I Learned Your Pulse

"Like back-stabbing, murderous traitors?"

No!

He would not think of his time with Pansy. He would not remember how she'd explained why she'd cried and how terrible he'd felt and how soft her eyes had been, a chocolatey color, melting like fondue and enveloping him like he was dipped in it. Eyes so similar to Hermione's.

No, it was the other way around. Hermione's eyes were similar to Pansy's. That was it, and final. similar, not the same, because only Pansy's eyes could ever make him melt like they could, strip him of the mask he had so carefully etched into his face.

He didn't hear the footsteps or the voice until Goyle had rounded the corner and spotted him.

"You're out late," he remarked casually. "I'd get to bed. No idea what's wondering around the castle right now."

"Like back-stabbing, murderous traitors?"

Draco was taken aback. He'd had no communication with Goyle, as he'd never liked him, since the end of last year, but he'd no idea that the words would come out so vehemently. As it was, his old friend's eyes looked at him angrily, furiously, barely concealing his hatred, and the paper Goyle had been reading at a two-year-old's level was dropped, drifting slowly to the ground as a leaf would in the fall.

"Greg?" asked Draco, confused.

And then Goyle flew at him.

"It's!" He punched Draco's stomach, knocking the wind out of him.Draco attempted to block, but wasn't expecting the punch so be so strong, and it hit him full-force, knocking him backwards.

"Your!" he swung his thick right fist into Draco's jaw, and he clutched it, uttering a cry of pain he hoped nobody heard.

"Fault!" He landed a square blow on Draco's left eye, which he felt began to immediately swell.

"He's!" He kicked Draco's side viciously, and Draco fell to his knees, beding over and clutching his ribcage.

"Dead!"

And Draco heard something wooden smack him over the head and Goyle yelled, "Crucio!"

His body was on fire. Not the kind of fire Pansy had stoked in him, nor the kind of fire that resided angrily in Hermione's eyes when she was upset. The kind of fire that reduces every blood cell to a grain of ash, every vein into just another burnt fuse, every molecule of his being into worthless cinder. He bit down on his tongue to keep from screaming, and had to cotinue to bit eso har blood rushed to fill his mouth with salty, sour taste. He spit it out, only to have Goyle sock him in the teeth. He knew at least three were knocked out and he knew many more were loosened, but the Cruciatus curse, amplified by a punch to the mouth that resulted in yet more blood to lose, made him so dizzy the air couldn't circulate fast enough and let him think. This lack of thoughts is what made him unable to defend himself when the curse lifted and Goyle's leather shoes struck his stomach and made him whimper in pain. He curled up, only to have Goyle kick his head away from his body to keep wailing on his torso.

Draco had forgotten, in the physical asault, that he could fight back. And when he realized, he was missing six teeth, was coughing up blod, and his stomach was swelling with nasty shades of blue and black. His jaw was so swollen he couldn't speak, and he was glad; he didn't want anybody to hear and come to find him, and get themselves beat up, too. If it was just him, nobody else had to hurt. But he managed to grasp his wand tightly enough to think the word Protego and see the silver sheen of a barrier pop over himself, and Goyle, leaping at him too late to realize his mistake, go flying backwards.

Draco struggled to sit up, but managed. Ligare, he thought, trying to point his wand at the boy, but with the lack of shield, Goyle had started on him again.

He grasped his golden hair and tugged him to his feet; he dropped his wand, and, to his dismay, Goyle stomped down hard on it. He heard a snap. And then Goyle bent his head backwards and kicked the behind of his knees, causing them to hit the floor painfully while he neck and back were arched in an uncomfortable positon, made even more uncomfortable by the fact that he was strtching the interior stomach wounds he'd created.

"Augamenti," said Goyle wickedly, smiling evilly at Draco's mangled body. And then water dumped itself over his face, streaming down his nostrils, into his eyes, and down the wrong pipe in his throat. He coughed and sputtered, but each time he opened his mouth for air, more water came in. Goyle was going to drown him.

He was going to die.

But with one last urge of his mind to preserve himself safely, he kicked his ankles out from underneath himself and lay flat on the ground instead of arched; his stomach vibrated with the blow from behindand he could not help but shout an incoherant interjection.

"Stop," he tried to beg, but Goyle had alrady gotten used to this, and had elbowed him in the chest, making him cough up a mixture of clear and crimson. He continued to elbow Draco'schest and knee his stomach while shouting 'Auguamenti!' at every opportunity. Draco tried to keep his mouth closed, tried not shut his eyes, but Goyle would strike his face every time he did so, and the blow with no air was worse than just no air. Water flooded his system, his throat, and he found that he was choking on the bile that had arisen from his throat. He tried to give one last mangled cry, but it wouldn't come out.

"Draco?"

No, no, no!

Hermione, get away, he thought, but he didn't have the strength left to say it. Goyle, however, froze, but only for a moment, before leaning down, whispering, "Crabbe's dead because of you. Youre going to get a lot more of this shitstorm, Malfoy, just wait," and then aiming one more lick at a rather large, unsettlingly putrescent bulging bruise from Draco's stomach, making the water flow up and douse his face all over again, mixed with vomit and blood, before he high-tailed it out of the hallway. Draco, now covered in the most vile mixture of bodily fluids he could think of, found, with some relief, that he could breathe, but his whole body stung and screamed and pleaded him to end the misery.

There was a failar gasp, and then a horrified, fear-riddled, anxiety-torn shriek of "Draco!" before he found himself spinning uncontrollably into the abyss that had welcomed Pansy before him.