Chapter Three: Remedial Potions
It is the third day since Dumbledore died.
Our Manor is now one of the most warded houses in England. My father's friends – and mine, I suppose, now – had worked on the magic all the previous day. Not that father had ever really left our home unprotected. Just, now, it was also unplottable.
As a result, I have to go and get Pansy from a meeting place half way to the village, which I was forbidden to do as I am probably now a wanted man. We walk back in awkward silence. I eventually feel for her hand, but it is like holding the hand of an Inferus: limp and cold.
Of course, she hadn't been at the celebration, and therefore had not seen my bravery in facing the Dark Lord's anger, or attack Snape. She only knows that I'd failed to kill Dumbledore. Still, I am glad she had come.
We climb the wall into a secret part of the garden, near a ramshackle summerhouse in the trees west of the house, surrounded by trees and shrubs and carpeted with long grass. I have brought Butterbeer and sweets with me, and a rug that I lay out after stamping down the grass. I lie on my back with my head on Pansy's lap and stare up into the dappled green light of a tree and she strokes her fingers slowly through my hair, the way she often did. I don't remember ever appreciating it quite so much.
We don't talk about anything.
When the house elf comes to tell me that Master Snape wants to see me in his office, Pansy helps me pack the things away and roll the blanket up, and I walk her back to the spot where she can safely leave. I move to kiss her, and she turns her face aside and places her lips on my cheek instead of my lips, and it hurts me and angers me, but I say nothing.
"Stay in touch," she whispers, looking sad, and Disapparates.
Snape's office is a room in one of the vast maze of cellars that spread under the house. I had only discovered the day before that my Potions professor had been permitted a base there since before I was born, though after the Dark Lord had almost been defeated by Potter he had rarely used it. It has been reopened, and the wards altered to permit me to enter as long as I am expected. I can feel the wards prickling my skin as I made my way along the narrow passageways with only my wand for light until I near the door, which is slightly ajar. I go inside, tucking my wand into my robes.
"What took you so long?" Snape was seated at a scarred oak desk, his quill skittering across parchment at an alarming speed, leaving narrow, scrawling words in its wake.
"I had a guest I had to see off the premises." I added, with effort, "Sorry."
The quill pauses and Snape looks up. "Parkinson?"
I give a slight nod, then say, "Yes, sir."
"Get permission next time. You are not permitted to leave the grounds alone, or let anyone enter without asking me or your mother." He finishes writing a sentence then lays down his quill and looks at me. I hate his ugly face and the fact he seems not to mind how he looks, but I keep my thoughts just below the surface, because I know how good at Legilimency he is.
He stands and moves to a door behind him. His new office is actually an antechamber for a larger room beyond, and I see it for the first time as the door swings open. He beckons me to follow him. It's a potions laboratory. It's not a large room, maybe ten paces square, with wide stone slabs running along the walls for work benches. I can feel a slight draught running past my cheek, as if the place is vented to the outside. There are three potions in progress on the right hand side of the room. This side of the room looks as if it has been cleaned. The left is filthy, in the way only sub-terranian rooms get, all slimy dirt and cobwebs and dead insects and rodents.
At my feet sits a bucket of steaming water and a scrubbing brush. Snape meets my gaze, gives a slight smile, and pushes past me to go back into his office.
"You have to be joking," I say, tightly.
"Have you ever known me to, Draco?" he asks, already half-immersed in a book.
"Get a house elf to do this. It's a waste of my time."
He snaps the book shut and glares at me. I glare back, because I'm not frightened of him, not now. His expression softens a little. "Hard work is a shock to you, Draco, because you've been spoiled. I am as culpable as your parents in this matter. I intend to redress the balance."
"You're not my father," I snarl, "you can't tell me what to do!"
He stares at me for a moment, calculating, thoughtful. "Try me," he says, softly.
I turn and kick the bucket across the floor.
He's on me quicker than a spider on a fly. He doesn't even use magic. His hand is closed around my throat and he presses me down onto one of the stone work benches. It reminds me of the Mudblood Granger, when she slapped me in our third year.
"No," he says, softly, feeling for my wand, "magic is too good for you, spoiled little child Draco. You're as bad as Potter. Neither of you have any discipline at all and you will both die as a result. Unfortunately my friendship with your mother means that, one way or another, I must do my best by you. Therefore, you will learn some discipline." He finally seems to notice I cannot breathe, and releases his hold and steps away from me.
"When my father hears about this- " I spit.
"The sooner the better," he says, coolly. "You may write to him this evening. On the condition that this room is scrubbed clean. Do not try to interfere with these potions, they are warded and, believe me Draco, that would incur a most serious punishment."
I know then that I will kill him.
Later he leaves without saying where he is going, and I'm glad of the easing of pressure in the air. I'm completely filthy and wet and I'm on the tenth bucket of water and third scrubbing brush. I've so committed myself to doing this by hand that I don't even consider using magic when he leaves.
There's something therapeutic about menial work; it clears the mind. I've been plotting for hours how I'm going to kill him. He probably knows that, even though he can't read my thoughts. So far, I've imagined all kinds of painful deaths, but as it appears obvious that I'm not as powerful as he is, nor as good at potions, there has to be another way.
When he goes, and I'm not harangued by the weight of his presence, I get the breakthrough I've been looking for. I scrub viciously at the stone flags on the floor, sliding the bristles of the brush into the grooves clogged with centuries of filth … and out pops something solid. I take it for a stone, and pick it up to discard it, but something about its regular features captures my attention. I clean it in the grimy water, and it sparkles a little. A gemstone, green, perhaps jade or emerald, oval shaped. It winks on my open palm like an evil eye.
I've seen something like it before. In my father's secret cache, under the dining room floor. My father had panicked and sold off some of the things he kept there, but is still, to my knowledge, a sizeable collection of Dark artefacts.
A Dark artefact, to help me get rid of Snape. It had failed with Dumbledore, but then I had to admit, my heart just hadn't been in it. Snape just continued to push me down, was obviously intent on humiliating me, as Dumbledore had not.
I shoved my feelings of guilt aside at my part in the murder. I hadn't hated Dumbledore, particularly, I had had no choice, it was business. But Snape …. I turned the gem over in my hand; if this did not belong to something powerful, then there would certainly be something down there that did.
Why wait? I'm not good at waiting. I wanted to go now, to see the Dark objects. So I did. I left my brush and bucket and sprinted down the dark corridor and up a short, narrow stone staircase two-at-a-time. This brought me to another corridor, longer, just as dark. I went more carefully, feeling my way along the dry walls that flaked under my fingertips. I think this is why the bastard took my wand, thinking it would keep me underground: not so, not likely. I can smell the musty richness of the wine cellars that lead off this corridor. I follow the curve and fall up another flight of steps, then go slowly, trying to remember how many. The darkness seems to be lessening. I can smell …. roast beef. I'm hungry. My senses tell me I have reached the door, and yes, it's here: I push it open a crack, and grey light greets me: I'm in a dark scullery off the kitchens.
The dining room isn't far away now. I squeeze through the maze of store rooms and through the washroom to an outside door to avoid the house elves. I walk quickly along the side of the house and clamber over the window sill through the open sash into the morning room. I dart to the door and listen: I hear a sound, but I can't say what it is or where it is coming from. I slip down the hall, the carpet muffling my steps. I can see the dining room, the door is open. Most of the doors along the hall are open, though some only partly. I pass the sitting room, mother's room, and I hear the sound again. I pause. The door is almost, almost completely, shut. I press my eye to the crack hinge-side, and peer in.
Snape: I recognise the dark set of his shoulders, the way his hair falls over them in lank tresses. He's in front of an Italian sideboard, staring ahead into a mirror.
My mother's face is reflected there.
Through the gloom I see she is held there, by him. Fear shoots through me. One of his hands holds her by the hair; it's twisted through his ugly fingers. His other hand holds her skirts up to her hips, I can see the backs of her legs, and now the way her arms are braced on the mirror frame. She looks back at him in the glass. He is moving against her. The mirror rattles slightly in the wood. Mother makes a small sound in the back of her throat.
My hand is raised, ready to shove the door open; but I don't. I know that sound, from the numerous times I've almost walked in on her and my father.
Suddenly, I wish I am blind and deaf. I fall away from the door, my mouth dry, covered from head to toe in hot, sweaty shame and utter revulsion. I gasp for breath. I turn and stagger into the dining room and hide myself behind the door, heart thudding, legs shaking. I catch sight of myself in the glass door of a cabinet: I look ghastly.
Pain: I relax my fist and find the gem imprinted into my palm.
The secret chamber is beneath the table. I crawl beneath and belatedly remember I haven't got my wand. For a brief moment, I feel like I might actually catch alight with the intensity of my anger and frustration. My fingers scrabble uselessly at the polished boards, unable to find the joins. I try the incantation wandlessly, but it doesn't work.
I must return to the cellars empty-handed. But he'll give me my wand back soon; this is a mere hiccough.
I return to the cellar. I refill the bucket and get to my knees and begin to scrub again. It doesn't seem to be getting any cleaner. A tear drops from my eye and gets swallowed in the grime. Then I can't stop the sobs, silent and fierce, as I think about my father, alone in a prison cell, and his friend cuckolding him, and his wife …
How can my mother let him do that to her? He must be forcing her …. He must be, blackmailing her perhaps, there must be a reason!
My head spins with it. I can't get the image out of my head, or the sound, or the fact that she does it with him, out of anybody else – and she's beautiful enough to get any of them she wants –
"Not finished yet?" He stands in the doorway, sallow-faced but for a hint of pink high on his cheeks, even in this light. Like nothing has happened. A line appears between his brows. "Are you crying?"
"Don't be ridiculous," I say through my teeth.
"Don't be ridiculous, sir," he corrects, stonily. "Keep going."
And he turns and takes his seat at his desk, and picks up his quill. It's a long time until I hear the scratch of his writing, however, and I know he's thinking about what he's just done to her.
I curse him silently and secretly with each circle I make with the brush, and paint a picture in my mind of him suffering, his face contorted, lying at my feet, dying, and my father coming up and saying "Well done, Draco!" and we wipe our feet in the bastard's blood and spit on him and watch as the ravens peck out his eyes.
"That's enough."
I look up, quickly. He's in the doorway again, holding out my wand. "That's enough for today," he said. "Six in the morning, here, ready to scrub. Your mother is expecting us both for dinner in half-an-hour, and you stink like Mundungus Fletcher. Go. Now."
I snatch my wand, and leave, as quickly as possible. He's right, I do smell; but as I pass him, I catch a familiar scent, and it's one that my father bought my mother as a present.
In the dark and quiet of the cellar corridors, alone, I snarl.
To be continued. Don't forget to sign up for email updates.
NOTES AND NODS
Snape is back, in abundance, next chapter, up soon: 'Graveside'.
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