Wolf Song

Whisper

by Jillian

(Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. Lyrics from Evanescence. This is a companion piece to the Wolf Song series by Carfiniel. It's a seventh year Draco story, in which he's reflecting upon some unexpected comfort from the attentions of Remus Lupin the summer before.)

***

catch me as I fall
say you're here and it's all over now

***

The rain hit the concrete with a slow, steady sizzle and the resulting steam turned the train station into such a fogged atmosphere that the people waiting there seemed as vague and indefinite as specters. Lost in the folds of his wizard robes, Draco Malfoy waited apart from the general crowd.

He had stood on the platform before, always in other circumstances. Pride, cold, anger, bitterness-these were feelings he could recollect in the company of his father or spurring a conflict with Harry Potter.

However, for all the day's disagreeable appearance, Draco found himself as eagerly taut as a newly tuned bow string. The relative solitude let him reflect back on a summer of changes, of responsibility, and of something warm. The last night at Grimmauld Place, Remus had taught him a simple spell to keep a circulation of warmth tracing through clothing and Draco's robes tingled with the currents of heat tracing wherever fabric touched skin.

The relatively simple spell still left Draco a little dizzy with the memory of the goodbye kisses they'd shared after the final lesson. He had never quite experienced anything like that indescribable want: to be with Remus Lupin. His lessons were so different from the Dark Art enchantments that he'd spend his previous holidays learning from the various tutors that Lucius Malfoy employed. The same teacher never stayed long at the manor. As Draco did not excel in one Dark Strength, Lucius would pursue another. Draco's memory rotated through images of wizards and magical beasts, but the images all melted under the remembered determination produced by one fixed glance from Remus.

With effort, Draco could shrug off dark curses. He could not, however, shrug off the slowly boiling insecurity of going an entire year without Remus immediately near.

"I've found you." Pansy's voice reached his ears through the grey mists. He could just hear the way her hands settled on either hip and the disapproving shake of her hair.

"Was I missing?" The drawl of his voice came naturally. Draco knew then that he hadn't lost his Slytherin edge. Hogwarts was his territory, and as he grew closer to it, he could feel the dark corners of his dungeon room held their own particular comforts.

"I didn't know if I should expect you with the Gryffindors," Pansy was near enough that he could see her lips try to hide a smile on the last word before her dramatic pause, "or with your . . . werewolf."

Caution tempered the comments hidden behind the mutually amused grins. Neither of them knew how safe they were since they'd become, as Pansy called it, Free Thinking Slytherins. Philosophically, to consider any other path than their Dark Lord's was blasphemous.

"Come now, Pansy," Draco felt the smile tearing at his cheeks, "Gryffindors? Just because I liked to add some well disciplined order to my life-that doesn't mean I've slipped into such social distaste."

"Well, someone you know has good taste," Pansy let her finger glide along the sleeve of his new robe. "His money bought this, didn't it?"

"I told him that I'd wear it," Draco leaned in close to where his breath blew back the hair by her ear, "only if he promised to also take it off." He snapped back to appreciate the briefest moment of shock on Pansy's face before she narrowed her eyes with cool appreciation.

"Just as long as you know what you want." She glanced over her shoulder, watching as shadowed forms glided back and forth around them.

"I want what any seventeen year old boy wants." He laughed, causing the magical currents in the robe to suddenly shift directions and force Draco to suck in his breath from the exhilarated rush. He wanted to always be warm. And never have to worry. And to always have Remus' reassuring presence next to him.

Pansy disappeared with a slight rustle of her robes into the grey. He could almost make out the baritone texture of Blaise Zabini's voice calling for her. While Draco felt relatively open with Pansy, he did envy the intimacy those two could share openly in front of the entire school.

His eyes scanned the edges of visibility, and for a moment he saw a lightning stripe of silver-blond hair. The color that, along with the crackle of an enormous fire and the smells of old magic books, reminded Draco of evenings in the Malfoy library. Malfoy blond.

The next thing Draco saw was the pale freckled skin of Ron Weasley suddenly in front of him.

"Don't just stand there like a git who can't recognize his own evil dad." Ron hissed the words in the disguise of a whisper, "If he sees you, then he'll take you away before you can get one foot to go the other direction."

Draco had difficulty understanding. His father was in Azkaban. Not at the train station.

"Bloody hell, Malfoy," Ron grabbed both of Draco's shoulders and shook him while effectively using his height to block Draco from seeing the ghost of his father again. "Lupin made me promise to make sure you get on this train safely."

"How?" Draco heard the word in his own voice as silence melted away to let in sound. How could he have forgotten his father? He felt the weighty power of his father's years of influence heavier than the warm, slightly damp robes. More certain than Remus.

"Turn around and walk so that I'm behind you." Ron guided Draco with the hands that had never left his shoulders, "I doubt he'll look for you in a group of red-haired Weasleys and other Gryffindors."

Draco felt a rush of anger and reluctant gratitude, even as he felt his features slip into a combative pout. Which only served to make Ron laugh. "Now that's the reaction that I would have expected. Your life is in the Order now. And as much as that pains me," Ron gave Draco a small shove from behind, simultaneously indulging in rivalry and reassuring the Slytherin that he was still following, "we have an interest in keeping your useful body alive."

***

speaking to the atmosphere
no one's here and I fall into myself
this truth drives me into madness

***

The adventure had continued with Draco finding himself sandwiched between Ron and Luna for the train ride to Hogwarts. Ron seemed rather smug, crossing his arms and glancing down at Draco with comments he liked to recycle. Ron's favorites were: "Don't look so sulky, Malfoy," or "Start keeping track, Malfoy. That's one you owe me so far," or "I'm such a noble, self-sacrificing Head Boy."

The smothering presence of the youngest Weasley boy finally drifted away as they neared the old castle that served as one of the most famous schools for young wizards. Draco felt too old, too advanced to belong among the ankle-biting first years who were making their way toward the beastly giant Hagrid and the infamous initiation of the newest pupils.

Crabbe and Goyle had found him after a moment of staring after the eleven year olds. They didn't have the words to ask Draco where he'd been at the train station or on the train. Under their shadows, he remembered what it felt like to serve as a leader in Umbridge's Wossname. The liberty of enforcing rules.

Draco was fond of listening to himself talk. Crabbe and Goyle were his most available audience for his frequent, indulgent lectures on proper wizard behavior and the shabby way that Dumbledore winked when Gryffindors second-guessed their professors. But partway to the Great Hall, Draco suddenly was at a loss of what to talk about. He could not trust them with the truth, and Draco was too tired to consider the further exhaustion of embellished lies.

"I'm skipping the stupid Sorting." He settled on escape, letting his arrogance relax his conflicted thoughts. "Go ahead. I'm sure Pansy can handle rounding up the first years."

He turned and, doing so, caught a glimpse of his reflection in a new display case that decorated the main hall. Draco caught his breath, but the resemblance was only to be expected. He was his father's son after all. The pointed chin, the pale colors. The expression, however, was unique to Draco; he knew that he'd never seen his father look startled-or anything less than perfectly composed. Even that difference disappeared as Draco resolved with effort to mask his feelings.

Looking past himself, he saw that the display was various pictures of Hogwarts students. Those who had sacrificed everything in order to defeat Voldemort.

Voldemort. Whenever Draco practiced saying the name, he heard the syllables in Remus' most chilling tone.

Cedric Diggory had a prominent corner of the display. His haunting smile was bashful as he apparently had been captured in photograph just moments after the first challenge of the Triwizard's Tournament. Draco shuddered, wondering who in the castle thought it appropriate to lord such tragedy over children and classmates. Malfoys were not sentimental. Draco would not allow himself to be done over by sentimentality.

He could not help but linger, seeing photograph after photograph of people who were labeled with the surnames of his own peers. He found the Potters easily enough. The black and white snapshot did nothing to lessen the dazzle of Lily Potter's eyes. Harry and his father had an annoying resemblance.

Then Draco's fingers pressed against the glass and he leaned forward until he could get no closer. "Remus."

A small dagger of jealousy bit into his heart as he noticed that Remus only appeared in pictures secretly honoring Sirius Black. Dumbledore was challenging the Ministry as it was, but only a fool would have missed the significance of Black's pictures. For Dumbledore to be so bold, the pretence of passivity would certainly be slipping from the Headmaster's shoulders. The powerful wizard was calling his followers to him.

And Voldemort would be calling his.

Draco knew he couldn't ignore the events at the train station. Nevertheless, for all of his new found hope, Draco Malfoy was scared.

***

I know I can stop the pain if I will it all away

***

Taking the quill into his hand, Draco felt a sudden nostalgia for all the other evenings when he'd sat at the same desk in the Slytherin dorm room and begun his letters to the only person that understood. The only person who understood what it was to lose someone important to a living hell.

He would never had spared Remus Lupin a glance if the older man hadn't hit upon the exact pain that iced his veins. The soothing balm of his conversation had enchanted Draco like a snake charmer might lure out and console any other poisonous creature.

He had suspected right away what Remus was up to. The werewolf ex-Professor was a Gryffindor after all, although he was notably more eager than the others to approach a teenaged Death Eater in training. As if he could righteously put Draco Malfoy onto the path of all that was goodness.

Draco had intended on resisting. Except that Remus hadn't quite used a strategy that Draco hadn't expected or known how to counter-spell.

He watched the quill leave a trail of language before the magical ink absorbed into the parchment.

*Remus, I miss you.*

In the quiet, nearly dark isolation, Draco let his head drop.

***

don't turn away
don't give in to the pain
don't try to hide
though they're screaming your name

***

Blaise was the first of the Slytherins to enter the room, pushing open the heavy iron door just in time to see Draco loose the eagle owl from the casement.

"Careful, now." Blaise said, pulling at his chin hair in such a way that demonstrated a long-practiced cover-up for nervous insecurity. While Draco knew just enough to act arrogant and get himself in the thick of things, Blaise liked to know only enough to keep himself reasonably close to the inner circle.

"I was sending away for additional school supplies." Draco feigned innocence, lifting his eyebrows in a quiet challenge.

Before this year, such an encounter would have indicated the need for Draco to re-establish his authority within Slytherin. Blaise didn't like playing second fiddle to an idle House Prince. Blaise did, however, like hiding behind the coat tails of the person most likely to take the blame, should the Free Thinkers be discovered. Neither young man had any illusions as to the nature of their companionship.

The dark-haired Slytherin pulled a bright, reflective badge from the front of his robes and tossed it onto Draco's desk. Touching it with his wand, Draco watched the engraving of "Prefect" distort and transfigure into "Potter Stinks."

"The first years were too chicken-blood tonight to even catch our switch as Slytherin Prefect tomorrow. Professor Snape was not at the Sorting either." Blaise leaned against the stone wall and crossed his arms, "And no one else really cares to watch the Slytherins."

"Slytherins will watch out for themselves in that case." Draco could not keep the frustration from his voice. The most immediate concern that of Snape's location. The last Draco knew of Professor Snape's whereabouts was the conversation he had overheard between the Head of Slytherin and Remus.

When he'd first heard and deeply believed Remus' declaration of love.

Used to being ignored upon the strong whim of a distracted Malfoy, Blaise left. Draco, however, felt his knees weakening, and sat on the edge of his bed. The eagle owl never flew fast enough. He remembered the exact fear brought about by waiting and of doubting Remus Lupin's reply. Shrugging the memory, Draco fell back on his bed and pulled upon memories from the summer.

***

don't close your eyes
God knows what lies behind them
don't turn out the light
never sleep never die

***

The first coming full moon had intrigued Draco. He had begrudgingly avoided aggressive contact with the other members of the Order, and had made up for the coming isolation and essential exile by monopolizing every moment with Remus that was possible. The moon brought the first significant threat to the time they had together.

Remus, as Draco remembered, approached the lunar calendar with the resolve of long suffering. The sharpness of Remus' eyesight intensified even as their expression wilted with sadness. The older man, who personified restraint, indulged in lingering touches. Nothing more than letting their shoulders rest against each other or actually letting his hand clasp Draco's hand if they walked together, but the possessive intensity had impressed Draco beyond normal comfort.

As Draco stared at the canopy above his bed in the Slytherin dorm room, he could remember how at the end of the last day Remus had pulled Draco fully close. He had taken the deepest breath as if inhaling all of Draco's essence and then exhaled with Draco's name on his lips.

He had not been allowed to follow Remus after that. Afterward neither of them had spoken about anything specifically, except that the werewolf had developed a comfortableness in holding him.

Which, Draco thought, rolling onto his side, he had somehow come to appreciate. And miss.

***

I'm frightened by what I see
but somehow I know that there's much more to come

***

Three weeks passed.

He tried to forget that he was waiting out his last year by devoting himself to his final studies. For once, he actually earned points for his house based on scholarly merit rather than popularity. The academic framework that Remus had helped him learn built him a solid base for further learning.

But his emotional security was not beyond splintering.

"I see you've started your Potions paper seven days early." The Head of Slytherin had appeared at Draco's elbow while he scribbled notes with sheets of calculations scattered around and over several open books. Draco chewed his lower lip, finished the thought on paper, and turned to look up at the Potions Professor. Snape's lips perpetually twisted downward as if he'd a rather unpleasant taste fixed on his tongue.

Draco had learned that the best way to intuit Snape's mood was by examining the placement of his arms. Crossed loosely with one hand pulling free from the long-sleeved robe in order to hold the opposite forearm, Snape was warily on guard but interested.

"Yes. Sir." The title was added after a heartbeat. He was becoming too familiar with seeing his teachers as peers, each humanly flawed and individually gifted.

"Good." The sharp nod ended the conversation, except that Snape left him with one last barb. "I'm glad to see that you've left some less desirable distractions behind you."

Draco didn't know how to answer.

He had turned in his Potions paper, which was a ridiculous twelve feet long, before he received Remus Lupin's reply.

"He's a clever one, your werewolf." Pansy had slid next to Draco at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall. "He choose the more indirect path in order to ensure his message to you."

Pansy hardly had time to pull the envelope from her robes before Draco's hands reached for it. His slim fingers did not visibly shake but were unable to open the correspondence.

"Let me." Pansy took back the letter which Draco watched with some deep need. She tore the corner. Handing it back, she fixed a rather stern look on him, "Be strong. Don't forget you're strong, even without him."

He felt a wash of anger at her, but snatched the letter open with careless strength.

"My Dragon -- You are stronger than you think. Always remember my belief in you. I would give anything to be with you now, but I've an assignment that will take me from London for some time. I will stay in contact with you as possible. All love, Remus."

The heat he had felt cooled until Draco felt the chill of settled sweat along his neck. Remus' reassurance should have been enough. He tried remembering what his strength was, and, finding nothing immediate, discovered instead that he started to doubt.

He measured time until it had no meaning. Owls to Remus were begun and discarded. The few he managed to send were brief, but never received a reply.

Draco started to scan the Prophet regularly, seeking out information from the world outside Hogwarts. The staff and students seemed surreal in their independence from the interests of the Ministry of Magic and Voldemort. He wondered if they were enchanted, or if he were the one under an anxiety spell, and they were the normal ones as they smiled so easily with jokes and appreciation of each other. However, the Prophet afforded him no further insight.

He couldn't remember the last time he had significant conversation.

And just when Draco thought he'd escape easily, a dragon lulled into hibernation, he received a summoning to the Headmaster's office.

The message from Dumbledore frankly announced the time and place, colored by a condescending comment about how he wasn't in trouble unless "he wanted to confess something."

He felt inclined to leave Pansy a note-something to the effect that no, he wasn't committing suicide, and that if he didn't return, she should look for pieces of him in Fawkes' bird-chow.

He didn't write the note. But as he found the stairway to the Headmaster's Office open and waiting with an ominous emptiness, Draco nearly decided to go with his first instinct to flee from anything suggested by Albus Dumbledore.

His mouth went dry as if he'd been without refreshment to the point of dehydration when he noticed that the stairway was in fact not empty, and he knew without doubt that if the passageway had been lacking in witnesses, he would have turned around and walked back to the Slytherin Dungeons.

Releasing his shoulders from his more thoughtful posture, Draco squared his gaze to meet Narcissa's. "Hello, Mother," he said, willing himself to watch her with deliberate alertness. Her breathing did not change when she spoke to him, one finger tapping along the curve of her crossed arms, her expression chiseled by long-standing indifference.

She lowered her arms and the smoothness of her stride made her seem to glide forward in her dark green robes. Her lips pulled tight together, full and red. She circled around him once, appraising him in a manner to which Draco was accustomed. He continued to stare blankly into the space where she had originally appeared.

"We had invited Frances Clearwater to the Manor for the summer," Narcissa began, her words light and almost affectionate with the sharing of casual information. "She's an excellent witch, well-studied in the art of certain potions. While her company was quite pleasant, we unfortunately had to dismiss her prematurely."

Draco knew he had been fooling himself by not anticipating his parent's reprimand for not returning to the Manor. He surrendered enough to let his eyes shift to one side, in order to focus on his mother's expression. Her same stern lips had pulled back into an almost fond smile, her eyes bright.

"She was sorry to have missed you, as we had talked about you a great deal while she visited."

"I'm sorry I missed-" Draco began, recklessly letting his body relax and turning to face her. He wanted to say something to alleviate the division between them.

"Please don't interrupt me." Narcissa's smile never faltered. "We received her sympathies for having such a headstrong young son." She reached out to push his hair back from one ear, and she let her fingers slide down behind his neck. "Of course, we were never concerned for you, Draco. You've always had such flares of passion. This summer did not come unexpected."

He felt the pressure of her fingertips in counterpoint to the gentle words that teased his ears with strange hope.

"You've always been touched with a wildness, Draco," she continued, and he found himself dizzily hypnotized with the way her lips formed the words. "Your father and I decided that to harness you would only diminish your potential. However." She gripped his neck fully. "You must agree that a time comes when a son has responsibilities."

"You've come to take me away."

In affirmation, her eyes narrowed to slits and she nodded, stiff and cool. "I see no other avenue that has been afforded to us."

"I haven't finished the year." Draco hated that he only echoed her comment with childlike complaint, and he grasped desperately for an ally. "I'm sure that Dumbledore has some opinion on my...completed education."

The laugh that answered him dwindled into a coo. "Darling, you are ours. Haven't you realized?" She took back her hand and let a finger slide down her cheek as she again looked over Draco as if seeing him each time for the first time. "Far be it from Dumbledore to stand in the way of familial privileges." She took a step towards the stairway. "But let us make everything proper and formal, shall we?"

***

fallen angels at my feet
whispered voices at my ear

***

If Draco had ever imagined a time to need Dumbledore, that dream died with the twinkle in the old wizard's eyes while he said with some heaviness, "Remus Lupin has been called away on a mission. He cannot always intervene on your behalf, Mr. Malfoy."

Even more strangely, his mother had spoken with apparent fondness of her son's illicit endeavors to keep and share a love with one of his family's enemies. "Although I have no objection to your physical desires," she had commented as they were escorted to the front hall, "I am sure you will find this relationship only to be an initiation or a stepping stone to a better match."

At risk of further despair or humiliation, Draco bit back his reply. Remus was unreachable. The Order only intervened on Dumbledore's command, which was not given. With a spirit that was slipping into an immeasurably dark bog, Draco wished he had written the note to Pansy that had amused him before this dramatic shift in his fate.

His belongings would be shipped afterward. Draco was leaving Hogwarts immediately.

They passed by the memorial to the slain wizards and witches who had sacrificed themselves for Dumbledore's cause. I will never be listed there, he thought, torn between bitterness and remorse. Pausing long enough to put his fingerprints upon the glass, he searched quickly for the face he found easier and easier to decrease in sharpness from his memory.

"He was in a small part lovely to look at when we were in school." Narcissa's words riddled his thoughts like shrapnel of ice. "But for your part, I know that it must have been your beauty that bewitched Remus Lupin into desiring you. The undisciplined restlessness of your spirit must have matched his animal-like instinct." Narcissa's pause left Draco little time to formulate his own thoughts. "Or perhaps his intellect was intrigued by your malleable youth and skill."

"Let's not talk about Remus Lupin." Draco forced the name of his lover to mimic the same disdain uttered by his mother moments before. "If you want me to focus on deciding my future, then I do not wish to dwell on the past." He felt his stare turn cold to reflect the emotion of his words, but his eyes worked quickly to memorize and appreciate every detail of Remus that the old photographs would yield.

"I agree that the past will stay behind you and will not be indulged with another thought." Narcissa seemed to have been waiting for him to speak the same conclusion. "But as for deciding your future? I'm afraid that is quite beyond your control."

Walking away from the echo of Hogwart's doors closing behind him, Draco restrained from invoking the spell to warm his robes. Instead, he held the words of the enchantment close to his heart, afraid it might otherwise be taken away from him-as if simply keeping that spell safe he might still be warm.

***

death before my eyes
lying next to me I fear
she beckons me shall I give in
upon my end shall I begin

***

"You will complete your final year under the guidance of tutors that are already gathering at the Manor." Narcissa continued their reunion through conversation during the ride through the school estate. While Draco had been taught the mechanics of Apparition prior to the lessons given to average students, he had no practical usage of the spell, let alone public approval to attempt such a spell. Narcissa had brought with her one of the family carriages from the garage. A nameless driver sat in the front separated from hearing their conversation by a thick pane of glass. From his memory, Draco knew that the carriages were enchanted to cross distances at unlikely speeds.

"To continue in your attempts to find my Dark Skill?" Draco asked idly, sitting across from where his mother sat with impeccable posture.

"Your magical ability was phenomenally vast when measured by such scales of aptitude," Narcissa said with maternal pride, "but your demonstration of such potential has been almost completely untapped. Focused concentration will bring about the inevitable. You will have great power, Draco."

"I am useless to you unless I take the Mark." Draco tried to adopt his mother's manner of implication without inflections of true emotion. He meant to lose the threat under the simpler value of the statement. For her part, Narcissa did not take the statement with any overt reaction of her own.

"The Mark is not yours for which to ask, son." Her words were cryptic and the sly confidence he heard radiating through them made Draco feel as if his breath no longer supplied energy to his limbs. "You need not ask for something which you have already been given."

"Excuse me?" Draco's breath did manage words to ask her meaning. He suddenly became very aware of his own skin.

"The Dark Lord to whom your father pledged himself also is my Dark Lord." Narcissa did not need to move to make her presence overwhelming. "You were born into his cause, Draco. You have been his since the moment you were conceived and the Mark was only hidden from you in order to give you relative security among the unenlightened community still present at Hogwarts."

"I was Marked?" He recoiled inwardly, hearing his determined vow to the Order to never take the cause of evil or take on the mark of Voldemort. Those words of promise were void before he had even chance to consider taking them.

"You only needed the knowledge of it to see our Lord's claim over you." Narcissa moved her eyes slowly to settle on the sleeve that hid the truth.

He willed back the despair of what he had once considered his lost innocence. He remembered how his skin had touched Remus and how he had never known of the ever-present nearness of his coming betrayal. He could never be saved if he'd already been so long forsaken.

Draco said quietly, "I suspect that father waits for us at home."

***

forsaking all I've fallen for
I rise to meet the end

***