Chapter 8: Downpour

The Gryffindor Common Room; November 10, 1997; around 12 PM

The world could have been dead at this hour and Hermione would never know. It was empty in the common room, the fires still burning as cheerfully as ever, but she could not hold herself to the homework spread before her as she did all other nights.

Harry had left earlier that evening, maybe only an hour ago. He hadn't told either of his closest friends, but he also hadn't seen Hermione sitting quietly by the fire. He tended not to see anything when he was distracted. What hurt most of all was that he hadn't seemed to see them at all these few weeks, paid little attention at any given time.

If it was a girl, Hermione would have understood. Some secretive love affair- who couldn't empathize with him for wanting that? But Harry wasn't sneaking out to meet some pretty Hufflepuff in the Astronomy Tower, because he wasn't risking himself for love at all, but business.

A guilty conscience stirred amid the worries in her mind. She tried to reassure herself that she had done it for Harry's sake, that it hadn't been her fault when things had turned bad. It had been an innocent act from the start. She had been worried, for God's sakes! She was and had been worried, that and her curiosity had gotten the best of her. There had never meant to be any harm…but, how to tell Harry?

There was the sound of a portrait swinging opened and then closed. Harry. "Hermione?" He seemed startled for a moment, and she closed her eyes. "Hermione, - is Ron awake as well? I need to talk to him."

She stood up suddenly. "Why?" There was no mistaking the anxiety in her voice. He looked at her queerly.

"I…want to ask him about something."

"I know what you want to ask, Harry. It wasn't Ron's fault."

He smiled, as if trying to smooth over a misunderstanding. The way he might look at a small child. "I don't think you know, Hermione. I'm not quite sure if I know myself."

"I do know." Looking away, her voice shaking. "It was my fault from the beginning"

As he walked over towards her, curled there in an armchair, Hermione could see that he still did not believe her. "No, Hermione, really-,"

"I stole the coin, all right?! I snuck into the boy's dormitories and rummaged through your drawer."

Harry's expression was frozen in that condescending smile. "You…-,"

"I didn't mean to!" Her voice was shrill. "I was worried about you, Harry, you'd been acting so strangely! I didn't know what else I could do- I thought something had happened to you, going through that Portkey, you had seen You-Know-Who or something!"

"You took it? But, Hermione…" you would never do that.

"Why didn't you tell us? We're not bad people, Harry, we can understand if you felt sympathetic for Malfoy-,"

"I didn't feel any sympathy," said Harry suddenly, loudly. "I hate him." How can you even suggest that? I thought I knew you.

She glanced at him, watching as his eyes turned to the flames. He was wearing some sort of glove, and he gripped it with terrible tension as if trying to wrest some emotion from it.

A single sigh. "Oh Harry! The truth is that I took the coin- I was worried- and I went there, myself, and came back…I must have left it out somewhere, and Ron-," No, not Ron too. Harry felt his head spinning.

"I found it." Ron entered, pyjamas as short as always. Harry was struck by the thought that Ron…Ron and Hermione had never changed. He had simply never seen the truth. "I thought it was ordinary galleon at first- you can't blame me for wanting to pick it up- but then I went there."

"You both saw it." His voice was hollow, waiting to be filled with dreaded possibility.

"The Gryffindor house saw it," said Ron. "And I showed them." His voice asked for no sympathy. For Harry, it translated as uncaring.

"So…everyone- they've all seen it now," repeated Harry quietly.

"Everyone that matters. I would've thought you could understand, Harry, you know what he's done to us over these years."

"I understand," Harry replied stoically, still staring into the fire as if imagining himself pitching into it. "Why you would do it. He's boasted, played the general prat for all this time, and now, finally, you have more than what he has. It's right to want to shove it all back at him."

I would have done it.

Demon.

"It's only human, Harry," said Hermione, almost pleadingly. "It's natural to want to-," Not the Hermione I knew. Not The Boy Who Lived.

"It isn't natural for me," Harry interrupted, turning his gaze abruptly. They could still see the fire reflecting in his glasses.

"Shut up, Harry," Ron said brusquely. "You might be a hero, but you're no saint, remember? You break rules left and right, but in the end, it's always out of good intentions. Not everything you do has to be done the right way."

Harry sank down to sit cross-legged by the fire. "But what if I don't always have good intentions?" His voice was hoarse and quiet, the question meant mostly for himself.

Standing above him, Ron looked resolved. "Then you're just like the rest of us."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They left soon after, deciding to discuss their next plan of action in the morning. There was a soft rustle; Draco appeared near the doorway, leaving the invisibility cloak in a shining puddle about his feet. After a moment's thought, he picked it up and draped it across himself again, then crept soundlessly towards the curving stairs.

The sounds of light (and not so light) snoring permeated the air, lending the room a comfortably drowsy feel. In the dark, there was little to see outside the lumps curled up in their beds; Draco found himself wishing he had a camera with him before turning to his task.

It was easy to find Harry's bed, easier still to find Harry's bedside table with a pair of round-framed glasses perched atop it. Carefully, Draco worked open the drawer, removing the books and stacking them methodically behind him on the floor.

And there was that pouch. Drawing it out of the drawer by the string, he probed through the fabric and felt the outline of the galleon there. Smiling in triumph, he opened the bag to feel it in his hand when-

He realized that he wasn't wearing his glove.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Manor in winter had always been a dazzling sight, snowcaps jauntily topping the roof and icicles rimming the edge like a tremendous crystal chandelier. Draco came home during holidays if only to see the house in its pretty winter coat, as he did all other years. Even as the years had passed and its halls were more increasingly filled with screams, he didn't mind. To him the house seemed ever innocent, though the events within in torture chambers were not.

It seemed sad that only a few swaying beams could bear the snow. In a moment, he forgot his accidental arrival. He went to stroke one, feeling the cold familiar wood press against his cheek. Home. He wanted to cry out in relief, but held in his voice and stood there silently, leaning up against what was left of his past. There were many things he wanted and could never have.

The midnight sky was an unsympathetic blue-grey. Voldemort stepped out of it, across the horizon, moments later.

Drawing the invisibility cloak closer about it, Draco waited, hating the fear that grew up inside of him. The Dark Lord, apparently, was not here for reminiscence or guilt, of which he had little tolerance for. He was here for Draco.

The invisibility cloak came aside with ease, tossed among the charcoal with little thought

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry Potter woke up suddenly to see the silver accents on his Transfiguration textbook catching the moon from the floor and his drawer emptied of its contents.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Dark Lord peered at his arm, no longer covered by dragon hide. "A renegade Death Eater should not be so eager to show the mark of his master."

Draco looked towards him, wrists facing towards the sky as if revealing the Dark Mark in atonement. "It - - it was taken from me. By Harry Potter."

"Recently, I should hope. Tell me, young Malfoy, why you saw it fit to ignore my call for months, when it was clear you were needed to fill your father's position."

"I felt unworthy." Draco said unwaveringly.

"You should." His eyes were conspicuous in the darkness, red against nocturnal blue and grey. "Your father was a great man. Complying."

"Am I like him?" Here was the man Lucius knew best, his master and the master of his son. Draco had been born to revere him with a trust known only to the welts on a slave's back and the whip that created them. The respect and trust made only from expectation, the knowledge that the commanding blow would always fall.

"Only in appearance," came the voice of judgment, sounding of snakes. "You have only his potential, none of his fidelity. But come." The Dark Lord stepped towards him. "I came here tonight only because I wished to show you something. Where is the Portkey?"

Draco proffered it out on his flat palm, where it had not moved since he arrived. "I was in the Gryffindor common room."

"No matter. You have an invisibility cloak, I can see."

"Potter's."

"All the better, young Malfoy. With it we can kill that boy and complete my other task all at once."

Draco's head turned sharply towards him, and then away, fingers suddenly closed around the coin. "No. Leave him to me-…master."

"You say you have a quarrel with him? It is my right more than yours, Malfoy, to kill Harry Potter." However, his words were more curious than angry. "He brought me to my ruin, and yet Draco believes that he may be more deserving of the final blow."

Draco bowed his head.

"Very well. He shall not die tonight- come, we have much to see. You waste too much of my time. It is not like the days when I wooed your father to my cause. Your conviction must be found more quickly."

Together, they took the coin. As they arrived, Hogwarts gave a shudder in her stony roots, and its children slept on fitfully.

Voldemort had returned.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry faked an innocent sleep while the man from his nightmares appeared. He couldn't see Voldemort, but he felt that pain pulsing through his scar, could almost smell the stench of not-quite-living on the air. It was clear; Voldemort had returned to finally kill him, and there was little Harry could do but pray and lie in a false slumber.

There was that touch on his forehead, the cold burning of snake flesh. There were hissed words in the darkness, and words hushed in reply. Traitor Malfoy and his master, come to triumph together in The Boy Who Lived 's death. Sleeping on with his eyelids clamped tightly shut, he waited, feeling indignant that this was the end after all.

Death. That cold-fingered hand stroking his cheek.

And then it walked away. Harry forgot and opened his eyes in surprise at their retreating footfalls, then closed them again in remembrance.

He rose from his bed, feeling momentous as he took up his wand and dagger to creep behind them. He had decided long ago after that incident that the only way he could kill Voldemort this time would be to strike from behind. There seemed no other way while those slanted eyes were watching, though it had seemed unlikely at the time that such a chance would present itself.

It was here. He put on the invisibility cloak they had left behind so carelessly.

For once, Harry Potter would be the first to strike. This was no murder in defense, but there was no other choice and Harry felt a sense of duty rising. This- this was revenge, what he had lived for. To kill. To kill the king of murderers.

Demon.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"No," hissed Draco suddenly. "You said-,"

Voldemort, alien in the gentle nature of the dormitories, had brushed that scar as if in suspicion. To Draco, it felt as the action was incriminating, disturbing that underlying purity-but he could not say so. The long-fingered hand traced its way down to his cheek.

"Do not worry, young Malfoy. He is yours."

They left soon after, Draco finding a sense of resentment. Master and mastered found their way about the darkness as if by chance. It was difficult to believe that Voldemort knew where he was going, but Draco obeyed and held his tongue.

He found himself facing the tapestry, found himself facing the memory of those nights before. Voldemort removed the helmet and handed it to Draco, who placed it warily at his feet. The gap opened. They passed through it, Draco looking back and Voldemort downward, at the light snow powdering the regular tiles.

A hissed word in Slytherin's snake tongue, and a tile popped loose so that the Dark Lord could part the floor and gain entrance. There was a flight of stairs, dust lingering on every step, and sense of ancient forbiddance. 

Down, down, down, the stair long and narrow, preservation a smell heavy on the air. The long way felt pivotal somewhere in his mind, and then-

The torches flared at their arrival, tall flames lighting up to the ceiling arched high above them. Long pillars supported either side, stretching at least seven meters to support the ceiling. They were ominously similar to the columns that had held up his own home, as if they were the models by which the Manor was built.

The skeletons caught his eyes within the next glance. Rows upon rows of bare white bones, larger and then smaller, made more dramatic in the flickering torchlight. They quivered slightly with some uncertain magic, as if still living. Animal bones, like a museum of those long dead. They were arranged on low pedestals with no glass to protect them, and positioned so naturally as to seem as if they had died this way, frozen in mid-stance until flesh rotted away.

Voldemort pressed those thin lips together, mocking a smile.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry followed them silently, hand pressed against the walls as he descended the long stairway just behind them. He could only do so much to stifle his gasps of pain; several times freezing at Voldemort's pauses on the steps, as if smelling for his shadow, only to continue on.

The Dark Lord was aware of him. Where, then, was the killing curse? When they entered the museum-room, Harry gaped from the shadows, waiting, wand in his left hand and dagger in his right.

He could surely kill Draco using a spell, but the Dark Lord would most likely have up protective charms of some sort. When Harry had encountered him, last year, the killing curse had failed against him. Voldemort and his Death Eaters had vanished before help came to drag away the Muggle corpses.

He had seen their glassy eyes as the curse rebounded, seemingly made stronger after being reflected. It had killed several innocents at once, in one great flash of light, and Voldemort had thanked him as Harry shook, seemingly in guilt and anger, but actually horrified at the sense of power it gave him to have murdered so easily.

It had been an accident. It had been an accident and he knew it, but he knew that the ghosts could rise from his wand as easily as they had from the wand of his enemy.

No. He would have to use the knife.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Draco watched as his master surveyed the area, eyes sliding over the bones and spellbooks piled on the long worktables that ran the length of the room. There were at least twenty specimens or so, arranged in neat rows with plaques on each platform. He walked down each row but stopped before a specific pair.

The lovers, the skeletons Draco had seen outside on the balcony that first time, that one time. Their same tangled embrace had not changed, but the knife was missing. Draco had seen it in Harry's drawer.

A cold hand on his shoulder made him shudder and move away. "Your father was an ambitious man, Draco, even in his school days. Even younger than you." He paced forward a few steps, eyes tilted downwards at the bones. Draco looked away, feeling like an intruder on a private moment, although it would last forever and they would not care.

"This was his dream. While I rose to power, Lucius found this room and made it his own. He was keen on pain, on understanding it, and he devoted his mind to finding its secrets. He captured or bought creatures, alive, froze them into a state of stasis, tested and prodded until he could feel their screams.

"I saw this, saw what a loyal servant he would make to me. I knew the past of his family, and how valuable they could be for certain causes. I wished to secure him- but how? It would have to have been done swiftly, in one maneuver, or else not at all.

"Through sources and time, I found his heart, tucked away in a secret museum of living pain. There was only one thing he desired, too risky for him to procure, but nothing for me. Human specimens.

"It was just as I knew it would be. Lucius was pleased, elated at the methods by which I had acquired them, at the treachery and blood spilled on their flesh. I believe he enjoyed hearing it, like a child might hear his favorite fairytale again and again. He was mine."

There was the sudden flash of a knife, blinding Draco. He cried out a gasp, stumbled a little, watched as the invisibility cloak was shaken off and Harry Potter was flung to the floor.

"Stupefy!"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Harry leapt towards him, meaning to plunge the dagger into Voldemort's neck but instead merely nicking it. The Dark Lord pivoted on his feet just as Harry began his rush, swinging out his wand easily.

"Stupefy!"

Harry slid to Voldemort's feet, wand and dagger clattering across the stone floor. Frozen, and Draco was as well, gray eyes wide and then narrowed. Voldemort turned to face him slowly. "Here is your chance, Malfoy. Kill him."

His first instinct was 'no'. An appropriate reply however, took longer to form.

"...no."

"Don't make me impatient with you, boy. Kill him and get it done with."

"It seems too simple. I-,"

"It's what your father would have done. Nothing is too simple when it comes to murder."

Draco narrowed his eyes, his fingers tracing the tabletop. "Obviously. But my father is dead, and this is what killed him." There were words etched beneath his touch. "It's mad to think I would want to follow his way."

"It would be perpetually wise to do so," Voldemort said softly. Harry was tangled on the floor, half-covered by the cloak. "But…he who waits too long loses the prize, I'm afraid." He lowered his wand so that it pointed towards Harry's inert body.

Draco didn't think in what he did next- he barely saw it himself. It was innate, some sort of buried instinct. He had the knife in his hand, taken from Harry. He was raising it and rushing at his master. He was plunging it in with a scream, barely muted. He was thrown off- he crashed into the desk, snapping and breaking like a wooden doll.

He found himself bleeding. Voldemort was not. The knife had done nothing.

"Fool," he hissed. "You think I could not anticipate this? Idiot boy. You are too young to understand immortality, or not young enough."

"...No..." Draco was gasping, one hand pressed against his head where it throbbed- blood was covering the table, filling the cracks and crevices that had been worn in, there, by time. "...no..." His vision was blurring and God, he was a fool, the greatest fool that had ever lived. Blood on the desk, spilling over the cracks, filling...

...words. He stared as Voldemort spoke, but Draco wasn't listening. Harry was stirring faintly on the floor but too faintly to draw attention. The blood drew fine-lettered words across the table. A spell. Used by his father to freeze his victims for study.

Subsisto...Saecula...Saeculorum

Subsisto...Saecula...Saeculorum. To end...to all eternity.

Voldemort had turned to Harry once again when Draco lifted his gaze slowly from the tabletop. Lifted his broken body from its surrender. He had been left for dead.

He was alive, though, so alive that it felt as if he were in flames. The words burned in Draco's mouth like all-consuming fire and blazed through him, screaming, shot through his wand and fell upon the once-great lord. By the time the spell had fallen, greatness had fallen away as well.

Voldemort had become little more than the museum exhibits he had so admired, the frozen specimens of pain. Living but already frozen, never to die again.

It was over.

Draco fell to his knees, to his hands, to his collapse. He closed his eyes; his train of thought was fading and winding so aimlessly, it seemed pointless to live or think at all- sleep seemed more favorable, death seemed a distant possibility.

He had done what his father would have called unthinkable: saved Harry Potter's life. There would be consequences. There would be a reprieve. But Father was dead, as was Voldemort. The only retribution he would receive could only come from himself.

It was better to sleep.

Draco closed his eyes and convinced himself to dream. He heard Harry stir and wake and realize...but did not look to see. Let Potter think he was dead. What he had done was inexcusable and it was going nowhere. He could not live with it and hardly wanted to. Somewhere he knew that, were he to live, he would wake everyday with it on his mind. His every living breath would give it away.

Damn Potter, damn him to hell- Potter had given him life, a poisoned apple. It gave him another chance for so many good things and yet opened the possibility to die again. Life was vulnerability. 

Let Potter think he was dead.

But Potter crawled over anyway, crouched over him. He was holding his breath though he didn't seem to care nor notice.

"Draco?" So hesitant. Yes, Potter, I'm dead. Can't you tell?

For once I am the martyred hero. You didn't have to kill anyone, Potter, you were so afraid of it- and now I've gone and done all the work for you.

Draco could feel Harry's hands at his throat. To choke him? No, now checking for a pulse, now brushing the side of Draco's face and tangling desperately through his hair. Traveling down the scratch marks and trailing blood onto his robes.

Harry was crying and Draco thought dimly, This is an accomplishment. But still, it hurt worse than anything that he had ever achieved.

You're no phoenix, Potter. Your tears won't heal anything. You gave me life once but you've got nothing left to help me.

There was no way Harry could possibly hear his thoughts, meant to reassure. If anything, Harry became only more frenzied, his movements jerky, and then at last resort-

-Harry kissed him. Kissed him as if he could give the kiss of life. In Draco's mind there was a great explosion, sparking and burning like a wildfire behind his eyes. Once ignited, it remained lit.

He was alive.

And he opened his eyes, though Potter's were tear-ringed and closed and could not see it, at once deciding to live.

He kissed back.