And now…
Welcome to:
Spiderweb
Chapter 8- For my body.
He opened his eyes slowly, just a crack, still dozing in the golden warmth of the furs and the almost snuffled embers of the fire.
He felt soft, taken by the heat absorbed during the night, embraced by the pleasant temperature of...
He stirred somewhat, lazy like a cat. Stretching a hand in search of the source of warmth, his body, if not his mind, remembered curved against his side, and under his tired cheek, taking out the chill the snow had cast in his bones.
But his fingers found only still warm pelts, and the empty space where it had been.
Frustrated, he stretched a little more, and a needle of pain, delicate like an echo, pierced his abdomen.
Pain ... memories of the previous day climbed to his waking mind, slimy and unpleasant.
Draco opened his eyes fully, revealing aggressively contracted pupils, and gray irises darkened to almost black.
Suddenly, the scent permeating the furs registered in his consciousness; dried blood, sex, and old dust. Intense, choking...
The last remnants of sleep joined with the mortuary perfume, making Draco dizzy.
He felt weak, exhausted. And the wave of panic that threatened to break over him, did nothing but raise to even greater heights of discomfort, until it became a giant titan, frothy with incoherence and the horror of the half-remembered memories, made hazy by the poison; Hands, lips, shiny black beetle shell-like chitin , fangs dripping in venom, fondling, blood, claws, semen...
But also warmth.
Soft, cloyingly sweet, tender in the arms that had held Draco as he moaned in pain, and in the hands that had brushed his sweaty hair from his temples.
The dichotomy made everything seem to tilt precipitously, despite being lying down.
The air stopped in his throat, and for a moment he was unable to breathe, his impossibly distended irises, fixed on the luminous fungi of the stone wall, without seeing them. Body rigid, heart pounding against his ribs in the crazy cadence, almost arrhythmic, of a war drum.
One of the two sets of memories had to be false. Or the creature was playing a very cruel game with him.
The spy put his hands to his head, trying to bring order to the chaos. But only when the absence of oxygen in his lungs began to burn, his brain managed to break the surface of the silt, that had paralyzed him.
'Stockholm', something he had read long ago, snaked by his disjointed neurons, and dragged the information out, much like a piece of torn fabric.
But it didn't make sense, it did not.
In his panic he crawled out of the nest, falling on the cold stone floor, putting physical distance between the place of his memories, and himself.
The cold, so sudden and sharp against his almost completely naked body, hit him squarely.
Draco breathed convulsively, choking in the cold air, his body beginning to ache, as when a relief potion starts losing its effect.
The agony of recovering memories brought a sense of nausea that threatened to make him vomit.
Panic. He was having a panic attack.
"Enough ... I have to calm myself."
Draco closed his eyes, allowing himself to relax on the icy stone, so the temperature shock might wake him up, forcing himself to slow down his breathing, until it became deep and rhythmic.
Helping his thoughts return to something more like the calm pond they used to be. Although, in the apparent tranquility, hidden beneath the surface of his occlumency, tumultuous feelings and panic, churned like sharks.
"Okay. What has happened, has happened."
He clung to the words repeating them like a mantra, like a prayer, again and again, and again, and again ... as he had done once before, until the sharks started sinking slowly to the bottom of the pond. Until he could look into the water and not feel like screaming.
And only then, he was left to contemplate what that ... that monster, had turned him into ... and what he had said. Draco didn't shy from the knowledge, since he knew trying to deny the truth, was a quick way to madness.
He had seen it too many times.
The idea of being a monster was not as frightening as the notion of being pregnant.
Perhaps because he couldn't feel any change in himself. Perhaps because the idea of nurturing a creature brought by the one who had hurt him so, was repugnant to a visceral level.
He pressed his cheek against the frosty, wet stone floor. His eyes full of unshed tears. The cold was soothing.
But the repugnance and disgust, that clung to his bowels with an iron fist, seemed almost solid.
Draco shivered like a child who has been abandoned on a winter night. And nausea became arcades, that, had there been something left to digest in his stomach, would have made him vomit.
They didn't last more than a minute, but the nausea stayed, unpleasant and unhealthy.
Merlin ... He clutched his belly, fingers barely skating the area where the fetus should be, without daring to touch it at all. His lungs burned, and he realized that sweat had begun to pearl his bare skin.
... Something was growing inside him, perhaps in the form of an abomination halfway between a spider and a human. Or even more horrible, as a complete spider.
It mattered little, that he too, could be one. The hatchling, if Draco had really been breed, (and there was no reason to believe that the monster had lied), was the result of a disgusting act.
And the scariest part, was that the resulting abomination was his.
The idea that a fetus come from the monster, had something of Draco's...
For a moment, the mental image was so disgusting and terrifying, that tears were about to break the barrier of will, that the spy had been trying so hard to sustain.
He would not cry.
After all the unforgivable things he had seen and done, under the rule of the Dark Lord, believing that his tears had dried, this monster had managed to wrest complete agony drops from him, once already.
He would not manage a second.
Draco gritted his teeth and dug his nails into the soft skin of his belly, with a consuming anguish he had never felt before, until he started bleeding. Blood, of a deep and sticky like candy red, soaking his fingers.
The new pain, and the warmth of his own vitality, managed to calm him, as had not done the cold and his own efforts.
Therefore, to remove his nails from his skin, and not further increase the wounds until he took the fetus from his body with his own hands, was an exercise of nearly unbreakable will. Only pride allowed him to accomplish.
The monster was not going to get to destroy Draco. Not physically, not psychically.
Because ... Another new pain raised, when he remembered, suddenly, the people at Hogwarts, unaware of the traitor within their own walls. In danger of death, or something much worse, if the Dark Lord managed to break the barriers of the last refuge of the light.
So terribly vulnerable ...
Draco grabbed the energies he had left, the fear for his loved ones, the notion of what would happen if he didn't warn them in time, and the agonizing probability that it could already be too late, to crystallize his own will into a needle of unbreakable steel, that could keep the fear and panic at bay.
"I have to warn them." There had to be a way to achieve that. He just had to find it.
Taking a deep breath, Draco slowly studied the place he was in.
Still the cave.
He became aware of the bandages gripping his lower belly and thighs. The unpleasant feeling, wetly sticky inside. His exhaustion and discomfort.
The Malfoy heir felt sick.
But at least there was no sign of the black widow. Not that he could see from his position, lying on the ground.
However, not being able to perceive him, didn't confirm his absence from the cave, or from its surroundings. The creature may have ways to know if he tried to leave.
And he was too fast, too powerful, to escape, even if Draco had had his wand.
He had seen the arachnid twice in combat, more than enough to know he wouldn't be able to escape on his own.
The widows strength ... it was terrible, a dozen Death Eaters had barely hindered his progress. And even less their spells.
The memories came clear as crystal.
The black widow knew magic. Draco had seen him cast spells.
The first time he had been almost unconscious, in pain, and hadn't assimilated, at the time, that the great acromantula had been the one casting the healing spell that had relieved him a little.
But the second time, yesterday, in combat, the spell he had used to break free from the Incarcerous ... and Draco knew he could take human form, when the monster decided to look as such.
A new thought stretched in his mind full of steel teeth, anger, hatred, and cold intellect.
That being, at some point, had been a wizard.
That being, at some point, had been human.
Or something similar enough to infiltrate polite society. And if he had done it once, he could do it again ...
"His desire is to perpetuate this damn specie, even if he has to use me in order to accomplish it. Because according to him, I am the only other left. And he will not let me go."
If he was willing to fall so low to get a descendant. To the point of torturing the only other one of his own, he had found.
He will not let him go.
Not until Draco gave him what he wanted. And maybe not even then. When he finally got tired, Hogwarts could be nothing but ruins.
But such an intense desire, also meant something else.
Malfoy smiled a cruel, cold and black, smirk.
He knew what he had to do.
oOo
(Harry)
"Stupid kids."
The furious hissing made the nearest acromantula, lift his gaze from his feast, (the Death Eater under his feet, still convulsing weakly in the last breaths of life).
A new group of the Dark Lord's servants had disturbed Harry's sleep, an hour before dawn. Forcing him to leave the warm shelter of his nest, and the body, still gently gifted, of the asleep Malfoy.
The carnage was quick.
The vegetation had already done much of the work when he arrived with the acromantulas, and had only been necessary to end the small resistance of the survivors.
But this attack, with so little time passed since the previous one, was worrying.
The Death Eaters were accelerating, with increasingly shorter intervals between invasions.
Voldemort must be getting desperate. They could not remain many magical creatures outside the Black Forest. How long until the need for potions, made him launch a real attack against the woods?
Harry thought that the only reason it hadn't already happened, was the resistance. Most of Voldemort's troops had to be dedicated to the "cold" war, that had been running for years.
And only the new followers, younger and less prepared, were those who, for being dispensable, were sent to the forest.
No more than boys.
Dark, sold to Voldemort, cruel, murderers, and ruthless. But still, almost children.
Voldemort knew very well that by sending them to the Dark Forest, he was signing their death warrant. And they were conceited enough to believe that, where others had been unable to survive, they would.
He himself knew what naive young humans could be. What manipulable. What dispensable.
He had been inculcated to perfection.
"Stupid." The injustice burned him as he looked at the bodies.
The memory of a life he had left behind long ago. The fragments, still bleeding, of a betrayal he could never forgive, but that he didn't want to remember, rising from the coffin where they had been buried almost ten years ago, forgotten in the cemetery of his memory.
Harry pushed them back to the grave with brutality.
He had major concerns to attend to. Soon, the shortage of potions was going to be dangerous for Voldemort. If he wanted to continue the war, at least. And when that happened, if the forest spirit had not recovered ...
Although they would present battle, there were not so many people is the woods, to face the armies of darkness.
'Only a few months more. If we can hold on a few months more, all Voldemort could throw at us, would not matter. They won't be able to break through the barriers of the Forest.'
Around him, the shadows of the leafless trees had begun to stretch across the clearing, like skeletal fingers. Under the perpetual blanket of dark clouds that covered the sun, the morning had given way to noon.
Malfoy must be already awake, or about to be.
"I'd better get back to the nest." -The Mutilated bodies looked at him from the floor.- "And bring some food." He took one of them in his jaws.
oOo
When Harry reached the cave, the web of detecting and protective spells, which he had woven that morning, remained untouched.
Inside, in the dim light of the greenish fungi, everything seemed quiet. And as he moved through the network of tunnels, the only sounds were his own, accompanied by the occasional patter of water drops against stone, or against the soft surface of the moss.
Malfoy seemed to be asleep...
When the apparent tranquility of the room burst into pieces, with a single inhalation.
The smell of blood was almost like a physical blow. It entered his nostrils and electrocuted his nervous system, awakening the instinct that had just begun to subside after the carnage, of the arachnid.
It was the exotic, sweet, and sticky fragrance of the slytherin's blood.
The cadaver slipped from his tweezers to the floor.
He ran.
Harry burst into the nest with fangs bared, and his heartbeat a mad staccato in his throat.
For a moment, he had believed that the remedy Soul had administered-whatever it was that green mass of pumpkin juice, insects, and old dust- had not been enough, and Malfoy's internal wounds had reopened. Although Harry had been inside the blond last night, just hours after the attack, and he had not uttered a whimper of pain.
He came prepared to stop bleeding, and carry him to Father if necessary.
What he was not prepared for, was to find Malfoy, lying on the mountain of fur, completely naked except for the bandages around his belly and thighs, raised slightly on a arm, defiant. His gaze hard; the cloudy gray of his pupils, looking like solidified steel. And in his hand, gripped so tightly that his knuckles had turned white, he holded a thick shard of rock, its jagged edges enough to rip flesh.
He had the tip resting on his belly.
The smell of blood came from the deep scratches marrying the soft skin of his underbelly, which had just stopped bleeding.
Harry let out a low violent hiss, at the sight. His long legs carried him into the cavern, dangerously close to Draco. Who simply pressed the tip of stone against his own skin, all cold indifference, even as the scratches started bleeding again.
"Don't take a step more."- Malfoy ordered in a deadly quiet voice. The arm that held the shard, tense.
Harry bared his fangs again, aggressively, but his former Hogwarts fellow knew very well that he wouldn't attack him.
Because if he did, he wouldn't be in time to stop the makeshift stone knife, from embedding on the flesh, and killing the creature cradled inside his womb.
He stopped a few meters from the bed, barely controlling his anger, pushing it to the back of his mind, but not too far away.
"I don't know what you think you're doing. But killing what you have inside won't help you any. I'll just have to wait until you're healed, and then breed you again." The threat was clear. Kill the hatchling, and the two previous rapes will look like a pleasure in comparison.
Draco pressed a little deeper, accepting the pain whiplash that rose from his skin through his column, and even to the tips of his fingers, deepening his breathing.
"You could do it, and I would kill it again, again and again, all the times it took."
Harry tensed like a bow. Because he knew that Malfoy was capable of it. He could not always keep an eye on the wizard, or have him bound in his state, stress might be enough to kill the hatchling. And as desperately as they needed this, he couldn't take the chance. Or everything that he had fought for, would be for naught.
"You know I will not let you go." the hiss poisonous as cyanide between his fangs.
"I know." -his tenuous intake, the only sign of weakness Draco could not hide.- "But I will not stay. I have to go back to the war."
Harry snapped his jaws.
"You will not."
Draco pressed a little more. Blood trickled down his sides staining the furs. He saw the black widow tensed violently, the damage was becoming serious.
"We can make a deal, or we can both get nothing. It's up to you."
Harry drew himself up to his freakish height.
"What kind of deal?" distrust, anger and murderous tension permeated his words.
Draco knew he was walking on very thin ice. But he had stepped on thinner planes and come out victorious.
"You want a baby from me."- pronouncing those words left a rotten taste in the mouth- "I have to get back to the combat. The deal is simple enough; my body, for your help in the battle."
Harry froze, processing that, while Draco soothed the nausea of that phrase. But trapped in a staring contest, which sought to read the other's intentions.
'So Malfoy wants me to fight for the Death Eaters.'- Harry thought. Disgust climbing his brain synapses, yet he knew if that was what was needed to save the forest, he would.
At the end of the day, killing Death Eaters or members of the light, made no difference. Both sacrificed innocents for their benefit. As far as Harry was concerned, they could wage war until they killed themselves.
But if Malfoy gave him a hatchling ...
"With what conditions?" he asked coldly.
Draco felt the lump he had kept pressing inside, began to relax.
"I know you can camouflage among humans, I've seen you do magic."- Harry didn't say a word.- "Come with me to Hogwarts, pretending to be my ally. That's where I'll be helping mine. So you can watch my ... pregnancy"- syllables that wanted to burn his paladar.- "go well. And I direct your efforts in the war."
"I thought you served the Dark Lord."- Harry asked, not sure what to think about that.
Draco smiled slightly, a small smile of saddened cruelty.
"I'm on my own side."
'Malfoy is more like Snape the bastard, than I thought.' And that gave him the advantage of not having to bend for Voldemort, nor for Dumbledore. To play an alliance solely linked to the slytherin blond.
It was, somehow, better than the had expected. But that didn't mean that leaving the forest to fight in a war he had left long ago, and to have to return to a world he despised, were not repugnant decisions.
And yet, he would ... with his own conditions.
"If you want me to fight under your command, I will. But in return, I will not only want you to carry this pregnancy to end."- He let part of his human side emerge, allowing his body to metamorphose into the hybrid between human and spider, he had used in each of their encounters. And this time he hissed with lips that had been on his, moved with a body that had entered him, and gazed with eyes that had seen him cry out in pain, and moan in pleasure. - "I want your body to be mine. That you lie with me whenever I want, and obey me in everything your health concerns. Our hatchling will be born healthy. I will not accept anything less."
Draco swallowed, and lifted his chin proudly. The shard of stone withdrawing from his skin.
"Okay." -My body for their lives.-
To be continue.