The Three of Us - By Sabiha Atturkhan

Written By: Sabiha Atturkhan

Category: Script Writing

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Sabiha Atturkhan brings a deeply magical and emotionally resonant scene to life in her script, "The Three of Us," part of the larger work "The Eclipse Heir of the Half-Blood Prince." Featured in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, Atturkhan's piece delves into the mystical and familial complexities within a world of magic. The scene is set in the Malfoy Manor, capturing a moment of inheritance, identity, and the unspoken bonds that tie characters together.

About the Work

In "The Three of Us," Atturkhan crafts a poignant exploration of family legacy and personal identity through vivid dialogue and rich imagery. The script's atmosphere is infused with a sense of history and magic, as characters grapple with the weight of their inherited powers and the complexities of their relationships. The narrative reveals deep emotional undercurrents, inviting readers into a world where decisions and discoveries are steeped in tradition and expectation.

The Three of Us

Original Submission by Sabiha Atturkhan

THE THREE OF US

A scene from THE ECLIPSE HEIR OF THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

Written by Sabiha Atturkhan

FADE IN:

INT. MALFOY MANOR — LABORATORY — LATE AFTERNOON

The laboratory in full light for once. Afternoon sun through high windows. Cauldrons simmering. The smell of something complex and important.

SEVERUS SNAPE stands at his workbench, his back to the room. Working. Or appearing to work. The set of his shoulders says he has been thinking about this for a very long time.

HEAVEN MARSHALL SNAPE, 11, sits in the worn leather chair in the corner. Her chair. It has been her chair since she was four years old — the leather shaped around her, the armrests worn smooth at exactly her height. She is watching him.

She does this sometimes. Watches him work and says nothing. He has never asked her to stop.

HEAVEN

You're not actually brewing anything.

Severus doesn't turn around.

SEVERUS

(evenly)

Correct.

HEAVEN

You're thinking.

SEVERUS

Also correct.

A beat.

HEAVEN

About what?

Severus sets down the stirring rod. Slowly. The deliberate movement of a man who has decided something and is in the process of not undoing it.

He crosses to the far wall. The cabinet — warded, sealed, always locked, the one Heaven has spent eleven years learning not to ask about. His hand finds the lock. The wards peel back like a held breath releasing.

He withdraws two books.

Turns. Crosses to Heaven. Stands before her. Holds them out.

She doesn't take them immediately. She looks at them first — the brown one, ancient, warm even from a distance, something in it already pulling at something in her. The black one, newer, silver-clasped, its protective enchantments shimmering faintly in the afternoon light.

Then she takes them.

Both hands. The brown one settles in her left. The warmth of it moves through her palm immediately — not the warmth of leather, something older, something that knows her.

Her breath changes slightly. Just slightly. Severus notices.

SEVERUS

(quietly)

The brown one belonged to your mother. The Marshall grimoire. Wolf magic. Vampire magic. The creature knowledge her family accumulated for centuries.

Heaven looks at the brown cover. Her mother's. Four hundred years of women, all of them having held this before her.

HEAVEN

(barely above a whisper)

And the black one?

SEVERUS

Mine.

A pause. The hardest kind — the kind before something true.

SEVERUS (CONT'D)

The Prince grimoire. The witch in you comes from me. You should have my family's knowledge as well as hers.

He stops. Something crosses his face — quickly, controlled, almost invisible. Almost.

SEVERUS (CONT'D)

I should have given it sooner.

Heaven looks up at him. At the man who has been her father in every way that matters and never once made it simple and never once made it less than everything.

She opens the brown grimoire.

The handwriting inside is unfamiliar — looping, warm, nothing like Severus's precise hand. But something in her recognises it before her eyes do. Before her mind does.

She reads. Her face changes as she reads. The way a face changes when something it has been waiting for finally arrives.

Severus watches her read.

HEAVEN

(reading aloud, quietly)

"To the daughter who reads this —"

She stops. Swallows. Continues.

HEAVEN (CONT'D)

"You carry the Crescent legacy. The wolf who runs beneath the moon. The vampire who walks in darkness. But you have something more, don't you? Something from your father's side. Something that makes you three instead of two."

Silence.

The afternoon light moves. The cauldrons simmer. The laboratory holds them — the man standing and the girl in the chair and the two grimoires and eleven years of preparation.

HEAVEN (CONT'D)

(barely above a breath)

Three instead of two.

She closes the grimoire gently. Looks up at Severus.

He is watching her with the expression he reserves for potions at their most critical stage — complete attention, nothing held back.

HEAVEN (CONT'D)

Thank you.

It is not enough. They both know it. Neither of them says so.

Severus nods once.

Heaven opens the grimoire again. Begins to read properly. The leather warm against her hands. Her mother's handwriting filling the afternoon.

Severus returns to his workbench. Picks up the stirring rod. Does not brew anything. Stands with his back to the room and listens to the sound of his daughter reading her mother's words for the first time.

The laboratory breathes.

CUT TO:

INT. MALFOY MANOR — LIBRARY, EAST ALCOVE — EVENING

The shelves have been arranged to make a room within a room. Someone did this deliberately, years ago, and the three children who occupy it now have never questioned the gift.

A fire. A Persian rug. Two grimoires between them — one brown and ancient, one black and silver-clasped — like the agenda of a meeting no adult has been invited to.

HEAVEN MARSHALL SNAPE, 11, sits cross-legged on the rug. Dark hair. Eyes that shift colour when she forgets to control them — right now, something between gold and green. She is reading. She has been reading for an hour. This is what she looks like when she is afraid and will not say so.

DRACO MALFOY, 13, leans against the nearest shelf with the careful posture of someone who learned early that how you hold yourself is a statement. Platinum-blonde. Watching Heaven the way you watch someone you'd do anything for.

BLAISE ZABINI, 11, sits across from her. Notebook open on his knee. He writes without looking down — a habit so practised it has become invisible.

The fire crackles. Outside the alcove, the library is dark and the house is quiet and the summer is almost over.

HEAVEN

She left me a history. Not just spells. The whole thing — where it starts, who we were before anyone had words for it.

Blaise writes. Doesn't look up.

BLAISE

What does she say about the vampire side?

HEAVEN

(quoting from memory)

"The first humans who encountered them did not call them vampires. They called them the night-walkers. The ones who return."

A beat. Draco turns this over.

DRACO

Every civilisation?

HEAVEN

Every one that ever buried its dead. The Mesopotamians had Lilith. The Greeks had lamiae. The Slavic peoples had the vampyr.

DRACO

(quietly)

And they were all responding to something real.

HEAVEN

She says: they were responding to us.

Silence. The fire settles. Nobody moves.

BLAISE

(still writing)

The dormancy. She explains it?

HEAVEN

A cage. Not a punishment — she's very specific about that. A protection. The wolf and the vampire are both asleep until something wakes them.

DRACO

Until what?

HEAVEN

She doesn't say. She says — when it happens, I'll be ready.

Draco picks up the brown grimoire. Both hands. Careful — the way Heaven showed him. He opens it to the back pages and reads.

DRACO

(reading aloud, slowly)

"Marguerite Marshall, 1623 to 1689. Kept her wolf caged for sixty-six years. Died refusing to turn. The blood remembers her restraint."

He turns the page.

DRACO (CONT'D)

There's a list.

HEAVEN

I know. Four hundred years of them.

Blaise looks up from his notebook for the first time.

BLAISE

And you're at the end.

Heaven doesn't answer. She looks at the grimoire in Draco's hands.

Her eyes shift. Just for a moment — something moves through them that is not quite human. Gold. Then green. Then nothing.

She pulls it back. Her eyes settle.

HEAVEN

I added my name. This afternoon.

DRACO

(very quietly)

What did you write?

HEAVEN

First tribrid. Beginning. Continuing.

A long pause.

Draco sets the grimoire down with the care of someone handling something irreplaceable. Blaise closes his notebook with the quiet click of a decision being made.

BLAISE

Hogwarts in two months.

HEAVEN

I know.

DRACO

Dumbledore sees everything. That's not an exaggeration — Father says the portraits report to him, the ghosts, the castle itself.

HEAVEN

I know.

DRACO

Then you know you can't do this alone.

Heaven looks at him. Something in her expression is very old for eleven.

HEAVEN

I've never done anything alone. That's rather the point of the three of us.

Blaise almost smiles. Anyone who didn't know him would miss it.

BLAISE

Whatever you need to learn, we learn with you. Whatever you need to hide, we help you hide.

DRACO

We're Malfoy and Zabini and Snape.

BLAISE

We've been training for this since we could walk.

Heaven looks at both of them. She takes a slow breath. When she exhales, something in her settles — visible, if you know how to look.

HEAVEN

Together, then.

DRACO

Together.

BLAISE

Always.

A beat.

Then Blaise opens his notebook. Draco reopens the grimoire. Heaven picks up the Prince grimoire and settles it in her lap.

They read.

The fire burns. The house breathes. Outside, the sun finishes setting on the last summer before everything changes.

CUT TO:

INT. MALFOY MANOR — LABORATORY — SAME EVENING

The laboratory at dusk. Cauldrons cold. The workbench cleared. A room that is usually full of purpose, emptied of it — as though it too is waiting for something.

SEVERUS SNAPE stands at the window. His back to the room. He is not looking at the garden. He is listening to the house the way you listen to something you love and would never say so.

The door opens.

LUCIUS MALFOY enters without knocking. He never knocks here. 40s. Silver-blonde. The kind of man who was taught that composure was the highest virtue and has spent twenty years discovering that composure has limits. He crosses to the workbench without speaking. Stops.

Six inches between them.

Their hands rest on the workbench — Lucius's left, Severus's right — separated by a distance so small it would take almost nothing to cross it. Almost nothing. Twenty years of almost nothing.

Neither of them looks at the other.

LUCIUS

(so quietly it is almost only breath)

They've been in the library for two hours.

SEVERUS

I know.

Lucius looks at the ceiling. Following the sound of three children reading three floors up. His expression does something complicated — pride and grief and something else, something that has no name in any language he has been taught to speak.

LUCIUS

All three of them. Together.

SEVERUS

I know.

A silence.

Not an empty silence. A full one — twenty years of conversations that didn't happen, twenty years of hands that almost reached, twenty years of standing in rooms like this one and not saying the thing that was always there to be said.

Lucius turns his head. Just slightly. The line of his jaw in the fading light. The particular way he holds himself when he is feeling something he hasn't decided to feel yet.

LUCIUS

(barely above a whisper)

Severus.

Just his name. Only his name. The way you say a name when the name is the whole sentence.

Severus doesn't move. But something in the line of his shoulders changes — the almost imperceptible release of something held too long.

His hand moves across the workbench. Slowly. The way you move toward something you have wanted for so long that wanting has become its own kind of home and arriving might change everything and you move toward it anyway.

It stops an inch from Lucius's hand.

Lucius looks down at the distance between them. At Severus's hand. At the inch that is not nothing.

He looks up. At Severus's profile. At the man who has stood beside him in every version of his life for twenty years and never once made it easy and never once made it less than this.

Lucius's hand moves.

The inch closes.

His fingers find Severus's and hold them — not gently, not tentatively, but with the certainty of someone who has been moving toward this for twenty years and is done pretending otherwise.

Severus closes his eyes. Just for a moment. Just long enough for something to cross his face that no one else has ever seen and no one else will.

Then he opens them.

LUCIUS

(his voice changed — warmer, unguarded, the voice under the performance)

We did this right, Severus.

The longest pause in the history of this room.

Severus turns his head. Looks at Lucius the way he looks at things he will not allow himself to look at in public — with the full weight of twenty years, with nothing held back.

SEVERUS

(so quietly it is almost only breath)

Yes.

He turns his hand over. His fingers close around Lucius's.

SEVERUS (CONT'D)

I think we did.

They stand like that.

The laboratory holds them. The last light goes from the garden. Above them three children are reading by firelight and the house is breathing around all of them and the summer is almost over and none of that matters because this — this — is the thing that has been waiting.

For twenty years.

In this room.

CUT TO:

INT. MALFOY MANOR — HEAVEN'S ROOM — LATER THAT NIGHT

The house is dark. Everyone is sleeping. Or almost everyone.

HEAVEN sits at the small desk by the window. Still dressed, as though she forgot to change, or decided not to. The Marshall grimoire is open in front of her. The brown leather catches the candlelight.

She is not reading. She is looking at the last page.

We see what she sees: the list. Four entries in four different hands. The last one — her mother's — ending with a gap. A deliberate space. An invitation.

Heaven picks up her quill. Holds it above the page. Doesn't write.

Outside the window the garden is dark and the summer is almost over and somewhere in the house Draco and Blaise are sleeping and somewhere in the house Severus and Lucius are standing in a laboratory with their hands finally touching and none of them know she is here, doing this, alone, at the edge of the thing that is about to begin.

Her quill touches the page.

She writes.

We see her hand moving across the page. Slow. Deliberate. Each word chosen.

She sets the quill down. Looks at what she has written.

A long beat.

Then she reads it aloud. Not performing it. Not announcing it. The way you say something to yourself in an empty room to find out if it is true.

HEAVEN

(quietly, to no one, to everyone)

Heaven Marshall Snape. 1999 — present. First tribrid. Beginning. Continuing.

Silence.

The candlelight moves.

Her eyes shift — gold, then green, then something in between that has no name yet. The thing in the dark behind her ribs stirs. Not hungrily. Not with urgency. The way something ancient stirs when it finally recognises where it is.

She doesn't look away from the page.

HEAVEN (CONT'D)

(barely above a whisper)

I heard you, Maman.

She closes the grimoire.

Both hands flat against the cover. Four hundred years of women pressing back against her palms.

She stays like that for a long moment.

Then she looks up. Out the window. At the garden, the dark, the sky above the Manor that is the same sky above Hogwarts two months from now.

Her eyes settle. Brown. Ordinary. Controlled.

She blows out the candle.

DARKNESS.

A beat.

Then — very faintly, from somewhere in the house below — the sound of a door opening.

Not closing.

Opening.

CUT TO:

INT./EXT. MALFOY MANOR — NIGHT

The Manor after midnight.

We move through it slowly. Room by room. The camera unhurried — the way the house itself moves through time, which is to say without urgency, which is to say as though it has always known it would outlast whatever happens inside it.

THE LIBRARY.

The east alcove. Empty now. The Persian rug still bears the impression of three children sitting cross-legged — the pile compressed in three distinct places, a triangle, a geometry of presence. The fire has burned down to embers. The two grimoires are gone. The notebooks are gone. Only the warmth remains, and the specific quality of a space that has recently held something important and has not yet let go of it.

THE CORRIDOR.

Second floor. The botanical prints in their frames — wrong plants, wrong coast, beautiful and wrong simultaneously. The runner carpet running its length in the dark. At the far end, a door. Closed. The light underneath it is out.

THE LABORATORY.

Dark now. The cauldrons cold. The workbench cleared. Two sets of footprints in the dust near the window — standing close, standing together, standing for a long time.

The locked cabinet on the far wall stands open.

Not broken open. Opened. By someone who had the key and used it and did not close it again because what was inside it is no longer inside it.

It is empty. What it held is in a girl's room upstairs, warm against her hands.

DRACO'S ROOM.

Platinum-blonde against a dark pillow. Sleeping with the particular stillness of someone who learned young that how you hold yourself is a statement — even in sleep, even alone. One hand open on the coverlet. The fingers relaxed.

On his nightstand: a notebook. Three pages filled in his careful hand — notes from the grimoire, facts about dormancy and pack bonds and threshold creatures.

He is ready. He has been ready his whole life.

BLAISE'S ROOM.

Darker. The curtains fully closed. BLAISE sleeping with the economy of someone who has learned to rest wherever rest is available. His notebook is on the floor beside the bed — closed, but with a quill still tucked between the pages.

The last thing he wrote, visible when we tilt toward it:

We are Malfoy and Zabini and Snape.

Below it, underlined once:

Always.

NARCISSA'S SITTING ROOM.

She is not asleep.

NARCISSA BLACK sits in the chair by the window — the one that faces the garden, the one she has sat in every night for years. She has a book open on her lap. She is not reading it.

She is listening to the house.

She knows where everyone is. She always knows where everyone is. Draco asleep. Blaise asleep. Severus and Lucius in the laboratory.

Heaven —

She looks at the ceiling. At the floor above her. At the specific square of plaster above which a girl is sitting at a desk with two grimoires and a candle that is almost out.

Something in Narcissa's expression settles. The expression of someone who has been holding something in trust for a very long time and has just understood that the holding is almost over. That what she has been keeping is about to be claimed.

She closes her book.

Looks back at the garden.

HEAVEN'S ROOM.

The candle is almost out. A thin thread of smoke rising from the wick. The grimoire closed on the desk, both of Heaven's hands flat against the cover.

HEAVEN sits perfectly still. Her eyes are open. Looking at nothing. Looking at everything.

The thing in the dark behind her ribs is very quiet. Not asleep. Not stirring. Simply present — aware of itself in a way it has not been before tonight, the way you become aware of a room when someone finally turns on a light.

The candle goes out.

Darkness.

A long beat of pure darkness and pure silence.

Then — very slowly — the Manor begins to breathe.

The wards hum. The old stones settle. The foundations shift by a fraction of an inch the way foundations shift when the weight they are carrying changes. The garden moves in a wind that has no source.

The house knows.

It has always known.

It has been waiting, in its patient stone way, for the girl in the chair to add her name to the list, to say the words aloud, to close the cover with both hands and feel four hundred years pressing back.

Now she has.

Now everything is different.

Now the summer can end.

EXT. MALFOY MANOR — CONTINUOUS

The Manor from outside. Full shot. The stone facade in the moonlight, the garden dark below, the windows dark — all of them dark now, one by one, the last candle out.

The building breathes.

The wards pulse once — a single slow beat, like a heart acknowledging something.

Then stillness.

The summer night. The Manor. Everything it holds.

FADE OUT.

THE END

Category: Script Writing

Author: Sabiha Atturkhan

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious platform that celebrates diverse voices in literature. This competition invites participants from around the globe to showcase their talent in poetry, short stories, essays, and creative writing. It serves as a beacon for emerging and established writers to share their unique narratives and connect with a wider audience.

We extend our gratitude to Sabiha Atturkhan for her mesmerizing contribution, "The Three of Us," to the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Her script stands as a testament to the power of storytelling and the intricate tapestry of family and identity woven through her work. Thank you, Sabiha, for sharing your extraordinary vision with us.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.