When You Turn Your Back [Drarry]

[10] Power is Power

Even from a metre away, Draco could tell that the woman was dead by her eyes. Though her face told a story that Draco had witnessed too many times in his life: horror. The curse never left a mark, though the dead eyes conveyed enough for people to catch up.

The small crowd gathered around the lifeless body of the woman held a general air of surprise mixed with horror and confusion as them. But none of them seemed as confused as the two men staring at their former Christmas guest from inside their threshold.

“What the hell — ”

The incoherent mutter of the incomplete sentence pulled him out of Draco's shock stricken reverie and he was compelled to move. Within one long stride, he was beside the woman kneeling down to check for absent pulse and breaths, only to reassure his hypothesis. But there was something that made him frown.

“It was recent. Her body is still warm.” he told Harry.

“How recent?” the man frowned back.

“Like three or five minutes give or take?” Draco said.

“They could be here then?” Harry looked around at the crowd of people with suspicion in his eyes.

“Hardly possible. It takes two minutes to get to the ground floor from here where they could have apparated away.” Draco shook his head.

The paled skin could hardly be connected with her death but more with the reason of her death. The scene raised contradictory questions in Draco's mind that he struggled to answer while he searched for any signs of harassment or fight to flight around her exposed skin of her limbs without any success. Although he found something entirely unexpected when he took off one of her pumps to see her feet.

What fell out was a piece of parchment filled with the words: Guess who? Better luck next time!

“Harry?” Draco called the man clearing the crowd away with the help of his Auror authorities. “Harry!”

“Yeah?”

“Look,”

The site was cleared away within the next ten minutes when a group of Aurors, including Ron popped into the scene in their robes, ready to combat. Though upon sizing the situation, they quite efficiently took the matter in their hands by sending the body with the Aurors to take care of the official formalities that had to be taken care of. Ron's expression had turned sour in anticipation upon seeing the note.

“Can it be Lucius Malfoy?” he had presented his suspicion to the both of them.

“No, it can't be.” Draco had said.

“How can you say?”

“My father wouldn't leave a note like that. Especially in those words.” Draco had made a disgusted face to which Ron had let the matter pass.

Later on he had agreed to the fact in words that Lucius Malfoy indeed wouldn't speak in such colloquial language and was the poshest piglet he had the misfortune to witness in his life. It had all been in front of Draco, hence he had expectantly been quiet about his opinion.

“Someone's trying to mess with you, Harry. Wants some attention.” Ron sneered at the wall behind Harry's head.

“Then they have got to be kidding me, because that's my bloody ex!” Harry had his head in his hands. “What are they trying to prove?”

“I don't know, that they have some toxic obsession with you? Doesn't make any sense.” Ron provided with a sigh.

“Well, we don't exactly know if that note was meant for us.” Draco commented. “And if it was for Harry, then there's more to come.”