@etrcnge requested a starter.
FAILURE. Its stench clings to his dress shirt with the sweat && vile that follows. It’s a moment of disgust, the look of disappointment. They see him as a liability, a boy branded with the mark when he didn’t deserve the titles of even his family name. How they compared him to the downfall, how they joked about Fenrir Greyback’s canines latching into the pale flesh of his skin. The Dark Lord even, though he saw the success in the end, mocked him. A form of torture he hadn’t yet known, humility.
His mother yet stroked his hair. His father, too bruised to notice anything but the backs of his eyelids && the fear of reliving the moments of his life he’d just endured. There was fear in his soul && regret in his heart && there’s no room either. Not with the mix of distress, of the reluctance that shadowed his eyelids. Not with her beady eyes staring at him, he can’t tell if she shares their contempt. Blood wasn’t as think as her loyalty && Draco didn’t understand her urgency to follow a man, a tyrant. Perhaps that’s what left them so different, the Blacks && the Malfoys. Related in nothing but blood. He’s almost scared of her approach. ❛ You fancy tea, Aunt Bella? ❜ It’s offered only as a means to divert from the conundrum of his thoughts. Of the ever impending doom that silently beckons him home.
There was little MERCY given if ANY at all when it came to Bellatrix, get caught in her line of TARGET && one might as well kiss themselves GOODBYE ----- a LOOSE canon, the wild card of the bunch. However, should you have her LOOK on the perspective of FAMILY, there were exceptions that could be made, believe it or not SHE was still a human being, while the THOUGHT of a FELON such as herself with FEELINGS was bizarre, that does not mean she did not have them.
THE stress, tension, && FEAR------ if DRACO did not think that they weren’t readable FROM his being, he was entirely wrong. Bella was not NAIVE, though often mistaken as such. GAZE did follow each step that he took, PROBABLY feeling that with such failure, he was now WALKING on borrowed time.
Her steps were not quiet, she DID not enter with grace or care, SHE was well aware of the anxiety HER presence was causing after the recent events, though that did not MEAN Bella would turn on her heel && leave for the SAKE of his sanity in all this. She would grow close, PERHAPS too close for one’s comfort, though Draco should be use to it by now, personal SPACE was no longer something he had.
Her tone was different, soft though still UNSETTLING --
‘ Never mind the TEA ----- how’re we feelin’ ? ‘
There came genuine CURIOSITY for how he would answer her QUESTION, he would not dare ignore her, he had no choice but to speak --- was there CARE in her words ? Mockery ?