Macbeth: Act Four, Scene One

Disclaimer: I love Harry Potter. According to Plato, 'love' is 'the desire to possess something, and to go on possessing it eternally.' Therefore, I desire to eternally possess Harry Potter, and by implication, I don't currently eternally possess him at all. JK Rowling does. (This one's for you, Ros, and yes, I know I decidedly massacred Plato. Sorry.)

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A/N: Happy New Year! I hope everyone had an excellent 2004, and will continue to have an excellent 2005.

For my New Year's celebration, I fulfilled my filial duty by introducing my 60-year-old father to Finding Nemo, which is apparently a headache-curer and general energiser, as it so filled me with energy that I spent the rest of the evening writing the final scene of this story. By candlelight, because occasionally I get an urge to be atmospheric.

I'm the same with telling people about fanfiction in general. I didn't even know any of by friends were fanfictioners until one of them mentioned it, at which my mouth fell wide open. I, also, cannot tell anyone about my fanfic-writing, as I tend to go bright red. Not even my parents know! I can tell people who already know about fanfiction and D/Hr, but no one else.

In other news, I'm glad to announce that the alternating updates won, so you get one chapter of Macbeth a fortnight and one chapter of Fallen a fortnight. Updates of both will move to Friday nights. Thank you so much to everyone who voted, especially those who chose alternating in order to give me a break. Writing really is about communication between a writer and a reader through the medium of the story, and sometimes it's very easy for readers to forget that the writer is a human being, or for the writer to see the readers as some ravenous story-eating monster that must be kept fed. I'm incredibly glad and grateful that this isn't happening here, and I couldn't ask for a better group of readers. I love you all. Really.

Anyway, without further ado about nothing, onto the fic. Enjoy!

'Ere the bat hath flown his cloister'd flight; ere to black Hecate's summons the shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done…' Malfoy paused, here, glancing at her sideways, the slightly manic smile she knew all too well from reality flitting across his face, 'a deed of dreadful note.'

Hermione let his eerie proclamation hang in the air for a second, stepping forward and reaching out to touch him, then freezing as if afraid before letting her arm fall away. Then she asked, her voice firm though a little nervous, 'What's to be done?'

Malfoy shook himself and turned towards her, smiling warmly. 'Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed,' he told her, brushing the lightest of kisses across her forehead. His lips were soft and cold. He pulled away, turning, to deliver the rest of his speech. 'Come, seeling night, scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day…' he began.

Hermione couldn't help but shudder, and was incredibly relieved that it could be passed off as acting, even if they hadn't planned for it. She was always worried that something would set Malfoy off in the middle of rehearsals, like Banquo's ghost set Macbeth off in the middle of his feast – they'd practiced that one last Monday – and betray his insanity to the directors. Or that something about the way the smiled, the way he looked too perfectly, glitteringly mad would make her snap, and she'd betray him.

Hermione wondered, for a moment, if Lady Macbeth would have felt the same way.

'So, prithee,' Malfoy concluded, holding out his hand to her, pausing with his head on one side and saying, almost gently, 'go with me.'

She took his hand and followed him off the stage, or rather to the edge of the group of desks that made their temporary stage.

'You aren't going to make us go through it again, are you?' moaned Adrian before anyone else could talk, earning himself a glare from Megan.

'Actually, I thought one more run through-' she began, coldly, but was interrupted by Stan.

'Megan, dearest, you know that if there is one thing in the world I adore, it is Macbeth,' he said earnestly. 'Were the school on fire, it would be the first thing I rescued, were I attacked by dangerous robbers looking to steal it, I would defend it with my life, were I…'

'Brevity is the soul of wit, Polonius,' Ruth cut in, smiling in amusement, earning a soft laugh from Olivia and a puzzled look from Adrian. Stan looked abashed.

'Alright, alright. To get to what I was saying, then; well, I can see Adrian's point. I'm getting utterly tired of it myself, to be honest. I mean, we had that huge full-cast meeting this morning about production dates and rehearsals and all the rest…'

'And the costume meeting,' Ruth offered. 'And Olivia and I spent lunchtime looking up lighting spells.'

'And I'm sure Hermione and Draco are just as tired as we are,' Stan finished, glancing up at the stage. Hermione wasn't particularly tired, but Draco gave a firm nod of agreement before she could say anything, and gave her hand a tight squeeze before letting go of it. He must have been holding it ever since the scene ended, though she hadn't noticed.

'So, in short,' Adrian finished, 'let us out this accursed nightmare of a rehearsal. Please,' he added, almost as an afterthought.

Megan sighed and started gathering her paperwork together. 'I guess I can't argue,' she said. 'I'll let you two know when we want you next. Keep practicing, both of you; we only have a month until the first performance.' That was one of the things they'd decided; they were going to perform the play on the last three nights of term, one show a night. There had been far more interest in it than they'd expected.

Draco nodded again and headed for the door, leaving right behind the cluster of directors; all of whom but Megan had bolted as soon as she'd finished speaking. Hermione clambered down carefully – she was always afraid she'd fall – and picked up her bag, leaving as Megan started packing sheets of parchment away.

She hadn't taken more than three steps when someone grabbed her wrist.

'Granger.'

Her name was spoken with complete neutrality: emotionally neutral, neither too loud nor too quiet, not asking anything or telling anything. A simple statement, and she didn't need to turn around to recognise the speaker.

'Malfoy,' she acknowledged. He dropped her hand gently, and she did turn to face him. He was leaning against the wall, one arm across his chest, simply watching her in an elegant way that was somehow completely unnerving. 'Did you want something?' she asked.

'Perhaps,' he said, half-shrugging one shoulder. 'We need to decide when we're rehearsing next.'

Megan chose that moment to bustle out of the door, startling Hermione but not fazing Malfoy in the slightest; he simply gave her a cordial smile and a nod. She returned the smile and headed off in the direction of the Gryffindor Common Room.

'Should we go somewhere more private?' he asked coolly, which immediately raised questions in Hermione's mind. There was no need to go somewhere private simply to set a rehearsal time: that meant he wanted something else. Suppressing a raised eyebrow and a question, she simply nodded.

Malfoy's eyes roved the corridor for a moment, before landing on a door about halfway down. 'In here?' he suggested, strolling over to it casually and putting a slender, graceful hand on the door handle. 'Granger?'

'What? Oh. Yes, in there.'

The room turned out to be a storeroom for Muggle Studies, and not a well organised one at that. Narrow, winding paths led through wobbling piles of various Muggle contraptions; televisions and gramophones, dusty piles of records that could only play by magical means at Hogwarts, a collection of rather battered computers, boxes of empty plastic bottles and electric plugs, non-moving photographs, ballpoint pens and pads of perfectly ordinary paper. Posters around the walls depicted the workings of the printing press, the insides of a computer and eighteenth-century cotton mills, while a huge row of sagging bookcases held a dog-eared collection of textbooks, Muggle literature, and various other unidentifiable things. A wilting and rather dusty spider plant completed the room.

Malfoy coughed, presumably from the dust, and perched rather delicately on the cleanest object he could find, which happened to be the television. He surveyed the room, looking away from her, and she was just about to tell him that televisions generally weren't used for sitting on when he spoke.

'There's a meeting tonight.'

It took her a few seconds to work out that he didn't mean the play. 'A… you-know-what meeting?'

'Death Eaters? Yes.' She couldn't see his face, and his voice was so impossibly neutral that she couldn't pick anything up from that, either. He would have showed more emotion talking about one of Professor Binns' History of Magic lectures. Boredom was, after all, an emotion.

Why was he telling her this? She leant to one side in an attempt to see his expression, but failed to see anything other then a strand of blond hair brushing against his cheek; he swept it away. And continued.

'It's too soon. He never holds them this close together.' And this time there was a hint of something just showing through a crack in his voice; something like fear. His shoulders were very tight, very tense, and she felt an instinctive desire to reach out and touch them.

'Do you… do you think something's going to happen?' she asked, as much to keep the conversation going as anything. If it could be called a conversation.

He snorted. 'No, Granger, we're going to sit around in a circle, drinking Firewhisky and sharing amusing but incredibly lewd anecdotes,' he snapped, and finally turned his head to face her, wearing an expression of irritation. 'Of course something's going to happen.'

Hermione bit her lip, hard, and tried to figure out what to say. Malfoy was… not shaking, exactly; if he were anyone other than Malfoy he would be shaking, but Malfoy wouldn't. Not while he was sane, anyway. Which he mightn't be for much longer.

Which was why she had to think carefully about what to say.

'Do you think…' she began, licking her suddenly-dry lips, 'would it be a good idea for you to… to go to Dumbledore? He could-'

'Is that your answer to everything?' Malfoy cut in, snapping at her. 'Go to Dumbledore? I thought you were meant to be smart, Granger…' His tone was a mixture of contempt and disappointment; he turned away, staring vaguely in the direction of a large map of the London Underground that was hanging at an angle on one wall.

'Malfoy…' Hermione started, her tone pleading, and when this had no effect she tried, 'Draco. Listen to me, please. Dumbledore can help, he's possibly the only person who can do anything right now…'

'And what gives you the idea that he'll want to?' Malfoy asked, tilting his chin upwards; even from behind he looked defiant. Hermione found herself reaching out an arm towards his shoulder, then stopped herself.

'He's helped people before,' she said softly, thinking of Snape but not daring to say it. 'In Voldemort's last rise, people who joined him but realised they were making a mistake; people who backed out… he helped them. And he can help you. And… and he will, Malfoy, I really think he will.'

Had Snape been like Malfoy? She didn't know. She certainly couldn't picture Snape as Malfoy was now: sitting on top of a television set in a dusty Muggle Studies storeroom – still managing to look impeccable, of course – with his back to someone desperately trying to persuade him to seek help from Albus Dumbledore. Though that was probably because she couldn't imagine looking quite as impossibly beautiful as Malfoy did.

He scoffed. 'What reason does he have to help me? What proof does he have that I'm not just…' he waved a hand in a vague gesture – 'a spy or something, trying to get his trust and then betray him in deepest consequence – as the instruments of darkness so often do? He finished, laughing a little, bitterly. Quoting again, or at least making reference to the play.

'You aren't an instrument of darkness,' Hermione said firmly, and this time she really did put her hand on his shoulder, which felt very tense and very firm and very warm; she hadn't expected that. 'You're… you're a human. Someone who made a mistake and did the wrong thing and… and someone who feels guilty about hurting other people. Don't you think Dumbledore will see that?'

'No,' he answered flatly. 'He'll see the son of one of the Dark Lord's greatest followers asking for help, with nothing to offer and no proof that he is what he says he is, and a massive threat to his side of the war. He won't help me, and he couldn't if he wanted to.'

'He can. He has,' Hermione said desperately, perching on a large and mysterious cardboard box beside Malfoy's television, so she was sitting about an inch below his height. Her hand was still on his shoulder; he hadn't removed it. 'I told you, he's helped people in Voldemort's past rise…'

'Not a Malfoy, though,' he cut in sharply, twisting to look at her over his shoulder. 'Not someone from a family of Dark wizards who've taken every opportunity to massacre Muggles they can get…'

She sighed. 'No, not a Malfoy,' she agreed. 'But someone in your position, all the same…'

'Who probably brought vast an ample reasons to believe him, like a list of all the Dark Lord's planned attacks which could be ticked off as he went through, or a rescued prisoner of war, or something. I have nothing. Nothing but my word, and yours, and do you really think he'll believe…'

'I think it's worth trying,' Hermione replied firmly, 'and I think you should have more faith in him...'

'I think you should pay more attention to reality,' Malfoy muttered, turning his head away, and Hermione didn't have an answer. Because, well, what proof did they have?

'Is there any other option?' she asked him. 'Any other way out of it?'

Malfoy shook his head. 'No. No one gets out of being a Death Eater. Lifetime service. Even if Dumbledore did give me protection, I'd always be watching over my shoulder. Waiting. The Dark Lord does not let his followers leave. It's…'

'It's not hopeless,' Hermione whispered, anticipating what he was going to say, and – quite tentatively, and seemingly without any input from her conscious mind – stroking her hand gently across Malfoy's back, trying to soothe him. 'There's always hope.'

'Spoken like a true Gryffindor. Always hope, messy glory and recklessness,' Malfoy retorted, but his heart didn't seem in it. He sighed a little, and she gave his shoulder a light squeeze, leaving her hand resting there. Very slowly – so slowly she barely noticed it – his shoulders relaxed.

They might have stayed like that for ten minutes - Hermione wasn't really paying attention to time, so it could have been five or it could have been fifteen – just sitting there, with her hand on his shoulder and neither of them able to see the other's expression. His skin was warm underneath the smooth cotton of his robes, and Hermione half-imagined she could feel the faint pulse of his heartbeat.

'I'd better go,' he said eventually, quietly. 'I have to… to get ready…'

'Of course,' she whispered, removing her hand and dropping it to her lap. He stood, appeared to pause for a moment, and strode to the door, but before he could open it Hermione found herself speaking. 'Is there no way you can avoid it? Stay behind?'

'No,' Malfoy said, very softly. 'There isn't.' And he was gone, leaving Hermione alone in a dusty room to think over everything he'd just said.

'And then she grabbed the Quaffle again, yeah, and started coming at me from the left, and I was still way over on the right side of the goal from the last shot,' Ron said, face flushed with the excitement of the Quidditch practice.

Hermione nodded, trying to pay half her attention to Ron and half to her Arithmancy homework. 'What did you do?' she asked.

'Shot off after it, though I didn't think I had a chance of getting it,' he said, and beamed proudly, 'but I did. I just knocked it – right with the tip of my little finger,' he said, raising the digit in question, 'and it went flying straight into one of the Bludgers that was about to hit Harry. That bit was a fluke, I guess… but everyone said it was an amazing save, didn't they, Harry?'

Harry had crumpled beside him on the sofa after coming in from Quidditch practices and hadn't said a word for the past five minutes. When he didn't respond to Ron's question, Ron turned towards him, frowning. 'Harry? Oy, Harry? I don't believe it…'

Hermione glanced up from her Arithmancy to see Harry snuggled into the corner of the sofa, still in his Quidditch robes, eyes closed and fast asleep. Ron lent over and gave his arm a gentle shake. 'Harry, wake up…'

'Oh, let him sleep, Ron,' Hermione chided. 'He looks exhausted.' She scribbled something down on her parchment, which caused her quill to start turning slowly orange. She frowned at it. 'That wasn't meant to happen…'

'Sorry,' Ron said, half for distracting her and half for trying to wake Harry, while Hermione glared fiercely at her sum in an attempt to figure out where she'd gone wrong. She made a small but deliberate alteration, and her quill faded back to white again. Nodding in satisfaction, she continued.

'I was wondering, though…' she said, and bit her lip, looking up from the parchment. 'How's he been sleeping?'

'Better than he was in summer,' Ron replied with a half-shrug. 'Though you can tell that by looking at him. He's fine, Hermione, stop worrying.'

Hermione focussed on her Arithmancy. 'I guess you're right,' she said, with a quick glance up at Harry. 'He definitely looks peaceful.'

'He's fine,' Ron repeated, and Hermione went back to her homework. What she didn't see was the faint frown which passed over Harry's face, or the way the edges of his eyes screwed up as his scar started to redden.

'Morsmordre Insigne.'

The voice that spoke it was cold, oddly high, and Harry shivered in his sleep as an icy wave of something like pleasure flowed through him. There was a brief gasp, then silence. Then colour started to seep out of the darkness, and he could see.

A ring of black cloaked and masked figures stood in the middle of some deserted patch of land. There was no moon, and the stars were faint; the scene was illuminated only by balls of pale, silvery light that hung heavily in the air, drifting at random around the scene, illuminating everything in impossibly sharp detail. In the centre of the ring stood Voldemort, snakelike features cast into a vivid mixture of light and shadow, which only served to make him appear even more terrifying, more inhuman. Before him a Death Eater was kneeling, cloaked and masked like the rest, one arm outreached. The left one, and Voldemort's pale fingertip was pressed against a vividly black Dark Mark.

An initiation? A new recruit?

Voldemort released the arm and spoke, his voice sending shivers down Harry's spine. 'You may rise,' he said, and the figure did so. 'Take your place among my loyal followers.'

'Thank you, my lord,' the figure replied, and Harry was startled to hear that the voice was female. He hadn't expected that, somehow.

The woman moved backwards into the circle, and Voldemort smiled, a pale, twisted mockery of a smile. 'I am pleased,' he began, and a general murmur ran around the circle. 'We have achieved much lately, have we not? The wizarding world cowers in fear of our next attack. The cowardly Minister and his Aurors are weak, easy to defeat. Unprepared.' Harry realised that Voldemort was carefully avoiding something on the ground, and tried to see what it was; the lights stayed mostly around chest height and left the ground in shadow.

'We have had many fine victories, have we not? So many Mudbloods and Muggles dead, and each one, of course, brings us closer to our goal, whether they be key targets for murder…' His face twisted into his mockery of a smile once more, 'Or simple abominations upon the earth which we have exterminated like the vermin they are.' There was a mutter of agreement from the ranks; Harry suspected they would have cheered, if they weren't afraid of angering their leader.

Voldemort moved on; one of the lights finally dipped down low, and Harry's stomach twisted as he finally saw what the thing on the ground was that Voldemort had walked round. A woman's corpse, the light shining off the bloodstains that streaked the skin. Her face was still twisted in agony from… from whatever they'd done to her: Harry didn't want to think.

'And in the near future, my faithful followers, we shall have even more to celebrate. Plans are even now being set in motion…' Voldemort let the sentence trail off with a high, cold laugh. 'But that is the future, is it not? I find myself rather more concerned with the present.' He folded his arms behind his back, circling the Death Eaters in a manner that could only be described as predatory.

'We have had successes, of course, but,' he sighed, 'there were failures too. Such as the attack we had planned on that abhorrent Mudblood settlement near London. Do you remember? When the Aurors, and Dumbledore's detestable Order, were there lying in wait for us? I admit myself incredibly curious as to how they knew in advance.' He stopped short, addressed the Death Eater nearest to him. 'Do you know?'

The trembling figure dropped to its knees, raising its hands in protest. 'My Lord…' came the voice, 'I… I have no idea how…'

'Of course you have no idea,' replied Voldemort, in some sickening perversion of gentleness. 'You had nothing to do with it.' He continued on, and the figure hastily got to its feet as soon as he realised that his neck wasn't on the line. 'It seems to me, my friends, that we have a spy in our midst.'

A sudden horrible realisation sent Harry's senses reeling. Snape. That was who Voldemort meant, the spy, the person who had alerted the Order…

Voldemort paced on through the circle, looking each Death Eater in the eye through the holes in their mask. 'I wonder who it could be…' he said, thoughtfully, moving from Death Eater to Death Eater. And stopped.

'Severus,' he said, into the sudden terrible silence.

The cloaked figure who must be Snape dropped to his knees, head bowed, 'My Lord, I would never…'

'Silence.' Voldemort's order was cold and pitiless, and he let it hang in the air for several seconds before speaking again. 'Severus,' he continued at last. 'You really should have been more careful.'

'My Lord,' Snape began again, tentatively, 'I have done nothing but serve you, loyally and faithfully, my Lord, I swear it…'

'You should have been far more careful,' Voldemort said, removing a piece of parchment from his robe and unfolding it. 'Leaving incriminating documentation such as this lying around in the bottom of a concealed, heavily warded and hexed box, where anyone who broke into your home could find it…'

'My Lord, I would never betray you,' Snape said, firmly and with a desperate sincerity to his voice that almost had Harry believing him. 'I have no idea what the parchment you're holding is, my Lord, I suspect it is an attempt to trick you into thinking that I would betray you. You know, my Lord, that I have many enemies…'

'I believe I ordered you to be silent?' Voldemort remarked, at which Snape did fall silent, head almost touching the ground, waiting for his fate to be decided.

Voldemort regarded him in silence for a few moments, an eerie silence hanging over the gathering, before turning to the Death Eater on Snape's right. 'Tell me,' he asked, 'What is the punishment for a Death Eater who turns on his master?'

'Death, my Lord,' came the unwilling reply.

'My Lord,' Snape cut in, still bent and kneeling at Voldemort's feet, 'Please, this documentation is false, a lie, I have proof, my…'

He was cut off as Voldemort pointed his wand at him and muttered, 'Expelliarmus. Iaceo.' flicking the tip of his wand into the circle of Death Eaters and catching hold of Snape's own wand. Snape was dragged along the ground to lie in a sprawling heap in the circle's centre.

'My Lord,' he began again, still desperately trying to survive, 'please, my Lord, I…'

'Silencio,' Voldemort muttered. Snape mouthed another few syllables then stopped, closing his eyes, seemingly defeated. Voldemort casually snapped Snape's wand in one quick movement, and tossed the pieces to the ground.

'Whom shall I choose for this… unparalleled honour?' he asked, pacing the circle once again. He stopped before the woman he'd earlier Marked. 'As my newest follower,' he said, 'I would enjoy a display of your… capabilities.'

She bowed her head. 'I would consider myself privileged to rid the world of this traitor, my Lord.'

He nodded in approval before continuing around the circle, considering the others carefully. The woman took a step forwards, raising her head with pride, as Voldemort stopped beside another Death Eater. 'I believe it would also be… beneficial… for you to deliver his punishment,' he said thoughtfully.

The figure bowed his head as the woman had done, and said in a thickened voice, 'It would be a great honour, my Lord.'

Snape must have recognised the voice, because he gasped – soundlessly – and stared at Voldemort with uttermost revulsion, mouthing something that looked incredibly like 'Bastard.'

The two chosen Death Eaters stepped to the middle; Voldemort fell back, smiling cruelly. 'I would like this punishment,' he said slowly, 'to be as painful and as long as possible. You understand me?'

'Yes, my Lord,' the woman said; the other figure simply nodded.

'Then you may begin when you are ready,' Voldemort said, pointing his wand at Snape and removing the silencing charm with a 'Sonus.'

The woman was the first to begin, and a savage surge of joy – Voldemort's joy – flowed through Harry so fiercely that he never heard what she said; heard only Snape's scream and felt only the burning pain in his scar as he was flung back into consciousness…

A/N: Spells: 'Morsmordre Insigne,' is my invented spell for Marking new Death Eaters: Morsmordre you all know, and 'insigne' means a mark. 'Iaceo' means I throw, and 'sonus', the counter spell to 'silencio,' means 'sound'.

And yes, that is the end of the chapter. According to one of my betae, 'your reviewers will rip you to shreds for this injustice!' Please. Please, don't. Being in shreds will greatly impair my ability to write. (On the other hand, she's seeing me in school on Wednesday, so if I disappear suddenly, you know what's happened to me.)

For those who have read Macbeth, you may be amused to realise that the Death Eaters were, indeed, supposed to be meeting upon a heath (where the witches met in the play.)

This week's question is related to the last week's question. Since so many of us seem to be 'in the closet' about our fanfictional preferences, we need a closet-equivalent to come out of. We could come out of the broom-cupboard, or possibly the Chamber of Secrets. Suggestions?

Review!