Every time I look at the stats, they just keep getting better!
SB: Infidel is a term used in religions, for an unbeliever. So if you think of Harry Potter as a religion, than not reading the seventh book would be only something an unbeliever could do. It was a joke. ^.^ And I'm really wondering what she wrote to Rosalie, too -- she hasn't been trusting enough to hand over that info quite yet.
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STORY STATS:
Rating -- PG thru PG-13
Chapter Title -- Chains
Chapter Word Count -- 2790
What I really want right now -- Roswell Season One
Hope you all enjoy!
Chains
by Shu of the Wind
***
Greengrass didn't write to him again. Somehow, he knew he should have pitched the letter, in case the Carrows suddenly decided to search him and discovered it, but he also could never find the time or will to do so. Now that the Easter holiday was drawing nearer, he never seemed to be alone in the common room anymore; the seventh years had all begun studying for their N.E.W.T.s, as the fifth years were for their O.W.L.s, and they seemed to be popping up wherever he looked.
The prospect of Greengrass going and joining the Order of the Phoenix – or whatever they were calling the 'help the Mudbloods' movement nowadays – wasn't exactly a pleasing one. But then again, there was no guarantee she was doing just that; she could still be hiding wherever it was she was hiding, or she could have fled to her parents despite the rift she'd created between them. Any option, really, was safer than staying in the castle, when the Carrows were out for your blood.
He entertained a few times the idea of writing back – the thought, for some reason, was exciting – but he discounted it immediately each time. The Carrows had been careless enough to let a letter in through the windows they couldn't reach, but every letter being sent was required to be brought to the Carrows to be checked, and he didn't doubt that there were more black-robes at the edge of the grounds bringing down unregistered owls.
He couldn't help wondering where she was, however. He found himself checking the lists of caught Mudbloods and traitors every morning in the Prophet, searching for her name. Though a description was listed (apparently no one had photographs of her), weeks passed, and there was no hint of her being caught. Which meant that she was either dead, and no one had bothered to report it; or she had managed to stay on the run, out of sight, disguised herself, perhaps. This thought brought the slightest bit of relief; he wasn't happy about feeling relieved, but he was, and there was nothing he could do to change it.
Now that Greengrass was gone, it was as though some blindfold had been torn away from him, and the world seemed to have righted itself again. The hate came back, slowly, suffocatingly, but this time detached; it didn't swallow him as it had before. It was as though he'd put up a mental shield, like he did with Occlumency, built with Greengrass's help, especially to keep the hate away. And he felt a little safer; suspended in a Greengrass-free bubble which kept him from making another stupid mistake.
Other than that, nothing much had changed. He no longer spent any time with his fellow seventh years, preferring instead to going out for a fly; the Slytherin Quidditch team had been on a winning streak lately, perhaps because of his impromptu practices with the Snitch. But it was sometimes odd to walk onto the pitch – especially on early Saturday mornings – and not have someone waiting for him there.
He hadn't realized just how deeply she'd managed to insert herself into his life, and rather than frightening him, or making him angry, he just accepted it. There was probably no way he was going to be able to get away from her now, anyway. She'd infected him, dug her claws in like a terrified cat and held on; detaching her would be too much effort and probably painful. It was easier to just let her have her way.
Besides, it wasn't like she could do much about lecturing him while she was off in the middle of nowhere. Draco scowled at the thought. Stupid blind naïve noble fool. What had been the point of running off, anyway? She wasn't an idiot, despite her obvious stupidity sometimes. She would have had detention, she would have been made an example of, but if she had stayed she at least knew where she was going to sleep every night. She knew she had food.
When he thought that, he took out the letter and read it again, tracing the words with his fingers. That's a funny thing to admit, isn't it? That I'm a coward. Was that the key to why Astoria Greengrass was so frustrating? She could admit the things about herself that he could never dream of doing. She knew what she believed, what she felt, she admitted it, and she acted on it; he refused to believe anything contrary to what he'd already been told because it kept up that protective bubble.
Very much in spite of himself, of everything he'd learned, and everything that he had tried to keep the same, he found himself missing Greengrass. Maddening, ambitious, stubborn, frustrating Greengrass. It was one of those things he just learned to accept – along with the fact that he was probably never going to be able to get rid of her. He didn't like her – he doubted that any self-respecting Slytherin could like her – but he missed the fact that there had been someone around Hogwarts who knew more about him than, sometimes, it seemed, he himself did. And it was clear from the letter that she was feeling the same; he might not like her, but there had been a certain freedom and trust she'd brought him that was lost, now.
They had been locked together somehow, as though some creature had woven invisible chains, which connected them no matter how much they both strained to break the connection. They had both adapted to it, though neither liked it; he wondered how long the chains were going to last.
He wondered if he would ever see her again.
This war – which the Dark Lord had won before it had even really begun – was tainting him, changing him. He wanted to be changed; he wanted to stay the same. He was scared to change. Scared to say that there might have just been someone that he trusted in this hellhole of a school, because it wasn't the person he was supposed to have trusted.
Rosalie King said nothing more to him, despite the fact he knew she had read Greengrass's letter. He wondered whether Greengrass had told her about how he'd helped her; he doubted it. She really wasn't an idiot, as much as he disliked admitting it. She was reckless and rash and completely uncaring of the consequences, but she wasn't an idiot. Telling Rosalie King the truth would have been a stupid thing to do.
He also caught Daphne Greengrass red-eyed and frustrated a few times. He wondered if Greengrass had sent her letter of severing ties to their parents.
Easter break inched closer, and Draco packed his bags, longing to go home but at the same time terrified to see the Dark Lord living there. If he could have cast a charm over himself, making him invisible to all eyes but those of his parents, he would have. Here, at Hogwarts, he held a position of power, almost equal with the Carrows and Snape. There, he was nothing but the coward who had been unable to kill Dumbledore – the person all the other Death Eaters went to as someone to do their dirty work, someone who couldn't say no lest he be killed by the Dark Lord for disobeying yet again.
To the Dark Lord, failing him is the same as betrayal!
Draco lifted the clear goblet from Blaise's bedside table, weighed it in his hand. It was comforting, empty, and made of crystal, heavy in his hand.
What had been the core of his betrayal? His inability to murder the old Muggle-lover Dumbledore. What had that been because of? Dumbledore's stupid, stupid words, and the tantalizing prospect they'd offered – freedom, for himself and his family, from the Dark Lord.
The memory pounded through him, and Draco dropped down onto the bed, putting his face in his hands, that hateful, calm old face staring at him out of the depths of his mind…
If you were going to kill me, you would have done it when you first disarmed me, you would not have stopped for this pleasant chat about ways and means.
I haven't got any options! I've got to do it! He'll kill me! He'll kill my whole family!
I can help you, Draco.
No, you can't. Nobody can. He told me to do it or he'll kill me. I've got no choice.
He cannot kill you if you are already dead.
Shut up, you stupid old man, shut up!
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to forget, the goblet tangled between his fingers but the memory remained. It was forcing its way into the forefront of his mind, on the eve of Easter break, the most dangerous time for it to do so…
Safety. Safety offered – safety promised – and he'd begun to lower his wand…and then the Carrows, and Greyback, Greyback who had come to kill the other students at Hogwarts, his classmates, his friends, not for any purpose, but for pleasure…
Dumbledore had offered him somewhere without the taint of the Dark Lord, a place where the Mark on his arm, on his father's, wouldn't have mattered – or if it had, he probably wouldn't have cared. Dumbledore, the old softie who let Saint Potter get away with everything because of that stupid scar, Dumbledore, whose mother had been a Mudblood, according to Rita Skeeter – Dumbledore, who'd been friends with Gellert Grindelwald…
God, Grindelwald. Dumbledore had known what it meant to not know where he had ever existed, to not know where to go or what to do. Dumbledore had known what he, Draco, had done, who he was, and he'd still offered Draco help, staring into the face of the darkness as he was. He hadn't cared.
Faces streamed out in his mind's eye – that Bell girl when she'd returned to school, healthy as before; Rosmerta as he'd put the Imperius Curse on her; the Weasel, grey and drained after the poisoned mead; Dumbledore's lined face as Snape hit him with the curse and he tumbled over the edge of the tower like an old broken doll…
And then Greengrass, staring at him, her eyes wide and grey-blue and almost as piercing as Dumbledore's – The world might be grey. But the point is, Malfoy – we don't have to be.
Shut up.
She didn't: She refused to go away. You've never cared a bit for somebody other than yourself…outside your precious family….You keep doing what you're doing because of that fear…that's what keeps you going. But I keep going because even though I'm scared, I know that what I'm doing is right.
How does it feel to be the one being bullied?
"SHUT UP!"
The goblet left his hand before he realized it, and shattered against the wall. He stared at the pieces, glinting on the floor of the dormitory, before slamming his trunk shut and locking it, turning his back on the remnants of the crystal goblet.
I don't think I started it and I don't think you did, either. Just coincidence, Malfoy. That's all it was. An accident.
Accident, was it, that she'd sought him out for Occlumency? Accident that when she'd been suspected by the Carrows, he'd warned her of it? Accident that when she'd returned to the common room, broken, bleeding, he'd helped her willingly – grudgingly, but willingly – and kept quiet on the fact that he'd been the last to see her before her escape? Accident that he'd kept her existence from Snape and the Carrows for so long, accident that she'd been in the common room that night he'd argued with Pansy and helped him in the library, accident that she'd written him a letter, one of only two people in the castle she'd trusted enough to keep it quiet?
There was no bloody chance this was an accident.
Draco pointed his wand at the broken goblet, connecting the pieces once more with a silent spell, and replaced it on Blaise's bedside table before pulling the letter from his pocket again, not to read it, but simply to run his fingers over it.
He had to be calm in order to return home. There was no chance he would be able to hide his fear from the Dark Lord; he was too skilled a Legilimens for that. But he could bury the memories of Greengrass and the letter, enough that they wouldn't be seen through a perfunctory scan – if he was good enough at Occlumency to keep Snap out, he could survive a few minutes in the Dark Lord's presence. He simply had to remain out of sight, not give the Dark Lord any hint that he needed his mind invaded.
And since it was his home, he could leave whenever he liked. Do errands for people. Stay away as much as possible while still being dutiful to the Dark Lord, not giving any indication that he was thinking of searching for a traitor. And if he was discovered…well, it would be a favor for the Carrows, anyway; they had searched the edges of the forest for the past week – they had found no trace of her. If she was still on the castle grounds, she was stupider than he'd thought.
Everything in him revolted at handing Greengrass over to them, and Draco spun his wand between his fingers, spreading the parchment on the top of his trunk. He studied it, frowning, thinking. She wouldn't have gone to her parents, and he remembered from the family tree in Malfoy Manor that most of her family other than her father, stepmother, and sister were dead. She had no friends to stay with, nothing.
Nothing but the D.A.
Would they do anything to help her, out of a sense of honor? She'd done things for them, it was only right – in their minds – that they do something for her when she needed it. The Patils were his first choice, but there was no way that they would ever tell him, and the only way to keep this quiet was if they did…or if he checked up on them without anyone else knowing.
Draco charmed the letter, as he should have done long ago, so that it looked more like Potions notes than anything else if someone other than him looked at it, stuffed it into one of his textbooks, and slammed the trunk shut.
He finally had someplace to start looking.
***
It took him an hour to find the addresses of each known member of the D.A. still at Hogwarts. The Carrows never kept an eye on the student records, and he'd had free reign of the school all year – none of the professors would have been able to stop him if he claimed he was on the Carrows' business.
After all, searching for the location of a student they'd been hunting for could come under the distinction of 'the Carrows' business' even though he had no intention of turning over Greengrass's location to any of the Death Eaters.
There were only a few names that made any sort of sense, but he wrote down the addresses of all the original D.A. members anyway. If they still kept in contact, any one of them was a potential hiding place. It added up to twenty-six names, minus Potter, Weasley, and Granger.
He could mark off the Mudbloods and those who they had in custody. The Weasleys, too, were off the list – there had been no indication of any of them taking in a recent house guest, according to the Ministry – which left sixteen people: Smith, Abbott, Macmillan, or Bones from Hufflepuff, Boot, Chang, Corner, Goldstein, or Padma Patil from Ravenclaw, or Longbottom (that he doubted as well, but he kept it anyway), Bell, Brown, Finnigan, Johnson, Jordan, Parvati Patil, or Spinnet from Gryffindor. If they had used those coins he had copied last year, then it would have been simple enough to get Greengrass out of the picture.
It could have been Rosalie King, but he had already sent one of the black-robes to check that, and there was no one at the Kings' house that couldn't be explained.
Either way, these names were the best chances he had of locating her.
And when he Flooed back to Malfoy Manor, he wiped his mind clean of every thought of it, and went into the dining hall to pay his respects to the Dark Lord.