Beginning at the End ⏃ Dramione

Chapter 30: Divert

Momentarily glancing down at his aunt's long, spindly fingers wrapped around his wrist, Draco thought it felt like she was tugging him along to his doom.

"Nephew, you look like you've got a goblin in your grave! Aren't you excited to see the Dark Lord?"

He dared to pull away so that she was forced to release his arm, and she abruptly stopped to look back at him. Remembering who he was dealing with, Draco kept his eyes low. He was still struggling to banish all the happy moments he shared with Hermione from his thoughts. All of that would be considered treason, and he needed to keep his mind on false memories of his so-called captors. As he adjusted the cuff of his sleeve, he scanned Bellatrix from the bottom up.

"I'm hardly excited to see him, Aunty..." He paused, mostly to clear the acid rising in his throat, before clarifying in a long drawl that mimicked Severus Snape, "I'm honored."

Bellatrix had clearly been caught off-guard by this response, but she could not be seen in such a way, so she quickly donned a false smile that even the portraits on the walls might have found eerie. As she reached for his hand again, he recoiled.

Stepping past her, he continued on. "I'm not a boy anymore."

He held back his curiosity over her reaction and faced forward. Meanwhile, her footsteps now began to flank his.

Just as he was beginning the process of pushing his memories to the far corners of his mind, his aunt began to whisper to herself, "I've got Draco... I've got Draco..." Then she leaned over to him, her stale breath making him wrinkle his nose. "I can't wait to hear what juicy news you've got, nephew."

She paused, likely studying him. Did she know he had nothing? Was she testing him? Draco sensed her stare moving away from him, and then her walk turned into a strut.

"Imagine how impressed everyone will be: Draco the spy!"

Yes, he was a spy. But, he reflected, spying on the Order would have been far more pleasant than what he was attempting to do here at the manor.

Bellatrix continued her chatter, "Maybe you can redeem your pathetic father."

Draco walked in silence. His father's failures were just another thing he had to rise above. Despite expressing disappointment in Lucius's every effort, the Dark Lord continued to use him for some reason.

"I just hope he is not still angry at you for your failures at Hogwarts. Yes, He was very upset wasn't He?"

He felt the blood drain from his face. Ultimately, he thought he had achieved the goal, with Snape's aid or otherwise. Even though Dumbledore had been disposed of, it was never enough for the Dark Lord. Draco was trying his best not to be sick from nerves, when a small vibration against his chest distracted him. Glancing down at the medallion, he quickly looked back up to his aunt to see if she had noticed anything. She, however, was carrying on with her psycho-babble about her catch of the day, so Draco peeked up to scan the rest of the hallway. All the portraits were sneering at them as they passed, Bellatrix was apparently too loud for their liking. Paranoid, Draco withheld looking at the medallion just yet. Even as a child, sneaking around the manor, he had a fear that they could see what others in the living world could not. Up ahead, there were spaces on the wall without a line of family lineage to gawk at them, this is where he could inspect the invisible object.

When he passed the last of the Malfoy heirs, he swiftly lifted the medallion from inside his shirt to glance at it. Having to take a mental picture of the message as they approached the first frame in another series of relatives from the Black family, he quickly dropped it back against his chest. It was all he needed as he continued walking forward; he no longer saw the long hallway to his doom, but the vision of Hermione's message: 'Be-clever-survive-love-you'