Fan Fiction ❯ Droplet ❯ Droplet ( Chapter 1 )

Title: Droplet

Genre: general/romance

Rating: PG-13

Pairings: slash (Are you still surprised?)

Warning: Book5: Chap35 spoilers. Book6: huge spoilers. Language. Weirdness. Not OOCness, I hope.

Disclaimers: Harry Potter, unfortunately, is not mine. The song (from which I got the title, and a line) is not mine, either. (I love that song!) Please don't sue. No money's involved. The idea's mine, though, but if the ideas expressed here mirror your own ... well, you know what they say about great minds.

Notes: The idea for this fic came after about a few months after I read OotP, appended while I toiled through the agonies of waiting for HBP, and reading it.
I simply can't accept what happened with Draco. Yes, Draco. I mean, he's not some cheap bootlicker villain; he's a Malfoy, and is in Slytherin! He's got class and brains. Being evil does not turn your brains to mush! Being wimpy and blubbering and losing one's composure is forgivable, I suppose ...
And of course, there was that abomination I deign not mention. Though him dead is much better than Remus with another ...! (claws the monitor)
Yes, I know, this is not a rant board, so I'll just shut up. Do read the fic.
This fic serves as an offering to the pagan gods of Ancient Greece, who seemed to be missing in the warped rendition of Troy. I loved the blue 'dress' on Orlando Bloom, though.
Of course, I don't forget my Muses, who seem to be exasperated to the point of chaining me to the PC, given that I never finish most of my projects. See? I finished this one. Yay!
Please read and review! Feedback is my life.

A young man sat alone, undisturbed in the lavish train compartment. His golden locks glinted, reflecting the sunlight. Platinum eyes stared out at the fleeting scenery, unseeing, listless.

Beneath a swath of black cloth, the brand burned on his left arm.

Reaching for the slender piece of wood, of polished rowan and a vampire-blood core, he extinguished all the lights, and pulled the heavy drapes so that not so much as a sliver of the window, or what lay beyond them, showed. Soft piano music played somewhere. The blond lay there in the darkness, but his eyes were open; he did not move. Masked in innocence of the absence of light, the fragile porcelain doll.

Minutes trickled in heavy dollops, while hours flowed in lethargic droplets. Nothing stirred in the darkened compartment.

A great whine came from the engines. The train slowed to a stop.

Draco Malfoy blinked once, twice. A lazy flick of his wrist opened the doors; he stood up, hair and clothing in perfect order. Giving his cloak a twitch that sent the sable fabric flaring around him, he walked out of the compartment sedately. He moved with an almost preternatural grace, as the house-elves of Malfoy Property, attired in pristine pillowcases, bustled about to attend to his things.

The blond did not even spare the magical velvet ropes a glance. The sharp sting of sterling silver breaking skin incited him not; not a flinch, not a wince. He let the blood smear on the dragon pin set with emeralds, which he wore on his robes with no emotion.

The familiar disorienting sensation of hurtling through space, being pulled behind the navel overwhelmed him. Draco began to plummet in earnest into nothingness. He chose not to be bothered by it.

The grand Malfoy Manor, viewed from the south, greeted the dispassionate gray eyes as he emerged from the Garden of Night-Blooming Flowers. It was far enough from the chateau proper, but reasonably within its premises. It would have been disrespectful in the very least to just go barging in, and his mother seemed to be sharing the sentiment; appearances must be kept. His Nimbus 2001 hovered waist-high a foot away from him. He mounted the broom, and flew to the immense front doors of the main edifice.

Leaving the Nimbus to the care of the house-elves, Draco paused before entering the house, one hand on the heavy knocker. His lissomness only created a stark contrast to his impassive movements. He moved as if on autopilot, as it was, mechanical and silent; the pretty boy marionette.

The knocker made a resounding boom in the relative, almost monkish, quiet. The stone doors swung open inwardly without so much a creak. He entered. Contracted pupils dilated as he was greeted by muted sunlight and the scent of beeswax candles.

He was home.

A few moments, or maybe hours, had passed, but who was counting? Draco did not know, or care. After washing off the day's dust, he settled in his room, sitting by the window facing west, dumb and mute. The sun cast long cool shadows, distorting the labyrinthine court, the water fountain with its cool marble Four Elemental Deities at the center. Now, the night birds cooed their songs, stars reflected in his eyes, and the red-tinged gibbous moon hung low, highlighting his pallor. Draco had not bothered with lights, food, or anything, for that matter.

It was time.

He stood up, unlocking the cassone with lacy delicate gilt; trap for the unwary, the ornamentation masking the wards. Swirling prismatic matter greeted his listless eyes. Its multitude of colors reflected iridescently on the cool silver of taloned thumb-piece. Scraping the piercing tip against the lines of his finger, he shook a measure of the ground catalyst on his fingertip. He traced a quick Celtic knot with the metal affixed on his thumb, the Gaelic verse lilting on his lips; an acute pain. A drop of crimson welled up from the pad of his left forefinger, dissolving the azure crystals carefully arranged in an ancient insignia. The superficial wound closed, healed with preternatural swiftness. Murmuring the old songs with no discernable accent, he submerged his bare newly-healed fingertip in the never-quiescent contents of the Pensieve.

There was no conceivable change, other than the fact that the casket had disappeared. Draco returned to his seat, steeled for the inevitable.

"And so you sulk like a child, as usual." That cool cadence could only belong to one person. "It does not become you, or anyone of your background. You have a reputation to uphold. Have I taught you nothing? Appearance is a cunning ally." The shrewd gray eyes widened. "Ah, but I see you do take heed of my words. Your mother ... and everybody of import, think you are rather ... enthused ... with your station? Attributing it, perhaps, to your youth? How terribly amusing, this." A cool finger touched the slightly parted lips in thought, his wand hand gesturing. "I see through the pretence, my dear Draco."

The blond young man insolently remained silent, though he did turn his head to acknowledge the speaker.

"Why do you balk at your responsibility, child?" The tone was ice. Storm-gray eyes met platinum. "You are my son. You are a Slytherin. More importantly, you are a Malfoy. You will not shame me. You will not shame the family name. You will do what needs to be done." The unsaid or else suffer the consequences of your impertinence hung heavy in the air.

A satiric smile twisted Draco's full lips. For the first time since the journey home, he spoke. "Is that supposed to frighten me?" He shook his head. "The answer doesn't matter. I know what I must do. I know what my responsibilities are." His movements were mocking, but his father chose to ignore them. "I understand them. Hence, the need for the facade. Which, of course, you already know." He added a deferential, "Father."

Blue-green flames flared in the hearth, blazing as if burning for hours. Every candle was suddenly lighted, illuminating the whole room. Lucius Malfoy drew closer to his son and sat down on an ornate high-backed armchair. His wand disappeared beneath the folds of black cloth; he placed his hands under his chin, peering at him above his steepled fingers.

"You hesitate. You falter." No reaction. Lucius continued speaking. "You are tried in both strength and willpower. It happens to us all."

Suddenly, Draco stood up, looking down on his father, confronting him in cold fury. "I do not understand the necessity for silence and stealth, Father. Why must we do what we do? Follow the Dark Lord! Be enemies of the helpless! Scourge the half-bloods, the Mudbloods, the blood traitors! And with you, Father, imprisoned like a common criminal! I have no taste for any of it! I'm sick of the hypocrisy, sick of the life you're making me live!" His words crested with emotion, but he delivered his words in a very level tone, almost monotonous, all the while retaining his indifferent mask. As if realizing what he said, he sat down angrily, back at his original position by the windowsill; betrayed by his actions and his speech, but never by his face. One way or the other, but not wholly. Truly a Malfoy.

"You are young yet." Lucius spoke softly, not losing his stately calm, his expression of mild contempt. "I was younger when I was tried. I did not break." Draco remembered how he looked reduced to tears, courtesy of the Dark Lord; he saw, but was not supposed to, and so he kept silent. "You will learn in due time, eventually, as I had. You will accept this as the inexorable, as I had."

He stared at the moon outside, the stars, at his open palms. It was not hard to imagine his hands caked in blood, his whole body bathed with the unceasing flow of blood of others; unwashable, unredeemable, and forever.

"I have no taste for bringing death, or causing it. Pain, yes; I will deceive neither you nor myself, Father. But never shall I glory in needless killing." He closed his eyes, and the image burned in his thoughts, but it was better than meeting his Father's gaze. So like his, so unlike his. The horror was that he was not unlike his Father, at all. "I will not play the games of others, nor let myself be someone's pawn."

There was a sound of harsh laughter, and to Draco's surprise, it was he who had laughed. "Oncle Sirius is dead, Father. Dead. Lost forever through the veil that parts the World of the Living from the World of the Dead. I am the only living pureblood that has the strongest legal claim to be an Heir of the Noble House of Black. There is, of course, Aunt Bellatrix, and other vagrant descendants, but no matter." He glared at his father. The Honorable Lucius Malfoy, yes, he had been there, he had witnessed the unspeakable act itself, the demise of a courageous man of worth. And he paid for it. Oh, how he paid for it. He did not even bother to shroud his contempt. "How am I supposed to justify that?"

"It's not justifiable. Harry Potter was Sirius Black's heritor, of course, being his godson, so even if you are a legal claimant ... Ah, but there is still the testament from cousin Regulus, if I am not mistaken?" He nodded to Draco. "But, as you said, it does not matter."

Gray eyes flashed lightning, the white-blond hair appeared burnished to a golden shimmer when he tossed his head. "Your imprisonment doesn't vindicate you from my uncle's murder, Father, however much you think it does. More so, since I accept this mission as retribution from the Dark Lord."

"Ah, yes, you see as much, do you? Of course. My heir, my son." He allowed a measure of laughter, rich and true. "But you are mistaken, Draco, if you suppose that I am not, to use your own words, vindicated, not only of cousin Sirius's murder, by all this. Look as if you know everything, yes, that is a virtue, but if you think it ... Many had made that mistake before, and many still would, in the future. Do not be one of them."

Draco looked down at his clenched fists. "If you have wished for death ..."

His gray eyes were iron as he shook his head. "But that is not the way to my redemption, and so I did not. I chose the greater evil of debasement." Lucius was silent for a moment, and when he continued, there was a self-deprecating smile on his lips. "We choose the paths, but they all lead to the same destination. Turn away from the crossroads, Draco. Do not dwell on them overmuch, for they will appear, over and over. You cannot change your fate."

"Like hell!"

"Like hell, truly, of the worst ilk imaginable," Lucius answered calmly.

Tense silence dominated the room. The fire hissed and crackled. An inane thought struck Draco, the desire to smoke to soothe his nerves. Nothing was at hand, and he did not want to conjure cigarettes, but there was some wine, only of the finest quality, on the shelf. He did not feel like drinking, though.

His father had no problems, however. A cup of dark brew he had conjured sat smoking on the table, as he took a measured puff on his slender pipe. "You despise being a pawn. Perfectly understandable. So what would you, then? Would you rather be the King, then, my son? The Queen, ah, yes, perhaps, yes. I suggest, therefore, that you learn the machinations of the game very well." His eyes looked almost violet in the darkness. "But you have allowed the forbidden, Draco," he said through a thick breath of bluish smoke. "You have broken the most important rule. The only rule, I have to admit, worth abiding. This, I will not tolerate."

"I have no idea of what you're talking about, Father." It was the perfect truth, too.

Lucius sounded surprised. If it were feigned or not, Draco would never know. "No? Am I to believe that your unhealthy obsessions are just ... unhealthy obsessions? That they would not hinder you?"

He felt a surge of anger at the observation, another because he had been so easily goaded to the anger; nonetheless, he kept his tone and choice of words in check. "It is imperative that I spy on Harry Potter and keep track of the Headmaster. The Dark Lord arranged it so."

A smirk twisted his Father's lips. "So, you, my son, who rebels when commanded, now pleases to serve? In deceiving me, you deceive yourself. Did you think I know nothing of your secret yearnings to be glorified and exalted above him?" He sneered. "You insult yourself when you insult me, my dear Draco."

The blond did not flinch, did not react at all, but the remark stung, and his father knew he had hit a nerve. The silence stretched to several heartbeats, before one chose to yield.

"The Dark Lord is an exacting master. He seeks to humiliate you, to destroy you, as he had done to me," he whispered, gazing at his son, a striking image of his youth. "My flesh and blood. The embodiment of my crimes. My sin."

Maleficentia.

Condemned since birth to oppose, not only evil, but also good, to create the balance among the chaos. To thwart plans, for better or for worse. To bear the agony of inflicting pain on the innocent, and courting villainy. The meaning of being a Malfoy.

"I did not choose to be a Malfoy, to be your son."

Lucius nodded, agreeing. "Though you said you wanted control of the board. You have it, because you are a Malfoy." He raised his eyebrows. "A pawn who crosses becomes the Queen." He seemed to remember his drink, taking sip of the smoking concoction without grimacing. "Speaking of Queens, I trust you've finished the Pureblood Account. As a matter of course."

"Shall I list them all?" A faintly bitter smile grazed Draco's lips. "Maleficentia. Regina Coeli. Angelus. Boodschapper. ÐáñáñôÞìáô& aacute;. Annalen von Roguel und von Jermiel. Le Livre Perdu de Raziel. La Jumele Lilit et Ieva, Épouses de Edom. Motivo dell'esistenza. La Chronique de la Sorciere Gabrielle, Marquise de Mal Foi. Schicksal. La Rivelazione dila Male Madre. La Prognosi e le Comprensioni dalle Streghe e dai Maghi Più Grandi. Trabalhos da Má Fé Sobre o Contrapeso e a Justiça. Blut, Seele, und Magie. El Crepúsculo de la Magia. Íà êà÷åñòâå êðîâè. ÐñïâëÝøåéò êáé áðïêáëýøåé&ogr ave;. De Kunst van het In evenwicht brengen van Gebeurtenissen door Kennis en Magisch door de Grote Moeders. L'Anni dala Principessa Bianca da Male Fede."

He took another puff before speaking, his face unreadable. "And La Historia de Sangre Magica?"

"I merely forgot to cite it." Draco shrugged. "Or, shall I say, I do not consider a book finished until I have read it thrice over."

Lucius, overly pleased, nodded with approval. "Well done. Very well done. What of the Advanced Courses?"

"PET, BAT, TOAD, COW, MANGER, CLAW, and FEED, all excellent." A shadow passed over the gray eyes before he replied. "As for the DEER ... other aspects were graded; perfect. The only thing left is for the mission to be accomplished."

"Yes. Which leaves five more to finish within the next school year." His father was sipping the concoction. "I don't doubt your ability to perform those tasks impeccably." He placed the goblet back on the obsidian table, the stone reflecting the flickering flames. "What concerns me now is the prophecy. More specifically, the one you made concerning the upcoming cataclysm." Fair brows rose. "Have the Great Mothers roused, or enlightened you with their thoughts?"

Draco smirked, raking his fingers through his fine hair. "The Twins, the Marquise and the Princess, and the other Great Mothers sleep, as they have always done since the turn of the century. No words from them, no knowledge hidden in the Sacred Blood." He clenched his fist, conviction staining his face with anguish. "I only know that I should defy the Dark Lord."

"Ah." How a single syllable could hold as much meaning as that did? "How you gladden my evil heart, dear Draco. I am proud of you." Lucius looked down on himself, his hands gleaming, kaleidoscopic, then translucent. "Your magic grows more potent daily. But you must depart." Their gray eyes met, past and future parallel, existing in the present. "Keep the Family safe."

There was no time to bask in the praise, as he would have done several years back. What stayed with him was his father's last statement; the meaning was not lost upon the younger Malfoy, who nodded gravely at the words. "Is there anything else, Father?"

Though Lucius's face remained distinct, everything else was an opalescent mass of seemingly liquid gaseous matter. "Disregard good and evil, Draco. They are but egotistic labels for power." The ethereal voice continued. "Morals are relative. Justice, more so."

He did not bother to keep the touch of petulance out of his voice. "Because only balance matters. Balance is absolute."

His father's disintegrating expression was one of benign acceptance. If ever anything was said, Draco did not hear it, an insistent buzzing filling his ears.

Everything burst into color, coalescing into a pure white light.

***

"An Immanent Memory," Albus Dumbledore whispered, his wizened hand weakly clutching the phial that held the precious prismatic substance. His sharp blue eyes met the iron gray pair, lost in the emaciated face. "Its nature was lost several centuries ago, and yet your son seemed very much familiar with the process." The other man kept silent. "Why do you give me this ... unexpected?" Unbidden would have been the harsher, but more accurate term.

"I don't need your pity, Dumbledore," the blond hissed through his painfully cut lips. "Your understanding, however, is something else." He managed a sneer. "The Gryffindor with a thirst for knowledge. For all your genius, Dumbledore, you amazingly fail to understand some things. It will be your downfall." It was a foretelling.

The great wizard nodded, recognizing the truth in the words. He tucked the vessel deep into his robes. "Is there anything else you want to say to me, my dear lad?"

Lucius Malfoy clutched at his grubby knees, his fingers and knuckles white. The manacles on his ankles and wrists tinkled, garishly musical in such a dismal place. The irony was not lost on both men.

"Judge him not by the means he employed." He bit off the words before they become a torrent. "My son, the mirror of my soul, blood of my blood."

Faintly repelled, Dumbledore, nonetheless, said, "I will not judge him at all, Lucius." He stood up, but something in the glint of the gray eyes that remained startlingly ruthless made him sit down. He waited.

"Do you know why Snape have always hated them?" Lucius did not wait for an answer. An almost zealous light suffused his squalid features. "The Marauders - you are aware they call themselves that? They were all Purebloods, as you and I are! Lupin spurning his advances, my cousin laughing at him, getting the man he hungered for, Pettigrew in their company ... and James seeing him only as a source of entertainment ..." A spasm went through his body. "James was with me."

Rapt, the Headmaster faintly wondered if he was being lied to. Everyone seemed to hold a vendetta against Severus Snape. But to what purpose? And why this tasteless obsession with the bloodlines? His great mind could not grasp the machination behind the concept of half-bloods wanting to be accepted as purebloods. There was nothing to do but listen.

"He wanted Narcissa," Lucius was saying, his voice lower, and even the old man had to strain to hear him. "He ached for her. This I saw from the time when I was a prefect, then as part-time Professor. All those years ... But he knew that the Blacks would not let him, not even if he had the backing of the Dark Lord. For," something akin to glee flickered in his eyes, "who is the Dark Lord but a half-blood descendant of Salazar Slytherin?"

"An orphan brought up in wrong circumstances," Dumbledore thought, "hungry for power to revenge himself on the world that did not accept him," but he simply gestured for the slightly crazed prisoner to continue his ravings.

"That contempt angered the Dark Lord! I don't think you understand the magnitude of my words, but no matter. I only ask for you to listen. Think on it when you will."

The Headmaster nodded, as if saying that he was indeed listening.

"Do you know that Avada Kedavra is a total separation of soul and body, and it is one of the most painful ways to die? The Dark Lord designed it that way. I told James to run. I told him to leave Godric's Hollow on the Feast of Samhain. He didn't. He said he accepted his fate. I told him to think of his son, and he told me it would be all right, that in dying, he will protect his son better than were he alive. So when we attacked ... I arrived first, to cast the Dark Mark in the skies. I numbed his body so he won't feel the excruciating pain of the Avada Kedavra," the blond man whispered, "He smiled at me one last time. He told me to take care of his son as much as I can." He glared at the Headmaster. "I did! I swore it by the Great Mothers. I eased both their passages; I boosted her powers so she can perform the complex spell that deflected the Cruel Death Spell! Do you understand the gravity of what I've done? DO YOU?!"

Dumbledore did not have the time to process the statement, much less formulate a response, before Lucius was yet again speaking.

"His childhood was hell, it's a wonder he didn't turn out like the Dark Lord did. I think I understand what James meant about his death in that sense; though then ... His foster family could have beaten him to death. He could have been starved to death. He would have wasted away in loneliness with that insipid Muggle family, and James's sacrifice would have been vacuous! I kept Harry Potter alive! I made those vermin wary so they will not throw him out! And why do you think," he said, breathing hard, "I planted the Dark Lord's diary where it was? Of course I knew what it was, I knew who the Heir of Slytherin was! I went out of my way to abuse a house-elf so that he could be of help to James's son, so that he will have a loyal ally."

Lucius face was an interesting study of pureblood superciliousness. "I planted the idea of the Dueling Club. It was a calculated move on my part, because I knew ... I knew, even before it was reported to me by my son, that Potter was a Parselmouth! I only tried to keep my own son out of it. My son, destined for greater things, my son a true Seer. Who do you think directed the phoenix and that accursed Hat to him? I did!"

He wanted so to leave, his rather incomparable reason screaming for repast, but all knowledge was worth having. Dumbledore continued to listen, each word causing him untoward pain.

The flow of words stopped abruptly; Lucius seemingly a man rudely awoken. In fact, it was as if he had been prophesying, and roused from the trance. But the cast of his face told that he recollected everything that passed from his lips. "You'll have to excuse me, Headmaster. I am exhausted. This interview is concluded. Good day." He turned to his side and pointedly looked away towards a particular spot on the wall.

It was the truth, all of it. He didn't need the Veritaserum for confirmation. Nor could he sense neither Legilimency, nor Imperius on him. After much deliberation, the elder wizard stood up. "Then, Lucius, thank you for your time. But humor an old man with one last question."

Too well-bred to do otherwise, he faced the Headmaster, albeit grudgingly. "You might as well, I suppose. I've already divulged to you in two minutes much more than I had to my wife in almost two decades of marriage." He laughed. "Well?"

Weighing his words for a moment, he finally settled at, "Who belongs to the Malfoy Family, other than yourself, your wife, and your son?"

Lucius smiled, a genuine expression of pleasure, at the question. "Ah. The Family. Or, more appropriately, one must call us The Community. Five main branches, we have; vampires, humans, veelas, merepeople, and centaurs." The half-moon spectacles Dumbledore wore shaded his deep blue eyes from scrutiny. "Minor branches have other sentient magical creatures. Yes. All of us trace our distinct origin through blood for over three thousand years. Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor," Lucius's tone was tinted with scorn, "were but two of the more fragrant blooms on the Blood Vine that started with the Malfoy Twins."

"And this is what was threatened by the Dark Lord, should Draco not do his command," Dumbledore said softly, and this triggered immediate response from the detained Malfoy.

"The Dark Lord does not understand the Family," he sneered. "Or, more correctly, he covets the Family, he is envious; he understands too much of how important the Family is, to me, and to my son." If he were the type to do so, the blond man would have spat.

Dumbledore shook his head. "I wouldn't go that far, Lucius. He is, after all, born of human parents. He has, at least, some of the fallibilities everyone has." The twinkle was back in the formerly bleak azure eyes. "Well then, I thank you for your help, and I assure you, I will keep my Vows." With a pleasant smile on his face, a swish of his cloak, and a jaunty nod, the Headmaster took his leave, without sparing the prisoner a glance back.

***

Draco gasped as he came to, feeling the satin of his bedspread. For a moment, he just stared at the bed hangings, uncomprehending. He remembered his tie to the Immanent conscious of his father was broken, and he was expelled from the memory. There was only white and ... He must have fainted, and put to bed by orders from his mother.

The tasseled curtains at one corner of his room tugged at his attention. The key to Grimmauld Place lay behind the fancy brocade. The blond boy wondered if his mother had had the slightest idea ...

I, Regulus Astraeos Black, with the consent of my brother, Sirius Hyacinthe Black, do commit specific properties to my nephew, Draco Thomas Malfoy, upon my death, as follows ... The words came to him unbidden. He turned away from the corner, which disappeared with a wave of his hand. Touching his temples lightly, he murmured an incantation, which caused the a ball of ghost-light to hover by his head.

Sweat was trickling down his back, his chest heaving with an effort to breathe. Something important about the Dream. Yes. But what it was, he could not recall. Draco sat up, running fingers through his hair. He needed a fresh breath of air. Suddenly, the chiffon canopy, the silk sheets, the velvet pillows, the woolen quilt were too oppressive.

"You are overwrought," a crystalline voice commented. "So much so that you did not notice me."

The blond whipped around, peering in the darkness. He could not see anything beyond where the moon shone in his room, and what the ghost-light illuminated, but, now that he was focusing on it, he could feel a terrible beat, slow and inexorable, of an immortal heart.

Soft flickering candlelight lit the room. He heard the wicks ignite, felt the strength of the mind that commanded the tapers to kindle. The scent of beeswax filled the air.

"Lady Amaranth," Draco whispered. The hovering ball of light dissipated. "You have come." He pushed the covers off him, encumbered. The ornate embroidery on his nightclothes felt heavy against his feverish skin.

Amaranth stepped forward, her pale alabaster skin seemingly absorbing and radiating moonlight. What a sight she was in wizarding clothes, of this age, which had only altered a little over the past decades. Her long blue-black hair fell in ripples down her back. A wax rendition of a stately woman with eyes the color of twilight. There was, the Slytherin knew, no more living tissue in her that was not changed into a vampire's undead, animated flesh. He felt it keenly now that he was aware if it. What she said was true; he should have been warier.

"Your presence is always a pleasure, cousin," Draco commented wryly. "I can't help but wonder, though, What the purpose of this visit is, now."

Affronted, Amaranth scowled. "My dragon, how you wound me," she said in a musical intonation. "Do I need a reason to see you?"

He raised his eyebrows, amused. The vampire relented.

"The Great Mothers commanded me to counsel Wasserwald on which action to take with the Dark Lord," she said. "The portkey is kept safe enough, I trust?" She shook her head. "But what of it? Ten years had passed since I last saw you. I have missed you." She smiled, enough to bewitch any man, and more. "My darling." She opened her arms, which he knew could easily overpower five hale mortal men. "My Seer of the Blood."

Draco, slightly entranced by the glittering sapphire eyes, went to Amaranth, angling his face for the kiss of greeting, and shuddered at the taste of vampiric blood passed from her lips to his.

He broke away the embrace, startling her, even hurting her a little. Quickened by the taste of immortal blood, he turned towards the table, where an open ledger lay, its creamy lined pages and the ready quill beside it, beckoned. With a ferocity that shocked even him, he wrote rapidly on the parchment, the scratching noise almost soothing in its harshness. Words seem to flow out of the ink-drenched nib, unceasing.

He paused, only to realize that he was staring at the ledger in horrifying acceptance and comprehension. The quill lay on the table, next to the inkwell, dormant as if exuding satisfaction.

"You are marked with the Dragon, I know this ... yet ... I name you Seer without thought," Amaranth said as she regarded him broodingly, rather perturbed. "The Great Mothers said nothing to me ..." Sapphires, glittering in the darkness, glanced first at the written prophecy, then shifted to her mortal cousin. "You have Dreamt. Know you the implications of such?" Laughter bubbled from his lips as he stared at the still-wet words on the stiff snowy parchment. "A duty and a burden, my Lady Amaranth. Death to balance life. A prediction to balance a premonition." He pointed the ledger. "The Prophecies of the Dragon."

"Does Strategos know about this?" she said sharply, deep blue eyes flashing, naming the elder centaur that kept track of the Family records. "I shouldn't have asked. This is his work, the book. Right now, he is aware that you have added another foretelling, yes?" A single vertical line of testiness marred her otherwise smooth marble forehead. "I have been away too long, it seems, to absorbed with the tending of the Great Mothers."

"Time is a luxury," Draco said, in answer to Amaranth's question. He gestured to himself, shrugging his shoulders meaningfully. "Years flow and we have no choice but to ride the current. Dreams and visions awaken to shadow my eyes. The Dragon stirs."

"I didn't realize." Amaranth cocked her head, peering at her much younger cousin thoughtfully. She turned her sapphire eyes to the open ledger. "Use the mirror to walk the veil. A remnant of the remnant ... " She skimmed several lines before speaking again. "... A star to lead the star to cross the shores of Fate. Love to trespass, love to prevail, bound by moonbeams and starlight ..." A flush animated her cheeks. "No. Preposterous. I won't allow this! The Great Mothers, once they ..." she trailed off, staring at the blond boy. "They already know! And they approve, do they not?!"

Draco let sarcasm flavor his tone. "I appreciate the sentiment, though mulishness only takes you so far, doesn't it? You understand as well as I do, Lady Amaranth," he smiled, gray eyes clear, appalling in their comprehension. "I have to maintain the balance, as we always have done, for over three thousand years. My duty as a Malfoy. If ... no, when ... Headmaster Dumbledore dies ... I have to bring Oncle Sirius back."

"Whatever the cost to you, or to anyone," Amaranth added, her morose expression only highlighting her exquisite features. "I could not affect anything anymore." Sapphire eyes lit up. "Good luck, my dragon. That much, at least, I could give."

"Yes," Draco said with a wry grin. "Thank you, my Lady. I certainly would need it."

... tbc? ...

Author's notes:

Roguel and Jermiel are archangels, which I saw somewhere in the Net. I don't own them, okay? The books are made-up by me. If there are real books like them, I work without that knowledge.

To Koneko-Ne-chan: Thanks for consoling me, and helping me with my mad search for second names. *hug*

Is this a good enough foundation? Should I still continue this? Please tell me! (;_;)