Removing the Dark Mark (Drarry Angst)

At Large

Ayyyy 4 months late.... At this rate I might just finish this book by the time they finally make a Marauders Movie

_______________________

Dumbledore draped his hand over Harry's shoulder and pulled him up to the head of the table. The Order pushed away their plates of trifle and bowls of carrots and swede and looked up to the two of them. Dumbledore turned Harry towards him and asked, "Do you know what You Know Who is trying to do?"

Harry's mouth went dry, he had spent so much time travelling through the day to get to the Shell Cottage with the idea that things would sort themselves out at Hogwarts without really putting much thought into the state he had left everything. He glanced around the room at the other members of the Order; the Weasleys, Mad-Eye Moody, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Remus Lupin, and knew he couldn't possibly tell them that he had just run away from it. Heck he had run away from Draco! When he possibly needed him the most.

However, with Dumbledore's arm draped over his shoulders, he knew he couldn't quite lie either.

"He's..." Harry murmured below his breath, looking out through the window, past the porch where Ron was pacing and to the shimmering forcefield. "He's inside Hogwarts.'

"Hogwarts!"

"But how?!"

"Just when Dumbledore wasn't there!"

"How, in Hogwarts!"

"There must've been a man on the inside!"

The table exploded into a frantic array of baffled hues, their eyes flicking between each other and to Harry with astonishment. Harry's neck flushed hotly, cringing against the over-abundance of noise.

The squabble was only silenced as Dumbledore sat up from his chair, the arm which was still draped like a scarf over Harry's shoulders falling by his sides. "The stars..." he announced, his voice carrying across the room like the ribbons of a kite, before gaining an earthier tone and turning his silky blue eyes towards Harry, "Are listening to you now."

Harry cocked an eyebrow with confusion but, as the room continued to wait tentatively for his explanation, he took a deep breath and began. "I-I don't know what he's doing or what he's after but he's infiltrated Hogwarts. I didn't get the chance to see any Death Eaters, only his, uhh, snake—"

"Nagini," Dumbeldore corrected, rubbing the tips of his fingers together. "Did you see where he got in?"
Harry scratched the back of his neck, going through all the possibilities of whether relaying the truth would cause any destruction anywhere. How would it make him look? Would it hurt Draco? "He used a curse— I-I think..." His mind flashed to Draco's sunken eyes, burning into a deep red as the Dark Mark covered his entire body. "I think he... he cursed a student. Possessed. I didn't even know it was possible," he managed with a shake of his head as if he didn't really understand either yet he knew what he had seen.

Instead of the previous out roar, the table of the Order just sat in stagnant silence, their jaws falling slack and their breath pulled taught.

"A student?" Mrs Weasley murmured meekly, her voice lilting with astonishment. "B-but how?"
"Tell us what you know, Potter," Kingsley asked, now standing up from his chair and leaning his arms against the cluttered tabletop.

Harry gulped down the mixture of fear, guilt and overwhelming stress down his throat. "It was Draco— Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. Voldemort used the Dark Mark to... Possess him." Dumbledore from beside him started to pace back and forth, his apathetic silence starting to make Harry's hair stand on end. "It was slow at first, I noticed him passing out randomly for the past week, he seemed weak but also a lot... Ballsier. Like he would do things that I never thought he would have the guts to do, he seemed happy but also like... Too confident, like it was out of character. As if he knew he was going to end soon." Harry felt his neck grow hot as he realised how much he had been talking about Draco. He dug his nails into the soft wood of the table and tried to swerve his words. "Uh, and he was in the medical wing after fainting again and just as he was being let out I— I was just in the hallway you know, a-and uh he approached me and his skin suddenly turned like a pitch black and... And after I knew it I was talking to Voldemort—"

"I think the garden needs tending to," Dumbledore said simpilly, having moved to look out the window. Harry's eyebrows pinched together with confused annoyance as he followed Dumbledore's gaze through the window, past where Ron was sulking on the deck to the slightly unkempt garden beds. The members of the Order were still sitting at the table, looking to the greatest wizard in the country with the same amount of confusion as Harry.

"Uh... I can do that now..?" Fleur muttered tentatively, pausing between words in hopes for Dumbledore to clarify anything, but when he didn't she pushed herself up from her chair and fetched a spade from the cupboard on the nearest wall.

Harry's gaze followed her, Bill and Mr Weasley as they pottered out to the front yard, glowing in the light of the stars. He looked to Dumbledore's face to see it pull up in a quaint smile.

"Albus... What should we do?" Remus asked, glancing between Harry and Dumbledore patiently.

"I think Bill, Fleur and Arthur have got it managed, no need," he chimed, moving over to the table and serving himself up some yorkshire pudding with plum gravy.

"For bloody sakes, Albus, Hogwarts is in danger!" Mad-Eye Moody barked, clunkily raising from his chair and hobbling to rub his frustrated sneer at Dumbledore. Harry's fists clenched harder and harder the longer Dumbledore stayed silent, almost arrogantly wiping his plate with the pudding in front of Mad-Eye's impatient rage.

"Sir, pleas—" Harry started until Dumbledore interrupted him with a raised hand.

"What's the news, Malissus?" he asked, turning from Alastor to the painting on his right. In it, a woman with ashy eyes and a soot-like complexion crouched into frame through a hatch in the floor.

"I've talked to a few other paintings, and it's not him in the flesh. I think the boy is right, he has possessed a student," she answered, her tall, lean figure bent to fit into the frame.

"The Imperio Charm, perhaps?" Dumbledore asked, pulling up a chair from the table and bringing it forward to face Malissus' painting.

"I'm not sure sir, no one's seen him since Potter left."

"Are there any Death Eaters?" he asked, crossing his legs in the chair and placing his hands on top as if they were talking about knitting patterns rather than the imminent demise of Hogwarts.

"None that I saw. Sir... He might be at large. He could be on his way there in any minut—"

Harry jumped as he heard a high pitched scream from the deck followed by a series of muffled explosions. Harry skidded to the window where Ron pressed his face against the glass. Behind him, the shields shimmered brightly as a series of red, turbulent spells were fired against it, and from across the shore, through the defensive shields and surrounded by a swarm of Death Eaters, Harry could see Draco Malfoy staring back at him.