Draco opened his eyes onto the blackness of the drawn-up blankets and quilt and a leadenness as grey as the faint light that filtered through the knit wool and down. He must have pulled the blankets above his head in the night. He groaned as he pushed them away from his face, exposed his eyes to the blue-white brightness of the eternal flames, the icy air that filled his dungeon room.
If he kept his eyes shut, he could hear the susurration and thunder of the sea, constant as a clock's tick; he could smell the salt in the air, tipping his tongue, tickling his nose. But when he opened his eyes, it was the blank stone walls of the prison, no windows, and the guttering flames. With his eyes open, he knew the leadenness of his body was the weight of a dead man's limbs, pulling him back toward the bed, stiffening his joints, and aching in muscles that refused to be used.
He pushed himself off the bed and winced when the skin of his healing welts stretched. He stumbled over to his trunk and began to dress. Layering was his only hope of heating his bones enough to make them function. And he would need them to function. At least a while longer.
His wand had fallen from his hand in the night to the floor, where it lay like any piece of kindling brought inside to feed the flames. Draco fumbled it with stiff fingers, too cold, too long kept curled last night. He pocketed it to look at those fingers, wondering what good they'd do him, really. They, like the wand, seemed more or less useless appendages in view of what he must face: the Dark Lord and his own godlike vengeance, warranted and wholly inescapable. Draco knew from books what Muggles muttered to one another about divine justice.
As he straightened from tying the laces of his fur-lined boots, his eyes lingered on the smooth, black sea stone that sat atop Grindelwald's marked bookcase. If Master Draco ever really needs his Dobby, it will bring Dobby to him. He is needing only to squeeze it and think of Dobby. That's what Dobby had said all those years ago. But could it really--
Draco sighed and left through the open door.
Going up the dusty stairs, with their close, frosted walls, he kept his head bent, watching his black boots climb of their own volition.
It was not until he reached the Great Hall that he had any need to pull his mind back into himself, to drag it out of the dark, dripping sea cavern it had crouched in all that grey morning.
He was unsurprised to find the Hall lit by the dim, diffuse light of a cloud-covered sky as his eyes roved over the heads of the students, carefully avoiding the High Table, where he sensed the fiery glare like the prickle of a razor-blade against his nape.
Theodore Nott turned away from the table to smile at him, a broad smile that lit his freckled face like stage-lighting; his moss green eyes gave him away, pools of worry in the otherwise sunny face. Draco trudged toward him.
"Morning, Draco," Theodore said when Draco slipped onto the seat beside him. "Lovely day."
Draco looked toward the three square windows at the front of the room, above the heads of the Death Eaters. Every one was splattered with teardrops of snow and beyond the sky was the same leaden grey that Draco felt in the corners of his mind, in his extremities-- numb toes and stiff fingers in dragonhide. Theodore's comment did not seem worth a negative reply.
Theodore's green eyes were still on Draco's face. "Do you remember why?"
Draco tugged his gaze away from the windows, the ridge of mountaintop horizon that was so eerie for its wrong peaks and too sharp points, and looked up into Theodore's freckle-spotted face. Draco saw again the worry in Theodore's eyes, the hopefulness of his smile. Draco's gaze went to the High Table, slid along the row toward the center, where Bellatrix Lestrange leaned forward toward--
Draco swung his eyes away, fixed them back on Theodore. "You're taking your test today," Draco recalled.
Theodore nodded, seemed to hesitate as he watched Draco's face for any sign of an expression. Draco reached for the basket of biscuits.
"Do you have any advice for me?" Theodore wanted to know.
Draco snorted weakly. "You've seen me in class, Theodore," he said quietly. "You've seen the way the Dark Lord looks at me." Draco had to fight the impulse to turn and check for that furious expression himself, held stiff to hide the shudder that crept through him. "You're better at this than me," he admitted.
"But you're Draco Malfoy."
"So?"
"Hasn't your father dropped you any hints over the years?"
Draco swallowed a bite of biscuit that had turned to chalk in his mouth. "If he has," he told Theodore quietly, "it didn't take." He followed the bread with a few gulps of water from the glass cup. "Didn't your father ever tell you anything?"
Theodore gave a wistful smile. "Nothing particularly useful," he said, "for this. Just the general."
Draco tore at the biscuit more hesitantly with his fingers. "Did you write him?"
"I wanted to," Theodore admitted. "I will tonight when I know. One way or another."
Draco nodded.
---
Theodore did not concentrate on the morning's classes. Draco sat beside him, shoving Crabbe or Goyle aside when necessary, and heard him muttering curses under his breath, practicing wrist movements beneath tables. When classes let out, Draco grabbed Theodore's wrist and pulled him from the classroom, putting space between them and Crabbe and Goyle. He fed Theodore little bits of what the Dark Lord had been doing to him.
"You know I didn't try to fly out of here," Draco said, with his gaze on the flagged floor, his own booted feet. "He thinks I'm not doing well enough," he muttered, struggling to be vague, knowing he was playing with a knife just letting go these few sentences. "He made a whip of his wand and he struck me here, here." He thrust out both balled fists, where the lines of the whip's lash was still an ugly red across both's backs, quickly pulled them out of sight. He pointed to the back of his neck, his back, his arms, touched the bridge of his nose and winced.
Theodore's eyes grew wide.
"He's not a forgiving man, Theodore."
Theodore glanced at the lines across Draco's hands. "So I won't mess up."
"People make mistakes."
"And he has a right to be angry with us if we do."
"But we're human! Even he makes mis--"
Theodore cut him off, "Don't say that, Draco. Are you mad? What do you think he'll do to you if he hears?"
Draco crossed his arms across his chest, bent his head again toward the floor, watching their feet across the flagged stones. Their steps were out of sync.
---
Draco ran a fork idly through his tasteless food during lunch. Beside him, Theodore had already bolted his down, now sat with one hand hidden beneath his thigh, his right balled and trembling on his wand. His eyes were only for the high table, where the Dark Lord sat, still engaged in a leisurely meal. Theodore's foot jiggled beneath the table; with Crabbe and Goyle sitting across from them, Draco thought he felt the rickety bench shiver with its energy. He didn't have the heart to tell Theodore to cut it out.
What was Theodore walking into? Draco could only guess.
When the Dark Lord stood, Theodore leapt to his feet and his knee hit the table. He stood grimacing on it, not daring to massage the pain away, as the Dark Lord's eyes swept toward him, slid from him to Draco, who lowered his head over his plate, feeling the pinprick sparks all along his side.
"Wish me luck," Theodore said as Draco, glancing up, saw the Dark Lord drift along behind the table toward the stairs.
Draco's throat was dry, plugged with last-minute warnings. "Good luck."
"Ready?" The high voice sent a shiver along Draco's spine and he tried to bury himself in the uneaten dish.
"My lord," came Theodore's response and Draco was sure he had dropped into a bow, but couldn't turn to look.
"Then come."
There was a soft whisper of light robes, the heavier swish of Theodore's woolen cloak and the two were gone.
Draco looked up and toward the squat doorway into the entrance hall. They were no where in sight.
"He's so brilliant."
Draco looked back toward the sigh to see Cat Yaxley staring with glazed eyes after the disappeared pair, her long face in her hands. "Who? The Dark Lord?"
"Theodore Nott, you dolt!"
Draco frowned and turned away from her.
---
All through afternoon classes Draco was distracted by imagined flashes of what Theodore might be doing for the Dark Lord even now: skittering spiders; on their backs, legs curled in a silent screech; Theodore out in the grounds showing off his Apparition; and-- Draco's hand moved along his left forearm as he stared unseeing toward the blackboard-- a brand, white-hot, burning, snaking, scaring.
None of the Death Eaters commented on Theodore's absence, none of them moved hands toward their Dark Marks, feeling the phantom pain. None of them were haunted by the memories of their own inductions, the tortures, the murders they had performed since. They went on, explaining this curse or that poison, as if the mundane only surrounded them all.
Draco started at Crabbe's sharp rasp as Pettigrew turned his back to scribble on the chalkboard. "You all right?"
"Fine, Crabbe," Draco mumbled, settling back into the hard-backed chair.
---
Theodore was sitting at the dinner table, smiling vaguely into his stew when Draco arrived with Crabbe and Goyle in tow. Draco looked once at the Dark Lord before sidling into the seat beside him. He took a deep breath. "It went well then?" he guessed.
Theodore looked up, still grinning. "I did it, Draco," he said. "I did it." And he pulled back the left sleeve of his robe to reveal his burned-black skin, the hissing serpent-tongue in its skull.
Draco recoiled, fighting to force a lying grin onto his face. "Well done, Theodore." He kept his voice quiet, was almost certain Crabbe and Goyle couldn't hear him as they sandwiched onto the opposite bench.
Theodore nodded, ran a hand through his sandy hair as he shook his sleeve back over it. "It still hurts, though."
"I imagine it might for a bit."
"I finished two hours ago."
And your skin's still that color? Draco thought, disgusted, horrified by the cruelty of it. He didn't remember his own branding, was glad he didn't.
"He let me off to rest. And I got to write home to Dad." Theodore smiled.
Draco tried to smile back and dragged the tureen of stew toward himself, took a wooden bowl from the stacks on the table. "What was it like?"
Theodore beamed even more broadly, a slow, dazed smile. "It was intense, but I must have done well. He quizzed me on everything we've been taught, like I'd guessed. He drilled me, questioned my loyalty, the sort of service he could expect--"
Draco remembered meeting the Dark Lord for the first time, in that dark office room and his icy voice drifting from the shadows of a leather armchair. Do you serve of your own volition? What do you offer me? Show me the seal that binds us. Prove yourself mine! He shivered.
"And he let me perform my first act for him in his sight."
"What did he have you do?"
A grin spread across Theodore's face, an odd light coming into his green eyes. "He let me kill for him. He watched."
Draco's head snapped around and he felt his body stiffen on the bench, his fingers tighten on the spoon he'd just lifted from the table, the knuckles going white. Two days was not nearly enough time for him to forget the emerald light piercing his eyes, the sight of the spider's lifeless body, or the taste of bile, the rush of blood from his own face as he realized what he had just witnessed. He felt his color begin to drip away even now, recalling it. "Kill?" Draco asked, ashamed to hear the leap in his voice. "Who? What?"
Theodore told him lightly, shrugging, "Some Muggle rat one of the Death Eaters had caught snooping about near the pine woods. It's one less to worry about, one less to push us all into hiding."
"But--"
Theodore laughed and Draco jolted to hear it. "Don't worry, Draco. I'm sure he won't ask you till you've killed a spider. How could he?"
Draco swallowed past shallow pants. He would have Carrow's class tomorrow. He would be forced to give the Killing Curse another go. And what if he managed it? If that dreadful wind did come down to steal away the spider's life? Already he could picture the Muggle's eyes trembling in their sockets, a bright blue, wide, and youthful. Draco's spoon clattered into the bowl and he could only be glad for once that it was made of wood; the sound didn't carry.
"You all right, Draco?" Theodore asked. It was the most human his voice had sounded since the beginning of dinner.
"No," came Draco's hollow reply. He pushed the bowl away, scrambled off the bench. "I have to go," he declared, keeping his eyes fixed on the flagged floor.
"All right but--"
Draco had already turned and was marching toward the door.
---
The following afternoon, Draco pointed a shaking wand at the spider eyeing him from the desk. I won't cast it, Draco thought. I won't cast it. I don't want to. And if I don't want to--
Ah, said a voice from somewhere deep inside Draco. It was high-pitched, like a finger run along an icy iron banister. It made his hairs stand on end, sent a shiver along his spine. But if you don't cast it, what will you ever amount to? Will you remain here forever? Locked in training?
I don't want to train. Draco's voice was quiet inside him. I don't want--
You don't? Liar! You want this. You want this more than anything else. It's all you've ever wanted.
"Avada-- Avada Kedavra. Avada Kedavra." The wand wood grew warm beneath his fingers as he chanted to block out the icy voice, to keep Carrow from getting too suspicious as she patrolled between the desks. "Avada Kedavra."
Draco's vision exploded in a flash of emerald green. He shouted and grabbed hold of his wand with both hands. A wind came roaring down around him, whipped past, and eddied around the spider, which reared on its hind legs, then fell backward onto the desk as the light cleared and the wind died.
It left a dead silence in its wake. All eyes were fixed on Draco, who stood there panting, still gripping the wand two-handed, with rigid arms.
"Malfoy," Carrow's voice was soft but loud in the aftermath, impressed, gentler than it had been toward him in weeks. "Well done."
Draco stared at the lifeless body of the spider on the desk. Unmarked, with its legs bent uselessly up atop its upturned belly. He'd done it. He took a great gulp of air, turning from the desk. He felt cold with all the blood rushing from his face and wrapped his arms around himself, pressing the still warm wood of his wand against his arm to leak its heat through the wool of his turtleneck sweater. His every limb shook.
---
"I was beginning to think I'd never get to say it, Draco. You had me worried."
Draco stared at the toes of his boots, peeking out from beneath the hem of the dyed vicuna wool cloak. The firelight sent a shiver of gold along the leather, but did nothing to warm his hands in their dragonhide. He'd been wandering around numb since Carrow's class. He had numbed himself further at the sight of the oily coils of the great boa, curled like a dog on the hearth rug, and of the Dark Lord, his robes blending with the shadows and the black leather of the chair back, his gruesome, bone-white face drawing all attention to itself by contrast.
"I suppose you know what this means?"
Draco kept silent, concentrated on the creases in the leather the firelight highlighted.
"I shall make you one of mine," the Dark Lord hissed, sanguine. Draco heard the whisper of his lightweight robes as he paced nearer, knew by his shadow that he stood before the fire, in front of or behind his snake. He cast Draco into complete darkness, smothered, masked him with that long shadow. Draco shuddered and the Dark Lord chuckled, a hissing sound like a frothing cauldron. Draco watched the long, bone finger come toward him. It burned when it made contact with the underside of his chin. Draco was almost glad; glad he could still feel, that the curse had not killed that inside of him; he had been beginning to wonder. The Dark Lord lifted his head.
Draco saw himself reflected in the red baths of the Dark Lord's eyes, in the slit islands of his catlike pupils. He was in front of the snake, not behind it, and nearer Draco than Draco had guessed.
"Mine," the Dark Lord said again, softly, almost a coo. Still holding him still, captive with the one hand, he raised the other and let its index run a lazy line down the plane of Draco's face. The edges of the Dark Lord's mouth turned upward. "What do you say to that, Draco? Are you at last ready to serve me, or will I have to keep you on the end of chain?"
"I thought we decided I wasn't your bichon frisé." Draco did not feel the words rise through his throat or push out past his tongue. He had no memory of forming them, only heard them as though from a distance through his numbness.
The red eyes narrowed on a drawn-in breath, a sharp hiss, like a blade being drawn. The Dark Lord snatched his hand back. "Still?"
"I don't want--"
His voice was hard as the steel blade, as final as its point at his throat. "We've had this conversation before, Draco."
"Too often," Draco agreed, letting his gaze fall once more to his toes. This was easier.
"Why? What did I do--"
"To get saddled with me?" His father had said the same before.
The Dark Lord took a beat before contradicting him, "No. I would not have worded it like that."
"But you'd have meant it too."
The finger returned, brushed Draco's cheek. "Draco--"
"No!" Draco pulled back. The snake on the floor let out an annoyed hiss at his shout, raised its blunt head. "Get away from me! I don't want-- I can't--" Draco took a deep breath, looking at the shadows of one of the deeper corners of the room. He spoke to them, quietly. "I can't. It would kill me."
"What would?" His voice was too gentle, velvet curtains blocking the truer nature.
"Killing," Draco choked.
"So, don't kill." The Dark Lord took another soft step toward him. Draco stiffened, but didn't back away. He waited. "You don't have to kill, Draco," he said. "I can arrange that easily. There are other things you can do. More useful things. I don't need another ax."
Draco heard the ticking of the watch on his wrist, the sputter and sizzle of the fire. "So what do you need?"
"I need an accomplice."
Another pause, another thirty seconds counted out. "An accomplice."
"Yes. I never intended you as an ax. Certainly one day I hope you can be sharpened to a lethal edge, but I don't plan for that day to come for a long time. If I can help it, the day it's needed will never come. I'll be here, I can be the executioner."
"I," Draco hesitated, peeking up at him from beneath a tuft of blonde bang, "don't understand."
"And I don't want you to. Till you prove yourself."
"So," Draco said, looking up at him even a little more, looking into his face. He wore an expression not unlike that Draco had seen in children's eyes in front of Quality Quidditch Supplies; covetous, Draco would have called it, almost greedy. "You'll test me. Like you did Theodore. But... I don't have to kill? Like he did?"
"Ah. No. I think I'd like to see you do it, Draco, once. After that...."
"Just once?"
"Just once."
"But in that book you gave me-- Secrets of the Darkest Arts-- it said that killing even once tears the soul. You would make me--"
"Ah, Draco," the Dark Lord smiled, "who am I to deal in souls? We leave that to God and the devil, don't we?"
Draco eyed him, watched his expression, the half-quirk curve of his lipless mouth. "There's something you're not telling me."
"There's much I'm not telling you. Yet. After the test."
"No. Now. I've a right to know what I'm getting into." He wrapped his arms about himself, feeling the sudden chill of fear, trepidation creep through his veins.
"You do not set the rules here, Draco. Not for me."
The steel in his tone, the sudden leap of flames in his scarlet eyes let Draco know that the price of another word would be dear to pay. He closed his lips against the trembling questions that threatened to spill from his clenched heart.
"I think," the Dark Lord said more quietly, "we shall set your test for tomorrow morning, Draco. Following breakfast, you will report here."
"My lord--"
"Not another sound, boy. Off to bed."
Draco hesitated, letting his arms fall limp by his sides. "Are you coming too?"
"To lock you in?" The Dark Lord grinned. "Yes, Draco, I shall come."
Draco shut his eyes and heard already the door close shut behind him, locking him in the dungeon room, even as he dropped into a quick bow and left the Dark Lord's office for the corridor.
A/N: So, my friends, here seems not really the proper place for a lecture, at least not in my warm, honeyed tones. Maybe if I took on the Dark Lord's hiss, but outside of my writer state, I don't think that's possible. Alas, I'd never have trouble with any of my future children! But here is my warning to you all. Ff net has added this new feature to the writer's profile. We now have the ability to track how many people are viewing our chapters, how many times the chapters are accessed, the day the person visited, and the country they are from. Now, I don't have the names of any of you, but I do know that it is only the ninth day of November and that this story alone has already been read by twelve people, who have viewed it a total of 62 times. Where are my reviews?!?! Well, there you go, I've begged. Lucius would be appalled, but you've all driven me to it. Last month 69 people read this, accessing it 254 times; it was my most popular story that month, and I got not a single review. I'm appalled by that and I'm the writer so my distress ought to count more than Lucius'. In short, PLEASE review? Thank you for listening to my selfish service announcement. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
Yours forever, Tsona