A/N: This chapter is brought to you by the letter "D." Draco, Death Eaters, Dark Lords, Dementors, death, despair, destruction, and dentistry have all been combined to bring you the tenth instalment of the epic fic, Deeper Than Blood. Grab your pixie sticks and prepare to enjoy the wild twists and turns Draco Malfoy and Malcolm Baddock face as they come to terms with what they've been raised to do.

Disclaimer: All the characters that you recognise really don't belong to me. I'm just here to play house and destroy life as they know it. But, I promise that I'll return them all in one piece. And I'm not making any money, really. In fact, I'm losing it. All this time I spend writing, I could be working a second job…oh, wait, I hate the first place. Never mind.

I am still walking evading the shadows

I am still running a narrow line

I'll go wherever you would have me go

Ever searching for a sign

Blue Horizon by 38th Parallel

Perfect Game

Chapter Ten

Malcolm felt all of the air leaving him in one hard swoop. Across the table, Voldemort was looking at him with glittering eyes, maliciousness ingrained into every serpentine facial feature. A pressure had built at the back of Malcolm's throat long before, but in the wake of such a glare, it had turned slimy and nauseating. Every pore on his body had opened to let the cold air flow in, so that goose pimples rose everywhere. His hair stood on end. His boots, resting on the ground, were shaking the slightest bit.

Between him and the most powerful Dark Lord of all time lay a ruined chessboard. The remnants of battling black and white formed a grey filament of dust over the cracked squares, attesting to the battle that had taken place for hours between Keeper and Dark Lord. Two kings, one queen, a few scattered pawns, and three bishops were all that remained of the ferocious entanglement.

But one king stood, checkmated against the rest.

Sucking in a deep breath, Malcolm stared at the king in disbelief. The word to end the game still hung in the air over the chess game, like the rest of the battle dust. It echoed through every segment of his dazed and befuddled brain. "Checkmate."

Slowly, the game started to reconstruct itself all on its own. With no intervention, smashed pawns sprang back to life, halved rooks connected to the other halves, one queen picked herself out of the dust, knights crawled back to their equine friends. Malcolm snorted to himself as Hermione Granger, one of the rooks, actually reached down to dust off a minuscule copy of what appeared to be Hogwarts, A History. Draco straightened his crown as he resumed his normal spot. All of the chess pieces lined up on their own spots, none looking worse for the wear.

"I can't believe this, boy." Voldemort's hiss was incensed. Rage vibrated from every syllable. "Nobody beats me at chess."

"I just did." Malcolm's tongue felt too thick to use, but somehow he formed the words. They sounded distant to his ears. He repeated himself, not quite believing yet. "I actually beat you. You were checkmated. That means…that means that I can see your pieces." He glanced down, intent to study the black pieces. To his disappointment, most wore the normal garb of Death Eaters, so he could see very few faces. There was no doubting that the king was Lord Voldemort. The queen, however, was dressed in robes of blood-coloured velvet. He caught a glance of long, blond hair…

"Crucio!"

Malcolm knew pain. There was very little chance that he could avoid doing so, playing Quidditch as hard as he did. He had plummeted from broomsticks, broken more bones than he cared to say, ripped fingernails off while catching the Quaffle, and had more concussions than all of the boys in his year put together. It was odd to see him without cuts, scrapes, or bruises, or even the occasional black eye. And all of that felt like heaven compared to the utter agony that wracked his entire form now.

There was no centralised agony, nothing coming from just one point. It spread all over, and it came from all over. There was no beginning to it, and there would be no end. It just came in one big, unending wave, murdering him a hundred times over. In his mind, Malcolm bashed into a thousand walls and threw thousands of things. He flung himself from a thousand cliffs. He begged for his mother. He screamed for and at his father. His throat tore itself apart from his howls.

Then it all stopped.

It was almost like waking from a nightmare, or coming through a terrifying fog. Afterimages of the pain twinged at every muscle, throbbing almost gently. Malcolm opened his eyes—when had he closed them?—to find that he was in a foetal position, still manacled to the table. The manacles had marred his wrists with dark crimson, and he felt blood well at the back of his damaged throat.

And across from him, looking as though he had just finished reading the Sunday morning paper, was Lord Voldemort. Malcolm shook in unbroken terror that Voldemort would inflict something so awful on him again. The shaking alone made his body ache all over again.

The Dark Lord, however, had other plans. Malignant eyes never leaving Malcolm's glazed, fearful ones, he called, "Baddock!" Malcolm's father, a dark, looming shadow, appeared at his elbow so quickly that Malcolm blinked. Had his father been there the whole time? His chest hitched suspiciously. Had his father actually stood there while Voldemort had Crucio'd his own son?

Now anger joined the fear, enabling Malcolm to lift his head high and glare malevolently. If his father noticed, the elder Baddock gave no sign.

Voldemort's next words froze Malcolm's blood on its path to his heart. "Ah, good, Baddock. Your prompt arrival is adequate. Undo those bonds and take your son to his cell and leave him there. Keep him alive only until Draco's time comes."

Draco's time? Malcolm wondered, watching with little interest as the man that called himself a father touched a wand that Malcolm would recognise in his sleep to the manacle on his son's left wrist. What is Draco's time? The manacle melted away, joined shortly by its partner, and the chains tying Malcolm to the table. Is Draco even here? Is Ginny? Where is here?

Rough hands hauled him to his feet and shoved him in the general direction of a door that Malcolm had not seen before in the darkened room. His entire form quaked, but he did not care. Sweet, nurturing delirious surreality had swept in on the pain's wake, and he found himself gazing at the world with apathy unequalled. As long as something levied him away from Voldemort, he was content to be manhandled from the room. That was, at least, until he heard Voldemort's parting words.

"And once you have the girl, Mr. Baddock, kill him."

*

Draco caught the bottle with his fingertips, cold and wet against the pads of his hand. "What's this?" he asked without thinking, picking up the vintage.

He had been sitting in a room for about an hour now, he guessed, with only a dark shadow across the table to keep him company. It was a small room, darkened and dull. There had been no words exchanged so far. Three days had passed since he had been Stunned and led away at wandpoint from his date with Ginny Weasley. What had occurred of Ginny, he was not positive, but he was almost sure that the phoenix had flown her out of there. Baddock's situation was not so lucky, Draco knew. They had thrown both boys in the same cell, after Draco was released from his nightmarish sessions with his father. Baddock was very tight-lipped about where he had been, but Draco had gleaned enough information to know that something had gone very, very wrong for the young Keeper—especially after the young man had coughed blood all over Draco's sleeve.

Of course, enquiring about either of those was downright foolish. Draco wasn't an average prisoner; he had learned early on that he wasn't to be killed. Now his only point was to find out why he was there in the first place. He wanted to ask about that, too, but knew that was pretty stupid. So instead, he asked about the bottle that had been passed to him by a nameless personage.

"Wine," was the grunted answer. "Your father felt that your progress was going well enough for you to receive some reward."

The rage that had washed through Draco on and off for three days straight did not surface now. In fact, his only reaction was an uplifted eyebrow. He picked up the bottle and read the brand and year. "Surely my father knows that I gave up alcohol altogether," he said mildly, pushing the bottle back to its source. "If you've intentions of giving me recompense, I would not say no to a stroll outside, or perhaps the smallest taste of freedom. I find chains and imprisonment rather morbid and positively dull."

He had to bite back a smirk against the shocked, stiff reaction of the wine deliverer. "Mr. Malfoy…"

"Come, come, I'm sure you're one of Father's henchmen. That puts us almost in the same family, doesn't it? Call me Draco. My family does." Draco had learned his etiquette and stone-faced ability to lie from the best of the brightest: his father. Although he tended not to react rationally to situations involving Potter and Ginny, he could play this calm-faced persona until he was ready to rip throats out. This way, nobody would be able to guess his reactions.

"Very well…Draco." The henchman obviously did not know what to take of the smirking, calm boy across the table. "I can't allow you to go outside."

Now Draco was getting bored with this. "A deck of cards, then?" he wheedled easily. "It wouldn't be too much, and Baddock's a growing boy. Too much more of this drab place and he may go insane. That won't look good for the Slytherin Quidditch team, won't it? I mean, you're a Slytherin, aren't you?"

"…Yes," the man holding the wine replied slowly, unsure as to what Draco was aiming for. "Yes, I was a Slytherin."

There was never a finer actor than Draco at that moment. He leaned forward with his palms flat on the table, pretending outrage when all he felt was manipulative amusement. "Then how dare you refuse to give us this gift! The future of Slytherin's Quidditch team rests on your shoulders, man! Are you going to let them go into poverty over a mere deck of cards?"

Obviously quaking with fear, the man hurried from the room to procure the deck of cards for Draco and Baddock. Once he was sure that the man had completely gone, Draco leaned back and allowed the annoyed expression to leave his face. His victory was short-lived, it turned out.

"You're manipulative as well as many-sided, Lord Malfoy," a serpentine voice said from the darkness, causing every fibre in Draco's being to freeze up quite unexpectedly. "I would hate to be your opponent in such a game of cards."

Although his throat closed up in betrayal, Draco still managed to murmur, "Lord Voldemort," with passable reverence. He quickly dropped his head; Draco had been in the presence of Voldemort before, being the son of one of the highest esteemed Death Eaters. He knew the entire charade from front to back, and could act accordingly. That did not, however, account for the fact that his knees were knocking together so loudly that he was positive the Dark Lord heard it. "I did not hear your lordship come in."

"That would not have been possible," came the answering reply. Underneath the sweeps of blond hair that had grown long enough to fall beseechingly into his eyes, Draco could see the shadow of what had once been a man, Tom Riddle. "I entered before you."

Now Draco's throat was battling with the Sahara Desert. He forced his knees together by crossing his legs at the ankles and tucking them underneath his chair. "Of course, milord," he answered with some difficulty. That explains a lot. Although he did not voice this last part, it was evident in the set of his shoulders. Realising that the wine was now between the Dark Lord and himself, he asked, "Would your lordship care for a glass? I do not partake myself, but don't let me stop you."

There was a graceful shifting that nearly made him start. "Wine loosens the tongue all too much for my tastes. What would any of us be if we were all reduced to idiots who cried at the merest word, Mr. Malfoy?"

"A bunch of tail-wagging sods following some mindless operation or other, I'd imagine," Draco said before he could stop himself.

He blanched at his courage, but the damage had been done. "Is that how you perceive my esteemed order to be, Mr. Malfoy?" The tone was surprisingly empty of malice; if he were to examine it with a detached air, which was certainly not possible with the blood racing through his system and thudding through his heart as it was, Draco would have detected only curiosity. "Some days, I feel that you are more than right."

Surely this couldn't be happening. "I am?" Draco asked slowly, lifting his head the slightest bit to get a better view through his hair. "Right, I mean? About the tail-wagging sods?"

The laugh that was presented him now was cold and humourless. "How else would you get such a strong legion of men behind you, Mr. Malfoy? Rewards. Promises. Dealings. Men cannot lead men alone by faith. We are not perfect—we must bluff. Surely you've realised this long before. I've heard your merits concerning the card table."

Until his sixteenth birthday, Draco had been one of the most reputed poker players under twenty, after all. His father had entered him into the games to score heaps of money—money that Draco never saw again. With a natural poker face, Draco had indeed walked away with the heaviest pockets after the game more than a few times. "Are you calling your men a bunch of faithless swots, milord?" he finally asked, pushing all of this information aside. "I don't feel that they would appreciate that very much."

Voldemort flicked his fingers, which Draco now could clearly see. An amused smile that was still sinister collected on his snakelike features. "The truth, as they say, hurts, Mr. Malfoy."

That it does, Draco wanted to agree, but wisely kept his tongue. Being a smart aleck would earn him nothing. Right now, he needed to wait and assess his situation. Faithless swots or not, those men and this half-human lord in front of him were more danger than he wished to think about. One tiny whiff of the indecision on his part would have them all over him like Chasers on a Quaffle.

"However, not all men in my legion are, as you put it, 'faithless swots.' I have several devout followers, of whom I like to make examples. You remember Bartemius Crouch, Jr., correct?"

A scowl coming over his features, Draco affirmed that he had, indeed. Being in Lucius Malfoy's circle meant knowing most of what happened at Hogwarts. As a consequence, Draco had learned that it had not been Alastor Moody, but Barty Crouch that had humiliated him by turning him into a bouncing rodent of some sort. From the way Potter and his friends talked, it was a ferret, but Draco had never been sure.

"Until I had to dispose of him, he was quite the devoted follower. I would pay to have ten more like him. It was almost a tragedy, that I had to ask that Dementor to finish the job his father started." If Voldemort had been any sixth or seventh year in the Slytherin House, he would have been twirling the stem of some vicious-looking wineglass, and watching the wine luxuriously. However, he was only tapping the fingers of one hand against the table and staring at Draco with smoky red eyes. "You'll discover, Mr. Malfoy, that the blind cannot lead the blind. You know perhaps as well as I do that Albus Dumbledore and 'Order of the Phoenix' are just a bunch of meddling old fools who have become bored with saving the day by the legal, normal ways. They are still every bit as tiresome and conceited as they were when they tried to take the world from the offices of the Ministry."

Draco blinked at the change of topic, but gave no other reaction than that. His poker face was grafted firmly in its spot, not even budging for the darkest lord of all time. "The Gryffindors are always butting into my business," he agreed honestly, venom in his voice. "They seem to deem me unworthy to handle my own affairs."

Unbidden, a flash of Potter's stubborn face from the Prefect's bathroom only a month before came into his mind. He did not blink, even when that was followed by another flash, this time of Granger's face as she pulled him into an alcove to discuss Ginny's honour. And bringing up the rear as always was a view of an angry Weasley, pinning him against the wall. Other than that, he could conjure up no more images. "I'm surprised that none of them have died, impaled on their own swords before now. They've always seemed a foolhardy breed to me." Without the Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and Slytherins, it wouldn't be surprising if the castle had burned down five times over, he thought derisively to himself.

"I've learned not to underestimate Gryffindors. A reckless fool with a wand, fool though he is, is still a threat." Voldemort steepled his spindly fingers. "That is why I must be assured that my men have complete faith in me."

He's going to do it, Draco thought with one wild spurt of panic, although his face showed no more than a piqued curiosity. Underneath, he was sweating wildly, bashing things around in his mind. He avoided the dark spot within that had been growing in the past three days. The dark spot actually liked the idea of following such a sinister villain. However, the rest of him was protesting and screaming, He's actually going to do it. He's going to make me take the Dark Mark, here and now!

The knowledge that he would one day have to take the Dark Mark on his left arm, and deal with a lifetime of wearing long sleeves and arm cramps, had always been present. That was why Draco had invented his own defence mechanisms to combat the knowledge. However, the most effectual one, that taking the Mark wouldn't happen for a long time, wasn't proving effective at all in the face of such panic.

"Understandable, milord," Draco said slowly, his voice betraying none of his panic. "I would ask for little else, were I in your position."

The door opened and both the Dark Lord and the son of one of his most prestigious followers looked up as the nameless Death Eater Draco had sent for cards re-entered. When the Death Eater saw Voldemort sitting across the table from Draco, he fell immediately to his knees and touched his forehead to the floor. "Milord," he said in a whimpering tone. Draco realised with quite a guilty jolt that he had ordered the poor Death Eater to go against orders, which would certain mean punishment on the Death Eater's part. "I—I only went to retrieve a deck of cards for this boy. A mere deck of cards, milord, that's all, I swear!"

"Get up, you snivelling rodent. Today is your lucky day." Voldemort glanced fleetingly at Draco, long enough to make the boy's stomach churn unpleasantly. "Mr. Malfoy has agreed to play you in cards. Should you win, you can keep your life."

Draco hadn't agreed to any such thing, but nobody could claim that the Dark Lord was fair. He looked across at the whimpering Death Eater, wondering exactly why such a coward had joined Voldemort's ranks. He soon found out. "Please, milord, I'm just trying to support my family…"

"You will remember that the next time you disobey an order, then," Voldemort said idly, looking almost bored. With a small amount of thrill and a larger amount of dread, Draco realised that this was some sort of test of him, not of the servant. The servant was at Draco's mercy, and Voldemort wanted to see how Draco would play this game. Draco was skilled enough at cards to win or to lose easily. If he lost, he would be going easy on the poor man, but if he won, he would condemn the man. He watched without any sort of compassion as the man sat down across from him and brought the deck of cards into the dim light. "The cards. Mr. Malfoy will deal."

The Death Eater had fetched Exploding Snap cards, Draco saw immediately. Inwardly, he almost trilled with pleasure. Although Draco excelled at poker, his true love was the danger and excitement a simple game of Exploding Snap held. Of course, it wouldn't be quite as fun with only two people, especially not with somebody's life at stake.

"We'll keep it simple," he said severely, looking at his opponent without any flash of pity in his eyes, "because simple is all I think you can handle."

The Death Eater tensed. "Very well, milord," he muttered, looking fearful and annoyed at the same time. "If that is the way you wish to do things. I can handle complex, but if you would like to keep it simple, then by all means, do."

Draco's scowl deepened as he subconsciously tried to make himself appear more frightening. He had a plan, but it would never work if the Death Eater showed nothing but disdain towards him. "Complex, then," he snapped, wishing that he had not inadvertently backed himself into that corner. It would definitely throw a broken wand into his plans. "And mind you, keep comments like that to yourself. I have no wish for you to soil the air with their pitiful foolishness."

That shut his opponent up. Score one for Draco Malfoy, Draco thought to himself as his nimble fingers shuffled the deck. "Tell me your name, fool. I can hardly well play against a nameless man in Exploding Snap, can I? Why, that's almost against the rules." Diamond-hard coldness emanated from his voice, earning him a nod from the Dark Lord and an astonished stare from his opponent.

"Stodgeton," his opponent finally answered. "Lloyd Stodgeton."

Draco stared at him balefully, glad that he was finally bowing down to the plan. "Well?" he asked impatiently, after a moment.

Although Stodgeton's face was blocked by the Death Eater mask, he radiated confusion. "Well what, sir?" he asked slowly, looking from Draco to Voldemort.

"Your mask!" Draco snapped impetuously. Acting just like Lucius came extremely easily, a thought that made him feel both relieved and scared. "I can hardly be expected to play against you in a decent game of Snap while it's on, can I? Come, we're all of one confidence here. Remove that obstruction and let's start this game! You're wasting my time!"

Lloyd Stodgeton was a wisp of a man, probably in his early thirties or late twenties. He had obviously seen better years, for his face was rather gaunt and the skin hung unappealingly from his neck. He was balding as well, the shiny skin atop his head alive with hundreds of freckles. They ran up the length of his hands and neck and face, the only parts of Lloyd Stodgeton that Draco could see. Dishwater blond hair gleamed dully in the dim light. "Very well, milord." He tore his blue gaze away from Draco's own. He accepted the first hand without so much as glancing up.

But Draco had played his hand at Exploding Snap several times, and knew how to cajole an unwilling player. If he wanted to spare pitiful Lloyd Stodgeton's life, he had to do it carefully. He had to find something that made Stodgeton worth preserving in Voldemort's care. Although the fact that Stodgeton was a father would play with most peoples' heartstrings, Voldemort had instructed Lucius Malfoy to have his own son whipped. Baddock had thrown his own son into the cell at Voldemort's orders. That was hardly something that Draco could use to his advantage. It took him awhile, but he discovered it: Stodgeton's redeeming quality was that he had once been a prised Curse-Breaker for Gringotts.

So it was a very relieved Draco that lost to Stodgeton by a mere defaulted card, when his entire hand of cards ignited and tried to singe his eyebrows off. Stodgeton, still left with a hand that was only smouldering, stared at the younger man, obviously stunned.

Voldemort leaned close to the victor, eyes malignant. Even from where he was sucking on the tips of his fingers to relieve some of the pain, Draco could see the other man shaking wildly. "Mr. Malfoy has seen the benefits in sparing your life, Stodgeton. Next time, you may not be so lucky. Let this be a lesson to you: never disobey a direct order from me, or it will be the last thing you do. I will make certain of it." Stodgeton babbled that he would never dream of such a thing. "Good. Now get out of here—the sight of you tires me!"

Stodgeton needed no further urging.

Even as the door swung shut behind the almost-ruined man, Draco turned his gaze towards the table directly in front of Voldemort. "Did I pass your test, milord?"

"Suitably." Voldemort seemed to be pondering something, so Draco took the opportunity to get another glimpse of the notorious criminal through the curtain of his hair. Voldemort had returned to tapping his fingers against the table again, but he was not regarding Draco now. It was the eyes that made him terrifying, Draco asserted after a minute. Once those inhuman eyes turned on you, you knew that there was no hope, and that there would never be hope again. They were like Dementors—frightening, snakelike Dementors. "Your birthday is only four days away, Mr. Malfoy."

"Yes, milord. Thursday."

"Great things will be happening…On that day, do you intend to join my cause?" Voldemort was still not looking at him, which was probably a good thing. Draco's left hand had started to shake despite his best efforts to keep a calm head.

Feeling sick, he replied, "Fire and brimstone couldn't hold me away, milord."

The dark spot, the half of him that kept silent within, liked this idea and thrummed with happy intensity. Following Voldemort meant power, and the dark spot like power. It craved power. For a minute, Draco was taken over by that spot, and his whole being hungered for that power. But the human in him felt that retching all over the room was a very good idea. Steeling his resolve, Draco managed to keep the sandwich they had fed him for lunch inside his body.

"I will take you up on your promise, Malfoy. Fire and brimstone might very well try. I need leaders like you—leaders who crave for the very same thing I do: eternal power. With a dozen like you, we could rule the world without flicking so much as a finger."

World-domination hadn't been in Draco's plans since fifth-year, but he was hardly going to say so. Instead, he just forced himself to nod grimly, having sealed his own fate. Nothing would save him now, even buoyed by Snape, Ginny, and Dumbledore though he was. Would you be a Death Eater if you had a choice? had been Ginny's question to him. She'd seen something redeeming in him, because she'd replied, Then that's all I need to know. Even though that had made him feel better than anything he could imagine, it did nothing to help him right now. He felt as black as sin, only blacker, and stickier. A simple "yes" would have sufficed to Voldemort's proposal, but he had willingly thrown in that bit about fire and brimstone.

The most frightening part was that half of him liked that bit.

*

The logical thing to do when one landed unexpectedly in the middle of New Orleans, Louisiana was to panic and immediately try to figure out why.

Colin had done neither. His first thought had actually been, What? Hey, wait, this isn't the train station. This is…hey, that sign says New Orleans. I'm in New Orleans?!…Cool!

And then he set off to find what he was looking for. Six days and thirteen rolls of film later, he still didn't know exactly why he was in New Orleans searching for something, but it did not particularly bother him. The fact that he didn't even know what he was looking for was slightly trying, but not as trying as the fact that he was running out of money with which to buy film. Or food, for that matter.

It bothered him that these were the only things that should happen to bother him at all, come to think of it.

The problem that he was an ocean away from the safehouse he shared with his brother, father, and grandfather wasn't the least bothersome to him at all. Colin had merely written a note on the back of a flyer and had mailed that with regular mail. Of course, he'd had to nick the envelope from a package of them in a nearby monstrosity called a "Dollar Store," but he doubted that the person unlucky enough to buy that particular package would know that instead of the normal fifty envelopes, there were only forty-nine. He had addressed the letter to Jerry Connell, the name his father had taken while in hiding, with a postscript (and an entirely fake address) by Colin Connell. The mystery of it had actually been pretty exciting.

With the minor problem of his family out of the way, Colin had plenty of time to wander the different quadrants of New Orleans and to contemplate his existence. He slept on a stoop with a roof over it, the drowsy heat enough to knock him out even on a concrete bed. During the day, he migrated from one tourist trap to another, careful not to spend more than two dollars a day (scrimping had always come easily to him). Some days, he sat in cool cafes out of the way of the normal tourist crowds and read through the Soul Book, which seemed to be changing with time. It was growing darker and wilder, more pages appearing by the day that were filled in inconsistent anecdotes and crazy, sketched in drawings of half-things that didn't exist.

Today, something was going to happen. He could taste the change in the air, like the salt that always clung around the docks. Upon waking that morning, he had washed up in the sink of a nearby restaurant (promising himself that he would take a shower in the 'truck stop' later), and let his feet wander. The Soul Book was securely tucked in his back pocket. His feet took him by the docks, as he had expected, and then up to a quadrant of New Orleans that he had only been through once. All through the day, he wandered the streets, trying not to let the muggy heat overtake him. When the day started to cool around six o'clock at night, he found himself standing on the same corner that he had landed on six days before.

"What's the matter, son?" asked an old man that Colin had seen on the streets before. He was sitting on a park bench only a few feet away, smoking what looked to be self-rolled cigarette. Grizzled and quite burnt by a long life on the streets Norman "Ned" Parker had become an acquaintance of Colin's in the young man's week of wandering the streets. "You look like you're waiting for sum'thin."

Distracted, Colin just gave a half-shrug. "Maybe."

He was not sure why he splayed his feet, squared his shoulders, and hunkered down like a rugby player. He even raised his hands to catch something, like a very large ball. It all felt instinctual to him, like he had been raised for this moment alone. All of eternity could be offering him a thousand rolls of film, and the most antique of cameras, but he knew that he would not budge from that spot. For once, he felt right in place.

That lasted for about five seconds, when a shorter, very feminine body emerged from a rip in space and collapsed against him. Colin strained his calves and lower back, trying to keep the added weight from sending them both crashing unceremoniously to the pavement. He got lucky; the other person had very quick reactions. Soon they were standing on both feet, a reasonable distance apart. "Hermione!" Colin cried, regaining his voice first. "What—what are you doing in New Orleans?"

Hermione Granger flicked frizzy hair out of her eyes with one hand and re-shouldered her pack with the other. Her brown eyes were very placid, like a faithful dog's eyes, as she looked at Colin. "I guess I'm meant to be here, that's all. Travelling in the Realm of the Undead was no picnic, but now is not the time for that. Let's go."

"Go? Go where?" Colin was so trapped in the whirlwind of the moment that he was having a hard time discerning that the Head Girl, best friend to Harry Potter, was in New Orleans. And that she had been travelling in the Realm of the Undead. And that she wasn't questioning why she was there, either. Thoughts chased each other in a half-crazed frenzy around Colin's head as he stared at the shorter British witch.

Hermione rolled her eyes like it was obvious. "To find something to eat, of course! Something's going to happen very soon, and we're going to need to be well-fed for it, aren't we?"

"Sure," Colin replied, although he did not feel sure at all. Instead, he felt downright scared for the first time in a week as he followed the other Gryffindor off to a restaurant. Hermione was right; something was about to happen, and he wasn't sure he was going to like it very much. It roiled around like a sickening pit in his stomach, making him uncomfortable as he matched his step to Hermione's. Soon, he knew, his world would change.

Meanwhile, Ned Parker lifted a bottle to his lips and took another heavy drink. "Here's to life," he muttered to nobody, and tried to forget that a girl had just appeared out of thin air.

*

It was as though reality had taken Malcolm by the head and given his noggin a good twist, shoving him from the slate—most people would call such an allowance a "cot," but Malcolm felt that the furniture didn't deserve such a generous name—and onto the stone floor of the warehouse. "Ow!" he protested, rubbing at his elbow. Gingerly, he touched his neck with two fingers, making sure it had not snapped in the paranormal moment. There was no obvious damage, so he cleared his throat to see if anything had been injured there. Nothing.

Then he looked up.

The cell he and Draco had been sharing for the past six days was a simple affair, really. A box of criss-crossing metal bars, it sat in the middle of an abandoned warehouse. There was no leave for privacy; the two boys had lived in constant scrutiny for nearly a week. Two hideous slates were crowded into the space, against opposite walls. In between was an uneventful area of boring grey concrete, marked occasionally by the random Exploding Snap card that had been separated from the rest of the pile. For two days, he and Draco had purposely put together bad hands at Snap so that the cards would explode and melt the simple lock that was padlocked about the only door of the cage. Their plan was hard to pull off with so many guards, but they eventually were successful enough to discover one thing: only a set of keys that the Death Eaters had could free the two young men.

Because the twist in reality had thrown him into a position lying parallel to his bed, Malcolm had sat up to stare at the only exit. Had he not looked at just the right moment, he would have never have spotted it. As it was, he had to rub his eyes and blink several times before he was satisfied that he had not been hallucinating.

Right next to the padlock that he and Draco had been trying to melt for two days was what could be nothing but a rip in space and time.

There was a great gap in the air of a certain discoloured light, giving the illusion of pure nothingness. Curiosity breaking through the dulled senses that had taken over Malcolm's skull; he scrambled to his feet and leaped across the cell in one fluid motion. Six days of being trapped in a tiny cell had their effect, though. Malcolm stumbled and pitched forward, his hand sliding neatly into the tear. What followed was the surreal noise of something being ripped and then a startled yelp from the young man as he was pulled into the inter-dimensional rip. "What the—!"

He remembered appearing in America, and then in Louisiana. There had been no physical change: he had been standing in his father's manor one moment, and the next had been in America. Less than a twinkling of an eye. There was nothing to say that his body had instantaneously moved itself across thousands of miles without alerting him—except for the abrupt change in location. Malcolm had spent most of the last six days wondering why his body wouldn't do that to him now, to get him out of the cell.

And apparently, it just had.

The skin on the tops of his arms and back of his neck tingled warningly as he opened his eyes. White immediately assaulted his vision, making sight all but useless. Gritting his teeth, he blinked until he could focus for more than a few seconds without suffering a migraine. With time, he was able to keep his eyes open long enough to explore the room that he had been thrown into.

It could rival the Great Hall in size and win easily: white seemed to spread for miles, glowing in every direction so that Malcolm could only stare for so long. The floor beneath his socks, which looked grubby compared to the purity of the whiteness, was carved with strange runic symbols that Malcolm had never seen before. He bent to inspect them closely, but the sound of a throat clearing nearly threw him to the ground as he whirled.

"Mr. Baddock, I presume?" The voice was clean of any accent, the syllables crisp and slightly exaggerated with subtle nuances. The speaker had just appeared from thin air without even the pop! that normally announced an Apparation. Malcolm turned warily, his defences up as a result of six days' imprisonment. He wondered if this was just another terrible ploy of his father's to break his resolve and turn him into the perfect death eater, but the man that approached him now spoke of nothing in particular. A white robe as blinding as the room swirled about his form as the man drew near. Blinking away afterimages from the robe, Malcolm saw flat, chiselled features on his dark head. They were drawn up into a delighted smile, to his utter surprise.

"Er—yes," he said upon realising that this man was talking to him. "Who are you?" His voice was guarded with steel, and his legs were posed to run.

"Relax, Mr. Baddock," the man said, finally reaching him. He stopped only three feet away and snapped his fingers. Immediately, padded chairs shot up from the floor just behind each of them. Although the man seated himself, Malcolm did not move. "Really, son, you can relax. I'm not any danger to you—why, I am you."

Malcolm scoffed, but took a seat. "Right. I believe you, really I do."

"Well, I'm not you, exactly, but I am your Fate." The man smiled idly, obviously used to such confrontations.

"I don't believe in Fate."

"I know."

They stared at each other for a long moment, Malcolm's stare disbelieving and guarded, the man's entertained and rather content. Finally, Malcolm gave in and broke eye contact. In truth, his head was still spinning from the trip through the grey nothingness, and the room made his eyes hurt. "Could you turn off the white a bit, then?" he demanded grouchily. "I'm getting a migraine."

"Ah, yes, not many find my home all that pleasant. It's why I have so few visitors." Fate, for that was Malcolm was going to call him until he could figure out an actual name, snapped his fingers once again, and the scene changed entirely. Malcolm was eerily spooked to find himself sitting in the parlour of his own house. Everything was the same, down to the scowls on the portrait of his father and himself, painted when Malcolm had been ten. His mother had been alive then. "Have no worry, Mr. Baddock, this is all only an illusion. I chose a place you might be familiar with."

"I'm familiar with it," Malcolm muttered. He was half-tempted to cross to the other side of the room and take a long pull at the whiskey bottle that he knew would be hidden behind the portrait of Uncle Vedwin. Instead, he folded his hands in his lap and glared. "That doesn't make it comfortable, though."

Fate raised an amused eyebrow. "Deal with it."

The questions were bubbling to the surface, each one more confusing, demanding, and dizzying than the one before. Malcolm could hardly voice all of them at once, so he chose to sit back and let this strange man explain. He wasn't going to make anything easy, he decided. After the attack in New Orleans, and the following imprisonment, he had vowed to make life difficult for anybody who ever disagreed with him about anything. He was tired of bowing down to orders. "Why have you brought me here? And don't evade the question—I want truth, and somebody's going to give it to me today!"

"My, my, insistent." A flourish of the fingers and Fate was holding a goblet of iced water. "Would you like some?"

His throat was burning with the need for liquid. "I'd like my questions answered," Malcolm said gruffly.

Fate's smile was indulgently smug, making Malcolm bristle in his seat even as the strange man passed over the water and flourished himself another. "My main jobs are to meddle, destroy, and clear the way for what I want to happen. In your life, I'm afraid I might have been too late to save you from yourself," and for a moment, he pulled considerable regret into his statement, "but I can inform you that in the great lottery of practical Fates, you've nearly taken the cake."

Malcolm stared.

"Tell me, son, have you ever heard of the six-point ritual?"

*

A rabid fear.

Draco lay on his cot, his blue-grey eyes wide as he tried to discern reality from surreality with very little luck. Inside, raging emotions that had lain dormant for over a year had return with such force that he had nearly lost all of his dinner at their onset. The anger and the hatred were back, stronger than they had ever been. It felt as though he had two personalities warring for dominance inside his pale, rigid body, and the actual Draco could do nothing about it.

A rising anger.

He didn't like this, not at all. Malcolm Baddock had disappeared without even so much as unlocking the cage, so there was only one guard watching him now. But still, Draco was too torn to move. Something was beating on his body from the inside, and he was doing everything but showing the bruises.

Hatred, whole and complete.

How he hated all of them: Potter, with his perfect life and his heroic struggles, always the good guy, always the winner. Dumbledore, for believing that the sun rose and set with stupid Potter and his stupid ways. Snape, for not saving him from his father. His father, for throwing him to the dogs and making him believe that was all that was possible. Baddock, for getting away. Ginny, for not being enough to keep him from this raving insanity.

There's nothing left now.

The voice spoke inside his head, whispered through his blood. He couldn't do anything now; fighting himself wasn't an option, and the personality that fulminated inside, bouncing painfully against his forehead and the back of his eyes. The resulting headache was spectacular in its depth and complexity.

Somebody, stop the pain.

Evilness abated; Ginny's image wafted to the front of his mind. She was looking at him, studying him on the bridge that night so long ago in New Orleans. It was as though her cinnamon eyes were staring through him at something only she could see. Seeing something that he would never see in himself. Reassured that she was still out there and alive, Draco turned onto his side and fell into an uneasy sleep that was punctured by nightmares of what he might become if this kept up any longer.

*

A/N, the Second: I owe a lot of people an apology for the delay. Between getting settled in, passing my classes, dealing with emotional crises, and a highly formidable lists of "things to do before I go insane," I'm afraid I haven't had much time for the plight of Draco towards the means of self-actualisation.

Thanks to all those lovely people that poked me and prodded me until I updated this overbalanced soap opera of mystical proportions. If I'm right, and I like to think I am, we're looking at 2-4 more chapters, including the epilogue. The next chapter is going to be one of my favourites, the troops assembling for battle. Be sure to stick around! Thank you to all you lovely reviewers out there! That little blue box down there? Yeah, it really makes my day.