Dramione - The Sweetest Dream

Chapter 55

"Please, don't stop on my accord.  I would hate to disrupt such an intimate moment," Bellatrix drawled as she stuck out her lower lip in mock sympathy, her lips stretching into a malevolent grin in a flash of yellowed teeth.

            "Where's the Draconite?"  Draco said through a clenched jaw, his chest rising and falling quickly with each short and controlled breath.

            "Oh, this thing?"  She pulled the small stone from the folds of her cloak, holding it in a trembling hand, each thin, fragile bone visible beneath her papery skin.  As her fingers brushed the stone, her veins began to darken, her blood running black through her body as her flesh began to adapt a slate grey hue.   

            "It is quite an impressive bit of magic," she tossed the stone between her hands, the rock making a small clinking sound as it touched her palms.  "But it comes at such a price."

            "Why did you take away those student's magic?"  Hermione's voice rang cold and hollow in the cave.  Bellatrix leaned casually against the wall of the cavern, brushing the Draconite affectionately with a gnarled finger.

            "I'm finishing the Dark Lord's work, quite successfully, I might add."  Her voice was eerily cheery, her grey skin stretched tight over the bones of her face as she grinned.  "Students are Hogworts will slowly start losing their ability to preform magic, one by one they'll become powerless."  A manic laugh escaped her lips, ringing cold against the damp stone.

            "Then why take away the magic of Pure Bloods?"  Draco edged closer to his aunt, stretching up to his full height, his knuckles white as he clasped his wand.

            "Pure Bloods that sympathize with Mudbloods should suffer the same fate as their Muggle-born friends," she sneered. 

            Mudbloods.  Hermione brushed her fingertips along the scar along her forearm, given to her by Bellatrix herself.   Bellatrix saw the flicker of movement and tossed her head back, laughing wildly, a ring of white rimming her crazed eyes.

            "You're awfully familiar with disloyal Pure Bloods, aren't you?  You filthy little Mudblood."  Her laugh stopped abruptly, the echo hanging eerily in the frigid air, as she slowly walked towards Hermione, the sound of her feet dragging along the stone filling the air.  She stopped just a few paces away, part of her face illuminated by the light of Hermione's wand, the other obscured in shadow.

            The faint sound of heels tapping against the stone began to grow from the mouth of the cave, growing louder with each step.  Draco glanced over his shoulder to see the figure of a woman emerging from the darkness, her silver hair glowing in the pale light of her wand.

            "Mum," he whispered, the color draining from his cheeks.  "What are you doing here?"

            "I followed you.  You honestly think I'd let the two of you come alone?"  She gazed fondly at her son and Hermione, before fixing a stern gaze towards Bellatrix.

            "How kind of you to come, Cissy," Bellatrix sneered.

            "Where's Rodolphus?"  Narcissa asked coldly, her eyes scanning the cave.

            "He's right over there," the tip of Bellatrix's wand lit, a beacon of light falling across the stone and landing on a lump of flesh and blood, the eyes unmoving and fixed in a state of horror. 

            Hermione clasped a hand over her mouth, a wave of nausea crashing into her as she saw Rodolphus's waxy skin, his limbs already becoming stiff with rigor mortis. 

            "Why would you do this?  Why kill your own husband?"  Draco's voice was low, his anger bubbling beneath the surface of his cool and detached exterior.  Bellatrix took a step closer to him, the rancid smell of whiskey overwhelming with each exhale.

            "This is what happens to those that are not loyal to the Dark Lord," she whispered, pointing a thin finger at her dead husband, slouched against the stone in a puddle of his own blood.  "Surely, you'll reconsider your loyalties."  She dragged her finger along the contour of his jaw, nicking his skin with her nail as she returned her hand to the folds of her cloak, a bead of warm blood trickling down his neck.

            Draco stood in silence, the silver flecks in his deep blue eyes seeming to glow in the shadows of the cave.  Hermione watched him, her hand instinctively wrapping around her abdomen, feeling the soft flutter of movement from within her.  The lines in Bellatrix's face deepened as her face became distorted with rage.

            "You disloyal brat!"  Bellatrix screamed, inches from Draco's unchanging face, her eyes glazed over with an unhinged sort of madness.  She fixed her gaze on Hermione, her fist shaking as she clenched her wand.  Turning her head slowly to Draco, her lips curled into the familiar malevolent grin. 

            "I suppose the only solution is to get rid of the Mudblood that's corrupting you.  Crucio!" Hermione doubled over in pain, contorting her body in bizarre angles in a feeble attempt to escape the blinding pain.  Her blood pulsed loudly in her ears, the quiet pitter-patter of the twin's heartbeats becoming a faint hum, fading into the darkness.

            "No!"  Draco felt the seams of his heart begin to burst as he watched Hermione's face become distorted from pain.  A powerful desire to protect the woman he loved, and his unborn children, coursed through him, surging through his fingertips and into his wand, his love and pain emitting into a beam of pale blue light from the tip of his wand, crashing into Bellatrix.

            "No," she muttered over and over, dropping her wand as she pressed her hands against her body, the liquid stone of her skin fading away to her thin, pale flesh.  The Draconite lay on the ground, quivering on the stone, until it crumbled into a fine powder.  Bellatrix bent down, running her shaking hands through the dust. 

            Hermione collapsed onto the ground as the Cruciatus Curse left her, the rise and fall of her chest slowing dramatically as she lay on the cold stone.  Draco rushed to her side, a wet lock of hair clinging to his forehead as he rested his head on her chest, listening for the rhythmic beating of her heart, searching desperately for a flicker of life within her frail body.

            As he lay next to Hermione, the cave became illuminated with a toxic green light, his mother yelling the incantation, her voice choked with emotion.  Draco glanced quickly over his shoulder to see Bellatrix splayed on the ground, her eyes staring at some unforeseeable distance, cold, unmoving, and dead.