Chapter Three

When I opened my eyes, I was still lying in the same spot I had been when I was knocked out, but when I looked towards where Sophie had been lying, I saw nothing.

She wasn't there.

For a moment, I felt panic surge through me. I pushed myself to my feet, far too quickly since my head spun around in circles and black dots flashed before my eyes. I tried blinking several times to clear them as I whipped my head around, searching for Sophie, finally I saw her, sitting on the window seat in the small bedroom we'd been imprisoned in.

"Sophie," I whispered her name. She glanced over at me briefly, giving me a look that made me want to cry, before turning back to whatever she was watching outside. In the dim gray light, cast from the small window she was sitting near, I could see her face. She had a split lip, and the beginnings of a black eye. I was sure that if I could see beneath her dirty clothes there would be bruises all up and down her arms and legs too.

The sight of her twisted my heart.

"Sophie," I breathed her name again, before walking over to her, taking off the black tuxedo jacket I was wearing and draping it over her shoulders. I was wearing a black turtleneck beneath, so I was much warmer than she must have been.

I wasn't sure if she wanted anything to do with me at the moment, so I turned to walk away, when she reached out and grabbed my hand, wrapping her small slender fingers around my hand. "Please don't go," she whispered. I turned back around, entwining my fingers with hers. She leaned heavily against me, drawing her legs up against her chest, her head resting just above my bellybutton.

We stood there, silently for what felt like hours, but must have been only minutes or seconds. I watched people passing by below, not even able to see the mansion. There was a man with his two children trailing behind him on bicycles. There was a woman, talking on the phone, while she was walking her dog. And there was a couple, sitting on a bench across the street, holding hands and gently kissing one another. I knew when Sophie noticed them because her grip on my hand tightened. I bent down slightly, pulling her head closer to me, so I could kiss the top of it.

"Draco." Her voice was barely above a whisper. She grabbed the collar of my jacket as I began to pull away. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, before her lips connected with mine. At first, I didn't know why she wanted to kiss me when we were in such a dire situation, but after a moment, I closed my eyes and held her face tight against as I kissed her passionately.

When we broke apart, we stayed mere inches apart for a moment before moving away slowly. She went back to lying her head against my torso, while staring out the window. We were silent for a few minutes more before she broke the silence.

"They're going to hurt us, aren't they," she said. She said it as a statement. Not a question, which made me swallow hard. She almost sounded like she was giving up already.

I took a deep breath and said, in a strained voice, "Yes, they probably will."

"What do they want?"

I looked down at her, trying to come up with a good response, but nothing came to mind. I didn't know what they wanted. I knew they wanted my loyalty and probably her loyalty. But that couldn't be all. They wouldn't be holding us captive for that. They would kill us if that was all they wanted. They would have killed us a long time ago if that was really truly what they wanted, but they hadn't, so that couldn't be it.

You have something they want, something told me.

What is it that we have? I replied, since I could think of nothing of any value that either I or Sophie had that they would want more than anything.

I froze. I was sure I had nothing they might want, but Sophie…I only assumed she would have nothing they wanted because she was muggle born. However, there was always the possibility that she might have something I didn't know about. Again, I had to ask myself, What would she have that anyone else would want?

The voice in my head immediately replied, Something you don't even know about.

I licked my lips, looking out the window again at a bird flitting by the window, singing happily, free from any cage or care in the world. I took another deep breath. I opened my mouth to ask her what I was thinking, but just then our door burst open.

Sophia and I jumped apart, though every single person that filled the doorway knew the reason we were locked in this room was because of our love…and maybe something else I was ignorant of. I stared at the Death Eater's gathered in the door and wondered, briefly what they were all doing there, until my father pushed his way to the front of their group. I realized only then that I had thought he was still in Azkaban. I should have been more surprised the night before, but I was too busy worrying about Sophia and her safety to realize my father had been broken out of Azkaban.

"So this is Sophia Avery," my father said, his lips curling in a sadistic smile. I looked with my eyes to my right and saw Sophie standing close next to me, so we were almost touching, but not quite. I resisted the urge to grab her hand and entwine her fingers with mine again. "Draco hasn't said much about you," my father went on to say. I felt fear race through me when I saw him smirk at Sophie. It was then I couldn't hold back any longer. I grabbed Sophie's hand and squeezed as hard as I could without hurting her, trying to protect her through touch alone. His smirk didn't waver, even when he looked down and saw our joined hands, in fact, I think it gave him strength as his smirk widened and he continued, "Interestingly enough, however, I already know much about you." My grip tightened. I felt her flinch beside me from the pain, but I couldn't let go. "I know that you are seventeen years old, like my son as well as in Slytherin, though no one is really sure why. I also know you are muggle born and would fit better in Gryffindor house." Here he turned to me, saying, almost mockingly, "Am I getting this correct so far, Draco?"

I didn't want to answer. I sucked my lips into my mouth and shut my eyes tightly, for a moment, trying to block out everything. I held my breath, squeezing Sophie's hand tighter still. I heard her hiss in pain. However, I knew that things would be worse than they already were if I didn't say something. I let my breath out and said in a voice that sounded obviously strained, "Yes, you have."

My father smirked. "Good." He gave me a cool smile before he added, turning back to Sophia, "I also know what you've been hiding, Avery." His voice was like a frozen wind blowing through a graveyard. "I'm not sure you understand this, but it belongs to the Dark Lord and how it ever got into your hands is a mystery to the whole wizarding world really." He ended his statement with a smirk that sent shivers down my spine. I wondered how that same smirk could ever have made me feel like my father could defeat anyone. I shook myself. That wasn't what I had meant at all. The fact he could defeat anyone was true. It was the fact that I had felt good knowing that that puzzled me.

I swallowed again, glancing at Sophie with my eyes, wondering what my father could possibly be referring to. The threatening voice in my head echoed back to me what I had been thinking earlier, She could be hiding something you don't know about. I squeezed Sophia's hand tighter still. She winced.

I watched out of the corner of my eye as Sophie licked her lips, took a shuddering breath and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

My father's, Lucius Malfoy's, face was mere inches from hers before I finished blinking. She took an automatic step back, hitting the wall. I felt the need to step in front of my father to protect her, but I knew that wouldn't help us any, so I resisted the urge to do so as he grabbed her wrist, dragging her closer to him, so close it was almost gruesome.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Avery," he hissed, through gritted teeth. Sophie had turned her face away from him. She looked quite upset at his assault. I wished I could stop him without hurting her. He shook her and added, "And I am going to make sure that you give it back to us, no matter what it takes."

"I DON'T HAVE IT!" Sophie shouted in his face, wrenching her wrist from his grasp. My father leaned back as she stepped away from him, her face twisted into an angry sneer I had never seen on her before. "They took it," she whispered. "When they ransacked my house last summer they took it." She sounded near tears. "I haven't seen it since."

I took a deep breath, resisting the urge to ask what it was they were talking about.

My father looked unconvinced. He glanced back at the Death Eaters standing in the doorway. I recognized Grayback and Amycus among them, along with some other Death Eaters I had seen before. I saw Fenrir Grayback give me a ghastly smile and I knew, immediately, what my father wanted to do. My mouth dried up instantly and I found it hard to swallow. I couldn't watch that. Not again. Let alone do it.

"We'll get it out of you somehow," my father muttered, walking swiftly back to his group standing in the doorway.

"Didn't you hear me?" Sophie shouted at their backs as they turned to leave. "I don't know where it is! Torturing me won't do you any good. It's hard to ask someone for something and expect a right answer when they don't have one to give, now isn't it?"

He spun around, looking livid. I wasn't sure about Sophie, I never saw her face, but I felt fear course through me, along with panic. My father wasn't the kind of man that took sarcastic words directed at him well. In fact, disobeying him usually wasn't a good idea. I tried to grab Sophie's hand to pull her closer to me, but she pulled her hand away, obviously trying to tell me she didn't need my protection.

"Pain and darkness doesn't work on everyone, Mr. Malfoy," she said, shaking her head. "Besides, evil never prevails anyway."

My father strode back and slapped her across the face hard. "You would do well to control your tongue, Ms. Avery," he replied, using the formal at the beginning of her last name as though it were an insult. "The Dark Lord isn't as merciful as the rest of us are."

"When will I be seeing him, so I can tell him what I told you," she said, loudly, her voice sounding taunting and resentful as my father walked out of the room.

He turned around and smirked. "Soon enough." His eyes shifted to me and I couldn't tell whether he was pleased that I would be at this little meeting also or if he was upset. "You too, Draco."

I said nothing in reply.

Then they were gone.

Sophie glared at the door as it slammed behind them. We heard a key turn in a lock. Sophie ran to the door and began pounding it with her fists, thinking she might be able to break her way through the door. I knew it didn't really matter. Even if we did manage to get out of this room, we were still helpless. We didn't have our wands and without them we would be cursed or killed and then either thrown back into this room or in a back alley.

After a moment, she sank to the ground. Her thin body was shaking and I knew she was crying. I bent down, picking up my jacket, which had fallen to the floor a while ago when my father had been confronting her about, who knew what, and walked over to where she was sitting on the floor. I knelt down next to her, wrapped the jacket around her shoulders and pulled her to me, so I could hold her, while she cried. I noticed, as she wrapped her arms around my torso that the fleshy part on the side of her hands was covered in splinters and blood.

"I don't understand them," she sobbed into my neck. "What gives them the right to hurt people? Why do they think that torturing people will make them want to give them what they want? I'd think it would just make them more resilient to not give them what they're after."

I rubbed her arm gently, licking my lips and saying, "I think the reason they do it is because with most people it works. People don't like pain and if that's what they give them, then to make it stop, whoever they're torturing will give them anything, even turn in their friends and family."

She pushed herself away from me, so she could look into my face. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. She choked on her breath a couple of times as she replied, "That's horrible." Then she leaned back into me, crying some more.

I stared at a book that was hidden under a small table that was placed against the wall next to the door under a mirror as I whispered, "Yes, it is."

I wondered what she would do if she knew that I had helped torture people into giving up their families before. I wondered if she would still love me if she knew I had almost killed people because I had used the Cruciatus curse on them for so long. I wondered if she would still want to be in my arms if she knew the hands beneath them had been used to hurt innocent people in unimaginable ways.

"It's not your fault what you've done," she says to me, taking the bird I am holding in my hands in her own. She holds it up to her face and kisses it gently on the top of the head. She smiles at it. I can tell she likes it. She's always liked animals. Especially birds. She looks up at me. "You've been surrounded by people who have been bad influences on you all your life. You're expected to follow in your father's footsteps. All your family has been Death Eaters. Now they're just thinking, why not you too?"

She places the bird in a cage next to the Vanishing Cabinet. I know she plans to take it back to its original cage just outside the Room of Requirement, but since she can't put it anywhere else, for now she has to cage it. I know it pains her to do so. She hates putting anything in a cage. Especially since she has been caged in so many ways most of her life.

I watch her carefully close the cage door and watch the bird flit around inside the small enclosed space, chirping angrily, as if it can't figure out why it can't fly any farther that the bars on either side of the cage. It's used to a larger space.

"That's not true," I say, still staring at the bird. She turns to look at me, confused by what I just said. I repeat myself. "That's not true. I chose to do those things. I chose to hurt those people. I could have chosen not to. There's always a choice, Sophia."

She gives me a half smile akin to the one I saw the night I first met her. "Yes that's true." She takes my hands in hers, staring at our entwined fingers for a moment before she asks softly, "But would you have done those things had you not been surrounded by the people you are now?"

I sighed, coming out of the few happy memories I had of us together, slowly. It was such a pity that our relationship had been so short lived. It was painful. It felt as if I had known her for years, and I had, but in all actuality I had only really truly known her for about a year and a half.

She would never hate you for what you've done, I reminded myself. If you can torture her, and she will still love you, then I'm not sure what you could do to make her hate you.

However, that was untrue. I knew exactly what I could do to make her hate me, but that was the exact opposite of what I planned to do. Unless I had to, I would never do that. I would never make her hate me, unless I had no other choice. Unless her life was in danger.

I closed my eyes in pain. I wished I could have hidden her better. I wished I could have kept up my façade of being exactly what my father and the Dark Lord wanted long enough for Harry Potter to destroy him or until I worked up the courage to oppose him myself. However, more than any of that at the moment I wished I had listened to Dumbledore. I wished I had taken his offer. I wished I had let him protect me and my family and her. Then I wouldn't be here right now. I would be somewhere safe. With her.

"Draco." Her voice was soft, barely audible over the pounding of my heart. I turned to look at her. She looked very tired, absolutely exhausted, and about ten years older than she actually was. I stroked her face gently, brushing her sweaty hair out of her eyes. "Promise me you will never be like them." She more breathed than spoke the words.

I swallowed. "I'm already like them, Sophie," I said, sounding very near tears.

She shook her head wearily, "No you're not. You're nothing like them. You're kind and good and capable of love. They aren't. They're vile and cruel and have only ever known hate. Please don't ever do that. No matter what happens, promise me you will never let your hatred consume you."

I knew what she was talking about, even though I wanted desperately to pretend I had no idea. She meant if they killed her. If the Death Eaters killed her, she didn't want me to give into my hatred and destroy them mercilessly, heartlessly. She didn't want me to turn into the very evil I was trying so hard to annihilate, if they killed her. She didn't want to be avenged.

Half of me wanted to promise her that I would do exactly as she wanted, but another, stronger half of me, wanted to tell her that that wasn't going to happen. If she died, I was never going to forgive whoever hurt her. I was never going to rest until I avenged her, until the murderer was screaming and begging for mercy as much as she had been at the end. I thought of all the people it might be. My father, Bellatrix, Fenrir Grayback. Maybe even someone else once we had been here for a while.

It wasn't until she whispered my name a second time that I realized I had been consumed by my own thoughts for so long. She touched my face with the tips of her fingers. I gasped and closed my eyes. Still when she touched me, I felt as though she were touching me for the first time all over again. I was still overwhelmed.

"Please promise me, Draco."

Her words brought me back to the real world and I took her hand, kissing her fingertips, before I looked deep into her eyes and said, "If they kill you, I don't know what I'll do, Sophie, but I promise you that I will try to keep myself from turning into them. I will avenge you, I promise you that, but I will try not to be as heartless and cruel as they are."

It was an empty promise. She could tell and so could I, but she said nothing. She only gave me a sad smile that didn't quite reach her eyes and said, in a whisper, "Thank you." I thought about kissing her, about trying to make her feel better, but I knew that I couldn't and I knew she wouldn't let me. Violence frightened Sophie. It frightened her more than almost anything in this world. Maybe even more than her parents. If I couldn't promise her I wasn't going to be violent, there was no way she was going to want to be near me at least for some time.

She goes back to sitting on the window seat, watching muggles pass by below. I sit on the edge of the queen sized bed, sitting directly in the middle of the room. At least they want to keep us comfortable, I thought disdainfully, gripping the bed sheets beneath me angrily, my face set in an angry grimace.

I glanced over at Sophie. Silent tears were running down her dirty cheeks. I thought about going over to wipe them off her face, but I wasn't sure if she was still angry with me or not. I noticed my jacket I had lent her was lying on the floor next to her. I wasn't entirely sure what that meant. Did she want me to go over and pick up the jacket and wrap it around her shoulders again, while holding her? Or did she not want it anymore because of what I had said?

I laid back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Images of Sophie and I together filled my mind. Images of us happy. Images of us before we were really friends. Images of us speaking and studying together when I first began to get to know her. Our third year was when we began to really talk, I thought, going back to that fateful night in the common rooms when I had noticed her sitting by herself, studying as per usual.

I sighed and closed my eyes.

What if I hadn't spoken to her then? I thought suddenly. What if we'd just continued being half friends? What if I'd never let myself fall in love with her?

What if, what if, what if…

It all filled my mind, overwhelming me.

What if she hadn't accepted me? What if she just thought of me as a cold blooded murderer? What if she had been placed in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin?

Maybe it would have been for the best, I thought. You wouldn't be here right now if none of this between you and her had never happened. She'd be safe. Away from you. You'd be here, cold blooded as you were before you met her.

What if I hadn't changed when I met her? What if she'd gone over to the dark side? What if…what if…what if...

The questions lulled me into a tortured sleep full of nightmares of Sophie being taken away from me, of her wanting nothing to do with me, of her being just as horrible a person as I am. I woke up partway through the day to find Sophie had fallen asleep on the window seat, wrapped in my jacket. She looked as if she were sleeping soundly despite our situation. She took deep breaths. I watched her wrap the jacket more tightly around herself.

I thought about carrying her over to the bed and laying her beside me. It had to be far more comfortable on this bed than on that hard window seat, but then I remembered that she was probably still distrusting of me and I lay back down on the bed, rolled over and tried to find sleep once more.

It took almost an hour for me to fall asleep again, but when I did it was well worth the wait. I slept peacefully. And dreamt of only things that were happy. I dreamt we were back at school. That Sophie was safe. That I was safe. And that we were both happy. Or at least as happy as we could be, hiding our love from everyone else.

The only thing disconcerting about the dream was the maniacal whisper in the background that kept saying the same thing over and over again, What if, what if, what if…