words and things (ex_recursive906) wrote in bandinnabox, @ 2007-08-25 20:49:00 |
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Current mood: | rushed |
5th fragment for Femme
So not beta-ed, I'm rather afraid I'll stop if I have to think about it and then never finish. Still no title. Perhaps I should ask Femme to name it as I have no particular thoughts about it yet. Certainly I expect her to beta it. :D
Part 5/7 (not at all even parts)
Warnings: Spoilers for DH, angst
Pairings: perhaps some very much implied and one-sided and ambivalent Draco/Snape
Rating: R-ish for implied torture and war
#1 here, #2 here, #3 here, #4 here
Draco was still struggling to swallow the surge of hope and bitterness when His Lordship spoke. His first words in the long several hours since the prisoner had been brought in and everybody in the room tensed and turned towards him.
“Yaxley. Snape. You are very nearly late.”
They were ordered to take places nearer the fire – close to His Lordship, who was always nearest the largest blaze possible, and almost as far as possible from Draco. Not that either of them seemed to have noticed he was here, and why would they. Draco couldn’t think himself of a reason why it mattered that he was here, except that being here meant he was at least still alive – for as long as the Dark Lord took some continued amusement in his family’s struggles.
It was Harry Potter then. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Plots and rumours and counter-rumours. The good-as-dead witch’s trailing cloak traced a shadowy circle on the polished wood. Everyone else was watching Snape, of course, as he and Yaxley played once more for the coveted safer place in His Lordship’s retinue.
Carrow giggled at something, but Draco was only half listening. A shadow of cloth trailed its path mere inches from where his own fingertips lay on the table. So near. It was always so near.
Mistakes where Harry Potter is concerned. Of course there had been mistakes. The shadow of a hand, the shadow of a triangle of fallen cloth. “Some of them have been my own,” His Lordship said, and by the lighter pitch as well as well as the following pause Draco knew to school himself for possible repercussions. Everyone knew it. Around him the familiar room drew itself up in expectation. “That Potter lives is due more to my errors than to his triumphs.”
Because not looking was now as dangerous as catching His eye, Draco looked up. They all waited, with various degrees of horrified apprehension. But His Lordship appeared to be interested only in the slowly turning prisoner above them. The Hanged Woman, Draco thought, repressing a laugh of his own that would undoubtedly have beaten Carrow’s for crazed nervousness.
“I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best-laid plans. But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be.”
Draco was almost amused to find his Occlumency holding yet and his urge to look to the reactions of others easy enough to repress. He didn’t look to his parents, nor to his fearful Aunt, and not even to Snape. He kept his eyes no more and no less on the Dark Lord than any other person present. Carrow shuffled and trembled and Draco was almost sure he would escape any further punishment tonight when a great cry from beneath them shook his near composure.
Ollivander. And Draco shuddered at the thought, shuddered at the memory of the old wizard twisted obscenely in a great silent scream on his mother’s favourite carpet of reds and pinks and black.
He wasn’t the only one who looked down, and some of them with more surprise having arrived later. Perhaps it was enough. Even one of Snape’s eyebrows lifted slightly and Draco knew he was scanning the company for information and grasped and pressed at the grey curtain of his concentration. Don’t let him in. For not the first time Draco wondered at how well keeping out Severus Snape had honed his capacity to keep out the Dark Lord himself.
“Wormtail,” His Lordship said, almost conversationally. “Have I not spoken to you about keeping our prisoner quiet?”
And Pettigrew was off with the usual groveling nothings. Draco didn’t even glance at him as he scrambled out. Pettigrew was the least of the Dark Lord’s inner circle, and it was best not to be linked with him in anyone’s eyes although Draco had taken pains – had taken considerable pains – to ensure that Pettigrew thought of him more favourably than not. When a man was kicked so often – well, Draco understood that well enough. It was true of young men as well.
Caught up in that thought, which was both reassuring and yet entirely not, Draco felt Snape’s eyes on him before he was ready for it.