Hunting For The Sun

CHAPTER EIGHT

Karma and the Issues of the Human Soul

I waited nervously for the door at the end of the room to open. To take up my nerves and adrenaline, I looked around the room. The house was one of those large Victorian ones, set back from the road. You´d never guess to look at it what it was, but I can´t tell you any more than that. Secret, you understand.

The room I sat in was long and thin. The walls were a functional blue and a single pot-plant stood withering in the corner. This wasn´t how things were meant to be. It was supposed to be all chrome and black leather. Where were all the gadgets? I sat on a faded brown sofa, the sort you used to find in school staff rooms.

Suddenly, there was a buzzing sound, and the door popped open. I scrambled to my feet and brushed off my clothes. I set a confident but slightly evil smile on my face, and walked in. I very nearly fell down the staircase beyond that door. It was all that was in the room, and I was thrown off completely. I started down the concrete steps into the dark, conjuring a bundle of flames to ward off the blackness. So I´m scared of the dark, who cares?

At the foot of what seemed like a thousand steps, there stood a door. It was already open, so I tapped it lightly, and went in.

This room was much more like it. It was so massive that I couldn´t see the ceiling. A polished black floor reflected the light from concealed spotlights, and the wall opposite was plastered with computer screens. At that time I had only ever heard of computers, and not seen one. It didn´t take me long to work out what they were, though.

The images on the screen showed that these were cameras in all the important parts of the city. A single chair sat in front of the screens, but no one was in it. I assumed that I was to wait, as I could see no other doors. I tried to move as silently as was possible over to the screens. One showed me Malfoy´s office. I ignored the twinge of sadness when I saw the desk and drew subconsciously on a memory of snogging violently and knocking the crystal decanter to the floor. It was still there. No one had even gone in for weeks. Malfoy´s tie was still slung over the back of the chair where I threw it. The only difference was that his wand was now in my pocket, and not in the vase of now withered flowers. I curled my fingers around the smooth wood. What had I done?

`Dragon Child!´

I jumped, and spun about. A tall man wearing a black suit and sunglasses stood by the door.

`Sir,´ I said, nodding.

`How are you?´ he asked, clicking his fingers and sitting in a chair that appeared beside him. He pushed off the wall, and it rolled over to me. I sat in the chair by the screens.

`I´m well.´

`Good, good. So, how can we help you?´ He folded his arms over his paunch, and linked his fingers.

`I want to join you,´ I said slowly, not quite sure why he didn´t know that.

`Ah, well, you see, there was a slight complication there...´ He shifted uncomfortably.

`What do you mean?´ I snapped, eyes flashing.

`Well, we underestimated quite how much trouble you´re in.´

`Since when has that ever stopped you?´ I shrilled, coming to my feet. `What´s going on?´

`We only run because of the Death Eaters!´ he snapped, rising. `If we hid one of their enemies in our midst, we would lose all their custom.´

`You know what?´ I shouted. `I don´t even want to be in your stupid organisation anyway! I always thought that the Mafia was something really big and important. You know something else? I think the Muggles did it better than you!´ I didn´t even think about it as I drew my gun and pulled the trigger on him. He had been insubordinate, and needed neutralising. I hardly bothered to run. I filched his nice gold Rolex, and the fat-bloke medallion around his neck, then strolled away, whistling a happy tune. There was nothing in my way. If they denied me, I would kill them. Simple.

No one met me on the stairs back out again. I got all the way to the door before a man with a wand directed at my forehead appeared.

`Did you kill him?´ he asked in a trembling voice.

`Yes, are you volunteering for the position of...´ I counted on my fingers. `My twenty-third victim?´

`You watch your mouth,´ he warned.

I crossed my eyes and tried with all sincerity to look at my tongue.

`I´m afraid I´m not capable of that. Can you do it? I could always help you out.´

`What are you talking about?´ he said, giving me an odd look.

`Well, I could tear your mouth out of your face, then you´d be able to look at it,´ I offered innocently. `Or maybe I could punch you so hard you´d have to stick your hand up your arse to brush your teeth.´

`Stop threatening me!´ he said, looking uncomfortable.

`What are you, a girl?´ I scoffed. `Wizards really have lost their backbone these days.´

`You killed one of us, now we´ll kill you.´

`Try me,´ I said darkly.

He spun the wand and aimed it at my head, but, trusting entirely to luck, I promise you, I whipped up my hand and knocked it out of his fist. I knew this wasn´t me. It must have been two-way residue from Malfoy. I could feel the information filtering through my brain. I hadn´t been able to do that before. Malfoy´s spell was definitely backfiring. The man reeled slightly, and I brought up my knee into his chin. I heard an unpleasant crunch, and grabbed his wand, snapping it in two before pelting out of the building and across the road, ignoring the swerving cars and shouts.

I climbed over a panel fence and dropped down into the alley beyond. I leaned my back against a wall and sat there panting for a while before dragging my polluted mind back to sift over the facts.

Malfoy had been sucking information out of my head since I was ten, and passing it on. He had clearly known about the backfire, but quelled it with his control over me. Now he was gone, I had the equivalent of what he had gained from me. It seemed that I had an articulate knowledge of crime, supreme intelligence, skills with various different weapons, and a notable lack of scruples. This was, I felt, a very good deal in exchange for a bit of information. I also, as I found out later, had gained all the things he knew about the codes, passwords and secrets of the Ministry. However, I only seemed to access the knowledge when I needed it.

So pollution was also beneficial, but I still didn´t like it. I would have to do something else to get big. The Mafia wouldn´t help me, so I was a little at sea. I could get no criminal organisation, but with a little deception I would be able to get some form of organisation. This time, though, I could travel first class.

~

I leaned back in the seat, sipping at the cocktail brought to me by the waiter. The countryside flashed past the glass, and a light sprinkling of rain was sifting down. It was, as I recall, about February by that time, and things were starting to warm up. I drew a heart in the condensation on the glass with one finger. I had noticed how much I had changed in appearance. This isn´t just me boasting about how pretty I was becoming, because the theory I had soon turned out to be correct. Where I had had stubby, skinny fingers before, they were now long and artistic. My skin had been slightly golden, but now it was pale. I had been one of those round-faced people, but now my jaw line and cheekbones were sharpening, and my face was becoming more refined. My hair had been coarse and straight, now it coiled in wide ringlets and was as fine as silk. The changes scared me, but I made the most of them. My theory, if you´ll care to hear, was that I was becoming a female Malfoy. That´s stopped now, owing to some occurrences that I will soon relate to you, but it was clearly happening. Malfoy wasn´t looking like me, because he had a stronger personality. I was subject to him more than he was to me, but now he was dead, and it was printing on me out of a desire to survive, do you follow me? It doesn´t matter if you don´t, but that´s what it was.

As the train continued Northwards, I settled into gazing out of the window. I can´t remember what time, or at what point it was, but I regained sanity.

It was just like that. I was suddenly off that high I had been on all the time since Malfoy´s death. I suddenly came tumbling back to earth. I was still the same person, just a sane one. The danger of all that I had done hit me like a speeding rhino. I cradled my face in my hands, and gasped for air. I had been in so much danger! Even then my brain was still ticking away, and I came up with another theory. Because I killed Malfoy magically, and snapped his side of our link magically, the madness caused must have been magical. That´s why it stopping was magical, and that´s why it was so quick. I didn´t have the mental capacity to wonder why it had stopped when it did, so I stored that for further processing.

The instant it happened, though, my first thought was of Draco. Even though it may not sound like much, I missed him. That was enough. The pain that had been storing over the months overflowed into something physical and my chest burned as I fought a battle to cry more than was humanly possible. I don´t know or care if anyone heard my bestial wailing. That wasn´t what was important. I gasped through scorched lungs, and blinked acid tears out of my eyes. I had killed the one man I loved, and the darkness in my soul had held it from me.

I knew what I had done, and it didn´t bother me too much. It was not that I had killed all those people. I was a criminal, after all. It was that Malfoy had been one of them. I couldn´t think. I just sat with my cheek against the icy window, trying to stop crying. I´m sure there was something going on in there. Even when I´m sane, I don´t fully control my mind to this day. It was probably due to the lack of light in my childhood. I don´t know what I was plotting. I just had the words `live, live, live´ playing over and over in my head like a stuck record. Of course I would live, I would always live, but did I have the power to give that to other people? I couldn´t say.

Malfoy´s theory-obsessed spirit was starting to crush my minimal intelligence. It was taking me over. I should never have expected that he hadn´t protected himself from death. He was one of the most magically advanced people on the planet. Voldemort was a child compared to him. So Voldemort was immortal. He relied on others. Malfoy relied on whomsoever killed him. It was a sick irony, but he was obviously expecting a bloke to kill him. I felt like laughing. Sucker. But I was the one paying. He would soon become conscious in me, and control me again. I had to exorcise him, or rescue him, before my time was out. It sounded so unfair and clichéd. It was beyond all the normal bounds. Right now he was on recovery overdrive, helping me without realising to work him out. That´s what´s called being too clever for your own good, or being cut on the blade of your own sharp wit, impaled upon your own sword. But he wasn´t yet. I knew what I had to do, but not how. That would come later.

I felt the pounding of the pistons underneath me as the train slowed into the station. Rain splattered against the glass, and I could see nothing beyond darkness. What was I doing here? Malfoy didn´t want me here; I didn´t want me here. It only suggested to me that I was the pawn of far more than I had thought. Malfoy´s replaced soul and my own twisted mind already controlled me. Now someone was spannering the works in a new way. I stood up, and promptly fell down. I knew I was important in Rae-land, but why was I so relevant. It must have been more than I had been told. I was special in some way other than that I could touch my nose with my tongue, and scratch the back of my head with my toenails. There was something that I had done, or that had been done, that gave me something others wanted.

My mind was too far from issues of vanity to think of it like that. It wasn´t good. I had been forced to kill my friends and my love, all because of whatever this was. I don´t think you´d be flattered either.

I´m sorry that this section of my file is so much internal monologue of shaded years long past in the history of war. It´s important that I explain. You know who I am, if I know who you are, and you will know my tale by now. This is what I was told to do. All the bits that had never come out before will come out now. That was my order, and I´m used to taking orders I don´t understand yet never question. These are the areas of my life untouched by the paparazzi, and now they´ll have a field day, but you deserve to know. I can´t very well be me when you don´t know who `me´ is. Well, that´s enough of that. Back to the tale.

I stepped down into the puddle-ridden and rain-soaked station at `Ho sm ade´. The broken sign was not the dreariest thing there, however. I was. I touched my fingers to my face, and felt it pulse with metallic energy. I hadn´t got long. I had to get Malfoy out of me before he really got control. I ran down the chewing gum studded staircase and over a broken bridge spanning a rain-dimpled river. I slid down the muddy hill on the other side into the town.

It was so unreal. I remembered seeing Hogsmeade before and this was not it. People slept in heaps under cardboard boxes, and sputtering torches smoked up at the dripping sky. The rebels who had come here for a better life huddled where the rivulets of water from the gutters weren´t as strong as in other places. A child stirred under a crate, and turned baleful eyes on me. The world I had deserted was now blinding me. I delved into my pockets and crouched to press three ten Galleon bills into her hand. She gave me a little smile, then started to cry. I took off my coat and pulled off the black sweater I wore underneath off over my head. She took it, and wrapped it around her.

`I´ll help you,´ I breathed. She just looked at me, and then looked away, shaking her head.

`I will!´ I half-shouted. `I´ll come back for you all!´

She gave me a reassuring smile that didn´t reach her eyes. She knew that I had no idea of the real world, but she mistook me for someone who couldn´t do what she set out to. She was wrong there, and I will always promise. It takes someone special to get me to keep them, but when I start out, I finish. I pulled my coat back on and walked away. It wouldn´t do to turn back.

`Nice guns,´ she called after me.

`What?´ I said, turning back after all.

`Nice guns, and nice coat. Shame you had to steal it,´ she said lightly. There was something odd going on here. `I like the dragon charm. Did you lose the original? Have you still got my ring?´

I gasped and stumbled away as the child stood up, and shrugged off her exterior. She grew taller like a flower in speed-camera. She blossomed into a thorny rose, tall, blond, dressed in black with a white fur cape, and dead.

`No!´

`Rae? What do you mean?´ he asked nastily.

`You´re dead, Draco!´ I screamed.

`I was,´ he corrected me. I tried to run, but he crooked a beckoning finger at me, and I lurched forward like a wooded puppet.

He reached out and pulled me to him until I was pressed right against his body. He lowered his face right into mine, and I felt the rain drip off his hair. He was really back. I couldn´t feel the insanity, this was real.

`You saved me, Rae,´ he whispered, balling a fist into the fabric of my shirt. I squeaked slightly.

`I killed you,´ I said, to no one in particular.

`Then I lived,´ Malfoy smiled. `Isn´t life a dream?´

`Why are you here?´

`You´re here, Rae,´ he said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, but he didn´t sound insulting. He sounded genuine.

`Are you linked to me, or something?´ I said.

`No,´ he sighed. `No.´ He lifted his face and flicked a hand. The cloud cleared, and above us was a full moon. `I love you Rae.´

`What? You don´t love me! You were controlling me!´ I spat, trying and failing to shove him away.

`Clever girl. I suppose you spotted how I came to be here, too?´

`Yes, but that´s not the point!´

`Yes, I did make you love me. Unfortunately, no spell works only on the castee. I have to take returns. Now I love you, and it´s three times more than you love me.´

I left out a moment to wonder at how he must be feeling.

`Starting to wish that spell was weaker, Malfoy?´ I hissed unpleasantly.

`Starting to wish I had never let you kill me,´ he retorted, but it was a gentle reply. `Now I´ve lost everything to you. All my prowess is diluted, bitch.´

`That´s hardly my fault!´ I snapped, but I couldn´t argue for long.

`No. I´ve still got most of it, though.´ He let go of me, and straightened my shirt scrupulously. He flicked an out-of-place strand of my hair over to the right side, and cupped my chin in his hands. He tilted my face up to his.

`I never chose to do what I did. I was as much of an experiment as you, with as little choice in the matter,´ he told me. I looked into his grey eyes, which searched my face like two spotlights. He looked so gentle. `What I lost is what made me who I was, unwilling. I lost my insanity, along with some intelligence, evilness, fighting skill and appearance,´ he said lightly, running a finger softly over my cheekbone. `You look different. I don´t think I´d know you if I wasn´t a part of you.´ He sighed, then continued. `What I could never address, you conquered in a matter of weeks.´

`I wasn´t alone,´ I said, fighting the ever-powerful urge to melt into his arms.

`No, but I was too weak, too dead to do much. You´re a strong person, Rae.´

`I will survive all pain and darkness,´ I said.

`Probably by worming your way in then betraying all of its plans to the other side,´ Malfoy commented lightly. `But I have much to thank you for.´ He changed the tone of his voice to a soft, lulling, persuasive note. `We could go into business together,´ he told me. `No one could stop us. We´re the two best people in the country at what we do. With both of us on board, we could never lose!´

`Lose what?´

`Anything!´ he said fiercely. `We could rule the world, Rae!´

Pause game a second. Now, at this point in any namby-pamby tale of honour and courage, a tale of fantasy, may I add, they would say `I don´t want the world!´ and start beating the evil nasty-nasty over the head with their wibble-stick. This is a tale of true life, back before the second War of Hope. I could have the world. Where´s the harm in at least trying. Un-pause.

`Where do we start?´ I whispered excitedly.