Assistant: You are a summarizer for a FanFiction Reader App (AO3). Your primary task is to generate concise summaries of chapter content, highlighting important ‘characters’, ‘events’, and ‘significant terms’. Ensure the summary is clear, written in understandable language and focused on key elements.
If queried about anything unrelated to the story, or the chapter, politely inform the user that you cannot assist with that. Maintain a friendly tone throughout, don't make things up, stay factual. 
Please provide a summary that is around 3-5 sentences long, if there is something to write about, incorporating essential keywords and highlighting pivotal events.
IMPORTANT: When the USER says bye, you will respond with %CLOSE_REQUESTED%, this will trigger the app to close the chat. This is very important, so don't forget it!
Assistant: Title: Veiled In Darkness
        Author: writteninerised writteninerised 
        Chapter: 1/19 
        Summary: “𝘏𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘵, 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦?”Draco Malfoy is left blind after a tragic turn of events, and Hermione Granger finds herself bound to his side as they struggle to survive. Forced together by circumstance, they navigate the darkness both around them and within, forging a bond they can’t ignore.
        Contents: Chapter 1
    

    


  

  
  
    
    
  
    
      Draco - March 1998
    
  
 
  Draco stood near the grand fireplace of Malfoy Manor, his arms rigid at his sides, his nails biting into his palms. The room was heavy with tension as Bellatrix loomed over the girl writhing on the floor.

  Hermione Granger screamed, her voice raw and fractured, ripping through the room like a crack of thunder. Bellatrix’s laughter followed, sharp and unhinged.

  Draco clenched his jaw, forcing his breath to stay steady, his face impassive. He was good at that now. He had seen this before—seen worse—but something about 
  
    this
  
   made his stomach twist.

  Maybe it was the way Granger refused to beg.
  

  Maybe it was the way she kept holding on, even as she unraveled.

  Or could it be because he knows her? But why should he care? Granger is a Mudblood. His reaction was nothing more than the weight of the room pressing in. That had to be it. 

  And yet, for the first time, he realized just how much he hated standing in this room. This Manor. A place he once called home, now draped in shadows, twisted into something unfamiliar. Perhaps it had been that way for longer than he realized. Months. A year. He’d lost track. He felt like a stranger within these walls. More of an outsider here than Potter, locked away in the cellar.

  “Tell me!” Bellatrix hissed, yanking Hermione up by her hair. “Where did you get the sword?”

  Hermione didn’t answer. She trembled, her breath coming in short gasps. With one final, deliberate slice, Draco’s aunt let go of Granger’s arm, letting it fall limp at her side.

  The air was thick, suffocating. His shirt felt too tight, like it was shrinking against his skin. Every inch of him itched with the need to escape, to claw his way out of his own body just to breathe.

  Bellatrix had turned her fury onto the goblin, but Draco couldn’t look away from the girl crumpled on the floor. The crimson staining her arm drew his gaze, and he swore he could taste iron on his tongue.

  For all the differences they were told existed, her blood was the same as his.

  His fingers twitched toward the place where his own scars lay, a phantom sting flaring across his chest. For a split second, it wasn’t her blood he saw. It was his, spreading across the bathroom floor, warm and endless, the sting of open wounds and the cold press of tile against his back. The memory crashed into him, sudden and jarring, before he forced it down.

  His gaze traveled up to her face. The emptiness in her eyes was worse than the bl@@dy word sliced into her arm.

  Draco looked away.

  A commotion at the stairs. A voice began shouting. His father stiffened beside him, exchanging glances with his mother. Before they could react, someone shouted. 

  “Expelliarmus!”

  Bellatrix’s wand wrenched from her grip, soaring straight into Potter’s hand, while Narcissa’s spun through the air and landed firmly in Weasley’s grasp.

  Draco lifted his wand. Weasley and Potter were in the room, their faces pale and furious, their eyes immediately locking onto Hermione. 

  “Hermione!” Ron’s voice cracked as he lunged toward her. 

  He looked pathetic, Draco thought. 

  Lucius stepped into Weasley’s path, flicking his wand. A curse shot toward Ron, forcing him to throw himself aside.

  Potter’s wand was trained on Draco, forcing his attention away from his father and Weasley. 

  A bolt of red light streaked toward Draco. He twisted, sparks crackled as he deflected the spell, stumbling back. But Harry didn’t let up. His face was tight with fury as he pressed forward, firing again. Draco ducked, rolling across the floor before snapping his wand up and sending a curse hurtling back.

  The room erupted into chaos. Spells crackled through the air, flashing red and blue, illuminating the dark stone walls in erratic bursts. Bellatrix was shouting, causing Draco's head to spin. Harry’s next jinx struck Draco squarely in the chest, lifting him off his feet and slamming him onto the cold floor.

  F@ck@ng, Potter. 

  Across the room, Ron and Lucius dueled in a vicious clash of magic. Each spell met another in midair, bursting into sharp sparks of light. Lucius fought with calculated precision, his strikes cold and unrelenting, forcing Ron back step by step. It was clear that something had snapped in Weasley to cause him to fight this hard. 

  “Is that all you’ve got, blood traitor?” Lucius sneered, sending a slashing hex at him.

  Ron barely dodged. His breath came ragged, his grip tightening on his wand.

  Lucius deflected Ron’s next spell by a hair’s breadth, but he wasn’t fast enough for the one that followed. Harry’s spell struck with force.

  “Stupefy!”

  The stunning spell hit with brutal force. Lucius crumpled, collapsing in a heap against the cold floor, unconscious.

  “No!” Narcissa’s cry rang through the room.

  Draco’s stomach twisted at the sight of his father sprawled motionless on the ground. Fury surged through him. He didn’t think, he just reacted.

  His wand snapped up. A curse shot across the room, striking Potter hard in the shoulder. The force sent him staggering, pain flashing across his face before he hit the ground with a grunt. Draco’s lips curled in satisfaction.

  He didn’t hesitate. Another hex flew from his wand, fast and precise. Harry barely twisted in time, the spell scorching past his ribs, leaving the fabric of his shirt singed. His expression darkened, his grip on his wand tightening.

  “Oh, honestly, Potter," Draco scoffed. He had him. Right where he wanted. 

  But he made a mistake. He forgot about Weasley, got too carried away. 

  A jet of red light hurtled toward him. The impact hit like a hammer to the chest, stealing the breath from his lungs. He was airborne for a split second before crashing onto the floor with a sickening thud. His wand slipped from his fingers, skidding out of reach.

  Pain exploded through Draco’s ribs. His vision swam, his breath coming in shallow gasps as he reached for his wand, just inches away, but impossibly out of reach. He clenched his jaw, forcing his body to move, but before he could push himself up Bellatrix’s voice sliced through the chaos, sharp and commanding.

  “Enough!”

  Draco’s gaze snapped up. His aunt stood in the center of the room, one arm wrapped around Hermione’s trembling body, the other pressing a gleaming dagger against her throat. Potter and Weasley were on their feet with wands up. 

  “Not another step, Potter,” she hissed, her wild eyes glittering with manic delight. “Or I’ll slice up your little Mudblood friend and we can see how dirty her blood really is.”

  Hermione let out a small, strangled whimper as the blade bit into her skin. A single drop of blood rolled down her throat.

  Harry and Ron froze, chests heaving and eyes filled with panic.

  Bellatrix’s lips curled into a slow, satisfied smile as she drank in the fear on their faces. “Drop them. Now.”

  Neither moved at first, but after a tense, agonizing moment, their wands clattered to the wood floor. The sound of their surrender had Draco straightening, his fingers tightening around his own wand. He lifted it, leveling it at Potter and Weasley, ready for anything.

  “Draco.” Bellatrix said, and she nodded toward the fallen wands.

  Draco stepped forward, scooping them up, his grip firm. Bellatrix let out a delighted laugh, a sound so full of twisted glee that it sent a shudder down Draco’s spine. She leaned in close to Hermione’s ear, her voice dripping with amusement.

  “I’ve already called him,” she purred. “The Dark Lord is on his way.” She giggled, the sound unnatural and unhinged, her grip on Hermione tightening as the room seemed to close in. “He will be so pleased. We finally have Potter.”

  A creaking sound. A shift in the air. Everyone was frozen, looking around. Draco looked up in time to see a small, ragged figure clinging to the grand chandelier above them.

  Dobby. The f@ck@ng elf. 

  “You!” Bellatrix shrieked.

  “Dobby has come to save his friends. Dobby has come to save Harry Potter.”

  The chandelier groaned under its Dobby’s weight, golden chains straining as it swayed. Light fractured through the cascading crystals, shimmering in the chaos. Until, with a final, ominous creak, it tilted, beginning its deadly descent.

  Draco’s breath hitched. His gaze snapped downward just as Bellatrix shoved Hermione aside, sending her sprawling across the floor. She barely stirred, her chest rising and falling in uneven breaths.

  The chandelier lurched.

  A shout rang through the air—Potter or Weasley, Draco couldn’t tell. He didn’t care.

  His wand flicked up on instinct, the spell leaving his lips before he even fully registered the motion.

  “Accio!”

  The spell hit her like a gust of wind, yanking her jumper forward just as the chandelier came crashing down with a deafening explosion of glass and iron. The shards flew in all directions, some slicing into his sleeves, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t.

  Because Hermione Granger was sprawled on the floor at his feet.

  Draco’s breath caught.

  She was staring up at him, her eyes wide, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Her curls were tangled, her skin pale, her lips parted in shock. 

  What did he just do? He curled his fingers tighter around his wand, but it didn’t stop the tremor running through him.  

  “Draco!” His mother’s voice snapped across the room, sharp and laced with something dangerously close to fear. Draco flinched. His body tensed as he turned toward her, toward the judgment already forming in her eyes. “What have you done?” 

  He swallowed hard, but no words came. There was no excuse. No explanation. His fingers curled into a fist at his side, his stomach twisting.

  As if the world had suddenly unfrozen around him, the chaos in the room crashed back into focus.

  Weasley and Potter were already at Hermione’s side, Ron’s filthy hands gripping her shoulders, his voice frantic. Draco’s pulse pounded in his ears. He should do something. Anything. But his mind was still stuck on the tremor in his own hand, the undeniable proof that, for the first time, he had made a choice without waiting for someone else to make it for him.

  And it was to save a girl he should have let die.

  Bellatrix’s shrieks cut through the air as she scrambled to her feet, furious and wild. Potter and Weasley were already hauling Granger up, their movements urgent. Draco tightened his grip on his wand, forcing himself to focus. With his father unable to guide him, the responsibility to make decisions fell squarely on his shoulders.

  Dobby dashed past him, moving with frantic urgency toward the three standing. The elf’s bony fingers latched onto Potter’s wrist with surprising strength.

  “We must go, Harry Potter!” Dobby squeaked, his voice trembling with desperation.

  Ron, with Hermione barely conscious in his arms, reached for Harry’s arm, his grip desperate. Draco knew exactly what was about to happen.

  Bellatrix did too.

  “Draco! 
  
    Do something!
  
  ” she shrieked, her voice sharp enough to slice through his hesitation.

  He fired the first spell that came to mind, aiming for Potter’s arm in a last-ditch effort to tear him from Dobby’s grasp before he was gone for good.

  But Harry twisted at the last second, his head snapping back to look over his shoulder. 

  Draco’s spell missed. Instead, it slammed into Ron’s hand, the one gripping Potter’s sleeve, forcing his fingers to splay open as their connection broke.

  There was a sharp, violent crack.

  Ron recoiled with a shout, as the impact of the spell sent him sprawling. Hermione tumbled with him, their bodies hitting the floor just as Dobby and Harry Potter disapparated. 

  For a heartbeat, the room was silent.

  Draco stood frozen, his stomach dropping as the reality of what he had just done sank in. Potter was gone.

  Bellatrix’s scream ripped through the silence.

  “You fool!” She shrieked, her eyes wild with fury. Before Draco could react, she lunged at him, seizing his wrist in a bruising grip. With a sharp yank, she wrenched his wand from his fingers.

  Draco barely had time to process what was happening.

  Bellatrix was already turning. Already raising his wand.

  “
  
    Avada Kedavra!
  
  ”

  The sickly green light erupted from the tip, striking Weasley square in the chest.

  The impact sent Ron’s head smacking against the floor. His eyes, already wide with shock, glazed over. Empty. His chest fell still.

  The silence lasted only a moment before a guttural scream tore through the room. It wasn’t Bellatrix’s, lacking heart and life. This one was different. It was a cry so filled with agony that it struck Draco’s chest like a physical blow.

  Hermione’s hands shook as she dragged herself toward Ron, her body trembling, her face streaked with tears. “
  No, no, no, no—
  ” She reached for him, gripping desperately to his chest. “
  Ron, please.
  ”

  Her fingers tangled in his shirt, shaking him. But his head only lolled to the side, his face pale and unmoving.

  Draco was frozen, a sick feeling creeping through him. But why? He didn’t care for Weasley. He was just one of too many red heads running around. 

  He watched as Hermione clung to the lifeless body, her cries piercing the air, so loud they rattled his skull.

  Would anyone mourn him like that?

  The thought twisted inside him, making his fist tighten. Was he jealous? The feeling was vile, like poison in his gut. A boy lay dead before him, and all Draco could focus on was the realization that he would never know that kind of love. It was a twisted thought. Repulsive.

  He turned his gaze away from the raw scene, only to meet Bellatrix's gleeful, manic smile. She reveled in the sight of the girl mourning Weasley’s body. Was this what his insides looked like? With these thoughts, he might as well be as evil as her. Maybe there wasn’t 
  
    good
  
   in his blood. The poison didn’t just sit in his gut—it coursed through his veins.

  He wanted to run, wanted to escape the suffocating weight of the manor, but deep down, he knew there was no place to hide from the Dark Lord. He’d failed, and now he’d pay the price. He had let Potter slip away, and there would be consequences. He was already doomed.

  Bellatrix still held Draco’s wand, and he felt empty, his fingers curling around air. His stomach churned, nausea rising in his throat. He felt bare, vulnerable. Exposed.

  He had tried. He knew what he needed to do, but he had failed. He couldn’t stop Potter. He couldn’t follow through. He’d failed with Dumbledore, and now this.

  He was going to die. It was inevitable.

  Out of nowhere, he felt his mother's hand grasp his. The sudden warmth and firmness of her fingers sent a sharp pang through him. She must know. The weight of her hand seemed to confirm what he already knew. He wasn’t getting out of this.

  He felt a wand slip into his hand, though he wasn’t sure whose it was. He had lost the other wands in the chaos. Still, the presence of any wand made him feel less vulnerable.

  A sudden, suffocating cold. A dark, rippling presence seeped into the room, curling around them like a living shadow. The air grew heavy. The warmth drained from Draco’s skin. He lifted his gaze, his stomach sinking, his breath catching, just as the Dark Lord stepped into the room.

  Bellatrix's hands smoothed over her disheveled robes as she faced Voldemort. 

  "My Lord," Bellatrix gasped, dipping her head in reverence. But Voldemort did not look at her.

  His red eyes swept the room, burning with fury, his expression twisting into something terrible. His wand twitched in his pale fingers.

  "Where is he?" His voice was soft. Too soft. A deadly whisper that slithered through the air like a serpent.

  No one moved. No one dared breathe. Except for Bellatrix. She was drawn toward the Dark Lord while the rest of them shrank away. Draco kept his eyes down, his pulse hammering at his throat.

  Bellatrix swallowed before stepping forward. "My Lord, Potter was here. I had him, but the filthy little elf," she spat the word, disgust curling her lips, "interfered."

  Voldemort’s gaze burned through her. His thin fingers flexed around his wand, his expression unreadable in its quiet malice.

  "You called me here," he murmured, his voice dripping with venom, "for Potter." His gaze flicked around, empty and furious. "And yet…he is not here."

  Bellatrix faltered. "My Lord, yes, but—" She lifted her hands in frantic desperation, trying to salvage it. "But we have the Mudblood!"

  She whirled toward Hermione, who was still trembling over Weasley’s body, her face buried in his chest. "We have her!"

  A silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.

  Then Voldemort’s wand twitched.

  Hermione shrieked as she was wrenched into the air, her sobs cutting into panicked gasps. And then, just as suddenly, she was silenced. Her voice snatched away as though stolen from her throat.

  She hung there, suspended upside down several feet above the ground, her limbs taut, her hands forced behind her back. Draco barely swallowed against the thick knot in his throat. It was Charity Burbage all over again. He wanted to look away, just as he had then. But Charity had never met his eyes.

  Granger did.

  Her wide, desperate gaze locked onto his, pleading and terrified. She looked like prey caught in a web, silently begging to be freed before the spider descended.

  Voldemort circled her slowly, his steps deliberate. A predator sizing up his next kill.

  "You have her?" he mused, voice quiet, dangerous. "And what, exactly, do you expect me to do with her?"

  Hermione hung in the air like the shattered chandelier once had, eyes wet with terror.

  Bellatrix’s mouth opened and closed uselessly before she found her voice. "My Lord, she is valuable to Potter. Imagine all the ways we could use her to draw him back. He has already lost the Weasley boy. The Mudblood is all he has left."

  Voldemort tilted his head, considering. Then his lip curled in disdain.

  "I would not need to do this if Potter were still here!" His voice cracked through the room like a whip. The very walls seemed to tremble in its wake.

  Even Bellatrix flinched.

  Draco stood frozen, his breath shallow, his body rigid. His mother kept casting anxious glances toward Lucius’s motionless form, as if willing him to wake, to rise up and protect them. But he didn’t.

  Draco should have seized the moment to cast a counter-curse, to rouse his father from his stupor—but he was too consumed by his fury toward Potter. Always letting his anger spiral out of control. His father would have scolded him for it. Reminded him that his mind was weak, that he failed to see what was right in front of him.

  No matter how many times he disappointed his father, he could never stop trying to win his approval. He could never stop trying to prove himself. No matter how much he despised this part of himself, it was who he was. Eager to make his father proud. Desperate for any shred of praise or affection, willing to die trying to earn it.

  Draco had to step up. He had to do better, be the man his father had molded him into, even if it meant his own undoing. As Voldemort turned to Bellatrix, Draco stepped in front of his mother, a quiet resolve settling over him.

  "Tell me," The Dark Lord murmured. "How did Potter escape?"

  Draco’s ears rang. His chest felt tight, like all the air had been sucked from the room. This was it.

  His aunt was loyal to her blood, but never more than she was to the Dark Lord. He knew his name was about to slip from her lips, and once it did, his fate was sealed. For the briefest moment, he considered stunning his mother. She didn’t need to see what would happen next. It would only cause her more pain. 

  He had heard her cries in the night, begging his father to take them away, to protect him. She had pleaded. She had been desperate.

  But his father had refused.

  
    "The Dark Lord will find us," he had said. "And the punishment will be worse than death."
  

  And so Draco had known, for a long time now, that this was inevitable. His fate had always been death.

  Somewhere in the depths of his mind, a thought surfaced.

  There was one person who would cry for him. One person who would grieve.

  His mother.

  The realization did not bring him comfort. It did not fill him with the warmth of love as he had expected, the way he had seen Hermione grieve for Weasley. Instead, it curdled in his chest, heavy and sickening. It made him feel ill. It made him feel like something inside him was breaking.

  Desperate to feel something other than misery, why did his eyes seek out Granger’s in those final moments before Bellatrix spoke the name Malfoy?

  The name had barely left Bellatrix’s lips before a flash of green light filled Draco’s vision. He didn't even have time to brace for it. 

  But,

  the curse struck Lucius’s unmoving body where he lay on the floor. There was no resistance, no reaction…just a dull shift as the force of the spell nudged him slightly against the wooden floor. He was already gone before his body even settled.

  A loud shaky gasp sucked all the air from the room. Draco’s mother was moving across the room. She rushed forward, collapsing to her knees beside Lucius, her hands hovering over him, frantic, hesitant—like touching him might make it real. Her breathing came in sharp, uneven gasps, and for a moment, she just stared, her chest rising and falling too fast, her fingers twitching like she couldn’t decide what to do.

  But there was nothing to do.

  Draco’s own breath had stopped.

  His father was dead. 

  The realization struck like ice in his veins. A distant, ringing numbness swallowed the world around him. Everything blurred. The flickering candlelight, the oppressive weight of the Dark Lord’s presence, his mother’s trembling hands on his father’s unmoving chest.

  It was his fault. Draco had let Potter slip away. He had let his father lie on the ground when a simple flick of his wrist could have roused him. Lucius would have spoken up, defended himself. But Draco had killed him, in that moment, with his own inaction. His failure. His mistake.

  His stomach twisted violently.

  He knew he should move, should go to his mother, but his feet wouldn’t obey. His pulse pounded in his ears, his limbs cold and leaden. 

  He forced himself to look at his mother. Her head was bowed, shoulders shaking, but she didn’t wail, didn’t beg. Just a quiet, breaking sound in the back of her throat as she pressed a trembling hand against his father’s chest.

  Draco clenched his jaw.

  His mother had spent the last year fearing for 
  
    his
  
   life. And now, because of him, she had lost her husband instead.

  Voldemort didn’t spare Lucius a second glance. The Dark Lord turned, stepping away as if he had simply swatted a fly. One of his most loyal followers, discarded without a second thought.  His robes whispered across the floor, his focus shifting once more to Bellatrix.

  Lucius Malfoy was dead.

  The words burned into his mind, into his bones, weighing him down like chains. He wanted to move, to speak, to reach for his mother, but all he could do was stand there, frozen.

  Bellatrix’s gaze burned through him, hotter than the Dark Mark itself. He could feel the word 
  
    coward
  
   seared into his skin, carved over the mark like a taunt, a declaration of his failure. 

  A fraud. A disgrace.

  He had spent his life trying to be the perfect Malfoy, the perfect son, the perfect student, and hopefully the perfect Death Eater. And for what?

  His father was dead. His mother knelt beside the body, her hands trembling as she reached for a man who would never reach back. Because of him. Because he failed at everything that mattered.

  
    Pathetic. Weak. Coward.
  

  The words howled inside his mind.

  Something was building in him. Something reckless. Something desperate. Something that clawed at his chest, demanding he 
  
    act
  
  . He had been a weak link in a chain that was always doomed to break.

  His fingers clenched around the wand in his hand, lifting it with a swift, deliberate motion. It felt foreign in his grasp, but he willed it to become his own.

  Bellatrix drew in a sharp breath, the room holding its collective breath in response. But Voldemort... laughed. A cruel, chilling sound that slithered beneath Draco's skin, sinking deep into his bones.

  Bellatrix laughed too, eager to echo him, but it was thin, nervous.

  Draco’s mother was staring at him now, her face pale, her eyes wide.

  Voldemort stepped closer, “You’ve grown bold.”

  The Dark Lord regarded him with cold amusement, his eyes flicking over the tension in Draco’s shoulders, the way his breath came short and sharp.

  “And what will you do with that, Draco?” Voldemort’s voice was silk wrapped around a blade. “Strike me down? Prove yourself? Now that your father is dead, you think you can come out from his shadow?”

  Draco’s pulse roared in his ears. His grip did not loosen. "You don’t know me."

  Voldemort raised a skeletal brow, tilting his head in amusement. "Tell me, then, who are you?"

  Draco opened his mouth, but the words didn’t come. He didn’t know. He had spent his entire life being what others wanted him to be, twisting himself into whatever shape fit their expectations. And for the first time, there was no one left to tell him who he was supposed to be.

  Only him.

  “I never wanted this.” Draco admitted. 

  A slow, cruel smile curled over Voldemort’s lips. “Ah.” He let the sound stretch between them, savoring it. “And yet here you stand, branded like cattle. A name built on generations of loyalty, only to end with…you.” He scoffed, disgust written on his face.

  Draco’s chest tightened. He wasn’t sure if it was rage or terror or something else entirely, but it clawed its way up his throat, desperate to be free.

  “No,” he said. “It ends with 
  
    you
  
  .”

  He raised his wand higher, directly pointed at Voldemort. 

  Laughter.

  Cold and sharp, it spilled from Voldemort’s mouth, curling through the room like smoke. Bellatrix was already laughing with him, high and shrill, like shattered glass.

  “You were never strong enough to stand beside the Dark Lord, and you think you’re strong enough to stand against him?” Bellatrix spat.

  Draco held his wand steady, refusing to lower it. 

  Voldemort exhaled, a sound that almost resembled a sigh. He turned to Bellatrix, exchanging a look that Draco couldn’t decipher. But he felt it, Voldemort was done with words, determined to let Bellatrix silence him.

  Barely lifting her wand, Bellatrix prepared to strike, but Draco was faster. A streak of red light shot toward her, his aim true. She twisted away with ease, her eyes turning black as they met him.

  "Oh, you do have some fight in you after all," she taunted, her eyes gleaming with manic delight. "Pathetic, but amusing."

  Draco flicked his wrist again, the strike landing against her gut like a punch. She cried out in pain, doubling over, but she sprang back to her feet with a furious scream.

  “No!” Narcissa’s shout rang out, cutting through his concentration.

  In that moment of distraction, his aunt’s spell struck his wand hand. A sharp, searing pain shot up his arm as his wand was wrenched from his grasp, skittering across the floor.

  Bellatrix’s smirk widened. "And there it is, the weak, useless boy who was never meant to hold a wand in the first place."

  Draco panted, his chest rising and falling as he glared at her. The room felt too small, suffocating under the weight of her laughter. 

  Voldemort stepped forward, looking down at Draco as if he were something rotten beneath his boot. He turned his head slightly, his gaze sliding to Bellatrix. "Your loyalty wavered once before. Prove to me that it never will again."

  Bellatrix's smile faltered, but only for a moment. Her gaze flickered to Narcissa. Her sister. Her blood. Something unreadable passed through her eyes, but it was snuffed out as she raised her wand.

  Narcissa rose unsteadily, her legs trembling beneath her. Lucius’s lifeless body lay at her feet, but she didn’t look at him. Draco was her full focus. His destiny laid out clearly. Her frantic gaze darted between her sister and her son.

  “Please,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “He’s just a boy.” Tears welled in her eyes as she met Bellatrix’s gaze. “My boy.”

  For a fleeting second, their eyes held. Then Bellatrix turned away.

  “With pleasure, my Lord,” she said, facing Voldemort.

  Draco had no time to react before a flash of green erupted from her wand. In a single, harrowing instant, he saw everything. The way his mother’s eyes widened. The way her body moved before thought, before reason. She lunged forward, shielding him, and the curse struck her.

  The world cracked open. Or maybe it was his chest, his very heart.

  The violent streak of green ricocheted, a force so raw and destructive it tore through the room. Draco didn’t have time to understand, didn’t have time to react, before the light struck him across the face.

  Pain, searing and blinding, coursed through him. His body crumpled to the ground, but he felt nothing. Nothing except the frantic, desperate gasps for air that caught in his throat.

  Above him, Hermione Granger hung suspended in the air, her curls spilling downward like the delicate tendrils of a willow tree. For a moment, he swore he could feel a soft breeze and the warmth of sunlight against his skin. 

  He tried to focus on her, to cling to something real, but her figure blurred, slipping away, shifting like shadows. She was dissolving, and he felt himself sinking, swallowed by the weight of cold, endless depth, veiled in darkness.'
User: Translate in Italian 
User: Translate in Italian 
Assistant: