Be Careful
13: Who You Defy
By Anne B. Walsh
Draco watched Snape and the Carrows walking around the entrance hall, peering behind statues and tapping on panelling. So they’re here looking for me. Why don’t I just go with them?
Maybe because I don’t want to get dragged home like a little kid who ran away with a rucksack. But it’s going to happen unless I do something fast. They’re almost over here already.
A thought occurred to him. He drew his wand and aimed it carefully at the top of the staircase.
Have to get the timing just right on this one…
"Look!" shouted Amycus, pointing to the balustrade. "There he goes!"
A shadowy, robed figure fled into the darkness of the first floor hallway.
"Come back, you stupid boy!" Alecto dashed up the marble stairs, her robes flying out behind her. "We’re trying to help you!"
Severus started to follow Amycus upwards, then slowed, letting the siblings get ahead of him.
They are eager for their glory. Perhaps a bit too eager.
Let me take one more look at what we are leaving behind…
From this angle, Severus discovered, the black robes and pale hair which had been hidden at floor level were plainly visible. As he watched from the corner of his eye, the boy slipped out from behind the artist’s rendering of Salazar Slytherin and his two sons and darted across to the kitchen corridor.
He seems well and whole. Well enough, certainly, to send us chasing after a wild Fwooper.
But I should still follow him to be sure of where he is going.
The portrait of the fruit bowl was still quivering when Severus arrived, and the flames in the kitchen fireplace had not lost their last traces of green. The house-elves all contrived to look very busy indeed.
"Did he return home, or go to some other place?" Severus asked the air.
"Home, sir," murmured several small diffident voices.
"Very good." Severus turned and left the kitchens. They had accomplished their mission; there was no reason to let the Carrows run loose in Hogwarts any longer than necessary.
Though ‘necessary’ is a flexible concept at the moment, considering I will soon be dealing with them here for a full year or more.
He bared his teeth momentarily in annoyance at the thought, then set it aside. The reality would come when it came, and no amount of brooding would change it.
And I shall have this—that a mere child fooled them into chasing after an illusory figure—to keep them in line, along with the other information the Dark Lord has already given me.
The day looked brighter already.
Draco stumbled out of Malfoy Manor’s main fireplace, spitting soot.
Forgot rule one about Floo travel. He dropped into a chair and fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. Never, ever, ever inhale. Ptah.
A vigorous coughing fit later, he looked up to discover both elder Malfoys staring at him. A moment of panic gave way to inspiration.
No one saw me—they can’t prove anything…
"What?" he demanded, folding the handkerchief over and using it to wipe the rest of the ashes off his face. "I’m not even allowed to go for a walk in the morning without telling you?"
"A walk is one thing," Lucius said, arms folded. "Leaving the house and the grounds, without permission—"
"What do I need your permission for? I’m of age! I can do what I like!"
"While you live under my roof—"
Draco snorted. "Your roof? That’s a good one. You wouldn’t even be here if the Dark Lord hadn’t decided he wanted you to see me get punished. All he has to do is decide you’re not useful anymore, and you’re gone. I wouldn’t be giving orders around here if I were you."
Narcissa glanced at Lucius, whose sallow face had gone a peculiar shade of green. "We were worried about you, Draco," she said pleadingly. "All we want is for you to be safe."
"All you want?" Draco stood up, shoving his chair backwards across the room. "Are you sure? Maybe you should have thought about that a few years ago. When it actually could have done some good."
Narcissa’s hand flew to her throat, as though he’d struck her.
"I’m going upstairs." Draco stormed across the room and pushed between his parents.
Lucius’ hand snapped down and grasped his wrist.
"Let go of me!"
"You will listen first." Lucius tightened his grip as Draco tried to pull free. "I will not have you frightening your mother like this."
"She was the only one frightened, was she?"
"Do not push me, boy, I am very near my limit." Lucius’ fingers hadn’t lost their knack of finding the most painful places to dig in. "As I was saying. This is twice you have disappeared from a place you ought to have been sleeping and reappeared, unaccountably, somewhere else. I do not know if it is sleepwalking or a practical joke you are attempting to play, but it ends now. Before you go to bed tonight, you will take a Dreamless Sleep potion, and the same for every night hereafter."
Draco’s heart flipped over, as if he’d missed not only the vanishing step but an entire flight of them. No—no—he can’t—
"You can’t make me," he said, but even to his own ears the words sounded feeble.
"I have ways." Lucius released Draco’s wrist. "Now, go to your room."
"Make me," Draco sneered.
Lucius’ fist smashed into his right cheekbone.
Draco staggered backwards and fell to the floor, the impact sending another shock of pain through his face.
Lucius came forward step by step until he towered over Draco. Narcissa was a white-faced presence at his elbow. "I said," he repeated precisely, "go to your room. Now."
Slowly, Draco got to his feet, the right side of his face throbbing. He dared not speak, but something told him that if he gave in now, if he obeyed this command, he would be giving in and obeying for the rest of his life.
He looked from one to the other of his parents—
No. They’re not my parents.
Not anymore. Not after this.
Especially not now that I know what parents should be like.
The man and woman standing in front of him were jailors, nothing more. He would obey them because he had no choice, not because it was some sacred filial duty. He might still pretend to be their son, but that was all it would ever be, a pretense.
And all pretenses fail, sooner or later.
Draco inclined his head coolly to Lucius, then turned and began to climb the stairs. Behind him, he heard Narcissa’s first choked-off sob.
He did not look back.
"You’re sure these are his," Ray said to Neenie, looking down at the pile of black cloth.
"Positive. Echo found them for me." The oldest daughter of Dobby and Winky was widely acknowledged to be the real mistress of Fidelus Manor. "He just wore them yesterday."
"All right. I trust Echo."
"And you don’t trust me?" Hermione huffed.
"I didn’t say that."
"You were thinking it."
"Isn’t it nice being a twin, they say," Ray muttered, waving his wand around the crumpled robes and the freshly written note lying on the workbench. "Isn’t it nice always having someone else around to talk to…"
A bit of magic he’d almost missed was flung back into his spell pattern. "Isn’t it nice having someone there to clean up your messes," Neenie said tartly, dipping her wand’s tip into his space and coming up with several loops on its end.
"Stop that, you don’t know what you’re…" Ray trailed off as Neenie drew a perfect third-level rune for speech in the air, leaving every thread precisely where it was meant to be. "All right, maybe you do."
"I always know what I’m doing," Neenie said, starting the rune for ‘far away’ down and to the left of the ‘speech’ rune. "I may get distracted at times, but I always come back to it in the end."
"As much as some of us wish you wouldn’t." Ray added two interlinked runes, one for ‘time’ and the other for ‘change’, at the opposite corner from the one where Hermione was working. Finally, he brought his wand down to first the note, then the robes, linking them both to the pattern, as his twin sketched the rune for ‘journey’ at the final corner.
Free hands met in the air above the spell.
Ready?
Let’s go.
Two wands touched two lines in the pattern.
The spell sprang to life.
Draco had finished with his first reaction—a fit of temper, involving shouting himself hoarse (which hurt his developing bruise, but he didn’t care) and hurling loose objects about the room—and was now well into his second, which seemed to consist mostly of denying he wanted to fling himself across the bed and cry until his mum came to comfort him.
Because she won’t.
She can’t.
I’m never going to see her, or Abby, or Ray and Neenie, or Moony and Danger, or any of them. Not ever again.
I’ll never have a class with Professor Riddle, or know if his new grandchild was a boy or a girl. Or Danger’s baby, come to think. And I never did find out who Mum was in love with.
At any other time, he’d have been laughing at the absurdity of his words, but at this moment he was too miserable to care.
I finally found what I thought I’d never have. What I wasn’t even supposed to want. A place to be happy, and people who cared about me. Maybe they were imaginary—I’m not so sure anymore—but they were real enough for me to care back. Real enough for me to…
He might as well say it. It was true.
Real enough for me to love them. As much as I can love. As much as I know how.
I suppose I won’t ever learn any better, now.
Draco slid to the floor, his back against the bed, staring at the door. He’d heard the key in the lock almost as soon as he’d closed it behind himself, and he knew Malfoy Manor locks from of old. They were specifically designed to punish anyone who tried using magic to undo them.
I don’t know why I was surprised. I said it myself. They’re not my parents now, they’re my jailors. I wasn’t even thinking of them as my mother and father—it was as if we weren’t related at all…
"At least I moved," he said under his breath. "Be a little much to get locked up in my old nursery." A difference between that room and this occurred to him. "What’re they going to do about…"
With a small pop, a tray materialized in the corner of the room. On it were a covered plate, a china pitcher and an earthenware pot with a lid, a flask of potion, and a note.
They thought to send me a chamber pot. How nice of them.
Feeling lazy, Draco drew his wand and Summoned the note.
My son, it read in Narcissa’s flowing curlicues. These things will supply your needs until I can bring your father to see reason. Please, do not anger him again. He has enough troubles in his life without one of the people he should be able to trust turning on him.
Draco scowled. "Like there was ever trust in this house."
I warn you that the flask is enchanted. Its contents must be drunk by the time the sun has set, or they will be magically transferred into your body by means less pleasant.
"What’s it going to do, shove the stuff up my—never mind, I don’t want to know." Draco kept reading half-heartedly, until the next sentence made him sit up straight.
I have had news since this morning which makes me think it is possible you may be able to return to school this September. I beg of you, Draco, do nothing which may place this chance in jeopardy. With it lies your last hope for a life beyond that for which I now see you are ill-suited.
"Oh, you see that now, do you? Nice of you to admit it."
With all my love, your mother
Draco crumpled the note into a ball and flung it aside. "All your love," he said savagely. "For all the bloody good it does. All the good it’s ever done me, my whole life. And then in one week—one week—you hear me?" He was on his feet, shouting at the closed door, bellowing at the top of his lungs. "One week! One bloody week and I know more about love than you taught me in seventeen years!"
He sank to the floor again. His face stabbed with pain, his throat felt seared and raw, and his whole body was shaking with reaction.
One week to be happy, and now it’s over. If I can bring myself to suck up enough, maybe I get to go back to school for another year, and watch everybody avoid me like dragon pox. If not… this is it. These four walls, or some other set. Forever.
His vision clouded over. He let it. There was no one here to see.
Unnoticed, a ghostlike wisp of paper drifted to the floor beside Draco.
It had come a long way. It could afford to wait a few minutes.