A Soul to Keep

CHAPTER EIGHT

It is Time

In the absence of Pamela Parkinson, the Malfoy dungeons had fallen utterly still. The pair of teenagers sat rigidly on the edge of the stage, as far away from the podium and the cauldron as they could manage at the same time. The soft song of the Guest Chime filled the air and emphasized the strange tranquillity of the large room.

But Draco looked grouchy.

"Pansy, there is a sword."

"I see that, yes."

"And daggers. There are two daggers."

"I am aware of that."

Draco bit his lip uncharacteristically and slid his hands under his thighs. Pansy wondered where he'd picked that habit up. "Do you think they're going to... you know, with the sword?" he asked childishly.

Ever the hero, Draco Malfoy.

"It seems a bit too ritualistic, don't you think?" Pansy reasoned. "I mean, look, there are goblets. You don't need goblets to stab Harry Potter to death."

Draco perked up a bit. "Maybe they don't know he's coming and this is all just some big dinner thing."

"A Death Eater potluck," Pansy said incredulously.

"It's bound to happen eventually."

"A Death Eater potluck for which Lucius Malfoy is released from Azkaban ten months beforehand - presumably to begin early preparations - and we are locked up in the basement."

Draco seemed satisfied with this explanation and nodded approvingly. "This would be the best place for a DE get-together, really. Maybe we're the guests of honour."

"Are you high?"

He began scanning their surroundings appraisingly, frowning slightly as he counted only seven chairs set up along the mysterious table. "Hmm? No, no. Do Death Eaters do that sort of thing at their potlucks?"

Pansy made to respond, but was distracted as the room suddenly fell silent.

As abruptly as the Guest Chime had begun, the sound fell away, the last of it bouncing feebly off of the walls and echoing quietly.

"Whoever's here's come in," Draco decided. "I hope they brought lentil soup."

Pansy looked disconsolately at him. Everyone had gone mad.

"What? I can like that. One cannot live solely on caviar, you know."

"You're completely content in your delusion now, aren't you?"

Draco brushed dust off of his robes and checked his breath in his palm. "How's my hair? I hear voices."

"Somehow not surprising."

"No, you silly wench. Coming down the corridor."

He was right. Several hushed voices could be heard, growing louder and more distinct as they drew nearer, a crazed giggle occasionally slicing through the drone.

"My mother's there," Pansy told him wearily.

She was the first to step into the room, her hood drawn up over her ecstatic face, and was followed immediately by Lucius. The pair of them stood stiffly on either side of the door, flanking the slow procession of dark figures that entered after them.

These were not Death Eaters.

A group of women passed the pair; each of them clad in tattered, fading black robes with moth-eaten, black lace veils hiding their faces. A stale scent of antique books and mould clung heavily to their robes and filled the room as more and more of these strange individuals appeared in the doorway. They shuffled as they inched along, several of them favouring one leg or the other. They moved as if they were of tremendously advanced years and slumped down into the seats around the table, seven of them in all.

The last to enter the room was the Dark Lord himself.

Pansy moaned as she felt a tingling sensations tickle its way up her arm and through her chest. She realised that, for the first time in months, her arm was the same temperature as the rest of her body. She had grown so accustomed to the intense pain and frozen flesh that the faint cold she had been experiencing of late had seemed like the long lost norm.

Draco was watching her with a look of sheer horror as she sighed in relief next to him and the room was filled with ominous figures. His pale eyes were rimmed with pink and his unease was palpable.

"Pansy," said the Dark Lord in his high, airy voice. She stiffened. "You have done well yet again. I am most pleased."

She wanted to say something, anything, to make it plain to him that she had not done any of this of her own volition. That this was all a hideous mistake, and that she would never have surrendered Draco to him if she had had the chance to stop all of this. She could not feel that revolting man inside of her mind, it was almost as if he had grown to trust her fully, as if he no longer needed to be privy to her most inner thoughts because he was certain that her loyalty lay only with him.

Pansy wondered how he had gained such a faithful - and fearful - following with such a trusting nature.

Perhaps he had no faith in her after all. Perhaps, now that his plans had worked out perfectly for him, he saw no reason to control her. He no longer needed her.

Pansy knew perfectly well what happened to Death Eaters that were no longer essential and yet dared disobey their Lord.

She remained silent.

"You will come to me," he told her.

She stood, utterly ashamed of her weakness, and brushed Draco's clammy fingers off of her hand as he tried to hold her back.

That snakeskin complexion and those red eyes came into sharp focus as Lord Voldemort moved toward her and she took a few small steps in his direction. He placed one of his thin hands on her shoulder, the long nails clawing yet again at the flesh of her neck, and he lead her up onto the stage.

"Take up that sword," he whispered to her.

She obeyed.

Pamela made a quiet sound of disapproval as her perfectly arranged display was ruined.

"Do you know what this is for?" he asked her, running a long, bony finger up the shining blade.

Pansy nodded.

He looked impressed. His dark eyebrows arched and his thin lips pressed together in a way that she had only ever been able to interpret as some sort of smile. "Excellent. You will be the one to wield it, of course."

"Milord?" was all that she could manage to spit out. She knew that she couldn't kill Potter, the idea of it was cutting off her air supply and she felt faint as she held the cold steel in her palm. Again, common sense seemed to have fled from her presence, and she was left holding a ritual backsword on a large stage before a room of what looked like Hags.

Voldemort had spent nearly two decades by now plotting the murder of that boy, and it simply did not make sense for him to be forcing her to do it now in his stead.

"Has the moon risen yet, Lucius?" he asked, his eyes remaining focused on Pansy's shaking hands.

"No, Milord," he answered with a crackle in his voice that Pansy had never heard before.

Lucius Malfoy was frightened.

***

"Isn't it locked?"

"Of course it's not locked."

"What?"

"So, the man-eating wall, shrub-labyrinth, and the pack of Crups didn't seem like enough to keep intruders out to you?"

Harry maintained a blank, world-weary face. "We didn't see any of that, Matilda."

"I'm a Malfoy!"

"Stop saying that like it's the answer to every question I ask you!"

"Harry, shush," she warned, remembering to whisper as they stood by the front doors of Malfoy Manor. "I've been here many times. Do you really think that everyone is going to be forced to brave all of that just to pop by? We went the safe way, you moron. I am not about to go wasting time in a maze of scratchy little bushes while my cousin is in mortal peril."

"Fine, fine. We'll go in then."

"Alright."

Harry reached out toward the knob and pulled his hand back, appearing to think better of it. He looked questioningly to Matilda.

She didn't move.

"Will there be, er... Will another, hmm. There aren't any more alarms are there? I don't want to be found before we get to him. Them."

Matilda shook her head and muttered "Hero," under her breath. She pushed the door open just enough to allow their entry and Harry quickly shut it behind them.

"How long do we have left before the wards go back up?" she whispered, now standing in the massive entrance hall.

Harry checked his watch. "Forty minutes. They're not even down yet."

"This is alright," Matilda said. "Really. We'll just take ten minutes or so to search the largest mansion in the Wizarding world from top to bottom, another ten to rescue Draco and Pansy from the darkest wizard of all time, and then another twenty to get back across the grounds and to Dumbledore."

Harry had gone ashen. He put Draco's complexion to shame. "Sounds good. So, you know your way around, right?" he almost pleaded.

"Not really, I haven't been here since I was little. I was hoping that you would know where to go."

"Why would I know?"

"I assumed you'd been here more recently. You have been here before, haven't you?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, once. But I was..." He looked up to the ceiling and trailed off.

"In Draco's bedroom," Matilda filled in.

"It's not like that. You have a filthy mind, has anyone ever told you that?"

"Yes," she replied. "But I wasn't implying anything. It only makes sense that you would have been there, otherwise my uncle or aunt would have already had you killed."

Harry gave her that blank look again and then nodded affirmatively.

Matilda stopped and listened for a moment. "I hear voices. That way," she said and led the mute boy forward into the Manor.

It took them fifteen minutes to discover that the source of this voice was one very old, very baritone house elf with rather startling cataracts. The hideous little beast's every word carried throughout the entire first floor like Lucius' yelling in a snit, and Matilda was becoming royally pissed off.

"Fuck," she hissed as the diminutive monster hitched his loincloth up over his bony hips and limped down into the kitchens. "Well, the Hags aren't on this floor."

"Upstairs?" Harry offered, gnawing on his lower lip in obvious trepidation.

Matilda shook her head. "No. Lucius doesn't allow just anyone up there. What the hell was I thinking?"

Harry gaped mutely at her.

Matilda was beginning to suspect that she intimidated the poor boy.

"The dungeons! The basement! It's all cold cement and eeriness down there. If there's going to be a ritual, it'll be in the dungeons."

"The Malfoys have dungeons."

"Well, we don't use them so much anymore." She looked around for a moment. "You wouldn't happen to know how to get down there, would you?"

"Oh, of course," Harry snapped. He had somehow grown even paler and had begun wringing his hands.

Hopefully, this was how he prepared himself for every bit of mortal combat he found himself mixed up in.

"We'll just have to find our way from the kitchens then," Matilda whispered in tones of irritated resignation. "That's how we did it when we were little."

So they followed the half-blind little fiend as he hobbled down the winding stairs.

If the house elves sensed their presence at all, they did nothing about it. They appeared to be preparing a large amount of dried herbs and were constantly rearranging a long line of tall bottles of mysterious liquids while muttering to themselves in third person.

They were preparing the ingredients for the Hags.

A miniscule elf, looking much younger than the rest, brushed past them, his arm coming up inside of the cloak for a fraction of a second as he scuttled by. Matilda gasped and Harry looked prepared to run for his life, but the little thing did not appear to notice what he had done.

"We should keep going," Matilda whispered directly into Harry's ear. He nodded, his eyes still glued to the youngest elf.

They stood by a door on the far side of the room for a few minutes, waiting for it to be opened for them. Eventually, the baritone limped over to them and jerked it open, then continued to hobble down a long, dark hallway.

"Is this the right way?" Harry whispered to Matilda as they followed.

She nodded, although in truth she had as much of an idea where she was as Harry did.

They turned several sharp corners and found that the light dimmed and the temperature dropped the closer they got to the centre of the mansion. The house elf was limping along at an incredible pace, his few hairs flapping wispily out behind his round skull. He wheezed heavily and was constantly hitching his loincloth back up over his hipbones. Soon, he began humming in his sepulchral tone, the notes echoing loudly against the dense stone walls, drowning out any other possible sounds. He paused for a moment and looked around before taking a sharp right.

Harry mumbled something incoherent.

"Pardon?" Matilda said and continued to move.

"I asked if house elves can see though Invisibility Cloaks," he repeated in a whisper.

"How should I know?" she took a few steps forward and stopped, an oddly cool rush of air touching her cheeks. She turned to question her companion.

He wasn't there.

The invisibility cloak had slipped off her shoulders and she was standing, perfectly visible, in the centre of the corridor somewhere in the vicinity of an invisible boy.

"Harry?" she hissed, the panic rising quickly into a ball in her throat. "Harry, where the hell are you?"

She felt invisible fingers wrap around her forearm as a much larger ones wrapped around the other.

"Matilda Malfoy?"

She spun around and attempted to wrench her arm free of the stranger's grip. Upon first glance, she could see that this man closely resembled one of Draco's cronies and she relaxed slightly. If they were at all related, she could outwit him if she had to.

"Goyle?" she asked.

He twisted his face into an extraordinarily confused expression and said, "Come with me."

"No." She was not going to be ordered about by a man that had very possibly fathered one of her cousin's goons.

The strange expression deepened and she felt Harry's hand slip away from her. The mountain of a Death Eater removed his meaty hand from her arm and immediately wrapped it around the back of her neck. He began unceremoniously pushing her forward with a grunt.

"Unhand me, Mr. Goyle!" she ordered, trying her best to imitate her father.

He continued to shove her down the corridor.

"There's a wall there, you buffoon!"

He steered her to the right and around another corner.

"There's a door!"

It was opened for her.

"Hello, uncle," she said lightly as Lucius shut it behind her. "I appear to have stumbled upon a henchman."

Lucius clenched and unclenched his jaw several times before speaking. "What are you doing here, you stupid girl?" he demanded roughly.

"Visiting. No one was upstairs, so I came down here."

"Visiting," he said flatly.

"Well, I missed you so."

"Shut up," he growled. "Must you foul everything up? You've been nothing but a nuisance since you were a child." His cheeks were steadily reddening as he nervously turned away from her.

"Draco?" Matilda said disbelievingly, following Lucius' gaze. "Wait, who gave Pansy a sword? That is a bad idea. Put down the weapon, sweetheart."

Pansy spared her the usual glare and instead turned to the man next to her with perfect terror swimming in her wide eyes. It was Lord Voldemort.

Matilda started and instinctively moved so that she was blocked somewhat by her uncle's torso.

Voldemort was tapping four long, skeletal fingers impatiently on one of his thighs, the white skin of his face stretched tightly around his thin, pursed lips. He frowned at Matilda in annoyance and then looked to the table stretching across the room.

"Are those Hags?" Matilda asked no one in particular as her ears began to ring and her head started to pound. Her pulse quickened and she prayed that Harry was on his way with the Aurors. Had it been ten minutes?

"Yes, darling," Pansy's mother said. "Please, now, sit down or something. Just get out of the way."

"Kill her," Voldemort ordered calmly, waving a dismissive hand.

"For popping by?" she croaked.

"Milord, with all due respect..." Lucius trailed off, waiting for his Lord to nod in approval. "There may be others. She may be useful."

"Others? There are no others," Matilda said a little too quickly.

One of the Hags stood up from her seat at the table, a bit of dust falling from her shoulders as she did so. "It is time," she said in a raspy sort of grumble. "We must begin. Leave the girl."

Surprisingly, Voldemort nodded stiffly in compliance and gestured vaguely toward the wall beside Matilda.

The massive hand of Goyle sr. wrapped tightly around the back of her neck yet again, this time painfully so, and he shoved her down to the floor against the cold bricks of the wall. "Stay down there," he instructed, folding his fingers into colossal fists. Matilda nodded weakly.

Hurry up, Harry.

"It is the youngest first," said another of the Hags, lifting herself from her seat with her arms and shuffling toward the stage. The others followed suit and soon the seven of them were stationed in an eerily still line before the stage.

"Go ahead, young lady," another wheezed. She was addressing Pansy.

Pansy's green eyes danced around the room desperately, settling eventually on Matilda. She held her gaze pleadingly, the weight of it slowing Matilda's breathing and astounding her with the intensity of it. The girl's horror was whitewashed across her face and she made a quiet whimpering noise as she looked back down at the sword. "I can't," she murmured, her voice breaking.

"You must do it," Voldemort snapped, his previous calm lost entirely. "You must."

Pansy shook her head and a few tears spilled down her pallid cheeks. "But he's not here," she pleaded faintly.

"Get up on the stage, Draco," Lucius ordered. "This won't work with you sitting on the edge. Move."

"Father?" Draco said cautiously. He didn't seem to understand what was happening.

"UP!"

Draco hung his head and obeyed in a manner that Matilda had only ever seen him display when Lucius was concerned. The frightened boy threw his legs up beside him and moved to stand shakily beside the cauldron. His feet clanked hollowly on the new surface as if he was balanced on a grid of metal bars over an empty space.

A wave of comprehension seemed to surge against Pansy and she staggered backward. "But I can't!" she exclaimed, her words thick with sobs. "I thought..."

Draco gasped and spun to face Lucius. "Father, no," he said with grim understanding. It was as if he was all too aware that beseeching anything of that man was futile.

Lucius silently folded his arms.

Voldemort draped one of his pale hands over Pansy's shoulder and said, "The blade, my girl. Now is the time."

She whimpered slightly and raised it, her right arm shaking noticeably, the Mark no doubt burning painfully into her flesh. Draco raised his chin proudly and set his mouth firmly into a thin, determined line.

"No!" Matilda shrieked, scrambling to her feet. "You can't, Pansy!"

"Shut her up," Lucius said, still facing the stage and his terrified son.

Goyle's hands wrapped around Matilda's arms and she struggled wildly, employing every bit of strength she possessed to break free. She screamed again and again as she fought the man, his nails digging deeply into her flesh and drawing blood as she pulled away. She had no idea what she was going to do in the event that she somehow wrenched herself from his grip, but the panic was wild and fierce inside of her mind, pounding through her veins like acid, and she was determined to get to that stage.

"Stop," Goyle rumbled in his throat.

Matilda let loose another shriek of horror as she saw Pansy take a tentative step toward Draco. "Harry!" she screamed. There was no need for stealth and secrecy any longer, he had to get there now or else all was lost. "Harry! Harry!"

"I said shut her up," Lucius bellowed. He stormed over to them, arms straight at his side, hands clenched into fists. He wrenched Matilda away from her captor by the jaw and promptly slammed her head against the wall.

Agony exploded inside of her mind and she collapsed to the floor. She remained conscious, but a feeling of bitter illness hit her hard and her vision was blurred heavily as she watched Pansy take another step forward.

She tried to open her mouth to scream again, to call out for help, to save Draco, but she could only manage a strangled gurgle.

"Through the heart, Pansy. Now," said Voldemort. "It must be through the heart!"

The traitorous girl nodded and lowered the blade, resting it against Draco's chest. He shut his eyes and squared his jaw, looking absolutely resigned to death. He had given up. There was no fight in him.

Matilda forced herself up into a sitting position and swallowed a wave of sick. She dragged her mutinous legs behind her as she crawled toward the door.

She had to find Harry.

The floor was icy against her hands and the exit seemed miles away. The throbbing in her head only seemed to increase as she moved, as if slow cracks were forming in her skull as they do in thin ice. The door was too far away and the stone was too cold, she was too injured and the boot was too heavy as Lucius thrust his foot down onto her back and glared malevolently down at her.

"You will remain," he told her.

"But he's going to kill you too!" she cried thickly, finding her voice and a large amount of blood in her mouth along with it.

"I know that!" he roared back at her, digging his heel into her spine. "There is no other way!"

"Pansy, you must do it now!" the Dark Lord hissed from the stage. "NOW!"

Matilda turned her head up to the stage. She was closer to them now, and even with her quickly blurring vision she could see that Pansy shut her eyes as she nodded.

She stumbled backward again; the blade falling for a moment before she thrust it upward and blindly forced it forward into Draco, all of her body weight behind it as she drove it deeper into him.

Draco's scream echoed hideously through the round room and he grabbed at the wound as he fell to his knees, the sword sliding easily from his body as the door slammed open.

A flood of Aurors spilled in, sending curses in every direction at the horde of Death Eaters that followed them and at the Hags that were already in the room. Tonks absolutely sprinted in, followed by the pink-cheeked witch and the black wizard. There were no less than a dozen others, some that had not been in Dumbledore's office earlier, and for each of them at least two new Death Eaters swarmed in. Moody was the last to limp in; his face glistening with sweat as he fired carefully aimed curses and hexes at more than his share of foes, each of them hitting the floor with dull thuds or pained cries.

The weight of Lucius' foot was suddenly missing, but Matilda could not move. She attempted to push herself up once again, but collapsed forward as dozens of feet stomped by, a few narrowly missing her limbs or torso. She lay bleeding from the head and fighting unconsciousness on the cold stone of the floor as the battle blazed around her.

Dumbledore, whom she had not initially noticed, rushed the stage, sending one indigo stream of a curse at Voldemort and sending him flying back into the wall. The Dark Lord easily picked himself back up and flew toward the headmaster, wand pointed murderously at the other wizard. Their personal battle was quickly swallowed up by the larger one, and soon each individual conflict was indiscernible from the next.

Matilda had seen that Tonks was the one to take Goyle down with a particularly painful-looking hex, but it was the mass of black cloaks billowing around the room that caused the greatest amount of confusion. She could not tell who had cursed whom, and she was more than certain that she saw a pale boy with red hair laying limply on the ground, a young-looking girl dragging him from the room by the arms.

Harry was the next to the stage and threw himself down beside Draco with a hollow clank of metal against bone. He wrapped his shaking arms around the injured boy's abdomen and half carried, half dragged him toward the door and the other Gryffindors. Blood was running steadily from Draco's wound, spreading like spilled ink and gleaming crimson through the thin fibres of his robes. His eyes were clamped shut as they passed Matilda, and her heart faltered as she realised that he must still have been conscious.

Harry's robes were soaked through as well, and as they passed she could see Lucius running at the pair of boys like a wild man, his wand held out before him as he sent a vicious curse in Harry's direction.

Matilda made brief eye contact with Pansy as she rushed toward them and threw herself in front of the curse. Three Aurors descended upon Lucius as Pansy fell.