𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙥 | DRACO MALFOY

blood in the water

__________ start of year 7 part 2 _________

Harper Malfoy

The marble floors were slick with blood.

I stood just behind Draco, my hand curled loosely around his wrist. His skin was clammy. Mine was worse. The copper tang in the air made my stomach turn. It was impossible to tell if it was the light filtering in through the tall windows or the blood reflecting off the walls, but the entire room had taken on a sickly, red haze.

Griphook lay sprawled near the hearth, his small hand still clenched around the sword of Gryffindor. His eyes were open, blank, like glass marbles. The blade in his hand shimmered one last time and then simply vanished.

Gone.

"Did you see that?" I murmured, leaning closer to Draco. "The sword... it just disappeared."

He didn't answer, only nodded faintly. I could feel the tension in his bones, the war within him still raging. He wasn't the only one battling himself.

Lucius stood like a statue beside us, the corners of his mouth twitching as if he wanted to speak but didn't dare. Narcissa's face was unreadable. And Bellatrix—Merlin, Bellatrix was trembling with a twisted kind of delight, her eyes fixed on the widening pool of blood that had crept to her boots. She didn't even flinch.

Then he spoke.

Voldemort.

His voice slithered through the room in Parseltongue, incomprehensible yet paralyzing.

He knows something. He's planning something.

Nagini coiled around his feet, hissing softly in reply, as if part of the same dreadful rhythm. Voldemort's red eyes didn't blink.

"The boy has discovered our secret, Nagini," he said. "We must find out just how much he knows. We must return to our hiding places and see if the others are safe."

A storm of images flashed through my mind—some mine, some his. A ring with a black stone. A diary. The lake under the school. A tiara. A cup. Hogwarts. Ravenclaw. So many pieces I couldn't connect. Faces I didn't recognize. Things he feared.

And Harry.

Always Harry.

"He's getting too close," I whispered under my breath.

Draco heard. "Too close for him... or for us?"

I didn't answer. I wasn't sure I knew.

Voldemort turned his head slightly, speaking again to Nagini. "And you, my friend, must stay close..."

The snake slithered tighter around his robes. Her scales caught the dying light like wet glass, each movement precise, predatory.

Then, silence.

The kind of silence that weighs down on you, that waits with bated breath. A beat too long. A warning.

I shifted closer to Draco. "He's leaving again. That means something's gone wrong."

"Or right," Draco said quietly. "Depends who you ask."

I glanced back at Griphook's body, at the now-empty space where the sword had been.

Nothing about this felt right. Not anymore. And deep down, I was beginning to wonder if it ever had.

The air in Malfoy Manor had grown heavier by the hour, thick with tension and the stench of blood that not even the finest incense could mask. It clung to the silk curtains, seeped into the stone floors, settled in my lungs. I woke up tasting fear, went to sleep clutching it. Every moment here, beneath my father's roof and my father's watchful eyes, was a game of survival—one I had learned too well.