Come Hither

Chapter 16

The Snake Pit

Voldemort stared fixedly at a spot on the floor a few yards from the table. A malevolent smile and a sweet hiss uttered,

"Do join us, Harry."

A debilitating realization zoomed towards Harry, locking his limbs and shattering his chest. It even stopped the pain throbbing in his scar for a moment. Unable to move, stunned beyond anything, he watched as the dozen Death Eaters started peering very generally in his direction.

Voldemort knew he was in this room.

Breath stolen, senses stifled, and heart crush into arrest, Harry remained motionless, barely responsive as emerald shock stared straight at Voldemort's malevolent smile.

There was no hope for him.

Could Voldemort see through Invisibility Cloaks? With Voldemort, Harry couldn't see where he was looking exactly, since he didn't have eyeballs of which to speak.

Voldemort's slits gave an unnatural glint, not that his whole being wasn't unnatural. He raised his wand and hissed lowly, "Accio Invisibility Cloak," in Harry's direction.

Harry's breath caught at the back of his throat.

But nothing happened.

He released a stilted, relieved sigh.

It was short-lived.

Voldemort rose. "Search for him. Do not kill him. Remain seated, Lucius." His merciless, red slits looked down at the figure of Lady Malfoy lying on top of the table. "Dinner, Nagini." Voldemort swept into the depths of the manor with his Death Eaters, some of whom looking back quickly over their shoulders at Narcissa's body on the table with fairly disappointed looks.

Survival instincts overruling the absolute shock of his known presence and his trying to comprehend Voldemort's Parseltongue order at his snake, Harry went off down the corridor, just wanting to get away from all of them, from Voldemort.

He ran down the lavish, cream-painted aisle, past many male portraits bearing the trademark pale complexion, white-blond hair, and smirk. Voldemort and his followers were hot on his heels, and he couldn't move fast since it would alert them of his whereabouts. His breathing was sounding too loud and his body feeling too vulnerable to the smallest of physical forces.

The Death Eaters behind him, one who was particularly passionate, Bellatrix Lestrange - the deranged woman he had seen on the cover of the Daily Prophet in the article of the mass breakout from Azkaban, was firing spell after random spell at anything in front of her. Streaks of blue and red whipped over his head, just over his shoulders, and past his knees as he tried to run soundlessly along the wall of the corridor under his Invisibility Cloak.

Amidst this, countless other Death Eaters were destroying everything in their path - pedestals exploded and doors were blasted off their hinges. Harry ducked through shattering glasses, ceramics, and wood. He turned a corner and ran into a large hallway. Relief flowed over his body at this; there was less chance the Death Eaters' spells would strike him in a bigger space.

He turned around and horror filled him as he saw the cloaked figures spilling into the grand hallway. Some went up the two converging flights of stairs into the higher floors of the manor whilst others flowed toward each side of the hallway, investigating the various doors and just firing randomly, trying to strike him by some chance.

Then Voldemort appeared in the sea of black, the tallest of them, striding briskly but calmly with a face so exquisitely abundant in malevolence that it looked deeply mild, this emphasized by the flat face, snake-like nostrils, and those damning red slits. Harry felt a sharp shard of pain slice through his head as his scar burst in agony at the mere sight of him. Barely suppressing a moan, Harry ran down the grand hallway, trying to decide on entering the most arbitrary door but also fighting the temptation to do so, knowing he would ultimately be cornered and captured if he were confined in the limited space of a room.

As he ran in a crouch into another hallway, his heart skipped a beat when a blue streak flashed past his Invisibility Cloak, close to his ear, almost singeing the heirloom. He was holding the Cloak so tight in his hands to his body that he was nearly tripping on his knees trying to run. He had to make himself as small as possible as he ran in a crouch along the corridor lined with even more paintings, pedestals, and doors. He turned another corner, a wooden splinter flying past him, and ducked down at a passing streak of purple light. He ran and ran, and just like life never prepares one, it didn't do any exception to Harry. His legs locked instantaneously mid-run and his heart swelled out of his chest. Continuously parallel to his panic, desperation, and fear as he ran into corridor after corridor, jumped spell after spell, and ducked flying chunks after flying chunks, had been a more desperate, subconscious hope - to spot an intricately decorated door on the left side of a room - and it stood right in front of him, bearing the carved patterns as had the one he had seen in his dream, though he saw the other side.

Barely believing what he could see and hearing shouted incantations and doors being blasted at random, Harry was propelled by a force forward into the room he hoped was the one his mind had been covertly looking for all along. He barged in and closed the door immediately with shaking hands, muffling the destructive noises outside. He turned around, and just as he had suspected, just as he had desperately wished and hoped - Draco's naked body lay on the green silk bed in the dark room, lit only by the fire burning brightly under the mantle.

Immense relief washed over his whole body at the sight, rendering him motionless for a few seconds before he finally moved towards to the bed. There he was - Draco. He was completely naked, lying down on the bed, the fire casting dancing tongues on his pale, hence supremely reflective legs, and thighs, and arms, and bums. And he wasn't moving. As he inched over to the bed, into the room Draco and Voldemort always used in his dreams, Harry's heartbeat grew increasingly choking with every step forward. He got to the side of the naked figure. Panic overwhelming him, he shook the boy's shoulders. That peaceful, glowing face, due to the fire, was so serene and, amidst this raging battleground, eerily unsettling as well.

"Draco." His voice came out only as a dismal, frightened whisper. It was so strange; he saw this person everyday in school, he just saw him yesterday in the Great Hall, in Hogwarts. And now that person was laying here, somehow teleported to his home. Even though he had known it was true all along, that Draco was pleasing Voldemort, it still made it that much more real and glaring to see him in this setting. This was real. He shook the boy again.

"Draco!" Another timid whisper, hushed by his stilted pulse.

The boy's face moved a little in a half-formed grimace. It was a victorious instance for Harry, and he rejoiced in it for a moment before he heard Bellatrix's psychopathic voice shrieking all along the hallway just beyond their door; she was getting close, along with the other Death Eaters, who were probably tearing down everything in their path. His elation wiped away in one stroke, Harry's eyes widened in panic as he stared almost vacantly at the door.

Instincts overtaking him, Harry turned around, held his arms out wide with his Invisibility Cloak, and jumped onto Draco's naked back. He brought his hands and legs around the pale, unconscious form, and wrapped around him, effectively hugging their bodies together. Cocooned by the Invisibility Cloak and completely invisible, Harry rolled them both off the bed and onto the floor, somewhat smoothing out the sheets of the bed as he did so, landing on the wooden floor with a painful thump, whereupon Harry rolled them over across the room to a spot close to the wall with the fireplace.

Eyes intensely shut, absolute fear and panicked desperation encasing his entire universe, Harry held Draco's compliant, terrifyingly limp body tightly close and listened acutely over his erratic breathing at the roaring noise of exploding furniture and walls. He could barely hear Bellatrix's deranged giggling over the thundering of his heart, but he clearly heard them cut short by Voldemort's cold, high-pitched voice:

"Leave that door to me, Bella."

...Evilly simple - evilly damning - evilly fatal.

The one door Voldemort had to go through was this one. He had been coming straight for this door all along.

Harry clenched his jaw shut, scrunched his eyes shut tighter, and held onto Draco more fiercely as he heard their door being flung open. The excruciating pain in his scar spiked up so much, Harry seized up, tasting bile at the back of his throat, and he barely drew in stuttering breaths with which to blast Draco's neck. There was no sound after the door opened. It wasn't even decimated like the rest. No, Voldemort was exceptional to everything he did; he was an exquisite exception.

Harry could hear the Death Eaters proceeding to shoot random spells at the air in front of them and destroying door after door down the hallway. Then, he heard the heavy clink of boots - it was a stalking sound - it was stalking death. Harry thought he feared Voldemort only a little, but now, that fear was beyond measure. He thought his immense anger and rage at this man would keep that fear at bay, smother it. But now, now that Voldemort himself was walking into the room with that slow, clinking pace, he found he was perilously wrong. Voldemort would be feared. He was feared. Perhaps the fear was so much because he was scared for more than himself but for another as well; perhaps he feared for Draco.

The clinking boots stop moving. There was silence. Silence... Silence... Silence that carried a crushing weight, that made every breath of Harry's sound like clashing cymbals in a quiet funeral, that made every heartbeat feel like another stroke of his signature on his death certificate.

"Draco?" A teasing, singsong voice - a travesty of his merciless, loveless, high-pitched caw.

Draco shifted. Harry pulled him closer into himself, hugged him tighter, and crushed his chest to Draco's back and his jean-clad erection into his naked buttocks. The pain in his scar was slowly killing him. It was a hot nail poignantly piercing into his skull, robbing him of more and more of his consciousness with every throb. He was too scared to whisper to Draco not to move. He was too scared to do anything. He just held on tight, simple terror and a new, foreign, fierce protectiveness waging war against each other inside him.

"Draco?" A sweet, lilting call to doom.

"Reveal yourself, my pretty catamite. You know you deserved your punishment, don't you? Show yourself this instant and I may display some mercy." It wasn't an amused, singsong voice anymore.

Harry felt Draco's breath on his forearm catch; maybe he had woken up, or maybe he was responding to Voldemort's offer of reprieve. Harry held onto Draco more fiercely, feeling betrayed for some reason. He tried to keep his breath as low as possible, tried to keep the both of them as motionless as possible under his Invisibility Cloak. He was shaking all over, vibrating inside the cloak. His eyes were still shut, he couldn't see Voldemort, and he didn't want to, especially when he was sure those scarlet eyes would gleam from the fire. Nevertheless, he couldn't open them even if he wanted to - his scar was throbbing with blinding pain.

"Very well."

And those words, spoken in such a casual tone and volume, elicited more fear than the highest shout from the Astronomy tower by that very same voice - simply evil. He heard the clinking boots heading to the door. Voldemort wasn't even going to search the room. No, he was the Dark Lord. And before Harry caught the door clicking shut, he heard a low hiss,

"Incendio Maximus."

The entire room went up in flames.

***

The giant snake gave its master an obedient, pleased hiss before slowly slithering down the Dark Lord's throne, across the seat, and up onto the tabletop. Lucius glared at the snake from his end of the table as it stalked closer and closer to his wife, who wasn't even granted an audience for her death. Lucius was to sit there and watch as his wife was engulfed by Voldemort's giant snake, in his own home. The snake started to wound itself around her petite body, and Lucius' glare fell and gave way to lowered eyelids and an expression akin to resignation on his face. Lucius dared not to touch the great snake, for it would be tantamount to suicide if he did. As much as he undoubtedly loved his wife, he feared Voldemort and death more, and the Malfoy name wasn't known for its courage. Moreover, Lucius couldn't just run away from his own home - his son Draco was Voldemort's chambers. Thus, there wasn't a possible way out, so he all could do was to stay put and attempt making up for lost recognition.

His wife dying right in front of his eyes, and his son locked in the Dark Lord's chambers, and observing his bleak situation, a small smirk suddenly made itself known on Lucius' lips. He took out his wand from his robes, twirled it in his hands without taking his eyes off the picture atop the table. Then, he pointed it at a cupboard, the doors of which opened and from it, out floated a contraption. The object was slowly directed towards the end of the table and landed soundlessly on it under the meticulous direction of Lucius' hand. He tapped his wand once on the object and his favourite classical music from Wizottini, his favourite tenor, started to fill the air.

Coil after coil, note after note, Lucius remained with a wan smirk and hooded eyes. The music floated over the sound of blasted doors and exploding tiles and pedestals, over the shrill cries of his sister-in-law and the other Death Eaters, and over the stuttered, pathetic, panic-laden utterances of his name from his wife's lips as the giant snake continued to wind around her.

Lucius Abraxas Malfoy accommodated Voldemort in his home - Voldemort lived under his roof; Voldemort raped his son, and now Voldemort was killing his wife slowly; Voldemort had his home and his family; Voldemort had absolutely mastered his life.

Lucius magicked over the wineglass from the table and a bottle of Malfoy wine that had been manufactured by one of his vineyards of the villas he owned that were scattered across Scotland. He poured it and, with a bleak smile, toasted to the snake and its countless coils, just as the head of the snake started ingesting her feet.

Perhaps his wrongdoings had caught up with him finally.

But most certainly, in a snake pit, what goes around comes around.