defy with all our might

Someone once compared Draco Malfoy to water. Perhaps it was an accurate description. Like a stretch of water, he was silent and still, even fish avoided him. The only image that the water gave was their reflection. No one could see his true nature. He was like an empty doll, following every single order by King Voldemort without fail. But the truth was – he wasn't empty.

.

.

.

He was broken.

Golden rays made their way through the cracks of the window, falling right onto Draco's face. Shifting in discomfort, he tried to block the light trying to make its way into his eye, before grunting in defeat and laid there in the comfort of his bed. Soon enough, the smell of freshly made breakfast wafted to his nose, jerking him out of his sleepiness.

''Hermione?'' His voice echoed through the silent house. The delicious smell of food was gone, replaced with the damp morning air. Draco sat up right on his bed and took a good look of the place before sighing deeply. It had been the same dream. It had been the same person. It had been six months since Hermione left his home without notice.

The first few months had been hell. He barely slept, spending each waking minute searching the streets for a certain brown-haired girl. His ears would perk up at the mention of a rebellion, running straight to the scene with raised hopes. He would turn at the sound of ginger, hoping he had heard it wrongly and the person had said Granger instead. But no, all his efforts were futile. It was as if that girl vanished off the face of the earth. No matter how hard he tried to look, she just could not be found.

By now, he had calmed down a little. He was back into his normal lifestyle, or at least what was normal before he met Hermione. He was back hiding behind a persona, a fake personality that accepted the world as it was (for all its countless flaws). He let his rational side take over, burying his emotional side deep down, trying not to give in to his memories and break down. (But no matter how strong one was, there was always a time where it all fell apart.)

As Draco stood in front of a full-length mirror, he could see the toll on his body in the last six months. He was no longer that calm-before-a-storm boy. Externally, yes, he was still the same Draco Malfoy. But with one deep look into his eyes, everything was falling apart from within and crumbling before his very eyes. His eyes wandered down, landing on his bandaged left hand that portrayed his recent act of breaking down and his loss of control. It brought him back to the time when Hermione would be like a mother hen fussing over his little injuries.

Draco stepped into the house, internally glad that the lights were already off. Hermione must already be asleep, he thought to himself. He winced as he staggered slowly into the house, careful not to exert extra pressure that might make the floor squeak and wake the dead. However, the lights suddenly flickered to life and he straightened up immediately at the sight of a brown-haired girl.

''You're home late, Draco.'' Hermione said, arms crossed, looking angry.

''Sorry,'' he replied thinly. ''Unexpected things popped up.''

''The least you could do was tell me,'' the girl replied, walking into the kitchen. ''I cooked some food, by the way, thought you might be hung-''

A thud stopped Hermione in the middle of her words. She spun around to see Draco lying on the floor, covered in his own pool of blood.

''Draco!'' Hermione rushed to the fallen boy in panic. ''Draco? Draco, answer me! What's wrong?''

He gave no reply, causing the girl to panic even more. She lifted the now half-conscious boy and hoisted him onto the bed before instinctively pulling his coat off. She gasped at the sight of his blood-soaked shirt before carefully peeling it off, afraid to add more damage to the wound.

'Where did he get that wound..?' She thought as she grabbed a bowl of clean water and some cloth, wiping the blood away without touching the wound itself. The wound looked like a whip mark, stretching from the tip of his shoulder bone to his mid back, screaming an angry red. Draco groaned slightly, before shifting around, pouring more blood onto the sheet and covers.

''Stop moving around!'' Hermione ordered, panicking at the sight of more blood. ''You're going to make the wound worse.''

Draco stopped shifting around and Hermione continued to wipe the blood clean. ''S-sorry for the trouble… I lost it for a while back there.''

''What happened..?''

''My father…'' Draco started, uneasiness in his voice, ''He heard about me saving you back in the square.'' Hermione froze. It wasn’t her fault but she couldn’t help but feel guilty. ''He was enraged that you're still running about in the open, and wanted me to reveal your location to him. I didn't comply and… you can guess what happens next. This place might not be safe for you anymore. It’s your choice to leave. I won't stop you.''

''Stupid...'' Hermione whispered softly, ''You don't need to protect me like that. You wouldn't have to hurt like this if you had given me to them.''

''You're the stupid one,'' Draco replied, struggling into sitting position, before proceeding to cup Hermione's face in his shaking hand. ''After all these months, how can I just sell you out like that? Hermione Granger, I'm in love with you. I would rather die here with you than go back to being a monster working for the King. I promise that I'm not giving up on you, on us. We'll find ways to set things right, okay?''

Sniffling softly, she cried into his chest as Draco put an arm around her. Even though the action brought more pain than comfort to him, it was all pushed back into his mind. 'We'll be okay.' He thought to himself.

He smiled bitterly at the distant memory, remembering that moment where everything felt perfect. The days after that were sweet, as Hermione nursed his wound. But then one day, she just left. No note, no anything. His feelings became a whirlpool of hurt, pain, and anxiety. Was she safe? Was she taken when he was out? Thoughts circled his mind day and night, and time only made them worse.

Thoughts haunted him with every step he took. Their memories haunted him with every breathe he took. Their love for one another, which had been buried, haunted him every second he was alive. Now, he was broken beyond repair. He was a broken doll with a broken heart. He was barely holding on because the pain in his heart was one that no medicine could ever cure. Only she could, but she had long left his side.

He was hopelessly broken and there was no fixing him.

Hermione was hopelessly broken. She was physically broken. She was a monster. She was ugly. They tortured her, cut her open and left purple bruises on her skin. They didn’t give her enough water, nor enough food or enough space and comfort. They only gave her enough to survive. She was a skeleton, breathing but not living. She was a puppet, mercilessly manipulated by those in control. She was a mere tool, disposable if she got out of line but precious for the information she could give. She hated it with every fibre in her body.

She hated everything about them – the way they would abuse her and use her until they reaped all the benefits out of her. They were cruel and inhumane. They didn’t deserve to be considered humans. They were merciless when it came to treating her and seeing to her basic needs. She hated them. She hated what they did to her. They made her ugly. They gave her bruises. They gave her cuts. They let her bleed. They killed the spark in her eyes and the hope that once lit her heart on fire. She hated who she was now. She was not pretty – she was ugly. She was not a warrior – she was a monster. She was not sick – she was broken. She was broken beyond repair and nothing could fix her, nothing but him. But he was no longer by her side. They had ruthlessly flicked Draco away from her life. She was miserable.

Thoughts of what happened to him and how he was doing now haunted her with every step she took. Their memories haunted her with every breathe she took. Their love for one another, which had been buried, haunted her every second she was still living her miserable life. Now, she was broken beyond repair. She was a broken doll with a broken soul. She was barely holding on because the pain for living this long was unbearable. No amount of medicine could cure it. Only he could, but he had long left her side.

She was hopelessly broken and there was no fixing her.

(He was right. It was better to comply than to defy.)

Every day of his life, Draco had a plentiful breakfast in silence. Sometimes his father was there, sometimes he was not. When his father was, he did not speak much and simply sat and read the newspaper which illustrated King Voldemort’s victories in a more positive light. Some days when he was there, his father did not read the newspaper at all. Instead he talked to Draco (more of a lecture in Draco’s honest opinion). It usually consisted of King Voldemort and how grateful they should be for His Majesty accepting them as his loyal servants. Draco considered himself lucky in moments like these that he was not born with the same mindset that his father had. (But he was still broken beyond repair.)

It was one breakfast morning where Draco was greeted for breakfast with his father, already sitting down and eating his meal. When Draco took a seat and also started to eat, he found it unusual because there was no newspaper nor did his father utter a word. He continued to eat slowly, cautiously regarding his father’s strange behaviour. The delicious food that was brought here from England was meant to melt on his tongue but they did not. He had an ominous feeling about today. Something was about to happen and he had a strong instinct that he would not like it. As he watched Lucius ate, the possibility of something unexpected and not to his liking coming to his eyes today grew with every passing second. He did not act upon his instincts. He was a doll, controlled by his father’s manipulative ways.

With a clutter, his father set his cutlery down. Draco immediately turned his head to see what his father was doing. It was not in his father’s nature to let his cutlery fall to his plate without any grace. As Draco observed his father’s face, he noticed that his father’s eyes were full of excitement and anticipation. There was an undeniable spark in his eye, showing his emotions to the world. It was an expression that Draco had already seen far too many times without fail. The last time he saw it was when his father told him of plans to invade the land, this land that they currently ‘own’ and the time before that was when King Voldemort especially requested that his father have permission to torture one of his subordinates, a matter that he considered to be of the greatest honour and carried out immediately, despite the fact that the subordinate was his own brother.

“Draco,” his attention stayed on his father, “I have something to show you. Come,” he gestured as he stood up and left the table, expecting his son to follow him like he always had.

As they both walked into the corridor with Draco, even though he was taller, barely being able to keep up with his father’s pace, Lucius gave a nod to the servants and almost instantly he and his son were presented with cloaks to go outside. This was even worse than what Draco expected. Having his father show him and give him a mental image was worse than having his father tell him and then letting him slowly, little bits at a time, digest the information. (But he was broken. He would not be able to digest it anyway.)

Together, they exited their mansion through the grand front doors that took barely any resources to produce as his father had the locals bullied into doing everything. “What do you think of human experiments?” The younger man immediately frowned. His father, as Draco had noticed from a very early age, had an obsession of sorts with humans and their capacity for pain and the amount of alteration that could be done to their physical structure. Personally, Draco found it gruesome and inhumane. His father loved to torture people and see if he could stretch their feet wider to form a ‘tail’ or if he could flatten their hands to turn them into ‘fins’. Every time his father told him, Draco felt like vomiting and the stench of the sewage that hit him as they came outside didn’t help the urging sensation for his breakfast to come back up at all. He suppressed the urge because it was so much easier to comply than to defy.

“Don’t you find it fascinating?” his father continued without giving his son the opportunity to answer. “We could do so much more if we could change the capacity levels of humans. Imagine how much good it would do to His Majesty!” Draco had long given up on answering and interrupting his father. The last time he tried was a long time ago and it was the last time he was going to try.

“How ground-breaking would it be if we could alter the human structure?” Abruptly, Lucius immediately stopped and turned to his left to face an abandoned warehouse. “Instead of having soldiers on the front lines, we could have humans with invincible qualities.” His father was fiddling the lock with a key that he had kept hidden in his cloak. “His Majesty would be able to rule the world!”

Once his father managed to get the door open, Draco cautiously followed his father inside. He had a feeling that his father was going to be showing him a human experiment, a successful one. He honestly did not want to see it but he did not really have a choice, not unless he wanted to become a human experiment himself.

Draco’s eyes took time adjusting to the light in the old warehouse. Advanced technology scattered on either side, every screen detailing a specific aspect of the unfortunate soul that they were using. Everything was calling for his attention but as he and his father got closer; his attention became focused on a cage in the middle. All that he could make out in it was a mattress, a black blanket and a basic toilet. Draco felt sorry for the person whoever it was.

“This is the latest human experiment and it has been working marvellously.” Now that Draco looked closer not everything was in place. He could barely make out the cracked screens in the corner, the ragged scratches on the wall and the red stains of splattered blood on the ground. “With the altering of human DNA, this is going to be a major breakthrough.” They were standing just outside of the metal cage which was tiny for someone to live in. The blanket that Draco thought was a blanket wasn’t. It looked far too different from a blanked to be one. It looked like wings – black, withered wings.

The wings slowly started moving and Draco supposed that whoever it was moving them was hidden underneath their wings on the straw-filled mattress. When the pair of wings was lifted into the air, they ruffled slightly. The shadows were still able to conceal the identity of the person. As the wings moved to straighten themselves out properly, Draco saw brown hair – unkempt and dirty hair. The person stood with their wings facing him and their face the other way. The wings looked shrivelled from this perspective. They were mucky, dirty and oily. He took a glance at his father. Lucius was proud of his latest achievement. Draco did not know what there was to be proud of but he did not say it.

The person slowly turned around. They kept their head down but as Draco examined the person’s body, he realised that this person was a female. She was a local here and she had been tortured so that her wings could be implanted inside her back. Her skin was pulled around her bones, making her anorexic. She had not been fed properly. Her lips were chapped and peeling. She had not been given any water. Her skin was dotted with bruises and cuts. They had tortured her. It was times like these that Draco felt secretly ashamed that he had such a cruel father. He did not show his thoughts and emotions openly on his face, only staring blankly at the girl in front of him.

“Lift up your head!” Lucius urged the girl. Slowly she lifted her head. Draco’s eyes scanned her forehead, eyes, cheeks, nose, lips and chin. She looked familiar. She looked like…

She started to spread out her wings. They expanded slowly as they rose above her head and stretched further than he thought it would. When he first saw those wings he thought that they were withered and shrivelled. Now that he saw the wings in full view, they were magnificent and beautiful just like their owner used to be, just like Hermione once was.

The sight before him broke his heart. He cannot believe they did this to her. These few months without her have been unbearable. These few months for her would have been beyond unbearable. He can’t believe they treated her like this. She was a living skeleton, destroyed and lifeless. What broke his heart the most was the look in her eyes. She no longer had hope in her heart. All he could see was defeat. She was resigned to her fate. What happened to the girl who always spoke her mind no matter the consequences? Where was the strong girl who taught him to be more expressive and to be braver? He searched her eyes. The Hermione he once knew was dead, choked by his father and his sick obsession. (And he could not contain the overwhelming urge to bring breakfast back up.)

“Don’t you think it’s marvellous?” his father was proud of what was in front of him. His father was proud of the human experiment that he had created. His father was proud of what he had done to Hermione, broken her physically and mentally beyond repair.

He had to do something about this. He could not suppress his emotions any longer. He was the only one who had the power to do something. His hands turned into fists. He was never going to comply, not where his father was concerned. He wanted more than anything to defy as anger and adrenaline bubbled in his veins. Unfortunately, his father would never listen to him, not when his father was fascinated with the wings that accompanied Hermione. He had to express himself but his father would always brush him off or punish him. What if he ended up like her? What if he became broken beyond repair, physically and mentally? He could never allow that. All hope would be lost.

He had to find a way to show his father that human experiments were gruesome. He had to find a way to show his father his views on altering the human structure and torturing people. He had to find a way to speak his mind. He had to find a way for his father to take him seriously. His father could not neglect him anymore like he had done so countless times throughout his childhood whether it was in service to the King or not. And secretly the answer wasn’t so hard.

(Defy. Defy. Defy.)

(Start a rebellion. Cause chaos. Make him lose favour with the King.)

Hermione was already broken. He was as well. There was nothing left but hope. There was nothing left to lose.