Okay, so I may have gone off the deep end with this one. One thing I can say? It will definitely be unique.
This story is a Vodemort in power AU, featuring a creature Harry, and my sad attempts at romance.
I don't own the rights to any published works that I am aware of. If I do in fact own the rights to something, please let me know. I could use the money.
Chapter One: Prologue: The Tower
Draco Malfoy stood at the base of the tower, key in hand. Why the Dark King needed a magically sealed door when the tower was already held under the Fidelius was beyond him, but it wasn't Draco's place to ask, and really, he stopped being surprised about the same time he realized the tower was located in the center of a Dragon Sanctuary. A Hebridean Black dragon sanctuary, because apparently Welsh Greens weren't aggressive enough.
He stuck the key in the lock and gave it a twist. He pulled the door open. It was only thanks to his years of service in the D.E. that Draco managed to avoid shrieking at the sight that greeted him. A woman with long dirty blond hair, protuberant eyes, and bright clashing robes stood uncomfortably close to where the door had just been. In the dark. A flash of light drew his eye to her neck, where a silver snake coiled. It didn't take a genius to recognize his Lord's handiwork.
Draco stood there, waiting for her to say something, and the silence stretched on. He cleared his throat. She blinked and her eyes seemed to focus in on him.
"You're Draco Opaleye," She said, and Draco nearly fell over in shock. She read the tabloids. The Dark King had a maiden locked in a tower, on a mountain surrounded by vicious dragons, in the frozen Highlands of Scotland, and she read tabloids. He took it back — what he'd thought about not being surprised — he needed to completely reevaluate his assumptions about his Lord.
"But you knew that already, of course," the woman continued, "My name's Luna, by the way. Welcome to Tlí Ubh tNeves." With that she turned away from the door and Draco followed her in. Torches flared to life, and with a pop a house-elf materialized and Draco shucked his cloak and tossed it at the thing. He was in a small antechamber with a high ceiling. When he looked back to the blonde, he found her watching him with her head tilted at a slight angle.
"There are seven floors in tNeves," she said, more cooly than before, "the only way to get from one floor to the next is to know where you're going," which didn't surprise Draco. If Dark King hadn't been satisfied by the Fidelis he certainly wouldn't be satisfied by a charmed key. The woman, Luna, continued in a sing-song voice:
"Two are dedicated to sleeping,
There's the Entrance never used,
A Library for reading,
Commons for fun and food.
In this rocky sanctuary,
We've a Garden with a view,
And opposite that a kitchen
With a dedicated crew.
At the center's the Upper Suite,
A floor past my own bed,
And three from me the Library,
With more books than could be read."
Draco closed his eyes and repeated the rhyme several times. When he opened them Luna was walking towards the inner door. He hurried to follow, but she closed the door in his face and Draco had to step back quickly to avoid getting smacked. He yanked the door back open and found himself in a large empty room. Scattered about it were various furnishings; here a bed, there a bathtub, in another corner a pile of cauldrons, leaning against it several blank canvases. In the center of it all a broad, spiralling staircase. Luna stopped at the first step and turned to him.
"You'll find what you're looking for in the gardens," she said, and then she was climbing the stairs and out of sight. Draco crossed the dusty room and peered into the spiral. In one direction the steps descended until they pooled on a concrete floor, and in the other direction they wound upwards. Light filtered from the center, but he dared not step in to see if the stairs ascended to the roof just yet. Pivoting on his heel he made his way to a settee with a chipped foot and settled in to think.
It was difficult so say how long Draco sat there, but after a time, he felt confident he knew the order of the floors and returned to the stairs. With a deep breath he stepped into the spiral. As he'd suspected, in between the loose coils Draco could see all the way up, where light shone down from a glass ceiling — or at least one spelled to look like such. He began to climb.
There were a large number of steps to reach the next floor, given the high ceiling of the Entrance, and when he reached the next floor without being subjected to any curses, dark creatures, or death he released an audible sigh of relief. He would never understand his Lord's need for constant trials.
When Draco reached the Gardens the sun was low in the sky and light shone through the windows, covering the plants in a golden hue. It was more of a greenhouse than a garden, and as Draco wandered among the flowers and trees he found the first sign that what he sought was near. On the floor, winding across his path, Draco spotted a delicate gold chain. Gently he lifted it, and watched it trail off to each side. Right or left? Draco decided to go left, towards the windows.
He walked along, cutting through the garden with the gold chain running through his fingers, until he saw something that made his heart skip a beat. There, curled up on a bench in the light of the setting sun. He must have gasped, or scuffed his foot, or gave some signal that he was there, because the next moment the creature turned and looked at him. He'd never seen anything like it. Him. It. The basic form was that of a man, tall and thin, but this being was no more a man than a Centaur was. Draco gave himself a moment to take everything in. His face was framed by a mane of gold-red fire, and in the center of his forehead framed by a jagged silver scar was a small nacre horn with dark whirls. The rest of his skin was white, and where it should have pinkened on his cheeks or in the corners of his eyes or his lips, it instead glowed silver. His eyes were a striking green. He was dressed in a simple brown robe, and in his lap, sitting loosely in gold-taloned hands was an old tome. From where his feet curled on the bench Draco could see the gold chain falling and trailing back along the ground and up again to where it still rested in his hand.
This was what he was sent to retrieve.
Draco hesitated, then bowed. He held the bow for several long moments, waiting for some form of acknowledgement, like was was taught to when approaching Hippogryphs years ago in his NEWT Care of Magical Creatures class, but the Being only continued to watch him. Draco's back began to strain and he clenched his fists. He felt something bite into his palm, and startled, looked down at his hand and the chain held therein. He let it slip from his fingers and turned back to the other. If anything, the green eyes watched him even more intently, but at last they seemed to find something in Draco's own blue-grey eyes, and turned to the side, where the sun had reached the hills and the sky transitioned into a brilliant orange. Draco took it as his cue to straighten and approach.
As he got closer he realized that the gold-red mane wasn't actually fire, but hair — no feathers. Thousands of long, hair-like feathers that changed from red to gold as they caught the light. It was captivating.
"You are…" Draco trailed off. You are what I'm here for? You are my King's possession? You are beautiful? He wasn't really sure what he had been trying to say.
"Haven. Your Lord has named me 'Haven Smedet'," the Being, Smedet, said, and Merlin, that voice wasn't human. It was tonal, like the words were sung instead of spoken, but no man could achieve that purity of sound. A tuning fork would sound sour in comparison. Barely, Draco remembered to nod. The confirmation was nice, if not necessary.
"I'm Draco—" he began.
"—Malfoy," Smedet finished, cutting him off.
"I'm sorry, have we met?" Draco asked despite knowing they hadn't, because there was no way he'd believe this Being read the tabloids.
"In a previous lifetime," he said, with a wry smile, "but you've changed since then."
"I… imagine I have," Draco tried to make it sound like it wasn't a question. On second thought tabloids seemed probable. The man laughed and it sounded like chimes. Draco felt his spirits soar, and it was all he could manage not to laugh along. He caught himself, however, and it wasn't difficult to realize his emotions were being influenced. It was a sobering thought regardless. This was a trial Draco couldn't afford to fail.
"I was sent to escort you to the Dark King's Keep," he said once Smedet's laughter faded. At his words the smile fell from the other's face.
"I know," Smedet replied, turning back to the window and the sliver of sun still visible, and Draco felt a sudden desire to have those eyes turned back on him.
"How?" He asked, and his wish was granted.
"I overheard him giving you the order." Something of his confusion must have shown on Draco's face, because the other continued, "I hear everything Your Lord hears, see everything Your Lord Sees, feel everything Your Lord feels," he said, "as he does me."
The other's eyes were seemed to glow, and with a start, Draco realized the Garden had gone dark. The sun had set.
"Come on," Smedet said, and in a graceful move unfolded from the bench, and rose to his feet. The chain clinked softly against the stone floor. "It's too late to leave tonight, and it's nearly time for supper."
Draco expected they'd follow the chain to get to the stairs to avoid tangling it up, but Smedet chose a new path. When they crossed another portion and the two sections of chain overlapped, there was a brief glow and the links reconnected at the intersection. The loop began to shorten like the fuse of a firecracker, both ends glowing and shrinking until they disappeared from view behind various pots and plants. Well that certainly cleared some things up at least.
As they reached the stairs Draco heard the most beautiful of songs break out loudly from behind and above him. He felt his chest swell with joy, and turned to see a phoenix perched on the upper branches of one of the taller trees, singing. Then he heard it again right behind him and spun, but instead of a second phoenix there was Smedet, lips puckered and whistling a reply. He heard the phoenix answer back, and turned around again.
Slowly, Draco approached the tree and stood at the base. He heard Dumbledore had a phoenix, before he died, but Draco never saw it. This phoenix's feathers seemed to radiate light, but they also looked somehow familiar. He turned to ask Smedet if he knew, and his breath caught in his throat. The man — Being — glowed faintly in the dim light, and matching perfectly to the feathers of the phoenix was the patterning of his own red and gold hair feathers. Draco gaped at him, and he stopped whistling to grin at Draco.
"Her name's Ankaa," he said, and Draco thought he detected hints of pride, "I think of her as my mother."
"She's beautiful," Draco breathed, and when he heard a trill from said phoenix he felt his face stretch into a grin of his own.
Nothing more was said until they reached the Commons. The stairs let out into a lobby of sorts, and from there several archways opened to different rooms. There was one with several chess sets, another with instruments, a third with what looked like boundary lines for dueling matches, and so on. Smedet led him into a room with an oak dining table and a large silver chandelier.
Draco had expected to see Luna, but wasn't at all prepared to the two older men. Each of them had a silver snake coiled about their necks. One was a large man with a protruding stomach, but the other—
"Ollivander." Draco hadn't realized he'd spoken until said man turned to him, "You disappeared my second year. Everyone said you'd died." Everyone said he must have been killed by some strange creature, hunting down newer and more powerful wand cores. Everyone but Dumbledore anyway, but the old Headmaster had lost a great deal of sway at the end of Draco's first year, and no one listened to his senile warnings.
"Draco Malfoy," the man said by way of greeting, "Ten inches, Hawthorn, with a unicorn tail hair. Reasonably pliant."
"Er, yes," Draco said.
"Horace Slughorn," the other man said, having walked over while Ollivander spoke, and held out his hand, "You must be Lucius' sun. I was his Head of House you know, back when he was in Slytherin." Draco offered him a greeting he couldn't remember and let himself shift into the practiced dance of smalltalk, his mind racing away in other directions. Directions that led to questions like why the Dark King decided to stick this particular group of people together with a mysterious glowing Being in a tower surrounded by Dragons and under the tightest security known to the Wizarding World.
Dinner passed slowly, with Slughorn barely giving anyone else space to talk. Draco got the impression the man was a bit of a socialite and wasn't handling his captivity very well.
When they finished eating the old professor ushered Draco back to the stairs and to the Lower Dorms, with admonition that he'd had a long day getting to the tower, and would have an equally long one leaving it. Draco put up only a token protest before complying and collapsing onto the bed in an unused room.
So there it is! My prologue. If you think you can solve my riddle, or anything else I've hidden in here, put your answer in a review or PM me with it! I'm considering making this story a bit more interactive and putting puzzles in every chapter or so. Let me know your thoughts!