Slytherin's Warning

Rumours
By Carter Murray

To know the words you say to me
Are true, causes a quake in me
And I know you're afraid of me
Afraid of what's inside of me
You don't ask how it came to me
I'd tell you how a beast bit me
But still you turn away from me
Spread rumours, and don't look at me
By starlit sky you hunt for me
And scare your young with talk of me
Good fortune has forsaken me
This curse has been the end of me

-page 50, Full Moon: An Anthology of Werewolf Literature

The door was open! The room Draco had only caught the smallest glimpses of, the room Lupin so often retreated to and blocked Draco from seeing. Draco surprised himself by hesitating a second--but only a second--before taking quick steps inside.

The office was small and unremarkable at first glance. A well-made but somewhat beaten desk was to Draco's left, against the wall that adjoined the sitting room. There was a window set in the wall next to it, with a perch that would accommodate two owls, maybe three. The other walls were lined with bookshelves; the floor was bare but for a single box. Draco lifted the lid and saw folded robes. He gingerly lowered it closed again.

The contents of these bookshelves were considerably darker than those in the main room, entire rows on the methodology behind the choice of a sacrifice and the theory underlying blood magic. The few Draco pulled out for a closer look even felt menacing--almost as though the magic in the volumes knew Draco was an interloper.

The Aurors had left little evidence of their presence here, and Draco felt uneasy. He knew Lupin would be back soon. What had he expected to find, anyway? But he did not go. Instead, he turned to the desk. It was overflowing with papers, perhaps seventy percent of them in Lupin's now-familiar scrawl.

Draco picked up on piece for a closer look. To his surprise, the paper read, "10/11 Nozguz. No on H's cup. R's inkwell, bookstamp? BM, MoM apps. to research." What could that possibly mean? Most of the other parchments were equally cryptic. Eventually, with the aid of a book titled, "Sirone: The Art of Tracing Magical Artifacts Through Time," Draco determined that Lupin was doing an extensive survey of magical artifacts. But what could that possibly have to do with the war against the Dark Lord?

Draco was just turning to go, disappointed by how mundane the office actually was, when he paused. Another copy of Hogwarts, a History? What could it be doing here? Draco pulled out the book, noting that this copy was not dusty as the ones in the main room were. As he suspected, there was a niche cut out of the pages, a small box resting inside. The slight tingling of his fingers as he lifted it out told Draco the box had one or more charms upon it, and on a hunch he enlarged it.

It settled into a size about the same as a breadbox. Draco didn't try to force the gleaming lock open, instead using a complex combination of charms to vanish the box (but not the contents) and insubstantiate his hand. A moment later the box snapped back into physical being, but Draco had what he wanted--a fist full of parchments.

They were short letters--notes, really. There were no dates, but they were addressed to "Moony." Draco suspected they were from one of Lupin's school friends, kept for their sentimental value. But then the words, "Second Task," jumped out at him, niggling at his memory, and he read:

Moony--Checked out that place we were talking about didn't find anything but a trap with water good thing the kits Brains made had gillyweed or we'd have been in trouble so guess the Second Task was good for something. Will see you in two days bring the paper as always. TBWWA

"The Second Task," had to refer to the Triwizard Tournament, and there had only been one during Lupin's lifetime, meaning the letter was quite recent after all. Undoubtedly any of the Order could have gotten the idea to habitually carry Gillyweed, as Potter's use of it in the Tournament was common knowledge, but Draco guessed that the letter was from Potter himself.

After all, how many people would call Lupin, "Moony," now that his school friends were gone? The child of one of those friends, perhaps. The reference to the Second Task seemed personal, too. If it was Potter then "Brains" had to be Granger. Interested again, Draco quickly scanned some of the other letters.

Moony--Place 3 on Sat. TBWWA

Moony--Welch's Arith. text, latest ed., for Brains. TBWWA

Moony--Set up meet with BW? Books on wards. TBWWA

Moony--You know to never trust a dragon. TBWWA

Draco lingered over that one, suspicion aroused. It was possible that Potter (if Potter was indeed the writer; Merlin knew what "TBWWA" stood for) was talking about some literal threat. The Prophet had reported more than one dragon attack in recent weeks. And of course, Draco only had half the correspondence to work with--who knew what Lupin had said to elicit that response?

If it wasn't a literal dragon though, then Lupin had... Draco couldn't finish the thought. A part of him wanted to stop reading, to back out of the office and leave Lupin's secrets undisturbed. But he'd already come this far; he couldn't turn back now.

Moony--Inkwell, you think? TBWWA

Moony--Chess says have any swords? TBWWA

Moony--Don't use Floo. Brain's testing ideas. TBWWA

Moony--Tell O goblin refuge? TBWWA

Moony--We need to talk. Shack? TBWWA

Moony--Don't trust him. TBWWA

Moony--Tell who're halfbloods. TBWWA

At a soft, scuffing sound Draco spun around, only to see Lupin standing in the doorway to the office. His eyes were on the parchment clenched in Draco's hands rather than on Draco's face, and he was very pale. "Draco? What are you doing here?" When Draco only stared at him without responding, Lupin said, "I'd hoped you would not breach my trust this way."

It was the wrong thing to say. Draco opened his hands and let the parchments fall. "Well I wouldn't want to break all the trust that's between us," he said bitterly. He didn't understand everything he'd read, but he understood enough. Lupin's expression of comprehension, quickly followed by one Draco couldn't place--guilt, perhaps?--only served to ignite Draco's anger.

He stormed past Lupin, stomping on the letters as he went, ranting, "I can't believe I trusted you. You said you wouldn't tell anyone I was here unless I agreed and I bought it!"

"Draco...."

Draco spun to face him. "How long has Potter known I was here?"

Lupin winced. "I sent him a message the moment you arrived. He and the others were all for handing you over to the Ministry, but I persuaded them not to."

"So you've been lying to me from the start! What else have you been lying about?"

"Nothing, Draco."

"I don't believe you! And don't call me that!" Draco lifted his wand and pointed it at Lupin. "You thought to turn a Malfoy to the Light with your lies! I should kill you now!"

Lupin spread his hands in what looked like a gesture of surrender. "Draco, I'm sorry."

"I said, don't call me that!" Draco's wand faltered. "Stop looking at me!"

For once, Lupin's face was completely open, with sorrow and remorse but a kind of quiet resolve as well. He said, "Are you going to kill me, Draco?"

"I should! I should right now and then undo everything you've done to me!" But Draco knew he wouldn't cast Avada Kedavra.

And Lupin undoubtedly knew it too, damn him, because he said, "Not everything can be undone."

So much had happened during the time he'd spent in this small house; neither the outside world nor Draco's mind could ever go back to the way they were before. Draco's gaze fell upon the bubbling cauldron in the corner. "Not everything... but this can!" He aimed a blasting hex at the stand the cauldron stood upon, and it readily collapsed. The expensive, volatile potion briefly ignited with flames of a brilliant red, and the half-done mixture spilled onto the floor.

"I trusted a werewolf!" Draco snarled. "I won't make that mistake again." Lupin started to say something else, but Draco reflexively sent a stunning spell his way, and the werewolf hit the wall hard before landing in a heap on the floor. Draco didn't look at the werewolf, just Disapparated.

Given his emotional state, it was a minor miracle he didn't splinch himself, but when he appeared in a field Merlin alone knew where, he still had all his arms and legs. For a moment Draco stood still, breathing heavily and clutching at his wand. His eyes stung a bit, but he did not cry. He was a man now, not a child.

The field was quiet and empty, desolate in the way a field could only be in winter. The only sign of habitation was a low stone wall off to Draco's right. After a few minutes, the adrenaline of Draco's flight began to wear off and he shivered. Now what? He could not go home--even if the manor allowed him entrance, the Ministry was surely watching it. To go almost anywhere else in the Wizarding World would be certain suicide. And even that would be better than returning to the werewolf.

Draco started walking as much to keep warm as anything else. When he reached the stone wall climbing over it seemed like too much trouble, so he turned and walked beside it. "I could go to Hogwarts," he mused aloud. His voice felt raw and very small. But could he even get close to Hogwarts, or through the wards? He knew better than to expect any allies there.

After some time, as the sun sank towards the horizon, the wall intersected a muggle road. As Draco paused in indecision, two bright lights appeared, followed shortly by a muggle carriage. Draco hadn't ever seen one before, but he knew that was what it had to be. But how did it move without magic? He only got the briefest glimpse of the man inside as the--transport--flashed past. The man had combed-back brown hair and reading glasses and an unfriendly expression. In short, utterly unremarkable.

Draco started when he heard the rumbling sound the transporter made coming from behind him and turned--was the man coming back? But no, this one was red (the other black), and bigger, and there were two children sitting behind the man in front, gawking at Draco through the glass. Soon they were over the next small hill and out of sight. One way was as good as another, so Draco started walking that way too.

It grew dark quickly. Lupin would surely have woken by now--well unless he'd been really hurt from hitting the wall, but Draco was pretty sure that wasn't the case--and the werewolf was probably shut in his little office writing his little letters to Harry-Bloody-Potter. Draco scowled at the thought. The muggle carriages went by from time to time, though Draco couldn't see their occupants anymore. He thought he was getting rather used to their speed and noise, right up until one of them screeched to a sudden stop by Draco and made a truly awful blaring noise. Draco covered his ears.

When the sound ended, Draco watched the window of the transporter disappear into the door. It hadn't been vanished--muggles couldn't do that. Could they? But Draco didn't know how it had been done.

An angry-looking older man with wild white eyebrows demanded, "Just what do you think you're doing, young man? I nearly--"

Draco had had enough. He pulled his wand, pointed it at the shouting man, and said the first thing that came to mind. "Imperio!"

The old man immediately quieted, his eyes going confused, and in the abrupt silence Draco heard a frightened gasp. Looking closer, he saw that there was also an old woman in the car. Her terrified gaze darted between Draco and the man, presumably her husband. "What did you do to him?" she whispered.

Draco didn't bother answering her. He hoped he wouldn't have to curse her too; he didn't know if he could hold two people under the curse at once. "Let me in the--let me in," Draco willed the man, and he obediently turned around in his seat, opening the back door.

The woman gasped again as Draco slid in, and he could hear her whispering, "Gareth? Gareth? What's going on?" The man, "Gareth" apparently, did not answer, just started the--

This was getting ridiculous. "What is this?" Draco asked, fighting down his impatience at her confused expression. It was a perfectly simple question! "This transport. What is it?"

"A Vauxhall?"

What was she asking him for? At least he had a name now. "And that noise?"

She shifted in her chair to stare at him a moment, saying, "The horn?" and Draco belatedly realized that maybe these things were obvious to muggles, commonplace, and she couldn't figure out why Draco didn't know them. After a moment she gulped and said, "We don't have much money, really--"

"Quiet." She broke off with a little squeak, almost like a rabbit might make. But no, he was not going to think about the rabbits now. Pushing the memory away, he said, "Do as I say or I'll kill him." He couldn't, but the old muggle couldn't know that.

About twenty minutes later Draco noticed more lights and more buildings, and they turned down one street and then another and finally stopped before a small house. Bigger than Lupin's cottage, but still a hovel compared to the Manor, even compared to the Malfoy family's summer home. Draco followed the couple inside.

He allowed the man to sit down, and turned to the woman hovering in the doorway. "Make me something to eat." Another squeak, and she turned towards the kitchen. Draco could hear her rushing around and banging pots. The man would not move, so Draco examined the room. "What's this?" It looking a bit like a Wizarding Wireless.

"Stereo," the man answered dully, not even looking.

"This?"

"Telly." Draco experimentally pressed a button and jumped back and sounds spilled out, the box lighting up with moving pictures. Had the Statute of Secrecy been broken? Thankfully, pressing the same button silenced it.

"This?"

"Telephone." Telly and telephone? Draco pressed the numbered buttons, but nothing happened. Perhaps it was broken.

At a shuffling sound, Draco turned and saw the woman staring at him, holding a plate. She asked, "Are you an alien?"

Draco had been allowed to read the "Mud Muggle" comics until he was seven--long past time for him to put away such a stupid book, according to his father. The muggles in those stories were always crying, "Alien!" so Draco knew what it meant. He just snorted and went to take the food from her. She cringed slightly as he approached, sighing in relief when all he did was take the plate. "Sit," Draco ordered. She sat beside her husband and took his hands in hers. He didn't look at her.

The sandwiches were dry but Draco hadn't realized just how hungry he was until he started eating. When he finished, he resumed examining the room, namely the unmoving photos on the walls. There were many pictures of the couple now seated across the room, their faces fixed in the uncomfortable smile so common to the older generation. And pictures of what were presumably the couple's children and grandchildren, all smiling widely. Some pictures were from houses--this one, perhaps--and some from beaches and some from public gatherings of one sort or another. No photos hung at Malfoy Manor. They had ornate paintings of their forbears.

Finally Malfoy turned and looked at the couple. He cancelled the Imperio, only realizing how much the curse drained him by his resulting lightheadedness. The husband charged at Draco with a roar; Draco cast a full Body-bind and watched with satisfaction as the man fell stiffly back onto the sofa. His wife couldn't repress a cry.

"This is what is going to happen," Draco told them coldly. "You will go about your lives with one exception--I will stay here for a time. This will be a secret. Not a single soul is to know. You will make me meals and do anything else I may require. In return, I will allow you both to live. If one of you should in any way reveal my presence here, the other shall die....first. If both of you reveal that I am here, I will find the people in these photographs one by one and take my vengeance upon them." One of the pictures caught his gaze, of a girl close to his own age, with long dark hair and a smattering of freckles. "....beginning with her." To the man he said, "I trust you will behave yourself," and released the Body-bind.

"Who are you?" gasped the man. "What are you?"

"That is none of your concern. Do we understand each other?" The man looked as though he wanted to say something else, but the woman touched his arm, and he looked at her, and stilled.

"We do," he said softly. Hate was in his eyes. The three of them sat stiffly into the night, no one talked or making eye contact, the couple tightly holding hands. And that was the first day.

Draco's orders were more or less to make a space for him (known only by the three of them) but to otherwise behave normally. He didn't want suspicious neighbors or family questioning his "hosts" too much. So he couldn't help but learn more about the two, little though he cared for it.

The man was Gareth. He was retired but went fishing every week and spent weekday mornings at the pub talking with his friends about sport and politics. He hated Draco. The woman's name was Regina. Her health was poor and she missed her children. One lived in London, and one lived in the United States (it took Draco some time to puzzle "American" out of that name--apparently the muggles had broken the New World down into any number of countries). And one son she despaired of ever settling down, she told Draco.

"This one's from Thomas. I tell you, I despair of him ever settling down. He's wandering about Africa now, says he's going to Bangladesh soon." They were sitting in the kitchen, Draco sipping some tea and thinking very circular thoughts, while the muggle woman looked over the post. She sighed heavily. "Why would he go there?" Draco would have thought she was talking to herself, but then she said, "Does your mother know you're here?" Does she know what you are doing, was the implied question.

"My mother is dead," said Draco, and her eyes widened.

Regina met a circle of other women for a weekly card game, though it sounded more like a gossip circle than anything else. She hosted the gathering that weekend, and Draco stood inside the door to the master bedroom, listening to make sure she didn't say anything she shouldn't. He was struck by how similar it was to the way he'd imagined Augusta Longbottom's charity society to be.

It seemed that Draco had nearly by chance fallen into the perfect way to hide the remainder of the war. There was just one small problem--how would he know when the war was over?