Never A Memory

~Father, Be Proud~

That night…
~*~

Severus Snape stared at the parchment Draco had left on his desk. True to his word, Draco had scrawled a series of runes across the parchment with what Snape decided was an unsteady hand. Whatever these runes meant, it had frightened his godson when he had discovered their translation.

Robes billowing behind him, Severus made his way across the castle to the Restricted Section and set about tracing Draco’s steps.

~*~

Lucius Malfoy had been buried in the weed-strangled cemetery outside of Azkaban called Dementor’s Circle. Draco, who had refused to speak for the entirety of their journey to the dreaded prison, quietly located his father’s marker. Upon reaching it, Harry trailing worriedly behind him, Draco took the shovel they had found in a nearby shed and shoved it into the ground. Placing one foot on the shovel, Draco buried it deep into the earth and pulled out a chunk of dirt.

Harry watched for a few minutes, wondering why Draco, of all people, was not using magic for the grizzly task at hand. At one point, while Draco continued to labor silently over his father’s grave, Harry turned to retrace his steps to the shed, fairly certain that there was another shovel in there somewhere.

Behind him, Draco shoved his tool into the dirt again and read Harry’s thoughts. “No, Harry. This is something I need to do alone.”

Harry turned back and watched the blond Slytherin resume his task. “Why won’t you use magic? You weren’t exactly built for hard labor.” Harry wasn’t sure what had made him say something cruel but Draco seemed to shrug it off with a harsh laugh, pulling another clump of dirt from atop his father’s grave.

“If you had been in China with me,” Draco murmured, grunting softly as he shoved and heaved pile of dirt after pile of dirt, “you would not say such things.”

Shamed into silence, Harry did not speak for a long moment. Then, “Draco, maybe you should let the dead rest.”

Draco paused and let out a shout of despairing laughter before setting to work again. After that, Harry did not bother Draco again.

Finally, Draco’s shovel hit the coffin and the Slytherin Prince disappeared into the hole he had made. After some sounds of scuffling, Draco pushed the lid of Lucius Malfoy’s coffin over the edge of the hole before, literally, dragging his father’s body out of the grave.

Harry watched, somewhat horrified, as Draco hunched over his father’s corpse, panting and glaring at him with such a sickly expression Harry thought Draco might lash out at Lucius’ lifeless body. Which he did.

With a shout, Harry clutched Draco’s robes and flung the Slytherin off of the corpse. “Malfoy, what is wrong with you?!”

Their eyes met and something in Harry’s emerald green graze seemed to subdue Draco’s wrath. “Help me build the fire.”

Slowly, and without magic, they built a large bonfire; all the while, Harry shot Draco wary sidelong glances. After pulling Lucius’ corpse atop the pile of wood and lighting it afire, Harry and Draco stood side by side, breathing hard against the stench of burning rotting flesh and watched the entire thing burn.

It was hot; hotter than Harry would have thought, standing next to a funeral pyre. Harry wiped a few droplets of sweat from his brow as he gazed at the roaring fire. Yes, it was hot and it smelled terrible…but it was beautiful, in its own way. Harry watched a great billowing of smoke rise from the fire and twirl into the night sky, dancing within the space between the stars. Harry could not see the moon and it bothered him.

“Do you know what a Tulpa is?” Draco asked quietly, the sound of his voice nearly lost in the roaring of the fire.

“Residual spirit energy?” Harry answered uncertainly, trying to place the word. “Condensed to a certain focal point? Am I close?”

Draco stole a wry sidelong glance Harry’s way. “Surprisingly,” Draco said dryly. “What do you know about Maul, the Black Tulpa?”

Harry frowned, the word sounding foreign to him. “Nothing.”

“There was a Prophecy,” Draco murmured after a long moment, staring at his father’s burning body. “Walburga said it was the Prophecy of my birth.”

“What Prophecy?” Harry demanded, turning to Draco.

“The portrait,” Draco explained patiently. “The portrait of Walburga Black spoke to me when you went to the Ministry. She spoke of a Prophecy.”

“What Prophecy?” Harry repeated through clenched teeth.

“A Pact is made on the Quest for Immortality…a God of Darkness relinquishes the Seven Keys…a Promise fulfilled in a Pure Womb…a Child born to Heal severed Lines…a Marking of the Near-Man…when the Dark Lord perishes at the Hands of Love half-remembered…The Gatherer is hosted and calls in the Night…a Sacrifice is laid on the Alter of Justice…and Purity wears the Face of Maul…Darkness reigns over the Land of Men…so be quiet Child…for the Black Tulpa fears only the Eighth Key.”

Silence clapped in their ears like thunder after Draco had finished the recitation. Harry swallowed and opened his mouth to speak; yet, nothing came out.

Draco continued, angry words spilling from his mouth as he watched the Harry Potter he’d always despised slide back into place…just like Draco had predicted, judgmental and full of spite. “I thought perhaps Pansy would know something. That perhaps Pandora had divulged a family secret I could use to my advantage as I searched for the Eighth Key. But, no. The only thing she found was that I had strange Runes etched into the Mark on my back.” Draco glanced at Harry as a muscle worked in the young Auror’s jaw. “Then, at Hogwarts, I learned the meaning of the Runes.”

“The Restricted Section,” Harry remarked, less than amused.

“Yes, well.” Draco fell silent, staring into the flames, his entire body quivering as the rift between them grew wider and wider.

Finally, Harry turned to the Malfoy heir. “What do the Runes mean?”

Draco did’t answer right away. Then, “’Maul, whose name must not be spoken aloud, is the Black Tulpa. When tainted souls of evil unmentionable are released from bodily confines, it is directed to the Black Tulpa; where it swirls in an abyss of darkness. This darkness was so dense that it spawned a mind like a demon, bearing a heart of hatred and contempt. This being was named Maul, which must not be spoken aloud, and given the Seven Keys.’ That’s all I found about Maul. The rest was torn and missing.”

Harry ran a hand through his hair and fixed Draco with an intense look. “Malfoy, you’ve dragged me all over the countryside, confused and worried the fuck out of me, made me swear an Unbreakable Vow to kill you, desecrated your father’s grave, and now you’re telling me loads of mad bollocks about Prophecies and evil spirits. You have about thirty seconds to start making sense—“

“The Runes translated into ‘Chosen Host of Maul, the Black Tulpa'.”

Draco and Harry stared hard at one another.

“No,” Harry breathed as Draco continued to speak. “When Voldemort marked me the second time, he marked me for possession. This Maul is already inside me Harry—that’s why I had you swear the Vow…I…I can feel him…”

“The sleepwalking?” Harry whispered, closing his eyes. “That thing behind your eyes?”

Draco looked away but stood his ground even as he swallowed his pride. “I need your help to find the Eighth Key. I don’t think I can do this on my own—“

“No shit, Sherlock!” Harry exploded. “You are such a witless, self-absorbed prick, you know that?”

Draco fell silent and watched as Harry fumed and paced. Draco braced himself for the possibility that Harry might give up on him. After all, Harry Potter’s mission was to keep him safe from renegade Death Eaters who would see him dead for his actions against Voldemort. Now that Draco had forced him to swear an Unbreakable Vow to end his life, should it become necessary, the terms of this case have drastically shifted.

Harry quit his pacing and turned to Draco, their silhouettes against the angry fire stark and black. “Why did you lie to me? You shouldn’t have lied to me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me who I really was when I woke from my coma?” Draco shot back quietly. “Why did you send me to America as some Muggle?”

“To protect you.” Harry looked suddenly tired. “Draco, I don’t need protection.”

Draco would have disagreed, but he didn’t need to; Harry read it in his face. “Malfoy, it is my job to protect *you*.”

“So, protect me, Potter!” Closeted emotion made Draco’s voice raw. Something tremored deep inside him and Draco couldn’t put a name to why he suddenly panicked.

Harry shook his head and Draco clenched and unclenched his fits, that tremor playing nervous music on the erratic beats of his heart.

Minutes passed and they said nothing to one another. Anger, guilt, and fear shrouded Draco like a cloak while Harry managed to look very, very tired.

Finally, a whisper worked its way passed Harry’s full lips. Three words.

“I hate this.”

Draco cracked a wry, hopeful smile and lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “It always gets worse before it gets better.”

Harry eyed his Slytherin comrade. “Did your mother used to say that?”

Draco smiled genuinely this time, a flash of perfectly white teeth. “Ah, no. Dumbledore, actually.”

Harry took in a deep breath, his green eyes large and wary. “If this is going to work, we have to always be honest with one another. No more lies.”

Draco nodded minutely, his eyes hard with understanding; though, secretly, his heart leapt.

Harry looked back at the funeral pyre.

“So, what’s next?” Draco asked, coming to stand beside the young Auror. “To the Ministry?”

“They need to know,” Harry conceded with a nod. “Especially that the Gatherer seems to be under Maul’s command and his Death Eaters are no real threat to you…and that the Death Eaters refusing the Gatherer’s call could be friend or foe and there is no real way to know for sure…”

Draco blinked. He hadn’t thought of that.

“But…no. I’ll take you back to Grimmauld Place first. If I take you straight to the Ministry with this crazy story about you turning into the most evil creature mankind has ever known, you might just disappear within the Ministry and some story about you breaking your neck in Asia will show up in the Daily Prophet.”

Draco nearly choked on his own saliva. “Truly?”

Harry smiled gently. “I’ll be able to protect you from Grimauld Place. Anyone who can get in is either loyal to you or me. I’ll go to the Ministry and make an official report.”

Draco nodded and they turned back to the fire, watching it burn itself into small embers.

“I really do hate this,” Harry said with a sigh.

Draco shuddered. “But not me?”

Harry caught his eye. “No, not you.”

Draco watched the smoke plume skywards and thought of his father.

~*~

Underground.

To a Wizard, that meant without the use of magic…so that travel would go unmarked and undetected.

To Blaise Zabini, that meant strictly horseback. Except, of course, the few times he had to cross a river or a bit of ocean.

A pureblood would never be caught making use of a Muggle contraption unless it was a dire emergency. And truly, as much as he and Draco Malfoy were near-cousins, one ambiguous letter from Pansy Parkinson did not qualify as a ‘dire emergency’.

So, Blaise made good time changing horses every hundred miles or so.

Pureblood or no, Blaise was not so pretentious as to never use Muggles to his advantage. His network was spread all over Europe, Asia, and the Americas…which made him quite unwelcome at most Death Eater parties during the war, though he was often used as a spy nonetheless, and from both sides.

However, regardless of his usefulness to the Ministry during the war, he was blacklisted when the warrant for Draco’s assassination came and he, Blaise Zabini, just happened to be at the top of the list of suspects. With his shady reputation, and no desire to bring unwelcome light to his best friend’s unusual predicament, Blaise had fled to Italy and waited.

Now, he raced; hell for leather, northbound on a chestnut bay. The animal beneath him sweated above the churning muscles that carried her master ever-onward. White frothed from the bit clenched between the bay’s teeth and her eyes rolled as Blaise steered her through a dense forest at a faster pace than was probably wise.

Blaise’s sharp eyes darted around them as he steered, wondering if the bay would make it to the next pick-up point where another steed waited, fresh and fully fed and watered, for Blaise to run it into the ground like the countless animals before it. It wouldn’t be the first time he had to put down a horse. In the mountains, Blaise’s spotted stallion had crushed his foreleg on a crest of sharp rocks hidden by a thin layer of snow.

Blaise was a hard master, but not a cruel one. After the stallion had thrown him, Blaise had circled back for an extra water skin and to slit the poor beast’s throat. Blaise had trudged the rest of the distance to the next pick-up point on foot, stopping only to make blood-tea enough to sustain him for another long trek.

But, no; the bay lasted and after nodding to the Muggle who waited patiently with the next steed and mounting the fresh horse, Blaise was off again, racing up the French coast like a thousand demons were after him.

It was raining hard by the time Blaise reached the part of the French coast where one could barely see the English coast from across the straits if it were clear and sunny out and he was as bone weary as his steed when he dismounted. Bellatrix had warned him about a strange Prophecy before she had set off to retrieve a Horcrux for Voldemort and Blaise, squinting across the sea against the downpour, hoped against hope that Pansy’s letter didn’t hold a hidden warning about the only thing that could deprave sleep from the most jovial Pureblood ever to grace English Wizarding circles.

Yet, a chill crawling up Blaise’s spine told him he was running out of time.

~*~

The flight back to Number Twelve Grimauld Place was prickly. That unstable, crackly tension had returned and Harry shivered whenever Draco glanced at him.

They found themselves staring at one another in the hallway, energy crackling between them.

“My worst fear,” Harry said at great length, “was that I would become like Voldemort.”

“At Hogwarts,” Draco murmured with a nod, remembering. “I saw.”

Harry sighed and swept a hand around him, gesturing at the house around him. “I’m not sure I’ve done much more than buy us some time. If they order me to bring you to the Ministry, I might have to.”

Draco nodded again, his eyes burning with something unsaid. “I understand.”

“I hate this,” Harry muttered for the third time that night, making to move past Draco towards the door.

Draco grabbed his arm and pushed Harry against the wall, pinning him there with his own body. “You bought us some time, Harry,” Draco whispered, his lips pressed against his ear. “Let’s use it…we may not have another chance.”

Harry made a sound somewhere between a sob and a groan before clutching Draco’s face and crushing his lips against his, kissing him like a drowning man.

It was violent; filled with desperation and passion. Draco shoved his tongue passed Harry’s teeth, moaning as Harry’s tongue rose up to meet his, velvety and insistent. Harry clung to Draco’s shoulders as he pressed his leg between Harry’s. Their minds were swimming, fingers ripping at clothes, tripping over buttons and ties, trying to breathe against the awful, wonderful pressure of each other’s bodies.

How they became naked, Harry wasn’t sure. Perhaps their wandless magic helped where their fingers were useless. It didn’t matter, not really. They were unspeakably hard already and they rutted against one another, gasping into each other’s mouths. Draco pressed in as much as he could, wanting to touch every part of Harry’s body, breathe in every possible scent, taste every possible flavor. Pinned against the wall, Harry let Draco ravish him. He hadn’t submitted in a long time. Draco’s mouth and hands seemed to be everywhere at one, reverent and thirsty, making sounds of wonderment at every touch that elicited a moan from Harry’s lips.

Draco left a trail of sweet saliva as he kissed down Harry’s throat. He murmured soft prayers against the skin of Harry’s chest, taking time to pay homage to each taut nipple before moving ever-downward. Harry quivered when Draco dipped his tongue into his naval and placed a firm kiss on his lower abdomen.

When Harry found the strength to open his eyes and glance down, his eyes locked with Draco’s bright gray ones and nearly wept. Slowly, reverently, like the severity of temple worship, Draco kissed the bobbing head of Harry’s erect phallus. Harry’s neck turned to water and his head rolled as Draco continued his tortuous worship. Lips and tongue worked the impressive length of Harry’s shaft, tasting with long sweeps of the velvety muscle and placed a kiss to cool the discovered area.

Soon, Harry was quivering and moaning above Draco's kneeling form as if every harpstring was being plucked. Then, when Harry thought he couldn’t stand it any longer and the growing heat in his stomach was going to explode, Draco took Harry’s entire length into the warmth of his mouth and throat.

Harry gasped, swearing obscenities under his breath, and clutched at Draco’s silvery head as it bobbed over his phallus. Too much and not enough; the swirling, crackling energy was back, surrounding them and penetrating them and with a shout, Harry spent himself into Draco’s surprisingly talented mouth.

Draco rocked back on his heels, eyes filled with wicked laughter, a wry smile hovering over his glistening lips. “I’ve never done that before. How was I?”

Harry groaned and his eyes fluttered closed, Draco’s clear laughter ringing off the walls of the hall. And then it was quiet again as Draco waited for Harry to catch his breath.

“You look so beautiful like that,” Draco murmured as his eyes soaked in Harry Potter, gloriously nude, cheeks flushed and lips parted, breath coming in pants as he leaned against the wall with his eyes closed.

A slow smile curled Harry’s lips as he cracked an eye open, watching as Draco stood, lithe as a cat and twice as predatory. “Thanks.”

Draco pressed in close again, wrapping his arms around Harry’s lean waist. “I want to fuck you,” Draco whispered in his ear.

Harry turned his face and kissed Draco. Harry could taste himself on his lips. “Do you think you can handle it?”

Draco swept his arm across a small table laden with candlesticks and small adornments, sending them clattering on the floor. Pushing Harry down on the table and watching his face change from languid pleasure, to surprise, and back to a minxy little smirk, Draco situated himself between Harry’s legs and placed another kiss on Harry's stomach.

Draco stumbled through the preparation, listening with rapt attention as Harry guided him with his own fingers through the stretching and searching for and stimulating the prostate. When Draco’s trembling fingers hit their mark, he marveled at how Harry hissed and arched off the table, smiling a little to himself.

“Yeah,” Harry gasped. “You’ll want to aim for that.”

Whispering a quick lubricating spell, Draco positioned himself between Harry’s legs and pushed in slowly. Draco was larger than average and Harry winced at the intrusion, but he hid his expression until Draco had filled him completely.

Draco’s features were open with awe and passion. “Fuck, Harry…you’re so hot…and tight…”

Harry smiled gently and touched Draco’s wondering face. “Move, Draco.”

Draco placed his hands on either side of Harry’s face and pulled out slowly before pushing back in, beginning the ages old rhythm. “I’m not hurting you, am I?” Draco asked, concerned when he saw Harry wince and bite his lip.

Harry met his worried gaze. “No, Draco. You haven’t hurt me; not yet.”

“A passing dalliance, no doubt?” Walburga had inquired.

“Of course, my lady.”

“And you will break his heart, then?”

“Certainly, my lady.”

Walburga had seemed disappointed in his answer. Draco was beginning to agree with her. He pressed a fierce kiss against Harry’s mouth, latching with hungry lips that ravished as Draco slammed into him, over and over, no longer concerned with being gentle. This nameless thing between them wasn’t gentle. It grew large, so all encompassing, that it made to swallow them whole. It burned them and claimed them and latched them together. It did all these things, but it wasn’t gentle in its doing. Draco understood at least that much. He understood what it was to be cruel. And so did, it seemed, Harry, who met his harsh thrust each and every time, grunting and gasping and biting down on Draco’s shoulder when the pain became too much to bear alone. And then the sweet, blessed magic between them reared up and danced around and through them again. Swirling with lightless color and pranced and twinkled until their screams were lost in it.

Too much and not enough. It would never be enough.

Afterward, Draco watched Harry slowly get dressed, taking care to mend his ripped clothing as he did. Draco pulled on his trousers, feeling slightly guilty at giving Harry such rough treatment.

“Don’t,” Harry said, breaking the silence.

“What?” Draco blinked, startled.

“Don’t feel bad. I wanted it too. I was gentle with you the first time, but it’s not always so.”

Draco took in a deep breath. “Really?”

Harry nodded and put on his Auror’s robes.

“Well, it’s fitting, then.”

Harry smiled sadly. “It is, isn’t it?”.

Draco stood to face Harry and the young Auror gathered him in his arms. “I hate this,” Harry hissed.

Draco stirred and lifted his head. “But not me?”

Harry pressed a chaste kiss to Draco’s lips and shook his head. “No, not you.”

Draco pried himself loose of Harry’s embrace, sick unto death of heart ache and things left half-said, and did not watch Harry leave for the Ministry.

~*~

Severus Snape, up to his elbows in ancient documents and sick with worry, cursed aloud as he re-read--for the third time--the translation of the Runes.

Severus took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. This was bad.

It always gets worse before it gets better.


~*~



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