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TWELVE PROTECT FROM HARM

(PART TWO)

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      THE PREFECT'S BATHROOM is always a little warmer than the other ones, what with the large bath creating a constant steamy fog. Holly still isn't sure if she likes this bathroom, because whilst she likes the massive bath and the pretty stained-glass window (even if it's depiction of a mermaid is totally inaccurate) she isn't the biggest fan of how long it takes to walk to. Most of the time she uses the one in the dungeons, because it's a hell of a lot easier keeping her toothbrush in the room next to where she sleeps, rather than a room a whole five minutes' walk away. But, sometimes, she likes to go into this bathroom, considering it's always empty, and the steam makes it a relaxing place to read.

       In Cold Blood by Truman Capote sits in her lap as she leans against one of the windows, a small ledge being her seat. She has the first period free, thankfully, so she sits in the prefect's bathroom with her book, happily reading the true story of a family murdered in cold blood, as the title says. The book's been covered with another dust sleeve, so it comes across as just another book that ties into her learning; she stole this one off of her extra reading for History of Magic, an old book called Sacred Families Around the World.

       Inside of that one, she remembers, had a section about the Malfoys — how they rose through muggle aristocracy, but resentfully went into hiding once it was made illegal to have wizard-muggle relations of any sort — under the United Kingdom section. Valen, however, had it's own page in the Norway chapter, detailing the story of how the Valens, who rose to high status when they moved to England in the 1800s, and a woman called Constance married into wealth, her four husbands mysteriously dying soon after each wedding, and how she promptly changed her son's name to her maiden name, without care for the society's norm at the time. "I'm not giving greatness to another name," she apparently said.

       She had spent that breakfast in the hall, sitting on the Gryffindor table to hear Harry explain what was in Slughorn's memory. "Horcruxes are objects that hide part of someone's soul, so the person can live forever — but you've got to split your soul in order to do it, and to do that, you've got to kill someone. And Voldemort asked Slughorn if you could make seven of these Horcruxes... Dumbledore says that's what he's done, so he can be immortal."

       "But what objects did he use?"

       "He only made six Horcruxes, the seventh part is in his body... But Tom Riddle's diary was one of them, until that was destroyed... And Dumbledore destroyed another, which was Marvolo's ring. He thinks that other ones are Slytherin's locket and Hufflepuff's cup, because Voldemort would want to use artefacts. And—And he says that Nagini, his snake, could be another, but he doesn't know about the other two... But, he says that I can go with him the next time he goes to get another one!"

       "We'll help, too," Ron had said, and to Holly's amazement, he motioned to her, as well. Her eyes had widened, and he must've noticed, because he shrugged. "Well, it's not like we know anything about dark magic, is it? And you rightfully won the Tournament."

       "My mother wouldn't let me," Holly had replied earnestly, a frown appearing across her face. She wouldn't, she knows that. If she tried to run away, her mother would kill her — or worse, tell Voldemort where her dad is, even it that killed her for having the 'relationship' in the first place.

       It was around that time that she excused herself, walking to the prefect's bathroom and opening up her book, ready to immerse herself into someone else's problems for an hour or two.

       The door opens into the bathroom. Holly closes the book immediately, ready to up and leave so someone can have their mid-morning bath or whatever, but as she turns to see who it is, she halts. The door closes behind Pansy.

       "I want to apologise," says Pansy.

       Holly holds onto her book as she walks closer, carefully keeping her distance from the bath, or, the massive drowning device. Pansy fiddles with her thumbs as she looks at Holly nervously.

       "I know I shouldn't have told Flo about Susannah," says Pansy, as she says so, Susannah appears out of nowhere, crossing her arms and giving Pansy a nasty look. Holly looks at Susannah, hoping she'll take the hint and leave for a couple minutes... She doesn't. "And I know that I only said that stuff because I didn't want Flo to think I was crazy, and all that..." She sighs. "I'm sorry, Hol. I really didn't mean to tell her — and I've taken the memory away, so she doesn't know about it anymore... I'm really, really sorry."

       Holly looks at Pansy for a minute, before she moves forwards, hugging her. "I've missed you," she tells her truthfully, holding Pansy close to her. Pansy hugs her back, and Holly pulls away, smiling weakly. "And I get it, I guess — it's self-preservation, isn't it? Like, do you remember last year, when I told Umbridge I didn't see Voldemort—"

       "Don't say his name," Pansy whispers.

       Holly freezes. Suddenly she sees it on her best friend's face — Pansy "Pug-Faced" Parkinson, bully of many, isn't excited about the idea of Voldemort taking over the wizarding world again, not like most Hogwarts students would expect. She's terrified.

       "Pans," says Holly softly, her brows furrowing as she looks at her best friend, her eyes still a little wide from the mention of the dreaded name. "If things get bad again... It's safer for you to tell them things. I—I don't want you to die because you knew something..."

       "I won't tell anyone about your dad — what I told you then, I'll take that secret to the grave, because you're my best friend, and I know what they'll do if they find out..." says Pansy, looking away for a second, before she turns to Holly, her face hardened. "Take my memory of it."

       "What?"

       "It's the safest option, isn't it?"

       Holly looks at Pansy, a determined expression on her face.

       "Really?" says Holly.

       "Really," says Pansy with a nod.

       Holly thinks it's incredible of Pansy to say this, but the idea feels strange. The idea of her best friend being terrified makes Holly feel a little sick, but, Pansy gives Holly a look, urging her to do it already. Slowly, Holly raises her wand, concentrating on that memory, of the night they were in this bathroom and Holly revealed her 'small' crush on Harry, and later, revealed the fact that her dad is a muggle.

       "You're my best friend," Pansy had said, the words ringing through Holly's ears as she extracts the memory from her best friend's mind, after summoning an empty vial from the potions classroom. "If you've got a secret, I'm taking it to the grave."

       Holly's glad she's taking the memory, having heard that. She loves her dad immensely, she always will, but she can't bear the thought of her best friend sacrificing her life for a secret about him.

       So she looks down at the vial once she's taken the memory, and looks up at Susannah, who's still watching over the two. "Hey, Suze?" says Holly. "Could you hide this?"

       "Ooooooooooooooooh sure!" says Susannah, whizzing through the air and plucking the vial from Holly's grasp, before dissolving out of sight.

       Holly turns to Pansy.

       "So what have you been up to?"

       "I kissed Flo—"

       "You fucking what?"

✧

       WEIRDLY, HOLLY'S CHEST hurts as she walks to dinner that evening, trying her hardest to ignore the painful sensation. Her chest feels as if it's heaving, like if she was crying, but that's the weird part — she isn't crying, her chest just hurts. Her hands keep on shaking, too, and every couple of minutes she'll feel like she's in a cold room, water being splashed onto her face for no apparent reason.

       She keeps on thinking about her cousin. He's missing from the Slytherin table, and there's a voice in her head telling her that something isn't right. Holly gets to her feet, leaving Pansy in pursuit of wherever her cousin is, but the second she gets into the hallway, she's face-to-face with April.

       April's smile disappears the second she sees Holly.

       "It's you," says April. She looks Holly up and down, as if she isn't shorter than her, and Holly can't even focus on the girl in front of her. The only thing on her mind is her cousin, Draco, Draco, Draco. Something feels like it's terribly wrong, and she can feel her stomach twisting and turning into knots, dread taking over.

       Holly begins to walk past April, but the little girl steps in her path. 

       "OK, look," says Holly, the dread and panic turning into irritation. "I need to find my cousin, I'm not listening to you having a go at me for something I'm sorry for—" April snorts, and Holly glares at her. "You know what? I want to move on from Durmstrang. I don't want to be the person I was there, but if you don't see that, why should I care? We're not even friends."

       She gets past April before anything else is said, her mind beginning to fill with her cousin's voice. I can't do it... I can't... It won't work... Her stomach is in agony, pure dread filling her entire body as her mind begins to scream to her the whereabouts of her cousin, the wrist that connected her to him beginning to ache from where the golden lines wrapped around it.

       Her mind feels like it's caving in on her; the sound of her cousin crying uncontrollably drowns out the sound of her own thoughts, telling her to calm down, this is just the connection, if she stops panicking she'll be able to think straight. But she can't, she can't. She feels like her entire life is on the line, as she breaks into a run, not even knowing where she's going, her feet just knowing the way to her cousin.

       Why is this happening to her? She tries to remember what that Unbreakable Vow actually said... Will you, Holliday, protect Draco from harm? The question's so vague, what is she supposed to expect from that? First it's caused them to have a telepathic connection, and now... Whatever this is. But she doesn't get it. It makes no sense. How is this meant to protect Draco from harm? How is she supposed to help him at all, when she's struggling to even think properly, let alone defend both of them — and what's hurting him anyway? Who, in this school, would be threatening her cousin's life?

       She bursts open a door just as she hears Harry shout, "SECTUMSEMPRA!"

       Everything slows down. One second she's running on fumes, feeling nothing but panic, and the next, she's crashed to the floor next to her cousin, identical cuts appearing across her body. She feels all of the cuts tear open her skin, feels her blood trickle down her arms, stain her school uniform, running across other cuts and making them sting even more. Cuts appear on the soles of her feet, her knees, above her eye, and she feels like she's been rendered useless. Everything hurts too much for her to move, but she can see her cousin shaking, and she realises something — he isn't used to pain like she is.

       She had fallen on top of him, so she forces herself to move off of him, the cuts on her palms scraping against the bathroom floor. She can hear Harry mumbling how he didn't mean it, having fallen to his knees beside her, not knowing what to do.

       But Holly ignores him, her mind on her cousin. "It'll be fine," she begins to mumble, over and over, trying her hardest to comfort him when she can't even move without grazing a cut and making it worse. At one point she accidentally moves too much and two cuts along her arm join together, and she winces.

       It begins to dawn on her. The connection was trying to warn her, trying to alert her of the danger her cousin was in, and in turn, her. Because they're connected, by the looks of things, if one of them is in danger, so's the other, and because of that, here she is, her school shirt blood-red.

       She can't find the strength to mumble after a couple minutes, as Snape storms into the bathroom and begins the counter-curse against the spell. Things become blurry as she's taken to the hospital wing, everything feeling like it's a distance away from her as she's put on one of the hospital beds, her head hitting the pillow, and her eyes closing, closing... shut.

✧

       SHE SEES THE HOSPITAL wing around her, a couple of candles keeping parts of the room lit. It's gotten dark since she fell asleep, having fainted from the amount of pain and adrenaline rushing through her head, and quickly falling asleep afterwards, exhausted and still feeling out of it. The cuts are gone now, thankfully, but by the looks of things, she and Draco are meant to stay in the hospital wing for the time being.

       They're the only two in the hospital wing, by the looks of it. Holly sits upright, and she looks across to her cousin, her brows beginning to furrow.

       "Draco," she whispers, hoping he's awake and hear her. But, he's not, and normally Holly would leave it, but she's got some investigating to do.

       She quietly tiptoes out of her hospital bed, and darts across to his, lightly prodding him on the arm until he turns over, and gives her one of the nastiest glares she's ever seen.

       "I'm trying to sleep," says Draco.

       "I've got a question," says Holly, sitting on the foot of his bed. Draco lets out a grumble, and begrudgingly sits up. "What happened earlier?"

       "What, how your boyfriend tried to kill me?"

       "No — well, yes, that happened, but he didn't mean it..." says Holly, pulling a face. Draco doesn't look impressed, and she sighs. "Before that. I felt my chest heaving, like I was crying. Were you upset about something?"

       Draco looks away from her, his gaze fixed on one of the windows around the hospital wing. Holly watches him closely, hoping he'll actually tell her. "It's about the task I told you about," he says. "You'll hate me if I tell you, and you'll get involved and I'm not getting you involved — that's why I've kept you in the dark, because I'm not having this happen to you, too..."

       "I won't hate you," says Holly softly.

       "You will," says Draco.

       "I won't," says Holly, a little more forcefully. "Draco—"

       "You can't tell anyone," says Draco, before she can attempt to talk him into telling her. She supposes he's desperate to tell someone, whatever secret he's been holding all year is eating away at him, she can tell, she doubts other students from other years haven't noticed the once-brutish Draco Malfoy become quiet and miserable. "You've got to promise me you won't tell anyone — not Parkinson, not that boyfriend of yours... No one."

       Holly puts a hand on her heart. "I swear on my life."

       Draco turns to Holly. The candle flickering on his bedside table lights his face up, ever so slightly, enough for Holly to see the glassiness of his eyes, tears building up again. His bottom lip begins to shake, and she quickly begins to realise, that his tears aren't just sadness, they're of fear. His skin looks even paler under the candlelight, and the slight amount of moonlight seeping in through the windows around them; he looks even more tired than usual, his under-eyes a dark purple.

       His voice is quiet, petrified of someone else overhearing this massive secret of his. The secret that's completely changed him, made him a shell of the person he was the year before. She leans closer slightly, waiting for him to finally reveal what's changed him so terribly since the summer.

       And then he says it:

       "I have to kill Dumbledore."

       Holly's stomach drops.

       "He's been getting angry about it for ages," says Draco, speaking ever so quietly. Tears start to roll down his face. "I tried to kill him with the necklace — I used Imperius on Madam Rosmerta who gave it to Hertz, but then she touched the thing... And then I tried with the mead, but Weasley got poisoned instead... All year I've been trying to repair the Vanishing Cabinet in the Room of Requirement, and I've almost finished it. And then..." He breaks off, crying.

       Holly moves forwards and hugs her cousin. He wraps his arms around her, his head on her shoulder as he cries, his tears wetting her pyjamas. She holds her cousin, hugging him.

       "I can help," she says quietly, but immediately, he pulls away, and shakes his head.

       "No, you're not," he says. Holly doesn't know what else to say — she feels useless, knowing she can't help him with the task that's eating away at him. She just wants to help him. "This is my problem. I'm not letting you."

       Holly starts to feel panicked, and tries her hardest to think of every other solution. There's only one decent one left, and although she knows he'll hate it, she says it anyway. "We could tell Dumbledore," she says. "I know the Order will keep us safe—"

       "He'll kill our entire family," says Draco. "You don't know what he's like. He's better than them. He's always two steps ahead, he's always more powerful, he'll kill us if we try and go against him, he'll kill us..."

       Holly nods. Another thought strikes her, her stomach filling with dread as she looks at his forearm. "Does that mean...?"

       Draco nods once. He draws back from her, and slowly, he pulls up the sleeve of his pyjama shirt, revealing the Dark Mark.

       "Oh my God," she whispers.

       "I don't want this," he says quickly. "I didn't have a say in this — I think he's just trying to get back at Dad, for getting thrown into Azkaban..."

       Holly nods. She can't take her eyes off of the black mark covering his forearm, a horrific contrast to his pale skin.

       "Tomorrow I have to kill him," says Draco, pulling his sleeve down. "Tomorrow I have to kill the only person who can stop him."

       Holly doesn't respond. She doesn't know what happens, in the minutes afterwards. Everything feels like it's slowed down, and at one point she decides that she wants to go to sleep, returning to her bed. She rests her head on the pillow, and everything feels strange. Because tomorrow, everything is going to change. Tomorrow, the world won't have some protection, because everyone knows that Voldemort's scared of one person and one person only, and that's Dumbledore. And if he's gone... She squeezes her eyes shut, already feeling terrified.

       She sleeps until the early evening, missing the day's lessons — and that day's Wizengamot trial — completely. By the time she wakes up, it's nearing dinnertime, and Draco's already left, having most likely lied to Madam Pomfrey about needing to have a shower or something, and instead snuck off to that Vanishing Cabinet.

       Holly eats the dinner presented to her by one of the house-elves, a bowl of pasta and a glass of pumpkin juice, with dessert being a little bowl of fruit. Harry's left a note for her, explaining how he didn't know what the spell did, that he didn't mean to hurt him like that, that he felt sorry for all of it, and she reads it as she eats her pasta, feeling sorry. She isn't angry at him. He said they had gotten into a fight, he didn't mean to do what he did, why would she get angry about it? No one thought it would hurt her, nor did anyone know what that spell did.

       She keeps on glancing at her cousin's hospital bed, knowing that he's got to return at some point, the house-elves keep on returning and asking when 'the boy' will be back, so he can have his dinner, too...

       And then she sees the note on the bedside table.

       Holly,

       Don't kill me.

       Draco.

       She frowns. Why would she get pissed off at him...?

       And then she realises — her wand's missing. He took her wand when he left, when she was still asleep. Holly jumps out of bed, looking up at the clock on the wall, which now reads seven o'clock. Her heart begins to race, and she runs towards the doors, but he's locked them.

       She hears Susannah say, "He really doesn't want you getting involved."

       But Holly ignores her. Instead, she tries her hardest to open the doors again, but there's no use. He's locked her inside the hospital wing, away from everything that's going to happen tonight, with no means of escape.

       And she remembers what she said earlier this school year, and how fitting it is now.

       "DRACO, YOU CUNT!"

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im so excited for the end AND im so so so excited for deathly hallows

i hope you enjoyed, and let me know what you thought!