The Hunt

Chapter 38

Afraid of The Dark

The fortress, as Draco now knew what these mountain side caves where called, was silent as he roamed aimlessly through its empty halls and passageways trying to sort out what Snape had told him earlier that morning. His mother was dead and he had known about it for how long? The question weighed on him. Reasons and justifications had come to mind for Snape not telling him and he clung to the fact that Severus might have wanted to spare him after what he had witnesses of his father and perhaps that's why his father was///. He didn't want to say it. It couldn't be true. His father had always been strong. Azkaban could not have bent him like that. It had to have been the strain of learning of her death and that's why he didn't want to tell his only son. His mother dead, his father gone daft and Severus said that the Dark Lord had bent his aunt's mind and ruined her, his Master dead, and this rubbish about a new Great Master and some old twits trying to revive some old society was more than his mind could sift through. And he had to be ready in two days for, for what he didn't even understand what Severus had been prattling about. Deep down he was scared. Scared out of his wits and yet he was expected to kill again and this time his own father.

Startled by what he was thinking he stopped in his tracks with a sickened look of his face. He had not even realized what he was thinking about until that name popped into his head. Harry Potter. He had been wondering what Harry would be doing and what he would be thinking about if the roles were reversed. He hadn't gone soft and surely he wasn't addled in the brains, so why had he been thinking of what Potter would do? He did have to admit that Potter had gotten out of some pretty tight situations by himself when they were in Hogwarts together and he had not been scared like this nor had to face what he was looking at, or had he.

Draco Malfoy never did like Harry Potter. He had introduced himself to him once on the train to Hogwarts some ten years earlier and even offered Potter his hand. Offered to guide him and be his friend but Potter refused to take his hand and refused to accept his guidance, taking up with a blood traitor like Weasley and hanging on every word of that jumped up mud blood Hermione Granger, as if she knew everything in the world. But for some reason he found himself to be not quite unlike Potter right now what with everything hanging on his shoulders and being expected to perform as if he had all the answers. "So what would Potter do then?" There was no one around him to answer his questions.

He found himself in a passageway with his wand tip lit not even realizing when he had done so, and held his wand aloft so that he could see where he was. The chamber was pitch black and he could see little se he extinguished his wand and with another flick he sent a blue ball of flame into the air and gasped. He had entered into the very bowels of the cave system and perhaps the largest chamber he had seen since arriving. Crystals gleamed in the lit as he looked upon stalactites and stalagmites of varying heights and thickness. Formations known as Soda Straws, Pop Cycles, Fried Eggs, and a lake that was so placid it appeared as if it might have been iced over with a crystal clear sheet of ice. A small path centered the chamber leading to the lakes edge and he followed its path. Tiny sounds of water drops echoed in the stillness of the room. Had he not had other problems on his mind he might have been awed by this sight but curiosity rose quickly. And he entered further into the room, following the path.

By all appearances no one had been in here for hundreds of years and maybe even longer if ever but the path was not made naturally so some one had to have been down there. The globe of light followed him as he stride downward still going deeper into the mountain. He reached a point where the path split three ways and stopped to consider which direction to take. Turning around to face the direction in which he had just came he pointed his wand to the ground and said softly "Flagrate." A red X appeared on the path where he had just been and then he turned around and took the path that angled to the left. In no more than a few paces he found himself standing at the lakes edge but the path seemed as if it led into the water. Taking a deep breath he gingerly placed the toe of his foot into the water but felt only firmness so he looked down thinking that he had not stepped far enough forward and was astonished to see his foot firmly on top of the water. He took his foot back and squatted so that he could study what he had just seen.

His mind was clear now and he had placed what he was thinking in the back of his head as he studied the water. Finding a small pebble, Draco tossed it to where his foot had just been and not only seen it sink but heard the plunk as it struck the flatness of the lake. Standing up, he stepped on the water once again and felt the firmness of its surface and so he took another step forward and then a third and then a fourth step until he was about halfway across the lake or so he thought as he couldn't see either side in the darkness. Marveling, Draco walked across the surface of the water until he reached the far side if the lake, It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the opposite side and he found another pebble to toss into the water and heard the splash of it hitting the surface. He grinned and gave a light nod of his head as if to acknowledge the magic he knew to be there and turned to continue on. The path ambled in its direction but seemed to always lead in one direction and he followed it for nearly half an hour until it stopped against a stone wall. Thinking for only a moment Draco tapped the wall and said "Reveal your secret " The walled seemed to shimmer and just as abruptly as the path ended the stone was replaced by an old rough hewn wooden door. Draco tried the handle but it was locked. He tapped the handle in incanted to unlocking spell "Alohamora." And he heard the lock click and the door opened of its own accord.

Draco pushed the door opened and noticed that it made no noise as he opened just enough to peer inside but saw only blackness. His heart began to race and his breathing quickened in pace with his pulse. Conjuring up another sphere of light, he sent it floating into the room. He saw nothing again. He looked around him as if someone might be watching and pushed to door opened further and stepped inside adding another globe of light to the one already inside. He found row upon row of shelves stacked high in the chamber. It was a vast library of sorts. He stepped into one of the stacks and removed a book from its shelf. It was heavier that it first appeared and he nearly let it fall to the floor as its weight caused him to grasp it with both hands. The book was large and leather bound. it looked as if it may have been there for a thousand years as it was covered in dust and the leather had cracked and hardened. He turned the book over, wiping the dust away with his hand and read the title "The Druid Histories First Tome of the Second Age." Replacing the Tome he stepped further into the stacks and pulled another book down and read its title after cleaning away the dust and read a similar title, "The Druid Histories Fifty Third Tome of the Second Age."

Draco returned to the main aisle to discover that both sides were filled with stacks of books as he ventured deeper into the Library. He had no clue how far he had gone when he reached a group of tables that were rather long and wide surrounded by chairs with lamps arranged in the centers of the tables every few feet. Taking a chance he lit one of the lamps and when nothing happened he lit several more until there was sufficient light to discover that the ends of each stacks held brackets that also had lamps. Sitting down at the nearest table, he noticed that at the far end of the tables stood what looked like a podium so he stood up and made his way towards it. A very large tome lay atop of the podium and he dusted off its cover to read
"Directory of Histories." He tried to pick the book up and found to be too large and too heavy so he opened it to find that it was sorted by subject and the referenced which stack the tome was to found in and which history and in some cases a list of histories and their Ages in which information on a subject could be reviewed or studied.. Idly, he glanced down the page he had turned to and found a listing on the Goblin war or wars. It seemed as if there had been several throughout the various Ages of time, and then a thought struck him and he searched for Dragons Mist and found that the list covered nearly three whole pages of references in nearly every tome. Well it seemed as if it must have been every tome as at least a hundred had been listed. At least!

Draco had to stand as the muscles down his back had stiffened in the hours that he had spent leafing through the volumes that lay opened before his seat. Stacks of the tomes littered the table. He had discovered that the Dragoons were originally formed by the ancient Druids. A society that had honor bound themselves to battle and defeat the evil that plagued the age of faerie. They existed for one purpose and that purpose was to scourge evil from the lands. They were the ones that formed a prison known as the Forbidding. The head of their Order, at the beginning of the Second Age had discovered a means of immortality and began to delve into the dark arts until he was broken. Grindelwald had been sentenced to the Forbidding and as he was passed through he swore vengeance and his return. Draco had searched for more information but there was none. The Dragoons were disbanded when they began to force payments for their protection against evil and several of their members had been sentenced and exiled into the Forbidding as well.

Leaning back over the table, Draco closed the Tome. He sought for the volume that contained the information concerning the Forbidding and found it underneath half a dozen other Tomes and reopened it to the page that he had marked.

"Once sentenced into the Forbidding one cannot be returned, however a balance must be maintained so it is possible that one may find a weakness and exploit that weakness. This can only be done when another is being placed into the Forbidding. The Avendesoro Tree maintains the living barrier that seals the Forbidding and if and only if the Tree of life can be sickened the barrier to the Forbidding will remain solid and sealed until the end of time. Care for the Avendesoro has been entrusted to the care of the Silvani…,"

He closed the book again. He was missing something very important and he knew it. Snape had hinted at some of this but he made no sense of it. A curl in his lip formed as he snorted as he said "He might as well been speaking gibberish for all the sense he made." But, Snape seldom if ever spoke gibberish. He was telling him something while trying not to say anything at all.

Glancing back down to the volumes of books, Draco stifled a yawn. He had been at this reading for a very long time, longer than he had realized and he was hungry too but something kept tugging at him, not wanting him to leave. He needed an escape. "By the Gods! Escape!" Draco turned back to the Tomes and leafed through the last few books. "It can't be!" he muttered to himself as he sought for the pages that he had just read, failing to place a marker in them. The words immortality, escape, and Grindelwald coursed through his mind as he scanned from one book to the next. Rushing to the Directory he scanned its lists looking for Grindelwald's name. It wasn't there, yet his name had been mentioned. A sudden thought came to him when he couldn't find the name. He couldn't have been stricken from the records, Draco was sure of it. Grindelwald had to be listed. He remembered the name from a chocolate frog card he had once a very long time ago. Dumbledore defeated him the same year the Dark Lord left Hogwarts.

He had forgotten about his hunger as he searched the volumes and tried to cross reference events with the Directory. "If he is this Great Master that Snape speaks of…, and I am to be prepared… Draco's eye's gleamed with the possibilities that lay before him as his mind raced forward with what he could do with that power. Snape had been grooming him for these past three years. He sensed that much from what he had been learning but he thought it was to take over his families business. He was almost giddy with the thoughts of the power he would be receiving and the knowledge he would gain. Potter was first on his list as he was the one that destroyed his father, destroyed his family. He laid blame on no one but Potter, the boy who lived.

Elation slowly turned to frustration as Draco found himself sitting blankly in front of a dozen more tomes with no more information other than hints, bits, and pieces that he could not puzzle together. Pushing back another book roughly, he stood with disgust at his failure. He knew that he needed to leave but he was reluctant to go. With his feet dragging Draco retraced his steps back down through the stacks to the entrance into the library and opened the heavy wooden door and stepped out back into the cave. He remembered to lock the door only after he fought down the urge to return back to the books and then retreated hastily back down the darkened path back to the lake.

Draco found the mark that he had left in the middle of the path and without hesitation he stepped out onto the water only to have his foot sink. Draco's brevity and momentum carried him forward head first into the icy cold blackness of the underground lake. The path had carried him over the water when he had first arrived but now he sank deep into the waters and his sodden cloak only served to weigh him down even further. The water was not too deep where he had fallen in but being caught in mid stride he sank nearly head first until he hit the smoothness of the bottom.

Stunned by the sudden drop and by the frigid coldness of the lake's waters, Draco lost his direction when he sank and began to panic. Just managing to get his feet underneath himself and only after taking in several large swallows of water Draco pushed hard from the bottom and broke the surface sputtering and confused. Terrified he looked about, searching for the lakes edge which was only just a few feet behind him but in the blackness of the cave in might as well been a hundred feet away. The weight of his cloak and his wet clothes constantly pulled at him and threatened to pull him down again as he fought to keep his head above the water. The splashing echoed and reverberated off the walls and from the ceiling compounding his panic as the return echo did return only three fold louder and faster until his skull felt as if it were resonating in tempo with the echoes.

He had turned himself in circles and was slowly pulling himself further and further away the where safety laid silently in the dark. A tiny voice barely audible began to struggle with the resonance that was still building within his head. "wand…wand…wand…WAND!" Something long and thin struck a flailing hand and he grasped at it. His eye's were wide trying desperately to absorb any light that they might find but there was none, as he tried to see what had hit his hand. hearing a plop right in front of his face, some semblance of composure made a small hole in the wall of panic and he felt for what had landed in the water just in front of his face. It was his wand. It took several attempts to light the tip of his wand as he stammered and sputtered trying to incant the single and simple word "Lumos" when the light appeared Fear still raged inside of him but panic began to ebb away as he made out the dim outline of the lake's shore.

Draco was not a good swimmer but his flailing managed to draw himself nearer the edge and he could just make out the red X that lay in the middle of his path. Reaching the shore he dragged himself up and out of the water and laid there breathing hard and near exhaustion. Why would the lake not let him pass? Why would it not allow him to return to its other side? What kind of trap was this?' The questions flooded his mind and panic began to peek its head out once again as the questions flowed past without answers. He knew that he should be doing something, his clothes were wet, he was freezing cold, and he laid there on the ground listening to questions as they flooded his mind. He was shaking and his breathing was short and rapid. His breaths sounded as if he were snorting as he breathed through his nose and in his hand he held tightly his wand. Draco was afraid. He had almost drowned and his mind had gone blank. No one was there to whisper advice in his ear, to goad him into thinking. He was on his own in total darkness save the small light of his wand and he did not know what to do, yet he knew he was supposed to be doing something, he should be doing something but his mind was blank. He was frozen in his fear.

Draco laid where he was and his breathing turned into whimperings of disparity as hope drained from him. The crushing weight of the loss of his mother and his father reduced to bent tirades of madness added to his fear. Panic swept through him in waves allowing moments where thoughts and unbidden questions would hold him fast to where he lay. Aloneness in the darkness of the caves rooted him. Hours went by as he crumbled in on himself and at the near point of giving up a voice spoke to him out of the darkness. "Draco, you are not alone. Be safe and be comforted. Your mother is near." He opened his eyes and a woman with red hair and green eyes stood before him. She had a kindly face. One that for some reason he felt he could trust what she said. There was something familiar about her, something about her eyes that he recognized but he had never seen her before. She was smiling at him now and when she touched his face with her hand, a reassuring touch, one that a mother might give to a young child to comfort them, he felt warmed inside and his shivering seemed to slow. "Your mother loves you very much Draco, and it is her loves that brings her here. I must go now, do not be afraid, you are safe until she arrives."

The woman vanished and yet he did feel safer. His fear of the darkness and the near drowning had swept away the moment she touched his face. He remembered his wand and relit the tip before conjuring one of his glow globes and then used the wand to siphon the water from his clothes. He was thinking much more clearly now and his breathing had all but turned to normal when a silvery mist began to shimmer and then form before his very eyes. The image of a tall white blond and handsome woman was taking shape in the shimmer. "Mother?" She hovered just above the ground and was smiling as she looked down upon him. "Yes, Draco. I am here my son. I felt your need from a terrible distance but something held me or I would have been here sooner." She knelt in front of him and reached out to embrace him but her hands went right through. Draco did not notice because he felt the embrace and he felt the warmth of her body as well as her hug. "Mother I cannot escape from this place, I cannot escape from the madness, I do not know what it is that I am to do." His voice was taking on the whining of a small child seeking the guidance of his mother.

"Draco, what bothers you my darling boy?" the caresses from her hands bolstered his confidence as he unfolded everything that had happened to him since the night of Dumbledore's death. The things that he had learned from Severus and the things that he had just discovered, and the events that had happened in just the last four days spilled from his mouth as if he needed to confess everything that he has seen, heard, and done since he last seen her. Narcissa remained quiet as she comforted her son. As Draco spoke he began to see how events in his life had unfolded and he felt sickened by it but he continued on. When he finally finished speaking he saw with clarity how his path had been led as if he had always been on some leash. He saw how his Aunt Bellatrix was no longer the person he had always thought her to be and how his father was now. He very nearly resembled just how Bellatrix had acted the last he had seen her. It was a madness that crept into them slowly at first until it had fully engulfed the one's that he loved and at the center of it stood Lord Voldemort. His mother never turned but then he remembered that his mother had always remained clear of the Dark Lord and only went to him when she was summoned. He could only remember just that one time when she had been summoned and he as well.

Anger built inside of him as he pictured exactly what Snape had been telling him earlier that morning. It had all made sense to him now but his path remained yet unclear and now he was to be made this new Great Lord's Protégé. Immediately he pictured his future once again and saw bleakness in place of the glory he had pictured while he was in the Library. The evilness and uncaring that had taken hold of his family had nearly snared him too but he had no idea of how to stop it from happening. His mother would tell him how and when he looked up she was no longer there. He called out into the surrounding darkness but she failed to reappear. Grumbling to himself he stood on his feet and apparated but nothing happened. He was still where he stood near the edge of the dark lake. This time he did not panic and tried it once again and still nothing happened. He remembered that he was hungry and flicked his wand but nothing happened. A snarl came to his mouth as he tested the water gently and found that his foot sank beneath the waters edge. He was stuck where he was.

Draco sat back down in the middle of the pathway, the glow globe hovering just above his head illuminating only a small circle around him, and began to list what had happened to him. He began by listing only the highlights of it though beginning with that one night three years earlier and ending with him sitting here in the darkness. He did not know when his fear left him nor did he bother to question whether or not that lady with the red hair and green eyes or his mother had actually appeared before him but he did list them. Most of the list that he had created he immediately dismissed keeping only those things that had been said or done since early this morning, though he did bundle Snape's teachings into one and placed that back onto the list. For some reason he knew that it was important and felt that somehow it pertained to what he was doing here in the caves and here in this Library, but that was another puzzle to work out as he contemplated what it was he should be doing now.

Curiosity over the two women appearing just as he was ready to fall into the precipice of panic and fear intrigued him. The strange woman had calmed him that was true enough, but he felt that he should know her, those eyes were so familiar to him. His mother had gotten him to talk out where he had been and what he had found, his mother had gotten him to start thinking again rather than sitting here whimpering and being a spineless, jellied, blithering idiot that was frozen in fear and panic. She had gotten his mind to start working again. Shaking his head he realized that his thoughts had drifted from the subject at hand and that was how to get away from this cavern and this stupid lake.

Realizing that his thoughts were turning circles sitting in the middle of nowhere, he stood on his feet and retraced his steps back to the Library and unlocked the door once again and entered. His first thought was to go back to that directory to try to find a way out of here. There had to something mentioned in some book about this place. A frame of sorts fastened to the back of the door caught his eye as he turned to close it behind him. He had not seen it earlier or if he had he paid it no attention, after all it was so covered in dust he could hardly see that it was there when looking straight at it. Again, curiosity tool hold and he brushed the dust away and was startled to find that it was not a picture but a framed piece of parchment that was so old the parchment looked as browned as the wooden door itself. He had to light the tip of his wand to get a better look at what was written when he uttered an oath that would certainly have gotten his mouth washed out if his mother had heard him. Written on the parchment in old English lettering were the words "You may not leave until all is placed in order." He understood what that meant almost immediately after reading it. He had left dozens of books on the tables that he had used before. A wave of irritation swept over him but he tucked it away and smiling ruefully, gathered himself up to return the books he had taken. Nearly and hour later or so it seemed as if an hour had past but really it was less than that, he had crossed referenced where each book belonged with the directory and returned them to the stacks where he had found them.\

With a deep breath, Draco opened the door from the Library and this time remembering lock it, he walked back to where his red X marked the path that would lead across the lake. He stood at the waters edge taking several calming breaths and then one deep breath and held it as he stepped out onto the water once again. Bracing himself for another plunge into the icy cold blackness of the cavern lake, Draco's foot stepped onto solidness and he exhaled loudly. He still wasn't certain of himself and repeated the deep breath, held it again and took another step and was again prepared for an icy splash that did not come. Draco kept this practice up until he could see the opposite shoreline only a few feet away from him. When he stepped onto firm ground Draco exhaled deeply in a sign of relief. He tried to apparate now that he was away from the other side, away from the Library and found that even here he still wasn't able. He would have to walk out of here. Thankfully he had thought of marking his pathway and after several long minutes he found himself exiting the huge chamber. A thought came to him about sharing his discovery with Snape but squashed it thinking that if he could not think of something nor Snape for that matter then and only then would he share.