The Times of Restoration
"until the times of restoration of all things," Acts 3:21
Prologue
"Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths." Isaiah 59:7
Draco stood in the cold mud of the North York Moors and shivered slightly. Even though his robes were heavy, the cold was creeping and persistent. It penetrated his thin body and sank deep into his bones.
Voldemort was crapping on as per usual, he thought off-handedly. He had only been to two meetings before this one but he was already tired of the words that were hailed at him mercilessly like weapons, numbing his mind and heart both. Voldemort's words were formal and ridiculous but oddly unrelenting and like the cold, they penetrated the boy to the bone.
He felt suffocated behind the silver and black velvet mask. It barely allowed enough air if you were standing still and he had already trekked for half an hour over this hostile landscape with his parents. The sweat had long dried on his body and now he felt half frozen.
As Voldemort's high, thin voice whined on Draco's mind wondered. It was only his third meeting and he already regretted taking the Dark Mark. The initiation ceremony had been a theatrical farce but Draco had felt the full, enslaving power that the Death Eaters now had over his life - particularly Voldemort, of course. He had taken the Mark because it had always been expected of him and he himself had never questioned it. To him, being a Death Eater had seemed a glamorous, mysterious and empowering thing. In a short time, he had learned that it was really a mundane, boring and enslaving thing.
*** Draco thought back over his initiation. Like all secret societies, he had had to wear initiation robes and be led blindfolded to the Death Eater's headquarters. Even now, he didn't know the location. That knowledge was for inner circle members only. He had had to swear an oath of allegiance that he had previously learned off by heart and recite it perfectly on his knees. Then they had cut him across one side of his pale, thin chest and taken some of his blood. This was used as the ink on the contract which was forged magically on charmed parchment that could never be destroyed. He had had to sign it in his own blood too with a special quill but that was at the end of the ceremony. Once his blood was taken, he had his blindfold removed and was told to stand to receive the Dark Mark. It was burned into the sensitive skin of his inner forearm with a red-hot brand charmed specially to not scar but rather leave a pitch black image that would burn red hot again at Voldemort's command. If the boy had flinched this point, he would have been rejected and his memory erased. Then he was presented with the Death Eater robes and mask, and required to sign the contract in front of all the Death Eaters as witnesses. Before he melted into the crowd of other Death Eaters, he was required to prostrate himself fully on the floor before Voldemort and kiss the hem of his robe. He did this with the dignity and air of a priest at his ordination.
He had come through it with flying colours, as he had always known he would. He did not make a mistake nor even hesitate as he said the oath. He did not flinch when he was cut or burned. His signature was sure and rapid. Narcissa and Lucius watched him keenly throughout and seemed satisfied at the end - not pleased, just satisfied. He had not embarrassed them and that was all they cared about.
A sudden chill wind across the moors brought Draco suddenly back to the present. He flexed his pectoral muscle where the cut was still healing from the ceremony. It ached in the cold. It had not been just a scratch; the cut had been deep and close to his heart.
".**we are taking as many male Muggle-borns from England to our camps to build underground laboratories, and will later take yet more. Not one of them will ever come within the field of vision of the pureblood people. I am convinced that things would look bleak for the purebloods if we had not resolved the Muggle-born problem there, if, for example, the camps North of Gillamoor or the other West of Callington were still in existence," Voldemort was saying.
A chill that did not come from the wind over the North Sea suddenly froze Draco's blood in his veins. Did Voldemort just say what I thought he just said, he wondered? Draco swayed slighty on his feet. The Death Eaters had camps they were taking Muggle-borns to, he realised with dawning horror. He literally felt blood drain from his face and the fine hairs on his arms stood on end.
He glanced at his parents. They were unmoved and he realised with a sudden feeling of light-headedness that they knew. Not only did they know but must have known for a long time as they were part of Voldemort's inner circle and always had been.
He wanted to get away suddenly but was hemmed in by other Death Eaters. He began to listen carefully to what Voldemort was saying, hoping for more information but it was just more self-congratulatory and inflammatory rhetoric. Eventually he paused.
"Bring the girl," Voldemort said suddenly into the silence.
Draco frowned and looked around the gathering. He soon saw a familiar looking figure being led to where Voldemort held center stage. As she came closer he recognized Hermione and his lips parted in shock behind the Death Eater mask.
Draco knew she was a good as dead. She was a mudblood and had been stupid enough to try and crash a Death Eater meeting. He felt no fondness for Hermione but he certainly did not wish to see her murdered. He held his breath as the girl drew close to Voldemort.
"Well, the little mudblood whore friend of Harry Potter will finally get what's coming to her," Narcissa drawled coldly in her high voice. She recognized Hermione from attending Quidditch while her son was at Hogwarts. Narcissa had seen Hermione with a triumphant Harry Potter more times than she cared to remember.
Draco watched with frowning concentration as Voldemort called Snape over to them. They were saying something but he couldn't quite hear what it was. Voldemort's red eyes suddenly glowed with fury and he raised his wand. Draco closed his eyes behind the mask. He didn't want to watch. He didn't hear the killing curse however and opened them again curiously to see a magnificent black unicorn standing before the suddenly rather small looking wizard. Draco's mouth fell open. He had never seen anything like it. The gracile animal seemed to suck the light out of the dim torches and condense the darkness into thick, living shadow. Its eyes burned like live coals and its horn glowed, throwing gold light in a circle around it.
Voldemort seemed frozen as the unicorn lowered its horn and charged. Suddenly out of the night, Draco heard Snape hiss the killing curse and Voldemort was silhouetted by green light for a millisecond before disappearing into a black fog. The unicorn wheeled and screamed.
Draco gasped and clutching his ears, he fell to the ground as the unicorn's cry went through him like a laser through flesh. It burnt up his soul and paralysed his mind. In that second, he doubted anything good could ever happen again. Finally it was over and he picked himself up and ran into the night, as far from that unicorn as he could get.
Ten minutes later he was lost and alone in the pitch dark on the North York Moors. He tripped and fell over into the thick, freezing mud and lay there trying to catch his breath. He had no idea what to do next. All he had wanted was to get away from that sound and from any possibility of having to hear it again. Gradually his breathing calmed and he was able to think. He remembered Voldemort talking about the camps and the perception that his parents had known about them all along. He realized he wanted to see the camps for himself, to see if they were real. Slowly he stood up, quite unconscious now of the cold and the mud.
He did not have his apparating license yet but could apparate perfectly well as his parents had taught him how to do it years ago. He had been apparating illegally for years. He frowned as he struggled to remember what Voldemort had said. Something about new underground camps like the ones at.. was it Gillamoor and. Callington, he thought? Well, if he had to choose locations for new camps he'd build them under the old ones, he reasoned. Then it would be easy enough to take materials from the old structures to make the new. Still thinking rather hazily, he decided to try Gillamoor first and apparated there. "Lumos," he said immediately and his wand tip lit up.
Using a simple compass spell, he walked northward for about fifteen minutes and near an old underground burn* he felt a sudden warmth where the Dark Mark on his forearm had been burned not long before. "So it must be around here," he murmured. Green torches suddenly sprang to life on either side of the cave-like entry to the burn. He scrambled down the embankment and found himself face-to-face with massive iron doors just inside the cave.
He waded through the icy, shallow water to the doors. He felt a quick, hot sensation on his arm again, and the doors slowly and silently opened. Almost like a sleepwalker, Draco stumbled in. He found himself walking down a massive tunnel.
To his amazement, he had not encountered a single fellow Death Eater. The place seemed to be deserted. He knew all of them would have been at the meeting but why had none of them come back here? Had they been frightened off by Voldemort's sudden demise? Yes, he realized, that was exactly what had happened. With Voldemort no longer around to protect them they had deserted all the centers of Death Eater activity in case they were caught and put in Azkaban.
Right at that point however, Draco did not give a damn about Azakaban. He wanted to find out the truth about what Voldemort and his parents had been up to and everything else could go to hell. He came to another immense set of doors. Once again, these opened for him and he cautiously stepped through to find himself in a waking nightmare.
He stared open mouthed at the rows of human sized cages and the laboratory equipment. Slowly he walked along the cages, peering into them. He thought they were all empty until he came to his first victim. It was a middle-aged man, emaciated to almost a skeleton. His head was shaved and he was naked, his thin knees drawn up to a chest where every rib showed through. His face was turned away from Draco and he did not move, as though he had not heard Draco's footsteps on the stone floor. The cage was filthy and Draco stepped back suddenly when he realized the man's skin was crawling with lice. The smell made Draco gag and he looked away in horror. His pale eyes quickly scanned the other cages. Sure enough, there were other wizards in a similar condition in some of them. Not a lot but enough. Slowly Draco stepped away from the rows of cages and in a sudden desperate move, he tore himself away from the sight and ran through one of the doorways off the main chamber.
He found himself in a Dark Arts library and he threw himself on a couch in relief and suddenly found himself weeping. He smeared his dirty hands over his face in an effort to wipe the hated tears away. He had not cried for years, he was not going to start now. He sniffed and pushed his wet hair out of his face and spawled on the couch, his skinny legs thrown out in front of him. He closed his eyes and rested his pale head on the back of the couch. He just wanted to sit still and not think for a long, long time.
* * *
Draco could not help but think. As he sat there filthy and wet and cold, he reviewed his life up until then and the hellish revelations that night had brought. The past few weeks had disillusioned him about the glamour and power of the Death Eaters but that night had vanquished any thoughts of the Death Eater's cause being a noble or righteous one. As he pushed one hand through his hair, he realized it was shaking. He pursed his thin mouth in annoyance at his own weakness. He knew he needed to make some drastic changes to his life and as he sat there, he thought them through very carefully.
A sudden noise startled Draco out of his reverie. It was the doors of the main chamber opening, he realized. He bit his lip anxiously and checked his watch. Yes, he had been there for hours. Long enough for Dumbledore to have assembled a team and infiltrated the place. Now that he understood that Snape was an undercover agent for Dumbledore, he guessed that Snape had gone back with the information from the meeting and everyone had come straight there using the same deductions as he had himself. It had not taken the team of Aurors long to dismantle the charms around the camp, he thought.
He had no idea what to do. Should he go out and turn himself in, and take the risk that he would be thrown straight into Azkaban or should he hide and hope that he could dodge the team and escape after they left? He opted for the latter for the time being. Silently he crept into the large fireplace and crouched to one side, out of anyone's direct line of vision. He knew a preliminary search would not be likely to include the fireplace but all the bookshelves would be searched in case they hid secret passageways.
He was proved correct. A small team of Aurors led by Remus searched the room briefly, checking the bookshelves but no-one so much as glanced into the fireplace.
As the hours wore on Draco grew curious as to who was there. Cautiously he crept out of the fireplace which fortunately was not in line with the door and peered out with one eye. From the doorway, he suddenly recognized Hermione who happened to be just opposite and quickly ducked back inside before he was seen. As the bookshelves had been searched already, he hid behind the largest one.
Suddenly he heard her soft voice, "I know you're here so you may as well come out."
With a feeling of inevitability, he stepped tiredly out into the light.
* Scottish term for 'stream' - Cambridge Dictionary ** Based on a speech given by Himmler on 24 May 1945 *** Very loosely based on Masonic initiation rites. Source:
ation.html
"until the times of restoration of all things," Acts 3:21
Prologue
"Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths." Isaiah 59:7
Draco stood in the cold mud of the North York Moors and shivered slightly. Even though his robes were heavy, the cold was creeping and persistent. It penetrated his thin body and sank deep into his bones.
Voldemort was crapping on as per usual, he thought off-handedly. He had only been to two meetings before this one but he was already tired of the words that were hailed at him mercilessly like weapons, numbing his mind and heart both. Voldemort's words were formal and ridiculous but oddly unrelenting and like the cold, they penetrated the boy to the bone.
He felt suffocated behind the silver and black velvet mask. It barely allowed enough air if you were standing still and he had already trekked for half an hour over this hostile landscape with his parents. The sweat had long dried on his body and now he felt half frozen.
As Voldemort's high, thin voice whined on Draco's mind wondered. It was only his third meeting and he already regretted taking the Dark Mark. The initiation ceremony had been a theatrical farce but Draco had felt the full, enslaving power that the Death Eaters now had over his life - particularly Voldemort, of course. He had taken the Mark because it had always been expected of him and he himself had never questioned it. To him, being a Death Eater had seemed a glamorous, mysterious and empowering thing. In a short time, he had learned that it was really a mundane, boring and enslaving thing.
*** Draco thought back over his initiation. Like all secret societies, he had had to wear initiation robes and be led blindfolded to the Death Eater's headquarters. Even now, he didn't know the location. That knowledge was for inner circle members only. He had had to swear an oath of allegiance that he had previously learned off by heart and recite it perfectly on his knees. Then they had cut him across one side of his pale, thin chest and taken some of his blood. This was used as the ink on the contract which was forged magically on charmed parchment that could never be destroyed. He had had to sign it in his own blood too with a special quill but that was at the end of the ceremony. Once his blood was taken, he had his blindfold removed and was told to stand to receive the Dark Mark. It was burned into the sensitive skin of his inner forearm with a red-hot brand charmed specially to not scar but rather leave a pitch black image that would burn red hot again at Voldemort's command. If the boy had flinched this point, he would have been rejected and his memory erased. Then he was presented with the Death Eater robes and mask, and required to sign the contract in front of all the Death Eaters as witnesses. Before he melted into the crowd of other Death Eaters, he was required to prostrate himself fully on the floor before Voldemort and kiss the hem of his robe. He did this with the dignity and air of a priest at his ordination.
He had come through it with flying colours, as he had always known he would. He did not make a mistake nor even hesitate as he said the oath. He did not flinch when he was cut or burned. His signature was sure and rapid. Narcissa and Lucius watched him keenly throughout and seemed satisfied at the end - not pleased, just satisfied. He had not embarrassed them and that was all they cared about.
A sudden chill wind across the moors brought Draco suddenly back to the present. He flexed his pectoral muscle where the cut was still healing from the ceremony. It ached in the cold. It had not been just a scratch; the cut had been deep and close to his heart.
".**we are taking as many male Muggle-borns from England to our camps to build underground laboratories, and will later take yet more. Not one of them will ever come within the field of vision of the pureblood people. I am convinced that things would look bleak for the purebloods if we had not resolved the Muggle-born problem there, if, for example, the camps North of Gillamoor or the other West of Callington were still in existence," Voldemort was saying.
A chill that did not come from the wind over the North Sea suddenly froze Draco's blood in his veins. Did Voldemort just say what I thought he just said, he wondered? Draco swayed slighty on his feet. The Death Eaters had camps they were taking Muggle-borns to, he realised with dawning horror. He literally felt blood drain from his face and the fine hairs on his arms stood on end.
He glanced at his parents. They were unmoved and he realised with a sudden feeling of light-headedness that they knew. Not only did they know but must have known for a long time as they were part of Voldemort's inner circle and always had been.
He wanted to get away suddenly but was hemmed in by other Death Eaters. He began to listen carefully to what Voldemort was saying, hoping for more information but it was just more self-congratulatory and inflammatory rhetoric. Eventually he paused.
"Bring the girl," Voldemort said suddenly into the silence.
Draco frowned and looked around the gathering. He soon saw a familiar looking figure being led to where Voldemort held center stage. As she came closer he recognized Hermione and his lips parted in shock behind the Death Eater mask.
Draco knew she was a good as dead. She was a mudblood and had been stupid enough to try and crash a Death Eater meeting. He felt no fondness for Hermione but he certainly did not wish to see her murdered. He held his breath as the girl drew close to Voldemort.
"Well, the little mudblood whore friend of Harry Potter will finally get what's coming to her," Narcissa drawled coldly in her high voice. She recognized Hermione from attending Quidditch while her son was at Hogwarts. Narcissa had seen Hermione with a triumphant Harry Potter more times than she cared to remember.
Draco watched with frowning concentration as Voldemort called Snape over to them. They were saying something but he couldn't quite hear what it was. Voldemort's red eyes suddenly glowed with fury and he raised his wand. Draco closed his eyes behind the mask. He didn't want to watch. He didn't hear the killing curse however and opened them again curiously to see a magnificent black unicorn standing before the suddenly rather small looking wizard. Draco's mouth fell open. He had never seen anything like it. The gracile animal seemed to suck the light out of the dim torches and condense the darkness into thick, living shadow. Its eyes burned like live coals and its horn glowed, throwing gold light in a circle around it.
Voldemort seemed frozen as the unicorn lowered its horn and charged. Suddenly out of the night, Draco heard Snape hiss the killing curse and Voldemort was silhouetted by green light for a millisecond before disappearing into a black fog. The unicorn wheeled and screamed.
Draco gasped and clutching his ears, he fell to the ground as the unicorn's cry went through him like a laser through flesh. It burnt up his soul and paralysed his mind. In that second, he doubted anything good could ever happen again. Finally it was over and he picked himself up and ran into the night, as far from that unicorn as he could get.
Ten minutes later he was lost and alone in the pitch dark on the North York Moors. He tripped and fell over into the thick, freezing mud and lay there trying to catch his breath. He had no idea what to do next. All he had wanted was to get away from that sound and from any possibility of having to hear it again. Gradually his breathing calmed and he was able to think. He remembered Voldemort talking about the camps and the perception that his parents had known about them all along. He realized he wanted to see the camps for himself, to see if they were real. Slowly he stood up, quite unconscious now of the cold and the mud.
He did not have his apparating license yet but could apparate perfectly well as his parents had taught him how to do it years ago. He had been apparating illegally for years. He frowned as he struggled to remember what Voldemort had said. Something about new underground camps like the ones at.. was it Gillamoor and. Callington, he thought? Well, if he had to choose locations for new camps he'd build them under the old ones, he reasoned. Then it would be easy enough to take materials from the old structures to make the new. Still thinking rather hazily, he decided to try Gillamoor first and apparated there. "Lumos," he said immediately and his wand tip lit up.
Using a simple compass spell, he walked northward for about fifteen minutes and near an old underground burn* he felt a sudden warmth where the Dark Mark on his forearm had been burned not long before. "So it must be around here," he murmured. Green torches suddenly sprang to life on either side of the cave-like entry to the burn. He scrambled down the embankment and found himself face-to-face with massive iron doors just inside the cave.
He waded through the icy, shallow water to the doors. He felt a quick, hot sensation on his arm again, and the doors slowly and silently opened. Almost like a sleepwalker, Draco stumbled in. He found himself walking down a massive tunnel.
To his amazement, he had not encountered a single fellow Death Eater. The place seemed to be deserted. He knew all of them would have been at the meeting but why had none of them come back here? Had they been frightened off by Voldemort's sudden demise? Yes, he realized, that was exactly what had happened. With Voldemort no longer around to protect them they had deserted all the centers of Death Eater activity in case they were caught and put in Azkaban.
Right at that point however, Draco did not give a damn about Azakaban. He wanted to find out the truth about what Voldemort and his parents had been up to and everything else could go to hell. He came to another immense set of doors. Once again, these opened for him and he cautiously stepped through to find himself in a waking nightmare.
He stared open mouthed at the rows of human sized cages and the laboratory equipment. Slowly he walked along the cages, peering into them. He thought they were all empty until he came to his first victim. It was a middle-aged man, emaciated to almost a skeleton. His head was shaved and he was naked, his thin knees drawn up to a chest where every rib showed through. His face was turned away from Draco and he did not move, as though he had not heard Draco's footsteps on the stone floor. The cage was filthy and Draco stepped back suddenly when he realized the man's skin was crawling with lice. The smell made Draco gag and he looked away in horror. His pale eyes quickly scanned the other cages. Sure enough, there were other wizards in a similar condition in some of them. Not a lot but enough. Slowly Draco stepped away from the rows of cages and in a sudden desperate move, he tore himself away from the sight and ran through one of the doorways off the main chamber.
He found himself in a Dark Arts library and he threw himself on a couch in relief and suddenly found himself weeping. He smeared his dirty hands over his face in an effort to wipe the hated tears away. He had not cried for years, he was not going to start now. He sniffed and pushed his wet hair out of his face and spawled on the couch, his skinny legs thrown out in front of him. He closed his eyes and rested his pale head on the back of the couch. He just wanted to sit still and not think for a long, long time.
* * *
Draco could not help but think. As he sat there filthy and wet and cold, he reviewed his life up until then and the hellish revelations that night had brought. The past few weeks had disillusioned him about the glamour and power of the Death Eaters but that night had vanquished any thoughts of the Death Eater's cause being a noble or righteous one. As he pushed one hand through his hair, he realized it was shaking. He pursed his thin mouth in annoyance at his own weakness. He knew he needed to make some drastic changes to his life and as he sat there, he thought them through very carefully.
A sudden noise startled Draco out of his reverie. It was the doors of the main chamber opening, he realized. He bit his lip anxiously and checked his watch. Yes, he had been there for hours. Long enough for Dumbledore to have assembled a team and infiltrated the place. Now that he understood that Snape was an undercover agent for Dumbledore, he guessed that Snape had gone back with the information from the meeting and everyone had come straight there using the same deductions as he had himself. It had not taken the team of Aurors long to dismantle the charms around the camp, he thought.
He had no idea what to do. Should he go out and turn himself in, and take the risk that he would be thrown straight into Azkaban or should he hide and hope that he could dodge the team and escape after they left? He opted for the latter for the time being. Silently he crept into the large fireplace and crouched to one side, out of anyone's direct line of vision. He knew a preliminary search would not be likely to include the fireplace but all the bookshelves would be searched in case they hid secret passageways.
He was proved correct. A small team of Aurors led by Remus searched the room briefly, checking the bookshelves but no-one so much as glanced into the fireplace.
As the hours wore on Draco grew curious as to who was there. Cautiously he crept out of the fireplace which fortunately was not in line with the door and peered out with one eye. From the doorway, he suddenly recognized Hermione who happened to be just opposite and quickly ducked back inside before he was seen. As the bookshelves had been searched already, he hid behind the largest one.
Suddenly he heard her soft voice, "I know you're here so you may as well come out."
With a feeling of inevitability, he stepped tiredly out into the light.
* Scottish term for 'stream' - Cambridge Dictionary ** Based on a speech given by Himmler on 24 May 1945 *** Very loosely based on Masonic initiation rites. Source:
ation.html
