The parlour of the Crouch family home is packed with witches and wizards, the room is incredibly loud and Draco can’t move a centimetre without someone touching him; accidentally or purposefully, unfortunately for Draco, at his ripe age of 7, his cheeks are still chubby and squeezable. Draco doesn’t understand the appeal. He grips onto the hem of his father’s robes tightly, Draco breathes heavily and actively fights the urge to smash the heels of his palm into his head, not to embarrass his parents.
His father leans down, his mouth almost to his ear, and whispers, “How about you go get something to eat, huh? Might make you feel a little better, Bud” Draco nods and reluctantly releases his grip on his father’s robes and wanders over to a table filled with treats, he grabs what looks like a treacle tart, and gives it a smell, confirming his suspicion of the pastry being a treacle tart and takes a large bite of the dessert.
“Oh, Draco!” Blaise’s mother, a woman Draco only knows as Ms. Zabini, smiles at him and saunters over to where he stands next to the table of treats, holding his treacle tart in two hands, “Oh, baby, you have crumbs all over your face!” She giggles, pulls a handkerchief from the breast of her dress, grabs his chin, and then wipes the crumbs from the corners of his mouth.
“Hello, Ms. Zabini,” Draco greets then takes another bite of tart, Ms. Zabini scoffs with a smile as the crumbs return to Draco’s face.
“How are you doing, Darling? I haven’t seen you in a while, huh? I should take Blaise to come over and play soon,” She smiles,
“Yeah, you should,” Draco nods, thinking about how much he misses his friend. Ms. Zabini laughs, at what he has no idea; he doesn’t recall making a joke.
“Tell me, baby, where are your mummy and daddy?” Draco points his treacle tart-clad hands to where his parents stand together chatting with someone Draco doesn’t recognize, Ms. Zabini thanks him and shoves her handkerchief into his robe pocket, “For when you're finished.” She smiles and walks away, her dress swaying elegantly behind her.
“Draco, you must be a Malfoy, huh? Son of Narcissa?” A tall man with short-cropped black hair approaches Draco with a macabre grin on his thin lips grows as he approaches Draco with little haste, “It’s been a while since I’ve seen her, how’s your Auntie been, huh?” Aunt? Draco is very confused, he is not supposed to talk about Aunt Andy outside the house, “Auntie?” He settles on as he shoves the final piece of tart into his mouth.
“Your Aunt, Bellatrix” The man looks at him as if he’s stupid, and Draco remembers the letters that Bellatrix sends him from Azkaban biweekly, they always sacre him, give him nightmares for a few days after he reads them, so he stopped reading them long ago. As far as he knows, Bellatrix is fully insane, and Draco is confused as to why someone would care about how she is.
“Bellatrix? Isn’t she crazy?” He knits his eyebrows and the man’s face twists in anger, “Excuse me?” A voice calls from behind the other man,
“I asked if Bellatrix was crazy,” Draco shrugs, the other man shakes with anger, he pulls his wand from his robe pocket and points it and Draco’s face, for a moment, Draco’s confused, and then, “Crucio.”
The pain is indescribable, Draco screams in agony, tears stream down his rounded cheeks and wet the crumbs of treacle tart that still remain around his mouth. His back arches against the against the tile floor and his arms lurch out, his wrists hitting violently against the floor.
Suddenly the pain is gone, and his father is by his side. Draco looks up and his mother is on top of the man, her wand against his neck. The man who had talked to him originally sends a spell at his mother and she is blasted backward into the wall, his father stands and Draco closes his eyes, the sounds of fighting are heard from all around him and he opens his eyes in just enough time to see the man he had talked to originally get hit with a spell from an auror that forces his neck back, his jaw opens and a cloud of black smoke escapes his mouth, and then he drops dead to the floor. Draco stands and runs, his mother and father yell after him but they are not fast enough to keep up. He runs down a hallway; his vision clouded with tears and runs straight into a bookcase, instead of falling backward like expected, he falls forward, and scrubs at his face then wipes the crimson red that bleeds from his nose and stands himself up. He looks at the scenery around him, he is surrounded by rows upon rows upon rows of books, thousands and thousands of them, there are far more books in this singular room than in all of the libraries in Malfoy Manor combined. There are hundreds of books in every genre, Draco thinks he could spend the rest of his life here and still never be able to read all of them.
He immediately runs to find the herbology section, the subject he has been most interested in lately, he skims through dozens of books about hundreds of plants. He finds one he’s especially interested in and he practices what his mum had taught him, and with a little concentration the book is small enough to fit in his pocket and he drops it in. He climbs down from the ledge of the bookshelf he had climbed to access the book, and groans as his feet hit the ground. Now to find a way out, Draco thinks it might be a good idea to ACTUALLY move in here. He contemplates building a bed out of soft-cover books. He does find a way out eventually.