Amv: I'm sorry, I just HAD to start writing this! I've gotten the entire plot and everything else planned out and I'm already halfway through chapter two. Please, PLEASE humor me and read & review this! Think of it as your Christmas present to me!

I do not own Harry Potter.

UPDATE: This was updated from the original for two reasons: first, there were a few grammar mistakes, and secondly, because I thought I should improve Draco's O.W.L.S since he's not as stupid as I make him seem originally.

Chapter One

Fire.

That was all he knew, all he felt, all he could focus on. There was no world. There was only himself and this blinding, blazing pain in his forearm. He screwed up his face, biting the inside of his cheek so hard it bled. He didn't make a noise. He couldn't make a noise. It wasn't allowed. If he made any sound, even the tiniest noise at the back of his throat, this pain would be for nothing, and he would let everyone down.

Finally the burning stopped and died down to a dull, numbing throb. The hand holding his arm released him, and he sunk down to his knees in exhaustion. He looked down at the inside of his left forearm. Branded into his pale white skin was the stark black image of a skull with a snake twined through its mouth and below it.

Most teenagers had a party on their sixteenth birthday. Draco Malfoy was branded with the Dark Mark.

He looked up at the man who had given him the Mark. The man was deathly pale and bald, with slits for nostrils and red eyes. Lord Voldemort, the Dark Lord, the most famous and feared dark wizard for a hundred years. And now Draco bore the Mark of his followers. Of the Death Eaters.

Voldemort smiled. "Congratulations, Draco. You've just completed the first step to becoming a true follower."

"The first step?" Draco repeated.

"But of course. Did you think that you could get the Mark and be done with it?" Voldemort asked.

Draco had hoped, but clearly nothing could be that easy. He shook his head. "I'll do whatever it takes."

"But we all know that. After all," Voldemort tucked his wand into his robes and glanced at the woman standing along the wall. She had long, fair hair pulled back into a bun sitting low on the nape of her neck. Though she tried to appear brave, the hands she held behind her back trembled and her light blue eyes shone with suppressed tears. With a chuckle he turned back to Draco. "You don't have much choice, do you?"

Draco didn't respond and refused to look at his mother. Doing so would look like a weak cry for help in the Dark Lord's eyes.

"Fortunately for you, receiving the Mark was the first step in becoming my follower. Your next test is a test of your loyalty to me. I expect all of my Death Eaters to show loyalty to me until the end. You must not tell anyone what I'm about to tell you, howsoever you are tortured." Voldemort allowed the last word to linger in the air. The silence in the room was nearly tangible.

"Go into the next room for your test. And you must not reveal any information I have told you." Voldemort said. "I have business to attend to, so I will return in an hour or so."

"You didn't tell me any information," Draco said.

Voldemort gave a chilling smile and Disapparated.

Draco looked at his mother wordlessly and stood up to go. His legs wobbled slightly beneath him and he stepped into the next room. It was his father's study, a room where he had always found the man working when he was younger. But the person sitting in his father's leather chair no more resembled him than a centaur resembled a mermaid. She was dressed in a snug-fitting but torn and dirty black dress with her Death Eater's robe over it. Her hair was knotted on top of her head crazily, curls and strands escaping it and falling over her back and face, and her teeth, when she leered at him, were chipped and blackened.

"Good evening and happy birthday, my dear nephew," she said.

"Thank you, Aunt Bella," Draco replied quietly.

"I'm so proud of you," Bellatrix Lestrange said, standing up. She swayed, as if she was drunk, but Draco knew it wasn't wine that intoxicated her. It was her Dark Lord and his power and his beliefs that corresponded exactly with her own. She would do anything her Master ordered.

She sat on his father's deck and studied him through heavy-lidded eyes. "Are you ready, Draco?" she whispered, "You know what to do?"

No, Draco wanted to reply. No, he had no idea. He only knew that he couldn't reveal any information Voldemort told him, but there wasn't anything Voldemort had told him that was worth knowing.

Before he could answer, Bellatrix flicked her wand at him. Draco was blasted off his feet, his back against the door, his head crashing into the heavy oak wood. He sunk to the floor, stunned. His head was spinning, but before he could regain his bearings, Bellatrix threw him against the walls, the ceiling, and let him crash to the floor. There was a nasty crack as his right leg landed awkwardly beneath him, breaking his fall.

Bellatrix flicked him onto his back with her wand and stood towering above him. "What did the Dark Lord tell you?"

"Nothing," Draco gasped out through the pain.

Bellatrix fired a spell at him. Draco felt his robes singe and his arms began to blister. What had she jinxed him with? Difindo? Reducto? His eyes watered and she asked again, "What did the Dark Lord tell you?"

"Nothing," Draco repeated.

Her dark eyes stared into his own, and Draco suddenly knew what was coming.

"Crucio!" Bellatrix yelled.

The pain was unbelievable. Hot knives stabbed every inch of his body. His joints felt as if they were being twisted all the wrong ways. He would have taken being branded with the Mark, all over his body, repeatedly, and been thankful and glad. He recalled his Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher using this spell on a spider two years ago. The flinching, twitching bug had struck him as humorous; now, he was sickened with his fourteen-year-old self. This wasn't funny. No creature deserved this pain. Now he finally understood why the Cruciartus Curse was called an Unforgiveable Curse.

Bellatrix lifted the curse and studied her panting, shaking nephew. "What did he tell you?"

"Nothing," Draco croaked. His throat was raw. He realized that he had been screaming.

The Curse again. The cycle continued for what seemed like ages. Curse. Question. Refusal. Curse. Question. Refusal. Draco began to wish he would die, that it would end. Nothing was worth this pain. This entire thing—the Dark Mark, these tests—wasn't his idea, his choice. He supported Voldemort's plans and ideas, he believed that Muggle-borns had no place in his school or in the world, but he had never wanted to be a Death Eater.

Bellatrix stopped the curse again and pulled him to his feet. She shoved him against the wall with a hand on his throat.

"Are you loyal to the Dark Lord?" She asked, a mad gleam in her eyes.

"Yes," Draco said weakly. She had jarred his leg when she moved him and the pain was making his eyes water again.

Bellatrix took her dagger out of her pocket and cut a thin, shallow cut on his left cheek. "Say it like you mean it, Draco!" She shrieked.

"Yes!" Draco said it louder. Bellatrix slashed him on his right cheekbone below his eyes, deeper this time. Warm blood began to drip down his face.

"Like you mean it!"

"BELLATRIX!"

A hand grabbed Bellatrix on the shoulder and yanked her off of him. "Bellatrix, control yourself!"

Draco stared at the man. Curtains of shoulder-length, slightly greasy black hair framed his sallow face, dark eyes, and hooked nose. Severus Snape held his wand threateningly at her. "You overstep your boundaries. You weren't told to kill the boy, only test him. Get out. Now."

Bellatrix shot him a haughty, disdaining glare and exited the room. Snape watched her go and indicated for Draco to sit. He stumbled into a chair in front of his father's desk and collapsed, trembling.

"You're limping," Snape observed. "Where does it hurt?"

"Where doesn't it hurt?" Draco murmured. "I just had the Cruciartus Curse used on me for a good twenty minutes straight."

Snape's lip curled. "She never had much restraint. Now, I can't heal your wounds, but I can splint your leg." He pointed his wand, and white bandages came out of its tip and wrapped tightly around his shin, where he had pulled up his pant leg. He tried to stand, and immediately wished he hadn't. The bandage braced his leg and caused the broken bones (for he now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his leg was, indeed, broken) to grate against each other. He swayed and sat down again.

The room was quiet for a few minutes. Draco asked, "Why are you here?"

"I am here because the Dark Lord requested my presence, and I felt that Lucius would have wanted me to be here when he could not." Snape replied.

Draco nodded in understanding just as a loud crack announced someone Apparating into the room. Both Draco and Snape turned to find Lord Voldemort. He had a goblin at his side, tightly bound with cords. The Dark Lord shoved it face-first to the ground. A red stain began to pool onto the carpet below it.

"Hello, Severus," Voldemort said pleasantly, as if he hadn't just come into the room with a goblin that had a potentially life-threatening injury. "So glad you could make it."

"The pleasure is mine, my Lord," Snape replied in his characteristically dry, emotionless voice.

"And Draco," Voldemort went on, turning to him. "You look a little worse for wear than you did an hour ago, but you appear to be holding up well. I have a second test for you."

Oh, dear God, Draco thought. "Do you, my Lord?"

"I do. It's a little unorthodox, but I feel it could be useful in regards to your training." He nudged the goblin onto its back with the toe of his boot. The goblin let out a low groan. "I needed to get some information from this creature, but he refused to give it to me until after I killed his wife and children. I've gotten all I need to out of it, and I decided to have you put it out of its misery."

"What?" His ordeal with the Curse had left him exhausted and his wits were moving slowly.

"Kill the goblin," Voldemort said.

The order woke Draco up. "I…" He looked down at the goblin. It was certainly ugly, with a pointed face, sharp little teeth, and long fingers and toes. There was a large slash across his chest, starting at his right shoulder and ending just below the left side of the ribcage. The cut wasn't deep, but the size of it would kill the goblin anyway.

"I am unsure if this is a good idea, my Lord," Snape stepped in. "Draco may be a newly recruited Death Eater, but it is difficult for a sixteen-year-old to perform the Killing Curse. Besides, he cannot stand."

"Why should he stand?" Voldemort asked coldly. "I know I say that standing above the body makes the kill that much more satisfying, but there will be plenty of time for satisfying killings in the future." He looked at Draco. "Do it," he ordered.

Draco looked between the two men then down at the goblin. He was only semi-conscious, most likely barely hearing what they said, but his small, beady eyes looked into his. He felt a wave of revulsion at what he was about to do and raised his wand. He recalled his fourth-year Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher telling the class that the Killing Curse needed a good amount of force behind it, so he summed up his magical power and yelled, "Avada Kedavra!"

There was a flash of green light, a short, brief cry that abruptly cut off, and the goblin lay dead. Its empty eyes were still looking into Draco's.

The room was quiet before Voldemort said, "Well done, Draco. You seem to be a natural killer."

Snape said nothing. Draco felt as if he were about to throw up, but he managed to choke out, "Th-thank you, my Lord."

"I will go out into the entrance hall and inform your parents and aunt of your success." Voldemort said before exiting the room. When he was gone, Draco buried his face in his trembling hands. He felt dirty, not proud. He didn't want to be a "natural killer."

"We should go," Snape said. He helped Draco stand, and they left the study and went to the entrance hall. His mother stood where she had been before he left and she gave a tiny gasp of horror at the sight of him. Bellatrix leaned on the wall beside them, eyes on Voldemort. The Dark Lord was standing on the steps so he was elevated above everyone else. Draco knelt about ten feet from him, alone, and Snape went to stand near his mother.

"So…young Draco," Voldemort said, lightly touching his fingertips together as he surveyed his newest recruit. "Before I can give you your first job for me, I'm afraid you must pass one more test."

Draco felt his face, what could be seen under the blood Bellatrix's wounds had let out, go deathly white. He tried to keep his face passive, emotionless, but internally he trembled. After the ordeal with the Curse, killing the goblin, and being branded with the Mark, he was unsure if he could take more. He glanced around the room. Snape's face was just as expressionless as his own; his mother was in tears at the sight of his mangled and burned body and robes; Bellatrix looked prouder than he had ever seen her. No one was going to stop this; no one was going to stop him. He had no options, no other choices, nowhere to run. He couldn't run and leave his mother to take Voldemort's wrath over his father's failure at the Ministry weeks ago. It was his mother or him. Draco had chosen to put himself into the noose.

He drew in a deep breath and looked back up into Voldemort's pitiless red eyes. "I'm ready."

It was so sudden that Draco had no way to prepare for it, not that he knew what was going on. All he knew was that he was seeing snippets of scenes from his past as if he were watching a movie: he is seven, watching with a mixture of revulsion and confusion as his father beats the house-elf senseless for not putting enough sugar in Draco's cocoa…He is thirteen, and a hippogriff is standing above him, wings flapping, talons flying, fury in its orange eyes…He is fourteen, trying to be a gentleman as Pansy Parkinson clings to his arm, and a familiar girl in pale blue robes walks past him, and he wants to speak, to sneer, but the words don't come, and he watches dumbly as she moves away from him, holding the arm of Viktor Krum…

As quickly as it started, it was over. Draco bowed his head, his hair covering his eyes, sweat dripping down his temples and stinging as they mixed in his cuts. He took great, searing breaths, trying to fight the growing panic and fear rising up in him. Draco looked up at Voldemort and found the Dark Lord smiling. He knew Draco's feelings, his terror, and reveled in it.

"Interesting," Voldemort said. "You've met crossroads in your past…and I'm glad to see you've chosen the right paths. Congratulations. You have passed your tests. You may kiss my robes."

Slowly, Draco got to his feet. His legs, especially the broken one, protested the movement and he stumbled to Voldemort. He knelt, took the hem of his black robe just as he had watched his father do in the past, and pressed them to his lips. He dropped the hem and haltingly returned to his place. Voldemort still had that same smile on his face.

"Now, Draco, my newest, youngest Death Eater…Your mission."

The room, if it was possible, was even quieter. The Dark Lord continued, "Am I correct in saying that you will be returning to Hogwarts to begin your sixth year with Harry Potter?"

"Yes, my Lord," Draco croaked.

"Tell me, do you know who is most important to Harry Potter? A best friend, perhaps, or a girlfriend…?" Voldemort asked.

Draco thought. "He broke up with a girl last year, Cho Chee, or something…he mostly spends his time with blood traitors like the Weasleys. Oh, yes, and Mudblood Granger, she's part of his little posse."

Voldemort's attention perked. "'Mudblood Granger?' 'She?' Tell me about her," he ordered.

"Name's Hermione. A right know-it-all, the teacher's favorite, stickler for rules, the girl in Potter's Golden Trio of friends," Draco spat, a stab of annoyance in his gut at mentioning her. "Always acts like she's got a wand up her—"

"That will do," Voldemort said, sounding amused. "Well, this is much more straightforward than I thought. You mission is to get close to this Hermione Granger Mudblood, close to Potter if you have to. Any information you learn about him should be passed on to me through Severus. Earn her trust and the trust of the others if you can…then take away a member of the so-called 'Golden Trio.' Kill the Mudblood."

And with his order, Voldemort Disapparated from the entrance hall. Bellatrix let out a loud, maniacal cackle, screamed, "Good luck, my dear nephew!" and Disapparated as well.

With the Dark Lord and her sister gone, his mother, Narcissa, ran to her son. Clutching him to her, she sobbed, saying, "Draco…oh, Draco…"

"'M Fine." The words felt thick in his mouth and he detached himself from his mother. Dimly, he noted that he had left a large bloodstain on her white blouse. He began to sway, the exhaustion and stress of the past hour and a half—had it really been such a short time?—finally getting to him as the adrenaline in his blood drained away. He felt his broken leg, cuts, and burns as he hadn't before, and, unable to utter another word, he sank down into black unconsciousness.

Draco's heavy eyelids twitched as he felt gentle hands sponge his forehead. It was difficult to move without the area protesting, screaming with sores and aches. Nevertheless, he opened his eyes, and after a few blinks, a pair of large, tennis-ball shaped yellow eyes fell into focus.

With a startled half-yell he shoved it away and scrambled upright. His back came into contact with the dark wood of the headboard of his bed. He studied the small, bat-eared creature dressed in a slightly frayed but otherwise clean pillowcase.

Draco gave a long sigh. "Lina, what were you doing?"

The house-elf looked up at him and said, "Master Draco has a slight fever, sir. Mistress Narcissa told Lina to take care of Master Draco while she got something to eat. Lina is sorry for startling Master Draco!"

"It doesn't matter," Draco said with a shrug. Since his father had been tricked into accidentally setting their former house-elf free (he had never said exactly how, only that it had something to do with that "[explicative] [explicative] Potter"), he had changed policies. They weren't to treat the house-elf as an equal, no, never, but they were to treat her with a certain amount of respect so she wouldn't be so "desperate" to run away.

He pulled back his blankets and noticed that his right leg was wrapped in fresh white bandages. "Lina, didn't someone fix my leg?"

"Yes, Master Draco. The bandages are for the swelling," Lina answered in her squeaky voice.

He nodded and got out of bed and limped to his mirror to see himself. His face, normally very pale, was even whiter after losing so much blood. His platinum blond hair was ungelled, his bangs falling over his forehead and into his light gray-blue eyes. Sweeping his bangs aside, he found that his eyes were shadowed and had a faintly haunted look about them. The wounds Bellatrix had inflicted on him were healed, but he noticed that the one below his right eye wasn't completely gone. There was a thin, curved scar along the curve of his eye socket.

"Lina, why didn't you completely heal this one?" He asked, pointing at it.

Lina grinned toothily. "Lina thought it made Master Draco look rugged, sir!"

He raised an eyebrow at the house-elf as his mother entered the room.

"Mum," he said, indicating his cheek, "does this scar really make me look 'rugged?'"

A tiny smile creased her face, which, Draco now saw, looked exhausted. "Sorry, no, son. I told Lina to tell you that. The scar isn't even noticeable from a distance or in normal conversation."

"Good. I don't want to be like Potter or anything," Draco said. He sat on his desk.

Narcissa sighed. "Draco, please don't mention anything about your mission to me, at least for now. Last night seems like a nightmare." She sat on the corner of his bed and said, "Lina, bring us some tea."

"Certainly, Mistress Narcissa!" Lina said cheerfully before bowing out of the room.

They listened to Lina's steps as she shuffled down the hall. When her footfalls faded away, Draco asked, "What time is it?"

"A little past noon," his mother replied. "You've been out for a while."

Draco nodded and studied his bandaged leg. He noticed that his forearms were wrapped as well. "What did Bella hit me with?"

His mother frowned. "Reducto."

Draco nodded again, feigning disinterest. "Anything interesting happen while I was asleep?"

"Actually, yes," Narcissa pulled an envelope out of her pocket. "Your O.W.L.s results came." She stood up and set the envelope on the tabled next to him. She kissed him lightly on the head. "I have something to do. I'll be home for dinner."

"Bye, mum," Draco said. He waited for her to go and then he took up the envelope and broke the wax Hogwarts Crest seal. He realized his hands were shaking slightly as he pulled out the parchment and unfolded it. The letter said:

Ordinary Wizarding Levels Results

Pass Grades Fail Grades

Outstanding (O) Poor (P)

Exceeds Expectations (E) Dreadful (D)

Acceptable (A) Troll (T)

Draco Abraxas Malfoy has received:

Astronomy O

Care of Magical Creatures E

Charms O

Transfiguration O

Potions O

Herbology O

Defense Against the Dark Arts E

History of Magic O

Draco read the paper over and over and finally let out a small sigh of relief. He grinned, thankful that he hadn't failed anything, something he was sure he couldn't say for Crabbe or Goyle. Of course, he hadn't thought he would fail anything. He may have acted collected about the tests, but he still remembered whipping out note cards while he was patrolling the corridors late at night or when he knew no one was watching.

But inevitably, his mind drifted to his mission and the girl he was now supposed to kill. Not that he minded; he hated the stuck-up Mudblood. But wondered if, wherever she was, she was giving a small sigh of relief over her results as well.

He snorted. She had probably gotten straight O's, or something.

Amv: PLEEEEEAAASSSEEE REVIEW! Merry Christmas! Chapter 5 of Perfect Chemistry will be up soon!