Fic: soon enough the skies turned into mountains and the stars set upon the earth like mist [1/?]

[quillpunk]

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Chapter 1: but i asked myself "are there any gods left on this broken rock?" and no answer was found, so i seek now to build myself a new one

"The Dark Lord is definitely in love with me," Draco smugly tells Blaise.

Draco's new plan is going swimmingly.

Blaise looks up from the textbook and says, "Draco, you've never even met the Dark Lord face-to-face."

"So you agree with me that he'd love me if he met me," is what Draco gets from that. Blaise's answering sigh is loud in the dorm room where their beds are located. Blaise opens his mouth, but Draco is ready and he continues, "Really, when you think of it, aren't I the Dark Lord's ideal spouse? I'm rich, from a Noble family, have personal relationships with everybody who's going to be anybody one day." Draco frowns into the air. "I think I'm pretty perfect."

"I hate you," Theo announces from his bed, doing something with runes that Draco doesn't understand. The other boy hasn't even looked up and yet still adds, "Really, you're a bloody lunatic."

"But I'm a lunatic who's going to survive," Draco points out. At that, he receives twin sighs and he merely rolls his eyes in response. They're shortsighted but he will forgive them just this once on account of their long history and support. He understands that this new master-plan might be a little advanced for them to follow, but Draco is convinced that it's the only way out.

Because really, what other option does he have?

Draco's father lost Lord Voldemort's regard with Potter's stunt in the Department of Mysteries. It's been years, and yet he's not once gotten it back, failure after failure piling up. The Malfoy's are wealthy and have both history and the ministry on their side, and yet, it's not enough.

Nothing has been enough.

So Draco's plan might sound silly, but it's a fucking masterpiece and it will fix everything. Obviously.

"Well, if you keep your mouth shut you might be more convincing," says Blaise, looking up at him with a raised eyebrow. "If you're truly intending to do this."

Draco's eyes narrow. "Just because I'm better looking than you-"

"You are so not."

"That doesn't mean your jealousy has to overwhelm you. I'm sure if you work at it, you can get better and become a productive member of society."

"You little shit," breathes Blaise. He rises, tossing the book on Theo's bed and hitting Theo's back with his expert aim. Theo yelps, muttering something unflattering, and Blaise glares at Draco. "I am the most handsome man in this whole school."

"Sure. If you say so."

"Will you please shut up, we take our NEWTs in like two days?" Theo grouches from his bed, looking at them with blood-shot eyes below a head full of wild bed-hair. He squints at them, "What time is it anyway?"

"Three in the morning," Draco kindly reveals.

Theo groans, "Why are you two still up? You're not even in studying."

"I am plotting," Draco says, "Which is just as important if I'm going to survive when I graduate." Then he frowns. "You should get started on your own plot, too."

"Who said I haven't?" Theo smirks, but it looks kind of pathetic on him considering how exhaustion seems to emanate off him. He seems to realize this, adding, "And anyway, you can plot in silence. Or another room."

"But then nobody would hear Draco's genius?" Blaise drawls.

"Glad you see it my way."

Blaise stares at him in silence for a long, long moment. Then he says, clearly pronouncing every syllable, "I am going to murder you."

"That seems very rash. I'm a Malfoy, you know."

Blaise just looks at him. Then he walks over to Theo's bed and flops down, picking up his book and ignoring everything, including Theo's feeble attempts to push him off. Draco, in a magnanimous mood considering how well his plan is coming together, allows this. He goes back to his notebook, scooting the chair back in under the desk and picks up his quill. Bites the feathered end and frowns at the horrid taste.

Goes right back to his nefarious plotting.

In short, Draco's plan is the following:

1. Convince everybody that Lord Voldemort is in love with him.

2. Leverage their fear of Lord Voldemort's retaliation should anything happen to Draco to get extra favors and protection on raids and so on.

3. Leverage Lord Voldemort's perceived love to surreptitiously get himself removed from doing raids.

4. Leverage... well, leverage it for something else to ensure his safety.

Admittedly the plan is not entirely complete yet, but he's sure it'll come to him. It's already a masterpiece and can only improve from here, really. Nodding, Draco bites the end of the quill again. Frowns. Mutters, "Bloody shit," under his breath and gets an annoyed groan from Theo in response. Draco waves at him, hunching over his desk and pulling the candle closer.

Draco's scribbled notes are expertly penned, the handwriting the most sublime calligraphy. The candlelight flickers in the night as time ticks away, Blaise and then Theo heading to bed before him. Draco, meanwhile, stays hunched until his back aches, eyebrows furrowed and lips twisted into a soft frown.

His arm aches, the Dark Mark summoning somebody. It doesn't persist, so it's not him but he holds his breath for a strangely long minute anyway.

After another hour, he looks up. Theo is sleeping on top of his books, Blaise having gone to bed very properly after even brushing his teeth. Vince and Greg are both snoring in their beds, and Draco stands. Stretches. Coughs softly and hides his notebook in the bottom of his trunk, making sure the fake bottom is carefully placed over it.

It's going to be fine, he tells himself.

Draco's plan will work, and his parents won't be tortured anymore, and his father won't have to go on suicide runs again. It'll all be fine, and Draco won't have to fear his own home.

He goes to bed and stares up at the ceiling for a long, long time.

The fact is simple; Lord Voldemort is winning. This is not a guess, not an exaggeration. The battle arena is the Ministry of Magic and the Dark Lord is occupying more positions, more departments, with every passing month.

Draco is a genius. This is an objective fact. In fact, it's so obvious that Granger avoids him every time she sees him coming, knowing that he's the only threat to her hegemony over Hogwarts. Now, she veers off into another hallway as soon as she spots him but Draco is on a mission and he follows her doggedly.

"Granger!" Draco calls after her, speeding up until he's almost running. She doesn't look back but when he grabs her hand she whirls around to face him.

"What, Malfoy?" she demands harshly, glaring at him.

There's soot in her hair and dirt on her face; he bets she was crawling through the dungeons again trying to find Potter. He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest, leaning leisurely against the stonewall. "Don't be so jumpy," he chides her, giving her a pitying stare. "I only wanted to ask you a question about Potions."

Her eyes narrow. "You're the best at Potions in our year."

"Yeah, but with the NEWTs coming up I'm losing confidence and I am on the verge of self-destructing."

"Liar," Granger rolls her eyes. "You're an arrogant asshole."

"That's hurtful."

Granger scowls at him. "What do you really want?"

"I told you. I need your help to study."

"The NEWTs are literally tomorrow."

Draco rolls his eyes. "Which is why I'm panicking."

"You don't look like you're panicking to me."

"I'm a very good actor."

She scoffs. "At least put some effort into your intonation," she mutters, looking him over. Her hands clench by her side and he takes a surreptitious step back to get out of punching range, still remembering that faithful day she broke his nose. Naturally, it was flawlessly fixed by Pomphry but the memory remained.

Granger sighs, and pinches the bridge of her nose. "I don't have time to argue with you, I'm helping Neville study."

"Great, than I can tag along."

She stares at him. "Runes. We're studying runes."

"Longbottom takes Runes?" Draco tilts his head, trying to remember if he's ever heard of such a thing. "I thought he was in Care of Magical Creatures."

She winces, biting her bottom lip, and her hand goes to the locket around her throat. Draco's never seen her taking it off all year, and he wonders why she'd wear something so clearly cursed. Maybe the curse is that she can't take it off? But then why wouldn't her precious McGonagall have figured that out already? It's not like especially subtle; the dark magic is practically oozing off it.

"He transferred in third year," she says, still fiddling with the locket. She gives him a harsh stare, "I'll let you join if you promise not to mock him."

"Sure, sure, I'll be nice." Draco smiles beautifully.

She scoffs once more but doesn't stop him from following when she starts walking again. Draco stays in pace with her, trying to think of how to properly phrase his Voldemort reveal to them later. In the end, he'd only gotten about two hours of sleep and was now running on fumes and potions, his skin itchy with the unnatural energy. It's possible he took too many, but really, it's now or never. He needs to start the rumors before he graduates from Hogwarts or it's never going to reach outside of Slytherin.

The strategy is simple; simply convince enough people that the Dark Lord is in love with him and then they'll do the hard work of convincing everybody else that it's true. Granger and Longbottom are the perfect people to start with for this because they occupy two different subsets of Hogwarts—even if they do hang out together.

Longbottom flinches as soon as he spots Draco approaching, and Draco merely smiles excessively kindly in response. It strains his cheeks though, the unfamiliar expression only a recent addition to his armory. Longbottom flinches again.

He leans over the table toward Granger and hisses, "What's Malfoy doing here?"

"He's going to study with us." Granger sits down next to Longbottom and dumps a whole pile of thick books on the table at the same time as Draco gingerly sits down. There's two empty spaces between them, but he really can't be expected to get closer. What if their Gryffindorness is contagious?

Longbottom peeks at him and peeps, ducking his head again and scooting his chair closer to Granger's. Draco doesn't even bother to hide it when he rolls his eyes, pulling out a random notebook from his bag and making only a token effort to pretend that he's actually studying.

"Do you like Runes?" Longbottom asks after about half-an-hour, during which Draco has been doodling in the margins of one of his Potions notebooks. Draco looks up, taking a second to understand that Longbottom just voluntarily spoke to him, and can't help giving him a suspicious look. Longbottom, strangely, seems to take this as encouragement. "I know you had tutors in Runes when you were growing up. Why didn't you take Runes?"

Draco glances at Granger, who's viciously glaring at him with a curled lip. "I'm good at it but I don't much like it."

"Then, could you help me with this? Hermione's explanation is-" Longbottom glances at Granger and when she smiles at him, he forges on- "a bit too technical for me. I don't quite understand what she means."

This is it, Draco thinks. If he just plays this right the opening to (at least somewhat naturally) talk about the Dark Lord will appear. So he smiles and gets into the chair next to Longbottom, making a gimme gesture until Longbottom slides his notebook over and says, "It's this bit here. I'm not sure to tie these two runes together without inserting a third one? But if I do that I change the whole meaning, you know?"

"If you wanna tie them together, just tie them together," Draco says after a quick glance, without the patience to come up with something better. His leg is bouncing under the table, foot tapping on the floor, and his stomach is starting to cramp.

He can't mess this up.

"Tie them together?" Granger asks, a strange note in her voice.

Draco grabs Longbottom's quill and makes a quick line between rune a and b, making a show of drawing little bows where the line touches each rune. "There," he says, smiling.

Granger snags the notebook right out of Longbottom's hands. "That can't work," she protests, running her finger along the line and avoiding Longbottom's weak attempt to get the notebook back. She looks up at them, frowning, and says, "This can't possibly work, Malfoy."

Draco shrugs. "It's magic."

"That's a bullshit explanation and you know it." Granger nearly growls, finally returning the notebook to Longbottom. In the library's silence, her voice nearly echoes. "There are rules to Runes and we haven't learned anything about tying them together. You're just trying to get Neville in trouble," her accusation rings out over the table.

"Hermione..." Longbottom starts, slouching in his chair like he's trying to hide. The indignity makes Draco scoot away from him. Thankfully neither of them seems to notice, to occupied with their own little world as Longbottom adds, "Draco's really good at magic. If he says it'll work, I believe him."

"But it doesn't—"

Longbottom shakes his head. "I'm trying to tie them together. A physical tie is as good as any other."

Granger bites her lip, hand going to her locket again. Longbottom flinches, Draco's eyebrows furrowing, but quite honestly Draco is running out of patience with this entire conversation. If it weren't for his plan he wouldn't even deign to help them and it itches that they think he's lying. He interrupts their staring contest with a curt, "Just try it. It either works or it doesn't, so stop wasting time."

"You're right," Granger admits, and Draco straightens up. She nods to Longbottom, "Give it a go."

Longbottom does.

Naturally, it works perfectly.

(Hah. Draco is a genius.)

Granger spends about five minutes staring at the notebook in silence, after, and Draco takes the opportunity to very smoothly say, "I think the Dark Lord is in love with me."

"What the fuck?" says Granger.

Longbottom stares at him with obvious horror, even scooting away from Draco somewhat. "Are you okay?" he even asks.

Draco smoothly blows right past their reactions and continues, "Lord Voldemort sometimes visits Malfoy Manor-" (Longbottom mutters, "Should you be telling us this?") "and I've noticed him... looking at me."

"And you got he's in love with me out of that?" Granger doubtfully asks.

Draco stares her right in the eyes. "He looks at me a lot."

Longbottom makes a wounded noise, Draco unable to not sneer at him. There should be a limit to how pathetic a pureblood can be and yet somehow Longbottom always manages to subvert his expectations. Granger glares at him for 'mocking' Longbottom and says, "I'm sure you're mistaken."

Draco nods thoughtfully, rearranging his expression into one of sorrowful thoughtfulness. "I'm..." an artful pause, "sure you're right. I must just be imagining it." He sighs theatrically, "It's just that I've seen Lord Voldemort around so often lately, every time I go home. Why just this Yule I..." here, he shakes his head, "no, I'm sure you're right. It must be my imagining. I'm just being paranoid." A wan smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes.

Genius.

Granger's eyebrows are furrowed and she makes eye-contact with Longbottom, communicating something without words. Draco patiently waits, his heartbeat slowing. With this, the first step is underway.

"If you feel unsafe..." Granger starts after a moment, looking at Draco again. She's still frowning, but she doesn't appear to be rejecting his words outright—which was the only goal, really.

Draco shakes his head. "I'm perfectly safe," he says with another wan and weary smile. He clears his throat after a second and says,"Let's get back to it!"

Granger and Longbottom exchange another suspicious look. Draco makes sure his tension is extra visible, tilting his head so the lighting can reach the ark circles under his eyes that, for once, he didn't hide. His finger taps on the table, a rhythm he can't quite identify, and Granger finally gives in. Says, "You're right, there's still lots more to go through."

Draco's smile is a weak, feeble thing, his tension lingering in his spine and shoulders, and he turns toward them with all the grace he possess.

The rest of the studying session goes by flawlessly, Granger and Longbottom observing Draco when they think he's not paying attention. The jokes on them though because Draco is always paying attention, his mind trying to spin out all the way his plan can go wrong all at once. It gives him a headache, and he presses his fingers on the bridge of his nose in a stupid attempt to dispel it.

When it doesn't work he looks up again, frowning at the twin looks of suspicion he's being graced with. "What?" he nearly snaps, managing to correct the tone on the very last syllable.

Calm. He's a kind, magnanimous person helping them study out of the goodness of his heart.

And there's no way they can possibly figure out his genius master-plan.

Squaring his shoulders, he asks, "Do you need help with anything?"

Granger shakes her head. "If you're tired you don't have to stay, we can continue on our own." The pounding in his skull has increased and it's the only reason why his gaze so obviously goes to the locket around her throat (rather then the discreet, surreptitiousness looks he's been giving it so far). She blanches when she realizes where he's looking, her hand covering the locket instantly.

"You should probably do something about that," Draco says, nodding to the locket. There's no need to be discreet when he's already been caught. "I can almost feel the dark magic in my lungs."

Granger sneers at him.

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