What the Room Requires

Chapter Twenty-Two

            She crushed my head to the floor with her palm, twisting my neck, then bent over my left arm and carved into it again with a needle-pointed knife.

            I screamed and screamed and screamed. Tears poured down my face and I kicked and thrashed. Bellatrix held me down like an iron weight. Harry and Ron were imprisoned below. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy stood a way off, saying nothing.

            And Draco stood behind me, near the fireplace, silent.

            My screaming nearly blinded me—I almost lost consciousness.

            And it took every shred of will I had ever possessed—every fiber of bravery, everything inside me, to keep from wailing his name.

            I had seen him when they hauled us in to this dusky place called Malfoy Manor. Our eyes had met—and my heart had nearly leaped out of my chest. But he had looked so white—the sight of us there, surrounded by Death Eaters and Snatchers, clearly horrified him. And of course, he could not act as if we even really knew each other.

            They had forced Harry to his knees on the hard floor of a once-grand hall as Ron and I stood at the other end, bound up by the Snatchers and Death Eaters. Bellatrix had tried to make Draco to identify Harry, for Harry’s face had been misshapen by my stinging spell.

Draco had recognized him instantly. I could see it in the way his back stiffened.

            “Well?” Bellatrix cried, taking fistfuls of Harry’s hair and pointing her wand at his throat. Draco shook his head.

            “I can’t be sure.”

            “Draco,” Lucius, unshaven and mussed—a far fall from his usually grand self—had come up behind his son and grasped him in an almost-strangle-hold at the back of his neck. I had twitched against that filthy Greyback, my captor, biting back a shout at Lucius to get his hands off him.

            “Look closely, son,” Lucius had urged into Draco’s ear. Then, Lucius glanced back at us, at the Snatchers and other Death Eaters. I had glared viciously at him. Lucius turned back to Draco.

            “If we are the ones to hand Potter over to the Dark Lord,” Lucius pleaded. “Everything will be forgiven—it will all be as it was! You understand?”

            No, you don’t understand, Lucius, I wanted to shout. The last thing Draco wants is for it to return to the way it was…

            And that had been confirmed when, though they drove Draco to his knees in front of Harry and he looked him straight in the eyes, he had repeated:

“I can’t be sure.”

            This had sent Bellatrix into a rage.

And everything had unraveled from there.

            I could feel Draco’s helplessness building as they threw Harry and Ron in the basement and kept me up above—his desperation filled the air, filled my lungs with every breath I took. I had tried not to look at him, tried to help him restrain himself, for his father and mother and so many dangerous people surrounded him that if he tried to help me, they would report back to Voldemort and he would surely be killed.

            But now, Bellatrix had bent my neck and forced my face toward him. I could see his shoes—glimpse the rest of his tall form through the haze of my tears. He was frozen, watching me.