Erasing Time's Tracks
Chapter 6

Disclaimer: This work of fan-fiction is not intended for personal profit. All characters utilized herein which are not creations of myself belong to J. K. Rowling.

- - -

Draco Malfoy could no longer ignore a very real problem he was having: dreams.

He had woken up that morning, shaking in terror as he relived, once again, that horrible night after Snape had killed Dumbledore.

They had Apparated to the mansion where the Dark Lord was living. They had mounted the stairs – Draco with trepidation, Snape with an unreadable exterior – then headed for the antechamber. There, Amycus and Wormtail were waiting to receive the pair, and wordlessly escorted Professor Snape and Draco to the usual meeting room, where his throne like chair sat at one end, and a fireplace occupied the middle of one of the long walls. The rest of the room was bare stone.

Inside the room that night, several Death Eaters waited. Bellatrix Lestrange looked positively furious, and judging from the smirk that Snape was wearing, he had managed to outfox her with his murder of Dumbledore. The rest of the unmasked Death Eaters wore expressions ranging from neutral to anticipatory.

Draco, quivering, stood as steadily as possible beside Snape after the two assumed a deferential stance a few feet away from the imposing throne. The white-faced monster who was sitting in it spoke menacingly.

"I have heard from Greyback that the raid on Hogwarts achieved its objective of sowing terror and discord. However, disturbing news has also reached me, Severus."

The now ex-Potions master wasted no time and launched straight into condemning Draco.

"My Lord, I was waiting to ensure no-one at Hogwarts suspected me while the raid went on, when I received news that young Malfoy was on the Astronomy Tower with Dumbledore. I rushed upstairs to ensure he would successfully complete his task.

His cold voice grew more ominous.

"He wavered, and was attempting to argue with the old man, wasting precious time. I was forced to step in and murder the old man, completing the task that Draco had been given."

The Dark Lord looked grim as he said, "Severus, I believe now would be a good time to remind Mr Malfoy of the, shall we say, reward for failure."

Draco quailed as Snape turned, stepped back, whipped out his wand, and snarled, "Crucio."

The pain was so severe that the young blond lost consciousness briefly after feeling as though all of his bones were crushed simultaneously. As he came to, the wand was pointed at him again, as the owner bellowed, "Vomica Cruor!"

The Blood-Boiling Hex threw Draco into anguished cries as the unbearable heat flowed through his body, leaving him sobbing and snivelling on the hard stone as blood dripped out of his nose after the hex terminated. He shakily got to his hands and knees, and coughed, spitting blood on the stone floor.

Snape had sneered at him in utter contempt before he turned around again.

"My Lord, this young brat who blew my cover is not worth my further time. I shall leave him for you or the others to discipline if you so desire."

The Dark Lord took that occasion to say, "Dearest Bella, something appears to have given you an upset stomach. Would you like to elaborate?"

"It is nothing, my Lord." Her gaunt face rearranged itself into a slightly less poisonous scowl, and her Master purred, "Bella, join me in instructing young Malfoy in the art of dual curses."

A moment later, two voices bellowed, "Crucio!"

Draco Malfoy writhed on the floor as the pain crashed into him repeatedly.

- - -

At that point, Draco snapped instantly to wakefulness, breathing hard as he wiped the sweat off his forehead and shuddered at the dream/memory he'd relived. He remembered what happened after he had been cursed by Voldemort and Aunt Bellatrix; he had been tortured for several minutes after that (he never could work out exactly how long it was; the fact that he was still sane was rather more important), then left for dead in an undignified heap.

The Dark Lord had said, "Leave the rubbish on the floor. The rest of you, come with me."

Somehow, after who knew how long he lay there, he had summoned up reserves of energy and staggered out of the mansion, unobserved by anyone, intending to get away and use his Portkey, which had been cleverly hidden as one of his Malfoy family rings.

He sometimes still had a hard time believing he was alive, and in his eleven-year-old self, instead of dead at the hands of the capricious Lord Voldemort who threw away human lives like so much scrap parchment.

Draco shoved himself out of bed, grabbed his wand, and muttered "Tempus."

It was six o'clock in the morning. Luckily, his room was some distance from the one his parents occupied, and he had become quite proficient at silencing charms anyway, so any untoward shouts would go unheard. He had instructed Dobby the barmy house-elf to ensure he was in no real danger, in the event that the silencing charms blocked shouts due to things other than nightmares.

He gave up on getting any more sleep, and trying to keep from attracting the attention of his parents, the young blond had the elf begin drawing a bath. He cast a cleaning charm on his sweaty pyjamas, then chucked them in a random direction.

In the bath, he tried to take his mind off his horrible memory by considering what he knew about Harry Potter.

In his first year, many rumours had gone around about Professor Quirrell, given that he stuttered and seemed afraid of his own shadow; one such rumour was that the man was a vampire – and had been up to something before he had then turned up dead. Potter had somehow been involved.

Something about a stone?

Draco was uncertain as he had been absolutely incensed when Dumbledore threw the House Cup to Gryffindor that year.

As for the year after that, everybody knew about Potter the Parselmouth (thanks to Draco's facility with a snake conjuration spell), the petrified students and the sudden and miraculous destruction of whatever it was that had been threatening the school. The rumours claimed that the monster had been a basilisk, or that one had been involved in some way. The blond shuddered at the thought of such a creature freely moving about the school. He himself had only made the connection to a diary his father had kept when the Dark Lord had been rather furious over Lucius's inept handling of the entire thing.

And then came third year, complete with those horrid dementors.

Draco shuddered at the memory. Nobody really knew what had happened to Sirius Black, but Remus Lupin, the Defence Professor, had been forced to resign once Severus Snape had let it slip to his favoured blond pupil (along with other Slytherins), who then recalled with some embarrassment how easily he had been manipulated into scurrying around rumour-mongering about how the man was a werewolf. He still disliked werewolves – Greyback was definitely not one to be trifled with – but he would be blasted if he would let someone use his prejudices to push his buttons like some sort of portal to Diagon Alley.

He wondered at the significance of the fact that Peter Pettigrew tended to be called Wormtail. Snape had always regarded the man with patronising contempt. The Dark Lord had laughed quite insanely at the notion that Sirius Black had ever been a Death Eater, so it was possible the man had been wrongly convicted; hadn't the original alleged victim been Pettigrew? Additionally, Draco's sneaking and spying around Malfoy Manor as well as at Hogwarts had led to overhearing some interesting snatches of conversation – such as the time the slimy Potions master had ranted to Lucius, during fourth year on a Hogsmeade visit, something about how "Potter, just like his father and his little friends, will get all the glory along with his little friends thanks to that arseface Crouch—"

Many of the Death Eaters he had momentarily known of had attended the prestigious school some twenty or thirty years ago, and he knew Snape had been at Hogwarts in the 1970s, along with James Potter. The exact significance of this he could not determine, but it stood to reason that the latter had gotten into scrapes with the former.

It was not exactly unlike his interactions with a certain messy-haired, green-eyed boy, and it was easy to see that Harry Potter quite resembled his father, as Merlin only knew how many people commented on it in first year and sporadically afterward. The way Snape had acted towards the Boy who Lived clearly indicated that he had assumed the boy to be a clone of his father, which Draco thought a bit ironic given that people simply assumed that he was exactly like his own father, Lucius Malfoy.

The memories of his fourth year reminded the young blond exactly how much of a cock-up the whole Triwizard Tournament had been. Draco flushed at his immaturity with that stupid "Potter Stinks" stunt, and remembered that rumours abounded about how "Mad-Eye Moody" had actually been an impostor of some kind, and that Potter had gotten the worst of it in an encounter with the Dark Lord and had been lucky to escape along with Cedric Diggory's body.

He really did not want to think about the two years that came after that one, but he briefly considered the way that he had sucked up to that odious Dolores Umbridge by being on the Inquisitorial Squad, and how he had abused his power just because he could. There had been rumours of an illegal Blood Quill as well, although nothing substantial about that quill was confirmed. Another strange thing was the Remedial Potions Potter had been going to. Right around that time, the attitude that Snape had towards Potter had sunk to an all-time low, and the man had sneered when Draco had casually mentioned it.

"His ability at Potions," Snape said derisively, "is not worth my time outside of class. Now, was there a purpose to this visit or are you simply looking for more ammunition against the precious Golden Boy Potter?"

And as for his sixth year…Merlin, what a complete balls-up that had been. The one thing he had discovered was that Potter had somehow found out that Snape had killed Dumbledore; he dimly remembered the bespectacled teenager screaming about it during the confusing flight from school.

At least now Draco could work out what he would not do, in order that he not impede the Chosen One…

Author Notes:

So, a short vignette. Draco's experience has been rather traumatic and we see it manifesting here. Additionally, a bit of an overview of the HP books from Draco's perspective. We see he is missing some key pieces of information, such as Occlumency, and the exact relationship among James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew.

This chapter is in final form, so thanks go to Kirinin and Maddevillechilde for theirwork as betas. :)