The Facade

Chapter 11

I feel sweat dripping down my forehead.

M

y eyes start to open but everything is blurry, I try to become aware of my senses, I can feel a hard and cold surface on my back, I’m lying on the floor.

I try to sat up straight but my head throbs with pain, and a grunt escapes my throat, my hand flew to the ache in my right temple, my fingers touched something wet, they come back flushed red.

I realized it was blood dripping down my forehead, not sweat.

I blinked my eyes multiple times to clear off the pitch black obscuring them. I could make the dim light room I was in, and some black long figures lying on the floor. Everything around me felt dizzy, if I tried to stood up I would surely faint.

I closed my eyes to recall what happened, I didn’t even know how I came here, or where I even was, I was only sure that whatever this place was – from the state of my head – I wasn’t welcomed to it.

I grunted in frustration, the wound at my temple was making me hard to remember how did I ended up here, I rubbed my eyes and opened them wide, my surroundings begun to appear clear in my vision.

My breath caught.

The black figures on the ground, they were bodies – no, corpses – their chests were stilled, blood stained the black marble, their clothes, like a river that flown the room. I looked down at my own clothes, they soaked in blood, but it wasn’t mine.

My vision was full sharp now and I studied the room, my lips parted. It was Voldemort’s room at the Ministry of Magic. It was only then that I recognized the clothes from the corpses lying on the ground, they were so full of red, wet with it, that I didn’t mind to recognize it before, they were Death Eaters robes, these people were my partners.

My hands trembled, I sucked in a scream, the room was in ruins, wreckage among the floor, some Death Eater masks shattered in the floor, the nearest wall at my side had vanished, dust was settled in the air. I had no idea what was happening only that the knock on my head had been enough to make me unconscious.

I looked at my left and froze at what my gaze sighted.

Pansy, Blaise, Montague, each one of them lying on the floor next to each other’s, unmoving, their skin was so pale…they were dead.

I had no concept of time, my head couldn’t wrap around what my eyes were witnessing, I just knew that when my eyes roamed the room and fell to the body at my right, the next breath I took hurt my lungs.

Theo was lying on the floor, inches away from me, his chest against the cool marble floor, a pool of blood dampened his clothes. His face was turned to me, his mask was attached to his face, broken where his left eye was located, an unblinking eye staring right back at me. Cold. Empty. Lifeless.

Daunted by the sight of his corpse staring at me, I tried to crawl backwards, I needed to get out of here, I needed to know what happened, but it felt like my legs suddenly felt as heavy as iron, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t remember.

“It’s your fault you know.” A cold voice said, cutting me from my thoughts. My head swirled around to the figure standing in front of me among the pile of bodies. My lips parted away.

Malfoy.

He was peering down at me, my skin shivered at that, his features seemed as cold as always, but mixed with something else, vicious, his eyes emotionless, despite the smirk on his face, he seemed unhuman, a cold-hearted soul.