"Crucio!"

"NO!" A heart-stopping scream came from behind a wooden door. "I DIDN'T MEAN IT STOP I DIDN'T MEAN IT STOP PLEASE STOP!" The words were all run into one frighteningly gasped-out sentence. A somber, pale man opened the door, looking in. A tall woman had her wand directed at a blonde boy in torn robes, and she was laughing as though she was having the time of her life. There was a green Slytherin patch on the boy's shirt that had been stained maroon like most of his clothes. He was screaming in absolute agony, his fingernails digging in to the skin of his face, his feet, ankles wrapped in slackless barbed wire, kicking mercilessly at the air. His skin was covered with dry and fresh blood, some of which dripped from his forehead into his eyes and down toward his mouth. He had tears sparkling freshly in his eyes that mixed with the blood, diluting it.

"If you torture him into insanity, the Dark Lord will have your head," the man's voice issued forth, a voice that seemed too deep for his frail-looking body. "You know he's not done with that child yet." He aimed his own wand at the boy, and he stopped screaming. His head lolled back slowly onto he ground, mouth agape, blood and saliva dripping from it. His eyes looked glazed and blank. He almost seemed dead, but every now again he would twitch, or hiccough, or murmur something that sounded insane to anybody but himself.

The woman turned around. She, too, was smeared with blood, but she was not injured. She was very, very pretty, and looked quite young, despite the look of aged intellect in her eyes. "But Lanier," she pleaded childishly. "I wanted to test another new spell on him. It's called the Cutting Curse. You just say Crudus and where you want them to be cut, and a gash shows up! Pop! It's just that simple!" She started to laugh again, and she went to raise her wand at the bleeding boy. Lanier, however, grabbed her wrists. "You're pushing your luck, you veela witch," he hissed. "Stop it, Lanier!" she demanded, as he tightened his grip until her hand was turning purple. He threw her wrist down by her side, where she rubbed it tenderly, pouting.

"You have Rastus get that boy out of here, Alaea," he directed sternly. "The Dark Lord is going to give him a final chance. You may not agree, but the Dark Lord knows that if he ends up half the man his father is- or was- he'll be extremely valuable to us." He walked away, a snarl on his face.

Alaea checked to make sure he was out of earshot before she directed her wand at the blonde boy again. "Crudus chest," she muttered. The clothes and skin on his chest split like paper through a paper cutter, and blood slowly, painfully oozed from the wound. She clapped, grinning like a schoolgirl, and turned out the door, calling out, "Rastus!"

Draco Malfoy, the self-proclaimed Slytherin King, did not move.

A/N: Okay, well, I know it may not seem so, but I have a feeling that if you like Draco, and the idea of him not being that bad, you'll probably like this story a lot. I don't agree much with most Draco ships, but if you're good, and you leave me a review, you may see some Draco-esque romance in this story, anyways. Wink wink.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, which is good for you readers- I'm sure J. K. Rowling does a much, much better job with it than I do.