Black Rose (Draco Malfoy)

Fighting

  Chapter 37: Fighting

There were more. Black shapes were emerging out of thin air all around them, blocking our way left and right; eyes glinted through slits in hoods, a dozen lit wand tips were pointing directly at our hearts; Ginny gave a gasp of horror. I thought I was going to be sick.

"To me, Potter," repeated the drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy as he held out his hand, palm up. "To me."

"Where's Sirius?" Harry said.

Several of the Death Eaters laughed; a harsh female voice from the midst of the shadowy figures to Harry's left said triumphantly, "The Dark Lord always knows!"

"Always," Lucius echoed softly. "Now, give me the prophecy, Potter."

"I want to know where Sirius is!" Harry exclaimed.

"I want to know where Sirius is!" mimicked the woman to his left. She and her fellow Death Eaters had closed in so that they were mere feet away from us.

"You've got him," Harry said. "He's here. I know he is."

"The little baby woke up fwightened and fort what it dweamed was twoo," the woman said in a horrible, mock baby voice.

"Don't do anything, Harry muttered to Ron beside him. "Not yet-"

The woman who had mimicked him let out a raucous scream of laughter. "You hear him? You hear him? Giving instructions to the other children as though he thinks of fighting us!"

"Oh, you don't know Potter as I do, Bellatrix," Lucius said softly. "He has a great weakness for heroics; the Dark Lord understands this about him. Now give me the prophecy, Potter."

"I know Sirius is here," Harry said. "I know you've got him!"

More of the Death Eaters laughed, though the woman laughed loudest of all.

"It's time you learned the difference between life and dreams, Potter," Lucius said. "Now give me the prophecy, or we start using wands."

"Go on, then," Harry said, raising his own wand to chest height.

I raised my wand along with the others. There was no way we were backing down without a fight.

"Hand over the prophecy and no one need get hurt," Lucius said coolly.

"Yeah, right!" Harry said with a laugh. "I give you this--prophecy, is it? And you'll just let us skip off home, will you?"

The words were hardly out of his mouth when the female Death Eater shrieked: "Accio proph-"

Harry shouted 'Protego' before she finished her spell, and he managed to cling onto the prophecy.

"Oh, he knows how to play, little bitty baby Potter," she said, her mad eyes staring through the slits in her hood. "Very well, then-"

"I TOLD YOU, NO!" Lucius roared at the woman. "If you smash it--!"

The woman stepped forward, away from her fellows, and pulled off her hood. It was Bellatrix Lestrange's face, who had escaped from Azkaban. "You need more persuasion? Very well--take the smallest one," she ordered the Death Eaters beside her. "Let him watch while we torture the little girl. I'll do it."

The rest of us closed in around Ginny; I moved instinctively. Harry stood so that he was in front of her. "You'll have to smash this if you want to attack any of us," he told Bellatrix. "I don't think your boss will be too pleased if you come back without it, will he?"