The Ichor and the Blood

Prologue: In which there is friendship

The truth lay hidden in his soul, so much of what he could deny was the truth.

     The boy sat in the tub, furiously scrubbing at the scars that stood as a perpetual reminder of what pains he had suffered. He was not minding the sting of the soap against burnt, opened, and ruined flesh. Perhaps, if he rubbed his body long enough the pain and the scars would go away. His hand then went to a dark serpent embedded on the underside of his left palm. He especially hated that, it was not as large or as severe as the other faults thrust so violently into his what would have been flawless etiolated skin, but it delved deep into the scar that had long since killed him. This was the condition of his heart. Yet his heart lived despite its emptiness, and let him love, and let him now cry that he had accomplished everything and nothing, failed at everything and nothing. Like rain, the tears fell and inflicted its doom; and its joy.

I remember then, any point that could be called then, I can remember. I understand the beauty to a world of disgust and sadness. I have no healers to decide for me what is done wrong, to tell me I have so and so disease. If I know that I am a dreamer whose dreams have only made this black of life a Sisyphean existence, why do I forever push up that boulder...? Does my heart thirst for impossible accomplishment? I think I do it to escape the fear of

leaving the situation I have known. I have bestowed my love so readily, and I am worthless.

With this parchment in my hand , let the tears fall down, I close my eyes and let the quill fall and let it write in its Saturnine soliloquy, painful words, each accursed word that drips from my heart, each falling into storms where no light from any blessed window shone. Then I shall know these furies have risen again, and let their waves of torment crash into my ship. Let its wreck lie, nay, for my ship cannot die but live these storms again and forever.

As a boy, I'd often listen to the swinging notes of the violin, I remember how its body could feel every passion that was a part of me, and let it roll with suck accuracy, that I must have been crying from these notes, music like words, both like tears, filled with a longing so deep, so intense that all I could want was to not want anymore, to not breathe another tainted breath, to become one with the ground and let it be forgotten, just as so much of the truth lies forgotten.

 

His hand adapted easily to each instrument, it fitted to the brush, naturally held between each long delicate finger. He relaxed in the feel of fingertips upon the nib of his pen, his hand became the flesh of this tool for creation.

A hand was now a violin. Music poured from within, each solitary weeping string becoming one and apart of some grand play of sound, sharp, brilliant, wanting, needing, imagining in its musical absinthe.

His father would not approve; he wondered had he, if Draco would be happier? He wondered had he truly hated him would he be alive now, emotionally. He was certainly paralyzed if not completely dead. There was absolutely nothing left for Draco to give to the world or himself.

     *         *         *         *         *         *     

She stood there in the cold, hugging the cloak against her frame, it was icy as the February snow that lay piled in a blanket beneath her booted feet. The air was fresh and cold to breathe and she waited for a warning from somebody to let her know why she was here. It was then she saw in the distance, a dark figure, at first a dot and then growing bigger as it came closer, ever closer. She squinted her eyes to see who the figure was, but she already knew, it was the ghost of a memory she had always kept within her heart, she could not ever forget the voice that was calling her.

Long ago, she had bled, and then he came, his hands playing the concertos on his violin. "Ginny, come out, I am here." The tunes from her crypt now beckoned her forward, tugged and pushed by the heavenly music, that were like roses in a graveyard. The music tingled in the night, it wanted her to come to it. He was ice and he was steam, she had never known what he was, but the sound of his voice calling her name, and the music that followed her was dripping in the rouge of her blood, she hated seeing blood, but it ran through her veins and so she followed it.

"Virginia ... Virginia ... Virginia my angel ..."

He called out to her soul, and it was the ghost of her love that guided her to him now, the ghost of a love she thought would never die. Slowly, cautiously, she made her way through the snow. She held a white hand out, her lambent eyes, gazing across the field. "Tom...." She came closer. "Tom is it

you?" She could see him now waiting for her. "You've come back to me."

She awaited the feel of his skin, and the silent poetry of his words, the words he would never speak.

At last she was there, he did not throw open his arms, nor did he say a word to her. Instead, he grabbed her wrists in his long bony fingers and held her so she was bowing to him. "Look at me Virginia. Beauty has passed out from my face, it lay forgotten like the years, I have been away from you."

She struggled in his grasp and cried. "I lay wanting needing for a touch from a girl, like I used to, they'd come behind and start to kiss my neck." She didn't know if he was whispering, or whether his face spoke out everything.

He pulled her up and he began to bite at her neck, drawing blood and licking it away. "Tom." She looked at him and saw the face of a boy she had known, because that was what she wanted to see. She let her hand slide up inside of his shirt. His skin was rough and hard, and cold. She felt his tongue probe into her mouth, and he held her with a binding grip. He began to kiss her, ravish her deep, searching, needing, his human part longing to touch and be touched, his other part wanting to control her. He bit her neck and scratched the flesh of her arm. Blood soon poured and spilled across untainted skin, phantom bleeding. She yelped away from his mouth. And then she saw him in his true face, scaly with red bulbous eyes that glared in fiery light, and she

heard a voice growling on her ear.

"Struggle against me, give me that pleasure and struggle." Crying, she obeyed needing to please him. She struggled as she had done before waiting for his hands to delve into her clothes only for him to rip them off. Now he would speak, and his words were subjects. Any subject to wound her would suffice.

*    *    *

In the aftermath of the prefects' meeting, two of the prestigious members had remained in the room, absorbed in their attempts to improve themselves by extensive reading, or they did stay behind only to continue the games they had often played after meetings, each trying to outdo the other with sharp wit. Of course she had interested him, like no other had, she was intriguing to him, he had always thought her to have a magical zeal for life, something he had always admired in her, and pitied in her, she would learn the truth in time and he thought it awful in so good a person. He had only finished a book he had found a few days ago, from an author he had not known, a mythical place within the territory of France. Something Hugo. Les Miserables. It had been a powerful book . It was about the pains of a class so different from his own; so different from the privileged. He had cried a bit in its duration. He had finished, and having nothing better to do, decided to check up on the girl who was now writing.

She was fiddling with a sort of poem, fun to say, in its old sort of prose. She had now gotten into something like this.

Let tempests gather and storm away to crash unto each its way, to turn from all but his good name the ruins of which there was no aide. Such words they were that they be torrents of wind in the pouring rain in the darkness where the light shut out no way for the moon to illuminate, and to this he stole in one yearning gaze to let a wave carry him from they. 

"Don't tell me you're trying to attempt at poetry I bet it's purely pathetic" He snatched the book away from her grasp and read." Let tempests gather and storm away ..." 

"Do you still think it's pathetic?" asked, Hermione, as if daring him to tell her it wasn’t the most beautiful poem he had ever heard.

"No, not entirely," he said thoughtfully." The form is outdated and a bit overly illustrious, the structure a bit clumsy, but well written, somewhat at least." He sat down, thinking of how ridiculous it was doing anything in the 'everyday is the same day only slightly different' routine. At least that was what he could think shallowly, deep within him his soul could have written the piece of poetry he'd just read with such a painful ferocity, it would have torn the world like the scars that decorated his own body. 

"That means a lot, I'm sure, coming from my severest critic." She turned her head and smiled, such a young uncommonly beautiful face even almost caused hm to smile. The smile though was a small one, a momentary youthful fantasy only that could be given by a person who someday would be one of the few to truly understand the wrong of the world, truly feel it; as he did.

"Or perhaps today is a rare day, rare indeed, that you could have the propensity to understand the importance of giving a furious compliment, making up for its lack of color through its scarcity." At this the intellectual side of him won out over his depression, allowing him to be properly intrigued by her wit. It was a cruel wit, but one not lacking in intellect.

"No, Granger, I am sure you have me all wrong. It is not out of jealousy that I compliment you, but out of peaked interest." He responded easily." I'm afraid there is such a lack of intellectual activity in the minds of the others of my house that I am to welcome any person I find stimulating with welcome arms; even if the only person is you."

She laughed in the way a well-bred lady was supposed to laugh - with grace. "Truly, I don't know why you would want to know any sort of intelligence, your being devoid of any seems to be somewhat odd, if you want to know someone smart."

"I've gotten all top marks on my exams. I've been the top in the school for three years. I am the smartest person you know." true, he had outdone her grade-wise for years, she had to settle for second-best, as he once did. The way he teased her now, carefully pronouncing each word, annoyed her like a gadfly.

"Still, I don't understand what you mean,” she inquired.

"I am not here, to read. I've come to stay in the room after meetings to play these mind games with you. I have decided that its ridiculous to not realize that I think you brilliant. I don’t think it’s wise for us to be enemies, as entertaining as that is for me. Should we form a truce?"

Years of fighting and bickering had let him know the way she could have him believe he had beaten her, and then just as quickly pick up and leave him where he was trapped. That was why he liked her, she was smart, and he was tired of fighting like that with someone who could beat him as much as she did(he beat her as much as she beat him, but she still beat him too much).

He had surely been more civil or at least less uncivil. He had not called her anything disrespectful for over a year. She was still shocked, how could 'for prefects' meetings ,and simply neither leaving afterward turn into something like this?

"Are you saying that you would forget every part of what you've done to me over the years and give yourself the biggest blow to your pride you've ever received to become my friend?" she asked incredulously.

"No!" The lighthearted air of the conversation turned sour with the bitter laconism he delicately used, perhaps to kill her hopes. It was a while before he spoke again." My pride was taken long ago, you see, a very, very, long, old time ago with every hope of feeling anything other than indifference towards anyone besides the person who took away my pride. I never hated you or thought you inferior because of your blood, God knows mine has done nothing but hurt me. You remind me a lot of myself when I was younger, and it's different in my relationship with you because I think I respect you, and I would like to be more friendly if you could handle it?"

Hermione had considered laughing at him, telling him to stop being so absolutely ridiculous, but the seriousness with which he confronted her, his mystery, his intelligence, and the intensity of his eyes intrigued her, as though he could almost be fascinating. Oh, but he was fascinating and intriguing, how could a person she hardly knew affect her like he did? She'd missed a class in 2nd year, become violent, cried , lusted even. Now he was being nice to her, and she would try it. She hadn't decided whether she liked him or not, but she wondered if eventually perhaps she could.

In the trance of a childlike fascination she walked up to him and extended her hand."Then Draco, a truce we shall have.” He needed to know why he asked her to do this, and so she timidly agreed, ignoring all trepidation to say no.

* * * *     * *

Draco was a boy of ten then, the event was a sort of gathering between Voldemort and some of the Death Eaters. though out of power he had managed at the particular time to send Lucius Malfoy and a few others to the gathering.

In the middle of the ceremony, Lucius had taken Draco away.

He was in chains, holding, containing, constricting his young naked and bleeding self, with desperate trying calls he pleaded for his father to stop, watching as his father slid down his pants. With horrifying speed, his father then went on to kiss his neck, rough violent bites like an animal denied

of nutrient. His waited for what he thought to be inevitable. With, the irony of saving grace, Voldemort had come in and stopped his father from doing it, there had been an equal mix of fear and gratitude. His father had never tried to do it again, Voldemort had made sure of that, but Draco could not forget the sounds of his screams, nor forget that it was the night his heart

truly died. He was the type that would have been a virgin on his wedding day, and that he had almost lost it then, made the experience that much worse.

* * * * *

Draco sat rubbing his skin......

Help

his fathers nails, they must have been talons delved into his flesh,

there was blood and fear, world spinning. Faster Faster Faster

Blood boiling

Help

Every ideal was shattered

in the folds of night's satin sheet

The feeling of teeth trying to destroy

Hurting

Crying

Help

Please

Help me help help

Faster faster faster

He was broken

There were other times, physical instances but this was most devastating, and it was the quickest one to make him cry. Like rain his tears gave in the stretch of running streams, hope; despair

 

Dear Mum,

Mother I have thought of you as I picked out a rose for today, it reminds me of you and your grace and poise, you had thorns too, nasty hooky ones. Do you wish to hear from your beloved son, no, although ask me if I should like to hear from you, and I'd very much like to, I should write you, and you should write too. I shall ask you how you are doing, you would say well, and you would ask me. Mother, all is not well, it is not, I want a mother, I love you mum, I always will, I think I'll comfort myself by thinking you will reply, although I know you won't

Love,
Draco Malfoy

* * * * * * * *

Hermione sat in the common room amidst the company of various boys, eagerly sitting around her, most not speaking, only to admire the beauty that radiated from her form. She was the epitome of grace and pulchritude. One could start to admire the delicate etiolating of her skin, or perhaps the dark tresses of hair that fell so naturally. The clarity and richness of her large tsavorite eyes and the perfection of her nose, made her a classic beauty, that those around her could never truly appreciate, nor would they understand the taste of her clothes or the poise
of her walk. None of them either could appreciate her modesty

Brushing her unmatched tendrils of hair by the mirror that stood in her room, which she had gone to, she sat to ponder. Draco had surprised her; had he really sat back, after meetings so he could be with her? It struck her as a charming sort of gesture, and she smiled in reminisce.

Thoughts of him were completely interrupted then. The sanguineous face of Virginia, interrupted. Slowly she sat across from her and Hermione turned around to face her." I decided to check up on you." Hermione motioned for her friend to continue." You've been acting strange tonight, you seemed rather out of it."

"Perhaps, something happened today, something I never thought about, and there's a sort of mystery about him." She indeed, could not get him out of her mind.

"So this mystery is a he then?"

"It's not like that, Draco Malfoy has asked me to be his friend, well to form a truce actually."She felt odd saying this perhaps because she was in shock.

"Strange, I would agree, Lavender who heard it from Cho Chang who heard it from Padma who heard it from Pansy, told me that he never does anything with anyone, and whenever a girl asks for sex, he always says no."

"Ginny, can't you even try to be appropriate?"

"I am being appropriate, imagine getting him to let his willy run wild, like a horse, only bigger, much, much bigger."

"Ginny, don't be so loud, Ron will hear you and he'll kill me." Ginny shrugged.

"He'd just be jealous because we all no he doesn't have a big willy."

Hermione laughed. "Is it really?"

"Why else do you think Fred and George call him ickle Ronniekins?"

"Well I would like to see you call him that with his ickle temper."

"Fine!" Ginny gave up."Give me time before you decide to roast me on an open fire."

"Shoo, before he hears you."

The girl walked away and Hermione continued to think as she prepared for sleep, thinking at one point of how Ronald would act if he heard what his sister had said. She imagined he would kill Lavender.

* * * * * * * *

Hermione looked at Draco, meeting with him as he had requested, he now motioned for her to sit down. "I brought you here, because rumor has it that you've read 'Hogwarts a History'."

Although she knew that was not the reason he had brought her here, her face lit up and he thought her at that moment radiant, she was." Oh, everyone always tells me that I'm a complete bore, reading this."

"I've always loved the book." For hours they had engaged in spirited conversation about the book laughing and talking,

"No, of course people can't apparate on Hogwarts grounds the book is never wrong it's like my bible."

"But Hogwarts has so much of a magical atmosphere, I'm sure there are different approaches to the same result, magic like that can do it, that's why you can't use electricity on Hogwarts grounds."

"How do you know about electricity?"

It was all wonderful until during the middle of it his eagle owl had flown in, dropping an envelope into his lap, ripping it open he found it was from his mother. "Hemione please go."

"Why?"

For the first times in her life she saw him look truly murderous. She wouldn't budge.

Getting up, he screamed." Get the bloody hell away from me, Mudblood."

She walked over to him and slapped him, resisting the urge to burst into tears. "I'm sorry I ever met you, you absolute horror of a human being. She left him, and he unfolded the contents of the letter, standing up to read it

Draco,

You are my shining star, right when you were born I realized how special you were, you were my healthy blue-eyed baby. I remember when you took your first steps, spoke your first words, and all of those moments I was as proud as any mother of brilliant boy could be. I've watched you grow up too, into a beautiful boy too, just thinking about you brings a tear to my eye. I love my blue-eyed baby, and now he's growing up, I remember the times I'd go out with you and show you off to all of my friends, they'd all say 'ooh what a beautiful baby that is. You are smart too, I remember we were all talking about politics, you were really little and you corrected us all. All my friends said how intelligent you were and you were going to be such a gentleman one
day and as your mother I have to realize that you aren't a little baby calling for his mummy because he has a boubou, and your growing into a man any mother would be proud of. Although I still cry, know I love you blue-eyed baby of mine. Enjoy your life.

Your loving devoted mother,
Narcissa

With all his strength he ripped that letter apart. "LIAR!" He screamed "Liar liar liar" Blue eyed baby boy, he had grey blue eyes, no woman would use those words. He wondered what book she had got that from, some trashy dime novel? He took a glass, smashing it against the wall, yelling.

He was crying uncontrollably now, hating himself for crying, being weak like he was now.

He cried and cried, hurting and bruising himself, reopening cuts and scars and reliving memories, Yelping, Crying.

He yelled out of hurt, frustration with himself, and an emptiness he needed wanted and had to have filled. He hugged himself afterward, shaking lonely and empty. and in awful physical pain looking at the mark the devil gave him all of those years ago.

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Severus Snape stayed in his office that night, looking over various papers submitted by two people, he read and reread until he had convinced himself that he was seeing the truth. Dumbledore should have found this contrary to anything he believed in.

Severus decided tomorrow would be a big day for the two of them. It certainly would be.
The two of them might be keys in a sort of mystery.

* * * * * * * *

Sofia, Bulgaria 1156:

The land was good, lakes and mountains, and plains. She decided it was what she had dreamed of. "Novone livers here in dis part Mame.'' She smiled at her guide." I very much like it, do you know who owns it?"

He nodded, "It's owned by de Boerchekov family, don't go much in using it vo. I dink vey not like vis vland 'me, they von't gonna have vroblems if vou vant to buy ve Vland; Bulgarians very generous."

She shrugged. "I didn't say I would buy it, but now I think I might ask them." She considered her guide and that he might ask for her but decided he wasn't too bright. "Where do they live?"

"I show you, Kostadin knows de vay to Boerchekov family I know de way oaffer, come I show you." She was not used to such awful walking conditions and she cut her feet and legs many times, struggling to keep up with the Bulgarian oaf. She put up with it, she hadn't charmed and slept with half of the
continent's powerful men so she could stop her dream. She had money and now she wanted to do something with it. Danska Durmstrang would not give up.

After an eternity of walking she at last collapsed where she could see the house. The guide stopped and ran to her . "They are wealthy I see."

"Yes very lucky."

With his support they made it into the house. She was welcomed inside by a servant, and brought into the sitting room. The halls were dark and cold, stone used so often. She had sat in the room and faced two men. One she recognized the other she did not. "I am here," she said,
"I am here to buy a piece of the land."

"How ironic, so has he." The older unfamiliar one nodded towards the one she recognized. " He's Salazar Slytherin."

"I am to buy the part of it surrounding the fish shaped lake." She stared at him." I should leave now."

He had left, and she stood in front of him. "Let me buy it,"she pleaded. He shook his head." He shall have it, my wife will agree when she returns from her trip." She smiled, his wife was away and she would get her land by performing for her special friend in his bedroom. To her delight he was willing to let her. Perhaps he would give her the land once she made herself his obsession, as she did with all of her men.

* * * * * *

Hermione,

I'm sorry about yesterday I didn't mean to shut you out things just happened. Please forgive me, I don't want to be mean, you wouldn't understand how much having a person that knows the English language well, means to me, I've always admired and watched you as if you seemed to have a sort of mystic quality about you. I do value your company

Please meet me at noon in the meeting room, I'll be waiting

Draco Malfoy

The letter was not sent to her by his owl that morning, but by another's, to avoid suspicions. The elegant script seemed hauntingly like her own. She would meet him then, as he asked her, but the potions professor would have them meet much sooner. But she found herself very interested
about what was in the letter, maybe there was something secret. She knew after that day; that she would learn things both about him and the Potions professor.

She had finished eating, walking swiftly, embraced as she went by her beautiful coat, it had been given to her by a rich relative, as she would never be able to have one otherwise, and in it she looked like she might have been worth a fortune. Following hurriedly in her wake, Snape caught up to her. "Miss Granger, I must have you come with me it is urgent." She stopped and faced him.

"This rather unexpected, Professor, I was on my way to class, where you should be heading, I believe."

"I have a substitute, I repeat it is urgent."

"Yes Professor." She followed his lead through the web of stairs and corridors and into the dungeons."

-----------------------------------
Once there she was surprised to find Draco on the side of the office and gave him a confused look before being seated into the professor's office together, neither knowing how important it was that they were here,

 

AND THAT HARRY POTTER WASN'T.

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Harry Potter sat in classes with Ron Weasley

Virginia Weasley was taken ill and knew her sickness to
be psychological as if she had seen her end.

And the devil stood watching, waiting, the mechanics of his head turning, formulating.

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When the man did not give her the land she decided she would seduce, Salazar, she was not in possession of any great beauty, but she was pretty, more importantly she was worldly and that's what he wanted.

It seemed curious to her that she should now be obsessed with a person she wanted to take land from. Salazar Slytherin was a name she knew would be spoken a thousand years later. He had just left Hogwarts, a school he had created, a school she wanted to destroy with one of her own, on the land she had wanted. He was only twenty-nine he had started a school that was already bigger than any other school. The other three founders were already over 50 now, and still he had been arguably the most important. He had resigned and now he was in Bulgaria because he was rumored to have set up an agreement with the Minister for Magic. She had followed his career; he had studied volumes of books on realms of magic, studied so that he became, more knowledgeable than anyone in Britain, and how he had become powerful by making it his business to know who would be powerful when he came of age. They became his friends, and they became famous, and he used their power until he had risen above them all, he got involved with every major country's Ministry and held enormous influence, and he had then taken countries he hated and destroyed them by declaring war for the two countries. He had stopped this at 20, and joined a group of three emerging people. They founded a school in Britain, and with his name it rose to become greater than any other school. For nine years that school was his life, he picked his students and molded them into capable magicians. He was always in control and then, the other founder, with the temerity to challenge his authority, led him to quit and it was said he cursed one he had been close to. Rowena was his aunt, he had given her more power than Gryffindor, or Hufflepuff. Rowena had to carry the thirst of unsatiated knowledge, to think others knew more than she and be driven by it.

 

Danska Durmstrang knew he was dangerous, but she was unafraid, he had power, power was what
she wanted and she would have it. His ambition would fall dormant on her own. She would seduce
him, and he would lust, a slave to her charms, like so many others had before him.

She prepared herself. She became a countess of a good-sized piece of land, she could not use it
though, its waters did not spring violet streams of magical substance, its sands did not slither along the floor with tails of possessed beads of glass. It didn't compare to the untamed beauty of the morphing mountain peaks.