Winter's Flame

Life was not looking good. Life was looking canine. A wolf had taken over the Malfoy Manor, and was most likely peeing on all the furniture to mark his new territory.
Draco raised the curved sword, then brought it down hard on the wooden post, quickly pulling it out and backing up again, lining up another slash.
It had been two weeks. Two weeks with a monster in the house. It had been a full moon only three days after Lupin had come to the Manor, and in a great anti-climax, he had simply curled up beside the fire and gone to sleep. Some bloody monster. Looked more like a tired old dog on his last legs.
Draco used all his strength to cut deeply into the side of the post. So deep, in fact, that he couldn't get it back out again. He muttered under his breath as he tried to pull it out. He couldn't wait to get back to school. No more wolves, no more big, empty house. Just a big, bustling castle full of idiot students and idiot teachers. Whispering students now, probably. The Azkaban Escape had been plastered all over the newspapers and magazines. Narcissa had a price over her head and everybody was sweating over the fact that every great Death Eater was again on the loose. No doubt Potter would be basking in it. The Malfoy family's downward spiral into shame and little Potter, the victim of it all.
Stupid bloody git.
"God damn it!" he growled, giving up on the sword. He spun and stormed from the room, taking the stairs two at a time until he reached his bedroom and threw himself inside on his four poster bed. He didn't like himself like this. So full of anger. It wasn't normal. He liked being calm. He lay face down on his pillow and grumbled noiselessly into it, his hair falling over the place. It was getting too long, but he couldn't be bothered going to get it cut.
A loud noise caused him to jump suddenly, and he whipped the hair from his face in order to see what the hell it was.
The shutters had blown open, despite the lock, and the hammering rain was beating through the opening and saturating everything near it. Several hailstones bounced inside. He gave a long and heartfelt sigh as he struggled to his feet and went to close it, peering through the rain and into the dying afternoon as he did.
A sudden movement made him freeze. He wasn't imagining it this time. There was a black clad figure moving about in the woods just beyond the gardens. The figure paused, and seemed like it looked up at him though it was hard to tell in the mist. The figure moved back out of sight and, making a quick and probably irrational decision, Draco grabbed his wand and pulled on his shoes, running out of his room and down the stairs.
"Where are you going?" Lupin asked as they collided in the main hall. He was carrying a plate loaded with sandwiches which, amazingly, he managed not to drop.
"Out," Draco snapped, pushing past him.
Lupin was unfazed. He merely raised both eyebrows. "In the rain?"
Draco ignored him. That was another thing that annoyed him. No matter what he did, nothing amazed the man. Wolf. Whatever. He was never much more than concerned. It was weird.
He squelched through the drowning gardens and through the hedge maze, easily avoiding the traps that his grandfather had installed to 'make parties more interesting' and ran into the woods.
The rain was ever so slightly less forceful inside, and it was much darker.
"Lumos," he muttered, raising his wand. A ghoulish green light emanated from the tip and he moved through the trees. Through the pounding noise of the rain, he heard a low melodic hum, and he followed it until he reached a tree stump beside a small, circular pond. The figure in black was seated serenely on the stump, singing to herself with both eyes closed and her legs crossed.
"You," Draco breathed, amazed.
The girl's eyes opened, and the shadowy green gazed up at him. "Me," she said in the same low voice.
He frowned. "What are you doing here?"
"Meditating," she shrugged, gracefully unfolding her legs. "It's a beautiful place for it."
Draco forced his voice to be harsh. "You're on private property."
"Yes. I am. Have you read my book yet?"
"No, I haven't."
"Well you should," she stood up, and her height equalled his. He was forced to take a step back. "You'll never achieve what you have to if you cannot master your inner strength."
"My what?"
"What do you want, Draco?" she asked. "More than anything?"
"How do you know my name?"
The girl smiled mysteriously. "I'm well informed."
"By who?"
"By someone who would have you tap your inner potential."
Draco snorted. "And who would that be?"
"Think," she said simply, seating herself back on the stump. She leaned forward. "Who needs you?"
"My father?" he frowned slightly.
The girl leaned back onto her arms. "Close, but not quite."
He raised an eyebrow. "The Dark Lord?"
"He always did like you," she smiled. "Now he wants you to be part of the family."
"He wants me to be a Death Eater?" again, the feeling of pride flooded through him.
She smiled the affirmative. "But," she cautioned. "He wants you to learn a little... something first."
"The Earth Magic?"
"Otherwise you're just an ordinary follower. But when you can control your inner magic. Then you'll be special."
Draco was interested. No, he was bursting at the seams, raring to go. The Dark Lord wanted him! Him! He was singled out above everybody else. But he controlled his excitement and kept a cool face. "And what can you do with the' inner magic'?"
She smiled at him, as if she knew everything he was thinking. She really was gorgeous though, he thought to himself. Gorgeous yet… sinister, at the same time. A strange combination, true, but one that set Draco's heart racing.
The girl extended a palm and from it sprung a vine that coiled around her arm and between her fingers, sprouting tiny white flowers as it went.
"I'm supposed to help the Dark Lord by growing plants?" he asked sceptically.
Without a word, and at a blinding speed, the vines grew to the ground and coiled up around Draco's body, binding him tight and squeezing around his neck, cutting off both his air supply and his circulation. After a moment, the vines slackened and fell to the ground. "I stand corrected," he gasped, rubbing his neck.
"That's only a taste of it," she stood and whispered into his ear. "Read the book. Master the techniques. Then come back to me." Her lips hovered tantalizingly close to his neck, then the sensation was gone. He turned his head to look at her, but there was nothing but a spicy scent in the air.

"What are you reading?" the voice intruded into the calm quiet of Draco's bedroom. He was on his bed, wrapped up in the book of magic given to him by the mysterious girl who's name he still didn't know.
"What's it to you?" he asked, not looking up.
"Just curious." Lupin stayed just outside the door. He had never actually entered Draco's room before, something that Draco was glad for. He hated it when people invaded his personal space.
"Curiosity killed the wolf."
Lupin smiled faintly and flicked his eyes to the cover of the book. "Earth Magic. What made you look at that?"
Draco looked up at him from beneath the strands of his fringe. "Curiosity."
Again Lupin smiled, then vanished from the doorway. Draco looked back down at the book and began to read the chapter for the third time, trying to embed the instructions for meditation firmly into his mind.

He was still there hours later, seated in the middle of his huge bed, legs folded and his eyes closed. His mind and body were totally relaxed and he had the strangest sensation of floating, though he felt himself still on the bed.
As he sat here, wrapped in a blanket of calm, the faintest strain of music reached his ears. He slowly opened his eyes, still totally relaxed, and rose from the bed. Still not quite aware of what he was doing, he followed the sound of the piano to the music room, where he found Lupin playing the gleaming grand piano. It was a mournful tune, and a difficult one by the sounds of it, though Lupin was playing it with the greatest of ease. Draco frowned slightly, noticing that a glistening tear was rolling down the Werewolf's cheek.
As if sensing his presence, Lupin stopped playing and turned around, not bothering to wipe away the tear. They regarded each other for a long moment then, still half in a trance, Draco joined him at the piano stool. There, side by side with one of his father's hated enemies, he began to play. Draco had been playing piano for as long as he could remember. His father had always made him play for his guests, and the blonde boy had never ceased to amaze them with his astonishing talent.
Draco played a tinkling, bittersweet melody that rolled about the castle like the last crashing wave upon a midnight shore. After a minute, Lupin joined in, playing a sorrowful tune full of regret and painful memories. They continued on, playing together for nearly an hour and making perhaps the most beautiful music that either was likely to create in their lifetime when, finally, as the clock struck midnight, Draco stood without a word and retreated back to his bedroom where he stared at the book for a long time before shoving it under his pillow and settling in, clothes and all, for a troubled night's sleep.

It was strange between the two after the piano incident. Neither mentioned it again. Nor did they really speak at all, until one morning, exactly one week later, when Draco descended the stairs with scruffy hair and sandy eyes.
It was the loud crash that caused his eyes to snap into focus. A man dressed in a black cape wandered into the hall, his arms filled with the polished silver cups that had lined the walls of the trophy room. "S'cuse me," he said politely, walking out into the rain and leaving the manor with them firmly in his grasp. Draco stared after him, his brows furrowed. "The hell?" he muttered to himself, then headed for his fathers study which was the source of all the noise.
Inside he found Lupin with two wizards and a witch. They were studiously going through Lucius' magic and history books, putting some things in piles and others back where they came from. Other things they scowled at disapprovingly and dropped them into a metal container and set it alight, producing a sickly green fog.
"What," he asked levelly. "Do you think you're doing?"
The witch spun around with a squawk of fright, knocking a pot plant off the desk. "Oh! God! I'm sorry! I'll fix it!" She knelt down, her messy pink ringlets hanging everywhere and flicked her wand at it. "Reparo!" The plant and it's pot zoomed back together and she picked it up, setting it back on the table with a sigh of satisfaction. "See? All better."
"I always hated that plant," Draco observed mildly.
"Oh," the witch looked stumped for a minute, then pushed it off the desk where it promptly shattered for the second time. "There you go."
Draco looked back at Lupin, ignoring the other two men and raising his eyebrows.
"We're looking for illegal devices, Draco," the Werewolf stretched. "Your father admitted to having them and he told us where they would be."
"Why would he do that?"
"Said he didn't want your Mum to have them," the witch explained.
"Nymphadora Tonks," Lupin scratched his neck. "This is Draco."
"Wotcher," she waved.
"Hi," he answered flatly.
"Thing is, Draco," she continued, speaking to him as if he were suddenly her best friend. "That all of your fathers top secret stuff is hidden in a room somewhere."
"He said that you'd be able to show us where," Lupin said.
"Secret room?" Draco asked insolently. "Father must be mistaken. I don't know anything about it."
"Draco," Lupin said patiently. "Lucius told us that you know exactly where it is and how to get inside. He said you could show it to us."
"There are hundreds of rooms in this Manor, Lupin," Draco folded his arms. "Some of them are secret and some of them aren't. Father used to keep things in most of them, some valuable, some illegal, and some heirlooms like I just saw some guy carry off."
"Bloody Dung," one of the other Wizards muttered and excused himself from the room.
Draco ignored him. "So if you want information," he continued, "you'll have to be slightly more specific."
"The meeting room," Nymphadora Tonks offered. "And he said you knew where, 'cos you used to hide behind a statue and listen when you were a young'n."
"The meeting room," he mused.
"Draco," Lupin said, ever so slightly reproachfully. "You need to tell us where it is."
Draco sat down behind the desk and rested his chin on his knuckles, pretending to be lost in thought for a while.
"Draco."
He raised his eyebrows slightly. "Like I said, Father's mistaken." He looked up and straight into Lupin's golden eyes. "Don't know anything about it."
For the first time, Draco saw annoyance flash across Lupin's face, if only for an instant, and then he was passive once again. "Fine. If you really don't know."
They stared at each other for a long moment, golden eyes locked with silver ones, until at last Draco looked away and the wizards continued to sort through his fathers books.

The meeting room was one of Draco's favourite places in the house. It was not the sort of room where one would expect certain evil gatherings to be held in, but evil people could often be quite unpredictable.
The room was enchanted, and quite cleverly hidden. It was, of course, in his fathers study, and could only be opened if either a Malfoy or Voldemort himself pulled a certain latch underneath Lucius' dark wooden desk. A portion of the stone floor would then slide away to reveal a ladder, then a set of spiral stairs which went down quite a ways. You would then enter a corridor, at the end of which were two statues: one of Salazar Slytherin, and the other of Drake Malfoy, the first and so far only Malfoy to make Minister of Magic. Beyond the statues was a large round cavern. The floor was covered with grass and dotted with tiny white flowers and a gleaming lake filled half of the room. There were several trees clustered about, and a round stone table with thirty-five chairs around it. The roof and walls had been bewitched to reflect the sky outside. In fact, it had been Drake Malfoy who had taught the Hogwarts headmaster of the day how to enchant the ceiling of the Great Hall in the same fashion.
Draco sat with his chin on his knees, staring out over the crystal clear lake as a fraudulent wind played with his hair and a cloned moon shone high in the starlit brick sky. He was utterly confused. Why would his father have told Lupin about the room? Why was he so willing to give up the cause? Was it just because his mother had betrayed him? And why had she done that? Betrayed her husband and abandoned her son. What the hell was going on in his family?
A hand was laid upon his shoulder. "Have you been practising?"
Draco yelped and jumped up. "What the hell?" he asked, his voice curiously high.
The girl smiled and took a step towards him, letting the light fall upon her lovely face. "Remember me?"
"I do," he unconsciously rubbed his neck. "Though I still don't have a name."
"It's Draco," she said seriously. "Draco Augustus Malfoy."
He half smiled. "Very funny."
"You didn't answer my question."
"You didn't answer mine."
She looked at him expectantly and he sighed. "Yes, I've been practising."
"And?"
"And I can't make anything happen!" he growled. "I can meditate fine, but the rest is bullshit."
"Meditation is the easy part," she said wisely, seating herself on the ground and folding her legs. "It's what comes after that takes longer to master. For most, anyway."
She patted the ground in front of her and he sat, mimicking her. "You need to be in touch with the earth, or else the magic won't flow."
"Be in touch with the earth?" he raised an eyebrow. "How the hell do I do that?"
"You just do," she shrugged unhelpfully. "It's different for everyone. You have to feel the earth, and let it flow through you. You have to find your own way of doing it."
"Bit hard when it's raining all the time."
"Welcome to England," she smiled. "But rain is a part of nature. Use it if you have to."
"It's just… hard to concentrate," he said, feeling like he was making lame excuses. A feeling he wasn't used to. "With that bloody Werewolf and his friends running about the house, trying to break into my father's things."
"Remus Lupin is prying?" she asked, raising both brows. Draco nodded, and she bit her lower lip for a moment, and she appeared to be thinking.
"What is it?" he eventually asked when she had been statue-still for a few minutes.
"Teach him a lesson," she said finally, looking at him. Her green eyes were pitch black in the moonlight, and she looked like a pagan goddess with her alabaster skin and ebony hair.
"How?"
"Every Werewolf must drink Wolfsbane potion every month before they transform. It keeps the killing urge inside them dormant. If they don't they go crazy for the night, destroying at will. That sort of thing has quite an effect on dear gentle Remus." She did not say the latter with sarcasm, but instead with an oddly fond smile on her face. "If you replace the potion with one that tastes the same, but is missing the vital ingredient, he'll slip into the proper Wolf state."
"And it'll make him go crazy?" Draco asked, liking the idea. "With severe mental after effects. Sounds fun. But where do I get the potion?"
She glanced up at the waxing moon. "It's full moon tomorrow," she said. "Don't you worry your pretty head about it. I'll take care of everything."
"Pretty?" he objected.
"Tomorrow night," she whispered. "Stay in your room, and don't come out for anything."
She stood and smiled at him and began to retreat into the shadows while he looked up at her with a frown. "Why are you doing this?"
"Because I'm your friend, Draco," she said affectionately. "And I want to help you."
"Help me do what?"
"To become the man you can be," she smiled and slipped into a shadow. As she disappeared, one word lingered in the night air. Morgan.
"Morgan," he whispered. He spent most of the night beside the lake, staring into space.