The Raven II
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JKR, various publishers of the HP series. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Chapter 15 (uploaded 7/26/05)
Peter Pettigrew ran with his "talking" raven to an unused bedroom of the mansion. Once there, he carefully removed each layer of cloth which covered the bird, in case it would attack him. To his surprise, once it was uncovered, it just sat on top of the cloak, on the bed. "Thank you," Snape bowed his head.
"Who are you?"
"Call me Hugin."
"You said you were a wizard. What's your real name?" Wormtail prodded the bird.
"I think I will keep that to myself, for now."
"Are you an animagus?"
"No. At the moment, the ability to transform is beyond my capabilities."
Wormtail tapped his chin as he thought about it. Then he waived his wand and performed the incantation to bring an animagus back into his wizarding form. The raven glowed blue for a half-second, but nothing happened. "I told you I wasn't an animagus."
"What are you doing here? You're a spy, aren't you," Peter accused.
"No, the raven you had earlier is my little brother, Munin. I was merely trying to free him."
"I see. Well, you said you could do something for me. What can you do?"
"I know you're looking for a couple wizards. One of your own and a boy."
"Severus Snape and Harry Potter," Wormtail confirmed.
"You would be a hero if you could present them to your master, would you not?" the greasy raven offered.
Wormtail sat on the bed next to the black bird and put his chin on his fists to think about it, "Hmm. Tempting."
"Don't think about it too long, someone's bound to check up on us soon enough. If we're just going to sit around, you might as well get us something to eat. Call a house elf, I'm starving." Snape suggested.
Peter sighed, "I am the house elf. I get no respect around here."
Lucius stormed through the house, dragging his son behind him, "Wormtail! Where are you?" Finally he arrived at the right bedroom and threw open the door. "Have you killed that damn bird yet?"
"Whoops, you took to long to decide," the greasy, black bird tossed its head back.
"No," came the red-faced reply, "I'm thinking of keeping him. He's rather pleasant to talk to." Severus sat calmly on the bed and noticed Draco behind the two adults. Draco's eyes widened as he recognized the raven on the bed.
"He's what? Get out, Wormtail. I only wish I knew what the Dark Lord sees in you. Draco! Boy, get in here." Lucius pointed at the bird. "That is now your bird. I want you to practice the unforgivable curses on it. Start with imperius, then crucio, and finally the killing curse. It better be dead by the time I check on you in the morning. Good night." The senior Malfoy pushed Wormtail out of the room and slammed the door shut.
Draco yelled at the door, "Hey! You want me to sleep in a room where I killed?"
"YES!" was the muffled reply. Draco stomped his foot and stuck his tongue out at the door.
"Hi, Uncle Severus." Draco swatted the old black cloak off the bed and onto the floor. When he plopped down on the bed, it popped Snape up into the air. The bird fluttered softly onto the teen's stomach. "Did you get my package?" Snape nodded. "Where is it?" Snape lifted his wings in a shrug.
Draco spotted a spider in the corner of the ceiling. "Imperio! Come down here, spider." The spider marched down the wall, and stopped on the floor in the middle of the room. Draco sat up in bed and smirked, "This isn't too hard, eh? Crucio!" The spider trembled in its place, before collapsing. Snape didn't like it, but he could he do? He hopped onto Draco's shoulder and paced back and forth. "Stop that, you're making me crazy."
"Alohomora," came a voice from the other side of the door. In anticipation, Draco stood up and pointed his wand.
Wormtail came in holding a tray of sandwiches and pumpkin juice. "Don't curse me," he teased. "Unforgivable curses take a lot out of a wizard."
"Thanks, who are you?" Draco asked, as he put away his wand and took the tray. Snape walked down Draco's arm and started pecking at some bread crust.
"Everyone calls me Wormtail," Pettigrew answered. "Do you know who that is?"
Draco narrowed his eyes and lied, "No, do you?"
"He calls himself Hugin," Wormtail replied. Draco snorted a laugh, but at the bird's squawk, the sixteen year-old stuffed half a sandwich into his mouth so he wouldn't give himself away. He could only manage, then, to nod at Wormtail. "He says he's a wizard, but he won't tell me his real name." Snape clicked his beak several times and was rewarded with a cucumber.
"And you talk to birds all the time, right?" Draco smirked.
"Don't get cheeky," Wormtail growled.
"Say, do you know what happened to that package of sweets I sent by owl?"
"Yeh, I dug it out of the rubbish," Peter tossed it over, still wrapped as tight as when it was sent. "If you sent it as a joke, your father didn't find it funny at all."
"Oh, so that's why he fetched me from school. No, it was meant for Uncle Severus." Draco tossed the package onto the bed.
"Uncle?"
"Yeh, didn't you know, he's my godfather. Have you seen him?"
"We're still looking for him. But it's interesting that your owl delivered the package to this house."
"Yeh," Draco said lazily, "I'll bet he's probably somewhere in this house. What's that hissing noise? It sounds like it's coming down the hall." Snape's head popped up from the sandwich it was buried in and flew up to perch on Draco's head. "Ow, your claws are sharp!"
"Sounds like Nagini got away from the ice bath again. We've been keeping her temperature down to slow the bleeding." Wormtail rolled his eyes and walked into the hallway. He returned holding the big snake's tail, while Voldemort held its head.
"Draco Malfoy, I'm glad you decided to listen to your father and start training," Voldemort smiled and flashed his red beady eyes dangerously. "What have you accomplished so far?"
The blonde Hogwarts student looked around on the floor and pointed at the twitchy spider that had crawled to the corner. "I was just warming up on the Imperius curse and the Cruciatus curse when Wormtail brought me a snack." Draco put a pleasant smile on his face.
"What about the bird?" They watched as the raven jumped down to the bed and tugged on the string around the package.
"I like the bird," Draco exclaimed, "it's pretty smart. See? It's already picked out a sweet for me." SQUAWK, it shook its head. "For Wormtail?" SQUAWK! It shook its head again. "For Nagini!" The raven bobbed it's head and flew with the candy to Draco's hand. Malfoy unwrapped the Nosebleed Nougat and pinched off the nosebleed half with his fingers, like he'd seen Potter do in the gardener's shack. As he bent to give the candy to the snake, the black bird thought he was getting bit too close to the snake's mouth and flew up to Wormtail's balding head.
The snake swallowed the candy and immediately stopped bleeding. "Brilliant!" Voldemort declared, much to Lucius's pleasure. He and Bellatrix had come down to the room and witnessed Nagini's recovery. "What can I do for you, Draco?"
"I'd like to keep the raven to do with as I please," Draco decided.
Right before Snape flew back to Draco's shoulder, he whispered to Wormtail, "I told you I could help you get in the good graces of your master." Wormtail huffed quietly and walked out the door.
"Fine. We'll find you something else to torture. Rest well tonight, you've earned it." Voldemort left the room, followed by Nagini under her own power.
Lucius turned and pointed at Draco, "You'll kill the bird, if you know what's good for you. Mark my words, boy, don't get attached to it."
"Yes, Father," Draco nodded curtly. Balanced on his godson's shoulder, Snape bowed to Lucius with a glint in his eyes. Lucius merely turned on his heel and slammed the door behind him.
Once everyone was out of his room, Draco whispered to the raven, "Are you ready to transform?" Snape bobbed his head affirmatively, then turned to pull a feather off his back.
AWK! That hurt. He did another. AWK!
"Oh, come on, this will take all night," Draco said impatiently. He put the bird down in the middle of the floor and placed his hand over its back, then yanked off a handful of tail feathers. Out of instinct, Snape attacked the Death Eater apprentice. In self-defense, Draco shielded and fired off some repelling charms against the bird, but was giggling all the same. "Petrificus…"
Suddenly, the door slammed open. Lucius was fuming but kept his voice dangerously low, "You are not here to play with the bird. Kill it already!"
"But you said to torture it first," Draco said, as he threw the black cloak over the bird and the plucked feathers. "Leave me to it already! I'll have something for you by morning." Lucius scowled and slammed the door behind him as he left the room and stomped down the hallway with heavy feet. Before any more interruptions, Draco pulled the small vial from the inside pocket of his robes and fell to his knees with the cloak in front of him.
"Shh," Draco whispered as he slowly pulled the black cloth away. He uncorked the vial and tipped it into the bird's mouth as he gargled all the potion down.. Snape clicked his beak once and put his head down for a nap. Before the transformation occurred, Draco moved Snape and the cloak to the bed. He piled the black feathers in the center of the room and spent a few minutes decorating the room with scorch marks before he laid down, himself.
Snape woke up first the next morning, curled at the foot of the bed with a pounding headache. Running his fingers through his straight shoulder-length hair, he felt the patches of hair missing from the back of his head. "Draco, wake up," he shook the pale teen at the other end of the mattress.
"Stop it, Crabbe, I just want a few more minutes with her," he mumbled into the pillow.
"Draco," Snape called a bit louder, "let me borrow your wand."
"Huh?" the sleepy teen started. "Oh, I was having a dream. I was back at Hogwarts and…"
"I really don't want to hear it," Snape said blankly. "I need to borrow your mirror and wand." Snape sat now at the edge of the bed with his back to Draco, who was having a hard time suppressing his snickers.
Snape snatched the wand and mirror from Draco, almost as soon as the items were pulled out of his robes. Silently, he charmed his hair length back to normal and returned the items. "Have you ever tried to do anything about the oiliness?" Draco asked carefully.
"There only so much I can do with my hair. It's quite stubborn. Get on your feet. You will have the honor of finding me in the gardener's shed. What happened to my wand, do you know?"
"Dumbledore took it from me," Draco yawned. "What time is it, anyway?" He never got an answer, as he was yanked off the bed by the scruff of his neck and herded down the hallway.
They were passing through the kitchen, when Snape noticed a cauldron simmering on the counter. He wafted the steam into his face, "Mmm, fresh headache potion." The potions master dropped a ladle full of potion into a goblet and was just blowing it cool.
"That is the Dark Lord's potion you're drinking," Lucius walked in on the other two.
"Surely he can spare mere ladle, Lucius. Do me a favor and cool it off for me, will you?"
Lucius waved his wand over the goblet that Snape held out. "Thank you."
"Where have you been? Both sides have been looking for you, and then some."
"How many sides are there in this war, Lucius?"
"Well, there's the ministry, too. You've been reported as missing."
"I was confunded and wandering naked through the apple grove," Severus said with a completely straight face. Lucius returned an equally straight face. "Seriously, that last bout of crucio almost put me in St. Mungo's permanently."
Draco had an incredulous look on his face. "How do you all know when to believe each other? Father, I found him sleeping in the gardener's shack. I went there for potion ingredients early this morning."
Snape quickly changed the subject. "Say, you haven't seen my little raven, have you? Goes by the name of Munin."
"Yes, speaking of ravens," Lucius looked at his son, "nice job on that bird up stairs. However, if you had used the killing curse, as I told you to do, you wouldn't have such a mess to clean up. Come along, now. I'll take you into the forest and we'll find some practice for you."
"I haven't had breakfast yet," Draco complained.
"Trust me, it's better that you haven't eaten yet," Snape left the Malfoys in the kitchen to report his presence to Lord Voldemort.
Several days later at Hogwarts, Draco was summoned to Professor Snape's office. Snape snapped the newspaper, the Daily Prophet, and folded it neatly on his desk before acknowledging Draco's arrival. "Well, let's see it then." Draco rolled up his left sleeve to display the Dark Mark on his arm.
"What about you?" Draco asked. "Did he believe you?"
"Yes. I'll be in good standing again, once I find Harry Potter."
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To be continued…
A/N: HBP did lots to re-energize my muse. Getting it written in my busy life is still a problem, but I just came off a one week vacation that allowed me to finish writing this chapter. I intended to have a quieter vacation so that I could finish the story, but that didn't work out. Thank you for your reviews: Qem, Silverthreads, E.A.V., Arica Princess of Rivendell, Ms. Padfoot, Heart of the Wizard, Wren Truesong, Werinaya, Ezmerelda, SnufflerMuffler, Nenya, MysticSong 1978, Bekah17, Yzliose, Susan Potter, Pleione, Lurk, and reseh. Watermelon sorbet to all my lovely reviewers to help them cool off. Geez, it was 120F in Las Vegas last week.