How...Unfortunate

1

Draco screamed, throwing the half-sawed apple across the room. The sound echoed around the place, despite how full of junk it was. The green apple landed somewhere in one of the large piles that were everywhere, all the old crap that students had been storing in this place for...well presumably since the castle was made in the first place so for several centuries. His eyes glared out, seeing nothing, tears flooding them, but by some miracle he was able to hold them back.

Taking a shuddering breath, he let his body drop to sit on the edge of the cupboard. "It is absolutely hopeless." Draco muttered to himself, feeling tears begin to sting as they slowly fell from his eyes. They dripped from his cheeks onto his legs. Draco felt his body shudder at the fear that gripped him, and let his arms drape across his knees, his head falling heavily on his arms. "How..." He murmured to the empty air. "How am I supposed to fix this...this thing in less than five months?" This task that he had been given by the Dark Lord was more than just difficult...and it left him anxious to complete, but at the same time he was having a lot of difficulty. "It has been three months already," He whispered to himself, finally allowing the fear and frustration to penetrate through. "...and in those three months. I have failed in every bloody conceivable way." Not that Draco thought he was supposed to succeed. He wagered that the Dark Lord had given him this task expecting him to fail. The Death Eaters would just raid the castle if he could not find a way to let them in secretly. He had heard the Dark Lord speaking to his Aunt Bella about it. Surprisingly, the madwoman had backed him up, saying she knew that Draco was more than capable of figuring a way for them to get in. While Draco was honored by his Aunt's belief in him, he was almost certain that it was quite misplaced. "He is going to be so angry." Draco's very bones shuddered at the thought of the Dark Lord's wrath. He had seen it enough times against others. He did not want it wielded against him. "I have nothing to report, no positive updates...my mother..." Draco felt himself choke at the words, shaking his head pitifully. The tears fell down his face slowly, not even able to be stopped by the Malfoy will not cry...ever. Then again...sometimes wills break, and he had been under quite the amount of stress lately.

He knew what would happen if he did not get positive feedback in the next couple of weeks. He did not need someone else to tell him, it was obvious enough. The Dark Lord had made it quite cler when he had given Draco the task in the first place. He held not ill-conceived illusions that it would be a pleasant punishment. At best, Draco would get let off with a couple of Crucio's and that was it. He doubted that he would be given that scenario, it seemed a bit too tame for the Dark Lord's interests. The man was a sadistic bastard. He was likely relishing the upcoming report that Draco was going to have to make, knowing that he was bound to fail.

The winter festivities were coming in two weeks, and he was supposed to return home...He would want an update, Draco just knew it, and if he had nothing good to say, no positive results...what was he supposed to do? His mother would probably be murdered, he would definitely be severely punished...Father...Father would never be released from Azkaban, and though Draco was not sure that was something he cared about all that much he knew the toll that it took on his mother. Even if he disliked Father...he could not put that before his mother's love for him.

"What..." Draco stopped his aloud musings suddenly, hearing the tale tell sound of something flying towards him. Not even registering that nothing should be flying towards him as nobody should be able to get into the room of requirement in the first place. Draco dropped to the floor...feeling damp water flood the front of his shirt and the sleeves of his robes. With no time to really process the fact that he, one, should not be feeling anything but the cold floor of cement or even stone which lined the floor of the Room of Requirement, and for two, his reflexes to things being thrown at him had gotten surprisingly sharp, he had clenched his eyes from the pain of having something cut his arm slightly. It was just a graze, but he heard a terrible screech from behind him that hand him scrambling up and whipping around, only to have him yelp in surprise, jumping backwards as he saw a gigantic spider with a slew of arrows sticking out of it. He felt his heart begin to race but his breaths came out only slightly faster than normal, his mind racing with calculations. "What in Merlin's name?" That was not normal. Beyond the fact that it was cold, and now he was wet courtesy of the floor, but living spiders? In the room of requirement? He supposed it was possible. If some stupid student had put the eggs in the room, they would eventually hatch. Yet, Draco had been in and out of the room for months. At this rate, the room was more his dorm than his actual dorms. Surely, he would have noticed gigantic spiders crawling around!