The Cell

Chapter 12: Loyalties

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

- Anne Frank

When Draco reached the top of the stairs, he stopped for a moment and braced himself against the wood paneling. She was going to live. She was going to be okay.

Unfortunately, this created almost as many problems as it solved. There was a portkey waiting for him in London and he wanted nothing more than to take her to Italy, far away from any more danger or pain, but she wasn't one to run from a fight; if he knew anything about her, he knew that.

His mind drifted back to the copy of the Daily Prophet from downstairs. At least he finally had an answer to the "why" of the matter. All this time they were keeping her alive to further a propaganda scheme, in case they needed to take more hair. That was it. Polyjuice potion didn't work with a dead person as the subject of transformation. Nobody was even monitoring closely enough to piece together that she had nearly died. They were stuffed in that cell and forgotten about, known only to each other and a mute, half-blind house elf.

Draco couldn't help but wonder if perhaps there was a doppelganger of himself wandering about as well, but he didn't think there would be any tactical advantage in that. He knew his father and he would bet galleons for gargoyles that the man had locked him in the cell with Hermione as some twisted form of punishment for his transgression. The Dark Lord might not even know about it.

Now that he had said it out loud, spoken about what had actually happened, he was faced with the fact that he had risked everything, his own life, his mother's life, for a girl he didn't even like.

Then he realised what he was missing, the question he had failed to ask since getting out. Turning from the doorway to the bedroom, he ran back down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

"Blaise, Theo, my mother!" he shouted frantically. "What happened to my - ?"

He came up short. As if summoned, seated on the couch in the front parlor conversing in hushed tones with Theo and Blaise, sat Narcissa Malfoy.

"Draco," she breathed with a smile upon seeing him, getting to her feet and crossing the room in several long strides before pulling him tightly into her arms. Draco could see over her shoulder as Theo dragged Blaise from the room and shoved him in the direction of the kitchens.

"C'mon," he muttered, "you can see the finger."

Draco buried his head in his mother's neck and drew in several ragged breaths before she pushed his shoulders away from her and placed a hand on either side of his face, looking him over as she had when he was a boy, before releasing him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in a shaking voice. They moved back to the sofa across from Hermione and sank down.

"I'm the one that told Blaise and Theodore where you were, did they not say?"

He shook his head no.

"That's alright, it appears things were rather more eventful than I had anticipated," she said, nodding across the room to the slumbering witch with a sly smile. "I can't stay for long, I'm meant to be meeting your father at Hogwarts."

"What – no, that's absurd, just come with us," he said with a bewildered expression, trying to understand why she would even consider such a thing.

"I'm sorry Draco, I can't do that."

"Why?" he demanded. "Because of father? Enough is enough mother, come, leave with us. Please."

"It was never about your father..."