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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
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Chapter List
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Chapter Eight--A Burning
            "Although the Dark Lord wants you to babysit his snake, I still require you to assist me."
            Nagini hissed as though she understood and was objecting to that description of what Draco did for her. For that matter, Draco did as well. Babysitting called to mind a slightly boring job watching his friends' younger siblings for an hour, not standing vigilantly with wand in hand before Nagini while she hissed to try and frighten him.
            But neither of them would gain anything if Draco said that aloud, and so he simply nodded and murmured, "Yes, sir. What do you want me to do?"
            Elwood stepped away from the doorway he'd been standing in, and led Draco into the room where he had already helped drain people of their magic and torture them. With an effort, Draco turned his head to the side and managed to ignore the huge machine that stood there and clacked softly to itself through its hanging chains.
            Something else glowed in the middle of the floor where the helpless Muggles had lain. It looked like a pool of heated mercury that Draco had once seen illustrated in a Potions textbook. He hesitated and curled his fingers around his wand, trying to decide if he would defend himself if Elwood ordered him to step into it. He knew what kinds of potions that mercury could make, and death would be better than most of them.
            "I need the blood of someone who knows Potter well," said Elwood, and his eyes were wild in the way that Draco had already learned they got when he was missing too much sleep. "That means you."
            Draco swallowed back sticky nausea and muttered, "I was his rival, sir, not in the same house with him. I don't know him well."
            "Better than anyone else," said Elwood, and took firm hold of Draco's arm. He didn't have his wand, which you would usually use for a Blood-Drawing Charm, in hand, but rather a large silver knife with a black hilt that Draco had never seen before. On the blade near the edge was a carving of a crescent moon.
            Draco closed his eyes and tried to stand still. He knew that he had won rare indulgence from the Dark Lord by managing to free his mother from the Dark Lord's spell. Things would be so much worse now if Draco rebelled in some way or managed to upset Elwood, who was highly favored among the Death Eaters.
            "Back, you stupid thing!"
            Draco snapped his eyes open, because he didn't think Elwood was addressing him. In fact, Nagini reared up in front of them, her mouth open and her tongue snapping and her fangs bared. Draco would have tried to jerk his arm away from Elwood, consequences be damned, and run and hide if he hadn't realized something.
            Nagini was hissing at Elwood, not at him. Draco's efforts at guarding her and the way he had stood still while she twined up his body and the rabbit he had fed her this morning--live, screaming, and terrified--had apparently paid off.
            "I am taking his blood for a purpose that our Lord approves of," said Elwood harshly. Draco wondered for a second about all the Death Eaters' propensity to treat Nagini like she understood what they were saying. After all, only the Dark Lord was a Parselmouth and could make himself properly comprehensible to a snake. "Back off and let me do so! Your Lord wishes it!"
            Nagini showed no sign of recognizing that the Dark Lord wished it. She advanced, still wreathing and writhing her body in almost impossible directions, and Draco saw fear come into Elwood's eyes at last. He might not have seen Nagini eat people as often as Draco had, but he knew as well as Draco that she was capable of it.
            Carefully, as though he had nothing to fear after all, Elwood began to fall back before Nagini, keeping one eye on the snake all the while. Nagini dipped her head and hissed loudly enough to make Draco tremble, although he kept still. He thought Nagini might not harm him as long as she could ignore him.
            "I need your blood," Elwood said between gritted teeth. He shifted the knife as if to drop it, but Nagini hissed all the louder, and he stopped the motion. "That much, the Dark Lord has commanded."
            "But he didn't command you to cut me with that particular knife?" A little ill, Draco wondered what would have happened had the blade touched his skin. There were so many different enchantments someone could put on a knife like that, it was difficult to be sure.
            "It would make your blood more potent," said Elwood, and for a second, his eyes darted away from Nagini to lock onto Draco. "That would be all that happened. I swear it."
            Draco shook his head and drew his wand with slow, smooth movements that he hoped would alarm neither Elwood nor Nagini. "I know my own enchantments to make the blood more potent. Nagini?"
            The snake stopped moving towards Elwood, although she didn't look at him. She swayed easily back and forth all the time, and Draco could see her tongue darting rapidly out, as though she liked the smell of fear on the air.
            "I'm going to add my own blood to the pool the way our Lord would want," Draco said, still clear and slow, and took a step towards the pool of mercury. He wondered if something had changed in Nagini in the last few months. He didn't remember her understanding English so well from people other than the Dark Lord last year, when he had first met her. "Please let Elwood go. Our Lord needs good and faithful servants."
            Especially since I only serve him out of fear and because I can't escape, and because I think Professor Snape is the same way.
            Draco shivered a little at the daring thought, but the Dark Lord wasn't here to read his mind and punish him right now, the same way that Professor Snape wasn't here to do it and scold him. He carefully pushed his wand into his arm and cut a little bit of the skin with a murmured Diffindo. The blood ran out in seconds, and Draco squeezed the skin until it was welling up into drops, then cast the charm that would make it more potent.
            "How much blood do you need?" he asked Elwood, who was staring at him with a strange, foreign expression on his face.
            "Are you a Parselmouth?" Elwood asked.
            Draco laughed aloud, and then stopped. He sounded unhinged, and that would mean the end of any respect that Elwood might have for him, if the laughter continued. He simply shook his head and managed to smile at Elwood in a way that felt surprisingly natural.
            "No," he murmured. "Our Lord is the only one who has that gift, besides Harry Potter." He turned back to the pool. "How much blood do you need, and how does this work?" He privately thought that Elwood should have asked the Dark Lord for blood, if he needed some sort of magical connection to Potter for his trap to work. The Dark Lord was the one who spent the most time thinking obsessively about Potter, the one who could tell Elwood exactly what his strengths and weaknesses were. Draco could only tell them about Potter's skill in beating him up and snatching the Snitch.
            There was a weak stirring in the back of his mind at that thought, as though he could tell them something else, but he remained convinced that couldn't be true. He would have no reason to hold back, not when sharing such information would bring him power and prestige among the Death Eaters, and might possibly keep his mother safe.
            "That is enough," said Elwood, when Draco had squeezed seven drops of blood into the pool.
            Draco kept his snort to himself as he moved his arm away and cast the simple healing spell on the skin needed to knit it back together, but he did feel the sort of contempt he assumed Elwood often felt for him. First, of course it was seven; seven was a common mystical number. Second, Draco could have easily let one more drop fall before Elwood could stop him. He should have said something earlier.
            When Draco glanced at Elwood's dark expression, though, he thought he was wise to keep all displays of emotion to himself. Elwood probably resented the assumption of status he would think Draco had because Draco was taking care of the Dark Lord's snake.
            Draco wondered bleakly if he could tell the man that status and power among the Death Eaters were the last things he wanted, and that he would have gladly given everything about it up if he was assured of safety for himself and his mother. He cursed himself every day for not taking Dumbledore's offer when it was made.
            Of course, by then it was probably too late. The Death Eaters were inside the school, and Professor Snape had been right up the stairs behind him.
            "My thanks," said Elwood, with a formal dip of his head, and turned back to his pool. "You can go now."
            Most Death Eaters wouldn't have obeyed that command willingly, but Draco found it easy to. He turned and left with Nagini gliding beside him. When she wanted to wrap her head around his arm, he let her. She was dangerous, but probably less so to him at the moment than some other Death Eaters were.
*
            The grey country this time seemed to be brighter to Draco. As he sat dangling his feet in the river, he reviewed again and again, in some amazement, the way he had got close to Nagini. He had done it without even knowing why he was doing it. He had simply felt that pull of his desire, and he had done it.
            Maybe he had a future after all, if he could just survive what felt like the Dark Lord's inevitable discovery of this plan.
            "Malfoy?"
            Draco looked around, and then jumped to his feet, staring. "Potter?" he whispered. He knew his voice came out hushed in quite an inappropriate way, but that was the way he felt as the burned figure staggered towards him.
            Potter sighed and sat down, dangling one blistered arm in the water of the river. "That feels so much better than any water I tried to cast on it," he whispered.
            Draco supposed that dream-water might be a cure for anything, even burns inflicted by Fiendfyre. But he had something he needed to ask Potter first. "Did you lose control of the spell?" he demanded, stepping up to him. "Or did someone else cast it and you got caught in the way?" He could easily imagine Weasley losing control of the fire the first time he cast it. Or there could be a spy among Potter's Order, a hidden Death Eater, the way that Draco was hidden among the Death Eaters.
            "Neither," said Potter, with a sigh. He sank down and submerged most of his body in the water. Draco was left to stand helplessly on the bank. He didn't like the feeling, so he sat down with a scowl and splashed some water over Potter's blackened neck. Potter gasped in response and nodded. "Thanks."
            "The explanation," Draco reminded him. "I have got Nagini to trust me and even defend me from another Death Eater, and I'll tell you about what Elwood did today, so I've made progress to share with you. You have to tell me something now."
            Potter tilted his head back and blinked at Draco. "You did that?" he whispered. "Wow. You're amazing." Then he began to cough, the sounds tearing their way up his throat from what sounded like smock-blackened lungs.
            Draco rolled his eyes and poured more water over Potter's hair. "Praise later, explanations now."
            "You have changed," Potter said, but at the sight of Draco's expression, perhaps, he coughed again in a way that meant he was about to start talking instead of succumbing to smoke inhalation. "We did find a few members of the Order who could cast Fiendfyre. And the Horcrux seemed--I mean, we placed it in an open area where there was plenty of water and plenty of space to move around if the fire started pursuing us. See, I did listen when you were talking to me," he added defiantly.
            Draco said nothing, but let his hand rest on the back of Potter's neck. He wondered if it was only his imagination that the burns there, covered with a thin layer of moving water, already looked better than they had.
            "But the Horcrux's soul came out and fought us this time." Potter was silent, his eyes, from what Draco could tell where he was sitting, on the rippling surface of the stream. "Maybe that's what happened to Moody. I don't know. There was nothing one moment, just the fire burning towards the surface of the Horcrux, and the next instant, there was this shadowy Voldemort in front of me, scratching at my face."
            Draco shuddered even though he knew the Taboo on Voldemort's name didn't apply inside the dream, or they would have been found before this. "So it drove you into the flames?"
            Potter hesitated.
            "Are you this grudging with all your friends?" Draco demanded. He was starting to wonder if this inability to explain what he was doing or where he'd been was the real reason Professor Snape disliked Potter, rather than any incompetence in Potions. Potter had been competent enough in Slughorn's class the past year.
            Potter spun around with a wide mouth. "What? Are you--are you calling yourself my friend now?"
            Draco's hand stiffened, and his fingers, which he hadn't even realized properly were rubbing Potter's nape, did the same thing. "I can stop."
            "No," said Potter. "That's fine. I was just surprised, that's all." He hesitated one more time, then said, "I don't know any spells that can properly take on a Horcrux shade. Any more than I knew spells that could destroy them until you explained about Fiendfyre to me. So I waited until it got wrapped around me like it was going to choke me and jumped into the fire."
            Of course you did, Draco thought, stunned, his fingers this time stopping their stroking motion in sheer outrage at Potter's lack of common sense.
            But what else had he expected? Most people didn't survive this kind of burn with Fiendfyre, because the moment the fire touched them it would burn everything, not just blister their skin and blacken it a bit. Trust Potter to survive it because he had done the one thing no one else would dare.
            "How did you quench the Fiendfyre?" he asked, and his voice was at least functioning, even if it sounded pretty dry.
            "When the spirit got into the Fiendfyre, it turned everything black and cold," said Potter, and shrugged a little. "I actually wasn't awake for that part, so I have to report what I know secondhand. But they told me that the flames turned into dark ice and cracked down the middle, and when the ice melted, there was no trace of the spell left. I suppose the Horcrux and the Fiendfyre were such opposing forces that the one couldn't stand the other."
            Draco nodded slowly. That made sense on a sort of poetical or intuitive level (which was probably the level that a Gryffindor would feel it at, of course), even though he had half a dozen magical theories in the back of his head that were screaming that it didn't make sense.
            On the other hand, Potter was unlikely to know of those magical theories. Draco didn't think he was weaving an elaborate deception to fool Draco; he had, as he'd said, been unconscious at the time.
            "And have you come up with a plan to get into the Manor and kill Nagini?" he asked. He was certain Potter hadn't, but it gave him an excuse to prolong the conversation and sit here stroking Potter's burned neck, and that was something he actually wanted to do, strange as it sounded.
            "Not yet," said Potter, and his muscles tensed under Draco's touch as he blew his breath out in a long sigh. "She was always going to be the toughest one, except for actually killing Voldemort himself. But now that I know you've achieved as much as you have, I have some more confidence." He reached back and took Draco's hand and squeezed it hard.
            Draco looked down at their joined hands, and said nothing for a long moment. Then he took a deep breath of his own, and started telling Potter about the way that Nagini had defended Draco himself from Elwood, and about the pool of mercury that Elwood had wanted to put Draco's blood into.
            But long after Potter had gone back to his own people, Draco sat on the riverbank, feeling Potter's fingers within his, Potter's crisped and singed hair under his touch, and Potter's back leaning trustfully against his chest.
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A Dream of Running Water