Author's Note: To my faithful followers, sorry for my long absence. I have had a difficult year with my mother's multiple strokes and eventual passing. I was finally inspired for a new story, but Harry Potter this time instead of Pride and Prejudice. If that is not your thing, I understand, but if it is, I hope you will enjoy the story. This is my first HP fic so please be kind :). I have completed the story and will be posting a chapter each day. Please note that it contains mature content.
Prologue
He was in the drawing room when he heard the commotion.
Draco Malfoy felt a twisting in his gut when the snatchers entered the manor with prisoners. And by the state of their excitement, he knew he was not going to like it.
He never did.
He was desperately tired of this absurd war and of the insane dark wizard who had ruined his life. He wanted Voldemort dead. He wanted to grab his mother and flee.
But of course that was impossible.
He had seen what had happened to Death Eaters who attempted to flee the Dark Lord. He could not so risk his mother's life.
So he only had to endure, and pray that he and Narcissa made it through this war alive.
It was with a sick lurching of the stomach, therefore, that he heard the snatchers declare that they had captured Harry Potter.
Not that Draco gave two figs for the wanker Potter or his prat friend Weasel-bee. But Draco was smart enough to realize that the only slim chance of ending the madness of this war was through the Boy Who Lived. Of course, Draco was fucked either way. If Potter did somehow destroy the Dark Lord, Draco would be imprisoned as a Death Eater, no matter how unwilling he had been when he took the dark mark or since. But perhaps he and his mother could escape to the continent, maybe Paris or Rome, before that happened. It was his only hope.
"Come, Draco, you can tell us if it is truly Potter," Lucius said with a sadistic gleam in his eye. The sycophant had been obsessed with getting back into the Dark Lord's good graces. Bellatrix was looking at him too, so Draco was forced to step forward, to his extreme reluctance.
There were three of them there, one female and two males, all of them dressed in ragged clothes and thin almost to the point of emaciation. At once he recognized the distinctive ginger hair of Weasley. Next to him, kneeling with a wand at his throat, was unmistakably Potter, despite his face being unaccountably swollen and distorted. He barely registered the third figure.
He swallowed and stepped back. "I don't know. I'm – I'm not sure," he said, drawing up his walls of occlumency. His mother had begun tutoring him in occlumency before his sixth year at Hogwarts and it had saved his life more than once.
"Look carefully, Draco," said Bellatrix urgently. "If it is Potter, we will be rewarded beyond measure."
Draco looked again, pretending to study them. This time he noted that the third figure was indeed the know-it-all Granger. He was not surprised to see her with the other morons. No doubt she was the only reason the two boys had stayed alive and hidden so long. What had the idiots done to get her captured with them?
"I – I can't tell," he said again, stepping back toward the mantle and looking away.
He was afraid they would press him again, but just then his aunt noticed something silver gleaming in the hand of one of the snatchers – the sword of Gryffindor.
She went insane, killing three snatchers with a single curse, demanding to know where the trio had gotten it.
Quickly, Potter and Weasel were sent to the cellar while Bellatrix declared that she would keep the mudblood for questioning.
Draco felt sick as he watched Granger dragged forward by her hair despite her struggles. He was powerless to do anything when his aunt raised her wand and cried, "Crucio!"
Granger's whole body jerked and convulsed as she screamed. Draco knew exactly what she was feeling, having been at the receiving end of his aunt's wand before. Bellatrix was particularly powerful at curses, and her torture methods were more painful than most.
Draco had been forced to do and see many terrible things since this war started, but this was undoubtedly the worst. He had to stand by, helplessly, as his own aunt tortured an innocent seventeen-year-old girl for no reason other than the accident of her birth.
"How did you get into my vault at Gringotts?!" she screamed, demented with fury.
"We haven't been in your vault! We found the sword in a forest! I swear!"
"Lies!"
Draco breathed a sigh of relief when Bellatrix lowered her wand and lifted the curse. But it only became worse when she took out a knife and began to carve into Granger's arm. The word that Draco wished he had never spoken, had never thrown at her in malice in the halls of Hogwarts – mudblood.
Granger's screams filled the drawing room as she writhed in agony. Draco thought he might vomit and was sure the horror showed on his face. Fortunately his aunt and father were paying him no heed.
Draco found himself hoping that perhaps somehow Granger could escape. Surely the Order of the Pheonix would want to save their precious Chosen One. But as the minutes crawled on and Granger's screams only escalated, he realized no help was coming. He was going to be forced to watch while his aunt tortured a teenage girl to death.
He had never been so happy to see anyone in his life as he was when the strange house elf Dobby appeared and managed to rescue all three of the prisoners, dragging them with him as he disapparated with a crack from Malfoy Manor. And when the Dark Lord appeared only minutes later and punished all of them for their failure, Draco hardly noted the pain of the curses. All he could feel was relief.