Hey, everybody! Each time I tried to submit this chapter to my Doc Manager, it said that there was some kind of error. I got scared that I wouldn't be able to update today, but I eventually figured it out. I had to copy/paste over a different chapter and submit it. Hopefully no one needs Chapter 14 anymore! Haha! Anyways. Without further adieu, I give you Chapter 31.
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Chapter Thirty-one
I rushed towards where Potter, Weasley and Granger vanished with Dobby and the goblin. There was no sign of them. The House Elf must have Apparated them to who knows where. But the knife…
I looked behind me and found Bellatrix straightening her posture with a satisfied and evil smirk on her lips. "Any sign of them, Draco?" she asked, feigning ignorance.
"What did you do?" I shouted before I could stop myself. "That knife could have killed them!"
Lucius raised an eyebrow at me, his eyes, for once, clearing from his drunken haze.
Bellatrix scoffed. "Well, that was the idea, Draco."
I clenched my jaw to keep me from saying anything else. I was done with everything here. Nearly killing Hermione for no reason was the last of what I'm willing to take. I'm tired of pretending like I believe.
I bent down and picked up my mother's wand from where Dobby had dropped it. I don't know where they went, but I knew enough about Apparating that I thought if I concentrated on Harry, Ron and Hermione hard enough, I could get to them.
"Draco," a soft voice called. I glanced up from Mother's wand to find Lucius approaching me with his shaking hand outstretched. "I know that directly attacking people you used to go to school with can be confusing, but you're not thinking clearly."
He placed his hand on my shoulder, but I brushed it off, throwing his hand back at him. "Get off!" I ordered, an unfamiliar sense of excitement and pride at my action swelling in my chest.
Lucius froze, his hand hanging in the air for a moment before he lowered it. "Draco, you just need to calm-"
"Shut up!" I yelled, taking a few steps out of his reach. "I'm done."
"Wh-What do you mean 'done'?" Lucius wondered. "The Dark Lord will be very-"
"I mean done with him," I interrupted. "I never believed in him. I'm done with him." My heart raced, and my stomach churned as I said the next words. "And I'm done with you. Lucius."
"You dare to-" he roared, but I cut him off by raising my mother's wand.
I aimed directly at his heart and took a few more steps away from him. I had to keep them at bay until I got far enough away so that I could Apparate without their interference, and the fact that I was the only one with a wand helped tremendously.
My heart raced with my breathing, and my stomach was turning in every direction possible. Half of me thought I was insane for doing this, and the other half thought that this was the greatest I've ever been.
"Drop the wand, Malfoy!" a voice ordered behind me.
The sudden voice made me jump and turn to find an unfamiliar Death Eater slowly advancing on me, his wand drawn and trained on my chest. I adjusted my aim for the advancing Death Eater but remembered Bellatrix. She didn't have a wand, but I wasn't sure if she was more or less dangerous that way.
I had to Apparate now.
I raised my mother's wand as more Death Eaters appeared. Some of them Apparated into the room, and others came through the halls and doors that connected to it. Each of my muscles coiled like snakes, freezing my wand arm.
"I said, drop the wand, Malfoy," the same Death Eater repeated in a calmer but firm voice.
If I moved the wand another inch, they would take me down. If it was still just that one Death Eater, I'd Apparate right now, but I stood no chance against the ten who were now in the room.
Mother's wand was plucked from my fingers by a nearby Death Eater and another took each of my wrists and bound them together behind my back with a magical cord.
My excitement and pride at finally defying Lucius and the other Death Eaters instantly deflated like a popped balloon.
They would kill me, and I never helped. I never helped this war.
The Death Eaters pushed me towards the cellar steps, all of their wands trained on me, their tips practically burning holes into my back. They guided me down the stairs where an unsteady Wormtail awaited us.
"Get out of here," one of the Death Eaters ordered.
Wormtail didn't even nod. He removed his hand from his head and stumbled up the stairs, nearly falling back down them in the process.
A Death Eater kicked the door open and shoved me inside. They closed the barred door and locked it behind me. They all turned their backs on me and marched up the stairs, the cord releasing itself from my wrists and falling to the floor.
"What did you do with him!" a voice shouted from upstairs. It sounded like Mother.
"It's for his own good, Narcissa," a deeper voice answered. Lucius.
I took a few cautious steps closer to the iron bars of the door to try and hear better, but it proved in vain a cacophony of yelling broke out. It was definitely an argument, but I could only catch a few phrases.
"Just a boy!"
"Needs to learn."
"We can."
"But that's."
"Enough!" a high and harsh voice roared above the rest, silencing them all. Bellatrix. "We'll send him a message, and let him decide what to do with Draco."
Reluctant noises of agreement answered the voice and eventually quieted. Footsteps sounded and grew more and more distant until everything fell silent. I stood at the door, straining to hear anything to let me know I wasn't alone but heard nothing.
I wandered away from the barred door and paced the empty cellar. Luna and Ollivander were gone. They probably got away with Dobby and the rest of them. At least I hope they did. Bellatrix's knife was more than concerning, but all I could do was wait and plead that she missed.
At some point, I laid down on the stone bench, having already paced every square inch of the cellar twice over. My mind kept drifting through the memories of torture that the Death Eaters had subjected me to. I couldn't help but theorize about how much worse it would be now. I openly defied them all. They would kill me in the slowest possible way.
I was startled awake by a piercing pain in my chest. I cried out and instinctively grabbed for the source of the pain, though there was nothing there. My body thrashed to get away from the pain, making me slip off of the stone bench and crash to the rough floor.
The pain abruptly ended, leaving me breathless. I gasped as I gripped my side, pushing myself onto my back. I hissed with each breath, a sharp thread of pain pulsing in my side each time I breathed in.
"Good evening, Draco," a distinctive and breathy voice whispered.
I snapped my eyes open and lifted my head from the floor to find You-Know-Who himself standing over me, the tip of his wand light a bright and pale blue that stung my eyes.
But there was something off about his wand. It wasn't his usual bone-shaped one. This wand was long and straight with decorative spheres embedded into the wood. It was Dumbledore's wand.
"Oh, yes," Voldemort hissed, raising the stolen wand slightly, "the wand. It's mine, now, but it is untested. Luckily your father told me what happened. Now, I finally have someone to test this new wand on."
"Get up, Malfoy," a distant voice demanded, but it was too distant to matter. Every part of me ached and burned, but I could barely remember why. There was something hot and wet underneath my cheek. Some part of me knew it was blood, but the rest of me was left guessing. "I said get up!" the same voice yelled louder than before.
Who I thought was the owner of the voice delivered a sharp kick to my stomach that forced the air from my lungs and left my already aching torso throbbing with a steady drumbeat of dull pain.
I dragged my heavy eyes open as my hands flew to my stomach to try and quell the pain. The silhouette of a man stood in front of me, but my gaze drifted around the whole room before I found his face. I thought it was the Death Eater that threw me into the cellar but his features were so blurred that I couldn't be sure.
The figure lifted his arm. "Brought you food." Something fell out of his hand and clattered to the stone floor. I winced at the noise that made my head throb. "Be sure to eat it all. You might not get any more for a while." The silhouette turned and marched out of the cellar, closing the door behind him.
I thought about sitting up repeatedly, but the thought stopped there. It wouldn't translate to action. I took a few deep breaths and held one, forcing my torso to bend and pull me into a sitting position. The breath I held was pushed out with a shout as bolts of searing pain coursed through me. The pain almost threw me back to the floor, but I managed to stay upright and glance down at the metal tray the Death Eater had brought me. It was a small cup of broth-broth that had splashed all over the tray-and a biscuit.
Half of me suspected that it would be poisoned, but the other half of me knew that there were much easier ways to kill me, and I was starving. My throat burned with dryness. It was the same food that they gave me during my training to become a Death Eater, so it wouldn't kill me. Probably.
I took the cup broth with a shaking and blood-covered hand and took a cautious sip of it, intending to take it slow, but the moment I tasted the peppery soup, instinct took hold and I gulped down the entire cup and reached for the crumbling biscuit.
The hunger pains silenced with the food, but the rest of me was still hurting. I glanced back down at the floor and found that a small pool of blood had formed where I was laying. My suit cuff was in tatters, so it was safe to say that the rest of my clothes were, too. Drying blood coated both of my hands and my sleeves.
I tried to think back to the moments before now, but there was nothing but confusing darkness and bright pain. The blurred memories flew by uncontrollably fast. Too fast for me to make sense of anything. The only thing that was clear was that Vold-You-Know-Who had talked to me.
A wave of exhaustion so strong threw me back to the ground. I laid there and readily closed my eyes, spinning for a moment in the darkness before I lost consciousness again.
I didn't know how long had passed before the same process repeated itself: there was tremendous pain, and I woke up in a pool of my own blood, greeted by a Death Eater with the same bland food, though it was a different Death Eater every time I woke up.
If he was trying to kill me for defying him, why didn't he get it over with already? Why didn't he kill me?
Draco? Draco, come on. Please, wake up. The gentle voice was enough to bring my consciousness to the surface. It would be nice to wake up to that voice instead of the Dark Lord and his pain, but that was impossible. Waking meant pain. It always meant pain.
Draco, please. It's just me. She was so pleading and soft that it sounded like Mother. But there was no way that they would let her see me. Maybe I was dying and her voice was a hallucination.
There was a gentle sigh before something pointed-a wand?-jabbed itself into my chest. My heart jumped, fearing that the voice would hurt me, but it quickly slowed again.
The wand twisted in my chest and filled me with an unnatural energy. I gasped at the sudden rush, my eyes flying open.
"It's okay. It's okay," the soft voice comforted, a hand sliding onto my shoulder.
My gaze wandered to find the source of the voice and discovered my mother. Her image ran across my sight. I tried to force my vision into focus but only succeeded in exhausting myself, my eyes slipping closed again.
"No, no, no," she warned. "You need to stay awake, okay?"
I managed to get my eyes to open again, and I wanted to ask her why I needed to stay conscious, but I couldn't. The world was darkening more and more the longer I stayed awake. I didn't have the energy to ask.
"I can't tell you how sorry I am," she whispered, the tip of her wand lighting a soft blue. She waved it over me as she spoke. "If you hadn't defied him, you wouldn't be in this situation."
The aching beats of pain that had been constantly vibrating through my whole body slowly ebbed, something warm and pleasant taking its place. I closed my eyes again, memorizing what it felt like to not be in pain, and I couldn't wake up again.
Pain, rest, food.
Pain, rest, food.
That's the only things that happened. How long has it been since they threw me in here? Months? I never registered how dark it was in this cellar when I was bringing food to Luna and Ollivander, but I've spent so long down here that the light from the Lumos spell made my eyes burn.
Mother would come by sometimes. Sometimes she would heal me or bring me extra food or water, but most times she would just hold me. She would hold me while I rested, whispering to me. Most of the time I couldn't understand anything of what she said. My mind was too distant to make any sense of it, but some of it I could make out. There was something about killing Potter and listening to the Dark Lord.
The next time I woke up, I found myself lying on my bed in my room. A dim orange light flickered on the ceiling, and it took me far too long to realize that it was firelight.
"Draco?" a gentle voice called. That voice has whispered to me often enough for me to easily recognize it as Mother's. "You're awake," she breathed, her face swimming into focus.
Water was suddenly streaming into my mouth. It was cool and soothed my throat that I didn't even know was dry.
"You're going to be exhausted for a while," Mother said, taking the water away. "I suggest you stay in bed for the next few days."
"Like I'd want to be anywhere else," I croaked, wincing at the burning in my throat.
Hope you guys liked this chapter, though it was pretty dark. It's sort of inspired by this writing prompt I saw on Pinterest once. Keep a look out for the next chapter to find out what they did to Draco!