His icy breath chills more than my neck, it permeates my mind, body and soul. Harry is dead. The numb conquers all and I barely register the frost-coated, merciless laugh echoing through the two-person occupied room.
My frozen body stands silent, awaiting the death of the echo. The midnight quiet saturates the still air before I break my bonds and crouch at Harry's lifeless form.
Hesitantly, I reach out and caress his flesh-torn back as my knees absorb the blood on the stone. Tears drip in tracks down my cheeks, the explosion within too much to hold in. His arms are trapped beneath the dead weight soaking up the crimson that once flowed through them. A second hand joins the first, and before I realize it, I hold my love in my arms, rocking his silent form, caressing his pulsing neck…
A pulse, he has a pulse. My love is not dead, he lives, but only just.
"Draco…" The words, hoarse, dead and barely above a breathless whisper, commands my attention and I gaze into hollow, sparkling emerald eyes.
"Hold on, Harry. Hold on, love." But he closed his eyes before I finished. The weak beat was still there, we only had a short time longer.
The sound of stone grinding stone resonates behind me and my face whips around to see Lupin's pale form enter the Oubliette from a hidden doorway. I doubt Lucius even knows of its existence.
"We've got to get him out of here, now, before Lucius returns." I command quickly, much more in control than I felt.
Nodding, Lupin raises his wand. "Sanguina." All the blood puddled on the stone, caked to Harry's body and sopped on my trousers lifts and floats into a large vial now clutched in Lupin's capable hands. "Non-infectante."
"Quickly, Draco. Through here, and we'll apparate back."
With a muttered spell, I levitate Harry through the passage behind Lupin. Grabbng hands, limbs, all intertwining, the gateway closes as we apparate away and Lucius enters the empty chamber.
"Here, my Lord. He is ready – for – your …" Lucius stared at the vacant and spotless granite where Harry Potter once slumped, practically lifeless.
"Where is he, Lucius? I grow tired of these games. You should have brought him to me from the first." The cold fury in the scarlet eyes fixated on the pale man in the Oubliette.
Lucius was silent, knowing any answer would be the wrong one. Instead he perched on his toes, awaiting the next move.
"Find another exit." Voldemort's command was taken by the
seven other Death
Eaters with him. "Lucius, my boy, you have lost your touch. First with Draco,
and now this."
"I promise, my Lord, something must have --"
"Excuses, excuses. I cannot stand or accept failure, especially amongst my most trusted circle." The lifeless smirk never left the bone-white face.
"Here, my Lord, a second entrance." A nameless cloaked Death Eater pointed to the passage just minutes before occupied by three trembling forms.
"And it seems you lie, Lucius, even to your master." His paper thin index finger jutted out to painfully stroke the Malfoy's cheek. "It's a pity."
Voldemort dropped his hand and moved back. Raising his wand nonchalantly, he aimed directly at Lucius, whose face had fallen a brighter shade of white. An unearthly sound ricocheted off the granite as a burst of green light illuminated the walls.
The lifeless form of Lucius Malfoy crumpled to the ground to the high-pitched piercing laugh of Lord Voldemort.