This story was originally published on Granger Enchanted. I am bringing it over to fan fiction dot net, in hopes that someone here might enjoy it.
This is definitely an AU story: Snape lives, Malfoys are 'good', Ron is a bastard, back-handed Ginny bashing, and a slightly talkative Marcus Flint.
THAT BEING SAID: don't 'slam' me for writing an AU story, with an AU premise, with an EWE ending.
This is a fun, lighthearted, story, which was written as a gift for the amazing HP authoress Savva.
THANK YOU!
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Ides of April, 1997
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Moaning Myrtle's Bathroom
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"I know how to save you."
Six words.
That's all it took for Draco to lift his shoulders from where he'd hunched over the sink in the boys' lav – he really needed to find somewhere else to vent his frustration or at least learn to shove Crabbe at Moaning Myrtle so that the sex-happy, whiny-ass, perma-virgin ghost wouldn't sell him out to every Potter, Snape and Granger – and really look at the witch who'd just made sure that they wouldn't be overheard or interrupted.
I know how to save you.
Six words that hadn't come from his mother's mouth or by an owl delivering one of Lucius' once-a-month-live-from-Azkaban letters, or passed to him by a world wary and war weary godfather.
Every single adult in his life had told him that the blackest-green tattoo on his arm was permanent; a permanent fixture to his soul, his magic, his mind, and his body; the physical embodiment of his Lord's everlasting commitment to him.
Yet, a seventeen year-old Mudblood, one known for her cleverness and resourcefulness, had the audacity to offer him hope in the form of six single-syllable words: I know how to save you.
"Fuck off before I fucking hurt you." He glared at her reflection. "Don't think that I won't."
She shook her head. She fixed her gaze on him and ignored his crude attempt at a dismissal and half-assed threat.
"It's true. Harry's the one who gave me the idea. Well, not Harry directly. There was a fair bit of inspiration from when I modified the Protean charm last year…"
Draco snorted and sneered at the mention of the Boy-Who-Wouldn't-Stop-Fucking-Up-Other-People's-Lives. "Always comes down to fucking Potter with you, doesn't it?"
"Are you done being foul? Because I can go; I don't have to tell you anything." Ever the bossy swot, she waved her hand at the door. The one he'd watched her barricade with spells that didn't appear in any Sixth or Seventh year text book that Draco had ever read, or Restricted tome that resided on his godfather's personal reference shelf, or Ministry-banned manuscript tucked away in the vast and expansive Malfoy Archives.
She crossed one arm across her body while her other hand bracketed her hip. She looked up at him through a framework of thick eyelashes, barely-there freckles, loose curls, and delicate features. Her challenge delivered – him to shut up or she would leave - she was the epitome of hesitant confidence.
"I just thought you'd like to know that there's actually a way…" She paused, her thought process halted as she searched for the right words to say and the right words, more importantly, not to say. "You don't have to be…his."
His… Voldemort's. The snake-faced rat-bastard that forced his Mark on his pristine Malfoy flesh within hours of The-Thing-Who-Used-to-be-Riddle defeat in the atrium at the Ministry.
Draco wanted to clap his hand over the snake-and-skull etched into his skin… He wanted to pretend that he hadn't screamed, writhed, and cried out in pain as his two psychotic 'uncles', Rabastan and Rodolphus, held him down by his shoulders while his even more bat-shit-crazy-zealous-is-an-understatement Aunt Bellatrix used her Cursed knife to slice apart the sleeve of his school shirt so that her Lord – and now his – could brand him as 'compensation' for Lucius' incarceration. The symbolism – and Voldemort loved his symbols, no fucking surprise there – of his rendered school shirt at the hands of those who'd now dictate the parameters of his new life wasn't lost on him then or now. Happy fucking graduation to me; silver masks and Death Eaters' robes are the 'new' cap-and-gown.
But Malfoys didn't beg. Malfoys didn't plead. They fucking sucked it up – whatever 'it' of the moment was – and played things smart until Opportunity presented itself.
Course, with his bloody fucking luck, Opportunity wore tiny-ass Mary Janes and a Gryffindor tie. But, when Opportunity speaks…
Not that he wasn't above giving Opportunity a two-fingered salute just because he could.
Which was why he turned, faced her, and placed both hands behind him, flexing his fingers on edge of the aged porcelain sink. "Who are you to suppose that I have his Mark?"
She scoffed – out loud - at him!
"Anyone with two brain cells to rub together, that's who!" She struggled with her temper. Her sudden switch to mirth really pissed him off. "You really think that no one knows? Gods, Malfoy, I knew you were arrogant, but really?!"
He moved towards her. The proven capability of the witch and the pointy end of her wand aimed at his still healing chest, the same chest Potter had sliced to ribbons not six days ago, had him stopping five feet from where she stood.
He arched a haughty eyebrow at the length of carved vinewood primed with a yet-to-be-released spell.
"Go ahead. Do it." He leaned forward so that there were only four feet between their two noses. His lip curled nastily. "If you can."
She leaned forward.
Now there were only three feet between their noses.
She matched his derisiveness with honest self-assessment. There was no more hesitancy to her confidence.
"You'll learn, Malfoy, that there are a lot of things I can do."
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Draco poured three more fingers of Ogden's Black Label into his glass. His godfather had finished his first glassful long before Draco finished recounting the discussion between himself and Granger. The older man had long drifted into introspection. Draco didn't have the heart to separate the man from his brooding.
He resettled into the other chair in Uncle Severus' lounge. The Potions Master's quarters at Hogwarts were comfortable. As they should be. The man had been living in the same bedroom, WC, lounge, and study-cum-library for more than ten years.
Once his godfather's eyes shifted from staring at the flames in the hearth to actually seeing him, was when Draco offered his apology.
"For what it's worth: I'm sorry. I asked her. Hell, I ordered her! She said, each and every time that I screamed at her, yelled at her, attempted to bribe her or politely requested that she include you, that what'll work for me won't work for you." He closed his eyes for a moment and for both their sakes streamlined the GryffinSwot's hour-long dissertation. "Despite being wand-bonded to Father, and that the Prince line is as magically potent as the Malfoy family line, the spell is patriarchal. If the spell were matriarchal, then she'd be able to perform a separate ceremony for you." He needed another mouthful of liquor to swallow down his guilty feelings. "If it's any consolation, Granger said that even magic has some rules that can't be bent, twisted, or broken. She truly sounded…irked…about that."
Snape didn't bother with shaking his head or acknowledging the fact that Draco's salvation didn't – couldn't – include him. Instead, he picked up his glass and peered at the emptiness therein. He then stood, walked over to the side table topped with decanters, and tipped more finely aged brandy into his stemless cut-crystal.
"Don't concern yourself with what cannot be, Draco." He hefted the glass, tilting the brandy in the firelight, and spoke to him over the rim. "As you can see – my glass is half-full."
Draco rolled his eyes at the way his godfather offered him ass-backwards absolution. Considering the almost wry twist to the man's nearly non-existent lips, apparently Voldemort wasn't the only one with a penchant for fucked-up symbolism.
"How?"
Snape came as close as ever to actually smiling. It was really rather fucking creepy the way those thin lips exposed the very tips of his yellow, crooked, teeth. "That's for me to know and you to find out."
"Let's just pray that that's one conversation we'll never have to share, shall we?" Draco didn't want to think about what the circumstances would be where Severus Snape would come face-to-face with a Grim Reaper. It did make him feel somewhat mollified that, somehow, Snape, along with all the Malfoys, would survive the war. A sudden flash of insight had him nearly flinging his glass into the wall. "Granger got to you too, didn't she?!"
Snape's almost-smile warped into a fierce glare. The tall man marched to where Draco sat. He leaned down, the tip of his hooked nose mere inches from the center of Draco's chin.
"You'll do well, boy, to banish that thought." The fire in the grate flared as his godfather's emotions spiked. "For her sake as well as mine: if you can't forget what you've just surmised, I won't hesitate to take it from you."
Draco didn't know why he spoke impulsively. As if his cagey godfather, the one wizard cagier than Lucius Malfoy, would ever place himself on equal-footing as an almost seventeen year-old. Not to mention that forced Obliviation wasn't on Draco's list of things he wanted to experience. Then again, he snarked to himself, I'd never know if I'd been Obliviated, would I?
Properly cowed, Draco didn't resent Severus' intimidation. Their respective – him, his parents, and his godfather's – situations were dire. He was man-enough, wizard-enough, to acknowledge that Granger's proposal was the escape-clause that he'd been told didn't exist. I know how to save you, indeed. For him to jeopardize that by not taking the GryffChit up on her offer would be to admit that he, his magic, his life, his family, belonged to Voldemort.
Fuck. That.
He was a Malfoy. A Malfoy was beholden to himself, his name, his Pater, his wife, and the Old Ones.
That didn't mean that he didn't want verification. That's why he came to his godfather in the first place – after spending three days surreptitiously researching the girl's claims. He couldn't tell his Uncle Severus what the Noseless One wanted him to do, the two tasks he'd yet to accomplish. But, he needed to know if Granger was telling the truth. Not that she'd lie – not about something like this. But, still, he'd be a fool not to double-check. And a Malfoy was never a fool. A Malfoy could act foolishly, and had. Lucius binding himself, and by extension Draco and Narcissa as Lucius was Pater when Lucius took the Mark, to Voldemort was foolish. Draco's ongoing feud with Potter was foolish. Underestimating Granger was foolish. He, Draco Malfoy, was determined to make sure he wasn't labeled as the first Fool on the Malfoy family tree.
He re-introduced the reason why he'd shown up at his every-way-that-counted Uncle's door.
"Is she right? What she's proposing? Would it work?"
Severus sat in his chair. He crossed his ankle across his knee; his glass he cradled loosely in his hands. Thankfully his Uncle didn't call him out on the fact that he, Draco, had a moment where he was simply a teenaged boy who was in way over his head in every possibly way.
"Tell me again what she said."
Draco recalled every word she'd said to him in that lavatory, and then paraphrased it. "She said it was a variation on the resurrection spell…he…and Pettigrew used two years ago. Bones of a father, blood of an enemy, gift from a servant – that spell. But with different…ingredients…and intentions."
"Yes…," the older wizard drawled. He extrapolated Granger's assertions. "Intentions of the caster would change the nature of the spell as well as influence the properties sustained within the required ingredients and corresponding chants. The impacts would thus facilitate the changes to the very nature of the resulting potion while achieving the same…but diametrically different…end result." Snape's expression became very shrewd. His eyebrows sloped low over the inner corners of his eyes, any trace of the Lecturing Intellectual aspect of his personality instantly erased. "Did she ask for anything? Make her help contingent on you doing something her, for Potter? Extract any Vow from you?"
"No," Draco shook his head. "She asked for nothing." He remembered his skepticism when she said she didn't want anything from him in exchange for her…help. "I asked her three times. Every time I asked her for her conditions, she said that she didn't have any. I didn't believe her."
He took a swig from his glass. He swished the liquor around his teeth, grimacing as the fermented beverage clawed at his tongue and gums.
"I still don't." Hand nearly level to his mouth, it was his turn to look at the Potions Master over the rim of his glass. "Unless you tell me otherwise."
"Anyone who makes an offer and doesn't ask for anything shouldn't be trusted." Snape matched his grimace with one of his own. That is, until he back-pedaled. His expression softened to that of a man who'd recently come to an unexpected but not unwelcomed realization. "Except when it comes to her."
"Contradict yourself much?" Draco groused. He didn't appreciate his uncle's exercise in double standards.
Again, that almost-smile on his godfather's face creeped him out to no end.
"When you're older, you'll realize that there are people in this world who are walking, talking, paradoxes." Snape leaned back, his posture relaxed. Hell, the man even took a nice long pull on his glass. He savored what he'd swallowed before explaining the reason for his earlier question. "If she'd asked for anything, set any conditions, then the spell won't work; she'd be offering you an empty promise."
Draco could've sworn that Snape was speaking from personal experience.
"Did she tell you why she was doing this?" Severus asked.
Draco nodded, his thoughts centered on what her offer, now that he knew that it was real and not some school-yard scroll-happy eyes-bigger-than-my-spell-book fantasy, truly meant.
"She said that I didn't deserve to die. Though I be a, 'selfish, arrogant, foul, loathsome, evil-little-cockroach', I didn't deserve to die for sins that stemmed from the hubris of others or because of my own personality drawbacks." He chuckled ruefully, his eyes fixed on the fireplace and only seeing her as she used all of her fingers to list his flaws.
If she only knew how correct and how wrong she was about him.
"I'm not without blame." He'd rolled his eyes at her when she lectured him the first time, three days ago. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and spoke to the upper corners of his godfather's lounge as he paraphrased her lecture. "She said that we all reach an 'Age of Accountability': a point in our lives where our actions are our own rather than the learned behaviors of those around us, and that from here on out, I was 'on notice' that I'd crossed that threshold. But, and she repeated this: I didn't deserve to die because of other people's perceptions and resulting life choices."
So focused on his memory of the petite witch, he only half-heard his godfather muttering something about Dumbledore backing the wrong horse. Whatever the hell that meant, Merlin only knew.
"So, I should do this?"
"Yes. You should, Draco." He swirled his drink but didn't lift his glass to his lips. "When did Miss Granger say this is to occur?"
"At Beltane."
"You'll have just under two weeks to prepare."
"Granger seemed confident that there'd be enough time."
Severus inhaled the rest of his drink with two swift swallows. The glass he set on the side table next to his chair. The man propped his elbows on the armrest of his chair and steepled his fingers. He matched Draco's intense study of the well-lit fire.
It was a while before either one of them spoke. It was his godfather who broke their shared silence.
"You realize you can't call her 'Princess' anymore."
Draco smirked. For a few years now, he'd referred to Potter's best female friend as Gryffindor's Princess. He felt a bit of pride that even the staff at Hogwarts had taken a shine to Granger's Malfoy-given nickname.
But, his godfather was right. His smirk retracted into something more contemplative. And, as much as he liked the sneer that underscored the title 'Princess' when directed at Granger, he couldn't bring himself to even think of that nickname any more, let alone say it out loud.
"No. I can't." Draco slumped a bit in the large wing-backed chair. The coziness of the hearth, the newly discovered camaraderie between him and his godfather, and the Ogden's in his bloodstream made him as introspective as his Uncle.
"Do you know the function of a Valkyrie, Draco?"
Snape answered his own question for both of them. Not before wandlessly and wordlessly Summoning two decanters, one with fire-whiskey and the other one with brandy.
"The most basic – and grossly simplistic – definition of a Valkyrie: a female warrior who decides who lives and who dies."
Draco agreed with his godfather the only way he could: he up-ended the base of his decanter. Before taking a drink, he sighed.
"Yeah – but 'Valkyrie' doesn't roll off the tongue the same way, Uncle."
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This story was originally published as a one-shot; all 21400 words in one-go. Here, I've broken it up; not my favorite format, but I'm trying to be considerate *smile* to those who might find 21400 a bit daunting to read all at one time.
