Even Lovers Drown

An hour of searching for friends in the blood-spattered snow after the battle, and the only thing I find is him. My former rival. Still alive - well, barely. I saw Voldemort strike him with the Serpent Dagger myself, shortly before his well-placed Avada Kedavra ended the second reign of the Dark Lord. Venenum Aguis - one of the most lethal magic-based snake poisons in existence. As deadly as Basilisk venom - just a little slower. I've watched Voldemort milk Nagini and infuse the poison with his magic. We tried it on a captured Auror. It took him hours to die, and got pretty ugly towards the end. So very appropriate a weapon to kill a Parselmouth, especially the damnable traitor before me.

He's lying on his back in the snow, face flushed with fever despite the cold, breathing irregularly. I aim a vicious kick to his side, and the green eyes fly open. I doubt that he can see much, without his glasses and half-delirious, but at least he's awake now. I pause for a second, wand pointed, searching for the most hideous curses in my arsenal to end him with.

Just as I'm about to cast the first volley, a hand closes around my wand arm.

Fuck! Please, not him. Not now!

I whirl round, drawing myself up to my full, unimpressive height, trying to shield the body on the ground from view.

"Father, please! Just leave. Let me deal with him." It comes out far too much like pleading. I should have walked away and left him to the Aguis! But then, Lucius would probably have stumbled across him on his own. Things like that are destined to happen. Destiny is a bitch.

He peers over my shoulder, and then shoves me aside hard enough to send me to my knees in the snow. Helplessly, I watch him kneel beside the dying body and pick it up carefully, cradling it in his arms with a horribly protective air. Then he Disapparates.

I choke down a pathetic sob and follow. There is only one place to go, after all.

~ ~ ~

The master bedroom of the Manor exudes an atmosphere of long disuse and an even longer absence of emotional warmth. It had been almost empty ever since Mother's death, and the cold that has followed the two months it had been used this autumn is icy enough to haunt the room despite the lack of ghost.

He's lit a magical fire in the fireplace, but it's no match for the cold. I lean against the doorframe and watch. It's not so much eavesdropping, really - they're locked into their private little hell so securely it wouldn't change a thing if all of Hogwarts' staff and students were lining the walls of the room.

Father sits on the bedside next to the contorted, shivering body that has been placed on the sheets reverently, and the tension in his back screams through the heavy fabric of his winter robes.

"Were you ever serious?" His voice has an undertone that forces tears to my eyes. No Malfoy should sound like that, ever!

Green eyes focus on him, cold and glazed, like sweets made from one of Severus' most acidic potions.

"Never." The response is so immediate that the intensity alone comes like a blow. I can see how much speaking hurts him in the way his throat threatens to constrict after every word. But he forces them out, precise and hateful.

"Hate you. Always hated you. Only volunteered for that mission" - the word is spat out like the vilest curse he knows - "because I hated nobody else enough to wish it on them." He coughs and convulses in pain, but forces himself to continue as soon as he's gathered sufficient breath.

"The time I spent with you was the most terrible of my entire life, and I'm glad I'll be dead soon so I won't have to live with the memory of your hands on me!"

The poisonous eyes close, and he lets his head fall to the side. It looks very much like an invitation for a curse, or for a blade to be drawn across that pale, hateful neck, or perhaps just for Father to wrap his hands around that vicious throat and strangle the life out of the bastard. Merlin knows, I want to.

I wait for the tension to erupt into an act of brutal violence, but it doesn't come. Father gets up from the bed, very stiffly, fists clenched tightly enough to carve bloody half-moons into his palms. The Malfoy mask has descended over his features, and it's only because I know him better than anyone that I see the incredible hurt beneath it. He stops before me, and I wonder if he's going to hit me for listening in. But he only grabs my arms, forcing me to look into his frozen face.

"Make sure he dies. Kill him, or leave him to the poison. Just... just make sure he dies!"

The door slams closed behind him, and bloody smears dot my sleeve where his hands have been.

I raise my eyes and stare at the... thing... on the bed. He has rolled onto his side immediately after the door has banged shut, cradling his wounded arm. His eyes are screwed tightly shut in pain as the poison finally overwhelms his self-control. I just hope it hurts as much as it appears to.

Slowly I walk up to the bed, wondering what I could possibly do to him to make up for those words, and come up empty. I've been a vicious bastard all my life, and a Death Eater to boot, but no act I have ever committed was even remotely as cruel as what he did just now. Not even his betrayal.

It wasn't enough that he seduced my father, shared his bed for months and made him trust him, not enough that he just walked away one night and betrayed all of Lucius' secrets to Dumbledore and left us with the fallout. No, he had to spit in his face on top of it. I had sworn to myself I would kill Potter with my own hands for what he did. Now I have the chance.

I grab a handful of hair and cruelly yank his head up. We're both shaking, me with hatred, he with pain.

"Do you know what Voldemort did to him?" I hiss into his ear, twisting my hand until his neck muscles are stretched to the breaking point and he's forced to look into my face. "Nothing. He did nothing at all. He gave him to his Inner Circle for punishment, to do with as they pleased." My voice almost chokes with fury, but I continue anyway. I want him to hear it. "Do you know how many of them were just itching to have proud Lucius Malfoy on his knees before them? Can you imagine what they did, Potter? What they made him do to atone for his betrayal?"

And still, after all that, his first impulse had been to protect the accursed traitor!

I never wanted to make someone suffer so badly in my entire life.

I grab his arms and shake him in sheer frustration, and am rewarded with an inhuman shriek. I look down and realise I've clamped down on the knife wound, which is inflamed badly and is marked with yellow-greenish streaks where the poison has spread through his veins. I pull my fingers away in disgust and let him flop back. He curls into a miserable ball on the black satin sheets, tears spilling over his cheeks, trying to suppress his agonised whimpers.

"Try again, Potter," I order coldly. "I could not hear you."

"Lied to him, Malfoy," he whispers into the pillows so quietly I'm not sure I understand correctly. Then, more clearly, "I lied to him!"

I can't help but stare down at him, too nonplussed to answer. Potter, of all people, is not the type to lie to escape torture. Not even now would I believe that.

"Had to," he whispers, eyes closed and face screwed up in agony. "If he can hate me, he can go on. It's the mourning that kills us." He grimaces, such a bitter expression that it makes my stomach churn. "I could have side-stepped Voldemort's dagger, Malfoy. But what for? There never was a chance!"

He swallows convulsively, and large drops of sweat are forming on his forehead. He shouldn't talk so much, I think distractedly. It'll kill him.

"Want to stop thinking about what I did to him. Want to stop thinking about him." His fingers clench around a corner of the soaked pillow, and he stares, unseeing, at an imaginary point somewhere at the front of my robes. I wonder what he sees there. Or who.

Absent-mindedly I reach down and brush a tendril of wet black hair out of his face.

"You love him." It's a statement, not a question.

The corner of his mouth twists up in a sarcastic smile, filled with self-contempt.

"Pathetic, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"You'll look out for him."

"Yes."

There's an odd calm on his face after this, even as the slow spreading of the poison forces more tears from his eyes. The shivers come more frequently, now.

I draw my wand and carefully put a hand on his chest, just above the heart. It beats a lot faster than it should. He sighs, quietly.

"He must not know."

"No," I agree, as quietly. "He must not."

So well does he know us. Oh no, Father won't be inclined to mourn his dead lover after Potter ripped his pride to shreds and threw his love back into his face. The words will gnaw on him, run through his mind like wildfire whenever he's tempted to give up. And he will hate - we're Malfoys, it's what we do best.

I swore I would kill Potter, with my own hands.

I shouldn't do it. He deserves to suffer for the pain he's inflicted. But then again, perhaps he has, having to break a loved one's heart like that.

Very gently, I touch my wand to his chest and mutter the spell that will stop his heart. A slight tremor, a hitch of breath, and it is over.

He doesn't look peaceful in death, as the cliché goes. Just... empty. I reach out to close his eyes, then decide against it. It would look too much like an act of contrition. For over seven years I dreamed of seeing him dead at my feet. I do not regret this.

Instead, I walk over to the window. Fresh volleys of snowflakes throw themselves against the enchanted glass, obscuring the view beyond. We have to move soon. Soon the Aurors will come, and Dumbledore's Order, and Potter's friends, to root out the last of Voldemort's supporters. They won't find us here. But on some distant warm summer night, or on a quiet, frosty winter's day, we will find them. I will do it because I'm a Malfoy, and a Death Eater, and, of course, a vicious bastard. And Lucius will do it because, to him, each and every one of them will wear Potter's face.

~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~

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