Save The Date (A Drarry FanFiction)

Chapter Sixteen

   "Back!" Draco all but screamed. "Back, go back!"

Bones was already scrabbling across the floor along the way they had come, but the doors had indeed been released, and the corridor was now blocked. Those that had been held captive in the cells were not entirely human as Draco had suspected, but living, walking skeletons, with only rags of flesh and cloth left hanging from their frames. Their empty eye sockets seemed to seek him and Bones out regardless, and their finger joints clacked as they reached for out for them.

They had no choice but to try the other way in the t-junction, but even in his panicked state Draco could tell that was wrong.

Abattoir would have been coming from the basement. They needed to get past him. If only he had his wand!

Draco was hysterical, that was the only explanation for the way his adrenaline kicked in and instead of running away, he lunged forwards, seizing the nearest skeleton by its arm, and yanked as hard as he could. "Are you crazy!" Bones howled, but as he'd hoped, the arm came lose, and now he had a weapon.

And not a second too soon. He spun, just as the meat cleaver came down, and he parried the blade away.

For the first time in his life, Draco mentally thanked his father profusely for all the fencing lessons he had been forced to endure.

Abattoir was strong and merciless, but Draco was fast and delicate. He may have only had a bit of old bone, but he knew how to glance away the clumsy blows the Mayor was throwing, and slowly, he forced him back the way he had come.

Of course though, bone was no match for a sharpened knife, and despite his best efforts Abattoir was still hacking chunks out of his humerus until it inevitably shattered. But Draco had other kinds of Bones to rely on. "Here!" the dog shouted just as his makeshift weapon snapped apart, and Draco risked a glance back and down. In less than a second, he was able to see that his companion was using his heavy jaw to launch at the stumbling skeleton hoard, who moved more like shuffling zombies than the humans they had once presumably been.

Having seen how easily Draco had broken the first one's arm away, Bones was now latching onto their legs, giving each one a ferocious shake, and forcing them to tumble apart.

As he ducked another swing from Abattoir, Draco was able to snatch up several more bones, so he had a femur and tibia in each hand, working with both to beat the Mayor back.

Abattoir was hissing as he worked tirelessly, spittle flying from between his teeth, his bug-eyes impossibly wide and a manic laugh continuously barking from his throat. But Draco was fighting for his life – for Bones' life – for Harry's life – and there was a fire in his belly he'd never felt before.

When one of the thigh bones snapped at a particularly beautiful sharp angle, Draco wasted no time switching tactics and thrusting forwards, managing to utilise the element of surprise to skewer the bastard right through his repulsive apron and into his chest.

"COME ON!" he roared at Bones, turning to take in the mountain of bones the small dog had managed to accumulate in such a short amount of time. "Good boy!" Draco laughed as they sprinted past the momentarily incapacitated mayor. "Who's a good boy? Who's going to get a juicy steak?"

"Talk to me like that again," Bones half panted, half snarled. "And it'll be your leg I'll sink my teeth into next!"

Draco just laughed harder though as they slammed through the door that would finally lead them down to the basement.

Then stopped dead.

It was the pitchest black he'd even seen. It wasn't just dark. It was the absence of all light.

"Wha-" he stuttered.

"Go!" Bones shouted as Draco realised the impaled Mayor was getting to his feet again, and his skeleton hoard were climbing over their fallen brethren.

He took a step, but it was a step down and he stumbled, catching the wall just beyond the black for support before he fell. He couldn't do this, he couldn't fumble around in the dark with a homicidal pillar of the community and his reanimated chums merrily chasing behind him.

Bones pushed on his back legs and reached up so his front paws dug into Draco's thigh. "Pick me up and I'll guide you!" he cried desperately.

"You can see in that?" Draco gasped, looking into the soul-wrenching blackness, hefting him up even as he spoke.

"I'm special!" Bones bellowed. "Remember?"

With that, Draco fled down the stairs, with what was possibly the heaviest ever small dog under his right arm and the bone-sword still thrusting forward in his left. He closed his eyes to help with the awful disorientation of the complete blackness, and just kept dropping his feet, one after the other.

"You're coming to the end!" Bones shouted. "Three," he yelled in time with Draco's footfall. "Two, ONE!"

True to his word, at that Draco stumbled forwards on flat ground. "Please tell me this is the basement we need?" he begged as the sound of cluttering footsteps reached the top of the staircase.

"Yes, yes!" Bones yelped. "Go left – stop! Go right. Keep going...keep going..."

The skeletons were rattling and Abattoir was still laughing like he was having the time of his former-life, but Draco blocked them out, thinking only of Bones and his instructions.

"Stop! Okay, forward, forward, forw-"

Draco's face smashed into something wooden, despite his best efforts to brace himself with his hands full of dogs and bones. "Ow," he whimpered.

"The door!" Bones hollered. "The door, that's the door – open it!"

Draco didn't hesitate. He dropped the bone-sword and smacked at the wood until his hand found the protrusion of the handle, then he forced it down with everything he had.

He fell forwards into the further darkness, Bones still firmly clutched to his chest, and he prayed that wherever they would land would be better than where they had just come from.