HP -- Perchance to Dream IV: With the Candlestick
Title: Perchance to Dream
Chapter: 4. With the Candlestick
Fandom: Harry Potter
Character: Draco Malfoy
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,130
Warnings: suicide, language, violence, a bizarre sense of humor
Summary: Chronicling the annual suicide attempts of one Draco A. Malfoy, failure.
Author's Note: Skip to eighteen seconds to get past the stupid, unnecessary intro to the video. I hate people on YouTube some days. XD
IV - WITH THE CANDLESTICK
Someone save me, if you will
And take away all these pills
And please just save me, if you can
From my blasphemy in my wasteland
- “Save Me” - Shinedown -
It was Draco Malfoy’s twenty-eighth birthday, and he was trying to kill himself.
Consistency was kind of comforting sometimes.
He had considered using a real candlestick. He even had one-one of the bright, shining silver ones that had stood once, pompous, proud, and pristine, on his parents’ dining table. It was a lovely thing, and he told himself that was why he didn’t want to attempt suicide with it; who knew how he might mangle it or dent it or destroy it completely?
Embarrassingly, it was more metaphor-based than anything else. First off, he didn’t like the phallic imagery very much at all, and second, candles were about light. About illumination. Not about ushering in the depthless, endless, unfathomable darkness that Draco Malfoy sought with such persistence.
Lead pipe? Didn’t have one. Wrench? Nope. And those were blunt objects, anyway-crude, cold, unforgiving, and unrefined. How exactly did you go about killing yourself with a weapon like that, anyway? Killing other people, sure; but yourself? You’d have to hit your own head pretty hard just to induce unconsciousness; death was a different matter entirely.
There were more sophisticated ways to go.
And easier ways to facilitate going.
Draco set the candlestick down, jammed a tall green candle into it, pulled out an old-school book of cardboard matches, bent three of them beyond repair, finally managed to convince one to catch, and lit the wick. He shook the match out, paused, set it down on a paper napkin, chewed his lip a little, figured a funeral pyre would actually be kind of classy, and left it there.
He sat down on his bed, the mattress springs creaking like a horror-movie door in protest, held out his right palm, and emptied into it half the contents of the cylindrical orange bottle. He looked at them for a moment, the little white capsules he had released, and rolled them around a bit.
It amused him to think that he quite literally held his life in his hands.
Without further ado, he tilted his head back and poured the pills into his mouth. Reaching half-blind towards the nightstand, he found the bottle residing there, and then he washed five and a half doses of sleeping pills down with vodka.
Might as well go all the way, right?
The ornery mattress cradled him for once as he reclined slowly upon it and folded his hands on his stomach. He lay for a long time, watching the candlelight play on the ceiling, the darkness creeping in on the edges of his vision so slowly as to seem tantalizing and almost arrogant.
Arrogant, like someone else he knew.
He closed his eyes, and everything… ceased… moving.
From the fringes of the growing dimness came a voice, faint at first, then progressively louder.
“Draco!”
The undulating echoes that spread through the room were made not by the banging of his heart, but by the banging of a set of knuckles upon the door.
“Draco, I really need something!”
No one’s home, Draco thought wearily, cracking an eye partway open to the ambient yellow warmth cast by the candle onto the walls. Or no one would be, if there was any home to speak of.
“Draco, I know you’re there! The landlady told me you were!”
I’ll bet she did, damn her. Couldn’t she just tag me and release me back into the wild?
“You’re so petty! Let me in!”
I don’t think you want that, love.
“Oh, forget it! Alohomora!”
The door gave, and Hermione Granger stormed in.
Then she stopped.
“What are you doing?” she demanded stupidly.
It was something of an accomplishment to dumbfound Hermione Granger, but Draco didn’t have much opportunity to celebrate.
“Dying,” he answered.
He drifted on the ambulance ride, which might well have lasted anywhere from five minutes to an hour; back and forth, oscillating along the timeline like a sine wave, here, and there, and nowhere at once.
If he was dead, he didn’t think that this was too bad.
“Tell me where the fucking Order headquarters is, you fucking Mudblood!”
The tears running down her face spark like fire, not like crystal. There is pain in them, yes, but mostly there is anger.
“I can’t tell you; don’t you understand that? There’s a Fidelius Charm involved, in case you’d forgotten!”
“So what the fuck am I supposed to do, Granger? What the fuck am I supposed to tell him, huh? ‘Sorry, my Lord; a little old charm got in the way. Oh, well, never mind!’”
Something in the flash of her eyes scares him. He thinks, wildly, madly, almost unwittingly, that it is righteousness.
“I’m not your babysitter, Draco,” she spits. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you joined up and got your little club tattoo.”
He turns on her, his pounding heart threatening to break his ribs.
“You think I had a choice?”
“There’s always a choice, Draco!” she shouts at him. “Every minute’s another choice, every word’s a choice, every breath and every heartbeat gives you another one! Don’t you get it? You had a choice then, you have a choice now, and you always will! Nothing’s set, nothing’s predetermined, unless you consent to let it be that way! No one can make you live the way they want you to! In the end, it’s you that does the living!”
He snatches up the silver candlestick and slams it into her cheek, and the chair to which she is tied rocks for a moment. She falls silent, her head bowed, her eyelids fluttering, consciousness slipping away. A bit of blood dribbles out of the corner of her mouth.
“You’re wrong,” he says.
She stirs, and he touches her matted hair and hears himself whisper.
“And I’m sorry…”
He opened his eyes. The color scheme was all in teals and purples and grays, like something the eighties had vomited back up. He couldn’t blame the eighties. He doubted it would have agreed with him, either.
A male nurse in blue scrubs with a sheep motif smiled at him, brown eyes warm behind frameless glasses. The announcement was inevitable: “We pumped your stomach… is it Draco?”
He nodded. Yes, sir. Constellation Boy. That’s me.
The smile took on something of ruefulness and a gentle reprimand. “Your friend said you were mixing alcohol and medication…”
Friend? What friend? Are we talking about the same Mudblood Granger?
“…which is never a good idea. But you should be all right now. The rest you can sleep off.”
Draco closed his eyes again, hearing the soft, almost tentative beep of the EKG fade into the background.
That’s what I was trying to do in the first place, he murmured to himself. Sleep it off. Sleep it all off. Sleep it all away.
[Chapter III] [Chapter V]
Chapter: 4. With the Candlestick
Fandom: Harry Potter
Character: Draco Malfoy
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,130
Warnings: suicide, language, violence, a bizarre sense of humor
Summary: Chronicling the annual suicide attempts of one Draco A. Malfoy, failure.
Author's Note: Skip to eighteen seconds to get past the stupid, unnecessary intro to the video. I hate people on YouTube some days. XD
IV - WITH THE CANDLESTICK
Someone save me, if you will
And take away all these pills
And please just save me, if you can
From my blasphemy in my wasteland
- “Save Me” - Shinedown -
It was Draco Malfoy’s twenty-eighth birthday, and he was trying to kill himself.
Consistency was kind of comforting sometimes.
He had considered using a real candlestick. He even had one-one of the bright, shining silver ones that had stood once, pompous, proud, and pristine, on his parents’ dining table. It was a lovely thing, and he told himself that was why he didn’t want to attempt suicide with it; who knew how he might mangle it or dent it or destroy it completely?
Embarrassingly, it was more metaphor-based than anything else. First off, he didn’t like the phallic imagery very much at all, and second, candles were about light. About illumination. Not about ushering in the depthless, endless, unfathomable darkness that Draco Malfoy sought with such persistence.
Lead pipe? Didn’t have one. Wrench? Nope. And those were blunt objects, anyway-crude, cold, unforgiving, and unrefined. How exactly did you go about killing yourself with a weapon like that, anyway? Killing other people, sure; but yourself? You’d have to hit your own head pretty hard just to induce unconsciousness; death was a different matter entirely.
There were more sophisticated ways to go.
And easier ways to facilitate going.
Draco set the candlestick down, jammed a tall green candle into it, pulled out an old-school book of cardboard matches, bent three of them beyond repair, finally managed to convince one to catch, and lit the wick. He shook the match out, paused, set it down on a paper napkin, chewed his lip a little, figured a funeral pyre would actually be kind of classy, and left it there.
He sat down on his bed, the mattress springs creaking like a horror-movie door in protest, held out his right palm, and emptied into it half the contents of the cylindrical orange bottle. He looked at them for a moment, the little white capsules he had released, and rolled them around a bit.
It amused him to think that he quite literally held his life in his hands.
Without further ado, he tilted his head back and poured the pills into his mouth. Reaching half-blind towards the nightstand, he found the bottle residing there, and then he washed five and a half doses of sleeping pills down with vodka.
Might as well go all the way, right?
The ornery mattress cradled him for once as he reclined slowly upon it and folded his hands on his stomach. He lay for a long time, watching the candlelight play on the ceiling, the darkness creeping in on the edges of his vision so slowly as to seem tantalizing and almost arrogant.
Arrogant, like someone else he knew.
He closed his eyes, and everything… ceased… moving.
From the fringes of the growing dimness came a voice, faint at first, then progressively louder.
“Draco!”
The undulating echoes that spread through the room were made not by the banging of his heart, but by the banging of a set of knuckles upon the door.
“Draco, I really need something!”
No one’s home, Draco thought wearily, cracking an eye partway open to the ambient yellow warmth cast by the candle onto the walls. Or no one would be, if there was any home to speak of.
“Draco, I know you’re there! The landlady told me you were!”
I’ll bet she did, damn her. Couldn’t she just tag me and release me back into the wild?
“You’re so petty! Let me in!”
I don’t think you want that, love.
“Oh, forget it! Alohomora!”
The door gave, and Hermione Granger stormed in.
Then she stopped.
“What are you doing?” she demanded stupidly.
It was something of an accomplishment to dumbfound Hermione Granger, but Draco didn’t have much opportunity to celebrate.
“Dying,” he answered.
He drifted on the ambulance ride, which might well have lasted anywhere from five minutes to an hour; back and forth, oscillating along the timeline like a sine wave, here, and there, and nowhere at once.
If he was dead, he didn’t think that this was too bad.
“Tell me where the fucking Order headquarters is, you fucking Mudblood!”
The tears running down her face spark like fire, not like crystal. There is pain in them, yes, but mostly there is anger.
“I can’t tell you; don’t you understand that? There’s a Fidelius Charm involved, in case you’d forgotten!”
“So what the fuck am I supposed to do, Granger? What the fuck am I supposed to tell him, huh? ‘Sorry, my Lord; a little old charm got in the way. Oh, well, never mind!’”
Something in the flash of her eyes scares him. He thinks, wildly, madly, almost unwittingly, that it is righteousness.
“I’m not your babysitter, Draco,” she spits. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you joined up and got your little club tattoo.”
He turns on her, his pounding heart threatening to break his ribs.
“You think I had a choice?”
“There’s always a choice, Draco!” she shouts at him. “Every minute’s another choice, every word’s a choice, every breath and every heartbeat gives you another one! Don’t you get it? You had a choice then, you have a choice now, and you always will! Nothing’s set, nothing’s predetermined, unless you consent to let it be that way! No one can make you live the way they want you to! In the end, it’s you that does the living!”
He snatches up the silver candlestick and slams it into her cheek, and the chair to which she is tied rocks for a moment. She falls silent, her head bowed, her eyelids fluttering, consciousness slipping away. A bit of blood dribbles out of the corner of her mouth.
“You’re wrong,” he says.
She stirs, and he touches her matted hair and hears himself whisper.
“And I’m sorry…”
He opened his eyes. The color scheme was all in teals and purples and grays, like something the eighties had vomited back up. He couldn’t blame the eighties. He doubted it would have agreed with him, either.
A male nurse in blue scrubs with a sheep motif smiled at him, brown eyes warm behind frameless glasses. The announcement was inevitable: “We pumped your stomach… is it Draco?”
He nodded. Yes, sir. Constellation Boy. That’s me.
The smile took on something of ruefulness and a gentle reprimand. “Your friend said you were mixing alcohol and medication…”
Friend? What friend? Are we talking about the same Mudblood Granger?
“…which is never a good idea. But you should be all right now. The rest you can sleep off.”
Draco closed his eyes again, hearing the soft, almost tentative beep of the EKG fade into the background.
That’s what I was trying to do in the first place, he murmured to himself. Sleep it off. Sleep it all off. Sleep it all away.
[Chapter III] [Chapter V]