Part Six : Blood
It is winter and I am held in shackles like ice, skin as translucent as the finest parchment and blood pumping thinly in trails of blue ink. Sometimes it feels as if I am, indeed, freezing to death. (My heart jolting, breath coming ragged and strained, fingers trembling uncontrollably. Why? Why must it be this way?)
Because he is there, and so close, and yet -
We're partners now because that's the way things are. There is no best-friend Weasley or knowing Granger and now I am all he has. I don't know if that's a good or welcome thing, but I'm the one he plays chess with in the evenings and I'm the one he relies upon for homework help and I'm the one he looks to on too-gray afternoons when the wind shrieks outside. You would think I'd get tired of him. But every time he says my name - he clings to the word Malfoy like it's a childish reminder of our hatred - I look at him and it seems I see him for the first time.
"Don't you two ever go anywhere?" asks Ernie Mulligan, shifting his weight back and forth as he waits for his brother. "Every time I come in the damn room, you're both sitting here."
"Leave it," Nicolas Mulligan persuades him, having successfully retrieved his jacket and now waiting impatiently. "Jeanne's waiting." With that reminder, Ernie gives the two of us a none-so-friendly smile and follows his twin out the door. For being so sullen all of the time, they sure have a more active social life than the two of us.
"Well," I say.
Potter looks up for the first time since they entered the room. (It's childish to constantly call me Malfoy like some shield, but I can't bring myself to call him Harry. So where lies the difference?) "Well, what?" He has been working on his project for Advanced Potions the last week without fail and that is what he is bent over now.
"Are you ever going to finish that?" I feel the fire against my back in the small fireplace at the end of our dorm. I can, too, hear it crackling. "I'm nearly done. What are you dithering on about?"
"I am not dithering." He only shrugs and goes back to writing in that messy scrawl of his.
Silence.
"Potter," I say, voice irritated, "don't you ever go out?"
He looks up from his books, silent for a moment, then slams one shut. "I'll have you know, I am going out tonight. Right now." After throwing his books and supplies none too gently on his bed, he yanks his cloak from his bedpost. Hagrid sent him the wretched, handmade garment a month ago for Christmas. I have no idea why he wears the ratty thing.
"What, in that?"
"Sod off, Malfoy." He disappears out the door and the room sinks into solitude, the last bits of sunlight sinking red through the wall of windows to my left. My books are bathed in copper, lost in the bloody fall of the sun. The trees, too, bare as skeletons, are tipped in ruddy gold.
I shiver in the sudden silence of his absence. It wasn't my fault, really, for provoking him into leaving with such spontaneity. Of course not. Frowning, I stab at the parchment with my quill.
The effect of blood power is the strongest known magic in this world.
I stare at the writing, my writing, and scribble it out angrily. Why must I write so precisely, so reminiscent of my father? Why can't my feminine script be sprawling and illegible like his?
I shove the papers back, angrily. I lied when I said I was almost done; I've barely begun the thing. I've been rewriting it for two weeks, as has Potter. Perhaps he is dithering on about something or other, but he always seems to know what to say. I haven't a clue. He hasn't seemed as frustrated as I have, worn out to the point of exhaustion, working on and on without an inkling of where I am going. I retrieve my cauldron and sit it on the table, staring at its pale sheen. Originally I'd planned to coincide my Advanced Potions assignment (create your own Potion and detail the process, etceteras, in research paper format) with my Fundamentals of Magic Principles paper. Only it isn't quite going as planned.
The trees and distant buildings are silhouetted against the sunset, the room dusted with a faint orange glow. I pull out the library book on potions, flipping automatically to the page. It is already well worn.
Running my finger down the list of ingredients, I nod to myself. I have practically memorized them, could recite them half asleep. (Only my nights are wracked with insomnia and fevered dreams of him. Must I wake with dread's wintry fingers scraping my spine, only to sit up and stare over the motionless forms of Mulligan and Mulligan at his serene expression? Bathed in moonlight, so vulnerable without his glasses, that scar trailing down his forehead behind the curtain of shadow. It is the worst sort of torment, and everywhere I turn he is there.)
The seniors all tell us that Professor Kimball's expectations are ridiculous. No one actually creates their own potion; they steal some obscure and probably useless potion from a book and do their best to make up a feasible story about creating it. Of course, Professor knows that, and he hands out grades randomly anyway. It is largely unfair, but he knows potions better than Snape, and that impresses me.
Potter found some ridiculous potion that makes your skin change colors. It is positively useless, as far as I can see, but probably one of the most interesting in our class.
And I? I am the one that thinks he can do what no one else can. I am the egotistical little rich boy who is bound and determined to create his own potion. Of course, it's based almost completely off of the one I found, but there are several changes I plan to make. Had planned, except that the entire assignment is due next week - and the Fundamentals paper the day after - and I don't know what to say.
Only Malfoys don't give up. They die reaching for ridiculous dreams of power and pomposity, lost in the still-lingering call of ancient hopes. They always will, I suppose.
Sometimes I think I am in over my head in so many, many ways. I am drowning beneath the ice of his cold gaze and I can't even fight the chill of winter. I can't struggle. I don't want to. Because there is that dream and it is not the age-old dream of power. (A fool, I am. No Malfoy loves. No Malfoy dreams such highfalutin dreams. We fall at the feet of power, bound with our own longings, but it is a cold and glittering dream that leaves us shivering and mere collectors of porcelain statues. It should not be about craving warmth and hair as black as the water beneath the winter sheet of ice and eyes as piercing as any winter breeze and lips that speak my name as if it makes no difference when it should, when I want it to. I want everything to make a difference to him. But he is as unshakable as my father's dream, and what else can I do?)
Fuck all of this. I am drowning, and I don't seem to realize or care. Maybe that is the mercy of Winter. Maybe that is as merciful as Harry Bloody Potter gets to people like me.
Do I want to realize? Do I want to care? Or do I want to sink into this wistful dreaming haze and perhaps it isn't gratifying and perhaps it isn't everything and perhaps I have gone absolutely stark raving mad, but what dream ever satisfies you completely?
I prick my finger, ever so gently, and let the blood fall.
I like potions. Pansy used to laugh at me, used to pressure the others into laughing. Snape's little pet, she would snicker. (Later, I learned that her mother had been sleeping with my father. It lasted about two weeks, but it was enough to make me regret ever seeing Pansy's sneering face.) I truly like potions, though. I like the way the ingredients swirl, the danger, the ever-pulsing need for perfection.
Perfection is something I can relate to. And while I cannot live up to my father's dream, perhaps I can satisfy this demand. This need for everything to be perfectly done.
I withdraw the vial from my pocket and tip its contents gently into the cauldron. It bubbles. It is a pale green, and I stir it slowly. After adding the last of the nectar, there is but one ingredient left. I stare down at the carefully measured pool of blood that has seeped from my finger, then lift it gently and tip it into the potion. (Red and green, is that how it's to be? Gryffindor and Slytherin, bleeding together into a liquid of purest translucence.)
And I have done it. It is a potion that forever binds the giver to the drinker, and it simmers ever so gently in my cauldron. Harmless to the giver, of course. I take a bit on my finger and put it to my tongue, tasting the shivery, coppery taste of it. I imagine it tastes a bit like melting snowflakes, if they weren't so cold.
I draw my wand, point it, and whisper, "Dissolutia."
And later, when I am bent over my parchment with the neat lines of my handwriting, absently wondering where he has gone and what he is doing and if he is possibly thinking of me, alone with my writing and my silence and my blood, I try to remember that taste.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it didn't taste quite as simple as snowflakes, fluttering on his eyelashes and dancing through the midnight silk of his hair. Maybe it tasted addicting, like adrenaline, like the hottest part of the fire where the bluest flames dance. Maybe it tasted like power.
It is derived from a simple spell to bind ones livestock to ones property, as used in the days where farming was more lucrative, I write. At such a time, the wizard would collect the blood of his animals and spread the potion on his land. They would not be able to stray much further.
Pause, for cramping fingers.
With simple adaptations, this potion binds one to the drinker with the use of one's own blood. Its use is very dangerous, on a level with the Unforgivable Curses and love potions, a reason why it has not been tested and its use is not recommended. The termination of this potion is exceedingly difficult: the only antidote, as such, is death.
I stop, quill tickling the corner of my mouth. Why, exactly, did I create it? The use of blood intrigues me, I suppose. The ties that blood forms, a train of thought I know all too well. It is simple, really, yet the entire magical world is in an upset over it.
Yes, I think it did taste like power. (And maybe, Father, there are different kinds of power dreams.)
The words swim beneath my wavering gaze and I gather the papers tiredly. Where is the git? He didn't have to stomp out of here like I'd offended him somehow. (I just can't work with his melting emerald gaze interrogating me. I can't think when he is that near.) He didn't have to act as if he cared what I thought.
Because we hate each other. Right, Potter?
I fall asleep without meaning to, shivering half under the blankets in my clothes. The parchment lies scattered over the nightstand beside my bed, and the last rays of evening do not disturb my sleep. No, actually, it is another sort of light that stirs my dreams: emerald, to be exact, disconcertingly quizzing me. Asking me why we are the way we are, so far apart when we are just about the only thing keeping each other sane. Asking me who I am, why he cannot hate me the way he always did. Asking me when I stopped hating him the way I always did, and started -
"Malfoy! Malfoy!" His touch is petal-soft on my skin and, still lost in the hazy state between dream and reality, I have to concede that there is probably no better way to wake up than to him.
He grabs my shirt and yanks me forward, shaking me. "Wake up, go - oh, you are awake. Um. Good."
"The hell do you want, Potter?" I glance at my watch and blink. "It's two in the morning! What-" It is then that I realize he is shaking. "Potter? Are you all right?"
"I-I'm fine." He realizes in turn that he is still clutching my shirt and releases. I move back so I can sit up without his weight on my legs. "I - I'm alive, which is something." And he yanks something around his neck to the forefront, waving it in my face. It takes me a moment to recognize it as the stone I gave him, the stone we kicked together down deserted Privet Drive. "What did you do to this, Malfoy?"
"What do you mean, what did I do to it?"
"Stop being stupid!" His eyes are practically glowing in the shadows, lit within by inner light. "This-" He looked away, almost ashamed. "This saved my life, tonight."
I frown. "Where the hell were you?"
"It's a secret."
It is my turn to grab his shirt, which I realize, too late, is ripped and dusty. "Potter, I'll repeat myself; where the hell were you?"
"With Dumbledore," he mutters. "A - a mission, of sorts."
"How did that thing save your life?"
"V - Voldemort couldn't touch me, Malfoy. He could barely come near me. The hell did you do? Is this some Dark Arts spell?"
I take the stone from him, looking at it. It's faint green glow throbs gently. "No," I say carefully. "No, actually, Potter. I didn't do anything at all to it." He looks at me, frowning, and I continue. "I didn't put any protection spells on it. I didn't use the Dark Arts on it. I just drilled a hole in it and tried to Transfigure it, which never worked. It started glowing instead, that's all."
He is too stunned to even speak. "You - wh - why?"
I shrug. "It was pretty."
"Why in bloody hell did you tell me you put protection spells on it, then? I could've died!"
"I wanted you to keep it." I'm glad that it is dark, or he might catch sight of the tint in my cheeks. "And you didn't die, Potter. Why didn't you?"
"Like I know!" He frowns. "Malfoy, damn you! Of course you'd be the one to tell me you put spells on here and not actually do it. That's ridiculous. I should've known you'd pull something like that." Staring at me, as if trying to puzzle out something especially enigmatic, he shakes his head and turns away. "All right. I suppose I called it upon myself. I did say that I don't trust you."
The words shiver between us like breath in the air on a cold day, and I too must look from him. He is disappointed, he is hurt, and somehow that is more painful than any sort of literal frostbite. "It wasn't as if you did," I finally say, trying to keep my words level. "You didn't rely on it for protection or any such thing."
"True," he admits, grudgingly. "To tell you the truth, I forgot about it. But Malfoy, what happened to it? You're sure you didn't do anything?"
"Quite sure," I reply.
The shadows paint his face all sorts of ghostly colors, slipping like aged bruises across his cheeks. His eyes are wide and I can see in the brief moonlight that his clothes are torn. (Where did you take him, Dumbledore? Why did you endanger him this time, was it for Azkaban or some Mudblood family or what? Why do you have to keep putting him in this danger? He could have died, and I wouldn't even know.)
"There's one thing," he finally tells me slowly. "When my mother died, her - her love for me sort of protected me from that time on. I don't understand it entirely. Something about her death protected me. Until in fourth year, when Voldemort took my blood and then he could touch me again."
I stare at him, incredulously. (My heart is jumping nervously, skipping over the surface of his icy glare.) "Are you trying to tell me that I'm in love with you, Potter?"
"Of - of course not! I was just saying. I don't know anything about it, I guess I could owl Dumbledore and ask him-"
"No! Don't be ridiculous! It was probably just a fluke, I mean, how do you know that it was even this stone?"
He rolls his eyes. "Gee, I wonder what else could have flared all green and made Voldemort scream in pain. I could feel it, like, throbbing." We both fall into silence and realize that we have not been the quietest in our argument. Half the dorm is awake, restlessly tossing and turning and generally muttering about the disquiet. He exchanges a glance with me. "Look-"
I catch his sleeve as he stands. "Potter," I say quietly. "Take me with you, next time."
His eyes snap. "What? Why?"
"Because." A faint smirk, the everyday mask that's become so much habit that it doesn't even hurt. Even worn for him. "You obviously need my protection."
"I do not!"
"Do so!"
"Do not!" Pause. "Oh, for God's sakes, I'm not going through this childish argument with you. No, Malfoy. I don't trust you. Why should I?"
"You shouldn't." I still grasp his sleeve. "But take me with you."
"But your father-"
"Can go and die for all I care. Potter." I make him look at me and he does so, reluctantly, eyes burning as steadily as the stone. "Please."
"I don't know why it matters so much to you," he says quietly, "but all right. If you let me write to Dumbledore." When I frown, he glares. "I have to tell him exactly what happened tonight, Malfoy. I'll need to explain, anyhow. It can't hurt if I ask him."
"All right," I finally growl, letting go of his tattered sleeve. "Now, I'm going back to sleep."
That is not tenderness in his eyes when he turns away. It is not. Of course not. (Ah, but do I want it to be?) "Good morning, then." He smiles, ever so faintly. "And thanks."
It is not surprising that we share insomnia like everything else lately, and I can hear him tossing restlessly far into the dawn. Moonlight shivers across the floor in relentless patterns until it is finally replaced with the sun's earliest tendrils of light, and I have to bury my face in the pillow to find the last sustaining bit of darkness. His voice is still echoing in my head, hours later, his quiet thanks lingering when all the insults have streamed away.
He is thanking me for something I didn't do, when I never had the bravery or the breath to thank him for anything. (His hand on my wrist, leading me through the stark gravestones. His scent on my skin, the feel of his clothes. His voice in my ears, frustrated, trying to find a solution for something that never troubled him and only troubled me. His books, his papers, his hands, his laugh, his eyes, his breath, his company, his everything, in my life.)
I give up on sleep, as it has eluded me for hours, and slide back into a sitting position. Beside me, Ernie Mulligan is snoring loudly, and further down the room someone is competing with him.
From my nightstand I take the roll of parchment and squint at it in the early dawn; I can just make out the words in the pale light that shines through our dormitory. Blood is the single greatest influence on our world, my Fundamentals of Magic Principles paper says. Whether acknowledged or not, it rules many of our thoughts and sentiments, even causing the extreme measures of death and torture that are known to occur throughout history. Why?
That is, indeed, the question. And there is a question in those eyes of pained green when I look up and find his gaze upon me. So insomnia has another victim.
"What are you doing?" he mouths to me, brow furrowed.
I mouth back, "Potions."
The closest thing to a smile I've seen all night from him slips across his face. There are dark circles beneath his eyes and he looks as if he's just been through a fortnight of nightmares. (Maybe he has. I'm sure something more frightening than he haunts his dreams, though he is the only thing that torments my sleep.) I watch him slip out of bed and walk to the window, scratching his head absently.
"Potter," I call softly, and he turns. Beat. Here I am, drowning again, struggling for breath against the tide of his eyes. "I... Um." Ice shivers against my skin, icicle bars driving my heartbeat. My voice is encased in winter and I think that if I open my mouth, perhaps nothing but frozen breath will emerge to paint the room in harsh white. "N-nothing."
He squints at me as if he maybe doesn't believe me, but only shrugs and turns away. I watch his shadowy figure disappear down the stairs and think that perhaps he is going for a walk in the misty dawn. If I were braver or perhaps more confident, I would follow; only I am not a Gryffindor and I am not the self-assured boy everyone seems to think I am. So here I am. Sleepless, shivering, and very solitary.
The blood pounds in my ears as I stare at the rumpled sheets he has abandoned, the empty bed just two down that he tossed and turned in all night.
Bloody hell. I hate
winter.