Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and the Plate of Carleigh

One step. Two more. It was getting easier. The pain was slowly receding from his heaving chest. Escaping in pitiful increments just as his shock and horror had. The dark figure before him was always at least a full stride ahead, and the reasoning behind this could no longer be blamed on something as frivolous as not being fully-grown. Judging by his lean stature, with just the correct amount of a muscle that adorned his once slinky form, and certainly by what the cold, stormy gray eyes had witnessed, the boy was no longer, just a boy. He was fully-grown, and there was no excuse for his actions now. He must take full responsibility for them.

Could anyone question that he didn't know such an inevitable fact before he accepted his mission? Did they not understand that he could make those sort of decisions on his own? To Draco Malfoy's dismay, just about everyone involved in his murderous task to dispose of the Dark Lord Voldemort's second greatest enemy knew better than he that the decision to take the job on his own was a rash one, and certainly far from what would be considered correct.

Draco would never admit to the slight fear hidden behind the gray ominous clouds that peaked through the shadows of his deceitful eyes, but it was there just as his curiosity to why Severus Snape was still walking in front of him, just a few feet away. The man was showing some sort of compassion just by helping him along, and although the seventeen year old would merely smirk and toss this tidbit to the side as a sign of weakness, he couldn't help but be thankful that this weakness was helping him. He was still alive, fed, and getting in better shape after experiencing the nasty pull of apparating.

Suddenly, the figure before him stopped walking and Draco's thoughts were interrupted after nearly colliding with his former Potions teacher. In the moonlight, Snape's curtain of greasy black hair gleamed menacingly, and Draco took a stuttered step backwards in surprise while running a pale hand through his own silvery blond locks. As Snape turned around to gaze down upon his pupil, his eyes scrutinized the boy with a mixture of contempt and concern. Highly intelligent was the Potions master, and more than anyone else, he was aware of the delicacy of the situation. All possible next moves that the pair could make were somehow strewn out before him on a giant Wizard's chessboard. One wrong step and a gallant knight would erupt out of no where smashing the two to minuscule bits, leaving them to be blown away by the faintest wind unless some being took mercy upon their souls and set the whole arena up once more. However, the mercy could basically be taken entirely out of the equation seeing how hated the two were after the events of the past few hours.

"Draco, I-I understand if you're confused about what has happened, but there is a lot to be done," the mentioned was shocked by the slight faltering in the speaker's normally monotonous tone. Snape's breaths were still sharp, and his eyes scanned the forest scene that was darkened by the blanket of June night sky.

"Professor, isn't it best that we return to the Dark Lord?" The reply came a few moments after desperately trying to decipher what Snape had been talking about. In no way did Draco see himself as confused! The mission had been a complete success! Dumbledore, the almighty Albus Dumbledore, was dead!

An unexpected wave of nausea whipped up from his toes at a shocking pace and brought Draco to his knees. 'It..It had worked...' he thought to himself hopelessly, not daring to look out and see the contempt that Snape must have been watching him with. 'They thought I'd fail...I thought I'd fail...But it worked...He's dead...' fragmented strings of consciousness pounded one after the other deep in the young man's chest so that he now resembled that child which was thought to have vanished forever with the etching of the tingling mark on his left arm.

No sign of warmth or kindness brought relent to these terrible and unknown feelings. Guilt seemed to be overpowering them all, but the fear that preferred to remain hidden in the depths of his silvery pools leaked out onto cold, defined cheeks. It was embarrassing, of course, but not unheard of for Draco Malfoy to cry. What would have once been a surge of fury, was now only an acute tickle of resent for the day when Harry Potter, the last person in the world that Draco would have wanted to see, stumbled upon him on a especially rough day where he'd been fretting over how this very scheme of killing Dumbledore was going to work out, crying in the bathroom and being comforted by a mudblooded outcast-of-a-ghost, Moaning Myrtle. At least then he'd been able to look up and see that someone in the world cared about why he was upset. No matter how degrading it might have been, he relished that feeling of someone caring about him. And his problems. And his needs. And wanting to fix them.

Out of habit, Draco reeled his arms back to his knees and sat kneeling for a few more moments before quickly wiping away a couple salty tears and careening his head to peer up at Professor Snape. To his surprise, Snape's own face was illuminated in the moonlight, only to reveal that he, as well, was wiping away the remains of a good, silent, cry.