'A Priori'

'A Priori' - Chapter One

Disclaimer: I hold no copyright, make no money, take no credit.

Warnings: Character death, mentions of non-con and child abuse. Oh, and, y'know, slash.

Chapter One

I.

Dumbledore said to go, and Snape goes, because the probability of their remaining alive if they don't is miniscule. Draco is, predictably, worse than useless while Snape's looking (not desperately - beyond desperation) out a place from which to Disapparate. He locks them into a classroom at the top of a castle and draws a circle in green flame with his wand.

He shoves them both inside it. Draco's skin is the same colour as the flames, and Snape hears himself barking that for fuck's sake, boy, he's the one who's just committed murder here, now hold on (his own hands are shaking, and worse, but there are feet on the stairs that have only taken so long because noone would think to look for Snape in Gryffindor Tower). This is what rouses Draco, and he stares at Snape with big rolling fish eyes, mouth absurdly ajar so that Snape knows what the brat is going to say for a full half second before the monumental stupidity of over-breeding and indoctrination makes him bleat some nonsense about how you can't Apparate within Hogwarts.

Have you ever actually tried, Snape snaps, and they disappear with a pop.

II.

They re-appear in a slug-infested, freezing wood with the distant noise of Muggle traffic. The endless lowing of cars and cattle seem to frighten Draco even more than the darkness, and yet again Snape wonders how Lucius Malfoy's son could be so stupid, before realising he's answered his own question. Snape's angrier than he's ever been. He's killed Albus Dumbledore. He's fled Hogwarts with Draco Malfoy. None of this was ever part of either plan, and standing there in the darkness Severus wonders - for the second time in his life - how he could have simultaneously gone so very far off both his maps.

The snivelling noise behind him brings an answer. Draco, plucking his cloak around him, has picked his way to a treestump, sat down and started to cry. Again.

Exhaling the breath he's held for about three hours, Snape runs his fingers through lank hair and watches Draco shudder. This is not what the Vow asked. Protection would have been something else. What, though? As a matter of immediacy, consigning him to the Death Eaters would have meant destruction. The Order might shelter him, but have never been further from victory. ....admittedly, keeping him in the care of one who is now outlawed from both (Dumbledore's murder a loyal act, subsequent flight its negation) might conflate the perils of both, but if he'd acted rashly in a moment of terror, Snape knows it's too late to act otherwise, now. He himself is no introduction to the Order, and, besides, the boy's loyalties are themselves doubtful. He had, after all, intended to kill Dumbledore. Dumbledore might have talked him down, but Dumbledore could talk anyone down, or up, hadn't he himself -

Stop.

Snape has been awake for twenty hours. It is time they found shelter.

"Draco."

He wipes his eyes on his sleeve, glances at Snape, and starts to cry again. Impatient, Snape strides forward and shakes him by the shoulder. "Come on. We need to get out of here." The brat won't raise his head. Frustration rising, Snape shakes him again, harder, and speaks more roughly. "Draco!"

His eyes are red and weeping, and he struggles ineffectually to escape. "Murderer! You murdered him, you -" he breaks down, can't finish. Cries.

At the stupidity of that, Snape drops him with a sneer of disgust, looking down at the crumpled, snivelling child with something akin to hate. Turning, he begins to stalk away through the clearing, knowing that fear of the darkness and cold will make Draco follow him before too long. He does, muddy and shivering, limping along at Snape's side.

They reach (Snape finds) a derelict outbuilding at the point where the wood becomes scrubland, the undergrowth an abandoned brownfield site. Draco looks at it in horror, but then he's never had need of one before. Snape dumps him under the arches, then goes to sit at the door, watching the sky towards Hogwarts, since that's their pursuer's likeliest line of approach. When rose-pink begins to burn in the right of his vision (like blood behind his eyelids), his head falls to his chest. If he doesn't sleep, neither does he dream.

III.

By daylight, the outbuilding looks even more of a shell, breeze blocks covered with some tattered grey mess that looks suspiciously like asbestos. The morning is cold, for all it's summer, and Snape knows they need to leave soon. Rising in a series of jolts and clicks, he hunches through what was probably a windowframe, goes to the corner where he left Draco sleeping.

It is perhaps not entirely surprising that the corner should be empty, but the sick shock goes like electricity down his arms and legs and Snape feels worse than he has at any point in the last five days. Turning, he moves quickly and then faster through the shell and back out to open ground, startling a flock of crows used to having only the pylons for company. He searches.

Draco is lying under one of the pylons, about fifty yards away. Furious, and wary of the prospect of electrocution, Snape breaks into a run. He uses Mobilicorpus to bring Draco away from the Muggle grid (an irrelevant thought of Arthur Weasley flits through Snape's head, which does nothing for his temper), and acknowledges a feeling of relief when the boy starts (wakes) and looks around him.

Which doesn't explain why, in the next second, he has both hands round Draco's throat.

"You STUPID and UNGRATEFUL little boy. Do you have any idea what that is? Why it is? Why we're even here?" He can see a fleck of his own spit on Draco's cheek, and is can tell from the trembling gurgles that he's suitably terrified. Snape squeezes long, callus-horned fingers around the soft little throat, just enough to makes his eyes bulge. His own reflection is pitted in the huge grey eyes, and Snape wonders whether Draco imagines he's about to die. Snape takes a breath. "You are bound to me by a vow, and you will stay with me unless - whether," he amends, seeing a mulish look warring in the boy's face, some of his Malfoy pride returning, "you wish to get us both killed, or no."

He lets the boy tumble back beneath him, pausing to consider the effect of his words. Once more, it seems, the boy is terrified. Snape wonders if Lucius ever treated him like this: he's biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. Eyes hooded, Snape folds himself back, far enough to let Draco breathe, but close enough to stop him moving away. Draco's breathing is visibly fast, his eyes huge and wary. His cheeks, hollow as they are, flush as Snape stares down at him.

After a while, Snape traces over that bitten underlip. There is indeed blood, and Draco shudders, having to close his eyes against the sensation. When he opens them again, Snape is smiling, cruelly.

"Get up," he says, pulling away. "We've got a long way to go."

With a look of - what, exactly? Hatred? Disappointment? - Draco scowls and shoves away, unnecessarily so since Snape's already on his feet. He starts to get up, heading back towards the hut. Snape waits until he's turned before licking the blood from his forefinger.

IV.

Draco doesn't try to escape again, and after a few days Snape knows that, logically, they won't be caught until they want to be. They're becoming more, not less, untraceable with every hour that passes, and (some irony, here) the most cunning member of both sides is the one that both sides are trying to hunt. Snape wonders if Draco realises this too, because since the pylon incident he's become increasingly less terrified, more sullen and spiteful. A certain rudeness has crept into his tone, and his habitual look is a scowl. Snape doesn't care; he'd rather ignore an angry brat than tend to a crying baby.

He finds them a bolt-hole in an abandoned farmhouse near the mouth of the river Avon. There's a small town a few miles away, overfull with holiday-makers. This is fortunate, since in a couple of days Snape knows he'll have to start stealing food for them both. Draco may be braver but he's no more cooperative, and physically, he's probably in poorer condition than Snape. Snape's seen him shirtless once, squalling complaints about the coldness of the water Snape drew him for washing. His emaciation is appalling: sharp-boned arms, and his chest flushed as if sore from being stretched over so many ribs. It makes him tired, though, so in the evenings he sleeps quickly, leaving Snape in the kitchen chair: hunched, insomniac, trying desperately to think.

It would be easier to get rid of Draco. Much easier, especially if his next turn is (as Snape expects it will have to be, even temporarily) towards the Dark Lord. Having already killed the boy would earn him credit and prevent a lot of future strife; nor, given the boy's "treachery" and Snape's assured status as Dumbledore's murderer, would Lucius be able to object. Bellatrix wouldn't care anyway, being bonkers even by the stark standards of the Black family tree. Killing - or silencing, or Obliviating, or any of the myriad ways to stifle the wretched boy that Snape considers every single day - Draco would also have the blessing of ridding Snape of an appalling irritation: barely tolerable in school, the boy is unbearable out of it. The fact is, the two of them hate each other. The boy whinges.

But if he ever wants - or needs - to return to the Order, the murder of a child.... Severus shudders, grips the sides of his coffee cup. Only Voldemort has killed children, so far. As if Alb - as if what he'd done to Dumbledore wasn't enough.

Then there's Narcissa. Not the woman per se - just as overbred and neurotic as her sisters, as flesh and blood she's easy to dismiss. The Vow. Snape... shifting uncomfortably, he has to admit that he doesn't know how far it goes. What its consequences might be. In -

A bumping noise above his head makes him start, then groan. Draco is dreaming again.

V.

The farmhouse has no furniture upstairs, and Draco was so infuriating the evening of their arrival that Snape had pointedly refused to Transfigure him a bed. Draco (stubborn as a Gryffindor, Snape had drawled, making no secret of his amusement) had (predictably) cursed and shrieked and settled down in the LEAST comfortable bit of the attic, where (Snape enjoyed imagining the capital letters) he would PROBABLY DIE of PNEUMONIA. "Oh good," Snape murmured, and left him to it.

The problem? Draco's nightmares. They'd happened at Hogwarts, Snape knew that, but in the lower school Narcissa had sent medicaments, and in later years Draco had presumably learned to control it himself (Parkinson was unlikely to put up with this, Snape grumbles, climbing the staircase irritably). The wretched child starts by whimpering, twitching, even sobbing a little; annoying but not serious. Now, however, he's graduated to thrashing all over, knocking his head against the wall or floorboards in a way that even if it didn't brain him (would anyone notice the difference, he mutters, casting Lumos and attempting to roll the boy over), makes it completely impossible for the only other person in the house to conduct a decent existence.

"Draco. DRACO."

Draco is apparently determined to concuss himself. Snape tugs, hard. Draco is NOT "lighter than he should be", or anything of the sort. To all intents and purposes, he's a dead weight, a flailing kicking one, and when Snape hauls him away from the wall he responds by attaching himself to Snape's shoulders with a vice-like grip. Snape resists the temptation to put a knee in his chest, and shakes.

"DRACO. Wake UP, you're freezing, you stupid -" Attempting to pin the boy down with one hand and hunt for either his wand or the blanket with another, Snape is totally unsurprised when the window chooses this fucking moment to shatter with the impact of the storm and reflects, arse-up in a sudden shower of rain and breaking glass, holding down a slippery teenage boy who's currently trying to break his nose, that this and this alone is entirely the worst position that working for Saint Albus Dumbled -

The realisation brings him up short. And, while he's winded from it, Draco hits him in the face.

They lie there afterwards, Snape testing his bloodied nose, Draco tearstained and silent from the tremendous slap Snape just gave him. The storm rolls away, leaving the drumming rain that gradually dies on the farmhouse roof, leaving only the draining and sloshing of an ancient house. Snape feels a particularly large raindrop hit his cheek and groans. By morning, there will be a thousand leaks and repairing them might attract attention. They'll have to leave. Beside him, Draco sneezes. Snape sits up, looks at him with distaste. Evidently the boy doesn't have the wit to move himself.

"....you're freezing. Come on."

He shies away. "M'fine." This could go on ALL NIGHT, what in the name of MERLIN -

"Malfoy." Draco flinches, although whether from the name or the hand on his shoulder, it's hard to say.

" - leave 'lone, couldn't you just give me a Warming Charm?"

"No, you little idiot, this is a Muggle area, and I don't want to use any more magic than I have to. Here." He wraps his own blanket around Draco's shoulders, manhandles them back towards the chimney stack, where the damp has yet to seep through. Even that isn't enough to stop the boy's pathetic shivering. Snape sighs, sits back against the wall, tries to ignore his headache. He'll stop.

He doesn't, though, and the noise is unbearable; a tinny whimper, gibberish as the boy's teeth chatter and bite. Despite himself, Snape is starting to get uneasy - sickness would impede their progress, and again, there's the matter of the Vow... bloody Purebloods, he grumbles, not for the first time in his adult life, and eases himself down. There is, after all, nothing else to offer.

Contrary to Snape's expectation, Draco is actually asleep, which make his shivers and whimperings somehow worse, more pathetic. He doesn't look so petulant and vicious asleep, only young, and if Snape can't actually pity him, he can wish he had some Dreamless Sleep to administer, for both their sakes. Gingerly (his cold bones complaining), he stretches out, joint by joint, and puts an arm around Draco's middle, starting to close his eyes.

In another second there's a wand at his throat.

"Get. OFF."

Snape takes a breath, tries to assess the situation. His own wand is in his pocket, which is under his thigh, which is, in turn, being crushed by the weight of both Malfoy's legs. He speaks very quietly.

"You're cold. Just lie still. There's no sense in your dying in the night."

Draco's expression is so wild that Snape wonders if he might be feverish. The hair at his temples is wet, but whether from sweat, tears or rain it is hard to say. He jabs the wand forwards again, eyes glassy.

"Get off me." Jab. "I WON'T, I tell you, I'm not going to -"

Not sure if Draco's really awake or not, but the wand is a liability. Snape removes it, just pulls it out of his grip with a speed and strength that disarms the teenager and then drives him wild. With a dreadful cry, he launches himself at Snape's throat, and for the second time that night, Snape finds himself restraining an hysterical Malfoy for their mutual protection. Draco may be younger and more desperate, but it's exactly that desperation which alarms Snape, makes him determined to pin the boy, and calm him down by force if necessary. He uses his superior strength and weight, and soon they're back to their old positions, Snape's arms covering Malfoy's, Draco held tight against his chest. Regaining his breath, slightly shocked, Snape speaks firmly into his ear.

"Just lie still."

"NO, let me GO, I -" A burst of ineffectual struggling. Snape traps Draco's leg between his, able to ignore the squawks for the next few minutes while he concentrates on forcing warmth back into the boy. Draco's body may be uncomfortably bony, his hair damp, but he's starting to thaw, from rage as much as the contact.

At least, that is what Snape assumes. When he next speaks, however, Draco's voice is very small.

"....please, I don't like this."

There is something about this voice that Snape doesn't like. A conciliatory Draco might be easier, but it's unnatural, especially at four in the morning at the tail end of a truly legendary temper tantrum. Now Draco isn't outraged; he just sounds scared.

"What's wrong?"

A shudder that distorts his whole body. "Look, I just don't like having people here when I sleep. Not so close. I'm fine, honestly, I'm warming up, and I won't - I won't do it again."

Some Malfoy haughtiness, certainly, but warning bells ring in Snape's brain as the boy's pitch gets higher. His breathing's shallow.

"Draco." He tries to make his voice low (an approximation of soothing, the sort of tone he'd use for a Thestral), but that has the opposite of the intended effect; Draco makes a choked noise and tenses further in Snape's arms. Curiosity is overwhelming concern, now, and it's only another second before Snape hears himself asking, "What does it remind you of?"

The boy freezes.

Snape's stomach turns. "....look, Draco, I -" he begins, but shock has slackened his arms, and Draco twists around and forwards, kneeing Snape hard in the groin before he's had a chance to explain himself. Winded (again), Snape chokes back nausea and wonders if the pain will make him sick. By the time he's stopped seeing stars, Draco is gone; cursing (and probably castrated, he croaks), Snape crawls off to his old corner, where he spends the rest of the night.

VI.

They don't speak to each other for three days. On the third evening, Snape returns from the village with the food he's bought or stolen.

As he sets it in front of Draco, the boy looks up. "I hate you."

Snape looks back at him, shrugs. The boy pushes his plate away.

Snape raises his eyebrows, takes the plate, the food, and throws both into the bin.

Draco bites his lip, shivers, curls further into the chair.

VII.

A different hideout, much further South. Snape saw the cover of a local newspaper and decided it was time to leave. They made remarkably good time, but Draco's health won't stand many more of these flights. He's barely eating, and the nightmares persist. Snape wonders what on earth he'd be dealing with if Draco had killed Dumbledore, but thinks it best not to say anything. The boy's spoiling for a fight, but not entertaining enough to be much of an opponent. He's also idle, spoilt, untidy, thriftless, and incapable of concentrating on a task for any length of time. He sneers at Snape's books (Transfigured in miniature, always on his person), his calm, his ordered attitudes.

They haven't touched since the night Snape tried to take him in his arms. One morning, seeing Draco more than usually exhausted, Snape offered to brew him a Sleeping Draught. Draco's haughty reply made it clear he wouldn't trust Snape to watch over him, unconscious. For goodness's sake, you silly boy, I'm not going to rape you, Snape snaps back: Draco blanches and leaves the room.

Snape doesn't see him again until the evening, when he's visible in the garden, sitting in the gloom. The grass is parched and there are no flowers; Snape wonders what on earth there is to attract him until he sees that Draco's watching some pieces of straw, Charmed to fly like tiny brooms around his head. Squinting, Snape can discern an entire Quidditch team, rising one by one into the air. Draco raises his hand to guide them, once or twice, but is otherwise motionless, letting their tiny shadows flit across his face.

There in the dying sun, between the long shadows and with the last light cast in his hair, Draco is beautiful.

Snape rubs a hand over his face. This cannot go on.

Suddenly furious without knowing why, he grabs some of their food; the bread, the cheese (but not the pate, he doesn't care THAT much); and storms into the garden. Draco scowls at his game. Snape can out-scowl a thousand Malfoys.

"Eat something. Now."

Inaudible reply. Snape rolls his eyes in silence. "Draco. You have to eat."
The next reply is more audible, and entirely ludicrous. With the air of one consigning his sanity to the grave, Snape sits down wearily beside him.

"You do not want to die."

The boy sniffs. "Why're you doing this to me?" That awful apathetic gaze, the one Snape can least stand. He raises an eyebrow.

"Keeping you alive, you mean?" Draco can't be put off by sarcasm, however - he shifts, picking at a few blades of grass.

"You might answer."

With a heavy sigh, Snape supposes he'll have to, shrugging. "All life is precious."

A snort. "It isn't. You aren't honestly saying that - that Weasley's life is precious? Granger?" The idea seems to amuse him, and although it's a vicious and half-witted amusement, it is, at least characteristic of the son Narcissa Malfoy last saw. Snape pushes the bread towards him.

"Eat."

"No."

"You do know I could force you." It's a statement, not a question. Draco flinches, but he's staring down at his wand and Snape assumes he's sulking. Rolling his eyes, he gives up and leaves, the food discarded in Draco's lap. He might sneak a bite after Snape has gone; he's done that before.

Instead, Draco's Imperio is as soft as a whisper, and Snape's sure he must have misheard in the second before it hits him; after, he only has the strength to turn and see Draco's face. Its expression is distorted, somehow feline; catlike, sharp with a malevolent hate.

When Draco calls his Finite Incantatem, all Snape's precious books are burnt. Snape's first autonomous action is to strike Draco so hard he draws blood. The look of dreary triumph on Draco's face is the final straw; Snape leaves him on the ground and goes inside, to bed.

VIII.

He's not aware of Draco's return but when he wakes it's to Draco's sobbing, high and insistent and louder than before. Annoyed (his books, the little fucker can cry all he wants, he's seventeen), Snape burrows down under the blankets and tries to ignore it, but the brat's hysterical. Grumbling, Snape shuffles to his feet, lank hair unpleasantly sticky against greasy skin (Hades, he wants a bath) and eyes itching with tiredness as he picks his way to the door.

Draco is asleep on what would have been the landing before the house went derelict; now it's just the other part of the habitable first floor. It's almost as if he's having a fit; he's thrashing and keening in his sleep, babbling confused streams of cries that sound like pleading.

Watching him silently, a vicious impulse makes Snape long for a camera, to take this picture as a gift for Lucius in his prison cell - look, he sneers, your son and heir, your precious baby, blubbering and sobbing in some filthy Muggle hallway - except that Snape knows Draco was never precious to Lucius, not really. Not in himself.

...not surprising, Snape reflects, unmoved, and casts the Charm before turning away. He hasn't reached the bedroom, however, before there's a dull clunking noise, exactly the sound an empty Malfoy skull makes when it collides with stone farmhouse wall.

JUST TO CHECK HE'S NOT SWALLOWING HIS TONGUE, Snape tells whatever internal force is the arbitrator of night-time lunacy, and trudges back. No - predictably the little bastard's survived, not even AWAKE, just with the interesting addition of a cut forehead to the somnolent histrionics. Gritting his teeth (the last time he had to do this was REGULUS, why were the Blacks not STERILISED), Snape prods the boy's chest with his foot. No response.

..vowing to use the boy's hide for a LAMPSHADE should the little shit hurt him again (a favourite trick of Mulciber's, and in the small hours Snape is beginning to think fondly of his Death Eater friends), Snape kneels down, and, wand gripped tightly in his remaining hand, shakes Draco by the shoulder.

Nothing.

Cautious, Severus tries again. Pokes his sternum.

With a heave of his chest, Draco stirs and gasps awake, but - just as Snape's expecting to be hexed, at the very least, he sobs, shudders - and falls asleep again, curling around the hand on his chest. Eyes widening, Snape watches his breathing deepen, his face smooth, the flickers and contortions of fear slip away. just to chuck a good Silencing Charm on him and Snape has just decided to retract his hand when Draco hugs it. Clings. Wraps both arms around Snape's, and hangs on with all the tenacity of a small and smelly limpet.

Rarely has Snape been so irritated.

....oh, blast it. Might as well get SOME sleep, it's only a few hours before dawn, and removing the Charm might at least give him some WARNING if the whelp restarts his Moaning Myrtle routine. Grudging Draco every moment of undisturbed rest, he waves his wand (wonkily, given that the stupid boy's holding his right hand) and Draco's breathing, occasionally hitching but no cause for concern, fills his ears.

Snape sighs.

...stupid boy. Cautiously, he stretches out behind Draco, judging this the position least likely to break his trapped wrist. The boy is pliant, and his hair, close to Snape's neck, feels surprisingly soft. This may well be the least unpleasant aspect of their time together - or would be if only the floor wasn't so damned hard.

Draco shivers, and Severus finds himself murmuring nonsense - quiet, hush - and astonishingly, a phrase of his father's, whisht. The boy's dreaming again, however, and Snape tenses, waiting for the kick. Instead, though, he starts up a pathetic whimpering, burrowing back into Snape, shying away from some invisible thing.

Grateful not to be the one evaded, Snape clicks his tongue and rubs the boy's back, trying to wake him up, turn him round. "Draco. You're all right. Come on, now, don't be ridiculous, you're perfectly safe."

The boy keeps shivering, but does wake, looking up at Snape with huge, apprehensive eyes that are more nightmare than reason. Gasping, he asks distinctly (and it's the distinctness which makes it so terrible), "Fenrir?"

Snape stares at him, a cold trickle of foreboding moving down the back of his throat. By the time he answers, there's ice in his stomach. "No," he manages, after a moment. "Snape. Ah, Severus Snape. ...Fenrir can't get in here."

"Oh." Draco doesn't sound sure; still half-asleep, he's struggling to collect his ideas. Eventually he nods, shivers, and curls back in.

Some long-dormant instinct of pity works on Snape then, and he hears himself say heavily that Draco would, probably, sleep better if he was in.. a bed. Bones screaming in silent furious protest, he heaves himself BACK up off the floor and propels Draco towards the bedroom (wondering which leg he'll have to AMPUTATE come morning, given that one is shrivelled with cramp, and the other ominously numb). Draco lolls along in front of him, head down, collapsing into bed without a murmur. Snape drags the blankets back over him and startsfor the door, intending to sit in the kitchen, when the boy speaks again.

"Why're you LEAVING?" The tone was is outraged, so petulant, so very very Malfoy that Snape has to bite back a sharp retort. Draco's expression, however, disarms him: in the light from the door, his face looks very very young.

Which, Snape tells himself sternly, is all the more reason to leave.

"....do you not want me to?" A debt of care, Snape insists, returning to the bed. He's seventeen, not a child..... gah. Head pounding, he perches on the edge of the bed and tries not to just slump with exhaustion.

Draco shifts. Snape see him square his shoulders, test his response before he makes it.

"...stay."

Snape watches him for another moment. Then, raising his eyebrows, he nods and lies down beside the boy, not commenting when Draco wriggles back and into his arms; not speaking, in fact, for the rest of the night.

IX.

When Snape opens his eyes, Draco sits watching him, fully awake and cross-legged at the end of the bed. Immediately feeling guilty, Snape struggles to sit up, wincing at the lurid purple of Draco's browbone (however deserved), and the ache of his own sore muscles. There is something commanding about Draco's poise, something slightly spiteful and devious in his grey eyes. It makes Snape nervous, and, conscious, suddenly, of his own disorder awake (and the uncomfortable knowledge that one of his pupils has been watching him sleep), he scowls. With inherited grace (the boy goes on looking clean even when Snape KNOWS they should both be equally filthy) and more than a hint of theatricality, Draco takes his cue.

"I've been thinking," he announces, and if Snape's eloquent eyebrows discomfort him, he doesn't show it, "about the Vow."

The best response is none at all. This does discomfort Draco, but he presses on. "It's Unbreakable, yes?"

"Ye-es?"

"Born of flame and Old Magic, contracted between two persons and valid for all eternity?"

"As you say."

"Akin to the Fidelius Charm, more drastic in its consequences than the obligations of the Secret-Keeper -"

"Yes, yes, all right, idiot, where have you been reading this?"

"I'm NOT an idiot, and anyway, I've decided," Draco pouts, sulky about being prematurely forced to his punchline, "that you should be nicer to me." It's a lame finish, and he knows it. Snape gives him a look that has destroyed the bladder control of entire Hufflepuff Houses.

"Is that so?"

Even Draco has the grace to look uncomfortable. Snape doesn't break his gaze, however, and in another minute the boy is whining and yelping and (predictably) pronouncing that NONE of it is even VAGUELY fair.

"And what, precisely, is UNfair, Draco? Shall we list the instances of physical harm you've inflicted on me? The damage to my personal property? The hours of wasted time spent searching for your useless and unworthy -"

" - NO -" Draco cuts in shrilly, and Snape presses a hand to his temple. The boy thumps the mattress, kicking at the corner of the sheet in a spasm of rage and tantrum. "NOT wasted, because YOU have to look after ME, it SAYS, and if anything HAPPENS to me, you DIE." He scowls, pushing back a lock of white-blond hair. The poise and Malfoy grace is gone; his underlip is out and his eyes alight with the savagery of a Black. It is amazing to Snape how something so beautiful can swiftly become so ugly. The boy is as weak-willed as Regulus, as neurotic as his mother; Severus is dealing more with Bella's nephew than Lucius Malfoy's son. Unfortunately, the boy is also speaking truth.

"What do you want, Draco?" he asks after a minute, making his tone as uninterested as possible. As expected, this disarms him; for someone capable of such monstrous tantrums, immediate capitulation is still strange to Draco. Evidently his father required some further move of his - negociation might be a useful tool in future, depending on Draco's response.

"... I want to go back to Malfoy Manor."

It's either bluff or stupidity and Snape treats it as both. "Something plausible, please."

"....fine. I want a proper house to stay in, in a city. With people. And some new clothes," he adds, as a half-defiant afterthought. Snape considers the demands for a second, then nods.

"Fine. We'll leave in an hour."

X.

"But I'm hungry."

"That's why I'm GOING. So, you'll stay here. I'll be back in an hour, and during that time, you will not talk to anyone -"

"...I th-thought you said this was a Muggle city," Draco breathes, clutching the rail that's bolted onto the concrete wall. Following Draco's gaze, Snape frowns. It's not entirely beyond possibility that he should have miscalculated their coordinates prior to Disapparating, but it is....unlikely.

Then again, so is what's happening in the streets below the car park.

A gasp at his elbow makes Snape start. "Isn't that.... a vampire?"

"No, you little fool, it's the middle of the day. What on earth are these Muggles doing?" Snape snaps, narrowing his eyes at a group of pasty teenagers in violet and black. Antonin Dolohov used to have a similar set of robes, although his were never that... shiny.

"Whoa, those are some amazing cloaks."

Both of them whip round, wands at the ready, defensive stance assumed. The Muggles beam.

"Wow, where did you get those? Deianra's brother ordered ours online, but Cygnus -" Snape can feel Draco twitching beside him, as the girl with improbably red hair indicates a pasty boy with a straggly-looking plait, " - said we should have made our own. I'm Bellatrix, by the way."

You most certainly are not, Snape wants to snap, but Draco, wide-eyed, has already slipped forwards from his side. Expression reverent, he has drifted towards the strangers with a reverent look in his eyes. "Can I have some of that?"

"Sure thing." The larger girl (blue hair, vast bosom) offers him whatever lurid and vomit-inducing "sweets" she is eating from a packet. Draco's stomach gurgles contentedly, and he gives them a blissful smile before accepting a handful.

While Draco's eating, "Cygnus" (REALLY, what sort of a NAME) shoot Draco a shy, pleased smile of his own. Snape could kill him for it.

He glares malevolently at "Cygnus", who seems to take the hint, retreating half a step and blinking anxiously through his eyeliner (which, Snape suspects, is causing conjunctivitis). Gorging over, Draco looks up.

"I like these people," he says decisively. "Let's go."

There is a pause.

....possibly he could kill them for food, at a later date. Snape shrugs, follows them away. "As you wish."

XI.

Six hours later, Severus is drunk, Draco is drunk, and things are more amusing than they have been for days. Muggles, Snape concludes, really are stupid, but this group's stupidity is more bearable than most. He has gathered several things in the past few hours; that these children are credulous, naive and over-monied; that they all, without exception, have too much time on their hands, and that none of them knows how to mix a decent drink. All of this has worked in his favour; he and Draco have been mistaken for another pair of chalked-up, sub-pagan weirdoes; their genuine wizarding artefacts make them the centre of attention; and the general inebriation has allowed Snape to rifle fifteen pockets and an unguarded wall safe. He now has three hundred pounds in Muggle cash, and Draco has had a square meal.

And nobody, nobody would think to look for them here.

The situation, Snape concludes, is hilarious. The flat's smell of patchouli and lemongrass may remind him of first-year Potions classes, but it's warmer than any place they've been for a week. The awful Muggle woman with dreadlocks may keep trying to shove her bosom in his face, but she has, unwittingly, provided them shelter. The idiot Cygnus boy (his given name is Glyn - Snape knows, because the boy's wallet is now inside his pocket) may be flirting outrageously with Draco, but the fawning and misguided attention is at least making Draco (Lucius Malfoy's son - oh, THIS is the best revenge) smile.

And it's good, Snape concedes, to see him smile.

XII.

"They're playing a GAME," Draco says owlishly, lurching away from the kitchen table to land more or less safely in Snape's lap. His legs don't reach the end of the sofa. Of all the ludicrous things that have happened so far today, the sight of Draco in eyeliner may take the prize. Unable to stop smirking, Snape rests a hand on his back.

"Who put that on you?"

"Hm? Oh, I don't know. Cygnus. Astrid. Canteloupe." He starts to grin. "Crabbe, Goyle, Potter, Granger, it doesn't much matter, does it?" Chuckling, Snape shakes his head. "This was a very good idea."

"I suppose it could be considered a form of education." Snape smirks, amused by the boy's swaying, the distinctly Muggle wine-stains on his distinctly Muggle shirt. "Ashtoreth", whose flat this is and whose real name is Angela, lent him a spare after Draco spilt relish over the first. Snape, fingers itching for his wand, pushed inside the awful woman's mind (he hated doing that to Muggles - they never knew, but you always wanted a cold shower and a nice sharp fork on which to spear your eyes, oh Hades the vapidity) and confirmed that yes, the ignorant trollop, had only done it to see the boy shirtless. This pisses him off. He is pissed off about being pissed off.

On the other hand, Draco is making eyes at Cygnus and sulking will do nothing to abate this. Snape smacks his arm.

"Don't use that look on the unwary. He'll have a seizure."

"Mmmm, seizures. What?" Draco sweeps the room with a glorious, cocksure gaze. "I'm just extending my appreciation. Anyway, what happened to you, the Great Muggle Apologist?" He laughs, too loudly, and suddenly the drunkenness isn't charming, it's irritating and loud, and far too heavy in his lap. Snape gives him a shove, glowering, but Draco's tenacious; he digs into Snape's shoulders, clutching handful of robes, leaning closer and closer with his sickly-scented lips and his dangerous eyes.

"All life is precious, Snape," he quotes, and Snape balks, and would like to question that statement, especially in its application to insufferable teenage Malfoys with small brains, and huge egos, and Hadesfuck burgeoning erections pressing against their ex-Potion Master's thigh - which is the moment that Ashtoreth uses to shove herself between them again, and Snape has never been so grateful to see big breasts before.

"We were thinking - seeing as your wife's thrown you out, " Snape looks incredulously at Draco but Draco's staring up at Ashtoreth in a manner that suggests some late-flowering Oedipal complex " - and your B&B's let you down," Snape SPLUTTERS at the room, but apparently nobody is listening, "that you and your boyfriend could use our spare room."

Snape is struck dumb.

Cygnus beams. "We have a futon."

A futon, Severus Snape concludes, is the bad thing that happens when all the world's other miseries have been exhausted. It is no coincidence that tonight he will be sharing one with Draco. Draco, stung into silence from the tremendous row the two of them have just had, is undressing for bed.

The would-be succubi in the next room, it seems, have been fed a version of events in which he, a Muggle schoolmaster, seduced Draco (a willing pupil), abandoned his wife and family, and - for reasons never fully explained, not EVEN in Draco's fevered brain - brought him to Britain's largest "Gothic" festival in order to consummate their torrid affair. Without (to add insult to injury) having booked them adequate accommodation first. That they should be told this is offensive, that they should BELIEVE it is worse, and that Draco should make it up in the first place is all manner of bad things.

Moreover, Snape is NOT comfortable with the idea of sleeping quite so close to the carpet. He's still fighting the urge to de-gnome it.

"I hate your face," Draco hisses, undoing buttons.

"My face hates you. For goodness' sake, boy, don't leave your shirt on the floor, it'll have LICE by morning." Snape glares from boy to tufted mattress. "Which side do you want? Actually, don't bother with an answer, you're getting the side with the stain."

"What? That is SO UNFAIR."

"Yes. Yes, it is. Now shut up and don't bother me again til morning." He shrugs off his cloak, then decides that's going far enough. Draco stares.

"Is that what you're going to sleep in? Merlin, no wonder they all think you're a vampire -"

" - and no WONDER they think I'm an adulterous and paedophilic SCHOOLMASTER, there's certainly no WONDER in that."

Draco pulls off grey socks and undoes the plain black belt. Snape ignores the delicate bones in his feet, the invisible shimmer of hair that grows below his navel. "...it wouldn't be paedophilia, actually, they know I'm seventeen."

"Really? They haven't mistaken you for a spoilt toddler with the brain of a gnat?"

"Just because you HATE me."

"I don't hate you, Draco. I find you intensely annoying."

"Only because I'm a Pureblood."

"No, because you're insufferable."

Draco turns to face him, all white skin and undone trousers. Severus finds the last bit particularly unnecessary. Without knowing why, he is also nervous. Draco narrows his eyes.

"You got hard when I sat in your lap."

Oh fuck, he knows.

" - I DID NOT," Snape spits, half a beat late, wondering what, exactly, his subconscious has decided the boy knows. Draco has got the upper hand, however, and he knows it.

Leaning right forward (Snape tries to escape, but the whole POINT of the futon, that which brackets it with the alarm fork, the fingertip toothbrush and the electronic noodle-strainer in sheer infuriating horror is that, when you are stuck on a futon, there is nowhere to go), past Snape's personal space and into places even Snape hasn't visited recently, Draco raises an eyebrow.

"You want me."

"I want you to stop talking nonsense, you stupid boy. I had no idea you were drunk enough to mistake your own - penis. If anyone," he glowers, wanting to crush that silly little smirk out of Draco's lips, "was experiencing what I can only hope was an involuntary response to alcohol, stimulus, and the unbelievable arrogance of youth - "

" - so what if I was hard? Cygnus sucked me off in the bathroom."

Snape loses his temper. And hexes the futon.

And grabs Draco by the throat.

...It is immensely satisfying.

"ONE, Cygnus did NOT suck you off in the bathroom. You never went to the bathroom with him. TWO, his name is Glyn, he's a socially avoidant Muggle with PINK-EYE, and THREE, apart from your WHININGS when you decided you'd caught MUGGLE DISEASE, I DO NOT CARE where or with WHOM you stage your sordid little couplings, because YOU are a TIRESOME, SELFISH and IGNORANT little boy."

Draco starts shouting as soon as Snape lets him go. "No, YOU'RE the selfish one, keeping me locked up just because you made my STUPID mother some STUPID Vow I never ASKED to be your PET, I don't want to be ANYBODY'S lapdog -"

" - shame, considering who your father is -"

" - how DARE you talk about my father, you aren't fit to lick my father's boots, NONE of you are, your mother was only a Prince and they're NOTHING to us, mother only called you cousin as a kindness -"

" - oh yes, your mother, your mother who begged me to look after you now your father's gone - SHE knows he won't be coming back, when are YOU going to wake up and see him for the piece of scum that -"

" - DON'T YOU DARE TALK ABOUT MY FATHER!" Suddenly draco is launching at him, fists and nails flying until what seems like a blind attack is explained: they're grappling for the same wand, Snape's wand, lying forgotten on the far side of the bed, inside his robes. Snape's hand grips Draco's wrist; Draco swears and kicks out against his leg. Ignoring the pain, Snape concentrates on the wand, determined to stretch across and grab it before Draco can do the same. Draco, he is certain, wants to kill him. His face, pale and sharp, is now distorted with a rage surpassing even his father's; held off by both Snape's hands, he digs all his nails into the older man's forearms, leaving ten livid crescents in his flesh. Swearing, hard, Snape takes a chance and reverses their positions, slamming Draco down so hard that the wooden platform cracks. Now it is Draco's turn to look afraid.

"Your father," Snape hisses, "is a joke. He sold out at the wrong time to the wrong side, and that's why he's going to die. Not because he's a victim, or a hero, but because he's a coward and a fool. And you're worse," he presses on, merciless in the triumph of finally forcing these words down the ungrateful brat's throat, "because you, more than anyone, know all this and yet persist - in despite of everything, the evidence, the logic, your own inclinations - no, DON'T move, you're going to hear this - in idolising a man who doesn't love you, doesn't care for you, has always been wrong. And who is never," Snape persists, as cruel as he can make it, " ever coming back to you." He waits. "Who do you think came up with the plan for you to kill Dumbledore? Think, Draco, who was it who needed you to save his skin? Who were you really expected to save?"

"....dead or not, he's worth ten of you," Draco snarls, almost at once, but his eyes betray him. The look of shock and desolation there makes something twist in Snape's stomach, but he knows that it has to be done. Not letting go just yet, he stares down impassively at the boy. Draco is the first to look away.

"...leave me alone," he says, very quiet, and Snape complies, pocketing Draco's wand as well as his own as he moves off, going to stand by the window where the air is cool and where he doesn't have to look at the boy's face. He can still see it, though, pale behind his eyes. The small ghost of someone murdered. The - stop.

Around them, the flat, the house and the thin grey street resume their night-time noises, Snape watching the cars go by and the blanched light they send across the bed. Draco lies on his side now, facing away from Snape. His thin shoulderblades twitch intermittently, and Snape closes his hands over the windowsill to keep from going to him. From pulling him close, taking him in his arms and keeping him there .

If Snape's honest with himself - which a masochistic streak, at moments such as these, often forces him to be - the impulse to gather Draco in is at least as strong as the one to tear him apart in handfuls.

It's been that way for a while now, and he has no idea what to do.

...the knowledge that Draco probably (no, UNDOUBTEDLY) hates him as much as anyone has a right to -

" - are you even listeningto me?"

Snape blinks. Instead of the sobbing ball he expects, he finds Draco sitting up, peering at him irritably. His eyes are red, and his shoulders tense, but there's no suggestion of a breakdown. Obscurely chastened, Snape nods: more unexpectedly still, Draco moves aside, offering Snape a seat. Nodding acknowledgement, Snape takes it, watching closely as Draco exhales, inhales and squares himself to speak.

"He's always - used me," Draco starts again, and Snape feels his stomach twist in kind. Pressing his lips tightly together, he nods and leans in a little, waiting for him to continue. This Draco does, looking down at his hands, which are white and bloodless to the knuckle. He's twisting them so that Snape almost considers taking one, but quickly suppresses the impulse. "When he wanted to send me to Durmstrang, he didn't carehow upset Mother was, how much she hated the idea. She couldn't bear the thought of me going so far away, and I - I didn't want to leave -" A sudden flash, for Snape, of the homesick little boy he'd comforted once or twice; the white-blond hair he'd stroked; the pride he'd felt when the boy started rising through his peers, " - but he didn't care, he let it go on and on for weeks and when I went to Hogwarts, it was because of what - what the Dark Lord wanted. ...he didn't even tellus until the summer. And then at Christmas, always parading me to his friends like I was some sort of lapdog, making me sit with Pansy, making sure I knew what was expected of me - you all thought it was something NEW," he flared, turning to Snape. "You think you've got the definitive version, don't you? That the Headma - that Dumbledore was how it started? Well listen to this," Draco orders, eyes glittering and dangerous in the half-light. "It started with Fenrir Greyback. When I was ten years old."

Snape can feel the creeping coldness moving inside his skin and through his bones, listening. Half-snatches of memory: as back through the turning pages of a book, he remembers Malfoy Manor, that summer. It was never warm inside the ice palace Lucius and Narcissa had built for themselves; there was never too much noise or unruliness. What a strange guest Greyback had been. His predilection for children was - Snape's features twist as he remembers - of course widely known, and Snape had wondered why Lucius allowed Fenrir so near his son. Or had he? Perhaps he hadn't, at all; he'd certainly been wrapped up in his own private worries, that summer - his jealousy at the appointment of Quirrell, the knowledge that he'd soon be sharing oxygen with another pig-headed Potter.

Draco keeps talking; Greyback had information on his father, damaging information - so did they all, is Snape's nauseated response, but he can hazard a guess as to the sort Fenrir might have had. Fenrir's predilection was unforgivable, but not uncommon (after all, hadn't that been Regulus Black's introduction to the group? Barty Crouch's, too?); in fact, Snape had sometimes wondered whether Lucius himself, with such a son -

No. He had never wondered.

A bargain. It was simple enough, although God knows the risks were horrific - as dispassionately as he can, Snape considers them and is at once appalled. Pushing aside his own feelings for the b - for Draco (something it is becoming increasingly hard to do, because by Hades if that bastard Greyback has a drop of blood left in his body - ), thinking only as a Death Eater, what was Lucius thinking? The risks! Fenrir could have bitten him, Fenrir could have killed him - Lucius might not have cared for the boy, but he was the Dark Lord's property! The only heir that would ever be of any use, had Lucius gone insane -

...and now he's thinking of Draco in the same terms as they had.

Ten. Merlin, it was no age. Not even in Death Eater circles, where childhood and innocence were rarely synonymous and never prolonged. Ten. And to think Fenrir had resurfaced this year, just as things began to really fall apart for Draco. What a blow that must have been. No wonder Greyback haunted his nightmares.

Unable to do more, Snape reaches out, offering the boy his hand. It is an unaccustomed gesture, and he feels foolish as soon as it's made. Draco stares down at the palm until Snape thinks he must be growing HAIR there, or something - scowling, he starts to retract before Draco says regretfully, "Oh, I've hurt you."

It takes Snape a moment to work out what he means (hopefully Draco has imbibed any of the nonsense about Spiritual Wounds that Ashtoreth used when describing her divorce). Then he sees what Draco's looking at: the nailmarks, still deep but with the addition of bruises. The boy's clawing has broken the skin, in places.

"I've had worse," Snape says drily, and they exchange humourless smiles.

"Probably from me," Draco concedes, laying his hand over Snape's. He does it exactly, as if comparing the sizes (Snape's fingers are longer, Draco's span greater), but there's a hesitancy there that Snape hasn't seen before. He expects Draco to smirk or scowl when it's over, but instead he gets a doubtful look, a troubled look, something tired and pensive that grabs at Snape's heart and makes it hurt.

Draco keeps that look even as he falls asleep, but this time his hand is fisted in Snape's shirt, his head pillowed on the older man's arm. Snape watches him drift off, so close and warm that Snape could kiss him if he tried.

He doesn't, of course. He strokes Draco's hair to soothe him, but no more. Then, still curled protectively around the boy, he drags the cloak back over them, touches Draco's cheek to check he's warm. Gradually, he adapts his body to the angles of the ludicrously uncomfortable mattress (needless to say, he's got the side with the hole. And the broken frame), and tries to close his eyes. It should be more of a struggle, but Draco's breath is warm against his neck, his leg a comforting weight against Snape's own. Even with the distant hum of Muggle traffic in his ears, sleep is swift, and kind, and dreamless.

And above the flat, a green skull begins to glow in the dark.