Disclaimer: I own nothing but some of the observations and the plot. J.K. Rowling owns my soul, thus I live to interpret her work feebly.

Beyond All Others

The moon was playing softly against the black sky, casting lengthy shadows across the ground, drifting calmly as if nothing extraordinary had happened that night. Nothing stirred but a small rabbit that was hopping disjointedly across the dirt pathways, ignorant and self-preserving. The rabbit flinched and scurried away as two figures appeared with a deafening CRACK! The shorter of the two wrenched his arm out of the taller man's grasp and began to walk haughtily towards a large building on the far side of the hill. The tall man with limp, shoulder-length hair reached out and yanked the other figure backwards with a hiss of annoyance.

"Back fool! We have to hide your mother," Snape said looking around nervously, "We have leeway because of Dumbledore's death, but your mother does not. She must hide if she wishes to survive."

"What?" Draco yelped. "Why?"

"Because," Snape sneered, looking down his nose at his reckless charge, "She disobeyed a direct order from the Dark Lord to hold her tongue regarding your duty."

"Why in the bloody hell," seethed Draco, wondering at his mother's stupidity, "would she do something that idiotic?"

"Because she had no faith in you and your abilities," Snape explained as if talking to a stubborn child. "Though you are correct, it was an extremely stupid action to take."

"Don't insult my mother!" Draco snapped, turning scarlet and glaring daggers at his professor. Snape was silently musing at the hypocrisy of teenagers when he responded.

"Well," Snape reasoned, pausing as if for dramatic effect, "you said it yourself. She acted foolishly and must now… reap her rewards."

"This is your fault!" Draco accused, pointing a finger in Snape's face. "Why'd you go and make an unbreakable vow? You idiot."

"Do not ever," Snape said furiously, "assume that you are my equal, it will be the last mistake you shall ever make! Just because you no longer attend Hogwarts does not mean you forget to respect your elders, most especially me. And," continued Snape, interrupting Draco before he could utter a word, "your mother would be in trouble with the Dark Lord whether I had accepted the vow or not. She is still guilty of treachery."

"If," Draco hissed, with shaking fists, "you are done having a go at my mum—"

"Don't you see?" Snape asked him exasperatedly. "She has made things undeniably harder for you, and you know exactly why she must hide, and know perfectly well that the blame does not lie with me!"

"I see no reason why she is in trouble in the first place," argued Draco, "And neither do I see how she made things harder for me at any point!"

"The Dark Lord threatened you with the death of your family, correct?" Snape asked, extremely annoyed now.

"Yes," Draco answered off-handedly. "Your point is..?"

"By doing what she did," Snape explained slowly, "she has ensured her death with or without your success. She effectively made any effort of yours a complete waste."

Draco opened his mouth to retort, but simply closed it and proceeded to stalk determinedly towards his mansion. He opened the door and Snape followed silently, preparing himself for what he was about to do. He walked through the halls, following the sound of indecipherable yelling towards where Draco was apparently shouting down his mother, who was backing away with an utterly ashamed look on her face. He stopped a few paces away and waited for Draco to finish his shouting, and then stepped forward.

"You realize the situation?" Snape asked.

"Yes," she answered shakily. "Where should I go?"

"I can give you," he answered silkily, "no definite answer to that question. As you very well know, Draco and I will undoubtedly receive new tasks, and will have to devote our full time to them. I can only offer you my home. It is well warded and has many hiding places should you look hard enough to find them."

She nodded and looked tearfully at Draco, throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly. Snape nodded to her and spun on his heel, heading towards the doorway and out into the night. Draco followed shortly thereafter, and together they walked silently through the gates and Apparated away to the Headquarters of Voldemort and the other Death Eaters with no other obligations. They immediately hurried into a house that appeared out of thin air and began to walk through a maze of hallways. As they reached the door to the Dark Lord's chambers, the aggressive teen made to storm in heedlessly and without pretense.

"Get back here, you idiot!" Snape ordered as he closed his fingers around the arm of his charge.

He continued in the same voice, though slightly hasty now. "If either one of us goes in, we are dead! Separately we have each made a gargantuan mistake."

"I wouldn't have if you hadn't interfered like I told you not to!" hissed Malfoy with almost reckless venom in his voice. "I was seconds away from completing the mission!"

"Do not," Snape hissed, "try to tell me that you were about to finish him! That lie will be your death if you speak it to the Dark Lord, you imbecile!"

"Now," he continued, "If we go in together, we have completed a mission he has been working on for almost three decades, and we can work that to our advantage."

The teen threw him a filthy look but complied nonetheless and followed the man into a relatively large room. As they entered, they found their master to be sitting contentedly with his fingertips together in a fashion reminiscent of one, now late, Albus Dumbledore.

"Ah, Severus and Draco," he hissed in an almost caressing tone. "What a pleasant surprise."

"What news do you bring me?" Voldemort inquired in an interested sneer. "Hopefully news… of a certain wizard's untimely death."

"We do bring such news, Master," Snape said in a silky whisper. "He is indeed no longer among us."

"Tell me the story," Voldemort said, pleasure in his voice as he relished in his newest victory. "I want to hear the details of the Muggle-loving fool's death."

Snape related the entire night back to Voldemort, hesitating on Draco's failure to finish the job but telling the truth anyway. He hoped with all of his heart that his hunch from the year before had been right, and voiced this at the end of his tale.

"I know that you ordered Draco to do it, My Lord," he began emotionlessly, showing no vulnerable sentiment to his cruel master, "but I had the impression that you intended me to finalize the act when you told me the plan last year."

Voldemort stared impassively at them for what felt like hours rather than seconds. When he spoke, it was in a tone of reluctant mercy, yet it still held the pleased, gloating inflection from the initial news of Dumbledore's death.

"I am disappointed in your reluctance to take the killing blow, Draco," he told the teen. "However, I will admit that I tasked you with his death to punish your father, and despite that, you managed to kill Dumbledore without ever uttering anything but a few repairing spells. That is a valuable kind of talent, and you shall be rewarded, I assure you."

"You, Severus," he said tuning his head to the older man, "were able to step forward in Draco's moment of weakness and pull the trigger. You too shall be rewarded for your actions, as indeed, I did intend for you to do it… in the very end."

He leaned back in his throne-like chair and surveyed them closely, as though measuring his next words carefully. He leaned forward again and, after a few minutes, spoke in a tone of utmost finality.

"If this had been anybody but Albus Dumbledore," Voldemort whispered in a deadly hiss, "you would both be dead! I cannot allow this any further. Severus, I want him trained and ready to step into service by summer's end. His talents for keeping his hands clean like his father cannot be his only asset. Even Lucius knew when to buckle down and fight."

"I'm sorry master," Draco spoke for the first time since entering the room. "My hesitation is inexcusable. I beg forgiveness in the hope that Dumbledore's death will appease you."

"Then I suggest," Voldemort hissed, "that you do not fail me on the task I am about to set you and Severus, going by the principle that you two seem destined to work together." He leaned back and Draco sighed in deep relief.

Still looking at them he reached over to the table next to his chair and grabbed a stack of papers. Both Snape and the young Malfoy smirked a little at the Dark Lord's organization methods. If the question wouldn't have invited Voldemort annihilate them, they would have perhaps asked him if he had misplaced his reading spectacles, but they valued their lives and so remained silent. Voldemort flipped through countless pages and finally pulled one out and looked up at his servants.

"I would further suggest that you never speak unless spoken to again, young Malfoy. You will regret doing so, and I'm sure Severus can teach you the penalty for doing so, and the one for smirking, YOU IMPUDENT WHELP!" Voldemort flicked his fingers and before Draco could react, Snape had taken action.

"CRUCIO!" roared Snape, smirking in glee at Draco's humiliation and agony. "Let this be your first lesson of the summer. That is not Dumbledore, and this is not Potions class," he intoned over Draco's pitiful whimpers, stalking closer and closer to the young charge. "You will know this pain and a hundred times worse, should our lord deem you worthy enough to punish you himself if you do not learn." The screams grew louder as Snape grew closer, until his wand was almost touching the child writhing on the floor. "It is time you learned, learned that those with greater power than you, will hurt you, no matter your influence." And then the wand made contact with Draco's chest, and the teenager was taken over by convulsions.

"Enough!" Voldemort yelled from his chair. "He will learn, or he will be punished. By me." He looked at the quivering mass of flesh on the floor.

"I want you to find Harry Potter, tell me what he is doing," he said staring intently at them both, "I thought you in particular would enjoy this job, young Malfoy. You are to start after his birthday, as he will be of age and no doubt roaming about like the idiot that he is. That is all, be gone."

Malfoy slowly dragged himself up, and with one last fearful look at his new master, he and Snape bowed low and exited the room briskly. Snape was cursing quietly beside him. Draco looked over at his former professor in confusion and wondered why he was displeased by their assignment, seeing as Snape hated Potter just as much as he did himself, if not more so, but shrugged it off. He was in too much pain to do much of anything at this point.

- - - - -

And so they waited. They waited until that fool's birthday came, waiting for their hunt to commence. They lived at the Dark Lord's headquarters while Severus taught Draco everything he knew, focusing his strengths and teaching him spells he would never learn in Hogwarts. Draco in particular was eager to humiliate and hunt down his rival, and perhaps temporarily forget about his mother's absence, and it showed as he excelled in everything he was learning. Draco trained harder than he ever had, spurned on by the chance that if he worked hard enough, he might stand a chance against Potter. Having never bested him in any kind of serious fight, Draco scowled at the memory of being put in the Hospital Wing by that fool last year. Snape used this to his advantage, motivating Draco to master each new spell and incantation, mocking him for losing to his unworthy nemesis. However, every time Draco mentioned the assignment to Snape, his teacher would grow tense and withdraw, seemingly frustrated by what he constantly deemed, 'a near impossible mission.'

"What's wrong, Professor?" Draco asked, confused by his mentor's behavior on one such occasion. "I would have thought that you especially would relish this assignment. From what I've heard, you gave Potter a sound beating when he tried to fight you at Hogwarts."

"My doubt is not whether I will be able to grab the idiot," Snape clarified, "but whether I will be able to find him."

"Well," reasoned Draco, "you were spying on the Order. I'm sure you've heard enough about the places he might stay, and you have access to all of them. You taught him for six years, so you would know where he would stay."

"The thing that bothers me most," Snape began, an odd pitch marring his usually apathetic tone, "is that I have an idea of exactly where he will go, and I already know that I can't get in."

Yet as Snape said this, he realized through his stupor just how much this generation of students he had taught from first-year had grown, and how much they still had to develop. His favorite student, sitting before him, had progressed from an arrogant, imbecilic brat to a cool and calculating, though still arrogant young man. As if sensing Snape's mentor moment, Draco showed just how much he had matured, especially in the last year.

"If we can't get in," Draco whispered in a malevolent tone, looking Snape in the eye, "we have to draw them out, don't we?"

As July 31st drew ever closer, Snape and Malfoy could be seen hunched over the small table in Snape's sitting room, planning how best to seize their target quickly and efficiently. There were crumpled bits of parchment and thick leather-bound tomes everywhere. Possible places, times and dates and supplies were pinned to small board on the wall, yet no definite details were laid down. Snape had scribbled something down quickly, only to screw up the whole page, toss it into the air and obliterate it before it reached the floor. Snape sighed and ran his long fingers through his greasy locks and flumped back into his chair. He and Draco had been planning for almost a month; Potter's birthday was next week, and still they were no closer to a definite plan on how to snag him. Dumbledore had mentioned once in passing that Harry would cease to be protected by his Aunt's blood on his 17th birthday, but had not said where the whelp lived. He rubbed his temples as he realized that that would give Potter time to flee to better protection. Well, he thought to himself, while they figured out a plan to capture Potter, they could go to the place he would undeniably be and still gather information.

"I honestly don't know," Draco sighed, looking at a piece of rumpled paper in his hand. "He'll be too smart to fall for an attack on Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley, and Hogwarts will probably be impenetrable by the time this plan is ready to go. I don't see this happening."

"There is one place," Snape drawled, coming upon a new stroke of brilliance. "One place that he would rush to protect in an instant."

"And where would that be?" Draco asked in a manner that conveyed his annoyance at being kept in the dark.

"That," Snape sneered with glee, "would unmistakably be, The Burrow."

Draco's face split with a maniacal grin that twisted his features in a rather nasty way, much like when the Dark Lord tried to smile. It seemed that the possibility of making the Weasleys suffer on top of Potter was almost too good.

"When?" asked Draco, unable to keep the sickening happiness out of his soft tenor.

"I think," Snape whispered menacingly, "that we should remind him of that fateful Halloween so long ago."

Draco laughed while Snape smirked nastily, and they renewed their planning, writing furiously gruesome and horrific tactics with which to attack the Burrow. Halloween would not be a good day for Harry Potter. It would be even worse for the Weasleys.

As they schemed, Harry Potter sat at his desk, mourning a lost teacher, flipping through the pages of a Charms book distractedly, and preparing himself to fight a battle that would test him to the core. He glanced up and gazed into his reflection, staring back into the eyes of a man who knew he was doomed. They were eyes that were dull, and hopeless, but under all that, as a testament to Harry's character and strength, there was a fervent, almost manic gleam, one that promised his departure would be an event to remember. Yes, thought Harry, he would go down in flames, and his enemies would burn with him in the fires of his last breath. With that, he dove back into his book, drowning his sorrows and doubts in his own deadly resolve, a resolve that resonated within him, spurring him to victory, soothing his wounds, and promising a possible life after this war.

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Afrojack