TWO.
"I do not understand. How does Harry Potter command you?" Snape growled, rising from his crouch and turning to pace across the floor.
"He cast Imperio," Draco began.
" – and the first thing he did was order you not to use the word Mudblood," Snape parried, brows raised.
Draco took a shaky breath, ready to explain, but "no," emerged regardless of his will in the matter. Veritaserum had him replying with directness rather than complexity. "The first thing he ordered me to do was shut up."
Snape issued a snort that sounded a great deal like an aborted laugh turned groan. "The perfect idiot, to waste such an opportunity. What were his subsequent orders?"
"To not be such a git. To stop calling him 'Master'. To 'answer me, Draco'. 'Draco: be good'. 'Draco: be nice' –"
"It sounds as though he had a great deal of fun at your expense," Snape interrupted, lip curled. "What a fool."
It was not clear to which of the two boys he was referring.
Draco felt instinctive indignation and shame clutch at his throat, but Severus hadn't asked a question so he wasn't required to answer at all. In any case, he wasn't certain what to say to such an assertion, so he elaborated on his initial statement. "Potter is a quick thinker with a strong personality who is highly skilled in the Mental Arts. The Dark Lord meant for the Imperio to form a mental connection."
Severus paused and then sank heavily to slump on the bed. "And this was… successful?"
"Yes," Draco replied, swallowing.
"Elaborate."
Draco's breath came in little huffs. If pressed, he would have said that he'd rather undergo Cruciatus than discuss his relationship with Potter. He struggled against the compulsion harder than ever, but the Veritaserum on overdose was a monster he couldn't wrestle, not with all the will in the world. "His mind rose up to cover mine, like a tidal wave, and it was frightening at first, but then it became – I don't want to, I don't want to say – comforting, and being around him felt good. His approval felt better, and I hated it and at the same time wanted it so badly – began to wonder if it hadn't really been that way all along, me just wanting him to notice so bad I'd do anything to make him sit up and listen."
"Typical of the entanglement," Snape replied, his coal-black eyes on Draco's. "One comes to believe that he has always wished to obey the Caster."
Draco felt himself flush, but he'd read the same books as Snape, knew the same stories. Something at the heart of him pulsed not right, not right, but he knew it was Harry's hand reaching out and twisting, from Merlin-knew how far. "He didn't mean it," he heard himself continue. "He's Muggle-raised, he doesn't even know about the effects of the Unforgivables."
"Grasping at excuses for your attacker," the dark-eyed man observed, disinterested. "Also very common. Presumably he didn't mean to cast Imperius, either."
"I pushed him to do it!" Draco shouted, fury swimming up through Veriatserum's haze. "It was the job he gave me, aren't you listening, Voldemort told me to –"
"The Dark Lord," the professor corrected, voice chill. "I assume your master taught you to eschew such formalities?"
"No!" Draco growled, anger layering over a deep and tremoring thread of fear. "I started on that myself, me, he didn't – you don't understand!"
Snape crouched then, settling back on his haunches and searching Draco's panicked grey eyes with his own. "Oh, but I believe I do, Mister Malfoy," he replied, voice low and sure in a way that made Draco's spine chill. "I believe I understand far better than you. You have labored under a – how shall we say? – misapprehension for the better part of a year. I have within my power to remove it."
Draco's foreboding shifted into a wary certainty. "Remove what?" he demanded, attempting to inject some of his old sense of command. When the strident query emerged as a squeak, he winced.
"Your connection to Potter, of course," Snape replied sneeringly. "I assure you, you will thank me once you are free of it."
"I won't," Draco asserted. "Professor, please, you don't know what you're doing."
Snape looked at him with sorrowful scorn. "Draco," the lank-haired man whispered, eyes going soft, "in a moment you'll be so ashamed you'll wish you'd never been born."
The pain was worse than Harry's reflected Obscura, Draco thought, biting back on his screams. It felt like the inversion of Obscura, as though something vital and living and essential was being ripped free. Draco finally made the conscious decision to allow himself to scream, only to realize that the horrific sound all around him meant he already was. He could only hope, he thought with a stab of venomous satisfaction, that Narcissa would burst through the door and cast the Killing Curse at this strange mirror-reflection of Professor Snape. But then he remembered Silencio Perispherico and – and –
No.
Images flashed past Draco. The Remembrall incident, the Inquisitorial Squad, scared, Potter?, his small, white hand outstretched to Harry's on the Hogwarts Express first year. All those shining filaments that joined the two that night in the Hospital Wing as Harry accepted Draco's Wizard's Debt strained and snapped under the pressure of Professor Snape's Legilimency.
Draco cried out and struggled more than he thought he could have managed only a year ago, fueled by adrenaline and despair, but Snape evaded when necessary, his mind darting to and from Draco's, unpredictable as a swaying cobra. And so one by one, the silvery cords in Draco's mind floated free.
And as they did, Draco found that the events of the last year were taking on a different color. Suddenly his actions began to seem foreign – as though he hadn't actually been present for his conversations with Harry, but had heard about them second-hand. His mind felt aching with the loss, sore and empty like the socket left by a pulled tooth.
" – aco," Snape was murmuring, swiping Draco's sweat-damp hair away from his eyes with one, long finger. He could feel the ropes unwinding, blood returning to his oxygen-starved limbs. He could feel himself being lifted, and set into bed, the lights dimmed. He could hear the door close, wards incanted around it.
Draco blinked up at the ceiling, where slashes of daylight played against a backdrop of shadow. The birds singing outside told him it was early morning; he could feel the pleasant chill of early morning right through his covers. For a long moment, he was not entirely certain where he was; his stomach rumbled, and he thought longingly of scrambled eggs and shepard's pie in the Great Hall.
Then memory slammed down, and Draco couldn't breathe around its weight. Panicking, he reached out for that tenuous thread of connection… it was grasping for Harry at Malfoy Manor in the dead of night, desperate and sick with it, fingers closing on empty air. The sour taste at the back of his throat felt like sick betrayal, and he wasn't sure who he was angriest with – Snape, or Potter, or himself for feeling the loss so keenly.
Standing was more difficult than it should have been. For a long moment he stared at the bed as pure despair threatened to claim him – returning to the bed and throwing the covers over his aching skull seemed the only option for a dark moment, all other avenues eclipsed by his exhaustion.
Draco moved to the bathing room off of his suite and splashed his face with icy water, then pinched his cheeks until they took on a semblance of color. Then he sat on the edge of his bed, determined to think out his plan of attack. With such a cagey Snape, he would have to be even more careful of his every action.
A knock at the door startled him back into alertness. With an icy shock, he realized he hadn't been thinking at all, only staring at the blue-painted walls.
His mother was at the door, hair all spun gold and smiling cheerfully in a rose-coloured gown. With a leap of joy too-soon smothered in the morass of wretchedness he felt, he realized his very return had already done her a world of good. "Draco!" she exclaimed, clasping both of his hands in hers. "You're awake. I'm sure you were very exhausted. How do you feel now?"
"Well," he replied, surprised at how even and sane his voice sounded. "Tired," he amended, when her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed.
"There's breakfast downstairs," Narcissa offered with an eager smile. "All your favorites."
Draco's stomach flipped unpleasantly. "Thank-you, mother. I shall be down shortly."
Narcissa smiled and nodded and practically bobbed in place before finally exiting.
Draco slumped. The effort of behaving normally had been exhausting.
He stood in front of the mirror a few more moments, schooling his features. He could not manage the warmth he'd felt towards his mother last night, so he settled for his default aloofness. When he felt his features were set, he took a bracing breath and emerged from his rooms.
Seeing Snape seated at his breakfast table, eating kippers as though nothing whatsoever had happened almost undid all of Draco's careful reserve. A surge of fury and terror swept through him dragonsfire hot, followed by a flash of stultifying cold that made him shudder.
That was leagues better than the emptiness he'd felt, but nothing would be gained from Snape by way of nervous breakdown; so Draco smoothed his expression again and approached the rosewood table, seating himself across from the professor.
The House Elves had gone all-out for his homecoming. Every dish he enjoyed had been set on the little table until it groaned under the weight, from home-made scones and fresh raspberry jam, to eggs, to fresh fruit, to the French sausage he'd acquired a taste for in a summer holiday to Nice. He could only assume that the kippers were for Snape's benefit; he hated the nasty, oily things.
In order to avoid making eye contact with Snape, Draco widened his gaze to Malfoy Manor as a whole, with its cathedral ceilings and baroque furniture and tasteful decorations. In many ways, sitting in the sunlight-filled informal dining room was like a return to childhood, and therefore obliquely comforting; but it was also more than a little strange, this resumption of all the little rituals he'd outgrown, like a dream of the past that refused to dissolve on waking, a dream with deliberate mistakes, where he knew what he saw was the Manor, but he was not at home.
Draco's mother entered from the kitchen and offered him an odd, wavering smile. "Draco! There you are!" Her eyes traveled from his face to his plate as she circled the table.
Narcissa Malfoy did not need words to make a point, Draco reflected as he immediately reached for the bowl of fruit salad, exquisitely arranged, to serve himself; then, he stood with Severus as she reached her chair. When Narcissa had seated herself, the men followed suit.
Draco stabbed a blueberry with extreme prejudice, thinking. Ron would say to suck it up until he could have it out with Snape properly, and alone. For all of his modern ideas, Ron was old fashioned when it came to women, and he wouldn't believe it was right for Narcissa to witness the knock-down, drag-out fight that would result if Draco said half of what he were thinking about the older wizard. Hermione would tell him to sit tight until someone in authority could come and help him. She might advise him to do research, too, on dimensions - realities.
Harry would -
He realized with a start that he wasn't really sure.
"Draco..." Narcissa began, delicately.
Draco looked at the mess he'd made of his fruit and took a scone with a certain rebellious air. If his mother wished for them to play happy family, he was willing to soothe her clearly agitated nerves for so long as he could manage, but he knew he was no Severus Snape. His feelings could only be masked to such a degree, and for only so long before the façade crumbled. Just then, he didn't trust himself to reply.
"Severus has informed me of your... troubles last evening. I know what Severus did to you last night must've hurt. And you must know how sorry I am that we were not able to protect you better."
He jerked his head up from his plate to stare across the table at Snape, who returned his wide-eyed surprise with an entirely blank expression. When Draco's gaze flickered back to his mother, her brow was furrowed, and her lower lip trembled.
He could scarcely credit it, but Snape had told her everything: and she'd agreed he was right, at least provisionally, or Snape wouldn't be eating kippers at their breakfast table.
"Protect me from what, precisely?" Draco finally said, when he trusted his voice to remain as acerbic and curt as he intended.
"From enchantment, obviously," Severus broke in coldly.
Snape believed he was saving Narcissa, Draco realized. Saving her again. "Harry and I made that pact together," Draco stated, quite calmly, he thought, for the circumstances. "You had no right to dissolve a contract I'd made with another wizard."
"You still believe this enchantment to have been voluntary?" Severus hissed, leaning forward across the table and towards Draco. There was that spark of wildness in his eyes again, the one Draco now knew he buried under layers of bile. "Need I remind you how much you despised Harry Potter your entire boyhood? You woke up one morning enamoured of him and you suppose it chance?"
Enamoured! Draco's mind chittered, but of course it was true - the enamoured part, anyway, even if it made him sound like a schoolgirl with a crush. He speared a tiny piece of persimmon and placed it in his mouth to give him time to think.
"Severus," Narcissa chided, placing a gentle hand on the inside of his arm.
Draco watched as Severus relaxed an inch under the press of her touch and suppressed the urge to roll his eyes with every fiber of his being; he managed, just. "I told you under a preposterous dose of Veritaserum just that," Draco replied. "And when you simplify any relationship to such a degree, of course it comes across as ridiculous. I could just as well say that you awoke one morning and decided that your relationship with the Headmaster was at a very final end. Such a statement would be equally specious."
Snape's expression hardened, but he otherwise ignored the jibe. "There is only one way someone could tell a falsehood while under Veritaserum."
And that was really rather carefully said, for Severus Snape, Draco reflected, spearing and swallowing a raspberry; it wasn't every day he was accused of being completely deranged to his face.
After he'd chewed, and swallowed, he placed his fork across his plate with a gentle clink. "So: you suppose that the Dark Lord being back from the dead was enough to unhinge me? Or perhaps it was the death of the Headmaster." He stopped, then, because he felt that if he kept his mouth open, hysterical babble was in his future; and that did not bode well for the success of his argument.
"No, Draco!" Narcissa exclaimed. "We don't believe you've lost your mind."
Draco's eyes snapped over to Snape, who had his hands folded on the table, his plate pushed away. He looked a little white around the mouth, as though Draco had succeeded in shocking him. "I meant to say that the only way to fool Veritaserum," Snape went on, as though he were merely clarifying a salient point, "is for the victim to himself believe that he is conveying accurate information."
"What Severus is trying to say is that we don't believe you're mad," Narcissa rushed in. "We believe it is the enchantment itself that is at fault."
"Enchantment?" Draco echoed weakly. "So you're saying that Harry enchanted me to, to love him, and then enchanted me to believe my life had gone entirely differently than you both suppose. Even assuming Potter had the ability to do such a thing, why on earth should he attempt the latter?" He noted with a vicious little stab of pleasure that both Narcissa and Severus had startled on the word love. Let them fret themselves into oblivion, he thought.
"I believe it is the same curse rather than two separate enchantments," Severus said, "and that one feeds into the other."
"So if you broke one then, you ought to have broken the other," Draco snapped.
Both looked uncomfortable at this pronouncement, and Draco knew he was right.
"How do you feel now, when you think of Mister Potter?" Snape queried, rather than answer the implicit question.
Draco saw no harm in answering honestly. "It feels like I went to bed and woke up someone else. I don't know how to feel."
Narcissa reached out to unfold his hand from its deathgrip on her rosewood chairs, and Draco was about to snap out an apology for taking his frustration out on the thousand-Galleon furniture when he realized she was offering comfort instead of reprimand.
"How long, in your mind, have you been friends with Mister Potter?" Snape queried.
"Probably since we played chess that first time, though I wouldn't've admitted it then. Almost a year, I suppose."
"Chess?" Snape inquired neutrally.
Draco snorted. "Harry's bollocks at it - er - sorry, mother."
"You sounded like Ronald Weasley just then," Snape continued. "You have done so, off and on; you've picked up traces of his accent, and it's altered the way you say certain words entirely. How long have you been intimate with Mister Weasley?"
Draco snorted at Snape's phrasing. "Less time than with Harry," Draco replied. "But Ron -" Draco wasn't sure how to say that Ron had appeared in his life after the Mark had seared into his skin, and made him feel like a human being again; the way that Ron had refused to treat him differently than any mate in Hospital over a Quidditch injury. The way Ron kept on visiting, even when Hermione was too prudent to come, and Harry too angry.
"Then there are several enchantments, each layered atop the other," Severus diagnosed. "We will have to remove them all, if we wish to return Draco to his original state."
The stab of sheer panic took even Draco by surprise, so that he'd stood, his chair overturned, before Snape could so much as blink. No part of his connection to Ron was magical, and Merlin knew what might happen if Severus were attempt to destroy it with magic. He framed himself in the doorway, one hand pressed firm against the frame for support. "You're not taking anyone else," he said, and his voice cracked around the words.
Narcissa dabbed at her mouth with a napkin and kept very upright in her chair, turning worried eyes on him. "Don't you see, Draco?" she implored. "Whoever cast this enchantment manipulated it - manipulated you - so that, were it to begin to unravel, you would fight back. Surely you can understand the logic of such a contrivance."
"I'm finished talking now," Draco said clearly. He turned to address Severus: "I only followed you so far because I worried you'd lost your mind, talking about the Dark Lord as though he were still alive. That, and Ron told me to look after you," he tacked on, and was gratified by the look of shock intermingled with disgust on Snape's face. "Now: I'm going back to Hogwarts."
"No!"
Severus and Draco turned to stare at Narcissa, who had clapped one white hand over her mouth. She lowered it to her lap, where Draco could see it still shook.
"Mother?"
Narcissa did not rise to approach him, but some of the ice melted from her gaze as she stared across the room. "Darling, you are slated to see the Dark Lord tonight, he informed me by owl, I didn't want to say anything until we'd spoken about - the other thing. If you run, he will follow you. You would not reach Hogwarts," she added on viewing his most stubborn expression. "I'm sorry," she added, just before Draco heard "STUPEFY!" and his vision went black.
When he woke again, he had been laid out in the Blue Room, and it was early evening. Snape was perched on the corner of the bed, staring out of the window, where the sky was painted with the pinks and purples and golds of early sunset.
Draco made use of the moments before Severus noticed him to take stock of the situation. He could try to overcome Severus physically, but he had a feeling it couldn't end well, especially since he was hampered by the covers, anchored by the other man's weight on one end.
But if it came to it, he would fight. We are all a little Gryffindor in the right circumstances, he thought, steeling himself for the inevitable confrontation. And I'm a Gryffindor in extremis.
But when Snape's gaze finally turned to the bed, his eyes were as grim as Narcissa's.
"Draco," he greeted, gravely, and Draco deflated. Here was the man who'd been tortured because of him - the man who had refused to take revenge afterwards, who'd given him his second chance.
"You can't take the last year from me," Draco asserted. "I won't let you."
"I have discerned that," Snape replied. "You truly believe that you care for these people."
And though before, Draco had used the word love to shock Snape and his mother, care sounded weighty and formal on Snape's tongue. "They're important to me," he said. He knew it was vital to avoid the appearance of concession to the other wizard. "Which is why I can't let you take them away."
"Then let me set your mind at ease, Draco: I do not plan on trying."
Draco struggled against the blankets to sit up.
"The Dark Lord arrives tonight," Snape went on. "If all goes well, you shall return to Hogwarts forthwith."
"But - how?"
"You will leave that to me," Snape ordered. "And do not act surprised."
Surprised? "You won't -"
"No, for the second and last time." Severus paused, and when he next spoke, Draco got the impression he was carefully considering every word. "My vow was to protect your life, Draco, and so I shall do whatever places you in the least danger. Right now, that is sending you back to Hogwarts with your faulty memories intact."
Draco took in and released a shaky breath.
"Smarten yourself up," Snape ordered, standing. "And if you should choose to run to Hogwarts to your new friends before you meet with the Dark Lord, you shall doom all three of us." He slowly placed Draco's wand on the dressing-room table and exited the room without looking back - no ward on the door or windows - no Incarcerus. Draco was free to go, so long as he no longer valued his own life or the life of his mother.
Draco stood and made his way to the mirror. He looked as though he'd been run over by a hippogriff: hair askew, dark smudges under his eyes, clothing rumpled. He took a shower, letting the hot water relax his muscles, and groomed himself meticulously: hair slicked down, every button in place.
Then, there was nothing to do but wait. A House Elf had been in and out: the bed was made up, and there was a bowl of cold cucumber soup with fresh bread awaiting him.
He supposed he had better eat it. He'd only had a bit of fruit and scone today, though he'd spent most of the day unconscious. He had only barely touched the soup, though, when Pliny popped into the room.
"Young Master!" he exclaimed, quivering from head to toe. "Mistress is asking Pliny to tell you to come downstairs immediately!"
"Is he here, Pliny?" Draco stood, setting the soup down slowly so as not to reveal his own trembling.
"Yes!" Pliny whispered. "Yes, Young Master! He is here!"
A/N: So: aaah! Oh my goodness, this one took awhile. Not just because it was difficult to write, but because I had to figure out what was going on with Ron (our Ron) before I continued... whether I wanted to do intermittent alterations in POV in each chapter a la HM, or keep it to Draco. Well, it's Draco for now, and we'll find out what went on with Ron later. That's the way it had to be. :)
Continuing the tradition of recs embedded within this series: there's Two Lockets by Sinick and Acid. This is a worthwhile fic for a number of reasons. First, the style is drop-dead-gorgeous-amazing, creepy and eerie and stunning to the nth degree. This is especially so at the start, where the authors are attempting to write the point of view of someone who is losing his mind. (They do it perfectly.) Second, Grimmauld Place is sentient, and has more careful characterization than most authors put into their human beings. (The candles! The library!) On top of that is a romance I would normally have a hard time believing, executed beautifully.
This story is so rich, dark and amazing. It's like Godiva chocolate cake. With a touch of dark arsenic for that extra kick.
I'm really not doing it justice, here. You should go read it. Nowish.
Rating's a pretty hard R, though, so not for the kiddies.
-K