The Disappearances of Draco Malfoy

Chapter 1: Afterlife

"I can help you, Draco," said Dumbledore.

"No, you can't," said Malfoy, his wand hand shaking very badly indeed. "Nobody can. He told me to do it or he'll kill me. I've got no choice."

"He cannot kill you if you are already dead. Come over to the right side, Draco, and we can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine. What is more, I can send members of the Order to your mother tonight to hide her likewise. Nobody would be surprised that you had died in your attempt to kill me—forgive me, but Lord Voldemort probably expects it. Nor would the Death Eaters be surprised that we had captured and killed your mother—it is what they would do themselves, after all. Your father is safe at the moment in Azkaban... When the time comes we can protect him too. Come over to the right side, Draco... you are not a killer..."

Malfoy stared at Dumbledore.

"But I got this far, didn't I?" he said slowly. "They thought I'd die in the attempt, but I'm here... and you're in my power... I'm the one with the wand... you're at my mercy..."

"No, Draco," said Dumbledore quietly. "It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now."

Malfoy did not speak. His mouth was open, his wand hand still trembling...

-

With every passing second, the wand in Draco's hand seemed to grow heavier.

Do it, hissed Bella's voice in his mind. Kill him, Draco... the filthy Muggle-lover... look at his ruined hand, look at how he stands, how he breathes. He is as good as dead already! Kill him now!

Draco had been hearing Bellatrix's voice all year. In the days after his assignment, her fanatical energy had felt like a gift. She knew as well as he did that the Dark Lord had given him this mission to punish his father—and yet, she'd said, think, think of what you might achieve, Draco! It is a chance that any faithful servant of the Dark Lord would die for, to serve him beyond all others!

Draco had repeated the idea to himself so many times that it had become a liturgy. This wasn't a death sentence at all. It was an invitation to the Dark Lord's right hand, and if he could only kill Dumbledore, he would cross the finish line, ensure his family's status forever, and win power and glory beyond imagining. Kill Dumbledore, and end the dark year at last.

But now, as the night wind stung his eyes, as he stood shivering upon the cusp of victory, Draco allowed himself to imagine it fully. He saw himself sitting beside the Dark Lord as his most honored deputy. And he saw the truth, glowing steadily and ominously like a faint red light behind everything else. He thought he might have known it for months already.

This was not a finish line. It was the starting gate. Kill once, and he would need to kill again and again to survive. And even then, even if he gave the Dark Lord decades of loyal, absolute service, he wouldn't be safe. He could be brutally punished at any time for a single error, as his father had been.

He thought wildly of his parents, then of Crabbe and Goyle, Pansy and Blaise. They would suffer for his failures the way he'd suffered for his father's. His life would be the dark year drawn out forever into the future, a lifetime spent beneath a knife that hung by a thread.

Draco clutched harder to the wand, telling himself to act—to say the incantation—to make the choice—but the world seemed to be dissolving around him. Everything was coming apart into incomprehensible patches of texture and sensation. There was this: the pale green light that shimmered down from the Dark Mark overhead, undulating over stone and flesh and rampart, like standing in an underwater place. And this: the tacky stick and reek of cloth in the damp pit of his right arm, where his robes had bunched; he hadn't showered in three days, sleepless with preparation. And this: the hiss and whip of the wind at the top of the world.