they were just kids [draco malfoy]

zero

The girl feels her being aggressively hauled up as two cloaked men hold her by her arms. And in a blink of an eye the world around her spins, her body flung into a sucking hole before her feet touch the ground in front of a rather large dark door.

The torture, the news about her father, the sickening feeling of apparating – none of it did good for her stomach and if she wasn't being held up, she would've surely fallen.

Her vision is hazy, her mind just the same.

She looks up at the house she is sure would become her prison. The gothic style isn't much different from the place she has just left, but this manor appears to hold itself with a little more grace. Surely, a touch of an at heart gentle woman. A trapped artist.

Any other day, the girl would've been mesmerised by the beauty of the place, enjoying the warm atmosphere the plants carefully arranged around the grounds emitted. She would've surely enjoyed the way their wet leaves shimmered in the moonlight or the way the candles along the path that led up to the very front door of the house wrapped its walls in various deep shadows, presenting the manor to look temptingly mysterious.

But now all she could think of was the way the wines of a deep red climbing rose wrapped around the necks of a sculpture of two chatting children. Two smiling children who didn't notice the dangerous force looming right above their heads that would surely, inevitably and ever so slowly take away the last of their freedom.

The girl doesn't notice the door being opened as she's too buzzy blinking away the nausea in her stomach and praying this is all but reality.

Only when she hears a man to her right speak does she break out of her trance.

The girl looks up meeting the cold grey eyes of Lucius Malfoy. For the faintest of seconds, she searches for sympathy in the eyes of the tall man, hoping that maybe he was not truly as cruel as she had been told he was. But inevitably, she feels her expression turning into a frown as she watches him look upon her with great distaste and sort of even pity. Not pity that comes from a real place of worry but rather one from a place of reprobation.

Her plan had crumbled, her world and moral compasses were beyond repair, but she was not going to let the older Malfoy look at her with such disregard. Her father had taught her better than letting others stomp on the likes of her, especially a Malfoy.

The girl straightens out mustering the wee bit of courage she has left and roughly pulls her arms out of the grasp of the two men holding her. Lucius slowly turns his head from the girl and nods at the two before grabbing the girl himself and yanking her inside, making her stumble.

The man looks upon her with another pointed look as if wanting to say something. But he holds it in, instead, turning to shout into the otherwise eerily quiet house.

"Draco!"

She hears a door open and a set of footsteps walking down some hallway before she sees him appear on the top of the grand staircase. The platinum-blonde descends the stairs with such poise and gracefulness as she has never seen him do before. It feels almost like a scene out of a film. A film she never wanted to be part of.

"Yes, fath-" the boy starts but cuts himself off once his eyes lock onto the girl by the door. His heart skips a beat, the same as his foot misses a step, making him stumble and nearly tumble down the stairs. His heart beating a hundred miles a second, just barely being able to recollect his poise, the boy turns to his father, pretending as if nothing had just happened.

"What is she doing here?" he questions, his voice holding no sign of the anxiety he feels.

The elder Malfoy looks at his son with nearly as much distaste as he had shown the girl. "I have already told you."

Draco feels his heart drop down in the pit of his stomach. 

His girl had failed.