Legilimens

| Seven |

11 May, 1998

He was running as fast as he could, tree branches and roots zooming past him and hitting him in the process. The fugitives they were chasing weren't even that important, Draco shouldn't have bothered chasing after them, but the Carrows liked to play with their victims before catching and torturing them. Alecto and Amycus Carrow were two of the most lethal Death Eaters of the inner circle, and Draco needed them to believe he was as devoted to the Dark Lord as they were. When they came across several footsteps in the mud, they didn't hesitate to follow them to a barely hidden camp a few miles away. The second the fugitives started running, the Carrows shared a wicked smile and started after them. Draco held back a sight of annoyance and followed after them.

They had now been chasing them for ten minutes, purposely sending hexes around them, to fright the fugitives even more than they already were, and making them hope they could get away from three top Death Eaters. Draco felt like laughing at the whole thing. The captives they had found the previous day in the same forest had tried the same thing, and all of them had been captured. Why were they all so dumb to believe running away could save them? Couldn't they hold their ground and fight, instead of cowardly running away? And they said Slytherins were the coward ones...

Draco huffed and stopped running; he had had enough of all this nonsense. Draco threw a silent Incarcerous at the running figure, and watched as the thin cords flew out of his wand and wrapped around the three pair of legs, binding the fugitives on the dry leaves and dirt. Getting closer to them, Draco could hear their grunts and short breaths. Leaning over them, he recognized Hannah Abbott, Dean Thomas and Millicent Bulstrode, three Hogwarts students in the same year as him. Motioning for Amycus to grab them he turned around, not wanting them to see the look in his eyes.

"Bring them back to the manor."

Draco heard a few rustles of leaves and clothes, then all was silent. The Carrows had taken the three students back to the Dark Lord's headquarters for questioning, and he was finally alone. He slipped his hand in the inside pocket of his vest and retrieved a small phial of numbing potion. Gulping it down, he hoped the potion would take effect sooner than the last time he had to torture his fellow classmates. Dropping the glass phial on the ground and crushing it with his foot, Draco took a few deep breaths before disapparating to Malfoy Manor.

His house, once familiar and comforting, was now cold and void of love. The family portraits illustrating either of his parents had been burned down, and Draco didn't recognize the place. The Dark Lord had transformed it into his headquarters, and during the day, Death Eaters and other followers of Voldemort came and went under his Darkness' commands. The Drawing room's sole purpose was now to torture, and the cellar was used to hold the prisoners they hadn't yet killed. At night, Draco remained alone in the gigantic manor, his only company the few Death Eaters guarding the prisoners to prevent an escape. Draco had always been solitary, preferring being by himself than having to hold a meaningless conversation with someone unimportant. But now, he felt alone, and he would give anything to get to his old life back, to erase all the bad the Malfoys had made over the years and simply start... anew. But those were dreams, fantasies. He had to face reality and fix his mistake, not erase them.

After apparating in the entrance hall of his old home, Draco made his way to the drawing room, where the three students they had just captured where down to their knees, one beside another. The three of them were trembling out of fear, terrified of what would come. Full of sweat and dirt, they awaited their fate in stoic silence. Draco took a moment to look at them. Just like the people they had caught the previous day, they weren't his friends. Most of them hated him just as much as he used to, but no one deserved to be treated the way the Death Eaters would do, simply to get some futile information about the Order. But Draco had a job to do, and even though he wished he could show them mercy, it was impossible. Looking at Alecto, he ordered.