With a flick of his wand, Slughorn lifted Draco's bound body and directed him towards the end of the corridor.
Draco took a deep breath, trying to quell the panic rising inside, his heart galloping madly like a startled Pegasus. He twisted his neck to glance at Slughorn, whose bald pate was pearled with sweat by the light of the sconces. There was something unnerving about the man's stiff frame and this, coupled with the ominous silence, made him recall one winter day in Hogsmeade. Slughorn's glassy stare, the way he plodded along behind Draco in total silence – it could only mean one thing.
Draco tilted down his chin to gaze at his bindings, squirming to snake his hand inside his robes and get his wand. It was useless, though, because the ropes tightened when they sensed his movement. When he glanced up, he was already inside the poorly lit potions lab; with dread pooling in his stomach, he noticed the shelf on his left held a small bottle with a metallic cap.
Inside, a tiny nude man writhed slowly. It was Harry.
Draco closed his eyes, his face twisted in a desperate grimace. The violence he had thought long behind him was staring him in the face. He tried to collect his thoughts, to avoid the painful recollection of the Dark Lord casting Avada at Professor Burbage, and Riddle's hideous features contorting with sadistic glee while he tortured his mother and father. Draco felt the same hopelessness that had encroached upon him when he recognized Harry's face in the Manor, when he shrank back at the thought that the Snatchers had captured his secret crush.
There had to be a way out of this, thought Draco in despair. To evade the dread pervading his mind, Draco twisted his neck to stare at the door.
"You can come out, Theo," he snarled.
"Well, how did you know I was working with dear Professor Slughorn?" Theo Nott drawled lazily as he sauntered into the room, his stringy frame made even thinner when he stood at the junction of two rows of shelves.
Draco glanced at Slughorn's unmoving figure. "Quit playing the innocent, Theo. I recognize the symptoms. You cast Imperio on him!"
"I forgot, Malfoy, that you are well acquainted with the curse; after all, you used it on Rosmerta when you fumbled the Dark Lord's orders!"
Draco recoiled at that. He shivered minutely, and then he narrowed his eyes at Nott. "I had to, or else the Dark Lord would've killed my parents! What's your excuse? No one is pointing a wand at your mother."
"My mother's dead, idiot!" Theo growled. "It's my stepmother you're thinking of, but of course the Malfoy brat has never deigned to know me better!"
"What do you want with Potter, Theo?" Draco said, wiggling as he tried to back up towards the edge of the shelf to cut the rope. "Are you trying to resurrect the Dark Lord?"
Theo barked a sharp laugh and then he stepped towards the shelf, leaning down to pick up the bottle that held Harry. He hefted it towards Draco, his lips curling in a malicious leer. "You would think that, wouldn't you? You always cowered before the Dark Lord."
"Same as you," Draco spat out defiantly. "Same as everybody except my crazy aunt!"
"You have a point, Malfoy." Theo snorted and then he threw the bottle in the air while Draco bit back a scream. He caught it easily on his palm and made a fist around it. "I don't intend something as asinine as bringing back the noseless bastard."
"Then what do you want with Harry?" said Draco, his voice breaking at the name of his boyfriend.
Theo walked to the shelf and put the bottle there, patting softly the metallic cap. Then he glanced at Draco. "It's simple, I want his power." Theo gazed at the shelf, saying in a low voice, "I seek a distillation of Potter's magical essence, to transfer to me that which makes him the strongest wizard that ever lived."
"What?" Draco said thickly. This might be one of the uses of the Christmas potion. Could it be that Theo forced Slughorn to brew Nativitatis while under Imperio?
Then Draco shook his head at that, realizing that brewing the potion required creativity and sharp judgment, something Slughorn would be unable to muster under the Dark curse.
"Do you think I can't do it? That I'm unable to?" Theo scowled at Draco and waved his hand at Slughorn. "I have a Potions Master at my command and if that isn't enough, why, I also have the pesky Weasley twins!"
"You used the Imperius on the twins?" said Draco with a shiver. Somehow, this was an even worse violation than casting the Dark curse on Slughorn; after all, Draco did not care much for his Head of House while he had grown quite fond of the twins.
"I did," Theo gloated. "Used it on one of them, and their twin bond made it a breeze to cast it on the other. Nudged it up a tad to suggest it is all a great prank and the fools fell for it!"
Draco nodded dumbly.
"They used one of their pranks to distract everyone in Slughorn's idiotic party so I could curse Potter!" Theo glowered at two boxes on the potions bench, neatly labeled as WWW products. "The idiots failed to get me that stupid heirloom you gave Potter, though."
"How did you find out about that?" Draco said in a whisper, feeling the world closing in around him. Had Theo imperio'ed his mother or his father? Perhaps he had an accomplice, Draco thought as he tilted down his chin, his hair falling down in a blond curtain which hid the defeated expression on his face. "I reckon Pansy told you."
"Not Pansy. Silly girl wouldn't betray you; shows you she isn't worthy to be in Slytherin!" Theo said, curling up his lips in a leer. "It was your house-elf."
"Muggy?"
Theo nodded. "I only had to suggest Potter might hurt her precious master, and she was ready to spill the secrets, foolish elf!"
While Theo was busy gloating in the same manner of the Dark Lord he so despised, Draco noticed that the two boxes with pranks were throbbing.
He arched his eyebrow at that; if Theo thought he controlled completely the twins, he was wrong. Draco knew the irrepressible way Fred and George acted, and he had no doubt that the prank they had thought up would go way beyond what Theo suspected. Furthermore, Ron and Hermione were in the dungeons, and Draco earnestly hoped they would wake up and come storming through the door any minute.
Draco realized that he was not alone this time. Last year, he had faced utter darkness completely on his own; now he had Harry's friends by his side. More than that, he had Harry to fight for.
His spirits rising, Draco tilted up his chin to gaze at Theo, intent on distracting the gloating Slytherin.
"You're more of a fool than she is, Nott," Draco said. "It will be nigh impossible to distill Harry's power."
"I have time, Malfoy," Theo snarled, his gaze fixed on Draco. "If it takes years to do it, I can wait. I could blame you for Potter's disappearance and have you sent to Azkaban, everybody knows you couldn't stand Potter!"
"Would you do that?" Draco said, his voice wavering on purpose as he sought to distract Theo from the boxes which were throbbing ever more violently in the dim light.
"Not unless you force me." Theo narrowed his eyes at him. "It will be far more pleasurable to watch you squirm, Malfoy, knowing that I have Potter's fate in my hands. You see, there's no counter spell for the potion and curse I used on him."
"Is that so?"
"Indeed it is so. Or I can cast Imperio on you." Theo took out his wand and pointed it at Draco. "How would you like to know what Rosmerta felt?"
Draco shrank back and closed his eyes, expecting to feel the curse washing over him, but he heard a loud roar instead.
He opened his eyes and saw a geyser of multicolored hues springing up from the table; when it rained upon Theo's arm, both the sleeve of his robes and his wand vanished.
The prank caused the table to disappear and the vials fell to the floor, the sound of breaking glass further distracting Theo while Draco hurled himself towards the rivulets of bright azure and green that ran in the cobbled floor, groaning as the floor hit hard his right shoulder.
The twin's prank ran its course, and the ropes binding Draco vanished, together with most of his robes. Draco heaved himself, shouting because of the excruciating pain on his dislocated shoulder while he tried to hold his wand aloft, so it wouldn't suffer the effects of the twins' prank and vanish too.
He squatted on his haunches and shrugged off his tattered robes to swish his wand at Nott and cast Incarcerous.
Then he stood up, dismissing the writhing traitor at his feet, wincing as he made his way to the shelf where he spent a few seconds casting a healing spell on himself. His heart throbbed painfully in his chest as he gazed at the diminutive figure of his trapped boyfriend. Draco reached down to cradle the bottle tenderly between his hands and crouched to lay it on the floor. Finally, he rummaged in the pockets of his trousers until his fingers clasped around the slim neck of the vial which held the Nativitatis potion.
With a trembling hand, Draco uncapped the bottle which held Harry prisoner, gazing down at his trapped boyfriend inside before he upended the vial and took a step back.
The potion mixed with the contents of Harry's watery prison for a few seconds, and then a bright magenta cloud shot up until it reached the ceiling; it had streaks of red, yellow, green, blue, bronze - the whole spectrum of the Hogwarts Houses.
Draco coughed and raised his left arm to shield his eyes squinting at the harsh burst of colored lights. When he opened his eyelids, a moaning sound coming from the floor made him tilt down his chin. Harry was on the floor, his back bleeding from cuts caused by shards of his broken glass prison. He crouched above him, pale fingers caressing sweaty locks.
"Harry, are you all right? Come on, Potter, answer me!" Draco babbled, his fingers wrapping around Harry's chest; when he felt Harry's heart beating strongly under his fingertips, Draco breathed a sigh of relief.
Foregoing the use of Wingardium leviosa, Draco hooked his arms around Harry's torso and legs and lifted the unconscious Gryffindor.
It was on the corridor that he found Hermione and Ron waking up.
"Wassup?" said Ron groggily.
"Come with me." Draco cocked his head at the other end of the corridor. "Harry's hurt; I'm taking him to the infirmary."
"What happened?" said Hermione.
"Tell you later, Hermione." Draco glanced back at the corridor. "We'll have to tell McGonagall to call the Aurors, but let's see to Harry first."
As the four students passed the portrait, the snake looked at them and uncoiled his tail to wave it towards them. The serpent nodded and then hissed in satisfaction. "I alwayssss wondered why your weird lot had so many stiff tentacles. At least they are good for something."
oOoOo
Two wizards stood on the front of Gringotts, their shocks of black and blond hair contrasting nicely with the snowy street.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Harry wiggled his eyebrows at Draco.
"I have to. There might be others like Theo, drunk on power." Draco patted the pockets of his robes. "It's better to keep safe the recipe to brew the Christmas potion."
Harry leaned closer to Draco's tall frame, his fingers trailing a path up his neck. "You could use it to win a potions apprenticeship."
"I can earn it another way, though I have to say the potion worked wonders to bolster my confidence." Draco smirked at him. "Besides, I think the ancient Potions Masters had good reasons to keep it under wraps. There are some things the world will never be ready for."
Harry smiled a tad guiltily, thinking about the secret of the Horcruxes which he hadn't confided in Draco yet. As he gazed at the chiseled features of his boyfriend, Harry's heart leaped with joy, for there would be many Christmases to come in which to grow closer and whisper secrets in the dark to Draco, the wizard who had caught his heart at last despite seemingly unsurmountable odds.
Harry tenderly cradled Draco's pale cheeks between his hands as he leaned forward, their lips meeting in a kiss that hinted at pleasures to come; their bodies curled around each other just like the wings of the Snitch before it wakes up and shoots up towards the blue sky in the start of another game.
tbc