Chapter 8: The Monster I Am

"I hope he'll be back soon," Tori said as the crack of Harry's apparition to St. Mungo's with Narcissa faded away around them.

"He will," Daphne said. "Let's go get those bodies. Flopsy is clearing out the dirt under the stairs."

"Daph?"

Daphne paused. "Yes?"

"You…trust him."

"I suppose I do," Daphne said.

Tori raised her thick, furry eyebrows. "You never trust anyone. Why start now?"

"I was jealous." Daphne looked down at her feet. After all these months, she still wasn't used to the furry, clawed things she saw there. "You seemed so much happier trusting Harry and Draco, and they kept proving you right. I decided I'd give it a try."

"How does it feel?"

"Like I should have tried this sooner," Daphne said.

Tori laughed sadly, a soft, rumbling sound. "It didn't feel so good when Draco sold all of us out last year."

"Yet you're still willing to trust people."

"Of course!"

"I told you," Daphne said, "you were the strong one the whole time."

"You have a different kind of strength, maybe," Tori said. "I don't know if I would've thought to hide bodies like this."

"Speaking of which, we should probably get to that. If you'll just help me haul them, I'll kill them."

"I hate to make you do that alone," Tori said.

"Don't worry," Daphne replied. "I'd rather do it myself than make you do it."

"Thank you," Tori's reply was just a whisper.

Flopsy had already cleared out several feet of dirt from below the former location of the stairs when the girls made their way out of the house, but in their vulpine forms they had no trouble leaping the hole and continuing to where the Death Eaters' bodies lay. Draco was already there, using cleaning and vanishing charms to remove any stray blood on the ground.

"I'll get the four intact bodies," Daphne said. "Tori, can you get the other one and try to keep it from dripping?"

"I think so," Tori said. "Can you carry all four?"

"Yes," Daphne grunted as she picked up the first two and shoved them under her arms. She then picked up Selwyn and Euphemia in her hands and slowly hauled them to the hole Flopsy was making. Her arms and hands were shaking by the time she got to the edge of the hole, and she only barely managed to toss them into the hole before her grip strength gave out on her.

"You could have just gone back and made a second trip," Tori said as she threw her corpse in.

"I hate making second trips," Daphne replied. "Flopsy, can you put the dirt back in the hole now?"

"I is sorry, Mistress," Flopsy said, "but they's is not dead yet and I can't kills them."

"Oh, right," Tori said. "I forgot about that."

"It's never really come up before," Daphne said drily. She hopped into the hole, took a deep breath, and ripped out Euphemia's throat with her claws. She had to fight back against the instinct to retch, but she succeeded and killed Travers next before she could get queasy. He was easier, and the last Death Eater, a young man not much older than her, was almost fun. It was only when she found her paws reaching for the very dead Selwyn's throat next that she forced herself to stop.

"Tori," Daphne ground out the word, forcing her vocal cords to remember what human speech felt like, "tell me I'm human and don't need to mutilate a corpse."

"He'd dead, Daph," Tori said. "Look at me. He's dead."

Daphne did take her eyes off Selwyn's corpse. "I want to do it with my teeth. He…he looks like he'll be tasty. Lots of fat–"

"No!" Tori said. "Look at me, please. He's dead now. You don't have to do this."

"Daphne!" Draco's voice chimed in, surprising her out of her flesh-induced reverie. "You had the best grades in our year in Slytherin for our entire time in school. You are smarter than this. You are better than this. Now get out of that damn hole and let Flopsy do her job."

"Very well." Daphne closed her eyes, turned around, and climbed out entirely by feel.

When she got to the top, furry arms wrapped around her. "Thank you," Tori said. "I'm not ready to lose you yet."

"I'm already a monster," Daphne said.

"No." A human hand, Draco's, patted her arm. "I am. You will never be the monster I am."

One of Tori's arms released Daphne and pulled Draco in an embrace with her. Daphne opened her eyes and saw the boy's nose crinkle in disgust before he tamped down that emotion. She didn't envy him, stuck with the two of them and a working, human olfactory system.

"Listen, Draco," Tori said, "I don't know what you were, but you've chosen not to be a monster today. That's all that matters: that every day, you choose to be better than you were. That goes for us, too, Daph. We chose not to be monsters yesterday, and for as long as I can I will not let you choose to be a monster today. Is that clear?"

Daphne nodded. "Thank you. I…needed that."

"I won't let you down," Draco whispered.

"I know." Tori released them. "It looks like Flopsy's done with the dirt."

"Yes, Mistress," Flopsy said. "Is good?"

"It is," Tori said. The dirt was flat and she'd even patted it down to better support the porch. "That's great work."

"May Flopsy take a rest now? That was hard magicking."

"Of course," Tori said. "We'll call you if we need anything."

As soon as Flopsy popped away, Draco whipped out his wand and began vanishing stray bits of dirt. "No sense making what we've done too obvious," he said. "She was pretty tired toward the end and probably didn't have it in her to clean this up."

Daphne raised her eyebrows. "Draco, I don't think I've ever seen you be charitable toward a house elf before. Your family's treatment of Dobby made even my father uncomfortable, and that's my father I'm talking about."

"I thought that was normal when I was younger," Draco said. "It wasn't until after Dobby left and I started complaining about it that I realized how far out of line we were. When Dobby sacrificed his own life to save Potter and his friends, I was incredibly resentful that something…someone I'd grown up with would do that for someone else. After Potter got us out of Azkaban, I realized I'd had every chance to earn that kind of loyalty from Dobby, too, and I'd thrown them away, just like I threw away so many other important things. So, yeah, I treat house elves better now because I don't want any children I might have to learn the same thing from their father that I learnt from mine."

Tori gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder, and for once the poor boy didn't stagger. Either she was getting better at that or Draco was getting better at absorbing the pummeling.

"I suppose," Draco said, changing the subject, "I should get started on the staircase. Stand back, please."

They all took a few steps back while Draco looked around at the pieces of wood lying on the ground around them. "Can you do this?" Tori asked.

"I think so," Draco said. "One upside of the method by which I betrayed the school is that I'm probably one of the best magical carpenters and furniture repairmen in the entire country."

"Wait, what?" Daphne asked.

"It's a long story," Draco said. "Reparo."

Pieces of wood whipped into the air all around them, somehow dodging their bodies and embedding themselves in the rapidly reconstructing frame of the staircase. A full minute passed, then two, and Draco's concentration didn't flag. Once the full frame of the staircase and each stair was rebuilt, Draco let the spell stop and leaned over, his hands on his knees.

"Damn," he said. "I forgot how hard that was to sustain. I got the main portion, at least."

"You weren't kidding about skills," Tori said. "Even McGonagall would have been impressed with that."

Draco nodded. "It's nice to know I could work for a living if necessary."

"You would work?" Daphne asked. "Who are you and what have you done with Draco?"

"I," Draco said, "am someone who has run the numbers on his estate's remaining assets, his parents' expenditures, and come to some depressing conclusions."

"You'll make it," Tori said. "I think you're finally embracing the person I thought you could have been all along."

"Thank you." Draco might have blushed as he said that, but Daphne thought she was probably imagining it. "I should probably finish up this project. Potter will be back soon and he may need help with the artifact."

He stretched, leveled his wand, and continued repairing the stairs. The finer touches ended up requiring a few more breaks, but after ten minutes they had a staircase that, if it wasn't quite as good as it had been that morning, was certainly close enough to withstand scrutiny.

"I hate to suggest this," Daphne said when he was done, "but these stairs look too good now. Too new."

Draco sat down on the second step and sighed. "Yes, yes, such is the fate of all true art: to be trod upon by those incapable of appreciating its genius."

"They're stairs," Daphne said.

"To you, perhaps," Draco said. "To me, they represent the striving of all wizards toward the unknowable heights of pure magic."

"So…striving," Tori said, "but striving that you can walk on?"

"Exactly," Draco said. "The idea that we can tread our own striving under our feet is–"

"Complete rubbish," Tori said.

Draco tried to pout at her, but ended up laughing when Tori couldn't keep a straight face about it. (Smiles in her current form looked a lot like those of a gigantic dog.)

Daphne just shook her head. "If you two are quite done, I'm going to stomp on these a bit and scratch them with the claws on my toes."

"I can't watch." Draco covered his eyes.

"Did anyone ever tell you," Daphne said as she began to stomp up the stairs, "that you're a terrible drama queen?"

Tori grunted grumpily at her sister. "That's not true at all. He's the best drama queen."

"Wait…" Draco sat up and looked back and forth between them. "Were you defending me or insulting me?"

"A lady never tells," Tori said.

"It's quite simple, really," Daphne paused in her tromping. "Tori's in Slytherin with us, right?"

Draco nodded.

"If she were a 'Puff, she'd be defending you. If she were a 'Claw, she'd be insulting you. But since she's a Snake, she's doing both simultaneously, and will claim later to have done whichever one turns out to have been most advantageous."

"See?" Tori asked. "She gets it."

"That doesn't answer my question," Draco said, "but I learnt something anyway. So what would a Lion do?"

"Neither," Daphne said. "That would require them to use words. They'd either hex you or whoever was insulting you." She paused. "Actually, in your particular case, they'd probably hex you regardless."

"That certainly fits my experience," Draco said.

"Speaking of our Lion," Daphne said, "when do you think he'll return? It seems like he's been gone awhile now."

Draco flipped out his pocket watch. "He has."

"Do you think we should worry?" Tori asked.

"Probably," Draco said.

The girls' heads whipped around to glare at him.

"Wait, wait." The boy held his hands up in a placating gesture. "I didn't mean I thought he was going to sell us out, just that he's probably in trouble. To be honest, after that boy's school career, I'm kind of surprised he can make it to the grocery store and back without being abducted by some cult worshiping a forgotten dark budgerigar deity. My only real hope for my mother's safety was that I was personally responsible for a decent fraction of the incidents Potter stumbled into and I'm safely trapped here."

"Oh," Daphne said, "I see what you mean." She sighed. "Think I have time to scrub Narcissa from the wards?"

"With Potter's luck?" Draco snorted. "Doubtful. Give it a try, and, if you detect any apparition, stop and try to talk them out of attacking. I'll go around the side of the house and Disillusion Tori. If they attack, just try not to get hurt while she sneaks up on them. I'll try to cover you with spellfire, but I'd rather not visibly attack any Aurors if I can avoid it."

"That makes sense," Tori said, "but I should probably handle the wards and the negotiations. No offense, Daph, but you're not the most diplomatic person on a good day and the last few months haven't been good for either of us. Besides, it's not like I've accomplished much in our fights, anyway."

"Tori–"

"It's alright, Draco," Tori said. "Now get moving. We're probably low on time."

He nodded. "You're right. Be careful."

Daphne nodded. "Just be your charming self and stay out of trouble until I can sneak up on them, OK?"

"Can do," Tori said.

Draco and Daphne hurried off toward the west wing of the manor (the house itself faced south), Draco jogging to keep pace with Daphne's long, fast strides.

"You were trying to keep her out of the line of fire, weren't you?" Daphne asked as they walked.

Contrary to what most Gryffindors seemed to think, "pathological lying" wasn't part of being "cunning." Sometimes, you had to admit it when someone had you dead to rights. "Yes," Draco said. "Are you mad at me?"

Daphne snorted derisively. "I'd be a rubbish big sister if I hadn't wanted the same thing. Why do you care, though? We'll be dead by midnight."

They were around the side of the manor by that point, and Draco stopped and rubbed his left temple with his free hand. "She…she gives me hope almost every time I talk to her, and I can't give her any in return. This is all I can do."

"It's enough," Daphne said firmly. "For both of us."

The silence that followed was shattered by the crack of several simultaneous apparitions at the front gates.