The Dragon Variation

Chapter Seventeen

A Fool's Game

July 2002

She's on the same side as Him, Voldemort. She honestly forgets sometimes that she should appear happy to be on the 'winning' side. She has to accept and move on. To make it easier, she does just that; burying the emotions deep down and locked up.

Meanwhile, Voldemort is monopolising the world, and Draco Malfoy is worth Park Lane and Mayfair, why she thinks of this in riddles and games is unclear, but it's the way her brain can understand her own position in this. And Voldemort owns the entire board. As well as moving chess pieces, she's bidding for his life too.

He's been made an indirect successor to the regime. He won't replace the Dark Lord. Because the Dark Lord will never fall, but he will be acting as protégé to the regime. Like a puppet. He'll be a Dark Lord on a string while Voldemort is Supreme and the one pulling the strings. Make Draco do the dirty work.

The gravity of this is immense. Soul crushing.

She didn't see Draco after that. As if he were avoiding her again, but she did see him elsewhere, in the news that she so much hated seeing. It made her angry.

His face was everywhere on the front cover of newspapers. A constant black and white loop of him in a different ceremonial uniform standing at Voldemort's right hand, in front of Bellatrix, as Voldemort addresses the world on a magical hologram. Draco's expression was cool and calculated. He looked deadly. He had a hand behind his back, and his medals for valour in combat on show.

The other hand was carefully resting on the handle of a silver glinting sword in the hip holster on his side. The Sword of Gryffindor. It shimmered slightly under a protection charm, so no one could summon it off of him. Voldemort is playing his moves close to his chest—thinking the Sword Of Gryffindor, something that will kill a Horcrux, his soul, is safe in Draco's hands. Prodding at the Order. Taking a dig at them.

The legacy of Godric Gryffindor lives inside that sword; a Nobel man known for being the most outwardly accepting of Muggle-born witches and wizards and used the sword to fight fairly during a time of muggle and Wizarding world tension. That sword represented a bridge between muggles and wizards in some respects. 

And now, it is in the hands of those who want that bridge burnt to ashes.

Draco somehow, is such a situation, still looked royal. Like a prince, and essentially he is. She was certain only she could see the telltale signs of his nervousness. Cracking his neck, tapping his thumb to his index finger in a 1-2-3-4 beat, discreetly by his side.

Draco stood unwavering, watching the crowd of supporters in front of them. Two muggles with sackcloth bags over their heads knelt before Voldemort, shaking terribly. 

It was something ceremonial. Voldemort could have ordered the Killing curse—but he wanted the Order to be provoked by it.

Draco had been ordered to behead the two muggles with the Sword Of Gryffindor on a live hologram. It was swift and looked like a knife moving through butter. It was awful. What scared her was just how easy Draco did it. He looked deadly.

Actions, such as, were asserting another warning shot to the Order to come out and fight and give up Harry.

Just as the Black Snitches moved off his face, his expression shifted—he looked as though he might vomit watching the muggle's loose heads and detached bodies were banished from sight. The hologram finally glitched and turned off at the end of the loop on the page.

It made her shudder and tossed the paper into the kitchen sink of the cottage. She also felt the need to vomit.

She doesn't know why she's there now he's stopped showing up. But it seems to be a place of comfort. Her only place of comfort.