Disclaimer: The characters and storylines of Harry Potter belong to JK Rowling.
Author's Note: First of all let me apologize for the long wait and also for the shortness of this update. Graduating, moving to a different country, and starting a new job does cause one to become quite distracted from writing, unfortunately. But, I'm back, and hopefully this is but one of a long series of updates.
Chapter 21
He could remember running. The wind blowing in his face. The feel of salt from the sea spray prickling at his skin. The touch of skin on skin.
And then the blessed silence exploded all at once, hurtling him towards a world where patches of red and black burst across his eyes. He watched.
A page turned, crackling as its owner used one long yellow fingernail to flip it forward. The words were of a language that he did not understand, strange markings scattered across the page like the scratchings of a fowl. The room...did not initially seem special or different, but Draco soon noticed that it was filled with the usual embellishments of evil: the shrunken elf heads on the wall (a decorative piece he knew Hermione would scream bloody murder about), the Hand of Glory on the mantelpiece, and, last but not least, the shuddering books on the shelf that shook violently and moaned eerily every few minutes. Nevertheless, the room, oddly, had a decidedly homey feel to him, as if he had been in that very same room many times in the…
The door knocked sharply and as his point of view moved languidly upwards, Draco was startled to hear a high-pitched voice that was not his own emanate throughout the room, "Enter."
A long brown haired man walked into the room, and bowed smartly towards him. He was carrying a generic black rubbish bag, which he now reached into, and, unexpectedly, pulled out a long eared bunny rabbit with unusually large front teeth. He held it out towards the owner of the voice.
"Sire, I have him."
Draco wanted to burst out laughing. Was this some kind of a joke? What had the bunny rabbit done, eh? Twitched its ears at the wrong person? Eaten all the carrots in the vegetable patch?
What he witnessed later on however made him wish he hadn't been there. For what he had seen would probably cause him to lose his appetite for a very, very, long time.
A single whispered hiss from the owner of the voice and the rabbit immediately morphed into a chicken. It flapped its wings, once, twice, looking bewilderedly around itself and clucked warily. Just as unexpectedly it then changed into a rat, and before it could get away, into a spider, then, a mongoose, and a robin, a hedgehog, and then so quickly it was two or three animals at a time, and suddenly it seemed to Draco as if he were watching it in slow motion, and with every change, he could hear bone wrench and muscles twist and flesh bulge…the creature, for he could find no other word to describe it soon became a throbbing coil of guts, tissue, blood and gore. He heard its shrieks and disgusting whimpers as it was turned inside out and stretched into every imaginable shape there was, until with another indiscernible murmur from the voice the 'creature' took the shape of a man, who flopped onto the ground, gasping for breath. The man lifted his head and Draco realized that he was everyone's favourite ex-Executioner, Macnair.
"And what have you got to say for yourself? Hmm?"
Macnair scrabbled on the stone floor and tried to stand up, but something seemed to be keeping him down. The sound of his fingernails screeching across the floor made Draco wince.
"Master…I…I have tried my very best to serve you! I have always been loyal! Always! Please…give me a chance…please…" he started to sob, a sight which even Draco found disturbing to watch.
The owner of the voice laughed. With a lazy flick of a wand Macnair was now jerked up by his neck into the air, desperately flailing at the invisible holds that kept him trapped.
"Please! Master! Most beloved Master! No….no! I will serve you better than you can ever imagine! I will capture that mudblood bitch Granger! I will…no…please no…don't kill me! No!"
To Draco, it was somewhat ironic that the man who used to revel in killing people in situations such as this would be so afraid at his own execution. He heard a loud sound, and realized that the frightened old man had defecated into his own trousers.
"Pathetic," hissed the owner of the voice. "You're a failure, Macnair, an utter failure, and you do not deserve to belong to my army. Now die. Fervefacio."
And as the screaming began Draco tried to look away, but he could not. He tried closing his eyes, but nothing worked, for here he was nothing but a disembodied form, forced to listen and see whatever this man…this mad man saw or did. And it was terrifying. To be trapped like this forever was worse than the death that Macnair was receiving, for here there was no peace at the end of the tunnel. There was no rest.
Finally, it was over. The awful voice hissed once more, "You will ensure that everyone finds out what had happened to Macnair?"
The brown-haired man looked as though he wanted to empty his own insides but somehow managed to keep it together long enough to nod once and then leave the room swiftly on two feet, dragging the cooked body of the recently departed Macnair as he left. Draco admired the resolve of the man. If it were he, he would have been spewing all across the room by now.
He hadn't time to ponder why he was even in this god-forsaken place as Ginny Weasley abruptly popped out of nowhere, right in front of him, her eyes sunken and face pale, a ghostly remnant of what she had once been. The owner of the voice did not seem to notice her, but Draco could see her staring jarringly right at him.
"You see what I see?"
"What?"
And as soon as the images had come, they left him. He looked around, and realized that he was once again in the white room. He trembled, tried to stop himself on the rationalization that Malfoys did not tremble.
Malfoys felt no fear.
But there he was, shaking, and he couldn't stop himself. Try as he might he could not stop.
He ran for the entryway that popped up seemingly out of nowhere a few ways away from him, jumped through, and landed back in the Infirmary, where he promptly threw up this morning's breakfast, as well as everything he had eaten in the last two days. Amidst his pitiful heaving and spitting of vomit, blood, and saliva he managed to gasp one name, "Voldemort!"
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