Chapter 1
Draco heard his name being bellowed from downstairs by Aunt Bella. Her voice grated against his skin like cheap muggle fabric as he casually sauntered down the stairs toward the drawing room. His bones ached with every step and he had to admit that his mother was correct, he had lost some weight, but this was war, he’d either die or gain it back.
When he entered the drawing room, no longer light and airy the way his mother had made it years before he was born, but cold and dark from the constant use of dark magic, he saw his parents, a few filthy snatchers, and Bella. His father looked like he was aging years in hours. Azkaban had not been kind to him, but the Dark Lord had been far worse. His mother held onto her elegance like a lifeline, as if one hair out of place might actually kill her.
As Draco moved closer to the scene before him, he saw three figures kneeling and hunched before Bella. One looked like he met the wrong end of a stinging hex cast by an angry hag. The other had orange hair and a bloodied face that reminded him of the Weasel. And then there was the third figure.
He’d have to be dead to not see her. And even then, he would know her in death, from the other side of the veil. It’s the hair, he told himself. The bloody wild hair that had a mind of its own. Even months of hiding, and fighting, and fleeing into Merlin knew where hadn’t dulled that hair.
He looked back at the other people in the room. The other two kneeling figures had to be the wonder twins.
They had her on her knees. They had her on her fucking knees. Draco shook his head, forcing his mind into the blank slate his mother had taught him to go to. But he still felt the anger there, pulsing at the back of his neck, egging him on.
“Ah, there you are,” Lucius mused softly. He motioned for Draco to join them, to walk closer, to breathe the same air. “You’ll settle this.”
Draco moved his way towards them gracefully and with a confidence that could never truly be felt.
“What’s all this?” He asked smoothly. He addressed his mother, as she was the only one in this room that he did not feel like murdering. His mother and someone else.
Aunt Bella lunged for him, gripping hard on his upper arm and dragging him in front of the three figures. He breathed through his nose to keep from screaming. It was a mistake. Through the filth and the dirt and the blood, he could smell it. Honey and rose and cinnamon.
“Is this Potter?” His aunt demanded as he tried not to gag on his own tongue.
Draco looked at the face that could only belong to Potter. That unkillable face. He knew instantly that the boils and blisters and lumps could only be cast by a witch as angry as the one just one meter away from him.
“I don’t know. His face is all messed up,” Draco’s voice shook in his ear but he doubt anyone else noticed. “It’s impossible to say.”
Bella dragged him back, away from the group, her nails digging into his arm, even through the jumper he was wearing. There would be marks, maybe even bruises. He was getting rather anemic anyway. He made his way to his mother’s side and she put a gentle hand on his shoulder.
Draco felt a rush of calm flood his senses like ice. Bella was yelling at the snatchers for something and he could see the top of her head out of the corner of his eye. The ice hardened around his mind and blocked out his senses. His breathing normalized.
“That’s Potter’s mudblood, I’ve seen her in the papers and I remember her.” It was his father’s voice that echoed through the room. A fire started in Draco’s head, starting to burn away at the ice. The hand on his shoulder became heavier and the ice held and held and held.
Draco looked up at his mother, and a thin sheen of sweat started to appear at her temples. He took a deep breath. They would all be fine. Just a little longer.
Bella was arguing with the snatchers about something and then suddenly there were three dead bodies in the drawing room. Draco looked at the slumped figures on the floor. None were her so he would still breathe. He watched motionless as Potter and Weasley were dragged from the room. They were yelling but he couldn’t hear what they were saying, the ice was too thick.
Narcissa tried to turn him from the room but he was so frozen in place that he believed only in death would he move again, become alive in his own body again.
And then death came.
Though Draco had imagined his death a thousand times before, at the hands of the Dark Lord, or Potter, or Bella, or some strange hippogriff accident, he always thought that at the end, it would be like sleeping. Like slipping into a dream and nothing would hurt.
But this death, this death hurt. It was so painful it nearly brought him to his knees.
She was screaming.
She was dying.
She was bleeding out on the marble floor he used to crawl on.
He’d crawl again.
Towards her.
To help her.
To shield her.
But he kept standing.
And she kept screaming.
It wasn’t the cruciatus curse that made him move. It wasn’t the vile words dripping from his Aunt’s tongue. It wasn’t even the word she carved into the girl’s arm.
When Draco raised his wand, it was the sight of this Aunt straddling the girl, a dagger raised above her head, ready to strike once more.
She was not going to die. He had made up his mind so long ago that it didn’t feel like a choice anymore. The cards were read, fate would not allow it. Hermione Granger was going to live, and if it meant he had to kill every person on the planet one by one, he would do it with a smile.
The words didn’t even leave his lips. There was simply a flash of green and his Aunt fell back onto the marble floor, her clothes slowly soaking in the blood. There was no fire in his mind. The ice remained. But it changed somehow.
It was no longer his mother’s icy calm that had shielded him from everything for so long. It was sharp and jagged and full of rage.
Draco looked down to see frost coating the handle of his wand.
His senses slowly came back as he heard shouts from his father and pleas from his mother. He couldn’t turn away though.
Her hair had blood in it. Her eyes were closed. But he watched her chest rise and fall in even beats. Alive.
“Gimlin,” Draco called out. A house elf with one flopping ear popped out of thin air into the room.
“Master has called,” The little elf whined slightly.
He still hadn’t taken his eyes off her. He was counting her breaths. How many was a person supposed to breathe in a minute? Was she breathing too slow? Too fast?
“Gather the snakes, tell them it’s time.”
The elf nodded its head, not that Draco saw, and popped out of the room as quickly as it had appeared.
Narcissa rested a hand on his shoulder. “Is this really what you want my dragon?”
“I want her by my side,” was all he said before the fireplace blazed green.
Theodore Nott swore softly under his breath as he entered the room.