Author: Meltha
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: Yes, thank you. Meltha
Spoilers: AU book 7
Distribution: Fanfiction.net and the Bunny Warren. If you're interested, please let me know.
Summary: Draco is subjected to the Dark Lord's test of loyalty.
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by J.K. Rowling, a wonderfully creative author whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Author Note: Written for challenge 5 of round three of Dramione_ldws. One-hundred to 499 words dealing with horror or suspense.

The Final Test

This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. When I was small, Mother and Father used to tell me bedtime stories about how wonderful things would be when the Dark Lord returned and the Wizarding world would take over, how we would be all but worshipped. He was supposed to take away everything bad and make the whole earth pure once more. I used to fall asleep with a smile on my face and dream lovely things.

But the reality is a nightmare. So much blood everywhere, on my parents’ hands, on mine, and I couldn’t see the difference in color when it belonged to a Mudblood or when it was my own. Everyone bleeds red.

Everyone bleeds.

Father brought me to the Ministry today. I don’t think even he knew why. Reading between the lines of the Prophet had taught me what to expect: terrified half-bloods and Muggleborns being brought in, the new statue lauding Pureblood superiority, Moody’s eye mounted on Umbridge’s door. But knowing didn’t prepare me for the reality of it all as I followed in Father’s wake down the corridors. Fear filled every breath of air like a poisonous cloud. Voldemort had created his own heaven, just as my parents told me he would, but it was a devil’s paradise.

Father brought us to a door at the end of a twisting corridor, and I knew trouble must be ahead because he was perspiring. Father sweats only when he cannot control his baser instincts, like fear. It unsettled me more than anything I had yet seen.

“Remember, Draco,” he said, and his tone shook the smallest bit, “you have nothing to fear from him if you have kept faith with your Pureblood ancestors and avoided anything that would shame them.”

I nodded. My godfather had taught me Occlumency well, and I was undoubtedly about to be subjected to yet another of the Dark Lord’s attempts to probe the thoughts in my mind, thoughts of her, her eyes laughing in sunlight, the strikingly beautiful lines of her face when I infuriated her, the deep brown of her incorrigible hair. He had thus far found nothing, and I would make sure he found nothing again.

My father opened the door to the Dark Lord’s throne room. It was just as I had pictured it would be, but there was one difference, and as that inhuman face lit with a horrific smile of satisfaction, I knew I was in hell.

I screamed. I screamed until my throat was raw, and my eyes would have forced themselves from their sockets if they could.

Her head, eyes staring sightlessly, was mounted above his throne.

“I see Miss Parkinson was right to suspect your infidelity after all, Draco,” the high voice said mockingly. “You have my congratulations. It is rare to lie successfully to Lord Voldemort for so long, but in the end, he always knows.”

Tomorrow I die, or so he has said, but in truth, I am dead already.