Draco Malfoy (original_snake) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-10-30 10:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, door: tales, draco malfoy, rose red |
Who: Draco, Rose, and Beast
What: Draco visits Rose
Where: The castle
When: Recently
Rating: Not High
Status: Complete
Draco had put Andrew through the paces, taking him to his own door to put his pack together, and then had him carry it to the Fairy Tale door. He wasn’t sure what was on the other side at all, so he had packed a few potions, his wand, Potter’s invisibility cloak, and his gloves. He carried his broom separately, or rather Andrew did until he opened the door that left Draco at the edge of the forest. “Let’s hope the Whomping Willow didn’t move and decide to call this place home,” he said, pulling his quidditch gloves out of the pack.
He put the gloves on, pulling the straps tight with his teeth. When they were comfortable, he slung the pack over his shoulder and picked up the broom. The forest was dark, and he didn’t know the terrain at all. He reached for his wand. “Lumos maxima,” he mumbled, lighting the tip. He wasn’t going to be able to fly blind. He would end up running himself through on a branch.
He could hear Potter’s voice as he flew into the trees, deciding to come in low, as opposed to being an easy target in plain sight in the sky. ‘Look at you playing the hero.’ That was the one thing Draco wasn’t. He wasn’t pretending to be some golden boy who could come in and rescue the damsel out of the tower. There was something about her, and the conversations they had. They were similar in too many ways, but first and foremost in Draco’s mind was the loneliness.
Draco had a talent for flying, well developed in his Hogwarts years, and at the manor. He often flew through the woods, giving him an extra advantage. He stayed low, extending his thin frame over the broom. His legs tucked underneath, making the smallest package possible. Quick and agile, he ducked over and under branches, trying to follow the general direction of Rose’s roughly drawn map. He wasn’t sure how long he was in the air, and he didn’t want to think of the way that the forest felt alive, like it was watching him. He just pressed on until he saw the trees thin and then break. Once in the open, he turned upward to the sky. There were a few cuts on his face, but he paid them no mind. It was only a bit of surface damage. He had been through worse.
From the air, he could see the castle. There was nothing to stop him from getting to the window. There was a beast to consider, but he couldn’t fly. He also had an invisibility cloak, just in case. He hadn’t flown with it as it hindered his speed, but it was there if the need arose. He looked at the map again, choosing the window he thought might be hers. Hovering outside, he tapped on it, waiting to be invited in.
There was no clock to tell time in Rose's room, and her sister had brought no such device when she'd brought Rose jeans and shirts from the mundane world. She judged the time by the sun and the moon in the sky, and she didn't know when to expect Draco precisely, not beyond knowing what the sky should look like. But she was still ready when that knock came.
She hadn't left her room or gone down to dinner, and she only hoped the Beast had eaten that feast he'd told her about and fallen asleep stuffed and content. She didn't hate her captor anymore, but she did yearn for conversation from beyond her prison, and she and Draco had so much in common. The events of the party had only made that clearer to Rose. Killing one's own sister was clearly an indicator of something.
She wasn't dressed in any of Snow's mundane clothing, because she hated how restrictive they felt. Instead, she was dressed in one of her own dresses, red and oft-washed, with an embroidered rose on the front in pink stitch. It was a traditional dress, long and with a scooped neck, and her red hair was loose and long. She had bruises dotting her jaw and neck, but the worst of it was beneath the red fabric, hidden out of sight.
She was sitting on the bed when the knock came, reading one of the books she'd brought with her from the merchant's house, and she jumped up quickly and climbed over the bed to open the stained glass that allowed access to the window garden beneath the sill. She hadn't read any books about wizards, and she didn't know what to expect from him, but her smile widened when she saw him. "You're not a troll," she teased, her smile lush and red, and the glass swung outward as she looked at his broom. "It's nice to meet you, Draco." She kept her voice quiet, so as not to be heard.
“You didn’t actually think I was a troll?” he asked, looking a bit surprised, climbing through the window. He stood, looking around the room, dressed in his usual black array of clothes. They hid him well against the night, and he hadn’t wanted to wear robes. His shirt was tucked neatly into black jeans, complete with a belt. His shoes were expensive Italian leather, showing off the wealth in an understated way. The only thing that defined him as a wizard offhand was the broom, which he leaned against the wall, and the wand, which was held in place by the belt for easy access, just in case.
For the first time, he looked at her, a bit amused that she was a ginger. She wasn’t like the Weasley’s, thank Merlin. Her hair was much darker and richer than theirs would ever be. Her dress looked like many of those he had seen on witches in Diagon Alley when they were not in robes. “It is nice to meet you too, Ms. Rose.” One hand reached for hers, the other moved to his cheek where the branch had caught him. It didn’t seem so bad.
“What do you think would happen if I took you out of here?” He hadn’t seen any sort of beast around when he came in, but the thought was there already. “You really shouldn’t be in a prison.”
"We have them. They live in the woods, and I had no idea what you looked like before. Is that shocking?" she asked, knowing simply from the cut of his simple clothing and the way he held himself that, yes, it was likely to be. Here was a young man born to money. She had been raised in the woods, but she knew finery in a man's stance when she saw it. She and Snow had watched the procession of carriages at the wood's edge often enough as a child, and had Snow not gone on to become queen?
"Please, just Rose. I gave up lady and princess when I left my sister's court, and we didn't use anything before our names in the woods. Would you rather I call you sir? Or Mr. Malfoy?" she asked, moving closer when she noticed the blood on his cheek. For a second, she worried that one of the dead branches had scratched him. She had come to distrust the wood around the Beast's castle since arriving. "You're hurt. Sit down and let me tend it," she insisted, all command and nothing of the demure princess at all.
As for leaving. "I gave my word. Your company for awhile will have to suffice."
“It’s good to know that I am officially not a troll,” he grinned. He was about to say that he could easily take care of the scratch, but he sat on the chair instead. Pale grey eyes looked up at her, through strands of white blond hair. He hadn’t bothered with gel that had been a staple in his Hogwart’s years. It looked better now, softer when it was down. “I caught a low branch when I cut a corner a little tight. My wand doesn’t create much light out there.”
“I’m Draco, just that. Sir is my father.” In business it was different, but not from her. “Am I the first non-mugg [...] mundane to ever make it here?” It was an achievement of sorts, and one that a normal Slytherin wouldn’t risk. They didn’t take that many chances, but Draco’s life had required a much higher degree of risk.
His eyes studied her, remembering what she had told him about that party. He couldn’t really blame her for anything that happened there, or really for anything at all. She hadn’t judged him for anything he had done, and he was far from innocent. “Are you alright?” he asked with an accent that was definitely British. “After the party, I mean. That place was not exactly right.”
She waited until he took a seat, and then she pulled over a basin of water and a washcloth, which she set on the dressing table at his back. She busied herself with dipping the cloth in the water, a slight hum on her lips as she squeezed it out and regarded him once more. The cloth was then pressed gently to his cheek with just enough pressure to wipe away the blood, but without making it bleed anew.
"Your wand?" she asked with a smile that did nothing to hide her curiosity. "Our witches and wizards don't use wands," she explained. "It would be helpful if they did, as we could simply steal them from the bad ones," she suggested, though there was a question in the teasing musing. "Do you have magic without them?"
She was still pressing the cloth to his cheek, and she wrung it out a second later and took the dry one that was on the rim of the basin and repeated the gentle press. "Draco," she said, because she'd never said it aloud when reading the words on the page. "I like how that sounds. It's regal, and I won't hold that against you," she added conspiratorially, as he'd already proved himself to be more than any of the wealthy men and women she knew.
“You can’t always steal a wand. They have a life of their own, and a loyalty to their owner. Used by the wrong wizard, they can backfire horribly. It actually helps focus the magic, although I do know a few wandless spells.” Draco smiled as he let her tend to the damage on his cheek. He could easily fix it, but he liked her attention. “I can fly. I can also apparate, both are wandless.”
“Your Beast told me that I couldn’t come,” he grinned smugly. He was proud of the operation. He had put the plan in motion with a little help from Andrew, but he had made it into this world. He was aware that the Beast might have something to say about it, but what the Beast didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
She had a lot of questions that he wasn’t really sure how to answer. “I haven’t gotten a good look at your world, but ours is a mess. The businesses are still being rebuilt, and I don’t think Hogwarts has fully recovered yet, although the school is opened. A lot of people died in the war. I guess that is a bit of rebuilding as well.” He had lost several friends, and his mentor, who was more of a father than his own. Draco might not have shown it until the last year, but he wished he had.
He raised fingers to his cheek. They showed that he had never performed a day’s hard work, another symbol of his family’s wealth. “The princess was nice, a bit spoiled, but not unlike me. We talked a bit about the stars. I was named after the constellation, Draco. My mother’s family has a tradition. She is Narcissa, and then there is Andromeda, and Bellatrix. My cousins are Sirius, and Regulus, and the list goes on. We did dance in the ballroom. It was a nice evening, but,” he paused for a moment, “I wished she was you.”
"Apparate?" she asked, eager for any information he could provide about a world beyond her own. This wasn't Snow's mundane world that he was talking about. It sounded like the Homelands before the Adversary. "Our witches and wizards don't use wands, and they're very feared and distrusted. It's the reason Snow and I were raised in the woods, to keep us safe. Our mother is a witch," she explained, because it sounded like his world was very different. As if witches and wizards lived in the open, unfeared. "One of the last things Snow and I did before Snow fled to the mundane world was to save a witch from being cooked alive. Snow has all but forgotten her magic." She paused, trying to imagine his world. "I would love to see your world. What is Hogwarts?"
When he mentioned the Beast, she turned to look over her shoulder, as if the mention would call him to them. "He's not as bad as I thought. He won't hurt me, though he'd eat you if he found you here," she added worriedly, glancing toward his broom to ensure it was close enough for him to grab, should he need to fly away quickly. She didn't believe the Beast's wings to actually be functional, as she'd never seen him fly, and surely he weighed too much to become airborne.
"Do you miss your family?" Surprisingly, she didn't mind how smooth his fingers were. Her distrust of wealth only applied to people who didn't understand her, it seemed. She pushed a lock of pale blond off his forehead, keeping it from falling against the injury, a thoughtless little gesture that showed she was generally a fearless creature. "I would have liked to dance. I was in the ballroom, but not for anything as nice as that." When he said he wished the princess had been her, she gave him a coy smile that seemed perfectly fitted to her personality and bright coloring. She took a small step back, closer to the window and a safe escape, should he need it. "There's no music, but you can ask me to dance," she suggested.
He stood to his full height of six feet, drawing his wand. He sent a simple locking spell at the door, not sure how strong it would be, but perhaps it would not be good to have the Beast walk in. He replaced the wand in his belt, reaching for her hand. He was still playing the role in a way he had been born to. This was not the direction his life had taken, but it was easy to fall into the fantasy. “Come dance with me, Princess,” he purred in a low drawl.
“My world is hidden from the muggles, er mundanes,” he told her, wrapping an arm around her waist, taking her other hand in his. “We know how to conceal ourselves, make buildings look empty when we are really inside. Mundanes don’t deal well with magic. In early history, they used to hang witches and wizards out of fear. We do live among them, but they do not realize who we are.” It was the reason that muggleborns were not easily accepted into their culture.
“In our world, there was a dark wizard who wanted complete control. Anyone who was born from muggles, or even half muggle, would be killed. I am a pureblood. My family tree dates back for a century of pureblood witches and wizards. There are a few exceptions but they were stricken from that tree. I was born to serve him, but by the time I was of age, I was beginning to think just how wrong it was. My father had failed him on one of his tasks, and put in prison. The dark lord told me he would kill my family if I didn’t complete an even harder task. I hated him, but I was branded as evil, a supporter of the dark lord, a death eater.” He moved slowly as he spoke, telling the story. His body seemed to tense at times, although he had a feeling she would understand. That understanding was what had brought him here.
“Hogwarts is a magical school for witches and wizards so that we can learn magic,” he explained, shifting topic a bit. “It was home for seven years.” There were both good and bad memories of the school. He wondered if his father would have sent him to Durmstrang if it would have been different. Potter wouldn’t have been such a factor in his life, and the war would have been farther away.
Had she not known what she did about him, that purr and request to dance would have been met with a fair amount of vinegar and sass. She was not raised for this life, though she'd ended it up in it all the same thanks to a cursed bear, thanks to Snow's penchant for stumbling on princes. Rose had always been the one that climbed too high on the branches, while Snow waited below, perfectly non-mussed and chastising. Those were the little girls that grew up to be princesses. Not hellions with red hair and scraped knees. And so it had been, but here she was, curtseying to a boy with the carriage and look of a prince himself. But she knew better, knew he was a kindred spirit, and so she went into his arms with a warm laugh, one that lit the air with mischief.
She was not very good at following the dance, but what she lacked in temperance she made up for in a natural and wild grace. Her fingers closed around his, and she moved a little too close for propriety. "There aren't enough witches and wizards here for that," she said of his hidden world, where it sounded like weirds numbered in the hundreds. "Our Adversary had a witch called the Blue Fairy, and with her he began a path of creation and destruction. She tired of his ways, and he chained her up and made and elixir from her magic, one that allowed him to wield her magic. Our queens and kings - North, South, East and West - are not magical, and you can see how they would come to fear weirds - magic wielders - when they all ended up at war thanks to one fairy and a man who used her magic to create life. Thousands upon thousands died, all because the Adversary had magic the others did not."
When he tensed, she moved a little closer, fingers tightening in his reassuringly. "I would like to see your school. I can't imagine such a place existing. And what you did was brave, Draco, leaving behind the life you had been groomed for. I still don't feel like I fit in anywhere that isn't the place I knew as a girl. I'm too wild for ballrooms and formal dining halls, and I yearn for green grass and blooms in a way that can't be sated within four walls."
“You would like Hogwarts,” Draco explained. “It’s a castle, but the grounds are very green. There is the lake, and the quidditch pitch, and the forest is past that. I would take you,” his paused, raising his eyebrows. If she wanted to, he would gladly take her away from this castle.
“War is war. Neither side wins,” Draco said with a frown. He had realized that, seeing the bodies in the castle. His own friend, one that he was supposed to look out for, had been one of them. “Everyone thought it would be this glorious world once the dark lord was destroyed, but it just looked like a war zone. It wasn’t sunshine and bloody rainbows.” His hand hand moved up, tangling in her hair. It had been so long since anyone had been close like this, years really. It was by choice, focusing on business instead, ignoring his own needs, his own loneliness.
“I have never been wild. I was never allowed to really play with other lads.” He had always wanted to when he was younger. He wanted to run, and even get dirty, but his mother would drag him away quickly. “I used to fly all the time. That’s the only way I could get away. I crashed into a tree once. I’m surprised that my mother didn’t take my broom.” At times he had felt as constrained by his environment as had to feel, being confined here.
“It’s too bad you can’t leave, even for a little while.” He was leaning closer to her, musing out loud. “We could fly. You would love it.”
She liked the feel of his fingers in her hair, even if she felt slightly guilty about all the things she'd done before, guilty because was tainted. She had no illusions about what her behavior at court had been. She had no fond memories of her time as a princess. Those days were mired in hate and envy for her, and she didn't want to think of them now. "If I could talk to my girl and convince her to go to your door, would you let her in?" she asked. She wasn't sure how dangerous his world was, but it would give her a chance to see something beyond these castle walls, and all without breaking her word. It was a freedom she'd never considered before, and she almost bounced with the possibilities before her.
She moved closer, the red hem of her skirts brushing against the legs of his trousers. He was so unlike Charming. He was everything someone charming should be, and perhaps her thinking so was indicative of how young she still truly was.
She glanced toward the broom and, as was her wont, she considered the risk boldly. What the beast wouldn't know couldn't hurt him. To fly, it would be like climbing the tallest tree and going even higher still. To feel the wind in her hair, and to slide her hands around his waist. She leaned closer when he did, and when she tipped her head up to speak her lips almost brushed his chin. "Only for a few minutes," she said tentatively, already well on the road to giving in.
It was a plan that Draco hadn’t thought of. The girl could go to his door. It was brilliant, and exactly what he had done. “I could do that. My muggle arranged this, with a bit of persuasion. The heir-apparent has been quite useful, and he listens.” Draco wasn’t above a bit of manipulation when it came to Andrew. He had always assumed her confinement to the castle would keep her here, but the outside world held more options than he had thought. “I could show you Hogwarts, and a quidditch match. I have season tickets to the Falmouth Falcons matches.” She wouldn’t know who they were, but he was already planning the date in his head. He could show her real magic.
His forehead brushed against hers, caught up in this fantasy. There were so many things that they could do, and she didn’t know his worst side, the things he had done. Perhaps he had glossed over them a bit, painted a different picture of those days, or perhaps she really did understand. “I brought you something for later,” he ventured. “It’s a book that my muggle gave me, at my insistence, of course. It’s part of that series about what happened in our world. You can read it after we fly.”
He hated moving away from her, but they could certainly dance again. Picking up the broom, he smiled, holding it out. “It’s thin, but balance isn’t that hard. This one was built for racing.” It didn’t mean much to anyone who had never seen a broom, let alone one in the air, but the design was sleek and smooth, definitely not one for sweeping a floor. The Quality Quidditch seal was on the side, proudly displayed. He handed it to her, going to the window to open it wider. “We won’t be long,” he encouraged, taking a risk that he wasn’t sure was a good idea, but one that he wanted.
The Beast knew his domain well, a domain that stretched from the tops of the towers to the dark basements, and beyond to the edges of the dark forest. He thought still of the Valley of his domain, and though he could not walk it as he had done all those years ago when he was on two legs alone, it was still his. He thought of the castle as his, the invisible mute servants as his, and he thought of Rose as his, too. This concept of ownership was incredibly animalistic, in his way, and just because she was his didn’t make her chattel, or even a prisoner. In the Beast’s mind, Rose’s father had given her into his care in repayment for a debt, and Rose belonged here, with him, as much as the unpolished stone.
He was at the foot of her stair when he heard the unfamiliar voice. The Beast was, after all, a Beast, and not a man, and with his stealth and hearing he hunted a forest almost devoid of game with decent result. Few men would have been able to do the same. The unfamiliar voice stirred the animal that was always threatening to conquer the vestiges of humanity that still remained, and the Beast flattened limbs, feathers and fur close to his body so he could steal up the stair and find the thief that dared impose his presence in this, his place.
He didn’t bother listening for very long. A low, rippling growl, better suited to tigers trapped up in snowed mountains, was the only warning before the Beast hit the door with enough weight to tear one of the upper hinges from its post. The stout oak door held, but it would not for long, as the Beast did not even have words, only growls and snarls as he assailed the door with his formidable weight. The hinges, the door, the room, the tower; all shook.
Rose was lost in the promise of books and seeing his world. She believed, then with Draco's forehead against hers, that she would be able to keep her word and still see a world beyond these castle walls. When he moved away, she followed closely, and she listened to his assurances about the broom with a grin on her lips, one that said she wasn't afraid. Fearless, she would have already scaled the walls to this castle if she'd not given her word. She wasn't the type to remain entrapped without cause. She would risk death not to be a victim, but she thought it was sweet that he wanted to reassure her. She looked over his shoulder as he pushed open the window, her arm pressed to his in a way that thrilled her.
And then she heard the beginning of that low, rippling growl. She froze for a second, a child caught with her hand in the candy jar, and then she shoved at Draco. She knew he'd used magic on the door, but if it was a locking spell it would do no good against the Beast's bulk. She didn't fear for herself, but she feared for him, and she wanted him to get on the broom, where she was stupidly sure the Beast could not reach him.
"Go," she insisted, her voice fearful and determined. "I won't let him hurt you, but you must go." He had told her that he wasn't brave, and she was counting on that to be true just then. She was positive it wasn't the truth at all, but she wanted it to be fact during the time when the door shook and threatened to splinter. She pressed a hurried kiss to his lips, and her eyes were bright with concern. This was not Snow; the Beast would kill him.
Draco had his wand drawn when he heard the first crash into the door. His eyes were wide, staring at the hinge. Even magic could only hold for so long. “Protego,” he said, casting a shield on the door, buying a few more hits. He didn’t know how strong his magic was here, but he could fly, so there was something to it.
Her kiss stunned him, glued him to the spot. The boy who had kept to himself for so long after the war wrapped an arm around her. “I’m coming back,” he promised, kissing her again just a bit longer, hoping that door would last.
He knew that whatever was on the other side wasn’t going to just give up. His eyes narrowed at the hinge. “Bugger it,” he growled, reaching for the pack. He drew out the book, handing it to her. “Hide this. Read it later.” The broom was in his hand, but he had to push himself to let go. He wanted to stand there and fire as many curses as he could until whatever was behind the door collapsed, but if he failed, if the magic didn’t work, he could be killed and so could she. “I’ll be right out the window, out of sight. If he tries to hurt you, I’ll be back.” He was in the window and on the broom, heading out of sight but within earshot a moment later.
The door burst open in a shower of splintering wood and screeching iron, the bands bending, the old moss-eaten stone crumbling, and the remains of the spell collapsing in one last explosion of strength. The Beast came through the mess like a snake through fire, slicking his wings back to his massive bear-like body and leaping into the room tiger paws first. He was a blur of striped death, the long gray bars down the primary feathers and the monochrome black and white over some parts of his shoulders lending to the confusion of varicolored fur.
He landed astonishingly neatly considering some of his back legs were more hooves than paws, wings flaring and big maned head low to the ground. He slid several inches past Rose as if she was not there, and he was just in time to see the flap of material as the man went out the window. The Beast could smell him, an alien smell of thievery and deception, and as he leaped again the Beast let out a roar that shook dust from the rafters. He slammed shoulders first into the window, which was far too small for him, and clawed out in an attempt to reach the man, who was hovering just out of reach--on a broom.
The Beast had never seen such a ludicrous thing in his life, but it spoke to him of one thing: sorcery. The Beast hated sorcery, and everything it stood for. He pulled his paw back in the window, scrambling back with the serpentine fox tail whipping, and then he roared again in frustration and rage.
Rose jumped back when the Beast slid past her. She'd forced herself to hold her ground as roared and broke down the door, but even she couldn't avoid her instinctive reaction to that slide against the floor. "Stop it!" she yelled once she could find her voice, and she wasn't yelling at the boy outside the window, not at all. "I said, stop it." She felt like a tiny, insignificant thing in that room, the rafters coming down and his roars filling the space. She didn't shrink back against the wall; quite the opposite. When the Beast began slamming his shoulders against the window, she stomped forward and poked his wing with her fingertip, climbing onto the bed to manage to get that height on him. "You're being dramatic. I just had a visitor, that's all," which of course had no effect with all that roaring. "IF YOU DON'T STOP I SHALL NEVER EAT AGAIN!" There that was loud.
Draco hovered dropping into the Beast’s line of sight. When he realized that the creature couldn’t get out of the window, the smirk curled his lips. He move closer, safely out of reach. He sat up, controlling the broom with his legs, arms crossing his chest. His wand stayed in his left hand. He didn’t know if the Beast could fly, but he was fairly certain that his broom was faster and more agile.
An idea came to him as he hovered. He wasn’t powerless, not with his magic. His spells had worked, at least somewhat, and he didn’t have trouble in the air. “Silencio,” he said, casting the spell at the creature. He could do far worse than a silencing charm, but he wouldn’t risk Rose getting hurt. “If that’s all you can do, I have dealt with far worse.” He ended the spell a moment later with a quick, “Finite.” His grey eyes fixed on the creature, cold as ice. “Now, I know you roar, but do you speak?”
When Rose jabbed at his wing, the Beast nearly didn’t notice at all, but the shouting managed to get in while he was still filling his lungs. He was not stupid enough to allow the animal in him to keep clawing at the window when there was no way through the murder hole, and he whipped back around in a tight curl to face Rose just as the wizard bobbed a little lower into sight on the backdrop of the clear gray sky. The stars were covered by the clouds, and the only light in the room came from the glow of the hearth that still burned, but it was enough to make the Beast’s eyes gleam with a hellish green fire that was as far from man as such eyes could be. He glared at her, but had no time to speak, as out of the corner of his eye he saw the man in the sky again. He twisted around once more to roar at him, but that didn’t get far, either.
The Beast was not a creature made of natural birth nor human understanding. He was an assembly of magic, not old as a dragon was old nor resistant as a dragon’s scales were resistant, but magic had the same effect as a magnet did when it was misaligned to another. The spell worked, choking off the Beast’s sound, but not entirely, and the pressure of it impacting, receding, and then vanishing as it was dismissed drove the Beast absolutely mad with rage. Turning fully toward the window, he filled the room with his bulk, flaring his wings to buffet Rose backward onto her bed and clawing his way up onto the end of the stout oak frame.
From there, the Beast crouched and took a leap into the rafters, crashing and snarling as he went. It only took a second before his purpose became clear: he was going to tear through the roof and come out in clean air, with a shot at the wizard who dared trespass.
Rose was impressed by the spell, and there was a teensy second where she cast a look that said as much in Draco's direction. But that was over as soon as the Beast began to try to claw through the roof, and she actually rolled her eyes at the pointlessness of all this. Turning her attention away from Draco, she reached up and jumped, trying to get enough height on the bed to grab one of the Beast's wings. But then his tail almost knocked her to the ground, and she rethought her plan.
"Go," she whispered, all mouth movement and no sound, to Draco. He might not listen, but she had to try, and she'd be able to see him again. She'd even invite him back, once she explained to the Beast that she was to be allowed visitors. Humph. She tipped her chin, and with that thought in mind, she grabbed onto the Beast's tail, and she yanked.
The Beast’s tail, a strong limb that began as something like a lion’s tail, acquired a whip-like texture somewhere in the middle, and then glinted with scales right before it ended with a tuft of red fox fur, had been lashing back and forth in the air as the Beast clawed his way up into the rafters and started ripping down thatch and God knew what in the old Tower roof. It had been recently repaired in advance of Rose’s housing there, and he was tearing through it like a cat through wet newspaper right up until Rose caught him while he was balancing on haunches more designed for running than climbing.
With an astonishingly dog-like sound of surprise, the Beast fell off the beam he’d been balancing on, crashed through a second (splintering it into three parts) and flattened a chair in the corner of Rose’s room after a considerable fall. This time the Tower shook down to its foundations, and the roof groaned warnings.
Draco had moved closer after seeing the Beast fall. His wand was still drawn on the animal. “Incarcerous,” he shouted at the creature, wrapping him in secure ropes, magically holding him. “This is first year magic. I haven’t even gotten to the hard spells yet.” He knew he shouldn’t be doing this. He should have left, but the Beast had awakened that part of him that never wanted to follow, or run and hide again, especially after the war. Once the spell had secured the Beast, he stepped back in the window.
When the roof groaned, he looked up at the damage. “Are you bloody mental? Are you going to destroy the castle just to get to me? I could have just taken her out.” He looked at Rose, who looked safe, provided the roof didn’t fall in on her. Carefully, he levitated the first beam back up to the rafters. “Reparo,” he said, repeating it in several places.
He mumbled a few swear words under his breath, picking up the pieces of the beam. “I guess you won’t be giving me a hand,” he snarled at the creature. At heart, Draco was not a killer, but he did know a few more hexes and curses. At the closer distance, he was able to see the true size of the creature. “What the Hell are you anyway?”
Absolutely blind with anger by this point, there was very little left of the intelligence of the man. A combination of repeated sorcery and violations of his territory had made the instincts take over entirely, and none of Rose’s considering, acid-tongued host was present in the snarling, howling assembly of limbs tangled in Draco’s ropes. The Beast twisted and bit at his bonds to absolutely no avail, probably making even more of a tangle when a longer patience would have allowed his own repellent nature to push off the spell in due time.
By the time the dust had cleared and the beams were settled out of the way, the Beast was still tangled in the remains of the chair and the new rope, straining and jumping by turns, doing his absolute best to tear Draco’s throat out if he could just get him into reach. It was not a pathetic sight, because the Beast was simply too large to be pathetic, taking up fully half of the room with one massive wing (a white barn owl’s wing, in some places, as Draco would no doubt notice despite the incredible size of it) and the bulk of his body, which was a grizzly’s if it was a hare’s. The Beast glared with rabid madness and snapped yellowed feline teeth at the empty air in response to the question.
"He's cursed," Rose provided, sympathy kicking in for the creature tied and scared in the bonds. "He can talk, when he isn't angry." She felt safe enough with the bonds, even with that wing reaching impossibly far and those sharp yellow teeth, to walk to the window. "Thank you for fixing everything. Go. I'll contact you. We'll see each other again," she promised, throwing a defiant look over her shoulder at the ensnared Beast, one that came complete with a toss of her copper hair. But that look just brought back all those soft feelings she'd had for Snow's bear once upon a time, and she looked back at Draco a moment before closing the remaining distance to the window. She wasn't angry with him. He'd only done what he needed to in order to keep himself safe, and he'd repaired the damage, and she was fairly sure his magic could have done much worse than that.
"You won't stop talking to me because of this?" she asked, though she knew their time was limited; those bonds wouldn't hold forever. "Say yes, then leave me. Be careful in the wood."
Draco was angry at the creature who had disrupted the meeting. He was so tempted to remove bones from a wing. He could inflict more damage than either the beast or Rose realized. He remembered Potter lying on the ground in his car on the train. He had broken his nose before walking out of the car. That was a different time, and the act was one of desperation.
Rose had pulled him back before his anger got the better of him. “No, I won’t stop talking to you.” He lowered his head so that only she could hear him. “I will get your mundane a key, and I could always come back here.” His finger stroked her cheek. He felt stronger than he had in a long time. He looked at the Beast a last time, so tempted to issue a warning, just one parting shot. Perhaps it wasn’t needed. If the creature tried to follow, he would drop him from the sky, and it was much farther to fall.
“I will see you soon,” he promised, taking the broom that sat by the window. He took off out the window again, knowing the Beast would be free as soon as he was out of range to hold the spell. It felt so good to fly, and he was running on a high, even if the minor victory might not be long lived.