Chapter One
by Capella
A/N: (June 23, 2005): Slight change -- well, not slight. This fic IS slash.
Just so you know, this has nothing to do with Jews. Mitzvahs just means "good deeds" in Hebrew; I heard it somewhere and it stuck. shrugs
Review!
Thanks!
"Oderint Dum Metuant.
(Let them hate so long as they fear.)"
Lucius Accius
"You can always come stay with Remus and me, you know. You don't have to stay with your father."
Draco looked sideways at Potter -- Harry. Harry was squinting against the sun so that his eyes were just slits with bright green barely showing, and his lips were curled into a tentative smile. Draco could almost believe that he was being sincere.
"You and Remus and who else?"
A faint blush rose to Harry's cheeks. "Mandy," he mumbled, and Draco's eyebrows rose.
"Brocklehurst?" he said, smiling, and Harry nodded, his face bright red. "From Ravenclaw?"
"Yes, okay?" Harry exclaimed. "She's staying with me for a few days over break." The color in his face had gone down, but there was still a faint red stain high up on his cheeks.
"Well, she's pretty," he said, and Harry shot him a sharp look. "I like black hair and blue eyes. She's on their Quidditch team, too --"
"You keep your paws off of her, Malfoy," Harry said, but there was a teasing note in his voice that said he was not entirely serious. The Hogwarts train whistled, three sharp impatient notes. Draco's heart leapt in his chest.
"I have to go," he said, and Harry nodded. Students rushed past them onto the train, a few of them pausing and looking at them curiously. Harry looked as though he was trying to decide something. "Potter," Draco said impatiently, and suddenly he was pulled into a hug. Harry's hands were tentative on his back and they shook nervously.
As suddenly as he was pulled into the hug he was released. Harry stood in front of him, his hands fluttering at his sides.
"Potter --" he said, still feeling the warmth of the embrace. He had never been hugged before; not by his father or his mother or his friends. It was -- an odd feeling, not particularly unpleasant.
"You're my friend, right?" Harry said all in a rush. Draco raised an eyebrow.
"I am." It felt strange to say it, although he didn't know why; Harry had just hugged him, for God's sake.
He wasn't quite sure how it had lead to this; all he had done one day his sixth year was decide that he was tired of being cruel to Harry every day when Harry seemed to be struggling so badly with life. Suddenly, Harry was smiling at him during lunch and stopping him in the hall to ask him how his day had been or what new moves he'd thought of for his Quidditch team; he asked about Draco's girlfriend and braved the Slytherin lunch table a few times just to sit together.
Harry smiled at him, a blinding smile, and Draco felt his lips twitch in response.
"Get on the damn train," Harry said, still grinning, and gave his shoulder a push. "Give your father my regards."
An odd little shiver went up Draco's spine. He wanted badly to take Harry up on his offer; to go stay with Remus and Harry and Mandy, a father-figure and his son and his girlfriend, an honest to God family. "Good-bye," he said instead, turning towards the train, and each step was heavier than the last.
Lucius was waiting for him at the train station. The ride home was taken in silence; Draco was dropped off and Lucius left without a word. He hadn't looked at Draco the entire time.
By the time dinner came that night, Draco had began to feel the first pangs of nervousness.
Draco showed up at the dinner table at exactly six-thirty on the last day of his Christmas break. It was when his father always ate dinner, when he wasn't out. Draco had dressed nicely, in a dark green shirt and loose black trousers. His father always liked him to dress well for dinner when he was on break or during the summer.
His father was standing behind his chair already at the head of the table, and he motioned for Draco to sit down to his right, the place where Draco's mother usually sat. Draco's skin tingled. There were only two places set at the table.
"Where's Mother?" he asked, hiding the dismay he felt at enduring an entire silent dinner with his father. Lucius gave him a penetrating gaze with cold gray eyes.
"She is away to visit relatives," he said at last. Draco barely contained his surprise -- his mother disliked most of her relatives, only saw them around holidays, and Christmas had come and gone. But he refused to satisfy his father by exposing the least bit of curiosity or worry, so he took his place at the table.
Lucius rang a small bell and a house elf ran into the room, carrying two trays filled with a raw, red steak. Draco hated meat so rare that it bled; he hadn't known his father liked it either.
Draco had choked down half his steak by the time his father finally spoke, and Lucius's voice was so sudden in the engulfing silence that Draco dropped a piece of meat onto the floor.
"I know what you are doing, Draco, and I do not approve of it."
Draco glanced at his father, but Lucius's eyes remained focused on the food in front of him. He lifted a piece of steak to his mouth and looked at Draco for a mere second, but that second was all it took, and Draco knew instantly what his father meant.
"I don't know what you mean, Father," he said instead, and his father's brows lowered in annoyance.
"You were never a rebellious child," Lucius murmured, casting another glance at Draco from underneath lowered lashes, and the look somehow set a shaking inside Draco's bones. From anger, not fear. "Your mother and I took the best care of you, and you loved us for it. I cannot understand why you have chosen this time, this situation, to finally rebel against me."
Draco clenched his fork in a tight grip in agitation, but he was not nervous, not yet. His father had not scared him since he was a little boy, when threats and irritated looks had been his worst fears. He tried again. "Father, I do not know --"
"Harry Potter, you ignorant child." It was something that should have been delivered in a shout, but Lucius said it softly and calmly, as if it was not something that sent Draco's heart racing in his chest. "Your two sycophants informed on you to me. Did you think I would not hear? That I was getting feebleminded? Foolish, foolish child. You shall not like your punishment for this."
Draco was left reeling in his chair as his father's speech was driven home. Crabbe and Goyle had betrayed him, and his father knew about his fragile, tentative relationship with Potter. Harry. And his father was going to punish him.
"Father, I --" But he did not know what to say. Fear and anger and guilt warred for supremacy, and he was left floundering for words that would not come. His father sat calmly, eating his meal.
"There is a Death Eater initiation tonight. You will come with me, and I shall present you to my lord. Lord Voldemort has grown tired of waiting."
"I won't come with you to that meeting."
Lucius went on as if Draco had not said a word.
"After the meeting, we will come home and discuss your punishment, if you are in the shape for it. I shall prepare you after dinner for your initiation."
"I won't go," Draco snarled. "I won't follow your stupid rules anymore, Father. I think I'm going to enlist in Dumbledore's Army just to piss you off."
"Be quiet, Draco," Lucius said, glancing over at him, stabbing a bit of steak on the end of his fork. It dripped red juices onto his plate. "You sound like a mindless teenager having a temper tantrum." Contrary to his quiet tone, Lucius's eyes flashed dangerously. Draco never even saw Lucius's other hand sneak to his left side, where the snake cane leaned on the arm of the chair.
"I am a teenager, Father, in case you missed my last ten birthdays," Draco said angrily, staring at his father and refusing to back down from the look in his father's eyes. "And I will not be a Death Eater just because you tell me to. I --"
He fell out of his chair and his cheek hit the ground with a dull thud, blood spraying out of his mouth onto the floor. His hand lifted, trembling, to his cheek, touching gingerly the jagged cut that the snake of Lucius's cane had made when it had struck his face.
Lucius stared down at him coldly and shook the cane, and a tiny drop of blood from the tip of one of the fangs hit Draco on the hand. Draco sat up slowly, and he stared at his father in shock.
"Father?" he said, his voice shaking, the fight gone out of him completely.
Lucius did not even blink. "You will terminate your friendship with Harry Potter," he said in an even tone. Draco's heart raced in his chest.
"Fine," he said after a moment. His father was not omnipresent. He would not know if Draco simply lied now and did not do as he said.
Suddenly his father's hand flashed, and Draco caught the vial thrown at his face out of a Seeker's reflex. There was a dark, murky green potion behind the clear glass. Draco stared at it, uncomprehending for a moment, and then looked up at his father. Lucius's face showed no emotion.
"You will terminate the friendship with this."
Draco's eyes widened for a second. "Poison," he whispered, dropping the vial as if it burned him. The glass tinkled on the stone floor and rolled beneath the table, resting at Lucius's feet. It did not break.
Lucius smiled briefly and without humor. "Good boy," he said, and his hand came down to stroke Draco's hair out of his face. Draco flinched back before he could help it, and his father's lips tightened into a thin white line. A bit of blood dribbled out of the corner of Draco's mouth from where one of his teeth had cut into the inside of his cheek. Lucius straightened and handed him a napkin; Draco wiped away the blood numbly, still staring up at his father's expressionless face.
"You will take the potion and go to your room. Pack for your return to school tomorrow. Put the poison in Harry Potter's drink in the next three days." Lucius picked up his fork and delicately ate the piece of steak. "I will know if you do not kill him, and if you refuse, he will be brought back here. I assure you that you will not like what I do to him." Lucius picked up his fork and delicately ate the piece of steak.
"You're bluffing," Draco said and was relieved to hear his voice sound steady. "If you could capture him, you would have done it by now."
Lucius merely looked at him steadily, and Draco felt his insides quiver with the fear of impending pain, pain that he had never received at the hands of his father before today.
"Would you really like to find out?" Lucius said finally, and Draco realized that he did not want to.
Draco stretched out a hand, hesitated a moment, and crawled forward to retrieve the potion, resting at Lucius's feet. He shut his eyes, shuddering, expecting to feel a boot dig into his stomach. Instead, he heard his father sigh impatiently; Draco straightened with the poison clenched in one hand and his other gripping his pant leg.
After a moment, in which neither father nor son said a word, Draco turned to go.
"Son."
Draco turned, his hair falling over his forehead and hiding his eyes, and he was grateful for it.
"Put some more clothes on," Lucius said, the tiniest hint of a smile in his voice. "You're shivering."
Lucius came to his room later that night. Draco was so busy packing, throwing his clothes into his suitcase with an enraged vigor, that he did not hear his father come in.
"There is still the matter of your punishment."
"Jesus!" Draco said, his heart going up in his throat. The clothes in his arms flew out of his arms and onto the bed. "Knock next time, Father."
He turned and there his father stood in the doorway, imposing in black pants and a flowing black shirt that stood out stark against his blonde-white hair. "You will come with me, now," Lucius said quietly.
"You're not being serious about this."
Lucius simply stared at him, a dangerous glint in his eye, and that was all it took to get Draco's feet moving slowly across the carpet. He was barefoot, and the soft threads of the rug were soothing against the soles of his feet. It was a shock when he felt the cold of the stone hallway underneath his toes.
He looked up questioningly at his father, who simply wrapped Draco's wrist in a surprisingly strong grip.
"Where are you taking me?" he demanded, trying to yank his arm out of his father's grip, but Lucius merely tightened his hand and dragged Draco along. His father tugged him insistently in the direction of the stairs that went down, and Draco felt a sick curdling in the pit of his stomach. "You would not dare," he said. "You would not dare take me to the dungeons."
His father glanced down at him with steely gray eyes. "You would be surprised what I dare, my son," he said, and suddenly he flung Draco forward.
Draco's head hit the stone of the steps first and he was almost unconscious for the rest of the trip down. He lay crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, his head ringing, black spots dancing in front of his eyes. He moaned faintly.
The dungeons were surprisingly warm, and that should have set warning bells off in his head. Instead, he drifted in the pleasant stillness between consciousness and darkness, trying to pretend that he was in his bed and that his father had not just thrown him into hell.
A boot dug into his ribs and he barely stifled his yelp, getting to his feet instead so fast that the world spun. His father was there, in front of him, looking at him with those damned never-changing eyes.
"Come with me."
"Like hell," Draco snarled, and his father sighed.
"Come with me, or you will be made to, and I assure you that it will not be a pleasant experience."
Draco hesitated and then made his feet move, step by step, closer to where his father stood now in the open doorway of a chamber. He had to resist the most intense desire to shut his eyes as he stepped through the door.
He might have gasped; he wasn't sure.
"Father," he whispered without knowing why as he looked at his -- punishment. Chains on the walls. Whips on a table. Other instruments that he neither knew or desired to know the use of. Strangely enough, there was a fire in the middle of the room, crackling merrily, with something that looked like a stretcher floating above it. He glanced up at his father, who was looking at the room with a sick sort of fondness.
"You have never been here before, have you, my son?"
"No," he said, and was proud that his voice was steady and calm.
"Let me introduce you as to how these things are done. Take off your clothes."
Draco flushed, and the most absurd sense of prudery rose in him. "No."
Draco's father sighed again, looking more annoyed than anything else. "Draco, that is a very nice shirt that your mother gave you. I do not want to explain to her why it is ripped and stained." Stained with what, he did not say, but he did not have to.
"Fine," Draco said, and peeled off his shirt and trousers, leaving him shivering in the middle of the room in his undergarments despite the fierce heat emanating from the fire.
"Do you see those chains, Draco?" his father said. "The ones hanging there, about your height if you braced yourself against the wall."
"You're really going to do this?" Draco asked, feeling faintly the need to vomit. His father's lips twisted in a smirk.
"Of course I will not do it," he said, and then, even before Draco began to feel the tiniest bit of hope, "I have those who will do it for me."
Two men moved out of the shadows in the corners of the room not lit by the fire and moved towards Draco. Their faces were masked to right beneath their noses, a wide slit cut for each eye. Their grinning mouths beneath the brown leather were sinister, and Draco felt panic slowly begin to rise until he had to bite his lip to keep from protesting. But he was not worried, not really, not yet. He was his father's only son; his father would not dare to hurt him too badly. It was a scare tactic. He was so bitterly sure.
It wasn't until the men had wrestled him to the wall and forced both of his hands inside the cruel, steel cuffs at the ends of the chains that the reality set in; and by then it was too late, and the lathes of a whip struck his side with a crack and curled around to hit the edges of his belly.
He barely stifled a cry behind his clenched teeth.
"What are you doing, Father?" he said in a raised voice, almost desperate, and the next whipstroke hit him across his shoulderblades; it burned as if he had been cut by a knife. One of the men muttered something and the other laughed, and the crack of the whip was audible in the dead, still dungeon air as it struck his back again.
"Giving you your punishment," his father said, a smile in his voice. "You should know by now that I never say anything that I do not mean."
The next whipstroke hit him on the back of his thigh. He crumpled to one knee, grimacing in pain, trying to get up to his feet even as the two men laughed behind him. He had just gotten up when the whip hit him across his lower back and buttocks; he finally let out a cry at the pain and the humiliation, and the fact that his father was the cause of it all.
It continued on and on; Draco stopped counting at thirty, but it could have been three times that by the time the men were satisfied. All he knew was that his back was on fire.
"That is enough," his father said, and Draco sagged in his bonds, filled with relief at the fact that his punishment was over and his father had not forced one damn tear out of him. His father must have made some sort of signal that he could not see, facing the wall as he was, for Draco heard the men drop their whips onto the table and pick something else up.
Moments later, Draco felt a fine sprinkling of something on his skin.
He twisted his head and stared down at the fine blue coating over his left arm, and even as he watched, it disappeared, seemingly into his flesh. "Father," he said, and then stopped, a bit unnerved. Lucius laughed quietly, a sound that sent shivers up his spine.
"Did you think that was your punishment?" he said fondly. "No, my son. Put him on the rack."
Oh God, Draco had learned about the rack in DADA his sixth year, when they were talking about banned torture methods and Hermione had brought up Muggle tortures, and Lupin had laughed and talked about the rack and the hot irons and other things that he did not want to think about.
The two men came and let him out of his shackles, and he fought like a wild thing until one of them planted a beefy fist in between his ribs. He doubled over, wheezing, and they grasped his arms again.
The rack turned out to be the odd stretcher floating above the fire. Strangely, it seemed to be made of a very fine fabric that did not break when he was made to lie on it. One of the hooded men took both his wrists in one huge hand and gripped them so tightly above Draco's head that he felt his circulation being cut off. He soon found out why.
The fire rose up from beneath him and warmed his back almost pleasantly for a few moments. He stared up at the menacing black eyes of the man above him and raised an eyebrow, trying his best to be haughty and mocking while wondering what torture they planned next. The man grinned down -- and waited.
A faint prickling started in his limbs, as if he were being pinched by hundreds of fingers. He squirmed a little at the unpleasantness, but his true source of discomfort were the stripes of pain on his back and legs.
The pinching turned into a burning so abruptly that he gasped as it spread along his skin, up his arms and down his legs, as if he was being held in the fire instead of over it; sweat slicked his skin until it looked as if he'd been drenched in oil. He gasped for air, and suddenly knew what the purpose of that odd powder was that had been put on his flesh.
"What was it?" he panted, his eyes rolling around the room in search of his father. His voice rose until he was yelling. "What was it? What the hell did you do to me?"
His father's face appeared suddenly before his own, so close that their noses were nearly touching. His father's lip was curled as if he smelled something unpleasant.
"Get this shit off of me," Draco screamed, and his father winced.
"Not so loudly, Draco, please. I do not want you to wake your mother."
Draco froze; he stopped twisting his hands in the strong man's grip and laid still, and it wasn't even an effort although his skin felt as if it were on fire. "You lied to me," he said, tears of anger in his eyes. "You said she was gone. Does she know that I'm down here?"
Lucius's lips curled into a cold smile. "If I said yes," he said, "what would you do?"
Tears spilled down his cheeks and he snarled up at his father's cruel countenance, but he had no answer.
Suddenly the burning in his flesh escalated; he gasped and arched his back, and his father smiled again.
"I just want two words from you, Draco, and you shall be released."
"Tell me," Draco said, completely prepared to lie if he had to.
Lucius put two fingers underneath his son's chin and tilted his face upwards until Draco was looking straight into his father's clear gray eyes.
"I recant."
"Oh, like hell," Draco managed to choke out, and then he had to use his breath to pull air into his lungs as he panted desperately. His father shook his head, a disappointed look on his face. It took a minute before he could speak again. "I learned about the damned Spanish Inquisition. I'm not going to play along with your stupid games. You can go straight to hell for all I care. I will not say that for you."
Lucius sighed and motioned to the hooded torturer not occupied with holding Draco's arms down. "Then I'm afraid you will not be allowed to speak until you do."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Yes, I would."
Draco had indeed learned all about the Inquisition; his father was fascinated by it, had a number of books on it in his library. Draco had read one when he had been bored. It seemed that heretics were fitted with a device that pained the throat and were only allowed to speak two words -- "I recant."
He hadn't actually thought his father would use the Heretic's fork on him.
"Father --" he said, beginning to feel a bit panicky despite himself as the torturer rummaged around on the table; Draco could hear the clank of metal on metal, and his stomach twisted itself in knots when the noise stopped. "Father, I --"
Lucius smiled. "I'm afraid it's too late to plead with me now, Draco."
"Plead, my ass," Draco growled, although he had been almost ready to do just that. The hooded man was at his side now, the object in his hand. Draco got a really good look at it and shut his eyes so tightly that spots appeared. "Oh, my God." It was just as the book had described it. A steel rod with two spikes on each end, and a collar just the right size to go around a throat attached to the middle of the rod.
"I would keep my eyes closed, if I were you." Lucius sounded delighted at getting a reaction. "I am always told that the anticipation is the worst. Do tell me if I am right."
His mind scrambled anxiously to remember just what that book had said the use of a Heretic's fork was.
'With the four sharp points rammed deep into the flesh under the chin and into the bone of the sternum, the fork prevented all movement of the head and allowed the victim only to murmur "abiuro" or "I recant, which was engraved on the side of the fork." '
"Oh, God," he whispered, and the man above him chuckled.
"Chin up, now," he said in a rumbly tone. Draco felt the cold touch of metal on his collarbone.
He could hear his father laughing above his own screams.
"What did you say, Draco?"
A mumble, incoherent and punctured by hitching sobs, escaped Draco's throat before he could help himself.
"Remove it," Lucius said; Draco almost whimpered in relief. The spikes slid out of his chin and collarbone, and he gasped at the excruciating pain. Blood flowed down his chest; his skin was sticky with it. There was not a place on his body that his torturers had missed. It had made it somehow worse that he was almost unable to scream; with that fork jammed in his skin to keep his mouth shut, all he had managed were choking shrieks that his father had laughed at.
"Repeat for me what you said."
Draco's throat hurt too much to talk for a moment. He could see the impatience in his father's face.
"Continue," Draco's father said in a bored tone, waving a hand, and the hooded man grinned wickedly and nodded, going over to the table again. Draco could hear the clank of metal.
The hooded man held up some device for Lucius's inspection, and Lucius smiled slightly and nodded. "That will do, I think."
Oh God, Draco knew what that instrument was. His heart was pounding wildly in his chest; the man was heading for the small fire in the corner, separate from the one he himself was being held over. His father motioned to the man again, and his torturer held the ripper into the fire. Suddenly, Draco snapped.
"I recant!" he screamed. "Oh my God, I recant!" The hooded man turned the ripper in the fire, opening the tongs menacingly and grinning in his direction. Draco's eyes rolled wildly around the room, panic gripping his chest until he couldn't breathe. "Please, Daddy! I'll be good! Please make them stop! I'll be good, I swear I'll be good from now on if you make them stop!"
He was crying, screaming hysterically, all thought of rebellion gone; he just wanted -- needed -- the pain to stop before he lost his mind. Oh, God, the hooded man was picking up the ripper from out of the flames, it was glowing red hot with heat, and Draco didn't know if the man would actually go through with it, but the thought was too much for him to take, and the man holding his hands above his head was grinning down at him; the gash on his cheek from when his father had hit him was pulsing with every beat of his heart, and as Draco saw the man approach with a smile and that ripper, Draco knew that he would rather die than go through anything else --
"Stop."
Suddenly the hands that were nearly breaking his wrists were gone, and the man holding the ripper was gone, and the fire underneath where he lay was doused. He felt the most urgent need to get off of the odd torture-sling that he had been held to, and he rolled off of it onto the floor, curling into a tight ball, gasping and sobbing.
A hand came down to stroke his sweat-slicked hair and he was too tired to cringe.
"Please," he sobbed, his breath hitching. "Please, Daddy." He was in too much pain to be shamed, but as he called his father something he had not said since he was five, a tiny part of him that had been his pride shriveled up in his chest.
"You do not know how difficult it is for me to see you suffer, Draco," his father said gently. "It was necessary. Do you see that now?"
"Yes, D -- Father," Draco whispered, fresh tears rolling down his cheeks, and his father pulled him up into a hug. Draco forgot the pain, forgot the humiliation, forgot why he had been holding out in the first place when he felt the first touch of his father's hands on his back, in an embrace that he had yearned for since he was a little boy. "I'll be good. I'm sorry, Father." He desperately wanted to plead with his father not to hurt him anymore, but the tattered shreds of his pride would not let him. He felt the tears rolling down his cheeks and wondered if he would have any left by the time his father was finished.
Lucius grasped him by the shoulders and pulled him out of the embrace, until they were kneeling on the floor and staring eye to eye. "What are you going to do when you get back to school?" his father asked sternly, and the threat of pain was in his eyes.
"I'm going to -- put that p-poison in Harry's drink." It was the hardest thing he had ever said, and it made it worse somehow that he almost couldn't think to disobey. He wanted to poison Harry because his father wanted him to, and disobedience was beyond his ability at that moment. His father raised an eyebrow, and Draco realized he had called Harry by his first name. "Potter, Father, I'm sorry."
His father said nothing for a moment, and Draco's insides writhed as he waited for condemnation.
"It seems as if I will not have to punish you further today," Lucius said at last, a warm glow in his eyes that was, if Draco had rationally thought about it, obviously false. "Go to your room. I will have the men who participated in your punishment today killed. I will be along shortly to heal your threatening wounds, but the whip-marks will be left as a reminder to you."
Draco did not ask why. He pulled himself to his feet and grasped the cloak that his father held out towards him, tugged it silently around himself and refusing to gasp when it touched his tortured skin. Blood oozed down his chest from the deep punctures in his chin and sternum. He tottered off to his room, staring straight ahead at nothing.
A/N: ...man, that was nasty. If you don't know what a ripper is, I suppose you should be glad. It's not a nice toy.
Anyway, see? I actually wrote a fic with no slash! However, I haven't been able to write a story with no nasty stuff in it that is also no slash, but I'm sure I'll be able to someday.
The next half should be out soon -- within the next few weeks.
Hope this is as good as my slash fics. Poor Draco.