Snakes and Lions

The Dark Mark

Harry heard the thump of Draco landing before he had identified the slight swish of the cloak. Draco dropped the invisibility cloak all at once, and let his broom clatter to the floor.

"Are you satisfied with my performance?" Draco asked. There was an edge to the tone. Harry looked up at him, and was surprised to note that Draco's jaw was clenched. Harry hoped he didn't feel too humiliated by the exercise.

"Quite," Harry said, deliberately nudging himself back into the relaxation induced by the cognac. "You were clever, resourceful, and subtle. It's quite a twist, though, to see you play nice to a lost little girl."

Draco visibly flinched. "And what would you know about me and little girls, Potter?" he growled.

"Huh?"

"I have two cousins near that age. I like them. That is -- they're witches, of course, but that young, it hardly matters."

Draco sat down and pulled his knees up to his chest. He suddenly looked utterly miserable.

"You all right?"

"No, I'm not!" Draco yelled. His eyes widened at the noise. "Sorry."

Harry put down his goblet and scooted over so he was sitting across from Draco. "Want to talk about it?"

Draco shook his head, then laid one cheek down on his knees, so Harry could no longer see his face. Harry carefully repressed the urge to touch Draco, or attempt to talk to him. Instead, he reached over to pick up his cognac and resumed drinking it. From where he sat, he could see a stretch of cerulean blue sky, and pieces of fluffy white clouds floating dizzily to the east. The sunlight slanted up now. He realized he was quite drunk, but he was still enjoying it. He decided he would stop drinking at sunset, so they could fly back not too far into full dark.

"Remember how I was gone, Halloween weekend?" Draco asked. Harry remembered. There had been a Death Eater attack on a small Welsh village Halloween night; he had wondered at the time if the missing Malfoy had participated. Over the last months, Draco had been so diffident about the Death Eaters that Harry had decided he had not.

"I was at the attack," Draco continued. "Not officially, but Father wanted me there. For training, he said. To see how I conducted myself in a 'more chaotic environment.'"

Harry swallowed. He found himself unable to move or speak. He'd heard some details from that attack -- it had been a horrible one.

"It was fine, at first," Draco said. "We had this lot of fat shopkeepers who'd been at some sort of merchants' meeting, and we tormented them. They were shapeless men in shapeless grey clothes, and stout women in skirts too stiff to fall down, even if you spun them feet up. We made them do things, and hurt them and told them what we would burn -- no burning, yet, as that would attract attention. Then their guards came with their silly uniforms and useless weapons, and they were great fun to humiliate, and their humiliation made it more exciting to hurt the others."

Draco was speaking very clearly and rapidly, now. He had raised his head, but was looking far beyond Harry. His cheeks were flushed pink, and his breathing quick and shallow. Harry was frozen in horrified fascination. How could something so terrible make Draco look so sparkling and perfect?

Draco shuddered. His eyes shut and tightened that way, and he turned his face down again.

"Father and I chased down a family. One of the merchant women had fled to a house, and tried to get her children into a car and away. He let them get out of the main fight, then stopped the car and took them out. Father killed her. He killed the two boys and gave me the girl to rape.

"I might have been able to, if she was older. She was a child, eleven at the most, with golden curls like cousin Marcella and crying so hard for her mother that she scarcely noticed what I was doing to her, except when it hurt. I was terrified Father would kill me -- he'd gone quite blood-mad -- so I was trying to do her, and all the time whispering that I was sorry. I've never apologized to a Muggle, before or since, but it was so awful. I couldn't get it up, and he would notice, and then he cast the Imperius Curse on me, and after that it was blissfully easy."

Harry remembered the Imperius Curse, and how it always seemed it would be so nice, if he ever gave in to it. Draco pressed his face into his knees and was silent for several minutes. Harry watched his shoulders rise and fall in forced deep breaths. Eventually, Draco turned his head to one side and spoke again, his voice unusually high and strained.

"When it was over, he snapped her neck. I don't know if he handed me the girl just because she was there, or because she looked like Marcella, and he suspected I might be swayed by that. I love Desiree and Marcella, and he knows I do." Draco said the last a bit defiantly, as if Harry might think less of him for loving his cousins. His eyes were pink when he looked up. "They are eight and ten, too young to be competitive with in any way, they follow me about and do everything I tell them, and think that I am perfect, and everything I do, or say, or like, is perfect." Draco practically spat the last word.

"What more could you ask for?" Harry said. He tried to speak lightly, but his voice squeaked like a child's. He swallowed the rest of his drink, forgetting it was alcohol until it hit his throat, then coughing embarrassingly.

"Well?" Draco said angrily, after Harry had finished choking. "Go on."

"With what?"

"Lay into me."

"Why?"

Draco stared unbelievingly at Harry. Harry shrugged.

"I wouldn't have cooperated. On the other hand, I wouldn't be expected to. And I don't see that there's much of a difference between being forced to rape someone and being raped. I mean, technically, there's not, is there?"

"Don't make me an innocent, Potter. I knew perfectly well what can go on at these things. Torturing her some other way wouldn't have been any better, either. I just -- I didn't expect it to be like that. I thought there'd be a ... a bit of a fight. I'd have managed better if she'd been bigger than me -- someone who'd bite and kick and think she ought to be able to get away."

"But they're Muggles," Harry said flatly. "You know they don't really have a chance."

Draco nodded.

"I don't want anything more to do with it," he said.

Harry, with a sense of relief, nodded. He still felt rather ill at the account, but it was reassuring to see that Draco seemed to, as well.

"It's been pleasant to let you convince me that's reasonable -- from what you say, and how Father behaves now, I can say that I believe they will lose, rather than having to think about being revolted by it all. I mean, what purpose could it possibly serve to torture them? And raping her? Normally, he wouldn't want me to touch a Muggle girl, but it's okay if he kills her afterwards? I don't think they're even terrorizing anybody as much as repelling them."

"You still say you'll be a Death Eater, though," Harry pointed out.

Draco, who had started to relax, pulled his knees in tighter. "I'm not likely to get out of it, am I?" he asked. Abruptly, he let his legs fall, and rubbed at his forehead. "Last summer, Desiree and Marcella stayed at Malfoy Manor for two weeks. I was showing off how grown up I am -- posing for them, really. I have that marvelous precise pivot that I picked up from Snape -- the one that will make a shoulder cape float like wings if you do it right -- and Marcella picked it up from me. She had me transfigure half her clothing to black and silver -- much to the displeasure of her nurse, who is trying to raise a dazzling little lady -- and followed me about like the extra-junior Death Eater. It was cute. She's charming and sweet, and still cries if her toys break, and here she was in all this billowing black, trying to remember to stand with her arms across her chest, glaring at Desiree, then breaking out in giggles."

"Charming."

"Yeah," Draco went up on his knees to look over the short side wall. Golden light rested on his face and hair. "I'm starting to feel like I wreck everything I touch. Here I am with you, all brave and fierce and honorable, and the best I can think of is to get you drunk and try to talk you into stealing things."

Harry considered this. He did not, he decided, consider himself significantly corrupted by Draco.

"But we've done some marvelous exploring," he pointed out. "And we've both learned more from our schoolwork then we would have alone. And you've got me over being afraid to deal with snakes, which really is one of my more exclusive skills. And we're both better on the pitch -- I've gotten vague invitations from recruiters already, and I suspect you have, as well -- I recognized that blue envelope you got at breakfast, yesterday. I know more about my family, both good and bad, than before, and you know more about Muggles. You even acknowledge the usefulness of some Muggle ideas."

"Such as?"

"Inflatable chairs." Harry laughed. "Ah -- and we've turned the dreaded secret lair of Salazar Slytherin into a clubhouse. I rather like that."

"You would," Draco said, rolling his eyes. "You admire impertinence."

"I've had idiots yelling about my impertinence for so long, I rather had to develop some and revel in it. It was really my only defense. Not being impertinent never helped in the slightest." Harry looked at Draco's cup. "You going to finish that?"

"No. I'd be sick if I tried to drink anything. You want it?"

"It looks like about the right amount." Harry picked up and eyeballed the liquid in the silver goblet, which was difficult to estimate from the top. He took a swallow from it, then looked again, Draco, Harry reckoned, had drunk about half a serving. Harry, thinking back, suspected this was also Draco's first glass. He thought it was his fourth.

Draco frowned at him. "Can you stand up?" he asked.

Harry got to his feet, bumped his head on one of the beams above them, and abruptly sat again. "Yes," he said. "Don't fuss, Draco -- we can't leave for an hour, yet."

"Less. And you won't be in any shape to fly for at least two."

"So?" Harry forced himself to take another swallow, to show he didn't care what Draco thought. Draco looked away. His shoulders lifted in a shrug.

"I want to be back at school," he said.

Harry put down the goblet abruptly. "Oh," he said. "Sorry."

"It's all right. I don't have a good reason why -- I think just talking about all this makes me feel ... something."

"I won't have any more."

"Thanks."

Harry looked at Draco. He wanted to say something reassuring, like "I still like you," or "that sucks," but he wasn't sure how it would sound. The whole story was horrible in more ways that he could catalog. Thinking aloud, he commented:

"I hope you'd had sex before."

"What?!"

Harry blushed. "I mean -- that'd be a horrid first time, wouldn't it?"

"Oh -- yes, I suppose. I've had Pansy a few times -- to see if I could stand her. It wasn't bad, but I don't think I can endure her as a wife. I sort of did it with Blaise, which was rather more fun, perhaps because no one is expecting me to marry him, but then he thought he could get familiar with me. I disabused him of that, well enough, but I haven't been able to go back to normal with him since. I suppose that's another reason I was lonely, last fall. Blaise is low class, but clever. He used to be my refuge when I needed intelligent conversation."

"Who expects you to marry Pansy?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "There are not many suitable pureblood girls available, Potter. I'd been thinking of telling father I won't have any I've met and asking him to send me to Durmstrang for my seventh year, so I can check out the possibilities there, but the Durmstrang students all seemed so impressed with the luxury of Hogwarts that I'm afraid I'd spend all year in some horrid, frigid hovel, whining."

Harry though about this. "I'd miss you," he said finally.

Draco turned away again. "You'll miss me anyway, Harry. Don't expect me to return, next fall, as someone with whom you can still associate in private."

Harry looked at the floor. He couldn't think of anything to say.

"Quiz me on Herbology," Draco asked suddenly, sounding oddly desperate.

Harry nodded. "Er .. what are the, er, principal uses of belladonna?"

Draco scowled. "Killing people, whatever the fucking textbook says."

Harry didn't say anything.

Half-an-hour later, the sky was growing dark. Harry, carefully, stood up to look out to the west. Lines of gold still shown behind purple clouds.

"You still look pretty wobbly," Draco observed.

"Sorry."

"You stopped when I said I wanted to leave early."

Harry shrugged. "Still."

He watched the brilliant gold darken and fade. The town below him was all in shadow, now. "I need to pee."

Draco snickered. "Get it in the guttering, then."

The night was growing cold. Harry followed Draco's advice as quickly as possible.

"Feel any better?" Draco asked, when Harry sat again.

"A bit. Not flying anytime soon, though."

Draco started to chuckle. A familiar burn cut deep into Harry's forehead. He gasped in pain and pressed his hands to his scar.

"Aaaa!"

"Harry?" Draco questioned. "Harry!" He moved forward. As he did so, his eyes widened, focusing beyond Harry's shoulder. "Oh crap!"

One hand still pressed to the searing pain in his forehead, Harry twisted. In the sky over the town's centre, glowing with lurid malice, hung the Dark Mark.