Who Will Stop the Rain

The Salamander

Draco picked up the origami figure shaped like a salamander and turned it over in his trembling fingers. The messenger had informed him that concealed within each figure was an address that would take Draco to each trial. The address to the first trial was to be found within the salamander.

You have only days, perhaps hours to complete your trials successfully and secure the safe return of your son, the parchment had read. Move with speed and surety. A moment's hesitation could mean his end. I will contact you again once you have completed the first trial.

Draco had written back, begging for more information, asking why they were doing this to him, but they did not reply. He roughly wiped away his tears with the back of his hand and unfolded the salamander figure. The Aurors had been useless so far and he wasn't going to take the killer's threats lightly - he believed that if he contacted the Ministry and the killer found out, they would disappear like a whisper in the wind. It wasn't worth the risk. Draco knew now that he had no choice but to play the killer's twisted game: this was his only chance to save Scorpius.

He flattened the creased paper on the table and felt his stomach clench at the all-too familiar address scrawled onto the paper: Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire.

Of course it had to be the bloody Manor. Without a moment's hesitation he stuffed the piece of paper into his pocket, grabbed his wand and strode out of the room. The quicker he got this done, the sooner he would have his son back.

Draco hurried out of the pub into a nearby alleyway, checking over his shoulder that nobody had seen him before Apparating to the entrance of the ruined Manor he had once called home. Dark clouds hung low overhead, promising another downpour. More rain meant there was less time to find Scorpius. He strode towards the Manor's entrance, his feet slipped and splashed in puddles as he took in his eerily familiar surroundings. He had been born in the Manor, spent most of his life here before the fire had torn through it, leaving it uninhabitable. Time and neglect had left the once magnificent stately home in ruins, the neatly trimmed gardens were wild now, while the house itself was little more than a burnt husk, left to decompose over the years.

He marched up the flagstone steps towards the front entrance where the large oak doors stood ajar. Before Draco entered the derelict building, something bright and shiny caught his eye. On the uppermost step sat a small porcelain figurine shaped like a salamander. Draco's heart began to thump painfully in his chest. The killer had been here, at his ancestral home. To know that bastard had sullied the place with their presence was just further salt in the wounds as far as Draco was concerned.

He picked up the porcelain figure in order to inspect it more closely and heard something rattle inside of it. Turning the figurine over in his hand, he scrutinised it from all angles. There was only one way to access whatever was concealed within it. He smashed the figurine on the stone steps and it shattered, pieces of white porcelain bouncing away in all directions. Draco immediately spotted a key amongst the shards and snatched it off of the ground. It was small in size, gold with a fleur-de-lis symbol stamped onto the bow. He immediately recognised it as a key to the Manor's Drawing Room. Draco wondered how the killer had come to acquire such an item, but he supposed it wouldn't be so difficult - the Manor and its contents had been abandoned on the night of the fire. It would have been easy for anyone to enter in the aftermath and pilfer what hadn't been swallowed up by flames.

Pocketing the key, Draco clutched his wand tightly in his hand, pushed open the dilapidated door and slipped into the Entrance Hall. He walked slowly through the darkened entrance before veering left in the direction of the Drawing Room, taking care to make as little noise as possible as he walked further into the heart of the ruined Manor. The only thing that he could hear was his footsteps reverberating through the lofty corridors and the occasional fluttering of a pigeon's wings echoing from one of the distant rooms. The stench of rotten, burnt wood filled his nostrils as he took in the sorry sight before him - the paintings that had once lined the hallways were gone (whether burned or stolen, he didn't know), and the only source of light emanated from the tip of his wand.