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+ Infest: A Harry Potter Song Fic by Canarde +
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+ Chapter Eight: Snakes +
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"I got a problem with the snakes
That are crawling
Through my area when the darkness has fallen.
Momma told me that they love to bite;
They'll stab you in the back,
No shame that's right.
I keep my distance 'cause
They're making me crazy
And stealing from me
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"Do you know how it feels to be bit
In the neck by the snake that kills?
Do you know how it feels to be stabbed
In the back, then watch the blood spill?
I don't like how it feels, check it --
Do you know how it feels to be stabbed
In the back, then watch the blood spill?"
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Flesh, slick with sweat and desire, pressing so close it may as well have been one body instead of two.
Breaths, heavy with exertion and passion, panting in a rhythm designed by the Creator for the two of them alone.
Limbs, tangled with urgancy and hope, sliding like molten silver in the moonlight and cool breeze of a midnight in May.
And into the balmy evening, against the pressing darkness of the shadowed wood nearby, through the vales and mountains surrounding, four words echoed in a distant whisper: "Do you love me?"
Only one syllable had need to be said, and only one word was moaned into a crevace of a soft and supple neck: "Forever."
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As he sat through History of Magic, tapping a near-dry quill against a blank roll of parchment while Professor Binns droned on about Mermish colonies in the Atlantic, Draco watched everyone's golden boy leaning lazily against his hand. The focus of Draco's attention was prodded by the mudblood, who laughed brightly as the boy swatted at her hand playfully. Draco boiled for a moment, instantly caught himself and sighed inwardly. When he looked back at the mudblood and the world's golden boy, he eyed the pair disdainfully.
Draco scowled deeply into his own parchment and quill, and almost at once the rough edge of a torn bit of parchment scraped over the nape of his neck. With an upward sigh, he reached back and took the hastily folded note from Parkinson, who leaned back in her seat as though testing his reaction to her looping scrawl: I want to kick him, too. Do you think Binns would mind?
Without missing a beat, Draco replied in his signature silver ink: More than you care to test, I'm sure. We'll get him later; meet me at the Baroness after class, and we'll make plans for this atfernoon's Potions lesson; though, in his mind, he altered Parkinson's 'kick' to read 'kiss' and smiled secretively to himself.
He passed the note back and took the delicate shiver of a fingernail trailed across his neck to mean that she would meet him in the hidden alcove behind a molding statue of the Bloody Baron's late wife, who looked quite as sour and melancholy as the Baron himself often was.
Professor Binns, as usual, lost track of time; but, as merely a shade of himself, it was expected that his sense of time was not as accurate as most other professors. It was well after the hour that the mudblood finally caught his attention by slamming the classroom door from her seat across the room, and Binns threatened to continue the lesson in the following week, much to the chagrin of most of the class.
As Draco swept out of the room flanked by Crabbe and Goyle, who sported twin menacing sneers which rivaled even his perfected, haughty smirk, Parkinson flounced along after, the silver tassels on her bag swinging innocently with her staged curls.
"Afternoon, Parkinson," he said casually as she passed and glanced over her shoulder with a sparkling and cunning smile.
"See you after Herbology, Draco," she purred, turning a corner and disappearing down a rickety and splintering staircase which lead directly to the Slytherin dungeons. And once she was out of sight, Draco put out his lip slightly, discouraged by her willingness to do harm to the golden boy.
"Goyle," Draco said sharply, and the thug to his left grunted, "Crabbe, get on down to the greenhouses, I have something to which I must attend." They slouched off in the direction of the well-kept greenhouses, and Draco shuddered for a moment as he absently watched them go.
He turned to a stair cut into the marble behind a rotting tapestry, but abruptly knocked into the sharp elbow of a passerby. Ever gracious by his father's teaching, he began to apologize, and stopped short when he found himself speaking to a freckled, long-nosed redhead who wore a scowl far surpassing his own.
"Watch it, Weasley," he said, quite more casually and calmly than he would have liked. "You wouldn't have enough Galleons in Gringotts to pay for these robes if you scuffed them -- and my shoes cost more than your entire family is worth." The redhead's grey eyes blazed, and he muttered an angry reply under his breath, to which Draco chuckled, turning on his heel as the pale shade of Nicolas de Mimsy-Porpington glided by, pearly-white and casting a reprimanding stare at him through vacant eyes.
"You'll get yours, you know, Malfoy, and when you do, I'll be watching! I'll be doubled over in laughter when you get your own!"
Draco dismissed him entirely and strolled casually down a narrow corridor leading to a sweeping hidden marble staircase. In the end, he appeared right in front of the molding statue of the Baroness, and upon glancing down the corridor, he saw that Parkinson was attempting a seductive stroll across the chipping flagstones of the floor. Her shoes clacked loudly, and the tassles on her bag swayed jovially; but there was a dangerous and malicious edge to her dull grey eyes and cheerful voice which put Draco in a more defensive mood than he usually should have been.
Parkinson came to a stop in front of him and leaned slightly to one side in an attempt to appear more vuluptuous and curved; her knee was bent slightly, her head tipped to one side as she curled a stray lock of hair around a manicured nail.
"Good morning, Draco," she purred, eyeing him with a hunger he had only seen once before, in the emerald eyes of his newest infatuation. "And after the night you've had, I'm sure it must be a good morning."
"Why, Parkinson, what are you implying?"
She pounced and pinned him to the wall in a swift movement Draco could have avoided had he feared for his safety. However, he knew something Parkinson did not know he did: she would never hurt him -- not even, Draco was sure, if the Dark Lord himself gave her the order.
Her lips were scented with lip gloss, her hair brushing the side of his sharp nose with a tickling innocence in its pristine curl; her voice was less kind now that only the two of them were able to hear it. The voice was a gutteral but definately feminine growl, and her nails pressed into the flesh of his shoulder and of his waist, her breath sweet against his cheek as she watched him through the corner of her eye.
"I couldn't sleep last night, Malfoy -- I heard you leaving your dormitory at an hour of which Filch would certainly not have approved. I won't lie to you ... I was curious as to what exactly you were slipping out so carfully to do."
Draco opened his mouth as if to object, and she kneed him carefully in his thigh. Taking the hint, he snapped his mouth shut, biting his lip to ensure his own silence.
"I saw you meeting him; I saw the two of you slipping away through the shadows. Where did you go with him, Malfoy? Where would you have gone with Harry Potter in the silent hours of the night?"
"Potter and I -- "
"No," she snapped, letting up slightly and clapping a hand over Draco's pale lips. "Don't answer. I don't want to hear the words leave you, nor do I want to guess -- the both of us know what you were up to."
She was breathing heavily and seemed pained to be saying these things to him. Hesitantly, she glanced over her shoulder. Then, she leaned close again, her arm pressing almost dangerously across his throat, her hand carressing his shoulder.
"I'll tell you what, Malfoy. Ensure me a spot with Voldermort, and I won't -- "
"Parkinson, I'm not affilliated with anything of that ... persuasion ... anymore."
A long moment passed before either of them said anything. Finally, Parkinson stepped back, completely abandoning her threat on Draco's throat. She smiled sweetly and flipped her hair.
"Ensure me a position in Voldemort's inner circle," she said, "or perhaps more than just the three of us will know about your excursions with the Potter boy."
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Lucius -
I recently have found myself in a precarious situation; the two options are public humiliation of the Malfoy name, or reassociating myself with the Death Eaters and Dark Lord.
I understand and appreciate that you have risked yourself for me several times already with the Dark Lord, and I come to you to request one more rather large favor. If you are willing to aid me with this, I would be forever in your debt. Owl me at once regardless of what your reply may contain.
I could not possibly ask for a more sacrificing father.
- Draco
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Parkinson cleverly flipped back the left sleeve of her robes during Snape's lesson while they stirred their assigned potion, and relief flooded Draco's veins. The Dark Mark had been burned into her immaculate skin, and from her wrist hung the silver crest of Voldemort's more trusted Death Eaters.
"You're very welcome," Draco said darkly as she tilted her head up hautily and stirred the bubbling concoction in their cauldrom a little more absently.
Parkinson's eyes twinkled as she replied, "Believe me when I say that it's nothing."
And she laughed, and Draco wondered whether he was more fool than he had yet to realize by trusting her ability to retain a secret of this magnitude.
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Draco swept down the corridor, an airy June sun running golden highlights through his white-blond hair. As he rounded a corner, he was elbowed sharply, and he looked up to apologize. Even when he recognized the offender as a red-headed, long-nosed Weasley, he drawled an apology.
But there was an animosity in Weasley's eyes that Draco could never have ignored.
"Malfoy," growled Weasley, rolling up the sleeves of his robes casually. Panic settled into the pit of Draco's stomach, and he began to walk quickly away, his head turned on his shoulder to watch the enemy approaching.
He was cannoned into; he caught a glimpse of red hair and a speckling of freckles before being slammed into a wall. His skull cracked against the rough masonary with a hollow thunk, and he winced as a sharp pain shot through his head and back and legs.
Weasley's large hands were balled up in fists, and hits were raining down on Draco, who scrambled to shield his face and head with outstretched arms.
But the redhead seemed to intent on proving something to Draco, because he seized Draco's robes by the collar and crashed him into the wall a second time, this time staring directly into Draco's eyes with a malevolant passion Draco had only seen before in the eyes of Death Eaters.
"Weasley, I don't want to -- "
"Queer," Weasley hissed through clenched teeth.
"What Parkinson says isn't always -- "
"It wasn't only Pansy, Malfoy."
Ron was flushed a hateful red, his freckles had nearly vanished. His grey eyes were smoldering with the embers of hatred far surpassing anything he had ever seen. Draco closed his eyes, praying to whatever deity would listen to a tainted soul, and relaxed into Weasley's hands as they suspended him several inches above the flagstone floors.
"Stay away from him."
"From whom, Weasley? Parkinson lies, she alwas has. Can't believe a thing -- "
Draco was silenced by another crack of his skull agaisnt the wall and the slicing pain which dove straight from one end of his spine to the other. He winced, and Weasley let up slightly out of pure pity.
"I talked to Harry," he breathed heavily through his nose, "and he doesn't deny it. He wants me to acknowlege -- support, even -- this ... this mistake ... But, damn it, how can I possibly? The years of spats should not revert to ... to -- galavanting in the woods, starkers ... Damn, Malfoy, why him?"
Something in Weasley had changed, and now he looked down at Draco with a bemused, pleading mien in his eyes; Draco had to look away.
"Why him? Of all the boys at Hogwarts, why Harry?"
Draco willed himself to meet the redhead's gaze, and he said, levelly, "I can't change the fact that you and I could never be anything more than a primal folly." Weasley winced, and Draco was allowed to stand on his own feet once more.
He straightened his robes and smoothed back his hair.
"If you'll excuse me, I have a snake of which to rid my garden."
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The Great Hall entertained the end-of-term banquet. Laughs, tears, gifts, lessons, and memories were exchanged and gathered by the collective student body.
But amid the gaity and grievences, two bodies were missing from the four long tables in the hall; and only two in the crowds noticed they were gone.
The Gryffendor Tower entertained its own end-of-term banquet.
Ensnared in a tangle of bedclothes and passions, the world's golden boy and one former child of darkness poured out their every thought to one another without speaking a single word; and in the richness of one another, neither could have asked for anything more.
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Thank you Mrs Martinez, for requiring me to show the world who I am, and for indirectly inspiring this chapter.
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All characters used in this piece of fiction are property of J.K. Rowling and copyright Warner Brothers.
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Song lyrics are property of Papa Roach and copyright Viva La Cucaracha Music.
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Chapter Nine coming soon to a fan fiction archive near you.