Narcissa Black Malfoy was sobbing, on her knees on her bed, clawing at the arm of Severus Snape as he rooted with his free hand through his satchel for a calming draught. Her only son, Draco, stood beside them, helpless, mustering the courage to open the door and meet the monster at the end of the corridor.
Across the room, the door began to creak open under Peter Pettigrew's silver hand.
Pettigrew...
Snape's head snapped up. "Colloportus," he hissed. Pettigrew was thrust out as the door slammed shut.
Snape tipped Narcissa's head back, feeding her the calming draught with a firmness so close to roughness it made Draco yell. But then Snape lowered her to into her pillows with a detached but careful gentleness, her cries growing quiet, exhausted, sleeping.
But there was no rest for Snape, maker of an unbreakable vow. He turned from the bed, lunging across the floor to whisper hotly in Draco's face.
"I have it. Secret Keeper. Already, I know the secret of who has cast the love charm. If I bind you with a Fidelius charm, and make you a keeper of this secret, you will only be able to divulge it willingly. If you cast it correctly, the Dark Lord should not be able to force you."
Malfoy shook his head. "Me? I don't understand. Why not make you my Secret Keeper? It's more my secret than it is yours."
For a moment, Snape said nothing. He stood face to face with Draco, his eyes narrowing. The Fidelius spell was notoriously difficult, rarely performed by underaged wizards, and never under the kind of duress Draco currently faced. But Snape could not agree to do it himself. A Secret Keeper's silence is voluntary. And Snape, in his convoluted personal landscape of twisted, folded alliances, could not trust himself never to volunteer. Draco knew it too.
With the Dark Mark on his arm, Draco had already out-maneuvred the Trace and its limitations on him performing magic outside of school. He could agree to cast the spell, so he did. "Right, let's get started."
"Patience, Draco. Calm yourself, watch, and listen carefully…"
Narcissa sank deeper into her enchanted sleep. Pettigrew rattled and whinged outside the door doubly locked by Snape's spell and Draco's will made manifest through the house over which he was master. And at the base of the staircase, Bellatrix sat at the piano, its lid raised, racing, pounding, ringing through La Campanella over and over again with virtuosic perfection and obsessive repetition, deliberately fighting to keep her sister awake and suffering, remembering Azkaban.
These were the conditions under which Snape and Draco gripped each other by the hand and fought through the incantations and intricate wand work required to make Draco keeper of the secret of Hermione's role as the caster of the love token. When it was finished, Draco snatched his hand away, staggering backward, collapsing against his mother's vanity, his back against the mirror.
"Did I get it? Will it work?"
Snape said nothing but, "Alohomora," and Peter Pettigrew tumbled into the room.
"Master Malfoy," he said, scrambling back onto his feet, "quickly. You will come with me."
Lead like a stranger through a house that had belonged to his family for five hundred years, Draco followed Wormtail along the upstairs corridor to the large, cold suite where the Dark Lord had taken up residence. He came along slowly, lagging behind, causing Wormtail to wait at the door as Draco gathered strength to bring the pitch of his occulmency to a roaring, impenetrable clamour, Secret Keeper or not.
He stepped through the door. There was no rush of legilimens, just a welcome spoken in the loud, high voice of the Dark Lord's menacing perversion of friendliness. "Draco, at last," he said, beckoning him closer to where he stood by the hearth. "How is your mother this evening?"
He fought not to let his occulmency slip as he spoke. "She is resting in Professor Snape's care. She'll be well enough soon."
The Dark Lord hummed. "Poor Narcissa, visitor of Azkaban. Her sister has been less than sympathetic." He chuckled. "Azkaban," he repeated the name like a curse. "A shocking place, at first sight, to be sure. Proof, excellent proof, of the corrupt heart of the current Ministry. That wizards could ever subject one another to such atrocities - " he clucked his tongue. "The nightmare will all be over soon, Draco. We shall set the remainder of our brethren free."
He dropped a hand on Draco's shoulder, its coldness seeping through his jacket.
Draco swallowed through a dry throat. "Yes, my Lord. Soon. We have had a breakthrough in the mending of the vanishing cabinet at Hogwarts."
"Yes, you've successfully transported matter. Next comes the passage of living matter without killing it. Yes, Draco. There are more breakthroughs to come." He twisted with a slow, snakelike grace before sitting in the armchair before the fire, next to a table set with a crystal decanter and a single glass. "And to expedite your success, we must simplify your affairs."
Draco's skin prickled from his scalp to his heels. This was it. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, focused, as if he was not nonplussed as the Dark Lord pressed into his mind. He was never any good at controlling the expression on his face, but he fought to hold it in a neutral calm he did not feel, straining to maintain the internal noise that hid his thoughts.
"Ah, Bella's method," the Dark Lord smiled. "Crude, inelegant, but effective enough. I will teach you further myself. But not today."
His words signaled that his legilimens would abate, but it did not. Primed for the deception, Draco held his ground.
"What is it you are hiding?" the Dark Lord mused.
Draco let an image bob out of the maelstrom of his resistance - a distraction, interesting, disturbing but tangential. It was an image he had just seen, that of his mother and Snape together on the bed, his mother on her knees, her hands tangled in Snape's robes, her face raised to his, her lips parted and desperate as Snape leaned over her. It was just to administer the calming draught, but Draco didn't show the Dark Lord that.
The Dark Lord laughed low in his throat. "There is no better servant than Severus. Surely, Draco, you wouldn't grudge him a fine, wealthy woman as a reward for his genius and his loyalty, in the end."
Draco said nothing, holding the image in the front of his mind until the Dark Lord's legilmency withdrew.
"Accept what you cannot change, my chosen boy," he began again. "And now you must tell me the name of your witch, the one who had marked your arm."
His mouth was almost too dry to speak. "She's an insignificant girl, nothing in the face of my lord's power."
The Dark Lord scratched at his wand hand. "She is an irritant for me, and a weakness for you. Do not discount my words. Do not be sentimental, young Malfoy. Love is nothing real. Just as I have provided another, better match for your bereft mother, I will also provide a better match for you. Whoever you want, no medieval restrictions on your appetites, unfettered power over her - or him."
Medieval restrictions - did he know?
Draco kept silent as the Dark Lord studied his face.
"Name the witch."
Nothing.
He drew his wand, twirling it in his fingertips. "Master Malfoy, I am a collector of rare and beautiful heirlooms - emblems of pure-blood wizarding history. Did you know?"
Draco shook his head.
"Yes, when I collected your father, he was not much older than you. A living treasure himself, a moving, breathing tribute to the beauty of pure magical lineage. Have you forgotten him already - the lines of your father's face, before his troubles, the clarity of his eyes? No, of course you haven't. You see it yourself in every mirror, pane of glass, pool of water."
He moved his hand through the air before him, as if caressing Draco's face, or that of Lucius, many years ago. "My dear boy, do not force me to damage my collection any further. Rather, let us be civilized. Name the witch."
"My lord, I would keep her secret."
"You will not."
Above their heads, the chandelier on the ceiling began to rattle, crystal and silver jangling together in the still air of the room. From beneath the plaster of the walls and ceiling came the faint sounds of moaning stones and timbers.
The Dark Lord smirked. "Malfoy Manor is indeed an exceptional house. I hear you, Draco, your fear and desire tearing at these old stones. Call it off at once, or I shall raze this house to the ground with my own powers of destruction. Your mother will be destroyed in her bed along with it, which would be a shame for you and your professor. And notwithstanding all of that, Draco, you and I, we would simply continue this interview elsewhere."
Draco took a deep breath, willing the house not to crush the Death Eater vermin that had infested it. The rattling and groaning slowed and then silenced.
The Dark Lord nodded, lifting the crystal stopper from the decanter at his elbow and filling the glass. "You will drink this," he said. "Veratiserum. And then you will name the witch."
"My Lord," Draco began, a quaver in his voice, his hands shaking. "Destroying the girl does nothing to give you entrance to Hogwarts. Only the repair of the vanishing cabinet can accomplish that. And if the girl is identified and harmed, I - I will not complete the repair. I will refuse."
With a loud clink just short of a shatter, the Dark Lord dropped the crystal stopper back into the decanter. "You are pristine and lovely but not so precious as to be irreplaceable, Master Malfoy. If you refuse your task, another student will gladly rush in to take your place. Nott's child is capable enough and he has nearly as much at stake."
"My lord, the cabinet is hidden. It's no longer sitting dormant and unguarded in a corridor. I have hidden it and no other student knows where."
"We shall find it."
He bowed his head but shook it. "You will not. What's hidden in Hogwarts remains hidden."
"We shall see." The Dark Lord raised the glass. "Drink."
Draco edged forward, close enough to take the glass and toss the potion down his throat. He set the empty glass on the table and stepped back again.
"Name the witch."
In barely a whisper: "I refuse."
The Dark Lord swatted the glass, smashing it against the hearth. "How?" His anger had gone from cold to white hot. Draco stood drenched in sweat, his breaths shallow as he waited. The Dark Lord was rising from his chair, his wand drawn.
"Crucio!"
The sick green blast rocked Draco backwards. He braced himself for the shock of pain, jaw clenched, eyes closed. It never came. The Fidelius charm protected him from torture meant to extract his secret. Still swamped in green light, he stood silently before the Dark Lord.
It was coming together. "Fidelius," the Dark Lord spat. "You have yet another accomplice."
He was advancing on Draco, knowing he could not extract the secret from him, knowing he needed to preserve him to ensure getting into Hogwarts through the cabinet, but mad with a lust to hurt him all the same.
His hand clawed toward the boy, like a talon scratching against his already scarred left arm. He gripped Draco's wrist, exposed the Dark Mark, bearing down on it with more green fire from his wand.
Beneath the black scar tissue, blue light flashed in Draco's skin, Hermione's charm. The Dark Lord called out - partly in satisfaction for having revealed it, partly in horror that it was still so strong and bright. In the blur of light and noise, something else flared, from beneath his own skin. Draco had hardly seen it before the Dark Lord's cries grew louder, agonizingly shrill, and he threw Draco away from him, sending him crashing into the broken glass on the floor.
The Dark Lord stood with his back to him, facing the fire, hissing over his shoulder. "You will finish mending the vanishing cabinet before summer begins or your mother will die, your father will die, you will die."
Draco was crawling toward the door, his path marked with his own bloody handprints smeared across the floor.
"Get out of my sight. And send Severus."
Hermione stood over a sink of wet, brown potato peelings in her childhood house in Heathgate. The peelings fell away in long, thin swaths, not unlike ringlets. Her parents had invited Tim's relatives for a Christmas dinner, all of them would arrive soon, raving about what a woman Hermione had become, giving her tips on controlling her wild Granger hair - hot, slimy hair treatments that needed to be started before 5am or else simpler solutions of cutting all of it back to her scalp.
She adored them but would keep her hair anyway. That's what she decided as she smiled over the potato skin ringlets, thinking of Draco's fingers tangled in her curls. Potatoes - what would he say if she told him even peeling potatoes reminded her of him? She laughed. He'd hate it.
A pot of stewing turkey giblets boiled over on the cooker. Her mother called out for Hermione to lower the heat. She lifted her head, took a single step toward the stove. The kitchen was growing fuzzy and dark around its edges. The darkness moved inward, closing around the centre of her vision, like a scene change in a silent movie.
Only it wasn't silent. Hermione's mother's voice was speaking in the room now, uncommonly high and frightened, speaking English that Hermione was too detached to understand. Blue light flashed inside her eyes, fast, not long enough for her to know if she'd truly seen Draco in it, or merely wished to, before the light was gone.
Everything faded to black.
Professor Snape returned to the bedroom where Draco lay with his head on his mother's stomach as she slept. Snape's face was a sickly green and there might have been a tremble in his hands as he repacked his satchel, tucking away the ingredients for the poultice he'd applied not just to the Dark Lord's palm but his entire hand from wrist to fingertips.
"We must go," he said.
Draco was only too happy to hear it, sitting up, shaking his mother awake.
"Not her," Snape said. "She must remain here, with them."
All signs of relief left Draco's face. "As their hostage?"
"As their hostess. Do not argue, Draco. It has never been more true that your lives hang by a thread."
Snape moved to open the door, making for the outside of the Manor, where he could apparate them away.
"Professor Snape," Draco called him back. "If I can do spells without the Trace, can I also apparate without a license? If I can, then I can get us directly outside, and spare us a walk past Aunt Bella on our way out. I know you can't apparate within Malfoy Manor, but I - "
"Stop showing off, Draco, and do it."