The Hard Road

Chapter 4

Spellbound

-/-/-/-/-/-/-

The euphoria was overwhelming, like floating through a cloud, wondering at the world through lazy, morphine soaked eyes. A small voice, a stray itch, the devil on his shoulder whispered, "Fight it. Resist the Imperius."

It was only on the sixth day of practice that Draco threw it off the first time. He made Mother imperius him again and again and again, day after day between their sessions because he couldn't bear the shame of Potter beating him. The reward - a bloody nose when he crashed headfirst into father's carved rosewood chair at the head of the dinner table, but, Draco Malfoy had now thrown off an Imperius, and it was easier the second time. By the twentieth, he could reliably throw them off without any injury. More or less.

Harry, on the other hand, was all but impossible to Imperius. The shaggy haired devil would play opossum, appearing to be under the curse, then you would end up standing on the dining room table, clucking like a chicken while Potter pointed and laughed.

The Cruciatus was a different animal altogether. His mother had trained him on the torture curse before the war. Unlike the Imperius, where you had to fight it to break it, the Cruciatus had to be absorbed. Fighting tightened its grip and magnified its terror. It required steely self control to open yourself to the pain, but when you did, a massive jolt of power and energy poured through you.

Potter had endless trouble with the Cruciatus. He would scream and writhe and kick, miring himself deeper within the chains of torture. Draco gritted his teeth, remembering whippings where any show of emotion earned more stripes. Hours of beating back pain, hurt, and shame into stone faced calm. He had never understood why until the first time he absorbed a Crucio. He shot off the floor, crackling with energy. Forked streaks of blue lightning rippled back at Snape. His professor slashed his wand, sending the bolt smashing through the window. He was greeted with loud applause and a hearty congratulation from his father, mother, and even his potion master. His fingers were still numb when his mother pushed a heaping banana split into his hands. "You did it!"

He never understood why it was such a momentous occasion until his father seized and screamed under The Dark Lord's Crucio, and then limped and shook for days after. He always assumed his Aunt Bella could throw off a Crucio as easily as his mother, until he came into the drawing room after a mission and found her unconscious and wandless on their floor, her body still arched and twitching from The Dark Lord's crucio.

Today's lesson was done two hours later. Potter's words flickered behind the doorway as Draco's mother escorted him towards the Floo. "Lady Malfoy?"

Her voice was soft and endearing. "Please, call me Aunt Narcissa."

Potter paused. "Are you sure? I barely know you."

"Sirius adopted you as his son and heir. So please, I insist."

"It's just.. Strange...". Potter heaved a long breath. "Ok. Aunt Narcissa... Why do they call it stolen magic?"

Silence greeted him, so he waited. Potter continued, "You know, muggle witches. Why do they call it stolen magic?"

He quirked an eyebrow and crept closer to the corner of the wall. His mother's playful beckon called. "Draco."

He silently scampered back across the room and then ambled through as if he wasn't listening. "Yes mother."

"Harry asked why muggle witches powers are referred to by some as possessing 'stolen magic.'"

Draco stuttered and closed his mouth. The question had never occurred to him. It was stolen because his father said so. Because Umbridge and the Carrows and Aunt Bella and Doholov and The Dark Lord said so. "I... I suppose it is just what I was always taught."

"This family paid a veritable fortune to send you to the most august wizarding preparatory institution in The Isles, and I find my son has learned nothing about the birds and the bees. I suppose I'm going to have to sit you boys down for 'The Talk.'"

Draco's face heated. His mother was clearly enjoying the chance to embarrass him.

Her eyes glittered. "And you, Harry. Your relatives never explained how your mother got her powers? How about your friend, Ms. Granger?"

Potter's forehead wrinkled. "I just assumed they were born with powers."

She continued. "Or why squibs, especially females, in a family are so scandalous?"

Puzzlement filled his face.

"I never expected this... Lack of understanding about the nature of our powers or the sustainment of our species. I will be writing to Headmistress McGonagal. Come. Let's take a seat in the drawing room. We can share some refreshment while I go through the basics."

Draco groaned as he slouched across the green fringed loveseat with a ginger ale dangling in his fingers. Potter was leaning forward in the leather great chair, gin and tonic at the ready, while his mother sipped a tall vodka Collins bearing a half dozen Luxardo cherries and orange slices buried in a heap of shaved ice.

"Now, where were we? Oh yes, muggle born witches. So, based on our conversation, without a proper explanation, you assumed that witches are simply muggles born with magic. That magic just somehow sprung out of the ground or appeared like the black swan of long tailed statistics. Does the term 'Stolen magic,' cast any doubt upon that theory?"

Potter's brow wrinkled. "Please forgive me if I'm a bit dense, but I never made any connection before."

"Please don't take offense when I tell you this. I understand your mother was a muggle, as is a very close friend of yours. Muggles are not born with powers. They never have been."

Confusion filled Potter's face, but she continued, "Muggles must receive their magic from our species."

"Our Species? Are you saying we are different?"

She nodded.

"Different Biologically?"

She nodded again. "Precisely. The most sacred duty of every witch is to provide for the survival of our species. Historically, that number has always been three children. If we are unable, then we must do what we can to provide for the species by other means."

Potter's forehead wrinkled. "So, wait. Can normal muggle girls and wizards have children?"

"I am told it happens, most commonly through the use of fertility medication and specialist intervention. The offspring are sometimes sterile, and generally possess limited magic. It is more probable with a witch and a muggle male, but it is still unreliable. It is sort of a wonder that Riddle had any powers, or..." Draco's mother's attention drifted towards the window.

He quirked an eyebrow. Voldemort? sterile? There had been a rumor about Aunt Bella's baby... Everyone knew Uncle Rudolphus was sterile and Aunt Bella was always slobbering over The Dark Lord. Apparently, things changed after the git turned up a new body. His parents had fought endlessly about raising his cousin but father wouldn't have it.

Potter leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand through his hair and staring off into oblivion. After a few minutes, he asked, "So, how do muggles become witches?"

She continued. "There is a procedure. An ancient ritual. A suitable candidate goes through a lengthy preparation process so that her body is capable of receiving our magic and bearing our children, then the donor witch gives up the ghost to her."

Draco sat straight up in his chair, fingers knotted into the cushion and his teeth gritted. "Mother? Give up the ghost?"

She nodded. "Yes. When the time comes, I will. It is my duty."

His stomach churned. "What specifically do you mean?"

"The ritual is called the Contaminatuo Ritualis."

Harry waved his hand. "This makes no sense. I still don't understand how you call muggles a different species."

"I suppose this is a lot to take in. Perhaps Ms. Granger would be willing to corroborate the explanation with some details."

Potter's mouth moved but no words came out.

"Please understand, you are blood kin in more ways than one. Your mother received her magic and our blood from my grandmother's great aunt, Marie Rosier. I don't know much, specifically, about your mother's situation. The Granger girl's family paid half a million galleons due to the deterioration of her condition."

Harry blanched, and the words dribbled out. "Cor! Half a million? Medical condition?"

She nodded. "As I understand, the girl was born with some sort of incurable ailment. A fatal cancer, I believe. They poured a medium sized fortune into her, but by then she only had a few weeks to live. I'm afraid that my sister hated your muggle friend because she received her magic from our aunt." A long sigh drifted out. "She was always Aunt Tyrophenia's favorite."

Draco's mother stared off into the distance. After a long silence, her voice cracked. "My aunt insisted we attend. Unfortunately, dear Bella was incarcerated at the time... My mother forced the rest of us to witness it."

"Witness what?"

She dabbed swollen eyes, revealing the long repressed sadness. "The Granger girl was required to cut my aunt's still beating heart out of her chest and then butcher her body. The girl was so weak that it took her several tries..."

Potter's face went through white to green, but his mother had turned away and was silently sobbing.

Harry stammered, "I... I'm so sorry. I never knew."

She patted his hand. "She didn't steal anything. My aunt insisted. Part of the agreement is that the girl was to be betrothed to my son, but my husband... Well, you know how he can be."

Draco crossed the room and laid his hands on his weeping mother's back while Potter apologized, drifted towards the fireplace, and disappeared into a giant flare of green.

His head spun as he comforted his mother. Soon, his feet were pounding a trail skirted by old rose thickets and brambles. The smell of leaf mold and pine needles filled his lungs. Arching trees twined into the dense canopy above. Streamers of light broke through the branches, revealing clumps of grass shrouding the old game trail. Granger? For a wife? The thought of being saddled with that shrew turned his stomach. So long as father was alive, it could never happen. For once, he conceded that the man had done the right thing, but now worried about his mother and her machinations. There must be other ways to avoid the incest that plagued Britain's wizard community. The prospect of a witch from the darkest Brazilian Amazon or the farthest reaches of Siberia's tundra sounded like an excellent option.

-/-/-/-/-

The following Wednesday, he and Potter were racing through the park while the early shards of yellow and red sparkled off the wet tree limbs. They had been talking about the coming divination lessons. Draco had to admit, after five years of Trelawny followed by a year with the horse, he didn't have much confidence in the subject but his mother insisted. She had a seer coming in from Eastern Europe to train them on scrying mirrors and prophetic visions. They rounded the bend and followed the giant hedge lining the sidewalk against Buckingham Palace. He had never paid much attention, but now noticed the cameras concealed in the greenery as well as the buzzing in his brain from the electric fencing. With his eyes opened to the realities of war, he now recognized that the so called butlers directing service trucks in and out of the various gates were actually specially trained military men with submachine guns concealed under their suit jackets.

These sort of things never occurred to him before leading men to war. Potter's voice snatched him back to the present. "Yeah, remember what your mother said about muggle witches. Hermione explained it better to me. She wasn't born with powers."

"Mmmm?"

"She was really sick. Bleeding out of her nose and eyes all the time. Could barely walk. Grew up in a hospital. Dozens of operations and blood transfusions. Said they took her to some place really far away. Thick spruce forests that went on for miles and snow that was over her head. That's where they did the procedure. Changed her eye color and hair color."

"Did she... You know..." He dragged his thumb across his throat.

Harry shrugged. "She doesn't remember much about that. She loved Tyrophenia. Said the old woman was like a grandmother to her. She was nine or so. She thinks she may have been imperiused. She said she sometimes has nightmares about a bone handled knife with a curved blade and a beating heart squirming around in her hand. Oh, and you remember the Thestrals? She said she's seen them since the first day she set foot at Hogwarts. She just assumed everybody else could too."

Draco nodded, but now he was curious.

Harry flicked a malicious smile. "So, I asked her the part about marrying you."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Merlin, Potter! Why would you do that?"

Harry's eyes twinkled with glee. "She said she knew about the deal."

"You told her I didn't know a thing about it?"

"Yeah, well, do you want her to think you're not actually a complete bastard?"

Damn it all to hell. He hated when Potter had a good point.

They rounded the palace and took a break in the shadows of the giant gilded angel topping Queen Victoria's memorial. The twinkle was back in Potter's eyes. He saw it coming a mile away. "So, what do you think of her?"

"What do I think? I think my father has officially forbidden it."

"Yeah, but if something happened with the girls in Albania or wherever?"

He groaned. "No. We're not talking about this."

Potter's wicked smile bloomed. "Would your mother try to call it in?"

"Did you forget my mother is now your aunt. This is the same aunt who sent our lawyers to draw you up a proper prenuptial contract so some hussy could not impair the most ancient and noble House of Black. What did your girlfriend do when she found out she would not retain claim to your estate in the case of a divorce?"

"Fuck off. I liked Laika."

"And she liked your money. You're playing in the big leagues. My father has forbidden me from having anything to do with Granger... You, on the other hand, are fair game, cousin. I'm sure my fine mother would do everything in her power to prevent the extinction of her family. You're in this just as deep as I am."

Take that Potter!

Harry's eyes widened.

He elbowed Potter and perked the corner of his lip. "I think it is in both of our best interests to make sure she has a long and happy marriage... To someone else. Seventy years of marital bliss and twenty-some-odd children would not be too much to hope for."

-/-/-/-/-

Draco took the family Floo to two or three properties a week. There were villas overlooking resorts in Monaco and Luxembourg. Industrial estates in Germany, France, and Italy. Ski estates in the alps of Switzerland and Belgium. The estate in Vienna was particularly beautiful, as was Tuscany, but with his coming enlistment in France, he turned his focus there. An ancient castle in Normandy initially caught his attention, but it lacked indoor plumbing. The great hall would be fun for parties, but the lack of modern amenities turned him off. He settled on a villa outside Beziers. It had been rebuilt and modernized after World War One and again after World War Two. The new house was built on the ruins of ancient castles which had been destroyed too many times to count. According to legend, the original site dated back to 323 BC. Servants passages opened to narrow staircases hidden behind the walls that snaked deep into the rocks under the old works. Three underground levels were hewn into the mountain, the deepest of which led to an ancient cave where they had a wine cellar, a root cellar, a cheese cave, and a potion workshop complete with racks of preserved ingredients. A hidden library contained shelves and shelves of unique and ancient texts including potion manuals, spells, charms, and curses.

There, in a hidden chapel, he found exactly the right nook for a vanishing cabinet.

A few days later, he had all the supplies he needed. Muggle libraries were almost better than magic.

Draco's skin tingled from the electricity humming inside the muggle extension cords. He rubbed his eyes, praying for some respite against the crackling buzz pinging through his body. He understood full well why wizards shunned muggle electricity within the magical realm, but there was just too much work to do. It would take him weeks to build the casework for his concealed exit with hand saws, chisels, and planes. Twenty five seconds on his power saw finished what would have taken hours with a bow saw. The hand held linishers did hours of hand sanding in minutes.

His mind drifted back to his woodworking lessons with Neil, the family's carpenter. The old man's hands, hard and black from a lifetime of work, caressed the rough sawn walnut lumber. Draco had to listen carefully to make heads or tails of the man's thick Welsh drawl. The man mumbled something through his teeth. Draco focused and eventually decided it had something to do with the cabinet, which the man kept calling cwpwrdd. Rapping his thick knuckles made a hollow, papery sound. Neil shook his head. "It's too fer gone. Full o' Morgrugyn gwyn."

The man took a drag from the cigarette dangling in the corner of his stained lips and slid an oblong pencil stub out from behind his ear. Today's first lesson was making something called story sticks. Dimensions were transferred off the cabinet, directly to to wooden sticks. These would be used to exactly replicate the casework and door.

Each day he snuck off for a new lesson. Cutting wood to length and cleaning off the tool marks. Squaring and truing lumber. Preparing each piece of wood and laying out the joints. Chiseling mortises and sawing tenons. Jointing narrow boards into wider panels. Each piece had to be done carefully so that the cabinet would hold together.

He couldn't let a single soul learn of what he was doing. Certainly not the bastard Potter, King Weasel, or most of all, their nosy mudblood swot. That meant he had to do all the woodwork himself, but because he barely had a semester, he had to use muggle tools. That was his first experience with both electric tools and muggle libraries.

Likely that old plodder, Arthur Weasly, was the only wizard in this half of England who even knew what these muggle tools were, much less how they worked. As it happened, that same muggle library housing books about "Woodworking" was where he discovered manuals chocked full of military strategy and tactics.

Now, here he was, making another, because vanishing cabinets had to be made by hand using actual wood and natural glues. That had been the heart of the problem with the one at Borgin's - some well meaning soul had used half a dozen different magical attempts to repair it, rendering the delicate portal useless. Of course, the woodworms and rot had not helped.

He clamped the long beech plank between two vises mounted on opposite ends of the bench and went to work. First with the electric planer to grind off the rough saw marks, and then to properly square it with a hand plane and a try square. Next, he laid out where the top and bottom boards would go and marked out the mortises. An electric drill hogged out the waste, giving him room to chisel the hole to its rectangular shape. He made each cut carefully but quickly, holding the razor sharp wood chisel into the knife cut line like Neil had shown him, and driving it with a mallet. Each shaving was flicked out before moving on. He test fitted the sawn tenon into his freshly cut mortise and smiled when the lines marking the end of the cuts disappeared.

Next was the rabbet for the door panels. He set the fence on his saw and ripped a groove down the length of the board, reset the fence a blade width deeper, and repeated the cut.

His mind drifted to father's railing disappointment when he found out Draco was doing "Muggle Work." As usual, his father didn't understand that craftsmanship was a key element of magic. As Professor Snape oft repeated: Mastery comes from laying your shoulders into the plow. Things like boiling down fresh rabbit hides to make the natural glue were just as critical to this as trimming scarabs when making a potion. It had to be done just so without any short cuts or adulterations if you wanted the cabinet to work.

He floo'ed home for dinner and afterwards chased ten flights of stairs down past the dungeon to check on his varnish. He pitched a handful of Zanzibar copal into a cauldron of boiling tung oil. Beside that, a small fire burned around a can full of pine fatwood. Aromatic tar was dripping out the bottom into a soup can while the turpentine vapor condensed and drizzled out of the copper worm into a glass jar.

-/-/-/-/-

Sweat dripped down his nose as he swirled his fingers over his head and chanted out the fourth series of spells over the cabinet pair. Binding magical charms into wood was difficult to execute properly without a wand, but with a month of practice, he was pushing through. His fingers tingled as he repeated the enchantments over the inside of the door. The fuzzy pink glow settled like a fine mist onto the dark wood and soaked in. He slumped into the chair. The tea cup sloshed as it met his lips. Magic like this left him spent. His eyes ached for quick nap and a snack, but he had already tripped twice on the muggle cords snaking through his workshop.

His eyes popped open with a start. A wet tea stain was growing in the center of his shirt. He rubbed his eyes and finished the last of the roast chicken and bacon sandwich and washed it down with the remains of his now cold tea. His forearms ached from the endless vibration which power tools poured into hands stiff from pushing charms without a wand, but the blasted tangle of muggle cords was still laying exactly where it fell.

He rolled the cord around his hand, keeping it neat as he added each turn. Now he knew why old Neil always insisted on rolling them up just so. The blasted things turned into gordian knots if you didn't.

Thirty meters of electrical wire loops were buzzing like bees on his arm as he passed the cabinet door. He wasn't looking forward to working another three weeks of charms. Tomorrow, he would be useless from the exertion, hung over worse than a firewhiskey bender.

His fingers absently drifted over the casework while mindlessly reciting the next charm in his head, when his arm cramped. Pink plasma two hands deep flooded into the wood grain leaving his entire forearm numb. He jerked backwards from the surprise, flinging the hank of wire halfway across the wood chips and scraps on the floor while he nursed his hand. A quick inspection proved the charms took, wordlessly and wandlessly, for the first time. He massaged feeling back into his forearm, wondering what the devil just happened.

Energized from the success, he tried again on another section, focusing his magic and then reciting the charm in his head, but he couldn't even manage a faint glow.

He twisted his fingers for a wordless Lumos, but was answered with a sputtering puff. Magic mocked him, but he had no rebuttal. With a groan, he untangled the cord and wrapped it back up, using his forearm as a guide. His mind was back on the next charm for the casework as loop after buzzing loop wound on his arm. This next part was the base of the cabinet. It had to be done exactly right or you might bury yourself straight into middle of a hillside, so he focused on the exact wording of the charm.

Jolts wracked the muscles in his arm as the yellow aura swirled and roared out of his fingertips and poured, soaking into the wood grain. His teeth locked as the words flashed through his mind, but he pulled free, keeling backwards onto the stone floor in a cloud of sawdust.

His whole arm rippled with cramps while his jaw throbbed, but his mind was alive and crystal clear. His heart beat in his ears as he massaged his mouth.

Merlin! What in the bloody hell was that?

Draco pushed back off the floor and dusted off. A quick incantation revealed that he had somehow managed to enchant the cabinet with two weeks worth of charms within two seconds.

His heart was still racing but he wasn't tired. Draco stared at the cabinet. He was craving another go. An itch gnawed the back of his mind. What specifically happened? Technique was the heart of so much successful magic, was it necessary here? Backtracking each motion, he replayed the incidents in his mind. It worked twice and failed once. What was the same? What was different?

He recited step after step. The only difference was that he had not made any effort to actually cast the spells on the two successes, so he took his place before the casework. Draco inhaled and let his breath trickle out, brushed his fingertips over the wood, and ran through the incantation.

Nothing. Not even a sputter. So he tried again, more fervently this time, but the best he could muster with that muggle electricity's infernal buzzing was a tiny, yellow tinged flicker.

The noise was like a swarm of mosquitoes hovering behind his ears. He understood full well why proper wizards didn't want the stuff around, it gave him a headache. He hauled the heap of cord into his arms and pulled the plug out of the wall.

Blissful silence blanketed the room, but he was staring at the cord. His eyebrow quirked as his mind turned over the incantation again.. He was winding up the spare cord, when...

No... It's a lump of muggle metal and rubber that gets pooped out of muggle factories, miles at a time. It hasn't got any magic. Surely if it did, every wizard on the isles would fill his house with piles of the stuff...

Snape would have told me.

Potter grew up with this stuff...

Certainly, Granger would have come up with some way to use it in the war...

He twiddled and rolled the three pronged plug, inhaled hard, and shoved it into the outlet. Draco waited, but nothing happened except the buzz that echoed like a beehive inside his skull. He tried a wordless Lumos, but nothing happened. His hand drifted down to the female plug laying on the stone floor. Another lumos, and the dead lamp mocked him.

He quirked an eyebrow and wracked his brain. He was wrapping the cord.

One loop flopped over his arm and his hand stretched towards the lamp, and Lumos. Darkness answered, so he looped a few more wraps and tried again. He had twenty loops over his arm before his elbow tingled. The itch spread up his shoulder, sending twinges through his jaw, but his wordless lumos brought light flickering out of the darkness.

Something?

He unwrapped the cord and tried again.

Nothing.

Forty wraps had him flicking dim wobbles of light through the darkness. Sixty wraps brought comfortable illumination that was easy to control once you stilled your body to the jitters. Eighty locked his jaws until he was able to relax and absorb the magic, like turning a Crucio. A hundred turns sent white brilliance glittering out of every surface in the workshop and left his whole arm numb.

Now he wondered, what sort of magic had the muggles stumbled on. No, that was wrong. Muggles have no magic, it had something to do with this electricity stuff and the coiled wire, but why didn't magical textbooks say anything about it. A trip to the muggle library was now in order, to learn about electricity and it's behavior in coiled wires.