Darker Magic

Chapter 6:

Impervius

Draco Malfoy had learned long ago the importance of forbearance. It was the most necessary skill for moving through the events of life. Once set into motion, an event was never just finished. There were no beginnings or endings, just endless causes and effects, and there was a difference between an effect caused by the heated action of a moment, and the effect of an purposefully plotted cause, or series of causes. The human element, perhaps the most unpredictable aspect of this carefully planned cosmos, was not nearly as disruptive as was commonly believed. Draco knew the value of patience; one must have the sensibility to ride above the brief surges of spontaneity, the actions of anger and confusion that upset the precise balance. Fury, confusion, lust, and fear were all sweeping storms that could be weathered by the most grounded individual. With enough attention to detail and separation of self, events could always be coaxed back onto the safety of the plotted line. Draco could see it stretched out before him like a silver arrow, causes turned to events turned to causes, eternally advancing, and in that steady, pulsing beat was his stability, his life's blood.

The world moved in a series of moments, swift and patient impetus in certain directions. The nudge was as amenable as the sudden spike, just as important and deadly, and both could be pondered and planned into absolute perfection. To strike deep, one had to strike gently, slowly, always looking two steps ahead because a burst of emotionally driven action was always a danger... but never difficult to integrate into the larger ideal. Draco studied it carefully, noted the swift, darting strike as well as the long-awaited, coiling one, and found that while the first was at times more effective, he preferred the second for its lack of haste, its careful contemplation, the patient sharpening of that which wounded the deepest. The softest, most delicate fangs held the most useful poisons, and Draco learned detachment and finesse as he honed his edges. They cut cleanly and he saw it from a distance that kept the resulting pain safely away.

Draco knew how to apply indifference to his heart and mind like a soothing salve until he remembered what it felt like to feel nothing but contempt for everything. As long as the pain was not his, it was not pain. Eventually he regarded it as nothing. His wards were complete and impenetrable.

But no matter how many spells were cast, no matter how inconsequential the wound was, eventually the numbness had to slither from his veins and give way to deeper, more desperate symptoms.

Draco's numbness deserted him, leaving a hole that stung around the edges and ached deep into the very core of his being until it was all he could feel.

That... and the blinding absence of what he had pushed away.

Draco's dreams came again and there was nothing hazy about them. They bore a stark, crisp quality he likened to waking life, and he woke from them in confusion, forced to separate the vision from the real memory. Often they tumbled and wove themselves together so intricately Draco could not divide one from the other. He woke from dreams of waking from dreams. Every time he blinked, his body stiffened, preparing itself to awaken yet again.

He did not begin to define the dreams as nightmares until one recurred and he finally recognized the sound ringing through his ears.

Harry... a pillar... black shape... high-pitched sound. Voice.

Draco forced himself awake before he saw any more.

* * *

His days blurred together until Draco gave up trying to differentiate, to remember what exactly he had done a week or even a day ago. He could have done everything over the course of the last year, or all in the last day; he was no longer sure. But a day came mid-December that sliced a swath of clarity through the haze, and suddenly he knew he had seen nothing up until then, nothing as memorable as this.

The Great Hall was sparsely populated with late dinner-goers. Draco ate mechanically, sitting across from Pansy, who did not need his responses to continue on the barrage of "conversation" she'd begun. Draco nodded, chewed, let it all tune out into a static buzz. He found himself looking past the small groups of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws to the table farthest from Slytherin.

Harry sat there, picking at his dinner with his group of dorm-mates. Draco watched the dark haired boy laugh, watched all the Gryffindors shove and joke with each other. For some reason he could not articulate, it felt oddly out of place, a pocket of distended life in an otherwise silent world. Draco studied Harry. The cheerfulness in his face... seemed stretched. His eyes were bright green, but shadowed by something indefinable. Draco peered closely, glad of the chattering people scattered about the house tables. His fork stilled and he gazed over Pansy's shoulder as she prattled away.

At length, Weasley rose and said something, gesturing to the doorway. The rest of the seventh years got up with him and drank the last of their beverages. Harry remained in his seat, waving them all away, laughing at something Finnigan said. Weasley shoved his shoulder playfully and then left with the rest of his housemates. Harry watched them all with a smile fixed to his lips, until the large doors closed behind them.

As soon as the door shut, however, the life in Harry's body seemed to wither, like a rose plunged into a freezing river. The Gryffindor's cheeks were suddenly ashen. He glanced around the hall once in a lost sort of way, as if looking for something even he couldn't quite remember. Whatever it was, he didn't seem to find it. His chin sank slowly to his arms on the table, shoulders twitching once. And then he was so still...

Draco tore his eyes away. He stood and left the Great Hall. Pansy called something to him, but he ignored it. He made his way back to Slytherin House, entering a deserted common room full of soft, orange shadows. Draco sighed, relieved, but a sudden movement in one of the darker corners drew his attention. A person rose from one of the chairs and came toward him, moving fast.

Millicent rushed across the room to the entranceway and slammed into him. Her face was whiter than a corpse's. He caught her arms and steadied her, but when she looked up, the wild glaze in her eyes made him step back. She opened her mouth to speak, but her face turned a sickly shade of green and she pushed past him. He let her go, watching her stumble out of sight around the corner, and turned to see that the common room was, in fact, not empty. Nott sat in the flickering orange firelight staring at him, a hideous grin carved across his face.

* * *

The first time Draco allowed himself to see that his control over what was happening had begun to slip was in Potions class, mid-December. And then it became horribly obvious.

Snape eyed the students contemptuously. "Pairs today. And I do trust you all familiarized yourself with the more taxing aspects of the freezing solution last night. Malfoy and Potter--"

Draco was looking at Harry, whose face had turned so pale that Snape stopped mid-sentence. The Gryffindor looked like he was going to be sick. The boy swallowed, his whole body rolling in a soft tremor. Draco was transfixed.

Snape's eyes narrowed and shot to Draco. The professor corrected so quickly Draco doubted any of his classmates noticed the slip. "On second thought, Malfoy, pair with Nott. I want at least one potion worthy of study by the end of class. Potter. Bulstrode."

Snape sneered at Harry and strode away. But Draco saw the furrow of his brow, the way the professor's eyes strayed to his own as he passed.

The class proceeded without incident, though that meant ignoring the steady looks Nott kept giving him. Searching. Judging. Testing acidic waters. Draco could practically feel the grinding as things slid into place in Nott's head, reorganizing themselves with every new word he heard, every glance he observed.

When Nott turned his attention to their cauldron toward the end of class and Draco thought it safe to look, he sought Harry out of the corner of his eye. The Gryffindor was moving mechanically, his attention far away from the crushed Siberian Ice-Fruit he was dropping into the cauldron in front of him. As Draco watched, his shoulders hitched minutely... and again... and again, as if trying to rid themselves of a bothersome gnat. It was the sort of movement one made when just having finished crying, the remnants of anguish still twitching at the body, trying to gain another foothold.

Harry's eyes met his in one incandescent moment and Draco felt something shift within him at the pain there. It was familiar. For an instant he had the wild urge to pull his wand and make absolutely certain he was not under the power of the charm he'd used last year. Harry's cheeks flushed red, then paled again, and he jerked his head away. Millicent turned to him questioningly, but by then Draco was looking away, back to his own potion... to find Nott, his blue gaze fixed on him once more.

When night fell at the end of each day, Draco felt he should have enjoyed the warmth of his cloak and the fire in the common room. He should have treasured the heat provided by his blankets, the silence rewarded by his bed-hangings, trapping him in a small pocket of timelessness until the sun rose once again. Better than the chill of the winter wind which he would have felt outside at the forest's edge, the cold grass beneath his body, the stark moonlight washing over him. But even the newfound warmth did not leave him in peace. His nights came and sucked it away from him as soon as he had grasped it.

Draco longed for the fire-lit dreams of Harry, the uncomfortable itchy ones of skin and soft sounds because, though he still dreamt of Harry, the dreams he had now were horrible, visceral and grating. They left him with a wan face stretched about the edges, looking back at him from the mirror in the cold dawn hours. The face of a sick person.

Even Snape had seen fit to confront him about his state of mind, and Draco was surly from the effort of holding his nonchalance in place long enough to put his professor off the scent. But he knew by Snape's glittering eyes that he had only bought himself a little more time, a small amount of patience from a man not known for his willingness to wait.

It was getting harder and harder to see beyond the immediate cessation of that constant ache, the planned goals that would result from self-detachment.

Thestrals invaded his mind at night, and Harry stood in the middle of them, wasting away before Draco's eyes, no matter how loudly Draco shouted at him to move, to leave the creatures behind. Harry blinked at him, and when his eyes reopened, they were opaque white, and the thestrals gazed at Draco mutely, and the white washed over his sight until he couldn't see Harry anymore.

Draco stared at himself for long, quavering moments in the mornings, touched his pale cheeks, the smudges under his eyes. The dreams were eating him alive.

He stood looking over the lawn, and it was iced over with frost. There was a body on the grass, half-covered in snow, long-stemmed red roses growing up around the stilled limbs. Draco was not close enough to see the chest rise and fall, but he knew there was no such movement. He didn't need to see the frozen face, sightless eyes turned heavenward, to know who it was.

Draco woke and bit his lip in silence, shutting his eyes tightly. He buried the reaction deep and turned his mind to what other things he could.

But the worst dream didn't come until the last weeks before the holidays.

Harry was bound to a pillar, hands curled around nooses of light tight against his wrists. The pillar shone brightly this time, hot silver and icy green stretching up far into the gloom. Harry's eyes stared forward, fixated on the thing that moved about him in the darkness. And the high-pitched sound cracked through the air, rising and falling.

Laughter.

Draco stood to the side, fearful that the thing would see him, but it only circled the pillar and Harry, its keening, cackling laugh rolling around, echoing against walls that were invisible in the blackness. The thing flowed out of the darkness to Harry, curling the vague edges of itself around him. Twin orbs glowed crimson from what should have been its face. Draco could see a mouth, a jagged slash of even darker space, yawning wide, pouring that poisonous sound into the room. The green of Harry's eyes faded against the red light, battling.

Draco heard words, a nonsensical howl amidst the laughter, but somehow he understood. It asked Harry for a thing he would not give. A name.

When Harry did not answer, it told him it knew the name. That the bearer of that name was broken already. A single blood-red tear slipped down Harry's cheek.

The thing reached up a tattered... something toward Harry's face. Draco tried to move, tried to scream, to stop this, to get in the way, anything. But he was bound in place, roped into silence by the choking blackness. Harry turned his head but the dark tendrils found his scar and it glowed a fierce green. Harry's body jerked and he screamed, his scar turning bloody red. Harry's body began to burn. The smell of smoldering flesh filled Draco's nose and the thing laughed on and on.

Draco jerked up in bed, covered in sweat. He blinked in the darkness. Every muscle felt taut; a soft whisper told him to move, move. He pushed his curtains aside and lowered his feet to the cold floor stones. Nott's curtains were hanging open but Draco went right past them, the odd tightening sensation in his gut rising.

Harry's sightless eyes stared at him from the dissipating haze of his dreams.
He walked slowly into the bathroom, bent over a toilet, and vomited until nothing was left. Then the vision came back and he retched until the tears rose in his eyes and blurred it all away.

* * *

On a late afternoon in August before his sixth year, Draco had taken his father's robe and mask, gone out to the rolling grounds beyond the gardens, and Disapparated. It was astoundingly easy, this disassembling of the self. For Draco, who had known the basics of it since he was twelve, and the finer details of making oneself disappear entirely for at least a year, the action bore no great significance other than the satisfaction of having known how to do it long before anyone else his age.

He barely thought about it at all. Funny how some things reversed after a time.

But that day... Draco thought about it. Every detail had to be perfect: the lay of his robes upon reappearance, the fall of his hair, the expression on his face. Draco knew this at least: one did not Apparate into the presence of the Dark Lord in a state of disarray.

The room was dark, dank with the smell of mold and moisture. Draco stood alone at one end of it, glad of the way his father's cloak draped over his trembling hands, because suddenly he didn't feel ready to be here, suddenly he could sense that presence in the room with him, one he had caught whiffs of every so often in the manor but had never actually been able to grasp. Now he could feel it, could almost reach out and touch it. It slithered through the air, winding and tightening. He felt the abrupt urge to place it within a body, some sort of visible form, because outside it was too big, too smothering. Draco squinted through the dim light.

Two people stood in the farther reaches of the room, one about the height of his mother, the other tall in an obscene way. Something was not quite right about that one, but Draco couldn't put his finger on it. They were staring at him, and Draco waited. He was frightened. But not nearly frightened enough to be stupid. He understood what was expected of him.

The shorter of the two glanced at the taller figure, then raised a thin hand and beckoned Draco forward. He stepped into the room's recesses, the confidence long ground into his bones finally taking over. It did help a little that halfway there, he recognized the shorter person.

His aunt could not have been less like his mother if she tried. They had the same face, long, stately, with delicate cheekbones and flawless, pale skin. But Bellatrix Lestrange's face had been carved out, pocked with gaunt hollows and burning black eyes. They stared out at him from holes that receded too deeply into her face. Her lips had thinned but were still very red, disturbing against her snowy skin. She peered at him through thick, black hair that hung in long curtains around her face, separating her features into wide strips of white skin, glittering eyes, sharp angles. Her mouth was set in a rigid half-smile, the white of her teeth gleaming out gently. Draco wanted to pull her hair from her face and look at her unobstructed, and yet, he didn't want to see any more. Azkaban had left her with a Kiss all its own, Dementor-less and subtle, belonging to the dark corridors and hollow whistling of wind.

His aunt gestured him forward, murmuring a welcome under her breath. Her hand closed on his arm, guiding him toward the other occupant of the room, and Draco fought the repulsion he felt at her touch, the brittle, spindly feel of bony fingers through his robes. He looked straight ahead, at what was certainly the Dark Lord... and saw a man.

Later, he would not really be able to remember the man's face, or his expression. His features were misted over in Draco's mind, suggesting vaguely of being thin and sharp, regal, but not quite memorable; just that he was a man, not nearly what Draco had been expecting. He straightened. This was Tom Marvolo Riddle. He was powerful surely. But frightening? Draco's confidence returned in a sweep and he felt the familiar quirk of a sneer on his face. He would certainly give his respect, his attention, even his loyalty. He was relieved he would not be required to give his fear as well.

The man spoke. His voice was pleasant and unhurried. "This is Draco?"

Bellatrix nodded, her head moving in a slow bob on her neck. Her smile twisted oddly. "Yes, my Lord. The one and only."

Voldemort - and did the fear the name inspired really fit him? - laughed, a soft, amused sound. "And here I thought we had Lucius, his glorious hair cut."

Draco bowed his head, hearing the rasp of his aunt's answering laugh. His voice came easily. "My Lord, my apologies. But my father is unable to be here."

Silence from the man. Draco glanced up and saw that he was being studied. Cool, dark eyes flicked to Bellatrix, then back to him. "And how will his stay in Azkaban be, I wonder?"

A low, almost wistful sigh from behind him. His aunt's voice. "It suited me quite well, my Lord."

The man smiled. Draco was feeling more comfortable with every passing moment. He met the eyes that were searching him and was gratified with a raised eyebrow. "Draco Malfoy. Do you know why I have called you here?"

Draco raised his chin. "I assume to replace my father... when you feel it is necessary, of course, my Lord."

"In part. In actuality, I brought you here to meet me. I find it a most suitable test, wouldn't you agree?"

Draco nodded, averting his eyes in respect. "And... have I passed, my Lord?"

"That will depend upon your impressions of this meeting, Draco."

Draco glanced up, confused. He opened his mouth, closed it, then began again. "I... am pleased with it. My Lord."

The man smiled suddenly, eyes widening a touch. He looked over Draco's shoulder at Bellatrix. "Did you hear? He is pleased with what he sees, Bella."

Her laughter hissed in Draco's ear, curling in the dank air of the room. "Is he?"

Voldemort tilted his head and looked Draco squarely in the face. "His decisions are made swiftly. He will have to be taught patience." One of the man's skeletal fingers moved ever so slightly against his side.

And something tore in the air.

Draco blinked, feeling his gut lurch. The man, the recognizable face, was dripping away, giving way to something that made the breath freeze in his lungs. This was no man standing here in front of him. It had been, Draco was sure of it. But not anymore.

The face staring out at him from the shadows was white. There couldn't possibly be any blood beneath that sickly translucent flesh. Draco stared, unable to look away, trying to pinpoint the familiar features again, but they were gone. Oh, there were still eyes... heavy-lidded blank ones with irises so red Draco suddenly knew where all the missing blood was. Fever-bright, deep glinting rubies. There was a nose; flat, sloping, with what were more like cuts in the skin than nostrils. The mouth... was too long for the face, as if this creature had smiled and been unable to stop the gash from stretching ear to ear. Draco thought that if the mouth were opened, it would be full of pointed teeth.

Draco's instincts told him to be still, and he held himself rigid. The musty air swirled around him, making Draco want to gag, enveloping this thing as if it were its own. Bellatrix came silently around to stand beside Voldemort, and Draco was startled into near-flight. She should have looked normal next to the... what was he? But she did not. Her body became even more thin and wraithlike, half-melded with the darkness behind her. The air was thick and fetid. Draco knew suddenly that he was the one who did not belong, that he had somehow wandered into the realm of demons and drows, dark, emaciated things that could not be seen in the light of day.

Voldemort spoke. "He does not look me in the eye."

"It is a rare person who can, my Lord," Bellatrix answered, her tone soft, reverent.

The room choked Draco but his mind rebelled even in its revulsion, its wish to be gone. Part of him didn't want to look. That part knew the dangers of looking, of forcing that sort of evil on oneself, of ending whatever childhood he might have had left in this dark, cold room with no way out. But the other part knew just as surely that he had long since grown up, that this thing standing before him held the keys to the only gateway he had yet to pass. He would not be talked down to. He was a Malfoy.

Draco raised his eyes and, shuddering, met the gaze squarely.

Voldemort smiled, and it was truly horrible to behold.

"Your father's robes," came the hiss from that lipless mouth. The words sounded like dry leaves rasping together. "You return them? Or do you bring them to be redistributed?"

Draco's body was weak, shaking on the thinnest of threads. He wasn't sure what held him still, what forced his gaze into the glittering blood-red one boring into him. He swallowed. "My father is in Azkaban, where he can no longer aid you. I bring his robes for what you will, my Lord."

Voldemort's gaze was vibrating something inside Draco's chest, an ugly, throbbing shiver. He bit his tongue to stop himself from retching.

The Dark Lord moved gently, a scrape-sigh of robes against skin. "Should I be angry, perhaps? Your father's current residence is his own fault. He faltered in the face of a child. A child, the age of this shaking boy in front of me. Would that child come to my side, meet my eyes with the same strength as this one? I, who have stumbled at his feet more times than I care to count. He shoves me into a dark hole until he cannot keep me there any longer, and when he dreams, I can feel his heart rattle. But I cannot touch him, he eludes my grip just as he eluded your father's."

There was absolutely no emotion in Voldemort's voice. It was not a dead voice; there was something there, but... his voice was unconcerned. Light and easy, speaking words that should have been ground out between clenched teeth with fury flashing in the eyes. But the Dark Lord's fractured face looked mildly interested, a curious lift of the eyebrows to go along with his indifferent voice. In his eyes, the irises were red and blank. A word flew through Draco's head.

Sociopath.

This voice... was too human. Coming from a creature that obviously was not. The contrast was too much. He both recognized and did not recognize this... thing in front of him. Draco fought the rising urge to gag at the horror that sprang up in his innards.

Voldemort chuckled, a tattered sound, and took Draco's chin in one wasted palm. His skin felt dry and scratchy, and cold against his face. Draco could not blink, could not look away. All he knew was the red of those eyes.

"Keep your father's robes, my little master Malfoy. For that is what you are, the master. Does it suit you?"

His aunt's eyes drove into him from the darkness. Draco could hear her breathing. He nodded shakily. "I think it might, my Lord."

Voldemort smiled and released his face. "You are not ready yet. But you wish to be, and that, Malfoy, is the hardest step. Mind you do not underestimate the difficulty of the steps to follow."

With the slightest of nods to the woman beside him, Voldemort turned away. Bellatrix moved Draco with one crooked finger at his shoulder, an insane smile twisting her lips. She guided him back to the other end of the room and told him to return home. Draco forced himself to return her smile mid-Apparition, and saw her features waver and diminish until nothing but the cold blackness of being nothing remained. He reappeared in his rooms at the manor, and they were dark and silent.

Draco did not try on his father's robes. He put them back in their folded place in his empty chambers. But in his dreams and nightmares, Draco was already wearing them.

* * *

The last Hogsmeade weekend before holidays came, and with it a sudden flurry of snow that thickened into a blizzard by the time the massive castle doors shut behind the returning stragglers. Draco had spent the day preparing his trunk for departure the following afternoon. The common room was not a place for solitude anymore, what with his housemates moving through it constantly, shifting trunks and readying bags. The library no longer held the welcoming peace it had before, and the grounds were covered in thick, drifting snow, flailed at by northern winds. Draco passed over dinner and walked the vacant hallways with rigid steps instead, unable to settle any place. They were not his places, these darkened corridors, these empty classrooms.

So he walked, and kept himself from thinking.

Moving silent as a wraith through the corridors on the third floor, he came across Dumbledore. It was sudden; Draco glanced up, and there he was at the end of the hallway, half-lit by the line of wall torches, his beard glowing burnished gold. The Headmaster nodded as he passed him, and stopped.

"I trust, Mr. Malfoy, that you have everything in order for the Christmas holidays?"

Draco inclined his head slightly, eyes on the ancient face in front of him. "Quite."

Dumbledore gazed at him keenly. "You will be returning home, then?"

He began to feel it, wisping through the stillness of the corridor, making the torches flicker as it came. That familiar, loathsome tendril of magic. Draco had expected it, and he prepared himself for its impact, ready to throw it from him even as it touched him.

"Where else would I go, if not home, Headmaster?" he said in a low, mocking voice.

Dumbledore appraised him silently, and it was then that the magic finally flitted against Draco's skin. It tugged at him, teased him, and held little of the warmth he'd expected from magic of this sort. It was not cold or distant, but there was no heat. Draco went rigid in surprise, and for an instant he forgot to fight it off.

Dumbledore waited a moment longer, and then nodded once more. "I wish you a safe and pleasant journey, Draco." He turned and continued on his way down the corridor.

Draco held himself taut and sneering until the Headmaster had disappeared, and then leaned against the wall trying to catch his breath. It was... not right. Not right to be wishing for the touch of that magic again, and then, even less right not to find what he sought there. Not that magic. That magic felt wrong to his taxed mind, his weary body. He knew what was right, which magic belonged, what it was that warmed his body to simultaneous discomfort and satiation, knew it as surely as he would not admit it out loud, but this was not it. His expectations shattered into dust and Draco finally knew loss, utter and complete. Even in this he couldn't feel the familiar, because Harry's magic, he only just realized, had never felt like this magic had. It had never pushed like this and given nothing in return.

The difference, so elusive before, pricked at him sharply.

He made his way back to Slytherin House, suddenly too tired to think or move in this silent, oppressive castle. He couldn't banish the thoughts he'd kept at bay for so many days, and they crowded in: nightmares, thestrals, potions, dulled green eyes... cool blue ones. He ignored everyone he passed on his way through the dungeons, walked right by his housemates as they lugged belongings to the common room, and went to his dormitory. It was empty, and Draco dropped down on his bed and yanked the curtains shut. He stared at the ceiling until his mind went blank, and all that remained was the play of shadows over the tops of his bed hangings, the muted crackle of the fire. It was warm and dark, and Draco stared until the fire burnt low and he could no longer pick out the individual stones above. The hours stretched on into an indistinct stupor.

Firelight. Lips against his skin, pulling away with a quiet gasp. Hot breath over his throat. Hands trailing, his own hands, not quite finding the spot of perfect heat. A warm body tight against his, legs clenched around him. Words half spoken, falling into breathless murmurs. Draco found a familiar mouth in a kiss.

He woke with a gasp and the room was filled with gray light. He blinked once, twice, and his dream caught up with him, leaving him fighting for breath, a searing ache in his chest. He rolled over and curled, drawing his knees up, and fought as hard as he could not to make a sound. But inside his head, the keening was deafening.

Draco bit his lip until the pain drove the ache into submission. He had to move again. Shoving his curtains aside, he pulled himself out of bed. The room was silent except for the slumbering breaths of his roommates behind their bed hangings. Cold air flowed through the open window, making the curtains drift. Nothing else in the room moved, save one large eagle owl perched on the edge of the trunk by his bed. Draco took what it had to offer, feeding it and letting it back out into the rising dawn through the window, because even the bird's yellow eyes were too weighty a mantle to read under.

He unrolled the parchment, performed the proper spells without reading the disguising text, and looked at the letter.

I watch your mother daily, endeavoring to pinpoint the moment when I first realized what I had done to her. Now, I do not believe I ever realized its full import until this moment.

She has faded. Her hair is still yours, the color of white gold and just as rare as that precious metal. I thought it would sustain me, the knowledge that you bear her unearthly spark. I have wondered in my baser hours if you did not steal it from her very skin, spirit it away like an ether-swelling imp that is only happy with things not of its world. There are moments when I would have it back from you at any cost, tear it free of your heart and wrench it from your body, then weave those threads back into her soul and make her flat eyes come alive again.

Try as I might, it takes but a moment of quiet observance, a single tread of her step in my ears, to remind me that it is not you who have done this to her.

We sacrifice much in the name of survival, and yet I will not pretend that it is a mere question of breathing from this day to the next. It is a vow made so deeply within the fiber of being that it cannot be unmade, simply because to extricate it would be to rip a part of us asunder, to make us incomplete. Clearly the woman I wed is whole no longer. Her threads trail behind her, ragged and bleeding, and that spark is gone, flown wholly to the only one of us who can now house it safely: You.

Draco, I do not tell you this in order to regret the choices I have made, or the rending of both your mother's and my spirits. That dream is an agony for my eyes and ears only, and I guard it as sacredly as I once guarded her. I tell you this in order to guard you. You have bound yourself, in a way I can sense but never touch, as fits the deepest of bindings. To what have you fixed your tether? I do not know, and the time for caring has come and gone already, so I warn only.

Most ties do not possess the strength to hold against that which would tear them apart. The strongest force to stand against them is you, yourself. But though it may tempt, a dire, sickly sort of fruit, you may yet find strength in these ties. Once broken, that strength is lost to you forever, and only a soulless shell remains to house the clinging threads.

There is a proverb that urges one to keep one's enemies closest to the heart, and it follows that you must thrust what is dearest to you away from the danger by thrusting it out of your existence. If you have indeed stolen your mother's spark, I pray you find in it the strength to resist the temptation to break, rend, and retreat. It is a strength she could not find, a fortitude I lacked and lack still. I would sooner see you broken by darkness than broken by that which you kept from you, that which you needed in order to survive but lacked the courage to draw strength from.

For an empty, eternal moment, Draco felt nothing.

Then the hole inside him lanced so painfully he gasped. He could not stop it: something poured into the gaping cavity, filling it, burning it, so familiar and so agonizing. The edges bled afresh and Draco found he was crushing the letter in one white fist.

He had forgotten how this felt, to be so full. The relief. And suddenly there was nothing there to combat it anymore, though he searched for it long and hard.

It was gone. All he could see were warm green eyes.

Draco felt a new sort of emptiness, one that came with absolute clarity. It shivered inside him and for a moment he tried to shy away. But even that was impossible now. He did not want to. The silver path glittered and shifted before his eyes. When it settled into stillness again, Draco sighed.

He could not see all ends. But he could see one, gleaming just inside his vision, and it struck him with a hollow peace it never had before.

* * *

Draco was reading. The wall felt cool against his back, and the hallway was dark even in the flickering torchlight. The pages of his book glowed faintly with the charm he'd cast over them, illuminating the words in the dimness.

He could hear students trooping past, dragging trunks and satchels, bags and animal cages. He sat and listened to the hum of movement, reading each word carefully, savoring the silent feel of them against his lips.

It may have been three hours before the sounds of departing students echoed away into nothingness. But Draco knew patience. He waited. And read.

Someone came up the passage with hurrying steps, huffing air in great gasps. And still Draco did not look up. The person came to a stop in front of the portrait; Draco read on. Longbottom's voice echoed over the walls, rising and falling in whimpering tones.

"Oh, please, please, let me in! You know who I am. I've just forgotten my winter coat, I'll only be a moment."

"Password?" said a cool voice.

"But you've changed it again!"

"Password."

At last. Draco raised his eyes and listened.