A/N I hate going to school, I really do. On the plus side, I am now officially into my second semester, sophomore year. Then again, that might not really be a plus. Fast forward to Christmas, s'il vous plait?
Oh look, me and my French.
Anyway! Finally updating. I know it's been a while, and I'm sorry. The most activity I've had on FFnet for a while now is me reading a million and then some Death Note fanfics (and the occasional Dramione). Yes, welcome the noob to the world of Death Note. How I lived this long without watching it, I don't know.
Also, I've just realized how short this sequel is going to be. From how I've thought it out, there will be at most five (give or take one) chapters left? Unless I find a way to pad it with… I d'know, anything. But we'll see. This story's kind of been writing itself all this while anyway (I did state in Not Like This that I hadn't planned on a sequel… and really, up until now, I'm not really planning it. It's just going places).
Written while watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Ah, nostalgia.
But! Enough babble. Chapter time!
xxxxx
Draco marveled at the Invisibility Cloak as he tugged it over his body and it immediately vanished. It was supple and smooth, flowing against him like water. He'd only ever seen these, never really used them. Oh, the things he could have accomplished if he'd owned one. He was fairly sure Potter's mindset was much the same and this was how he'd done so much without getting caught.
He moved quickly, quietly, through the forest, trying his damnednest not to get the cloak caught on branches and rocks. Despite his denials, he'd actually come to… not dislike Potter so much, and it wouldn't be very… prudent to tear his cloak. Especially since he hadn't exactly borrowed it, and was using to explore an avenue he hadn't informed them about. Clenching his teeth, Draco shoved down the muffins of… something in the vicinity of becoming guilt. He'd get Hermione back even if it meant ripping Potter's damn cloak to shreds.
The sky was dimming, the chirping of the birds slowly being replaced by the humming of crickets. A squirrel scampered around him, its paws almost catching the cloak and causing Draco to stumble. A sparrow flew down and nipped at the squirrel, and the squirrel chattered at it angrily until an owl's faraway hoot silenced it. Day sounds faded into the twilight, and Draco was suddenly struck by the peace of it all. Hours spent in surveillance, the past few months' events, and the general anxiety at knowing Hermione was in danger had stressed him out severely. He reached up to the bags around his eyes, fully feeling –for the first time- how much of himself he'd lost since his capture. The dusk was bringing on a serenity he hadn't felt in so long… a serenity he hadn't known since those stolen days with Hermione.
He squeezed his eyes shut and willed his mind not to call up the memories. He didn't want to ruin what peace he had attained, no matter how temporary it was. Just once, just this once, he simply wanted to be happy he was alive.
After a while, he reached the same tree he'd climbed earlier that day and leaned against it, catching his breath. All around him leaves rustled in the evening breeze. A firefly flitted before him, winking in the growing darkness. He watched it for a few moments, reveling in his newfound tranquility-
-until it was abruptly broken by a creak and short string of profanities, and Draco was reminded of his duty. He crouched low in the shadows, momentarily forgetting he was invisible, and narrowed his eyes at the silhouette emerging from the passage in the ground. It turned, and in the dying light Draco saw the familiar white mask.
A Death Eater.
Holding his breath, he watched as the Death Eater climbed out and straightened, its head shifting back and forth. This was it; this was Draco's chance. He drew his wand, shifting slightly to get a better target.
Crack.
Fuck. Draco looked down to the broken twig beneath his toes, then back up. The Death Eater had heard him. It was wary now, crouched in a defensive position, one hand tucked into the folds of its robes –presumably gripping its wand. Draco once again found himself pressed up against a tree, but this time he wasn't that frightened anymore. He forced himself to breathe normally as the Death Eater began creeping toward him. He can't see me, he reminded himself.
Instinctively, Draco pressed up harder against the tree the closer the Death Eater got. The hand gripping his wand was shaking slightly as he raised it, taking careful aim. As soon as the figure in front of him turned its back, he allowed himself a small smile as he whispered "Stupefy."
The jet of red light burst out of his wand.
Against all odds, the figure chose that very second to bend over.
The spell whizzed harmlessly over its target, missing completely. Draco, however, was not so fortunate; the Death Eater hadn't missed noticingit. Immediately it was back in defensive stance, and heading directly toward the source of the spell. Which, of course, meant it was heading directly toward Draco.
Cursing his rotten luck, Draco ducked down and tried to scurry away to the cover of the deeper forest. Panic did nothing for him; he blundered through the overgrowth noisily, attracting the attention of the Death Eater. The wind carried its voice over to the stumbling blonde boy, making him shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
"Where are you, you little sneak?"
Draco's gray eyes went wide as he recognized the voice. Surely not- it couldn't be- No. No, it couldn't. Not with what he knew. No, no, no. Merlin, please, no. That voice had been bad enough in his nightmares. But there it was, in real life, taking much of his resolve; what little he had left was wavering. He whipped around. The Death Eater was hot on his heels.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are." That voice, that voice. Draco cried out as his foot caught a roof and he pitched toward the forest floor. He heard a triumphant snarl and immediately propelled himself backward, not caring if his hands scraped painfully against gravel or his pants chafed or his cloak was almost coming off. He just had to get away.
"I know you're out there," the voice hissed, and Draco knew it was getting closer. When his back hit a tree, Draco was just short of all-out panic. His breathing came in spurts, his heart sped up tenfold, and as his pursuer loomed out of the shadows, he noticed just seconds too late that one foot was sticking out of the cloak, pale ankle exposed for all the world to see.
"There you are," whispered the venom and velvet voice of Lucius Malfoy as he raised that cobra-headed wand and prepared to strike.
Draco could only watch.
That black-gloved hand reared back and Draco closed his eyes-
-and something abruptly thudded to the earth as red briefly streaked across his vision.
Silence.
Draco waited until his heart had calmed and his breathing had slowed before opening his eyes. He inhaled sharply at the sight before him. There was his father, mask teetering on the ground next to him, quite obviously Stunned. The cobra-headed wand was firmly grasped in the familiar black-gloved hand. For a few long moments, Draco could not tear his eyes away. His father. His father was right there. Deep, deep down, underneath all the panic and revulsion and anger, Draco felt the stirrings of familial relief. His father was alive.
He stood slowly, blinking to adjust his eyes to the enveloping darkness. The cloak slid off his shoulders and huddled on the ground. "Hello?" he called softly. "Hello?" No answer. Draco looked around, confused and a little wary. "Who's there?" He raised his wand and, battling every instinct, lit the tip. No one. Nothing. Who had saved him?
Unsettled, Draco turned his attention back to his unconscious father. What had he been doing in there? How was he alive? He reached down toward the mask lying on the ground, but arrested his fingers right before they touched. Could he-? The white disguise sparked something in his mind. A plan. He was only a little smaller than his father; the robes and the mask would fit. His fingers closed around the mask and he lifted it to his face.
The mask hovered a few inches before his face. Draco watched it shake in the air. Not once had he worn this, not even after he'd been branded. He had never donned the robe and mask and gone in service to the Dark Lord, hexing people without a second thought, purging the world of what they believed was filth. Despite having held one countless of times, a mask had never touched his face. He looked down at his father, whose face he had seen covered up countless times. It was exposed now, a long scar running up his cheek, crossing his left eye. His white-blonde hair was more white than blonde, and uneven. Through the robes the son could see his father's thin frame. He had lived, yes, but he had not lived well.
Kneeling, he stripped his father of the long, dark robe. A bolt of bitter humor shot through him when he saw that underneath, his father was wearing simple pants and a button-down. He rather looked like an eccentric Muggle. Swallowing his disgust, he dropped the robe over his shoulders, the black fabric clinging to him as if trying to drag his skin from his body. Then the mask. It leered at him, the inverted face, mocking his every movement. With shaking fingers pressed the cold metal to his skin. It weighed him down, choked him. His left arm burned.
Forcing himself to remain calm and focused, Draco looked at the unconscious body on the ground beneath him. The eye slits distorted his vision slightly. What to do with his father? If he left him here, Lucius might wake up before he came back, or someone could find him. And it wasn't as if he could take his father with him. And there was something else… something tickling the back of his mind. Draco began to pace slightly, biting his lip –and then his foot stepped onto something soft and silky and he nearly lost his balance. Looking down, he blinked in surprise at the puddle of cloth at his feet. The Invisibility Cloak! That could work, couldn't it?
Steeling himself, Draco raised his wand. Ropes sprang from the tip and wrapped themselves around his father's body, binding the man. With a flick of his wand, Draco levitated his father to the roots of a nearby tree, lowering him where they were particularly entangled. Hopefully no one would bother him there. Still unwilling to touch his father's unconscious form, Draco again used his wand to curl Lucius up into a ball, then spread the Invisibility Cloak over him. There. That ought to do it.
Stepping back, Draco frowned. Something was missing here… There was something he wasn't thinking of. The forest was pitch-black now; the sun having completely set. He tapped his wand against his palm and lit the tip and –wand.
The password.
And his father's wand.
Shit. He couldn't just wake his father up and ask for the password to the underground passage. Neither could he leave his father within crawling distance of that cobra-headed wand. He could simply take the wand with him, but the thought of that metal snake head coming into contact with his skin utterly repulsed him. But he knew he couldn't make a convincing Lucius without it… At the thought, Draco did not even bother trying to suppress the shudder that ran through him. How long ago had he sworn to never be like the man lying before him? And yet now, in order to save Hermione, he was going to have to become him.
Draco laughed bitterly. Life could really screw with you sometimes.
Reluctantly, he reached down and fumbled until he found his father's hands. He stripped the one of its glove and pulled it on, gritting his teeth. He then pried the wand out of the other and stripped it of the glove as well. The cobra head glittered on the ground, the jewels set into the eyes seeming almost alive, watching him. At the sight, he nearly balked on his plan. This was the wand that had tortured him time and again, ever since he was a boy. This wand meant pain and punishment. This wand had killed hundreds of innocents, had torn apart lives and loves.
This wand could have hurt her, Draco realized, and the anger bubbled up. Lucius could have.
Snarling, he snatched up the wand. His fingers convulsed around it for a moment, wanting to break it. The red eyes of the cobra dared him to do so. With ever ounce of self-control in his body he shoved it into the pocket of his robes. An image of Lucius, cackling, eyes manic, Crucio-ing Hermione swam into his mind and Draco bit back a roar of anger. He pushed it back, not wanting to see, not wanting to imagine…
And then it hit him.
Lucius had come from the passage. Lucius would know the password to it. It would be there, in his thoughts, in his mind…
Could he do it?
As if it were a separate entity from him, his body gave him an answer. Shaking fingers closed around the slender rod of wood in his pants pocket. A stiff arm raised it just until it was level with the invisible lump that was his father. Chapped lips forced one word through teeth, a dry tongue forming syllables it had not used in a long, long time.
"Legilimens."
xxxxx
Narcissa, beautiful and elated, walking down an aisle in a stunning wedding dress, his new life and hope-
Narcissa, pale and wan, cheekbones sharp as she prepared a thin cabbage stew in the tiny cottage, and from his seat at the dining table Lucius steeled himself to tell her he'd been passed over for promotion yet again-
Rodolphus Lestrange, grinning evilly, informed Lucius of his new master and the rewards Lucius would gain if Lucius joined the cause as well-
Lucius, biting back a hiss of pain as the Mark was branded onto his skin, back muscles rigid with determination-
A small girl looked up at him with fearful blue eyes, her pink mouth forming an 'o' just as a jet of green light filled his vision-
Narcissa's own blue eyes searched him for answers he could no longer give, and Draco now knew why his father never looked his mother in the eye anymore-
Lucius led Narcissa by the hand into Malfoy Manor, their new home, his new underlings scurried to bring their bags over the threshold-
Draco felt new chaos seep into his mind and heart at the memories, and he desperately searched for that which he was looking for, not wanting to see all these strange and new sights, things he had never known before-
Narcissa cried out as Draco was brought into the world, and Lucius looked at the newborn baby and saw only another sacrifice to the Dark Lord, another piece of him to give up for money and comfort and a better life than he had first given his wife-
Hundreds of faces of Muggles and wizards alike, all having fallen by Lucius' hand, and Draco saw how his father had never forgotten any of them-
Draco fell to the ground, brought down by his own hand, and Lucius was convincing himself that this was all for something good, even as he hurt his only son-
There! There was the memory-
Lucius knelt on the ground behind the old Lestrange house, eyes furtively scanning his surroundings, and he tapped the ground thrice and whispered-
xxxxx
Swallowing all the guilt, pain and confusion that had welled up inside him, Draco crouched on the grass, the borrowed robes fanning out around him like a ridiculous dress. He squared his shoulders, set his jaw, and tapped the ground thrice.
"Patefacio in tenebris nomen domini," he whispered. (*)
A square section of ground lifted itself up with a creak.
"Lumos," he muttered, and light burst from the tip of his wand.
The dark mouth of the passage yawned at him like a hungry beast.
A short set of steps flowed down to a dirt-packed trail, leading off into the shadows.
Hermione could be somewhere at the end of that.
Draco repeated that thought to himself again and again as he took his first steps down the stairs, making his way down into the darkness, his borrowed Death Eater garb weighing him down with every footfall. His heart was in his throat and his bottom lip between his teeth and for one, heart-wrenching moment he turned, eyes searching the stars-
Before he could even think about turning back, the ground closed itself once more, leaving Draco utterly alone.
No way but forward.
The cobra head of his father's wand bumped against his hip as he strode forward into the waiting darkness.
xxxxx
A/N This chapter took three days to crank out. I'm not entirely satisfied with it, but I can't quite pinpoint what exactly makes me unhappy.
(*) Latin for "All in the name of the Dark Lord." Or "Open in the name of the Dark Lord." Google Translate.
What do you think of Lucius' memories? Do you at least hate him less now? (Haha.) Was that whole sequence up there confusing?
Constructive criticism is always welcome, please and thank you!
