Sold harry/draco 1
Title : Sold!
Beta : Choco
Pairing : Harry/Draco
Rating : NC-17
Warning(s): Slash, character death, torture
Word Count: 58492
Summary: **Compliant through OotP only - written 2004** Draco suffers from the backlash of his father's arrest for being a Death Eater after his fifth year.
Draco narrowed his eyes focusing on the tall, dark walls of Malfoy Manor before him. He knew he had to get a good look now and imprint the sight of it in his mind so that he'd always remember the old mansion. This could, after all, be his very last time ever seeing it. Moment's before its lawn had been teeming with company, mudbloods and trash that Draco had always hoped would burn up and die if they ever got too close to his parents house.
Sold!
All of his personal belongings.
Sold!
His mother's clothes and father's books.
Sold!
All those important things he was never allowed to touch.
Sold!
His memories and livelihood, his past and future and all the Malfoy secrets.
Sold. All of it gone for mere knuts, a handful of galleons and sickles exchanged for treasures of priceless value into the grubby, greedy fingers of Muggle-loving rubbish. Draco had been forced to stand by and watch, do nothing but watch the tentative auction unfold that ended in his complete destitution and poverty. Now, they were all gone, the final thief hauling away his steal down the street in a cart that looked like it would break under the sheer value of its cargo, too cheap and rundown itself for such precious weight.
The vultures left Malfoy Manor a shell, its front lawn littered with tiny white auction papers and other bits of rumpled garbage. The once proud estate, standing on top of a hill looking down at the wizarding town that surrounded it, had been reduced and gutted. There wasn't anything there to look up to now. There wasn't anything there at all.
"Come along, Mr. Malfoy."
The oily voice of Professor Snape beside him earned a glance, Draco's gray narrowed eyes and then relaxed as Snape looked back at him. There wasn't anything particularly soft in the Professor's eyes or the thin line of his mouth but it was a small reassurance to be next to him anyway. Professor Snape had always favored Draco in school, and even if he was a part of the rotten bunch that had done this to him, he was better company than could have been provided him.
Snape hardly gave his charge a moment to think about this before he was turning and leading the way back down the path that lead to the street and to the Ministry car that waited for them.
Draco faltered as Snape opened the car door and held it for him. He'd never exactly been in a car before, or had he wanted to be. His parents traveled in a very expensive carriage, much more comfortable than he thought a machine of metal could ever be.
"Malfoy."
Snape was beginning to sound annoyed but it didn't spur Draco on at all. Once he got in that car, after all, there wouldn't be any turning back. Once he got into that car, everything would start and there wouldn't be anything that could stop it. At the same time, he almost didn't mind. It wouldn't be terrible if things could change, if he could change, and if he could be the one to make them happen.
"Malfoy, get in the car."
His hands clenching into fists at his sides, Draco turned and looked up at the black-eyed, hook-nosed face of his favorite Professor. "I don't have to you know," He began, gently prodding the hypothetical. "You don't ha-"
"In, Draco." Snape started into the car himself and instead of being climbed over, Draco regrettably got in, slid down the long back seat to the far side against the window. Snape sat down beside him, closing the door and with a glance back at them in the rear view mirror, the Ministry's driver pulled away from the curb.
Draco closed his eyes as soon as the vehicle began to move, his fingers gripping the edge of the leather seat beside his knees. He knew if he opened his eyes again he would want to turn around and look at his house. There was always one more glance he would have to have and he would see it slowly, slowly fade growing smaller as they left it behind. The structures and towers would blend together, indistinguishable. The hedge maze in the backyard, his mother's beautiful gardens would all smear into a mess of shaded green.
He couldn't turn around to watch it though, what would they think of him? Professor Snape and this Ministry official would laugh at him, kneeling on his seat and pressing his face up against the back window watching his Death Eater home and his Death Eater life fade into a memory.
Well, that probably wasn't true. Draco was sure that Professor Snape didn't even know how to laugh .
The thought of leaving Malfoy Manor behind, his life and parents behind, balled up in his chest, a tight nugget of fear. Everything he knew he was slowly driving away from and even though he'd been a part of the Wizarding world all of his life, nothing that awaited him was familiar. Alone. Draco Malfoy was going to be all alone and not to mention poor, at the hands of his worst enemies.
His eyes snapped open and without thinking Draco twisted around to glance out the back window, gray eyes sweeping from side to side swiftly, searching. Where was it? Where had his house gone? How could they be this far away already?
"It's already passed, Mr. Malfoy."
Draco stopped his searching, Snape was right. There wasn't any sign of his house now. He turned around, looking instead at the back of the driver's head before closing his eyes again and sitting back in his seat. So this was the end.
****
"Daddy, I'm bored!" Draco announced, as he tossed open the door to his father's study.
Lucius Malfoy looked up from over the edges of a short stack of papers he held in one hand, a quill in the other. At the sight of his only son, the stately patriarch tossed the papers lightly down onto his desk. "Draco. Go bother your mother."
"I don't want to." Draco sulked, swinging the door lazily back and forth on its hinges. "She told me to go outside."
"Well that sounds like good advice to me." Lucius insisted and setting his quill back into its stand, he folded his hands over his desk.
"There's nothing to do outside!" The boy protested, his eyes widening slightly. He stepped all the way into his father's office and closed the door loudly.
"Don't slam the door."
"Sorry."
Lucius knew Draco wasn't sorry. His son placed his hands on his desk and leaned over them, resting his chin over his folded fingers. "It's the same old boring backyard as ever."
"Well then perhaps you should go into town." Lucius reclined in his chair watching his boy with an arched brow. Draco was a chore, more work than he had thought a son would be when he and Narcissa first decided that they ought to have one.
"I don't want to go into town!" Draco whined again. "Daddy, it's full of rotten muggle-lovers." He sank to his knees so the only thing left on the desk were his fingertips, clinging to the hard wood. "They smell funny and give me weird looks."
"What kind of weird looks?" The eldest Malfoy smirked, rising just slightly from his seat to try and get a better look at Draco, although he could only see the boy's pale arms.
"They're jealous," Draco insisted and soon his fingers disappeared all together. "They wish they were as good as I am."
"I see." When he felt little fingers and little shoulders brush past his calves, Lucius rolled back in his chair and with one hand on the edge of his desk, he leaned over to look beneath it.
Draco peered back at him with owlish gray eyes.
"I don't see how you can be so bored, little Dragon, you're still only a baby. You haven't even gone to school yet. You hardly know anything at all." He smirked at the withering look the boy beneath his desk gave him.
"That's not true!" He snapped back. "I'm not a baby and I know a lot of things! A lot more things than you do!"
"Is that so?" Lucius smiled.
"Yes! It's so! And I'll go to stupid Hogwarts pretty soon! I'm not a little kid you know!"
"Draco, you won't be going to school for four years, yet. That's more than half the years you've been alive."
"So?" His son shot back in defiance.
"So, indeed." Slowly, Lucius tucked his chair back under his desk, then, mindful of the boy curled up there as well. Between his feet, Draco was quiet and as Lucius reclaimed his work and his quill, he felt his son's arms wrap tightly around one of his legs. Draco hugged his father's leg, pressing his cheek against his shin. It was true that parenting was a big hassle, but sometimes it had the ability to make you feel good.
****
When Draco woke up, it was because the car had stopped and because Snape had shaken his shoulder lightly. "Mr. Malfoy," He said the waspish voice he used whenever one of his students was doing something he didn't approve of. "We've arrived. Get out, your things should be retrieved from the trunk."
They were here? The blonde rubbed his eyes, slowly taking his fingers away to peek over the top of them. They were here, finally, at a place he'd never been before. The house the car had parked in front of looked like it hadn't been lived in for years, derelict and old, just about ready to fall apart and filthy.
He grimaced and after one more moment of examination he pushed open the door to the car and stepped out. The Ministry driver had already opened the trunk and was pulling out Draco's school trunk. He'd only been allowed one trunk to put in everything he needed to take with him.
"Here ya go, lad." The Ministry wizard let his trunk clunk loudly to the floor as he got it out of the back of the car and Draco winced as it hit the asphalt.
"Be careful with that, you idiot!" He snapped his hands clenching together as he lifted a fist. "There are valuable things inside there you r-"
"Enough!" Snape interrupted him with a sharp no-nonsense tone. "Follow me, take your things with you." And he started towards the black front door of the building.
Draco looked from his professor's narrow and swiftly retreating back to his trunk. "How-how am I supposed to carry this by myself?" He asked, incredulous and made the mistake of glancing at the Ministry wizard.
The man shrugged his shoulders with an all too pleased smirk on his face and then got back into the car and drove away.
"W-Wait!" Draco snapped, his gray eyes switching from Snape to the disappearing car quickly. Eventually he gave up his sputtering with a sigh and picked up the end of his trunk.
"Hurry up, we can't stand around in the street all day, Malfoy!" Snape was beginning to sound cross as he called from the front porch, turning to the house to lift the silver serpent knocker and demand entrance.
"Bloody-" Draco hissed and dragged his trunk a few feet towards the curb. He couldn't stand the sound of the wood being torn up by the tiny rocks on the road. "Professor, can't you just-"
"No." The front door opened then and Draco was surprised to see none other than Professor Lupin standing behind it.
The man looked older than Draco had remembered, not that he really payed attention to him all that much in class anyway. He dropped his trunk halfway up the house's front lawn and stubbornly sat down on the lid. There was no way he was going into a house with that freak of nature. Lupin wasn't even human!
"Severus," No matter who was on the other side of the door, Draco was sure Remus would have greeted them with the same warm smile, Death Eaters aside. "Why don't you help the boy? It's a little mean to make him carry that all the way, isn't it?"
"He can do it." Snape replied and stepped aside as Lupin opened the door all the way and moved out onto the porch. He watched as the haggard old-young man went to help Draco with his trunk and with a derisive snort, stepped inside the house on his own.
On the trunk, Draco stiffened at the sight of the approaching man and wished, not for the first time since all of this had started, that his wand wasn't buried at the bottom of all his things.
"Ready?" Lupin asked as he picked up the rear of the trunk.
Draco sent him a narrowed glare and slid off the end of the trunk. "Ha." He said and frowning, grabbed the front of the trunk and followed Snape up and into the house. It didn't look like he'd have much of a choice, anyway, even if he didn't want to. They looked like they would force him into the house one way or the other.
He took a moment to glance around his new surroundings, his disgust twisting his frown deeper and deeper into a sneer of repulsion. This house had to only still be standing thanks to magic. Although it was obvious there had been some attempt at cleaning it up, there wasn't any way the peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpet could ever be made into something presentable. "Professor!" Draco said loudly and promptly dropped his end of the trunk with a loud thunk.
Lupin and Snape winced at the same time. And then...
Screams, unlike those Draco had ever heard of, erupted from somewhere on the ground floor. The blonde quickly lifted his hands, slapping them over his ears as the tortured, blood-curdling cries were soon echoed by many more. He'd never heard people scream like that before, not even from the secret room beneath his drawing room floor!
Lupin had run up the stairs towards a large set of moth-eaten, moldy curtains. Draco realized then that it was the portraits on the walls that were screaming at him, all of them and at the lead of whatever it was behind those curtains that Lupin was trying to keep covered.
"Malfoy!" Snape had turned his wrath onto Draco and the boy gasped as his potion's professor grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away from the screaming portraits and Lupin and down a hallway.
"Never," Snape growled as he propelled Draco into a room "ever make noise like that in the hallways!" He ordered. "You'll wake up that wretched woman and force all of us to suffer, do you understand me?"
"What is that?" Draco asked, his eyes as round as galleons as his hands lowered from his ears. Even though they were some distance away he could still hear the portrait screaming and ranting.
"Vile beast! Diseased freak! How dare you stain the house of my fathers, you--"
"Just sit down." Snape replied and for the first time Draco realized that he was in a kitchen. He sat down at the heavy dining table after brushing off the seat with a handkerchief. "There was a big debate over what to do with you, Draco," Snape explained. " I had to spend more time than I wanted to arguing and reasoning to get them to accept you here."
"Oh how positively brill, professor. Thanks." Draco replied sarcastically, sinking back into his chair and folding his arms over his chest.
"You should be thankful." Snape scowled as Lupin finally rejoined them, looking exhausted even through his weary smile. The werewolf took out a plate and began to prepare some sort of meal, Draco didn't want to pay attention. "They were going to stick you with a foster parent, or even in a home for lost boys."
The corner of Draco's mouth twitched in a way that made Snape smile.
"There are still some important things for you to know and understand, however." The potions master continued. "You are now a property of the Ministry. With both of your parents unfit and in prison without any chance of ever being set free, you are nearly an orphan. Until you graduate from Hogwarts and become a full, independent wizard, you are under the control of the Ministry."
Lupin set down a sandwich in front of Draco and a mug of juice. He looked down at the lunch and then squinted up at the old Defense teacher who smiled back at him. Lupin left before Draco had a chance to glower at him properly.
"The Ministry," Professor Snape continued, drawing his attention away from Lupin's back "has given you into our care, The Order of the Phoenix, for obvious reasons."
"What reasons?" Draco interrupted. He couldn't think of a single good reason to give him into the hands of a group of wayward freedom fighters, even if they had been recognized and accepted by Fudge as an honored group of combatants against the now threatening Dark Lord.
"Mainly," Snape looked more than a little annoyed to be interrupted but continued in that smooth voice of his. "That you are a possibly valuable source for the current activities of the Death Eaters and their Lord."
"Oh I see." Draco said and pushed the sandwich away. If that was why they had brought him here, to use him like this, he wasn't going to be a good prisoner of war. "You think that maybe mommy and daddy may have mentioned some sort of dirty little secret to me on accident in between, you know, sacrificing babies and kicking puppies down sewers with the rest of the Death Eater's right?"
"In less sarcastic ways, yes." Snape replied. Lupin had sat at the table on the other side of the Potion's Master, both professors flanking the sour Malfoy heir. Remus pushed the plate back towards Draco with worn hands.
"Well you're wasting your time. They didn't tell me anything." He pushed the plate away from him again. "Not hungry."
Lupin sighed and after a moment of watching him (Draco felt his eyes and was determined not to squirm!), Lupin picked up the plate and juice and brought it back towards the counter. "I'll put it away for you later, if you feel so inclined."
"Not likely!"
Snape realized that Draco had hit his whiny I'm-not-going-to-do-anything-you-tell-me-to-just-because-you-told-me-to phase and knew that there wasn't anything more that could be said at that moment that would get through to him, one way or the other. He got to his feet, brushing off the front of his robes lightly with his spindly fingers. "I will be on my way then. Lupin, I leave this in your charge."
"Of course, Severus." Remus smiled still, putting his hands on the back of Draco's chair to keep the boy locked into place beneath the table as he tried to get up.
"What? You can't leave me here! Professor! Not in this rotten house with this wretched flea-bitten-"
Lupin, still smiling and waving to Snape's back, interrupted coolly. "Now you sound like Mrs. Black, Draco."
Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12 (final)
Beta : Choco
Pairing : Harry/Draco
Rating : NC-17
Warning(s): Slash, character death, torture
Word Count: 58492
Summary: **Compliant through OotP only - written 2004** Draco suffers from the backlash of his father's arrest for being a Death Eater after his fifth year.
Draco narrowed his eyes focusing on the tall, dark walls of Malfoy Manor before him. He knew he had to get a good look now and imprint the sight of it in his mind so that he'd always remember the old mansion. This could, after all, be his very last time ever seeing it. Moment's before its lawn had been teeming with company, mudbloods and trash that Draco had always hoped would burn up and die if they ever got too close to his parents house.
Sold!
All of his personal belongings.
Sold!
His mother's clothes and father's books.
Sold!
All those important things he was never allowed to touch.
Sold!
His memories and livelihood, his past and future and all the Malfoy secrets.
Sold. All of it gone for mere knuts, a handful of galleons and sickles exchanged for treasures of priceless value into the grubby, greedy fingers of Muggle-loving rubbish. Draco had been forced to stand by and watch, do nothing but watch the tentative auction unfold that ended in his complete destitution and poverty. Now, they were all gone, the final thief hauling away his steal down the street in a cart that looked like it would break under the sheer value of its cargo, too cheap and rundown itself for such precious weight.
The vultures left Malfoy Manor a shell, its front lawn littered with tiny white auction papers and other bits of rumpled garbage. The once proud estate, standing on top of a hill looking down at the wizarding town that surrounded it, had been reduced and gutted. There wasn't anything there to look up to now. There wasn't anything there at all.
"Come along, Mr. Malfoy."
The oily voice of Professor Snape beside him earned a glance, Draco's gray narrowed eyes and then relaxed as Snape looked back at him. There wasn't anything particularly soft in the Professor's eyes or the thin line of his mouth but it was a small reassurance to be next to him anyway. Professor Snape had always favored Draco in school, and even if he was a part of the rotten bunch that had done this to him, he was better company than could have been provided him.
Snape hardly gave his charge a moment to think about this before he was turning and leading the way back down the path that lead to the street and to the Ministry car that waited for them.
Draco faltered as Snape opened the car door and held it for him. He'd never exactly been in a car before, or had he wanted to be. His parents traveled in a very expensive carriage, much more comfortable than he thought a machine of metal could ever be.
"Malfoy."
Snape was beginning to sound annoyed but it didn't spur Draco on at all. Once he got in that car, after all, there wouldn't be any turning back. Once he got into that car, everything would start and there wouldn't be anything that could stop it. At the same time, he almost didn't mind. It wouldn't be terrible if things could change, if he could change, and if he could be the one to make them happen.
"Malfoy, get in the car."
His hands clenching into fists at his sides, Draco turned and looked up at the black-eyed, hook-nosed face of his favorite Professor. "I don't have to you know," He began, gently prodding the hypothetical. "You don't ha-"
"In, Draco." Snape started into the car himself and instead of being climbed over, Draco regrettably got in, slid down the long back seat to the far side against the window. Snape sat down beside him, closing the door and with a glance back at them in the rear view mirror, the Ministry's driver pulled away from the curb.
Draco closed his eyes as soon as the vehicle began to move, his fingers gripping the edge of the leather seat beside his knees. He knew if he opened his eyes again he would want to turn around and look at his house. There was always one more glance he would have to have and he would see it slowly, slowly fade growing smaller as they left it behind. The structures and towers would blend together, indistinguishable. The hedge maze in the backyard, his mother's beautiful gardens would all smear into a mess of shaded green.
He couldn't turn around to watch it though, what would they think of him? Professor Snape and this Ministry official would laugh at him, kneeling on his seat and pressing his face up against the back window watching his Death Eater home and his Death Eater life fade into a memory.
Well, that probably wasn't true. Draco was sure that Professor Snape didn't even know how to laugh .
The thought of leaving Malfoy Manor behind, his life and parents behind, balled up in his chest, a tight nugget of fear. Everything he knew he was slowly driving away from and even though he'd been a part of the Wizarding world all of his life, nothing that awaited him was familiar. Alone. Draco Malfoy was going to be all alone and not to mention poor, at the hands of his worst enemies.
His eyes snapped open and without thinking Draco twisted around to glance out the back window, gray eyes sweeping from side to side swiftly, searching. Where was it? Where had his house gone? How could they be this far away already?
"It's already passed, Mr. Malfoy."
Draco stopped his searching, Snape was right. There wasn't any sign of his house now. He turned around, looking instead at the back of the driver's head before closing his eyes again and sitting back in his seat. So this was the end.
****
"Daddy, I'm bored!" Draco announced, as he tossed open the door to his father's study.
Lucius Malfoy looked up from over the edges of a short stack of papers he held in one hand, a quill in the other. At the sight of his only son, the stately patriarch tossed the papers lightly down onto his desk. "Draco. Go bother your mother."
"I don't want to." Draco sulked, swinging the door lazily back and forth on its hinges. "She told me to go outside."
"Well that sounds like good advice to me." Lucius insisted and setting his quill back into its stand, he folded his hands over his desk.
"There's nothing to do outside!" The boy protested, his eyes widening slightly. He stepped all the way into his father's office and closed the door loudly.
"Don't slam the door."
"Sorry."
Lucius knew Draco wasn't sorry. His son placed his hands on his desk and leaned over them, resting his chin over his folded fingers. "It's the same old boring backyard as ever."
"Well then perhaps you should go into town." Lucius reclined in his chair watching his boy with an arched brow. Draco was a chore, more work than he had thought a son would be when he and Narcissa first decided that they ought to have one.
"I don't want to go into town!" Draco whined again. "Daddy, it's full of rotten muggle-lovers." He sank to his knees so the only thing left on the desk were his fingertips, clinging to the hard wood. "They smell funny and give me weird looks."
"What kind of weird looks?" The eldest Malfoy smirked, rising just slightly from his seat to try and get a better look at Draco, although he could only see the boy's pale arms.
"They're jealous," Draco insisted and soon his fingers disappeared all together. "They wish they were as good as I am."
"I see." When he felt little fingers and little shoulders brush past his calves, Lucius rolled back in his chair and with one hand on the edge of his desk, he leaned over to look beneath it.
Draco peered back at him with owlish gray eyes.
"I don't see how you can be so bored, little Dragon, you're still only a baby. You haven't even gone to school yet. You hardly know anything at all." He smirked at the withering look the boy beneath his desk gave him.
"That's not true!" He snapped back. "I'm not a baby and I know a lot of things! A lot more things than you do!"
"Is that so?" Lucius smiled.
"Yes! It's so! And I'll go to stupid Hogwarts pretty soon! I'm not a little kid you know!"
"Draco, you won't be going to school for four years, yet. That's more than half the years you've been alive."
"So?" His son shot back in defiance.
"So, indeed." Slowly, Lucius tucked his chair back under his desk, then, mindful of the boy curled up there as well. Between his feet, Draco was quiet and as Lucius reclaimed his work and his quill, he felt his son's arms wrap tightly around one of his legs. Draco hugged his father's leg, pressing his cheek against his shin. It was true that parenting was a big hassle, but sometimes it had the ability to make you feel good.
****
When Draco woke up, it was because the car had stopped and because Snape had shaken his shoulder lightly. "Mr. Malfoy," He said the waspish voice he used whenever one of his students was doing something he didn't approve of. "We've arrived. Get out, your things should be retrieved from the trunk."
They were here? The blonde rubbed his eyes, slowly taking his fingers away to peek over the top of them. They were here, finally, at a place he'd never been before. The house the car had parked in front of looked like it hadn't been lived in for years, derelict and old, just about ready to fall apart and filthy.
He grimaced and after one more moment of examination he pushed open the door to the car and stepped out. The Ministry driver had already opened the trunk and was pulling out Draco's school trunk. He'd only been allowed one trunk to put in everything he needed to take with him.
"Here ya go, lad." The Ministry wizard let his trunk clunk loudly to the floor as he got it out of the back of the car and Draco winced as it hit the asphalt.
"Be careful with that, you idiot!" He snapped his hands clenching together as he lifted a fist. "There are valuable things inside there you r-"
"Enough!" Snape interrupted him with a sharp no-nonsense tone. "Follow me, take your things with you." And he started towards the black front door of the building.
Draco looked from his professor's narrow and swiftly retreating back to his trunk. "How-how am I supposed to carry this by myself?" He asked, incredulous and made the mistake of glancing at the Ministry wizard.
The man shrugged his shoulders with an all too pleased smirk on his face and then got back into the car and drove away.
"W-Wait!" Draco snapped, his gray eyes switching from Snape to the disappearing car quickly. Eventually he gave up his sputtering with a sigh and picked up the end of his trunk.
"Hurry up, we can't stand around in the street all day, Malfoy!" Snape was beginning to sound cross as he called from the front porch, turning to the house to lift the silver serpent knocker and demand entrance.
"Bloody-" Draco hissed and dragged his trunk a few feet towards the curb. He couldn't stand the sound of the wood being torn up by the tiny rocks on the road. "Professor, can't you just-"
"No." The front door opened then and Draco was surprised to see none other than Professor Lupin standing behind it.
The man looked older than Draco had remembered, not that he really payed attention to him all that much in class anyway. He dropped his trunk halfway up the house's front lawn and stubbornly sat down on the lid. There was no way he was going into a house with that freak of nature. Lupin wasn't even human!
"Severus," No matter who was on the other side of the door, Draco was sure Remus would have greeted them with the same warm smile, Death Eaters aside. "Why don't you help the boy? It's a little mean to make him carry that all the way, isn't it?"
"He can do it." Snape replied and stepped aside as Lupin opened the door all the way and moved out onto the porch. He watched as the haggard old-young man went to help Draco with his trunk and with a derisive snort, stepped inside the house on his own.
On the trunk, Draco stiffened at the sight of the approaching man and wished, not for the first time since all of this had started, that his wand wasn't buried at the bottom of all his things.
"Ready?" Lupin asked as he picked up the rear of the trunk.
Draco sent him a narrowed glare and slid off the end of the trunk. "Ha." He said and frowning, grabbed the front of the trunk and followed Snape up and into the house. It didn't look like he'd have much of a choice, anyway, even if he didn't want to. They looked like they would force him into the house one way or the other.
He took a moment to glance around his new surroundings, his disgust twisting his frown deeper and deeper into a sneer of repulsion. This house had to only still be standing thanks to magic. Although it was obvious there had been some attempt at cleaning it up, there wasn't any way the peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpet could ever be made into something presentable. "Professor!" Draco said loudly and promptly dropped his end of the trunk with a loud thunk.
Lupin and Snape winced at the same time. And then...
Screams, unlike those Draco had ever heard of, erupted from somewhere on the ground floor. The blonde quickly lifted his hands, slapping them over his ears as the tortured, blood-curdling cries were soon echoed by many more. He'd never heard people scream like that before, not even from the secret room beneath his drawing room floor!
Lupin had run up the stairs towards a large set of moth-eaten, moldy curtains. Draco realized then that it was the portraits on the walls that were screaming at him, all of them and at the lead of whatever it was behind those curtains that Lupin was trying to keep covered.
"Malfoy!" Snape had turned his wrath onto Draco and the boy gasped as his potion's professor grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away from the screaming portraits and Lupin and down a hallway.
"Never," Snape growled as he propelled Draco into a room "ever make noise like that in the hallways!" He ordered. "You'll wake up that wretched woman and force all of us to suffer, do you understand me?"
"What is that?" Draco asked, his eyes as round as galleons as his hands lowered from his ears. Even though they were some distance away he could still hear the portrait screaming and ranting.
"Vile beast! Diseased freak! How dare you stain the house of my fathers, you--"
"Just sit down." Snape replied and for the first time Draco realized that he was in a kitchen. He sat down at the heavy dining table after brushing off the seat with a handkerchief. "There was a big debate over what to do with you, Draco," Snape explained. " I had to spend more time than I wanted to arguing and reasoning to get them to accept you here."
"Oh how positively brill, professor. Thanks." Draco replied sarcastically, sinking back into his chair and folding his arms over his chest.
"You should be thankful." Snape scowled as Lupin finally rejoined them, looking exhausted even through his weary smile. The werewolf took out a plate and began to prepare some sort of meal, Draco didn't want to pay attention. "They were going to stick you with a foster parent, or even in a home for lost boys."
The corner of Draco's mouth twitched in a way that made Snape smile.
"There are still some important things for you to know and understand, however." The potions master continued. "You are now a property of the Ministry. With both of your parents unfit and in prison without any chance of ever being set free, you are nearly an orphan. Until you graduate from Hogwarts and become a full, independent wizard, you are under the control of the Ministry."
Lupin set down a sandwich in front of Draco and a mug of juice. He looked down at the lunch and then squinted up at the old Defense teacher who smiled back at him. Lupin left before Draco had a chance to glower at him properly.
"The Ministry," Professor Snape continued, drawing his attention away from Lupin's back "has given you into our care, The Order of the Phoenix, for obvious reasons."
"What reasons?" Draco interrupted. He couldn't think of a single good reason to give him into the hands of a group of wayward freedom fighters, even if they had been recognized and accepted by Fudge as an honored group of combatants against the now threatening Dark Lord.
"Mainly," Snape looked more than a little annoyed to be interrupted but continued in that smooth voice of his. "That you are a possibly valuable source for the current activities of the Death Eaters and their Lord."
"Oh I see." Draco said and pushed the sandwich away. If that was why they had brought him here, to use him like this, he wasn't going to be a good prisoner of war. "You think that maybe mommy and daddy may have mentioned some sort of dirty little secret to me on accident in between, you know, sacrificing babies and kicking puppies down sewers with the rest of the Death Eater's right?"
"In less sarcastic ways, yes." Snape replied. Lupin had sat at the table on the other side of the Potion's Master, both professors flanking the sour Malfoy heir. Remus pushed the plate back towards Draco with worn hands.
"Well you're wasting your time. They didn't tell me anything." He pushed the plate away from him again. "Not hungry."
Lupin sighed and after a moment of watching him (Draco felt his eyes and was determined not to squirm!), Lupin picked up the plate and juice and brought it back towards the counter. "I'll put it away for you later, if you feel so inclined."
"Not likely!"
Snape realized that Draco had hit his whiny I'm-not-going-to-do-anything-you-tell-me-to-just-because-you-told-me-to phase and knew that there wasn't anything more that could be said at that moment that would get through to him, one way or the other. He got to his feet, brushing off the front of his robes lightly with his spindly fingers. "I will be on my way then. Lupin, I leave this in your charge."
"Of course, Severus." Remus smiled still, putting his hands on the back of Draco's chair to keep the boy locked into place beneath the table as he tried to get up.
"What? You can't leave me here! Professor! Not in this rotten house with this wretched flea-bitten-"
Lupin, still smiling and waving to Snape's back, interrupted coolly. "Now you sound like Mrs. Black, Draco."
Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12 (final)