Chapter Text
A deep, tri-tone chime rang through the Manor as the front gates opened. Draco looked up from A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration, holding the page with his finger as he swung his legs off the chair arm and set feet on the floor nervously. Two years ago, perhaps, he would have been relieved to stop rereading the same paragraph without absorbing it. Now, any interruption filled him with dread.
His mother squeezed his shoulder as she passed towards the front doors, a reassurance and a warning. Setting the book on the floor, Draco took a deep breath. He checked for his wand. He considered going to his room to hide, but his father’s stern presence in the armchair across the fireplace pinned him where he sat.
It would do no good, anyway, he knew. They always remembered Draco was in the house, always summoned him when it entertained them to do so. The Dark Lord was travelling, but the rest of the inner circle was plenty capable of making life in the Manor hell.
Only a week and a half left of the Easter holiday. He could make it a week and a half.
“What is this?” His mother’s voice was cold, imposing. Draco frowned, listening harder; that tone said it wasn’t anyone from the inner circle. She spoke to them with more deference these days.
The horrible scrape of Fenrir Greyback’s voice infiltrated the Manor’s air, and Draco shuddered. “We’re here to see He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!”
He heard his mother demand the man’s identity, but Draco would have known that voice anywhere. What the hell was that psychopath doing in his house? And demanding to see Lord Voldemort? Draco imagined scenarios, mentally rating their likelihood. He did that a lot now, always hoping to anticipate the blow before it fell.
He must have been lost in his imagination because he swore he heard the man say Harry Potter. His father sat up straighter, a frown line digging itself between his brows. His mother’s clicking heels climbed the stairs and echoed down the hall, parading a shuffling host of footsteps behind, and Draco watched his father for a sign of what to do.
Draco heard his name in the hall and stiffened. Suddenly hating the vulnerability of being seated, he stood and heard his father stand as well.
The crowd that pressed into the drawing room was truly peculiar. Greyback towered over his mother, leading a handful of grubby prisoners tied together into an ungainly knot. He saw a couple sneering men with wands out—must be Snatchers.
“What is this?” his father said. His hand flexed like it might have held a wand, a nervous twitch.
His mother’s hands also moved expressively, folding over each other at her waist and squeezing so her fingertips blanched of colour. “They say they’ve got Potter.” Her eyes flicked to Draco, and he bit the inside of his mouth. “Draco, come here.”
No, thank you, he wanted to say. Or perhaps, no, please. It didn’t used to be this way. He didn’t used to feel this need to beg to be ignored in his own house. But he stepped forward as he’d been bid, approaching the wad of prisoners Greyback was manhandling to put a muddy, injured, dark-haired one in Draco’s view.
“Well, boy?” the werewolf drawled, and Draco shuddered. He had no interest in helping Greyback with anything, but fear drove him to pass his eyes over the figure he presented.
Someone had treated the man very poorly. It was a young man, certainly, and his unruly dark hair looked like Potter’s always had. His face was pink and distorted, shiny with welts so swollen it seemed his skin would split any moment. Draco turned his face away. I want no part in this.
“Well, Draco?” his father prompted. The edge of excitement in his father’s voice filled his stomach with cold water. “Is it? Is it Harry Potter?”
He didn’t look back at the person Greyback held. The figure was wearing Potter’s glasses. And there’d been a many-branching mark on his forehead, swollen as the skin was, just where Potter’s scar marked him. He knew what would happen if it was Harry Potter: they’d call Lord Voldemort. They’d bring him back here. He’d kill Potter and then he’d stay , and there would be no escape from him, not for a moment. I want no fucking part of this.
“I can’t—I can’t be sure,” Draco said. His voice wasn’t as steady as he’d have liked. He tilted his head back, staring up at the chandelier, watching the firelight catch and glitter in its crystals.
His father jerked at his arm, burning with too much excitement for a gentleman’s stoicism. “But look at him carefully, look! Come closer! Draco, if we are the ones who hand Potter over to the Dark Lord, everything will be forgiv—”
Greyback and his father began to argue; Draco looked desperately around the room for anything, any reason to leave, any way to end this. Please, don’t be Potter. Please don’t be Harry fucking Potter.
He stepped away again, closer to the fire. His mother’s eyes flicked to him, and he saw a shadow of his own fear reflected in her eyes. Send them away, he thought at her. It’s not worth it. Tell them it’s no one.
But of course, if it was Harry Potter, and Draco was the one to say it wasn’t—
His hands jerked for a moment, the memory of Crucio burning through his nerves and muscles so present it was hard to breathe. Better to simply be uncertain. Let someone else look into that cursed face and decide who it belonged to.
“—Draco,” his father said, drawing him reluctantly back to the moment, “come here, look properly! What do you think?”
Edging forward, Draco came to his father’s shoulder and looked properly.
Of fucking course it was Harry Potter. He’d stared at that stupid face plenty of times, seen it take on every possible emotion, seen it injured and mud-streaked and rain-splattered. Potter was staring right back at him through the slits that barely showed the green of his eyes. Yes, obviously yes, yes, it was Harry Potter.
“I don’t know.”
Draco backed up a step or two, then turned away, staring into the fire. His heart pounded so hard he was sure someone in the room would call him on it. He’s lying, they’d say. Trying to protect Harry Potter? Where is your loyalty? Do you need to be taught another lesson?
His hands twitched again, and he pressed them to his stomach to still them. His mother, beside him, seemed to be speaking his uncertainty into the room, advising caution. Maybe she could talk them out of all this. If it wasn’t Potter—if he wasn’t sure it was Potter—maybe this could all go away. The Snatchers would walk them back out, Potter would pull a characteristically brash and lucky maneuver, he’d be on the run again, and Draco could keep his head down for a week and a half until he could get back to school and out of this goddamn house.
There was a commotion as Greyback hauled the prisoners around again, and then his mother’s breath caught. “Wait. Yes—yes, she was in Madam Malkin’s with Potter! I saw her picture in the Prophet! Look, Draco, isn’t it the Granger girl?”
Draco squeezed his eyes shut hard, then turned. He looked. Granger’s hair was longer, her face scraped and bruised like she’d been roughed up on the way in. No surprise, if Greyback had had his hands on her.
Her brown eyes begged. She’d never looked at Draco like that before, and it turned his stomach.
After too long spent staring blankly, Draco said, “I…maybe…yeah.” He couldn’t exactly lie, like he had with Potter. He’d gone to school with her for six fucking years; of course he knew her on sight, when there was nothing different about her face but that split in her lip and a vicious bruise welling up around her eye.
“But then, that’s the Weasley boy!” his father shouted, circling the pack of prisoners who shook now, silent but dripping with fear so potent Draco could smell it. “It’s them, Potter’s friends—Draco, look at him, isn’t it Arthur Weasley’s son, what’s his name—?”
God fucking DAMN IT, Draco roared in his head. He turned his back so his father wouldn’t see his frustration or his fear. “Yeah, it could be,” he said, though he refused to look.
Maybe he could make an excuse, something that required him to return to school immediately. He could not be in this house when Voldemort returned. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. As long as—
The drawing room door opened, and Draco peeked over his shoulder, hoping against hope that it would be a house-elf. But Aunt Bella strode in, that cold, wild light in her eyes that said she was itching to hurt someone. Draco quailed.
She recognised them immediately. Of course she did; her memory was eerily, obsessively good when it came to the Dark Lord’s enemies. Draco curled in on himself as they argued about who would summon their master, who would get the credit.
Forget me. Forget I exist, I beg you. Send me away so I can’t steal any bit of your goodwill with Lord Voldemort.
The litany was so loud in his head he heard nothing from the room until his aunt shouted, “Stop!” at the top of her lungs. He jolted, hearing fear in her voice. She was so unpredictable when she was afraid. The skin of his back crawled, waiting for a curse to strike him between the shoulder blades.
When he heard the first cry of Stupefy, he spun. As Aunt Bella Stunned the other three Snatchers, he backed up until his heels grew hot from the fire. She wielded, of all things, a sword, holding it to Greyback’s chest as though she meant to run him through.
Draco’s mind raced, trying to understand what had changed. They weren’t calling Voldemort anymore. Why? Had Aunt Bella finally fully cracked?
“Where did you find this sword?” she demanded. Spit flew from her mouth, and her eyes had gone the white-edged wide of madness. Draco’s fingers twitched in memory of the pain she could inflict in this state. He didn’t even want to breathe; nothing to call the attention of the room. “Snape sent it to my vault in Gringotts!”
Greyback knelt, arms held wide to his sides by bindings of magic, and the vicious smugness he always wore was cut through with alarm. “It was in their tent. Release me, I say!”
With an almost lazy flick of her wand, Bellatrix did. Draco braced for him to attack in retribution, but the werewolf seemed nervous to approach her. Instead, his eyes went to Draco as Aunt Bella called his name. “Draco, move this scum outside. If you’ve not got the guts to finish them, then leave them in the courtyard for me.”
Finish them? He looked at the Snatchers, lying bent on the floor like puppets with strings sliced. She wanted the Snatchers dead?
Cold despite his proximity to the fire, Draco stepped towards the closest of the unconscious men as smoothly as he could. He heard his mother come to his defence; she hated when Aunt Bella called him a coward—an insult to the family, of course, which was always hard to bear, but she had also seen how short the step was from coward to needs to be toughened up , and with Bella, that was always, always awful.
Bellatrix didn’t seem to hear the admonition. She alternated between screaming about the danger they were all in and muttering to herself, Potter’s name sputtering out of her lips. Her wand hissed like a snake, coughing fire onto the carpet. Draco tried to stay out of her sight as he levitated the first body. He’d do his task one at a time, though he could manage all three; this way, he had at least three excuses to leave the room.
His mother took charge, watching her sister uneasily. “Take these prisoners down to the cellar, Greyback.”
“Wait!” Aunt Bella’s eyes twitched over the prisoners. “All except…except for the Mudblood.”
Draco hastened to the door as he heard Weasley shout something foolhardy about taking Granger’s place. It didn’t matter who went first, he knew. They’d all get a taste of Aunt Bella’s brand of pain. He pictured the sword and the panic on his aunt’s face. Why had seeing the sword changed her mind? What about a sword put them in danger, should the Dark Lord appear? It didn’t make sense.
“If she dies under questioning, I’ll take you next,” Bellatrix said, and Draco paused in the hall.
Questioning?
Ah. It was some piece of knowledge she was waiting on before she’d press her Mark and summon him. Whatever it was, if she tortured Granger, she’d know it almost immediately. That one was the brains of the operation. Draco snuck a look at the bushy-haired girl, already trembling as she was untied from the group. She’d crack like an egg at the first touch of a Cruciatus. She’d probably start stuttering out answers before the wand was even raised.
Draco took a deep breath. Maybe…maybe their master would return happy. Maybe he’d be pleased, and he’d take what he wanted from the situation, and he’d leave again. Maybe… Draco didn’t have much hope.
He looked back at the dangling form before him and resigned himself to the nightmare to come. He’d have to savour the small freedom of wafting these bodies out to the courtyard; it might be the last he tasted.
Unless—Potter. Potter wouldn’t break. He didn’t have the good goddamn sense to break. His stubbornness would hold until torture broke his mind, Draco was sure.
Before he could think too much about it, he cleared his throat and turned to face his aunt. Summoning his voice, he said, “What’s a Mudblood going to know? She’s along for the ride. You should question Potter, if that is him.”
He nodded towards the knot of prisoners being dragged, shouting, towards the cellars, and then turned to carry the stunned Snatcher out without waiting to see Bellatrix’s response. It was never advisable to let her see you cared what she did.
The polished stone of the hallway passed too quickly under his feet, and when he emerged into the courtyard, he tilted his face up to the sky, wishing it wasn’t overcast. He was so cold; he wished he could absorb the sun for at least a minute.
It wouldn’t do to linger. He tromped back, but his steps halted abruptly at a choked-off scream from the drawing room. Potter.
Aunt Bella shouted about the sword, demanding to know how they’d gotten into her vault and what else they’d stolen from her, and then Potter howled. Draco’s stomach clenched, and he stood frozen in the hall, unable to leave, unwilling to go closer.
“We didn’t—” Potter managed, before another scream wrenched out of him. Then there were no words for a long time, only awful, choked wails that petered out into sobs. Draco edged into the room, creeping just close enough to whisper the spell and bring another Snatcher’s body into the hall. He knew with absolute certainty that if his aunt remembered he was there, she’d order his wand out, tell him to make Potter talk.
He couldn’t torture Potter.
As silently as he could, he took the second body out to the courtyard, then clutched the wall, taking deep breaths. His hands shook.
“I am not doing it, and it’s not being done to me,” he whispered. “I am not doing it, and it’s not being done to me.” The grim reassurance he lived by these days.
Hold, Potter, he thought, as if it would do any good at all. Don’t tell her. Whatever it is, don’t tell her.
The return trip to the drawing room was not long enough. The screams hadn’t stopped.
Between wrenching cries, Potter choked out a hoarse, “Fuck you,” and Bellatrix screamed with a fury Draco had never heard from her. Shit, she was going to kill him.
Moving too suddenly and too quickly, Draco tripped forward into the room, knocking into a suit of armour that clanged loudly against the wall and sending its axe clattering across the stone floor. Bellatrix spun on him, and he gestured towards the last Snatcher. “Just—getting the last—”
Sneering, she’d already turned away from him. She hissed a spell that threw Potter hard up against the wall, binding him with his arms outstretched as she had Greyback. Her teeth bared, she stabbed the tip of her wand into the palm of his left hand, and something dark began to appear on his skin. Potter’s screams hit a new pitch. This wasn’t the Cruciatus. Draco had no idea what this was.
He backed out, the Snatcher following him in the air like a ragdoll. His mind raced and stuttered, a halting cacophony from which he could pull no coherent thoughts. If she killed Potter—if she killed him—
Voldemort would kill them all. Slowly. Making examples of them. Surely his mother would step in, or his father. Surely they wouldn’t let her—
The last Snatcher dropped unceremoniously onto the pile and Draco all but ran back, a sheen of sweat slicking his entire body despite how cold he felt.
Potter was shouting, desperate words forced through gritted teeth. “It’s a fake! It’s fake, it’s not—it’s not the real—”
“Fake?” Aunt Bella echoed, manic eyes flicking over Potter’s face. She pulled her wand away and he dropped, slamming into the ground so hard his knees buckled and he curled in on himself. She stepped back, tossing her hair out of her face impatiently. “Just a copy? A likely story. Still…Cissy, come here, we need to talk about—” She pulled Draco’s parents out into the hall, away from Potter’s gasping form and Greyback, who followed them in curiosity.
Draco, left mostly alone, edged closer to Potter and gave him a once-over. Moving, breathing, no obvious spell damage. The shaking was an after-effect of the Cruciatus. The swelling—probably a Stinging Jinx—was going down, leaving the unmistakeable face of the Boy Who Lived. Draco stared a second too long before he realised Potter’s green eyes were on him.
Potter’s jaw was tight, his hands curled into trembling claws against his torso, his curse-wracked nerves still sending signals to lock his muscles. Draco glanced up towards Greyback; the werewolf was peeking down the hall, trying his best to overhear Aunt Bella.
Bending quickly, Draco grabbed one of Potter’s arms and pressed his thumb hard against the inside of his wrist until his fingers started to loosen. Eyes still on Greyback, he snatched up the other arm and did the same.
“Get the hell out of here, Potter,” he muttered.
Potter stared at him, that heated Gryffindor temper pouring out of him, scorching enough to warm Draco’s cold skin. “Help me.”
He knew his incredulity showed on his face. How the fuck did Potter think he could help him? Draco couldn’t even get out of this house himself. “Where’s your rescue?”
Potter shook his head. No rescue coming. The green eyes were demanding. “Your wand—”
“Not a chance.” Draco’s grip tightened on his wand, his only protection. He had seen what happened to a Malfoy without a wand; his father was a laughingstock at best and a convenient violence-sink at worst, their whole family under threat as his constant shame was paraded before the others of the inner circle, a reminder of what it meant to fail the Dark Lord.
Potter gave a sudden, sharp inhalation and his eyes lit with a spark of hope. With a groan, he tried to sit up, reaching down towards his own feet.
Draco heard the footsteps returning to the drawing room almost too late. He was still bent over Potter; he had time only to grab Potter around the throat and lift his wand before Aunt Bella shoved past Greyback and returned.
“What, Draco?” she asked.
“He tried to make a run for it while you were out of sight,” Draco said. His heartbeat pulsed uncomfortably in his own throat. “I thought I should probably search him, make sure he didn’t have any tricks up his sleeve.”
Bellatrix snorted derisively. “If he was going to get tricksy, I imagine he would’ve done it before I gave him the Rot Seed Hex. Search him if you must. Then go get that filthy goblin from the cellar. He can tell us for certain if the sword is real.” She pulled his father close, muttering to him with occasional dark glances for Greyback.
Draco met Potter’s eyes, which burned with anger again. As he ran his hands along the pockets of his jacket and his jeans, finding nothing, Potter held perfectly still. When he knelt down next to Potter’s ankles, though, he twitched, the slightest tell. Draco saw it, then—the sharp edge of something sticking out of Potter’s shoe, beneath his sock. The point was catching, poking through the wool.
Without a sound, keeping his movements as casual as he could, Draco slid his fingers under the sock—Potter’s skin was so hot it burned—and pulled out a broken fragment of mirror. He glanced up at the others in the room, who’d noticed nothing, and palmed the thing. He didn’t dare look at Potter as he stood and shrugged. “Nothing. Pathetic.”
Then he made for the cellar, keeping his hand by his side, his body between his discovery and his aunt. Out in the hall, he lifted it where he could see.
At first, only his own pale face was reflected back, grey eyes showing more fear than he’d have liked. And then, strangely, he saw a blue eye, bright and twinkling and surrounded by wrinkles.
A sending mirror? Or something else? Clearly this was what had given Potter that spark of hope. Before he could think about it, he whispered, “Harry Potter is a prisoner at Malfoy Manor. Get him out of here before they call the Dark Lord to take him.”
The eye widened slightly, then vanished. Draco looked over his shoulder at the empty hall. Pocketing the mirror, he trotted down the steps to the cellar, lighting his wand as he went.
“Everyone stand up,” he called through the door, “and line up against the back wall. Don’t try anything, or I’ll kill you!”
He hated the tremor in his voice—the way it belied the threat. Everything would go so much smoother if they believed him. But it seemed they did, regardless. When he opened the door, wand held high and casting pale light across their faces, they were angry but compliant. He found Griphook among the group and grabbed his arm.
No one spoke for the goblin or tried to grab him back. Draco was able to pull him easily into the hall, though his short legs made their progress to the drawing room painfully slow. When at last he shoved the goblin into the room, Aunt Bella was near apoplectic with impatience, swinging the sword towards him somewhat wildly.
“Look at this!” she cried, holding the blade out towards the goblin. “Is this genuine?”
Draco tilted his head past her until he could see Potter, who had pulled himself up to sit, half-slumped against the wall. His hands still trembled with the aftershocks of whatever Bella had done to him. But Potter’s eyes were bright and burning, his face set.
“What would he know about it?” Potter said. “We only met him today, when the Snatchers caught us.”
Bellatrix threw the curse over her shoulder without even looking at Potter. “Crucio! You will be silent!”
Potter’s body jerked so hard his head slammed into the window frame, then the floor as he writhed. Everything twitched; his teeth ground against each other until Draco swore he could hear them creak. At first, eyes squeezed shut, Potter struggled in silence, but once the sound broke through, it was awful. His agonised keening filled the room.
Aunt Bella turned back to the goblin with a sickly-sweet smile. “Now, goblin. Tell me: is this the real Sword of Gryffindor?”
“This…” The goblin ran his fingers over the edge of the blade, bending to peer at the etching. “This is a fake.”
Potter’s screams were horribly, unbearably loud, but somewhere underneath them, Draco could have sworn he heard a…cracking sound. He frowned down the hallway, but he saw nothing there. He was hyperaware of the mirror in his pocket—of what Bellatrix would do if she found it and guessed what he’d done.
“Well,” his aunt said, her entire body relaxing and that saccharine smile pasted on her face. “Well then. I suppose little Potter wasn’t lying after all.” Her eyes darted to his mother’s and Draco saw relief play over both his parents’ faces. What did it matter if the sword was real? She’d said something about her vault. Had she been afraid they’d been inside her vault at Gringotts? No one could break into Gringotts.
And what did it have to do with the Dark Lord?
“We can call him then,” Bellatrix said, her relief blossoming into bliss. She pointed her wand at Potter, dragging him to his feet by invisible ropes. He shook harder now, breath hitching, fingers returned to the painful, cramping claws. Draco assumed the spell had ended, since the screaming had stopped. “Prepare yourself to meet him agai—”
A second crack resounded through the house, much more audible now that Potter was quiet. They all swivelled, looking for the source.
Lucius was the first to speak. “What was that? Did you hear that? What was that noise from the cellar?”
“Draco—” Bellatrix began, but his mother cut her off.
“No, call Wormtail! Make him go and check!” She cast a single, worried glance at Draco.
When Bellatrix nodded, Draco obediently trotted towards the guest room where the snivelling, unpleasant git had made himself comfortable. Wormtail was already waiting at the door, sniffing around while he held onto the doorframe like he was looking for a direction to scurry.
“Something’s happening in the cellar,” Draco said. “Aunt Bella wants you to take a look.” He backed out of Wormtail’s way as soon as the man started to move, wanting at least two feet of clean air between them.
Wormtail descended the stairs, and Draco retreated to the drawing room, not wanting to be anywhere near if there was trouble. I’m not doing it, and it’s not being done to me.
Everyone in the drawing room was frozen, listening. There were faint sounds, as if of a scuffle, from the cellar, but when Draco’s father called down, Wormtail gave a wheezing all-clear. The room relaxed again.
“Good, good,” Bellatrix panted, excitement glittering in her eyes. “We need to prepare the boy for best impact. Kneeling here, don’t you think?” A flick of her wand forced Potter to his knees.
Moving slowly, the goblin reached out for the sword as if to take it. Aunt Bella’s head whipped towards him, and with a lip curl of disgust, she slashed the air with her wand. The goblin fell, shouting and gripping the bleeding cut across his face—probably meant for his throat—and Bellatrix kicked him casually away from her.
“Now,” she said, triumph building in her voice, “now we call the Dark Lord!”
She pushed back her sleeve, held her left arm aloft, and with what could only be described as ecstasy writ across her features, she pressed her index finger against the Dark Mark. Draco felt his own Mark tingle and heat in response.
Potter gasped and flailed against his bonds, eyes squeezed shut against some invisible pain that ground its way out of his throat as a groan. Draco backed up against the far wall. Dread flooded him with ice water. No. The stupid fucking mirror had been nothing. Potter had not escaped, and now Voldemort was coming.
Someone seized Draco’s arm just as he felt the blunt point of a wand jab hard into the side of his throat. “Drop your wands, or I’ll kill him!”
Draco froze, only his eyes cutting sideways to see the flash of red hair. Weasley? Fucking Weasley was trying to take him hostage? Humiliating.
And poorly calculated. Draco could’ve told him Bellatrix and Greyback, at least, wouldn’t blink at such a threat. Aunt Bella spun, teeth bared as she prepared to kill the Weasel, and Draco carefully readjusted his grip on his wand, which Weasley must not have seen in his left hand.
Someone grabbed Draco’s left wrist hard, yanking the wand from his fingers. Granger. He barely had time to recognise her bushy hair before she was shouting, “Bombarda!” Bellatrix skidded backwards across the stone floor as an explosion shook the room.
Potter dropped facedown on the floor; her binding spell must have lifted.
With Draco bracketed by the escapees and a wandpoint digging into the soft place under his jaw, his mother kept her wand at her side. But Greyback, grimacing, fired a green flash of light towards the three of them.
Weasley shoved Draco hard enough to topple them all to the floor behind one of the sofas, still holding fast to Draco’s arm, though he nearly dropped the wand he was holding. Draco scrabbled desperately at Granger’s arm, trying to get his wand back, but she crawled out of his reach, firing an Expulso curse over the arm of the sofa.
He elbowed Weasley hard in the face and received a punishing punch to the ribs, and then the wand was jabbed up under his jaw again. “Get up, you miserable prick,” Weasley said, hauling Draco up in front of him like a shield.
The room was chaos. Potter had tackled a screeching Bellatrix, now bleeding from the ears, and Granger’s onslaught of spells seemed to be providing him enough cover to wrench her wand out of her hands. Greyback narrowed his eyes and took aim at Weasley, a green burst of light shooting past Draco’s shoulder but missing the redhead narrowly.
“Fumos,” Weasley shouted, flicking the wand away from Draco long enough to summon a dark screen of smoke that billowed across the room and blocked Draco’s vision of his parents and Greyback.
More spells flew out of the smoke, but Draco heard his mother screaming for Greyback to stop for fear of hitting Draco.
Potter had wrestled Bella’s wand away from her and was now standing shakily, pointing it at her. She sneered. “It doesn’t matter. The Dark Lord is already on his way.”
“I know,” Potter said. “He’s going to be pissed as hell when he gets here and finds I’m gone. Might kill you, even.” He held his left hand tucked against his stomach, like it was injured.
Lucius emerged from the smoke, preparing to dive at Potter. And then the ceiling seemed to crash down on him.
The massive crystal chandelier slammed into the floor, sending crystalline shards in every direction. Several slashed burning lines across Draco’s face and neck, and Weasley also jerked and cursed. Beneath the wreckage, Draco’s father moved feebly.
Granger screamed, “Stupefy!” and Greyback, who had just emerged, bleeding, from the smoke, was knocked backwards, already unconscious.
Since Potter had turned, throwing his hands up to cover his face, Bellatrix surged to her feet, hair wild as she jabbed towards him with a small, silver knife. Draco’s mother stumbled out of the smoke, almost shoving into her sister, and then her eyes went wide as she looked at something past her and Potter both.
“Dobby? You! You dropped the chandelier?”
Bellatrix stopped, turning towards the tiny elf now trotting into the room. His giant eyes were narrowed in what looked astonishingly like rage, though Draco had never known the creature to be capable of anger. “You must not hurt Harry Potter!”
Was this…was this the help he’d summoned with the mirror? A house-elf?
Potter stumbled forward, grabbing his head with a cry. “Go!” he said, and when no one moved, he said, “Ron, Hermione, go!”
Everything happened at once.
Potter dove for the couch, grabbing the goblin under one arm as he moved. Weasley shoved Draco to the ground again, taking hold of Granger with one hand and reaching out towards Dobby with the other.
And Dobby…Dobby snapped, and Draco was dragged, yelping, towards him, skidding across the stone floor with the jangle of crystal shards and broken chains from the chandelier. He, Potter, and Weasley reached the little elf at the same time. As soon as the elf’s too-long fingers wrapped over Draco’s shoulder, everything started to warp.
Apparition.
Draco shouted wordlessly, eyes on his screeching mother. He had time to see Bellatrix’s arm sling forward as she hurled something, and then everything was pain and queasy darkness and the disorientation of magical movement.