Summary: Chaos is unleashed in the darkness, and an enemy's trust will draw Harry to the centre.

Rating: R

Warnings: Violence, coarse language, slash (being male/male romantic pairings). That's it, as far as I know.

Disclaimer: To all lawyers, Warner Brothers employees, J. K. Rowling and anyone else who may choose to get offended about this borrowing of characters and setting: I am well aware they aren't mine. They're quite belligerent about that, to be honest. Nor will they show me how to play poker, or let me make any money from selling their…stories. Yes…

Feedback: Welcome: All and sundry. Unwelcome: *crickets chirrup* *Draco swats crickets*

Other: Firstly, sorry there's been so little activity around here lately; Year Twelve does that to a person, apparently. All Torn Down will be updated in a day or two. This story is being written in between, and All Torn Down will always have priority so while the chapters are short, the updates will probably be slow.

In other news: Draco's mind is completely warped in this story. He has good reasons.

The Way of the Beast: Escape

'There are many Sorrows in heaven, waiting to be sent to us as Angels…'

—The Glory Days, Isobelle Carmody.

Thud.

Harry's eyelids flickered open, and he tensed. The room around him was shrouded in darkness, and he suddenly felt very exposed and vulnerable, though he knew his wand lay safe on a table a few feet away. The clawing blackness brought back unwelcome memories of the cupboard under the stairs.

Someone else was in the room; he could hear them breathing. His fingers curled in the folds of his bedclothes as he tried to gauge where they were, and whether he could reach his wand before they stopped him. 'Who's there?'

There was a scraping sound, as though the person was trying to slide towards him. 'Harry?'

Harry sat up. 'Malfoy? What are you doing in here?'

'Can I stay?'

Harry jumped; Malfoy was much nearer to him than he had thought. Before he could reply, he felt the sheets being lifted and a warm body settling beside his. 'What the hell do you think you're—'

He froze as a pair of arms encircled him. Malfoy buried his head in Harry's chest. 'I'm all fucked up,' he whispered, his voice thick and ragged.

Harry realised Draco was shaking against him. 'Gods, what's wrong?'

Malfoy choked. 'Help me. Help me please, someone, help, I-I'm so, so...I...oh, shit. Oh God, Harry, please, help me...'

'What's happened?' Harry reached for his wand. 'Tell me what's happened...lumos.'

As the wand shed light across the room, Draco burrowed in closer to Harry, trying to hide his face. Harry felt a dampness seep through his pyjamas where Malfoy's face was pressed against his chest and for a second his mind stilled in shock. Is he crying?

'Look at me. Draco, look at me.' Malfoy refused to move. Harry gave an exasperated snort and took hold of his chin, yanking Draco's head up until their eyes met. 'Look—'

Draco's face looked like a battlefield. Purpled bruises covered its surface, swelling in some areas and in others crossed by savage lacerations. It looked as though someone had tried his utmost to break a bone—whether it be his jaw or his skull seemed irrelevant. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the usual cool steel of his eyes was a tempest of fear and shame.

Harry began to breathe again. 'Oh, gods...' Malfoy hadn't been crying. Blood from some of the cuts had smeared on Harry's pyjamas, but there were no tears to blur the storm in those eyes. 'Why did you come here? You need the Hospital Wing.'

'No!' A spasm juddered through Malfoy's body. Harry gasped, feeling nails dig into his sides like claws as Draco clung to him. 'No, no, no. Not there, not there...'

'Ssh, ssh,' Harry murmured, feeling like a mother trying to comfort a nightmare-ridden child. He peeled Draco's hands away from him as gently as he could. 'You're not making any sense. You need someone to look at this, now come on.' He sat up, taking Draco's weight with him. 'I'll take you there.'

'No...'

'Stop being such a child. I'll carry you if I have to.'

Malfoy cringed back, shaking his head stubbornly. Harry sighed. 'I'd have thought humiliation would get through to you of all people.'

He lifted Draco easily. Harry wasn't sure what was more unexpected: the sheer lightness of the boy, or his lack of resistance. He glanced down at Draco's eyes, into which a little reproach and resignation had seeped. 'Where have you been the past week? Who did this to you?'

Draco remained silent. Harry rolled his eyes and carried him away.

*

'Coming, I'm coming!' Harry stopped kicking at the Hospital Wing door as it swung open to reveal an irate Madam Pomfrey, menacing in a thick pink nightgown. 'What—' Her expression melted when she saw who Harry was holding. She held out her arms. 'Give him to me.'

Harry did so, and followed her into the Wing.

'Where did you find him?' Pomfrey asked, laying Draco out on a bed. At some point on the way to the Wing, Draco had fallen asleep. Harry stared, horrified, at his emaciated form. His robes were torn and stained with dirt among other things, and what was visible of his body was no better than his face. Harry shuddered.

'Potter?'

He started. 'Sorry?'

'Where was he?'

'He'd gotten into my room, I don't know how. And he—he was like that, only,' Harry's eye strayed again to the inert body on the bed. 'Only I didn't see, before...'

'Do you want to stay here for the night?'

Harry rubbed at his eyes. 'No, I'm fine. I just need to get back, and, and…'

'Mmm,' the matron said, eyeing the blood smeared on Harry's pyjama top. 'You're fine.'

He looked down. 'Oh. That's his, not mine.'

'Show me.' Harry unbuttoned his shirt to reveal the unbroken skin of his chest. Her eyes flicked to his side. 'What's that?' Madam Pomfrey pulled the shirt aside to inspect a row of gashes in his sides.

'Hmm? Oh, that. He didn't want to come here; I guess that was his way of showing it.'

'He was holding onto you?'

'Like a cat holds onto a tree when there's a dog around,' Harry murmured, yawning. 'I hadn't realised he'd broken the skin, though.' he began to button the shirt again.

'I think you should stay here.'

'No, it's all right, really. I just need to go back and get some rest...'

Pomfrey smiled and nodded understandingly as he spoke, all the while guiding him to another bed. She pulled back the sheets and pushed Harry onto the mattress. 'Rest then,' she said, tucking him in.

'But—'

'Ssh.' She ran a gentle hand over his face, closing his eyes. There must have been a little magic in that touch, because Harry fell asleep a few minutes later.

*

When Harry woke, Pomfrey had gone. Daylight, soft and warm, shafted through an unshuttered window across the room. He sat up.

Draco was still lost to the world. His face, still mottled with colour, wasn't as grisly a sight as it had appeared last night. There were several patches and bandages covering his skin; Madam Pomfrey had been hard at work.

Harry slid out from between the sheets and crossed the floor to the other boy's bed. Draco's robe had been stripped from him, and now he lay in a crisp hospital gown. Even asleep, a trace of the fear Harry had seen the night before was perceptible.

'Trust you to look so vulnerable when you're asleep,' Harry muttered. He looked up at the creak of a door.

'Morning,' Madam Pomfrey said.

'Morning. How is he?'

'He'll heal,' she said. Harry frowned; that wasn't what he meant and she knew it. 'Breakfast is on in the Hall. I suggest you go and get ready for the day.'

She turned her back on him to strip the sheets from the bed on which he'd slept, effectively closing the conversation.

Harry wandered out of the Wing, feeling more than a little disoriented at the matron's brusque treatment of him. He earned several odd glances as he made his way from the Hospital Wing to his room in Gryffindor Tower in bloodstained pyjamas, but on his internal radar they registered as unimportant.

He tore his clothes off as soon as he was safely inside his room to inspect the scars left by Draco's nails. Harry gave a low whistle; the tract of gashes on both sides was impressive, and wouldn't heal for a good few days by his guess.

'Cat,' he muttered, groping in his trunk for clean clothes and his Prefect badge. Once he was dressed, Harry threw the pyjamas in a corner, promising himself a new set after the next trip to Hogsmeade. Then he hurried down to the Great Hall.

He slid into his seat between Ron and Hermione, muttering 'Malfoy's back,' as he helped himself to food. Hermione glanced from him to the Slytherin table.

'I don't see him.'

'He's in the Hospital Wing.'

Ron almost choked on his egg. 'What? Why's he there?'

'I took him there last night.' He saw the looks on their faces, and sighed. 'Somehow he got into my room and—'

'And you gave him what-for!' Ron said, grinning.

'No. Someone else already had. I don't know how he got in, but he was a mess and he was panicking.' Harry shrugged. 'So I took him to the Wing.' He grimaced, placing a hand on his side. 'He really, really didn't want to go.'

'What did he do?'

'Scratched me up a bit. No, Hermione, don't worry. It's all right, just hurts a little.'

Ron whistled, glancing again at the Slytherin table. 'Wonder where he's been?'

'And who with,' Harry muttered darkly. Hermione looked surprised.

'You're worried about him?'

'Yes.' Harry pushed his plate away, stretching and trying not to wince at the pain shooting along his torso. 'What do we have first up?'

'Potions,' Hermione said gloomily.

Harry scowled. 'Brilliant.'

He glared across the room at the Potions Master. After the chaos following the Triwizard disaster, Harry had dared hope that Snape would become, if not warm, then at least civil in his lessons. He had realised by the end of the first lesson back that it wasn't to be, and the old enmity between the two of them had renewed itself with a passion.

*

If Snape had been informed about Draco's reappearance, he gave no sign of caring. The man loomed at the front of the classroom, barking instructions. His grim gaze swept the silent room, pausing as it passed over Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville in particular.

'Remember that the bryony root must be properly skinned and chopped, or the potion will explode in your face and, Mr Longbottom, you will be cleaning the mess up before you go to the Hospital Wi—'

'Excuse me, Professor Snape?'

'—ng. Do I make myself clear? Yes, Madam Pomfrey?' The animosity in his gaze barely diminished as it shifted to consider the matron.

'Could I borrow one of your students, please? Harry Potter?'

Snape sneered, glancing back at Harry. 'Don't think for an instant that this gets you out of work, Potter. I expect the potion to be completed in your own time and handed in by tomorrow morning. Now get out.'

Harry did so, with as much speed as he could muster. Pomfrey closed the Potions room door and gestured for him to follow her. Harry found he had to trot to keep up.

'What's going on?'

'It's Malfoy. He's woken up, but he's being...difficult. Refuses to talk to anyone, among other things. He wants to see you.'

'Why me?'

'I don't know, but he was very adamant.'

Harry stared at her. 'If he's not talking to anyone, how could he say he wanted to see me?'

She handed him a torn piece of paper. Scrawled on it were two words:

Get Potter.