Draco Sinister

Chapter Thirteen - Through A Glass Darkly

Alcohol and fire did not mix, thought Draco, staring into the grate, where the flames had burned themselves down to a bed of glowing red embers. He had now made it through three more Mai Tais since returning to the bedroom, and his surrounding were starting to look a little peculiar. The warmth of the fire, combined with the heat of the alcohol running through his blood, was making him sweat through his clothes, not to mention the fact that his vision was blurring. He wondered if it were entirely normal that the liquor in his glass was staying quite steady while the furniture seemed to be sloshing up and down.

Blurred as it was, the room had started to remind him of his fatherś study back at the Manor. The same thick stone walls, ominous tapestries full of snakes and spiders, the same heavy armchairs; how often had he seen his father sunk into a chair by the fire, glass of Firewhiskey Regal in hand, staring moodily into the flames, exactly as he was doing now. He almost felt as if he were back home, or if not at home, at least in some place other than this fortress: a place both foreign and strangely familiar, where reality assumed the texture of a dream.

Through the silence, he heard Slytherinś voice in his head again, telling him about the covenant that held the world together, the necessity of opposites, the dark and the light, night and day, good and evil. Freezing cold and furnace heat, deadly blackness and petrifying light. He saw Harryś face, and the expression on it when Harry had looked at him in the cell -not quite rage, not quite disgust, not quite disappointment, but a far worse combination of all three.
Whatś wrong with me? Why am I thinking about these things when thereś no point? He glanced down, and saw his own distorted reflection in the side of the silver cup he held: the smooth plane of one cheek, marred only by the tiny scar on his cheekbone, the silver of his eye. Or maybe I ́m just getting really drunk. He put the cup he was holding down on the table next to the chair, very carefully, and waved a hand at the fire. "Incendio," he whispered, and the flames leaped up again as if new. The amber light of the fire lanced through the green liquid in his glass, turning it gold. He leaned back, resting his head on the back of the armchair, very slowly lowering his eyelids so that he looked at the firelight through his lashes, a fringe of silvery grass.

A shadow passed across the fire. He ignored it. The images that danced across his inner lids held his attention. The Mirror of Judgement, its silvery surface reflecting back at him: first his own pale frightened face, then...other things. Afterwards, he ́d barely resisted Slytherin dragging him off to examine his "army." Which was ridiculously vast. Dementors, werewolves, trolls and various other nasties stretching as far as the eye could see. He had hardly cared. Fleur had told him that Slytherin would show him things so terrible that he might die of them. Well, he hadn ́t died, but what he had seen left a white-hot trail across his soul. Some things you don ́t recover from.

Another shadow passed in front of his eyelids. This time, he felt his muscles tense. There was someone in the room with him. He swung around in the chair, half-expecting to see Fleur, or Slytherin, or another random minion. But not who he did see.

Standing in front of him, her flame-colored hair seeing to light a halo around her pale face, was Ginny.

***

It had started to rain. The grass around Sirius and Lupinś feet was wet, and soaked through the cuffs of their trousers as they waited on the hillside. Their heads and shoulders were dry, however, thanks to the Parapluieus Charm Lupin had cast after they left the Potter house. Sirius had been too absorbed in thought to pay much attention to the weather - too absorbed in thought, and in staring at the scabbard that was, without any doubt, the Gryffindor Key. It was a beautiful thing, so well-made that the art that had gone into carving the flowers and leaves all up and down the sides of it almost had nothing to give it. The idea that it had belonged to generations of Potters, James included, made Sirius so nervous at the thought of dropping or damaging it that Lupin had suggested he cast a Reductus charm on it to shrink it to the size of his hand so he could conceal it carefully in the inner pocket of his cloak, which he did.