Rose Thorn ❖ (Draco Malfoy - Harry Potter Series)

6.06

What is your name?

     Camille stared at the words on the parchment but more so, the handwriting. She recognised it immediately. It was Draco's handwriting. It was Draco on the other side of the vanishing cabinet. She wrote back to him instantly.

Draco, what are you doing with a Vanishing Cabinet?

      She felt anxious for the parchment's return. What if it wasn't him? Though...what if it was? The paper fluttered back into view.

Milly?

Where are you?

     Camille felt the tears fall from her eyes. It was him.

I'm sorry.

     Neither of them had answered a single question but she didn't care. She was so alone. She was lost without him. She couldn't pick the paper up fast enough when it returned.

Harry's got a nice shade of blue on his face for thinking he knows a damn thing about what I feel for you. Tell me where you are, Milly, let me come save you.

     She gulped. The end of the road, so far. He could never save her, not from this place.

My only chance at freedom is if you fix this cabinet.

     The paper disappeared and Camille shut the door upon hearing the lock on her door rattle. Yet, it was not Grindelwald who stepped inside. It was Tom Riddle, his younger version...she got it now – he was a clone stuck in time, made especially as a specific player in Grindelwald's game for Camille.

     "Come with me." Tom Riddle spoke and Camille gave one last look to the cabinet before following the seventeen-year-old boy. He took her back to the dungeon she'd first spent her time in and she shook her head as they stepped inside. "This is the next move on the board, child of darkness. Sleep well."

     Tom Riddle locked her in the dark coffin-like box, windowless and hopeless. The cabinet was her only chance...Draco... She hit her fists against the iron door. "Let me out! Let me out! Don't do this to me! Please, let me out!"

     "Your next task will be to raise a soul from the dead, Miss Grindelwald." Tom Riddle spoke from the other side of the door. "Until then, be at peace with your new home."

     Camille screamed, her voice bouncing off the stone walls. "You cannot cage me; I am Death itself."

     Grindelwald answered this time. "You are mistaken, Camille. You think you answer to no one...but you are bound to me."

⍟

Camille. It was Camille on the other end. 

     Draco was frustrated, she had now stopped replying to him. The letter did not come back after he'd sent her a message of his promise to get her out.

     He only knew of the second cabinet in the store but what if there was a third, what if that made the paths harder, the bird dying in the crossroad between doors.

     Draco Malfoy was beyond stressed and it was taking a toll on his health. There were some nights he didn't sleep at all. There were days when he couldn't even answer simply classroom questions correctly, even ones he did know the answer too. His grades were slipping...he couldn't manage much longer. He almost believed he would die soon.

     Draco wandered into the Great Hall, adjusting his tie so that he could get a bit of rutting oxygen in this stuffy castle. He hadn't spoken to Crabbe and Goyle in a long while, not even to Blaise nor Theodore. Well, Theodore had his own issues to worry about. Yes, he knew about Tracey and his predicament. He paced down the aisles, eyes on no one in particular until...

     Katie Bell stared at him. She had been talking to Harry...and now he stared at him too.

     No. No. He couldn't be any unluckier.

     He walked back out of the Hall with haste, near rippling the buttons on his shirt to give him more air...he was feeling claustrophic is this wretched place. All the tasks...all the worries...it was killing him. Perhaps Harry would be merciful and kill him.

     He ran into the familiar third years bathroom, a place he'd often come to reflect and then he threw his tie off and unbuttoned his shirt until it was bare skin against the cold, stale air.

     He began to weep.

     How he wished Milly was here...how he wished everything would go back to normal. He wished Cedric was alive. He wished Voldemort had stayed dead. He wished...

     He caught a reflection in the mirror that was not his own...and it was not Moaning Myrtle neither.

     Staring back at him was Harry Potter.

     No! That wretched hero knows he is weak...

     Harry cast the first hex at him, muttering something about Katie Bell. Draco dodged it, gliding behind the stalls. The hex had hit the sinks and water gushed out like a mad fountain, the water pooling amidst the floor.

     Draco crouched, hoping to spy on Harry's whereabouts under the stalls. He saw his feet, standing right at the opposite end. He could hit him now, whilst he didn't know it was coming. No, that was not who he was. That was what Voldemort wanted him to become and he had vouched for Camille's sake, that he would not succumb to his manipulations of power.

     Harry lowered himself too, and when his eyes met Draco, he threw him a counter curse that would only stun him. Harry was fast, he'd deflected it immediately. Until...

     "Sectumsempra." Harry shouted and a dark green light permeated from his wand toward him.

     Pain. It was all Draco felt.

     He lay on the floor and felt as if an ocean of water gushed out of him. It was pain but it was also bliss. Bliss of his oncoming death...bliss of his release from this hell of a world.

     No, that was the darkness talking.

     Draco grunted. He needed to fight...to fight for his girl. He could not die until she was safe and sound, happy and alive.

     There was a flash of black and Draco thought it was Voldemort for a moment, come to laugh at him for his weakness. It was Snape and he was mending his wounds.

     Draco let himself fall into a deep slumber.