Haunted

17 | slandering of a god

This was a bad idea. A supremely bad idea, he thought, but yet his feet continued to carry him down the cobblestone road and towards the bar. Golden light spilled out onto the street, as though the bar was beckoning him. It was beckoning him, wasn't it? The bar promised companionship from old friends and drinks that might help to calm the rush of anxiety that was circulating through his body like venom. What does one call that if not an invitation, a bidding to come closer?

Draco paused by the entrance to the bar, eyesight slightly blurry around the edges, like a kind of astigmatism that caused all the light that invaded his corneas to be distorted; lines across his vision instead of dots. He blinked a few times, a rhythmless twitching of his eyes that might look, to anyone else, like he was suffering from some sort of stroke.

Through the large window, he could spy his school friends crowded around a table, chatting and laughing as though they were not soldiers in a war. As though they were just kids in their twenties and not adults who'd been forcibly pulled from childhood, who'd killed and tortured in the name of a cause they didn't believe in, who'd inflicted horrors to keep the wand from being turned on themselves and their families. Or perhaps it was just him who didn't believe in the cause, just him who acted out of self-preservation. He didn't know and he was too cowardly to ask.

Draco swallowed, watching silently, transfixed as if the people inside the bar were a source of entertainment for his own viewing. His eyes wandered from face to face; Theo's familiar grin that he hadn't seen in far too long; Pansy, who covered her mouth with her hand to contain a giggle; Astoria nursing a glass of something pink and observing the conversation with an amused expression. There was Daphne, who was prone to tapping her manicured nails on the table, and Adrian, who held her other hand beneath the table where he thought nobody could see. Blaise returned to the table with his wand directing a levitating tray of drinks, and Draco could practically hear his boisterous laugh when the contents of a glass sloshed over the side and poured directly onto the front of Theo's shirt.

A burst of melancholy gripped Draco so suddenly that he stepped back as though he'd taken a physical blow to the chest. He turned to face the street, some unknown force begging that he pretend as though he hadn't seen what he had. A pair of shaking hands conjured a cigarette from a hidden pocket of his cloak, and he used wandless magic to light it. He'd been unofficially working on quitting the Muggle habit, but his nerves were stuttering and in desperate need of calming; a restlessness that he knew a few puffs would quell.

He brought the cigarette to his lips and took a deep inhale, shuttered eyes still able to make out the blurred glow from the other end. He sucked in and let the smoke gather in his lungs, let the nicotine soak into his bloodstream, and then finally let it flow from his lips in a continuous breath that didn't end until he had no more oxygen left to give.

There was something desperately wrong with watching his friends laughing when he, himself, was filled with such a deep despair that some days he wondered if it might last forever, if he was destined to spend the rest of his life wading through thick mud under the cover of threatening rainclouds. The desolation was so pervasive, so ubiquitous, that sometimes he could hardly breathe, could hardly think. Any momentary respite from the gloom was just that: a respite. No matter how much he might smile with Blaise during mealtimes or spread his arms out in the air while flying on his broom, it was always there, lying just beneath the surface like a shark patrolling the waves, out of sight except for an ominous dorsal fin exposed above the water.

How could they be laughing? How could they be enjoying themselves? They were in the midst of a war, for Merlin's sake. How dare they find light among the darkness when he was so covered in shadows, when the Wizarding world had descended into a never ending dusk.