The second thing was the dark. Not the soft darkness of a bedroom at night, but a heavy, oppressive darkness that swallowed all light. The kind of darkness that pressed against his eyes and made him wonder if he'd gone blind.

The third thing was the pain. A throbbing, insistent ache that pulsed through his body, centered somewhere in his back. It was the pain that finally dragged him from the fog of unconsciousness.

Draco Malfoy opened his eyes to darkness and tried to remember where he was.

The last thing he recalled was the cold — proper cold, the kind that made his breath fog in the air. He'd been walking. No, he'd been flooing. He'd stepped into the fireplace at the manor, called out his destination, and then—

Nothing.

He tried to move, and that was when he realized he couldn't feel his hands. His arms were limp at his sides, numb. He tried to flex his fingers and felt nothing. The panic started to rise in his chest, a familiar clawing sensation that he'd learned to suppress over the years.

Breathe, he told himself. Occlumency. Compartmentalize.

He was alive. That was something. He was alive, and he was somewhere cold, and dark, and he needed to figure out where.

Draco shifted slightly, and the pain in his back flared — sharp, sudden, electric. He gasped, a ragged sound that echoed strangely around him, bouncing back at him from walls he couldn't see. The echo told him he was in an enclosed space. Stone. Damp. The smell of moss and old earth filled his nostrils.

A well. He was at the bottom of a well.

The realization settled over him like a shroud. He reached out, his numb fingers brushing against rough stone, slick with moisture. He pushed himself up, his arms trembling with the effort, and that was when he noticed something else.

He wasn't as cold as he should be. The air around him was freezing — he could see his breath forming in faint clouds — but his body felt... warm. Too warm. A strange, foreign heat pulsed through him, radiating from his back, from that spot of pain.

Draco reached behind him, his fingers brushing against something that wasn't clothing. Something that wasn't stone.

Something that moved.

His hand recoiled as if burned. His heart hammered against his ribs. He reached back again, slower this time, and felt the smooth, almost leathery texture of something large and folded. Something attached to his shoulder blades.

The scream that tore from his throat was raw, desperate, and utterly alone in the darkness.

Wings.

He had wings.