Resurgence of Evil

CHAPTER 17:

I sat down carefully on the edge of the desk, fingering the back of my head, where the wetness of blood stained my fingers. "Thanks," I said, holding up the sword to Harry in a mock-salute.

"How did they get that?" Harry asked, looking at me suspiciously.

I sighed. "They jumped me at Neville's - at the funeral."

"What?!" The shocked outrage startled me.

"Not literally," I said. "They had invisibility cloaks, and forced me to leave. The funeral wasn't disrupted in any way."

"Good," sighed Harry, and then he straightened. "Not that you were jumped, I mean - it's just that - oh, bloody hell . . . "

I laughed a little, and put the sword down again.

"Do you actually know how to use that?" Harry asked curiously.

"Of course," I said. "I wouldn't have the right to carry it if I didn't."

"How does having the right to carry it fit into all that?" he asked, with the tone of a person humoring another's eccentricities.

I shrugged. He'd learn better soon enough. "Here," I said. He took it, but hadn't held it a minute before crying out in surprise as - somehow - he managed to cut a long gash across the back of his hand.

"How-"

"It's a magical sword. It knows when someone is unworthy, or too unskilled, to carry it. So it's warned you. I wouldn't suggest you pick it up again."

"Or?"

"Potter, have I ever given you more than one warning?"

Harry, surprised by the change in subject, fell silent, thinking. "No," he said finally, recalling our years at school, and all the information I'd passed to him.

"Where do you think I learned it from?"

"No second chances, Draco?" Harry asked, gazing levelly at the sword.

"You've just been given a second chance not to touch it." I picked it up again, and said, "Can I floo to the Burrow from here?"

"Yeah." Harry opened a drawer in his desk, and took out a tin, formerly filled with cookies, that held Floo Powder. After waiting for him to activate the Network, I took a pinch and threw it into the fireplace.

I rolled out of the hearth at the Burrow, and saw Hermione and Ron start guiltily. Hermione shoved something in her pocket, and I gave it no more than a glance before determining to pick her pocket as soon as possible. Slight of hand - another unorthodox skill, much like the swordplay I practiced, that had been learnt purely for myself, and in secret, during my years at Hogwarts.

"Hi, Draco," Hermione said, eyes shifting nervously. Abruptly, the object she had been attempting to conceal began to ring. The chime was eerily familiar. Trying to push aside an expression of guilt, Hermione pulled the cell phone out of her pocket with a shaking hand.

"Hello?" she asked, after clearing her throat. "It's for you," she said after a minute, her face a mask.

"Yes?" I asked, taking the phone from her and putting it to my ear.

"Draco."

"What do you want me to call you?" I asked. "You're no longer my father, if you ever were."

"Now, that's much too crass of you, Draco. I never expected such ill-breeding. But you're right. 'Father' would not do. I am the Master. That's what you may call me."

I snorted. "In your dreams."

"I try to have patience, son, but I am quickly becoming tired of these ill-mannered games." The voice was cold, hard, and unyielding. "I've discovered a new trick. Would you like to see?"

There was a faint crackling, and I pulled up my sleeve, quickly gesturing for something sharp. This conversation was running much along the lines of our previous talks, and I knew what was coming. Or so I thought.

I was so centered on preparing to drain the fluid, that I almost didn't hear the faint noise of someone shouting a curse. "Imperio!"

The sudden, warm bliss that enfolded my senses, washing away concern, was much too familiar. Immediately, disbelieving the offered peace, I began to fight. Everything in me, all the experiences of my life, rebelled and refused to believe that such happiness could be possible.

I blinked, sweating. But the curse was gone - obliterated as I brought the force of my will and disbelief against it.

I slammed the phone into the wall, then picked up a chair and brought one of the legs smashing down on the plastic and wires, just to be safe. "Where the hell are all these phones coming from?" I cried, sitting in the chair.

Picking up the plastic, I turned the crushed bits over in my hands. This phone was identical to mine, and the one I'd found in my sweatshirt. Two of the same might be overlooked, but not three. And two of the three had come from the same source.

I lifted my eyes to Hermione. "What do you know?" I snarled, pulling out my wand. Ron's eyes widened and he quickly inserted himself between my wand and his wife.

"Why do you think she knows anything?" he demanded, and for the first time I could see true anger, directed at me, in his eyes. Before, it had always been directed at the Draco Malfoy of the act. Now, it was for the true me, and it hurt like a blow to the gut.

"She's not stupid," I snapped. "I received two of the phones through her. She's the only one of us in a position to know more than I do - and there's every possibility that we're facing a spy, and not the real Hermione."

"Think about it," Ron spat. "You know that Death Eaters can't use the Polyjuice Potion. She is who she is, not a spy!"

Having forgotten that significant fact - for all the changes in my world, none of them had been present for over two weeks - I lowered my wand. Ron took a step in my direction and said, voice low and intent, "Threaten her again, and I will kill you." He turned, and Hermione stepped forward, face pale.

"I know it looks suspicious, but I swear - I found it. On the counter. Right where I'd left yours, actually, when I went to get it in the kitchen two nights ago."

I looked over at the counter, and then glanced back at Hermione. I rubbed a hand over my face. It was barely afternoon, but I'd already been attacked twice and had done some threatening of my own. It was shaping up into a real bang-up day.

I said nothing to her, and merely glanced at Ron before I went to my workroom, and began testing the substance. I started to break it down into it's basic components.

After four days, I found, to my dismay, that the information my father had taunted me with was, in fact, correct.

The "green goo"*, as I'd heard Sirius call it, was essentially magic. I'd thought that it had eaten through the spells on my charmed glass, but it had merely absorbed them. Its corrosiveness was due to the high concentration of magic, twisted to evil intent.

Somehow, the Mark had been manipulated into a biological machine. One that took the DNA in my body, and searched until it found the specific genes that linked me to magic and made me a wizard. Once it discovered the connection, it somehow - I hadn't yet been able to determine the exact process - made that connection manifest physically into pure, raw magic that coursed through my bloodstream.

The Mark acted as an organ that filtered all the magic from my blood, and it was through the Mark that this pure power was tainted and twisted, at the whim of the Dark Lord.

The blending of advanced muggle medicine with magic was what struck me as most odd, after I'd twisted my mind around the idea. My father wanted nothing to do with muggles, convinced that they could contribute nothing to the world. Why, then, would he use muggle medicine and research to formulate such a brilliant magical curse?

I knew that he could use wandless magic, but it was to such a slight degree that it was only truly useful as a parlor trick. My mother had been his superior in that one area. How was it, then, that he could meld medicine and magic?

A horrible thought struck me. Spell-smiths had long since died out. Albus Dumbledore's brother, Aberforth, was the only one known to our time. But if my father had this skill . . . coupled with his flair for Dark Magic, the world faced a threat equal to Voldemort - and greater, if my father's psychotic tendencies held true.

Feeling sick, I barely made my way to the bathroom before throwing up. The symptoms had been increasing, slightly, but this newest revelation foretold such doom that I could no longer hold my iron grip on my body.

Two more days of research, combined with searching for another apartment, yielded no new information but resulted in my finding a decent, six-room apartment a good distance from my former home. After almost a week of steady work, I determined that I needed a break from my deliberations. Taking the dirty red box and shoving it into my pocket, I decided to return to my apartment. It was more than a little dangerous, but I needed several items that were there, and to make arrangements for the rest of my belongings to be moved to a new home.

When I arrived, I found the apartment much as I had left it - I'd been absent for barely two weeks. My broken wards still retained enough power to give the illusion that someone still lived there, and keep muggles out. I picked up a pile of newspapers and opened the door.

The illusion ended here, and the place was mostly a shambles. Quickly, I began working to pack, shrink and transfigure my belongings. After most of a day, I had packed, cleaned (sort of) and informed my landlord that I was canceling my contract. He didn't put up much of a fuss, considering the trouble that had frequently "shown up" at my place, and I paid him enough to satisfy him for the inconvenience.

It took longer, nearly four days, to move into my new apartment and structure my wards accordingly. I used different protections that ran along the same lines as my old ones, and put more layers than I could count up. Each line was based on a different form of lethal attack. No more playing around. I also established several "extended" wards, whose protection would follow me wherever I went, with the reservoir of power centered around and coming from my house.

It took very little convincing, after the altercation between myself and the Weasleys, for them to give up their "obligation" of having me stay at their house. After another day, I had officially changed my residence (again), and was prepared. For what, God only knew. All I knew was that the recent lack of murders, and quiet in the news, was simply the eye of the storm. Only my father, the Dark Lord, knew how long it would last.