Third Place - Drama

(Saturday)

I really don�t know who was more excited, Harry or myself. I finally got him to hold still long enough to bathe and comb his hair. I waited until I was completely dressed before putting him into his clothes. I didn�t want him to dirty them or wrinkle them. And it was, I discovered, a very good choice. While he waited for me to finish getting ready, he poked and prodded and smelled and opened every tube and jar I owned. The resulting mess was almost bad enough to force him into his second bath of the morning.

Once clothed, we headed down to the Entrance Hall. It had been hours since we�d had a bite of breakfast, and Harry was making silly faces and clutching his stomach in �starvation� every time I glanced at him. I refused to give in, but I also pretended not to notice when Ginny slipped him a couple of biscuits to tide him over. Her sly smile in my direction was a complete giveaway, but Harry seemed delighted in his sneaky munching.

He�d finished the last of the biscuits by the time Neville and Granger had met us and was in the middle of repeating a story I�d told him about Mum when Pansy finally strolled out of the dungeons. She was dressed to the nines, which really didn�t surprise me. She is a Slytherin and, as such, understood the importance of exactly what was going on here today.

We walked down to Hogsmeade with high energy. Harry held my hand the whole way, trying to convince me to skip with him. Had I not valued my reputation, I might have joined him; that was how excited I was. When we reached the main street of the town, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck begin to prickle and I knew that Dumbledore�s Aurors were watching.

We entered Madam Puddifoot�s and my eyes immediately searched out my mother�s. When our gazes met, she smiled; a sweet, loving smile that I remembered from my early childhood. She then stood and clasped her hands, lifting them to her lips to hide the quiver I could see begin in her smile. I vaguely noted Ginny murmur something and nodded absently. It was only after I felt them move away from our backs that I realized she�d probably excused them to get their own table.

I pulled Harry along with me, moving toward my mother. She was clad in a gorgeous light blue robe that brought out her eyes and her hair was coiffed so that an attractive ringlet escaped down either side of her cheeks. I noticed as I got closer that she wore no jewelry, not even her wedding ring. I could understand the ring, as she probably didn�t want to be known as the wife of the Boy Who Lived�s torturer, but I�d never seen her without earrings or a necklace.

I shook off the random thought as her arms came up around me, embracing me for the first time in too many years to count. She just held me for long moments, gently squeezing me to her. When she pulled away, she did so with a kiss on my cheek. "I missed you, my precious," she whispered.

"I missed you too, mum," I returned in a whisper. A shuffle brought my attention back to my guest. I smiled and held out a hand to Harry. He took it shyly and stepped forward to my side. "Mum, this is Harry Potter," I introduced him proudly. "Harry, this is my mum, Narcissa."

Harry smiled slightly and peeked up through his fringe. Mum laughed softly. "It�s lovely to meet you, Harry. To finally meet the boy who saved my son."

Her smile faded as she�d finished delivering her line. Her face became slack and her eyes vacant. Her arms fell from around my waist and she seemed to stumble a bit. I darted forward to catch her, panicked. Her eyes met mine and the sorrow within those blue depths nearly made my own eyes well up in tears. "I�m so sorry, my son," she whispered.

The front door slammed. The tinkling bells that announced customers fell to the ground with a dull clink. Patrons that had previously been sipping tea and eating scones suddenly stood, shimmered as their glamours dissipated and pointed wands around the room. I could hear the words to wards and locking spells coming from every corner of the room. On the heels of that were the screams from the regular patrons who now had those wands turned on them.

"Drop your wands!" came a bellow from near the door. I turned to see my uncle Rabastan shoot Expelliarmus at an unwise patron. The man went skittering across the floor, far from the wand he had been going for. "The next curse won�t be so bloodless," my uncle sneered. The clatter of wands roared in my ears.

I caught Ginny�s eye from across the room. She looked furious. Her eyes kept darting from my uncle to my mother to a table full of sheepish looking men and women. I saw when they set their wands down that they came out of holsters rather than pockets and I knew that this had been our protection...our now disarmed protection.

I turned back to my mother. Silent tears were sliding down her face and she refused to meet my eyes. "What is this, Mother?" I demanded anyway.

"This, my sweet nephew, is a trap," a lilting voice answered instead.

I flinched. I hadn�t known my aunt as I was growing up. She and her husband had been guests of Azkaban since before I could remember. But, in the short time since Voldemort had broken his loyal Death Eaters out, she had been a regular at the Manor. Her obsession with the Dark Lord was only surpassed by her obsession with my father.

My mother had once told me that Bellatrix should have been promised to Lucius. They were so much alike in every aspect. Unfortunately, they were unalike in the only way that their parents had deemed appropriate. Bellatrix was as dark as Narcissa was fair. Thusly, Narcissa wound up engaged to her aesthetically pleasing counterpart while Bellatrix was promised to the eldest son of the Lestrange line.

My mother had taken to her rooms more often than not once Bellatrix came back upon the scene. It was so much easier to pretend that she didn�t know her husband was conducting a blatant affair right under her nose with her sister. I often wondered what my uncle Rodolphus thought about the whole situation. I would have thought that he would have some harsh feelings toward my father for fucking his wife practically in front of him. I suppose it was the power of the Dark Lord that allowed his two favorites, Lucius and Bellatrix, to do as they chose without fear of recrimination. While my mother hid in her rooms, Rodolphus merely stayed away from the Manor altogether.

It�s strange the oddly random direction one�s brain takes when they are facing certain death. My family history shot through my head even as I watched my Aunt Bellatrix moving toward me with a smirk I recognized as residing on my father�s face. As she came to a stop, a mere two meters away, I managed to break out of my shock. I could hear Harry�s slight whimper from behind me, and I took a step backwards, bringing my back up against his chest.

I could feel his hands as they rested, trembling, on the back of my robe. I could hear his breath becoming more and more strained as the silence dragged on in the teashop. "What do you want, Aunt Bella?" I asked politely, pleased that my voice wasn�t shaking.

She smiled at me, a feral snarl that showed yellowed teeth. "Why, my sweet nephew," she cooed. "I want revenge. Revenge for killing my Lucius. Revenge for turning blood traitor and dragging my pathetic minded sister along with you." Her voice dropped into a dangerous snarl as she cast a disgusted look at my mother who still refused to make eye contact with anyone.

"So, you�re here to kill me?" I summarized to bring her attention back to me, wondering why I was bothering to save the woman who betrayed me.

Bellatrix giggled, a slightly insane note to her amusement. "No, no, no! I�m here to make you pay, my little Draco. I�m here to make you suffer." She sauntered forward a pace or two and leaned in as if to impart a secret to me. "I will hurt you until you wish to die, though," she nodded in assurance. "But I certainly won�t kill you. I can�t kill the last of the Malfoys." She giggled again. "Lucius would be so displeased with me."

"So, why are we still here then, Aunt Bella?" I interjected a bit of impatience in my demand, wondering where I was finding the balls to stand up to my insane aunt. "Surely you can�t mean to torture me here," I waved my hands around the shop, "in broad daylight and in the middle of a busy town?"

Bellatrix sneered and flipped her lank hair behind her shoulders. "Of course not, idiot boy. Your punishment is waiting elsewhere. But," she went from angry to simpering in a heartbeat. "Your beloved mummy goes no further. And I have no desire to drag a struggling Harry Potter with me on a side-along apparition. So," she drawled, dragging her finger along her wand, "we are going to dispense with my darling sister and I�m going to make sure that Harry Potter is unable to argue with me before I take you anywhere."

"Why are you killing my mother?" The words tumbled out of my lips before I could stop them. "She did exactly what you wanted," I added bitterly. "She brought me to you just like you wanted." I glared accusingly at my mother, hating her, hating that she flinched when I spat my vitriol.

Bella giggled again. "You truly are your mother�s son, aren�t you, precious? Your father�s son would never be so dense." She kicked a tiny booted foot out and caught my mother in the side. My mother gasped slightly, but didn�t move. "Cissy didn�t do anything I didn�t want her to. I�ve had the vapid twit under Imperious for days now. She may have written the letter, but it was my hand behind her."

She shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Granted, all the sickly sweet nothings were straight from her loving little heart," she sneered, kicking at my mother again. This time, a sound not unlike a wounded animal came from my mother�s throat. "And that ridiculous display when you came in was Mummy Dearest as well. I thought it would be more...impressive if the old girl still had some life in her."

Harry leaned into my back, moaning into my back. I could feel his head shaking �nonono� against my robe. Bellatrix sneered, her eyes fixed on the small bit of Harry she could see from behind me. "What�s the matter? Is ickle Potty�s noggin hurting?" she tutted. "Don�t worry, love. Soon, my Lord will make sure you haven�t a noggin to hurt." She gave another tittering giggle. "Or a heart. Or a liver. He promised me your liver," she said in a stage whisper, leaning forward again. "I�m looking so forward to it. I plan on having it with sour cherries and sage toast."

I hated that she had threatened me. That she had threatened my mother. But there was no way that she was getting away with threatening my Harry. "You�ll not touch him, you psychotic bitch," I snarled.

She just laughed gaily and leveled her wand at me. "Crucio."

"No!" came a scream. I couldn�t decide if it was from my mouth, from someone in the room, or if I�d only imagined it in my head. Then I canted sideways and landed on my arse next to my mother. The next scream had no words, but the sound cut straight to my heart. I craned my neck around to see Harry on his knees twitching from the Cruciatus spell he�d taken for me.

My body exploded into a flurry of movement. I have no idea how I got up onto my feet, I only know that I did, and that I took a running leap at my aunt before tackling her to the ground. I vaguely recognized shouts and screams coming from the room around me. I could hear the sizzle of spells going past my head and the occasional breaking of glass. But none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered right now was tearing the eyes out of my aunt�s face.

We writhed on the ground, biting, scratching, punching and kicking. As I clawed at her face, I felt a satisfying pop that was drowned out by an ear-piecing shriek. Pain and adrenaline gave my Aunt Bella strength and she tossed me off of her. I skidded and looked back at her. Her right eye was a bloody, dripping hole and her teeth were bared in a hideous grimace.

She came to her knees and jabbed her wand at my prone form. "Avada Kedavra!" she screeched, spraying blood over the floor in front of her. I watched the end of her wand glow green. Watched as the light left the end of the wood. Watched as it came towards me. And then I could see nothing but legs. Legs that came between death and me.

"No more!" Harry screamed.

There was a thump and then the rushing roar of silence. I scooted a bit to the side and saw a single remaining dark eye staring accusingly at me from my aunt�s final resting place on the floor. <

"Incendio!"

I looked back to the legs in front of me and followed them up to find the rest of Harry Potter, his hand extended as though a wand itself. I saw a spark of orange come off of the tip of his finger and then the rapidly burning form that had once been Bellatrix Lestrange took my attention back. I felt the wards drop in a flood of magic and half a dozen pops signaling the exit of the other Death Eaters.

I have no idea how long I stared at the crisping flesh before me. It was only after I heard the door open and then close that I realized Harry was no longer standing in front of me. And it was only after I noticed that, that I realized something else...

Harry was back.