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Chapter Text

Along the narrow lanes of Hogsmeade, unseasonable snow flurries drifted off the edge of the roofs and along the windows, coming down in handfuls as students pulled their cloaks tight. The small village seemed to channel the wind over the cobblestones until it whipped over the students and bit through even the staunchest warming charms.

The streets were mostly empty, walked only a handful of locals and the few children who had stayed over summer or come early. Draco's train ticket was still in his pocket. Pansy had been the only other Slytherin with him on a train of mostly empty cars. 

His parents had sent him along with little more than his wand and a handful of galleons. Anything to get him out of the manor, out of Wiltshire, out of England completely. If they could have sent him to the continent, he thought they would have, and themselves with him.  

The ride had been silent. He held a mandrake leaf in his mouth, as he had done for the past couple of weeks, and the animagus charm required that he hold silent until the month was done. He'd never realized how much he wanted to talk than when he couldn't.

Seated on a lonely bench out of the way, he leaned forward, head bowed. He glanced sideways at the main road, watching students run from shop to shop. Few green scarves lingered in front of the shop windows. Almost all of them were older students, and the few third and fourth years among them walked within arm's reach of a sixth or seventh year. And Pansy, walking by herself, two drinks hovering with her as she stepped out of Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop. 

He smiled ruefully. Among all the students, she stood out with her light summer robes cut at the knee, the collar draped low on her shoulders as befit a young witch of marriageable age. She kicked up snow, letting it spill in the air around her. Other children rushed away from the cold puffs, wondering how she could stand the chill.

"Got you a Vermilion Sunset juice," Pansy said, brushing snow from the bench before sitting down. Smiling around the straw of her own pink Rose Bloom Tea, she hovered the dark red juice closer to his face until he had to take it. "You're welcome."

He didn't smile. He barely nodded at her. The few galleons he had were too precious to spend on anything this frivolous. He took a long drink, careful not to swallow the leaf. 

Side by side, they watched the snow fall over the cobblestones. With a huff, he leaned over until he was pressed against her side, his head on her shoulder.

"Cold?" she asked.

He didn't answer, instead touching the edge of her robe, raising an eyebrow. 

"S'the trick, isn't it?" she smiled. The spells she'd cast on her clothing were all of her own doing, a point of pride that she could beat out Madam Malkin's work. "Never bother with charms. You want warm clothes—hit it with a potion of firethorn and hearth ash."

A pack of yellow Hufflepuff students ran by, complaining about herbology summer reading. Their voices faded again, leaving Pansy and Draco in silence.

Their own summer had been consumed by the war.

Pansy didn't know where her parents were. She'd simply woken up one day and they were gone, a note on the kitchen table to stay safe, keep going to school, and they would return when they could. She had hope that they were about their master's work. From snatches of conversation she'd overheard from them before they'd vanished, and from what Draco and Blaise and Theo had heard, they'd slowly pieced together that the dark lord had his Death Eaters moving across the entire countryside like pieces on a chess board.

She hoped Voldemort didn't sacrifice them like pawns.

Her uncertainty made studying feel ridiculous. Still, she had done her own summer reading. All the Death Eater's children had done their summer work, and practiced their craft long into the night as well. Homework was no longer a chore but a preparation for battle. Her potions were lethal. Blaise cast charms like weapons. Theo had even learned the rudiments of crafting little handheld jinxes. 

And Draco, whose family served best as politicians and socialites, now took advantage of perhaps the last opportunity he'd ever have to fall silent for a month.

The snow swallowed the sound around them. At Hogwarts, on the train, even in their own homes, they couldn't speak for fear of being overheard. Here on this single bench at the end of the street, finally, they seemed to be alone. 

Pansy lifted her drink to her lips to disguise how she murmured. "So…the master's angry. With your family."

Draco nodded once.

She put her hand on his.

"And you…have to do something? For him."

He paused, then nodded once.

"You can't tell me what it is?"

He shook his head once.

"Can't say at all?" she asked.

He shook his head again.

She frowned.

"How can I help?"

He glanced at her, raising an eyebrow.

The weight of her offer hung between them. Any other wizard would have thought that Draco simply wrestled with how best to serve the master. The Malfoys were proud dark wizards, always just out of reach of the law, and they had thrown their lot in with Voldemort for years. Of course Pansy knew this.

Pansy also knew that Draco would throw his lot in with whoever gave his family the best chance to survive. That survival instinct was the wagon she would hitch her star to. The dark lord's power wasn't so attractive when it threatened to stomp its own minions into the mud. But a sneaky, conniving, scheming Malfoy? Malfoys who had proven they knew the value of loyalty?

"You heard about the Prewett girl?" she asked.

His eyes narrowed. Yes. He had heard. 

Not that anyone else had, not yet. But his mother had whispered to him what had happened—a mudblood miscegenation of a blood traitor and a muggle—Mafalda Prewett probably hadn't even known why she had been killed. But she had been, and her parents as well, and the house burned down for good measure.

She had been all of fourteen years old. And, according to Draco's mother, who had likely been one of the Death Eaters who helped kill the Prewetts, their deaths had been slow and miserable. 

To cross Voldemort was to risk a fate worse than death. But to serve him?

The Malfoys had been loyal.

They had discovered that to serve was little better.

"So…" Pansy said, pointedly looking at Draco. "You have a plan?"

Draco gave her a dry, humorless smile. It was the kind of look one condemned prisoner might give to their cell mate.

There was nothing else to say—not out here in the open where anyone might be listening. At least they had figured out where they stood with each other, checked the edges of where their loyalties stood. 

Finally, after their drinks were done and the cups disapparated, Draco sighed and stood up. 

She walked beside him, following his look to the small cloud of Slytherin students around Blaise, the badge on his collar gleaming even in the glare of a cold afternoon. 

"You really didn't want it?" she said.

He grimaced. 

Earlier that day, Dumbledore had summoned Draco and Pansy to his office with no explanation. Both of them had wracked their brains trying to remember anything they had done and not been caught for—but in his office, they'd found themselves in a group with Granger and one of the Weasleys, Hanna Abbott and Padma Patil, and a couple of other students he hadn't recognized. And Draco had been in the very awkward position of declining, silently, the Prefect badge.

Everyone had looked at him oddly. Pansy had been in no position to run interference for him beyond a feeble "hellebore accident." And then Dumbledore had locked eyes with him.

Had the old man guessed that Draco was attempting an animagus spell?

"Indeed," Dumbledore had said, as if he completely believed the lie. "Hellebore poisoning can be quite debilitating. The silence may last for…"

Here the headmaster had paused and glanced at his clock, which showed the minutes and hours, days and months, with a moon more than halfway through its phase.

"…another week?" he'd finished.

Draco pressed his lips flat—yes, somehow Dumbledore had guessed. There'd been no point lying. He'd nodded and escaped the meeting swiftly after. This outing of the Slytherins to Hogsmeade had been a welcome distraction.

But now he felt a pang to see the prefect badge on Blaise's collar. 

"'Bout time you came back," Blaise said, ushering the Slytherins toward the end of the lane where two Hogwarts carriages stood waiting. "Leaving me with all the kids, and don't think I didn't notice I didn't get a drink."

Pansy made a show of reaching into her pocket, bringing out a bag of gummy bears that she slipped into his hand.

"Only the best muggle contraband for you," she said. "And they're already warm."

Breaking into a smile, Blaise didn't say thanks, sliding the bag quietly into his own pocket. "Glad you made it before time. Sun's about to set and somehow it's even colder."

Oh.

Draco breathed in sharply.

Of course.

Rim-bryne.

Cold that cut like this in the summer should have been a dead giveaway.

Draco didn't pause in his step, but he did put his hand down into the long pocket of his robes where his wand lay. Putting a hand on each of their shoulders, he caught their attention, giving them a look.

Pansy's expression turned stony. But Blaise faltered, facing forward while his gaze swept the street, the small nooks between the shops, and he gripped his wand too hard. He snapped suddenly at the children, hustling them with sharp words. The carriages were only a few feet away—too far—too far—

Behind them, something exploded. Blaise and Pansy started to look, and Draco grabbed their shoulders and forcibly turned them to keep going.

This time it was the windows across the street from them that exploded outward, sending shards of glass flying into the air. Windows were followed by bricks and chunks of stone as the front wall of the tea shop blasted into the street, knocking prone those unfortunate students who'd been too close.

He didn't know why he turned—morbid curiosity, a need to see. The fear that something dreadful might be expected of him. He expected Death Eaters, dark cloaks, masks, perhaps the Dark Lord himself.

Instead his eyes widened. He saw blood as if someone had splashed buckets across the snow. He saw adults and scarves—red, yellow, a blue one here and there. And he saw dark cloaks, yes, a handful of people with their faces and bodies hidden by hoods so shadowed that they must have been charmed to keep out the light. 

Each of them was scooping handfuls of blood red snow into their hands, lifting them up to their mouths. At his gasp, one of them turned toward him, the tiny pinpoints of its eyes gleaming out of the darkness of its hood.

"There you are," she hissed.

Years later, Draco would look back and realize that this was where the dark lord's plan had gone awry. Vampires made for fine foot soldiers—stealthy, cunning, resentful under the Ministry's boot—but surrounded by so much blood, of course they would lose control. They would frenzy, like sharks, forgetting the plan or escape in the hunger for the prey around them.

Later on, he would realize he'd been in an impossible position—defend himself against the vampires who were so clearly doing Voldemort's work? Or run away to be pounced on from behind and devoured?

Now, caught up in the shock of people screaming, of seeing a vampire coming toward with her gloved hands stained red and stretched toward him, all he could think of was the endless practice his father had drilled into him over the summer at home.

Do not hesitate, Lucius had said. Cast to kill.

Draco felt like he was made of lead. It took all of his strength to bring the wand up. By the time he could aim, the vampire was front of him, pressed close, too close. When Draco breathed in, there was the stench of blood. The vampire's hood fell back, revealing dark eyes in pale skin and sharp teeth tilted to meet Draco's throat.

It was not a gentle assault. The vampire hit him with all of her weight, slamming them both down on the stones. Pain froze his voice. Draco fell against the curb and stars swirled in front of his eyes even as his wand's tip pressed against her side.

He couldn't speak to form a spell. He couldn't think past the burning pain of her claws, the lacerations that drew like lines of fire across his arms and shoulders. He felt like pain like flames.

He couldn't breathe as her weight crushed the air out of him. Something in him moved, something raw and vital in his blood summoned to his will, gathering wordlessly in his hands. The air around him was silent. All he could hear was the snarl and snap of teeth above his face.

And then the snarls turned high pitch. The weight on him grew hot, painfully hot—his clothes singed as the creature on him started to glow from inside, black lines cracking over her skin, ashes drifting off her face and falling in clumps as fire smoldered up from inside her body. She stared at him in dawning horror just before her eyes blackened and charred.

Then all of its weight vanished in one blast of cold wind. Its shape crumbled into charred embers, grey and red, that blew across the cobblestones.

The street was blessedly silent. 

Silent except for the cries of wounded children. The snarls of vampires feasting. The snap of aurors apparating in and attacking.

Aurors.

Fresh fear washed through Draco.

No. He couldn't let himself be found like this.

He sat up slowly, the pain in his head growing with every heartbeat. In a few minutes, it would hurt too much to think. He didn't have time. He turned on his hands and knees, pushing himself up to his feet, staggering down the road. He had to lean on the wall beside him to catch his breath, gathering his strength. One by one, he flicked away the wounds on his arms. The deeper ones would take real charms. He'd ask Pansy to do it for him later.

To his surprise, the Hogwarts carriages were still there, waiting to take the children back to the school. He blinked stupidly. Why were they so empty? 

"Draco!" 

He barely registered the two people coming beside him, drawing him along to an empty carriage, helping him up and in. Pansy immediately started healing the deeper gouges in his hands as Blaise set their carriage to follow the other Slytherins, the only other carriage returning to school.

Draco slumped back in his seat. The headache was already blinding. The wounds were gone or fading, but everything still hurt.

Blaise stared at the blood on Draco's clothes, one hand over his mouth.

"It hit you so fast," Pansy said, breathless. "I saw it from here. It…you were under it. I thought it was going to eat you. And then…"

He heard it in her voice. She wasn't thinking of how he had then killed it. She was thinking that it would kill him, and then it would come after the students. After her. 

Draco smiled despite the wounds across his hands and arms. None of them had had the sense to cast a spell to help. As he had discovered over the summer, it was one thing to prepare for war and violence. Quite another to face it for themselves.

The ride back to Hogwarts was silent. 

In hindsight, the violence at Hogsmeade was over in seconds. By the time the carriages arrived, the school was on high alert. Blaise rode on the front of their carriage, wand at the ready, and he was off before the wheels came to a full stop at the doors, ushering the children in. The Slytherins passed by McGonagall and Flitwick, with Snape taking a headcount before striding toward the back of the line where Pansy helped Draco step down.

"How were you wounded?" Snape demanded, turning Draco by the shoulders. 

Draco froze. He couldn't think past his headache. Stepping into the glaring light only made turned the pain into something sharp behind his eyes.

"The window by us exploded," Pansy said. "I've been trying to get rid of the cuts—"

A moment passed. Snape looked at the blood on Draco's robes, the pattern of spray and drip. His head lifted slightly, and he glanced once at the other teachers. No one was looking at them.

"…take him to Pomfrey," Snape said without any weight in his voice.

"Yessir," Pansy said, putting her arm around Draco's shoulders and guiding him in.

Through the great hall, into the corridor, finally alone from prying eyes, both Pansy and Draco walked past Pomfrey's infirmary without a word. Their step quickened as they headed straight for the Slytherin common room, with Pansy guiding Draco around turns and down stairs as he had to put his hand over his eyes, hissing in pain.

"He didn't believe us," Pansy whispered.

Draco shook his head.

"But I got rid of most of the cuts!"

He snorted.

"We're going to get in trouble," she said. "Pomfrey'll—"

By the time they had reached the dungeons and she was giving the password, Draco was leaning heavily on her shoulder. He got into the common room as far as the first chair, collapsing and curling up on plush sofa.

Pansy knelt by one of the cabinets and pushed aside the school books, withdrawing a tray of bottles hidden in the back. She didn't bring them out but rather opened them there on the floor, pouring dried blossoms and smoked roots into a single cup, adding a bit of alcohol and boiling it all with a quick charm. 

The glass noisily clinked as her hands shook. She cursed under her breath and set everything down, wiping her hands on her skirt and smearing drying blood along the hem. She took a sip of her own from the alcohol. After a long breath, she gathered everything up again. Only after she carefully hid it all again did she bring the cup over to Draco, putting it in his hands. 

"It'll help kill the pain," she said. "Try not to throw it up."

He didn't answer, holding it close to his lips for long seconds before he worked up the strength to take a sip. Grimacing, he forced himself to keep going, glancing from the drink to Pansy.

"It's safe, just something for my monthlies," she said, lying down on the couch across from him. She stretched out as languidly as a cat, somehow claiming the largest piece of furniture for herself. "Stronger than Pomfrey gives out."

He couldn't argue that. The relief came in a slow tide washing over his head, easing the pain away in waves. The furniture in the room came back into focus, going from a blurry silver green to the edges of old furniture, the window into the lake, the door of the common room opening as an ominous shadow of billowing robes came toward them.

Bitter taste or not, Draco bolted the rest of the drink and pocketed the cup.

"'Window exploded', indeed," Snape muttered, pulling up a chair as he moved to examine Draco. "Tell me it didn't bite you."

Draco shook his head once. He allowed Snape to take his hand and turn it over, pushing up the sleeve to see the deeper wounds. 

"If it was going for the kill, it might not have tried to bite you." Snape glanced over his shoulder at Pansy. "What did you give him?"

"Clover potion," she said innocently. "Just my usual."

Snape narrowed his eyes. "I'm going to give him a sanguiline draught. Will there be any interactions?"

A flush crept over her cheeks. She was advanced enough to know what he meant—drinks meant to fortify the blood would exacerbate the effects of any alcohol in the system. A little clover was one thing, but mixing sanguiline with liquor could range from a little fever to blood catching on fire.

"It had a kick," she admitted. "But not much. Just a splash. We're not getting drunk down here."

He ignored that, turning back to Draco.

"Now," he said. "I assume from your silence that you've managed to keep from speaking?"

Draco gave a sharp nod. 

Snape gave him an appraising look. The blood splashes were clear. The violence of the attack couldn't be questioned. 

"Impressive."

Draco couldn't help feel a swell of pride. Praise from his godfather was rare indeed.

By the time Draco had Snape's potion, the Slytherin students started to come into the common room. Blaise stood outside for a moment, quietly speaking with the Bloody Baron, and then the ghost turned to stand guard as Blaise shut the door, coming in with an eye toward the couch. When Pansy didn't move to make room, he sat down on her legs, ignoring her huff.

"God, that Pomfrey," Blaise sighed, staring at the ceiling. "I told her everyone was fine. She just shooed me away and looked over every damn one of us."

"Not everyone's as honest as you are," Pansy muttered as she shifted under his weight and didn't move him an inch. "Oh for—have you been hitting the butterbeer hard?"

Snape waited to make sure that Draco had finished the potion and took the cup back, then kept his hand out expectantly. Draco sighed and put the previous cup in Snape's hand, with a strong scent of alcohol wafting after it.

"Do not drink anything else," Snape said sternly. "Unless you want to catch on fire. Now, since Pomfrey has released the rest of you…" 

Here he turned his attention to Blaise.

"No one else knows that our house has otherwise escaped injury. Keep everyone inside the common room for the foreseeable future. Other houses were not so lucky, and the headmaster is concerned about resentment and reprisal."

"Typical," Blaise said with a frown. "Not like we had anything to do with it."

But he hedged that by glancing at Draco, waiting until Draco shook his head that no, they hadn't planned anything. 

"Be that as it may," Snape said. "It was a wise decision to bring the baron in on keeping the rest of them out…and our own lot in."

Blaise's head lifted slightly with the praise.

Pansy gave up trying to dislodge Blaise and pillowed her head in her hands. 

"We didn't see much," she said. "Were there students hurt?"

Snape held silent a moment. "I'm sure the Prophet will have all the details."

There was nothing else to say. Once Snape left, Draco looked around at the handful of Slytherins. Most of them were third and fourth years, sent a little early to avoid the rush of children and parents buying supplies and packing onto the train. At least, that was the reason they could admit. 

In truth, they were all children of Death Eaters or dark wizards who knew that the school was perhaps the one spot they were safe from Voldemort. Or at least they had thought so. 

Dinner came late, with the elves bringing dishes to the common room. Draco barely touched his food. When Pansy gave him a look, he motioned at his hands, the faint discoloration where he'd been clawed. His wounds were healed but his body ached, and a shadow of pain lingered in his head. He was still reeling from the attack. His expression told her that of course he didn't feel hungry. 

Which was a lie. 

He absolutely wanted to eat.

A vampire's curse was so infectious. Already he felt a desire for something more than normal food and drink.

He poured his glass from the pitcher of pomegranate juice on the table. Dark red and bitter, no one else would drink it. But the sharp tang was enough of a distraction from the deep thirst growing inside him. 

He'd only been attacked that day. What would he be like in a week? A month?

Had the dark lord meant for him to turn, an added curse and a punishment to his family? Was Voldemort simply dragging out the Malfoys' misery? Did his parents know?

A stupid question. Of course they knew. His parents would have planned the attack even knowing the risk to him, to prove their unswerving loyalty even as they broke inside. And if Voldemort didn't tell them before the attack, then certainly after it, to dangle his impending vampirism in front of them. If nothing else, Snape would send word to them.

They would send help. He had to believe in them.

He went to bed early, escaping to his room which was still empty of other students. A relief to be away from people. As he lay down, he tucked his tongue against his teeth, holding secure the leaf in his mouth. He'd kept it there for weeks—just a little more and he could finally speak again. Just to the full moon. 

Before, he'd hoped that his animagus wouldn't be a ferret.

Now he hoped he wouldn't be a bat.

Chapter Text

The Daily Prophet ran with the headline of Hogsmeade Explosion, 4 Dead. Blaise read the article out loud, his smooth voice clearly carrying through the common room.

"—deaths due to flying glass and masonry as a new installation of security charms interacted with existing spells. Owing to its age, Hogsmeade charms are notoriously out of date. Many buildings harbor infrastructure that has been grandfathered in…"

Draco glanced up from his book, frowning.

At his look, Blaise skimmed the rest of the page, turning to the rest of the article further in. "There's nothing about vampires. No, wait…'rumors of vampires and other monsters have not been substantiated…no credible evidence of You-Know-Who…'"

One of the children cursed under her breath. Another one got up from the carpet where they were eating breakfast and sat against Pansy, who huffed but still put her arm around him.

"Who died?" Pansy asked.

Blaise flipped back to the front. "Constance Whitcombe, widow, Ethelbert Merriweather, pensioner, Archibald Henslowe, wand assistant at Ollivander, Beatrice Pemberton, artist. Numerous others suffered severe injury, along with numerous students arrived early to Hogwarts. Dumbledore has yet to offer any apology or explanation, despite calls for his resignation."

There was a brief pause.

"Numerous?" Blaise echoed. "Students? The street wasn't full."

"The tea shop was," Pansy said. "If you weren't such a stickler for curfew, we would've been dragging our feet, too."

"All of that," Blaise said, "for one wand assistant? It had to be for him, right?"

"There was no green skull in the sky," one of the children said. "Maybe it was just…y'know. To kill."

Not a comforting thought. That the dark lord might not even have a list of wizards, just random violence, meant that there was no pattern to the places that would be attacked. 

Another day passed. Slytherins played Exploding Snap until Blaise grew sick of the random pops and distracted the younger ones with faldlifian charms, showing them how to fold a paper bird and breathe a little life into it so that a flock of tiny scraps of paper flew around the ceiling. It was cute until they added dragons, unicorns, frogs, and even a centaur as large as one's hand and had the room sounding like a dozen people flipping pages.

On the other side of the room, threatening to soak any paper toys coming too close, Pansy demonstrated for the girls how to craft potions not taught in their school books. A smoky quartz drink to change their eye color, a syrupy green draught that made everything taste like celery, a potion that could smooth their skin for a day—frivolous things frowned upon by adults but of dire need to teenage girls. 

And in the corner away from the flapping paper and the girls cooing over their nails, Draco sat curled in a hard wood chair, a lumos charm glowing softly overhead. The book he was reading had arrived just that morning, sent by his own owl. It had to have been his own owl. Ilmauzer was an eagle owl and so the only one strong enough in the family to carry the heavy book. 

That they had sent this particular book meant that Draco's situation was precarious indeed. Many of the books in the Malfoy library were rare, priceless even, but this one was handwritten on brittle pages held together only by heavy preservation charms. A flight from his home to Hogwarts could have destroyed the book if they hadn't wrapped it up in cloth spelled to repel wind and rain. And the spells inside were dangerous at best, spells of last resort for the truly desperate.

His mother had bookmarked a page for him, a potion meant to curb vampiric cravings. He'd be able to survive on the birds and rats in the castle, to resist his desire for human blood. But the potion was long and laborious—he would have spent all of his spare time crafting it. 

So he'd read past her bookmark, searching for anything better. The script was hard to read and the writing was ancient, but he was determined and desperate. And, as his godfather liked to say, a Malfoy through and through.

Later in the evening, when they had finished dinner and the children were drifting to bed, Draco brought his book to Pansy, holding it open to a page and moving his finger down to the entry in the corner.

"What is it?" Pansy asked, bringing the book closer. "Is this what you've been reading all this time?"

She scanned the recipe, frowning as she worked through the old script. She blinked, putting together what it meant, and then hissed in a breath. She looked up at him, taken aback not at the potion but at his flat expression.

"Are you insane?" she whispered. 

He gave a small shrug. Then tilted his head. Could she do it?

She pressed her mouth to a flat line, rereading the recipe.

Malſanguis, for the preservacioun of the remnaunt light abidinge in the blood of the yet not dying suppliaunt, requirin a sacrifice of ash, blod, fyre, and rowan. Say twelve Pater Noster to an noon, and boyle a mash of fulle red berrie and blod. Thereto adde one burnt splash of yew and a lok of haire, and repeat the suppliaunce. An offrynge of blod and bone thus made, and all candles must be quenched an ye ask on cool of flame. Upon the sygne, drinke, that the throte may feele the scourching fyre.

"No," she said, her voice rising. "No no no, Draco, no—the vampirism took, didn't it? The attack—you were bitten—"

He shook his head, but she barley noticed.

"Fine, it didn't bite, but—werewolf attacks can leave victims craving raw meat. A vampire attack—" she cut herself off, taking his hands in hers. "Vampires are so infectious—they were eating blood in their hands, weren't they? The blood would have been on their hands when she jumped on you. Would…would that have been enough? We need to get you to Pomfrey—"

He gripped her hands too tightly, stopping her cold. She glared at him and yanked her hands back.

"At least Snape," she tried again.

He gave another shake of his head. He pointed at the book again.

"You just had to go and do the animagus spell now," she grumbled. "And here I thought I'd like you shutting up for awhile."

He matched her glare, but his frustration won out as he went to gather the book up. If she wouldn't help him, he would do it on his own.

Pansy wasn't having it. Looking around to make sure no one was watching—Blaise was passed out in a pile of fluttering birds and frogs, and the only other children awake were a couple of first years watching the squid—she grabbed his robe and pulled him down close.

"This potion is dead complicated," she whispered. "It's old. I mean old old. There's—look here." 

She turned the book so he could see, pointing at the twelve Pater Noster.

"That's not really an Our Father. Look at it afterward, to an noontyde. Annoon—it's hiding the old name. Did you really not notice?"

Gritting his teeth, taking a deep breath to steady himself, he moved her finger to the text on cooling of flame. She looked at it for a long moment. Then he covered up of flame and she reread on cool over and over. 

Her lips parted. 

"Ankou," she whispered. 

The spell was full of hidden names, old names of old gods that most of Britain had forgotten. With a quick glance at him, she kept her hand to mark the page and turned the book to see the cover. 

In tattered cloth stretched over hard wood covers, the faded title could barely be made out in someone's unsteady handwriting: Shadewed Alembik: Wherin Are Conteinéd the Most Potent Artes of the Auncient Apotecarie, With Remedyes Both Ere and After for the Neede of the Twice Faithful. 

The pricks of talons marked the edges. This had been sent by owl, no doubt by one of Draco's parents. His own family had put this in front of him. Only dark families of their ancient lineages even remembered what it was to be the twice faithful.

She sat back in her chair, feeling the wind out of her sails. 

He sat down to face her, quietly waiting.

"I might…" she started, then fell quiet again.

He didn't move.

She started again. "It's…it says twenty Our Fathers. That's not just praying, that's measuring out time. But if it means an older chant, there's no way of knowing how long it should take. It could burn…it could explode. It could be raw and then you've also pissed off an old god and ruined the potion."

He didn't move.

"And…okay, say we don't screw it up," she said. "This is poison. Rowan and yew—well, all right, the yew's not so bad, but the rowan, Draco. You'd be drinking poison. We don't know how that'd mix with the animagus attempt."

He didn't move.

"And if it doesn't work and you're changing into a…" She looked around again just to be sure. "Why won't you go to Snape?"

This time he didn't react in anger. Draco reached over to the quill and parchment, turning the page sideways and scribbling a long note on the side. She sat straight, reading over his hand.

What if it's punishment to my family? That I'm supposed to turn? Then if I don't, mother and father…

Pansy bit her lip. 

The dark families knew that the Malfoys had failed the dark lord. Failed badly. Something precious to the dark lord had been lost, maybe destroyed. Potter was still alive. Schemes had backfired and crumbled to nothing, overplaying their hand and gaining nothing for it. They had even lost their house elf. 

In the past, wizards had been punished with being forced into Fenrir's pack. Witches had simply vanished and their severed hands of glory sent to their families. Heads were found in little piles in backyards or mounted on fence posts. That the Malfoy heir was cursed to undeath was entirely possible.

In a way, this potion was the best possible solution they had. Malsanguis, for the preservation of the remnant of light in the blood of the supplicant, holding back the curse of darkness. 

All they had to do was beg the old gods of death, Annwn and Ankou, to give them this gift.

"…can't you wait until you can speak again?" she tried one more time.

He lowered his head briefly. Then looked back at her. Before her eyes, before her face, her mouth or hair, the first thing he noticed was the pulse of her heart at her throat. Heard the rush of blood. It was faint, only there if he concentrated, but it would grow. He would hunger. He might—

He shook his head. His expression said it had to be now.

She closed her eyes.

"I don't keep rowan here," she said finally.

He took a deep breath, shuddering as he slumped in relief. That wasn't a no. That was a demand to escort her into the Forbidden Forest. He nodded.

"Then let's get going," she said, already on her feet. "Bark of yew, I have, but we'll need a basket to keep the berries. You carry the basket. I'll get the knife."

She was preoccupied now with fetching her supplies, so Draco went over to Blaise, tapping his shoulder. As Blaise blinked awake, slowly focusing on him, Draco motioned at himself and Pansy, waving at her basket and cloak.

"The forest?" Blaise echoed. "Seriously? By yourselves?"

Draco nodded once.

"Potion nerds," Blaise murmured, shifting to go back to sleep.

"Just getting some ingredients," Pansy said, unfurling her cape around her shoulders and pulling up the hood. "Want anything?"

Blaise considered. "Rose hips if you find any. Or lavender. If they're fresh enough for a skin cream, of course."

She rolled her eyes. "You vain little…sure. I'll grab it if I see it."

"Does Snape know you're going?" Blaise asked.

"Of course not," she said with a sweet air of innocence, tapping the pin on her robe. "Why should I? I told my fellow prefect. We both agreed I'd be back by dawn."

"And if anyone sees you?" he pressed. "A pair of dark wizards rooting around in the forest at night?"

"Exactly," she said, pausing at the door as Draco joined her. "Why would little good wizards admit they were in the forest at night, too?"

A thin crescent moon hung in the sky between black tangled branches. Draco held the lantern low, the golden light guiding them along the path of fallen leaves and twigs, the deep tramp of a centaur's hoof in mud, the flash of rowan berries under heavy brush. 

Pansy knelt and gingerly pinched the red sprig away from its branch, slicing the stem clean, and dropped it into the basket. The sound of the berries bouncing in the straw bottom matched the rustling deeper in the woods. Too cold for crickets, the silence was broken only by the distant calls of night birds and wind through the leaves.

She wiped her hands on her skirt, especially where her fingers had touched the rowan. The sting was faint, but her skin would be raw by the end the night.

A single rose bush grew wild along the path, and she cut the last two dried blossoms free. Then they moved deeper into the forest, stepping off the path, carefully picking their way over stones and a creek.

"…there's a patch of lavender over here," she muttered, motioning at Draco to move the lantern around. "And I know I got stuck in a rowan bush somewhere around here once."

She sighed and glared at him, but the look was wasted since her face wasn't in the light. She was only a shadowed silhouette to him.

"I should've sent you off alone," she hissed. "Why am I traipsing here for your potion?"

He smiled and wished he could speak. Instead he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, leading the way so she wouldn't trip into anything. Here was another rose bush, there another spray of rowan. By the time the cold had broken through her warmth charms, the basket was full of ingredients, including a last tuft of lavender.

Now they all but ran out of the forest, glad to be hopping over the creek—their shoes and the bottoms of their robes soaked through in the icy slush—and they kicked through leaves without caring if anything heard them. They were getting out, and the creatures in the forest wouldn't chase after now that they had a good head start.

For a moment, they were children, witches' children, and they forgot the war as the night turned into their playground.

So when they plunged out of the edge of the forest amidst snapping twigs and kicked up leaves, Pansy's laughter turned into a shriek as she and Draco came face to face with Granger, her wand out, flanked by Potter, Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. Draco nearly cursed and held his tongue just in time.

"What are you doing in the forest?" Potter demanded.

"Draco," Luna said. "You looked like you were about to say something just now."

"The hellebore story must be real," Granger said too lightly. "He would've called me mudblood by now otherwise."

Draco clenched his teeth a little harder and put his hand on Pansy, who had taken a step forward. 

"Forest's free if you want to go looking," Pansy said in sickly sweetness, her fingertips at her chest to tip the pin at her collar. "We're done with it."

Draco had no doubt that the lights of Hogwarts castle gleamed on Pansy's prefect badge. Not a week and she was already wielding her new authority like a weapon. 

"Do you have permission?" Luna asked, as if she was curious and not in the middle of a stand-off. "Students aren't allowed out after hours, certainly not to the Forbidden Forest."

"Ah ah, sixth year potions privilege," Pansy sing-songed.

Granger frowned. "You're not in my class."

"No," Potter said. "She's in the other course."

Pansy stiffened. No, she wasn't in the favored Slug-club class. Several students had been selected to join a smaller class with Slughorn already fawning over them, promising work with special potions recipes and rare ingredients and tricky quirks. 

And the rest of the students who didn't have anything to offer Slughorn were stuffed into his on-level class, packed full and given readings straight out of the book. 

Granger, while not gloating, held a look of triumph in her eyes that Pansy didn't miss.

Draco's hand tightened on her shoulder in silent reminder. Don't do anything stupid. They were outnumbered and he couldn't cast anything properly. 

"Feel free to ask Slughorn about it," Pansy snapped. "If you don't mind, it's cold out here."

She took a step to move past them, and Neville stepped in front.

"What's in the basket?" he asked. "Toadstools and yew?"

Now both of them froze. 

Neville was no muggleborn half-blood who didn't know wizard culture, and he wasn't the flighty child of a flighty family. Neville knew the rules. Neville was pureblood and knew more than he should of the dark arts. Toadstools and yew were common components of poisons.

But if he knew the poisons, then he probably knew what hurt dark wizards, too. Or at least he knew what was rumored to hurt dark wizards. So Draco gave Pansy the lantern and put his hand on the basket, pausing as they all suddenly aimed their wands in reflex, waiting for the pause to grow awkward and rub in how they had their wands and he didn't.

And then he drew open the basket with theatrical slowness, giving them a look at the dried roses, the withered lavender. He lifted a sprig of rowan berries and held it out at Neville, who stared at it for a long moment. 

Outwardly, Draco held it perfectly still as if it was just one more ingredient. He grit his teeth and struggled to hold the leaf in place lightly on his tongue, so close to accidentally tearing it against the roof of his mouth.

Come on, you bloody bastard, he thought. Come on, come on…

The skin of Draco's hand stung like it was on fire. Rowan was a potent charm against dark magic and poison to anyone with more than a little dark heritage—it hurt, it hurt, oh God, it hurt. 

Neville looked up at him in confusion. 

"Flowers and berries," Pansy said, picking the sprig out of Draco's hand and tossing it back in the basket. "Roses and rowan, if you must know."

Draco turned his head to hide how his eyes had watered.

"Satisfied?" Pansy said. "Let Miss know-it-all see what kind of poison we can make out of that, hm? Now back off—I'm freezing solid."

This time she didn't stop, knocking her shoulder against Neville's and pushing past. Draco followed after with a last look at Potter, warily checking to see where the Boy Who Lived's wand was pointing. Potter wasn't aiming at him, but he looked like he knew Draco was up to something and just couldn't figure out what.

Inside the halls, Draco and Pansy glanced at each other and broken into a run, ignoring the sleepy squawks of indignation from the portraits. After a quick detour when they spotted Mrs. Norris pawing around a corner, they finally came to the dungeons and nodded to the baron as they entered. 

As the door shut and locked behind them, they heard the baron telling Finch that no one had come this way and that his cat must have been mistaken.

Blaise was still passed out on the couch. Pansy went by him, grabbing the potions book  and continuing into the depths of the dungeons. Draco hurried to keep up with her, and he found that they needed the lantern now just as much as in the forest. The candle sconces along the wall didn't light as they passed several doorways he didn't recognize. 

Finally, when the dungeon was more cave than corridor, Pansy motioned at him to put the lantern down on a table against the far wall. Draco paused and looked around. Here were bottles and jars, some half full, others nearly empty, a cauldron, a row of candles, and several books piled haphazardly on the table and the floor.

Her private alchemy, he realized. 

"'Oh, you're not in my class'," Pansy echoed Hermione's accusation in a high whine. "'Oh, she's in the other class.' Oh, she's not one of Slughorn's little favorites." 

She took the small cauldrom and dumped it out in the corner where the light didn't reach. Then she gave it a quick scrub and rinse and set it back down, pulling close the basket, a jar of tree bark, a handful of candles. She set each of them down with the exaggerated thump of irritation so that one of the candles nearly cracked. 

"I'll show them," she muttered. "I'll do this so well the old gods sit up and damn well pay attention."

Draco had never seen her like so intent. Granger's comment had wormed its way under Pansy's skin in a way he didn't think Pansy realized. She took her ingredient knife and cut her skin without hesitation, as matter of factly as she had cut the berries from their branch. 

The scent of her blood exploded over him. He clamped his hand over his nose and mouth, trying not to breathe, turning away so he couldn't see her blood welling up like candy. Hungry—he hadn't felt hungry all day but now he was starving—

With her bloodied hand, she opened the book.

The cover landed as heavy as lead and fell open to the right page with no rustling. Draco recognized the illustrations of Malsanguis, the rowan and yew, the ash and blood. But the words looked different on the page. No longer the recipe, the words now showed the a prayer to a long forgotten god.

He swallowed once. This was no longer a potion. This was a ritual, and Pansy was holding the sacrificial knife.

She didn't measure out the rowan, instead dropping in all of the berries, unwashed and damp with the night's dew. She took his arm and slashed his hand with her ingredient's knife, and he felt the ragged edge of the blade burning his skin with the residue of rowan. 

He didn't even notice that he was bleeding. He just saw her blood splashed across her hand, on the book. It took an incredible act of will not to lick the drops off the page.

The fire beneath the cauldron glowed steadily while she used a pestle to grind her ingredients into a mash that smelled of copper and earth. As she worked, the mixture that should have been a messy lump turned into a crimson liquid that gleamed in the candlelight.

And as she worked, she began to speak.

"Annwn, hold the fate strings. Annwn, hold sway."

Draco had never heard the chant. Draco barely knew the names of old gods, let alone their sacred rites. And he didn't think Pansy knew it, either. 

"Ankou, in Annwn's blessing, no return. No rites, no death, unmourned."

But he recognized it, understood what it was saying, in the same way his blood recognized magic. Asking the blessing of two death gods, a funeral rite without a funeral.

The fire beneath the cauldron grew stronger. The candles flared. 

She repeated the prayer. Again. And again. The candles were melting rivulets of wax winding around their shafts, puddling on the table. She reached with her knife and cut a piece of his hair, dropping the strands into the red potion.

She wasn't chanting in English anymore. 

"Livende still, tha byrden unwriten," she said, her hands upraised, her eyes half-lidded. "Annwn, Ankou, swa let he byrn—"

It wasn't easy to hear her anymore. As the potion bubbled and smoked, the sound in the room grew louder, a pressure that lay on top of him like something looming close, breathing just over his shoulder. 

Something was in the room with them, growling, watching. He could feel it breathing on his neck. Draco gripped the edge of the table and refused to turn around, his mouth pressed shut. 

Pansy hadn't stopped, calling out the words at the top of her voice, barely heard over the growls now turning into roars. Draco felt its voice rumble deep in his chest. The table shook. The jars rattled. The candles burned so hot that the wax poured down and puddled on the table.

Letting her long sleeves fall over her hands, Pansy lifted the hot cauldron up and held it out to Draco, who found his own reflection bubbling in the lurid blood-red surface.

There was no time for hesitation. With a deep breath, he pressed the leaf under his tongue so he wouldn't swallow it. Then he put his hands outside of hers, holding the cauldron steady, tilted it, and drank.

The candles went dark. The flame doused suddenly. The room fell silent.

Boiling hot liquid hit his throat so that he burned, and the fumes hit his head like wine. He didn't feel the heat—he felt the poison, thick rowan scorching the whole way down and landing in his stomach so that his legs shook. He had no idea how much to drink. The whole thing? He thought he would pass out. 

Trembling, he sank to the floor, still swallowing mouthfuls.

But the small cauldron meant it was over quickly. Pansy finally lifted the cauldron away, setting it down with great finality. She was breathing hard, wiping the hair from her damp forehead.

On the floor, Draco leaned on the table leg. He put his hands around his stomach, gritting his teeth, the familiar leaf in his mouth now reeking of poison. The damn thing would sting for ages, he just knew it. He hoped this was all worth it.

But…he felt the hunger inside him fading, satiated. Hopefully satiated forever. 

It seemed like he lay there forever, miserable, shivering in the cold as he burned inside. The lantern light slowly came into focus.

He realized the blur on the floor beside him was Pansy, curled up, shaking, holding the cauldron on her knees. She looked at him over its iron edge, her eyes wide.

In her anger, in his desperation, they had done something very reckless. Neither of them felt safe enough to move. Neither of them felt like they were alone. 

After a long time of lying there and neither of them dying, they started to feel like they were away with it. 

And then they heard footsteps, faint but distinct, at the far end of the corridor.

The panic of being caught and in trouble was more terrifying than any god or monster. Pansy shot up and apparated all of the mess out of the cauldron and off the table, dropping her scarf over it like the afterthought of a messy potions student. Beside her, Draco dragged himself up along the table, leaning so hard he nearly sent it teetering to one side, and he grabbed the book and tucked it into his robes.

The door opened. They turned, ramrod straight, as Snape walked in, igniting the lumos sconces along the wall, opening his mouth to demand answers. And then he coughed, staggering back, waving his hand as if waving off an unseen attacker and looking at them in horror. 

Pansy and Draco shared a look, then looked up. Not just smoke but a thick cloud of fumes hovered over their heads, incriminating and impossible to hide, scant inches above them but in perfect range for the taller teacher. They glanced at each other again and felt the terrible realization that they were caught.

"I'll scold you later," Snape snapped, holding his breath and coming in just far enough to grab each of them behind the neck, marching them out of the room. "I can't yell at you if you're dead."

At first they thought he was overreacting, but the farther they went, the worse the burning and scratching grew as they breathed. Pansy started coughing out mouthfuls of smoke, and Draco felt his chest buck as he struggled not to make a sound.

By the time they reached the closest bathroom, they were nearly retching. Snape held them over the sinks, turning on the cold water so they could rinse out their mouths, drink, splash their faces. A moment later, he was pulling at their cloths so they could step out of the robes that—now that they were in a room lit beyond candles and glowing potions—they could see were covered in red stains.

So much for keeping it hidden. 

Being half-naked in their underclothes would have been embarrassing if they weren't used to dangerous potions explosions and laboratory procedures. This was hardly their first exploded poison, hardly their first emergency disrobing.

"Every time I think you might have some sense," Snape grumbled, disapparating the clothes, "you make it painfully clear that you don't. Rowan? Were you trying to poison yourselves? Is that…yes, that's yew, as well, and…"

In the mirror, Draco saw the look in Snape's eyes. Of course a potions master recognized the tang of blood.

Snape looked at him for a long moment, putting together the few pieces he had. His eyes narrowed as his voice softened.

"Does your mother know?"

Reluctantly, slowly, Draco drew out the book and handed it over. Snape took it as reverently as a holy manuscript. Of course he would—handwritten, bound in ragged cloth with worm-eaten margins, this clearly was no textbook. Part of a private library. He opened the cover and found Narcissa Malfoy's name in curling script. Then turned the pages to the marker left in the spine and skimmed the recipes until he found the one filled with rowan and yew. 

Sighing as if he had lost this match, he closed the book and held it in his arm.

"Miss Parkinson," Snape started.

"…yes?" she said, with one more cough of a faint red smoke from her lips.

"In the future, you will find your life far less complicated if you refrain from enabling Malfoy stupidity," he said, with all the air of someone who never took his own advice.

She frowned, opening her mouth to ask if that meant she was in trouble. But her voice cracked and scratched, and she found quickly that she couldn't make a sound. She tried again, and then looked at the two of them in panic.

"Don't look at me like a gaping fish," Snape said unkindly. "You breathed in an unknown amount of poison. You're lucky if you only lose your voice for awhile. And…I can't take you to Pomfrey for this. Both of you, shower off. I'll have the elves take care of your clothing. And then, you are going to tell me everything that happened."

As he left them to it, Draco and Pansy glanced at each other in mutual agreement. Like hell were they going to say everything that had happened.

Chapter Text

The rest of the Slytherins returned to eating in the Great Hall. Draco and Pansy, begging off the ill effects of their potion, lounged inside the common hall another day more, long enough for Draco to finally reach the full moon without having spoken for a month. Although their absence earned them another disapproving glare from Snape, the animagus spell they had tacit permission for.

"Don't you dare mess this up and make this all for nothing," she warned him in a raspy voice, but her warning turned into a coughing fit of a tiny bit of red smoke escaping her mouth. The rowan was slow to leave her lungs.

They were alone under the stars, sitting beside the lake. She had brought them to the far side where no one ever walked, and she had gathered up dew from grass no one had touched. At least, he hoped so. It would be terrible for the spell to fail after all that.

With utmost care, he let the leaf slip out of his mouth into the glass phial, corking it up. The other ingredients she'd helped him find lay inside already. 

"Finally," he whispered, able to speak for the first time in weeks. The words sounded strange to his ears. He'd all but forgotten the sound of his own voice. "I don't do the chant yet, right?"

They both knew the answer, but she nodded.

"Sunrise and sunset, wand at your heart, amato, animo, animato, animagus," she said, counting off on her fingers. "Don't panic if you feel a second heartbeat."

He sighed and leaned back, looking at the clear sky. 

"Glad it isn't cloudy," he said. "But…I don't like having to wait for a storm."

"Don't like having to wake up at sunrise, more like," she said, giving him the glass. "Put it somewhere no one will find it. And don't you dare wake me up at sunrise. I'll lend you my potions clock until you've finished."

He nodded solemnly. He could carry on with the rest of the spell on his own, now that he could speak. But where to put the glass? If he didn't perform this spell properly, the mistake could be disastrous. Wizards who botched an animagus spell could be stuck halfway between human and animal, or a person with the mind of a beast, or a beast with far too human eyes. 

"I'm going back in," she said, getting to her feet. "Make sure you put it somewhere safe. No sun, no touching it, no one even looking at it—"

"I will," he said, not moving. "I remember. Just…I'll be in after a bit."

She didn't answer, simply scanning the horizon. Hogsmeade lay in the distance, still lit by Ministry flares. The forest was too far to hear the small sounds of its denizens howling to each other. And Hogwarts, looming up past the lake, burned with a light at every window, vigilant and wide awake.

"Don't stay too long," she warned.

He nodded, not watching her go.

He didn't have to watch.

He heard her footsteps long after they should have faded. He caught the scent of her blood, rushing through her body after every heartbeat. Her warmth lingered in the air.

Draco had told no one. 

He could go without blood. He didn't have to drink. But he felt everyone's blood moving around him, and the urge was strong. Like a child living in a candy store.

He knew Blaise and Pansy were watching him as well. They were his friends but they weren't stupid. Reckless, but always calculated. Harboring a vampire among children was asking for trouble. But a friend touched by ancient gods? Well. Maybe not such a risk.

Would the spell keep at bay this vampire infection? There was no cure. Begging the old gods for help wasn't a cure—he didn't even know what the cost would be.

What would the old gods' blessing do to an animagus charm? 

Too many questions.

When he saw the dark lord again, would Voldemort feel the vampirism in him? Would it be punishment enough? Or would Voldemort kill Draco's parents like he'd done to the Potters? To so many other wizards?

And then there was Voldemort's order. 

Kill Dumbledore.

Was that even still part of Draco's plan?

He'd told no one. Not even his parents. Not even his godfather. Certainly not Pansy. 

Alone in this, he knew there would be opportunities. Chances. Pure luck. And luck was, as his mother liked to say, simply the residue of hard work. So he would work and create chances and opportunities. And then…

Who could say?

The wind blew a little colder, bringing with it a flurry of snow and ice. Putting his hood up against the weather, Draco slowly stood. The small bottle lay tucked inside a pocket. He would stash it somewhere deep in the dungeons, somewhere dark and forgotten.

As he walked along the path, he glanced up at the stars, wishing he could read them like the centaurs did. Or tell the future at all. He'd heard muggleborns say that stars were bright burning gas so far in the distance that no one could ever reach them. But he didn't believe them. The old stories described nine clear spheres around the earth, each one holding a planet and stars, all turning in the night and singing in soft harmony—that made far more sense.

A crunch of gravel and pebbles out of sync with his step.

Someone was walking with him.

Somehow someone had hidden themselves out here with nothing to hide behind, no trees, no bushes, nothing.

Cold panic stole over him. A stone turned under his foot, and he stumbled to one knee. His hand fumbled in his robe, finding the pocket his wand, but as his fingers curled around the shaft, he held still. Forced himself to slow down his breathing.

Silence. The wind over the cold ground. His own heartbeat slamming in his chest. Had he just imagined someone nearby?

No. He knew he hadn't imagined it. 

"Merlin," he said, forcing a chuckle. "Get a grip on yourself."

He stood, brushing the dust off, and he started walking again, hands in his pockets. He kept a steady rhythm, and as expected, he heard the echo of steps behind him, each footfall trying to fall in time with his own.

He took a deep breath. Yes. There was blood and a heartbeat somewhere behind him, hard to pick out because of the way the wind blew. There was a hint of warmth somewhere to his right. 

One more deep breath to steady his nerves. Then he dropped, turning on one knee, wand out and casting the petrificus totalus spell. 

Blue ice shot in a beam as he swung in a broad arc. A scuff of dirt and frost kicked up from the ground as someone dove to one side, a pair of ratty muggle shoes and muggle pants tattered at the ankles appearing for a flash. 

Press your advantage, Lucius had taught him. Don't let up. No mercy.

"Everte statum," he called out once, twice, followed swiftly by his barely seen target dodging yet again. Frustrated with how long it took to cast the spell, knowing he shouldn't do it, he used a faster, older spell. "Fon le-af!"

Like a silver waterfall, something yanked out of the air to reveal Harry Potter, his wand raised, hesitating a moment. Draco's eyes widened. He didn't have time to cast another spell—Potter's wand was aimed right at him—

Draco didn't hear the spell cast at him. He was already throwing himself to one side, and something cold and thin rushed past him, terrifyingly close. Black cloth fluttered to the ground, the hem of his robe sliced neatly off.

Move, move, Lucius had said. If you're standing still, then you're wrong. Move— 

Or you can yell something accusing and damning, Narcissa had said. People are so afraid of getting into trouble.

"What is wrong with you?" Draco demanded, still on his side, gathering his legs under himself. "Are you trying to kill me?"

Potter blinked. He didn't look like he knew what to do now that the spells had stopped flying. He even bent and gathered up the silver cloth at his feet.

"You—you're the one that started casting," Potter said, offended at the accusation.

"You were following me," Draco said, standing, taking a step back. "Going to kill me on the way back?"

"What?" Potter shook his head, his eyes wide. "No, I wouldn't—"

"What the hell was that curse?" Draco said, and he gave a dramatic flourish of his robes to show where his sleeve and part of the side had been cut clean through. "Don't tell me it only cuts clothes."

"I…" Potter didn't move. He seemed surprised at himself, tightening his grip on his wand like it would fall out of his hand. 

Then his shoulders set and he faced Draco with renewed calm.

"What was that you cast at me?" Potter said. "Phone le haf? That's not a normal spell."

"I'm not a professor," Draco said, drawing himself upright, as if speaking to Potter was beneath him. "And this isn't a lesson. Now, can I leave or are you intent on killing me here?"

"I'm not going to—" Potter cut himself off. His frustration with arguing with Draco was clear on his face. "You're up to something."

"Yes," Draco said easily. "And the headmaster knows about it, so go running to ask him if you're so curious."

The retort came to him so readily, even though he knew he shouldn't send Harry to Dumbledore. The headmaster might tell Potter about Draco trying to become an animagus. Potter might ask about a spell that didn't sound like one of the school's charms. Fon le-af was not evil or forbidden, but it would raise questions. For a wizard as wise as Dumbledore, it would bring answers.

"You're lying," Potter said, but there was doubt in his voice.

Granger had told Potter about Draco's "hellebore accident." They must have also wracked their brains over roses and rowan and come up with nothing poisonous. Add a strange sounding spell that did nothing worse than grab at a cloak, and it was weird…but not evil. Potter wouldn't do anything…yet.

No matter. Draco's parents were painfully close to Voldemort, and he was about to risk an animagus spell interacting with vampirism. Harry damn Potter was an annoyance at best. 

"Ask your little girlfriend," Draco said. "She was there at the prefect's meeting. You weren't."

Oh, that hit a nerve. Potter's gaze could have burned right through him. Draco was glad Potter wasn't aiming his wand. The wordless intent could probably have set him on fire.

Draco didn't dare smile. But he did lift his eyebrow in a manner he'd seen his mother do any number of times when she had to run from a conversation. He considered throwing another insult, but he wanted to reach the castle without being blasted in the back. So he simply started walking.

After a moment, he heard Potter walking several steps back. 

Draco stopped and looked at him. "Are you still following me?"

Potter gave him a flat look. "There's only one path to the castle."

Draco frowned. "Then after you."

"As if," Potter scoffed.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

"You…are you seriously going to follow me back the whole way?" Draco said.

"I'm not staying out here all night," Potter said. 

Draco tried to think of an argument for that, but every comment went round in circles and came back to him at an impasse. All he could think of was to say that his father would hear about this, and now that sounded so weak and childish to his own ears.

"You could just wait five minutes," he said.

Potter's look told him that wasn't about to happen.

To hell with it, Draco thought. If he kills me, he puts me out of my own misery and he goes to Azkaban. 

He turned around again and kept walking. Hearing Potter's footsteps behind him set his teeth on edge.

"You're absolutely ridiculous," Draco muttered. "Like a prefect about curfews."

"You're the one sneaking around at night," Potter grumbled back. "For what? Ingredients you could get from Slughorn anytime."

"Not if you're not in his stupid Slug club," Draco said. "I'm sure you're enjoying all the little privileges he doles out. Just one more wizard fawning over you."

Potter didn't answer. Draco glanced over his shoulder at him. The other boy was glaring at the path, his wand out of sight, probably in the pocket his hand was in. But Potter didn't look at all like he wanted to hex Draco. The anger was turned inward.

Don't be afraid to push your luck, Narcissa had told him. Information is worth the risk.

"…or maybe he doesn't fawn enough?" Draco asked.

Potter stopped in his tracks. 

Draco paused, waiting for him to start again. When a moment passed and Potter was still standing there, Draco prodded again.

"Now what are you on about?"

The look in Potter's eyes was murderous. "You really think everyone likes me? That I get favors and special treatment?"

Yes, a million times over, I've seen it with my own eyes, Draco wanted to say. But his mother's careful guidance tempered his response.

"Don't they?" he asked.

"No," Potter said. "I never wanted this. I didn't want to be the boy that lived. I'd rather be…"

His voice softened.

"…I'd rather be anything else."

As if Draco believed that.

"Then give it up," Draco said with a laugh, as if it was the most obvious thing. "Let someone else be the hero, kill the villain, whatever it is boys that live do."

Potter's look was still gloomy, but at least he didn't look so angry anymore. He lifted his head, a childish gleam back in his eyes for an instant.

"Don't worry, I'll still be there. To save the day."

Draco's eyes narrowed.

"And how's that gone for you so far?"

He meant the question honestly. But he hadn't expected Potter's look to take on the same distant stare that his father sometimes wore. The look of Death Eaters who had been in this fight for years occasionally wore. That they didn't want to remember something but couldn't help replaying it in their memory.

Before Draco could say anything else, Potter turned and started walking.

"I think I will take those five minutes," Potter muttered. Not long after, he swirled the cloak back over his shoulders and vanished.

Draco blinked. And then quickly returned to the castle, not slowing until he reached doors and even then moving hurriedly until he reached the dungeons.

Pansy's potions clock lay on his pillow, already set to dawn. He put the glass phial with the animagus charm underneath his bed's headboard. 

He didn't know what to make of that conversation. 

But he knew one thing. 

Potter had an invisibility cloak. 

Draco wanted one, too. Or…no. Invisibility could be too much of a risk. He lay on the bed, mind racing, wondering how such things were made. What spells were possible. He thought of sending a request to his mother—

He closed his eyes. No. That route was closed.

In the book they had sent, she had slipped a note along on the bookmark.

Do not send again. It is not safe.

He could imagine her quietly slipping away from the dark lord, maybe even slipping out of bed, holding a hand of glory, stealing up to the owlry to send this book. He hoped she had managed it without being discovered. He only knew she had made it to the owlry and sent the book. If she'd been found out helping him…if she hadn't made it back unseen…

Then again, his owl was unharmed. Wouldn't the dark lord have tried to destroy any help she could send? He had to hope she was safe. That his father was alive.

He turned on one side, burying his face in the pillow. Of course they were alive. 

The dark lord had given him a task. 

They were alive so that it would be his fault when they were killed. He had one year to do the impossible.

Tomorrow was the first official day of Hogwarts' term. And Dumbledore had to be dead by the end.

Chapter Text

At least the first day of term had no classes, just students arriving to settle in and wait for the first years at dinner. But it was insult to injury that Draco had to wake ridiculously early.

He dragged himself up before the crack of dawn, dressing while half-asleep, and made his way out of the common room, into the castle in search of a lonely window with a view to the sun. Part of the animagus ritual meant reciting a short chant at dawn and dusk, and after a month of silence, he refused to fail just because he slept in.

To his surprise, the school was busy with students, teachers and prefects, Filch and his cat. Draco had always preferred nights to mornings, so he'd never known Hogwarts was full of morning people. He spotted Blaise giving an orientation to a handful of arriving students, looking disgustingly awake and put together.

Draco put his hood up so he didn't look as disheveled as he knew he was, with uncombed hair and shadowed eyes. He quickened his pace, looking for a properly secluded place without anyone, and he started to worry that the sun would break the horizon before he found a lonely spot. Upstairs first, then down, then finally finding himself outside in the walled gardens. 

The wind whipped through the bushes and trees, bringing a flurry of drifting snow from the tops of the walls. The sunlight didn't reach the narrow lanes here yet, keeping the gardens colder than the rest of the grounds, but the chill was a blessing. No one was out here. He took a moment to listen for footsteps, for a heartbeat. Nothing. Alone.

He stood close to the wall, watching the sun's edge finally touch the horizon.  

"Amato, animo, animato, animagus."

Ridiculous that there wasn't a proper dark spell for turning into an animal. But then, any dark spell would be far less gentle than an animagus charm, far more likely to affect his soul—the difference between a werewolf or a real wolf. He returned inside, intent on another hour and a half of sleep, but when he reached his bed, looking down at the rumpled blanket and pillow, he realized he was fully awake. Groaning to himself, he simply gathered his satchel and decided to head to the library.

The halls grew busier as more children arrived. The returning students, from second years to sevenths, would trickle in throughout the day, reclaim their beds and find their friends, go out for lunch in Hogsmeade, and then come back to see their schedules, argue about any last minute class changes, and finally come down to the great hall to welcome in the new first years.

Few students stayed over the break or arrived days early—usually. Draco hadn't even known the Weasel and the mublood were there until he'd seen them in Dumbledore's office.

Then again...of course those students most at risk had arrived early. Hogwarts was the safest place in the war, especially for the children.

Until Draco eventually managed to find a way in for the dark lord and all his death eaters.

He pushed that thought away. Not now. 

The library was almost literally upside down when he entered, halting in the doorway. The shelves all floated up off the floor as house elves swept underneath. Piles of books lay on top of each other, some stacked up to the ceiling, tottering but never falling. A house elf sat in the chandelier, knocking off last year's wax. The brass and wood polish lay scattered around the floor amidst rags and dust pans that swept up any missed debris by themselves.

"Don't just stand there blocking the doorway," Madam Pince said with all the air of wishing he would turn and leave. "The library is open and the card catalog is available, despite the cleaning taking longer this year."

This time her ire was directed at the elf, who worked a little faster under her glare. 

"Thank you," Draco said, nodding deferentially. No one disrespected the Hogwarts librarian. 

He spotted the only surface clear of cleaning supplies, a round table with one student in a red scarf. Granger looked up and stiffened to see him. Draco instinctively drew himself up to his full height. He almost turned—he could feel the headache coming on just from the thought of dealing with her—but no. He wasn't about to let the little irritant chase him off.

He could tolerate sitting across from Granger. Hopefully not for long.

He set his satchel and scroll for notes on the table, satisfied by her discomfit as she drew her three open books fully onto her side. He briefly caught a glance of the header one of the pages—Vinegaris a'Vino—before she pulled it closer.

Taking his wand, he went to the card catalog in the corner. A wooden cabinet as tall as he was, it was filled with small drawers with labels of A-Ar, As-B, C-D, E-Eg, and so on, an alphabetical listing of every book in the library. He slid his hand down to the last row and over two columns to the drawer marked Wy-Vi. Then pulled it out, fingers lightly tapping through the cards itemizing every book from subjects Wyvern to Viticulture. 

Va 7282 
                       Subject: Vampire Biology 

 Author: Botrel, Bran
 Title: Vampire Varieties, Breton.
        2nd ed.
 Publication: Rennes : River Loire, c. 1882.
 282 pages.
       
      1. Magic and Culture, French -- nonfiction.
      2. Notable Witches and Wizards-- nonfiction.

Va 7294 
                       Subject: Vampire, Feeding 

 Author: Eckles, Everett
 Title: Blood Rations
 Publication: London: Ministry of Magic, c. 1882.
 282 pages.
       
      1. Legal requirements for Vampire Registration -- nonfiction.
      2. Available foodstuffs and amounts -- nonfiction.
 

 Va 8003  
                       Subject: Vampire, Folklore 

 Author: Le Gall, Yan  
 Title: L'Origine du Mort-vivant: Une Variété d'Ankou 
 Publication: Brest, c. 1650     
 Pages: 145   
           
      1. Early Breton Perspective on Vampires  -- nonfiction.
      2. Ankou Connection: Death in Folklore  -- nonfiction. 

A couple of these were promising. He copied the titles and authors. If the last book was in French, he would have some trouble, but he might be able to cadge a translation charm from someone. 

His head felt heavy, and he blinked several times, forcing himself to focus. Was this from not sleeping those last couple of hours? He flipped through a few more cards, finding little useful. Vampire fashion, vampires in muggle history, vampires in wizarding history... The letters were starting to blur.

 RS III-V         
             Þema: Vampyr                

 Writere: Eadric of Wessex 
 Titl: Lēoð of Doom: Ancou’s Wyrd Wætch 
 Writung-Staede: Wintcestria, DCCCXC   
 Blæd: XXIV        
              
  I. Bearing Sāwls in GloamWagon   
 II. Blōdwyrm a Ancou

                      
 
His breath caught. Ancient, just judging from the language. He couldn't make out most of the card—his French was shaky, but his old English was limited to a handful of spells. Still, there was the old spelling of Ankou, the god of the ritual Pansy had cast, and…bloodwyrm? Grimacing, he copied down the title and author, but the number stopped him in his tracks.

RS

Restricted Section

Well. Damn. That made things complicated. How on earth was he going to—?

He was about to push the drawer back when a slip of paper stuck to the old card caught his eye. It wasn't filed but rather folded, half-crumpled, torn along the edge. This one was smaller, handwritten in neat print, and yellowed with age.

Lo 00

Lost Feast

Novák, Jan
Ta Prisera Na Hostine
Praha, c. 1610

   
      
He frowned. Was this even a card? He took down the number anyway—

A cough from behind him made him grit his teeth. Granger, not so subtly behind him, wanting to look something up.

"Worse than bloody Ravenclaws," he muttered, sliding the drawer shut and moving.

She huffed. "That's a compliment, thank you."

Telling himself that he was halfway done, he yawned, heading toward the W and V section. He moved around the table, feeling like he was sleep-walking, when a heavy shelf floated solidly against another with enough force to flatten him. He drew up short, startled back to alertness. No—he wasn't going to try to go into the shelves. 

At her desk, hands on her forehead to stymie her headache, Madame Pince groaned deep in her soul.

"Just…accio the books," she said. Then glared at him. "Gently!"

He nodded again, "of course," and raised his wand. And hesitated. He didn't want Granger to know what he was summoning. Titles were a dead giveaway. Authors could be remembered. So he called out the numbers instead, gathering the three he felt were useful. And telling himself he'd find a way to get to the restricted one later.

Three books landed in his hand, heavy enough that he had to hold them against his chest so they wouldn't fall. Who knew what Madame Pince would do if he dropped them. He sat, careful to set the books down on their covers to hide their titles, the spines toward him to hide the names. Granger rolled her eyes and worked on her own notes.

He started with the region book about biology—

The hematological analysis of vampiridae within the Bretony region indicates a consistent metabolic rate that is maintained within the confines of a 7–16°C environment. Observations suggest that the populations are primarily distributed across sedimentary deposits in the Armorican Massif and the adjacent crystalline regions of northern Bretony, where the geochemical composition remains largely invariant.

He tried. He really did. But it went on like that for pages, and when he looked up, he had made barely any progress and his head ached worse than before. Morning was slipping away. He admitted defeat for now. If he couldn't find anything later, he might return to this. Maybe.

He closed the book and tried the next one,  L'Origine du Mort-vivant: Une Variété d'Ankou. But upon opening it, he discovered that it was indeed in the original French. He was determined, but not here. Not now. His head was already throbbing from trying to read that one textbook. Struggling with French now would only make the pain worse.

Hoping the last book was in English, he pulled it close. It was small enough to fit into his hand, more of a journal, and the cover had an old tag pasted to the front, with the handwriting of Lo 57, Ta Prisera Na Hostine.

Almost 400 years old, and yet this book didn't seem worn or tattered. It seemed almost new. There were a few bookworm gouges along the edges, a bite mark on the spine from a mouse maybe. He didn't feel any preservative charms on the leather cover or the thick paper. 

This simply hadn't been read often.

He opened it, and the spine creaked as if opened for the first time. In fact, the bookplate inside the cover showed that it had only been checked out once, over two hundred years ago. 

Ta Prisera Na Hostine…a translation for the Englande.

The Thing at the Feast

Before one can understand the strange unlife of the vampire, one must understand the revenant's walk upon the earth. Though he hungers like people, must eat like people, and must otherwise starve as any person would when so deprived, one must never mistake the vampire's hunger as mortal.

The vampire is death made manifest. 

Draco paused. 

The vampire is death made manifest. 

His eyes rested on that line for several seconds. 

The vampire is death

He blinked.

Felt a pressure in his brain, like he had suddenly developed a fever. 

The library felt very dark, and all he saw were the words on the page, worn and rough.

vampire

He had been so wrapped up in his family's danger, in his fear of the dark lord and the impossibility of his task, that he hadn't thought about what this meant. He'd thought about how to stave off the eventual hunger, the danger he might pose to his friends, how to hide the tell-tale signs of what he'd become…

Yes. That was the issue

What had he become? was becoming?

Under the table, he put his fingertips to his wrist, feeling for his pulse. Didn't they say that an animagus might feel two heartbeats? Now he just wanted to feel his own. To his relief, he felt the quickening under his skin…and then waited several seconds.

Waited.

Finally felt it again.

Slow. 

Slowing.

But still there. He hadn't turned.

His took a breath, feeling like the tension in his chest would barely let him breathe enough.

He hadn't turned yet.

Because he would turn. There was no cure. Once infected, the only recourse was to stave off the symptoms. Because there was no cure for death.

He was dying. And he hadn't noticed. 

"Are you all right?" Granger asked.

Too fast, Draco looked up, at once feeling lightheaded. Granger floated in front of him, blurred at the edges, her eyes narrowed and her lips twisted so slightly, as if afraid he might get her sick. 

A half-hysterical laugh slipped free before he could stop. Putting his hand over his mouth, silencing himself, he swept his scroll and quill into his satchel, threw the strap over his shoulder, and took the books with him to Madam Pince's desk.

"I'm so sorry," he said in a rush, "but I'm feeling out of sorts. Can I check these out for the day?"

Her eyebrows raised, clearly caught mid-cluck at his outburst, Pince slowly took the books from him and set them down, first one, then the other, then... Inspecting the last cover for a long moment, her hand hovered over the date stamp. She hesitated for several seconds. 

Then she took the stamp and adjusted the date.

"You may check them out for the week," she said, marking the plates inside the cover. "Do visit Madam Pomfrey before you read them. It would not do to collapse and damage the books."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, swaying faintly. 

"You look rather pale," she said, making a note of the books in her registry. "When was the last time you ate?"

Draco went still.

When was the last time he'd eaten?

"I don't…"

He'd been so worried about stopping the transformation that he hadn't thought to eat anything.

"Go," Madame Pince sighed, but with less judgment than before. "Before you fall over."

"Yes….yes ma'am," he said, nodding as he tucked the books away. "Right away."

He left, ignoring Granger's look following him out of the library, and he went toward he dungeons, into a corridor past the Slytherin common room. Taking a deep breath, he caught the hint of sweat and blood, but it was all stale—there was no one nearby to see him.

Of the doors along the corridor here, one of them was made of rough wood gone rotten with age, and if anyone tried to open it, the hinges would creak, dust would flutter down, and they would find nothing more than a small broom closet. But if he took the handle in one hand and curled his fingers around the opposite edge of the door, the door swung the other way as smoothly as the day it was set, revealing a ladder up. 

Slytherin's entrance to the Hogwarts kitchens was a closely guarded secret among the older students. He had no idea who else knew—at least the Quidditch players, which was how he'd learned of it. And Pansy must have known some other way—this was no doubt where she snuck the liquor for her potions.

Securing the door behind himself, he started to climb in pitch black darkness. He clung to the rungs tighter than needed. He felt worse already. The ladder itself felt like it was spinning.

So intent was he on holding on, he didn't realize how far he'd gone until he knocked his head against the trap door above him. Wincing, muffling a curse, he undid the latch and climbed out, groaning as he set the trap door back down. 

In front of him, dozens of house elves scurried around the kitchen, cleaning one side, cooking on the other, washing dishes, chopping vegetables, putting meat into pies. They gave him a quick glance and then kept about their business.

Beef simmering on the spit, stew slowly stirred over a low flame, pumpkins put into the press and squeezed…the scent of dinner being prepared for dozens of students. Steam and spices filled the air. 

Draco's headache grew worse. To him, the food simply reeked.

Climbing to his feet, one hand to his head, he sat down at the counter where a single elf sliced radishes. Here the stench of food wasn't so bad. 

"The headmaster says dinner's at the set time," the elf said primly, with the air of following orders exactly.

"Not hungry," he said, bringing out the book. "Just a mo…moment."

He opened the book, flipping through pages, looking for the list. There were so few pages, why was it hard to focus? He gripped the book tightly when he found the spot.

There are possibilities. They lie between myth and reality, couched in symbol and religion. They do not all satisfy all creatures. But there are methods that may be used to fulfill the ritual and sacrifice for the blood feast.

The fruit of the underworld. Persephone's doom, the pomegranate. Between worlds, between life and death, the welcoming tang of ease and relief from the pangs of mortality. The seeds will not be enough. A carafe of bitter strength must be kept close at hand.

The barley soul cake, dry dust, mud compounded. An uncommon choice, best for the vampire that has forgotten what it is. The revenant may be fooled with what it remembers-

The words swirled in front of him. That was it for reading.

"Pomegranate, please," he mumbled. "I just need a drink."

"…yes. You do, don't you?"

Something in the elf's tone sent a bolt of warning through him. He froze, holding his breath—or was he even breathing now?—then glanced up.

The elf was looking at him.

She slowed in her task, setting down her knife, not just looking but studying him. Looking for…what, he didn't know.

"What…is…you?" the elf asked, leaning close, staring as if she'd read the answer in his face. "You're…blurry."

He didn't dare move. House elves were subservient, loyal, meek to a fault…and bloody powerful if they took a liking to be.

"I'm…" he whispered. "I'm just cursed."

"…yes," she said, nodding slowly. "Yous is."

She didn't move to serve him. She tilted her head, looking at him like a bug needing squishing.

"…but with what?" she said slowly. "Can'ts tell, and if it's dangerous—"

His head swam like a boat in rough seas, and the roaring in his ears was from his own hunger. But what kept him upright was his stung pride, his spite at having to satisfy these creatures for something as small as a favor from the kitchen.

Draco's pride and spite mixed into restrained anger. His fingers curled around the corner, white knuckled. 

"If I was dangerous," he said, his voice full of generations of pure blood superiority and ancient wealth, "you would know. You would all know. You would be certain of how dangerous I was."

She leaned back quickly, her gaze going to his hands, then back up to his face.

"But here I am asking," he said, his jaw tight, his indignation all that was keeping him upright. "Pomegranate."

She looked at him.

Draco could have screamed.

"…please," was all he managed.

Looking over him once more, still of the opinion that he would have been better swept up and thrown away with the rest of the vermin caught in the corners, she turned her hand in the air. A glass cup appeared, which she set in front of him. Another turn of her hand, a carafe, which filled gradually with wine-red liquid.

The scent hit him, clearing away the stink of everything else. This—he put his hands around the cup as she poured—this was clear, clean, pure, bitter and cold, and when he drank, the strength of it overwhelmed him. It tasted twice as strong as its scent, and he had to drink in small bursts. He coughed once, turning his head away, his eyes watering with the powerful taste.

The elf was still watching. If anything, she studied him even closer, even tasting the drops left in the carafe to see that it was indeed simple pomegranate juice.  

Cursed, yes. Many wizards labored under curses. But this…

He swallowed the last bit, desperately wanting more, knowing better than to push his luck. He set the glass down. Set the book back in the satchel.

"Have…" He breathed deep as his head started to clear. "Have you seen something like me before? Ever?"

Her mouth tightened.

"No," she said firmly, "and never again will be too soons enough."

The drink was done. Time to retreat. He felt her stare on him as he turned, leaving through the front entrance. 

He didn't think anything good was going to come of that.

Whatever. He would deal with the wreckage of the bridges he burned when he had to. For now, he had his answer. He didn't know why, but at least he knew that pomegranate juice could slake a vampire's thirst instead of blood.

He paused. 

No. He had nothing. He needed answers, not guesses. He needed to read, to study his own curse. Curses. He put a hand over his face. 

What had he done to himself? …was still doing to himself?

He needed a place to read.

Where to go? Not to the common room, not with all the students settling in. Not to the library, certainly not to the hospital wing. The Great Hall would feel too open, and the gardens were still covered in unseasonable snow. At loose ends, he walked along the corridors, instinctively heading downstairs, into the depths of the castle. 

The potions classroom lay ahead. He kept walking, pretending not to notice the wary look the new potions teacher shot his way. Not a long look—Slughorn was chatting with a ring of prospective new arrivals. Draco kept on, passing two more doors, turning left, then right, losing himself in the halls he'd never walked before.

But now he discovered how the walls very quickly went from stone to hewn rock, and the sconces lit as he walked by. There were doors, but each of them he found shut tight. Turning another corner, he almost passed a tall, narrow gate, half open. Only the faint groan of its hinges as he walked by drew his attention. 

He touched the gate, peering in curiously.

It wasn't wise to go traipsing in unknown spaces in Hogwarts. The forgotten places could be treacherous. But the space here wasn't big enough to hold secrets. So small that he could put his arms out and touch either wall, he found that the arched ceiling was similarly low. 

There was a basin made of rock, quite dry, and a long, hard bench. No friendly sconce for a light, but he set a lumos charm in the basin and took a seat.

The little reading nook was lonely, quiet, and tucked away from sight. Perfect.

He had a lot of reading to do.

Ta Prisera Na Hostine…a translation.

The Thing at the Feast

by Jan Novák

:: For my poor, dear, lost Milena, still with us ::

Before one can understand the strange unlife of the vampire, one must understand the revenant's walk upon the earth. Though he hungers like people, must eat like people, and must otherwise starve as any person would when so deprived, one must never mistake the vampire's hunger as mortal.

The vampire is death made manifest. 

From the Russians upir, the Slavic opiro, and the Turkish onpyr, the vampire is the thing at the feast, the thing at the sacrifice. Blood, the feast of the vampire, for the blood is the life and the vampire must consume life for himself just as death must consume him. The vampire is death and is of death, and as such anything he must devours must be of life. 

But food will not sustain. Wholesome fruits and meats and grains are as dust in his mouth. So what may sate the loved one still with us, the echo of what used to be? The confused, lost look of the newly dead who may not rest in peace...who is unable to satisfy the hunger themself?

There are possibilities. They lie between myth and reality, couched in symbol and religion. They do not all satisfy all creatures. But there are methods that may be used to fulfill the ritual and sacrifice for the blood feast.

The fruit of the underworld. Persephone's doom, the pomegranate. Between worlds, between life and death, the welcoming tang of ease and relief from the pangs of mortality. The seeds will not be enough. A carafe of bitter strength must be kept close at hand.

The barley cake, soul cake, dry dust, mud compounded. An uncommon choice, best for the vampire that has forgotten what it is. The revenant may be fooled with what it remembers as the shell of food.

Beware the milk and honey, the common sacrifice, for it is life freely given for the young. It is anathema to the dead. But to ferment the honey, to let it begin its corruption and turn to liquor, is powerful sustenance. For the young vampire, a fine sacrifice indeed.

From the new world, cacao, dark and without the sugar that it is so commonly adulterated with…

Chapter Text

Draco had never been so insulted.

He was halfway through Vampire Varieties, Breton, having slogged through a ridiculous amount of observational data about geography, flora, and fauna, and he was no stranger to the more difficult academic texts. He had a headache, he was close to tears with the author's sentences that ran as long as a whole page. But this…

He read the offending sentence again.

Empirical studies of vampiric hematophagy, ranging from the Carpathian Basin to the Iberian Peninsula, reveal a marked predilection among vampiridae for the sanguine fluids of viable "quick" organisms contra the coagulated residues of deceased entities.

The author wrote all of that just to say that vampires preferred blood of the living, not the dead.

He snapped the book shut—lifted it up high as if to throw it, to slam it against the wall, with full intent to leap up after it, open it again and rip out all the pages. 

Only the thought of Madame Pince's anger held him back.

Slowly, slowly, he breathed out, shut his eyes, lowered the book back onto his lap. 

The author was a Ravenclaw, he fucking knew it.

Fuck it. He was done studying for tonight.

Not to say that Draco couldn't slog through it. He had a foot of notes in tiny print tucked away in his satchel, and he had noted which chapters to start on next. But as much as he wanted to keep reading, he also wanted to drown the books in the lake.

And yet…

These books were useless!

Blood Rations was nothing more than a legal defense on Ministry's laws requiring every vampire to register and receive blood from the Department of Undeath. Well, to hell with that—he was a (soon-to-be) unregistered animagus, a not-yet-of-age Death Eater, and the hopeful assassin of Dumbledore...what was one more broken law?

And Vampire Varieties, Breton…for all its dense jargon and academic language, it was ridiculously shallow. The first chapter said nothing more than vampires were as cool as the climate allowed. Was this as far as vampire research had advanced? 

Well, at least as far as they had studied vampirism in England. 

As for L'Origine du Mort-vivant: Une Variété d'Ankou…that was a problem. He'd run up against the wall of his shaky French almost immediately. And the book seemed useful, which just made the barrier all the more frustrating. Of course, he did know someone who spoke French fluently, who was acquainted with academic magic and as well.

So, during the Great Feast, he worked on a letter to Bellatrix Lestrange.

Sandwiched between Pansy and Blaise, no one could see what he was writing. Students often completed work at the table, after all. He even noticed Granger across the way, reading something with Neville, visibly swallowing a mutter when Weasley jostled her too hard, laughing at whatever Potter said. The room filled quickly with students and teachers as they noted the boats coming across the lake with the first years.

Dear Aunt Bella,

Please forgive my intrusion on your own great work. I am afraid that, in researching my new circumstances, I am unfortunately limited by my amateurish level of French. Knowing your own exacting standards, I am hesitant to ask and risk frustrating you with my slow study, but in this, there is no one else I may reach out to…

In a way, writing the letter was a blessing. It forced him to craft his wording so he wouldn't offend his frightening, loyal, insane, murderous aunt, which gave him something to focus on instead of the stench of cooked meats and vegetables as plates appeared on the tables. On the night breeze that swept in with the first years. 

On all the warm bodies full of blood around him, laughing, breathing, pressed against him, pulsing beneath the skin…

"Here," Pansy said, trading her pomegranate juice for his shepherd's pie. "You don't look half feral."

Wincing, Draco put down his quill and took her glass in his hands, drinking it down in one go. On his other side, Blaise donated his own glass and took Draco's potatoes and strawberries. Both of them had requested pomegranate juice. Tomorrow, when more of his friends arrived, he'd have them all ask and get a dedicated carafe for the table.

The first years were all sorted with no surprises. Slughorn had been introduced to polite applause. Dumbledore gave a brief welcome. Owls arrived with late mail. It almost felt like a normal year.

MEGAN HOW DARE YOU SNEAK OUT BEHIND OUR BACKS?

Draco dropped the quill in shock. Forks and knives clattered to the floor as students startled, looking for the source of the screaming voice. A girl at the Hufflepuff table had sunk low in her chair, hands over her face, and her friends held her as the howler letter continued to shriek.

WE FORBADE YOU FROM ATTENDING—DO YOU WANT TO END UP IN ST. MUNGOS? DO YOU WANT TO END UP DEAD? I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY—WE CAN'T BRING YOU ALONG NOW. YOU'LL HAVE TO WAIT TILL THE TERM ENDS. YOUR MOTHER IS WORRIED SICK.

The letter went on like that for a minute and a half. Everyone watched. It was impossible not to. By the time it finished, the poor girl's face was beet red and she was in tears. Madame Pomfrey had already left the teacher's table and gone down the aisle, collecting her and bringing her with her friends away from the feast, toward the hospital wing.

The Great Hall was silent. 

Students looked at each other, at their plates. It seemed like every family had wrestled with their child's attendance at Hogwarts. Had other students snuck out of their homes to attend? The school was supposed to be a safe place, but the return of You Know Who had changed that in at least a few minds.

The headmaster, moving as if he labored under a heavy weight, rose and stepped forward to address the students. Dumbledore's footsteps rustled along the floor, audible as no one spoke.

"It is normal to be afraid when faced with danger," he started. "It is true that the coming year will bring great trial and difficulty. But it is also true that the students of Hogwarts have never shirked in their duty, have never failed to rise to adversity."

He stared over them, as if looking ahead to the future. 

"I have already sent missives to your parents. They know of the attack at Hogsmeade. They also know that I, personally, along with your teachers, have seen to the protection of this school and the grounds. Our safeguards are many."

Here he took a breath, glancing with a smile at Potter and his friends. Draco felt a stab of irritation. What new adventure had they gone on? Saved the school again?

And why shouldn't he smile at them, Draco thought. They aren't trying to get Death Eaters into the school.

"Resilience," he said, gazing at the Hufflepuffs, slowly favoring each table in turn. "Wisdom. Bravery. And cunning.  As difficult as this year may be, and I have no doubt that there will be challenges we do not even know yet, my faith in this school is absolute. Please believe in yourselves as I believe in you."

Draco wanted to throw up.

The feast was over. Students took handfuls of fruit and treats as snacks and returned to their common rooms. Draco took a look at his phial under the bed, up near the headboard, to make sure it was undisturbed. Then, only pausing to kick off his shoes, he curled up on his bed without even getting under the covers, intending on a moment's rest before properly getting to sleep.

He blinked. 

The potions clock chimed softly, warning him of sunrise in half an hour.

He stared at it for a long moment, then put one hand on it, staring in shock. It was broken, it had to be broken, it couldn't possibly be morning already…but no. He heard a few students rising, heard Blaise stumble into something and curse quietly.

This just wasn't fair.

He gave his clothes a quick charm to clean them and got on his shoes, shouldered his satchel again. Skipping class was not an option, not for him, certainly not for his parents. He was expected to excel in all of his classes. A dark lord intent on the lives of Draco and his family was no excuse for low marks.

He already knew his schedule, but he checked again just in case. Five NEWTs level classes—Transfiguration, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms, and Herbology.

He sighed. Alchemy hadn't had enough students sign up. Maybe next semester. But that had left a blank spot in his schedule that his parents wouldn't let him leave blank, and he was damned if he would take the Ministry's version of History.

So he would be waking up to Herbology every morning. As he walked through the school, passing other early risers, he saw that he was the first one in.

"Mister Malfoy," he heard as he walked into the classroom. "I thought perhaps your name on my roster was a mistake."

Draco glanced up from the schedule to Professor Sprout, who glanced at him as she wrote the day's agenda on the chalkboard.

"You never seemed more than mildly interested in the material," she added. 

He shrugged. "Snape said the best ingredients are raised from the seed."

Her head lifted with a small smile. "Very true. The class is open seating—please select wherever you'd like, but the class won't be very large."

"Better than potions, then," he said, choosing a seat at the front but to one side, the far side of a shared desk. "Slughorn's got that packed to the gills."

Her smile faded, but her ire didn't seem directed at Draco. "Yes, I've heard. Well. We all have our own methods."

Gratified to hear her distaste for Slughorn's favoritism, Draco sat down and spread out his books, unrolling his summer assignment, a four foot explanation of how to raise aconite and asphodel together, roots entwined. It was already done, but he had been forced to erase a big chunk of writing in the middle and written over it—he worked at removing stray marks.

Slowly the rest of the class filtered in. Several Hufflepuffs, several Ravenclaws, a handful of Gryffindors, Granger of course, followed by Potter. And finally Neville Longbottom, who frowned to see Draco in the only other seat available at the front. 

Curious, Draco glanced back and saw that there were no other seats. He chuckled and leaned back, nudging his book properly onto his side of the paired desk.

"Don't worry," he said in a low voice, "can't poison you with an audience."

Neville stiffened. 

"Relax," Draco smiled. "I left my deadly rowan and lavender in my room."

"There's no way—" Neville started, about to turn to Sprout.

"My mistake," Potter said, standing up from his seat with Granger. "That's my spot, Neville. Yours is here."

Potter clapped Neville's shoulder, nodding reassuringly at him, and sat down with a glare at Draco. Sprout barely gave the whole scene a nod, rushing to get the last bit of paperwork done.

"Brave Gryffindor," Draco whispered, "ten points, thank goodness Potter's always here to save the day."

"Can you at least try," Potter whispered, "to not be a monster for one year?"

"Why are you even here?" Draco continued, glancing to make sure Sprout was still preparing for class. "Keeping the weasel's girlfriend company?"

"Learning to make antidotes," Potter said , "for the poisons your lot make."

Draco scoffed and sat back in his seat. "Doubtful, unless you let brave Longbottom take over your little army."

His voice let them know exactly how likely he thought that was. He didn't have to look at Neville to know the other boy was turning red. 

Potter scowled, but after a little thought, he half-smiled, looking as if he liked the thought of that. He glanced over his shoulder, nodding once. 

Draco didn't bother looking. He was rolling up his parchment in preparation to hand it in, undoing another scroll in order to start his notes. His irritation had less to do with Potter beside him and more to do with himself and something his father had said. 

When your opponent is making a mistake, don't correct him. The last thing Draco wanted was for Neville to get a confidence boost from his friends. Nevermind trading barbs. He needed to learn to keep his mouth shut.

Fortunately, he didn't have time to trade barbs. Sprout kept them busy with notes and greenhouse safety procedures and emergency protocols for the dangerous plants they would work with. And he didn't have to deal with Potter anyway. Draco had friends in his other classes, and he only had Potter and Granger in Transfiguration and Defense, where Draco kept comfortably in the back with the rest of the dark wizards.

Just before dinner, he returned to the garden, recited the animagus charm, and looked up at the darkening sky, wishing for a thunderstorm. Instead the sky was painfully clear of all clouds.

On the way back in, he saw a flyer posted in the hall. He normally wouldn't have bothered with the flyers in the halls, usually adverts for used schoolbooks and class supplies, but this one splashed the word Apparition across the front, and that was something he was keen on learning.

"If you are seventeen years of age, or will turn seventeen on or before the 31st of August next, you are eligible for a twelve-week course of Apparition Lessons from a Ministry of Magic Apparition instructor. Please sign below if you woulds like to participate. Cost 12 Galleons."

…12 galleons.

What so many students didn't understand was that he was not personally wealthy. Lucius Malfoy was wealthy, and occasionally he showered that on his son. Narcissa might spoil him with pocket change or gifts, but actual financial freedom? Choice? Power?

His lack of coins stung.  He had enough to cover Apparition lessons…barely. But the licensure test would be offered to everyone, and if he could study on his own….

Pansy or Theodore or Blaise would tell him what the teacher said. And Draco would beg off that he was busy doing…things…for his family. He certainly wasn't attending for being too poor.

At dinner, he picked at his plate, giving away most of the meal to Pansy and to Theo, who had just arrived that morning. Draco was interested only in the pomegranate juice that they found too strong. Under the table, he put his fingers to his wrist, counting heartbeats. Still there, but slow, sluggish.

It hadn't happened yet. But soon.

That night, there was no message from his parents. He knew better than to expect one, but he had hoped. Instead he lay awake for too long, trying to think of something, anything. The task was impossible—how to kill Dumbledore, who Voldemort had tried for years to kill—and he knew he was meant to fail.

His dreams were full of shadows, moonlight through stone windows, and rain on the horizon. So he continued for another day, another night, already sick of waking up before dawn.

On the third day at breakfast, he was startled by his owl, Ilmauzer, dropping a letter and a Daily Prophet special inset in front of him. A few other owls flew in with their own newspapers, but the special inset was a premium subscription service. Pansy and Theo both read over his shoulder while Blaise, across from him, only busied himself with his toast and jam, waiting patiently for one of them to give him the short version.

Ministry Mayhem!

In a shocking attack only an hour ago, unknown assailants launched a brazen attack on the Ministry of Magic, leaving chaos in their wake. Sources who wish to remain anonymous reported that the assailants were dressed in the black hoods and masks commonly associated with Death Eaters. These same sources also report that several Ministry personnel sustained injuries during the assault. Two officials are reported in critical condition at St. Mungo's Hospital. There are also unconfirmed rumors of one fatality—no word on if that's a Ministry official or Death Eater. 

Eyewitnesses recount scenes of panic, Unforgivable curses, and commendable valor as defenders of the realm scrambled to repel the assailants. The Ministry has vowed a rigorous investigation, promising swift justice for those responsible. After the Hogsmeade attack and the deaths at Hereford, the Ministry struggles to offer reassurances to a shaken magical community. 

The photograph following the headline showed the Ministry atrium half hidden in plumes of smoke, with Aurors and officials putting out smoldering flames. There was the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, waving away the photographer as he walked out of frame.

Draco exchanged a look with his friends, to see if any of them knew who had been attacked, but all of the shrugged or looked wide eyed. An attack on the Ministry was risky, a bold move. But why attack such a heavily guarded target when officials were so much more vulnerable in their homes?

Across the room, voices grew louder. Weasley bolted up from his chair, insisting that he had to get to the floo, he had to talk to his mother, why hadn't she sent word that his father was all right? Granger and Potter followed on his heels.

Draco didn't care. It might be one of his parents dead. He handed off the paper to his friends, then gathered the letter. There was no return address, only his name. In his aunt's handwriting. He left the table, heading to the bathrooms, going into a stall.

Dearest Draco,

I am delighted to read your missive. Indeed, today has been delightful overall. A wonderful excursion to the ministry. And then to return and see your request for my help… I am overjoyed to see you taking to your responsibilities, and doubly so to of course offer my aid in what small way I might. Why, I'll even bring a gift. Knockturn Alley, Saturday.

With a joyful heart.

Draco stuffed the letter into his satchel. His parents were not dead. And in a few days, he would meet his aunt.

Chapter Text

Weasley wasn't in Herbology the next day. 

Granger and Potter sat beside each other whispering, leaving Draco his own desk. They didn't seem to notice that he used the seat closer to them, listening to their murmuring throughout the lecture. As Draco took notes, he managed to catch a word here and there—cruciatus, burns—but little more. Enough to confirm that the Weasley patriarch was indeed one of the wizards wounded in the attack, but nothing else. 

The dark lord was moving, that much was certain. And the good wizards no longer felt so safe here in the school. Yes, Dumbledore and the Forbidden Forest's denizens and even the castle itself would keep them shielded from Death Eaters, but their family and friends? And if they set foot outside? A Hufflepuff already lay in St. Mungos, along with a Ravenclaw student, both injured from the explosion at Hogsmeade. 

And Draco had to find a way to bring that horror inside the school. 

Classes felt like shuffling through a dream. Occasionally Pansy nudged him in Potions or Theo kicked him under the desk in Transfiguration, bringing him back to the lectures. Usually he could look like he was paying attention.

Taking notes let his mind wander, writing down what the professor said while his own thoughts went to ways around the school security. Really, it made sense—he was a Death Eater in all but the Dark Mark. He had his orders from his master. And he was positioned inside the school. If Bellatrix had been given the order, he knew his aunt would have found a way. 

But he wasn't a battle hardened dark wizard. He had never killed anyone. And now he had to find a way to kill one of the greatest wizards of an age. How to create the opportunity, the spell, the medium through which to work—

"Mr. Malfoy, are you sure you want to continue this class?"

Draco blinked and looked up. Professor Flitwick stood on the desk in front of him, staring down only inches away. Laughter followed as the class watched, from the Gryffindors especially. Draco felt his face grow warm. 

"Or is the lecture not enthralling enough?" Flitwick said, glancing over his notes. "—on the intent crafted through the speaker's will focused through mediums of—well, it seems you kept up enough on the lecture. But clearly your will is elsewhere. I must ask again, do you intend to stay in the course? Because if your mind wanders during the practice of creating your own charm, I worry for the health of everyone in this room."

Laughter from around the room again.

Draco grit his teeth.

Do not speak in anger, Lucius warned him. Learn from my errors.

Cold fire, if you must, Narcissa said. Everyone is useful in some capacity.

Draco took a breath and looked up at the small wizard.

"Do potion ingredients count as mediums?" Draco asked.

Flitwick blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

Draco felt himself grow a little more in control of himself. 

"A charm's magic focuses through the wand," Draco said, "the user's hand movements, even just pure intent. Is a potion then just a different focus for the spell? Like…mandrake for ani—"

He almost said animagus but caught himself partway through.

"—antidotes. Since potions also useful for reversing some curses."

The room was silent for a half a second as the students looked at each other. Draco wanted to crawl under his desk and vanish.

"Sorry," Draco muttered. "Just…it made me wonder is all."

Flitwick sighed and rubbed his temples. "No no, it is I who must apologize. I have been so long a teacher that I had forgotten the strange ways that learning can connect ideas in the student's mind."

Jumping off the desk, Flitwick floated down and landed easily on the floor. He walked along the aisle back to the front, climbing up to the top of his lectern.

"Indeed, it is as you guessed," Flitwick said, resuming his lecture. "Tangentially, of course—this is actually a topic for seventh year, and only toward the end of the year, at that."

Out of the corner of his eye, Draco saw Granger lean forward, opening another page of her notebook, scribbling down every word. Potter, as usual, watched her at first, then glanced at Draco, who didn't look away in time.

"Charms works through mediums which focus our will. Magic is the means of altering the world around us. Potions and their ingredients, wands, crystals, even runes and bones and other mechanisms—all of these are simply the means of sending out your will. Powerful wizards simply need their own mental focus, hence the casting of nonverbal magic. Also a topic for next year in its proper depth."

"However…"

Here he fixed the class with a stern look, first Draco, then Granger.

"As tempting as it may be to practice with unusual and untested materials, the danger of the spell rebounding upon its caster cannot be overemphasized. Since I am all too aware that teenagers believe themselves to be invincible and lucky, I will arrange a small presentation from Madame Pomfrey on the injuries she has seen from students who thought themselves more advanced than they actually were, ranging from burns, curses, and gangrene to…well, she will explain it in greater detail."

Flitwick's face had gone pale. Whatever memory he recalled was clearly one that had affected him deeply. But he shook it off and looked back at Draco.

"In any case, an insightful comment, Mr. Malfoy. In the future, please do not keep those to yourself. That would cheapen the class discussion and, I must admit, lead an old teacher to think the worst of his students."

"No harm done," Draco said with enough diplomacy to make his mother smile.

Class passed almost uneventfully after that. But during the lecture, in the pauses between Flitwick's comments, he heard Granger whispering to Potter. He kept an ear out, making out what he could. And what he heard made him swallow his nerves.

Mandrake, he heard her murmur. Antidotes, pff. —liar—meant to say animag—hellebore accident my—.

Dammit. 

He kept his face blank as if he hadn't heard, as if she was wrong. Let them think they had guessed. He could find another cover story. He could get the Slyherins involved. He could…

He felt a tightness in his chest. 

No. He could make an calming potion. And then he could take his time and think and plan. Somewhere no one would bother him.

God, it was only the start of the year. How was he going to last to the end?

Not by listening to the captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, that was damn sure. Draco didn't expect to be ambushed on coming out of Charms, still setting his quill in his satchel. But there was Vaisey, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, clearly having gotten out of his own class early just to lie in wait.

"Oh, don't start," Draco said, turning down the hall. "I know Snape already told you—"

"Doesn't matter," Vaisey said. "I don't speak nonsense, and you not being seeker is nonsense." 

"Just get someone else." Draco tried to walk faster. "I can't this year."

"There's no time to train a new seeker," Vaisey said, his long legs letting him keep up easily. "And everyone else is packed muscle. I can't put them on as seekers. They don't have the dexterity for it."

"That's your problem, captain," Draco said, emphasizing the last word. "I have a full schedule of NEWTs and a mountain of family matters—"

"You're going to let Gryffindor take the house cup?" Vaisey said. "Let Potter walk all over us?"

"I don't care," Draco said. He realized they were attracting attention, even here at the end of the hall, so he grabbed Vaisey's shoulder and pulled him around the corner, out of sight.

"Look," he whispered as low as he could. "I have much bigger problems on my mind—"

"Family problems," Vaisey said just as quietly.

Draco paused, his look turning dark. That was dangerously close to openly acknowledging the real issue. Vaisey would know the real reason that the Malfoys were in trouble. Vaisey's family was as deep into pure blood politics as any dark wizard—his pride in his family extended to wrapping himself up in its name so that everyone referred to him by his last name. And, of course, to downplay his own dark lineage.

"Taranis," Draco said in warning, using the boy's first name. "Tread carefully."

"I know you came here in rush," Vaisey said, ignoring the danger, "and your funds are limited."

"Pay off someone else," Draco said. "Harper, maybe."

"Have you traded Malfoy practicality for Weasley pride?" Vaisey asked with a pointed smirk. "Since when is your hair red?"

"Keep it up," Draco said, "and you'll see how red I paint this floor."

"Save it for the pitch," Vaisey said, undeterred. "Two hundred galleons for the season."

To his credit, Draco kept his face blank. But everyone had their price, and that came damn near to his.  Supplies, apparition lessons, fare to Diagon Alley and just barely enough to shop seriously in Knockturn Alley…all for a few hours of time on the field.

Oh, but the time, the precious time to scheme, practice, plan…

Draco's mouth parted, on the precipice of giving in. Still he hesitated. His family, the dark lord, his responsibilities. He couldn't waste time flying, playing a stupid game…

"Two fifty," Vaisey said. "I can't go higher."

Draco grimaced. Dammit. 

"Dawn and dusk are off limits," Draco said slowly. "Quidditch. And nothing else."

"Nothing else," Vaisey said so smoothly that Draco wondered if he had missed something in the negotiation. "Practice starts tomorrow."

"As long as I get them up front," Draco said.

"Tonight, under your bed," Vaisey said, already turning away. "See you on the pitch."

Still uneasy about the deal, Draco spent the rest of his classes in an anxiety-fueled daze, relying on Pansy to kick him or Theodore to nudge him to avoid another incident like in Charms. He didn't tell them about the galleons. 

In the evening, Draco found the bag under the bed as promised. He didn't bother to check it yet. If it was leprechaun gold or a few coins short, there would be hell to pay. Vaisey wasn't stupid. 

But it was the first time Draco had gold of his own, from his own skills, not from his father's hand. 

He could do anything he wanted with that gold.

12 galleons for Apparition lessons. That would save hours of him studying on his own.

25 galleons for potions components. That would save hours of him stealing from the potions classroom.

5 galleons fare to and from Diagon Alley, with travel expenses.

And with his meeting with his aunt in a few days, who knew how much he would need in Knockturn Alley?

He would have to ask Snape how to sell potions of his own creation. A brisk black market for potions occasionally sprung up each year at Hogwarts, only to be ruthlessly suppressed when teachers discovered who did the selling. Too risky here. He would have to make money to make opportunities.

His chest felt tight again. It had seemed to grow tighter since performing the chant at dusk in the gardens. An electrical storm to finish off the animagus charm couldn't come fast enough—

A thought struck him.

His heart sank.

A terrible thought.

Too terrible to look at first. But damn it all, he had to know. 

He turned and leaned down the side of the bed, lifting the blankets, finding the bag of gold. Yes, all well and good, but Vaisey hadn't pushed the bag under the middle of the bed like a normal person would. He'd pushed it unseen under the headboard. 

Where the phial holding the animagus charm had lay. 

And now the phial lay a few inches away against the wall, knocked out of place.

His heart fell. But there was nothing he could do. He lay back down, staring at the ceiling. 

The animagus charm was supposed to lie undisturbed until the storm, when he would drink it. The phial had only moved a few inches. Was that too much? In his heart, he knew it was. But how bad was it? An animagus charm could go wrong any number of ways. And he'd held it perfectly so far. It was such a little thing. A couple of inches. Really, just one or two. Not much.

And what if he didn't drink it at all? A spell interrupted was just as bad as a spell disturbed. Really, the odds of the charm rebounding on him was just as great if he didn't drink it. So he had no choice. 

Maybe he would be lucky. 

Chapter Text

Draco felt like he was starving while surrounded by a feast.

After another dawn recital of the damn animagus charm, which he was seriously starting to regret, he came into the Great Hall for another glass of pomegranate juice. It was bitter and strangely dry, and while it sated the thirst, it did nothing to stop the craving.

He looked around. This early in the morning, there were few students in the hall having breakfast. It was easier on Draco that way, fewer people to feel in the room, fewer pulsing hearts and whispers and rustling clothes. But if he paused, if he didn't have anything to distract him, and he listened a little too attentively, took a deep breath around anyone…

God, he could taste the blood on the air.

Blaise sat across from him, having his usual toast and jam. Theo sat next to him, helping himself to Draco's food.

"Still think you're going to look like a scarecrow before long," Theo said around a mouthful of ham. "But I can't say I mind too much."

Draco made the mistake of looking at him. He had known Theo for years, but now, all he saw was the pulse of his vein in his throat, scented the copper tang under his skin. Draco ran his tongue over his teeth, feeling for fangs, blinking he realized he didn't have any.

The spell he and Pansy had cast had done something to him. He didn't know what. But his own heart continued to beat—slowly, once or twice a minute. Enough to tell him he wasn't dead. That he wasn't alive, either.

Would his heart beat faster again if he bit—? 

Mumbling he would see them in class, Draco shot to his feet and left as fast as possible without breaking into a full run. 

Being around people was getting harder. He couldn't carry pomegranates with him everywhere.  Just being in the halls, surrounded by heartbeats and blood rushing through veins, feeling the heat of people near him…

He arrived early to Herbology again, finding relief in the mostly empty classroom. Sprout was at her desk, grading, sighing as she crossed out a whole section of someone's paper.

"Flitwick was quite impressed with you the other day," Sprout said when she spotted him. "Normally students don't try peeling back the layers of magical mechanics until their advanced studies, after they've graduated."

Draco settled in his chair, bringing out his mostly done homework. He was used to being the first here, before even Neville, as he had to rise every day for the animagus ritual. Today, however, he spotted Granger in her own seat, glancing at him briefly before looking back to her work.

"More like he caught me daydreaming," Draco said. "It made me think that…"

His voice trailed off. From the chalkboard, Sprout turned to see him over her shoulder. 

"You thought…?"

Draco shrugged. "Admittedly, professor I'd hoped that the alchemy class would make this year. "

It was one of the few subjects he had an actual interest in. Transmuting one element into another, creating rare materials to be combined into something completely new. It seemed like a mix between charms and transfiguration. There was so little on the topic, however, that when he'd seen the class as an elective, he'd figured it could be something for himself, a small bright spot between all the worries of the year.

"It so rarely garners enough interest," Sprout said with a mournful sigh. "You and Miss Granger, Mr. Longbottom and Mr. Nott. I think that was it. Oh, and Miss Jones. We need at least thirteen."

"Do you teach the alchemy course?" Granger asked, lifting her head.

"Depending on the schedule," Sprout said. "I sometimes trade off with Professor Babbling. You wouldn't think she'd be so keen on it, but it turns out she found her interest in runes from reading ancient alchemical recipes."

"I don't suppose…" Granger's voice trailed. She twisted her quill in her fingertips, glancing at Draco once, then frowning.

Draco knew what she was thinking. Dammit, he knew what the little chit was thinking, and it was a good idea. But he didn't want to agree with her, didn't want to have anything to do with the little mudblood. He turned to the front of the classroom. He had enough to deal with. 

He sighed.

"I am curious…" he heard himself start.

No. It was stupid. He already had so much to do. He had no time. He was already dragged into Quidditch this year when he'd planned to skip out. He had to wake up before every damn sunrise for a charm that was probably already broken. He had to get something like an income. He had…

He had to get just one little thing he'd wanted for himself. 

"…would a club be out of the question?" he asked.

Sprout paused, one hand at the chalkboard, and then completely turned. "I…what?"

"A club," Granger said, nodding now that he'd been the one to ask. "If we can't have a class, then a small club after hours? There'd be no time for a real course, true, but perhaps the textbook—"

Draco read the rising refusal in Sprout's face and covered for Granger's stupidity.

"—certainly no practical lessons," he said. "Only theory. Just…sort of tying it back to what we're already learning."

Granger immediately saw her error and corrected. Perhaps she was finally realizing other people didn't have the insane drive for academics that she did, that a teacher wouldn't want to prepare an entire extra class and eat into her time for grading and planning.

"Once a week, or every other week, maybe," Granger said. "Half an hour at tea. And if we could get enough people involved, then the class might make."

"And we'd have prepped students for the next semester," Draco added.

Sprout held the chalk in her hand thoughtfully. Her immediate refusal was gone.

"A tea time club," she murmured. "In theoretical alchemical studies. That sounds…nice, actually. I could ask Bathsheda along. I think…if you're willing to complete the paperwork to found the club. I do prefer these things to be student-led, of course."

"Of course," Granger said as if it was the most obvious thing. "I'll ask the headmaster and see what's to be done. I'll handle everything."

"That would be helpful," Sprout said, a small smile rising to her face. "Yes, that would be best. I'll arrange for both of you to access the textbooks. Unless there's a class, they fall within the Restricted Section."

Both of them sat straight. A golden ticket, that was—especially if Madame Pince could be convinced to let them enter for themselves. Draco and Granger shared a look, understanding each other immediately, nodding once in slow truce.

By this time, students began to trickle in. Weasley still wasn't back, so the shuffled seats continued, with Draco left alone as Neville took Weasley's seat and Potter sat beside Granger, listening to her explain about the club. Potter looked as eager to add on an academic club as Draco was to spend time with the Granger girl, but to her credit, Potter eventually nodded. Neville, listening in, chirped in that he knew a few people who might be interested. 

Draco couldn't think of anyone to ask, even after the bell rang. There was no one he could bother asking in Potions class, either, focused instead on the memory potion in the textbook. On the chalkboard, Slughorn had posted notes and instructions for each class, first years through seventh, and Draco felt a twist of indignation at the final note—Slug Club, Vinegaris a'Vino. So that's what Granger had been studying up in the library.

Right after classes, he had to run across campus to arrive at Quidditch practice on time. He hadn't been able to get a new uniform for this year—he'd simply transfigured the old one to be a tiny bit larger. He thought he did a decent job, although his cloak and hood seemed a touch too small. He had to put it on and ask Theo to properly tug out the edges.

"You're getting good at that," Draco said, putting his hood up, examining the seams. "The detail is perfect."

"It's not bad," Theo said as he finished drawing on his boots. "Transfiguration takes patience. I could do better if I had more time."

"Not with the way Vaisey's driving the team," Draco said. He took up his broom—now three years old, but still good. "Touch up the edges?"

"You are such a spoiled brat," Theo said without any heat. He put his wand out and cleaned up the ragged ends of Draco's broom, smoothing the strands so that it looked good as new. "I thought you got exceeds in transfiguration?"

"Outstanding, thank you," Draco said. "But it never looks as good as when you do it."

"All right, what do you want?" Theo said. 'Your compliments aren't subtle."

"Just don't want to get embarrassed by old gear," Draco said. "Although…hey, you signed up for alchemy class, right?"

Theo frowned. "Who told you that?"

"Sprout's going to have an after-hours club for everyone who wanted to get in," Draco said. "We'd get the textbooks and access to the restricted section."

They started walking, the last stragglers out to the pitch. Far ahead on the grass, Vaisey had the newest players lined up and climbing onto their brooms, setting them to practice laps around the field. Before they got within hearing range, Theo stopped and turned to Draco.

"What's the catch?"

Draco looked around to make sure they were alone. He didn't hear Potter under that cloak, but the sound of the Slytherins beginning their warm-ups played havoc with his senses. He lowered his voice so no one heard.

"The mudblood's going to be there."

Not just any mudblood. The mudblood—such was the notoriety Granger now enjoyed among the purebloods. In every high level class, outstripping everyone's marks, seemingly always at Potter's side, she was now impossible to ignore.

Theo groaned and turned his head, glaring at the clear sky.

"Fucking hell," Theo cursed under his breath. "Of course she is."

Draco waited. If it had been Crabbe or Goyle, he would have pushed them into it, insulted their pride and then bullied them into being quiet during the meeting. But Theo was not one to push. Theo would talk himself into it if Draco let him.

A long moment passed. Draco could practically see the thought growing in Theo's head. 

"…Sprout's running it?" Theo asked.

"And Professor Babbling," Draco added.

"Fuck." Theo leaned on his broom, glaring at the sky again. "So. Two professors. A private class. We just have to put up with sodding Granger."

Draco half-shrugged.

"…fine." Theo sighed and hefted his broom over his shoulder, turning back to the pitch. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"Oh, don't jinx it," Draco said. "Look, see if you can get anyone else, huh? If we're lucky, class'll make next year."

"If we're lucky, we'll all be alive," Theo muttered. "I'll ask. I know the Carrow sisters were curious, but…but to find someone who's interested and willing to hold their tongue around that little know-it-all?"

The thought didn't bear finishing.

Vaisey glared at them from the corner of his eye, but he said nothing about them being late. He had only just finished setting the youngest players to their practices. Instead, Vaisey set the older players into their usual drills, then turned to Draco, holding out a small box. 

"Got a real wild one," Vaisey said. "The charm on it's broken—it's as like to turn and smack you in the face as much as fly straight." 
 
"Lovely," Draco said, ducking as the snitch leaped out of the box and buzzed past his head, nearly slicing his ear open. "—the hell?!"

"Off you go, then," Vaisey said. "Before it nicks anyone else, huh?"

Draco gave him a fierce look, but Vaisey's smug expression meant they both knew Draco was bought and paid for. With another curse, Draco kicked up into the air, one arm up in fear that the snitch would come at him again. 

He was almost at the farthest height possible, just at the regulation's limit on a snitch, when he stopped and looked for the tell-tale sparkle. Below him, the players looked like birds swooping in and out amongst each other. He barely heard them. Here, the wind blew past, bringing the scent of distant rain.

And something else. He looked around again, wondering what that sound was. A bug flying by? Yes, he knew his hearing was better—the vampire curse in him was only muted, not cured, and vampires had a predator's hearing—

He blinked in realization. Holding his breath, he listened intently.

There, to his left—he turned and flew before he even saw it, the snitch flying in erratic angles, and the closer he came, the louder it grew. By the time he was within arm's reach, it was as loud as a cicada.

His hand closed on the snitch. And he smiled slowly even as he brought it down to a startled Vaisey.

"How on earth…?" the captain whispered. There was no question that the snitch was still brokenly erratic. It yanked and shuddered in Draco's hand.

"When you buy a Malfoy," Draco said, savoring this small win. "You get what you pay for."

After practice, Draco again went to the gardens, listened to be sure he was alone, and then said the ritual once more. He passed the apparition lessons flyer and reminded himself to sign up. 

The weekend was fast approaching. He'd need to go into the forest tonight, gather a handful of ingredients. Sage, snow drops, even alihotsy would be found in the forest, but eel eyes? Exotic feathers? Even buying bottles and labels meant he needed to visit Diagon Alley. He would ask Pansy along. 

At dinner, he traded most of his meal away. In return, his close circle had all requested pomegranate juice, which meant he had not just their drinks but a full pitcher before him. If not requested, the house elves wouldn't have provided. It was a rare sight at the tables otherwise.

"You can't live off this stuff forever," Blaise said, pushing the pitcher to him and obligingly taking Draco's tart. "You lose enough weight, and everyone will notice."

"I'll figure something out," Draco said, and let Pansy take his fruit, Theo his shepherd's pie. 

"I swear, if you have to go looking in the forest for more than potions ingredients…" Pansy warned.

He shook his head, not wanting to think about drinking an animal's blood. "Last resort, that."

From across the hall, Granger and Potter appeared with Weasley between them. So the red head had returned. He looked miserable. Well, Weasley usually looked miserable, but now he looked especially so. 

Not surprising. The Daily Prophet had reported on the Weasleys leaving the hospital bedside of Arthur Weasley to attend the funeral of their cousins, the whole Prewett family. The newspaper had reported their deaths as murders but did not go so far as accusing You-Know-Who of the crime. Whether that was on orders from the Ministry or just plain fear was anyone's guess.

Draco had known the Prewetts were related to the Weasleys. Genealogy of the sacred 28 pureblood families was simply a given. But it didn't really sink in that a family had been wiped off the list until he saw Weasley in black robes, the stunned look in his eyes.

Sacred 27, more like. Sure, there were Prewetts who had married into other families, the Weasel's mother for one. But the family name was gone. 

Thus to all blood traitors, as the Death Eaters would say.

And they would burn away the Malfoys just as easily if it came to it.

Draco was halfway through his drink, considering the many ways the dark lord might destroy his family, when a paper was slapped down in front of him. He sat back, finally noticing that Potter had come all the way around the hall and down the aisle, leaning boldly over Pansy, who shrank away from Potter like she'd melt to touch him.

"…the hell?" Theo said, not caring if the professors heard.

"The manners of the ill-bred," Blaise said, moving his plate away. "Mm, I've lost my appetite."

"Are you insane?" Draco hissed. "You really—"

"I don't care what you say about me," Potter said over him. "And for whatever reason, Hermione said you want your name on this thing."

Even more indignant now that the mudblood was mentioned, Draco looked down at the paper.

Hogwarts Application for the Creation of a Student Club

Purpose: To study alchemy and alchemical functions in all forms of magic

Sponsor(s): Pomona Spout, Bathsheda Babbling

Place: 6th Floor Tea Room

Activities: Reading, discussion.

Fundraising: not applicable

Materials: not applicable

Signatories: Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, Megan Jones, Luna Lovegood, Melinda Bobbin, Dean Thomas.

Draco sighed. "That's all you lot could get?"

"I don't mind if it doesn't make," Potter said. "So I don't have to hear you complain about being upstaged by Hermione."

Draco suddenly understood why his father had been baited into physically assaulting Arthur Weasley years ago. 

But, to both of their surprise, Blaise slid the paper out from under Potter's hand toward himself, signing it, then giving it to Theo, who did the same. Theo sent it down the Slytherin table where it reached the Carrow sisters, who nodded and signed silently, passing it back up. 

"That's twelve," Theo said, holding the quill out to Draco.

Draco wanted to snap the quill in half. Tear the paper in half. Tackle Potter and break his nose. Clamp his teeth around Potter's throat and bite down until Potter was screaming and screaming—

"…Draco…" Pansy whispered. 

Looking away, glaring at the paper, Draco signed his name with a violent flourish that almost tore the paper.

Potter took it with a small smile, adding "You've got your father's temper."

The entire Slytherin table gasped, looking at Draco, expecting a roar, a leap over the table, a fight and both of them carted off to Filch's dungeon.

Draco's anger was swallowed by fear of what the dark lord would do if he jeopardized the plan so blatantly. His parents, dead. Tortured to death. Tortured to madness. Potter's comment only drove home what had happened to Potter's family. Draco, in his mind's eye, saw his parents killed by the same spell.

"I'm sure I do," Draco said, flat, as if his emotions had died. "Can you tell where yours came from?"

Potter's face darkened. He didn't answer. But he took the paper, walked back to Granger and handed it off, quietly muttering with her.

The Slytherin table was nearly silent.

"Good god," Pansy whispered. "You looked like you were going to eat him."

Aware that he was being stared at, Draco finished his drink in one go and stood, leaving his satchel behind. Someone would grab it. He didn't want—no, he couldn't stay to explain. Couldn't stay surrounded by the rumble of beating hearts and held breaths. He wanted nothing more to leap from one table to the next until he pounced on Potter, knocking him backward so hard his head broke against the wall. 

Breathing heavily, he escaped the Great Hall and walked up the first set of stairs he found, up, up, anywhere but here. 

He spent the rest of the evening walking the halls of Hogwarts, heading down familiar corridors, deliberately turning toward ways he had never gone down before. He told himself it was in service of his mission, to find a way into the castle, to discover hidden passages and rooms. Like the little alcove he'd found for himself, his own private study room. But he had never been good at lying to himself.

He was searching Hogwarts for a secret way in, yes. But mostly he wanted to lose himself in its labyrinthine corridors.

Walking the halls, alone and away from anyone else, brought relief from the scent of blood, the constant sound of chatter. The school itself was a fine distraction.

The castle was fascinating. Despite spending so many years here, he'd seen only a sliver of its secrets. He found small study areas everywhere, stairways that went from one floor to another and no further, the occasional unused classroom. He found places he'd forgotten, classes he'd taken once for a semester and had faded from his memory. Professors in their offices, grading papers. Windows overlooking the battlements.

And in the walking back and forth, not wanting to return just yet, in wanting a quiet, lonely place to retreat from the world, he heard a door click open behind him.

There was no heartbeat, no scent besides dust. He was alone. So who had opened the door? Where had the door come from? It had been a wall and a tapestry, he was sure.

He pushed the door open, stepping into a broad room of a few candles casting more shadows than light. It looked like any other room in the castle, but there was something about the high vaulted ceilings and alcoves that Draco remembered. He'd been here before, in the Inquisitorial Squad, when they'd found a list of student names of Dumbledore's Army.

The strange "come and go" room…Potter's group had called it something else, but Draco'd never really caught the name. He just knew this was a place that came and went when it was needed. Now he knew where it was.

He frowned. So did many other students. It wasn't safe. But maybe it could still prove useful.

He stepped out, glancing up and down the hall to see that he was alone. Breathed in deep to be sure. Committed the hall to memory and noted the way here. He would be back.

When he returned to his bed, not too long before he would have to rise again, he found his satchel on his bed with a bottle of the remaining pomegranate juice and a note in Pansy's handwriting that he'd better top up on that so she didn't wake up with him looming over her one night. He sighed, drinking down the whole bottle. 

It kept him alive, true. It didn't end his craving for actual blood.

He stared at the wall for a long time, looking past the wall at some point in the distance, wondering if he'd made a terrible mistake in fighting the curse. In casting the strange Ankou spell. In trying to cast an animagus on himself. 

In this small dormitory, he felt like he was already dead and buried. 

No.

He curled up on the bed.

He felt like he was changing into something he didn't even know the name of.

Chapter Text

On Saturday, students who had a permission slip could visit Hogsmeade, riding in carriages with a professor and a prefect each. Snape nearly didn't write the form for him, worrying less about whatever the dark lord intended for Draco, and more about what Draco intended if left to his own devices in the castle. Draco suspected that his godfather filled out the slip to distract him with shopping.

"You'll want small potions bottles," Snape said, writing a list out for him as well. "Glass stoppers and sealing wax—memory charms? You'll want gray ribbon. Blank labels. You can use my carrying trays and my old potions bag. Visit Stitches and Draughts and mention I sent you. It's common to make an extra potion for the shop owner to try, so keep that in mind."

Draco nodded dutifully, glancing around the office. It was ostensibly the office for the Potions professor, but being teacher of Defense Against the Dark Arts didn't mean Snape would give up his workshop to Slughorn. Snape had built this place up as his personal supply for years, and only after great convincing by Dumbledore had he even given up the storeroom. Snape knew where everything in this room was placed, down to the smallest vial.

Which would make Draco's task all the more difficult when he sneaked inside. He didn't ask about the book his mother had sent, but he noted the office layout. If he had to, he would have to find that book again. Which meant he would have to break in here. Or into Snape's private quarters.

"I saw you signed on for apparation lessons. I'll add the knight bus to this slip," Snape said, writing in the dates on the form. "In case there are questions. Your parents would not protest you having options."

"Are my parents well?" Draco asked.

Snape hesitated, his hand resting on top of the desk. Draco's head lifted marginally. There—inside the top drawer, most likely.

"…I believe so," he said. "The dark…he would have told me otherwise."

"To boast," Draco said flatly.

Snape nodded once. He finished signing his name to the form and handed it to him.

"Be careful," Snape said, sounding infinitely tired. "Stay with your friends. Don't—"

"Don't run off on my own," Draco said. "I won't."

Of course it was a lie. At Hogsmeade, as he slipped away from the group of Slytherins, with Blaise and Pansy letting him know when no one was looking, he stole away to the Three Broomsticks Inn, waited his turn, and used the floo to travel all the way to Diagon Alley.

His first stop was a quick walk around the corner into Knockturn Alley, to Borgin and Burkes. 

The shop was much as he remembered it—shelves upon shelves of trinkets, jewelry, statuettes, bottles, dolls, all with little labels beside each, giving their history and background. There were large pieces of furniture, all very ancient looking, trunks and a very large cabinet that loomed over everything in the store. 

He went up to the counter, finding the owner seated as he polished something small in his hands.

"Ah, the young Malfoy," Borgin said, smiling in welcome, but as Draco approached, Borgin's smile faded in confusion, and he peered at Draco as if he found him blury. "Now that's…strange. Are you all right?"

Struck by the depths of how not all right he was, Draco laughed once, a half-hysterical bark that startled Borgin back. 

"Not quite," Draco admitted, glancing away. "Things are…well. I'm here looking for something particular."

Borgin set down the small waterglobe, hands on the counter. "And what might that be? Got a lot of things in here that might do."

"Without going into many details," Draco said, reassured when Borgin waved his concern off, "I want a cloak. With a hood."

Borgin frowned. "You can get something like that from any clothier."

"I need something durable," Draco said. "That can take a spell. A strong spell."

Now Borgin nodded once. "Something that can hold a jinx or a hex."

"A real one," Draco said. "I'm not putting any little mending or cleaning charm on it."

"No…no, you wouldn't, would you? Come around, see what I have."

Borgin took him around the shop, between tight shelves and floor displays, to a wardrobe with several red and gold robes hanging up. Borgin closed the wardrobe and opened it again, revealing several green robes, then closed and opened the wardrobe yet one more time to numerous cloaks hanging on pegs. His hand moved along the row, murmuring "wool invernness, toadskin full cloak, feather-felt half…ah, here we go. Flax linen, bit short for a full cloak, but it's sturdy, takes a spell readily, and it only gets better with age."

Draco took the offered cloak, unfurled it and put it over his shoulders. Soft and tan, it ran down to the floor, and when he pulled the hood up, it settled easily over his head and draped low.

"Better with age?" he asked.

"S'why it ain't stiff and scratchy," Borgin said. "Fresh off the loom, it's all fibers. That one's years old, strong enough to hold up going through thorns. It won't rot like other fibers if it gets damp. And if you want to dye it, it'll take the color ready enough…it'll fade if you go out in the sun lots, though."

Draco chuckled. "No worry about that. Can you—?" He stopped himself from asking for a dye job. He didn't have the galleons for it. "…no. I'll take it as is. Can you send it to Hogwarts, care of Draco Malfoy?"

"'Course," Borgin said, folding it up for him as they returned to the front. "Shall I send the bill to Malfoy estate? There'd be a twenty galleon retainer."

Draco didn't hesitate. "Of course, that'd be best. If I could send a note along with?"

If Borgin thought it was odd, he didn't say. He simply gave the paper and quill to Draco, who wrote very briefly. Mail could be searched, and the dark lord might be looking over his father's shoulder. He had to keep it short.

— Apologies, necessary for my work in the school. My thanks for all your help. -Draco

There, oblique enough to sound like a child spending money without permission, but clear enough to Lucius and Narcissa that the book had helped.

He waited for Borgin to ring up the purchase, properly box the cloak, address the label, in the usual way, and Draco glanced around the shop in idle curiosity. There was the hand of glory that  he still found intriguing, perhaps useful someday, amulets and necklaces promising terrible curses—

He stopped.

"Forgive me," he said slowly, not sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. "But that is a remarkably ugly cabinet."

Borgin chuckled, not even looking up. "I know exactly which one you mean. Useful, even if it's broken."

"'Broken'?" Draco echoed, looking at the large wardrobe that loomed over the shop. He hadn't really looked at it before because it looked like part of the wall, covered in dust and small knickknacks.

"It's a vanishing cabinet," Borgin said. "Back when we had to hide from muggle mobs. And of course later, when the priests needed a bolthole, huh? But its twin was lost sometime ago, and I've never been able to find out where it leads."

Draco swallowed once. He had seen its twin. In Hogwarts. 

The idea snapped into his head—enter the cabinet here, come out inside the school. No portkey, no floo, no apparition…and as easily as stepping in and out. He could fill Hogwarts with Death Eaters in minutes.

"Could it be connected again?" Draco asked as Borgin finished up the bill and enclosed it in an envelope. "If the other was found?"

Borgin shook his head once with a sad sigh. "If it's broken on this end, then it might be ruined on the other. Still. I'd sell it half off. I've only kept it so long 'cause…the chance, y'know? The chance it could work."

Draco nodded once. Yes. A chance.

He visited Mulpepper's Apothecary next, one of the very few stores that had an entrance on both Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley. Most reputable wizards didn't know about the entrance on the other side of the building, where the customary potions materials of ingredients, bottles, and labels sat beside little dolls, human teeth and vials of blood. All legal, all questionable, and all a front for materials one had to know about to ask for.

He emerged with his purchases again on the way to Hogwarts, and a good hundred pounds poorer. Rare ingredients were not as a cheap as a flax cloak, and the proprietor would not take the chances that Borgin would with a regular customer. Still, Draco had not only his supplies but the shop owner's curious interest in anything he might make. It was a start.

And that left one last appointment. The sun was going down, he hadn't eaten, and he knew that somewhere his aunt was waiting. But he realized that he didn't know where she intended to meet him. She couldn't have said in her letter in case it was intercepted, which left him standing in a small alcove, out of the way of shoppers and street sellers, not sure where to go.

He froze when he felt the soft grip of a hand on his shoulder.

"So good of you to come," his aunt whispered just behind him. "Turn. Follow."

Steeling himself, telling himself he was a Death Eater in all but name and mark, that he was bold as any other dark wizard, he turned as if nothing was wrong and found his aunt Bellatrix smiling in invitation, leading him to the brick wall that shuddered, cracked wide enough to let them pass, then closed up behind them again. 

Candles covered in wax drippings lit the sign near the ceiling, the Galan Lay. Draco blinked. He knew his folk were the twice faithful, but he had never seen a place so open about it. In the corner, someone was playing a violin and singing an old tune he hadn't heard in ages, I douse the candle, trust the dark…eyes like stars beside me…

There was little else to see. It was clearly a restaurant, but a small one, with a handful of tables spread along the wall, tall chairs with high sides to keep out drafts and hide the diners from easy view. The walls were hewn rock, the ceiling low and rough, and the candle on the table barely lit a small circle around them. 

"Order first," Bellatrix said softly. "My treat."

He hadn't seen her in weeks. She was always off on her lord's business, only returning to sleep, to brew poison, to torture someone in the basement. Her hair was wild as always, as untamed as her eyes, and she seemed genuinely pleased to be with him. She always seemed pleased—she'd never had a child of her own and his memories of her always involved her giving him candy and toys.

Then again, the last time he'd seen her, she'd been gouging out a muggle-born's heart to use in a potion. 

Against his better judgment, he took his eyes off of her, gazing at the short menu. Ortolan bunting drowned in wine, young goose foie gras, yearling peryton veal, steamed egg ala nightjar (soft upon request), live mandrake, blood-in-your-eye. He knew these dishes—his mother had made sure he had a full grasp of etiquette so he didn't embarrass himself—but these were not customary in the Malfoy house. Or any house not given to the dark.

From the corner, the violin played on, hidden, hidden, I hear them above me. So low, it crept through the air, filling the small space. 

"Nightjar, soft," he said, "please. And pomegranate juice."

Passing along the order to the waiter, a ghost with a head split by an axe, Bellatrix chuckled once. "Soft-hearted, still. I can tell you haven't made your first kill yet."

She said it so matter of factly that Draco slowly came to remember her overwhelming presence. He'd been around Death Eaters, had even seen Voldemort for a few harrowing moments, but no one lived this life more devotedly than his aunt.

"Not yet," he said.

She favored him with a smile. "That's what I like to hear. I'm also pleased to see that you haven't tasted blood yet. It's wise to refrain, even if it makes the hunger difficult to control. Your first frenzy should be at the right moment."

Draco hadn't heard of a first frenzy. He didn't think it was something that made it into the official registries. And he didn't have to think hard about what that meant.

"I've found that pomegranates help," he said slowly, not sure how much to reveal to her, not sure he could hide anything if he tried. "One of the books in the library…it had suggestions…"

"You always were so studious," she said, reaching out to caress his cheek, not so much like a doting aunt but like a snake nuzzling a little bird. "So much more clever than your father."

Draco swallowed once. "I'm lucky to take after my mother that way."

"Yes," she said. "You are. Willing to do your own work rather than trust others to do it for him. Willing to ask for help when you're in over your head. What is this book you need translated?"

He set the book before her. She turned it, whispering the title L'Origine du Mort-vivant: Une Variété d'Ankou. Recognizing the god's name, she glanced at him, her slow smile eager, like a child with a new toy. 

She opened the cover, carefully turning the first pages, running her fingers along the rat and worm eaten margins. She skipped over whole sections, reading out titles and dismissing them, "Legend's source…faithful adherents…warding off psychopomps of all kinds…ah, here we are."

She pressed the book open, reading in a whisper, translating as she went.

"L’Ankou est un ancien revenant, le cadavre vivant,—the…ancient living corpse—la dernière créature ensevelie…où un nouveau gardien sera choisi…the last creature buried each year. Il chevauche son charriot cliquetant…in his clacking carriage, yes…Mais l’Ankou est une créature de changement. Plus qu’une mort, il est un passeur, menant l’âme vers sa forme prochaine. Yes, here it is. This is what you what."

Draco leaned forward, looking over her hand as she pointed at each word. 

"But the ankou is a creature of change…from one form to the next. …comment ils offrirent une part d’eux-mêmes et devinrent autre chose, une créature ni vive ni morte, prise au piège et pourtant libérée. We pledge something important of ourselves and transform into something new. Neither alive nor dead."

She looked up at him with eyes bright, delighted. "Draco, my dear boy…what have you done to yourself? Or have you done it yet?"

Had her eyes always been so large? He felt like he was falling, remembering the growling thunderous roar of the ritual between him and Pansy, the sense of something monstrous breathing just behind him. The memory flared up in his mind as if he was there, "Annwn, Ankou, swa let he byrn—"

Bellatrix clapped her hands together, her fingertips at her lips, amazed at what she had seen in his thought. Draco sat back in the chair, blinking hard, gasping for air.

"Oh, how marvelous…" she whispered. "And so reckless. That couldn't have come from the Hogwarts library. No…"

He swallowed once. There was no hiding from her legilimency. He was in danger. His family was in danger. His mother's desperate gambit to keep him from fully turning into a vampire against the dark lord's wishes—

Hide yourself in truth, Narcissa had said. Lies don't have to be false.

"From the library at home," he breathed. "There were old spells. To the old gods."

"Mm, yes, that would be it," she nodded. "I never liked learning out of books, but you're more academic than I was at your age. Little book thief…I'm sure that's not the only interesting thing in there. What did the spell do for you?"

"I don't know." Draco's mouth twisted. "…Snape kept it once he found out."

Bellatrix frowned. "What?"

"He saw it when he saved me and Pansy," Draco said. "There was rowan all over us. We'd breathed it in."

Bellatrix grimaced to hear of rowan, but her disapproval of Snape's action remained. "You'll have that book back. I'll see to it."

Draco nodded once. "Thank you, aunt."

Inwardly he thought he needed to rush back to school as fast as possible and warn his godfather. 

"That…that was legilimency," he said.

Her head tilted as she smiled. "Oh yes. I need to teach you. I'm sure your godfather could," although her tone indicated that she didn't think much of that, "but I'll be faster at it. If a little rough."

Lunch finally arrived. Draco was served a half dozen soft boiled eggs, with the half formed remnants of nightjar embryos inside. Had he asked for the dish proper, the eggs would have had a mostly formed chick inside.

Across from him, Bellatrix devoured a mandrake with its mouth torn out, its limbs flailing drunkenly as it dripped the wine it had been doused in, straining to make a sound. Instead, it moaned silently as the music played, hidden, hidden…I douse the candle…eyes like stars beside me.

"I'll give you your first lessons here," Bellatrix said. "And I'll show you how to practice alone. You will need as many skills as you can gather. Our lord hopes for great things from you."

"I…" Draco's voice caught in his throat for a moment. He took a breath. "I hope I can live up to his expectations."

"His grace is so much to take in, isn't it?" She conjured a quarto wine bottle in her hands, small enough to fit in his robe's pocket. "Here, a gift. Don't drink it now. When you finish your planning to bring us in, when we begin the great work inside the castle, then drink. The frenzy will help you with your first kill."

Here she put her hand on his, covering it reassuringly. 

"The first one is the hardest," she said. "After that, you'll find it's so much easier. Joyful, even."

He couldn't help it.

"Do you remember your first?" he asked.

Her look turned inward, and she smiled a little sadly. 

"I didn't even know their names," she said. "They were muggles my lord pointed out. He said they would be a good first start. It took a few tries, oh, more than couple. But they didn't scream and no one saw us, and that was it. I can still remember the look on their faces…filthy vermin."

"If he…" Draco started. "When he returns, properly returns, takes over again…will we start that again? Destroying muggles?"

"Of course," Bellatrix said. "Muggles, mudbloods, blood traitors…"

In Draco's mind, he saw a wave of blood washing over bodies in Diagon Alley. Blood flowing down the stairs of Hogwarts. Dead eyes wide open over gaping mouths pouring blood, all set to the music of dark wizards. I hear them calling me, trust the dark…lay beside me, lay beside me.

Intrigued by his expression, with a little push, she looked in and saw his imagination play out its scenes of horror. She smiled. "Yes. Exactly. You understand."

Sometime later, pale, his hands in his pockets to hide his shaking, he arrived via floo back in Hogsmeade. How long had her lesson been? He stepped out into a drizzling rain, one of very few people on the street. The sun was starting to set, the carriages had all gone back to the castle, and he had a long walk ahead of him.

The rain felt like bits of ice, a remnant of the cold weather spell still lingering over the street. He lifted his face, letting it sting his cheeks. It helped take away some of the touch of his aunt's mind clawing through his thoughts. 

"Lay beside me," he murmured, the song filling his head. "Lay beside me…eyes like stars…"

He put his hood up and started to walk. It gave him time to think, and he skirted close to the edge of the road, slipping into the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He'd been gone too long. He was sure his absence had been noticed. No doubt he'd be scolded by Snape. That was fine. He needed to warn his godfather anyway.

Easier to walk surrounded by the dark forest, hidden in the trees, the wild plants, the creek whispering the song back to him. "I hear them, I hear them…" Oh, his head hurt. The flowers here glowed at night, flickering as the wind rustled their leaves, dazzling his eyes.

Halfway there, the sun touched the horizon—time to cast the animagus charm yet again. He fumbled for his wand, struggling to close his hand over the shaft, settling for holding it against his chest as he said the words. He wished the sky was full of lightning. An electrical storm would finish off this damn spell. But then what would he change into?

"Eyes like stars…eyes like…"

By the time he spotted the school in the distance, he saw the faint movement showing that there were people milling around the front doors. Damn. There'd be no sneaking into the castle that way. And if he was caught trying through the side? He couldn't walk into the school like this. His satchel was heavy with potions supplies, a book on vampirism, a bottle of blood… No. He couldn't go in with that. 

He didn't think they'd spotted him yet. He bent behind a bush, grimacing to see rowan and blackberries, but they were a nice thick patch of thorned growth that he could hide his satchel in. He gave the ground a flick, and leaves and stones covered the bag neatly, settling as he pronounced a concealment charm. There. Safe.

A shriek made him duck low, lying flat against the dirt and stones. His heart, which he hadn't felt properly for so long, beat heavy—slow, painful beats inside his cheat. He grimaced and put his hand over where it lay, thinking anyone could hear it in the stillness. The leaves sounded so loud as he tried to hold still as voices carried on the wind.

"—are you—lucky if no one—"

"—not my fault—something moved—"

He frowned. Was that…? His fear faded, replaced by suspicion. Gripping his wand, he started moving toward where he thought the voices had come from. From one tree to another, his fingers sunk into the soft earth, he crept along the ground. Behind trees, behind the large stones and broken outcrops, over tangled roots and drooping branches, he crouched in the deep shadows where the last rays of sunlight didn't reach. 

Yes, there they were—he recognized the Weasel's red hair anywhere. And where Weasley went, the mudblood and scar-head were sure to follow. What were they doing? Potter was on his hands and knees watching something on the ground. Granger held her wand out toward the forest, ready to cast a spell, but her hand trembled as she gazed wildly between the trees. Weasley stood beside her, following her look.

"There's nothing," Weasley whispered. "Just admit you got spooked by—"

"I know I heard someone," Granger said over him. "I know there's something."

"It's the Forbidden Forest," Weasley said. "There's tons of things out here. It could be fairies, it could be vampires…spiders…"

His voice hitched at the last one. Now he took his wand and held it out, looking for the faintest movement.

"Hermione, come back here!" Potter said, looking at the small plant in front of him. "It worked!"

Glancing at him, then back at the forest, Granger grumbled something under her breath and went back to his side, kneeling beside him. Faintly bluish light glowed and illuminated their faces. Both of them smiled excitedly, and she brought out a knife that gleamed until she sliced whatever had provided the light. Potter dug at something, and then they were climbing to their feet, brushing dirt off.

"That should work," she said. "Right after flowering."

"That's one," Potter said. "Ashwinders next, right?"

"The eggs," she said with a nod. "But we can't do that out here."

They were starting to walk away, calling Weasley after them. Draco strained to hear their conversation as they moved farther, but Weasley still hand his wand out, scanning for anything following. Draco cursed and crouched low, thinking he could maybe follow just out of sight. 

He would have sworn he hadn't made a sound, but Weasley suddenly aimed right at him. Draco froze, eyes wide. No, not at him—a few inches above him, but still damned close. He didn't even breathe.

Weasley frowned, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes. Weasley bent slightly, and Draco had the terrible feeling that he wasn't as hidden as he'd hoped. His heart was pounding again, a slow drumbeat, and his chest started to hurt. He had to breathe, he couldn't keep holding it—he let out his breath and dropped at the same time, cheek to the stones beneath him.

Through the grass, he watched Weasley whirl on his heel, sprinting after Potter and Granger, yelling about a huge spider with glowing eyes—it dropped out of the trees—

Draco paid attention long enough to make sure they weren't coming back—he saw them sprinting less out of fear and more out of excitement—they had done whatever they set out to do. He crouched down where they had been digging. He found a leaf, a stem. A single glowing petal. He couldn't make them out here in the gloom, so he pocketed them and made his way to the edge of the forest. 

He sat there for a long while, waiting just inside the treeline. They must have gone inside by now, hadn't they? But he didn't want to risk running into them. Three against one, and he was so tired from his meeting with his aunt.

The lights of Hogwarts burned, warm and inviting. He saw the occasional figure moving past the windows, the flickers of a lumos charm in the Gryffindor tower. The night was cold and growing colder as the wind blew across him. 

Outside the castle, leaning his head against a tree, he felt less like a Hogwarts student and more like an intruder.

Chapter Text

When Draco finally felt that he could sneak in, he stood and made his way to the door, heading not to the common room but towards his godfather's office. His footsteps rang along the stone walls, and he tried to step more lightly, but he was tired, his head hurt, and he still had business to finish before he could sleep.

To his surprise, the office was open, but it wasn't Snape inside. He glanced in and found Slughorn examining the bottles, taking stock. Draco shied back behind the door frame, risking a glance around the room to see if he could spot the book, but there was nothing in view except for the other man's bag and wand taking notes on what he found.

He didn't want to deal with Slughorn. Draco moved past the doorway, but his foot scuffed the stone floor. There was a startled gasp from inside the office and the sound of something shattering on the floor. Draco broke into a run, turning the corner, easily outrunning the professor. But he didn't stop at the common room—he had to talk to Snape now.

The teachers did not have their chambers near the students, for their own sanity, but Draco had visited Snape's chambers before. He walked through the castle, careful to watch for Filch and his cat, and arrived at his godfather's door. He knocked once, twi—

The door opened before he could finish. Snape looked around to see if anyone had followed him, then waved him in and shut the door. 

"You're worse than your parents," Snape whispered harshly. "Between the three of you, it's amazing anyone can sleep."

"I am hardly—" Draco started to defend himself, then stopped. "Wait, what are my parents—" He stopped again. "No, wait, I'm here to warn you. My aunt—"

"—has already contacted me," Snape snapped, "ranting about the book that you 'rightfully stole'. At least you had enough sense not to say where the book came from."

Draco took a breath. "She's teaching me occlumency."

"She's teaching you…" Snape's voice trailed off in horror. "Good god…what did she see?"

"The spell I cast with Pansy," Draco said. "That I'm trying to cast an animagus charm. She's very interested in what I'll be."

"You're lucky she sees you as a child," Snape muttered. "That she sees you as a six year old child too stupid to walk on his own. That she doesn't think you're as much of a Malfoy as she is. Stay in her good graces. If she even suspected that your parents sent that to you, it wouldn't matter where their loyalties lie."

Draco knew. To Bellatrix, family was important, but the Dark Lord's will took precedence over everything. Experimenting on himself was all well and good. But that his parents had tried to thwart Voldemort's attempt to turn Draco into a vampire…it wouldn't matter how faithfully they served him otherwise.

"Was she…very mad?" Draco asked.

Snape took the book from the mantle over the fire, handing it to him. "I have practice dealing with her. Once I explained that you were a step away from killing yourself with rowan, she calmed down. Do try not to kill yourself with this."

Draco held the book close, intending to read every spell inside. He considered briefly asking Snape for a permission note to check out the other book from the library's Restricted Section, but he decided against it. That would draw undue attention, and he didn't want to explain to anyone why he needed a book about Ankou and blood, not even his godfather. 

"Will you let me help with anything?" Snape asked yet again. "At all? You cannot possibly shoulder the dark lord's demands on your own, whatever they are. No one can."

Draco hesitated. There was so much that Snape could help with, and yet so little that he could trust him with. Snape answered to Voldemort, and Draco had no idea how much he said would get back to the dark lord. His parents were alive, he was sure that Snape was loyal to the Malfoy family, but he knew that some of the Death Eaters didn't trust Snape, and that worry had trickled down to him.

"…my cloak," he said, finally. "I know Potter has a cloak of invisibility. I bought a cloak today, but I need to know the spell and how to charm it."

He watched Snape's gaze turn inward, just for a moment, as if something had been confirmed. Snape's look turned dark, and he went and sat by the fireplace.

"Yes," he murmured. "Yes, I will help with this. However, you may not want a cloak of invisibility. That's a powerful charm, takes some work, and it fades all too quickly. You would not find it of use for long, and the charm takes too long to cast to be all that useful. Otherwise, everyone would be walking around in them."

Draco cursed. "Then…?"

"A cloak of shadows," Snape said. "You'll look a bit like a dementor, but no one will know it's you, it's easy to hide, and…you may come to find you need a way to avoid the sun."

Snape's gaze met Draco's, who understood that his godfather knew something of what had happened. How much had Draco succeeded at keeping secret? How much was Snape being afraid to push and drive Draco away? He sat down slowly in the chair that Snape motioned toward.

"Accio your satchel and things," Snape said. "We can get started tonight."

Draco glanced at the clock. 1 am. Oh well. He supposed he could sleep when he was dead.

He felt dead enough when he woke up still wearing the previous day's clothes, just in time to make it to a lonely window to say the animagus charm. Damn charm….he felt nothing but regret for it now. He was in desperate need of sleep, he had probably botched the spell, and with the ritual and the vampiric curse…if he finally managed a transformation, he'd probably be stuck halfway or a completely mindless beast.

And how bad was his situation that he looked forward to slithering into the Scottish countryside, never to be seen again?

He was dragging his feet toward Herbology when he noticed the side-eye looks he was getting. Everyone in the halls shied away as they passed. And no wonder—grass stains covered the bottom of his pants and the edges of his robes. He was even leaving bits of dirt in his wake. With a bitten off curse, he ducked into the nearest bathroom.

Relieved that it was empty, he went to the far mirror, leaning close so he could see himself in the poor light, and tidied himself up, casting quick charms to clean off his clothes and get the wrinkles out. He even used a charm his mother had taught him, "beor eag," banishing the circles under his eyes. The spell had the uncomfortable side effect of making his heart race, but with how slow his heart now beat, he felt nothing.

He straightened his clothes, appraising himself in the mirror again. No, he hadn't been lurking in the dark forest late at night—he'd just spent too much time in study after lights out, that's all. 

Only now that he was done did he begin to notice the decrepit state of the bathroom. The sinks, like the mirrors, were chipped along the edges, and the few candles here were burned low, like their charms had been allowed to grow weak. The door to the farthest stall was entirely off its hinges and leaned against the wall. And no one had come in after him. From the dust and grime on everything, no one came in here ever.

"Lost?"

Standing in the doorway, Pansy gave him a wry look as she entered. Her voice brought a little relief, and then Draco realized what was wrong. He looked around again. Was this the—?

"Yes, it's a girl's toilets," Pansy said, walking by him to splash water on her face, damping a few stray hairs back. "But no one comes in here. You're safe."

"Why's no one come in?" he asked. "Why's it like this?"

"It's Myrtle's," Pansy said, looking at herself in the mirror, brightening her eyes, running a quick charm over her lips so that they glossed pink. Her hands ran over her face and smoothed her complexion, and a last touch of her fingers colored her eyelids a light smoky color. 

"But she must be out," Pansy continued. "You'll know when she's in here, she howls something awful. Still, in a pinch…"

They left the bathroom, and Draco glanced at the sign on the door. Yes, it said Girls Bathroom, but the sign was faded so that it blended with the wall, and the dark gloom inside seemed to leak out, darkening the door and further hiding the sign.

"You look exhausted," Pansy said, walking alongside. "Where did you go yesterday? Blaise and I were half-frantic when you stayed out past hours."

Draco frowned. "I had a lot of errands. Got a lot of business done. Got my book back from Snape, too, so I thought you and I—"

"—so I wish you the best time reading it," she said with mock sincerity. "Keep the damn thing away from me. I'm not casting anything else out of it."

He glanced down at her. "Has anything bad happened?"

"No," she said, shaking her head, "and I'm not risking it again. Snape was right—my life is a lot less complicated if I stay out of Malfoy business."

He gave her a look, but she was used to his looks. They were almost at the herbology classroom, and she had farther to go, so he asked if she would be willing to attend the alchemy club meeting. She gave him her own look, which wasn't intimidating so much as a polite invitation to go to hell.

"You already have Hestia and Flora," Pansy said, turning to walk backward, "and Blaise and Theo and you. That's plenty."

"You're not at all curious?" he asked. "Alchemy never makes."

"Because it's boring," she said. "Just try not to start any fights and you'll be fine."

"Some help you are," he said after her, heading inside the class.

He drowsed through classes. Toward the end of Transfiguration, as everyone was packing up their books, he remembered the plant bits in his pocket. When he was sure Granger and her friends weren't looking at him, he pulled out he trimmings and examined them. He expected a strange or rare plant, but he recognized the stem and leaf bits immediately.

Common squill. Although, from the curl of the leaves and how thick and cleanly cut the stem was, this came from a squill in spring, not in the fall. In fact—the bell rang and class started to empty of students, but Draco took a moment to look up the page in his herbology textbook. Yes, he was right—this plant had flowered. 

"But squill doesn't flower in the fall," he murmured.

Which was why Potter had said something about it flowering. Granger, Potter, and Ron out in the Forbidden Forest, forcing a flower to open too soon so they could harvest the bulb.

"Don't you have a meeting to attend?"

Draco blinked and looked up. Flitwick sat at his desk, going over the stack of scrolls he had for grading. The stack was taller than he was.

"…what?" he asked, then glanced at the clock.

"Pomona—oh, excuse me, Professors Sprout and Babbling were going on about the alchemy club you started," Flitwick said. He smiled at him. "It's good to see the club starting up with so many from each house."

"Uh, right," he murmured, getting his things together, nodding respectfully as he ran to make the meeting. Halfway there, he realized that Flitwick meant that it was good to see the Slytherins and Gryffindors sitting down together without snarling. 

Just how clueless were the rest of the world? Of course dark wizards could keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Slytherins knew how to bide their time.

He arrived in the herbology class room right after the clock struck 4 pm. Tea had only just started, and the house elves had prepared a small buffet beside Sprout's desk. Draco set his satchel down against the wall with the rest of the satchels and bags marked with green and silver labels. Still, he took the moment to glance at the other bags, not obvious about it but spotting a few interesting things—orange gold eggs poking out of a cloth bundle, a tiny bottle with pink fumes escaping from the cork. Intriguing.

The Carrow sisters were gathering little cookies and eclairs on small plates, and Blaise had abandoned the chamomile tea and pumpkin juice to the Hufflepuff students, going after the Earl Grey and scones and tarts. 

Draco spotted Theo among the juices, waving a small carafe of pomegranate juice at Draco while mouthing 'you owe me one' and hoarding the cucumber sandwiches. Draco joined him and let him use his plate to add more sandwiches to his pile. 

Professor Bathsheda transfigured a bunch of desks into a single round table where everyone took their seats, sizing each other up. The Gryffindors had Potter, Granger, Neville, and Parkes, although Granger had brought the Lovegood girl to sit beside her. It looked like Granger hadn't convinced Weasley to come after all, and two of the girls left when they saw the lack of the Quidditch Keeper.

The rest of the club was made up of mostly Slytherins. Draco was surprised to see so few Ravenclaws and almost no Hufflepuffs—only Megan Jones and Thelma Holmes. 

Professor Sprout sighed to watch the girls leave, but it was a small thing. "Down to twelve, but no matter. This is more than I expected, and I'm sure Neville and I can drum up more support from our own house."

Professor Babbling nodded. "I can ask among the Ravenclaws. I simply haven't had time. This is the first moment I've had time to actually sit down."

"Grading?" Neville asked.

"Research," Babbling said. "I'm so happy I don't have to grade endless essays. At least runes assignments are easy to mark."

"Are you sure you'll want to take Alchemy over?" Sprout asked. "You know it's so much worse than essays."

Granger pounced to get them on topic. "Does alchemy need a lot of writing?"

"Ever so much writing," Babbling sighed, as if she could see the stacks of scrolls around her, dripping off the desk. "It's half philosophy and unraveling the laws of magic. It's why so many of the books are in the Restricted Section."

"Honestly, though," said Babbling, "that's half the fun, seeing what the students come up with. At some point, your inexperience and lack of training can be as valuable as years of practice."

Potter half-chuckled. "Because if you don't know the rules, you don't know what you can't do."

Professor Sprout nodded excitedly. "For instance, I know your potions class is focusing on antidotes for blended poisons. The process of finding the correct antidote is in itself a kind of alchemy."

Professor Babbling nodded with her. "Poisons have individual antidotes. Put multiples together, and the combined antidote won't work—you must find a proper reagent."

Draco frowned. "But…considering that the reagent must create something new, it's not really potions—that's changing materials. Creating something new would violate Gamp's law."

Granger sat straight with the flash of something coming together. "Oh, oh, yes, Slughorn mentioned that it's nigh alchemy, to find the one ingredient that blends the potions together and creates an antidote for the entire mess."

Neville leaned back in his seat. "Plants and ingredients that work like that…those aren't listed. I don't remember reading about them."

Draco shook his head. "You can't limit yourself to plants. A reagent could be anything—a flame, blood, a curse…"

"Hair," Granger added. "To make the antidote, you'd have to consider anything…"

"Could narrow it down to what reacts with the ingredients," Draco mused.

"But that would automatically expand out to whatever reacts with their reactions," Granger said. "It becomes a massive undertaking."

Draco chuckled. "You could have antidote that has dozens of ingredients."

Granger huffed. "Or over fifty and a chunk of my own hair…"

Draco and Granger met each other's looks, then looked away irritably.

"Wait a moment," Hestia Carrow broke in. "I'm afraid—"

"—we've been left behind a bit," Flora Carrow said. "What's a blended poison?"

Blaise, who happened to be in Slughorn's class and the club as well, explained the idea of putting several poisons together in one bottle, and Theo added how it was then impossible to combine antidotes to cure those poisons.

"Oh, I get it now," Neville said, "poison someone with aconite, nightshade, and foxglove, and all three of them will hurt. But to save the victim, you can't just mix the antidotes together. You have to mix the antidotes and then make them all react together." 

Luna, making a tower of her tea cakes, added that there's the common antidote, but even that should only be given for one poison at a time. To take care of multiple poisons would be very difficult indeed, an individual mixture every single time.

Draco shook his head once. He had heard his godfather talk about something like this, when he showed Draco how to create a poison for the dark lord. That there would be no possible fix, not in time. Not unless they…

"Just shove a bezoar down their throat," Draco said, then glared at Potter, who had said the exact same thing with him and met his gaze evenly.

"Exactly," Professor Sprout said. "I know Hagrid helps collect bezoars from some of his creatures. There are so many things we don't know about magic, things that nature seems to create with no difficulty."

"If we're getting this far into theory already," Professor Babbling said, "I think, Pomona, we had best get them the book."

"'The book'?" Granger echoed. 

"Yes, but not the textbook," Professor Sprout said. "Well, not the official one."

Professor Babbling laughed. "Yes, Madame Pince would never. However, the older one, it's just as useful. You know how ridiculous the textbook writers are."

Luna, slowly decimating her leaning tower of tarts, asked what the difference was.

"Oh, you know," Professor Sprout said, already accio'ing an official request slip from her desk and filling it out. "Marksby and Marksby are the biggest textbook publishers for Europe, and I swear they just change out a few pages and then charge twenty galleons for the new edition."

"The real issue," Professor Babbling said, "is that the official textbooks must stay locked up unless there's a class. But a copy for the club's perusal, that should be fine."

Neville happened to be closest to Professor Sprout, who handed him the slip. In that one movement, Draco saw the hope ignite and die in the same instant in Granger's eyes. In Neville's hands was the key to accessing the Restricted Section…and Neville had not changed from his younger days. Neville would never think of stealing books from the library. Neville would probably tattle on anyone who tried.

Granger glanced at Potter, who shrugged, then at Luna, who was tearing her tart and scone in half and stuffing one in the other. No help there. Granger frowned, twisting her napkin in her fingers, then slowly lifted her head, her decision made. There was nothing Gryffindor in her gaze and everything of a witch who wouldn't let anything stand in her way.  

She's going to get those books, Draco realized, lowering his eyes so she wouldn't see him watching. The only question was how much damage she would do along the way. 

Granger nudged Potter and tilted her head once, whispering in his ear. Potter looked at her with wide eyes, then at Neville, then back at Granger as if she were insane. Granger had to bend and whisper with him, and they were lucky that Luna and Neville were distracting the whole table with a conversation about the numerous plants and creatures Luna swore existed and Neville swore just as unequivocally were imaginary. Potter looked no happier with Granger, but he finally gave in just as Neville push Luna for proof.

The bell ring for five o'clock. As house elves appeared for the dishes, the students and professors thanked each other for a lovely tea and rose to gather the remaining pastries. Draco grabbed his satchel, brushing off a last bit of grass and using that as an excuse to remain inside the class. Granger asked Neville as casually as possible when he would go to the library, and when Neville said right now, before dinner, Granger simply said she looked forward to reading them and watched him go. 

A few seconds later, Granger shadowed Neville from several dozen feet back. Draco kept them both in sight, wondering if she had something in mind. Did she have a plan for a distraction? Or a—

In the empty hall, he heard Neville's footfalls, Granger's, his own…and a fourth set, a heartbeat racing in excitement, so close that Draco could have reached out and grabbed them.

He almost did. The surprise of it and the reveal would have been satisfying to watch as Potter turned in shock. But knowing about Potter's cloak might come in handy later, and now he knew Granger's plan. Cause a distraction, get Potter in, get the books under his cloak, and get out again.

No, that wouldn't do. Draco had to stop them. Or, at least, he had to nudge things along the way he wanted.

Neville headed into the library, going straight to the front desk. Granger stood off to one side, back to Neville, pretending to be absorbed in searching the card catalog for a book. Draco moved further up the shelves, glancing around. And he immediately spotted his ticket in. He'd thought he'd have to scheme up something on the spot, but luck was with them. 

On the far side of the library, Romilda Vane and Lavender Brown sat at a table by the window. Both of them had their bags on the floor, and Draco recognized Romilda's as the one by the wall at tea time with the eggs. He hadn't paid much attention to her as she'd left before the soiree started, but the eggs in her bag…that he had noticed.

He took a deep breath. He didn't now how powerful the effect of his spell on her bag would be. He needed a real distraction, after all. 

Granger's eyes were fixed on Neville. She had no clue what to do, frozen in indecision. Was Potter waiting near the gate? Draco imagined Potter preferred using that invisibility cloak of his and didn't want to be so open about breaking the rules. And these were supposed to be brave heroes of the school? Afraid to cause a scene?

Neville was smiling and chatting with Madame Pince, who was unlocking the gate to the Restricted Section. There was no more time.

Draco hid his wand with his sleeve, tilted it under his arm to aim at Romilda's bag, and cast opinn.

An eruption of flames and heat exploded from the bag, throwing Romilda and Lavender from their chairs, knocking Draco off his feet to the floor, with Granger gasping at the fire serpents racing across the ceiling like a wave. Fire rolled up along the shelves, over the books, alive and hungry and twisting over everything and everyone in their way.

Chapter Text

Fallen on his back, Draco felt a wave of heat pass over him as all the ashwinder eggs suddenly hatched. He rose up, crawling backwards away from the conflagration. He'd seen tiny ashwinder nests before, never anything this big. Just how many eggs had Romilda snuck into the school?

Flaming serpents slithered along the curtains and ceiling, racing in swirling loops, igniting anything they touched in the library—the table and chairs, the floor and shelves. Springing from the bookbag, ashwinders poured out one after another, searching for anything that would burn deliciously. Romilda and Lavender scrambled back, shrieking as the serpents curled around their shoes, up their robes and through their sleeves. Lavender's hands went through the ashwinders as she tried to smack them away, and Romilda's conjured water passed uselessly through the flames.

"Glaciatus!"

A white charm crackled through the aisle, splashed on Romilda, and froze several ashwinders in place before they poofed in a spray of ice. A second charm froze away the ashwinders on Lavender.

"You have to freeze ashwinders," Madame Pince said as she ran close, "not wet them."

Neville followed at her heels, casting frost at anything glowing red. And then, running past Draco still on the floor, was Potter, likewise casting glaciatus charms and throwing himself into the thick of the fire.

Draco couldn't help watching for a moment. Pince and Neville were careful to stay at the edges, only reaching in to help pull Romilda and Lavender out of danger. But Potter had no sense of danger and simply dove toward the mass of fire snakes still erupting from Romilda's bag, whirling to splash ice across the walls, easily sniping any snakes that crawled up his leg or off a shelf onto his shoulder.

Draco blinked. No, he needed to go—now, now. He got up and ran—that wasn't suspicious, was it? Of course he had to run, the library was in flames, wasn't it?

The gate to the Restricted Section was still open. He looked over his shoulder one more time. The shelves were completely engulfed in lashing magical flame that began to roll along the ceiling. Pince and Neville were tending to the girls, having left the destruction of the ashwinders to Potter, who didn't care that the edges of his robes were on fire as he took aim, never missing despite the flames along his sleeve.

Draco, despite himself, was impressed.

He would have watched if he didn't have to steal a book.

No one saw him sneak past the gate, bent low, not quite running into the dark rows of books. He kept low, moving along the shelves, his fingertip hovering over the numbers along the spines. The titles were tantalizing— Tenebris Animarum, Maleficia, The Wound Unhealed, Vox Mortis, Into the Veil, Veela na Gigs, Cannibal Charms —but he was here for a reason.

"Stay focused," he whispered to himself, moving around the shelf to the other side, reading the letters. RS I, RS II, RS III…there, now he just needed the L's…

Laburinthos Pharmaka

Lament of the Parseltongued

Ledger of the Drowned Gods

…

Leonora: A Bawdy Tale of a Body Witch

He blinked.

An empty spot.

Where the book should be, there was an empty space. The book beside it lay slanted where L ēoð of Doom should have been.

He stood there, stymied.

It was gone…?

But…?

In the stillness, he heard Potter casting charms, heard Pince and Neville's voices raised over the crackling flames, but they were muffled from distance. Here in the stacks, as he held still, he heard the scuffle of a book being drawn and of steps coming closer.

Someone was in here with him. Someone was grabbing books. Someone he couldn't see.

He realized it as soon as he heard their heartbeat.

Granger. The damn invisibility cloak.

Somehow she knew what book he wanted. And she'd taken it before going for her own books. She was moving down the aisle, moving behind him—

He put out his leg. There was a heavy weight against him, and then Granger lay sprawled on the floor as the cloak tugged partly off, books spilling along the floor. His eyes widened. Here he was only going for a single book. Granger had at least ten, probably more. A small red book, L ēoð of Doom , lay at the very end.

Their eyes met, and he saw the fear pushing out her fury. She didn't want to get caught.

More than that. She was terrified of being caught.

He grabbed the red book, then met her gaze and grabbed the book under it just to make his point. Beyond her indignant gasp, she didn't protest. She couldn't, not if she wanted to escape, too.

He tucked the books in his robes as he slipped past the gate back into the library, noting that the ashwinders had been chased away from the shelves and people and were trying instead to eat the ceiling. Pince was still occupied with the girls, who were shivering and chattering as their clothes lay in frozen tatters. Neville and Potter, standing back to back, slowly whittled down the remaining serpents.

And Draco slid out of the library, down toward the dungeons, like a snake rushing back into his own burrow. He passed the Slytherin common room and instead went down to his little alcove deep in the dungeons. Lonely, quiet, out of sight—he put a lumos charm in the stone basin and sat down, confident that no one would see its light.

His hands trembled in excitement. Finally he could start reading. The hard cover crackled as he opened it, and the pages were yellowed from age, the words handwritten in beautiful calligraphy.

                   L ēoð of Doom:

              Ancou’s Wyrd Wætch

                  Eadric of Wessex

 

                  Wintcestria, DCCCXC

Ancu se deathradere          beorhtwyrhta an anhoga
forleas blac heorot            forleas death begen
ealdraed hrydder              eac nu ealoweard
beorgweard gaestbera      grafhwel steppe

Draco stared past the page.

He shut his eyes and let his head thunk lightly on the wall behind him.

Of course it was poetry—two neat lines of it down the page. And while he recognized Old English, he certainly couldn't read it. He flipped through twenty four pages, all of them impossible to understand.

Sawol forloren                nama forloren · eal Deathes lac
se awierga Ancu             oferhyda gaest
nu grafstappa                 lifescotan gelaeda

No friendly notes of previous students here. The manuscript was clean of marks or smudges. He could even feel the indentions from where the writer's pen had pushed down on the paper.

blodwyrm naedre           givre leohteage
gewunden on beama      forboden sceadu
swigede sothword          fotgenga fylgja

There it was, blodwyrm, exactly what he needed to know. And he couldn't read it. No one he knew could read it.

"Can't be asking Aunt Bella' for help on this one," he sighed, letting his hand fall, holding the book canted.

Snape?

He slowly shook his head. No. The last time he put something in front of Snape, his godfather had whisked it away. Only Bella's threats had put the recipes in his hands again.

Maybe his father would have been able… Draco closed his eyes. If his father was still alive. If he wasn't under the dark lord's suspicious watch.

He looked at the pages again. Okay. No. This wasn't impossible. It was just a setback. He just needed an Old English to Modern English dictionary. There were only twenty four pages. And look—there were some words he could already kind of understand: Ancu, death, begen, forlorn, forboden…

He would need quill and parchment. He would need the dictionary. He would need time. He couldn't do anything about it now—the library was probably still on fire. He took a deep breath. Don't panic, don't get upset. It was just one more step in the process.

If he told himself that enough, maybe he wouldn't scream in frustration. He set the book aside before he threw it at the wall.

What about the other book, the one he'd stolen from Granger? He held it up, tilting it to better see the scuffed letters on the cover. This book was far more popular and more often checked out.

Balancing Alchemical Formulae: On the Corrections of Compromised Conjurations, Charms, Castings, Concoctions and Cures, with a focus on conjured catalysts of alchemical reactions

Draco groaned. It was practically homework. Of course Granger wanted it for her assignments. Trust Granger to find the most involved, obtuse, and dry material. Still, she had wanted it badly enough to risk thieving. Stealing the material away from her almost made the reading worth it. He would read it, even if only to mention the ideas in class and dangle her loss in front of her face.

Should've tried to grab the invisibility cloak, he thought. But no, that would have been too much. Potter would have come for it, and after seeing Potter handling those ashwinders, Draco didn't want to face him in a duel.

Was that what Potter was always like? Draco had never seen him in a fight, not a real fight. He'd wondered how Potter could be such a thorn in the dark lord's side. Now he had seen Potter rush into flames on all sides.

If he didn't hate the bastard, he would have been impressed.

"I am afraid that the library will be closed for the evening," Dumbledore said during dinner. "I've asked the professors to be mindful of this inconvenience on your assignments. Our house elves assure me that they can repair the damage quickly, but it may be late tomorrow when the library is fit for scholars again. In the meantime, I remind everyone of the danger of certain potions ingredients…"

No mention of the theft. Draco tuned out the headmaster after that. He glanced at Granger and flinched to see Potter beside her, and glaring directly at him, too. The mudblood's hand was on Potter's wrist as she whispered to him. She didn't look like she was egging him on—she looked like she was trying to convince him not to leap over the tables and stomp Draco into the floor.

Draco pushed his fare out to his friends and took the carafe of pomegranate juice. Whatever. Scarhead wouldn't go against whatever his girlfriend said. Hopefully.

Besides, they already knew his family was sworn to the dark lord. Too many mistakes on their end had made that painfully obvious. Let them think he was slinking off to the dungeons to perform dark magic. They couldn't do anything about it.

After dinner, after curfew, Draco slipped out of bed and headed for Pansy's hidden workshop, his new cloak and the needed ingredients in his hands.

The wizarding world made dark magic sound so taboo and exciting and dangerous. In reality, Draco found much of it as tedious as homework.

The problem with dark potions was not the gathering of dangerous ingredients, nor the handling of poisons or the occasional life and death hazard of inhaling toxic fumes. No. The real problem was the endless grinding of ingredients in a mortar and pestle, spending hours breaking down the harshest substances into fine powder and paste.

He had been in Pansy's hidden workshop, borrowing her tools, for the better part of the night.

Patience, Snape had said. You're not a damn first year anymore.

The recipe had been in his mother's book, Shadewed Alembik. Snape had showed him the recipe, and Draco had recognized the notes scribbled in the margins as his godfather's handwriting.

Earlier, when first exploring the possibilities of a cloak of shadows, Snape had left his godson to translate the recipe while he prepped the cloak to receive the charm more readily.

Æfenglōm mentel, for the scattering of the lyght y-left afore the coming of derkenesse, requiring an aboundaunce of wolfsbane & foxgloue, the beries of dwale, a mesure of ale & dent de lion. In the Niht, take an half pound of wolfsbane petales y-thresshid to one mastic, then wirk in thritty dwale beries, one 'a tyme, til the mixture y-turneth a derk violet. Styr one foxgloue blossom an over til the colour y-chaungeth. Sprede ouer flax or wolle & lay on ale & dent de lion ala.

A struggle to understand even with Snape's old notes, that beries of dwale meant nightshade, ale meant alcohol. Draco had written out "a half pound of aconite petals mashed in a mortar, add thirty belladonna berries, one of thyme, until dark, then add a foxglove at a time until it turned. Spread over the cloak and splash with ale and lion's tooth."

Snape had glanced at it, then scratched out "thyme" and inserted "one at a time." Then scratched out "ala" and added "light on fire" at the end. Then finally crossed out "lion's tooth" and inserted "dandelion." With a faint chuckle at his godson's mistranslation.

When he was younger, Draco had thought that his godfather was boring and irritating.

Now Draco thought that Snape was frighteningly smart and damned infuriating. How on earth had the man worked his way into his parents' good graces?

Having his work corrected was galling. Having his work corrected when Snape already knew the recipe made Draco understand why Narcissa often threatened Snape with violence.

Draco added yet another foxglove and watched the mixture. He didn't want to miss any color change. He'd already been at this for hours. His hands were sore. He leaned closer and closer to the lumos charm, sagging against the table, his eyes half shut.

Patience, Snape had said, a single potion can take hours.

If only there was a self-grinding mortar and pestle…but potions were so temperamental and delicate that there was nothing for it but to grind by hand. No wonder this technique had been forgotten. It took forever, the recipe was ancient, one needed a potions master familiar with the dark arts, and the last stage would be impossibly tricky.

One more blossom and another stir—

The mix swirled suddenly like a cloud at the edge of sunset, dark violets and just a hint of lavender. Draco sighed in relief and upended the mortar over the cloak, using his wand to spread the mix over the whole surface. Then he splashed Pansy's alcohol—very begrudgingly given from her stash from the common room—over the cloak.

"She's going to be livid," he whispered, putting the now-empty bottle aside. "Not a drop left."

He took the last ingredient, a single dandelion in its full puff ball. He had one shot at this. He'd wanted to get a second or third dandelion, but Snape had warned him that if the recipe said one dandelion, then that was what was used, and nothing more. There was magic in the ingredient, and likewise there was magic in only having one dandelion at the ready.

Draco examined the puff ball one more time. Not a single seed was missing.

Then he blew out one sharp breath, sending the seeds scattered up into the air, floating down towards the cloak. He put his wand out, waiting. There was no way to know when to cast the flame spell. Too early and the flames would flare out into nothing. Too late and the cloak would burn.

The seeds hung in the air like dust motes, only slowly drifting down inch by inch. He almost conjured the fire then, but it didn't feel right.

Patience , Snape had said as if he could scold the idea into Draco. You have no idea how many so-called masters ruin their own work on the last step.

Draco was more afraid of fucking up in front of Snape than he was of poisoning or burning himself.

The dandelion seeds almost touched the cloak…and fell no further, resting lightly on the swirl of color along the cloth. A delicate lattice of purple and black shadow held the seeds aloft. With a sense of wonder at how perfectly the charm came together, Draco cast the last word.

"Ala."

Not incendio or fyria, but ala, what Snape had explained was one of the earliest fire charms.

White flames, almost impossible to see against the darkness, flickered over the length of the cloak. The cloth turned black as if burned, and as quick as it started, the flames died down to nothing.

After a long moment, Draco lightly tapped the cloak, worried it'd still be hot to the touch. No, it was cool. The cloth felt normal, as if there were no charms on it. He took hold of the top and swirled it over himself, settling it on his shoulders. It clasped neatly, looking like any other bit of winter gear. And when he raised the hood over his head and brought it low…

The edges of the cloak blurred. He held out his hand and only saw a dark shape with soft edges. He looked around—there were no mirrors here, but he'd heard Blaise and Pansy and her girls cast reflection charms on every surface imaginable. He charmed the wall and tilted the sconce holding the lumos charm close.

Every detail of his face was gone, leaving a smooth shadowy surface. He looked like ink under glass. Nothing could be made out. Yes, he was still his size, his shape, but the softened silhouette and the wisps of shadow trailing his movements made him harder to make out. In fact, he could barely tell that he was even wearing a cloak—so neatly did the cloth ripple like smoke.

He put the hood back, and the shadows slipped away. He stood wearing a sensible black cloak for the coming autumn and winter season.

Yes. This would do.

A week passed. The weather warmed so that Draco didn't shiver in the early mornings, reciting the animagus charm without snow crunching underfoot. Instead of arriving to the herbology classroom ahead of time, he instead spent his extra time reading down in the dungeons, in his little gated alcove. He couldn't keep the stolen books anywhere else, so he read by the light of a dim lumos charm, listening for the slightest sound of a footstep or heartbeat.

When in consideration of the bifurcation of a bilateral conjuration conduit, in which otherwise cooperative linkages are destabilized and severed, reestablishment of the synchronistic resonance between charmed termini is cemented via a patterned repetition of voiced catalytic locus, ie. a new incantation, spoken in sympathy with the previous incantation.

Whereupon a previous incantation has been lost, the grammatical substitutionary of a binary system will suffice—oculi and manus are the most common off these. An indication of harmony, followed by the conjuration of a link, then finally sealed with the form's function.

All of this is to say, however, that care must be taken in how the forms are joined, crafted, and aligned …

Draco found his eyes dragging shut and his head slipping forward as he pushed through. Twice he woke up with only minutes before the class bell. Reading the book was like punishment for its own theft.

And yet, Granger's face when Draco answered Flitwick's question about charms chained together, already understanding the framework behind harmonious spell craft…priceless. She looked like she could hex him into the ground right there in class. Even better, she couldn't complain. If she accused him of theft, he'd accuse her right back. Their destruction was mutually assured.

This was not to say that he escaped unscathed.

It was in the library that Granger had her revenge.

The day after the fire, as soon as Pince reopened the library, Draco had looked through the card catalogue and found three different dictionaries of Old English, particularly one with a Breton appendix. Perfect. He walked down the aisle, his fingertips trailing along the book spines, counting off the letters.

"Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Magica Saxonica, Angla-Bretonic…" he whispered, coming closer to his target, murmuring the titles over and over.

Then nothing.

An empty space on the shelf between Dialectica Latin and A Brythonic Dictionary , which leaned the wide distance over as if underscoring the missing books.

The books weren't there.

And when he asked Pince at the front desk when they'd be returned, Pince noted that the books had been checked out almost a week ago, and were checked out for an extended project and would not be due back for another three weeks.

Draco managed to keep his temper until safely out of the library and in an empty bathroom, and then he'd grasped the edges of a sink and screamed.

That filthy, filthy, filthy mudblood.

He knew. He didn't have to guess—he knew. She'd known that the book he wanted was in Old English. Of course she had taken every dictionary and resource.

If she couldn't keep the book from him, she'd keep him from translating it.

He slammed his fist down on the sink. She'd outmaneuvered him a week before he'd even realized, and he didn't know how.

How on earth was he supposed to get another dictionary? He couldn't get anything from his parents, and Snape wouldn't have anything but potions books.

Briefly he'd thought of the strange come and go room, but dismissed the thought as quick as it came. That wasn't secure. He didn't know how it worked. He might be swallowed up when it changed, let alone the odds of being discovered.

Still. There was another option. He still had several galleons. But he'd have to get Pansy to agree.

In the Slytherin common room, sitting side by side against the glass wall to the lake, Draco and Pansy hashed out exactly what options Draco had, what his priorities had to be. And most importantly, of course—

"You owe me a bottle," Pansy said, scowling behind her potions book.

"Be reasonable," Draco said.

"Basilisk Black," she said. "No cheaping out."

"And how am I going to get that?" he asked. "I can't just snatch it out of the shop."

They paused as several first years walked by, staring at the fish swimming past the glass. Draco pretended to point at something in Pansy's book, and she gave him a sharp look, warning him off. When the first years had gone, Pansy slumped a few more inches with the pages too close to her face.

"You used it all up," she muttered, "so you owe me. I don't have anything to take the edge off and Slughorn's an absolute bastard with his work. And Snape…good Lord…"

Draco couldn't argue that. The professors were not pulling punches with their assignments. Slughorn barely explained how to craft each potion, and then answered their questions by telling them to "simply reread the recipe." And Snape didn't pay favorites as he demanded long lists of memorization for counter-curses and jinxes, and woe to the student who cast the wrong counter curse in practice duels.

Slytherin had cheered when Snape was announced professor for defense against the dark arts. Now they all realized that Snape did not play favorites.

"I need to get to Knockturn Alley," Draco insisted.

"Then you better get something to pay me for it," she said, not budging. "Covering for you takes time. And I don't have time to spare. I don't know how you even manage with that stupid alchemy club on top of everything else."

"What if I had something else?" he said. "What if I taught you something?"

"How to beg favors from friends?" she snapped.

"Aww, we're still friends," he smiled.

She smacked his shoulder. "We'll be better friends when you get that bottle."

"Mm, but I'm serious," he said. "I have something much better."

She glanced at him, curious.

He gazed into her eyes—large, round, hazel. He would have found her pretty if they hadn't been as close as siblings for so long. Her eyes were always striking in their intensity. To look into them was to see her anger and her happiness without an ounce of deception.

Then he gazed into her, and she stiffened as she felt the change. He saw her frustration in potions class, the wit-sharpening potion bubbling in front of her without the proper reaction, and she had followed the recipe exactly. He saw Slughorn's unsurprised face, expecting her to fail, and then Pansy's glance went past Slughorn to the board, with the agenda for the Slugclub class—wit-sharpening and polyjuice. Her eyes filled with tears and she excused herself to the bathroom, hiding in Myrtle's bathroom, sobbing as the ghost sat and commiserated with her. Maybe the mudblood was right. Maybe she really was stupid and worthless and couldn't do anything to help her parents and she just wanted to aim her wand at Slughorn—Granger—Voldemort—and just blast their brains over the wall and—

Draco blinked, coming out of the vision, too choked to speak.

Pansy put her hand up to her mouth, pressing down so she wouldn't make a sound. They both looked each other for long seconds.

"Hell," he rasped, turning his head and dragging his sleeve across his face. "That's not supposed to happen."

"Who taught you that?" Pansy asked, her own eyes red and damp.

"I can't say," he whispered back, coughing so that his throat didn't feel so tight. "Damn it…I didn't…dammit."

Her hands curled around his arm.

"Can you teach me that?" she said.

He looked at her again. "But I fucked it up."

"Don't care," she said. "Teach me that and I'll cover for you on Saturday."

"Not here," he said, standing and holding his hand out to her. "Not if we're acting like this the first time."

"Your fault for not warning me," she said, accepting his hand up. "I'll think of something happy this time."

But, in a quiet room further in the dungeons, sitting crosslegged and staring at each other, they both paused. Looked at each other in rueful silence. And sighed.

For now, it was very hard to think of anything happy.

Chapter Text

Again, the early morning recital of the animagus charm. After he had come to bed so late, Draco felt more asleep than awake as he unwillingly sat up, stepping into the cold air, onto the cold floor, shrugging on his robes. He squinted through bleary eyes, his head hung low, hefting the heavy potions bag over his shoulder, until he came out into the castle gardens, staring at the sun creeping up from the earth. 

He had to cast the animagus charm until an electrical storm struck. There was no way of knowing when that would happen. He was so tired.

Saturday meant no classes, a time to study and prepare assignments for Monday. And a time for students to head to Hogsmeade. In the gray morning light, he claimed a spot on the front steps, sitting against the wall and gently putting down his bag. An hour passed as he read over his charms notes in the growing light. Breakfast came and went, and other students arrived and sat along the steps, waiting for the carriages. 

Pansy came an hour later, plopping down beside him and leaning against his shoulders. Dark circles smudged her own eyes. She gave him a wan smile as he turned her prefect pin right side up.

"Theo says bring him back something interesting," she mumbled. 

"What?" Draco said. "What brought that on? He could've come if he wanted something."

"Because," Pansy drawled, exhaustion dragging at her voice. "Snape came in looking for you."

Draco shut his eyes with a faint groan.

"Oh, God," Draco said. "What…what did he say? Why was he looking for me?"

"Dunno," Pansy said. "Theo offered to clean the defense room for a little extra credit. Last I saw, Snape was taking him and a couple others so they could finish everything by dinner."

Draco winced. Cleaning the defense classroom meant clearing out the leftover scorch marks, splashes of charms and the residue of jinxes. The stray syllables that gathered at the edges of the room sometimes melted and fused together in unpredictable ways. Knockback jinxes and impediment jinxes were harmless on their own, but let them miss their targets and strike the same patch of wall, and any poor wizard walking nearby could find themselves frozen stiff and thrown across the room.

Cleaning was an all-day affair, and a messy, dangerous event at that. And Theo had sacrificed himself to distract Snape. For a price, of course.

"Did Theo say if he wanted anything in particular?" Draco asked.

"Just something interesting," Pansy said.

Draco nodded once, adding that to the pile of errands he had to complete.

The carriages came, and he and Pansy piled in together with a pair of fifth-year Slytherins intimidated to be riding with older students. They looked curiously at his bag, clinking with glass jars, but knew better than to ask. The carriage lurched forward on its way. Pansy yawned, glancing at them sideways.

"You'll stay with me," she muttered at the youngsters. "We'll all go shopping. Don't get lost." 

They nodded dutifully. Draco understood, then, how Pansy was giving up her Saturday to lead a group of students who would swear that Draco was with them the whole time. It was her duty as a prefect to chaperone at Hogsmeade, although she should have had her fellow prefect's help.

"What does Blaise owe you?" he asked.

Pansy smiled despite the early hour. "He already paid me off. Let's just say you can take your time getting that basilisk. I have something to tide me over."

The carriages dropped them off at the Hogsmeade community gardens, and Draco immediately set off for the Three Broomsticks Inn, taking the floo to Diagon Alley. 

First, he stopped at Mulpepper's Apothecary, emptying the potions bag of all the memory potions he had brewed. The sale took longer than expected as the shopkeep tried his sample skeptically, insisting on testing out how well it worked by examining his balance sheets right then. 

It was worth it. When Draco left with a pile of coins in his pocket, he felt a strange lightness in his step.

Twenty galleons for his potions. Minutes the sickles and knuts for the ingredients and bottles and labels, he'd made a good fifteen galleons profit. 

Fifteen galleons that was his. True, he'd traded on his godfather’s reputation, but it was Draco's skill that closed the deal. More sales, more clout…this was how a reputation was built. Do well enough and he could bring in enough galleons to survive. Just in case…

Just in case the war took everything and everyone. 

The sale had taken longer than he'd wanted, but he had enough time to duck into The Starry Prophesier, moving past their telescopes and orreries and armillary spheres of pocket solar systems with their spinning circles and intricate clicking parts. He didn't understand most of what the little contraptions did, but Theo understood them. Draco went to the counter where the brass wheels were lined up, volvelles meant for quick calculations.

He flipped through them, only understanding some of the titles—moon phases, declining conjugations of Latin verbs, settings for timings on spring mechanisms. He spotted one titled Ley Lines through the Old Kingdoms. That sounded interesting. He hoped Theo thought so, too. And even better, he could send it by owl with a bundle of other packages meant for Hogwarts for only a knut.

He did not look forward to his last errand.

This time, he knew where to meet his aunt. He found the nondescript brick wall, hidden behind large potted plants meant to cover how the bricks split to allow him in.

The restaurant was the same as before. The Galan Lay was more shadow than candlelight, and he took a seat at a table against the wall. He ordered pomegranate juice, then sat back to wait.

Someone was playing a violin. He couldn't see them, or the violin. The music seemed to come out of the rock walls. Heartbeat, heartbeat, walk with me, my masters old and new, cold truths walk beside me, their eyes like stars beside me. The same words repeated over and over, in different patterns to a shifting melody. After a little while, he couldn't help murmuring the words with the song.

"I hope I haven't kept you waiting."

His aunt's voice settled on him coldly as she sat, ordering her meal before focusing entirely on him. 

Draco tensed. Today she didn't feel as doting. Her mouth was pressed in a flat line. Her gaze fell across the pomegranate juice, then over his face. Searching.

"Not…" Draco started, lowering his gaze to the table. "Not at all. I"m just…"

"Tired," she finished for him, leaning forward to she studied his face. "Classes? Or your real work?"

Draco swallowed once. The first question to dodge. She was so used to all of her efforts going toward the dark lord that anything less was treason.

"I think…I might…I have a lead," Draco said. "It's going to take a lot of studying, though. I have to learn if it's even possible before I can start creating the spell to to put everything together."

She tilted her head. "You think you might have a lead? Nothing certain?"

Under the table, Draco tightened his grip on his robes. He was standing on the very edge of her trust. The dark lord demanded results, and thus so did his aunt.

"Two ancient bits of magic," he started, "that used to be one spell have been cut apart for years, so long that their magic has gone wild. I have to find a way to patch the broken incantation, using the right grammar when I don't even know what language to start with, and I only have one of the portals to study—"

Her invasion came swift, boring into his memories. He'd half expected it and kept the book he'd stolen from Granger firmly in his mind, the tiny print, the painfully dry words.

Common spellwork languages include the modified Latin of modern wizards, but can range from Celtic, Welsh, Old English, and even early Bretonic depending on the proper time. Delicate care must be taken to the appropriate time and place lest an incorrect conjugation of the future subjunctive construction send the would-be mender flying into the wall. 

Bellatrix withdrew from his mind with a bewildered breath. She shook her head slowly, letting the memory fade away.

"That's your mother in you," she sighed, her voice bitter. "More interested in reading and theory than…ah well. Making magic is so much more complicated than simply using it. Is there anything I can help with?"

That sounded more like the aunt he remembered—terrifying but generous when it came to family. 

"I don't suppose you have a translator's dictionary of Old English?" he asked. "Or Brittonic?"

She smiled despite her irritation. "Oh, no no. Go to Oldknowe or Obscurus for books. Maybe Flourish and…although…you should know that any of their dictionaries of the old languages will differ from ours."

Draco blinked. That thought had not occurred to him. He heaved a long breath and leaned back in his chair. As he thought about it, it made sense. Modern words could have multiple meanings. Why should old languages be different?

"But, if it's different…where can I find a dark translation?"

She shook her head once. "We wouldn't have written things down. Not where the rest of the world could see."

He struggled to make sense of that. Was it hopeless then? Translating the book, finding out what he had done to himself? The wild half-formed idea of using the cabinets, was that impossible?

"Then…how…?"

"Your mother would know better than me," Bellatrix said, annoyed again, "but she is otherwise occupied. And your godfather…well, he showed exactly how much you can trust him with your spellcraft. Still. Maybe…"

She looked at him with a growing mischievous glint in her eye. Draco felt like a mouse watching the cat lean closer, her hand cupping his face to hold him still. She smiled, like a child at play, and then she was inside his thoughts again. 

He tried to bring back the memory of the book, to use it as a shield—she waved it away without effort, diving deeper. Her thoughts felt like cold steel pushing into his brain inch by slow inch, enjoying how his memories sliced away piece by piece. His shivering in the snowy mornings, his silent struggling under the vampire, the humiliating train ride after fifth year, the transfiguration into a ferret—then farther back, faster—his brief stay at Hogwarts over Christmas one year, his sorting into Slytherin. 

Too deep. Pain blossomed up from where she dug in.

Draco sat paralyzed, her spell dragging a jagged line through his brain, leaving memories bleeding out of him. There was summer with Aunt Bella bringing him candy as he played on the rug, a snowfall in his mother's arms. And then—

Strings. Light strumming, heavy knocks on a wood frame of a harp. A song in a dark room, a room of stone—no, of wood—and a fire burning in a pit dug into dirt. He was not alone. So many people sat alongside him, half hidden in shadow, drinking, silently listening to the song—no, the story—and the person beside him had stars for eyes, glinting in the darkness—

She let him go, catching her breath as if she'd run a great distance, giggling as he fell back in his seat.

"You saw it," she said, her grin triumphant. 

"What…?" he whispered, holding the chair so he didn't topple over. "What was that?"

"You're pure blood," she said, as if that explained everything, waving down the waiter to order a drink. 

He didn't try to put that together. He could barely think. The pain grew so that he felt like he might throw up. He felt stretched out of shape and tattered at the edges.

"…was that…still legilimancy?" he asked.

"Tell Snape to teach you occlumancy." Bellatrix sighed to look at him, her mirth fading. "You shouldn't tear so easily. Your parents have sorely neglected much of your education."

The last bit was said with such spite that Draco flinched.

"Did they do something wrong?" he breathed, desperately clinging to her saying 'have', as if they were still alive. "They upset you?"

"Not…" Bellatrix shut her eyes. "Not really. Stupid Cissy is just being sullen as usual, and your father…why she chose that man is beyond me."

Draco tried to think through the song droning in the background. His parents were alive. But he couldn't ask anything, couldn't push for answers. He had to appear every inch the dutiful Death Eater, ignoring family to serve their master. And he couldn't concentrate to be careful with his questions.

Still. He was allowed a little family curiosity, wasn't he? Pressing his cold hand to his forehead, he blinked a few times and squinted up at her.

"'Chose'?" he asked. "I…I thought it was…arranged. I thought everyone's marriage was arranged."

Bellatrix half-shrugged, staring past him at something in her mind's eye. "Your mother always pushed tradition. She's lucky Lucius was from an acceptable family. She's lucky she's my sister. She…"

Her gaze snapped back to Draco, and she pursed her lips, gently brushing the hair from his eyes.

"Poor thing, I really took it out on you, didn't I?" Bellatrix sighed, putting her wand to his head and murmuring something that sounded like 'benliss'. 

The wound didn't heal but the pain faded. It didn't dispel the nausea or dizziness, but he could think again.

"Go back quickly," she said. "I thought you might join us today, but you're in no condition for any fun. Go back and get a couple occlumancy lessons under your belt."

He nodded once, wincing as that made the pain flare again.

"I'll send a message when to meet again," she said, as if they had simply concluded a normal business lunch. "Important work coming."

He put the money to pay for his drink on the table. As he stood, swaying slightly, he heard the music again, the violin's song finding the rip in his brain and sinking into the wound. 

Heartbeat, heortegeclyp, walk with me, my masters ealde and niwan, cold truths þe gath be me, their eyes like steorran beside me.

Draco paused, holding the table to keep from toppling over. Was that…?

The languages weaved in and out. He looked into the darkness where there was no musician and no violin, then looked at Bellatrix who smiled as if he'd finally noticed the secret she'd held up for him to see.

"Silly thing," she said, "you don't always need to read to learn something new."

Not sure what she had shown him, dazed by his injury, he nodded once, respectfully. And then staggered out of the darkness, through the wall, back into the murmur of Knockturn Alley.

Too loud. He put his hand on the wall to steady himself as he made his way out. The afternoon sun barely poked between the tall buildings, but even that was too bright. 

Stepping into Diagon Alley was worse. So many more people, so many heartbeats, so much more light. The glare overwhelmed his eyes. He almost put his hood up but remembered that it was enchanted just in time. No, he needed to get inside somewhere. To sit. To rest. He couldn't floo back to Hogsmeade yet—he'd end up vomiting in the network.

The jingle of a familiar bell called him forward, and he blindly opened the door to Flourish and Blotts. Relief was immediate. The window was blocked with boxes and loose books, and the lumos charms were no brighter than fireflies.

"Apologies for the dark," the clerk called from the register. "Just let me know if you need help finding anything."

Draco didn't answer, feeling for the chair in the corner and sitting heavily, one hand over his face. He heard people moving around the shop, through the aisles, quietly rustling pages. A pile of books thumped on the counter.

"What happened with the lights in here?" someone asked.

"Oh, a nox spell got out of hand down at Scibbulus'. Half the street can't get a good lumos going."

Draco let the voices wash over him. The pain was coming back. He looked to see if he was alone, then put his wand to his head and whispered "benliss." 

Dangerous to cast a spell that he didn't know and had only barely heard. Still, the urge to vomit faded, and he cast the spell twice more, damn the consequences. His head felt like an uncovered wound open to the air, but numbed and no longer bleeding. 

He'd known his aunt was dangerous. Now he felt the depth of her cruelty, understood why Snape was so cautious about her. And Draco was her beloved nephew. How terrible was she without that family bond restraining her hand?

At least she hadn't dragged him along on her 'fun'. 

He frowned. What his aunt considered "fun" was not good. She'd mentioned "us." There was only one group that she gathered with. She hadn't sounded like she meant to apparate or portkey with him. She'd said to go back to school "quick." 

Cold chills ran through his body.

Here. Now. 

Whatever she was going to do—an attack—the Death Eaters—it was going to be today, soon, maybe in moments. Here, in Diagon Alley. Here, in the shops where the light had gone dark. An attack—he had to go, before people—

Someone was standing at the far end of the aisle, outlined by the window. He glanced out of the corner of his eye—a long haired girl in a Hogwarts uniform, a scarf. But she didn't move . She just stood there, facing the shelves along the wall. How long had she been standing still before he noticed?

She didn't have a heartbeat. 

He didn't move. No heartbeat. And now that he was listening, she also wasn't breathing. 

An older lady edged past her, murmuring a soft "excuse me, dear" as she walked down the aisle. The girl didn't respond, didn't even react to the light jostling.

Draco stood up, swaying as the room tilted and spun. He put one foot in front of the other, not waiting for the room to stop. Someone was coming in—he ran into them, knocking a few books loose, ignoring their startled swearing as he clung to the shelves to stay upright. He had to get to the Leaky Cauldron and its fireplace. It was only four shops down, if he just—

The clock inside the shop struck four.

A pause.

In the shop was rush of stomping feet and a startled cry.

Someone screamed. And kept screaming.

Spells followed with brief flashes of light, followed by the screaming suddenly cut off with a wet gurgling. Draco heard yells and breaking glass. Spells cast in rapid succession—protego, expelliarmus, stupefy. 

"It's not working—" 

"—just sliding off her—"

As Draco got his hand on the door, a blur of movement in the shop made him look up. The girl—he could barely make her out in the gloom—she got her hands around someone else and dug her teeth into their shoulder.

The stench of blood filled the air. His fear warred with desire. He wanted to taste it so badly. It smelled of copper and rust—he could taste it in the air—

Then she turned her head, and her eyes flashed as they reflected the little light from the door. Her jaw fell open as if broken, dripping with gore. Her eyes locked on him, seeing him through the dark.

Fear overrode hunger. He turned and ran into the street, pushing into the crowd, looking up in time to see the green swirl of a skull and snake in the clouds.

People were running in all directions, pushing against each other, knocking each other over. The roar of beating hearts and shouts and the crush of people flying by sent his equilibrium spinning again. Fighting his way to the side against a wall, he went down on his knees, his hands on the cold stone ground. 

"Imberatria!"

The voices came from all directions, but the closest came from in front of the Leaky Cauldron. Two Death Eaters behind black masks, wands raised to the sky, casting the same spell over and over, "imberatria, imberatria."

The clouds thickened and grew black. Heavy, cold rain began to fall. The only light came from the few shop windows and street lamps that hadn't been cursed to darkness. 

A jinx's blue light struck the wall near his head, startling him backwards and into a mass of empty barrels reeking of beer. He took cover behind them, listening to the spells flying back and forth. The surprise attack was still going well for the Death Eaters, but the shoppers here all had wands, and the attack was beginning to turn into an even fight.

He put up the hood on his cloak and his hands vanished into blurry shadows. The heavy rain made the street black, and he crawled along the railings and behind signs and stands. He couldn't reach the Leaky Cauldron. He had to find a shop with a fireplace—

Someone fell right on top of him, yelling and flailing, flattening him on the cobblestones. Draco cursed under the heavy weight, pushing himself up on one elbow. Then another weight landed on him, and the woman's yells turned terribly high pitched.

Draco looked up at the thing attacking her. Hard to see the details in the dark, but its eyes shone white as it bit down on the woman's face, on her hands, like a wild animal hungry for whatever it could get its teeth around.

There was blood everywhere. Draco couldn't think. His mind blanked. No spells came to mind. All he could see was its eyes gleaming in the dark like stars, like fires burning.

Fire. He knew a fire spell—he'd used one recently. He stammered, and the word seemed thicken in his mouth, dragged out by sheer force of will, "a…laa…"

Flames didn't shoot from his wand. White heat erupted out of the creature, and now he saw it clearly—an older man with red hair, a yellow scarf around his neck, blood all over his face. He was dead, clearly dead, burning from the inside out until he stopped moving and fell to one side.

The woman on top of Draco wasn't dead. Wailing, turning on her hands and knees, she started to crawl blindly away from the noise.

Draco turned on his elbows and dry heaved. There was nothing to throw up, but his body didn't care. Several seconds passed as he took deep, gulping breaths.

No one heard him. The street was full of shouts, some of it spells, some of it wordless. Windows were shattering. One of the shops was on fire, raging too hot for the rain to put out. 

Forget reaching a floo. He had to survive long enough to find a hole and drag it in after himself.

Someone else ran past, tripping over on him and splaying along the ground. Draco winced and looked up—whoever it was, they'd been running from a Death Eater who stepped unknowingly on Draco's hand. His fingers cracked.

The ground tilted even as he held still. The agony of bones breaking brought a terrible clarity. All he knew was that "ala" had solved one of his problems and it could probably solve a lot more. His wand was in his crushed hand—he cast the spell anyway. 

White fire spread over the Death Eater's robes. The dark wizard tore away handfuls of his burning clothing, turning like a wind mill as the fire spread.

Draco sat up, clutching his broken hand against his stomach, rising to a low crouch. Anger filled him, and more than fear, he felt a deep hate for the person who had hurt him. Switching hands, he cast "ala" again—his aim went wide, hitting not just the Death Eater but the wet street in a broad spray that suddenly illuminated the storefronts and regular wizards and a handful of Death Eaters and their pet monsters.

Now that everyone could properly see who they were fighting, the odds drew even. Incendio spells filled the air as people now saw that fire worked against the dead. 

Draco didn't stay to watch. Crawling along the sidewalk, on one hand and one elbow, he kept behind the potted plants, the abandoned stands, the boxes lining the shops. Spells exploded pots and burst against the crates. He crept over someone who didn't move as he went by. 

How was anyone standing up and fighting?

He found an alcove in front of a shop and ducked inside, glad for the bricked shelter. The door was wide open, banging in the wind, and he spotted the glow of a hearth inside. Should he try—?

On the other side of the alcove, a burst of heat threw someone against the wall with enough force to make the wall crack. Draco was inside before he realized it.

The fire barely cut the gloom. The room stank of blood, and the walls glistened darkly as the flames reflected on the wall. He tried to cast a lumos charm that sparked and sputtered out. 

The hearth suddenly roared with the green white flames of an active floo. Draco backed away, pressed into the corner, afraid he'd see more Death Eaters or monsters coming through. Instead several wizards and witches came one after another, wands ready, moving to the door and then heading out, casting spells he didn't catch. Ministry aurors

No one saw him. He sat still, listening to the fight outside. The hearth flashed again as another witch appeared and then rushed out. This time, Draco spotted the jar on the floor, the top tumbled off, powder all over the carpet. All he had to do was grab a handful and go. 

He was too afraid to move.

He didn't know how long he sat there, curled tight, afraid to make the slightest sound. The window exploded, and he turned his shoulder to the falling glass. Blistering heat swept in, followed by a flurry of frost that stung his eyes.

"—come on, you cowardly bastards, quit hiding behind your monsters—"

The voice was ridiculously brave, drawing forth a dozen cheers as one side rallied. It didn't give Draco any hope, but it did bring to mind a recent memory.

Potter, standing in the flames, aiming spells at the ashwinders burning their way through the library. Potter, leaping stupidly into the fire. Potter, who didn't seem to feel fear. Potter, who hadn't even gotten bitten or burned by the damn things.

Draco swallowed once. Fine. If that scar-faced bastard could fight, then Draco could at least save himself. He crawled forward and grabbed floo powder, flinging it into the hearth. He didn't get to his feet. He lunged into the flames and called out "Hogsmeade, the Three Broomsticks."

He tumbled out onto a wooden floor, practically thrown out of the hearth. He landed on his broken hand on crunching glass with someone howling underneath him.

"Well done, that's the way you do it!"

Howling, cold, no heartbeat, thrashing like an animal—he'd landed on something dead but not dead, hard enough to knock them flat. 

Draco scrambled off, backing against the bar, looking into the white eyes of another dead monster.

The attack was here, too.

Chapter Text

The Three Broomsticks was in splinters. Tables and chairs smashed along the walls, two dead bodies smoldering on the floor.

An auror who'd clearly been having the worse end of the fight now cast incendio on the dead woman snarling on the floor. She climbed up on her feet even as the flames lit her bones from the inside. Only as her body charred and her eyes melted did she finally fall and lay still.

"Damn inferius, tough bastards," the auror muttered, wiping his bloodied mouth with a torn sleeve. "Good thing you…you…hey, where'd you go?"

The auror looked around, his gaze sweeping right past the Draco-sized shadow on the floor in front of him. Cursing, the auror went out the door, which dangled on one hinge.

Finally Draco felt like he could catch his breath. Hogsmeade, too? Again? The windows were shattered, and outside were shouts and flashing lights. Spells. Fires.

But not darkness. Whatever had happened here, the Death Eaters hadn't cast their jinxes to stop lumos spells and cover the sky. There was no rain here, no black clouds. Only the sun in the distance sinking toward the horizon, the golden disc just touching the rooftops.

"—great shot, that set the buggers going! Incendio—!"

Aurors. Yes, there had been aurors stationed here since the last attack. And Potter's little soldiers. And the professors here as chaperones. Even the older students. Hogsmeade was no soft target, not anymore, not like Diagon Alley.

He swallowed once, getting to his feet. The room didn't tilt. His head didn't hurt so much now. If that was fear or the wound healing, he didn't know. He knelt by the window, looking out carefully.

No vampires. No Death Eaters, either. He didn't see the Dark Mark in the sky. But there were dead people shambling through the street, some of them on fire, lighting the shop fronts in a red glow and longer shadows. A few aurors clustered in groups, slowly reclaiming the town.

"No tears now, girl, no tears, we're almost there…"

One of the aurors, a witch with an eyepatch, held a Hufflepuff girl against her side, igniting two dead monsters to clear their path. Draco reasoned that there must be other students. Maybe if he waited, the aurors would clean this all up. He could pretend he'd been here the whole time. He could—

The front wall of the Three Broomsticks buckled under flames eating their way through the wood. No, he couldn't wait here. He couldn't hide among students, not when he looked like a walking shadow. And he couldn't have anyone find out he'd been at Diagon Alley and then just conveniently appeared here for this attack.

Fine, to hell with cunning and plans. He'd just run. He could make it out of Hogsmeade—it was a small town, only a couple streets, and he knew how to set these things—inferius?—on fire.

He took a deep breath. Just ignore the bone-deep weariness and the way his hand had gone numb.

With a quick glance over himself to make sure he was still shrouded in darkness, he went through the burning door and headed toward the river. The sun was halfway down, and the sky was purple. He could cross the nearest bridge, cross the road, head into the forest, walk back to Hogwarts—he'd done it once already—

Smoke and ash filled the air. He had to pick his way over the charred remains dotting the street. He didn't see normal people on the ground, only the things the auror had called inferius. It seemed like the attack here was dwindling down. The streetlamps were coming on with their lumos charms timed for when the sun set.

Then he came around the corner of lane and found the fight still raging, focused on Zonko's joke shop. The windows were bright in the evening's twilight, acting like beacons to the monsters bent on killing everyone inside.

The doors had been ripped from their hinges and blood splashed the cobblestones and the huge sign. Yes, there were students in there, dozens of Hogwarts scarves, along with townsfolk and aurors mounting a brave defense around the children.

They had to be brave. Dozens of corpses were moving with frightening speed toward the shop.

The windows on the first floor were broken but covered with shelves and boxes as barricades. The dead creatures beat and punched at the heavy wood and crates but couldn't get through. But from where Draco stood, he saw a weakness in their defense.

The windows on the second floor didn't have anything but their intact glass. The inferius, in whatever passed for their thoughts, had begun to crawl along the walls, digging their hands into the bricks, the bones of their fingertips stabbing the mortar as they climbed.

No one inside had noticed yet. They wouldn't notice until the monsters smashed through and rush them from above.

Draco knew he should have walked away. Turned his back and returned to Hogwarts. This was all Voldemort's will, after all. He was a Death Eater.

But watching death descending on living people…on people he knew…

"…the…the walls," Draco said, trying to yell out the words. He could barely get the syllables out in whispers. Even if he could raise his voice, the shouting from inside the shop would have drowned him out.

He could cast spells, however. "Ala" was easy, easier to say than incendio, and he didn't have to yell to ignite white flame on each inferius that he aimed at.

He hit one of the creatures crawling to the windows. A second. A third. There were too many to make a dent. But their howls as they fell drew attention so that people rushed upstairs, picking off inferius as they came into view.

Draco's breath hitched. Hestia was there with her twin. There was Luna. Granger. Neville. Yes, the students were inside. Pansy? He hoped.

Why didn't they tell us? he wondered. Why didn't his aunt warn him? Or Severus, or—

The inferius farthest from the joke shop stopped and turned. Draco stilled, hoping they wouldn't see him. Their glowing eyes locked on him—the camouflage of shadows meant nothing to the dead. They came stumbling too fast with jaws hung obscenely wide. And Draco didn't have any walls between him and them.

He picked off one, then another—an incendio spell caught two coming from his right. There were so many, and what he'd taken for snarls and growls was just the air pressed between rotten muscles. Disgust and nausea overpowered his fear. He turned and ran.

Cross the river. He didn't even know if that would work, but he told himself to cross the river and then keep running. At High Street, he passed headlong between aurors and a pack of inferius. He put his hands on his hood, holding it low as he darted by, immolating another inferius to make way.

Hogsmeade was unfamiliar in the dark. The sun was down, and the lamps did next to nothing. He hit his shoulder on something hard as he ran, wincing and stumbling to stay on his feet.

There, ahead, he saw the river between the buildings. There was the way out of Hogsmeade, the bridge leading to River's Edge road, and farther up on the hill was the cemetery. He leaned on the bridge railing, catching his breath. He glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing behind him, then looked ahead. Just in case. Just to make sure there was nothing ahead of him on the road or…

His eyes narrowed.

There was motion in the cemetery.

There were shapes, silhouettes, things that took a moment to turn into something recognizable in the moonlight. They were people.

Lots of people. None of them standing straight, all canted as if held up by a puppet string at a single shoulder.

Dozens? They were standing up out of the earth, crawling up out of graves, held up not by their own power but by dark magic.

Slowly walking forward, picking up speed as they tottered unsteadily on decayed joints.

Draco felt his heart drop.

Of course. For an evil dark lord bent on using dead people as an army, where better to hide his forces than a cemetery?

He wondered if he could make it to the school. If he could outpace something that didn't get tired. That could see him through the shadows.

Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless.

He thought of his friends. Could Hogseade survive another wave?

No, probably not. The inferius would approach the shop in all directions, come up the walls, swarm the windows and doors. There was no hope with them spread out like that, not even with aurors in town.

This wasn't like the first attack of vampires. This was meant to turn Hogsmeade into a slaughter.

But…if they couldn't swarm? If they were held here at the bridge, where the inferius would have to come across shoulder to shoulder…?

"Oh, God, I'm an idiot," he whispered, taking aim.

He scoffed. Aim—as if he had to aim when there were so many of them, packed in tight.

He leaned against the bridge railing. The world was starting to spin again, not out of pain but out of the enormity of what he was about to do. About to try.

He laughed humorlessly. Trying to run would have been idiotic, but that didn't make this desperate stand any less stupid.

White flames ignited on the dead closest to the bridge. They didn't stop—they started to run at him, or lope or hobble or whatever their movement could be called. They came faster, ignoring the ones that caught fire, and the ones on fire moved until they broke apart at the blackened joints.

The air rippled with rising heat. The dead crawled over their fallen forces like a wave of spiders. They were halfway across the bridge now, and the street was still painfully empty. No one was coming, too wrapped up with the assault inside the town. No one knew this was happening.

He felt the weight of every spell now, slowing in his casting even as the dead drew closer.

He could see them clearly now. Yellowed skeletons, bodies dripping rotted flesh, the freshly dead with whited eyes and jaws held on by sloughing skin. He saw Sunday best and school uniforms and wizard robes hiding decay beneath. He saw muggle clothes he didn't understand. They were so close now, reaching out even as he retreated from the bridge railing, hands up to shield himself. How utterly futile this was, he was going to die, everyone was going to—

Red flame erupted from behind him, smoldering hot as it passed by and into the dead, who vanished under a wave of fire so thick that it looked like liquid.

"Incendio!"

Another jet of heat launched past him. As he flinched away, a hand fell on his shoulder and turned him around to face the street.

"Keep it up!" came a sickeningly familiar voice. "There's some that followed me!"

Potter, throwing himself into the flames. Potter, facing a horde of monsters like it was a school assignment. Potter, who had just turned his back to a dark stranger because he didn't know it was Draco under the cloak.

And yes, some monsters had followed Potter—one halfway up the street, and then another coming around a shop corner. So much easier to simply strike down a single corpse or two.

Potter's back pressed against his, and Draco leaned against him as he caught his breath. There was another inferius, severed in half at the waist, dragging itself along the cobblestones toward them, and he pressed his hand over his mouth even as he killed it.

"Where'd these ones come from?" Potter shouted over the fire. "These aren't the ones from the garden."

The community garden? Had the first wave of corpses had been buried there, in the center of town? Draco tried to answer only to gulp in a mouthful of disgusting ash and smoke. He coughed, feeling the deep rasp in his throat.

"Cem…ce…" he coughed again, managing to croak out "graveyard."

Behind him, a firestorm raged. The heat was intolerable even with his back to it and his hood shielding him. How was Potter facing it?

He looked over his shoulder and froze with wide eyes. The inferi and the whole bridge and the surrounding grass were all on fire. Potter swung his wand high, and the flames swirled up over the whole area like a demonic whirlwind, with just the two of them safely at the edge.

For all the heat, Draco felt cold as he backed away. He hadn't heard Potter say anything but the most basic incendio spell.

The flames dropped like curtains over the dead, who collapsed like broken dolls. Potter swung the last ribbon of fire down and exploded the last corpse in a shower of sparks.

The bridge was empty. The bottom of it was half burned out, and the bodies bobbed in the water, or hung from the bridge's remaining wooden beams, or lay in a tangled knot of limbs that had charred together. The fire dwindled to glowing embers.

"I think that's it," Potter said with a shaky smile. Glancing back, he started to ask, "is that like an invisibility cloak or—?"

Potter frowned. He turned again, looking down the street, on either side of the river. "Wait! Where are you?"

Draco lay only a few feet away among the river stones, covering his mouth with one hand. His breath caught in his throat as Potter looked straight at him, a lumos charm raised high, but Potter moved his wand again, seeing nothing but shadows.

Please go away, Draco thought, please, just go, just go, you absolute monster.

He shut his eyes, willing Potter to leave. Long seconds passed. Finally he heard Potter murmur something under his breath and turn, heading back down the street.

Draco waited for several seconds until Potter's footsteps disappeared. There. Now he could follow him, slip inside the joke shop, rejoin the students—

But when he tried to push himself up, his arms wouldn't move. His legs refused to gather under himself. He lay still, his face against the warm damp earth, too tired to rise. His eyes wouldn't open. The rip that Bellatrix had torn in his mind ached again. The world wasn't spinning but it wasn't holding still, either.

Fine. Whatever. Maybe he didn't want to move. Maybe he would just sleep out here for the whole night. That would make saying the animagus charm at dawn stupidly easy, wouldn't it?

He didn't know how long he lay there. Light rain began to fall and gather in puddles. He heard people splash past, heard some reparo spells to mend the bridge. Should he put his hood down, pretend that he'd stumbled here from some hiding place? No, too suspicious. They'd be looking for who did this, for the Death Eaters who planned this.

He gave a faint, humorless laugh. Wrong Death Eater.

Hooves on cobblestone woke him. Hooves and wooden wheels clacked along the road, driving too close to his outstretched hand and head. With a spike of panic, he dragged himself out of the way of the carriages rolling by. The lanterns swaying from the carriage frames made him flinch as the golden glow dazzled his eyes.

The carriages were here for the children. If he wanted to get back to the school tonight, without walking for miles or spending the night in the mud, he had to go now.

This time he found the strength to pull himself up on his knees, his shoulders slumped as he caught his breath. Thank goodness no one could see him get to his feet and walk. He looked no better than the dead he'd killed.

The carriages rolled slowly. Even so, they outpaced him as he leaned against the storefronts, walking with his shoulder against the stone.

The streets were clean. The bodies were gone. He came around the shop and found the students gathered together outside the joke shop. They stood in groups, some crying, holding each other, looking as weary as he felt. Carriages drew close, allowed in four or five students, and then joined the line back to the school. There was Flitwick and McGonagall and Trelawney checking off names of each group, and for all their authority, they were just as tired as the students, double checking names, interrupted by aurors asking questions, trying to restart where they’d left off.

Draco paused, wondering how he would manage this. Then his head lifted. There was Pansy and the Carrow twins, and two younger Slytherins beside them, clustered together, waiting their turn. He counted the groups ahead of them…four…five…then looked back at the carriages…four…five….

As the whole line moved forward, he drew even with the carriage, careful to stay low so they didn’t even spot a hint of shadow through the windows. He stepped up on the sideboard, grasping the handle and slipping in, dropping into the farthest seat, shutting the door with the faintest click. The curtains were drawn, so he put his hood back, letting the shadows slip off of him.

If he was caught, so be it. He couldn't move again, not now.

But he knew he was away with it when the carriage paused, the door opened, and everyone piled in beside him without any startled questions or shouts that might have drawn attention. Half in and half out, Pansy checked with Trelawney, verifying all their names, adding that she'd missed Malfoy coming in with them. The name was added, and it was done.

As the carriage moved forward, Pansy dropped beside him and leaned heavily on his shoulder. Her arms were covered in dark bruises, her neck was even darker, and her eye and cheek were marked with red splotches.

The fifth years sat across from him with the twins. Their robes were stained with smoke and grime, torn in spots. One of them had a large bruise across his face, but they both managed to lean against each other and fall asleep as they rode.

Beside them, squished close, Hestia and Flora looked fine, but Hestia leaned to one side, pressing her hand against her ribs, and Flora held her sister's hand like her life depended on it.

None of them spoke for a long time. The wheels audibly groaned going across the bridge, and then the dirt crunched under them as they drew alongside the river.

Hestia moved the curtain an inch, watching the road pass by. She saw the charred bodies pushed off to the side, to be investigated later, and she saw the black marks where flame had scorched the stones and grass. She let the curtain fall back, about to say something, then glanced at the two youngsters to make sure they were asleep. Then she turned her attention to Draco.

"Did you know?" Hestia whispered.

Draco breathed out, mustering the strength to talk.

"No," he whispered. "I wasn't warned."

Hestia and Flora glanced at each other and said nothing.

None of them had been warned. What that meant for their parents, for their own status in the dark lord's eyes, was impossible to tell.

The rest of the ride passed in silence.

Chapter Text

Draco woke up floating above a long table, paralyzed, breathing in quick, shallow gasps. Blood blinded his eyes. People sat around him, masked with black mouths in steel faces. They stared as if he were a bug underfoot. 

"Young Malfoy."

The dark lord's voice came from the head of the table.

"Fouling my plans, like the rest of his miserable family, but then burning down my inferi like one of Potter's little army? So much for loyalty."

Draco tensed, holding his breath. He knew what was coming. Let it be quick, please, let it be a quick flash of green.

"Severus, if you would do the honors. Nagini…dinner."

Draco woke up where he had passed out, on a chair in the hospital wing. His whole body was tense, and he was as sore as if he'd been on the quidditch pitch for hours. Whatever he had been dreaming faded swiftly. He only remembered a terrible anxiety that faded but didn't really go away. 

Shaking the sleep out of his head, he sat a little straighter, wincing at a cramp in his neck. It was still night. The windows were black. The sconces along the wall gave a golden glow that broke the chill of the early hours.

He paused. There was no mud on his clothes, no singed edges, no rain soaked through to his skin. Had he change his robes?

He wasn't alone. Pansy sat against his side, snoring lightly in her own chair. Hestia occupied the bed, awake, upright against the pillow. Her sister had the chair closest to her, holding her hand, staring past her at a point on the blanket. White screens blocked their view of the students in the other beds.

People were speaking around them in low murmurs, whispering about the attack, what the attack meant, how they were injured.

"—saw one sitting up, and there was dirt falling off—"

"—looked like something from the movies I told you about—"

"—safe now, nothing can get inside here—"

And his own injuries? His hand didn't hurt. It moved when he flexed it with only the echo of an ache. His head still swam, but only with a faint tilt to the floor if he moved too quickly, as if gravity had to catch up after him. There were only sore muscles and the lingering fear of impending catastrophe.

"Oh good, you're awake."

Blaise peered around the screen, blinking rapidly. He looked like he hadn't slept—his robes were askew and he yawned every other minute. He held two mugs of a sparkling opalescent liquid, and he put one in Flora's hand, guiding her to curl her fingers around the glass. 

"Drink it," Blaise told her quietly, "you'll feel better. Hestia?"

Hestia shook her head once, but she gave her sister a stern look. Flora huffed and started to take small sips. 

"Anyone else feeling rough?" Blaise said.

Draco glanced at Pansy, about to nudge her, when Blaise stopped him.

"No no, let her sleep. Pomfrey said not to wake anyone up. It's only for people as can't. Wait a moment."

Blaise moved behind the screen, checking in on the people on the other side. A moment later, he came back without the other glass, sitting on the side of the bed. He kept one eye on Pomfrey in her office and watched for anyone coming this far down the hospital wing, yawning so hard that his eyes watered.

"Did Pomfrey put you to work?" Draco said. 

"She's drafted all the prefects," Blaise said, nodding. "Too many kids for her at once, even with Sprout helping. All the elves, too, to deal with the laundry."

Blaise grimaced at that. Now why would Blaise make a face at the idea of laundry? Draco glanced at Pansy, the deep red bruises along her throat and face, then at Hestia, who took shallow breaths and tried not to move. Ah. The girls had been covered in more than mud and rainwater. Probably everyone had been splattered with blood, theirs or that of the dead. Now they were all in clean robes...the elves' doing, probably. 

"Was anyone killed?" Draco asked.

"There's a couple who're bad off in another room," Blaise said with a shrug. "Can't take them anywhere else for now. But Pomfrey said everyone'll be fine. In here's just the ones who're hurt. Or…"

He glanced at Flora's empty gaze and didn't say more. Then he looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming down the aisle and dropped his voice to less than a whisper.

"Did you know?"

Bracing Pansy so she didn't fall, Draco leaned forward, closing the little conspiratorial circle among them. "You think I would've gone if I had?"

Completely still, Hestia glanced sideways to see him. 

"Were you in Diagon Alley?" she breathed. "They said that—"

"—there was an attack there, too," Flora said, unmoving, expressionless. "but no one's heard much—"

"—no details," Hestia finished. "About what those things were."

"Inferius," he said. "That's what they're called." 

"Weird name for 'em," Blaise said. "Creevy's calling them zombies."

"That's a muggle word," Hestia said. 

"Doesn't matter what they're called," Flora said. "Why were they here?"

Their attention went back to Draco, who leaned back from their stares. 

"Don't look at me," he muttered. "Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley? That's awfully big for an attack."

"What happened in Diagon Alley?" Blaise asked. "Was it just like here?"

Draco shifted in his seat. Their looks make him feel nauseous and he didn't know why. They were only curious, desperately curious. 

"It…started at four," Draco said. "I was in Flourish and Blotts. The clock struck. The…inferius there, she didn't do anything until the clock hit four. Then she started…biting, I think?"

"Some of them were biting," Hestia said. "Some of them—"

"—went for strangling," Flora said. "Like Pansy. It had its hands around her for ages before…" 

Flora's eyes lowered briefly.

"…before the mudbood got it off her."

Draco's stomach twisted. Granger? Of course. Where Potter went, Granger followed, and hadn't Draco seen Lovegood and Neville there, too? The whole happy lot of them. Of all the people…Pansy was going to be furious at needing rescuing. But Pansy must have been taken completely by surprise, especially if everyone had panicked and run around like they had at Diagon Alley. He frowned as a thought struck him.

"The sky didn't go dark here, did it?" he asked. "It was raining over there. They cast something to cover the sky in stormclouds."

"No, it did for a bit," Blaise said. "Not for long. If it was a spell, they didn't get it off right."

"What was the spell?" Hestia asked.

Draco frowned. "Inber...tria? Imberatia? Something like that. It was hard to hear. And they sent the dark mark up. "

Hestia frowned. "There was no dark mark—"

"—not above us," Flora said, "so they must not have—"

"—killed who they wanted," Hestia said. "I wonder if—"

"—they sent it up at St. Mungo's?" Flora said.

"St. Mungo's?" Draco asked. "They attacked the hospital?"

The twins shared a look.

"We heard Weasley say so," Hestia said.

Blaise nodded as if that answered a question. "No wonder Pomfrey can't send anyone there. If those things were there, too."

Draco frowned. But that made no sense. Why attack the hospital? 

Draco considered that. The last he'd heard of Weasley's father was about the attack on the ministry weeks ago. And since the Weasel had come back to classes, he'd assumed that Arthur Weasley was released, or at least alive and recovering. 

"Is his father still in St. Mungo's?" he asked.

No one seemed to know. They heard Pomfrey call out "prefects, please!" to summon back her helpers, so Blaise stood with a resigned sigh and left. 

Draco glanced down at Pansy. Should he stay? Was he expected to stay? He'd need to say the animagus charm soon, and he was so hungry. He nudged Pansy to sit a little straighter, sliding out from under her, and then leaned to look past the screen.

He couldn't see much. All of the screens had been drawn between the beds, framing the shadows as students sat up with each other. At the far end of the hospital wing, Pomfrey stood at her desk behind a dozen jars, mixing a potion in a small cauldron. She looked intently focused. Draco wondered if Pomfrey would notice him slipping out—?

Snape came through the door, nodding at her and saying something. She gave him a look but didn't argue, and then Snape walked swiftly into the wing. 

Ducking back behind the screen, Draco sat straight. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit. 

The last person he wanted to see. Right now, that was not his godfather, not a professor. That was a fellow Death Eater, a highly regarded Death Eater, one of Voldemort's most loyal followers. Snape might have been part of the attack. Snape might have seen Draco run. Draco put a hand over his mouth—Snape might have found out he'd helped stop the inferius. That he'd helped Potter.

All the things Snape might demand—where had he gone? What had he seen? What had he done?—was nothing that Draco wanted to answer. He hoped Snape was after someone else— 

A heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Draco winced.

"You will come with me," Snape said, already turning and bringing him along. "Miss Carrow, you will alert someone if Miss Parkinson falls out of her chair."

Flora had passed out in her sister's lap. Hestia gave the faintest of nods.

Without a word, Draco followed at Snape's shoulder, glancing at each screened off bunch of students as they passed. It was much the same, one or two on a bed, with another few sitting beside them. He briefly spotted the bright flash of red hair and heard Weasley talking with Granger, but he only made out the word "—tincture—?" and they didn't even notice him as he went by.

"A moment," Pomfrey said before they could leave. "Mr. Malfoy, I need to note how your hand came to be injured."

Draco looked at the parchment at her side, the quill floating so that she didn't have to stop stirring the glittering potion in the cauldron. The top of the parchment had the official stationery letterhead of the Ministry, with several notes jotted down in her flowing cursive. So the aurors were still investigating, reconstructing how the attack had gone. Yes, how had he been injured when he hadn't been seen among the students at Zonko's?

"I…" Draco made a small show of trying to remember. "I was at the Three Broomsticks, and I heard the clock chime…then there was a lot of yelling and I saw flashes of red."

The quill started scratching. 

"I woke up with a witch with an eyepatch taking me…to the joke shop? I kind of just sat down in a corner 'till Pansy got me for the carriage."

Pomfrey hmm'ed and said "multiple stupefies, one of Mrs. Fawley's rescues." 

She glanced at Snape, her irritation as obvious as the dark smudges under her eyes. 

"Give him one dose of rennervate draught when he starts to flag," she said. "If he ends up back here, I'll be sending Hagrid to you for all his class needs from now on."

"Understood," Snape said, unfazed. "Malfoy will not be coming back tonight."

Draco heard the understood "not if he knows what's good for him." He gave Pomfrey a nod, swaying slightly, and followed after his godfather again.

Halfway down the hall, Snape muttered back at him. "You don't have to play it up."

"Not really playing anything," Draco mumbled, putting a hand on his head. "It's…been an eventful night."

"'Eventful'," Snape scoffed. He kept his hand on Draco's shoulder and steered him not toward the dungeons but along a serpentine corridor, away from prying eyes. "More eventful than you realize."

Hogwarts at night was not Hogwarts during the day. Without students filling the corridors with their chatter and footsteps, any noise echoed hollowly through the school. Snape did not bother with a lumos charm, comfortable with the bright moonlight through the windows. At the far end of the hall, Filch's lantern's glow moved by, throwing Ms. Norris' shadow along the floor. Then Filch moved out of sight, and the hall was dark again.

Draco didn't recognize the door at first as Snape unlocked it and ushered him inside. Then the iron chandelier ignited, candles in their sconces along the walls flared to life, and Draco saw the familiar walls of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. There were the photos of wizards wounded in duels, holding up hands missing fingers, showing off gouged eyes and half of their limbs charred or covered in blood. Snape's idea of impressing upon students the importance of blocking attacks.

"Sit," Snape said, motioning at the seat across from his desk. "And do not get sick—I refuse to put up with Hagrid."

"Nothing sleep won't fix…" Draco said. He turned and lay his head in his hands, leaning heavily against the large desk so he could watch Snape from the corner of his eye.

The silence stretched as Snape drew the curtains back just enough to see out, making sure that no one was on the grounds or on the ramparts across the quad. In the distance, Hogsmeade glowed with the bright gold of warm lumos charms and, outside the village, lurid red with flames. To burn the dead? 

"God," Draco mumbled, "I won't be getting any work done today. Forget Flitwick's essay. Maybe Monday classes'll cancel."

"Mine won't," Snape said, leaving the window. 

Then Snape tapped his wand on his desk and called out, "Crix, drinks—pomegranate, chocolate with achiote, and mead."

Draco held his breath. What did Crix mean?

Then an elf appeared standing on the desk, glaring sternly at Snape. She pretended not to notice Draco—he sat straight so she couldn't step on him. She wasn't just any elf. Draco recognized her, the elf cutting radishes when he'd first gone to the kitchens to beg for pomegranates. The one who'd looked at him like she'd happily stomp him and sweep him into the rubbish.

"Its not being dinner no longer nor breakfast yet," she snapped, adjusting the dish towel wrapped around herself. "And mead is no proper drink for a student…even such as he is. And we don'ts truck with weird spices, neither."

Snape matched her look and dismissed her arguments one by one. "The kitchen is currently in full service at the headmaster's order. You know the boy will not become inebriated. And I gave you ample time with the request last week."

Her mouth pressed into a tight line. She folded her arms.

"What is he?" she demanded. "He's all blurry."

Snape looked annoyed that he had to answer.

"He's a victim of you-know-who," Snape said, "struggling under a terrible curse. And if you're not careful, he'll die of starvation, and imagine how that will look—a child starving to death in Hogwarts. What will the other elves think?"

She huffed and set her shoulders, but she snapped out of sight. A few seconds later, several cups and carafes appeared in front of them, with the familiar scent of pomegranate and chocolate, touched with a decidedly sharp tang of spice and alcohol.

Draco leaned back, looking from the cups to his godfather. "What are…?"

"You clearly haven't looked at yourself in a mirror lately." Snape sat down at his desk. "No matter how your friends cover for you, it has become obvious that you are not eating like a normal student. You cannot limit yourself as you have."

A flush rose over Draco's face. He took the pomegranate juice in both hands, holding it close, breathing in deep. It didn't smell toxic. He glanced at Snape and tried to read his face, but he looked away quickly at Snape's glare.

How would he know if this or the other drinks were poisoned? Snape was a potions master.

…he wouldn't know. Until he collapsed.

 He bolted the drink down without flinching. Nothing. Just the usual strong taste. 

"I'm fine," Draco muttered. "I can eat…things."

"What, steamed egg?" Snape said. "The things your aunt eats are not fit for regular company."

"It isn't illegal," Draco said even as he knew what the response would be.

"A chick in the shell, just old enough that its bones crack between your teeth—" Snape paused as he saw his godson flinch. "Mm. Your aunt did say you took it soft."

Draco didn't answer. He didn't like the memory of yolk half-formed into a solid mass. He took the next cup and held it close to have something to do with his hands. A strong scent of spice and chocolate washed over him.

"You must eat more," Snape said. "And more substantially. We cannot secure meals that might do more for you. They are either too expensive or…taboo. But you can at least soften the edges you're developing."

Draco stared into the hot chocolate. He had known this drink was possible, that he could have tried it. It was in the book. He just hadn't because he'd been desperate and then the pomegranate had been enough. He hadn't wanted to draw more attention to himself. 

He sipped, grimacing faintly at the sting to his tongue, but it hit his stomach with a sense of fullness and heat that pushed away the thirst for blood. It didn't hurt. It might have felt good if his stomach hadn't been twisted up in knots.

"How did you know about chocolate?" he whispered. "Or mead?"

Snape huffed as if the question was beneath him. Maybe it was.

"We can trade recipes later," Snape said dryly. "We have other things to discuss. Tonight was a catastrophe for the dark lord. His efforts have been set back weeks, perhaps months, and the aurors were tight lipped as always. You were in Diagon Alley during the attack. What happened?"

Draco looked at him long enough that he saw a flash of irritation on his godfather's face. Snape normally revealed nothing he didn't mean to, but this meant that Snape hadn't been there. He didn't know what had happened and was fishing for information.

Voldemort hadn't told Snape.

Now that was unsettling. Did that mean that Snape was no longer in the dark lord's favor? Draco closed his eyes. What hope was there if all of his contacts in the Death Eaters were on the outs? Except for Aunt Bella, but she would kill him if Voldemort demanded.

Worse. What if Snape wanted back into Voldemort's good graces? What if Snape meant to drag Draco's disloyalty out in front of the dark lord as his way back in?

"I met Aunt Bella," Draco said slowly. "She…showed me a few things."

"I know she hurt you," Snape said. "She all but bragged about it. If you'd permit me to examine—"

"It's healing," Draco said too quickly. "It's…better."

Snape didn't argue, but his look darkened. "Go on."

"I made it to Flourish and Blotts," Draco said. "To rest. One of those things, inferius, was inside already. I didn't realize what she was. She didn't attack anyone until four. I…"

Draco shifted uncomfortably. He'd run like a coward. So what? Why was it so hard to admit to running? To being scared? Death Eaters fought behind masks. Hid behind the dead. Attacked and killed children. Who expected him to behave like a hero here?

"I got—I got outsde," he stammered, "and it was dark. I put my hood up and—"

He halted midsentence. He'd burned a Death Eater down in the street. His heart didn't pound, but he felt like he was suffocating under Snape's glare. Could Snape tell just by looking at him?

"I saw a Death Eater catch fire," Draco said slowly. 

Snape didn't seem to care. A terrible thought struck Draco.

"It couldn't have been one of my parents?" he asked.

His godfather waved away the idea with one hand. "Your mother is not a fighter, she would not have been sent. Your father is one of our best. He would have been sent to the Ministry instead. In any case, you would have recognized their voice."

Recognized their screams. Snape said it so matter of factly. Draco felt sick. A bead of sweat gathered at his temple as he came closer to the worst part.

"When…" Draco started again, "when I found a hearth, I came to the Three Broomsticks. I landed on one of the damn things. Then I ran."

Snape made a soft sound of understanding. "That explains that. You left a very confused auror behind you. Then what?"

Draco's voice caught in his throat. Snape's voice had grown stern, waiting to judge whatever Draco said next. To weigh Draco's actions against his loyalties. Draco looked up at Snape, who had served Voldemort unflinchingly for years. Snape returned his look with the same focused dedication that Bellatrix had. Draco couldn't look away, transfixed. His breath stilled. 

Then I stopped the inferius long enough for damn Potter to save the day, Draco thought, remembering the dead burning on the bridge. I burned them down as they came. I almost died until Potter got there. I kept them from taking him from behind. I…

Finally Snape's expression changed. His eyes widened slightly, and his lips parted. 

For the first time in his life, Draco saw his godfather look surprised.

"Your aunt was right," Snape whispered. "You should have learned occlumancy."

Draco felt numb. He couldn't move. His thoughts—Snape had read them. Snape knew. He knew. He—

Snape schooled his face back into his mask of cold disdain. He sat straight. Whatever choice he'd had to make, he'd decided, and he did not look at Draco with any kindness or regard in his eyes. He looked like he was about to cast a curse.

Ala, ala, fire, light him on— Draco's hand clenched on his pocket where his wand should have been and he found nothing but empty cloth. Panic ran through him like ice.

Snape shifted subtly, his hand under the desk, no doubt going for his wand—

Draco flung the heavy cup at his godfather's face, rising and running for the door in the same movement. He heard the cup smash, saw the door shimmer as it was reinforced with a spell. He turned and found Snape on his feet, wand raised.

"Stilhri—"

White light froze the stone where Draco had been seconds before. If he could just reach the window—it was so far across the room, but it was the closest way out—Draco's thought only half-formed in his head, just leap from the window. He didn't know how he would survive, but anything was better than this—he ducked another spell, grabbing and flinging the chair on his way. 

In one fluid movement, Snape caught the chair in midair and slung it around against the wall inches in front of Draco, who flinched back as the chair smashed to pieces and showered him in splinters. He slipped on the smooth stone floor and landed on his side, and the window shimmered with another spell, sealing him in.

Snape wanted to catch him, not kill him—Draco could barely breathe. He darted behind the closest desk and went to pull at his cloak's hood. Nothing—laundry, his clothes, the elves had taken it to clean—

Snape was coming toward him—Draco heard his quick footsteps—he threw himself forward just as the desk he was hiding behind went skittering one way. Like an animal, he moved along the floor between desks, one step ahead as Snape tried to cut him off. 

He reached the window at the far wall, but it was made of small decorative panes that he would never be able to fit through. Behind him, all the desks suddenly slid to either side of the room. Draco turned, crouching, with Snape aiming his wand directly at him.

Hide, have to hide— Draco thought.

All the candles around him blew out as if in a strong gust of wind that whirled across the walls and took every lumos charm with it. The chandelier rattled on its chain as half its candles—the half closer to Draco—extinguished in one puff. This end of the classroom lay in thick shadow.

Snape didn't move. Draco shifted to one knee. Both of them breathed shallow, spent from running or casting several spells in quick succession, ready to dodge or cast yet one more hex. Draco tensed, wishing he had his wand—he could have used ala, he didn't think there was even a counter curse for that. He wished he could melt into the darkness here. He couldn't get away—he'd have to fight and he knew he couldn't win. He heard Snape's blood rushing through him, heard his heart beating like someone pounding on a door, saw the fear in his godfather's eyes, wide eyes, black eyes—

Little fool, I am trying not to hurt you.

Draco blinked. That hadn't been his his thought.

Snape kept his hand raised but said nothing. Draco didn't move, startled by his godfather's sentiment. They stared at each other, perfectly still, ready to react at the slightest movement.

Then Snape tilted his head ever so slightly.

…do you even know how you're doing that?

Despite himself. Draco glanced down at himself. He was on the floor, hands on the stones, impossible to see. In fact, his whole body blurred into the shadows, almost indistinct. Was this a spell? When had he cast it? How was he—?

With a half-strangled gasp, he lost his grip on whatever magic he had done. The lumos charms reignited like sparklers, and his slow heartbeat came once, powerfully, so hard that he fell forward in an awkward heap. The shock knocked the breath out of him. He lay stunned, staring dumbly at Snape at the far end of the room.  

Draco shut his eyes and waited for a hex.

But long seconds passed and he didn't hear anything besides a piece of furniture being moved. Did Snape intend to deliver him to the dark lord captured as an offering? Behold the stupid Malfoy child, worse than his parents combined.

"If you are done trying to embarrass yourself," Snape said, "then sit down. I refuse to believe you're hurt. Even if you are, I'm not taking you back to Pomfrey."

That did not sound like a dark wizard intent on murder. 

Draco lifted his head. Snape was seated at his desk again, a new chair propped up obviously for Draco. Snape pulled a stack of parchments in front of himself and dabbed a quill in red ink, making notes and scratching out sections.

Draco frowned. Was he…?

Snape frowned in irritation that wasn't directed at Draco, circling something at the top of the paper. He set the first parchment face-down after only a few seconds, moving to the next essay. Adding what was now obviously a grade. Moving to the next. He didn't even look at Draco.

The classroom was painfully silent. The scratching quill, the wind blowing against the window, the rustling of paper. The quick tapping of Snape's fingertips against the desk. His tight, measured breath. His heartbeat.

Draco swallowed once. 

Snape's heart was beating quickly, nervously. He could mask his feelings beneath a veneer of calm, but Draco could hear his heart. Could hear his tightly measured breaths.

Draco's panic started to fade. He took a long breath. Let it out shakily. Long seconds passed. Snape wasn't hexiing him. 

Why wasn't Snape hexing him? Why was he grading essays? Just sitting there ignoring him?

Without the fear numbing his thought, sense slowly crept back into Draco. The answer followed readily enough, if he thought about it. Snape was trying not to panic him again. Nothing was as monotonous and nonthreatening as grading essays. It gave Snape something to do with his hands besides hold a wand. Something to focus on besides Draco. And to be obvious about how he wasn't trying to hurt him.

Draco pushed himself up on his knees, his shoulders slumped. 

"Does this mean," Draco asked slowly, "that you are not going to kill me?"

Snape stopped writing. He didn't look up.

"Never," he said softly, with unusual sincerity. "That will never be an option."

Draco considered that. All right, he wasn't going to die yet. But there were other things Snape could do.

"Obliviate?" he tried again. "Tortured to insanity?"

Snape made his usual sound of derision. "Removing your memories of one night would hardly alter how difficult your family makes things on the regular."

Hearing the insult pulled a small laugh out of him. Draco drew himself upright. He climbed back to his feet, making the awkward walk back to the chair. He turned it sideways and sat down heavily, leaning over the backrest. They sat quietly, as if the brief chase hadn't happened. The tension had drained from between them. 

"Did you take it?" Draco said finally. "While I was asleep? My wand?"

"You would have burned me down," Snape countered.

Draco stared at him for a moment, then lifted one hand in acknowledgment. Fair enough. 

"So now what?" Draco asked.

Snape paused, slowly marking one more paper with a failing grade, and set the stack aside.

"Now…we have a very different conversation," Snape said. "An honest one."

His mouth pressed into a flat line, and he sat back in his seat, tossing his quill on top of the essays with a splotch of red ink.

"As much as the likes of us can have, at any rate."

Chapter Text

"'Honest'?" Draco echoed, disbelieving.

Despite suggesting it, Snape didn't look like he thought they could speak with much honesty, either. His wand was kept deliberately hidden behind the desk, maintaining the upper hand. 

"Fine," Snape said. "With the understanding that I will not harm you."

Draco heard the scold in his godfather's voice. Snape had no such assurance from Draco. The only reason Draco hadn't cast a fire spell was because his wand was gone. His gaze slipped down to his hands. Snape had called him skeletal. The skin looked like watery milk over blue veins. The rounded tone of his arms had diminished, and the edges of his wrist bones were distinct.

He didn't know what he was, but he knew he'd made a deal with something powerful enough to stave off vampirism. It was old, from the first faiths, and Draco was too scared of what he'd touched to dwell on it long. Still…he'd been trying to run from Snape. If he'd tried to fight instead? He wondered, glancing back up at his godfather.

Snape lifted his head slightly, easily reading his look.

"Please do not waste our time trying to fight me," Snape said. "I have survived this game longer than you've been alive. If you can still be called 'alive'?"

An invitation to speak.

Draco tensed. Even his friends hadn't been willing to broach the topic. That Snape knew about it felt like a violation. What else did Snape know? For all that Snape had asked what Voldemort had demanded of him, had asked how he could help, clearly Snape knew much more than he'd led Draco to believe.

Neither spoke for a long moment as he tried to dredge up the words to start. 

"There's no cure for vampirism," Draco said, and he shifted in his seat, feeling Snape's stare like judgment. "It was this or…"

"…or truly die," Snape finished for him. "What do you know about that spell? Did your mother say anything? Or did you cast it blindly?"

How easily his godfather made him feel like an idiot. Draco shook his head once. 

"She only sent the book. And when Pansy…the spell changed."

Snape's features tightened as if he hadn't expected that. 

"That…makes things harder. But not impossible. Very well, we'll set aside time to use a pensieve." He gazed at the calendar on his desk, all of the little boxes filled in with his notes. "Not today, not after…well. Perhaps Saturday."

"…Aunt Bella expects me on Saturday," Draco said slowly. "If I don't go, there'll be trouble."

"You cannot meet with her again," Snape said. "She will read your memories like an open book. How on earth you kept anything from her is a miracle."

Draco felt a stab of indignation. "I managed."

Snape raised an eyebrow. "She said she looked into your thoughts. To see that you are working."

Draco glanced away. The wound had healed but the memory of pain made him cold. "Yes, and I thought of a spell I've been studying. Heavy on grammar. Aunt Bella doesn't like reading."

Snape snorted in what might have been an exceedingly dry laugh.

"…you're very much like your mother," Snape said.

Another moment passed. Draco waited, but Snape didn't elaborate.

"But what will happen?" Draco said. "If I don't go to meet her? When he finds out?"

Snape took a long, measured breath, carefully considering how he would respond.

"Your actions in Hogsmeade will not reach him through me," Snape said. "But he is not stupid, and I need to know your intentions going forward."

"'My intentions'?" Draco echoed.

"You are trying to walk on a razor's edge," Snape said, "without any idea of what you're doing. It would almost be amusing if the consequences weren't so dire."

"I've made it so far," Draco said too quickly, his last shreds of pride wounded to the core. "I'm doing what he ordered, I'm—"

"Potter informed the headmaster," Snape said over him. "Of someone under a cloak of shadows at the bridge. He was quite impressed and wanted to know who singlehandedly stopped the dark lord's slaughter. I imagine the rumor will spread quickly."

Draco's hands tightened on the arms of the desk. "Potter was the one…" he whispered.

"Potter would have arrived several minutes too late." Snape shook his head once. "The children's survival was your doing. The inferi would have torn them apart otherwise."

Draco stared at him. Snape was a Death Eater. Draco knew that. But it was entirely different to think of Snape as planning and putting into motion a slaughter. Scheming alongside Bella and Voldemort. Planning the deaths of his students.

"Did you know about the attacks?" Draco asked slowly.

Snape glanced down at the parchments, looking past them. 

"No. I was not told."

Draco didn't recognize the look that flickered across his godfather's face. He'd known him for years, and this look was new. It felt like Snape was at a loss. 

Draco felt a strange sense of unease. He knew that people lied. He knew that, even if people didn't lie, they often hid the truth. This was the first time he realized Snape might be lying and concealing something from him right now. 

Would Snape kill students? If the dark lord commanded it, certainly Snape would. 

Draco swallowed nervously. There was no dark mark on his own arm, not yet. But if Voldemort told Draco to kill someone, wouldn't he? Wasn't that what Draco was working towards?

"It's…" Draco said faintly, turning to the window, feeling his head swim. 

"It's a war." Snape's face tightened ever so slightly. "People die." 

"…we're not of age," Draco said, but it sounded so weak when he said it. So what that they were children? What did that matter? 

"The children have made themselves into targets," Snape said, his consonants clipped. "Potter's damn little army, they're so eager to rush into war and kill themselves off. The moment they picked up their wands to fight back…"

"Dumbledore…" Draco started, but his voice trailed off.

The greatest wizard of their age, and yet there had been two attacks on the students, two attacks that Dumbledore hadn't been there for. Hogwarts stood as much a fortress as ever…but there were two Death Eaters inside already. Hadn't Draco already found a potential flaw in the defenses, hampered only by ancient grammar? Should he tell Snape about the vanishing cabinet? He couldn't stop his thoughts from contradicting each other. He was afraid and wanted to run. But his parents would be killed. But Death Eaters in the school would be a slaughter. Draco couldn't kill Dumbledore. Voldemort had already tried to turn Draco into a vampire—what else would the dark lord do?

As Draco spiraled through questions, a soft clink brought him out of his thoughts. Snape was pouring the mead, holding the cup out to him. Not trusting his voice, Draco reached out and took the drink, bringing it close like a shield. 

The taste was like sweet fire, like honey made from poison flowers. The heat in his mouth and down his throat settled his nerves.

"Why are you telling me all this?" Draco whispered. "I'm just your godson."

Snape didn't argue. Family relations were nothing to Voldemort. Death Eaters killed relatives as readily as burning shameful family from their tapestries. Cutting Draco off, especially for stopping one of Voldemort's attacks, wasn't out of the question. And Snape didn't stoop to explain himself.

"What," Snape said again, more deliberately, "do you intend to do?"

Crawl in bed forever, Draco thought, and let the world spin without me. 

"The dark lord ordered you bitten," Snape started. "You only escaped vampirism by cursing yourself into something else."

Draco tried to take a drink to give himself a moment and found the cup empty. Desperately thirsty, Draco leaned forward to take the whole carafe of mead, taking a long drink. The alcohol burned more than the chocolate spice, and he took comfort in the heat pooling inside him. Snape's voice seemed to come from everywhere.

"Your parents sent you here in the futile hope that you would be out of the dark lord's reach. And you are under the equally futile hope of accomplishing what must be an impossible task." Snape lowered his head slightly. "Do you honestly think he expects you to succeed? A mere student?"

Draco grasped at that last point. He didn't understand how Voldemort thought, but he did understand what he studied. The magic made sense when he gave himself time to think over the language and logic. His own craft was the only strength he could rely on. 

"…but I can," Draco said.

Snape leaned back in his chair, giving him a long, measured look.

"Can you?" Snape asked.

There was no sarcasm in his voice. 

"I…" 

Figure out a way into Hogwarts, something that no one ever managed before? A route right under Dumbledore's nose? With barely understood mechanics and grammar and lost languages?

He breathed in, held it, and let it out, nevermind how his breath shook.

"Yes."

Snape didn't react except to sit painfully still.

"It will take time," Draco immediately qualified. "I have to figure out the languages used, where the spell broke apart, how to guide the spell—"

"You're sure?" Snape cut him off.

Draco met his gaze. He expected worry or satisfaction. But the slightly tightened brow, the downturn of the mouth, the sidelong glance—Snape's look wasn't that of a Death Eater pleased at a plan going right. No. Snape instead looked at him like…

…like he didn't want Draco to succeed.

Draco didn't understand.

Snape was a Death Eater. He should want the attacks to succeed. He should want Draco to serve the dark lord. He should have told Bellatrix that Draco wasn't a vampire. So why hadn't he?

Draco lowered his gaze. It wasn't wise to look into Snape's eyes. Not now.

"May I ask," Draco started, "what are your intentions?"

Snape didn't answer. He stood and went to the windows again, not turning his back, looking out at the clouds catching the first hint of the gray morning. 

Draco waited. Snape was painfully still, any movement as deliberate as a statue changing position. Yes, Snape didn't like how this had turned out. 

"I am trying," Snape said slowly, as if he was pushing the words out heavily, "to save you and your parents from your own stupidity."

That could be taken many, many ways. Now that Draco was thinking, it became clear that they were both dancing around a topic. Which meant that there was something to be danced around. He didn't think he could get Snape to admit anything. Snape had been doing this for as long as Draco had been alive. But now Draco knew there was something else. What did Snape see that Draco didn't? Well, how was Draco being stupid?

Cursing himself. Barely eating. Not telling Snape about Voldemort's task of—

As soon as Draco thought it, the answer was obvious. What would Snape say about their master's command to break open Hogwarts and kill Dumbledore as well?

"He thinks I can't do it," Draco realized.

Snape glanced sideways at him. For once, his disdain wasn't aimed at Draco.

"He judges people by his own abilities," Snape said, "and what he demanded of you, he couldn't do it himself."

Snape looked at him like he understood exactly what Draco had been told to do. Like he had known forever. Asking to be allowed to help had simply been a way of begging Draco to…

To what? 

To take Snape's help in killing Dumbledore and slaughtering students? To cling to Snape like a lifeline? 

Draco shook his head, laughing once without humor. So this was how a pawn felt.   

"If I did pull it off?" Draco asked. "Even halfway?"

Snape laughed once, darkly.

"Succeed where he failed? In front of all his Death Eaters?"

"Nagini. Dinner."

Like opening his eyes and finding himself in the middle of the ocean, sinking, only now aware of the cold waters. Draco breathed in once, then again, trying to gulp in air.

He was going to die. There was no hope. Succeed and show up the colossal arrogance of the dark lord? Or fail and be lucky to grovel for his life, only to be fed to a snake. Or turned into an inferi. Or simply killed as an example. 

Everything had been set against him from the start and he'd been too stupid to see it.

"What…what should I do?" Draco whispered.

Snape studied him for a long moment, gauging his feeling. Then he closed his eyes, briefly, and breathed out. Some of the tension he'd been holding in his shoulders dropped.

"Will you listen to me?" Snape asked softly.

Like a drowning man clinging to a log. Draco nodded once.

Snape returned to his seat. Draco watched him think, weighing options, and shuffling his plans, reshuffling them again, coming up with a new idea on the fly. Snape pushed the essays, the quills and books and empty carafe to once side, clearing a space on his desk.

"Then you must tell me everything you know," Snape said, motioning him forward once. "With luck, you may fill in some gaps."

Draco looked at the determination on his godfather's face, then at the window, the painful blue of late night and early morning. He felt every moment of nerves and fear from the attacks before. Any last reserve of strength had gone.

"…now?" he asked, even as he reluctantly brought his seat closer.

"You can sleep later," Snape said. "There is no knowing how little time we have."

Remembering Bellatrix's intrusion in to his mind and the thought of what she might do if she was suspicious, or worse, enraged, brought Draco to attention. At Snape's command, Draco began to speak, in hushed whispers for fear that the walls could hear them. 

By the time he had finished, he struggled to keep his head up, slipping into sleep between words. Snape had to prod him to repeat the animagus charm. 

Much later, Draco woke up in the same desk, in the sunlight through the window. The room was empty. He didn't remember the end of the conversation. His wand lay in front of him. Tucking it back into his robes, he came to his feet, swaying as he went to the door and found it locked. He cast the spell to open it, his eyes half shut and his head bowed as he wound his way back to the dungeons. The halls were almost empty. Only a handful of students were about, clustered together in tight groups, moving quickly to wherever they were going.

By the time he finally collapsed in bed, he was asleep before he hit the pillow.

He slept through most of Sunday. So did much of the school. 

By the time the bell rang to summon students for dinner, Draco was the last one out of Slytherin, straggling after his friends. Yawning, bleary-eyed, he pulled his robe straighter along his shoulders, struggling with his cloak in one arm. 

As he closed the door to the common room after himself, he stumbled into Theo, who couldn't get out of his way in time. A small group of younger Slytherins packed together in the corridor and refused to move forward, holding hands, wands raised with lumos charms blazing. 

"Tone it down," Blaise grumbled, moving ahead of them. "You're just blinding yourself. There's nothing in here but us."

"But it's dark," one of the little ones said. "They came out of the dark and there's been weird noises in the dark here. They said Hogsmeade was safe, too, and they were there in the dark. There's been noises—"

"Oh knock it off," Pansy snapped. 

Her voice held a hint of the rasp she'd woken up with. Her eye was tinged pink and her face had a reddish glow to it that Pomfrey had calmed down from the blotches of burst blood vessels. The bruises around her throat were now three faint shadows that only hinted at the long strangling she'd suffered.
 
"'They, they, they'—there's no one here but us," she said, her voice low with threats. "Get going. If I see you dawdling, I'll give you something to be afraid of."

They stared at her with wide eyes, unable to move. Then she took a step toward them, hand tight around her wand, and they jumped and ran, disappearing around the corner toward the stairs. 

Blaise made a curt sound of disapproval. "Didn't think Slytherins could squeak."

She snorted, putting her wand in her pocket. She didn't bring her hand back out, preferring to keep the slender shaft of wood in her tight fingers.

Theo drew even with her, just out of reach.

"Pretty sure prefects aren't allowed to hit students," Theo said with a laugh.

"Pretty sure they don't know that," she muttered. "When I tell them 'go', I'm not asking." 

Draco didn't comment. He hung behind their group, watching Blaise keep his own lumos charm even in the lit corridor. Theo likewise kept his hands in his pocket and his gaze on the side rooms and corridors they passed. And Draco had his cloak, bringing it up around his shoulders. 

Wands, he thought, were fine and all. But he didn't ever want to have to draw his in a fight, to be in a street dispelling a dozen curses and jinxes sent his way. He didn't think he'd be lucky enough to know every counterspell, not when there were wizards who'd been fighting since the last war.  

Or wizards like Voldemort or Potter, who were simply overwhelming in their power. 

In the Great Hall, Draco's gang was one of the last groups to sit down. The carafe of pomegranate juice was waiting for him, but an unusual scent filled the air over the usual dinner of roast chicken and vegetables. The students around him all had cups with the achiote chocolate that Snape had gotten for him. Pansy took hers doubtfully, but Blaise didn't hesitate, so she followed suit. 

Dinner was noticeably quiet. Students spoke in murmurs and flinched if a knife struck a plate too hard. It was impossible not to notice the shimmering sparkle of magic over the windows. The wards of the castle had been freshly reinforced. Small wonder that McGonnagall and Flitwick were not seated at the table. Dumbledore himself looked tired and in need of a long rest.

Draco, using his drink to half-hide his face, glanced over the rim at the Gryffindors. Neville looked like he was trying to reassure a few first years sitting around him, but he looked to be the only one bearing up under the stress. Potter stared distantly through his plate, and Granger was skimming a book in one hand as seriously as if it held a vital clue, saying something to Potter even though he didn't give any sign that he had heard. 

Weasley looked almost white as a sheet, his face tightened in a permanent grimace, nodding vaguely when Neville squeezed his shoulder.

Draco would haven given a lot to be a shadow under their table, listening in. 

Then Potter looked up, and his gaze met Draco's.

Cold anger and restraint—Draco felt Potter's resentment and flinched away. Too late— Potter had seen him. 

Did they know he hadn't been at the joke shop? Did they know he had left Hogsmeade and gone to Diagon Alley? 

Light tapping of steel on glass caught his attention. Everyone looked up toward the teacher's table as Dumbledore rose. The headmaster didn't have to wave his hands for quiet. 

"You must have noticed that the evening letters and parcels have not been delivered," Dumbledore said. "Professor McGonagall and Madame Hooch are currently examining each one for any dark magic. I have been reassured that they have already gone over the whole lot, but they wanted to be doubly sure. Mail shall be passed out after dessert."

A murmur spread through the students. No one had considered their own letters as a means of attack. That the professors had already thought of it brought both worry and relief.

"And," Dumbledore continued, "while some of my colleagues were rather insistent on continuing as usual, in the comforting reassurance of routine and schedule…"

Here he glanced vaguely to one side, where it was obvious from the professors' expression that 'some colleagues' meant only Snape.

"…more persuasive arguments have convinced me that the proper course of action is to cancel classes for the next week."

Jaws dropped. The murmur now was louder, some excitement peeking through the nerves. Deadly peril was one thing, but canceled classes couldn't be overlooked.

"As frightening and terrible as the attack was," Dumbledore said, standing straighter, "the fact remains that the students of Hogwarts accounted themselves as no less valorous, no less capable, than some of the most veteran aurors of the Ministry. I have received word from several Hogsmeade shopkeeps grateful for the swift actions of our older students, and commendations from aurors regarding how calm and steadfast you proved yourselves during the fight. The brave stand at Zonko's, the camaraderie in the Three Broomsticks, the conflagration at the bridge…I have never been so proud of all of my students."

Draco looked askance, staring into the red stained liquid of his cup. 

Dessert was served—toffee pudding, bread pudding, and apple crumble steaming in the cool air. Tarts and biscuits appeared on smaller plates, and the Great Hall felt warmer and safer as the sweets flowed. Draco pushed the plate of shortbread at his elbow over towards Pansy, who broke them into pieces and dunked them into tea to make them softer.

True to Dumbledore's word, letters and small packages began to appear at the tables. A plain brown envelope fluttered down on Pansy's plate, and she paused, her hands frozen above the paper. Then she took a breath and undid the string holding it shut, pulling free a single slip of torn newspaper with two hearts drawn in the margin. 

Pansy put her hand over her mouth, muffling her cry. The napkin half-hid her shaky smile.

Draco could guess what it meant. Two hearts, for her two parents. They had to be on the run if this was as much of a message as they could send.

He wondered if his own parents were still alive. Then decided they must be. Voldemort wouldn't miss the opportunity to rub their deaths in his face otherwise.

"Kill Dumbledore, and let my Death Eaters into the castle past the wards. Do this, and your family will be redeemed in my eyes."

Lies, all lies. But… Draco twisted the cup in his hands. The dark lord rewarded faithful servants well. Peter Pettigrew had his silver hand and the master's complete trust. Maybe Snape was wrong. If Draco fixed the cabinet, let in the Death Eaters, somehow killed the headmaster…

Draco put the cup down, his eyes shut. His whole body felt as heavy as lead. He wanted to sleep and never wake up. Or slip into the Forbidden Forest and curl up under a bush, letting the world go by without him.

ARE YOU MAD? YOU WILL REMAIN IN HOGWARTS — THAT IS THAT.

Draco blinked, startled straight. Who was yelling at him? 

But no—everyone had startled, dropping spoons and cups. A stupefy slipped free and flew over everyone's heads to splash against the wall, with a sheepish Ernie McMillan putting his wand down. 

The voice continued, and everyone looked around. This howler wasn't particularly angry, so it was hard to see who had received it, but the sternness of a mother's voice captured and held every child's attention.

THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN COME HOME, WE LEFT THE HOUSE — I DON'T CARE WHAT THE MINISTRY SAYS, ATTACKS ARE HAPPENING IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. NOWHERE ELSE IS SAFE. YOU HEAR ME? NOWHERE IS SAFE BUT HOGWARTS.

There was a flurry of shredded papers, and Demelza at the Gryffindor table looked stricken and wan. She noticed everyone's glances and lowered her head. 

Draco wondered if the howler had been sent before yesterday's attack. He wondered who his aunt was attacking and killing? Attacks clearly weren't being reported in the Daily Prophet. By now there should have been a special edition or late printing. Instead the news simply wasn't reporting anything.

He looked around the Great Hall. 

Hogwarts may have been safer than all the rest of Britain. But from the way everyone looked at each other, then up at a weary, tired Dumbledore, not many of the students believed that. They looked like the little Slytherins had, nervous, hunched, quiet in their groups.

He lifted his cup, staring into the chocolate. Not as satisfying as the mead.

Was he going to continue repairing the cabinet? He could do it—he was sure of it. If he had enough time. Voldemort didn't actually expect anything, but it would be a trump card, a way out if worse came to worse. A bargaining chip. Something to offer in exchange for his life.

For all of their conversation, Snape had not directly told him to stop.

He imagined the entire Great Hall filled with children, dead. The blood. The stench of it. 

Nowhere safe but Hogwarts? Then nowhere was safe. And Draco took no comfort in being a snake in the shadows, not when there were such powerful monsters waging a war around him.

Chapter Text

Classes being canceled didn't mean time off. If anything, Draco doubled his efforts. 

With Pansy's help, he kept the students away from the far corner of the common room, claiming one of the larger tables, and pulled close a handful of tall-backed chairs. Some green and silver cushions helped ease the hard edges of the old fashioned furniture. They kept the candlelight low so that no one could read over their shoulders, with Pansy and Theo and the twins studying as Draco revised his notes on the Vanishing Cabinet.

Vanishing, from Anglo-French word vanir to disappear, from the Latin word vanescere to vanish, itself from vanus, the void. And cabinet, from the Middle French word for a small room or chamber. 

He wouldn't have cared about the name except that ornately carved furniture that transported people from one place to another had been called Vanishing Cabinets for centuries, even longer. In the wizarding world, names mattered.

Vanir is of the 14th century. Cabinet is of the 16th. Cabinets themselves were not popular enough in wizarding society until after the 1600s, but the term stayed the same for small chambers and tall armoires alike.

For something so rare, they were very popular. They were dead useful and yet difficult to craft. He looked back at his notes. Vanishing Cabinets had been manufactured one set at a time from multiple wizarding guilds in England for two centuries, and then the secret had disappeared as the guilds lost power in the 1600s, so that muggle-made cabinets were enchanted by only a handful of wizards…and then no one at all as the lineages died out.

Aelfwynn Wrightster, last known witch of a family of wood workers, crafted the last recorded cabinet. The family stopped producing witches and wizards at all.

Squibs, the rest of them. And long enough ago that any of the witch's notes and things would have been lost to time. The family were all muggles now.

One more tragedy of mixing outside of the wizarding culture.

He sat straight, stretching, working the cramp out of his shoulder.

"Found something?" Pansy whispered to hide her lingering rasp.

"…I need a book on 17th century charm construction," he sighed.

She snorted in shared sympathy.

"And I need a book with accurate recipes," she said, flipping a page derisively. "Not the safe Ministry ones."

The sharp rustling of the page made Theo glance up. He'd joined them with hand tools and small components neatly sorted in paper packets. He kept a lumos burning bright in a bowl, but it was shielded with a propped-up book so that the bright light didn't bother his friends—it only glittered on the gears and screws and pins he put together with tweezers. He turned a gear one way, studying at the diagram in his book, then back at the tiny mechanism between his fingertips. He frowned and started to unscrew the gear to turn it the other way round.

Hestia and Flora sat on either side of a corner. With a jar of beetles between them, they spoke with looks and shrugs that made sense only to them. Flora carefully lay out one beetle at a time, and they each tugged off the wings until they had a small pile. Constantly rechecking their notes, they whispered the incantation to turn the wings into gems of the same green and violet coloring. More often than not, the 'gems' looked like dull stones, and then they sighed and tried again.

No other Slytherins bothered them. They were all rumored to be related to Death Eaters, if not servants of the dark lord themselves, and even if they weren't, Pansy was there. Her rasp had not improved, and the fear that it might be permanent had put the devil himself in her. Her glare when someone in the common room coughed too loud sent the smallest students huddling together for protection. 

No one actually left the room, however. Just like neither Pansy nor Draco nor anyone considered retreating to a more private chamber deeper in the dungeons. 

No one wanted to be alone in the dark. The stone walls groaned and echoed with strange knocks and sounds. Hogwarts was so deep, with so many secrets, who would dare explore beyond the dormitories of their dungeons?

The constant murmur of the common room felt a thousand times safer. Everyone could see each other, could see the corners and high ceilings. Some of them sang songs from the Weird Sisters' latest albums, and others spread out pages of the Prophet and the Quibbler and argued over what had really happened on Saturday. They were all happier for the company of older students and prefects. 

Blaise walked with heavy steps so he wouldn't startle anyone. So many of the students kept one hand in their robe at all time, ready to defend themselves at the first sign of danger. He made enough noise that everyone knew he was there as he came up behind Draco and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Vaisey's looking for you," Blaise whispered. "I couldn't put him off."

Draco huffed. Of course Vaisey was looking for him. Dumbledore had asked the Quidditch players to volunteer for an exhibition match, mixed teams, purely a friendly game to lift the students' morale. And Draco knew that no one wanted to play on an open field like sitting ducks. Plus, no one would want to play with Slytherins. If they didn't field enough from their own side, there wouldn't be a game, and Draco didn't want to play.

"Told him you were in the owlry," Blaise said. "But that wasn't long ago."

"…the usual?" Draco asked, knowing that Blaise's gift of a warning required a gift from him in return. "Lavender and the like?"

"No, not today," Blaise said and gave him a note. "Got these damn bags under my eyes, but I don't want something too strong. Mother says they'll stay baggy if you're not careful."

Draco took the note and looked over the ingredients. He sighed. The ingredients were nothing unusual, but there were a bunch of them.

"Who's cooking it up for you?" he asked deliberately.

"I'm not asking you, relax," Blaise chuckled. "I have other people that owe me favors. It's just most don't ever go in the forest."

Pansy glanced sideways at him. "Draco…"

He shook his head once, standing. "It's the forest, not Hogsmeade. Castle grounds're safe. And this won't take long."

"You going by the library?" she asked, and all of them looked up.

"Just to drop off," he said. He raised a hand to stop them before they could ask. "Not to check out."

The twins sighed and went back to their work, and Theo just handed over a book. Pansy added a couple of her own, and Blaise pulled a small one from his pocket. Draco stuffed them all in his satchel and stood, leaving the dungeon.

Few students braved the halls. The classrooms were closed and the sunlight didn't reach the corridors. The students who did come out walked together in pairs and trios. There was safety in numbers, as well as in the occasional professors walking through the halls, speaking with each other.

He paused when he came to the library. The tables were packed as far as he could see. Madame Pinch looked almost mental, her lips pressed tight as she checked out book after book. The line of students, mostly Ravenclaws, went around the desk and along the wall.

She should've realized the library would be popular, he thought. A place for lots of students to gather, with one of the most feared adults in the whole school keeping watch? Pinche wasn't afraid of ashwinders or monsters or Death Eaters. Where else was safer? Even if she looked halfway to stupefying the students to shush them.

Draco didn't say anything to her, only politely nodding and keeping his head down as he gently put each book into the return slot. 

He had already returned the books stolen from the Restricted Section. At least, he thought they had been returned. He'd left them in the far corners of the library, on top of books popular with the first years—Serial Killer Wizards and Ancient Fertility Magics—the usual volumes passed along the dormitories in one's first weeks. When he'd checked the shelves the day after, the stolen books were gone, probably back on the circulation cart with Madame Pinch going mad trying to figure out who had placed them there. 

It had hurt to leave the books behind, but keeping them was too risky. Granger could have accused him while he had them in his room. Pinch could have accio'd them as soon as she realized they were gone. He'd taken as many notes as he could of the repair book, then copied the pages of the old book on Ankou out verbatim. They were only twenty-four pages, so he'd managed in one night, but the manuscript had been old and faded with odd handwriting. He had to hope he'd made no mistakes.

He went to the dictionaries section just to see if any books that he was waiting for had been returned—no, none of them. But he paused. A Brythonic Dictionary was there, and while it wasn't Anglo-Saxon… He picked it up and thumbed through the first pages. There was the list of editors and contributors, the commentary from the Hogwarts headmaster Edessa Sakndenberg, and then finally a short introduction about the book itself.

A dictionary for the living of Cymraeg, Kernowek, and Brezhoneg, as well as the dead of Cumbric and Brittonic, being the most common languages ancestral to all beings of that region, now subsumed into the lingua "angla" franca, a record as the great languages, like the old spirits, change, die, and return.

Draco frowned. 

There was wordplay going on above his head. 

More importantly, however, was the mention of the great spirits dying and returning, and how this book correlated the other languages back to Brythonic. 

He took this book and the dictionary beside it on Angla-Brythonic, hoping against hope that Granger had missed something useful in her sweep. When he returned to the front seating area, he found that several tables had opened up as the Ravenclaws flocked at the doorway, waiting for their last housemate to check out their stack. 

Draco sat, setting one book beside the other, opening them at the same time to examine their entries for the same words.  

Amren, Amrout, Amwynn, Aangant, Anaraith…both of them had almost the same terms, and the same definitions. They were in English, although the second book had the terms with older spellings.

Anbleid (n.) — wolf's bane

Ancarth (n.) — a root for a seer's visions

Ankou (n.) — slave of death; Annwn's creature

He paused on the word. 

Yes. Almost the same word from the poem. Just a letter off. This could work. This could—

Yes. This would work.

He stood straight, heady with relief and satisfaction and something sharper. Granger hadn't gotten everything. She hadn't—

"Ow—"

Blood.

Draco froze, half upright.

The copper scent of blood filled the space around them. 

To Draco, the rest of the world vanished. All that mattered was—

"—I think I gave myself a papercut!"

In the quiet library, the voice was painfully loud. Pinch's shush was a scolding in itself, but everyone couldn't help looking up, seeing who had said that. 

Draco didn't have to look. In the space between the cry of pain and the rest of it, he could have crawled over the table and pounced on the open wound.

When he did look, he saw the drop of blood first, then Potter, then the blood again.

Draco was vaguely aware that Potter wasn't alone. Sometime after he'd started reading, Potter and his entourage had sat at the table directly across from him, facing him. Potter held his finger up to show the thin drop of blood oozing out of his cut. 

Beside her, Weasley and Granger stared not at Potter but at Draco, their hands below the table. On their wands. 

Everyone else looked from Draco to the three of them, not quite sure why they were staring so intently. 

There wasn't even enough blood to drip down Potter's palm.

Draco's stomach twisted.

It didn't matter. He wanted it.

And they wanted to see him react, didn't they? Attack Potter in front of the students and in front of a teacher? Reveal why he was so damn thin and pale and didn't eat normally anymore?

They knew. At least they suspected.

He couldn't move. If he moved, it would be toward their trap. He couldn't speak—he would have gasped in hunger. Potter's blood felt as strong as Potter's magic. Draco knew he could have found that drop if Potter was on the other side of the school. 

Dammit, his hands were starting to shake. He couldn't stop staring. He had to move, stop looking at it, look at anything else, look at anything—

Potter narrowed his eyes. It was enough movement to break the hypnotic glistening light on that one drop, and Draco forced his look up to meet Potters' gaze.

white fires of anger

A flash like fire billowed up, scorching with tangible heat. Draco had a glimpse of Potter straightening up in surprise as Draco stumbled backward, away from him, away from that fury directed squarely at him, away— 

Draco tried to grab the table and only swept the books down on top of himself. 

The knock on his head jolted him back to his senses. 

There hadn't been fire. His face wasn't burned. Whatever monstrous magic he'd seen in Potter's look, it hadn't been real fire roaring up in front of him. And Draco didn't want to see it again. He gathered the books, holding them close as he got back to his feet, turning his face away from Potter.

"Malfoy—" Potter started, but he was drowned out by the rest of the room laughing at his fall and Madam Pinch's frustrated scolding.

Draco held the books against his chest until he reached the librarian's desk, putting them down in front of her with a hasty apology. He knew his face was red. Let them think it was embarrassment. He was only too happy to stuff the books in his satchel with a quick word of thanks, all but running out of the library.

The halls were empty. Perfect. He wasn't afraid of a few dark corridors when the real monster was back there in the library. 

Did Potter know that Draco was afraid of him? Of course—how could he not? Did Potter guess that Draco had felt his anger? Maybe—was Potter a legilimens? An occlumens? Potter was so damn powerful that maybe his magic was simply his emotions spilling out uncontrollably.

Draco put one hand on the wall as he walked, trying not to stumble. He ran his arm across his face, drawing in shaky breaths. Blocking the scent of blood. Fucking Potter, stupid Weasley, filthy mudblood…

Damn curse. Damn vampires. Damn war. Damn Volde—

He stepped face-first into a heavy shoulder that sent him sideways into the wall. Draco put his arms out and barely caught himself before he fell, cursing loudly.

"There you are," Vaisey said. "'Bout time I found you."

Draco tried to keep his irritation from showing, but apparently it didn't work. Vaisey smacked a hand against the wall near his head to keep him from walking by.

"I want you for the exhibition game," Vaisey said before Draco could talk.

"You only bought me for the season—" Draco started.

"The match is part of the season," Vaisey said, leaning over him to use his larger seize against him. "Gryffindor scraped together all the other players willing to go."

"Then they're stupid," Draco said. "The whole thing is stupid."

"We're already down a chaser and a beater," Vaisey said, "and I'm playing keeper. If you don't play seeker, that's it."

"Then that's it," Draco said, backing away. "I was in Hogsmeade, I was at the fighting, if you think I can play after that—"

"You have to play every game," Vaisey pushed. "If you want any shot at pro. And if we win—"

"Win?" Draco echoed incredulously. "'Win'? At this rate, none of us are surviving past this year."

"If you fly like you did last time, you'll beat Potter for sure," Vaisey said. "A sure win."

As if that was enticing. As if Draco wanted to be anywhere near Potter. The sense of that white hot anger was enough to make Draco duck under Vaisey's arm and move past him.

"Call me when it's a real game," Draco said as he went.

Vaisey paused.

"…or I can tell the headmaster you weren't at Zonko's on Saturday."

Draco stopped. 

His breath caught in his throat. 

Vaisey continued. "Or the Three Broomsticks. You weren't there, either."

There was no one in the hall. Draco didn't look over his shoulder or turn.

"I…was," Draco said softly. "At the Three Broom—"

"Not at the start," Vaisey said, with the painfully sharp smugness of being right. "I know where you weren't. Think the headmaster would want to know you lied?"

Draco stared at the stones of the floor. Vaisey couldn't know for sure. The fighting had been chaotic and confusing. But Draco didn't want anyone prying into his comings and goings. Everyone knew he was related to Bellatrix, and that his family had dealings with dark magic. It didn't take a genius to put things together and come up with plausible suspicions.

Refusing to speak, Draco started walking again. 

"I'll see you on the field," Vaisey called out after him.

Which was how Draco found himself cursing a blue streak as he did up his boot laces, pulling his uniform properly on his shoulders, and tugging the hood over his head. Grasping his broom, he followed Theo out, the last one in line as they came out onto the pitch.

"I don't know how he got you, too," Theo muttered, holding his broom like a shield in front of himself. "But I'm glad I don't have to stand here alone."

Draco glanced up at the stands around them and understood.

The entire school had turned out for the game. It made no sense for everyone to come into the open air when they were afraid of the outside world, but then Draco imagined that no one wanted to be left alone in an empty castle. The game was meant as a way to cheer up the students, and they were all here, clapping and stamping their feet as the other players were named—Potter, Weasley, Mclaggen, Chambers, Bradley, Johnson, and Sloper. 

But when Slytherin's players were listed—Malfoy, Nott, Vaisey, Urquhart, Harper, Zabini—boos and hisses. The noise did not collapse into outright jeers or slurs, but Draco heard the fear behind the boos. Some of these Slytherins were the children or relatives of Death Eaters.

"What do you think?" Draco asked. "We're down one."

Theo scoffed. "With Weasley lagging and Sloper tripping them up? And they've never played all on one team? Just find the damn snitch."

"Fast as I can," Draco promised.

There was the whistle and the release of the snitch, and the players all kicked up into the air. Draco went up higher until the crowd sounded like a rustle of leaves, and he closed his eyes, listening.

It wasn't the snitch he heard but another heartbeat coming up fast beside his,a heartbeat he recognized. Draco turned his back to Potter, keeping his face averted. Dammit, was he imagining the scent of blood or could he still taste it on the air?

"What was that at the library?" Potter demanded, flying closer. 

"Sod off," Draco said, shying away.

"You looked half-crazed," Potter said. "You were—look at me, you little ferret—"

Draco banked hard left, moving away from Potter and sick to his stomach at feeling him following. Was Potter in the game just to get him alone? Draco started spiraling downward in broad circles, waiting to hear the hum of the snitch's wings.

"You were in the Restricted Section—" Potter started.

"Is that what your girlfriend says?" Draco said.

"She's—" Potter cut himself off. "You were there, you grabbed something about old gods and a bloody snake?"

"Not like," Draco said, banking harder left into the spiral and going faster.

"She read everything," Potter said close at his shoulder. "All the books you tried to get—"

"Not all—" Draco said before he stopped himself.

"So you did find something—" Potter started.

There.

Under Potter's voice, just under his heartbeat, was the hum.

In fact, it was right under Potter's heart. 

Draco's head snapped toward it, spinning his broom, spotting the snitch in arm's reach just under and behind Potter's arm. As Potter looked down, Draco reached out as fast as he could.

Potter jerked reflexively, purely on instinct, and the movement luckily knocked the snitch with his elbow, sending it flying backwards. Draco lunged forward as Potter turned, and then they were flying side by side through a wisp of cloud, cold and icy as they picked up speed. By the time the snitch plunged straight down, Draco saw the crowd and the stadium as a blur that went horizontal as the snitch pivoted and flew straight along the ground.

"—there goes Potter and Malfoy, they're on the—"

Dirt and grass flew up behind them as the snitch flew inches above the earth, then rocketed back up into the chaos of the beaters swinging bats. Neither of them hesitated. Snitches always threaded their way through a game without being hit. As long as the seekers fearlessly stayed the course, as close behind as possible, they had a good chance of avoiding the heavy iron bludgers or other players. 

That meant flying side by side, jockeying for the closest route, and they barreled through Sloper so that he plummeted to the ground with a cry. A moment later, they had flown through the farthest hoop before Draco realized where they were, barely dodging Weasley on the way.

"Is the damn…thing…broken?" Potter growled out, struggling to breathe in the wind.

Draco said nothing. Potter was pressed against his shoulder, and the heat of the body was the heat of his blood. After seeing it, being surrounded by its scent, feeling its warmth, was maddening. The wind slicing past his face just barely kept him focused.

The next turn was so sharp that it hurt. They both winced as the snitch veered straight up, inches past the announcer's box. There was a yell as whoever was calling out the game startled backward. 

The snitch was in reach. Both of them put their hands out, and Draco veered heavily right into Potter. At these speeds, no one would see a foul. No one would see him try to—

Instead, Potter luckily ducked at the right instant, and Draco rolled right over him, losing precious inches. Draco yelled and put on speed, but he couldn't pull even again.

"Serves you right," Potter shouted over his shoulder.

They were climbing back into the clouds again, even higher this time. Cold air and moisture stung their eyes. Draco risked grabbing the end of Potter's broom. Stupidly risky—a hard turn could break his arm—but the added weight jolted Potter back down the scant inch that Draco needed. The snitch was right there—they both reached—

The snitch turned too fast, coming right between them, right between their faces—

Draco looked into Potter's eyes.

cramped darkness and the tiniest light through the sliver of wood, spiders crawling over his hand, nauseating hunger and cruelty in his uncle's eyes

a cold house, endless fear, Draco vomiting as he listened to flesh wetly sliced, screams that turned high pitched as pieces were cut off

As in the library, Draco flinched backward…off his broom into the open air.

Potter sucked in a frantic breath, and the snitch luckily went past his lips into his mouth. As Potter coughed and scrabbled with his glove-covered hands, Draco's world turned over and over until he was staring upwards. The clouds grew smaller in the vast blue sky. The wind howled past his ears. Someone was yelling that "Malfoy's falling—"

Draco saw a blur that must have been Potter coming toward him, his arm outstretched. Draco couldn't reach for him. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. Fear froze him solid.

Potter almost reached him in time.

Pain flashed through Draco's whole body, and then his world went black. 

For a brief moment, there was no fear. No chaos. No worry. The world was quiet. There was no war. No dark lord. No Potter. No blood. He wasn't falling. Everything was still.

Was he coiled up in a dark burrow?

It was torture to hear sounds again. 

Potter was leaning over him. Draco knew without seeing—there were other people around him, too, but none as obvious as Potter—and he shut his eyes tight. The sense of safety went away and he was left in the real world again, splayed out on the grass, with pain shooting down his back.

Outmaneuvered and sent crashing yet again. In front of the whole damn school. If only the ground would swallow him up right now. He would play dead and let them carry him off to—

"Pomfrey!"

Madame Hooch was there, right beside him, yelling out so loud that he winced.

"Poppy, get over here! I don't hear a heartbeat!"

Draco hands dug into the dirt, his breath catching in his throat. 

Shit. 

Shit shit shit oh no no no—

He bolted upright and started pushing himself backward, scooting out of her reach before she even realized. Potter was looking at him like her yelling had answered something for him, standing up and starting toward him. 

Draco kept moving backward, damn the pain and bones grinding in his back. He'd crawl all the way off the pitch and into the changing rooms if he had to—where was Snape?—where was—

He crawled back up into someone who pinned him in place. Pomfrey was kneeling next to him, holding him so he couldn't move. Draco tried to turn and found that she was used to catching patients who didn't want to be held. And now that he was stuck, he felt pain flaring up over his chest and spine and up his head. Something wet crept down his hair and temple.

Pomfrey put her wand over Draco's chest and muttered something he couldn't hear. 

The crowd was silent. Draco felt the world crumbling around him. No, not here, not like this, not in front of everyone. There was no heartbeat and she was listening intently—

"What on earth…?" Pomfrey whispered.

The cold thump in his chest surprised them both. 

A moment passed. Draco held still, and Pomfrey listened intently with her wand uplifted.

A second beat followed the first, then a third, not following any rhythm. A fourth, a fifth, slowly, as if the heart inside his chest was figuring out how to work again. After several long seconds, the lifeless, sullen heatbeat became a steady, regular pace.

Pomfrey made a soft, thoughtful sound, frowning faintly. She put her wand to Draco's head, mending the gash near his eye, then cast something that stopped the pain so he could drag in a full breath. 

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

She wasn't asking about his bones or the fall. He couldn't meet her eyes. He shook his head once and winced.

She looked up, giving Potter a glare that stopped him from coming closer. Then she nodded once at Hooch.

"He'll be fine," Pomfrey said, and then they didn't matter anymore as the crowd applauded politely, more for her and Hooch than for the fact that he was all right. As Hogwarts celebrated the winning team, Draco was put on a stretcher and carried away after her. It wasn't his first time ending a game on his back, and he felt a brief twinge of success at escaping Potter as he was taken away.

He spent the afternoon asleep, waking as the sun lay halfway sunk on the horizon. Lying on the hospital bed, drowsing under a healing potion, he considered what he'd seen in Potter's eyes.

He understood half of it. Part of the vision had been his own home, cold and hollow, filled with Death Eaters and Voldemort always at hand, and blood and screams coming from the basement. He had lived with that horror all summer, thanking God that it wasn't him or his parents instead.

But the other place? Cramped, dark, a little prison for a little prisoner. Spiders—well, that was all right, spiders weren't scary, but the memory had a feeling of fear and disgust for them. Hunger. And someone who was his uncle, staring at him from the light.

Not Draco's uncle. 

If the one place had been his home, had the other place been from Potter's memory? Potter's home?

He didn't like that. That meant that Potter had seen the horror inside Malfoy Manor. Draco didn't think he could lie around that one. Pretend it was something he'd read and then had a nightmare about? He winced at how obvious a lie that was. And nevermind the vision—the scent of Potter's blood had been right there for the whole mad flight after the snitch. 

No, he'd have to avoid Potter…for an entire school year. 

Impossible.

The only thing more worrying was the heartbeat.

He put a hand on his chest. This pulse wasn't what he'd felt before the vampire's bite. After a hard game, his heart had always beat fast and strong and steady. 

This new heartbeat went just a touch too fast, too soft, and it asserted itself in short bursts, faded, then came back again when he wasn't expecting it. 

So the animagus charm was working. Maybe. The charm bottle had been jostled, after all. Maybe he would turn into a slug and completely forget who he was. A little snake under a rock. A toad half sunk in mud. A roach under the bed with twiching antennae—

He had to move. He couldn't keep lying flat, thinking about how the walls he'd built for himself were closing in. He sat straight, quietly climbing off the bed. His gear lay on the table beside him and—

He frowned. A small paper package stuck out just barely from a pocket—an envelope tied with string. 

Glancing around himself, he picked it up, feeling something round and hard. He tore the seal and turned the package over, and something small and white fell into his palm. When he looked at it closely, he had to stare at it for a long moment before he realized what it was.

A single human molar shimmering with a spell. 

His back and chest tensed up in anxiety. Message and warning in one. This had to be a portkey.

He still had the package in his hand. He turned it over and read the script inside the flap.

Your presence is expected tonight. 

There was no signature. No need. He knew this was from Bella.

No. Not Bella. She had just done the writing. This summons came from the dark lord himself.

How? How on earth had this gotten in here? It couldn't have been checked by the professors. It had to have been walked in. Snape?

This was not a meeting he could put off. Not without consequences. Draco looked out the window. The last purple light of sunset was dropping into the horizon. 

Chapter Text

Sneaking out of the hospital had been easy—Pomfrey hadn't even been there at her desk. He would beg forgiveness for sneaking out later. Say he was light headed and didn't know where he was. 

"Just…stay calm," Draco whispered to himself. There were strong winds blowing through the forbidden forest, covering his voice. "Stay calm." 

Sneaking out of the castle had been a little harder because he refused to leave without his cloak, and that meant waiting for the dungeons to open briefly enough for an accio spell. There were so many reasons for not wanting anyone to see him, not even his friends, not for this. Did anyone notice his cloak slipping out along the ceiling like spilled ink? He didn't hear shouts, so he hoped he was away with it, bringing up the hood and covering himself in shadows.

"Just…breathe. Just—"

The rest of the way was easy. With the sun set, the castle was dark and quiet, save for the knockings and groanings of the stones around him. Without the sound of students moving through the halls, Hogwarts moaned and breathed on its own. Bypassing Mrs. Norris once, he escaped without anyone noticing him, heading for the forest. 

"Just a little way now. Not far."

His heart beat knocked against his ribs. He grimaced, putting his hand over the left side of his chest as it beat hard, feeding on his fear. Whatever animal lay inside him, it did not like being out in the open.

Was this stupid? Would Snape call this stupid? Sneaking out with an unknown portkey, following Bella's summons? He shook his head at himself. Of course Snape would call him stupid.

If he faced Voldemort, what would he say? Would the dark lord see his betrayal at the bridge? Would he know that Draco had set a Death Eater on fire? That the plan to turn Draco into a vampire had failed, sort of?

He shouldn't go. But he couldn't not go.

Draco Malfoy would be a loyal Death Eater. Except when he wasn't. 

Tonight's moon was black. Clouds covered the sky. His only light was the odd luminescence of the forest, the glowing flowers and shimmering brooks that guided him into the treeline. He followed forest's edge in the general direction of of Hogsmeade—he couldn't tell where the castle wards began and ended. Magic didn't have neat lines like on a map. He figured the portkey would take him as soon as it could, so he held it in one hand as he went, watching its faint shine as he—

The portkey flashed. When the light faded, he was no longer near Hogwarts.

Feeling vaguely nauseous, Draco did not recognize where he was. There was red and white smoke, and people gathered in a crowd across the wide street. Bright street lamps lit up the haze of smoke and the stadium where…a Quidditch match was being played?

No, not Quidditch. The people on the street were not wearing robes. They had skirts and pants, jackets, the kind of things the muggle-borns had. There were no wands. There were no robes.

These were muggles. 

Without thinking, he backed up several steps, coming up against a wire fence. He sank down to the grass. Could they see him? There were no muggles near him, were there? He glanced around himself, seeing just a clear plot of dirt and pavement. No, he was alone—he had a moment to catch his breath, to look for where to go next—

There was a pop, and then someone was standing in front of him. Draco's breath froze, but he tensed, making the fence shake. 

The robed figure turned, wand raised, and Snape stared through the fence into the field on the other side. 

Draco stared up at him, completely still.

A chorus of loud laughter came from the muggles. Snape frowned, clearly not satisfied, but he put his wand away and turned, moving confidently toward the huge red building before them.

Draco waited half a moment, then followed after him, easing into the crowd, ducking outstretched arms and muggles standing in little groups. After a brief hesitation, he put his hood down. A walking shadow stood out here in the light and smoke, and Snape was focused straight ahead. 

How did Snape walk through the muggle crowd so easily? The smoke stung Draco's throat and made Snape all but impossible to see as he pushed between men cheering and swaying. It was impossible to hear anything over the chanting that he didn't understand. 

Someone fell into step beside him. Draco startled to see Goyle at his shoulder, taller and broader than before. And beside him, Crabbe. His former classmate barely glanced at him with a nod.

Draco didn't say anything to them. They were out of school, not having the scores to continue, and he didn't miss them. He had seen them briefly, over the summer, in and out of the mansion. Always in the company of Death Eaters, always with their masks. 

A whizz and bang from somewhere out of sight sent blue smoke spilling over the ground. Draco winced. Muggles—jumping and howling like animals, stinking of alcohol. How was Snape finding his way in this mess? But he did, and Draco felt several others drawing alongside him, their dark robes the only familiar sight in the chaos.

They came around the corner of a brick wall, in the shadow of a alcove where the lights flickered dimly. Goyle tripped over something, and Draco paused as the rest of them stepped over the body on the pavement. No, not things. Bodies—several men and a few women in a jumble of dark shirts and pants, yellow vests and checkers. Their eyes stared at nothing.

"Come on," Crabbe said not to Draco but to everyone, "it's over this way."

Draco couldn't stop staring at the dead woman's eyes. He was vaguely aware of dark robes passing him, that he was being left behind. Carefully he stepped in the spaces between the dead, holding his cloak closed. At least the bodies weren't moving. At least it wasn't him.

They left the lights and came to a spot of flat pavement where the streetlamps had gone dark. At last they stopped. Draco hung back at the edge of the gathering. He hadn't realized that Voldemort commanded this many Death Eaters. They sat on the muggle contraptions with wheels, lounged on steel railings, stood restlessly tapping their feet or murmuring with each other. He couldn't see the end of them for how they blurred together in the night.

"Here you are," came a whisper by his ear. "I knew I'd find you."

Bellatrix came around him, her arm on his shoulders, smiling like a schoolgirl before a dance. She ruffled his hair, then pressed something cold into his hands.

"There," she said. "Stay out of the way and have fun."

He didn't answer except to nod dutifully. She was already moving past him, standing alongside the dark lord. Voldemort wore no mask, standing a head above his followers, wand raised, smiling in satisfaction at the onoes who had answered his summons. He started talking, addressing them, motioning at the roaring sound outside.

"Finally, my Death Eaters, finally we will properly treat these mongrels as they deserve. You have so long hidden your true strength, hidden from creatures who should properly fear you instead—"

Draco barely heard him. Here against the wall, he heard the shouting crowd more clearly, and even that he barely heard over the ringing in his ears. Draco had worried for nothing. Voldemort wouldn't ask him anything. Voldemort didn't care about him. This wasn't anything to do with Draco. The dark lord didn't care about a loose pawn. 

Draco studied his aunt's gift. A steel mask, smooth with two almond shapes for his eyes. The mask had no grill for a mouth. 

Fitting, because he couldn't breathe.

Too fast. This was happening too fast. He knew what they were here for. The attacks on Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade had failed. Muggles would make for a much easier target. 

"—clean kills," the dark lord's voice brought Draco back. "We need them intact. But, of course, don't neglect to indulge your pent up desires. Let them scream."

Draco's grip on the mask tightened. The roar outside sounded as loud as the Quidditch Cup. The Death Eaters hung on Voldemort's every word, wands grasped, the sense of anticipation filling the air. Masks were set on faces. Bellatrix vanished behind a filigree face. Snape vanished behind a metal skull. Their hearts pounded like drums all around him, their breaths heavy as they readied themselves for killing.

"Leave nothing alive, leave no filthy muggles crawling behind you," the dark lord said, his voice rising in excitement. "Teach these creatures who their betters are. You are the true heirs of the magic in this world. I see you eager for the night's work. Now—!"

At his spell, a great flash of light burst against the stadium, followed by a blast and a rush of smoke and dust sweeping the ground. 

Draco couldn't put his hands over his ears in time—his cry of pain was swallowed by the explosion tearing the stadium down the middle. The stadium's bricks separated and flew inward, upward, leaving a great gash in the wall. The lights of the stadium flickered and went out. 

The morsmordre was cast and the skull and serpent hovered in the sky, its lurid green glow serving as their light. The Death Eaters began to march as one toward the entrance torn into the stone. 

Outside of himself, as if he was watching himself move, Draco put the mask against his face where its charm held it in place. One foot after another, he followed the rest of them, walking over chunks of brick and steel, over slick pavement, over something that crunched and gave underfoot.

The Death Eaters followed Voldemort up into the stadium. Draco, however, found a corridor broken open to his right, the masonry and wires crumbling and dangling on the sides. He slid away, down into the darkness, where the noise finally muffled.

He almost understood what this place was. The Quidditch World Cup had immense scaffolding to support the stands. This tunnel was muggle scaffolding, made of bricks and stone, and it extended far under the stadium. He even partly recognized the remnants of a souvenir shop, the rows of shirts covered in thick dust, the posters of players on the walls.

There were no windows, and in the smoky dust drifting in, everything looked alien and strange. He raised a lumos charm, trying to recognize something familiar in the muggle world. A hall, broken chairs, crumpled people. They looked like they had just fallen over. Another Death Eater must have come this way already.

A muffled explosion shook the walls. The real horror was above him. The only thing down here was darkness and distant screams, the groaning of steel under great pressure. A knocking like stones grinding against each other, same as in Hogwarts, in the dungeons. 

A heartbeat was coming. He doused his lumos charm and fumbled briefly with his hood, raising it over his head. He couldn't see who they were, stumbling, crying, running past him toward the open air. Their heartbeat faded into the distance.

He walked deeper into the darkness. There had been muggles here—muggles were still here, some of them knocked senseless, some of them now gathering themselves up. He wanted nothing to do with them. A shadow, that was all he was, and he kept to side of the corridor where the lights had stopped working. 

Another muggle went by, a woman holding a torn coat, staggering by him, stumbling and crying—

"Crucio!"

There was a choked gurgle—bones cracked—the muggle collapsed. Her heartbeat stammered and stopped.

A Death Eater—impossible to know who—ran right by him, a lumos charm raised as they hunted more muggles. 

Draco didn't move until the Death Eater had passed. 

He stared at the shape curled on the floor, curled backwards, her back almost snapped, the neck contorted almost around. Muggles didn't have the same protection as wizards, but he didn't realize how fragile that made them. A wizard could survive torture under cruciatus. He had seen it. But this muggle just folded up like a stomped.

The air was still, broken only by distant screams. Whatever the dark lord was doing above, it was pure slaughter.

A sliver of light caught his eye. A thin line glowed under a door, a room that somehow still had light. He went toward it, hearing hearts inside. When he pushed the door wide, a handful of girls in tight clothes—the same skirt Pansy liked—screamed and fell over themselves, slid down to the floor crying, scrambling into what he vaguely recognized as a large bathroom stall. They struggled to close the door, to latch it, and Draco felt their panic like small birds fluttering in front of a snake.

Past them, though, farther in front of him, he saw a dark figure with blurred edges and two pinpoints of light where his eyes should be. A Death Eater? They raised their wand just as he did, and when he cast diffindo, the spell sent cracks out through the mirror.

Draco grimaced. A mirror? He put the hood back and saw himself properly, black robes trailing dirt, a halo of blonde hair around a smooth, featureless mask. He was absolutely covered in dust.

He came inside, surprised to see a faucet. His hands felt filthy, he wanted to clean off—but the water sputtered and came out rust colored.

One of the girls was crying as the rest of them tried to shush her. Draco smelled blood—from the stall? Maybe. Or the water? But it smelled wrong, as if it was muddy or filthy. It didn't tempt him to taste. 

Draco heard the footsteps and breathing coming fast, but he felt as heavy as lead, only able to turn slowly as the door shot open, hitting the wall. The Death Eater saw him, then looked toward the stall where the girls were crying louder.

"Quit playing with them," the Death Eager grumbled. "S'no time for that."

Draco fixated on the Death Eater like a snake locking onto its prey. There was the tang of blood on him, a wound on his head that bled fluently. The odd filigree of the mask, the line of blood dripping down the cheek, the grill flashing with white teeth.

Draco wasn't aware of the darkness that spread out behind him, crawling over the walls, covering the mirror. He only knew the scent of blood on the other man was delicious, so close he could reach forward and drag his tongue along that mask, damn the consequences.

The way Draco stared, his eyes dilating, made the other wizard stop and look, really look, at him. 

"Merli—"

The Death Eater's voice cut off as Draco lunged. 

Draco threw himself with abandon, mouth wide, lunging for his throat, knocking him backward on the floor with such force that they both slid several inches. There was guttural cursing and hands raking at him, trying to push him off.

Something was wrong. His teeth didn't close over skin. There was no satisfying gout of blood. He tasted steel and felt the cool press of metal against his cheek. Why couldn't he bite—?

"Crucio!"

White pain flashed through him as if he'd been set on fire. He hit the far wall and landed in a heap. A high pitched whine filled his head as he lay still, trembling. 

"Where the hell are you, you—there you are!"

Draco didn't hear the cruciatus curse this time. He was burning—he felt like his skin was charring off. He couldn't draw breath to scream as every muscle tensed and locked. Something in his back and chest tightened, twisting, tearing—

"Langlock."

The pain cut off so fast that Draco nearly fainted. He turned on his hands and and knees, curled up, gasped deep breaths. Someone stepped beside him, between him and the Death Eater.

"Confringo."

There was an explosion. Draco didn't see what happened. The scent of blood burned away, and then Snape's hand clamped painfully on his shoulder, pulling him upright. His godfather's familiar voice came out of a skeleton face.

"You were not ready for this. Not yet."

"Wh…wha…?" Draco breathed, barely able to think. He was lucky to get his feet under himself again, braced against the wall. The scent of blood was gone. The pain was gone. It had happened so fast that he felt spun around.

"How did you—?" Snape cut himself off. "No. Later. You have to get out of the stadium." 

"Wait," Draco finally managed. "Wait, what—"

Snape put something into Draco's left hand. "Tenacis—"

Draco's fingers closed tight. Whatever was in his hand, he couldn't drop it if he wanted to.

"Now go," Snape said, putting the hood over Draco's head forcefully, then turning him, pushing him forward. "Go!"

Draco stumbled, glancing over his shoulder. Snape wasn't looking at him anymore, turning toward the mess of whoever that Death Eater had been.

Draco clutched at himself. He felt as if his skin had been burned off and put back on in an instant, and the shock of it had stolen his breath. His second heartbeat pounded like something alive. Move—go—stop standing and go—

A great fireball erupted behind him, shaking the floor and the walls, filling the corridor with heat and light.

Now Draco could run—holding his hood securely as if that would help, not caring where he was going. Sparks burst overhead and masonry crumbled around him as he turned toward a second hallway and a glow of light ahead, running up a ramp, hoping to find a door or a broken wall. 

A deep ache spread through his back as if he'd torn muscles. This pain didn't matter—it didn't hurt as bad as the crucio had—he kept going down a corridor where he saw light at the end—

Draco came out into the middle of the stands. 

At least, they had been stands once, just like this had been a stadium.

There were two levels of seating in a ring. The Death Eaters had collapsed one section—rows of chairs flattened the section below it. He heard voices and crying underneath. How were people still alive under there? 

And how were people still alive up here? The aisles were strewn with bodies draped over the fencing, the rails, over each other, and yet there were still so many muggles alive, running from Death Eaters, trying to climb down the walls or up the lights. 

Voldemort stood in the center of the field, arms outspread, wand high. His head tilted back. There was dark magic beneath him, like black water bubbling up and spreading across the field, black with deep purple ripples. The incendio spell cast at the dark lord splashed on his shield, flames spilling down—

Draco blinked. Incendio? He followed the line of the spell and found a witch with purple hair behind a barricade of piled up chairs, leaning out to try again. And there were other wizards with her, not many, spreading out through the stands, charming the lights back on and casting powerful jinxes at Death Eaters, who were forced to stop killing and focus on these wizards. 

Aurors? They didn't look like it. Their efforts were haphazard but they were the only reason there were still muggles alive in the first place.

Draco backed away out of the light. There had to be a way out—

A charm like a firework exploded overhead, filling the stadium with light. Draco winced, recoiling, suddenly very visible as a moving shadow. 

"What the hell are you s'posed to be?"

Draco turned. Several steps above the passage he'd emerged from, there were two Death Eaters looking down at him, wands raised. Goyle, Crabbe—he would have recognized their shapes even if he didn't know their masks.

He should have put his hood down and revealed that he was wearing a mask. Instead he turned for fear that the hood would fall. 

They took his movement as an attack, raising their wands at the same time. 

Knowing he wasn't going to beat them to the draw, Draco ducked and stayed low as he ran along the seats. The chairs behind him exploded as their spells missed, and Draco pointed his wand at the closest thing at hand, "mobilicorpus—"

—the muggle that his spell found had been tall and broad and tangled up in the railing he'd died in. Bones snapped as Draco pulled the body free and flung it through the air. Crabbe managed to put up a shield, but the body careened off the shield and struck Goyle down backwards. 

But that left Draco open as Crabbe dropped his protego and aimed, and Draco tried to make himself a smaller target, ducking even as he heard Crabbe cast "cruci—"

"Stupefy!"

Crabbe flew over three rows of chairs and landed out of sight, the red flash of his Unforgivable curse flickering and going out.

Draco turned and found Potter standing behind him, one leg propped up on the seat like a damn hero, looking at him like he was a lost friend.

"You fight dirty," Potter said, coming close, moving past him, putting an arm around his shoulder. "Come on, this spot's too ope—" 

A spell whistled from one side of the stadium, glancing off the charm around Voldemort and careening toward the second level of seating across the way. Draco held his breath as the back wall and concrete supports burst into powder. There were people there still trying to get out. The floor and all the seats and people lifted up, held in the air for a brief second, and started to fall.

Just started. The aurors moved to hold it in place, pivoting so fast and shouting charms he couldn't hear, transfiguring new supports from the chairs and floor below that they seemed so practiced. Like this was easy.

"No," Potter muttered, talking not to Draco but to the aurors who couldn't hear him. "No, that's a distraction, he's doing something—"

Dead thing, black eyes beneath me, rise again, walk for me, walk for me.

Draco didn't hear it at first. The rhythmic chant was soft, a whisper amidst the chaos. He slowly grew aware that he wasn't hearing it in the air. It was in his head.

It was the dark lord's voice, hissing and cold. It was dark magic shaped by spellcraft, spoken for the dead. He looked across the field at Voldemort, who now  raised his hands, held his wand high as he traced a figure eight. 

The dark water now completely covered the field in a thin layer and ran up the sides of the stands, flowing up the stairs and beneath the risers, beneath the endless dead muggles. 

Hear me, your new master, stand before me, rekindled spark

The world spun around so that Draco started to fall, going to one knee, held up only by Potter's arms. He put his hands over his ears but it wouldn't stop. The chant was in his head and wouldn't stop repeating.

"What's wrong?" Potter said. "Can you hear what he's saying?"

But Potter's voice faded against the dark lord's voice drowning out Draco's thoughts.  Draco opened his eyes as if that might make the voice easier to ignore. He saw spat out sunflower seeds and spilled drinks under the remains of a broken chair. Staring back were the dead eyes of an old man, his face partly covered in the blue paint of whatever team played here. 

Black water flowed around the body, soaking the bottom of Draco's robes, flowing further up the stadium.

Dead thing, walk for me, walk for me…

The eyes congealed with blood. Then widened. Without breathing, the head lolled as the body rose up on one arm, lifting with its shoulder, its broken leg under its body, pushing up.

"What…?" Potter's voice held nothing so much as weary disbelief. "No…not, not this…"

Now the screams turned high pitched and shrill, from fear to the insanity of seeing the dead rise. 

Draco couldn't stop the sound in his head. The chant was endless, looping in a familiar rhythm, dead thing, black eyes beneath me, rise again, walk for me, walk for me..

No.

No, that was wrong.

Heartbeat.

Eyes like stars.

He knew this song. And the dark lord was saying it wrong. Draco clung to the words. He could focus on that. He didn't have to try hard to remember. He already knew it by heart.

Heartbeat, eyes like stars beside me, cold truths walk beside me, trust the dark

Repeating the words helped. His head cleared. The dark lord's magic was no longer in his mind.

He pulled himself upright, his trembling hands clutching the back of a seat. There were dead things moving in ways that made no sense as parts of their bodies no longer worked. A head hanging on a broken neck. Arms holding the railing because the legs were crushed. Simply standing. Twitching. Waiting.

These inferi were focused entirely on Voldemort, waiting for him to finish the spell. Draco didn't know what would happen then, but it wouldn't be good. 

Dead thing, walk for me…

The voice pushed in again. Draco turned toward Potter as if that could force the spell out. He said the chant faster. The only thing keeping his head clear was knowing the right words, saying them to himself like protection.

Dead thing, black eyes—

"—eyes like stars beside me," Draco whispered, "cold truths walk beside me—"

Potter shook him once, trying to pull him half a step, and he pressed Draco's wand back into his hand.

"Come on, I need you like last time," Potter said. "Help me—what are you saying? What are you holding in your other—"

Draco looked up, hand clasped around his wand as if it was heavier than lead. The inferi all stood straighter. There were so many. Hundreds. At least hundreds. They were an army, far more than the aurors, more than even Potter could burn down. 

black eyes beneath me

"Dammit, enough!" Draco smacked his closed hand into his temple, yelling in frustration. In his anger, he pointed his wand into the water and tried to yell the magic over Voldemort's. "Trust the dark, I hear them, my masters old and new."

Dead thing, black eyes beneath me, rise again, walk for me, swell the dark

Voldemort looked rapturous, surrounded by the dead. Here was his kingdom of corpses.

Hear me, your new master 

The inferi suddenly lifted their heads. The ones closest to Draco and Potter turned, finally noticing them, their blackened bloody eyes lolling wide. There were gurgled snarls from deep in their throats as dead vocal chords rattled.

stand before me, rekindled spark

A last ripple of dark magic flowed from Voldemort's wand through the water soaking the field, radiating out like black and purple streams. 

As the words of the dark lord's faded into the inferi, they put out their hands, turning charging toward Potter, toward Draco, toward anything alive and warm and breathing. 

Potter dropped Draco to aim at the dozen inferi lunging toward them, casting a gout of fire. 

Landing hard on his side, wincing as pain flared in his side, Draco managed the last words of the proper spell.

"I douse the candle."

He felt the words slip into Voldemort's original, find the spot where it should be...and turn the meaning of the whole structure.

The inferi toppled without ceremony. Potter's fire flashed over them and missed them completely as the dead tumbled and struck the ground, their faces locked in their last blank stare, their hands limp again. They fell, the last bit of air hissing from their lungs, and lay still. The water flowed back to the field and vanished to wherever Voldemort had conjured it from. 

Head finally silent, Draco groaned, rising up on his elbows. Where were the Death Eaters? The aurors? The dark lord?

Down in the field, Voldemort turned, gazing at the piles of dead, now useless to him. He turned, then turned again, as if he might see some handful of inferi still standing. There was nothing.

In the stillness, they heard a strange wailing from outside the walls. 

One of the aurors yelled a charge and urged the rest of them on, "don't break ranks for anything!"

The Death Eaters split into two forces, the handful that stood and advanced on the aurors, and the rest that disappeared into the passages, the broken wall, any door, abandoning their master and fleeing into the night.

Draco stared in wonder. 

Death Eaters…ran?

These were the dark lord's masters of magic? 

The dark lord sent an Unforgivable curse that flashed toward the clustered aurors, but with such a long way to travel, they easily moved to avoid its path and came together again as a practiced unit.

Then the dark lord cursed and vanished.

Draco couldn't move. 

This was how fights went? 

And the aurors? These were the best the Ministry had?

"…the hell?"

Potter's whisper broke the strange quiet. Draco looked up, startled to see Potter staring down at him with his mouth partly open.

Draco knew that look. Even if Potter wasn't raising his wand or moving toward him, that was the other boy's glare. That was the only look Potter ever favored him with. The camaraderie between them was broken. What had—

Potter took a step closer. Draco put his hands up to shield himself, and they were his hands, unblurred by shadow, pale and trembling. Which meant his hood had fallen, and Draco lay there before him with gray eyes in a Death Eater's mask and a halo of tangled blond hair.

Potter reached down toward him. 

Somewhere past him, there was a flash of a spell striking the stadium, a wave that ran down the walls, and then the sense of a charm having ended.

Potter was close enough that Draco saw the dust in his hair. The crease of his brow as his frown increased.

"What the hell are you—"

The portkey in Draco's hand hummed and grew hot. There was a bright light.

Then Draco was falling, just enough to feel a jolt of panic, before he landed in cold water, falling back so that the water closed over his head. Whatever the portkey had been, it slipped from his fingers and sank out of sight.

A moment passed as he kicked, sitting straight, gasping as he broke the surface. He looked around, blinking water from his eyes.

Tall trees blocking out the sky, blue flowers bending in the faintest breeze that rippled their pale luminescence, water that shimmered—a pond in the forbidden forest. 

A shallow pond. It only rose to his chest as he sat at its edge, shivering, staring in the darkness. His hair dripped uncomfortably, and he went to push it out of his eyes only to find the damn mask in the way yet again. He grabbed the edge, pulling it free, wincing as a notch in the metal caught his hair. 

Cursing, whining as it pulled painfully, he had to pinch the hairs and pull gingerly, finally freeing one side, then the other. Once the mask came free, he threw it aside. He didn't see where it landed and didn't care. His side hurt and his back hurt and there was a knot in his head that was throbbing rhythmically.

Stop and think, he told himself. Stop. Just...stop. Think.

So what that Potter knew it was him?

Bella had seen him. His loyalty was proved, for tonight at least.

So what that Potter knew he was the one wearing shadows?

His parents were safe, for now.

So what that Potter had recognized him through the mask?

God, Draco could still smell the dead. Bile and excrement and other filth, whatever a body dropped when it died, and the terrible rot that started immediately. He turned his wand on himself, aiming at his robes, scourgifying the dust, the grime and wet stains. 

So what if Potter knew Draco had turned against the dark lord twice now?

Scourgify didn't feel like enough. He looked around, at a loss of what to do, and found familiar pale pink flowers here at the edge of the pond. Some students from long ago must have planted soapwort here. 

Were there monsters out here tonight? He didn't care. He wanted to be clean. He pulled off his robes and cloak, satisfied to feel himself shivering. He gathered up a handful of the leaves and put them in the water, crushing them, building a lather that he worked over the fabric. 

So what if Potter knew that Draco was a Death Eater?

Another handful served to wash his hands and face, then his arms, accompanying several tergeo spells. It wasn't enough. He cast tergeo again, then again. His skin felt raw. The smell wouldn't go away. He bent and cupped the lathered water in his hand, putting it in his mouth, rinsing and spitting into the dirt.

So what if Potter would tell, would certainly tell, would stop Draco from trying to save his parents, would lead to his father and mother being tortured and flayed and torn apart and then—only then—finally being fed to the dark lord's snake—

Draco turned on his hands and knees, throwing up into the dirt. The tears came briefly, and he furiously wiped them away, busying himself with rinsing his mouth again.

He back sat down in the pond. He dried his robes and put them back on, not caring that the bottoms soaked once more. The cold was comfortable.

Damn portkey nausea.

He sat for a long moment, staring at the soapwort. There was a bug crawling over the petal, a tiny little beetle. He watched it for several seconds. What if that was his animagus? He could curl up in a flower and never come out again and die with the first true snowfall. 

So what?

Drawing his knees to his chest, he put his head down.

The tears came again, and he scolded himself to stop. 

He was alive. There were plenty that weren't. So what that he felt sick and filthy inside and out.

So what?

For a long moment, he let himself sit still and pretend he wasn't part of the world.

A cough came from the other side of the pond. Not a real cough. A polite one, sort of embarrassed at itself.

Oh God, no.

Slowly, turning his head just enough to see from the corner of his eye, Draco felt his breath stop.

Across the pond, sitting high and dry in the grass, was Harry Potter, hands and head just visible under his invisibility cloak, watching Draco as if he was watching a wounded snake.

Chapter Text

Draco's breath stopped in his throat.

What?

Potter was here?

Across the pond, sitting high and dry in the grass, Potter sat wrapped up in his invisibility cloak, only his head and hands visible, the tips of his shoes showing near the water. He watched Draco intently. 

Oh, God.  

Potter was here.

No. 

No no no. 

Draco needed to be anywhere else, inside Hogwarts, in the dungeons, in a dark hole, anywhere but here. Was he on fire? He felt like he was on fire—like his bones were smoldering.

"Ah," Potter started, "so. You were—?"

"No," Draco cut him off, getting to his feet, stepping on the edge of his robe so that he jerked back down, going on one knee in the water. "Hell—no—no I am not doing this. Not now, dear God, not now—"

"'Not now'?" Potter echoed, standing up. "Of course we're talking now."

"I am not talking to you," Draco said, his hand up as if he could wave Potter away, stepping awkwardly out of the pond. "How did you know—no, I refuse, I am not—" 

"You can't just—" Potter started.

Potter was advancing, and Draco's voice rose as if he might scream. 

"No no, don't come near me—!"

The panic in Draco's voice made Potter stop for just a moment, long enough for Draco to back away and put a little more distance between them. Then Potter started after him again, a weird sliver of a person between the panels of his invisibility cloak, his fingers holding the edges as he walked.

"We have to talk," Potter said, "you're a death eat—"

"Fuck off!" 

Draco turned and threw the only thing he had available, a handful of dried soapwort that fluttered to the grass. Potter stopped as if it was deadly poison, then grumbled at himself when he saw it was just leaves. 

"You had a mask—" Potter said, moving to catch up.

"Stop it—" Draco walked faster toward the castle.

"Were you there when the attack started—"

"Shut up—"

"And then…you were fighting them?" Potter said, jogging and trying to see his face. 

"Stop it—"

"And you were all in shadows, like before at the bridge—"

"God, stop it, stop—"

"And you cast the spell, I…I douse the candle—"

Now Draco turned, wheeling on him with wide eyes, hands up as if he could make Potter stop talking just by clawing his words out of the air.

"Stop saying things!" Draco shrieked. "You can't say anything! You'll get them killed! Stop!"

Potter halted, blinking as if he didn't understand anything Draco said. 

Draco put his arms around himself—pain nestled in his stomach and bent him forward, as if he had swallowed hot coals. Hunched like this, his gaze moved down—this close, he could see the vaguest outline of the invisibility cloak where the edges of the trees shimmered so slightly. Potter's cloak slipped a little, revealing the torn edges of his robes, the stains on his muggle pants. A scorch mark on his shoes. 

Draco stared at his shoes, ratty gray muggle shoes with worn seams, covered on the bottom edges with filth. Blood, dried blood, congealed. Potter hadn't cast the scourgify on himself. Whoever had scourgified him clean hadn't seen his shoes, and Potter didn't care that he had stepped in blood and bile. 

"Malfoy, you have to…" Potter tried again, but whatever he wanted to say faded as he stared in confusion at Draco. "What's wrong with you?" 

Draco looked up at him silently. 

He felt aches through his body, sharp jabs in his joints, raw sensitivity in his hands and head. The burning inside wasn't fading. The gentle night air blew over him like a sand blast.  The wind over the grass sounded as loud as a scream. He heard Potter's heartbeat and the blood rushing through his veins, smelled the blood lingering on his robe's hem, smelled it as the most inviting taste.

What was wrong with him?

His laughter surprised both of them. It was a faint breath, barely audible, then another, half-formed, a shaking of his chest that came faster and faster, his voice stammering between breaths so that he tightened his arms around himself, trying to hold himself from collapsing.

"What's…wrong?" Draco gasped, one hand pressed uselessly to his mouth. "What's…?"

The laughter grew as Draco's shoulders slumped and his breaths shook. Potter stood as if he was holding his wand under his cloak, and the ridiculousness of it struck Draco just that much more. Here was Potter, with all his monstrous strength, heroically facing down Draco's trembling and exhaustion. 

He closed his eyes. The laughter wouldn't stop and he didn't have the strength to stop the breathless heaving. He sank, on his knees, rocked by helpless desperation.

"Malfoy—"

He put both hands to his mouth, muffling the sound with the sodden edges of his cloak. It didn't help. 

And then a new voice cut through the air.

"Mister Potter, haven't you noticed that Mister Malfoy is in no condition to speak?"

There was no mistaking the measured footsteps in the grass or the clipped consonants of his godfather. As if suddenly drenched in cold water, Draco froze. His hysteria hollowed into quiet gasps.

"I have to talk to him," Potter demanded. "He has to—"

"He has to do nothing," Snape said, drawing even with Draco. "Except rest."

"You can't…" Potter glanced down at Draco, then back up at Snape. "You can't just take him away."

"As his teacher, I most certainly can."

"But—"

"You may be given by the headmaster greater latitude than I have advised," Snape said. "But I will not make that same error."

Draco blinked. Something in his godfather's voice startled him—

"You can't hide him!" Potter snapped. "Where are you taking him?" 

Snape scoffed. "I will hide him away where no one would think to look for a sick student—the hospital wing."

Snape's hand gripped Draco's shoulder and heaved him back up on his feet, turning him away from Potter—Snape's fingertips dug into Draco's bones with a strength that warned him not to struggle or pull away. The pain was a blessing. The shock of it broke his panic so he could breathe properly again. 

"What's wrong with him?" Potter said. "He's half mad."

Snape didn't answer except to turn away, back to the castle, bringing Draco along with him. Draco heard the powerful thud of his godfather's heartbeat right beside his ear, felt Snape's billowing robe deliberately draped over Draco's shoulders to better shield him. Potter's heartbeat followed at first, but it was obvious that they were moving at a slow pace with no intent to speak or acknowledge his presence. Potter vanished under his cloak and his heartbeat went away almost as quickly, running past them toward the castle.

Draco didn't know where Potter was going. Nowhere good. Potter wouldn't give up that easily.

"'Half mad'," Snape murmured. "Finally. A reaction that makes sense."

"Why's it hurt?" Draco mumbled. "S'like I ate fire."

"You 'ate' two cruciatus curses," Snape said. "I will brew a few restorative draughts over the week and you will be fine."

Potions. So Snape still intended to help him. Draco had not outlived his usefulness. He didn't suppose that Snape came and rescued every wayward Death Eater. 

Then the tone of his godfather's voice shifted.

"You were there when I appeared at the stadium, weren't you?" Snape said. It wasn't really a question. "The shadow when I heard the fence behind me. And the mask…must have been a gift from your aunt."

Draco half-murmured something that Snape took as an affirmative.

"Where is it?" Snape asked.

"I…" Draco glanced back toward the forest and was surprised at how far they'd walked. "I threw it…somewhere. Didn't see where it—"

"Accio mask."

A metallic glint came out of the trees, speeding toward them like a shot so that Draco winced and ducked. He needn't have worried. Snape caught the mask and pocketed it out of sight.

"Not something to leave out. Anything else you dropped?"

They were walking again. Snape refused to let him stand still more than a moment, and Draco found himself leaning more and more on his godfather's arm, not watching where they were going. His eyes felt hot and glued shut.

"…lost the portkey in the pond," Draco said. 

"Whose?" Snape demanded. "The one I gave you?"

Draco nodded. "Mm. Slipped loose."

"And the one you used to reach the stadium?"

"I…" What had he done with that one? He patted the pocket of his robe and felt only his wand. "I don't know."

"You have a habit of dropping things," Snape said. "It may yet be in Glasgow. It will need to be retrieved. What was it? How did you come by it?"

Draco felt increasingly nauseous. 

"A…human tooth. It was on my gear," Draco said. "In the hospital. With the note from Aunt Bella. I thought…"

"I can imagine what you thought," Snape said. 

Draco felt the grass change to flat stone, the sound of a heavy door opening and locking behind them, and their quiet steps through the dark corridor. He forced his eyes open, wincing at the thin morning light.

"Keep quiet," Snape said. "When asked, you don't remember anything about tonight. You're sick, you wandered off from the shock of your fall, and you need rest. For now, whatever anyone asks, you know nothing."

"…Potter knows," Draco said.

"I'm more concerned about who else knows," Snape said quietly. "I did not leave you that portkey. There may be another one of us here."

Draco considered that for a long moment. From the sounds of their footsteps and the atmosphere of the castle as they moved, the groans and creaks of the castle around them, he could tell vaguely where they were. They were not anywhere near the hospital wing.

He wasn't sure if he was happy about that. But he didn't want to deal with Pomfrey, he didn't want to be out in the open in the hospital wing, and he wanted whatever Snape would brew to ease the pain. He wanted to hide, and Snape knew best where to go. He trusted Snape's deceptions more than Hogwarts' defenses.

"So much for wards and charms," Draco said. "How can they possibly call this place secure?"

Snape unlocked the door to the Defense Against the Dark Arts room, ushering him in and sealing it behind them.

"There is no security in this world," Snape said. "Now keep quiet. No one will know you're here. I rarely use this office myself."

Across the class and down a final staircase, they emerged into an office meant for a teacher's use. There was little here except for a desk and clock, a wooden cabinet and a couch against the wall. A window of colored glass let in the scant light filtering through dust particles in the air.

"There is a washroom behind the door," Snape said, setting him on the couch. "I will have your first dose as soon as I can. Do not leave for any reason."

Draco nodded once obediently. He gripped the edge of the couch, waiting to feel less sick so he could lie down, and he glanced at the door by the cabinet, noting where to run if the nausea worsened. One after another, he scraped his shoes off, undid the cloak and let it fall behind him. After a deep breath, he lay down, just a little too long to comfortably stretch out. The padded arm was scratchy and musty and the middle sagged so much he thought he might fold in half.

Snape set Draco's wand on the desk. The portkey and the mask went into a drawer that was locked. Snape gave him one more look, as if to make sure he was breathing, and then he left the office, locking the door behind himself.
 
"…is he well?"

Draco's eyes shot open. 

The whisper had been tiny, so small that it should have been impossible for him to hear it on the other side of a thick door and across the room. But he heard it, just as sure as he heard the heartbeats of his godfather and someone else.

He was up and off the couch, one arm around his stomach, and he crept up to the door. Rest be damned—information was more important than pain.

"He's in one piece," Snape whispered. "Physically."

"Yes, Mister Potter informed me that he was acting 'half mad'."

Draco grit his teeth to keep from snapping. Not five minutes and Potter had already spilled everything to…who the hell was talking? He couldn't recognize the hissed voice.

"'Half mad' is the only rational response to what he's been through tonight," Snape said, starting to move up the stairs. "He took two cruciatus curses on top of everything else."

"'Everything else'…then may I assume that the rest of Potter's report was accurate?"

"…please. I am trying to keep him from breaking."

"I expect nothing less…"

Draco couldn't hear the rest. He tried, but the last thing he caught was the sound of a door shutting, and then the room was silent.

He sat down on the chair at the desk. The heat inside him had dwindled to embers. His back hurt, tightened up around his spine, and his shoulders felt as if he had been lifting heavy books all day. His breaths struggled with an edge of wheezing.

Sleep wasn't coming any time soon. In this quiet office, he heard muggle screams. He closed his eyes and smelled smoke and death. If he stared at the wall, he saw the large stone bricks of the stadium broken and leading to darkness. 

A glimmer from the window stung his eye, and he put his hand up to shield himself from the sunrise. He'd been the whole night out, with only a couple of hours of sleep after the game the day before. 

Oh. Right.

He grasped his wand, touched the tip to his heart, and recited automatically "amata animo animato animagus." The words meant nothing anymore. Then he tossed his wand on the desk and looked around the room. 

He had seen this room briefly a couple of times, mostly when Umbridge tried to run the school. Once with Lockhart, with a host of students to help move supplies. Hogwarts furnished each office with a few basics and left the professors to decorate as they pleased.

Since Snape never used this place, it was bare. It had the feeling of one of the private chambers for professors to live in, attached to the class where they would teach. No wonder Snape didn't want to live here. No one would—this was far more stark and plain than their apartments on the higher floors. 

The door to the washroom was ajar, with the edge of a toilet and a bathtub just visible. It made him wonder if the muggle girls had escaped. Snape could have killed them out of expediency. Or another Death Eater might have been sweeping through the underside of the stadium.

Draco was feeling nauseous again. This room felt so empty, so wide open. There was no place to hide. He wanted to go back to the forest and crawl into a dark den under a tree.

Thinking of the forest was worse. God, he had embarrassed himself thoroughly. In front of Potter, no less. Screamed, even. But it wasn't his fault. Potter had kept pushing.

'Please,' Potter had said. 'Please, you have to…'

Please, what? Draco had no idea how to respond. Potter had sounded half desperate. What did Potter have to whine about? Whining that Draco wasn't fawning over him like the rest of the wizarding world, surely. The battle was won, hooray for Potter's side.

Draco leaned on the desk, laying his head in his arms. He idly tapped on the desk as he thought. Yes, Potter's side had won.

And the Death Eaters had fled when the tide of battle turned. 

Even Voldemort had fled.

The aurors had been swift to join the fight, but there had been so few of them. There had been so many aurors at Diagon Alley, in Hogsmeade. But so few at the stadium. Had Potter been with those aurors? Hadn't he called out to them? Before Snape's portkey had whisked Draco away.

Snape…

"…given greater latitude by the headmaster…"

Draco had thought he knew what his godfather's disdain sounded like. 

For years, Snape had been a frequent guest at the Manor, almost like family—conspiring with Lucius at the hearth, researching with Narcissa in the library. Giving Draco lessons in the garden. 

However, when the Dark Lord returned, the visits became cold, nothing more than the master's trusted servant come to check up on a few wayward lackeys. Snape had turned a frosty shoulder to Lucius. Refused to speak to Narcissa. Given only a book or recipe to Draco to fulfill his obligations. 

And Draco had thought that was that. What friendship could there be between Death Eaters when loyalty was owed to the dark lord and no one else?

He'd thought that was the extent of Snape's disrespect.

But the way he spoke to Potter, when no one else was around to hear…

When Snape thought no one else was around to hear. He'd assumed that Draco had been lost in hysteria. 

Snape had killed a Death Eater to save Draco. Snape thought that Draco was worth pouring effort into. That he was worth keeping in one piece. As a pawn? Could he hope to be more than a pawn? Snape was one of Voldemort's most faithful servants…but Snape had killed a Death Eater.

The world was not what Draco had thought it was.

Draco didn't know enough, and he didn't even know the questions to ask, or who would be safe enough to ask and honest enough to answer. 

Which left the question of what Draco should do. 

Study—if Snape and his secret conspirator really wanted Draco to rest and improve, then they also would not let Draco out anytime soon. He would ask for his books and classwork.

He would puzzle out how to connect the two vanishing cabinets. He would translate the poem. He needed the grammar books. 

Sleep. Yes. How much time had passed as he sat here thinking? The window let in all the light of the sunrise. The entire office would catch all the early sunlight, far too bright to fall asleep to. Not unless he wanted to sleep in the tub.

Hm.

He glanced at the washroom again. It was dark, but he could see that the tub had brass feet. The edge of a shower curtain. A wallpaper pattern from a couple hundred years ago. And no windows.

With the sigh of someone giving up, he grabbed his wand and went inside. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust, which a quick scourgify fixed. The small room was cramped, but the tub was large enough, although its curtain was threadbare and ratty at the ends. He swept it aside and winced as it tore free of its hooks. Whatever. He shut the door.

Instantly the room was pitch black, save for the slimmest line of light under the door, just enough that he could see the tub's claw feet. He glanced around, just to indulge in how comforting the dark felt, and looked toward his left. 

Two pinpricks of light stared back.

Draco felt his body go cold, but he felt it as if he was standing outside of himself, studying his own reactions. Yes, there was a mirror, he should have realized that. And something was staring at him, with the same eyes that he'd seen in the mirror in the muggle stadium. Neither of them moved, and then Draco breathed in, and the thing in the mirror shifted in the same manner.

Draco lifted his head slowly. 

So did the thing in the mirror, the two eyes rising the slightest degree, glaring down disdainfully at him.

Draco tilted his head to one side. So did the thing in the mirror.

Just his reflection. 

Just his reflection.

Afraid that it would come towards him if he moved, he screwed up his courage and tossed the torn shower curtain over the mirror. Nothing happened except that the mirror was covered and his reflection hidden. 

He stood there long enough to reassure himself that there was no other heartbeat, no breathing, no presence beside himself. It helped, a little. His exhaustion was what finally forced him to move, stepping into the tub, lying upright with his head on the smooth, cool rim. It almost felt like he was asleep in a little burrow of stone.

The cramped bathroom was dark. The Death Eater's footsteps were coming closer down the hall, out of sight, never at the door, just always coming closer. Distant screams came from the stadium, with the red light of the muggle girls bathroom coming in under the door.

Flitwick lectured somewhere out of sight, as if the classroom was on the other side of the wall. "Magic is the means of altering the world around us." And Snape was speaking in his own classroom upstairs, "do you even know how you're doing that?"

Draco put his hand over his chest where he felt the animal heartbeat. Steady, strong, and not his.

There was a rustle beside him. To his left, his reflection watched him from the mirror, its eyes black save for two spots of light. Draco turned, and the reflection didn't move with him. It came closer, right up to the glass surface.

Then it put its hands on either side of the mirror and leaned forward, coming through, its face and shoulders, an arm—

Draco fell backward, splashing into the cold pond, sinking slowly, the blue glow of the forest turning dark. He tried to kick, to put his hand out to reach the surface. He kept sinking farther into darkness.

A hand grasped his, pulling upward. Draco never rose far enough to break the surface, but he recognized the person leaning over the pond's edge, the lightning scar and glasses, pulling him back up toward the light.

Waking to the same dream each night, Draco remained in the office for the rest of the week. He felt as if he hadn't slept at all. His body was sore and cramped—the cruciatus curses left deep aches for days, and he'd been sleeping curled and cold in the tub. He couldn't bring himself to sleep on the couch. Too open, too soft—the cushions sagged and were difficult to clamber out of.

The tub, however, was perfect—small, dark, and sheltered. He didn't look at the mirror except for stray glances, and even then only with the lights on. The few times he spotted himself, there were black circles under his eyes as if he'd smudged coal in half-moons for effect. He kept the door sensibly shut and even found a measure of safety reading in the empty tub, the only sound the turning of pages and the floorboards creaking when he changed position.

If Snape noticed that he was sleeping in the tub, he didn't mention it. 

For the rest of the week, there were no classes, no assignments, just time for sleep and reading the books that Snape brought at his request. Potions every hour that tasted of moss and tree bark. The occasional drink of tart pomegranate and spiced chocolate. 

And occlumency lessons that left both Draco and Snape with headaches. 

"That is enough for the evening," his godather said, sitting straight with a hand pressed to his temple. "You will at least not embarrass yourself if faced with a legilimens."

Draco pressed both hands on his head to ease the deep ache. "Do you think I could stop one?" he asked.

"Of course not," Snape said. "You would realize that someone is prying, and you'd have a hope of looking away in time."

Draco pressed his mouth flat. "How long does it take to become an occlumens?"

"…one does not ever truly master the skill," Snape said. "One simply improves. But you are further along than I would have expected of a beginner. You are your mother's son. Thank heaven. Your father has no control, I swear."

That did not surprise Draco to hear. But thinking about his parents only brought back anxiety and pain, so he forced himself to think of something else.

"Do you know who left me the portkey?"

"Whoever it is, they have hidden themselves well." Snape instead motioned at the books on the desk. "What progress have you made?"

Draco sighed and leaned back in his chair. He didn't want to think about the books, not with his head ringing. But clearly Snape didn't want to talk about the portkey, so Draco went with the subject change. 

"Aunt Bella was right. The dictionaries help, but the languages changed. Half of the meanings are hidden in word play and symbols from hundreds of years ago."

"Yet you accomplished this once already," Snape said.

Draco looked away. "That was an accident."

"One hell of a happy accident," Snape said. "To take control of the dark lord's spell."

"Don't…" Draco winced. "Don't say it out loud."

"The secret is safe," Snape said, but with the carefully measured balance of someone holding it as a weapon. It wasn't an assurance. It was an expectation. "But however you managed it, you must master it, as soon as you can."

"I've tried," Draco whined, glaring at the two books on the corner of the desk. The unnamed book from his mother's library lay wrapped in paper to protect it from light and handling. The notebook holding the poem he'd copied from the Restricted Section book lay under it, with translations and definitions and question marks and asterisks. He'd marked up the first copy so much that he'd copied it out again. "But I've translated every word and the damn thing still makes no sense. It's poetry, not a damn recipe."

He expected to be scolded for whining. Instead Snape lifted his wand and conjured several candles in front of him, each in a small brass holder. At his nod, Draco picked one up. Slender, tapered, with lines of dripped wax already hardened along the sides, the candle didn't seem charmed at all.

"Try reading again when it's dark," Snape said. "With only these for light."

"Like a muggle?" Draco asked, offended.

"Like a wizard," Snape said, "before lumos charms were created."

Draco's brow furrowed. That was very long ago. He imagined the office lit only by faint moonlight from outside—no, tonight was a new moon. With the candles lit, flickering, reading the ancient song aloud—

An image came to him, a memory burned into his mind from his aunt's touch, of sitting among an audience in a small wooden shack, listening to the singer with a harp, the wind outside blowing over the doors and setting drafts along the floor. Someone sat beside him, listening, watching him—someone with stars for eyes.

Draco set the candle down with careful deliberateness.

Snape knew more than he let on. 

"Is it safe?" he asked slowly.

"You summoned up old magics you don't understand," Snape said, now rising from his seat. "The time for safe is long past. But if you were in immediate danger, I think it would have manifested before now."

Draco watched him go, crossing the office and heading up to the door. The office loomed empty and hollow around him, lit by the afternoon glare, and Draco had the feeling that being put here was not just for his own protection. This was a cell to contain any terrible consequences of the magics Draco might attempt. 

Just as Snape opened the door to leave, Draco called out.

"Can I go outside?" he asked, pushing when he saw Snape start to object. "Just…just as a break. I've been here for days. Just to walk a bit."

Snape hesitated a long moment. 

"That is a stupid idea," Snape said at last. "For many reasons."

Draco shut his eyes.

"But this is not a prison," Snape added, not looking at him. And then he left.

Draco waited all of five minutes before he threw his cloak over his shoulders and left. 

Up the stairs, out the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, then out into the hall. The door to the grounds lay not far away, but he didn't dare leave the castle itself. He didn't know where he was going. Not Slytherin, not the library, not anywhere occupied…perhaps he'd just walk the halls. 

There were almost no students about. He saw a few farther ahead, a pack of girls laughing and running too quickly so that one of them straggled behind. She whined at them to wait up, sprinting after. 

Oh. It was time for dinner. Everyone would be in the Great Hall. 

Pansy would be there. All his friends. Were they getting his copies of the Prophet? What news was there about the attack? Had there been other attacks? New victims? 

He briefly considered going to dinner. Walking like this after days being cooped up showed him how sore his back was, how his hips and knees were stiff. The stretch felt good. If he went to dinner, he'd like sitting with Nott and Blaise and leaning against Pansy, having the good will that giving away all his deserts and dinner got him, conspiring about what was going on outside the school.

Then again, he knew exactly what had gone on outside the school.

He thought better of it. It would be a stupid idea, worse than just a quick walk. The other students would stare, and Potter would be there, and there would be questions he couldn't answer, even from his friends. Especially from his friends. Best to stay away from everyone, and right now the school was almost empty. Better to take advantage of being alone, walk a circle around the corridors, come back, and prepare to read—

The girl shrieked.

Draco froze. 

Teasing and laughter followed the shriek almost immediately. Not fast enough. Cold chills went down Draco's back. The smell of broken stone and dust, the girls huddled together and crying too hard to scream, the muggles screaming somewhere above, inferi crawling along the pavement, and the death eater splashed with blood—the death eater screaming on fire—"crucio"—

There was a bathroom just ahead. He ducked inside, slamming the door open, heading to the far back to the only sink that wasn't broken. He grabbed the edges tight, leaning on it for support, his forehead pressed against the mirror.

A long moment passed. He was shaking and colder than the room. His breathing felt tight, and it was the jolt of his own heartbeat that made him breathe in properly. 

"Just…just nerves," he told himself. "Just nerves."

He didn't know how long he stood there, telling himself that it was just nerves. Long enough that he started to hope that he'd chosen the boy's bathrooms, but he hadn't even looked. 

He forced the rusted faucet to turn. His face felt flushed, so he splashed water over himself, slicking back his hair so that it was out of his way.

Now that he looked up, he recognized this bathroom—the haunted one, although the ghost must have been away. He looked at the cracked mirror and studied himself. 

There was so little evening sun left, and the windows were so dusty and cobwebbed that the room was more dark than light. And there in his eyes, dim but starting to come visible, were the tiny dots of light.

It wasn't so bad seeing them like this, when his reflection was clearly his own. He put his hand on the glass, tilting his head one way, then the other. His reflection did the same. When Draco leaned close, there was nothing remarkable about what he saw—unkempt hair held down by the water's weight, skin gone pale and shadowed without proper food, and gray eyes with the faintest touch of light in the dark.

And he had no idea why.

His reflection blurred, then sort of became two, then came back in focus. The shock had taken more out of him than he thought. And he hadn't eaten all day. He felt light and dizzy, and he put a hand on the wall to steady himself—he should head back up and—

Of course that was when the door opened. He didn't have to look. He knew that footfall, the cadence of steps—confident, too quick.

"For the love of God," Draco muttered, "what part of 'fuck off' did you not get?"

"I need to talk to you," Potter said.

Draco briefly wondered if he could get through one of the windows or push by Potter to the door.

"Go away," Draco said. "I am exhausted."

"You think you're the only one who's tired?" Potter said, his voice hardening.

Standing upright, Draco took a moment to check his footing so he wouldn't fall over. His head swam in and out. He half-turned, and Potter put his back against the door—not as if he was scared but rather to block Draco from leaving.

"Are we fighting?" Draco asked. "Here?"

Potter stiffened, his hand clearly on his wand in his robe. Then he forced himself to exhale.

"I…don't want to fight," Potter said slowly. "I was…told…that I should try talking to you."

"'Talking' Tch." 

But there was no way to move past, and no way to duel without swiftly losing. And if he kept standing, he was going to tip over. Draco put his back to the wall, leaning and sliding down to the floor to sit. The cold floor was comfortable. He closed his eyes to hide them, and he listened for a moment, finding Potter's heart, his breathing. 

Potter didn't say anything, expectantly waiting for Draco to start. As if Draco had anything he wanted to say to him.

Then again. Draco did have a question.

"Who did you tell?" Draco asked.

Potter frowned. "What do you mean?"

Draco dragged in a loud breath. Snape had been right—leaving the room had been stupid. This was a bad situation and entirely his own fault. He didn't think there'd be a last minute save this time.

"I begged you not to say anything," Draco said.

Potter audibly scoffed. "After everything you've done?"

Draco didn't argue. 

"Who did you tell?"

"I don't have to say."

Draco's laugh was humorless. "This'll be a boring conversation, then. Neither of us talking."

"I…" Potter paused, then seemed to gather up his confidence. "I can make you talk."

Draco couldn't help it. He smiled. Now he understood why his mother smiled so often when people threatened. There was something in Potter's voice that said he could never 'make' anyone do anything. This wasn't the confidence of a Death Eater who had cast a killing curse. This was someone trying to interrogate a prisoner with no idea of how to play bad auror.

"Right," Draco said, pulling one knee up to rest his arm. He felt a little less helpless this way. "You, cast a cruciatus?"

Silence.

"…I told the headmaster," Potter said finally. "He said…that I should try to talk to you."

Dumbledore. Draco made a soft sound. Yes, that had been the voice he couldn't place, whispering on the stairs. Talking to Snape. The headmaster talking to a Death Eater who pleaded that he was trying not to break Draco…

"Good Lord," Draco whispered to himself. "The wheels within wheels…"

"Your turn," Potter said, getting his wind back. "Are you a Death Eater?"

Draco had no clue how to answer that. He had a mask. He'd answered Voldemort's summons. Would he answer them again? Was he still trying to get the cabinets connected? Would he obey to keep his parents alive? Maybe, and yes, and yes a thousand times.

He'd also stopped the dark lord twice now. Would he do it again?

He half waved his hand. "Ask something easier."

Potter's face kind of tightened, not out of anger but out of not getting a clear answer.

"…are you the one who helped kill the inferi? Both nights? In that shadow hoody thing?"

Draco ran his hand through his hair. The night was getting darker. The elf had probably brought his meal to the office, and he wanted a drink. He wanted light so his eyes weren't noticeable. He wanted to be back in the office, safely away from uncomfortable questions.

"What do you want from me?" Draco asked.

Keeping his hand at his forehead, shielding his eyes, he peered at Potter through his fingers. Potter was frowning, but not in anger. Dumbledore had told Potter to talk, hadn't he? So Potter didn't know what he wanted. 

"If I didn't do what you say I did," Draco said slowly, "there's no point talking. And if I did…it'd be stupid to talk."

Potter sat down. His back was still against the door, and he certainly had one hand on his wand in his robes. No one was leaving, and no one would be coming in. Draco wondered if Potter's friends were on the other side.

"Someone helped me," Potter said, parsing out his words. "Someone kept the inferi from crossing that bridge. And then that someone stood with me. At my back. Someone kept them from attacking me."

Draco frowned. That…was not how it had happened. Potter made it sound heroic. And what he'd done was not heroic. He didn't know why, but that felt almost insulting. Like being given a robe two sizes too big.

"That someone probably tried to run," Draco said, more out of spite than anything else. "The bridge was blocked."

Potter shifted, leaning forward. "Someone could have run back to the shop. There were aurors. Students. People. You—someone could have run before I got there."

"The dead…move very fast," Draco said, knowing it was a weak argument.

"No fast enough," Potter said. "In the stadium. Someone stopped them before they really got going. Someone—"

"Stop—" Draco said, his voice hitching.

Mercifully, Potter didn't keep going. He paused, watching Draco intently.

"I want to know," Potter said, sounding more sure of himself, as if he'd figured it out by talking. "If that someone wants the same thing as I do."

There were so many ways to take that. His immediate thought was to laugh, to turn away and tell Potter to leave. But the laughter wouldn't come, and Potter wasn't going anywhere.

"What is it you want?" Draco asked. "Be…be clear. At the end of all this."

Potter fidgeted and leaned forward, as if he was on the cusp of something. 

"You know who…gone. The war ended."

Draco waited for him to say 'the Death Eaters gone.' Or 'the dark wizards, all gone.' But that didn't come. No mention of Azkaban. No mention of dementors. Of prison and punishment. 

He half wanted Snape here. Snape understood so much more of what was going on. Snape knew how stupid Draco's decisions might be, whichever way he went. 

"…what else?" Draco asked.

Potter lifted his head. 

"Voldemort dead. That's it."

Draco winced to hear the name. There was a hollow emptiness to the bathroom, so that each drip of water and their voices sounded too loud. The name of Voldemort echoed around him, settling in the painful hollows of his bones.

"And…dark wizards?" Draco whispered, so softly that the only reason Potter heard him was the dead stillness of the air.

Potter didn't hesitate.

"I don't know about anyone else," Potter said. "But the enemy of my enemy…is my…"

Potter's breath hitched for an infinitesimal moment.

"…friend."

Draco heard what Potter was offering. Friendship was a pretty mirage, but an alliance, possible. Conditional, temporary, grudging as hell, the kind of compromise that no one was happy about. Were the forces of good as hard up as wanting a half-dead Malfoy on their side? Was the half-dead Malfoy as hard up as saying yes?

How could he trust Potter?

How could Potter trust him?

Fine. He'd been making awful decisions since the start of the year. What was one more?

Draco didn't trust his voice. He reached up and took the edge of his hood in his fingertips, pausing. He drew it up over his head. Shadows grew over him as he heard Potter breathe in. Then Draco pushed the hood back so that the shadows left again.

The sun was gone, the room was lit only by a few lumos charms in broken sconces, and he kept his eyes shut. He didn't look at Potter. If he looked at the other boy, he was afraid he'd see triumph, that this had been one long con to gull him into revealing himself.

So he waited for Potter to speak.