The Kiss

The Kiss

Draco sighed as tears filled his eyes. He had been in this place for a month, hiding from the world. Snape had brought him here, after his mission failed. He had wanted to do it, to kill Dumbledore, but he hadn't been able to.

And then for Snape to make a fool of him like he had. He just shoved Draco aside as though there were nothing wrong with it!

And then.... He did it. He killed Dumbledore. That wasn't his job, it was Draco's!

He was on the run now. The Dark Lord was furious that Draco hadn't been the one to complete the mission (albeit he was not complaining that it was indeed completed) and had signed Draco's death warrant personally. He didn't know what to do, or where to turn, and he knew he couldn't go home. He knew that with an absolute certainty, even though no one had told him such.

He was tired. He was tired of being forced to hide, of not knowing what was going on, of being told what to do and when to do it.... He wanted out.

He sighed and stretched and lay back on the cot he had been given to use as a bed. This is what becoming a Death Eater had given him. This is what choosing to follow Voldemort had led him to. This was not what he had in mind.

He had pictured something glorious. Something...rewarding. He didn't think he'd be hiding from both Death Eaters and Aurors. He didn't think he'd be forced to live in a hole in the wall. He didn't think that his only contact to the outside world would be a man named Wormtail of all things.

And who would have thought that Snape would live in an old Muggle dump such as this?

The door above him creaked open and the rickety steps shed dust and moaned as the fat, rat-like man slowly walked down them. He turned the corner and looked at Draco with small, beady, watery blue eyes. "Your father is here," he squeaked. Draco winced at the sound.

"My father is in Azkaban," Draco drawled. "And even if he were not, what in the name of Slytherin would he be doing here?"

"You--you didn't hear?" he asked. "The--the Dark Lord, he--he freed everyone."

Draco's cold gray eyes narrows on the rat-like man. "When?" he asked.

"Yester--yesterday."

Draco sighed and sat up. Wormtail turned and walked up the stairs to the main level of the house. Draco followed.

Indeed Draco's father was standing in the front room of Snape's house. He looked paler than the last time Draco had seen him. Paler and thinner and he relied on his cane much more than before. He stood in the middle of the dusty room and, leaning on his cane, reached towards the table to pick up a glass of wine that had been poured for him by Wormtail, Snape having gone away on a mission now that he has no need for living the double life he had been.

He took a sip and set the glass down once more.

"I am ashamed of you," his father said softly. "You were given a mission and you have failed to complete that mission," he said, his voice still as soft as snow. "It is true that Albus Dumbledore has been taken care of but it is also true that you did not take care of him, or so I hear. You have failed Draco, and because you have failed, you must die. The Dark Lord does not forgive failures."

"Then why are you still alive?" Draco asked roughly.

"It is my punishment," Lucius said softly. He sighed heavily and reached into his robes. He pulled out his wand. "It is my duty, as your father, and my punishment, for my own failure, to punish your failure," he said softly. "You are my only son, Draco and for that I am truly regretful for what I am about to do. Your mother will surely never forgive me for this. Avada--"

Draco, not wanting to end his life at only seventeen years, dove towards his father. A move few have ever expected. He rolled over the table and snatched his father's wand out of his hands. "Avada Kedavra!" he shouted, the wand pointed directly at his father's chest. The green light enveloped his father before the man fell down dead.

He heard a sharp intake of breath come from Wormtail. He cast the curse again. He would not allow anyone to know what had happened.

He took his father's cloak from the stand at the door and placed his father's wand in an inside pocket. He opened the door and stepped out, breathing in the clean night air for the first time in a month.

He set off down the street without a backwards glance.