Chapter 1:
The swirling grey clouds twisted and turned through the blackening sky, blotting out the weak sunlight more and more as the seconds ticked by. I knew why I was here, I knew what I had to do, I even knew how I was going to do it. But, even after all this time to prepare myself, I still wasn't sure if I could do it. Regardless of all my doubts, I walked with a flawless certainty that could have fooled even the brilliant, but bumbling, Professor Trelawney. My arm began to lift from my side, seeming to levitate with a confidence of its own, raising my wand to point at the graying man facing away from me. His dusty lavender robes swirled around his feet when he turned to look at me, baby sky blue eyes peering over half moon spectacles. The innocence of his soul was like a shot through the lungs, I stared down at my feet, desperately trying to catch my breath. When I got my racing pulse back under control I looked back up through a veil of my milky white hair. Standing in the old man's place, wearing the old man's robes was my Lord. He stood there before me, bringing to life all of the menacing shadows from my dreams, my nightmares. I dropped to my knee and bowed my head. I heard him whisper my name, "Draco". And I felt a small twinge of pride, he was talking to me. But when I raised my head to look at him, that same old man with the glowing blue eyes and frizzy grey hair that inched down his back and matching beard had retaken his place.
"You'd better make up your mind, Draco. You're running out of time." Stated the man in his gravely, voice, raising his wispy, grey eyebrows. With that the old man's face became a sickening merry go round of faces. Faces of every person I had ever seen. First Harry Potter, then my father, then Arthur Weasley, then the Minister of Magic, then my mother, and many others. Then came the voices.
"Draco. Draco. What are you going to do, Draco?"
The most menacing of the faces was that of the insane Bellatrix Lestrange. Her beautiful face was contorted with a mocking laughter that made me nervous. I felt both weak and enraged as she stepped out from behind Dumbledore's body as the faces continued reeling by, making my stomach turn. Bolts of lightening began to flash bright green outside. Bellatrix whirled around Dumbledore's motionless body, flailing her arms in the air, dancing to the beat of an unheard drum. She twirled across the floor to me. Coming up behind me, she put her hands on my shoulders. It wasn't until she grabbed me that I realized I was shaking. Bellatrix leaned in and whispered in my ear, her steaming breath raising the hair on the back of my neck.
"What are you going to do, Draco?"
When I spun around to face her she was gone. But I could still hear her shrill cackles echoing off the stone walls. When I looked back to Dumbledore he was shaking. The faces no longer just appearing in place of his own, but instead ghosting out of him like hazy clouds of dust. As they continued chanting, "Draco. Draco. What are you going to do, Draco?"
They all turned from small floating faces to full sized people and began crowding around me and Dumbledore's jerking body. Suddenly, and without warning, Dumbledore dropped to the floor, lifeless. I don't know why, but I screamed,
"No!"
As I threw myself at the old man laying in a crumpled heap on the floor.
I jolted awake. There was a great storm raging outside. The rain hammered against my window while the wind howled and the thunder crashed. The lightening that cracked through the black night sky was a blinding white again. My skin was clammy and burned as if it Bellatrix's breath had continued to linger, but I was also covered in goose bumps and was violently shivering. Glancing down at my bare chest I saw drops of sweat beading up and rolling down my skin onto my black silk sheets. Without a moments hesitation I jumped from my bed and dashed to the bathroom across the hall. Throwing open the door and not bothering with the lights, I flung myself, face first, into the toilet and vomited.