For The Greater Good (A Draco Malfoy Story)

The Dream

        It looked like a war zone. The house barely seemed stable as I walked inside. Tables, chairs, parts of the wall, glass, and rubble were strewn about and blown apart. Blood was smeared on the walls. Bodies littered the floor, black robes and skull masks mingling with different colored robes and badges that could only belong to Ministry Officials. The wind whistled from the storm raging on outside as I walked further into the house, my heart pounding against my chest. The house looked familiar but I couldn't think of why. It was like something was clouding my head, making it all hazy as if someone drugged me.

Then I heard it.

Sobs and blood-curdling screams filled the air, breaking the silence and propelling me forward until I reached a room that I had played in as a child. When I walked in, I was greeted with a sight so horrible, I had to lean on the door frame for support. My legs fell out from underneath me, relinquishing their support. The room was trashed and four bodies filled the space within. Rain invaded the room through the shattered window, the wind blowing my mother's floral curtains aside furiously.

But the destruction of the room took a backseat to what laid in the center of it all. There, on her knees with scrapes and bruises covering her body, was my mother...and in her arms was my father's broken and lifeless body. My mother was sobbing and screaming while brushing back my father's hair from his face. Suddenly, she looked up and pure loathing flashed across her amber eyes like a wildfire erupting in forest of dried pine and oak.

"YOU!" She screamed, her voice gone hoarse. "YOU DID THIS! HOW COULD YOU?"

I woke up with Hermione shaking my drenched, trembling body. Warm tears spilled down my cheeks as the image of my father's unseeing eyes flashed through my mind. Concern crinkled Hermione's forehead and added a rushed quality to her voice.

"Rose, are you alright?" she asked. I nodded, albeit shakily. I noticed Hermione wearing the uniform already and realized it was time for breakfast. So without another word, I got up, grabbed some clothes, and went into the dorm's bathroom to take a shower. Once I was done and the water had cleared my head, I went with Hermione down to breakfast in the Great Hall. Conversations from the other students formed a white noise all around me as I sat down at the Gryffindor House table, an array of breakfast dishes placed tantalizingly in front of me. But I could not stomach the sight or smell of the food. My mind kept drifting to the dream and despite my best efforts to focus on Hermione's one-sided conversation, my eyes froze with the image of my mother covered in blood and my father crumpled on the ground before it.

A brief tickling in the back of my head pulled me from my thoughts but the images still faintly lingered, like dark spots appearing before your eyes after staring at the sun too long and finally looking away. I turned and met my brother's glance before his hand landed on my shoulder in greeting. I felt the tension transfer through our contact and his face immediately wiped of any jovialness.

"What's happened?" he asked in a low voice. I felt my throat constrict and choke out any words that lingered there so I only motioned my head towards the door. His hand never left my shoulder as we exited the Hall together and I found myself using it as a tether to sanity.

"What's happened?" he asked once more when we arrived under the shade of an oak tree by the Black Lake. I told him the whole dream and about halfway through it, tears collected in my eyes despite my best efforts. I tried to spare him the gruesome details but when the horror started to dilate his pupils, I knew he saw everything anyway through our mental connection.

"Gabriel," I began.

"No," he backed away from me slightly, shaking his head. "No. It was just...just a dream," he said, but I could tell even he didn't believe it. "We'll go to Dumbledore, that's what we'll do. He'll know if -- he'll know what this means."