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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 Six—A Light
            “I require young Mr. Malfoy’s help with my spells.”
            Draco stood there with his head bowed and his eyes fastened on his feet, not daring to breathe loudly. He had gone to Rodolphus Lestrange again this morning, only to find Elwood there claiming that the Dark Lord had promised Draco could help him with his research.
            Draco clenched his hands. He didn’t want to murder people or torture them, but—he hesitated to admit this—it was better than suffering himself.
            “And our Lord promised that I could have him, for the vengeance-debt.” Rodolphus spun his wand the way he had the other day, but his eyes promised cold revenge on Elwood, not the fire he had showed Draco. “It’s important that he understand exactly what he did in depriving me of my wife, and that he never do it again.” He tilted his head towards Draco, and Draco looked down quickly before he could meet the madman’s eyes.
            “What does your wife matter?” Elwood made a little motion with his hand. “She’s dead. We have the living to hunt down.”
            Draco said nothing. Neither of them, so far, had asked for his opinion. And as long as he was still alive, he knew he could do something. He wasn’t entirely sure how he would bring down the Dark Lord, but it felt as if he had plans and a way to do it, despite everything.
            “Come here and say that,” Rodolphus said, and rose up in a single swift motion from the table in the middle of the torture room he had summoned Draco to.
            Draco tensed his legs, but didn’t move away from them yet. That would only attract attention. Instead, he concentrated on smoothing out his breathing so it didn’t sound harsh and draw their attention that way.
            “You have no idea who I am.” Elwood’s voice was strong and confident, utterly unlike either Rodolphus’s hiss or the trembling whisper Draco knew he would have used if he’d tried to use the same words himself. Elwood didn’t even draw his wand, only watched Rodolphus. “The task that our Lord has given me is the most important one. I will bring down Harry Potter, and I will do it with the help of this expendable idiot who has turned out to be surprisingly good at torture.”
            Draco wished he could allow himself to feel comforted. But thinking about Elwood’s work and the way that he didn’t know if Elwood would win this confrontation, he couldn’t. Rodolphus would just take out his temper on Draco if he succeeded in winning.
            “Let us go to our Lord, then.” Rodolphus’s eyes glowed like the eyes of a mad rat Draco had once found in a deserted corner of the Manor. “If you have the courage to ask him for Draco Malfoy, then—”
            “He has already asked me.”
            The Dark Lord’s presence filled the room like cold smoke. Draco fell helplessly to his knees, followed a moment later by the other two, and heard the Dark Lord laugh. The noise sounded as if it came from a dead throat.
            Why did I ever think this was the path to glory? Draco knew he should keep his thoughts subdued, bound back, broken, that enough people had taken enough risks for him, but ones like this kept insisting on slipping across his mind. He didn’t know why, but there they were, and his face was helplessly pale and cold, and his hands shook.
            “Elwood is doing a great work,” said the Dark Lord chidingly to Rodolphus, and Draco saw the white hand stretch out from its dark sleeve towards Rodolphus’s face. Draco bent his head further, until his hair shut out the vision. “You are not. What are you doing, but trying to avenge someone too weak to fight off a teenager?”
            Rodolphus tried to say something, but choked in response. Draco knew that the hatred he felt wouldn’t be directed at the Dark Lord, though. It would all come back to Draco, and the Dark Lord would test his followers in the way, and rejoice when he found out who the strong ones and the weak ones were.
            It’s political manipulation. It has nothing to do with finding the ones who are most worthy. It’s there to amuse him and see who would die for him.
            His father had told him as much with lesser political figures, like the Minister. It was how politics worked, in general. But his father had never once mentioned that the same simple concepts could apply to the exalted Dark Lord.
            The Dark Lord’s face turned towards Draco. Draco cringed, hoping it was the right thing to do. The Dark Lord wanted weakness, wanted loyalty, but there were those unexpected moments when he also wanted strength.
            “Draco,” said the Dark Lord tenderly, “I have a request to make of you.”
            At least Draco knew the proper response to that one, no matter what the Dark Lord currently thought of him. He lifted his head at once and said, in a soft voice, “Anything that you wish, my Lord.”
            “This young one could give you an example of loyalty and promptness to respond to, Rodolphus,” said the Dark Lord. Draco’s heart shook with despair when he thought of what would happen the next time he met Rodolphus, but he kept his eyes obediently on his Lord’s face anyway. At least thoughts of fear and terror were likely to please the Dark Lord.
            That pale figure swiveled back to regard Draco, and the long, claw-like hands made an almost delicate gesture in the air. “I want you, Draco…”
            “Yes, my Lord?” Draco despised himself for the breathless edge to his voice, but the Dark Lord was like that. He could make you want to serve him even as you despised yourself for the desire. Draco knew that was why his father had followed him.
            Father…
            The grief welled and nearly blocked his ears, but then the Dark Lord said the one thing that could have made Draco pay the utmost attention. “You will restrain your mother from begging me for your life.”
            Draco bowed at once, one hand over his heart. He knew his elbow was cocked awkwardly against the floor and the Dark Lord might not see it, but Draco did it anyway. “Of course, my Lord. I will remind her that our lives are yours, and you are the only one who can grant whether they will continue or not.”
            The Dark Lord gave a chuckle like the squeak of a hinge on a gate, and laid his hand on Draco’s hair. Worms couldn’t have felt more disgusting squirming on the back of his neck, but Draco didn’t look up. He wouldn’t dare.
            All the while, his heart hammered and his mind screamed. Mother, Mother, what did you do? What did he do to you?
            “You are most refreshingly obedient, after your first great failure,” the Dark Lord mused. “Perhaps I will reverse the spell I put on her after all.”
            “Your choice, my Lord,” Draco said, his voice and will to survive shaping the words while the soul of him was contorted and writhing in agony. He knew the Dark Lord could cast spells that others couldn’t, because of the sheer knowledge or power that was needed. He wanted to go to his mother at once.
            But he would make things worse for her if he did. He had to remind himself of that.
            For a second, the wriggling fingers tightened in his hair, and then the Dark Lord stepped back and nodded, looking pleased. “It is. Do not forget it. For today, you will work with Elwood.”
            He didn’t say it would be permanently, the small part of Draco that could spare attention for his own plight from his mother’s reminded him. But Draco stood with his gaze on the floor, and nodded. “Yes, my Lord.”
            “The young can instruct their elders, sometimes,” the Dark Lord said, with another grating chuckle, and swept out again.
            “Indeed they can,” said Elwood, and jerked his head sideways at Draco. Draco followed Elwood out of the dining room, and didn’t look back when Rodolphus said something in a voice that promised him no good. Nothing in his ancestral home promised him much good right now. He would ignore the threats except when they were in front of him.
            Or when they were to his mother.
            Mother, what did you do?
*
            It wasn’t until the middle of the afternoon that Elwood told Draco he had no more work for him to do, as the next bit of the spell was a tricky one and he had to settle it by himself, and Draco ducked away, first to the dining room where he grabbed a bit of bread and cheese to give himself an excuse for wandering, and then up to the room where he thought his mother might be. Not the suite of rooms his parents had used for years, of course. The Dark Lord had taken those, and pushed his mother into this smaller, plainer set.
            Mother, Draco thought, and knocked on the door. There was a soft sound from behind it, like a groan, except it didn’t deserve that name because it didn’t have enough breath.
            Draco had never heard his mother make even an ordinary grunt or groan, though, and he was light-headed with despair. “Mother?” he whispered, and knocked again.
            This time, there was a noise as though someone had tried to walk and had fallen. Heart so hard that it felt as though it was being forced down his throat instead of up, Draco kicked the door open and hurried inside.
            His mother lay on the floor. When Draco turned her gently over, he saw that her hair had gone white. Her face was visibly lined with wrinkles, and the hands that reached out to him were spotted with brown and lines of grey.
            “It’s the Aging Curse,” said his mother, and closed her eyes. Two teeth, loosened from her gums, fell out and lay on the carpet beside her.
            Draco, trembling, managed to urge his mother back into the bed. He knew the Aging Curse could be ended and all the damage it had done would go with it, but he didn’t know the countercurse. And ending it before the Dark Lord decided that it would be ended would be a bad idea, anyway.
            “What happened?” Draco asked, and sat beside his mother. Her hand found his, so delicate that Draco thought he could break the bones if he pressed too hard. Veins of blue threaded it the way they did some of the marble in the Manor.
            “I—was begging him to reconsider assigning you to Rodolphus.” His mother coughed, painfully, and her gums began to bleed. “He did this to me.”
            Draco felt as though someone had taken a large splinter of ice and plunged it into his chest. They had transfixed his heart, he thought, calm and numb. And they had transfixed, at the same time, his fear.
            There was only so far he could go being afraid of the Dark Lord, maybe, no matter what the Dark Lord did, before the fear turned to rage. That had happened after he watched his father die, but it was happening anew now. It filled him with an oddly transparent aching. It felt as though someone had not only jabbed him with the ice but with the ability to see himself from a distance.
            He had held back when his father died because he had worried for Narcissa. And now the worst had happened anyway, and it turned out that nothing he did could save his mother from getting killed or suffering.
            Maybe he ought to have known that after the failure of his plan to spare his parents from suffering by living up to the Dark Lord’s orders. He had managed to tell himself it was only because he had failed to kill Dumbledore that they were in danger. Live up to the Dark Lord’s orders, and they wouldn’t be harmed.
            But his father had died anyway. His mother had been harmed.
            He rewards competence and punishes failure, his father had said to Draco years ago, when he was discussing the Dark Lord’s return. But that wasn’t true. He punished all sorts of things, and he never forgave a failure, and Draco and his mother were bound in a state of dependence where seeing the other one hurt was worse than suffering themselves.
            The Dark Lord would call that the weakness of love, Draco was certain. He’d heard him speak of it before, almost barking the words, using them to flay his servants when they couldn’t conquer the simplest of the Order of the Phoenix.
            But Draco thought it was a strength, now.
            His hand tightened on his mother’s when the door opened, but it was Snape. He carried a black vial that he brought over to the bed and immediately tilted down Narcissa’s throat. Draco tensed, but then relaxed when he recognized it. The Strengthening Draught. It would prevent his mother—hopefully—from dying of age-related complications before the Dark Lord took away the curse.
            “What will your excuse be?” Draco whispered before Snape left.
            Snape cocked an eye at him. “Taking thought that my Lord need not,” he said smoothly. “He would not want a pleasing toy to die when he might want to play with her still.” And he stepped out and shut the door behind him.
            Draco closed his eyes and swallowed. At least Snape could take care of himself. That was one less person Draco had to worry about, although he wasn’t sure whether he could get rid of the emotions entirely.
            But he would make this work. He would find a solution for his mother’s problem, and he would make sure that he did it in a way that harmed the Dark Lord, even if at first he had to cower and beg and make it seem like he was intimidated by the all-powerful beast in the way that all the rest of the Death Eaters were.
            And he would make sure that, as far as the Dark Lord’s death went, he was in at the kill.
*
            This time, Draco was waiting for Potter when he appeared on the bank of the river, and he gave Potter no time to ask questions. He asked instead, his voice spilling eagerly into the question that had come to him the instant he opened his eyes in this twilight country and remembered that he could come here and oppose the bloody Dark Lord.
            “What are you searching for? What does it have to do with defeating him?”
            Potter paused with his mouth a little open, then closed it, and blinked, and answered, “I don’t think I should tell you.”
            Draco waved an impatient hand. “Snape hid this object and the memories it provokes in my head so well that I never think of them when I’m awake. You don’t have to be worried about him finding out about this. He would have done it already. And you don’t have to worry about me betraying you because I chose to, either. He cursed my mother with aging today. I want him dead. I want to know how you’re going to make him dead. I want to help.”
            “Cursed your mother with aging?” Potter repeated, a little blankly.
            Draco would have taken the time to be bleakly amused at that, how Potter had seen so many awful things—like a bloody basilisk charging straight at him with its mouth open—and could still be scandalized by something like this. But he didn’t have the time. He just nodded and said, “He cursed her to be older. Her teeth are falling out. So’s her hair. And she has heart problems, and problems with her bones and joints.”
            “That’s horrible.”
            Maybe Draco could make Potter’s innocence work for him, here. He gave another impatient tap with his hand on the ground. “Focus, Potter. What are you looking for? How can I help?”
            Potter visibly shook off the questions he wanted to ask, himself. “I don’t see how you can, since you forget about this every time you wake up.”
            “If I show that I want to help, I think Snape will know what to do.” Draco knew the excuse was weak, but he clung to it as the one bright and shining hope that could bring light to his life right now, or to this grey country. “What are you doing?”
            Potter watched him in silence for long minutes. Draco waited, the only thing he could do. Potter was the one who had to judge him, and make a decision.
            And slowly, Potter told him about the Horcruxes. He didn’t elaborate on what all of them were or exactly how the Dark Lord had made them, but at the end of their conversation, Draco knew that they were keeping the Dark Lord immortal. That Potter had used the clue Draco had given him in their last conversation—how much the Dark Lord had valued Bellatrix—to determine that a Horcrux was probably in the Lestranges’ Gringotts vault. They’d already retrieved a few of the Horcruxes, a locket and a diadem, with the help of other members of the Order of the Phoenix, and Moody had died trying to destroy the diadem.
            Draco turned around to the dusk when Potter had vanished, and told himself two things. First, there was no way that Nagini wasn’t a Horcrux; the Dark Lord valued her too much, and kept her closer even than his wand, sometimes. Draco had seen him sit at the table in the dining room with his wand a meter away from him and Nagini coiled in his lap.
Second, he would see if a desire could survive the transition between his sleep and waking in the way that a memory couldn’t.
*
delia cerrano: It was a bit heartless, but Harry was really excited about the idea Draco had given him.
SP777: It’s gone completely AU as of now, but yes, Harry is on the Horcrux quest.
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A Dream of Running Water