Chapter Text
"You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!"
— Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Draco tugged aimlessly at the invisible bonds around his wrist, rotating his arms this way and that just to distract himself. Distract himself from his parents similarly bound on either side of him. Distract himself from the aurors still prowling around the Great Hall for no other reason than to appear in control. Distract himself from the dead and wounded spotted around like acorns freshly fallen. Distract himself from the guilt, the self-hatred, the loathing that was coiling hard in his stomach like the snake he was, would always be.
“Draco” was hissed from his father’s lips, interrupting his spiraling thoughts “control yourself and stop embarrassing us.”
He looked up to see his father staring contemptuously at his hands which after looking down he noticed were inflamed and starting to bleed around the invisible magical bonds. In what his father probably thought was a fit of madness he twisted his face into a similar sneer copying his father perfectly and began tugging even more forcefully causing blood to begin dripping on the floor in front of him.
Why were they still here in this corner of the hall? Why hadn’t they been escorted to Azkaban yet? Was it a punishment in itself? To stand here and watch the people they had fought against weep for those which were lost? To see Harry Potter himself, fresh from victory, the girl Weasley tucked securely at his side. Even though looking closer Potter didn’t look like he had just won a war he had been fighting since he was a year old. Actually looking at him kiss her lightly on the forehead, he looked so tired and lost. Not victorious and self-assured as surely Draco would have looked. So why? Why did his heart twist painfully in his chest? Why did he not feel satisfied at this defeated looking Potter? Why did he just feel cold?
He looked over at his mother and was shocked to see silent tears running down her face as she stared at him. Meeting her eyes and raising one perfectly trimmed eyebrow in question, she just smiled briefly before looking down at the blood still dripping from his wrist to the floor. “I’m sorry Draco.” It was said so softly he almost thought he had imagined it before her eyes rose up to meet his again, tears still flowing freely. He frowned and opened his mouth to respond but he would never know what he would have said to the only person that mattered to him; a person that still had let him down in numerous ways, a person that had taught him to keep his head down and be a coward; because at that moment a fist crashed into his cheek right where Ronald Weasley had punched him earlier. He spat the blood pooling in his mouth onto the floor to join the blood from his wrist before looking up into eyes filled with rage and to his concern a certain mad glee that he was used to seeing in the eyes of his Aunt Bellatrix.
“How dare you!” his father shouted in rage. “Auror Kingsley!” He called imperiously as if anyone would come to their aid.
Draco scoffed at the same time as young Dennis Creevey of whom the fist belonged to.
“Don’t worry Lord Malfoy no one can hear you. Being in this castle this past year has helped me perfect certain spells I otherwise wouldn’t have bothered with such as muffliato and Notice-Me-Not.”
He absentmindedly swished his wand into the correct movements turning towards them with a mad smile, “Colin and I spent countless hours practicing in the Gryffindor common room until we could both perform them wordlessly as well as other certain useful spells.” He saw Dennis Creevey’s face twisting as he talked, into an anger he knew would be placed at his feet and rightfully so, he could feel the snake in his stomach twisting yet again.
“You,” he spat looking directly at Draco, “you tortured us, your lackeys tortured us, Colin died fighting you!”
He screamed; emotions turning his young face red and sweaty. Draco swallowed heavily not know what to say as Dennis panted in front of him.
“Yet here you stand! Alive and barely wounded.”
Draco turned away in the face of his anger and swallowed heavily before letting his head fall forward in defeat. It was all true after all, and he was tired. Tired of running, tired of fighting,…..tired of living. He would take whatever punishment Dennis saw fitting and so he said as much to the shock of his parents whose quick intakes of breath he could hear on either side of him.
He supposed he should have expected the short bark of mad laughter that admission drew from the boy in front of him.
“No Malfoy, even I can recognize an enemy that is already defeated,” Dennis muttered, gaze moving from his eyes down to his bleeding wrist, to the still growing puddle of blood dripping in front of him as Draco still tugged sporadically at the bonds. Then Dennis moved his gaze to his mother beside him and grinned happily.
“No, I know just how to make you suffer.” He raised his wand with a laugh, “I think you’ll find this is fitting.”
In that heart stopping moment, as a new mad man raised his wand on the only person he cared about. Draco did something he had never done before, he didn’t think of himself, he didn’t shrink away, he didn’t run. He moved in front of his mother as she instinctively leaned back and distantly heard the yelled “Sectumsempra!”
For the second time in his life he felt the cutting curse rip him open but instead of from the front it had caught him on his right side and he knew as his fathers and mothers screams echoed around him followed distantly by Dennis Creeveys’ insane laughter that he would not survive this time. As his heart beat slowed and the warmth of his blood surrounded him he couldn’t help but wish that he had done things differently. That he had not been so naïve and seen his parents and the wizarding world as it really was. He couldn’t help but think in his last moments that he would never be worth the second chance he so desperately wanted.