A Thousand Words

Annie

Story Summary:
Five years after the second war, the Ministry of Magic proposes an interdepartmental challenge in an attempt to restore trust between workers. Unknowingly, Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy are assigned as partners. As the two begin to write to each other under the nicknames Starlight and Shadow, their careers outside of their letters become entwined as well. Obsessions grow out of control, friendships are shattered, and all the while, the threat of a second era of darkness looms above the wizarding world. What happens when Starlight and Shadow begin meeting in secret? And will the two ever discover who the mystery on the other side of the page is?

Chapter 02 - His World of Unending Night

Chapter Summary:
Of house-elves, unpleasant memories, and potions.
Posted:
01/11/2006
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4,837


Chapter 2: His World of Unending Night

The first thing Draco noticed when he stepped out of his fireplace was that his house-elf had forgotten, once again, to clean up his sitting room.

'Lydig!' he roared as he brushed off the ashes from his thin black robes.

There was a scurry of footsteps and then a tiny, aged house-elf dressed in a torn black kitchen cloth appeared at the doorway of Draco's sitting room.

'Master is home!' he squeaked nervously, trying to look delighted but failing as he edged into the room.

'Yes, I'm home,' muttered Draco, shrugging off his robes and tossing them at the miniature creature. 'Now, what's your excuse this time for not cleaning this room up?'

'Lydig - Lydig had thought that perhaps Master did not want Lydig to touch his - his Ministry files again...'

'I've already told you several times, you stupid beast, that I'll tell you when I don't want you to touch certain rooms of the house. I don't recall mentioning that I wanted you to leave my sitting room alone when I left this morning.'

'Lydig is sorry, he is a bad elf,' the house-elf squealed, shakily lifting his wrinkled, long-figured hands to his face as if expecting a blow. 'He will listen to Master next time.'

'You had better,' Draco growled. His sofa was littered with crumpled pieces of parchment, empty bottles of Firewhiskey, and broken quills, but he collapsed on it anyway and stretched out his legs. 'Is my dinner ready?' he mumbled.

'Lydig has it ready in the oven, sir; it shall be only a few minutes.'

'Well hurry up and get it then,' Draco snapped without turning around to look at the house-elf.

There was the sound of tiny footsteps scampering away, and then silence. For a moment, Draco lay still in the darkness, listening to the faint sound of his own breathing.

It had been a tiring day, as usual. Suspicious glares, eyes that quickly shifted away whenever he passed, impossibly difficult assignments...and then an unexpected meeting with Hermione Granger.

Draco's mind lingered on the last of those thoughts. He had, of course, seen her several times in the office he shared with the other Hit Wizards, as she frequently visited it to talk and exchange files with the Head. However, the few times she and Draco had spoken to each other could hardly be counted as conversations. They were always cold and distant with each other, both, perhaps, never having really forgotten the past.

Or so that was what Draco thought was Hermione's view of it.

He himself, on the other hand, tried tirelessly put the past from his mind. He disliked remembering those days of darkness, the days he had spent under one person or another's power - whether it was his father's, Dumbledore's, or the Dark Lord's - because they reminded him of his weaknesses. Those were the days when he had thought the world was all about looking down upon those of unworthy blood, beating the famous Potter boy at school and Quidditch, and striving to become one of them - those fearless, powerful wizards the world deemed the Death Eaters.

The day Draco discovered there was more to life than what he knew it to be was the day his world was shattered.

That day, he'd helped Potter - his enemy, his rival - to safety. He'd done it because he'd had no where else to turn and no one else to keep at his side, but he'd done it anyway. And after those agonisingly long minutes during which Draco had let Harry lean on his shoulder and helped him limp across the field to the safety of the forest, Draco realised that there was no way he'd ever be able to turn back. He had unleashed the hopeful, compassionate side of him that had been compartmentalised all his life, and it had, in an instant, overcome his darker side to the point of no return.

Then, there were those four years...those four years he had spent in the forest, living off of the mere hope that someday he'd be able to venture back out into the world. For the most part, he had lived those four years alone. Sometimes, though, he'd come across other hiding Death Eaters - his old companions and associates, but never his friends - and they would beg him and implore him to gather them together, to organise them and start a new era of darkness. 'Son of Lucius,' they had begged him, 'you can save us now. You're the only one.'

Draco had turned away and walked back into the shadows, unable to bring himself to answer their pleas. They had not seen his act of redemption; they did not know that he no longer wanted their company. At that time, he lived his life only for himself and for no one else. He was not Lucius' son. Lucius was dead, Dumbledore was dead, the Dark Lord was dead...for the first time in his life, Draco was in charge of his own future.

'Lydig has Master's dinner ready!'

Draco was rudely snapped out of his thoughts by his house-elf's high-pitched voice. It had shuffled in without his noticing, and was carrying a large silver platter laden with food over its head.

'Thank you,' said Draco stiffly. 'Put it on the table.'

'As Master wishes.' The platter of food was set down on the coffee table in front of Draco.

'Leave,' said Draco plainly as he shifted into a sitting position and looked down without interest at the food before him.

With a frightened nod, the house-elf darted out of the room, leaving Draco alone in the dark.

Lazily, Draco took his wand from the coffee table and flicked it in no particular direction. Several candles around the room magically lit themselves, and the fire in the hearth burst into life, giving the room a peaceful reddish-orange glow.

After a moment's hesitation, Draco picked up his fork and speared a sprout with the end of it. He brought it to his lips and put it into his mouth, chewing it thoughtfully for a long time before finally swallowing. Then, he dropped his fork back onto the silver platter and lay down again with a slight grimace.

Food did not interest him. After all, the point of eating was to do it with someone else, and if there was no one there to share Draco's dinner with him, what was the point of having it? To Draco, there was nothing worse than eating in solitude.

Thus, instead of settling down to his dinner, Draco closed his eyes and let his mind begin reminiscing again.

After those four lonely, terrible years in the forest, Draco had mustered up the strength and courage to step out of it, out of its darkness and shadows and into the light of the world. He was barely alive then; little amounts of food and sunlight coupled with the unbearable stress and fear that had wracked his mind everyday had weakened Draco greatly. However, he was determined, and his determination brought him to the steps of the Ministry.

Unfortunately for Draco, acceptance did not come as immediately as he had dreamt it would. The world knew him as a Death Eater, and he had been on the verge of being thrown into Azkaban when, wonder of wonders, Harry stepped in for him and ordered the Ministry to give him another chance.

It was only fair, Harry had said later that day when Draco questioned him about his motives for doing what he had done. Yet after that, Draco lost all his hostility towards Harry Potter, and vice versa. The two were still a step away from friends, but they had formed a level of respect between each other, and that was more than either would've imagined possible years ago.

At that point, Draco rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in the arm of his sofa. It had an unpleasant, musty scent that Draco couldn't place. With a muffled groan, he flipped back over onto his back and stared blankly up at the ceiling.

Draco didn't know how much time he passed just staring up at the ceiling, but when he finally checked his watch, it was 1am. His muddled mind urged him to sleep, but he had other matters he had to attend to before he would allow himself to seek the comfort of his bed: namely, his potions.

A wave of dizziness overcame Draco as he stood up, but he cleared it away by shaking his head, and began to walk to the stairway that led to his basement.

When Draco arrived in the basement, he stopped and inhaled the familiar clean, earthy perfume that emanated from the potion he always kept boiling at the foot of the staircase: Amortentia, the most powerful love potion in the world.

Stepping past the cauldron of Amortentia, Draco moved past various other boiling substances towards the back of the room where the largest cauldron of all sat.

Upon arriving at this cauldron, Draco peered cautiously at its contents. Dark red. Perfect.

Setting his wand on the table next to the cauldron, Draco grabbed a lab coat from a hook hanging on the wall a few feet away and shrugged it on. Then, he stirred the thick contents of the enormous cauldron twice before picking up a tattered book that lay on the table next to his wand and glancing at the page it was turned to.

The page was one of those few pages at the beginning and end of a book that publishers often leave blank for unknown reasons. However, someone had scribbled a large quantity of neat but cramped sentences onto this page, and titled it 'Wolfsbane II Potion'.

The Wolfsbane II Potion was what Draco had been working on for the past year, ever since he'd secured a house of his own. It was a potion to completely cure a victim of lycanthropy, an improved version of the first Wolfsbane Potion, which only alleviated some of the pain of the transformation. Draco's mentor, Severus Snape, had worked tirelessly on secretly trying to perfect this potion in his years at Hogwarts, but had been forced to give up his attempts when he graduated. Just before his death, however, Severus had forced Draco - who was the closest thing to a son Severus had ever had - to swear he would continue to work on finishing the Wolfsbane II Potion when Severus died.

This promise, combined with the hope of finding a real cure for lycanthropy and his natural passion for potion brewing, was Draco's way of keeping himself busy when he was not at work in the Ministry. Though he occasionally brewed other hard-to-find potions to sell to wizarding families in need of them, no one knew about this particular potion of Draco's, for he preferred to keep it his own secret.

Now, Draco sighed as he studied the incomplete instructions Severus had written out as a student. He scribbled down a few lines of his own and crossed one of Severus' out, then turned to gaze at the potion again.

'A pinch more of aconite...' he murmured, tapping his bottom lip thoughtfully, 'a drop of Acromantula venom...would greatly reduce the effects on the nervous system, but could cause possible fatal side effects...'

Draco continued to mutter incoherent sentences to himself as he studied the swirling red substance in the cauldron intently. At last, he seized one of the hundreds of phials on the shelf above his head and emptied its contents into the cauldron.

For a split second, nothing happened; then, rings of black smoke began issuing from the potion with a series of loud cracks.

Draco whooped out loud and hurriedly scribbled down a few words underneath the lines he had earlier added. His face shone with excitement as his quill rapidly scratched a few messy instructions onto the page of the book.

Now spurred on by the progress he had just made, Draco grabbed a few more phials, poured the liquids in them into a larger flask, and swirled them around. Sparks issued from the new concoction before dying away to reveal a pale blue substance.

From under the table, Draco pulled out a cage of rats. He opened the latch, grabbed one, and closed the latch. Placing the rat he had just extracted on the surface of the table, Draco drew in a deep breath then poured a drop of the substance he had mixed up in the flask into the rat's mouth.

The rat's eyes bulged out and its entire body started to shake. It squeaked madly as it twisted and turned on the wooden surface of the table. Then, its nails began to lengthen and its fur began to shorten. After a while, the pain it was feeling seemed to subside, and Draco was left with a quivering, hairless rat with unnaturally long nails.

This was apparently not the result Draco had been aiming for, for he pounded his fist on the table in frustration and vehemently ran his other hand through his tangled blond hair. The rat squeaked in fright at this and tried to scramble away, an attempt that did not quite work out as its nails were preventing it from moving very far.

'Master?' came a trembling voice suddenly from the doorways.

Draco angrily turned around to face his house-elf. 'What do you want, Lydig?' he growled viciously.

'Lydig is thinking that perhaps Master should go to bed,' said the house-elf in a tone of speech that, despite the terror and apprehension in his enormous brown eyes filled, was marked with determination. 'It is late and Master must be waking up in three hours' time for work.'

Draco opened his mouth to order the house-elf out of his basement, but then he closed it when he realised how accurate its words were. He did need his rest, and it wasn't like he was going to get anywhere that night. Thus, Draco resignedly nodded and stepped away from the cauldron.

The house-elf looked utterly thrilled at the fact that his master had not ordered him away, and scrambled forward to offer more help. 'Would sir like Lydig to make clean up?'

'No, Lydig, you can leave now. I'll clean up. I'd rather no one touch my potions.'

'Very well,' squeaked the house-elf, bowing deeply and beginning to back out of the room. Then, he stopped, as if suddenly remembering something. 'Lydig has forgotten... Master has an owl.'

'An owl?' Draco repeated, turning around in the middle of taking off his lab coat to frown at his house-elf. 'From whom?'

'Lydig does not know,' Lydig replied, shaking his head rapidly so that his large ears flapped against the sides of his head loudly. 'Lydig placed it on the kitchen table, sir, and fed it water, so he is suspecting it is still there.'

'Very well,' said Draco curtly. 'Now you may leave.'

Draco watched the house-elf whisk out of the room before he hung his lab coat back on its hook and picked up his wand from the table. The rat had disappeared, but Draco did not devote any time to finding it. Instead, he stalked over to the other side of the potions room, ascended the stairs, and made his way over to the kitchen.

Sure enough, the owl was right where Lydig had said it would be. Draco did not recognise it; it was a small owl bearing a collar with the Ministry's crest, so he assumed the message it brought with it was work-related.

However, upon removing the letter from the owl's leg, Draco realised immediately that it wasn't official post. There was no name or address written it, for one, and the parchment was not the type the Ministry used.

Curious as to whom the letter might be from, Draco unfolded it. His breath caught in his throat the moment he saw the words neatly printed at the top of it: 'To my pen pal'.

The interdepartmental unity challenge. Draco had forgotten entirely about it. He groaned in frustration when he realised that he now had to write a response to this person. However, another glance at the letter increased his curiosity, and the urge to read it became stronger.

Thus, Draco retreated to his bedroom, all thoughts of sleep gone from his mind.