The Soul Connection

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Where are you going?" Pansy demanded, as Draco walked as fast as he could away from the Slytherin common room. He was going to the Room of Requirement, where he could have the meltdown which was inevitably boiling to the surface in private. Never again would he be caught in tears in front of another person, not after Potter found him and used the Sectumsempra curse on him in the toilets.

"To the toilets, I'll be back later," Draco replied without even a glance back.

"Fine, I'll come with you."

"Just wait in the common room," he snapped.

"Tell me what's going on, Draco. Look at me!" Pansy said, raising her voice. There was an uncomfortably long silence as he turned around and made eye contact with the raven-haired girl, and the pain of rejection was clearly visible in her emerald green eyes as Draco shook his head and moved to keep walking. The next words were like a needle in his heart.

"Do you not like me any more?"

"It's not that Pansy."

"Then what is it!"

"You know what it is!" Draco shouted, "I have to do something for You-Know-Who or else... or he'll... look I can't tell you!"

"You have to tell me, everyone has noticed you've been avoiding us and acting weird. I can help you, just tell me what you need," pleaded Pansy as she moved closer to him. Each step she took towards him, he took a step backwards.

"I have to do it alone. If I fail I might as well be dead. Just stay away from me Pansy, it's for your own good," Draco said sadly as he left her standing there and took off again up a flight of stairs towards the Room of Requirement. He didn't often feel guilt, he wasn't the kind of person to care what other people thought. But Pansy was to Draco what Harry was to Hermione: a best friend, the closest friend he had in the miserable old castle. Guilt, as well as the multitude of other emotions, was eating away at him as he neared closer to the Room. Once he was inside, he grabbed the bag on his back and threw it as hard as he could across the large expanse of junk. Thankfully it went in the direction the broken cabinet was in, but Draco didn't really care. He proceeded to savagely kick a pile of books, push over an old bookshelf which broke and splintered on the ground, grab an old broom and break it on the broken bookshelf, and then punch a mirror, shattering it. He felt no pain, but the sight of crimson blood dripping from his hand snapped him out of his rage. He ignored it and stumbled over to where he'd thrown his bag, leaving a trail of blood behind himself, before falling down beside the bag. His mind was a whirl as he tried to concentrate on what to do next. Snape had come to him with a message from Voldemort, saying that if he didn't make progress with killing Dumbledore faster, his parents would be punished. When Voldemort says 'punished', it's not hard to imagine the severity and cruelty which awaited Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy. Snape had yet again offered his assistance to Draco, which Draco yet again refused. Voldemort had set Draco the mission to kill Dumbledore, no one else. If he let Snape do it, he wouldn't gain Voldemort's forgiveness, the Malfoy name would not be cleared, and his parents would still get punished. He was, quite literally, alone in the endeavour.

Well, he had Borgin. It'd been a few days since he sent the letter asking for help on fixing the cabinet, and he was still waiting for a reply. After reading the 'Fixing Broken or Damaged Magical Objects' book some more, he guessed that it would require a special kind of potion and a tricky Transfiguration spell in order to fix the cabinet. There were many different kinds of potions and spells involved in mending and restoring magical objects, and only Borgin would know which combination was required to fix a teleporting cabinet. As Draco pondered this he realised his hand was still bleeding, and sighed as he pulled out his wand and healed the wounds. He reached over to grab his bag and pulled out the Potions textbook he'd found the last time he was in the Room of Requirement, flicking through it again. He swore he'd seen spells in the margins, and sure enough, after a few minutes of reading the various helpful scribbles on each page, he found a page with spells on it. The first one, 'Levicorpus', apparently dangled the victim upside down by their ankles. Draco smirked as he read the description, and then his eyes widened in shock at the next spell. It read, 'Sectumsempra - for enemies'. He remembered it was the exact spell Potter had shouted in the toilets and only Snape knew how to heal the wound it caused. Draco continued flicking through the book feverishly to see what else it had hidden, seeing spells such as 'Liberacorpus' and 'Muffliato'.