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Breaking The Habit	By : ravennatan Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Snape/Draco Views: 3058 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Breaking The Habit
- 1
Title: Breaking the Habit

Author: Ravenna C. Tan

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Draco/Snape

Warnings: HBP spoilers, mutual masturbation, oral sex, and angst.

Word Count: 5248

House: Ravenclaw, of course

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or any of the Harry Potter universe. This is non-commercial fan-based work for the love of it.

SUMMARY: After months on the run with Severus Snape, Draco wakes up in Malfoy Manor. He has been rescued from the Dark Lord's clutches and his parents are eager for him to forget completely the "dark time" in his life, Snape included.

A/N: The idea for this story came to me while listening to the radio. I looked up the song lyrics and have woven them in the story as songfic, but you can read it without the lyrics and it should still make sense! Based on the song "Breaking the Habit" by Linkin Park

Thanks to miraba for beta-reading.

Cross-posted.

--

Memories consume

Like opening the wound

I'm picking me apart again

You all assume

I'm safe here in my room

Unless I try to start again

Draco Malfoy wakes in the night and lies perfectly still, listening for whatever woke him with his heart hammering hard and wondering why he is alone. Then the scent of the sachet under his pillow and the memory of where he is hits him. Home. Malfoy Manor. He is no longer running for his life. No longer hiding. But he is alone.

He has to be sure. The feeling that Severus is lying there in the dark, sleeping with his face turned away from Draco as he always did, is so strong, so vivid that Draco reaches out expecting to feel the outcropping of a shoulder. His hand closes on the softness of the feather duvet. He strangles a cry in his throat and punches his pillow.

They want him to forget. He remembers the words very clearly, "Forget about Snape, Draco." His mother's voice. His father's voice. "Unfortunate that the boy developed such an attachment for him." They want him to forget the fugitive months, the War. They want him back to the way he was--or the way they thought he had been, hoped he had been. They think if he can just forget it all that he will be normal again.

He bites his fist, curling in the bed around his loneliness, around the emptiness in the pit of his stomach, around the urge to cry. He pulls the pillow into his arms then. They don't want him to think about it, but he can't not. The pillow becomes Snape's shoulder. Severus never pushed him away when he needed someone to cling to, in the middle of a dark night.

Severus never pushed him away when he would reach through the layers of cloth, to put his hand on Severus' skin, to feel his heart beating against his palm. Draco never begged, not with his voice. He beseeched with his hands, his fingers playing over Severus' belly, his nipples. And Severus never denied him.

The man would sometimes feign sleep for long minutes, while Draco--more fearful inside that Severus would say no than he was of death or Voldemort--would persist, sometimes until he began to tremble. And then Severus would turn to him, and press his lips to Draco's neck, or his mouth, or bare and suckle a nipple, and Draco's trembling would sometimes turn to sighs of pleasure and sometimes to tears of relief.

Draco wraps quaking fingers around his cock. Severus would fist him sometimes. When they were safe--or thought they were for a time--he would tease Draco until he begged, or until he screamed. When they weren't safe, he would pump Draco with one hand, and keep the other clamped tight over Draco's mouth to keep him silent. Draco did not know how it was that Severus knew how much he needed that, to scream or to be held back, maybe both.

He smothers his face in his pillow as he comes silently. They don't want him to remember, but every night, he does.

* * *

I don't want to be the one

the battles always choose

Cause inside I realize

that I'm the one confused

Draco hears someone coming up the stairs. He spends most of his time lying in bed, listening. It is not his mother's footstep on the staircase, of that he is sure, and yet he can tell by the light coming through the window that this is when she usually brings him a midday meal. The step is heavier, a boot. For a moment he thinks Severus has come. But then he is shocked by to see the face of his father peering through the half-opened door. He bears a laden tray. Draco is not sure what is most shocking, his father, his father home at midday, or his father carrying a tray like a servant.

"Draco," Lucius says, clipped and formal as if they were in the sitting room, entertaining guests for tea.

Draco sits up in bed, pulling the covers around him, his knees up and drawn to his chest.

Lucius places the tray on the table by the bed, and sits in the chair there. "Draco, I thought you and I could have a little talk."

"Where's mother?" Draco closes his eyes. She is usually the one to bring up lunch or tea and the break from routine confuses him. "I don't understand."

"I know you've been through a very difficult time," Lucius says, leaning forward and clasping his hands together.

Draco begins to shiver. His father cares for him, he knows he does, but when he tries to force warmth or caring into his voice, it reminds Draco of the false sympathy the Dark Lord used.

The night of his Marking comes to mind clearly. They had trapped a little Muggle girl, blond and blue eyed and disgustingly innocent in a flowered dress and shiny black shoes. At first Draco had thought they were torturing some animal when he heard the sounds coming out of her throat. They had her in a cage like one, and really, wasn't that the point? That those without magic weren't human? But the screams made his hair stand on end. It wasn't until the Death Eaters ringing her stepped aside that he saw it was a girl.

They were in a cemetery, Draco didn't know where, and the Death Eaters formed a ring around him and Voldemort and the girl in the cage. She began to cry. Voldemort spoke to her then, Draco didn't remember the words but he remembered the tone. False, so false. Yet the girl stifled her sobs a bit. Draco remembered staring at her, eyes narrow, hiding his confusion behind a mask of anger and disdain.

And then there was Voldemort encouraging him to take out his wand. Draco looked at his father, pleading with his eyes for some instruction. But no one had told him what was expected, what he should do. The Dark Lord's eyes were on him, waiting, as were all the others. Voldemort stepped aside, leaving Draco and the girl illuminated by the wandlight of the Death Eaters's circle.

"Draco Malfoy," the Dark Lord said. "Will you be a soldier for me, willing to kill and die for me?"

"Yes." So that was what they wanted. For him to prove himself worthy of the Mark. He pointed his wand at the girl and it seemed they all held their breath. The Killing Curse passed easily over his lips and the body slumped against the bars. Then Voldemort's wand, searing pain in his arm, and it was over.

Lucius had been angry as they made their way home and Draco didn't understand why. What more had they wanted from him? If he had expected something different, why hadn't he said so before? Draco had expected Lucius to be proud, but he acted as if Draco had nearly disgraced the family.

"Why were you so angry with me?" Draco says, lifting his head from his arms and staring at his father through the lank blond strands that fall in his eyes.

"I'm not angry with you," Lucius says in that fake, warm voice.

"Not now, that night. The night of..." He finds he cannot say it. "You seemed disappointed."

"Let us not speak of the evils in our past," Lucius says with a wan smile. This time, he almost sounds genuine. "The war is over. You've been forgiven. We've been forgiven."

"Well, I haven't forgiven you," Draco says, and buries his head in his arms again. He does not move again until a long time later, after Lucius has left the room.

* * *

I don't know what's worth fighting for

Or why I have to scream

I don't know why I instigate

And say what I don't mean

The next visitor is his mother. This doesn't surprise him. She notices, as she always does, that he hasn't eaten, he hasn't even touched the tea. This is why she won't entrust his feeding to a house elf. Even in his debilitated state, Draco can still bully them into leaving him alone. Getting his mother to leave him is harder.

At least she has given up trying to cuddle him, to hug him. The last time she did that, he let out a scream that would wake the dead. Now she sits in the chair and talks. She talks to him about relatives he doesn't remember, schoolmates it seems he barely knew, local gossip, anything to keep her mouth busy. He tries to ignore her, to pretend he can't understand a word she says, some foreign language pouring out of her mouth like opera. He mostly ignores it by staring at the pattern of threads in the bedcovers.

He just wants her to go away, so he can pretend Severus is there. Whenever he feels like screaming, he pretends to be lying next him, and the feeling fades. These days the feeling is coming more often, not less. Draco doesn't understand why, but he doesn't want them to know. He wants to be left alone.

Maybe it doesn't matter that she's there. He closes his eyes and tunes out his mother's blathering. Severus is there, his weight on the mattress pulling Draco toward him as the gravitational pull of the Earth to the Moon. Draco curls onto his side, away from her, scissoring a pillow between his legs. He imagines it is Severus' hip or thigh.

He was half-asleep, but only half, with one leg draped over Severus', on the night the Death Eaters found them. They were holed up in a tiny flat above a Squib tobacconist's in Newcastle, and there had been no time. Snape's first shield spell, though hastily cast, had bought them a few seconds, and two Death Eaters were killed, but outside there were more, with strong Disapparition charms. The curses cast in the fight set the building ablaze but ultimately they were both taken.

Draco rocks slowly against the pillow. He thinks it odd that the Death Eaters left them together, while his so-called rescuers have separated them. He long ago gave up the illusion of understanding what evil is supposed to be, but he thinks he might have known happiness, maybe even freedom, if only for a few fleeting moments at a time, in the dark, with Severus. Sometimes, while they were kissing, Draco would come, just from rubbing against Severus' leg.

His mother's voice cuts through his reverie. "Draco, are you all right? Why are you making those noises? Are you sick?" He hears the clink of the china. "Here, have some tea."

"Go away," he hisses, through clenched teeth. Then her hand touches his shoulder and he cannot keep the scream inside any longer. It pours out of him, rage, and fear, and helplessness, which might have once been words but which now are just a storm of sound tearing his throat ragged.

* * *

I don't know how I got this way

I know it's not all right

So I'm breaking the habit, tonight

When he comes to, she is gone. Moonlight comes through the gauzy curtains on the double doors to the balcony. Someone has propped them open and a warm breeze flutters the gossamer.

Draco's throat hurts and he wonders what is wrong with him. It wasn't his first uncontrollable screaming fit-- he's been having them ever since they confined him up here. It's WHY they confined him up here. Traumatized, that's the word the mediwizard used. It's as if all the time he spent under Cruciatus could have left something lingering like a poison in his system. He feels out of breath as if he has been in a fight, but for the moment his mind is clear. He hasn't eaten for two days but he feels more awake, more alive, than he has in recent memory. He thinks. If there were a potion that could cause this sort of pain, would it have a half-life in his body? How long had it been since the rescue, anyway? A potion...

A potion? He sits up, eyes narrowed with suspicion. No, it couldn't be... A recently filled pot of tea sits on his side table. He climbs cautiously from the bed. He lifts the lid of the pot and sniffs gently.

He closes his eyes. Potions had always been his strong suit; his brain must have been truly addled for him not to have noticed this before. That tang of hellebore. And lovage, as well? His gut twists in disgust. Did they think that would be enough to make him forget the Killing Curse, the Dark Lord, and Severus? He remembers all those things with such clarity, and yet he barely remembers Hogwarts, can't recall his relatives... the potion has been robbing him memories, but not the ones his caretakers want.

He carries the teapot to the balcony and pours it over the railing into the garden. His hands shake as he does it. Could they really be that stupid? But he realizes that yes, they could. They would rather have a smiling, docile, mindless imbecile for a son than the screaming lunatic catamite they rescued from Voldemort's clutches. Draco stares down into the dark garden. He is aware for the first time in months, aware of himself, aware of the present, and of the past.

He remembers Voldemort's dungeon, the terror of being taken there, a hood over his head, the laughter of Death Eaters in his ears, the jolts of Cruciatus from those who took pleasure from it on the way. He also remembers the ridiculous, inappropriate, unreal sense of relief he felt when he realized that he and Severus were being thrown into the same cell.

At first they were never left alone, but as time wore on, and Voldemort's forces were thinned, there were whole days, whole nights, when they never saw a captor. At first they thought it some kind of trick. But there was a war on, and it appeared Voldemort's soldiers were needed for other mischief from time to time.

In the breeze through the window, Draco imagines he hears Severus' whisper. What had he said that night?

Draco had been lying upon the tatters of his cloak, wrung out by Cruciatus and more creative forms of torture. The Dark Lord had decided the punishment worked best if Draco were to bear the brunt of the physical torture, leaving Severus the psychological pain of guilt, helplessness, outrage, and empathy. Draco did not even know what it was that the Dark Lord wanted from Severus. He was usually screaming too loud to hear the questions.

Now he lay there, wishing for Severus to come comfort him. His limbs felt like lead, he could not force himself to move--the only sign he was alive came from the fresh tears leaking from his eyes.

And Severus came to him, cradled him in his arms, and whispered "I'm so sorry. It's my fault you are here. My fault you are suffering."

"Don't be ridiculous," Draco had replied, his voice weak but his sense of outrage still sharp. He pressed his forehead to Severus' chest, his tears soaking the cloth of the man's robes. The pain seemed driven back by the warmth emanating from Severus' body. "You didn't make me take the Mark."

"But I did turn you against Him."

"No..." Draco found himself hushed by a kiss, a kiss that threatened to drive all thought from his head. "No," he said again, when he could, determined to hold onto at least one thought. "It's my fault you're here," Draco finished. "If you hadn't been protecting me all this time, you wouldn't have ended up here." Draco trembled. "It's my fault for needing you so much."

No reply came, other than two hands, seeking Draco's skin, and eventually a mouth, a hot, wet mouth, traveling from Draco's lips down his body to his cock, and sucking not urgently but gently. Having spoken his one thought, Draco allowed himself to drift, to forget, as Severus' tongue became his one connection to the universe. The dungeon seemed to disappear, the pain and fear with it.

Draco doesn't remember now if he came--he assumes he did. He remembers not the end, but what seemed like hours of pleasure, days, endless time, suspended... Severus protecting him still, in the only way he still could.

Draco stands on the balcony and stares up at the moon. How ironic it is that the one person who might have been able to actually make a potion that would make him forget is the one person they won't ever allow him to see again. No, he didn't suppose Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy would stand for it in their son, but when his life hung by a thread his parents' prejudices were hardly a prime concern. Draco had needed Severus, and Severus had been there for him. He holds himself tightly as the breeze turns to a gust of wind. He wonders if Severus is looking at this same moon and thinking of him. He shakes his head. The potion has made him stupid, he decides. He must make sure not to take it again, no matter how they try to push it on him.

* * *

Clutching my cure

I tightly lock the door

I try to catch my breath again

I hurt much more

Than anytime before

I had no options left again

Six months go by. Six months still imprisoned, playing the role of convalescent. They think he is drinking the damnable tea, and that this is why he is improving so much. He goes through five or six whole pots of it a day, or so his mother thinks. He hopes some bush in the garden is not dying from all the tainted tea he has poured over the railing.

He speaks to his mother now when she visits. He acts as normal as he can. He is rewarded with trips to the dining room, the sitting room, the music room. He imagines Severus is there, sitting behind him, just out of his line of sight, encouraging him, approving. It gets him through it.

The fa�ade is hard to maintain, though. Because now his memories are surfacing in earnest. Cruciatus. He remembers now the sensation of falling into the lowest pits of Hell, like his flesh is burning off his bones. The memory seizes him at odd times. Sitting by the fire with his father one evening, each of them reading a book. Lucius reading that is, while Draco, finding the memory nearly as painful as the curse itself, forces himself to placidly turn page after page, to maintain the appearance of normality. When he can no longer stand it, he announces that he is tired, and needs to rest. Lucius again sounds almost genuine when he agrees that Draco should not try to do too much and should go off to bed.

Alone in his room, Draco drops his robes at the foot of the bed and climbs in. Once again it is memories of Severus that drive back the bad ones.

Draco remembers the first time, the very first time, when they were still at Hogwarts. It was the day that Potter had slashed him open with some dark spell. Draco remembers clearly the blood in the water, and Professor Snape cradling him in his arms, and somehow healing him with a kind of chanting song-like spell.

Draco had woken up expecting to find himself in the hospital wing. But no, he looked up groggily to find himself in a bed in a dimly lit dungeon room. Both side tables were piled with books and most of the rest of the furniture looked to be bookshelves, full ones.

And then he noticed the black-clad figure sitting in a chair beside him, nearly blending into the shadows.

"Professor?"

"Mr. Malfoy, the sleeping draught I gave you should have kept you knocked out for at least another hour." Professor Snape had set aside a book. With a flick of his wand the illumination brightened and he sat upon the edge of the bed. "Let me see your face." He tilted Draco's chin toward him and squinted critically at him. "Hmm, I think I can safely say you will have no scars."

"Not anywhere?" Draco had said, his hand clutching at the spot on his chest where the slash had been deepest.

"Let me look." Severus had then drawn away the bedcovers, revealing a completely naked Draco, who lay still under the examination. Severus had traced the faint white lines that remained with the tips of his fingers, running them back and forth, until Draco finally caught the man's hands in his own and kissed them. He was achingly hard by then, a fact the professor could not have missed as he had run his fingers up and down Draco's skin as if mesmerized. Draco had pulled the hands in his down to his groin, where they resumed their caressing.

He had been afraid to say anything, afraid that if he spoke, the stern, distant professor would replace the hungry, mesmerized man on the bed with him. So he said nothing, arching under the touch on his cock, which was followed quickly by an eager mouth. Draco's own mouth was eager, and he took one of the other man's free hands and suckled his fingers one by one. He was pleased by the groan Severus made then, and he sat up and pushed at the black robes trying to make the other man as naked as he.

That was accomplished with the professor's help, and Draco soon found himself spooned, his back against the professor's bare chest, with teeth nipping at his neck, arms encircling him, a hand on his cock again. He could feel Severus' cock pressed up against his tailbone. He rolled onto his belly, or maybe he was pushed there, and the thrusting hardness against hardness increased in tempo. Severus had gasped when he came onto Draco's back, Draco shuddering empathetically under him though he did not come himself from it.

And then the man rolled him onto his back, and slid one leg between his. He cradled Draco's head between his hands and kissed him as his hipbone slid over Draco's erection. His lips let Draco's go and Draco opened his eyes to find Severus staring back. He could not look away, neither of them could. Severus made a rhythm with his hip, and Draco thrust back in response, his lips parted soundlessly. Then a whimper escaped, Severus moved faster, and Draco clung to him, eyes still open, unable to break the locked gaze until the moment he began to come. Then he could not help it, he squeezed his eyes shut, his mouth opened wide, though still he made no sound as the orgasm had wracked him from toe to head.

Now Draco caresses himself, whispering "Severus, Severus" into his pillow. How long can he make it last? So long as he is in that state of bliss, he feels no pain, no fear. This is the reason to keep up the charade. Once they declare him cured, he will have a wand again, and a life, and then his parents be damned. He knows what they want--a Malfoy heir, an arranged match with some Pureblood witch, as if no lessons from the War have really been learned.

He imagines being reunited with Severus at last, of looking into those dark eyes once again, and comes before he realizes he is doing so.

* * *

I'll paint it on the walls

Cause I'm the one at fault

I'll never fight again

And this is how it ends

It is spring when his mother starts taking him with her on short trips out of the house. To a restaurant for tea. To the clothiers for new robes. A visit with Professor Sinistra, now retired to an estate nearby with fabulous gardens. Draco wishes to wander the labyrinth but his mother says no, it might be upsetting. Very well. The former professor engages him with questions, and it is several minutes before he realizes she is testing him, probing his acuity.

"Mr. Malfoy," the woman says, and it is almost a relief to be spoken to that way, not coddled or babied. "We are all aware that your schooling was somewhat truncated, and I would like to ask if you are interested in the possibility of remedying that situation."

"Naturally, I would like to continue my education," he says in his best aristocratic voice, composing his face to look eager and attentive. It is not hard to do so, because he would be quite eager to do so. He has been wondering if he should bring up the subject himself with his parents, and he is pleased they have been thinking this way. He wonders if Hogwarts is out of the question, the way the subject of Severus seems to be a forbidden topic. He wonders if the professor has his old job back, and his heart beats harder.

Aurora Sinistra nods at him and then at his mother. It is only a few days after that they go to a wand shop.

Draco is a wizard once again. But the subject of his return to school does not come up again until one warm night when the Malfoy family is at dinner in the formal dining room. Everything seems in order, so Draco wonders why his parents are acting... tense. He mentally checks himself, but he is fairly sure he has not done anything to attract attention or upset them. The scent of night blooming flowers in the garden wafts in on the May breeze, and his heart stirs with the feeling that can only be the onset of summer.

Then suddenly the warmth in his veins is shot through with ice. It was on a night just like tonight that he faced Dumbledore on the Astronomy Tower. The night he and Severus fled.

Two years ago tonight. He finds himself staring into his soup, blinking back tears. He looks up, surprised to find his mother is doing the same. She excuses herself hurriedly and leaves the room.

"Mother, what's wrong?" Draco calls after her, but this time it is his voice that brims with false concern.

When she is gone he faces his father, seated at the head of the table, the Malfoy crest hanging in tapestry behind his head. "I know what she's thinking about," Draco says. "I know what night tonight is."

Lucius appears startled from his own reverie. "I thought we agreed not to talk about the past."

"Am I to assume then that a return to Hogwarts is out of the question for me?"

Lucius scowls. "Once upon a time you wanted to go to Durmstrang."

"Durmstrang is it, then? In the Fall?"

Lucius shakes his head. "Hogwarts would make the most sense, but..." His face is grave with reservations.

"But what?" When he doesn't go on, Draco finds he cannot hold up his fa�ade any longer. "But you're afraid I'll see... Professor Snape there, aren't you."

Lucius looks up, shocked, his pale face even paler. "Draco..."

"What!" Draco finds himself standing, his hand gripping his wand inside his robe's deep pocket.

His father seems to shrink in his seat. "Draco, I don't know how to explain this."

"Explain what?" Draco tamps down his anger, his curiosity roused by the fact that Lucius' voice is completely devoid of its usual veneer. He sounds... distraught.

"Draco, I know there are things you don't remember..."

Draco draws his wand and slams it down on the table. His eyes blaze in accusation. "Do you know why I don't remember things, father? Was it your idea or mother's?"

"I..." Lucius drops his eyes and Draco knows he cannot hide the truth. "We thought it best..."

Draco picks up the teacup from his place setting and flings it to the marble floor. It shatters with a high-pitched crash. "You tried to make me forget." He is not shouting, but his voice cuts through the air. "You made me forget."

Lucius' hands are raised now, placating, supplicant. "I know. I'm sorry for that. That's why I must tell you certain things now." He indicates Draco's chair with his hand. "Please, Draco, sit down"

Draco folds his arms over his chest, his wand still gripped in his right.

"Very well." Lucius pinches the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "But first I must say I did not mean to seem as if I have any objection to your return to Hogwarts. If it is what you want, Draco, I will of course do everything in my power to see you reinstated there."

Draco narrows his eyes, well aware this is a stalling tactic. "We were on the subject of Severus Snape." Draco has not forgotten his mother and his father's voices, coming through the haze of the potion, "Forget about Snape, Draco." The one thing he would not forget, could not forget.

"Ah, yes." Lucius Malfoy has never looked more miserable to his son. He clears his throat before he speaks again. "He was killed during your rescue."

There is a moment, only a moment, in which Draco stands stunned by the words. In the next moment his mind rejects them as a lie, a ploy, a plot. But there is a part of him that knows it is true. The gaping emptiness he had thought walled off suddenly swallows him, the pain that Severus' memory drove back so easily before is suddenly unbearable. He is falling, falling into the pit of Hell and the pain is indescribable. So this was why he was screaming all along. It wasn't the pain of Cruciatus they were trying to deaden, it was grief.

He does not see the teapot before he smashes it, does not hear his father calling his name, does not feel the floor as he collapses, the scream he has been suppressing for months upon months now finally breaking loose, tearing his chest, shredding his throat, and leaving him once more, alone.

I don't know what's worth fighting for

Or why I have to scream

But now I have some clarity

To show you what I mean

I don't know how I got this way

I'll never be alright

So I'm breaking the habit

Breaking the habit

Tonight

* * *

Read my other hp slash fics at The Raven's Quill: http://ravenna-c-tan.livejournal.com
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Breaking The Habit