Chapter 18:

'The awful daring of a moment's surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract

By this, and this only, we have existed'

~ 'What the Thunder Said' by T.S. Eliot

2000

I lived under the roof of a monster.

It took the home of my childhood away from me, tearing apart tapestries of memories, pissing on the remains like an animal claiming territory.

On the eve of my fourth year, the Dark Lord Voldemort deemed the house of my ancestors fit to be his stronghold, even deigned to admit that it was to his liking. He filled the empty dungeons, broke the dignity of the quiet between our walls with the sounds of torture, and relished in watching blood seep across the white marble floors. When I think of my old home, I don't think first of growing up there but of staring up at the ceiling at night, bouts of feverish shaking rattling up my spine, disgusted with myself for being thankful it wasn't me screaming somewhere in the dark.

Every time a Death Eater succumbed to the Sleeping Sickness, I didn't know which was greater: the viscous, feral delight in me, or the Dark Lord's rage. I remember wandering through rooms upon rooms of them, sleeping bodies like corpses no longer useful to the cause, their souls lost in the Dreaming, nothing but carrion for their nightmares. Their care was tossed to the house elves like much else. Sometimes, a Death Eater would become convinced that they were the one who would find the cure, seduced by the thought of earning the Dark Lord's trust with it. I once came across one screaming at a room full of sleeping faces, spittle falling on unresponsive cheeks, incoherent in his defeat.

They were all fools. They bowed down to a monster, thinking it a man.

Worst of all, my father was just a creature to them, there to ridicule – the mighty brought low. I remember hearing them laugh, seeing them sneer whenever Lucius scrambled after me when I hit the floor, unable to stand after being under the Cruciatus Curse. My father cradled me in those moments, murmuring to me as if I were a baby again. He may have been reduced to a shell of who he was by the Sickness, made into a being of pure reaction and confusion by it, but the love didn't go. Of all things, it didn't. It struck me as the strangest thing. It seemed instinctual now that there was no pride for it to hide behind.

I never knew father felt so much for mother and I. It was all I recognised of him near the end. It gentled him from the wild thing he became. Mother and I were the only ones who could calm him down, cajole him out of each and every hideaway he ran to when frightened. But those times were few and far between for he slept more than he stayed awake.

I both wanted and hated to know that love from my father since it was testament to what I had lost, to what I thought was never there in the first place. A biting reminder that'd I'd been wrong all along.

To realise this when I could do nothing to set it right . . . that kind of horror, that brand of resignation - they are things I wish you will never know, Albus.

xXx

1996

There was nothing but air between him and the endless sea below. Even so, Draco sat. He swung his legs back and forth, moving his toes in and out of the water, watching the ripples stretch, then fade further out. Blue sky yawned over them, full of big, meandering clouds. And there was Albus, lying next to him on his stomach, his head perched in one palm. He dipped his free hand into the water, his legs taking turns swinging up and down.

Draco tilted his head back and closed his eyes. 'I've been given a task,' he said quietly. He hadn't wanted to say it, but he had to tell someone – someone that mattered. Otherwise, the truth would sit in his chest, searing, heavy. It already hurt more than he could stand.

Albus didn't ask by whom and Draco loved him for it. 'To do what?' Albus said instead. He sounded soft and distant, matching Draco's tone, the solemnity of the dream. Life happened elsewhere to someone else. Not here, not in this dream of sky and sea. And certainly not in the space between them, where their words sat waiting to be heard and said. They wouldn't be felt. That was for another time, another dream.

'I'm to find them a way into Hogwarts,' Draco replied.

Albus hummed thoughtfully. 'And while you're doing that practically impossible task,' he said sarcastically, ' – why don't you take down their daemon wards too?'

'They have wards like that?'

The boy nodded, lifting a finger and watching the droplets fall from it.

'Huh.' Draco looked down at the water again, at the way it distorted the shape of his feet under the surface. They were pale and fragile things, hovering above a darkening abyss. For a dizzying moment, he felt as if he were about to fall into it.

'So how are you going to do it?'

'I'm not.'

Albus went very still for a moment. Even after all these years, Albus was the same little boy, unaged, turning to stare at him with wide and old eyes. 'But they'll kill you,' he said slowly, disbelievingly.

There was a blizzard rising up Draco's bones. 'And my parents too, so they've told me,' he added. Of all things, he'd chuckled, but the sound of it rang hollow. 'But I won't do it.'

He tried to sound as sure as he felt but the words came out faint and breathless. Fearful. Why couldn't he show that certainty he felt inside? It was immovable. The terror the Dark Lord inspired in him was nothing to it.

Perhaps that's all that matters, he thought.

Albus sat up and hugged him, resting his head on Draco's shoulder. 'Then don't do it,' he said, voice breaking a little. 'But they don't have to know that, do they?'

They'll find out, a dark thought immediately whispered. Draco opened his mouth to say it, but the words died in his mouth. He simply nodded.

Albus rolled his head until his forehead pressed against his shoulder. 'Please don't let them win,' he began, clutching at Draco's shirt. 'Please don't let them stamp out the best of you.'

Draco put his hand in Al's hair, running his fingers through it once, twice, frowning at the way the boy trembled. 'I won't,' he answered.

xXx

'I want to help you.'

That got them staring. Draco rolled his hands into fists at his sides, shoulders hunched and tense. 'I know you may not believe me because of who I am and what my family has done, but I do. I'm . . . I'm not picking sides,' he stressed, stumbling but somehow finding that ferocity that'd driven him here in the first place. 'I just want him gone.'

He couldn't say the Dark Lord's name, not like they could, but he didn't need to. There was no one else he viewed with as much abhorrence.

Red, Light and Brand traded looks. They had heeded his call and accepted the invitation into his mind, wary and curious. They had come this far. What else had they expected? Not this, it seemed, if their expressions were anything to go by.

'Are you sure?' Light asked, a frown below guarded, darkening eyes.

Draco jerked his head down in a nod.

'I'd be surprised if you were,' Brand cut in with a look of stubborn refusal that made him seem far away. Draco realised he knew it – it was what Brand did to harden himself before a tough decision. 'So we'll ask you again - are you sure? Because you will regret this. And you'll have to carry it alone. Even if we didn't demand secrecy from you, ask yourself: who would believe you? That one simple question will haunt you, very nearly unmake you, whether you like it or not. For all the magic we have in this world, the Dreaming is infinitely stranger. They'd think you mad and not in a good way. Are you prepared to fight that downward spiral you could fall into? The one that'll swallow you whole the moment you start second guessing yourself?'

Draco tried to find the words, but they died in his mouth. Brand watched him, expressionless, adding quietly, 'And you know that ending this war will mean many things for you . . . like losing your father.'

Anger rose up and broke the surface in a rush, making him want to scream at him, at this creature. You said he'd just go to sleep! But he knew that was the child in him, wanting everything, unforgiving in the face of mistakes, unable to understand sacrifice. He owed them too much - his life least of all. They pulled him out of the maw of his nightmares, branded him with their protection. They gave him back his sanity and taught him how to be a Dream Walker. They were family when his blood weren't. Without them, he'd have never have become friends with Albus. He shoved the anger down.

He'd known for a long time that Lucius was gone. His father was dead the moment he forgot who he was.

They had taken his father from him. And I let them, he thought, the grief raw acid in his chest, his throat. They never said he would wake up. His eyes grew hot and each breath shorter. If not them, then it would have been the Dark Lord, he reminded himself.

I would've lost him either way.

'I already have regrets,' Draco said. 'I can bear a few more if it means freeing mother.'

All three of them froze. The expression of shock was alien on them. They were like gods in the Dreaming, knowing, watchful, powerful, but they seemed young all of a sudden. It had never occurred to him that they were just that, struggling with what they'd done, with what they thought they had to do. Light was the first to speak, 'Draco, please try to - '

'I'll only help if you take the seed out of her mind. I know it's there. I've seen it,' he continued, an eerie calm settling over him. Albus' words came back to him then, gave him the strength to carry on: They need you. You can get something we can't. Something they need to finish their mission. Getting it is the only way you'll save her. He remembered Albus sitting there in front of him, reluctant and forlorn, not wanting to have to choose between any of them. The unfairness of it all struck Draco deep. Albus was the last to deserve something like this. And they made him choose between family and friend. It wasn't something any of them could be proud of.

Draco hated how glad he was to see Light so stricken. 'We can't – ' she tried, but he cut her off.

'Yes, you can. Don't make the mistake of thinking she's your enemy. She's not my father. Mother's a victim, a prisoner in her own home. It may be easy for you to forget that, but it isn't for me,' Draco paused, feeling that knot of terror at the base of his spine twist like it did every time he woke and wondered if his parents had survived the night. 'I can't protect her from the Dark Lord, but I can from the Sickness. That's my condition.'

Red rubbed his face with one hand, sighing. 'You wouldn't understand why we have to do this,' he said tiredly.

'Probably. But I do know that you're condemning a woman to losing her mind. To knowing each step of the way because she watched it happen to her husband. To realising she will leave her only child to the mercy of a monster. To - '

'Stop. Juststop.'

Draco turned to Brand, surprised. The man stared back, unimpressed, the set of his mouth disdainful, anger burning in his eyes. Draco suddenly wanted to crumple inwards and disappear, anything to not be pinned down by that stare. In that blind moment where he wanted to run, he found it in himself to stay his ground. He wasn't doing this for himself. Mother needed him. It was just the two of them now and if he didn't do something, no one would.

And she deserved a son who would do anything to save her.

'Please don't make me watch it happen again. I'd rather kill her than see her suffer like that,' Draco managed, the words shuddering out of him. He hated it – hated saying it, hated that he really would do it if he had to. 'Please don't make me do that.'

'What if you had to kill her to destroy Voldemort? Would you help us even then?'

Draco felt something shrink inside of him. 'No,' he breathed. The hope that had crept cautiously into his heart drained away. The thought of waking from this and seeing his mother's face, pale and worried whenever she thought he wasn't there to see it, was painful. She knew. She knew and couldn't say it. How do you even begin to try to? It would mean facing what you would lose. Better to say nothing at all.

It made him ache to realise he would do the same in her place.

'No,' Draco said again, louder this time. 'But that's not what you need me for, is it?'

Brand's face changed and it made Draco shudder. 'What did Albus tell you?' he asked in a voice that would brook no argument.

'That I can get something you can't.'

Light let out a long sigh, then shook her head, curls moving with it. 'I can't believe he . . .' she trailed off. She frowned, worrying at her lip, thoughts moving behind a far-off stare. Draco saw the moment the resignation, and then the relief, hit her. 'It's true, you know, what he said.'

Brand and Red shot her a quelling look. She responded with a just as heated glare. When Red opened his mouth to speak, his expression outraged, she grabbed his arm and firmly held him back. 'We need him, love,' she said, looking at Red beseechingly. 'There's no one else.'

'But he's just a kid - '

'There's no one else,' she repeated, voice hard. Light turned to Draco. 'What we ask of you will not be easy. You'll live with the consequences for the rest of your life. What we'll do to you will . . . change you.'

He thought immediately of blood – his blood, and strangely enough if it would remain pure. He was the last, the very last Malfoy. His father always pressed upon him the importance of carrying on the family line, of not tarnishing its purity with the unworthy - with those halfbloods, those muggleborns. But that was a mantra from another time, from another life. The reasons for them had long since fallen flat. Everything had to be different so they could survive this.

'How will I change?'

'We can't be certain,' Light replied. 'This has never been done before. You'll become a vessel. Part of you will become something else. You wouldn't be able to call it entirely human anymore.'

'Will I be like you?'

'No,' she said, and with it he could feel the force of her pity. 'But you'll belong more in the Dreaming than in the Waking. You'll be more than a Dream Walker.'

He took in a deep breath, lungs expanding until they hurt, the air claustrophobically tumbling in his chest. He didn't know if he could do it. How much would he change? What would he become? Would it be enough? Questions tossed and turned in his head, yelling louder and louder, fighting to be heard. When the din reached its peak, there was a moment of quiet and in it he found clarity.

Who was he kidding? If this was the only way, he'd do it for mother.

'If the Dreaming's to become my next port of call, I'll be able to keep Al company more so than usual, I suppose,' Draco quipped, a smile that wasn't quite right working its way onto his face.

'Yeah,' Brand said. He wore the oddest look, confused and pleased, complete with a smile he couldn't help giving. They hadn't expected this of him - that much was clear. With that, Draco spoke first before he could let his mind backtrack, 'I'll do it.'

'And we agree to your condition.'

Draco let out a sigh of relief, not caring if they'd hear it.

'Then let's begin.'

His head shot up. 'What? Now?' Draco spluttered.

Brand bared teeth in a parody of a grin. Before Draco could do anything, Brand had a hand on his chest, over the scar they'd seared onto him years ago, the magic in the knotted coils of skin eagerly rising up to meet its master.

'Let's go find some horcruxes,' Brand said before the magic hit him.

xXx

Albus, your words followed me. They reminded me to watch what I gave up in the name of survival. You never said who 'they' were that day: your parents or the Death Eaters. I didn't think to ask. But now I wonder what you meant, because they both tried to change me, to smother that part of me you love the most: my humanity. I suppose it doesn't matter now . . .

Al, you only thought of what I was giving up then, but I know now that for all I have lost along the way, I gained more than I could have ever imagined. Starting with you.