The Room of Requirement smelled like dust when he walked in.
That wasn't new to him, though, the Room always smelled like dust.
But just how much it smelled like dust Draco Malfoy realised only after its scent wasn't neutralised when the air was polluted by the musk of a werewolf and the violent perfumes of Pureblood Death Eaters.
That overpowering mixture of scents announced the presence of the Dark Lord's lot even better than the bloody Dark Mark did.
"Good evening," came the low purr of a greeting from a beautiful woman that just happened to be his dreadful aunt as she stepped out of the Vanishing cabinet.
Bellatrix Lestrange offered her hand to her nephew, which he accepted, kissing her fingertips obediently. As he did that, he noticed that she was wearing a corseted black dress that exposed her hourglass figure and made her bosom appear to be a moment from overflowing in the tightness of it. Her face, not so long ago looking as if it belonged to on old hag, was smooth and radiant - enough so that Draco thought that she looked at least a decade younger than her own younger sister, his mother.
He was still trying to figure out how she restored her health and looks so quickly after more than a decade of Azkaban.
But he knew that beauty was wasted on her, since she was as mad as a hatter.
"Good evening, Bella," he said while trying his best to sound at ease, but ended up speaking in a voice more fitting for a man who was about to attend his own funeral.
Perhaps that's just what this evening is, he thought to himself.
The burial of my soul.
Obviously on a side-mission to annoy and terrify the living life out of him at the same time, Bella let the hand her nephew kissed drop to her side, but with the other she held the door of the Vanishing cabinet open, making travel for the others at Borgin and Burkes impossible until she let go.
The Room of Requirement seemed to have no immediate impact on Bellatrix Lestrange; she was far too preoccupied with the fact that Draco was finally in front of her, after many long months of absence.
"Would you mind closing that?" Draco asked, pointing at the dusty cabinet, wishing anyone to be able to come through, even Greyback, so that he wouldn't have to be alone with his aunt for a moment more than it was necessary. She laughed a bell-like laughter (so unlike her ungraceful cackling after she escaped her prison), not letting go. She was enjoying Draco's discomfort, which was made even greater by her dress, so ridiculously inconvenient for the occasion. Draco guessed that she had chosen to wear it specifically for him - so that the sight of her beauty at its best would be some sort her pervasive reward in the honour of repairing the cabinet and letting the Death Eaters into Hogwarts. That's how her pleasure driven, insane mind worked - he knew that much.
A small rattling sound could be heard coming from the cabinet; it was an obvious sign that someone was trying to come through. Bella ignored it, and Draco resisted the urge to clear his throat as a not-so-subtle hint to just get on with it.
She took a step closer to him and grabbed his arm, their faces now mare inches apart, making a shiver run down Draco's spine. With the wide grin on her face and gleaming eyes, Draco realised she looked even hungrier than Greyback usually does when a full moon is approaching.
Fuck, he almost cursed under his breath.
"My, my, little Draco," she said with a big, seemingly innocent smile and a husky voice, "what a favourable outcome this is", gesturing with a nod of her head to the repaired Vanishing cabinet.
The light from the torches was flickering around them and the semi-darkness of the room was providing an atmosphere Draco did not appreciate but Bella delighted in.
There his aunt goes again, trying to seduce him, without giving them even five minutes of normalcy. She was close enough to him that he could smell the sweetness of her breath (cinnamon?) and he wanted to move, to run, but he couldn't, since not playing her game would be read into as betrayal.
"Your mother and father said to say 'hello and good boy'," she said, nodding her head twice as she said the words 'hello' and 'boy' which gave the doll-like appearance she was probably aiming for.
Draco highly doubted his parents said anything of the sort. He doubted they were even informed of the success of his mission.
He was about to thank her, but instead froze in shock as he heard the doors of the cabinet slam behind her. He almost yelped - so unused he was to any noise in the Room, other than the sound of his own breathing and the spells he performed, but he stopped himself just in time. He realised that the noise the cabinet was now making meant that someone was trying to force their way through.
Bella's smile dissolved into a frown and she moved to step beside her nephew, still not letting go of his arm; the two of them standing in silence like a proper welcome party for the guests who were obviously just about to arrive.
"For fuck's sake, Bella!" shouted Yaxley furiously, immediately upon stepping out of the cabinet. He slammed the door rather violently behind him which made Draco cringe in despair since he didn't feel like going through the ordeal of repairing the cabinet all over again.
"Oh, my, Yaxley," she answered with disinterest and all the false innocence she could muster, "what have I done now?"
Whatever Yaxley was about to bark at her next was to wait for a few moments (and be forgotten) since he suddenly found himself speechless; that was the impact the Room had on him.
The platinum-haired man did a little spin on the spot to observe the vast space around him and all the things that surrounded him. The sight was pretty intimidating, even for a seasoned Death Eater like himself. He made a 'huh' sound as the impact of the Room settled and Draco half-expected him to ask something in the lines of 'are we really in Hogwarts', but in the next moment the man was all business.
"Boy," he said as he turned to Draco, skipping any formal greeting, "in how big of a hurry are we? And where exactly did Dumbledore go?"
Gibbon and Rowle were now behind him as they came out of the cabinet together, Rowle slamming the door just like Yaxley did (adding another nail to Draco's coffin that Death Eaters will be the end of him) and Greyback was behind them before they even managed to get two steps away from the door.
"My informer told me that he flew into Hogsmeade with Potter. They then Disapparated, I don't know where to, and they still haven't come back," came Draco's timid answer. "That was almost an hour ago. The next report will come when they get back to Hogsmeade," he added.
"Informer?" Yaxley asked while still looking around, now presumably for the exit.
"I cast the Imperius curse on Madam Rosmerta," he answered awkwardly, shifting his weight from one leg to the other.
Yaxley only nodded as a reply. There was a short silence which Draco felt needed to be filled. "She is the..."
"I bloody well know who the keeper of the Three Broomsticks is," snapped Yaxley at Draco, who paled even more but stood his ground, starting to feel his pride hurt, which was a surprise in itself since he didn't think he had any of it left. He felt that at least a 'thank you' was in order, and not house-elf treatment.
"I apologise," Draco said in a small, but firm voice. Only then did Yaxley turn to him and notice that the boy was as white as a sheet. Though he wasn't on the verge of shivering like his order's youngest member, Yaxley was anxious too, knowing they were about to go after Dumbledore. He became aware of himself and realised he was acting like an arse because of it, so he put his hand on Draco's shoulder and gave it a little squeeze as an apology.
Gibbon, Rowle and Greyback remained silent behind them, taking in their surroundings and not bothering to join the conversation. Bella was being uncharacteristically silent.
"No. Don't apologise," Yaxley said as he took his leather gloves out of his pocket and started putting them on. "You did a marvellous job, my boy. Your father and mother will be proud of you when they hear of it."
Bella huffed at that statement but Draco refrained from commenting, instead he gave Yaxley a small bow with his head.
Draco knew that he would gleam with pride if he heard such words said to him, if only it were any other situation than the one he was currently stuck in. At that moment a big part of him was wishing that he had simply failed his mission. A treacherous little thought overcame his mind – if only I could lock them all in here with the cabinet and the exit destroyed, and then just pretend that nothing ever happened if someone asks me.
"Let us move along then," Yaxley said and started walking away from the group, only to hear no sound of footsteps following him. He turned to look at Bella who seemed preoccupied with observing the high shelves to her right with the same kind of morbidly curious expression that strongly reminded Draco of Luna Lovegood. Her hand was on Draco's shoulder and he could feel how cold it was even through his shirt.
There was a moment of very awkward silence, with her just holding him like that and Yaxley's face slowly twisting into a grimace.
"Well, then. Shall we?" she asked casually after she felt she made her point across. After all, this was her darling boy's mission and Yaxley had no right taking the lead.
Draco took the hint and started walking, trying to keep his head high instead of staring at the floor as he moved. The wooden floorboards made a creaking noise as he walked, the sound interfering with the little grace he was trying to summon. Yaxley gave a sigh of disgust and waited for them to catch up to him and only started walking once Draco and Bella were ahead of him, allowing them to lead the way.
"I've been told just about everything there was about this room," started Bella conversationally, a sly smile appearing in the corner of her mouth, "but actually being here and seeing how incredible it all is still comes as a shock. The air feels so thick with magic," she said with passion, taking delight in the strange objects surrounding her, from the life sized statue of a lady with the funny wig and ugly crown, to the cage filled with shackled broomsticks.
Draco had no idea how exactly air could be 'thick with magic', nor what she meant by that, so he decided to stay silent and walk straight ahead to the big wooden door that was their exit.
"I wish I've known about this when I was a student," Bella whined with genuine regret in her voice.
"One can only imagine as to what you would use it for," came Yaxley's sarcastic voice from behind them. Bella grinned wide at that, but didn't respond to the provocation. She turned to Draco and winked at her nephew, who in turn tried to act as if he wasn't in possession of peripheral vision.
He felt cold sweat break on his back. He knew that for the seasoned Death Eaters with him this was just another mission, even though it was probably one of the most important ones in the whole war. But in spite all that, Bella would still try to have as much fun as she can and Yaxley would still not mind to childishly bicker.
Perhaps that was their way of relieving tension – or so Draco hoped. He hoped they were still human enough to feel even a bit of fear.
Before Draco was fully acquainted with the Dark Lord's twisted ways, he watched with excitement as the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters entered his first home. It took only days before the Malfoy Manor began losing its charm and beauty as Dark magic began to overflow the rooms.
The air became 'thick with magic', just as his aunt had described the Room of Requirement, except that it wasn't the good kind of magic, but instead the kind that seems to suck the very life out of the place. Draco had no other way to describe how he experienced the subtle change other that he felt like every colour around him seemed to fade just a little into gray. Nothing was 'vibrant' anymore, so he observed.
It took Draco a week before he came out of denial and made peace with the fact that his new Master and most of his lackeys were actually insane. As proud as he was of his lineage, he found that genocide and general oppression was not his cup of tea and not what he wanted to fight for. He was probably the cockiest and most pompous Pureblood that ever entered Hogwarts, but he was soon rethinking his ideals. Next to the lot he had to deal with now, Mudbloods didn't seem half that bad. In fact, he realised that nothing was wrong with them in the first place; it was the teachings of the Purebloods that he was fed all his life that were warped.
He'd take Granger over Bellatrix any day.
The Malfoy family couldn't escape the fact that they had imprisoned themselves into their own home by inviting the maniacs in. They were threading gently from room to room, from day to day while being the hosts in the place their Lord now called Headquarters.
He wanted to blame his father for tarnishing the Manor and the family name beyond repair, but he knew that his father had fallen into the same trap as he himself did - simply by being of the right blood for the Dark Lord. It was his grandfather Abraxas that willingly offered Lucius' life to Voldemort without even asking his opinion on the matter, so Lucius was forced to do the same with Draco, even though he would have preferred to hide him from wizarding Brittan forever, or at least until the Dark Lord fell, even at the cost of his own life.
Even though Draco now cursed the day the Death Eaters entered his first home, here he was, letting them into his second one. He felt his hands tremble, so he quickly dug his fingernails into his palms, certainly leaving crescent marks, hoping that the slight pain might take the shivers away.
But Bella noticed. She put her arm under his and he felt her squeeze his forearm with her hand. A silent way of telling him to have courage for what was up ahead, he guessed.
But he also felt the hairs on his arms stand up as her cold touch reminded him of their Occlumency lessons together, when she volunteered to teach him so that he could protect himself from Dumbledore's invasions, should they come. As he marched for the doors of the Room of Requirement, flashbacks came back to him of all the times she breached his inner walls and waltzed into his mind, and then proceeded to dig a little too deep.
"Just to motivate you, sweet baby," he remembered her saying as he was kneeling over and gasping at her feet, "so that you fight your aunt even harder in order to stop her from finding more of your dirty, dirty secrets," she cooed as she held his chin firmly with her cold fingers, holding hard enough for the inside of his cheeks to get ground on his teeth.
It felt to him like she always knew how to find the specific memories he dreaded she should see. The thoughts of a lustful teenager, as much as he tried to help himself not to look her way, but still too many glances slipped to her inappropriately low cleavage during dinner, when she would lean across the table invitingly. Nobody noticed that she only did that when her nephew sat right across from her.
In the usual crowd at the Manor the only one to decipher the hidden meaning of her body language was his father.
"Son," started Lucius with a serious tone, "if Bella tries to seduce you..."
"Father," Draco hissed, urging Lucius to stop talking, knowing she would find the memory of the conversation and then Merlin only knows what would happen. She would probably take it as approval and encouragement, as insane as she was.
"Let her," finished his father gravely.
What would his mother think if she heard those words escape his father's lips?
It would be the finishing crack that would split her heart in half.
"Am I beautiful, Draco?" Bella asked in the lowest of whispers with a dreamy look in her eyes, low enough for Draco to convince himself that they couldn't be overheard, but he still panicked and thought that this was not something he wanted to deal with right now. Draco let go of her hand as if it had burned him, feeling as if she could read his thoughts by just touching him, as if she knew that he was thinking about her. But he wasn't looking her in the eye, so she couldn't, he tried to calm himself.
You're mad, is what he wanted to say in reply, but he hung his head low and decided to ignore the question.
She smiled with delight even though she didn't get an answer, taking the newly formed pink tint of her nephews' cheeks as a compliment.
"Stop bullying the boy," said the blond man behind them.
Oh, fuck my life, Draco thought. How the fuck did he hear her?
"Shut your mouth, Yaxley," she spun to bark at him with all of the sweetness from her voice gone, making Draco shudder.
The summer break of his fifth year, with his aunt living and recovering under his father's roof, Draco spent petrified, fearing every rustle of silk in front of his door and dreading every moment of life, as he knew his mad aunt was debating whether she should bed him or not.
Since Purebloods were notorious for marrying within the family, he knew that the fact that they were so closely related would not be an argument to stop her from bullying him into having an affair with her.
He remembered being twelve and proudly scanning the pages of the Pureblood family books, looking up the Malfoy family tree. He remembered the way his stomach twisted when he realised that his great-grandmother was actually the niece of his great-grandfather. He closed the book gently and put it back onto the shelf with a silent promise to himself to never look at it again in hope of forgetting what he had read. It was one of the many eye openers on the subject of why Pureblood traditions are so frowned upon. He knew now that if Bella demanded to have him, no one but his mother and father would probably even blink. In the new extremist circumstances it would probably be considered socially acceptable for them to have an affair.
The Dark Lord denied his favourite soldier nothing and if it had come to that, Draco knew that by default he had no right to deny himself to her. He didn't need his father telling him that.
They finally reached the ebony doors of the Room of Requirement.
"I'll go first to check if there's someone out there," Draco said without stopping and as he did he felt the entire group slow down and stop to wait for him. He realised that he had just given out his first command, and was obeyed. He knew that he should feel powerful, but he only felt misery.
He stepped into the marble hallway and closed the door behind him, but he didn't let go of the handle so that he wouldn't have to call for the Room again. He stood still for several deep, long breaths and just listened to the silence of the castle. There was no magic he could cast without revealing himself to anyone that might be out there, so his instinct that there was no one around to see or hear him would have to be good enough.
It was his last chance to back out, he realised. He could block the Room's doors or make a distraction for long enough and call the Order members and raise the alarm with his Patronus. He knew that the hand from the other side, from the Light, was still extended, and that if he reached for it he would fall on soft ground and be safe and protected and that his role in the war would be done, lest he chose to enter the battlefront again willingly. Which he wouldn't.
But if he was to save his own skin, he would end his mother's life with that action. The Dark Lord wouldn't kill his father because he simply couldn't afford to lose him, even though he has made many mistakes already, but the wife, the mother who served no use to him other that a replaceable hostess of the headquarters would be removed as an act of revenge for the son's betrayal.
So he turned and opened the door wide for the deadly group to enter. In that moment he realised that the marking of his arm was not the action that sold his soul, instead it was the simple action of opening a door.
Draco stood with his hand on the doorknob and watched the group of Death Eaters exit the room one by one. The last to leave was Bellatrix. He noticed that she was now serious and focused; the wild grin was nowhere to be seen. Good, Draco thought. At least no more funny business.
He watched as she stepped out into the dim-lit hallway, her heels suddenly making clicking sounds as they transitioned from wood to marble. Draco let go of the heavy door and watched it slowly close behind her as she stepped away. Bellatrix was looking inside the Room over her shoulder and as the door was closing, Draco saw a strange change in her expression. Her pupils diluted in an instant due to the sudden excitement she felt, as if she were a cat, and he had to stop himself from shouting out her name as he saw her grab the handle and run right back into the Room of Requirement.
The rest of the group was unfazed by the new development (Yaxley only frowning again) since they were all very much used to Bella's erratic behaviour, but Draco rushed behind her to see why in Merlin's name was his aunt causing an unnecessary delay.
He shouted her name once he was inside, slamming the door behind him but stopped in his tracks at the entrance, shocked, as he realised that the Room of Requirement changed for her.
The dusty hall packed with junk in which he spent most of his year was gone and was now replaced by a small, generic Slytherin dorm bedroom. There was nothing personal in the room that would add character to it; there were no trunks peeking from under the beds, no clothes or books scattered over the chairs. It looked the same as the dorm rooms look when the students enter them at the beginning of every school year.
The exception, Draco noticed in his astonishment, were the windows. The Slytherins resided underground in the dungeons, but now, where should have been stone walls, stood giant floor to wall windows with hip high rails and dark green velvet curtains; the view was that of the Forbidden forest.
How the fuck does this work?
Draco was quite impressed for a moment with the extent of Hogwarts' magical power, but he soon felt only panic as he saw his aunt open one of the windows and lean over the iron railing. If someone was looking up from the grounds, would they see the windows that weren't supposed to be there?
There was no time left for wonder at the castle's incredible abilities, since it had just given Bellatrix the means to fulfil her nasty wish - whatever that was, he thought, and he had to stop her. She had already opened one of the windows and Draco felt a gust of ice-cold wind blow straight into his face; a salute from the rowdy Scottish sky that was just about to be marred by Dark magic.
"Come, look at this," he heard her shout out to him with childlike excitement as her onyx coloured, waist-long hair flowed in the wind as she leaned dangerously far over the railing. Draco took a step toward her and saw immediately what made her so giddy.
The Astronomy tower was plain in their view.
He immediately realised what she was up to.
"Bella, don't!" he half-screamed in vain as he rushed toward her, only to see her draw her walnut wand from her sleeve and point it at the tower while quite maniacally shouting 'Morsmordre', just as he was about to grab her forearm.
Green light flashed above the grounds, but no echo of her voice come back to them from the outside. Instead, it sounded as if she had shouted at a wall inside the room and yet the Dark Mark was visibly looming above Hogwarts.
That'll give Potter and Dumbledore a scare, the thought flashed briefly through his mind, as if they were only setting up the scene for a prank instead for a murder that he was about to commit. Anger would have boiled within him if fear hadn't overtaken him first.
"Why the fuck did you do that?!", he screamed at her, almost hysterically, tossing all grace aside and not caring that he sounded like Myrtle when she thoroughly riled herself up. "Now they'll know that we're here! We were supposed to remain unnoticed until we reached the tower," he exclaimed, holding his head with his hands and gripping his hair with his fingers in a desperate effort to calm himself.
The truth was, Draco was magically much weaker than Bellatrix was, so he couldn't feel the heavy shield of the schools glamours cover the windows and themselves from view of anyone that might be looking at the changed side of the castle's walls. Bellatrix was well-aware of her nephew's ignorance, but she didn't bother herself with giving him an explanation.
"Calm down, wittle baby," instead she only cooed at him.
"No one will be able to pinpoint where the spell came from, and that is all that matters," she said as she closed the window behind her so that the cold wind couldn't abuse them anymore.
"If the fools rush to the tower before us, we will pounce upon them like wolves on cattle. And even if we meet someone in the halls, well," she paused for a second and tilted her head slightly while widening her eyes to freak him out just a bit more, the maniacal grin returning to her face, "who bloody cares? We'll kill them all anyway," she added casually as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
As if whoever they would attack wouldn't fight back, Draco's mind screamed.
"But it's foolishto cast the signal before we've even reached the tower," he said in a panicked voice.
"A part of the Order is always on patrol, it's not just the professors, and you know that. What if they intercept us? They'll know exactly where we want to go!"
"We'll have to deal with the Order one way or the other, there is no avoiding them, no matter what we do," she said and started walking in the direction of the door, but stopped as a frown came over her beautiful face and she turned her head toward him. With the look she gave him Draco felt as if she was staring at him with the kind of surprise one would feel as if he had just Apparated by her side and she had not been expecting him.
"Nephew, why are you so frightened?" she asked and he realised that it was a genuine question, as if what lies ahead of them isn't something for him to frown deepened, but in the next moment she wiped it off her face and replaced it with a pretty smile.
By then Draco really thought he might piss himself out of fear of her.
"They won't be able to beat us," she said in a surprisingly gentle voice and walked back to him. Raising her fingers to his lips she shushed him before he was able to say anything else that would annoy her.
"Enough of this, baby. Let's go," she ordered softly.
And so he followed her out of the Room of Requirement with his head bowed down, feeling like a dog on an invisible leash.
He was far from convinced that she was right to feel so calm, but it didn't matter one way or the other.
They were at a disadvantage from the moment they first stepped out of the Room because they were not aware of the fact that the Golden trio was in the possession of a map that shows where everyone in the entire school was currently located. While he still tried to reassure himself that they were unnoticed despite the glowing Dark mark above the school, their position was already pinpointed. There was a battle ahead of them before they even reach the Astronomy tower, with or without his mad aunt doing what she had just done.
Thank you for reading, please drop a review and tell me what you think of the story so far!