Chapter 30
The air in the chamber was still, but my pulse was hammering in my ears.
I clenched and unclenched my fists, forcing myself to breathe past the remnants of pain curling at the edges of my ribs. The magic had rejected me—had ripped through me like claws, tearing away something that was never mine to begin with.
And I was glad.
I was relieved.
For years, my father had whispered about our noble legacy, had spoken of Salazar Slytherin’s blood running in our veins like it was something holy. He had molded me into something meant to carry on a bloodline, to uphold the purity of old magic, to be more than lesser wizards.
But it had all been a lie.
The door had proven that much.
The only blood I carried was the taint of my father’s oath to Voldemort, the remnants of a vow that had tied us to a false king, a cursed cause. That was what had let me through before—not heritage, not power.
Just a mistake I never made but still carried the weight of.
But it wasn’t enough for this door.
It wasn’t enough for the true heir.
I exhaled sharply, forcing the tightness in my chest to ease.
This wasn’t the moment for personal revelations. Not when Potter was looking at me like he was still trying to figure something out. Not when the others were waiting—expecting—for me to say something.
“Draco,” Hermione said softly. Her fingers ghosted over my wrist, grounding, steadying. Always her. Always the first one to reach out to me, like she knew what it meant to be unmade by something bigger than yourself.
I inhaled. Swallowed. Nodded.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, voice rougher than I meant it to be.
Potter didn’t look convinced. “Did it—?”
“Yes, it bloody well hurt,” I snapped, irritation curling around the edge of my words. “But more importantly, it didn’t work.”
Ron exhaled, muttering, “Brilliant deduction.”
Ginny huffed but didn’t argue. Which was its own kind of unnerving.
I rolled my shoulders, forcing out the last of the lingering discomfort. My limbs still felt wrong, like I was shaking from the inside out, but I refused to let it show. I refused to let them see weakness.
Especially not now.
Because now we knew who this door was waiting for.
I turned to Potter, my stomach twisting as I said the words.
“It’ll open for you.”
Silence.
For a long moment, Potter just stared at me, his jaw tightening. His shoulders tensed, like he was bracing for something he didn’t want to acknowledge.
Then he sighed. Rubbed his face. And muttered, “Of course it will.”
It should’ve felt satisfying.
It didn’t.
Because for all the times I had mocked him, envied him, resented him for being the Chosen One—this wasn’t something I would ever want.
He had already had a piece of Voldemort inside him once. Had already lost too much of himself to another’s magic. And now? Now, he would never be free of it. Even with the Horcrux destroyed, even with the war over, something lingered in his blood.
Something had stayed.
And it would pass on.
To his children. To their children. Forever.
His legacy would never be just his own.
I understood that feeling better than I wanted to.
His jaw ticked, his gaze flicking toward the seal. “Right, then,” he muttered. “Let’s get this over with.”
Hermione’s fingers curled at her sides like she wanted to reach for him but didn’t.
She didn’t like this.
Neither did I.
But what choice did we have?
Potter stepped forward, his wand still lit, his shoulders squared. He exhaled slowly, and when he spoke, the words curled into the air like something alive.
Parseltongue.
It was different when he spoke it.
When I had tried, the words had stumbled—harsh, foreign, something unnatural clawing its way out of me.
But Potter?
The words belonged to him.
They slithered between the cracks in the door like they were meant to, like the magic in the stone had been waiting for its master to return.
The reaction was immediate.
The chamber shuddered.
The serpent emblem coiled inward, twisting and shifting into itself, the lines glowing a deep, sickly green before splitting apart.
A deep, guttural hiss echoed through the chamber, not from Potter’s mouth—but from the door itself.
It was… welcoming him.
Welcoming the last heir.
The stone rumbled as it parted, dust and time unraveling at our feet, revealing the dark corridor beyond.
No one moved.
No one spoke.
Then Potter swallowed, took a step forward, and muttered, “Here we go.”
He walked through.
And we followed him in.
The corridor beyond the door stretched downward into darkness, a gaping maw that swallowed the dim glow of our wands. The air hung heavy, thick with damp decay, and something worse—something acrid and ancient that settled at the back of my throat like rot. Every breath felt like inhaling the remnants of something long dead.
My grip on my wand tightened as we descended, each step against the uneven stone reverberating through the silence. The occasional drip of water echoed from above, but even that felt wrong. Like the walls were swallowing the sound. Like the darkness was listening.
I hated this.
I hated the way the walls pressed too close, their damp surfaces slick and pulsing with a sense of wrongness. I hated the way the air itself felt charged, alive, shifting with unseen movement just at the edges of my perception. But most of all, I hated the gnawing certainty in my gut, the primal instinct clawing up my spine, screaming at me to run.
But I didn’t.
Because Harry bloody Potter led the way, shoulders squared, wand at the ready, stepping into the abyss as if he were meant to.
Because Hermione walked beside me, Solara’s golden wings pulsing with a soft, steady glow that cut through the dark like a heartbeat, grounding me, keeping me from listening to the terror slithering beneath my skin.
No one spoke.
Not even Weasley. And that was saying something.
The deeper we went, the colder it became. Not the sharp, biting chill of winter, but a consuming, marrow-deep freeze that sank into my bones, into my blood. A cold that took rather than simply existed. I clenched my teeth, focusing on the flickering glow of our wands—wands that seemed weaker, dimmer, like the dark was leeching their light away.
Then—
A sound.
Low. Rumbling.
A vibration against my ribs, a frequency that wasn’t heard but felt.
Something shifted in the abyss ahead. A shape, massive, moving just beyond the reach of our light.
We froze.
Beside me, Tenebris growled, his sleek black form bristling, shadows curling at the edges of his frame. Across from him, Potter’s stag Eidolon tensed, ears flicking forward, golden eyes locking onto the darkness.
Something was watching us.
I could feel it.
The energy in the chamber thickened, pressing against my skin, pulsing in time with my own heartbeat—or something else’s.
Ginny whispered, “I really hate this.”
No one disagreed.
Then—
The shadows moved.
Fast.
A blur of obsidian scales and too many limbs, limbs that twisted and bent in ways that defied anatomy. Teeth. Too many teeth. Black and wet and razor-sharp, stretching wide in a mouth that split too far down. Not a basilisk, but something far older, something wrong, something that had been waiting.
And it went for Harry.
Because of course it did.
It moved like liquid shadow, faster than thought, a flickering mass of shifting horror. Harry barely had time to raise his wand before it collided with him, a solid force of nightmare and hunger. He hit the ground hard, rolling just as a set of razor claws slashed through the space where his head had been, shattering stone like glass.
I reacted before I even thought.
Before I could stop myself.
“Depulso!”
The spell slammed into the creature’s side, sending it skidding back with an unearthly shriek, a sound that scraped down my spine like rusted metal.
I lunged forward, shoving Potter behind me, my pulse hammering as the thing twisted, its mass contorting, its too-many eyes locking onto me now. Assessing.
It was fast.
And it was smart.
It didn’t lunge blindly. It studied me, head tilting at an angle that made my stomach turn. Its mouth split into something that wasn’t quite a grin, but close enough to feel wrong.
I barely had a second to move before it struck.
I dodged, narrowly avoiding a swipe that would have torn through my ribs like parchment. It was hunting now, testing.
My magic burned beneath my skin, an instinctual response to the raw, predatory presence in front of me.
“Incarcerous!”
Thick, enchanted ropes lashed from my wand, snapping around its limbs, its throat, tightening with a force meant to bind.
It fought.
And it was strong.
The ropes burned with magic, straining against its writhing mass. But even as I watched, it shredded through them, fibers snapping like dry grass, the remnants disintegrating into dust.
It was resisting magic.
Shit.
Harry was beside me in an instant, his wand raised, his breathing ragged. “That’s not going to hold it.”
“No shit, Potter.”
The creature shrieked, a sound that vibrated through the stone, a sound that was triumphant.
And then it lunged again.
There was no time to think.
I threw out my wand hand, magic snapping from my fingertips—raw, desperate, barely controlled.
“Confringo!”
The blast hit the creature dead center. Fire and force exploded outward, consuming it, sending it hurtling backward.
It hit the far wall with a sickening crunch, limbs twitching, contorting, before crumpling into a heaped mass of darkness.
The ground shook.
Dust and debris rained down.
And then—
Silence.
A terrible, aching silence.
The thing didn’t move.
Didn’t make a sound.
For a long, stretched moment, none of us did either.
My breath was ragged, my magic still thrumming, desperate for another fight, another strike. My pulse hammered, every muscle still locked in battle-readiness.
But the thing just… lay there.
Broken.
Gone.
Finally.
I exhaled sharply, my arms trembling as I lowered my wand. My heart pounded against my ribs, a frantic, stuttering rhythm, adrenaline still burning hot in my veins before leaving me raw. Too open.
Then—
“Draco.”
Not Malfoy.
Draco.
The name hit me like a physical blow, a force I wasn’t prepared for, disarming me more than any spell ever could. And before I could fully register it—
Something warm, something fierce, slammed into me, knocking the breath from my lungs.
I staggered, barely managing to keep my footing, my hands automatically reaching out to brace myself against the unexpected impact. My fingers met fabric—soft, but firm, gripping, clinging.
Ginny.
Ginny Weasley was hugging me.
I froze, my entire body locking up in sheer, unfiltered confusion. My arms stayed stiff at my sides, utterly useless, because—what the actual hell was happening?
“You—” Her voice wavered, a whisper of something raw, something unraveling at the edges. I felt it, the way she shook against me. “You saved him.”
Her words settled deep, a weight pressing into my chest, unfamiliar, unwelcome—no, not unwelcome. Just… different. Unsteady.
I swallowed, my throat tight, my mind scrambling for something—anything—to say.
But I didn’t know what to do with this. This sudden, crushing wave of gratitude pressing into my ribs, squeezing something I hadn’t even realized was there.
It was weird.
Uncomfortable.
Nice.
…Nice?
What the hell was wrong with me?
Ginny pulled back before I could even begin to sort through the mess in my head, stepping away with an ease that made the moment feel almost unreal, like it had never happened.
Except it had.
And it should have ended there.
But then—
Potter.
His gaze found mine, steady, unflinching. Really looking at me. Not like an enemy, not like a rival.
Something between us shifted.
He exhaled, still pale, still shaken, but there was something in his expression I couldn’t quite define.
Respect.
Recognition.
Gratitude.
He nodded once. “Thanks.”
One word.
And yet, somehow, it was more.
Because we both knew what had just happened.
We both knew I didn’t have to do it.
I could have let the creature take him. Could have let fate run its course. Could have let things unfold the way they were supposed to.
But I hadn’t.
And that mattered.
More than either of us were willing to admit.
I let out a slow breath, forcing my mind to quiet, my body to loosen, pushing away the weight of it all. Running a hand through my hair, I did what I did best—I smirked. Because it was easier.
“Don’t make a habit of needing me to save your life, Potter.”
His lips twitched, something almost like a laugh slipping through, a breath of something lighter. “Noted.”
Another shift.
Something less sharp between us now.
Something that wasn’t rivalry.
Wasn’t hatred.
Just—something else.
Something new.
Something better.
I didn’t know what the hell it meant.
And I wasn’t ready to think about it yet.
So instead, I turned back toward the passage ahead, toward the dark, gaping unknown still waiting for us.
Because this wasn’t over.
Not even close.