Insomniac

Chapter Four

Draco Malfoy woke with a start from a dream that left him shaking. He'd been lost somewhere - somewhere dark and unfamiliar, and it had felt like walking underwater. His last impressions were of suffocating slowly and being unable to see. He sensed somehow that he had been marooned.

He sat up slowly in his oversized bed, leaning back on his elbows and taking in his dim bedroom. For a few moments he focused on breathing. The small glowing clock on the far wall said it was twenty minutes past three. Laying back again, he stared at the ceiling. From outside the light from the waxing moon poured in through the window and stretched in wide planks over his head. He blinked a few times and then sat up, leaned over to his bedside table, and opened the drawer.

In it was something he'd purchased from Harold Dingle not two days before the Hogwarts Express had taken them home. It was Muggle stuff, Dingle had told him, but it's brilliant. He compared it to Powdered Dragon Claw and to the clear, biting potions the seventh years had been brewing all through Easter break - but better, he said, because the Ministry's not got regulations and laws around it. Dingle had said, Just be ready, mate and took twelve Galleons from him. Draco had hoped Dingle wasn't having him on, and that night he sat in the dormitory, very late, and pushed the powder into thin, straight lines on one of Pansy's mirrors, as Dingle had shown him and as he'd seen sixth and seventh years doing with their Powdered Dragon Claw.

It had been breathtaking, amazing, incredible. He'd bought more straight away in the morning, once he'd come down, because he knew it was going to be a long summer.

Now he switched on the gas lamp his mother had charmed to come on with a touch of his hand (his wand, useless until September, was in the drawer beside the wax-paper bag holding this stuff Dingle had sold him) and took out the bag and Pansy's mirror. The first two days had been easy enough, but he was thinking of it more and more now, and tonight he was unequivocally convinced that without it he would die.

Potter, he thought, a moment later, as his mind began to shift and buzz and ignite. Potter is upstairs.

A moment later he was in the hallway, turning lamps on with his hands, and a moment after that he was opening the door that led to the study through which he strode, purposeful and with eyes bright like candle flames; a moment after that he was on the stairs, and then he was opening another door and fairly running down the hallway thinking Potter now it's my turn and rubbing the powder off his upper lip and sucking it off his fingers. Potter, he thought, now it's my turn.

"Impedimenta," said a clear voice that sounded like his mother's but was not. Draco jerked to a halt and fell over backwards ungracefully, crashing into a side table and toppling a large porcelain urn.

Bellatrix stood. She had been perched on the stairs leading to the attic, reading by wandlight The Boy Who Lived: The Role of Harry Potter in the Decline and Fall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. She tossed the book onto the stair beside her and approached Draco with her arms crossed. Draco lay back on the floor panting, watching as Bellatrix's wandlight moved and swirled on the embossed ceiling far above him. He laughed a little and rubbed one hand across his eyes.

"What are you doing?" Bellatrix demanded. Draco continued to laugh, softly and tiredly, as though he was laughing at himself. "Stop," said Bellatrix. "Finite Incantatem."

Draco sat up. "You need to let me up there," he said, pointing beyond his aunt at the dark stairs that led to Potter.

"I can't, love," said Bellatrix in a soft, almost dangerous voice. "I told you already I can't."

"I need to get up there," Draco insisted. "He's up there. I have to get up there. You need to move. Move." Using Bellatrix's robes as leverage he hoisted himself to his feet and, catching his breath and pushing a hand through his hair, started past her for the stairs.

"Stop it," Bellatrix commanded, and she took a few steps backwards as Draco attempted to push her aside. "I said stop it." She held him at a distance with one hand on his chest, and raised her wand. "I said I would, love, and I will," she said, again in that soft voice he didn't like. It sounded like Mum doing an impression of Dad. Draco looked from her wand, and the light, to her face. She looked so little like Mum it was disconcerting.

"I SAID LET ME THROUGH!" he shrieked, suddenly, and with all his force pushed past her to the stairs.

:::

In the guest bedroom beside Draco's, Pansy Parkinson awoke to a flash of distant bright light and the sound of someone screaming. For a few drowsy moments she thought it was lightning, and that some of the third-year girls had gotten into a violent, screeching brawl with some of the fourth years, but as the seconds passed she remembered, gradually, where she was and what might be going on. She opened her eyes, sat up slowly, pushed a hand through her sleep-tangled hair.

She hadn't spent a night at Malfoy Manor before, though she and Draco had been friends for years, since even before Hogwarts. In fact, she didn't think she could recall a time in which she didn't know Draco. And that was definitely the sound of him shouting, desperate and manic, though she couldn't make out the words.

A part of her was not surprised; Draco, though he attempted with his usual Malfoy-ness to behave coolly, was deeply unsettled by his father's imprisonment. Unsettled wasn't the right word, even - Draco was calmly hysterical, in the way only Draco could be; he was obsessed with the thought of Potter, blamed everything on Potter, and for days had stalked through Hogwarts with a look behind his eyes like he was truly, honestly, planning to kill him. There was something else about him now, too, a sort of constant trembling that Pansy thought was quite separate from way he'd nearly visibly vibrated when he spoke of Potter and oh, all the things he'd do, the revenge he'd take, the pain he'd bring, the reckoning. Pansy had sat in the Slytherin common room the night before holidays began and listened to four solid hours of this. She watched Draco with a kind of morbid fascination, as though he was a train wreck in very slow motion - the horrifying realization of the inevitable, the crushing and splintering on impact, the screeching, too-late stop. He was thoroughly consumed, and Pansy was alarmed.

And now she was frightened as well. She had never heard him shout like this before, though she'd seen him angry - he'd been angry enough the time Moody had turned him into a ferret, and after Potter and Weasley (whichever Weasley it was) had jumped him two on one after Quidditch - but this was something on another level. The shouting was nearer now.

"I SAID YOU NEED TO LET ME UP THERE - HE'S UP THERE - I NEED - " Draco was screaming, and she saw the bright gold light of a wand coming down the hall. The light was dim, then blinding in the cracks around her door - clearly the person wielding it did not have a strong grip.

"You CAN'T - Draco if you do not let go I swear I will curse you - " said another voice, one that sounded like Mrs. Malfoy but wasn't.

"DON'T TOUCH ME," Draco shouted next, and the wall shuddered as someone slammed into it. Pansy gasped. Blindly she reached for the windowsill behind her bed and found her glasses. Though she knew clearer vision wouldn't exactly help the situation, she felt more fortified this way.

She was completely amazed, afraid, and mystified. What in the world was Draco screaming about? Who was he? Why was this happening at three-thirty in the morning? More than anything she feared her door would open, that Draco would charge inside and grab her and demand that she understand this.

Abruptly there was silence, and then the sound of someone sliding down the wall and to the floor. Pansy bit her lip and leaned forward, prepared.

And then there was a low voice, Bellatrix's: "Are you all right?" Silence. "Talk to me, love."

Draco must have responded, but he was so quiet that Pansy couldn't make anything out.

"It's all right, love," said Bellatrix next, "let's just get you back to bed. C'mon. It's late."

:::

Bellatrix crouched over Draco and put one long, cold hand against his face. "Open your eyes for me," she said. After a long moment, he did so. "There we go. Good boy." She smiled at him a little in the nicest way she knew how. "You're on Powdered Dragon Claw, aren't you?" she asked. Draco shook his head from side to side, limply. "No, you are, it's all right. I've done so much of that, honestly - you and I will have to talk about the First War sometime. Being a Death Eater was so much more fun then, I promise." Taking his arms, she pulled him to his feet.

"He's up there," Draco moaned, and he sounded piteous and small.

"I know," Bellatrix said. "Everything's going to work, Draco, I promise. Everything. Your dad will be home again, and Potter will be gone, and we will all be safe." Slowly they made their way into Draco's room, dim with only the small light by his bed.

He seemed to have forgotten she was there as he laid himself down on the bed, because he didn't say another word, just turned his head to the wall and lay there, breathing.

:::

Pansy allowed ten minutes to pass, and when the clock read twenty minutes to four she opened her door very slightly and peered into the hall.

It was empty, and silent except for the sounds of the pictures on the wall breathing quietly in the way Pansy always imagined a doll would. Trailing one hand along the wall (the corridor was dark and windowless) she moved to Draco's room and pushed the door open.

"Draco," she whispered. "Draco, are you awake?"

He did not respond. Pansy moved silently across the room to his bed - he had such a large bed, she'd been envious for years - and crouched beside it. He lay like a dead thing, his face turned from her.

"Draco," she whispered again, though as she said it she realized she did not want to wake him. Standing, she leaned over and looked at him, her heart heavy with fear and a strange feeling of loss.

:::

Remus had always hated being under Dumbledore's Invisibility Cloak, and he hated it no less when he had to maneuver through the crowds and confusion of Diagon Alley. It was eleven in the morning; his back was still sore from an uncomfortable (but thoroughly unconscious) night on the library's couch, and he'd already been down to Hogsmeade on Dumbledore's suggestion to look at renting a flat over a small apothecary near The Hog's Head. The place had been tiny and unassuming; he'd liked it, but he wasn't sure whether it would fit the entire Order without any expansion charms, and those could get to be a hassle after a time... He was, in truth, looking for new headquarters, but he knew that any place the Order settled on was going to be his new home for the time. Why can't we go back to my old flat in York? Remus had asked Dumbledore. Hogsmeade is closer, he'd replied, and the conversation had ended before Remus could protest London wasn't.

Ahead of him were the reason he was under this cloak, already hot and hungry: Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson were winding their way up the street, holding hands to prevent the crowd from parting them. Diagon Alley had filled with a dense, steady stream of people in the days since the summer holidays had begun. With the Daily Prophet deluged with news on Voldemort (both accurate and inaccurate), witches and wizards from all over Britain were coming to Diagon Alley and to Hogsmeade in search of news the Prophet had perhaps left out. People were taking large withdrawals from their Gringotts accounts ("I don't know about you, but I'm not sure about those goblins") and spending the money on every kind of precaution wizarding money could buy: Paying professional enchanters to perform security charms on their homes; purchasing extra provisions "just in case"; and on the kind of cheap Guides to Self-Protection that seemed to be cropping up in every bookshop's front window. Draco Malfoy raked over the displays with a derisive sneer and turned to Pansy.

"Look at that," he said, pointing with his free hand at a large red sign in Olivet's Quality Books: Personal Protection Charms, Free with Any 2G Purchase!

Pansy snorted. "We could split one, be half-safe," she suggested, laughing.

"C'mon," he said, tugging her away from the window, "we have to go meet someone."

"What are we doing?" Pansy asked. "I need to go to Madam Malkin's. They're having a sale on dress robes."

"I need to take care of something first," said Draco evasively, and he led her away from the crowd toward a small side street that led, Pansy knew, into a corner of Knockturn Alley.

"Oh, now this is good," she said. She loved Knockturn Alley: she left it always feeling the same way she did when Millicent told the good ghost stories about her huge farmhouse out in Lancashire. It was the only place to really learn Dark Arts; it was here she'd found an entire book on concealment charms (many weren't allowed in Hogwarts) and several African talismans that she liked to think kept her lucky.

"I told him eleven fifteen," Draco said, half to himself.

"You told who?"

"Dingle. I'm meeting him here."

"That Ravenclaw - " Pansy was about to say prefect, but he wasn't one, and she would have corrected herself with Quidditch player, but he'd been kicked off the team for not showing up to practice for two solid weeks.

"Yes," Draco replied. "He's got something for me."

Pansy's eyebrows came together. It was common knowledge around Hogwarts that Harold Dingle was the person to go to if one needed an illicit potion or something to smoke or something to snort. During their prefect training first week of fifth year, they'd been taught about how to approach people like him, and what to look out for, but Draco had spent that meeting making faces at Granger until she raised her hand and called him out to McGonagall.

"What's he got?" Pansy asked.

"This Muggle stuff," Draco replied, standing on tiptoe impatiently and leaning over to peer around the wall at the end of the alley into the long and crooked street that made up Knockturn Alley. "You snort it, like Powdered Dragon Claw. Your mind goes all brilliant. It's great stuff."

"Draco!" she exclaimed, horrified, though part of her was actually intrigued. "I've heard those things are really dangerous."

"Yes, well, a man's got to live a little, hasn't he," Draco said, though he wasn't really listening; he was squinting at the crowd now trying to get a glimpse of Dingle.

Unbeknownst to Draco and Pansy, Remus was standing only ten feet behind them, leaning against the wall under the Cloak and listening to their conversation. Powdered Dragon Claw - what was that similar Muggle drug? He spent a few moments chasing its name around in his head, and he was about to remember what it was when another figure stepped into the alley behind them.

"Malfoy," said a languid voice. Draco spun around, a little too fast, and had to catch his balance. He sniffed and laughed a little, and Pansy looked uneasy.

"Dingle," Draco said, nodding, once he'd recovered himself.

Remus watched the three teenagers in fascination. Harold Dingle was Aloof and Cool, all patched-up robes and mussed hair (James, Remus thought); Draco was Attempt at Cool, Take Seventeen, constantly shifting his weight and crossing and uncrossing his arms and saying "Yeah" a lot and nodding. Pansy was trying to look as though she wasn't paying attention, and while she had positioned herself to watch the crowd pass in Knockturn Alley, her eyes kept flicking back to Draco as he dug twelve more Galleons out of his pocket and traded them for the wax paper bag Dingle held out.

"Thanks, man," Draco said, pocketing the bag when the transaction was complete and Dingle was counting out the dozen large gold coins.

"Yup," said Dingle indifferently, and he went by Draco and Pansy into Knockturn Alley, swiftly vanishing into the crowd. Draco, Pansy and Remus all watched him go. Draco let out a long breath.

"Okay, I'm set," he said. "Good. Glad that's taken care of, I was beginning to run low, and that wouldn't have been fun." His laugh had taken a high and nervous pitch. Pansy looked at him askance.

:::

Lunch found Draco and Pansy at a small, wrought-iron table outside a café by Flourish and Blott's. Remus was standing out of the way of the crowd, by the wall, watching them with some resentment: He was hungry, but he'd already eaten the crackers he'd brought, and he wasn't to return to Hogwarts until Draco and Pansy were back at Malfoy Manor. He watched Pansy poke at a remaining olive in her salad, wrinkling her nose, until Draco stabbed it with his own fork and ate it.

"Look at that," Pansy said, suddenly, pointing. The crowd had thinned a little - people returning to work from their lunch breaks - and she could finally read a sign she'd been trying to decipher since they'd been seated.

"What?" asked Draco, mouth full of olive, twisting around in his seat.

"Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes," Pansy said slowly, savoring every delicious word.

"Oh," said Draco, half rising from his seat. "Oh! Oh! Come on. Come on. I have some shoplifting to do here. Let's go." Without waiting to pay the bill he started off across the street. Pansy left two Galleons on the table and followed. Remus, cursing aloud, went after them.

Inside the shop it was bright and warm; there were no customers in it, and behind the counter, seated on a stool, was a red-haired girl reading a copy of Witch Weekly and drinking what looked to be a bright pink smoothie from the Exotic Ice Cream shop next door. She glanced up when the bell over the door chimed.

"Welcome to Weas - " she began, and then she stopped.

"Hey Wease," Draco said, and Remus noticed that he seemed to be much better at Aloof and Cool now than he had been around Harold Dingle, probably because Ginny didn't have any Muggle drugs she could keep from him.

"Malfoy," Ginny said, coldly, and while she turned back to her magazine Remus noticed that she was keeping her eyes firmly on Draco while Pansy headed to a corner at the back of the store where Fred and George had stocked candy in bulk. After she read the sign over it carefully to ensure they weren't those foul Skiving Snackboxes she knew they'd advertised last year, Remus watched her begin to liberally help herself to the sweets.

"Stop stealing my candy, Parkinson," Ginny snapped when she took her eyes from Draco.

Pansy laughed. "'Stop stealing my candy!' You sound like a first-year." She popped a large truffle into her mouth and chewed it, smirking at Ginny, who rolled her eyes.

"Why are you in here?" she asked witheringly, though Remus was sure she could guess the answer.

"I wanted some free stuff," Draco replied, not looking up from a shelf of biting doorknobs. "Pans, what d'you think? Should we get some of these for next year?"

"Excellent," Pansy called.

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave," Ginny said loudly, "as Piggy over here won't stop stealing candy."

"Piggy!" Pansy screeched. It was Ginny's turn to smirk. Pansy, in retaliation, took the scoop that had been filling a bag with Bertie Bott's and flung a cupful of jelly beans on the floor. "You mangy little bitch!"

Remus had a moment of panic in which he wondered whether he would have to unearth himself from the Invisibility Cloak and break up what appeared to be an impending catfight, but he was spared having to intervene when Draco said graciously, "By all means, Weasley, throw out the offender. Goodness knows I've been trying to get you alone." He addressed his last line to Ginny's chest, and he glanced back up at her to see her glaring at him. (Pansy was doing the same thing.)

"Out," Ginny said to both of them, pointing to the door.

"Go ahead, Pansy," said Draco, "I'll meet you in a sec. Grab some of those hazelnut truffles for me too, would you?"

Pansy, throwing Ginny a look of utmost loathing, took a handful of hazelnut truffles and stalked out of the shop, the little bell jangling as the door slammed.

"Alone at last," said Draco, sounding (Remus thought as he struggled not to retch) like his father.

"What do you want," Ginny snapped.

"A sip of your smoothie," said Draco, pointing.

"Drop dead."

"Those are some harsh words, Weasley," said Draco, leaning on the counter. He leaned forward. "I've got what you want," he sang under his breath, looking sideways at a display of miniature Quidditch players, all of whom were strutting around flexing their muscles and arguing with one another in high, indecipherable voices.

"What," Ginny said sharply, sliding off her stool. "You have him. You do, don't you? MALFOY!" She made to come around the counter toward him, but he held up a hand.

"I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about," he said.

"YES YOU DO," Ginny shouted furiously. Draco smiled a little.

"Why, what is it you want?" he asked.

"Get out," Ginny commanded, pointing to the door.

"Because I can get it," he continued, in a lower voice.

"I said OUT," Ginny yelled. "My brothers will be back in a few minutes, and I know you don't want to run into them."

At this, Remus saw Draco's face, thus far controlled, flinch a little. Ginny noticed too.

"Out," she repeated, quieter.

Draco took a step toward her and she, instinctively, stepped back. "I know what you're looking for," he said, "and it's not Potter."

Remus looked at Ginny, who appeared momentarily mute. She and Draco looked at one another for a long moment, and Draco's face slowly took on its familiar smirk again. Ginny narrowed her eyes.

"Get out," she said through her teeth.

"Ta," said Draco with a little wave, and he left the store. Remus made sure Ginny's back was turned - was that a cough or a choke? - before following.

:::

At Malfoy Manor Snape was watching Kreacher prepare a cup of tea in such a complicated and convoluted way, he thought Kreacher must be doing it purposely. Upstairs, Narcissa was swaying and laughing, having had (as she said) a few too many glasses of wine with lunch. It was true: An hour before, he'd watched her down four glasses of merlot, one after another, while hardly taking a bite of the eggs benedict Bellatrix had made. (Eggs benedict, Bellatrix said, were a specialty of hers and one she'd missed while in Azkaban. Apparently the Malfoys had had eggs benedict for breakfast as well, and for dinner the night before.) He wondered when Narcissa had picked up this drinking habit; he couldn't recall her ever having more than two drinks at a time, in all the years he'd known her. He could hear her drunkenly addressing her talking mirror upstairs, but he and Bellatrix were alone in the drawing room, and he was looking into the kitchen because Bellatrix had been saying some things that made him uneasy.

Rather, it was what she wasn't saying. She'd been staring at him so much and for so long that he was seriously beginning to believe that she'd picked up Legilimency somewhere. He was avoiding eye contact at all costs, even though he knew he needed to be able to see into her mind. The thought of her looking into his memories made him so thoroughly nauseated, though, that he thought it might actually be worth the risk. He was already so focused on Occlumency he was finding it an effort to concentrate on what Bellatrix was - and wasn't - saying to him now.

He'd been able to see into Narcissa, over lunch, enough to discern that Potter was still upstairs and still Stunned. He'd spent much of the past hour trying to wind his conversation with Bellatrix around to whatever plans the Death Eaters were forming at the moment; the fact that she hadn't told him anything about Potter was making him just as uneasy as any possible Legilimency she might be doing.

Unfortunately, Bellatrix seemed more interested in reminiscing about Voldemort's First War, when (as she said) she'd still had her figure and her looks, and he'd been even more scrawny and pedantic than he was now. He scowled, but humored her and let her tell stories. Truth be told, sometimes he liked to hear them - sometimes just to remember a time in which he hadn't been so thoroughly miserable, if only because of relentless self-deception. Besides, he hadn't had anyone in years, apart from Lucius and Narcissa, who really appreciated what being a Death Eater had meant, and Lucius and Narcissa were not the kind who would tell the stories Bellatrix was telling now.

Kreacher brought him a cup of tea (he noticed that Kreacher remembered that he took his tea very strong and black - something he must have noticed in Grimmauld Place) and Snape listened to Bellatrix as she went on about Barty, and about Lucius and Narcissa's wedding and her own wedding to Rodolphus (whom she didn't seem to hold in very high esteem these days) - "And," she continued gleefully, "remember how Rabastan was so drunk he threw up on you?"

"I prefer not to think about it," Snape said dryly.

"Oh, that was one of the best parts of my wedding," Bellatrix insisted, "and you nearly lost your head there, all screaming about how Rabastan was an abomination and a blight on Wizardkind or something, I remember you using all these thesaurus words - "

"Someone has to use them," Snape murmured.

"You're an odd man," Bellatrix observed. She continued telling stories about her wedding, which had occurred just over three weeks before Voldemort had fallen. Snape had been a double agent by that point, and his only memories of Bellatrix and Rodolphus's wedding were that the band they'd "hired" was atrocious, and that he dearly wanted a half-dozen or so shots of firewhiskey. After the wedding - this he remembered more clearly - he'd gone back to Hogwarts to report to Dumbledore what had gone on. Nothing noteworthy, he'd said, "except I WAS VOMITED ON." Dumbledore, for some reason, found that amusing, and he thanked Snape for making him laugh for the first time in weeks.

The Lestrange wedding was one of the only memories, in fact, that he had of the weeks before Voldemort's fall. Things at that time seemed to blend into one another, so that the twenty or so days between the wedding and Hallowe'en seemed to be one very long hour. The routine he'd acquired during those three weeks was with him even today, in some respects, and sometimes he was surprised by the way the smell of his office, first thing on an autumn morning, could bring him back to twenty-one. Even things like the way his tea tasted, when the weather outside was cold and cheerless the way it had been that month, made him think no time had passed at all.

Toward the end of the first war he had made a sort of peace with the idea of everything just ending, very suddenly; he always felt his days, then, were limited. In a detached way it was something of a comfort. The thought that he'd only have to do this for a few more weeks, maybe - it was never more than a month, in his mind - made every day a little easier to abide, and every night when he sat for hours at the table in his rooms near his new office he would wonder if the ambush was upon him already.

The strangest thing of all, though, out of all the years in which he'd been a part of the war, was the feeling he'd woken to on that first morning of November. He knew something had happened - could feel it, he'd woken to it just past midnight - and he found himself greeted with an unfamiliar feeling that was halfway between celebration and a hollow sort of mourning.

Bellatrix's talking had wandered away from her wedding; now she was talking about Regulus Black. Snape tuned her out. Regulus Black had been his friend, and in fact Regulus had talked to him about defecting (eight months before Snape himself finally did so); only forty-eight hours after this conversation, Evan Rosier had killed Regulus. It had been a Combustion Curse, to "send a message." Evan Rosier, too, had been his friend; he remembered the afternoon the Order came for Rosier, because he'd only left Rosier's flat thirty minutes before Mad-Eye Moody showed up.

He wanted her to stop talking. "Bellatrix," he said, a little too sharply. She looked at him.

"Yes, love?"

"I need to know what the Dark Lord is planning," he said. "How are the others getting out of Azkaban?"

Bellatrix smiled at him a little. "All in good time, Severus," she said. "All shall be revealed."

This didn't calm him.

He looked at her then and saw, suddenly, an image of Potter upstairs, and immediately after that he heard a high, cold laugh in the back of his mind and he could see Bellatrix on the floor of a dark and dusty house. I can find him, Master, she was saying, I ask only for time. And then there were Bellatrix and Narcissa in the kitchen, looking toward the fireplace, and Bellatrix was saying, Oh, but he looks so delicious. At this, he abruptly stopped his prying.

"What?" Bellatrix asked, a smile playing around her lips. "You're looking at me again."

Snape looked down at his teacup. "I was thinking," he said.

"Mm," Bellatrix replied.

39