Disclaimers: I don't own Harry Potter. Don't make me say it again – every time I do, part of me dies.
Notes: WHEE! I ROCK! You don't know why? Well that's a shame, allow me to enlighten you – it's my birthday! That's right baby, November 21st, people should love and adore me now (at least for the afternoon.) Some people already DO love me, like my mum. Other people are just very VERY kind and draw me FANART! Yahoo! Okay, so the other day I got an email and in it was a link to my very own Twasits fanart by Chelsea. Beautiful beautiful day, I was so excited I burst into tears and spent the evening dancing around my dining room. The people that love me did not appreciate that. The picture is on my website, go look at it there.
Right then, onward ho.
Alylizzy: Hehe, I'm glad you don't think it detracts from the story, I was worried about that. In any case, you should like this chapter. I am all about Luna myself – she's so fascinating.
Neverbird: Your kindness never ceases to astound me. Well, actually I read your review and started wailing because you delivered such a perfect statement about Harry and Draco's future relationship that I freaked out, screaming at the top of my lungs "NOW IT HAS TO BE GOOOD! NOOOOOO!" several times over. I think I quite scared the dog. ':laughs:' But – once I calmed down a bit (two cups of tea and Leah telling me to shut the hell up) your review inspired me. Damn straight! It will be dynamite. :D. Thank you.
CHAPTER 13: Questions
The deegles were on the move. It was a little thing, but it spoke of big things to Luna, who'd been keeping an eye on tiny developments for as long as she could remember. When she was only five years old, she remembered lying on the floor with her father, her little blue eyes just big enough to watch the dust bunnies form under the couch. Each bunny was like a civilization unto itself, each particle a person and each little dusty wave a clique, a band, a house, a family unto itself. Civilizations crumbled apart and reformed, they grouped together, and they danced around each other as they marked out their territories under the couch.
When her father sneezed they scattered to the four winds then tentatively made their way towards each other yet again, the nature of gravity and static cling until Hurricane Daddy blew through again. They spent hours together, her little feet playing with the knees of her father's trousers as they spent hours on the hard wood watching the dust – until her mother swept them up and scowled at the delinquent pair before swatting both their rear ends with the broom. Luna was seven when her mother died in a charms accident. She never called it that of course, because adding realism to the problem that took her mother made it that much more painful.
Her father had once been a reputable journalist, he could have been editor of the Daily Prophet, and would have done a better job of it too. But her mother had always kept him a bit together, and if he wanted to go off after she died then Luna was in no position to stop him. They had to learn to cope in their own way, she had hers, her father had his. Traveling the world, and reporting on obscure creatures that no one else believed in, she had seen it all. Losing himself in his work made him feel better, losing herself in her head made everyone a little more comfortable than letting everything she felt she'd lost hang out.
So she'd kept her head down, and kept her mouth shut. Eventually she learned to listen, because that's all she could do. Listen, to everything, with her eyes, her ears, her nose, with every sense she had listened to the wind, so she didn't flinch when things broke, and she didn't wince when people called her "Loony Lovegood" and she might have heard things differently through turnip earrings, but they were real. The deegles were moving, they were running, and it meant big things for all sorts of people.
The note read "Astronomy tower, midnight." He'd slipped it to Potter in the library as he passed with a potions text that rivaled the Encyclopedia Britannica M-O in size, though he didn't need it. He wasn't interested in the text; there was a more complete edition in his home library, one that hadn't been stripped of relevant information. Relevant to what he didn't know, but if it wasn't there, it was surely relevant to something of value. No, he hadn't needed the text, but he needed to be in the library, because Potter was in the library.
Draco Malfoy had never been particularly proficient at concealing his intentions, but he found himself skulking around the school like a convicted felon, watching his friends as they watched him – for anything. He felt eyes on him at every waking moment, and quite a few moments when he wasn't. So he found himself wide awake against a stone wall in the highest tower of Hogwarts Castle, fighting the urge to pace with every muscle in his body, which in some ways was more exhausting, but he wouldn't give in. He wouldn't show anybody in the world that his mind was racing and his heart was pounding like he'd run from Marathon to the Greek army and back. He wouldn't let his body run circles around this infuriating room, no matter what his brain was doing.
His mother had been right, in the sense that only a mother can be right: his mother had been right about everything leaving neither loopholes nor questions to be desired, it was the most hateful thing she had ever done. He couldn't rely on his name, wealth, or anything else he'd grown up to believe would be eternal, all he had was himself and a handful of half formed ideas. He would never be a Muggle sympathizer, he wanted nothing to do with them, he wanted Muggles gone from his life, but he had come to see their necessity. It was purely mathematical, pure logic.
Voldemort viewed Muggles as a lower life form, it was a simple act of mercy to kill them, put them out of the agony that must surely be magic-envy; just like it was a simple act of mercy to drown infants to save them the humiliation of foster homes, orphanages, parents that didn't want them. By eliminating Muggles, Voldemort would reduce the world population by over half because of a silly vendetta against his Muggle father.
A man (if he could still be called a man) that powerful would be the undisputed world controller, the potential for micromanagement was dizzying. His fear of half-bloods would generate strict breeding laws, no inter-racial procreation, and absolutely no tainted blood, so the breeding populous would be cut down to five pureblood families per major European country. Within seven generations, the entire wizard population would be Weasleys, and the eighth would be ruthlessly in-bred, a world of drooling imbeciles ruled over by an immortal dictator.
It was disgustingly possible; Voldemort would be using the noble sons of pureblood families to bring on their own unwitting demise, and with a sudden click, Draco could see the whole paranoid scenario before him. He was no Muggle sympathizer, but he would not see his children's children, the descendants of the Malfoy line, reduced to nothing more than drooling worshipers of a false god. In a sense it was already begun, by his father's plan Draco was to remain a teenager forever, until his mother opened his eyes in the only way she knew how.
But he was doomed, by his own actions and those of his father; he would be destined to follow the path set before him. Perhaps he would find Muggle post-it notes left by his mother along the way, how to cope when you've realized you chose incorrectly – Draco darling, the scotch is in a compartment under the fifth guest bed. But he would never allow anyone to see how panicked he was about the whole mad world, and he certainly would never let Potter see him squirm. If Potter ever showed up.
He showed no signs of doing so; it was surprising and irritating in the extreme, how very like Potter to show up every time he wanted to make an idiot of himself, and ignore him out of spite when he actually needed… help: though it galled him to admit it. Unbeknownst to him his foot was energetically rolling from side to side, inner ankle, outer ankle, inner ankle, outer ankle – he forced it to stop by curling his toes in the end of his shoes. It was a very tight fit, and pinched.
"Malfoy," an estranged voice said from across the room, nearly fifteen feet away, he estimated as Potter's ruffled head emerged from the confines of his invisibility cloak, followed by the rest of him. Draco had always thought it extremely convenient; he might have the worst luck with potions, he might be hopeless without Granger at charms, transfigurations, and herbology, but the reluctant hero always got the greatest tools. "Why am I here at one in the morning?"
"Because you're late." Malfoy snapped, and let his foot start tapping, this time with impatience because everything else had flown out the window when Harry made his appearance. It always did, articulation, wand work, and his well reputed cold logic made the dooming leap from the astronomy tower and went 'splat' on the frozen ground below whenever Harry Potter was in the vicinity. The corner of his brain that realized this stood by and watched with something between disgust and grudging acceptance of this little flaw; and the part of his brain that didn't realize this made an ass of the part that did at every turn.
Harry bent his head to scratch his eyebrow and shrugged as if to say 'so? I had things to do' though what they were at midnight he couldn't imagine. "Malfoy, if I'm here so you can whine at me, could you write a letter and owl it so I can get some sleep?" Apparently Potter was itchy because he'd moved to his ear, then the back of his head as he yawned.
"No Potter, I…" his stare was absolutely the most presumptuous, condescending thing he had ever seen, his voice was flatter than an Irish skillet, "we need to talk."
"Oh good, I was hoping we would do something normal like climb trees, dance around the maypole, bludgeon each other to death with Quidditch gear… how's the eye by the way?"
Draco snorted, hadn't he once said something about sarcasm?1 Well, snide fit the remark as well, and he was never so disturbed in his life. He wanted to ask about twenty three thousand questions about it; Harry had been playing Quidditch like a shark, silently ripping victory out from under everyone he played, it was violent even, but impressive. He wanted to ask all about the glowering and stony silences with people that had once been friendly, but he hadn't successfully asked Harry Potter a question since he was ten years old in Diagon alley, looking for the scrawny kid's surname.
He wished he was ten again and admission of ignorance came as easily. "Potter…" It was hard to say anything but his surname now, it dragged a wry smirk out of him, and he was feeling less and less like he had three days ago when he'd first heard the latest Death Eater news. If he could just spit it out, if he could just pretend for five seconds that he was asking to borrow a galleon… well that would never work he'd never asked for money in his life. Gritting his teeth he swallowed his pride and everything that went with it, the bile that was churning in his stomach, the shudder that ran across his shoulders, the rigid indignation that was almost a substitute for confidence, and he was left with what he'd always had. Fear, and his self preservation instinct took over. "I need your help."
Harry blinked, opened his mouth, and blinked again while closing it. A hiss of air escaped his nose, he blinked more, hair fell into his eyes, Draco wished he would say something until he finally did. "Right. Clearly you've gone mad, good luck with that. I'm going to bed." More frozen blinking, did he never get tired of it?
Harry turned on his heel and took a step towards the door, whisking his cloak around his shoulders. Draco tried not to scowl and successfully failed. "Potter." Harry's head stopped and sunk on invisible shoulders. "I'm serious."
Draco had been stared down by many things in his long career of stubborn contests of will, but being stared at by a disembodied head, a head that was blatantly appraising him with flat green eyes was…somewhat horrible. How did he stack up, what was the criteria, what was he supposed to do during this furious inspection? He itched the spot above his ear. "So?"
"So?"
"With what you git?" Harry hadn't heard that word since before Ron died; it was strange how easily it slipped off his tongue. "Your homework, your chocolate frog card collection?"
Harry Potter was a bastard. A bastard to make him say it, and a bastard to make him forcefully admit his former allegiances, forget personal loss, forget his generous experience, or the genuine kindness he displayed to humanity, Harry Potter was the worst person that shouldn't be alive and Draco wasted no time in telling him so.
"So we know you haven't been brainwashed." Harry deadpanned as Malfoy wrapped up his vicious tirade against Harry's parentage, his upbringing, his sexual habits, and slue of other lowbrow insults that Harry wouldn't feel comfortable repeating in the Hogshead. Harry was almost impressed by Malfoy's astounding grasp of descriptive and vulgar language. Malfoy glared. "Why didn't you go to Dumbledore for this?"
"Oh, that would be brilliant, Potter. Call me selfish, but dying on the right side is still dying." Did he really need to tell Potter that Dumbledore couldn't protect anything? Draco kneaded his eyes, he could feel a headache building at his temples; wouldn't it be nice to forcibly smash his head on a rock in time to the pounding until he was too dead to care? Dumbledore couldn't protect him, and he didn't want protection, he didn't want a reassuring pat on the back and a mumbled "I'll take care of everything" before being punted out of that ridiculous office; he wanted a hand in his fate, he wanted to know every minute detail of every little plan, because it was his life – he wanted to survive it. Draco wanted a miracle; he wanted something that only someone who understood the frustration of being associated with Dumbledore could possibly know.
"So… how exactly am I supposed to help?"
Malfoy had forced himself to evaluate the situation. Panicked and improvised the excuse for not going to Dumbledore when the fact was he couldn't take the publicity, if his father found out about Draco's assumed change of heart, aurors or not Lucius would have his hide. He had even forced himself to stay in this spot and wait for Potter for an entire hour when running for the hills had never seemed like such a wonderful idea, but the one thing he hadn't considered was why. Why go to Potter when the simple thing would have been going to the aurors, why go to Potter when he could have asked Snape, why on earth hadn't he asked Snape? It seemed so stupid now, so absolutely ridiculous, his paranoid delusions, but he couldn't risk his potions master's dark associations. "If I knew that Potter, I wouldn't have to ask." He took a deep breath, that sentence had been fantastic; something like what he used to feel when his father clapped him on the shoulder, a poor excuse for a hug. Proud, defensible: like a Malfoy.
"Fine." Said Harry, and he suddenly looked just as tired he kept claiming to be. He looked dead as Malfoy's first pet goldfish; gaunt sunken cheeks, ash circles beneath his eyes, and a face that was not meant to be pale – Harry looked gothic in every sense of the word. Gothic, and angry, and tired. "When you figure it out, let me know." And the rest of him disappeared beneath the invisibility cloak.
Voldemort rapped idly on the exposed ribcage of a Muggle boy, click clickity, clickity click, click clickity, he was so bored. Or at the very least, extremely frustrated – his efforts were becoming fruitless, and mindlessly pursuing something that appeared not to exist was on the vast and varied list of what defined insanity. Not that he was insane, just a scientist searching out a cure – then, denial was also a form of insanity.
There was something obviously anatomically inferior about Muggles, inherently different for their lack of magical abilities, and therefore lacking in the vitally rumored core of magic – a core that was infuriatingly still a rumor. This boy clearly fit the Muggle definition of healthy, heart still pumping under the very spot that he was tapping, no missing piece, no vacant cavity wherein something roughly the size of a gherkin (at least that was the estimated proportion) was distinctly in absentia.
Muggles had no magical resistance, years at that loathsome Muggle institution had taught him that through sadistic experimentation. But was that to say that Muggles had no latent magic at all? Or was the core of magic simply a matter of the soul – was there a way to measure the soul? It was suspected, measured, even recorded that the body lost exactly 21 grams of weight at the exact moment of death, was the soul of a wizard any heavier for the core? That would be a difficult experiment to conduct, it would require at least four preparatory spells and 10 individuals (both wizard and Muggle) to kill. Vaguely he wondered if the soul theorem was true, would a very precisely tuned weight-maintaining spell keep the soul from leaving the body? Talk about revolutionary advancement in the medical field – not that wizards had problems with such things.
A warning bell rang in some corner of his examining room, yes yes, he knew – the longer the specimen was exposed, the less of a chance it had for life. The boy was going to die – not from some irreparable damage but simply because not disposing of his lab rats had caused him problems in the past. He could easily zip the boy up, hide the scar, wipe his memory, and little Timmy could be found down the well after 30 hours missing. But what would happen when Timmy got called out to play, and suddenly his chest split open and his ribs got crushed in the inevitable fall, and mom, who'd only recently gotten her darling boy back, would see his intestines splattered across the road? Besides, it was too much effort for one worthless Muggle boy.
If he were to dissect a living wizard like this, which didn't seem like a bad idea given the sheer incompetence of the majority of his cohorts, would he see the core? Of the many corpses he'd inspected, he hadn't seen a thing – but maybe the core was only prevalent in the living. Maybe if he could get a living wizard specimen on this table, he could find it, and if he could find it there was a good chance that he could utilize it. What if he could get Potter? Wouldn't it be poetic justice if he could use a piece of Potter's own soul? Why waste all that brilliant potential by murdering him when he could just as easily tweak his perceptions of the universe and put him to work?
Of course, that was assuming he could find the damned thing and experiment with it—his lofty ambitions would, for once, have to take a back seat to scientific research. It was a race to the end and a solution, if he didn't find the core first someone else would, protect against potential tampering, and that wasn't a risk he was willing to take. As it stood, there were over 100 death eaters, the best and brightest scientists and wizards he had on board researching a way to essentially overthrow a long-standing government. If Dumbledore's spies somehow discovered the efforts of those medical technicians he would no doubt be looking for a way to oppose soul-magic innovations.
Other minds were busily striking fear into the masses, and still more were running covert operations to secure funds for their noble aspirations – everything from drug schemes to cheaply produced cauldrons. What had once been the idle daydreams of a lonely, bitter young man had become a thriving organization quite unlike anything the world had seen before – if only for the fact that they would be successful. So it was with a burgeoning sense of pride that he watched the young heart beneath his hand make its final struggle against life.
And we're done for now! GOD Voldemort is SO much fun to write. Yes, I realize that's somewhat disturbing, but it's TRUE. He is honestly a BLAST to write, I'm fairly certain I had Nazi experimentation in mind when I wrote that segment.
1 Right, once again I fuck up. The sarcasm line was "Sarcasm doesn't suit you" from Habitual Bastards (also written by me) hehe. Watch me be distracted. Instead of just changing the line, of course I just whined about it. Alas, such is the story of my life.
The begging: Here it comes folks, that part you all dread where the poor and put upon writer of absurdly depressing fanfiction BEGS you to review for her. She cries, she pleads, she crawls on hands and knees to kiss at the hem of your robes and the dirty toes of your shoes for praise, and occasionally flames (I don't mind criticism, honestly). Well, I'm doing all of that. PLEASE REVIEW! IT'S MY BIRTHDAY, PRETEND YOU CARE!