CHAPTER 10
AS THEY DROWN
_R_E_V_E_L_A_T_I_O_
As they come by
As they slip away
As they sail by
Wanderers in the night
As they wonder
As they tease
As they surrender
Lost souls in a flight
As they conceal
As they drown...
(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)
He was swimming
in a sea of other
people's expectations.
Men had drowned in
seas like that.
— Robert Jordan,
New Spring (Wheel of Time #0)
(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)
The Malfoy family stood apprehensively at the entrance of their dining hall. The mother was furiously gripping her son's shoulder while the father was merely standing there, cold and impassive.
"Go in. Don't disappoint me boy."
Have I ever?, he thought angrily. His lips twitched, ever so slightly. His toes curled into tight little balls of white skin, while his knuckles impossibly tightened even more.
He went in, his entire demeanour calm and composed but his eyes were screaming hate and anger. His mother reluctantly let go of his shoulder. He opened the door to the dining hall and stepped inside. The hall was dark and damp and the air felt sickening. It was terribly cold in there.
As he stepped inside, the door closed behind him on its own. He knew all too well. Trying to intimidate me with my own tricks?
He walked confidently, head held high, mind fearless. He was a lunatic after all, nothing else, nothing else.
Voldemort was sitting in the far end of the hall in the head chair, in which he remembered his late grandfather used to sit long ago.
"Draco Malfoy."
"My lord." He cringed inwardly as he bowed a little for show. His hand was twitching furiously to draw out his wand and do the Cruciatus Curse right then and there.
"Are you afraid?"
"No, my lord.", he said smoothly. It was the blatant truth. He was feeling anything except fear at the moment. The thin, nose-less, bald man was not at all frightening.
"Lucius was very praiseful of your talents. Let's see what have you got. Show me your wand."
"Ah, Hawthorn, I see. Only given to those of superior magical ability.", the Dark Lord remarked as Draco handed him his wand.
"You'll be a good death eater. Let us see something else."
Suddenly he felt as if his mind was being torn up by an extremely sharp sword. He recognised it as Legilimency and focused on blocking up his mind. He had to do it somehow. Whatever he had read up on Occlumency, he was applying it then, with all he had in him. Don't let him get to you. He focused all his energy on making his mind as blank as a newborn child.
Forget everything.
Forget about your mother.
Forget about your tricks.
Forget that you hate this madman.
Forget that you're in love.
Forget about her.
Forget who you are.
Just forget.
Sweat broke up on his pale forehead. His hands were white as his knuckles clenched painfully. He was suffering from a terrible headache.
After a seemingly long, long time, his mind seemed to regain stability as he felt the penetrating sword go away. He opened his tightly closed eyes, even though he didn't remember closing them at any point. He felt he was lucky to have not fallen onto his knees on the stony floor. He felt weak for the first time in years.
And suddenly it dawned upon him why people bothered to fear this lunatic. He could drive them crazy without a single movement on his part.
"You're surprisingly good at blocking your mind. Who taught you?"
"No one.", he barely said, heaving huge breaths.
"You are lying! Crucio!"
Just as he had regained his breath, he felt it going away again. Electricity crackled through his already weakened body as he gasped for air. His surroundings were starting to black out as he began losing his vision. He writhed in pain on the cold ground. This was far more powerful than his father's version.
He had often been on the receiving end of his father's Cruciatus Curse, but nothing was even remotely close to the turmoil he was going through at that painful moment. Fire shot through his every bone and his blood boiled. His sweat evaporated and he felt as if his skin was burning.
At last after an eternity, when his torture stopped, he yet again opened his tightly lidded eyes, only to see a mad glint in Voldemort's red eyes
"Fear me young Malfoy."
He was unable to bring himself to say anything as he brought his still writhing form up from the floor. I'll do anything but that. His head felt dizzy and his knees were weak.
"I think you're ready to be initiated. Better before your thoughts wander. I want you to be powerful but not a blood traitor, you're going to be my heir after all."
Heir. The word echoed off through the walls and reverberated around him in the silent air.
Heir? Blood traitor? Did he see Hermione in my mind? No it can't be...
But he couldn't say anything about that matter. After all the person in front of him didn't wear his heart on his sleeve. Before he could do anything, the madman's sickly greyish fingers were rolling his left sleeve up.
"Do you, Draco Lucius Malfoy, choose to be my loyal servant until your death?"
He had no choice. He sighed. "Yes"
And then long black swirls of an evil ink-like substance burst forward from the Dark Lord's wand as it hovered over his white skin. He seemed to be muttering some sort of a complex incantation. His skin burnt yet again and he felt as if he would collapse for the second time. The pain in his left arm was at its maximum when his right hand automatically came to clutch it at the elbow. When the wand finally left his searing skin, he saw the dull, dark brown outlines of the snake and the skull, glaring at him, taunting him.
He had been branded.
His untainted skin had been tainted.
He was a deatheater like the rest of those stupid filthy purebloods.
"Remember to fear me.", Voldemort's sharp voice cut through the cold afternoon air.
No, no, no!
But for the first time in his life, Draco Malfoy felt a little afraid of Voldemort. "I have a task for you—", he continued speaking, "bring me that Mudblood, Potter's best friend, what is her name... Ah yes! Hermione Granger. I want her here till the end of this school year."
Never.
"And don't think of backing out, your mother's life is at stake here."
With that the cruel Dark Lord left the fourteen year old boy and went outside. In that sorrowful moment, there was no cunning Slytherin, no tormentor, no prodigy but just a fourteen year old boy. A fourteen year old, who had no choice but to make the hardest choice of them all.
Someone had to be sacrificed, even if both deserved to live. He had to choose between love and family. It was unfair, it was tough.
He decided that in the end, it would be him.
After all, if he had to kill one of the two people he loved the most, he didn't have any right to live, did he? So, he thought that he was better off getting killed himself in the process than let either of them die. His mother would survive his death, she had to. And Granger? Granger had Potter and Weasley. Also she didn't love him. She would have practically nothing to mourn about, he thought.
A few minutes after the madman's departure from the room, his mother ran in and hugged his weak body to her chest. Tears were running down her cheeks; he could feel the wetness from them on his shirt. To his surprise, they ran down his cheeks too.
She didn't sleep.
Not a wink.
Her sleeping hours were spent trying to decode Malfoy and his enigmatic persona. He had proved to be an interesting puzzle so far. Hermione still couldn't understand the strange emptiness she felt inside herself every time she thought of those faraway mercurial eyes.
She wanted to meet him. Soon. She felt— no, she knew that something was wrong with him when she didn't receive a swallow for three days. With these thoughts, the courageous bookworm finally went to a dreamful sleep as the first rosy waves of dawn touched the cloudy sky.
It was Saturday that morning. Their next meeting day.
She would be meeting him soon if all was right. She didn't suspect that nothing couldn't be right at all.
A/N: A mainly Draco-ish chapter. What do you think about it?
REVIEW! THAT'S WHAT DRACO WOULD WANT!