Total Eclipse of the Heart

Chapter 2

Draco Malfoy chuckled to himself as he leaned back against the wall and took out his own pack of cigarettes, lighting one anew. He had been surprised to note that he and the Weaselette smoked the same kind of Muggle fags. But then again, he had always been a believer in the occurrence of improbable events. A Weasley who endorsed in something of quality could only be an ironic accident, a twist of fate meant to taunt him with its oddity.

Puffing languidly out of his fag, Draco took out his expensive pocket watch and checked the time. Fifteen minutes until his contact was scheduled to arrive here, from Hogsmeade, by special portkey. Thankfully, the Weaselette had left before he had been forced to Stupefy and Obliviate her. His dealings were his own business and he had no need for nosy Weasleys interfering in his carefully orchestrated plans, which, if he executed properly, would preserve the Malfoy fortune and the Malfoy name.

He sighed, taking another drag and exhaling it slowly through his nostrils, a futile attempt to distract himself from the grim thoughts that swam through his head. Everything, his home, his fortune, his name, not to mention the lives of his mother and himself lay in the precarious balance of the blasted war between good and evil. And he, unwilling participant, had been dragged right into the middle of it. His hands had been tied even before he thought to utter a word of protest, and now he was stuck in a puppet-play rivalry whose connotations were all too real. After all, he couldn't exactly say "no" to Lord Voldemort, but he also couldn't find it in himself to whole-heartedly join a cause whose advantages he did not see. Draco's sole concern happened to be the preservation of his way of life, which included expensive clothes, summer sojourns in Switzerland and exquisite caviar dishes. He cared naught for Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, lieutenants of good and evil warring with one another. They could do so for all eternity just so long as they left him out of their strife.

For the millionth time in two years, he once again thanked his bastardly father for implicating the family in a war where both sides stood to lose tremendously before they reached any sort of resolution. It left him trapped between a rock and a hard place: to continue as the Dark Lord's personal trust fund or to lose his life on the grounds of disobedience. The non-choice held little other benefits besides life, and it trampled on everything he had been raised to believe about himself and the Malfoy name. To say that it disgusted him completely would have been a crass understatement.

In the two years since he had stepped into the heavy shoes of his father, his most reoccurring thought was that life was a zero-sum game and that that he was paying now for fifteen years of unperturbed existence in the lap of all luxury. He was perfectly aware that in the big books of life he deserved no abstraction from this only rule, but the thought still made him shiver with cold anger at its injustice. Draco desperately wished that he would have been given the chance to pay for his sins another way.

Now, he was Voldemort's personal goblin and the Malfoy family fortune the Dark Lord's personal Gringotts, from where he freely subsidized his various plights towards bringing the Wizarding World into chaos. Never mind the fact that in seven years, since he had made his reappearance on the stage of the Wizarding World, he had not once been successful in gaining back the power he had possessed in the seventeen years previous to his demise. How much longer he needed until he understood that his resurrection was doomed to failure, Draco couldn't predict. Those maniacal power-hungry tyrant types were always mentally unstable.

Underneath his robes, the skin of his left forearm prickled persistently, but he refused to bring forth his right hand to ease the discomfort. Instead, he continued to nonchalantly lean against the wall, practicing the schooling of his features into an iron mask unreflective of his true feelings. He was thankful to Severus Snape for teaching him the art of Occlumency during the summer of his Fifth year. In the two years since he had assumed the responsibilities of his father, it had proved to be a crucial skill that had saved his life on numerous occasions.

Ever since he had been indicted into Death Eater ranks, he had worked relentlessly at perfecting the art of the double-layered mask, which prevented his true emotions from seeping out, as well as insulated his thoughts from anyone tempted to rummage through his head without his permission. Thankfully, the Dark Lord had assumed that as a son of Lucius his loyalty did not need to be tested through the customary rape of his mental faculties. He had been forced to prove his allegiance in other... more applicable ways.

Against his back, the wall was cold, and Draco shuddered with the memories of the previous summers. He allowed himself the tortures of guilt and shame before slamming the door shut on the sights and smells and sounds that threatened to ruin his precarious internal balance. There would be time to savour the implications of his actions another time, when the stakes did not count so highly on his cool judgement and presence of spirit.

Following the summer of his Sixth year, Draco had, however, pleaded with the Dark Lord for minimal involvement in active duties, coating his repulsion in the argument that Aurors had been watching the Malfoys since the imprisonment of his father as a Death Eater. It was nothing but the ultimate truth, as the Ministry's Aurors had been constantly monitoring the visitors coming in and going out of Malfoy Manor, as well as the correspondences of the remaining family members. One wrong move on the behalf of himself or his mother and they would be on their way to Azkaban faster than they could say "Lord Voldemort".

And so, he had been reassigned to the passive tasks of espionage and information collection despite being an "elite" in the Dark Lord's macabre army. The tyrant's inner circle, to which Draco held an unwilling fulltime membership, enthralled themselves with gruesome displays of power through violence. If the summer's activities had been a foreshadowing, they were not about to lessen in coming future. Draco had put himself out of commission before he had enough material to craft himself a never-ending stream of nightmares to plague his dreams.

He was eternally thankful that the threat of the Malfoy fortune falling into public hands had successfully persuaded the Dark Lord into assigning him tasks which would leave no tangible evidence of his involvement. Since the beginning of his final year at Hogwarts he had not even been Summoned to the usual meetings, so dire was his Lord's wishes to keep him safe. The situation, however, did nothing for the Malfoy name, or for his ability to make his own choices. If anything, it restrained him even more, as he knew that both sides would watch his every move for an indication of wavering loyalty.

It was in this manner that he found himself playing both sides against the middle, in a most dangerous gamble for the salvation of his family. The Dark Lord wanted to extend his ears in the heart of Dumbledore's stronghold and had hence delegated Draco to report on the activities of Dumbledore's Army. Placing an informant amongst the student body had been a strategic moment of ingenuity, as his other most trusted spy did not have the necessary social connections to inform him of student activities. History had proven, repeatedly, that young adults were a force to be reckoned with, as they had no time to appreciate the meaning of attachments and were rather drowned in their impulses to revolt against the norm and shape the world into what they believed was the "right image". With him amongst the student body, and Snape amongst the staff, the Dark Lord had two pairs of eyes at Hogwarts and hence a full preview of the preparations of his enemies.

Draco had never doubted that Lord Voldemort was a brilliant strategist. If anything, two years of working in his elite circle had only proven that fact repeatedly, as the man had shown an almost innate ability to sense the undercurrents flowing through his Dark Army. He showed an almost prophetic capability to prevent uprisings within his own ranks. In short, he ruled with an iron fist that Draco hoped to never encounter head on. Fear was a wonderful tool at the disposition of a ruler and the Dark Lord had its many usages down to an art. One wrong move and death would be a mercy denied to Draco. He had seen with his own eyes the absolute meaning of torture.

As for the Side of Light, Draco had decided to remain uninvolved, entrusting to Snape the task of quieting Dumbledore's suspicion of his involvement in any dark affairs. He had dangled the promise of information before the eyes of a man who feasted upon it, knowing that Snape would not refuse a chance for a pair of ears within the Dark Lord's elite circle. As a son of Lucius Malfoy, right hand of Voldemort, Draco had a reserved seat at the table of elites while Severus Snape was still working his way up through the ranks and proving his worth. It was, Draco observed cynically, the only time when his lineage had actually been an asset rather than a disadvantage. If he were to consider the paradoxical situation in which he found himself, he would perhaps reconsider, but for now he only had the side of the Dark Lord to contend with.

A war on two fronts was never a good idea unless one had the arsenal to permit such a luxury. As one person, Draco could not afford it and held no illusions about the infinity of ways in which he could find himself screaming for his death. As of yet, he had not made up his mind which side could inflict more damage. The arrangement with professor Snape was hence most convenient and mutually beneficial. Draco fell off the radar of Dumbledore's Army, and Snape went above and beyond his call of duty for the aforementioned. Although he and the Potions Master had never explicitly discussed their individual situations, intricate word plays had communicated their agreement clearly enough. As far as Draco was concerned, Snape had held up his part of the deal, considering that over the summer he had been informed of the staff's decision to name him Head Boy. There would have been no way that Dumbledore would have appointed a Death Eater for that position, even though the criterion was based on grades and Draco was by far the smartest boy in Seventh year.

As his thoughts reached full circle, he again found himself shuddering with cold terror. He couldn't bear to think of the role that he had undertaken, as the agent of a double agent with a secret agenda of his own. Sometimes he wondered if that moment of lucidity back in Fifth year had not actually been the final dip into insanity, tempting him to bite off more than he could chew. As of yet he had no way of knowing, but judging by the fact that he was still alive, it was an indication that the decision couldn't have been all that bad.

He took a moment to compose his shattered mental mask, and reminded himself that he had had no choice but to fill in for his currently-imprisoned father. Naturally, he had never been forced to engage in such a dangerous gamble either, but unlike his father Draco was not blinded by the glamorous vision of the world advertised by the Dark Lord. There was something inherently foolish about trusting a man who had lacked a physical body for fourteen years and who was obsessed with the conquest of the world. Draco had taken a page out of the Muggles' book and had engaged in a little bit of contingency planning by playing this risqué game of deception. As a Malfoy, he knew better than to put all his eggs into one basket.

As a matter of fact, he had no intention of putting the majority of his figurative "eggs" into any one basket. The side of Harry Potter was in no way better than the side of the Dark Lord. While one tried to dominate the world through the suppression of basic human rights and freedoms, the other was simply more cunning and tried to trick the world into buying its version of liberality and equality while it operated the show from behind the scenes. During his many sleepless nights Draco often reasoned that perhaps his father had been right in choosing the Dark Lord over Dumbledore. At least with the former, one could expect open warfare and the threat of unimaginable torture hanging above one's head at the littlest mistake. With the latter, however, there were no accurate predictions to be made about the punishments that came with failure. In Draco's opinion advocates of equality and liberty were just as dangerous, if not more so than maniacal power-hungry tyrants. At least with the tyrant you always knew to expect insanity.

His cigarette extinguished, he took another look at his watch. It was time. He moved away from the wall, straightening his robes and brushing off invisible dust particles. A familiar cracking noise to his left indicated that his guest had arrived. Fixing his mask in place, Draco willed his mind empty of all thoughts and worries and felt the muscles in his face relax into a blank expression. Whomever Voldemort had sent, he or she was bound to be part of the same circle of elites. The Dark Lord might be a maniac, but he was not a fool. He knew that Draco was not his father and hence sought to account for the unpredictability of that fact.

Not once in the two years since he had joined The Cause had Draco been in the presence of a less-powerful associate. Voldemort was not giving him the chance to use his magical or persuasive powers to foil his plans in any way. It was sort of like having one's hands tied together without any bindings. Draco was perfectly aware that at his slightest wrong move the guillotine of consequence would fly down to sever his head from his body. He secretly hoped that he could come back as a ghost when it happened.

"Young Mr. Malfoy," the black-hooded figure hissed at him. Draco could feel the hair on his back rise in repulsion.

"Mulciber," he acknowledged with a nod of his head. The trick to this whole confrontation was keeping his calm and acting in the same manner that had him labelled by all of Hogwarts staff as a Magnificent Spoiled Bastard. He was perfectly aware that this visit was both a call to duty but also an inspection meant to reconfirm his personal loyalty and commitment to the Dark Lord. It had been quite a while since he had renewed their connection.

"Our Lord sends you greetings and hopes that all is finding you well," Mulciber grunted, the customary phrase spoken as greeting between all the sons of Voldemort.

"All is well my brother. I trust our Lord is also well," he uttered back the phrase, stifling the desire to throw up.

"He sends you a message," Mulciber began, not wasting any time with other formalities. The portkey was timed to take him back in seven minutes, before the wards of Hogwarts scanned the grounds for intruders again. It had taken the Dark Lord two years to finally discover how to trick the Security spells in order to contact his spies, and he still had not found a counter-spell against the Apparition Ban. Timed portkeys between Security scans were the best that he had come up with. Draco was thankful for his slow progress, as it meant that Hogwarts was for the moment a Dark-Lord-Free zone.

"Severus Snape is not to be trusted any longer," Mulciber continued, drawing Draco's attention back to the issues at hand. "You are to watch him and report to our Lord if anything of significance takes place," the man before him instructed in his deep voice.

The message was short, sweet and to the point. The Dark Lord was not a man to waste words uselessly when there was important business to be done. This alerted Draco to the seriousness of the issue. Privately, he entertained an image of him flogging Severus Snape for allowing himself to raise suspicion. It wasn't just his snarky, greasy hide that was on the line should he be subjected to one of Lord Voldemort's favourite games of torture.

He felt his stomach constrict painfully and a wave of nausea washed over him. He was now to be the double agent of the double agent with his own secret agenda. He wondered briefly what crimes he had committed in his previous life to deserve reincarnation instead of eternal torture. He also wondered how he was going to save his life and the life of his mother now. He had withheld information about Snape's double agent nature ever since he was indicted into their ranks. Now he was asked to report on it. If he didn't report on it, and Snape did something very obvious against the Dark Lord then he too would fall under suspicion. If he reported on it, and Snape was punished for it, he would have all of Dumbledore's Army hunting for his head. Not to mention that the whole school would find out he was part of Voldemort's fan club. He would be expelled, and without the Hogwarts credentials he would truly be at the mercy of the Dark Lord, committing unspeakable acts against innocents as part of his lap dog routine. The guillotine above his head shuddered precariously. Draco suppressed a shiver as he struggled to regain his internal composure.

"You are shocked," Mulciber continued, misinterpreting his silence for surprise. Thank goodness for stupid servants. Stupid, but fiercely loyal and deeply deadly, Draco reminded himself silently, while pondering his next move. He ardently hoped that Mulciber would continue, giving him footing for an argument that would not expose his motives. "He was after all your long-time mentor and is your current Head of House," he continued.

There it was! The escape Draco had been waiting for. He jumped on it faster than a drowning man on an extended hand. "He might be suspecting me. And if he is the traitor that our Lord suspects he is..." he allowed the sentence to hang ominously in the air.

"Severus Snape was always a sneaky snake. Conniving with his forked tongue. Which is why the Dark Lord is sending you this warning, young Malfoy."

"My thanks to his Lordship," Draco muttered, displaying his best expression of worry and gratitude. "If Dumbledore were to suspect, the Ministry would seize all of the family fortune," he added. This situation needed to be exploited for all that it was worth.

"You must not give them reason to suspect you. The Dark Lord urges you to drop your contact to the brief minimum. Only if you have proof of his betrayal or in the case of an emergency are you to contact him," Mulciber stressed.

Inside, Draco was jumping for joy. He tried, as inconspicuously as possible to let out the breath that he had been holding. And then he went back to being the loyal servant. "But when our Lord calls, I must answer. My powers are needed to aid the cause," Draco insisted. All good servants were reluctant to leave their masters.

"He will send you special missive when he needs you," Mulciber informed him.

"Very well. My fireplace is monitored, however. And so is the Owlery, though I'm sure that letters from my own mother are not screened," Draco supplied. Excellent servants were always eager to help maintain contact with their masters when sent away.

"As Head Boy you have special privileges. You will know when you are needed."

"Very well," he acknowledged.

"The Dark Lord also requests more funds. And a safe house for Bellatrix Lestrange who has been sighted by the Aurors during a task."

Now, he had to fight hard not to grind his teeth. Naturally the bastard wanted more money. He had been expanding his operations as of late, leading Draco to believe that it wouldn't be long before open warfare would strike the Wizarding World. Both sides had taken two long years to prepare their attacks, and like hounds they were now waiting to tear the other to bits. Enough hate had accumulated on either side for the conflict to explode into violent bloodshed. He just hoped that in the midst of their anger they would forget him and his family.

As for Bellatrix, the bitch was too much into showing off her powers to be trusted with anything important. But because she panted according to the tune set by Voldemort's fanfare, he kept her around to lick the grind off his boots. He was always in need of a peanut gallery to "ooh" and "aah" at his every decision and display of power. And naturally it was the Malfoy name who had to bear the risk and brunt of the work required in protecting her. A waste of oxygen that woman was, and now he had to think of how to save her attention-loving hide.

"Very well. My mother can give our Lord access to the necessary money. It will look suspicious if I Apparate to Gringotts and transfer the necessary galleons out of my accounts. I've no doubt that Dumbledore is watching me like a hawk. My mother, however, will attract less attention. She is a notorious spendthrift," Draco decided in his best authoritative voice. When swimming with the sharks, you had to be a shark to avoid being eaten. "As for Bellatrix, my mother can smuggle her on a Muggle boat headed for France. From there she can catch a Muggle train to Switzerland. We have a chateau in the Alps that is Unplottable. She can wait there until this entire affair blows over," Draco decided.

Considering Bellatrix's knack for showing off and getting into trouble, the chateau in Switzerland was the most expendable of Malfoy property that they owned. The deed was strictly in his father's name, unlike the rest of the assets which he had shared with his mother. It was hence the least traceable to the remaining Malfoy family members. The Ministry would assume that since Lucius' capture, all of the assets strictly in his name were passed onto the Dark Lord, and not onto his existing family. It was a fair gamble given the odds against him.

"Very well. I shall inform our Lord," Mulciber grunted. "Farewell my brother."

"May your enemies be blind to your passing," Draco uttered the customary ending phrase, internally disgusted at the customs practiced by the Dark Lord's legions, and watched impassively as Mulciber disappeared back through the portkey.

Then, deep in thought, he lit another cigarette. Sleep was a long time coming that night.