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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 Nine--A Fall
            "The service that you have rendered has pleased my snake exceptionally, Draco."
            Draco crouched and bobbed his head in response to the Dark Lord's praise, wondering how much it was acceptable to preen. Wondering if he wanted to, for that matter. But it was the same double-edged dilemma of every moment before the Dark Lord: show too much eagerness for something, and he would withhold it to spite you, but if you didn't show enough, then he would inflict punishment on you.
            "Nagini is a beautiful lady," Draco mumbled, his eyes still on the floor. "I'm pleased that I've been able to entertain her."
            The Dark Lord's hand came out and hung in the air before him like a spider on the dangling strand of a web. Swallowing his distaste, Draco let himself rise just the right distance and rest his chin in the Dark Lord's palm, so that his head would tilt back and the Dark Lord could see into his eyes and read his mind without having to abandon his rock throne.
            Draco could feel the crush and crash of Legilimency through his mind, and he flinched. It would never become easier, no matter how many times he endured it. And the Dark Lord might look with amusement on something that would bring disfavor tomorrow. Draco didn't know how to walk the edge, didn't know whether he'd displayed enough of one emotion.
            The Dark Lord seemed to have decided that, today, that uncertainty was exactly what he wanted, instead of a questioning of his judgment in choosing one particular Death Eater. He loosed Draco's chin with a delighted chuckle and leaned backwards with his hands intertwining. "Do you know why I wanted Elwood to shed your blood with that particular knife, Draco?" he asked.
            Draco froze, shivering. If that had been a command of the Dark Lord's instead of Elwood's particular idea, then--
            "No, no," said the Dark Lord, and patted Draco's head with the dustiest and driest hand he'd ever felt. "You were not wrong when Nagini rose up and defended you. She is a part of myself, and cannot be wrong." He gave a smile at the snake who slowly curled around his boots, body tangling around itself in what looked like a subtle release of breath.
            A part of myself. That wording seemed strange, and Draco wrestled with it for a moment, until he realized the Dark Lord was waiting for an answer to his prior question. Hoping it hadn't been too long, Draco ducked his head and murmured, "No, my Lord. I didn't recognize the enchantments on that knife."
            The Dark Lord laughed, a booming sound. "And why should you, when I came up with them myself? Sometimes you remind me of myself when I was young, Draco, and then I remember how very backwards you are in magical strength and genius compared to me." He patted Draco's head again. "Thank you for the glimpses into what I might have been, and what I rose to overcome."
            Draco shivered with resentment and the desire to strike out, but of course, the Dark Lord could also have spoken those words as a test, as well as meaning them. Those of his followers who wouldn't submit to his will deserved to be culled, in the way that the Dark Lord saw things.
            Draco kept silent, and the Dark Lord nodded and clucked his tongue and said, "You won't have seen any enchantments like that because I was the one who made them. I was the one who created a knife that is a fundamental part of the trap closing around Harry Potter."
            Draco blinked. He had known the machine and the pool of mercury were parts of a trap, but he had thought it was a ritual that would cause Potter to fall over dead from a distance or something. The Dark Lord spoke in a more literal way than that, as if it was a snare. "What do you mean, my Lord?"
            A second later, he cringed, fearing that he'd spoken out of turn and more than was wanted, but the Dark Lord seemed to be in one of his rare expansive moods this morning where he would explain things, because he wanted other people to admire his magical prowess. He only chuckled and said, "It is a trap that will close around Harry Potter, no matter where he is or where he runs, and bring him to me."
            Draco didn't have to feign the gasp he made, and once again the Dark Lord looked pleased. "Yes," he purred. "The machine will resonate in tune with his magic, and permit me to find him. The pool of mercury will poison his will and make him incapable of fighting back. You know that potions containing mercury are often used to make the drinkers docile?"
            Once again, Draco nodded. He had had lingering death on his mind more than obedience when thinking about mercury potions yesterday, but it made sense that the Dark Lord would want the docility aspect. He couldn't control Potter via the Imperius Curse, and he would want to torture the boy to death himself, not give him a simple potion.
            The Dark Lord sat back, seeming well-content with Draco as audience. "Your blood will make the effect on his will all the greater. Someone who knew him, someone who could always compel him to pay attention...yes, Draco, Severus told me about the way Potter followed you around the school this past year." He chuckled again, a sound like spiders being crushed to death. "You are his current obsession. It should prove easy enough for your blood to catch him."
            So it's like a ritual after all, but a big and confusing one, Draco thought. His sight blurred, and his head pounded. He thought that he was feeling angry at the thought of Potter following him around the school and finding him in the bathroom and using Sectumsempra on him, but there was also something else, something more recent and darker and angrier that squirmed at the edges of his vision...
            "Are you paying attention, Draco?"
            "Yes, my Lord," Draco said, and settled himself back into a more comfortable position on his haunches, one that he could maintain for a long time and that would make him seem more attentive to the Dark Lord. "So you plan to confuse Potter's mind and make him come to you that way?"
            Some kind of insolence must have come through his voice that he didn't intend. The Dark Lord hissed casually.
            Nagini unwound from about the Dark Lord's feet and slithered over to Draco, her scales rasping so hard against the floor that Draco almost rose and tried to run before he remembered that would only make the situation worse. So he held still while she curled all about him, from his feet up to his neck, and fell over when that was the only thing he could do. He closed his eyes as Nagini's tongue flicked his cheek. He had seen her do that, as if tasting, right before she ate one of her meals.
            "I will tell you what I plan," said the Dark Lord, "when I am assured that you cannot speak of it to anyone else. Mens clausa."
            Draco cried out as his mind seemed to tremble. That was the only way he could describe the sharp, painful rippling in his skull. He would have raised his hands to clap them over his ears, but Nagini was still binding his arms down. He could only tremble, and Nagini's hisses now sounded like laughter instead of promises in his defense.
            "What is this?"
            Draco felt his chin picked up and his head tilted back and forth, but he was in too much pain to open his eyes or do anything else except lie there and pant. Then there was the sharp touch of what seemed to be claws on his eyelids, and the Dark Lord's calm voice said, "Open your eyes now, or lose them."
            Draco's eyes sprang open despite the claws pricking at them, and he stared back at the Dark Lord, nearly motionless in his fear. The Dark Lord tore into his mind with effortless Legilimency, a whip of will that made Draco scream.
            For once, the Dark Lord seemed to be concerned with something other than whether Draco was displaying weakness at the moment or not. He whirled away from Draco and began to pace back and forth through the room, hissing under his breath. Nagini hissed something in return, but to Draco's regret, she didn't crawl away from him.
            Draco touched one hand to his aching head as Nagini's coils loosened a bit. The blurriness that had afflicted his vision was worse now, so he closed his eyes and just lay there. He wondered dimly what had upset the Dark Lord, and what he would do when he found out about Potter and Draco's nightly conversations with him...
            What?
            There were thoughts about Potter in his head! Draco explored them with growing fear, because he was sure he hadn't put them there, and the list of candidates who could have was quite small. He was sweating hard enough to make Nagini hiss in displeasure by the time he was done.
            He glanced up at the Dark Lord.
            The Dark Lord was once again seated on the rock throne, bent down so that his head, and thus his eyes, were a short distance away from Draco. He chuckled, and Draco writhed, panic so intense tearing through him that it was like agony.
            He had imagined that he would instantly be subjected to a torture curse, or something like it, but instead, Nagini unwound from him and slithered over to coil at the Dark Lord's feet. Draco sat up, shivering. At the moment, he was suspicious of everything that went the way he once would have liked it to go.
            "Draco." The Dark Lord spoke the way that Draco thought he would to another snake, besides Nagini, except this time, he was doing it in a language that Draco could understand. "This is an unexpected opportunity."
            Draco coughed, trying to moisten his dry throat so he could talk, but it was utterly useless. His hands were shaking frantically, anyway, and no matter how he tried to tighten them, they remained consumed with tremors. He stared down at them and tried, furiously, to will them quiet.
            It didn't work.
            "I know that you expect to be executed as a traitor," said the Dark Lord almost tenderly. "For your failures, and as an example, the way your father was executed." He laughed. "It is incredible how much hatred you hold towards me for that simple act, even though your father had given his life into my keeping for me to do with as I willed. Yes, decidedly, you remind me of myself. You could build that hatred into a towering edifice given the chance." He looked at Draco with a lipless smile. "You will not have it."
            Draco cowered. He wondered what else he could do. The memories of the grey country and the grey river and his chats with Potter were fragmenting and drifting in among his regular memories, and it disoriented him. He knew that the Dark Lord could kill him right now and he wouldn't even be able to lift a hand in defense.
            Only one link between the memories remained missing. He didn't know how he'd got into the grey country, or seen Potter. Wasn't Potter supposed to be far away, hiding from everybody and continuing this quest he had?
            "I suppose I should have known Dumbledore would find out about my Horcruxes," the Dark Lord breathed, and his mood shifted. Draco fell flat on his face, shaking, in front of the chill cloud of loathing that seemed to fill the room. He knew he would soil himself if this continued much longer, but he had no idea how to make it stop.
            "But," said the Dark Lord, and the mood shifted again, and Draco shuddered deep in his bones at the amount of insanity it must have taken to put that much emotion aside, "I have a plan in place to deal with the Horcrux hunter. And his traitor." He reached out and hauled Draco up again, his fingers closing on the nape of Draco's neck. Draco felt the pain flowing through him, the way that the nails cut into him and drew out something that ran in his veins more deeply than blood, and began to cry.
            "Yes," said the Dark Lord, "I may not even need the machine Elwood is building, except to hold Potter when he arrives here. I may have the perfect bait." And he gave Draco a smile that made him gibber.
*
            In the end, all of Draco's efforts to stay awake and hold back were for naught. The Dark Lord simply cast a Sleeping Charm at him, and Draco opened his eyes to find himself in the grey country once more, walking towards the river with a motion that felt smooth, almost automatic. He knew Potter would be waiting for him there.
            He could feel the vast amusement, not his own, riding his mind at the thought of that.
            Draco was panting a little by the time he reached the river. And yes, Potter was waiting, and he stood up and came towards Draco with no sign that he knew anything was wrong, his mouth open in what would probably be a welcoming shout.
            Draco decided that he could do one thing. Well, attempt to do one thing, anyway. He knew that the Dark Lord would let him speak, so that he could attempt to persuade Potter into the trap. And the Dark Lord's will as there to hurt him if he spoke any words other than the ones the Dark Lord would permit to him.
            But there might be a space of a few moments when Draco could speak the right words, the ones that would warn Potter instead.
            I don't want to do it. I don't want to suffer. I don't want Mother to suffer.
            But Draco knew his death was probably only a matter of the Dark Lord's boredom away; he would die for being a traitor when the Dark Lord became bored with torturing him. His mother's life was forfeit. The Dark Lord hadn't said so outright, because of course he had to leave Draco some hope to make it more tormenting, but he had hinted at it.
            Potter was almost there. Draco didn't know if the Dark Lord could actually pull Potter to him through the connection between Potter's mind and Draco's, but he wasn't going to take the chance of what would happen when they touched.
            He drew a deep breath, arranged his face in a welcoming smile, and blurted out, "He knows. Run."
            That was as far as he got before the pain crushed down on him and he fell to his knees. He tried to scream, but the scream was frozen in his throat. His hands clawed at his own legs, and he could see long rents opening in his flesh, as though his fingernails had turned into real talons--or his skin had grown impossibly delicate. With the Dark Lord's power, either or both could have been true.
            The thoughts flashed through his head and then turned sideways and became sparks of trembling pain. Draco knew he was somewhere, he knew he was in pain, and he knew that someone waited on the other side of the pain, someone he didn't want to fail. It might even be himself. He didn't know. He struggled to the surface, and opened his mouth and screamed again once he reached it.
            Suddenly he could scream. Why was the Dark Lord letting him scream?
            "Draco!"
            It was Potter, crouched beside him. Draco opened his eyes with a moan of despair that, for some reason, he was able to make. Perhaps the Dark Lord thought he deserved one chance to express some of his feelings...
            Before he was crushed. Utterly.
            And it was despair that filled him when he saw Potter crouching in front of him, shaking his shoulder. He sat back when Draco opened his eyes, but Draco didn't think he was about to get to his feet and bolt, which was the only thing that would have worked. Instead, he knelt there, and his face was filled with a quiet power, a lack of fear that--
            That Draco might have admired in other circumstances. Now, he flung his hand out and scratched at Potter's knee in turn, and saw Potter's expression change a little as the pain hit him. But he still didn't run.
            "This is the way it needs to happen," said Potter, head turned as if he was talking to someone invisible who stood there. "I didn't know this, but it makes sense now that I'm here and talking to him."
            Draco tried to sob, tried to say that nothing made sense, tried again to tell Potter to run, tried to beg Potter to do it for him if he wouldn't do it for his friends or his quest or the wizarding world that he had said he wanted to save. But nothing would come out of his mouth now. He was melting, he thought, turning into water the way that the banks of the grey river had turned completely into water. The Dark Lord had absolute hold of him, and could do what he liked with Draco's mind and body.
            Hadn't that always been true? Hadn't he been a fool to rebel against him in the first place, to even try coming to this place and meeting with Potter, however he had done it?
            Potter's face changed, and he rested a hand on Draco's shoulder that was the only real thing Draco could feel at the moment. "No. Don't ever think that. When you think like that, it's hopeless. No one can stop him then. No one can save you if you don't keep enough of your defiance alive to rebel."
            Draco wished dearly to answer and tell Potter that he was wrong, because defiance was no use, but he didn't get the chance. The world melted around him like wet paint running down a canvas, and then he opened his eyes again in his bed, shivering.
            He knew, now. He knew that somehow, the connection between his mind and Potter's, and between the Dark Lord and the Mark on Draco's arm, had been used to bring Potter through into this house. He would be here. In Malfoy Manor. Suffering.
            And despite what Potter said, there really wasn't power enough in Draco for defiance.
            Draco tucked his arm wearily over his eyes. The only thing that might matter, the only thing worth rising from his bed for, might be vengeance.
            But he saw no hope to take that, either. So he lay there and let himself suffer, mind racing in silent, miserable circles.
*
            staar: As Harry has mentioned, other Order members are helping him.
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A Dream of Running Water