Chapter Twenty-Four of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- Delays Have Dangerous Ends

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Twenty-Four—Delays Have Dangerous Ends

The pain lasted for more moments than Draco had known it could last without driving him mad. He felt his spine arch and heard it crack; cold sweat was sliding across his skin and into his eyes without his being able to wipe it away. His hands formed into claws, and he thought distantly what he must look like if someone came into the room, his father, or Severus, or Harry.

Disgust at the thought was perhaps what anchored his mind, so that he was still sane when the pain foamed away and dropped him back into the real world. He lay still, panting, his eyes shut. He had no desire to look on the face of his tormentor, and his mind was already focused on survival. At the moment, staring at a triumphant grin was likely to drive him to say something stupid, and he didn’t want to feel the Cruciatus Curse again.

“You’re so pathetic,” whispered the voice Draco dreaded hearing, his own. Or, no, not quite his own. There were still minor imperfections in it, traces of some other accent, upswings and lilts where Draco would have striven to speak the words flatly and without emotion. “You concealed that great flaw at the heart of you under a glittering surface. You couldn’t have made it obvious, could you? I never knew it was there until I saw you staring at him.”

Common sense demanded that Draco open his eyes then. He needed to be able to see the stranger’s face and especially his eyes, to determine the way he would jump next.

If one can determine that with a bloody madman who’s a genius at spells.

He looked. The other Draco was bending over him, staring at him with a look of ugly, open scorn that made Draco wonder what exactly had happened to him in his own world. Draco never would have worn such an expression himself, thanks to the way it twisted his face. This man didn’t seem as vain of his appearance.

Then he cannot be me. That revelation gave Draco the strength to whisper, “What are you going to do with me?”

The mouth-destroying smile Harry had described when the imposter attacked him on the Malfoy grounds widened across his face then. Draco had already steeled himself to accept ugliness, and so he was able not to look away, although it made the imposter look like a snake unhinging his jaw. Draco could see why the imposter might want to take his place, but not why he had a desire to imitate Nagini.

“What you might imagine I’ll do,” whispered the imposter. “Learn what I need to, the pieces of your life I’m still missing, to take your place.”

“What happened to your own world?” Draco asked. “Your own time? Why must you come out of it and assault me here?” He made his voice as neutral as possible. Until he understood more about what the man was capable of, this was no time for playing mental games with him, and certainly no time for insults.

The man started laughing. Draco winced. He had never considered that his own voice could crack down the middle like that, but now he had to wonder if it could. He hated the imposter the more for giving him something so unpleasant to reflect on.

“You would think that,” said the man. “You can’t imagine what you seem like from the outside. The mirror, the flawed mirror that does not reflect perfection, but can be taught better by rearranging the glass.”

Draco lowered his head and stared at his hands as if ashamed. The veins stood out on the backs of them, and his fingers trembled. That strengthened his desire for revenge on the bastard, but it also reminded him that he had to act more subtly than that desire called for. “I don’t understand you.”

The stranger’s hand fell on his cheek. Draco shuddered, but kept his head down and his eyes tamely fastened on the bedcovers.

“Of course you do not,” breathed his voice. Draco, if listening to a recording of it, knew he could not have told the difference between it and his own any more. “There has always been a charming innocence about you. You fretted about what you looked like to other people, with the appearance and the reputation of Draco Malfoy and the Malfoy family, but you couldn’t estimate their perceptions because your own consumed you.”

“I have made beautiful houses that others agree are beautiful,” said Draco, and then bit the inside of his cheek in vexation. He had to tame his pride, or he was not likely to survive the night.

“I know that,” said the imposter. “And I have studied long to have some portion of your talent. But it is not enough. After I have finished the game with you and with Potter, Draco Malfoy will retire from the public life of an architect. He will have made all the money he needs, and you will need to spend time with my family.”

Draco concealed a shudder. “I don’t understand,” he said. “If you wanted to seize my whole life, surely you’d want my career and my love affair with Harry as well.”

“They are flaws in the glass,” the imposter replied calmly. “I was angry at first, when I realized that I could not make them fit myself. You had hidden your obsession with Potter well enough that I was unprepared for it. I could have borne with a casual affair, but your depth of feeling was too much.” He flicked his wand, and Draco arched, screaming without sound, as a coil of fire seized the muscles of his neck and curled around his ribs and down the length of his spine. “But I should not have been angry,” the imposter continued in a meditative voice, exactly as if he hadn’t cast that shocking spell. The words nearly vanished behind a ringing wall of pain, but Draco fought fiercely and made himself remember them and reach them. “I should have realized I could change the glass. And so I will.”

He reached down and smoothed a hand over Draco’s cheek. The spell ended then, and dropped Draco into a shaking, sobbing mess. He couldn’t even feel a spark of shame; he simply had no resources left that would enable him to have hidden this weakness.

The imposter continued stroking his cheek. “I’ll change you,” he said. “You’ll realize the truth before you die. And so will Potter.”

Draco, staring up at him, wondered what made him despair most: the realization that he was completely out of his depth when confronting this man and had no idea what to do next, the fact that he would have to try anyway—

Or the fact that the thought of Harry dying was more intolerable than the thought of doing so himself.

He licked his lips and whispered a few papery words. “I—you could walk through the bloodline wards, but how are you going to find Harry?” He tried to sound interested. The one weakness this madman seemed to have was telling Draco about the ways Draco had disappointed him and the ways he planned to correct it, even if he did it in riddling, obscure language.

“Harry,” said the madman, and his snarl distended his mouth again. “You would call him that.” A flick of his wand, and Draco rolled his head back in sick silence as a rib in his right side broke.

“You need not worry,” the imposter was saying, when Draco could listen again. “What draws the hummingbird but the nectar?”

This time, Draco understood. He’ll kidnap me and get his revenge on both of us—by hurting me whilst I’m with him, and forcing Harry to come hunting him so that he can get me back.

“Oh, dear,” said the imposter, in Draco’s own tone of concern, and moved his wand sideways. This time, the rib healed. “I can’t let you have your wand,” the man explained, taking Draco’s hawthorn wand with a humiliatingly easy gesture of his hand, “but I didn’t mean to hurt you so that you couldn’t walk. You can walk, can’t you?” He stared at Draco in a way that made the question a command.

Draco forced a smile and a nod, and stood. The imposter appeared delighted, and rested a hand on his shoulder for a moment. “There,” he said. “I knew I’d chosen a strong man to replace.”

Draco ducked his head as if in embarrassed gratitude. He knew the plan he would have to follow now: charm the man, and even convince him he agreed with some of his goals, until he had the chance to escape.

He only hoped that would happen before Harry was driven to seek him out.

*

Lucius stood in silence in the doorway of Draco’s bedroom, staring at his son’s empty bed.

He then took three steps into the room, put his hand in the middle of the blankets, and felt the indentation. Draco always slept in the same position every night, though he would have insisted that he didn’t if asked, because he considered it a dangerous habit to develop. The covers had no warmth, and Lucius knew the imposter must have taken his son hostage hours ago.

The wards had not reacted. The potions had not reacted. And yet, Lucius could see a single drop of blood on the pillow where Draco’s head might have rested. There had been violent magic here.

And no reaction.

Lucius closed his eyes and stood still. If Severus stepped through the doorway right now, he did not want to appear weak in front of him. But he was thinking of the other person he might appear weak in front of. Narcissa had a portrait frame in Draco’s room, and she might even use it, for all he knew.

I’ve failed. She will know I’ve failed.

But if she could stare at him and make him feel worthless over his failure, she might not do the same thing if he found Draco again.

He turned. Severus did stand in the doorway, eyes on the bed. He looked at Lucius, and said nothing. He did not have to. Lucius turned his head aside as if from a blow.

“How do you plan to fix this?” Few people knew Severus’s voice could sound that flat and unreflective, like a pool of black ice.

“The way that Malfoys have always settled their problems when they have no other choice,” said Lucius. “And sometimes even when they do.” He was impressed by the steadiness of his voice. “Dark magic.”

Severus unexpectedly reached out and caught his arm. “If you use it, you will go to Azkaban, and Potter is unlikely to speak for you this time,” he said.

Lucius wrenched his arm away. “And Draco is unlikely to return if I do not use the magic. Do you have anything else to say, Severus? Or will you apply your own art to winning him free?”

At once Severus turned on one heel, letting his robes flap behind him like dramatic birds’ wings. If he put as much effort into diplomacy as he did into drama, Lucius thought, feeling weariness descend on him like bindings on his bones, then he would have made friends with Lucius again long ago.

But then, he probably felt no emotion where Lucius was concerned. He simply didn’t want to lose the roof over his head.

And Lucius had more important things to worry about than Severus’s reaction to his actions. He was already mentally preparing himself for the challenge as he went towards his private rooms.

Turning someone inside out physically was one of the most difficult and damaging Dark curses Lucius knew.

Turning oneself inside out mentally was an order of magnitude more difficult.

*

Severus scraped off a piece of his fingernail and tossed it into the black potion that bubbled in the cauldron. It leaped, a swift motion like the whole of the sample trying to bubble at once, and then collapsed on itself. Severus leaned over the cauldron, muscles still tensed and body still balanced in such a way that it would let him move backwards should the liquid explode. He was not stupid.

But no image appeared on the surface of the potion, as it should have. Severus half-shut his eyes and stood in thought, tapping his fingernails against his palm. The clipped one caught at his skin with a tearing motion that produced a hangnail in seconds; Severus flicked his wand, detached the hangnail, and floated it into one of his cabinets to use the next time he brewed a Theseus’s Fortune Potion.

The Finder’s Potion could not locate Draco and his probable kidnapper, then. Severus remained still for some moments, revising the information that his mind contained about the potion, and then went and fetched the book that contained the original of that information from the shelf, because he was not stupid.

The Finder’s Potion is powerful in effect, but limited in scope, said the book, the words visible to Severus even through the haze of his own scribbled notes and several dark stains that had come from old cups of tea consumed in silence and lamplight above the pages. It can fail in a number of several ways to locate the individual it is aimed at. It has been known to fail when the individual in question is behind a Fidelius Charm. An especially conclusive case of failure happens when the individual has a twin and the brewer has not sufficient distinguished the two in his mind. And, of course, the intrusion of a second copy of the same person, as from a Budding Spell, would cause the potion to fail. It relies on the uniqueness of its target, much as owls do to find the people their letters are addressed to, and an interruption to that uniqueness renders the potion inert.

Severus laid the book on the carpet. His eyes were fixed on the wall as his mind recalled the phantom snake’s answer to his question when he had made the last potion, and what he had known about Narcissa Malfoy—whether she had been the kind of woman who could have borne twins and hidden one of them from her husband—and what he knew about Draco—whether he was the kind of person with the arrogance to cast the Budding Spell, thinking the copy of himself created would perfectly fulfill his desires.

But he had known Narcissa Malfoy, and he knew Draco Malfoy, and he recalled the phantom snake’s answer.

It explained, as well, why the bloodline wards and then the potions had failed to react to the imposter crossing into the Manor. Those wards and potions had been trained to accept Draco’s presence, but not to keep count of how many of him were present.

They would not react, of course, to a second Draco.

*

Harry knew something was wrong from the moment Ron came to lunch with him that day.

Ron avoided his eyes, for one thing, and since Ron was forthright enough to meet anyone’s eyes—in fact, Harry had heard him saying that he thought people who wouldn’t look other people in the eye were either criminals or former Slytherins—that was suspicious. Then he took to clearing his throat loudly whenever Harry paused in the conversation, and starting some other topic hurriedly. Then he took a piece of toast and paced around the house, coming back at last with a crumb-stained book from the library. Hermione had trained Ron, by that time, not to drop crumbs on books.

And then Harry said, “How’s the Malfoy case going?” and the toast fell from Ron’s hand to land on the carpet in a splatter of crumbs and butter.

He tried to cover by clearing his throat again and stooping to pick it up. The house, however, Vanished the mess before he could. Harry had learned by then that the cottage had its own spells that made the food, cleaned the rooms, and dusted the furniture. He could see why the Aurors had made it into a safehouse. It was valuable property, especially in the case of another Dark Lord’s war when the inhabitants might not be able to venture out in search of food.

“Malfoy, mate?” Ron asked brightly, eyes locked on his fingers as they clenched on the arm of a chair. “Why would you ask about him?”

And Harry knew.

Radiant rage brought him to his feet, but he kept from strangling Ron by reminding himself that the Fidelius Charm would be destroyed if its Keeper died. He took a long, slow breath, and said, “I was asking about the case, and not Malfoy himself. What’s happened?”

Ron’s face flushed brilliant red, and he stared at Harry with the terrified look of a rabbit corned by Crookshanks. Harry kept up his stare, not looking away. Ron was honest enough to admit the truth—if pressed.

“Mate,” said Ron at last, and closed his eyes. “I swear I didn’t—we didn’t think he would be in danger these first days. The imposter was after you last time, and we thought he’d keep going after you. That’s why the Fidelius, wasn’t it? And the Manor has wards, powerful ones, that Snape, the bastard, was strengthening—“

“Is he dead?”

Harry was surprised he could ask the question calmly when he felt as if he were spinning down into the darkness between the stars, but he did.

Ron jumped as though he’d sat on a pin. “No, no!” he almost shouted, and then calmed down enough to add, “That is, we don’t know. He vanished from his bed in the middle of the night, the git, and didn’t bother to leave anything to tell anyone where he’d gone.” He scowled, and Harry thought he heard him mutter something about, “Always knew that he’d run when he was most needed.”

Harry ignored that entirely. He was not about to get distracted by the grudges that still clustered around the war. “And you think he’s—what? Gone off to some party? When he knows his life is in danger? Isn’t it more likely that the imposter kidnapped him?”

Ron took a deep breath. “I don’t know,” he said at last, after a loud exhalation. “I can’t make anyone in that damn pile tell me the truth. Malfoy Senior mutters and sneers and tells me he has some kind of spell to prepare, and of course Snape has a shut door between himself and the outside world most of the time anyway. No way am I going to open it just to ask if he’s seen Malfoy.”

Harry had heard enough. If Lucius was preparing some sort of spell, then he was probably trying to find Draco, or perhaps take revenge on his killer. Snape might be doing the same thing. Harry had no doubt the man still hated him, but he also thought he must have cared for Draco; Draco had claimed him publicly as a mentor after the war, which had been one of the reasons Snape hadn’t been executed for Dumbledore’s murder.

And Harry couldn’t bear to remain in the house whilst Draco was in danger, especially with the person who had, in a way, let it happen.

He stood and Summoned one of the Auror robes he’d brought with him. It had enchantments on it that made it fit for battle in a way his ordinary clothes weren’t. After that came the Invisibility Cloak, and Ron stared in frank bewilderment as Harry bundled that up and slipped it into a pocket. As he started to put on the Auror robe, Ron finally seemed to grasp the truth.

“Harry,” he said. “You can’t leave.”

“Really?” Harry asked, his head bowed as he focused fiercely on the way the buttons were done up. If he did that, then he might be able to stop focusing on the images of Draco’s being tortured that flashed behind his eyes. “I have the use of my legs, and the cottage has a door, and I have my wand so I can Apparate. What’s to prevent me?”

“Mate, look, I’m sorry—“

Harry looked up, and Ron shut his mouth when he saw his face.

“You should be,” Harry said, what felt like an age later. “You were part of the reason Malfoy wasn’t assigned protection these first few days, weren’t you?” He felt he was being generous in saying that Ron was part of the reason, and not the whole.

Ron winced, but said gamely, “Everyone really did think he’d go after you first. I don’t like Malfoy, but I wouldn’t wish the kind of fate on him that it seems any victim of this lunatic is likely to get.” And then he took a deep breath and stepped forwards, clamping his hands on Harry’s shoulders. It had been years since he did that, since Harry’s breakup with Ginny, and it startled Harry into paying attention.

“I didn’t make the recommendations that I should have,” Ron said steadily. “But neither did anyone else. We did think you were in more danger, Harry, and Malfoy himself refused protection when we offered it. You know the trouble he had accepting any Auror guard in his house but you.” He wrinkled his nose. “And I think he only accepted you in the first place so he could accuse you of seducing him.” He shook his head and spoke on before Harry could interrupt. “I think you should stay here where you’re safe. Kingsley has the best Aurors in the department working on this already.”

“I’m the best Auror in the department,” Harry said.

“Mate, no one really thinks you should be working on this,” Ron said. He added encouragingly, “You don’t yourself, if you think about it.”

“Yes, I do.” Harry shook Ron’s hands off with a neat twist of his shoulders. “I want to rescue Draco. I owe him for vanishing in the middle of an investigation—“

“Goddamn it, Harry, you don’t—“

“Because I should have been able to overcome my feelings, if I was an adult,” Harry said, raising his voice, “and get past what he did to me. That would have shown him who was the stronger man, so it would have been the best revenge, too.” Ignoring his own conviction that he couldn’t possibly have remained near Draco at the time, he added, “And imagine what you would feel if it was Hermione who’d been kidnapped, Ron. Could you remain still?”

Ron’s eyes wavered, but he said, “Hermione’s never hurt me the way Malfoy hurt you, even when we had spectacular fights—“

Harry leaned forwards. “Then imagine if your obsession had been kidnapped,” he said, softly, fiercely. “The woman you told me you were ready to sacrifice your life for, even though you only saw her, didn’t know her. Could you sit by and let that happen? What would happen if you heard she died? Wouldn’t you feel like killing yourself?”

There were long moments when Harry felt Ron teetering on a dagger-point. He wasn’t breathing, his eyes fixed past Harry’s head on something only he could see. Harry remained still, knowing he had already done all he could to affect the outcome.

And then Ron exhaled sharply and said, “Right. You have to go after him. But I’m coming with you.”

Harry grinned hard enough that his jaw hurt and his teeth ground together. “I never expected anything else.”

Chapter 25.

Comments

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Ron really didn't mean to botch it. He just thought Malfoy would be all right for a day or two, and then he found out he was wrong.