Author's Note: The title is a Biblical reference. No, I'm not trying to push religion on anyone; I just thought it was fitting. Don't bother looking it up, because I'm taking it out of context. Anyway, I was thinking specifically of the New American translation, in which Luke 11:11 reads, "What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish?"
I disagree with JKR's belief that at least young wizards wear full sets of Muggle clothing beneath their roves. I won't bore you with my reasons, but I'm just letting you know that, in my stories, wizards and witches wear only underwear and socks under their robes.
Rated PG-13 for violence (mostly in coming chapters).
Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with the views espoused by the characters. The aforementioned characters belong to J. K. Rowling. The plot devices are my own.
Luke 11:11
Hermione,
Meet me in the second floor storage room (the one with rampaging hippogriffs carved into the door) at 10.00 tonight. Tell no one.
Harry
Hermione's analytical mind spiraled and pirouetted, whirled and spun back, shaped theories and quickly discarded them, wondering why Harry wanted to meet her in a storage room. What was wrong with the Gryffindor common room?
At the appointed hour, Hermione approached the massive walnut door that guarded the storage room. The relief on its surface was certainly gruesome, with several enraged hippogriffs attacking a cowering group of wizards, made all the more disconcerting by its animation. She hesitated a moment, then seized the doorknob and boldly swung the door open.
Shutting the door quietly behind her, Hermione quickly surveyed her dim surroundings. This room was used mostly for storing paintings that were considered unfit to be hung in the halls of Hogwarts. Large gilded scrolls protruded from a stack of irregularly shaped frames that partially covered a voluptuous witch entwined with a centaur in a way Hermione never thought possible. Several amateurishly enchanted figures in a pastoral scene twitched spasmodically. Most of the paintings, however, were simply too horrific to be displayed, even by Hogwarts' standards. Hermione shuddered at the sight of these dark canvases whose images writhed and heaved and bled and bled and bled. . . .
With great effort, Hermione wrenched her gaze from the hellish décor to rest on the two green brocade chairs that had obviously been summoned from elsewhere. She sat resignedly, remembering that Harry's nature tended towards tardiness. As she stared determinedly at the floor, her peripheral vision registered a ripple of sable apart from the frantic gesticulations of the paintings.
"Ever punctual." The two words deftly incised the pathos that was threatening to overwhelm Hermione.
She rose abruptly, as Draco Malfoy's cool voice was the last sound she expected to hear. Draco flipped his wand casually in the direction of the ornate bronze doorknob as he muttered a locking charm.
"You should enunciate your words better," admonished Hermione. "You're lucky that the knob didn't disappear." Draco rolled his eyes, unnoticed by Hermione, who suddenly recalled the purpose of her presence in the storeroom. "Now, what do you think you're doing here? I'm supposed to–"
"Actually, I wrote that note," Draco interrupted in his infuriatingly supercilious drawl.
"But . . . how . . . Harry's signature . . . you . . . you . . . halitotic nematode!"
"Dear, dear; our favourite little lecturer has become an incoherent idiot."
"Why," hissed Hermione, suddenly regaining her composure, "did you forge Harry's signature? That's a serious offense! You'll be divested of your prefect duties."
"Would you have come if you knew I wrote the note and not your precious Potter?" he asked with a self-depreciating sneer.
"Of course not!" Hermione exclaimed in exasperation.
Draco nodded. Twice he opened his mouth, and twice he closed it again without a sound. Hermione watched him grope for the appropriate expression. Finally, when Hermione thought that she could no longer withstand the tension, Draco uttered a barely audible admission.
"I'm desperate." The words seemed to deflate his whole being.
Hermione quickly noted that his countenance was even more sickly than usual. His silver eyes had tarnished and his once prominent cheekbones now threatened to pierce the chalky tissue paper that passed for skin. Even his hair was limp and dull.
"Oh, come off it," Hermione scoffed irritably. "You're looking like the posterboy for Waif-of-the-Week down at the Last Chance Orphanage." Immediately she wondered where that callous statement had originated. She was never so deliberately malicious . . . except to Malfoy. Had the years of reflex insults inured her to the pain of others?
"I sincerely wish I was," Draco replied. It wasn't a dramatic act or a sarcastic retort, merely a cool statement of fact.
Angered, Hermione exclaimed, "That's a horrible thing to say!" She took a step closer to Draco and lowered her voice to an intense whisper. "You're just jealous of Harry!"
"Of course I'm jealous of Potter!" Draco spat. He grabbed her robes by the gold griffin clasp at the collar, raising her to her tiptoes so that their noses almost touched. Hermione could feel the tremors of emotion that shook his grip. "I would give anything to be locked up in a small room and have my father leave me alone!"
Draco released Hermione with a sharp flick of his wrists and smoothly transferred his fingers to the silver clasp at his own throat. Without hesitation, he unhooked the entwined serpents and slid his robes down to his waist.
"What are you. . . ." gasped Hermione in horrified embarrassment, her voice quickly strangled by a sight that frightened and appalled her.
On instinct, she recoiled from the viper whose sinuous length was coiled once about Draco's bare waist and whose head appeared from beneath his left arm to rest menacingly on his chest. Its obsidian scales glittered in an intricately layered pattern resembling the Malfoy family crest.
Blinking, Hermione realized that the creature was not alive, but a serpent tattoo, a glistening trompe l'oil seeming to writhe on the pale canvas of his spare frame. She winced, almost imperceptibly, when she saw the ivory fangs piercing his left breast, just above the heart.
"I don't understand," she whispered.
"Why do you think I'm Snape's favorite? It isn't the House–he hates Slytherins as much as he hates Gryffindors and the rest. It's just that he's grown accustomed to me and, perhaps, even feels pity for me, if that's possible for him.
"After every trip home I have to spend weeks in the Potions dungeon, concocting antidotes to counteract the new venom my father conjures up.
"Do you know how many foul potions I've choked down in my pitiful attempts to find something that will at least lessen the effects of the venom? Most of them just wrench my guts and quickly reappear, splattered across the room along with the entire contents of my alimentary canal." Draco's lips tightened in a mirthless smirk of remembrance. "I've scrubbed that room so many times I should be granted an honourary title of house elf.
"Others are not so innocuous. I'm working blindly, now. By my fourth year, the regular library books had nothing more to offer, and, of course, no teacher in his right mind would give Malfoy a pass to the Restricted Section, not that Madam Pince would admit me, even with a pass. Professor Snape is of no great help, either, because he has no more idea than I of the compositions of the venoms. Besides, he is already overtaxed by demons of his own.
"Eventually I do stumble upon an appropriate draught and I can concentrate my attention fully on annoying Potter and Weasley. And you, of course," Draco added hastily.
Hermione sat quietly and gestured to Draco to take the opposing chair, which he did with evident relief. She began skeptically, "So, how is it that after six and a half years of silence you suddenly decide to confide in me?"
"Christmas Day, I angered Father past bearing. . . ." His voice trailed off wearily.
"What did you do?" Hermione inquired cautiously.
"He had been working for months, trying to delicately insinuate a small hole into the weave of spells that shroud Hogwarts, protecting it and its occupants from depraved villains such as himself. That night, his labours culminated in a rift the diameter of a wand in our library fireplace, although only for a minute. He was about to attempt a straight-forward Avada Kedavra on Harry."
Hermione gasped as Draco doggedly resumed his tale. "As much as I dislike Harry, I'm not so cruel, or so stupid, as to want him dead. I had only discovered Father's intention, or I would have planned for a house elf to interrupt him, but, since time was against me, I improvised.
"I'd rather not relive the details, but suffice it to say that I blocked the fireplace long enough for the hole to heal itself."
"That was foolish! You could have been killed!" Hermione exclaimed.
Draco's pupils, already dilated from pain and exhaustion, engulfed the slivers of grey that rimmed them as his voice coloured a duskier hue. "And if I had? One less Dark wizard, so much the better."
Hermione drew a breath to contradict him, then expelled the air noiselessly when she realized that she could not.
Draco continued, "Luckily for me, lies flow out of my mouth as easily as the truth.'" Hermione flushed as she recognized the words with which she had described Draco to Harry and Ron only two days before. "I pretended to have been sleepwalking. I think Father believed me, as my somnambulism is a major problem."
At Hermione's puzzlement, he explained, "Sleepwalking is fairly common among Dark wizards. Many of our beds look more like medieval torture devices than places for repose. That, or some sort of kinky sex toys . . . elaborate contraptions of leather straps, chains, and iron bars." He grinned maliciously. "You should see mine; you'd never think about me in the same way again.
"Anyway, Father raged for a few hours, threw some curses and several sharp objects, and then confined me to my bed for the rest of the vacation. He personally bound me in, extra tight, of course."
He closed his eyes and drew a shuddering breath. "That punishment has always been reserved for the worst offences, as I am a pathological claustrophobe." His eyelids jerked open and his chest began to heave. Hermione stretched a comforting hand to his exposed shoulder, but Draco sprang to his feet as if she had tried to smother him.
"Too tight!" he gasped, tearing frantically at the robes still bunched at his waist. Before Hermione could respond, he had stripped himself of the offending garment and stood wild-eyed in the middle of the room.
Black silk boxers. Hermione's mind focused on this revelation with an inordinate intensity. Black silk boxers.
Suddenly, Draco realized what a spectacle he was creating and cringed at the disclosure of one of his most private vulnerabilities. He clutched at his hysteria and forced it back into the depths of his consciousness. "I apologize," he said stiffly, although he did not reattire himself. He glided back to his chair and recommenced his tale as if nothing had happened.
"I figured that I had gotten off easy, considering the gravity of the situation. But, the night before I was to return to Hogwarts, Father came to me and applied a venom curse that took twice as long as usual, I think. I can't be sure, because he always seals my eyes and ears, so the time always has a hint of eternity.
"I also think he enjoys my fear," Draco remarked pensively. "It excites him. That's how his Master controls him. In exchange for absolute obedience, my father is allowed to participate in the sordid torture sessions that are rending the Ministry of Magic apart. He comes home from them exhilarated and lusting for more. On those nights, the beds in the manor are not used for sleeping.
"Anyway, I am unable to fight this new venom." Draco gazed unblinkingly into Hermione's steady eyes. "I am ready to concede defeat."
For the first time in Hermione's memory, Draco humbled himself to beg. "I realize that, after all I've done to you, I have no right to ask for your assistance, but I appeal to your sense of mercy."
"Why don't you go to Dumbledore? I'm sure he would know what to do."
Draco snorted, "I couldn't explain this to him. Look, I've learned not to upset Father unless absolutely necessary."
"But, if your health is involved. . . ."
"Didn't I just explain to you how my health came to be in this condition? Come on, Hermione! For everything I've said about you, I've never denied your intelligence; don't make me insult it now.
"You're, to put it bluntly, my last chance. I can't blame you for hesitating, and," with great effort he unlocked the door with a quivering wand, "I won't stop you from walking out that door and forgetting all about this."
Hermione stared in disbelief from the disengaged lock to the monstrosity that seemed to be ravaging Draco further as she watched. Before her rational intellect could determine a reasonable course of action, she began to speak.
"Well, we'd better start in the library. If you feel that you've exhausted the regular resources, I'll trust your judgement. Hmm . . . I can probably convince Hagrid to give me a pass for the Restricted Section, as he's offered extra credit for a research scroll on the history of hybrid dragon breeding."
Draco blinked in surprise at Hermione's abrupt decision. Suddenly, his face relaxed into the first real smile Hermione had ever seen on it.
"You know," she commented absentmindedly, "you wouldn't look so bad if you would smile like that more often."