Chapter Text
2 May, 1998 - Hogwarts
Following Potter into the Room of Requirement and starting a duel seemed like a great idea until Crabbe tried to get clever about it.
But in the blink of an eye Crabbe's bad decision grew into a wall of flaming serpents twice Draco's height, voraciously consuming decades, possibly centuries of accumulated junk. The blaze cut an impenetrable path across the room, separating Draco from the door. He watched the Chosen Prat and the others flee on broomsticks and hated himself for calling out for help.
Honestly, Draco had rather expected that Saint Potter's savior complex would extend to rescuing Death Eaters, at least young, mostly harmless ones who used to be schoolmates. He found himself a bit shocked they’d actually left him behind. Served him right for expecting any sort of decency from mudbloods and blood traitors.
Hadn’t Draco refrained from turning Potter over to the Dark Lord when he had the chance? Shouldn't they have some sort of gratitude for that?
He grudgingly allowed that maybe, possibly he ought to have tried to do something when his mad aunt tortured the Granger girl. He’d felt vaguely bad about the whole incident before, but now it felt like a mistake for which he was being unfairly punished. It wasn't like Draco had tortured her.
Through the shifting curtains of flame, Draco watched as Potter or one of his cronies hauled Goyle onto a broom and dragged him along as they fled. So, then, it seemed leaving Draco and Crabbe to die was probably less of a personal judgment than a matter of how much Fiendfyre stood between them.
Not nearly far enough away, Crabbe screamed as the fire caught up with him. The fire Crabbe himself had set between Draco and the exit, like a fucking idiot. Draco was too spite-filled and too caught up in his own prospects to spare an emotion for his lackey's plight. He was also getting dizzy.
He must have been imagining the sizzling sound of Crabbe's body because reasonably there was no way he could actually have heard it over the rush and roar of flame. The sound made him want to run, but there was nowhere to go. Panic forced him to keep looking.
In a moment of desperate hope, Draco looked around wildly for a route to the vanishing cabinet, but flames had curled around that side of the room too. Not like the stupid thing would do him the favor of working anyway. He spun, looking for another way out, for anything but fire.
Draco cast a bitter look at his retreating adversaries, but found he could no longer see out to the castle proper anymore. They were probably long gone. He couldn't see anything but walls of flame moving in on him. Couldn’t hear the battle he’d hoped—failed—to escape.
Everything was unbearably hot. It finally sunk in that there would be no escape. No one was coming for him. Probably no one would ever even know he died here. His mother wouldn't even have the small comfort of a corpse to bury. Draco felt himself swaying, barely able to scream as the fire reached for him.
The world started to go dark as Draco's lungs tried to suck in oxygen that had already been consumed by the blaze. His last thought before the flames engulfed his body was that this, trapped like an animal, this was no fitting death for a Malfoy heir.