Exploratory fic.
Something that was in poking my muse for attention. I might make it into a prelude for a Draco!werewolf fic in the future.
Now with proper spacing!
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3710
The Power of Fear
Draco had always hated the goldfish with the cheeks that puffed out - honestly, they were ridiculous! The regular sort were pretty enough, why ruin the only thing they had going for them with such a hideous addition? He hadn't thought much of God before deciding the fish in the garden pond were stupid as well as ugly, but his tolerance for the belief was waning more every day.
The fish shoved each other out of the way to nibble the pebbles Draco tossed into their small, rippling world. He wondered if they even knew the difference between rocks and real food. Maybe they didn't even care? They lived in a pond where the only entertainment was the bubbles from a small waterfall, or the occasional water bug scooting across the surface.
The amusement passed. Draco sat back in the uncomfortable metal garden chair with a sigh, and the fish went back to their bubbles and bugs. A fat bumblebee buzzed about, attracted to the boy's bright hair; he ignored it and stared at the sky. The clouds were sparse and fluffy, and the sun was pleasantly warm on his skin. The recipe for a nap was there, but the idea of his complexion going from a hideous winter white to pinker than a spring lily was enough to keep his sleep-deprived lids open. Halfway, at least.
He caught the scent of body odor and young blood; it was weak compared to the sweet smell of daffodils and tulips, but constant. The mix made Draco stop breathing for several seconds in order to spare his lungs from the poison for as long as possible.
Judging by the weakness of the abominable werewolf's stench, he had to be at least twenty paces away. Too close for Draco's comfort, yet just far enough to appear as a non-threat to any on-looking eyes.
Draco's hands gripped the iron chair's arms as he stood, imagining for those two seconds that they were around Greyback's neck. Not that he would ever soil his own hands, even in the name of sweet, righteous violence against an enemy. He liked to think he was much more discreet than that.
Greyback stood near the azalea bushes, using the bird bath to wash his hands. The matted hair on his large head was shiny with blood. His face and stained robes were wet. But it was the smile on his scruffy, scarred face that made Draco want to be flogged rather than be subjected to it. When he blinked, that smile always stayed stuck to the backs of his eyelids. He fixated on the speck of raw meat stuck between two pointed teeth.
“Lovely day we're having,” Greyback said, and shook his hands dry over the grass.
“Draco.”
His mother's voice cracked through the atmosphere like Apparition into a forest sent birds flying from trees. She didn't spare Greyback a glance, and he didn't need to see the tension in the line of her shoulders to see that she wanted him as far away from the werewolf as possible. Right now.
“Your father is calling for you.”
That was a lie. Lucius was knocked out by Severus' extra strong calming drought by now. Greyback wouldn't know this, which was the point; the Malfoys were careful about who knew their strengths and weaknesses. Draco was a weakness they couldn't hide, but they could safeguard the reasons why, and bolster up their defenses with lies.
Narcissa twined her arm around Draco's and walked unhurriedly through the blooming gardens to the manor. A glance back confirmed that Greyback's eyes and smile were still aimed at him. Draco laid a hand over his mother's and slowly pried her fingernails out of his bicep.
“You are not to leave your room tonight,” she said in her conversational tone. The thing about that tone was that no discussion was meant to follow from the partner in conversation.
“Mother, you don't decide that,” was Draco's response. “I do as he commands.”
The sunshine faded upon their steps into the manor. Stone and marble made the echoes of their shoes bounce off the stares of grey-eyed ancestors. Narcissa escorted her son to the heavy, alarm-laden door to his private rooms. She touched the dark skin under his eyes with a cool, perfumed hand. A concentrated sigh through her nose tickled his chin.
“Let's say he commanded you to get some rest.”
Her discreet tenderness made him smile.
Orange light from the sunset lit the corridors of the South Wing as Draco walked to the drawing room that evening. The stench had been following him for some time now. A glance out the tall, cast-iron windows showed a fat, ghostly moon already materializing in the sky. Two days until it would be full.
“Pretty thing, isn't she?” The nonchalant contemplation was ground up and shredded by Greyback's gravelly voice. “Makes me itchy, just looking at her.”
He was closer now. Draco could feel the burning heat of his putrid breath on the back on his neck. The scratch of split nails on his pulse point made Draco stop. He could see the door to the drawing room. The consonants of idle conversation drifted towards them. Someone was sobbing.
“There's work to be done.”
Draco's voice was much more bored and calm than the jumping jacks his heart was doing told. The sting of Greyback's filthy nail biting into his skin jump-started Draco's legs back into working mode. He left the werewolf chuckling in the hallway and closed the drawing room door on him.
He passed the milling Death Eaters and the crying girl caressing her bruises in the corner. Lucius and Narcissa were already sitting in their appointed seats at the long table. As Draco sat next to his father, Greyback entered the room. He caught Draco's eye and licked a sticky smear of blood from his finger.
Everyone rose to attention when Voldemort bustled into the room. Someone had to clap a hand around the girl's mouth to keep her from screaming, but she was otherwise ignored. A house elf popped in with a tea tray and set it within reach of the Dark Lord's chair - a high-backed antique, the most imposing in the manor that Narcissa could find. The dark wood made the deformed man's green-tinged pale skin and red eyes stand out. Draco could sympathize with the crying girl's knee-jerk reaction.
The house elf prepared one tea cup while the twenty Death Eaters took their seats. Greyback and the man who had, presumably, brought the girl in stayed standing at the back of the room. The pop of the house elf's exit signaled the start of the meeting.
“Anyone care to introduce our guest of the day?” Voldemort sipped from his tea cup and sat back in his seat of power to examine the faces of his gathered minions.
The meaningless berk in charge of the girl's captivity hauled her to her shoe-less feet and thrust her forward until her hips knocked into the table. The jolt of contact shook the Dark Lord's tea service, making him frown with annoyance. The closest Death Eater hissed an unintelligible reprimand. Draco stared, impassive, at the girl's wet face. She was older than he by a few years at least, and familiar.
“Caught her snooping about some files she shouldn't have been at the ministry,” said the berk. Draco recalled his inane role as a night janitor at the Ministry, one of the many un-Marked eyes and ears Voldemort so carefully placed near his enemies.
“What files?” Voldemort asked, a mere flicker of interest coloring his cold voice.
The janitor's confidence petered out and he looked nervous now. “Shouldn't know, should I? But she had this with her. Wouldn't have thought anything about it, except the serial numbers started to move about.”
The fake Galleon in the man's calloused hand made Draco sit up. Ice water replaced his blood when Voldemort called his name - he shouldn't have reacted. Life, as it was for him now, was easier on the edges of the Dark Lord's attention.
“Draco.” The voice wrapped around him like a silk scarf on fire, and he was forced to look his Lord in the eye. “Your interest has been piqued. Do share with the rest of the class.”
“No! Please, Draco!”
He was shocked to hear his name from the girl, and mildly surprised to recognize her when she pushed her dirty hair away from her face. The name came up from a handful of hazy memories he had locked away, filed under a different Draco Malfoy's life experiences. For an entire humiliating semester she had patiently helped him navigate the vast mysteries of Astronomy in the school library.
Penelope Clearwater begged him to lie with her eyes, and he hated her for naively believing he had the power to show her mercy.
“It's enchanted with the Protean charm,” he said, and abandoned the sight of Penelope's crushed hopes for Voldemort's amused wreck of face. “Potter used Protean-enchanted coins to communicate with members of his resistance club.”
Draco had also used the same system to communicate with Madam Rosmerta during the past year, but he wasn't foolish enough to bring up a reminder of why his family was doused in complete shame and ridicule.
“She's too old to have been a part of that group,” he added. “But whoever she's in contact with has that uncommon knowledge, and is involved in something of interest.”
From the way Voldemort set his cup down and laced his spidery fingers together, Draco could tell he was pleased with this information.
“Well, we had better find out what that is,” he said, and, like an old rubber band dubiously stretched to its max, smiled at Draco. “You may have the honor, young Malfoy.”
Penelope's face was fearful. Either she was too afraid to struggle against her handler, or she knew that the effort was useless. Draco calmly pushed his chair out and stood. He adjusted his robes, removed his hawthorn wand from its holster, and approached the girl. Ten paces to the end of the table.
“Over here, please,” he told the berk janitor, and rolled up his sleeves. His parents' eyes burned through him more than the other Death Eaters, even more so than Voldemort's. He envisioned a metal fist keeping his desperation from reaching the surface and announcing to everyone just how little he wanted to do this.
Draco pursed his lips when Penelope started begging again. “Do you have anything useful to say?” he snapped at her with a sneer. That was as much mercy as he could afford.
Someone was going to notice the bead of sweat moving like a snail down the back of his neck. Draco bound her wrists and ankles and waved the janitor away from her with a smacking motion of his hand. He used his hate of the weakness the once emotionally collected girl showed to cast the Cruciatus. She crumbled, kneecaps cracking against the marble floor, and curled into a convulsing fetal position. But she didn't scream. She needed to scream!
Three excruciatingly slow minutes of nothing but gagging and jerking muscles even with his complete concentration. Draco lifted the curse.
“Who gave you that coin?” he demanded. Penelope's eyes rolled around in her head. Draco nudged her onto her back with his boot and asked again. Nothing. She wasn't even crying anymore.
The snickering was low, under the breath, but reached Draco's ears just fine.
“Seems like little Malfoy here has the brains, but not the gumption,” Greyback said. The feral smile belayed how much enjoyment the werewolf was getting.
“You've got to put you back into it, Draco dear,” came the bored voice of his aunt Bellatrix.
His next try got a yelp and moan out of the girl, but the wand was slippery in his hand and the pressure was getting to him. Lucius and Narcissa watched him with blank eyes, the spark of hope in them gone. This was just another exercise in Malfoy humiliation now.
“Let's stop wasting our time now, eh?”
Greyback's hand gripped him from wrist to forearm, so big was his hand. The prick of nails in his soft flesh was enough to start an over-production of adrenaline in Draco. The blood and slimy earth smell, the hulking mass looming over him, the tight snare of his hand, the vultures ready to descend - the mouse cracked.
And so did the Dark Lord's tea cup.
Draco dug his bony fingers into Greyback's wrist and twisted. The werewolf grimaced and dropped Draco's wand hand.
“Your place is over there,” he said, his wand not quite on Greyback, but close enough. The clear, hard look in Draco's eyes suggested he would remind him of more than just his place in the Dark Lord's hierarchy if he didn't move his ass.
The feeling in the room was different; colder, quieter, a renewed back-straightening interest in the proceedings from so many black hearts drooling for a show of violence made the colors brighter. There was something delightfully blade-like about the way the Malfoy boy's eyes stayed on the retreating, snarling, Greyback. His gaze was fixed even as he turned his wand back on the girl.
Her screams were beautiful.
The interrogation proved successful. On the completion of the meeting, and Penelope's body removed from the drawing room, many approving hands patted or shook Draco. Bellatrix had laughed and never looked more proud of her nephew. His parents had never look so relieved.
But too much had been said by Draco's behavior. The vultures would demand more in time.
“Draco Malfoy.”
There was his name coming off of that split tongue again. Twice in less than forty-five minutes was not a good omen. His parents hesitated, but were forced to go on; they hadn't been called for.
Draco paused in his flight from the room and appropriately bowed his head. “Yes, my Lord?”
The bleached bone white fingers that tilted his chin up and to the side were shockingly warm. There was still humanity behind the reptilian face. The thought of how much Voldemort had to hate his own warmth appeased the urge to flinch.
Another hand moved the collar of Draco's robes away, and the Dark Lord made a high-pitched snort of amusement.
“I would have thought that you were too old for Greyback,” he mused out loud, and let Draco go.
A quick touch to the scratch on his neck told Draco the wound had yet to start closing. Of course - it was from a werewolf close to the full moon. He would need to see Snape for a proper disinfectant and healing potion. For a fucking scratch.
“My age is not what appeals to him.” His heart raced from speaking out of turn.
Red eyes watched his face for traces of petty treachery. A mental probe poked at his thoughts. “You may be useful yet.”
“I live to serve you, my Lord.”
Voldemort smiled, the gray of his teeth showing. “Yes, you do.”
Dismissed, Draco left his Lord's company and swaggered through the manor straight to his rooms with his shaking hands buried deep into the pockets of his robes.
“Useful” meant many different things.
He never thought he would get into a scrape with Weasley again, especially not during an attack on an obscure Muggle village in an even more obscure part of the country. Though they weren't on the Quidditch pitch or in the Hogwarts hallways between classes, some things were the same. Like the feeling of callouses on Weasley's hands when they clamped around his neck. What was new was that the hands hadn't grabbed for him until the Death Eater mask had been ripped from his face.
But the insults hadn't changed much. If Draco had the air to breathe, he would have laughed.
“You slimy, evil, rotten shit! Pointy-faced, ferret shit- “
The howling was new as well. The fear spiking through both of them was paralyzing, and then Weasley decided blaming everything on Draco was the best course of action. Preceded by a fist to the chin, of course.
“You brought the wolves?!” he shouted, and hit him again.
“Last night was the full moon, of course we didn't bring the wolves, you idiot!” Draco shouted back, and tried his best to shield himself from Weasley's pummeling. “They bite whatever they feel like biting! They're not ours!”
Frantic shouting replaced the sounds of spell-fire. And then there was screaming too close for comfort - and wet tearing noises amongst pleased growls. Order members and Death Eaters alike ran past the pair on the ground. Weasley jumped to his feet when someone, a colleague by the look of horrified anger on the ginger's face, was tackled to the ground right in front of them.
The safe confines of the manor were in Draco's mind, ready for Apparition, when he noticed the familiar grey of the wolf's coat and his yellow eyes. He would recognize that bloody muzzle grin anywhere.
And Greyback recognized Draco; he could tell by how much more gobs of pink-tinged saliva dripped from his mouth upon spotting him. The man-wolf ignored the forced bravery Weasley was displaying and stalked towards his favorite prey.
The hawthorn wand in Draco's hand trembled. His legs wanted to run, but damned if he was going to give Greyback the pleasure of running him down like a rabbit.
“What's going on?” Weasley's nervousness and confusion over the sight of two enemies going for each other and not him was apparent. “What's he doing?”
“What does it look like he's doing?” Draco said, keeping his eyes on Greyback's slow and deliberate movements. “He's going to kill the witness.”
And have a bit of fun with a tasty morsel at the same time, but the was the less interesting part. Draco suspected Greyback would have liked to torture him with a bite and let him live with the shame, but a maimed corpse would have to do in this situation. Perhaps he'd even take a leg bone as a souvenir.
“Why is he leaving me alone?” Weasley asked, his wand trained on Greyback and trembling as much as Draco's.
“Could you do me a favor and not be a complete waste of space right now?” he snapped back, his face scowling. “Consider it a last request from wizard to wizard. He's been caught creating new wolves, without authorization, to stuff his own ranks. The Dark Lord would not be happy with Mr. Greyback here if someone survived and told him his mutt was planning a move against the hand that feeds him.”
Draco glanced at Weasley; his face was so pale his freckles could have been mistaken for flecks of blood. “I suggest you take that information and get your arse out of here before he decides he'd like a ginger side dish.”
He dodged Greyback's pounce, but was caught by a clawed paw to the hem of his robes and brought down. With a snarl and a viscous kick to the snout, Draco addled the wolf's senses long enough to scramble to his feet and sting him with an immobilization charm. Beyond making Greyback's movements sluggish the effect was weak.
Draco's heartbeat was going so fast he could feel the blood thudding its way past his temples to his brain. He gripped his wand tighter; if he could make Penelope scream, he could make Greyback regret every smirk and greedy look sent his way.
He held on to that hatred, let it fill his mind, and cast just as Greyback leaped once more. The sounds of an animal under the Cruciatus were worse than a human's, and so much more satisfying. Draco didn't need begging and pleading to satisfy the urge to make something suffer, just the purity of wordless agony.
He had fantasized about the way Greyback would choke and buck under his power, so when Weasley smacked his arm aside and broke his concentration, Draco turned his wand on him.
“What are you still doing here?” he demanded.
Weasley regarded him with disbelief and disgust. “Fucking hell, Malfoy! You enjoyed that, didn't you?”
“Don't waste your pity on him. He ruined your brother's face didn't he? You should be cheering me on.”
“The screaming...“ Weasley shook his head. “You're as much of a monster as he is if you get off on that.”
“That's true.” Draco's wand did not lower. “I suggest you leave now before you find out just how much of a monster I can be. I won't tell you again, Weasley.”
The weak growls of Greyback behind did not make Draco's gaze flicker. Stupid, misplaced morality would not steal this from him. Weasley looked from wizard to wolf and shook his head.
“You are completely mental.”
The crack of Weasley's dis-apparition echoed through the copse of trees; a lone, probably injured, Muggle was prompted into screaming. Orange and yellow light from a burning house in the distance colored Greyback's fur a dappled brown. The fire added pops and sizzling to the orchestra of moans, cries for help, and the staccato cracking of twigs as someone approached. His father's figure, darkly outlined by the growing fire as it consumed its neighbor house, was running towards him, wand at his side.
“Draco!”
There was terror and worry in his voice, the sort that brought up a memory from a long time ago when the only thing Narcissa and Lucius ever worried about was their son running into helicopters.
Draco's smile confused his father. “I do believe that I have a gift for the Dark Lord,” he said, and bound the werewolf with a flick of his wand.
In that moment, a shade of the old merciless Lucius settled over the anxious and kicked about one. He stood a little straighter and returned his son's smile.
Now with proper spacing!
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3710
The Power of Fear
Draco had always hated the goldfish with the cheeks that puffed out - honestly, they were ridiculous! The regular sort were pretty enough, why ruin the only thing they had going for them with such a hideous addition? He hadn't thought much of God before deciding the fish in the garden pond were stupid as well as ugly, but his tolerance for the belief was waning more every day.
The fish shoved each other out of the way to nibble the pebbles Draco tossed into their small, rippling world. He wondered if they even knew the difference between rocks and real food. Maybe they didn't even care? They lived in a pond where the only entertainment was the bubbles from a small waterfall, or the occasional water bug scooting across the surface.
The amusement passed. Draco sat back in the uncomfortable metal garden chair with a sigh, and the fish went back to their bubbles and bugs. A fat bumblebee buzzed about, attracted to the boy's bright hair; he ignored it and stared at the sky. The clouds were sparse and fluffy, and the sun was pleasantly warm on his skin. The recipe for a nap was there, but the idea of his complexion going from a hideous winter white to pinker than a spring lily was enough to keep his sleep-deprived lids open. Halfway, at least.
He caught the scent of body odor and young blood; it was weak compared to the sweet smell of daffodils and tulips, but constant. The mix made Draco stop breathing for several seconds in order to spare his lungs from the poison for as long as possible.
Judging by the weakness of the abominable werewolf's stench, he had to be at least twenty paces away. Too close for Draco's comfort, yet just far enough to appear as a non-threat to any on-looking eyes.
Draco's hands gripped the iron chair's arms as he stood, imagining for those two seconds that they were around Greyback's neck. Not that he would ever soil his own hands, even in the name of sweet, righteous violence against an enemy. He liked to think he was much more discreet than that.
Greyback stood near the azalea bushes, using the bird bath to wash his hands. The matted hair on his large head was shiny with blood. His face and stained robes were wet. But it was the smile on his scruffy, scarred face that made Draco want to be flogged rather than be subjected to it. When he blinked, that smile always stayed stuck to the backs of his eyelids. He fixated on the speck of raw meat stuck between two pointed teeth.
“Lovely day we're having,” Greyback said, and shook his hands dry over the grass.
“Draco.”
His mother's voice cracked through the atmosphere like Apparition into a forest sent birds flying from trees. She didn't spare Greyback a glance, and he didn't need to see the tension in the line of her shoulders to see that she wanted him as far away from the werewolf as possible. Right now.
“Your father is calling for you.”
That was a lie. Lucius was knocked out by Severus' extra strong calming drought by now. Greyback wouldn't know this, which was the point; the Malfoys were careful about who knew their strengths and weaknesses. Draco was a weakness they couldn't hide, but they could safeguard the reasons why, and bolster up their defenses with lies.
Narcissa twined her arm around Draco's and walked unhurriedly through the blooming gardens to the manor. A glance back confirmed that Greyback's eyes and smile were still aimed at him. Draco laid a hand over his mother's and slowly pried her fingernails out of his bicep.
“You are not to leave your room tonight,” she said in her conversational tone. The thing about that tone was that no discussion was meant to follow from the partner in conversation.
“Mother, you don't decide that,” was Draco's response. “I do as he commands.”
The sunshine faded upon their steps into the manor. Stone and marble made the echoes of their shoes bounce off the stares of grey-eyed ancestors. Narcissa escorted her son to the heavy, alarm-laden door to his private rooms. She touched the dark skin under his eyes with a cool, perfumed hand. A concentrated sigh through her nose tickled his chin.
“Let's say he commanded you to get some rest.”
Her discreet tenderness made him smile.
Orange light from the sunset lit the corridors of the South Wing as Draco walked to the drawing room that evening. The stench had been following him for some time now. A glance out the tall, cast-iron windows showed a fat, ghostly moon already materializing in the sky. Two days until it would be full.
“Pretty thing, isn't she?” The nonchalant contemplation was ground up and shredded by Greyback's gravelly voice. “Makes me itchy, just looking at her.”
He was closer now. Draco could feel the burning heat of his putrid breath on the back on his neck. The scratch of split nails on his pulse point made Draco stop. He could see the door to the drawing room. The consonants of idle conversation drifted towards them. Someone was sobbing.
“There's work to be done.”
Draco's voice was much more bored and calm than the jumping jacks his heart was doing told. The sting of Greyback's filthy nail biting into his skin jump-started Draco's legs back into working mode. He left the werewolf chuckling in the hallway and closed the drawing room door on him.
He passed the milling Death Eaters and the crying girl caressing her bruises in the corner. Lucius and Narcissa were already sitting in their appointed seats at the long table. As Draco sat next to his father, Greyback entered the room. He caught Draco's eye and licked a sticky smear of blood from his finger.
Everyone rose to attention when Voldemort bustled into the room. Someone had to clap a hand around the girl's mouth to keep her from screaming, but she was otherwise ignored. A house elf popped in with a tea tray and set it within reach of the Dark Lord's chair - a high-backed antique, the most imposing in the manor that Narcissa could find. The dark wood made the deformed man's green-tinged pale skin and red eyes stand out. Draco could sympathize with the crying girl's knee-jerk reaction.
The house elf prepared one tea cup while the twenty Death Eaters took their seats. Greyback and the man who had, presumably, brought the girl in stayed standing at the back of the room. The pop of the house elf's exit signaled the start of the meeting.
“Anyone care to introduce our guest of the day?” Voldemort sipped from his tea cup and sat back in his seat of power to examine the faces of his gathered minions.
The meaningless berk in charge of the girl's captivity hauled her to her shoe-less feet and thrust her forward until her hips knocked into the table. The jolt of contact shook the Dark Lord's tea service, making him frown with annoyance. The closest Death Eater hissed an unintelligible reprimand. Draco stared, impassive, at the girl's wet face. She was older than he by a few years at least, and familiar.
“Caught her snooping about some files she shouldn't have been at the ministry,” said the berk. Draco recalled his inane role as a night janitor at the Ministry, one of the many un-Marked eyes and ears Voldemort so carefully placed near his enemies.
“What files?” Voldemort asked, a mere flicker of interest coloring his cold voice.
The janitor's confidence petered out and he looked nervous now. “Shouldn't know, should I? But she had this with her. Wouldn't have thought anything about it, except the serial numbers started to move about.”
The fake Galleon in the man's calloused hand made Draco sit up. Ice water replaced his blood when Voldemort called his name - he shouldn't have reacted. Life, as it was for him now, was easier on the edges of the Dark Lord's attention.
“Draco.” The voice wrapped around him like a silk scarf on fire, and he was forced to look his Lord in the eye. “Your interest has been piqued. Do share with the rest of the class.”
“No! Please, Draco!”
He was shocked to hear his name from the girl, and mildly surprised to recognize her when she pushed her dirty hair away from her face. The name came up from a handful of hazy memories he had locked away, filed under a different Draco Malfoy's life experiences. For an entire humiliating semester she had patiently helped him navigate the vast mysteries of Astronomy in the school library.
Penelope Clearwater begged him to lie with her eyes, and he hated her for naively believing he had the power to show her mercy.
“It's enchanted with the Protean charm,” he said, and abandoned the sight of Penelope's crushed hopes for Voldemort's amused wreck of face. “Potter used Protean-enchanted coins to communicate with members of his resistance club.”
Draco had also used the same system to communicate with Madam Rosmerta during the past year, but he wasn't foolish enough to bring up a reminder of why his family was doused in complete shame and ridicule.
“She's too old to have been a part of that group,” he added. “But whoever she's in contact with has that uncommon knowledge, and is involved in something of interest.”
From the way Voldemort set his cup down and laced his spidery fingers together, Draco could tell he was pleased with this information.
“Well, we had better find out what that is,” he said, and, like an old rubber band dubiously stretched to its max, smiled at Draco. “You may have the honor, young Malfoy.”
Penelope's face was fearful. Either she was too afraid to struggle against her handler, or she knew that the effort was useless. Draco calmly pushed his chair out and stood. He adjusted his robes, removed his hawthorn wand from its holster, and approached the girl. Ten paces to the end of the table.
“Over here, please,” he told the berk janitor, and rolled up his sleeves. His parents' eyes burned through him more than the other Death Eaters, even more so than Voldemort's. He envisioned a metal fist keeping his desperation from reaching the surface and announcing to everyone just how little he wanted to do this.
Draco pursed his lips when Penelope started begging again. “Do you have anything useful to say?” he snapped at her with a sneer. That was as much mercy as he could afford.
Someone was going to notice the bead of sweat moving like a snail down the back of his neck. Draco bound her wrists and ankles and waved the janitor away from her with a smacking motion of his hand. He used his hate of the weakness the once emotionally collected girl showed to cast the Cruciatus. She crumbled, kneecaps cracking against the marble floor, and curled into a convulsing fetal position. But she didn't scream. She needed to scream!
Three excruciatingly slow minutes of nothing but gagging and jerking muscles even with his complete concentration. Draco lifted the curse.
“Who gave you that coin?” he demanded. Penelope's eyes rolled around in her head. Draco nudged her onto her back with his boot and asked again. Nothing. She wasn't even crying anymore.
The snickering was low, under the breath, but reached Draco's ears just fine.
“Seems like little Malfoy here has the brains, but not the gumption,” Greyback said. The feral smile belayed how much enjoyment the werewolf was getting.
“You've got to put you back into it, Draco dear,” came the bored voice of his aunt Bellatrix.
His next try got a yelp and moan out of the girl, but the wand was slippery in his hand and the pressure was getting to him. Lucius and Narcissa watched him with blank eyes, the spark of hope in them gone. This was just another exercise in Malfoy humiliation now.
“Let's stop wasting our time now, eh?”
Greyback's hand gripped him from wrist to forearm, so big was his hand. The prick of nails in his soft flesh was enough to start an over-production of adrenaline in Draco. The blood and slimy earth smell, the hulking mass looming over him, the tight snare of his hand, the vultures ready to descend - the mouse cracked.
And so did the Dark Lord's tea cup.
Draco dug his bony fingers into Greyback's wrist and twisted. The werewolf grimaced and dropped Draco's wand hand.
“Your place is over there,” he said, his wand not quite on Greyback, but close enough. The clear, hard look in Draco's eyes suggested he would remind him of more than just his place in the Dark Lord's hierarchy if he didn't move his ass.
The feeling in the room was different; colder, quieter, a renewed back-straightening interest in the proceedings from so many black hearts drooling for a show of violence made the colors brighter. There was something delightfully blade-like about the way the Malfoy boy's eyes stayed on the retreating, snarling, Greyback. His gaze was fixed even as he turned his wand back on the girl.
Her screams were beautiful.
The interrogation proved successful. On the completion of the meeting, and Penelope's body removed from the drawing room, many approving hands patted or shook Draco. Bellatrix had laughed and never looked more proud of her nephew. His parents had never look so relieved.
But too much had been said by Draco's behavior. The vultures would demand more in time.
“Draco Malfoy.”
There was his name coming off of that split tongue again. Twice in less than forty-five minutes was not a good omen. His parents hesitated, but were forced to go on; they hadn't been called for.
Draco paused in his flight from the room and appropriately bowed his head. “Yes, my Lord?”
The bleached bone white fingers that tilted his chin up and to the side were shockingly warm. There was still humanity behind the reptilian face. The thought of how much Voldemort had to hate his own warmth appeased the urge to flinch.
Another hand moved the collar of Draco's robes away, and the Dark Lord made a high-pitched snort of amusement.
“I would have thought that you were too old for Greyback,” he mused out loud, and let Draco go.
A quick touch to the scratch on his neck told Draco the wound had yet to start closing. Of course - it was from a werewolf close to the full moon. He would need to see Snape for a proper disinfectant and healing potion. For a fucking scratch.
“My age is not what appeals to him.” His heart raced from speaking out of turn.
Red eyes watched his face for traces of petty treachery. A mental probe poked at his thoughts. “You may be useful yet.”
“I live to serve you, my Lord.”
Voldemort smiled, the gray of his teeth showing. “Yes, you do.”
Dismissed, Draco left his Lord's company and swaggered through the manor straight to his rooms with his shaking hands buried deep into the pockets of his robes.
“Useful” meant many different things.
He never thought he would get into a scrape with Weasley again, especially not during an attack on an obscure Muggle village in an even more obscure part of the country. Though they weren't on the Quidditch pitch or in the Hogwarts hallways between classes, some things were the same. Like the feeling of callouses on Weasley's hands when they clamped around his neck. What was new was that the hands hadn't grabbed for him until the Death Eater mask had been ripped from his face.
But the insults hadn't changed much. If Draco had the air to breathe, he would have laughed.
“You slimy, evil, rotten shit! Pointy-faced, ferret shit- “
The howling was new as well. The fear spiking through both of them was paralyzing, and then Weasley decided blaming everything on Draco was the best course of action. Preceded by a fist to the chin, of course.
“You brought the wolves?!” he shouted, and hit him again.
“Last night was the full moon, of course we didn't bring the wolves, you idiot!” Draco shouted back, and tried his best to shield himself from Weasley's pummeling. “They bite whatever they feel like biting! They're not ours!”
Frantic shouting replaced the sounds of spell-fire. And then there was screaming too close for comfort - and wet tearing noises amongst pleased growls. Order members and Death Eaters alike ran past the pair on the ground. Weasley jumped to his feet when someone, a colleague by the look of horrified anger on the ginger's face, was tackled to the ground right in front of them.
The safe confines of the manor were in Draco's mind, ready for Apparition, when he noticed the familiar grey of the wolf's coat and his yellow eyes. He would recognize that bloody muzzle grin anywhere.
And Greyback recognized Draco; he could tell by how much more gobs of pink-tinged saliva dripped from his mouth upon spotting him. The man-wolf ignored the forced bravery Weasley was displaying and stalked towards his favorite prey.
The hawthorn wand in Draco's hand trembled. His legs wanted to run, but damned if he was going to give Greyback the pleasure of running him down like a rabbit.
“What's going on?” Weasley's nervousness and confusion over the sight of two enemies going for each other and not him was apparent. “What's he doing?”
“What does it look like he's doing?” Draco said, keeping his eyes on Greyback's slow and deliberate movements. “He's going to kill the witness.”
And have a bit of fun with a tasty morsel at the same time, but the was the less interesting part. Draco suspected Greyback would have liked to torture him with a bite and let him live with the shame, but a maimed corpse would have to do in this situation. Perhaps he'd even take a leg bone as a souvenir.
“Why is he leaving me alone?” Weasley asked, his wand trained on Greyback and trembling as much as Draco's.
“Could you do me a favor and not be a complete waste of space right now?” he snapped back, his face scowling. “Consider it a last request from wizard to wizard. He's been caught creating new wolves, without authorization, to stuff his own ranks. The Dark Lord would not be happy with Mr. Greyback here if someone survived and told him his mutt was planning a move against the hand that feeds him.”
Draco glanced at Weasley; his face was so pale his freckles could have been mistaken for flecks of blood. “I suggest you take that information and get your arse out of here before he decides he'd like a ginger side dish.”
He dodged Greyback's pounce, but was caught by a clawed paw to the hem of his robes and brought down. With a snarl and a viscous kick to the snout, Draco addled the wolf's senses long enough to scramble to his feet and sting him with an immobilization charm. Beyond making Greyback's movements sluggish the effect was weak.
Draco's heartbeat was going so fast he could feel the blood thudding its way past his temples to his brain. He gripped his wand tighter; if he could make Penelope scream, he could make Greyback regret every smirk and greedy look sent his way.
He held on to that hatred, let it fill his mind, and cast just as Greyback leaped once more. The sounds of an animal under the Cruciatus were worse than a human's, and so much more satisfying. Draco didn't need begging and pleading to satisfy the urge to make something suffer, just the purity of wordless agony.
He had fantasized about the way Greyback would choke and buck under his power, so when Weasley smacked his arm aside and broke his concentration, Draco turned his wand on him.
“What are you still doing here?” he demanded.
Weasley regarded him with disbelief and disgust. “Fucking hell, Malfoy! You enjoyed that, didn't you?”
“Don't waste your pity on him. He ruined your brother's face didn't he? You should be cheering me on.”
“The screaming...“ Weasley shook his head. “You're as much of a monster as he is if you get off on that.”
“That's true.” Draco's wand did not lower. “I suggest you leave now before you find out just how much of a monster I can be. I won't tell you again, Weasley.”
The weak growls of Greyback behind did not make Draco's gaze flicker. Stupid, misplaced morality would not steal this from him. Weasley looked from wizard to wolf and shook his head.
“You are completely mental.”
The crack of Weasley's dis-apparition echoed through the copse of trees; a lone, probably injured, Muggle was prompted into screaming. Orange and yellow light from a burning house in the distance colored Greyback's fur a dappled brown. The fire added pops and sizzling to the orchestra of moans, cries for help, and the staccato cracking of twigs as someone approached. His father's figure, darkly outlined by the growing fire as it consumed its neighbor house, was running towards him, wand at his side.
“Draco!”
There was terror and worry in his voice, the sort that brought up a memory from a long time ago when the only thing Narcissa and Lucius ever worried about was their son running into helicopters.
Draco's smile confused his father. “I do believe that I have a gift for the Dark Lord,” he said, and bound the werewolf with a flick of his wand.
In that moment, a shade of the old merciless Lucius settled over the anxious and kicked about one. He stood a little straighter and returned his son's smile.