Author Note:

First story so not much to say other than that I'll never own Harry Potter in a million years

What does a man have left when all else he can think of has been taken from him? His love, fortune, fame, family and even his definition of life and it consequences has been taken. Thus what does he truly have left? This is a rather complex and only question Draco Malfoy has left himself to ask and ponder over in the last few days or weeks or may be even months since his last and most fatal failure in front of He-who-must-not-be-named. The failure of not been able to kill Dumbledore has been the last straw of patience He had for him and this punishment of indefinite isolation peppered with crucio when one of his other brethren was the only solution He wanted for him. "Brethren's, huh" said Draco incredulously and to himself. To even call those blood thirsty sadistic bastards brethren will tarnish the name of loyalty he had for his true brothers of Slytherin thought Draco. In the unknown amount of time Draco was imprisoned in the isolated cell of the Malfoy mansion basement he asked and tried to answer many question that popped in his head. Most of which were based around the many dangerous and downright unthinkable experience he had witnessed in the years he had spent in that great castle called Hogwarts. These question went from asking should he have annoyed his godfather Snape to know what was gonna be asked in the test to many other but always ended with could he have truly killed Dumbledore. And that question has led him to come to one rather startling conclusion and that was he was not capable of that evil deed no matter how much he tried. This came as a shock since he was a Death Eater, a being that thrived off of evil and murder, so why does he see himself as someone who couldn't. However after pondering and pondering he saw no answer and no reason for perusing this question and moved on the new one. "What does a man have left when all else he can think of has been taken from him?" Draco said aloud. His voice bounced of the wall of his 6 by 8 feet cell and hurt his ear. Due to the lack of care, food and proper treatment of his battered self, Draco learned and witnessed that his body's movement and the sound of his voice was not that of the Draco he conjured up during his fitful sleep. After giving himself a few minutes to regain his senses and allow the ringing is his ear to stop he went back to pondering the new question he asked himself. To his dismay he found that there was truly nothing he had left to call his own which was something he was not allowing to be. "There must be something. There MUST BE" he said ignoring his own hoarse voice and the ringing. "I lost too much to have not gained something in return" voiced Draco solemnly "Do tell what is it that you have so valiantly lost my dear Draco" drawled out a voice behind him that aroused nothing but the purest of all dread in him. Draco did everything he could to make his body not break out in hives and contour his face into something that he hoped remotely reassemble neutral as he turned all the back to face his aunt Bellatrix. He said nothing which just happened to make her aunt all the more happier as she made her way toward her "dear draco". "ohhh why so serious" said Bellatrix as she made her way to Draco's so called personal space to which Draco thought "do I still have something personal or have I lost that as well" sarcastically. During to him thinking to himself Draco missed how her aunt's facial expression changed from playful to a rather dangerous form of psychotic. "I asked what is it that you have lost DRACO" Bellatrix said and at the screamed out. Draco immediately snapped out of his own world his he frequents most of the time and said automatically "The loyalty of the Death Eater and Lord Voldemort, what else?" This seemed to have brought Bellatrix from psychotic to her earlier playfulness and joyfully said back "Ohh well than dear draco I believe that it is something you need to earn back cause Lord Voldemort thinks loyalty is something you don't have". Whatever color Draco's body had retained after missing numerous meals started drain at an alarming rate and he said softly "How will I earn it back if He has already accepted that I don't deserve it back". "Hmm we could always try this" replied Bellatrix as she conjured up a cat o' nine tails in her hand and her eyes glimed brightly. Draco's sharp mind instantaneously understood what it was that Bellatrix was meaning. He knew that to her crazy aunt inducing pain will always solve the problem thus he steeled himself and in a voice that really wasn't his he replied "whatever you say aunty". "Ohhh your such a sweet little boy aren't you?" Bellatrix replied back and at the same time she swung the whip at him. The first one hit in the chest and the rest swung all over his body with different intensity. He hoped by now he would have been used to it but her aunt's ability to induce pain never seemed to get old and in every new session, as she put it, she did something new to make the pain feel fresh. By the 6th or 7th swing Draco was on his knees and trying to not to grunt or pass out but he was starting to loss the battle at a rather fast pace. Sensing that her cousin was not making enough noise Bellatrix felt it in her heart to allow Draco a respite before she started the session again. "Well do you think it's enough to change His mind yet, aunt Bellatrix" said Draco in a voice he hoped that didn't show how much pain he was in at the moment. "Truth be told I feel that we showed go a few more rounds…" Bellatrix never got to finish her sentence that could have brought about several more minutes of pain for Draco as he and her both sensed their individual Death Mark pulsate. This brought two very different feeling to two very different individual. Draco felt like that what little air was entering him leave all at once and replacing it with what he could only describe as hopelessness and fear but his aunt he knew only felt pure joy and merriment at the opportunity of inducing pain and suffering the pulsation presented in front of her. "Well I better go to serve the Lord and I hope this session will allow you to find a better answer for me and the Lord to hear" and she immediate Apparated without allowing him to try and say something.

The day started like any other for Draco. He woke in sweats from another dream that showed nothing but blood, bodies and the shrill cries of people dying or watching the torture killing people dear to them. He is so fed up with the same nightmare no matter how tired or sleep deprived he is. He wanted nothing to do with this anymore because the nightmare did nothing but show what kind of a coward and selfish of a person he was. Day in and day out at any moment he shut his eyes that moment plays out in front of in the most clear crystal details possible. And after waking up he spends minutes or hours trying to calm himself down and try to bring himself to a point where he can function properly without breaking down into random moments of hysteria. This was what he was doing currently that consisted of him breathing in large amounts of air and exhaling slowly while sitting up on his bed. After a while he found his heart beat to subside to a relatively normal rate and he stood up slowly testing his feet to see they could handle his weight. He became satisfied to see he wasn't as weak after the nightmare as he was in the beginning. He wasn't sure if that was a good or bad sign in the term of him getting used to nightmares of this magnitude.

While he was contemplating his new conundrum he finally heard the steps of several footsteps reaching him in a fluid rate toward his cell. Huh, he thought. The footsteps were accompanied with shouts of resistance which sounded feminine but then again it has been a long time since he heard the sound of a women that wasn't laced with insanity im talking about you aunty, draco thought. The footsteps and the shouting stopped at the cell in front of him and the girl/woman was thrown inside unceremoniously. There was silence for a while but as the death eaters were leaving the girl/women started to curse at them vocally using words that no properly raised pureblood lady should know about thus draco surmised that the female of unknown origin was a muggle or maybe a muggleborn. This all happened while he was sitting in his bed so he thought it was time to get up and meet his temporary neighbor and introduce himself as it has been rather sometime since his last neighbor a lovely single mother how was brought in as entertainment for the DL and his minions. The screams of Dawn were reverberating through his skull as Draco went to the door and peeked out the bared window in it. "psst hey lady with the foul mouth you okay in there" draco said and waited cause it takes a while for the situation to settle on the prisoners before they are ready to say anything. "whose there?" replied the female in a shaky voice that cause draco to sweat profusely. "Granger is that really you?" replied Draco in a trance like state.

Next time of Draco's Doubt:

"Draco?" replied an equally dazed and surprised Hermione. "what in the name of Merlin are you doing HERE" Draco replied. "right back at you" Hermione said sarcastically. "Dark Lord doesn't like it when his minions do what he tells them to do as you obviously know" "so you are what his prisoner for falling to kill Dumbledore" "nothing escapes your eyes do they granger" drawls draco. Hermione huffs but Draco sees that she is in pain and it makes the huff look like labored breathing. "rest Granger you'll need the strength soon enough" and Hermione talks the advice to heart as a few minute later Draco could hear the sound of very faint and labored breathing of a person whose asleep. With nothing else to do Draco also goes to sleep cause when you're a prisoner you can never have too much sleep.