A Touch of Madness
Draco stood among the Death Eaters, his face carefully schooled into impassivity, but his hands trembled at his sides. Voldemort’s voice rang through the battlefield, cold and triumphant.
“Harry Potter is dead.”
The words settled over Draco like a suffocating fog. His breath came too shallow, his pulse thrummed too fast. He could hear the gasps, the muffled sobs from the Hogwarts defenders, the broken sound that escaped from Granger’s throat. But it was nothing compared to the hollow, yawning void that opened up inside him.
Dead.
Harry was dead.
Something inside Draco twisted and snapped.
A sharp, hysterical laugh bubbled up in his throat, and before he could stop himself, it escaped—a jagged, broken sound that had the nearest Death Eaters turning to look at him in confusion. His shoulders shook, but not with fear. No, this was something else. Something that curled at the edges of his mind like fire licking parchment.
Bellatrix had always called it the Black Madness.
“Draco?” His father’s voice was sharp, but distant. Unimportant.
Draco tilted his head, his eyes locking onto Voldemort with a new kind of clarity, a sharp, ringing certainty. If Harry Potter was dead, then nothing mattered. If Harry was dead, then there were no sides. No alliances. No rules.
Draco smiled.
It was not a Malfoy smile—cool, restrained, full of quiet arrogance. No, this was something raw, something sharp-edged and reckless, something that bared his teeth like an animal about to bite.
“Dead, is he?” Draco murmured, his voice deceptively soft. His fingers curled around his wand, white-knuckled.
Voldemort barely spared him a glance. “You have something to say, Draco?”
Draco let out another sharp, breathless laugh. “Yeah, actually.”
And then, without hesitation, he lifted his wand—
And fired a curse straight at Voldemort’s face.
It was sheer, unfiltered chaos. Bellatrix shrieked, Lucius lunged toward him, Death Eaters scrambled, but Draco didn’t stop. He didn’t think. His magic flared wild and reckless, spells tearing from his wand faster than he could process.
Someone—maybe Narcissa, maybe Snape—was shouting his name, but he didn’t care. Because Voldemort was reeling, because the Death Eaters were off guard, because if Harry Potter was dead, then Draco Malfoy had nothing left to lose.
And wasn’t that just terrifying?