Choice

Cold. He felt cold. The room was darker than any night he had ever seen, and colder still than any winter he had ever felt. Still, he refused to show any sign of weakness. The air turned itself to ice around him, melting only long enough to be inhaled before turning back to crystals once it hit his lungs.

“Come now, Mister Malfoy,” a voice scolded from the darkness.

He couldn’t see them. Whoever it was, they had hid themselves in the darkness, but Draco could tell they were close. He could practically feel their breath on the back of his neck.

“You know all you have to do is tell us where they are. Tell us, and you can go free.”

Another voice, this one stronger, but further away perhaps; or so he thought, until a hand materialized to force its way into his chest. The breath, frozen as it was, was pushed from him in a low wince. Draco hated that sound, hated himself for making it, and hated them for the laughter that followed.

“Come now little prince, tell us what we need to know.”

Ah, yes. That voice he knew, and would know anywhere. It was the sickeningly sweet sounds of his aunt, Bellatrix Lestrange.

“Be a good little boy, Draco.” She finishes her words with a soundless curse, causing him to bite his tongue rather than scream out.

He won’t give her that pleasure.

“Insolent fool!” A hand smacks painfully across his face. This is his reward for silence.

His vision swims as yet another voice enters into the mix, this one telling him he has a choice, and it needs to be made.

Choices. All his life he has acted as if he had all the choices in the world, as if time itself asked him before it dared to move. But the truth is he has rarely ever made a single decision. His life has been preplanned since the moment of his conception. From the very day Draco was born, his freedom was striped from him, and his life laid out like a road map before his eager silver, eyes: something to be studied, learned, and excepted as truth.

For years, he had followed blindly. He accepted what he believed he could not change, and no matter how they would argue the contrary, Draco knew now that he had been taught to be weak. He was taught to be submissive to superiors, and to flaunt authority over those who were below him. Draco was taught to be a coward, ducking the real responsibilities of a human being in favor of carrying out his Master’s whims. And he knew he was a fool to ever believe that what he was doing was righteous, necessary even.

She taught him that. She taught him to be a better person, because she herself is a better person. She let loose within him a soul he never knew existed; a person of courage: a person of defiance.

Now they, the teachers, the stealers, those who had hurt him, demanded that he give her up. Of course he knew where she was hiding, but he would rather die than give that information away. Finally, he had made a choice.

“You think you’re so powerful,” he mumbles out into the darkness. He knows not where they are, but there is no doubt they are hanging off his every word. “It’s a pity it’s all for nothing.”

“Foolish child! Do you not think we hold power over you still? Your very life is in our hands!”

It is then, perhaps, that he cracks ever so slightly, as a pained laughter makes its way from his cracked and bleeding lips.

“Yes,” Draco acknowledges. “You have caught me, have tied me to a chair, and you have beaten me. But notice still that I am stronger than I once was. You don’t control me anymore.”

“You realize what this means, Little One?” his aunt coos from somewhere off to his right. “You had a choice, and it appears that you have chosen death.”

As soon as she finishes, Draco is thrown into a world of pain he has never known. He realizes too late that he is screaming, but he cannot make it stop. He can hear Auntie Bella cackling along with the shouts of curses thrown at him. It is too much, and he knows that they will kill him, but he doesn’t care. Just as his mind begins to darken, and his senses dull, he can hear shouting, calls for back up, and something else. He know they are not the voices of his captors, but before his mind has time to understand what is going on around him, everything fades to black.

---
“Draco?” A soft voice spoke to him from somewhere above. “Come on you lazy troll. You’ve had enough beauty sleep!”

He opened his eyes slowly to be met with the most wonderful of sight he could have imagine.

“Gin?” His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Of course it’s me! What, were you expecting one of your other girlfriends?”

Sitting up, he lunged for her, pinning her beneath him on the mattress. For the first time, he realized that he feels no pain.

“And what would I do with another girlfriend?” He asked slyly. “Don’t you think you’re enough trouble as it is?”

She started to laugh beneath him as his fingers began to tickle her sides.

“Dra- Draco stop it!” she giggled. “I hahah- I can’t breathe!” She began her own attack, using her delicate fingers and nails to tickle the flesh of his arms, the only place that can make him laugh.

But before she could get too far, he stopped her, pulling her towards him and wrapping his arms around her.

“It was a dream then?” he asked, inhaling deeply the scent of her hair, lilies and gardenias.

“What was? You’ve been sleeping half the day, so probably.”

“Mmm.” He nodded, placing light kisses on her forehead. “Good, I would hate to think I was going to be missing this.”

With a sweet smile she turned to face him just enough to kiss his. When she pulled back however, the smile is gone.

“Draco?” she asked. The alarm in her voice startled him slightly. “Draco, your lips are bleeding.”

Before he had a chance to bring a hand to his mouth, Draco’s vision turned to black.
---

The cold has returned, full force, as he can feel his back pressed against the cobbled stone of the floor. All around him voices are shouting, cursing and screaming. One, his Aunt’s, slices through the rest.

“It’s too late!” she sings. “It’s too late now, he’s made his choice! He’s already gone.”

Through heavily laden eyes he watches her sail across the room to land with a satisfying thunk against the wall.

“Bitch, I have never liked her anyway.” Yet another voice he could pick out of a thousand crowds. It was Ginny.

Draco tired to move towards her and when found he couldn’t he tried to make his voice carry, but all that came out was a low and pathetic sounding moan. But even that had taken too much energy, and even the darkness around him began to grow hazy. Draco realized then that there was a warmth surrounding him. A thick, wet, and sticky warmth: blood. He was covered in his own blood. Now desperate for the chill in the air, Draco tired to pull a shaking breath into his lungs, but it was in vain. Only a tiny trickle managed to find its way into his body.

“Draco!”

Ah, so his Ginny had found him now. He felt ashamed that she had to see him like this, to see him as weak. And he wished, if only for a second that they hadn’t come to save him. Then that way, her last vision of him would have been something stronger, something better than he was now. He knew that, because he knew that they had come too late.

“Come on, Draco, hang in there just a little bit longer. For me.” Even in the dark, he could see the fiery burning of her hair, and he could feel the splash of her tears as they hit his face.

He wanted to stay, he did, but his aunt had only been too right. They had come too late, and his choice had already been made.

Somewhere in the back of his fading mind, Draco was proud of what he had done. He had made a decision, and even though that choice had been death, he had also chosen life. Life for the Order, and for those who would continue to fight to put an end to a war he had wanted no part in.

Slowly, as if watching it from afar, Draco felt one last breath being pulled from his aching lungs. And with it he managed a smile, one he hoped she could see in the dark, and three words he prayed she heard.

“Be strong, love.”

---
“Draco!”

Draco opened his eyes gingerly, to a warm hand pressed against his face.

“What was that all about?” Ginny’s voice asked from above. She was holding his head, cradled gently between her hands. When he did not answer, she pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing scaring me half to death like that. One second, I tell you your lips are bleeding, the next you’re passing out on me! Honestly! Since when are you such a sissy?”

He leaned up, reaching his hand toward her face, and pulled her back down for a second kiss.

“They must have been chapped,” he whispered.

Skeptically, she glared at him before sinking back down to lay beside him.

“Maybe it is too early for you to be getting out of bed.”

He laughed, pulling her body flush against his own.

“And why would you say that?” he asked, in between kisses to the crown of her fiery head.

“I don’t know, maybe because you’re warm, and I’m cold. You always have been a good heater.”

“Oh, is that all I’m good for? I thought there might have been something more?”

“And I miss you when you have to leave. I worry about you,” she added, her voice betraying reluctance.

He wished he could comfort her better, but his eyes were already beginning to grow heavy, his brain becoming clouded with exhaustion.

“Silly girl,” he mumbled. “I couldn’t die on you. You’d be so lost without me. Not to mention all the walls you’d walk into.”

Soft laughter causes her to shake in his arms every so slightly as she reached for the blankets to cover both of them.

“I know, it’s just hard…” she trailed off, turning her body towards him to tuck her head carefully into the side of his neck. “I’m not sure what I’d do without you, you giant pain in my arse.”

Slowly, with the last of his energy, Draco smiled.

“You’d be strong,” he tells her. His voice was weak, and in the dim light of the room, he prayed she’d be awake enough to hear him. “Always, love, be strong.”