Nightmares and Nocturnes

The King's Return

Chapter 27: The King's Return

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1998

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"You have to mean it," Narcissa said quietly, and Draco jumped, his wand still pointed at the Snatcher's head.

"Mother," he exhaled, half-choking on shame. "I just - I wasn't - "

"It won't work," she continued, reaching out to close her hand around his shoulder. Her blue eyes traveled slowly over his face, a penitential sort of sadness filling them as she looked at him. "Sweetheart," she whispered, "my love, my darling - " the pressure of her fingers tightened. "It won't work unless you mean it."

"I know," he forced out, wincing as the words emerged jarringly off-pitch. "I know," he repeated, lower - and he did, and the intent was true enough, and perhaps if anyone else had been listening they might have believed him on the second try - but his mother's mouth only bowed, saddened, as he stared at the stunned Snatcher's back.

Narcissa watched him for a moment, contemplating the hesitation on his face, and then she flicked her wand once, turning the Snatcher face up and steadying Draco as he flinched.

"You don't need to tell me you're afraid," Narcissa said, her voice soft and hurried, pausing to glance hastily over her shoulder. "I can see as much. But a curse is only as strong as your resolve, Draco."

"Only as strong as I am, you mean," he muttered under his breath, and her fingers clenched around his shoulder, her nails digging into his skin through the dark fabric of his shirt.

"No," she whispered urgently. "Your strength cannot be measured by times like these, or by force. This was not your decision," she reminded him, "nor was it mine. This," she said emphatically, waving a hand to the bodies around them. "This is no measure of who you are."

Draco looked down at the Snatcher, feeling queasy. "But - "

"Don't think of him," she breathed in his ear, catching the sound of footsteps from elsewhere in the house; of shouts and screams in another room, another episode of torture, somewhere uncomfortably close and still inconceivably far away. "Think of me," she pleaded at a whisper. "Think of your father - and if nothing else, think of yourself. Darling," she begged, her grip painfully tight. "My darling, you have to mean it," she said again. "If for nothing else, mean it so that you can stay alive."

At the jolt from her touch, Draco raised his wand blindly, the motion borne more from obedience than conviction; but even then, he stole a moment, a hapless conjuring of something he lacked, struggling to summon the sureness he knew it would take.

"What if I don't?" he asked her, his voice shaking. "What if I can't?"

Narcissa checked over her shoulder again, stepping in to speak in his ear. "There is more to this life," she told him quickly, a rushed lesson in a darkened room. "Everything I have done," she implored, "despite all the ways I have failed, it has only been to give you all that life has promised. But if you forget - if you find yourself wanting - "

She paused, twisting the point of her wand. "Avada Kedavra," she said quietly, and for a moment, the unmoving chest of the Snatcher seemed to fly upwards; as if the man, whose name Draco did not and would not know, had spared his last breath on earth to reach unwillingly for him, to mock him for a fool, to let the fleeting vestige of his being shudder through Draco's soul.

And somewhere, Draco was sure, the nameless man was laughing.

"He's gone, Draco," Narcissa said, and he lifted his chin numbly, seeking out her face in the room full of vacancy and loss. "He's gone, but you're still standing. He's gone," she repeated, taking his face in her hands, "but you remain."