Draco came to slowly, a mass of aches and pains, and misery. His wand arm was above his head, so his body sagged from his arm, where whatever was holding him cut into his wrist. His hand felt as if it may be broken. He managed, wincing, to look up at his hand, which was huge and swollen. His head hurt to move. It was like having a bad hangover and a stiff neck at the same time, only worse. It was a while before he could focus his eyes. He was manacled to the wall.
He tried to sit up, and felt every part of his body creak and hurt with the effort. He looked around him, still squinting. He was in a dirty cell with a little straw over the floor, and a pan of foul smelling stuff near him, which may have been something to eat. The straw was rotten and moldy and slightly damp. The manacle was too tight on his arm, because his arm and hand were swollen. He ached all over, and could see blood on the hand he still seemed to be able to use. But he was still in his invisibility cloak.
Nobody in the Wizarding world had ever seen reversible robes, and so they hadn’t known to take it away. His potion was in the invisible pocket still too, although his wand had been taken. But Parvati’s wand was still tucked into the lining of his cloak and was digging into him rather painfully. Obviously they were not expecting him to have more than one wand, and the invisibility cloak had proved a blessing. Draco moved cautiously, and managed to work his free hand under his robe to grasp the wand. He managed to get it out of the lining with a great deal of effort, which left him feeling nauseous and sweaty. He could hear the guards talking loudly “ they appeared to be playing some kind of drinking game. He hid the wand under his robes, and concentrated on moving his feet. He needed to be mobile if he were to escape.
After a while, the feeling came back into his feet and legs. He was just about to grasp the wand, when he heard footsteps approaching. He feigned sleep, as the guard checked on him, kicking him to see if he got a response. Draco let out an involuntary moan that he could not repress, but did not open his eyes.
The guard went back to report. His words floated clearly back to Draco. “Prisoner seems to be coming out of it. Another half an hour we can all have some fun. Pass me that bottle, you!”
Draco felt chills run down his spine at the thought of more torture, and a desperation that was far greater than anything he had ever felt before.
He waited until the noise of the drinking game had started again, and then raised Parvati’s wand.
“Alohamora!”
The manacle sprang open with a loud clank. Draco’s heart almost stopped, but the guards outside didn’t seem to hear. If there was one way to win this war, it was to attack Voldemort as soon as possible before his guards were trained properly.
He got painfully to his feet, and shakily changed his robes around, so that he was wearing the invisibility cloak. If he had not heard the guard's words, he would not have been able to move, but terror is a great pain reliever.
Draco was so scared now that he was functioning on automatic pilot. He thanked Merlin Hermione had the idea of the invisibility cloaks. When he got back to Hogwarts, cost him what it may, he would call her ‘Hermione’, and not Granger. She deserved it.
He stood another five minutes, making sure his feet would carry him and moving his stiff muscles. His hand was not broken, he could move all his fingers, but it was badly bruised, and hurt like Hades... He waited until his head had stopped swimming, and then drank some potion, and slipped out through the door as quickly and quietly as he could.
Soft-footed Draco, his father had called him once, but now his feet felt swollen and clumsy. The guards were drinking however, and did not notice. It would not be long before they found out he had escaped “ just as soon as they noticed he had disappeared from the map. They would expect him to go for the doors. He walked as quickly as possible to the stairway. He had gone only a corridor’s length, before his escape was noticed, and the alarm was given. A man passed him shouting “Guards! The prisoner “ where is he?”
Draco ran as quickly as he could. In a minute the corridors would be filled with people, and he would be found “ the invisibility cloak wouldn’t help him if he bumped into someone. He crouched behind a drinking fountain as someone ran towards him. He heard talk.
“He can’t have gone far!”
“Someone must be helping him!”
“Seal off this corridor!”
“Invisibility cloak! He must have one, or we would have seen him!”
Draco, crouching under the drinking fountains, made his way along the wall, and just managed to make the door before it was shut behind him. The one in front of him shut too. He was trapped in a corridor, with two guards. He looked up. The castle was made of the same stone blocks as in the tower, with glass skylights running along the top as the walls met the roof. He could climb. Badly hurt or not, it couldn’t matter “ he had to get out, or he would be hurt worse, and killed. If he made it to the windowsill, he would be able to get along like a crab somehow. Gritting his teeth, he started to climb.
Rivers of sweat covered him, and at one point he really thought he was going to be sick. The pain from his arm was incredible. The sound of voices spurred him on, however, and he managed to make the windows under the rafters more quickly than he would ever have thought possible. The two guards were making so much noise yelling to colleagues on the other side of the door that they did not hear the noise he made.
Draco made his way through a small window-like gap by the door, tearing the invisibility cloak slightly in the process. If anybody had been looking, they would have seen the shadow over the light, but the guards in the corridor were feeling along the walls. Draco saw two more guards in this corridor, and he edged along the top of the wall by the skylights on his stomach, one foot hooked into the gaps in the bricks in the wall below, hoping that he was low enough not to shut out the light. He made it to the next small window, above the next door, but this one had glass. Draco felt the skylight next to him give a little, he gave it a push, and it opened soundlessly. He slipped through, lying full length on the guttering, but could not shut the window. The guards might notice the breeze, but hopefully they would think the window had already been open. He had to move on.
Now he was in a worse position than before. The wind was strong. He could see the roof sloping up, and then becoming flat, but there were guards walking along the flat part, obviously doing sentry duty. There were too many of them for him to think of going that way.
The other side was a sheer drop down to the courtyard. Draco noticed a window open again, a long way ahead, and hoped the guttering was secure. It gave him a couple of very nasty moments. Once he half slipped off the gutter, and clinging on with one hand and one knee, scrabbled around to find a way to fling himself back up. One of the guards turned and said “Hang on a mo’ “ did you hear that?” and both guards looked in his direction. The invisibility cloak helped here, and Draco clung to the guttering like a fly, with one arm and one leg, heart beating like fury and feeling the gutter slowly bending down under his weight, until they turned back again, whereupon he scrabbled forward again, this time trying to be more quiet.
His hair, dark with sweat now, under his invisibility cloak stuck to his forehead, and his arm throbbed severely. By this time it was almost black. He had to keep stopping to swallow nausea. He reached the window, but it took a long, long time, and he looked inside. The corridor was empty, and better, the door was open. He lost no time in slipping inside. This time however, he left bloodstains down the wall, where he climbed to the floor. His hands and knees were pretty torn up with clinging onto the guttering. He couldn’t stop to clean the wall “ he heard footsteps, and he had to keep going.
He fled softly to the open door, and through. A guard passed him running full speed, and Draco heard him go down the corridor, and through the next door. He had not noticed the blood. Luck was with him right now. He dodged two more guards, and ran as swiftly as he could towards where he knew the stairway to the Tombs to be. Just as he neared it, he heard the alarms by the front door go off “ security had been breached somehow.
************
Parvati had made up for lost time. The time she had spent eating and sleeping had really helped, and she was moving fast. Her shoulder pained her, but being a wolf really helped with that. Animals tended to be far more philosophical about pain. She loped through the forest at speed, and then turning into a raven, considered how to enter the castle. The only opening could see was the front door, and she could pretend to be a messenger. That was how the owls were entering. She swooped down, but before she got to the door, the alarms went off. She heard a guard call “The raven! Look!” and then she was dodging spells to save her life, using the moves Harry had taught her, and had to fly away fast, helped by the fact that a couple of owls had chosen that moment to try to deliver their messages, and got in the way, creating a confusion. The two Death Eaters that took off on brooms, she escaped very easily, flying through thick undergrowth.
When she next tried to approach the castle, a guard sent a spell whizzing dangerously close to her head. Parvati flew back into the woods to think. As she did so, she noticed a few owls leave the castle. She felt sure they had been dispatched to look for her, and knew their search would be far more successful, so she transformed immediately into a wolf again, and made her way towards the river. As she saw it, she remembered something about Draco saying there was a waterway to the castle. It was a thought anyway. She transformed again, this time into an otter, and slipped into the water. It was worth trying.
Even as an otter, she found the water was icy. She shivered as she submerged, fish scattering as they saw her. She swam in the direction of the castle, investigating every inch of the riverbed. She knew she had struck gold, when she found a stream cascading over a weir into the river from the direction of the castle. The remains of Nagini’s body had been caught on the weir. She nudged it off with her nose, quivering her whiskers in distaste, not wanting anybody to find it and put two and two together, and started up the weir.
The current was strong! It was difficult for her to make any headway, unless she swam at the side, and scrabbled hard with her paws. And otters were notoriously good swimmers. Soon she was thoroughly warm. After a while, the water ran underground, but there was still an airway overhead. It was even more difficult to pull herself along now, as her paws found slippery rock instead of earth. She lost a claw, but the water was so icy, she didn’t even notice. It was a long and difficult swim, even for an otter, but Parvati found herself at last in a place that opened out. It looked as if it had been used at one time to launch boats, and there was a circular impression on the rocks above her. She guessed the faint light to be magical, as it did not seem to come from anywhere. The place reeked of old and very strong magic. Parvati pulled herself out onto the platform and shook herself dry. Then she began to nose around for some way to open the door above her.
***********************
Draco did not know what the alarm was, but soldiers were running to the front door. At that moment, somebody noticed the blood on the wall, but luckily called out “He’s outside! He climbed up to the window!” Draco breathed a sigh of relief, and dodging the guards at the entrance to the Tombs, started down the stairs.
It was a great strain in his condition, and he lost his footing, falling a way, and unfortunately cannoning into two guards coming up the stairs. He managed to scramble over them, as they grabbed at the air, not seeing him, but the alarm was up. Draco blasted two more guards coming up the stairs with the Stupification spell, and scrambled over them. But Voldemort was coming “ he could hear the commotion. The four guards were now chasing him down the stairs, and he was not fast. Spells ricocheted off the walls around him. Added to everything, he had given his ankle a nasty twist when he fell on the stairs. He put on a spurt of energy, and managed to make it to the bottom of the stairs, and along to the Tombs.
The rope was still there, and Draco ran toward it, but had to stop and perform a shield charm “ the guards, aware from his footsteps where he was, were aiming all too successfully now. As he stood still a moment, a voice said, “Leave him to me.” Draco looked up, and saw Voldemort.
His breath almost choked him. He did not see how he was going to get out of this one “ but Voldemort was not looking at the rope. He did not seem to be able to see it. He was looking at Draco, and he was furious. Perhaps he did not know about the rope and trapdoor. Draco looked over to the side, and tensed. He could just make it if “
As he leapt, Voldemort raised his wand. Draco had just a second to perform a shield charm “Protego!” as Voldemort’s curse shattered it, and with it Parvati’s wand. But at that moment, his bad hand grabbed the rope, pulled, and the trapdoor opened. Voldemort’s next curse only missed him by a couple of inches, as he swung,and crashed into the wall behind him. He was able to hold on no longer, and the third curse went over his head, as he dropped into the ice cold churning water below. Voldemort uttered another spell as the trapdoor started to shut, which held it open with a jar. He walked over to look at the swirling black waters, and smiled a thin cruel smile. Draco was already out of sight. There is no way that injured as he was, he could cope in those waters. Especially since he now had only half a broken and useless wand.
Voldemort stepped back, allowing the trapdoor to shut. A good way to get rid of bodies, he thought, and paused, a thought hitting him. It was here that the two guards Nagini had bitten had been found. Draco had obviously known how to operate the trap door…
Voldemort’s howl of rage had his guards shaking in their shoes.