I want to exorcise the demons from your past
Morning found him curled in a ball on the bed, a migraine slamming roughshod against his temple. He uncorked the potion on his nightstand and downed it in one swig, mentally reminding himself to visit Knockturn Alley. Every Healer he'd consulted hemmed and hawed but inevitably they all insinuated that it was all in his head. No shit his headaches were in his head. He didn't care what psychobabble they spouted about psychosomatic symptoms of blah blah; he was in pain; it felt real ergo it was real. If that meant substances that occasionally caused him to hallucinate at least the liquid courage was reliable.
Ten minutes later, showered and dressed, his headache began to fade into the recess of his skull. He went down for breakfast. Silently served by Esther, he ignored everything but his newfound calm, an euphoric absence of panic and charbroiled fear. He'd reached some kind of resolution in the madness of last night while terror and relief had chafed his skin like sandpaper. All his nerve endings felt numb now. Whatever anyone said, no matter how honeyed the words or tempting the offer, he was going to survive. Not only live, he was going to thrive and that began today.
If he had to he would grind Granger into dust to find his mother and save himself.
He sauntered into the hallway where he'd imprisoned her, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and nodded at his house-elf to unlock and open the door. He walked in on Granger asleep, sheets clinging around her. Sometime during the night she'd put on a sleeping gown, the hem of it now hitched up to her thighs. It was some kind of gossamer negligee, his mother's no doubt. She had the look of someone who'd tossed restlessly before succumbing to exhaustion. He ran his eyes along her body at leisure, noting the placement of every burn scar, healed cut and carved epithet.
Bellatrix had outdone herself. 'Filth' cradled the valley of her breasts, 'whore' the inner flesh of her thigh. The night before had been a blur of panic, hope, fear, with no room left to cram in her wounds. He remedied that oversight now, poring over every exposed patch of skin, the closer he looked the farther he felt. Draco was a scientist studying a tiny, insignificant thing, his scrutiny callously intimate while his body remained somewhere distant. It was the same succor he sought whenever he felt the Dark Lord's slicing gaze, some remnant of survival instinct that faded him to some muffled space within where nothing outside penetrated.
Granger wasn't a person; she was a thing, a noose around his neck he had to cut. It was either him or her, and really, hadn't he already made this choice a hundred, thousand times?
He pressed a finger onto the tail of the Dark Mark, the whorls of his thumb tracing the new ink. Granger awoke screaming and clawing at herself. The skin snake coiled around her neck moved, its body burning as bright as the heated metal that branded her. The image was so vivid in his mind that he could almost smell her skin frying but of course, it was all an illusion. Draco let go of his left arm and the snake around her neck froze. Like the Cruciatus Curse, the immediate pain would disappear leaving behind only residual tremors and phantom, all-too-visceral pain.
"Malfoy," she croaked.
"Good morning," he responded. "Sleep well?"
Granger sprang up and balled her hands into fists. She swung wildly at him with one hand, a feint he didn't see coming and when he ducked, the other connected with his jaw. His head whipped back as her knuckles crushed the corner of his mouth into his teeth. Granger reared back to hit him again. This time he caught her uppercut with the unerring instinct of a Seeker and yanked hard, hurling her past his body onto the floor. The carpet was soft; she didn't stay down for long. As soon as she regained her balance, he grabbed her to turn her around and narrowly avoided being head-butted. She followed through by kicking him in the shin.
They scrapped like schoolyard children for another minute before he finally restrained her arms and managed to trap her feet together between his boots. He gripped her chin and wrestled her face still. "Not had enough?" he panted. "Want to give being branded like cattle another go?"
She tried to spit on him but the angle was off; she was turned away from him, the top of her head pressed into his shoulder, her back to his chest. She stopped struggling, equally out of breath. "You're one of them, aren't you?" she accused. "Narcissa, your mother, said you were different. She said you were a good person but all along you've pulled wool over her eyes, haven't you? I feel sorry for her! No wonder she turned against Voldemort in the end. She wanted him to kill her so she wouldn't have to see you for what you—"
Draco pushed her off him, her touch suddenly scalding. "Don't you dare use my mother to manipulate—"
"Did I hit a nerve, Malfoy?" she mocked. "I'm right, aren't I? You're nothing but a sniveling coward, first hiding behind your mother's skirts and now Volde—" The rest was swallowed up in a scream as she crumpled to the ground, clutching her neck.
He kept pressing the snake on his arm until her eyes rolled back and she lost consciousness. He savored hot triumph over finally getting the upper hand until a silence only punctuated by his labored breaths wrapped around him. The quiet insanity of it dissolved him into tremors and a cold sweat. He fell heavily to his knees beside her. She lay motionless—finally, finally quiet, no more steel-serrated words to batter him. Swallowing hard, he gestured for Esther to move Granger back onto the bed. He'd come to prove his dominance, his greater worth. What was it Father always said? No plan survived contact with the enemy.
Leave it to always-outsmarting-him, perpetually unimpressed, impossibly forthright Granger to dash his pride into tatters yet again. Reflected in her eyes he saw what she did: He was vermin, scurrying for scraps, running for his life at the drop of a hat. At this thought Draco considered killing her. Even though he'd never managed to kill anyone, there had to be a first time for everything, didn't there?
His father had died to keep him unsullied, protesting when the Dark Lord tried to blood him. It was a pointless hope that maybe he'd finally become a man, whatever that meant. A man would've delighted in trussing Granger out for the Dark Lord's pleasure, but not him, not when pain unnerved him, blood frightened him and both were no less undesirable coming from someone else. He always knew that he didn't have that hunger, the way Bellatrix craved desolation in others.
He didn't have it in him, a killer he was not, and now it looked like he wasn't much of a torturer either. Was there nothing he was capable of doing right?
"Feed her when she wakes up," he told Esther and left the room.
He went for air. Summertime in Wiltshire vacillated from moody rainclouds to muggy heat, but today the breeze felt crisp in his hair as he flew. He never bothered with a destination, and today was no different. It struck him that flight was yet another failed facsimile for freedom, another method of hoodwinking himself from the truth that he was a prisoner. What Granger said refused to leave him; how would his life be any different if he ran away from it all? He was already a persecuted refugee, only he'd sold out, tried to buy some time by rolling over and playing dead. And he no longer even had an adequate excuse.
No one he cared for needed saving or required his subservience to the Dark Lord to keep breathing. He was in it for no one but himself.
Braking sharply in the air, he gripped the handle of his broomstick to guide it back to the Manor. It was probably a sign of the apocalypse—but that was already here in this world ruled by a madman—because for once he wanted to listen to Granger. Everything about her was toxic, corroding him through sheer proximity. Yes, she invariably enraged him but she didn't lie.
She was strange that way.
When he returned he found her bedroom empty. Somewhere in the last fraught twenty-four hours the room had somehow become hers, an oasis for sanctimonious birds in the ruins of his home. Draco found her in the kitchen, her pockets bulging with cutlery. She clutched a butter knife menacingly at his approach, ripping her gaze away from the inside of his left arm to glare at him. "Don't come any closer or I'll—"
"Tell me about Potter."
She froze, her eyes locking onto his face. "What?"
"Tell me about the Horcruxes. Tell me what you did to gain my mother's trust. Tell me everything and don't leave anything out."
Granger hesitated, stifling incredulity. "Everything . . . might take a while."
Draco pulled out a chair from the oft-scrubbed table and sat. "We have a while."
She blinked at him once, twice, then followed his lead and sank slowly onto the chair across from him. He didn't miss the way she eyed the slab of wood between them as a shield, as if he needed to resort to violence when there was a world of pain awaiting her at his merest whim. "A Horcrux is the Darkest magic there is," she said, cautiously at first then slowly taking on a didactic intonation. "You have to commit murder to make one. It tears away a piece of your soul and deposits it in something else. So long as you've still got a bit of it somewhere in the world you're effectively immortal."
"Why would the Dark Lord make Potter a Horcrux," he asked, "then spend so much time trying to kill him?"
"I don't think he knew. He'd already split his soul six times, Professor Quirrell the seventh. It was probably falling apart at the seams. When his Killing Curse rebounded from Harry's mother sacrificing herself to save him it split off another piece. At that point Harry was the only living thing around. It didn't have anywhere else to go."
"That's what makes you think Potter's still alive?"
She shook her head. "Harry's not. The fragment of Voldemort's soul inside him is. We've been trying to kill him for three years with no success. He acts like he has nothing whatsoever to fear, completely different from when he thought we'd destroyed all his Horcruxes. It can't be a coincidence."
"Maybe he's made more of them."
"Maybe. But Voldemort's barely human as is. Why would he break off a ninth piece and risk diluting his power or reducing himself into an animal when he already has Harry?"
"The snake of his, Nagini," he suppressed a shudder recalling the way it ate the Dark Lord's victims, "that was a Horcrux? That's why Longbottom decapitated it and got blown to smithereens for his trouble?"
Her eyes darkened in memory. "Yes. I don't know how he knew to do it. Harry must've told him."
"So your grand plan is what? Track down the thing squatting in Potter's body and kill it?"
"In a nutshell."
"Then what?"
She arched a brow, uncomprehending. "Then we kill Voldemort. Once and for all."
Draco snorted at the deluded finality in her statement. "Let's be clear about something. There is no 'we'. There is you and your Order and there is me and my mother. I help you find Potter, you tell me where she is and the two of us disappear somewhere safe."
"Funny coincidence, that." One side of Granger's mouth lifted in a sardonic smile. "That was the deal I was going to offer before you decided to get your jollies torturing me."
"Believe me, if that's what I'd wanted," he snapped, "I wouldn't have offered up my eardrums to your shrill bleating. Consider us both suitably punished."
Not the least chastened, she held out her hand, irrationally bold. "I'll need a wand."
"Right. Because the Dark Lord wouldn't find anything amiss about that when he decides to check up on me."
Granger tilted her head in askance. "Will he? Be unexpectedly checking up on you, I mean?"
"How would I know? I should think," he sniped, "that's the point of dropping in unannounced."
"Fine, then, yours will do. We'll just have to stick together in case he shows up. You can take it back and make a show of torturing me or something if he does."
"No," he said flatly.
She sighed. "What do you mean, no?"
"No. I realize this is a word you flat-out ignore when it suits you but I am not giving up my wand. Whatever you need done, you can tell me or teach me."
"Afraid I'll hex you?" she asked, amused.
"You seem to be under the mistaken impression we're equals here. We're not. You'll do nothing without my permission or I'll toss you back to the Dark Lord."
She rolled her eyes, unimpressed. "As I was present while he was schooling you, we both know that won't happen. He'll kill you for failing to break me or some rot. There are no givebacks, Malfoy."
He clenched his teeth and reached out to strike her. She flinched instinctively, shrinking into herself to avoid the blow. Smiling he tapped her cheek and withdrew. He casually rolled up his left sleeve. "I have all the power, Granger. Try and run me through with that butter knife, see what happens."
Not unexpectedly she honed in on his Mark but her face was full of anything but fear. "You still have the Tracker on you, good."
He frowned. "What are you on about?"
"The Dark Mark," she indicated with her chin, "is how we'll find Harry. Haven't you ever wondered how he's able to show you where he is whenever he Summons you? The Mark acts like a psychic link, a one-way mental pathway. And luckily for us, once a path exists it can be made to work both ways."
"You want to use his own spell to spy on him and what—we just cross our fingers he doesn't notice?"
"It's risky," she acknowledged, "but there's so many of you linked to him there's a good chance he won't notice. Look, I never said this would be easy."
"Right. My fault for assuming not easy could mean anything besides mind-blowingly dangerous."
"Oh, please. You're acting like I'm an adrenaline junkie—"
"That's the problem with you lot. If bloodshed isn't guaranteed then it's not bloody brave enough. As the only person risking his skin here—"
"You're joking! Letting myself get captured doesn't count as risking my—"
"—my life should be the last resort and not the first thing your gung-ho mind leaps to—"
"—wouldn't ask if it weren't absolutely necessary! And don't be ridiculous, Malfoy, if there were any other—"
"—since you have no evidence that your Potter Horcrux theory is even true—"
"—do you think I would've come to you of all people if I had any other choice?"
Draco pressed his lips into a thin line, only restraining himself from shaking her until her head fell off because Granger still clenched the butter knife, white-knuckled, ready to behead him or something at the drop of a hat. "Fine," he said, slapping his wand onto the table in front of her. "Do it, whatever it is."
Her hand shot out for his wand and she held it to her chest with a reverent look that for once included him, just a little. She smiled, wide and grateful, as she aimed above them and let loose a jet of blue sparks. The nakedness of her pleasure clawed at his chest hotly. Ignoring it, he placed his left arm on the table, the charred black ink dimming the light in her eyes.
"It's b-been a while since I've used magic." Her voice hitched, the admission costing her something to make. "I might need to warm up first."
"Fine," he repeated and stood up, jerking his sleeve back down his arm. "Warm up, practice, write a bleeding essay. Do whatever it is you have to do. Just remember, if you fuck this up, we're both dead."
On that parting shot he stalked out of the kitchen, feigning an anger he no longer felt. He was too sick of terror clogging his every pore to stay angry.