Usual Disclaimer: All Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling. This plot is just my idea.

Final installment of the His Little Bird series in at least four parts.

These events take place a couple of months after His Persephone.

Need I remind you that this is going to be dark and angsty?

Part I

Before the final battle, the Malfoy boy had been a topic of great interest and confusion amongst Voldemort's followers. To be sure, his successful mission the year before had convinced them all he was not the coward many had assumed him to be, and more than a few were surprised he had managed to pull it off. Lucius was proud, Bellatrix more so, but Narcissa had only wanted her son to be safe.

If Voldemort was surprised that Draco had been successful he never showed it. His words to the young man had been sincere, there was potential in him and the Dark Lord had found himself strangely eager to see what would come of it if he encouraged it. With a little pruning here and there, perhaps the boy could surpass the rest of his family in both ability and rank.

In all truth the Dark Lord had intended for the boy to die in the mission. He had been eager enough before taking on the task, often accompanying his father on missions and revels even when his presence was not needed. Had he died, Voldemort would never have felt a loss, for followers he had enough. What he needed was assurance that victory would be his in the end. The daunting task, should the boy have failed, would have hurried the arrival of the final battle and shaken everyone else out of their idiotic false sense of security. But everyone had been taken by surprise when he arrived, bloodied and barely controlling his temper but victorious nonetheless.

The look he had given him then! A daring, knowing look with an upwards tilt of the corner of his lip, as if to say, I know what you meant to do, and I beat you.

Such insolence would never have been tolerated but the mere fact that the boy knelt there before him, alive, was enough to give the Dark Lord pause and he found he was…impressed.

Dumbledore was no longer an obstacle and he had the Malfoy boy to thank.

He had looked down at the young wizard and thought here was promise. Who else among all his devoted could have accomplished such a feat? Bella, perhaps, but she was wilder than the devious Fiendfyre and short of temper, Voldemort was without doubt she would have lost patience and instead choose to blast her way through the castle to complete the task. But the boy…

Bella and some of the others had been assigned to train him to the best of their ability. Luckily, Draco was in want of almost nothing; already having adapted to the nearly emotionless state long ago by influence of his father and was already adept at wandless and noverbal magic. His skill in dueling was great. He was ruthless and conniving and it didn't take much imagination for Tom Riddle to see a little of himself in the young man with the pale hair.

The case of Narcissa's ailment worried Draco constantly-that and the Gryffindor girl. The Dark Lord himself was proficient enough in Occlumency that he could slip into others' thoughts with relative ease, unless he wished to torture his subject of scrutiny. He often studied Draco thusly and found his thoughts mostly divided between an overwhelming desire for the girl and an anxiousness regarding his mother, who grew worse with every passing day.

That Draco thought so much about the girl did not bother him. The boy needed some form of release and he had clearly chosen it in the girl, it was clear by the amount of fantasies he had built up in his head. The only problem was that the girl was not there to relieve him. There were days when Draco had showed exponential progress and there were days where the Dark Lord was disappointed. That the boy was frustrated was evident, it was soon after these trying sessions that Draco began his crimes in both Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade. This distracted him sufficiently for a while and he flourished, but they ended quickly and after his second attempt to abduct the witch failed, his performance dropped again, and the Dark Lord himself was irritated enough he was very seriously considering having the girl either killed or abducted by his own men to end it all, but Draco was transformed after that experience. Fueled by rage, by impatience and lust and so many other things, he was deemed strong enough by the Dark Lord to end his training, but his obsession with the girl had not ended. The Dark Lord himself offered assistance in capturing the girl time and time again but Draco flatly refused, intent on doing it on his own. He had been working on devising yet another plan to capture the elusive object of his lust when by a pure stroke of chance she all but came to him. That had settled matters quite nicely for everyone except the unfortunate Gryffindor, who found herself in a nightmare scenario.

Then came the trouble with Narcissa. Both Lucius and Voldemort had always known what was wrong with her-Voldemort because he was the one who had shown them the book in which the dark spell, but by both the elder Malfoy's request their son remained in the dark. Or so they both thought.

The Dark Lord had shown Draco the cause of his mother's suffering out of curiosity; wanting to know how the boy would react to the knowledge that he had been lied to all this time about the nature of his birth, and rightly so, Draco had been furious. The Dark Lord had claimed there was no way to reverse the spell or vanquish its effects but had Draco not let himself become so distraught and looked closer he would have seen there was a page missing. This page, which had been destroyed sometime earlier by the creature that held it then, held the cure.

Narcissa had been the last obstacle, the Dark Lord had thought to himself. With her gone, her son would reach his full potential. But he had failed to realize what damage the girl could do to his careful plans.

When the Granger girl was first brought to him all his stealthy attacks upon her mind were resisted ably, and he was forced to torture her in hopes of obtaining the information he wanted so dearly. He had taken no pleasure from violating her other than the pain it caused her. This was a message without words for his protégé. However great he might become it was all because of him. As easily as Draco had gained all this power it could be taken away should he let himself become too distracted. He had already begun to suspect Draco was becoming too attached to the girl. The girl was dispensable, he wanted to make that clear. He had seen the brief alarm in Draco's eyes when he had ordered him out of the room and almost expected him to refuse.

By then the others had begun to think the Dark Lord was merely having Draco trained to become his new right hand or even a new leader amongst them, such as Lucius had once been. Draco had thought this too, especially since his Aunt Bella had confided in him that Voldemort suspected Severus was a spy. Severus himself had been keeping a low profile all that time, but swore his loyalty remained with their side. He had remained so until the final battle, during which he revealed himself by coming to the aid of the Order when both Tonks and Remus had been cornered and outnumbered by a group of five Death Eaters. The Potions Professor took them all by surprise but none more so than Remus. They had thought the occurrence had not been seen by any other but somehow word got around to the Dark Lord, who was understandably angry. After the battle Severus' headless body was found in the greenhouse, his blood covering the better part of the floor.

No one on their side had expected the Dark Lord to die. That had not been part of their plan. Very few had known about the Horcruxes. Not even Draco had been honoured with this crucial information, and yet it was through him that Hermione learned of the diadem. If not for that seemingly unimportant remark about the tiara the final battle would have had a different outcome.

Hermione had suspected it, but no one else could have imagined Harry had been the seventh Horcrux. The Dark Lord had not been able to conceal his shock upon seeing the Boy-Who-Lived rise again after being thought dead. In his last, unsuspecting moments, Voldemort realized what that meant for him. Though he still dueled Harry fiercely he did not scream with rage when the Killing Curse hit him. His last malevolent grin unsettled those who were so unfortunate as to see it but was forgotten (except by Harry, Ron and Neville) the moment his body hit the ground. Their final confrontation had been brief but would forever remain etched into the witnesses' memories and in the many written accounts that were written afterward.

Draco had not been there to see his master die. He had been so focused on bringing Hermione back to him that he had paid no attention to the happenings in the courtyard-all he could see was her. But she had escaped him again because he had let his guard down and Flitwick had found him and the second Flitwick's tiny little body had fallen to the ground he simultaneously heard the sound of Hermione Apparating away and the overjoyed, victorious cheers from the courtyard. That second of pure sound was all he needed to know his side had lost and he himself retreated before anyone else could find him, but not before entering the dim Shrieking Shack and taking Blaise's body with him.

Nothing was safe from him once he got back to the Manor. He was so angry he took it out on anything within reach. The twin defeats of the day were great and devastating to him; that his wife should slip out of his grasp yet again and that his master had allowed himself to be killed. If only he had not let himself become so distracted by following Longbottom, whom he had found quite by accident and followed discretely, wondering why on Earth the great fool carried with him the sword of Gryffindor. Draco had watched Neville slice at something and then run off seconds later. His intent had been to follow Longbottom and kill him but to his utter amazement Hermione had appeared then and he went for the obvious choice. But now that he was alone, accompanied by Blaise's lifeless corpse and the ruins of his study he had forgotten his fury for the moment and allowed himself to think.

And think he did.

A/N:

I meant to start writing this earlier but I've been feeling so unmotivated towards writing lately. Took me ages to just start plotting this out and then typing it is a whole different story. All the same, I've figured it out now and I hope you enjoy.

We'll be hearing more on Draco next.

See you soon,

C