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The moment Draco stepped into his home, he knew he should’ve stayed at Hogwarts for Easter after all.
He could practically taste the stench of unwashed bodies and wet dog that hung thick in the air. A trail of muddy prints on the Manor’s normally pristine marble floors confirmed what he dreaded: Fenrir and his band of miscreants were here again.
The Easter holiday suddenly stretched before him like an endless tunnel, and Draco wondered if he could slip out to Theo’s before anyone—
“Oi! Draco’s back!”
Thanks, arsehole. Why don't you just head up to the roof and announce it to all of Wiltshire while you're at it?
“Is that Draco?”
His muscles tensed at his aunt’s voice.
“Yeah, just got in,” someone else yelled. “He’s right here!”
For fuck's sake...
“Draco, get in here!”
A bone-deep weariness settled over him as he trudged towards the drawing room. The Manor’s halls, once suffused with warmth, were now steeped in shadow. He didn’t know if it was just his imagination but everything seemed even colder and darker than what he remembered from the previous summer. If only he could borrow Theo’s time-turner and go back a few years to convince his mother to let him study abroad.
He was done with this bloody war. Every creak of the floorboards, every whispered conversation behind closed doors set his nerves on edge. He hated feeling like a stranger in his own home. More than anything, he was sick of being at Aunt Bella’s and the Dark Lord’s beck and call. Every. Single. Fucking. Day.
Thunder rumbled outside, and rain began pelting against the windows, as if the weather itself was mocking his mood. “Aunt Bel—” The words died in his throat as he entered the drawing room, the crystal chandelier casting shadows across the scene before him.
Merlin’s tits, what did those mongrels drag in this time?
“Well, don’t just stand there. Come here, Draco,” Bellatrix huffed impatiently. She gestured to the prone figure on the floor, her rings glinting in the light. “Fenrir caught Potter’s Mudblood.”
Draco blinked. “Sorry, what?"
Bella pinned him with a look and repeated herself, slower this time, as if speaking to a dim-witted child. “Potter’s Mudblood. That’s her.”
It had been months since he last saw Granger. Word was, she’d been on the run with Potter and the Weasel. He tried to reconcile the figure on the ground with the irritating know-it-all from their last Prefect meeting—the way she’d stood there with her hands on her hips, lecturing him about proper corridor patrol procedures, that ridiculous badge gleaming on her chest. Whoever the snatchers had brought in looked like death warmed up, her face a puffy, bloodied mess. Her clothes were torn, and her body was covered in bruises and cuts. A pendant with what appeared to be a jewelled orb hung around her neck, gleaming faintly in the dim light.
Is that really her?
No, it can’t be... but that hair…
Was it only a few years ago that he’d hoped the basilisk would get her? The memory of second year flooded back—him, standing in the Slytherin common room, declaring that the Chamber of Secrets would rid them all of Mudbloods.
Draco had long since come to terms with the fact that his younger self had been full of shit—much like the way a ten-year-old who claimed he could kill a nundu bare-handed was full of it. Now, looking at her crumpled on the floor, he realised he wanted her dead about as much as he’d wanted to kill Dumbledore.
The memory of that night on the Astronomy Tower flashed through his mind, making his hand shake slightly. He could still hear the old man’s voice: “Draco, you are not a killer.”
He realised Bella was still waiting for him to say something. “Are you sure that’s her?” he asked, forcing his voice into practiced nonchalance. “It’s hard to tell.”
“She put up quite a fight, apparently,” Bellatrix sniffed. “And when she got here, she refused to answer my questions, so I had to be more... persuasive.”
Not for the first time, Draco was thankful for his Occlumency lessons. The screams from the cellar when his aunt got ‘persuasive’ haunted his nights. Sometimes, during his worst nightmares, he’d hear his mother’s keening voice among them, and he’d wake, pyjamas sticking to his skin, unable to distinguish memory from nightmare.
“But yes, it’s her.”
“Where’s Potter and the Weasel? Weren’t they together?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out,” she said, scowling. “Fenrir said they were all in the forest, but they split up. This one,” she nudged Granger with her toe, “was the only one they caught.”
Such fucking useless tossers, the both of them. How bloody difficult is it to escape together?
“So I want you to try.”
He stared at her blankly. I really should have stayed at Hogwarts.
“You want me to get her to tell you where Potter and Weasley are.” His chest tightened at the implications.
“Yes,” she trilled, looking pleased, as if he were finally catching on.
How? Look at her. She's barely conscious. How am I supposed to get her to talk?
“Do you mean now?”
“Well, Draco, I’d like an answer as soon as possible. Fenrir would be happy to give it a go, but I thought I’d give you a chance to redeem yourself. And it might help redeem your father in the Dark Lord’s eyes.”
As if on cue, Fenrir strode into the room, eyes gleaming yellow in the dim light. The stench of blood and something worse rolled off him in waves. “Heard my name. You done with her, then? My turn?”
His stomach churned. The memory of finding what remained of the Montgomery sisters after Fenrir had had his turn flashed through his mind: That day, Bella had ordered him to “find the dog”. They needed him for an errand and he was somewhere in the gardens doing Merlin knew what with those two witches.
The shrieks had led him to the maze’s entrance. Each step forward brought new horrors: first, the blood-spattered fabric fluttering in the hedges like a grotesque flag, then the wet, guttural sounds. When he rounded a corner and spotted the pale, severed arm lying on the ground, its fingers curled as if reaching for help, he fled. He hadn’t set foot near the maze since.
Whatever his feelings toward Granger, he didn’t think he could stomach the thought of Fenrir doing the same thing to her.
“I’ll tell you when I’m done, you stupid mongrel! Did I say I was done?” Bellatrix snarled, rolling her eyes in exasperation. Without warning, she turned, hurling a flurry of curses at Fenrir, who barely managed to lunge out of the way.
Chaos erupted as Fenrir’s pack burst into the room to support their leader, exchanging hexes and stunners with Bellatrix, who continued goading them with insults.
Nothing his aunt did surprised him anymore and Draco supposed he should be glad her capricious nature had led to this turn of events.
Right, get Granger out. I’ve got to get her out while they’re distracted. His father’s face swam before him, features tight with disappointment. Helping the Mudblood? You should have been born a Weasley, Draco. Maybe you’d be better suited living in that hovel— Draco quashed the voice. His father was going to be furious and there would be repercussions, but he would deal with all that…later.
He knelt beside Granger, slipping an arm under her shoulders and propped her head up, his mind focused on Apparating them both to safety. But just as he was about to Disapparate, he felt a weak pressure against his chest.
He glanced down and saw her looking at him through the slit of a bruised eye. The pendant around her neck pulsed with a strange, rhythmic light.
She's alive. Thank Merlin.
His teeth worried at his lower lip as he shot a quick glance at the chaos erupting around them—the spat between Bellatrix and Fenrir’s pack had devolved into a full-blown melee, with spells ricocheting off the walls and shattering artifacts. The chandelier above swayed dangerously, casting wild shadows across the walls. Good. Now’s the chance...
Once again, he felt the pressure, faint but deliberate, as if she were trying to push him away.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Granger,” he whispered urgently. “We need to go. Now.”
“No,” she croaked, barely audible. He leaned in, struggling to hear her over the din around them. “Not yet.”
She gripped his robes, using them to steady herself as she slid to her knees and raised herself to an upright position, swaying precariously as she did so.
“What do you mean not yet?” he hissed. “Don’t you want to get out of here?”
“Bellatrix... I’m not leaving until she goes down.” There was a flash of steely light in her eyes that should have come with its own danger sign.
“Stay back, Malfoy,” she whispered.
“What?” he spluttered, clutching his wand in a death grip. He couldn’t believe her nerve. Here he was, risking his neck to get her out and instead of being grateful, she was telling him to stay back. Unbelievable. “Have you gone mad? This isn’t the time to be a hero!”
But of course, the idiot wasn’t listening to him. Why did he even think she would? He eyed her warily, wondering if he could Apparate them both away before his aunt turned them into hex practice targets.
An eerie silence descended upon the room and the hairs on his neck stood as he realised that the fighting had ceased. All eyes were now on Granger. Even the storm outside seemed to be holding its breath.
Brilliant. Just brilliant. I should have Apparated us both instead of listening to her jabber on. Fuck. Why didn’t I do that?
"Mudblood. Still breathing, I see," Bellatrix sneered, her wild hair crackling with dark magic.
Granger murmured something he couldn’t quite catch, and a low hum filled the room.
Draco was tempted to remind his aunt that they still didn’t know where Potter was and killing Granger would mean losing a valuable lead, but the hard glint in her eyes told him he’d be hexed six ways to Sunday if he interrupted her now.
Bellatrix raised her wand, lips curling in a snarl, as Granger took a deep breath and stepped in front of him. The air in the room grew heavy with magic, making his skin prickle.
“Cruc—”
But before Bellatrix could finish, Granger muttered an incantation. A low rumble filled the room, and a wave of light surged forward, engulfing Bellatrix, Fenrir, and his pack. Their screams were cut short as the light swallowed them. The blast sent Draco sprawling backwards, his head cracking against the floor before he was enveloped in darkness.
When Draco came to, the only sound in the room was Granger’s ragged breathing and the steady onslaught of rain through the now-shattered windows. She was slumped on the floor, trembling hands pressed against the cracked, blood-soaked tiles, her body barely holding itself upright. The pendant hung dark and silent around her neck.
His stomach lurched as the acrid smell of burnt flesh hit him like a Bludger to the gut. He staggered to his feet, blinking through the haze of smoke, and his eyes fell on what remained of his aunt. Bellatrix’s body looked like it had been blown apart, and chunks of it lay scattered across the room—a limb here, part of a torso there. Her head was wedged in someone's blackened rib cage, her features caught between fury and disbelief, as if she was unable to accept this was how things had ended for her. A hysterical laugh threatened to bubble up as he imagined his mother’s reaction to the destruction of the room and her sister's demise, but he swallowed it down. That was the least of his concerns now.
Draco turned to Granger and she met his gaze through bloodshot eyes, her face ashen. The raw power that had just decimated the room was still thrumming faintly around her, making the air taste like lightning.
He had so many questions he didn’t know where to start.
This witch, who looked like she wanted to throw up every time she got on a broom, had just obliterated a bunch of werewolves and his aunt—his AUNT, one of the most fearsome witches in wizarding Britain and the Dark Lord’s second-in-command. And the way she had controlled that power...
“Granger…” His voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper. “Who...What the bloody hell are you?”
She licked her cracked lips, a cagey expression on her face. “You—”
But before she could finish, her eyes rolled back as she collapsed onto the floor in an unconscious heap.