The half-blood princess

Chapter 13/The day has come

Today the time has come, today we will kill Dumbledore. The day goes by much faster than any other in my life. In the evening I lie down in my bed. But none of us really sleep.

We meet in the common room at 9 p.m. We'll discuss everything there again.

At 9:30 p.m. Draco and Theodore go into the Room of Requirement. Pansy and Blaise also go to their post. I'm now sitting alone in the room with Mattheo. After five minutes we leave too.

Mattheo stops in front of the stairs from the astronomy tower. That's where his post is. He gives me a kiss and I go upstairs to the tower. I wait there a bit and then I hear it. I hear the fighting going on. 

Then someone shouts "Morsmorde!" and the Dark Mark appears in the sky.

I go downstairs a bit to take a look. Then I see Draco fighting with an auror. I go a little further down the stairs and cast a spell that allows Draco to quickly come to me. We go back up the stairs together and Dumbledore is now standing there.

Draco immediately says "Expelliarmus!" and Dumbledore's wand flies from his hands.

"Good evening Draco, good evening Rose." he says, "do you have support?"

"Yes, there are Death Eaters here at school tonight." I say palely.

"How did you do that?" Dumbledore asks calmly.

Draco tells him everything.

"Then why did you try to kill me in other ways?" asks Dumbledore.

"We wanted to do this in other ways, we didn't actually want to choose this path." I say, "How do you know we're going to kill you?"

"I have my sources." he says.

Tears are slowly starting to roll down my cheeks. I see that Draco is about to cry too.

"Why do you do it if you don't want to?" asks Dumbledore.

We pull up our sleeves and show Dumbledore the Dark Mark on our arms.

"We-we have to do it. We have to kill you or he's going to kill us." we say.

Then we hear someone coming up the stairs. They are the Death Eaters Yaxley, Greyback, Bellatrix and my father.

Bellatrix stands behind us and whispers "Draco, Rose kill him. The Dark Lord will be proud."

Tears continue to stream down my cheeks but I try to stop them. 

Then it happens. My father stands in front of us. He gets his wand and points it at Dumbledore.

Dumbledore says "Severus, Severus please."

And then my father shouts "Avada Kedavra!" and Dumbledore falls from the Astronomy Tower.

At this sight I start to cry even more.

My thoughts are going crazy. Will the Dark Lord kill us now because we didn't kill Dumbledore? Will we get in trouble?

Then Draco takes my arm and we go downstairs together, where Pansy, Blaise, Theodore and Mattheo are fighting.

When they see us they go with us. We run into the big hall. There Bellatrix blows up the window and we go out of the castle.

From there we run together to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Then I trip over something and fall to the ground. My ankle immediately starts to get thick. I try to get up again but I can't. The others have already disapparated. I look around and see my father fighting with Potter.

"Sectumsempra!" shouts Potter.

Then my father says "Are you trying to use my own spells against me Mister Potter? Yes, I am the Half-Blood Prince."

Then my father walks over to me and takes my arm. We disapparade and arrive at Malfoy Manor.

I'll look around first and see the others. I sit on the floor and hold my ankle.

"What happened?" Draco asks.

"I twisted my ankle" I answer.

The ankle is now very thick and blue. I still can't perform properly.

Suddenly Mattheo apparates to us. 

He says with a trembling voice "Rose, Draco, you should come with me to my father. Professor Snape, you should also come to him in two hours."

"N-n-no, do you think he'll-" I stutter.

"He won't kill us." says Draco, but I can't really believe him because I watched him kill his son and wasn't the least bit sad afterwards.

I limp to Mattheo. I don't know where his father is, so I have to apparate with him. Draco is coming too. Then we disapparate.

I think we're at the Ridlle's house. 

I try to hold myself up but fall to the floor. My ankle still hurts.

Then Draco and Mattheo support me while walking.

After a while the Dark Lord comes into the room. I'm afraid he'll do something to us. It's not our fault that my father killed Dumbledore.

The Dark Lord asks "Why did Severus kill Dumbledore and not you?"

"W-we couldn't do anything about it. He-he just did it." I stutter.

"Okay," says the Dark Lord, "and what about the other experiments?"

Now Draco stutters "We w-wanted to try something different first, w-we wanted to try it a-alone."

Then the Dark Lord says again "You can be happy that Dumbledore died so or so, I won't punish you but if I order you to do something again you will do it without mistakes!"

"We will my Lord." I say.

Then the Dark Lord lets us go again and I limp out of the room.

"What even happened, Rose?" Mattheo then asks.

"I twisted my ankle and my ankle has been hurting since there." I answer.

Then Mattheo looks at my ankle and says "It's broken."

He tells a spell and the ankle hurts for a moment and then it heal.

I say "You should go to St. Mungo's Hospital after you graduate."

We laugh.

"We should go again. I can spend the holidays at Malfoy Manor." says Mattheo.

Then we all apparate back there.

We arrive back at Malfoy Manor. There we go straight to our rooms and unpack our things. We all spend the holidays there. 

Later we are told that there will be several more meetings here during the holidays.

The first one is in one week.

I won't sleep anymore that night. None of us. We all sit down in Draco's room. It's the biggest. There we just discuss everything that happened today. I don't want to do anything wrong again, I don't know what the Dark Lord would do then.