Breaking the rules

AN-This chapter is a little short, but the next one is going to be pretty long. It explains exactly what happened to the Malfoys.



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"How can this be happening?" Ron mumbled tearfully. He was sitting hunched over in an uncomfortabl wooden chair outside Harry\'s hospital room.



Ginny was huddled against the wall, half listening as she struggled to come to terms with the deaths that seemed to be pressing in painfully from every direction. The hardest was Harry\'s, having been witness to every agonizing minute of it, but knowing that Hermione had died by means of a very painful curse shocked her to the core.



The worst part was waiting for Harry to actually die. Healer Singh had declared him brain dead shortly after they had observed his memories. All the life giving spells he had been under had already been removed, but half an hour later he was still hanging on.



"This can\'t be happening," Ron muttered angrily. "It can\'t!"



"It is, Ron!" Ginny snapped. "We have to accept it!"



"Why?" Arthur spoke up suddenly. "Harry\'s not dead yet, maybe he\'ll surprise us," Both of his children turned nearly identical dubious frowns on him, and he shrugged helplessly, "He\'s not dead yet."



"It\'s only a matter of time, Dad," Ginny sighed and wiped her eyes as tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. "He fell so far. A muggle would be dead already."



"I know," Arthur sighed sadly.



Just then the doors to the lift opened and Kingsley appeared, looking more shaken than Ginny had ever seen him. "To think we thought things would be better with You-know who gone," he murmured tiredly. "Everything is falling apart."



"What now?" Arthur asked reluctantly.



"My men just found Narcissa Malfoy locked in an old cell in the lower dungeons of Hogwarts," Kingsley sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Lucius and Draco were dead in the same cell," he added quietly. Ginny gasped, feeling another weight added to her chest at the thought of Draco lying dead after the haunted look she\'d seen in his eyes earlier. "I guess You-know-who\'s followers didn\'t take kindly to her protecting Harry."



"So...wait...she\'s alive? Why kill Lucius and Draco and leave her alive?" Ron asked.



"They killed Lucius to punish her. Even worse, they forced her to kill her own son, then let her live. So she would suffer with knowing she ended her child\'s life," Kingsley explained quietly.



"How did they make her kill Draco?" Arthur asked, looking shocked. "Imperius?"



"They tortured him with the same knife that was used to kill Hermione. He was suffering, and they forced Narcissa to put him out of his misery," Kinsley explained with a grimace.



"Oh gods!" Ginny gasped, feeling a wave of dizziness pass over her.



"How could she?" Ron frowned. "How could she bring herself to do it?"



"I told you, the knife is cursed to cause extreme pain, but the victim doesn\'t die until the curse travels through the blood to the heart. Hermione was cut close to her heart, so she died fairly quickly," Kingsley frowned sadly. "Draco...wasn\'t so lucky. The bastard cut...he cut half his scalp off, and then started to cut..." Kingsley glanced at Ginny and hesitated.



"Cut what?" Ginny didn\'t know why, but she had to know what had happened to the boy who had saved the Hufflepuff girl\'s life just hours before.



Kingsley didn\'t speak, but glanced down at his own groin. Ginny frowned confusedly for a moment before the implication sank in. "It would have taken him several hours to die. He begged Narcissa to kill him."



Ginny didn\'t have a chance to turn away before she threw up all over the Minister of Magic\'s shoes.