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Time in Azkaban moved to the beat of several drums. There was the shift change of the guards. Thrice daily, in a cacophony of footfalls. Afternoons spent in the yard, metered out by his father's knuckles. Weeks measured in the bloom and fade of bruises, with trips to the infirmary at what seemed like irregular intervals, but turned out to be distinctly related to the guard schedule.
The months melded together until Draco measured them in seasons. Days were marked by the clatter of steel meal trays until the sound formed the fatally slow heartbeat of the entire fortress. Three beats per day. A slow glug of moving blood that matched the swallowing of food so bland it was torture. The crumbled mortar between the stones tasted better. The metallic tang of his blood, licked from an always-split lip, was a savory nightcap.
The sun was high and the air balmy the first time it happened. Mid-summer. Quite possibly his birthday. Which birthday, he wasn't entirely sure of.
He unfolded the brown paper napkin over his lap, and something tickled the top of his bare foot. Probably a rat, he thought as he shook it. But wood hit the stone.
A sliver of wood. No longer than his thumb. Little more than an ambitious toothpick.
He set it against his tongue and sucked gently. His saliva turned bitter. Acrid. And the wood didn't soften.
Hawthorn.
Curious.
He tucked it under his mattress and put it out of his mind.
Until hit happened again in early winter. Yule, perhaps. And this sliver was larger. Nearly the diameter of a pencil.
Curious and curiouser.
It happened with near regularity, twice a year, until he had a handful of various splinters, most with one smooth, rounded edge. And on what he suspected was his birthday, a single glittering hair fell from his napkin.
Potter appeared the next day.
Not all at once. The tail of a red robe around the corner of Draco's corridor. The taste of his magic in the prison yard as Draco dodged Lucius' backhand, only to catch a haymaker in the jaw. The murmur of his voice from the other side of an infirmary curtain.
And then there he was. Clean, pin-straight, and even his riot of hair was shiny.
Draco's filthy skin and shredded jumpsuit carried all the prestige of chewed gum on pavement. The MediWitch bustled in behind Potter, and he stepped aside to watch.
"It'll help with the swelling," she said.
A plastic straw nudged Draco's lips, and his jaw tried to part, but met the binding pressure of the wires threaded between his teeth, followed by searing pain. Not the first time Lucius had broken his jaw, but possibly the worst.
Potter cleared his throat. "How long will his jaw be wired shut?"
"I'm sorry, I can't release inmate-"
"I'm being sworn in as Head Auror next week. I can pull his chart myself."
She gave up on getting Draco to drink the potion. "Six weeks."
"Hm."
Potter turned and walked away, but Draco suspected he didn't leave. It kept happening, the glimpses of him. A fresh red robe with gold trim. Licks of his magic late at night. A week of seeing Potter in his peripheral vision. A week of unprecedented peace in the yard. A week without Lucius.
And at the end of the week, an unusual dessert. It fluttered out from the folds of his napkin and landed in his lap.
A Mandrake leaf.
It was cool and smooth against the irritated inside of his cheek. A buffer between his flesh and the wires. His tongue ran along the inside of the wires, and he relished the blister that had formed and burst at the tip of his tongue. It was too interesting to not explore, in this grey building in a grey sea, overlain by grey sky.
Grey, in and of itself, was not a bad color. But a grey sea that never surged, and a grey sky that never roiled could drive a man mad with unfulfilled anticipation.
The Mandrake leaf was verdant in color and flavour both. Bitter, and floral, and saliva-enducing while it filled his nose with the acrid tang of snapped green twigs. He spent three days on his cot with his eyes shut, savoring the leaf and refusing the bland puree on his trays.
Hunger got the better of him, and he accepted the next offering. Grey mush.
He picked up his napkin to wipe his chin, and flinched as an insect fell out into his food.
Not an insect. A chrysalis.
His heart hammered against his ribs, and he swallowed saliva that tasted like wet grass clippings.
Potter came to see him the next day.
"He's getting the Kiss."
Draco blinked up at the freshly-minted Head Auror, resplendent in gold and crimson. A Christmas gift to all of wizardkind.
"Your father." Potter bounced the toe of his shoe against the corridor floor. "Tomorrow."
It was an occasion for conversation, but Draco didn't remember the last one he'd had, nor did he trust his blistered tongue to perform.
Potter patted his robe pockets, eliciting a muffled clinking of the contents.
"Do you want to watch?"
Draco's breath huffed in an almost-laugh, and his lips curved in an almost-smile. Did he want to watch the death of the man who brought him into this world and made him want to leave it? Absolutely. Did he ever want to see the man's face again? Absolutely not.
Lucius Malfoy probably had very little in the way of a soul to claim, so the Dementors would dispose of him in mere seconds. Maybe it would be worth watching.
Potter waited for an answer, and Draco responded by holding a hand up, thumb and finger pinched close, but not touching.
A wry smirk graced Potter's clean-shaven face. "A little, hm?"
Draco nodded, tried to bite his smiling lips, but had to settle for pulling them tight against his locked teeth.
"Alright."
Days passed in paralyzing monotony. Grey sky, grey halls, grey food, but then... a seagull.
Draco sat in a corner of the prison yard, legs outstretched, ankles crossed, and gasped as a black and white form fluttered to the ground. Not grey. Distinctly black and white.
Its yellow beak pecked idly at small rocks, and it regarded Draco with a beady black eye. It gave a laughing cry to the sky, where others circled.
Draco swallowed saliva that tasted of tea steeped too long. He'd always assumed the rats inside the prison had always been there, but perhaps animals could pass through the wards. Draco swallowed again and willed his spit to extinguish the dangerous glimmer of hope that sparked in his chest.
The gulls didn't return, but Draco watched the sky every day. He hadn't seen a rat in weeks, but he checked under his bed, hoping to snatch one. He wanted to hold it tight and inspect it for signs of the outside world; the smell of sea water, sand in its pelt, remnants of ingested trash in its gut.
Instead, only the hawthorn slivers and strand of hair greeted him under his cot. He listened for movement in the hall, but heard none. He ran his calloused tongue over the wires in his mouth for a long moment. The cell block had gotten quieter. The crowd in the yard had diminished. Perhaps Head Auror Potter was on an execution spree.
Out with the old prisoners, and in with the... well, no one, he thought, scooping up the wood and hair. Good riddance.
He arranged and re-arranged the pieces for a while and pondered the fate of the missing prisoners. Perhaps they'd been sentenced to life as Squibs. Most of them would beg for death or quickly find it after being released.
Even locked in Azkaban, magic still existed. He could scent it like oncoming rain, and feel it like an air pressure drop, always present, to some degree. To live without it would be akin to being stripped of one's senses. A plate of grey mush slid through a slot in the bars of his cell. Maybe sensory stripping wasn't so different from sensory deprivation.