Chapter Eight
'Ortus Filius'
The Rising Son
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Authors Note: This chapter is basically long pieces of dialogue, most of it is Draco speaking - unless indicated otherwise.
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"I had been running for almost two years when they tracked me down. As Snape had advised, I stayed out of magical communities, kept to myself and never stayed in any muggle location very long. I traveled mostly by night for the first few weeks after the port key had transported me to the mountains of France. I had been surprised to find a small tent included in the backpack that Snape had given me. Although it was charmed, it was small, basic and did not draw attention, which I guess was the point.
In the times that I did meet other people, they assumed I was a muggle English tourist on a camping holiday and I did nothing to alter their opinion. My life was anything but a holiday, I hardly slept those first few months and the news that the wizards held at Azkaban had been released by the Dark Lord did nothing to help – every sound I heard was a death eater coming to end my life, every shadow was Voldemort or my father. I was going insane with paranoia and I knew it – I started to keep a diary to try and stop myself for become a lunatic…Voldemort has that diary now."
He shifted uncomfortably on the couch and continued his story.
"From time to time I would come across a wizarding community; I altered my appearance so as not to be recognized by anyone who may know my father. It was during one of those brief visits to a wizarding village that I first saw a newspaper article that said my mother was under suspicion of being a Death Eater and had fled to Scotland to hide.
I had not seen for over a year and a half at that stage, and although we were not an affectionate family, I loved her and she in her way loved me too. I made up my mind then, that I would head to Scotland and try and find her, perhaps together we would find a way through this. It was my biggest mistake."
Draco's voice became almost a whisper, that he missed his Mother was obvious by the look of desolation on his face.
"My father knew me better than I ever gave him credit for, and in Scotland he dangled my mother in front of me like a carrot, making sure that she was photographed in locations that I could recognize and circulating rumors of her whereabouts. I was so desperate to get to contact her that I ignored all the warning signs – the night that I finally apparated into her hotel room, it was my father waiting for me, not my mother. The only thing my father said to me was "Disappointing Draco, very disappointing," then he hit me with 'Crucio' and I lost consciousness."
"When I woke up I was in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor, I have no idea how long I had been there. I had barely been conscious for five minutes when Voldemort requested that I be brought before him. Crabbe and Goyle, who had joined their fathers as death eaters after their escape from Azkaban, came down to the dungeons to bring me to the Dark Lord. They took an inordinate amount of pleasure in kicking the stuffing out me before hand."
"On that first meeting with the Dark Lord, I had resigned myself to death, I did not welcome it by any means, but I knew it was inevitable. Standing in front of him, trembling with fear and what I could muster of my defiance, I tried as best I could to steel my mind against the Dark Lord's intrusions but it was useless at best and merely added to the reasons he found to be displeased with me. He was strangely calm, he did not ask me why I had not killed Dumbledore, the fact that I had failed in my mission to him was enough. He was almost polite when he sentenced me to be kept as a prisoner in the dungeons and tortured… "until I find a use for you that befits your lowly mudblood loving status, or until you repent, whichever comes first."
Draco gave an involuntary shudder at the memory and only Harry really understood what he meant about the insane politeness of Voldemort's threats, he had witnessed it himself during the Tri-Wizard Tournament in fourth year.
"By way of comparison Lucius was fanatical in his need to punish me. In that first meeting he publicly denounced me in front of the other Death Eaters, and it was on his command that they were given permission to test 'whatever curses you feel are necessary to show him the error of his ways.' They had carte blanche to teach me a lesson, and as the son of the most hated Death Eater alive, I paid in flesh and with my screams for the frustrations my father had wrought upon them over the years."
"I saw nothing of my Mother during the months that I was there, in fact, with the exception of those who came to torture me I saw no-one and no-one was allowed to speak to me, not even the tiny house elf who came to bring me what limited food and water I was allowed. I existed in a world consisting of silence, the laughter of my captors and my own screams of pain. Although I saw no other prisoners during my time in the Manor before Tonks arrived, I all too often heard their anguished cries echoing through the damp stone corridors. Another scream rending the night air during the wee hours of the morning, the sound of another person begging for their life, protesting their loyalty to the darkness…all too often it ended in a flash of green light and the eerie silence that only death brings."
"There were originally four cells in the Manors dungeons, solid stone cells 12 paces by 10 paces, walls three feet thick with no means of escape. Two of the cells had been rendered useless, damaged well before I was born; they had caved in and were unable to be fixed."
Draco had hidden in those cells as a very young child, sometimes as part of a game played with the family's house elf, more often as a retreat against his father's vicious temper.
"I remember the day that Tonks was brought to the Manor, it was either very late or extremely early and I had been trying to sleep after a particularly vicious beating the day before. Crabbe and Goyle brought her down to the dungeon corridor and I had expected that she would be thrown into the cell next to mine as all the others had been, instead they had opened the door to my cell and had mercilessly thrown her across the room, following only to attach the hand manacles to a chain on the wall. I did not look at them, nor did they look at me, they simply left, as though I did not exist at all.
When I was sure that they were out of the dungeon corridor, I moved slowly to where Tonks lay. Bruised, bloody from what I assumed was the use of a Sectumsempra curse and unconscious she was propped awkwardly against the cold stone wall, I remember thinking that the pink of her hair an unbearably bright paradox to the situation in which she found herself. I knew who Tonks was of course, I had seen pictures in my mother's old albums of other family members from her side of the family, but to the best of my knowledge we had never met."
He smiled directly at Tonks, the bond between them palpable as she looked at him with teary eyed sympathy and the haunted look that is found so often in those who have lived to tell tales such as this.
"I moved Tonks as best I could, with my hands manacled I was next to useless. I used some of the water I had left to try and wipe her wounds clean or cleaner at least and then lay her down on the only blanket in the room, knowing there was nothing more I could do for her, I lay down next to her and went to sleep."
"It was the dungeon door opening that woke me the next morning, I had barely enough time to open my eyes when I heard the sharp rattle of chains and before I could get to my feet on my own I was being hauled into the air by my arms, the popping feeling at my shoulder and the searing pain told me that my shoulder was dislocated. The two Death Eaters said nothing at all as they dangled me from the chain – they simply took out a knife and started slowly dragging it down my chest. The pain was blinding and although I tried to hold it in, my scream echoed off the damp dungeon walls, which seemed to only feed their blood lust as they decided to continue to not only making new cuts, but re-cutting into the already bleeding ones. In my pain, I vaguely heard a woman's screaming for them to stop, her horrified screams cutting through the sound of my own heart beating in my ears, before I passed out."
"When I woke minutes later I was on the floor, unceremoniously dumped there I had guessed by my captors. It took me a minute to register that my captors were now preoccupied elsewhere. Tonks was being tortured by Crabbe and Goyle, hanging in the same position as I had been shortly before and facing a similar fate. They screaming insults at her, using their fists to inflict vicious body blows with sickeningly dull thumps. Drawing their wands they used Crucio on her, asking her where The Order's headquarters was, even as I watched her twist with the pain of the curse, her body contorting despite it's restraints, she remained unwavering. Nothing they said could get her to tell them where The Order was, in fact, from memory she told them that The Order met in a hat, a cuckoo clock and inside the statue on Voldemort's fathers grave. Her lack of cooperation made them furious and they beat her within an inch of her life. I would have helped her if I could move, but my injuries and the loss of blood had weakened me to such a degree that I could do little more than watch in horror. I have never felt so helpless in my entire life."
Draco stopped momentarily as Lupin handed him a glass of water and he took it gratefully, composing himself as he returned to his tale.
"Day after day it went on like this, the beatings, the torture and the nights where we huddled together, trying desperately to hold ourselves together, fighting both our growing fear and the weakening of our bodies from both beatings, the resulting infections and the lack of any decent nourishment. They tortured our bodies with curses and weapons and used legilimency and other means to try and break our minds. One night, after I'd screamed at them to leave Tonks alone, the put a boggart in the room with us – Tonks tried to keep me from thinking about my worst fears by singing silly songs, but my mind was so weakened and for the next 5 hours I saw my mother dying in various horrific ways, all the while telling me it was my fault…neither of us slept that night."
Molly Weasley gave a choked sob from the back of the room, grabbing her husbands hand for support. She knew all too well what it was like to see her worst fears made flesh, by a boggart and in reality. Draco looked at her with sympathy in his eyes and continued.
"The beatings had steadily escalated over that last week. The night that we escaped we were certain that death was close. That morning they had once again put us through the most excruciating torture they could think of, I had been first, my ribs kicked so vicously that I head them crack in protest, it made the Cruciatus curse all the more painful for the movement simply forced the bones to press on my lungs, the final straw before they let me drop to the floor again was the knife that they used to open every one of the old wounds that they had previously inflicted."
"Tonks had so far been spared the knife treatment, I had assumed that they required her to live so that they could eventually break her and get the information they needed on the Order. That day, something had changed and in addition to the vicious, bone breaking beating that they inflicted on her already broken body, they sliced a deep V into Tonks' chest, a reminder to the Order they said of the power of the Dark Lord."
"Tonks had been in a fever all day and had been fading in and out of consciousness. We knew that something big was going on that day, there had been shouting and a lot of movement on the upper levels all day, but as night fell our captors returned, this time with my father.
"Lucius looked at me as I lay on the dungeon floor next to Tonks and his expression was vile combination of hatred and revulsion. I knew that he would show me no mercy; he had after all been brutally embarrassed by my betrayal of Voldemort and as I had been told so often in my childhood, a Malfoy never loses face without revenge. He said not one word to me, he just walked across the room to where I lay, spat at me, then turned and said to Crabbe and Goyle, "you have work to do this evening naturally, but tomorrow you may do whatever you wish to them, they are of no consequence." I knew that Tonks and I would not see the sun set the next day, our lives had come to an end."
"Help, when it arrived, came from the most unexpected place, and I forever owe my life to the brave creature that helped us get out of there."
Tonks sent him a huge smile and leaned forward in her seat, "I thought I dreamt that up Draco, what with the fever and all. But it was really…?"
Draco grinned and nodded.