PRINCESS ➳ harry potter , draco malfoy (OLD VERSION)

76 || The Lion and the Lioness

December drifted into a frozen January, and before Katie knew it, she had said goodbye to Sirius and the rest of the Order, traveled back to Hogwarts, and finished a very tedious day of lessons. She was now sat at dinner, relieved that her classes were over, but dreading the pile of homework that she had already gotten on her first day back.

"Woah," Pansy gasped as she read the front page of the Daily Prophet. "Look at this." She pushed the paper across the table so that Katie and Draco could read it together. Katie felt an uncomfortable shiver run down her spine when she read the bold headline: MASS BREAKOUT FROM AZKABAN, MINISTRY FEARS BLACK IS 'RALLYING POINT' FOR DEATH EATERS.

Ten black and white pictures filled the front page, nine showing wizard's faces, and the tenth, a witch's. Her hair was unkempt and straggly. She glared up at Katie through heavily lidded eyes, an arrogant, disdainful smile playing around her thin mouth. Despite her estranged appearance, Katie instantly recognised her from the family tree at Grimmauld Place — Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius' cousin.

Each picture was captioned with a name and crime for which the person had been sent to Azkaban.

Antonin Dolohov, convicted for the brutal murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett.

Augustus Rookwood, convicted of leaking Ministry of Magic secrets to He Who Must Not Be Named.

Bellatrix Lestrange, convicted of the torture and permanent incapacitation of Frank and Alice Longbottom.

Her face growing steadily paler with every passing second, Katie read through Bellatrix's caption at least three times to make sure that she had not misread anything. Then, with a horrible writhing feeling in her stomach, as though serpents were coiling around inside of it, she cast her gaze along the Gryffindor table. Her eyes found Neville. He was sat beside Dean Thomas, the Daily Prophet hanging loosely from his hands, his mouth and eyes open in a silent scream. Katie could feel horror rising in her throat like bile. Of course she had known that Neville was raised by and lived with his grandmother, but she had never known or been so ignorant as to ask what had happened to her parents. However, now that she knew, she desperately wished she didn't.

"Bellatrix Lestrange?" Draco whispered to himself. Katie decided to tear her stare away from Neville and look at Draco instead. "She's — she's my Aunt."

Katie's stomach did a somersault. "She's your what?"

"My Aunt," Draco repeated simply, oblivious to Katie's horrified tone. "I forgot all about her."

But Katie didn't care that Draco was related to Bellatrix, what she cared about was the fact that he was related to Sirius.

"You — you're related to Sirius Black?" she asked.

Draco turned to face her with a scrutinising look etched into his expression. His eyes narrowed.

"I suppose I am," he said darkly. "Why?" he added.

Katie gulped harshly. "No reason."

After dinner, Katie had barely left her seat when Chris came tearing across the Great Hall towards her, madly flailing a copy of the Daily Prophet around in his hand.

"Did you — did you see—?" he gasped.

"Yes," Katie told him. "Chris, you know what this means don't you?" she dropped her voice to a level that was so low it was barely louder than a whisper. "He's got them. He's got the Dementors on his side."

***

Over the next few days, the entire school had received the news of the mass breakout at Azkaban. Those who came from wizarding families, like Katie, had grown up hearing the names of these Death Eaters spoken with almost as much fear as Voldemort's. Katie always recalled her mother being very reluctant to speak about Voldemort or his followers — not that most people enjoyed sharing that kind of information with their children, but Maria Blair flat out refused to speak of the first war or anything that had happened during it.