𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐔𝐒 2008

On Falcon's Wings (2/3)

On Falcon's Wings Part 2 of 3

Harry was getting worried. He’d been basically ‘camped out’ outside of the moldering ruins for nearly a day and a half now, and there was still no sign of help coming. When he’d left, he’d been so certain that Snape would tell his friends where he’d gone, and they’d send re-enforcements as quickly as possible. The fact that they hadn’t arrived made the hair on the back of his neck twitch. Something wasn’t right; he couldn’t say what, but something had gone wrong. And here he was, in the middle of nowhere, the one wizard Voldemort most wanted, just steps away from his headquarters. It was madness, and he knew it.

Part of the time, he contemplated Apparating back to where he’d come from, but two things stopped him. First, the fact that he doubted that Hermione and Ron would still be there. Without a doubt, they’d taken the grievously injured Snape for help. He knew Hermione. Ron’s arguments wouldn’t deter her from trying to save the man, regardless of what they thought of him. And second, and perhaps most important; the things that Snape had said to him back in that tattered tent in the Forest of Dean.

“I’ve been in your mind, Potter,” he’d said. “I’ve seen, I know.”

Harry straightened from where he’d been secreting his bag once again and stared at the castle from the covering of the pine tree. The clouds above were thick and pale grey. Like Draco’s eyes. He swallowed heavily.

“Boy, I don’t care,” Snape had gone on. “It doesn’t matter to me. But I’ve seen into his heart, as well…I’ve seen into his heart. You must save him. You need him for what is ahead. And you don’t understand, Potter. You don’t know what they’ll do to him…”

He had more than a passing idea, though, and the very thought of it brought bile to the back of his throat. There had been that one raid, that one time they’d come upon what was left after one of the Dark Lord’s ‘entertainments’. The horror of that would never leave him, and Harry couldn’t let that happen to Malfoy… he couldn’t. Because Snape had been right.

Harry hadn’t wanted to admit it, even to himself, for a very long time. After all, there had been Cho, and Ginny. But even while he’d been dating them, he had never been able to just ignore Draco Malfoy. He’d thought him a prat, and the world’s most annoying git, and all of the previous year he’d been absolutely certain that the bloody blond ponce was planning something. But even then he’d found himself staring at his rivals hands, and the back of his neck, and the smooth, graceful way that he’d moved and known, no matter how desperately he wanted to deny it, that there had been more to his fascination than his belief that Malfoy had been ‘up to something’. And then he’d seen him on the top of that tower, heard the horror in his voice when he said he hadn’t known that Frenrir Greyback would be in the party of Death Eater’s he’d let in the school, and he knew he’d been telling the truth. He also knew, in his heart, that Malfoy would never have been able to kill Dumbledore. He’d been lowering his wand…

A sound from the nearby road caught Harry’s attention, and he stepped back into the shadows beneath the trees, his back against sturdy, rough bark. That had been the sound of Apparition; he’d know it anywhere. He watched as two tall, beefy men in hooded capes came up the road and he thought he recognized one as Goyle’s father. The other he didn’t know, but something about the way he moved made the hair on the back of Harry’s neck twitch again. That one, his instincts screamed, was dangerous. As a light snow began to fall, Harry watched the massive front door of the ancient fortress open and the two men move quickly inside. These were the first new arrivals in two days; Harry hoped it didn’t mean that more were coming…