Hello, everybody who gives me a bit of his/her valuable time! This is a translation of my own one-shot "El espejo del miedo" which is written in Spanish and can be found in my profile in this very page. This is my first work within Harry Potter's fandom and my first in English too. I ask for your excuses if my grammar is not accurate enough. I've learned English on my own by reading fanworks or watching movies or so; plus I have no beta reader. Thus, if you find something is wrong punctuated or misspelled, please let me know. I'm always eager to learn more.

As a recommendation, and only if you want, I'd say that before you start reading, listen the tango "Garúa", interpreted by Roberto Goyeneche, and (more optional, if it can be) the tango "Mi noche triste" by Adriana Varela. I wrote this story while was listening them (well, I was listening tango in general, but I was repeating them more than what is sane XD!)

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all characters and terms related are property of J K Rowling, Scholastics and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc. This work use them with the mere aim of entertaining. No profit is being made.

The Fear's Mirror

By wonderland writer

"Can you honestly tell me that you had made your best efforts, Draco?"

There was again. That damned piece of flesh in a corner of the lips curving slightly downwards, deforming Lucius Malfoy's face. Azkaban has dented it graceless and the features than once were aristocratic and elegant, now looked bitterly rude. Malfoy Manor was not in better conditions; lacklustre and sombre, the mansion yearned for its old splendor.

Draco avoided his gaze as good as he could, but his father's disappointed countenance was something difficult to elude. His mind insisted on showing it even though its owner were not around. He approached to one of the windows displaying the front garden and observed how clouds were beginning to darken the sky. An overwhelming pressure started to build in his chest. Doubtless, tonight there would be a storm; Draco didn't like storms.

He was invaded by the memory of another evening almost like this, about seven years ago; although, that time's weather had nothing to do with this one's frightening effect. Lucius had indulged him to skip that day's Latin lesson and joining him to do a quick visit to Knockturn's Alley before rain and cold could damage their health. At the time, Draco didn't really notice that the trips to Knockturn were short due to more reasons that just the climate.

He remembered that, as they had gone side by side, a rare artifact had drawn his attention fiercely. Draco hadn´t even thought and had stopped to watch the dirty window of a small, lugubrious shop, letting his unaware father keep the path and get mobbed by the flog stuffing the air.

It was a mask –a horrible mask with the most bizarre, twisted features Draco had ever seen. Its mouth went wide almost from side to side, and was as disproportionate and bestial as a lycanthrope's snout. The demented, gilded eyes were huge and protruded and had pupils without irises; as the too long, lumpy nose made Draco recall the snowmen muggles usually do at Yule. What that hideous face's skin should have been was painted with a red resin and had an ancient, brittle constitution. Overall, the mask's gestures caused laugh rather than fear.

Draco could not explain it but, despite its extravagant appearance, the thing had something that made him feel an unstoppable, morbid fascination. He knew the mask must have been cursed with some kind of forbidden magic, he could sense it, but this was so much more.

"Japanese people consider that's how the most atrocious fear looks like"

The rough, foreign accented voice came from somewhere on his left. Draco turned towards who had talked to him and found a smirking, little figure leaned on the entrance door frame: a sinister oriental whose insincere features even made difficult guessing his age. The shop's owner, apparently. His long, tangled hair drizzled with silver, hung down filthy from his head and tied loosely under his shoulders. His clothes, a strange, oriental stylish, ochre gown and a bamboo hat, were worn out and greasy. Draco had wondered if all Knockturn´s shopkeepers agreed to look repugnant and tacky. It's not an axiom, he thought, that your taste for Dark Arts be inversely proportional to your taste for soap.

He looked nervously around, finding that he was rather far from getting his father's help in case needed. Malfoys usually had a lot of confidence in themselves, but they weren't stupid; there were certain things were better to deal with very little and from the distance. Trying to not warning his partner, Draco cleared his throat and spoke with the mayor arrogance his years of careful observation let him.

"Rather ridiculous, if you ask me. I had in mind that the Japanese wizards were extremely wise and resourceful. Father, who is a great wizard himself, respects them very much and says there're not many magic communities so conscious and respectful of a wizard's appropriate behaviour."

It seemed his haughtiness amused the dealer, who approached Draco unsteadily and more than it was comfortable. His breath smelled rough and herbal. Draco knew that smell: Alienatio Dei, a hallucinogen made from Datura. He got immediately alert; a drugged Dark Wizard was always bad news.

"Ridiculous, hum?" The man had asked, chuckling a bit frenetically. "Young Master, fear... ¡No! Not cautious anticipation or annoying cramps in your guts or stupid expectation... no... Most of men feel those and then keep living, and feel them again not matters. The fear my ancestors speak about, the unscrupulous terror, attack your dreams and turn them into nightmares; it feed on your weaknesses and your defects and transform them into a new reality you cannot escape. Your body, your soul and your mind are not of you anymore, and then your life change into a lot of distressing little fragments between a nightmare and the next. Until there is not fragments, no. Only the large, dark nightmare... and the fear."

The man's pitch, yet sweet in his narcotic cadence, was loaded with a great quantity of venom. Draco had swallowed roughly and moved away a few inches. The dense fog and loud thunders would have been a big help for anyone who could be wanting to make disappear somebody (in the non-literal way of the term) without witnesses. In Knockturn, that wasn't rare after all.

Well, it was obvious to him that this wizard didn't accept a constructive criticism about his merchandise; he had to be appeased in any way. Draco had been raised too to sweeten the ears and being liked when it were necessary.

"Er...eh, you are right, I guess. Mmm... that mask..."

"Noh"

"No what?"Draco had asked, confused, and this made the Japanese laugh mildly and overcome the distance the boy had imposed on between them.

"This", he pointed at the object through the shop window as he kept staring at Draco, "is a Noh theatre mask, Young Know-it-all Master. Very, very old. It is sayed that its creator maked with boggart's dead tissue and cursed it with most antique, forbidden Black Magic. He was thirsty for fame, you know? ¡Power, yes! He wanted the power fame comes with, and then... Then he created Kyōfu no kagami and gived it the power of watch inside the deepest of souls and use it. This way… this way user could spread worst of the horrors… the total panic…"

Draco looked the mask as astonished as repelled, meanwhile the obscure words got entangled with his thoughts and a shudder went through him from head to toe. He hadn't known of someone killing a boggart thus far. Most wizards were content with casting a Ridikkulus and the creatures were wise enough to run away before that would go further. Within Magic World, to murder its beings with selfish purposes was kind of a crime against Magic Itself, and was a doomed act which turned against the perpetrator. If it was true, instead a publicity stunt "made in Knockturn", he could understand better the monstrous aura surrounding the object.

The acrid breath crushing against his jaw reminded him that he wasn't alone. He swivelled to face the grown man meanwhile backed away a few steps. Of all wizards he had met in this alley, this one was the creepiest and that was saying a lot.

The Japanese's lips curved again in that so annoyingly wide way, almost slitting his face in halves. Without a word, the disgusting man went to his shop tottering a bit, took the mask off its site, and came back leaning too close again.

"For you, Young Master." He said showing the mask. "Kyōfu no kagami had choosed go with you and I not want to get in the middle"

Draco completely froze for several seconds, gazing directly to the artefact. The call of the mask was a lot stronger without the glass in-between, but the muddy attitude of de trader was troubling him. A thunder was heard far away and the mist got even thicker.

"This is serious? Why would you want me to take something like this? It must be very expensive?"

"Oh, you will pay the cost; I'm sure! As I did. No, no, not that cost… The Galleons your father may possess will not pay your tears, not even one. Look, take it, feel the mask's power!"

The excited hand swayed in front of him, displaying, offering its treasure. Draco doubted a little, but the wicked temptation was far too powerful. He had extended his arm and, at the moment he was taking the article, a pair of hands clapped around his and pulled him against its owner's body. Draco tried to swallow and opened his mouth to yell, but his voice was lost in his throat. He observed with bulging, wide eyes the expression of his partner who seemed delighted with Draco's fear. That stupid grin… he would make sure his father pull it out his face by a very painful curse.

"Uh, uh. One moment, Young Master, wait." Draco couldn't stop staring at the drugged character's lips while that fleshy muscle's decadent concatenation of contractions was lulling him, subjecting him to the reverberation of the words as if they came from the deepest abysm of his being itself. "This item is a powerful weapon, but only if mind and heart are strong enough. Young Master is young, ¡oh, so young! And power… power seduce him as much as all who are like us. But a person who wants power must be prepared for it! And the fear… the horror… a powerful person's scares are unmatched… Young Master, take my advice and start your self-discovery sooner than discovery of others… the biggest enemy is always in our soul's brumes."

Abruptly, the rare man dropped his hand down and got into the store with an amazingly steady pace, without even saying goodbye. Trembling, Draco raised his right hand and watched the mask left in it. You must enter and demand explanations, he thought. Nonetheless, his legs remained still and the illogical feeling that if he went inside that local, he would disappear, compressed his chest in every breath. Soon enough, the thinking hadn't been of any consequence as his father had appeared. Lucius's tense features had left no doubt about Draco should keep quiet and hold the telling off on his splitting away. He had never spoken someone about that episode and he never had felt as disturbed as he had done at that godforsaken Knocturn Alley's nook.

"It's enough, Lucius! This conversation has already recurred a hundred times since you came back. Draco made as well as he could." His mother's annoyed whisper took him back quickly to the harsh reality. They couldn't even speak out loud in their own home. "You wouldn't have done better in his place, and you are very well in knowledge that the Lord wasn't expecting it either. Merlin! If it hadn't been for Severus's assist, who knows what could have happened with our son."

The three were in one of the many drawing rooms where his mother used to receive visits. Every room adequately decorated accordingly what kind of people and what season of the year. His mother usually said that the secret of Malfoys' influence was based on not leaving the most minimal detail to chance. Knowing and manipulating were the maxims that had let his ancestors put the family name in the highest scales of Magic Society.

"Pay attention, Draco", the sunlight crept through the picture window and made Narcissa's hair glow, "it is not about what you actually have, but about what the others think you have. Give them what they want, charm them, and make them envy you… desire you… fear you. In pursuance of this, you must observe them, even if they aren't worthwhile. Information and your own astuteness for using it in your favour are the most profitable elements you can count with. Your breeding has given you the necessary, and the noblest House of Slytherin is going to help you to polish it up. Draco, you have born for greatness and for nothing less."

Draco watched carefully around. Lucius was pacing nervously around the room, which was scantily enlightened by two hippogriff oil lamps; whilst his mother was sitting in a myrtle green bergère. All about her rigid but graceful posture made evident her obduracy on not being defeated by the circumstances her family was involved in. Her son, otherwise, could see beyond. The blue eyes were hollow, dark circled; the skin was so pale it seemed translucent; and the always absent wrinkles had begun to been noticed.

All this was his fault. Lucius had failed, true, but he could have made it up for it. Years of training, a purest, thoroughly planned ancestry, wealth, influences, an unsurpassed mentor as his father was, and… nothing; he had failed to do something valuable with all that. He had foundered and plunged his family into ridicule; and, worse of all, he had lowered them all to live under the Lord's antipathy.

A tormented, shrill scream tore the calm tension that resided in the house, and the three pure-bloods jerked swiftly in their sites. Charity Burbage had been kidnapped from her house in Middlesbrough at early hours of that morning and was suffering a torture that had carried on since she had arrived at the mansion. In a few minutes, it would be ten utter hours filled with uninterrupted martyrdom; his always charming aunt Bella's absolute courtesy, needless to say. During the course of the afternoon, an occasional sound product of torture has been heard from the dungeons, but the last was like no other. Professor Burbage had been moved to somewhere on the ground floor and that could only means one thing: circus.

Two staccato knocks were heard from the door before it was slightly opened and Mulciber's head peeked out from the remained thin space. The man not even tried to dissimulate his voice's displeasure as he spoke.

"Lord Himself approached me for transmit His desire for you joining Him at dinner. There will be a quite… entertaining show. Not suitable for weak stomachs, however."

He said the latter staring mockingly at Draco, who desired with all his heart that Lucius were capable of reading his apologies into his look. It was grossly unfair that his parents have to bear being ridiculed inside their own home.

Mother, what can I do if I don't serve for what I've born?

This thought tagged along with him all the way to dining room. As he walked on, he could see in the calamitous sky how the storm had begun to break.

-oO°0°Oo-

The continuous pattering of rain drown out miraculously the disgusting sound of his retching, and the occasional glints of lightning were the only things that allowed discerning his silhouette, which was shaking and bent over his toilet. Damn, repulsive serpent, Nagini! I hope your head roll soon.

Once recomposed, Draco rose and hurried to clean himself up in order to get rid of the bitter flavour in his mouth. He despised muggles and their influence as much as any respectable wizard, but this… this was vulgar. To debase themselves and to fall in barbarism was not what Draco was thinking in when his father used to talk about the new regime that Voldemort would set up. Draco had reckoned on tradition, discipline, pride and power; not terror even of breathing and paranoia without limits. Pure-bloods trying to bring down pure-bloods, complots and betrayal among those who should be brothers in the struggle.

People that once had referred to the name Malfoy with reverence today were spitting over it. How soon they had forgotten that, when they had needed hideout or protection from the Ministry, it was Lucius Malfoy who had concealed them or helped them to cover their miseries; that a lot of them had not received Dementor's Kiss because Lucius had coated several functionaries' walls with money. What could have done those bastards that now were boasting about the time they had spent in Azkaban? How to guarantee successful if everyone would have been going nuts slowly inside that penitentiary dump?

Blind! All of you are blind! One day you're going to make a faux pas or to become dispensable, and your dearest master will turn you into boa's food.

Draco would have laughed if he hadn't seen in front row that macabre show. Or, if he and his parents would haven't been the first item in Lord's "Things I Have to Rid of" list.

Burbage was a pure-blood, for Merlin's sake!

And nobody…

All of them…

I don't serve, Mother, neither for one nor for the other.

A lightning illuminated the firmament and, in the penumbra of his bedroom, Draco could glimpse the Kyōfu no kagami hanging from the upper of the wall opposite his canopied bed. He made his way cautiously and sat down at the foot of the mattress, facing the artefact.

It hadn't been over there all the time. Actually, the object had terrified Draco so much that, as soon as he had arrived in manor the day he had got it, he had placed it at the bottom of a chest with toys and other things that he seldom used. The thing remained there until last summer, when he had spent so much time inside his room that he had thought he was going to result deep-rooted right in that floor and staying joined to that spot for all eternity. It was on a random afternoon in which he was so bored that he had begun to explore all his bedroom's forsaken nooks, that he had found the mask given by the Japanese that cold November day. The feeling had passed through him then was the same as when he had held it for the first time. Fascination and fear.

At that time, Bellatrix had recently gone out of Azkaban and had assumed his tutelage at the dominion over Dark Arts personally. He had thought mask's expression looked hilariously alike the one his aunt used to adopt whilst she was talking with mad passion about her Lord and the use of Unforgivables. So, as a sort of mocking gesture, he had hanged it up in his room and, everyday for a while, he watched the mask as he woke up and said sweet-voicely: "Good morning, aunt Bella. How did you sleep? What's on schedule for today?" This made him especially good-humored and let him face the witch soon afterwards with a very slight curve on the right corner of his lips, a secret smirk, boasting foolishly in that kind of pay back nobody but him knew about. Natural was too that, when he came back to his room after a particularly hard training, he fed all that words he doesn't dare say in person, not even being Cruciated, to the mask, nurturing it someway with his anger and anxiety.

This night, however, it wasn't Bellatrix whom he could recognize in the features carved conscientiously on boggart's tissue. This night, when copious rain froze the soil and clouds hide the world from the moon light; when lightning extended through the firmament as the sky's veins and the following thunderous sound made the windows' crystals rattle; and when humidity seeped through the ancient construction's cracks, permeating his body and making it shiver; In this night, Draco didn't see anything else that his very face supernaturally sketched on the red surface. His very eyes reflecting anguish and terror, his very mouth irregular and distorted in a silent shout.

Wrath begun to poison his chest, forcing his lungs and squeezing his guts. The incessant tic-tac of a delicately carved longcase clock parked at some corner was slowly making him mad. He stood up and straightened just at front of the Kyōfu no kagami. His breathe erratic, his hands twitching, his stare almost perforating the profusely hated stuff. A dense fog started to fill the room and the temperature lowered abruptly. Cold sweat dripped over his skin, slipping in chilling drops. As the clock's bell announced the newest hour, and a lightning struck someplace nearby giving the whole room a sudden clarity, Draco lost it.

"NO!" he shrieked "STOP IT! Did you hear me? Stop in this very moment!" His hands clawed at his hair, pulling. Pain was always preferable to madness. "Do you think I don't know you're trying to do? I'm your Master, OBEY ME! It's always the same, always! I don't understand what you're trying to show me, and it's destroying me… destroying me…"

Screams became gradually into moans, and tears drew salty paths from his sore eyes through his cheeks, for finally falling in his palms, which were trying to hide, in vane, all the drama. His convulsing body slid slowly until he rested kneeled down on the shaded room's fluffy carpet.

Torturing minutes –or it would be hours? –had to pass until the spasms lowered less frequent and, at last, Draco could get into the hazy vacuum of the after. His overwhelmed, numb mind refused to acknowledge anything but isolated impressions. His skin was cold, he could say, due to the sensation he was getting from his face rubbing against his gelid fingers. Ground was too hard in spite of the carpet, and cold was cramping his muscles, desensitizing them. His utter interior was in a fragile state of forsake and solitude. The clock' s hypnotic compasses echoed round the space, and wind blew wildly again making the crystals crackling, menacing vacuously with crumble them apart. Rain had eased up, been replaced with a pathetic drizzle that was trying, in subtle silence, to dissimulate its presence.

Suddenly, a pair of thin arms wrapped around him from behind, and a warm, herbs-smelling breathe caressed his jaw. An ochre glint sparked amidst shadows, whilst a sweet, tiny sound made its way through his auditory channel until arriving directly in his stiff intellect. He could not yell or move, but just to listen and try to process the images that were filtering into his brain.

"I told you, Young Master, the worst enemy is hidden in the deep of our self. Grow stronger than the beast or soon it will be too late, and you cannot escape from the nightmare…"

Two dry knocks from the door break in on the room's quietude. Draco opened his eyes jerking and stood up from his location on the foot of the bed. Fog had dissipated so as cold. He touched his face and found it warm, as he already know it would be. His dry eyes didn't burn. A small fire was wobbling presumptuously in the chimney and was glowing with relaxed vagueness the furniture and the occupant. His glare rose immediately to the object that was being profiled diffusely overhead. The Kyōfu no kagami looked back at him imperturbable.

"Come in", he responded to whom had knocked.

His voice went out, nonetheless, with some faltering. He passed his hands through his face and hair, in a gesture which could be easily confused with one of tiredness. He breathed deeply and tried to cover the panic for being capable of facing his visitor. Bellatrix. That wouldn't come in very useful with her; she seemed to smell fear as a delicacy. He had spent a very long time around the witch, but lately she had become more unstable than usual. His failure in killing Hogwarts's Headmaster, in addition to his cousin's recent marriage to the werewolf, had not sat well with her nerves at all.

Draco's heart started to race strongly. Kyōfu no kagami was observing all from his privileged position on high. He swallowed hard. Feed on this too, parasite.

"Awake still, nephew?" the witch asked in casual tone as she was wandered slowly through the room, glimpsing apathetically here and there; her soft voice overlapping the clock's staccatos in a maddening melody. "What convenient; your Lord claims you. I've been speaking well of you, you see, and I think He wants to corroborate by Himself whether my training has borne any fruit." Bella stopped in front of the chimney, looking at the Kyōfu no kagami, but she resumed his path very soon after that. "There have been some colleagues Death Eaters who haven't been very successful in assignments their Lord had entrusted to them. You know, nephew, our Master has a very understanding, generous nature; however, his patience has a limit too. In this case, they have exceeded it. So, our magnanimous Lord, who consider that getting rid of that useless scum would be a waste, has decided it's about time for you to prove yourself and show finally that you are, at least, of some use to the cause."

At that point, Bellatrix had ceased to pay attention to something else but Draco and started to approach tranquilly. The blonde knew from bitter experience that the burst would break soon, and it would fill of poison and frenzy all the words that drop from her mouth. He prepared himself mentally but, as always, every-fucking-word was as a dagger; the steely blades hacking his self-esteem.

"You owe it to me, after all. Valuable time was wasted in improving your abilities and you weren't even capable of kill a harmless oldster, sinking all your family in the process. Son of your father! No! Even a loser like him doesn't see in you more than a disappointment. It's not enough humiliation that… that… THAT has related to an animal by her own will, no! You come too to ruin all the efforts your relatives have done for keeping on top and proud of his members." Bella's pace had quickened and now she was surrounding Draco, cornering him and studying his reaction to her venom. "Ah, but you're a Black and for the rest of life I've got all, I'm going to get some benefit from you! Our Lord, the greatest wizard of all time, Lord Voldemort, has given to you the chance to redeem your gaffes, so that this family can come back to be in His best grace. Therefore, you're going to made for His presence and, with the biggest deference your Master deserves, you're going to ask what you're expected to do and then you're going to cruciate that layabouts until they can only drool and babble nonsense, do you understand?"

His aunt finished her harangue abruptly, facing him from his side and seeking her lips ended up at Draco's ear height. The woman's soul must have rejoiced at the sight of the youngest's defeated, painful expression, because she relaxed visibly. In order to conclude his bullying, she blew softly over the portion of his neck where her victim's jaw connected with the ear, knowing the sweat surely had formed there. A plain shiver passed through her nephew's body and Bellatrix smirked maliciously. Draco was trembling slightly as he observed the mask on the wall. This must have bored the witch, who took her wand out of her robes parsimoniously and put the tip on the young's chin, swivelling his face gently for him to watch her. His eyes full, just about to overflow, brought to her a satisfied smile. Afterwards, she caressed with her free hand the blonde hair of his temple in a consoling way as her wand was travelling very lazily from his chin to his Adam's apple and was perambulating carefully, drawing doodles over the tender skin. At the exterior, rain was becoming storm again.

"Did you understand me, Draco?" His name was said like a purr by his aunt's lips, which approached to his so much that it produced a phantom caress, a sick touch that was not at all. Her wand, nevertheless, was pressing his neck more strongly than before, hurting him as he tried to swallow the knot in his throat.

"Y-y-yes. Yes, aunt Bella." I'll do what I have to do to survive.

The irritating, pleased grin that adorned the witch's face made him sick. In a single, vehement movement that made her clothes rustle as they waved, Bellatrix turned to the exit and head towards there in a brisk pace.

"Great. Preen yourself a little, would you? We'll be waiting for you at the ground's principal drawing-room. Ah! And…Draco?" Woman stayed under the door frame and, without turning around him, tilted her head to glare at Draco over her shoulder. "Hurry up."

Draco only managed to nod once before the witch slammed the door resonantly, blowing out the fire and leaving him in darkness. Then, a pitiful sigh was heard in the obscurity and a silhouette collapsed on the floor. Kneeled, Draco lifted his face towards his doom camouflaged now in its element, waiting to torment him and plunge him again into the deep of its abysm.

He already knew it; the history would repeat itself as he returned from his little tourism through the drawing-room. Anger, disappointment, horror and crying. The anguish flooding his chest, asphyxiating him and subduing him. The mask, the worse mirror; and the vacuity… the emptiness. That place at his parents, his fellows and his ancestors' side; that hole that hurts for not being occupied.

He didn't fool himself. As it was going on, the battle would be lost and terror would prey on him. He wasn't strong, he was a shame. Soon enough, it would be nothing but this, the constant panic and the waiting for a rest that would never arrive. Not even when his victimizer doomed another poor devil, he could be free. His mouldy soul would wallow in his misery forever; year by year, day by day, minute after minute, he would never be able to withdraw his sight from his own pathetic reflex.

A mild smell of Alienatio Dei permeated the cold air and Draco left the room lest think too much about it. Outside, a new tempest menaced with making the sky fall. Windows trembled and humidity sneaked through the ambient, waiting to freeze who came in contact with it. A lighting broke into the boisterous, overcast sky and its light rub the bedroom interior just a moment, profiling a demon's macabre face: its empty eyes, its mouth in huge opening.

And, amidst the blackness, thunder was its roar.