Requiem

Requiem

If God Will Send His Angels

There are a thousand and one ways and more that a man can be broken, and Vincent Crabbe knows all of them intimately. He learned his lessons well, when Draco Malfoy sold him to the Dark Lord they had once refused to serve. Oh, Vin knows everything that can be done to make a man scream--he has seen men die of nothing more than the telling. Well. He has not seen much of anything lately. He can remember, though, and his dreams are filled with tortures, all of them leading up to that one defining moment, when Voldemort had held the glowing red poker to his eyes, while Draco Malfoy lay in a pool of blood and vomit.

Of course, he did not see anything after that: the delicate nerves that connected his eyes to his brain were irreparably damaged the moment they came in contact with the heat, and though they say that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king in truth there is no land of the blind. But Pansy described it all to him, what happened next, and sometimes he thinks he can remember seeing it, it is all so clear in his mind. Draco Malfoy rising like the sun and becoming a golden falcon that flies like a bullet toward Voldemort's throat, and afterward when all the pieces of Voldemort that are left would fit in a carryout bag at a nice restaurant.

All of his memories come irretrievably back to Draco Malfoy. Vin, and Greg who was his cousin and closest friend and died of fear, spent all their lives in Draco's shadow. They never minded it: never minded being always a second too slow, a heartbeat behind, because Draco never let them mind it. It seemed right that he would always be ahead, because he is the Malfoy heir and they are only younger sons of younger sons of younger sons. And then Draco left forever, and Vin came out of his shadow and into the shadows in which he will spend the rest of his life.

The lives of the blind, the scarred, the ruined, are made of small humiliating moments. Every day Vin starts over--learns the geography of himself, his flat, his neighborhood, his world, the geography of a computer keyboard, the men's bathroom at the Ministry, of a woman's body. He learns everything from scratch every day.

Until Draco Malfoy came back to England, Vin would have said (had said, in fact) that there is no room in the life of a blind man for hatred, for revenge. It was not, in fact, true then, and it is not true now. Vin wants Draco dead as much as anyone. Yet, his job, his livelihood, depends on Draco; in this new harsher England there are few enough jobs for a blind man and a Death Eater's son. Vin oversees (ironic, how it all comes back to sight) the Malfoy Trust--the Malfoy lands and properties, which Draco traded to Lestrange for some tiny sum. Only, of course, by wizarding law he was underage, and Malfoy House itself is entailed, and the current heir having vanished the Ministry had confiscated the lot to hold for Draco's children or, on his death, the next Malfoy. Vin is good at what he does because his father was Lucius Malfoy's steward and he was brought up to be Draco's and to do exactly what he is doing.

Despite all of this he hates Draco and will kill him if he can. He has come here to Hogwarts, a blind man sliding on the ice and using his cane to pick a path where once he would have strode confidently. Ostensibly he is meant to be talking business but today his business is death. Draco's office is the one that once was Vector's--a child leads him but in truth he remembers the way and could have found it on his own--and it is still small and claustrophobic and smells faintly of American cigarettes and more faintly of blood, illness, some vast dark unhappiness. There is a rustle of robes as Draco stands, moves smoothly around the desk, takes the hand Vin offers.

Neither of them says anything for a long moment. Draco breathes slowly, shallowly, as if it hurts him to do even that. The air around him reeks of defeat, pain, and loss. He smells broken the way Greg smelled broken, the kind of broken that happens without torture. Vin realizes that Draco Malfoy is waiting for death and that he will not fight it, but cannot bring himself to say the words. His left hand, still in his pocket, loses its death grip on his wand; he exhales, reaches into his briefcase for the papers that need to be signed.

"I just need you to look these over," he says finally. "Let me know what you think, Professor."