Destined for Darkness (A Draco Malfoy Fic)

Inevitable

I stared back at myself in the bathroom mirror and sighed.

My eyes were bloodshot, and the dark purple circles under my eyes contrasted against my pale face—physical evidence of the sleepless night I'd had. I guess technically, I had slept, but it definitely had not been restful.

Since Voldemort had arrived at the manor, no amount of occluding had been able to keep the sound of his voice out of my head at night. But every time, without fail, Draco was there to wrap me up in his arms, pulling me just to the surface of consciousness to ward off the nightmares, and then soothe me back into a somewhat peaceful sleep—at least until the voice inevitably returned.

Last night, however, Draco hadn't been there to stop the nightmare from spiraling. I had known that our luck of him not being needed would eventually run out, and it finally had yesterday when he and Lucius had been called out late in the afternoon. Draco promised he would only be gone for one night, but I knew he couldn't ensure that. So if it looked like I'd be spending another night on my own, coffee spiked with Wideye Potion would be my nightcap.

I would do anything to prevent seeing the images that had played over and over in my head last night.

I was sitting at the table in the drawing room, surrounded by Death Eaters, as a body hovered over my head. But in my nightmare, it wasn't Charity Burbage.

It was Draco.

Then Narcissa.

Then Pansy. Blaise. Theo.

Their bodies would fall lifelessly to the table after being hit by Voldemort's curse, and then he would force me to watch his snake devour their corpses. Over and over.

There was a split second of relief at one point when Draco fell to the table—again—but he wasn't dead. At least until the snake started eating him alive. Then I was forced to watch the continuous loop of the people I loved being swallowed whole as well as listen to them scream and beg for death.

And there was nothing I could do. I was frozen, unable to move or make a sound. I couldn't even blink to spare myself a millisecond of the horrors I was having to watch.

The nightmare seemed to last all night as the sun streaming through the curtains is what finally woke me up. Though I was desperate for sleep, with Draco gone and the possibility of falling right back into that dream the second my eyes closed again, I'd had no interest in staying in bed.

Leaning over the sink, I splashed some cold water in my face, but when it did nothing to make me look or feel less like the walking dead, I decided caffeine was my only hope to be able to function today.

I called Tippy, and she told me that Narcissa and I were the only two in the manor this morning. With the Ministry coup having occurred only two days ago, it seemed all the Death Eaters were busy elsewhere—small mercies.

However, even with that knowledge, I briskly walked the short distance down the hall to the hidden door near Draco's room to get to the library and cast a—pointless—Homenum Revelio once inside.

I had slowly grown more paranoid each day since we'd arrived at Malfoy Manor, wondering when and how Katherine would make her move. Now, with exactly one week until my seventeenth birthday, I was hyper-aware of every sound and movement. Poor Tippy's eyes went round as saucers when she popped in a few minutes later with the tea I had asked for and was greeted with the business end of my wand.

Of course, I would feel more protected and less on edge if I just stayed in Draco's room, but I was on a mission that required the vast Malfoy library.

Last week when Theo was here, we were in the library, and I was telling him about the meeting and just the general atmosphere of the manor now that Voldemort and his Death Eaters were practically living here. Trying to make me feel better, Theo made a comment, saying what I should really be scared of are some of the things hidden in the Malfoy artifact room or stored right there in the library. I might have given a snarky reply about how that was not helpful at all, but it turned out it actually was because it had given me an idea.