lomonaaeren | Chapter Twenty-Four of 'Inter Vivos'- Secrets

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Four—Secrets

He woke sweating.

Severus opened his eyes, and then shut them again. The sight of the room around him made him ill. He recognized it, of course; he would always recognize it, no matter how many years he had been away. He drew the blanket closer to him with trembling fingers, his breath coming in gasps. His skin was cold and clammy when he touched it with one hand.

On the other side of the room, his mother lay dying.

The rational part of Severus's mind wondered how that could have happened, because the last thing he remembered was lying in his own bedroom and staring at the ceiling, waiting to fall asleep. But he nevertheless knew it was true. He could hear the slight rattle of his mother's breath as the disease in her lungs extended its grip.

And then she whispered his name.

Severus lay still, old fear and old sorrow running over him like powdery dried blood poured from a bucket. He wanted to vomit, which was the first time in years, given the tortures he had endured and seen and practiced under the Dark Lord's rule. His breathing was so loud that it should have overwhelmed the sound of his mother's.

But it didn't. And she kept calling his name, sometimes plaintive, sometimes piercing, always soft.

“Severus. Severus. Severus. Severus.”

And on and on like that it went, always repeated, never varying enough to allow his thoughts to stray to something else. Still Severus panted like a dog, and the sweat crept out on his skin like the creeping of maggots.

The fear washed over him and drowned him.

Once, he had feared nothing but betraying Lily. Then, he had feared nothing but death with his wrongs still not made up for. Then, he had feared disappointing Dumbledore, and then he had feared losing Harry’s trust.

This emotion was like none of those. It clung like tar. It clawed like a bear. It made Severus heavy with misery, and he didn’t, at last, notice that his mother’s voice had stopped until he opened his eyes.

He was lying in his own bed in the dungeons again, and, when he cast a Tempus Charm, it seemed that no time had gone by at all. He shuddered and wiped his mouth, wondering what had happened.

A dream, he decided at last. It had to be. This was close to the time of year when his mother had died. Yes, it was a dream, and nothing more. He lay back against the pillow and force himself to close his eyes.

Three hours later, he was still awake, listening for the whisper of her voice.

*

“Yes, I have discovered how to destroy the Horcrux.” Dumbledore suspended the locket above his head for a moment and frowned at it. Harry was grateful that at least the man had understandable emotional reactions to something. “It is dangerous, but we can accomplish it relatively easily.”

“How can it be both?” Harry winced a little as the question came out of his mouth. It was the kind he wouldn’t have asked last year.

But last year, you didn’t have Draco to think of, and you didn’t think that much of your friends.

“It is dangerous, because it involves dangerous objects.” Dumbledore put the locket on the desk in front of him and stroked the chain for a moment. Harry hid a shudder. He supposed Dumbledore must have touched Darker magical objects in his lifetime and that was the reason he seemed comfortable touching this one, but Harry would never be comfortable. The diary had been bad enough, and he remembered the sense of oil and blood that he’d got from the locket when Mrs. Malfoy had brought it into the Great Hall. “But it is easy because we do not need to go far for those objects. You killed a basilisk in your second year, Harry, and no one ever did anything with the fangs. One of them, at least, should still remain in the Chamber of Secrets, and it will contain some unused and unaltered poison.”

Harry frowned and rubbed at his ear, thinking of the research he and Draco had been doing. “That’s not necessarily going to work,” he said. “There are also guardian spirits in the Horcruxes that we have to deal with.”

“Oh, yes, I know that,” Dumbledore said calmly. “And that is what has occupied me for the past few days. I already knew that basilisk venom was an antidote to Horcruxes.” He smiled at Harry, but Harry didn’t know why; maybe there was some joke in the sentence that he’d missed. “But I have been researching spells to deal with the guardian spirits. And a modified Switching Charm is the best recourse.”

“A Switching Charm,” Harry repeated.

“Yes, my boy.” Dumbledore leaned forwards, his face grave again in the way that made Harry feel like he had to pay attention, though how serious Dumbledore was any more he never knew. “Tom Riddle, or his spirit, performed a more complicated version of that when he tried to drain Ginny’s life-force into the diary. He switched his presence and hers. At first he was in the diary, full of Dark magic, and Ginny was outside, full of the spirit—or life, call it that—that he needed to survive. As she poured out her emotions into the diary, she poured her life into him, and her presence began fading. Tom began to appear in her place, gaining substance that would, in the end, have permitted him to exist independently. He gave her the Dark magic that was killing her when you found her in the Chamber of Secrets. Of course it’s somewhat hard to picture that, because it was not instantaneous. Ginny ‘faded’ over a long period of time. And instead of taking Tom’s place in the diary as a perfect Switching Charm would have required, she would have died, as humans do without their life. But that is the way to deal with a Horcrux’s guardian spirit. We must pull it outside its object without giving it a hold on our spirits, so that it is powerless, and inject something into the Horcrux in return that will destroy it from the inside out.”

Harry nodded slowly. He thought he actually understood this, which made it different from most of the magical theory he’d learned. “How did you decide that, sir?”

“By thorough investigation of some of the older texts that the library does not possess, but I do. I have yet to determine a way of resisting the spirit when it appears, so my research will continue.” Dumbledore touched his fingertips together as if he thought that his next words needed careful bracing. “I also conducted a careful search of young Miss Weasley’s memories. I recognized some of the sensations she experienced, having almost become a victim of a twisted Switching Charm myself.”

Harry stared at him, then shook his head. “I don’t want anyone else hurt by this,” he said. “Did you ask her for her permission?”

“Of course,” Dumbledore said, and he looked both sad and offended. “I had an untrustworthy mentor when I was learning Occlumency. I had no wish to tear through Miss Weasley’s mind as mine was torn through.”

“Did you ask her for her permission?” Harry leaned forwards. “Or did you give her some speech about how this was good for me and for the war, and that she should do it if she wanted to help you, her House, and her friends?”

Dumbledore flinched this time. His eyes grew both sadder and harder. “You cannot do everything, my boy,” he said. “You must learn to let others make the contributions they wish to make.”

“And I will,” Harry said tersely. “Just as soon as I’m convinced those compromises are the ones they want to make, and that they’re not emotionally blackmailed or guilted into making them.”

Dumbledore opened both hands in a gesture that Harry recognized as one of helplessness. He wasn’t fooled. Dumbledore was only as helpless as other people allowed him to appear, through their own not paying attention to the situation. “I do not know what you want from me, my boy,” he said simply. “I have apologized. I have made mistakes, but I believe those can be forgiven. You have not forgiven me.”

“I haven’t said this before, because we need to work together to win the war and to destroy the Horcruxes.” Harry stood, his eyes fixed on Dumbledore’s face. “But I don’t think I’ll ever really forgive you.”

Dumbledore shook his head. He never looked away from Harry’s eyes, either. In some ways, this would be easier if he was more afraid of me, Harry thought in anger. This way, I never know if he’s actually changed his mind, or if he’s decided the consequences aren’t worth it and gone back to his old way of thinking.

“What makes you great, and what the Dark Lord does not understand, is your ability to love,” Dumbledore whispered. “It is not very loving of you to refuse me your forgiveness, Harry.”

Harry laughed, which startled him as much as it did Dumbledore, but he was better at hiding the shock. “And you didn’t act very loving towards me when you left me with the Dursleys,” he said. “Look, sir, do you really want to drag this into the open again? I’ll speak with Ginny, and if she says that you didn’t force her to give up her memories, then that’s fine. But I don’t want to listen to you lecture me about forgiving someone. You don’t get to do that when you committed so many of the crimes that you want forgiven in the first place.”

“Crimes,” Dumbledore said, in a tone of voice that invited Harry to correct that to “mistakes.”

How do I know these things? Just from watching Snape and Draco, I reckon. Harry didn’t like it, though. Last year, he still wouldn’t have known what Dumbledore wanted him to say, because it would have been hard for him to sort out Dumbledore’s longing for sympathy from his own bad emotions. And even now, he sometimes thought it would be simpler if he could be an ignorant Gryffindor. Snape and Draco could do the watching; their perceptions would be more right than his.

Now, though, they weren’t here, so he said, “I told you I wouldn’t bring this up again,” and changed the subject to one that he knew Dumbledore wouldn’t be expecting. “Why have you worked on ways to destroy the locket before the stone in the ring?”

Dumbledore’s face changed rapidly in several directions, but Harry’s new ability to sense and have insights into people wouldn’t tell him what those changes meant. In the end, he shook his head. “The stone on the ring is harder to destroy,” he said.

“Why?” Harry pressed. “What’s different about it? Is it possible to make a more powerful kind of Horcrux?”

“Those are questions I can’t answer, Harry,” Dumbledore began, in a tone that Harry thought he meant to be soothing.

“Can’t or won’t?”

Dumbledore turned his head away.

Harry turned, too, and left the office with a sigh. He knew that pressing Dumbledore wasn’t a good idea; they needed to work together for everyone’s sake. But he wished Dumbledore could see that there was a time to stop keeping secrets and stop acting stupid, and the time had come.

He rode down the moving staircase to the gargoyle, and then turned in the direction of the hospital wing. Since so many of the students had gone home for Christmas holidays, Dumbledore had said that it was safe for Sirius to come and stay in the infirmary for a few days. Harry was hopeful that some of the exercises Madam Pomfrey had ordered him to do would help his twisted hand.

A shadow whisked behind him. Harry turned around, his hand already on his wand.

A moment later, he relaxed. He recognized the shadow. Professor Snape was walking away from him, down towards the dungeons.

Harry thought about chasing him and asking if he’d come to see the Headmaster, or even telling him what Dumbledore had said about the Horcruxes. (Harry had just realized that Dumbledore had sent him away without telling him how to destroy the locket). But he was tired, and he wanted to see Sirius, and he still didn’t entirely trust Snape. So he headed on to the hospital wing, and the undemanding company of someone who loved him and didn’t always push him to be better than he was.

*

Christmas with his mother and Harry was fun.

That surprised Draco, a little, because Christmas at the Manor was always so formal. His mother would insist that he open his presents as if they were treasures, down to the paper they were wrapped in, and spend a little time discussing and admiring each one, even if he didn’t like it. Then they would probably pause for a conversation that his father wanted to have with his mother on some point of business. And then his mother would open a present. And then one of the house-elves would bring in tea or brightly decorated biscuits. And only then would Narcissa allow Draco to open another gift.

But Harry tore into his gifts with enthusiasm, cuddling the Weasley jumper and laughing at the boring book that Granger gave him (101 Ways to Finish your Homework on Time) and noisily enjoying himself with the box of Chocolate Frogs that were a present from Weasley’s sister. And Narcissa sat back and smiled the entire time. So what if the smile looked like a glint of light on an ice sculpture? Draco was too busy enjoying the ability to be a kid for once.

And he was nervously anticipating the moment when Harry would open his gift, instead of anticipating his own.

Finally Harry reached the large blue-silver box, and rattled it back and forth with a look of curiosity. Draco winced. He agreed with his mother that that was a barbaric habit. What if he’d got Harry something fragile, and it broke? He hadn’t, but it was the principle of the thing.

This time, Harry couldn’t tell what it was from the shaking, so he shrugged and ripped open the paper with a two-handed motion. Draco thought he saw his mother flinch, but if she did, she hid it well, because the next moment her face wore a polite, interested smile again.

And then Harry was lifting Draco’s gift from the blankets he had packed the box with, and turning an astonished, soft gaze on him.

Draco allowed himself to preen under Harry’s gaze, because he knew he had a right to be proud. The watch had been in the Malfoy family for years, but most of Draco’s recent ancestors hadn’t carried it; they found it too awkward. The watch was made of a warm metal that looked like silver but would grow warm to the human touch and stay warm hours later. And it was big, and it did have to be wound up now and then, but Draco had given it to Harry anyway, because it had the Malfoy coat of arms on the band, and the centerpiece could be inscribed with a Pensieve memory transformed into an image.

He’d chosen the memory of the last Quidditch game he and Harry played against each other. He couldn’t think of another picture that showed them both in so good a light and which he was willing to show to the public.

Harry stared at him with an expression that Draco couldn’t read for a moment. And then he leaned forwards, the paper crinkling under his elbows and his eyes so wide that they looked as if they would fall out of his head, and kissed Draco right there, with his mother watching.

Draco swallowed his fear. After all, his mother wasn’t stupid. Draco suspected that she already knew and was keeping silent because Draco hadn’t shown a sign of wanting to talk about it. But he did resist Harry’s attempt to stick his tongue in Draco’s mouth. There were limits to what he was willing to do in front of his mother.

Harry finally sat back, and said, “What I got you isn’t anything that special.”

“Well,” Draco said, and picked up the white-wrapped box he’d been saving until last. He found himself happy, for some reason, that Harry hadn’t gone for green and silver paper, the way he had the last few years. Maybe he was starting to see Draco as more than just Slytherin.

Well, of course he is, or he wouldn’t be dating you.

He tore open the paper and lifted out what looked like a red book, except with fuzz on the covers. He glanced at Harry, who flushed and coughed. “That was the only one left when I owled the shop,” he muttered, sounding apologetic. “I think everyone else had the same idea for holiday gifts that I did.”

Still not knowing what the book was, Draco opened it.

And then he froze, because there were large creamy pages in the book, and on every page were photographs of Harry.

Draco turned silently past the images, all wizarding photographs. Harry studying with his friends. Harry eating in the Great Hall, his mouth open and showing half-chewed chicken as he laughed at Weasley; the pictured Granger who sat behind him slapped the back of his head. Harry swooping down from a Quidditch match, clutching the Snitch triumphantly in his hand.

“Colin took them,” Harry said anxiously. “I didn’t know if you would like them, but I wanted to get you something special.”

Draco shut the book, even though he really wanted to look through it. His mother had taught him well. There were other things to do on a Christmas morning than spend all his time with his gifts.

“It is special,” he whispered. “Thank you.”

Harry smiled at him, and Draco blinked. Yes, he had always found Harry attractive, but when Harry was happy and smiling in a relaxed way, he was—beautiful.

I just hope other people don’t notice. I’m the only one who needs to realize how good he looks.

Harry went into the kitchen not long after that, and Narcissa cleared her throat gently. Draco turned to her, knowing what would come now. Narcissa had certain standards for the boy that her only child would date, and though Draco knew Harry passed them in his own mind, he had to wonder if Harry would pass them in his mother’s.

But Narcissa only said. “Are you settled and happy, Draco?”

Settled. She means sure of my choice. Draco lifted his chin and stared back at his mother, and not just because he was certain. If he showed a sign of doubt, then Narcissa would court other people for him, and Draco didn’t want to be bothered by the nuisance. “I am,” he said. “Harry is everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“What have you wanted?” Narcissa spoke while barely moving her lips, which Draco thought was odd, but, well, it wasn’t his business to wonder about his mother’s standards, any more than Narcissa would be able to question his once she heard them.

“I’ve only wanted Harry that I can remember,” Draco said. “Someone passionate and powerful and clever—”

Narcissa raised her eyebrows.

“He is clever,” Draco said. “Not the way that you would categorize it, no, but he is. And he’s beautiful and a fighter and strong. That’s what I want, Mother. He satisfies me like no one else would.” He hesitated, but his mother’s eyes were still skeptical, so he said the thing that would have to put a stop to whatever she was thinking about breaking him and Harry up. “I love him, Mother.”

Narcissa closed her eyes and nodded in what looked like resignation. Then she opened them again and said, “Do you know, I tire of the dungeons. I think I’d like a room in one of the towers, if there’s some available.”

Draco blinked at her, caught off-guard.

“And I think that you should come with me,” Narcissa continued thoughtfully. “Everyone already knows that you’re not staying in Slytherin this year, and you’re closer to the people who might try to harm you down here. So come with me to the tower. You’ll be company for a woman living out her old age quietly.”

Draco snorted, both at the thought of his mother being old and at the thought of her doing anything quietly. “Going there won’t keep me and Harry apart, you know. We’ll just meet in another part of the school.”

Narcissa shrugged, her shoulders shifting as if she were adjusting a burden. “I suspect I can live with that.”

Draco looked at her closely, then nodded. “All right. Do you think we should wait for Professor Snape before we eat?”

“No.” Narcissa stood and looked at the pile of torn paper for a moment, as if she were going to find some secret in it, before she Vanished it with a flick of her wand. “I invited him to join the celebrations, but he would not. He said that he found Christmas a hard holiday to deal with and would spend the day in his rooms.”

Draco shrugged and nodded. Well, that’s that, then. He felt a small surge of disappointment that Snape didn’t care enough about them to spend the holiday with them, but he didn’t know that much about Snape’s past, and what he knew was dark. If he had some special grief associated with Christmas, then Draco would leave him alone to nurse it.

*

The thing was—

Harry shot a curse at him, and Severus spun past it, dropping to one knee as Harry followed that with another spell. He was both stronger and faster than he’d been, but Severus knew none of it would make any difference, not when he was challenging a Dark Lord far more learned in evil magic than he was, and smarter, and stronger.

The thing was, he couldn’t tell any of them about the fear.

Harry stalked a step forwards, seeking to press his nonexistent advantage. Severus uncoiled to his feet and gave him a string of spells to deal with that snapped and snarled around his defenses.

None of them would believe him. All of them would discount the gnawing fear that woke him in the morning, lay with him at night, and hovered like a blurring mist before his eyes when he stood in the Potions classes during the day.

Harry was just starting to trust him again, just starting to confide in him the way he might have before Severus had ruined things. Severus wouldn’t jeopardize that by talking about fear that came from nowhere and left as suddenly.

Harry burst past the string of spells and rushed him. Severus fell back, not afraid of him.

No, afraid for him. Because now he could see that all Dumbledore’s planning, and all of his, and all of Harry’s, was going to be useless when he faced the Dark Lord at last.

The Dark Lord had made Horcruxes. He had made Harry into a Horcrux. How was that possible to get past? Even if the miraculous happened and all the other Horcruxes were destroyed, Harry would have to die before the destruction could be complete. And Severus knew Draco was not capable of killing him, even out of love, and he would fight fiercely to prevent such a thing from happening. Dumbledore might talk about Harry’s death, but he would take no concrete step towards accomplishing it, not when he still longed to earn the boy’s love and forgiveness.

And then there was Severus himself, who was no more capable of killing Harry than he was of saving him.

A curse got through his defenses and cut into his shoulder. Severus gasped and dropped to his knees again, but this time it wasn’t deliberate. He heard Harry cry out as if from a distance; all normal sounds still swam under the oily covering of fear.

Or are they normal? The fear is the normal thing, the sane way to live when a Dark Lord is risen.

“Professor Snape, are you all right? Oh, Merlin, I wouldn’t have used that if I thought there was a chance it could get through your defenses. I just wanted to see what the counter was because I didn’t remember it very well. Oh, God—”

And finally Severus remembered that Harry had nearly killed Black the same way when the Dark Lord was in possession of his body, and he managed to answer calmly and sanely. There was no reason for Harry to share the same kind of fear whilst he was alive. Let him live out his hopeful life and learn it only in the last moments.

“I will be fine.” He touched his wand to the wound and whispered a simple healing spell, then another to clot the blood. In a moment, he was wiping away dried blood from the closed cut. “There, you see?”

Harry blinked and stepped back. “But—I thought the healing was more complicated than that.”

His eyes were bright with the effort to understand. Severus felt for a moment as if his heart would burst. He had not been able to keep the first pair of eyes like that, the first person dear to him, alive and safe. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep Harry that way, either, which made him want to weep. But he could at least hold himself in check where Harry was concerned, he reminded himself sternly. He had never told Lily the full truth about the evils that the Death Eaters exposed him to in school, either.

“It is not,” Severus said. “But usually, one does not have the chance to cast that charm in the middle of battle, and it is necessary to cast the blood-clotting spell with it. Otherwise, the wound bleeds out too fast, as the curse designed it to do.”

“What’s the blood-clotting charm?” Now Harry’s eyes were even brighter with determination.

And so Severus taught him the simple magic that he would never use, that would never make any difference, because the Dark Lord had other ways to kill than draining him of blood.

Harry smiled with pleasure as he absorbed the spell, and for a long moment, Severus considered telling him about the fear. Harry looked capable of understanding anything in that moment.

But then he shook his head. No, it was better not to. Kinder. How could anyone understand the sourceless terror that was consuming him now?

How many times has anyone ever been able to understand you?

*

Here we are again. Ginny had assured him that Dumbledore hadn’t persuaded her against her will, though, so Harry had decided to work with him to destroy the locket as soon as Dumbledore had managed to research ways of resisting the guardian spirit.

“And we put the Horcrux in the basilisk venom, and that’s it?” Harry eyed the basin of gleaming venom on Dumbledore’s desk skeptically. It sounded too simple, when he’d had to fight off Tom Riddle and the snake and then stab the diary with a fang.

Dumbledore nodded. His attention was on the locket, which lay gleaming beside the basin. Harry decided the guardian spirit couldn’t know what they’d planned, or it would have been out already, trying to persuade them or force them to allow it to live. “This is not the same as your first battle, Harry,” he said. “This is under controlled conditions.” He looked up with a small smile. “And then there is one less Horcrux in the world.”

“And once we get rid of the stone in the ring, then we’ve destroyed three,” said Harry, to see what Dumbledore would say.

It was only a small movement, but Dumbledore glanced away from him. “Yes.”

Harry swallowed a sigh. Whatever Dumbledore’s fascination was with the stone in the ring, Harry didn’t think he could get him to admit it yet. And it wouldn’t do any good to try. They would need each other for the task. Harry would lower the locket into the venom, and Dumbledore would cast the Switching Charm that would force the guardian spirit out of the locket and replace it with a small, burning seed of his own magical power, which would melt the metal and corrode the protective spells Voldemort had left on the locket.

Harry knew well enough that Dumbledore could have done this himself, and that Harry was being allowed to participate as a courtesy. That was another reason he didn’t want to pressure Dumbledore right now.

He took a deep breath and picked up the locket. Dumbledore lifted his wand and nodded encouragingly to him. Harry used that to make himself hold onto the locket. His scar had begun to burn when he touched it.

“One,” Dumbledore whispered. “Two. Three.”

Harry dropped the locket into the venom. Immediately, it began to bubble and boil like a cauldron, and Dumbledore spoke the simple two-word incantation of the Switching Charm at the same moment.

Something bright red, like a coal, leaped off the desk beside the basin, where nothing had been before, and Harry thought he saw it digging towards the locket. Then a brilliant flash made him start back from the venom with a hand over his face. His scar burned wildly at the same moment, and he heard an outraged shriek.

The shriek went on rising instead of ending, growing louder and louder. Harry could hear Dumbledore chanting something, but he couldn’t look, because the pain in his head made him want to faint and the light was blinding him. He braced himself with one hand on the edge of the desk until he thought about the basilisk venom splashing on his hand and snatched it hastily back. Then he forced his eyes open against the light.

Something dark and deformed, but small, struggled an inch from Dumbledore, above the basin, its face glowing with green magic. It shrieked without pausing. Harry supposed it didn’t have to breathe. He thought it looked like Voldemort the way he’d seen him in some dreams before he was resurrected, like a baby with stumps for legs and a face that was full of evil.

And then the basilisk venom bubbled with what Harry thought was a triumphant sound, and the deformed thing vanished. Dumbledore sagged forwards, then sighed and stepped back so he wouldn’t upset the basin. Harry’s scar stopped burning in the same instant.

“Is that—is that it?” Harry asked, when he could speak. His voice was scratchy. Maybe he’d screamed, too, but he wouldn’t have been able to hear it with the guardian spirit shrieking.

“Yes, it is.” Dumbledore sounded breathless. He shook his head and stared hard at the basin for a moment, then sighed. “Next time, I will be better-prepared. The spirit vanished when the locket melted, but I had not realized that the Switching Charm would propel it into the world with such power.” Dumbledore stroked his beard. “It appears that the Horcrux can act as a conduit for power longer than I had thought.”

Harry dropped into a chair without answering and closed his eyes. Snape had said that he would be too busy to participate in the destruction of the Horcrux, and Draco had flown into a rage and said that Harry shouldn’t be present at the destruction at all, so Harry just hadn’t told him what evening they’d planned on.

He wished one of them was here now, though. He was more comfortable showing weakness in front of them than in front of Dumbledore.

*

Something is wrong with him.

Draco narrowed his eyes in thought. He was sitting in the back of the Potions classroom, but that meant he still had a good view of Professor Snape. The NEWT Potions class was small, and the professor was never still, pacing back and forth as though some stinging fly hurt him when he stopped. But he didn’t snap any more than usual, the way he would have if he was really irritable.

That was one of the signs that something was wrong with Snape. The others were his pale face, and the way he hadn’t objected when Narcissa had taken rooms with Draco in Ravenclaw Tower, even though for a moment he’d looked pained.

And now he approached Smith, shook his head, snapped something Draco didn’t hear because he didn’t need to pay attention to it, and then picked up an ingredient lying on the table and tossed it into the cauldron.

The potion exploded.

Draco ducked and flinched, feeling gobbets of half-solid liquid spatter his arms. It was an instinctive reaction, which he was glad of, because he would have been too shocked to move if he’d have to leave it up to conscious thought. Professor Snape had botched a potion.

Yes, something was wrong. But Draco wasn’t so foolish as to think he could make Snape talk to him about it just by asking. Even subtly asking would be a problem, because the professor was subtle himself and would probably see through it. So he would have to approach the problem from the other way around.

But no good solutions occurred to him after he left the NEWT Potions class, even when he leaned on the sill of a window on the fifth floor and gazed out into the March sunlight, keeping his breathing as calm as possible. That was a good way to suggest ways to correct the flying anklets and ideas for new projects, but manipulating someone was a different kind of idea. Draco gave up at last and went to his and his mother’s rooms.

Maybe I should think about a different problem altogether, he decided, as he closed the door behind him. Ask Father’s book about information we could use to fight the war, but not about what it means when a Potions Master botches a potion, since I wouldn’t even know how to phrase the question at this point.

He smiled when he noticed that his mother was sitting at a table in the middle of the sitting room, sipping tea from a porcelain cup and reaching for a package on the table. “Who’s that from?” he asked.

“My sister Andromeda.” Someone would have had to know his mother well to hear the tinge of excitement in her voice. Draco knew that she had stopped owling his aunt Andromeda or Flooing her when she married a Muggle, but she needed the support of her family now that she had left Lucius. If her sister had reached out to her first, that was important.

Draco glanced idly at the box. It was wrapped in the same kind of blue-silver paper that Harry had used on his Christmas gift. Maybe it was from him. He felt a deep contentment when he considered his boyfriend and his mother exchanging presents, which they hadn’t done at this Christmas.

And then he stiffened, because there was a taint of Dark magic to the box that he didn’t think he would have recognized if not for his dueling lessons with Professor Snape.

“Mother, no!” he said sharply, just as she reached out and brushed a finger against the side of the box.

It shifted and clicked, and then Draco grabbed Narcissa and carried her to the floor behind the table. He drew his wand as they fell and conjured a Shield Charm. His mother was working with him, he realized a moment later, and chanting her part of the Shield Charm in a steady voice, unafraid.

The explosion that followed tested both their magical skill. Draco could see the table blown to splinters before he had to hide his eyes from the oncoming wave of light and force. Magic shrieked around them and battered them until Draco’s arms and shoulders were sore. But he kept chanting, feeding new power into the shields, and Narcissa matched him word for word, all the time alert and unafraid.

Finally, it was over, and Draco sat up and stared at the wide cracks in the walls. He could hear shrieks outside the door, and knocking, and calling, but he couldn’t respond to them at the moment. He stared at his mother instead, waiting for her opinion.

“That was from Lucius,” Narcissa said at last, after some consideration. She sat up and ran a hand through her blonde hair, studying the shattered table. “We shall have to have house-elves in here to clear out the damage. Such a nuisance.” She spoke as lightly as though they had been compelled to have an unwelcome visitor to afternoon tea.

Draco swallowed and nodded. Then he stepped towards the remains of the package and contained them within a variant of the Shield Charm, a protective bubble that would preserve as much of the magical energy as possible for further investigation.

He did pause when he was near it, because there was a tingle of a different familiar Dark energy around it now, and because another thought had struck him. He was sure that his mother had put up precautions against any package from Lucius coming into their rooms; wards would have sounded if he had so much as touched the paper.

Which meant that someone else in the school was working with or for Lucius.

Draco grimaced and concentrated for a moment, trying to identify the familiarity of that second Dark magic, but it was useless. In the end, he shook his head, cast the protective bubble, and then summoned a house-elf to send word to Dumbledore.

*

The fear was overwhelming.

It had got worse in the last few months; Severus knew that. But it had never attacked him like this, in public. He was sitting at the staff table for dinner, and the fear was rushing over him like great waves of dirty water.

He wanted to close his eyes and gasp, in hopes of forcing it away. He wanted to draw his wand and fight it. He wanted to turn to Minerva and demand that she Stupefy him, because that seemed like the only thing at the moment that might stop this.

But he knew better than that. The fear would be waiting when he woke up.

It was overwhelming. It was punishing. And between one bite and the next of meat, Severus found that he simply couldn’t endure it anymore. He had to do something to end it, anything.

And suddenly he knew, the way he once would have known the next step in a potion. He rose to his feet, made some mumbled excuse to Dumbledore and Minerva, and hurried out of the Great Hall.

There was someone waiting not far away, someone who could offer him the solution to ending the fear. He believed that as strongly as he had believed a moment before that nothing could really end it.

His mind tried to point out that his behavior was irrational. Severus ignored that. Living with fear for five months would make anyone irrational. He sped up, until he was almost running through the open doors of the school and towards the gates.

Someone waiting there, or just beyond it. Someone who could give him what he needed. Someone who could explain the mysterious attack on Narcissa and Draco they hadn’t been able to trace yet, someone who could soothe away the fears he had about Harry, someone who could make him able to defeat the Dark Lord.

Someone who could give him peace.

*

Draco sighed and sat back in his chair, trying to control his yawns. His mother had wanted him to eat dinner in their rooms with her tonight, and Draco had eaten so well that now he had to stave off sleep. He snorted half-heartedly, but couldn’t bring himself to regret it, and tried to think of what to ask his father’s book about.

Some way to solve the mystery of who had sent his mother that package would be good, but Draco had tried any combination of words, and so had Narcissa, and nothing had resulted. There’d been no attack since. Everything had settled down into an ominous silence, as ominous as the fact that the Dark Lord hadn’t made a move to attack Harry in almost a year now, and his attacks on other people had stopped. Draco couldn’t understand it. Harry was improving in Occlumency, but he wasn’t good enough, probably, to keep the Dark Lord out. Why did he stay out?

Harry had asked Dumbledore, and then shrugged the next time Draco saw him after that. Dumbledore believed that the Dark Lord, having handed the task of killing Harry over to Bellatrix Lestrange, didn’t want to “lower” himself by doing anything to help the task. Draco had pointed out that didn’t explain the rest of his silence, and Harry had agreed.

But neither of them could do anything about it—which seemed to explain a lot of the war lately, Draco thought. Life had become an endless round of kissing and training and homework. The first part was certainly pleasant, but Draco wanted it to go somewhere, and so far it didn’t seem as if it would. Maybe nothing would happen until Harry met and battled Bellatrix Lestrange, and then the Dark Lord would have to come after him himself.

The Lestranges. That’s something I can ask the book about.

Draco did, keeping the question as general as possible, so that the book could offer him any real information it had. Words swirled out of the depths of the paper and assembled on the page. Draco began reading idly, knowing he would need a second session when he was fully awake to understand what the book had said.

The Lestranges are more widespread than has been considered, and more numerous. Of course, as some members of every generation in the past century have been criminals, many pure-blood families have thought it wise to hide their connection with them. Among the families that the Lestranges have married into are the Blacks, the Malfoys, the Rosiers, the Wellinghams…

Draco’s eye nearly skipped past the last part. And then he started awake and read it again and again.

The Wellinghams.

Draco concentrated fiercely. He had only heard the name once, in a discussion in the Slytherin common room about other students’ genealogy, but he was sure he remembered it, anyway. He had been trained to memorize facts about heredity and complicated family trees quite young, after all.

Wellingham was the maiden name of Seamus Finnigan’s mother.

Not sure what exactly it meant, but knowing it was important, Draco stood and ran from the rooms, intent on finding Harry.

*

Harry followed Snape for many reasons when he left the Great Hall.

He followed him because something was clearly not right. Snape had been growing more and more distant lately, more jumpy. Harry had thought that something was happening with his potions, and then with his teaching, and then with his conversations with Dumbledore. But no matter what he suggested, Snape denied it all. And that left subjects that Harry wasn’t comfortable broaching, such as Snape’s relationship with his mother.

He followed him because other people stared after him, but no one did anything. If Harry was good at anything besides Quidditch, Defense, and bringing Draco off, it was saving people no one else would save.

He followed him because he had started to feel again, lately, as if he could trust Snape, and he wanted to tell him so. Maybe hearing that would turn Snape around and away from whatever was hurting him lately.

Harry was surprised when he saw Snape running through the Hogwarts gates and towards the Forbidden Forest, but he shrugged and followed anyway, faster, under the guise of a Disillusionment Charm. He missed his Invisibility Cloak for a moment, but he’d had to get along without it for four years now; this was just another thing he’d have to do without it.

Faster they went, over dark hollows and past dark trees and away from the sun. Harry was panting by the time Snape stopped, and fought to conceal the sound from Snape’s ears.

Snape came to a stop in front of a tree at first, and stared about as if he didn’t know what to do. Then a figure moved in the shadows of the tree, and threw back the hood of a cloak that had covered its head. A white mask dangled from the figure’s hand, a Death Eater’s mask.

Harry knew who she was at once; he’d heard her described often enough. Black eyes, long black hair, a sulky face lit by the brilliance of craziness. And then she looked straight at him, seeing past the Disillusionment Charm, and laughed.

“Little baby Potter,” she said. “How delightful of you to join us.” She nodded at Snape. “I believe that the only way to make the fear go away is to kill him now, Severus, because my Lord would only finish the job in a crueler fashion,” she said.

And then Snape wheeled around, and Harry saw that all the light and life was gone from his eyes, drowned under expanded, enormous pupils, and suddenly Harry was facing both Snape’s and Bellatrix’s wands.

He drew his wand, because there was nothing else he could do, although his heart made his throat hurt, and went to battle.

Chapter 25.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

slashpuppy.livejournal.com

I haz the throne!

:-)

From:

slashpuppy.livejournal.com

Ooooh, I did wonder when I read the last chapter if anybody else had been caught up in Bellatrix's fearful plotting. And it turns out to be Snape! That is sooooo not fair. And after he'd begun to make progress with Harry! Come on Harry, take Bellatrix down hard and Snape down gently! I'm hoping that Draco fetches up and helps Harry deal with Bellatrix!

I'm still of the opinion that there's also something wrong with Dumbledore... aside from his twisty, never gives a straight answer ways! Is he being subverted somehow by Voldemort?

And how *evol* of you leaving it there! I soooo want to know what happens next! Can't wait to read the next chapter! :-)

From:

Chapter Twenty-Four of 'Inter Vivos'- Secrets

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags