Next chapter at 300 comments! Dedicated to softball4infiniti
— TWs for toxicity, alcoholism.

  DAYS PASSED THAT way, in quiet solitude, just the two of them. With no one out looking for them, there was no reason to rush and so they took their time, settled, created a little haven of calm whilst the world continued to burn around them. Three Sins remained; Greed, Envy, Wrath.

Navy had abandoned them the moment it was revealed that Seamus Finnegan had betrayed the rebels and the plan began to go south. Seven showed Draco the stone, told him it was what she had used him, though she left out the part about him dying. She was embarrassed mainly, over the way she had reacted to his death — the way she had mourned him so keenly, and slept beside his body for days after. She decided he didn't need to know any of that, and so he wouldn't, ever. Telling him would serve little purpose except to humiliate her and worry him. It didn't matter that he had died, he was alive now.

Draco had eyed the stone closely, a philosopher's stone — or so he had called it. Navy had sent several more letters in the days following, more gifts of gold, food, even various potions. Draco said it was because she felt guilty for leaving them. Seven didn't believe it for a second. Navy hadn't even tried looking for them once that bomb had gone off. These gifts were only because she didn't want to lose them both as allies, she knew she needed them to defeat the remaining Sins. In months, they had done what she couldn't in years.

In her letters, Navy described how they had all ran to the edge of the maze, Seamus had entered, claiming he was going to look for the prize at the centre but never returned.
Bill and George went in to look for him and found he'd slashed his way out the other side of the hedge maze, not even having attempted to look for the prize. Bill and George had found it though, presented it to Navy; one of the last remaining philosopher's stones.
Luna and her father had made it out safely too, or so Navy said, though there had been no news of Echo or his men. Draco didn't want to talk about it.

Freshly aware of the fragility of life, Seven valued these peaceful days, hoarded as many of those calm moments as she could. She tried things she never had, she read books, wrote a little, tried her hand at painting, Draco even started trying to teach her how to cook. She was terrible at all three, but that didn't matter, Draco still treated her works as if they were the best he ever saw.

Tonight's package from Navy had yielded a dozen fresh eggs, flour, milk, butter and several herbs and spices. Draco stood facing the stove, Seven sat on the island, watching him work whilst swinging her legs like a child.

"What's on the menu tonight?" She asked, examining one of the eggs.
People were starving all across the districts, fighting over whatever scraps of food they could. That had been Seven once, and now here she was, spoilt for choice. She had felt guilty for the first few days, but with each meal, with every full belly, it became easier to shut those passing thoughts out.

Seven had never known what life had been like before the war, but here, in their small corner of the world, she liked to think it had been like this.

"Pancakes." Draco grinned, a smear of flour across his cheek.

Seven laughed, gesturing to the mess, "Nice face."

"What?" His hand flew up to his cheek, wiping it away, "Oh." He hastily busied himself with the task at hand. "Can you — can you get the plates." Seven frowned at the sudden strain in his voice but hopped off the island nonetheless. "Okay..."

No more secrets.

And yet, there were still so many — still so much she didn't know. Seven was just as guilty as Draco though, keeping more than her fair share of things. She still hadn't told him about her memory of the Dark Lord — or the dark mark Bellatrix had uncovered. After the projection of the skull and snake in the sky, her mark had faded back into the tan skin of her wrist. Just as invisible as it had been before.

They ate in silence. The food was good, the best she'd ever had in fact. She wanted to tell him that but he wouldn't even look at her, spending the meal staring down at his plate. This was the worst — the not knowing what she'd done wrong. Though if anything she should be used to not knowing by now, that seemed to be the premise of her entire life.

"Can we paint again, soon?" She asked quietly, desperate to break the quiet, not wanting him to be sad but also not knowing how to fix it.

Draco sighed, "I'm running out of paint, we can't afford to waste anymore."

Waste. He didn't want to waste any more on her.

Seven knew it to be true, she didn't have a fraction of the talent at the easel that Draco did. The only things she had been able to produce were childish and meagre compared to his, but he'd still always treated them as equal until now.
He'd sat beside her for hours and watched her work, held her hand and showed her how to replicate similar stokes or mix particular colours. He'd even taken down some of his own works so that they could hang hers around the apartment.

"I could go and trade for some more, we have more than enough gold to last the year and the markets only a few miles —,"

"— I said no, Seven." Draco snapped.

Her cheeks flushed red, feeling like a scolded child; embarrassed, inadequate, "Okay."

Draco's chair protested with a horrid scraping sound as he stood, chucking his dirty plate into the sink with more force than was needed. It clattered loudly and Seven flinched instinctively at the sound, not that Draco would have noticed. He'd already grabbed a bottle of something unnecessarily strong and retreated to the balcony, shutting the glass doors beside him. A clear sign that Seven was not welcome to follow.

She sat alone at the island for a while, watching through the doors as he tossed back his head and drank greedily, as if starved. As if that liquor was the cure to all that ailed him. As if it could drown out the thoughts — the memories.
Then he'd lean out over the railings on his forearms, too far out for comfort and with his hands in his hair, as if wanted to fall. And then the cycle would repeat again. And again. And again.

It went on for hours, continuing on into the night, long after Seven had gone to bed, though she didn't dare sleep in case he actually did fall. From where she lay she had a perfect view of him, star drenched and haunting, his hair reflecting perfect white in the pale moonlight.
Perhaps it was because she had already lost him once that she watched him, terrified of losing him again. She'd like to think that was the case, and not that she had become all too attached to someone incapable of availability.

These passing days had been so perfect, so pure, and now, so seemingly lost.

Thin tendrils of grey smoke billowed from his lips, head tilted back in ecstasy as he took another drag of the cigarette. Seven had never known him to smoke, didn't even know where he could've come across a cigarette in this district where such unpleasant vices were forbidden.

At that she abandoned the premise of sleep, standing and pulling a blanket around her shoulders to cover her thin nightdress. The past nights they had slept in the same bed, separate but still, together. He had made no move to touch her, and so in turn neither had she. Though that didn't matter much, as every morning they awoke tangled in each other's arms all the same.

"Hey," She said quietly as she stepped out onto the balcony, closing the door to the rest of the apartment behind her.

He didn't turn, "What do you want, Seven?"

From his tongue, her name was a weapon, sharp as knives and nothing close to kind. Something meant to hurt. It did.

She frowned as he took another drag of the cigarette, all the while still clutching the bottle in his other hand, "Do I always have to want something to talk to you?"

The sun had already set, bruising the sky with its last purple hues, warding off the full flush of the night for just a little while longer. Draco stared into the impending dark, tapping the ash off his cigarette onto the street below, "You should go back inside, it's getting cold out here."

Winter would arrive in a few weeks, bringing with it snow and hale and all manner of obstacles for their next journey. The break had been nice but the mounting chill was yet another reminder that they couldn't stay here forever. Seven tried her best to hide a treacherous shiver, wrapping the blanket tighter around herself, "It's not too bad."

He sighed, "I'm tired, Seven."

"Then you should sleep." She knew full well he was trying to get rid of her but she didn't care. She hadn't spent nights sleeping next to — mourning over his corpse, tearing herself apart over his death , just so he could ignore her upon his return.

"No, not tired like that." Frustration worked itself into the fine lines of his face, "I just want to be alone, please, just leave me alone."

"Have I done something to upset you? Because if I have —,"

"— No, no." It was like he was trying to convince himself more than her, "You haven't done anything... It's just —," He shook his head, "I don't even know how to put it into words."

"Well," Said Seven carefully, "If you feel like trying I'm here to listen," She lingered, waiting for him to inevitably shut her out, but also ready to stay if by some miracle he didn't. Time trickled by, moments, minutes, maybe even hours. It didn't matter, she'd wait for him until they were nothing more than bones.

"These past few days have been the best I've had in years," He said slowly, tentatively as if pressing a bruise just to see how much he could make it hurt. His head was in his hands, the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes, "They've been perfect — you've been perfect, but..."

"It's still not enough," Seven finished for him; solemn.

The exhale of breath shook him like a sob but he wasn't crying, just hurting. All that pain he'd held down for so long coming to the surface, "I don't know, something's missing. It feels empty, like we've been playing house, living here — pretending everything's fine, all whilst our friends die out there."

A knot balled in her chest, a noose around her heart, she wanted to comfort him but didn't quite know how. Seven didn't have any friends or family, none other than Draco.
She didn't know his pain, couldn't even pretend to. "We'll be back to hunting Sins soon enough," She assured him, "It's okay to take a break Draco, we've earned it. We've been fighting all our lives — nonstop for years and look how far we've come! In a matter of months, we've killed four Sins — four! Before us, no one had even managed to kill one!"

He laughed and shook his head; a hollow, mirthless sound, "It makes you think though, doesn't it. Why couldn't they?"

Seven shrugged, never really having thought about it. "They didn't have the resources we do, the daggers to destroy Horcruxes."

"Wrath made three daggers from the sword of Gryffindor," Draco said grimly, "That means there are more out there. More people with the resources to kill Sins, so why don't they?"

"Yes, but if Wrath was the one who made the original daggers then I'd bet the other two belong to Sins, it would make sense wouldn't it? — To give the Sins one of the only weapons capable of killing them."

At last, he looked at her, with eyes dark as thunder and hair pale as lightning, he looked like a freshly woken storm. Brooding, restless, tormented by something, or maybe, someone. "Then why do you have one?"

Seven knew why she had one of Wrath's daggers — or at least, she thought she knew. But she could never tell Draco that.

No more secrets.

Except this one. This one had to stay hidden. He could never know that at one point in time, probably before the war, Seven had been one of them. Not just one of them — the best of them, working directly for the Dark Lord. That was why she had one of the daggers.

Seven could lie to anyone, in fact she liked to think it quite a talent of hers; toying with those ever-vague lines of morality, twisting truth to fiction and back again. Pushing lies to see just how far she could take them before a deal would fall through, or, more often then not, she'd get what she wanted. Seven could lie to anyone, except Draco. It felt wrong, it was wrong. "I don't know," She tried to shrug, "Maybe I stole it."

Draco wore his mask just as well as Seven wore hers, "Maybe it was given to you."

"Maybe." She didn't see the point in speculating.

The conversation was over and yet Draco didn't look away. Never in his life had he looked at her this way; like she was a stranger. With eyes narrowed and a posture that was suddenly tense as he pushed off the railing. "Show me."

"What?"

"Your mark," Darkness homed itself in the black pits of his irises — swallowed any semblance of the boy she thought she knew. There was aggression there too, danger hiding in plain sight as he said, "Show it to me."

He was drunk, she told herself, that's why. Her Draco would never look at her that way. And yet, she still took a step back for every one he took forward. "I — I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Don't play dumb with me, Seven." Draco hissed, and for all the drink he'd had, his words were clear as day. That was what scared her the most. "Show me, now."

"Draco — please! You're drunk, just go to bed —,"
In one fluid movement, he lurched forwards, grabbing her arm, forcing her back against the railing and pulled out his wand, pressing it into the base of her wrist. Seven writhed, thrashed hopelessly against a man twice her size, "Draco, stop! Let go — you're hurting me!"

He didn't care. Not about her. Not anymore. Not when he saw the mark that manifested itself there, thick and black and altogether awful. She saw the way his face changed at the sight of it, the way it fell. Worst of all the way he dropped her arm, practically threw it away from him as if she repulsed him. Perhaps she did, after all she was one of them — the very worst of them.

  He went back to the railing, as far away from her as he could get. He drank and then drank again, over and over until only dregs remained and all the while Seven's pleads fell on deaf ears.

  "It's not what it looks like — I'm not one of them, I promise! Draco, you know me! You know I'm not one of them! I promise! Please, believe me!"

"Fuck!" Something inside him snapped and cried out, he launching the glass bottle towards the streets below. It smashed in a glorious ripple of amber glass. Then his head was back in his hands, eyes pressed tightly shut, jaw clenched.

  "Draco! Please! Listen to me —!"

    "— Stop!" He snarled and like a beaten dog she fell silent at once; terrified, and at the same time, desperate for his approval.

Defeat became him. Shoulders slumping, and with his chest heaving a mournful sigh, Draco rolled up his sleeve.
And there, the mirror image of Seven's, was a dark mark.

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