Choices
11:05pm July 1st -One Year Earlier
He looks up at his godfather's stern face as the man secures his plain black robes so that they don't slip in battle. He'd always dreamed of this day; his initiation into the storied Knights of Walpurgis. His father is supposed to be here instead, or if not his father, then his mother. But his father is in Azkaban for trying to kill a boy the same age as his son, and his mother can't stop crying in the corner, and so, his godfather is here, unsmiling.
Severus gives a sharp jerk to one of the many hidden straps he's tying because of course Draco has to pay attention, he has to be able to do this himself. Their eyes meet briefly before they both look away.
But Draco cannot concentrate, not with his mother's sobs keening in his ears. Not with his father's absence a raw and weeping wound. Not with the knowledge that his Father had sold his first born son, him, about to be branded on his arm for all the world to see.
"You don't understand my dragon. It was a different time. Our cause was winning. And with your Father in a high enough position in the new government, he would have ensured you a high position too. Our victory was assured, no one could have predicted that the Potters... that a baby...."
"Is there really such a thing as free will? I feel like there are no true choices in life." Draco's voice shatters the silence, echoing a question he had overheard earlier that day on the train home. What he really wants to say is that he does not want this. And if he were seventeen, then that would be the end of this farce. But Draco's sixteenth birthday has only recently passed, and so his opinion didn't matter, not in this sort of binding, not to magic.
His godfather takes a long time to answer. Long enough that Draco thinks he won't. Draco keeps his eyes fixed on Severus's hands, at first because he knows that his godfather won't answer if he thinks that Draco isn't paying attention, but eventually he finds it soothing to watch the familiar spindly fingers at work as they have done throughout his childhood: chopping ingredients, pointing things out in potions publications, ruffling his freshly coiffed hair.
"Free will is a very real and heavy burden, Draco. You will likely do things to survive, never forget though, that once you've survived, then you must live with the things that you have done."
Draco's hands curl into fists unbidden. That was not the answer that Potter had been given when he had voiced the same. Potter had gotten: "There's always a choice."
But why would the answers be the same? Draco was not the boy who had fought the Dark Lord to a standstill, who had fought his way out of multiple ambushes with some of the deadliest witches and wizards known to wizardkind, and came out on top. Draco was not rumored to have gone against trolls, dragons, nor over a hundred dementors at once. Draco was not Harry Potter who had no family to be used against him as leverage or to weigh him down with traditions and expectations to live up to.
And so, Draco's choices were limited and terrible.
Draco forces his fingers to uncurl even though the anger is still there, simmering in his gut. He has never felt such all consuming anger, he has never felt such hate.
Draco remembers the exact moment he began to hate Harry Potter. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't when Potter had rejected his handshake in first year. It wasn't even when his mother's owl flew to him on a warm summer's morn with a box of foil wrapped galleons masquerading as chocolates, a key to the family villa in Paris, and a letter stating that his Father had failed a mission involving Potter and been arrested, that the Dark Lord was displeased, and that Draco should not come home. An encoded letter that was so peppered with "I love you's," that Draco knew his mother did not expect to be able to tell him so again, in person or otherwise.
No, Draco only began to truly hate Potter later that day on the Hogwarts Express when he had been ready to beg, plead, grovel, give anything to Potter who clearly had the power to challenge the Dark Lord −for his mother's life. Of course he had never got the chance because he had been stopped outside Potter's carriage by that Chang Bitch and company. And over the clatter of the train running along its tracks, and over the screeching of the Weasleyette's Bat-Boggey Hex he'd heard Harry-bloody-Potter tell the Weasel and the Mudblood that he felt he had no choices.
Feburary 15th - Six months Ago
The flickering shadows, the embalmed ingredients floating in their jars, all called to mind how the sunlight refracted beneath the waves, the way the Black Lake's denizens calmly swayed with the current, and other breathtaking underwater views seen from the Slytherin dorms. For most Slytherins, Professors Snape's office was soothing.
Draco Malfoy though, was not soothed. The Slytherin dorms were full of spies. He could not relax there. He could not relax here. He inattentively tugged at the bindings around his throat. He did this often enough that the portion of the tattoo which was normally hidden underneath his skin had been teased out into visibility. With magic giving the ink a burnished sheen, the patterned scales of the tapered snake tail bore some resemblance to a delicate chain, and the bindings could almost be mistaken for jewelry −if you were an idiot of course.
A large calloused hand gently touched his wrist. Surprised, Draco pulled harder than he meant to on the tattoo, and the coils around his heart gave an unpleasant lurch. From his seat, Draco looked up into his godfather's coal black eyes. "Enough, Draco." Draco glares at the hand on his wrist until Severus reluctantly removes it. "Showing off your Dark Mark as you have been is unseemly."
"Let them see!" Draco's labored breaths hung heavy in the shocked silence after his outburst. Pink dusted his death pale cheeks and made him look almost healthy. He picked up the chair which had clattered to the floor when he'd abruptly stood, and grudgingly set it facing the desk instead of the wall. His godfather might have lost the silent stalemate, but Draco had lost his composure, which was a greater misstep −It showed where he was vulnerable. Slightly calmer he continued: "Let them choose the Dark Lord with open eyes."
Severus rubbed his temples, and Draco lazily spun his fork while staring at his untouched plate of food, conflicted. Rather than take advantage of his slip, Sev had shown Draco honest emotion in turn. Granted that emotion was exasperation... "They might expel you. May I add that an expulsion would mean mission failure?"
Draco couldn't help it, he laughed. It was not a happy laugh, it sawed against the lining of his pharynx and ended in a hacking cough as if his body were trying to remove the foreign sensation. "That fool Dumbledore would never. He's too soft. He knows how old I am, he knows I can't consent. All he sees is a child in pain, even though he also knows who my master is." Draco's throat closes up and he can't continue, because that's the worst part. Dumbledore's not stupid but he's a good man. Draco has to kill a good man.
"Let me help you!" Severus' voice is laden with enough emotion that Draco looks up sharply in disbelief. He takes a cautious bite of the food while watching his House Head's reaction through narrowed eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for until he sees it: the barest slump to Severus’ shoulders. They curl slightly inwards like he wants to protect himself after a blow, like the proud man has bowed slightly under a great weight. On anyone else, Draco would have believed it a genuine show of subconscious emotion. On the head of Slytherin House, the motion just looks fake. A trap to get him to open up. Showing exasperation was one thing, but showing… hurt, like that? Never.
He finishes the remainder of his meal with efficient movements. It tastes like ashes in his mouth, yet Draco is well practiced at this point in not letting his discomfort show. In the Great Hall with all those prying eyes on him, Draco normally could not afford something as telling as a loss of appetite. It was a momentary lapse in judgment that had made him display such weakness here.
"Draco." Sev says, all the emotion from before leeched out.
Draco meets Severus' eyes again, and allows a memory to play across his mind: of his Uncle Sev dolling Draco up and delivering him like a hogtied pig to the Dark Lord's feet. Draco closes his eyes, partially to break the connection, but mostly because he doesn't want to see his godfather's reaction. "I don't want your help." Draco finally says. He doesn't open his eyes. His eyelids weigh a thousand pounds. He lays his head down in his arms, not caring for their Slytherin games anymore.
Draco realizes too late, that that memory had been a double-edged sword. A reminder that there was no point in getting up. If he succeeds in this mission there would just be another, and another after that. Orders. Servitude. Cycles of fear and pain. That is his life now. There was no space for his own ambitions in his future.
Sev yanks him out of his chair by the hair. He grips Draco's shoulders while Draco looks at his godfather with wide wild eyes. "I know your mother told you to run," Snape hisses. "Once the Dark Lord called in his debt and you were within a certain distance from him, there was nothing that could be done. Do not blame me for the consequences of your own actions."
Draco wants to laugh again, but manages to choke it down this time. It lodges in his throat, a ball of hot fragile pain splintering into his words. "Pray tell, what would have happened to my mother if I hadn't shown up?"
Snape tightens his grip on Draco's shoulders and doesn't speak. Then again, he doesn't have to, the sudden quiet speaks volumes.
Funny how as soon as his godfather stops talking, Draco can’t. The levy had broken, and here was the deluge. "What do you think of me, that you would ask me to leave my mother to die when I could prevent it. You," Draco's voice cracks. "You were leverage for my mother, my mother was leverage for me. The Dark Lord's neat ploy wouldn't have worked without you."
Snape shoves Draco away as if burned. Draco's back hits a wall. He holds himself still because everything is suddenly too much. He is aware of his blood galloping through his veins, the way his bellowing breaths hitch when they catch on the too tight magic around his throat. It doesn't feel like the rush of playing quidditch. It feels like a monstrous hippogryph rearing above him, talons about to come down. Like he has angered something he should not have and his body is screaming at him to move, to not lay down, to not die. He remembers he doesn't want to die.
"I had my orders, I could no more defy them then you."
Draco stares at his godfather the loyal deatheater uncomprehending, waiting for a blow that does not come. His heart does not calm itself from its manic tempo. He pats himself down. Checks his arms. Scours the floor for tell-tale crimson.
The hippogryph's talons had been so sharp he hadn't felt the mauling. There had only been the looming shadow of the beast, the glint of something sharp in motion, and then his blood was a fountain, wine-red droplets spinning in the sun. His flesh had parted so easily he'd had to ask Madam Pomfrey to wrap him up so that Draco could placate his sudden childish fear that he would burst open again like an overripe fruit at the slightest provocation.
This old fear on top of all of his recent terror proves to be too much. He cracks underneath the pressure to find a wellspring of white hot rage.
Defy? He seethes. What were they Gryffindors now? Outright defiance was not the Slytherin way. Draco had been taught from a young age not to express his anger immediately, but to wait and revenge himself at a better time.
His anger drains away abruptly, leaving him shaking and weak. He slides to the floor when his legs give out. He hasn't been acting like either of the houses. Draco knows he’s all over the place. He can’t trust his friends. He can’t decide if he trusts his godfather or not. His entire family has been lying to him for so long he doesn’t know where it all ends. Did they love him, or did they just feel guilty? Still, he has no real plans outside of 'survive,' he resolves to change that.
Distracted, he begins to rub soothing circles above his heart before he catches himself. It was a habit he had picked up from when the bindings were new, and he had to figure out the hard way what thoughts were permitted now, and what were not. He had been surprised to find that he could curse the Dark Lord to his heart's content, but could not entertain thoughts of forsaking his orders.
The bindings do not care about his loyalty, only his obedience.
But it was the kind of tell that could not be faked. Like a flinch, it was a habit borne from pain similar to how his Father sometimes gripped his left forearm while being summoned even though doing so at the wrong place and time could get him killed. It spelled his undeniable disobedience for all the world to see. 'Let them see!' he had shouted earlier. But not here, not like this. Not in front of someone who had to have known about the Geas he had been born under and yet had still ...
“You lied to me −about free will, you lied.”
Draco picks himself off the floor with heavy use of the wall behind him as crutch. He doesn’t feel sixteen. Everything ached as his displeased magic once again buzzed angrily through his limbs trying to dislodge the invasive Dark Mark. Madam Pomphrey, under absolute secrecy and unbreakable healer patient confidentiality, had said it was a condition similar to Muggle arthritis.
Hand on the door-handle voice as steady as he can make it, he has to clear this point up. "I am not holding you accountable for my choices, Uncle-" Draco shook his head "Professor Snape, I am holding you accountable for yours. You chose to take the Dark Mark. A choice that was denied to me. Who's fault is it that you were not in a position to help me then; Who's fault is it that you are not in a position to help me now?"
The door makes a final click behind him.
4:11am June 5th - Three Months Ago
The scent of incense was thick and cloying in the air, and Draco was tempted to vanish it all away. But this was actually the point where most rituals failed: after the last steps of the dance, after the final notes of song. If Draco was a muggle, he would have said that the magic was like a newly forged blade − still molten, it had to be doused and made to keep its new shape.
Yet Draco was not a muggle, and his medium was not steel. Constrained magic was volatile. If he messed up here and was lucky, then all his work would simply be undone, and the magic would fall apart formless. It was much more likely though, that there would be a backlash. There was a reason why rituals had fallen out of favor, at the end of them you were essentially left with two choices: temper it, or die.
Leaf litter crunched underfoot as he wandered into the nearby trees and came back with a bucket of crisp spring water tucked securely into the crook of his elbow where it would not splash.
He dips into the water a rough woven cloth whose thread of stray unicorn hair glitters in the low candlelight. Carefully, so as not to wet his fingers, he then drapes the now damp cloth along the bucket's edge. The coarseness was not required, it was simply a byproduct of Draco having woven and sewn the cloth himself. All of the ingredients he had used earlier this morning had been collected by him, down to the spring water he had carried back from the surrounding mountains.
He is not looking where he is going, yet, his feet stop almost without prompting. He finds he stands at the head of the ritual circle. The leaves do not stir in their branches. Crickets had ceased their chirping at the nascent dawn. The magic hung tense and heavy in the air when Draco began to sing.
They were not words of power.
He walks slowly and unhurried counterclockwise around the waning ritual circle, gathering the hand rolled sticks of incense and snuffing them out in the bucket of water as he comes up to them. As the heady aroma dissipated, he suffused the air instead with the soft notes from an old Welsh lullaby. He could almost hear his mother's voice singing alongside him of calm waters after a storm and returning home after a long time away as she had a few times while tucking him in bed. He remembers every syllable even though she had only sung it sparingly in his presence, as it was a Black song, and Draco is had been a Malfoy.
He lets the memories flow through him down to the restless magic along with the settled feeling the lullaby had always instilled in him, and the drowsiness after a long day. The words did not matter, nor the language, only the intent, which was to put the wild magic to sleep. And so, he sang to the magic about sailing through the reflected stars as he reached down into the ceremonial bowl and blew away the ashes of burnt offerings. A sudden breeze breached the stillness of the early morning, catching the ashes and winging them far and away. He closed his eyes and bid the departing magic one word with the entirety of his being: freedom.
The magic was finally calm and -He stumbled as it all came back to him in a rush. All the emotion and intent he had poured into the ritual to stoke the magic to higher heights. The fear, the anger, the betrayal, the hope, the desecration he'd felt when the Dark Mark etched itself deep into his flesh, befouling his heart, his mind, his magic.
He found himself crying. He did not wipe the tears away, instead allowing the rivulets to drip down to the hard packed earth in thanks along with the blood from the still bleeding ritual cut on his navel.
He stood there in the hush, trying to pull himself back together long enough that when he turned around again, all the candles save one had died down.
Then, and only then did he retrieve the damp cloth to wipe away the poultice from his left forearm. The icy water breaking his last lingering connection to the wild magic. Draco takes a deep breath and inspects the brand on it in the light from the lone candle. The skull and the snake of the Dark Mark had been knotted together in an oroboros, but now the snake was loosely coiled on top of the skull as if ready to strike. The link had been broken. His link to the Dark Lord had been broken.
He lets out a quiet, cautious laugh. He couldn't help thinking that this was such a waste of his magical majority. He could have been tall, graceful and deceptively strong like his father, he could have been more magically powerful like his godfather, he could have been beautiful like his mother. Instead he had asked to be emancipated.
Emancipation, his lips quirked up into a smile that felt long overdue, was a very specific word. It meant: to release (someone) from someone else's control or power. Who was he freeing himself from with this? The Dark Lord, or the family which had sold him? Both, he reasons. Then, after a moment he stops smiling. Neither he decides. The bindings were still there: they were an unavoidable apart of him since he had been born with them. Hence, technically he was still a servant, just one without a master. And the bonds between him and his family were ones of love. Annoyingly untouchable by magic. So for all their betrayal, he still loved his mother, his godfather,… his father. Which meant he still had to finish his mission, and quickly. Then Narcissa would be under less scrutiny and he and his mother could slip away. The quicker, the better.
The Dark Lord would know what he has done to his Mark, not today, probably not during what pitiful time was left of the school year, but soon. The next time the Dark Lord tried to summon Draco and could not.
Draco shivered, the morning chill making him miss his tunic and robes. Wizarding robes were designed for rituals: creating long trailing dance movements that flowed with magic. The reason he was only wearing trousers above his bare toes was because of the raw rippling scar bisecting his torso diagonally from shoulder to hip.
He grits his teeth when he bends to retrieve the salve and roll of clean bandages, the numbness granted by the ritual trance long gone.
The wrappings climbing up his torso itched. He resisted the urge to scratch. Like all wounds made with dark magic, the barely healed scar roiled with unrestrained emotion. In this case: anger. Draco did not need to know the incantation to understand the spell which had felled him had been Potter’s wordless fury honed to a wicked edge and made manifest. It was shallow though. It was a great rage spread thin across the world. It was a rally against the unfairness and cruelties of life. Potter wasn’t angry at anything in particular, or rather, he wasn’t angry at Draco in particular. Which was good, because any deeper and the curse would have sliced clean through his ribs to his heart. The only reason why he was alive now was because Draco was alone in his hate. Like he was alone in everything else now.
He slides on his Hogwarts robes and returns to the castle to allow his 'friends' to bid him happy birthday. It was beyond rude to ask, but since many of them were spying on him, when it inevitably came up he'd tell them that he had wished for 'clear sight' to help him on his mission for the Dark Lord. Honestly, now that he had marginally less to worry about, he did have an idea that he could try on that vanishing cabinet.
Present
There were scratches in the wall. Some of it was decipherable as angry words and mangled runes, but most of it wasn't. Mostly it was just erratic vicious gashes. Wood shavings littered the floor underneath along with pieces of a shattered vase, broken quill nibs, a snapped letter opener, ragged fingernail tips and drops of blood.
It was supposed to be a window.
Draco's bedroom, as proper of a pureblood heir, was ensconced deep within Malfoy Manor rather than situated vulnerably on an outer wall. As such, his "window" had been a magical construct nearly indistinguishable from a real window. It depicted in real time: rain and sleet, sun and clouds, there was even a tree which lashed against the scenes in heavy winds -or at least it had, before Draco had broke it trying to reach the real place it was connected to on the Malfoy property.
And above the savaged wall, was a furious night sky.