XIV

Stormhaven Castle, May 1999

Present Day

Theo and Draco sat in silence as the former began to draw blood from Draco's arm in his laboratory up in the North Tower, he really didn't know an appropriate way to bring up the topic of what had gone on in Draco's study delicately.

"Just ask the question, you're clearly dying to." said Draco dryly, the amusement in his voice in direct contrast to the hard glitter in his heterochromatic eyes.

Theo studied him carefully, his slim fingers resting on his chin, "I wouldn't know where to begin honestly. Why don't you tell me what happened, what caused this sudden change?"

Draco shrugged, studying the vials of blood in front of him, "I always knew they were inside me, you know but what I experienced today." he shook his head, "I barely believe it myself, it's madness... to think that a creature with a soul just... existed... within me. She agreed to relinquish all her power to me, she had been holding on to the last dregs of it to fight the Shroud. I don't know how the magic of it works but I can feel the change. I'm no longer human."

"She?"

"She appeared female to me, the spirit must have been taken from a female Nandu..."

"This dark magic that Snape has given access to the Dark Lord to." said Theo quietly, "It could end us all, first what they did to you and all those innocent people from the Order that they experimented on and now... Merlin only knows..."

"Did she say why she had chosen to appear before you only now? All those months of struggle, the inability to control the Nandu's raw power, the pain of having the runes tattooed onto you... all of that could have been avoided."

"She just said that I hadn't been ready."

"So, the mating ritual had something to do with it?"

"Merlin, it's just a giant cosmic joke...all this." Draco shook his head, looking down at his hands like the secrets of the universe were in his palms. "A changeling, no longer human, half animal... my pure blood won't count for much now."

"You know it never counted for much anyway." scoffed Theo, "Blood purity is a myth perpetuated from the dawn of civilised society. Muggle or magical, the truth is that blood is just that...blood. We're all naked, blood stained sacks of flesh when we're born and that's exactly what we are when we die and any man who believes otherwise is deluding himself. Hell, in a hundred years even the accomplishments of the greatest of our race are forgotten and traded for the achievements of a new generation. We are specks in a universe that will crush us in its vastness and apathy, and we have deluded ourselves into thinking anything we do or say matters."

Draco laughed bitterly, "How right you are, my friend. It's not every day that one is reminded of ones insignificance in the grand scheme of things or is this just a special occasion?"

"This path we've chosen, Malfoy... very few outcomes are in our favour. Just think of this as preparation, in case all ends for naught. Sack of flesh or not, I've made my peace with death and perhaps it's time you did to. Even if it is a futile death."

"Why did you choose this, Nott? You could have said no when Blaise came to you."

"And have missed the opportunity to study the first human Nandu changeling to ever exist? Not a chance in hell, love." He grinned, his light-hearted smile belying the serious nature of the question.

"Nott when the time comes, and it will come... mark me, there will be another war and you may have chosen the wrong side, the weak side."

"'People living deeply have no fear of death'" he quoted philosophically patting Draco on his arm, "And mon ami, living under Voldemort is not living, not a full life, anyway. It is a life of drudgery and darkness and I'd rather give my life for freedom than continue to live a half-life."

"You're a fool." scoffed the blond, "But I am glad to have you on our side."

"I think it's time we told your lady the truth of what we have been doing." Theo said solemnly, "She deserves to know what we have dragged her into."

Suddenly the only tattoo on Draco's body that hadn't vanished in his transformation began to tingle... his Dark Mark.

"It seems telling Granger will have to wait." he said grimly, "I'm being summoned."

Theo shoved him towards the door, "Go, I'll be busy with these blood samples anyway and I'm sure Blaise will return shortly, I'll watch for Granger."

They clasped hands... hugging briefly, eyes conveying what words couldn't... make sure you look after her if I don't return, before Draco left from the servants entrance of the tower.

Theo watched from the window as Draco walked to the edge of the magical barrier and disappeared through it and though Theo wasn't a praying man, he sent one up just for good measure.

...

"Master Theo! You need to come here!" 'Ti's loud, panicked voice startled Theo. Absorbed as he was in his work, he had barely heard her calling out to him several times before. It had been a few hours since Malfoy left for what promised to be another distasteful and degrading errand from the Dark Lord.

Theo was, as scientists are won't to do sceptical of politics and any profession that's very foundation was built upon spinning the truth, after all his business was the truth, he peddled in nothing other than facts.

The fact was he looked at the world in a very black and white way until Voldemort assumed power, grabbing the keys to the coffers of the Ministry and subjugating the families and men who held power in their small communities to commit atrocities. The Razing, as they referred to it now had been the months after the Dark Lord's victory, wizards turning on each other. Currying favour with the very men they had fought against twenty years ago in the first war, helping the Death Eaters drag families with muggleborn wives, husbands and parents out of their homes. Murdering, burning down homes with children still within, capturing dissenting wizards and witches and throwing them into the dungeons of Hogwarts.

Now... he wasn't so sure of black and white, good people and bad, those who do terrible things during the times of atrocity and those who chose to stand up even when it is easier, painless to go along with.

He missed democracy. He found himself, for the first time in his life feeling the burden of what it was like to prove your humanity time and again.

"What, what is it?" he said, shaking himself free of his little reverie and poking his head out of his study's door to shoot her an irritated glare.

"Stop glaring. This is serious, you need to come outside. There is someone near the border of the castle."

"It could just be a muggle, Ma'ati. You know better than to bother me while I'm working."

"Any muggle you know who has a lightening shaped scar on his forehead?"

"Fuck! What is he doing here?" he swore roundly, "You can't be serious?" he shot her a disbelieving glance.

Theo didn't bother returning to his workbench to put any of his work away, as fastidious as he was. Harry Potter being anywhere near Stormhaven Castle was bad news, Harry Potter being anywhere in England was bad news.

He followed after the Orisha who knew all about where Blaise was keeping Potter and had clearly understood that if Potter was here... something had gone very wrong.

Catching sight of Hermione in the kitchen he quickly grabbed her arm.

"Questions later, we have a problem... come with me."

"Harry..." she whispered as soon as they stepped out of the castle catching sight of a familiar head of black hair, "It can't be...I thought he was dead." She turned to Theo, her gaze a mixture of censure and relief.

He understood that today had been a trying day for Hermione Granger, after all it isn't every day or week for that matter that you are brought to a mysterious castle, reunited with your long lost love, told that you need to help control the beasts forced inside him due to a sick experiment conducted by a sociopathic, reckless and wildly unstable wizard of questionable humanity, that you need to mate with him and then he leaves you to go do the very same wizards bidding.

Theo got it. He just didn't know if he had it in him to explain to her what exactly it all meant.

"I'm sorry, darling but now isn't the time for explanations. He shouldn't be here, I understand that you've only been here for a week but Potter being here could get us all killed." said Theo grimly.

"Something's wrong." Hermione said shaking her head, moving in his direction, "He looks like he's going to collapse. I have to get to him."

"No. Not you." Theo's eyes were hard, "'Ti will fetch him, it's her magic that guards Stormhaven Castle and the only reason we aren't all dead yet."

"Shall I bring him inside, Master Theo?"

"He looks half dead and he's bleeding, we can't leave him out there." said Hermione firmly, "Please, just get him in and if you don't, there isn't a fucking power in the world that is going to stop me from getting to him. Your choice."

Theo just nodded his head, his mouth set in a firm uncompromising line.

"Is this what you've been doing? Keeping him somewhere?" Hermione whispered, "Why?"

"To protect him. Granger our country is now officially a dead state in the eyes of the International Confederation of Wizards. No one is coming to help us, in fact other countries are actively receiving our muggle born witches and wizards as refugees but only the muggle born's, not even half-bloods or the pure bloods that had nothing to do with Voldemort. We managed to rescue Potter... or Blaise did, just barely. Because the resistance is dead, half have fled and the other half are hidden and scared, unable to flee. You have been hiding for months, you know nothing of what has gone on in our world since then. We did what we had to." He replied grimly

She grabbed his arm sinking her nails into his skin, "Then tell me! Why am I here, what is with all this secrecy? Just give me some answers. I'm not a naïve fool Theo Nott and I have been fighting Voldemort far longer than you have."

"I'm worried about what you'll do once you hear these answers." he replied, turning surprisingly clear and keen eyes to look at her, "Will you stay? When you know you have an option of leaving, after all you're a muggleborn. The most famous one in fact, the one who would be granted asylum in any country of her choosing. Where you could raise that wolf child of yours away from here... from the death and the destruction, you wouldn't need to stay; to fight when so many have fled... or died. The American's are clamouring after you, after all you're the only one from the trio who hasn't been declared dead yet. That bitch in the MACUSA is willing to open an agreement on trade if you are given up as a political refugee."

"You don't know me Theo Nott." she choked out. Her amber eyes blazing with rage, "If you think that I would abandon everything I believe in, everything that is good and just and right and run away. You know nothing about me."

"Don't I, Hermione Granger. Don't be a fool... we're all adults now, this is no longer a game of pretend, this our life now. Voldemort, Death-Eaters, the purging of any undesirable, slavery, poverty, starvation of those who couldn't afford to flee. That is our reality, it's no longer a maybe scenario to contemplate in our cosy tower rooms and in my experience you Gryffindor's seem to lose all semblance of sense when you aren't on the winning side."

"Master Theo." Ma'ati said softly, "Please."

"Blaise." rasped out a bloodless Harry Potter, leaning against Ma'ati's shoulder, "You have to go get him. Flint. The bunker... a raid."

Hermione watched Theo Nott's eyes grow as cold as ice as the words kept spilling out of Harry's mouth and his face contort into a viscera of rage.

Something had clearly gone very wrong.

...

Draco Malfoy was choking on the miasma that obscured his former rooms in Hogwarts, the dungeons that used to once house more than a dozen Slytherin's had been returned to their original use... to be used as a prison and a torture chamber whenever the mood stuck.

The bones of Hogwarts castle were those of an ancient warlord's holding, won after a bloody war with the Celts, once stripped of light, the fripperies that children bring and the warmth of humanity, Hogwarts was a terrifying maw of darkness.

Sometimes it seemed that the cold blue fires that now burnt in the castles many fireplaces gave off no light and didn't make the rooms warm, no in fact it seemed that these fires froze the air even more. Stormhaven tucked up as it was in the highlands still managed to emit a degree of warmth that Draco thought simply couldn't return to the halls of Hogwarts. Not anymore.

Like Malfoy Manor these walls were stained with so much blood that only a purging would managed to drive the curses and the grief of all those who lost their lives here, a lancing of fire to give their souls some rest in the afterlife.

He stood in front of the entrance of the dungeons where he had been bade to wait for the Dark Lord and his ever-faithful general Severus Snape. Unlike Voldemort, who the win and power grab had driven into a sense of complacency, Severus Snape remained ever alert.

Draco was reminded of Moody, 'constant vigilance' indeed, he was far more worried about Snape noticing a difference in his powers than the Dark Lord himself. He had to make it out of Hogwarts alive if he was to continue to fight their shadow battle to oust Voldemort and his death cult from power.

The Shroud was contained in a way he had never experienced before and for the first time in months he felt like himself, completely and fully in control. Except for the surging of new, hot power within his veins.

He knew it was his new changling blood getting accustomed to being confined in a human body in contrast to the Shroud's cold insidious darkness that slid across his heart every time he used its powers of Necromancy... this feeling was strange... like hot sparks at the tips of his fingers, filling his blood with a fizzy effervescence and giving him strength, physical and mental... grounding him but also altering him.

His senses seemed to be on a high, aware of every little sound around him... in fact he could hear the scuttling of a rat just beyond the door of the dungeons. The quite whooshing of a robe against the flagstones and the scent of decaying flesh let him know that soon he would be face to face with the Dark Lord.

"Ah Malfoy..." came a hissing, serpentine voice, "My little traitor."

Draco turned easily, noting dispassionately that with his now superior changeling strength he could easily have killed the Dark Lord there and then, had Severus Snape not been eyeing him with narrow suspicion.

"Something is different about you." said his former godfather, "More... unruly." He sniffed disdainfully. Draco supposed that was his form of greeting.

"Worry not Severus, little Draco knows that tis only my benevolence that is keeping him alive and the day he incurs my displeasure is the day that Stormhaven castle will be torn asunder brick by blessed brick by the Death Eaters and that what I did to him during his time in captivity would seem like naught but a stroll in the park in comparison."

Arrogant sod, thought Draco, raging... the Nandu's blood within him screaming to show this pitiful, scaly creature it's full magnificence by ripping it apart.

"My lord." He choked out instead, swallowing the bile that soured his mouth when he uttered those words.

"Come, enough of this chit-chat." said the Dark Lord, "Your Necromancy is required... for I have finally found a way to regain my lost vigour."

Draco followed them down the dark hallway bracing himself for what lay on the other side, his now acute senses warned him that his eyes would greet a sight like he had never seen before.

It smelt like death, decay and like a land that is harrowed by devastation. His ears picked up the sounds of wailing and his sensitive nose the smell of urine, blood and sexual fluid. He felt his throat close up, the sounds and smells of misery even more acute now. Splattered along the castle walls was the dried blood of the previous tenants of the prison cells and his newly strengthened vison could make out the age of each layer... some days old and some months old... some hours old.

The first cell at the beginning of the dungeons was the one they stopped in front of before the Dark Lord turned to him with a sick smile on his serpentine face... his narrow jewel like red eyes glittering with the kind of fanatic excitement one only sees in the face of a mad man.

"You will help us." he hissed, coming upto Draco... so close... too close... close enough for him to see the shining strands of saliva cling to his sharp canines... like the jaw of a snake open wide, poised to strike. "You will use your Necromancy to draw the magic out from the worthless muggle that Severus has treated."

"I can only use my magic on the dead." said Draco flatly, "Or those about to die."

Letting loose a frightening cackle Voldemort patted Draco's arm, "Worry not my boy... for die they shall."

Moving aside he allowed Draco to finally look into the filthy cell where a thin child lay slumped against the filthy stone wall, her small pink mouth slack and her blonde hair cropped carelessly close to her head.

She couldn't have been older than 12.

...

Phrases used in the story-

MACUSA- Magical Congress of the United States of America

A/N- Hello all, one of my lovely reader's and a good friend DorothyMalfoy on fanfiction has been kind enough to compile a Necromancer's Bride playlist for those of you who would be interested in listening to some mood music while you read this story. I've been listening to it while working on these chapters! It's excellent for writing angsty content! Deffo give it a listen. As always please review! I love to hear what you guys have to say!

playlist/1UR3FpPMTv3bkygsWQBfE0?si=gHBgcfDFR3KXatObCsTCxw