A/N: Please review, all constructive criticism is welcome.
Chapter 5: A New Morning
Amos Diggory looked up at his wife and smiled. She was ever so beautiful and loving, seeing her smile again was an incredible blessing.
Having the new baby had finally helped to soothe her pain about Cedric, her first-born whom they had lost in such a horrible way. It had given her a new purpose, a new light to fill her life and a new sparkle that filled her eyes.
Seeing her laugh, the candlelight reflecting in her hair, he felt like his heart was overflowing with his love for her. They had been married for so many years and they hadn't always been happy, but at that moment he wouldn't have had it any other way. As long as she was laughing again.
The door crashing open snapped him out of his reveries.
Black-clad figures moved into the room, and the laughter died. Amos thought himself thrown back in time, to a lone dark place three years ago, where his Cedric had once lain on the ground, unmoving and silent.
He hadn't been able to help him; he knew he had failed him. As a father he should have been there and died in his place.
Now the baby was upstairs. And yet, Amos couldn't move, he just sat on his chair and stared at the horrors that had come back to haunt him once more. And he would fail again.
He heard his wife screaming in the next room, in a way that she hadn't for three years.
The scream was filled with horror, fear and pain and it tore straight into his heart. He should never have married her; he should never have had a family with her. Then it would all have been different, she wouldn't have had to suffer like she did. Their son wouldn't have died and their new child wouldn't have suffered the same.
Draco heard the woman scream and he saw Bellatrix laugh like she was having the time of her life. He saw Amos Diggory sitting in his chair, an expression of disbelief showing on his face.
The man didn't move at all, but then why should he.
Draco didn't believe for a second that Lucius would ever have thrown himself in front of Draco or Narcissa either - and where was she now, dead and rotting away. Lucius might have been able to save her but he hadn't bothered trying, saving himself had clearly been more important to him.
That man was like Lucius, he didn't go out of his way to save his wife and child either. He was worthless scum who deserved to die after all.
Draco felt something burning inside him, something bright as the sun and yet dark at the same time, and he welcomed it when hatred filled his heart. It made it all much easier.
Bellatrix dragged the crying woman into the living room.
"You have come again, you are the devils that killed my Cedric, you are demons…"
Diggory's wife ranted on and on while letting out hysterical sobs and scratching her own face with her fingernails until it bled. She tried to throw herself at Bellatrix who just smacked her hard in the face and she fell down at Bellatrix's feet.
"You worthless piece of scum, all you can do is cry and whine, you sorry excuse for a witch. You are a disgrace to any wizard, crying like a muggle, I will give you a reason to cry"
Bellatrix screamed at the woman, her eyes glowing with insanity and power radiating from her very body.
Madness was hanging in the air all around them. And giving in to it for the first time, Draco felt it too.
Bellatrix was right they were whining and crying like they didn't know magic at all.
That man was too much of a coward to defend his own wife and child, he was a despicable ministry coward who just sat behind his desk all day long deciding the fate of the wizarding world when he knew nothing at all. He just stared at Draco and Bellatrix dumbfounded, his eyes wide and expressionless.
Draco stopped his efforts at trying to suppress the urge to stop the staring; he stepped forward and pointed his wand at the coward.
"Crucio."
Bellatrix looked at him and laughed madly while Amos Diggory fell to the floor screaming and finally stopped staring at them.
He was in much more pain than that girl, Weasley, had ever been so far, because Draco had for the first time fully mastered the spell. He wanted to cause pain more than he ever had before and the hatred drove the spell to enormous power.
Draco licked his lips eagerly and for the first time he wanted more. He wanted to let all the pain and hatred that he had built inside him for so long to go away; he wanted to let it out.
He wanted to be strong for once, so they wouldn't be able to hurt him any longer, so that nobody would ever hurt him again.
He looked at Bellatrix and something passed between them. An understanding.
Had he seen himself, had he known what he looked like at this moment, he would have been terrified. His eyes held the same crazed look as Bellatrix's, and both of them laughed insanely.
But everything happened so fast, everything got blurry in the madness, in the screaming and the shouting. Draco heard someone screaming "Crucio" again and again and deep down he knew it was him, and he was terrified but at the same time he felt incredibly powerful like this was the answer to all his prayers.
All those people that he had always wanted to get back at, and now there was this stupid man, it was all his fault, all his fault that he didn't even help his wife, that he didn't even save her, that he was a cold heartless bastard who would force his only son to become something that he never wanted to be…
"Avada Kedavra!" Beside him Bellatrix screamed the same at the woman who already had not been moving anymore for the last couple of minutes, probably already dead.
He didn't care. What did it matter anyway? They only got what they deserved. They had only been punished for their wrongdoings. He felt a weird twitching at the back of his mind, wanting to tell him that something was terribly wrong here. Maybe he was going insane? But that didn't matter either. After all it felt so good, better than he had ever felt in the last year.
Then he heard the baby cry upstairs. Bellatrix looked up, their eyes met, and her smile grew wider. He knew what she was thinking and he knew he should have been terrified, horrified, and all at the same time. But today was different. It was a different day, a different life, a new morning.
~**********~
When Draco apparated back to the manor, he still felt the ecstasy and the energy washing through his body. He felt exalted, and even more, he felt vindictive. He walked straight down to the dungeons, to see that girl and smashed open the door, causing her to jump with fright.
But then she did something that surprised him a great deal. She struggled to get up and stood before him, looking him in the eye.
"I have been bad in the past, but from now on I will do as you wish, master."
Draco sucked his breath in sharply. Did she really think that he was that stupid? Did she really for one moment believe that she could play him?
But then today was a day for new experiences. Maybe he should find out, and explore her mind deeper than he could ever have by just torturing her. After all he knew that having control of the mind was a much stronger force than having control of the body.
"Will you really my little pet?" he said slowly, a grin spreading on his face. "It may actually pay off if you do so…"
Ginny couldn't believe her ears. Her tactic was right; she had heard it. If she kept this up, she might actually be let out of here one day and then she could escape. Maybe she didn't fool him now, he surely was suspicious of her, but someday she would lure him into thinking that she really had changed and then she would make her move.
She had known it; there was hope yet. All she had to do was have the will and drive to go through with it and she would succeed.
"So what do you think is it that I wish, my pet?" he drawled, his voice just a low murmur.
"I could think of a great many things…but I am sure this is one of them," Ginny answered, locking her empty brown eyes with his cold grey ones.
She was standing so close to him, that they were almost touching, and she could feel heat and energy practically rolling from his body in waves, there truly was something powerful and different about him today.
She leaned forward slowly and touched his lips with hers. Her lips were dry and swollen, but pain was a small price for what she wanted to gain in the end. She kissed him again softly but determined and he yanked her forward roughly, pressing his lips on hers with force, sending a shot of pain through her body.
Only a splinter second later he shoved her away hard, making her stumble backwards against the wall.
"You might want to wash first, I wouldn't want to touch that." He said coldly, looking at her like she was filth under his shoe. "I'll send the house elves to clean you up."
With that he left her alone again, walking back up to the main rooms of the manor.
And despite, or maybe even because of his last comment, Ginny felt good. She felt powerful, sensing that she wasn't helpless anymore. It felt good that she had finally taken it into her own hands to make her situation better.
Obviously she couldn't count on anybody else, but she could make it on her own, she knew that now. She would learn to survive and maybe she would even learn to manipulate him.
Draco felt the blood cursing through his veins as he walked up to his rooms. Never had he thought that kissing that stupid girl would actually feel good. But it did.
And whatever might be the outcome; he would definitely be able to enjoy his little pet for a while. Maybe this would take his mind of other things, things that he didn't want to think about, now that the ecstasy was leaving his body and soul, enabling him to see things clearer again.
He remembered it all. Earlier it had all been happening in a daze, faster than anything, all tumbling out at once.
The feeling of power left him and it left him empty. What had he been thinking, going off like he had done? That man hadn't been Lucius after all!
And what had happened after…
He looked into the mirror in the hallway, and his face looked whiter than ever. He was as pale as snow on a winter's day, but apart from that he looked like always.
He looked normal. But he didn't feel normal and somehow he thought that he would never do again.
He should be scared, horrified, he should throw himself off the balcony for what he had done. But something had to be terribly wrong with him, because he didn't feel any of that. He just felt cold. And dead, he thought to himself, that was it, he felt dead.
Suddenly someone touched his shoulder and he spun around, his wand drawn. Lucius.
His father looked him over carefully and then he said something that he never had said before.
"I'm proud of you, son."
That was the irony of it all. Finally his father said the words he had always wanted to hear, he said what Draco had longed for all his life. And now that it happened it didn't mean anything, it was worth nothing.
Draco smiled bitterly and just turned his back on Lucius, closing the door to his rooms behind him. He leaned against the door, sighed heavily and slowly slid to ground, burying his face in his hands.
Hearing his father say these things would have made him so proud in the past, now it just made him feel defeated. Which he probably was, if he thought about it rationally, after all this wasn't him, it was like he was somebody else now, somebody different.
This was what he had always imagined dying to be like, he hadn't been scared about maggots digging into his flesh or rotting away in damp dark soils. He had been scared by the thought of losing himself and forgetting who he was, afraid of losing himself in an eternal darkness, which he would never ever escape.
He wondered if Lucius felt the same as he did now. Did he even feel anything? And when had it all begun?
If his father had felt this for a long, long time, stretching back to before Draco had even been born, it wasn't surprising that he could never love him.
How could you love anything if you were empty?
~**********~
That night something occurred that hadn't happened in years. Lucius and Draco had dinner together in the great dining room of the manor. They sat next to each other at the great table while the house elves brought in wine, food and lid the candles in the dark but richly antique-furnished room.
The candlelight danced in the room and cast shadows onto the walls. Draco caught himself staring at the way the light reflected in his father's blond hair, which was so much like his.
Lucius slightly raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing and Draco lowered his eyes quickly, taking an enormous sip from his wine glass.
The silence stretched on and the tension was almost visible but the usual air of hostility was strangely absent.
Draco was increasingly uncomfortable, as neither of them spoke but they had never really had much to say to each other.
There wasn't much love lost between them and most certainly not after the last couple of weeks and yet Draco felt connected, it was as if he was at the edge of a deep abyss and the key to the dark, cold and almost lifeless heart of his family was finally within his reach.
All he had to do was take that one final step and he would know it all, he would grasp what had been a secret to him for so long. Their motivations, their past, present and future and who they truly were. All he had to do was become one of them. However he didn't manage to push away the thought that somehow he already had.
Downing his fourth glass of wine, Lucius finally spoke and thus ripped Draco from his thoughts.
"Did you know that my father, your grandfather, knew the Dark Lord when he was still at Hogwarts?"
Draco hadn't known that, but he could have guessed it, he thought to himself.
"Were they friends?"
"They shared some ideals and ideas, so in a way you could consider them allies, maybe even friends as far as that was possible with either of them. Of course the heir of Slytherin was always much more powerful than your grandfather."
"Did he tell you about him?"
At that, Lucius chuckled softly and Draco almost choked on his wine.
"You could say that. He used to tell me about the glorious days when the heir of Slytherin would finally rise to power and the house of Malfoy would shine in the glory of his rightful and long overdue reign." He said, his voice now flat and cold.
"He used to tell me how we would one day bathe in the blood of muggles and mudbloods and fulfil the legacy of Salazar Slytherin. He used to tell me many things."
Just like you told me, Draco thought but didn't say it out loud. It simply wasn't important anymore because it was in the past and nothing would ever change it. He didn't fool himself into thinking that Lucius regretted anything because he knew that he wasn't even capable of that kind of emotion, something Draco understood now.
It wasn't his father that had changed, it was him. He could relate to him now, something that he hadn't been able to do before.
It was ironic if you thought about it, Draco rationalized, what kept them sitting at this dining room table wasn't any kind of rediscovered affection, it was the exact opposite.
It was the absence of feeling that enabled them to hold a conversation. Of course many people wouldn't have considered that a true conversation, but what had passed between them in those few moments was more than had ever passed between them in the 18 years before.
At the same time he knew that there would never be more than this. They were related by blood and by name and more importantly destined to be allies in their fight, but each of them would be on his own. Lucius wouldn't go out of his way to save him and he wouldn't go out of his way to save Lucius.
Their paths would cross and they would always be connected in a certain way, but they would always look out for themselves and never for each other.
It was the way it had always been and the way it would always be.
A sharp pain in his arm reminded Draco of more important matters. The Dark Lord was calling and he had to respond.
"I have to go."
Lucius nodded at him knowingly and raised his glass for one final toast.
"You will do what you have to do. I have no doubts about that."
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