Promises to Keep

Draco had known for some time that Snape was a halfblood. His father had not believed

in withholding useful information, not when said information could buy his son and heir a bit of extra consideration. It had not meant very much to Draco when he'd found out; pure blood was not so common as it had once been, even in Slytherin House. And Snape was one of them, despite his poor taste in ancestors.

He was learning now that Muggles and wizards were every bit as different as Lord Voldemort had said they were, and that in this place Snape was different too. Since the house was not on the Floo network, Snape shrank Draco's bag of clothes and Apparated them both to London. They landed in weeds as high as Draco's head, and Snape struggled to push his chair across the rutted drive to the little house. It was not exactly what Draco had hoped for. Rigid with embarrassment and nerves, he sat as still as he could, trying to will the chair to glide smoothly instead of slipping and catching. He could hear Snape panting behind him, and feel Snape's resentment washing over him in waves.

He had thought he was inured to humiliation, to the fact of his own helplessness. He had thought the first months he'd spent in hospital, when he could not get himself across the room to the toilet, when he had woken to the sound of his own screams, and begged for a potion to stop the pain--begged for death--had been the worst he would ever experience. But yesterday they had introduced him to the Auror who would serve as his parole officer, and it had been Harry Potter. And today, finally, Snape had come.

They were the first familiar faces he had seen since his injury, and they had registered identical expressions of embarrassment and disgust. It had hurt more than he had expected to see shame from Snape and pity from Potter. If he had to spend the rest of his life this way--it did not bear thinking of.

It took two levitation charms, a great deal of muscle, and a small amount of swearing by Snape, to get the chair in the front door of the house. Although he'd done nothing but sit in it, Draco was exhausted and near tears. Snape pointed out the significant features of the downstairs, which consisted of four rooms: a tiny galley kitchen, a toilet, a smallish sitting room and an even smaller bedroom. It had clearly been remodeled and hastily cleaned for Draco's benefit, and he feigned gratitude as best he could.

Snape did not seem to notice either his insincerity or his agonizing mortification. He was thinner than Draco had ever seen him, his eyes shadowed and his skin sallow from his time in prison. Far worse, he seemed to have lost all of his old vitriol. He had not sneered at Draco once since he'd come to retrieve him. Draco had done this to Snape, although he had not meant to. Snape had had to choose between going to Azkaban and letting Draco die.

"Make yourself something for dinner," Snape said when the tour had been concluded. "I think I'm going to go to bed." He turned and went upstairs, where Draco could not follow him, and Draco was left alone in a kitchen with counters and cupboards he couldn't reach, and a refrigerator full of food he didn't know how to cook. When he was sure that Snape wasn't coming back, he hauled himself out of his wheelchair and into his bed, and this time he did cry.

In the morning Snape made him breakfast and did not offer to help him shower and dress, and Draco remembered why Snape had been his favorite teacher. They sat at the kitchen table--Snape had lowered it to match Draco's chair--and drank black coffee and made lists of things they would need to buy. It seemed almost normal, if Draco could have forgotten that his legs were missing, could have ignored the emptiness that lurked behind Snape's put-on, brittle cheerfulness.

After they'd eaten, Snape went out to bring the motor around. Although Draco pretended to be blasé about it, he was secretly excited: he'd never been in a true Muggle automobile. "What sort is it?" he asked Snape. "Does it use petrol?"

Snape shrugged. "It was my father's," he answered. "It's black."

Draco had been picturing something small and green and speedy, but Snape's motor was not only black, but also bigger than he'd imagined an automobile could be. Even more disappointingly it didn't have any sort of maker's mark on it that he could see. But there were a few tattered stickers still clinging to the rear. Draco wondered if it was Snape or his father who had been fond of Clash, and what it meant, but he decided the question could keep.

"Is it a Roller?" he asked, as Snape helped him into the cavernous interior.

This time Snape smiled. "It began life as a Rover, I think, but at this stage it's being held together mainly by magic. I haven't opened the hood since before you were born."

Draco settled back against the worn upholstery. "Never mind," he said. "I'd like to keep what's left of my illusions, please."

The smile slid away, and Snape looked as grim as ever. "I should think you'd have gotten over that some time ago."

It felt rather like a slap in the face. Draco stared out the window at the streets of London, and hated Snape with all his strength. It would have been better to spend the rest of his life in hospital, or even in Azkaban, than spend it being resented by Snape.

Before they could go shopping, they had to meet with Potter. Draco suspected that this, not house arrest, was meant to be his punishment. Potter appeared to have decided that he was not only crippled but also partially blind and completely deaf. He spoke so slowly and so clearly to Draco, and used such small words, that even Snape noticed and snapped at him to get on with it. The terms of his sentence were simple enough: no wand, no attempts to use magic, no leaving the city unaccompanied or the country at all. And Snape would serve as his keeper, in more ways than one.

What made it especially unbearable was that Potter had survived the war entirely intact, and grown into exactly the type of person Draco found most attractive, all slender muscle and green-eyed intensity. Draco was gloomily aware that he might never get laid again. It did not make Potter's smug righteousness any pleasanter; he seemed to believe that Draco in particular and the Malfoys in general had gotten what they deserved.

Afterward--agony added to agony--Snape and Draco bought groceries and a tin opener and a cooking box that Snape said was Merlin's gift to Muggle housewives. Neither of them could manage much in the way of optimism, and when they got back to Spinner's End--Draco could not bring himself to call it home--Snape carried in the shopping and vanished upstairs again.

Draco bludgeoned open two of the tins--the opener was harder to operate than it looked, but he hated to ask for help--and sat at the table to eat dinner. Snape's kitchen was disconcertingly tidy, except for the splatters from the pasta he'd just opened, and the newspaper he'd spilled over the tabletop. It was nothing at like Malfoy Manor, nothing like Hogwarts. And Draco, who'd had snobbery bred into his bones, hated it.

He left his dishes on the table, a small rebellion against Snape's order, and wheeled himself into the sitting room. It was very small, and every inch of space was lined with shelves of books, or stacks of books. Despite himself, he was tempted. Slipping out of his chair and hoping Snape would not come down and see him on the floor, he pulled himself closer to the nearest pile. There were potions books from Snape's office at Hogwarts mixed in with Muggle texts and novels. Some of the books were ancient and probably priceless; others were new, with uncut pages. He chose a dozen from the surrounding stacks and the shelves within reach, and heaped them on the seat of his chair.

Most of what Potter had said to him that morning had been utter crap, which didn't especially surprise him--but Potter had said something that resonated. He had said that Draco needed a job--worse, an occupation. While no one in Draco's family had ever been employed, he wondered if a job wouldn't be preferable to spending his life trapped in the world's smallest house with a man who wished he was dead. Unfortunately Snape's collection seemed to be heavy on writers with long Russian names and light on books on career counseling. Draco restacked them as neatly as he could, so that Snape wouldn't be able to tell at a glance some were missing, and pushed the chair into his bedroom.

There was nothing in it but the bed and a wardrobe--not that there was room for any more furniture--and the plastic bag of clothes Draco had brought with him from the hospital, most of which were probably from Muggle charity shops. He should unpack, or read one of the books he'd acquired. Instead he hauled himself onto his bed and flopped against the pillow with a sigh.

He couldn't stop thinking about Potter, which was a real problem. It was one thing to hate Potter, or envy him--Potter was a hero and not an outcast, Potter still had his legs--no one could blame Draco. But lust was something else again. He knew that if they'd been in his place, neither his father nor Snape would have been thinking about the green of Potter's eyes against his black shirt, or the strong capable curve of his wrist. Draco's hand had slipped down onto his crotch, and he drew it away reluctantly. Not with Snape upstairs, and not when all he could picture was Harry Potter. Not tonight, or ever. That part of his life was over, anyway, and he knew it.