Draco does not remember a time before Azkaban.

He visits his father there every week, braves the dark waters and faceless guards, tucks happiness away in a safe place. He has been hiding it so long, sometimes even he forgets where it is.

But the prison he always remembers. Between the muggles with torches and racks and the red robes of inquisitors, his childhood nightmares were peppered with the cackles of an insane aunt, the dog-man cousin called "traitor", the whistle of air being sucked through non-existent teeth. He has been told since he was a baby that the Dark Lord would rise. He has been told since he was a baby that Voldemort would free them all, that the grasping fingers of breath are allies, that the darkness is not to be feared, that joy is to be found in the pursuit of glory, not in memories.

He has been told, and he remembers.

When he was four, he found a wardrobe in an unused bedroom, filled with black cloaks and pale masks, and for two whole days he thought he'd found a way to push the darkness back. He did not know then that it was the thing inside the cloak he ought to fear, but he learned. He has always been a quick study.

He has always done well in Defense Against the Dark Arts.

There is a bitterness, sour in the back of his throat, that he will never see Potter's face when he kills him, that he will never show him what he has done, what he has subjected Draco's father to, subjected Draco to. That he will never walk the halls, never skitter past laughter and pleas and grip his father's hand too tightly, his mother's skirt. That he will never forget how to smile. That he will never know these things that cannot be forgotten at all.

Mostly, Draco is tired. Sixteen years, and a hundred more before him, gray, bleak, screaming. A cell of his own, perhaps, bars to hold and pretend they're his father's fingers, or even the kiss, and never a heaven or hell, just blank unholiness.

He imagines that heaven is like snow, white and pure and so beautiful it hurts to look for too long. Cold and warming and eventually you fall asleep, and your body presses angels in the ground.

He knows what hell is like.

One more visit before the school year, before the cycle starts again. One more trip to the island, one more search of robes and pockets.

"The guards have been restless lately," he is told. "If they start anything, give a holler."

So many cloaks and masks and whispers. They are waiting for him.

Draco goes to death with an open hand. Death twines fingers around his own, and pulls him after. He stumbles.

He falls.

He