How They Fell

Chapter Seven


Draco woke up the next morning with the feeling of wrongness. He frowned to him self sleepily as he tried to figure out what it could be.

Opening his eyes he realised that it was much too early to be awake, it was six in the morning for fuck’s sake! Why was he awake now! If one of the bloody house elves had woken him up it would get one hell of a beating!

However he couldn’t hear any noise, and try as he might he could not go back to sleep. After lying there for half an hour getting grumpier and grumpier with the situation he decided to get up. Throwing a cloak over his shoulders he walked into the hall, and started to pace through the house.

But…something felt off in the magic that pervaded the house. He couldn’t describe it – but somehow the usual atmosphere of his childhood home had gone.

He closed his eyes, trying to distinguish what it was. He felt like the house was leaning towards something, everything focused on a point outside of the house. It was watching and kind of…flowing out to that point, taking the warmth and strength out from the stones around him.

Draco opened his eyes in a flash of silver. Something was wrong, nothing should sap at the house like that.

He quickly began to stride towards that odd focal point, going downstairs and out of a back door.

Whatever it was it was not in the kitchen gardens, but towards the north, somewhere near the small corps of trees on the estate.

Draco moved hurriedly and stealthily around the side of the house towards the northern side. It was pulling him, telling him that it was to his right somewhere on the lawn.

Making his way closer, Draco’s eyes swept over the scene in front of him. It was a beautiful clear morning and the grass was wet with dew under his feet.

There – there. Just in front of the line of trees, a bulge of black rose from the green lawn.

Draco ran towards it.

Something here was wrong, so very wrong.

Coming closer, Draco could see that it was two figures, intertwined and lying oddly.

Suddenly he stopped short.

An invisible fist had punched him in the chest. Instinctively his shoulders came forward as a hole opened inside of him.

There, lying on the lawn were his mother and father. Their skin pale, their limbs askew and all the horrors humanity can inflict evident in their beaten bodies.

The wound worsened in Draco’s chest as every singly detail burned its way into his memory.

Something stopped.

Draco stood there, stock still, looking at what was before him as his nice, safe, superior world fell to pieces.

To Draco those moments, or hours were indescribable as his life ground to a halt as he saw.

It was the sight that finally made him move. Hope reviving his frozen limbs as he became aware of his mothers chest slowly rising and falling.

She was alive.

And his father…alive to. But only just.

He had to do something. They needed help. Slowly his brain began to look for his next action.

St Mungo’s!…But no, his father would be arrested again. He would not lead his father straight to the ministry. Yet professional help was necessary, he had to take them somewhere!

Hogwarts! It was the enemy, but his only choice, he had to do something now! He grabbed his parents’ hands and Apparated.

But he couldn’t get there, something held him off – the anti-Apparation wards. ‘SHIT!’

Draco appeared just outside the closed gates. This could not be happening, this was too much. He needed to get in, he had too.

Raising his wand in absolute panic he sounded an alarm, directing it towards the castle and did the worst thing he could imagine at that particular moment – waited.

* * *

He did all he could for his parents, levitating them gently onto stretchers, wiping away the worst of the blood. But he almost burst with relief when he heard the dog’s bark and saw the huge figure of Hagrid bounding towards him.

“Help! Help me! Please, please help me!” Burst from his lips.

Hagrid stopped still as he took in the weeping young man and bodies in front of him, before he swiftly unlocked and opened the gate.

He and Draco ran towards the castle as fast as they could, the two stretchers following swiftly behind them. As they neared it, the great doors began to open before them and Draco felt a small wave of relief, ‘nearly there, nearly there, nearly there, nearly there!’

“Dumbledore, Dumbledore,” gasped Hagrid his voice booming.

“Hagrid and…Mr Malfoy,” said Dumbledore one eyebrow arched in surprise, “what has happened?”

“My, my p-parents!” Gasped Draco, utterly winded. Dumbledore glanced towards the stretchers and paused momentarily, his face setting.

To Draco that pause of decision lasted a lifetime; his entire being wavered powerlessly in front of Dumbledore’s inscrutable gaze.

A short in breath and it was over. “Quick! The hospital wing,” stepping back to allow Draco through. Inside the door his eyes met Snape’s and watched his Godfather horrified reaction when he saw the Malfoy’s.

For Draco that was a moment of clarity before the stretchers bearing his parents were taken from his grasp and swept towards the hospital wing with him and most of the school staff following.

Madam Pomfrey looked alarmed and shocked as the two prone bodies were bought before her. “Oh! Albus,” left her lips is a small breath, before she began to move.

Draco was pushed into a chair by someone, as the stretchers were replaced by beds. Dumbledore began to issue orders. He, Madam Pomfrey and Severus Snape moved towards the beds, pulling the curtains around them.

Draco found himself being led away insistently by Professor McGonagall, despite his struggling. He found himself in Madam Pomfrey’s office sitting in a chair with a mug pushed to his lips.

“Mr Malfoy, drink this up, it will help,” McGonagall said softly and with more sympathy in her voice that Draco had ever heard her use towards him before.

He felt the warm bitter drink fill his mouth as he drank it, mechanically doing as McGonagall had asked. He felt his eyelids flutter closed and his body relax as sleep overcame him.