Malachite

MALACHITE

Draco's bedroom looks the same as he left it in January. He feels it should look different, reflect the changes within him. There is a dark hole spreading out from his stomach, gnawing at his heart. He looks at the walls, papered in brocade silver fabric, and expects to see the dark slime of rot spreading and staining. His bed broods in the middle of the room, heavy dark wood compressed by the weight of dark green curtains, and he wonders that it is still solid, not crumbling, and the mattress is still soft and giving as he sits. He peels back the bedspread and slides his fingers along cool satin sheets.

At the edges of his vision, he sees Snape's robes twitch. The thick doors thud softly as Snape shuts them, but the sound of his footsteps is stifled by the thick rugs. The black swirls in front of Draco's eyes, and it's a moment before he realizes it was only Snape's robes, billowing as he knelt beside Draco.

"Draco. Listen to me," and the stillness of Snape's voice sounds odd enough that Draco raises his head, meets his eyes. "I am sure that the Dark Lord will be pleased," but his voice is flat and there is no conviction in the words, "that you have served him well." And Draco nods, a tight dip of his chin, knowing suddenly that he will never be good enough. He had, in the end, been unable to fulfill his task. He had disappointed, again. He wonders vaguely why he didn't seem to care.

"Draco." Snape's voice cut hard in his ears, and he willed his eyes to focus again. "I am sure you will continue to prove your devotion to the right path," and Draco was listening well enough to hear the peculiar bite in those words, but not lucid enough to puzzle through it.

"Should you ever need to talk, for any reason. Should you need to unburden yourself of anything, at all. I will listen. Any secrets you confide, I will protect."

Draco nods again, but his eyes are losing focus. Snape's voice held no emotion, and he feels as empty as it sounds, ill-shaped and out of place. He had battled him the whole year, locked him out from his former position as a mentor, built his own plan for fulfilling his orders (oh but you didn't even get there in the end, did you?). And in the end, Snape had been the one to save it all.

He looks at his professor and sees a murderer.

"Draco, remember what I have said."

He looks at his professor and sees nothing. Occlumens, his brain whispers, and he knows the strength of Severus' words. His throat is dry and he knows without trying that his voice would break, and that wouldn't do, so he nods. Stronger, this time, firm and forceful. He nods, and a tiny bit of world seems to fall into place again. Severus as mentor, and he would listen, because he had tried to forge his own path and made someone else a murderer.

Black robes slip between the quickly closing doors, and the noise of closure echoes vaguely through the empty room. He looks around again, seeing the play of light across silver and dark wood. The canopy feels like a cave around him, so he took a pillow and slept on the floor.

He sleeps on the floor for 158 nights.

~

The summer was a blur of Apparition and wandlight, green against his eyelids every night. He wasn't ever asked to kill, and he supposed that somewhere he ought to feel thankful. He was apprentice and lookout. He listened. He listened to the bickering on missions and in meetings, he listened to the lies they all told. He listened to them scream.

He watched his relatives crawling across filthy floors to pay homage to a halfblood monster, and he knew. He knew what he had been raised to be, and it was not this. He wondered if his father had known all along, had been planning since he'd first held his son in his arms. Lucius Malfoy had not raised a Death Eater. He had not raised his son to cower before a lesser man. He had always seen the disappointment in his father's eyes, but he had never known what it meant.

~

The halls of Malfoy Manor were quiet, oppressive with darkness. His shoulders no longer bent under the weight of night, and he was no longer a boy creeping out to play in the park after he'd been put to bed. His boots were kidskin leather with soles just as soft, and the dark green of his robes were camouflage as efficient as an Invisibility Cloak, blending in with the shadows. In the servants' wing, light slipped around the edges of one door, swallowed up quickly by the dark. He didn't knock, but stroked a nail against the grain, knowing the occupant would hear even that light scratch.

The door opened enough for one dark eye to peer out, and then barely enough for Draco's slim body to slip through the crack. Severus closed it again and drifted his wand across, leaving a lingering glow as the magic seeped into the existing wards, strengthening them, then sat on a small and rickety chair next to a desk that looked just as old and close to falling apart. There was a chair behind Draco, but he didn't take it. He realized his hands were clenched into fists, his nails digging into palms that were slick with unwelcome sweat. He forced himself to relax, to adopt a pose of languorous, aristocratic ease that came so effortlessly he felt it might be another gift of his blood. His throat was dry but a hushed thought of Aguamenti and a flick of fingers so subtle it might not have been noticed fixed that, and he was able to speak with confidence.

"Will you still keep my secrets?" A blunt question, but Draco had never been skilled with wordplay, with subtlety and double-edged tongues. He was blunt, and to the point, and at least it hadn't killed him yet. Severus nodded, and he plunged ahead before he could think too hard about it all.

"At school, he thought you were on their side." He almost fumbled on those words, because school had been Hogwarts, and he had been Dumbledore, but now he was dead and Draco was no longer welcome, and he had been amazed to realize at the start of September how that was something that hurt. A place that had been his second home would no longer welcome him in its halls, and the man who had placed his faith in Draco despite his name and his family was dead because of him. He hadn't realized that he cared.

"They thought you were their spy. And I - I think they were right. I think I understand, some of it. I want..." his voice trailed off, and that hadn't lasted long at all. Severus wasn't moving, his dark eyes were still on Draco, and he felt pinned under the weight of that gaze.

"This isn't the life I want to lead. I do not agree." The words almost hissed with conviction, squeezed through his lips with the force of that truth. That was the heart of the matter, anyways. He was not a groveling minion, and he did not want to live his life as a fugitive murderer. He believed in the purity of his blood, but he had found he did not believe in killing. And he had found it hard to believe that purity granted superiority, because since the start of the summer they had been thwarted at every turn by halfbloods and Mudbloods, working under the banner of an enemy born of a Mudblood mother. Purity of blood was not winning this war.

Draco could feel his throat drying out as he stood there, heavy breath rasping and palms sweating and Severus just sat there with dark, impenetrable eyes. Draco met that gaze and held it, made no effort to hide his thoughts, and knew this was a test. A test of his truth, and a test of whether or not Draco had accurately judged his old professor.

"Sit down," and Draco took the empty chair, and the candles burned to stubs and their voices grew hoarse but at the end Draco knew he was on the side he wanted to be on.

It was close to dawn when he left that small bedroom, and the door had almost closed behind him before he heard Severus' quiet words.

"Your father would have been proud," and he knew he had made the right choice.