Disclaimer: I own nothing, all of Harry Potter belongs to the wonderful J. K. Rowling.
A/N: For Challenge 3 of Test Your Limits Competition.
The Switch
All was silent in hills of the Scottish Highlands; the heat of the long summer day still hung about, stifling all of the scatter inhabitants into an uncomfortable sleep. Nestled in the old mountains was a small house, abandoned until recently when an odd mass of people began to hide out behind its shuttered walls. If there had been any neighbors at all in the area they would have been puzzled by the array of faces that came in and out of the cottage daily- from old to young and all shades of color with new arrivals each day. The only thing that a bystander would have noticed that they all had in common was the same frayed clothes from being worn too long and the haunted look in their eyes. The new inhabitants of the house were often weary eyed from endless running and travel upon their arrival and the house served as little more than a place to sleep. And sleep they did, often for days at a time while the world turned silently around them and the rickety old walls kept them safe.
It might have been the unusual heat that night keeping everyone sound asleep in the cottage or that they were so desperate for the semblance of safety they had convinced themselves that this small home was an invincible haven, but when a sharp crack broke the even silence not one head lifted off of their beds. Not one heard a muffled anti-apparition charm followed by a curse as one of the three invading figures stumbled into a stone hidden by the night's darkness nor were their dreams interrupted as the front door loudly creaked open. Creaks were common in the house and the inhabitants had learned to sleep with them as background noise otherwise they would be woken up every time another tossed or turned.
"Bloody animals," a deep voice snarled before a green jet of light hit a body on the floor. "Lying all over the floors like flobberworms in a house full of dirt." He kicked the dead body out of the doorway and into the pile of sleeping men and women that patterned the floor. Another hulking man followed the first in and the last one seemed slight in their wake, moonlight glimpsing on his fair hair before he closed the door behind him.
The dead body blended in with its sleeping counterparts and the smaller man had the fleeting thought that if they left now the man would wake up in the morning just like the rest. As the first man moved further into the room, he had a sinking feeling realizing that all the sleeping forms would soon be corpses and no one would ever be any the wiser. One moment they'd be dreaming and the next-
"Crucio," the man snarled, pointing his wand at a random body on the floor. Screaming instantly filled the small shack and bodies jumped awake, fueled by fear. Blue eyes flicked to the first victim whose body was now being trampled on by the frenzied inhabitants. Others fell with shouts of pain or turned on their fellow refugees with a blank look in their eye while the two hulking men chuckled with sick glee.
"What's wrong, Malfoy?" the second man demanded, realizing their third companion was not participating in what they would consider festivities. Instead of replying, Draco flicked his wand at someone who was trying to flee through the window and sent his own killing curse. He held the gaze of his former crony as the green light hit the body- a woman, he thought with chagrin. The other man merely grunted in his direction before making a sweeping motion with his arm, causing windows to come crashing and flinging bodies who had been trying to climb out of them across the room.
Draco threw curses here and there to look involved but he tried not to think about what he was doing. He had thought that the transition between being the prince of Slytherin to acclaimed Death Eater would be much easier than this. He had never had a problem being cold or hostile to those who opposed him in school, but it seemed that those traits didn't carry over to the tasks asked of him by the Dark Lord. His father's advice was to turn off his emotions on the matter and do what was told of him. The words might have been cold, but the fear behind his father's eyes had burned brightly and Draco had taken the advice seriously. Unfortunately, that was what led him to this raid a Mudblood safe house.
Crabbe and Goyle seemed to have no qualms with killing and Draco had tried to embrace their enthusiasm. He had even sought out his former professor in order to get his advice on the matter. In the end, he had been told that the mind is the greatest tool and the worst weapon. Draco had thought of his mind much like a room full of doors and compartments since his first foray with legilimency and now he added a switch to that room, one that controlled his emotions. He had tried, with no success, to isolate his emotions to be correlated to that switch. As another body hit the floor, this one cut up by the explosion of glass Crabbe had caused, he was painfully aware at his failure at turning the switch off.
The screams soon faded out to small moans here and there of those who had been badly injured rather than at the receiving end of an Avada Kedavra and the three came to stand in the middle of the room, surveying the piles of bodies. Only minutes before they had been neatly arranged in sleep but now they were strewn bloody over one another in attempt to escape their inevitable death. Draco had felt sorry for the man killed as they entered but in retrospect they would have all been better off falling off in the middle of their dreams rather than in this pit of hell he and his partners had created. The silence was once again broken by a string of coughs from Goyle.
"Maybe you're allergic to all this garish tartan," Draco drawled as Goyle's fit subsided. Once both Crabbe and Goyle would have laughed obediently, but the times they spent in Slytherin were long gone and the two just regarded him with confusion and slight derision before dismissing his comment. In this new order, he was below them as he couldn't distance himself from his emotions and hesitance to kill. The Malfoy name had fallen hard and Draco was not doing enough by the Dark Lord's standards to redeem his family. Sending him with his former friends might have been seen as a blessing months ago but tonight the two were as dangerous to him as they were to the Mudbloods they had been order to slaughter. Their attention wasn't focused on him for very long as soft sobbing came from a far corner of the room, pulling their attention to another possible kill.
Draco's stomach sank when he saw the small figure in the corner and he almost let out his own cry to see a girl probably no older than five cowering with wide eyes. Crabbe and Goyle stalked closer to the child and with each crunch their shoes made over the broken glass of the windows the girl let out a louder wail. Without thinking, Draco shouted for them to stop.
Time seemed to stand still in that moment. Crabbe and Goyle, who had made it most of the way across the room, turned their murderous glares onto Draco. Draco's mind whirled, realizing the cost of his actions and he glanced back over to the child. The girl had stopped her hiccoughing cries and now watched Draco half in hope and half in fear. Draco tried to think of how likely he could get to the girl before the other two were able to react and if they could both escape. He ignored their demands for answers as he surveyed the scene before his eyes landed on what the girl was clutching.
In her arms was a bright plush unicorn, one that looked so familiar to the toy he had teased Pansy for as a child. The girl morphed into his ex-girlfriend and Draco remembered the days where the two frolicked in the gardens of Malfoy Manor without a care in the world. That was before any talk of the Dark Lord's return and much more past than when he had taken up residence in Darco's family's home. He hadn't seen her recently but the last time he had, he saw the same fear behind her eyes that he had in his father's.
The switch flipped in Draco's mind and his eyes went hard regarding the cowering child. This wasn't about his own morals or wants, he realized, but the lives of those he loved. He couldn't falter, couldn't fail lest they would all follow him in his demise. He strode confidently towards his former friends, appraising them with a withering glance before curling his lip in the fashion he had perfected in school.
"Let me," he stated, living little room for argument from the two boulder-like men. He didn't wait for any arguments either as he pushed past them, leveling his wand with the girl before hitting her with a torture curse. He did not turn away as her body writhed in pain nor did he flinch as it eventually hit the ground from a steady beam of green. When the three bodies exited the house, the hills of the Highland were as silent as they arrived. The first rays of light began to peak over the eastern mountains as the slightest one spared a single turn backwards toward the old house. With a final flick of his wand the old shutters lit with flames to match the rising run.