Chapter 26: Be Mine

February 14th


Elara blinked several times.

Her heart was racing and the hair on the back of her neck stood on it's ends. She could feel the shiver run through her spine as she turned her head from side to side, squinting into the darkness.

Something wasn't right.

She shuddered again as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, making the outlines of the objects around her. She stood and moved her hands out in front of her, feeling her way though the room. They hit stone. She could feel the divots of the pebbled textures as the pads of her fingers scraped along the cool rock. She didn't know where she was, and her arm was throbbing.

She stopped, her ears perking up as she heard a rustle of fabric from behind her. She held her breath, waiting to see if it was a trick of her imagination in the dark or if someone was watching her. She felt in her waistband for her wand and felt her heart drop as she realized it was not there. She closed her eyes, what happened? Where was she?

She remembered the room of requirement, bickering with Draco. She could remember the heat she had felt, as if her blood was boiling as it rolled through her veins, a stark contrast to the eerie chill that settled upon her now. She felt her arm throbbing again and she remembered the blood. Ruby red, flowing from gaping slashes along her arm. Her brother's voice as he begged her to open her eyes, to stay awake. The tune her mother used to sing playing in her head.

Fury.

Her eyes snapped open as she felt it course through her. Foreign in her veins, an outrage that did not belong to her as it seeped through her mind and poisoned her thoughts. She grit her teeth and heard a low chuckle disrupt the air behind her. She spun on her heel, keeping a hand to the wall. She waited, bated breath as the outrage twisted and coiled inside of her, flowing out through her fingertips and settling into a fierce animosity.

She had felt this brand of fury only once before.

"Your magic teases me, Elara."

She stifled a gasp as the voice assaulted her ears, shredding through her mind and clawing up her back.

"You think you can defy me so easily?"

The sound of his voice seemed to be all around her now, encumbering her senses and flooding her brain.

"You think you can escape me so easily?"

She felt panic rising in her chest, gripping her lungs and sucking the breath from her lips.

"You think you have a choice? I have been inside your mind. I know who you are, what you've done. The betrayal. The webs you weave! I have seen what you are capable of. I know what greatness you could achieve."

The voice echoed loud, screeching her thoughts to a halt and demanding her full attention.

"What do you want?" She said, her voice quiet. She couldn't think. She couldn't clear her head of him enough to come up with a plan, to find a way out of whatever prison he had brought her to.

"Accept me." His crimson eyes appeared before her, a silver cast beginning to glow around the room. "Accept me and you shall be forgiven. Accept me and I shall show you greatness. Accept me and I will help you hone your abilities."

She stuck her chin out, clenching her jaw as she gathered her nerve. She stared at him, his skin sunken and stretched taught over the bones in his snakelike face. "Your magic isn't working on me." She said. "It's rejecting."

"As mine rejects, so does yours." He spoke, his voice lofty and challenging. "I can see you have grown weaker; your body is fading, and your mind is diminishing alongside of it. Your magic is weak.

"What did you do to me?" She said.

"I marked you as the witch you are." He said, his lips twisting up in a sickening smile. "Simply injected your magic with what could be, the excellence you could accomplish."

"You poisoned me." She spat.

"You feel useless now. Without your abilities, you are nothing. But you could be powerful. You could be formidable in my ranks."

She studied him, watching as he slinked through the room, his long black robes flowing behind him. His bare feet barely disturbing the dirt on the ground. He seemed to move as if he were transparent. A ghost dancing between life and death. A demon in purgatory.

"That's all you've really wanted, isn't it, Elara? To be useful."

She stared back at him; her jaw clenched so tight she was afraid her teeth may crack. Her breath pushing through her nose in shaky, broken puffs.

"As you have read everyone around you, I can read you."

She could feel him in her mind, clawing his way through her thoughts, picking out the most toxic and perverted versions of herself.

"You are angry. Tired of being held back, of being underestimated. Tired of being told what to do. Tired of being imprisoned and too weak to do anything about it."

Her heart was pounding, she was sure he could hear the thundering beneath her ribcage as loudly as she could; feel the blood pumping through her veins. Her mouth felt dry and her palms sweaty. She folded her arms over her chest, in act of defiance or to keep herself together, she wasn't sure.

"Using anger as fuel won't work on me." She hissed. "I know what anger does to people. I know what havoc is caused when people use their rage to make decisions. Rage makes you blind."

"And you are not blind." He agreed. "You see everything from the corner of the room that you have been shoved, don't you? You've observed people in their purest forms, knows what drives them, don't you?"

She didn't answer with words, she only brought in another breath of air, pushing it through her flared nostrils as her eyes set cold and calculating against his serpentine face.

"You are not moved by hate, greed, and anger. Unmotivated by power?" He barked a laugh that sent another chill straight to her spine. She refused to shudder. "Then perhaps…"

He stepped closer to her and reached a hand toward her, wrapping his fingers around her chin, grasping it tightly as he forced her to look into his eyes. She could feel his long fingernails puncturing the skin of her jaw and the underside of her chin. Her skin screaming as it began to bruise from the force of his grip. His lip curled in a snarl and she could see his teeth, blackened with the rot of his soul and as pointed as the messages he delivered with daggers.

"Love? Fear?"

She finally closed her eyes, trying to steady the pain in her chest as her lungs ached for air. His hand crushing her jaw and forcing her head forward.

"Afraid of what will happen to your family." He said, and she could hear the smirk on his lips. "Afraid of dying-

Her eyes snapped open. "I am not afraid of death." She ground out, her voice squashed and broken from the hold on her chin.

He pulled her face closer to his, forcing her onto her toes as she let out a small whimper of pain. "You are afraid of dying a villain." He hissed. "Afraid of your family knowing what you're capable of."

"No, I'm not." She said, knowing she had to fight back. Somehow, she had to fight back. She had no power and no wand. Her abilities were subdued and thrumming with his fury. She felt juvenile, as if talking back to her parents, but she couldn't stay silent!

"You told no one of the manifestations." He said, his lips curling around his teeth once more. "Cracking mirrors as a child, blaming Draco for broken windows, crushing stone benches to dust in your gardens."

She felt her eyes widen a fraction of an inch. "It was accidental magic." She could taste the salt of his skin on her lips as they brushed his palm with her words. "Every child has accidental magic!"

"You were not a child, though. Were you?"

She closed her eyes again. He was winning. She could feel it and she knew he could too. He had her.

"You will join me, Elara, or I will scalp the blonde from each of their heads while you watch, feeling everything that they feel. What hatred they would harbor for you, knowing you could have spared their lives if you'd only have conceded."

She wasn't afraid to die. She would never be afraid of her own death enough to allow it to be used against her. But fear of her family's death? She could see Draco sobbing over her as he did in the dining room that afternoon. Could see her mother, the broken and terrified witch she had become. Her father, the shell of a wizard who once stood tall and rigid; now hunched and shaking. His eyes haunted her almost as much as the serpent's in front of her.

"Accept me, Elara, and I will give them back to you. I will restore your family to the greatness they once were, the power they once held…"

He paused, tightening the grip on her chin, his nails pressing further into her skin.

"Refuse me, and you will watch them crumble."

Suddenly, he was gone. She collapsed on all fours, gasping for air as the sudden loss of energy in the room suffocated her senses. She sputtered, coughing as pulled herself to her knees and rubbed her bruised jaw. She closed her eyes, taking slow, deep breaths.

She looked down to her arm, noticing the slow throb of it once more. It looked mangled, large cavernous slashes wrapped around it from wrist to elbow. She studied the marks, they seemed to pulse and twitch, as if waiting for something. Unharmed, the Dark Mark swirled on her arm, angry and demanding. Had the circumstances not just made it painfully clear that Snape's theory was right, that her body was trying to force the unwanted Dark Magic out, she would swear it looked as if she had been splinched.

Impossible choices.

Why was she only given impossible choices?!

Stay hidden away or have people exploit her abilities. Go to Hogwarts or sit by and let Draco fail. Figure out how to fix the cabinet or risk her entire family being punished. Lie to Harry or risk failing the task. Tell the truth or die locked in your own head. Get herself out and never see her family again, knowing what would happen to them if she left. Accept an offer from the Devil himself or watch as he rips them all apart, limb for limb.

They weren't choices. She was never given choices. They were ultimatums! They were the absolute worst of either scenario and she could no longer live in the grey area between the black and white. There was no white. There was no grey! She felt like she was thirteen again, playing a morbid game of would you rather with her brother and their friends in the gardens as they laughed.

"Would you rather be eaten by a dragon or drowned by a mermaid?"

"Would you rather smell like a troll for a year or be used as a troll's tissue for a month?"

Would you rather stand your ground and watch your family be slowly and painfully tortured and killed or allow an extremely powerful maniacal wizard to use your abilities to further a cause you don't want to be a part of in hopes that you all make it out alive?

Her heart ached.

She should have told Harry everything. She should have told him about the cabinet, about the task, about the Death Eaters and Dumbledore and the terrible, horrible things that were to come. That she had put her hand in. She was a coward.

And Harry had called her brave.

She felt sick. Her stomach clenched and turned, forcing the bile to scorch her throat as it spilled onto the dirt floor. She was shaking, her entire body trembling as she tried to breathe. Desperately trying to pull oxygen into her lungs as she sobbed and panted. Panic forcing her head into her dirty hands, reminding her of her cowardice. Slamming every moment, every lie she's told, into the forefront of her mind. Reminding her that she did it to herself. She had played the victim, she had been so convinced she had it under control, that she was trying to make the right choices.

She thought she had made the right choices, even if some of them were a bit… convoluted. She had tried to do what was right, and what did it give her?

She had agreed to not go to Hogwarts when she got her letter when she turned eleven. She had agreed to stay in hiding, to stay quiet and lie about her abilities, her existence. She had turned her eye when Voldemort returned, pretending she didn't see her family falling apart rapidly in front of her. She had agreed to help Draco with his task, to put herself in the position of being a pawn in a game she chose to ignore the rules to. She had sought out Harry, reeling him in and accusing him of being suspicious of her. She had made the decision to play both sides against the middle, to try and still toe the line of light and dark and when it came crashing down, she blamed other people. Blamed a lack of options. She was the one who manipulated Harry, made him fall for her and then fell for him—knowing what was at stake. Knowing what could happen.

She was the one who figured out the formula to fix the cabinet. Had figured out the incantations they needed to create a spell that might work.

She had never done the right thing, because there wasn't right and wrong for her. There was wrong and worse.

She was panting, eyes closed, trying to catch her breath that labored as if she had just run to London and back. It was her fault. It was all her fault. She had conceded so many times in her life, so many times she had felt like there weren't better options.

He could make her powerful.

He could ignite her flames with dark magic, he could put her at the top. He could make sure her family was safe after the war. He could ensure a place for them in his kingdom, a high standing in his ranks.

They had already lost so much. If the Order won this war, her family would be persecuted. She could be safe. She could get herself out. But Draco… Her Mother and Father… They would surely burn in the aftermath. They were already so despised by the Wizarding community. They would be the first ones to be used to make an example out of. And she would have to sit by and watch them be scalped anyway.

She swallowed the lump in her throat as the realization came to her, clear as crystal.

"I'll do it." She said, knowing he would hear her. "I'll do what you ask. I'll use my abilities for you. I'll join you. But you have to keep them safe. You have to make sure they survive. Unharmed."

Like an echoing breeze, she felt the words swirl around her as she closed her eyes. "You have my word."

She had just signed a deal with the devil. Signed her name neatly on the dotted line, her blood the ink for an unforgiving quill. Elara Druella Malfoy.

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a/n: DON'T COME FOR ME. *hides under bed*

I warned the chapter was short, but that it was important. I think we can all agree it was important. Tell me your thoughts, review!

Song I liked for this chapter was Gasoline by Halsey

Please don't hate me after this. I really struggled writing this chapter. I love Elara and it broke my heart to type this one out, I promise there's a reason as the story goes forward. It's probably going to start getting a bit darker after the next few chapters.

Thank you for reading! Thank you for reviewing! Keep it coming! i love them!

xo

mimi

(p.s. I've started writing a little Dramione! I'm gonna post the first chapter probably tomorrow. I'm not planning on it being a particularly long story, just something fun and different to get my brain off of Elara and her turmoil. It's a post-war fic based in my hometown and with a TON of original characters. It's going to be called Alliance, so keep an eye out! (: ))