Title: The Predicament of Free Will
Author: sundroptea
Rating: R
Warnings: language, some violence, light sexual situations
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine. At all. Even a smidge. JKR would never trust her characters to me, and quite frankly after this I'm convinced that she'd be justified in banning me from even reading her books.
Author's Notes: This was written for the Hot Summer Nights fic exchange in the dmhgficexchange live journal community, in 2006. The prompt I received is posted at the end of the story, in order not to spoil anything. I tweaked it a bit before posting it here, but nothing major. Absolutely not Deathly Hallows compliant. Please enjoy!
Summary: A cup, a spy, a boy, a girl, and the choices that result from the interactions of some or more of these.
"Man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be."
Ayn Rand
One
To begin:
An interlude of some importance in a place of some decay:
"You're being unreasonable!"
"You're being naïve!"
Hermione watched the faces of her closest friends contort in rage as they stared at one another across the Room Table. They refused to call it the war room, wanting to keep some semblance of a homey atmosphere, instead preferring just 'the Room.' Try as they might, they could not get rid of the capitalization on the 'R.' She could see Kingsley had his fists clenched, too, and Merlin knew Moody was a Whizzbee ready to fizz even on a good day. Fantastic, she thought to herself. Because this degenerating into a first former brawl is really going to help us defeat a power-hungry madman intent on the domination of the world as we know it.
"Harry, I don't see what about this you aren't getting," Tonks' voice was genuinely confused. "They have the Hufflepuff Cup. We need the Hufflepuff Cup! What do you suggest-?"
"What I suggest is that you stop acting so bloody calm about this! You're talking about the man who killed Dumbledore! Since when do we negotiate with Death Eaters?" Harry's green eyes swept the Table, but when he looked at Hermione, she found something in her notes with which to occupy her attention.
"Since it became obvious that this is a different war than the last time, son!" Remus tried to keep the anger out of his voice, but there lurked a bit of wolf in his timbre when he said the word 'son.' "There aren't just two sides here, Harry. It's not just Death Eater and everyone else!"
"There can be as many sides as you please, Lupin, but there's only one bloody right one! And the way to stay on it is to not join the others!" Hestia Jones slammed her fist down in front of her so hard her whole body quivered, right down to the tips of her short black hair.
"Now, hold on there, Jones. Sometimes winning a war requires a dirtying of the hands. Or do you expect us to fight Voldemort with puppies and rainbows?" Moody's voice was calm, although his good eye was twitching and his magic one spinning madly. Albeit with him, it could have been caused by anything from anger to indigestion.
"We're getting off topic now!" Hermione interjected. "The first thing we need to do is verify that he's telling the truth. If this really is from Snape, and he does indeed have the Hufflepuff Cup, how did he get it? Where did he get it?" She was interrupted by Kingsley.
"We've been searching for that damned piece of crockery for months now and before this we hadn't even a drunken whisper of its whereabouts! How did that one blighter get a hold of it when all of us couldn't?" He looked skeptical.
Moody's good eye stopped twitching long enough for him to raise his eyebrow. "Maybe the cup was buried in some mud somewhere, eh, Jones?"
"Just you wait one minute, Alastor Moody! That isn't what I meant at all, and you bloody well know it!"
"This is getting us nowhere!" interjected McGonagall. She waved her hands for silence, and then turned to Hermione again. "You were having a thought, my dear."
Hermione nodded, but was quiet for a moment, her gaze distant. "Let's work on the assumption that it is the cup we're looking for-" Harry's mouth opened and then closed again promptly after Lupin laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. She looked at him anyway, and answered his unspoken question. "Snape is too smart to try and bait us with a fake cup, Harry. He knows that we would check up on his claim, and he knows that to lie is to snap the final thread of diplomacy we would show him, and he wouldn't come out of hiding to put himself into danger. We know that Voldemort's not keen on him either, right now, though for what particular reason I couldn't tell you. He's a Slytherin, Harry. It's an issue of hedging his bets."
"How do we know that his being out of favor isn't some big Dark ruse?" Neville's voice was worried.
"Scrimigeour's private records show that when Dolohov was… questioned, he was unequivocal on this point-"
"Which in and of itself screams 'suspicious!'" Ron said.
"It's because of Malfoy." The voice of Phineas' portrait cut through the room, and resulted in a bleeding out of wild chatter.
"What's because of Malfoy?" asked Harry, pushing his glasses up his nose.
"Why, Snape's sudden turn for the unpopular, of course. Do catch up, boy! There are times when I'm quiet thankful I died, and this is one of them. If I had been alive, and forced to try to teach you a subject that didn't involve the balance of life and death, I would probably have wound up killing myself anyway." It really was more insulting when a portrait rolled their eyes at you than could be accurately described.
"What are you saying, Professor Black?" Hermione asked. "That Malfoy did something to make Snape an outcast?"
"Not precisely, my dear girl," his tone was slightly less patronizing when addressing Hermione. In the time she had spent living at Number 12, she had managed to foster a rapport with the crotchety painting. He may have been a Pureblooded Slytherin elitist, but he was a smug peacock first and an opportunist to boot. She knew when to catch the pompous fly with the honey of praise. "Snape wouldn't produce young Malfoy when he was told to do so. Bellatrix has been over to interrogate her sister nearly every day since the raid on Hogwarts. The Sinister Monks can't get a moment to sacrifice a starving pigeon let alone a fatted calf."
"The Sinister Monks?" asked Ron, not bothering to hide his dislike for the portrait's snide tone.
"You'll remember them from your days at Hogwarts, of course? Pardon; I seem to have forgotten for a moment to whom I am speaking. Should you have paid any attention, you would have remembered them from your days at Hogwarts. They were hung in the North Tower- oh, well, actually, they were hung in Didcot in 1655, but before that, one of their, erm, noble number painted a series of portraits of their more elaborate ceremonies. Only two of them have stood the test of time, however. The one he donated to Hogwarts, where he had been educated, and the one passed down from generation to generation, in the family manor in Wiltshire. To his credit, Ambrosias Floridan Malfoy certainly knew how to pay proper respects to one's alma mater."
He paused for a moment, as if in contemplation. "Of course, this was rather offset by the fact that he did almost burn it down in 1654, in his order's zeal to take over the school…"
"That was him? Malfoy is related to the League of the Withered Asp? I read all about that in-"
"We know, Hermione," Harry and Ron intoned, simultaneously, breaking into her excited tangent.
"Oh, yes, of course. Sorry. Please, do go on Professor Black." Hermione was contrite, but there was an airy quality to her voice that suggested that she would be interrogating the portrait further, at a more convenient time.
"The Dark Lord has cast Snape out as a traitor. Insubordination is not taken lightly by the former Mr. Riddle. There is a bounty on his head, and young Malfoy's."
Everyone at the table sat back, digesting this.
"That makes sense," Ron admitted slowly, turning to Harry and nodding. "Now what do we do with it?" Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his temples. The Room was quiet, except for the furious scratching of Hermione's quill as she made notes on the conversation that had just taken place.
"Let's recap," grunted Moody. "We get a scroll signed with the mark of Severus Snape, asking us if we were interested in acquiring the Hufflepuff Cup he has in his possession. The note claims that he'd be willing to make a trade, although for what, it didn't say. We find out that he's wanted on both sides, and liked by neither. What do you reckon he wants?"
Harry drummed his fingers on the table. "Is he stupid enough to think that a cup is going to grant him clemency for killing Professor Dumbledore?"
Tonks shook her head. "It's hardly just a Cup, Harry, and you know that as well as I do. But it seems a bit too obliging for Snape… Not quite his style."
"Can we really say that though? He's always had a robe to cling to before; now he's on his own," said Kingsley. Minerva sniffed and looked grim.
"Listen here, sonny. I worked alongside that man for nearly twenty five years, and never once in all of that time have I seen him be the one to bend first. He isn't stupid enough to think that anyone is going to forget his part in Albus' death. This is a desperate act, by a desperate man, but to what end?" She folded her hands in her lap, pretending not to notice them shaking.
Hermione suddenly sat up very straight in her chair. "What if it's not Snape who's desperate?"
Lupin, having caught her train of thought, slapped his palm on the table. "What about Draco? He's the catalyst for all this. How do you suppose Snape feels towards him, being the reason his Lord's put a bounty on him?"
"I should imagine not warm and fuzzy!" said Tonks, whose hair had sprung out in purple ringlets with her excitement.
"It would be like that coward Snape to bully someone weaker than him," growled Moody, wrinkling the remains of his nose in disgust.
Hermione shook her head. "I think we may be approaching it the wrong way. After all, he choose not to give up Malfoy's whereabouts when he had the chance. Why would he do that, if his intent was to stay in league with Voldemort?"
"Maybe he couldn't! Maybe he didn't know where Malfoy was," Neville said, frowning.
"Then why wouldn't he try to find him? The Dark Lord takes a sick sort of thrill in the hunt," Harry looked thoughtful, making his best effort to put aside his dislike for Snape in favor of logic. "I'm pretty sure that Voldemort would get a kick out of Snape running Malfoy down."
"Unless that's not the only reason why He Who Must Not Be Named is angry at him."
"What else could there be? He bagged Dum- er- What I mean to say is, he removed one of the Dark Lord's biggest threats. Isn't that enough to earn a gold star in Death Eating?" Tact was apparently not lost on Fred Weasley completely.
"Was he supposed to?" asked Tonks.
"Supposed to what?"
"Kill him? Did Voldemort want him alive for something?"
"No. Voldemort wanted him dead, I can promise you that," said Harry, rubbing his scar. "But why wouldn't he want Snape to be the one to do it?"
"Maybe because he lost his biggest spy?"
"Or perhaps because he wanted to do it himself?"
"They said something on the Tower, the other Death Eaters, about Malfoy being the one to do it. They even stopped Fenrir Greybeck from attacking. What if Voldemort was mad that Snape didn't make Malfoy do it himself?" Harry spread his hands in confusion.
"I don't like it," said Molly. "There are too many unknowns here!"
"Mum's right," Ron nodded, and rested his chin in his hands. He wore the same sharp look of concentration that he did in chess just before sending Harry into paroxysms of maligned defeat. "We're not even certain that the note's from Snape."
"If not Snape, then who?" snapped Hestia. "You-Know-Who doesn't know we know about the Horcruxes."
"She's right, Ron," murmured Harry. "Unless he told Voldemort before being cast out."
"If Voldemort knew that we knew about the Horcruxes then he would have struck long before now. That's his ace in the hole, so to speak. And I have the feeling that he keeps them a secret even his most loyal ring of followers. After all, the loyalty of a Death Eater is not something upon which to plan your future. To speak of it to him would be suicide, if this is indeed the case," Minerva's voice was firm.
"If, if, if! Isn't there anything we know for sure?" burst out Tonks. "I mean, besides the fact that we don't know anything at all?" She hopped up from her chair and began to pace tugging at ears that were suddenly a foot long in the lobes.
"Let's not stir up our cauldrons before we light the flame," Kingsley said, as Lupin grabbed Tonks and sat her back down. Slightly mollified by her quick outburst her ears returned to their normal size and shape. "We know that we have an offer, and as far as I can see, our only option is to treat it as legitimate. What if it is the Cup, and we ignore it? Can we really take that chance?"
There was silence in the room. Everyone knew he was right, and there was nothing for it now but to plan as best they could.
"Who's going to meet him?" Ron asked. Hermione took out a fresh scroll and started making a timeline.
"Why, I will, Ronald. I'm the one who's been studying the Hufflepuff Cup."
"Out of the question, Hermione! This is my fight! I'm going!" Harry grabbed her spare quill and scratched her name out on her scroll, mostly just to annoy her. She slapped his hand. "Besides, I've seen the Hufflepuff Cup. I'll know what it looks like."
"Bully for you Harry. You're still not going. I am. You're far too confrontational. Also, if this is a trap, it's probably more for you than me. Better to keep you in the shadows."
"That's supposed to make me feel better? 'Don't worry Harry! They'd probably only want me for bait!'" He raked a hand through his hair and stared at her, his green eyes narrow and his mouth set firmly, even through the falsetto.
"No, actually," said Hermione, wringing her hands, though her tone of voice was as sensible and pragmatic as the Order had ever heard it. "They would probably want me dead for, you know, general demoralizing purposes. But it would be better me than-"
"Hermione!"
She flushed. "Well, it would! Besides, I'd feel safer having you on guard. You're much better at combat magic than I am." She didn't know if that would work, because, flying aside, there were few things that she didn't overachieve at, and everyone knew it.
"The note was specific as to the times and places, which makes me uncomfortable. We should write back and change the rendezvous. Our territory or nothing," Kingsley was all tactics and strategy, and that helped to divert Harry's attention from Hermione, who was busy re-writing her name on the timetable. She knew Ron was looking at her though, and that made her take time to flourish the 'H' and underline it.
They weren't going to change her mind. She felt something pulling her towards this mission, a precognitive tingle that told her that this would be important for her, individually, as well as for her side. She set aside her speculative musing, as she had a plan of attack to help devise and focusing on the ball of ice in her stomach was not going to prove productive for anyone.
Draco Malfoy waited for Severus' return with a bitterness that failed to surprise him. In the long months since the day of the tower, he had grown used to the companionship of bitterness and despondency.
"Please make at least a passing attempt at logical reasoning today, Draco, and do not try to leave. You know very well the situation outside, and what happened last time I was forced to… retrieve you."
Severus' parting words echoed through his head, bouncing around, and scraping the edges like so many finely sharpened verbal razors.
Of course he hadn't listened. Once he was sure Severus was gone, he rushed to the mouth of the cave and was promptly flung backwards as the wards kicked into effect. He had hit his head rather hard on one of the walls, he thought, from the amount of blood under his fingers, but as there were no mirrors in this paradise of captivity, he couldn't really be sure.
The woozy feeling helped him make a guess though.
Damn him! Draco pulled himself up from where he lay, just incapacitated enough to be prevented from making another go at escaping. That bastard has no right to keep me locked up like this!
No, that was the ministry's job, now.
Draco slumped back, thinking over the series of events that had led to his latest head wound, and his abysmal surroundings in general. If only…
But no. He was not one to dwell on what ifs. He did what he'd had to do, and he couldn't see any point at where he might have known to act differently. His parents were all he had, their name, their honor, their lives…
That was all he had believed in for his entire life, and now that it was gone, he didn't really care much about what happened either way. He only thought that he'd rather be locked up by the ministry than bartered with by Severus. He didn't expect to live much longer in any case, but he'd be damned if he allowed himself to be used as a galleon in some deal to buy Severus' freedom.
He thought he heard movement in the front of the cave and he couldn't squelch the twinge of relief he felt; at least Severus wouldn't let him bleed to death, not if it meant losing his bartering chip.
He wondered morbidly what Voldemort would do to him, exactly, and in what order. Long and messy, as an example of the foolishness of failing, or quick and humiliating in its insignificance to anyone?
It was all moot anyway. His father was dead; his mother, God, his mother... Everything and everyone he had sacrificed his future for was now just so much dust in the memory of the world.
He had gotten away from Severus once and only once, although it hadn't been for lack of trying since.
Draco had found his opportunity during the weekly bath.
He had been granted relative freedom from Severus during that time, both because he had not yet before made an attempt to part company and because Severus had been convinced that simply taking the wandless boy's clothes was insurance enough of his return.
He missed that time. It was a simpler, less naked-in-front-of-older-blokes sort of time.
It was not the most pleasant experience he'd ever had, running naked through the forest brush, holding his bits with one hand, knowing an injury there would be crippling, and trying to remember the way to the small wizarding village that Severus used to keep tabs on Voldemort's spread in Wizard Britain. He'd done it, though, and he'd done it quickly, knowing he'd had a bare few minutes (with no pun intended) before Severus noticed his departure. Severus had magic, and at the moment of flight, Draco did not, and was acutely aware of that. It only got worse before it got better, as his stinging altercation with a Venomous Tentacula proved. But he'd gone, bleeding, bruised, poisoned and he made it to the village in time to snatch a wand, staunch the bleeding, and apparate to the outskirts of Malfoy Manor. He'd felt the tingle that meant his presence had been detected at the house, but he didn't know if his mother was currently entertaining any of her less illustrious guests. He also felt the tracking wards Severus had placed pulling at his skin, and he had known that his free time was coming to an end, one way or the other.
He'd come too far to quit now, he reckoned, and hitched up the rough robes he'd transfigured from some fallen leaves, darting straight for the Manor's front doors.
He recognized the luck he'd had that the doors still opened automatically for him as he raced up the stairs to his mother's chambers, where he'd felt sure she would be, seeing as how he hadn't been killed or shackled immediately upon entrance. No guests then, although he was convinced that they would be coming soon.
"Mother!" he'd burst out, jamming the door open with his shoulder, and trying to shake off the deja-vu he'd felt, having done something similar many times in his boyhood with far less grim and dire tidings.
She was seated at her vanity, her back to him, but her blue-grey eyes meeting his own in the glass. A Slytherin would never not be able to see the door.
She had smiled, beginning to turn his way, and for one perfect, delightful moment he'd thought, 'This is it! I'm here. I'll take her and we can run and then somewhere I'll find a way to build the Malfoy name again, all I have to do now is…'
And then he saw the scars. The sides of her face and head were crisscrossed with raised and jagged bumps, and he recognized them from newspaper photos he'd seen from when the Longbottoms were covered by The Prophet as the Most Valiant of the Unsung. No names had been mentioned, and the features were blurred, but he'd known, of course, with the same certainty that he knew now, the meticulous work of his Aunt Bella.
"Draco dear!" his mother started, holding her arms wide. He had gone to her, hoping it wasn't as bad as it looked, knowing it was his fault, his doing. He'd taken hold of her chin, gently, and studied her wounds, the most vivid and violent of which looked as fresh as if it had been done that day. He'd known if he counted them there would most likely be one for each and every day he had been hidden away.
One for each day since the Tower.
His mother then slapped him sweetly across the face, leaving a stinging welt and then snuggled into his chest, wrapping her arms around him tightly, still smiling her familiar smile, the one she reserved for him alone. It had broke him then, into little pieces, the absolute faultlessness of her smile, when the rest of her was so irreparably damaged as to make her an animated corpse.
"It's time for tea!" she had exclaimed letting him go, and seemingly not noticing him backing slowly away. "It's not nice to keep guests waiting, even if they do mean to kill you, sweetheart, did I say kill, I meant kiss, come give mummy a kiss she missed you oh you dead little man why are you dressed like a caveman those clothes make my head hurt, but that's common enough now, I think I hear your Aunty calling, but you should run because she means to spank you for your transgressions and what now are you crying, darling, Malfoys don't cry they blink and count their titles in their heads, oh my head, I'm bleeding! BLEEDING!" She began thrashing from side to side, not bleeding in the slightest.
Her hands flew up and waved around her head, as if wanting to clutch it but knowing that it would only make it worse. Some of the scabs opened again, and now she really was bleeding, and oozing something that looked viscous and raw. But she had begun laughing even as she wailed keenly at the pain that had made her fall from her seat.
Draco just watched her, feeling his will to continue draining slowly away, each beat of his pulse a painful struggle, pumping out any hope he'd had, in much the same manner as his mother's wounds. He sat on a bench and waited for his Aunt Bella, and he hoped he had time to get at least one hex in, to make her bleed for her sister, just a little.
It was Severus however who was through the door first, and Draco just stared numbly up at him.
"Why did you run away from me, idiot boy?! And to here? Of all places here? Are you trying to get yourself killed? Get up! Get up, you useless…" Severus' stopped midway through hoisting him to his feet when the tableaux he was seeing caught up with his intellect. "Oh Draco. I did not mean for you to find out this way. I am sorry, but we must go now. It's what she would have wanted."
A spark of anger had flickered then, across Draco's deadened face. "How would you know? You're nothing but a power hungry leech, who'd steal a person's chance to save their family in the hope of currying favor with the madman who threatened them in the first place!"
Snape had looked at him, with unreadable emotion in his eyes, before shaking it off, and drawing to his full height. "You may rail against my character and my lineage all you wish, but please do so later when we are out of immediate danger. I crashed the apparition spells, but your aunt knows how to rebuild them, and how to do it quickly. Now, Draco, we must flee-"
Further instruction was prevented by Narcissa. She had stopped screaming and stood up, smeared from head to toe in blood and pus. She calmly re-sat herself at the vanity, and began applying lipstick to her eyes and cheeks.
"Oh, Severus, darling! How lovely to see you! It's a shame you didn't do as I asked," she had trilled, discarding the lipstick and dumping some foundation potion into her hair, rubbing it in with both hands and not noticing that she was kneading it into her sores, seemingly unaware of the pain. "Perhaps next time you make a promise to someone you'll let them know first where you stand in the grander scheme of things. I prefer in the north orchards, by the trees with the flowering fruit."
Severus had started slightly, at being addressed so. Draco watched his face, wondering what his mother's body could have said to make a hardened spy visibly react. Snape's efforts at hauling Draco out of the room had tripled, and he found himself being dragged through the door and down the hall. His pilfered wand snapped and useless, he had just resigned himself to going with Severus, when his mother's form popped out of her room and followed them.
"Don't you fall away when I'm talking to you about serious things, young man! I am discussing blood betrayal, a Vow and a bond and you have none now, none now, none how, how I remember days when we used to play, the GARDENS need TENDING! Now that your father is dead, there is no one to remember such things!" She ripped a frame off the wall, and the portrait of The Holy Monks his never endingly-great Uncle Ambrosias had painted went flying over the third floor balcony.
"What betrayal, Mum? What are you talking about? Father's dead?" Draco's fists and feet were suddenly flying, breaking the grip Severus had on him. Severus tried to magically bind him, but Draco elbowed him in the throat. "What're you talking about, Mum? What betrayal?"
Narcissa was now turning circles, but she stopped and looked at her son. "He was supposed to help you kill Dumbledore. He was supposed to save you. He promised me, and then he killed you. And now you walk through these halls a ghost, and your father killed because of it! That and the babies!"
She did a jaunty two step and then, for one brief second, she gasped and seemed to come to herself. She stumbled to her knees and locked sane eyes with Draco's horrified ones.
"She's here. Go!"
Then she collapsed completely. As did all of Draco's hopes for the future.
At first, he'd been completely drained. The news of his father's demise had struck him, cut him deeply, but not so much as the fate of his mother. It was fairly assumed that Lucius wouldn't make it out of Azkaban alive, so much so that they'd already had a reading of the will, even before the night of the Tower.
They'd escaped from the Manor, scant seconds before his aunt had come charging down the hall. Snape had already wrapped his fingers around a Portkey and they were back in the cave, with the howls of his unbalanced aunt ringing in their ears.
Severus moved him about the cave like a rag doll, forcing him to eat and to sleep, even though there was no real point in it for him anymore. He'd tolerated Snape's administrations because he had felt divorced from life, completely devoid of any future aspirations or the will to live. He actually didn't remember much from that week of restless sleep and cognitive disassociation. One memory of staring at a cave wall blends into every other memory of staring at a cave wall, over time.
He remembers Snape being angry though, which he now thought rather bloody callous in a frightening sort of way. He'd railed at him for hours about the stupidity of what he'd done, hadn't he been given a brain to use, or had that been knocked out by a bludger sometime back? What an irresponsible thing he'd done, apparently, not just for him but for his mother. Did Draco have any idea how much worse it was going to be for her now that it was known he was still alive?
That had been the point where he'd come back to himself slightly.
This man had no business talking about his mother. If there was anything in the world that he knew anymore, it was that. He hadn't been able to shake his mother's words. Rather, one word of hers in particular, as he blocked most of the bit about his clothes and grooming out, as it horrified him as well.
That word was 'betrayal.'
"I am discussing blood betrayal, a Vow and…"
He knew about the promise Snape had made his mother, that he would help him when he could. But it was ridiculous. He hadn't tried to help at all. He'd taken his only chance at saving himself and his family away from him, and then hidden him, so that Voldemort had time to finish off his family. And then he'd lied, said it was for his own good, said his mother had asked him too. The injustice… It had been the only thing keeping him sane, during that time of comatose apathy. Well, sane being relative in this case, with a senseless lack of concern for your own welfare being the most and the fiendish caretaking of the hostage who's family you somehow betrayed being the least well adjusted.
As soon as he'd really had time to process and digest the fact that the man who had saved him on the tower, who had spirited him away when he'd needed it most, had done it to destroy him, the lethargy fled and left in its vast and expansive place a new emotion.
Anger.
It was a deep, simmering, festering anger; the kind only a Slytherin could do justice to.
And so he waited. He played the perfect unwitting captive; he lay about as though wrecked by the knowledge of his mother's mental demise, with glassy eyes and a blank expression.
He'd been trying to get free ever since. He'd thought he'd have better luck when Severus and he made their trips to the village, or bathing area, but no such luck. Severus watched him every minute and usually had a magical leash around his wrist, despite his limp limbs and lack of response to outside stimuli.
The man knew a fellow Slytherin when he met one.
Draco knew that Severus didn't buy his act completely, but also knew that he was starting to get worried. He'd taken to staring at him staring at the cave walls. It was everything Draco had not to twitch under the scrutinizing gaze, not to strike out at the man he now blamed for his family's destruction.
He was ashamed to admit that he wished there was some plausible explanation for his mother's words. He wanted for there to be some way to take in everything, sum it up, and come out with at least one true ally in this new world of caves and shadows.
His anger hadn't blinded him to reason. He debated the possibility that his mother's words were as suspect as his questionable attire that day. He contemplated the possibility of her just being wrong, her words a story woven from a simple strand of crazy, and he felt guilty for how much of him wanted to believe that. It would make everything so much simpler and he could go back to thinking that someone in this world would be there to defend him.
He hadn't run away from Severus, then. He'd been running to his mother. If Severus hadn't cut off his every attempt to discuss the prospect of collecting her, he wouldn't have run to begin with. He'd honestly thought that it had been Snape's intention all along to aid him, that he'd gotten it wrong that frantic, frenzied final year when he'd thought Snape was out to foil him at every turn.
At any rate, when he'd gone, it had never entered his mind that he wouldn't be coming back. He'd just be bringing his mum along, so she'd be safe too.
He kept running aground because there was no way for him to sail around something that he knew: there was truth in what his mother said. He wondered why he thought that; he was baffled by the certainty he felt that it wasn't just more mad rambling from the torn remains of a savaged mind.
He didn't believe in Divination, but he reluctantly admitted that it had to be some sort of intuition. His mother was the person he loved best in the world. If he couldn't read her, sanity or no sanity, than he wasn't the son he'd always assumed he was. He could plainly see when she had meant what she was saying and when it was just her words escaping her.
He shook his head to try to clear it, recognizing it as a bad idea almost immediately after embarking upon the action. None of this was helping him now, as he bled from the head, immobilized, even as his captor went to make the arrangements for his change of guard.
He'd read the letter that Severus had drafted, proposing a trade.
To whom it may concern: I have in my possession a certain item that I feel may be of some considerable use to you. If you desire to acquire it, you may contact me via this owl and this owl alone. Only this one will reach me. Rest assured that you will not find me otherwise.
After that had been his insignia, the mark of the house of Prince, and nothing else.
That had been the first of suddenly much correspondence, a flurry of feathers and fetching of ink and scroll. Severus had sent two more letters, letters he didn't have the opportunity to read, but both making Severus pace with some degree of brimstone in his stride.
He surmised that Severus was planning on trading him off in return for either a lighter sentence, or to curry favor with the Dark Lord. He knew it would be soon. The flinty look in Snape's eye whenever it fell on his prostrate form hardened day by day until his stone eyes gleamed like over-polished marble. It was a faintly feverish look, one that seemed to glisten more fanatically as time went on. It had worried Draco that such a controlled man would display his emotions so boldly. It meant something unexpected was about to happen. This was not a look someone about to plan a final escape from confinement enjoyed seeing on his warden's face. It was a look that made Draco nervous, and that was not promising.
Then, today, it had disappeared.
Now there was only a strange anticipation, a certain calm that had dissipated the anxious tension in Snape's frame. It was worse than the gleam.
It had led to his foolish rush on the mouth of the cave. He knew that it was warded; he'd felt them from the back of the cave, where he'd started his run from. What's more is that he'd seen them erected, and knew which ones they were.
Snape knew that the wandless boy was good and trapped and that he need not take any trouble in hiding it from him anymore.
He wished he hadn't been so blind, or so prideful. Dumbledore's words came back to him now, to taunt him with the promise of another way, but it had died when he had died, and now he was stuck in a cave with a man who wanted to barter him like a collapsible cauldron in Slapdashed Alley.
All of this seemed wildly unimportant to him now, as his vision began to swim. He wondered seriously whether it might not be better for him to die on the floor with nothing accomplished than being killed by a militant group after having enacted some form of revenge. A revenge with knives, he thought fuzzily, big, shiny ones that liked their job.
In that strange, contradictory state brought on by impending sleep and massive head wounds, he found the rustling at the front of the cave getting louder, and yet foggier at the same time. He couldn't reason why Snape was taking his sweet time in coming to chastise him for trying to get away, or some other grievance he'd thought of while out arranging his demise. It wasn't like him, he thought. It was his only real delight now that he couldn't take off house points.
The noises came closer and he began a silent tirade in his mind about how rude it was to be loud when someone was obviously trying to sleep on the floor of a cave in a pool of their own blood. Some people had no manners!
He was still working out where exactly he had just went wrong in his thinking when he noticed something interesting about the sounds that were so disrupting him. It wasn't Snape who was making them.
"Bloody fucking oath! Would you come and look at this?" said the Voice-Who-Was-Not-Snape.
He realized he was about to die when his mind connected a name with the voice. Since it was impossible that he should actually be correct, he must be in the midst of the death hallucinations.
There was no way that Harry-friggin'-Potter et. al were in his cave.
He said his last goodbyes, and then everything went completely black.
He knew something was wrong the second the Portkey let go of his navel.
The plan was that they pop in a few miles away from the village Snape had specified, and close in from all sides, to keep an accurate watch. It was a sound plan, and he wasn't just saying that because it had been him who'd come up with it.
He was covering the direct eastern sector. Two miles of trees and underbrush to stalk through stood before him, and somewhere up ahead he heard the hissing of a Venomous Tentacula. He shuddered and vowed to steer clear of that. He knew he had to meet up with Harry and Hermione at the inner rim of the village square.
After Harry had insisted Hermione not meet the one claiming to be Snape alone, she had relented and agreed to go as 1/3 of the Trio. Ron knew that she was both pleased and disgruntled at the prospect.
On one hand she felt safer with her best friends, evidenced by her small sigh and the subtle shift of her shoulders that suggested a release of some indefinable tension. On the other, she was convinced for some reason that this was a mission she had to do, and her gut instinct told her she should go alone.
Ron knew all about gut instincts. He lived by them almost exclusively. Unless it was chess or battle plans he pretty much went where his wand pointed, the hell with the rest. It was this faith in his gut instincts that led to his uneasiness upon his completion of the Portkey there.
Right now, everything in him told him that something weird was about to happen, something that he hadn't foreseen. He would almost have called it a premonition, if three years of Divination with Trelawney hadn't taught him that all such nonsense was rubbish.
He couldn't put his finger on the origin of his discomfort. At least, until he turned around, that is. He was looking up into the opening of a large cave, some yards off, too deep for him to see to the back of it, even if it hadn't been just after sundown on a fairly moonless night.
His mouth hung open as he stared at the cave, drawn in and repelled both by the inky blackness that comprised the archway. He took a tentative step towards it, shuffling his feet slightly, which he regretted as it's one of the first things an Auror learns not to do. He had been a master of stealth when Moody had taught the younger Order members the basic principles.
He also regretted it for another reason:
Immediately following the scuff of his worn wizard trainers on the dirt a hand clamped down on his shoulder with considerable force.
He was already moving into a defensive roll, with his wand up and some of Fred and George's Sneak Powder in his hand when he saw who had grabbed him and grumbled in disgust.
"Dammit Harry! Why would you even do that? Why?" he stored the powder away again, angry at having been caught off guard, knowing that it could have been someone who didn't like him quite so much as his best mate.
"Test your reflexes. You're getting slow in your old age, Grandpa." Harry decided that ranting about his startling lack of awareness would only rub salt in his wounds and get him angry, thus damaging his focus even more. Instead, of course, he taunted him, to calm him down.
Boy logic, whatever that means.
"What're you even doing here? You're supposed to be Apparating directly into the village proper." Ron was still preoccupied with the cave, but his wand was up and his shield spells rechecked again. He would not be caught with his knickers down twice, he resolved. "Where's Hermione?"
"She's waiting back at Grimmauld Place. I needed to talk to you first, before the meeting."
Ron, still battling the unease that had led to his distraction previously, was making his way towards the mouth of the cave. "What about, mate?" His voice was distant. He felt like there was somewhere else he needed to be, but he ignored it. This was more important, for some reason.
"If this thing goes pear shaped today, I want you to get Hermione out of there. If this is some trick of Voldemort's to kill you guys… I need for it not to work. You've got to promise me that…" Harry's earnest voice trailed off, because it was then he sensed the magic surrounding the cave. He grabbed Ron's arm to still his slow approach, and hissed, "Do you feel that?"
Ron nodded, and that was when the first blast sent them sprawling backwards into the trees.