Immutable Laws of Physics by phlox

Warning: mentions of torture.

Like a broken record, I thank my crazy-great beta, eucalyptus, for yet again riding to the rescue and saving this fic from banality. Written for the LJ Interhouse-fest, 2011 from a prompt by snugglelove54

I.

Everything had led to this.

Every house cup lost, every Snitch that fluttered out of his grasp, every grade that was second-best had brought him here. The injustice of Potter being allowed to compete in the Triwizard Tournament, the humiliation of being bounced and ridiculed as a ferret, the terror of his father being dragged away to Azkaban had all been prelude to this moment. Here, now, would be all that mattered from now on.

Because this was something no one else could do. The task had been given to Draco because he was the only one who could make it happen. The necklace and the poisoned mead had been silly half-baked exercises which had meant nothing. But this... this was what would bring him glory. All of his hard work would raise him and his family up from his father's fall from grace.

Even the old man agreed. Draco told him how he'd fixed the Vanishing Cabinet to make passage for the Death Eaters, and there was something in those ancient eyes he'd never seen there before: respect. Seeing it, a kind of reckless elation puffed him up from within, making him feel like he could take to the sky without his broom. He remembered that feeling, though he couldn't recall the last he'd felt it since meeting Harry Potter.

He was almost sure it was pride.

Though fear was like a living thing under Draco's skin and he felt pinned under the stare of those blue eyes, there was a strength that was making itself known inside him. Surely he could do this – even Dumbledore believed in him. Yes, he was clever, he'd had a clever plan. He was going to push through this paralyzing fear, steady his hand, and... kill him.

But the barmy old fool just kept talking. He spoke of mercy and Snape's allegiance and seemed to know all of Draco's plan without being told. Though Dumbledore looked faint, as though he didn't need anything to speed him on his journey from this world, he just wouldn't shut up. His whole body trembled against the parapet, but his message was clear: there is help for you, Draco. There is a way out. For you, for your whole family.

Wildly, Draco considered the possibility of safety, of freedom, of peace.

He could wipe the slate clean and fix everything for himself and for his family. As the words penetrated the bank of fear, anger, and humiliation, Draco realized that he deserved this lifeline as much as anyone else. Even if he had to make nice with all those Gryffindors, he could do it if it meant never again having to feel his heart pound in his ears like this. Suddenly a different feeling began to make itself known, a warmth that started from his stomach and spread to the tips of the shaking fingers wrapped around his wand.

He was almost sure it was hope.

But then the others burst into the Tower. There was disappointment in Dumbledore's eyes, and Draco was surprised how much it hurt to see it. That lifeline, his chance, slipped through his fingers then, as fickle as any Snitch, as heartbreaking as the House Championship, as demoralizing as an imperfect grade.

He couldn't do it. He could neither salvage his task nor triumph in his own rescue. The stain of failure had marked him permanently, like a spill of wine on silk.

II.

They weren't his friends.

Of course, it was unlikely anyone would even suspect him of caring for a sodding Gryffindor, much less three of them. They had been the thorns in his side, banes of his existence, and the focus of all his frustrations for years. But... his enemies? He wasn't sure what that word meant any more, really. Looking at them now, here, he couldn't seem to summon the old hatred any more than he could be bothered to figure how to label them.

Because there were people with whom he broke bread every day who taunted his father, gleefully reveling in his weakness and shame. There were people Draco was forced to greet with deference whose mere presence in their home made his mother's lips press into an expression of such hard forbearance that it made him sick at the sight of it.

There were people – some of them members of his family, his own blood – who had dragged him down into the cellar months ago, long before it had held the prisoners who lived there now. Those people had left him there in the dark, visiting him only to summon the fires of hell to course through his veins, the Cruciatus only one of the excruciating curses rained down upon him.

It was supposed to be an honor to serve the Dark Lord. To take his punishment for failing to do all of what he'd been ordered was supposed to be his duty and privilege. There were no points for effort with him.

Draco didn't know what the bloody fuck to call him either, but 'Master' was a title he whispered in fear but without respect. It hadn't mattered to him that Draco had gotten his followers into Hogwarts, breaching the security that had held the castle secure for centuries. Hehadn't thought it at all clever that Draco had fixed the Vanishing Cabinet and brought the Dark Forces' greatest enemy to the brink of defeat.

Draco hadn't killed the old man himself, and that was enough to damn him and his family's standing. In this world and on that scale, just having kept himself and his parents alive was a great victory. It was the best he could hope for anymore. The Malfoys were inundated and surrounded, but not by allies, and it wasn't to any kind of brotherhood they belonged.

So were these dirty, beaten prisoners dragged into his parlor his enemies?

They were Draco's peers in every way. Though Potter was almost unrecognizable under the Stinging Jinx, they all looked the way he felt; his nerves were as stretched and worn as they appeared. When had they all started fighting this war, anyway? Fifth year? Sixth? Deep down, Draco knew they'd been fighting longer than he had. All of them had just become adults, but their childhood was a distant memory, their lives one long conflict that seemed never-ending.

And Draco grasped suddenly, with a clarity he'd never before experienced, that none of them had started it. This wasn't their war, though it was theirs to fight. Not even Potter had asked for this.

So when Draco was given the chance to turn them over, to end it, to wipe that strained smile from his mum's face and purge the look of utter defeat from his father's eyes, he turned away.

I can't be sure. I don't know. Maybe.

It was simple, liberating. It was surprisingly easy to just refuse to confirm or deny, and the weight that lifted from his shoulders was immense. He could be on his own side. This was not his war, and he could be neither Light nor Dark.

His mum was offended by his aunt's barked order, but Draco was actually relieved to get out of the stifling room for the few minutes it took him to remove the Stunned and injured Snatchers to the courtyard. He took a moment then to breathe deeply the sweetness of the spring evening, tipping his head back to look into the clear and starry sky. Yes, he could simply do nothing. There could be peace in no longer caring about any of it.

The first scream jolted him from that absurd fantasy. In a daze, he walked back inside, slowly through the hallway to the rear parlor, pulled by the sounds of madness and distress. He knew it was Granger before he got there, but seeing was always worse.

He didn't understand exactly what was happening. Aunt Bella was waving what looked to be the Sword of Gryffindor with one hand, pinning Granger to the floor with her best Cruciatus with the other. It's not like Draco hadn't seen his aunt torturing people before – that was just a typical evening lately in Malfoy Manor.

But inexplicably, as Granger's back bent and her fingers clawed at the priceless wool rug under each maniacal Crucio, he could feel the lick of fire in his own veins and the pricks of a hundred knives scoring down his spine. He could feel with Granger and for her, and damned if that wasn't the weirdest sensation ever.

Draco didn't want to feel for anybody but himself; numbness was the only way toward safety and peace. He didn't want to do anything, but Granger wasn't helping herself. He'd confessed to things he'd never even contemplated doing while under his aunt's wand, so how was the swotty bint even still fighting it? Why was she fighting it? Anger overrode the pain as his brain buzzed with the imperative that it had to end. Something had to be done.

"Stop."

The word left Draco's mouth without conscious permission and at not much more than a whisper, but the sheer incongruity of it brought the action in the room to a stand-still. He saw his mother's face paling to ghostly white as she gasped softly. His father's eyes closed and his head dropped a fraction in defeat, closing in on himself for whatever hell was to come.

Shock was bizarrely attractive on Aunt Bella's face; it relaxed and smoothed the lines of age and madness. As she turned to him, an unhinged glee warmed her look of astonishment. "What was that, Draco dearest?" she said in the sickeningly sweet voice she favored for her deepest taunts. "Did you have something to add to the proceedings?"

He swallowed, his brain an absolute blank for a moment, and blobs of white danced in his vision before he reminded himself to breathe. He had no idea what he was doing. This wasn't the sort of thing Draco Malfoy did, and now was not the time to try to change the way things were and always had been.

Potter was the hero, and Granger had always taken care of herself. If she was here at the mercy of his aunt's wand and the bloody Chosen One was in the cellar underneath his feet, then where the hell did that leave him?

Reaching for something, anything then, he blurted, "Maybe the goblin knows something about it, Aunt Bella... about your vault."

It was a feeble attempt, but his mother relaxed just a fraction and his father opened his eyes. Bellatrix's glare narrowed in thought for a moment before she turned to Greyback, asking him something about when and where the goblin was captured. The tension seemed to leave the room like the whoosh of air from his lungs.

Draco was drawn to look down at Granger where she lay curled in on herself on the carpet and wasn't surprised to find her staring back. Her eyes were beginning to glaze over with the madness of her torture, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before the intelligence left and never came back. He'd seen it happen – right in this very room, in fact – but the possibility of that happening to her sickened him.

He'd struggled for each gasp of air and reached for any anchor under Bella's Cruciatus, and he purposefully held Granger's gaze now. That was something he could do for her easily, and it didn't take any great courage. Though tears poured from them, her eyes were clearing with each breath she took, and the moment was strangely ordinary as understanding passed between the two of them.

There had never been a time when it had been just he and Granger without their friends around too, and it was funny, but he found he didn't have many feelings about her without the backdrop of school to give them meaning.

Aunt Bella's voice broke the spell, and he tore his eyes from Granger's as the questioning began again. Predictably, she continued to deny anything and everything until his father again latched onto the idea of the goblin and suggested Draco get him to examine the sword. He wasn't as grateful to leave the room this time, but his feet led him toward the cellar and back, shocked though he was that Potter and Weasley didn't try to fight him. He returned to the parlor in time to hear the sound of Granger's final scream before falling unconscious.

When at last his aunt went to summon the Dark Lord, Draco was terrified. He'd known plenty of terror in the last year, but the sudden hopelessness he felt then consumed him. Why weren't they fighting back? Were her friends just going to leave her to be swallowed up whole by Greyback? He didn't want it to end like this – it couldn't end like this. He couldn't bear it if Potter, Weasley or Granger died here in this parlor where he'd opened his Christmas presents every year as a child.

Things slowed down and blurred around the edges then so that when Weasley and the Chosen One himself finally came charging through the door, he fought without conviction and mechanically followed directions. Draco couldn't think beyond each moment to the consequences of anything.

When it all came careening to a head in an explosion of glass and pain, Potter came to retrieve the wands. Draco simply surrendered. His head down, his hands covering his bleeding face, he just let him have them.

Yes, please, take them. Go.

He experienced a split second of joy at their escape. They weren't his friends, but he was done fighting them. A part of him acknowledged that if there was an end to this, the way to salvation was through them.

But then the Dark Lord arrived, and Draco remembered exactly what those consequences were. Fingers had to be pointed and blame placed somewhere, and dear Aunt Bella decided that he was the most convenient target. His mother's entreaties fell on deaf ears, and Draco found himself in the again empty cellar, curses ripping through him, flaying his throat with his screams.

He couldn't ride into the fight with heroism or pull himself inside a shell of indifference. Strive or hide, engage or deflect, failure was still failure when you were huddled in the dark.

III.

He only had to make it through the night.

Draco had promised his mother that he'd come back to her as her wild eyes had sought some sort of comfort at their last parting. He was sick of her fear, her exhaustion, and the strain it put on her delicate face. So when given the chance, he'd persuaded Crabbe and Goyle to hang back, to stay in the castle instead of going out to meet the Dark Lord. They could be safe here; they could hide.

But the best hiding place at Hogwarts was already taken.

There was no redirecting Crabbe once he'd seen Potter and the others go into the Room of Hidden Things. Neither of them listened to him anymore, and he hadn't much cared before now. He'd dragged what was left of himself back to Hogwarts after the Easter holiday, with his goal then as now: to keep his head down and stay alive.

His motives had a way of changing lately though, and it was becoming more than a bit of a nuisance. Because staying alive shouldn't involve caring about whether or not Crabbe killed Potter or cursed Granger for that matter, but there he was, deflecting ill-timed, amateur curses and trying to keep Goyle out of the way. Draco thought he could distract them with the mystery of the diadem, but neither of them could grasp anything beyond their own bloodlust.

He tried putting the fear of the Dark Lord's wishes into them, but they couldn't see the sense of it. Too ignorant to realize how ridiculously outmatched they were against Potter, Weasley, and Granger, they kept trying to fight. It would have been funny if it wasn't so bloody pathetic, and Draco would have laughed if the situation wasn't so desperate. Crabbe and Goyle weren't going to listen to him anymore, and they didn't have the sense to know that he was trying to keep all of them alive.

Then again, they hadn't seen the side of the war he had; they still thought it was all a great adventure.

As the fight left Goyle crumpled at his feet and sent Crabbe and Weasley running in the opposite direction, Draco took a moment to look to the door, to dream of washing his hands of it all. He could, easily; he didn't owe them anything. He owed his mum one live son at the end of all of this and he intended to keep that promise. Though all he wanted was to turn his back and go, his feet just wouldn't cooperate.

With his luck, the Dark Lord's wrath would fall on him anyway whether he'd had anything to do with it or not.

And, he thought, his conscience prickling and the voice in the back of his head supplying a very unpleasant truth, if Potter lost this thing, his life and those of the people he cared about wouldn't be worth much at any rate.

But it all became about survival with the flick of Crabbe's wand, and all thoughts of fleeing vanished. Roaring dragons, chimaeras, and serpents of Fiendfyre suddenly spat and lunged at them, and Draco simply reacted. In a flash, abandoning his friends was no longer even an option. An instinct borne of history took over.

They'd learned Quidditch together, had stayed up all night too wired to sleep on their first night at Hogwarts together, and had bragged and lied through their introductions to the mysteries of women together. When they were nine years old, the three of them had gotten lost in the Zabini labyrinth, having been led to the middle and left there by Blaise as a prank. Their fear then had been as real as this, and they had promised each other with all the seriousness of children that they would get out. Together.

Without a thought, Draco made that same promise to them tonight. Hauling Goyle's unconscious bulk, he shouted for Crabbe to follow. He ran, as much as was possible while dragging dead weight, and he glanced back every four or five steps to be sure Crabbe was still huffing behind him.

It was a losing battle for Crabbe to outrun the fire though, regardless of his speed or clumsiness. As the caster of the Fiendfyre, the flames were drawn to follow him. They danced about him, entreating as a servant to a master.

Rounding a corner, Draco could see the way to the door through the smoke. If they hurried, they could make it before the fire reached and obscured the path. He had a sudden idea then and turned back to Crabbe. But his heart stopped at the wall of flame rising up behind his struggling friend.

Wildly and recklessly, Draco pointed his wand and cast Expelliarmus toward him. Crabbe's wand flew from his grip toward his own outstretched hand.

Draco had intended to draw the flames to follow him and the wand of their origin. He was faster, cagier, and he could outrun them. But the loss of his wand unbalanced Crabbe, and in his surprise, he reached to follow it. He fell for the final time then and didn't get back up. The great bear that the fire had become pounced upon him and left nothing behind.

With a scream of desperation, Draco threw Crabbe's wand into the crouching beast and turned to the ring of fire that now surrounded them. He had one other promise to keep and he'd be damned if he'd be made a liar to his mum. His only choice was to go up, and he found the strength from Merlin only knew where. Heaving with all his might, he pulled Goyle with him to the top of the charred pile.

After that, Potter's rescue was nothing but dumb luck.

Granger stood over him as he lay on the floor of the hallway outside the Room of Requirement, the sympathy in her eyes inconceivable to him. Surely she reveled in the roles being reversed, in her standing tall over his weakness. As the image of the fire consuming Crabbe overtook him, he turned away from her in shame, coughing out his friend's name in his grief.

He understood the game now. There was defeat in heroism as much as in cowardice, and the law of averages held no sway over the fickleness of fate.

IV.

In the end, he learned you could go far with a show of confidence, and that was easy enough to fake.

Draco had scraped his pride and dignity off the ground, clutched his hard-won parole to his chest, and walked through the doors of Hogwarts for his eighth year. He'd been prepared to both defend himself when necessary and take his medicine when unavoidable, but everyone had seemed too worn-out to pay him much notice. Being invisible was something he would never have imagined could be a comfort, but he was tired too and had accepted it gratefully.

When he'd come in contact with Granger, he'd expected that same comforting disregard. She seemed incapable of ignoring him though, as if she neededto engage him every time she crossed his path. Draco had never had an issue wrangling with Granger, so he jumped in, and the conflict was reassuring in its familiarity.

After a while, he'd gotten used to it. Some time after that, he'd begun to look forward to it. And at some point in between, he'd stopped answering civility with rudeness and learned to talk to her.

"It doesn't make any sense."

"Malfoy, you're talking about two completely different things."

"Different? They're both means of transportation."

"They're completely different modes of transportation."

He paused, waiting for her to either back off or explain that ridiculous statement, but she just looked him squarely and unblinkingly in the eye. Exasperated, he said, "Muggles clearly have the capacity for flight, so it's nonsensical that they wouldn't use it everywhere. Automobiles just don't make sense when there's proof that they can—"

"I explained that was just a fictional program. They can't actually—"

"But they can! They've got Aero-planes and such, so they should be able to adjust it to a smaller scale."

Granger took a breath, rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers, a sign she was either frustrated or losing the thread of her argument. "Listen, Malfoy, there are the laws of physics... and hydraulics..." She made a rolling gesture with her hand as though there was a logical and obvious continuance to her line of thought, but the flush of her cheeks was a dead giveaway.

Draco laughed outright at her futile argument and her inability to admit defeat. Her eyes snapped to his, widened in surprise, and his breath caught. She looked stunned for a moment until she looked away at a group of fifth-years passing by.

He cleared his throat and said, "I just don't understand why they would write about it for those Telly-shows and movies if it wasn't feasible."

"It's using their imagination, Malfoy. It's not about limitations." She took a breath, her look pensive. "Magic isn't possible for Muggles, but they dream it up for themselves – their own version of it, anyway. They have fantasy and science fiction and all sorts of things that make their world... bigger, more than what they've been taught to expect."

"But isn't it frustrating to think of something or see something they can't do? Doesn't it always feel..." He looked away, his brow furrowed, his stomach suddenly in a twist. "Don't they feel like they've failed?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, Malfoy, it's not like that at all. They can strive for whatever they imagine... and in their imagination, anything's possible. There are laws that govern their reality, but they don't have accept them. Fantasy is where they can transcend that. Maybe a wizard just can't understand..." She trailed off, looking over his shoulder lost in thought.

Draco wanted to understand. His frustrations made him feel as tethered to the ground as any Muggle. He knew his limitations well, but his efforts to transcend them had only brought him years of defeat, repeated torture, and endless grief.

But here Granger stood, the moment as ordinary as the one they'd shared in his parlor, when simply having the space to breathe had been the only gift he could give. Looking into her clear eyes, which held none of the madness that had threatened to dull them forever, he thought maybe the laws didn't apply where she was concerned.

There was a great commotion behind her by the Transfiguration classroom and Granger started, looking at her watch anxiously. Draco knew she had Herbology after their Muggle Studies class and usually had to hurry to make it.

"Oh, I have to go, but I—"

A sudden urgency overtook him at the thought of her departure.

"Listen, Granger," he began, and she turned back fully to face him. "If you don't have a partner yet, I was thinking that we – you and I – could do the final project on human flight together." She looked at him blankly for a second, and his confidence slipped ever so slightly. "Frankly, having to work with anyone else in the class would just drag us down anyway, so it's only natural that we pool our considerable talents for this since it's the last—"

"I'd love to, Malfoy." She said this wryly, but there was an undeniable twinkle in her eyes.

Everything had led to this.

It wasn't much, but the smile that bloomed on her face made Draco feel like a hero. It had taken all of his courage. This time it was enough.

... the end ...