Resurgence of Evil

I dropped the sword and clutched my arm, just above the gash I'd cut to release the fluid. I'd barely gotten the blade out in time, and knew exactly how close I'd come to dying by my mother's hand. I was still surprised that she hadn't stopped me.

I looked up from where I was curled around my bleeding arm. A hand gently touched my hair. "Draco," came the soft voice. I flinched.

"You're bleeding," she said. Her hands took my arm, turning it to look at the gash. "Oh," she said, sadly, when she saw the Mark. Then she looked at me. "You went to the Vault," she said, glancing at the sword. "Did you find what else I left for you?"

I reached my other hand into my pocket, and pulled out the battered red box.

"Yes," she said simply. "Open it."

It was hard using only one hand, but somehow I managed. "Now, put one leaf over the cut," she said.

Trembling, unsure of what she was going to end up doing to me, I took out one leaf. She pulled away. I glanced at her, and she read the question in my eyes. "I don't have the Mark, my son," she said. She revealed the old mark, Voldemort's black brand. "The leaves of a plant that feeds from the River Styx can only kill me."

The plant of Lord Parker's musings was a real plant, that was watered by the flowing River Styx, one of the three rivers the dead were required to cross before entering the afterlife, on another plane. Nourished by otherworldly waters, yet manifest on our plane of existence - this gave Parker's so-called " mors obscura herba" the "death-dark plant", unheard-of power. I felt my eyes widen in astonishment at the revelation.

With surprisingly gentle strength, my mother ripped several strips from the hem of her robes and wrapped them gently around my arm, binding the leaf next to my skin, over the cut. Under the bandages, I felt a shiver of magic. The temporal-freeze spell was broken, the magic powering it absorbed by the green fluid.

"Thank you, Mother," I said quietly, trying to preserve the peace. I had no idea how long her present state of near-sanity would last. Her mind was volatile, likely to morph at any moment.

I reached carefully for the box. The blow caught me behind the ear and I went sprawling, biting my lip to keep from crying out in pain when I landed on my injured arm.

"How dare you bring that here," she snarled. I pushed myself to my hands and knees in time to receive a vicious kick to the ribs that flipped me onto my back. I groped for the box.

My hand felt cool metal.

She advanced on me, and I grasped the hilt of my sword, bringing it up into an en guarde as I struggled to my feet. The box was on the ground between us, it's contents scattered nearby, dangerously close to a still-glowing puddle of the green goo.

She pulled out her wand and the duel began. "Expelliarmus!" she cried, but I managed to dodge and roll at the last second, reaching into my pocket for my wand.

"Annihilate!"

The ground exploded to her left, sending clods of dirt and grass flying. I closed distance quickly, whipping my sword through a quick, offensive foure and attacking with a lunge. She shouted, and blood blossomed in a horizontal line stretching from just under her collarbone across the front of her right arm.

"Crucio!"

I screamed, trying not to drop my wand, trying to work past it, through it - anything. I hurled the sword desperately, forcing my mother to drop her focus on the spell and dodge. I sat up, gasping, and rolled to avoid an incoming Reductor curse. "Stupefy!" I cried, hearing my voice crack and give.

She was lying on the ground, eyes closed, and I carefully walked over to her, kicking her wand out of reach. The bloody cut was long, deep, and visible through the jagged tear in her robes. I saw a silver chain glint in the moonlight, and carefully pulled the necklace free. Attached was a silver coin, and on one side was an image of the Dark Mark. I turned it over. Furor Arma Ministrat. "Madness supplies the weapons," I whispered. Everything became clear.

Moving quickly, I picked up one of the black leaves, putting the other in the box, and dipped it into the green fluid. Quickly, I place d it against the deep gash. It immediately adhered itself to her bloody flesh, and black photosynthetic juices dripped out of the leaf, into her bloodstream.

The mors obscura herba feeds from the river of the dead, which is made from the tears of the damned. The only other substance that could provide sustenance was the blood of the damned.

With a sudden gasp, my mother sat up. I scrambled back, and she looked down at herself. I braced myself for the fury, but it didn't come.

"You've almost killed her," she said simply. I looked at her, my hand straying to the other leaf in my pocket. "But it's not enough. You have to kill me, too."

I didn't say anything.

"Come, Draco," she said, laughing a little. The chuckle dissolved into a gurgling cough, but she still spoke. Mother had always been able to read my silence. "I've been dead to you for months. Surely this changes nothing."

But there were things I had to know, and only my mother could tell me. But how to ask? It is always wise to ask the dead what they want. My mother's voice reverberated back to me across years.

She wasn't dead, but there was no hope for survival. Even now I could see the leaf growing shoots, developing a stem.

"Mother," I asked quietly, "what do you want?"

She smiled at me, the expression brilliant on her worn features. "Death," she replied just as softly, with longing. I remembered our conversation in the Riddle House months ago, and the same longing which her more violent side had expressed.

"Why?" I asked, keeping my voice calm. The other was mortally wounded, but not dead yet.

She sighed. "When Voldemort came to the Manor, I knew there was no hope. The secret was out, you see, and I knew that you'd been caught. I vowed that I wouldn't be taken alive, but it was not so. After your father was captured, the Dark Lord came to me, and I couldn't turn my wand on myself in time." She sighed. "The torture was long, and painful. Somewhere in there, she came to me." A smile worked its way across her features. "She said, to trust her, and she could get us out. I didn't want to, Draco, but she really was insistent," mother sighed, shaking her head with a small smile. "In the end, Voldemort left. To find you, I suppose. He never came back. And then she helped me escape." A small frown appeared. "I insisted that we kill him, though. She didn't really like that, and she made me promise. She said, 'For every Death Eater you kill, you must kill an innocent.' And I agreed, just because I didn't think there would be very many. And I didn't kill them, Draco," she said, her tone that of the earnest child. "She did."

She started to cough, and blood came up.

"Who?" I asked. "Who did you kill?"

"Lucius," she said.

I was taken aback - my time with the Potters and Weasleys had made me readjust my definition of marriage, and the idea of spousal murder repulsed me.

"Draco," she said, smiling at my shock. "My sweet little boy." She was lying on the ground now, and she stretched a hand toward me. I didn't know what to do, and so I crawled over to her carefully, and took her into my arms. "I've always wished that I could see you grow up differently," she said, her hand pressed weakly to my face. "Like the other little boys that I saw playing in Diagon Alley."

I didn't know what to say. She coughed again, and there was blood on her lips. "Quickly now, Draco," she said, her voice commanding. I fumbled in my pocket, searching for the box, and finally pulled it out. The leaf was crumbling, drying out. The temporal spell had been absorbed by the green goo that had touched it, and it was now decaying. "She's going," my mother cried. Her back bent in a spasm, and she coughed harshly. The plant was now six inches tall, growing sturdily from the wound on her chest. "She's going, but she must take me with her! We've been through too much together to abandon each other now!" She was sobbing, coughing blood.

I held out the leaf, and she grabbed it and stuffed it into her mouth. The new leaf shot out roots, grew a stem and sprouted other leaves within minutes, nourished by the hot life-blood pumping out of her. I lowered her to the ground, moving away.

I watched, struck dumb, as her flesh was consumed. Within minutes, two sturdy plants (one slightly smaller than the other) were growing, their roots stretching to plunge into the earth, searching for new sustenance - the otherworldly waters of the River Styx, which flows across the face of the earth, in another time and place.

One sprouted just under the collarbone, the leaves tinged with the acid green of Avada Kedavra. Another, in a cruel parody of the Dark Mark, jutted from the mouth of the skull, its leaves shining with gold veins. One plant for the death of a Death Eater, another for the death of an innocent. Both damned by the choices they had made - and both the same person.

I turned away and picked up the sword. For the first time I saw the three men standing on the edge of the field, not fifteen feet away, staring at me. Ron, Harry, and Oliver Wood. There was a thick sheaf of papers in Wood's hand.

I avoided looking at them, and reached for my wand, which was lying uncomfortably close to the bone-white skeleton. I put it in my pocket, but felt something else within the cloth. Reaching in, I pulled out a coin.

It was silver, and on one side was etched the Dark Mark. The other held the inscription, Furor Arma Ministrat. And underneath, so tiny that I had to squint in the light of the moon to see it, was the miniscule, elaborately scripted addition. Spes Mortis.

"The hope of death," I whispered, and felt a single tear wet my cheek.