Marked

The Fall

a/n: Trust me. Trust that I am going somewhere with this. This is still 100% a Dramione story and it will not end in tragedy. But this chapter . . . this chapter is going to hurt.

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Chapter 28: The Fall

"You have no idea what you've set in motion," Draco growled mutinously as he sank slowly to his knees, arms rigid at his side.

"Ah, but I do," the Dark Lord replied smoothly. "Every possible person that the prophecy refers to is in this room. And at my mercy," he added, pointedly nudging his wand into Harry's forehead. "None of you will be walking out of here."

"You're making a mistake," Draco said flatly. "Not to mention that you're being baited by a fraud - "

"Do not bore me with your amateur stalling tactics," Voldemort threatened, twisting his wand further into Harry's temple. "You only waste my time and yours."

"You could at least have the decency to kill me yourself," Draco snarled back, trying not to look at the wand that was pointed to his chest - or the arm it was attached to.

The Dark Lord shrugged his heavily robed shoulders. "Why get my hands dirty?" he asked, grinning devilishly. "Do it," he hissed, addressing Draco's assailant.

"My Lord," Lucius whimpered, cringing. The wand he held to his son's chest was shaking perilously in his hand.

"Father," Draco said quietly, focusing his attention on the thin, pale ghost of a man that stood uncertainly before him. "Father. Look at me. Don't do this."

"You don't understand," Lucius told him, his voice hushed and frightened. "You don't know what he'll do to me - "

"I do," Draco corrected his father. "Yes, I do. Are you ready for this, Father?" he asked, looking directly into the grey eyes that were so like his own.

Is this what he would look like, if he made it through this day? Is this what he would become?

Lucius was muttering indistinctly. "Draco - you know not what you speak - "

"I do, Father, I do," Draco repeated, suddenly calm. "But what will you allow to destroy you, Father? Him?" He shook his head in numb, detached disbelief. "Or you?"

"Do it!" Voldemort repeated, his voice a grating cry that cut through the eerily quiet room.

Draco let his eyes stray to Granger; she was crying, the tears dripping silently from her eyes. It was always his fault, wasn't it? The tears. He was always making her cry.

"I'm sorry," he told her, and it was only when he licked the salt from his lips that he realized he was crying too. "I love you. Only you, Hermione. Always you."

"Lucius!" Voldemort shouted. "Lucius - do it!"

Draco let his eyes slide back to his father's, preparing himself for whatever came next. If he was going to die, he wasn't going to beg. There was only one more thing to offer.

"I forgive you," Draco said, and he watched something break inside the once proud Lucius Malfoy before he slowly turned away, looking back at Granger.

He took in the familiar flecks of gold in her eyes, the flush of her cheeks and the bow of her lips, and he closed his eyes, the image of her face burned permanently into the backs of his eyelids. If they never opened again, he wanted her to be the last thing he saw.

. . . . . . . .

A few hours earlier