Mitzvahs

Chapter Six

by Capella


A/N: Sorry this was so long in coming. I tried to get Black Eyes done before this, but since I'm currently stuck on that, I figured I'd do this first.
Just remember, this will be slash soon -- probably no sex, but slash. Sorry if that pisses anyone off. Just -- pretend it isn't there or something.
Violence. Seriously. I mean it. But 'm sure you guys saw that coming.
"Ah, God! what trances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one unachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms."

Herman Melville, Moby Dick


"Wingardium leviosa."

The beetle scuttled by Draco's outstretched foot, unperturbed. Draco set his jaw and tried again.

"Wingardium leviosa!"

The beetle paused for a moment as if sensing something, its antennae wiggling furiously, and scurried off in the opposite direction.

"Fuck!"

Draco threw his wand and it hit the wall of the cave with a clatter. He pulled his knees up to his chest, feeling his heartbeat throb behind his eyes. He almost imagined he could hear it, echoing softly off the walls of the cave, and the thought made him smile a little.

It had been three months since Draco had touched the portkey and been pulled to the cave, and those three months had been painstakingly spent trying to learn what he had spent eleven years forgetting, trying to aquire skills he was never taught. Once he had been sent a tawny owl with a book of spells dangling from its claws, but other than that he had been utterly alone. An underground stream ran through the cave a ways back, which he used for drinking water and food, when he managed to catch a fish. Other than that, he survived off rats. From what he could tell, when he had gotten bored one day and decided to explore, the cave was huge, probably going on for miles. He didn't get that far. Getting lost was not part of the plan.

Sometimes he would sit and wonder what Harry was doing as he practiced his Crucios and Avada Kedavras on passing rats and insects. Did he have a family? Did he think of Draco at all? Draco giggled a little again. If Harry hadn't thought of Draco before, he would once Draco found him. He would think about Draco a whole lot. Draco had a lot of plans for Harry; maybe he would kiss him and then crack open his skull with a rock, or maybe he would find Ron and make Harry kill Ron and then Draco would kiss him and put Crucio on him until Harry went insane. Draco was a little disturbed by his fascination with Harry's mouth, but it disturbed him no more than his desire to rip Harry's heart, still beating, out of his bloody chest.

He supposed that Harry should be the last one he killed, for poetry's sake, although when he thought about it he didn't know how it was poetic at all, unless he considered Harry's mouth, which he could probably compose sonnets about. He snickered and then for some reason felt a little nauseous.

No, others would be first. Maybe Blaise first, or Mandy, or Ron. He knew how to kill each one. Especially Blaise; he'd known ever since Blaise had visited him at the prison how he would die. He did not know if he would kill Seamus or Hermione, the two Gryffindors he had not hated his last year at school.

But that would come later. First --

The little beetle scurried back by Draco's foot. Draco got up and walked over to the other side of the cave, picking up his wand. He laid down on his stomach, propped himself up on his elbows, and pointed his wand at the bug.

"Crucio."

The little bug quivered and started convulsing, rolling over onto its back, its legs twitching wildly in the air. Draco laughed so hard his stomach hurt.

Not long now, he thought, and prodded the beetle with his wand until it caught fire.


Blaise knew something was wrong the minute he opened the door.

It was -- quiet. For the first time in two years, six months, and three days. Which either meant that Cale was sleeping through the night, finally, or that his wife had taken Cale out somewhere.

He raised an eyebrow at the mess left in the kitchen and wondered how the house elves had gotten so lazy all of a sudden.

"Alex?" he shouted. There was no answer. "Are you home?"

"No one's home, Blaisey-boy," someone whispered into his ear, soft breath fanning over his cheek, and Blaise froze in shock. "Just you and me and the bodies in the bedrooms." A breath of laughter.

It was a few seconds before he could finally make his legs stumble away, forward somehow, until his midsection hit the kitchen table and he could pull himself upright and turn around, his heart pounding a frantic tattoo in his chest.

A figure was sitting in one of the chairs across the dark room, a figure with long, lanky blonde hair. Two gray pairs of eyes glittered sardonically at him from across the room. An insane, tiny smile was on a pair of chapped, bloody lips. For a moment Blaise could not believe what he saw.

"Draco?" he whispered, and for a moment he thought that Draco hadn't heard. But a few minutes later, he saw Draco's lips quirk up into a wider smile. It looked unnatural on Draco's face.

"Give the boy a prize," he said equally softly, and Blaise shuddered to hear the madness in his voice. He took a tentative step sideways, preparing to run from the room if necessary. "Your hair looks nice, Blaise." Reflexively, Blaise reached up to touch his shoulder-length blonde hair.

"What are you doing here?"

Draco raised an eyebrow and for a moment looked like the old Draco that Blaise knew. "I think you meant to ask what I am doing outside of Azkaban. But I think that really does not concern you. Don't you?" Blaise nodded slowly. Keep him talking. Let me get to my child and my wife. "Well. Perhaps you should be asking what I am doing here, at your house." Draco paused, and seemed to be waiting for some sort of reply.

"What are you doing at my house?" Blaise asked, shuffling to the side again. Draco grinned.

"I remember my trial quite clearly," he said, and with a horrified sort of realization Blaise knew where he was going with that. "I remember what everyone said about me. I remember what my roommate said about me. You made me look bad, Blaise. Very bad. That really hurt me, you know. I thought you had been my friend."

"I'm sorry?" Blaise offered, all the while seeing how close he could get to the stairs without Draco noticing.

"Accepted," Draco said casually. "And I wouldn't bother going upstairs to check on your family. I killed them before you came home. I didn't want anyone distracting us. I want you," he said and smiled wider, "all to myself."

"What?" Blaise asked dumbly, still stuck on the word "killed." It circled around in his head until it was all he could think or see besides the little maddening smile on Draco's face.

"It is your fault, you realize," Draco said, getting up out of his chair, moving as sinuously as a dancer. "You should have realized that you could not go unpunished." He reached into his pocket for something, and at that moment Blaise realized what he was going to do. He reached into his own pocket for his wand.

Draco was faster.

"Crucio."

Liquid fire danced along Blaise's nerve endings and he collapsed, whimpering mindlessly through pain so intense that he could barely see, feel, hear. Through sight blurred with tears and pain, he saw Draco's smiling visage hovering over him. He tried to strike, thinking of Cale lying dead in his cradle and his wife dead in their bed, but a fresh wave of pain hit him and it was all he could do not to scream.

"You do not know how long I have wanted to do this, my friend," Draco sighed, and to Blaise's pain-filled mind his voice was as harsh as a lark's and as grating. He managed to keep his eyes on Draco and saw Draco pick up his wand from where it was sitting next to him. He watched, transfixed, as the wand came down towards his eye, and when he reflexively closed it, the point came to rest on his closed eyelid. Draco sighed again, sounding almost perfectly content watching Blaise writhe in pain.

"Do try and think about the consequences of your actions this time, dear Blaise," Draco said, and started to slowly push the wand downwards, laughing, seemingly unheeding of the spurting blood and Blaise's panicked, animals screams.


Draco smiled gently down at her, holding the mallet he'd transfigured from the stirring-spoon in his right hand. Pansy tried to move again, but the full body-bind he'd put on her only moments ago was as strong as it had been then. Draco had caught her sleeping, unaware of anything wrong until she'd tried to move and found she could not. He had moved her to the floor but had not told her why.

"Draco," she said, her mouth dry. "Draco, let me go. Now."

Draco stroked her hair back from her face. He looked almost normal, like he hadn't been in Azkaban for eleven or so years -- his hair, while long, looked clean, his clothes looked good and costly, although he was extremely slim and had splatters of something dark on his face. He was almost frighteningly attractive, just as he had been while still at school. He caught her looking and answered as if he knew what she was thinking.

"While I was at Blaise's house, I took the liberty of washing up and taking some of his clothes. I knew he would not mind. He had other pressing issues at hand."

Pansy knew Blaise was dead even before Draco finished his sentence. She did not curse or try to strike or plead. It was pointless, anyway.

"You missed a few spots," she said, trying to smile a little, her eyes focused on what she knew was blood on his face and neck. He did not smile back.

"I know."

There was a long pause.

"You were the first person I ever slept with, you know, back in fourth year," he said quietly, and for a moment he sounded almost sane. "But you always cared so much what everyone thought of you. When I started becoming friends with Potter, that was just it for you. And at the trial --"

"I said nothing wrong!"

"-- you told the judges I had been acting strange lately. Strange, Pansy? That did not sound incriminating at all, did it?"

"Draco!" She was getting angry now, angry and a little scared despite herself at the wicked gleam in Draco's eyes. "For fuck's sake --"

Draco tsked and grabbed her right hand, pulling it to the side and then doing the same to the other until she was stretched out in a spread-eagle position on the floor. "Language, Pansy." He said nothing else but tapped her right hand lightly with his mallet, settling down on his knees next to her side. Pansy was suddenly a bit more afraid than she had been.

"Draco --"

Suddenly the mallet whistled down with a force that was more powerful than Pansy would have thought Draco could muster, weak as he should have been from his years in Azkaban. She let out a pained, choked cry as the bones in her fingers were crushed beyond recognition, splintered and some driving through the skin of her hand. It felt as if he had lit her hand on fire. She sobbed as he stroked her mutilated hand gently.

"Come now, Pansy. You had to know this was coming."

He moved around to her other side, looking at her wickedly from under lowered lashes, tapping her other hand with the mallet.

"Oh, God --" she cried, unable to stop herself. "Draco, please!"

"Did you hear me beg at the trial, you little bitch?" Draco snarled. "I begged when they lead me away and I begged when I realized I would be spending the rest of my life in that fucking place."

He brought the mallet down hard on Pansy's other hand, and she screamed this time, degenerating into sobbing, almost hyperventilating breaths.

It hurt worse as he crushed her feet, destroyed her kneecaps, broke her collarbone, and she drifted in and out of a pained consciousness.

She felt him tap the mallet on her cheek.

"Please, Draco," she whispered. He smiled down at her before bringing the mallet to crush into her cheekbone. She whimpered, too exhausted to do much else, as the bones of her jaw and cheek drove through the skin of her mouth and through her gums. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to be.

It was almost a blessing when she saw the mallet coming down towards her head.


Mandy had seen Draco walking on the street late at night in downtown London, but she had not connected the dots until he had walked right by her and pressed something into her hand. Seconds later she had felt the familiar tugging in her navel and felt the world dimming away, and when she opened her eyes again, she was in some sort of -- cave.

"Did you like the Portkey, Mandy?"

She spun around, but a body-bind hit her before she could draw her own wand. She stood upright, glaring poison at the man standing in front of her.

"Draco Malfoy," she hissed through clenched teeth. He was startlingly beautiful for a convict, but he had a strange look in his eyes. It didn't matter to her. She had hated him for eleven years. "What the hell am I here for."

Draco smiled slowly. "Bitch," he breathed. "You know perfectly well what I brought you to the place to do. I have been waiting for this moment for a longer time than you can even imagine." He blinked as if considering something. "Although you are not my top priority. I know you can imagine who that honor is reserved for."

"You lay a hand on Harry and I'll slit your throat, you little shit."

"No, you won't." Draco looked wickedly pleased with himself. "You'll already be dead."

Her breath caught in her throat. The thought that he would actually kill her had never crossed her mind. She began to feel a little afraid.

"But I want it to last with you, dear," he said in an almost fond tone. "I've been waiting for this for so long that to have it over quickly would almost be too anticlimactic. Now, Mandy Brocklehurst, are you familiar with the process of being skinned alive?"

She gazed at him uncomprehendingly.

"Well, I suppose not. Being skinned alive is when --"

"I know what it means!" she snapped. "I just cannot believe that you would be so -- barbaric." Despite her words, a small worm of cold fear was curling unpleasantly in her stomach. He smiled as if he knew her thoughts.

"I suppose being locked up with dementors will do that to you," he said softly. He picked up a knife from the floor. It glinted off the lamplight from the oil lamp in the corner of the cave. He saw her glancing at the lamp and grinned. "I've gotten better at Transfigurations."

"Have you." Her voice was neutral. He did not respond, but stalked closer, knife in hand.

"I have heard that Muggles who use this technique must tie up their victims. I wonder how the experience will differ in your place, as you need no restraints but magical ones." He tilted his head and cut off the bottom half of her shirt. Her stomach shivered in the cold.

He brought the knife up to her abdomen.

"This looks like a good place to start," he said, and began cutting. She did not scream until he peeled her skin back from the muscles like an orange, and even then she did not scream for mercy.

Those screams came later, after Draco began on her legs and back.


Draco sat by Mandy's body, tapping his wand against his cheek consideringly.

Blaise had been easy to kill, and so had Pansy. Mandy had been a little bit messy, but for some reason Draco had never considered the amount of blood involved with skinning a body. She had lasted a good while, and he had almost been impressed that she had not begged until the end, although by that time he had gotten tired of her curses and insults. She was dead now, anyway.

Draco was a bit stuck on who to kill next.

He had killed those three. He wanted Potter. But he figured that with Voldemort on the loose, Potter probably had a Secret-Keeper. He grinned. He knew who that was.

He already knew how to get the secret out of Weasley and Granger, too. Then he'd kill them.

Then, Harry. He would find out why he was betrayed, and kiss Harry as Harry died.

Draco did not notice the tears running down his cheeks, mixing with the blood of his three victims that he had not bothered to wash off his face.