Set Fire to Rain

Harry

“Where’s Regan at?” Hermione asked, sending a book flying up to it’s place on the bookshelf. Hermione and I were walking quietly through the library while Ron was off somewhere snogging Lavender. Hermione seems to have warmed up to Regan in the last few weeks, although we were all sketchy when her relationship with Draco was brought up.
“Regan’s right here,” Regan said popping around the corner with a smile. I smiled back and gave her a hug, which was rare with her. Every moment she spent with me I was hopeful that she was coming closer and closer to the light. “What are you guys doing? I know Harry isn’t reading a book, and if he is, you’re bloody brilliant Hermione.”
She laughed. “We’re just returning my books, and talking about Slughorn’s Christmas party.”
Reagan scrunched her nose. “That sounds fun.”
“Which be the way Hermione,” I said, turning to my friend. “I figured since we both can’t go to the Christmas party with who’d we’d really like that, we’d go together?”
Her face faltered immediately. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Regan made a face. “Who on earth are you taking?”
“It’s a surprise,” she replied awkwardly, placing a large, leather bound book back in its place. I glanced at Regan who cast Hermione a sympathetic look.
“You need to be worried about you, Harry. You can’t just take anyone. For example, do you see the girl behind me?”
Hermione moved in front of me, looking at me. Reagan and I both moved in sync, leaning to look around Hermione. The girl Hermione directed us to look at had a pretty, heart-shaped face and black curls that tumbled all over. She wasn’t ugly by any means, but she wouldn’t turn your head standing next to Ginny, or ever my sister for that matter. The girl glanced up and gave me a shy smile, making me looking away quickly.
“What about her?” I asked, nodding my head at Hermione. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Regan narrow her eyes at the girl, and I was sure whoever it was looked away in fear. Regan was terrifying when she made that face.
“That’s Ramilda Vain, I hear she’s trying to smuggle you a love potion.”
“Pardon?” Regan asked rigidly. “I’ll hex her so bad she won’t know which end of her body is which, that right bloody-“
“Regan,” Hermione chirped, giving her a look that I couldn’t understand. Regan looked like she was going to protest but subsided and sneered in the girls direction, muttering something along the lines of, “I’ll show her vain.” The comment made me smirk.
“She thinks you’re the chosen one,” Hermione explained.
“I am the chosen one,” I pointed out. Hermione and my sister both smacked me at the same time.
“That is not something to gloat about.”
Reagan’s face faded back into her stone façade, which often happened when reaching the topic of Malfoy or of the Dark Lord. No matter how many times I pressed, Reagan’s wall went up and did not give when it came to her death eater business and what her plan was exactly. All she ever told me was that she was working on it and to remember that things had changed for her. she never told me what had changed, but I sense that Voldemort had done something to waver her trust in him. I wondered if he threatened Draco’s life.
“Sorry, so I’ll just invite someone- hey, Regan want to do me a favor?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Gee, I’m so glad you found a use for me.”
“Will you go?”
She thought about it. “Yes, but you’re gonna owe me.”
The words were light and she smiled at me, but there was something that held about her words. I really would owe her.

Regan

I found him standing on the quidditch field, broom in hand and staring up at the sky. I had expected he would be flying already, rather than just standing. Draco had his back to me, blonde hair tossing slightly in the wind. My footsteps crunched in the snow, causing him to turn around. Upon seeing me, a smile broke out across his face.
“Why aren’t you flying already?” I asked, standing next to him. He kissed me on the head and twined our fingers together.
“Just got distracted about thinking.”
Something in his voice made me look at him. “What is it?”
“You’ve changed.”
I went rigid. “What do you mean?”
Draco looked at me long and hard and gestured for me to walk up into the stands and sit with him. I fallowed him quietly across the field, fingers still intertwined. The heat coming from his hand made me feel safe, but my heart still squeezed tight at his words, terrified at what Draco might say. Draco had not commented on my friendship with my brother yet, although I was waiting for the day he would. Draco had also not commented on what happened in the Chamber that night.
“There is something,” Draco began very, very slowly. “That has bothered me the night it happened, but I was always to terrified to ask. Not because I thought you would get mad, but because I’m terrified that I will see it again.”
“See what?”
“The night you did your first task… I was so scared. I didn’t know what He had asked you to do, and when you came back I was so relieved. But when I opened my bedroom door that night, to ask you about it- the look in your eyes was enough to stop my breathing. There was a darkness I could not fathom, a phantom in your eyes Regan… what did you do.”
I let go of his hand, turning away and shutting my eyes tight. My breath constricted in my chest and the tears burned at my eyes. The ghost of that night haunted me like the torture of the Dark Lord’s power. That was the night that I truly lost myself, the night that I knew there was no turning back for me.
“Don’t look away from me, Regan.” It wasn’t a command. It was tentative, and scared. Two things that never left Draco Malfoy’s voice.
“There is a reason, Gregory Bane hated me, besides the fact that he hated everyone and wanted to be Lord of everything. Gregory Bane had a father, a father that you know well enough. His name was Igor Karakoff, headmaster of Durmstrang. Karakoff renounced the Death Eater name in order to help his son, his demonic twisted son who was nothing but a raving lunatic.
“The Dark Lord called me to him that night. He said he had thought about every task possible, but could not quite come up with something that would prove myself. After all, I was ‘the sister of a filthy vermin that needed to be exterminated.’ He believed the only way I would be able to prove myself was letting myself be consumed with fear and overpower that fear- to fight fear itself. I don’t know how he knew Draco, but he knew the only thing I was scared of was not trusting myself.
“They lived on a quiet street, in a small house. It was not extravagant, and certainly did not look like the home of a mad man and his crazy son. I went in to that house, right past Gregory’s bedroom door- I didn’t know it was Gregory’s at the time- and marched into their bedroom. I used the langlock charm on his wife and Karakoff, and made him watch as I tortured her. If she could have screamed- if I had heard them I would have let them kill me.
“I left her there, after killing him, insane and barely alive. And as I left that house, I wondered how much of a monster I could truly be to have done that, what kind of demon existed within to feel nothing. That’s when I felt the fear, and it was fear of myself. I could have ended my life that night- but that’s when I realized what the real task was. The real task was to come back alive after what I had done. The Dark Lord knew what it would do to me. Knew it would consume me.
“I died that night Draco. No one is safe around me. I would die to save you- and I know you think something is different about me because of the relationship with my brother. But after all the hate for him, after everything I know he is not my enemy. I am my own enemy, and I cannot save myself from that. I can only save you- and I have to save him. Harry is everything I could never be. I am a demon.”
I had not known the tears were falling until I tasted the salt, bitter on my tongue. The wind was gold against my wet face, and I felt that same feeling inside me again. The fear of myself. I could have let them go that night, I could have disappeared and let them think I was dead. In fact, that may have been the better idea.
“You’re wrong,” Draco said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. I turned to look at him and found his blue eyes looking right at me. There was something in his face that made my heart beat faster, that made tears stream down my face even quicker. He thought he could save me, like my brother.
“No,” I shook my head. “I’m not.”
“Yes you are. Regan. You can produce a patronus.”
Looking at Draco and hearing his words were all I could do. We can’t produce patronus’s. They’re pure. But even myself, a black monster had produce one. What am I?