Chapter Twenty-Six of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- Unto a Feast of Death

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Twenty-Six—Unto a Feast of Death

The final place they landed was as gloomy as Draco had expected it to be. It was no wonder, he thought, looking around critically, that the imposter longed to adopt Draco’s life as his own. At least Malfoy Manor had light.

And so did this place, as Draco saw a moment later when the imposter waved his wand and the lamps and torches around the room all took fire at once, a spell that Draco had never learned but would like to. Of course, perhaps it was the walls that had been prepared and not the lamps and torches, in which case the magic was less impressive and only a variation on a spell that Draco knew. He adjusted the hang of his robe on his shoulders, not condescending to look at the stranger as he steered Draco through the room with a hand low on his back.

“This is the place where you’ll stay,” said the stranger, and then propelled Draco into another chamber that he likewise lit with a flick of his wrist. “I hope—that is to say, I do know you’ll enjoy this.” His voice wavered for a moment, increasing the differences that Draco saw between the man and himself, and then firmed again. “It’s exactly like your room at home, after all.”

And it was, down to the material of the curtains on the bed—though given the heavy stone walls Draco had seen in the first room, he was sure the window was enchanted, rather than looking out over a real view of green lawns and trees. He paced forwards and halted, staring down at the bed. He had only meant to stroke the pillows and give some sarcastic comment about how much work the imposter had put into an inferior imitation, but he had seen an image of his own body’s indentation in the mattress.

“It’s yours,” said the imposter. “Not only like yours. It’s yours.” His voice held a reverence that frightened Draco more than the threats he’d heard so far, perhaps even more than the Cruciatus he’d suffered whilst still at home.

He glanced over his shoulder and met the shining, fanatic eyes of his captor. They stared at him, and yet past him, as if the real Draco was only the embodiment of the abstract ideal that the imposter served. Draco opened his mouth to comment on that, and then took a deep breath. Remember that you don’t want to make him angry.

“You’ve tried hard to make this exactly like mine,” he said. “Why?”

“It has to be yours,” said the imposter, and leaned forwards. “It has to be yours, because I have to be you.”

Draco lowered his eyes. “You’ve said things like that,” he said. “But I’m afraid I’m too stupid to understand what you really mean.”

“You’re not stupid,” said the imposter indignantly, and for a moment his wand moved in a dangerous figure-eight pattern. “Would I have chosen to become someone stupid?”

Noted. Draco had assumed denigration of himself and praise of the imposter’s superior powers would please him, but it didn’t seem so. Nevertheless, the failure had taught Draco an important lesson, and no permanent harm had been done.

“You wouldn’t, I see that now,” said Draco, and then turned in a circle, letting a frown slowly appear on his face, as if he had just now noticed something missing.

“What is it?” The imposter hopped backwards in front of him, anxious attention fixed on his face. “What do you need? What can I get for you?”

Yes, he does want to please me, in some odd way. Of course, all that leads to pleasing himself, because he can’t—become—me if he doesn’t understand the way I think and can’t incorporate that into his own behavior. Draco dropped his arms and turned to face the man squarely. “The bed that Harry conjured to put in my room,” he said. “It’s been there for more than a week now, and yet you don’t have it here yet. Why is that?”

The imposter whitened to the lips and glided a few steps closer, lowering his voice impressively. Draco didn’t allow himself to move or show fear; he knew it would only encourage the other man to persist in his threats.

“Your obsession with him is a flaw in you,” the man whispered, “a crack in the glass, to be scoured away. I won’t have the bed here, reminding you of him. You should have cast him out of your own mind when you gave that story to the papers, but it’s too obvious that you haven’t. Brooding, moping…why can’t you see that your own perfection is worth far more than he could ever give you?”

Draco spent a moment marveling. It seemed to him that this man was far more in need of the scolding and the awakening that Faustine had given him than he was himself. I wonder if she knows of his existence, and what she would say if she could see him now. He likes me the way I was, or at least the way I was convinced I was, not giving a damn about Harry except for my desire to humiliate him.

“I—I reckon I can understand you,” he said, when he became aware the imposter’s eyes were fastened on him once more. He bowed his head and spoke with abject humility, though he kept a sting in the back of his voice, because the imposter wouldn’t believe complete surrender; he would only be sure that Draco was hiding something. He must see that Draco resented the fact that the other man was right. “I have acted pathetic since I became involved with Harry—“

“Call him Potter,” said the stranger. “I like the sound of your voice when you say the name that way.”

“Potter,” Draco spat, and even gave the name an extra bitter twist, for the stranger’s sake.

The man trembled and moved towards him, one hand rising so that it cupped Draco’s cheek from a distance of several inches. His eyes fluttered as if someone were sucking him off. “Yes,” he whispered.

“I understand why you want to become me,” said Draco, and he opened his eyes a bit wider, nudging his voice by reluctant turns into a questioning lilt. “But why did you decide that you wanted to become me in the first place? Why not be whoever you were?”

“I am you now,” said the imposter, and his mouth twitched. His wand rose in his hand and traced a pattern that looked to Draco like the branching notation of a musical scale, though since his attention to the stranger’s wand was so strict, he had to admit he wasn’t certain of that. “Or I’m going to be, as soon as I scour out the flaws in the glass.”

Draco had some idea of what he meant by that now. He wants to make me over into his image of perfection. And he probably also does command Legilimency, and he’s going to take what he doesn’t understand from my mind, since he can no longer count on his observation.

No matter what, Draco knew he had to prevent the imposter from entering his head that way. Severus had described what could happen when an inelegant or careless Legilimens tried to read information from an unwilling mind. The sensation of rape was the least of it; Draco could lose memories, sanity, intelligence, or his mental integrity.

And the only way he could see to prevent that was compliance.

He moved towards the imposter, who looked a bit uncertain, his wand rising as if he would stick it into Draco’s chest or throat, but let him come. Draco halted in front of him and did his best to adopt a demure look. He knew his mother had been able to do that considerably better than he could, well enough to fool his father into believing that she truly cared for him. “I understand, yes,” Draco whispered. “And I—I want to help you.”

Slowly, joy began to nibble at the edges of the imposter’s face. But he didn’t lower his wand yet. Draco felt a weird sense of pride, seeing that. At least the man who had chosen to imitate him, and even to try and take his place and his life, wasn’t stupid, either.

Draco had nearly abandoned the idea that this man was a variation of himself from another time. He wouldn’t have had to work so hard on the voice, for one thing, and the tactics he undertook, while clever, were not ones Draco could see himself adopting. It also seemed odd that he wouldn’t see the advantages of having a powerful and utterly devoted lover like Harry; Draco would certainly have tried to retain Harry as well as his father and the Manor if he had ventured into another world and found a version of himself there.

No, it was more likely that he was a true imposter, and had had to build up the cunning and skill he had used to get this far. That would explain why he didn’t have the native understanding Draco thought no portion of himself, no matter how inferior, could be entirely without. And he was not smarter than Draco, or at least not smart in the same ways.

“You want to help me,” said the imposter, calling Draco’s attention back to the present. “How? Really?” He traced his wand in a line that would have traveled from Draco’s forehead down to his nose if it were touching his skin, passing between his eyes. Draco held his breath as he would have if the wand were really touching him; he didn’t think it was much less dangerous, having it an inch or so away. “You must know that when I take your place, you’ll cease to exist as an independent person. You’ll be perfected and resurrected instead, made over into the ideal.” His voice held a sturdy pride.

“I know that,” said Draco, and then summoned more courage than he had known he possessed and raised his hands until they cradled the imposter’s cheeks. “But maybe I’m tired of feeling inferior. Maybe I’m as exasperated with my Potter obsession as you are. Maybe I want to be free of it. But I can’t trust myself to win me free. I knew my capacity for obsession so much less than I thought I did.”

“You could crush your infatuation with him only to have it rise again,” the imposter said, his breath coming faster and faster, leaning towards Draco and letting his breath rake over his face. It was scented like Draco’s own, and it followed the same pace and rhythm; Draco hadn’t even noticed the imposter adjusting his breathing to do that. Draco felt the world twist for a moment as he wondered if he was looking at a separate person at all, or into some warped mirror.

No! That’s the way he thinks. If he once convinces you to start thinking the same way, then Severus would have the right to laugh and turn his back on you as an unworthy student of the logic he tried to teach you. You don’t want that to happen, do you?

A few deep breaths, and Draco had braced himself again. He was thinking the way he should be, the only way he could in this situation in order to survive, fast and clear and powerfully. He gazed dreamily into the other man’s eyes and nodded. “That’s exactly it. I’ve tried to rid myself of this twisted obsession before, and nothing worked. Not ignoring Potter, not trying to concentrate on my career, not telling myself that he was only a hero and what did I have to do with heroes? And you won’t even have my career when you take my place.” Draco let his voice dip into true sorrow. “I don’t want the same fate to happen to you. If I can’t be free of the flaws that seam me, at least you might be, and stand in a place of honor I can’t manage.”

The man grabbed Draco’s hands and licked his wrists, rubbed his face into his palms, and closed his eyes ecstatically, like a purring cat. Draco felt faintly ill. He had no need to see a face that looked like his own violated in that way, by such acceptance of a simple gift from another person.

Then it occurred to him that he would probably look like that, when—and if—he told Harry the truth and when—and if—Harry gave him a second chance. He could imagine himself gazing in mindless adoration at the green eyes of the man he was in love with—

Now is not the time to worry about that, he thought, and gave a push that sent the vision spinning to a far corner of his mind. The imposter was speaking again, anyway, and Draco knew that he daren’t miss a single word.

“Thank you,” he said. “I knew you would see sense in the end, because you’re too perfect not to, but I was afraid I might have to torture you into it.” The casual way he spoke the words chilled Draco. Torture had never been casual for him, even in the Dark Lord’s service. He had imagined the way Harry’s eyes would look at him when he heard about each crime. “I can show you what to do now, and give you the gift of knowledge, instead of only taking it from you.”

Draco forced himself to smile. He had no idea if anyone would come for him. From what he had seen in the imposter’s fights with Harry, he was the kind of genius with spells who could construct spells that would manage to baffle Lucius—and if Severus was not fooled, still, his expertise lay in potions and not in tracking spells. It was possible that the imposter could hold him at bay until he had stolen everything he needed from Draco, and then Severus would find only that man when he came to rescue him.

As for Harry coming…he might have heard of the kidnapping by now, but Draco knew him. Humiliated pride and interfering friends would hold him at a distance. He could not count on Harry.

That revelation, after all that had happened, was the one that almost stole the strength from his legs. He held himself up anyway, with a vast, dragging breath of air, and met the imposter’s gaze straight on.

“Then let’s go to the place that you planned to take the knowledge from me,” he said. “I want to make the trade there.”

I’ll have to do this myself. And why should I fear that? Didn’t I manage to construct the relics room, and make a career as an architect, and win Harry’s love, on my own?

*

They ended up outside a large boulder that crouched alone in the middle of a barren scrubland protected by so many Muggle-Repelling Charms that Severus had to catch his breath as they forced their way through them. Walking among them was like feeling swords rubbing against his shoulders. Though many wizards refused to acknowledge it, Muggle-Repelling Charms used in abundance made them feel unwelcome, too, in most places—which was only another sign of how thoroughly deranged Draco’s captor was.

(Memories, old taunts. “Hey, Mudblood! Bothered by the charms? That’s not surprising, is it, when your father’s a Mudblood?” And Lily holding his hand, glaring at his taunters with scornful glittering eyes, and telling him, “Never mind, Severus. They can’t even get their abusive terms right, can they? Your father’s a Muggle!” And she met his eyes then, and the scornful glitter was gone, and in them instead was a gentleness that made this one of his sweetest memories.

He had been eleven years old. Without, as yet, the stubborn teenage pride that would one day make him decide that being rescued by a girl was intolerable).

The boulder hummed with magic. Severus, studying it, would be willing to bet that at least half of it was glamours, but the illusions were woven with deceptive mastery into the stone itself. It would take them too long to poke through them.

Potter didn’t bother trying. He aimed his wand instead and barked out a single harsh command. Severus decided, later, that it hadn’t been an incantation after all, only the command of an exasperated man to his wandless magic.

The boulder shivered, and whirlwinds of dust and dead grass began to gather about it. Severus stepped closer to Potter, the Curse Potion hovering in its circular vial behind him. And so he saw the glitter of the Cobra Curse around the base of the boulder, rising and flaring its hood out as Potter’s whirlwinds danced closer and closer to the stone.

“Potter,” he said, and though Weasley glared at him as if Severus were the Dark Lord himself when he touched Potter’s shoulder—

(And he did not like it much himself, feeling flesh that shivered with the pollution of James Potter’s blood under his hand).

--it succeeded in attracting Potter’s attention. Severus ignored the outraged shine in his eyes, and nodded to the Cobra Curse. By now it had risen on its “tail,” the line of golden light that bound it to the earth, and was slithering closer to them with large loops of its body, looking like nothing so much as a kite string without the kite. No one who did not know what it was would have found it deadly. That, Severus was sure, was part of the point. His respect for the subtlety of their enemy increased an inch.

“It is the Cobra Curse,” he said, deciding that Auror training must have covered such spells. “Dispatch it.”

Potter opened his mouth and hissed.

Severus felt a moment of vivid distaste for Gryffindor dramatics, and then realized that the Parseltongue emerging from Potter’s mouth had, in fact, calmed the Cobra Curse. The line of light halted, swaying back and forth, the hood fluttering rapidly. Two eyes formed, balls of crimson flame that Severus had never seen the like of before, high in the end that Severus had to assume was the head. They examined Potter raptly, and then the curse moved further towards him and hissed a reply.

Potter pointed at the boulder as he hissed back, and the sounds crept down Severus’s spine and up to his skull and found a place in his memory. He had heard Potter use Parseltongue in his second year at the dueling club that that fool Lockhart had organized, but more to the point and more often and more recently, he had heard the Dark Lord use it, hissing foul commands to that great snake of his. Potter’s voice sounded as violent and vicious and disturbing as the Dark Lord’s had.

Severus took some small joy in that, which helped to compensate for his irritation that he couldn’t understand what Potter was saying. They were not so different in some ways, Potter and the monster he had defeated.

The Cobra Curse suddenly rose, and Severus found himself tensing; danger to Potter still called that response from him, after all these years. It was a maddening thing to discover. But the snake ward only hissed a long and what, to Severus, sounded like a complicated sentence, and then bowed its head to Potter and dissipated into golden nothingness.

Potter raked a hand through his hair, nodded at no one in particular, and appeared to dismiss the way Weasley was staring at him in frank awe—though Severus could not, because he thought it might account for much of the arrogant and reckless way the boy behaved. “Let’s go,” he said, and took a step forwards.

A wall of blue flame sprang up in front of them, and Potter screamed.

Well, Severus thought in resignation as he drew his wand and prepared to cast the countercurse as well as hold Weasley back from dashing uselessly to Potter’s rescue, I suppose I should have suspected this.

*

“Here.”

“Here” was a circle, cut by a spiral that started at its outer edge and proceeded to its center, drawn in the middle of another stone floor. Draco studied the precise lines of the circle and spiral both and reckoned that they had been chiseled by fire. In both glittered tiny purple flakes that Draco suspected were scattered bits of amethyst crystal.

He recognized the spell. It had been meant to clear the mind, to settle the spirit, and most of the time Draco would say that was harmless magic. But here, he thought it had probably been employed to help wipe the man who the imposter had been out of existence, so that he might more perfectly imitate Draco.

And now, from the anxious, loving way he turned towards Draco and beckoned him on, he was hoping that it would do the same thing to Draco.

“Come here,” he whispered.

Draco lifted his head and thought of what Harry would do at the moment. He would march forwards with Gryffindor courage because that was what he did—

No. Not all the time. He can exercise Slytherin cunning, too, the way he did when he sent me that letter. His reactions are more complex than I’m used to thinking of them. And the imposter doesn’t understand them at all, so if I act like him, I’m more likely to confuse this man who thinks that he knows most of me.

Harry would walk forwards and pretend to be in compliance, then, the way Draco was already doing, but he would be looking for another escape route all the time, and a way to reduce the risk to himself—as long as he was the only one in danger. And for the moment, that held true. Draco froze his face into a smile and stepped into the center of the spiral; the imposter had moved out of the way and left it to him, though he remained inside the circle.

The moment Draco’s feet touched the center of the spiral, purple light flared up like the Aurora Borealis from the flakes of amethyst, and then settled again.

“Ah,” said the imposter, and shot Draco a narrow, intense glance. “The magic is almost ready to take you.”

“What do I have to do?” Draco never knew how he managed to keep his voice clear and unintimidated.

No, wait, he did. The image of green eyes and a lightning bolt scar that he was holding firmly in front of his mental vision.

“To recite the incantation I’ll speak for you,” said the imposter, “granting me access to your mind and soul so that I can understand the things I still don’t understand.” His voice was rapid but low, his face so soft that Draco thought he looked aroused. He hoped that the imitation was less than perfect in this case; he would hate to think he looked so languid and puffy when he was on the verge of orgasm. “And then you’ll pass mostly into nothingness. So soft, so gentle; it’s a gentle death. You can’t think we’d want a harsh death for myself.”

When he’s reciting the incantation to me. I’ll ask for one repetition—just one, because he must know my memory for spells is fairly good. But I can’t let him complete it. I’ll have to move, then.

Draco nodded, and the man began to speak.

And then the stone room shuddered, and blue flames flashed across Draco’s vision, and a scream split the air, and the imposter said, in a voice that cracked like the smile that had come across his face when he was staring at Draco in the throes of pain, “They are here? Potter? I’ll kill them!”

He turned, wand rising.

The image of Harry hovered in front of Draco’s eyes.

Harry. Harry came for me.

His breathing slowed and shortened, and he wavered on his feet for an instant.

Then he leaped out of the spiral and charged the imposter, catching him around the waist and bearing him to the ground. The next moment, he was thrashing desperately for the wand, whilst the imposter screamed without words and tried to strangle him.

The only clear thought in his head flashed like the blue flame and rang like the scream.

I won’t let him hurt Harry. I won’t.

Chapter 27.

Comments

[lunasky3.livejournal.com]

Is it weird I'm a fan of the imposter? He's creepy cool :) But go Draco go!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Not so weird, I think. I'm kind of fascinated by him myself, but not enough to want him to win!