Chapter Six of 'A Black Stone in a Glass Box'- A White Dungeon
Chapter Five.
Title: A Black Stone in a Glass Box (6/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, Blaise/Astoria
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Weird magic, DH-compliant in most ways but ignores epilogue, some angst, OC character death.
Summary: Harry has made a sacrifice to protect the wizarding world. And Draco Malfoy is going to find a way to reverse it if it kills him. After all, if he doesn’t reverse it, then he’ll only die of boredom anyway.
Author’s Notes: This is based on the fairy tale of Koschei the Deathless, which is where the familiarity in the plot will probably come from. It’s going to be an action/adventure and humor story more than a romance, mostly in Draco’s POV, and although the first chapter is fairly dark, the rest are definitely lighter
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Six-A White Dungeon
Draco opened his eyes and groaned a little. He sat up and winced when his hand met the throbbing lump on the back of his head. He was in a bad way.
Then he realized that his hand was down at his side and in fact it was a wall pressing against the lump on the back of his head, and grimaced. He really was in a bad way if he couldn’t even keep track of where the parts of his body were at any given moment.
He shut his eyes and concentrated on memory, which he thought would help him most right now. He remembered the dog rushing him, and he had cast another water shield to obliterate the flames it had tried to breathe at him. He knew that much. He fastened that image in his mind, and held it there. What had happened after it? How had he got here?
He didn’t know where “here” was, in fact, but it was a dark and enclosed space, and that was enough to tell him its differences from the sunlit corridors he had walked through. He reached out with both hands and felt for the confines of the room.
Tall enough to let him sit up and wide enough to let him lie down, Draco judged. Otherwise, it was remarkably small; his hands brushed against stone almost as soon as he stretched them out beyond that.
He envisioned himself in a little stone egg, one that could be blocked or crushed by the ceiling falling in, the way that he could die down here and no one else would ever know what had happened to him-
Draco drew a deep, slow breath, and told himself he was being ridiculous. Yes, ridiculous. What kind of Malfoy panicked because his enemy had put him in a cell? Malfoys had been in all sorts of cells down the centuries, and they had come out and put their enemies inside them instead.
Not that Draco had the urge to do that with the dog. He smiled a little to think of it, though. But no, what he wanted was to kill it, and force it to relinquish whatever little piece of Potter’s heart it had in storage.
Potter’s heart. What will happen to him if I die here, and don’t free myself, or convince the dog to do it? However it managed to put me in the dungeon in the first place.
Draco sighed as the answer came to him. He would stay there, of course. He hadn’t let anyone know he was going on this mad quest with Potter; he hadn’t even bothered to inform his parents that he had figured out the chain ritual. He had simply leapt straight into it, and let Potter take him from the Manor to the bird’s cave.
Well, that would change when he got out of here. Draco would write down what he knew so far and insist on finding an owl to send it to his parents, and Pansy. Pansy might have become a troublesome shrew obsessed with the war and her family, but at least she would appreciate the fact that Draco wouldn’t want knowledge of this kind-potential and glorious blackmail material-die with him.
Now there was only the problem of getting out of the dungeon. Draco accepted that he didn’t know how he had got here, how he had lost the battle with the dog so badly, only that it had knocked him unconscious and put him here somehow.
His responsibility was to figure out how to escape, not to minutely analyze every possible movement of the dog for clues.
Draco stood up, and nodded when the ceiling almost knocked him on the head. That was how high it was, then. He groped for his wand, without much hope, and nearly fell over in surprise when he found it inside his clothes.
Did the dog know it was important to wizards? Perhaps it had associated wands with Potter and felt obscurely that Draco should keep it, even though it was a weapon. Or maybe Draco was crediting the bloody dog with far too much intelligence and he should go ahead and act while he could.
When he held the wand up and turned in a slow circle, the Lumos illuminated the cell fully. Draco blinked as painful sparks leaped into his eyes. His dungeon cell was made of white marble, the same eye-shatteringly pure color as the walls in the corridors above. It wouldn’t be surprising, Draco thought, if it was dug out of the house’s foundation somehow.
Somehow. He was tired of that word, unless it could be attached to “miraculously,” as in, “Somehow, he miraculously escaped.”
He toyed with casting a few spells that would burrow up through the stone, but had to put that notion aside. He had no idea how thick the stone was, or what may lie outside the door. Sure, it seemed like this was part of the foundations, but he could as easily be inside a tower without windows. Bloody lot of good it would do to start burrowing and then break through a wall to tumble out of the sky.
He also couldn’t see a door, which made picking a lock rather out of the question. Draco took a moment to mourn for the lack of opportunity to use the skills Louis had taught him.
He thought about it a little more, and then smiled. What did Malfoys do when wrongfully imprisoned in dungeons by their enemies? They wrote to the newspapers. They lodged cold and furious complaints with the proper authorities. They entertained visitors and dropped cryptic hints about the secrets they knew that might be worth their freedom.
In other words, captive Malfoys made a fuss.
Draco didn’t want to break through the walls blindly in case it brought them down on his head, but there was something he could do that might convince the dog he was trying to. He raised his wand and whispered, “Adstrepo.”
Deep, booming noises began to resound against the cell’s walls, including hollow sounds that mimicked clapping hands. There were mad cackles, too, and the crackling of flames, and sledgehammers hitting stones, and dogs barking. Draco thought that last round might bring the dog faster than anything else.
He cast a charm on his ears to muffle the noise and leaned back to wait.
It didn’t take long. Draco heard barking from what sounded like an agitated throat. He cast his spell again, and the clamor of the veritable kennel that seemed like it was trapped in the cell with him redoubled again.
This time, it sounded like paws were scraping against the wall. Draco narrowed his eyes, and made out a thin line of light come into being on the stone. Who knew how the dog operated the door, since it had only paws and not hands, but that mattered less than the essential truth that there was a way into the open appearing. Draco stepped back and banished the Lumos from his wand so the dog wouldn’t see him right away.
Finally, the door opened completely, and the dog thrust its head into the cell, staring around. Draco saw the moment when its eyes widened and it began to suck its breath in, probably to clear the cell out with a good burst of flames.
Draco sprang lightly out and landed in front of the dog with a tumbler’s movement that would have made Danielle, his last dancer lover, weep in pride.
The dog scrambled to the side, and its breath came out as harmless smoke and fumes and no more. Draco gestured lazily with his wand, and the smoke flew back up the dog’s nostrils and buried itself in its throat.
The dog began to sneeze frantically. Draco stepped towards it. He wasn’t taking any chances this time with a spell that was supposed to stop an animal’s heart. This dog could resist most magic, or at least some.
That was all right. Draco would kill it indirectly.
“Accio rock,” he said cheerfully, focusing his wand on a loose block of stone in the corridor ceiling that looked lower than the rest. He heard the dog’s frenzied growl, and stepped out of the way of its charge.
Which put the dog neatly in the path of the falling stone.
There was a loud and messy half-explosion. Draco saw blood stain the far side of the stone, and wrinkled his nose. There was also a smell that resembled the mixture between a Muggle chemical factory and, well, wet dog.
Then the blood faded, and, with it, the paws sticking out from under the block. Draco levitated it up, in time to see the last traces of the body become two simpler objects. One was a piece of brown fur that Potter had probably enchanted to become the dog in the first place. The other was a glinting white tooth that Draco bent down and picked up a second before the palace followed the dog.
Draco picked up the tooth, tried to spin it, and cursed mildly as it tumbled out of his hand and landed on the ground. Well, he ought to have remembered that a tooth wouldn’t spin as easily as a feather. What really mattered was that he had won.
He picked up the tooth and turned around, wondering whether the river had come back despite the palace’s vanishing. No, there was only a spread of green plants, shining as though they had never been trampled or crossed, and Potter standing some meters away from him, on what would have been the opposite bank, gaping at him.
Draco couldn’t help himself. Faced with surprise so profound, there was only one reaction that made any sense. He bowed and swept his hands out to either side. “What do you think?” he asked, and then stood back up and bowed again, bending fully at the waist this time and keeping his eyes on the jungle floor. “That one, or this one?”
“I don’t care, Malfoy.”
Draco looked up, and laughed at the way Potter’s eyes blazed and his teeth were locked together. “You resent me for taking care of the threat to your heart and power,” he said comfortably, shrugging a little and bouncing the tooth in his hand. “Well, resent me all you want. The bird is gone, and now the dog. You’re a little closer to being free, and the chain ritual is a little closer to being ended.”
Potter drew his wand.
Well, that hadn’t been something Draco had thought would happen. He took a step back and lifted his wand in front of him. “You’re remembering that I’m on your side, right, Potter?” he asked cautiously. “That war business some years ago was all a misunderstanding, really.”
“I know you’re on the side of having a Dark Lord come back to haunt the world,” Potter said. “I never should have trusted that nonsense you spouted to me about another ritual that could hold them back. I chose to make this sacrifice. What right do you have to disrupt it?”
Draco took another few steps closer, instead of backing away the way he’d planned on. Astonishment would do that to people sometimes. “You can ask that, Potter?” he demanded. “Really?”
Whatever Potter thought of the tone of his voice, it at least had the effect of surprising him. He backed up a step himself, and stared. Then he said, “Yes. I can ask it for all the reasons that I’ve already mentioned-because you’re my enemy, and you have a reason to-”
“You just mentioned them, so you don’t need to repeat them,” Draco interrupted him, and sighed. “Really, Potter. How did I find out about the chain ritual in the first place?”
“You noticed something wrong with me. And that’s strange.” Potter folded his arms. “You never cared before whether I was behaving like a good little hero or acting up, unless you could get me in trouble.”
“But how did I learn it was a chain ritual?” Draco reminded him patiently. “Instead of, say, that you’d decided to sacrifice your brain for greater magic skill in the sure and certain belief that losing it would make no difference?”
Potter stared at him, his mouth working, obviously torn between whether he should pursue the insult or answer Draco’s question. Draco stood there and waited. He was thoroughly sick of this. Potter had been the one to surrender the key to the problem to him, and he still wanted to blame Draco for it. Typical.
Draco wondered idly what would happen if Potter was placed in a situation where he couldn’t blame anyone, except himself. He would probably explode, or something.
“You know because I told you,” Potter said at last.
Draco nodded carefully, in the exaggerated fashion that it seemed Potter was most likely to understand. “And what would prevent someone else-someone who really does want the Dark Lords to come back, which I assure you I don’t, since I don’t fancy being a slave again-from asking you? You were so out of it that you would have given the answer to anyone. When that ritual took your heart, it took any sense that you cared about yourself, too. It destroyed your self-preservation instinct,” he added kindly, because Potter was gaping at him and so must require a simpler explanation. “You never would have believed me so easily before, but suspicion and hatred are emotions. So you told me. You could have told any other enemy, too.”
Or a friend. Maybe it would have been better if Potter had confessed to one of his friends and they had set out to destroy the ritual instead of Draco. At least Potter wouldn’t be having a shouting match with Draco in the middle of a fading jungle.
On the other hand, Draco would still be bored, and that really didn’t bear thinking of.
“I never would have confessed that easily,” Potter said, although his forehead was wrinkled and he frowned into the distance as though he almost remembered the conversation. “You tricked me somehow.”
Draco rolled his eyes, hard, and then winced and resolved not to do that again. It hurt, and he didn’t owe it to Potter to hurt himself for Potter’s sake. He had done more than enough for him out of the goodness of his heart. “You told me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Do you want me to use one of those charms that pulls a memory to the surface of your mind and lets it play out before your eyes like a Pensieve?” Draco offered earnestly. “Because I could, you know.”
Potter shuddered. Draco smiled. Those charms hurt for the same reason that breaking an Obliviate did: they took a wizard deeper into his mind than he was ever meant to go. “No,” Potter whispered, a little hoarsely, and then coughed and cleared his throat. “No, I don’t want you to do that,” he repeated, more firmly.
“Then accept the truth of what I said,” Draco said, and spread his arms again, although this time he had no temptation to bow. “Accept the bloody truth,” he added more harshly, when he saw Potter hesitating. “Yes, this is what happened. How else would I know about that ritual otherwise? You said it was old and secret, and I have to admit, I’ve never heard of anything this elaborate. And I’ve never heard of anything that took someone’s heart to protect the world from Dark Lords, either.”
Potter opened and closed his mouth a few times. Then he said, “Swear to me that you won’t tell anyone else.”
Draco rolled his eyes again, but this time gently, out of consideration for himself, if Potter couldn’t be bothered to have any. “Tell them about the ritual and the content? I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I don’t know the incantation you used or the exact enchantments. By the time it’s broken, it’ll be nothing more than a fond memory, a good story.”
Potter stepped towards him. “I don’t want you to ever mention it again. Either as a good story or a memory.”
Draco peered at him. “But then what will I say to explain where I was in these next few days if people ask me? I must have something to say. Preserving a dignified silence is all very well in its way, but I only do what I’m good at.”
“Deny it, Malfoy.” Potter moved another step closer. “Come up with a lie. I don’t care. But you’re going to stop here. I forbid you to try and destroy the other guardians.”
Draco widened his eyes. His blood rushed through his veins, and he had to repress the temptation to pant. “Really?” he murmured, full-throated. “You forbid me?”
“Yes,” Potter snapped. “You said that you’re doing this because I would have confessed the secret of the ritual to anyone. Well, I won’t, not now that you’ve woken me up a little and warned me about the danger. This is far enough to go. I have enough of my emotions back.”
Draco watched him for a few seconds, then smiled. “I’m still on the word ‘forbid,’” he remarked politely. “How exactly do you think that you can forbid me?”
“I swear to God, Malfoy-”
“Because,” Draco said, holding up the dog’s tooth, “I know some spells that can follow this and Apparate me to the place where I would use it, either as a weapon or a key.”
Potter relaxed, staring at him. Then he laughed. “You don’t really, Malfoy,” he said. “You don’t have the slightest idea.”
“Watch me,” Draco said, and cast one of the spells, and let the tooth pull him through oblivion towards the next guardian.
He had to concede that Potter really was handsome with an incredulously flushed face.
Chapter Seven.
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