A/N: So, my friends. This is it. This is the chapter I have perhaps most looked forward to writing and that it came out well, I think, only makes me more excited for you to read it. This chapter is perhaps, more or less, the main reason DEDC had to be edited in the first place. So, I hope that doesn't get your hopes up too terribly. I will say this before I leave you, every so often, JKR's timeline and mine touch. This and the following chapter is one of those times. So, to be informed about what's going on at Hogwarts, see the end of chapter 24-- Occlumency-- of OotP. No High Inquisitor Umbridge on this timeline, though. ;) Enjoy!
Yours forever, Tsona
As the winter months came on, earlier than they had in England and with a greater ferocity than Draco had ever seen, the temperature dropped so that students and Death Eaters alike walked through the hallways in several pullovers, their thickest traveling cloaks, and warmest pair of gloves, and still saw their breath rise in thick clouds. Draco struggled to curl stiff fingers in fur-lined dragonhide around the thin shaft of a quill. By early November, the first floor classrooms' windows were blocked by snow drifts and the whole floor seemed caught in a perpetual state of twilight. A battalion of house-elves was assigned the sole task of finding enough firewood in the blanketed woods to fuel the many fires kept burning inside the castle. Draco had seen them crossing the entrance hall with their tiny arms full, icicles hanging from their noses, and frost lining the hair of their ears, all thought of keeping invisible forgotten. Several, Draco learned, had already had to have been dragged back into the castle by the others and propped before the roaring kitchen fire bundled in several woolen blankets and with a half-pint of butterbeer.
Alecto Carrow announced in late November that they would begin actually attempting the Cruciatus Curse and brought in a large jar of wolf spiders to practice on. Draco stood beside the desk looking down at his. It seemed quite harmless, merely standing there flexing its pinchers. His eyes wandered around the room to where his classmates had eagerly begun practicing. Several of the spiders had rolled over onto their backs, squirming, writhing, their long legs twitching miserably. Draco knew if the spiders had been capable of human speech their screams would have resounded throughout the room, long and unbroken. His eyes fell back on the wolf spider before him. Looking into its many eyes, Draco remembered the flame in his bones so great that he had thought they might all turn to ash beneath the curse, heard the echoes of his own prolonged screams, the pain in his lip as he bit through it, the taste of blood and tears that had streamed, unable to be stemmed, from his eyes.
He raised his wand, but it shook slightly in his hand. The first red jet missed, sailing past the spider and leaving a long, black scorch mark in the desk. Draco chanced a glance about, but no one seemed to have noticed; Carrow was several feet away praising Theodore Nott's spellwork. Draco took aim again, making sure to steady his hand, even if he couldn't quite keep the rest of him from trembling. This time the spell connected, but the spider, rather than rolling over, curling in upon itself, was flung backward to the end of the desk and seemed otherwise unharmed.
Enraged, on the defensive, the wolf spider reared up, reaching out with its long legs. It started to scuttle quickly toward Draco, its many eyes glaring. Draco took several, slow steps backward, not willing to wait for the vindictive arachnid to reach him. He knocked against the desk behind him. It tipped and Cat Yaxley screamed as her own spider went sliding toward her.
"Malfoy!" Carrow snapped, hurrying over. She saw the advancing spider and grabbed the jar from her desk. She quickly had it behind the glass, its pinchers scraping vainly against its prison. Carrow shook her head as she walked away from him and did not offer another spider, nor stay to hear an explanation. Draco had the distinct impression she had been watching him all along. Nott was staring at him openly, his mouth hanging and his green eyes wide with surprise.
Christmas passed in Durmstrang without so much as a blip. Draco found himself looking up at the low ceiling of Great Hall and missing the enchanted snow falling warm and dry on his shoulders, in his hair, and into the bowl of steaming, sugar-dusted oatmeal he would have been enjoying at Hogwarts. The walls seemed particularly drab and the room horribly open without Hogwarts' twelve, glittering spruces. The corridors that day and the week or so preceding were taut with silence, all the students buttoning their lips, none of them quite daring to burst into the carols that tingled on the tips of their tongues; their eyes darted toward one another, each hoping for someone else to be the instigator. None of them went home, but they ploughed on with their work. No presents came as on the holiday, like always, there was no owl post.
Draco found Crabbe, Goyle, and Theodore Nott in the break between Wormtail's class-- on stealth, concealment, and other tricks of spying-- and lunch to exchange a cursory "Happy Christmas" with them. He sensed then that each of the others was feeling some resentment at having been forced to stay on over the ignored Yuletide. Theodore had never spent the Hogwarts holiday inside the castle and Draco pitied him the confinement even as he consoled himself by reminding himself that at least he was missing the annual Malfoy Christmas party with all its glittering facade hiding the emptiness of the boxes beneath the tree.
That night Draco hadn't dared to bring up the holiday to the Dark Lord, but had moved on with his lessons.
Among the incantations of Secrets of the Darkest Art Draco had found the Veritas Curse, a spell forerunner to Veritaserum that had been banned upon the discovery of the potion because victims suffered greatly under the curse and sometimes were driven crazy by the pain and the forcible removal of their most secret feelings. However, unlike the potion, a person under its influence could not stopper truths halfway to his mouth. Draco shuddered to think of himself beneath the curse and was hesitant to ask the Dark Lord to help him master it. But his mentor seemed to have memorized the contents of the book and had developed the habit of asking Draco whether he had mastered a curse if Draco failed to ask him about the more gruesome spells. Draco didn't think he'd ever forget the twisted face of the dark-eyed house-elf-- Vlad, who had hated Karkaroff, but hated the Dark Lord more, and who fancied the pretty house-elf Lita, who worked in the kitchens-- as he writhed on the ground.
Draco fell slouched against the bed when he lifted the curse. The elf at his feet continued to whimper and moan, curling in upon himself.
"I'm impressed," the Dark Lord said, and Draco looked at him with dilated eyes and ragged breaths.
Late one Monday in February, Draco burrowed under the numerous fleece blankets and the downy quilt and cradled the open book in his lap, against his drawn up knees to await the Dark Lord. He turned the page and his eyes fell across the heading 'Inferi'. Below this was an illustration of one of the monsters, an old, rotting corpse brought back to life by Dark magic. Draco glanced around the room, not wanting to meet the empty eyes of the ink sketch. Would the Dark Lord quiz him on this as well? Or, like Horcruxes, was this a topic he'd be allowed to skip?
There was a faint knock on the door. The Dark Lord glided in, but left the door wide behind him. "Well?" he asked.
"Good evening, my lord," Draco tried hopefully, thinking he was asking for some genuflection. Draco wondered if he ought to stand and bow as well. He was still not certain of the politesse that applied to their odd relationship.
"Yes," the Dark Lord, breathed, his snakelike nostril's flaring. Draco noticed then that his eyes burned brighter than he had seen them for some time and that his mouth seemed lighter. He left it parted, sucked in the cold air of Draco's cell with a faint hint of a grin. "It is. And I want you to share it with me."
Draco, watching him, reached for the scrap of parchment he was using as a bookmark, and closed the book. Laying it aside, he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and sat up straighter. "I don't think I understand, my lord."
"Get dressed, Draco. I'll wait in the corridor."
"But where are we going?" Draco called.
The door closed on him as a response.
Draco stared at the door for a few moments filled with only the hiss of the Dark Lord's silvery-blue flames. Then, seeing no alternative, no reason he ought not to, he followed the Dark Lord's command.
Draco dressed with care, uncertain of the occasion or venue, the pullover he wore over a fleece shirt was a deep grey that he thought would darken his eyes nicely so that they would stand out from his pale skin. The vicuna wool cloak pinned below his pointed chin with a handsome silver brooch of two snakes locked in combat. Beneath his boots, though, he wore thick woolen socks, simple and warm.
As soon as he opened the door, the Dark Lord started up the dark corridor so that Draco, dashing to keep up with his lengthened stride, had no chance to ask again where he was being taken.
The Dark Lord led him up the dusty steps and into the entrance hall. Light was spilling from the doors to the Great Hall, and voices drifted with the dust motes in its ray, most of them gruff and hoarse.
Draco followed the Dark Lord into the hall. The tables had again been pushed along the sides of the wall and the open floor was taken up instead by a cluster of people, some of them masked Death Eaters, but also nine ragged men and a woman whose faces were uncovered. Each of these seemed filthier than the last, more gaunt, paler. Each wore robes of a horizontal black and white stripes. Draco jogging to the Dark Lord's side, muttered, "Is there another meeting?"
"There will be," the Dark Lord answered back and there was a gleam in his red eyes, a turn to his mouth. "Didn't I tell you you could attend?"
"You did."
Cruel and disparaging eyes turned on Draco as he approached the milling group with the Dark Lord, some from behind masks, others not. The eyes of the ratty bunch were hollow, not unlike those of the illustrated Inferius, eyes in which the spark of life could hardly be seen, as if someone had snuffed that fire long ago and had left only the shell of these bodies to walk to the earth. Draco thought immediately that he would not want to cross these people.
"Hang on!" suddenly said the woman, whose black, unkempt hair spread out in a wild cloud from her dark, sunken face. Or was the darkness of it grime? "I know him! That's your boy, isn't it, Lucius?" She looked toward one of the staring, masked Death Eaters, who nodded stiffly, silently. "Cissy's son?"
"Yes, Bella," the Dark Lord smiled.
"Well!" The woman let out a raucous laugh. "I haven't seen you, Draco, since you were an ickle, wittle tot. Still clinging to Cissy's leg, then, you were."
Her horrible baby voice stopped Draco and he stared at her, horrified. The Dark Lord stopped beside him, glanced down. "How does she know me?" Draco whispered.
"Draco, meet your Aunt Bellatrix."
"Aunt--"
The wild woman grinned at him. Her teeth were yellowed and brown at the edges. And now Draco knew where this group had come from, why they looked so hideous.
"You broke into Azkaban!" Draco gasped, swinging round to the Dark Lord.
His father's cold snap of a voice answered from beneath one of the hoods, "Honestly, Draco! How dare you question--"
The Dark Lord held up a white hand to the man, but kept his eyes on Draco, smiling. "Yes, I did," he said calmly. "You can't expect me-- or us-- to rise without a proper army."
He moved away from Draco toward the convicts, moved among them, introducing each by name. "Antonin Dolohov, Augustus Rookwood-- I'd like to speak with you afterward, Rookwood-- your Uncle Roldolphus, his brother Rabastan Lestrange, Mulciber-- he used to work alongside your father quite often-- he's excellent with the Imperius as well-- Travers--"
Draco couldn't take any of it in, but stared at the vicious faces, each one of which bowed before their master. Bellatrix, as the Dark Lord paused before her, reached out a bony hand, touched his briefly before he strode away. Her husband Roldolphus, thin and even now wide-eyed as though in fright, grasped her other hand, peered across at her.
When the introductions were through, one of them-- Rabastan Lestrange-- looked toward Draco. His pale eyes, among the other's, were particularly vacant, making his glare all the more pointed. He asked the Dark Lord, "Is he still your--"
"Yes," the Dark Lord said, glaring at the thickset man pointedly. "Do you think I'd have brought him along tonight otherwise? Introduced him to all of you?"
Lestrange bowed his head. "No, my lord, of course not. Forgive me."
"Just don't question it again. In fact...." The Dark Lord turned and looked at Draco, still some yards away. "Perhaps he ought to have the honor." With a horrid grin, he said, "Come here, Draco."
Draco checked quickly behind him, then shuffled forward, keeping his head down, not wanting to meet the eyes of the convicts whose ranks he joined. He knew he was standing before the Dark Lord when he saw the long sweep of his black robe. Long, white fingers curled around his left wrist, held his arm before him, and Draco shuddered in his frozen grasp, struggled against the impulse to fight for escape, bit down on his lip.
"My lord, do you think this really proper? To--"
"Lucius, you yourself swore the boy would stand by me, did you not?"
"Of course, my lord, but--"
"Well, then let me treat him as mine." The red eyes turned to Draco again, who was quite bemused by these exchanges. "This may hurt some, they tell me." He pushed back Draco's sleeve, revealing the grinning skull with its horrible serpent tongue. Draco shivered to remember the spark that had shot between the Dark Lord's finger and the Mark when he had first examined it, the day Draco had been brought to him.
"Wait, my lord, what--"
But the white forefinger pressed against the Mark and his question was lost in a howl. The Mark burned black, seared on his arm, and as the Dark Lord released him to draw his wand, raise his hands to the ceiling, Draco stumbled backward, clutching his arm tight to him. Wind whipped up past Draco at the Dark Lord's command, tugged at Draco's cloak, at the hems of the Death Eaters' robes. It roared past his ears, and Draco saw the Death Eaters huddling into themselves, swaying to keep their feet.
And then all was still.
The Dark Lord lowered his wand and looked around him. Into the sudden stillness came the many pops, and snaps, and cracks of Apparating Death Eaters, masked and robed. From the rest of the castle came the Death Eaters who remained at Durmstrang, tugging on masks as they entered: the Carrows, Wormtail with his gleaming, silver hand.... Draco spied wide eyes beneath the hoods as they caught sight of their newly rescued comrades. Several clasped hands with the convicts. Bellatrix pulled one of the smaller new arrivals into a tight hug and then pointed to Draco, whispering. The smaller Death Eater turned to follow Bellatrix's finger and she smiled at him, her blue eyes agleam. Draco returned it.
"Form ranks," the Dark Lord called before Draco could move forward to greet his mother. "Let me see that all of you are here."
The Death Eaters moved into the great circle Draco had seen before through the chink in the door. Even the convicts seemed to have places; their hooded companions shifted easily aside to leave spots open for them. Bellatrix stood between Lucius Malfoy and her husband Roldolphus.
Draco was left standing beside the Dark Lord in the middle, as the wizard raised his wand again and the winds whipped downward this time, crashing over all of them and making the circle sway.
When the storm quieted, the Dark Lord glanced down at Draco, considering. "For now, go stand between your mother and father, Draco."
As he moved into place, trembling somewhat, his mother's hand, hidden in a shapely dragonhide glove, moved to his shoulder, rested there. She didn't smell like herself-- she had removed her favorite paperwhite perfume, perhaps for anonynmity's sake-- but he knew it was her from the smile in her bright blue eyes he could see through the slits in her hood. "It's good to see you," she murmured.
"It's good to see you too, Mother," he whispered back.
His aunt shushed them both. Her eyes were rapt on the Dark Lord, grey eyes-- like his-- and oddly misty. Draco thought of cobwebs. His father, between him and her, was determinedly avoiding his gaze, staring straight ahead, his lips pressed thin.
"Welcome, my Death Eaters. You see why I have summoned you all here tonight, I think: To welcome back to our ranks several who had been missing." He glanced here at all the unmasked convicts. "Once, these were some of my most faithful. These are some of those that braved Azkaban rather than deny me. I remember telling you all last June I would have them back, and here they are. Lord Voldemort keeps his promises, does he not?"
There was a collective shudder around the circle as the Dark Lord pronounced his own name. Draco couldn't help joining it. The hooded and masked Death Eaters all muttered noises of assent and affirmation.
"Already I have spoken with them, and it has been agreed that they will remain here with me, far from the reach of the Aurors and the Ministry. From here, they will help me to push forward with those plans already in motion, and to devise new plots.
And we've another newcomer too." The Dark Lord turned, eyes blazing with pleasure, on Draco. Draco dropped his gaze as he continued, "My son, Draco, has joined us for the first time tonight."
Draco could feel the eyes of the whole circle upon him, but only acknowledged one pair. His father's grey eyes-- nearly twins of Draco's-- had swung round, wide to fasten on him. There was a sort of flash of furor in them. His hands in their dragonhide clenched and unclenched.
"I have been working with him, instructing him. He has been learning well, and I hope you will all give him your respect."
As the talk turned to the sort of briefs and stratagems Draco had overheard before, he allowed his eyes to wander around the circle. He was, he noted, the only Death Eater who appeared anywhere near his age. Practically everyone seemed larger and burlier, taller, or old and bent.
"Already I have the giant's allegiance. It is time to turn my attention to the dementors. I doubt it will take much longer. Tonight's meeting went well. They seemed quite eager to do whatever I required of them. I think memory must be long in a dementor," he continued thoughtfully. "There seemed to be some recall of the old days. They're certainly bitter about their imprisonment." He returned to the circle at large. "Fudge, Wormtail has told me, allowed some of them to patrol Hogwarts in the wake of Sirius Black's escape. They had a taste of freedom there. They remembered what it was like to have a steady supply of prey. I need to discover, though, whether the dementors can be freed from Azkaban without my intervention. Can they simply fly from the island or--"
"Please, my lord," said a voice from beneath one of the hoods across the circle. The man bent low in a sweeping bow, arms outspread. "The dementors are fastened to the island by means of certain charms, renewed every year by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures in cooperation with the Aurors."
"Ah. Are they simple charms?"
A second voice answered, a voice like a steely hiss. "No, my lord, quite complex, I think."
"Can you volunteer for the job, Macnair?"
"Generally, my lord, the job goes to someone higher up. I am a mere executioner." Here he lowered himself in a humble bow, grinning. Draco thought there was something mocking in the formality, but the Dark Lord seemed not to notice it.
"Jugson, how many Aurors generally go?"
"Only one or two," said the first Death Eater. "We're mostly bodyguards, there if something should go wrong."
"Can you volunteer and keep the spells from being performed?"
The man swept another bow. "Of course, my lord, it would be an honor."
"When is the next time they'll be renewed?"
"Not till the summer," said Jugson.
"June, I think," Macnair agreed.
"And how many from Magical Creatures are involved?"
"Not many. Three, maybe four."
The Dark Lord's hairless eyebrow ridges rose as he turned the first man. "A tall order."
"I can handle it."
"See that you do. The Confundus Charm will work nicely. You can convince the men from Magical Creatures they have already performed the spell, that is simple enough. It will be a matter of keeping them from the Ministry long enough to make it believable. You will have to send the dementors to me, as well."
"Quite simple, my lord. I will not fail you."
"No, I don't suspect you will." There was a threat in the steel of his voice. "And while we're discussing the Ministry. One of its members is lately deceased. Avery--" one of the Death Eaters, shorter than many of the others, jumped "--I believe it was on your advice that Broderick Bode was convinced to help me?"
"Yes, my lord," the man agreed, trembling visibly, even from his place across the circle.
"It appears as though that there were charms around the prophecy, did you know that, Avery? Lucius kept him under the Imperius only with great difficulty, he fought horribly, and yet the jolt from those charms broke all his power over him. We are fortunate that it also addled his brains, and he had to be taken to St. Mungo's. Perhaps you can explain what happened if you're so knowledgeable about the Department of Mysteries?"
"My lord! I don't know!" The man's eyes darted around the circle, as though hoping someone would vouch for him; no one did. "I didn't know that there were charms! I thought-- Bode was an Unspeakable! Oughtn't he to have been able to--"
"Apparently not." Avery quailed beneath his fiery glare. The Dark Lord continued to the group, "Nott was able to feign friendship with the man. Mungo's healers never have been careful about who they let in. Who would want to harm an injured or sick man? So when Bode began to recover speech, I believe, Nott anonymously sent him a Christmas present that proved fatal, did you not, Nott?"
Theodore Nott's aging father appeared even frailer than he was, bent-backed beside two of the largest Death Eaters-- men whose bouldery shape made Draco recall illustrations he had seen of giants-- as he inclined his head. "A cutting of Devil's Snare, my lord. Kept alive and healthy long enough by Mistress Strout, who I believe, also encouraged him to care for the plant himself." He bowed here to another of the Death Eaters.
She turned her head away from him and batted her hand as if to swat away the compliment, giggling girlishly.
"And no one suspects?"
"I've been suspended," said the woman. "On full pay, but all the same. They've questioned me, of course, but I've kept silent for Than-- Nott." She turned blue eyes on Theodore's father and cocked a shrug as if in apology.
He gave her a nod.
"So, it seems for now, Avery, you're false information has caused... not much damage. Yet, it does put me in need of another plan and set me back months. I'm not pleased, Avery."
"N--n--no, my lord. Of-- of course not. But I-- I did think--"
"Next time, Avery, verify your facts before you give them to me. Or else, what good are they?"
"It-- It might have worked."
"But it did not. And now I must begin anew and have wasted time on fruitless schemes."
There was a slight shiver that ran through the circle. Draco felt it pass him like a breeze. There was fear in the eyes of those around him, in the eyes of the unmasked convicts as they looked on the Dark Lord.
"Severus, Lucius-- any news on the identity of the one who sent the dementors after Potter?"
The Death Eater standing on his mother's left shook his head. Draco looked curiously at Professor Snape, the Potions' master of Hogwarts. His dark eyes met Draco's momentarily. They bored through him with their intensity and Draco wasn't sure the professor was glad to see him.
Lucius' oily voice rolled from Draco's other side, "No, my lord, but I'm sure whoever it was has only helped you. Fudge continues to return to the incident, to use it as evidence that Dumbledore is trying to undermine--"
There was a soft hiss that might have hid a chuckle; another shiver worked its way around the circle. Draco felt his father beside him shudder most violently. "Helped me, Lucius? I'm beginning to suspect I can use Potter yet. This attack only makes me ever more eager to have the dementors at my bidding. Should this person try again...."
"Of-- of course, my lord," Lucius breathed. Draco chanced a glance at his father's face. He was struggling to hold the Dark Lord's fiery gaze. His eyes, very grey, kept darting toward the floor. "I merely meant-- I mean, after all-- Potter would have been more easily apprehended had he been exp--"
"I have stolen him from beneath Dumbledore's crooked nose before, Lucius. And this time the boy himself has showed me the way to do it. Distance," the Dark Lord corrected the stammering man, "does not seem to be an issue in this case. Nor do Hogwarts' enchantments. Plus, his being at Hogwarts, Severus has informed me, seems to erode his trust in his old protector, heightens his weakest emotions still more."
"But, my lord," Lucius tried, "you can't have known-- we all would have expected--" The Dark Lord's glare was so fierce that Draco's father broke off with a bone-rattling shudder that was echoed by the whole ring. The Death Eaters nearest him turned away, except Bellatrix, who continued to ogle the Dark Lord.
"Ah well, come June, if Jugson does his job, I suppose, it won't matter. I can ask the dementors then myself. In the meantime, we must hope whoever it is was does not try again." He said, "Perhaps that is enough for tonight." His eyes roved around the circle. "Rookwood, Avery, I need you both to stay. And Severus, if you don't mind, I'd like a further word with you about Potter."
Lucius looked up to glare at Snape, who nodded to the Dark Lord, smirking.
"Until next time, then, my Death Eaters." He raised his wand and the winds again rushed upward. Narcissa grabbed her son to keep herself steady. Draco peered up at her through eyes silted against the winds.
When the gales calmed, she looked down at him again. Her blue eyes found his grey ones. "Keep safe, Draco. Mind him." She bent down and kissed his cheek once before departing with a nearly silent pop. His father lingered only a moment afterward to frown at Draco, saying nothing. Then he too was gone, with a louder crack.
When every hooded Death Eater but Snape, the quaking Avery, and those who worked at Durmstrang had Disapparated, the Dark Lord raised his wand again. The winds whipped up around them, the air fell heavily on Draco, flattened his blonde locks to his head.
In the silence following, the Dark Lord looked around. His eyes rested first on Draco. "I expect you'll be in bed soon." Then his gaze traveled on to land on one of the convicts, pockmarked and hunched. "You first, Rookwood. Follow me. Avery-- be up at the office in a half an hour. Wait outside. Severus-- an hour."
He left and Rookwood trailed along behind him.
A/N: There you are, my friends. What did you think? Please understand, I very much enjoy politics. I enjoy schemes and the insider glimpses these meetings allow me. But, really, if JKR offers me Auntie Bella to play with, you can hardly expect me to ignore the gift. Look for her to have a role later. I had hoped she'd be a major player here, but fresh out of Azkaban, there's only so much she knows. So, we'll all have to wait. So, please review! It tends to be, the more I hear about a story, the more it is in the forefront of my mind and the more writing I do for it. All for the sake of you, my delightful readers! Thank you!
Yours forever, Tsona
