Chapter one: The Carousel of the Mind

Everything was a bright and dizzying tailspin of light and color. Draco's head pounded, but more with musical thought than any sort of pain. He sort of remembered pain; it was a ghost of something familiar, like a friend. It was so far and deep inside what was left of him, he supposed he had no use to search it out.

Simply put, Draco Malfoy was drunk. And not just any kind of drunk. He was piss drunk, eyes lolled and reeking of alcohol flooded pores. He smelled of the kind of sickness that would take weeks to wash away. Not that he cared, and it was obvious. Wherever he sat, mostly in muggle streets and door stops, he sat lavishly. He lie there as though he had no cares and the world, and truly he didn't.

Time, pain, hunger, thought, nothing was at all relevant to him.

Until, of course, he passed a window by and happened to see the date on a muggle vision box. It was July 29th. Was he supposed to know that? Something important- some thing or time he was supposed to remember but didn't- had passed him by. Or maybe it was coming up?

Well he couldn't be bothered to think on it now. He was much too far gone to care anyway. The only thing he could think of that mattered was that he was running out of galleons- pounds, as the muggles called it. And that just wouldn't do when he was a devout drunk, so he needed to go back into his vaults, didn't he?

Draco wasn't sure how exactly he always made it back to the vaults without being hissed at on the streets (or maybe he was, but he just couldn't be bothered to care.) Following the same vein of logic, Draco wasn't sure what exactly happened when he arrived or how he convinced the goblins to give him his money.

This time, however, although Draco wouldn't remember why, he did not receive anything close to his money. To best describe what he remembered, there was a lot of shouting, a lot of staring. The staring was slightly more unnerving than the shouting, mostly because it wasn't the same kind of staring he was used to. It wasn't for him being drunk, primarily because he could already feel the signs of a headache coming onto him, marking it's departure.

The goblins had stared down at him from their pedestals, disgusted and amusement projected. Later on, when he wasn't drunk, he realized how much of a fool he had been. He was seized without much struggle, for his brain only rendered the bright colored fabrics swirling in his sight. Gasps and whispered jeers came his way, trying to push to the forefront of his mind something he was working hard not to remember.

Draco remembered being pulled around, down one long street and another (mostly because there was a lot of walking) and then being flushed down a toilet. He realized after such thing occurred, that he had to be asleep under The Eye again. Dreaming of being pushed to wakefulness.

He suspected the coppers had gotten him up from there again. It made the most logical sense as to why he was sitting in a bright room. It was the cleanest room he had seen in... Ever! Certainly before his last trip to the muggle police station, anyway. It was so bright, in fact, that after a short while Draco's dizziness grew into a piercing, painful sound.

It knocked his head about until he could remember, or at least was vaguely aware that he had been captured.

Fuck...

Asleep..? Draco had never been more awake in his damned life. What an idiot he had been! What did the Ministry want from him after all this time? What day was it? The room smelled heavily of him, so they must have known he was drunk.

Anger began creeping to the surface the longer he sat in the room. It muddled his chest while his head rang with chimes that could rival those of the Notre Dame. What did they want? Certainly not his money, or they would have seized him whilst still drunk, and robbed him blind. Or maybe they needed a signature to "search" his vaults? Not like he'd do that now he was half sober, either.

Couldn't they just leave him alone? After all this time, all the damage that they'd done, that he'd done and now they wanted-... He was an orderly drunk! He didn't even parade said inebriation in the wizarding world, excepting maybe once every few months! Even those occurences were short lived!

Draco shifted his leg and felt something thud against the wooden table in front of him. He feigned pain, excitement overriding his headache briefly as he doubled over to lie his forehead on the table. He slid his hand in his pocket. There it was. The small bottle of Smith something or other. Draco's head spun. How hadn't they caught this? Had they even inspected him upon his capture? Maybe the ministry was becoming lax in the face of the fall of Voldemort...

What the fuck did he care? If he drunk this now there was the possibility that they would use a sobering charm on him. But if he was discreet enough... And Draco didn't hope for much these days, but if he could just remain even tipsy...

With one hand, he twisted the bottle bit by bit, sliding off the cap. He hoped they weren't watching him from somewhere, peering in to wait and see how he acted. The top dropped like a leaded weight into the trench of his pocket. Excitement reared its head, dissipating his anger into tangles of joy and condensing his headache into a thin line above his eyes. Without waiting for a passerby, Draco slid the lip of the bottle into his mouth and threw his head back. He acted exasperated as he slid and arm across his face, hiding the evidence.

It wasn't until the lights began to sway like ocean waves again that someone walked in, and it wasn't who he thought it would be. Then again... Who did he think it would be?

A sharp bun slid into his view, very much grey, with hints of wiry brown hairs hinting through. Draco imagined the colors unwinding and sliding across the white walls. Winding hills of morning grey and Autumn brown sent him into a silent and very pleased stupor.

Even the sharp voice that said, "Nice to see you once more, Mr. Malfoy," could not bring him back.

Something vague in the back of his mind told him he knew that voice and also knew someone named 'Mr. Malfoy.' But the hills were far too tall to climb. And to be clear and certain, Draco was quite sure he didn't want to.

~{nightmares}~

Draco doubled over in pain so quickly that he thought he would lose motor function within thirty seconds. He could feel the sky coach growing close to the castle, the wards emitting an almost electric buzz like a muggle fly trap. Not being used to being back in the magical world made him sensitive to the sights and sounds.

For example, he knew it to be midday, but the sky was muddied with blazing red swirls of magic. The tendrils searched as though they had thousands of signatures to check and verify. It also didn't help him not to be drunk, a stipulation of coming back to school.

Which, if Draco had was perfectly honest, was the exact opposite of what he had planned to do. Not that he had planned to do much, except stay drunk and eventually pass on. It seemed like a very good plan too, until Minerva McGonagall took it upon herself to "save him."

"It's either complete your education, Mr. Malfoy," she said, "or be sent to Azkaban to await..."

She had let his rolling imagination fill in the blanks. At the time, Draco the Drunk had smiled at the prospect of finally being left alone. He'd thought, 'This Azkaban place sounds wonderful!'

At least his drunk mind might have been partially right, he thought as the drew ever closer to the wards. The buzz had turned into a keen. Draco was forced to focus on his surroundings to lull the feeling into something manageable.

The sky coach was a bit more lavish than Draco expected. Although dreadfully shaped like a cabbage, the inside was lined with velvet and lit by jitterbugs. Fancier coaches would have used light fairies, but Draco wasn't complaining. He was loathe not to relish velvet seating when McGonagall knew he had been wallowing in the trash with Muggles. She might have downgraded him just out of spite. Seeing spoiled young Malfoy bellyache about hard coach benches...

Well, she'd even allowed him a carafe of treats in it, though he was not at all hungry throughout the trip. He could not complain even if he felt it was the customary thing to do. Besides which, she wasn't there. She had given him an offer which he literally could not refuse, and taken her leave. The aurors had escorted him to some makeshift sleeping quarters, though that moniker was decidedly generous.

There had been nothing but a block of wood to sleep on and a pot to piss in. Draco had not been pleased when he awoke that morning, post alcoholic buzz. His headache had started low and threatening. He had refrained from being bodily dragged, already having been in a foul mood from pain. It was obvious that his magic helped out a bit with that, though he wasn't grateful. The mood had lasted all day, even as he shoved himself into this nice looking carriage. A step up from the room, but still did nothing to assuage his ever mounting headache.

Now, his head splintered in two just as he entered the wards around Hogwarts. He doubled over, feeling nauseated. He grit his teeth. The pain in his head only responded to the pounding of his heart. He grabbed a goblet of water from the assortment, drinking from it heavily. He barely waited for it to refill itself before he took another swallow, and repeated until he had polished six cups of the cool liquid.

By the time he was finished, his stomach was unpleasantly full, and he could feel the descent of the carriage through the pop of his ears. His headache descended once again to a less maddening thrum above his eyes.

The thestrals were not unruly. They guided the carriage to a smooth landing. Much smoother than Draco had thought they could, for undead visions. They rode along a path that Draco was not sure he had ever seen before, partially through a forest that lie just beyond Hogsmeade. As they sailed by the shops, which blurred together in an almost childlike whirl of color, Draco had a thought. It wasn't a very good thought, and he wasn't sure why he thought of it exactly. Still, it replaced the pounding in his head with a rush of excitement

He remembered to one of his least proud moments when he was sixteen- not that he had many of the opposite. Katie Bell had been dumb enough to touch a thing for which he had cursed her to deliver to Dumbledore. Besides the point, he had received said thing in Hogsmeade. If he could get an accursed object into Hogwarts, he could certainly smuggle a bit of trashy magical (or muggle, he was not picky on prospects now) booze into the school. Not that he had very many allies on the outside to assist him with his endeavors. Still, he had no doubt his money had weight here and there. Draco had at least been able to withdraw a fine amount of galleons from his store, at least enough to keep him properly sloshed through winter.

When Draco's carriage slowed at the gates of Hogwarts, he noticed that while it was not in shambles there was still a bit of work to be done. At least, on the outside there was. The setting sun washed the remaining rubble in a mute blue tone, with slashes of blazing oranges. It made him stop to ponder- had they changed the wards? Hogsmeade had not been a very good line of defense for Hogwarts, and Draco thought maybe McGonagall resented the fact. His irritation multiplied, making his headache return just as fierce as ever.

When Draco finally stepped out of the carriage near the front gates, the sun was nearly set. He had started this journey slightly before dawn. The cooling summer air irritated him further, reminding him that it would be a cold and damp winter in the damnable castle once again. Draco could make out people on the far edges of the grounds. He wondered who could possibly want to come back to that godforsaken place. Then he realized that not everyone felt the way he did about these things.

McGonagall met him at the gates. She was as taciturn as ever. Draco didn't care. He didn't care what she had to say about the upcoming year, or about what he could or couldn't do in the two weeks it would take the year to start. He didn't care where she let him sleep, for now, and he didn't care that this was, as she put it, "his last warning."

Draco didn't want to be there. He didn't want to be anywhere. He just wanted-...

McGonagall gave him some excuse and left him to his own devices, having showed him his rooms until further notice. The door closed on the small room, but Draco couldn't be bothered to look around at it. Anger, frustration, hated, rage welled up inside him. It boiled to the top of his skin until it felt like he was melting, like his head had set the rest of his body on fire. His headache rose and rose until it was white noise, and then suddenly he really could feel something burning.

Right next to him, the four poster on which he was to sleep had ignited. It twisted and boiled until it melted into a white hot pocket of air. The pile smouldered, blocking up his room with black smoke. Draco could hear Crabbe screaming in the back of his head, hear himself screaming, begging for someone, anyone to help him-

And then the bed was gone. It winked out of sight in a flash of purple and red flame, leaving no trace of itself but for smoke. Slowly, as if becoming sober once more, Draco realized he was choking on the smoke. Quickly, he lunged for the window and flung it open, doing the same for the door in the front of his room.

He saw the traces of a ghost left behind as they streaked away to find a living adult but couldn't possibly be bothered with caring. He began flinging his poorly arranged bags open, not trusting himself to wandlessly banish the smoke. As he dug through fanciful robes, body balms, and hair lotions looking for even a drop to drink, Draco realized that none of it mattered. Not one bit of it. Only how quickly he would need a drink, and how soon he would be able to get it.