Fractal

Chapter Thirteen

````````````````````````

Kelsey opened her eyes. She groaned, feeling the light from the window piercing her chocolate orbs and burn them. She put a hand up to protect them when someone from the side slipped the curtains shut.

"I'm so glad to see you're awake, dear. We were most worried about you." Dumbledore said, his voice very friendly and altogether bouncy, like it always was. She looked over to her side, seeing Draco laying there, surrounded by many wizards. She sat up but Dumbledore suggested that she lay down and conserve her strength.

"He's fine but the Ministry suspects him." Dumbledore said, a tinge of malice in his voice. Kelsey whipped her head around back to Dumbledore, confused. She ignored the pain and dizziness that accompanied the quick motion.

"Accused of what?" She asked suspiciously, her eyes narrowing.

"Ah yes, perhaps I should tell you what happened." Dumbledore said, sitting down on a chair next to her bed. Kelsey tried to screen out Draco's voice from the next bed to hear the headmaster's, but it was extremely difficult.

"Well, when you three came riding out of the forest, there was this light. It was a spell, but we weren't sure which one. When it was finally spoken, however...we understood. Snape and myself managed to protect ourselves against it, but a few students behind us could not. Twenty, my dear, twenty students died of the Aveda Kadarva curse. The rest were just stunned, some injured." Dumbledore said, stress appearing in his voice. Kelsey gasped as she heard this, remembering the ride back to Hogwarts.

"And they suspect Draco!?" She hissed, sitting up in her bed despite Dumbledore's advice to lay down.

"Of course, my dear. Who else?" Dumbledore asked her, as if challenging her to see if she had any other explanation for what had happened.

"But...Harry Potter..." She hissed, remembering hearing Potter scream those words.

"I've already talked to Mr. Potter. He said that he thought Draco was up to no good and went off to the forest to stop him. He found Draco and tried to stop him, but he would not and eventually ended up chasing him. He said that he was performing some kind of binding spell to stop him, but he was too late..." Dumbledore trailed off, looking out of the curtained window. It was sunny outside, a complete opposite to what Kelsey was feeling.

Kelsey's jaw dropped. Surely he didn't believe him...then again, Potter had the spotless record and Draco's father was a Death Eater; she had seen that firsthand, although maybe a little unwillingly.

"What are they going to do to him!? You don't even know if it's him!!" Kelsey argued, her entire body shaking with rage. Dumbledore looked at her with a bit of sympathy, but what he said next surprised her;

"I wouldn't consort with the enemy, my dear. Nothing good can come from it." With that he left her to herself, jangled thoughts and all.

````````````

A few days later Kelsey was allowed to get back to school. Draco and Harry were as well, and Draco just kept looking at everyone and everything like they were Voldemort himself. Finally, one day after classes were over in the evening, Draco pulled Kelsey aside. He looked more than worried; heck, he looked terribly frightened. Kelsey stood there beside him in a small niche in the wall, where no one would see him in the shadows.

"They're coming for me today, Kelsey." Draco said softly, leaning against the wall. "Soon. I have to wait here for them."

"Who? Draco, what's going on?" Kelsey asked him fearfully, already wondering if she knew what the Ministry would do to him. Draco looked at her with this expression of a little child whom had been caught doing something he was completely innocent of.

"They're bringing me before the Assembly. They think I did it, Kelsey. They think I killed all those students..." He leaned against the wall with his entire weight, his hand going up to his forehead in grief and frustration combined. Kelsey gasped.

"You can't be serious! No one ever escapes them...then you'll be sent to..." She was shaking uncontrollably, her body wracking up with sobs. Draco nodded, his eyes getting that faraway look like he was thinking of something else in detail.

"My dream..." He said, tears appearing at the corners of his eyes. The moonlight coming in through the window illuminated them to a beautiful shade of glowing silver, like Saron's own blood. The unicorn had been put back in his pen and was being taken care of by the substitute Gamekeeper, a wizard from the Ministry. He was safe, Kelsey was safe...only he...he would pay for something he had not even done.

"Pardon me?" Kelsey asked, thoroughly confused. Draco smiled and looked out at the rising moon, feeling the fear well up through his body as he tried to calm himself and Kelsey.

"I had a dream that this would happen...a few nights before I met you. I thought it was only a dream..." Draco said softly. Kelsey looked up; he was crying. Silent tears leaked down his cheeks, following small tracks and grooves in his face. Kelsey felt like crying as well; she didn't know what would become of him and she suspected that she never would, after this night. Finally Draco looked down at her, smiling a smile through his curtain of tears.

"It was great knowing you, it really was. This whole adventure...this whole...story..." Draco took a few moments, "was worth it. If I could do it again, I would, even if it meant this outcome. Meeting you and Saron has changed me, more than I think even you realize." Malfoy said truthfully, closing his to spare himself the embarrassment of crying.

There was a tone somewhere in the castle and Draco looked up at the sky with watery grey eyes, biting his lip. He looked down at Kelsey, who was staring up at him with the utmost compassion and caring in her eyes. He sighed; leaning down against her, he gently touched her jawbone and pushed it up slightly with one finger, pressing his lips softly against hers. The two of them seemed locked there in time, frozen in that one single instant for all eternity. Oh, how Kelsey wished that could be so. Then, after what seemed like forever under him, the two separated gently, their lips parting with a gentle, rather romantic sucking noise. Draco looked at her, colour on his cheeks.

Then he was gone down the hallway, walking towards his futile destiny.

````````````````

Draco Malfoy stood up as straight and tall as he could as he was pushed into the small pit of the Assembly's meeting room, immediately looking upon the faces of thousands and thousands of wizards and witches, all looking at him with spite. He staggered as the two wizards holding him thrust him forward where all could see him. His mind was a cloud, turned that way by a gentle brushing of a Dementor's lips against his own. He was still himself, only severely rattled. Apparently the newbies couldn't wait to get started on him. He had screamed and wailed the entire trip to the Assembly; the only thing that kept him sane was Kelsey's soft kiss, only hours before. Her kiss, the only spot of pleasure among riptides of pain, torment and torture.

There was total silence in the room; not a witch or wizard dared to speak against it, none but the old trickster Prof. Dumbledore. He stood up, his back tall and straight despite his age. Before him, in the huge pit that was surrounded on all sides by spectators, stood the accused; Draco Malfoy. His grey eyes were downcast, drawn towards the floor, his head hung in fatigue. Two older wizards held him tightly in his place in the middle of the lighted pit, holding him before Dumbledore and the rest of the Assembly.

"Draco Malfoy..." The Professor's voice echoed through the packed hall, echoing eerily off the walls even though there seemed not a cubic foot of extra space among the frightened mass. At this the white-haired boy looked up, his face drawing upwards to meet Dumbledore's strict, tight one. His eyes were lifeless; it was as though all his spirit had been sucked directly out of his body. The poor boy, Dumbledore thought, The Dementors have been at him already... Draco's grey eyes were unfocused, trailing off to the sides as if he were searching for whom the voice belonged to; they were glazed over, reflecting the light off them in a frightening, supernatural way as they moved about listlessly.

"You are aware of the crimes put against you." Dumbledore said firmly, watching him stagger slightly as the two guards let him go. The Malfoy teenager tried hard to stay on his feet; he managed it, barely. When he didn't speak, Dumbledore continued. "You are accused of ruthlessly killing a total of twenty former Hogwarts students..." The old man said, pain coming to his voice. Hogwarts would miss those twenty, many of them Gryffindors; he would see to it that this boy was put to justice, even if he did come from his own school.

"I am aware of the lisssst, old f-fool." Draco stuttered, his eyes suddenly coming into focus. Dumbledore had to hand it to him; most prisoners wouldn't have been able to stand after even one session with the Dementors. He admired Malfoy's courage, but it didn't make up for what he had done. The guards moved to hold him back again, but Dumbledore held out a hand, keeping them at bay. Though he looked tired and a little more worse for wear, Draco stood up as best as he could, looking as though he might faint at any moment. The latter was probably true; the only thing that worried Dumbledore was the intense, glassy look in the boy's eyes. It sent shivers down his spine, even though he knew that Malfoy could do no harm without his wand.

Dumbledore continued, not willing to show fear in front of this...convict. "By the power and office I hold, you will be stripped of your wand, Hogwarts robes and all of your possessions." Draco listened to him with a far off look in his eye, as if he were staring not at Dumbledore, but the back wall. In those defiant grey eyes Dumbledore saw resistance, anger and...hope. Though it may have been masked by the rage he must have been feeling, there was a small sliver of hope there in his eyes. What did he hope? Hope that he would not go to Azkaban, on the grounds that he had been acting in self-defence?

Draco's eyes continued to stare at him as the Assembly began and his sentence was decided. Then, in a quick, flickering movement, they moved up. Up the crowds, to a familiar dark-haired boy with glasses that was sitting in the crowd, staring right back at him...Draco's eyes suddenly widened and his mouth opened wide in a scream that shook the seats of the assembly house.

"HARRY POTTER!!!" Malfoy screamed, raising his weak arm and pointing at him with hate in his eyes. "You..." He added in a little whisper, eyes twitching and swirling about as a result of his staggered mental control.

Silence reigned. Everyone turned and looked at Harry, wondering what he was doing here. He just stared at Malfoy with hate, as they all did. A few seconds more people stared, then looked back down at Draco with confusion in their eyes. Draco continued to look at Harry. He kept up that look for a while more; then something happened. Slowly, Potter's glare became softer, more saddened. Draco looked; was that a tear in his eye?