Surpassing Danger
Chapter 30: Music and Memorabilia (Arc 7)
By Anne B. Walsh
Draco Malfoy sat back in his chair, listening with half an ear as his father and the other Death Eaters seated around the table made their reports to the Dark Lord. As fascinating as he would usually have found this process, he had something else on his mind.
Whether or not it really is my mind, even now.
He found it hard to believe his father could have made such a glaring mistake as leaving any of the "Pack's" spells active on him—mentally, he spat the word for his captors' unnatural family—but he couldn't ignore the facts.
There are these weird little moments, usually just as I'm falling asleep or waking up, when I feel the way I did when their precious Hermione had her blood-hold over me. Like there's someone else inside my head, listening, watching, waiting. Someone who wants to control me. Maybe even destroy me.
Absently, he stroked the small scar on his cheek, letting his eyes rest on the matching one on his father's. We may still carry the marks of the pain they've put us through, Father with his lycanthropy, me with my blood-borne slaving, but we've beaten them at last. We're together again. I'm back where I belong, and I'm not about to let anyone take that away from me.
"—will speak with you again at the end of the week," the Dark Lord concluded, and vanished silently in the act of rising from his chair. Draco let out a breath of admiration at such a marvelous command of Apparition, then obediently followed his father from the room by the more mundane means of the door.
As Wormtail scuttled past the Malfoys in his usual half-hunch, Draco caught sight of a tube of polished wood clutched tightly in the silver hand, too thick to be a wand and decorated with an odd pattern of holes. "What's that?" he demanded, catching the corner of Wormtail's cloak and bringing the shorter wizard to a halt. "Where did you get it?"
"Oh, this?" Wormtail looked as though he wished he could stuff the whatever-it-was inside his robes, but Draco's voice, carrying and clear, had halted every Death Eater in the corridor and brought all their heads around to stare. "I…found it. In one of the older rooms near mine. I had hoped to show it to our Master, to see if it might be magical, but he was too busy, so I'll just—"
"Give it here." Draco stuck out his hand imperiously, sensing his father stepping up on his right, adding his own authority to his son's command. "I want it."
Wormtail opened his mouth, then closed it again at Lucius's soft cough. His shoulders slumped, and he laid the tube of wood in Draco's palm reluctantly.
"Thank you," said Draco magnanimously, curling his fingers around his acquisition. "I do appreciate your generosity."
"Don't mention it," mumbled Wormtail, then immediately transformed into his alternate shape and scurried away around the corner. The other Death Eaters present shared a good laugh before dispersing, each towards their own set of rooms, Draco accepting his father's proud squeeze of a shoulder with a grateful smile and tucking his prize away inside his robes before they resumed their own upward trek.
I wonder what it is, and what it's used for. It's hollow, I can tell that just by the weight, and the holes along the side meet up with the one down the middle. The one end of it flares out some, and it looks like the other end is made to blow into…
After triple-locking his door, Peter Pettigrew grinned broadly at his wife. "He took it," he reported, coming across the sitting room to kiss her so that she wouldn't need to get up. Her ever-increasing girth made that a trickier proposition by the day. "Snatched it the instant he saw it, like a jarvey at a gnomehole."
"The letter did say he probably would." Evanie placed her hand momentarily over her husband's on the curve of her belly, smiling fondly up at him, then returned to the work she'd been doing when he arrived, the careful disassembly and examination of the other small item which had arrived with said letter. "Did they say anything useful at the meeting today?"
"No, not really, except that Our Dear Master will likely be out of the country until the end of the week." Peter frowned, stacking the breakfast dishes together and moving them to the small tray which sat atop a shelf in the corner of the room. "I wonder what he's doing on the Continent so much these days? Maybe I can find out."
"Don't take chances you don't need to, please?" Snapping two pieces back together, Evanie peered along the line thus created. "Even with this, I don't think I could fight my way out of here."
"You shouldn't need to. It's only a precaution. Though that's less necessary than it once was." Smirking, Peter rapped his wand twice against the tray, sending the dishes on their way to the kitchen for the house-elves' attention. "I wonder what Bellatrix would do if she ever found out who made her a widow?"
"Most likely she'd send you a bouquet and a thank-you card," said Evanie absently, her attention on making sure the cylinders she was replacing lined up properly with the barrel of her newly-acquired potion piece. "And you might not even have to check the flowers for poison…"
Peter laughed aloud, savoring the sound and the feelings it evoked. He'd spent quite enough of his life being miserable, and didn't intend to go back.
We'll find a way out of this. Somehow. Now that I've finally got my head on straight, and I'm standing up for the ones I love. He cast a thoughtful glance at the door, thinking of the boy he'd confronted in the corridor. And even, a little bit, for the ones I might have loved, if things had fallen out differently than they have.
I'm just as glad my offer of a few days ago wasn't taken—he's terribly charming in his rightful person, and his taunting Lucius was a thing of beauty…
Draco leaned against the railing of his bedroom's balcony, enjoying the warm sunlight of early May and turning the mysterious object over in his hands. He had been practicing with his newly acquired wand (hawthorn and unicorn hair, reasonably springy, ten inches long exactly), but had grown weary of the simple spells his father had set him to master. They came so easily to him that he might almost have been studying with his proper cohort at Hogwarts since the very beginning.
I suppose that's the other side of the bond between me and little Miss Granger-Lupin. What she learned, so did I. He shuddered slightly at the name and the memories it evoked, both of his "mistress" herself and of the bizarre couple who served as her surrogate parents—though it only makes sense that a werewolf would marry a Muggle. Who else would have him? And magic does sometimes transfer along a marriage bond, the same way it can along lines of blood…
But none of his musings were getting him any further towards figuring out what the thing in his hands might be.
"I thought earlier this bit looked like a mouthpiece," he murmured aloud, raising the item toward his face. "Let's see what happens…"
As the wood touched his lips, his hands briskly rearranged themselves, thumbs under, fingers on top, each covering a single hole. His stance altered, becoming more upright and squarer-shouldered, and he drew a long breath in.
What—
The thought never completed itself, as the breath flowed from him through what he was holding and created, to his shock, a clear, distinct sound, both musical and lovely. His fingers moved with certainty in a pattern unknown to him, yet compelling and familiar, and a sweet, wandering melody filled the air around him.
Do-re-mi-sol-mi-re-do, mi-sol-la, do-ti-sol-mi, fa-mi-re...
"Weird," Draco breathed, taking the—pipe, he supposed it ought to be called, though it might have a more specific name, he'd need to look it up—away from his lips. "I didn't know I could do that."
Though I know Sirius Black held onto enough of his raising that he wanted all his darling cubs to gain a few basic accomplishments. Probably they tried to get Hermione to learn to play, and even though she never kept up with it, it bled over to me as something she didn't feel she needed…
Wherever this ability had come from, though, Draco knew he wasn't about to give it up. A proper pureblood gentleman, after all, should be master of at least one of the fine arts, to ensure that he and his wife, whoever she might eventually be, might have some commonality of interest.
Besides, I like it. And what's my new life about, if it isn't doing what I like, when I like, and as I like? Stroking a loving finger around the broad end of his pipe, he tucked it away inside his robes again. I don't think I'll show it to Father just yet, not until he's got less on his mind. Maybe once the war's over, and we're thinking about whose blood might be best to bring into the Malfoy line. He smirked. Or possibly I'll get the chance to spread the love a little more widely—there's plenty to go around, after all, and the more purebloods we can breed up for our Master's cause, the better…
Leaning on the railing again, Draco lost himself in pleasurable thoughts of the future as envisioned by the Dark Lord, and never noticed his fingers drumming out a complicated rhythm on the wood beside him.
"And you've been doing this since Christmas?" Hermione stared around at the potions laboratory her twin and his beloved had created in the safe haven which was Moaning Myrtle's perpetually out-of-order toilet. "Without anyone knowing about it?"
"Anyone except you, now." Luna held out a small scroll, covered in Draco's best handwriting. "If you look at what the Imprimatus Potion is meant to do, I think you'll understand why we weren't telling anyone."
Hermione accepted the scroll and scanned the first few lines, then looked up at Luna searchingly. "You're thinking of the vision," she said. "Because if it's true, and all yours have been so far, then you know Lucius Malfoy will be there, in that place, at that time. And you know he'll believe that you're joining his side. For whatever reason, whyever he might think that…"
"It's possible that I'll have enchanted myself to believe it, until the vision is over." Luna smiled at Myrtle, who floated above her cubicle, engrossed in a ghostly book and weaving her translucent hand absently through the blue steam rising from the bubbling cauldron. "That would certainly account for why I didn't see my usual telltales for lies. Though…" She trailed off, as though thinking, but then shook her head. "Never mind. The point is, yes, I know he will be there. And that he'll let me get close to him. The potion should be ready in another month, by the fifth of June." Dipping her hand into her pocket, she emerged with Draco's green-stoned dagger, her fingers wrapped expertly around the hilt. "And I'll dip this into it before I go."
"Because goblin-wrought silver absorbs whatever makes it stronger." Hermione let her hand rest for a moment on the hilt of her own dagger, belted around her waist as always. "But will it kill him instead, if you stab him with it? He is a werewolf, and it is silver…"
"I don't know. It might, or the Imprimatus might coat the blade and get into his blood first. Destroy his human mind, except for just enough to talk a little and do magic when he's told, and fixate his wolf side into obedience to the first person he sees. Which will be me. She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Defied." Luna's smile turned thin and cold. "Whichever way it happens, I can live with it."
"You know," said Hermione slowly, "I think I can too." She unrolled the scroll once more. "Which point had you got to?"
"Step fifteen, wasn't it?" Luna came around to look over Hermione's shoulder. "Whichever was the one that needed three weeks of simmering afterwards. The time's up tomorrow, which is why I asked you to come today, I'm almost certain I understand the next part but it looks like it needs two pairs of hands to get it done…"
Draco slept, and dreamed, fragments of images and feelings that made no sense to him. How could he run on four legs, hear in impossibly high frequencies, catch the scent of prey on the wind? He was a human, not an animal, no matter how badly the Pack had treated him…
But no, he remembered it now, a short episode when he'd been about ten years old. The Muggle woman, Danger as they called her, giddy with the magic her werewolf husband foolishly let her use, had decided to try her hand at high-level transfiguration, and thus the Pack's kitchen boy had been changed for the space of a day into the shape of a gray-furred fox.
I almost enjoyed it, or would have if I'd really understood what was going on. Nobody expects foxes to do chores, or stand still and get taunted and abused. If I could have had a fox's body, but my human mind still, that would have been the best…
And in this dream, he realized as a huge form loomed ahead of him, that was precisely what he did have. Slipping to one side of the path he'd been following, concealing himself among the vaguely-delineated underbrush (with a brief, wrinkled-nose grimace for the sloppiness of the work), he sampled the air, nose high, mouth open.
Female. Adult. Predator. Under his breath, he growled, and began to back slowly away, moving with extra care due to the slight flexibility of the ground. I don't know how you got into my dreams, but I don't want to see you, I don't want to come near you, I don't want to deal with you ever again…
The scent eddied, then resumed, this time with a tinge of baking bread and a sharp floral tone added to it. "I know you're there, Draco," said a woman's voice. "You can run if you like, but you already know this isn't real, so I can't hurt you. And I think there might be some things you want to say to me."
Emboldened, Draco reared back and shot upwards as a human, brushing bits of leaf off his palms. "You think so, do you?" he said coolly, stalking forward into the small clearing where the woman he'd just been thinking about, the woman called Danger, sat at the base of a tree, her legs folded under her, watching him with her face calm and expressionless. "And what might give you the idea you're worth a single moment of my time, real or not?"
"I'm here." Danger gestured, palm up, at the woods all around them. "Whether you meant to or not, you opened your dream to me. And whether you believe it or not, I'm not about to hurt you."
"Not about to?" sneered Draco, concealing his quivering fear beneath a thick layer of scorn. "Pity you didn't have that attitude all along. Now why don't you leave me alone and let me get on with my life? It's over. I'm where I ought to be, and there's nothing your people can do to me any longer."
"That may be true. But if you should ever come across something in your life you can't explain, something that seems too strange to believe, try talking to me, or to another of my Pack." Danger smiled softly. "You might be surprised by what you'd find out."
"I'd be surprised by how fast you'd snap your damned shackles back on me, you mean," Draco retorted. "Honestly, I'm amazed you let me go at all! You've been dogs in the manger over me every day that I can remember, if you can't have me, no one can—rather than see me free and happy, back with my father where I belong, I'd have thought you'd want me dead—"
"I considered it."
The words, spoken not in any histrionic tone but with the same flat simplicity with which Danger would have announced that broomsticks were for flying, stunned Draco momentarily into silence. "You—what?" he got out when he could speak again.
"We have our spies among the Death Eaters, as I'm sure the Death Eaters have theirs among us. One of those spies contacted me, through an intermediary, to offer his services on our behalf." Danger's smile flickered once and died, like a candle flame burning too quickly through its wick. "If we wished you to meet with some terrible accident, he said, or even suffer a more obvious mischief by person or persons unknown, he would oblige us quickly and quietly, without fear, without suffering. As he would prefer it done for a child of his own, in a similar situation, were there no other hope to be had."
"But…" Draco pressed his fingers against his forehead, trying to will away the headache he could feel building. "You said no."
"I did say no." Now the smile returned, and built into something worthy of the name. "Think about that, the next time you're meditating on how badly you've been wronged."
"I don't believe you," snapped Draco, but even to himself the words sounded petty and childish. "You could tell me anything you like, here and now," he said in a more reasonable tone. "Say there's a secret hideout for Muggles under Hogwarts, or you can walk through walls any time you please, or the Heir of Slytherin delivers your mail. I've got no way to prove or disprove any of it."
"No, you don't," agreed Danger, getting to her feet. "But tell me this." She stroked two fingers along her cheek, then kissed them and blew gently across them in Draco's direction. "Why would I lie?"
Draco was still trying to formulate an answer to this when the ground tore apart under his feet.
One choked scream escaped him before his eyes popped open.
He was lying in his own bed, breathing in short, panting gasps, his pajamas dampened with sweat.
"Why would you lie?" he muttered, sitting up, pressing a hand to his heart to calm himself down. "Because you want me grateful to you, that's why. You want me thinking of you as some kind of heroine. Well, break a leg with that one, Gertrude. It's not happening, not so long as my name is Draco Malfoy."
After fanning his sheets a few times to cool himself down, then flipping his pillow and punching it into shape, he lay down and closed his eyes once more.
On the edge of sleep, he felt his fingers brush against the spot on his cheek where Danger's kiss had landed.
Matt Smythe waved Meghan over to his table at the end of Potions on the Friday of that week, Natalie and Graham joining the small conclave as a matter of course. "Mum found this in Amanda's things, that Professor Flitwick sent home with her and Dad after they were here to see…you know," he said uncomfortably, extending a parchment envelope. "She thought I ought to give it to somebody, even if it can't go to the person it's meant for."
Meghan took the envelope, glanced at the address, and nodded. "We'll keep it until we see him again," she said, tucking it into her pocket. "Thank you."
"Until you see him again?" asked Natalie as the friends walked in the direction of Gryffindor Tower, Graham headed ultimately for the library where he needed to do some research for a History of Magic essay. "But I thought…"
"We know people who know things." Meghan looked around at the expanse of the castle, letting her fingers trail along the stone wall beside her. "Those people told us not to stop hoping, and not to let ourselves get all twisted up with hate and anger. So I'm trying to think good thoughts. And one of those thoughts is that we will see him again."
"All right."
"Are you going to open it?" Graham asked, looking curiously at Meghan's pocket. "Or your parents?"
"Well, I won't. I don't know what they'll do, but I think they'll leave it alone too. Amanda was…" Meghan hesitated. "Different," she said finally. "She'd touched deep magic, the kind that's old and very strong. It isn't done with wands or potions, and it can't be undone with them either."
"Like the spell our year broke." Natalie giggled. "I wonder if any of the Death Eaters have noticed it's gone yet."
"Probably not. But if they do what my Dadfoot thinks they might, and Mr. Weasley and Percy…" Meghan trailed off, shaking her head. "George's funeral is tomorrow," she said quietly. "Is it bad that I don't want to go?"
"No one ever wants to go to funerals." Graham shifted his bag on his shoulder. "But isn't that why we're fighting the war? So not as many people will have to go to funerals?"
"I guess so." Meghan sniffled once. "I just…I wish…" She pushed away from the two and stalked to the end of the hallway, past the tapestry of pink-clad trolls which hung on one wall, then back again, her eyes shining brighter than usual, her hands opening and closing. "I just wish there was someplace I could hide from it all," she said restlessly, turning away to pace along the corridor once more. "Someplace I could go that nobody would ever, ever find me, not until I was ready to be found—"
Natalie gasped, hands against her mouth. Graham bit off a swearword in the middle.
Meghan turned to see what had surprised her friends. "Oh, that," she said dismissively, waving a hand at the door which had formed in the opposite wall. "That's just the Room of Requirement, where we used to meet for DA, remember? With the passage down to the Den where my Pride has our den-nights, that we used to keep from being caught by Professor Umbridge that one time?"
"But you weren't requiring a room for anything." Natalie lowered her hands. "Except a hiding place, and it could just have made a little alcove for that."
"Or maybe a broom closet," suggested Graham with a smile. "Didn't the Weasley twins say that's what it was when they hid here from Mr. Filch?"
"As long as it doesn't turn into what Draco and Luna used to do that, back in the fall." Meghan laid her hand on the doorknob. "Want to see?"
"Yes, please," said Graham promptly as Natalie swallowed once, but nodded.
Twisting the knob boldly, Meghan threw the door open.
Three breaths sucked in together.
Lucius awakened from a pleasant afternoon nap to an odd feeling of compression on his chest. Cautiously, prepared for anything from a fellow Death Eater's cat to a magical creature sent by his Master to summon him, he opened one eye.
The enormous green eyes staring back at him from a distance of about six inches did indeed belong to a magical creature, but just as surely it had nothing to do with his Master. As Lucius had good and painful reasons to know, this particular creature could no longer be sent anywhere, by anyone.
Not since Draco caught that blasted ball made out of socks, at any rate…
"Lucius Malfoy thinks he is so very clever, taking back his son," said a voice which managed despite its squeakiness to be decidedly chilling. "But Lucius Malfoy should know how easy it is for big, clumsy wizards to have…accidents." A pair of enormous, batlike ears flipped back and forth once. "If Lucius Malfoy is not very kind to his son, accidents will start to happen. Many, many accidents." A grin revealed a mouthful of worryingly pointed teeth. "You shall not harm Dobby's master."
With a snap of his long fingers, the clothed house-elf vanished.
Lucius growled under his breath, rolling off the sofa he'd used for his nap and choosing a pillow to shred to pieces. It did nothing productive, he knew, but it would use up his temper without causing any true harm.
Accidents indeed. And because the Manor is mine, all blame for inimical magic within its walls must ultimately fall to me, whether or not I was truly involved! How am I now to discipline the boy if he begins to misbehave, as surely he will?
He flung a handful of feathers savagely aside. "I had hoped that some of the restraint and dignity he displayed before I cast my spells would carry over," he said aloud, denuding the pillow of another handful. "Give the Pack their due, they raised a surprisingly admirable young man in many ways, despite his rather vulgar mode of expressing himself and his absolutely unacceptable views on life. But no, the Draco I have restored to his proper way of thinking seems to have lost every scrap of maturity and dedication. He plays at the lessons I give him while they amuse him, then tosses them aside in favor of something he likes better—"
Doing the same to the now deflated pillow, Lucius turned and met his reflected eyes in the mirror across the room. "Perhaps I can use that to my advantage," he mused aloud, drawing his wand and absently twirling it to send the feathers back to their proper place and restore the pillow to its unmutilated state. "If I can persuade him that nothing could be more enjoyable than the way in which my Master intends to use him, that the frightful parts of it are instead exciting and thrilling, and most of all, that there will be a great reward awaiting him at the end of it…"
The more he thought about this idea, the better Lucius liked it.
"Draco may have the demeanor of a child, but he has the desires and urges of a man," he said, bending to rummage in one of his desk's drawers for parchment, quill, and ink. "And in his former life, he was much enamored of Miss Luna Lovegood. Perhaps we can take advantage of a certain petty plot to bring her into our control here, or perhaps we shall simply make her a secondary goal of the larger plan which already centers around my son." He smiled. "After all, the House of Malfoy must continue, must it not? And the blood of the Lovegoods is acceptably pure, even if their ways of thinking are…peculiar." The smile surged upwards into a grin. "Thinking is not precisely a necessity for what we shall require the girl to do."
I should research suitable potions, perhaps, to render her as docile and pliable as may be, or even mindless altogether, save for basic animal instinct. It would never do to have a scrap of pillow talk begin unraveling all my careful work, now would it?
Chuckling to himself, Lucius set to work noting down the elements needed for these new elaborations on his Master's current plan.
Poor blind fools. They think they are hemming me in, keeping me from harming their loved ones any further, when in fact, they are merely opening new horizons before my eyes…
"All right, we're here," said Harry, stepping inside the unused classroom and allowing Ginny to lock the door behind him. "Now what is so important that you couldn't tell anybody about it until the whole Pride was together?"
With a flourish, Meghan whipped away the cloth which covered one of the desks.
Harry looked at the item thus revealed, feeling his fellow Warriors doing the same. "It's a snow globe," he said after a moment. "What about it?"
"Magic snow globe," Ron corrected, shading his eyes. "Still, not that special. Though I'd love to know what it does, it's awfully bright…"
"What it does isn't the point," said Meghan impatiently. "Touch it. Not everyone," she added quickly as most of the Pride started forward. "Just Harry and Neville."
Glancing over at Neville, Harry got a shrug in return. So he doesn't know what's up either—that's odd, I didn't think Pearl did much of anything without her Captain…
Side by side, the two boys laid their hands on the smooth, cool curve of glass.
Neville frowned, shifting his feet. "It's colder than it ought to be," he said. "And I'm getting something…"
Harry nodded absently in agreement with this, trying to track down his own "something", an almost indefinable shiver along his magical nerves. He'd felt it before, and recently, though very seldom before that, and it was associated with something definitely unpleasant—
So faint that he nearly missed it, his scar twinged with pain.
"What—" Harry snatched his hand away, taking a rapid step back from the desk and snapping his wand out of its holster. "Tell me your godmother's Animagus form name," he demanded, pointing the wand at Meghan as the rest of the Pride came to alert around him.
"She…doesn't have one. We just call her Danger, no matter what she looks like. Mama called her Princess once, but that was back when she didn't remember anything." Meghan blinked in confusion. "Harry, why—"
"Voldemort?" said Hermione from the back of the room. "Harry, did your scar just hurt?"
"Yes, but not like it does when something's a Horcrux." Harry laughed shakily, releasing his wand to return it to its place. "That would be way too easy, don't you think? Just finding it in some random room at Hogwarts?"
"But what is it, then?" Ginny asked, the rest of the Pride coming forward to examine the globe as well. "And that wasn't funny, Meghan," she added, stepping around Harry to confront the younger witch. "Haven't we had enough problems—"
"I wasn't trying to be funny, I was trying to find out if I was making things up!" Meghan glared at Ginny. "Because I found it with Graham and Natalie in the same place as the Room of Requirement, only it's different, it's huge and it's full of broken and stolen and hidden everything, and I thought I felt just the tiniest bit of the same feeling I get when I hold a Horcrux but I wasn't sure!" She planted her hands on her hips. "So I was trying to—oh." Distracted by the crackle of parchment, she pulled a letter from her pocket and handed it across to Hermione. "I think you should have this," she said. "You or Luna."
Hermione glanced at the name written across the letter's back. "I see." Tucking it into her own pocket, she stepped up beside Ron. "I don't suppose you can tell what kind of magic is on it?" she asked him.
"Only thing it's bringing to mind—and this is going to sound stupid, so don't laugh at me—but it reminds me a little of Dad's car." Ron shook his head, his expression baffled. "But Dad would never use Dark magic, especially not on something the family's around all the time…"
"So this must not be a Dark spell, then," said Ginny. "Luna? Can you See anything?"
"Not clearly." Luna tilted her head first one way, then another, frowning in concentration. "You're right, though, it isn't a Dark spell. It is a complicated one, something that none of us know how to cast yet. I'd recognize anything I knew how to do, or that I'd seen one of you doing. Should we ask Professor Dumbledore?"
"Probably." Harry checked his watch. "But not right now, it's getting late. This thing won't explode or possess anybody or something like that, Luna? I mean spontaneously, if nobody's meddling with it or trying spells on it?"
"It shouldn't." Luna walked a slow circle around the snow globe, viewing it from every angle. "None of the magic on it is active at all. It needs to be triggered somehow. I just can't spot the trigger point…"
"We can figure it out later." Neville pulled a bag from his pocket, removed a number of oddly-shaped green pods from it, and held it open for Hermione to levitate the globe into it. "Going to put it somewhere safe for the night, Harry?"
"Safest place I know." Harry accepted the bag and waited for Ginny to remove her Imperturbable Charm from the door. "Up in our dorm, in one of the drawers in my wardrobe. Even if the Death Eaters have a Gryffindor or two on their side, who'd think to go looking for anything valuable underneath my socks?"
Draco lay curled up on his side, shivering. Almost seventeen he might be, but it had been a stormy night when the Pack had first stolen him away from his home, and some things never stopped being frightening.
Think about something else. Anything else. Music, maybe—all the different songs I'm finding with my pipe, and some of them I can even think up words for—what Father and his Master want me to do, wouldn't that be amazing, actually getting to see Hogwarts and go inside, not to mention keeping the stupid Pack looking at me instead of at Father and his friends while they creep inside—and Father was even hinting there might be something very important that only I could do while I was there, something that would really help our side of the war—
Outside the window, lightning washed the night with fire. An instant later, thunder pounded through the skies, reverberating painfully through Draco's chest. He pressed his face into his pillow, unable to stop the whimper from escaping.
I hate this. I hate it. I should be too old for this, I should be able to be strong and get through it, but I'm not. I can't. I want somebody to come, but then at the same time I don't, because the only one who'd come would be Father, and he wouldn't understand, he'd only get angry—
The bed dipped on one side, as though someone had sat down on it.
"Will I do?" said a voice.
It's a man, but not Father—he sounds young, almost my age—
Draco sat up, squinting in confusion at the stranger in his bedroom. "Who are you?" he asked warily, and somehow felt no surprise when his words came out in the treble of a young child rather than his own mid-range tenor. "How did you get in here?"
"Call me Fox." A wand a couple inches longer than Draco's own flicked towards the fireplace, bringing up the flames to dance merrily along the logs. "I'm a relation of yours. Not one you'd have heard of, but that's how I got in. The house knows who does and doesn't belong here."
"That's what Father told me." Draco gathered his knees to his chest, still unsure of what he should do. Fox, seen in the brightening firelight, did indeed bear some resemblance to Draco's father, or to Draco himself at his proper age, but his hair was several tones darker, his features broader and plainer, and his eyes were a bright and definite blue. "What do you want?"
Fox shrugged. "You seemed kind of scared. I thought you might want some company." He smiled, a warm, friendly, understanding expression. "I remember what it's like to be scared of storms. They used to get to me pretty badly when I was your age."
A low growl of thunder sounded outside, making Draco shiver. "How did you stop being scared?" he asked, still hugging his knees. "Can you teach me?"
"I can start, sure." Fox patted the bed beside him. "Come on over here."
"Why?"
"Because it's a lot harder to fight your fears on your own than it is if you have help." Fox patted the spot again. "I don't bite. Promise."
Draco hesitated for another second. "Who helped you?"
"My dad." The answer was immediate, as a wistful look came across Fox's face. "He used to come get me on stormy nights, and we'd go downstairs—I shared a bedroom when I was little, we didn't have nearly as big a house as this one—but we'd go downstairs, so we wouldn't wake anybody up, and then he'd talk to me and tell me stories. You like stories?"
"Sometimes." Draco swallowed once, then, gathering his courage, scooted across the bed to Fox's side. "What stories would he tell you?"
"Oh, all kinds. Usually he'd start by getting me to understand what was happening outside." Fox held out his hands, about six inches apart. "See, the lightning makes the air get really, really hot, and it comes apart a little ways. But it doesn't want to be apart, so it comes slamming back together, and that's what makes the thunder." He brought his hands together in a clap, though not a hard one. "Dad used to say it was the clouds applauding for the great show the lightning was putting on out there."
Draco grinned at this image, and couldn't see any point in objecting when one of Fox's arms looped around him and settled there, tucking him in comfortably against Fox's side. "The lightning's putting on a really big show tonight," he said, peering around Fox at the rain lashing across the balcony. "Does it have a story to go with it?"
"I don't know. It might." Fox glanced down at him. "Was that your very subtle way of letting me know you'd like a story too?"
"I'm supposed to be too old for bedtime stories, though," Draco objected.
Fox laughed. "Trust me, no one's ever too old for a bedtime story. How about 'Cinderella'? I used to love that one when I was your age."
"All right." Laying his head against Fox's chest, Draco let his eyes close, the better to find the pictures that ought to go with the words. This was, to be certain, a dream, but for once it was a good one.
"Well, then," Fox began, "once upon a time there was a lovely witch named Ella, who had a wicked stepmother and two ugly stepsisters. They took away her wand and made her do all the housework without magic, and sleep near the kitchen fireplace so that she got covered in ashes and cinders, and that's how she came to be called Cinderella…"
Author Notes:
If you think this scene looks familiar, it should. Go check out Chapter 27 of Living without Danger, "Memories and Magic". And yes, you can all stop panicking now…Alex and Anne did promise our Fox would be protected!
Not terribly much to say here. My sister graduated safely and won a gold medallion for excellence in the performing arts. Given that the character of Meghan is based on her, is anyone surprised?
More as soon as I can manage it! Buy my originals if you have money, give me a nice review if you don't, and soon will be sooner!