Dream It Is Not Death

Dream it is Not Death

Prologue

The letters began arriving a week after they did. Be the letters long or short, his mother always preceded her name with 'je t'aime', and when he found precious few seconds to respond back, there would always be a 'je t'aime aussi, mère'.

Draco began to dream in French at night, listening to the waves breaking against the cliff side below. When he had been younger, five, six years old, his mother had taught him French while his father was away at work, a fragment here and a sentence there. And now, while dreaming, he spoke French like a proper Malfoy should, and understood every word whispered back to him.

None of the dreams were pleasant dreams.

Snape was furious with the amount of owls flying around the manor. He claimed that there was no easier way to become uncovered than contact outside that wasn't by Floo, and he said that an owl could be intercepted by the Ministry at any time. Draco didn't care, and read his mother's letters by candlelight before tossing and turning in bed every night.

Her words comforted him. Snape's did not.

The air was thick with the smell of the sea. His mother said that she could smell the salt in the parchment, and told him how proud she was of him.

He had nothing to say to that, and instead spoke of the village nearby.

When Snape had asked him if he knew anywhere that they could hide, Draco had instantly thought of the manor his family would stay at in the summertime, and had instantly spoken that he didn't. But Snape had seen through it, and they went there, the small manor on the French coast overlooking the grey, grey waters of the Strait of Dover.

The cliffs were alabaster here. He would often walk along the edge and peer down at the rocks below, not straying too far from the manor property. Occasionally tourists would wander over from the public splays of the Côte d'Opale, looking at their maps and asking Draco for directions home. He knew it made Snape nervous when he talked to visitors; he did it anyway, pointing them to the town of Calais to the east and talking briefly about the weather, or foreign politics, or some other polite conversation point. Once, when it was a pretty young girl with a jewelled pin in her hair, he kissed her cheek and she blushed, talking too quickly in French for him to follow. He apologized, and he watched her car drive away long after it was out of sight.

They, of course, could not see the Unplottable manor at the cliff's edge with the Muggle repelling charms. They only saw a pale, anxious boy and a small cottage, rundown and filthy with age. But it was for the best.

For the first time in his life, Draco could say, honestly, that he was lonely. Snape brooded in the manor all day, waiting in the library by the fireplace for word from another Death Eater that they could move out, that they could come out of hiding and move back to England, and would only scowl at Draco when he tried to speak with him. The only true contact that Draco had was with his mother through the notes the owls brought, and they were far and few between, what with Snape's insistence and his mother's fear.

His mother wasn't afraid of the Ministry finding her; it was the Death Eaters she feared.

Draco had failed. While the mission had, ultimately, been a success and Dumbledore had been murdered, it had not been Draco who had carried out the deed, but instead Snape. It hung over Draco's head like a curse, reminding him every day that his mother could very well be dead by nightfall over his cowardice, that because he was weak, his father might be found cold and lifeless one morning on the prison floor. He himself could be murdered in his sleep. And all because of him.

When Voldemort gives you a task to prove that you were worth the magic used to brand your arm, you went through with it, or you died. So Draco held his breath and tiptoed around the manor, half hoping that no one contacted Snape, good news or otherwise. He didn't want to face his possible, and very probable, demise.

His mother said how proud she was, and all Draco could do was scratch out those lines in heavy black ink in shame.

Snape, when he wasn't in the library, was in the basement with his potions ingredients and vials and a cauldron that had come from somewhere hiding in the cobwebs. Draco didn't know what Snape was making, nor did he care, but occasionally he would come down and watch the older man at his work.

It was, in essence, beautiful.

His mother sent news of the Ministry's lockdown on known, or even suspected, Death Eater households, though the information was all second hand. The Ministry had long since seized the Malfoy trust funds and the manor in Wiltshire, and his mother had long since gone into hiding somewhere in Northern Ireland.

When he told Snape of the tightening of the reigns, he said nothing and only stirred faster.

On days when it was not too rainy or too windy, Snape would send Draco out to find more ingredients that grew in the area, wild along the roadside. He collected tiny flowers and wild weeds and stuffed them into the pockets of his jacket, and picked up smooth rocks to throw them into the frothy water later. This was, of course, menial busy work to keep his mind off the fact that they were prisoners on their own accord.

All life leading up to the war was busy work. But soon they could take action.

When Draco dreamed, it was in black and white and the only colour was blood. And this blood isn't red, either, it's more of an eggplant, a deep, almost purple red. In these dreams, people smell like death. Black robes and white masks and old blood. French words. He would wake up panting, holding a hand to his chest and looking around wildly, and then he would crawl out of bed and wander the manor.

It was June fifteenth, according to the tally marks Draco kept on a sheet of paper in the kitchen. Every night, after he woke up panicked and alone, he would go to the kitchen and make another mark. Snape said nothing about the parchment and went about his detached life as normal, only commenting that it was almost time.

For what, Draco wasn't sure.

Late at night, after reading the letters until his eyes stung from the dim candle light but before falling into sleepless dreams, he would run his fingers over his chest, feeling the slightly raised scars. They were white now, a little whiter than his blanched skin, and warm to the touch. Occasionally and at random, they would break open again and he would bleed; Snape filed it under carelessness, but Draco knew it was something more. When Harry Potter had put them there with anger in his eyes, he had done something more. Every night, his fingers would somehow find the other raised mark on his left arm, and when he realized they were there, he would jerk them back as if burned.

Accounts from his mother only grew bleaker the longer Draco and Snape stayed in France. Apparently the name of every Death Eater living in the United Kingdom had been listed, and were to be killed upon sight; apparently the Ministry was taking every precaution to cover for their incompetence in previous years. But what troubled Snape was the newspaper clipping of a list that his mother gave them, because it indicated a traitor or a spy within the inner ranks. "They've got nearly every member listed. Some high profile names are on here." Snape crumpled the letter into a ball when Draco showed it to him, throwing it in the fireplace; Draco didn't let him near any of the others.

Snape hadn't mentioned how his own name had sat very near the top, and Draco's right below it.

Everyone was in hiding, now; his mother said that even his aunt Bellatrix and her husband Rodolphus, two of the most fearless Death Eaters Draco knew, had joined her now in the safe house. Snape reasoned that that was why no one had come for them yet, come to give them the next leg of their mission; Draco nodded silently and secretly hoped that they would forget them there, along the seashore, until the war was over.

He was ready, but he was scared. He wanted to fight, to carry on where his father left off, but he was afraid to fail again, and afraid of the punishment that would come for the first failure. Draco was conflicted, and it was fear that won him over.

In one dream, a dream he had countless times, he would be sitting alone in a room. It was a small room, an arms span wide and again as long, and the only light was coming from a barred window ten feet from the floor. There was no door, and no other conceivable way to get out, and he sat there with his Death Eater mask on for what seemed like an eternity, until a voice suddenly started speaking to him from through the bars. It was low, quick French, but Draco understood and pleaded, begging to be freed.

Every single time, it would be Dumbledore's voice, and every single time, Dumbledore would laugh at his request. And then Draco would wake up, and he would cry as he got out of bed to walk to the kitchen.

Before Draco would throw the rocks from the lane into the sea far below him, he would write names on the flattest sides of the stone. His father's name. His mother's name. The names of all of his friends at school. The names of people he had known in his past that he would probably never see again. He might live through the month, he might live through the year, he might live until he was old and dying of natural causes, but he didn't think he would live to see them even one more time.

The stones with names on them flew the farthest with the flick of his wrist. He thought it was good luck.

Two letters came one day, a Thursday in early July, and then no more came after them. He would watch out the windows for hours while Snape watched the fireplace for longer, but no owl from his mother ever followed. The two letters were normal and plain, filled with descriptions of the flowers in the garden at the safe house they were staying in, and with talk about when he was younger, and with reports of the Ministry's latest attempt - and failure - in uncovering Voldemort's whereabouts, and with the words 'je t'aime'.

Draco never knew if she got his sentiments of 'je t'aime aussi, mère' or not. Somewhere inside, he had a feeling she didn't.

The manor was calm and silent on the afternoon that the parchment said it was July tenth. He had been awoken that morning not by dreams and shortness of breath, but by Snape, telling him to go and find more knotgrass. Upset at having his one night of fine sleep be interrupted, Draco had stormed out, hands in his pockets and a signature Slytherin sneer on his face.

Knotgrass grew over on the cliff edge, a kilometre or so down the way, and as he had walked, he had seen a Muggle jeep driving quickly down the road inland. Draco had pulled the hood of his jacket up over his pale hair, away from the wind, and had kicked a rock over the edge.

Now, roots in hand, Draco shivered as he stepped into the house. There would be rain tonight, he could feel it in the air. Snape would be in a bad mood, because Snape was always in a bad mood, and there would be no owls coming if the weather was too rough.

When he found Snape, cold and dead on hearth of the fireplace in the library, he didn't know what to do. The knotgrass fell to the ground as he backed away, frantically checking his pockets for the wand he knew he didn't have on him. It was up his trunk, with his robes and his books and his letters from his mother. It was far away, and here was Snape, eyes open and staring up at the ceiling, temple bloody, hair bloody, everything on him bloody.

There was even a bloody trail over to the table next to the sofa. Draco walked over to it, holding his breath when the metallic smell of all that blood hit his nose. He felt faint. There was a piece of parchment on the table and on it in a shaky hand with blood spattered all over, was written one word:

Basement.

And with that one word, Draco knew. He knew what Snape had been brewing all this time, and he knew what the knotgrass was for, and he knew, if not what to do next, what he had to do first.

When he left the manor, it was with pockets brimming with full vials and his trunk dragging behind and his wand outstretched for the Knight Bus.

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