Black Fire

Chapter Two

What it's like to be me

No you don't know what it's like,
When nothing feels all right,
You don't know what it's like,
To be like me...

To be hurt,
To feel lost,
To be left out in the dark,
To be kicked when you're down,
To feel like you've been pushed around,
To be on the edge of breaking down,
And no one's there to save you,
No you don't know what it's like,
Welcome to my life...

- Simple Plan, Welcome to my life

***

After hearing Dumbledore's word Harry had stormed off, not towards his bedroom he would share with Ron, but downstairs towards the kitchen. He was angry, why was Dumbledore talking about Sirius' death for like it he'd only been taken captive? Sirius was dead, Harry knew that, he'd had to realise that before he could even think about living without his godfather, and what was Narcissa Malfoy doing at Grimmauld Place? Hadn't it been her that had set Sirius up in the first place?

Behind him the yells of his friends attempting to restrain him were ringing in his ears, but he did not care. He needed to talk to Dumbledore... He had to ask what was going on... Was Sirius still alive...?

"Harry?" a familiar voice yelled out to him from somewhere bellow. Their hair was long and dark, streaks of bright pink flowing from under heavy layers. "How have you been?" they asked.

"Tonks?" he asked looking at the familiar face. "I - I'm fine..." he stuttered surveying the woman in front of him with great enthusiasm.

"Yes, I've just got back from St. Mungo's. Stupid Lestrange woman, can't even aim a curse right!" she tutted loudly and then waved to the stairs behind Harry. "How have you lot been?" she asked as he heard numerous amounts of pairs of feet on the steps behind him.

The group behind him muttered their replies at different paces. "Well, what are you all doing down here? Molly will do her nut if she finds out that you've tried listening in!" They all exchanged glances at each other as the door to the kitchen and Mrs. Weasley came storming out looking daggers at Fred and George.

"What the hell, do you think you are DOING?!" she bellowed, her eyes popping strangely out of her head. "I trusted you enough to come to the meeting but instead you spy on us and let the children hear as well? Hand them over, NOW!" She held her hand out to receive the other half of the Word Wrangler; it obviously wasn't as one-way as the twins had hoped.

"Look mum, we just thought they ought to know -" Fred said.

"- He was Harry's Godfather mum, he really should -" George continued.

"- And it's not like they heard much -"

"- Harry heard something about Sirius' death and decided that he'd transfigure himself in to a tea pot and waltz right in to the meeting inconspicuously and hear what Dumbledore has to say for himself..."

"I DON'T CARE! THEY ARE STILL CHILDREN YOU TWO AND AS LONG AS THEY ARE THEY WILL NOT KNOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE ORDER!" Mrs. Weasley continued to yell; suddenly they were deafened as Mrs. Black's portrait added to he screams and awoke all the other paintings around her.

Once Mrs. Black's curtains had been drawn again and the other portraits stunned, Mrs. Weasley continued to yell at her sons.

Harry coughed. "Mrs. Weasley, as much as I like the fact that you care about us and everything, we are not children," he sounded calm but as Mrs. Weasley opened her mouth to argue, he cut across her. "Look, I've faced Voldemort more times than anyone else in this God damn place, I chased him to the Philosopher's Stone, I had to fight him to keep your daughter alive in the Chamber of Secrets, I had to watch him murder Cedric and use my blood to come back, and I had to watch his most stupid fucking loyal Death Eater murder the only person close enough to a parent because low and behold... HE KILLED MINE!" by the time he had finished he was screaming in her face, tears falling down his cheeks that had turned pink from anger.

"So don't you dare, call me a fucking child! You don't know what it is like to be me!" Without knowing where he was going, Harry turned on his heel and stormed off, the tears sliding down his cheeks, falling harder and more quickly.

***

The darkness was intoxicating; nothing seemed to penetrate the cold dungeon.

"She's just down here..." The man before him stopped and dared a glance down at his left hand. "He's angry," he whispered.

"What was that My Lord?" the man behind him spoke.

"The Potter boy, he's angry, he's vulnerable, and he would be easily manipulated if he were in this state... I do believe I have a plan..."

He shuffled his feet; this would be it, the one test of where his loyalties truly lay. 'How am I going to get myself out of this one?' he took a deep breath, sighed and turned to face the man he called master, his beetle black eyes shining through his hood. "Master, will we be continuing?"

"Yes, yes, we shall, now keep up this time... I do not wish to keep stopping," he turned on his heel and in a sweep of his black robes he became one with his equally as black backdrop.

***

He had walked straight into the Drawing Room, the curtains that he had help de-doxie the summer before hand were not drawn and moonlight was pouring in to the room. The room had changed considerably since he'd seen it last, an ancient table had been brought in and on top of that sat dangerously high piles of equally ancient books. Behind them, casting moving shadows across the floor, a glowing light flickered and, beyond the light, he could make out a small amount of the Black family tree.

He screamed in frustration, why had he got so angry with Mrs. Weasley? What the hell had she ever done but love him as her own? But he knew he was truly angry with Dumbledore, why had he not said something to him earlier? What the hell was Narcissa Malfoy doing in the Order...?

"Potter, I'm sorry to ruin your frustrated angsty-teenager moment, but I was trying to read before you started bleating on about the Dark Lord downstairs," the horribly familiar drawl echoed inside his head. His anger couldn't help but escalate.

"Malfoy, what the fuck do you think you are doing here?" he asked as he spun around, his green eyes shooting an evil glare of hatred.

It seemed for a moment that the boy before him would lunge at him, threatening to kill him, or at least throw a well plaice hex, but suddenly the ice in his eyes seemed to melt slightly as he erupted into fits of laughter. "You, have no, idea, Potter!"

Harry looked back at him, his frustration subsiding slightly. Why the hell was Malfoy, laughing?

"Okay, who are you and what have you done with the real Malfoy?" Harry was shocked, not only were two of the Malfoy's in the Order, but here was Draco Malfoy laughing at Harry, not in an evil or threatening way but because...

"Potter, you have no idea how strange it is to here you say 'fuck'!" he sighed. "You've completely thrown my concentration off course, thanks a bunch, the story was just getting good as well."

"What's so wrong about me saying 'fuck'?"

He put a bookmark into his page and threw the book 'The Malfoy Code of Conduct' onto the nearest tottering pile of books. "You're too innocent, you hang around with Weasley for God sakes and yet here you are with me, sharing an angst ridden moment..."

Harry looked at the title of the book Draco had just put down near him. "You think your family Code of Conduct is a good story?" he asked.

"Well, no actually, but it has stories about each of our family members in the back, and I was just about to get to the good bit..." he mused, shooting Harry a look of disgust.

"Would that have been your birth?" asked Harry sarcastically.

"Of course," Draco said bluntly truthful.

"You're not serious?" said Harry rudely.

"Yes, what's so bad about that?" Draco sounded hurt, yet it was obvious, the way the light shone behind his frozen eyes that he didn't even have the slightest intention of being offended. "What is it Potter?"

Harry was staring open mouthed at Draco. "It's nothing..." Draco began to open his mouth but Harry cut across him, "Well, actually, it's just, I knew you were vain and all but... well, that's just taking it too far..."

Draco's mouth fell open slightly, sure he'd been called vain before, but Potter was standing in front of him telling him he was worse than vain. He gazed at Harry for a couple of minutes, taking in the way his dark hair fell so naturally un-neat that it was actually appealing, how his right hand had his wand resting gently in his grasp, how his shining green eyes were boring into his own grey ones... oh shit...

"Malfoy, were you just perving at me?" Harry's voice sounded uncomfortably through the long silence.

"No," Draco said frankly. Again an uncomfortable silence followed, Harry watched Draco pull a comfortable leather clad swivel chair around the other side of the antique desk so he was still facing Harry. "I suppose you're wondering why I'm here?"

Harry opened his mouth to tell Malfoy that he'd rather eat his own foot than to ask a Malfoy for information, but curiosity overcame his loathing and he drew a hard wooden chair over from by a cupboard that's shelve were once piled high with dark materials of all shapes and sizes.

"Well?" asked Harry after ten minutes of silence. "Are you going to tell me or not?"

"Patience Potter..." his drawl was back in place as he pulled his wand out of his left boot. He waved it in directing of the table and it flew through the air until the tapestry of the Black family came into clear view. "I don't know whether or not you knew Potter, but your godfather was my mother's cousin."

"Yes, but what has that got to do with this? Your mother shopped Sirius to the Death Eaters, and now Sirius is d..."

"Bloody hell, Potter, you do whine a lot don't you? I already heard you tell Mrs. Weasley that," Harry fell silent at Draco's words. "Look, my father was taken to Azkaban, he's a disgrace to the family name, and it's in my book over there," he waved in the direction to his family Code of Conduct and continued, "that if any Malfoy brings disgrace upon the Malfoy name then said member must be outlawed until such debt to the Malfoy family is repaid. Basically, that means that my father is indebted to myself and my mother.

"My mother has been under the Imperious Curse for the past year, my mother doesn't like being in league with the Dark Lord, she said that He was the reason that the Malfoy and Black name's have been dragged through the mud, but my father had different plans for his only son and his wife. So while I was a good boy and got on with practicing the Dark Arts, my mother began to rebel... I tried to stop him from hurting her, really I did, but my father is the biggest wanker I have ever met, even bigger than Weasley if that truly is possible, but I caught him raping her and I held my wand to him until he stopped and promised to use a more humane force against my mother," he took in a deep breath.

"Malfoy, not to being ruining your story, but why would your father be frightened of a fifteen year old boy?"

"I was fourteen and the only two reasons why my father feared me was firstly because he had taught me the Dark Arts himself, commending me on my quick progress to the same level as many fully grown Death Eaters and, well, he had his back to me... did you not hear me say that he was raping my mum?"

The silence echoed Draco's words, causing Harry to feel ill. He had only met Narcissa Malfoy the once and he suddenly felt angry with himself that he would judge her because of her last name. He opened his mouth and was surprised to find he could not speak.

"It was a rhetorical question, Potter," Draco rasped his voice hoarse from dryness.

***

The kitchen was silent apart from Mrs. Weasley's sobs, "I shouldn't have... but I didn't... I can't believe... I feel so bad..."

"Molly, it wasn't your fault, Harry seemed a little bit tense, so maybe he's just on a bit of a short fuse at the moment, and you can't really blame him for that, Sirius died, he's going to feel lost, he's going to want answers..." Tonks had a comforting arm around the crying woman, though it was obvious, that while some of her words were helping, others were doing more harm than good.

"Mum, don't listen to Harry; he's being a prick," stated Ron.

"Ron!" Hermione scolded, "You can't say that!"

"What?" he asked, "She's my mum Hermione, he can't go around saying things like that to her and he was bang out of order..."

She made a soft hushing noise. "Harry's your friend Ron, it's obvious that he's this way because we haven't been there for him enough, he's losing it because he lost Sirius, and it's the only way I think he knows how to cope..." There were footsteps on the stairs behind the door and as it swung open, Draco Malfoy walked into the kitchen, his eyes capturing the mood of the room instantly and he turned around and beckoned to the shadows.

"You can't stay out there forever you know..." he whispered, he began to walk into the room, gave his mother a kiss on the cheek and pulled a chair over to sit next to her.

Harry walked into the room, his face covered in angry blotches of red which strangely seemed to compromise with the green of his eyes. Ron had given Draco a look of disgust which seemed to have doubled into pure revulsion after realising his best friend had been taking advice from him. He began to open his mouth to scream at him but Hermione whispered something in his ear and he closed it once more.

He moved his head to face to room and looked around the faces in the room, some sympathetic, while others down right livid. "Mrs. Weasley... I..." But what Harry was about to say to her was cut off as a loud crash was heard from somewhere above them, Mrs. Black's yells joining the corruption a few moments later.

***

The dungeons were dark, cold and smelled damp. They had been walking for a good hour. They were alone and with only a small stump of candle left, he wondered if it would last for the remainder of the journey, let alone that of the return.

"My Pretty, where are you?" the man leading him hissed through the darkness. "Come out my dearest..."

"You called master?" she asked, appearing from the shadows to their left, dropping to her knees as she saw his face.

"Do not worry about my Death Eater policies, many of them do not apply to you..."

She slowly got to her feet, brushing the dirt from her pale skin. She was beautiful, her long hair glowing brightly in the dim candle light and her eyes dancing with the illumination. Her figure was casting oddly grotesque shadows over the walls and her shimmering hair was swaying in some unfelt wind.

"Dearest I would like you to meet my most loyal Death Eater; you may find you have much in common..." He waved a skeletal white, right hand out behind him vaguely. "He has stayed loyal to me since I first came to power, and when he was caught, he proclaimed to have turned spy against me, but little did they know that was one of my most cunning plans to date, for he never turned his back on me... never, and he has never truly renounced his devotion to me... not to my most trusted and loyal at least..."

"Well, I am honoured to finally meet the man that will never denounce his dedication to the Dark Lord." She held out a perfectly smooth hand.

He took it in his own and shook it lightly, thinking that if he shook it any harder her hand would break away from her wrist.

"When you start at the school my dearest, he will be teaching you... what subject was it again?" whispered Voldemort.

He turned to his master and muttered something inaudible.

"Very well," the Dark Lord spoke clearly.

The loyalist Death Eater turned back to Lord Voldemort's fiancé, placed his hands on his hooded cloak and pulled it down so the light danced across his pale face. His hair was long and greasy looking; his nose rather large and his eyes were black, hiding many years of painful torment.

"Severus Snape," he spoke loudly, "I will be your Potions Master..."