Disclaimer: Nothing I write here belongs to me, apart from original characters and some plot material. The rest (including the dialogue from a couple of characters) belongs to J K Rowling. I am not writing this for any monetary gain or otherwise. This disclaimer applies to the entirety of this story.
"What are you doing?" I breathed.
The others stood a ways behind him, eyeing us eagerly as he appeared to size me up. It was a game to them; a horrifying game that had me bound, waiting for the first blow to fall, the first tears to shed. And there he stood, his tense back to the murderous hounds prowling behind him, watching him twirl his wand, with an eagerness that bordered on the grotesque. They couldn't see his eyes, though, or the way they flickered in his bloodless, taut face, desperately searching for a way out of this; any conceivable escape there was. Yet never finding anything before him but my terrified, resolved face trapped by the chains snaking across my bloodied school robes.
"Please, you have to do it," I urged him in a whisper.
His eyes continued their helpless search for something, anything to help us. "No," he muttered briskly, now beginning to mumble immobilising jinxes under his breath as he tried to recall our combative training.
"There's no way we're getting out of this," I hissed harshly, trying to cover any tremour that might otherwise have shaken my voice. "Better one of us gets out of this unscathed than neither of us. I'll survive-" if barely, "- please don't make it any harder than it has to be."
He glared at me for an instant before going back to muttering to himself, his wand twirling faster now and his body rocking unconsciously onto the balls of his feet. The robed figures behind him shifted restlessly, glancing at each other
"Draco, look at me!"
All of a sudden, Draco let loose a malicious laugh and abruptly tore his wand up to my throat, pretending to taunt me to buy us a few more seconds. There was a slight edge of hysteria in his voice that made his laughter all the colder for it. At least he was looking at me now.
"No," he breathed harshly, his face so close that strands of my hair shifted every time he spoke. "I refuse to do it, not now, not ever and most certainly never to you." His eyes burned mine with the fire roiling within and I barely had the wits to contort my face into a look of false terror for our audience. Draco paused for a second in apprehension, thinking for a moment that I actually was afraid of him, before collecting himself.
"I've done things for this war that make me shudder and recoil from my own reflection. For years now, I've done what I had to, to save lives. For the greater good," he continued disgustedly. His fist tightened on his wand and lifted my chin a little higher. "However, you can talk yourself hoarse and try to reason with me all day over the fact that logically the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. You can urge and plead for me to see sense. But since when has reason had any bearing on our relationship? There is much that I've discovered I can stomach, but never can I stomach this. Never can I make myself hurt you."
I shook my head without even knowing what I was doing. "No," I cried hoarsely, tears building up and obscuring his grim, pale face. "No, you might get yourself killed. You must-"
"Draco, get on with it already! We don't have all day to torture the mudblood good and proper," cackled Carrow impatiently.
Draco glanced disgustedly at the onlookers in his peripheral vision before looking solemnly back to my face.
"Don't, please don't, just do as they say, I'll be fine," I begged.
I shook my head more and more frantically as Draco carefully brought his other hand up to cup my bruised face. "Please, no, don't-"
Draco only smiled mirthlessly, tightening his grip on his wand. "Never."