Chapter 13
Sixth Year is when it all goes downhill.
Voldemort has returned and the Death-Eaters have gathered at the Lestrange Manor. Draco's father is in Azkaban and so he is to pick up the mantle in order to keep his mother safe. He can't be seen with Harry under any circumstances because it's too dangerous now, for both of them; when Draco can be used against Harry and Harry can be forced to come to Voldemort.
For Lucius' failures, Draco is given the task to kill Albus Dumbledore — the closest thing to a father that Harry could have, along with the godfather he has lost not even a month ago.
It is clear this is meant to be his death.
The news of the violent fight at the end of Fifth year reach the ears of the Death-Eaters along with his uncle, Rodolphus Lestrange. There are clear testaments that Draco and Harry grew up together among the Slytherins, but all through Fifth Year, this narrative had been shifted. Something had happened to make the two become hateful enemies towards each other (all the while they met in secret, finding a spot all to themselves in the forests).
"Let me train my nephew," Rodolphus says to the Dark Lord, "I will make him your soldier."
Draco has strayed from his family's ideals and values, and the Dark Lord has no faith in his loyalty. He wants him dead at the heads of Dumbledore, and Draco has no choice but to kill himself in the attempt, if only so his mother's life will be spared. To Voldemort, Draco is, for all intents and purposes, weak and useless, and his death will be a joke among the Death-Eaters for months to come.
But Rodolphus Lestrange has all the power to change this fate.
So he does.
This is not out of love for his nephew.
This is merely a project; an experiment.
***
"Kill," Rodolphus orders. He walks around Draco in a half-circle, the steps of his polished shoes echoing across the Lestrange Manor.
"I can't," Draco whispers. His wand trembles, pointed at the petrified man.
"Kill him."
"I can't."
The silence is long and unbearable.
"Is that so."
Rodolphus comes to a stop behind him. Draco feels his presence slither up his spine and across his shoulders; the room is smothered in darkness, and terror. His wand drops as he falls to his hands and knees, ripping a gasp out of him, heaving for air he hadn't realized he'd been holding in his lungs at all.
"Your mother," Rodolphus says. His voice is calm; always calm, but Draco knows it is a facade. Somewhere inside himself, he has always sensed it as a child, though he didn't understand it then. His fear of his uncle had always seemed out of nowhere, irrational; attached to nothing. Now it made all the sense in the world. "Do you care for her?"
"Don't hurt her," Draco chokes out, gasping, bordering on a sob, "Please Uncle, I can't — I can't, I can't, I can't…" He crumples in on himself, the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes. He can't think. He can't think.
"You are pathetic," Rodolphus says coldly, tilting his head, his voice as steady as if he is stating facts, not speaking insults, "Weak and a coward. When the Dark Lord saw you so incompetent and fearful, he told me you would be useless and wanted you dead." Rodolphus unclasps his hands from behind his back and lowers, so he kneels before him on one knee, a wrist to the other, "I was the one that told him that I would make you capable. He gave you a chance to prove yourself; by killing that foolish, withered Hogwarts Headmaster."
Draco quiets, staring down at his knees. He holds his tongue. It's a punishment for his imprisoned father's failures, an impossible task. In the end, the result should be the same, whether it is at the hands of Dumbledore, forced by self-defense, or Voldemort himself. Draco will die.
But there is only one option he could choose, and that is compliance. If he does not comply, he will take his mother's life with him.
Most days now he thinks of his mother and dwells in the terror of Voldemort and Death-Eaters and being entrapped in a Manor he did not even know the location of and Harry.
He worries about Harry all the time; about what the future holds.
"I saved you," Rodolphus tells him, his voice softening, "didn't I, nephew?"
That, he did, though Draco cannot for the life of him understand why, beyond that he may be an experiment of sorts.
"Then kill. Or your mother dies, and then you. The only way your lives can be spared is if you become of use. I don't wish for her or you to die. Do you?"
Draco stares wide-eyed at his hands. "No," he whispers.
Rodolphus is quiet. He is waiting for Draco to do as he commanded.
But he cannot.
"Very well…" Rodolphus stands. "Then I will simply have to wring all this weakness out of you. You will either become strong, or die."
Abruptly, his hand shoots and grabs a hold of his head.
"Imperio."
The horror jolts through Draco; the shock. In the split-second he processes the Unforgivable he cast, he expects the darkness to come over him.
It becomes even more horrifying when he realizes; his body is no longer his own.
And he is aware of every second of it.
"Kill."
He watches his own wand raise. He feels himself stand, his head tilted, like a puppet pulled up by its strings. This should have not been possible. This should not be how the Imperius Curse works — he should have at least had the mercy of being unconscious to what he is being forced to do —
"Avada Kedavra."
The man cries out. The corpse drops to the floor.
The compulsion clears. Still, his body is not his own.
He now knows what it's like to scream without a voice, to feel sick and not be able to throw up in the most abstract way, all his muscles seized by the sedating magic of an Unforgivable.
Inside, he screams and screams and screams, while his misted eyes remain fixed on the corpse, head limply tilted, his mouth closed.
He screams for the person that has made him feel the safest.
Harry, Harry, Harry…
***
All throughout the year, Draco can sense Harry's gaze on him. Their friends are worried, but no one from Gryffindor can ever come near him, with the children of Death-Eaters gazing on them. No one from Slytherin can really be trusted; not necessarily because they would sell him out, but because they may not be left with any choice but to. They may be forced.
So the only two people that truly know that the huge fight that broke out between Harry and Draco was scripted are Harry and Draco. The rest may see it as it is, or believe that they're really drifted away from each other during the high tensions arising from Voldemort's return, from Sirius' death, from Draco's father being incarcerated. But no one will ever know for certain.
There is speculation, of course; theories, rumours that only grow more and more outlandish and bizarre. There are some people whose speculation is too close to the truth. It doesn't really matter, in the end. The uncertainty of it all is the very thin thread keeping each other safe.
Draco can tell Harry has noticed the state of him. There is no way he hasn't. Draco's clothes hang on him. He is constantly sickly, nauseated. His cheeks have hollowed and his face is drained of colour; ashen.
How does Draco tell him anything? Any of it?
The things he has done over the summer?
That he has been ordered to murder the only man left that Harry can consider a father figure of sorts?
He can't seek help. He doesn't know if anyone can help him. He thinks, sometimes, of going to Dumbledore, but Dumbledore is barely ever even there in the office this year from what he has heard. And what if —
What if they found out? That he sought help from the person he was ordered to kill?
Voldemort has eyes everywhere. There are children of Death-Eaters watching.
But above all, though Draco doesn't know how, he feels Rodolphus' gaze. In the weeks he has spent here, he has learned that Rodolphus knows everyone's secrets; even those told to no one, though he doesn't necessarily expose them to the Dark Lord always.
Somehow he thinks his uncle would know, because he seems to know everything anyway, no matter how much he tries to hide anything. He has all his Occlumency walls up from the lessons he learned from Severus in his childhood, but there are times he is still not certain Rodolphus is not in his mind.
Rodolphus is a nihilistic and bored man, from what Draco has gathered. He is loyal to the cause and the Dark Lord, but it doesn't seem to be due to any true sentiment or care for either. It seems more that he has nothing to care about and lacks excitement, so he dedicates himself to the organisation to fulfill a void, and finds things to invest himself in. Even if he knows something about him and Harry, he does not seem keen on exposing them to the Dark Lord.
What he seems keen on is something else entirely, and Draco rues that he is the thing his uncle has taken any interest in.
You are weak, but inteliigent as well. I see potential, if I manage to makesomething valuable out of you.
During the summer, Rodolphus has asked questions about the rumours, about the fight. Somehow Draco managed to answer them all. Still, his uncle is so unfathomable, with his ever-present hollow and thin smile that should be a mockery of interest in Draco's life, that Draco can't even begin to figure out if Rodolphus has them all figured out or not.
Draco is aware, every second of every day, that the briefest interaction with Harry can be a weakness if word ever gets to Voldemort; can sell them out, can be used against them. So is Harry. They are aware of the danger they inherently pose to each other.
It's easy to avoid Harry that way. His mind is so scattered he can barely focus on anything but his anxieties; on fixing the Vanishing Cabinet, on --
On --
Draco can imagine it; Harry's face, how full of hatred and disgust it will be.
And he realizes it, not for the first time.
He would rather die.
He would be forced to fix the Vanishing cabinet to save his family. This is expected of him.
But Draco dying at Dumbledore's hand is nothing less than Voldemort's expectation; desired, even. Perhaps he will not punish his family for this failure then, at least. It is the punishment Voldemort wants.
Rodolphus is trying to make a soldier and killer out of him. But Draco is incapable of that as well. He is not a fighter. He doesn't care to be involved in the war. Not for its own sake, at least. He cares for it only in relation to Harry, that he makes it out alive. He only cares about his family.
But Draco will die. He knows. He won't be there to see it, will he?
Overwhelmed by this terror, of his own death, or that he will never know what becomes of Harry and his family afterward, and how nothing is working out with the Vanishing Cabinet, Draco finds himself in the loo in front of the mirror, heaving and gasping for air, bent over the sink and on the verge of tears.
"Draco?"
It's Harry's voice.
And Draco can't tell him anything but he can't keep himself from letting Harry rush over to him and touch him soothingly, hands on his face. He is shaking like a small earthquake. He crumples into Harry's arms, hoping it may be the thing that holds him together, because he can't...
He can't...
For hours, they sit against the bathroom tiled wall, Draco almost entirely leaning into Harry's side. He feels like a child. He must look like it, tears silver on his flushed cheeks.
"Can you tell me what's happening?" Harry asks, gently.
Draco can barely speak enough to answer. What can he tell him? What can he tell him, of all the things that have happened over the summer? The things his hands have done?
What would Harry think?
"He's holding me somewhere..."
"Where?"
When Draco tries to tell the location, his voice cuts off, and a choked noise leaves him, hands shooting up to his throat. He is as shocked by it as Harry seems to be, wide-eyed as if he was not aware of this inability.
But it gives one thing away at least to Harry; that he and his mother are not at the Malfoy Manor.
"I'm at somebody's house. But I don't know where it is. I never seem to remember the travel between the train station and that place. Neither does my mum, when I ask her."
Harry's eyes are wide, afraid.
"Does it have a floo?"
"Yes. But I can't use it. He'll know wherever I go."
"Not to where I'll ask you to come. Do you remember where you found me? Privet Drive?"
Draco frowns at him. "Muggle places don't have floos."
"No. But I can ask Ron's dad to open the fireplace there as a special favor, just for a time. It's protected. They won't know where you and your mum are or be able to get to you once you're both there." Harry swallows. "You know my relatives will make it miserable for us all... but it's all we got. Can you do that, Draco? Can you trust me?"
Draco is not brave. But he does trust Harry.
Draco is not brave, but he does want his mother to be safe.
So he nods.
There, Harry tells him the plan. He hands him the DA Galleon, to send the sign when the time is right, when they are all away and opportunity is present, when Draco will be ready to do it. He will speak to Arthur in advance about the plan, giving him the same Galleon to transmit the message quickly, and when Draco tells him when to come, Arthur will activate the spell that allows the muggle fireplace to become a floo, so Draco and Narcissa can come through. Just as it senses two people passing through, the floo will close itself immediately.
***
The Christmas holidays come, and Harry, who has never in all the years of his Hogwarts life gone back to the Dursleys for Christmas, does so now.
The Dursleys are displeased at having to come pick him up, at the sudden change. At the same time, Harry knows they are looking forward to making good use of him around the house.
All through the break, Harry sits in wait, constantly guarded and on edge. He bears the Dursleys' snipes and jabs and is irritated and frustrated all the time. His patience is thin, the bandwidth of all his emotions and thoughts taken up by Draco and Narcissa.
Then the day comes. The Galleon that has created a red mark into his hand at this point, always careful to pocket during any housechores and away from the Dursleys' eyes, suddenly shifts. The message is sent. It's time.
Harry sends the signal to Arthur Weasley.
Not five minutes later, the fireplace in the Dursleys' living room abruptly blows up into a green fire, to the startled shrieks of Aunt Petunia and Dudley and Vernon. Aunt Petunia has stumbled back into a corner with her hand on her chest, wide-eyed and heaving. Dudley is frozen and pale, as they all are at the sight of any magic.
"What is this?" Vernon is the first to speak, angrily, turning to face Harry and grabbing him by the collar to shake him. "WHAT IS THIS? Boy, you better speak right now! Expecting someone of your kind here? Is that why you've been looking at the fireplace all this time?"
Harry does not care, barely hears him. His wide eyes are fixated on the fireplace, desperately hoping that they will make it, that he will see the familiar flash of white hair appear in the green flames.
He waits.
He waits.
And he waits.
He waits until the floo closes itself automatically after the time limit has passed, sensing no one coming through.