A/N: Beta'd by Raisinous Fiendling
Chapter Two
Tea with Cousin Nymphadora
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When morning came, Draco awoke to the sound of shouting downstairs. Forgetting where he was, he called out, "Shut up, Crabbe! Goyle!"
Getting no response from his roommates, Draco cracked open an eye and looked across to the pink flowers on the wall. He groaned and closed his eyes. Thinking was more painful in the morning than it had been the night before, because now his head was clear and he didn't have adrenaline to keep him going. He was frightened by what he had done and the path he was now left to follow. Dumbledore was dead and he was staying at Potter's neighbor's house in the hopes that Potter would forgive and protect him. Or at least, that was all he could bear to allow himself to want of Harry Potter; he was sure anything would be rejected flat out.
He crept to the door and opened it enough to hear the voices downstairs.
A female was sobbing -- he guessed it was Mrs. Figg. "But what will we do?" she was saying. "We don't have a chance without Dumbledore!"
Draco's insides twisted and he heard a gruff male voice answer, "We have Harry. We have to believe in him."
If anything, Mrs. Figg sobbed harder. "But he's just a boy!"
"He's not a boy anymore. A person doesn't go through what he has and stay a child. He's our only chance, Arabella."
The kitchen was silent for a while before Mrs. Figg asked so softly that Draco had to strain to hear, "And the Malfoy boy, what are we going to do with him?"
Draco heard the man sigh. "We don't know. Snape's gone back to Voldemort, and no one's really sure what side he's on, but Dumbledore made us all promise to look after Draco."
The man's voice was familiar, but Draco couldn't place it.
"But the paper said he let the Death Eaters in!"
"I know," came the sharp answer, "but this was Dumbledore's last wish. He wanted us to look after Harry and Draco. Besides, Voldemort will know by now that the boy has fled. He'll be killed if he tries to go back."
Draco swallowed the lump in his throat and walked purposely down the hall. As he stood at the top of the stairs, Mrs. Figg came to greet him, looking up at him with red eyes.
"Excuse me, which room is the bathroom?" He asked politely, his face flushed.
"The door on the right, just there." Her face was tear-streaked, and her voice wavered slightly as she pointed it out to him. Draco turned away from her and went into the bathroom. He used the toilet and thought of showering, not only because his hair was filthy, but because it would secure him another fifteen minutes alone.
As the hot water of the shower beat against his skin, he looked down at the black drawing on his forearm. He would always be a Death Eater; he had taken that oath. Some part of him would always belong to the Dark Lord. He didn't want to belong to anyone. He wanted to be a Malfoy, his own man.
In an act of desperation, he took the soap from the dish and scrubbed and scrubbed but the Dark Mark would not budge. Instead, it turned an unsightly red and looked even worse than before. Draco did not stop scrubbing; he wanted to keep going until his skin came off. Anything -- anything! -- was better than being marked. The let the soap fall to the ground and he used his fingernails to claw at the skin. He was not the Dark Lord's servant anymore and any reminder of the mistake he had made -- of the mistake his father and Snape had made as well -- had to be destroyed.
His skin became too inflamed for him to continue. Blood was running down his arm and he watched its progress down the drain. His head hit a tile on the shower wall and he sobbed, not just because of the mark on his arm, but because he had lost everything in one go. He had lost his family and his friends and the control he had over his emotions.
His life was now at the disposal of the last person who would ever trust him or like him. He hated his mark because Harry hated him because of it. He hated himself because he knew Harry hated him, too, and every day he felt the yearning for the other boy grow into a monster he could not control.
It took him a while to pick himself up off the hard shower floor. When he could no longer ignore the pains in his stomach, he emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his waist, and dashed toward his bedroom. He dressed carefully and remembered to heal the cuts on his arm so that they would not ruin his white shirt. When he was ready, he took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. He listened, but could hear no one. Carefully, he turned the knob and ventured down to the kitchen. Mrs. Figg was at the stove, preparing what smelt like bacon and eggs. Draco's stomach grumbled in approval.
Mrs. Figg nearly threw the frying pan when she realized he was in the doorway.
"I'm sorry," he apologized quickly. "I didn't mean to startle you, I was just hungry."
Mrs. Figg nodded. "Quite all right! Quite all right. I'll just, uh... finish here, and you can have a seat and... yes, there's a good lad."
Draco took a seat. Instantly, a cat leaped into his lap and he rubbed behind its ears absently.
"That'll be Mr. Tibbles," said Mrs. Figg affectionately as she brought his plate to him. She beckoned to the cat and he leapt off to follow her. Draco dug into his breakfast enthusiastically while he watched Muggle children play in a yard across the street.
Mrs. Figg came back into the kitchen and bustled around for a while before sitting at the table across from Draco. She was watching him anxiously and it was beginning to put him off his food. He smiled at her politely and she smiled weakly back at him, but continued to wring her hands.
"Where did you say Potter lived?" Draco asked, in between mouthfuls.
Her eyes widened. "Harry? Oh, two streets down, on Privet Drive."
"And you've been living here for how long?"
She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Nearly sixteen years."
"On Dumbledore's orders?" He asked cautiously.
At the name, her breath hitched and she seemed to grow in anxiousness. "Yes."
"But you're a witch, right?" Draco still hadn't seen her with a wand.
She shook her head. "I'm a squib."
Draco's eyes widened. "That was very clever of Dumbledore."
She looked severe. "Albus Dumbledore was a brilliant man."
Draco averted his eyes. "I know he was," he said softly.
"And Harry Potter will become a very powerful wizard," she added, more to convince herself than anything else.
"I know that, too," Draco said to himself.
"Now," said Mrs. Figg, growing in confidence, "There's really not much for someone your age to do around here. Are you of age?"
Draco was startled by the question, but nodded anyway, "My birthday was last week."
"You understand that any magic you use is traceable?" She asked.
Draco nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
"While you're here, I think it's best if you leave your wand in your room. It'll remove any temptation to use it, do you understand?" She gathered confidence as she spoke. "It's not so much the muggles we have to worry about as it is the Ministry. They'll be wanting you, I reckon."
Draco nodded. He felt his face grow hot. "I could... for your safety, I could just go."
She shot him a sharp look. "Why would you do that? No, no, you're to stay here! Those were Dumbledore's orders and even though..." she sniffed loudly, "even though he's gone, we'll still follow his orders."
Draco pushed his plate away. "Can I go for a walk?" He asked, suddenly feeling claustrophobic in the small house.
"No, I'm sorry, dear, but I've been given orders that you're not to leave the house yet."
Draco didn't argue. He cleared the table for Miss. Figg and she bustled around the kitchen for a while, occasionally throwing Draco furtive looks, until he finally asked her if she knew when Potter would be back.
"Next week, I think. They'll be having the funeral at the school and then the children will go home."
Draco nodded, not really surprised the term would not be finishing. It made him feel oddly better to think that if he couldn't finish his sixth year, no one else would be either.
"How many people know I'm here?"
Mrs. Figg looked appraisingly at him. "Snape, of course, Remus Lupin, who came by this morning, a few other trusted members of the Order and myself."
Draco nodded -- he had thought the voice from earlier was familiar. He was a little bothered by Lupin knowing his location, because he knew Lupin ran with Greyback's pack. He didn't know if the werewolf was a spy or not, but it was enough to unsettle him. "Lupin's, uh... Harry's friend, right?" he asked cautiously.
Mrs. Figg smiled approvingly. "Yes, Remus was a friend of Harry's parents. The only one left, you see... not counting Peter Pettigrew."
Draco thought back to Spinner's End and the door Snape always kept locked. "I know where he's at!" he exclaimed triumphantly.
"I'm sorry?" Mrs. Figg looked alarmed by his outburst.
"Sorry, I mean Wormtail--Pettigrew--he's with Snape."
Mrs. Figg raised an eyebrow, "Yes, I believe the Order is aware of where Pettigrew is, but now that Snape has left..."
Draco immediately came to Snape's defense. "But Snape hasn't! He's not a traitor."
It became apparent that although Mrs. Figg was willing to shelter him, she was not willing to trust his word. "This is not something we should be talking about, dear," she said quickly. "I believe Nymphadora will be by later, it's her job to make sure all the wards are functioning before Harry arrives. You can talk to her, how does that sound?"
He didn't know this Nymphadora person and he doubted she would be willing to listen to a word he had to say, but he nodded anyway.
Draco ended up spending the entire day in the sitting room trying to figure out how to work the box with the glass front. Mrs. Figg had turned it on with a Re-moat. A portrait had appeared in the glass, and then a different portrait had replaced it. And then the people in the portraits had all disappeared and the whole thing had changed! A man appeared to talk about a toilet cleaning solution. Draco had tried one of the buttons on the Re-moat and the picture had changed once more. As he found, the more he hit the buttons, the more the picture changed. Finally, he was drawn to a scene with a husband who had just found his wife with another man. The couple fought over custody of their children, before ultimately realizing that they still loved one another. Draco felt moved at the end when the couple reunited.
Quickly, he used the Re-moat to find something else.
When Nymphadora arrived, the Tell-a-vision had been turned off, and Draco was persuaded to go with Mrs. Figg out to the garden.
When she ushered him back to the house, Draco found himself sitting at the table across from a pink haired witch in blue denims and a bright orange T-shirt.
"Wotcha!" she said in greeting.
Draco nodded to her, curious about her, but wary.
She continued to smile brightly at him. "You don't know who I am, do you?"
Draco shook his head, looking to where Mrs. Figg was preparing tea.
"I'm Nymphadora Tonks, but everyone calls me Tonks. My mother is Andromeda Black Tonks."
Draco's eyebrows rose. "You're a Black?"
She smiled. "We met once before, you were eight or nine and your mother stopped by to, well..." she ran a hand through her hair and shook her head.
Draco knew of his mother and her sister's tumultuous relationship and quickly asked, "You were at Hogwarts this year, weren't you?"
"Yep! I was part of the team of Aurors assigned to the school."
"And you're a member of the Order of the Phoenix?"
She nodded. "But that's top secret, so mum's the word."
Draco smiled weakly as Mrs. Figg brought over tea. Nymphadora waited for Draco to take a sip before she began to drink her own. Mrs. Figg watched them both anxiously before leaving the room to go feed her new kitten.
"How did you get here, Draco?" Tonks asked, softly.
Before he had time to process the question, Draco found himself answering, "Snape gave me a Portkey." Belatedly, he realized he'd been slipped Veritaserum.
"Just relax," Tonks whispered, as Draco began to panic. "You shouldn't have anything to worry about. Now, what happened yesterday on the tower?"
His eyes were wide and he fought the potion furiously. He didn't care so much that Tonks would know about his attempts on Dumbledore's life. He imagined the entire Wizarding World knew by now. What worried him was that if Tonks was to start asking him questions about Harry, he might be forced to admit things that, until the day before, he had thought he'd be able to keep secret forever.
In the end the potion won, and Draco was forced to submit to her questioning. "Madam Rosmerta saw Dumbledore leaving," he answered in a monotonous drawl. "I let the Death Eaters into the school and fired the Dark Mark into the sky above the school. Dumbledore came back. I found him on the Astronomy tower; he was very weak. I disarmed him and he promised to protect me. Alecto, Amycus and Greyback joined me. They wanted me to kill Dumbledore. I didn't do it and then Snape came up to the tower. Snape killed Dumbledore because I wouldn't."
Steeling herself, Tonks asked, "And after?"
"We ran. Potter chased us, but we ran. The rest of the Death Eaters followed us. We Apparated from the Forbidden Forest."
"Where did you go?"
"We went to Spinner's End, just Snape and I."
"And what happened?"
His eyes pleaded with her. He wanted the questioning to stop. He did not want to continue. "Snape said I had a choice. He said I couldn't save my mother anymore. He told me he knew I was part-veela and I had to go to my soul mate. He gave me the Portkey and I came here."
Draco waited for her to ask who his soul mate was, but she never did. She was watching him carefully.
"Why didn't you kill Dumbledore?" She asked, her eyes boring into his.
Draco was alarmed, as he automatically answered, "I didn't want to kill him. He'd never done anything to me. He didn't deserve to die."
Tonks looked away, and cleared her throat. "I found Harry on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of the year. You had broken his nose. Why?"
Draco was as thoughtful as the truth serum allowed him to be and it took him a moment to choose his words. "Potter followed Zabini into our compartment; he was trying to see if I'd admit to being a Death Eater. He knew and I hated him for it."
"Do you hate Harry Potter?"
Draco averted his eyes. "No."
"Would you hurt him, if you could, in any way, either emotional or physically?"
Draco looked away from the neon-haired witch. "No, I could never hurt him," he whispered. As he said this, he felt as though he was finally admitting it to himself. He could never hurt Harry -- Harry, not Potter, not anymore -- because Harry was all he had, and all he'd ever have. Draco's heart raced and he looked up at Tonks, once again pleading with her to stop.
"Would you let someone else hurt him?"
Draco's heart was in his throat, and he honestly had no idea how it got there, "No, of course not! I love him!" The last sentence was out before he could think it through and it was as much a surprise to him as it was to Tonks. She sat rigid in her chair, stunned by his bold declaration.
Tonks kept silent for a long time after his confession. Draco could see she did not know what to make of him. She tugged at her hair and it changed from pink to blue and back again.
"Are you working with Severus Snape?" She asked, though he thought she knew the answer and only wanted confirmation.
"No," said Draco.
Tonk's mouth opened slightly in surprise. "Do you know what he's up to?"
"He went back to the Dark Lord." In an attempt to help Snape, he added, "but he's loyal to Dumbledore."
"He killed Dumbledore!" Tonks said angrily. The anger didn't suit her, in Draco's opinion, especially not with blue hair.
He continued to defend Snape because Snape had always defended him. "Snape had to do it, he made a vow. Dumbledore wanted him to do it."
"Why would Dumbledore want to die?"
"Because he was already dying!"
A cup shattered in the next room and Tonks took a deep breath, "Whose side are you on?"
"Harry's," Draco answered quickly.
Silence followed his answer.
She tried a new tactic with her questioning. "Is Snape working for Voldemort?"
"No. He's working against him." He was less nervous now, and more irritated that she was questioning Snape's loyalty. Hadn't Snape proved his loyalty by saving him, as Dumbledore's final request had been?
"How do you know?" She asked angrily.
"He told me before he gave me the Portkey. He's not loyal to the Dark Lord." His voice was rising and he wanted desperately for her to believe that Snape was still on their side.
She took a deep breath, watching him with shrewd eyes. "Where is Voldemort?"
"I don't know."
"Where were you marked?"
He shot her an incredulous look. "My left forearm."
Tonks glared at him, as if he was being slow on purpose. "I mean the location. Where were you when you were marked?"
"I don't know. I was Apparated there by Aunt Bellatrix, we arrived in a room with the Dark Lord, and I never saw anything but the room. I never Apparated there on my own either."
"Can you give me the location of any Death Eater besides yourself and Snape?" She asked, her anger diminishing.
Earlier in the day, he had tried to tell Mrs. Figg where Wormtail was hiding, but as he sat across from an actual Auror he realized that he might just be risking Snape's freedom as well. She had not seemed convinced of Snape's loyalty. Instead, he gave her a general answer that was honest. "Most of them are with Voldemort, I believe. The ones on the run from the law, anyway."
"Do you know of any Death Eaters that have recently been recruited?"
Draco shook his head, "He's not really recruiting right now. He's just after Harry."
"Would you die to protect Harry?" She asked quietly.
Draco gave her a look of deepest loathing. "I would die if I didn't," he said. And that was the key.
"There are ways around the veela magic. You could give up Harry and still live."
"It would be a half-existence, a dark and lonely life," Draco answered, his eyes empty. He had thought of this, of course. He had even found the perfect spell, but even it had an expiration date, and every spell and every potion ultimately led to the same end -- a lonely and depressing end. Veelas were not meant to live alone. To choose that path was suicidal. He knew that, having fled Voldemort, he risked losing his life, and was gambling with the chance that Harry might not want him. If either of these possibilities came to pass, however, it would still lead to a more pleasant end than an entire lifetime of sadness and living alone. No one would ever be able to fill the void his soul mate left.
"But you could possibly save yourself and your mother," Tonks suggested, sipping her tea slowly.
"I would never be happy," Draco whispered, hating himself instantly for knowing he would choose Harry over his own mother.
Tonks gave him another appraising look before declaring, "I'm done, no more questions. Draco Malfoy, you are cleared to live in Little Whinging and communicate with Harry Potter."
It wasn't the wards she had come to test, after all. Draco tried to smile at her, and to suppress his rage at not being trusted. He knew he wasn't to be trusted. He wouldn't have trusted himself either.
"A few members of the Order are taking shifts watching Harry this summer. I'm part of the team, so we'll be seeing each other." She got up and walked out; Draco heard her say good-bye to Mrs. Figg.
He spent the rest of the evening in his room, in his bed, trying not to think about what had changed between himself and Harry and when it had happened. At the beginning of the year, he had been unable to do more than break Harry's nose. Then, when the other boy had seen him crying in the bathroom, Draco had thought he could perform an Unforgivable on him, but afterwards, after Harry had sliced him open, he had felt guilty for trying.
And he couldn't kill Dumbledore because he knew the old man was the only person who could help Harry.
He had been of age an entire week, and the need to be near Harry was growing fast. He knew what would happen if Harry did not forgive him, or even if he never saw Harry again.
Without Harry, a depression deeper than the one he could already feel would set in and would not dissipate until Harry was able to return his affections. To be able to find your soul mate is a blessing, he had read once, if you waste it, it is only fair to face the consequences. A veela who knows who their mate is and does not go directly to that person, will feel their magical powers decline and will drop into a deep depression, ultimately feeling that his or her only option is suicide.
Draco turned onto his stomach on the bed and buried his face in his pillow. Every sign was pointing toward his demise. Being bound to Harry Potter meant sharing his rather high mortality risk, and being without him meant suicide. At least with Harry, there was a fifty-fifty chance of survival.
In the end, Draco became too tired to think, so he curled into a ball and drifted into an uneasy sleep.
