"Be quiet," his father spits, and Draco realises he has been emitting a faint, horrified whimpering through thirst-cracked parted lips, and clamps them shut. Refuses to give the leering Death Eaters off somewhere in the inky black the pleasure of his fear. Or let them down by showing it like a weakling. He's not sure which; he only knows that he must deserve this. He is a trapped beetle on its back – and what is a beetle for, but the amusement of its captors? It is nothing important, nothing special, nothing...