sixthiterationlogs | 002. I sat alone, in bed till the morning

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002. I sat alone, in bed till the morning - OTA (Part 1)

WHO: Draco Malfoy
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: Spanning his arrival to the evening of Feb 13
OPEN TO: Everyone, second section closed to Pietro Maximoff
WARNINGS: Angry teenagers (will update as necessary)
STATUS: Mixed

01. I'm crying, "They're coming for me" -- OTA

The past week has been a blur. Draco felt like he was just drifting in a constant state of panic that things like hunger and exhaustion barely penetrated. He'd rejected every scrap of help he'd been offered, thinking himself more than capable of doing everything on his own. The problem was that he was far too accustomed to life with magic and now he had to try to get by without it at all, his wand gone the way of his robes, his heirloom ring, his family's reputation. He didn't even have his wealth or connections to fall back on. For the first time, probably ever in his life, he was putting in hard, physical labor. Unwilling to accept what everyone said, he was trying to prove that he could escape.

The first few days were focused on the fountain, as that's where he'd come in, but there was no way he'd be able to reach the bottom of that thing without so much as a bubblehead charm. One night when he was certain no one see, he may have attempted such a feat, out of desperation. Finally, he gave up, focusing his efforts elsewhere. But the forest proved just as frustrating and far more perilous. If he wasn't running into sheer cliff walls or getting completely turned around, he was finding that footing was as dangerous as the depths of the Forbidden Forest and just barely escaped grievous injury. Night after night, he dragged himself back to the village, always wrapped snugly in his peacoat, growing more and more disheveled and frazzled. He was not made for this life and was getting more and more irritable.

02. And I tried to hold these secrets inside me -- Closed to Pietro

Finally, on Monday night, Draco decided he would not live like this any longer. He wasn't accepting that this place was permanent but if he didn't find a base of operations, he was going to run out of internal resources and be useless in every possible way. Constantly throwing ones self at a problem without a real plan was the gryffindor way, and he'll be damned if he was going to keep it up. Regroup and re-evaluate. Not all was lost. This meant having a set place to rest every night. Somewhere to call his own, to rest and recharge.

In his exhausted state, he didn't realize that the lack of available room keys meant the place was fully occupied. So he went room to room, checking doors, checking rooms. Some were locked, some were clearly occupied even if no one was home. Finally, when he reached the door for room 11, he thought perhaps he'd finally found one. It looked like people had been there recently, or at least that it had been cleaned more recently than some of the houses he'd seen. But he didn't see so much as a backpack to mark it as taken, though he was just tired enough that it was easy to miss something.

Convincing himself that it was free to take, which wasn't difficult for someone with such a self-centered view of the world, he dropped his backpack on the floor and collapsed onto one of the two beds. He barely managed to kick off his shoes, not bothering with his coat, before he started to drift off. He'd come up with a plan in the morning.

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That every human life has its worth is something Kira firmly believes, but sometimes that worth, determined by an outside party, can be watching someone be dumber and more desperate than yourself. More emotional, nastier, from a more accessible pool of fear.

It made him feel like he was fucking fine, watching some of the new arrivals.

He doesn't know the boy well enough to feel any twist of joy or relief at his distance--but the wake of his passing never feels very different from teenagers in the safehouses: separated from friends or family, absent of purpose or entertainment, trying to find a way for the drama of their existence to play out in a war zone. It was hard at any age, to realize your life, which seemed the most important thing in the world, was just a very small part of something big, something that didn't care.

Kira can't blame it: caring is exhausting.

Caring is taking a portion of the late lunch they serve out to Ren's grave, every day, just before it gets too dark. Caring is noticing that someone, or something, has taken to eating the food, and taking the time tonight to set the bowl of simple stew on the top layer of rocks, spoon in place at the edge, and instead of walking all the way back to the inn, looping back through the trees to sit watch.

He, and his cards, have some idea of who it might be. But he'd be first to protest an accusation without proof, and at least it hasn't been so cold since the lightning storms began.

Sitting at the base of another tree near to a hundred yards back, he angles himself so he can see the grave around its edge, hands deep in his pockets. He rubs his thumb over the small cat Casey had carved for him, letting his senses bleed out of him into the forest, listening for footsteps, waiting for the cat under his thumb to become the down of a bird's feathers, the maddening beat of its small heart, to tell him the boy is here.

The life Draco had been dragged from was one of extravagance. His family's wealth meant he never really had to ask or want for anything. Even at school, everything was provided for him. There was always someone to wash his clothes, cook his food, clean his room, start the fires, all of the messy little things that take up the average life. It was all rich food and warm, dry clothes. Never needing to ask for things and letting his parents money speak for him.

But now? Now he had trouble even asking for a meager meal a day at the pub. A stomach and body accustomed to three hearty meals, plus tea, each and every day did not do well on simple stew and bread. Especially when he was barely sleeping in his desperate, frantic search for a way out as it rained and thunder roared in the distance.

On his second night, he'd happened upon the food left out, unaware that it was meant to be a grave. With no one around, he claimed it for himself. He would have frowned at the idea of stealing food left on the ground in the middle of nowhere mere days before, but fear and hunger do strange things to what a young man is willing to do. Then again the next night, and every night after that.

Secretly grateful for whoever was leaving the food outside, he now knew to return just before it got dark. So about twenty minutes after Kira settled in, Draco emerged. He looked like a drowned, albino rat, with his pale hair plastered to his pointed face. He stepped out from between the trees, hands in his pockets, trying to look casual as he searched for anyone who might be watching. Too bad it was too dark to see Kira. He could barely see the bowl at his feet as he stopped. Deciding the coast was clear, he stooped down and picked up the bowl, as if he were perfectly entitled to it.

A bird in the hand worth two: he slips his hands free of his pockets to brace on the tree, picking himself up to make his way over to the figure. This isn't an aha moment, a triumph, to catch some idiot eating scraps from a grave in the dark. Kira moves quietly because he always does, his black clothing incidental camouflage.

Which is to say: he doesn't mean to be right at the boy's shoulder, head tilted at the mess of his hair and a frown tugging at his lips, when he sighs his presence out of the night. When he asks, rather plainly: "What the fuck are you doing?"

Stepping back from the spot, Draco cast a glance around, one hand shielding the bowl from the rain. He just wanted to find someone he could just be dry and warm. He was hesitant to return to the one place that was guaranteed, the inn, because he couldn't bear dealing with anyone there. The cold rain seeping into his clothes was still preferable to the shame of anything he might see in their faces, be it pity or resentment or just a complete lack of recognition.

Over the patter or rain, he hadn't heard anyone approach. The constant downpour masked any sound of moment that his otherwise high strung nerves would have twitched at in an instant. With the voice so close, he nearly jumped out of his skin, fumbling and almost dropping the bowl. Heart pounding in his chest, he twisted around to find the source in the dying light.

"What's it look like?!" He snapped, as if he could never be in the wrong.

The tall pine under which he buried Ren is thick enough to shelter them both from the rain, the roots providing a space out of the mud to stand--but it was no shelter compared to the inn, to even the collapsed houses along the paths. "It looks like you're eating food off the ground in the dark, when we served it at the inn hours ago."

Despite the boy's attitude, despite the fact of being out in the rain, trying to solve what he considers an idiotic problem, his tone isn't unkind. Only a brow raised in silent question. "I know you're hungry, but I cook in that kitchen almost every day, I will make you food: stop taking it off of my friend's grave."

Somehow, the offer to make him something registered on Draco's face as if it had been an outright insult. His lip pulled up into a sneer and he took a slight step back. But in it, he saw things like pit and charity, something a proper Malfoy would never participate in, let alone accept. By some twisted logic, getting food off the ground was preferable because it wasn't a handout.

"So, what, you'd rather make something new and waste this?!" He gestured with the bowl slightly. Only then did the rest of what Kira had said filter through. His attention snapped down to the earth upon which he stood, one foot pulling away, trying to see the sign of a formal grave in the gloom.

"Yes," he answers plainly: the elements and the sneering, ermine slip and loop of the boy's mood don't lend themselves to explanation of offerings and grief. Just thinking of the words, honor and respect, makes it feel like they're slipping through Kira's fingers, and the bird's heart beats fastest before a twist stills it entirely.

When he wrings the feeling out of his hands, it sends water droplets flicking from his fingers, a decent excuse for the movement. "Would you rather stand in the rain and eat watered down food than have something fresh?"

The question makes Draco far more uncomfortable than he'd thought possible. Usually he would let either pride or logic make his decisions for him. Most often, only one was needed, and frequently if both were called into action they fell on the same option. But here? They were were in direct opposition. Pride said to reject all help offered, that he needed to do it on his own. But logic yelled that he could easily be inside and not eating rain-soaked food.

It left him unable to move. Rooted in indecision. Tried to find a path between the two that would give him a way out. Why would a complete stranger be offering him free food after this accusation? "What's in it for you?" He demanded, there had to be a catch. There always was.

It was a much younger Kira who questioned and commented on how people felt; who threw discrepancy and coping mechanisms in someone's face. He could be nasty with it, driven to distraction by the things people said that were betrayals--of themselves and the people they said them to. His mother had to teach him--for himself, but also for the sake of the shop--to let people be themselves. Even when that meant letting them flounder, or lie.

Even when they made him stand in the rain, arguing something that shouldn't warrant discussion.

"I get to go back inside, knowing my friend's grave is going unmolested?" Holding a hand out, he hopes they're reaching a point where he can put the bowl back to its original purpose. "Do you need me to ask for more in return?"

Pride was a powerful thing, especially to a Malfoy. It led down the path of dark magic and murder. But Draco was not his father, he wasn't even the young man he'd been a year ago. As much as he tried to hold to his pride, the foundation of it had started to crumble. An audible growl of his stomach undermined his attempts to act like he was some how better than all of this and kicked up the last support he had for that poisonous pride.

Sulking, he tore his gaze away from Kira and merely thrust the bowl into his waiting hand. He couldn't look at the other while he gave in. He just muttered, "what are you, a bloody Hufflepuff?"

"Not according to Buzzfeed," he says, the words more question than answer--and when he tries to grasp the shape of it, it's like the stuffed doll in his room. He knows what Hufflepuff is, he just can't remember why. Why was there a quiz? What does a badger have to do with cooking for someone?

He puffs a breath through his teeth, just glad he's solved the immediate issue. The boy's shame makes enough sense in the context that he only leans past it, setting the bowl at the roots of the tree as intended.

For a moment, he hovers there, tracing the edges of the star once with his finger. He'd have to talk to Ren another time. "Come on, we'll move under the trees as much as we can, dodge some of the rain." The mud was unavoidable, but at least his boots have held up better than the rest of his clothes. His first steps out from under the branches squelch and stick to his feet, but he carries on, only a glance back to make sure the boy is following, instead of disturbing the space further.

For a fleeting moment, Draco felt like he understood why muggles looked at him so strangely when he spoke of things that were part of his daily life. Because "Buzzfeed" meant absolutely nothing to him. It was two random words smashed together that had no business being near each other. It almost sounded like a plant or a spell. Did it provide food for bees? Turn someone's food into bees? It could have been flies, too.

Trying to puzzle out what on earth it could mean, he just stood sullenly, waiting for Kira to finish with the grave. He follows when the other finally moves, only pausing briefly at the unsettling feeling of shoes in mud. For all the days in the damp forest and irritating rain, he still wasn't accustomed to such a revolting sensation.

"So are you going to explain what the bloody hell a Buzzfeed is, or aren't you?" he sneered at Kira's back. Maybe it was the other's school, he seemed just old enough that maybe he was only a few years out at most.

Kira snorts, barely audible over the squelch of their shoes, the sound of rain drizzling through pine needles and the winter-thinned canopy. It would be too much to ask that a young man who skulks around dark forests and calls him things like Hufflepuff under his breath knows what the internet is.

Rather than attempt the explanation, he wonders what would make sense to him, what explains the purpose without the context. "It's a bit like a magazine, it gathers up things people write elsewhere and makes lists or quizzes out of it. They had a quiz for Hogwarts houses."

It's as far as he manages before his mind loses the thread that should follow: why one had anything to do with the other, and where he's learned about a school of magic in the British isles. Perhaps his mother had wanted to send him, once upon a time, after her own mother had moved back to England. Before he'd slacked on both his public and private educations. "Did you--" he starts, the question forming in his mind as he lifts a wet branch and shakes the worst of the droplets free, pushing it aside and finally looking at the boy while he waits for him to carry through the path he's made them. "Did you go to Hogwarts?"

He isn't sure why the question feels ridiculous, impossible. The young man has the accent for it, and if he's tossing about house names like legitimate insults, Kira's sense of the world demands he be from the school or know enough about the internet to have taken dozens of personality quizzes.

The first thing that sprang to mind at the mention of a magazine with quizzes and the like was that trash rag the Quibbler. Full of nonsense, fictional creatures, and outlandish tales. The one and only thing they got right was one story, and of course it was on everyone's favorite golden boy. Perhaps Lovegood just finally got tired of being dirt poor and thought he'd get rich quick being a stupid rebel. For having a ravenclaw daughter he wasn't exactly smart. Then again, neither was she. He wouldn't past those idiots to try to come up with some quiz that could some how decide what house someone went in. That was preposterous.

Too wrapped up in trying to not sink into the mud and a little petty nonsense, like insulting other students, Draco started to feel a little bit better. Like some normalcy had been restored to the world. But it meant he almost missed Kira's question. He looked up, startled. He hadn't even considered Kira as being a wizard. Hadn't Graves said something about there only being the three of them--Graves, Draco himself, and that weird kid he still thought might be some sort of human-house elf abomination. Or was this one just keeping it all to himself?

"What do you think?" He snapped, not sure if he could give a straight answer. "Did you?"

Leaning into the branch to keep it steady, he keeps himself occupied stripping the needles from a twig at its tapered end. There weren't really pines outside the parks in Manhattan, and they hadn't been crowding up those either--it's strange to have the time, and the opportunity, to walk through a place like this. To notice how even the tree he'd buried Ren under, taller than the rest, was made up of a single shape, branching exponentially.

His mother would say they had power, and he slips a few of the needles into his pocket just in case. He hadn't gone anywhere to learn such things--he hadn't even graduated his perfectly normal high school. There were just the lessons handed down, distinguished from the tricks they did just for show. Things that had been warped by television and books so that, without the right flair, no one believed in them anymore.

He wonders what the boy might tell him, about an entire school for such things. Were there hard and fast rules, or did everyone just feel it out, the way he does? "I dropped out of Manhattan Village the last year, so, not really. Maybe if I'd gone to a magic school I'd have stuck it out. Calculus felt kind of pointless."

Looking up at the water falling softer upon them through the trees, he tilted his head trying to keep the boy moving.

Draco had paused when Kira started plucking at the needles. A rather odd thing to do for someone who'd insisted they get out of the rain. There was a strange sort of curiosity under his irritation. The move looked rather deliberate, or at least more deliberate than idly picking at something for lack of something to do. Why would this strange person--he was hesitant to call Kira a kid, but nor was he what Draco would think of as a man--have such an interest in pine needles now of all times?

Pushing on, he let out a derisive snort, as if his moving had nothing to do with Kira's urging. Anything to prove he wasn't the one at a disadvantage here. But it was difficult to maintain such superiority when one looked like someone had tried to drown a white rat in a mud puddle.

"What the bloody hell is a calculus?!" For as detailed as a wizarding education was on ways of magic and history, there were some things it lacked. Like advanced mathematics.

"Boring, hard to bullshit assignments for." Numbers have their own power and meanings, but in the world of equations and grading, they became rigid things with black and white answers.

Before he'd all but stopped speaking to him, Kira's father had tried to sit down and help him grasp it. Maybe it really was all his fault--Daichi had tried to bridge the gap, had tried to explain something important to him, had told him that if he jumped the chasm of his own unlinking from the world, he would catch him on the other side. Kira had thrown that in his face, unable to care about what his father cared about, and then left school entirely.

He hadn't needed it, but maybe his father had needed him to. Not to love him, but to relate to him. To have anything left to say. "It's stupid," he says anyway, bitterly entrenched in his decision: "It's some stupid kind of math, you won't need it here

"Assuming you actually learned some magic, has it--worked? Here, I mean."

The answer is not one that sits quite so well with Draco. It makes him wonder if he's landed with someone too much like the likes of Ron Weasley. Someone who never too school seriously and thought he could skate through it while making everything up. But Draco's classes, the ones he valued anyway, were the very sort that had black and white answers. Potions had incredibly precise measurements and components. Missing so much as a single clockwise stir could have catastrophic results.

Then again, perhaps he listened a bit too much to his father. Followed a bit too much of his father's aspirations rather than his own. But how did one learn how to listen to their own ambitions when tradition and family had been ground into him since he could remember? His father loved him, it was something he'd never doubted. But it wasn't a warm sort of emotion. More like a cold and distant protector there only to ensure he stayed on the correct path. A sharp tap of a cane to the shoulder was all he needed to remind him he was straying too far.

The question about magic snapped him back to the moment, and he looked over his shoulder at Kira. It was a dangerous question, because he still didn't know for sure whether the other was a wizard or not. He could be, but he might not be. And now it was both his father and the man called Graves in his head, warning him to stay his tongue on the matter.

"I could ask you the same, couldn't I? About any of your...abilities." He didn't even know if Kira had any, but he'd run into far too many people who had strange things they could do that were types of magic, but could be done without a wand, without incantations, but they could not access other areas of magic.

Kira stops in the shelter of another thickly branched pine, drops guided by enough needles to slither down the trunk or run off the tips at the very edge. There were dead and dry needles under their feet, on a slight bump of earth that sloped down into the path. Ren's house would be nearby, somewhere across from it, which meant some length of path to go before the fountain, and a need to cross through the open to get near the inn.

He shouldn't let urgency guide them to wandering lost through houses and trees, but the boy had to be hungry, and if he's been out in this chill since he arrived, the sooner he dries out by the fire, the better. Kira lifts a hand to catch himself on a low hanging branch, and leans out along the slope, testing the strength of the rain with his other hand. "They're weaker," he admits. "Some of them just don't work entirely, or so little that I can't tell if they're working. Everyone else I've asked says something similar, it's alright if you can't do much." Perhaps at full strength, he could sense more about the cause of the boy's hesitance to speak on it, but all he can do is plunge ahead--both with the subject, and out into the spattering rain, doing his best to step light through the washed path.

"We have to cross sometime," he calls back through the hiss of rain, not looking back to make sure the boy follows.

Contrarily, Casey had spent his entire life surviving on his strength and determination alone. He had not accepted a handout or leaned on another living soul for more than a decade of rough living as a wandering waif of a winter wasteland. Choked with ash and starved of food or friendship. He had no concept of pride, but he did have a strong concept of working for what he needed. Accepting anything he didn't earn was a risk and a slippery slope that led to a knife at his throat.

He only barely noticed Draco's struggles. He kept his head down too much and avoided getting to know anyone so fiercely that it was hard to keep track of those he wasn't put in endless contact with. He was sitting on the steps of the inn, a soft blues tune rising from his harmonica, when he caught sight of the roughed up wizard the first time, long enough to actually notice him. The second and third times he still said nothing, did nothing, only noticed and kept to his own.

It was the fourth time he watched Draco stumble back into the village just after the sky had grown dark that he finally decided to do something. He couldn't even discern a reason for the pull that dragged him to his feet. He heard John's words telling him to be kind, and he moved with their urging, despite his own uncertainty, still, as to how he was meant to follow them.

"You look like shit." His days of strict politeness had gone when the first month had ended and he was still there in the camp, breaking every rule he had ever set for himself. "You should come in." He gestured to the inn behind him and tucked his harmonica away in his pocket. His voice was rough, tired, and touched with a rasp.

The last time someone had asked Draco into the inn, he'd ended up fearing for his life, and that was only a few days before. Granted, it was only a thread and completely his own fault because he is completely incapable of being decent to someone, but the matter still stands. He'd at least somewhat trusted the woman, but he'd thought she was someone from at least near his home. He'd been scared and confused and she was at least vaguely familiar.

This guy? He didn't like this guy, on sight alone. He looked rough, which to Draco said trouble. The accent didn't help matters, lowering his opinion of the man. But that's what happens in the mind of a kid who's raised in massive wealth by parents who disdain anyone who isn't their equal. In fact, Draco looked at Casey like he was a cockroach that had scurried onto his shoe.

"You're one to talk," he spat, as if Draco himself didn't look like he'd been dragging himself along the forest floor in the pouring rain. "Why should I trust the likes of you?"

Wanda continued to explore the village. With each pass her path took her a little bit further from the safety of the buildings that gathered at the villages center. Wanda wasn't afraid of what she might find but she didn't know her new limits and she was careful.

As she moved towards the forest she reached out towards anything that might be lurking in the woods. She lightly brushed against the thoughts of animals, those awake and those sleeping through the coldest part of winter. What she didn't expect was to feel the presence of a human in the woods.

Wanda paused and turned towards the unknown variable, pulling the sparks of red mist to her fingertips. It was more difficult now but that wouldn't stop her.

The forest had not been kind to Draco over the last few days, but that wouldn't stop him from trying. His recent attempt to find the outermost edge left him limping. His foot had become tangled in some nasty roots, which sent him face-first into the thorny underbrush. He'd barely managed to pry his foot free, before limping to a less dense section of the forest.

Sitting on a fallen log, he gingerly pulled up the leg of his infuriatingly red pants, inspecting the damage. Sprained and scratched raw, but nothing serious as far as he could tell. He'd had worse just from quiddich practice.

As he gingerly flexed his foot, he felt it. But it wasn't possible. His head jerked up as he searched the forest in front of him. It was that strange sensation that had nothing to do with physical feeling. Like a faint pressure across his mind. But legilimency required eye contact. He held perfectly still, trying frantically to shut his mind down while listening for a sign of anyone. But without knowing who he was trying to block out, it wasn't easy to fight against it. If anyone in the world was capable of such a thing without being visible....no. He was worlds away, wasn't he?

Thanks to her abilities Wanda knew exactly where Draco was sitting. She found it odd that he wasn't moving. She inhaled slowly, releasing the breath as she stepped closer to the unknown element. Her boots crunch as she steps through the snow. Try as she might, she couldn't make her steps completely silent. Circling an ever green tree she paused, her green eyes falling on the blond boy in front of her.

She had her hands raised defensively, a small spark of red shimmering between her fingers. It was difficult to relax when you're meeting a stranger in the woods.

"What are you doing here?" Her accent was thick though she was easy to understand. Wanda's gaze flicked down to his ankle curiously. "You're hurt."

Hearing the crunch he jumped to his feet. It was an incredibly bad idea as it meant slamming his recently injured foot to the ground, making him wince. That split second wince was enough for him to lose a sense of which direction he'd heard the sound from. The trees threw the sound around, making it impossible to pinpoint, at least to someone who had zero experience with anything like tracking.

Then he saw her. What he noticed far more than the girl herself was what appeared to be magic in her hands. Like she was actually holding the light of a curse between her fingers. Without a wand. There were some magics that lingered like a mist, but none that could be held like that.

He took a defensive step back from her, his hand instinctively going to where his wand would have been at his hip. He winced again, trying to hide it and shift his weight off his bad foot. "I'm perfectly allowed to be here!" he said, trying to summon all the authority he could. It was slightly dampened by the fact that he looked like he'd been rolling around the forest floor all day, all muddy and scratched.

Wanda raised an eyebrow at him as he hurt himself. That didn't seem like a wise idea though it at least gave her an idea of who he was. Most likely, he had arrived like she had and he had hurt himself trying to find a way out. That didn't mean that he was a friend or that she'd let her guard down but he might listen to her if she tried to talk to him.

"I'm sure you are." She was less concerned about what he was doing here now that she's watched him. Very slowly, Wanda releases her powers and lowers her arms. There was tension in her shoulders, she was ready for an attack if he chose to do so but she wasn't going to keep up a stance that suggested that she was going to hurt him.

It was counter productive.

"I didn't know others were out here. You're looking for a way out?" She found it interesting since Thor hadn't been able too find a way out either. Wanda wondered what this boy could do.

The moment her power withdrew, the moment he couldn't feel her touch on his mind, hid defenses fell. They didn't just drop, they collapsed. He let out an audible gasp, taking a slight step back to brace himself. As if the sudden shift in pressure and momentum had been physical. That had been a lot harder than with anyone. Even his aunt, even Snape. But her touch hadn't been nearly as strong as theirs. Or was she just that good at masking it?

"Of course I am," he was unnecessarily defensive, as if she was accusing him of some wrong doing. "Shouldn't everyone be?!" But he gave a slight shake of his head, feeling oddly off balance and weak from his efforts. "How did you do that?!" He demanded without allowing her time to answer the first question. "The legilimency, when I couldn't even see you. HOW?!"

Wanda's powers were probably a little different from what he knew. If she had tried harder she might have seen his fears, seen the emotions and goals that he tried to hide but her touch hadn't been close enough for anything that in depth. She'd done nothing but identified that he was there, brushing lightly against his conscious thoughts.

Her brow furrowed at his question. "Legilimency?" It was a strange word and one that she didn't know. "I don't know what this is." She watched him and waited, wondering if he was going to explain or continue to throw questions at her.

Her powers were indeed very different from what he knew. Legilimency was not an innate skill to all wizards, and was actually somewhat rare, as it took a specific mindset, a great deal of power, and serious practice to learn. And it was usually something that could never go any deeper than the surface.

He looked her over, skeptically, at her words. By her accent he wondered if maybe they called it something else, if it was just called legilimency in English. "What you did. I felt it! Getting into people's heads! You're just lucky I know how to block it out, or you'd be sorry for even trying it on me." As if he could do anything while injured and wandless.

Her eyes narrowed at him. She didn't really care for his reaction. "You're afraid." She spoke softly and without doubt in her voice. "My aim wasn't to get into your head." Wanda's tone was harder. She didn't like this guy very much. "Only to see who was here."

She shook her head head, long brown hair shifting on either side of her cheeks. "I don't go playing in peoples heads anymore." She'd subtly imprint thoughts or commands if she had to force those who are innocent to move but she didn't like going into peoples minds. She didn't want to see their anger, hate and worries. There was so much darkness in people.

"That's the same thing, isn't it!" It really wasn't a question, because he couldn't see the difference. But from where he stood, magic of that nature only had one purpose and one purpose alone: reading another's thoughts. Then again, it wasn't exactly reading or even seeing, as thoughts were complicated and far from linear. It was bursts of images and sound and emotion all jumbled together.

Her following words make him hesitate, though. Because legilimency was merely looking through a window into someone's head, it wasn't possible to effect or change anything. That was a different sort of magic all together. Some of it darker than dark, to the point it was deemed Unforgiveable.

"What do you mean 'playing in peoples heads'?! Do you go around obliviating people for fun? Or would you just imperious someone for being around?" All full of vile spite, as completely offended by the notion. As if she would understand what either of those things even meant.

Wanda watched him, her expression guarded. She didn't care for this guys tone or his accusations. It felt to much like home and she was reminded, once again, why she'd stayed in the compound. She was to dangerous.

"I can't control what you think." Which wasn't actually true. The correct statement was that she wasn't going to control what he thought. It always came at a cost. "You've answered none of my questions. You've accused me." Her accent thickened as her eyes narrowed at him. "Why should I answer you?"

The question was soft but firm. She was ready to just leave him there. She didn't understand what he was saying but she knew his tone.

"Because if you don't, I'll expose you!" He didn't even hesitate with the threat, nor was it an empty one. Even scared, lost, and alone, the power over another person was difficult to resist. He didn't want the sort of power he was technically promised. The literal power, subjugating a whole country, that wasn't what he wanted to be part of. Just enough power for personal gain, that's all he ever wanted.

"Witch or not, you can get inside people's heads. Could do a lot more than just touch their minds, too, I'm guessing. Doesn't matter where we are, that's not something anyone's going to be comfortable with." All said with the sort of conviction that was more common in men twice his age. Nevermind he had no one he could actually tell. Yet. "So what'll it be, then?"

"Expose me for what?" It wasn't as if she was hiding anything about herself. She used her powers proudly, they were a part of her, a choice that she'd made a long time ago. It changed how she thought about herself but she wouldn't go back, not after everything that she's lost.

Wanda's eyes narrowed at him. "Tell them what you want."

She hated it but Wanda was used to being feared. She turned on her heel, leaving Draco behind her. She doubted that he'd be able to keep up with her for long, if he truly wanted to follow her.

What was the point of helping when there were those determined to see you a certain way. It was more discouraging than Wanda realized.

As Draco's luck would have it, it's only then, as he starts to drift off, that the door to number 11 swings open with a thwap of wood against wall. Light spills in, not from overhead — there are no working light switches here — but from a flickering candle held aloft by the young man coming through the doorway. Whatever is hampering his speed, it seems, is also draining his stamina; after a full day of exploration, Pietro feels strained in a way he hasn't for months, maybe years. Booted feet drag across the floorboard, the candle swaying in his lazily outstretched hand and the light swaying with it. Letting his backpack drop from one shoulder, he peers into the darkness ahead for the bedside table.

And he nearly jumps out of his skin at the sight of a toe-headed stranger already curled up beside it.

"Who's there?" Pietro snaps, his embarrassment quickly snowballing into anger. "Get up! What gives you the right to lurk in my room in the dark?"

When the door slaps open, Draco is instantly awake. His eyes snap open, but he remains perfectly still. Watching the brilliant candle, his face half buried in the pillow. He strains to hear who it could be, his pounding heart blotting out all but the most obvious sounds, unable to see anything. That singular flame in his vision reduces all else to inky darkness. He thinks he catches glimpses of a face, of pale hair, but he can't be sure.

For a terrifying moment, his mind scrambles over all the things that could be behind that light. All the people it could be. People who were a universe away. People he feared might one day claw their way up through the fountain to find him. Creatures and monsters, things that would never logically carry a candle. But the panicked mind yanked from the brink of sleep was not a logical thing.

But when Pietro finally spoke, his voice was unknown to Draco. Plain. Mundane. Completely and utterly human. Night the high cold trill of a Dark Lord, and not the revolting air sucking of literal soul-sucking monster. Just and ordinary young man.

Sitting up, quickly and defiantly, Draco stares at the shape of the other in the shadows. With the candle moved off to the side, he can start to make out some of the other's features, now. "It is rather quite difficult to lurk while one is asleep," he spat. "And I should be asking you the very same thing, as when I checked this room was perfectly empty." He was too exhausted to be having this argument, but he was going to push it anyway.

Did he not leave anything in the room to reserve it? -And so what if he didn't, anyway? Who is this posh asshole to go around taking whatever he likes? Now that Pietro is near enough to have a look at the intruder (and to hear his accent, far more impeccably British than Pietro's own), he likes him even less.

"Empty does not mean unclaimed," Pietro retorts, every syllable sharp as a needle. "Even an idiot child could reach that conclusion. Excuse me if I have overestimated your intellect."

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002. I sat alone, in bed till the morning - OTA (Part 1)

Sunday evening, the 12th

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