What It Means To Be

by spinner

11

"I promise you, I didn't know what Harry was up to, or I would have warned you."

Draco gave a curt, sharp laugh, and Snape felt a shiver of remembrance.  He couldn't help but recall how many times Lucius had made that very sound.  The younger Malfoy would not face his mentor.  The apprentice remained a silhouette, a tightly-wound pair of cloaked shoulders and the back of a close-cropped blond head.  His cold, pale ears were turning red in the growing wind.

"Master, forgive me for being so candid with someone who has been so kind to me, but you must learn to reign Potter in.  Honestly, you must.  Or I will hurt him."

"As if you or I have a chance at curbing the good intentions of Harry Potter?"

"You have a better chance than anyone else in influencing him."

"So the Minster of Magic keeps telling me," Severus hummed in resignation. 

"He's on my very last nerve."

"Try to maintain your patience.  I will speak with him."

"Now?"

"He is asleep, and could be for days."

"Wake him!"

"Tomorrow I will speak with him, apprentice.  Do not forget your place."

"Did he do this to make mockery of my pain?  Did he want to see me cry and beg?"

"He did this out of goodwill.  It was meant as your Christmas present."

"Goodwill!?" Draco snorted again, and he turned a quarter of the way around.  Severus could see the very edge of the newly-healed scar that ran over his nose and left cheek.  It was a very thin cut which would turn into a nearly-unnoticeable scar, hopefully.    

"He meant it as well as he could mean it.  I know his heart."

"My personal life, my relationship with my father, whatever unresolved issues I might have—these are none of Potter's business."

"I will speak to him.  Have patience."

"He treads so hard upon my softest spots," Draco trembled as he shook his head.  He was steeling himself against tears.

"Like most clairvoyants," Severus agreed.

"He's stupid.  He's arrogant.  He's much too kind.  He tries too hard to woo me to himself."

"I will speak to him," Severus promised again, smiling a very little.  "It is but a nick.  It will heal nicely.  It might leave you with a thin scar, but nothing more."

"Anna said as much too," Draco agreed.  "How can you be so in love with Potter?  He treads upon your wounds as he has done mine.  You cannot deny it."

"That I love him, or that he treads upon my wounds?"

"Either."

"He does not do so to hurt.  He wounds to heal.  He wants to make amends with you, and with me.  I believe he feels that by putting us in touch with our repressed and concealed injuries, he can make us whole again.  That's just the sort of nonsense Dumbledore might have expressed to him, if I had to guess the source of his encouragement." 

"Warn Potter to back off.  I'm in the position I'm in because of him.  Neither dark nor light, welcomed among no circle.  I am in exile because of him."

"You are not in exile," Severus soothed. 

"Am I not?" Draco whispered. 

"It's that very loneliness that makes Harry want to help you."

"He's utterly mad, Master, and he needs to stop this."

"I know."

"I'm not entirely unfeeling.  I understand that he's been damaged by what he's been through, after what Aunt Bellatrix did to him, after what my father did to him, after how his blood relatives treated him.  I understand that he's unstable.  Perhaps he wants to win me to his side in hopes that I will never harm him?"

"I don't know what he's thinking," Severus lied. 

"He's not going to make friends with the entire world.  I hope you've explained this to him."

"I've tried."

"I'm being patient, but he can't go around opening portals to the Underworld, yanking up my ghosts by the scruffs of their necks, thrusting me into these situations."

"He won't do this again.  I will see to that."

"It's simply not done."

"I quite agree."

"This is twice now," Draco fumed.

"When did he do this before?" Severus paled.

"In the tower.  It was around Halloween.  The channeling lasted no more than a few seconds.  He was staring into the fireplace flames and fell asleep.  Father spoke through him," Draco said, his throat tightening.

"Why didn't you mention this before?"

"I was afraid you'd think I had imagined it.  I doubt if Potter is aware.  When I startled him awake, he talked about a place called Catastrophe Caverns, and said something about a silly helmet."

"He channeled your father while he was having a vision?  Your father came into him at a vulnerable moment.  Harry could not have helped that.  It's common in spirit channeling to open paths to spirits other than the one you seek."

"This tonight he could have bloody well helped!" Draco exclaimed. 

"Has he done this any other time that you know of?"

"Not that I'm aware.  He has visions often enough.  He writes them in a red notebook that he keeps under his pillows."

"You've read this notebook?"

"No."

There was a long pause.  Dark eyes briefly met gray eyes, and the gray eyes fell as Draco finally turned face to face Severus.

"I've tried, naturally, but he put a Scriptor spell on it.  No one but the writer can read it.  Surely you're familiar with the spell."

"It's more properly called the Scriptor/Lector spell.  You can ward your scriptor spell to be read only by certain lectors.  Who taught him that, do you suppose?"

"If you're surprised he knows it, it must have been Granger."

"No doubt," Severus murmured.  "It appears she learned her lesson after her blue book fell into so many hands."

"Master, you have to talk to Potter," Draco said, his voice submissive, softening. 

"Tomorrow, I will get him alone," Severus paused and amended himself, "semi-alone, and I will warn him to tread gently on your soft spots.  Will that do?"

"He is disappointed in me, isn't he?"

"Potter?" Snape's face screwed up with puzzlement. 

"My father," Draco corrected.

"I always found it very difficult to read your father."

"Funny.  He often said the same of you," Draco hinted at a genuine smile.

"How could Lucius be disappointed in you?  What he said, he said in anger, you must know that.  You are everything a Slytherin could want in a son—devious, cunning, scheming, slippery."

"Let us not forget treacherous," Draco added ruefully, thinking on Crabbe and Goyle and his shattered shoppe.  "I have tried all my life to be a good son, and yet, I could read it in him.  He was disappointed in me.  Where did I go wrong?  Why couldn't I agree to kill Potter?  It would have made my father so happy to hear the words if nothing else."

"You were right to refuse the request."

"I know that," Draco muttered.  "I'm not stupid."

"Few Slytherins are."

"I never quite mastered blind obedience.  If you have taught me nothing else, you have taught me to think for myself."

"Which I may regret to my dying day," Severus tried to chuckle.

"It would have made Father so happy to hear the words, and yet I could not do it.  Why?  What's happened to me?"

"Life debt."

"I have paid my life debt to Potter.  I owe him nothing."

"You have paid life debts to each other, and that can have a quelling affect on enmity.  Not to mention all the other ways you are bound to one another.  You are bound as distant family.  You are bound by blood and bone exchange.  You were briefly related through his marriage to your aunt.  Whether this is to your liking or to his comfort, you and he are connected."

"Dumbledore forced us together this year to make us stop fighting."

"Yes.  No doubt that is his intention."

"Irritating, meddlesome, interfering bastard."

"In a nutshell."

"Merlin, that's Potter in a hundred and twenty years, isn't it, give or take?"

"Let us pray otherwise.  You should come inside before you get frostbite."

"I need a few moments.  Too many people."

"The Longbottoms have departed.  Granger and the Stoneburnes as well.  Modesto is guarding Harry, and Volkova is rearranging what remains of the furniture, with the house elves' help.  I have no idea where that other fellow wandered off to."

"Your gift," Draco tested another small smile, but this one was filled with grief.  "I wanted to thank you again.  It means a lot to me."

"If I had known you had such a fondness for jingle-bell cockrings, I'd have given you one years ago," Severus managed a smirk.

"The other gift," Draco blurted, going pink. 

"Ah.  But why?  It is customary to give a wizard a house warming gift for a new abode, and I thought you needed a homey knick-knack or two.  There's another word I hate.  Homey," Severus shuddered.  "You needed a piece of domestic drivel dripping with sentimentality, and that's why I bought it for you."

"I like it very much, and I have already hung it by the mantle.  'Home is where the heart is'.  How right you are."

"My intent was to amuse you, perhaps even annoy you.  I pictured that you would roll your eyes and pretend to like it to make me happy. My intent was not to make you sob as if you had been hit with a crying spell."

"I know, Master."

"I have to explain, I see, that it does not mean your home owns your heart.  It means that where your heart is given, so there is your home.  Home is where you are loved.  You are loved, Draco, very much.  Oh.  Oh, no.  Please don't sob.  I won't say another word."

"I'm not sobbing," Draco promised, sniffing.  Severus put a hand on his shoulder. 

"I must stop in to see Grandfather at Ravensrood, and then I must return to Hogwarts for the night.  If I don't return, the Headmaster will have redecorated my office in a holiday theme which involves bright bows and festive garlands and blinking lights.  That's what he intimated earlier, at any rate.  I will expect both you and Mr. Potter tomorrow at Ravensrood for a few minutes at least.  Whisper wants to ask you how your house elves are settling in at Wynding Lane."

"Tomorrow I will come to Ravensrood if you…."

"Yes?"

"If you promise to have another bottle of Grande Pomme Rouge that I may drown my sorrows in," Draco bargained.

"You may have part of another bottle, if you promise to share it.  But you have to brave Uncle Nemesis to get it."

"He doesn't scare me," Draco scoffed.

"In that case, I shall expect you tomorrow afternoon, late, four perhaps?"

"Four," Draco agreed with a nod.  Severus released his apprentice's shoulder, and patted him on top of the head before walking back across the snowfall on the roof of Grimwood Library.  He disappeared down into the private living quarters, leaving Draco alone with his thoughts in the cold winds.

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