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A Dream of Running Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7806 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Ten—A Summons
            “You’re to come.”
            Draco rose breathlessly to his feet. He had waited on his bed for some sign that the Dark Lord was going to torture him, or kill him, or torture his mother, or do something other than leave him here in silence. It would be almost worth it to see Potter writhing at his feet, Draco thought, as long as he knew.
            But he hadn’t expected Snape to be the Death Eater to deliver that summons.
            Perhaps it was a test for Snape, though. Draco didn’t dare think that the Dark Lord wouldn’t have recognized Snape’s touch in hiding those memories away from the forefront of his mind. So he didn’t dare say anything now. He just nodded and fell into line behind Snape as if he had thought this would happen.
            They passed in silence down a few of the corridors Draco had run through when he was a child, fencing with shadows and riding dragons made of thought. Draco wondered if he would ever be able to live here again, or to relive those memories, without a surge of hatred and fear.
            Then he snorted. He was unlikely to find out.
            Snape abruptly reached back and gripped his arm. Draco tried to shy away from the pain of his fingers. He would be feeling enough agony soon enough, from a different direction. Draco didn’t intend to spend any time in pain until then.
            Snape continued staring forwards and walking forwards. He spoke to Draco only from a corner of his mouth, and his voice was clipped and precise. “Since Potter is here, it changes the game.”
            Draco shivered and cowered. Why was Snape talking to him like this? Didn’t he know how weak Draco was, that he was the reason Potter had been captured in the first place? Didn’t he know that the Dark Lord would wring the memory of this conversation from Draco’s mind the first time he looked into Draco’s eyes?
            Snape twisted his arm harshly, and Draco gasped and paid attention. Snape was saying, “When I tell you to do something, I want you to do it, do you understand? I will have revenge on James Potter.”
            Draco blinked again. He had known, in part of him or because someone had once told him, that Snape had hated Potter’s father, but it didn’t seem exactly relevant to Draco at the moment.
            “You should think about something else,” he began, and then doubled over with a sob as Snape pinched something specific in his arm that caused him to stagger with pain. Snape turned around and stared remotely down at him.
            “You were a disappointment as a student,” Snape said. “You were not worth making an Unbreakable Vow for. You will regret it if you do not do exactly as I say, when I say it. Do you understand?”
            Draco didn’t, no, but he also knew he would get into worse trouble admitting that. So he nodded, and bowed down as if Snape were the Dark Lord himself, and waited until his actions seemed to pass some invisible line of reasonableness. Snape turned away with a sweep of his cloak, and made his way towards the top of the stairs that would lead down to the Dark Lord’s throne room.
            “Good. Then come this way.”
            Draco tried to keep some distance between them as he did. It seemed to him that Snape had gone mad, or perhaps finally decided that he might as well have some revenge on Potter before the Dark Lord figured out what he had done to help hide Draco’s memories and destroyed him. But Draco didn’t have to like it.
*
            “My faithful servants. Come in.”
            Draco started to shiver harder as he took in the throne room. It was entirely empty, except for the Dark Lord. Not even Elwood, who had been the most favored of his Death Eaters lately, was at his side. There was something tall and shrouded over in the corner, but Draco didn’t want to look at it. It seemed like a torture rack to him, or perhaps a gibbet where the Dark Lord would command him to be hanged.
            “Yes,” said the Dark Lord with a purr. He stood up, and Draco saw that he wasn’t completely alone after all. Nagini was draped around his shoulders, flowing over most of the throne as well. She lifted her head and gave Draco what he could have sworn was a disappointed glance. “My most faithful servants, because although you planned to rebel against me, you ended up advancing my power more than you could have foreseen.” He laughed in delight.
            Professor Snape dropped to his knees as though struck. Draco followed him. He didn’t know if that was the right thing to do—the Dark Lord might not think so, and although both of them could hurt him, the Dark Lord could hurt him far more—but it was all he could think of to do right now.
            In any case, the Dark Lord didn’t torture them or set Nagini on them. He paced slowly around them, his laughter echoing and washing over them. Draco thought he managed to suppress his shudders, or else they were hidden underneath his robes, but in truth, the Dark Lord’s laughter was more than he could bear. It was worse than it had been, soft rotting puffs of air from a darkened cavern. Draco wanted to stand up and run out of the room, and he thought he might have, despite the threats to his mother and him, if the Dark Lord hadn’t turned and gestured at the thing that Draco had thought was a gibbet.
            The cloth draping it floated up and off. Draco recognized the glitter and flash of jewels, and thought he was seeing Elwood’s machine, but he kept his gaze stubbornly on the floor.
            “Oh, look up,” said the Dark Lord in a throbbing voice. Draco didn’t want to think too hard about what it was throbbing with. “I want you to enjoy the sight of your triumph, and it is less worthwhile if you don’t look upon it.”
            Maybe someone brave would have defied the Dark Lord then, and died for it. Maybe death would have been better. But Draco was a coward, and he looked.
            The chains were wrapped around something in the center of the machine, instead of dangling from the frame the way Draco had seen them do so far. And that thing was Potter. Only his head looked out from the cocoon of gold metal and red jewels, and so it took Draco a long moment to recognize him. His face was pale, streaked with lines of blood that all seemed to lead back to his scar, and his eyes were closed.
            “So delightful,” the Dark Lord whispered, his voice low and thick. “He thought that he could destroy me, but he didn’t know. He didn’t know how powerful I was, and that I would always find out the truth at last, because the people who surround me are too weak to keep me out. Isn’t that right, Draco?” He came back to Draco and reached out his hand. Draco might have stayed staring at Potter, motionless, but Nagini hissed a warning, and he let the Dark Lord manipulate his head so Draco was looking at him. “You are the one responsible for this betrayal.”
            Draco wanted to disagree, but his voice was as motionless as the rest of him. And his cowardice probably wouldn’t have let him say something so defiant, anyway. It didn’t matter. The Dark Lord hissed a command to Nagini, and she twined languorously down the Dark Lord’s body and onto Draco’s.
            “I think,” said the Dark Lord, “that I shall invite your mother into this room to see what happens to you. But first, you are going to watch me destroy Harry Potter, and for that, you are the audience. Have an honored seat.”
            Nagini began to move, constricting her muscles and shuffling Draco along. Helpless in her coils, Draco was steered into the center of the room and held there, motionless, forced to watch as the Dark Lord reached out and gestured with his wand at Potter, murmuring, “Rennervate.”
            Potter was awake in seconds, his eyes flaring as though he’d been wrenched from a nightmare. He didn’t see many signs of recognizing that the nightmare was the thing he’d awoken into. He looked at Draco, and his mouth curved in a sad smile.
            “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is rotten for you.”
            Draco could feel his eyes stinging. He couldn’t say anything, but perhaps he didn’t need to. Potter looked as though he perfectly understood the feelings surging through Draco, and he smiled again.
            “Even though he betrayed you, Harry Potter?” The Dark Lord was circling the machine now, reaching out one hand to stroke the metallic cocoon. “You seem very willing to forgive traitors. I wonder that you would not do the same for Wormtail.”
            “Draco didn’t mean to betray me,” said Potter, and his smile was slight, but there. Draco saw some more blood trickle down Potter’s face as huge purple scabs at the corner of his lips cracked. Draco shivered, unable to imagine what tortures might have made Potter’s lips look like that. “He meant to betray you. He didn’t manage to. That’s okay. Wormtail, on the other hand, followed your scaly face of his own free will.”
            The Dark Lord’s face twisted, and his wand snapped out. “Crucio!”
            Draco actually rocked with the force of the spell, even though he wasn’t the one who’d had it cast at him. He hadn’t thought the Dark Lord was that close to the edge of rage. He had seemed so calm, almost happy, when he was addressing Draco and Snape.
            Snape, beside him, tensed almost imperceptibly. Draco probably wouldn’t have noticed it before the last few months, which had made him so sensitive to the moods of other Death Eaters. He eyed Snape sideways. Snape was watching Potter twist in the chains, and finally scream, as though he was watching the achievement of some plan.
            Draco remembered the way that Snape had said he wanted revenge on Potter’s dad, and grimaced. Maybe that was all this was. Maybe Snape could forget that he was probably going to die for his part in Draco’s treachery because he would watch Potter die first.
            The Dark Lord lifted the curse after a few minutes, and turned around to sneer at Snape. “I know what you want, Severus. And be assured that it shall not come to you.”
            Snape looked at the Dark Lord with a passive expression that puzzled Draco. One way or another, he would have thought Snape was better than that. He should either rage or ask for revenge on Potter or eloquently plead for his life. Or maybe—even though Draco had assumed that of course the Dark Lord would figure out what Snape had done, because there was no way that Draco was good enough at Occlumency to hide his treacherous thoughts on his own—the Dark Lord hadn’t figured enough of it out. Maybe he was thinking about letting Snape live because he was useful, or because he had killed Dumbledore.
            “Potter is mine to destroy,” said the Dark Lord, and his voice dropped to a low rumble. “You are not to intervene.”
            Draco turned back to look at Potter, who was slowly ceasing to twitch. He lifted his head a second later, and gave Draco a sympathetic smile. “Both of us wrapped up, huh?” he whispered.
            Draco would have nodded, but Nagini hissed when he made the slightest movement. In the end, he just had to lie there and blink his eyes a few times, deliberately, hoping Potter would get the message.
            “Yeah,” said Potter, and let his chin dangle, looking at the floor. It was probably easier that way, although part of Draco ached to think of Potter acting so submissive, so spiritless.
            “Of course, my Lord,” Snape was saying in a monotone. “I simply wondered whether something that had concerned me in idle moments was true.”
            Once again, his tone seemed like nothing special to Draco—still passive, if anything—but the Dark Lord took a long step towards Snape, suddenly focused on him to the exclusion of all else. “Say what you mean,” he whispered. “That is a command, Severus, from Lord Voldemort himself.”
            Nagini hissed when Draco automatically flinched at the name, too. From his nest of chains, Potter was watching with bright eyes.
            “I wondered,” Severus said, bowing his head, “whether it was true that you were truly immortal, my Lord. Whether you had conquered death.”
            “Of course Lord Voldemort is immortal,” the Dark Lord said, and really, Draco thought to himself, he would have to conquer his flinching reflex if he stayed here much longer and listened to this. It was just the way it would be. “Why would you doubt it?” His speech had acquired what Draco thought was a snake-like edge, even though there weren’t a lot of sibilants in those words.
            “Because, my Lord,” said Severus, and his voice was still so bland that Draco had to listen hard to convince himself he’d heard the actual words, “you seem to fear the boy.” He tossed his head contemptuously at Potter. “And no one who was immortal would fear that crawling incompetent.”
            The Dark Lord rocked slowly back and forth on his feet. “I do not fear him,” he said, and Draco tensed, recognizing that tone. It was cold, black rage that would sweep all before it. What was Professor Snape doing?
            Snape only stood there as if he didn’t realize the danger, although Draco had never seen anyone who seemed to know the Dark Lord’s moods as well. Perhaps he’d given up and was ready to die, Draco thought.
            Well, some people weren’t. Draco again tried to turn and twist, but Nagini tightened at once, and he had to go still. He could feel her fangs touching his neck.
            “Forgive me, my Lord,” said Snape, and performed an elegant bow that swept his head down to touch his feet. But he was immediately rising again, his eyes fastened on the Dark Lord in a way that made the bow seem more like a gesture of scorn than anything else. “But why keep him alive? Why hang him here and torture him and gloat over him if you dare to meet him in combat?”
            “I am going to kill him,” said the Dark Lord. Already, Draco thought he could see his mouth stretching out of shape, the way it had when he was screaming at Draco for failing to kill Dumbledore after he and Professor Snape had escaped from Hogwarts. The Dark Lord’s words warped and stretched and slid out of shape, too. “I will kill him when I have done with him. That is what I just told you.”
            “Yes,” said Snape, and still didn’t look away or lower his eyes, even though Draco could have told him it was essential to his survival right now. “But, my Lord, the longer he stays alive, the more you seem to fear him. It makes it seem as though you fear that you cannot kill him. It makes it seem as though perhaps he will defeat you again. If he could do it as a toddler, why not now?”
            The Dark Lord moved, flowing like Nagini across the floor and over to Snape. He pressed Snape back against the wooden side of Elwood’s machine with his long yew wand up against Snape’s jaw. Snape simply looked back with eyes so deep and unimpressed that Draco swallowed. He was aware of the frantic thunder of his own hoarse breathing as though it belonged to someone else.
            Nagini drew back, her head cocked as she watched her master. Perhaps she thought the Dark Lord would want her to be the one to execute Snape.
            “You dare to question me,” whispered the Dark Lord. “When you did not even search for my spirit during those years when I lay—elsewhere. When you went back to the school and worked for my greatest enemy.”
            “I killed him,” said Snape, never flinching, never showing a trace of the conflict that Draco knew perfectly well he had felt after killing Dumbledore. “Your greatest enemy is dead.” He paused, and blinked as though a thought had just occurred to him. “Is that why the Potter boy is still alive, my Lord? Because Albus Dumbledore was truly your greatest enemy, and with him gone, all others are lesser?”
            The Dark Lord held still, taut and trembling.
            “Forgive me,” said Snape, and bowed his head. “And kill me now, because, my Lord, I must lose faith in you, if you need a lesser servant like myself to kill your greatest enemy.”
            The Dark Lord roared wordlessly and spun around. Draco shut his eyes, not wanting to see the moment when Professor Snape died.
            “Avada Kedavra!”
            But Draco’s eyes popped open anyway, and when the green light flashed, it was heading in the wrong direction. It slammed into Harry Potter’s hanging body, and Potter opened his mouth as if he was going to swallow it down. And then his head dangled, and he was gone.
            Draco cried out hoarsely, not even having realized he was going to do that.
            But at the same moment, the Dark Lord crumpled to the floor, and Nagini unwound herself from Draco and surged towards him, hissing urgently.
            “Draco,” said Snape.
            Draco stared at him, unable to do anything else. He was as helpless as though Nagini was still pinning him. Snape stared into his eyes, and there was all that passion and intensity Draco had been missing before.
            “Help me kill the snake.”
            It was for Potter and not because Snape had told him to obey that Draco stood up, though. Because he had failed at everything else, but he might not fail at this.
            I’m so sorry, Potter, he thought incoherently as he stumbled forwards at Professor Snape’s side. Please forgive me, if you’re someplace where you can.
*
moodysavage: Well, he sort of did?
SP777: Yep. Well, this story is dark, I did promise that.
Jester: Thanks! He may be about to get revenge, at least.
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A Dream of Running Water