Dragon Tear Resurrection | By : VividRain Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 1429 -:- 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. |
"I never thought I'd have to rob these graves again."
Two men moved among the shadows of the Malfoy tomb, located on the back forty of the formidable estate. The one who had spoken was excessively tall and thin with a large hook nose and rounded shoulders. He moved in determinedly straight lines, slouching a little unconsciously. Practically made for skulking around dark dead places.
The other was significantly shorter and moved with a profound limp while leaning heavily on cane. He was humming a jaunty tune under his breath and fiddling with the hem of his sleeve. A stray beam of moonlight glinted over a small pair of glasses. He walked with the cool assurance of a man who understood his place in the grand scheme of things. Not the skulking type at all.
"You've grave robbed here before?" Curiosity tinged the shorter man's disapproving tone.
"How do you think I know the location? Pureblood families like the Malfoys have a vested interest in keeping such things a secret. Have you learned nothing since you were a first year?" The taller man sniped. "And please do stop humming. You're beginning to remind me of Albus."
Moonlight twinkled off the glasses again and their owner chuckled. They continued on the morbid errand, trying not to think about what lay before them. It was eleven o'clock on October 5th. Before them, the marble edifice that held every dead Malfoy who had ever walked the earth.
"What were you trying to find the first time?"
"Lucious had a grudge against a great-uncle of his. The old codger had been unusually disagreeable, even for a Malfoy." The taller man snorted. "When he died, Lucious insisted we remove some of the man's personal effects." A short pause. " We were thirteen."
"Precocious little shit wasn't he?"
They walked together into the dimness of the tomb and whispered the spells for light. There was no one around for miles, the Malfoy property still in contention among half a dozen distant cousins and different governmental agencies. The tomb's walls were lofty, a long hall of shelves filled with Malfoy dust and bones. Closest to the entrance was the only free standing encasment. It housed whatever trace elements were left of the founding father of the Malfoy clan. The shorter man wrinkled his nose in vague disgust.
"They say he killed his father and moved to England to escape charges, changing his name to Malfoy as a bad pun."
The taller man did not acknowledge the statement. He was staring down the long corridor of Malfoys, trying to discern the end. Their objective would be the last shelved in these walls, perhaps forever.
"If this doesn't work...."
"I know. It's too much to hope for after all this time." The shorter man placed a comforting hand on the taller one's shoulder. "We won't know unless we look."
The pair that walked the halls was much more somber then when they had begun jou journey, a little sloshed on vodka, at Hogwart's about an hour ago. They had been planning this trip for nearly three months now, trying not to put to much of their well worn hope into it.
They had survived one of the ugliest times in wizarding history, both doing their part to bring down an almost insurmountable evil. They had come through mostly intact, their great loves at their side to continue a mundane existence. No happiness came without a price for them and all too soon they were left with only each other and memories of times better and worse. They had formed a sort of partnership over time, built on memories more then anything. By now, it had deepened to a mellow true love that was comforting though never discussed.
Tonight might shatter all of that and dig up more then a body. Dozens of names lined the walls with various epitaphs and moving sculpture marking the burial ground. The walk felt miles long. The limping man had to stop in the fifteenth century to rest.
"I'm getting old." He said with little bitterness, rubbing at the seizing muscle. "Will he have aged?"
"I don't know."
They walked again, reaching the end of the vaults in a little less then ten minutes. More familiar names decorated the walls here. The bodies of Lucious and Narsissa Malfoy were entombed together right above the vault they had been seeking.
Draco Malfoy- Beloved Hero, read the inscription. Moving sluggishly around the words was a Chinese serpentine dragon that had it's mouth firmly locked around it's own tail, gradually devouring itself into a tight knot until it winked out of existence. It reappeared a moment later beginning the process again.
With delicate fingers, the younger man traced the shrinking figure, muttering incantations. A creaking, protesting sound signaled the release on the tomb's seal. Gradually, a long slab of rock was released from the wall and at another incantation, settled gently the floor. It was sealed slab with no visible opening.
"This is it, then. Should I say it or shall you?"
"Stop being childish." But the other man made no movement to utter the words.
"You know, you're cute when you're scared." Even in the somber light the glasses glinted in good humor.
"Open the casket, before I have to do it over *your* corpse."
"Yes, Master. Amgdali."
The covering of the tomb disintegrated revealing the body of Draco Malfoy. Ten years dead and locked in a vault, the average flesh would have shriveled and decayed. Not so this one. The barest flush of pink still rose on alabaster cheeks. It is a commonly known fact that hair and nails grow for a certain amount of time after death. Silvery blonde hair was packed and matted, filling up the top of the casket. Long, curling nails had wrapped around the wand clutched symbolically in right hand. The body was still growing, changing.
"He's.... alive." The younger man choked out. Neither of them moved to touch the body, too afraid to break the strange magic weaving itself protectively around the prone body. "That smirk on his face.....Maybe he really will rise."
"When did you administer the dose?" The taller man asked stiffly, his face a blank mask.
"At dawn. I remember watching the sun rise over the mountains..."
"We have a wait then."
There was no place to comfortably sit. The limping man whispered to his cane and withdrew from it two miniature chairs. Within seconds, they were large enough to settle into for the night. Their vigil began in silence, but they both knew it would not last.
"I remember the first night that I fell in love with him."
"Harry...."
"It's important. We need to tell these things. Whether or not he wakes from this tonight, next year or never. Sev?"
No answer. Harry took that as a yes and plunged into memory...
It was a night so charged that Harry would forever remember his hair standing on end. The next day, the war was to begin in earnest. Everything was in place for a tactical maneuver that Voldemort would never expect. It would weaken the Dark Lord at several critical points and may, in fact, change the course of history.
Harry wanted nothing to do with it. He was attempting to sleep, ensconced as he was in the makeshift barracks in the dungeons of Hogwart's. Many of the other students had been sent home or to protective bunkers whose locations went undisclosed, lest the information be leaked.
It was May, but unseasonably cold. It was worse in the dungeons, the chill working it's way into the bone, refusing to leave. The bed was the one he spent the past seven years in, moved to the dungeons for his comfort. It seemed different here. He couldn't imagine how the Slytherins slept here all the time. Surely none of them would stand to be half-frozen all the time. There was no friendly breeze, no distant cry of the owlery. The dungeons were perfectly still.
That is, until the curtain around his bed was lifted and someone dressed in black slithered into his bed. In an instant, he grabbed up his wand ready to kill. The person lifted their hands, showing their emptiness.
"I'm sorry." The voice was so familiar and in a flash of gray eyes in the dark, Harry realized his third worse enemy had just climbed into his bed. "So sorry. Please...."
Reluctantly, Harry lowered his wand. The boy on his bed seemed to relax slightly. At his command, a soft light filled his bed, flattering the thin and bruised face that had plagued his life. Malfoy, for the first time Harry could remember in their long history, looked absolutely horrid. He couldn't have been sleeping much if the bags under his eyes were any indication and there was a long livid bruise down one side of pale skin.
"What?" Harry started.
"I need to get away from them. I never wanted...." The thin body quivered, but his voice was steel. "Save me, please. I'll do anything to take *him* down. I was wrong, damningly wrong."
"Merlin." Save me, Harry. Save me from Voldemort. It was the one plea that Harry had no ability to resist. It was his sworn duty, his fate, his destiny to save people from Voldemort and he could not refuse it. Not even to a known death eater. "What happened, why me? How did you get in here, anyway?"
"I Apperated to Hogsmeade, walked into Hogwart's and used a secret Slytherin entrance. They missed it in the wards, I sealed it after I came through. As to what happened..." A delicate shudder poured over thin skin. He pulled up his sleeve until Harry could see the Dark Mark. Malfoy's was identical to all the others Harry had seen, except the surrounding cuts. It looked as though he'd spent the better part of a day trying to scratch the thing off of his skin. "Severus warned me...I should have listened, but I had to do things my way. I had to be stubborn. Potter....Harry. Please. You have to help me. I can't...I can't live with this. I need to do something to wash it from my skin."
"I will help you. But you must tell me everything."
"Yes, anything and everything." One slow nod. "I surrender to you."
It was Harry's turn to shudder. He knew that this was coming, the language of war was going to become his own and now, he had his first prisoner without a fight. It was too soon and too frightening. This wasn't Malfoy's role. He was supposed to be the bitter enemy until the very end of the play, but he'd caved in during the opening monologue, tossed aside the frightening arrogance and sent up the white flag.
"Tell me. I'll discuss it with Dumbledore first thing in the morning."
A quick dart of a sharp pink tongue wet chapped, peeling lips. It was the only warning he got before the story began in earnest. Harry sat at perfect attention as the ugly story was shot rapidly out of the lips he once believed shaped to spew insults. He told of the induction ceremony, the ritualistic blood lettings and other horror stories. If it had been anyone else, Harry might have suspected it was all a very calculated act, but Malfoy had always been bad with at hiding himself. He wore his beliefs on his sleeves, said exactly what he meant.
What clinched it for him was when Malfoy described the circumstances under which he left. It involved the killing curse, Lucious Malfoy and an innocent Muggle girl. In the middle of it, a tiny river of tears started to trickle from stormy gray eyes.
"He killed her. For fun. And not sudden at all...he played with her like cat with a mouse. I thought... I thought it would be different. I thought we were fighting for a cause. She was just a little girl. No one deserves that. Not even an animal. He wanted me...he wanted me to force myself on her, before he killed her. " He started to tremble again, the tears coming again, faster now. "She screamed. I have information, I know where they have their meetings, I could spy..."
"Shhh. It's okay. You don't have to go back there. You're with us now." Without knowing why, he scooted down the bed and took the quaking blonde in his arms. "I've got you."
There wasn't even a moment of hesitation before Draco melted into his arms, clinging like a child, hard silent sobs racking the emaciated flesh. It was not easily faked and little by little as the sobs turned to long stuttering breaths, he was convinced. For no strategy or prank would Draco Malfoy degrade himself to this level.
"Severus did warn me." Draco whispered into Harry's ear, his forehead pressed on the T-shirt clad shoulder. "When he saw the mark...he stopped talking to me."
"You're on a first name basis with Snape?!" And for some reason that was the most surprising thing that had happened this night. Though hadn't Draco said it before.... Strange.
"I've known him since I was a child." A slight hiccough and loose sob. The cogs in Harry's head spun rapidly.
"You knew he was a spy?"
Draco rose from the awkward cradling position and somehow wound up in ascended in Harry's lap. Shock, Harry decided, had made him regress.
"The winter of fifth year, right before I went home for Christmas. I was worried about him, he looked as if he hadn't slept in a month and when I went to visit him on off hours he couldn't even sneer properly. I kept coming around so often to check on him that I guess he figured he had to feed me so excuse or the other.
"But I had already started to piece the clues together. Voldemort isn't the brightest dark wizard in the world. He likes his plans too complicated and messy. And for a dark lord, he trusts people awfully easy. I knew Severus was a Death Eater, but it didn't mesh with everything else he told me. He has all these high ideals about what people are and aren't supposed to be. It just made sense to me that he was a spy. When I asked him, he said he was and that if I was as intelligent as I thought I was, I would do the same. "
"Why didn't you just turn him into Voldemort? Gain some brownie points."
Slate gray met emerald head on in a long distasteful stare.
"Severus has never wronged me. The information he was receiving was fairly low level stuff. Besides, if I had turned him in, I would be looked on suspiciously for associating with a traitor."
"Death Eaters are fucked up."
"Tell me about it."
There was a pause and they both began to laugh. It had a slightly hysterical edge to it, but it allowed some of the tension to leave their bodies. Draco somber again suddenly, caught by a thought.
"I think, if it wasn't for Severus. I would have gone back. When I was walking from Hogsmeade to here, I kept trying to rationalize everything. I thought that maybe I could return and plead forgiveness. No one was around, but Father. I could even show them the entrance and tell them how it wasn't sealed. But I just had this image of Severus in my head, staring at me disapprovingly.
"He hasn't spoken to me since I received the Dark Mark. He must have been at the ceremony. When I came back to school, he treated me the same in class, but he had all the passwords changed on his apartment and office."
A thought occurred to Harry in a sudden, stomach lurching charge.
"You're in love with Snape."
Draco looked away, but it's hard to avoid someone when one is sitting on them.
"As long as I can remember. Is that enough now, Potter? Will you save me now?"
Oh! Draco thought that this was what he meant by telling everything...he was answering as if he had taken Veritaserum.
"You've already saved yourself. I just have to bargain with Dumbledore, but if you have Snape on your side, you've already been spared. Dumbledore listens to everything he says."
"He should. Everyone should." Draco sighed and pushed off Harry. "What now?"
"There's not much we can do until everyone wakes up which isn't for another four hours. I would tell you to sleep, but I'm afraid if someone saw you...."
"Why can't I sleep here?"
"Uhh...this is *my* bed, Malfoy."
"I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of sharing, Potter."
"I am not letting you sleep with me."
There was a long drawn out pause until Draco sighed delicately and began speaking as if to an infant.
"Potter. We're going to need a lot of energy to deal with tomorrow. There is no other logical place for me to sleep. All you hav do do is lie down and take it like a man."
"Oh gee, well when you put it that way...."
"You're a bigger git then Severus." Draco said firmly. "Shove over and go to sleep."
Mouth gaping open, Harry watched in horror as he was pushed back under the covers and was joined by a warm body. Draco gestured the lights off.
"I would think that you wouldn't be so eager to get into bed with me." The warmth moved closer. "And I definitely didn't think you'd want a cuddle."
"I *like* a warm body in my bed, Potter."
"Is Snape warm?"
Draco stiffened visibly.
"I wouldn't know."
"I thought you said..."
"I would think, Potter, that by now you knew that there was a difference between love and sex. Or did even that distinction fail to make it through your thick skull?"
"He wouldn't let you sleep with him, would he?"
"He doesn't know. Now shut and go to sleep, Potter."
Harry shut up. But he didn't sleep for a long time. Instead, he watched Draco dream, eyes moving rapidly under translucent lids. Something had altered tonight, far deeper then a simple defection. Malfoy had become Draco. He'd gain entrance into Harry's life and holed up there.
The Boy-Who-Lived was the first to admit that he fell in love far too easily. Something to do with his childhood, he was sure. He fell in love in many different ways, but every time was special and every person he loved still dear to him as the day he fell.
So why did this feel different? Why did he have the strangest feeling that Draco had just built himself a permanent home in Harry that previous to this invasion, he hadn't known existed?
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