Title: Double-Edged

Disclaimer: This story is not true and not mine.

Summary: Godparenting and molding and manipulation. Hopefully this isn't the story you think you know.

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Voldemort surveys the presented children approvingly.

This does not, Snape thinks, bode well for the war.

Goyle and Crabbe have no intelligence to bequeath their children. With Parkinson, no power; and Blaise had married a Ravenclaw.

But Draco Malfoy.

Lucius displays his son proudly, everyone present could feel the vibration of the baby's potential.

Snape is.

Snape is Draco Malfoy's godfather, and.

He fears.

He will pamper the child, shower the boy with blessings and praise and what love he has left. He views this task with dread.

-

At three, Draco greets him happily and clasps his robe sticky-fingered. He is sulky and when Snape gives him a chocolate frog he lights up like nothing else does for the bitter cold potions master.

At six, Snape introduces Draco to young Crabbe and Goyle. He makes sure that their fathers know exactly who their sons will be meeting beforehand. He makes sure, in his way, that their sons know too.

At nine, Draco asks for a broom. Snape gets one for him, but only after laying down cushioning charms on every inch of the Malfoy grounds so that the boy will never learn hurt. When Draco recieves the Nimbus, every bit of his delight and greed crosses his face, and Snape can't help but think at his father, I have won I have won.

At twelve, Snape watches Draco flitter in the hallways of the school, impudent and demanding. He sees Draco land at his feet at the end of the dueling table with a clench high in his chest. He notes, with what he doesn't admit is ambivalence, how Draco's wand is just a bit too slow.

And Draco Malfoy trusts him, eyes unshuttered, and Snape wonders how irrevocably he has molded this boy and if he could somehow undo the damage. Wonders if he wants to.

-

At twenty-one Draco Malfoy is dead somewhere in Wales at the hands of an Auror and, even though Snape was miles and battlefields away at the time, he feels the blood on his hands afterwards like it's ink, and permanent.