Chapter 15
Lucius Malfoy opens the door.
The Manor is so familiar and full of memories that it hurts to look at it. But seeing Lucius Malfoy here is the one thing out of place. Over the few summers Harry used to spend here with Draco and Narcissa, Lucius was always away on some overseas business trip, and Harry forgot he existed most of the time except for when Draco spoke of him. Now Lucius crouches before him to scrutinise his face closely. Harry's muscles are tense and rigid, fearful of being recognised.
"I see. Bring them in."
Lucius stands straight and turns, leading them inside. From what Harry could see only because of his nearsightedness, Lucius looked gaunt and exhausted and pale.
Harry tries to push down the anger and guilt, watching the blur of Ron and Hermione being shoved forward in front of him. He had said Voldemort's name, which summoned the Snatchers. Hermione was quick to disguise him with a disfiguring hex. Now here they are, in this predicament because of him.
The Death-Eaters are holing up in here, it seems, a safehouse of sorts.
Harry squashes down the desperate hope that somehow, somehow Draco might be here somewhere. But he suspects Draco is not. Neither is Narcissa. Lucius' shoulders are hunched, and he looks small and thin, clearly suffering the absence of his family. Scabior hands him the Blackthorn Wand from Harry's pocket.
Draco. Always, all throughout the run for the Horcruxes, Harry has not stopped thinking of him even once, through sleepless nights and in the middle of every mundane action, the moments he seeks strength and bravery. He will end Voldemort. He will end them all, so that the world and all his loved ones will be safe from him, so that he can find Draco and bring him home.
Where is he? What is happening to him?
He must be alive, surely. Harry would feel it in his soul, if he wasn't.
To wonder if he is okay is a futile question, however. One way or another, the answer is no. He opens the Marauders' Map often in the hopes of seeing his name.
But Draco is not there, or anywhere that he can be found. His name had not shown up all year.
"Is this the Potter boy?" Rowle asks. "What do you suppose?"
Lucius is silent.
Eventually, he turns, "My son would be able to answer your question. It would be best if you bring him here. He spent years in school with the Potter boy, after all."
Rowle sighs, bored and longsuffering. "If only his uncle would let him go long enough to come here."
"You have access to that place, do you not? It would be a shame to not have any confirmation that this is the Potter boy, before calling the Dark Lord over. What if it turns out it's not?"
Rowle, seeing the logic after a moment of contemplation, heaves a put-upon sigh. "Alright. I'll go get him. Maybe Rodolphus would see reason if I tell him why."
Harry's heart is hammering so hard he thinks it might break out of his chest.
Draco. He's coming here.
"What's going on here?" The high-pitched voice of Bellatrix pipes up from the top of the staircase and Harry's heart freezes in dread.
"We suspect this to be the Potter boy, Ma'am," Scabior says. "However, we first require confirmation. Rowle has gone to bring the Malfoy boy here."
Bellatrix titters, "That wretched bastard husband of mine... once he's fascinated by a project, he won't let go until he has worn it down..."
Harry's mind continues to whirr for an escape strategy, some way to get Ron and Hermione out of here, a way to escape after they've brought Draco, how can he get past them and out with Draco and everyone through all these Death-Eaters -
Even then, his attention is caught by Bellatrix' words.
A memory passes through Harry's mind; Rodolphus' thin and hollow face, his false smile, and the very air around him sickening and dark. He was unsettling in the most inexplicable and terrifying way, but there was no real thing Harry could pinpoint to. It's not as if Harry hasn't met people with ghostly faces and empty, hollow-eyed smiles before. He could not fathom what it was that made him feel that way particularly with Rodolphus.
And neither could Draco. Harry remembers. He remembers how strange and scared Draco was around him, how cold his small hand had felt in his after Rodolphus was gone.
***
Harry's eyes are sharp and his mind and heart are on edge in wait and anticipation. He is painfully aware of the room; Luna, and Dean Thomas, and an unconscious Hermione held against Lucius with a wand against her throat.
A good part of his mind, also consumed by the sense that Draco will show up at any moment.
Time is running out, Draco. Where are you?
I want to take you with me.
Even if Draco hates him right now, even if he can't stand him...
Lucius' eyes are full of scorching hatred, a manic kind of rage, exhausted eyes lit wild and desperate like that of a man who has reached the end of his rope.
"It's your fault. It's your fault! All of it! I've lost everything, my entire family because of you! Perhaps you would like to know what that feels like, Potter? Loss?"
Loss.
Loss is but another limb on Harry's body. What does he not know about it?
I want to save him too.
"I don't know what you mean by that," Harry says, feigning indifference, hoping Lucius would speak more of Draco and Narcissa, of what is happening.
Harry's own wand is pointed at him. He can feel the fragility of the situation, the thin line it is balanced on. All the muscles in his body are tensed.
"I lost them all… I lost everything because of you…" Lucius' eyes fall away as he mutters, then looks back up, "So I'll make you lose something too."
The rest happens so fast it was almost as if something else took over Harry's body and made him do it. When he'll think about it later, he will not remember or know how he came to the action.
All he feels is a cold jolt of terror, Hermione's life in his hands that he cannot, cannot afford to lose grip of. Anger that he has carried for months, maybe years even, aggravated by Hermione's horrible, almost unbearable screams that he had to hear as she was being tortured on a floor below them. He has had his eye on the chandelier above Lucius, but he was waiting for the right time to strike and he feared hurting Hermione.
The first syllable of the killing curse is barely out of Lucius' mouth before Harry sends a hex at the chandelier.
Lucius drops Hermione, and doesn't move out of the way in time, the entire chandelier coming down on him and rendering him injured and unconscious. Hermione gets hurt too; glass shards embedded into her skin and clothes. Ron runs forward quickly to pick her up gently and hold her against himself, wand still out defensively.
Dobby comes and saves them.
It's right when they begin to Disapparate that he sees him.
His gaze swims before him, almost unable to believe or process for seconds.
Draco is standing at the top of the staircase. His eyes are on the fallen form of his father, who has not gotten up. They raise, slowly, to Harry's. He must have seen, what Harry did to protect Hermione. He must have seen the way he hurt his father.
And Harry.
Harry thinks he must have gone mad, in that moment.
"Draco!" Harry screams, and makes to move towards him.
Dean grabs Harry by the waist, and holds him firm, while he thrashes and screams, rooting him there through the Disapparition.
"Draco! Draco!"
Bellatrix throws her knife just as the disapparition takes them away.
On the sand of the beach, Harry is still screaming and thrashing as if he can somehow go back.
"Potter! Stop it! It's not him anymore! I know he was your friend but the Draco you know is gone!"
Slowly, Harry comes back to his senses, his struggles weakening.
"I've seen him," Dean says, letting him go and stepping back, "I've seen him torture and kill people. He had the Imperius mist in his eyes at first. But now he doesn't."
Harry is shaking all over, hands clenched at his fists.
Draco has never been someone capable of violence. He has never even been a fighter. What must it be like, to be forced into a mould that was so misshapen for someone like him?
"Harry..." Ron whispers, pale.
When Harry turns, it's to Dobby in Luna's arms, bleeding.
***
When Voldemort arrives at the Manor, the failure is apparent. All the Death-Eaters stand petrified, drained of colour, and deathly silent.
Lucius lays still at his feet, bloody and amidst shattered glass.
Voldemort pushes his foot at Lucius' injured body, nudging him on his back. Then, as if he has just wiped the dirt off his shoe, goes back to addressing the room, as if Lucius isn't there at all.
The punishment will be faced by all, for letting them escape. This is certain and established.
"It was Lucius, my Lord," Rowle murmurs to the Dark Lord, "It was his failure. He could have incapacitated Harry Potter when he had that mudblood in his grasp, but he didn't act quickly enough. He'd grown too emotional and allowed them escape."
Lucius' final compensation for this failure will be his life. This is not said out loud.
But it is made apparent, when Voldemort stops Severus from picking Lucius up in order to heal him.
"Leave him there," Voldemort orders.
"He needs healing, my Lord--"
"Leave him there," Voldemort repeats.
"My Lord, I implore that I be allowed - "
Voldemort's eyes cloud with anger. "Are you defying me, Severus? Perhaps you would like to be in Lucius' place? Or perhaps I should kill the Malfoy boy as well, the last of that pathetic family you've grown too attached to..."
Severus stays silent.
"No... my Lord." He bows his head and steps back.
The discussion and activities commence around them. Lucius' body grows cold and colder, attracting flies as it lays there for hours.
Only when the Dark Lord leaves and the room grows empty does Severus step close to the corpse.
He lowers slowly to his knees, beside the father of a child he may have considered his own. He gathers up the shards with his wand, removes them from the body, before he picks it up and carries it away to clean it up, to prepare for the funeral.
***
"Your father has succumbed to his injuries," Rodolphus says at night, lounging against the doorframe, "how unfortunate."
Draco's eyes are misted grey by the Imperius, afar. He is sitting on the edge of the bed in his pyjamas, hands and wrists upturned and his head tilted limply.
"A father for a father," Rodolphus says, with a wry chuckle, "It seems Harry Potter was hellbent on seeking vengeance and evening the score." He pushes off the doorframe and moves towards Draco. "Would you say it was fair?"
There is no answer.
Draco's part in leading Dumbledore to his death has been acknowledged by the Dark Lord, and further convinced him that his nephew can be made useful for the special purpose they have in mind.
"It doesn't matter, in the end. There is nothing quantifiable about the life of a loved one, after all. And even if it was, the score is still not even." Rodolphus crouches down at Draco's eye level, resting a hand on top of his head gently, like a father to son, "What happened to your mother because of him... the price for that can only be paid with Harry Potter's life. Don't you think so?"
It takes time, sometimes, to get a verbal response out of his nephew while he is like this. It doesn't matter. Rodolphus can feel it in his mind.
He still wants to hear Draco say it out loud.
"Do you love him?"
No answer. When Rodolphus searches through his mind for those pesky, foolish feelings, however, he comes up cold and empty to his satisfaction. It took months, many months, to wipe them clean.
"Did you love him?" Rodolphus' hand tightens in his hair. Physical pain can elicit a response. He must feel the fear, the threat, even when his body struggles to react out of the dictates of Rodolphus' Imperius curse. "Answer me, boy."
"Yes."
"And what was that worth?"
Usually, there is never an answer to this one. When he searches through his mind, he can feel the hesitation and uncertainty towards the question; a sign that Rodolphus has not yet reached the goal he sought.
"Nothing," Draco whispers, now. "It was worth nothing."