Ask and ye shall recieve: Sick

As a response to asking for more when I wrote the original, and in homage to the impending final movie (which I am so excited about!), here's another Malfoy sketch.  This is immediately following my previous sketch: Shiver.
 

Sick

Another one.  He was assigned another one.  His whole body shook involuntarily as he dropped the second piece of parchment on the floor to rejoin the other.  He walked out of the Armory leaving the magical papers to decompose themselves as they always did.  The Dark Lord was thorough. 

It would be a woman’s this time.  A woman’s pinky finger wrapped inside a white cloth that would portkey itself through the briefcase to the Dark Lord for whatever dark purpose he deemed.  He might be working on breaking the woman’s husband into giving information.  They were hunting that boy and torturing everyone he knew, everyone he ever talked to was the Dark Lord’s current strategy. 

That stupid boy.  Did he even know how much trouble he was causing these people?  Did he care?  Draco thought of all the trouble the boy was causing him personally.  But he knew the special boy with the lightening bolt scar wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about that.  But the more innocent ones?  What about them?  What about their pinkies? 

His body issued an involuntary shudder again.  Draco mentally berated himself for his lack of control.  He probably looked like some Muggle with a muscle disease.  He thought of the scurrying Muggle he glimpsed through the window earlier.  The one he wished he could trade places with.  He berated himself again.  This time it was his father’s voice instead of his own running through his mind. 

Focus, Draco, focus, the voice continued.  He had a job to do. 

He walked the whole way to 900 Pine St.   He could have apparated, he had been near there before.  But he found the walk calming.  As calming as anything could be. 

Approaching the stout brownstone building, a twinge of sympathy for Kari Bell escaped him.  He flicked his wand and a mask materialized on his face.  A Death Eater mask. 

He climbed the stairs to apartment 36 and burst through the door.  A woman was sitting at the table with a small girl.  They were eating breakfast.  Draco pointed his wand at the woman.  “Kari.”  Confusion flickered over her face.  She glanced to the girl. 

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” bellowed a voice from the other side of the room.  Another girl emerged from the hallway, her wand pointed at Draco.  He gasped as if the breath had been knocked out of him, he  knew her.  He had played Quidditch against her.  She was a Gryffindor.  The girl in the hallway shouted again, “Mom, Kar, you okay?” 

The woman’s look of horror crystallized as she looked to her other daughter, “Katie, no!”  The little girl, perhaps 8 or 9, now had tears running down her face.  But Draco had heard.  The girl was Kari.  The Dark Lord wanted the girl’s pinky, not the woman’s.  Katie still had her wand pointed at him.  She deserved to curse him.  Probably more than anyone.  He had sent her to St. Mungo’s last year. 

He had been used then too.  He was beginning to feel sick. 

She sent a Stupefying curse his way.  He blocked.  And sent his own.  Katie fell.  The woman screamed.  He stupefied her too.  The little girl, Kari, was the only one left.  She cried silently, shaking. 

He raised his wand once more.  And faltered.  His hand shook almost as much as her small body did. 

“What do you want?”  came her small voice. 

He looked at her.  With her brown hair and round blue eyes, she looked like a miniature version of Katie.  He dissolved his mask and puked.  “I can’t do this,” he whispered. 

“Then leave,” she said through tears.  “Please.”

“I – I have to bring back something.”

Her eyes were getting red from the tears now pouring down her face.  He walked over to the kitchen table.  “Put you hand out.”

She let out a sob.  She was still shaking.  He took her arm and placed her palm on the table.  His wand pointed to her pinky.  “Mommy!”  she shouted to the still prone figure on the floor.  He touched the tip of the hawthorn to where her pinky finger joined the rest of her hand.  She turned her face away, screaming. 

Draco’s hand shook.  The tip of the wand moved.  It slipped off her finger and hit the wooden table.  The girl looked at him.  Her sobs melted into heaving breaths.  Her eyes asked what was he doing. 

He wished he knew. 

Katie started rousing herself.  Draco cursed.  “Pen and paper?”  he said to Kari.  She pointed to a drawer.  He took out a yellow pad and a blue pen.  Steadying his hand, he wrote:  Your father has been taken by the Dark Lord.  Run.

He folded it and put it in Katie’s barely conscious hand.  He turned back to the girl, “I’m sorry.”  She blinked.  “Obliviate.”

Draco apparated immediately to the Armory where he puked again.