The Scorpions Kiss

Chapter 11- Deeds Darker Than Death or Night



The next day Draco was quietly reserved at breakfast and thereafter in the next week that passed with no word from Harry and Ron yet. He seemed to be keeping Scorpius much closer to him these days and even waited for Hermione outside her classroom anytime he knew she would be leaving that wing of the castle.



It was nearing the holidays now and Hermione desperately needed to get Draco and Scorpius out of the castle. Draco seemed to have lost his sense of humor and Scorpius was misbehaving terribly these days because he was not used to not being able to run and play outside like all the other kids. Hogwarts was a big school, but not as big as the wide world outside the castle and Scorpius was going stir crazy to be a part of it. She had the perfect solution. She was chaperoning a student’s trip to Hogsmeade this snowy afternoon and she would surprise Draco and Scorpius by bringing them along. Draco needed to have some fun in his life. Since Harry had brought the news of Lucius’s release from Azkaban he had lost that luster for fun and games. He would normally come back from a victory with the Chudley Canons high on life and would want to make sweet beautiful love to Hermione all night long, but the last game he won he had just come back and dumped his broom in the closet and sat by the fire deep in thought. He still kissed Hermione but he hadn’t made love to her for weeks and it worried Hermione that he was shutting her out of his problems. She desperately wished he wouldn’t.



Draco, Hermione and Scorpius walked hand in hand down the snowy path to Hogmeade. The fresh air and the newly fallen snow that made everything look so clean and perfect had really improved Draco’s mood. Scorpius ran ahead a few feet hiding behind various rocks and then jumping out to scare Draco and Hermione who pretended to be frightened out of their wits as Scorpius laughed great belly laughs each time he did the same thing repeatedly.



“He never gets tired of that game, does he?” Hermione giggled.



“Nope, he sure doesn’t,” Draco replied as he crept around another boulder-sized rock and yelled boo to Scorpius, who laughed and climbed up into his father’s loving arms.



They reached the tiny town of Hogsmeade and Hermione noticed that the Three Broomsticks had a sign on the door that said “free hot chocolate to all young witches and wizards.” Hermione pointed to Draco and Scorpius, who were now throwing snowballs at each other as she slipped into the Three Broomsticks to get them all some hot chocolate. The place was warm and dry and she took off her gloves and scarf, sat down at a table and ordered hot chocolate for three. The waitress gave her the three cups and she was getting ready to leave when Professor Trelawney appeared at her side.



“Have you seen my sister, Hilda? She’s disappeared again,” Trelawney said with a sound of worry in her voice.



“What do you mean she disappeared?” This was the second time Sybil Trelawney had mentioned her sister disappearing. The first time, she had been cuddled up next to Draco in an old broom closet outside the Transfiguration classroom and just thought Trelawney had been confused; after all she had smelled of cooking sherry that day.



“Oh, dear, we were walking over to Honeydukes and then I heard a pop and she had disappeared! I thought you were smarter than that, Professor Granger.” Hermione had always loathed Professor Trelawney and that hadn’t changed.



“I am sure your sister will come back, although it is very odd, nobody apparates in Hogsmeade. It’s too close to Hogwarts and you can’t apparate back to Hogwarts because of the security enchantments.” Hermione was piecing something together in her mind.



“Sybil, please think hard when I ask you this. Where was your sister before she came to Hogwarts?” Hermione held Trelawney’s hand tightly and sat up intently listening for her answer.



“I don’t really know. I didn’t know her until this year when she appeared at Honeydukes while I was buying some sweets for my students. She introduced herself to me and told me she was my long lost sister, isn’t it wonderful?!”



Hermione thought quietly for a moment before leaping from her chair and running as fast as her legs would carry her, swinging the door to the Three Broomsticks open and then out into the cold snow. Where were Draco and Scorpius? She had to find them; something was wrong, very wrong.



She finally spotted Draco in the distance near the edge of the woods. He looked to be covering his eyes; no doubt playing hide and seek with Scorpius still.



“Draco, where is Scorpius?!” Hermione shouted as she ran towards the edge of the forest to the patch of clean snow where Draco and Scorpius were playing.



“Well, if I told you that, it would blow his hiding place, Granger,” Draco was smiling playfully until he saw the look of horror on Hermione’s face.



“What’s wrong?” Draco spoke with a sense of urgency.



“Oh, we have to find Scorpius, hurry!” Hermione began looking behind various large rocks in a frantic fashion. “Professor Trelawney’s sister disappeared again. Don’t you see? She apparated when she got to Honeydukes. Honeydukes is the barrier for being able to apparate, I read it in the Hogwarts teachers guide. Didn’t you read it? Oh, we have to find him. She is a fake; Trelawney’s sister is a fake. She never knew her before this year!”



Draco began shouting Scorpius’s name but the little boy was nowhere to be found. His little footprints were everywhere in the snow, so Draco decided to take one set while Hermione took the other set of prints, hoping one of them would find him.



“Scorpius? Scorpius? Daddy is getting very worried about you, come on, squirt, come out now! You win!” Draco called out as he followed the footprints in the snow. He was now deep in the woods and to his dismay the footprints of his son stopped abruptly, but were picked up by larger footprints. Draco’s face drained to milky white as he picked up his pace, following the prints of the larger man in the snow. He was running furiously now, following the trail when it stopped behind a large pine tree.



“Whoever you are, give me my son back now and I won’t kill you,” Draco called out to the figure behind the tree, wand in hand.



“Scorpius, are you alright? Daddy is here, baby!” Draco heard the muffled cry of his son and he edged forward to move closer to the figure behind the tree. He could only see the end of the figure’s black cloak and then he saw it. The long white hair of his father as he peered around the tree with Scorpius tucked under his arm, a petrified look on the boy’s face.



“Give him to me!” Draco shouted at the man as he stepped closer to Draco. “If you lay one hand on him, I will kill you without a second thought,” Draco said irately.



“Now, now, Draco, you wouldn’t want to scare the boy, would you? “ Lucius’s shrill voice sent chills down Draco’s back. He had feared the man who stood before him as a child. Even as an adult, Draco had been plagued with dreams of the beatings he took in his youth from his father. Now, that very man stood in front of him, holding his heart cradled in his arms and he knew he would do anything he said to keep Scorpius safe.



“Scorpius and I have gotten to know each other over the past few weeks, you see. He loves his grandpa, Lucius, don’t you, boy?” Lucius was twirling his fingers in the little boy’s flaxen hair, as the boy’s eyes were becoming wide with fear.



“He’s scared, Father. Give him to me,” Draco said, holding his arms out to take the boy.



Lucius gently handed Scorpius to Draco, who clutched him tightly in his arms as Scorpius clung to Draco for safety.



“He reminds me of you when you were small Draco. No doubt he will cause you great shame when he grows up, just as you have me,” Lucius sneered at Draco and stepped closer.



“Really, Draco, cavorting with Mudbloods? Obviously this fatal flaw in you comes from your mother. She always coddled you too much as a child. After all my years of teaching you and feeding you and loving you as my son, you repay me by fucking a Mudblood and having her bastard child? This won’t do at all, now, will it?” Lucius was moving slowly around Draco and his son, the soft snow crunching under his feet as he spoke. Draco’s face burned with the white hot fire and rage of a thousand suns going supernova.



Just then he heard Hermione calling out to the both of them. He could see her silhouette in the trees getting closer to where they stood in the forest. He set Scorpius down and pointed.



“Run to Miss ‘Mione ,Scorpius.” Scorpius turned and looked at his father as if worried to leave him, and Draco shouted at the boy with a stern look on his face.“Run. Now!" Scorpius took off on his little legs, crying as he ran to Hermione who spotted him through the trees and ran to him, scooping him up into her arms and then stopping to watch Draco and Lucius in the distance.



“Now that it is just you and I, let’s get down to it then, shall we?” Lucius said in a wicked voice as Draco stood only inches from his face.



“I am working on something big that requires your help. You will do what I ask, when I ask it of you, without any questions, or I will kill the Mudblood and the bastard child.” Draco looked at him pleadingly, his face contorted in the pain he felt in his heart.



“Yes, Draco, you are starting to understand, I can see,” Lucius grabbed Draco hard around the neck at this.“I know you think you love the Mudblood bitch, Granger. Like I said, I’ve been watching you for a while now right under your nose. You think you love the whore, but you don’t. A Malfoy doesn’t ever truly love his women, do we? You know what I am talking about; all the women in your past? All the filth you laid down with in your bed, without any thought of how it would hurt me. Well, I have a job for you that will be right up your alley, my traitorous, worthless, idiot son. You can repay me for the years I spent in Azkaban!”



Lucius took the heel of his hand, his other hand choking Draco around the neck and rammed it hard and fast into Draco’s nose. He heard the bone in his nose crack under his palm. Draco’s soft, warm blood trickled down his face. Draco swung his hand at Lucius’s face and hit him hard in the mouth causing Lucius to stumble backwards. Draco reached for his wand, but his father disarmed him and Draco ran fast and hard as spells from his father’s wand shot past him, only barely missing him.



“I’ll never work for you. I’m going to kill you, Father! I’ll kill you first!” Draco was shouting back as he ran towards Hermione and Scorpius, his face split open and his nose bleeding on the snow-blanketed ground.



Lucius called out to him and something made Draco turn around. When he turned around he saw his father take something from his cloak. He held a black, solid ball in his hands. It let off a purplish hue as he rubbed it, his wand pointing at it as he chanted. Draco was halfway back to the clearing where Hermione and Scorpius stood watching the scene in terror. Hermione, shielding the boys face and soothing his cries, could see Draco’s face dripping with blood as he ran towards them. His body was ricocheting off the trees as he lost his balance and fell.



“Crucio!” Lucius yelled as he had put the black ball away in his cloak. Draco felt a ripping pain shoot through his body. It felt like every cell in his body had exploded in torturous agony simultaneously. He lay on the ground staring out at Hermione and Scorpius, wanting to go to them, but the pain immobilized him and when it finally stopped, he drifted away.



Just then, a woman screamed out in the center of town. Hermione could see a dementor hovering over a crowd of people who stood around her. Then another was there and another, until the town of Hogsmeade was being invaded by at least twenty dementors. Hermione ran to Draco who lay in the snow and pulled him up. He was groggy and she was horrified to notice that he had split his head open as well as she held his head in her cloak.



“Draco, we have to get out of here!” Hermione was petrified as Scorpius clung to her, his tiny voice wailing as she tried desperately to get his father up off the ground.



“The dementors, Draco,oh please hurry!” Draco rose to his feet holding his head but it was too late, three dementors had descended upon them and Hermione held out her wand and shouted,“EXPECTO PATRONUM!” Her full-bodied patronus of an otter sprang forth from her wand and held the dementors back. She observed other professors in Hogsmeade doing the same thing and after an exceedingly long amount of time all of the dementors flew away, leaving the village of Hogsmeade to deal with the ramifications of the massacre that had just taken place in their sleepy, little village.



People were everywhere screaming and crying. Three witches were dead in the center of the town. The dementors had killed them with their kiss of death. All three women were muggle-born witches.



In the hours that followed, the Daily Prophet ran a story on the tragedy as Hermione read it from the hospital wing at Hogwarts.



Muggle-Born Witch Massacre



Three Dead, More to Follow?