I don't really read horror, so this story isn't terribly scary. I'd call it more suspense, but whatever. I really like it though, so that's something! My take on a different world, where Draco is a bigger sissy than ever.

Oh, and Harry Potter isn't mine.

Ubi Sunt

A bone-shattering scream jolts him awake from a dead sleep. This first night, he is too scared to leave the safety of his bed. He pulls the quilt over himself until he is entirely hidden, and when no other noise permeates the down, he fitfully returns to empty dreams.

Draco doesn't even remember the incident the next day. He shuffles about the manor as he usually does, spending each moment doing nothing except waiting for the sun to set so he can break the monotony with rest.

The shriek that wakes him is longer the second night, and it trails off into desperate sobs.

Hearing it again forces him to remember the previous incident, and makes it all that much more frightening. He jack-knifes into a sitting position, wide-eyed and gasping. "Who's there?" he demands. His heart taps at his ribs in syncopation, his fists are tight on the comforter. His wand is only an arm's length away, but the thought doesn't occur to him as he glances desperately around his darkened bedroom. "Who is it?" The sobs become hiccupping sniffles, which in turn become a fragile silence. He's scared to ask again, to break that calm.

It's much harder for him to fall back to sleep this time. When he does remember his wand, he drags it into bed with him and drifts off with it tangled between his fingers, even though he knows it's dangerous to do so.

On the third night he hears the voice cry out, Draco grabs his wand and—before his quaking hands win the battle of wills—marches straight into the corridor. It is startlingly empty, but the tremulous wails crawl across his skin until he wants to shout himself.

They come from the lower floor.

It takes him another minute of hesitating, of holding his shallow breath, before he can confidently step down the stairs. The manor has already quieted, yet it seems false, and tenuous. With each step, his body is poised to run, his muscles coiled as tightly as a spring. Draco pushes himself forward only through the fortitude of his curiosity. As his foot reaches the last step, he's close enough now to hear the words, punctuated with dry, shuddering moans:

Please, no. Stop it, stop it, please! I don't know! I don't—no, please—

All barely above a whisper.

The words tear at him, because he now recognizes them. They are the same, the same bleeding words as that time…. They trickle through the parlour doors—the doors that have been sealed, shut forever by his own wand over three years ago when his parents were permanently carted off to Azkaban. The spells still hold now.

His hand is tightening around his wand, but he barely notices—because he's figured out exactly who is screaming in his parlour at this hour of the morning. Without wasting a moment, he breaks into a sprint, back up the stairs, into the safety of his bedroom. He slams the door shut, and locks it, and he doesn't have to look in a mirror to know that he is as pale as the ghost that now haunts the manor.

When she cries out the next night, Draco immediately casts a silencing spell around his bed, creating a sanctuary in seconds. Yet, for some reason, he fancies he can still hear her weeping, and her voice, even though it was never very loud to begin with. His rest is fitful.

The night after that, he's burying his head under the pillow, scrunching his eyes shut and willing himself to sleep with all of his might, even in his spell-induced peace.

It's not working. Nothing's working. He knows that she is still there.

Draco prepares a sleeping draught for the following night and has a blissful evening of utter silence and rest, free even of dreams.

It is the very next day that she shrieks during his afternoon tea. His jolt of shock causes the cup to topple out of his hands, but he can't hear it shatter over the noise. He covers his ears and tries not to grit his teeth too much. Loudly, in order to be heard over her wailing pleas, Draco asks the attending house elf to deliver tea to the library from now on.

It is much quieter there—at the very least, he cannot make out her words.

The house elves are starting to whimper complaints about working near the parlour.

"The mudblood, she is screaming when the elves is coming by," they confide in whispers, too scared to state it outright. Draco, in turn, forbids them to speak of it. So they continue to clean around the room, shuddering whenever they hear a sound.

When the first elf dies, Draco convinces himself it is a mere coincidence. Never mind the circumstances seem suicidal. The body is bloated from the water and still soapy when it is taken away. He lets the others do what they will; he is not acquainted with house elf rituals, nor does he want to be.

He also tries not to think of how long it would have had to keep its own head submerged while the others watched, unmoving.

Draco witnesses the death of the next, and—without hesitation—he clothes the rest of the elves, save one. (This last elf he keeps solely for groceries and cooking, because he still refuses to leave the manor.) It is a testament to their fright that none of them cry when they leave. In Draco's ears, the apology of the last dead elf echoes, the backdrop a screech.

He wishes very much to forget, but the murderous fires dance behind his eyelids at night, and the blood-curdling screams he can't hear are ever present in his dreams.

Nothing's helping. Draco is now dividing his time between his room and the library, scouring every piece of literature for a solution to this haunting, but all books state that a ghost will remain until its purpose has been fulfilled. He cannot ask his parents for advice—they are still in Azkaban, and it will be another lifetime before he sees them again.

So he sits tensely every day, tucked in an armchair and clinging to the stony silence that he has meticulously arranged around himself so that he cannot hear her pleas for help. Indeed, he has become so accustomed to the absence of sound that the mere rustle of pages sets his teeth on edge.

He knows that he cannot continue like this forever, but he will try, until he finds enough courage to march downstairs and undo his spells to confront the ghost of a dying seventeen-year-old girl.

It has been three days since he has slept. He has been carrying the list of counter-spells in his pocket so that he may open the parlour doors whenever he wishes, but he doesn't wish to, not ever. It had been a mistake six years ago, and it would certainly be the same now. Wouldn't it?

Unfortunately, in his current state, he can hardly focus on eating, and every menial task has caused him trouble, so his question remains unanswered. Draco finally decides that he's suffered enough. He marches to those doors with false airs of confidence and bravery, and, while swaying on his feet, he mumbles the spells aloud. Each chink of the opening locks reverberates, and he listens to them rattle as much as he does not listen to her soft begging.

The door is finally unlocked.

Before he can run away, Draco shoves it open and steps inside. The first thing he sees is the back of the armchair that his father had sat in that day. It is high, a plush red velvet that his mother delighted in having. It is still pristine as the day it was purchased, and it raises the hair on his neck.

All the while, her words drift to him: Oh God, please listen to me, please. I can't tell you anything more. I can't!

"H-hello?" Merlin, he sounds stupid, but his own voice centres him—and for the very first time, he is rewarded with actual silence.

It's you! she bursts, and it turns his stomach to hear hope straining her voice. Where are you? Come here, please! Help me!

Draco draws in a breath and steps forward, already intimately acquainted the scene he will find.

There, the ghost of a girl long-dead lies, bound to the floor with shimmering conjured shackles. A large portion of her hair has been hacked off crudely, some too close to the scalp. Her clothes are torn around the shoulders and waist, with fingerprints permanently staining the skin around her throat. He wonders again what they had done to her, and is thankful that he is still ignorant of the answer. Her skin is blotched with bruises, but there is only one mark that stands out: across her forearm, her right arm—Merlin, it's all so real—the word 'mudblood' is carved clear down to the bone, and the blood slides down her tender skin in cascades that match her inexistent heartbeat.

He retches pitifully, at his feet. His skin is clammy and he wants to abandon her, but it is much too late for that.

Help me, she says again, softer, and at once he knows that she is not speaking to her invisible visitor from six years past, but to him, here and now—to the twenty-three-year-old Draco Malfoy who can barely stand on his knocking knees. Her eyes are anguished and utterly lucid, just like they were when he was seventeen and shit at following directions. Help me, Malfoy. Please.

"I can't. You know I can't." His broken words are a disturbing play on what he had uttered to her then, so he adds for good measure, "You're already dead."

Her face has already been stained with tears, so he cannot tell if she is crying now, or has been crying the entire time. Maybe she's been crying for six fucking years. There is still time. Please, I'm begging you. She's going to kill me—

"She's not here. No one's here. It's—it's just me."

It's strange, but she doesn't quite seem to understand. She is not fully grounded in his time, he realizes, so she is seeing him and not seeing him, all at once, just as he is her. She's coming, she insists. Hurry, Malfoy, help me. You can't just stand there and watch—you can't—

"Don't put this on me. Don't you dare." His voice is quaking, but he ignores the tremble as he looks away. Fire pumps through his veins, and the blistering heat of it makes him cry. "You're the one who chose to fight. You should have stayed away. You had every opportunity to escape, but you didn't! You fucking didn't, and that's why she fucking killed you! Do you hear me? You're dead!"

At this, she lets out another wail, one that sends him stumbling backwards, covering his ears and yelling just to be heard, to make sure he's really there. But then, right then, before his very eyes, a knife wound blossoms across her stomach, deep and growing and spreading, and she's still crying out for his help, his protection, and he can't, he fucking can't—

Then her voice grows weary as it fades, and then silence arrives, tardy as always. The apparition of a girl spread eagle on his floor is the only reminder of her presence that lingers. Her blood's silvery imitation spreads around her, an ethereal glow that staggers him.

The scream, this time, is torn from his own lips.

So that's how it works, he discovers: she comes to life every night to beg and plead for his help—the help he hadn't given her back then, and couldn't ever hope to now. Maybe that's her purpose, being there, and if he set her free somehow, she'd leave him be.

But how? How can he help her, when he is so far from helping himself?

Though he is in his pyjamas, he has no hope of falling asleep. He allowed the house elf to stay with him in his room to assuage its fears, but he can see by its twitching ears that it is still terrified of what it cannot hear. What he cannot hear.

He is twirling his wand between his fingers—not absently, no, but alertly, knowing that it is his protection and distraction all in one. He always has kept his wand well-polished, and the sleek black wood shines in the firelight as if it were lit itself. He knows that he is putting off the inevitable, that he will soon be downstairs, hearing those whispered words dragging across his skin, like thorns. But he has no other choice.

Draco seizes the handle at once and cries, "Finite Incantatem," to the walls. The effect is immediate: her screams burst through the cocoon of air, rebounding again and again, dampening his nerves. No, oh God, no please! Stop! The house elf's wailing joins it. None of this matters, though. Draco leaps to his feet with one purpose in mind.

Saving her.

The marble is cold on his feet, but he knows that the sensation has nothing to do with the quaking that racks his body. He can almost picture it now, so many years ago, hearing those awful cries while he lay under his covers, still as the dead. He'd forgotten his slippers then, too—forgotten them because he'd been too curious to stay in his room, as he'd been told. So he'd snuck downstairs, and peered into the parlour only to catch a glimpse of firelight flickering on the ceiling and a red high-backed armchair. "Please, no. Stop it, stop it, please! I don't know! I don't—no, please—"

"Enough!" a woman's voice barked back. "You're Potter's ickle pet, my dear, sweet child. You know where your master is, don't you?"

"No, I don't, please—" A sudden scream pierced him, right to the core. "Stop!" she was begging with hoarse cries. "No!"

Despite the chill in the manor, his body had broken into a cold sweat. He was frozen there, barely hidden behind the doors, while his aunt and his father muttered about taking a break, and would she still be alive when they got back or would they have to bandage the wound so she didn't bleed out? At long last, their footsteps faded into the dining room, and the door promptly shut. With that, Draco let out a shaking gush of air.

He'd wanted to climb the stairs, to go back to bed, but his body never cooperated that late at night, and bugger him if he wasn't interested.

(Merlin, he wished now, so much, that he had simply walked away.)

Gathering his courage, he turned and pushed inside.

The dying embers of the fire barely lit the room, but his eyes were already accustomed to the dark. He passed by his father's favourite sitting chair—the one his mother loved so much—and he saw a body.

For a moment, he thought she was dead. She wasn't moving, not even a twitch, but then the girl caught a trembling breath and he shuddered and glanced away from her face. She was splayed on the floor, bound in so many ways, bruised and bloody—there was a carving in her arm, as if she were a piece of wood. Mudblood. He worked up the courage to glance at her face again. Her mouth was bleeding freely; had she bitten her tongue? Blood matted down her hair as well… her frizzy hair…. Merlin, no….

His mind ground to a slow stop.

The girl had finally noticed his presence, and unhidden fear laced her shock. At once, it all released, replaced by a frantic confidence. "It's you!" she hissed in a whisper. "Come here, please. Help me!"

Numb, he obeyed, gagging on the bile that tickled the back of his throat. Her face was almost unrecognizable, blackened and swollen—but it was her.

"Help me. Help me, Malfoy. Please."

He stole an apprehensive glance at the closed doors of the dining room before returning his gaze to her. It was then he noted that she was crying as well. Draco didn't know why that had surprised him, but it had. "I can't," he whispered. "You know I can't."

A clatter came from the dining room. They whirled to see if they had been caught… but the door stayed closed. In a more urgent whisper, she entreated. "There is still time. Please, I'm begging you. She's going to kill me—she's coming—please help!"

His deadened lips mouthed the word "no" as he pushed himself away from her. There was so much blood in front of him, so much pain. He could barely watch, even while he could do nothing else. She squirmed, and a fresh batch of blood swelled in her arm, gushing down the white skin around it. Her lips were nearly translucent.

"Hurry, Malfoy, help me. You can't just stand there and watch—you can't—"

"A mudblood like you deserves it." The words felt as frozen as he did, and he shivered as he pronounced them. "You deserve this."

Her whitened face filled with a sickening dread. "Please, please, Malfoy, please, no, don't leave me no…."

He shook his head, one final time, before he darted out the door. (She didn't dare shout for him. If she had, he might have even turned back.) As quickly as his caution would allow, he retreated to his bedroom, muffling her dying screams with a wall of magic.

That was the last time he saw her, until a couple of weeks ago, when her ghost had jolted him from his sleep. He hopes ardently that tonight is the last night he will see her for a very long time. Draco waits in front of the door, bracing his resolve, and then he steps into the room.

Things quickly unravel. The girl shrieks as soon as he sets foot in the door, her voice shredding the air. He can hardly breathe, hardly focus. The wailing persists, louder and louder. He finds that he is bawling just as forcefully as she is—"Shut up! Shut the fuck up!"—but she is either not listening to him or she cannot obey, and he is afraid to admit to himself that it is probably the latter. He stumbles into her line of vision, ears still firmly blocked, eyesight blurred with his unfallen tears.

She gasps as soon as she catches him nearby. It's you! Come here, please. Help me! The words are so achingly familiar, they seem to cleave into his chest. Another sob guts him. Help me. Help me, Malfoy. Please.

The lines escape him before he has a chance to stop them. "I can't! Please, you know I didn't have a choice! I don't have a choice!"

There is still time. Please, I'm begging you. She is going to kill me—she's coming—

The apparition is still so terribly desperate. She had been the same way back then. Everyone is always so desperate to live. Draco knows this too well. And he knows that it's futile to help the departed escape death, he knows, but he drops to his knees beside her anyways and hisses "Disolvo," hoping with more heart than he has that it will free him from this mess.

Mutely, he watches with unhidden wonder as the binds around her right arm disappear altogether. It gives him pause. Was it really this easy, so fucking easy, to save her? He can almost feel his father's gaze itching at his back, and his aunt's shame burning him—but he's gone now, and she's gone as well. Everyone is all gone. What was it, then, that had stopped him before? Why had he been so afraid to save a life?

Hurry, please. She's coming! Her urgency spurs him into action. He mutters the spell again and again, releasing her ankles and other wrist, and her waist, and her hair. She rubs her joints almost immediately, wincing when her faded fingers brush over the wound—still pulsing, still bleeding. Mudblood.

"I'm sorry," he tells her. As soon as the sentence finishes leaving him, he knows that it has always been the truth. "I'm so sorry."

It's not your fault. It's okay. And—of all things—she smiles at him. It's weak, and it seems to pain her, but this fucking ghost is comforting him, telling him that it isn't his fault when it is, it is his fault, and somehow that's the worst thing of all.

"The door's just to your right," he's saying dully as she wobbles to her feet. She can hardly stand, but it doesn't stop her. She had always been stronger than he had. His chest constricts further, and the tears won't stop. "I've unlocked it for you. The grounds are long, but no one will try to stop you. Apparate as soon as you're outside the gate. Now go." She hesitates, so he says again, "Go!" and turns away to get one night of restful sleep.

Malfoy. He glances back—just in time to catch a glimpse of her attempted embrace—then she disappears altogether, leaving only the damp chill on his skin to remind him of the chance he had to set her free, the chance he had left behind for nothing….

He wonders where she's gone now, and if he'll ever see her again. Maybe someday, someday far from now, when he's good and old and has finally earned the right to be forgiven, she'll be there again….

Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?

Latin meaning, "Where are those who were before us?" Please review!