Chapter Eleven of 'A Dream of Running Water'- A Surprise
Chapter Ten.
Title: A Dream of Running Water (11/12)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Eventual Harry/Draco
Warnings: Minor character death, violence, angst, AU after HBP
Rating: R
Summary: Driven nearly mad by his bitterness against the Dark Lord, Draco becomes a spy for the Order of the Phoenix. The device they sneak him to aid in his reports has unpredictable side-effects-like allowing Draco to dream of a landscape with a river running through it. That would be soothing, if Potter wasn’t there.
Author’s Notes: This will probably be a fairly short fic, maybe ten or twelve chapters. It will be updated every Tuesday.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eleven-A Surprise
Nagini was wound about the Dark Lord, in almost the same way that the Dark Lord had told her to bind about Draco, but her coils were running up and down his body, massaging back and forth as if he would wake up from that. Draco hoped not. The center of his chest still felt frozen, but the sight of that pale hand seizing the yew wand would probably freeze his whole body.
“Now,” said Snape, and his voice was quiet, so controlled that Draco thought it would splinter into shards any second. “I want you to cast the exact same spell that I will, at the snake. Do you understand?”
Draco nodded, and said nothing about how easy that was to understand and how hard to do. He had no idea what spells Snape would choose to cast on Nagini. Maybe they would be ones Draco didn’t have the power to match.
But Snape didn’t hesitate, and didn’t ask Draco’s opinion, either. He only pointed his wand, and a second later, the incantation ripped free from him. “Sectumsempra!”
Draco gaped, and wanted to protest. That was the spell that Potter had used to tear him apart in the bathroom at Hogwarts, he knew it was.
But Potter was dead, and he had more than paid for that crime, the way Draco understood it. He let fly with the identical curse, and watched as both spells cut into Nagini, Snape’s near her head and Draco’s near her tail.
Nagini didn’t die, though. Maybe Draco’s spell had been misaimed, or maybe magic that affected humans didn’t affect magical snakes. She whipped around with a hiss and began to pour towards them, and Draco found himself holding his breath, wondering what in the world he could do next.
Snape seemed to have no doubt. He reached into his pocket and pulled out something that shimmered and tilted back and forth in its crystal flask, something that looked like thick wine of the kind Draco’s father had favored with dinner. Severus uncorked the flask and cast the potion inside out in front of him.
Draco gagged when he smelled the potion. Nothing he had ever brewed stank that badly. Nagini abruptly reared up and acted as if she was trying to go backwards when her tongue flickered out of her mouth, but she had come too far forwards. The potion hit her, and specifically the cuts on her head and tail that the spells had caused.
Nagini began to cry out in what sounded oddly like a human’s hiss of agony, her head snapping back and forth. Draco watched in silent horror as the slice in her neck widened. The potion Snape had cast seemed to be eating into it, deepening the cut like a river carving a canyon, and soon her head was only hanging onto her body by a strip of skin and scale. And then the potion gave a sharp bubbling noise, and Nagini collapsed to the floor, motionless, parts of her body rapidly dissolving.
“What was that?” Draco asked, the words almost exploding out of him. He could understand the spells not working against Nagini if the Dark Lord had cast some spell that protected his snake-which of course he would have if she was a Horcrux-but he didn’t know why the potion Snape had used next had worked.
“Basilisk venom,” was the only thing Snape said, and he ignored all of Draco’s questions about where he had got it and why it had worked. He moved swiftly over to Potter’s body and spent a moment staring into his dangling face. Draco turned his head aside, shuddering. If Snape wanted to savor this moment as his revenge on Potter’s dad, fine, but there were some things too awful for Draco to watch.
“I can only hope that this is what Albus meant,” he heard Snape mutter, and he turned back when something silvery and soft abruptly appeared, to fill the room with light. He thought Snape had cast a spell, but no, instead Snape held his arms out towards Potter. It looked as though his hands had been cut off at the wrists.
Draco yelped, and then realized that Snape held Potter’s Invisibility Cloak. Where had he got that?
Snape gave him a faint, contemptuous glance, and draped Potter’s body in the Cloak. Draco sighed a little as it disappeared. Yes, maybe he was a coward, but it was easier to look at Potter when he didn’t have to look directly at him.
“Now we must deal with a final threat,” said Snape, and turned around.
Draco opened his mouth to ask what that was, and then leaped and whirled as he heard the most awful sound he had ever heard. The Dark Lord was stirring, and his hand was already creeping like a twitching spider towards his wand.
He stopped, though, and Draco knew the exact moment when his eyes fell on the chopped-up, dead Nagini, because he uttered a loud hiss that filled Draco’s stomach with water. He started to back away, towards Snape.
Snape took a single step forwards. His eyes were as intent on the Dark Lord as they had been when he was goading him to kill Potter. And his hand was in his pocket again. Draco had almost lost his capacity to be surprised, and only wondered what Snape thought he would pull out this time.
He blurted, “What?” in shock when Snape took out a round glass vial. Draco had never seen one like it. Most vials were long and thin so you could store them in a shelf easily, or at least so you could put them in a pocket or sling them on a belt. This one looked like a ball, except that of course it was ridiculous to have a glass ball.
The Dark Lord was rising slowly to his feet like the wrath of a god. Snape wound up and threw the glass ball as hard as he could. The Dark Lord didn’t even try to dodge as the ball splattered against his chest and the shards jabbed him in the chest, covering him with the potion. He was gliding towards them, and Draco didn’t think he had eyes for anything else.
But when the Dark Lord took a step, his legs seemed to falter beneath him. He dropped to his knees on the floor, snarling. Draco wanted to faint, but he found himself compelled to stand there, staring. He didn’t know what was going on, but it didn’t seem to matter, not if the long strides that Professor Snape was taking towards the Dark Lord were serious. He was the one who was going to take care of this situation, not Draco.
The Dark Lord lifted his head and hissed something in Parseltongue. Draco was glad that he would never know what the monster was saying. And then the Dark Lord sprawled forwards and lay there, twitching uselessly. Draco watched the twitches race up and down his legs in the seconds before his face settled into repose. He stared. It seemed to be real sleep.
“What?” He whispered it this time.
“The vial contained the Draught of Living Death.” Snape shrugged. “A slight variation made it able to be effective upon entering the bloodstream, rather than on being drunk.” Draco wanted to laugh; Snape sounded so absurdly like Professor Snape, lecturing to Draco back in the Hogwarts potions lab, as though nothing had happened since then.
“Why not just kill him?” Draco whispered. He looked at the Dark Lord, and then away again. Even knowing they might be able to handle him like this, Draco’s heart was still throbbing furiously up his throat. He would never be easy until the Dark Lord was dead.
“I had not thought you so bloodthirsty,” Snape said, but he continued, instead of trying to enjoy the effects of Draco’s flush. “Because he would be a nightmare to duel. This was the surer method to bring him down. And we need to wait until-to see if Albus was right.” He turned and faced Potter’s shrouded corpse.
Draco turned with him, as much as he didn’t want to. He thought this was something he really owed Potter. He had been the one who helped the Dark Lord capture him.
But he leaped back and yelled as loudly as he could when he saw Potter’s corpse, covered by the Cloak, stirring.
Snape reached out and grabbed his arm, cutting off his scream with a Silencing Charm. Then he cast a locking spell at the door and strode over to Potter. With another flick of his wand, he cut the golden chains that were wrapped around Potter and lifted him down.
He was moving.
He was alive.
That can’t be true, Draco thought numbly. No one survives the Killing Curse.
And then, like another echo from a distant, gentler time, the thought, He did. Once before.
Draco shook his head and said nothing. He watched as the Cloak thrashed, only visible because it was moving and sent ripples of light and shadow racing around the room. Then Potter pushed himself slowly out of the middle of it, and blinked, and shook his head, and looked around the room as though he was trying to decide what should happen next.
His gaze fell on Draco, and softened. “You didn’t tell him, did you?” he asked Snape, simply, wearily.
“I dared not,” said Snape. “I didn’t even know if it would work.” He was already standing back from Potter with a scowl on his face and his arms folded, as if he didn’t appreciate the fact that Potter was alive.
The only thing Draco could say, to Snape, was, “You told me that you wanted revenge on his father, through him.”
Snape gave him a remote look. “That was there in case the Dark Lord read your thoughts, to make it seem as if I hated Potter and give me some breathing room to enact the plan. I could not have you betraying me the way you did him.” He nodded at Potter as if seeing someone come back from the dead was nothing remarkable.
Draco flinched, and Potter said at once, “He did it accidentally. And anyway, it’s because your Legilimency walls weren’t strong enough.” He gave Snape a long, meaningful glance. “You concentrated more on protecting yourself than on protecting him.”
Snape snorted and looked away. Potter stood up and came over to Draco, gently taking his hands and turning them back and forth as if he expected to find the Dark Mark on Draco’s palms instead of his forearm.
Draco let out a dry sob that surprised even him, and wrapped his arms around Potter, holding him close because he had to feel the warmth and the breath on his neck. “How did you-I have to know.”
“Of course you do,” said Potter. “I would have told you if there was any way I could.” His almost painful sincerity made Draco hold him closer than ever. “The shortest part of the story is that Dumbledore figured out I was also a Horcrux. And he told Snape. And Snape managed to communicate that information to me before he handed the box over to you.”
Draco felt as though someone had passed him through a curtain of water, or heat. “That’s what I still couldn’t remember,” he whispered. “How I’d been communicating with you. But it was that box.”
Potter nodded, his eyes tender. “So I knew I had to get myself killed somehow.” Draco clutched at him again, but Potter gave no sign that he’d noticed how disturbing his own words were. “But at the same time, there was something else Dumbledore hoped for. He thought that the bit of Voldemort’s-”
Draco flinched on instinct, and then remembered they were in the middle of the Dark Lord’s current headquarters. No alarms would ring here, because all the Death Eaters would assume that Voldemort was simply speaking his own name, the way he tended to do sometimes.
“Soul that was attached to mine,” said Potter, with a gentle smile that said he knew and forgave Draco’s flinch entirely, “might die if Voldemort could be the one that used the Killing Curse on me. Then I might be the one to survive.”
“But why did Professor Snape put the Invisibility Cloak over you?” Draco asked warily, staring at the Cloak on the floor.
Potter turned and stirred his fingers through it. “It’s special,” he said quietly. “Again, Dumbledore wasn’t sure, but he was almost sure that it was Death’s Cloak. One of the Deathly Hallows. It’s strongly linked to my family line, and I’ve used it for a long time. Combined with the fact that the Killing Curse could hit Voldemort’s soul instead of mine, it might have been able to hold my soul in my body.” He turned around and smiled, and this time, Draco thought he seemed dazed. “It did.”
“As did the prior exposure to the Resurrection Stone left to you by Dumbledore,” Snape abruptly interrupted, his voice cold. “You know that the combined force of two Hallows you owned was enough to hold you here, to give you the choice to come back.”
“No.” Potter’s face and voice were clear again, and although he didn’t look at Snape with the loathing Draco had been used to seeing in school, it wasn’t anything like the way he had looked at Draco in the past few days. “I didn’t have a choice. I was dead. I think the Killing Curse killed the soul bit, and the Hallows held my soul so it didn’t fly away, but I-I didn’t have a choice. I was dead.”
No wonder he’s dazed, Draco thought, a bit awed, and unconsciously tightened his hold on Potter. Potter reached out and glanced a hand down Draco’s cheek, muttering something under his breath.
“You own the Resurrection Stone?” Draco had to ask.
Potter nodded. “Dumbledore found it last year, as part of a different Horcrux. He passed it on to me, but Snape was the one who told me what it was later, the way he told me he was a Horcrux.” This time, his expression was carefully cordial. “Now. You still have to kill him, I presume? And you don’t think I’ll fall dead again the minute you slit his throat or whatever it is you’re going to do?”
“I thought I would leave that up to you.” Snape’s eyes turned slowly from Potter to the Dark Lord’s motionless body. “Since you appear to be the one who has to do it, according to the prophecy.”
“Prophecies, too,” Draco said to no one in particular. He knew, because Potter had just told him, that Potter and Snape had been plotting behind everyone’s backs for a long time, but it seemed there was so much there that Draco wondered how any explanation could take care of it.
“I know,” said Potter. “I’ll explain it.” He touched Draco again on the cheek, and gave him a glance that Draco knew was meant to communicate something, but unlike the way he had felt when Potter was hanging in the chain cocoon, he didn’t know what it was meant to be. “But right now, I have something to do.” He paused in the middle of standing up and glanced at Snape, lifting one eyebrow. “If someone can reassure me that killing him won’t kill me.”
“How can it?” Snape asked impatiently. “The last link between you was severed when the Horcrux in you died at his hand. He fell over from the shock of that, which gave us the chance to kill Nagini.” He nodded at the slaughtered snake, which Draco thought so far Potter had done a champion job of ignoring. Then again, perhaps a dead snake, even one with basilisk venom still bubbling in its wounds, was small compared to the feeling of dying and coming back again.
“Very well, then,” said Potter, and caught the wand Snape tossed him. “The others took care of the last one before I-arrived. No more Horcruxes.”
He walked up to the Dark Lord and stood there for a moment looking down at him. Draco thought nothing could interrupt that silent stare, but suddenly he glanced back at Draco, then at Nagini, and said, “We? Good for you.”
Draco lifted his head. If he had felt sunlight shining on his face at that moment, he couldn’t have been any more relieved or happier.
Potter looked down at the Dark Lord again, and his face relaxed so much that it was hard for Draco to believe he was gazing at his mortal enemy. But then Potter shook his head and murmured, “Good-bye, Tom. This is probably for the best, rather than me having to kill you in a duel or something.”
He reached out and laid his wand against the Dark Lord’s throat, and said something too quiet for Draco to hear. A second later, a long slit opened up against the Dark Lord’s throat, and dark blood spilled on the floor.
It wasn’t a violent death, although Draco found himself watching for the exact moment that the Dark Lord’s chest stopped moving. And then it arrived, and Potter took a step back and swallowed and shook, and then turned and grabbed onto Draco as if he was the one who needed comfort. Maybe he did, at that, Draco thought in wonder, and wrapped his arms around Potter and buried his head against his.
Then, it was truly over.
Chapter Twelve.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/722924.html. Comment wherever you like.