TITLE: Cruciamentum Eternus
CHAPTER: you must realize the truth: there are no chapters.
AUTHOR: Ankh Ascendant ( setosgirl0 / neferseti0 )
DATE: 2-24-10
FANDOM: Harry Potter
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter, or make any money from it.
PAIRINGS: None
TYPE: Drama
RATING: PG-13
WARNINGS: death, psychological trauma
OCs: none
BETA: none
WORDS: 1860
SUMMARY: There is a ghost who haunts the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: a young man with a pale, pointed face and wide eyes. By day he walks the dungeons like a Slytherin; by night the silence is broken by his screams. This is his story.
NOTES: I'm not certain if I'll actually write the other parts to this story that I planned. If I do, however, please don't actually regard the chapters as "chapters", but as separate scenes of the same narrative.

Anyway, I thought about ghosts after rereading the fifth book, and I came to the conclusion that Draco, who is not known for his courage in the face of the unknown, and who has very strong ties to this world (or at least his mother; I love me an unabashed mama's boy) is an excellent candidate to shy away from the path after death and unconsciously choose the shadow of life.

And that is the basis of this story, if it really is a story. It's not very nice, but it made me quite happy to write. Then gain, that says something about me...

* * *

Cruciamentum Eternus

"You failed."

The cold words chilled him more than the unnaturally chilly June night. The circle of Death Eaters had closed ranks around them in the darkness, forming a silent, stony witness to his judgment. All he could see were dark hoods watching impassively. He'd been told to remove his mask, marking him clearly as not one of them... He shivered and stared at the ground at their lord's feet, because it was easier than looking at him.

"I let everyone into the school," he said, forcing his voice steady. They had succeeded, surely he couldn't be blamed... He tried to hold firmly onto that fact; it wasn't working well. He remembered their lord's promised punishment should he fail in his task. "Dumbledore was killed."

Their lord was slow to answer. He was walking around the space slowly, circling him, and when he spoke his voice was cold and casual and dangerous. "But not... by... you."

He flinched, but raised his chin with what he hoped looked like confidence; it felt like foolish posturing. "Only because Snape interfered before I could." He sought the snake-like face, very briefly, then dropped his eyes again; he couldn't look at him for long. Especially when he was lying.

If their lord's face could show emotions like a normal person's, he looked vaguely amused. The expression was chilling. "You had your chance."

One large, pale hand twitched toward his wand; that was all it took for him to hit his knees, no longer even pretending to be confident. Pride wasn't worth the Dark Lord's wrath. "Give me another, please..." he pleaded, panic running through him and coloring his voice.

Pitiless red eyes looked down at him; he tried not to tremble, but there was nothing in those eyes he could appeal to or manipulate to get out of this.

Finally, the Dark Lord turned around, cloak flaring. "Lucius," he called.

His eyes darted to the hooded Death Eater who stepped forward from the circle. "My lord."

"Punish him."

"Yes, lord." The Death Eater drew his wand.

He drew back a little, disbelieving. "Father..."

With only the barest hesitation, the wand leveled at him. "Crucio," his father said quietly, coldly.

He screamed. The ground came up to meet him, but he didn't feel it; all he could feel was the fire where his bones should be, surging through him, consuming him...

Then it disappeared, as instantly as it had come, but the memory of the pain was enough to keep him curled up on the ground, whimpering.

"Again."

"No..." he whimpered, looking up at his father desperately, pulling himself back along the ground. The eye slits in the blank mask gave nothing away.

"Crucio."

The world turned to pain again. There was nothing else...

He couldn't move when it stopped this time, just choked and gasped in a ball on the ground.

"Again."

"No..." he breathed, curling up.

His father's voice was quieter this time, but no less cold. "Crucio."

Pain...

Waves of pain...

He wanted it to end...

Merciful darkness rolled over him, extinguishing the pain and everything else.

---

"Ennervate."

He whimpered as awareness came back, and curled into a ball. His body ached and he didn't want to remember why. He could hear jeering around him, though, from all sides, those hateful voices...

"Three curses and he faints like a little girl..."

"And he screams for his mother..."

His hands curled into fists in the grass, hot shame burning beside the memory of pain in every muscle. He tried to sit up without making a sound; he wasn't entirely successful, but he did manage to sit, looking warily up. His eyes avoided the jeering circle of Death Eaters, but found their lord, standing back, wand in hand. It had been his cold voice that had pulled him from the darkness.

The only Death Eater he could see not mocking him stood in front of him, impassive behind the mask, watching him. His eyes flinched away from his father.

"Again."

He flinched backward.

His father's voice came from behind the mask. "My Lord, if I may... We got into the school, and Dumbledore is dead, because of him, despite his inability..."

"I said again, Lucius."

There was a slight quiver to the wand that pointed at him. He pulled away, staring. "No, father, please..."

His father didn't seem to see his pleas. He might as well have begged the stars for help for all the sympathy he could see in the masked face. "...Crucio."

Again waves of pain rolled over him, obscuring everything but, like a tide drawn over him by a merciless moon. He was drowning in it... so much pain he couldn't breathe...

It may not have lasted long; he couldn't tell, time under it was immaterial. He only knew that when it ended he clutched at the ground, sobbing halfhearted pleas for mercy or protection. All he could think of was that he wanted his mother, he didn't want to be here... he needed her to help him... he couldn't do this, he needed her...

He gasped for air as the pleading trailed off, opening his eyes to stare up at the stars above the heads of the Death Eaters in his line of vision, curling up to try to stop his muscles twitching in uncontrollable spasms as they relived the pain. He struggled to get any sort of control over his body back, and generally failed. He really didn't think he could take more of this.

"Father..." His eyes turned desperately toward his father, trying to make him see that he really couldn't...

"You're losing heart, Lucius. Again."

He flinched and buried his face at the sound of the cold voice, choking on a sob, but there was no immediate return of the agony this time. His father was resisting the order.

"My lord... surely he has been punished..."

He listened to the voices, only half aware of them, very tentatively glad not to be in pain but too afraid of inciting the curse again to even lift his face and look at them. Maybe if he just did what they wanted, stayed here without trying to resist, he wouldn't have to go through that again... maybe he had suffered enough to satisfy their lord's wrath...

"It sounds as though you're trying to argue with me."

"Never, my lord," he answered swiftly. "I only fail to see how he will be any more use to you if this continues much longer."

"Don't flatter yourself." The Dark Lord's voice was cruelly amused; he grabbed the grass and tried not to hear it. "You've been gentle with him. Such weak curses wouldn't even break a Muggle." There were a few cruel titters around the circle. "And yet you fool yourself... Do you really think I shall have any more use for him, now that he's proven himself even more of a failure than you?"

The words meant little to him, though he knew they should. It was so much trouble to think, he didn't want to think, he just wanted to hide, or disappear. They meant something to his father, though; his voice took on an odd strangled quality. "My lord... my son..."

"You mean to say you can't follow this order?"

There was no answer.

The silence was broken by a derisive laugh. "Lord, give him to me! Lucius and my sister may be weak, but not I! If I had sons, I would give them all to you, and gladly!"

"You should take a lesson, Lucius." The voice sounded mocking. "Bellatrix, Rodolphus, take over this punishment... keep him under."

"No..." He looked up as he realized two dark forms were coming toward him, and looked desperately toward his father, standing back, looking almost frozen. "No, father, please, help me... please..."

His father said nothing, did nothing, to help him. The next thing he heard, still pleading with his father, was his aunt's cruel voice.

"Crucio."

His father had been easy on him. Where before waves of pain had covered everything else, now there simply was nothing else. His entire world turned into an eternity of agony that consumed him from the inside out. There was no ebb or flow of the pain, it only built higher and higher, taking more and more of him... He would have died to escape it.

When the blackness took him this time, he hoped that he had.

---

"Ennervate."

He opened his eyes to the starry sky and choked – not on the tears that were sliding wetly down his face this time, but on the thick taste in his throat. He rolled with a whimper onto his side and spat blood onto the grass beside him; his throat protested, and the taste returned quickly enough. Something was torn with his screaming... He didn't even have the energy to worry about it.

A sharp boot dug int his arm and kicked him over; he cried out, clutching at his arm, surprised at the pain that hadn't disappeared with the curse. He realized distantly as he felt the sickly bulge and sharp pain as he grabbed it that it was broken, but he didn't know how.

"This isn't even going to be fun," Bellatrix complained, standing over him. "If you can't go more than five minutes without passing out..."

"Stop..." he whispered, curled into a ball, not even looking up at her. He didn't expect her to listen, but he was beyond being able to control himself. "Please..."

She laughed and flicked her wand at him again.

He was consumed with the pain before he even heard her curse him. Again, there was absolutely nothing but pain, anywhere. The burning agony ravaged through him, consuming everything and leaving nothing in its wake but even more pain, leaving him nothing but a screaming mass of pain consuming itself...

Darkness returned, but there was no respite; someone brought him back straight into the agony, like it had never lifted and never would. It only continued to rage and burn, building inexorably upon itself until he couldn't even hope for its ending and was finally pushed into darkness again.

Again and again forever this cycle continued, darkness but no relief breaking the torture into thick chunks. How many he didn't know. Time had no meaning, or didn't exist; only pain was real. He couldn't even have said who he was.

All he had left was the agony and the desperate, mindless terror screaming for his mother to make it better, to save him.

Confused visions mixed intermittently with the pain. Merciless red eyes. A cruel laughing woman. His father unmasked, restrained physically by the two burly Crabbes. He looked like he was yelling. Screaming.

Screaming...

"Draco!"

A high cold laugh overrode the screaming, the yelling, the terror. A brilliant green light swallowed his screams and finally ended his pain.