Harry Potter and the Forgotten Promise

FORGOTTEN PROMISE

by

Emilia Hail

Chapter Two - Through the woods we plough, forlorn

It was half past three, and Draco Malfoy was helping his mother lay out the cutlery and crockery on the enormous table in the dining hall. Narcissa was sporting a developing bruise on her left cheek just below the eye which, Draco thought wryly, would soon turn into a particularly nice black eye. Evidently his father had been trying to get some that afternoon, and when refused had, as always, resorted to violence, after which Narcissa had probably relented. After all, Draco mused, surely if you were going to be raped, it was better to just be submissive and not get harmed than to put up a fight and get battered first?

Not that she would have put up much of a fight... Narcissa looked a lot older than her modest 39 years; her skin was cold, her complexion pale and gaunt, and her hair lank and dull. Her hands had none of their old strength and her eyes were continually glazed from trying to fight the terrible imperius curse she suffered but, Draco noted sourly, it was her bones that showed her condition most. Malnutrition had prevented her body from absorbing the minerals it badly needed, and a lack of calcium had turned her bones to glass. She broke like a porcelain doll. As a result, she wore baggy clothes and multiple layers should she fall - although that wasn't the only reason. A lack of nutrients had withered her body to a shrivelled frame of a woman almost three times her age, and her paper-like skin was taut around her bones; transparent and as thin as gold-leaf. She was a walking skeleton, and Draco could tell from the sunken dark pits she had for eyes that she was almost completely under her husband's control.

She rarely spoke, and when she did her voice was barely a whisper, and yet it grated on Draco's ears. Her voice sounded contorted and twisted as if someone was stretching her vocal chords, and her lips hardly moved in sync with the husky breathing sounds her throat produced. Draco knew that she never slept. Or at least, if you called a twelve-hour brain-frozen stupor sleeping, then yeah, she slept. Soundly.

After the forty minutes of violent sex; but sex implied mutual consent; she passed into a hypnotised unconscious nightmare with nothing but her son's sobs to prevent her from drifting towards death.

She was a helpless puppet, and Lucius Malfoy was the merciless puppeteer in a web of lust, anger and hatred that embittered Draco more than anything else ever could.

Except, perhaps, for one other thing. The fact that Draco, no matter how much hatred and passionate loathing he felt towards his father, still believed that somewhere inside him there was some good, and that if he believed it hard enough, then that little bit of good; that precious sliver of hope; would obliterate all the other bad, and they could be a family. And despite knowing that there was no good in his father, it was the one thing that Draco thought of every other second, and it kept him from going mad.

At school, life was different. Rather than lock away his feelings, he found it easier to share the pain. Lashing out at other people for a while took his mind off the hellish world he had to return to every few moments he had alone or at home, and it was this that Draco hated most about his life: He was exactly like his father. The whole thing was a vicious cycle, and it was up to him to break it. And he would start by sticking up for his mother.

'Trust me,' rasped Narcissa, penetrating Draco's thoughts and causing him to start. 'Don't stand up to your father - he'll kill you, and you're all I have.'

Draco stared at her. 'H-how...?'

She waved her hand in irritation. 'How doesn't matter,' she wheezed, inhaling heavily. 'What matters is that you listen to me, and promise me that you won't do anything stupid.'

'I... No,' he said finally, holding his mother's hands. 'I won't do anything stupid. I will do what's right...'

'Don't be foolish!' she hissed; and then a remarkable change came over her. Her hands flew to her sides, and her eyes flashed briefly before becoming dull and glazed once more. The tendons in her neck convulsed and contorted; pushing from under her parchment-like skin.

Draco watched in horror as her mouth opened and closed as she gasped for breath, and then he understood that she was trying to speak.

Then, taking him by surprise, her hands grabbed at his robes and dragged him closer towards her. 'Clear...Your...Mind!' she rasped; her neck twisting and her head jerking as she tried vainly to fight the curse that gripped her. Suddenly, she went limp in his arms; her eyelids fluttered shut, and she slumped against his chest. She was not dead - only unconscious. For now, anyway.

At that moment, the grand doors burst open and Lucius Malfoy swept in gracefully. Catching sight of his wife in the arms of his son, he stopped and his eyes widened. 'Oh,' he said softly, and then turned to leave the room.

Draco, staring after his father, felt tears well up in his eyes, and as the doors slammed behind him, openly sobbed into his mother's limp body.

***

'Well?' spluttered Uncle Vernon; his cheeks puffing in and out as he tried to calm himself.

The young woman glared at him under dust-covered eyelashes. 'Sir,' she began; her voice tinny with irritation, 'I must apologise profusely for the mess I have caused and for the distressed states of your wife and son...'

'Apologise profusely?!' Uncle Vernon echoed, and a gob of spit flew across the room and landed on the woman's cheek. 'Mess? Distress?!'

Raising a hand to her face, the woman disgustedly wiped at the spittle that had touched her delicate skin and made a show of rubbing her fingers down her robes to clean them.

She was beautiful, in a plain sort of way, Harry contemplated, even when she was covered in flakes of plaster...

'Quit it, Harry,' the woman growled softly; a playful smile on her lips. 'They didn't make me a professor for nothing!'

It was true - when the regular school lists had arrived in the post just the other day, Harry had scanned the book list to see that one, Inside the Mind of a Metamorphagus - Tips of the Trade, was written by a Professor Nymphadora Tonks.

'I didn't know you'd written a book,' Harry began; suddenly feeling stupid. There wasn't any reason why she shouldn't...

She grinned at him then, and Harry felt his cheeks go hot.

'Nothing to say for yourself, eh?' bellowed Uncle Vernon triumphantly. 'Thought as much. Bloody freak, just like the rest of them at that crackpot school...'

Flicking a strand of now flame-coloured hair out of her eyes, Tonks said waspishly, 'Oh, shut up, Dursley,' and shot an electric-blue cord of what must have been magic from her right index finger.

It struck Uncle Vernon in the chest, and as he began to open his mouth to make a very rude reply, he stared down his nose in horror; piggy eyes widening in fright. The edges of his lips had curled back in on themselves and become enveloped in a peculiar grimace that was almost certainly very painful. From under the bulging skin of Uncle Vernon's upper chin and philtrum the faint outline of the contours of his teeth could be seen, and he began to moan in pain; whimpering and clutching at his face.

'That won't do anything,' Tonks remarked as she nodded to his hands which were now clawing at his face. She was clearly enjoying this moment of torture.

The two piggy eyes in his face were wide with terror, and he began to breathe more heavily through his nose as if he was about to go into shock.

Suddenly Harry could stand it no more. 'Stop it!' he yelled. 'Can't you see you're hurting him? You're as bad as he is!'

A look of surprise on her face, Tonks shrugged nonchalantly before withdrawing her magic.

Uncle Vernon's lips opened with a pop! and the beefy man gasped heavily, clutching at his throat, before slumping on the bed as he tried to catch his breath. The two lips were now bloated and protruding out from his face as if they had had an extra fifty grams of blood pumped into them, and were like purple slugs crawling across his face.

Attractive to some, Harry thought, but definitely not to me. And by the looks of things, not to Aunt Petunia either, who was staring at Tonks as if she was some kind of wicked witch. Which Harry supposed she could be... He couldn't believe she had done something so cruel so willingly. OK, perhaps his uncle had been more than rude, and perhaps Harry had briefly enjoyed watching him get his come-uppance, but what Tonks had done was torture, and she'd been almost disappointed when Harry had made her stop. Harry could smell something fishy, and he wasn't thinking about Uncle Vernon's morning breath. Yes, I smell something fishy too.

From a distant corner of the room came the tiniest voice Harry had ever heard - except, of course, for Moaning Myrtle's. Aunt Petunia crawled slowly like a shy owl out of the nest-like cover of Dudley's duvet and said in a trembling squeak, 'Er, perhaps you'd like some tea...?' When she received a quick glare from Tonks, she withdrew her head into her neck like a tortoise, and as she slowly pushed it out again, ventured, 'Coffee?'

Tonks grinned. 'Black. Two sugars.'

'Right,' Aunt Petunia gulped, and sidled off to the door. 'I'll just go and get it ready, then!'

Uncle Vernon cast a furtive glance around the room. 'Er, I'll come and help you, dear!' he called as he moved to follow her, and then hissed, 'and for God's sake, shut the curtains, Dudley!'

Dudley whimpered, and ran out after his father, but as he glanced back nervously, Tonks blew him a kiss and winked provocatively at him. Dudley yelped, and flew down the stairs, much to the amusement of both Harry and Tonks.

'So!' said Tonks, stretching herself out like a cat on Dudley's bed. 'Your folks. They don't treat you right, do they?'

Harry gave her a sidelong glance. He couldn't help noticing how large her breasts were. 'Um,' he began nervously, licking his lips and trying desperately to ignore the heat growing between his legs. 'They treat me OK, I guess...' What was he saying?

She smiled as if she could read his mind, and moved her arms above her head so that her breasts pushed up against the tight fabric of her robes.

'Look, uh,' Harry continued; his cheeks burning. 'I'm going to, uh, um... I'm going to, uh... go...' and with that, he made a dash for the bathroom; Tonks' tinkling laughter spinning round his head.

As he ran out of Dudley's bedroom, Tonks smiled to herself and gently sat up. Moving her left arm slightly out of her sleeve, she turned her palm over and gazed absently at the black skull that was burnt into the flesh on her wrist.

***