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Format: Novel
Chapters: 41
Word Count: 224,342
Status: COMPLETED
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Strong Language, Strong Violence, Scenes of a Sexual Nature, Sensitive Topic/Issue/Theme, Contains Spoilers
Genres: Romance, Action/Adventure, AU
Characters: Harry, Ron, Hermione, R. Lestrange, Draco, Pansy
Pairings: Draco/Hermione, Ron/Hermione
First Published: 08/23/2007
Last Chapter: 10/04/2012
Last Updated: 10/04/2012
Summary:
"Miss Granger, you are in grave danger," he said slowly. "But the Ministy can offer you a safe hiding place, where no one will be able to find you."
"Wh...where is this place?" Hermione said shakily.
The man took a deep breath and looked into those brown eyes. "Miss Granger, what do you know of Malfoy Manor?"
A/N: This is AU and it is assumed in this version that the epilogue of Deathly Hallows never took place and Hermione is the one who killed Bellatrix Lestrange.
Henry Skeid sat amidst a huge stack of papers and quickly filed through a set of documents that lay right in front of him. There was nothing in the pile today that he hadn’t seen before: warrants, arrests, decrees and many other boring jobs that the Head of Magical Law Enforcement was forced to do.
Though a very tall man, Henry’s aging features gave him a very feeble appearance that was only enhanced by his square spectacles and receding hairline. A few grey hairs were visible on in his dark hair and his pale skin had developed white blotches and dark circles under his dark eyes. Despite his failing appearance, Henry always managed to pull of a very powerful look with his navy blue robes with gold buttons.
His thoughts were distracted for a brief second when a loud buzzing sound erupted in his room. He looked up immediately and removed his spectacles, placing two fingers between his eyes, on his temple. His next appointment had arrived and it would not be an easy one.
He took a deep breath and quickly looked at himself in the mirror, smoothing down some untameable hairs on his head. He wiped the sweat off of his forehead and adjusted his collar. “Show time,” he said to himself as the green emerald flames erupted in his office and a young girl fell out into the ashes.
Immediately Skeid rushed over to help her up and smiled warmly. “Hello Ms. Granger,” he said gently as the young woman got up on her feet. She dusted herself off and Skeid was able to get a good look at her appearance. She looked different than in most of the photos in the Daily Prophet. Her dark hair was bushy and messily tied up into a ponytail which seemed to compliment her brown eyes.
She looked up and smiled briefly too. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Skeid,” she said, holding out her hand.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Skeid said as he took her hand and ushered her over to his dark oak desk where he seated her on a cushioned brown chair.
“Thank you,” Hermione replied.
Skeid took a seat on the other side of the desk and took a deep breath before beginning. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked her patiently.
“Water will be great,” she said quickly. Skeid had the feeling that she wasn’t in the mood for casual chivalry and wanted to get down to business. He took out his wand from his robe’s pocket and waved it, causing a pitcher of water and a glass to appear on the desk. Hermione filled it with water and took a quick sip before looking back at Skeid.
“I was very curious to know why you requested to see me,” she began. “Your…your assistant didn’t really mention the reason for this appointment.”
“Yes, I’m afraid I have to keep her in the dark about certain situations,” Skeid replied. “Such as this.”
“And what kind of situation is this?” Hermione asked.
“One of great importance and great danger,” he said with a tone of weariness. “Ms. Granger, I will need you to listen carefully while I explain this to you.”
Hermione sat up in her seat with a concerned expression on her face. “Alright.”
“It’s been quite a while since You Know Who was defeated and, to be frankly honest, things are not as organized or proper as we would have hoped.”
“I’m…I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Hermione said.
“Do you know of a Rodolphus Lestrange?”
“Bellatrix Lestrange’s husband?” Hermione asked. “Well, yes I’ve heard of him and I think he was there at the Final Battle but…but I’ve never actually seen him.”
“After he was apprehended and sent to Azkaban, the recent damage done to the prison resulted in a few prisoners escaping – he was one of them.”
“Recent?” Hermione said. “You mean the escape a year ago?”
“Precisely,” Skeid said. “Our sources tell us that he left the country after his escape.”
“Where did he go?”
“Australia.”
Hermione’s eyes blanked in fear. “Australia?” she repeated. “Did…d…did he hurt anyone there?”
“Miss Granger, he murdered a muggle couple. We found their bodies and it seemed that they had had their memories modified.”
Hermione’s eyes were very watery. “What…who…who were they?”
“We don’t know their real names but their neighbours said that they were Wendell and Monica Wilkins.”
“NO!” Hermione got up from the chair and buried her face in her hands. “NO!” she yelled.
“Miss Granger…” Skeid began but decided not to continue. He thought it would be best to give her a few minutes to release whatever she felt inside.
“My…my parents!” she cried. She hit her fist hard against the walls and wept her heart out.
“Miss Granger, I am deeply sorry for your loss,” Skeid began. He had never been good with consolations or condolences. He offered her a box of tissues and refilled her glass of water.
Hermione took a few more minutes to collect herself and reached for a tissue, with which she wiped her eyes. She took a sip of the water and took a few deep breaths before looking back at Skeid. “How…how long ago did this happen?” she asked amidst sobs.
“Three months ago,” Skeid replied sombrely. “We didn’t know who they were until I heard that you were looking for your parents whom you’d sent there. I am terribly sorry for your loss.”
Hermione nodded but didn’t say anything. “May I go now?” she asked.
Skeid shifted uncomfortably in his chair and then looked back up at the young woman who seemed to have aged so much in these past few minutes. “Unfortunately Miss Granger, your parents death is not the reason I called you in here.”
“I…I beg your pardon?”
“In light of your parents’ death, I am worried for your security,” Skeid said. His tone had taken on a very paternal character that he wished it hadn’t.
“My security?”
“Though you are of age, as I understand it, you have no longer any living relatives…blood relatives.”
Hermione shook her head. “No, I don’t,” she replied.
“Miss Granger, you are a muggle born,” Skeid said firmly. “And you now have no living blood relatives. With this ongoing surge of killings of your lineage, I do not think you’re in a safe position.”
“What?” Hermione said. “I’m…I’m living with the Weasleys currently and I d-”
“I understand that,” Skeid said patiently. “However, Arthur and Molly Weasley’s house is not safely out of the way. Your reputation in helping Mr. Potter has earned you a very prominent position on the top of the list of muggle borns that need to be killed.”
“Are you saying that I’m in danger?”
“Yes,” Skeid said matter-of-factly. “And we need to take all precautions to ensure that you remain safe.”
“What kind of precautions?”
“The Ministry can offer you housing, in a very special location that is definitely hard to locate.”
“I…I can’t believe this!” Hermione shrieked. “I am very well able to defend myself, thank you!”
“I understand that, Miss Granger,” Skeid said. Hermione was begging to turn red and Skeid was worried she wouldn’t listen to him. “But Rodolphus Lestrange is heading this killing spree and he is, if I may so, a very expertly trained killer.”
“I don’t care if it was Voldemort himself coming for me!” Hermione said, getting out of her seat.
“He’s targeted you!” Skeid said. “You were the one that killed his wife.”
“I don’t…I don’t believe this! So he murdered my parents?”
“I’m almost positive that he didn’t know they were your parents,” Skeid said. “But he has targeted you.”
“This is absolute madness!”
“Miss Granger, please calm down!” Skeid insisted. “It’s not only for your safety but for the safety of the Weasleys and Mr. Potter!”
“What do you mean?” Hermione asked.
“These are ruthless, cold blooded killers,” Skeid urged. “They won’t care who they kill and if you’re living with the Weasleys, you’re making them a target!”
Hermione sat back down and wiped her eyes. Skeid looked into those dark, sad eyes and couldn’t help but feel completely helpless. “I know this is hard,” he said after a while, “but please try and understand.”
“If, hypothetically, I was to say yes,” Hermione said slowly. “What…what would happen?”
“Well,” Skeid said calmly, relief sweeping over him. “We’d send you to this location where you would be cared for by an auror at all times. It won’t be like babysitting, you will be free to do whatever you wish but an auror will keep an eye out for you.”
“Will I be able to see my friends?”
“Absolutely!” Skeid said. “They may visit you whenever they like. However, we ask that you not leave the premises unescorted until we find Lestrange and detain him.”
Hermione buried her face in her hands. “I promise you we are trying to apprehend him with our best possible resources,” Skeid assured her.
Hermione looked back up at the old man and sat up straight in her chair. “Alright,” she said after a few minutes of silent contemplation. “I…I will accept your offer.”
“You’re doing the right thing,” Skeid said.
“Wh…where is this new place that I’m going to be living in?”
“It belongs to a very experienced and very talented auror,” Skeid assured her.
“Yes alright, but where is it?”
Skeid had been dreading this moment during the entire conversation. He took a deep breath and looked into the young woman’s eyes. “Miss Granger, what do you know about Malfoy Manor?”
A/N (again :P): Hope you enjoyed it! Please leave me a review to let me know what you think! Reviews are really encouraging especially for a new fic! :D
The Burrow had grown exponentially ever since the Final Battle at Hogwarts. The cracked walls, loose floorboards, broken banisters and aging furniture had all been replaced while the Weasleys had added an additional story at the top and enlarged their basement below. The pale walls were now painted in beautiful cream colours and adorned with beautiful wooden floor. Thought it had been through so much renovation, Hermione still saw the house the same way she did when she first arrived here during Hogwarts. She stepped into the tiny living room where the evening light had placed a golden hue on the side of the walls.
“Hermione!”
Hermione jumped at the sound of Ginny calling her from behind. “Hermione!” she called again and this time Hermione turned around to see her red-headed friend jumping down the stairs.
“How was the meeting?” she asked with concern.
Hermione didn’t know how to respond, or whether she should say anything at all. She walked over to the stairs and peered quickly up to the second story where no one stood on the empty landing. She then turned back to Ginny and beckoned her to the kitchen with a stern look on her face.
“Hermione, wha-” Ginny started but was silenced by Hermione.
“Not here,” she whispered and ushered Ginny into the tiny kitchen. Though the house itself had changed a lot, the Weasleys’ kitchen remained its old self with the tarnished floorboards and peeling paint. Hermione pushed Ginny through the dancing mops and hopping brooms which were trying to clean the floor, and sat her down on one of the wooden chairs around the dining table.
“Are you alright, Hermione?” Ginny asked worriedly. Hermione nodded her head quickly and tiptoed back to the entrance of the kitchen where she once again checked the stairs to see that it was empty. After ensuring that no one was there, she returned and on her way back, knocked over a two teacups and a bowl of fruit.
“Sorry,” Hermione muttered clumsily to no one in particular and sat herself back down opposite Ginny.
“What’s going on?” Ginny asked, as she stood up and headed towards the stove.
“What are you doing?” Hermione said as she stood up too.
“No, no, sit back down,” Ginny said casually. “I’m getting us some tea.”
“Oh,” Hermione said shortly. “Right.”
Ginny took out a large metal pot and placed it on top of the stove, adding two cups of water. She then took out her wand and muttered a few words under her breath, igniting the stove and allowing the water to gently boil.
“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Ginny asked again as she reached for some tea leaves on top of the fridge.
Hermione wasn’t paying attention as she craned her neck behind the doorway to check if the stairwell was empty again.
“There’s no one there, for Merlin’s sake, Hermione!” Ginny said. “Who are you looking for?”
Hermione looked back at Ginny with a dull expression and sighed. “Ron,” she said. “He’s not home, right?”
Ginny dropped a pinch of tea leaves into the boiling water and shook her head. “He left for work a few hours ago, actually,” Ginny said. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want him to hear what I’m about to tell you,” Hermione said sombrely. She reached for a jar on top of the wooden table and opened the lid only to find that it was empty.
“Hungry?” Ginny asked her, reaching into one of the cabinets and taking out a yellow jar. She removed the lid and placed it gingerly onto the table, offering it to Hermione.
“Very,” Hermione said tiredly as she reached into the jar and pulled out a rice cake. She sighed once again and began to chew on it absentmindedly as Ginny poured out the tea into two green mugs, dropping a lump of sugar into each one.
“Alright,” Ginny said firmly as she sat down and handed Hermione one of the green mugs. “What’s going on?”
Hermione took a sip of the tea and felt a gentle warmth spread throughout her body that seemed to vanish the instant it came. Her eyes began to tear very slightly as she gathered herself to divulge the happenings of today’s meeting. “Do you remember the owl I got two weeks ago?” Hermione asked Ginny carefully.
Ginny furrowed her brow and shook her head. “No, I do- oh wait, do you mean the one from Australia?”
Hermione nodded. “The one that said that Wendell and Monica Wilkins had disappeared without a trace.”
“Yeah, I remember that one,” Ginny said, reaching for a rice cake too.
“They fo-” Hermione choked slightly and held back her tears. “They…found my parents.”
“Really?” Ginny said, at first sounding ecstatic but then confused after seeing Hermione’s tears. “But…but that’s good news, Hermione!”
Hermione wiped her tears carelessly on her sleeve and took another sip of the tea, relishing in another instant of warmth. Ginny still didn’t fully understand what was going on but reached over and gently pat her friend’s hand.
“What happened?” she asked softly. “Are they alright?”
Hermione shook her head and lay her head down on the table, unable to contain her grief. “They’re dead,” she breathed.
Ginny gasped and placed her hands over her mouth as Hermione sobbed against the wooden table. “I’m…I’m so sorry, Hermione!” Ginny whispered to her friend. “How…how could this have happened?”
Hermione looked up and wiped away the salty tears as they trickled down towards her mouth. Her eyes had lost all grief but instead contained hatred – one so powerful that Ginny felt almost afraid. “Rodolphus Lestrange,” she said bitterly.
“Lest- wait,” Ginny said. “You mean Bellatrix Lestrange’s husband?”
Hermione nodded. “He found his way down to Australia after the Azkaban breakout last year,” she said. “He went on a killing spree of muggles.”
“That loser is the scum living beneath dirtiest of fungus,” Ginny swore.
“He’s still on the loose,” Hermione said with difficulty as she reached over to wipe a fresh batch of tears streaming down her face.
“Don’t worry about it, Hermione,” Ginny said calmingly. “Cry it out if you need to.”
Hermione nodded and rested her head on the table, on top of her arms. She hadn’t gotten a chance to really let the full effects of her parents’ deaths get to her back at the Ministry but now, in silence, with her friend, she could feel the pain and grief overwhelm her. She sobbed uncontrollably on her arm and found herself reminiscing about life with her parents and what it had been like and the millions of thing she would miss. She appreciated Ginny just staying there with her, without uttering a single word or doing anything. The presence of someone else in the room made her feel like she wasn’t totally alone in this world despite what she felt like inside.
After a few minutes of silent grief, Hermione heard a thud at the door and a creaking sound, indicating that it was opened. Hermione immediately sat up and wiped her eyes as fast as she could, using her sleeve once again which now had a stain on its green fabric. Ginny turned towards the entrance of the kitchen where she heard footsteps approaching from a distance.
“I’m going to see who it is,” Ginny said softly. “Just sit tight.”
Hermione grabbed Ginny’s hand and stopped her from leaving. “Don’t tell Ron!” Hermione pleaded. “Make whatever excuse you can but you can’t let him see me like this.”
“Wha-?” Ginny asked confused.
“Just please!” Hermione begged.
Ginny nodded quickly and headed out the door. Hermione watched as Ginny’s shadow turned the corner and began to speak. “Ron, is that you?” she called out.
There was no reply.
“Ron?” Ginny asked again. “Ro- Oh Harry it’s you!”
Hermione sighed with relief as Ginny greeted Harry happily. She reached over to the cup of tea which had provided her with ample comfort and took another sip, feeling that similar sensation tingle her.
“Why did you think I was Ron?” Hermione heard Harry ask Ginny.
“It’s nothing,” Ginny said quickly.
Hermione put down the green mug beside her half eaten rice cake and call out to Ginny. “It’s alright, Ginny!” she said. “You and Harry can come in here!”
“Is that Hermione?” she heard Harry ask.
“Of course it is,” Ginny said.
Hermione saw their shadows approach the kitchen entrance and heard their footsteps get louder. Harry and Ginny came into view as they entered the tiny room and Ginny beckoned him to take a seat.
“Hermione, what’s going on?” Harry asked, as he clumsily made his way over through the mops and brooms and took a seat beside her. He had removed his jacket and was wearing dark black jeans with a bottle green t-shirt that seemed to compliment his eyes.
“What’s with all this secrecy?” he asked, this time, looking at Hermione. “Th- wait, Hermione? Are you crying?”
Hermione looked over towards one of the glass cabinets and saw her expression reflected faintly in it. Her eyes had swollen exponentially and the redness beneath them seemed to have gotten even redder. She grabbed a tissue from the table and wiped her face dry and then looked back at Harry.
“I’m alright,” she said.
Ginny poured out another cup of tea from the pot and placed it in front of Harry. “Don’t lie to me,” Harry said and placed his hand on Hermione’s.
Ginny sat down on the seat opposite them and gave Hermione a sympathetic expression. Hermione, in turn, nodded and dabbed her eyes again roughly. “Do you want me to tell him?” Ginny asked.
Hermione nodded slowly and Harry turned to Ginny. “Alright, I’m getting freaked out,” Harry said. “What happened?”
“They found Hermione’s parents,” Ginny said slowly.
“That’s great!” Harry said happily. “I…I still don’t understand the tears though.”
“They found their bodies,” Ginny corrected herself, this time, holding back a few tears herself.
“Oh no!” Harry gasped. “Oh Hermione!”
He looked over at her and gave her a hug, allowing her to sob on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he said kindly. “How did it happen?”
Hermione took a deep breath and looked back at Ginny, finding it hard to speak right now. “Rodolphus Lestrange killed them,” Ginny said solemnly. “He’s still on the loose.”
“I wish there was something I could for you,” Harry said, still clinging onto a sobbing Hermione.
“There’s more,” Hermione whispered. She sat back up and wiped her eyes for the last time, she hoped. She gathered herself and looked back at her reflection in the glass. She had to be strong.
“More?” Ginny asked, sipping her tea.
Hermione nodded. “Rodolphus Lestrange is looking for me.”
The bombshell seemed to hit both Harry and Ginny hard on their heads as they both gaped in shock.
“Looking for you?” Harry repeated. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that he’s out to kill me,” Hermione said bluntly.
“W...w…is…I don’t understand!” Ginny gasped. “Wh…why?”
“It’s because of Bellatrix, isn’t it?” Harry asked.
Hermione pushed back a few stray hairs that were hanging in front of her face and nodded gravely. “He wants revenge.”
“Is that why he murdered your parents?” Ginny asked.
“No,” Hermione said. “He didn’t…he didn’t know they were my parents.”
Harry’s expression was grave and serious while Ginny’s was disheartened and shocked. Hermione didn’t know how they’d react to finding out what the next few months had in store for her so she braced herself and just blurted it out.
“The Ministry wants to offer me protection.”
Ginny coughed on her tea and looked incredulously at Hermione. “What…what do you mean?”
“They want me to move…to another location,” Hermione said slowly. “Listen, do you have any more of these rice cakes?”
Ginny wasn’t sure whether to be surprised or afraid of Hermione’s random question but chose to act confused. “Um…yeah…sure.”
She got up and looked back into the cabinet, this time, emerging with a white jar with blue flowers painted around the top. “Here you go,” she said, removing the lid and handing a rice cake to Hermione.
“What other location?” Harry asked.
Hermione took a deep breath. “It’s…it’s supposed to be highly protected, you know, and…and very hard to locate.”
“Where?” Harry asked again, raising his eyebrow.
“There are many charms around it too,” Hermione said. She was stalling but she, herself, didn’t know why. She was secretly hoping that some miraculous creature would fall from the sky and tell her that this was all a dream. She’d wake up in a few minutes and be happy to be back in her own room with her books and find her parents.
“Hermione, where is this place?” Harry said, now getting impatient. “Do you know, Ginny?”
Ginny shook her head. “I’ve no idea. Hermione, please tell us.”
Hermione spent one last second hoping to wake up and then sighed hopelessly. “Malfoy Manor,” she said.
Ginny knocked over her cup of tea while Harry’s jaw dropped to the floor. Hermione couldn’t help but feel slightly amused at this sudden comical expression that had befallen the both of them. Ginny didn’t even notice the tea spilling over the table as she gaped at her confused and slightly bemused friend.
“Malfoy…Malfoy Manor?” Harry repeated. “ the Malfoy Manor?”
“How many other Malfoy Manors do we know of?” Hermione asked tetchily.
“So…with…with Draco Malfoy?” Ginny asked.
Hermione nodded glumly. “The one and only.”
“Now I understand why you didn’t want Ron to hear about it,” Ginny said steadily, reaching over to the counter and flicking her wand, causing a piece of cloth to fly over and begin to dry up the spill of tea.
“I don’t know how I’m going to tell him,” Hermione said, burying her face in her hands.
“This is rubbish, Hermione!” Harry protested. “You’re safer here with us! We’ll protect you!”
Hermione had been expecting these protests from everyone and so didn’t feel surprised when she saw the look of anger in Harry’s face. “We…we all have our own lives, Harry,” Hermione began. “I don’t want you to endanger yours and I don’t want Ron to endanger his.”
“That’s total nonsense!” Ginny interjected. “Mum and Dad would never agree to this!”
“Would they agree to having their only granddaughter in danger while I live with you?” Hermione added.
Though it was true that most of the Weasleys had grown up and moved out, Ginny, Bill, Fleur and Victoire still lived at the Burrow with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Due to Bill’s busy work schedule, he wasn’t home much and Fleur had needed some help with the baby and it was agreed upon that they would move back in here until Bill had completed his current large project.
“I know what I’m doing,” Hermione said slowly after a while. “I know it’s a…a difficult situation but Malfoy is an auror and he’s back on the good side.”
“Yeah, as far as we know,” Harry muttered.
It was the Easter Break and everyone had once again reconvened to spend a week at the Burrow. It was a usual tradition that around special holidays everyone would gather back for a few days or weeks and stay at the Burrow – this was one of those holidays. Hermione, despite being 27 years old, still liked to be back at the Burrow with her friends rather than at home, in a lonely London apartment.
“What about that tiny, minute, insignificant detail that you’re going out with Ron?” Ginny asked. The cloth had finished cleaning up the spill and so Ginny flicked her wand again and it flew over and lay itself down in the sink.
“He’ll have to deal with it,” Hermione said sharply. “But I am afraid of telling him.”
“Would it help if we were there?” Harry asked.
Hermione nodded and reached for her cup again. “We’ll need someone there to restrain him from punching the wall.”
Harry smiled slightly while Ginny too nodded with an amused expression on her face. As she opened her mouth to say something, she heard the front door click and the brass handle turn, indicating that someone had entered.
“Is anyone home?” Ron’s voice came from outside. Hermione froze and looked over quickly at Harry and Ginny, to whom she nodded.
“We’re in here!” Harry called out, as he gave Hermione a reassuring nod and stood up to go see where Ron was. Ron’s shadow got closer to the entrance and within a few seconds, he came into view.
“Hermione!” he said happily. “I didn’t think you’d be back so soon from your meeting!”
“It was a short meeting,” Hermione said quietly. “Do you want something to eat?”
Ron smiled and nodded eagerly. “I’m starving – it’s bloody windy out there by the way.”
“Oh, really?” Hermione said. “When I got back there was just a light breeze.”
“I know, that’s what I thought too but then when I was heading back, there were huge gusts of wind blowing from all directions.”
“Is it raining too?” Hermione asked, offering Ron a rice cake which he happily took.
“Kind of light drizzling, actually,” Ron said. “Nothing too serious.”
All this while, Harry and Ginny were staring incredulously at their two friends. “Why on earth are you talking about the weather?” Ginny cried after a while. “There are more important issues to be dealt with!”
Ron turned to Ginny with a confused expression but then look back at Hermione as Ginny nodded in her direction. “What important issues?”
“They found my parents’ bodies,” Hermione said quickly. In her experiences of letting the news out to everyone, she’d come to realize that the faster she said it, the less it hurt – much like a band aid which hurts less the faster you rip it off. She found herself holding back a few tears as Ron went over and hugged her.
“I’m so sorry, ‘Mione,” he said and placed a kiss on her forehead. “I…w…how did it happen?”
“It’s alright, Ron,” Hermione said, as Ron sat back down. “It…it was some loose death eater who got to them.”
She met Ginny’s eyes briefly for a second and then quickly looked away. “But the Ministry wants me to be placed in a protection program just in case I’m in danger.”
“What?!” Ron burst out. “In danger?”
“It’s just a precaution,” Hermione reassured him. “No one’s really after me but they…they want to be sure until they’ve caught the killers.”
Hermione wiped her eyes and looked at the dumfounded expressions on Harry and Ginny’s faces. She knew they would disapprove of her lying to Ron but it was the only way – the only way that she was sure Ron would let her go without fighting or protesting. If he had known she was in real danger from a cold blooded killer, he would have endangered himself and refused to let her go.
“I can’t believe this!” Ron said. “Why would someone be after you?”
“Because I’m a muggle,” Hermione said, once again she avoided both Harry and Ginny’s eye. “Ron, listen. I don’t want you to feel upset or afraid for me. This whole thing is just a stupid protocol that the Ministry has to follow. I’ll stay with an auror for a few weeks and then come back, completely unharmed.”
“Harry and I are aurors too,” Ron said. “Why can’t you just stay here?”
“Ron, please!,” Hermione pleaded. “Just…just let me go for a few weeks. You can come and see me whenever you want and…and it’ll all be over before you know it.”
“Where…where is this place?” Ron said shakily.
“It’s very protected and I’ve been told that it’s one of the most difficult buildings in London to locate,” Hermione said shiftily.
“So it’s in London then?” Ron confirmed.
“Yes, of course,” Hermione said.
“Where in London?” Ron asked.
“Well, you know, since it’s so protected no one really knows where it is,” Hermione muttered.
“Doesn’t it have a name? Or…or some sort of title?”
“Just tell him,” Ginny sighed, giving Hermione an encouraging nod. Hermione looked to Harry who nodded too and gave her a weak smile.
“Malfoy Manor,” Hermione blurted out.
Usually, in a mode of surprise, one would remain stationary or completely frozen but Ron Weasley was not like that. The moment he heard the words ‘Malfoy’ come out of his girlfriend’s mouth he sprung up off his seat and turned red in the face.
“Malfoy…Malfoy Manor?!” he repeated.
Hermione too got up and tried to calm him down. “Yes, Ron but please trust me, I’ll be alright.”
“Malfoy is going to be watching over you for the next few weeks?!” he said.
“Just calm down, mate,” Harry said, placing his hand on Ron’s shoulder.
“Of course I won’t!” Ron yelled. “My girlfriend is about to move in with a death eater! This kind of situation calls for anything but calm!”
“We’re not moving in,” Hermione said bitterly. “And he’s not a death eater.”
“This is for Hermione’s own safety!” Ginny told Ron. “Don’t you want her to be safe, Ron?”
“Of course I do! But that prat Malfoy won’t take a curse for anyone! I can protect you better than he can!”
“I know you can, Ron,” Hermione reassured him. “I just need you to understand that I can’t stay with you and endanger you and the rest of your family.”
“We can move away!” Ron bellowed. “We can move to another city for all I care!”
“Ron, please,” Hermione pleaded. “I promise you that everything will be alright.”
Some colour had begun to drain from Ron’s red face as Hermione placed her hand on his cheek and kissed him. “I promise you,” she said faintly.
He had calmed down a bit more as she held on to both of his hands and looked at his beautiful dark eyes. “I am safe and there’s really no danger to me. This is just the Ministry’s stupid protocol that I have to follow – everything will be alright. Do you trust me?”
Ron stood steady for a moment and then nodded slowly. “I do,” he said.
“Then trust me to know what I’m doing,” she said.
“And you promise everything will be alright?” Ron asked, sounding very childish and very serious at the same time.
Hermione nodded and kissed him once again. “I promise.”
Ron sighed very softly. “Then go.” Relief swept over Hermione as she hugged Ron gently and smiled at his overprotective expression.
“That took less effort than we thought!” Ginny said happily and began to clear the table of all the rice cakes and jars.
“When are you leaving?” Harry asked her.
“The Ministry wants me to move as soon as possible,” Hermione said. “I told them that the earliest I could leave was tomorrow afternoon.”
“Alright,” Ron said with some difficulty.
“Ron and I will go get you a trunk from upstairs,” Harry said, looking at Ginny as Ron left the kitchen. “And maybe, Ginny, you can…can talk to Hermione.”
Ginny nodded as Harry left with Ron and then turned back to Hermione. “What was that all about?” Hermione asked.
“Harry and I both want to know why you didn’t tell Ron.”
“Tell him what?”
“That you’re in serious danger. He just thinks this is some stupid Ministry screw up.”
Hermione took the three mugs of tea from the table and walked over to the sink and began washing them. “And that’s how it’s going to be,” Hermione said. “I don’t want him worrying for me.”
“And what if Rodolphus Lestrange finds you?” Ginny asked.
“They have aurors all over the world looking for him – I’m sure they’ll find him before he finds me.”
“I hope so,” Ginny said worriedly.
As Hermione finished washing the cups, she placed them by the side and turned when she heard a knock on the front door.
“I’ll get that,” Hermione said as she dried her hands on a towel and walked outside into the living room. As she made her way through the maze of shelves filled with photos, she looked back up the stairs to see where Ron and Harry had gotten too.
She finally reached the front door and turned the brass handle which felt cold against her warm skin. She opened the door which made a slight creaking noise as it sprung forward. It took her a few minutes to completely recognize who was standing at the door but the first thing that she registered was that smirk that always seemed to surface when he spoke to her.
“Hello Granger.”
A/N: Hope you enjoyed this chapter! I know it's long but I had a lot to get through :) Please leave me a review to let me know what you liked/disliked about it! They are really encouraging and helpful!
Hermione stood gazing at the door for what seemed like at least a few years until she finally seemed to accept that she wasn’t hallucinating. In full body and mind, as arrogant as ever and as…blonde…as ever, Draco Malfoy leaned on the doorway with a sneer curling up on the side of his mouth. His hair had grown a little longer than she last remembered but it seemed to glow against the sunlight coming from behind, creating a glowing halo and making him seem as angelic as a new born baby. His pale grey eyes and malicious sneer on the other hand, destroyed that innocent appearance and showed him for what he truly was – the devil.
His smile – or rather his smirk – personified everything that Hermione could possibly hate about him and even more. His arrogant posture that framed him in the doorway gave him an air of superiority and insolence that made Hermione want to punch him right in the face. And of course, suppressing that urge was taking her a lot of effort.
“Malfoy?” Hermione said after a while of staring.
“No it’s Viktor Krum,” Malfoy snapped back. “I just wanted to dye my hair.”
Hermione threw him a nasty look and huffed slightly. “That’s not funny.”
“I think it is,” Malfoy replied, his smirk still visible at the left side of his lip. Hermione had the severe urge to just put a huge piece of tape against his mouth and slam the door in his face.
“You know Granger,” Malfoy began. “I’ve been standing at your door for…quite a while. Are these the kind of manners mudbloods have?”
Hermione matched Malfoy’s irritatingly perfect smirk with a clumsy grimace. “I think they’re better manners than arrogant little pricks have.”
“Clever retort, Granger, have you been practicing?”
Malfoy seemed quite content with arguing for the entire day but Hermione had had enough. “Why are you here, Malfoy?” she sneered.
“I’m here for the same reason you think I’m here,” Malfoy replied.
“And what reason is that?” Hermione shot back.
“Would you like me to discuss that in public so that Uncle Ralphie can hear about it too?” Malfoy said casually.
“I don’t know what to be shocked at more,” Hermione snapped. “The fact that you can talk about this so casually or that Rodolphus is actually your uncle in reality.”
“Neither surprises me,” Malfoy said casually.
Hermione reached over to the door and grabbed the brass handle, controlling every urge within her to stop her from shutting it right in his proud face. Malfoy was now matching Hermione’s stern gaze and they seemed to be competing to see who could hold their gaze for the longest without looking away.
Hermione was sure this childish competition could go on forever and it probably would have if Ginny hadn’t come barging from behind.
“Hermione who is i- Malfoy!” Ginny gasped as she stared at the blonde man before her.
“Oh great, it’s you,” Malfoy said unenthusiastically.
“It’s nice to see you too, Malfoy,” Ginny retorted sarcastically. “Glad you could come.”
“Me too,” Malfoy sneered. “I’ve been standing at this bloody doorway for ten minutes now and no one has asked me to come in.”
Ginny looked at Hermione sourly who rolled her eyes and nodded after a few seconds. “Come in,” Hermione said shortly.
She didn’t bother to allow Malfoy to go in first, even though he was the guest, and as her parents had taught her – guests always went first. She turned on her heel and marched into the living room with a heated expression on her face, red enough to match Ginny’s fiery hair. Ginny on the other hand, let Malfoy pass her and ushered him roughly into the cramped living room where his proud stature seemed out of place.
Hermione walked over to one of the faded old couches and sat herself down, grabbing one of Mrs. Weasley’s hand knitted pillows and placing it in her lap. Malfoy on the other hand looked utterly confused and disgusted as he stared around the room and finally, after a resolved look from Hermione, took a seat on one of the wooden chairs opposite the couch.
“Do you want something to eat?” Ginny asked, as she took a seat beside Hermione.
Malfoy looked around sceptically. “No.” he said bluntly.
“Good,” Ginny replied coldly.
“But I would like something to drink,” Malfoy said maliciously, sneering once again.
“We don’t keep alcohol here,” Ginny said.
“Well I suppose tea would do, or do you not have that either?”
Ginny glared at Malfoy and jetted up from her seat, threw him a nasty look and turned her heel into the kitchen. Hermione meanwhile had resorted to fidgeting with the tiny beads dangling off the cushion to distract herself from Malfoy’s insolence. Malfoy, on the other hand, seemed to be looking around the room with an expression of utter disgust. Hermione noticed he didn’t take his coat off or place his arm on the seat.
“So why are you here?” Hermione asked.
“I told you,” Malfoy said. “I’m here for the exact reason you think I am.”
“Enough with these games. I thought you weren’t coming until tomorrow afternoon!” Hermione said.
“Yes, well, unfortunately I don’t run a chauffeur service here – transporting stupid muggles from the city to the countryside.”
“You know what Malfoy?” Hermione snapped. “I can’t believe after all that crap you pulled about being innocent and turning to the good side that you haven’t changed the slightest bit.”
“Oh don’t pull that psychoanalytical look on me, Granger,” Malfoy retorted. “I don’t need you to discover the inner reason for the denial of my feels and then somehow connect to my desire of being a ballerina. Alright?”
Hermione took a brief second to imagine Malfoy as a ballerina, laughed her head off internally and then went back to glaring at him. “This is ridiculous!” she burst out. “You just can’t show up here and just start being your stupid old asinine self.”
“Listen, Granger, I’d love nothing more than to sit here and talk with you all day – actually, I’d rather die than do that – but we need to get going.”
Ginny returned with three cups of tea on a tarnished silver tray that she hastily slammed down on the coffee table between the three of them. “Enjoy,” she sneered at Malfoy who gave her an equally blunt look.
Hermione reached over and grabbed the tea quickly – it seemed to have made her afternoon a little more bearable and a little less painful. She placed her lips against the smooth rim of the cup and tilted the cup ever so slightly so that the warm tea poured effortlessly into her mouth. Malfoy too took one of the cups and after examining it to make sure there were no crawling bugs on the handle, he too placed it against his mouth and took a sip.
“So are you going to tell us why you’re here?” Ginny asked.
“Well as I already mentioned to Gran- oh god! What is this sweetness in the tea?” Malfoy asked with a disgusted expression on his face.
“It’s sugar,” Hermione said incredulously.
“There is such a thing as moderation,” Malfoy said, with a sour expression on his face as he placed the cup back on the table.
“Enough with this,” Hermione said. “I’m not leaving now.”
“Well then good luck finding your way to a manor which even the Dark Lord himself had trouble locating,” Malfoy sneered proudly.
“That’s nothing to be pleased with,” Hermione snapped.
“Look, Granger,” Malfoy said. “The train to the outer city leaves in exactly –” Malfoy paused to check his watch. “44 minutes. It will take us at least twenty minutes to get to Diagon Alley where we will have to take the fireplace to the station which will take about ten minutes to get to the train. That gives you the next 14 minutes to pack your things and leave with me or stay here and rot with Rodolphus Lestrange’s wand up your nose.”
Hermione looked at Ginny and rolled her eyes. “I’ll go get my things,” she said and stood up.
“Fourteen minutes,” Malfoy said, tapping his watch. “Oh no wait- thirteen minutes.”
Malfoy stopped talking as he heard footsteps coming from the second story that began to descend.
“I think the bigger trunk was better,” one of voices came.
“It’s so heavy!” the second voice complained. “It’s not like she’s moving – it’s just temporary.”
Harry and Ron came into view as they descended the staircase, each step creaking against the floorboard beneath their feet. They stopped talking as they saw Draco Malfoy sitting on the couch with their respective girlfriends.
“Malfoy?” Harry blurted out.
“Oh great,” Malfoy muttered to himself. “It’s the Potter posse.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Ron asked.
“Relax Weasley,” Malfoy scoffed. “I’ll be gone in a few minutes.”
“You’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow!” Harry said.
Hermione stood up and looked at Ron and Harry. “It’s alright,” she said. “There was a misunderstanding with the timings –”
“So you’re leaving now?” Ron said.
“Yes,” Hermione replied solemnly. “Don’t worry about me, Ron. I’ll be fine.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Ron said, shooting Malfoy a nasty look, who seemed rather amused by the whole situation.
“Ten minutes,” he said, checking his watch again.
“Don’t talk to her like that!” Ron burst out, reaching into his pocket.
Harry darted forward and stepped between Ron and Malfoy and mouthed a few words to Ginny who got up from her seat immediately. “Let’s go pack, Ron!” she said as she grabbed Hermione’s arm and Ron’s arm and went with them upstairs, with Harry following them close behind.
---
“What the hell was that?!” Ron exploded as the four of them entered Hermione’s room on the second floor.
Ginny rolled her eyes and went over to help Harry pull out a large brown trunk from underneath the bed. “I told you I’d be leaving, Ron,” Hermione replied.
“Yes, but you didn’t tell me it was NOW!”
“Whether I left today or tomorrow, I’m still going to be gone,” Hermione said, tiredly. She was in no mood to argue with Ron but he just wouldn’t listen.
Harry and Ginny had managed to pull out the trunk and pretended with a lot of effort not to hear the arguing going on between Ron and Hermione. Harry thrust the trunk open while Ginny effortlessly waved her wand and all of Hermione’s possessions fell into it.
“And look at the way he was talking to you,” Ron bellowed. “It’s like you’re his bloody slave!”
“It’s Malfoy, Ron!” Hermione cried. “What else can you expect from him?”
“This is absolutely absurd,” Ron said. “I don’t see why you need to be going in the first place.”
“Are we going to have this conversation again?” Hermione asked angrily.
“Alright you two!” Ginny burst out. “Just stop this fighting!”
She placed herself between Ron and Hermione and looked at the both of them with a very annoyed expression. “Ron, Hermione’s leaving today and the last thing she needs is for you to be your stupid childish self. Why don’t you just say goodbye and do all that other crap couples do?”
“Hermione,” Harry began. “You guys shouldn’t be fighting at this time.”
“I can’t deal with this!” Hermione said. “If Ron doesn’t want to understand that I need to leave then maybe he doesn’t need to.”
“I can’t believe you’re acting like this!” Ron protested. “I understand why you need to leave!”
“Well then! Why are you so angry?”
“I just don’t….I just don’t want you to leave!” Ron burst out and then shut himself up in anguish. Hermione’s expression immediately softened as Harry and Ginny looked at each other with slight smiles appearing on their faces.
“I have to,” Hermione said slowly, gently placing her hand on Ron’s arm.
“I know,” Ron grunted.
“You can come anytime you want to visit me,” Hermione said.
“Well not anytime,” someone said from behind with a harsh tone. All four of them turned to see Malfoy standing at the doorway, leaning against the frame with an amused expression on his face.
“Granger,” he said, brandishing his watch in front of her. “Seven minutes.”
“Wait,” Hermione said harshly. “Why can’t Ron come anytime he wants?”
“Because it’s a protected house. And it won’t be very hard to find if Weasley here keeps bobbing in and out,” Malfoy sneered.
“What do you mean it’s protected?” Ginny asked.
“The Ministry’s placed a whole load of curses and spells and charms onto it. It’d take a pretty smart wizard with a lot of skill,” Malfoy paused to look at Ron and smirked, “to navigate his way through all of them to make it to the front door.”
“Well then this random death eater who killed your parents won’t be able to make it past the front gates, Hermione,” Ron said comfortingly. Malfoy’s expression faltered for a second and he looked at the both of them with a confused expression.
“Random?” he repeated. “Weasley, don’t underestimate him.”
“What are you talking about Malfoy?” Ron spat.
“It’s getting really late!” Ginny said suddenly.
“Yes,” Harry agreed immediately. “Ron, help me move Hermione’s trunk downstairs.”
Ron stared at the both of them blankly with a perplexed expression on his face. He didn’t have time to question what any of them had said as Harry shoved one handle of the trunk into his hands and began to navigate it down the stairs.
As the both of them left the room, Malfoy turned back to Hermione and Ginny and checked his watch for the fourth time. “Five minutes,” he said. “Coming or not?”
Hermione rolled her eyes at his unpleasant nature and then turned to Ginny. Ginny had been scribbling something on a piece of paper when she turned to face Hermione. “I’ll keep in contact,” she said gently.
“You better,” Ginny replied and hugged Hermione tightly. She still had the piece of scrap paper in her hand and as Hermione began to get slightly teary, she handed it to her.
“This is a safer address to send us owls to,” she said, indicating the writing on the paper. Hermione scanned her eyes over the sheet and read, Number 12, Grimmauld Place.
“Grimmauld place?” Hermione repeated with a puzzled expression.
“Yeah,” Ginny said, beginning to feel a little sad herself. “Since no one really lives there and it’s protected, we thought it’d be the safest place for you to send the owls in case Rodolphus is trying to intercept them or something.”
“Alright,” Hermione said and folded the piece of paper very carefully, placing it in her left pocket.
“I guess this is it,” Ginny said. “You take care.”
“You too,” Hermione said.
“And don’t you dare forget to keep in contact with us,” Ginny warned jokingly. “I think Ron may resort to becoming a hermit if you don’t.”
“Bye,” Hermione said wistfully and turned slowly, as though taking a longer time to leave would dull the pain.
Malfoy rolled his eyes and went down before her, his expensive dragon hide shoes making a thud against the wooden floors. The walk down the stairs for Hermione seemed to be one that caused her a lot of pain. It seemed that every step she took reminded her of another cherished memory that she’s spent with her friends.
Step
The Quidditch World Cup.
Step
Ron kissing her in the middle of the final battle.
Step
Hogwarts Graduation.
Step
Ron and Hermione dancing together for the first time.
Step
She couldn’t take it anymore. She wiped her eyes quickly with her other sleeve this time, and continued walking down the stairs at a faster pace, with the memories of so many years lingering at the back of her mind.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned to see Harry and Ron waiting for her, with a disgruntled Malfoy standing in the back. Hermione tried to pull herself together as she turned the corner and walked up to Harry and Ron.
“Did Ginny give you the address?” Harry asked gently and Hermione nodded solemnly. “Don’t you forget to write to us,” Harry said.
“I won’t,” Hermione replied and hugged Harry tightly.
“Don’t worry,” Harry said softly, so that only Hermione could hear him. “If you need anything, just write to us.”
“Of course,” Hermione said, trying to smile but failing miserably.
“If he causes you any trouble – any at all, or you get lost or something happens, just remember, Grimmauld Place is the safest place you can go. Only Ron, you and I can get in there by ourselves- not even Ginny.”
“Alright,” Hermione nodded and then turned to Ron. She had been dreading saying goodbye because she wasn’t sure what she’d say or how she’d fit all she wanted to say. However, as the moment neared she realized she didn’t have to say that much to him – just goodbye.
“Ron,” she whispered softly as Ron quickly averted his gaze. “You knew we’d have to say goodbye.”
“I don’t want to,” Ron said childishly, fiddling with his finger nails.
“We’ll see each other very soon,” Hermione assured him. “No matter what Malfoy says, the Ministry will still allow you to visit me.”
“Do you promise to write to me?” Ron asked.
“Of course,” Hermione said, trying to keep her expression and voice happy. “Don’t worry about me,” she added.
“I never worry about you,” Ron said.
“Good, because I worry about you all the time.”
“Well, you shouldn’t,” Ron said seriously.
“I’ll try. It’s going to be very hard not to keep thinking about you.”
Ron nodded. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stop thinking about you.”
Hermione smiled very weakly and put her hand on Ron’s face. “This will all be over before you know it.”
Ron nodded and then turned away for a few seconds. “What’s wrong?” Hermione asked.
“Oh it’s nothing,” Ron said chokingly. “I…I’ve just got something in my eye.”
Hermione couldn’t help but smile as she turned Ron back around and gave him a kiss. Their embrace was only broken when Malfoy rudely cleared his throat and scoffed ever so slightly. Ron and Hermione broke apart and turned to see Ginny coming down the stairs too.
“I’ve got to go,” Hermione said softly and wiped her eyes quickly as Malfoy tapped his watch impatiently. “I’ve got to go.”
“About time,” Malfoy sneered as reached into his robes and drew out his wand. He aimed the wooden stick very carefully at Hermione’s large trunk and whispered a few words, causing the trunk to levitate itself and move with Malfoy’s wand.
“Can we go now?” he asked impatiently.
“Yes,” Hermione nodded and turned to the three of them. “Bye,’ she whispered gravely.
Harry, Ginny and Ron just looked at Hermione as she put on her coat and stepped out into the garden. Malfoy had gone in front of her and was waiting outside. Hermione didn’t turn around again, the pain she would feel would have been too overwhelming for her. She took a deep breath and shut the door behind her, leaving all she knew behind.
---
A/N: Another chapter! Please review to let me know what you think of it. Trust me, a lot of ideas or comments/critique that reviewers leave me affect the way I write my next chapters. :)
Hermione had been sitting in a secluded coach for what had been at least ten minutes. She sighed to herself and checked her watch again – eleven minutes. The coach itself was very beautifully decorated with golden lining, red cushions and mahogany hangings on the side. It made Hermione feel, to a certain degree, very royal and regal and could only imagine the countless times the Malfoys had ridden in this, staring at the commoners down below them. But despite the gentle smell of expensive cologne, the velvet cushions against her back and gentle breeze ruffling her hair, Hermione felt utterly irritated right now.
They were still in front of the Burrow. As she had walked out the front door, into the garden and out into the street, Malfoy had made her sit in the carriage and said he would return shortly. That had been thirteen minutes ago.
She had now resorted to picking off stray threads on the edges of cushions, fingering each one carefully with her nails. She looked back out at the Burrow from where she could see Ron standing at the second story window, watching mournfully. She wasn’t sure if he could see her but she knew that speaking to him again would just make the pain of departure even deeper.
She settled her feel against the opposite wall and began to fiddle with her fingers. Her patient was thinning – she knew Malfoy wasn’t thrilled about this assignment either but he had no right to leave her here.
There were soft, distant footsteps approaching the carriage and as they got nearer, Hermione saw a tall shadow emerge.
“All set, Granger?” Malfoy said as he peered inside the carriage.
“It’s been fifteen minutes. I’m bloody well set,” Hermione snapped. She knew she should be rude but her patient had now worn thin.
“Right,” Malfoy said shortly and then went back outside.
Hermione bolted up from her seat very fast and hit her head hard against the ceiling. “HOLD ON!” she yelled after him.
Her head was now throbbing and she looked up at the beautifully adorned ceiling to realize that it was all hard iron underneath it. After using some very choice words to curse Malfoy, she sat back down and continued rubbing her head with the back of her hand.
“What is it?” Malfoy asked angrily, poking his head into the carriage again.
“Why haven’t we left yet?” Hermione asked angrily.
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “It takes time for all these charms that I have to put around the carriage. And here I thought you’d be low maintenance.”
“Low maintenance?” Hermione snapped.
A sneer curled up at the edge of Malfoy’s lips. “Low maintenance,” he repeated,
“And WHAT is that supposed to mean?” Hermione yelled after him but he was gone again. Hermione huffed loudly and sat back down. “Stupid ass,” she mumbled to herself.
The weather had begun to worsen outside as rain started to fall to the ground. Hermione looked up and saw that Ron had now gone in. She didn’t want to admit it but she did feel a little offended that he wouldn’t watch her leave – that’s what she would have done. However, further thought on this topic was cut short by Malfoy stepping back in. This time though he didn’t just peer in but instead sat down opposite Hermione.
“We should be leaving in a few seconds,” he said carelessly, glancing at his watch.
“Well I don’t think I’ll be trusting your sense of timing from now on,” Hermione retaliated.
“What?” Malfoy said roughly. He had peered out one of the carriage windows and was now checking his watch again.
“I’ve been sitting in here for fifteen minutes!” Hermione burst out. “You said we’d be leaving any minute-”
Malfoy smirked. “The fifteenth minute is any minute.”
“And what was all that rushing me throughout the house?” she snapped.
Malfoy opened his mouth to respond when his watch suddenly beeped. “Eli! It’s time to go!” He hit his fist against the door of the carriage twice and Hermione felt a lunge in her stomach as the carriage began to move. She took a deep breath to steady herself but calm was the last thing she could be as the carriage began to speed up - Hermione was sure it could take on a muggle race car any day. Her heart began to race as she looked out the window to the side and saw they were coming to a curved street.
“Turn!” she whispered to herself, still looking out. The curb was getting closer and the carriage still hadn’t turned.
“Turn!” Hermione whispered again. “Oh please!”
She clutched the side of her seat, digging her fingernails deep into the fabric until she was sure she had ripped it. Her heart began to pound in her ears and her pulse rate was rising exponentially. The curb was now only a few feet away and the carriage still hadn’t turned.
“TURN!” she yelled and immediately closed her eyes as the carriage was now a mere few inches away. Her throat felt like it had been twisted and a tingling sensation began to rise in her stomach. The magnanimous crash or the very narrow turn that she had been expecting hadn’t come. She slowly opened her eyes as she felt the wind soar through her bushy hair and a light bit of dust in the air.
Once her eyes were opened, she realized why they hadn’t crashed into the curb. She expelled a few deep breaths and began to let go of the cushions on the side which now had deep nail imprints on them. She turned to the side and looked down at the houses that were now getting smaller and smaller into the distance. They were flying.
Opposite her, Malfoy stood looking highly amused and looked at her with a belittling expression. “It flies,” he said.
“Yes I figured,” Hermione replied coldly.
“Of all things Granger, I thought flying would be the last thing you were afraid of,” Malfoy smirked, still enjoying those few moments of Hermione’s panic.
“I’m not afraid of flying,” she snapped. “I’m afraid of crashing and dying.”
“Pathetic,” Malfoy said.
“What’s pathetic?” Hermione asked angrily.
“Being a witch and still thinking you’d crash – though I suppose, you can’t really be called a witch.” Malfoy had now resorted to casually gazing out the window with his hand on the pane.
“Are you really going to spend the next few months making second year jokes?” Hermione asked him. She tried to keep her voice calm and cool but anger was building inside her.
Malfoy didn’t respond to her. Instead, he turned a black dragon-hide bag that lay under the seat. He reached for it and placed it gingerly in his lap, allowing Hermione a good view into it. From what she could see, there were quills, parchment, some robes and books jammed into that one tiny sack. As Malfoy turned the bag slightly right to reach in deeper, Hermione saw gold lettering along the front which shined under the sunlight – L.
Malfoy had now pulled out a green covered book from his bag and placed it back under his seat. As he gingerly flipped through the pages, Hermione sensed that he wasn’t going to respond to her any further. She happily turned her attention to the window where she gazed down upon the bare fields that they were now passing over.
The world began to seem a lot simpler as she watched the grass from above, looking like a green splash of paint against the blank canvas. That’s what Hermione often thought of the world, or rather liked to think about the world – just a painting. The artist first painted the canvas blue for the sky and then added bits of green for the grass and fields. He then splashed a mixture of yellow, orange and white to replicate the blinding light of the sun and with splashes of white, he created the clouds.
The fields look so beautiful – the fields…wait. The fields?
Hermione paused for a few moments to ponder the thought that had entered her mind. “Wait,” she said aloud. Malfoy looked up, irritated at being disturbed and rolled his eyes.
“Do a few moments of silence annoy you that much?” he said irritably.
“Why are we flying over fields?” Hermione asked.
“I beg your freaking pardon?” Malfoy said.
“You said we have to get to Diagon Alley!” Hermione said.
“I did.”
“We should be over London – over buildings and roads and cars.”
A small smile curved onto Malfoy’s lips. “Very smart indeed, Granger,” Malfoy said, now looking highly amused.
“Don’t insult my intelligence!” Hermione snapped.
“Forgive me,” Malfoy said, sounding anything but sincere.
“Explain why we aren’t over London right now!” Hermione protested. She hated being treated like a child.
“We’re flying directly to the Manor,” Malfoy said after a while. He had now placed his book by his side and was rummaging around for something else.
“But…but…” Hermione stuttered. “Wh…what was that whole lecture…?”
Malfoy found what he was looking for – a copy of today’s Daily Prophet. He took it out from under one of the cushions and placed it in his lap. “What lecture?”
“The whole thing about having to catch a train and…and…taking a fireplace from Diagon Alley and…”
Malfoy’s smile was now visibly wider. He didn’t respond immediately but instead started to flip through the newspaper very casually.
“Was that your idea of a joke?” Hermione burst out.
“It wasn’t a joke,” Malfoy replied innocently. “That is how one gets to Malfoy Manor – it’s just not how we’re getting there.”
“I don’t understand!” Hermione said angrily. “I had to rush through my goodbyes and…and pack whatever I could find…”
“I just thought giving you a deadline would make things run a little faster.”
“A FAKE deadline?!” Hermione screeched. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Ron properly!”
“Yes, well, I’m sure Weasley’s going to be okay,” Malfoy snarled. “He’s got his mummy back home if he needs a hug.”
“Shut up,” Hermione snapped.
“Hey, you’re the one who started the whole conversation,” Malfoy said, still taking pleasure in Hermione’s disdain.
“Alright,” Hermione said testily. “I’m sorry I ever spoke to you in the first place.”
“Good.” Malfoy said.
“Perfect.”
Hermione had slammed her hand against the window and was now absentmindedly staring outside. Malfoy had returned back to his newspaper and was flipping through the pages slowly, reading any interesting articles that he may have found. She was sure the silence in the carriage would go on forever – but it didn’t.
“Master Malfoy?” a voice called out from outside.
Hermione immediately jumped at the sound and shot her head out the window to see what was happening. She couldn’t see anything but as she raised her head a little higher she saw a little man sitting at the front of the carriage – like a driver.
Hermione gasped silently and then sat back down in her seat with a bemused expression. “There’s a man on top of the carriage!” she said.
Malfoy looked up. “Well, yes.”
“Master Malfoy!” the man called again.
“What is it, Eli?” Malfoy called back.
“We’re a little behind schedule,” he said. Malfoy reached for his watch and then nodded a few times and then looked back up.
“Yes, we are,” he said. “I suppose you want to speed up, then?”
“That was my intention,” Eli replied. “I just wanted to warn you so that you and your guest could secure yourselves in the seats, it can get quite bumpy.”
Malfoy pondered for a moment and shook his head. “I think we can afford to be a little behind schedule,” Malfoy said. “Don’t speed up.”
“Very well, sir,” the reply came and the carriage continued at its regular speed. Hermione secretly felt relieved that there was no more speed since she still hadn’t quite recovered from when they had taken off. Hermione looked at Malfoy and sensed that he realized that and she quickly changed the subject.
“I thought this carriage was enchanted,” she said quickly.
Malfoy nodded. “It is.”
“Well, then…why do you need a driver?” she asked coldly.
“Someone’s got to navigate and control the Thestrals,” Malfoy said.
“Thestrals?” Hermione sat up immediately. “This carriage is driven by Thestrals?”
“Are you surprised Granger?”
“Well, it’s just that I saw one of their legs,” Hermione said slowly.
“So?” Malfoy asked bluntly.
“I’ve never seen one before.”
“I guess you’ve seen death then,” Malfoy said, his tone was so nonchalant that Hermione felt a little annoyed. She quickly slumped back down and threw Malfoy a nasty look. She decided that looking out of the window made her seem busy and perhaps she wouldn’t have to talk to him then. It was getting darker, now that the sun had set. The stars in the sky had gone from distant objects hidden in the sun to magnificent miracles twinkling in the sky. With them in her mind, she slowly closed her eyes.
---
“What’s the matter mate?” Harry asked, as he sat down beside Ron at the dining table. The Weasleys had decided to go out to dinner but Ron had refused to go and Ginny and Harry thought it would be best if they stayed behind too.
Ginny was over at the kitchen counter cutting up some vegetables when Harry had entered. He looked at her with questioning expression and she nodded gravely and gestured to Ron.
“What do you think the matter is, Harry?” Ron replied.
“It’s been four hours since she left, Ron,” Ginny said, placing the vegetables in a bowl.
“It feels like forever,” Ron said grumpily, fiddling absentmindedly with his fork.
“Mate, if you keep counting the seconds like this, it will seem like an eternity,” Harry said. “Trust me, Hermione will be fine.”
“Harry’s right,” Ginny said, getting some heating up some leftovers on the stove. She walked over and placed the vegetables in front of the two of them and pat Ron’s shoulder before going back to the stove.
“Well I know Harry’s right,” Ron said irritably. “That still won’t stop me from worrying about her.”
“Alright think about it this way,” Ginny said. “Is Hermione smart?”
Ron looked up. “Well of course.”
“Smarter than you?” Ginny asked.
“Infinitely.”
“Is she brave?” Ginny asked again.
“Yeah.”
“Is she strong?”
“I think so,” Ron agreed.
“Then she’ll be fine,” Harry finished. “Now have a carrot and stop moping.”
Ron couldn’t help but smile a little as Harry reached for a carrot stick and began chewing on it. He grabbed another one and offered it to Ron who took it too. Ginny finished heating up the leftovers and placed them in a large plate as she walked over to the dining table.
“Eat up,” she said as she placed it gingerly between the three of them. Ron grunted slightly at the sight of the stale chicken from yesterday’s dinner and hard rice.
“I bet you wish you hadn’t turned down your dad’s offer for dinner,” Harry said, equally disgusted at the food.
“You said it,” Ron said as took a handful of rice and dumped it in his plate.
“I bet even the food at Malfoy Manor isn’t this bad,” Ginny said.
“Bad?” Harry scoffed. “I’ve heard they have a whole line-up of house elves in their kitchen to cook. I think the last thing Hermione has to worry about is bad food.”
“Yep,” Ron said, stuffing a fistful of chicken into his mouth. “Bad company is her real problem.”
“I think you’re right,” Ginny said. “Those few minutes with Malfoy this afternoon almost killed me – I can’t imagine having to spend months with him.”
“Poor ‘Mione,” Ron said sadly.
“I know,” Harry agreed. “Hopefully they find Rod-”
Harry stopped short when he looked over at Ginny who gave him a very frightened look. “Hopefully they find this death eater,” Harry corrected himself quickly.
Ron hadn’t seemed to notice this momentary tension and continued eating. He nodded grimly and then began to pour some water into a glass. “I do hope she writes to me soon,” he said.
“I do too,” Ginny sighed. “I have no one to talk you around here anymore.”
“Hey!” Harry protested. “What about me?”
Ginny looked confused. “What about you?”
“Why can’t you talk to me?” Harry said, sounding hurt and slightly amused.
A smile broke out on Ginny’s face as she playfully toyed with the cup in her hand. “You want me to talk to you about clothes, work, family, relationships-”
“Hold on there!” Ron said quickly. “Hermione talks to you about relationships? About me?”
“And you talk to Hermione about us?” Harry interjected.
Ginny’s smile faltered for a second. “Yeah,” she said leisurely.
“Bloody hell!” Ron spat. “How much do you know about me and Hermione?” he asked slowly.
The edge of Ginny’s mouth curved into a mischievous smile. “I know more things about you and Hermione than you probably do.”
“Ah! Women!” Harry protested as he shot up. “I can’t believe you tell Hermione stuff about us!”
“Well, we’re friends! That’s what friends do when they hang out!” Ginny defended.
Harry and Ron had both stood up, both blushing profusely and angry at the same thing. “That’s not what Harry and I do when we hang out,” Ron said irritably.
“Yeah!” Harry agreed. “We talk about Quidditch and brooms and work-”
“Oh don’t play all innocent with me!” Ginny said, still smiling but now a little red in the face. “I’ve seen you both smiling at Fleur whenever you guys are over here.”
“We’re being friendly!” Harry defended.
“Don’t you remember Bill and Fleur’s first anniversary dinner” Ginny shot back.
“What’re you talking about?” Ron said innocently.
“I saw you run right into her when she told everyone that she was so happy she could kiss anyone!” Ginny told Ron, who backed down immediately.
“That is true, mate,” Harry whispered to Ron, smiling slightly.
“Don’t you play innocent either,” Ginny snapped at Harry. “I seem to recall that you were right behind Ron when that incident happened.”
Harry backed down too. “Um…Ron…I think Teddy needs our help upstairs!”
Ron looked perplexed. “I thought he was sleeping, I p- Oh right! Yeah! We’re coming Teddy!”
Both Ron and Harry immediately shot out of the room so fast that they were gone in the blink of an eye. Ginny couldn’t help but smile at both of them. She went back to the dining table and picked up the dirty dishes and placed them in the sink where a piece of cloth began to clean them.
---
Hermione felt her leg throb painfully and opened her eyes slowly. For a brief second, she had forgotten about Malfoy and the fact that she was on her way to Malfoy Manor. She seemed to think that she was back in her apartment, back in her bed and that it had all been a bad dream. Unfortunately for her, that moment disappeared as fast as it has arrived and she remembered it all.
She sat up and saw that it was now pitch dark outside, with the clouds covering those little stars that she had envisioned as she slept. She turned her head slowly off the window pane and realized that the pain in her leg was actually coming from a pointy object lying against it. She bent down carefully and felt the object under her seat; immediately she could tell that it was wooden and it took her a good fifteen seconds to realize that it was her wand.
She grabbed it and placed it back in her handbag beside her, making sure to keep it safe this time. She looked around the carriage as best she could because the candles had been blown out and the lanterns doused. Her hand felt its way up to one of the cushions and then to the side panels and to the bag beside her. Eventually, she gave up trying to find her way around and slumped back in her seat.
“Tea, miss?”
Hermione jumped from her seat as she heard a voice come at her from behind. She looked around and finally saw a tiny man holding a silver tray on his hand and smiling at her very kindly. He was carrying a faintly lit candle and Hermione wondered why she hadn’t seen him approach but shook the thought from her heard.
“I apologize for startling you,” he said gently.
“That’s quite alright,” Hermione said quietly. “It’s my fault for reacting so badly.”
“So you are the well-known Miss Granger?” he said, holding out his hand very politely. Hermione wasn’t sure what to do – at first she thought he was going to shake her hand but then she realized that the wanted to kiss it. She awkwardly gave him her hand and he placed a kiss upon it very softly, the bristles of his white moustache brushing against her skin.
“A pleasure,” he said. “I am Eli Holmes.”
“You’re the driver?” Hermione asked. Now that the light had grown brighter she could see that Eli was a tiny, short man but very old of age. He had a flourishing white moustache that complimented his white hair which had a balding spot right in the middle.
“Oh no, I just guide the Thestrals.” he said. “Though it isn’t my regular job, Master Malfoy thought it be best if I accompanied him on this journey.”
Hermione smiled. “So what is it that you do?”
“I am the butler at Malfoy Mansion,” he said warmly.
“Oh,” Hermione said. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m-”
“Hermione Granger,” Eli finished her sentence for her. “Yes, Master Malfoy has been kind enough to fill me in on your situation. I’m most sorry about your parents.”
Hermione couldn’t help but feel a little relaxed as she realized the sincerity in Eli’s voice. She acknowledged his condolence with a smile and then turned towards the window where darkness still flooded the night.
“How come we’re not moving?” Hermione asked.
“We’re waiting for Master Malfoy to return,” he replied. “While he’s outside, the Thestrals are resting too.”
“You can see them too?” Hermione asked, feeling comfort in knowing that she was not alone.
“Oh indeed,” Eli said casually.
“So you must…so you must have seen death?” she asked. Hermione felt a little odd acting so friendly and personal with someone she’d just met but something about Eli’s twinkling blue eyes reminded her so much of Dumbledore that she couldn’t help but trust him.
“My dear,” Eli began shortly. “I’ve seen so much that you would be surprised.” He smiled soulfully and turned to face the empty seat behind him.
“So wait, where did Malfoy go?” Hermione asked, suddenly realizing that he wasn’t here.
“He will return shortly,” Eli said, providing no more detail.
“But where did he go?” Hermione asked suspiciously.
Eli chuckled softly as he reached behind him and drew out a silver tray. “Master Malfoy is a rare mystery to many, perhaps even his own parents,” he said thoughtfully. “Someone as insignificant as I could barely provide you with his daily schedule, let alone unplanned wanderings.”
Hermione sat puzzled for a few minutes as she thought about what Eli said. Malfoy was a rare mystery? How on earth could that be possible? Her attention was momentarily disrupted by the clanking of fine China as she noticed that Eli was pouring her a cup of tea.
“Oh that’s really not necessarily,” she said kindly. “I don’t really need any tea.”
“Aren’t you tired, my dear?” Eli asked her.
“That’s alright,” Hermione said. “I’ll just get something to drink once we get to the Manor.”
“Oh but we are here. We just can’t go any further without the Master” he said, gesturing to the flood of lights ahead where a mansion twice the size of Buckingham Palace stood. Hermione shook her head twice. That had not been there a second ago. “Welcome to Malfoy Manor.”
---
In the far distance, an array of twinkling lights dominated the darkened sky. Hermione squinted carefully and saw the vague outline of a magnificent manor that seemed to tower over the rest of the area. Beyond the entangling vines and ancient trees, she saw a huge cast iron gate that restricted the entrance to the manor with two silver serpents crafted onto the entrance. After the gates stood the infamous Malfoy Manor, in all its glory. Since they were so far away, Hermione could only see a faint outline of two towers attached onto the main Manor which could emulate the prowess of the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts.
“So how about that tea, dear?” Eli casually suggested, offering Hermione a cup of fragrant liquid.
Hermione was still gaping at the sight before her when she felt the warmth float over from the tea and prickle her skin. “Oh…right…” she said clumsily as she took the tea cup from Eli and began to sip it gently.
“Don’t worry about the castle,” Eli suggested. “You’re with Master Malfoy – it’s not as scary as it looks.”
“I…I beg your pardon?”
“This strong and intimidating appearance shouldn’t fool you. There are traps set from the main gate to the doorway, just to ward of intruders. But with Master Malfoy, you’re safe.”
“Oh no, I’m not scared,” Hermione said quickly.
“Then why are you so anxious?” Eli asked.
“I…I just had no idea how…big…Malfoy Manor would be.”
Eli smiled. “I suppose you thought it would be around the size of one of those muggle mansions…what are they called?”
“Bungalows,” Hermione said. “They’re called Bungalows in the muggle world. And you’re right. I never thought it would literally be as grand as Hogwarts.”
“That does seem to get a lot of people.” Eli placed the tea pot carefully on a tiny table beside Malfoy’s seat and turned to leave.
“Are you going?” Hermione asked quickly and rather childishly.
“Master Malfoy is returning,” Eli said, pointing out into the distance from where a small figure was approaching.
“Oh.”
“We’ll be flying to the castle so I need to get the Thestrals ready,” he said warmly. “Will you be okay, Ms. Granger?”
“Yes…yes, of course. Thank you.”
“Thank you for what?”
“Well, you’ve certainly kept me company in this darkness,” Hermione smiled. “I appreciate it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said as he took one step off the carriage and then disappeared.
Hermione took a moment to gather herself. The sudden appearance of the Manor had startled her but now she had to compose herself and take a few deep breaths. “I’m alright,” she sighed to herself. “Just…just need to take a minute.”
She certainly didn’t want Malfoy to see her so weak and vulnerable for she knew it would only lead to snide remarks and cruel insults. She looked out the window and saw his shadow getting closer. She wiped away the drool at the side of her mouth from sleeping and sat up straight as Malfoy stepped into the carriage. He paused for a second with a genuine lack of interest. “Oh,” he said. “You’re awake.”
“Yes,” Hermione said, equally casually.
“Well, we’re here,” he said as he took a seat opposite Hermione.
“Right, I see that.”
“Good.” Malfoy took the cup that Eli had placed beside him and began to leisurely sip it as he looked out the window.
“Where were you?” Hermione asked suddenly.
“Nearby,” Malfoy replied vaguely.
Hermione rolled her eyes and took a sip from her tea too. “That’s not very helpful,” Hermione sneered.
“Well I don’t have to answer to you,” Malfoy replied coldly.
“No, but you have to explain to me,” Hermione retorted with equal coldness. Malfoy was being so vague and annoying that she had that usual urge to punch him and spill a few drops of blood on that perfectly pale skin of his.
“What do I have to explain?”
“You’re my protector,” Hermione said, though she realized how weak that made her sound. “You can’t just leave me alone and then not tell me why.”
Malfoy grumbled and then shot Hermione a nasty look. “I had to unlock the Fidelus Charm on the Manor.”
“There’s a Fidelus charm?” Hermione said, sounding fascinated. “So, that means you’re the-”
“Secret Keeper,” Malfoy finished for her. “Are you satisfied now?” he added roughly as he took another sip of tea.
“There’s nothing satisfying about being stuck in a spooky old manor with you for the next few months with a madman chasing me,” Hermione snapped.
Malfoy was taken aback by Hermione’s sudden outburst and hid his surprise immediately by taking a long sip of tea. It seemed that Hermione too felt a little awkward after and hid behind her cup as well resulting in a mutual and rather cold silence that was only broken after Eli entered the carriage.
“The thestrals are ready, Master Malfoy,” he said obediently.
“Perfect,” Malfoy said. “So are we all set to go?”
“Yes, sir,” Eli responded.
“Alright then, we should leave as soon as possible,” Malfoy instructed. “Make sure that you hold on to the reins tightly – the mount is a little narrow.”
“Of course,” Eli nodded. “Where did you want to land?”
Malfoy peered out the window to the Manor in front of him and then calculated a few things mentally before turning back to Eli. “The courtyard?” Eli suggested.
Malfoy shook his head. “You will not have time to fly the Thestrals back – they will need to rest where we land and I’d rather not have them in the courtyard.”
“Very well, sir,” Eli said.
“The Northern Tower,” Malfoy said after a while. “Land on the roof and the Thestrals can rest there while we dismount. You can take them down to the stables in a few hours.”
“Alright,” Eli nodded and then turned away.
Hermione coughed very slightly to indicate her presence in the room since no one had seemed to pay any attention to her before. It’s not like she liked the attention – she just didn’t like being left out of conversations. Malfoy looked at her with a boring expression and then his lips began to curl into that familiar grimace.
“You’d better hold on, Granger,” he said. “It can get pretty bumpy.”
Hermione didn’t respond – just glared. She placed her hands on either sides of her seat and grasped the armrests quickly as the carriage began to move. Gradually, like before, the speed started to increase steadily and before she knew it, they had taken flight. A small churning feeling began to initiate in Hermione’s stomach and she knew it was the tea. She closed her eyes immediately as she felt the carriage go higher and higher and then it began to turn. It began to turn upwards towards the sky and Eli initiated a complete ninety degree turn. Hermione opened her eyes a fraction to see Malfoy sitting against his seat very casually, holding on to it lightly. He seemed to be enjoying that fact that Hermione was about to scream for her life. The carriage was now practically vertical – heading straight towards the stars. Hermione started to take deep, heavy breaths and sweat began to form on her forehead despite the chilling weather.
The churning feeling in her stomach then suddenly began to dissipate and her nerves calmed down – they were landing. She sighed deeply and very slowly opened her eyes. As before, Malfoy had his usual entertained expression on his face and this time, it seemed, he was on the verge of burst out in laughter.
Hermione shot him the dirtiest look she could muster and then look down the window and saw where Eli was landing the carriage. As the wheels touched the stony surface of the roof, Hermione felt a jerking feeling against her legs and then they landed. Hermione opened the door immediately to touch her feet to the floor while Draco waited patiently for Eli to arrive and open the door for him.
“Your bags are waiting for you, Miss Granger,” Eli said as Hermione came into his view. She saw that the roof they were standing on was as deserted as the forest they had been in – not a soul in sight. The chilling winter breeze was cooling her down and calming her nerves as she returned Eli’s comment with a smile.
“Would you like me to tend to the Thestrals?” Eli asked Malfoy.
“That won’t be necessary,” Draco replied. “I need you to show her to her room.” He crudely referred to Hermione who felt very offended.
“Certainly,” Eli said, nodding obediently.
“After you’ve shown her the room,” Draco continued. “I’ll need you to come see me.”
Eli nodded once again, his white hair ruffling slightly in the breeze. “Where will you be, sir?”
“In my room,” Draco said shortly as he loosed one button on his cloak and nodded to Eli.
“Goodnight Master Malfoy,” Eli said, as Draco began to depart. He glanced at Hermione for a second, nodded to her and then went through a small wooden door near one of the edges.
With a flash of a moment, he was gone. Hermione stood dumbfounded and very offended by Malfoy’s cold and rude attitude but then again, it was Malfoy and she couldn’t have expected anything else. She turned to Eli who was busy closing the carriage doors and tying the reins to a small post near the same wooden door that Draco had gone through.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he said as he went over and firmly threw the reins around the post and tied it strongly.
“Take your time,” Hermione replied quickly, not wanting to sound like Malfoy. “So, how long have you worked for the Malfoys?”
Eli smiled. “It’s been so long that I can barely remember a time when I didn’t work for them.”
“Oh wow,” Hermione exclaimed. “So I guess you know your way through this castle pretty well.”
“I’d like to think so,” Eli responded, now casting a charm on the carriage so it would clean itself. “I’m done, Ms. Granger. I’ll show you to your room.”
---
Hermione’s footsteps were echoing around the dark hallway as she descended the stairs from the Northern Tower. The chilling breeze from the roof had managed to finds its way into the Manor and now her arms had tiny Goosebumps trickling all over. She held her arms tight together and began rubbing them gently to keep herself warm as Eli guided her towards the central area of the manor.
“Don’t worry, Miss Granger,” he said softly. “This breeze only goes as far as these stairs. Once we leave the Northern Tower, it’s very toasty inside the Manor.”
“That’s great,” Hermione said happily as she imagined the thought of the warm atmosphere encircling her cold skin.
They had approached the end of the stairwell where a large wooden door separated the warmth from the cold. Eli placed his hand against the door and found its thick brass handle, which he tugged on strongly to open it. Instantly, a gush of warm air came racing out and soothed Hermione’s prickling Goosebumps and frozen fingers.
“Better, isn’t it?” Eli asked her.
“Definitely,” Hermione said, taking in some of the air into her lungs. It was then that she realized how utterly deceptive the stairwell down the tower had been. The inside of the Manor was nothing like the dark, chilly, deserted stairwell. Granted that it was still empty, but the gigantic hallways that lead down in front of them were no longer hidden in the shadows but rather illuminated with beautifully dimmed gold lights that shone magnificently on the maroon carpet. The walls carried the gently glowing torches that carried this illumination and were clean and beautifully decorated unlike the stairwell.
“I…it’s so…” Hermione stuttered.
“Beautiful?” Eli offered kindly.
“It’s gorgeous!” she breathed. “I…I never imagined that Malfoy Manor of all places could look like this!”
Eli chuckled softly. “It’s surprising how many people seem to be taken aback by its appearance.”
“The outside is so…ancient and worn out…” Hermione said, still unable to contain her shock.
“Well I suppose that it true,” Eli agreed. “You see, the Manor itself was built thousands and thousands of years ago by Maurus Malfoy.” The two of them had begun walking down the illuminated hallway.
“Maurus Malfoy?” Hermione said. “That name doesn’t sound familiar.”
“It wouldn’t,” Eli said sombrely. “Maurus was one of the first Malfoys to arrive here in England. He’s rather unknown to others but very famous…or rather infamous when it comes to knowledge amongst the pureblood families.”
“I see,” Hermione said.
“When Malfoy arrived here, he had the mansion built for himself and his wife – a rather scary old witch I am told. And it’s been in the family ever since.”
“That is certainly very old,” Hermione remarked.
“The inside of the Manor looked very similar to the outside before Abraxas Malfoy moved in here with his wife and son, Lucius.”
“Draco’s grandfather?”
“Certainly.”
“I’ve heard of Abraxas,” Hermione noted. “Wasn’t his wife supposed to be the most beautiful woman in Wiltshire?”
“Indeed,” Eli said, sounding very impressed. “She was said to have the most silver of hair and greyest of eyes – she was part Veela.”
“Oh,” Hermione said suddenly. “So that explains the blondeness in the entire family!”
Eli smiled. “She was very socially conscious and when she married into the Malfoys, she had the entire mansion renovated – from head to toe. All the obscure and hidden rooms of the mansions weren’t renovated of course but the main interior was.”
“Well that explains it,” Hermione said. They were now heading down a very long stretch of hallway with portraits on every side of the wall. Most of the wizards and witches were asleep but a few of them were peeking to see this new visitor. “How far exactly is my room?” Hermione asked after a while.
“Actually,” Eli said as they approached a dark, wooden door amongst many other similar ones down the hallway, “We’re here.”
He turned the handle on the door and opened the room to a very dimly lit chamber with a very golden theme. The sheets on the small bed were a tanned beige which matched the dark wooden headboard very well as well as the four side drawers and huge armoire on the side. There was a miniature chandelier hanging from the ceiling which provided the only current illumination that was present aside from the moonlight drizzling through the drawn curtains.
“I hope it’s satisfactory,” Eli said kindly as he led Hermione inside.
“Of course,” Hermione said happily. She had been expecting a prison rather than a room so she was very content with her current arrangements. Her luggage had arrived beforehand and was lying at the foot of her bed.
“It’s been a very long day, Ms. Granger,” Eli said as Hermione began to tour the room.
Hermione turned around and smiled. “I know, and thank you so much for accommodating me so well, Eli…if I may call you that.”
“I am at your beck and call whenever you need me,” he said, bowing shortly and then smiling at her as his eyes began to shimmer against the gold light.
“Goodnight Eli,” Hermione said, as Eli turned towards the door.
“Goodnight Ms. Granger,” he responded and closed the door.
---
“Is she asleep?” Malfoy asked as Eli entered the master bedroom. He didn’t look at Eli as he entered nor did he turn around.
“I just saw her to her room,” Eli said obediently.
“Right,” Draco said shortly and then turned to face Eli. His eyes were a little dark around the edges but that did not deter from his perfect complexion and shining blonde hair.
“What is it you wanted to see me about?” Eli asked.
“I need you to keep an eye on her, Eli,” Draco said carefully, as he fiddled with the quill in his hand.
“Whatever for?”
“She’s…she’s very curious,” Draco began. “I’ve known her since my first year and she’s not the kind of person who is afraid of challenges or of the unknown-”
“Many consider that an admirable quality.”
“I don’t. This Manor is huge and I don’t want her poking her head around it. The last thing I need is for her to get lost or in trouble here – there’ll be aurors all over the place if something happens to her.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just give her anything she wants – food, entertainment, whatever – keep her occupied.”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“She shouldn’t be too demanding,” Malfoy said. “Her parents’ deaths will keep her thoughts occupied most of the day so I doubt she’ll be bothering you.”
“I don’t mind serving her.”
“Well either way, Eli, just makes sure she doesn’t wander off.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Malfoy turned to face his desk again and rubbed the back of his head.
“She’s a very nice lady,” Eli remarked slowly, carefully calculating Malfoy’s reaction.
Malfoy didn’t turn around but scoffed very slightly. “I’ve known her far too long to judge that.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” Eli remarked.
“Not for you maybe,” Malfoy said. “But to me, I’ve known her for almost half my life.”
Malfoy began to flip through a few pages of his book. “Oh by the way,” Malfoy said after a while. “Her boyfriend may write.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Yes,” Malfoy rolled his eyes. “A terrible loser with red hair. His writing’s like a dead rat’s scratches against parchment.”
“Will he be just writing or will he come by?”
“I doubt he’ll come by. He doesn’t have enough skill to make it to the front gates let alone past all the charms between the gates and the front door.”
“Am I to keep these letters from Ms. Granger?”
“No no,” Malfoy said. “Give them to her but make sure the owls stay to a minimum.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
“Will that be all, sir?”
Malfoy nodded very slowly. “Is she still in the dungeons?”
“Ms. Granger?”
“No.”
Eli turned around. “She was there yesterday, sir.”
“Thank you,” he slammed his book shut and got up, beginning to head towards his bed. “Goodnight Eli.”
“Goodnight.”
---
Hermione sat in the backyard of the Burrow on a thin blanket laid out by Ron. He was sitting beside her with his eyes glued to her beautiful face and his hand on her hand. She smiled sweetly at Ron and admired the beauty of the sky under which they sat. It was night time and so the stars were brightly shining and casting their gently glimmer on everything below them.
“It’s such a beautiful night,” Hermione said softly.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” Ron remarked, staring at the dark clouds that were beginning to form.
“Why should it matter?” Hermione asked.
“Well, you know,” Ron said awkwardly. “I don’t want to get wet or anything.”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Rain is such a beautiful thing, Ron.”
“How so?” Ron asked thickly. “It’s just water.”
“It falls from the sky!” Hermione said, exasperatedly. “It comes from a place that we know so little of – for all we know, it could be angels shedding their blessings onto the earth below.”
Ron rolled his eyes and sighed.
“What was that?” Hermione asked.
“What was what?” Ron said innocently.
“Why did you just roll your eyes at me?”
“Hermione, I swear, you’re so melodramatic sometimes.”
“Melodramatic?” Hermione asked, getting a little angry.
“Well, I mean…its just water.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just water, Hermione. There’s nothing more to it.”
“Nothing more?”
“It isn’t angels crying or blessing us – angels don’t exist!”
Hermione scoffed and sat up right, staring Ron straight in the face. Her cheeks were slightly red now and her expression was far from friendly. “When I was a little girl, my parents told me that magic never existed!”
Ron sat upright too and heaved an exasperated sigh. “Don’t get started, Hermione!” he pleaded.
“Listen to me, Ron! Just because you don’t know if something exists doesn’t mean you should dismiss it. Don’t disregard the unknown, accept it – question it!”
“There’s nothing to question! It’s just rain!”
“Ron, this is not about rain! It’s about you just…just never being open to anything I say!”
“Are we going to argue about this again?” Ron spat bitterly as he shot up from the ground and started walking a few steps away.
“Yes, we are! Where on earth are you going?”
“I’m going to go inside!” he bellowed, as a few raindrops began to trickle down towards the ground. Hermione felt a drop hit her cheek and slide down to her chin.
“Why are you going inside?” Hermione asked. “What about dinner?”
“Well, if you’ll excuse me but your angels have started to cry,” Ron retorted as he marched further away. “And I don’t want to wallow in their salty tears.”
With that, he stormed into the backdoor and left Hermione standing by herself as the rain began to pour heavily on her. Her eyes began to soften and she could feel her tears mixing with the raindrops on her face.
The sunlight began to hit Hermione’s face very gently as she opened her eyes to her surrounding. She found herself in the room that she vaguely remembered entering last night with the beige paint and oak wood furniture. She sat up very slowly in the bed and realized that she was in Malfoy Manor. She immediately gasped when she remembered where she was, she gasped even louder when she realized that someone was in her room and she gasped the loudest when she realized it was Malfoy.
She immediately grabbed the sheets at the foot of the bed to cover her up and then realized there was nothing to cover. She was wearing very baggy and very loose blue plaid pyjamas.
“Excuse me!” she yelled really loudly as Malfoy smirked. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“This is my house,” Malfoy sneered. “I can go anywhere I want.”
Hermione rolled her eyes and even though she was wearing large clothes, she pulled her sheets closer to her. “Do you think I’m trying to look at you?” Malfoy asked disgustedly.
“Maybe,” Hermione retorted angrily.
“And why would I do that?”
Hermione shrugged. “I don’t know. There are very few people who understand the perverted mind.”
Malfoy scoffed loudly and waved his hand in the air. “Hagrid would probably look more attractive in those pyjamas than you do right now,” he retorted. Immediately, a sneer began to form at the edge of his mouth as he saw Hermione’s offended expression.
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means what it means. In the state you’re in, Granger,” Malfoy began. “No one’s going to want to try and sneak a look at you.”
Hermione’s jaw dropped as she got out of her bed in anger, stormed to the corner of the room and threw a shoe at Malfoy. He was so taken aback by this sudden out burst that he didn’t have time to duck and ended up getting hit right in his left rib.
“What the hell?!” he yelled as he cringed in pain.
Hermione mumbled angrily and Malfoy could make out a few choice curse words that he probably wouldn’t want to repeat. “I’ll have you know,” Hermione began. “That Ron would prefer me no matter how I looked.”
“Yeah right,” Malfoy coughed, more to himself than Hermione.
“What?”
“Oh nothing,” Malfoy said innocently.
“Just say it!”
“Judging by the way you were yelling his name angrily in your sleep, I highly doubt that.”
Hermione immediately turned her head to hide her tears from Malfoy. So she had been dreaming of that night. When she’d awoken, she could vaguely remember dreaming about something relating to Ron but now she remembered exactly what it had been. “What are you doing here?” Hermione asked angrily, wiping her tears away.
“We need to take security measures,” Malfoy said roughly. “I need to show you the escape routes from the Mansion and go through some protective measures here. Hurry up and get dressed.”
“I’ll take my own sweet time,” Hermione said bitterly.
“Fine,” Malfoy snapped. “Just don’t expect Lestrange to show up here and wait for you to get armed and ready before he kills you.”
Hermione threw Malfoy a very nasty look as he began to head towards the bedroom door. He grasped the door handle and jerked the door open roughly, turning to Hermione before leaving. “Breakfast in 30 minutes.”
“Jerk.”
---
Hermione stepped clumsily into the brightly lit dining hall of Malfoy Manor. After kicking Malfoy out of the room and cursing a few times, she had changed out of her baggy pyjamas and put on a light blue t-shirt and dark black jeans.
As Hermione looked around the beautiful dining hall, it wasn’t the massive table that sat in the middle surrounded by at least 20 chairs that caught her attention, nor the huge chandelier hanging off the ceiling but rather the tiny, pudgy man standing in the middle of the room, waiting to welcome her.
“Ms. Granger,” Eli said, respectfully nodding. “I hope you slept well.”
Hermione smiled slightly. “I’ve had better nights,” she remarked as she walked over to the dining table. “This is a lovely hall!”
“It’s funny you should say that,” Eli said softly.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve worked here for many years and this is probably the first time I’ve ever heard someone call this hall lovely.”
“It’s certainly not ugly,” Hermione said.
“Oh I know, dear, but it’s just that compared to the rest of the castle, almost all of the Malfoys seem to find this hall very plain and rather meek.”
“Meek?” Hermione said bluntly with a twinge of irritation in her voice. Bloody Malfoys and their arrogance, she thought to herself.
“It’s not as lavish as the guest hall,” Eli said.
“There are more dining halls?” Hermione said, aghast.
“Three more,” Eli replied, smiling at Hermione’s shock. “Two are on the third floor and one is on the second floor.”
“Who on earth would need four dining rooms for such a small family?”
“Well, Malfoy Manor was never just Master Malfoy and his parents.”
“What do you mean?”
“At one point, long before Abraxas, every single member of the Malfoy family lived in this mansion. Not to mention the hundreds of prisoners who were tortured everyday in the dark dungeons below us. Eggs, Ms.Granger?”
Hermione nodded slowly as Eli laid out two well cooked eggs on her plate and sprinkled a little salt on them. “Toast?” he offered.
“No thank you,” Hermione said as she took a fork and began to cut through the egg whites. “Did you cook these, Eli?”
“The eggs?” Eli asked. “Yes, yes…I’m afraid they may have gotten a little salty.” He chuckled to himself as he reached into his pocket and took out a very old and damaged wand. “This wand is not what it used to be.”
“Oh no,” Hermione said quickly. “I meant, they’re very good eggs. I haven’t had such a good breakfast in a long time.”
“Thank you, Ms.Granger,” he nodded courteously.
Hermione smiled warmly and plunged her fork back into the eggs as an unpleasant and familiar figure burst into the room.
“Breakfast’s over, Granger,” Malfoy sneered as he entered the hall.
“Lovely way to treat your guests,” Hermione snapped as she continued eating her eggs.
“I have to leave in a few hours,” Malfoy said. “Do you or don’t you want to see how to leave this mansion without getting eaten by a ten foot carnivorous plant?”
Hermione’s fork clattered on the plate as she contemplated the thought of such a plant. “You’re lying.”
“Really?” Malfoy replied smugly. “Try going out the front door and see what happens.”
“I’m not falling for your first year bluffs, Malfoy,” Hermione retorted.
“Fine, don’t.”
“Good, because I won’t.”
Hermione threw Malfoy a nasty look and turned back to her eggs. She watched Malfoy take a seat on the other end of the table and usher a floating glass of pumpkin juice.
“If I may make a suggestion…” Eli said slowly.
Both Hermione and Malfoy looked up at the old wizard. “Yes, Eli?” Malfoy said.
“Perhaps Ms.Granger, you should go with Master Malfoy after you’ve eaten.”
Hermione looked at Eli with a look of disbelief. “I can’t believe you’re taking his side,” she huffed.
“It’s not like that…” Eli began when he was interrupted by Malfoy.
“That’s not true! It’s exactly like that,” he muttered. “Of course Eli will take my side!”
“I can’t believe your guts, Malfoy,” Hermione sneered.
“Ms. Granger,” Eli said weakly. “Perhaps…”
“Not now, Eli!” Hermione said.
“Don’t talk to him like that!” Malfoy snapped.
“Oh dear…” Eli muttered to himself with a very confused expression on his face.
“Eli, you can say what you want,” Malfoy said childishly.
“I wasn’t shutting him up!” Hermione retorted.
“Can you please let him talk?”
“Why don’t you just shut up?”
“Excuse me! This is my mansion!”
“Oh shove it prissy boy!”
“Take that back!”
“I certainly will not!”
Hermione slammed her fork on the table and stormed out of the room, leaving Malfoy and Eli idly in the hall.
***
Hermione ran stormed down the long beige corridor that led from the dining hall to… where? Hermione took a deep breath when she realized that her surroundings looked completely unfamiliar. “Hello?” she called out as her voice echoed down the empty corridor.
She turned her head back and forth to try and find a familiar and safe-looking passageway back to her room and after minutes of hesitation, she walked down to the right of the hallway, hoping she was right. As she walked further and further down the hallway she realized that maybe she wasn’t right after all as the beautiful and dim golden glow began to fade into a dark and eerie shadow.
“Hello?” she called out again. She felt herself descending lower and lower into the castle. “Is anyone there?
Her footsteps began to echo across the hall. “Eli?”
As darkness began to descend upon Hermione’s eyes, she reached out into the blackness to try and feel the walls so she wouldn’t fall. As her hands pressed against the cold stony walls, she realized that she had gone a lot farther than she thought and immediately turned around.
The abruptness of her turn, twisted her ankle and she fell down a long flight of stairs. As her head hit hard against the hard floor, she tried to sit up, still staring into dark nothingness. She cringed from the heavy throbbing in her ankle and tried to soothe it by pressing three fingers on it – it didn’t help. She yelped slightly from the pain and placed her hands against the wall to try and steady herself into an upright position.
“How the bloody hell am I supposed to get out?” she cursed.
Her head began to sweat slightly as she thought of the huge mansion that she remembered seeing last night. She could be anywhere in the castle…
Her eyes began to adjust slightly to the darkness, giving her a vague outline of what seemed like an empty corridor. “Eli?” she called again. “Malfoy?”
---
“Master Malfoy, such petty arguments do no one any good,” Eli said sombrely to Malfoy as he sat chewing angrily on a piece of bread.
“Someone needs to teach that mudblood some manners,” Malfoy sneered.
“It will take her time to adjust, that’s all.”
“No, no, Eli. You can believe what you want to about that silly little twit but I know her far too well.”
“What is it that you hate about her, Master Malfoy?”
Malfoy sighed. “Where do I begin?”
Eli smiled very slowly. “Perhaps you two got off on the wrong foot?”
“I doubt it.”
“Well, sir…if you insist.”
“Where on earth did she go anyways?” Malfoy asked, placing a crouton in his mouth. “These are good croutons by the way.”
“I have no idea,” Eli replied. “And thank you. I’m guessing she’s going to her room.”
Malfoy scoffed arrogantly and looked out the door through which Hermione had exited about 15 minutes ago. “Does she even know where her room is?”
“I certainly hope so,” Eli said worriedly. “It’s not very hard to get lost in here.”
“I can imagine her face if she gets lost,” Malfoy said, chuckling to himself. “It’d be quite a treat to see her worry for once.”
“Well all things considered it’s a pretty straightforward pathway as soon as you take a right from the hall.”
“That’s odd,” Malfoy said. “I could have sworn I saw her take a left.”
“Oh my!” Eli said.
“W..what’s wrong?” Malfoy asked as he saw Eli’s worried expression.
“Master Malfoy, the left corridor leads straight to…”
“The dungeons!” Malfoy finished, with a long of serious concern and worry on his face. “I hate that mudblood!” Before Eli could say a second word, Malfoy had dashed out of the dining hall and headed left.
---
Hermione limped across the dark dungeons, helplessly grabbing at the walls for support. She now knew as clearly as ever the meaning of the phrase ‘silent as the grave’. The silence was almost deafening in the cold, dark dungeons – enough to make a person go mad. Hermione shivered uncontrollably and despite her chills, held on to the cold walls for support but she realized after a while, it wasn’t the cold that was giving her chills.
She felt herself afraid, for the first time in many years. Not afraid like telling Ron about Malfoy or afraid of tripping down the stairs – but afraid of something unknown and dark. She couldn’t explain the feeling – logic and reason could not be used. All she knew was that her heart was beating loudly in her ears and yet the silence of her surroundings overwhelmed her. Small wisps of frost expelled out her mouth as breathed in and out as she tried to remember the way back.
It was too dark to see where she had come from and the only thing she could make out were the vague shadows of the objects that surrounded her. She guessed that anyone who entered the dungeons was never supposed to leave.
“Ring around the roses… a pocket full of posies…” she began singing in hushed tones to drown out the ringing in her ears.
Her footsteps began to echo in the darkness and her voice resounded. “Ashes… ashes...”
“Ashes…ashes…” her voice echoed.
“Ashes…ashes…” but this time, it wasn’t an echo. The voice that had repeated the words was not Hermione’s trembling, low voice but rather a shrill, high pitched one.
“Hello?” Hermione called out.
No response. She trotted forward, blindly grabbing on to anything that would provide her support. “Is anyone there?” she repeated. The hair on her neck began to shiver as the voice repeated the words.
“Ashes…ashes…”
“Who is that?” Hermione cried. She placed her fingers carefully around her wand and drew it out. “Lumos!” she whispered. There was no light. She repeated the spell again but no light shone from the tip of her wand. Logic and reason had abandoned her fear long ago and now even magic was not working for her – Hermione stopped short and craned her neck, trying to spot the source of the voice.
“Who... who is that?” she said chokingly. “Malfoy…is that you?”
The voice continued singing in its shrill voice. “Ashes…ashes…”
“That’s not funny!” Hermione cried. “Malfoy, stop it!”
“And we all fall down!” the shrill voice finished the song. Hermione turned immediately and screamed as a swirl of bright green smoke surrounded her and from it, the shadow of a figure emerged.
Hermione reached for her wand but her trembling hands couldn’t make a steady grip around it. “Eli!” She yelled.
“And we all fall down!” the figure repeated. Hermione still couldn’t make out what the figure was but it was most definitely, not human. The shrill voice began to sing again in hushed tones and Hermione fell to the ground, surrounded by the green mist.
Her heart skipped a beat as the green mist rose and covered the walls. The voice was laughing now and the sheer coldness of the dungeons was beginning to sink into Hermione’s bones. All she saw was the green and amidst it, the shadow swiftly encircling her.
“Help!” she cried.
“Help!” the voice repeated gleefully. It laughed menacingly, like the shrill laughter a banshee makes before it attacks but with the coldness that only someone who has faced dementors could understand.
“HELP!” Hermione cried out again.
She felt completely helpless. Her magic would not work and her limbs were failing her. She collapsed on the floor as the green midst rose higher and higher while the darkness refused to dissipate.
“Aren’t you going to sing?” the shrill voice spoke. Hermione’s eyes widened. It was the voice of a woman.
“Who are you?” Hermione asked, rising up a little.
“AND WE ALL FALL DOWN!” Emerald flames erupted from the floor and singed Hermione’s skin as she fell backward. Blackness descended over her eyes and she lost the will to keep moving… slowly, the shrill voice grew further and further away and the last thing she heard before she passed out was the yell of a man and a bright white light.
---
Hermione,
I can’t say things are going well here without you but they’re not that bad. Ron’s still pretty grim about you leaving and all he does is go to work and come home and sleep and go to work (well, you get the point). I keep telling him to write to you and he always tells me that he doesn’t know what to say. (Apparently, “I miss you” is not enough for him.) Either way, things aren’t exactly the best they’ve been. Harry’s busy with Ministry stuff and keeps an eye on Ron at work; I guess it suffices to say that without you, he’s miserable. Write to him soon, it’ll make him feel loads better.
Everyone else is doing fine here…mum and dad are busy with Victoire and Teddy’s spending a few days with us (Andromeda dropped him off yesterday) so he keeps Harry and I very busy. We decided to extend our stay at the Burrow a little longer – especially with Teddy staying here. Mum thinks it’s a good idea for Ron to stay too so we can keep an eye on him.
Right back soon,
Ginny
PS: Harry says hi.
“Did you write that I said hi?” Harry asked Ginny as he peered over her shoulder.
“Yes, yes I did,” Ginny replied, showing Harry exactly where she had written her post script.
“Thank you,” Harry said cheerily.
“Yes, I’m sure she’ll feel much better now that you’ve said hi to her.”
“Clearly it’s the thought that counts,” Harry said. “Anyways, I doubt anything can make Hermione feel better.”
“I know…” Ginny sighed.
“I wish Ron would stop being such a brute though,” Harry pondered.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you see him chew into the roast tonight?”
“Ron’s always been like that,” Ginny joked. “He’d always let his feelings out with food.”
Just then, the door to Ginny’s bedroom creaked open and Teddy came wobbling in. “Uncle Harry!” he complained.
“What is it, Teddy?” Harry asked, as he took the toddler into his arms and lifted him off the floor.
“Vickie took my broomstick!” he wept. He was still far too young to be able to pronounce Victoire’s name correctly.
“You have to share with her,” Ginny replied with a smile.
“But it’s mine!”
“Yes, sweetie I know that,” Ginny responded. “But she lets you use her toys, doesn’t she?
“She’s stupid!” Teddy yelled.
“Don’t say that!” Harry said sternly. “She’s your friend, isn’t she?”
“No, she’s a girl!”
Harry laughed as Ginny gave Teddy a kiss on the cheek. “Someday you’ll be begging for girls to be your friends,” Harry told him.
“What? A handsome guy like Teddy?” Ginny smiled. “He’ll have girls lining up for him.”
“Gross!” Teddy whined.
“Hey, isn’t it your nap time?” Harry asked Teddy who smiled mischievously. “Let’s go down and apologize to Victoire. And then, we’ll go to bed.”
“Can I sleep in your room?” Teddy asked Harry.
“Yeah sure,” he said. He got up and kissed Ginny while Teddy started laughing at them both.
“Brat,” Ginny joked as Harry and Teddy left the room. Ginny turned back to her desk and rolled up the parchment on which she had written her letter. She gingerly attached it to her owl’s leg and sent it flying out into the afternoon sun.
---
“Ms. Granger…”
Hermione twitched slightly. She felt herself shiver as drops of cold water fell against her face. Her entire body was still trembling but not from fear anymore, it was trembling from the freezing temperature around her.
She took three short breaths and opened her eyes a fraction to see the white fog form as she exhaled. Her eyelids fluttered and she closed her eyes again, unable to muster the strength to open them completely. The green flames still encircled her mind as she remembered the darkness and fear and the cold and the laugh…that’s laugh of a creature who has nothing to lose – nothing to fear.
“Ms. Granger… open your eyes…” The cold water against her face seemed to increase as drops fell more rapidly. Her hair was wet and her lower lip was shaking uncontrollably from the cold.
She finally opened her eyes slowly and took a few minutes to adjust to the darkness. She was still in the dungeons but there were no more green flames or mist around the walls. Everything had gone back to being as it was before…like nothing had ever happened. She moved her head a little and saw Eli’s relieved face come into view.
He was holding up his wand from which the drops of water were falling and when he saw her eyes open, he moved his lips slightly and the drops stopped. Placing his wand beside him, he lifted Hermione’s head off the ground and spoke to her.
“Can you hear me?”
Hermione couldn’t gather the energy to speak but nodded slowly.
“Ms. Granger, do you know who I am?”
Hermione nodded again. Eli smiled and heaved a sigh of relief. “Come up dear, let’s get you dry.”
He placed his arm gingerly on Hermione’s shoulder and helped her off the ground. And then, waving his wand, conjured up a stretcher onto which Hermione was placed. Hermione saw Eli wave his wand and the stretcher began to move itself out of the dungeon.
“Aren’t you coming?” Hermione said weakly, as she saw Eli turn back towards the darkness.
“Momentarily, Ms. Granger,” he said and turned. Hermione craned her neck slightly only to see a figure sitting up against the wall, grasping onto its arm – his blonde hair, bloodstained.
---
House-elves were dabbing Hermione’s burns with a healing solution when Eli came into the room. It had a been about 2 hours since the stretcher had brought her back to her room and three house elves had taken to tending to her injured and weak body.
They had used a spell to dry her hair and clothes and covered her with multiple blankets. Two of them was currently dabbing a deep burn on her neck while the other was fetching some more bandages.
“Are you alright, Ms. Granger?” Eli asked kindly as he examined the weary woman.
“I don’t know,” Hermione replied truthfully.
“It’s understandable,” he said. “Those burns you got are rather serious.”
Hermione looked to her hand where one of the elves had bandaged a deep black burn that was still throbbing from the pain.
“Miss, you does not have to worry,” one of the elves squeaked cheerfully. “I is knowing how to fix you.”
Hermione smiled and her spirits lifted slightly. “Thank you. You’re doing an excellent job.” The elf bowed in gratitude and turned back to dabbing the wound on her neck.
“Greta is a medicinal elf,” Eli said, beaming at the eager worker.
“Medicinal?”
“They’re elves trained by St. Mungo’s in healing all kinds of ailments,” Eli explained. “Particularly ailments as serious as yours.”
“It’s not the burns that worry me,” Hermione said pensively.
Eli’s expression changed a little to one of concern. He knew she’d ask.
“What was that in the dungeons, Eli?” Hermione asked.
“I am not quite so sure myself,” Eli replied. He hadn’t lied to her – despite knowing who she was, he really didn’t know what she was.
“But…what was it doing down there?” Hermione asked, pushing for an answer.
“I’d rather you not ask,” Eli said truthfully. “This mansion has many secrets, my dear. Some are best left undisturbed.”
“I want to know,” Hermione said adamantly as she sat up straight and knocked a bottle of healing potion out of Greta’s hands.
“I must insist,” Eli said.
“Don’t insult my intelligence Eli!” Hermione protested. “Just…”
“Ms. Granger,” Eli said strongly. “You are a brave girl and one whose intelligence I would never think of insulting. I can in all honestly tell you that whatever it was in dungeons will not attack you again as long as you stay clear of the dungeons. Darkness and fear are the very things these creatures feed off of.”
Hermione knew that Eli would not answer any more of her questions. She sat back down and breathed in deeply. The screams she had released in the dungeons had left a lasting effect on her lungs and she cringed every time she breathed really deeply.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It is I who should be apologizing,” Eli said, bowing his head.
Hermione smiled slightly to mask the many thoughts that were flying through her head right now. She would figure out who it was in the dungeons. She was not one to back down from a challenge or the unknown – seven years at Hogwarts had taught her.
“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” Eli said kindly and turned towards the door. “Ah yes, before I forget.” He reached into his pocket and placed a folded piece of parchment by Hermione’s bedside. “This came for you a few minutes ago.”
“Grobon,” Eli said, referring to the other house elf. “Go down to the kitchen and bring Ms. Granger some caramel blueberries.”
“Caramel blueberries?” Hermione asked.
“The sugar will help restore your energy,” Eli smiled as he left the room.
Grobon disapparated while Hermione reached for the letter by her bedside – it was from Ginny. As her brown eyes scanned the letter, the two elves packed up the healing potions and disapparated out of the room. Hermione smiled at the last line, “PS: Harry says hi.”. She reached for a quill and parchment and began writing her reply.
---
Eli entered the lavish master bedroom where Draco said at the foot of his bed, breathing deeply and heavily.
“Is it any better?” Eli asked.
“No.” Draco replied bluntly as a small house elf pressed a moist cloth with green liquid against his bare chest. When she took the cloth off, the burnt flesh and black seared skin shone perfectly against Malfoy’s pale skin. His face had lost a lot of colour and his breaths continued to be inconsistent and heavy.
“I need...” Draco took a moment to breathe. “I need you to…check…”
“She’s alright, Master Malfoy,” Eli replied.
“Any burns?”
“A fair few but none that can cause any severe damage. Greta is looking after her.”
“Did she…” Draco breathed. “ask... did she ask you?”
“Don’t overwork yourself, Master Malfoy,” Eli said with concern. “She asked me but I told her nothing, as you said.”
“What’s she doing now?” Draco asked, with great difficulty.
“She got a letter, she’s reading it,” Eli replied. “I will get you something to drink, sir.”
“What about Adria?” Draco asked.
“After she burnt you, she fled to the Northern Tower,” Eli replied.
---
[b]a thousand apologies for the late update! I promise sooner updates![/b]
Harry’s eyes flew open with the patter of feet outside in the hall. He turned his head towards his watch and strained his eyes to read the time. After a few seconds, his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he saw that it was almost three in the morning. He raised his head slowly and turned to Ginny who was fast asleep on his right. He sat upright and rubbed his eyes carelessly and expelled a slight yawn. Between them, Teddy was snuggled under his blanket, breathing softly as he dreamed, hopefully of good things.
Harry placed his right foot on the ground in an attempt to find his slippers. He then got up, grabbed his wand carefully from his robes and started towards the door. The patter of feet had died down but Harry could still hear it outside.
“Lumos”, Harry whispered, and his wand tip light up, illuminating his path. As he reached towards the door handle, he turned it ever so slightly and saw a figure heading into one of the rooms.
“Ron?” Harry called out and the figure turned. It was Ron.
“Harry!” Ron said, surprised at his friend’s appearance. “What’re you doing up so late?”
“I thought I heard something…” Harry said, confused.
“Yeah, that was me. Sorry, mate.”
“Ron,” Harry said. “Why are you still awake?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Ron shrugged. Harry came out into the hall and closed the door to his room gently behind him.
“What’s wrong?” Harry asked.
“Nothing,” Ron said quickly but it was beyond obvious what the problem was.
Harry sighed. “You’ve got to stop this, mate,” he said. “She’ll be back before you know it.”
Ron closed the door to his room and came into the hall as well. He slumped down against the wall and looked at Harry with a gloomy face. “It’s not that.”
Harry sat down across Ron with his back to the other wall. “Then what is it?”
“It’s nothing,” Ron said imprudently. “Just…leave it be.”
“Well clearly there has to be something wrong if you stay up this late. I mean, it’s not like this is Hogwarts where you stay up late just to rebel against authority.”
“Come on, Harry.” Ron ran his hand through his hair. “Just leave it.”
“Fine,” Harry said callously. He stood up and walked towards his door and just as he reached for the handle, he heard Ron’s voice.
“It’s this.”
Harry turned and saw Ron holding a tiny blue box that he had produced from his pocket. His head hung low, as if he was defeated as he handed it to Harry.
“I was going to ask her to marry me,” Ron said as Harry opened the box and saw a beautiful solitaire ring with a lone diamond in the centre.
“Ron…” Harry gaped. “I can’t…I can’t believe this.”
Ron shrugged. “It was supposed to be a surprise… I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket for two months now.”
“Two months?” Harry said with surprise. “When were you planning on giving this to her?”
“I don’t actually know,” Ron said. “I was sort of hoping the moment would just…come up. You know? Like those cheesy muggle movies that Hermione made us watch once?”
“You mean like romantic stuff?” Harry asked.
“Yeah,” Ron said. “I mean, I know she says she doesn’t care about that sappy stuff but I know she does.”
“She’ll be back soon,” Harry said, noting the dejection in Ron’s voice. “You know, in Azkaban the one who lose their minds first are the guys that keep staring at the clock.”
“What do you mean?”
“They keep looking at the time and thinking about how long they’ve been in there and how long they’ll be and they never stop thinking about it.”
“So you’re saying that I’ll lose my mind if I keep thinking about this?” Ron asked.
Harry smiled and tossed the ring back to Ron. “I think you’ve already lost your mind with all this romantic stuff. Where’s the insensitive, shallow Ron that I knew?” he laughed.
Ron managed to produce a slight smile. Meanwhile, in Bill’s room, Victoire began to stir and started to cry, indicating that it was time for both Harry and Ron to go back to bed.
They both got up and Harry turned towards his room. “Goodnight, mate.”
“Yeah, night.”
---
Hermione sat in the dining hall as Eli served her eggs with buttered toast. The morning at Malfoy Manor had been especially quiet without the presence of Draco at breakfast.
“I’ll be out with some orange juice in a moment,” Eli said, as he went towards the kitchen. Hermione sat idly at the table and prodded the perfectly round, yellow yolk with her fork. Her appetite hadn’t quite returned after last night’s events but she gladly chewed on the toast to keep her mouth moving and her stomach satisfied.
Eli returned with a jar of orange liquid floating behind him and as he began clearing up some of the plates, the jar bobbled past Hermione and poured some juice into her glass.
“Thank you,” she said amidst chewing the toast.
“Will there be anything else?” Eli offered.
“Not that’s okay,” Hermione said quickly. “Thank you very much for the lovely breakfast.”
“You’re welcome,” Eli said bowing graciously and made his way towards the door.
“Eli wait!” Hermione said loudly and stood up from her seat, walking over to the old man. Something about him reminded her so much about Dumbledore that she felt herself back at Hogwarts now, more than ever.
“I’m sorry about the way I acted last night,” she said slowly. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
Eli smiled graciously. “No harm done, Ms. Granger,” Eli said. “The fault was mine as it is. I know what a curious person you are and it pains me not to be able to satisfy that curiosity.”
Hermione laughed softly. “I think you’re the first person who has thought of my curiosity as a good thing.”
“It is, my dear,” Eli said warmly. “If we do not question, we do not know.”
“In all my…curiosity,” Hermione began. “I never thanked you for saving my life.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I may not remember everything that happened down there, but I remember you coming to my help and the water drops and that white light…” Hermione strained her memory to remember more but that’s all it would produce for her.
Eli opened his mouth to respond when the doors to the dining hall creaked open and Malfoy walked in lazily wearing blue satin pyjamas. His hair was ruffled as though he had just woken up and his eyes blinked lazily past Hermione and looked at Eli.
“Good morning, Master Malfoy,” Eli said.
“Morning, morning…” Malfoy repeated hastily. “Breakfast, please.”
“Yes sir,” Eli replied and followed Malfoy to seat him at the table. “What would you like?”
“I don’t know…” Malfoy said, pondering his meal choices.
“May I suggest some wheat toast with jam?” Eli offered.
“No…no…” Malfoy said, waving his hand dismissively. “I want some milk tarts.”
Eli bowed and turned towards the kitchen as Hermione scoffed loudly. “Problem, Granger?” Malfoy snapped.
“No,” Hermione said shortly.
“Then there’s no reason for you to be here. Thanks for coming,” Malfoy replied coldly.
“Why are you such a child?” Hermione retorted.
“Can I not even eat breakfast in peace anymore?”
“No.” Hermione said sharply as she roughly pulled out a chair and sat opposite Draco. “No, you can’t.”
“Who’s being the child now?” Malfoy said angrily.
Hermione began to get even angrier. Last night, she had suffered a pretty traumatic event in Malfoy’s house and he didn’t even seem to care. Did he even know what happened to her? She had burn marks on her legs and arms (both covered by her long pyjamas) while he was perfectly pretty with his porcelain skin and blonde hair.
A plate of milk tarts bobbled its way over to Malfoy and placed itself gingerly in front of him. He dove into them and began biting one off like an animal, chewing quickly.
“Eli!” Hermione called out. Eli apparated beside her quickly while Malfoy looked up.
“Can you please deliver this to the owlery?” she asked, giving him the reply she had written to Ginny.
“Certainly,” Eli said, taking the letter and placing it inside his pocket.
“As soon as possible, please,” Hermione urged. “Thank you.”
Eli disapparated to the Owlery while Malfoy cocked his eyebrow. “You can’t order him around like that,” he said. “He’s my butler, not yours.”
“Would you rather me go find the Owlery for myself?” Hermione snapped back.
“Oh heavens, no…” Malfoy replied. “We all know what happens when you try to go around this castle by yourself.”
“So you do know!” Hermione said angrily, throwing her chair aside and standing up.
“Know what?” Malfoy said casually.
“You’re an ass…” Hermione bellowed. “I could have died last night and you don’t even have the courtesy to find out what happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Malfoy said, chewing his milk tarts carelessly. “You’re fine.”
“Clearly, something happened,” Hermione said loudly. “Or these would not be here!” Hermione rolled up her sleeves and showed Malfoy the burns on her arms that had turned her skin red and black. “And these wouldn’t be here!” She rolled up her pants and should him the burns on her legs. “So clearly, something happened.”
Malfoy swallowed slightly and there was a momentary flash in his eyes as he saw the degree of burns on Hermione. He quickly composed himself and smirked. “You’re not dead, are you?”
“Why are you taking this so lightly?” Hermione bellowed. “There’s something down in your dungeons that was adamant to kill me last night! I know you don’t like me but you’re supposed to be protecting me, aren’t you?”
“I thought you said you don’t need any protection?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“The point is that something happened in your bloody dungeon and not only did you not try to find me, but you didn’t even bother checking up on me? How can you rely on Eli to save me and to make sure I don’t die? Don’t you have some responsibility here?”
Malfoy was taken aback but also, slightly relieved. She thought Eli saved her which means that he would be spared all the questioning she was bound to do. He cringed suddenly, realizing that the burn on his chest was beginning to throb.
“Is that all?” Malfoy asked with difficulty.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you done talking? If you aren’t, I’ll be having my tarts in my room.”
Hermione sighed loudly and stormed out of the dining hall, slamming the door behind her. As she left, Malfoy lifted his shirt and saw the burnt flesh on his chest swollen. He reached for a cold glass of ice water on the table and placed it against his chest, to cool the burning sensation.
---
Hermione stormed into her room and drew out a thin piece of long parchment from one of the drawers.
Professor McGonagall, she began writing.
Recently, I’ve come upon a sort of interesting and unique creature that I do not remember encountering in books that I’ve read. I was rather hoping you could shed some light on the situation, if at all possible.
It was a sort of ghost but not really one like those that walk around Hogwarts. It was a woman with a really menacing laugh, sort of like a banshee. She also has the power to become invisible, and or transform into some sort of a shadowy figure. The one thing that really struck me is that she seemed to have a very menacing intent – she intends to hurt, not to scare.
She resides in the dungeons and makes mist and a sort of greenish fog appear everywhere and her method of injuring is fire. She can burn through skin very easily.
I know that my description is rather vague but any sort of help in the matter would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Hermione Granger
Hermione reread her letter and hated the way she sounded – like an incoherent child. She sighed and stuffed the parchment hastily into an envelope. She didn’t have time to sound smart and collective anymore. She opened her door to head out towards the Owlery, only to remember that she didn’t know where it was.
“Eli!” she called out and the tiny man appeared in front of her.
“Ms. Granger,” he said politely.
“Did you send the letter I gave you an hour ago?” she asked.
Eli toggled his memory back and shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s still here.” He tapped his pocket and smiled.
“Do you mind telling me where the Owlery is?” Hermione asked.
“Well, if you wait a few minutes, I can take your letter there…”
“No, no…it’s not that.” Hermione said quickly. “I have another letter to send too and I guess I might as well learn where the owls are. I just feel really bad for disturbing you.”
“Not all, my dear,” Eli said kindly. “I assume by now you know how to get to dining hall?”
Hermione nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, you head north from the dining room and when you reach the end of the corridor, there’s a stairwell leading upwards. That will take you straight to the owls.”
“Thank you,” Hermione beamed, appreciating the fact that Eli didn’t prevent her from exploring the manor like Malfoy. He handed Hermione her first letter and she went off to the Owlery.
---
“You didn’t tell me her burns were that bad,” Malfoy said shortly as Eli entered his room. Eli closed the door softly behind him and saw the fear in Malfoy’s eyes.
“They got worse overnight,” Eli replied. “They had seared very thinly into the skin when I saw them last night but it seems the burns sunk deeper today.”
“That’s how her magic works,” Draco sighed. He was sitting on the floor, lying against his bed. The pain from his chest disabled him greatly.
“What kind of magic is this?” Eli asked. “I have yet to encounter this kind of thing…and I assure you Master Malfoy, I have encountered almost all kinds of magic.”
“It’s a very dark kind of magic,” Draco replied, placing his arm lightly on his chest. “No, no it’s alright,” he added, as Eli went over to help him.
“Adria is not your average house ghost, I mean…she’s not really a ghost to begin with. But that’s not important…” Draco said, changing the subject. “What’s more important is that no one finds out about what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if Potter or Weasley get wind of this, they’ll be here in a flash and that’s the last thing I need. Besides, Granger thinks you saved her.”
“Yes, she thanked me this morning.”
“Either way, it is important for you to understand that no one should find out about this. The moment they hear she got injured, they’ll think I did something to her and aurors will be swarming around the manor in a flash.”
“Yes, sir,” Eli said obediently. Draco shifted slightly to find a more comfortable position but in his state, comfort was a luxury. He took a deep breath and pressed his fingers against the flesh wound which was still throbbing from the pain.
“Allow me,” Eli said and flicked his wand. A tray of moist towels appeared with a bottle that was labelled, ‘A Sure Cure for burns’.
“It won’t work Eli,” Draco said. “Adria’s burns aren’t those normal kinds you get from dragons and stuff. When she’s angry, not even the worst of things can stop her.”
“What exactly is she?”
“I don’t really know myself,” Draco sighed. “When I first tried to remove her from the mansion she seared right through the muscle in my right arm.”
“I’m sure the Ministry would now how to deal with this.”
“Well I suppose they would know a bit more than me but I’d rather not. This is her home, whether or not she realizes it and whether or not I like it.”
“But she’s dange-”
“I know,” Draco said, looking at his chest. “I know she’s dangerous but what happened to her was my fault. I have to right this.”
---
I'm sorry that this chapter was a little...uneventful. It's sort of a filler but I had to get some context in for what would happen later! So thank you for bearing with me!
Minerva McGonagall was fairly tired nowadays. Ever since her retirement from Hogwarts, she found herself bored to tears with nothing to do except count the seconds as they passed by. She got the occasional owls from her former students and more from her colleagues but she wanted to go back to the thrill she got from teaching, from moulding new minds and instilling some of her wisdom into new students.
She heard a small tap at the window.
Immediately, her head turned towards the window where she saw a tiny barn owl fluttering its wings excitedly to enter. McGonagall reached for the windows ledge and released it, letting the bird in.
“Hello there,” she said gently as the owl lay down a piece of rolled parchment in her palm. McGonagall unravelled the sheet as the owl dipped its beak into a nearby glass of water.
Hogwarts Alumni Dinner
Dear Professor McGonagall,
You are cordially invited to Hogwarts annual alumni dinner, celebrating the reunion of many of Hogwarts former students who still return to their second home in order to reminisce of the wonderful memories they formed there.
As a former professor and teacher to these very students, it would be with great pleasure that we invite you and we hope that you will honour us with your presence there, three weeks from Saturday.
Yours truly,
Pomona Sprout
Headmistress of Hogwarts
PS: You’d better be there Minerva, I’m rather hoping this will convince you to get out of retirement and get back to teaching.
McGonagall smiled and placed the letter on top of her old wooden desk. As she opened her window to let the owl leave, a second one soared in. This owl was much bigger and a lot more prompt. It didn’t ruffle its feathers or dally around for some water. All it did was place its letter on the desk and spread its majestic wings, preparing itself to fly out into the evening sun.
McGonagall looked at the envelope and saw the name of the sender: Hermione Granger. She smiled as she recognized the name of her brightest student, only her smile faltered slightly as she saw who the letter was addressed to. Ron Weasley?
“This must be a mistake,” McGonagall wondered aloud. She opened the letter and read the contents within.
Ron,
Don’t be upset, I’ll be home in a flash. You stay good and remember, I will always love you.
Love
Hermione
McGonagall blushed slightly realizing that it was not meant for her eyes. She looked around but the owl that had delivered the message had already left.
---
Hundreds of miles away, Ron Weasley opened a letter delivered from Hermione but was addressed to Professor McGonagall.
His eyes scanned the letter as the words jumped out at him and stifled his breath. His eyes widened at the comprehension of what he was reading and before he got to the last word, he jammed the letter in his pocket and grabbed a small blue knapsack beside the foot of his bed. Within three minutes, he had filled his bag with a set of robes, and his first year’s potions set.
Hearing the commotion upstairs, Harry entered Ron’s room with a look of concern on his face. “Ron… what’s going on?”
Ron didn’t reply but instead opened a huge trunk under his bed and retrieved a stone basin. “What’s wrong?” Harry asked. “Ron, seriously, what happened?”
“I’m going,” Ron replied shortly.
“Where?”
“Malfoy Manor.”
---
Ginny sat on the living room couch with a copy of Witch Weekly in her lap which had a picture of a rather scantily clad Viktor Krum smiling at her. Ginny pondered how Harry would look in that pose and began to smile.
Her humorous images of Harry were interrupted by the sound of a trunk being dragged down the stairs. Ron came into view a few seconds later with his wooden trunk and a large stone basin in his other hand. Harry tailed him with a worried expression on his face.
“…a million things that can happen on the way there!” Harry was saying. “Do you even know the way there?”
Ginny quickly stuffed the magazine away and stood up. “What’s wrong?”
“Ron wants to go to Malfoy Manor,” Harry said flatly.
“Is he crazy?” Ginny said as her jaw dropped.
“Hello!” Ron waved. “I’m right here!”
“Are you out of your bloody mind, Ron?” Ginny bellowed.
“Yes, I am.”
Ron picked up the stone basin and placed it on top of the wooden trunk. He grabbed his wand and placed it against his temple and gently dragged out a silver thread from his head.
“What are you doing with the penseive?” Harry asked.
“Nothing,” Ron said as he took the thread and placed it in the huge stone basin. Immediately the basin began to shine a light and the head of Draco Malfoy appeared.
“Look, Granger,” the Malfoy head said. “The train to the outer city leaves in exactly 44 minutes. It will take us at least twenty minutes to get to Diagon Alley where we will have to take the fireplace to the station which will take about ten minutes to get to the train. That gives you the next 14 minutes to pack your things and leave with me.”
“How did you get that memory?” Ginny asked. “You were with Harry getting Hermione’s trunk when Malfoy said that.”
“I heard him from upstairs, but I couldn’t catch the rest of the sentence. It doesn’t matter,” Ron said. “I know how to get there.”
“You’re crazy!” Ginny cried. “Why, all of a sudden, do you want to get to the Manor?”
“Look at this,” Ron said, shoving the letter into Ginny’s hands.
Ginny read the letter, and her eyes widened in shock. “Is Hermione alright?”
“Wait, what letter is this?” Harry asked, as he read over Ginny’s shoulder.
“She’s apparently been burnt by this ghost… Malfoy will pay with his life!” Ron barked.
“Wait, now,” Harry said. “How do you know she’s been attacked? Maybe she’s just asking?”
“Harry, look at the way she describes the creature and the way she talks about it! Clearly she got a first hand experience.”
“So what are you going to go there for?” Harry asked. “To be her knight in shining armour?”
“Maybe,” Ron said coldly and walked towards the door.
“I know you care about Hermione,” Ginny started. “But you have to understand, there’s nothing you can do.”
“I can save her, I can bring her back,” Ron shot back.
“Ron, she’s a big girl,” Harry said. “She doesn’t need your protection, she doesn’t need mine.”
“If she thinks that she needs Malfoy’s protection, she needs mine,” Ron retorted.
“Then I’m going with you,” Harry said.
“What?” Both Ginny and Ron said in unison.
“Well Hermione’s my friend too and I may not love her like you do, but I do love her as a friend and if she needs help, I’ll go too.”
“Well you’re not leaving me here,” Ginny said adamantly. “We’ll all go. But we’ll go tomorrow morning.”
“What’re you talking about?” Ron asked.
“Ron, it’s almost eleven at night. I mean, I know you want this whole dramatic thing to play out but we can’t sneak out to the middle of nowhere in the middle of night.”
Ron groaned and Harry placed his arm on his shoulder. “Take it or leave it,” he said. “We’ll leave first thing tomorrow.”
“Right,” Ron said dejectedly and walked back upstairs.
---
“This is the main entrance to the Manor,” Draco said lazily pointing at a huge 8 feet tall door. The door was made of chestnut coloured oak and above it, a dark black snake was carved into the wall with the words “Draco Dormiens” under it. Slight frost was beginning to kiss the windows of the chilly manor as the winter neared.
Hermione saw the magnificent entrance to Malfoy Manor and couldn’t help but feel impressed by the beauty and lavishness of it..
“If Lestrange comes at you, do not flee from this exit,” Draco said with a careless tone. “Beyond this door, there’s about a mile of ground to cover before the main gates and trust me, the plants are not friendly.”
“Thanks,” Hermione replied coldly. “I’m glad you care.”
“I’m serious, Granger,” Malfoy said, smirking slightly. Hermione assumed he was envisioning her being eaten by a ten foot apple tree.
“Let’s keep going,” Draco continued and walked down the left hallway that led to a passageway full of doors. The doors were of different sizes and shapes but all were a deep brown colour that matched well with the deep beige walls.
“What are all these doors for?” Hermione asked.
Draco shrugged. “Stuff,” he said casually. “Most of them are just empty so don’t bother. The only thing you need to worry about is this,” he added as they approached a giant painting mounted on the wall.
The frame was a copper colour and was intricately carved with floral designs. There was no actual painting inside the frame but Hermione was awestruck by the huge burn on the middle of the canvas.
“Granger, over here,” Draco said, ushering irritably towards a small passageway on the other side of the hallway.
“What happened to this painting?” Hermione asked as she ran her fingers along the ripped canvas.
Draco’s face twitched slightly at the sight of Hermione’s fingers against the canvas. Hermione noticed that and immediately retracted her hand as he rolled his eyes. “It’s burnt, can’t you see that?”
“Yes, I can,” Hermione replied through gritted teeth. “I mean, why is it burnt?”
“Why does it matter?”
“It’s just that… well all the other paintings with your ancestors and whatnot look so regal and lavish and this burnt painting…where’s the person in this portrait?”
“Don’t worry about her,” Draco said quietly. “She’s not coming back.”
Hermione recoiled slightly at the look of anguish in Malfoy’s eyes. He too, realized the bitterness in his voice and immediately pulled himself together. “Merlin Granger, by now I could have travelled three times around the castle on a unicycle, will you please hurry!”
Hermione threw Draco a nasty look and followed him to a small statue of a snake coiled around the Slytherin emblem. “Classy,” Hermione remarked sarcastically.
Draco ignored her and reached for the snake’s fang which he tugged slightly. He then drew out his wand and touched its tip to that very fang and said, “Venio!”
The fang did not move but instead, a huge gurgling sound began to resonate beneath the ground and a square shaped passageway appeared on the floor as the floor began to recede. Hermione gaped in amazement, “You sure are a paranoid lot,” she remarked. “There’s a secret passageway everywhere!”
“Very clever, Granger, you’re a true comedian,” Malfoy replied sarcastically. “This leads right down to a passageway between this floor and the dungeons, so you’re sort of travelling mid-ground level.”
Hermione nodded absentmindedly. “It leads all the way to the other end of the castle and into the back entrance at the foot of the South Tower.”
“Right,” Hermione said, not really paying attention. All her attention was focused on that burnt painting across the hall. Her eyes were fixated upon the sears against the canvas and her mind was drawn back to the burns on her arms.
Malfoy followed Hermione’s eyes to the canvas and he became concerned. Something about her expression worried him and he instantly knew what it was – she was putting pieces together. While her eyes were glued onto the painting, her right arm pressed against the burns on her left arm and Draco knew. He knew that it would only be a matter of time before she figured it out.
“Master Malfoy!” The tension in the room was broken as Eli apparated in between Hermione and Draco. Hermione turned to look at the frail old man whose expression was intensely hard and worried.
“We have a situation in the North Tower, sir,” Eli whispered. And though he tried to be subtle, Hermione could clearly hear the shaky tone of his voice.
“What’re you talking about?” Malfoy asked. Eli gestured very slightly at Hermione, indicating that he couldn’t say anything in her presence. Malfoy immediately understood and looked at Hermione.
“I need to deal with this,” he said tersely. “Stay here.”
“I won’t!” Hermione said.
“Why the hell not?”
“I want to see this! It’s the ghost, isn’t it? That woman who burnt me?” Hermione asked.
Draco knew that it was only a matter of time before she pieced everything together. “Granger, stay the bloody hell away. It’s for your own good!”
“What do you care?”
“I don’t!” Draco spat. “But this is my bloody house and you will do whatever the bloody hell I say!”
“I won’t,” Hermione said stubbornly. Eli looked concerned as he stood between the two, each as aggressive and stubborn as the other.
“Fine, have it your way then,” Draco said as he drew out his wand. “Petrificus Totalus!”
Hermione shriek was never completed as she froze midway, completely paralyzed. Her body fell to the ground and the last thing her immobile eyes could see was Draco’s blonde hair as he apparated towards the North Tower.
---
What was happening in the North Tower, Hermione did not know. All her paralyzed body could hear was the faint sound of the howling wind outside and the patter of rain against the window. The barely audible noises of the ghosts that roamed the mansion and the chatty Malfoys in the portraits were the only source of movement for Hermione as she lay on the floor, unable to move.
She occasionally thought she heard the sound of footsteps rushing towards her but after awhile, she dismissed them as delusions on her part. Her head pressed hard against the floors as her own weight held her down; the only good thing was that instead of cold stone, this floor was lush carpet that caressed Hermione’s head instead of bruising it.
As she lay paralyzed on the floor, one thing was for sure: Draco had gone to “deal” with the very same creature that had attacked her. When he had looked at her, instead of his arrogance there had been a severe and piercing look of fear in his eyes but more than that, vulnerability. Hermione didn’t know what it meant or why it was there but there was definitely more than Draco claimed.
Her wandering mind began to hear footsteps again and Hermione, once again, tried to convince herself that it was no one. But it actually was. The tiny patter of a house elf’s feet began to get closer to her and Hermione knew that if she could move, she would have heaved a huge sigh of relief.
“Miss!” the little elf squealed as it saw Hermione on the floor. She immediately recognized the elf as the one who had healed her when she got burnt.
“Oh, you is hurt!” the elf squeaked. Hermione tried to open her mouth and tell the elf to undo the spell but she couldn’t move. Her limbs were locked tight and frustration was beginning to build up in her.
Immediately, however, the elf lifted up its scarred fingers and placed it against Hermione’s temple. A faded green light appeared and Hermione felt her arms and legs loosen like string, and soon after her neck and head began to move as well.
She lay on the floor for a few seconds to recuperate from the thirty minutes that she’d spent lying there. “You is okay?”
Hermione nodded and lifted her head slightly to sit up on her arms. “How did you know to undo the spell on me?” she asked.
“Master Eli was sending me to help you, Miss,” the elf replied politely. Hermione smiled as the elf held out his hand to help Hermione up off the floor. As she got halfway up, a piercing scream rang through the walls of the deserted Manor.
The elf squeaked and covered his mouth with his hands while Hermione fell against the wall in shock. Her heart skipped a beat as the echo of the scream still resounded off the old walls of the mansion.
“What was that?” Hermione cried, placing her fingers against her ears to shield the sound of the echo.
The little elf squeaked in fear and ran towards the other side of the passageway. Hermione turned around and looked into the distance at the spot where Draco had apparated; she closed her eyes, and disappeared to the North Tower.
---
Draco dodged a burst of emerald flames as they shot past his ear. The darkness of the North Tower was broken by the momentary spurts of light from Draco’s wand and the devilish green from the demonic flames Adria was attacking with. Her shadowy figure mixed with the dark figures in the Tower and hid her from Draco’s sharp and perceptive eyes. Beads of sweat formed on his pale forehead that had been tainted with blood as a huge gash on his temple appeared when he fell hard against the wall.
Draco pulled himself up with great effort, placing his right hand over his chest to prevent the pain in his chest from his earlier burn. His wand was gripped tightly in his hand and he managed to duck right in time, avoiding another burst of flames followed by a maniacal laughter.
“Come and play!” she cried in her high pitched voice.
Eli, though wise in his years, was far less experienced in hand to hand combat, especially against something that he had never encountered before. He ducked behind the table and shot some of the most complicated protection charms he knew towards Draco as Adria neared him.
Malfoy ducked as another flame came at him and went right past his left ear. “Eli, stay out of the way!” Malfoy yelled.
Eli began to mouth another protection charm at Malfoy who managed to secure himself temporarily against a corner and dodge the flames that were so eerily followed by the high pitched laughter.
Draco turned the corner and aimed his wand at the dark shadow. “Sopei-”
Adria’s scream was followed by a stream of fire that hit Draco square in the chest. It seemed as though time had frozen as Draco felt the flames engulf him and sear right through into his heart - gnawing at the centre of the fragile organ. He shut his eyes and fell against the floor, hitting his head against the hard ground. His cry rang throughout the castle – it resounded so far that the very foundations of the ground began to tremble.
Malfoy placed his hand against the ground, the other on his chest and tried to push himself up. “Eli stay out of the way!” he cried as Eli shot a bright yellow flame at Adria which hit the dark shadow but was only absorbed in the blackness.
Draco pushed against the ground again, trying harder than ever to pick himself up but he couldn’t. He felt as though his chest had been twisted and deformed and that all the courage in the world couldn’t help him get up off the floor. His mind was feeling faint and he saw drops of blood spatter onto his shoulder – his head was bleeding.
He began to feel light-headed; No!, he said to himself. I can’t die… As he blinked a few times to restore his consciousness, a dark haired girl appeared at the Tower and Draco’s jaw fell to the floor.
“Granger! Get out!” he yelled.
Hermione’s terrified face looked at Draco, lying helplessly on the floor and Eli dodging the flames shot at him. Hermione took out her wand and aimed at the dark shadow and shot a jet of red light at it. As Draco expected, the shadow absorbed the light and the high pitched laughter resumed.
The flames began to circle Hermione and the terror on her face was illuminated. “Protego!” she yelled, pointing the wand at herself but nothing happened.
“Malfoy, what the hell is wrong with this ghost?” she cried.
Eli saw her and raised his wand, muttering his protection charms at her as a green flame burned through her arm. The charm didn’t work.
“The flames have circled her!” Eli yelled to Malfoy. “There’s no way to stop her, Master Malfoy!”
“I told you to stay the bloody hell away, Granger!” Malfoy yelled.
“It’s too late for that now, isn’t it?” Hermione shot back.
Malfoy’s head began to feel light and he knew that in a few moments, he would be unconscious and Hermione would be dead. Stupid mudblood, she doesn’t know how to defend herself against Adria…
Draco knew that no matter what kind of dark magic Hermione had fought before, the only way to hold off Adria was with dark magic itself, something Hermione knew nothing of – only he knew and only he could do it.
And then it hit him.
He grabbed his wand and pointed it straight at Hermione, “IMPERIO!” he shouted.
“Malfoy! W-?!” Hermione didn’t finish her sentence. Draco had managed to take control of her and used his wand to make her point her wand at the dark shadow looming around her.
“Hold it steady, Granger,” he said slowly.
Hermione robotically held her wand in front of her, steadily. “Now,” Draco continued. “When I say ‘go’, I want you to yell at the top of your voice, “Sopeinsta Grecgo”.”
The flames neared Hermione and the maniacal laughter began again. “Go!” Draco shouted.
Hermione raised her voice and yelled, “Sopeinsta Grecgo!”
A small white light began to shine at the tip of the wand but nothing happened. “Louder!” Malfoy yelled. “Say it like you mean it!”
“Sopeinsta Grecgo!” she cried.
A huge white light shot out of her wand and pierced the dark shadow. For a fleeting second, a thin figure emerged from the shadow- a woman. Still engulfed in flames, she fell to the floor and lay there momentarily. Draco turned towards the figure, his fuzzy vision trying to make out the details of the scene before him, but she disappeared as fast as she had appeared and the dark shadows consumed her again.
The shadows began to dissipate and soon, the darkness fled through an escape in the stairwell and nothing was left in the North Tower other than silence. The pure deafening silence that seemed almost worst than the attacks because the silence is always followed by questions – questions that Draco could not answer or rather, didn’t want to.
Hermione released her wand and as it fell to the floor, Draco released her from his imperius curse. The curse had drained the last bit of energy in him and he fell hard against the ground – closing his eyes and lying in the pool of blood.
---
A cold wind blew through the burrow and encircled Harry and Ginny as they were sleeping. Ginny shuddered slightly and turned around to face Harry whose face was buried in his pillow, stifling the slight snores.
“Harry,” she said lazily, shaking him roughly. “Wake up.”
Harry grunted deeply and turned to face Ginny, half asleep. He opened his eyes for a fraction of a second and then closed them again, falling back into his deep sleep.
“Harry,” Ginny muttered, amidst a yawn.
“What?” Harry grumbled. “What is it?”
“Go get a blanket.”
“Why?”
Another cold wind blew through the open window in the Burrow and sent shivers down Harry’s bare back. “That’s why,” Ginny said.
“Meh,” Harry grumbled and shifted into a more comfortable position. “Later.”
“No, come on…”
Harry sat himself up on his arms and rubbed his sleepy eyes. “Fine,” he groaned. He slipped the sheet off of him and turned towards Ginny who seemed to have fallen back to sleep.
He got up and fumbled for his glasses in the darkness, placing his feet on the cold floor. Then, after closing the window, he went out into the lit passageway and tried to remember where the blankets were kept.
“Ron?” Harry whispered, opening his friend’s door. “Ron, can we borrow a blanket?”
Ron didn’t reply. “Ron,” Harry whispered again. Ron was a well-known deep sleeper and so clearly, he wouldn’t hear Harry.
Harry scratched his head and yawned as he walked over to Ron’s bed to wake him. He placed his hand on Ron and began to shake him slightly. “Get up,” he said.
But instead of Ron, Harry felt a huge pile of blankets beneath his palm. He ruffled through them and saw that there as no one on the bed. He was wide awake now and began to search around the room.
“This isn’t funny, Ron,” he said tiredly. “Seriously, mate.”
There was no reply.
He went back to the Ron’s bed and saw a ripped piece of paper lying on one of the sheets. It was in Ron’s handwriting and seemed to have been written in a hurry.
I have to go by myself -Ron
---
phew, that was a long chapter. hope you like it :) I have exams coming up so I'll be MIA for a well but fear not, as soon as I'm done, I'll update.
Draco’s eyes flickered for a second and a dark blurry world emerged in front of him. In this dark world, every object and person was a mingled hybrid of deformed shapes and undistinguishable identities. There were sounds too. The faint buzz that could be heard from these hybrids clouded his ears until he closed his eyes again.
Then he felt it.
There was a gentle feeling in his hand… was it his left hand? Or wait… no it was his right. The warm sensation began to bring its way up his arm towards his shoulders. Draco inhaled deeply and took in this soft touch. A soft humming began and caressed his ears, in contrast to the intolerable buzzing earlier. The feeling was beginning to sink into him when it suddenly stopped –followed by a high pitched scream.
Draco’s eyes flew open and searched around for the mysterious voice. In his haste, he sat up so fast that his insides began to collapse on him – he couldn’t sit up. He fell back down and realized that he was lying on a bed; he was lying on a soft, cushioned thick bed with a huge and regal frame and a headboard draped in green silk. He was in his own bed.
He placed his hand on his chest and felt the swollen, still molten flesh. He began to pant as he tried once again to sit up – this time, with extreme pain, he managed to sit himself up at a forty-five degree angle.
“Eli!” he shouted. He tried to remember the last thing he did before he ended up here but his memory failed him. His head was pressing hard down on him and his chest was swollen and burnt – he knew he had been fighting Adria. But what had happened? Had he lost?
“Master Malfoy,” Eli said, heaving a sigh of relief. “You’re alright.”
“What happened?”
“It was her,” Eli said somberly. “It was Adria.”
“I…I can’t remember…” Draco stammered. “I can’t remember anything.”
“The blow to your head was quite hard,” Eli said gently. “Please, just lie down. It took the elves hours to stop the bleeding.”
Draco’s hand immediately flew to his head where he felt a layer of thick gauss and bandages. “How long was I out for?”
“It’s been two days.”
Draco tried to sit up again. “Two days?”
Eli nodded grimly. “55 hours to be exact.”
“Did anyone come by? Did anyone ask…?” Draco asked.
Eli looked at him with a curious expression. “No.”
He saw relief sweep over the face that was once etched with lines of worry but for a second – albeit a fraction of a second- he had seen a little boy’s sadness that no one had asked about how he was doing, that nobody cared if he was alive or dead.
“No one knew what happened,” Eli added and smiled gently. “But Ms. Granger…”
Draco’s memory swept back to a blurry scene where a brown haired girl was holding up her wand and yelling, in a petrified voice. “Granger!” Draco yelped. “She…she was there…”
“Yes, sir,” Eli replied. “She hasn’t been harmed though.”
Draco’s expression of surprise and worry didn’t change. “Does she remember anything?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so. She’s been asking…questions.”
“Well we’re not answering them,” Draco shot back as he placed his hand gingerly over his burnt flesh and sat up in his bed. He had mustered enough strength to attempt to walk now. He quickly grabbed a shirt that was lying by his bedside and put it on to cover the fleshy wound.
“Master Malfoy,” Eli began again as Malfoy started to walk. “She’s beginning to put it all together…”
Draco stopped in his tracks and turned around. “Then we stop her.”
Eli now had a concerned look on his face. “She’s already made a connection between the portrait and Adria – it’s only a matter of time before she finds out about Nat-”
“That’s enough!” Draco bellowed. “That is enough!” His face was red with trepidation and Eli had the feeling that his heart hurt more than his wounds.
“This discussion is over,” Malfoy said. His strength was weakening. He placed his hand on one of his many cushioned chairs for support and then turned towards Eli. “You have to keep her distracted – away from all of this.”
“What kind of distraction were you thinking of?”
“The kind that would keep her out of my hair. Something that would keep her satisfied and busy.”
“Well sir, I can just keep a sharper watch on her…”
“No,” Draco replied. “That’ll only make her more suspicious… besides, I’m going to be gone tonight and I need to know she won’t go poking her big nose around the manor.”
“Might I suggest a…hobby?” Eli said, slightly bemused.
“No, no…” Malfoy said, shrugging him off. “She’s not a child…” He then paused as a knowing expression began to form on his face. “But…she is a woman.”
“Yes, sir…she is,” Eli said awkwardly.
“And despite her brains and her boldness, all any woman ever wants is someone to be with.” A small smile curved at the edge of his lip as he turned to Eli and said, “I want you to find Ron Weasley and bring him here.”
---
Hermione sat in her room restlessly scanning the pages of the Daily Prophet. There was no news of Lestrange; there hadn’t been any for days. She wondered if Skeid had blown things out of proportion as her mind trailed back to that fateful day when she had learnt of her parents’ deaths. Maybe he had come to the wrong conclusion, maybe he had tallied the evidence incorrectly or illogically, or maybe he had underestimated the motives of Lestrange; either way, he and his actions were completely away from the public eye. There were no more high profiled muggle killings, no more break-ins and certainly, no more (not that there ever had been) threats to Hermione’s life.
Hermione’s once luscious and chocolate brown curly hair had become frail and straw-like – as it often did when she was in an uncomfortable or stressful situation for a long time. Her eyes had sunk even lower into her face due to her lack of sleep. All she could think about what the ghost (or whatever it was) and the painting in the hall.
Her pent up rage began to boil once again as her thoughts trailed onto Malfoy. That stupid prick was hiding something and he refused to even acknowledge that Hermione had some insight into his secret. That momentary sympathy and pity she had felt for Malfoy when she saw him dueling for his life in the tower had now subsided. He had used an Unforgivable Curse on her… did he think she was that much of an amateur that she couldn’t perform a simple spell? Did he really think she was so unskilled that he had to put her under the Imperius curse so that she could perform that spell correctly?
It had been two days. Once the darkness in the tower had cleared up, she had been released from the curse and she saw Malfoy fall unconscious onto the floor. Eli had rushed over to Malfoy and produced a thick piece of cloth which he pressed against his head to stop the bleeding. Healers had periodically arrived at the Mansion and spent hours in Malfoy’s room; the only conversation Hermione had managed to hear was a young Healer who was explaining to Eli that: “It will take about 24 hours now but the flesh should begin to heal, though the scars themselves will never truly disappear.” She had no idea what he had meant by that but she assumed that the Healer was referring to Malfoy’s head injury.
Hermione’s thoughts were interrupted by some voices outside, across the hall. She stood up and slowly made her way towards the door, with her ears sharply trying to decipher the words.
“…two bowls of cereal and some more milk tarts…” the voice said. Hermione rolled her eyes as she flung her door open and glared at Malfoy as he walked down the hall. He turned at the sound of the opening door and causally smirked, “Hello, Granger.”
“Still thinking of eating?” she snapped.
“Well yes, I’m a little hungry.”
Hermione scoffed and looked at Eli, who was beside Draco with a usual worrisome expression on his face. “Can you excuse us a minute?” Malfoy asked Eli.
Eli nodded and bowed his head, quickly disapparating on the spot. “I have the feeling there’s something you want to say to me, Granger,” Malfoy said snidely.
He walked over very nonchalantly and stood a mere two feet away from Hermione with his infamous smile spread across his face. “What would you like to say?” he asked her.
“You used an Unforgivable curse on me,” Hermione said, each breath of hers was drenched in anger. “You’re an auror and you used an illegal curse on me.”
“I saved you,” Draco corrected. His hands were casually folded across his chest while Hermione’s were by her side as she resisted the urge to punch him in the face.
“No, you used me.”
Draco laughed. “Yes, I used you to save you.”
“You’re an auror, a representative of the Ministry of Magic and-”
“Don’t try to be righteous and abide by the rule book,” Malfoy snapped. “Lest we forget you and the rest of the Potter Posse scrambling about the school doing many illegal things yourselves.”
“That was for a good reason,” Hermione shot back. “We were trying to stop Voldemort!”
“Well there you go,” Draco said. “I was trying to save you and Eli… well more Eli than you – he makes delicious milk tarts, if he’d died, where would I have gotten breakfast from?”
“You know, I used to think that you were a colossal pain in the neck. Now I have a much lower opinion of you!”
“What is it that’s really upsetting you, Granger?” Malfoy asked. “Is it really that I used an illegal curse on you, or perhaps is it that I didn’t trust you enough to perform the spell by yourself?”
Hermione looked up instantly and stuttered for a second. “That’s nonsense.”
“Is it really?” Malfoy said, in a mocking tone. “Maybe you’re angry because you know that you couldn’t have performed that spell.”
“Shut up!”
“Maybe there is something that the brains of the Potter Posse cannot do.”
“I could have performed it easily!”
“Ha!” Draco said. “There’s no way. You know as well as I do that it was dark magic-”
“Yes, something you and your family are famed for, no doubt.”
“All this bitterness isn’t good for you, Granger,” Malfoy said callously.
“I don’t know what it is that ghost was after,” Hermione began. “But she isn’t an ordinary household ghoul.”
Draco yawned loudly while Hermione shot him a wrathful glare. “Oh sorry,” Draco said sarcastically. “Please keep on talking. I generally yawn when I’m interested.”
She scoffed and turned her back to Malfoy as she began walking down the hallway. “Oh by the way,” Malfoy added. “Breakfast is on the table, if you care to eat.”
“Why should I bother?” Hermione snapped. “You’ll probably eat the entire table with your appetite.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Draco replied. “I’d leave some milk tarts for you but I’m afraid they’ll go straight to your thighs, which are incidentally looking a little chubbier nowadays.”
Hermione’s jaw dropped to the floor as her eyes immediately shot to her thighs. “It’s these pants! They’re unflattering!” Hermione yelled after Draco. “Wait…what the hell am I saying?” Hermione said to herself. “I did not gain weight…”
---
Ron stood in the crowded lanes of Diagon Alley. Even though it was just the break of dawn, witches and wizards were scrambling up and down the street, some opening up their stores, others getting an early start to the day’s shopping. Ron looked like a disheveled mess compared to even the most casually dressed people; he had hastily put on a green jumper over his night shirt and an old pair of faded jeans. His hair was unkempt, much like Harry’s, but his hair didn’t look as purposefully messed up but rather it seemed like he hadn’t taken the time to comb and set his hair, which he hadn’t.
He was standing beside an old used broomstick store as he tried to navigate his way to the fireplace that would eventually lead him to the train to the outer city. The problem then would be how to get from the outer city to Malfoy Manor. Slight drops of rain had begun to fall from the sky as Ron scrambled his way into the tiny broomstick shop to protect himself from the precipitation.
“Morning,” a deep voice said as he hastily wiped the raindrops from his face. Ron immediately turned around to see a rather large, old woman standing behind the counter with a bored smile on her face.
“Early shopping, I see,” she added as Ron nodded and acknowledged the greeting. He made his way into the store and surveyed the odd and old looking shop. The store itself wasn’t very big, about 10 people could fit in comfortably, and it had two doors on opposite walls – one leading to the street and the other, Ron guessed, to the backroom. There were two tiny windows that were currently shut but their panes looked rusted and worn out. There were two shelves on each wall, each of which carried four broomsticks mounted on a frame for a display and the only illumination in the room currently was the torches that were stuck up against the walls to emulate the effect of glamour.
“You fancy something?” the woman asked, in a rough voice.
“No, no…” Ron said. “I’m browsing, though,” he added quickly, noticing the instant displeasure on the old witch’s face.
“You ride?” she asked. The woman was a bit tubby but that was easily counteracted with her height, she was about the same height as Ron.
“A broomstick?” Ron asked thickly. “Yes…yes… often.”
“For Quidditch? Or do you just ride for fun?”
Ron hesitated. He really needed to find a way to the train station – it would only be a matter of time before Ginny and Harry figure out he was gone and they’d know exactly where to find him. “Both,” he said carelessly.
“Well, if you’re playing Quidditch, you’ll probably need something like this.” The woman moved out from behind the counter towards her displays. As she moved, Ron noticed that she wasn’t wearing the common frilly, grandmother style robes, but rather large blue ones with the a Quidditch player in green etched onto the arm and the slogan, “Ireland forever”.
She reached for a fairly long broomstick with a dark brown handle and slightly worn fibers at the top. “This one just came in a week ago, bought it off a chap from Sweden who’d come to visit. Pristine condition – flies like a bird”
“Is that so?” Ron replied, uninterested.
“Well,” the witch said, slightly offended. “If you don’t fancy this one, I’ve got plenty more.”
“No, really, it’s fine… I just-” Ron began, but it was too late. The witch had already scrambled over to her second shelf and taken out a broom with a jet black handle and the words ‘Viktor Krum’ etched onto it.
“This one here belonged to the Krum himself,” she said, proudly. “’Course it’s worth a lot but I’m not a Bulgaria fan me-self or I’d have kept it. It’s a Nimbus 5000, prime condition.”
Ron rolled his eyes and scoffed very slight – enough for effect but not enough that the witch would hear him. Krum never rode Nimbus broomsticks, he’d always ridden some famous Bulgarian model and clearly the words ‘Viktor Krum’ were scratched in with a spell or even a knife.
“Listen, I just need some directions,” Ron said weakly.
“What kind of directions?”
“I need to get to Malfoy Manor.”
The witch started to laugh in her deep, rough voice and her mouth opened wide enough to give Ron a good look at her rotting teeth. “Malfoy Manor, you’re crazy, right?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Boy, nobody can get to Malfoy Manor…”
Ron heaved an angry sigh and turned towards the woman. “Alright, you know what? I just need to get to the outer city.”
“Well you’ll need to take a train to get there,” the witch replied testily.
“Yeah, I got that part,” Ron said, irritably. “I mean, where are the trains?”
“Well, you go straight down the road towards that dress robes store and make a left. The fireplaces are on your first turn to the right after that. You take the fireplaces to the train station.”
“And which train do I take?”
The witch smiled roguishly. “Well, I got a whole load of train schedules back there behind the counter,” she said, gesturing towards her old seat. “They got times and locations.”
“Alright, I’ll take one of those,” Ron said eagerly, reaching into his back pocket for some money.
“Oh no, I’m afraid I can’t sell you those,” the witch replied toothily. “Those are only for distribution-”
“Alright, well then I’ll just take one.”
“Let me finish, boy,” she said. “Those are only for distribution with the purchase of a broomstick.” She shot a cocky smile at Ron who tried to control his anger.
“Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “I’ll…I’ll take the…the Krum broomstick and a train schedule.”
“Fine choice. Incidentally, this very broomstick was featured in Witch Weekly’s-”
“That’s great…” Ron said dismissively. “Can you please be quick?"
“That will be sixty eight galleons.”
Ron’s jaw dropped to the floor. He opened his mouth to say something but a meaningful look in the witch’s eye told him that buying that broomstick was the only way he’d be able to get his schedule. “I don’t have sixty eight galleons,” Ron said, holding out the fourteen galleons had hastily picked out of his robes before leaving the Burrow.
“We take credit,” the woman said.
“Credit?” Ron asked. “What’s that?”
“Well, you give me the fourteen galleons and I collect the rest from a family member,” she said. “You got a wife? Parents?”
Ron cursed under his breath. If he asked Ginny and Harry to pay for the rest of the broomstick, he’d leave a bread crumb trail that would lead them straight to him. But he had no choice. Ten minutes later, he had written down the address of the Burrow with instructions to Harry to find the rest of the money in Ron’s trunk in his room, bought himself a fake Viktor Krum broom and acquired a Diagon Alley train schedule.
---
“…yes, thank you,” Harry said, disheartened, as he pulled his head out of the fireplace.
“What happened?” Ginny asked as she brought in two cups of lemon tea and placed them gingerly on the oak table beside Harry.
“I just talked to the guy who runs the fireplaces at Diagon Alley,” Harry added, sitting up straight and grabbing one the cups hastily.
“And?”
“He said he hadn’t seen Ron or for that matter, anyone similar looking.” Both Harry and Ginny were still in their pajamas even though both of them had been up for hours.
“Well, that doesn’t say anything,” Ginny said encouragingly, sipping her tea. “Hundreds of people use those fireplaces each day, Ron could have easily slipped through.”
“Well, either way, tracing him is going to be virtually impossible. He left hours ago, he could be anywhere by now. He’ll always be one step ahead of us – even if we leave right now.”
“Can’t we ask Hermione to keep an eye out for him or something?” Ginny asked. She got up and closed the window, through which the cold wind was blowing in.
“He won’t make it that far,” Harry said gloomily. “It’s virtually impossible to find Malfoy Manor without someone who knows the way there, not to mention the enchantments and spells on the gates and the courtyards.”
“Well what do you propose?” Ginny asked and threw her hands up in a defeated gesture.
While Ginny and Harry pondered away the different possibilities, Mrs. Weasley slowly crept into the living room and interrupted the silence. “There’s someone at the door for you, Harry,” she said kindly. Through the years, Mrs. Weasley hadn’t changed a bit except for a slightly greyer hair; she still had the same authority, same kind spirit and same floral dresses.
“For me?” Harry asked, puzzled.
“Her name is Florence Baggerworth,” Mrs. Weasley added, hoping it would ring some bells.
“No idea,” Harry said, shrugging his shoulders and looking at Ginny.
“I’ve never heard of her either,” Ginny said.
“Well, she says that Ron sent her to you.”
Both Harry and Ginny jumped instantly up, causing the poor old woman to take a few steps back in surprise. “What is it?” Mrs. Weasley asked.
“Is she by the door?” Harry asked.
“I’ll let her in,” Mrs. Weasley said and made her way towards the front door. From a distance her welcoming voice could be heard, ushering the guest in towards the living room. When she came into view, both Harry and Ginny saw the plump woman who was slightly aged with graying brown hair and a huge set of robes which read ‘Ireland forever’.
“Dear Merlin, you are Harry Potter!” she exclaimed with joy, pushing past Ginny and shaking hands eagerly with Harry.
“Yes, hello,” Harry said a bit awkwardly as his wrist was being disjointed from his arm with her hard handshake. “I understand Ron sent you.”
“That was Ron Weasley?” the woman said in surprise. “That’s why he looked so familiar; when I was talking to him, I kept asking me-self…”
“Yes that’s great,” Ginny interrupted. “Do you have a message from Ron?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” the woman said, giving a rather cold stare to Ginny. “I do, however, have a bill of 54 galleons on his behalf.”
“For what?”
“This morning,” the woman said. “He came into me store and bought a broomstick for sixty eight galleons but he only had fourteen. I have a note from him.”
The woman produced a piece of paper that had the same hurried, scratchy writing that Harry had seen on Ron’s note last night. “Pay her fifty four galleons for a broomstick, the money’s in my trunk, don’t look for me,” Harry read the note aloud. Ginny took the note from Harry and reread it to herself, finally sighing and looking at Harry.
“I’ll get the money,” she said, putting her cup of tea on the oak desk and getting up.
“Well, um… Mrs. Baggerworth,” Harry started.
“Ms. Baggerworth,” she corrected with a cheeky smile on her face.
“Er…right. Ms. Baggerworth, do you know where Ron was going this morning?” Harry asked.
“He wanted to get to Malfoy Manor, that silly boy. I told him-”
“Do you remember, by any chance, what time this was?”
Ginny came downstairs and handed Baggerworth a small pouch of gold galleons. She overturned it in her lap and began counting frivolously. “Why?” she asked. “You trying to find him or something?”
“Yes, we are,” Ginny said, impatiently.
“Well for an extra four galleons, I’ll tell you the tracking spell I put on his broom,” Baggerworth said confidingly.
“Tracking spell?” Both Harry and Ginny gaped.
“I put them on all me brooms,” she said proudly. “Until the broom’s been paid off, I need to make sure I know where it is but once I get all the money, I remove the spell. I can make an exception in this case, of course.”
Harry looked at Ginny who had an irritated look on her face but nodded sourly. “Give her four galleons,” she said.
Harry produced four galleons and handed it to the happy old woman. “Pleasure doing business with you,” she said eagerly. “The spell is Vulticulus Mei. Just say the words and your wand will direct you to the broom.”
---
Rodolphus Lestrange sat quietly in his temporary residence- a small cottage on the outskirts of Bulgaria. His chase from the law had made his rough face even harder, deepening the lines of coarseness and grown out his already disheveled black hair. What had previously been some obstinate stubble was now a full beard and what had been bristly fingernails were now pointed talons.
The light in the one room cottage was only turned on at nights to a very dim level – just enough to see, but not be seen. The lights also served a purpose to illuminate the shadows in Lestrange’s face and make the dark circles under his eyes seem hollow, almost inhuman.
At the corner of the room, a small door stood through which a lanky wizard entered. “Rodolphus,” he hissed slightly. The night was dark and the man stood within the shadows, but Lestrange immediately recognized him, acknowledging this by a crooked smile on his face.
“Mulciber,” he said in a cold voice. “What brings you here?”
“It’s past midnight,” he said in a voice that seemed strong at first but held subtle tremors of fear. “Remember the rules, we turn out all lights at midnight.”
“I very well remember,” Lestrange said calmly. “I tend not to forget rules I make up.”
“The Bulgarians are watchful people,” Mulciber warned. “We need to make sure no one tracks us here.”
“There’s no need for you to check in on me,” Lestrange replied. “I will turn my lights out when my business is done.”
Mulciber looked like he was about to utter something but held himself back. “Right, then.” He had learnt from a lot of previous experience that questioning the leader was never a good idea.
“Before you leave though,” Lestrange added. “Drop off a bottle of that Bulgarian mead.”
Mulciber cocked an eyebrow. “Who's coming?”
Lestrange nodded with a smile. “My favorite nephew, in fact.”
---
The night was getting thick as Ron saw the huge clock chime 10 p.m. He was now on the outskirts of London as he descended from the train that he had caught earlier that afternoon. The train ride had been bumpy, in the literal sense. It had left the lines and was operating strictly in heavily wooded areas with uneven surfaces and unusual terrain. A wave of nausea had crept over him as the train had climbed over a huge mountain and then descended at, what felt like, the speed of sound.
He took a few seconds to calm himself down as the last of the passengers dismounted and the train pulled out of the cold station, disappearing into the night. Aside from the four people who had gotten off with him and one bored looking train clerk at the edge of the platform, not a single sign of life was visible.
“This is great,” he whispered to himself as he realized that Malfoy’s directions had been limited in usefulness. He now stood in the Outer city with nothing but a used broomstick and an empty rucksack, he hadn’t eaten in over 14 hours and his temporary adrenaline rush was now wearing itself off as his eyelids began to droop.
“Get it together,” he hissed to himself. “If you fall asleep, you’ll wake up with nothing but a broken bone.” The outer city was known for its extremely high crime rate with most of the crimes usually remaining within its borders. Ministry intervention in this part of London was limited to the occasional investigation when someone respectable or rich got caught up and even then, they tried to get out as soon as possible but for the most part, it was a dog eat dog existence.
“Are you lost?” the train clerk asked Ron and he soon realized how stupid he must have looked standing there by himself, even the four passengers had left the platform.
“I’m trying to get somewhere,” he said thickly. His hands clasped around his wand that sat loosely in his jean pocket.
“Isn’t everyone?” the clerk laughed. As he moved closer, Ron saw the face of the young man and remarked at the fresh and innocent face that seemed so rare in this part of London. He was shorter than Ron but about the same age, with black hair that stood out against his hazel eyes.
“Any place in particular?” he asked.
“Malfoy Manor,” Ron said, awaiting the surprised and mocking expression in the face of the young man. It didn’t take long; within seconds, the man had chuckled with a hollow voice.
“You’re kidding, right?” he asked.
“No.”
“Oh.”
The silence was awkward for a few seconds until Ron rolled his eyes and sighed. “I need to get to Malfoy Manor,” he said again. “Can you help me?”
“Sorry,” the man said, waving his hands up in defeat. “Never been there, never met anyone who has been there, don’t plan on going.”
“Coward,” Ron mumbled to himself as he sat down on one of the dirty benches.
“Listen mate,” the young man said. “Haven’t you heard the stories?”
Ron looked up. “What stories?”
“The Malfoy Manor is not a mansion,” he said slowly. “It’s a fortress. Not even the ministry dares to enter its grounds without permission.”
“What’s so bad about it?” Ron asked and the young man looked at him with stupor.
“The spells, the incantations, charms, traps, enchantments… where can I begin?” he said in a whisper. “Anyone who makes it to the front gates is considered a hero but when he tries to make it to the front door, he’s considered a fool.”
“Thanks,” Ron said sarcastically as he got up and made his way towards the other end of the platform.
“Wait a minute,” the man called after him. “Who are you?”
Ron paused briefly as he swung his bag over his shoulder. “A fool.”
---
Hermione stood impatiently in the main entrance of the manor, pacing around occasionally to keep the blood flowing in her legs. She had been unable to contain her excitement when Malfoy had mentioned that he’d be leaving later tonight and with Eli already gone somewhere else, the manor was hers to explore all night.
“Merlin, Granger,” Malfoy spat as he entered the hall. “Your steps are as loud as elephants’. Take it easy will you – my tiles are very delicate.”
Hermione glowered as she repeated the words in her head, he’ll be gone tonight. “I really wish Eli would return soon,” he continued, ignoring the angry stares Hermione was throwing at him. “I hate it when he’s late.”
“He’ll be back soon?” Hermione asked suddenly.
“Yes,” Malfoy replied curtly. “Ideally, he should already be here… must’ve run into some trouble.”
Hermione raised her eyebrow. “What kind of trouble? What’s he doing anyways?”
Malfoy ignored her question and began to idly dusting off his sleek brown jacket. His hair was, once again, neatly brushed back and he was wearing a tan shirt under his jacket with black pants. He smelt of a very intoxicating scent – a fusion of coconut and ginger. “I suppose I can just bring my own luggage down, myself,” he said shortly and walked out of the room nonchalantly.
“Brat,” Hermione muttered to herself.
She leaned against on the stone gargoyles that decorated the dimly lit room. The huge grandfather clock by the statue stated that it was just past ten thirty and Hermione felt her window of opportunity shrinking as each second past; the moment Eli returned she would be constantly under watch and unable to undertake her extravagantly planned expedition throughout the dungeons.
“You seem disappointed,” a cold voice said and Hermione snapped out of her daze as Malfoy returned into the room with a sleek, dragon-hide rucksack that hung loosely from his shoulder.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t get into too much trouble while I’m away Granger,” he said with that familiar crooked smile on his face. “I’ll be back before sundown tomorrow but knowing you, the entire mansion could burn down by then. So please, for the sake of my ancestors’ house, stay safe.”
Hermione scowled and resumed pacing around the entrance hall. “Well,” she started, “since you asked so nicely.”
Malfoy didn’t get a chance to react to her sarcasm as the front door opened dramatically and a dark shadow moved into the hall. As the darkness began to dissent and the light hit the shadow, Hermione couldn’t make out his features completely but that green jumper was recognizable anywhere – even when it was on a tired and beat out young man instead of a jovial and spirited red headed boy.
“Ron!” Hermione gasped loudly. She immediately ran forward and threw her arms around his neck, rocking all her weight onto him. He was startled for a moment but his eyes melted with warmth as he felt Hermione in his arms after a long time.
“Hey,” he said wearily, flashing a broad smile on his face. His grip tightened around her waist as he pressed his face against her neck and smelt the fragrance of her hair and felt the silkiness of her skin. “I’ve missed you.”
“Eli!” Malfoy called out rudely, interrupting what could have been a very precious moment. Ron and Hermione broke up instantly and both of them turned red – Hermione from embarrassment and Ron from anger. Eli came in shortly afterwards carrying Ron’s ripped backpack and a broomstick and bowed to Malfoy obediently.
“Yes, sir?” he asked.
“I was under the impression that you were getting food for the thestrals,” Malfoy replied. “Not, picking up homeless wizards.”
“Idiot,” Ron hissed under his breath.
“Mr. Weasley was lost,” Eli replied. “It’s a good thing I found him because he was on his way here alone- a dangerous task, no doubt.”
“I’d rather you had let him try to pry his way through carnivorous plants, it would have been amusing,” Draco said, sounding genuinely disappointed.
“Sod off,” Ron replied and turned back to Hermione.
“You were coming here?” she asked, her tone clearly worried.
“Yeah,” Ron replied. “I got your letter,” he continued, holding out the folded piece of parchment addressed to Professor McGonagall.
Hermione’s eyes widened as she realized what Ron was talking about. “Oh, Ron!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry… so sorry you had to read that.”
“Yeah,” he said. “The moment I read about that creature, I-”
“Creature?” Malfoy interrupted.
“Yes,” Ron said, puffing his chest forward and glaring at Malfoy. “This thing you’ve got running around your castle burning everything in sight.”
Malfoy’s expression faltered for a second, even less and he had already recovered himself. “Fat mouth, Granger,” he said angrily. “I saved your life and you go around telling the world that I’m torturing you with burns.”
“I never said that,” she said quickly. “And you didn’t save my life.”
“Master Malfoy,” Eli interrupted suddenly; clearly, he had been sensing the hostility and wanted to put an end to it. “I believe you are already late for your business trip.”
“Business trip?” Ron asked, suspiciously.
“Yes,” Malfoy retorted. “It’s what those of us with jobs do - work.”
He grabbed his bag and readjusted it on his shoulder, walking towards the main entrance. “I’ll be back tomorrow evening,” he told Eli. “We will talk then,” he added in a low whisper that only Eli could make out.
“Yes, sir,” Eli said, nodding. “Have a safe trip.”
“I hope you get injured!” Ron called after him and as the door shut, Hermione heard a few choice curse words from Malfoy that she hadn’t ever heard before.
“I’ll fix dinner, Mr. Weasley,” he said, nodding politely to Ron as he made his way to the kitchen.
Hermione grabbed Ron’s hand and ushered him up the long complex passageways and around the great flights of stairs, finally ending up in front of an oak door that led to Hermione’s beautiful room. “I guess things aren’t as bad as I had worried,” Ron said, eyeing the expensive furniture and lavish décor.
Hermione sat herself down on the bed and tapped the empty space beside her, indicating for Ron to come over. As they both sat down beside each other, Hermione looked into Ron’s eyes with a look of concern and regret. “I’m sorry for scaring you,” she said slowly. “I may have over-reacted initially.” She tried to keep her voice steady, realizing that mentioning the episode in the North Tower would probably not be the best idea.
“It’s not your fault,” he replied. “I over-reacted too. I bet Harry and Ginny are searching for me as we speak.”
“You didn’t tell them you were leaving?”
“Not really. The moment McGonagall’s letter arrived by accident-” Hermione’s face dawned comprehension as she realized that she had made a stupid mistake and misaddressed the envelopes. “-I got my things together and just left that night.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Hermione replied, taking Ron’s hand into her own hand interlacing her fingers with his.
“Well, in my defence, I had every right to,” he said. “The thing you described in the letter was no laughing matter – it sounded like serious dark magic.”
“I know,” Hermione said sombrely, leaning her head onto his shoulder. “You smell awful by the way,” she added.
Ron laughed casually. “I left in the dead of night and have been roaming London aimlessly ever since,” he said, amused. “I’m sorry if I forgot to shower.”
“So you really just left without even considering the fact that you didn’t know where the Manor was?” Hermione’s tone was disapproving but at the same time, she could hear the happiness in her voice, knowing that he’d come to look for her.
“I heard what Malfoy told you about the way to the Manor but he left out the part about how to get from the Outer City to the mansion itself… that’s when that butler comes in.”
“Eli,” Hermione corrected him. “He found you?”
“Well,” Ron said in a hesitant tone. “It was almost… almost as if he were looking for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was at the platform and I’d just spoken to some lunatic who told me that I’d never be able to find the mansion so I sat at the other end, near the front of the trains, on a bench thinking about what I should do next. Two trains came and left and he sort of…came up to me. He asked me if I was Ronald Weasley and I told him to bugger off but then he told me that he heard me talking about getting to Malfoy Manor. He said he could take me there, that he worked there. I didn’t really have a choice because it was either I follow him or go back home – so I followed him, hoping that he wasn’t some crazy murderer out to get me.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Hermione said. “It didn’t seem like he was looking for you.”
“Reasonable?”
“Well, the Malfoys are… overprotective of their house. I’d be willing to bet my life that they’ve got the entire village here under surveillance. Eli must have heard you coming and gone to fetch you before you killed yourself trying to get past the front gates.”
“I suppose,” Ron said weakly. “I can’t think straight right now,” he added. “I’m so hungry!”
“Eli cooks really well,” Hermione said, her head still resting on Ron’s shoulders. “You should go wash up before dinner anyways.”
“There are other things I’d rather do before dinner,” Ron said, smiling mischievously as he placed his lips behind Hermione’s ears.
“Ron, stop it,” Hermione giggled. He placed his hand over her waist and held her gently as he ran his lips along her cheek.
Before things could get out of hand, however, there was a prompt knock on the door and both Hermione and Ron broke apart. Ron groaned loudly in annoyance as Hermione called, “Who is it?”
“Dinner is served,” Eli announced through the door. “I’ll be waiting in the dining room beside the entrance hall, Ms. Granger.”
“Thank you,” Hermione replied and stood up before Ron’s lips could find her cheek again.
“Hey, I wasn’t finished!” Ron protested.
“You’re sweaty and hungry, like a true animal,” Hermione joked. “Go take a shower and we can have dinner.”
“Kill joy,” Ron said, making a baby face as he stood up off the plush bed. “I have no clothes, by the way,” he said after a while.
“I’m sure Eli will have taken care of that,” Hermione said, ushering Ron towards the bathroom four doors down. She hastily opened the door and they both a pair of green, silk pyjamas lying on top of the marble counter as well as a full set of towels.
“Those?” Ron asked, wide eyed. “I’m not wearing Malfoy’s underwear.”
“Ron, it’s clean,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes.
“Nope, no way!”
“Fine, you can come to dinner naked,” she hissed and banged the door shut, leaving Ron alone with a pouting face in the bathroom. “Idiot.”
---
Malfoy curled the thin wine glass in his hand as he glowered in the darkness of the small cottage. His tall frame hadn’t been able to fit comfortably into Lestrange’s weak, wooden chairs –clearly, a change from his lavishly cushioned chairs at the Manor. The darkness in the night was thick as the unnatural fog settled around Lestrange’s temporary hideout on the outskirts of Bulgaria with an eerie silence. It was past 2 a.m. and despite his best efforts, Draco didn’t feel as alert as he probably would have wanted to.
“I’m glad you finally came,” Lestrange said courteously, filling Draco’s glass halfway. His tone was casual as if they were sitting in living room in broad daylight and Draco had just come by for a friendly visit.
“I had no idea where you were,” Draco replied. “I’m surprised that you chose Bulgaria.”
“I’m just as surprised as you are,” Lestrange said, letting out a rough laugh.
“It’s a dangerous place.”
“Well, the ministry’s weak here and their influence extends only so far as convenience permits,” he said, smiling.
“I’d imagine that convenience is something you favour at this point?”
“It’s a luxury,” Lestrange said, his crooked smile still visible. “But all these years of hard work – literally, blood and sweat- have not been wasted. The Lestrange name is still recognized.”
“Ah yes,” Draco said, comprehension dawning on his face. He put his wine glass down on the table (better described as a thick piece of wood) without taking a sip. “Maximus.”
“You remembered,” Lestrange said. His tone sounded impressed but his expression remained as cold and blank as ever. “I called him on a few favours and well, let’s just say that having the Minister of Magic in your palm means a fair bit of convenience.”
“Are you planning on staying long?”
Lestrange readjusted himself to make himself more comfortable – a feeling that Draco couldn’t accomplish- and bore his yellow teeth in a cold smile. “While the weather permits.”
“It seems a bit warm here,” Draco said, looking out the window. “I’ve heard that rainfall is in…”
“Not that kind of weather,” Lestrange interrupted. “The kind that permits me to enter England again with very few questions asked.”
“It’s cold in England,” Draco shot back, playing on Lestrange’s analogy. “Far too cold.”
“Am I not welcome back?”
Draco’s expression didn’t falter as he pondered the question. “There has been no recent news of a new minister so you can’t get one of your men into the Ministry.”
“A piteous but trifling obstacle,” Lestrange acknowledged.
“Agreed.”
“I’ve heard that Potter is moving up, rumours say he’s going to be the next head of Magical Law Enforcement.”
“They’re rumours,” Draco acknowledged.
“I need to get back before he gets any closer to the top. We both know he’s going to crack down on security once he gets the power. If I can weasel my way back into England now, I can avoid a long string of trouble in the future.”
“Good plan, I suppose,” Draco replied, in a cold and nonchalant voice. He reached for his glass and decided that one sip wouldn’t hurt him.
“Naturally, I’ll need your help.”
Draco didn’t seem surprised or confused. He merely nodded as he set his glass back on the table. “Naturally.”
“Are you enjoying the wine, Draco?” he asked. Malfoy looked up for an instant and then his expression went blank again.
“It has a rather cruel texture,” he remarked, staring at the glass with a look of disappointment and smugness. “It’s a shame actually – I’ve always enjoyed the refreshments during visits with you.”
Lestrange let out a cold, hollow laugh that echoed around the dark walls. “You always had your father’s disposition,” he said, flashing another gritty smile. “Old Lucius – never one for an honest day’s work. He’d rather sit at home with his fancy drinks and big mansion than get his hands dirty.”
“For you,” Draco began with a chilly tone. “I am getting my hands dirty.”
“The question is, how dirty?”
“Enough that a little water will hide the tracks,” Draco said snidely. “I have a reputation to protect after all.”
“Excellent,” he replied. “I knew I could count on you.”
“How do you plan on getting into England?” Draco asked after a few minutes of silence, the anticipation in his voice was masked well but Lestrange readjusted his expression.
“I’m glad you asked,” he said in the same casual tone.
“It just seems that Bulgaria, or rather anywhere in the world, is safer for you than England.”
“It’s not the getting in that bugs me, but rather the staying inconspicuous. I’ll need a good place to hide, a safe one.”
“You are always welcome at Malfoy Manor,” Draco said blithely. “Of course,” he added, “my hospitality extends only so far as family is concerned – your cronies will need to find a sanctuary elsewhere.”
“Of course,” Lestrange said. “I’m glad you chose the right side,” he added. “You chose well.”
Draco saw his watch tick past the thirty minute mark, indicating that it was already 2:30 a.m. “And yet,” he said, with evident boredom, “You compare me to my father.”
“Well I didn’t say you had his stupidity,” Lestrange acknowledged. “But you prefer the luxury and power that comes along with this line of work.”
“Now come, Uncle Ralph,” Draco said, with a smile forming at the edge of his lips. “I think we can agree that power is the ultimate goal.”
“How so?”
“Power over people, over places, over fate – it’s what we all strive for.”
Lestrange’s expression changed to one of true pleasure as he reached for the thick piece of wood and grabbed a glass of mead off of it. “Now,” he said happily as his coarse fingers circled the container. “That is something I will drink to.”
He tipped the bottle feverously towards his glass and the warm brown liquid poured into it. Draco grabbed his own glass and raised it as Lestrange spoke. “To power over everyone,” he said in a drunken euphoria.
“Over everything,” Draco added and they clicked their glasses.
---
Ron strolled into the dining room casually twenty minutes late with his green jumper and jeans on him. As he walked into the magnificent room, eyeing the furniture with awe and savouring the smell of sweet food, he saw Hermione glare at him from where she sat.
“I took a shower,” he said defensively as he took a seat beside Hermione on the huge table. There were four plates, each with a different type of meat served with sauces, and a bowl of grilled vegetables with mashed potatoes.
“You put on your dirty clothes!” Hermione said, heaving a sigh. “Don’t you find that gross?”
“No,” Ron said honestly. “Truth be told, I’d rather wear muddy clothes than have Malfoy’s clothes on my back.”
Hermione rolled her eyes and turned her attention towards the food. “Have some,” she offered as she grabbed the nearest plate, which looked like it had chicken in it, and took a piece.
Ron grabbed the plate farthest from him containing a roasted slab of beef, adding a heap of potatoes on the side. “This smells good,” he added.
“You should send an owl to Harry and Ginny,” Hermione offered as she began to check on a piece of chicken. “They’ll be relieved.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said with a twinge of guilt. “They’ll be fine though,” he said.
Hermione reached over for the vegetables which were a little beyond her grasp; Ron stood up slightly and grabbed the bowl, handing it to her. As he did so, the bowl grazed Hermione’s hand slightly and she recoiled with a wince.
“What?” Ron asked.
“It’s nothing,” Hermione said quickly, spooning vegetables onto her plate absentmindedly.
“What’s wrong?” Ron asked again.
“It’s really nothing, Ron,” Hermione insisted. The pile of vegetables was growing larger as Hermione kept on adding more.
Ron took her arm and placed his hand gently on her wrist, squeezing it slightly so she let go of the spoon. He gingerly grabbed her long sleeve and rolled it up, his eyes grimacing in awe. Along her arms, the red visible lines of distinct burn marks remained as evidence of the happenings of the last few days at the Manor.
“Ron…” Hermione began weakly. “It’s not as bad as it seems.”
“Those were the burns you were talking about?”
Hermione nodded as Ron kept an unusually calm face but her eyes traced along his arms and found his hands, balled up in fists with the veins popping up at the sides. “Ron, trust me.”
His warms fingers ran along the burn marks and she cringed slightly from the pain of contact and saw the anger on Ron’s face. “He will pay.”
“Ron, listen to me,” Hermione said, placing her hands on Ron’s shoulders in an effort to calm him.
“Those aren’t a joke, Hermione!” Hermione could see the rage boiling in his eyes as he got up from the table and slammed the chair against the floor. Hermione rose immediately and took Ron’s hands in her own, gently running her fingers along them to keep him calm.
“He will pay,” Ron repeated. “I’ll make sure he does.”
“Ron!” Hermione said, in a pleading voice. “Listen to me.”
“There’s nothing to listen to – when he gets home, I will kill him.”
Hermione placed her hand on the sides of Ron’s face and drew his face towards hers, meeting his eyes. “I… I don’t think these are Malfoy’s fault,” she said slowly.
“What are you talking about?” Ron was calmer now and Hermione released his face from her cold hands.
“I think,” she said. “I think whatever it was that burnt me… that burnt this castle, it worries Malfoy.”
Ron still looked confused as Hermione took him by the hand and pulled him over to the chairs, seating him down. “When it was attacking, when she was attacking, Malfoy was trying to fight back and I saw him collapse to the ground and he was screaming.”
Ron’s interest was now peaked and his ears were sharply listening to Hermione’s words. “He was as afraid of her, probably more.”
“So, what does this mean?” Ron asked.
“It means,” Hermione began, “that there is something very wrong with Malfoy Manor.”
---
A/N: I know some people think this story is moving slowly, but to be frankly honest, it's a very long story. I've had this planned out in my head very carefully, and I promise you all, that you won't be disappointed!
“So, she’s a ghost?”
“Not really… it’s hard to describe…”
Hermione and Ron sat beside each other on the huge canopy bed in her room. It was almost three in the morning and neither of them felt the least bit sleepy – all their attention and energy was devoted to this mystery that lay within the mansion. Eli had long retired to bed after cleaning up dinner and after wishing them both good night, set up Ron’s room right across the hall from Hermione’s.
“Well, it does us no good unless we know what she is,” Ron said, stating the obvious.
“Not necessarily,” Hermione disagreed.
“What do you mean?” Ron said, squinting to get a better look at her expression.
The light in the room was dim, faint enough that the room wasn’t black but not bright enough that Hermione and Ron could see each other clearly. “I mean,” Hermione began, “that maybe… maybe if we know how to stop her, we can figure out what she is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“All creatures, ghosts, whatever you call them… they all have special characteristics that define the way they live, the things they do. Right?” Hermione looked at Ron, though for the most part she was trying to convince herself that her thoughts sounded coherent.
“Right,” Ron agreed.
“And when you destroy someone or something,” she began, struggling with the words and trying to make sense of them in her own head. “When you destroy them, you essentially try to take away those very characteristics, reducing the creatures to nothing but shells after which, you can just dispose of them.”
Ron’s expression became confused. “What defines this woman?” he asked.
“The flames,” Hermione answered. “The flames leave distinct marks unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.” She placed her hand over her burns and rubbed them gently.
“She inhabits the darkest parts of the mansion,” Ron said, remembering the story Hermione had told him.
“And, she’s vengeful. I don’t think she has any consciousness or a mind of her own – just the basic animal instincts, just the thought of survival.”
Ron folded his legs on the bed and placed his hands under his chin, resting his elbows on his legs. “That is unusual,” he agreed. “But where does that lead us?”
“If we backtrack from the spells that Malfoy used to try and stop her,” Hermione stared, “then we can figure out what characteristic it was that he was trying to destroy.”
“If at all,” Ron finished.
“What do you mean?”
“What if he wasn’t trying to destroy her?” Ron asked. “What if… he was trying to ward her off? Scare her away?”
The faint candles flickered gently as a gust of wind blew in through the window. Hermione wrapped her arms around herself in an effort to warm herself while Ron got up and shut the window, loudly. “You said it yourself,” he told Hermione. “You told me that both times you got caught up in this mess, there was a white light so we can assume that the same spell was used. But she came back the second time, so that spell doesn’t destroy her.”
“Well that leaves us with two options: either he was trying to save himself and her or she just can’t be destroyed. I guess the spe-”
“What spell did Malfoy use?” Ron asked, suddenly.
Hermione felt a lump in her throat. Her story had been edited out extensively for the purpose of Ron’s sanity and the imperius curse was one of those edited out details. “I don’t remember,” she said finally.
“But…you were…there, right?” he asked.
“Well, yes. But I didn’t hear him…” she said, trying to mask the shakiness in her voice. “He was just really far away.”
“Oh,” Ron said quietly. “Alright.”
“But I know it was dark magic,” Hermione said, immediately after. She tried to strain her memory into remembering the words Malfoy had forced her to say but her mind came up blank, the imperius curse was too strong.
“Well that doesn’t really help.”
“It does,” Hermione said quickly. “Think about it. If it takes dark magic to destroy then there’s a very good chance that it’s not listed with the Department of Magical Creatures’ regular threats. So that eliminates over half the possibilities – including a banshee.”
Despite Hermione’s adrenaline rush, her eyelids had begun to carelessly droop over his eyes and she knew that sleep was wavering over her. She turned to Ron and saw him yawning as well and felt a pang of guilt hit her as she realized that he’d been without sleep for over 24 hours because of her. The darkness in the room was now crawling over every inch of the walls as the candles were beginning to die out. The creaking of the branches was audible outside against the howling wind as Hermione turned back to Ron.
“That’s enough for tonight,” she said, placing her hands into Ron’s. “It’s time to sleep.”
“You’re right,” Ron agreed. “We’re getting way too worked about this.”
“I know.”
“It won’t even matter once you leave.”
“What?” Hermione asked, her eyes were sharp now as if it were broad daylight instead of early morning.
“When you leave,” Ron said, confused. “You don’t plan on living here, I hope.”
“No, no… I mean, I can’t just leave.”
“I spoke to Skeid a few days ago and he told me that there’s really nothing to worry about. Whoever it was that they were afraid of, well, he’s not coming. There have been no more killings.”
Hermione sat still for a few minutes. “That’s…great,” she said but couldn’t hide the uncertainty in her voice. Part of her wanted to return home to her normal life and finally put the whole Lestrange thing behind her but another part of her wondered if Lestrange would really quit so soon. And, another extremely tiny part – though she hated to admit it- of her felt the disappointment in leaving behind the unsolved mystery of Malfoy Manor.
Ron didn’t really notice Hermione’s pensive expression and got up off the bed to grab a blanket from the closet. “I’m not going to leave until the official release comes from the Ministry,” Hermione said slowly.
“That won’t take long,” Ron said casually. “A week, at the most.”
Why did she feel so upset about leaving? It’s not like she had planned to spend her life here at the Manor. Hadn’t she been so worked up a week ago about wanting to leave? Why now did she feel so indifferent to the idea of going back home?
The answer was, of course, clear in her head. The ghost. It wasn’t Malfoy, it wasn’t the luxurious existence and the constant pampering from Eli… it was the ghost. It was the hollow shell of a woman that patrolled the castle at all times, carrying with her the mystery of this ancient Manor.
Ron had grabbed a thick brown blanket that went so perfectly with the gold trimmings on the bed. As he climbed into bed and covered both himself and Hermione with it, she felt the warmth of the soft material against her skin and sleep clouding over her eyes.
“A week,” she mumbled to herself sleepily as Ron put his arms around her. That would be enough time. “That looks nice on you, by the way,” Ron said, gesturing at the small necklace around Hermione’s hand which she’d been holding subconsciously.
“Oh,” she said, realizing that she was still gripping it and released it. “It’s my good luck charm.”
The little rock in her hand fell loose against her neck and hung around the chain. She smiled, remembering the night her father had given her the little ivory rock and hung it in a chain around her neck. Tears fell out of her eyes, trailing down her cheeks and resting on her chin. The candles in the room blew out and all was dark, changing the environment into one that was conducive to the sleep that both Ron and Hermione had been deprived of.
Within minutes, both were in a dazed world of dreams.
---
“I’m afraid this is all the accommodation I can offer you,” Lestrange said, gesturing to an old bed frame with stacked cushions on top of it. “It grows on you.”
Draco looked at it sourly and pursed his lips slightly, thinking warily of his lavish, king-sized bed with cushions made from the softest feathers in the country. “Right,” he grunted.
He grabbed his leather rucksack and placed it gingerly beside the frame where it stood out against the old, beat out furniture in all its elegance. “Get some sleep, kiddo,” Lestrange said in a dim voice. “It’s been a long night.”
Draco straightened up and faced his uncle carefully. Up close, he realized that he was much taller than Lestrange who seemed to shrink against Draco’s six foot tall body. Draco felt oddly reassured and cleared his throat. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about something,” he started.
Lestrange flashed his rotten teeth in a smile. “Fire away,” he said darkly.
“Before, when you were in Austrailia,” he began, his voice was confident and bold without a single hesitation. “There were rumours…”
“Well there are always rumours, dear boy.”
“Well, these were more than just pieces of gossip: reports were filed and investigations issued.”
“Regarding what?”
Draco’s expressionless face drew out the moment before he spoke. “Hermione Granger.”
Lestrange didn’t flinch or become defensive in any where after hearing that name. “Ah,” he said with a foreboding smile on his face. “That’s just some unfinished business, Draco. Don’t trouble yourself with it.”
Malfoy became impatient and extremely offended. “Anything that you plan on doing within the next few months is my business,” he said, carefully adjusting his voice.
Lestrange looked at Draco for a second and cocked his eyebrow. “I suppose so.”
“Well then, it’s necessary that you do not do anything foolish while you’re under my roof.” Again, the rudeness didn’t seem to bother Lestrange. Oddly enough, Draco had the feeling that Lestrange only felt prouder as Draco got angrier.
“Don’t concern yourself with it, Draco,” Lestrange smiled. “I’ll be done with her in a few hours, a day at the most.”
“So it’s true then?” he asked, his voice completely steady as if he were in a casual conversation about the weather. “You’re planning on killing her?”
“More or less,” Lestrange shrugged.
“And how are you planning on finding her?”
“It shouldn’t be so hard, at least not when I’m back in England. A few contacts here and there should be able to get that mudblood at my feet.”
“I’d be careful around her,” Draco warned. “She is close to Potter.”
“Then, more the reason for me to take her,” Lestrange mused. “Maybe that will teach him to back away.”
“He’d kill you.”
Lestrange laughed loudly and the hollowness in his voice surprised even Draco. “Now, come on Draco,” he said, amusement in his eyes. “When did we ever worry about things like that? Things in the past were always done without care of insignificant pricks like Potter.”
“Well, Uncle Ralph,” Draco began, his tone cold. “As you saw, things in the past didn’t turn out so well. Or maybe you didn’t hear about the darkest wizard of all time falling at the hands of the insignificant little prick.”
Lestrange’s smile was wiped off his face. “Consider me warned,” he said curtly. Draco nodded as he turned back to his rucksack and removed his watch, gingerly placing it back in his bag.
“Do you know where she is?” Lestrange asked unexpectedly.
Draco paused for a moment and turned back. “Last I heard she had fled to some deserted town in the outskirts of London.”
“Keep a watchful eye out for her, will you?” Lestrange asked. “I’m sure I could pass her death off as an accident, if the need arises.”
Draco’s eyes immediately flooded with irritation when Lestrange suddenly spoke again. “I have heeded your warning,” he cautioned. “I won’t go around the city shooting spells! But…” his voice grew colder. “I am not leaving her alive.”
Draco paused and eventually shrugged. “Fair enough.”
“Excellent,” Lestrange said, his tone was light and casual again. “I’m going to go get some sleep now, you should too.”
Draco eyed the stack of cushions on the wrought iron frame and shook his head. “Right.”
---
The morning at Malfoy Manor was dimmed by the clouds overhead, hiding the sun. Ron’s face was twitching slightly as he slept calmly through the morning while Hermione watched him with amusement and worry.
A week. That was all she had.
Ron stirred very slightly, angling his body against the sheets. He squinted his eyes against the dim rays of sunlight that fought their way through the clouds and into the room. Hermione grinned and placed her fingers against Ron’s cheek, stroking it slightly.
“Hermione, stop it,” he mumbled as he drew the covers over his head.
“Ron, it’s morning,” she said in a sing song voice. “Time to get up, sunshine.” Her mocking tone seemed to irritate Ron more as he threw a pillow towards her and fell back under the sheets.
“I’m tired,” he said blankly. “I’ll wake up soon.”
“Right,” Hermione said, knowing well that Ron wasn’t going to wake up for another few hours.
“Mhmm…” he said. “Soon…”
Hermione rolled her eyes and came out from under the covers, scratching her bushy hair and looking down at her flannel pyjamas as an odd memory struck her.
“It means what it means. In the state you’re in, Granger,” Malfoy began. “No one’s going to want to try and sneak a look at you.”. These were the same set of pyjamas she’d been wearing that first morning at Malfoy Manor when she’d dreamt of Ron. She felt guilty thinking about that now - realizing that she’d been so angry at him that night – and turned to Ron to kiss him on the cheek.
“Bloody Malfoy,” she whispered to herself as she sat down quietly on a thick-cushioned arm chair with her legs outstretched on the floor. Of one thing she was convinced: no matter how dangerous, no matter how stupid and no matter how difficult the circumstances were, she was going to figure out the truth behind the ghost of the Manor. She had a week, at least, before any word from the Ministry reached Draco but given the extreme precautions around the Manor, maybe it would take longer. Her nerves began to calm down as she thought of the many possibilities that would prolong her stay at the mansion. If Skeid was to send any sort of letter to Draco, she assumed it would take a week, then it would be necessary to gather all sorts of legal papers that released her officially from Malfoy’s custody.
That was good, another two weeks.
Of course, she could make a fuss and insist she didn’t feel safe. That could buy her another week, after which she was sure Harry, Ginny and Ron would begin to suspect something – following that, she’d have to leave.
She sighed to herself, happily. She had bought herself another four weeks which meant that she had almost a month to figure out anything she could about that ghost and she knew just the place to start. She looked over at Ron who was snoring inside the covers and reassured herself that he’d be out for another two hours.
She had no time to waste. She grabbed a blue collar shirt, a pair of black pants and a thin notebook from the top of her desk, heading towards the bathroom.
As she reached the magnificently furnished washroom, she locked the door and turned on the marble taps, allowing the water to run a little. Within minutes, she had washed her face, brushed her teeth, combed her hair and dressed herself in her pants and shirt. Without a second glance in the mirror, she went downstairs, running down the spiralling staircase and through the huge oak doors.
She entered the dining hall and took a second to relax, gathering her breath. Grabbing one of the chairs, she sat down and grabbed a piece of buttered toast from the huge array of foods that Eli had served this morning.
“Good morning, Ms. Granger,” Eli said, appearing at the doorway. “Up so soon?”
“Yes,” Hermione said, trying to smile.
“Is Mr. Weasley awake?”
“Uh, no…no, he’s still asleep. I’d imagine he won’t be up for another few hours.”
Eli nodded slightly, his forehead creased with wrinkles and his bright eyes sharp and alert. He reminded Hermione so much of Dumbledore.
“Is something wrong?” Hermione asked, keeping her tone casual. She’d noted in the past how observant Eli could be and she wondered if maybe her attempts to play it cool were failing.
Eli pondered her question for a moment and then seemed to make a decision, grabbing a chair and sitting down beside her. “Yes.”
The sunlight in the dining room hit the floor at angles, creating odd shapes against the expensive tiles. Eli looked older now and the wrinkles that Hermione had noticed a few minutes ago seemed to be lines of fatigue rather than age. “What is it?”
“Ms. Granger,” he said slowly, as if unsure where to begin. “I am fully aware of your curiosity with regards to this…ghost, shall we call her that?”
Hermione nodded very slowly. She was tired of pretending that she didn’t care about what was happening. She looked at Eli and tried to put on an expression of determination. “Yes.”
“I believe- as I have come to know you this past week- that you are a resolute young lady and dissuading you would be only futile.”
Hermione’s lips twisted into a half smile as she acknowledged the compliment and agreed. “I’m not going to give up on this.”
“Nor should you,” Eli said, taking Hermione by surprise.
“What?”
“Malfoy Manor has kept too many secrets for too long now,” Eli said, his pale hands on the table were still. “It’s time that the ghosts of the past were buried.”
“But…but your loyalty is to the Malfoys,” Hermione said, still utterly surprised. “Why would you want me to uncover this?”
“My loyalties still lie with Master Malfoy,” Eli reassured her. “But I feel that sometimes he does not know what’s best for him.”
“And, me figuring out what this ghost is… that’s best for him?”
“Your assistance is what he requires, though he doesn’t know it,” Eli said softly. “He is a man of obstinacy and he has undertaken this secret unto himself, refusing the help of anyone else.”
“He would never accept my help, Eli,” Hermione said slowly.
“Much like you would never have offered it, if you hadn’t been attacked yourself?” Eli suggested.
Hermione sat still for a moment and nodded, agreeing with him. “But now your interest is peaked,” Eli continued. “You want to understand this creature; you want to figure out what she is because she has left her mark on you.”
Hermione felt Eli’s eyes move over to her arms where the burn marks still lay fresh. “It’s self-interest, Ms. Granger, that has you chasing this ghost around the castle.”
She couldn’t help but feel a little offended that Eli had referred to her as self-interested… selfish. But then again, he was probably right. If nothing had happened to her, she may not have taken the same level of concern. “What’s your point?” she asked.
“You and Master Malfoy are more alike than either of you realize,” Eli said, with a slight hint of amusement in his voice that was quickly covered up by the gravity of the situation. “He, too, has a personal connection to this ghost… this creature and much like yourself, he will not relax until he has put her to rest.”
“So, what you’re saying is…”
“Master Malfoy may not accept your aid directly but if given enough of a reason to trust you, he will take your theories seriously.”
“A reason to trust me?” Hermione asked, arching her eyebrow. “I don’t have to justify myself to him.”
“I know,” Eli said, quickly. “But there are certain pieces of information without which you can’t understand this ghost, pieces of information that only Master Malfoy can offer you.”
“But, you know them too.” It wasn’t a question or a passing thought. Hermione knew that Eli had as much information as Malfoy did.
“It is not my position to divulge them,” Eli said and she could tell that he really did want to reveal them.
“Why not?” Hermione asked but immediately regretted doing so. Her insistent tone reminded her so much of the girls at Hogwarts who would pry for gossip from other students.
“First of all, there are certain details that even I am not aware of. And secondly, they aren’t my stories to tell.”
Hermione sighed softly, enough only so that she could release the pent-up pressure inside her without Eli noticing. “You’re a smart woman, Ms. Granger,” Eli said, smiling now. “Your curiosity and your intellect are very rarely seen nowadays and I know you can put them to good use. You’ve already got a good start.”
Hermione looked up and her eyes suddenly dawned with comprehension. “You were listening last night?” she asked. To her surprise, she wasn’t angry.
“Not I, personally,” Eli mused. “Espionage was never one of my talents. But a house elf was kind enough to keep watch.”
“On whose orders? Malfoys?” she asked, irritation beginning to take over. She stood up loudly, knocking her chair back a few inches.
“No, mine.”
Hermione was taken aback. “Yours? Why would you want to hear what I was talking about?”
“I was sure last night that you’d discuss your ideas with Mr. Weasley and I wanted to see what you may think of,” Eli began, his tone was apologetic but at the same time, steady. “My original theory was correct: you caught on to some correct ideas very quickly.”
“Eli, I-”
“Ms. Granger,” Eli said, in his usual cool tone, also standing up. “I see in you the hope of burying this past. I cannot tell you anything but I can help you.”
“And how can you help me?”
Eli reached into his pocket and drew out a small envelope with a large red seal imprinted on the back: the Ministry of Magic. The writing on the front of the envelope was scripted elegantly with a small phrase: Draco Malfoy, from the desk of Henry Skeid.
“Skeid?” Hermione said, her voice going weak. This was the letter she’d feared, the letter that would end her days at Malfoy Manor and any hopes of solving this mystery.
“Yes, Mr. Skeid. My guess is that he would like to inform Master Malfoy that there is no longer any immediate danger to you and that you may leave his custody.”
Hermione sighed. “And how are you going to help me?” she asked.
Eli smiled very slightly and placed his second hand on the envelope, ripping it in half. “By buying you more time.”
“Wh-?” Hermione began, unsure of what to say.
“Good luck, Ms. Granger,” he smiled. “I’d start with the library – books are always a good place to begin, wouldn’t you say?”
Hermione opened her mouth to say something else but Eli interrupted her. “The third floor of the West Wing – right past your room, you’ll find a spiral staircase made of marble.”
He smiled at her one last time before patting her hand and walking back towards the kitchen. Hermione couldn’t help but stand idly, trying to intake all the information. Before he’d left, she was sure Eli had winked at her.
---
Draco leaned back against the velvet fabric in his lavish coach. The deep purple cloth brushed against his skin with gentle pressure, relieving him off the discomfort he had had to endure on Lestrange’s wire frame last night.
His visit with Lestrange was now over and millions of thoughts were circling his head, threatening to collapse his mind. Ideas, plans and details needed to be pondered, arrangements made and many other factors considered. He sighed and placed his fingers on the bridge of his nose. Things were beginning to fall in place.
His eyelids weighed down heavily on his grey eyes and he knew that in a few minutes, sleep would take over him. He tried to resist. He sat himself up straight and ran his fingers down his face, trying to waken the numb muscles. Then, he reached for a dark goblet that lay on one of the tables and overturned it, allowing his cupped hands to hold some of the water that fell from within. He splashed it onto his face and rubbed his eyes with is smooth fingers, trying to make himself alert again.
He would be back at the Manor in a few hours and he’d be able to rest then. But for now, he needed to stay awake. Placing the back of his sleeve against his forehead, he rubbed the remnants of water off his face and began to look out the window. He took his right hand and pressed it against his flesh, allowing the stinging feeling from the burnt leftovers to trigger his senses and wake him up.
“It’s getting darker, isn’t it?”
Draco closed his eyes as the voice sunk into him. It happened every time he felt pain – not only physical but emotional. The burnt flesh reminded him of Adria, of his past and the voice was growing stronger, as it always did.
“It’s only midday,” Draco replied, in barely a whisper.
“I wasn’t talking about the day.”
“Things are getting better,” he assured the voice. “It will all work out.”
“For whom?”
“You,” his voice was encompassed by the infinite pain being produced by his scars and yet, he didn’t want it to stop. He wanted to hear her.
“I’m dead.”
“Don’t remind me.” The pain had penetrated his mind.
“Stop doing this,” the voice said.
“It’s my fault.”
“It’s no one’s fault but his.”
“I left, I shouldn’t have left.” The numb feeling had now centered itself on his legs and he couldn’t move.
“Stop doing this.”
“Master Malfoy!” Draco’s eyes flew open as he heard the oddly familiar voice. “Are you alright, sir?”
Draco sat himself up – with pain – and looked around. They were on the roof of the Manor and by the looks of the worn out tiles and coarse peddle marks, they were on the roof of the North Tower.
“I’m fine, Eli,” Malfoy said, reassuring the worried old man.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Malfoy said, getting out of the carriage and stepping down on the hard rock. “I must have fallen asleep.”
“Your scars have reopened,” Eli said in a concerned tone as he pointed to Malfoy’s tan shirt through which a faint shade of red could be seen.
“How do burns reopen?” Draco asked as he grabbed a towel from his bag and placed it against his chest, allowing the blood to seep in.
“They’re more than just burns, sir.”
“I have to get inside,” Draco said, his breathing was now heavily irregular and he could feel his pulse starting to race.
“We’ll go through the North Tower,” Eli said, making his way towards the entrance to the cold set of stairs, holding the door open.
“No. Granger will see me.” Malfoy grabbed his bag, swung it carelessly against his shoulder and pressed the towel even harder into his chest. “I’ll go through the South Tower.”
“The South Tower is on the other side!” Eli protested.
“Right,” Draco said, making his way through the deserted roof. “Get to my room; I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“This is insane! How do you plan on making it across this mansion while losing blood?”
“We’ll find out,” Draco called back as he became smaller and smaller in the distance.
---
This is just a side note from me. I don't have the time to respond to all my reviews and so I just want to give a huge thanks to all my reviewers for everything they've said and helped me with. This appreciation extends out to people who have critiqued the story as well because you guys help me improve my writing which is definitley a good thing!
So thank you all, very much! =D
The walk back to Ron seemed a lot longer than it should have been. Thoughts were circling Hermione’s mind and picking at her brain with an unusual amount of persistence.
there are certain pieces of information without which you can’t understand this ghost, pieces of information that only Master Malfoy can offer you
There were particular things that Eli had been sure she would need from Malfoy -things that no one else could provide her with and that she couldn’t find anywhere else. What sorts of things? Any factual information about the creature’s being was definitely documented somewhere in some book in the Wizarding World – surely it wasn’t something scholarly that Malfoy was withholding from her.
Maybe an experience?
Maybe Malfoy knew how this creature became what she is today; maybe he understood the reason behind her rage. But why would that be necessary to stop her?
Thoughts like this swirled through Hermione’s sore head and she began to feel a sharp, throbbing pain in the side of her temple. By the time she had gotten to her room, she felt glad knowing that Ron would provide a distraction for her from these incoherent ideas bobbing around her mind.
She entered the bright bedroom and smiled to see that Ron had finally woken up but grimaced at the signs of the unmade bed and unfolded sheets.
“Hey,” Ron’s voice came from down the hall. He was wrapped in a towel from the waist down and his hair was dripping wet from his shower.
“Finally awake?” Hermione said, grinning as she went inside her room. Ron followed.
“Well it had been a long two nights and say what you will about Malfoy, that arrogant jerk has the finest beds in the country.”
“I don’t say anything about Malfoy,” Hermione replied. “You do.”
“Well, can you blame me?” Ron asked, innocently. He was still wearing his towel as he sat down on the carpeted floor, leaning against the bed. “The man’s a total pain.”
“Well, I would know.” Hermione sat down beside Ron and looked at him curiously. “Why aren’t you dressed?”
“Good question,” Ron said as he pensively gazed down his bare chest and white towel. “I have no clothes.”
“You have Malfoy’s clothes,” Hermione offered in a motherly tone.
“I have no clothes,” Ron repeated.
“Fine, serves you right for running away like a hormonal teenager anyways.”
“That was harsh,” Ron replied, pouting slightly. “You should be nice to me before I leave.”
Hermione looked up instantly. “You’re leaving?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Ron said glumly.
“But…why?”
“Well for starters, I only have one pair of pants,” he said, grinning. “And, I came by to check on you and you’re fine.”
“That’s it? You’re going to leave me?” Hermione asked, startled by her own surprise. Having someone she could talk with, especially Ron, had been a drastic change from her week of isolation.
“Skeid’s letter should be arriving within the week and once that’s done with, you’ll be back home.”
Hermione’s eyes suddenly narrowed at the mention of Skeid’s name as she remembered Eli ripping the letter in half, her mind listening to the creaks of the fine Ministry paper. She felt guilt overwhelm her; she was prolonging her stay here, worrying Ron, for her own selfish reasons and an irrational persistence to solve some stupid mystery.
“Hermione?” Ron’s voice came. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hermione replied quickly. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Me too,” Ron said leaning his cheek against Hermione’s head. “If it were up to me, I’d stay with you the whole time but I have to get back to the Ministry tomorrow for work.”
“Work?” Hermione asked, feeling suddenly stupid. “Right, work!”
“Yeah,” Ron replied. “Harry and I are supposed to go to Salisbury at the end of the week to round up some guys who’ve been selling illicit potions.”
“That sounds…exciting.”
“It’s never the same kind of fun anymore,” Ron said, heaving a sigh. “No more chases, fights and the like.”
“Would you prefer that?” Hermione asked, smiling.
But Hermione never found out the answer. Her pleasant conversation with Ron had been interrupted by a tiny little knock on the door which Ron got up to answer. As he moved aside, Hermione saw a tiny little house elf bobbing his tiny head up and down as he walked into the room.
“Sir, your clothes is ready,” he squeaked, holding out a pile of neatly folded fabric.
“Thank you,” Ron said, taking the clothes from him and admiring the fine job the elves did with cleaning his filthy old sweater.
“Your carriage is here too,” the elf said happily. “They is on the tower.”
“Thanks.” The elf left the room as Ron turned to Hermione.
“You’re pretty organized,” Hermione said, sounding impressed.
“Not really,” Ron confessed. “That butler of Malfoy’s arranged for everything. He told me to be by the rock garden at three o’clock. Do you know where that is?”
Hermione shook her head and shrugged. “We’ll ask a house elf, I’ll walk you.”
She smiled and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her to give Ron some privacy to change into his jumper and jeans. As she waited, she heard the muffled sounds of things being moved in a room not far from hers and she followed the noise to its source. She arrived at a stone-cut door that was opened on a slight angle through which the various voices could be heard. Not bothering to knock, she gently pushed the huge door inwards and saw the large room’s dark green walls that seemed were all centered by a ceiling that extended into the darkness above. In one corner of the room, two huge velvet arm chairs lay on a round Persian rug, each with silver embroidery of the letter ‘M’. Most of the room, however, was dominated by a huge canopy bed adorned with black sheets and silver cushions over a dark wood bed frame.
Hermione’s amazement at the extravagance of the room did not stop her from seeing the source of sounds – house elves. Four of the creatures were making their way around the room, bringing out new sets of sheets, polishing the ornaments and readjusting the huge paintings of some distant country.
“Miss?” a small voice came from beside Hermione.
Hermione turned and saw that one of the elves had come beside her with an inquisitive look on his face. “Can Bumble help you?”
“Yes!” Hermione said suddenly, remembering why she was here. “Do you know which way the rock garden is?”
“On the other side of the Manor, miss.”
“All the way on the other side?”
“Near the South Tower.”
South Tower. She couldn’t quite place her finger about it, but something about that place sounded oddly familiar.
“Thanks,” Hermione said as she turned back towards the huge door. “What’s all this for?” she asked, ushering to the room.
“Master Malfoy is having guests,” the elf squeaked.
Hermione angled her head slightly and raised an eyebrow. “Guests?” she wondered aloud. “That’s odd.”
“What is?” a voice said suddenly and Hermione saw Ron appear in the doorway with his green jumper and faded jeans.
“Hm?”
“What’s odd?”
“Oh it’s nothing,” Hermione muttered, thanking the elves one last time and leaving the room with Ron. “Let’s go.”
“Did you figure out where we need to go?”
“No, but we need to find our way to the South Tower to get to the rock garden.”
“Do you know how to get there?”
“Let’s just keep walking; I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”
As they walked through the long, cold hallway, both she and Ron began examined the various huge portraits that hung on the walls along with the occasional marble or granite statue.
As they strode by a marble carving of a woman with a snake curled around her body, Ron turned to Hermione with a sickened look. “I could think of a million other things to spend hundreds of galleons on instead of that stupid piece of rock.”
“It’s their family symbol,” Hermione replied. “They like it, I guess.”
“Yeah but that’s all you see most of the time…snakes.”
Snakes! The word rung a few times through Hermione’s already overfilled mind and she sprung up so quickly that Ron had to duck to avoid her hand hitting his face.
“What is it?” he asked, flabbergasted.
“There’s a passage by the main entrance,” Hermione said excitedly. “There’s a statue there of a snake coiling around the Slytherin emblem. It leads to a passage between the ground and it’ll take us straight to the South Tower… that’s why it sounded so familiar!”
Ron had a dumb expression on his face as Hermione sighed, remembering the day when Malfoy had shown her the statue and she’d seen the burnt painting for the first time. “Malfoy told me about it. It’s the quickest way to go to the South Tower.”
“Whoa.”
“Come on, Ron!” Hermione said, grabbing his hand and taking him towards the main entrance.
---
“Venio!” Hermione said quietly as the tip of her wand touched the cold, stone fang of the snake carved around the Slytherin emblem.
The ground shook beneath their feet and a small square passageway appeared on the floor as the tiles receded. Beyond the small opening, nothing but endless darkness was visible and Hermione heard Ron twitch.
“It’s not that bad,” Hermione offered.
“It’s a bloody dungeon down there!” Ron protested. “How do I know this isn’t some sort of a trap set up by Malfoy?”
“Because I wouldn’t lead you to it, idiot.”
“Maybe because you don’t know it’s a trap either.”
“Ron, will you stop being so irritating!”
“If there’s one thing I learnt from Hogwarts, it’s that going into dark, creepy places underground leads to nothing good!”
“But going into creepy, dark places in the Astronomy Tower to snog Lavender Brown is okay?” Hermione shot back.
Ron’s expression went glum. “You know, we almost went 2 years without mentioning that.”
“Are you coming or not?” Hermione said, stepping onto the shaky set of wooden stairs that led into the darkness below.
“Like I have a choice.”
Ron followed closely behind Hermione and as his head reached below ground level, he reached over and pulled the passage door shut, blocking out any source of light.
“It’s dark, Hermione,” Ron stated bluntly. “I hope you’re happy.”
“Yes, Ron, I’m thrilled.”
Hermione heard Ron take out his wand and within a few seconds, its tip was illuminated with a faint blue light. She reached for her own wand and pointed it upwards, whispering, “Lumos!”
With two lit wands, the pair made their way down the cold corridor, their feet aching against the uneven, rough surface. For the first three minutes, there was an eerie silence as they walked beside each other but conversation was inevitable.
“Malfoy saved you?” Ron asked suddenly.
“What?”
“Last night, Malfoy said he saved your life… when I got here.”
“It wasn’t him,” Hermione said knowing well that Malfoy would probably have left her lying there in the dungeons.
“He lied?”
“I guess so,” Hermione shrugged.
“Figures,” Ron said, hissing swear words under his breath. “And even after that, you can’t bring yourself to hate him?”
“I dislike him beyond all human capabilities,” Hermione said in a disgruntled tone. She didn’t like acknowledging such negative feelings. “I’m just not as… vocal…or physical about my dislike like you.”
“You should try it,” Ron said, smiling. “Punching and cursing feels good!”
“Thanks, I’ll remember that.”
Their walk was shorter than expected, though a full 25 minutes, and they emerged at the foot of the South Tower after climbing another set of stone steps. The rock garden was nothing like Hermione had expected; she had nightmares of vicious, man-eating plants, huge, ogre-sized boulders and creepy little insects wandering around. Instead, she saw probably the most beautiful garden she could remember seeing as her eyes flew from the huge, grey rocks embedded into the ground like icebergs, to the blooming flowers and shrubs growing in the little crevices and around the stones. The rocks dominated most of the soil and the shrubbery grew around it and sometimes over it but there was a distinct pathway between them all that led down to the centre of the circular array of nature where a shallow, round pond lay. Under the afternoon sun, the pond and the blue and yellow flowers growing around it shone brightly like the sun itself.
There weren’t that many animals in the rock garden apart from some exotic fish swimming in the pond and two hummingbirds and a sparrow on one of the larger trees. It was odd that the one place where Hermione expected snakes to be found, there were none.
To the side, well away from the flowers, a large carriage stood; it was poised carefully within view, balancing itself on its magnificent wheels. At the front, two large thestrals stood motionless, staring forward like statues.
“I guess that’s my carriage,” Ron said, unable to hide his amazement at the extravagance of his travel accommodations.
“I’ll write to you,” Hermione promised.
“About everything, please,” Ron pleaded. “Just so that I don’t accidentally intercept wrong messages and come flying down here to save you only to realize that you’re fine.”
Hermione smiled and took Ron into an embrace, leaning her head against his chest. “You’re too tall,” she muttered. “I have to reach up to kiss you.”
“No, you don’t.” Ron bent his head down and kissed Hermione gently, though she could feel the impatience in him as she placed his arms around her waist.
“I’ll miss you,” he said, his face barely three centimetres from hers.
“Me too.”
“I left you a present upstairs,” Ron whispered in her ear. Hermione looked up instantly.
“What present?”
“It’s a broomstick,” Ron said. “An authentic Viktor Krum!” he joked.
Hermione laughed. “And why would I need that?”
“In case you can’t stand another week here with Malfoy,” Ron said, winking. “Besides, a little flying practice wouldn’t kill you, you’re terrible at it.”
“Shut up,” Hermione said, playfully scowling.
“Okay,” Ron grinned and kissed her again. He held onto Hermione’s hand as he walked towards the large carriage and finally, as the door opened for him, he let go of her. “I’ll see you soon.”
Hermione felt guilt riding over her - why had that become such a familiar feeling? “Bye.”
With one last kiss, Ron sat down on the velvet seat and the doors closed. The thestrals trotted forward for a few seconds and then majestically took off into the air, soaring into the clouds and disappearing within a minute. A second sparrow emerged from the clouds and within moments, Hermione turned and ran.
---
Her footsteps echoed throughout the hollow passage as she forced her feet to move as fast as possible. She checked her watch and saw that it was almost four thirty in the afternoon and Malfoy would be back at any moment. Hermione’s steady hand held her wand tightly, allowing the path of illumination in front of her as she made her way through the criss-crossed tunnels. Without the conversation with Ron and the patient steps, she managed to make it back to the North part of the castle in ten minutes, emerging in front of the same snake statue.
She leaned against the wall for a minute, allowing her burning legs to recover from the run and then turned back towards the long stretch for doors in front of her. As she made her way towards her room, the huge portraits of Malfoy ancestors could be heard huffing and voicing their displeasure at her shabby, worn-out appearance and Hermione couldn’t really blame them. Even in the worst of conditions, Malfoy always managed to look composed and elegant whereas she managed to appear much worse than she felt.
In her room, she quickly grabbed a second shirt and squeezed little rock around her neck. please delay Malfoy she pleaded. There were no magical properties in her necklace but she hoped nonetheless that her good luck charm would pull through for her. She left her room and walked down the hall, entering a large room with brick red stone walls, a huge fireplace by one of the walls and a large rug in the centre. Past the fireplace, Hermione saw the marble staircase and darted towards it.
And before she knew it, she was on the third floor of the Manor. This floor was much darker, illuminated by candles because the sunlight was blocked out. She made her way towards the only set of doors visible: a huge stone door with carvings in it. She rolled her eyes when she saw what they were: snakes, again.
Pushing the doors, she entered the room inside and her heart skipped a beat. Even in the hurry she was in, she couldn’t help but stare. The walls of the large room were lined, from the ground to the ceiling with books; there were thousands of books, including titles that Hermione had only dared to wish she could read. She took in a sharp breath and smiled, this was heaven.
But before she could get any more carried away, she quickly reminded herself of why she was here.
Eli said that the library was the best place to look. She scanned the mountainous piles of books and wondered if perhaps he had gone a little crazy. There was no way she could find any information in here.
Dark creatures That was a start. She went over to a random shelf and began looking through books. By the time she had finished scanning that one shelf she was certain that the only place else she could have found these books, was in the Hogwarts Restricted Section. She moved on to the second shelf, encountering such titles as “Perfecting the Unforgivable Curses; their history and practices” and “Potions to die for”. Finally she came across a book that didn’t advocate death in its title.
Within the Shadows: A Comprehensive Guide to Dark Creatures
“That looks safe,” Hermione said to herself, grabbing the thick book and slamming it into an old oak table in the centre of the room. She pulled up a chair and began to flip through the pages frantically. She stopped when she saw the first image of a woman.
Hags
First seen in both Ireland and Scotland, hags are often seen as personifications of the elemental powers of nature, known for their grudges and unforgiving tempers.
“That sounds familiar,” she mused, taking out a piece of parchment and scratching some notes into it with a quill.
Hags are most often seen in the form of old, beat out women with deceptive charm. They are cunning creatures, known most for tempting young travellers in the countryside and then feeding off of their corpse. [See the story of Gildehert in Volume 5]. Destroying them is a simple matter – easier than most other creatures. A body binding curse will restrict their movement but the only sure way to destroy them is through the use of fiendfyre which produces defined burns that feed off the corpse for hours straight.
Hermione frowned. Was the creature an old woman? She strained her thoughts to remember, but her mind failed. “They are cunning creatures, known most for tempting…” she read aloud.
That didn’t sound right. This creature was a lot more animal like, with nothing but the basic instincts of survival. It wasn’t a hag, she moved on until she found another female dark creature.
Banshees are known as the lamenters of death. Their presence is a forewarning of bereavement, a fact often forgotten when onlookers hear their high pitched screeches. They are generally a more restful dark creature, appearing only when death is imminent but in the times of You Know Who, when death was a much stronger occurrence, their numbers increased greatly. They often rest in heavily wooded areas and are easily set off when they sense an intruder in their territory. Their main source of food is human shells (the body once the soul has departed); though in recent years they have been known to feed off the shells of animals as well.
Aside from their piercing screams, their fluid movements and alluring appearance strengthen them as predators as well as their ability to bind with dark magic.
Hermione scrawled some more notes. The screaming was the only thing that fit with the banshee because as far as she knew, nobody at the Manor was dying. Banshees were also never offensive – they only attacked once they’ve been attacked and if that had been the case, why hadn’t Draco destroyed her?
No, banshee wasn’t the answer either.
It was then that the doors to the library burst open and a pale Eli entered hurriedly. “Ms. Granger,” he said, his voice strained but still calm. “I need your help.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Master Malfoy.”
---
Draco released the pressure alongside his wounds as he leaned against the dark stone walls at the bottom of the South Tower. His breaths were becoming more irregular and rapid, creating a piercing pain in his lungs. His walk from the roof across the mansion had been bearable but as the blood kept soaking the towel against his chest his mind began to feel lighter. There was blackness forming around his vision and he knew it would only be a matter of minutes before everything went dark. In these moments of desperation, the darkness seemed friendly and inviting. In darkness there was peace, there was serenity and most of all, there was silence. The ringing in his ears began to recede and the hot, sticky feeling of blood on his chest had become numb.
What reason was there to live? He had no family left, no love in his life and his huge manor only made the feeling of emptiness hollower. And worst of all, a dark shadow of guilt had been lying mercilessly over his already cold heart, eating away at him.
He pressed the towel deeper into his chest, feeling the sudden surge of pain. He would hear her voice soon, and it would all be okay.
“You’re wrong.” The voice was smooth and soft.
“About what?” Draco asked, the words escaped his mouth much more easily than he would have imagined.
“About life.”
Draco paused. “It’s not worth living.”
“It’s also not worth losing like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re giving it up.”
“I’d deserve it – I have no reason to live.”
“Then find one.”
Draco felt a hollow laugh escape his lips. “Easier said than done.”
His body began to feel light and airborne and gusts of air flew beneath his arms. All pain had escaped from his body and his face felt relaxed and completely free of pressure – soon, the stillness would come.
“This feels nice,” Draco whispered to himself.
The stillness did not come. Instead, a head splitting scream filled the air. The scream was followed by a series of deep breaths and shouts of help. who was this?
“Draco!”
The pain resurfaced, first deep in the pit of his stomach and then slowly made its way through his veins and up to his skin where the burning began again. Draco could feel his heavy, unsteady breaths as they escaped his mouth and the sticky, warm feeling of blood against his hands.
“Draco…” the stranger’s voice had grown weak. “Say something!”
He felt a weight on his chest which went as fast as it came. His consciousness was coming back to him slowly and the blackness began to descend into a cloud of blurred colours.
“Can you hear me?” the frantic voice called.
The colours began to clarify themselves into shapes. Draco still couldn’t move but his marginally open eyes blinked twice to acknowledge the question. “Oh, thank goodness…” the voice cried, relief sweeping over the woman. “I’m getting Eli, just keep breathing.”
The lines around objects were becoming more distinct and Draco opened his eyes completely, glancing up at the frightened face of Pansy Parkinson.
---
“Draco…” the dreamy voice called to him. “Rise and shine, beautiful.”
Draco opened his eyes quickly and saw the smiling face of Pansy Parkinson in front of him. “Pansy…” he began weakly.
“Yes,” she replied, in a childish voice.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m helping you recover, silly,” she said, playing with a strand of hair on his head.
“I see that,” Draco said, “But must you lie on top of me?”
Pansy grimaced slightly and rolled off Draco onto the empty side of the bed. “You used to enjoy that,” she said irritably.
“Right,” he said and looked around him. He was in his room, tucked under his silky green covers with the back of his head against his soft pillows. The curtains were drawn but Draco could see the moonlight washing in through the lace. “What day is it?” he asked.
“It’s been thirty hours,” Pansy replied, answering the question he was leading up to. “You were out for most of it.”
“Most of it?” Draco asked. He put his elbows against the bed and pushed himself up into a seated position, leaning against the headboard.
“Eli mentioned that you were talking for a while, though I guess you don’t remember.”
Draco turned to look at Pansy and saw the extreme difference in the face he’d seen that very afternoon. Her straight, shoulder length black hair had been let down and hung neatly behind her ears and her fearful eyes were now cool and playful. She was thinner than she’d been back at Hogwarts and her off-shoulder orange sweater emphasized that.
She was lying on her stomach beside Draco and was propped up on her elbows. She reached for his bare shoulder and began tracing little shapes on them with her finger. “You gave us quite a scare,” she said darkly.
Draco took a minute to figure out if he was wearing any pants and after being satisfied that he was, he moved the covers down just a little so his bare chest was exposed. They were there. The burns had now become more defined than ever with a crescent shaped scar dominating the mass of healing flesh. The burning sensation wasn’t as strong when he pressed his fingers against the wounds and the redness had faded.
“Is it as bad as it looks?” she asked casually, eyeing the scars.
“It’s fine,” Draco lied emptily. “Thank you, by the way.”
“Anytime,” she said, smiling.
“What were you doing in the South Tower?” Draco asked suddenly. “…that was where you found me, right?”
“Yes, you were crouched away in some obscure corner,” she said. Her face had become more serious. “I heard your breathing and then you said something and I saw you.”
“So, why were you here?” Draco asked again, changing the subject as quickly as he could. He didn’t need Pansy questioning his sanity.
“A visit,” she shrugged casually. “You haven’t talked to me in months.” A mischievous grin appeared on her face again as she leaned in closer to Draco. “I missed you.”
Draco didn’t feel the need to shift away from her – this is how it usually was with her. “It was good you came by,” he answered.
Pansy sensed his indifference and playfully pouted. “Oh come on, Draco,” she whispered, edging in closer. “Didn’t you miss me at all?”
“Pansy, I don’t think now is the right time.”
“It’s the perfect time,” she said, bringing her red lips close to his ear.
“I’m injured,” Draco said.
“You look fine to me,” she replied. “You can talk and move about easily.”
Draco stared at her for a second. She was right. He had just had a fairly simple conversation with Pansy and he had felt no sharp pains in his chest. He had even managed to move the covers off of himself without feeling the familiar burning sensation. His mind took him back to the day he’d fought Adria in the North Tower. When he’d woken up, he had barely been able to speak, let alone have a full-on discussion.
“What’s wrong?” Pansy’s voice came.
“Were there a lot of healers?” Draco asked suddenly.
“No,” she replied suspiciously. “Why?”
“Just curious,” he said, feigning breeziness.
Her smile reappeared as she placed her hand against his face. “You should get your mind off of what happened,” she said, her black eyes dancing with delight. “Let me help you.” She rolled herself onto Draco and began to play with his hair again.
“How many healers were there?” he asked, looking into her eyes.
“That’s not exactly the kind of thing you’re supposed to be talking about now,” she sighed vehemently.
“How many?” Draco urged.
“Just Granger,” Pansy replied.
She saw the colour drain from Draco’s face as he sat up completely, causing her to fall back onto her side of the bed. “What?”
“It was just Granger,” she repeated, clearly annoyed.
“She saw me?”
“She healed you,” she said. “I would imagine she’d have to see you to heal you.”
“She couldn’t have…” Draco said, more to himself than Pansy. “I was in the South Tower…”
“Eli brought her in,” Pansy responded. “You were barely breathing when I found you and so I began to shout for help. Two house elves came by and I told them to go find Eli, one of them went and the other conjured up a stretcher and took you inside. By the time we got to your room, Eli and Granger were already there.”
Draco squeezed his hand into a fist and slammed it against the headboard, muttering a string of creative swearwords that Pansy hadn’t heard before. “All that for nothing,” he breathed angrily.
“Stop tensing yourself,” Pansy said, resuming her light tracing of Draco’s shoulder. “Calm down.”
“This is not the time,” Draco repeated tersely.
“Let me prove you wrong,” she said, placing a cool hand over his neck and running it along his collarbones.
But before he could respond, the door slowly creaked open and a preoccupied Hermione stepped in and suddenly stopped at the scene before her. Her jaw fell slightly as she eyed Malfoy, lying bare-chested on his bed, with a very comfortable Pansy running her fingers along his body.
“I’ll come back later,” she said awkwardly, rushing back out the door.
“Hold on!” Draco called, moving Pansy off of him and stepping onto the cold floor. Hermione stopped halfway and turned slowly.
“It’s fine,” she said, avoiding his eye. Clearly, she felt a lot more awkward than either he or Pansy did. “You can… get back to doing what you were doing.”
“I doubt it,” Pansy grunted from the bed. She sat up straight and put on her shoes, sighing irritably. “I’m going to get something to eat.”
“Ask Eli to give you a room,” Draco said to her.
“Alright.” She left the room and shut the door behind her, leaving Hermione and Draco face to face.
“I’ll get a shirt, if it makes you uncomfortable,” Draco said, turning towards his bed to find a covering for himself.
“No, don’t!” Hermione said, slightly louder than she had intended and Draco turned to her with a smirk on his face.
“Oh, grow up!” she snapped. “I meant that it’s important for the wound to stay exposed for a few hours. That’s why the windows are all opened; the cold air helps soothe the burns.”
Draco turned towards his windows and noticed them all propped open behind the curtains. It was then that he saw Hermione wearing a lavender sweater over her shirt and goose bumps along the sides of her neck.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“It’s freezing in here,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “But you probably don’t feel it.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked. He sat himself back on his bed while Hermione remained standing.
“You’ve spent the last eight hours with an abnormally high body temperature. It’ll take a while for you to feel cold the same way we do.”
“How did you know all this healing stuff?” Draco asked her.
“I learnt it,” she said slowly, as if examining a mental patient.
“When?”
“When I was training to be a healer…” she said, confused as to why Malfoy was asking her this.
“You’re a healer?” he asked suddenly.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said, curiously.
“You never asked,” she replied with a certain amount of oddity. “And I’m sorry about interrupting you and Pansy before.”
“Nothing was happening,” Draco shrugged.
“Well it certainly didn’t look like that.” Hermione mumbled, more to herself.
“We’re not together,” Draco said.
“Oh,” Hermione said bluntly. “I’d never seen her around here before, that’s all.”
“We have sort of… an open relationship.” He looked at Hermione to see if she understood what he meant but judging by her perplexed look, she didn’t. “It’s just that… often I find myself preoccupied with things and Pansy provides a good distraction for me.”
The lines on Hermione’s forehead creased as she tried to understand what he was saying. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said quickly. Clearly, she didn’t get it. “What things do you find yourself preoccupied with?”
Malfoy suddenly felt himself remembering why he had been angry with her in the first place. She knew. She knew that he had gotten those scars from saving her and she knew that he had done it twice – her curiosity was, no doubt, peaked and she would soon be asking more questions that he needed.
“These burns,” he said slowly. “I-”
“Eli told me,” Hermione responded. “You got them when you were trying to save yourself in the North Tower.”
Malfoy couldn’t help but smile inside. Thank goodness for Eli. “Yes.”
Hermione scanned him silently from head to toe and then suddenly opened her mouth. “Take your pants off,” she said. Malfoy gazed at her with a startled expression.
“Excuse me?” he said, that familiar grin reappearing on his pale face.
Hermione looked confused for a second and realized how her comment may have sounded. “You’re really a child, you know,” she grunted. “The blood seeped in through your leg, and you’re still wearing the same bloody pants.”
Draco glanced down at his legs and noticed the blood stains around his waist, staining his perfect brown pants. “Oh,” he said and reached out for a pair of grey trousers lying on a velvet armchair near his bed. “Turn around.”
“Why?” Hermione asked.
“You’ve seen enough for a day,” he muttered as Hermione rolled her eyes and turned to face the wall, away from Draco.
“So, what’d you do to me?” he asked, trying to fill the awkward silence as he unbuckled his pants.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what did you do that five of the best healers in the country couldn’t?” he asked.
“Let me ask you something,” Hermione said, still staring at the wall. “Would it be easier for five of the best hunters to catch a wolf while blinded or for a newly trained one with exact knowledge of what the wolf looks like and where he is?”
“Are you implying that my healers were handicapped?” Draco asked. He pulled the grey trousers over his legs.
“Not handicapped,” Hermione said coolly. Clearly, she was proud that she had managed to do what some of the best men in the country couldn’t. “Just un-informed.”
“I’m done,” Draco responded quickly and Hermione turned around. “So what was it, Granger?”
“Fiendfyre,” she said, reaching into her pocket and producing a parchment with scribbles over it.
“Cursed fire?” he asked, raising his eyebrow.
Hermione nodded. “I came across it while reading something about hags. It’s used to destroy them; it produces burns that feed off of their corpses, eventually killing them.”
“How charming. But that is useless, seeing as I am not a hag.”
“The effect is different on humans,” she offered. “I did some research after Eli brought you in and it’s more painful to us. But it also kills instantly if the exposure is long enough.”
“So I wasn’t exposed long enough to die? Just long enough to suffer pain and torture.”
Hermione nodded. “Lucky me,” Draco muttered.
“Once I knew what it was, I made a potion. It was complicated and called for some pretty rare ingredients – your potions cupboard is well stocked, by the way, I got all the materials easily.”
“Yes, my ancestors were a weird bunch. They liked to brew potions and feed them to muggles to see what happened,” he said pensively. Hermione flinched.
“Am I healed completely then?” he asked, turning to face her.
“Fiendfyre is dark magic,” Hermione said incredulously. “There’ll still be a sizeable scar and some occasional pain, but it shouldn’t hurt as much as it did.”
Malfoy stared at Hermione for a second and couldn’t hide his amazement. Despite his dislike for the bushy haired, bossy, know-it-all, she had saved him and he felt indebted to her and slightly ashamed, knowing that he probably wouldn’t have done the same. He had saved her, twice, but that was more out of obligation than care. He didn’t really have a choice; it was either save her or have the entire ministry come down to the Manor led by the Potter Posse. Hermione’s actions were totally voluntary – she didn’t need to save him. He would have lived, regardless but probably in more pain and discomfort.
“Thank you,” he said after a while.
Hermione was caught by surprise. “Malfoy, did you just thank me?” she said, a cocky smile appearing on her face.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he said as he raised his legs up on the bed and leaned his head against the pillow. Unwillingly, he smiled too. “But I suppose I do owe you.”
Instantly, he regretted his words as a knowing look flashed across Hermione’s face. “Do you mean that?” she asked.
“I don’t like where this is going,” he muttered. “But, yes, I did mean it. If you ever need anything, you can ask.”
“I do want something,” she said as a glimmer of hope flashed across her face. “Answers.”
Draco’s expression twisted into a frown. “No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask!” she protested.
“I can guess,” he snapped. “And I’m not answering your questions.”
“Let me help you!” she wailed.
Draco looked at her with a maddened expression as if he was staring at a lunatic. “Stay out of this, Granger,” he retorted, his voice was harsher now. “You’re here for a few more days; can’t you just shut that stupid mouth of yours up?”
“A few more days?”
“You will have to leave eventually.”
“You can’t make me leave until you get Skeid’s letter, and I know you haven’t gotten that yet!” she yelled.
Draco froze and his eyes narrowed. “How do you know I haven’t gotten it yet?” he asked.
Hermione faltered and her guilty expression gave it all away. Malfoy jumped out of bed and his eyes were fearless and cold. “I can’t believe you’d resort to that!” he spat angrily. “Hiding my mail?!”
“You need my help!” Hermione said. “You know that as well as I do. Without me, you’d be writhing in pain in your stupid bed.”
“I didn’t ask for your help then and I’m not asking now! Stay out of this, Granger!”
“You are so damn stubborn!”
“How is minding my privacy stubborn? If anyone is stubborn, it’s you, you stupid –”
“You’re stubborn because you won’t accept my help!
“I don’t even understand why you want to help! Nothing good has come from any of this!”
“Haven’t you ever just wanted to know?” Hermione asked, her eyes wide with anger. “And don’t tell me that this is none of my business,” she added, rolling up here sleeves to expose her circular burns. “This is my business too!”
“Like those hurt as much as mine do,” he spat, staring at her thin burns and mentally comparing them to the cooking flesh on his chest. “You need to leave,” Draco said heatedly. “Tomorrow, we’re going down to the bloody Ministry and getting all that paperwork done!”
“Don’t you see? The fiendfyre is a piece of the puzzle! It’s unusual for any creature to have that kind of power…”
“That doesn’t matter,” Draco replied. “I know what she is!”
“No you don’t,” Hermione corrected him. “You know who she is! If you knew what she was, you would have figured out a way to save her by now!”
The words hit Draco like a knife and his gaze became colder. His body was stiff and his grey eyes held nothing but anger and frustration. He saw Hermione recoil from his sharp gaze as well, instantly regretting her outburst. “Pack your things tonight,” he told her, holding the door open. “You’ll leave straight from the Ministry tomorrow.”
---
Hermione stalked down the carpeted corridor from Malfoy’s room with extremely flushed cheeks. Her constant trips back and forth between the Potions cupboard and Malfoy’s room in the past day had given her enough of an idea of the layout of this part of the castle.
She turned down the familiar marble stairs and walked past the huge row of windows that opened up onto the path of roses in the garden below. Her legs were detached from her mind, leading her carelessly through the maze like twists and turns until she reached the only place she knew how to get to. The Potions Cupboard.
She threw the door open and inhaled the familiar scent of rancid dust and dead flowers, leaning against the walls. She stood under the dim candles in the large room that hid most of the ancient jars, cracked bottles and towering shelves, making the place seem more unfamiliar to her.
Within moments, she felt the door to the Potions cupboard open slowly and a dark figure materialized. She didn’t bother turning to face the old man but when she spoke, her voice was still shaky.
“I assume you heard?” she asked harshly.
“It was hard to ignore the screaming,” Eli acknowledged.
They stood in silence for a few minutes and Hermione had the distinct impression that Eli was letting her vent all her anger out before proceeding. She did so gladly: taking in deep breaths and clenching her fists the side of her body.
“I underestimated his reaction,” Eli said slowly in an apologetic tone. “I didn’t think he would be so surprised at your eagerness to help.”
“He knew what I was going to ask him before I got the chance,” Hermione said, reflecting. “How surprised could he have been?”
“He was prepared for your questions, but I believe it was your offer to help him that caught him off guard.”
“I guess I can see that.” The stillness in the cold air was extremely favourable right now.
“Curiosity he was prepared for… camaraderie is something still beyond his grasp. I think he always assumed the burns would scare you off, that they were enough to dissuade you from pursuing this subject any further.”
“Much to his disappointment,” Hermione finished.
“Oh, yes,” Eli said, letting out a dark chuckle. “So now he has resorted to the only thing he can possibly do to keep you away.”
“He was just bluffing, right?” Hermione asked, not bothering to hide the strain in her voice. “He really can’t just drag me to the Ministry tomorrow and pack me off.”
“He can and as far as I know, that’s his plan.” The candles flickered gently and illuminated the hollow appearance in Eli’s face, making him seem older than he was already. He seemed worried.
“I guess saving his life wasn’t enough of a reason to trust me,” Hermione shot back, coldly and bluntly. “Clearly, I need to march into his bloody room with the entire mystery as good as solved for him to even consider my assistance.”
“That’s not true,” Eli corrected. “His anger, though surprising and extremely unexpected, is a good sign.”
Hermione looked at Eli like he was going crazy. “I meant it,” Eli continued. “Haven’t you ever wondered why he’s such a calm person all the time?”
“I never considered him calm – just emotionless.”
“He doesn’t display his emotions as readily… he’s in control of himself because he knows what he needs to do and how he needs to do it. You, on the other hand, Ms. Granger have startled him and shown him something very important that he hadn’t found before. Your discovery, might I add, was greatly impressive. You managed to figure out a very central and elusive piece of the puzzle.
“I’m not too sure about that,” Hermione added, though still beaming at the compliment. “I mean, fiendfyre is a very out of control curse and a lot more… theatrical, like it has a mind of its own. But with this creature, she had the fiendfyre under control very easily and the curse didn’t waver for a second.”
“What could that mean?”
“That she is more powerful than I had imagined because to be in control of such a dangerous curse… it’s remarkable. It requires dark magic beyond recognizable feats.”
“Well, I suppose there was no question of her power.”
“But the way she moved… she had such animal instincts but with such control over her attacks?” Hermione’s brain was beginning to hurt. That was never a good sign.
“The problem at hand is that you will be leaving tomorrow morning,” Eli said, registering the pained look on Hermione’s face. “And I don’t think we can afford to lose you just yet, Ms. Granger.” He formed a gentle smile on his face.
“I’m not ready to leave,” she agreed. “But I doubt he’ll see it that way.”
“Give me some time,” Eli said, his eyes focused on an indistinct object. “For now, is there anything in particular you need?”
“Some more information on Fiendfyre,” Hermione said, shrugging. “I checked in the library again while Malfoy was unconscious but there’s only so much I can find.”
“Ah! Now that I can help you with.”
He gestured to one of the floating candles in the Potions cupboard to follow him as he exited the dark room, leading the way down the narrow passageway. They walked for a silent ten minutes through woven passages and wide hallways until Hermione saw a familiar room with brick red walls and a large, stone fireplace, all encompassed by a circular Persian rug on the floor. Eli led her up the marble staircases and back onto the third floor of the Manor – the darkest floor, aside from the dungeons, that she’d seen. Despite the faint, floating candle, Hermione felt extremely blind and uncomfortable until they reached the large oak doors with the snake carvings. Pushing it aside, Eli made way for Hermione to enter the gigantic library of Malfoy Manor first.
Though this was the second time she saw it, she felt an elated jump in her throat as she found herself surrounded by the things that comforted her the most: books. Lined from the endless ceiling to the cold floor, the thick pages of knowledge -of which many were illegal, she was sure – made her feel serene and at peace.
Eli sensed the sudden lift in her mood but did not allow her to experience it any longer as he reminded Hermione of the limited time they had. He led the way past the books and ushered her over to a large shelf with only four titles.
Eli moved the four titles off the shelf carefully, exposing a small door knob behind the second book. He reached behind and turned it carefully, opening the door without the slightest bit of sound.
They entered a slightly smaller room that contained about one-fourth the books that were outside. Instead of large, soft chairs in the centre, there was a round wooden table surrounded by four thin framed chairs.
“This is a slightly more precarious room,” Eli warned. “No one outside the Malfoys knows about this.”
“My lips are sealed,” Hermione said, unable to contain her amazement.
“As you can see, the titles here are a little more…”
“Illegal?” Hermione finished for him. “I recognize some of these names,” she began. “A lot of these books have been banned by the Ministry.”
“All known copies in existence are to be destroyed,” Eli agreed. “But we can’t let such useful knowledge be wasted so easily.”
Hermione smiled. “How did the Malfoys come by all these books?” she asked.
“It’s a collection of generations,” Eli explained. “Malfoy Manor was always a much protected place and people often came here to hide their precious possessions. A lot of them never made it back to claim their belongings, so the items were placed around the manor. Most of these books were acquired as such.”
“So you think any of them have information on Fiendfyre?”
“You can check,” he offered. “If anywhere, the information would be here. If there is any record of a creature using dark magic as their offence, I doubt it would be in Ministry hands.”
Hermione nodded to Eli and then made her way to one of the bookshelves, running her hands across the books. “Good luck,” Eli said to her.
“You’re not staying?” she asked, suddenly turning around.
“Someone has to keep Master Malfoy busy,” he said, smiling as he turned away. “Let me know if you need me, Ms. Granger.”
And with that, he was gone.
---
The huge grandfather clock in the hall outside Malfoy’s room struck four in the morning. The bells echoed their way through the stone walls and distracted Draco for the length of the four chimes before he resorted back to worrying.
He hadn’t slept at all since his conversation with Hermione but his mind wasn’t strained or tired in any way. It was just filled with worries and thoughts. She knew a lot more than he had anticipated – or hoped. The one thing that had struck him more than anything else though was what she had said before he kicked her out.
If you knew what she was, you would have figured out a way to save her by now
Save her.
She had figured out that he wasn’t trying to kill Adria, that he was trying to save her. It would only take a few more hours of prodding around for her to figure out who Adria really was and her whole story. That would, undoubtedly, lead to more complications that Draco didn’t need to deal with. Lestrange was arriving in a week and his arrival required extensive physical and mental preparation which did not allow time for babysitting a stupid mudblood.
Draco paused suddenly and gazed out of the window onto the moonlit courtyard. A stupid woman, he corrected himself. Despite everything, she had saved his life. The antidote to the fiendfyre had managed to spare him hours more of unbearable pain – pain which, as he remembered his trip in the carriage back to Malfoy Manor, had almost driven him to killing himself.
And that was the other problem. The voice. The overwhelming temptation to hear that sweet, glossy voice often led to self-inflicted pain. Pain was the only way he ever heard her and it had taken him a while to realize that in his most excruciating moments, he found himself at the threshold of death from where she spoke to him. And more than once, he gave himself into that sweet temptation and allowed the pain to sink in deeper until the comforting sound of her words engulfed him. Once Adria’s story was discovered, it was only a matter of time before Hermione would find out who Natalie was and that was something that she could never know.
His body began to shiver and he looked down at his bare arms where tiny little goose bumps had begun to form. Hermione had been right; his body was becoming more accustomed to normal weather conditions. He put a black t-shirt that emphasized his broad shoulders and muscular build but hid his scars.
He needed a distraction right now. Something, anything that would take his mind off of Natalie, Adria, Granger or Lestrange.
He knew just the thing.
Slipping out his bedroom, he walked down the carpeted hallway until he reached a huge set of marble stairs that led both upstairs and down. He went down another floor, past a dining hall, a winery and into a corridor with multiple doors. He knocked on the one closest to him.
There was a rustling and a bit of confused muttering from inside but within a few minutes, the door had been opened by a very tired Pansy Parkinson.
“Draco?” she asked, her eyelids adjusting to the bright light of the candles behind him. “What is it?”
“I need something from you,” he asked, placing his arms in the frame of the doorway, leaning in.
“What?”
“A distraction.” And with that, he placed his pale lips against her pink ones and took her face into his hands, pressing himself into her. Her confusion melted away as she locked her arms around his neck and pulled him into her room, shutting the door behind her.
---
Hermione’s eyes flew open suddenly as the huge grandfather clock of the Manor began a series of six chimes, indicating that it was six o’clock in the morning. She looked around her surroundings slowly, allowing her hazy vision to adjust and saw that she was still in the library. She had been sleeping with her head on the wooden table, folded up in her arms.
“Damn,” she cursed, getting up quickly. The blood rushed and she had to hold on to the chair to allow herself to regain her balance. The last thing she could remember was reading the book ‘Newcastle’s Tales of the Forest’, a handwritten journal by a traveller named Henry Newcastle who had wandered the deepest part of the forests in Europe, detailing the many dark and illegal things he dabbled in.
As she scanned the room, she saw the book lying at the edge of the table and a crease in the page where she had stopped reading and fallen asleep. Would Malfoy already be awake?
There were no windows in this room but she knew that the sun was probably not as bright, giving her maybe less than an hour before she had to go back to her room where Malfoy would surely look for her.
Her head was pulsing slightly where it had touched the rough surface of the table and she placed her hand carelessly over it. She didn’t have any time. Grabbing the closest book she could find, she sat herself back down and began reading.
Dark Hearts
As she skimmed through, she saw references to werewolves, vampires and their curses, experiments detailing unusual effects of mixing wolf hair with human blood and snake venom. She sighed and shut the book, reaching for another.
Grimoire: Shadows of Immortality This was a detailed explanation of the seven different ways to attain immortality. Hermione cringed slightly at the mention of Horcruxes and she couldn’t help but feel slightly relieved that such a book was trapped within the walls of this Manor.
Nothing in that book either.
Her hopes were beginning to sink as she felt herself running out of time. She put it back on the shelf and searched around frantically for anything that hinted at Fiendfyre as a weapon for creatures. Most of the books were either handwritten journals of criminal witches as they dabbled in the deepest of the dark arts or books that contained a little too much information about illegal magical objects and curses. She suddenly caught sight of a leather bound book plastered against the wall with the title, ‘The Flames of the Fiend.”
Fiendfyre
She grabbed the book hastily and began to flip through it excitedly. The book was another collection of memoirs of a witch named Matilda Frogwart. Her eyes began to scan the first page that described the details of the rest of the book and her mind focused on the words in front of her.
December 23rd 1615
Mother has locked me in the closet again but this time, she didn’t see me sneak in the parchment and quill. Father is sitting by the porch steps; I can see him from the small window in the attic. Of course, he doesn’t ever stop mother when she tries her experiments on me – today it was a bite in the leg. It’s still bleeding but the experiment didn’t work again and now I have to sit until the stinging stops.
Light hinders the progress, my mother says, so I cannot sit outside with father or with the other girls on the street.
Soon, I will.
Soon, both mother and father will realize they were wrong.
The page ended and Hermione felt a knot in her stomach as she realized the Matilda Frogwart was a little girl. How did the diary of a 12 year old girl make its way into a collection of illegal dark magic books?
Soon, both mother and father will realize they were wrong.
Those words began to hold a darker meaning and the knot from Hermione’s stomach rose up to her throat. She reached forward to turn the page when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” she said quietly, praying it wasn’t Malfoy.
It was Eli. “Master Malfoy is looking for you,” he said quickly. “Hurry, Ms. Granger.”
“I’m not done,” she said.
“That bears no importance right now,” he replied. “If he found you here, your chances of staying at the Manor would be reduced to nothing. Please, hurry!”
She shut the book reluctantly and looked at the door. “Alright,” she said and left her unfinished research on the wooden table.
As she walked down the dark passageway on the third floor, the numbness in her head from sleeping began to feel more evident. “Why don’t we just apparate?” she asked exasperatedly. Her legs were sore from sitting on the chair all night and she was in no mood for long journeys.
“Only people of Malfoy titles can apparate within the grounds,” Eli said casually.
Hermione remembered the night Draco had whisked himself to the North Tower and that made sense to her now. “You can’t?”
“Not exactly,” he said deferentially. “I can apparate because I serve the Malfoys, as can the other house elves. But I cannot do it with as much ease as Master Malfoy himself – only to places that I’ve seen before.”
Hermione’s jaw dropped. “There are places in this castle that you haven’t seen?”
Eli laughed slightly. “I’ve seen more than Master Malfoy has but there are certain passages in the dungeons I’m sure, that I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing. The more familiar I am with a place, the easier it is for me to get there. I serve the Malfoys and so that is my title, no matter how inferior. Now, you and Ms. Parkinson for instance, cannot apparate within the grounds at all.”
“Pansy’s still here?” Hermione asked.
“Yes, Ms. Parkinson will be visiting here for a few more days I imagine.”
“How many more?”
“I’m not quite sure. I haven’t had the chance to ask her; I saw her only when she brought Master Malfoy in after his injury and then I showed her to her room, that’s been it.”
They were on the second floor and Hermione felt relief as the first rays of sunshine shone through the slightly open windows, illuminating the beige walls.
“Eli!”
Hermione froze as Malfoy’s voice echoed throughout the passage, ringing in her ears. Eli’s expression didn’t falter for a second as he made his way past the many doors and down another flight of stairs into a room Hermione had never seen before.
This room was about as large as all the others. It had bright white walls and intricately carved crown mouldings at the top, decorated with thin gold paint. There was an ivory couch in the middle of the room between two angled loveseats but the centre of attention was the dark oak grand piano sitting in the corner, majestically glowing in the sunlight from the oncoming windows.
Malfoy was sitting straight on the couch with a glass of water in one hand and the Daily Prophet in the other. His expression hardened as he saw Hermione cowering slightly behind his aged butler.
“What took so long?” he asked irritably, sipping his water.
“Ms. Granger was packing her things,” Eli said gently, bowing slightly and ushering Hermione into the room. “Have a seat.”
She looked around awkwardly and finally parked herself on one of the loveseats, sitting as far from Malfoy as possible without being too obvious.
“Doing it the muggle way?” he scoffed, raising his eyebrow.
Hermione’s forehead creased in anger as she sighed heavily. “You’ve called me that so many times, it’s getting old!” she snapped.
Draco’s expression changed into one of surprise. “What?”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Just stop calling me that!”
“Calling you what?”
“You know what!”
“No, I don’t,” he hissed.
“A mudblood!” she retorted. Suddenly however, she felt something wrong. Both Eli and Malfoy were staring at with confused expressions.
“I called you a muggle,” he said coldly turning his head back to Eli. Judging by Eli’s slightly amused eyes, Hermione guessed he wasn’t lying. This was probably the first time he’d spoken to her and used the word ‘muggle’ instead of ‘mudblood’. How odd.
“Ms. Granger’s luggage is packed and I’ve put it on the carriage,” Eli said obediently, breaking the awkward silence.
“Why on the carriage?” Malfoy asked. “Send it over to that shack of hers.”
The surprise of the word ‘muggle’ was now fading away rapidly as anger boiled inside her again.
“Most of her luggage has been sent off but I thought she might want an extra pair of clothes or some food. I’ve packed that in a knapsack.”
“Yes, we want this journey to be as convenient as possible,” Malfoy replied sarcastically. “Let’s go.”
“Now?” Hermione jumped up.
“Yes.”
“Breakfast first, Master Malfoy?” Eli insisted gesturing down the hall where Hermione suspected the second dining hall was. “It’s a long trip.”
“Fine,” Malfoy rolled his eyes.
The three of them walked two more doors and entered the second eating room in Malfoy Manor. This room was a little fancier with huge bouquets of flowers decorating each corner of the dark grey walls. At the centre, a long table dominated the room with chairs surrounding it and of course, it was covered in bowls full of luscious food. Pansy was sitting on one of the chairs with a plate of poached eggs and sausages in front of her. A smile crept onto her face when Draco walked into the room and she ushered to a seat beside her.
He looked at Hermione for a second and sat down beside Pansy, grabbing a bowl of milk tarts from the centre. Hermione, feeling awkward enough, sat herself opposite both of them and grabbed some French toast.
“It’s a nice morning, isn’t it?” Pansy said, looking striking in her bottle green cardigan.
“Not so much,” Hermione mumbled.
“Oh right, you’re leaving today, aren’t you?” she asked, though it was clear that she knew. Her voice wasn’t the same malignant and spiteful tone it had been at school but Hermione still felt an icy twinge when Pansy looked at her.
“Yeah,” Hermione said, prodding her breakfast with a fork. Draco seemed oblivious to the conversation, chewing his milk tarts silently.
“It’s a pity you can’t stay any longer,” Pansy said, her eyes focused on Draco.
“A terrible pity,” Hermione agreed, the sarcasm subtle.
“I can only imagine what it must feel like; having to go back to that little house of Weasley’s…what’s it called again? The Barrel?”
“The Burrow,” Hermione corrected, through gritted teeth.
“I’m going to have to be leaving soon too,” she said, sighing dramatically. “Being a reporter for Witch Weekly is no easy task. I mean, I had to be in Paris, Venice, Russia, Bulgaria, Germany… so many places! It’s a good thing I decided to drop by for a visit, or I may have been halfway to North America before Draco decided to invite me.”
“Glad you came,” Hermione muttered.
“Draco was surprised though, weren’t you?” she said, giggling at Malfoy. “A few unexpected visitors always keep things exciting. That’s exactly what I said to Samuel Davidson last summer. You know the Quidditch player?”
Hermione was beginning to get irritated right now. “Tell me, Pansy,” she said, feigning interest. “Was that before or after your father was sentenced to Azkaban as a death eater and your family’s house was seized by the Ministry?”
Pansy’s expression faltered and that familiar malice glimmered behind her tight mask. Hermione saw the slightest smile edge onto Malfoy’s lips but it went as soon as it came. Pansy had now turned away from her food and was twirling her finger gently around the back of Draco’s hand while he ate his breakfast.
Hermione felt sick just looking at them but Malfoy seemed so indifferent, as if he barely sensed the touch of her skin against his. He seemed almost bored and Hermione remembered what he had said yesterday.
Pansy and I have an… open relationship
The thoughts suddenly clicked into place and her stomach almost leapt out of its place. She felt nauseated looking at Malfoy and she let go of the French toast in front of her, trying to avoid all eye contact. Draco seemed to sense the sudden shift of the mood from angry to uncomfortable and his eyes shot up to Hermione’s.
She glared at him with cold eyes and he dropped his fork on his plate gently, standing up. “I’ll be by the carriage,” he said, looking at no one in particular but Hermione knew he was referring to her.
He walked out of the room effortlessly, shutting the door behind him. Hermione knew she couldn’t prolong the moment anymore and got out of her chair as well. It was time for her to leave.
“I’m sorry about your parents, by the way,” Pansy called. Hermione tried to hear the mockery in her voice but she heard nothing this time.
“Thanks,” she replied vacantly.
“I mean it,” Pansy urged. “It’s difficult to lose your parents and especially at the hands of such a high profiled killer.”
Hermione turned her head slowly and examined Pansy. “How… how did you know?”
“Draco told me,” she shrugged. “Last night…”
Hermione scowled at the expression of sudden triumph on Pansy’s face as she mentioned ‘last night’. “Right… well, thanks.”
That made sense now. She had wondered why Pansy hadn’t been shocked or even the least bit surprised at her presence at the Manor. Draco had told her that she was running from the grasps of a madman… great.
“Bye,” Hermione said blankly as she turned the knob and opened the door, looking at the beige hallway for the last time.
---
The thestrals began to glide forward slowly, effortlessly pulling the weight of two fully grown wizards, a huge carriage stuffed with velvet cushions and an old rucksack containing clothes and food. As Hermione felt her stomach lurch, she closed her eyes slightly, remembering the feeling of fear she got when the creatures took flight.
Malfoy was sitting across from her but instead of looking amused like he had done the last time they were here, he had a troubled expression on his face. Hermione figured that she really had startled him yesterday with her sudden outburst.
The thestrals were now in mid-air, soaring sumptuously through the clouds as the two strangers in the carriage looked away from each other. Hermione couldn’t help but look behind her at the opulent mansion behind her that was fading into the distance. Her eyes could still make out the North Tower on which she had first landed and the beautiful rock garden by the South Tower. And of course, somewhere within those very walls, a creature wailed in the darkness, pleased that its secret was to remain buried forever.
She closed her eyes and let the memory of the mansion fade into her mind. Despite the irritable company she had had to deal with, her stay at Malfoy Manor had ignited the same familiar spark in her that she had felt when at Hogwarts with Harry and Ron; the spark that ignited into a fire of mystery, adventure and curiosity… a fire that she hadn’t experienced in a long time.
And of course, there was Eli. As she had boarded the carriage, he had held her hand gently and placed a fragile kiss on it. It wasn’t the kind of heartfelt moment that she had been expecting, but then again, the twinkle in Eli’s eyes told her that maybe this wasn’t the last time she’d ever see him again.
“Granger?”
Hermione’s eyes opened as Draco called her name. “What is it?” she asked irritably, still not looking at him.
“I sent Weasley an owl last night,” he informed her. “We’re supposed to be done with all the paperwork and at his place at 5 p.m.”
“Great.” She turned back out to look at the window.
“Is there anything else you need?” he asked. “Your luggage has all been sent back.”
Hermione looked at him with bare eyes and shook her head. “I’m fine.”
“Good,” he replied coldly. “I figure we might as well get a head start on the paperwork.”
Hermione scoffed. “Yeah, we don’t want to prolong this happy journey together,” she snapped.
Malfoy reached into his briefcase marked with an ‘L’ and produced a stack of papers with the official Ministry emblem on them. “Do you have a quill?” he asked.
“No,” she replied flatly.
He reached into the briefcase again and produced a well-trimmed feather quill, handing it to Hermione. “Read through them if you want, it’s all basically the release forms.”
“Right.” She began to skim through the paragraphs of official jargon until her eyes could no longer bear the words on the page in front of her. “Where do I sign?”
“Wherever there’s a blank with ‘Hermione Granger’ under it.”
Hermione sat up suddenly and let the last sentence register into her head. This was the first time that Malfoy had ever said her name out loud to her. It sounded so weird when it was Draco’s bold voice delivering the name that she took a second to hear it again in her head. Unlike most people she knew, he over emphasized the ‘io’ part of her name, making it sound deeper and slightly fancier than it was.
Draco, too, seemed to have realized this peculiar fact but he didn’t look up from his papers. All Hermione could see was that his eyes, which had been scanning lines before, were frozen at one word. He wasn’t reading anymore and she was sure that he was repeating the words in his head as if he had just said something that was difficult to pronounce.
“Uh… yeah…okay,” she said, trying to mask the embarrassment that she felt. These were two people who had known each other since they were eleven years old and for the first time in over 10 years, one had said the other’s name… this had to have been some sort of record.
She grabbed the quill and scribbled her messy signature over the line on the first page, then proceeding to the second page. Malfoy seemed to have moved on as well from the momentary pause as his quill was scratching against the papers.
“If we’re doing all this paperwork here, why are we going to the Ministry?” Hermione asked.
“Standard procedures,” Malfoy said, not looking up. “Skeid needs to make sure everything is in order.”
“In order?”
Malfoy heaved an irritable sigh. Her curiosity was annoying him again. “The usual kind of stuff that he needs to talk to you about: he’ll thank you for bearing with the whole problem first, ask you about how you’re holding up after your parents’ deaths, explain any leads they have on Lestrange and the reason why they’re letting you go out of custody.”
“Oh… okay.”
“And then there’s some questions he’ll ask you and a medical exam.”
Hermione’s head shot up so quickly that she felt a moment of dizziness rush through her. She gaped at Draco with a horrified expression and even his perfect mask couldn’t hide his expression of worry. Suddenly Hermione understood the troubled expression he had been wearing at the beginning of the journey.
He was afraid. A medical exam would mean that she would have to be face to face with a healer who would check her from head to toe and ensure she was in fine physical shape, or at least as good as she was before. It would take a three year old with scissors two minutes to find the burns on her arms and legs and another three minutes to completely reveal the scars. It would take an experienced Ministry healer less than thirty seconds.
“A medical exam?” she asked again, confirming what she knew she had heard.
“Yes,” Draco replied, and though his voice was casual she could see the apprehension in his eyes. “I hope you’re not as afraid of needles as you are of heights,” he added.
Hermione rolled her eyes at his feeble attempt to hide his anxiety. “They’ll find the burns,” she said to him, choosing to be blunt rather than speak in code. Draco’s face faltered for a second but before she knew it, he had his mask back on. She had to give him some credit: it took a lot of effort to maintain such a blank expression.
“I’d assume so,” he agreed.
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it?”
“Because you know as well as I do that they’re going to ask questions.”
“And you will answer them,” he replied indifferently.
“But…? You know you can’t afford to have the Ministry know the truth…” Hermione began unconfidently.
Draco shoulders squared suddenly and his jaw clenched. Without warning, he reached behind him and produced a thick, brown palm-sized bad. “Is this enough?” he said icily as he handed her the pouch.
Hermione’s brown eyes widened. “What is this?” she asked quizzically.
Malfoy didn’t respond to her, instead choosing to stare out the window with a blank expression. Hermione could see past his transparent veil into the red fury in his eyes. She reached into the bag and felt her fingers press against something smooth and cold… there were many things in there. She looked up at Malfoy again and when she got no reaction, she overturned the bag in her lap.
A heap of gold coins fell onto her and by a quick glance over them; Hermione estimated there were over 1000 galleons in the pile.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Money,” Malfoy replied coldly, turning to face Hermione again.
“What for?”
“Your silence.”
Hermione now had a horrified look on her face. The coins on her lap were sparkling in the sunlight but all Hermione could do was focus on the perverse, cold man sitting across from her. “You… you…you” She couldn’t go on and her eyes welled up with tears. “You selfish, self-centered ass!” she screamed.
Tears were now mercilessly spilling over her face as she spoke to a startled Malfoy. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to think of me like that!” she cried. “You… complete… jerk!”
“Granger-”
“Shut up! Do you think I can be bought? After over ten years of knowing me, you honestly have the audacity to think that you can throw gold in my face and then order me around?! Those cheap tactics may have worked with your twisted friends but I… is that how I look to you? After all I’ve done against Voldemort and… and the death eaters, you still think that you can buy me?! ”
Malfoy was still staring at Hermione with a confused look on his face. “You can’t just assume people are lower than you because they’re poorer! I may not have your money or your stupid big mansion but I go home every night to a family,” she snapped. “When was the last time you sat at dinner with people who made you feel like no one else mattered but you? When was the last time anyone held your hand and looked at you like they could never stop looking?”
Malfoy looked at her with a blank expression. Hermione’s flushed cheeks and wet eyes were an overwhelming sight for the distant man and he could feel the heat radiating off her drenched face.
“I don’t want your disgusting money,” she said, as she wiped away her tears with her sleeve. “I don’t want your precious Malfoy gold. And I can’t believe you have the nerve to think of me as low as you. I don’t want to blackmail you… keep your filthy money. I hope someday you’ll come to realize that not all things are made of silver and gold.” She flung the gold coins off her lap and they cackled against the seats as they fell onto the plush carpet.
That was the last straw.
“If you don’t want the money then don’t take it,” Malfoy said, his fists tightened and his jaw clasped. “And don’t you dare think that just because you spent a few measly days in my house that you know me inside out. You think I’m narrow minded when you, with your haughtiness and pride thinking no one can be smarter than you, assume that just because I have money, I had no family.”
Hermione glared at him with livid eyes. “What do you think? That I wake up every morning and plan out all the awful things I’m going to do today to ruin peoples’ lives? I used to have a family!” he shouted.
His voice was shaking now and Hermione felt herself recoil slightly. “I had parents and friends and girlfriends and colleagues!” His voice was more controlled but Hermione saw the fury in his dim, grey eyes. “I used to have a family.”
The anger in Hermione hadn’t subsided enough to make her feel sorry for the livid man who sat across from her. She turned away, glancing at the grey sky and tried to distract herself with the indistinct shapes of the clouds. Despite her reluctance, he had shut her up.
---
“Ms. Granger! A pleasure to meet you again, my dear!”
Skeid came striding up the hallway as soon as his short, keen secretary had informed him that Mr. Malfoy and Ms. Granger were here. Hermione and Draco sat at opposite ends of a long stretch of chairs, each staring at the wall closet to them, wrapped up in their own thoughts.
“And of course, Mr. Malfoy! It’s been far too long, Draco!”
The tall man seemed a lot more enthusiastic since their last meeting but then again, Hermione reminded herself, he had been informing her of her parents’ deaths and she hadn’t been with a man whose name sent shivers down the spine of every Ministry official. His square spectacles sat on the edge of his blunt nose and his grey hairs seemed darker and better covered.
Malfoy got up slowly and shook Skeid’s eager hand with a short smile. “Let’s head on into the office,” Skeid suggested, holding his hand out to Hermione as he led the pair of them down the grey hallway into his large office. Nothing much had changed at all in these past three weeks; the oversized oak desk still sat in the middle of room, surrounded by three cushioned brown chairs, right beside filing cabinets and a huge stone fireplace.
“May I get you both something to drink?” he asked, ushering the two of them to the brown chairs and seating himself on the opposite side of the desk.
“I’m fine,” Draco said and Skeid turned to Hermione.
“Me too,” she said quickly.
“Very well, down to business already, I see?” he smiled hastily and reached out under his stacks of papers, pulling out a thin blue folder.
“Now before I begin, Ms. Granger, let me extend my thanks to you on behalf of the entire department for your patience in dealing with us.”
Hermione saw Draco from the corner of her eye as Skeid mumbled away a series of rehearsed gratifications. He was staring at him in a very professional manner though his expression was bored.
“-a hard time dealing with this, I’m sure. It’s truly a pleasure working with someone as cooperative and adjusting as you.”
Hermione nodded swiftly and flashed Skeid a quick smile. “Yes, right.”
“Once again, my sincerest condolences for your parents’ deaths,” he said, his enthusiastic voice turning gentle. “Are you holding up well?
“Fine, thank you,” Hermione said, still glancing at Draco’s unmoving expression. She felt a feeling of amazement as Skeid began to run through the agenda that Draco had guessed.
“That’s good to know. And you’ll be glad to hear that Rodolphus Lestrange has been tracked to somewhere in Southern Europe, much farther than we had originally predicted. We suspected he was lingering in Northern France.”
“Ah, okay,” Hermione said. Her responses were now automatic sounds that she made when Skeid paused.
“His distance and our forewarning of course, gives us a very good idea of the possible route he’ll be taking next. With no possible way of getting back in London, it is my pleasure to inform you, Ms. Granger, that you are not in any real danger.”
“That’s good to know,” she said, trying to fake enthusiasm. She was glad to know that Lestrange had no way of entering London but in all honesty, with Ron and Harry by her side, she had never really sensed the danger in the first place.
“-therefore, released from the custody of Mr. Malfoy and can return to your house,” he finished, taking a deep breath and clasping his hands together dramatically.
“Alright.”
“And now, unfortunately, we have the boring protocols to follow through upon – I’ll try my best to shorten them to the bare necessities.”
He opened his blue file and produced a sheet of parchment. “Ms. Granger, there’s a healer waiting in the second room down the hallway, to your right. She’ll just do a quick once over to make sure you’re healthy to go back.”
Hermione’s gaze met Draco’s for a brief second and she got up, sliding her chair back. “Sure.”
---
“And the protective measures undertaken?” Skeid asked, looking at Draco and then back at his paper.
“We had the perimeter secured with a variety of charms, including a Fidelus Charm,” Draco explained. This was the third question he’d had to answer as part of the formalities. “Ms. Granger was always under the surveillance of my reliable caretaker. She was informed of all possible exits that led out into the grounds and the conditions under which specific routes were to be chosen over others.”
“Were there any issues with that?”
“None at all,” Draco replied smoothly. “Ms. Granger was very compliant with the regulations and protective measures.”
“Excellent.”
Draco gazed out the translucent glass door to Skeid’s office down the hall. His mind had been preoccupied for the last 14 minutes as Hermione had made her way down the same narrow passage and turned on the right.
“Were there any problems with dark magic or the like?” Skeid asked.
Draco didn’t hesitate for a second. “None whatsoever pertaining to Lestrange.” He hadn’t lied.
“Right, right,” Skeid muttered, checking off things and writing notes beside them. “That sounds perfect, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco paused to give Skeid a moment to gather his papers and stuff them back into his blue file. “Is that all?” he asked.
“Yes,” he replied cheerfully.
“May I leave, then? I’d hate to press but I have somewhere to be tonight.”
“Once Ms. Granger gets back and I look over the report, that will be it,” he said, smiling nervously. “Would you like a glass of water?”
Draco didn’t have a chance to answer as a piercing scream rang through the hallway. Both men ran forward into the corridor and heard it again, the source of the scream was clear.
It was the second room to the right.
---
“Ms. Granger, what on earth happened?” Skeid cried, bursting into the room. The healer’s examination room was a small one with stone walls, a large examination table (on which Hermione currently sat) and a desk over at the corner with papers on top.
Beside Hermione, Malfoy saw a pale, old woman with curly dark hair and very pointed features. She may have been really pretty at another time but that was hard to see with the innumerable green boils on her face.
“Felice! My dear!” Skied said, looking at his bewitched employee. “What happened to you?”
“That girl!” the woman shrieked, pointing an accusing finger at Hermione.
Malfoy turned to Hermione with a perplexed expression as she put on an innocent and fearful face in front of the Head of Magical Law Enforcement. “I forgot to tell her, Mr. Skeid,” Hermione said in an apologetic tone. “Oh please, I’m so sorry!”
“Tell her what?” the frantic Ministry official said, leaning over the hysterical woman and mumbling soothing words to her.
“I’m hideous!” the healer cried. “I’ll never be able to leave my house!”
“Oh for heaven’s sake, you’re a healer, get it together!” Hermione said irritably and then quickly composed herself. “I mean, I’m so sorry!”
“Felice, what happened?” he asked the woman.
“I was doing my examination,” she said, sobbing. “I got past the face and asked her to hold out her hand so I can do an injury spell. I touched her fingers and then… oh! All these sick things started popping up on my face!”
She turned her head away, as if afraid that her face might repel others in the room.
“Why on earth did that happen?” Skied asked.
“It was part of the protection!” Hermione wailed in her dramatic apologetic voice. “Malfoy put the spell on me before we got to the Manor and I must have forgotten, oh! How foolish of me!”
She tried to produce a few synthetic tears but failed. However, her theatrical performance was enough to convince Skeid that this was all a misunderstanding. “It’s alright, dear,” he said sympathetically, placing his arm on Hermione’s shoulder. “What sort of spell was this, Mr. Malfoy?”
Malfoy was startled by his sudden inclusion in the conversation.
“It was a… Hornwart Charm…” Hermione said.
“I’ve… I’ve never heard of that…”
“Yes, it’s uncommon,” Hermione began. “Quite advanced. If anyone so much as touches me, they get green boils all over their faces!”
“Oh my!”
“It was a protective measure.”
Skeid turned to Draco and nodded fretfully. “You seem to have protected her very diligently, Mr. Malfoy.”
He didn’t pause to hear Malfoy’s response but instead, scrambled over to the sobbing healer at the desk and tried to comfort her. The healer however, seemed to be inconsolable and kept shoving Skeid’s arm off her shoulder as she howled overemotionally.
Hermione looked over at Malfoy with a knowing expression and nodded her head towards Skeid; he understood what she meant.
“We’ve taken up enough of your time, Mr. Skeid,” Malfoy said, feigning an impressive sympathetic tone. “And now with all that’s happening, I believe it’s time we take your leave.”
“Oh, yes, yes… I suppose that would be best,” he mumbled, standing up and straightening out his robes.
“And as you can very well see, Ms. Granger is in pristine condition,” he added. “So, I assume with an impaired healer hindering the examination, there will be no need to further pursue it?”
“No, no, that would be fine. She looks alright and… well, with all your protection I’d be surprised if she managed to get a scratch on herself.”
Malfoy let out a forced laugh as Skeid chuckled apprehensively. “It was a pleasure seeing you both again,” he said, shaking both Malfoy’s and Hermione’s hands. “Perhaps under less strenuous circumstances, a dinner would be in order.”
“Yes, of course,” Malfoy replied automatically. “Good day, Mr. Skeid.”
“Mr. Malfoy, Ms. Granger,” he said nodding politely to both of them as they exited the office.
The two had made their way back towards the main waiting room, past the hallway when Malfoy suddenly turned to Hermione with an inquisitive look on his face.
“What’s a Hornwart Charm?” he asked.
Hermione shrugged casually. “I have no idea.”
“Then what was that back there?”
She smiled mischievously. “It was an explosive pimple spell from the Weasleys’ Joke Shop.”
---
I lost over 200 reviews so reviews are much appreciated!
The carriage landed with a thud against the hard pavement, waking Hermione. She looked out of the gold framed window and saw the familiar two storey house standing tall against the sky. The sun was beginning to set and its magnificent rays shone majestically between the light clouds, creating a dramatic orange streak across the blue sky. Slightly dazed, she looked around the carriage and saw Malfoy watching her patiently, his expression unreadable.
“It’s time to go,” he said impassively. “Your luggage is already here.”
He indicated towards the front porch where a huge bronze trunk with a black strip around it, sat.
“Oh,” Hermione said, sitting up quickly and readjusting her tangled hair absentmindedly. “Thanks.”
“Is there anything else you need?” he asked. His fingers were twirling distractedly over his briefcase while he gazed intently at Hermione. This irritated her very much; Malfoy was probably the most inscrutable person she’d ever met. He could be staring out the window with a vacant expression and then a second later, he could be glaring at her with fury behind those grey eyes. Unpredictable and unreadable Hermione sighed. A dangerous combination.
“No, I’m fine,” she replied.
“Good.”
There was a momentary pause as Draco pondered something in his mind, allowing Hermione a chance to gaze at his aged face. He was still pale and reasonably attractive but his features seemed to have aged a great degree to a point where the lines on his forehead began to look solid and deep. The circles under his eyes were faint but visible and his sleek hair had now begun to wear down at the ends, detracting from the polished Malfoy look.
“I appreciate what you did at the Ministry,” he said finally.
Hermione looked at him curiously. “Don’t take this as any sort of encouragement,” Draco added suddenly, as a warning. “I still don’t need you at my throat but I don’t like owing anybody anything.”
“What do you owe me?”
“You saved me before and now, you probably spared me days worth of Ministry inquiries and at least 10,000 galleons.”
“They’d fine you that much?” Hermione asked.
“That’s how much I’d have had to bribe them,” Draco said, shrugging mindlessly. It didn’t seem like that big of an amount to him.
“Is that your thanks?” Hermione asked, surprised by the tone of iciness in her voice. The mention of the bribe had triggered her irrational side and her eyes danced over the spattered gold that still lay on the floor of the carriage.
“Thank you,” Draco said, with a tone of finality.
Hermione turned her head towards the bottom of the seat and grabbed her bag. Despite her irritable mood, she had sensed the sincerity in Malfoy’s voice, or maybe he was just a really good actor. She’d had enough evidence to support both theories.
“It wasn’t so bad living at Malfoy Manor,” Hermione said, as she placed her hands on the edge of the door to descend the royal carriage. “The food was good and the distractions were… ample. It was nice to feel like I was back at Hogwarts for a second.” She formed a gentle smile at the edge of her lips.
“It’s better when you feel it for more than a second,” Draco said. “When you feel like nothing else matters other than torturing Gryffindors and ordering around two big thugs.”
He didn’t smile back at Hermione but the sharp look from his eyes had vanished, replaced with a nostalgic sadness that she knew was related to his outburst this morning. I used to have a family!
“Well, at least you have Pansy,” she said, trying to brighten the mood a little. No one, not even the most sardonic and embittered wizard on the planet, should have to feel like the way Draco looked like he felt right now.
This time he did smile, only it was a thin, forced smile that was followed by an empty laugh. “Maybe.” It was apparent from his tone that he didn’t believe it at all.
She stepped out of the carriage and she could hear scrambles from the Burrow as her feet touched the ground. From the top window, she saw two figures running down the stairs and she turned back to Malfoy.
“Stay out of trouble,” were his last words as the thestrals began their gentle ascension back into the air. Hermione blinked once and he was gone.
“Hermione!”
Ginny ran out the front door and greeted her startled friend with a big hug, almost lifting her off the ground. “It’s so good to finally have you back!”
Hermione smiled. “Was Ron really that bad?”
“Well, he was better when he got back but before… when you’d just left, it was like someone had stuck a dementor in the house.”
She laughed slightly at the dark joke and made her way to the front of the porch where her stuff was lying. “They just came a few minutes ago,” Ginny said, pointing to the trunk and bag.
The door opened again and this time, Harry came out with a wide smile across his face. “Thank you for finally coming back!” he joked. “I’d started to think that you were planning on living in that mansion forever.”
“Nothing could keep her there,” Ginny joked. “Come on inside, Ron’s going to be home in an hour or so.”
“Ron’s not here?” Hermione asked.
“Don’t worry, he got a call from the Ministry Owlery – apparently, there’s some package he has to pick up.”
Hermione came back into the Burrow and felt the warmth of the stoking fire and the smell of fruit and pepper fill her senses. “It’s so nice to finally be back,” she said, remembering the cold walls of Malfoy Manor.
“And it’s about time too,” Harry added. “I was wondering when we’d get some sort of letter telling us that you’d hexed Malfoy or accidentally beaten him to death.”
“Haha, very funny,” Hermione mocked.
“Oh come on,” Harry insisted. The three of them had sat down opposite the warm fireplace, on the living room sofa, which felt hard to Hermione after being spoiled by the lavish furnishings at Malfoy Manor. “Don’t tell me you didn’t think of hurting him once… just once.”
Hermione smiled slyly. “Well more than once but I never did.”
“Good on you!” Ginny said sarcastically. “It’s a rather hard job, isn’t it?”
“Agreed.”
“Well, now you’re far away to cause him any harm,” Harry said lightly.
“How was the house while I was gone?” Hermione asked, ignoring the muffled laughter from both Harry and Ginny.
“Boring,” Harry sighed. “Teddy was here to keep us busy but Ron’s glumness brought the whole place down.”
“Teddy left?” Hermione asked with a twinge of disappointment. She felt an odd attachment to the little boy, especially now. She knew it was silly to think that the loss of her parents was similar to Teddy’s – she had at least had the opportunity to spend her early years with them by her side. Teddy would have to know his parents through others and Hermione empathized with him more than she had ever done before. And despite her irrational comparison, she sensed a tighter link between herself and Teddy, two people having lost a major part of their lives due to circumstances beyond their control.
“Well when Ron took off,” Ginny began, “we spent most of our time trying to track him so mum suggested that we drop Teddy back off with Andromeda until things got under control.”
“Oh I’m sorry about that,” Hermione said, her smile morphing itself into pursed lips. “I had no idea that the owls got mixed up an-”
“You’re sorry?” Ginny asked gaping. “We’re the ones who’re sorry! We should have rushed down there to help you together but Ron got a little carried away and he just ran off at night.”
Hermione felt herself reddening slightly at the fuss Ginny was making. “Did my letter really sound that ghastly?” she asked timidly. “I was very freaked out when I wrote that… and I wasn’t thinking straight. I made out things to be a lot worse than they actually were.”
“Ron told us your burns were bad,” Ginny said sombrely, eyeing Hermione’s long sleeved sweater.
“They’re much better now!” she insisted pushily but judging by the suspicious look on both their faces, Hermione guessed they wanted proof. She sighed and rolled up her right sleeve, allowing the warm air to touch the skin where the scars still remained.
Ginny’s eyes widened. “That’s much better?!” she half-screamed.
“Ginny, it’s alright!” Hermione insisted.
“It’s all swollen and… is that melted flesh?!”
“Ginny, please calm down… you sound like Ron right now.”
Ginny brought her face closer to the burns, placing her fingers gently over the seared flesh. Her eyes suddenly narrowed and Hermione knew that her fingers felt the faint throbbing under the red scars.
“Those don’t feel alright,” she said, calming down slightly. Her tone was dark and worried as she turned to Harry. “Take a look.”
“Are you sure it’s alright?” Harry asked Hermione, not going any further.
“Yes,” Hermione replied tersely.
“Then I believe you,” Harry said, turning back to Ginny. “Why would she lie?”
“It feels like a pulse!” Ginny said, squirming slightly.
“All injuries throb,” Hermione said defensively. “It’s part of the healing process.”
“She’s a healer,” Harry agreed. “Ginny, trust her.”
Ginny looked at Hermione with a calculating expression and then nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess us Weasleys do have a flair for the theatrical.”
“And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Hermione said, smiling at Ginny. She knew Ginny meant well – like Ron did. They were both overprotective and she often found that endearing but today, she appreciated Harry’s passiveness over Ron’s aggressiveness. Harry was the kind of person who would allow his friends to have secrets, trusting them enough to reveal them when they thought best. Ron was different of course; secrets, to him, were the foundation of betrayal and in all honesty, neither one was better than the other. It was just that today, she preferred one to the other.
The fireplace made a gurgling sound that made Hermione jump. The golden flames began to dim slightly and the cackling in the stone chasm became more pronounced as the colour changed green.
“Ron’s coming,” Harry said.
There was a flash of green flames and Ron popped out of the fire, falling on his back into the tiny living room.
“We also have a flair for clumsiness,” Ginny added as Hermione went over to Ron and knelt beside him.
“Are you alright?” she asked him, rubbing her hand against his shoulder. He was covered in soot from head to toe and that included the medium sized box in his arms.
“I am now,” he said, smiling at the brown haired girl; he leaned in to kiss her.
“Not in front of us,” Harry groaned, smiling.
“Spare the innocent,” Ginny agreed, making a sour face.
Ron scowled and turned back to Hermione. “This is for you,” he said, taking the box from his arms and laying it on her lap.
“You shouldn’t have,” Hermione said, blushing slightly.
Ron looked confused. “I didn’t,” he said quickly. “This is the package I picked up from the Ministry.”
“A package for me?” Hermione asked.
“Yeah, I got an owl this morning that said that I needed to pick up a package sent to this address –”
Hermione couldn’t hear what Ron was saying anymore. She ran her fingers over the address written on the box.
Hermione Granger the top of the address line read.
“-and that was it,” Ron finished.
“Yeah,” Hermione responded distractedly.
Something felt different about this package and it took Hermione only seconds to figure out what it was. There was a seal placed at the folded ends of the box and though the wax was moulded, her sharp eyes could clearly make out the snake entwining around the Celtic ‘M’ embedded in green.
“I’m going to open this later,” Hermione said, placing her fingers strategically over the wax seal so that her hand concealed most of it. She lifted it up gingerly and began to walk towards her room. “I’ll go put this upstairs.”
“Mum and Dad went out but they left dinner for us,” Ginny called from the bottom of the stairs. “Hurry back down!”
---
Later came at ten o’clock at night after Mrs. Weasley’s chicken pot pie, two hours of questioning Hermione (during which she carefully avoided mentioning the creature and her burns) and another hour of listening to the Weird Sisters’ new album. By the end, Hermione had managed to produce some faint yawns and excused herself from the others to go back to her room.
Now she sat, cross-legged, on her bed with the package in front of her. She had dimmed the lights slightly so that from the outside, the small crack under her door made it seem like the room was dark.
She grabbed her wand out of her pocket and undid the sealing charm placed on the box, after which the flaps shot open and the inside was visible. Hermione squinted slightly in the darkness to make out the contents and then reached in, allowing her sense of touch to discover them. She lifted out three heavy objects from inside and dumped them on her bed. With her illuminated wand, she moved in closer to see what these masses really were.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Dark Hearts, The Flames of the Fiend, Grimoire: Shadows of Immortality
The three books lay on her bedspread as Hermione’s wide eyes scanned their covers to make sure this wasn’t some sort of a joke. After a minute or two of just gaping, she became convinced that these really were the illegal books that she had been reading at Malfoy Manor this very morning.
She paused for a second and strained her ears, trying to pick out any sounds from outside. It seemed that Ron, Harry and Ginny were still all downstairs. Satisfied with the silence, Hermione reached back into the box and felt around for anything else. She pulled out a folded piece of parchment with only these words:
To help you continue your research – these were the books I found on the table this morning. I hope they are enough. I’m glad to help in any other way. Eli
Hermione suddenly realized why the package had been sent through the Ministry Owlery. The Malfoys’ owls were very easily recognized and it would have taken Harry all of two seconds to realize where this package had come from and another five seconds to open it and discover the illegal contents within. The Malfoy name was also very recognized and so it would have been fairly easy for the package to pass through Ministry inspections without having any questions raised and Harry and Ron would think that this was something from St. Mungos for her.
That familiar adrenaline rush spread through Hermione like wildlife as her eyes scanned the books. It wasn’t over.
She tossed the other two books back in the box and reached for “The Flames of the Fiend”, feeling her pulse race. Holding her wand to the page, she began reading from where she’d left off.
January 2nd 1616
Mother lost control of herself today in front of four muggles visiting in town. It was funny. I could hear her shriek from the street and then the muggles went crazy too… the yelling wouldn’t stop. But I liked it.
To calm her down, father let her do another experiment on me. This time it was the arm… the blood was not as thin today. This upset mother and she yelled at me some more until she went back downstairs.
Hermione kept on reading into the night. Matilda Frogwart spent another 40 entries detailing some more experiments that her mother did to her - though she never mentioned what they were exactly – leading up to September 1616. There was always mention of blood which scared Hermione but Matilda seemed almost apathetic to the experiments now, referring to them as though her mother was trying different dresses on her. Yet there was an undertone of darkness that Hermione felt; the darkness that was probably why this book was not published in a normal library.
There were footsteps outside the door; Hermione stuffed the book noisily in her pillow case and lay under her blankets with her eyes half closed. The footsteps neared and Hermione’s eyes sensed the door opening when the light from the hallway flooded the dark room.
“Are you asleep?” It was Harry.
Hermione felt the stillness in the room as she felt Harry scrutinizing her. “I’m awake,” she said quietly, trying to sound as if she had just woken up.
“Sorry,” Harry mumbled.
“No, it’s alright,” Hermione said as she sat up against her headboard. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just wanted to see how you were. I mean, I know with Ginny fussing and everything, we didn’t really get to talk.”
“Harry, after two hours of interrogation what is there left to talk about?” Hermione said, trying to sound cheerful.
“Well, we couldn’t mention Lestrange in front of Ron.”
Hermione took in a deep breath. “I’ll tell him someday,” she said remorsefully. Lying to Ron was never a good idea but sometimes it was necessary.
“It’s not that,” Harry said, taking a seat on a chair by the bed. Hermione swung her legs over the side of her bed, sitting opposite him. “I tried to find out as much as I could when Ron wasn’t around but I didn’t get very far.”
“Skeid said he was somewhere in Southern Europe,” Hermione offered.
“Yeah,” Harry said pensively. His eyebrows were raised and his jaw was taut and Hermione could tell he wanted to say something.
“What’s wrong?”
Harry looked at Hermione with a worried expression that stiffened her body. She knew that expression very well; it was the same one he always had had at Hogwarts when he was hiding some vital piece of information he thought would disturb her.
“I heard those stories too,” he said slowly. “The sources that provided them were very… leery. I mean, they were two guys from Italy who claimed they saw Lestrange staying in some wizarding inn.”
“What’s the problem with that?”
“They didn’t speak Italian, first of all,” Harry said darkly. “And secondly, doesn’t the information just sound…wrong?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying, Harry,” Hermione insisted impatiently. “What’re you getting at?”
“Alright. Think of it this way: Lestrange is a death eater, right?”
“Yes,” Hermione replied bluntly.
“He was among the most loyal to Voldemort and he spent most of his time in close confidences with the darkest wizards and Voldemort himself. He’s got a pretty good idea of how to hide and stay out of the public eye easily.”
“Yes, yes, I get that!” Hermione was now beyond impatient.
“Well, what experienced death eater would choose to hide out in an inn flooded with wizards all year just a few hours from where the Ministry expects him to go?”
Hermione froze. “I checked with the inn and… they’ve got a pretty good reputation. I mean, there are Ministry officials from Italy constantly staying there,” Harry continued. “Lestrange is wanted as an international death eater – there are posters of him in hundreds of different languages plastered over the wizarding world.”
“You think it was a set up?” she asked, managing to squeeze some air into her constricted lungs.
“That’s what I’m not sure of,” Harry said sceptically. “There’s only so much searching I can do without calling attention to the entire thing.”
“What do you think?” Hermione urged. Her experience with Harry had proven that his instincts, sometimes farfetched, were usually right on the mark.
“I think he did set up those sources,” Harry told her truthfully. “The Ministry expects him to be in London right now but they get a tip that he’s hiding out in Italy at the moment. They hand over the case to the Italian officials and let their own guard down. And that’s-”
“The perfect time to sneak in,” Hermione gasped, finishing Harry’s sentence. “It makes sense.”
“And not to mention, they’ve let his target go free,” Harry said. Hermione felt herself exposed as Harry referred to her as a target and her eyes shifted over nervously to the windows as if she expected the crazed man to jump in right now and kill her.
“You’re safe with us,” Harry said reassuringly.
“But are you safe with me?” Hermione asked him. “If a group of death eaters bursts in right now, what happens?”
“We fight,” Harry said, “like we always do.”
“Who protects Molly and Arthur?” Hermione asked. “Who goes to save Victoire? Don’t you see? This was the reason I’d left in the first place. If the threat hasn’t diminished, why did Skeid let me go?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said truthfully. “But-”
He hesitated and leaned in very slightly, lowering his voice. “You didn’t see anything odd at Malfoy Manor, did you?”
Hermione withdrew back slightly and tensed her hands. This is what he’d wanted to say all along. “You think Malfoy had a hand in this?” she asked incredulously.
“It’s a theory,” Harry said hesitantly. “But it makes sense.”
“How?”
“Well, first of all he takes you in at his Manor so he can keep watch on you until Lestrange finds a way into the country. That way you can’t run away anywhere else. And then, once Lestrange does come back to London, he tells Skeid to let you go –assuring him, it’s safe. Skeid would think so too with the fake sources and he becomes convinced that you’re in no danger. Now, it’s too late for you to hide anywhere.”
Hermione sucked in a deep breath and looked at Harry with intense eyes. “I was with him for over two weeks,” she said. “If he wanted to kill me, he would have done it then.”
“No, no,” Harry corrected her. “When Voldemort was after me, what did he always say?”
Hermione knew instantly. “He said you were to be brought in alive… so he could kill you.”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed, and Hermione sensed the slight darkening in his tone. “The pawns bring me in while he gets to finish me off.”
“You’re saying Malfoy is a pawn?” Hermione asked uneasily.
“We’ve seen him take orders from other death eaters before, what’s so different about this time?”
Outside the room, there were another two set of footsteps stirring. Hermione heard some muffled ‘goodnights’ and ‘sleep wells’ as the sounds receded. She guessed they were Ron and Ginny, who had finally decided to call it a night.
“You think Skeid would take orders from Malfoy? You think he would just let me go when Malfoy told him?” Hermione asked suddenly.
“Who wouldn’t? He’s got boat loads of money and his family name still holds a lot of power.”
“It doesn’t seem right,” she said finally. “I know… I know that it makes sense but…”
Hermione mind wandered over the many days she had spent in the Manor, trying to figure out exactly why Harry’s theory didn’t seem right to her. Had she been so preoccupied with the creature that she completely overlooked a plot that had been setup to kill her?
“I’m not sure about anything,” Harry said quietly. “It’s all speculation and I plan to check around more so don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” Hermione assured him. “I felt safe there… from Lestrange, at least.”
“We all felt you were safe,” Harry agreed. “From what I’ve heard, Malfoy’s got every possible curse surrounding that castle…”
“Yeah, there’s a Fidelus charm too,” Hermione said.
“It’d be a miracle if his friends managed to make it in without getting killed by a curse,” Harry joked. “Quite a fortress, isn’t it?”
Hermione laughed slightly. “No unexpected guests at Malfoy Manor.”
As Harry chuckled lightly, Hermione froze at the sound of her own words. No unexpected guests at Malfoy Manor. There was a familiar ringing in her head – the kind of alarm that was set off when something wasn’t right. A hollow voice inside her head began to recite a familiar conversation to her:
It’s a good thing I decided to drop by for a visit, or I may have been halfway to North America before Draco decided to invite me. Draco was surprised though, weren’t you? A few unexpected visitors always keep things exciting.”
Hermione felt the colour drain from her face.
“Yes, Ms. Parkinson will be visiting here for a few more days I imagine.”
“How many more?”
“I’m not quite sure. I haven’t had the chance to ask her; I saw her this time only when she brought Master Malfoy in after his injury and then I showed her to her room, that’s been it.”
“What’s wrong, Hermione?” Harry asked the pallid girl. “What happened?”
Malfoy Manor is not a mansion…it’s a fortress.
In all her preoccupation, she had failed to notice something. Her acute and observant eyes had missed the obvious deceit right in front of her eyes. For almost two days, she hadn’t realized and now that she had, it might be too late.
“Hermione?” Harry asked, his voice was frantic and he was on the verge of yelling. “What happened? What is it?!”
Hermione tried to gather some air in her lungs and compose her voice before Harry yelled loud enough to wake Ron up. It was harder than she thought as she felt her throat open slightly and gather in the warm air from the room.
She finally spoke in barely a whisper so that Harry had to lean in to hear her. “Pansy.”
---
Sincerest apologies for the late update! I will try to update before Christmas but if I don't, fear not! I won't abandon this story! School just happens to be killing me!
Hermione looked at Harry with a frightened expression. “Pansy,” she repeated slowly.
Harry’s confusion was further propelled into fear by Hermione’s terrified appearance and wide, brown eyes. “Pansy Parkinson?”
“Yes, yes, yes! How could I have not noticed?!” Hermione jumped up instantly and ran her fingers through her hair roughly. Her upper lip was curled and tense, like the rest of her face. “I should have seen it!”
“Hermione, you’re not making any sense,” Harry said. “Please, just sit down.”
She walked around the room, pacing impatiently and mumbling to herself as if she hadn’t heard Harry. “It doesn’t make sense though!”
“What doesn’t?” Harry urged. “What are you talking about?”
“But then… he said earlier…”
“Hermione!” Harry said roughly, standing up and grabbing her shoulders. “What are you talking about?”
Hermione collapsed against the foot of the bed and looked up at Harry’s shaken green eyes. “Pansy was at the Manor,” she replied unsteadily.
“Alright,” Harry said, calming down slightly once Hermione stopped talking to herself. He sat down beside her and placed his hand on hers. “Why was she there?”
“She… I think she said she was visiting Malfoy,” Hermione replied. She was trying to concentrate on the world in front of her but her mind kept wandering over the conversations of this morning.
“So, what’s wrong then?”
“She… she said she’d dropped by for a surprise visit,” Hermione answered with extra emphasis on the word ‘surprise’. “And well, she was talking to Malfoy.”
Harry’s face relaxed a little as he realized that the problem didn’t pertain to Lestrange. “You think that’s suspicious?”
“Well I didn’t really make much of it until you mentioned the curses and we were talking about the Fidelus charm. Only the secret keeper can unlock that charm and make the manor visible to outsiders.”
“Yeah, alright…”
“Harry!” Hermione growled at his slowness. “She said she came by for a surprise visit… do you really think she could have gotten past the charms and curses without attracting any attention?”
“Maybe Malfoy let her in?”
“No, no… he didn’t know. We were talking at breakfast and she kept mentioning how she was glad she dropped by uninvited…”
“Maybe it was Malfoy’s butler,” Harry suggested. “You said it yourself: he seems to be more than just a servant.”
“Well, that’s what I would have though too but earlier this morning he told me that he’d only seen Pansy in the morning when she met us in Malfoy’s room.”
Harry’s body became rigid and he sat up straight. For a second, Hermione felt glad that he understood the gravity of the situation but that glee faded when he turned to her with a puzzling look. “What were you doing in Malfoy’s room?” he asked with a slanted brow.
Hermione huffed angrily. “Harry! That’s not the point. Don’t you see? Neither he nor Malfoy saw Pansy come in or knew she was coming!”
“Hermione, this is not our problem,” Harry said impatiently. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Besides, if there was a problem, Malfoy and his butler would have realized it.”
“I have a feeling that they each think that the other let Pansy into the mansion,” Hermione said pensively. “Eli was under the impression that Malfoy had asked Pansy to come and I don’t see why Malfoy wouldn’t think the same thing about Eli. And then, they were both far too occupied with other things to really care.”
“Pansy can’t do any real harm,” Harry said carelessly. “We both know she’s a paper tiger. She claims to do more damage that she actually does.”
Hermione’s irritation was beginning to escalate. “We’re not back at Hogwarts, Harry,” she said shortly. “We don’t just shoot spells at each other or slip joke products in each other’s bags. This is serious.”
“I don’t see how it is,” Harry replied frankly.
“Do you have any idea of the kind of dark magic required to break through all those curses?” she asked anxiously. “Not to mention, the simple fact that overcoming a Fidelus charm is physically impossible for any person to do!”
“You’re overreacting. Your life is in danger right now and you’re worrying about Malfoy and Pansy?!” Harry asked.
“Eli and Malfoy could be in danger!” Hermione shot back.
“They’re capable of handling themselves.”
“And I’m not?” Hermione’s voice was sharp and steady. Harry immediately regretted his words but his expression of antagonism did not change. The kind green eyes were as determined as Hermione’s brown ones. “Tell me something. When we were in the Room of Requirement during the final battle, and the entire room was on fire, why did you go back to save Malfoy?”
Hermione’s gaze was intent and she saw Harry’s jaw unclench slightly. “Instinct,” he said sullenly.
“Because no one deserves to die when someone can save them,” Hermione offered.
“But does Malfoy need saving?” Harry said, straining his voice to show Hermione reason. “For all we know, this could be a trap leading you straight into Lestrange’s arms.”
“It’s not,” Hermione assured him. “I know that something’s wrong… and…” Hermione hesitated for a second. “I think it has something to do with the creature.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “So this is what it’s about?”
“I have to go back, Harry!”
“And how do you know this?”
Hermione felt the thick book under her pillow and she felt guilt riding over her again, this time though, it was heavier. A part of her was screaming loudly in her head, telling her to get a grip and listen to Harry, to see reason! But another part of her, the irrational part, was convincing her that the mystery was worth it; going back to Malfoy Manor was the right thing to do now.
“A feeling,” Hermione said slowly. “Trust me, please.”
“And what about Ron? Ginny?”
“You can take care of them,” Hermione said, softening her expression. Harry’s face immediately tensed and his body became rigid. He stood up off the ground and placed his hand on his forehead.
“You’re not going alone,” he said brusquely. “That’s suicide.”
“We can’t both just leave,” Hermione said. Now it was her turn to make Harry see reason. “Imagine Ron and Ginny waking up tomorrow and finding us both gone.”
“We’ll write them a note or something,” Harry said, his words were hasty and rushed as though prolonging this conversation would make Hermione change her mind.
“And then they’ll both storm their way to Malfoy Manor,” Hermione finished harshly. “That would be perfect for all of us.”
“I’m not letting you go by yourself, if at all!”
“Well I don’t need your permission, Harry,” Hermione said frankly. “I’m asking you as a friend, please stay back and take care of things here.”
“Hermione-”
“Harry,” she interrupted him sharply. Her tone was blunt and steady. “I’m going… no matter what.”
Harry hung his head in defeat, though his face was still tense and worried. His lower lip was curled into a subtle grimace and Hermione’s heart sunk deep into her chest. “I’m sorry, Harry,” she said kindly. She placed her hands around him and took him into a hug. He was stiff at first but then loosened under Hermione’s gentle touch, eventually wrapping his arms around her.
“Please take care,” he said, “if not for your own sake, then at least for Ron.”
“I will,” she responded. “You take care here too.”
He sighed to himself and then pulled back, glancing around the room. “What do you need to take with you?” he asked.
Hermione’s forehead contorted with worry lines as she scanned through her mental list. “A lot of things.”
---
The swirling mists of light dissolved into the darkness as the last candle in Draco’s room blew out. Thin beams of moonlight fought their way through the thick clouds and shone upon the dark room at Malfoy Manor, becoming the only source of illumination. Draco was sitting in his stuffed velvet chairs by the bed with one arm on the armrest and the other against his chest.
Though the burning sensation was barely evident anymore, he instinctively put his hand against the seared flesh; he didn’t really know why. The rest of his body was stiff and taut as it had been for the past few weeks and, much to his irritation, he was getting used to it. Not even the smooth, supple velvet imported from Paris could make him feel comfortable.
There was a flutter past the window and Draco impulsively shot up off his chair. Once again, he noted the complete lack of pain in the sudden action. As he swerved around the other large pieces of furniture, his eyes caught a glimpse of the black owl perched on his window pane, its waning yellow eyes staring fixedly at him. For a second, all it did was stare at the blonde man approaching. But before Draco made it to the window, the owl took off, leaving behind a folded piece of parchment.
Southern France was the only writing on the crumpled paper. He felt the blood racing through his body as he read the words in the dim light.
“Any news?” came a voice behind him. Malfoy didn’t flinch or get startled by the new presence in the room.
“He’s in the south of France,” Malfoy replied. “How long do you estimate it would take him to get here?”
“About one day,” Eli said without pausing. “He won’t be apparating?”
“He can’t. He’ll be taking trains and such for the most part but I think he has a broomstick with him.”
“One day,” Eli repeated, apparently satisfied that his original assumption was correct.
There was another moment of stillness as Malfoy looked out the window onto the vast courtyard. The thin shadows of the various bushes were dancing merrily as the gentle wind wrestled against their real counterparts. There were vines entwined around the great walls of the front gate that spread across the vast perimeter, sprouting flowers at some points. Despite his best efforts, Draco couldn’t help remembering the early mornings when he’d wake up and look through these very windows and see his mother tending to the plants. Gardening was Narcissa’s preferred pastime which she could spend hours engaged in, if left undisturbed and Draco couldn’t count the numerous times that her peaceful expression would change to one of bitterness and strain.
“The garden looks lovely at this hour,” Eli remarked, looking out the window innocently. “It’s a shame that most of those plants are enchanted to kill.”
Draco let out a cold laugh. “Who would ever guess that smelling the rose bushes could get you killed?”
“It upset your mother a lot,” Eli said, still staring out the window.
“Sorry?”
“The enchanted garden,” Eli explained. “It would upset her every time your father or one of his friends would put curses on her plants. She spent hours caring for them and she felt disturbed thinking that the vines she so carefully trimmed might accidentally strangle her some day.”
“It was for her own protection,” Draco said.
Eli laughed to himself. “What’s so funny?” Draco asked, turning to him.
“It’s amusing how often that line is used,” he said, still smiling.
Draco looked back out the window and admired the silvery glow that bathe the entire garden. “The bushes look wild.”
“I’ll have one of the house elves trim them tomorrow morning,” Eli said. His amusement had died down at the sound of Draco’s melancholy voice.
“Make sure they don’t get killed, please,” Draco added casually. “It’d be a pity to lose one of them.”
“I can assure you that they won’t be harmed,” Eli said solemnly. “Will that be all?”
Draco didn’t answer. “Did it really upset her?” he asked after a while. The wind was beginning to pick up and a few gusts entered the magnificent room, capering amongst the satin drapes.
Eli nodded once again. “She didn’t like it,” he said.
“She didn’t show it much.”
“That was part of her talent,” Eli remarked thoughtfully. “It was what was required of her at most times: to put on a mask.”
“Did my father know it upset her?”
“He knew.” Eli’s eyes wandered over to Draco who was now leaning on the end of the window pane, rest his elbows against the metal. “And he always bought her ladyslippers on occasion to cheer her up.”
“Ladyslippers?”
“They’re flowers, a type of orchid.”
There was a small smile beginning to crawl its way on Draco’s thin lips. “That sounds very unlike him.”
“One must never dismiss the unlikely,” Eli said. “It’s often more accurate than the likely. Do you know, Master Malfoy, what the ladyslipper symbolizes?”
“No idea.”
“Beauty,” Eli said. The expression on Draco’s face softened a little and the smile on his face widened.
“Was that really how they were? My parents, I mean.”
“They very rarely showed it but they were very protective of each other and of their family.”
“And yet… and they still believed in the Dark Lord’s plans? His ideas?”
“Very firmly but as you know, they came to regret that later. You may not have realized it but this,” Eli gestured to the Manor, “this meant a lot to them: this family, this house and you, especially, Master Malfoy.”
Draco held back an expression of extreme emotion as he nodded and turned towards his huge bed that was covered in dark green sheets tonight. “I think I’m going to call it a night.”
“May I ask, if you allow it, why this topic of family has come up so suddenly?” Eli inquired. He made his way over to the door of Malfoy’s room and held it open with one hand.
“Just something someone said this morning,” he replied, waving an airy hand.
“Very well,” Eli said with a familiar glimmer in his eyes. “Shall I draw the curtains?”
Draco turned towards the square window and gazed at the ever expanding sky. The moon had receded behind a cluster of clouds, allowing only narrow beams to lighten the garden. “No, that’s fine.”
Eli nodded obediently one last time and shut the door as he left.
---
Pansy sat at the edge of Draco’s bed with her arms wrapped around herself as Draco sullenly spoke. The silver light encircling the room was subdued as the tall man paced the room with amazing calmness.
“Eli estimates one day,” he said warily. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“And if he’s wrong?” Pansy asked and her tone was reserved as she observed Draco to see if she’d offended him. And by the way his muscles twitched, she guessed she had.
“He’s never wrong,” Draco replied tetchily. “Or at least, he never has been since I’ve known him.”
Pansy sighed and sat up straight. “Well, let’s assume for once that he does make a mistake. It would be rather inconvenient if we’re unprepared for any time span less than one day. I don’t want to be tortured to death, Draco. Not all of us can embrace pain like you.”
“No one’s going to die,” he said. “If he does somehow get here earlier than we expected, we take care of it right when we see him.”
“He’s going to have his cronies with him. Do you think it’ll be that easy?”
Draco stopped pacing and pursed his lips. There were thick crevices etching themselves into his perfect face as he sat down on the chair across from the bed. “He’s weaker, I’m sure.”
“He’s also crazier,” Pansy interjected.
Draco’s upper lip curled in irritation. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about that,” he said. “Let’s just drop it.”
“Fine,” Pansy replied nonchalantly, shrugging. “So you were saying: one day…”
“One day will give us ample time to prepare,” he said, talking more to himself than Pansy. He walked around the room, mumbling incoherently to himself and sometimes to Pansy till she finally groaned irritably and stood up.
“I honestly can’t understand a word you’ve said,” she complained. “If you’re going to talk to me, then speak clearly and if you’re not, then let me go to bed.”
“He’s very untrusting,” Draco explained. “I’m sure he feels my offer is loyal and genuine but he’s lived through far too many betrayals to be able to trust.”
“Do you think he’ll have his men watch us?”
“Not as such,” Draco mused. “I know he’ll put some sort of hearing spell over this place so he can keep track of us.”
Pansy buried her head in Draco’s pillow and spoke from it with a muffled voice. “So we destroy it?”
“We let him keep it,” Draco corrected her and then snarled at her confused face. “He needs to think he has the upper hand in this. I’ll bewitch a few rooms though where we can speak but other than that, he should be able to hear our made-up jargon.”
He turned back to Pansy and saw her head resting against the soft covers, her eyes closed and her breath steady. He was angry at first that she had fallen asleep but another part of him didn’t care – he was tired too. He lay down beside her and closed his eyes, allowing the shallow world of dreams to encircle him and ensnare him in a few hours of peace.
---
Diagon Alley looked a lot different at one in the morning than it did during its regular rush hour. The stores were all closed; some were boarded up with locks while others just flashed warning signs to potential thieves. The colossal candles that were floating throughout the long stretch illuminated the stone walls and wooden doors for any late-night visitors. The air was freezing and as Hermione made her way down the deserted alley, clouds of frost began to expel from her mouth as she exhaled.
She was an unusual sight at this hour of the morning with the large rucksack on her back, covering most of her black shirt which was further enveloped in a set of thick woollen robes to protect against the winter. She was carrying a slightly worn broomstick in her left hand and in the dim lighting, one could vaguely make out the words etched into the dark black handle.
She entered a small opening to her left and made her way down towards a narrow crack in the wall. She found the hidden door knob and made her way into the train station – a massive, grey warehouse-like building lit with bright white lights.
“I need a train ticket to the outer city,” she said in a hoarse voice as she approached the counter. There was a bored looking man sitting behind it and though he was probably a little older than Hermione, his deep brown hair and olive skin made him look 18.
“10 sickles, please,” he said, waving his wand and producing a tiny square piece of paper out of thin air.
Hermione reached into a little pouch that hung off her belt buckle and produced two gold galleons that she carefully placed on the wooden counter.
“For two galleons,” she began, “you didn’t see me.”
The man’s bored expression changed to one of intrigue. He eyed the money carefully and a twisted smile began to form on his thick lips. “I didn’t see you.”
Hermione grabbed the ticket and read the platform number hastily as she followed the signs plastered against the dark walls. She arrived at the designated platform where a huge black train roared furiously as gusts of steam blew out its front end. The station wasn’t as empty as Diagon Alley had been; there were a few wizards and witches boarding and descending from trains with luggage trolleys in their hands. Without hesitation, Hermione mounted the beastly train. It didn’t take her very long to find an empty compartment and when she did, she threw her bag down beside her and tilted the broomstick in the corner so it leaned against the wall. According to the ticket, the train was supposed to be leaving in ten minutes which meant that she had ten minutes left to worry that Ron would catch up to her.
Harry had promised her to keep Ron from finding out for as long as he could and assured her that he wouldn’t wake up until late in the morning but Hermione wasn’t so sure. If Ron happened to get up in the middle of the night and find her bed empty, it wouldn’t take him very long to realize where she would have gone and having been to the Manor himself, he could easily catch up to her.
She had tried to cover her tracks and ensure that no one saw her leaving but until the train itself left, there was still a possibility of Ron finding her. However, with nothing to do right now except wait, Hermione reached into her bag and grabbed a thick, leather bound book that had a bookmarked page.
September 16th 1616
I saw father kill a man today. I didn’t see the man but I distinctly remember a bright flash of green light… I think that was the spell. The words were a little hard to hear over the scream but it sounded something like ‘Abracadabra’.
I also learnt something very special. It’s a spell that makes people cry, they cry more than they have ever cried before. I did it to a little girl on the street yesterday and I saw her eyes twist and tears were spilling out. I just held out my wand and kept saying ‘crucio’.
The familiar sick feeling manifested itself in Hermione’s stomach as she envisioned a young girl laughing coldly in the middle of an empty street.
The train whistle blew loudly, piercing the silence in the station, as it began to move forward slowly. The relief that expelled from Hermione’s taut throat was mixed with the twisted feeling still flooding her stomach, though momentarily she grinned as she realized that Ron was now far from being able to catch her.
The train had caught speed and as the gloomy walls of the station faded into grey clouds of dust, Hermione turned back to her book and began reading again.
Matilda Frogwart was not an average girl; in fact, she was far from it. Her discover of the Cruciatus Curse led her to try it on her mother while she was sleeping. The end result was horrifying. As her memoirs kept getting darker, Matilda entailed how, over the next few years, she began to control her parents with this very dark magic. Her mother had grown weaker and she stopped her experiments on Matilda completely. Her father had tried to fight back but eventually, his will had become frail as well and he submitted to his daughter.
She was now well over 20 years old and the majority of her time was spent in the company of unscrupulous characters, sinking into the dark arts. Her stifling childhood and negligent parents had transformed the would-be child into a cynical and perverse woman. While she learnt as much as she could about illegal magic, her parents were locked in the same cellar that she had once called home.
July 15th 1624
There were only four words on this page but, as a cold gust of air blew in through the train compartment tainted with the foul smell of the outskirts, the goose bumps on Hermione’s arms began to rise and she shivered.
Today, I killed father.
---
His nerves were treading on thin ice and Pansy could tell. She watched him as his eyebrows shifted upwards and then jerked back down, as his lips twisted into a thin line and the pale, thin membrane of skin became hollow and dark. The darkness in the room only further deepened the contours in his face and the moonlight served the purpose of illuminating his silver hair. He squirmed slightly and though his eyes were closed, Pansy could picture the rapid movement of his grey pupils. She placed her long fingers against the side of his face and ran it down slowly, waiting for a shiver to pass through him.
Nothing.
She let out a low laugh and smiled to herself. “Like a statue carved in rock,” she whispered.
And, like the sound of a pin dropping in a room of dead silence, Draco heard her words and opened his eyes slowly, looking at her dark brown eyes as she lay beside him on the bed.
“You were sweating,” Pansy said slowly.
“Bad dream,” he replied with an expressionless tone. He propped himself up on his elbows and took a deep breath.
“You shouldn’t worry so much,” she remarked, edging closer to him. “It’ll be over soon.”
“And until it is, I need to worry,” he said.
“Then let me distract you,” she said, a thin smile twisting itself onto her thin lips. “I’m very good at it.”
Draco groaned slowly and edged away. “Not now,” he said flatly.
“Don’t tell me, you don’t want to?” Pansy asked, pouting. “Isn’t it fun?”
He sighed. “It was…nice,” he remarked awkwardly but turned away. “But now is not the time.”
“It’s Granger, isn’t it?” Pansy shot suddenly. Draco was so taken aback that his head jetted towards her with a piercing look of disbelief in it.
“What?”
Pansy smiled. “You said her name,” she said, raising her eyebrow. “Before, when you were sleeping.”
“What did I say?”
“You told her to stay away,” she said wilfully. Draco’s face relaxed a little and his calm, flat mask returned once again.
“It was a warning,” Draco said. “I probably told her to stay away from here.”
Pansy’s smile didn’t move. “Any girl that appears in your dreams has more of an effect on you than just distaste.”
Her eyes flickered for a moment before she placed a gentle kiss on Draco’s pale cheek and ran her finger down his face, feeling the rock hard dent of his cheekbone.
“Nothing,” she said, sighing. “I suppose you can wake me if you change your mind.”
Draco paused for a second as Pansy rolled back into the covers and tucked her head onto the pillow. He lay down beside her and put one arm behind his head. “You know,” he began, “someday, when you find someone, we’re going to have to stop this.”
“We will,” she said.
“Would it be easy?” Draco asked suddenly. “Would it be easy to let go of something so easily detached and unemotional and commit to a relationship that is based purely on love?”
“I could do it, if the guy was right,” Pansy remarked, her head facing away from Draco.
There was a moment of stillness before Draco spoke again. “How do you know?”
“Because if I met someone whom I could love so much that even the thought of betraying him hurt me, then I would be able to turn away from all this.”
“From me?”
“Even from you.”
“That’s very confident,” Draco noted.
“I know I could do it,” Pansy replied. The two of them sat in silence for a while before she turned to Draco. “Could you?”
“I don’t know,” he replied truthfully.
---
“Last Stop! This train has reached its last stop! All witches and wizards are kindly asked to collect their luggage and leave this train!”
The loud voice echoed on the empty platform as the conductor banged his fist against the large steam engine. “That means you too, miss!”
Hermione’s eyes flew open as a pair of hands shook her shoulders violently. “This is the last stop. We’re at the outer city,” the hands said.
Hermione looked around dazedly at the tall man in front of her and quickly sat up straight, adjusting her askew coat and frizzled hair. “What time is it?” she asked suddenly, realizing she had fallen asleep.
“A little past three in the morning,” the man replied without checking a watch. His hazel eyes were shining against his black hair but they looked tried. “You’d best leave the train, miss. We’re pulling out of the station in ten minutes.”
“We’re at the Outer City, right?”
“Yes we are.” He eyed Hermione suspiciously as she gathered all her belongings and stuffed the conspicuous leather bound book into her trunk. “You know where you’re heading, I reckon?”
“Well, sort of…” Hermione began. “I…” She wasn’t sure if she should continue her question. Would this man even know where Malfoy Manor was?
“I know this place like the back of my palm, miss,” he assured her.
“I need to get… I need to get to Malfoy Manor.”
The train’s whistle blew loudly, indicating the last call for all passengers to either get aboard or descend off the train. The man’s hazel eyes flickered and he took a step back. “I ain’t got nothing to do with that place,” he said cryptically. “Sorry, miss.”
Hermione rolled her eyes and grabbed her trunk and broomstick along with her as she pushed past the confused and frightened looking train clerk. “Useless,” she muttered to herself.
---
Evan Parker looked after the lady with a perplexed expression. She was the third person this week to ask him about Malfoy Manor and he was no dunce. Something was happening at the mansion.
But, unlike the red headed man and the blonde man, this girl seemed far too innocent to be working with the likes of Draco Malfoy. Still, he shook the eerie thought from his head and reached for a scrap of paper in his pocket to carry out his instructions.
“Bracknell Station – 3 a.m. a brown haired woman asked about the manor tonight. – Parker”
He folded the paper hastily and went over to his waiting room near the front of the train. The snowy white owl had been hooting anxiously, as if awaiting his return. He entered the small compartment and tied the parchment to the owl’s legs, releasing her from the cage.
“Off you go,” he said, watching her fly off towards Malfoy Manor and awaiting the shiny gold galleon he received every time he reported a potential visitor to the dark mansion.
---
There was a bright white flash and Draco sat up instinctively, reaching for his wand. His sudden jolt steadied a little when he realized it was Eli who had come into the room and was using the bright light at the windows.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s urgent, Master Malfoy!” Eli said heavily. “They’re here!”
“Who’s here?”
The quiver in his voice was too hard to hide; it was a quiver of a man who had realized his mistake and of a man grappling at straws before he drowned. “Lestrange.”
---
A cold shot of air passed through the room as the name Eli had just mentioned still echoed within the walls.
“How is that possible?”
“I underestimated him,” Eli said, his voice had become calmer but he spoke with speed. “He lied to you in his letter. There is no way he could have made it here from France within a few hours.”
“No surprise there,” Malfoy retorted. “How do you know he’s here though? Are they at the gates?”
Eli shook his head and reached into his dark pocket, producing a thin piece of parchment which he handed to Draco.
“Parker reported it?” he asked.
“I told him to keep a closer eye; I even doubled his commission. Master Malfoy, what do you suggest we do?”
“How long till they get here?” Malfoy asked.
“An hour or so,” Eli replied without pause. “And that is, if they make good time which I cannot guarantee.”
“How many of them are there?”
“The letter says five, including Lestrange himself.”
Draco’s eyes stood frozen on the cold, frosted glass window but his mind sped through hundreds of possible options that he had. The stunned silence in the room only clouded his mind further until a faint stirring from the bed grabbed his attention.
“Pansy,” he whispered to himself.
Immediately, he rushed towards her and stirred her quickly. “Pansy, get up,” he said hurriedly.
The weary woman opened her fatigued eyes and glanced at Draco with a confused expression. “What’s wrong?”
Draco had already left her side and reached into his drawer to grab a huge black set of robes. “Change into these,” he said, throwing them on the bed. “Hurry!”
“What’s wrong, Draco?”
“Lestrange is on his way here,” Draco replied quickly. “You need to get out of here. Eli will send you in the carriage.”
Pansy didn’t move as her eyes flooded with fear. “I told you this would happen!” she said. Her breath began to race.
“It’s fine – once you leave the grounds, Lestrange won’t ever know you were involved and you’ll be clear.”
Pansy sat upright and her brown eyes were even more confused. “Leave? Where am I going?”
Draco sighed. “Home… the Ministry… anywhere!”
To his disbelief, Pansy got up and laughed slowly. “I’m not going anywhere. We said we’d do this together.”
“No…absolutely not! Out of the question!” Draco shot back. “I know I said that but we’re not prepared enough…”
“I don’t care! You’re not the only one who lost something in this war!” Pansy cried. “I want my revenge.”
“I understand…” Draco said exasperatedly. “But-”
“If you understand, then the matter is settled. You stay, I stay.” Pansy’s hardened expression softened as she put her hand against Draco’s cold, pale cheek. “Don’t try to do things by yourself… life is always better when someone’s by your side.”
Pansy’s words struck Draco like an arrow in his chest as the faint cries of Hermione Granger entered his mind. Her persistent voice had been pleading so adamantly to help him that her words had been ingrained into his memory.
Let me help you!
“What do we need to do?” Pansy asked.
Draco sighed. “Eli’s resealing some of the charms to buy us some time but there’s five of them so I don’t know what more time will do.”
“We have the element of surprise,” Eli offered.
“I can probably take three of them but no more…” Draco pondered. “Pansy, you could take one?”
“Of course,” she said, twirling her wand in her fingers darkly.
“That leaves Lestrange. He’ll have his death eaters in front of him for sure so he’ll be the last one left.”
“I can handle him, Master Malfoy,” Eli said casually.
“No,” Draco shot back. “Lestrange is mine.”
---
Hermione examined her cold surroundings with astute eyes despite the oncoming tiredness. It was four in the morning and she was sitting in the middle of one of the most dangerous parts of London with nothing but a broomstick, a trunk and a large, illegal book.
She seated herself on one of the empty benches on the isolated platform and began to consider her options. Asking Harry for help would be useless because firstly, contacting him could set Ron off and secondly, he wouldn’t know how to get to the mansion. She could ask Eli to come get her but Malfoy might find out in the process or Pansy might intercept her owl. Or perhaps, she could spend the night at an inn nearby? Then again, the Outer City may not be the best place to spend the night.
“…such a prick…”
Hermione’s head snapped up as she heard a man’s voice on the other side of the platform approaching her. She craned her neck and saw a tall, bald man speaking to two other men. One of them was short and plump with long, tousled, brown hair and the other was constricted from her view.
The bald man replied. “I just want to sleep in a thick bed tonight,” he grunted. “Been too long… we’ve been sleeping on bloody piles of straw.”
“I’ve heard there’s an army of house elves there… d’you reckon we can get us some to take?” the bald man asked thickly.
“Shut up you two,” the hidden man said. His voice was low and smooth, reminding Hermione of Draco. “You won’t even be staying there.”
“’snot fair,” the bald man grumbled. “What are we waitin’ for, anyhoo?”
“Just be patient,” the hidden man replied. “We need broomsticks before we can fly to the Manor.”
“Where is it ‘nyways?” the bald man asked.
“Hidden, I’ve heard,” the short man replied. “Malfoy Manor is supposed to be a fortress.”
Hermione took in a sharp breath, stirring the air around her as she scrambled for a discarded Daily Prophet to make herself seem busy. They were talking about Malfoy… She strained her ears hard to hear the conversation though her eyes remained focused on the paper in front of her.
The hidden man stepped out from behind the large barrister and Hermione registered his appearance with some shock as he moved out of the shadows. He was taller than both the other men with longer than average black hair and extremely brown eyes. But what caught Hermione’s attention was that he reminded her so much of Draco in the way that he held himself: his posture was upright and rigid and though his facial features were harder, he looked about the same age as her.
“Clear out the trunks,” he ordered the bald man. “Rosier is coming with the brooms.”
Hermione took a few seconds before realizing that this was the very opportunity she had been waiting for. She tightened her right hand around the Viktor Krum broomstick and discreetly slid the old newspaper by the bench.
The bald man grunted slightly, baring his large yellow teeth before he left. The shorter man then seized the opportunity of his friend’s absence to ask a few more questions.
“Do you trust him?” he said cautiously. “I mean, Malfoy.”
“More than I trust you,” the Draco-look-alike replied, forming a very familiar smirk on his face that sent a tinge of something down Hermione’s spine.
“Very funny,” the other man grunted.
It seemed that even though the bald man and the shorter man were both much older, they all succumbed to this mysterious, tall figure. Within a matter of minutes, the bald man returned and handed each of the other men a broomstick. Hermione too grabbed hers tightly and watched attentively as the three figures proceeded to the front of the station.
“The rest are waiting,” one of them said. They headed for the exit.
Hermione followed, grabbing the invisibility cloak from her trunk.
---
Eli had finished setting up the last of the charms. They had a little over twenty minutes left and Malfoy and Pansy were preparing themselves both mentally and physically. The house elves had moved all of Draco’s possessions from his room to the largest and most magnificent bedroom in the Manor: the master bedroom – which is where he would be staying for the duration of Lestrange’s visit.
There was a flutter at the window and an owl flew in swiftly, dropping a letter into Eli’s old hands. The parchment was very familiar and Eli knew this could mean one thing – someone else was coming to the Manor.
Bracknell Station – 3 a.m. a brown haired woman asked about the manor tonight. – Parker
Eli was normally a calm man but he felt his heart skip three consecutive beats in a second. A brown haired woman… a woman with brown hair… In that instant, he knew. He knew the only brown haired woman who would dare try to come to the Manor and she was coming…
“What’s wrong?”
Eli felt taken aback as Malfoy stood in the doorway with a concerned look on his face. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
Eli looked at the young man in front of him and the tired look in his eyes as well as the faint tremors in his hands were enough to convince Eli that what he was about to do was right.
“Nothing,” he replied calmly.
“We’re ready,” Malfoy said.
Eli nodded grimly. “Is Ms. Parkinson downstairs?”
“She needs a moment to herself, she’s anxious.”
“And you?”
Malfoy looked up for a few seconds before turning towards the window. “I’m fine.”
“It’s alright to be nervous,” Eli said, taking on a much more paternal tone than he usually did. He felt almost intrusive as he observed Draco’s reaction.
Draco inhaled deeply but his eyes remained focused on the courtyard outside where the cold gusts of wind blew. “Get the elves to watch the forest,” he said coldly. “That’s probably where Lestrange is going to come from.”
“Yes, sir.”
---
Hermione shivered silently under the invisibility cloak. The three men had now been joined another two men and were standing outside in the dark corner of Bracknell Station. They were waiting.
There was a rustle in the canvas of trees behind them and an amorphous, hooded mass appeared from within. Hermione bit her lip to stop it from quivering as the light struck the haunted face of Rodolphus Lestrange, his eyes bloodshot and his lips twisted into a menacing grin.
Hermione felt a cold gust of air fly down her throat and twist her lungs. She couldn’t breathe properly.
“Cassius,” he said in a low voice. “My boy!”
The Draco look alike, apparently named Cassius, stepped forward as Lestrange opened his arms out and pulled him into an embrace. “It’s been far too long,” Lestrange added.
“I agree,” Cassius replied apathetically. “Shall we leave?”
“Yes, yes. The path is safe when the night is darkest…”
Cassius turned around and nodded to the other four men. “We keep north,” he said quietly as frost expelled from his mouth. “There’s a thin clearing after about twenty minutes or so, bordered by a river. A little further is an extremely dense forest, that’s where we descend.”
“Wha’ ‘bout the ministry?” one of the men asked.
Two of the men started laughing and Lestrange rolled his eyes. “It’s Malfoy Manor, Marcus. The Ministry won’t dare touch it.”
Hermione’s hands were trembling as her fingers tightened around her wand. He was there… fifteen feet from her. He had killed her parents. She could kill him right now. The other five men would notice her and she wasn’t strong enough to overpower them. The bald man and the man named Marcus did not seem that powerful – she could paralyze them.
She would surely die. The man named Cassius seemed a lot more strategic and masterful. He could definitely attack her within seconds of realizing what had happened and he was a death eater, so he wouldn’t hesitate before using the killing curse.
She took a deep breath and lifted her hand into the air. Harry would understand; he knows what it’s like to be consumed by revenge… he would understand that her death was necessary if it meant Lestrange would die too.
She closed her eyes and pictured Ron, Ginny and Harry… her friends, her family. She pointed her wand straight at Lestrange who seemed to be talking to one of the other men.
“Ava-” she began to whisper.
“Malfoy is not to be trusted,” Lestrange said in a low voice to Cassius.
Hermione stopped short as the men continued, still unaware of her.
“I know,” he replied.
Hermione swore at Malfoy any way she could in her mind. Her hand remained frozen in mid air but she no longer felt the same conviction of death as before – she had a reason to live. She needed to figure out what Malfoy was doing…
The mystery called to her again… slowly making her tense arm fall back to her side.
The men mounted their brooms and kicked off the ground. Cassius was the last one to leave and before he expertly took off, he turned his head slightly to the corner where Hermione was standing. His gaze hovered over the seemingly empty patch of grass and he turned back to his broom, kicking off.
---
Hermione had waited twenty minutes before taking off on her Viktor Krum broomstick. She had gone east first before curving north in order to avoid running into Lestrange’s men. As the first signs of dawn began to hit the horizon, she came upon the inclined river that the man named Cassius had mentioned. Though Hermione had never taken flying lessons, her general expertise with sneaking around where she wasn’t welcome had taught her a few tricks. She slowed down carefully and kept as low as possible. The wind had died down but her hands remained frozen in the cold, making it difficult to navigate smoothly.
Hermione suddenly stopped short as she saw the figures below, standing at the edge of the dense forest. She remembered landing here the first time with Eli and she knew what was going to come next - the Fidelus Charm.
The forest was dead silent for a moment, hidden beneath the black veil of darkness. Suddenly, there was a tiny tremor and a faint gold light emanated from the ground. The magnificent clearing past the forest shook silently and the opulent manor appeared out of thin air.
The men did not hesitate as they climbed on their brooms and zoomed past the trees into the manor’s grounds. Hermione followed shortly, still maintaining her height to avoid being seen. The clear air whisked itself through Hermione’s bushy tresses and the numbness in her fingers had finally set in. She continued to propel the broom forward, trying to find the maximum balance between speed and silence. In a matter of seconds, the Fidelus Charm would lock itself again and she wouldn’t be able to get back in.
“Go! Go! Go!” she hissed to herself.
The death eaters had already entered the grounds and Hermione was still a good hundred feet away. The edges of the Manor began to fade slowly and she kicked the broom roughly.
“Come on, you stupid piece of junk!”
---
Draco stood tall at the front steps of the Manor with Pansy at his arm and Eli a few feet behind him. He felt something that he hadn’t really felt in a long time… he felt like a true Malfoy.
“Thirty seconds,” Eli whispered from the back. The Fidelus Charm would close itself in thirty seconds and Lestrange and his men would be here within that time.
“What about the curses between the main gates and here?” Pansy asked.
“Disabled, temporarily,” Eli assured her.
“We don’t want dear Uncle Ralph to get hurt,” Draco added. “Twenty seconds.”
---
She was only fifty feet away but the darkness surrounding the Manor had centered itself. It was almost faded three quarters of the way which left very little room for entry. Hermione forwent any inclinations of silence and sped up as fast as she could.
The roof of the North Tower was visible and Hermione saw it as her best option. Another twenty feet and she would be there.
---
Pansy adjusted her velvet black robes nervously as Eli called out five seconds. From the far end of the courtyard, she could see a dark mass of figures descend from the sky. There were six men in total, each one on their own broomsticks.
She held Draco’s arm tighter and he looked at her with a pensive expression. She knew he regretted his decision to let her stay here but she didn’t care. It wasn’t his decision to make.
“There are six men,” Pansy whispered in a quivering voice. “His letter said five.”
“I didn’t expect him to tell the truth,” Draco replied. “Don’t worry.”
The brooms were closing in fast and before long, the six men landed with a thud against the ground. Pansy felt Draco’s arm tense up and she knew he was tightening the hold on his wand. She did the same with hers.
“Draco, Draco…”
The last figure to descend stepped out of the darkness and held his arms out in a fatherly fashion. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Uncle Ralph,” Draco said, nodding curtly. “You’re early.”
“Well you know what they say,” Lestrange said, still smiling. “Early bird gets the worm. Earlier is always better.”
“Not for the worm,” Draco replied.
Lestrange laughed coldly and turned towards Pansy. “Could it be?” he said, gaping at her. “Pansy Parkinson!”
“Mr. Lestrange,” Pansy said politely, unable to muster a smile. This seemed so reminiscent of her family’s earlier death eater gatherings where parents would show off just how evil their children had become.
“What a sight you have become,” he said, baring his large, yellow teeth. Pansy shifted uncomfortably and edged in closer to Draco. Lestrange didn’t seem to notice as he turned to Eli.
“And of course, Eli… my dear fellow, still in bountiful service, I see?”
“As always,” Eli replied shortly.
There was a still silence for a few seconds before Lestrange backed away and turned towards his men. “You remember Cassius, don’t you, Draco?”
The second figure stepped out of the dark and Pansy’s jaw dropped. She eyed Cassius with amazement, comparing him to the scrawny, pale faced boy he had been when she had last seen him twelve years ago.
Draco’s muscles tightened even further. “Durmstrang has changed you,” he noted.
“As has Hogwarts with you,” Cassius replied with a slight smile.
“Shall we go in?” Lestrange offered. “I’ve been yearning for a warm meal.”
Draco nodded before turning to Eli. “Put the curses on the grounds back in place,” he said. “We don’t need any unwanted visitors.”
“Yes, Master Malfoy.”
There was a slight shuffling of sounds and Eli waved his wand fluidly. Draco nodded gently and put his other hand on Pansy’s arm. “Let’s go.”
He began to take a few steps inside when there was a loud scream from above. All heads shot up directly towards the large roof of the castle where a tiny figure hung from the edge of the North Tower.
The colour from Draco’s face drained instantly as his ears registered that voice. Pansy took a little longer but sensing Draco’s fear, her arms began to tremble. There was a fumbling of sounds from behind them and before she could react, Eli had already drawn his wand and pushed Pansy behind him.
Four of the six death eaters had drawn their wands.
“I told you it wouldn’t be safe!” one of them hissed.
Cassius and Lestrange stood where they were though their eyes had jetted to the roof of the North Tower as well.
“I say we kill ‘em!” another one shot back.
The humour from Lestrange’s eyes had dissipated as he glared at Eli. Draco’s eyes, in all this time, had not moved from the North Tower. His pallid features were plastered against his cold face as he gazed up.
“What the hell is going on?” Lestrange barked.
No one replied.
There was another scream from above and this time, the figure twisted to look down. She was terrified as her eyes met Draco’s, who still hadn’t moved. Her fingers loosened from the top of the tower and the high-pitched cry for help struck his ears as she lost her grip and fell.
“Master Malfoy!” Eli cried as Draco jumped forward off the front steps. His wand was stretched out high in his arms.
“I hate her!” were the only words that Pansy heard as a shot of white light encircled the falling body, slowing it down.
“Expelliarmus!” one of the hooded death eaters shouted. Draco fell forward as Pansy took out her wand and countered the spell, striking the death eater in the chest as he fell backwards onto the ground.
The momentary lapse had caused Draco to falter and Hermione began to fall again. Her body was heading towards the large fountain surrounding a silver statue of Adonis. Hermione missed the stone statue by a few inches and landed into the water. A few seconds later, Draco followed in after her, realizing that the fountain had been enchanted to have the depth of an ocean.
His fingers grappled hopelessly for Hermione’s limp body as he took a sharp breath and ducked his head into the water. Though at first his vision was blurry and clouded, he caught sight of the struggling woman a few feet away. Draco managed to grab her hand tightly and she latched onto him firmly before he used his free arm to swim back up to the surface.
As his lips touched the cold morning air, he gasped loudly before pulling a conscious, scrambling Hermione Granger to the surface. She grabbed onto the stone edge of the fountain as Eli ran over to help her up.
“What on ear-” Hermione began, staring at Draco with a terrified expression.
Her words were cut short as the three remaining death eaters surrounded the fountain with their wands help up high. Draco’s breaths were quick and unsteady as he looked at Hermione with nothing but pure rage in his eyes. Pansy stood behind all of them, held back sharply by Cassius’s imposing figure.
“Who is this?” Lestrange demanded coldly, gesturing towards Hermione.
Draco was silent. He still wasn’t in perfect physical condition and his chest was beginning to throb mercilessly.
“What kind of game are you playing, Draco?” Lestrange asked, his smile returning. “Trying to trick your dear Uncle Ralph?”
“Master Lestrange,” Eli said. “Please, she’s no danger.”
“Who is she, Eli?” Lestrange demanded again.
Eli turned his head slightly to meet Malfoy’s grey eyes and then Hermione’s brown eyes before turning back to Lestrange. “This,” he said, gesturing to Hermione, “this is Lady Malfoy.”
---
I feel obligated to write something at this point. When I first got the idea of Lady Malfoy, Eli's last line is the first scene that came into my mind. I’ve been waiting for over a year to write this so I hope the twist is both unexpected and welcomed. I can’t say for sure how long this story is going to be but it’ll be good, I promise =) Reviews are much appreciated especially at this point. Were you shocked? Surprised? Do you hate it? Are you confused?
The awe struck expressions of the three people lying on the floor would have been an obvious giveaway to Lestrange, had he not been gaping at Eli himself. Malfoy’s grey eyes had widened to enormous proportions while Hermione’s jaw dropped to the floor. Pansy was rigid and completely frozen.
“Lady Malfoy?” Lestrange repeated, still looking at Eli.
“Yes, sir.”
“This…” he began. “This…is Lady Malfoy?”
“The one and only.”
Lestrange turned around to Cassius, who seemed just as perplexed. He shrugged. “You mean to tell me…this…this is Draco’s…”
“Wife,” Pansy said. “This is Draco’s wife.”
She looked at Hermione with a confused look and then immediately back to Lestrange. Hermione was aghast beyond comprehension, shivering in the icy wind and soaked from head to toe. Her quivering lip made it much harder to talk but with the whirlwind of thoughts going through her mind right now, she doubted her words would make any sense.
“I’ve never heard of her,” Lestrange countered.
“Yeah, me neither!” One of his cronies replied.
“You’ve been gone for so long, Master Lestrange,” Eli interjected. “I doubt Master Malfoy would have been able to contact you.”
Lestrange’s beady eyes hovered over onto Hermione’s blue face. The shivering had extended to her limbs and she grabbed her arms to keep herself warm. Eli took of his winter cloak and wrapped it gently around Hermione’s quivering body.
“Better, my lady?” he asked. His face was close to hers and only she could see the pleading expression in his eyes.
She turned her head to Draco slightly who hadn’t uttered a word. He seemed as terrified as she was. She wanted an answer…she would demand an answer… but later.
“Y-es-sss,” she replied shakily.
“Perhaps we should continue this conversation inside?” Eli asked calmly, moving away from Hermione and turning back to Lestrange. “The elves have prepared the warm meal you’ve been desiring.”
“I’m freezing,” Pansy agreed. “As I’m sure Draco and Her-”
She stopped herself mid-sentence and inhaled suddenly, as if she’d said a curse word.
“What?” Lestrange said suspiciously.
“Hermia,” Draco said unexpectedly. “Hermia and I are freezing.”
Lestrange’s furrowed brow and creased forehead remained tight. He looked at Draco carefully and then Hermione. “Of course,” he said, forcing a terse smile onto his face that was anything but sincere.
“Ms. Parkinson,” Eli said, looking at Pansy. “Perhaps you should get ready with Master and Lady Malfoy for the dinner. I will show these gentlemen their rooms.”
Draco turned suddenly and stood up. His fear seemed to have dissipated and his posture resumed its rigid and proper self. “My hospitality extends only so far as to you, Uncle Ralph,” he said coldly. “I’m afraid Malfoy Manor as a Death Eater motel was only permissible during my father’s time here.”
Lestrange smiled. “Naturally.”
“Cassius and I will be the only ones staying here,” he added. “Mulciber, Marcus and Hector will be visiting occasionally.”
“Eli, show them to their rooms,” Draco instructed, turning to Pansy. “Let’s go.”
“See you at dinner, my boy,” Lestrange said, nodding. “I’m dying to hear about your wedding.”
“As am I,” Cassius said smoothly, speaking for the first time here.
Draco nodded as he watched Eli lead the visiting party into the Manor. Cassius was the tallest of them all and his walk was both poised and fluid whereas the other men slouched like animals and walked harshly.
As the men disappeared from view, Draco turned back.
“Inside,” he said, each word dripping with anger as he glared at Hermione who recoiled, like a child about to be scolded by their parent. “Now.”
---
Draco stormed past the large dining halls and twisted corridors without uttering a word. Hermione cowered a few feet behind him, trailing at a snail's pace as her frigid body recovered. Pansy had slowed her steps to keep in line with Hermione, keeping her wand tightly locked in her hand. As the halls began to widen, they approached a huge set of marble staircases that opened from both sides of a platform above. Draco’s steps were deliberate and huge, causing Hermione extra effort to keep up with him.
“Where are we going?” she whispered.
“To the master bedroom,” Pansy replied briefly. “Keep up.”
As they reached the top of the platform, Hermione saw a magnificent set of dark, oak doors with silver handles. Draco stood in front of them and twisted the silver latch to open the intricately carved door.
As they entered the master bedroom of Malfoy Manor, Hermione took in a sharp breath. The master bedroom wasn’t a bedroom… it was a hotel suite, only three times as large. The walls were a neutral brown, finished off with light beige crown moulding and gold carvings along the top. There were dark drapes that hung off the two large windows on either side of a slightly lighter sofa set. There were various tables and around the room that carried photographs and extremely expensive crystal pottery. Very few lights lit the room, only enough to fill it with a light gold hue.
Pansy gestured Hermione in and shut the door behind her. Hermione was about to open her mouth to speak but was silenced instantly by a glare from Draco. Pansy pointed her wand to the door and uttered a few spells under a breath, which sealed off the room, Hermione guessed.
Great, she thought miserably. They’re going to kill me.
Pansy turned back to Draco and nodded.
“ARE YOU OUT OF YOU FREAKING MIND?!” Draco yelled. Hermione jumped back at his sudden outburst. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
“SINCE WE’RE ASKING QUESTIONS, WHY DON’T YOU TELL ME WHY YOU’RE HAVING A FAMILY REUNION WITH AN INTERNATIONALLY WANTED CRIMINAL?” she shot back.
Draco rolled his eyes. “Oh hell, Granger! Answer my question first!”
“NO!”
“Do you realize what could have happened!?” he shouted. “If they found out who you were, we’d be rounding up your dismembered body parts just about now!”
“And what a shame it is that aren’t!”
“And not only that, you would gotten us killed!” he added, turning red in the face.
Hermione turned to see him point to Pansy and her original fear struck her. Pansy. Pansy was the reason she’d come back. She looked at Pansy suspiciously and turned back to Draco.
“I came here to help you!”
“Good heavens, Granger! Why can’t you just stay out of my business?!” his glare became more pronounced by the minute. “What on earth could I have needed your help with?!”
“Her!” Hermione cried, pointing at Pansy.
The silence in the room was strong. Draco looked at Pansy, confused and then turned back to Hermione. “What about Pansy?”
“She… she…she got into the manor,” Hermione mumbled. “And none of you knew… she kept saying how she surprised you and then… then Eli said he hadn’t let her in. There was no way she could have gotten in without someone’s help…someone on the outside…”
Another brief silence followed when a pained look manifested itself onto Draco’s face and Pansy buried her face in her hands.
“That is what you came back for?!” he asked, exasperatedly. He turned to Pansy. “All that overacting…for nothing!”
Pansy looked up at Draco. “It’s not my fault! I didn’t think she’d actually go and question everything I said! And besides, you were gone when I first arrived so I couldn’t very well say it was you who let me in.”
Hermione watched perplexedly as Draco and Pansy exchanged words like she was not there. Something deep inside told her that Draco knew Pansy was coming… and that she was much more of a welcome guest at the Manor than Hermione was.
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?!” she cried angrily.
“Draco knew I was coming,” Pansy explained. “I’m an animagus and just like you got into the manor today when the Fidelus Charm was unlocked, I got into the manor when Weasley was leaving in his carriage.”
Hermione opened her mouth to protest but a vivid image fluttered through her memory. The image of her looking up at the sky as Ron flew away in the majestic Malfoy carriage and just before he disappeared, a little brown sparrow appeared out of the clouds.
“You’re a sparrow?” Hermione said, gasping suddenly.
She had been a fool. She had risked her life to come here, only to find that she wasn’t needed at all. Pansy had planned her visit and Malfoy had planned Pansy’s visit and no one had planned her arrival.
“W…what about Lestrange?!” Hermione shot back, clinging to any hope of dignifying her overreaction. “Why is he here?!”
Malfoy rolled his eyes and cursed loudly. “Suffering cats, Granger! I’m not playing twenty questions with you! Do you understand that?! If you had just minded your own damn business, you wouldn’t be in the same house as the man trying to kill you!”
Hermione had half the mind to just break down in tears right there but Draco’s arrogant and rude outbursts kept her from doing so.
“I want an answer,” she demanded, trying to sound forceful. “You were supposed to be protecting me from him!”
“Yes!” Malfoy exploded. “I was supposed to and I DID! If it wasn’t for your big nose, you would have returned to your bloody suburban lifestyle without a hair on your head being damaged. But you chose to dig around and get us half killed and now you’re back to finish the job! Great!”
“If you would JUST-”
The door to the master bedroom creaked open slowly and Eli hurried in, shutting it behind him.
“You must all get ready for dinner,” he instructed.
“Oh yeah, which reminds me,” Hermione began, harnessing this sudden burst of energy. “What is this nonsense about me being your wife?!”
“Well something had to be done!” Malfoy shouted.
Pansy and Eli seemed to have slowly backed out of this conversation, looking at each other worriedly as Hermione and Draco continued to belt insults at each other.
“You literally fell from the sky into the lap of the one man who’s out for your blood!” Malfoy said angrily. “You’re so bloody lucky that Lestrange’s never seen you.”
“Yes, but why couldn’t I have been a maid in the household?! Or… or another death eater friend?”
“I don’t know! Why don’t you ask Eli?”
All three of them turned to face Eli, who now wore an expression of guilt on his face. “I panicked,” he admitted. “Lestrange would have killed you at that very moment you fell… he was going to, I could see it.”
“He would have killed all of us,” Pansy corrected.
“But why make me a Malfoy?” Hermione asked, her voice now considerably softer.
“Master Lestrange has very little regard for anyone other than purebloods,” Eli continued. “Making you anything other than a Malfoy would have made him question your ancestry. As long as we can come up with a straight story about your parents, he won’t suspect it.”
Hermione wanted to argue with Eli but her better judgement stopped her. She knew he was right. The son of Lucius Malfoy would never marry a half-blood or muggle and so by association, she was already considered a pure blood. A little made up genealogy and she could convince all of them that she was from the highest ranks of wizarding society.
“But that still doesn’t answer why Lestrange is here in the first place!” Hermione said.
“Not now,” Pansy said, looking at Draco fearfully.
“Ms. Parkinson is right,” Eli agreed. “Dinner first, questions later.”
“Let’s get her story straight,” Draco said, still red in the face. Hermione felt the blood under her skin boiling as he began to talk about her like she wasn’t even there. “What family is Granger from?”
“It can’t be a British family,” Pansy added. “Lestrange knows all the extremely famous ones.”
“But he has to have heard of the family,” Eli said. “The Morettis?”
“Italy?” Draco scoffed. “He’s been there and he knows the whole lot of them.”
“The Bancrofts?” Pansy suggested. “I met Clarissa Bancroft a year before she died. Her family’s spread all over the world, there’s no way Lestrange could know all of them.”
“They’re too obscure,” Eli said, shaking his head.
“The Devereux,” Draco suggested suddenly. “They’re French.”
“The family of Edward Devereux?” Eli asked.
“The family went into hiding after the Dark Lord’s defeat, leaving France. They barely make contact with anyone out of Belgium.”
“That works!” Pansy said, sounding relieved as she turned to Hermione.
Eli seemed satisfied as well as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold watch. “You should get ready for dinner.”
Draco rolled his eyes and turned to Hermione. “What is she going to wear?”
“You know, I’m right here!” Hermione said, through gritted teeth.
“Yes, that’s what I’m trying to forget.”
“Might I be so bold as to suggest your mother’s robes?” Eli asked Malfoy. “They are the same height.”
Hermione watched Draco’s expression freeze for a moment and the rage from his eyes flee from his body. He looked out the window into the garden before quickly phasing back into his normal, irritable self.
“No,” he replied coldly. “Mother was far too thin; Granger won’t be able to fit in.”
Hermione’s mouth was already half open with an angry retort when she felt Eli’s warm hands press against her arm, ushering her to stop.
“We can always charm the robes,” Eli said.
“No.”
“I have a whole set of dress robes,” Pansy offered suddenly. “She can wear mine.”
“Right,” Draco said shortly before turning on his heel and walking into one of the other sub-rooms in the master bedroom.
---
“Your grandfather’s name was Edward Devereux,” Pansy called from outside the door.
“Right,” Hermione answered absentmindedly as she tried to figure out how to wear Pansy’s dress robes in the bathroom.
“He died young and it was your grandmother who raised your father until she was killed by a bunch of mudbloods – sorry, muggles. But you need to get used to saying ‘mudbloods’ in front of Lestrange.”
Hermione turned her back to the mirror in order to see the back strap of the dark maroon dress. “Why was she killed?”
“No one really knows,” Pansy said through the door. “Her body was never found.”
Hermione finally got a tight grip on the velvet strap and made a sloppy bow on the back to keep the dress tight at the waist line. She adjusted the thin straps around her shoulders as Pansy continued the story.
“Your parents are Edward Devereux the second and his wife, Constance. Your older brother was declared mad in Azkaban where he still lies captive and your younger brother is still with your mother.”
“My father’s dead?” Hermione asked.
She stopped for a second and revelled in the phrase she had just uttered. This whole chaotic mess had distracted her from the most important factor – her parents’ deaths.
“A year ago,” Pansy said. “So that would be right after you and Draco got married.”
Hermione choked slightly on her words. “I’m ready.”
She opened the door, stumbling into the beautiful dressing room, looking like less of a mess than she had before. The dark maroon dress that Pansy had lent her was a pretty good fit though a little more promiscuous than she was used to.
“Does it need to be this low?” Hermione asked, fidgeting with her neckline.
“The robes will cover it,” Pansy assured her, appearing from behind a dressing screen. She was wearing a chic black dress that hit the top of her knees flirtatiously. Her hair was let out and it swung slightly in the light breeze of the room.
Hermione felt completely inadequate in her clumsy outfit. “Let’s fix your hair,” Pansy suggested, taking out her wand.
“Why is this important?” Hermione asked bitterly.
“Appearances are key in pureblood families,” she said sternly. “The way you look reflects on your family. For a casual dinner, you look fine.”
She handed Hermione a matching set of maroon robes which she gladly put on to cover her cold arms and shivering shoulders. Pansy waved her wand, straightening the kinks in Hermione’s frizzy hair and then tying it into a sophisticated up do.
“Let Draco do all the talking.”
---
Pansy and Hermione met Draco at the door of the master bedroom. He looked completely put together in his dark black robes just like Pansy… Hermione reckoned they should have been the couple. His messy blonde hair had been washed and combed back while the pallor of his skin returned to its usual, flawless self.
“Once you leave this room,” he instructed. “He can hear what you say. He’s already put up the charm.”
Hermione nodded. “Try not to speak,” he added.
---
As the three of them arrived at the second dining hall by the white piano room, Draco moved aside to let Pansy enter. She gave them both a weak smile that couldn’t hide her genuine anxiety as she disappeared into the door.
Hermione heard chairs being moved and a little more shuffling before some conversation began. Draco turned to her for a split second and nodded, grabbing onto her hand. Where she had expected a rough grip, she instead felt a gentle sensation of ice as he placed his palm into hers. The doors opened slowly and Hermione braced herself as she stepped in, as Lady Malfoy.
The dining hall had changed considerably since she had last eaten here a few days ago during breakfast. The huge bouquets of flowers still dominated the corners of the dark grey walls but the appearance was now a lot stiffer. The head seat of the table was unoccupied but to its left sat Pansy. Beside her was the man named Cassius, dressed in navy blue robes. His clean cut image was a high contrast to Lestrange who sat on his other side. In the light he looked older than ever, with the deep circles under his eyes digging into his rough face. The three cronies, Mulciber, Marcus and Hector said on the opposite side of the table, leaving the seat to the right of the head empty.
Draco entered and took his seat at the head of the table, not letting go of Hermione’s hand until she sat down in the empty seat beside his. The table was full of delectable foods, as always and it seemed the three cronies were starving with hunger as they helped themselves to the meats.
“What a lovely meal,” Lestrange commented with a satisfied smile.
“Eli has outdone himself, as always,” Pansy agreed. “I see they are quite hungry...” she added with distaste, referring to the three men wolfing their food down.
“Common courtesy is an advanced science for them,” Cassius said, half amused and half disgusted. “They refuse to be civil.”
“’ay!” one of them mumbled through a mouthful of chicken. “We’ve been starving for days!”
Lestrange rolled his eyes. “Come now, Cassius,” he said calmly. “There are other dinner conversations that we can be having.”
His eyes turned to Hermione and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I believe Draco owes us a formal introduction to his lovely lady,” he joked.
Draco smiled sharply. “Of course, Uncle Ralph.”
Two house elves toddled out of the distant kitchen, carrying bowls of stew and vegetables which they placed effortlessly on the long table.
“Hermia,” Draco said smoothly. “This is my uncle, Rodolphus Lestrange. He was married to my mother’s sister.”
“A pleasure,” Hermione said, trying to sound just as charming as Draco as she extended her hand and allowed Lestrange’s greasy lips to touch it. As his warm breath hit her fingers, she felt her stomach overturn slightly.
“And Uncle Ralph, this is my wife, Hermia Malfoy.”
“Forgive me, my dear,” Lestrange said, letting go of Hermione’s hand. “What family are you from? I don’t recall ever having the pleasure of meeting you.”
“The Devereux family,” Hermione said and she could feel her voice getting shakier.
Lestrange’s face relaxed a little as his smile became a little more sincere. “The Devereux family? Of Belgium?”
“The one and only,” Draco interjected.
“I’ve heard great things about your grandfather,” Lestrange continued. His voice was steady, seemingly forced. “How is your father doing?”
Hermione looked away from his hollow face. “Unfortunately, he passed away last year. My mother’s been ill ever since.”
Lestrange seemed to get more satisfied with Hermione’s answers. “My condolences.”
Draco’s tense expression also relaxed as the doubt from Lestrange’s mind started to fade. He moved his hand over to a bowl and started to slowly spoon some soup into it. Lestrange, temporarily satisfied, also began to reach for large portions of meat which he ate with great patience for a man who had been deprived of proper food for months.
“Would you please pass the bread?” Cassius asked Hermione.
“Uh, yeah…yes, sure.”
She fumbled for the bread and passed the silver tray over to Cassius with a slightly confused expression.
“So, what exactly were you doing on the roof of the tower?” he asked brusquely.
Draco laughed. “She thought she dropped one of her bracelets on the roof and went looking for it and you know how slippery the ground gets in the winter.”
“Right, right…” Lestrange said.
“I heard your family’s been quite secretive in Belgium,” Cassius said, speaking to Hermione. “I didn’t imagine that any of you had made it out of that particular region. How did you and Draco meet?”
Hermione was caught off guard. She had prepared herself for stories about her family but she hadn’t given a single thought to her courtship… did death eaters even do that? Were they supposed to date? Maybe Lucius and Narcissa arranged Draco’s marriage?
“I think Draco tells the story better,” Pansy interjected suddenly.
“Now, now,” Lestrange replied, eyeing Pansy cautiously. “Let’s let Hermia tell the story.”
Hermione turned to Draco who smiled at her, though he was unable to hide his anxiety. “Go on,” he encouraged her.
“Well, after my brother was sent to Azkaban, my parents decided it would be safer for me to leave France while they moved to Belgium,” Hermione began. She tried to keep her voice cold and smooth like Pansy and Draco’s.
“A wise choice,” Lestrange agreed. He seemed pleased.
“I came to England in my last year at Hogwarts where I met Draco for the first time. He was so charming and so…evil…”
The men at the table laughed and though Hermione felt that she’d taken a misstep, everyone else thought she was joking.
“My parents instantly approved of him,” she continued, now gaining more confidence after an encouraging nod from Pansy. “But of course, there were other matters to be dealt with before we could get married, like the Ministry capturing death eaters and all. But when that was cleared up, we got married last year.”
That sounded believable, right?
“I knew you’d end up with a beautiful one,” Lestrange said approvingly, though his eyes looked at Hermione with a deep hunger in them that made her extremely uncomfortable. “Now if only Cassius could find someone like your young lady, I’d be able to rest in peace.”
Cassius rolled his eyes. “You said you wouldn’t bring that up,” he said.
“No one has caught his attention yet, though he seems to have gotten the attention of a fair few women.”
“Even as children, Cassius had girls floating around him,” Pansy added, trying to lighten the mood.
“I remember,” Lestrange said, taking on a very paternal tone that made Hermione extremely curious. “Were you ever one of them, Pansy?”
Cassius laughed. “No, no… Pansy never fawned over me like the other girls. She always treated me like her equal which is why I always liked her more than the other girls.”
Hermione was extremely surprised. She had expected the conversation to take on a very sombre tone about murder and death and Azkaban but… they were talking about family. She couldn’t fathom how these people, who clearly distrusted one another, were able to sit around like they were in a 40s family Thanksgiving reunion.
“Draco got a lot of girls too,” Cassius added. “Just the quieter types.”
“I always liked the quieter ones,” Draco agreed. “But as I recall, you had an unnatural attraction for the crazy loud girls.”
“Yes there were always the occasional bizarre ones,” Cassius said, laughing with Draco.
“You should have been there with these boys when they were kids,” Lestrange said to Hermione. “Lucius and I would always watch them with such pride – I tell you, we were the happiest fathers out of all of them.”
Hermione choked on the piece of carrot in her mouth very quietly so that only Draco noticed. He gave her a sharp look before turning back to the rest of his guests with a smiling visage.
Hermione understood the paternal tone in Lestrange’s voice. Cassius… Cassius was his son. She tried to remember the hundreds of times she had heard about or talked about the Lestrange family and never had there been a son mentioned. She looked Cassius’s smooth features and compared them with Lestrange’s rough ones with perplexity. Maybe he had looked different at an earlier age or maybe Cassius had taken after the Veela part of Narcissa and Bellatrix Malfoy’s ancestry.
“I’m terribly exhausted,” Pansy said, standing up slowly. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to call it a night.”
“Yes, I quite agree,” Cassius interjected. “It’s been a long day. Father, shall we?”
Lestrange looked at the food in front of him and then nodded. “I’m already looking forward to breakfast.”
“Goodnight both of you,” he said, baring his large yellow teeth to Hermione and Draco. “You too, Pansy.”
“Eli will show you both to your rooms in the East Wing,” Draco said. “Pansy, we’ll walk you to yours.”
“Goodnight,” Hermione said, nodding to them as Eli materialised at the foot of the long table.
---
The walk back to the Malfoy master bedroom was swift, silent and shorter than Hermione had imagined. Not a word had been uttered since they wished Lestrange and Cassius goodnight and headed for bed.
The large oak doors opened smoothly and Hermione felt a warm breeze engulf her as the doors closed behind her and she entered the beautiful bedroom.
Pansy sighed contentedly. “That went well,” she said.
“Better than I thought,” Draco admitted. “They seemed to be satisfied with your story,” he added, turning to Hermione.
“You were good,” Pansy said, smiling to Hermione. “I mean it.”
Hermione felt relieved that she had managed to convince them that she was a pureblood. She noticed that even Draco didn’t bother insulting her. Feeling a slight pull of acceptance, she decided to ask the question that had been troubling her since dinner.
“I didn’t know that Lestrange had a son,” she said slowly.
Draco and Pansy instantly exchanged knowing looks before Draco turned towards the bathroom on the left. “I’m going to go change,” he said.
Pansy took a seat on the bed and took off her the top layer of her robe, laying it on her lap. When Hermione heard the bathroom door close, she turned back to Pansy.
“He’s awfully self assured,” she snapped irritably.
“He just doesn’t want to talk about Lestrange’s family history,” Pansy assured her. “It’s… it’s a little complicated.”
“People say I’m smart,” Hermione said. “Try me.”
Pansy laughed. “You’re right to begin with… Cassius was never really in the Death Eaters’ children circle like Draco and I were. He wasn’t paraded around in pretty outfits, he wasn’t forced to be tutored and he didn’t go to Hogwarts like the rest of us.”
“He went to Durmstrang,” Hermione said, remembering what Draco had said earlier in the courtyard.
“Exactly,” Pansy said. “He was kept far away from our kind of life. Though when we were kids, we mingled all the time and played together. It was when he got older that Bellatrix chose to send him to Durmstrang.”
“Why?”
Pansy pondered her thoughts for a moment before answering Hermione. “She was very protective of him… everyone was. Draco’s father was on the board of governors at Hogwarts so it seemed logical that Draco would go there and then most of the other death eaters followed along. But Bellatrix wanted Cassius to be trained… and I mean really trained in the art of dark magic. Durmstrang offers a much more intensive curriculum than Hogwarts ever did.”
Hermione pursed her lips. “That doesn’t sound too complicated.”
Draco emerged out of the bathroom wearing a large black shirt over bottle green sweatpants. “You should go back to your room, Pansy,” he told her. “Lestrange will get suspicious.”
“Right,” she said. “Goodnight.” She smiled briefly at Hermione before heading out.
Draco turned to Hermione. “You should probably get ready to sleep,” he said, a sneer appearing on his face. “The pull-out sofa bed can get quite uncomfortable.”
Hermione’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me? I’m sleeping on the bed. You are more than welcome to lie on the couch.”
Draco shrugged. “My Manor, my rules. And after all those times that I’ve saved you, I deserve the bed.”
He walked towards the bed and tossed two large pillows at Hermione. “Sweet dreams.”
Hermione grumbled irritably as Draco lay down on the bed, putting his arms behind his head. Hermione rolled her eyes in disgust as she walked over to the tan sofa bed resting near the dressing screen.
---
Hermione heard him breathe again, this time deeper and harder. He was saying something inaudible and low but she doubted it made any sense. She turned herself over slightly, raising her head to see him. His right hand was over his chest, pushing into the thin skin and fresh scars. Hermione knew what the problem was – her Fiendfyre potion was beginning to wear off. Draco’s thick breaths seemed all too familiar and she remembered his incessant talking when she had cured him the first time.
---
PS: there is a backstory with Draco's parents. Be patient!
“He’s getting worse, Eli,” Hermione said, slowly.
It was right before dawn and Hermione had quietly snuck into the second sub-room in the Malfoy master bedroom. She had called Eli, hoping that he was awake and it was no surprise to her, when he materialised in a few seconds.
“Perhaps we need some more of the Fiendfyre antidote?” Eli suggested. “I can get you the ingredients you need.”
“Well, yes,” Hermione said hesitantly. She kept her voice low, hoping that Draco would remain asleep in the room beside her. He had started sweating again and clenched his chest unconsciously. “But something else is troubling me.”
“What is?” he asked.
“It was always in the back of my mind but Malfoy… Malfoy said something to me a while ago that made me think… when we fought that morning in the Manor after I gave him the potion the first time, I showed him my burns and he told me that they couldn’t possibly hurt as much as his did.” She was unsure, trying to find a way to explain it. “He was right; my burns aren’t as bad as his.”
Eli seemed unmoved. “Well, maybe he’d been attacked harder… longer exposure to the flames.”
“Not in the sense of physical pain,” Hermione said, correcting herself. “… You said he was talking in his sleep a lot and he did the same last night. When I saw the flesh and the burns and how they reopened… it all seemed to affect him so much more.”
Eli pondered her query for a minute. “I understand what you mean.”
“I’ve checked everywhere and Fiendfyre does not have those kinds of effects. I mean, the burns ache terribly like mine did but they had started to heal a while ago. Malfoys’ on the other hand… his seemed to have gotten worse. I noticed it a little to tell you the truth. The first time after the attack in the North Tower, he came out and he was alright but… eventually, his movements became forced and you could see the strain he placed on himself. And from what I saw when he was in his room before I healed him, it was amplified… like the injuries had been growing.”
“I’ve seen that kind of effect before,” Eli said, pensively. “Before I worked for the Malfoys.”
Hermione immediately looked up at the tired old man with a surprised expression. His devotion to the ancient family was so strong that Hermione had difficulty imagining a life in which Eli had been wearing something other than his regular butler’s robes and calling people without a ‘Ms’ or ‘Mr’ in front of their names.
“Before?”
“That was a long time ago,” he chuckled. “But I’d met a fellow once who told me he was searching for a hospital in the late hours of the night. He explained that his wife was dying because of a disease –a curse actually – that was growing in her and feeding off of her blood. That’s what made it grow so rapidly… the nourishment it got from her thick blood.”
“Like sucking her blood?” she thought, her eyes fighting off an image of a vampire.
“It was suspected that she had been hit by a vampire’s curse but we never found out. The poor woman was dead long before we got back to the house with a healer.”
“And the curse…the disease?”
“It had died with her. Once it lost its food, it had nothing to live off of. Nothing can grow without a source of nutrition to feed itself.” His eyes narrowed as he said the last sentence and Hermione understood his point.
“You think it’s feeding off Malfoy?” she asked cautiously.
“I had noticed the striking difference between your injuries before,” he said. “But the growing never occurred with to me until you just mentioned it.”
“What could Malfoy have that I don’t?”
Eli shrugged hopelessly. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Hermione pursed her lips. “But for now, we need some more antidote. If I give you the ingredients list, can you bring me the materials from the potions cupboard?”
“Absolutely, Ms. Granger.”
---
He felt her beautiful hair against his thin skin. The thick brown curls drew a veil around his eyes, filling his mind with the sweet scent of lavender. He felt himself lying on a field, his fingers grasping faintly at the long strands of grass growing from the ground. The increasing pain he had been feeling in his chest was now nothing more than a mere tickle.
“Am I dead?” he asked, hoping to hear the melodious voice.
“No,” Natalie replied. He dared not open his eyes for fear that he would wake up in the Manor again, alone.
“But you are,” he said.
“I know.”
“Then how is it that we are talking?” he asked, feeling foolish.
“You know nothing of death, Draco,” she said, her voice getting sadder. “You and I are at the Crossing – the thin threshold that separates life from death. We can talk but we cannot touch.”
Draco grimaced slightly and used his hands to feel around him, grasping only at threads of green grass. “I can feel things,” he said.
Natalie laughed softly but no happiness echoed from within her voice. “Last time, you couldn’t even do that,” she agreed. “The closer you get to death, the more you can feel here… see here.”
“And when I die?”
“Then you will be able to hold me,” she said.
Draco welcomed the release of pain and the suppression of his conscious but he could not get over the melancholy in Natalie’s voice. “Why are you sad?” he asked her gently.
“Can you hear me?” came another voice. This wasn’t Natalie’s sweet voice but rather, a distant one.
“Because I know you have to go back,” Natalie whispered, sorrowfully.
“I don’t want to,” Draco whimpered, ashamed that he sounded like a young child.
Natalie’s voice didn’t reply and the gentle feeling of grass under him faded quickly, only to be replaced by a groggy, warm sensation in his throat. He waited for the wrenching pain in the pit of his chest but that never surfaced. The feeling in his throat, however, got a lot worse and he began to taste the remnants of a thick liquid still in his mouth.
He coughed a little, trying to dispel the curdling chunks that were caught between his teeth when he felt a gentle hand against his chin.
“Don’t cough,” she said. “Just keep swallowing – it’s good for you.”
Draco opened his eyes, pausing a moment to let the lights adjust before speaking. To his surprise, Hermione sat at the foot of the large bed holding a jar of a thick, yellow potion that he had been, no doubt, drinking. He didn’t react to her presence but it didn’t escape him that it was her and not Pansy sitting by his side. “What is it?” he asked.
“The Fiendfyre antidote,” she explained.
Draco couldn’t help but sense a mild déjà vu as he remembered the last time she had given him the same antidote. Hermione had tried to offer her help and Draco had blatantly refused it, throwing in a few insults on the side. A lot of yelling and screaming had occurred during that argument but today, she seemed different. She was quieter and a lot more observant as opposed to her louder self. She hadn’t asked about Adria or his scars or even offered her help. He noticed that she had even dressed herself in another one of Pansy’s outfits, though this time she was wearing something a little more colourful. Her knitted sweater was a deep emerald colour with dark jeans underneath them, making her look a lot more mature too.
He pursed his lips slightly and gazed at the older figure in front of him, deciding that he didn’t like this aged Granger. Pansy had undergone this change too; she had discarded her flirtatious smile and colourful personality for the sombre shadows of Malfoy Manor. Even he felt chained down to the heavy responsibilities of this Manor, recalling the more vivid memories of his younger self. He remembered the thrill and enjoyment he got from tormenting Hermione and her friends, and more so from the constant facial expressions and retorts that she shot back at him.
“You haven’t asked me anything yet,” said Draco.
Hermione looked up, surprised. “About what?”
“About me, Lestrange, the Manor… anything…”
Hermione’s eyebrows furrowed slightly and she looked genuinely confused. “I thought you hated my curiosity.”
“I did,” Draco said suddenly. “I still do… but it’s not like you to stop when someone asks you to stop.”
Hermione now looked seriously bewildered. “Are you saying that you want me to bombard you with questions?”
“I’m saying that I want you to be…normal,” Draco explained, frustrated. He couldn’t bring himself to explain his thoughts and here he was, looking like a fool. “You were one of the most annoying people I had ever known and now… you’re practically bearable.”
Hermione laughed a little. “Well, I can say the same for you,” she countered. “Just last night we were yelling at each other and now, you’ve become so calm and mature that talking to you is like a surreal experience for me.”
“What are you saying?” Draco asked, unable to hide the smile on his face.
“I’m saying that we are in serious danger of getting along,” Hermione said, sarcastically. “But now that you mention it, can I ask you a question?”
“About what?”
“Skeid.”
Draco sat up suddenly as he heard the name and pondered the thought for a moment. He had been expecting a question about Adria or maybe even Natalie if she had been paying attention to him while he spoke in his sleep. But Skeid wasn’t a touchy subject, though he could hardly imagine what she wanted to ask. However, she had just saved his life for the second time and for some reason, he was in a rather good mood this morning.
“Just the one,” he said, slightly threateningly but he was sure that didn’t come off in his tone.
“You told him that Lestrange was going to come for me, didn’t you? You were the one who arranged for that whole “Ministry protection” thing?”
Completely caught off guard, Draco sat up higher and cocked his eyebrow. “Why would I do that?”
“Because if I lived with you, Lestrange wouldn’t be able to find me before he got to you.” She had a smug smile on her face as if she had discovered some crucial piece of information.
“And why on earth would I want that to happen?” Draco prodded further. He was interested in Hermione’s theory.
“Because,” she began, happily, “you are not as big of a jerk as you think you are.”
So that was the crucial information she thought she had discovered. She had figured out that Draco Malfoy had a nicer side. “Really?”
“You protected me,” she said. “You knew Lestrange was coming to London and you didn’t want him finding me so you kept me with you until you were sure that I could be safe. Then right before Lestrange got here, you told Skeid that I could be released and he let me go. That way you knew where either one of us was at all times.”
“So you think I’m the good guy in all this?”
“Well if you had wanted to kill me, you would have done that by now,” Hermione added. “Merlin knows, I’ve given you enough reasons.”
Draco eyed Hermione’s triumphant expression and sighed. “Don’t get your hopes up, Granger,” he said. “I didn’t protect you, per se, but rather it was the principle – I would have taken in anyone. Too many people have died at his hands – he won’t kill anymore innocent people.”
Hermione’s smile shrunk into a graver expression. “I guess I kind of killed your plan,” she said apologetically. “I shouldn’t have come back here.”
“No you shouldn’t have,” he agreed, standing up and realizing that he was not wearing a shirt. “Bloody hell, Granger, whenever you’re around, I wake up half naked, not remembering what happened the night before.”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “You’re right. I take advantage of you while you’re asleep.” She handed him his shirt which was lying on the floor, sprawled against the bedpost.
“You’re just afraid because you know you find me uncharacteristically attractive.”
Hermione scoffed. “Excuse me?”
Malfoy knew if he tried enough, he could get her to throw her hands up in the air and declare she hates him – just like she always did. “Go on, Granger, it’s no shame. You can admit you find me good looking.”
Hermione cocked an eyebrow. “Come on, Malfoy,” she said. “Don’t you have bigger fish to fry? A certain death eater to kill?”
He could see her getting irritated. “Wildly attractive, then?”
She laughed. “I find the Chudley Cannons attractive. You, on the other hand, are something else.”
“Beautiful?” he asked, standing up now. “Like Adonis?”
The words were coming to him naturally… without a single spasm of effort. He felt this liberating feeling sweep all over his body and inhaled the morning air sharply.
“I don’t find Adonis beautiful,” Hermione countered, cleaning up the empty jars of grass root extract and beetle juice. “He was far too free with his, shall we say… love?”
Draco laughed. “Not a bigamist, eh?”
“It’s a pity,” Hermione replied sarcastically. “There goes the only chance you and I would have ever had.”
Draco smiled. He had pinched a nerve on her… she had started to respond. “So you think about that, don’t you, Granger?” he asked, his grin widening.
Hermione grabbed the empty potion bottles and disposed of them with her wand. “What is it that put you in such a fine mood this morning?” she asked suspiciously.
“I had a lovely, uninterrupted sleep on this wonderful bed,” Draco exclaimed. He observed Hermione’s expression changing to one of irritation.
“You’re such a jerk,” she muttered.
“You were welcome to join me,” he added, smirking. With every remark he made, he felt himself feeling lighter and happier than he could remember.
“Like that would ever happen,” Hermione snapped.
“Well, you are my wife,” Draco said, encouraging her. He could see her getting angrier by the minute.
“And that really is a dream come true,” Hermione replied sardonically. “I’ve always wanted to marry a death eater.”
“Better me than Weasley,” he added.
That seemed to have done it. Hermione slammed a bottle of peach extract on the vanity and turned around, huffing loudly. “You really are the most arrogant…foolish…stupid biggest horse’s arse I have ever met!”
Almost, Draco thought to himself. She had almost said it.
“Come on, Granger. There must be something you like about me.”
Hermione looked at Draco with a piercing and cold gaze. “There couldn’t possibly be anything,” she said roughly. “I hate you!”
She stormed into one of the mini rooms in the master bedroom, leaving Draco to revel in his own triumph. For the first time in very long while, he felt truly released.
---
Hermione scowled angrily in the white bathroom, slamming the door loudly as she entered. Draco seemed to have taken on a new disposition this morning – he was happier and back to his usual arrogant self. Hermione had been terrified of even talking to him last night, recalling his emotionally detached gaze and infuriated expression. But today, the words had come out of her mouth so naturally, as if she was back at Hogwarts and just fending off another one of Malfoy’s personal attacks.
She felt the blood rushing through her as her energy rush died down. She felt exhilarated, to the point of hyperactive. She wanted to go back out there and continue yelling at Malfoy – she wanted to tell him all the awful things about everything in her life. Yell at him about how she thought he was a complete jerk, about how she wished Ron would stop being so protective of her, about how she wished she was a little bit taller and thinner, just like Ginny and most of all, about how she was having the most fun she’d had in a long time.
It wasn’t that she was a masochist, she quickly corrected herself. She would much rather have not been burned or almost killed by an unnamed creature but the thrill of adventure had settled itself in her heart. She wasn’t… she couldn’t be a woman of suburban life. She couldn’t work for eight hours a day and then come home to three kids and cook dinner for her husband. She couldn’t be a woman who spread neighbourhood gossip with her friends over tea. She was far too used to the adrenaline rush of pursuing the enemy, facing the unexpected and waking up not knowing the certainty of her future.
She had felt it last night too. Sitting so close to the man who’d shed her parents blood… the rush of hatred and energy that had pulsed through her veins. The thought of duelling each and every one of his three cronies who had spilt the blood innocent muggles and wizards…
And then it hit her. Like a tight slap in the face, Hermione finally saw what had been in front of her for weeks. She hastily opened the bathroom door and saw Draco shaking out his shoulders and twirling his wand in his right hand. He turned to see her and his smirk returned as he saw her dumbfounded expression.
“Saw your reflection, Granger?”
Hermione didn’t bother responding. “I think I know why your burns are worse than mine.”
The smile on Malfoy’s face vanished instantly, replaced by a curious expression. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I think I know why you keep falling towards the brink of death and I recovered within a few days.”
She heard the words as Eli had said them to her, weeks ago. They hadn’t meant anything to either of them back then but now, it all seemed to make so much more sense.
“Darkness and fear are the very things these creatures feed off of.”
“Those burns…that woman,” Hermione began, “They’re feeding off of your fear, your sadness.”
Any mirth from Draco’s eyes had now faded, replaced by an indecipherable expression. He looked at Hermione and then back down at his bare chest. “When you recover with the antidote,” Hermione explained. “You’re in a much better mood, like you are now. Don’t you remember when I first gave it to you? You were so much calmer.”
“When the antidote starts to fade, you become more detached and a lot harsher because the burns start to feed off the darkness inside you. They bring it out.”
“Darkness?”
“Your fears, shattered hopes, losses…” Hermione was worried about prodding further. She remembered what Pansy had told her yesterday. He’s suffered a lot more than you know. And that was what was killing him.
“Don’t you have those too?” Draco asked, his eyes were still motionless.
“Not to the same extent – we all have terrible experiences but we bypass them… we release them. You… you embrace them. That’s primarily what Edacium curses are most effective with.”
Hermione waited for Draco to respond but his eyes never left his chest. He kept looking down at the criss-crossed scars and she began to feel intrusive.
“Go,” Draco said quietly.
Hermione didn’t need to be told a second time – she went downstairs to the dining hall to go search for Pansy.
---
When Draco heard the door to the master bedroom close, he turned grabbed the white collared shirt by his bedside and put it on hastily, not bothering to button his cuffs. He made his way out of the room, through the bright corridors and up another set of marble staircases that led straight to the dimly lit hall on the third floor where the library doors were hidden under a veil of darkness.
Quickly, Draco turned the door knobs and entered. He reached for a huge stack of shelves in the right corner of the library and pulled out a thick, two thousand page book titled “Andronicus’ Curses: an extensive dictionary of every curse known to man.” He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for.
Edacium Curse –
Derived from the Latin word edax [edacium] – meaning gluttonous, or consuming. The Edacium curse is well-known as the “feeding curse” which sustains long term effects as long as the host body to which it is attached can nourish it. Vampire curses are the most well known Edacium curse, feeding off of the blood of the victims until death and in some cases, long after death. Other types such as curses which feed off of skin, hair, moisture, bone also exist. A more complicated form of the curse feeds not off of physical matter but rather the emotions and minds of the hosts.
Draco slammed the book shut and shoved it towards the floor, burying his head in his hands.
---
Tomorrow night was going to be what Pansy referred to as a “formal reunion” of Death Eaters. It seemed that all death eater gatherings used to be facilitated at Malfoy Manor and that now, with Lestrange’s return to England, another celebration was in order.
Hermione had spent the entire morning avoiding the master bedroom though more specifically, Draco. He had reacted very bizarrely to her revelation about the Edacium curse and she thought it was best to leave him. Lestrange and Cassius had departed early in the morning for some crucial “business” that Hermione didn’t dare question so most of the day was spent with Eli and Pansy, who were both fascinated with her discovery.
“An Edacium curse,” he marvelled. “Brilliant.”
Hermione tried to stop from blushing but she accepted the compliment. “The story you told me,” she began, “about the woman and the vampire… I think she might have had the same thing too.”
“Yes, yes,” Eli mused sadly. “It’s a pity we didn’t get to her on time.”
“But what does this all mean?” Pansy asked.
“It’s another piece of the puzzle,” Hermione explained. “Another step to figuring out what this creature is… if what Malfoy really wants to do is save her then he needs to know what she is. Maybe if we could figure out a loophole of some sort…”
“Edacium curses are dark magic,” Hermione continued. “They can be produced in many forms – vampires do so with bites, dementors do so with their kiss and this creature… she does it with her flames. There’s definitely more to the flames… there has to be some reason that she attacks with flames of all things.”
Pansy shifted uncomfortably and looked at Eli. “You know, don’t you?” Hermione asked, frustrated.
“Sort of,” Pansy confessed. “Not the whole story but… parts of it. It’s just that Draco’s got a reason for not telling people this story and I don’t want to be the one who breaks his trust.”
Hermione sighed. “It’s not your story to tell,” she muttered, thinking of what Eli had said to her weeks ago.
“He will tell you,” Eli assured her. “You’re like magnets – two completely opposite beings with ideals that contradict each others and yet there’s a force that neither of you can resist.”
For some reason, Hermione felt that Eli wasn’t just talking about Hermione’s offer to help. “Let’s just move on,” Pansy suggested.
“Right,” Hermione said sarcastically. “Let’s talk about these death eaters’ obsessions with having dinners. I swear you all have spent more time wearing fancy dresses than plotting evil.”
Eli laughed. “They are a very self-centered lot. Though I must admit, there is nothing with more grandeur and opulence than a dinner at Malfoy Manor.”
“Exactly,” Pansy said with severity. “Which is why you need to be extremely perfect tomorrow night – you’re the hostess.”
“No pressure,” Hermione muttered.
“Just look pretty and smile a lot but not your ‘I fight for good’ smile, you need a cold, evil smile.”
“Yes, I’ll get practicing right on that,” she snapped.
“I’m being serious. There are going to be hundreds of people here tonight – most of whom are going to be very curious as to the heiress of the Malfoy fortune. Young women are going to hate you for marrying their choice of husband, older women are going to hate you for marrying their choice of son-in-law and old men are going to get a little too close for comfort.”
The sarcastic bite in Hermione’s voice faded. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I’ve been to enough of these to know that if you don’t have an escort, you need a wand to fend off the vile men.”
“Oh I can’t handle this!” Hermione cried. “I was a nervous wreck last night with five other people! I can’t handle a hundred!”
“You won’t have to,” Eli interjected gently. “Master Malfoy will be there at all times – it’s highly unusual for Lady Malfoy to be unescorted.”
Hermione took a deep breath to calm herself down. The three of them were seated around a wooden dining table in another one of Malfoy Manor’s many rooms. This room was bright, flooded with sunlight from the courtyard and decorated with lavish green trimmings.
“I suppose I’ll have to dress up?” Hermione asked dejectedly.
“Naturally,” Pansy replied. “I have a killer dress for you, actually – it’s this great purple.”
“I can’t wait,” Hermione replied unenthusiastically, trying not to think about how purple always makes her look podgy and short. “Listen, I’m going to go and read more about Edacium curses and there’s a particular book that I’ve been wanting to finish. What time is Lestrange getting back?”
“In a few hours,” Eli said calmly, assuring that she had enough time. “I’ll have a house elf send for you when they arrive.”
“Right,” Hermione said before she got up to leave.
When the door shut behind her Pansy turned to Eli slowly and pondered something. She opened her mouth, paused and then continued, pointing to the closed doorway. “Did you notice all that sarcasm?” she asked.
Eli got up, gathering the cups of tea on the table. “I did.”
“She’s beginning to sound so much like Draco.”
A small smile curved onto Eli’s thin lips. “Funny, isn’t it?”
---
Hermione walked jadedly throughout the hallways with surprising ease. She navigated her way through the marble staircase and up towards the third floor to the peaceful sanctuary that was the Malfoy library. Before the cold air of the dark corridor even had time to dissipate into the warm library, Hermione had grabbed her favourite book and was once again pulled into the dark world of Matilda Frogwart.
Mother finally got the better of me today – my arms were blue and red from the scars that she had given me over twenty years ago, the pallor rising to the surface of my flaky skin. She lashed out at me in the attic when I returned and tried to kill me, I guess the starvation has finally gotten to her. I think she’s beginning to realize that father is not coming back. My visits to Albania proved very fruitful since I decided to use one of the newer spells I learnt there, a curse actually.
I grabbed my wand and pointed it at her pointed face, pierced with scratch marks and let the Fiendfyre engulf her.
“You know, they say curiosity killed the cat.”
Hermione turned around suddenly and saw Draco leaning against one of the bookshelves with his arms folded across his chest. He wasn’t smiling but the look of blankness had faded.
“Curiosity is extremely important,” Hermione defended, turning back to her book. “If curiosity killed the cat, I say the cat died nobly.”
A smirk formed on the corner of his mouth. “Do you realize that if that cat had been just a tiny bit smarter, he could have lived on for years to have a family and kids?”
“What a purposeless existence – death or no death, that cat knew he did himself justice in the end.”
Draco walked over to the table Hermione was seated at and perched himself across from her, throwing his legs up on the table. “I hate cats.”
Hermione scoffed. “I bet they aren’t so fond of you either.”
Draco sat up instantly with a look of surprise in his eyes. “Was that a smirk, Granger?”
“Is there any particular reason you’re irritating me, Malfoy?”
“There is actually,” he said, lifting his legs back onto the desk. “A very particular reason that revolves around the following passage I read in a book about curses.”
He reached for his pocket and pulled out a ripped piece of paper, reading it out loud. “Edacium curses are not only messengers of long term pain and suffering but to date, there is no material cure for the curse if it has lasted over three days. In such cases, the only known method to destroy the gluttonous effects that feed on the host is to destroy the creature – since no wand can perform this – that inflicted it.”
“That’s interesting,” Hermione remarked.
“I quite agree,” Draco said, “especially the part where it says that the only way to stop the pain from getting worse is an antidote – which I happen to have none of at the moment.”
“That’s what you find interesting?”
Draco looked at her carefully. “What else is there?”
“I don’t know, maybe the part that says you’re going to die slowly unless you kill the creature that performed the curse?”
He smiled suddenly. “You just want to know, don’t you?” he asked.
Hermione immediately looked away as their eyes met. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“It’s eating you up inside because you know that everyone around you knows but you don’t.”
“It wouldn’t hurt if you told me,” she defended. “We are in this together.”
“Not by choice though,” Draco corrected her. “If it was up to me, you’d be back with Weasley.”
Hermione scoffed. “No one is here by choice,” she said. “I’ve seen the way your face wears down once you’re back in the master bedroom. You don’t want to be here and you’re paying the price for whatever it is you did that you’re trying to fix – you are literally killing yourself.”
The mirth from Draco’s face had vanished a while ago but he didn’t yell at Hermione like he usually did when she said something bold. It seemed he had accepted her blunt insight. “How long do you think I have? I mean, before I can’t even walk or talk?”
“It feeds off your unhappiness so as long as you think happy thoughts, you can prolong it I suppose.”
“It’s going to be hard thinking of happy thoughts with death lingering over this place,” he said wistfully.
“You seemed very happy this morning,” Hermione suggested.
Draco almost had to hold back a grin. He remembered that feeling of ultimate release and contentment when he had fought with Hermione. He had felt almost separated from his physical pain when his Hogwarts’ insults flew out of his mouth and generated the same exasperated and dramatic response from her. Though he wasn’t totally successful at hiding his smile, he didn’t let Hermione in on his new theory.
“You know,” she said slowly. “It’s not very hard to be cheerful – happiness can be found even in the gloomiest of times.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“I mean it,” she said sincerely. “You don’t have to be living your dream life to be happy. Even the tiniest of light bulbs can provide illumination in a dark room.”
Draco laughed emptily. “You don’t know how dark of a place I’m in.”
“Well if you’d stop being so bloody stubborn, maybe you won’t have to face things alone.”
The amusement Draco got from her serious expression set him off again. He began to feel happier just hearing the irritation in Hermione’s voice. “Are you offering to throw me a light bulb, Granger?”
Hermione looked up and put the book in her lap. “I’m already in the darkness,” she said truthfully. “My parents are dead, I have no real family left and my friends are miles away from here. I’m trying to find a way out too.”
“What can two blind people do?”
Hermione paused, carefully choosing her words. “They can walk together.”
To her amazement, Draco didn’t look abashed at all. On the contrary, his eyes had focused intently without the malicious undertone that made them an icy grey. “A Slytherin and a Gryffindor working together, really?” he asked.
“We’re not in Hogwarts anymore, Draco,” she said.
The word resounded clearly in head. Draco. He observed she said it with a blunt sound on the ‘c’ – very few people said his name that way. “You say my name very weirdly,” he noted.
“I’m taking the high road.”
“Good, I’m quite content with the low road.”
Hermione sighed and huffed irritably. “So what now? Do you want me to call you Hermione?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Fine.”
“And will you tell me the story of this ghost woman?”
Draco looked around the library for a moment, crossed his arms over his chest. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s try this name thing out first,” he suggested, simpering. “We’re blind, remember? Let’s not walk too fast… we don’t want to trip.”
---
Hermione walked back to the master bedroom, absentmindedly turning corners that had become eerily familiar to her. She walked into one of the large purposeless rooms in the Manor and realized that she had entered a winery. Shelves against the wall were stacked with bottles of wines from all over the world, each one looking older than the one below it.
“Get him in here,” a rough voice called from the outside. “Oh for Merlin’s sake, Hector! Stop reading about those loud shrews and bring him in here!”
“They’re around the forest, Mulciber,” another voice replied. “What if one of ‘em got to us?”
Hermione choked on her own breath and recognized the familiar voice of one of Lestrange’s men. She searched around frantically for a way to escape but the men had gotten too close to the door for her to leave unnoticed.
She turned feebly towards the corner of the room and felt her hands hit a bump in the wall. She saw that an old storage cupboard was closed shut beside her and in a few seconds if she didn’t get in, she would be lying on the floor in various pieces. Pulling at the rusted handle frantically, the door budged open slowly and Hermione shut herself in as three men walked in, dragging another one on the floor. The cracks in the ancient door allowed her to see very clearly what the men were up to and shivers went down her spine. The door closed.
The man on the floor was pleading incoherently, grappling at the three men’s legs but his voice stopped suddenly when the door opened again, bringing in a gust of cold wind.
“Bartholomew,” Lestrange said with a perverse smile on his face that seemed to make his insane appearance bloodcurdling. “It’s so good to finally see you.”
The only response Hermione could hear was the soft whimpering of the kneeling man thrown in front of Lestrange, his hands clutching his chest. Her eyes were fixed on the figure, knowing unquestionably, as he did, that there was nothing good about this encounter. The three men behind Lestrange were grinning at each other; though their amusement, unlike Lestrange’s maddened smile, seemed genuine.
“I…I’m…I’m so sorry,” the kneeling man pleaded finally. His words were hindered by his uneven breaths and by the constant pounding in his chest as the blood raced through his veins and flushed his cheeks. “I…pl…please…forgive me.”
Hermione’s frozen body began trembling as the beseeching sobs reached her ears. The kneeling man was crying now and his words were almost incomprehensible as they mixed with his tears and pleas.
“I am glad to see you regret your decision,” Lestrange answered. “Traitor or not, it is gratifying to realize your mistakes, is it not?”
“Y…yes…” the man replied, his voice now more hopeful. Though he still remained on the ground, he bent his head lower and raised his trembling hands. “I…I real… realize that… I … I was wrong.”
One of the men behind Lestrange grunted angrily as he lunged forward. Lestrange held his hand up instantly and the same misshapen smile crept onto his face again. “Patience, Mulciber,” he warned.
“You believe him?” Mulciber spat angrily. “He’s a filthy little cockroach! I say we crush him!”
“No!” the man yelled, he dropped to his stomach and grabbed onto Lestrange’s feet. “Please…ple…please! I b…I beg you!”
“Don’t kill him yet,” another of Lestrange’s men yelled. “Let me have some fun with him first.”
Another man laughed. “A little cruciatus curse would be amusing,” he agreed.
Bartholomew’s sobs were louder and his breaths were deeper. “I… please!”
Hermione heard herself intake a sharp breath and felt the tears on the threshold of her eyes. Her instincts were yelling at her, “Go! Save him! You can take them all by surprise!. Another part of her, the rational part, was pleading its own case. He’s too powerful! You’ll both die! Everything will be blown out into the open … Malfoy, Eli…the Manor…everything will be destroyed!” Hermione’s hands tightened into fists and she could feel the circulation in her veins pulsing.
“What do you say, Bart?” Lestrange asked casually. “Shall I let them have their way?”
“Anything! I’ll give…I’ll…give you anything! Money! I have… I can give you thousands of galleons! Please!”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Lestrange replied. He turned towards his men and Hermione saw his crude eyes flash momentarily. She felt her stomach twisting and her lungs contracting.
“Bart, Bart…” Lestrange said, turning back. He sounded like a parent who had just caught his son trying to sneak out of his room. “Will there be anymore trouble from you?”
“No!” Bart replied amidst tears. His voice had returned to its hopeful and reverent tone. “I promise! I swear… I swear on my magic! Never… this will… you’ll never hear from me again!”
A cold laugh rang out throughout the room. “I’m a fair man,” Lestrange said. “I say we put this to a vote. If even one of these three men behind me thinks you should be let go of, I will let you go.”
---
Draco lounged around in the master bedroom, restlessly staring at the door. Hermione had been gone for over an hour and he’d expected to find her here. An unexplainable restlessness had taken over his body and prevented his mind from focusing on anything other than the whereabouts of the brunette.
“Eli,” he muttered into the air and the aged man popped up almost instantaneously.
“Yes, sir?”
Draco gazed at the door one last time, hoping she’d burst in but the silence forced him to speak. “Do you know where she is?”
“Ms. Granger? No, I have not seen her.”
Draco pursed his lips and got up. “She’s been gone for over an hour.”
Observing the concerned expression on his face, Eli offered a suggestion. “Shall I search for her?”
“No, no it’s okay…” he said. “I will.”
---
Bart’s lower lip was trembling erratically as his fearful blue eyes wandered over the three men towering behind Lestrange. His hands were up in front of him, clenched together as if he were begging the merciless souls to spare him.
The first one to pass his judgement was the tall bald man. There was an inherent animal-like quality to this man and, Hermione guessed, it was his hunched over posture that propelled that quality most. The man smiled, baring his crooked teeth and raised his hand in front of him, sticking his thumb up. For a fleeting second, relief flashed across Bart’s face but that was gone within moments as the blonde man flipped his arm around in a thumbs down.
“I’ll have fun with you,” he said, his beady eyes filled with carnage.
“Tough luck, Bart,” Lestrange said, amused as he turned to the broad man with the hooked nose and crooked jaw. “Marcus?”
The man named Marcus smiled as well, though his teeth were much cleaner than his friend’s. He tilted his head slightly, examining the kneeling man with extreme diligence until the amusement in his smile reached his cold eyes and he shook his head. “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”
The kneeling man turned his pleading eyes to Mulciber, grasping his pounding chest. “Please…” he begged.
Hermione saw the insane flicker in Mulciber’s black eyes and she knew what was going to happen. Her unsettled stomach could handle it no longer and the sound that had been barred by her constricted lungs made its way past her throat and towards her lips. She opened her mouth to yell, holding back the tears when an arm suddenly grasped her mouth.
Her eyes widened in fear as a second arm circled her body and placed itself against her arms, holding her firm in place. The wild scream that she had planned never came but a diminished, muffled version could be heard against the stranger’s hand around her mouth. She felt a face beside her ear and the cold breath of the person against her neck.
“Don’t move,” Draco’s voice came from behind her, his mouth pressed close to her ear. “Please.”
He loosened his grip around Hermione’s mouth, during which she took a few seconds to intake some air, filling up her dry lungs. “They’re going to kill him,” she whispered, feeling the tears spill onto her face.
“They will,” Draco said, still holding Hermione in place. She couldn’t see him but she could feel his rigid body pressed against her in the small place. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“We have to try!” she panted. “He’ll die!”
Hermione felt the grip around her tighten as Draco pressed his cold cheek against hers. “They’ll kill you in an instant,” he whispered. “And then, they’ll torture whatever’s left of you.”
There was a burst of laughter from the hall and Hermione knew that Mulciber had passed his judgement. There was a piercing cry and one last plea made by the kneeling man and though Hermione had turned away from the scene before her, she imagined him at Lestrange’s feet now.
“We can’t do anything,” Draco repeated, and some more laughter followed. “Hold on to me, we’re going to apparate out of here.”
Hermione grabbed Draco’s arm and closed her eyes, praying that she wouldn’t hear anymore. A few seconds passed and she heard Draco curse under his breath.
“You’re not concentrating!” he whispered. “Focus. We can’t apparate until you clear your mind.”
“I…I can’t…” Hermione pleaded. The images of what was happening outside began to fill Hermione’s mind and she knew that there was no way she could stop them. There was a faint wail from the outside as a flash of yellow light blinded the room. She turned her head completely, burying it into the soft fabric of Draco’s shirt. His grip was still tight but Hermione felt him lower his head as well, turning away from the horrific scene which was to follow.
“They’ll torture him!” she cried into his chest. Her sobs were uncontrolled. Though against the fabric, she imagined they weren’t loud enough for anyone other than Draco to hear.
“Think of something else!” he said quickly but it was too late. A foul chuckle was heard followed by a blaring scream that filled the air. Hermione couldn’t breathe and dug her face deeper into Draco’s chest, surrounded by the ear-splitting cry as the man was tormented.
There were more pleas and the man’s voice was going weaker as his words were drowned out by his painful cries. “Think of anything else,” Draco pleaded. “You can’t apparate with me unless your mind is clear!”
“I can’t…” she said weakly, speaking into his chest. “I… can’t…stop! He’s going to die!”
The scream was high-pitched and a violent image of the cringing spider from her fourth year came back to haunt Hermione’s thoughts. She felt a cold hand against her ears, trying to block out the noise for her but that didn’t help. Within seconds, an explosion of green light filled the darkness, and then came the stillness.
“I think Mulciber had too much fun with that,” Lestrange said in a satisfied tone.
“Next time, I get a turn,” hissed another voice.
A series of drowned words followed and Hermione heard footsteps fading into the distance. She didn’t move from Draco’s chest, refusing to breath as the hollow echo of the man’s last scream was laden in the thick air around her. Her tears had stopped, though she still felt the salty moisture on his shirt against her cheek. When she could control it no longer, her mouth opened a fraction and took in some air, just enough to sustain her.
“Let’s go,” Draco’s distant voice whispered. She tried to clear her mind and grasped his arm tighter. However, he didn’t try to apparate again. Instead, she felt his arms release his grip around her and place them by his side.
Hermione made no sound as Draco pushed the small wooden door open and climbed around her, out of the confined closet. He stood up straight and turned his back to Hermione, talking into thin air.
“Eli,” he said in a barely audible voice and there was a faint crack in the room.
“She saw?” Eli said, his voice loaded with concern.
“Most of it,” she heard Draco reply. “Where is Lestrange?”
“Heading towards his own room,” Eli informed. “The other three men were on their way to the main entrance. I believe they have transport waiting for them.”
“I need you to move the body,” Draco said, lowering his voice even more. “Keep it in the dungeons for now but see if you can find someone who knew him.”
“And Ms. Granger?”
“I’ll take her. She’s shaken up.”
There was some more movement and another faint crack before Hermione felt Draco’s hands on her arms. “Come on,” he said gently, pulling her out of the closet. “Let’s go.”
Hermione responded mechanically and stepped outside into the light. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the brightness but she immediately turned her face and buried it back into Draco’s chest out of fear that she might see something that she didn’t want to.
“He’s gone,” Draco assured her. “Eli moved him.”
Hermione’s eyes didn’t open but Draco held her steadily by the shoulder and she could feel his ash grey eyes on her. “Can you walk?” he asked.
She nodded, still looking at Draco’s soft shirt. He strengthened his grip around her shoulders and took a step forward slowly. Hermione’s legs felt like heavy boulders and it took more than just physical effort to drive them forward. The next few steps were arduous but the numbness had died down a little bit and Draco’s potent support meant that she didn’t have to apply as much physical force.
Her mind had begun to weaken as more of its conscious efforts went towards walking and suddenly, Draco thrust his hand into hers and her stomach began to twist. There was a familiar tugging at her navel and when she blinked again, they were back in the master bedroom.
“Sorry about that,” Draco apologized. “I saw your eyes wandering and I figured your mind was clear enough that we can apparate back here.”
Hermione didn’t respond as her knees buckled under her and she sat down on the ground, leaning her head against the heavy oak bed frame. She could feel the minute indentations and carvings within the wood pressing against her temple but it didn’t matter.
Never before in Hermione’s life had she seen something like what happened today. She had seen deaths; both as a healer and a student at Hogwarts, she had had her fair share of dead people. She even remembered once during the final battle trying to perform the killing curse herself but it was weak and barely touched Bellatrix’s perfect face. What had killed Bellatrix wasn’t a spell but rather a crueler weapon. She had been dancing tauntingly around Hermione’s curses and even though she was hit by the occasional one, her recovery was fast and effectual. Hermione had heard that Ron was injured and was lying by the Room of Requirement, so she left Bellatrix and ran. The maddened woman followed in eager pursuit of her mudblood prey and they duelled once again by that very room. The Fiendfyre could be heard inside it, still raging madly and Hermione saw her window of opportunity within seconds. She cast an explosive spell at the door and the wood burst into shrivelled smithereens, expelling heat into the cold night. Bellatrix had lunged forward and with one simple stunning spell, the woman had been thrown back into the flames. Her dark eyes, in their last moments, had conveyed in them the fear of death but not without emphasizing the lunacy within.
And that had been it. That was as close as Hermione had ever come to causing a death. She hadn’t ever felt the torture of standing by, powerless and inept, as an innocent man pleaded against death. She had never heard the appeals for mercy and for life from a man who knew his fate was as good as sealed by his past. The sounds were still burned into her mind and she knew that in time they, like the markings on her arms and legs, would heal but the scars would remain forever.
There was a creak in the door and a gentle thud as it shut again. Hermione’s weak mind was able to register Pansy’s hushed voice as she spoke with Draco though the subject of the conversation eluded her. There were gasps of shock and worry, exclamations of surprise and sighs of distress from Pansy as the conversation proceeded. She felt Pansy’s coconut scent fill the air as she approached Hermione and put her hand on her shoulders.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said gently.
“Me too,” Hermione replied weakly, opening her eyes. Draco’s head turned immediately towards her as she spoke for the first time. He was standing by the window with his hands in his pocket; in the light, the damp remnants of Hermione’s tears could be seen clearly on his blue shirt.
“You should change,” Pansy said, raising Hermione by her arm until she was half-sitting on the bed and half-standing. “If Lestrange comes by, he’ll suspect something.”
Hermione nodded feebly and ran the back of her sleeve across her face, wiping off the sweat and tears roughly while Pansy held out some green pyjamas for her.
“I’m going to go shower,” Draco said, heading out the door. “Stay with her, Pansy.”
He reached into the oak cupboard and pulled out a loose light blue shirt and a pair of dark grey sweatpants. As he left, Pansy turned back to Hermione with a worried expression.
“Are you alright?” she said quietly.
Hermione shook her head. “It was awful,” she said, burying her face in her hands. “He just wouldn’t stop screaming.”
“You’ve seen people die before,” Pansy said matter-of-factly.
“Never like this. Never… so cold-bloodedly… and I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.”
Pansy turned away and placed her fingers on the door knob. “I’ll be right outside,” she said. “You can change in here.”
---
The cold water struck Draco’s pale skin sharply as it washed away the salty smell of tears, dirt and sweat. He felt the drops of liquid bead on his thin skin and trickle down, sending an odd sensation throughout his numb body. As he put on his clothes and quickly combed his hair, he heard a knock on the door.
“What?” he said, opening it as he stepped out.
“Hermione’s fine,” Pansy said as she glanced back at the door that led to the Master bedroom. “Just shaken up.”
“What’s she doing now?” Draco asked and Pansy sensed the tone of uneasiness in his voice.
“She’s changing inside, give her a minute. Why do you sound nervous?”
Draco looked down and back up at the ceiling. “I’m…” he hesitated. “I don’t know what to say to her.”
Pansy couldn’t muster a smile despite Draco’s nerves. “She’s going to be reminded of her parents soon,” Pansy warned. “If she wants to say something, listen. If she doesn’t, then stay. No one wants to be left alone in their hour of need.”
“Then you go and stay with her,” Draco offered suddenly, despite himself. “You can be more understanding.”
“I don’t think I can.”
---
Draco entered the dark room and saw that Hermione hadn’t bothered changing her clothes. She was still lying by the bedpost, her head resting against it as she closed her eyes.
“You should go to sleep,” he suggested quietly.
The flickering candles in the room were beginning to die down as Hermione shook her head, looking into the carpeted floor. “I don’t want to,” she said weakly. “Let me just sit here.”
Unsure, Draco turned away as the first sign of tears appeared on Hermione’s pale cheeks. He was confused but also terrified that this situation was more than she could handle. The life had dissipated out of her within a few hours – her cold eyes and pallid skin were shattered remains.
Draco swallowed slightly and decided to leave Hermione in her own thoughts. He had found silence to be a great comfort in the worst of his moments and maybe she had done the same. He turned towards the tan pullout sofa bed and lay down on it, looking through the ornamented dressing screen at the lifeless body of Hermione Granger as it wept silently.
---
It was well past midnight when Draco opened his eyes in the master bedroom. The darkness had completely engulfed the surroundings, leaving the moonlight as his only companion as he sat up quietly and looked around the dressing screen to see Hermione still lying by the bedpost. She was moving very rhythmically and slowly, barely enough to stir the air around her.
Draco got up slowly and made his way over to the large bed, craning his neck to see if her eyes were closed. They were. There were still salty remains of her dried tears but the palpitating breaths and wistful sighs had stopped when she fell asleep. There was a slight red mark on her forehead where the carvings of the bedpost had ridden in.
He took her right arm very carefully and put it around his neck and slipped his arm under her knees to lift her. Her body hoisted itself up effortlessly into Draco’s arms and he carried her over to the bed where the soft covers provided a gentler surface. He draped a thick blanket over Hermione before turning back to his own sofa bed. As he stepped away, he felt Hermione’s hand grab the bottom of his shirt and he turned around to see her looking up at him.
“Don’t go,” she whispered. She sounded sad and completely shattered.
Draco nodded, taken by surprise. “I’m right here,” he assured her.
Hermione turned her heard towards the empty right side of the bed and looked back at Draco. “Stay.”
Her voice was weak and drained which didn’t help Draco’s efforts at refusing her request. He nodded to her as he lay down besides her, keeping three feet’s distance between them, unsure how close was too close. Hermione was a lot less worried about this proximity but maintained the distance.
“Do you think he killed my parents the same way?” she asked him. Neither of them looked at the other.
Draco didn’t know how to respond. His logic told him that Lestrange probably had revelled in the torture of his victims before killing them but he wasn’t sure he that was what Hermione wanted to hear. “I don’t know,” he said after a while.
Hermione’s eyes began to moisten. “He wouldn’t have spared them,” she said, amidst her heavy inhalations. “He would have enjoyed watching them die.”
A cold gust of air blew threw the room and Hermione shivered, huddling under the covers. She still looked away from Draco while he looked up at the ceiling. There was a bitter silence that deepened as the minutes went by. Hermione’s cries were soft but her tremors sent shivers down Draco’s spine.
“My parents are in Azkaban,” he said. He had uttered the words so softly that he wondered if Hermione had heard him at all. She didn’t respond but her head tilted up and she looked into Draco’s grey eyes.
“I was training as an Auror in Belize when my father got sentenced. He had been acquitted of his Death Eater charges with a strict eight year probationary period and zero tolerance policy on any violations. Eight months later, they found the body of a tortured young squib in our dungeons – she had been burnt to death.”
Hermione’s gazed remained fixed as Draco continued his story. “Aurors arrested my father and threw him in Azkaban. Four days later, they arrested my mother, believing her to be an accomplice. They’ve been in Azkaban ever since.”
There was a pause. “Did they kill the squib?”
Draco shook his head. “They were arrogant, followers of the Dark Lord and indirectly responsible for many of his conquests but they are not murderers.” He turned his body onto his side to face Hermione. “The majority of death eaters were just used for mindless physical violence – leading the riots, killing people. The important ones, like my parents and the Lestranges, became important for one of two reasons: they were ruthless, like the Lestranges or they were influential, like my parents. My mother was far too weak willed to kill.”
“And your father?”
“Too arrogant – he wouldn’t have wasted his time with such a lowly class.”
The thin rays of moonlight flooded through the curtains and laced the ceiling and walls of the bedroom as Draco continued. “My father died four months ago.”
“What about your mother?”
“She will follow soon.”
Hermione’s tears had dried up but the lifeless chill in her eyes remained. “I’m sorry,” she said, barely audible.
Draco turned back towards the ceiling and said, “There are worse things than death in this world. My life is purgatory.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Draco turned to face Hermione again, resting on his side. “Then why am I being punished? Why are you being bearing the burden of your parents’ deaths when all you did was fight for good?”
Hermione looked into Malfoy’s grey eyes as he looked into her brown ones. “It’s the price of being good,” she said sombrely. “I can choose to run away from Lestrange if I want to, disappear…become a whole new person and he would never find me. But I don’t want to. Why should I give up my life for that mangy excuse for a human being? And that’s what differentiates us from them… we stay to fight.”
“Us?” Draco asked. “I can’t be like you… I can’t be like the golden trio, I’m too weak. I can’t be the hero.”
The faintest trace of a smile appeared on Hermione’s face. “I’ve seen the way you fight for her… that creature… whoever she is. You’re not like any one of those men. Everybody is weak. Everybody fails. Being strong is fighting. It's hard and it's painful and it's every day. It's what we have to do.”
Draco heard her words and the beating of his heart resounded in his head. He knew what he had to do. “Do you know who that girl was? The one they found murdered in the dungeon?” he said softly, watching Hermione’s reaction.
Her face remained unchanged. “Her name was Adria,” he began. “She had been a housekeeper in the Manor since she was seven years old when Eli found her around the village, wandering. Both of my parents were impartial to her, she was a squib but she could tend to the house elves well.”
“Two years ago, before fleeing, Lestrange came to the Manor for refuge. When my father refused him any shelter, he returned a few days later and when no one was there, he burnt the courtyard with the dark mark… accusing my father of being a coward. His men… they found Adria and they tortured her for fun, like she was a toy. After abusing her and torturing her for hours, they put her out of her misery by burning her… with Fiendfyre.”
---
Fun fact: I wrote the scene with Bartholomew, Hermione and Draco almost eight months ago.
By the time Hermione’s eyes opened the next morning, Draco had left the master bedroom. She looked around for a few seconds, confused but the door opened suddenly and Pansy came in, distracting her.
“Good morning,” she said. “Feeling any better?”
“Much better,” Hermione replied, surprised by the ease at which her answer appeared on her lips. “Where’s Draco?”
“Everyone except Lestrange is downstairs right now. He’s still asleep.”
“Bugger,” Hermione cursed, realizing how late she was and got up. She looked around for pair of decent looking pants and Pansy handed her another one of her expensive shirts which Hermione took without commenting on that fact that purple always made her look like a lot shorter than she liked.
She ran into the bathroom and quickly got dressed, running some tap water onto her face to remove the salt stains on her cheeks.
“Can I ask you something?” Pansy said, as Hermione came back out and began to run her fingers through her hair in front of a mirror.
“Yeah.”
“What… what exactly happened last night, between you and Draco?”
Hermione looked at her fatigued visage in the mirror and then back at Pansy. “Truth be told, I don’t know,” she sighed.
“You don’t remember?”
“No, no, I remember what happened but I don’t quite understand what it was. Why? Did he say something?”
Pansy shook her head. “He won’t say a word but I haven’t really had the chance to talk to him.”
“He told me about Adria,” Hermione confessed.
Pansy’s reaction was extremely unexpected as she broke out into a relieved smile. “Finally!” she exclaimed and then, at the sight of Hermione’s confused expression, composed herself. “I mean, it’s terrible what happened to her but I’m so glad that he finally told you! And I’m guessing you made the Fiendfyre connection?”
“I did but there’s still the link to be drawn between the Fiendfyre and her becoming a ghost… something must have happened to her.”
“Well think about it later. We need to go down first for breakfast and then we’re going into the village to buy me a dress.”
Hermione cocked her eyebrow. “Wait, I thought you had a whole bunch of dresses.”
“You can never have too many dresses,” she explained. “Besides, Eli needs to search the Manor for Adria and we can’t really do that with Lestrange and Cassius in the house.”
Hermione reached for her hair clip, tying up the loose strands that hung messily over her face before turning towards the door. In a few seconds, she’d be out and everything she said would be heard.
“I don’t understand something,” she confessed.
“What?” Pansy asked.
“Why didn’t Draco want to tell me this story? Adria’s story?”
Pansy’s face contracted and her forehead wrinkled. Her mouth opened slightly. “He didn’t tell you?”
Hermione shook her head. “There’s more?” She was beginning to feel irritated. What was the point of telling her the story if he didn’t tell her all of it?
“Hermione, Draco was the one who was supposed to keep watch on the Manor that evening while his parents had left for the Ministry. Lestrange came and no one was there – Draco was the one who left Adria alone… she died because he left...”
Hermione’s jaw fell to the floor and for a few seconds, she forgot to breathe. She now understood why he never told her and why he had waited so long before finally choosing to divulge his secret. This is what made his death seem justifiable – he thought he was the guilty one. Her whole stay in the Manor was thrust into a new perspective –he was a martyr and just like she did with her parents, he blamed Adria’s death on himself.
“It was clearly not his fault. He’s been all but physically torturing himself ever since he came back that evening and found her body in the dungeons. Eli was devastated too but he just didn’t show it – you know how he is. Draco, though, became completely detached and writhed with guilt. He went back to Belize immediately after they buried Adria’s body in Beech Hill, that’s the village nearby on the other side of the forest and didn’t return until after his parents’ trial.”
Pansy continued to say something else but the sense of remorse ridden in Hermione’s thoughts blocked out her voice. She had accused Draco of so many things in the past few weeks and it turned out that he was fighting for exactly what she was – revenge.
Pansy put her hand against Hermione’s arm and smiled sadly. “Don’t worry about it,” she said softly.
“I’ve… I’ve been so awful to him.”
“He doesn’t like to be pitied,” Pansy said. “If anything, you kept him on his toes. Let’s go down, come on.”
Hermione nodded; glancing at herself one last time in the mirror, she made sure she looked as good as Lady Malfoy should.
---
Weaving down the many corridors and marble staircases, Hermione and Pansy arrived at the dining hall while Draco and Cassius were getting up from their seats.
“Good morning,” Cassius greeted them amicably.
“Hello,” Hermione replied, smiling and trying to sound cold. She looked over at Draco and their eyes met for a brief second before Pansy ushered her over.
“Let’s eat, shall we?” Pansy asked.
“Oh we just finished eating,” Cassius commented. He seemed genuinely upset at this lack of chivalry he had just displayed. “I assumed you and Hermia had already finished.”
“No, no that’s quite alright,” Pansy replied. “I wasn’t that hungry to begin with. Let’s just get going to Beech Hill.”
“Well, if you’re alright with it,” he said, turning to Hermione.
“I’m fine,” she replied, still keeping up her smile. “Isn’t Le- isn’t your uncle coming, Draco?”
Malfoy sharply reacted to her question and redirected it at Cassius. “I’m not quite sure, is he?”
“I think we should let him catch some sleep,” Cassius shrugged. “He’ll get up in a few minutes and he wanted to head out with Hector and Marcus for something.”
Hermione caught the disdain in Cassius’ voice before he held out his to her and smiled. “Shall we, Lady Malfoy?”
Hermione was aghast as she stared at his hand. What was she supposed to do? Take it? Was it a trick question to see if she’d take Draco’s hand instead? Pansy nodded her head subtly from behind Cassius and then took Draco’s arm into her own, indicating that it was alright for her to take Cassius’.
Right, Hermione thought to herself. I’d forgotten they were all polygamists.
She slipped her arm carefully around Cassius’ elbow and didn’t hesitate to note the sharp bulge of muscle that protruded from within. Draco noted her reaction with a small sigh and then turned towards the exit, walking with Pansy.
---
“So you studied at Hogwarts?” Cassius asked.
The pair of them was walking on the outskirts of Malfoy Manor, just near the forest. The day was extremely bright albeit slightly chilly but that didn’t seem to bother Hermione. The only thing that was irritating her was the extremely fast pace at which Draco and Pansy seemed to have moved forward at, leaving her and Cassius out of their earshot.
Hermione didn’t really expect to field questions but given that she hadn’t prepared herself for any lies, the truth seemed to be the only way to go. “Mhm,” she said. “I took my N.E.W.Ts in defence against the dark arts, potions, herbology, charms, transfiguration, muggle studies and ancient runes.”
Cassius seemed fascinated. “That’s impressive,” he agreed. “I never did get the chance to take muggle studies though.”
“So you took your N.E.W.Ts in all those subjects as well?” She had never met anyone as academically ambitious as she was.
“Well, Durmstrang doesn’t really have that test but I studied them all in my seventh year.
I hated Potions though,” he laughed. “I was the worst kid there even though that bloke, Krum couldn’t tell a ladybug from a dung beetle. But he was the prized Quidditch player, so everyone let him slip by.”
Hermione let a laugh slip out of her mouth. “You knew Viktor Krum?”
“Sort of – he was in the same year as me even though he was older. He ended up failing his Charms exam so horribly that even his thousands of galleons couldn’t make the teachers turn a blind eye. Quite an idiot, actually.”
“He’s not that bad.”
“You knew him too?”
Hermione blushed. This did, however, give her a good opportunity to throw a famous name around to boost her own credibility. “I dated him for a few months. He wasn’t so bad.”
Cassius was genuinely surprised. “That’s remarkable,” he admitted and then a wide smile curved onto his lips. “Imagine if I had been friends with him, then you and I could have met a long time ago.”
“Hermia!”
Hermione and Cassius both looked up and saw Draco walking towards them, slightly red in the face but she felt it had nothing to do with the cold. “Can you come with me? I really want to show you something.”
“I was talking to Cassius… sweetheart,” she replied tersely.
“Well, Pansy can keep him company,” he replied roughly as he pulled her arm out of Cassius’. He grabbed her hand and pulled her forward as she turned back and smiled apologetically to Cassius. She saw Pansy walking back towards him and when he took her arm and started to talk, she turned back to Draco.
“What on earth was that?” she asked.
“You’re not supposed to consort with the enemy.”
“I was just trying to act like Pansy does,” she defended herself.
“You are married,” he shot back. “You’re not supposed to be flirting with anyone but me.”
Despite the many comebacks that shot into her head, Hermione couldn’t bring herself to retort. Her perception of Draco had change so much since her talk with Pansy and she realized, every time she spoke to him, that they were both so much more alike than either of them knew.
“Fine,” she replied.
They arrived past a small heap of shrubbery before stepping into a wide clearing. Beech Hill was a tiny little village with stores and huts surrounding a large silver fountain in the middle of the town. From candy stores to a used wand dealership, the stores were brimming with wizards and witches, all carrying shopping bags.
As they walked around, Hermione’s slow pace allowed Cassius and Pansy to catch up with them pretty quickly. “Let’s find me a dress,” Pansy suggested brightly.
Hermione was in no mood to go shopping right now and judging by Draco’s fatigued face, neither was he. “We’ll meet you and Cassius back here in an hour or so,” she suggested.
“Agreed,” Pansy replied quickly. She was eager to get Cassius away from Draco as soon as possible.
Shooting both of them a quick smile, she grabbed Cassius’ hand and led him towards one of the stores. Draco watched them walk away before ushering Hermione to a small patch of grass under a thick stone bench.
“Let’s sit.”
Given the size of the bench, Hermione had to sit awkwardly closer to Malfoy than she was used to but she knew that it would be a convincing scene if Cassius or Lestrange came by. She wondered if Draco would bring up last night’s discussion at all – they had both been at a very vulnerable emotional stage and perhaps, he regretted his decision to tell her about Adria.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Do you have everything you need for tonight? Since we’re here, you can buy yourself anything else you want…”
“Pansy said she has a dress for me, so whatever…”
Draco looked at her with a confused expression. “You don’t like Pansy’s dress?”
“It’s purple,” she muttered, feeling extremely stupid and probably sounding the same way. “It’s…”
She wasn’t sure if Draco would laugh at her or think she was completely mental to be worrying about something as stupid as colour.
“It makes me look a lot shorter than I am,” she said. “And slightly fatter. And Pansy’s forcing me to wear it! You can’t force people to wear purple.”
A smile broke out on Draco’s face and within a second, he was laughing. “That’s what you’re worried about?” he said, amidst fits of hysteria.
“Well thank you for making me feel self-conscious,” she mumbled, embarrassed and red.
“Oh come on,” he said, slowing down now. “The great Hermione Granger is worried about looking inadequate - you have to admit that you sound ridiculous.”
“Well, I’m your wife… you’re supposed to humour me and tell me that I look beautiful no matter what, idiot.”
Draco snorted. “Even I can’t lie like that.”
“You’re impossible.”
“No I’m not,” he said, the laughter dying down and being replaced by a deep sadness. “I just got another dose of that Fiendfyre antidote so I’m in a better mood.”
“Oh.”
Draco opened his mouth to say something before his eyes darted over to something behind Hermione and his face stiffened. “Come closer,” he commanded her. “Stroke my hair.”
“Excuse me?”
“Just do it,” he said. “Someone’s looking at us.”
Hermione placed her hand against Draco’s temple and began to gently run her fingers through his soft blonde hair. She had an uncontrollable urge to turn around and see this particular stranger but her mind kept shooting her down. Draco leaned in closer to her and tilted his head slightly so that she could feel his peppermint breathe against her cheeks.
“Just keep smiling,” he said, plastering a smile onto his own face. “I can’t quite make out his face.”
She couldn’t help but notice the extreme closeness between her and Draco. She moved her hand from his hair and lowered it to his cheekbone, stroking it gently. He lost his focus for a second and his eyes fell away from the target and into Hermione’s and without warning, he leaned in closer, ending up merely an inch away from her face. She saw his grey eyes, felt his gentle breath against her cheek and it was racing as fast as her heart.
Footsteps were heard up ahead and Hermione felt Draco being pulled off of her. Her mind was still a little dizzy from the sharp electricity and so she didn’t quite register the mysterious figure grabbing Malfoy by the collar.
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY GIRLFRIEND!” Ron yelled, before tightening his fist and punching Malfoy straight in the nose.
---
“Ron!” Hermione cried and shot up instantly, pushing him slightly farther so that he wouldn’t break Draco into two pieces.
“What the HELL was that?!” Ron asked, completely red in the face.
Hermione turned around to see Draco lying on the ground with blood sprouting from his nose and upper lip. He cringed as the aftermath of the punch still shocked his nerves. “Bloody hell, Weasley!”
“Ron, why on earth did you punch him?!”
“HE WAS ABOUT TO KISS YOU! He’s lucky I didn’t snap him in half!”
Hermione bent down at Draco’s side and placed her hand against his bleeding nose. “Draco, can you hear me?”
“Unless you sound like an exceptionally loud ringing bell, not very clearly,” he muttered, clasping his nose as the blood dripped down his chin. He looked up at Ron. “Weasley, I swear when I get up, I’m going to break of your arm and beat you to death with it.”
“Ron, what’re you even doing here?!” Hermione asked, grabbing her wand and trying to remember the spell to heal broken bones.
“I was trying to figure out a way to get to Malfoy Manor!” he grunted. “Last time, that old bloke came and got me from the station – I don’t know how on earth I’m supposed to get there by myself!”
“No, I mean… why on earth are you here?”
“Are you kidding me?” he cried. “You left the Burrow to come here by yourself and take on some murderous killer and his stupid blonde puppet! I wasn’t going to leave you alone! But luckily I came here to find you almost kissing this useless excuse for a human being.”
“Weasley, shut up!” Draco bellowed, getting up on knees and slowly hoisting himself to his feet. A few pedestrians turned to stare at the odd trio but Ron’s scowl and Hermione’s hysteria kept them from wandering any closer.
“Ron, just calm down for now… we can’t attract any attention,” Hermione pleaded.
“Hermione-”
“Just listen to me, Ron!”
“No!”
“Weasley,” Draco said through gritted teeth. “Possibly the most dangerous death eater is right here in this very bloody village, thinking that your girlfriend is my wife. If you don’t bloody shut up and calm down, you’re going to get all of us killed.”
Hermione heard Draco’s words – the most dangerous – and she was sure he was talking about Cassius. But Cassius didn’t seem all that bad and then she remembered that Pansy hadn’t really finished telling her his story.
“Go to hell, Malfoy!”
“Ron, calm down and listen to him.”
“I won’t bloody well do anything of the sort. You and I are going home right now.”
“No!”
“Weasley, leave her alone.”
“She’s my girlfriend!”
“That doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do!”
“Weasley, bloody hell… you’re making her cry.”
“Shove off, Malfoy, this is none of your business!”
“Ron, stop fighting for Merlin’s sake!”
“Hermione, just come with me!”
“No!”
“Why the hell not? What’s gotten into you?”
“You can’t order me around!”
“You’re my girlfriend!”
“Well I don’t want to be your girlfriend anymore!”
Draco’s jaw fell open while Ron, red, looked at Hermione as tears ran down her face. “I’m sorry,” she said weakly.
His shattered gaze remained fixed on Hermione’s gentle features and he put his hands on her face. At first she closed her eyes to his soft touch but she collected herself and moved away. “I’m really sorry.”
“You’re just upset,” Ron said frantically. “It’s alright.”
“Ron, please don’t make this harder than it already is,” she replied.
“You can’t break up with me…”
Draco hadn’t seized the opportunity to be tactful and slowly withdraw from the situation. He awkwardly stood a few feet away from the torn couple and didn’t hesitate to listen in on the conversation with surprise but also an unexplained feeling of guilt.
“I know it’s really hard to see but this is the right thing for us.”
Ron didn’t have a chance to respond as two figures came walking forward from behind one of the stores. Pansy was carrying two large white bags while Cassius smoothly trailed behind with another three bags in his hand. Draco immediately turned red and faced Hermione’s bloodshot eyes with fear.
To her own surprise, an unexpected trigger acted in Hermione’s head and she threw herself into Ron’s arms, embracing him.
“I can’t believe you came all the way from Belgium to surprise me!” she cried, breathing onto Ron’s neck.
He was confused enough and opened his mouth to retort but a sharp whisper from Hermione stopped him: “Just please don’t talk,” she pleaded.
“What on earth is going on?” Pansy said, her face losing its entire colour.
“Oh Pansy, I don’t think you’ve met my friend from Belgium,” Hermione exclaimed happily. “This is Ronald.”
Pansy gaped at Hermione for a second and then past her at Draco’s stunned face. “A pleasure,” she said after a while, smiling shortly at Ron who was all the more perplexed.
“Ronald, this is my friend from Hogwarts, Pansy Parkinson and this is Cassius Lestrange, Rodolphus Lestrange’s son,” she added trying to sound extremely nonchalant.
Ron’s eyes widened to enormous proportions. “WHAT?!”
“Ronald, please don’t be silly,” she said, laughing slightly. “I told you Draco and I had guests staying at the Manor.”
“I wasn’t aware of anyone else visiting,” Cassius remarked suspiciously, his eyes narrowing into thin slits.
“Ronald’s a friend of Hermia’s older brother,” Draco explained. “I was rather under the impression that he was still in Belgium in hiding but I suppose with the Ministry dilly-dallying, getting into London’s a breeze.”
“Ah, so is he staying with us?” Cassius asked as the winter wind blew gently.
“I’d hope so,” Hermione said icily. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.”
Ron was speechless, staring madly at both Hermione and Draco as she put her arm under his and tugged it gently. “Come along, Ronald. You must be starving.”
“I agree,” Draco said smoothly, grabbing Hermione’s hand gently and escorting her forward.
They began to walk towards the forest, away from the tiny little village. Pansy, after staring at Ron awkwardly for a few seconds, accepted Cassius’ arm and strode forward. Though Hermione didn’t turn back, she could hear Ron’s large boots clunk against the ground as he followed.
“You’re getting better,” Draco whispered slowly, a grin forming on his face.
Hermione looked at him and tried to respond with equal happiness. As the ground began to get softer as they treaded towards the Manor, she nodded unenthusiastically. “Yeah.”
---
By the time that Cassius excused himself to go get ready for the ball and Lestrange returned back from his “trip” with bloody knuckles and a perverse smile, Hermione had managed to sneak Ron into the master bedroom and calm him down before explaining everything. And as the evening hue began to fill the sky, she finally took a deep breath after finishing her story without hesitating to wonder where Draco and Pansy might have gotten to.
“Lestrange couldn’t have had a son…” Ron said, looking into the distance. Hermione noticed that his voice had become much lower and he refused, at all costs, to make eye contact.
“He does,” she said. “I had no idea either. So, now you know what’s going on.” A twinge of guilt hit her when she internally apologized for the lie. She hadn’t told Ron everything that had happened including Draco’s involvement with Adria’s death, the Edacium curse and her witnessing of Bartholomew’s death.
“Right.”
“Oh for Merlin’s sake, Ron, please talk to me,” she pleaded, throwing her hands in the air.
“I don’t need to talk to you,” he replied. “I just want to leave.”
Anger began to boil inside Hermione as she glowered. “Well, you can’t,” she said coldly. “You got yourself into this mess and now, you’re going to have to wait till it all clears up.”
“And why the hell not?”
“Lestrange now thinks you’re some stupid death eater friend of ours,” she explained, getting up. “And if you leave suddenly, it’s going to look very suspicious. If you’d j-”
Hermione stopped talking as the door creaked open and Draco and Pansy came inside, both looking tired. Eli followed in at the end and shut the door gently before turning to speak.
“Mr. Weasley,” he said courteously.
Ron just nodded shortly and started speaking to Malfoy. “I want to leave.”
“Well you can’t,” he retorted. “You’re going to have to stay for the gathering tonight and then can leave immediately tomorrow morning.”
Hermione noticed the reddish hue surrounding Draco’s nose; she had healed the bone but the smears of blood were still slightly evident. Pansy was silent though the worry lines were beginning to set into her forehead as she creased them constantly out of concern.
“I’m not following your orders,” Ron spat angrily. “You’ve cost me enough for a lifetime.”
“Ron! Shut up!” Hermione burst. “HE did absolutely nothing – this has been a long time coming!”
“We’re very short on time,” Eli chimed in. “This has to wait.”
“Eli’s right,” Pansy agreed. “Please.”
“Mr. Weasley, I’ll arrange for some dress robes for you tonight.”
Ron glowered silently, shooting death glances mainly at Draco from where he sat. Hermione noticed that his lips were curled up, indicating a pensive undertone. She hoped he would stop arguing and cooperate, if only just for tonight.
“And I get to leave tomorrow?” he asked Eli.
“I will have a carriage escort you personally,” Eli said, nodding.
Ron looked up at Hermione with a sick look in his face, glaring. He then turned back to Eli and stood up. “Fine.”
Then, without another look at Malfoy or Hermione, he stormed into one of the sub-rooms in the huge master bedroom.
---
Cassius saw his father lying sprawled on an armchair with the Daily Prophet in his hands as he entered his room. The room’s dark green walls were all centered by a ceiling that extended into the darkness above. In one corner of the room, two huge velvet arm chairs lay on a round Persian rug, each with silver embroidery of the letter ‘M’. Most of the room, however, was dominated by a huge canopy bed adorned with black sheets and silver cushions over a dark wood bed frame.
“You’re back,” Lestrange said, not bothering to put down his paper.
“I am.”
“And how was the shopping?” he asked.
Cassius paused and sat himself down onto the second silver arm chair. “Quite pleasant,” he replied flatly.
“Did you manage to talk with Lady Malfoy?”
Cassius smiled as his father probed him with his black eyes. His father had sent him on a pitifully menial mission to judge the credibility of Lady Malfoy. He had been suspicious since day one of this bushy haired, uncoordinated, seemingly bold woman; a description such as that was very much against what anyone would have imagined Lady Malfoy would be.
“She’s nothing special,” Cassius said, dismissing his father’s doubts, “just a regular airhead, perfect for Malfoy.”
He smiled as the lie settled into Lestrange’s mind calmly. Truth be known, she was very bold and extremely intelligent – much to his own surprise. He, like any other, had always thought Lucius would fix Draco up with some stupid, extremely attractive woman who would sit idly by his side as he ruled over the Malfoy fortune. But this clearly wasn’t the case – Hermia Devereux was not the kind of obviously pretty woman that the Malfoys chose as wives. Her hair was extremely tangled, never combed properly. She wore outfits that were clearly not made for her and most importantly of all, she had a mind of her own.
“Perhaps you should start getting ready,” Cassius suggested.
“I’ll be up in a few minutes,” he responded lazily. “By the way, if you see Hector… he should have a package for me.”
“Right.”
Cassius got up, nodded shortly and then exited. The pale hallway was familiar to him from his younger days and so he could absentmindedly navigate his way to his own room.
He noted that most of his generation despised, or at least strayed away from, their parents. Draco didn’t speak of his parents though he knew that they were tucked away safely in Azkaban thanks to his father. Pansy broke off all ties with her father when he was caught trying to torture a muggle and even he despised Lestrange who cared only for power and nothing else.
“Did you need something?”
Cassius looked up and smiled as Draco walked up to him from ahead with a concerned expression on his face.
“I guess I must’ve missed my room,” Cassius admitted. “Sorry.”
“Good thing I stopped you or you’d have headed straight to the dungeons.”
“Good thing you did.”
Draco shrugged coldly. “You should get ready though.”
“As should you; you are the host after all, we can’t have you missing out on all the fun.”
Draco nodded. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
---
With Ron tucked away safely in one of the sub-rooms, Pansy getting ready in her own room and Draco taking a walk somewhere in the Manor, Hermione finally got a chance to calm down and collect her thoughts. But instead of a rational sorting through of her many ideas, she found herself spilling tears down her cheeks. She sat herself on the ground against the bed and felt the warm salty substance drip against her skin.
She didn’t really understand why she was crying though. Was the fact that she had just broken up with her boyfriend of over three years and her best friend for over ten years? Was it because she had just come within an inch of kissing Draco Malfoy and it was possibly the most electrifying contact she had ever shared with anyone? Or was it because the man who had killed her parents was living in the same house as she was?
“You’re crying,” Eli said sombrely. Hermione raised her head slightly off her knees and through her misty vision saw the aged man standing in front of her.
“You’re not going to try to stop me, are you?” she asked in a low voice.
Eli smiled sorrowfully and shook his head. “Tears are often necessary to help up clear out our vision. It helps many see better, I find.”
“I hate crying,” she said. “I feel so weak.”
Eli adjusted the back of his robes and sat down beside Hermione on the floor. “Emotions are a sign of strength, not weakness. So tell me, what is it that floods you with so much emotion?”
“A lot of things,” she said exasperatedly. “I have absolutely no one left, Eli. My friends are absorbed in their own lives; Ron probably never wants to see me again…”
“And what about Master Malfoy?”
Hermione laughed weakly. “He doesn’t want me, he needs me.”
Eli turned his neck and put his white, pale hands on Hermione’s. “Ms. Granger, you are an incredibly intelligent and beautiful woman and you have your entire life ahead of you. Just like the huge garden in the courtyard outside, it takes the wilting of one small rose for us to notice the beauty of the whole edifice. Sometimes, instead of trying to hold onto something, we need to let it go.”
“I’ve been with Ron for so long…”
“Then apologize to him.”
“But I just… I just don’t feel the same way about him. I can’t go back to him, not as his girlfriend.”
“So now you will learn what it’s like to be without him and it will hurt and you’ll probably cry some more but I promise you, one morning you’ll wake up and you will realize that even though you may not have your secure life, you have friends that care for you and an entire world brimming with possibilities for you to explore. And then, you’ll feel happy again.”
“And what if that never happens?”
Eli’s expression softened. “It will, you have to make sure of it. Ms. Granger, life can either be changed or accepted. If it cannot be accepted, it must be changed and if it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted.”
“No one wants to change, Eli.”
Eli laughed gently and got up off the floor, adjusting his robes carefully. “You’d be surprised to see how much people yearn for change – how even the smallest of actions are indicative of a magnanimous sentiment.”
Reaching into his pockets, he produced a pale blue handkerchief and handed it to Hermione. “You should get ready,” he suggested. “I’d better head down, the guests are arriving.”
“Thank you, Eli.”
Hermione got off the ground and smiled as Eli left the room with a pop. He was always such a cryptic persona. She walked over to the window and looked down at the front courtyard where carriages were lining up as some of England’s richest and cruellest wizards descended into Malfoy Manor. Hermione heard the door open behind her and from the clanking of the heels, she could tell that it was Pansy.
“Feeling nervous?” Pansy asked.
“A little,” she admitted.
Hermione faced Pansy and felt a twinge of jealousy as the attractive brunette looked even prettier than normal in her ensemble. She was wearing a fitted dark blue dress that reached the tip of her toes and from the top, wove itself around her neck, extenuated by large antique gold earrings. Her hair was tied in an up do but the few tresses that did manage to escape were curled and fell on the side of her face deliberately.
Hermione saw her own messy reflection in the large mirror against the wall and grunted. “I hate you.”
Pansy smiled. “Thank you.”
“No but seriously, how is it that I always manage to look like a train wreck?”
“Hermione, stop being silly and get ready. I’ve got your dress here and I’ll send a house elf up with the jewellery.”
“Fine, there’s no use avoiding it anymore – purple and I need to try and get along.”
She held up a life-sized package and handed it to Hermione, topping it off with a bottle of Madam Malga’s hair style cream, essence of lavender and a teeth whitening charm. She also thrust a huge jar of Spfelli’s Curling Cure on top before wishing Hermione luck and leaving to go check up on Ron.
Hermione unzipped the huge package and allowed herself a momentary breath before taking out the dress. It wasn’t the overload of purple that she was expecting. Instead, a handful of soft satin hit her hands before Hermione realized that her dress was in fact a burgundy satin dress with gold buttons that crimped at the waist and had delicate beaded embroidery on its thin sleeves. Attached at the neckline was a tiny note which, given her emotional state, put a huge smile on her face.
No one should be forced to wear purple .
---
A/N: To address someone else's question in my reviews, the reason I don't respond to reviews is because at one point, I fell behind and now have over a thousand reviews to respond to (yikes!). I'm also getting really busy so I figure you would all prefer me to write the story in my free time instead of responding to reviews. I really do appreciate all the commentary and I read every single review! So please review! If you ask an actual question, I'll respond to it in my author's note.
The burgundy taffeta hung off Hermione in such a manner that she was sure the dress was enchanted to fit its wearer. Running her hands along the gold buttons, she couldn’t help but feel mildly pleased at how she looked. Her hair was let down in huge curls that were tamed by Pansy’s many hair products, giving her an air of true sophistication. She turned around twice, sat down, stood up and concluded that there was no way she was giving this dress back.
She ran her fingers through her hair and plumped up the curls quickly before grabbing her wand and inserting it against her bodice.
There was a knock on the door and it opened slowly as Draco came in. Hermione saw the fatigue in his eyes and her heart felt heavy with sadness. She smiled at him and he looked at her, with his mouth gaping.
“You look nice,” he said after a long pause.
“Thank you,” she replied, feeling elated. “It’s a nice dress, thank you for it.”
“Don’t mention it,” he nodded. “Burgundy is not quite purple.”
“It’s not,” she agreed. “And it looks beautiful with the silver necklace that Pansy lent me.”
She fumbled around clumsily before reaching behind her and producing a double plated square silver pendant on a silver chain. Draco looked at it for a moment and then reached his hand into his pocket.
“Well, I just thought… you know, silver doesn’t really go that well with the gold buttons,” he said. He took his hand out of his pocket and held out a gold necklace at least half an inch thick encrusted with tiny rubies. “Might as well match.”
“Oh…oh my…” Hermione breathed. She was no shopaholic but even she could tell the real from the fake. The tinkling of the rubies, the intricate detail of the gold and the flawless shape it formed all overwhelmed her. “I can’t wear that, Draco.”
“Why not?” He seemed hurt.
“It’s so… it’s huge and it must be worth thousands of galleons…”
She felt like a fool trying to explain herself. In reality, all she wanted was to grab that necklace and put it around her neck. It was prettier than anything she had ever seen.
Draco rolled his eyes and walked behind Hermione, placing his hands gently on her arms and turning her to the right to face the floor-length mirror on the opposite wall. The two of them stared into it as he lifted the necklace and put it around Hermione’s neck from behind. She looked at herself in the mirror.
Wow, we look good together.
And unlike always, she didn’t snap out of her momentary lapse in judgement or reprimand herself for thinking that way. She couldn’t stop thinking it. They stood, one towering over the other, beside each other and the thought kept nagging her mind. She liked the way they looked together.
Draco too didn’t say anything as he stood behind Hermione and looked into the mirror. He was drawn to the image, just as much as she was and if Eli hadn’t entered, they could probably have stood there for hours.
“Mas- oh, I beg your pardon,” he said suddenly, looking away. “I didn’t realize I was interrupting.”
“No, no, it’s nothing,” Hermione said, waving her hand. “What is it?”
“There’s a letter here for you, Master Malfoy. Almost everyone is here, they’re awaiting you.”
“Right,” Hermione said distractedly. “I’m going to go put on my shoes…”
She grabbed the edges of her dress and paddled her way into one of the smaller rooms to find her matching shoes. Eli turned to Draco and just looked at him curiously.
“I did not know your mother’s jewellery was still in the mansion,” he said, a slight twinkle in his eye.
“It isn’t,” he agreed. “I had it brought out from Gringott’s this afternoon. I’d like you to return it after this evening.”
“Absolutely – it goes well with your mother’s dress.”
Draco pursed his lips and noted the look of satisfaction in Eli’s old face. Turning to the letter he had just received, he opened the envelope and read the contents. Whatever colour that remained in his face now vanished.
---
The gathering was taking place in one of the biggest and most opulent rooms of Malfoy Manor. The huge circular chamber fit every single former member of the Dark Lord’s followers, leaving room for an additional three hundred or so. The dark blue walls were illuminated by huge crystal chandelier that hung from the round ceiling, each candle on it emitting a silver glow. The marble floors were white and were surrounded by towering pillars that circled them at equal intervals. The velvet curtains with silver trimmings, though beautiful, were overpowered by the three grand white stone statues around the chamber.
The seven hundred or so death eaters were mingling amongst themselves and while they all had smiles plastered onto their faces, each one kept a sharp eye on their neighbour.
“You’re walking too fast,” Pansy grunted angrily at Ron.
He looked as menacing as Ron Weasley ever could, wearing ash grey robes held together by a deep sapphire broche. Pansy had hastily put a charm on him to blunt his nose slightly and darken his hair so that anyone who might have seen him at Hogwarts would not recognize him.
“I’m not here for the pleasurable company,” he snapped back. “I just want this to be over with.”
“Fine.”
She maintained a foot’s distance from Ron as he sucked his lips in like sour grapes and glared at every passing soul so that no one dared to approach him.
The last of the guests were starting to arrive through the huge oak double doors and from the corner of her eye, Pansy saw that the champagne bottles and sparkling wine goblets were being distributed. A furrow of noise swept its way across the room as the doors at the top of the marble staircase opened and Lestrange stepped out, slightly less dishevelled. He smiled savagely as eyes turned to him, some in admiration, others in fear and made his way down the set of stairs as a nobleman amongst paupers.
Ron’s body stiffened at the sight and Pansy pushed her hand hard against his chest to stop him from moving any further.
“Control yourself,” she ordered.
Ron angrily shoved his torso against her hand and marched over to the darker corners of the chamber so that he could sulk in private. Frustrated, Pansy searched around hastily for Draco and Hermione, hoping that they would finally come down. She was having a hard time fielding such a tough crowd.
Wishful thinking seemed to have paid off because at that very second, one of the smaller side doors opened and Draco and Hermione slipped into the crowd as shiftily as possible. She guessed they didn’t want all that attention especially from people who would be shocked to hear that they were not invited to a Malfoy wedding.
Now, the only person not accounted for was Cassius. And that would be a problem.
---
Hermione felt a light rush in her head as Draco held her hand firmly and manoeuvred her through the mass of crowds. She heard faint cries of “Hey Draco!” or “Malfoy, it’s been so long!” to which Draco only nodded curtly with a short smile and proceeded to the other end of the hall.
“I thought we were supposed to mingle,” Hermione asked when they got to a more secluded section of the circular room.
“In a second,” Draco warned. “But first, I need to explain something to you.”
Hermione rolled her eyes slightly and was about to open her mouth to tell Draco that he was being too over paranoid but the stern look in his face shut her up.
“Eli can’t find Adria,” he said in a low, rushed voice, as if afraid that others might overhear him.
Hermione felt her heart rate quicken and her pulse began to throb in her ears. “What?” she said weakly.
“He’s sure that she’s down somewhere in the dungeons but he still hasn’t been able to find her. Listen to me,” he added, gently but cautiously placing his hand against her cheek. “If anything happens tonight, you need to run.”
“What about everyone else?” Hermione asked roughly. She was surprised at the angry tone her voice had taken.
“Everyone else is collateral - you need to run. Get as far away from here as possible.”
“Draco, you’re not making any sense,” Hermione said, feeling her body heave deep breaths. “Adria doesn’t target people - she’d kill anyone.”
“Just please trust me, it’s not all about Adria. If anyone looks at you with even the slightest bit of suspicion, tell me.”
“I won’t do anything,” Hermione began angrily, “until you tell me what’s going on.”
Two or three people had begun to turn in their direction so Draco gave up and leaned in closer to Hermione. “I just got an owl from the Ministry,” he said quietly. The speed of his words were perhaps the only way Draco could convince himself that he was doing the right thing. “Someone broke into St. Mungo’s this morning and stole your personal records.”
Hermione’s face turned into chalk and she felt Draco’s hand tighten on her own. “Your name, address, history, photos, everything… I don’t want to scare you but you need to be very careful tonight. Someone somewhere has all the information on you and knows who you really are and if he gets to Lestrange…” He couldn’t complete his sentence.
“I’ll be dead,” Hermione finished.
“Eli already knows,” he added. He hoped that talking of solutions would instil some life back into Hermione’s terrified face. “I’m going to tell Pansy in just a moment – she’s coming over here right now. It is very unlikely that in such a huge crowd, Lestrange would be able to get to anyone.”
Pansy had managed to make her way through the crowd and looked at Hermione before turning to Draco. “What happened?”
“Hermione’s personal record is missing; someone broke into St. Mungo’s this afternoon.”
“Oh my… oh shit,” Pansy cursed. “Wait, this afternoon? How much time would it take to get from St. Mungo’s to here?”
Draco pondered, still holding onto Hermione. “Two to three hours,” he said, his voice failing to disguise his newfound sense of urgency. He suddenly looked around the room. “He has to be here by now.”
“There are seven hundred people here,” Hermione argued. “There’s no way we’ll find him.”
“Lestrange – just stay with Lestrange,” Pansy intervened. “Whoever this guy is, he’ll have to find Lestrange to give him the records.”
Hermione shook her head. “He’s by the drinks and he’s got nothing with him. The records should have been here hours ago, who could have gotten them?”
“Who’s not here?”
All three pairs of eyes darted frantically around the room, surveying each face and making a mental note of each name. Hermione focused most of her attention near the centre of the crowd, Draco searched the darker corners and Pansy fielded the outskirts.
Draco’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “Where’s Cassius?”
“I haven’t seen him all evening,” Pansy stuttered. “You don’t… you don’t think that… he?”
Draco pulled Hermione and the three of them stood behind one the large engraved pillars to hide from the crowd and mumbled Eli’s name under his breath. In a few seconds, the aged butler apparated two feet from them with a concerned look on his face. “I can’t see anyone with a package,” he said.
“That’s not important; find Cassius. He’s been missing all evening and he’s the only one other than Lestrange who would care enough to investigate Hermione.”
“Shouldn’t we send everyone home?” Pansy asked.
“That would not be very wise,” Eli warned.
“Eli’s right. The bigger crowd means that Cassius or whoever else has these records will have a much harder time finding Hermione. If something should happen, we can set off a distraction and the entire hall will be in chaos – she can escape.”
Draco’s eyes scanned the crowd from where he was standing and Hermione could tell that his mind was trying to pick out Cassius. She saw the thin contours of his face morph slowly and watched his eyes follow the line of death eaters against the wall until he saw Ron, by himself, in a corner brooding at the rest of the people. “Get Weasley to help too,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Eli said subserviently.
Draco took Hermione’s hand carefully and walked back into the crowd, whispering: “Stay close.”
Hermione craned her neck and saw Eli and Pansy move towards Ron before disappearing into the huge herd of people. Draco, meanwhile, was guiding her forward. Their passage was blocked by a huge wizard wearing emerald robes with some sort of foreign crest on them.
“Draco,” he said, smiling bitterly. “My dear boy, how have you been?”
“Very well, Mr. Fargo,” he replied. He noticed the man’s tiny beady eyes scanning Hermione to which he added: “Might I present my wife to you?”
The circles in the man’s eyes became excited as he held out his hand to Hermione. “Ah! Lady Malfoy, a pleasure.”
Hermione nodded uncomfortably. “Well, it’s quite a party you’ve got here,” he said. “You’ve really done your father proud.”
Draco didn’t respond but instead excused himself and told Fargo that he and Hermione had to go check on the drinks. Weaving their way through groups of drunken men and chattering women, they were stopped again but this time an extremely tall, old woman approached them.
“Draco, you have grown up,” she said, holding out her hand as Draco bent low to kiss it. When she stood up straight Hermione noticed that she was almost as tall as Draco. Her eyes shot over to Hermione and an angry undertone took shelter in her blue eyes.
“This must be the elusive Lady Malfoy,” she remarked. “Yes, Rodolphus was telling me about her. I suppose you must have been in a rush to get married.”
Hermione felt Draco’s hand tightened around hers – she guessed he had noticed the throbbing vein on her neck which was egging her on to punch this woman in the face.
“Well, Alexis is still unattached,” the woman continued. “You remember her, don’t you? You were so close that summer during your sixth year. It may have been the heat but I could’ve sworn there was some undeniable electricity between you two. Ah, here she comes!”
Hermione widened her eyes as Alexis walked up to Draco and gave him a tight kiss very close to the lips. She was exactly as tall as Draco, extremely slender and had shiny white skin. Her blonde hair was straight and reached the far below her shoulders. But undeniably, her strongest features were her mile long legs that were showcased suspiciously well in a low silver halter dress.
“I have missed you, Draco,” she said flirtatiously.
“It’s nice to see you,” he replied shortly. “I don’t think you’ve met my wife, Hermia.”
Both women’s smiles faltered and the younger one grimaced slightly. “No, I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Yes well, we must excuse ourselves, Aunt Augusta,” he said, turning to the old lady. “It was nice seeing you, Alexis.”
Without waiting for a response, Draco kept ploughing forward through the crowds until they reached the drinks at the other end of the hall. After greeting a few more questionable characters and a man Hermione could have sworn was on the Ministry’s international criminals list, Draco turned to Hermione and offered her a glass of sparkling wine.
“I’m not thirsty,” she refused. “Thanks.”
She eyed Pansy and Ron walking quickly around the circumference of the hall and her heart fell with despair.
“They can’t find him,” Draco explained, following her line of sight.
“But that doesn’t make sense. If he knows who I am, why wouldn’t he be here killing me?”
Draco raised his eyebrows to Hermione’s blunt question; he even let a small smile of amazement graze his lips before the anxiety and worry took over him again. “Cassius is nothing like Lestrange – he’s very smart.”
“Master Malfoy!” a hiss came from behind. Eli waded up to them with sweat draped over his thick white eyebrows. “I found Adria.”
“And?”
“She’s out of control,” he explained. “She was near the South Tower and usually, the green just warns me but this time, she was howling and clanking the chains. That could only mean…”
“That she recently attacked someone,” Draco explained. “That doesn’t make sense. No on here is foolish enough to go down to the dungeons by themselves.”
“Wait, why does that necessarily mean that she has attacked someone?” Hermione asked.
“When she attacks, the screams and the fear from her victims entice her. It’s sort of like an adrenaline rush and it excites her beyond our control. No curses or spells of any sort can destroy her.”
“Then how did… then how did Eil rescue me from her the first time?” she asked.
Eli suddenly looked down and Malfoy too took on a penitent face. Did she miss something?
“It was a charm that was used,” Draco answered. “A very simple spell – a severance spell. I came upon it accidently and it seemed to hold her off for a while – enough that one could escape.”
Hermione still felt like Draco wasn’t telling her something but the onset of a loud drunken cry distracted her. A man had slipped on his spilt drink and collided into one of the pillars. She heard Eli and Draco mumble something to each other and was able to make out the words.
“Who could have been in the dungeons?” Eli asked.
“I don’t know,” Malfoy replied truthfully. “I’m going to take Hermione upstairs – you keep searching for Cassius. It’s not safe down here.”
Usually, Hermione would have protested angrily to being chaperoned around but Draco’s last declaration had set off something in her mind. An old faded memory was coming back to her from her earlier days at the mansion. She remembered a bright white light right before she had fainted and then waking up again when Eli poured drops of water on her face. There were pieces missing from that particular memory and she was adamant to find them. Concentrating would be much easier once she was upstairs in the silence.
Draco escorted Hermione through a backdoor, trying to avoid Lestrange’s line of sight but from what she could tell, he was slightly inebriated and in serious conversation with a short man. Making their way through the corridors and up a set of marble stairs, they arrived at the master bedroom.
“I’m going to finish reading the book,” she explained. “It’s alright, you can go downstairs. I know you want to.”
“It’s just… I’d be more useful down there than up here,” he told her, unable to shield his guilty eyes. “If I can just find Cassius…”
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “Go.”
With a last look at her, he went back downstairs, his hurried footsteps echoing as the distance between them increased. Hermione shut the door frantically, took off her uncomfortable shoes and sat down on the huge bed, trying to clear her mind. She searched under the covers and produced Matilda Frogwart’s autobiography, placing it clumsily on the bed. She eagerly read on for the next forty minutes.
Matilda Frogwart had killed her mother with Fiendfyre and within the next few weeks or so, a ghost-like creature had taken shelter in her cellar. Well into her thirties now, Matilda had learnt a whole bunch of dark spell and magic but nothing could combat this particular creature. She spat out flames exactly like the ones that had been used to kill her and by the end of the first year – Matilda was positive beyond doubt that it was her mother. During her attacks, she was often excited by the blood of her victims which only egged her on more – generally, she left no survivors.
Hermione pinched the bridge between her eyes and sighed to release her frustration. Many people had been killed or attacked with Fiendfyre and they all just died… What made Adria and this woman so much more different that they took on a completely uncharacteristic form?
With her back against the door, she heard another click and it opened. “Draco, I’m alright. You don’t need to be checking up on me every thirty minutes,” she said.
“Really?”
Hermione’s heart beat faltered when she heard the voice that responded. A large gust of wind blew and put out the three candles that were lighting the room. Fearfully, Hermione got off the bed and turned to face the door.
Cassius smiled at her from the other end of the room and with every breath she took, her heart rate raced. His black eyes were focused intently on her and though he was hidden in the shadows, Hermione could make out a thick envelope between his fingers.
“Lady Malfoy,” he began courteously, bowing down.
Hermione looked through the corner of her eye at the doorway that stood at least ten meters away. Cassius would kill her before she could even take her first step. Draco had just left though, maybe if she screamed, he’d be able to hear her.
“These walls tell no tales, Lady Malfoy” Cassius explained, as if he heard her thinking. “If I am correct, which I like to think that I am, you could scream blue murder and Draco wouldn’t be able to hear you.”
Hermione cursed to herself as she realized that Cassius was right. Draco and Pansy had sealed the master bedroom with a charm that blocked all noise leaving the room – ironically, they had done it for protection.
“You can drop the act,” Hermione snapped. “I know you have my personal records.”
Cassius cocked his eyebrows and looked at the envelope in his hands that Hermione was staring at. “Hermione Granger suits you better than Lady Malfoy.”
“And why is that?”
Cassius’ smile widened. “It just does.”
Hermione looked into his dark eyes with extreme confusion. “Is this how you kill all your victims?”
“Actually, you’ll be happy to know that I have a lower death count than most other death eaters, including Draco.”
“He’s not a death eater,” Hermione shot back. She felt awkward arguing with Cassius when he was so close to her since he was around a foot taller. She took two steps back.
“It sounds like you’re asking me if he is,” he responded.
“I know he isn’t.”
“Me too,” he agreed. “It was Adria’s death that tipped him over the edge.”
Hermione’s eyes widened and gave away her surprise at which Cassius’ eyes twinkled with amusement. “I saw him the day after she died you know, in Belize,” he told her. “He was overridden with guilt – he took longer shifts at the training, volunteered for the most daunting and painful tasks and I knew right then, Draco Malfoy had left us.”
Hermione stood very still, still afraid. “Who is that creature in the Malfoy dungeons, Hermione?” he asked her.
“What creature?”
Cassius’ eyes narrowed to thin slits and he unbuttoned his white shirt, revealing his pale chest. Against the sweat beads, Hermione spotted faint traces of blood that were mixed in with a thin slice of melted flesh. “The creature that did this to me.”
Hermione’s heart beat furiously as the moonlight bathe the dark room in its silvery glow. She saw Cassius analyze every facial movement of hers and a satisfied expression took over – he knew she knew.
“I ran into Draco this afternoon and he was… almost afraid, shall I say? He thought I was going to the dungeons.”
“And so you went yourself to see what he was hiding, didn’t you?” Hermione finished for him.
Cassius shrugged. “I’m a very curious person.” He smiled as he eyed the faint scars that remained on her arms and added: “I can see we have that in common. But this creature - she resembled Adria.”
“Dead people don’t walk,” Hermione snapped.
Cassius laughed at her resilience and breached the distance between them. “You’re off the edge of the map – here, anything can happen.”
Hermione took another step back and felt her back hit the wall behind her, the rough texture grazing her shoulders. “Why does it matter who she is?” she asked quietly.
“So it is Adria,” he confirmed. “It’s interesting. From what I heard, she died like all my father’s other victims so I don’t quite understand why she’s the only who turned into this.”
He placed his fingers against the burnt flesh on his chest and winced slightly at the pain. He noticed Hermione looking at him and so he plastered the smile back on his face. “So tell me, Hermione. Is she the reason you’re here? Are you so obsessed with figuring out what Adria has become that you’re willing to risk your own life?”
Hermione shook her head. “I could just as easily be here to avenge my parents’ deaths.”
“You could,” he agreed. “But you aren’t. I’ve seen your nose buried in books at the library but never once have you even glanced at my father with the kind of hatred you would have if all you were thinking about was killing him.”
His eyes danced over the book Hermione had just been reading. He picked it up and turned it around a few times. “You think there’re similarities between Adria and Matilda’s mother?” he asked her.
Hermione was taken aback. “You’ve read this book?”
“Twice,” he told her. “Durmstrang never really had strict policies on illegal books.”
“Listen to me,” Hermione began angrily. “Don’t play with me. If you’re going to kill me, please just get it over with.”
Cassius was now only centimetres from Hermione and he bent his head low, his lips barely touching her ear. “Hermione, if I had wanted to kill you, I would have done it by now.”
“You’re going to tell your slimy git of a father who I really am then,” Hermione retorted, choking slightly on her words. She was going to die anyways, might as well do it in style.
“I won’t tell him,” Cassius said. “However, he’ll probably figure it out if you don’t make an appearance soon- which is why you should go back downstairs.”
Hermione instantly looked up into his eyes. “What?”
“Draco’s coming up here at this very moment,” he explained to her. “He’s coming to tell you that Eli has found Adria and that my father is beginning to get suspicious - he’s searching for the both of you right now with slightly less noble intentions than my own.”
“You’re letting me go?” she asked, still stupefied.
“I don’t kill for fun,” he told her.
He moved aside and by doing so, caused himself some pain in his chest and winced. Hermione saw the same kind of effect as she had seen on Draco and taking a step towards the door, she turned the door knob and heard Draco’s footsteps at the far end of the hall.
“Matilda Frogwart’s mother,” Cassius began, “was a vampire. I hate to spoil the book for you but I just thought you might find it interesting.”
---
Hermione met Draco halfway and in his worried state, he didn’t notice the glances she kept throwing back at the master bedroom.
“Let’s go down,” he said. “Lestrange’s getting very suspicious.”
Hermione nodded coyly. “Yes.”
Draco paused briefly to analyze her subservient reaction but the loud chimes of the grandfather clock downstairs distracted him. He held out his hand almost mechanically and Hermione took it with equal instinct.
“What is so complicated about Cassius?” Hermione asked as they sped down the stairs.
“What?”
“Pansy told me… a while ago. She said that his story was very complicated.”
Before Draco could respond, they had reached the huge circular room and joined the other death eaters. Plastering a smile on her face, Hermione put her arm into Draco’s and walked forward. From a distance, she saw Lestrange’s mouth twitch restlessly as he gazed at them intently. Pansy was talking to a short, blonde woman while Eli and Ron were conversing against one of the banisters.
Music from an unidentified source had started to play and the groups in the middle shuffled off to allow the creation of a dance floor.
“We should dance,” Hermione suggested. “It’ll keep people from talking to us.”
“I’m not that much of a dancer,” he said in a sharp drawl. His eyes were still scanning the perimeter and it took him a little bit of time to notice the approaching tall figure.
“Did I hear Lady Malfoy ask for a dance?” Cassius said, smiling. He had changed robes and dawned a newer and cleaner set of green ones.
If Draco had been at all surprised by his appearance, he didn’t show it. However, Hermione did note a small sigh of relief. “Yes, from me,” he snapped.
“Well, you and I are practically the same age and the same height. If she would so please, I think I could be an apt substitute,” he said.
They both looked at Hermione in unison. Draco’s face had a slightly smug appearance as he perceived her response but Hermione had her own agenda. “Yes, alright,” she said, extending her hand.
An aghast look on Draco’s face was the last thing Hermione saw before Cassius swept her through the crowds and in the middle of the small circle that was already filled with couples dancing. He put his arms around her waist and allowed her to position hers on his shoulders.
“I’m surprised you agreed,” he said, swaying fluidly.
Hermione didn’t respond to his comment. “Is that what those blood experiments were?” she asked. “Was her mother biting her and drawing blood?”
Cassius sighed. “And here I thought you wanted to dance with me because of my good looks.” But added when he saw the look of reproach on Hermione’s face: “Yes, I believe she was trying to convert her. Vampires need a very specific blood type, that is to say, thin blood, to be able to convert someone. Matilda Frogwart’s blood, which should have been genetically thin due to her mother’s state, was not.”
“So when her mother was tortured by the Fiendfyre, something related to her being a vampire must have triggered the transformation.”
“Perhaps.”
The two were very fluent in their dance and Hermione did not fail to notice that a more than a few eyes in the hall were fixed on them.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” she replied in a frustrated tone. “Why would the same thing happen to Adria?”
Cassius cocked his eyebrow. “Are they exactly the same?”
Hermione paused. “No.”
His lips twisted into a small smile and he brought his lips close to her ear. “Well then Hermione, Syballis’ doctrine of magical analysis states that one must identify the common factor, distinguish the differences and attribute each difference to a particular characteristic.”
He moved his head back slightly and looked into Hermione’s brown eyes. She noted that his eyes had reverted from their thin formation. He moved Hermione closer to him at which point she felt the melted flesh under his shirt throb. In a jarring stride, he stepped back a little and closed his eyes for a second.
Before Hermione could react, Draco had approached the two of them and broken them apart. “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt but I think you’ve entertained my wife for long enough, Cassius. I’m sure that there are many other single women whose evening you could brighten.”
“I was under the impression that you didn’t want to dance, Draco,” Cassius replied.
Draco sneered as Cassius took Hermione’s hand and kissed it gently. “I hope we can continue this sometime soon,” he said.
Hermione nodded slowly and Cassius walked away. Before she could gather her thoughts and figure out what Cassius had said about the differences, Draco grabbed her hand and pulled her further into the dance floor. “Let’s dance,” he said moodily.
“Oh don’t be too enthusiastic,” she snapped sarcastically.
“Yes, well I’m sorry I’m not pressing myself up against you like Cassius.”
“We were just talking, Draco,” Hermione said rolling her eyes.
“Please, you were one step shy of having your tongues down each other’s throats,” he barked.
“Why does it bother you so much?” Hermione shot back.
“Because whether you like it or not, you’re married to me,” he grunted. “Though, you’ve made it abundantly clear that it’s the least of your concerns.”
Before the words had even escaped Draco’s mouth, a huge burst of green flames erupted in the ballroom. Hermione spun around frantically and saw the immediate rigidity in Draco’s body – they both who it was.
“I thought Eli found her!” Hermione cried.
The crowd broke out into a commotion and cries could be heard from every corner of the circular chamber. A greenish hue had taken over. Without responding, Draco pulled Hermione closer to him. “We’ve got to find Pansy and Weasley,” he said.
“Oh, shit! Ron!” Hermione gasped, realizing that she had forgotten the others. “They were by the north side, I think.”
Grabbing her hand, Draco pulled Hermione through the huge hustle of people filing out of the doorway. A few darts of light capered in the air as death eaters began to initiate hostilities of their own. She reached into her dress and pulled out the wand that was stuck to her side, holding it precariously. The flames had now caught on to the drapes and while the regal curtains now burned an emerald green, someone overturned one of the large stone statues. Draco continued to manoeuvre them and Hermione kept her eyes peeled for any sign of Ron or Pansy.
“Stay low,” Draco warned loudly which Hermione barely heard over the many screams.
There was no sign of Lestrange or Cassius anywhere and while the two of them searched, the high pitched scream of Adria filled the air. A ring of fire encircled them all and a white spell came flying towards Hermione.
“Protego!” she screamed, deflecting it.
“That was from Lestrange’s men,” Draco shouted. “We have to go faster.”
Hermione sped up and then cursed her dress for holding her back. After dodging a huge spur of flames, she suddenly stopped. At the other end of hall, his eyes flaming as erratically as the green fire, stood Rodolphus Lestrange.
“Kill them!” he ordered and his men flew forward, with nothing but death in their eyes.
Draco’s eyes flashed for a second and he pulled Hermione out of the way as a red jet of light jetted passed her ear. “Change in plan,” he shouted. “Go to the South Tower.”
“What about Ron and Pansy?”
“You go ahead, I’ll find them!” he yelled as he countered two curses at the same time with his wand. Hermione was manoeuvring her magical stick with skill but she knew, they would not survive against three. “Remember, what I told you? Everyone is collateral. If we leave, his men might stop attacking.”
“Where do we go?”
“Anywhere… somewhere safe, hidden… where Lestrange won’t be able to get –”
Before Draco even finished his sentence, the location jumped into Hermione’s head. “I know exactly where we can go!”
They hid within the shadows of a huge pillar as Draco fumbled with his robes and removed the first layer to ease his movements. They were both sweating profusely and from the looks of it, had bought themselves a few more minutes before Lestrange would find them.
“You can apparate to the South Tower,” Draco explained to her.
“No, no I can’t,” Hermione replied, out of breath. “Only you and Eli can apparate around here.”
Draco shook his head. “Only people with Malfoy titles can apparate and you have one – you’re Lady Malfoy.”
Hermione’s eyes widened at the realization and at that very moment, Adria’s cackles reached their highest pitch. The entire hall was up in flames and a jet of green fire came flying towards Draco. “Sopeinsta Grecgo!” he yelled, pointing his wand.
A huge jet of white light flew of his wand and warded off the flames for a few more minutes. But those two words had triggered Hermione’s memory and she had left the present scene and darted back to a few months ago. She was in the dungeons, with the green overpowering her mind and body just like it was doing today. And she lay there, bleeding and on the brink of death when a huge jet of white light had flashed and a man had yelled the exact same spell. But the fog surrounding that memory had cleared up and it was nothing like she had expected. It wasn’t Eli who had shot the spell to save her – it was Draco. She could clearly see his outline in her mind, the white light from his wand pushing the flames away from her. But he wasn’t strong enough and part of her curse hit him. He fell against the floor.
“Hermione!”
Her mind suddenly awoke from its dazed recollection and heard Draco’s voice. He had shot another white light at Adria but the effects were minimal. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
Hermione held back tears and in her stupefied expression said: “You were the one who saved me.”
Draco looked at her for a second before responding. “What?”
“You, you were the one who saved me from Adria in the dungeons and in the North Tower. I remember. It was this exact same spell. It wasn’t Eli.”
She didn’t allow Draco to respond but instead, threw herself into him. There was a bloody gash on his right hand but he wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin on her head. “You should go,” he told her. “I’ll meet up with you in a few minutes when I find Pansy and Weasley.”
“Please don’t die,” she whispered.
Draco looked at her, still in his embrace, with a smile on his face. “I would never dream of it, Granger.”
Hermione also grinned despite her tears. “Be safe, Malfoy.”
He let go of her with great reluctance and turned back around. Hermione felt the familiar tug on her navel as she started to apparate, thinking only of the South Tower. The last thing she saw before disappearing into thin air was the tall blonde figure darting back into the flames.
---
A/N: As you can see, the chapters are getting longer and a lot more eventful than usual. Hopefully, it keeps you all guessing ;) Thank you for all the reviews and emails, they're really encouraging so keep them coming!
The dark crevices at the foot of the South Tower were enough to scare anyone witless. But the thought of all her friends still stuck in the flames terrified Hermione so much that the darkness and cold air were almost welcomed.
Unable to sit still, she had quickly taken a detour to the master bedroom and gathered a set of clothes for each person and put them in an enchanted bag that was sized to fit a lot more than it looked like it could. After that, she had draped a black set of robes over her head to avoid being seen and then headed straight for the South tower where she had been waiting for the last ten minutes.
It was killing her. She could do nothing except walk around restlessly with nothing but the worst on her mind. What if something happened to any one of them? She would never be able to forgive herself for it. There was a soft shuffle beside Hermione and she shot up suddenly, tightening the grasp around her wand.
“Are you going to kill me, Hermione?” Cassius asked, as he limped in from behind the corner.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked, exhaling deeply. She didn’t understand this wave of relief that swept over her when she saw that it was him and no one else.
He removed his hand from his chest and Hermione felt sick when she saw the blood seeping through his white shirt. He looked at her.
She gulped and prayed that she was doing the right thing. “Sit down,” she said, ushering to a huge rectangular stone on the other side of the small room. He took off his shirt and handed it to Hermione which she used, due to a lack of any other clean material, to clean up the blood surrounding his burnt flesh. She produced her wand and performed various spells.
“Does it ever heal?” he asked her.
She nodded solemnly, not looking up. “It will, in due time.”
As she began to clear up the excess skin around the wound with a spell, she asked him something that had been bugging her for a while: “Why didn’t you tell your father who I really am?”
Cassius smiled, despite the pain that she was sure he was in. He shrugged. “I’m not one to follow orders,” he said. “He sent me on a stupid, pathetic mission to find out who you really are and it angered me that he did. So I didn’t give him what he wanted.”
Hermione furrowed her sweaty brow, still not looking at him. “Does that bother you?” he asked her. “Knowing that I saved you out of spite and not out of goodness?”
“No,” she replied truthfully. “But it does make me feel like a fool to help you knowing that you could just as easily produce a wand and kill me.”
“I won’t,” he replied. She was taken aback by the sincerity in his voice and she looked up.
“Why not?”
“I told you: I don’t kill for fun. It’s pathetic and primal; there is no logic in judging somebody’s skill to inspire fear by their body count.”
Hermione continued cleaning up the blood and replied: “So what makes you the most dangerous death eater in the world?”
Cassius smiled as though he had just been paid a huge compliment. “I have an unfair advantage, unfortunately. But I’ll tell you about that some other time.”
He stood up as Hermione finished sealing the large gash on his chest and she handed him his bloody shirt. “You saved me and now I saved you,” she said, standing up as well. “Do we call it even?”
He put his shirt on and buttoned it up, shaking his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Calling it even means that you no longer owe me anything and I no longer am in debt to you. We will have no reason to ever see each other again in the future and that I cannot bear to think.”
With that passing sentiment, he smiled at her and headed back into the dark tower. “Good luck,” he said.
---
Draco appeared ten minutes later, with a broken arm and a bloody head, with Pansy by his side. She was nursing a broken rib judging by the way she held her torso, a cut lip and black eye. Hermione jumped up instantly at the sight of the disfigured two but the real horror came after Eli apparated behind them a few seconds later holding a limp body.
“RON!” Hermione screamed, running over to him.
He was laying perfectly still and were it not for the faint heart beat that Hermione heard when she pressed her wet cheek against his chest, she would have thought him dead. He had a series of cuts on his face and arms and a severe burn that ran down most of his back.
“He got caught in the crossfire,” Draco explained. “One of Lestrange’s men got to him after he got burnt by Adria.”
She couldn’t handle this all at once and felt herself fall against the wall. “Ron…” she said weakly. “Why in bloody sodding hell did he have to come back?!”
Draco helped Pansy into a seating position on the huge rock and then turned to Hermione with a guilty and worried expression. “We need to go.”
Hermione’s eyes suddenly shot up. “Alright. But we’ll need a carriage to transport Ron and Pansy.”
Draco sighed, bit his lip and shook his head. “You and I need to go.”
“What?” She looked from Draco to Eli to Pansy who all carried the same expression of fear.
“The exits are sealed off, we can’t take a carriage,” Draco explained. “Weasley and Pansy need some serious medical attention right now and no one can apparate out of the mansion – not even me. They won’t be able to get out without drawing attention.”
“So we’re just going to abandon them?” Hermione cried.
“It’s the right thing to do, Hermione,” Pansy said, with great difficulty.
“I will stay with them here,” Eli said.
“Excellent,” Hermione shot back sarcastically. “Now three of you can die.”
“When we leave, Lestrange won’t have any more reason to stay here. Things will clear up, and Eli will take them both to St. Mungo’s.”
Hermione threw her arms in the air and stormed past Draco, cursing loudly. “Do you hear what you’re saying?! Pansy can barely move, Ron’s… Merlin knows how close to death and you just want to leave them?”
“If we take them with us, they won’t survive… none of us will,” Draco explained.
Hermione didn’t bother to even stop the tears this time, letting them moisten her dirty face. She saw Draco slowly raise his arm up but then, apparently deciding against it, put it back down.
“Please,” was all he uttered.
Hermione didn’t respond to him, turning red with anger and shame. She had done this to Ron… to all of them. She had half the mind right now to run up and kill Lestrange – a sort of animal instinct had taken over her usually rational mind and it took Draco’s soft hand against her arm to bring her back to reality.
“Let’s go,” he said, hoisting the bag onto his shoulder.
Hermione walked over to Ron and bent down beside him, hating him for coming back and hating herself for letting this happen. She placed a kiss on his forehead and ran her hand down his cheek, hoping that whatever bad was coming in the future would affect her and no one else. She turned to Pansy who smiled at her, flinching slightly as Hermione placed a hand on her shoulder. Eli just grinned weakly as he bent down to kiss her hand and without allowing Hermione to say anything, said: “Be strong.”
Draco turned to say something to Pansy but she stopped him and blew him a gentle kiss. Without another word, Hermione and Draco pushed the large stone door ajar, glancing at the threesome one last time before heading out into the cold night.
---
Number 12, Grimmauld place hadn’t changed significantly since Sirius had owned it. After inheriting it, Harry had fixed up the creaking staircases, and moulded walls but for the most part, the corridors were still dark, the doors were still scathed and the floors were still cold to the touch. Harry made a point of coming here every summer with Ron, Ginny and Hermione but for the rest of the year, it was empty and silent, echoing the secrets of the extinct Black family name.
Draco and Hermione had not spoken a word to each other ever since they left the Manor and mounted their broomsticks, Draco on his Windblade 4000 and Hermione on her cheap Viktor Krum knock off. The two hour ride had ended on the deserted London street where Hermione, being one of the three secret keepers to the residence, had let herself and Draco in.
He placed the small bag by the entrance with the two brooms as she walked past the kitchen and into the small living room, darkened by the night sky but illuminated faintly by the candles in various portraits.
“Who it is?” one of the paintings whispered, sounding excited.
“It’s the mudblood,” another one shot back. “Calm down.”
A wave of murmurs echoed for a few seconds and then died out slowly as Draco entered. He stared at all of them before turning to Hermione with a quizzical expression, “These are…”
“Your ancestors,” she said, nodding.
“But why did Potter leave these portraits up here?” he asked.
Hermione sat down on the sofa and rested her head against the back. “For Sirius – he didn’t want to change anything about this place other than some of the very broken bits.”
Draco nodded as he acknowledged her comment and then watched her get up and remove the necklace from around her neck. She looked at it for a moment and he didn’t fail to note the sadness in her eyes as she returned it to him with a weak smile.
“Thank you,” she said.
She pulled the dress up an inch so that it didn’t scrape against the ground and then walked into one of the nearing rooms to change out of it, leaving Draco alone.
He lay down on the sofa and held the necklace up so that it shimmered in the dull orange light. It was a magnificently crafted piece of jewellery, custom made from Bolivia, which his mother had worn. A deep weight settled itself on his chest when he thought about his life, as it presently stood.
News of his mother’s death was imminent. She had neither the physical strength nor mental control to survive in Azkaban and had it not been for his father’s inane and failed attempt to escape which resulted in him getting an early kiss from the dementors, she would not have outlived him. He wanted to go see her.
Glancing out the window, he saw the early onset of dawn brimming against the horizon. As the gold and red colours of the sun began to streak the dark sky, he thought about making his visit soon. The world had taken its toll on him and now, all he wanted to do was sleep.
---
Hermione felt a cathartic release after emerging from the shower in a baggy t-shirt and loose jeans. Compared to the fitted clothes she’d been wearing recently, she enjoyed the lack of clinginess and the ability to breathe. She inhaled the air around her which was tainted by the scent of rusted paint, lavender shampoo and wet wood. The sun had risen fully when she drew the drapes in the small stretch of corridor between the bathroom and one of the bedrooms. The windows allowed gentle gusts of cold wind to blow in and caper through the curtains, giving the once dead house a sense of life again.
The water had washed away not only the dirt but also the sick feeling that was harbouring in the pit of her stomach and the anger that was festering in her mind. She had to gather herself and figure out how to destroy Adria – enough was enough. The lives of many people were now depending on this – innocent people serving penance for Lestrange’s crime.
As Hermione entered the living room to draw the curtains, she saw Draco lying on the sofa, his eyes closed and his face at peace. She felt odd as a smile forced itself onto her face against her will. He looked like a child. Unable to resist the urge, she sat down on the floor beside him, leaning her chin by his arm and looked at his pale face.
She was beginning to understand the real reasons behind her guilt at Ron’s injuries. She wasn’t just upset that he had come here for her but that her feelings were beginning to change. She had made it clear that their relationship could go no further than friendship but the amount of electricity she felt pulsing through her veins right now was more than she had ever experienced with Ron and she was ashamed about it.
Draco opened his eyes as some light flooded through the curtains. He looked around for a second and when he saw Hermione by his side, a small smile surfaced.
“Is it morning already?” he said.
“Yes,” she nodded.
He turned on his side so that he could face her better. The two sat in silence for a while, before Hermione opened her mouth again. “I should go and do some more research.”
“No, you should stay here and talk to me,” he said, holding onto her arm and pulling her back down.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I want you to tell me what I did was right.”
His ash grey eyes looked at her with a deep sadness as he continued. “I want you to tell me that allowing Pansy and you and even Weasley to be involved in this whole ordeal was the right thing to do.”
Hermione placed her hand on Draco’s cheek and moved in a little closer, almost on instinct. “Why do you feel so guilty all the time?” she asked.
“Because whenever I set out to do harm, I do harm and whenever I set out to do good, I do harm. There’s no escaping it. Maybe I’m just not meant to be good.”
This angered Hermione and she withdrew her hand from his face. “That’s a very cowardly thing to say.”
“You’re upset with me for saying that?” he asked, roughly.
“Stop worrying about the past, Draco. What’s done is done. We should learn from the past but we don’t need to fester away thinking about it. You’re barely twenty five for heaven’s sakes!”
Draco sat up irritably and glared out the window. “Did Pansy tell you? Did she tell you why Adria really died?”
“Yes, she did,” Hermione replied sharply. “It was because you left the Manor. It was an accident – like everything else in life, accidents happen.”
“You don’t know what it’s like… every time I see her, I wish I had died and not even because that would have spared her life, but because that would have spared me this guilt.”
He then turned to see Hermione’s reaction and laughed bitterly. “Have I repulsed you yet?” he asked. “Now that you know that I’m no valiant, redeemed hero?”
“Draco-”
“I’m tired,” he said, with a heavy undertone of sadness which then elevated into anger.
“I’m bloody tired of this sodding life. The more good I try to do, the worse things seem to play out. I just…”
“You’re just trying to find an excuse,” Hermione shot back angrily, standing up. “You stupid little prick.”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?!” Draco asked, also standing and towering over Hermione. “I am in this for everything I’ve got and I’ve lost most of it! I’ve lost more than you can ever imagine. To hell with being good and righteous! I regret every bloody thing I’ve done ever since.”
Hermione’s face was frozen with a peculiar expression on her face. Draco turned his head away from her to look out the window but the bright sunlight and green neighbourhood angered him even more so he turned to walk into the kitchen.
“Does that mean you regret saving me?” she asked suddenly in a low voice.
He paused and turned around. “What?”
“Do you regret saving me from the dungeons? Pulling me out of the fountain? Pretending to be married to me so that I could stay alive?”
He gazed at her with a blank expression and without waiting for a response, Hermione pushed past him, shoving him as hard as she could. “Where’re you going?” he asked her as she ran upstairs.
“Out,” she snapped, reappearing at the head of the stairs with an owl in her hand a tattered piece of parchment.
“Are you out of your mind? Lestrange will kill you,” he said, grabbing her by the arm.
“Well then I’ll be doing you a favour,” she said, breaking free from his grasp and slamming the door on the way out.
---
Hermione walked four blocks straight without turning back before she stopped. She took the parchment and pressed it against a large tree trunk, ignoring the indentations that it made against the thin material.
Four o’clock, Three Broomsticks
She attached the message to the owl in such a hurry that it pecked her twice before allowing her to fasten it on safely. She watched it eagerly swoop out of her hands and into the blue sky.
---
Draco moved his arm with a huge amount of pain as he opened the door to one of the rooms upstairs. This one was a very sombre room with taupe walls, a low ceiling with a broken chandelier and a huge tapestry on the south side with the Black family motto: ‘Toujours pur’. He walked towards the barred windows and looked out onto the deserted, dark street.
He hadn’t been able to stop worrying for the last however many hours it had been; he’d lost track of time after the first two. Hermione had been gone for most of the day and he was terrified, down to his very core, that she would be harmed. Those working for Lestrange were all over the place and the most unlikely of characters; anyone of them could have seen Hermione and snitched on her for a few galleons.
“You’re Cissy’s boy, aren’t you?”
Draco jumped at the sound, causing himself pain in the chest as he turned around and saw one of the portraits looking at him with a curious expression. The man in the portrait was very young – younger than Draco was right now – with dark, long black hair, a clean shaven face and beady black eyes.
He nodded to the question, suspiciously. “Yes,” the portrait continued, slightly dazed.
“They told me she had a son with… what’s his name? Lucien?”
“Lucius,” Draco corrected. “Lucius Malfoy.”
The boy nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Draco,” he answered.
A small laugh escaped the boy’s mouth at which point, Draco raised his eyebrow, perplexed. “What?” he asked.
“It’s a good name,” the boy said. “Very suiting – a snake, a nasty creature that can do a lot more harm than it looks capable of.”
Draco looked around the room and noticed that this portrait was the only one hanging here; all the other ones were downstairs in the corridor and living room. He moved in a little closer to read the inscription below the frame and saw the same was scratched out.
“My brother’s handiwork,” he explained. “When the Order of the Phoenix took over this house, he scratched out my name in a fit of rage, calling me a fool.”
“What’s your name?” Draco asked.
“Regulus Black,” the portrait responded, slowly and painfully. “I see you’ve heard of me,” he added, seeing the knowing look on Draco’s face.
“You were a death eater,” he said. “Sirius Black was your brother.”
“I was,” he agreed.
Draco gazed intently at the portrait. “You died very young.”
“A year and a half after this painting was done of me, in fact,” Regulus said. There was a pause and then he added, as an afterthought: “I’m glad you came in here. I rarely have anyone to talk to. My ancestors don’t take too kindly on my abandonment of the Dark Lord.”
Draco pursed his lips and turned back towards the window. Hermione still hadn’t returned and he wasn’t in the mood to chat it up with some lonely portrait. He gazed out onto the long stretch of concrete outside in hopes of seeing a figure walking up to the house or some form of life that would indicate that she was still alive and well.
“The mudblood isn’t back yet?” he asked.
Draco turned instantly and glared at the portrait. “Do not refer to her like that,” he said tersely. “Or I may not be as generous as Potter was.”
“You’ve become a do-gooder then, have you?” Regulus asked. “Oh yes, I can see it in your eyes. It’s the same thing I had harboured within me for years.”
“See what?”
“Fear – the fear of failure.”
Draco snarled and then let out a twisted laugh. “I’ve already failed,” he said. “I’ve already lost everything. There’s no fear left within me.”
Regulus fondled his black hair and shook his head. “No, you’re still afraid. Perhaps, you’re afraid of losing whatever you have left – perhaps, the mudblood herself.”
Draco could no longer stand the word, and he whipped out his wand and placed it two inches within Regulus’ face. “I can do whatever I want to you,” he warned. “And I will.”
“I’m dead,” he replied, sadly. “And a lot more like you than I originally thought.”
Draco did not release the tight grip on his wand as Regulus continued. “I did what my family asked of me… in fact, I did more: I joined the ranks of the death eaters, I followed the Dark Lord’s orders like a religion and I gave myself over to him, body, mind and soul.”
“But…” Draco said quietly, expecting the next word.
“But I got in way over my head. I didn’t lose anyone per se, but I became isolated. I could only do certain things, initiate conversation with certain people at certain times of the day and it drove me to madness.”
Unable to listen to him anymore, Draco turned away and began to do the one thing he knew would lead to more pain: think. He thought about Hermione and realized that he may very well never see her again. It was completely possible that she had gone back to Potter to go find Weasley or maybe she had returned to St. Mungo’s to work. And then there was the other possibility that Lestrange… no, he wouldn’t think about that. However, just like any other sensation, the only way to dull the thoughts of his broken past, present and future, he thought about her. It had been so long since he had imagined her fading face in his mind, so long since he had dreamt about her. Today he would think of her again and maybe, he would be happy.
---
“You never cease to surprise me,” he said, smiling.
“And why is that?” she asked slowly.
“Well, I fully admitted to being a death eater and not a good soul in disguise, and yet you still wanted to meet me?”
“You’re a pretty unpredictable person yourself,” Hermione replied. “You haven’t killed me yet and you’ve had more than enough chances.”
“Touché,” he nodded and placed his hand on her back, ushering to a small table by the flowered left wall. “Shall we eat?”
Though she had come to talk to Cassius, Hermione realized that she was indeed very hungry. She nodded and went towards the table to sit down. It was during the weekend so the tiny pub was packed with Hogwarts students and the room smelt like raw parchment and emu ink.
Shuffling between the crowds and elbowing some people in the process, Hermione made her way over to the table with two oak chairs. She put her coat on the backrest and sat down without hesitation, allowing her legs to rest which she hadn’t been able to do for a while. Cassius examined her with a curious expression before removing his dark navy overcoat and did the same thing, sitting down.
A floating tray with peppermint tea circled the table slowly and waited as Cassius removed two cups from it, one of which he placed in front of Hermione and the other which he sipped.
“And to what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked.
The first response that came to Hermione’s head was that Draco was being a complete self-pitying ass who was too busy wallowing in regrets and guilt to care about the real mystery. But that didn’t seem like a good idea to say.
“I need a favour,” she said.
Two plates of chicken pot pie, a tray of crackers and a bag of fudge brownies later, Hermione had explained what she wanted from Cassius. The pudgy little waitress wobbled her way over to gather their empty plates as he still pondered over her request with an amused expression.
“When I said that you and I owed each other, this isn’t what I had in mind.”
Hermione smiled slyly herself. “I promise I will make it worthwhile if you do this for me,” she said.
He contemplated her proposal. “What can you give me that I don’t already have?”
“I promise you, it’ll be worth your while,” she urged him. “Just meet me back here tomorrow at seven.”
While she sipped her last few drops of tea, he nodded. “I don’t like doing menial tasks, you know.”
“I know,” she agreed. “But I do appreciate this very much.”
“I don’t need you to appreciate me,” he replied. “I need you to fear me.”
“Oh yes, I fear you as well… very much so,” she said, without the least bit of terror. She held out her steady arms. “Look, I’m trembling!”
Cassius’ eyes narrowed very slightly at the faded burn marks on her arm and he put his fingers around her wrist, holding it up and moved his chair in to examine them closer. Hermione felt the warm touch of his hands and didn’t understand why his expression had changed so dramatically at the sign of the fire.
“They don’t look so bad,” he remarked. “Not as bad as mine.”
“They’ve healed and I was saved before the exposure could get worse.”
The last of the cups were cleared away from their table by the waitress and she left a small tray with a bill on it.
“Draco saved you?” he said.
Hermione suddenly looked down. “Yes,” she replied after a brief pause.
Without inquiring any further, he reached into his pockets and placed two galleons on the small, red tray. They both got up and headed outside and since it was nearing dusk, most of the students had cleared out. Hermione felt a shiver pass through her as the door opened and a cold gust of wind encircled her; she hastily put her coat on.
They walked to the edge of street, now only illuminated by bright orange lamps. Hogsmeade was quite sketchy at night time with the dark corners, and shady characters wandering the nights. As they approached the train station, she turned to Cassius and asked him something that had been bugging her.
“Are you still at the Manor?”
“No,” he replied. “I left right after I saw you in the South Tower.”
A wave of relief swept over Hermione’s face but then he added: “But I believe my father and his men are still there.”
The fleeting happiness vanished immediately. “I don’t know when they’re going to leave,” he said, answering her next question. “My father is far too ignorant in these matters – he finds killing a sort of relaxant when he’s stressed.”
The thought disturbed Hermione greatly and she nodded distractedly and began to turn towards the Floo station. “Tomorrow, then?” she asked.
“Seven o’clock,” he agreed.
---
About an hour after Hermione had left, Cassius still remained at the corner of the street of Hogsmeade, unaffected by the cold and undisturbed by the darkness. He took a seat on a nearby bench and rested his elbow on the edge.
Hermione Granger proved to be far more… something, whatever that something was. She was a mudblood, the woman who had killed his mother and the woman who was set out to seek revenge on his father. Cassius understood why he wasn’t worried about his father – he had never cared for the man. The lewd, foolishly blind man only ever did what he did, for the glory and so there was no real reason to protect him. His mother, as well, fell into the same category. She never cared for him, but for what he symbolized - a sick little seedling. And the irony of it was that he had done both of them very proud. He had accomplished everything that was expected of him and even more.
Yes, he understood all that.
And then there was Hermione Granger, the slightly short, bushy haired mudblood who was asking him to help her. He wasn’t going to kill her – he never really had wanted to, but the thought was now out of the question. She interested him in a way that no one ever had. She put her curiosity over everything else, apparently even her safety.
He thought about what she had asked him to do and stood up. He would return to Malfoy Manor tomorrow and do what she wanted. He smiled; at least he wouldn’t be bored anymore.
---
Hermione slowly pushed the front door open. It was almost nine thirty at night and there was no one around. Feeling slightly intrusive, she walked up the stairs and into Draco’s small bedroom using of the slight illumination from her wand to guide her. The room that she was in right now was fairly empty with the exception of a small single bed, a wooden chest, an empty portrait frame and a twisted staircase that led up to the roof.
Draco was asleep but by the heavy and strained movements of his body as he breathed – or tried to breathe- Hermione could tell that the antidote was wearing off fast. She quietly moved past the wooden chest and knelt down beside his shaking body, bringing the light near his face. She observed the sweat beads on his forehead and the redness all over his cheeks.
“Draco…” she said, fearfully. “Draco, wake up.”
She put her hand on his cheek, hoping that her cold fingers would trigger a response but the heat from his skin overwhelmed her and she withdrew her hand sharply.
“Draco,” she said, this time with a little more force. “Can you hear me?”
His facial structure didn’t change even the slightest bit and Hermione knew that he had fallen into a relapse. Without a single thought of hesitation, she ran back outside and manoeuvred her way down the stairs and to the entrance of the destitute house. Shuffling through a few things, she found the large bag that she had brought with her when they left the Manor. She cursed as she hit her knee against the banister but found what she was looking for – the Fiendfyre antidote. The portraits around her muttered inaudible cries of irritation as Hermione pushed the bag back noisily and ran back upstairs.
The small flood of light from the hallway illuminated Draco’s room better, so Hermione left the door open as she entered. Kneeling down beside the bed again, she popped open the bottle cover and held it close to Draco’s pale lips. Like the few times that she had done this before, the first few drops were the hardest to get in. His body began to resist the antidote and the thick liquid fell against the sides of his mouth.
Hermione put her hand on his cheek and used her thumb to keep his mouth open as she forcefully poured the potion into his mouth; this time, more of it got through.
“Draco?” she asked again. “Open your eyes.”
She tipped the bottle even further while keeping her left hand tight around his wrist, keeping track of his pulse. It was still far too fast which could only mean the potion’s effects hadn’t set in.
There was a still silence that lasted for hours in Hermione’s mind before there was a mild shaking in Draco’s chest. It rose and fell more steadily, as if his body was trying to hold on to dear life. He began to cough, regurgitating some of the original potion but Hermione’s hand on his face felt the sudden cooling of his skin. His seizing body had begun to settle down and his heavy set eyelids opened a fraction, unveiling the grazed gray colour of his irises.
Hermione expelled a sigh of relief and took a spare cloth from the floor to wipe away the excess potion falling out of his mouth. She didn’t speak to him. The last few times he had relapsed, it had taken him well over a few hours to finally regain consciousness during which she assumed his body was recuperating and repairing itself. But this sudden burst of wakefulness meant that he would probably need a couple of minutes to just recollect his memories and realize where he was.
Rolling up the sleeves of her flannel pyjamas, she whipped out her wand and began to use a cooling spell across Draco’s forehead. She noticed that his eyes had begun to move around very slowly but his pupils were still dilated. Regardless, as long as his mind had regained consciousness, he was in no terminal danger. When she was sure that his temperature had been lowered significantly, her hands moved over his heart where she felt the slowing beats.
The opening under his eyelids had gotten larger and Hermione saw the dilation in his pupils as it began to lessen. “Draco?” she said, very slowly.
He nodded, taking in a deep breath of the cold night air. “Did I…” he began. “Again?”
“Yeah, you did,” Hermione said. “But you recovered much faster this time, that’s good.”
Draco pursed his lips and closed his eyes again, sighing. He looked at Hermione who gently placed her hand on his cheek, smiling. “You came back,” he said, with great difficulty.
Hermione nodded fervently, pursing her lips to hold back the tears. “Of course I did. I’ll always come back.”
He began to cough. At first it was light but then the congestion built up and the fit got more violent.
And then it came.
Spewing out of his mouth like mucus, the blood stained the sheets and contrasted greatly with the paleness in Draco’s face as he fell back onto the bed and stopped breathing.
---
a/n:
Terribly sorry about the delay! Also, to keep you guys entertained while you wait for my updates very patiently, I will post a quote from the next chapter to keep you all guessing =)
Keep those encouraging reviews coming! I read them all and you have no idea how much they motivate me!
Chapter 25 - Alone
Harry's face stiffened. "They're starting to kill."
Unable to sit still, she had quickly taken a detour to the master bedroom and gathered a set of clothes for each person and put them in an enchanted bag that was sized to fit a lot more than it looked like it could. After that, she had draped a black set of robes over her head to avoid being seen and then headed straight for the South tower where she had been waiting for the last ten minutes.
It was killing her. She could do nothing except walk around restlessly with nothing but the worst on her mind. What if something happened to any one of them? She would never be able to forgive herself for it. There was a soft shuffle beside Hermione and she shot up suddenly, tightening the grasp around her wand.
“Are you going to kill me, Hermione?” Cassius asked, as he limped in from behind the corner.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked, exhaling deeply. She didn’t understand this wave of relief that swept over her when she saw that it was him and no one else.
He removed his hand from his chest and Hermione felt sick when she saw the blood seeping through his white shirt. He looked at her.
She gulped and prayed that she was doing the right thing. “Sit down,” she said, ushering to a huge rectangular stone on the other side of the small room. He took off his shirt and handed it to Hermione which she used, due to a lack of any other clean material, to clean up the blood surrounding his burnt flesh. She produced her wand and performed various spells.
“Does it ever heal?” he asked her.
She nodded solemnly, not looking up. “It will, in due time.”
As she began to clear up the excess skin around the wound with a spell, she asked him something that had been bugging her for a while: “Why didn’t you tell your father who I really am?”
Cassius smiled, despite the pain that she was sure he was in. He shrugged. “I’m not one to follow orders,” he said. “He sent me on a stupid, pathetic mission to find out who you really are and it angered me that he did. So I didn’t give him what he wanted.”
Hermione furrowed her sweaty brow, still not looking at him. “Does that bother you?” he asked her. “Knowing that I saved you out of spite and not out of goodness?”
“No,” she replied truthfully. “But it does make me feel like a fool to help you knowing that you could just as easily produce a wand and kill me.”
“I won’t,” he replied. She was taken aback by the sincerity in his voice and she looked up.
“Why not?”
“I told you: I don’t kill for fun. It’s pathetic and primal; there is no logic in judging somebody’s skill to inspire fear by their body count.”
Hermione continued cleaning up the blood and replied: “So what makes you the most dangerous death eater in the world?”
Cassius smiled as though he had just been paid a huge compliment. “I have an unfair advantage, unfortunately. But I’ll tell you about that some other time.”
He stood up as Hermione finished sealing the large gash on his chest and she handed him his bloody shirt. “You saved me and now I saved you,” she said, standing up as well. “Do we call it even?”
He put his shirt on and buttoned it up, shaking his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Calling it even means that you no longer owe me anything and I no longer am in debt to you. We will have no reason to ever see each other again in the future and that I cannot bear to think.”
With that passing sentiment, he smiled at her and headed back into the dark tower. “Good luck,” he said.
---
Draco appeared ten minutes later, with a broken arm and a bloody head, with Pansy by his side. She was nursing a broken rib judging by the way she held her torso, a cut lip and black eye. Hermione jumped up instantly at the sight of the disfigured two but the real horror came after Eli apparated behind them a few seconds later holding a limp body.
“RON!” Hermione screamed, running over to him.
He was laying perfectly still and were it not for the faint heart beat that Hermione heard when she pressed her wet cheek against his chest, she would have thought him dead. He had a series of cuts on his face and arms and a severe burn that ran down most of his back.
“He got caught in the crossfire,” Draco explained. “One of Lestrange’s men got to him after he got burnt by Adria.”
She couldn’t handle this all at once and felt herself fall against the wall. “Ron…” she said weakly. “Why in bloody sodding hell did he have to come back?!”
Draco helped Pansy into a seating position on the huge rock and then turned to Hermione with a guilty and worried expression. “We need to go.”
Hermione’s eyes suddenly shot up. “Alright. But we’ll need a carriage to transport Ron and Pansy.”
Draco sighed, bit his lip and shook his head. “You and I need to go.”
“What?” She looked from Draco to Eli to Pansy who all carried the same expression of fear.
“The exits are sealed off, we can’t take a carriage,” Draco explained. “Weasley and Pansy need some serious medical attention right now and no one can apparate out of the mansion – not even me. They won’t be able to get out without drawing attention.”
“So we’re just going to abandon them?” Hermione cried.
“It’s the right thing to do, Hermione,” Pansy said, with great difficulty.
“I will stay with them here,” Eli said.
“Excellent,” Hermione shot back sarcastically. “Now three of you can die.”
“When we leave, Lestrange won’t have any more reason to stay here. Things will clear up, and Eli will take them both to St. Mungo’s.”
Hermione threw her arms in the air and stormed past Draco, cursing loudly. “Do you hear what you’re saying?! Pansy can barely move, Ron’s… Merlin knows how close to death and you just want to leave them?”
“If we take them with us, they won’t survive… none of us will,” Draco explained.
Hermione didn’t bother to even stop the tears this time, letting them moisten her dirty face. She saw Draco slowly raise his arm up but then, apparently deciding against it, put it back down.
“Please,” was all he uttered.
Hermione didn’t respond to him, turning red with anger and shame. She had done this to Ron… to all of them. She had half the mind right now to run up and kill Lestrange – a sort of animal instinct had taken over her usually rational mind and it took Draco’s soft hand against her arm to bring her back to reality.
“Let’s go,” he said, hoisting the bag onto his shoulder.
Hermione walked over to Ron and bent down beside him, hating him for coming back and hating herself for letting this happen. She placed a kiss on his forehead and ran her hand down his cheek, hoping that whatever bad was coming in the future would affect her and no one else. She turned to Pansy who smiled at her, flinching slightly as Hermione placed a hand on her shoulder. Eli just grinned weakly as he bent down to kiss her hand and without allowing Hermione to say anything, said: “Be strong.”
Draco turned to say something to Pansy but she stopped him and blew him a gentle kiss. Without another word, Hermione and Draco pushed the large stone door ajar, glancing at the threesome one last time before heading out into the cold night.
---
Number 12, Grimmauld place hadn’t changed significantly since Sirius had owned it. After inheriting it, Harry had fixed up the creaking staircases, and moulded walls but for the most part, the corridors were still dark, the doors were still scathed and the floors were still cold to the touch. Harry made a point of coming here every summer with Ron, Ginny and Hermione but for the rest of the year, it was empty and silent, echoing the secrets of the extinct Black family name.
Draco and Hermione had not spoken a word to each other ever since they left the Manor and mounted their broomsticks, Draco on his Windblade 4000 and Hermione on her cheap Viktor Krum knock off. The two hour ride had ended on the deserted London street where Hermione, being one of the three secret keepers to the residence, had let herself and Draco in.
He placed the small bag by the entrance with the two brooms as she walked past the kitchen and into the small living room, darkened by the night sky but illuminated faintly by the candles in various portraits.
“Who it is?” one of the paintings whispered, sounding excited.
“It’s the mudblood,” another one shot back. “Calm down.”
A wave of murmurs echoed for a few seconds and then died out slowly as Draco entered. He stared at all of them before turning to Hermione with a quizzical expression, “These are…”
“Your ancestors,” she said, nodding.
“But why did Potter leave these portraits up here?” he asked.
Hermione sat down on the sofa and rested her head against the back. “For Sirius – he didn’t want to change anything about this place other than some of the very broken bits.”
Draco nodded as he acknowledged her comment and then watched her get up and remove the necklace from around her neck. She looked at it for a moment and he didn’t fail to note the sadness in her eyes as she returned it to him with a weak smile.
“Thank you,” she said.
She pulled the dress up an inch so that it didn’t scrape against the ground and then walked into one of the nearing rooms to change out of it, leaving Draco alone.
He lay down on the sofa and held the necklace up so that it shimmered in the dull orange light. It was a magnificently crafted piece of jewellery, custom made from Bolivia, which his mother had worn. A deep weight settled itself on his chest when he thought about his life, as it presently stood.
News of his mother’s death was imminent. She had neither the physical strength nor mental control to survive in Azkaban and had it not been for his father’s inane and failed attempt to escape which resulted in him getting an early kiss from the dementors, she would not have outlived him. He wanted to go see her.
Glancing out the window, he saw the early onset of dawn brimming against the horizon. As the gold and red colours of the sun began to streak the dark sky, he thought about making his visit soon. The world had taken its toll on him and now, all he wanted to do was sleep.
---
Hermione felt a cathartic release after emerging from the shower in a baggy t-shirt and loose jeans. Compared to the fitted clothes she’d been wearing recently, she enjoyed the lack of clinginess and the ability to breathe. She inhaled the air around her which was tainted by the scent of rusted paint, lavender shampoo and wet wood. The sun had risen fully when she drew the drapes in the small stretch of corridor between the bathroom and one of the bedrooms. The windows allowed gentle gusts of cold wind to blow in and caper through the curtains, giving the once dead house a sense of life again.
The water had washed away not only the dirt but also the sick feeling that was harbouring in the pit of her stomach and the anger that was festering in her mind. She had to gather herself and figure out how to destroy Adria – enough was enough. The lives of many people were now depending on this – innocent people serving penance for Lestrange’s crime.
As Hermione entered the living room to draw the curtains, she saw Draco lying on the sofa, his eyes closed and his face at peace. She felt odd as a smile forced itself onto her face against her will. He looked like a child. Unable to resist the urge, she sat down on the floor beside him, leaning her chin by his arm and looked at his pale face.
She was beginning to understand the real reasons behind her guilt at Ron’s injuries. She wasn’t just upset that he had come here for her but that her feelings were beginning to change. She had made it clear that their relationship could go no further than friendship but the amount of electricity she felt pulsing through her veins right now was more than she had ever experienced with Ron and she was ashamed about it.
Draco opened his eyes as some light flooded through the curtains. He looked around for a second and when he saw Hermione by his side, a small smile surfaced.
“Is it morning already?” he said.
“Yes,” she nodded.
He turned on his side so that he could face her better. The two sat in silence for a while, before Hermione opened her mouth again. “I should go and do some more research.”
“No, you should stay here and talk to me,” he said, holding onto her arm and pulling her back down.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I want you to tell me what I did was right.”
His ash grey eyes looked at her with a deep sadness as he continued. “I want you to tell me that allowing Pansy and you and even Weasley to be involved in this whole ordeal was the right thing to do.”
Hermione placed her hand on Draco’s cheek and moved in a little closer, almost on instinct. “Why do you feel so guilty all the time?” she asked.
“Because whenever I set out to do harm, I do harm and whenever I set out to do good, I do harm. There’s no escaping it. Maybe I’m just not meant to be good.”
This angered Hermione and she withdrew her hand from his face. “That’s a very cowardly thing to say.”
“You’re upset with me for saying that?” he asked, roughly.
“Stop worrying about the past, Draco. What’s done is done. We should learn from the past but we don’t need to fester away thinking about it. You’re barely twenty five for heaven’s sakes!”
Draco sat up irritably and glared out the window. “Did Pansy tell you? Did she tell you why Adria really died?”
“Yes, she did,” Hermione replied sharply. “It was because you left the Manor. It was an accident – like everything else in life, accidents happen.”
“You don’t know what it’s like… every time I see her, I wish I had died and not even because that would have spared her life, but because that would have spared me this guilt.”
He then turned to see Hermione’s reaction and laughed bitterly. “Have I repulsed you yet?” he asked. “Now that you know that I’m no valiant, redeemed hero?”
“Draco-”
“I’m tired,” he said, with a heavy undertone of sadness which then elevated into anger.
“I’m bloody tired of this sodding life. The more good I try to do, the worse things seem to play out. I just…”
“You’re just trying to find an excuse,” Hermione shot back angrily, standing up. “You stupid little prick.”
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?!” Draco asked, also standing and towering over Hermione. “I am in this for everything I’ve got and I’ve lost most of it! I’ve lost more than you can ever imagine. To hell with being good and righteous! I regret every bloody thing I’ve done ever since.”
Hermione’s face was frozen with a peculiar expression on her face. Draco turned his head away from her to look out the window but the bright sunlight and green neighbourhood angered him even more so he turned to walk into the kitchen.
“Does that mean you regret saving me?” she asked suddenly in a low voice.
He paused and turned around. “What?”
“Do you regret saving me from the dungeons? Pulling me out of the fountain? Pretending to be married to me so that I could stay alive?”
He gazed at her with a blank expression and without waiting for a response, Hermione pushed past him, shoving him as hard as she could. “Where’re you going?” he asked her as she ran upstairs.
“Out,” she snapped, reappearing at the head of the stairs with an owl in her hand a tattered piece of parchment.
“Are you out of your mind? Lestrange will kill you,” he said, grabbing her by the arm.
“Well then I’ll be doing you a favour,” she said, breaking free from his grasp and slamming the door on the way out.
---
Hermione walked four blocks straight without turning back before she stopped. She took the parchment and pressed it against a large tree trunk, ignoring the indentations that it made against the thin material.
Four o’clock, Three Broomsticks
She attached the message to the owl in such a hurry that it pecked her twice before allowing her to fasten it on safely. She watched it eagerly swoop out of her hands and into the blue sky.
---
Draco moved his arm with a huge amount of pain as he opened the door to one of the rooms upstairs. This one was a very sombre room with taupe walls, a low ceiling with a broken chandelier and a huge tapestry on the south side with the Black family motto: ‘Toujours pur’. He walked towards the barred windows and looked out onto the deserted, dark street.
He hadn’t been able to stop worrying for the last however many hours it had been; he’d lost track of time after the first two. Hermione had been gone for most of the day and he was terrified, down to his very core, that she would be harmed. Those working for Lestrange were all over the place and the most unlikely of characters; anyone of them could have seen Hermione and snitched on her for a few galleons.
“You’re Cissy’s boy, aren’t you?”
Draco jumped at the sound, causing himself pain in the chest as he turned around and saw one of the portraits looking at him with a curious expression. The man in the portrait was very young – younger than Draco was right now – with dark, long black hair, a clean shaven face and beady black eyes.
He nodded to the question, suspiciously. “Yes,” the portrait continued, slightly dazed.
“They told me she had a son with… what’s his name? Lucien?”
“Lucius,” Draco corrected. “Lucius Malfoy.”
The boy nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Draco,” he answered.
A small laugh escaped the boy’s mouth at which point, Draco raised his eyebrow, perplexed. “What?” he asked.
“It’s a good name,” the boy said. “Very suiting – a snake, a nasty creature that can do a lot more harm than it looks capable of.”
Draco looked around the room and noticed that this portrait was the only one hanging here; all the other ones were downstairs in the corridor and living room. He moved in a little closer to read the inscription below the frame and saw the same was scratched out.
“My brother’s handiwork,” he explained. “When the Order of the Phoenix took over this house, he scratched out my name in a fit of rage, calling me a fool.”
“What’s your name?” Draco asked.
“Regulus Black,” the portrait responded, slowly and painfully. “I see you’ve heard of me,” he added, seeing the knowing look on Draco’s face.
“You were a death eater,” he said. “Sirius Black was your brother.”
“I was,” he agreed.
Draco gazed intently at the portrait. “You died very young.”
“A year and a half after this painting was done of me, in fact,” Regulus said. There was a pause and then he added, as an afterthought: “I’m glad you came in here. I rarely have anyone to talk to. My ancestors don’t take too kindly on my abandonment of the Dark Lord.”
Draco pursed his lips and turned back towards the window. Hermione still hadn’t returned and he wasn’t in the mood to chat it up with some lonely portrait. He gazed out onto the long stretch of concrete outside in hopes of seeing a figure walking up to the house or some form of life that would indicate that she was still alive and well.
“The mudblood isn’t back yet?” he asked.
Draco turned instantly and glared at the portrait. “Do not refer to her like that,” he said tersely. “Or I may not be as generous as Potter was.”
“You’ve become a do-gooder then, have you?” Regulus asked. “Oh yes, I can see it in your eyes. It’s the same thing I had harboured within me for years.”
“See what?”
“Fear – the fear of failure.”
Draco snarled and then let out a twisted laugh. “I’ve already failed,” he said. “I’ve already lost everything. There’s no fear left within me.”
Regulus fondled his black hair and shook his head. “No, you’re still afraid. Perhaps, you’re afraid of losing whatever you have left – perhaps, the mudblood herself.”
Draco could no longer stand the word, and he whipped out his wand and placed it two inches within Regulus’ face. “I can do whatever I want to you,” he warned. “And I will.”
“I’m dead,” he replied, sadly. “And a lot more like you than I originally thought.”
Draco did not release the tight grip on his wand as Regulus continued. “I did what my family asked of me… in fact, I did more: I joined the ranks of the death eaters, I followed the Dark Lord’s orders like a religion and I gave myself over to him, body, mind and soul.”
“But…” Draco said quietly, expecting the next word.
“But I got in way over my head. I didn’t lose anyone per se, but I became isolated. I could only do certain things, initiate conversation with certain people at certain times of the day and it drove me to madness.”
Unable to listen to him anymore, Draco turned away and began to do the one thing he knew would lead to more pain: think. He thought about Hermione and realized that he may very well never see her again. It was completely possible that she had gone back to Potter to go find Weasley or maybe she had returned to St. Mungo’s to work. And then there was the other possibility that Lestrange… no, he wouldn’t think about that. However, just like any other sensation, the only way to dull the thoughts of his broken past, present and future, he thought about her. It had been so long since he had imagined her fading face in his mind, so long since he had dreamt about her. Today he would think of her again and maybe, he would be happy.
---
“You never cease to surprise me,” he said, smiling.
“And why is that?” she asked slowly.
“Well, I fully admitted to being a death eater and not a good soul in disguise, and yet you still wanted to meet me?”
“You’re a pretty unpredictable person yourself,” Hermione replied. “You haven’t killed me yet and you’ve had more than enough chances.”
“Touché,” he nodded and placed his hand on her back, ushering to a small table by the flowered left wall. “Shall we eat?”
Though she had come to talk to Cassius, Hermione realized that she was indeed very hungry. She nodded and went towards the table to sit down. It was during the weekend so the tiny pub was packed with Hogwarts students and the room smelt like raw parchment and emu ink.
Shuffling between the crowds and elbowing some people in the process, Hermione made her way over to the table with two oak chairs. She put her coat on the backrest and sat down without hesitation, allowing her legs to rest which she hadn’t been able to do for a while. Cassius examined her with a curious expression before removing his dark navy overcoat and did the same thing, sitting down.
A floating tray with peppermint tea circled the table slowly and waited as Cassius removed two cups from it, one of which he placed in front of Hermione and the other which he sipped.
“And to what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked.
The first response that came to Hermione’s head was that Draco was being a complete self-pitying ass who was too busy wallowing in regrets and guilt to care about the real mystery. But that didn’t seem like a good idea to say.
“I need a favour,” she said.
Two plates of chicken pot pie, a tray of crackers and a bag of fudge brownies later, Hermione had explained what she wanted from Cassius. The pudgy little waitress wobbled her way over to gather their empty plates as he still pondered over her request with an amused expression.
“When I said that you and I owed each other, this isn’t what I had in mind.”
Hermione smiled slyly herself. “I promise I will make it worthwhile if you do this for me,” she said.
He contemplated her proposal. “What can you give me that I don’t already have?”
“I promise you, it’ll be worth your while,” she urged him. “Just meet me back here tomorrow at seven.”
While she sipped her last few drops of tea, he nodded. “I don’t like doing menial tasks, you know.”
“I know,” she agreed. “But I do appreciate this very much.”
“I don’t need you to appreciate me,” he replied. “I need you to fear me.”
“Oh yes, I fear you as well… very much so,” she said, without the least bit of terror. She held out her steady arms. “Look, I’m trembling!”
Cassius’ eyes narrowed very slightly at the faded burn marks on her arm and he put his fingers around her wrist, holding it up and moved his chair in to examine them closer. Hermione felt the warm touch of his hands and didn’t understand why his expression had changed so dramatically at the sign of the fire.
“They don’t look so bad,” he remarked. “Not as bad as mine.”
“They’ve healed and I was saved before the exposure could get worse.”
The last of the cups were cleared away from their table by the waitress and she left a small tray with a bill on it.
“Draco saved you?” he said.
Hermione suddenly looked down. “Yes,” she replied after a brief pause.
Without inquiring any further, he reached into his pockets and placed two galleons on the small, red tray. They both got up and headed outside and since it was nearing dusk, most of the students had cleared out. Hermione felt a shiver pass through her as the door opened and a cold gust of wind encircled her; she hastily put her coat on.
They walked to the edge of street, now only illuminated by bright orange lamps. Hogsmeade was quite sketchy at night time with the dark corners, and shady characters wandering the nights. As they approached the train station, she turned to Cassius and asked him something that had been bugging her.
“Are you still at the Manor?”
“No,” he replied. “I left right after I saw you in the South Tower.”
A wave of relief swept over Hermione’s face but then he added: “But I believe my father and his men are still there.”
The fleeting happiness vanished immediately. “I don’t know when they’re going to leave,” he said, answering her next question. “My father is far too ignorant in these matters – he finds killing a sort of relaxant when he’s stressed.”
The thought disturbed Hermione greatly and she nodded distractedly and began to turn towards the Floo station. “Tomorrow, then?” she asked.
“Seven o’clock,” he agreed.
---
About an hour after Hermione had left, Cassius still remained at the corner of the street of Hogsmeade, unaffected by the cold and undisturbed by the darkness. He took a seat on a nearby bench and rested his elbow on the edge.
Hermione Granger proved to be far more… something, whatever that something was. She was a mudblood, the woman who had killed his mother and the woman who was set out to seek revenge on his father. Cassius understood why he wasn’t worried about his father – he had never cared for the man. The lewd, foolishly blind man only ever did what he did, for the glory and so there was no real reason to protect him. His mother, as well, fell into the same category. She never cared for him, but for what he symbolized - a sick little seedling. And the irony of it was that he had done both of them very proud. He had accomplished everything that was expected of him and even more.
Yes, he understood all that.
And then there was Hermione Granger, the slightly short, bushy haired mudblood who was asking him to help her. He wasn’t going to kill her – he never really had wanted to, but the thought was now out of the question. She interested him in a way that no one ever had. She put her curiosity over everything else, apparently even her safety.
He thought about what she had asked him to do and stood up. He would return to Malfoy Manor tomorrow and do what she wanted. He smiled; at least he wouldn’t be bored anymore.
---
Hermione slowly pushed the front door open. It was almost nine thirty at night and there was no one around. Feeling slightly intrusive, she walked up the stairs and into Draco’s small bedroom using of the slight illumination from her wand to guide her. The room that she was in right now was fairly empty with the exception of a small single bed, a wooden chest, an empty portrait frame and a twisted staircase that led up to the roof.
Draco was asleep but by the heavy and strained movements of his body as he breathed – or tried to breathe- Hermione could tell that the antidote was wearing off fast. She quietly moved past the wooden chest and knelt down beside his shaking body, bringing the light near his face. She observed the sweat beads on his forehead and the redness all over his cheeks.
“Draco…” she said, fearfully. “Draco, wake up.”
She put her hand on his cheek, hoping that her cold fingers would trigger a response but the heat from his skin overwhelmed her and she withdrew her hand sharply.
“Draco,” she said, this time with a little more force. “Can you hear me?”
His facial structure didn’t change even the slightest bit and Hermione knew that he had fallen into a relapse. Without a single thought of hesitation, she ran back outside and manoeuvred her way down the stairs and to the entrance of the destitute house. Shuffling through a few things, she found the large bag that she had brought with her when they left the Manor. She cursed as she hit her knee against the banister but found what she was looking for – the Fiendfyre antidote. The portraits around her muttered inaudible cries of irritation as Hermione pushed the bag back noisily and ran back upstairs.
The small flood of light from the hallway illuminated Draco’s room better, so Hermione left the door open as she entered. Kneeling down beside the bed again, she popped open the bottle cover and held it close to Draco’s pale lips. Like the few times that she had done this before, the first few drops were the hardest to get in. His body began to resist the antidote and the thick liquid fell against the sides of his mouth.
Hermione put her hand on his cheek and used her thumb to keep his mouth open as she forcefully poured the potion into his mouth; this time, more of it got through.
“Draco?” she asked again. “Open your eyes.”
She tipped the bottle even further while keeping her left hand tight around his wrist, keeping track of his pulse. It was still far too fast which could only mean the potion’s effects hadn’t set in.
There was a still silence that lasted for hours in Hermione’s mind before there was a mild shaking in Draco’s chest. It rose and fell more steadily, as if his body was trying to hold on to dear life. He began to cough, regurgitating some of the original potion but Hermione’s hand on his face felt the sudden cooling of his skin. His seizing body had begun to settle down and his heavy set eyelids opened a fraction, unveiling the grazed gray colour of his irises.
Hermione expelled a sigh of relief and took a spare cloth from the floor to wipe away the excess potion falling out of his mouth. She didn’t speak to him. The last few times he had relapsed, it had taken him well over a few hours to finally regain consciousness during which she assumed his body was recuperating and repairing itself. But this sudden burst of wakefulness meant that he would probably need a couple of minutes to just recollect his memories and realize where he was.
Rolling up the sleeves of her flannel pyjamas, she whipped out her wand and began to use a cooling spell across Draco’s forehead. She noticed that his eyes had begun to move around very slowly but his pupils were still dilated. Regardless, as long as his mind had regained consciousness, he was in no terminal danger. When she was sure that his temperature had been lowered significantly, her hands moved over his heart where she felt the slowing beats.
The opening under his eyelids had gotten larger and Hermione saw the dilation in his pupils as it began to lessen. “Draco?” she said, very slowly.
He nodded, taking in a deep breath of the cold night air. “Did I…” he began. “Again?”
“Yeah, you did,” Hermione said. “But you recovered much faster this time, that’s good.”
Draco pursed his lips and closed his eyes again, sighing. He looked at Hermione who gently placed her hand on his cheek, smiling. “You came back,” he said, with great difficulty.
Hermione nodded fervently, pursing her lips to hold back the tears. “Of course I did. I’ll always come back.”
He began to cough. At first it was light but then the congestion built up and the fit got more violent.
And then it came.
Spewing out of his mouth like mucus, the blood stained the sheets and contrasted greatly with the paleness in Draco’s face as he fell back onto the bed and stopped breathing.
---
a/n:
Terribly sorry about the delay! Also, to keep you guys entertained while you wait for my updates very patiently, I will post a quote from the next chapter to keep you all guessing =)
Keep those encouraging reviews coming! I read them all and you have no idea how much they motivate me!
Chapter 25 - Alone
Harry's face stiffened. "They're starting to kill."
Marcus and Hector patrolled the front stairwell diligently until Lestrange left their sight. Then, resigning themselves to the fatigue in their legs, they sat down and ordered one of the house elves to get them food from the well stocked Malfoy kitchen.
“How long do you think we’ll be here?” Hector asked.
Marcus, who was greedily eyeing the doorway through which a house elf would emerge very soon, shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn’t care less.”
“Lestrange wants to get the mudblood,” Marcus added after his pause. “But there’s been no luck in finding her. D’you reckon she’s still in the country?”
Hector spat angrily on the floor. “Why not? They’re filthy vermin. If she was smart, she’d have gone back to living with the rest of her mudbloods.”
“He’d still find her,” Marcus said.
The two sat in silence for a while. Hector began to breathe heavily, grunting softly while Marcus kept his eyes on the door, eagerly awaiting the food. Amidst the howling winds outside, the usually silent grounds of Malfoy Manor were stirring.
“And what about Malfoy?” Marcus asked, slowly in a low voice. His eyes wandered over to the stone floor where a small ant had begun to make its way around the large banister of the stairwell and to its home in the walls.
“What about him?”
“Is he really a traitor?”
Hector laughed crudely. “Probably. It’ll be fun to see what happens to him.”
Marcus also chimed in with a laugh. “So Lestrange’ll kill him?”
“Every man needs to face his fate one day or another,” Lestrange said, his voice gruff and harsh as he stood at the top of the staircase. He smiled as he descended slowly. “Draco Malfoy’s day of judgement will come soon and when it does...”
He stomped his foot on the desperate ant. “I will be most happy.”
---
The fear in Hermione’s eyes paralyzed her as Draco’s constricted airways stopped his breathing and induced a fit like shaking in his chest. She screamed, taking in the sharp smell of salt and blood, and fell down beside him. The blood had stopped coming out of his mouth and Hermione assumed that it was some sort of a clot that had formed in his airways, stopping him from breathing.
Despite her skills as a healer, she couldn’t bring herself to calm down the sudden upsurge of fear in her body. Dealing with strangers was one thing, dealing with… whatever Draco was to her… was another.
She fumbled around aimlessly, trying to find something to do… something to make him open his eyes and insult her or smirk at her, anything. She continued her raging panic as Draco’s skin got paler until her fingers wrapped around her wand. She scanned her mind for a spell to help breathing but her mind couldn’t think straight.
Blood… blood… blood…
Why couldn’t her mind think of anything?
The sweat on her face was beginning to pour down, drenching her in the cold room. Her mind wasn’t focused any longer. All she could see was the white face of Draco Malfoy, losing life by the second. She didn’t know what was happening anymore and her magical instincts had completely escaped her. So she turned to the muggle side of her.
She placed her fingers against Draco’s chin and opened his mouth slightly. There was blood on his teeth and gums but Hermione saw none of it as she closed her eyes and placed her lips against his. His lips were cold and dry but the feeling bypassed her as she hoped, with every fibre of her being, that this would work.
She breathed in and blew a deep breath out down his throat.
An upsurge of blood escaped his mouth and splattered against her lips and down her chin. She wiped her face roughly against her sleeve and placed her warm mouth against his again. This time she inhaled deeper and produced a much stronger gust of air that sailed down his wind pipe. Her hands reached over to his chest as she drew her head up. Hastily, she removed the buttons on his shirt and revealed his icy body. Her fingers pressed down near his heart and she pushed in deeply, one palm over the other. The first push triggered nothing but the second one induced some sort of a gurgling sound in his throat.
She placed her mouth back down against his and blew harder. The blood spattered on his lips once more and she drew her face up before pressing on his chest three more times.
She needed to get Draco to St. Mungo’s. Her mind was too fazed to be able to remember any of the spells that she needed right now but any healer would remember them in a second. Safety concerns were no longer vital – she didn’t need protection. If Lestrange were to somehow find them if they left, she would kill him instantly. It would be that simple. But she wouldn’t risk Draco’s life to cower from filthy vermin like him.
However, she couldn’t do this alone. St. Mungo’s didn’t allow apparation and there was no possible way to transport Draco without a carriage.
“Call Potter.”
Hermione turned instantly at the voice behind her. The empty frame above the bed wasn’t empty anymore. In the darkness it was hard to tell but a young man had appeared in the portrait.
“What?” she said, tasting the blood against her teeth and withholding the feeling of nausea as it overcame her.
“Potter… aren’t you all friends? He could probably help you.”
The face of Regulus Black wasn’t its usual apathetic self but rather, he seemed quite worried right now. Either way, he was right. Hermione knew that Harry would help her and being who he was, he’d be able to figure out some way to transport the body through the back doors to avoid others.
“The gurgling sound in his throat means that some air is getting through,” she said, unable to listen to the words as she spoke them.
She placed her head against Draco’s chest and felt the very small movements as it heaved up and down. “There’s very little air but he’s still alive. Watch him while I go down to the fireplace. If anything happens, yell for me.”
---
Harry smiled as Teddy’s face contorted in his sleep. He stood at the doorway, leaning casually as he observed the little boy lie peacefully in his bedroom, illuminated by the rotating Chudley Cannons lamp.
“What are you doing?” Ginny asked, coming up from behind. She peeked in and her quizzical expression melted away as she saw Teddy asleep. “Oh, he’s so adorable.”
“He’s growing up fast,” Harry remarked.
Ginny put her arm on Harry’s shoulder and kissed his cheek. “Spoken like a true father.”
Harry turned on his side and put his arms around Ginny’s waist. “I miss him being a baby,” he said, pulling her closer. “We should have one.”
Ginny blushed slightly but rolled her eyes, laughing it off. “And how would you explain that to mum?” she asked and then imitated his response: “Well Mrs Weasley, I’ve knocked up your daughter without marrying her, just like you always dreamed of.”
Harry bent his head, slightly embarrassed. “Well, it’s-”
But he never got to finish his sentence. There was a cackling sound from downstairs at which point, Ginny shut the door to Teddy’s room and looked at Harry with concern. “It’s like two in the morning, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Might be from the Ministry,” he added, shrugging.
They both rushed downstairs, arriving in the nick of time as green flames began to erupt in their fireplace. There were two or three large spurts before the emerald colour died down and a small head materialized from within.
“Hermione!” Ginny said cheerfully but her disposition shifted suddenly when the shaken brunette’s face became completely visible and she saw the blotches of blood on her face. “What… what happened? Are you alright?”
Harry bent down in front of the stone opening and examined her face more closely. “What’s wrong?” he asked her. “Where’s Ron?”
“I can’t explain right now,” Hermione said, her breaths were short and forced. “I need your help.”
“Yes, of course. What?” Harry replied swiftly. Upstairs, Teddy’s cries began to drown out some of the sound and he turned and nodded to Ginny who looked tersely at Hermione before sighing. “It’s alright, Ginny. Go tend to Teddy.”
She pursed her lips and went back upstairs, increasing the speed of her steps as Teddy’s cries got louder. Meanwhile, Harry turned back to Hermione. “Where’s Ron?”
Hermione let the tears fall down her face as she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What?!” Harry cried. He shot up. “He came to see you and…”
“Harry please keep your voice down, if Ginny found out she would never forgive me,” Hermione pleaded. “I need you to come to Grimmauld Place, as soon as possible without Ginny. Please, bring a healer. Draco’s… he’s barely breathing.”
“Where is Ron, Hermione?” he asked again, this time in a deeper and more intense voice, almost pleading.
“I swear I have no idea, Harry. Please hurry to Grimmauld Place. I can’t remember anything right now and I think Draco… I think Draco’s-” She couldn’t continue her sentence and the tears just spilled out mercilessly. Harry got up and looked around aimlessly, clasping his forehead.
“I’ll explain everything to you once you get here.”
He looked back up at the staircase and nodded, with a resigned expression. “I’ll be there as soon as possible,” he said and then added, seeing the expression on Hermione’s face: “I won’t tell Ginny.”
---
Hermione felt paralyzed with fear. For the first time in a long while, her mind had begun to phase to such a high degree. She couldn’t think straight, her body was numb and her heart beats were ringing in her ears. She was sitting by Draco’s side, periodically blowing more air into his mouth so that he could continue breathing but other than that, she couldn’t look at him. Her mind was running on standby at the moment, only permitting basic human functions such as breathing and blinking and the occasional motor movement. She kept repeating the scenario in her head when she pushed past him roughly and left to see Cassius. For some reason, the thought seemed almost like infidelity in addition to stupidity.
Burying her face in her hands, she felt the coldness of her palms against the warm sweat on her forehead. Hope was fading from her faster than she could think to hold on to it. With every minute and every blink of her wet, brown eyes, she purged herself deeper into the darkness.
She turned her head a little to the right and looked out the window. It was probably around four in the morning and Harry still hadn’t arrived. She reached up again, placing her hands on Draco’s cheeks and pressed her lips against his, blowing in to allow him to breathe. Another gush of blood spurted out of his throat and this time, as practice had taught her, she moved away in time to avoid it hitting her face. The cold spell she had placed on his head was working in overdrive but the sweat beads still remained, like little droplets.
Ensuring that the small, faint movements of his chest remained, Hermione resumed her viewing of the outside. She thought about leaving. She could do it right now; Harry was on his way here and he would soon arrive with a healer and see Draco. They’d all go to St. Mungo’s and he would be saved; she would not be needed. But she couldn’t do that. She needed to know that he would be alright.
“Hello?”
She jumped up instantly at the sound of someone calling from downstairs. Circling the upper hallway, she arrived at the top of the stairwell and called out: “Up here, Harry!”
She shuffled down the stairs weakly and peered around the corner. It wasn’t Harry. Though his face was scarred and his walk was heavy, Hermione would have recognized his strong eyes and white moustache anywhere.
“Eli!” she cried.
---
Unable to lift the weight by himself, Marcus grunted angrily until Hector grabbed on to the legs of the dead body so that they could transport it to the dungeons. This was the third body this week that Lestrange had asked to be “taken care of” and judging by the expensive dragon hide shoes and silk robes that the man was wearing, he was most likely a Ministry official.
“Hold him steady,” Hector barked as they turned the right corner at the edge of the hallway and descended towards the dungeons.
“His skin feels like rubber,” Marcus shot back. “It’s hard to hold on.”
They carefully stepped down each stair and upon reaching the platform landing, lay the body down for a second. Marcus drew out his wand and illuminated the series of torches that circled the stone pathway and led down to nothingness. As the yellow glow filled the darkness, the hidden figure behind the stone pillar was illuminated.
“Hello,” Cassius said, smiling. He stepped out from the shadows and dusted off his robes. “I see you’ve been doing some cleaning for my father.”
Both Marcus and Hector stepped back, completely letting go of the body and allowing it to hit the floor. “Cassius,” Marcus said, nodding. “I thought you’d left.”
“Your mistake,” he said, and then shrugged. As he walked forward, he looked down at the body and then back up at the stairwell through which they had entered. “I don’t want to keep you from your work so please, continue. However, if my father inquires as to my presence, I would appreciate you keeping our little meeting to yourselves.”
“Yes, of course,” both of them mumbled in unison.
Without another word, Cassius smiled and turned away, walking up the stairs and disappearing into the darkness.
---
“Eli!” Hermione repeated, still gaping at the aged man as he stood at the bottom of the stairwell.
“Oh Ms. Granger!” Eli said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness you’re alright.”
Hermione was still recovering from the shock so she didn’t respond but instead, kept on gaping. Eli moved into the living room, still wearing his large black robes and looked at Hermione who was still at the top of the stairs.
“How did you find us?” Hermione asked. “How did you get in?”
“Mr. Weasley is also the secret keeper to this place, I imagine,” he replied. “He revealed the secret to me and as for finding you, apparently your broom has a tracking charm on it that the shopkeeper didn’t take off.”
Hermione nodded absentmindedly – Eli had mentioned Ron’s name. “Is… is Ron alright? Pansy?”
“Not for very long, I’m afraid,” Eli responded. The relaxed expression that had befallen his face faded away and was replaced with a deep anxiety that etched itself into every line of his wrinkles. “I don’t know exactly what’s happening at the Manor right now but bodies are starting to appear in the dungeons.”
Hermione cursed. “Whose bodies?”
“I don’t know,” he responded. “Ms. Parkinson and Mr. Weasley are currently hiding in the underground passage that leads to the South Tower. We all couldn’t escape at once and since their movement is still impaired, I had to flee to come find you. We need to get them out of there.”
Hermione rubbed her face with her hands and nodded. “Draco was right, wasn’t he? They stopped searching once they figured out that we left.”
“Yes,” Eli said. “But I think Lestrange is having another gathering of some sort however, with fewer death eaters this time. We need to get them out before then.”
“When?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied.
Hermione’s mind was working into overdrive right now. “I can’t think straight now. Eli, Draco’s not okay. He’s been bleeding out of his mouth for hours and he can’t breathe.”
Eli wasn’t shaken by this sudden revelation. “Where is he right now?”
“Upstairs,” she said, feeling the overwhelming of paralysis. “I’ve been using muggle techniques to sustain him. Harry’s going to be here soon with a healer. I just- I just don’t know.”
“I will tend to him until Mr. Potter gets here,” Eli offered.
“You’re not surprised? You’re not afraid?” Hermione asked.
“My dear,” Eli began, smiling weakly. “I am afraid beyond my wits but not surprised. You said it yourself, Edacium curses feed off of pain and Master Malfoy has had more than enough pain for a lifetime.”
Hermione nodded, wiping her eyes roughly. “There’s a bottle of the antidote upstairs,” she explained. “He can’t swallow it right now but just in case you need it, it’s there.”
Eli took note of that in his head and bowed once before popping out of thin air and apparating to the room upstairs. Just as the air began to settle at the location where he had been, the door burst open, this time with Harry running in.
“Hermione!” he said, concerned. He was shabbily dressed in navy blue robes on top of his jeans and yellow t-shirt. Behind him, two more people entered the house.
“Are you the healers?” Hermione asked without addressing Harry.
The two people nodded. They were both fairly short, round people and wore the traditional St. Mungo’s lime green uniform. However, one of them was a woman with a pointed nose and clasped jaw while the man had very blunt features and bulgy blue eyes.
“He’s upstairs,” Hermione said, quickly. She pointed to the stairs and then to the second room to the right. “Do you see the scratched up door? Yes, that one. He’s in there.”
“Blogsworth,” the woman healer said to the man in a thick Irish accent. “Grab the medications.”
The man did as he was told and the two of them headed upstairs quickly when Harry put his arm on Hermione’s shoulder and turned her around. She examined his fatigued face which was laden with apprehension. It had a very Harry-esque look to it: his brow was furrowed above his bottle green eyes, his lips were pursed very slightly and the trademark round glasses were hanging a little below their usual position on the bridge of his nose.
“You look awful,” he said.
She nodded. “I know.”
He reached into his pocket and handed her a napkin. She took it wearily and began to absentmindedly wipe her face, noting the odd mixture of blood, sweat and tears that began appearing on it.
“Do you want some tea?” he asked. “Or some food? I don’t reckon this place is really well stocked with food.”
Hermione shook her head but her weighted legs were pining to sit down so she ushered them both over to the kitchen table where she took a seat on one of the wooden chairs. Harry remained standing and went over to the stove, searching for a pot which he placed atop it. He grabbed his wand and whispered a spell that began to fill it up with water and then a second one which lit a flame under it.
“You’re not mad at me?” she asked.
“Why would I be mad?” he said. He reached into his pocket as the water began to boil and pulled out a bag of leaves. He carefully dropped four of them into the heated water before adding, “I just wish you had asked me for help.”
“No,” Hermione explained. “You don’t understand, Harry. When we were teenagers it was different: neither of us had anything to lose, not me, not Ron, not you. You have a family now. You have Ginny, you have Teddy… you can’t play with your life anymore, not when there are people depending on you.”
“But Ron can?”
“Ron shouldn’t have come,” Hermione said, breathing heavily. “He was never supposed to get involved. This was my battle to fight with Lestrange and my parents’ deaths to avenge. I didn’t ask Ron to help, I didn’t ask Malfoy to help and I didn’t ask Pansy to help and they all got involved and now thanks to me, they all are in danger.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed with fear. “Where is Ron?”
Hermione put her hand on her forehead. “He’s at Malfoy Manor,” she said and watched the terrified look on Harry’s face materialize. “Pansy was there to help Draco, it was all a ploy to get Lestrange to Malfoy Manor. Draco set the whole thing up; he had the Ministry move me into the Manor until he knew where Lestrange was, so I wouldn’t get harmed. Then he sent me home but I was… stupid and I came running back to the Manor. Lestrange was there and we had to use this stupid cover up that I was Draco’s wife so that he wouldn’t suspect me. And then Ron showed up too.”
Hermione continued telling her story and watched Harry’s face make the slightest of movements when she said something particularly horrifying. As the story got intense, Harry jumped when the tea he was making began to overflow from the pot. He turned around quickly and put out the fire. He summoned a cup from the pantry and poured out the dark green coloured tea for Hermione.
“So Ron and Pansy are at Malfoy Manor, right now?”
Hermione nodded, putting her cold hands around the warm cup and feeling a sense of sudden relief. Harry thought about something for a while before speaking again. “We can raid Malfoy Manor,” he explained. “Lestrange is an international criminal.”
Hermione shook her head. “You know as well as I do that they’d be gone even before you got to the gates. Men like Lestrange can’t be caught with the law.”
“What’s going to happen to Ron? I mean, if Eli says he’s fine for now that doesn’t mean that he’ll be fine for much longer.”
Hermione twitched nervously at the idea. “Pansy knows her way around the Manor, much better than those death eaters. We need to figure out what Adria is – the only way to destroy the Edacium curse on Draco is to destroy the original caster of the spell.”
“Hermione, Ron’s life is seriously in danger.”
“I know that!” she said, getting up and turning towards the small glass door that allowed a view of the morning light outside. “Don’t you think I understand how close to death he is right now? How close they all are? I’ve been driving myself over the edge of madness thinking about this.”
“What do you need me to do? I want to help.”
Hermione shook her head instantly. “You can’t risk your life, Harry. Not now.”
“He’s my best friend,” Harry explained. “You’re my best friend. I can’t just leave you like this. I mean, it was fine when it was your own battle to fight, and even then, mind you, I wanted to stop you, but now people are dying.”
Hermione’s eyes suddenly shot up and her mind remembered what Eli had said to her.
“There are bodies at the Manor!” she cried suddenly. “Eli told me something about bodies appearing in the dungeons.”
Harry’s face stiffened. “They’re starting to kill.”
“Muggles, again?” Hermione asked. “No, that wouldn’t make sense.”
“Wizards,” Harry explained. “Hiding dead muggles makes no sense – you can just pass of their deaths as heart attacks or something. He’s killing wizards.”
“Have there been any recent people missing?” she asked.
Harry shook his head. “None that I’ve heard of although I doubt these people would show up on the radar. Think about it: Lestrange’s all about eliminating obstacles in his path. His men probably kill the moment they see their target and dump their bodies in the Malfoy dungeons. Ministry regulations state that you cannot file a missing wizard’s report until the person has been missing for at least 36 hours. His work would probably be done within an hour.”
The silence that followed as both Harry and Hermione contemplated the gravity of the situation was only broken when the woman healer appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“Is he alright?” Hermione asked with speed such that her words were slurred.
“For now,” the woman replied and Hermione’s face relaxed suddenly. She felt as if a huge burden had been lifted off her shoulders. “There was a blood clot in his wind pipe. It was very messy when we released it, there’s blood everywhere.”
Hermione nodded. Now that the calm had been restored in her mind, she began to remember the spells and potions that she would have needed to do the job herself. “The distilling slug serum probably thinned a lot of his blood.”
“Yes,” the healer said, impressed. “He’ll be regurgitating a lot of blood but that’s normal.”
Without listening to anymore, Hermione closed her eyes and felt the tug at her navel as she apparated to the upstairs room.
---
Hermione entered very slowly, peering in first for reasons that she herself did not understand. The man was covering Draco’s face so she couldn’t really see him but his body was animated, moving as he breathed. She knocked quietly.
“Yes?” the male healer called.
Hermione put her head through the door. “Is it alright if I come in?”
“Uh yes, of course,” the healer said. “Is there anything you need?”
“Oh well, I really wanted to speak to Draco.”
The healer looked confused. “He’s still unconscious. I reckon it’d be a little longer until he wakes up. And you are?”
Hermione paused for a second. “Mrs. Malfoy,” she explained.
The healer wrinkled his forehead that was fairly small compared to the size of his balding scalp. She watched him examine small details of her face as if she was somehow very familiar to him. But she didn’t worry. Hermione hadn’t appeared in the Daily Prophet for years and the only picture of her was the set published right after Voldemort’s defeat where she was much younger. Harry and Ron often made headlines with their escapades in other countries with dangerous criminals but Hermione was very content with her privacy. These healers were also clearly from the emergency section of St. Mungo’s whereas Hermione spent most of her time on the fourth floor, Spell Damage.
“Yes, of course,” the healer agreed. “Well Mrs. Malfoy, I was wondering if you could explain this to me?”
He removed a covering on Draco’s chest and revealed the melted flesh and crescent scar that still remained. Hermione’s eyes instantly flew to his face, however. He was breathing quietly but his eyes didn’t seem very calm, like he was having a bad dream.
“I have no idea,” Hermione lied. “Draco’s an auror – he deals with dangerous wizards all the time. It’s highly probable that this was a work related injury and he just didn’t want to tell me about it.”
“It’s… it’s almost as if it were alive,” the healer said, not taking his eyes off.
Hermione carefully surveyed the room and found all the tools and medications that the healers had brought. The door was slightly ajar when the woman and Harry came in as well.
“My husband and I would like to thank you both for your dutiful and dedicated service to him,” she began in her cold voice. She held her shoulders back and pouted her lips just a little.
Harry’s eyes widened. “What?”
“And you too, of course, Harry,” she said. She walked over to her own small bag and produced her purse.
“But we are not done,” the woman said, confused.
Hermione began to nervously eye the sunlight. It was almost ten in the morning now and she really didn’t want to draw any attention to the house anymore and people leaving and entering certainly did draw attention. Furthermore she had been off the radar for quite a few months now and it was probably better that way – at least when Lestrange came looking for her no one would be able to tell him where she was, even under spells.
“I’ve had a bit of healer training myself,” she said, smiling tersely. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to purchase your supplies to be well prepared for another emergency. Eli!”
Eli popped into the room and bowed, his eyes twinkling. “Yes, Lady Malfoy?”
“Will you please see to it that these two fine healers get compensated for their time and their supplies?” The two healers looked a little wary until they saw the huge stack of coins that Eli produced as he led them outside into the hall at which point, they began to smile greedily. He closed the door behind him, leaving Hermione, Harry and Draco alone in the room.
“What on earth was that about?” Harry asked, dumbfounded.
“I need to maintain my story,” she said. “Hermione Granger needs to hide for a little while longer. I figure the less people know of me, the smaller chance they have of getting harmed by Lestrange.”
“I miss Hermione Granger,” Harry said.
She looked away, unable to meet his eyes and sighed. “It’s not that easy, Harry. I’ve become someone in these last few years that I realize I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be married with five children, cooking and cleaning and working. I mean… I want that but not now.”
“You don’t want to be with Ron.”
Hermione shook her head. “It’s not that. Ron and I already broke up.”
Harry paused. At first Hermione thought it was because the thought of their break up was so overwhelming but apparently, he was thinking about something else. “You want Malfoy?” he said.
“I don’t know what I want.”
Harry shook his head disbelievingly and rolled his eyes. “My best friend is out there and his life is in danger. I supported you through this but I don’t know if I can anymore. I stay out of this, as an auror, only if you promise to tell me everything that happens, as your friend. I’ll look in to the missing wizards and let you know if I find anything unusual. Okay?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“I know you are,” he replied, squeezing her hand gently before leaving as well.
The door shut loudly and Hermione collected herself carelessly. She looked out the window and closed her eyes so that her eyelids were drowned out by the orange colour of the sun. She inhaled deeply, taking in the fresh air and her heart felt a little lighter.
“Eli,” she said again, opening her eyes. He appeared no more than a second later, bowing.
“Yes, Ms. Granger?” he asked.
“I’m going to be out this evening,” she explained. “Can you please restock the kitchen with some foods? There’s money in my purse. I’d also like the tracking spell on my broom to be removed.”
“Yes, of course,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Ms. Granger, before I depart, I’d like to say that I was very impressed with the way you held yourself today. If I may be so bold, you were a true Malfoy.”
Hermione smiled and placed a light kiss on his cheek. “Thank you.”
As he disappeared, Hermione thought about her plans for the rest of the day. She had to see Cassius at seven and needed to pick up some ingredients for the Fiendfyre antidote on the way. But she knew that the potion could only take her so far. What was really causing Draco’s relapses was his pain. Eli had said it before and Hermione knew it was true. There was something… something wrong and what made it worse was that she could do nothing to make him happy. Inexplicably, she began to feel ashamed of herself.
She looked at him, sleeping like a child but with the face of suffering one. He was having another bad dream but all she could do was watch him helplessly, unable to help him and unable to make him happy.
There as a stirring from the bed and Hermione’s eyes flew over to Draco who had begun to move a little. His eyes began to tremble slightly from under the lids and surely enough, they began to let light in with the fractional opening. Hermione knelt down beside the bed and put her hand on his forehead, brushing away the hair from his eyes. They opened even further and he looked at her, first confused but then a small smile appeared on his face.
“Hello,” she said, smiling as widely as she could before her eyes started to moisten. She felt like a total idiot.
“Miss me?” he asked, and for the first time in a very long time, he smirked. Again, the overwhelming emotion overtook Hermione and she laughed.
“More than you can ever imagine,” she said. She sat down beside him and since the bed was on a much higher level, he reached over and placed a soft kiss on her forehead.
“Thank you,” he said to which Hermione responded with a curious expression. “I don’t know for what but I know you did something because otherwise they would have been preparing for my funeral.”
Hermione felt an elated breeze soar through her body as she saw the animated movements on his face as he examined the rest of his room and then looked back at her with his grey eyes. “I really am quite high maintenance, aren’t I?” he asked. “It’s just never over with this.”
“You’ll be fine,” she promised. “Once this is all over, you’ll be back at the Manor with Pansy and everything will be alright and you’ll be happy. All you need to be is happy to forestall the pain.”
Draco cocked his eyebrow. “What about you?” he asked.
Hermione’s eyes lifted dramatically and part of her hoped that Draco hadn’t noticed the overly theatrical action. “What?”
“When this is all over, you’re not going to see me anymore?” he asked.
“No, no you need to be happy. You need to forget about all this awful nonsense and start a life of peace and calm. You j-”
“Hold on. You think you’re the reason I’m relapsing?” he asked. He sat up, much to his own distress when the pain surfaced a few seconds later. Hermione got up and handed him a pain relieving potion which he adamantly refused. “Answer me.”
“Well, I’m not helping,” she said. “We fight and I’m like this huge burden on you and I mean,” she felt herself falling apart, “I can’t even keep you a little happy.”
Tears began to fall mercilessly and she felt like a complete fool in front of Draco. She roughly wiped them with her sleeve and sniffed, using a tissue to clean away the salty remains. Draco tried to stand up but was far too weak to do so, so he motioned for Hermione to come closer to him. She knelt down, looking away and felt him place his hands on her cheeks very gently as he turned her face towards his.
“Haven’t you noticed that I only relapse when you go away? You’re the only one keeping me from death, Hermione and if you leave me, I don’t know what would happen to me but I can assure you it would be nothing good.”
Hermione shook her head. “You’re just placating me.”
“Do you know what it feels like right before I relapse?” he asked. Hermione shook her head. Part of her didn’t want to know the gruesome details but the rational part of her was very curious. “It feels like I’m drowning.”
He let go of her face and placed his hand on his heart. “This is like a weighted anchor that pulls me down with it every single time and I can’t breathe, I can’t see the surface and I can’t taste air. You save me from that. When I’m with you, I’m not a different person but I’m living in a different world. You bring me back to Hogwarts, to simpler days. When you left me because of what I said, I had no choice. Nothing was keeping me from going back to my own past and reliving the pain and losses that I have suffered.”
Hermione placed her hands gingerly on the bed covers. “Never again,” she promised.
He shuffled over a little and ushered to the space beside him on the bed. “You look like you need a bit of sleep,” he said.
She nodded, realizing that she hadn’t slept probably for days now. She lay down beside him and found herself right by his chest, noting how short she was compared to him. She looked up into his eyes and he smiled at her.
“I suppose the antidote’s working now,” she said. “You feel happy?”
He shrugged. “I just like the company.”
---
Hermione had fallen asleep hours ago but Draco had remained awake the entire time. His arm was protectively over her turned body while his mind wandered over the many thoughts trailing in his head.
He had seen Natalie again. He had even come close to touching her but this time his subconscious had changed. He saw her and he heard her but he had never been so distant from her in his life. The dream, or rather hallucination, had been interrupted by the fact that Natalie’s blue eyes began to change colour and her hair had darkened. Her sleek blonde waves turned into messy, brown curls and it didn’t take a genius to figure out who she resembled.
“What have I done,” he mumbled to himself.
“Quite a compromising position you’ve got yourself into,” Regulus muttered, smiling mischievously. He winked. “Glad to see that you’re awake, mate.”
Draco nodded courteously. “I apologize for snapping at you earlier.”
Regulus waved his arm and shook his head. “No need to apologize. But I see that you’re outlook has certainly improved. Did you see your life flash before your eyes like so many others do?”
“No,” he answered truthfully. “I saw my present.”
Regulus cocked his eyebrow. “What?”
Draco lowered his eyes onto the sleeping brunette and looked back up at Regulus. “I saw her.”
“Ah young romance,” he said, sarcastically fluttering his eyelids.
“It’s not like that,” Draco quickly corrected. “See, you said I was afraid of something. Every dream I have ever had has been about a certain other woman, not Hermione. I think I was afraid of being trapped within my past, with this other woman.”
“I don’t know why you seemed concerned – a beautiful girl in your dreams sounds good.”
“I feel guilty,” he said. “I saw the other woman at first and then all of a sudden I decided I didn’t want to see her anymore and then… poof…. She was gone. It was… it was just like…”
“Just like magic,” Regulus said. “Mind over matter, mate.”
----
Chapter 26: Fearless
Cassius nodded, a smile on his face. “She’s thinking that if she looks busy, we won’t notice her listening in. She doesn’t know anything about me, does she?”
a/n: oh my gosh, wow! I didn't realize how close I'd come to 1000 reviews! Thanks so much guys! It's almost been two years since I started writing this story. wow. erin
It was around 4 p.m. when Hermione woke up from her nap and not because she was feeling well rested but because she heard some muffled conversations downstairs. She blinked two or three times; the bed was empty but as she craned her neck over the foot of the bed she saw Draco sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall and reading something.
He heard her shuffle and looked up. “Oh, did I wake you?” he asked.
She nodded lazily. “Your reading is so disruptive,” she joked sarcastically to which he smiled. “What book is that?”
“They’re documents,” he explained, holding it up to show her. “From the Ministry.”
Barring the first few seconds of utter confusion, Hermione understood the voices from downstairs. “Harry’s here?” she asked.
“He’s talking with Eli right now,” Draco said. “I figured I should stay up here. He doesn’t seem too keen to talk to me.”
“He’s upset about Ron,” she said. “It’s not your fault.”
Hermione got off the bed and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her face was worn and aged beyond her years with mild remnants of the salty tears. She was wearing the same clothes that she had worn two days ago and her hair had convulsed into a large mass of frizz.
“I’m going to go shower,” she said. “I’ll be right out.”
---
“The burns were sealed,” Eli explained. “Fortunately, they weren’t as bad as Master Malfoy’s injuries so he will just sustain some minor aches until it all clears up.”
Harry nodded but couldn’t hide the concern on his face. “And he was alright when you last saw him?” he asked.
“I assure you, Mr. Potter, that he was.”
There was the sound of a door closing and then Draco appeared into the kitchen a few minutes later, carrying the thick pile of papers which included official Ministry documents, newspaper clippings and personal letters. Harry stiffened very slightly at the sight of Malfoy but not so much that an impartial observer would have noticed.
“Here,” Draco said, placing the stack on the table. “Around three of them seem to fit.”
Harry nodded. “Which three?”
“Edmund Abbott for sure,” Draco said and then reached for a small set of papers from the top as he took a seat across from Harry at the dining table. Eli began to prepare some sort of a dinner. “It says in the missing persons file that he was last seen leaving the pub at around three in the afternoon but never came home.”
“Right,” Harry agreed.
Draco put his finger on the map that accompanied the report. “He probably got taken right around here, near the Valley stretch. It’s surrounded by a whole load of trees and the path is also very sketchy. Hector was most likely the one who did it too. He’s the only one big enough to physically take on Abbott.”
“What about Sigmund Jewell?” Harry said.
“Too much physical evidence left at the scene,” Draco said, shaking his head. “Lestrange may be a dramatic killer but he’s a very clean kidnapper. That’s why he’s bringing everyone to the Manor before killing them: he wants to savour it and for the moment, Malfoy Manor is the only place he’s safe.”
“Margo Oswald also fit,” he added. “Has her family reported her missing yet?”
Harry shook his head in frustration. “She’s forty nine years old with no living relatives and no friends. Her boss at the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes insists on reporting her only after she’s been missing for more than a week.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “But I think she fits,” he said. “She was taken from her apartment and not a shred of disturbance left in the wake; that one was probably done by Marcus and his dreadfully ugly girlfriend – she has golden eyes, mind you, very disturbing.”
“But why these people?” Eli asked. He had been silent for most of the discussion but as he began to place bread rolls on the table, he skimmed over some of the documents on top.
Draco shrugged and then looked at Harry. “Any ideas?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “I’ll get their profiles once we’ve confirmed something. There’s clearly not much evidence.”
“Oh there’s never any evidence with Lestrange. When the man kidnaps, it’s like his victims vanish into thin air.”
“Well, I’ll check the profiles to see if anything comes up.”
“Just for the record, Potter, this is all being done under the table, right?” Draco asked.
Harry reluctantly nodded. “I know what it’s like to want revenge but the lives of my best friends are hanging in your hands,” he said. “Lestrange is yours only if you can guarantee that no one innocent gets hurt.”
“He is mine,” Draco said, feeling an odd surge of gratitude towards Harry. “I’ll have the Manor evacuated before anything happens.”
“I’ll have aurors on standby,” Harry offered and then seeing that Draco was about to protest, added: “No one will do anything unless you ask, don’t worry. But I’d feel better knowing that if all else fails, we could at least save whoever we can.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Draco assured him. He looked at the door, ensuring that Hermione wasn’t anywhere near and then said, “I’m going back to Malfoy Manor by the end of this week to search for Weasley and Pansy. If a fight happens, it happens but I’m going to try and avoid it. Hermione can’t know of it.”
Harry didn’t even bother asking why she couldn’t know. He knew that the moment Hermione would find out, she’d go flying to the Manor as well and that would endanger her. She was a brilliant fighter but Lestrange was a monster. “So you’ll clear out the Manor by the end of this week? Good.”
“It’s very likely that Lestrange won’t even be there,” Draco thought aloud. “I’m not in any physical shape to fight at the moment regardless.”
Eli had started to put the place settings on the dinner table when Hermione walked in with slightly damp hair, a clean face and a blue sweater over black pants. She looked tired but her disposition was significantly more relaxed.
“Harry,” she said, greeting him. “What’s going on?”
The two men shared a quick look before Draco spoke. “We’re figuring out who Lestrange is kidnapping. We’ve got two so far: Edmund Abbott and Margo Oswald.”
“Oh yeah,” Harry began. “Who’s the third one?”
Hermione sat down at the table, inhaling the scent of beans and beef with joy as Draco began to look through the stack of papers. “Ah, here,” he said, pulling out a newspaper article. “Christopher Bruty.”
Hermione took the piece of paper and began reading it out loud. “Though Ministry regulations don’t permit Mrs. Bruty to file a missing report just yet, the 39 year old witch is convinced that her husband, 43 year old Christopher Bruty, has been kidnapped. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that he has been missing except for a faint muffling sound that Mrs. Bruty thinks she heard at night. The following morning she claims to have woken up with unexplained bruises on her arm.”
“Her memory’s been modified,” Draco suggested. “She probably struggled with whoever came in at night, most likely Hector: his memory charms are so badly executed.”
“There are probably more people that he’s taken,” Hermione said.
“Probably,” Draco agreed. “But unless some more articles or reports come up, there’s no way to know.”
“So is that all that’s happened since I fell asleep?” Hermione asked.
“Pretty much,” Draco said. “Eli came back an hour later and he told me everything that had happened. A few hours later, Potter showed up with all the paperwork.”
“Dinner?” Eli said, placing a large bowl of beef and bean stew in front of the three of them.
“You’re staying for dinner, aren’t you?” Hermione asked Harry. “I’d imagine you haven’t eaten anything since yesterday.”
“Well, I kind of have to,” Harry said. “Ginny’s kicked me out of the house.”
“What?” Hermione asked.
Eli began pouring tea into Hermione’s cup as Harry explained his story. “I got home this morning and she obviously asked me what was happening and I didn’t tell her. I said that you guys were safe but at the risk of endangering her and Teddy, it would probably be best if she knew as little as possible.”
“Does she know we’re here?” Draco asked.
“No, and even if she did, she wouldn’t be able to get in,” he said. “She just got really angry and said that if I didn’t trust her, then maybe we weren’t ready to live together. She’s just angry.”
“I’m sorry about this, Harry,” Hermione said. “You can stay here of course.”
“No, I think I’m going to head back to my apartment,” he said. “The Weasleys are coming back from their trip to China in a few weeks anyways. I’d rather not get Ginny involved in this.”
The dinner was eaten mostly in silence since none of them had had a proper meal in a while. Occasional comments were passed about the next steps and it was concluded by the end of the meal, around 5:30 p.m. that Harry would retrieve the personal profiles of these potential victims and drop by tomorrow night with whatever information he could find. Harry also said that it would be best to keep an eye out for any other potential victims in the Daily Prophet, especially before the end of this week which Hermione didn’t understand but Draco seemed to agree with. When Harry left around 10 minutes after that, Hermione realized she had only about an hour in which to tell Draco about Cassius before she had to go meet him.
In her moment of extreme weakness and fear last night she had realized that lying to Draco was causing her guilt. There was no real reason to conceal Cassius’ aid and he would eventually figure it out so it was better he hear it from her than someone else.
The sun had almost set and the beauty of the orange glow that veered itself into the kitchen and onto the white walls stalled Hermione’s confession for a while. She admired the distinct diagonal pattern the rays formed because of the wooden shutters on the window.
“What do you want to say to me?” Draco asked, suddenly.
Hermione had been worrying about how to bring the subject up but she would never have imagined Draco to pry through her thoughts and force her confession onto her lips. “What?” she asked.
“All through dinner you were looking at your food like you had committed a murder.”
“How does one look at food when they’ve killed someone?” she asked. She was stalling, not on purpose but her subconscious kept steering off topic.
“Like you don’t deserve a good meal,” he explained, quite seriously. “You were staring at it as though all you should be eating is stale bread and rancid butter. So, tell me.”
Hermione sat down on the chair again and took a deep breath. She looked out the window at the comforting golden streaks across the sky before Draco took his seat beside her and his grey eyes fixed themselves on her face.
“Yesterday when I left,” she began and noted a twinge of guilt flicker across his face. “No, no… forget that.”
“Just tell me,” he said.
She needed to start at a different point in the story. She knew she should have planned this out but doing so would only have made her feel guiltier, as if she was constructing a story to tell Draco. “Cassius knows who I am,” she said.
Draco didn’t seem completely overthrown with shock and Hermione remembered that he predicted that Cassius had been the one to intercept her personal records. He was, however, distressed as though the confirmation added another worry to his mind. “It’s alright,” he said. “The Fidelus Charm will keep him out.”
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “When you left me at the ball that night in the master bedroom, he was there.”
There we go, she thought as Draco’s expression morphed completely. He stiffened and the mix of curiosity and fear had settled itself in. “He talked to me,” she continued, “about Adria. He’d read the book that I was reading about Adria and then he told me that he wasn’t going to kill me and… he let me go.”
To her surprise, Draco didn’t even bother wondering why Cassius didn’t kill her. In fact, that seemed to be the least of his concerns. “What book?” he asked.
Oh boy. “Flames of the Fiend by Matilda Frogwart,” she said quickly. She didn’t realize that she hadn’t told him about it.
“What else?” he asked.
“I went to meet him yesterday,” she said. She looked away like a child who hadn’t done her homework and lied to her parents about it. “I’m sorry.”
It seemed like everything within Draco collapsed at that very second. Physically, he remained taut but a huge explosion took place within his mind, the remnants of which could be seen in the sudden flicker in his eyes. It was even worse than she had imagined in her worst case scenarios and in an effort to make it go away, she kept on talking.
“He didn’t harm me or anything. I mean, he let me go so how bad could he really be, right? It’s just… I asked him to go back into Malfoy Manor and bring me the book and some other stuff about Matilda Frogwart’s family – I think there’s a connection to Adria.” That was good news, right?
But Draco couldn’t care less about the book. “Are you going to meet him again?”
Hermione pondered her only two options: lie or tell the truth. If she lied, he probably wouldn’t believe her but if she told the truth, she’d feel like a traitor. But then again, the very complicated surge of emotions within the blonde man had probably pinned her down as one of those at the beginning of this conversation. And that’s what really bothered her. She knew that she shouldn’t have lied to Draco but she had now become of the many others who had betrayed his trust.
“I’m supposed to, in forty minutes,” she said, checking her watch – another excuse to avoid his gaze.
The conversation didn’t last long after that but the turn it took was most unexpected. Draco got up and told Hermione that he’d like to accompany her, if she didn’t mind and then left the room once she agreed. She sat there, confused and wondered where the real Draco Malfoy had fallen through during the conversation.
---
They arrived in the freezing village with two minutes to spare. Draco walked at his own calm pace but Hermione hurried her footsteps over to the Three Broomsticks, worried that Cassius might leave when he didn’t find her. However, by the time she was halfway there and noticed that Draco’s strides still remained slow, she reduced her speed as well and walked by his side as they approached the small pub, covered in snow.
“I see him,” Draco said slowly, pointing to the corner of two streets where a figure, draped in an argyle sweater and blue jeans was sitting comfortably on the bench.
Cassius appeared to have seen them coming from a distance because he stood up and dusted the snow off of his shoes before greeting Hermione. Draco stood a few feet away as Cassius approached.
“I see you brought a friend,” he said, smiling.
Draco came in closer and nodded curtly. “Cassius.”
“Do I detect a sense of hesitation in your greeting?” he asked. “I suppose you weren’t too thrilled to come see me.”
“Not at all,” Hermione interjected as she motioned for them to enter the small pub. It was less crowded than usual so they managed to find a corner table where Cassius insisted on ordering dinner, which Hermione kindly declined but then agreed to have a round of drinks. The waitress brought Hermione a cup of mint tea, and a butterbeer for both Cassius and Draco.
“Here you go,” Cassius said, handing Hermione a packet. “Your book and the genealogy maps that you asked for are all in there.”
She smiled, impressed. “I didn’t think you’d show up today,” she said truthfully.
Cassius laughed. “Neither did I.”
Draco was sitting quietly, watching disapprovingly as Hermione accepted the package from Cassius and then reached back into her own bag. He took the package suspiciously then sneered at Cassius before placing it on his lap.
“You don’t seem to be too pleased to see me, Draco.” he asked. “I haven’t given you a single reason not to trust me, have I?”
“No, you haven’t,” Hermione interjected, worrying that Draco might insert some obscene comment. She continued rummaging through her purse messily. “I know it’s in here.”
The winter air began to settle as a new gust blew in when two new customers entered. The three broomsticks was extremely crowded with couples pushing past people to get their butterbeers and children angrily pulling at their parents’ coats so that they could go to Zonko’s Jokes Shop. The thick layer of snow that had set in on the ground outside was being broken as boots dragged the soiled ice in which eventually melted.
“Here,” Hermione said, grabbing a thick vile and handing it to Cassius. “This is it.”
Cassius took the bottle and examined it with disinterest. “Doesn’t seem like a fair trade off,” he said sourly.
Hermione rolled her eyes. “This is the antidote to the Fiendfyre,” she explained. “You need to take it as soon as your mood begins to decline. Don’t bother with any pain killing potions. I made this dosage really strong so don’t take more than a few drops at a time otherwise you might begin to feel a little uneasy at times.”
“Thank you,” he said and pocketed the clear glass container.
An awkward silence followed, broken only by Hermione’s attempts to comment about the weather. “Isn’t th-”
“Hermione, can you please give me a second alone with Draco?” Cassius asked, without looking at her. His gaze remained fixed on Draco.
Bewildered and slightly offended by this request, she turned to Draco who looked at her with a staid expression. Though he didn’t say anything, Hermione clearly got what he wasn’t saying. Go and let me be alone with him. You owe me this much.
“Right,” she said, uncomfortably as she got up.
She looked around foolishly for a place to go but her steps took her walking aimlessly so that she wasn’t standing around where she wasn’t wanted. She turned her head back, pretending to see if she stepped on anything but as her eyes darted over to the corner table she saw Draco and Cassius sitting in silence and she guessed they were waiting for her to actually go somewhere out of earshot. Where could she go? She didn’t really know anybody here. Madam Rosemerta had sold the place to a cousin of Seamus Finnigan years ago and retired with a nice sum of money.
She finally ended up in the washroom, receiving odd glances from the two other women in there as she grabbed a discarded Daily Prophet and began to read it. The wizard world seemed fairly ignorant of the trouble that was brewing beneath the surface; there were stories about the new Windblade prototypes that had leaked onto the market, a new use of mandrake juice as discovered by Neville Longbottom – wait a minute. Neville’s discovery had been over a year and a half ago… almost two years ago. She went back to the front page and saw that indeed, this daily prophet was almost two years old.
“Gross,” she said, tossing it aside.
“Excuse me!” an indignant voice came from behind. Hermione turned around in time to see a pudgy little woman picking up the daily prophet with her upper lip curled in disgust and her cheeks red. “This is mine!”
“It’s two years old,” Hermione said, and then regretted her words. The woman became angrier and began to mumble something in another language. Probably French, she guessed.
“I’ll have you know that the story of my niece’s death was reported in this very issue!”
Hermione was puzzled. “Uh sorry?” she said, not understanding why anyone would want a memento of such a tragic occasion. “Well at least you’ll always have this story to remind you of her death,” she added, as an insult to the injury she had already caused.
“Well, I never!” the woman said, brandishing her newspaper in Hermione’s face at which point she caught glimpse of a black and white photo staring at her, maddened with rage and twisted with insanity.
“Lestrange!” she cried.
“What?” the woman asked, clearly confused.
Hermione ripped the paper from her hands and read the article as the woman stomped her foot irritably and demanded that she be returned her artefact. “Rodolphus Lestrange still on the loose…” Hermione read aloud. “No signs of him… death eaters fleeing… Malfoys… Malfoys in capture… Lestrange’s trial postponed… only four witnesses brave enough to come forward… shall remain unnamed…”
The woman had left the bathroom huffing and bellowing, threatening to get the manager to reprimand this awful woman who has no regard for others. But Hermione couldn’t care less. “Leak in witnesses… though their identity is supposedly kept a secret to protect them, it is believed that Rodolphus Lestrange has already been informed of their names and an anonymous informant, claiming to be one of them and identified as a 47 year old from the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes-”
That’s where she stopped. It was so obvious. It was so clear all along and so simple. They were witnesses. He was killing the witnesses from his trial, erasing any evidence that could link him to the events that happened after Voldemort’s death. Naturally, in his days as Voldemort’s loyal servant, enough evidence had been collected and he had been condemned to life in Azkaban but his new killing spree would have surely earned him a dementor’s kiss.
“Four…” Hermione began to say to herself. “She tried to remember the names that Harry had mentioned… there was the woman in the article, who lived alone, the man whose wife was attacked as well and the man who went missing on his route home. That was three.”
“Hey lady!”
Hermione heard the voice of a man calling from outside, with the pudgy woman poking her head through the door. “I’m the manager here and this woman claims you’re harassing her.”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “For Merlin’s sake,” she muttered.
“Look, can you please just give her the newspaper?” he asked, through the door. “I’ve got my late rush coming in and I’m busy.”
Hermione scanned the article in a hurry, trying to find an allusion to the fourth witness. Someone who may have already been kidnapped or something they could still save. But there was no name, no description and no hints.
“Hey! Lady!” he called again, this time his voice got rougher. “I’m going to barge right in there if you don’t return her newspaper. Give it back or els- Oh yes, sir?”
The man’s voice suddenly went up an octave. Hermione wanted to peer out the door but she knew she should keep searching for the fourth name in her article. She began to read again, carefully keeping track of anything that might be a clue. Who are you, contestant number four?
“Is there a problem?” a man asked from outside, Hermione could hear the irritated tone.
The manager goggled and she heard some shuffling. “Absolutely not, sir. There’s some stupid woman inside causing a commotion. Please, I’ll be with you in just a minute.”
“Hermione, let’s go!”
Hermione turned just in time as Draco popped into the women’s bathroom. She opened her mouth to protest but before anything could happen, he grabbed her wrist and she felt the tug at her belly. The golden tiles dissolved right before her eyes and when she blinked again, they had appeared outside, in the cold night. She looked around, dazed when Draco removed his coat and put it over her shoulders and guided her towards a dry bench.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
Before she could answer, Cassius appeared from behind with a wide smile that reached from cheek to cheek. “That was fun.”
“That was you talking to the manager?” Hermione asked, suddenly recognizing his voice.
“We should leave,” Draco said, sharply as he stood up. “Let’s go.”
Without saying a word to Cassius, Draco took Hermione’s hand and began to walk towards the Floo station. She turned and waved once at Cassius before leaning in a little closer to Draco so that they could share the warmth of his coat.
---
“I’ve sent the letter to Harry,” Hermione explained.
Draco nodded, still a little distracted. “Good. He’ll be able to find out who the fourth witness is.”
They sat down on the bed, both cross legged. It was around eleven o’clock at night, so neither of them felt particularly sleepy and Eli had retired long since their return. “I suppose it would be stupid to ask what you and Cassius were talking about.”
Draco smiled. “I was waiting for you to ask me,” he said and then added: “But you know that I won’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“It’s nothing serious,” he assured her. “I promise.”
Hermione pursed her lips with force to keep herself from prodding further. She wanted to know, she had to know but she knew she couldn’t. She trusted Draco and she knew he would never lie to her so she just had to believe that whatever their conversation consisted of, it was of no effect to her.
“Tell me about this book,” he said. “The one about Adria.”
Hermione couldn’t help but smile at his transparent attempt to divert her attention. And she happily played along. She started off by explaining how she came across the text in the forbidden section and then showed him the book. She skipped through the first part of Matilda’s life and immediately segued into the part that mattered. She explained how Matilda tortured her mother and when she finally succumbed to the weakness, turned into the creature.
All through this conversation, Hermione watched with pleasure as Draco’s expression changed with every detail: from surprised, to confused, to enlightened. She was the centre of attention, granted it was the attention of one man, but the way that Draco listened to her made her feel more important than any of her symposiums and speeches at St. Mungos which took place in front of hundreds of people.
“Matilda Frogwart’s mother was a vampire,” Hermione explained. “She kept on trying to convert her daughter in the beginning with… experiments.”
Draco nodded. “Vampires really are trying to populate themselves. The small coven up in Northern Ireland grabs the occasional tourist now and then but it never works out.”
She twitched slightly at the thought of having her neck bitten. “That’s disgusting.”
“Okay, let’s go through all the similarities between Adria’s death and the mother’s,” Draco suggested.
“There are none,” Hermione sighed, exasperated, “except that they were both torture with dark magic before they were killed.”
“Maybe that means something.”
Hermione paused. “Maybe but I’m sure there’s some sort of connection. The way Matilda describes her mother, it’s too similar to Adria. She gets really excited when she’s given a particular stimulant, just like Adria did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whenever there was blood, her mother would freak out and get even stronger and harsher. Doesn’t that resemble Adria?”
“I suppose,” he mused. “But Adria got excited by screams. Whenever her victims would scream, she’d get stronger.”
Hermione threw herself on the pillow and grunted. “This is impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible for the great Hermione Granger,” Draco said, lying down beside her. Both of them propped themselves up on one elbow and faced each other. This lying down together was starting to become a natural instinct.
“This is hard.”
“Okay fine, but you have to admit something to me,” Draco said, looking at her mischievously.
“What?”
“Admit that you like this,” he said and a smile crept on his face. Hermione noted that he looked so much more attractive in the moonlight.
“I do,” she said with great ease. “I like being here, I like the mystery, I like the adventure and I like you.”
Draco looked down and smiled to himself, and then back up at Hermione. “Bet you never thought you’d say that, did you?”
“Do you like me?” Hermione asked.
Draco looked at her incredulously, as if she’d asked the stupidest question. “Of course, I like you.”
What an odd conversation this was. His face suddenly became sullen, draped in the blue moonlight. His eyes became distant and he turned on his back, looking up at the ceiling. Hermione remained where she was, keeping her brown eyes focused on Draco’s face.
“I’d like to go to Azkaban tomorrow,” he said. “I received an owl a few months ago that my mother’s been moved into the back cells.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It’s when prisoners are close to death that they’re moved into the back cells. Imminent death begins to agitate the dementors.”
Hermione was sure what to say and so ended up awkwardly mumbling ‘I’m sorry’ and continuing her efforts to analyze Draco’s expression. His sad disposition had taken over once again and she knew that his trip tomorrow wouldn’t help him much.
“Can you come with me?” he asked. His voice almost quivered a little and Hermione felt that she was talking to a scared child.
“Yeah.”
He got up off the bed, much to Hermione’s silent disappointment and kissed her forehead lightly before yawning and walking towards the door. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“I need to send an owl,” he said. “Goodnight, Hermione.”
“Goodnight, Draco.”
---
“Is she still listening to us?” Draco asked.
Cassius nodded, a smile on his face. “She’s thinking that if she looks busy, we won’t notice her listening in. She doesn’t know anything about me, does she?”
“Give it a minute and she’ll leave,” he said and surely enough, a few seconds later, Hermione trolled her way into the women’s washroom.
The Three Broomsticks was crowded enough now that no one would notice the two of them talking and moreover, no one would care. Cassius took a sip of his butterbeer and leaned over to Draco.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?” he asked.
Draco cocked his eyebrow. “No.”
“Oh yes, you are. The moment you came walking behind her to meet me, I knew you saw it too. I knew you’d realized it.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Draco replied coldly.
The mirth in Cassius’ face was evident now. “Pleading ignorance will do nothing for you, Draco. Especially now that you’ve wandered over to the good side, you should realize the dangers of ignoring the signs. You let Hermione come meet me, despite your own better judgement – now, don’t deny it. I know if you had it your way, you wouldn’t let her come within a hundred feet of me. So that tells me that you’re seeing it too and you’re afraid.”
“I let her come because I know you won’t do anything to stop me killing your sodding father,” Draco retorted sharply.
Cassius threw his hands up in the air, propped his feet up onto the table and spread his palms behind his head. “Now that’s just not true. Not the stop killing my father thing, that I will let you do. But that’s not why you let her come meet me.”
“Can you just shut t-” Draco began but the cries of a woman drowned him out. They both turned sharply and saw a pudgy woman squealing to the manager of the Three Broomsticks.
“It’s something about Hermione,” Cassius offered. “She’s not returning some…” he concentrated, “some newspaper?”
“Shit,” Draco muttered. “You distract the manager and I’ll apparate inside to get her.”
As Draco got up to help Hermione, Cassius put his feet on the ground to stand up. “Time is something not even I can control, Draco. History is beginning to repeat itself.”
---
A/N: Well, since you've all been very kind to me and given me over 1000 reviews, I thought I'd reciprocate with an early chapter!
Chapter 27: Azkaban
Draco smiled and winked. “Only for you, Hermione,” he said.
Relatively well rested but still dazed from the cold, Hermione had been woken by Eli at eight in the morning and presented with warm poached eggs and toasted bread in the kitchen. Despite the feeling of comfort as the crunch from the toast aroused her senses and the hot tea drizzled down her throat, she couldn’t help imagining that today would be a very depressing day.
“Master Malfoy’s gone out to meet Mr. Potter,” Eli explained. His suggestive tone indicated that he was merely presenting an unknown fact and not insinuating in any way that Hermione was looking around for Draco, even though she clearly was.
“Do you know why?” she asked.
Eli shrugged and began to clear up the kitchen with the wave of his wand. “I can only imagine that he wanted to do so before your visit to Azkaban.”
“Right,” Hermione said. “That’s going to be exciting.”
“Perhaps you should pack some extra antidote for Master Malfoy,” Eli said but Hermione waved her hand and held up a tiny glass vile in her right palm.
“Way ahead of you,” she said, and sounded proud. “This visit really isn’t going to be good for Draco.”
“He wants a chance to say goodbye,” Eli said protectively, as a father talking about his own son. “He was quite distraught about his father’s death even though he doesn’t seem to mention it quite a lot.”
A question prompted itself into Hermione’s head and given the absence of Draco, she thought it appropriate to ask. “What were his parents like, Eli? I mean, I know what they were like from the outside.”
She had a few adjectives ready to throw out but considering that one was dead and the other close to death, she didn’t feel that would be proper to do. She waited until Eli responded. “They were very protective of family,” he said. “Extremely.”
“Of Draco, you mean?”
He nodded. “He was given the best of the best – private tutors, flying lessons, everything. And when his mother wasn’t by his side – which didn’t happen very often, mind you – his father was teaching him the ways of the death eaters.”
Hermione grimaced. It was all a very pretty picture until Lucius came in. “And they both believed in Voldemort’s ways?”
Eli nodded. “They used to, but of course after the war things changed. I believe, however, that Narcissa still harbours the pureblood sentiments. ”
Hermione turned back to her eggs and started to prod them with her fork. Mentioning Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy to Eli was like talking about them to Draco: uncomfortable. Hermione knew Eli was smart enough to not get offended by her opinions of the Malfoys but she still felt awkward, talking to a loyal servant about their obviously immoral masters. Then a thought suddenly occurred to her.
“She’s not going to like me, is she?” Hermione asked.
Eli pursed his lips very slightly, indicating the all too obvious fact that he had known all along. “I do not think so.”
“She’ll recognize me,” Hermione stated. “And she’ll hate me for being who I am.”
“I honestly cannot say how pronounced her weakness has become,” Eli said, trying to be comforting. “Physically, she can barely move but I’m not sure what this has done to her mental capabilities. For all we know, she may not even register that you are Hermione Granger. She probably will recognize Draco though.”
She nodded. “I’d hate to think what would happen to him if she didn’t.”
“Are you finished?” Eli asked, ushering to the empty plate of eggs in front of Hermione.
She nodded and sighed as he removed the porcelain tray from her sight and guided it over to the small rectangular sink. Draco still hadn’t returned and it seemed that Eli was in the mood for conversation. Should she dare ask him?
There was a loud click from the outside, a little shove and Draco entered the house again, making his presence known by calling out Hermione’s name. She cursed at her missed opportunity but still felt relieved, knowing where Draco was.
“I’m in here,” Hermione called. “In the kitchen!”
He walked in and she was surprised with the huge amount of weight he was carrying. He looked fairly inconspicuous in his black pants and white button down shirt but the huge bag slung over his shoulder and the dizzying stack of books he carried in his hands undid the effects of his subtle dressing.
“What on earth is that?” she cried, getting up to help him place everything on the table. “Did you rob a library?”
Draco smiled and winked. “Only for you, Hermione,” he said.
Hermione’s heart leapt just a tiny bit but it was all too obvious that he was kidding. “I went over to Potter’s place and asked him to get me access to the Ministry library. I’d have gone in with my own name but… well, I figure Draco Malfoy should remain out of sight for a while.”
She scanned through the titles, mostly out of sheer curiosity but part of her also wanted to draw attention away from the bright shade of red that had definitely streaked across her face. Magical Creatures and where to find them, Beasts, Beasts and more beasts, Vampires and how to get to know them, The truth behind blood suckers, So you want to become a vampire?, A Comprehensive guide to dark creatures.
“I thought we’d get some research in on the way to Azkaban,” he suggested. “It’s a very long drive.”
“We’re driving?” Hermione asked.
“The Ministry carriages,” Draco replied. “Courtesy of Potter. They’re waiting outside for us.”
Harry really had been doing all that he could without directly interfering and Hermione silently thanked him for that. She knew how hard it was for him to stand by especially when Ron was the one involved.
“I shall see you both tonight for dinner,” Eli said, bowing graciously. He nodded once to Draco. “Good luck, Master Malfoy.”
He reciprocated with the same gesture and then led Hermione towards the front door which was still slightly ajar from the time he had entered. The outside was a loud more beautiful as the snow had settled on tufts of grass, leaving the occasional green streak. In the middle of the street, their carriage stood. It was not as gallant as Draco’s but nonetheless, it beat the floo network by miles. The dark grey panelling on the side bore the Ministry emblem and perched at the harness of the three thestrals was... no one.
“No driver?” she asked Draco.
“These ones are only for commute to Azkaban,” he explained. “The thestrals know where to go.”
She held onto Draco’s hand instinctively as he opened the door for her and helped her in, following close behind. The books were summoned through a charm and placed opposite them. Again, Hermione compared the pale blue seats to the red, velvety cushions of the Malfoy carriage, adorned with gold tassels and embroidery.
“Not quite the same is it,” Draco said, reading her mind.
She laughed. “Not quite.”
The door closed and as the carriage began to gather speed, Hermione closed her eyes. The irrational fear she had took over her body once again but instead of a smirking Draco, she realized that he had put his hand on hers and was holding onto it with extreme care. Before they had even lifted off, her eyes flew open and she looked down at the hand and then back up at the grey eyes.
Draco looked a little confused. “Should I… stop?” he asked, awkwardly.
“No,” Hermione said, and then regretted how quickly she had said it. “I just… it’s different from the last time we were here.”
She looked out the window with a little lurch in her stomach and realized they were already soaring through the air. Draco removed his hand and reached over to grab one of the many books that lay on the seat across from them. Hermione, however, was in no mood to study or research. The question that had been bugging her in the kitchen, which she hadn’t had the chance to pose to Eli was nagging her again. Something about the cold morning air as it entered Hermione’s lungs, the rush of energy as they flew high above the ground and the general frivolity of the situation prompted Hermione’s next words.
“Why do you and Pansy have sex?”
Oh dear Merlin. She cursed herself for sounding like a stupid little girl, quizzical and curious about things that were none of her business. Worse than that, she sounded like a little girl asking where babies came from. Shit, bugger, shit, shit, shit.
Draco’s internal response may have been similar but there was no way she could know. Instead, his eyes ballooned to the size of tennis balls and the grey pupils within were flooded with confusion and, Hermione noted this was very slight, guilt. Maybe he was also debating within himself if she really, truly had asked him such a question. There was quite possibly the most awkward silence of forty seconds before Draco chose to respond.
“Did you just ask me why Pansy and I have sex?” he said. Hermione was too distracted formulating her not-so-stupid response to analyse his voice.
“I think so…” she replied, sounding as uncomfortable as she felt. How on earth was that not-so-stupid?
She had already plunged blindly into the ice water, against her better judgement. “It’s just,” she began, trying to gather herself, “I mean, I know you guys... well, Pansy at least told me. And , do you love her?”
Oh holy crap, this could not get worse. Then she heard her last question in her head again. Nope, just got worse. Judging by the discernable mix of embarrassment and… what was that? Humour? He’s laughing at me.
“Why, all of a sudden, do you want to know?” he asked.
Honesty seemed to be the way to go. “When you told me last night that you liked me, I realized that I knew nothing about you beyond what I’d assumed at Hogwarts and what I’d heard from Harry and Ron. I mean, I know the kind of person you are but I know nothing else about you.”
He seemed disturbed by this thought and then countered: “I can say the same about you. If I tell you, then you should tell me something about yourself as well.”
“Agreed,” Hermione responded, eager to get her answer.
“Well,” Draco began, rather subdued. “I don’t love her, to answer your first question. But to address the overall issue, yes, I have slept with her.”
Hermione waited for him to bring up the ‘why’ part of her question and she wasn’t going to ask him again. But surely enough, a few seconds later he had recollected his thoughts, formulated his answer and then presented it to her.
“I was a very… controlled child, as I’m sure Eli has told you. Rigour and structure were part of my daily life and Pansy easily became an important characteristic of that. She was, to put it quite simply, the male version of me. Trained in the same arts, taught the same things and manipulated to grow up exactly the same. So it shouldn’t surprise you that our parents had arranged a marriage between us and during Hogwarts, that seemed a likely possibility. We slept together for the first time at the beginning of our sixth year and that was around the time of my budding death eater prospects. My father was… so proud, it was disgusting. And during that year, we slept together many times more and it became a sort of… release for me from my tensions of life. I was failing miserably at the task I was given and so I came back to my dormitory and had sex with Pansy. In my own way, it gave me a feeling of triumph when I failed at everything else. I never fell in love with her and nor she with me. We were just two people forced into a situation together. When, two years ago, Lestrange destroyed whatever I had left, I resorted back to that physical comfort because my mind was beyond repair. To be with Pansy again was like that sense of triumph – as stupid and shallow and…phallic as that may sound.”
Hermione listened with muted resignation. Meaningless sex for fun had seemed, to her at least, a much more satisfactory answer because it was simpler. Draco presented a much more complex view of himself which troubled Hermione. There was so much she didn’t know about him.
Realizing the magnitude of his confession, Draco gave Hermione a few minutes to absorb the information and waited for any follow up questions. She didn’t have any, or at least, she didn’t ask him anything.
“Now you,” he said, eager to remove the spotlight off of himself.
“Well what do you want to know?” she asked.
“I want to know about you and Weasley,” he prompted.
Hermione laughed and then thinking herself to be too cold, subdued herself with a smile. “That’s a very broad subject,” she mused. “We’d be here all day.”
“You two aren’t together anymore, right?” he asked and when she nodded rather solemnly, he added: “Why?”
Hermione braced herself for it was now her turn to reveal the more complex Hermione Granger, or at least, the darker one. “Ron and I had been friends for six years when he first asked me out during seventh year and naturally, it seemed logical. It followed the right pattern. First Harry and Ginny and then Ron and I and I have to admit that I did like him and was insanely jealous of Lavender and even Fleur when she gave him all that attention.”
Draco nodded, encouraging her to continue. “But we were different people and not different like opposites-attract kind of different. We were completely on different sides of every argument. He wanted to settle down instantly and get married, and I wanted a chance to rebuild my life. He proposed to me the weekend after the war ended. What was I supposed to do? And then when I told him it was too soon, we went back to dating but by the time I was ready for something more serious, he decided that his auror career needed his time. He loved me, that I don’t doubt but he never understood me. He couldn’t accept that I was no longer Hermione from Hogwarts. He thought that when I saw heavenly miracles in rain, it was wrong because it wasn’t logical. But how could I explain to him, make him understand that in seeing death, in seeing my life on the edge I had begun to accept a world beyond my comprehension?”
She began to feel emotions winding up inside herself and controlled her voice. “Well, anyways, we were different and neither of us were brave enough to face that. We stuck it out, hoping for something. I don’t know about Ron but every morning I’d wake up and hope that today I’d feel that electricity pulse through me like I’d always imagined but it never came. What you saw in the little village by the Manor was just the build up of years of self-deception and lies.”
Draco weakly nodded, oddly reminiscent of the way she had when he’d finished explaining his relationship with Pansy. Perhaps that was the only way in which to acknowledge such deep information.
“Do you think you can still be friends after this?” Draco asked.
She shrugged hopelessly. “We didn’t even really quite finish the break up. I mean, one minute I told him that I couldn’t be his girlfriend and the next I became Lady Malfoy and he turned into our evil friend Ronald. I do love him though, as a friend, as one of my best friends.”
“Relationships that revolve around circumstances don’t always seem to work, do they?” she added, as an afterthought.
“That’s not true,” Draco said. “Relationships can start off anywhere and in any way. It’s not how or when or where you meet someone but it’s the consequences of your time together that matter. Sometimes the person can be sitting right in front of you and you may not notice.”
Draco had planned his comment very carefully, ensuring that Hermione had been sitting beside him to avoid an awkward silence. “What’s sitting in front of us right now is a whole load of books,” Hermione said, making a smooth transition into a less taxing conversation. “I still can’t believe you brought them all.”
“I’m not a reader,” he admitted. “My father kept thrusting large voluminous texts at me while my mother used to leave classical literature on my bedside table. I decided that instead of disappointing one of them, I’d disappoint them both. In my life, I’ve probably only read one full book from cover to cover. But despite my disregard for books, I do know when they’re useful.”
“Alright,” Hermione said, rubbing her hands together dramatically and grabbing the top book from the pile. “Let’s do this.”
---
They were two hours into their research before their first break through.
In the first half hour, they had both silently scanned through their books, pausing when something interesting came up and the folding the corner of the page so that they could come back to it. Nothing but the rush of the air filled the silence and it gave them both a little time to themselves and perhaps, time to reflect on what they had just learnt.
By the end of the first hour, conversation had restarted and they began animated discussions about Adria and Matilda Frogwart. Hermione had brought along the book and charts that Cassius had given her so cross referencing was possible but other than agreeing that Matilda Frogwart was a twisted woman, no other consensus could be reached.
It was one hour later that Draco started to read out the first and only allusion to dark magic and vampires that he had found.
“Creating creatures of the night,” he began, reading from Vampires: A Study Guide, “vampirism is known to bind to dark magic.”
Hermione paused instantly and looked up at him. “Say that again,” she said, furrowing her brow.
“Creating creatures of-”
“No, no, no, the last part,” Hermione said.
“Vampirism is known to bind to dark magic.”
There was a slur of incomprehensible words that Draco strained his ears to grasp, but failed. She flipped through some pages, cast aside loose sheets of paper and scanned various titles before she turned back to him to explain herself.
“I’ve heard that before,” she said. “I can’t remember where but that seems so familiar. Except that it wasn’t about vampires.”
“Where? Can you remember when?” he asked.
Hermione shook her head. “Say it again,” she said, closing her eyes.
Draco smirked, much to her surprise and when she opened her eyes and looked at him with confusion, he added with a smile: “You make it sound like I’m saying something dirty.”
Hermione grunted and then smiled. “Please, just humour me and don’t say vampirism.”
He rolled his eyes and began. “Is known to bind to dark magic,” he said, slowly and clearly enunciating every syllable to ensure that Hermione could try and trigger her memory.
There was a two minute silence in which he analyzed the little twists and wrinkles that formed on her face as she tried to remember. Part of him was excited, of course but the rest of him was just plain amused. So this was the ritualistic process behind Hermione Granger’s intellect.
She opened her eyes, admitting nothing but defeat. “I can’t remember it,” she said, frustrated.
“It’s alright, it’ll come to you,” Draco reassured her. “I’m pretty bored with this stuff as is, and maybe getting your mind off of it will help things.”
“Shall we return to playing ‘Get to know me’?” she asked, sarcastically.
Draco’s lips parted, as he was about to form a word but the carriage came to a sudden stop with a thud. Barely being able to gather herself, Hermione looked out the window and into the open blue sea. It was a little disorienting, from her perspective and given the uneasy feeling of claustrophobia that had clouded her mind recently, to see the vast span of the water until it touched the horizon. It was mid-afternoon and the sun’s bright glare flickered playfully atop the waters, creating bright flashes of white on the pale blue.
“It’s beautiful,” Hermione breathed.
“Ironic,” Draco replied, “considering we’ve just landed at Azkaban.”
---
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Pansy asked, watching uneasily as the blood dripped out of Ron’s mouth.
“Yeah,” he muttered, rubbing his sleeve against his dry, cracked lips.
It was either day 3 or day 4, Pansy didn’t really know and honestly, she didn’t really care. Exhaustion had overtaken every fibre of her being. Exhaustion from excruciating amount of pain it took to execute the slightest movements due to her broken rib and newly acquired bruises and cuts. She was exhausted from the fact that she hadn’t slept properly in days out of fear that the slightest sound might be the death eaters coming to get them. And lastly, she was exhausted from the sheer amount of willpower it took to find reasons to stay alive, to chew on the few scraps of food that Eli had managed to scour before fleeing to find Hermione and Draco, to not run into the death eaters and hope that they’d end her misery for her.
In the back of her mind, Pansy knew that it would take a few days for Draco and Hermione to figure out how to come find them but the wait was killing her. She looked over at Ron, who was leaning against the wall with closed eyes. In their haste to move further down the passage to avoid the death eaters, he’d tripped over a large stone basin and broken his jaw, adding to an already long list of injuries which included a severe burn, multiple cuts and a broken ankle.
She sighed, eyeing the faint streaks of day that shone from the far end of the passage. There was no way they’d be able to escape. Eli had been the only choice and that had been when there were only Lestrange and his three men staying in the Manor. Now with more and more people arriving each day and more bodies appearing in the dungeons, escaping would be impossible.
In the faded darkness that was tainted with a few golden shadows that were merely a teaser of the freedom which they had foregone, they couldn’t really do much. The cold stone floor was terribly rough on the injuries that they both suffered and since they were below ground level, the frigid draft and small palettes of ice did nothing more than amplify the negative effects.
“Here,” she said, grabbing a piece of broken ice and wrapping it in one of the bloody cloths they had used. She pressed it gently against Ron’s face at which point he flinched but didn’t complain. “Does that feel better?”
“A little,” he said.
They had found themselves a small alcove, or rather, Eli had found them a small alcove that could fit two people with enough room left over for provisions and that’s where they had been for the last day or so.
“Here’s some bread,” she offered, placing it in his palm. “You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”
“No, I’m not really that hungry,” he said. “It’s better we save it for later when we’re starving. Your lips are turning blue.”
“I’m fine,” Pansy replied speedily. “No, it’s really okay, I don’t need your robe.”
But Ron removed the woollen robe that he had worn over his dress robes and handed it to her, despite her protests. “It’s my turn to sleep as is,” he remarked. “You can wear it till I wake up. If you die, Malfoy’ll probably blame me for it.”
She swung the robe over her head, with pain, and allowed the gentle, soft fabric to melt away against her skin. She looked over at Ron, whose eyes had begun to droop mercilessly, and felt a twinge of loneliness.
But within a second, or maybe even less, that feeling dissipated into sheer horror. “Do you hear that?” she whispered, her voice high pitched, as she rubbed Ron’s shoulders.
His eyes opened in a flash and he sat up. “What?”
But then his ears caught the shuffles in the farther end of the passage. There was movement, very slight but very evident. He moved his hand back and put it against Pansy’s shoulder. “Stay very still.”
“Maybe it’s Draco,” she guessed, but her own conviction was betrayed by the shakiness in her voice.
Within moments, the source of the sounds was revealed. A small figure was emerging from the darkness and small was an understatement. It was probably no more than three feet tall.
“It’s a… house elf,” Ron said, puzzled. “I thought you said they weren’t allowed down here?”
Pansy shrugged. “I is here to give the sir and madam something!” he said, or rather squealed. “Master Eli said that if an owl arrives in the kitchen, then Dory must come and give it to the sir and madam in the south tower passage.”
Ron shot his hand out immediately and received the letter. The elf also handed the red-head a small basket which he looked at suspiciously before handing to Pansy. “What’s in it?” he asked.
“Beef, pastries and a blanket,” the elf said. “Master Eli said to gives them to the sir and madam when Dory receives the first owl.”
“You have to come down here very quietly,” Pansy instructed. “We don’t want anyone finding us, Dory.”
The elf nodded eagerly. “Dory knows, and Dory will be very careful.”
“Thank you,” Ron said and the elf turned away squeakily, popping back into the darkness.
Given the extra provisions, Ron was most happy to eat something now. He dug deep into the basket and produced a thick, jelly-filled pastry that tickled his taste buds before it even entered his mouth. Meanwhile, Pansy had grabbed the envelope.
“It’s from Draco,” she said, excited and read it aloud: “Move another 25 yards north and push on the fourth brick from bottom on the left wall. Go through, turn south and exit west until the ground changes. Tomorrow at 3 a.m. Take care.”
Ron had already devoured his pastry and so stuck his head out, just a little to examine the passage which Draco suggested. “He’s smart,” he said. “He didn’t mention a single location that could be traced. What time is it now?”
“It’s 12:23 p.m.”
He cocked his eyebrow. “How did you kn-”
But he stopped when Pansy held up a thin, silver watch that Draco had enclosed in the envelope as well. Ron nodded, impressed, and then produced the blanket over his head, closing his eyes. “He’s smart.”
---
Azkaban was nothing new to Draco. He had been there many times before and today, it looked just as it always had. The huge stone walls were covered in filth and kept in the cold, dry air that reeked of blood and flesh. There was a small room before entering the actual prison where visitors were checked for any illicit materials but beyond that, there were no aurors, just dementors. They had been restored to Azkaban a year after they had been banned only because the Ministry realized the sheer power and control these creatures had over some of the deadliest prisoners known to man.
After their security check, Draco and Hermione walked down a long twisted passage before they entered the main holding cells. Immediately, Draco felt Hermione’s hand encircle his arm and she walked close by him.
“She’s here,” Draco said, ushering to one of the corner cells.
There was a pause as Draco took two steps forward while Hermione remained where she was. He guessed she didn’t think it polite to intrude on what could be the last chance they have to talk. He nodded to her with unspoken thanks and turned back to cell as he said, very softly, “Mother.”
He craned his neck into the cell and if he hadn’t visited the last few times, he wouldn’t have known that the small heap of cloth lying in the right corner was in fact his mother. She stirred a little, and then his second call drew her from the thin black sheets.
Whatever the stress of revenge had done to Draco and Hermione was nothing compared to what Azkaban had done to Narcissa Malfoy. Her long blonde hair was now as thin as straw, falling out periodically in large bunches. The colour had faded to a point where it just looked like soot mixed in with the occasional gray hairs. Her features had sunk deep into her face; no longer was her nose pointed and proud, no longer were her eyes bright and silver and no longer was her chin worn high as a Malfoy’s should. Her bones were sharp and pressed against her paper like skin with such force that it seemed like she was going to explode any second.
She looked at Draco for a moment, not understanding what this strange presence was.
“It’s me,” he said. “It’s Draco.”
“Draco,” she said, her voice was trembling and hoarse. “Draco. You came.”
“Of course, I did,” he replied. He bent down and placed his hands gingerly on his mother’s cheeks, feeling the hollowness.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” she said. “I always thought about how you would grow up to be such a strong man and look at you now!”
Draco smiled sadly. She had lost track of time. He’d come to visit her last month but to her it must have seemed like an eternity had passed. She pressed her bony fingers on his temple and then ran them down the side of his face, admiring her son.
“Where is your father, dear?” she asked, looking around the cell. “They usually let me spend a few hours with him.”
Even a sad smile seemed hard to muster right now. The doctors had warned Draco that his mother’s condition had worsened but seeing the effects up close was much more harrowing. She had forgotten that Lucius died four months ago.
“He’s dead,” Draco said. Were Narcissa her old self, she would have approved of his frankness and direct answer. I>Don’t sugarcoat things, Draco, it only makes you look weak. She always told him that.
Narcissa’s lower lip began to tremble. “Is he?” she asked.
He nodded, holding both her hands. “Mother, he died a few months ago. Don’t you remember? He tried to escape and they caught him. They even let you share a cell before his kiss.”
His mother nodded, somehow taken by the fact that she remembered something. “He told me to…” she paused.
“What did he tell you?” Draco asked. The doctors had said that recalling details was important but he was curious as well. “Mother, what did dad say?”
“He told me to survive,” Narcissa replied, looking very confused as she stared at the ground, furrowing her brow. Her blue eyes shot up into Draco’s and she put her hands out, as if reaching for him. “I miss you, my boy.”
He could tell that movement for her was fairly limited. She was weaker than the last time. Gently holding her hands, he pulled her into an embrace and smiled at her wet eyes. “You know I love you. It’ll be alright.”
Once again, Narcissa put her cold fingertips against Draco’s skin. “You look tired,” she said.
“I am,” he answered truthfully.
“Is Eli taking care of you?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yes, he is.”
“Monsieur Malfoy!” the French guard called from outside. “Your time’s almost up, sir. You’re already ten minutes overtime.”
A cold shiver began to sail through Draco’s bones as he realized that this may be the last time he would ever see his mother. With Lucius, it was different. His father was always a very imposing figure and when Draco didn’t meet his standards, nothing could shield the sheer disappointment and anger in his father’s eyes. Narcissa, on the other hand, was a mother. She was the kind of woman who pursed her lips irritably at a dinner when Draco behaved improperly but always defended him against Lucius, regardless of his conduct.
“You’ll be okay,” he promised her, placing his lips against her frail forehead and kissing it. “I love you.”
Narcissa put her head against his chest and her breathing became heavy and constrained. She was crying. “Please don’t leave me here, Draco.”
“Mother-”
“I promise I’ll do anything they want me to. I’ll testify… I’ll give them all the evidence just please… please don’t leave me here alone. The nights are terrifying, please!”
“I can’t just take y-” Draco pleaded, still holding on to her shoulders.
“I won’t even live in the Manor with you if you don’t want me to,” she begged. “I just can’t live here another second! Please! I want to grow old and die like a human being! Not like an animal!”
The French guard’s voice filled the thick air around them. “Monsieur Malfoy, I must insist.”
Draco looked away from the ice blue eyes that were filled with tears. He knew that once he saw into them, he wouldn’t be able to leave. “I have to go,” he said, staring at the floor.
He pried her fingers off of him and stood up, feeling smaller and worse than he’d ever felt in his life. Her pleading continued, but the whole encounter seemed to have weakened her. She sat back onto the floor, mumbling to herself and letting the tears flow. The cell door opened with a clank, and catching what could be the last glance of his mother, he turned away instantly, unable to bear the pain any longer.
When he reached the corner of the passage, he saw Hermione standing, absorbed in her thoughts. She looked up when she heard his footsteps. The weight of the world was crushing down on him and when he reached Hermione, all he could do was wait for her to put her arms around him and pull him into an embrace as he buried his head on her shoulder and for the first time in years, cried.
---
Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with an exasperated sigh. He had been searching for hours now. The Department of Records was almost closed for the day and he still hadn’t found out who the fourth witness in the Lestrange case was.
“Shit,” he muttered, shifting through what seemed like the thousandth stack of papers.
“Something wrong, Mr. Potter?”
The sixteen year old intern at the records department shuffled up from behind and tapped on Harry’s shoulder. He was six feet tall, extremely thin and his hazel eyes were hidden behind a wall of shaggy black hair.
“Basil, there are three witness profiles in Lestrange’s case file,” he said, pointing out the three stacks. “But there are four witnesses. Where did the last case file go?”
The intern shrugged. “All department heads have access to this place, sir,” he said. “And of course,” he added, indicating to Harry himself. “Certain important people have access as well.”
“Hundreds of people must have visited this department since the file was first issued four years ago. There’s no way I’ll be able to figure out who stole the file.” He grunted, and put his glasses back on.
“Actually,” Basil began, “all criminal files are reviewed when the case is reopened and if any evidence is missing, it’s noted down in the review documents.”
Harry looked at the young man with a new surge of hope. “Can you get me the documents for the Lestrange case file?” he asked and the intern eagerly agreed, rushing into a white walled corridor and emerging three minutes later with a small file folder.
“Here,” he said, placing it in front of Harry on the large black desk.
Harry opened the file, calming himself down so that he didn’t damage the papers in any way. There was a pink sheet on the top of the pile which dictated the protocol of reviewing a file. All evidence was first checked to see if it matched the checklist that was created when the file was assembled. When the verification was done, the examiner was to log the date of their review as well as sign in the presence of a co-signer whose name was noted. After that, the file could be used for the purpose of a criminal investigation.
Harry moved the pink sheet over to the side and examined the log.
“Well fancy that, Mr. Potter,” Basil said, peering over Harry’s shoulder and pointing to the first date. “Look at that. The original checklist says there are only three witness files.”
But Harry’s eyes weren’t focused on the original checklist. He was rereading the first review ever made to the Lestrange file, three days after it had been created. The examiner, the first person to have ever reviewed this file, had noted that all three witness files were present as well as all other supporting documentation. But moreover, the co-signer of the first review was a person very familiar to Harry.
“Mr. Potter, that’s your name!” Basil said, pointing at the name of the co-signer of the first review.
“That’s not possible. I have never seen the Lestrange case file,” Harry began. “And I have never co-signed this document… for anyone.”
“So it was forged?”
“Oh, more than that,” Harry said, rising. “Basil, the purpose of the co-signer is to assure that another person has seen this file and can vouch for the fact that it was not tampered with. If my name was forged as a co-signer, then that means the first examiner was by himself when he reviewed the file and he was probably the one who changed the original checklist from four witness files to three.”
“And so, after that, everyone just thought there were three witnesses because the original checklist said so,” Basil finished, amazed.
“Very good,” Harry commended. “But you know who wouldn’t forget that there were four people who could jeopardize his chance at freedom?”
“Rodolphus Lestrange,” Basil said. “But wait, who changed the original checklist? Who was the first examiner?”
Harry looked at the signature. He had seen it thousands of times before on documents, arrest warrants, official statements. The calligraphy was very distinct and even from a fair distance away, Harry saw how the dot from the ‘i’ ended with a curl that then joined it with the ‘d’. Basil was just an inexperienced boy and so he probably couldn’t make out the first and last name but Harry, who had seen the name so many times before, knew exactly who it was.
---
Draco’s head was tilted against the cushioned backing of the large red sofa in Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Hermione didn’t know if he really was sleeping or if he just wanted to rest in silence but she didn’t disturb him. She was sitting beside him and reading the last few pages of Matilda Frogwart’s diary as Eli prepared dinner.
She had married, quite late in life but to someone she believed she loved. Unfortunately, her rash experiments in foreign lands and many encounters with illegal magic had caused a sort of disease within her. She was sick, and she was dying. It was only when her first born child died three days after his birth that she realized that her disease was hereditary and that she had passed it on to him. Her daughter, born two years after, inherited a milder form of the disease and so managed to live. Matilda Frogwart died at the age of 44, never having solved the mystery of her mother or laying the ghost of her mother to rest.
Pondering the disastrous consequences of her actions, Hermione looked below the stack of books and saw a handwritten note, addressed to her. Curious, she held it up to the light and read it to herself.
The disease that Matilda Frogwart contracted was known as Fryer’s disease. I’ll assume that you are as smart as you are curious so there’ll be no need to explain the contraction of this disease to a healer as distinguished as yourself. Matilda Frogwart’s daughter, Felice, passed it on to her children as well and died at the age of thirty three. Her children, after passing it on to their kids, died at the age of fifty eight, sixty two and forty nine. You get the pattern. The disease was continuously passed on but given that only one parent carried it, it became less and less effective over the generations and her living descendents will probably live till about eighty or ninety. That’s not totally relevant but I assumed you’d want to know.
Cassius
Hermione recalled that Fryer’s disease could be caused in a multitude of ways but its symptoms always remained the same, particularly when the patient came closer to death: weakness, white liver spots on the arms and legs and the release of blood from the mouth. It was a slow process.
Her attention wavered when she heard a series of coughs beside her and she immediately looked at Draco. His eyes were still closed but he had begun to expel blood from his mouth. He was coughing and with every cough, more blood fell onto the fabric. She had anticipated this and produced a large bucket that was resting on the other side of the living room. She pulled it out in front of Draco so that the blood would mostly land there and put her hand gently on his cheek.
“Draco, wake up,” she said.
His eyes remained closed and she suddenly began to panic. But, with another tap on his face, they opened to reveal the grey irises that had suffered so much. He looked at her with confusion but before he could say anything, he began to cough again and this time, expelled a large clot of blood into the bucket.
Hermione placed her hand on his back. “It’s okay,” she said, as he bent over. “Your blood’s just exceptionally thin right now because of the medication. Your body’s trying to get rid of it.”
He sat up straighter and Hermione pressed her hand to his forehead. “Your temperature’s fine,” she said.
He nodded before throwing up another bit of blood. His body felt limp and drained, and he let it glide towards the floor where he sat, leaning against the seat. Hermione placed the bucket on the floor as well, right in front of him. She reached into her pocket and produced her thin vile with antidote in it. He took it from her hands and overturned it in his mouth. When the vile was empty, he sat back and pursed his lips, tasting the last of the drops that remained. The beetle extract in the antidote had probably settled the blood for a little while longer so Hermione pushed the bucket of blood towards the side and under the seat.
He pushed the hair out of his face and rubbed his eyes with fatigue, looking at the book that lay by Hermione’s side. “Did you finish the book?”
She nodded. “She dies in the end, because of a disease. Her husband wrote the last entry, talking about her death.”
He nodded. “That doesn’t really help, does it?”
“No,” she said. “But it’s nice to have an ending.”
They both looked up when Eli entered the room with a tray carrying an envelope on it. He placed them by Draco’s side and then summoned two cups from the kitchen and a kettle pot from which he began to pour some tea.
“A letter, sir,” he said.
Draco opened it, carefully laying his hand on the couch to stabilize his balance. He was still sitting on the floor and the rosy colour in his cheeks was yet to be restored. His eyes read over the words that were printed on the parchment.
“It’s from Harry,” he said. “Someone changed the number of witnesses in the Lestrange file from four to three. Harry thinks that it was the fourth witness himself who changed it.”
“Who?”
Draco stood up, trying to make his rising look effortless. “Henry Skeid.”
“What?” Hermione asked, standing up as well.
“It gets worse,” Draco informed her, a knowing look on his face. “Harry just went over to find Skeid and his house is empty – not even the smallest trace can be found. It’s almost as if he vanished into thin air.”
---
Chapter 28 - Rescue
This was an eerie twist of fate. This was time taking apart an old puzzle and putting it back together again. But it wasn’t completely the same. The roles had changed, positions reversed and the choice would now be his.
8:00 p.m.
“I’ll need at least two carriages.”
“I can arrange that,” Harry said. “Where should they be waiting? I’d assume anywhere near the Manor would be too dangerous.”
“No, they have to be close by,” Draco said, chewing on the last piece of bread they had left. “Weasley and Pansy are both practically unable to move right now so I don’t think I’ll be able to get them very far. Apparition in itself will be painful for them. One should be on the roof of the Manor, on the south side. I can apparate them to the roof safely.”
“Eli will drive that one, right?” Harry asked to which Draco turned to Eli who nodded.
“If anything suspicious happens,” Draco told Eli. “You have to leave for St. Mungo’s immediately. I’ll have my broomstick with me. However, if all goes as planned, then you will wait there for me to search the dungeons and bring back anyone alive.”
“I’ll be waiting at St. Mungo’s,” Harry said. “But what about Hermione?”
Draco looked away and buried his head in his hands. “I haven’t told her yet. She’s asleep upstairs. If she listens to me, which I doubt, she’ll probably wait with you at St. Mungo’s for Weasley.”
“Alright,” Harry said. “Last offer, are you sure you don’t want any other help with searching?”
“No,” Draco said immediately. “It’s just not worth it. The aurors will get lost before they can even start looking for people.”
“Fair enough,” Harry agreed. He got up and stretched, looking at his watch. “I’ll go and arrange the carriages. They’ll be here in about two hours.”
“Thanks,” Draco acknowledged, standing up himself and extending his hand.
Harry looked at it with a little confusion but he nodded gravely and took it, shaking it. “Good luck,” he said. “You’re not that bad, Malfoy.”
---
8:30 p.m.
Draco entered the room as silently as possible, peering over the wooden door to see if Hermione was still asleep. He found her, slumped over an arm chair with her neck positioned towards the window and her head bent low. She had two books resting on her lap and a mess of papers that ran along the floor to the bed. He sat down on the bed, beside her and watched as she breathed slowly and calmly, with each line on her face tensing and then relaxing as she revelled in her dreams.
He couldn’t help but thinking of Hogwarts. It hadn’t been that long since his graduation but it felt like an eternity. Long gone were the days when duels in the corridors and laced butterbeers were the only concern of his. Moreover, long gone were the days when Hermione Granger was part of the most despised trio in his life. Had he really hated her? This wasn’t the first time this question had popped into his mind but sitting here, watching her sleep made him want to face the answer.
He hadn’t hated her. It was more like an extremely strong dislike for what she represented – for whom she represented. She was a muggle and for that, he could not have liked her, he could not have been her friend. He could not have seen past one stupid title and discovered the sparkling intellect, unwavering curiosity and fiery passion within this one woman. But he knew now that this whole business of purebloods and mudbloods was one large pile of bullshit. And right now the only feeling that coursed through his veins was that of unyielding gratitude for having been given a second chance.
She turned onto her side and he realized that within a few minutes, he would wake her up and the peace on her face would be tainted with anger and contempt when he would tell her that he was going to Malfoy Manor in a few hours without her. She would insist on coming but he wouldn’t let her do that; friendship was not the only second chance he had been given. He stretched his arms above his head and prepared to tell her what he knew she wouldn’t want to hear.
“Hermione,” he said, smiling as her nose wrinkled when he touched her face. “You’re late for a test!”
Her eyes flew open and for a moment, it seemed she had believed him but then her gaze fell on his amused face, as he tried to stifle his laughter and she made a sour face at him. “Not funny,” she grumbled.
“I have something I want to tell you,” he said. He jumped right in, hoping that this speed would prevent him from cowering.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He looked out of the window in response to her question. He knew it: he was beginning to chicken out. Part of him, the scared part, wanted to leave while she was sleeping and avoid any sort of confrontation but he knew better than that. She repeated her question, this time emphasizing the urgent tone in her voice. “I’m going to Malfoy Manor,” he said.
Hermione looked confused and then, as if she heard the words in her head again, shook her head furiously. “We can’t go to Malfoy Manor now! We still don’t know how to stop Adria.”
He smiled briefly, more so at her immediate assumption that they were both going than because of a cheerful disposition. “We are not going anywhere. I am going to Malfoy Manor and you will stay here, or you can go to St. Mungo’s with Potter.”
Just as he had expected, Hermione’s creased her fair skin and furrowed her eyebrows. “You’re absolutely ridiculous,” she snapped. “You’re not leaving me here and going to get yourself killed.”
“I need to get Pansy and Weasley and the witnesses,” he defended. “You don’t know your way around the dungeons either. You’d get lost. It’ll be much more… efficient, if I go by myself. Eli will be on the roof with a carriage and we’ll get to St. Mungo’s the moment I evacuate the Manor.”
He put his hand on Hermione’s arm, but she got up and shrugged it off, angrily. “Is there something wrong with me?” she asked.
Draco was taken aback. “What?”
“I think there’s something you can’t trust about me or something you just can’t get used to because every time something’s about to happen, you insist on me sitting on the sidelines. Do you really think I’m that weak?”
Draco stood up, and pressed his fingers against his forehead. “Now you’re the one being ridiculous. You’re an amazing witch and I’ve never doubted that for a second but there are times when one must go alone.”
He could understand her anger and he could understand the reason behind her insistence that she should go as well but he would not, he could not fathom why on earth she felt this reflected her abilities as a witch. “You’re going to say the same thing to me when you fight Lestrange when it is very well my right to get my revenge too.”
He shook his head and put his arms on her shoulders, trying to stop her and make her look into his eyes. Maybe if she looked long enough, she would see that he was being nothing but earnest. “I swear to you on my magic, I will not fight Lestrange without you.”
She seemed to be out of her frenzy, if only temporarily. Her upper lip, which had been curled in anger, was now calm and slightly tense as Hermione tried to find another reason to argue. Apparently, she couldn’t find one. “You promise?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Draco agreed. “But I need to get in and out of the Manor as soon as possible tonight and I can do it fastest on my own.”
She shrugged her shoulders as he released his grip on her. Resigned, she began to pick up the stack of papers that were strewn all over the floor and said, “Fine.”
“Alright,” he replied, sighing with relief. At least there had been no broken or thrown items in the process. “Are you going to go with Harry to St. Mungo’s?”
“No,” Hermione replied, abruptly and Draco sensed a little antagonism. He guessed she was still annoyed at him. “I’m going in the carriage with Eli. Ron and Pansy will need medical attention. They’ve been living for three days with serious injuries and no medication. I won’t come to the dungeons but you’ll need more than puppy dog eyes to keep me sitting in a stupid hospital waiting room wondering every second whether you made it out alive or not.”
“I’m not going to die,” Draco said, putting his hand on her face. Why was this touching thing becoming so instinctive?
Hermione grabbed a few books and jammed them into her bag, swinging it onto her shoulder. She tossed Draco a set of black robes. “That’s a promise I’m going to make sure you keep.”
---
12:00 a.m.
“Okay, hold still,” Ron warned. He was glad that it was dark for fear that the light might have betrayed the fear in his eyes. “This shouldn’t hurt.”
Pansy was leaning against the wall with her eyes closed tight. She had her hands placed against the rough brick, both of them were clasped in a fist and her breaths were hard and heavy, as if anticipating the pain that was inevitable. She had ripped a hole through her dress through which the thick, red congealed blood could be seen above her ribs. They had to move in a few hours and the open wound wouldn’t allow that. After much debating, Ron and Pansy had come to the terrifying conclusion that it had to be stitched up or the blood loss would be too great and the pain unbearable.
Ron held his wand to her torso and repeated the spell in his head a few times so he wouldn’t make a mistake. The stitches would appear within a second but the lack of a sedative potion meant that the pain would be full on. Pansy had suggested knocking herself out but there was no telling when she’d recover and they had to move fast. They had three hours according to Draco’s watch.
“Okay,” Ron said, with a tone of finality as he braced himself.
Pansy nodded, her eyes still shut tight. She had a cloth tied around her mouth to prevent the screams from reaching too far. Ron knew that any more delay would just be a waste of time. He took a deep breath and said the words, as clearly as could. “Consui!
Thin black string materialized around Pansy’s wounds and wove itself up, tightly and quickly. But the look of sheer terror as she opened her eyes and took in a sharp breath was mind numbing. The cloth muffled the scream but it looked as if the piercing feeling had etched itself into Pansy’s face. Her eyes widened and her skin became pale but the ordeal was over within a second.
Ron, to his own surprise, had been particularly agile in grabbing a piece of discarded cloth and pressing it gently against the wound. The aftermath of the stitches stung Pansy with a great deal of strength and he heard her whimpering through her muffled mouth.
“It’s okay, it’s closed,” he assured her. “We’ll be out of here soon.”
She gave him no response and Ron didn’t bother waiting for one. He removed the cloth from around her mouth and handed her a small pastry, hoping that the food would give her enough energy to endure the stinging. Unsupervised administration of any medical treatment was likely to end badly, he knew that and judging by the growing redness around her wound, he prayed that this escape would go smoothly. His broken jaw had created purple and black bruises on the outside of his mouth and a severe, sharp throbbing at the back of his teeth. And those were just the new injuries.
“What…” Pansy struggled with her words. “What time… is it?”
“A little past midnight,” he said, checking the watch again. “Get some rest. I’ll stay up.”
She nodded, leaning her head back against the wall and placing her hand over her stitches. Three hours and they’d be able to leave. They’d be back with warm water, fresh food, an unstoppable supply of medication and treatment and a bed on which to sleep, peacefully.
---
1:30 a.m.
“The second carriage is enchanted,” Draco explained to Eli. “It’s going to wait on the outskirts of the forest. It’s a decoy. The moment your carriage takes off, it’ll leave too but it’s heading to a field just North of here. It’ll at least delay anyone who might be following you guys. I’ve got my broomstick and I know most of the dungeons, so I’ll be fine. If all goes well, I’ll come with you but you have to leave if anything happens.”
“Yes, sir,” he responded.
The carriage was the same as the one that had taken them to Azkaban. Eli held the door open as Hermione and Draco both got in. The two of them sat on the uncomfortable seats and within moments, Hermione heard a thump as Eli mounted the front. There was a pause and then the carriage began to gather speed.
“How long will it take to get there?” Hermione asked.
“Around an hour,” he said, checking his watch to make sure they were on time. “That’ll give us a half hour to get everything settled. I’ve told them 3 a.m. and if all goes according to plan, we’ll get there exactly in time.”
“Right,” Hermione said, nervously eyeing the clock. She was beginning to get worried. So much relied on this plan, which was, essentially, a hope that no death eaters would catch them in the act of escape. She grabbed her book and began to absentmindedly flip through the pages. Within that time, the fatigue of four days caught up with her and she fell asleep. But for that brief space of time, she entered a happier world without pain, without injury and without sacrifices.
---
2:10 a.m.
Cassius had his eyes closed as he lay by the window on one of the armchairs. There was a brief shiver that passed through him when he heard a woman’s voice in his head. He sat up, strained harder and then, like a door opening, all his thoughts melted away and he heard the voice again. There was a man’s voice as well and instantly, he knew it was Draco and Hermione.
He stretched a little and then lay back down on the chair. The night air was thick and cold but the sky itself was clear of anything that might have obstructed the glowing orb that majestically watched over the world. He smiled to himself. They had decided to come for the hostages after all. Cassius knew Pansy was somewhere in the Manor, with another guy whose voice he couldn’t recognize – he had heard them talking for quite some time now but it seemed like one, or both of them, was asleep.
“We’re almost there,” Draco said.
There was quite a distance to cover and that was confirmed when Draco told Hermione that they would be there within thirty minutes or so. But her mind was off somewhere else. The already evident smile on Cassius’ face widened when he realized that Hermione was thinking about him. She was wondering if she should have sent Cassius an owl to perhaps confirm that Lestrange wasn’t at the Manor or at least, asked for his help. She really did trust him.
This was an eerie twist of fate. This was time taking apart an old puzzle and putting it back together again. But it wasn’t completely the same. The roles had changed, positions reversed and the choice would now be his.
---
2:50 a.m.
They landed relatively smoothly on the roof of the South Tower with ten minutes to spare. The second carriage had arrived a few minutes behind them and Eli had taken it onto the outskirts of the forest to lay it as a decoy in case death eaters caught on to them. Now, all they were doing was waiting. When he came back, Draco would leave.
“Eli will be able to find his way back, right?” Hermione asked, nervously eyeing the dark forest below.
“That’s like asking if the world is round,” Draco said, calmly sitting back. “He’ll be back soon. The walk is a little long and not to mention, slightly treacherous.”
“That’s comforting,” Hermione retorted. She was now reconsidering her decision of coming. Would she really be able to sit back and calmly wait while he retrieved Ron and Pansy?
“Well it’s comforting knowing that the creatures in our forest will devourer any death eater that seeks to follow them. And not to mention, we’ll able to hear from miles away if any one of them encountered danger.”
Hermione furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”
“The banshees in the forest can screech blue murder,” Draco said. He continued to say something else but paused when an expression of pure horror had struck Hermione’s face. “What’s wrong?”
“Banshees!” she screeched. “Oh, how could I have missed it? Banshees!”
“Hermione, what’re you talking about?”
She turned around roughly and ran her hands through her backpack, pulling out a thick, weakly bound book that Draco recognized as ‘A Comprehensive Guide to Dark Creatures’. It was one of the books he had borrowed from the Ministry library. Hermione’s fingers were scouring each page, madly searching for something until she stopped at a particular section and shoved the book in Draco’s hands. “Read it,” she said.
Banshees are known as the lamenters of death. Their presence is a forewarning of bereavement, a fact often forgotten when onlookers hear their high pitched screeches. They are generally a more restful dark creature, appearing only when death is imminent but in the times of You Know Who, when death was a much stronger occurrence, their numbers increased greatly. They often rest in heavily wooded areas and are easily set off when they sense an intruder in their territory. Their main source of food is human shells (the body once the soul has departed); though in recent years they have been known to feed off the shells of animals as well.
Aside from their piercing screams, their fluid movements and alluring appearance strengthen them as predators as well as their ability to bind with dark magic.
“This is the book I read in your library.” Hermione said, exhausted as if all her research had culminated in this one final moment. “Banshees.”
Draco read the passage again, and then a third time over. Hermione pressed her eyes in her hands to ward off the fatigue but this revelation seemed to have drained the last bit of energy out of her. It was a dead end. Banshees were only found in heavily wooded areas, like the Malfoy forest. Adria was tortured in the dungeons. They had reached a dead end.
But Draco’s face was much more animated. He was no longer tired but suddenly very aware of the world around him and particularly, the words on the page in front of him. He couldn’t stop staring at them.
“It’s a dead end, Draco,” Hermione said in a heavy voice. “Adria was killed in the dungeons. Banshees are found outdoors.”
However, he didn’t respond. His eyes were fixated on the page. Was there something that she had missed? The watch on Hermione’s arm beeped 3 a.m. which meant that Ron and Pansy would have reached their location by now. Right on cue, Eli appeared from behind them, emerging unscathed as though he had just taken a luxurious walk in the fields. He paused at the dumbfounded look on Draco’s face but he registered their tight deadline and spoke.
“It’s 3 a.m.”
“Right,” Draco replied. He rubbed his face with his two hands and stood up, getting out of the carriage. He turned to Hermione. “Keep researching.”
“It’s a dead end,” she repeated. “There’s nothing more we can research here.”
Draco shook his head. “Adria was found in the dungeons. Lestrange dumped the body there the day before the official ministry investigation was to start. She was tortured in a small shack on our grounds – incidentally, the one located right in the middle of the forest.”
---
3:05 a.m.
“I don’t see anything,” Ron said, staring into the blackness.
They were exactly where Draco had instructed them to be. They had crawled north, in extreme pain, pushed the fourth brick from the bottom which had required a great deal of effort since neither of them could count in the dark, gone through the small passage that had appeared, leading them towards a small hole and finally, stopped when the cold stone floors turned into thick mud.
“He’ll be here,” Pansy countered with confidence. It was amazing that even after all that had happened, she had the energy to pretend to be hopeful. They both knew that there were more than just piteous obstacles in their way. For all they knew, Lestrange could be waiting in the corner, hoping to catch Draco and snap his neck in half. The deafening silence was ringing in their ears again but this time it was dulled by the soreness in every bone in their bodies. They were tired, hungry, sick and injured.
“Shit,” he muttered as he shifted his weight towards the left side of body to reduce the throbbing pain from his right side. “Are you sure it’s three in the morning?”
“Yes,” Pansy snapped irritably.
“Well, Malfoy’s not here, is he? The only thing that can make this better is a couple of death eaters hungry for blood. Or maybe, maybe we’ll meet Lestrange himself and we can introduce ourselves.”
“Oh you’re so witty, Ron,” Pansy retorted sarcastically. “If you’ll maybe just shut it for a second, we’d be able to hear something.”
There was a rumbling sound above them and they both moved out from under that particular spot above them. The ceiling was high enough that they could stand but judging by the staircase that had led them down here, they both knew they were further underground than before. Ron took out his wand, carefully pushing Pansy behind him and holding it up to the top so that he could be ready to disarm whoever it was that entered. Or it could very well be Draco himself.
A small pop resonated behind them and before they could fully register the new presence, Draco put his arm on Pansy’s shoulder and she fell into his embrace. “You’re alright, the both of you?” he asked.
He pointed his illuminated wand at the pair of them and grimaced at the blood and dirt that had almost become part of their appearance. “We’re alive,” Ron said.
“I think there’s someone above us, Draco,” Pansy said, pointing to the very faded rumbling sound.
“It’s Marcus,” he replied. “Don’t worry, this little room is basically sealed off from the rest of the dungeons. You can’t hear what’s going on in here from above, below or anywhere around.”
He helped Pansy over to the corner of the room and Ron hobbled over with the help of the wall. He put his hands on their shoulders. “We’ve got to hurry back.”
There was brief pause in which he cleared his mind and imagined the roof of the South Tower as the strong tug at his navel pulled them out of the dungeons and into the night air.
---
3:05 a.m.
Hermione’s adrenaline rush was sustaining her quite well. She had read through the banshee article twice, jotted down a few relevant notes and then referred back to her vampire text. It was making sense now, just like a fog clearing up on a cold day. She enjoyed the work to the extent that it also prevented the horrifying thoughts she was having about what was happening in the dungeons with Draco. They could be anywhere.
No, stop.
She diverted her thoughts back to the books in front of her. She had to keep reading. She noted that she needed to do some more research on the “binding” of dark magic with creatures and how that affected the death. Matilda Frogwart’s mother was a vampire, and she was tortured with dark magic until she died. However, being a vampire, the dark magic ‘bound’ to her and created this ghastly creature. She displayed the classical symptoms of vampirism when she transformed. She closed her eyes and remembered a small passage from the diary:
During her attacks, she was often excited by the blood of her victims which only egged her on more – generally, she left no survivors.
She was a vampire and so blood excited her even further. Similarly, Adria was lying in the forest when a banshee must have discovered her, being drawn to death quite easily. But the effects of the dark magic still hadn’t worn off the human shell and so the banshee, after consuming the body, bound to the dark magic and turned into the creature that now resided within Malfoy Manor. And like Draco had said to her so many months ago, the screams are what excited her - because she was bound to a banshee.
That made sense.
Hermione shut the book loudly and threw it by her side. The whole experience had culminated with a very anticlimactic revelation that should probably have been noticed by them before. There still remained the matter of somehow saving Adria and putting her soul to rest but now that they had their information, it would only take a matter of days before they figured out how to stop her. So much had been lost, so much had been changed by this one missed fact and she thought about what life would be like if she had made the vampire/banshee connection long ago.
Was that what made it anticlimactic? She thought about every single thing in her life that had changed since moving to Malfoy Manor. Her friends, her relationships, her past, her future, her personality, her desires… nothing remained the same. The transformation within her life had been so powerful, so effectual that it was insurmountable to have been caused by one tiny overlooked fact.
Her hands began to run through the books and articles she had packed, anything to keep her busy. There were the genealogy maps that Cassius had sent her; she would look at those later. She scanned through the other titles she’d brought along but for the most part, she and Draco had already looked through them and taken out the important information. Restless and terrified of imagining all the things that could be going wrong right now, she pulled out every other secondary source of information she had brought along from her backpack. There had to be something she hadn’t read through.
That’s when she saw the little piece of paper wedged messily between two large volumes, crinkled and crushed at an awkward angle. Pulling it out, she didn’t recognize it until she pressed out the folds and saw the angry face of Rodolphus Lestrange staring up at her. It was the article she’d taken from the woman in the Three Broomsticks; she must have thrown it into the bag during her hurry to pack and she read it through again, thanking her stars that she had managed to find it. Without it, they might never have known about the fourth witness and Henry Skeid.
It was funny how things worked sometimes.
Making sure the article wasn’t damaged, given it’s age, Hermione unfolded the entire thing and caught a glimpse of the back of her Lestrange article. The word jumped out at her: ‘Malfoy’. She curiously flipped the page over and read the title. That was odd. There was a picture associated with the article and as Hermione’s eyes scanned the faded print, her heart began to feel heavier and heavier. And then she read it again. And then a third time. When she got to the fifth time, she had pretty much memorized the words.
Suddenly the foreboding sense she had been feeling became a lot more real. There was something she didn’t know. There was something she didn’t know and Draco had to have known it and he hadn’t told her. All this time together, all those moments spent alone and he was hiding something from her. This puzzle she was trying to put together was missing pieces, many pieces and something told her, very important pieces.
Her thoughts were broken by a large thud on the ground and she immediately knew who it was. Grabbing her cloak, she pushed the carriage door open and saw Ron and Pansy slumped on the floor, clutching their sides in pain. The apparation had been painful for them and Ron, who was nursing his leg, seemed to have taken it slightly better than Pansy, who was gasping for breath. Draco lifted her off the cold ground and carried her towards the carriage while Hermione put her arm around Ron’s and helped him off the floor.
Eli rushed into the back and laid them both down on the cushioned seats where Hermione began to take out her healer supplies. She looked up at Draco for a brief second where he smiled at her and she froze. He closed his eyes and disappeared into thin air.
There was no time to mull over her thoughts and so she began searching through her bag and produced a tall vile of dark blue liquid. She shook it a couple of times and when it lightened, she placed it beside’s Pansy’s lips and allowed a few drops to seep in.
“What is it?” Ron asked, he was still clutching his side but unlike Pansy, he still had the ability to talk.
“Sedative potion,” she said, looking over all the injuries. “I can’t imagine what you guys must have gone through down there.”
“I hope no one ever does,” Ron responded. Pansy’s eyes dawdled on the two of them for a few seconds before they began to close down on her dark pupils and she fell into a peaceful sleep.
Hermione turned back to Ron and held up the vile, to which he nodded very briefly. She pressed it against his cut upper lip and he winced as she turned it into his mouth and emptied it so his eyes began to feel heavy and he went into a dreamless sleep.
“Here is the plaster, Ms. Granger,” Eli said, passing her a white box through the window from outside. “Will that be all?”
“For now,” Hermione replied.
She pursed her lips as she used a shearing spell to cut through Ron’s shirt and revealed the minor cuts that surrounded his huge burn. After dosing him with a few drops of her Fiendfyre antidote, she began to clean up the infected flesh and stitch up the cuts. The little drips of potion and sound of her gauze at it swept against the rough skin kept her mind far away from thoughts of particular importance.
The bone healing potion she had was a little too cold to be administered right now so she put a warming spell on it and left the flask in the corner, turning to Pansy. Despite being a fully trained and advanced healer, she felt herself suppress a yelp when she saw the messily stitched up cut down her sides. Ron had probably done it, judging by the inexperienced handling of the spell but as Hermione began to undo them and see the full gravity of the wound, she realized that he had also probably saved Pansy’s life. The stitches came off relatively smoothly and Hermione used her wand to clear up the dried blood and infected regions. She pressed a cold pack against the red induration and within a few minutes, finished tending to that particular wound.
“Drop your wand, love.”
The voice registered only a few seconds after it reached Hermione’s ears. She felt a coarse hand grab her arm and pull her out of the carriage, during which she felt her wand slip through her fingers and roll under one of the seats. The faceless hand flipped her around and placed a sharp object to her lower back.
“Are you alone?” he hissed.
They hadn’t found Eli yet. Hermione breathed calmly and nodded, whispering a very inaudible assertion. She was a few inches away from the carriage and she realized that if she leaned a little forward, she could secure the door and close it.
The sharp object dug deeper into her skin and she figured it was a wand of some sort. The man pressed his hard fingers into her shoulder and spun her around violently, pointing the wand right into her chin. It was Marcus; though in the moonlight his eyes were much more vivid and sultry. His cold breath was on her neck, materialising as frost as he inhaled and exhaled loudly giving off an animalistic disposition.
“Hello, Lady Malfoy,” he said, his cut lip twisting into a perverse smile. “Or… is it Hermione Granger? I don’t know. Which one do you prefer?”
His tantalizing had minimal effect on her. Her interest was captivated by the small movement at the front of the carriage and she knew Eli was there. She eyed the door again and she figured that all she needed was a large force against it and it would secure.
“Is Malfoy here with you as well?” he asked, pushing the wand deeper into her chin.
“No,” she said, struggling in his grasp.
She wasn’t sure if he believed her or not but his eyes narrowed slightly and he pouted. “Well that’s a pity,” he said. “I would have wanted to show him what I really think of him.”
He leaned back and spat onto the floor and Hermione, taking advantage of this one moment of distraction, leaned forward and shot her knee up into his stomach. Her leg then straightened back and with a huge amount of force, came into contact with the carriage door that made a loud sound as it clicked shut.
“Eli! Go!”
Marcus got up and grabbed Hermione’s hair, pulling her to the floor. But as he looked up, he saw the carriage wheels turning fast and the thestrals take off the roof of Malfoy Manor and fly into the darkness.
Hermione breathed a sigh of temporary relief; at least Ron and Pansy were safe. But Marcus was not at all happy about that. He aimed his wand at her and grimaced, cursing. “I’m going to have fun with you, mudblood.”
“You spilled innocent blood,” she shot back. “And yours will spill too. I’ll make sure of it, you bastard.”
“I wouldn’t be so confident if I was you,” he said, placing his jagged fingers against her cold cheek. She shrugged it off violently and balled her fingers into a fist, hitting Marcus’ nose with full force. He stumbled back, screamed and spat blood. His body stiffened and he lurched at Hermione, throwing her to the floor.
“Bitch,” he growled.
She struggled but his entire body weight was now pressing down on her. She was on her stomach and her chin was pressed against the ground, with her hands under her. Marcus lowered his thick lips to Hermione’s ears. “I’ll have fun with you tonight.”
Hermione struggled further as he grabbed her hands from underneath her and locked them behind her back with his wrist. Her cheek was pressed against the cold concrete. Her upper body was locked but her legs still had a free range of motion. She flexed her leg and checked to see if her heel would be able to reach Marcus’ back. He was kneeling on the ground beside her, with his hands still firm on her back. “Killing is quite exciting,” he muttered, now more to himself. “I’ll take you down to the dungeons, yes and-”
Before he could gather another sentence, Hermione swung her knee back and felt her heel hit Marcus’ upper back. The force wasn’t enough to knock him back but he was taken by surprise and the lock around her arms loosened. Hermione pulled her right hand free and she swung it at his jaw, sweeping herself onto her back and then shooting her legs into his stomach. He fell back in pain, bit his lip to stifle the scream and got off the floor, with a murderous look in his eyes.
“You filthy little mudblood,” he muttered. He pointed his wand at Hermione as she scrambled to her feet. Grinding his teeth he muttered his spell. “Cru-”
Before the last of his words escaped his half opened mouth, a pale hand grabbed his collar from the back and jerked his body upwards and then thrust it back to the ground. Marcus struggled, kicking his legs aimlessly and to no avail, like a bug lying on its back. Hermione was on her knees, watching with a fazed consciousness as Draco jammed his knee against the death eater’s spine and the man collapsed to the floor.
A maniacal laugh escaped Marcus’ lips and he slammed his head against the ground, the chuckles becoming louder. Soon, his dense voice filled the air and Hermione realized, one second too late that his wand was right by his side. His hairy hands grabbed the little stick with one stroke. But his movement was slightly short in terms of fluidity as Draco swung his own wand, pointing it at the tip of Marcus’ nose. His knuckles were white with the pressure of his wrist as Draco’s wand whipped the cold night air and said those two fateful words.
The green light flooded her vision.
By the time the bright spots in her field of vision had dissolved, Draco had stepped over the lifeless body and was at Hermione’s side, helping her up.
“Skeid’s alive,” he said, in a low voice and he slipped his arm under her elbow and lifted her off with minimal effort. “Are you okay?”
She heard a moaning from behind and turned on her heel to see the slightly battered body of Henry Skeid lying against the entrance to the tower. The man looked significantly older, even without his square glasses. The pale spots on his skin had increased in number, contrasted only by the darkness of his eye bags which made him look almost like a Dalmatian.
“The other three are dead,” Draco said, lowering his gaze. “I saw their bodies in the western part of the dungeons. I guess they were saving Skeid for Lestrange. He’s badly beaten though, and I think his arm is broken.”
Hermione nodded feebly and knelt down beside the aged man. “Mr. Skeid,” she said, speaking close to his face. “Can you hear me?”
Draco had secured Marcus’ body against the railings and then turned back to Hermione with a concerned look on his face. “Are you okay?”
“Skeid will be fine,” Hermione muttered, pushing her hand against Skeid’s neck and checking his pulse. “How are we going to get out of here?”
“Well however we leave, we’ve got to take the body with us,” Draco said, ushering to the lump that was now lying against the ground, turning blue from the cold. “Once we get off the grounds, Harry can arrange for some aurors to take him to Azkaban. Can you do anything for Skeid right now?”
Hermione pursed her lips and pressed fingers against his arm. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “He’s probably been tortured a lot. Look at his arms, there are cuts everywhere. You should try and get one of your carriages. It should be safe now.”
Draco waved his wand gently, and within minutes the clank of wheels against the walls of the Manor filled the air. Hermione watched carefully as Skeid stirred just a little bit as a response to the external noise. The elegant Malfoy carriage placed itself on the roof with a magnificent grace and Draco put a spell on Marcus before levitating him and placing his body onto the floor, against the cushioned seats. Skeid was put on one side of the seats, lying down with is head against a soft red pillow and Draco and Hermione sat opposite him.
---
Leaning back, Hermione winced slightly as the bruise on her cheek began to throb. Draco noticed her reaction and turned to face her, placing his hand against her cheek with care. She closed her eyes as his cold fingers settled themselves onto the blackening skin and he pushed back some of the stray hairs in front of her face.
“You never answered my question,” he said, examining the bruise close up.
Though there were two bodies – one dead, one alive - with them, they felt as if they were totally alone. Hermione put her hand over the hand that Draco had on her face and she looked at his solemn grey eyes. There was more life in them, more than there had been before.
“We’re getting close to the end,” Hermione said. “We just need to know how to break the bind of dark magic and Adria will split from the banshee.”
Draco removed his hand and nodded. “I’m sorry if what I did to Marcus upset you.”
Hermione nodded in silence and turned to face the window to her left. The thestrals had taken off and were now swinging the carriage around the large stretch of trees. Between the large sledgehammer that was digging into her brain and the noisy sounds of day breaking onto the horizon, Hermione found solace in the emptiness of the forest below.
“You would never lie to me, would you?” she asked.
“Never,” he said and Hermione’s heart felt like someone was pushing a sharp object against it. Now that she knew she was missing something, his voice seemed to betray him. Every action that he made – the touching of his hair, the slow blinking of his eyes, the fidgeting of his fingers – seemed to scream at Hermione, ‘come to your senses, you fool. He’s lying to you right now.’
---
Chapter 29 - St. Mungo's
"We'll just have to tell Hermione," Pansy said, adamant now. "Everything."
a/n: I don't want to give anything away but BE EXCITED FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER!
By the time Draco and Hermione had dropped off Skeid at St. Mungo’s, met up with Harry, taken Marcus’ body to the Ministry and returned to the hospital, it was a little past noon and Ron and Pansy were both sitting up in their beds, having lunch.
The extravagant private room with two beds, three large arm chairs, a bookshelf and two bathrooms took no effort to procure as it was located in the Malfoy Wing of the hospital. The washed out blue walls glowed in the sunlight that streamed in from the large rectangular windows, covered only slightly by lace curtains.
“This food is crap,” Ron muttered, stuffing chicken into his already full mouth.
Draco was talking with the nurse outside while Hermione sat by Ron’s side, smiling as he kept on complaining and demanding more food. Appetite was a good sign of recovery. His broken leg had healed up quite nicely, and the other cuts and bruises had been cleaned and dressed so that he now had patches all over his body. His burn was now just a thin slice of disfigured flesh across his back and Hermione knew that there was never a question of it regressing into the monster that it had become on Draco. Ron was far too laid back about life; even with all his complaints and irritations, she knew that he was always surrounded by loving family, loving friends and loving colleagues.
Pansy was sitting up as well, and eating slightly more modestly than Ron was, with a slab of pumpkin bread. Her wounds had been treated, including the string of Ron’s home-made stitches which may not have been the neatest but had still saved her life. Her black hair was swept up in a pony tail and her dress traded for baggy hospital gowns. She looked at Hermione, who was trying very hard to act normal around Ron.
“You’ll be free to go by tomorrow morning,” Draco said, swinging the door open. “Though I don’t think the weather will be as forgiving as it is today.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Pansy said, brightly. “I’ve been stuck in here for hours and I’ve wanted to go for a walk since about nine this morning.”
“Is it safe?” he asked, eyeing the bandages nervously to which Pansy nodded hastily and began to turn to get out of the bed. Draco rushed over and helped her, putting one hand on her shoulder and the other on her left arm. As Pansy’s feet touched the floor and she slipped on the hospital slippers, she held onto Draco’s arm and they began to slowly make their way towards the door.
“We won’t be long,” Draco said, turning to Hermione.
Hermione turned her head and nodded very feebly, barely meeting Draco’s eyes before the dark chocolate brown pupils turned back to Ron. Draco pursed his lips and breathed, suddenly very aware that Pansy was giving him a confused look. The two of them left the room wordlessly.
“You don’t have to apologize to me,” Ron said, as the door closed with a soft thud. He put his fork down and moved the plate onto a side table. “I came here out of my own free will and it was my fault that I got caught up in all of this.”
“This is not how I wanted things to end,” Hermione said.
“You mean our relationship?”
Ron took a deep breath and put his hand on Hermione’s. “It was going to have to end sooner or later. I mean, I’m not particularly pleased that it did but I know it had to be done.”
Hermione nodded, feeling a light mist forming across her eyes. Why was it suddenly so painful to talk about this with Ron? “You know, I never meant to break off the relationship,” she muttered. “I mean, I know that we had to end it but when you came to the village that day, that wasn’t what I was planning on doing. I’m so sorry! I was rude, and stupid and completely out of place.”
“I was jealous,” he admitted. “And Merlin knows, I never really learnt to give you the space you needed. If you hadn’t broken up with me that day, I would have done the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life.”
“What are you talking about?”
He reached into his pocket and drew out a tiny blue box. Ron looked at it in silence, as though the one little box held a world of memories for him. His eyes narrowed as Hermione’s fingers curled around the cover and lifted it gingerly, filling the air with the sound of squeakiness that came with the aged container. In the centre of the blue velvet interior was a thin band of gold, sitting under a large solitaire diamond ring. “Oh…” Hermione began, in barely a whisper.
“I had come to the village to ask you to marry me,” he drawled, adding a self-conscious laugh after. “I mean, I knew it wasn’t even the right thing to do but I felt like if we were engaged, you’d be mine. You know? I just didn’t want you to forget me.”
“It’s a beautiful ring,” Hermione said sombrely and then looked back up at Ron. “I probably would have said yes, too. When did we let things get so out of hand?”
Ron shrugged. “And then I was sitting there in the bloody dungeons and all I could think of was how I might never see you again and I think it was then that I realized that I love you, I’ve always loved you as my best friend and we just got really confused when we were younger, that’s all.”
There was a slight pause before Ron spoke again, carefully choosing his words. “I’m really glad we’re friends.”
Hermione’s body gave away and she flung herself onto Ron, pulling him into a tight embrace and burying her head in his neck. At first, he allowed her the momentary hug but then he felt her body quiver and her stifled breaths against his ear.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Ron sat up further and put his arms around Hermione’s shoulders. Her sobs were muffled but the wetness of her tears against his hospital gown was very evident. He pulled her in tighter and sat her down on his bed.
“Hermione, tell me what’s wrong.”
The sledgehammer had restarted, only this time it was drilling for the sensitive bits in Hermione’s brain and picking it all the moments in her life she wanted to store away in a box. She could hear the loud buzzing sound of the tool as it found the back of her skull and started there, then, like a harsh pulse, made its way to the top. It was scouring her mind, her memories and it was beating into her head with such magnitude that Ron’s tight embrace was the only thing keeping her up.
---
Despite the white walls and cold interior of St. Mungo’s, the outside was surprisingly green and lush. The last of winter was beginning to fade, leaving behind a gentle breeze that swayed merrily within the rose bushes, the large oak trees and the thick layer of grass on the ground. Draco and Pansy were walking past the stone fountain in the front yard, when her feet began to ache and they sat down on one of the benches, letting the daylight instil some of its beauty into their eyes.
While Pansy was rubbing her hand on a black bruise on her arm, she turned to see Draco, whose grey eyes were fixed on one of the windows above. She laughed, her lips curving into her notoriously mischievous smile. “Could you want her any more?”
Two nurses walked past them, accompanying a man in a pale white hospital gown. One of them seemed frustrated while the other had forced a smile onto her face as the old patient kept talking to her. Beyond them, a large crowd was beginning to gather as they waited for the official Ministry bus to get back to downtown London. Around the large masses of people, a thin, circular path dominated the grassy field, formed by stained concrete and tainted with the waste, spills, spit, dirt and footsteps of thousands of wizards.
“Probably not,” Draco admitted. He leaned his elbows on his knees and bent over, looking at the people around him.
“So what’s stopping you?” she asked.
Draco’s answer was short and direct. “Life.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t read into your mind,” she replied, half sarcastically and half seriously. “Explain.”
Draco sighed and inhaled a large gust of fresh air. It exhilarated him, as if stroking his resistance and bringing the words out from the knot in his stomach to his lips. “She saw me kill Marcus and she hasn’t said a word to me since.”
“Ah,” Pansy said, sighing as she put her hand on Draco’s shoulder. “It’s not easy to deal with something like that. You have to see it from her perspective. To see someone you trust and care for take another’s life is not exactly a common milestone in the average wizard’s life. And plus, she’s spent her life around Harry and Ron, the do-gooders, the heroes, the patriarchs of magical society.”
The rush of the night was finally starting to fade and the dull reality of day had settled itself into every bone in Draco’s fatigued body. He rubbed his face and inhaled another gust of cold air, hoping it would have the same exhilarating effect as before. It did not. “I know,” he muttered. “But you should have seen the way she turned away from me in the carriage. It was like I was a different species.”
Repeating the incident to Pansy revived the freshness of the memory, as if reopening a new wound. The stitches were seared, the blood was thick and red and the pain was just as sharp. He saw, in his head, Hermione look out the window, her body curled away from him. She had folded her arms together in front and her legs were bent, pressed into the seat, as if a wave of cold had surrounded her in the warm carriage.
“It’s… it’s not even just the thing with Marcus,” he muttered. He had already started, might as well let it all out.
“Go ahead, say it.”
A cold laughed escaped Draco’s lips. “You’ll think I’m insane.”
Pansy didn’t say anything but he knew she was listening. “It’s just hard,” he sighed. “I used to think I was only attracted to her, like when we would fight and her irritated expression would just tickle my nerves. And then the night when that guy, Bartholomew, I think, was killed, I woke up beside Hermione and all I could do was stare at her. I felt like I knew her, like I’ve known her since the day I was born.” He turned to Pansy with a grief stricken face. “And ever since then, I’ve done everything to protect her and to please her; half the time it’s been subconscious actions. I hold her hand if she’s afraid, I notice myself leaning in a little closer when it gets cold so she feels warmer…” He trailed off into the silence.
The morning air had lost some of its freshness, now laden with the dust of peoples’ feet, their bad breath and infectious sneezes. It seemed stale. The Ministry bus had arrived, thinning out the crowd that had gathered by the entrance but a new wave of people had flooded the courtyard, mostly employees and healers as they gathered to meet for their one hour lunch break.
“And then Cassius…”
Pansy shot Draco a terrified glance as she comprehended the full meaning of those three words and he knew that it was probably the same thing he had felt when Hermione had told him about Cassius right before they had gone to meet him. When she had confessed to him, it was as if someone had struck a high pitched bell in his ear, the reverberations of which still resonated in his mind, though the initial shock had worn off.
Pansy suddenly seemed very cold. “She’s not-?”
“I don’t know,” Draco answered truthfully. “But Cassius called me on it and he sees it too. He told me history was repeating itself.”
“You didn’t stop her from seeing him, did you?” she asked, rushing through the questions in her head.
Draco shook his head. “Of course not, I’m not going to make that mistake again.”
The sudden news had caused Pansy to recoil and stiffen, turning her head in all directions as if this was some sort of crude joke. Her black hair flew in the wind, revealing the scars on her neck and face. “Doesn’t that make you think?” he asked her. “Everyone in life has that one moment, when their world falls at their feet, everything they love and trust collapses like a frail building, when they look up at the sky and all the screaming in the world won’t explain why the fate chose to step on them. But now everyone else will have it just a little easier thinking that someone up there decided to screw with my life twice. Now, when someone hits rock bottom, they’ll think to themselves, ‘it’s alright! At least I’m not like that unfortunate sap Malfoy who found out he had another hundred feet to go after he hit his rock bottom’.”
“We will get through this,” Pansy assured him, her hands still a little shaky as she placed them on Draco’s arm. She looked at him with her dark eyes and tried, as hard as she could, to hide the doubt.
“I can’t get through this,” he said, his voice suddenly lower and his words barely a whisper.
“We’ll just have to tell Hermione,” she said, adamant now. She did what Draco had tried to do as she breathed in heavily, trying to absorb the freshness and energy of the air but instead, smelt the dense aroma of healing potions and unclean patients. “Everything.”
“No,” Draco said, rougher than he had hoped but he had to make his point known. “You can’t tell her. She’s already so deep into this mess, I don’t want to drag her even further. Whatever happens, I want her to have a choice.”
Pansy looked at Draco incredulously. Her fingers were now intertwined with his shirt sleeve, and she had a bitter glare. “You’re ruining your own life” she said. “I don’t know why on earth you think that every person’s sorrow and crime is your burden but it’s destroying you, slowly. Look at how many times you’ve slipped out of consciousness and half bled to death? It’s courage to take responsibility for your actions and it’s stupidity to take responsibility for others’. What you feel for Hermione is something some people will never experience their whole lives and I know you think it is some sick, twisted punishment for your past but it’s not. You’re a drowning man and this is a chance to save yourself. You want Hermione to have her choice? Well, this is your choice.”
Her voice had become aggressive now, determined to make Draco see reason. “If you let Hermione go now, then history will repeat itself… bloodshed, and all.”
She was red in the face, a light mist of sweat forming on her temples that made the hair by her forehead sticky. Draco turned his head slowly and examined Pansy in the sunlight. She was very beautiful, despite her dishevelled appearance and bandaged body. She was beautiful in the classical sense though: large dark eyes, curved lips, high cheekbones and legs that a man would kill for. He thought about the death eater gatherings they used to attend as teenagers, about how men younger than him to men probably twice his age would leer at her with lust and hunger, how their bodies would stiffen a little as she approached, how their senses danced with pleasure as her smell filled the air. Draco had never ever appreciated that in her and she had stayed loyal to him for years, without demanding even an eighth of the respect she deserved.
“You think I can fight fate?” he asked her.
She shook her head, letting out a cold laugh. “You’re not fighting fate,” she said. “You’re just fighting yourself.”
“You have to promise not to tell Hermione anything until I figure this out,” he muttered. He felt a little ashamed, smaller somehow to this strong presence that had found itself within Pansy. “I will tell her but after we take care of Adria and Lestrange.”
---
The nurse had kicked Hermione out of the room so that she could perform Ron’s check up. In her mind, she felt a strange sense of gratitude to be away from Ron now that she had drenched his shirt in tears and possibly terrified him with her outburst. Her eyes were now puffy and red, swollen all around and still slightly moist. Harry was still dealing with paperwork at the Ministry and Eli was… somewhere, so she contended to pay Skeid a visit.
She knocked on his door twice, rubbed her eyes one last time on her sleeve and trying to seem serious but content. “Mr. Skeid?” she called.
There was a weak ‘come in’ and she entered the room, very similar in appearance to Ron and Pansy’s with the exception of size: his room was only meant for one patient. Skeid was on the bed, his arm plastered, and his scabs covered in green ointment and without his glasses, he seemed ten years older but regardless, he was alive and for that, he had a smile on his face when he saw Hermione.
“Ms. Granger!” he cried with joy. “I owe you and Mr. Malfoy my life and more!”
“Don’t be silly, Mr. Skeid,” she muttered, disappointed that his compliment hadn’t done the slightest bit to cheer her up. Was she so detached from normal society? “And please, call me Hermione.”
“Hermione,” he said affectionately. “Regardless of what you think, you and Mr. Malfoy did save my life.”
Again, no warm fuzzy feeling. Hermione decided to ignore his compliment, modesty being second nature to her and put her hand on his thick cast. “How are you?” she asked.
“I’ve been better,” he muttered, smiling. “But the healers say a few days here and a long vacation, and I’ll be as good as new.”
His smile evaporated slowly and he lowered his gaze, matching Hermione’s and fiddled with his fingers. “That doesn’t, however, absolve me of the mess I made with the Lestrange case.”
Hermione felt an odd twinge of pity as the man’s head fell even lower, revealing his balding scalp and grey hairs. The press would have a field day; she could imagine the headlines right now: ‘Ministry head conspires with criminal’, ‘Ministry involved with death eater escape’ and only she and a few other people would know that it was just made up crap to sell papers.
“I was just so scared,” he mumbled. “I was an auror when I saw Lestrange slay some poor group of muggles but then he escaped. Four years later, they had a formal inquest into death eaters and created criminal files for them. By then, I was in the running for department head and I knew they wouldn’t let me pass if I was supposed to testify in a criminal case.”
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and then began to scrunch the sheets nervously. Hermione got the feeling that he wasn’t really telling her but rather, just saying it out loud. How long had he kept this is a secret?
“They had just put the files away and security was at an all time low so I just… snuck in and erased my name. I know it was wrong, I knew it was wrong back then too but I just couldn’t afford to lose the promotion. And Harry was of course in his auror training back then and I knew nobody would question it if he was my witness. He was the boy who lived for heaven’s sakes! So I forged his name and closed that chapter of my life…”
His voice trailed off, his self conscious smile turning dreamy and distant. “Or so I thought…” he added. “I should have known better though. He came to find me, you know? Lestrange, yes he did. Two years ago on September 27th, when I was in Belize facilitating auror training, he showed up to my house, pointed a wand in my face and almost killed me. If it hadn’t been for the guards outside, he probably would have succeeded. But he fled and I was terrified but I still didn’t have the courage to admit I tampered with Ministry records. You know, I always knew it would come back to haunt me… But I owe my life to you all. If it had been anybody else, they would have just let me die.”
“Harry’s responsible for figuring out it was you,” Hermione said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “If it wasn’t for him, we would have been searching for an unnamed witness number four. He was the one who found out you were missing.”
“Oh yes, Harry is going to go far in life,” Skeid said, regaining his more conscious presence. “I doubt he’s told you but – I suppose there’s no point it being a secret anymore – he’s in a meeting with the Minister.”
Hermione checked the clock on her wrist. It was half past one which meant that Harry had been at the Ministry for over six hours, definitely longer than it took to check in a body. “At about ten this morning, Kingsley Shacklebolt came in to my room and told me that a formal inquest for my actions will be deferred if I announce my early retirement. It was awfully nice of him considering the next option would have been getting sacked after some public investigations. Regardless, the Minister informed me that Harry will be the one to fill my position.”
Hermione gasped and an unwitting smile broke out. Finally, after all this time, there was some good news. “That’s wonderful,” she said.
“Of course Draco would have been a good choice as well,” Skeid continued.
Hermione’s smile thinned. “What?”
“Well it was between Harry and Draco, for the position I mean. They’re both strong, capable, excellent fighters, leaders but in the end it just came down to the image. I guess the Wizarding World is not quite ready to accept a Malfoy in the public eye just yet. But he’s a good man, nonetheless.”
She bit her lower lip and looked into the feathery clouds, parting way for the afternoon sun that filled the room with a golden glow that only contrasted the darkness she was finding herself in.
---
“You broke up with my sister?!” Ron yelled.
“No, no, no!” Harry defended, taking a step back. “She threw me out.”
“Why on earth would she do that? She loves you!”
Apparently all it had taken was a large meal and a pain killing potion to restore Ron back to his old, loud self. He was sitting in bed, his face horrified and his eyebrows furrowed, set in a rigid line above his twinkling eyes.
“I wouldn’t let her get involved in this mess,” Harry said bitterly. “She asked me where you were and what was happening with Hermione – which, truthfully, I didn’t really know back then – and so, when I refused to tell her whatever little bits I did know she got angry. You have to understand, mate. I couldn’t let her get involved in this.”
Ron opened his mouth a fraction, thought of something, let out a whimpering sound and then shut it again. “But I’m alright now, go on and tell her.”
“When this is all over,” Harry mumbled.
There was a brief knock on the door and Hermione entered, forcing a smile on her face that neither Harry nor Ron failed to notice. “Congratulations!”
Ron adopted a curious expression as Harry broke out into a small smile and nodded. “Thanks.”
“Harry just got promoted,” Hermione told Ron, that smile still stuck on her face. She was happy for Harry, she really was but with everything else that was happening, it was hard to maintain her cheeriness. “He’s the new head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.”
“That’s amazing, man!” Ron said, beaming as he stretched his hand out and hit Harry on the shoulder.
“It was just the whole Skeid mess up.”
“Ew, that means you’re my boss!” Ron said, tossing an empty box of apple sauce at Harry with happiness flickering in his eyes.
What Hermione would have given to feel the way that Ron and Harry did right now. Harry said something in return to Ron and they both started laughing but Hermione missed the joke. Her mind had dissolved and broken past the words and she felt like her soul was detached, observing her from above. She could see the happiness all around her, like a cosmic substance floating through the air and all she had to do was grab it, touch it, feel it and become it. But her limbs reached no further than her own body and she could see what she wanted to become but something was holding her back.
“What do you think, Hermione?”
Hermione looked around awkwardly. “Sorry, what?”
“About dinner.” Ron repeated. “Don’t you think we should have a celebratory dinner for Harry? Maybe invite Ginny?”
“Oh, yes, if that’s what Harry wants,” Hermione said.
“Maybe later,” Harry responded, diplomatically as always. “You and Pansy need to get better, I need to make sure no one reads too much into Marcus’ death and there is still the matter of Lestrange…”
“We can eat in here,” Ron suggested, but his words were drowned out by the sound of a large cart being wheeled past their room and a group of chattering nurses.
The argument was then put aside as Pansy walked in, her arm tightly clasped around Draco’s elbow so she wouldn’t fall. He paused, looked around and met Harry’s eye, nodding once in acknowledgement and then carefully escorted Pansy to her empty bed. Hermione had instantly looked away, finding something apparently fascinating with the sheets on Ron’s bed.
Pansy looked at her with a worried expression and then turned to Draco who pursed his lips a little, nodded and shrugged. He held onto her hand as she climbed up into bed and spread the large white sheets over her scathed legs, allowing her to prop herself up against the thick pillows.
“We have about a ten hour gap,” Harry explained, “before Lestrange might receive news of Marcus’ body at the Ministry. It’s almost two and by about midnight, they’ll have to send the body for burial at Azkaban; the press are bound to find out and ask questions by then.”
“Alright,” Draco said, firmly. “I’ll go speak to the healers and see if we can get Weasley and Pansy out of here. Grimmauld place is the only safe place to go.”
“We can do some research,” Harry said, referring to Hermione and himself. “Breaking the bind of dark magic, right?”
“Yes,” Hermione interjected, talking to Harry. “There’s a small library on the fourth floor here. Why don’t you go ahead and I’ll go get us both some tea from the cafeteria?”
Harry nodded, as both he and Hermione left the room, the latter seeming like she was in quite a hurry.
---
He felt the parchment scratch against his fingers as he unravelled the folded sheet of paper and read the message within. The ink still smelled fresh; it had only been written a few hours ago.
St. Mungos cafeteria, 2:00 p.m.?
HG
Cassius closed his eyes one more time and felt the world around him dissolve. The three dimensional objects became blurs against bright sunlight, their outlines fading and their colours all darkening until the only colour that he saw was black.
He could smell something… was that peppermint tea?
He heard a slow, steady breathing. It was forced and rhythmic, inserted to gather up energy before every piece of heart was poured out through the eyes, again. She was crying, silently. There were a lot of mixed emotions within her: fear, anger, confusion. They all flowed through her body like waves, washing up against the walls of her heart, confined within that one tiny beating organ. He could feel her tense, suck in a deep breath, hold it in and then sigh, hoping all her sorrows would leave with that small quantity of air.
And then he sensed it.
Under all that stiff emotion, an unbridled affection for Draco was growing. She was thinking about him, wondering what he was thinking about, analyzing his actions and his words in hopes to better understand him.
He blinked once and opened his eyes.
---
“You don’t look so well,” Cassius remarked as the bushy haired brunette made her way over to a table by the side and sat down.
“Long day,” Hermione muttered.
“Yes, I can imagine,” he said casually, eyeing her with great interest. “You paid a visit to the Manor this morning?”
Hermione didn’t even bother to pretend that she was surprised that he had this knowledge. Cassius always seemed to… know. She bit her lip and nodded, feeling the afternoon air settle into the warm cafeteria.
“So what did you want to meet me for?” he asked.
Hermione sighed. “We figured out what Adria is,” she explained, continuing on to elaborate on her statement with the details of binding to dark magic and the connection to Matilda Frogwart’s mother. “She was tortured with dark magic and then left to die. A banshee must have found her and then ‘bound’ to the magic, just like the vampirism in Matilda Frogwart’s mother bound to the dark magic. It’s a rare effect, I imagine, due to the need for a huge amount of dark magic before the full synthesis can occur.”
She felt a strange release as the words came out of her mouth, flowing like a river. She felt calm talking about intellectual things, about facts and unwavering knowledge that remained constant even in the face of time. Cassius had drawn a pensive expression and a quizzical tightening of his lips.
“That’s quite remarkable,” he said in a hushed tone, more to himself than Hermione. His voice was low and reserved. “Unbelievable.”
“I still don’t know how to break the bind though,” she thought aloud. “Such a large amount of dark magic – how can that be destroyed?”
Cassius wasn’t listening to her, however. His dark eyes had lost focus, looking at nothing in particular while his mind contemplated something. Hermione barely seemed to notice his lack of attention as she rambled on, in hopes of diverting her mind from the hundreds of problems that were plaguing her.
She started talking about the vampirism in the mother but in reality, her mind was filtering out the events of last night. She saw the swiftness with which Draco had flicked his wand, not a shudder of doubt or fear as the green light filled the air. In that moment, Hermione had felt a sticky heat emanate towards her, engulfing her and pulling her into that very same green light until she could no longer breathe. It had felt like a hand, closing its fingers on Hermione’s throat, clasping it as tight as it could so that the only sound she could have made would never have been heard. And within a second, the light had gone and the hand had vanished, leaving a nauseous feeling in Hermione’s stomach and an unsettling fear.
Draco thought it was Marcus’ death that was upsetting her. Truth be told, she couldn’t care less about Marcus. She had seen people die before. She had seen people killed before. She had seen murder, accidental deaths, accidents, natural deaths, sickness, disease, and after a while, it all became the same. The reality was so much scarier than just an irrational fear of death. She almost wished that that was what was upsetting her. The article was still in her pocket and so many times in the last few hours, she had felt like reaching in and pulling it out, and asking Draco to explain himself. There might even be a good explanation.
“… but we still haven’t figured out how to stop her.” Hermione felt herself snap back into conscious thought as the words escaped her mouth.
Cassius, too, was looking at her, listening to her. “Is that why you called me here?” he asked, that amused look snapping into his eyes.
She hesitated. “You know things.”
“Well… binding to dark magic is very rare,” Cassius said. “I’ve only read about it in m-”
“That’s not what I meant,” Hermione said, interjected. Her hands were fidgeting nervously on the desk and her eyes were looking right above them, avoiding his gaze. “You know things about the Malfoys… about the past.”
Cassius pursed his lips, and watched carefully as Hermione pulled out a thin piece of paper from her pocket. It was old, tinted slightly yellow and creased, making it particularly difficult to identify it as a newspaper clipping. Hermione placed it on the table and smoothed it out with her hands, making sure none of the ink ran onto her palms. Cassius craned over and saw the maddened face of Lestrange staring up at him, dawning his iconic perverse smile. When she was sure that the paper had been restored to a better condition, she pushed it over to Cassius who began to read the article.
“It’s about my father,” he said, blankly. “So?”
Hermione shook her head. “It’s a daily prophet from two years ago. Look at the back of the article.”
Cassius raised his eyebrow and turned the page over. The face of a woman looked up at him from the article, her picture surrounded by a small blurb of text. Her thin heart shaped face was centered around a small nose and embellished with large eyes, thin lips and light wavy hair that reached below her shoulders. She was smiling in the picture, blowing a kiss to whoever it was that had taken it. The photo was black and white so it was difficult to infer the colours of her face but it wasn’t difficult to tell that this woman was beautiful.
Cassius had been so caught up in the photo that it took a nudge from Hermione as she pointed out the title, to help him understand why she was so troubled: ‘Woman found dead at Malfoy Manor’
“Who is this woman?” Hermione asked and as Cassius opened his mouth to respond, she added: “Don’t tell me it’s Adria. Adria was much younger than Draco, she was supposed to be poor. But this woman looks exactly the same age as us and she looks rich.”
He closed his mouth and formulated another response. Hermione could tell he was carefully picking his words which made it all the more worse, because she knew it was something she wouldn’t want to hear. “Have you ever been down the main corridor of Malfoy Manor? The one right past the front doors? There’s a small statue there, with a snake coiled around it?”
The memory of the snake that led down to the South Tower came into her mind. “Yes,” she said.
“There’s a portrait there,” he explained.
Hermione creased her eyebrow. There were hundreds of portraits in Malfoy Manor; how could he expect her to remember one single portrait? “It’s an empty frame,” Cassius explained. “With a burn and rip through the canvas.”
Like the classical light bulb lighting inside her head, the memory found its way back into Hermione’s consciousness. She remembered, in her first days of the Manor, Draco showing her around and they had passed an empty frame with a burned canvas.
“What happened to this painting?” Hermione asked.
Draco’s face twitched slightly at the sight of Hermione’s fingers against the canvas. Hermione noticed that and immediately retracted her hand as he rolled his eyes. “It’s burnt, can’t you see that?”
“Yes, I can,” Hermione replied through gritted teeth. “I mean, why is it burnt?”
“Why does it matter?”
“It’s just that… well all the other paintings with your ancestors and whatnot look so regal and lavish and this burnt painting…where’s the person in this portrait?”
“Don’t worry about her,” Draco said quietly. “She’s not coming back.”
Cassius recognized the knowing look on Hermione’s face and he waited for her to look at him before he continued. “This was the woman that was supposed to be in that frame,” he said, pointing to the smiling woman in the article.
“Who is she?”
“Her name was Natalie,” he said, keeping his voice low.
Her patience was wearing thin, but her mind had held some sort of a clamp on Hermione’s mouth; it refused to let her speak. There was something about the way Draco had looked at her that day they saw the canvas that added an element of dread to Cassius’ story. His voice had been bitter but now that Hermione heard the conversation in her head again, he had seemed so distant and lost.
“Her name was Natalie Malfoy,” Cassius continued. “She was Draco’s wife and incidentally, the real Lady Malfoy.”
---
Chapter 30
Ron shuffled through the pages as Harry came into the door. He looked around a bit and then back down the hallway, turning to Draco. “Have you seen Hermione?”
Draco stood up, tossing the box on his lap aside. “She was supposed to be with you.”
a/n: will the twists never stop?! (answer: no). Hope you guys enjoyed it! Let me know how you liked it!
Ron had ordered another pudding cup when Draco came into the room carrying a stack of papers with a quill and bottle of ink on top. Pansy had drifted asleep but the sound of the door snapping against its frame woke her up with a jolt and she glanced around sleepily before Ron tossed her a box of chocolates which she received with a smile. Draco heaved a sigh, dumped the papers on Ron’s side table and threw himself into the chair, rubbing his eyes with his hands.
“You should get some sleep,” Pansy suggested, still groggy as she bit into a piece of dark fudge. “Hungry?”
He nodded and waited as she took out four pieces for herself and then tossed the box to him. The food tasted good but considering that he hadn’t eaten for hours, liquid vegetables would probably have tasted just as good. The chocolate melted against his mouth and he felt a little bit of his life instilled back into his mind.
“What’s with the papers?” Ron asked as he sifted through the first couple of pages.
“Release forms for you both,” Draco explained. “And the bill.”
Ron’s eyes widened at the unnecessarily large number that was written beside the words ‘Total’ and he said, “Why the fat bill?”
“Private double room, full confidentiality, the best healers in the hospital and a little tip to make sure no on talks,” Draco sighed, stuffing another piece into his mouth, “adds up.”
Ron threw the papers back into the pile and stretched his arms above his head. “To be a Malfoy,” he said, dramatically amidst a yawn.
“Not quite as good as it sounds,” Draco replied, then shut up when a worried look from Pansy caught his attention. “Sign the fifth page, Weasley.”
Ron shuffled through the pages as Harry came into the door. He looked around a bit and then back down the hallway, turning to Draco. “Have you seen Hermione?”
Draco stood up, tossing the box on his lap aside. “She was supposed to be with you.”
“I was at the library for an hour looking up things and I figured she just got tired out from last night and took a nap or was with here with you three.”
“She didn’t come in here,” Ron said, as he sat up further in his bed too. “Maybe she went to eat something. Didn’t she say she was going to the cafeteria?”
“I just came from there,” Harry explained. “I couldn’t find her.”
“This is not a big deal,” Pansy said, her eyes fixated on Draco who looked like a knife had been stabbed through his chest and then pulled out and stabbed again. “She had a lot to deal with last night on top of which she hasn’t slept or eaten for hours. Harry’s probably right; she might have just taken a few minutes to herself or fallen asleep. Ron and I will finish the release paperwork, Harry can go get the carriage ready and Draco, why don’t you pay the bill?”
There was a silence in the room as Draco turned his back to the three of them and began rifling through his pant pockets. “There’s nothing you can do,” Pansy said to him and he knew that both Harry and Ron were looking at his back as well.
He found what he was looking for and pulled a silk pouch from his pocket, slamming it against Pansy’s desk. He said nothing as Pansy watched with both fear and sadness, running his hands through his hair and walking out the door. Every step he took was heavy, laden with the self-loathing that had managed to escape him for the last few weeks. He opened the door as quickly as he could and on his way out, closed it, unable to avoid the loud sound that only added to the dramatic effect.
Pansy sighed and overturned the pouch, revealing over a hundred galleons. Frustrated and worried, she pushed them aside and asked Ron to pass her the paperwork, hoping to occupy her mind.
---
A seething rage had begun to boil inside Hermione’s blood and sent her body on an out of control rampage. Someone – it wasn’t Hermione Granger – was smothering her, making it difficult to breathe and allow rationale and logic to guide her thoughts. She had never really experienced this before; this uncontrollable rage that had been adulterated with confusion, fear but mostly an unforgiving loss of direction, both metaphorically and literally. She really didn’t know what she had left in life, what she could or should do and her rage had also driven her from the hospital back to Grimmauld place where she was now lying against the unlit fireplace, with her head against the stone backing.
She looked around the living room and saw the couch on which Draco had lain and spoken to her about his fears and his life. They had had a fight too that day but she couldn’t remember, for the life of her, what it had been about. Everything seemed trivial now. Then there was the bedroom upstairs where she had spent some of the most daunting hours of her life breathing air into him and hoping (or even praying) that Draco would live. When she had slept by his side that morning, life had seemed so much brighter and though it pained her to admit it right now, she had seen an end to this mess. She had seen herself waking up like that every morning maybe in a bigger bed – no, a smaller bed meant they had to sit closer together.
Had that been the first time?
Again, she painfully searched her memories for the right moment and was surprised when it came to her with such ease. It had been the night of the ball, at the Manor when she had looked into the mirror, with Draco behind her, and she liked what she saw. That was only the beginning however and the more time they spent together, the more Hermione could see her future clearing up in front of her.
But that had been an hour ago. Her world had changed, flipped, contorted itself and morphed into something she couldn’t even recognize. Marcus’ death had bothered her but she knew she would have gotten over it. After all, Harry and Ron had both killed people as aurors. But this. This, she couldn’t even fully understand. Sitting there, in the carriage when she had read the article for the first time, she hadn’t thought ‘Oh! That must be Draco’s – she couldn’t say the world-’ but her mind had doubted. Draco hadn’t told her something and that’s when the metamorphosis had started, when her world had begun to crack under the surfaces. Now, it was in a state of chaos and shabby ruins.
She focused her attention back to the room and as the small moments they had shared kept poking at the back of her mind, she stood up with great force and grabbed her knees, hunching over as her stomach began to churn, but it wasn’t a nauseous feeling. It was a feeling of pure pandemonium and holding onto her knee caps was the only thing keeping her from falling back and collapsing.
After a while, she stood up and dried the tears from her eyes but they persistently reappeared. She had to leave. She had to leave this little house, where memories of a happier time festered away and only reminded her that at one point, she had seen an end. Now, there was a dark fog that loomed over her future and she would have to face it. She felt her legs eagerly accept the idea and they pulled her up to her own room where she began to unload her clothes into a small enchanted bag.
She took no account of the disappearing winter weather and ended up throwing in her heavy sweaters, along with everything else. It was then that she saw it, hanging in the back of her closet, behind a red and white shirt: the dress. The burgundy dress that she had worn that night, looking into the mirror, that night when she had admitted – albeit to her subconscious but admitted, nonetheless – that this is where she wanted to be. It was now swaying in the gentle breeze of the afternoon, mocking her pain just like the furniture downstairs had. It was telling her: ‘Hermione, look at me. This is what you had looked liked as Lady Malfoy, the fake one… the lie that you had been stupidly clinging on to.’
Hermione grabbed the closet door and shut it as fast as she could, placing her back against it when she was sure it wouldn’t open and stared at her little bag on the bed. There was no time to waste, she had to leave or she’d be driven to madness.
She headed down the stairs and towards the fireplace, hoping that the sickness she got from using the Floo Network would somehow drown out the heat coursing through her veins. As she reached up to grab the powder, she felt a hand on her wrist hold her back and for a second, she thought it was the force that had been smothering her but upon turning around, realized it was Draco who had grabbed on to her wrist.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his words pouring out of him, dripping with fear.
Hermione hadn’t actually thought about what facing Draco would have been like but she felt herself go numb. The silly Hermione Granger – the one who had seen her future with this man – was terrified that this new rage would overpower her but the realistic Hermione Granger – the one who knew how puerile and foolish she had been – had no fear.
“Leaving,” she said, jerking her wrist out of his hand with a surprising force, one that alarmed Draco and he let go of her.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Stupid-Hermione was beginning to resurface and Draco’s cloudy grey eyes kept her in her place. She knew if she didn’t leave now, she would regret every word she said. “Let me go.”
“Stay,” he said, his voice losing its rough edge. It was now just a plea. “Please. Talk to me.”
“No.”
“Hermione if you ju-”
“NO!” she shrieked, pulling away as far as she could.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” he asked, the softness in his voice disappearing and a mixture of confusion and frustration appearing. “I can explain the thing about Marc-”
“Stop, Draco!” Hermione cried, pulling her hands over her ears and edging to the fireplace. “Just leave it!”
“I know I shouldn’t have killed him but you should have seen the way he was leering at you. He was a monster and I couldn’t help it.”
“Oh, so that was about me?” she asked. Stupid-Hermione began to protest but she was shoved aside. If Draco wanted to talk, they would talk. “You’re just protecting me? Looking out for me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, the hardened exterior melting away and revealing the childish face Hermione had seen so often. But the rage in her veins was like poison, stinging every part of her body and controlling every thought and emotion.
She dropped her bag to the floor as she bent down and pulled out the little scrap of paper that had changed her life. The photograph was folded up, and Hermione gratefully left it that way, looking at the back of the article that had the crinkled photo of a howling Lestrange. She glared at the paper, venting all her hate and frustration into it before she unbent her knees and stood up. Walking up to Draco, her hands tightened around the paper until she felt herself within an inch of the tall blonde and her hand reached out, pressing the paper roughly against his chest. The rage had given her courage. The hand that had, at one point, been smothering her, helped the words threw her throat and out onto her tongue. “You have no idea.”
Draco grabbed the sheet and his hands began to manoeuvre around the folds, trying to open it up, giving Hermione a chance to grab her bag and head out the front door. Her dim brown eyes were the last thing he saw before the door shut with a bang and the words on the page jumped out before his eyes.
But the words weren’t even necessary. The photo, the one that he hadn’t seen but in those dazed moments of unconsciousness, stared up at him as if holding a sign that congratulated him on screwing everything up. Like Hermione, he couldn’t look at the article any longer than he had to and he let it remain in his left hand as his right hand curled up into a fist and hit the wall with such force that the blood on his knuckles created a very distinct set of markings. Hermione was barely out the front door when she heard his scream but her legs were carrying her forward.
---
“I’ve got the medications in here,” Harry said, holding up a yellow bag as he headed towards the front door of Grimmauld Place. Ron and Pansy were slower to leave the carriage, still nursing their injuries but he waited for them by the gate. “Was there any word on Malfoy or Hermione?”
Pansy shrugged. “No.”
“Hermione was acting pretty strange at the hospital,” Ron added, and then he paused, pondering something. “We were talking and she just started to cry. I’ve seen her cry before but she just… it was pretty scary. I thought she was going to just break down.”
“She’s been through a lot these past few months,” Pansy suggested, biting her lip and hoping Ron wouldn’t prod any further.
“You mean, with Malfoy?” he asked and then smiled very slightly as the look of surprise flooded into Pansy’s eyes. He had spoken about the elephant in the room and he harboured the look of a man who had sadly accepted his place in the world. “I’m not blind.”
They dragged themselves with a slight soreness to the front door and Ron turned to Harry, still maintaining his solemn grin. “You could have told me you suspected something.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Harry admitted. “Besides, it’s none of my business what happens between the two of them.”
“It’s no longer mine, either,” Ron answered, letting the full feeling of the break up sink into him. It wasn’t a particularly novel emotion – he’d been feeling it for months, ever since he’d forced himself to buy that stupid ring and tried to convince his own mind that the relationship was heading in a good direction.
They entered the dark house while Harry resealed the Fidelus charm and came in a few seconds later. Pansy sat down on the couch while Ron headed straight for the kitchen to grab a sandwich. Harry pushed the thick curtains aside, letting in some of the evening sun and then went upstairs to search the bedrooms.
“They’re not here,” he said, remerging into the living room where Ron had stuffed cheese crackers into his palm. “And Eli isn’t here either.”
“That’s a shame because I would kill for some dinner.”
Pansy couldn’t help but smile at Ron’s simplicity. There was so much hate, bloodshed, anger, and disease festering away in people and nothing like that could ever touch Ron. He took a hit, recovered and kept on walking.
“I can make something,” she offered.
Unfortunately, Ron didn’t have a chance to respond as the door opened with a slight creak and Draco stepped in, visibly dishevelled and angry. He paused and looked at the three of them sitting in the living room, surprised they had gotten back so soon and then shut the door behind him.
The eerie silence that filled the room chilled Pansy’s bones and she knew Draco had found Hermione. She tried to read Ron and Harry’s expressions but they were both silently watching him as he tossed his coat on the couch and sat down opposite them.
“I found her,” he said.
None of them spoke immediately after because they could all predict what happened, though none of them knew why it had happened. “Where is she now?” Harry asked, after a while.
“I don’t know,” Draco admitted, his words forced, as if was making himself sit here and explain himself. Pansy knew well enough that he was afraid of being by himself. He was afraid of regressing, of being alone and plagued by thoughts of Hermione, reanalyzing every moment they had together, regretting every mistake he made and then waking up days later in a hospital. He was afraid of the dreams he’d have and so he was making himself sit here and talk because even explaining his fight with Hermione was better than solitary confinement where he was his own worst enemy. “She,” he paused, suppressing the memory of the fight, the way Hermione had looked at him. “She just went outside. I left the house twenty minutes later and I couldn’t find her.”
Now all that remained to find out was the reason behind the fight. The three pairs of eyes shifted around the room, awkwardly deepening the silence as Draco buried his face in his hands and rubbed his cheeks, trying to knock some sense into himself. “She knows,” he said finally. “She knows about Natalie.”
So that had been it, Pansy thought sadly. Hermione discovered the one – and only- thing that Draco had been hiding from her. But she couldn’t possibly have learnt the whole story; Pansy wasn’t even sure she knew the whole story. A huge surge of pity coursed through her, looking at Draco who seemed like a broken man. All over again… she sighed.
“Who’s Natalie?” Ron asked, another cheese cracker finding his mouth. He looked over at Pansy who shot him a reproachful glance and he put the crackers in a bowl beside him.
“My wife.”
Ron coughed on the crackers in his mouth. “What?!”
There was a brief silence during which Ron looked at Harry with a confused expression. Harry, who remained quiet, took the news with equal stupor but was a lot more subtle about it. The series of glances between the two of them ended when Harry spoke up.
“You’re married?” Harry asked.
“Widowed,” Draco responded, still staring at his knees. “Two years.”
Ron turned to Pansy who nodded weakly. Yeah, I knew, it said. He turned back to Draco and silently looked at Harry who just shrugged. The three of them looked at Draco with an odd combination of pity and curiosity.
“She committed suicide,” he said, quietly. He sounded solemn but in control, nonetheless. “Jumped off the North Tower one night.”
“You don’t have to talk about this,” Harry interjected. Pansy noted how careful he was of others around him and she felt grateful to him. Part of her regretted not getting to know the real Harry, Ron and Hermione at Hogwarts. It seemed that most of her early life was spent dealing with imaginary personas on real people.
“No,” he said, looking up at Harry. “You need to know.”
“Why?”
“Because when Hermione comes back, she’s going to have an entirely different version of it and she’s going to hate me.” He paused. “More than she already does.”
---
Hermione felt an eerie pulse through her body as she pushed open the front door and entered the Manor. It felt weird, wrong somehow, to be here without Draco but it looked the same as when they had fled that night at the ball. That seemed like ages ago, a different time perhaps, a time when life was simpler and more predictable.
“You can leave your stuff here,” Cassius said, pushing Hermione’s bag off to the side by a large statue. “The elves will come get it.”
She nodded feebly, stepping in and recognizing the large marble staircase, wooden floor, extravagant embellishments. She could almost smell Draco here and she shivered, hoping that was the cold night air. Cassius shut the door behind him and ushered her towards the smaller drawing room on the left side.
“Want something to eat?”
Hermione shook her head, entering the familiar white room with the grand piano in one corner and two couches centered around a thick Persian rug. She sat down and felt the load on her legs lighten up; she knew the soreness would kill her tomorrow. Cassius circled to the end of the room and drew the curtains to a close, allowing the dimly lit candles to illuminate the space between the four walls.
“Want something to drink?” he asked, taking a seat beside her and she nodded fervently.
“Yes, please.”
Cassius ordered a house elf to bring out a bottle of white wine and while they waited, he examined Hermione with a very curious expression. “Judging by the way you just left in the middle of our conversation this afternoon, I’d have thought Malfoy Manor would be the last place you wanted to come.”
“I’m sorry for this afternoon,” she muttered, recalling her bumbling fit of hysteria when she stood up and just left the cafeteria, unable to control her limbs as they guided her out the hospital and back to Grimmauld place with one simple urge: to get as far away from Draco as possible. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“My father won’t be returning until four o’clock, three days from now. So you are more than welcome here until then.”
“Thanks.”
The bottle of wine appeared and Hermione drank two full glasses of the sparkling liquid before she felt the knots in her body loosen and her mind start to cool down. She could feel that rage inside of her but it wasn’t boiling anymore, just down to a gentle simmer. She took another sip of her glass before placing it down on the table. “I want to know more.”
“More about her?” he inquired, “Or more about Draco?”
Hermione didn’t think twice before answering. “Both.”
Cassius tipped the dark green bottle and filled up his glass, taking a long sip before he smacked his lips and wiped them with a napkin. He paused, sighed and then rubbed his eyes with his palms, running his hands through his hair. “Draco’s parents were very eager to move on from the war. Lucius Malfoy had bought himself out of most of his sins – he’d created a hospital wing, donated his rare library collection to the Ministry and volunteered full cooperation with death eater investigations. They insisted that Draco get married before completing his auror training.”
Hermione nodded, feeling wide awake even though she hadn’t slept properly for over 36 hours. She sipped another bit of wine as Cassius continued.
“Natalie was a French student from Beauxbatons, training to be a healer in France where she’d grown up. You may have heard of her family name? Natalie Baudelaire?”
Hermione shook her head but given her former state of hysteria and shock, it was very possible that she had just forgotten. Baudelaire? It didn’t ring any bells. “Never.”
“It’s like the French equivalent of a Malfoy,” he explained. “Rich, long generation of purebloods, veela ancestry – sort of the perfect match, if you can imagine Draco back then.”
Hermione nodded quickly, eager to move on from anything to do with imagining Draco. The story seemed oddly distant to her, for some reason. She wasn’t listening to a secret life that Draco hadn’t admitted to, she was listening to some strangers’ story.
“They got married,” he continued. “About two years into the marriage, things began to get rough for them. They grew apart, Draco began to spend more time training in Belize and Natalie started to feel neglected. This continued on for another six months and there was one huge fight, and Draco left for Belize, ‘claiming’ he had no plans for returning.”
Hermione bit her lip. The looseness in her lips was beginning to fade and so she grabbed another glass of wine and drained half of it in one go. She nodded, signalling him to continue. “So they broke up?”
“No.” And then his voice became low, and deep. “Lucius Malfoy felt that his son’s mind was being distracted by these meaningless fights; Draco wasn’t doing so well in his training and the Malfoys attributed that to stress from the marriage…”
Hermione bit down on her lip harder. The same foreboding feeling settled itself into her bones as Cassius said, “Lucius had Natalie killed.” His voice shook a little. “He pulled her onto the roof of the North Tower and pushed her off of it, claiming suicide.”
The foreboding feeling had now turned into a thick, tight knot in her stomach and Hermione slammed her wine glass on the coffee table – it tipped over and fell – and got up, trying to shake the feeling. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “That’s horrible. They murdered her?”
He nodded grimly. “Let’s get you to bed,” he said. “We’ll continue the story later.”
Hermione felt his dark hair brush up against her arm as he leaned over and picked up the fallen glass. He motioned for an elf to come clean up the mess and then ushered her to the marble stairs where he told her he’d set up a room for her to sleep in.
---
“Did you give him the potion?”
Ron turned around, frightened by the sudden voice and saw Harry leaning in the kitchen doorway, wearing a grey shirt on top of blue sweat pants. He sighed, relieved and nodded. “Yeah, he drained it pretty fast too.”
He turned around to check the clock, squinting as the pressure of the day pressed down on his eyes. It was a little past two in the morning. “You think Hermione went to Malfoy Manor?”
Harry bit his lip, shrugging. “I don’t know.”
“I know you don’t know. I’m asking if you think she did.”
Ron grabbed a box of sugar crackers and threw one into his mouth as Harry took a seat on the kitchen table and he followed suit. “I think she might have. Lestrange’s son is the only one who can give her answers.”
He cursed, watching as Harry grabbed a cracker and started to chew on it. He pressed his palm into the ridge of his knee, trying to dull some of the soreness in his injured leg. Most of his injuries had healed up pretty quickly but there was a constant ache throughout his body, the kind of ache that felt like someone was poking him with a sharp object. “Did you notice how we’ve never heard of this bloke? Cassius?”
“I noticed,” Harry said, a knowing look passing between the two of them. “It is strange.”
“That this guy pops out of thin air? Oh yeah, it’s strange.”
“Bellatrix never struck me as the motherly type,” Harry added, half serious and half sarcastic. “I always thought it was be evil or be dead, for her.”
“Maybe she was being evil,” Ron thought. “Maybe she thought she could produce some evil spawn in case she kicked the bucket too soon. Hermione once told me that he went to Durmstrang and we all know they don’t cater to guys like us.”
“Voldemort’s been gone for years,” Harry said. His eyes flew to the top of the stairs to make sure Pansy and Draco were asleep. “If they had him as a back up, why not bring him out already? I mean, the death eaters are losing. We get more and more every day, so why is this guy hiding?”
“Maybe they have a strategy? Who knows?”
Harry shrugged, frustrated. Draco hadn’t really told them a lot except that he had had a wife who had committed suicide two years ago. Then there was, of course, the mystery ghost at Malfoy Manor who, as Hermione had told them, was a young maid named Adria who’d been tortured by Lestrange in the forest and then bound to a banshee and became some sort of a demon. Incidentally, that also happened two years ago.
“Don’t you get the feeling that there’s something we still don’t know?” Harry asked.
“You feel that too?” Ron asked, his eyes widening. “I didn’t want to say anything to Malfoy because he’s had it pretty rough but there’s something he’s not telling us.”
“His wife killed herself two years ago? Just a month before his front lawn is burnt by death eaters and a maid is tortured to death?” Harry pondered. “It’s just… there’s a lot.”
“Well he didn’t really say much about his wife,” Ron replied. “I guess you can’t blame him but I see what you mean. And how does Cassius seem to know everything that’s been going on?”
There really weren’t any answers, just a lot of questions. They’d been in this type of situation before… many times but for some reason – and it might have been that for the first time, they were doing this without Hermione’s brilliant intellect to logically eliminate all but one possibility – it felt harder. And what made it worse, Ron thought as he and Harry headed towards their beds, that it seemed that even Draco didn’t have all the answers.
---
Eli had appeared at three in the morning, carrying a case of food and two large bags of potion ingredients. He explained, to a very sleepy Ron, that he’d gone out to replenish the stock of food and at the same time, picked up ingredients for their diminishing supply of Feindfyre antidote. By the next morning, Ron had forgotten the entire conversation and was just as surprised to see Eli preparing a large breakfast as the rest of the house was.
“Malfoy didn’t relapse, did he?” Harry asked over a plate of toast and eggs.
Draco had woken up early this morning and gone out for a walk. “No,” Pansy said. “He’d had a dose of the antidote yesterday. It’s a good thing you went out and bought all those items, Eli.”
“Of course,” he replied, nodding and pouring another cup of tea for Ron. “Some more eggs, Mr. Weasley?”
“You don’t even have to ask,” he said, holding his plate up and watching with delight as Eli lay two more eggs onto the white plate. He turned back to other two sitting on the table and decided to address something that had been bugging him. “Why do you and Malfoy think Hermione went to Malfoy Manor?”
Pansy bit her lip and drank a sip of her tea. She knew the question would come up soon enough but she hadn’t anticipated it to be so direct. “I don’t know,” she replied, well aware that her lie was as transparent as air. “I guess it’s a hunch? Cassius is the only other person to know about the whole situation with Natalie.”
She was lying, and she was doing a bad job doing it but Harry and Ron played along, nodding as if they really did believe her. Pansy wanted to tell them but like always, it was Draco’s call. “Then why aren’t we going after her?” Ron asked. Again, blunt. “Or rather, why isn’t Malfoy going after her?”
She knew the answer to this one and she wasn’t going to lie about it. To lie about Draco’s past was something she had to do because it was his story to tell and his history to explain; but the reason behind staying at Grimmauld place was very much her own theory – one that, she was sure, was correct. “You can’t fight for something that’s not yours,” she said, grimly. And then she looked at Harry. “It’s the same reason you didn’t chase Hermione down to Malfoy Manor when she insisted on coming back. You can protect a person from accidents, from bad people, from dangerous people but you can’t stop them from making their own choices. If Hermione had been kidnapped and brought to the Manor, you two would’ve chased after her no matter what but if she left of her own will because she preferred to be at Malfoy Manor, you wouldn’t stop her. You couldn’t stop her.”
“So you don’t think the son of Rodolphus Lestrange is a threat to Hermione?” Ron asked incredulously.
“He won’t kill her,” Pansy said, her voice distant and her eyes staring at the table cloth. She was hiding something and she wanted to tell them so badly but she couldn’t. Draco wouldn’t let her.
“And you’re not going to tell us why.” Harry fixed his bottle green eyes on Pansy.
“I can’t,” she mumbled. “Ask Draco.”
Ron scoffed. “Yeah, because we’re just that close, right?”
“Trust me, if it was about me I would tell you. I know we should tell you but it’s not my story to tell.”
Harry sighed and dropped his fork onto his plate. He looked at Ron and nodded, admitting defeat. They’d have to ask Malfoy when he got back. But Ron turned to Pansy, a quizzical look in his brown eyes. “Well, since we’re on the subject, why don’t you tell us your story?”
The confused apprehension vanished instantly from Pansy’s eyes and she matched Ron’s gaze, with perplexity. “My story?”
“Yeah,” Ron replied. “Malfoy’s out to get the guy that ruined his parents’ lives and killed an innocent girl. Why are you here?”
Though Harry knew he should talk to Ron about not being so blunt all the time, part of him was very curious. What was Pansy’s story? He turned to her and then almost regretted it because it looked as though she was being cornered by two men who were sticking their noses into her business. But she took a deep breath and responded, very calmly. “Lestrange tried to sleep with me and when I refused to, he attacked me.”
There was a still silence. “He has this sick, hungry look in his eyes all the time and I always thought it was just the way he was and then one night, when I was eighteen, he told me he found me very desirable and that I’d make a great second wife for him. And he tried to kiss me. I pushed him over and tried to run but he grabbed me by the hair and pulled me into a room and used a curse on me. He told me I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was and he would leave a mark so that I will always remember that.”
She had unknowingly started crying, feeling the moisture as it reached the tips of her chin. She wiped her face quickly and tried to steady her voice. “Lestrange never touched me after that because he knew he’d ruined me.”
Harry tried to give Ron a sarcastic ‘good job’ look but the red head had already bent his head low, embarrassed. The awkward silence persisted for another few seconds as Pansy turned towards the bright windows and tried to wipe away her salty tears. Her sniffles were soft and stifled, only drowned out by the opening of the front door that gave both Ron and Harry an excuse to get up and leave the kitchen. Ron was still red in the face.
---
Cassius started to button his shirt, watching with a sultry satisfaction as the morning light filled the sky. He felt the coolness hit the bare half of his chest and he inhaled, savouring the sweet smell of approaching spring. Given the silence from the room beside him, he guessed that Hermione was still asleep. The thought of penetrating her mind flickered for a second, hovered over his concerns that she may feel it and get wary. But, given that she had never tried to stop him before only confirmed his suspicions that she wasn’t an occlumens.
He gazed out the window, trying to clear his mind. He felt his surroundings melt into a black blur and darken into nothingness. He focused all his energy at his target, breathing steadily and keeping his body at ease.
Ron, I don’t want to get married to you.
But, you have to, Hermione!
Why?
No one else wants you, darling. Even I don’t really want you but we have to get married or else you’ll just die alone. Is-
The train of thought suddenly broke as he heard a shuffle from the room beside him. Hermione had woken up, quite unexpectedly and Cassius had only managed to catch the last bit of her dream –or nightmare. He opened his eyes, letting the world around him focus for long enough that Hermione was knocking at his door by the time he was ready to face her.
“Morning,” he said, shifting the black hair from his face as he opened the door. “Good night?”
“What were you doing?” Hermione asked, her voice masking her fear very well.
A few seconds of silence passed between them before Cassius saw her analyzing his expression and his own face. She had felt him in her mind.
He cursed to himself. Using legilimency during a dream was dangerous because the mind was in a subconscious state and contrary to popular belief, that made it more aware of anything foreign. When people are awake, their minds are preoccupied with active thinking, motor skills and social stress but when they slip into sleep, there’s nothing there but a subconscious stream of thoughts. She had felt something weird in her mind and she was going to get answers.
She sat down on the large armchair as Cassius shut the door behind him. She waited for his response, growing impatient as he called in a house elf and asked him to bring them some breakfast. When the little creature departed, he turned to the large vanity and stared at his reflection in the mirror. His pale hands ran down his pointed features and then through his dark hair. He finally turned back to Hermione.
“Fancy a guess?” he asked.
“No,” she replied abruptly. “No games. I’m sick of games.”
He nodded, shrugging. “It’d probably make it a lot easier if you told me what you knew about me, or rather what Draco’s told you about me.”
Cassius felt her harsh shell fading as she started to realize that he was willing to tell her everything. The fear in her eyes had dissipated, leaving behind her trademark curiosity that now dominated the dark brown disks. She bit her lower lip and began considering a response to his question. A small smile surfaced on Cassius’ face as he watched Hermione realize that she knew next to nothing about him and yet she had started to trust him.
“I can’t think straight,” she muttered. “All I know is that I was dreaming something and all of a sudden, I saw you in the back of my head. I mean, you were there in my dream and it wasn’t like the other people there. You knew it was a dream and it was just… it was like you were watching me.”
“I’m a legilimens,” Cassius replied, his voice low, anticipating Hermione’s response.
“That’s not possible,” she shot back, almost instantly. “Legilimency requires physical proximity to your target and it’s not… it’s supposed to be illegal to learn.”
Cassius rolled his eyes and sat down opposite Hermione. “After everything that’s happened, it surprises you that I know something illegal?” His smile faded. “And proximity to your target is helpful in the early stages of legilimency. Advanced legilimens can be as far away as possible and still penetrate minds.”
There was a pause in which Hermione inhaled sharply, resenting the questioning of her knowledge. She considered what Cassius had told her. “And you are an advanced legilimens?”
“As good as they get,” he said. “And to answer your next question: yes, I have been in your mind more than once.”
Another sharp intake of breath as Hermione looked at Cassius with a concerned panic. “Why?!”
“I’ve told you this before, Hermione. You’re a very interesting person.”
The comment was left unanswered as a low knock on the door prompted a pause in the conversation and a house elf entered with two trays of eggs, toast and pumpkin juice. She summoned up a table from the corner and placed it in front of Hermione and Cassius, laying down the plates with care. She asked if there was anything else they needed to which Cassius shook his head. With a bow, the house elf left and he grabbed his fork, taking a bite of his egg.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Does that mean that you know exactly what’s been going on for the last few weeks?” she asked, the harshness resuming.
“No,” he responded honestly. “I know bits of information, yes. But unfortunately I can only see whatever is associated with your current state of mind. Let’s take, for example, your dream this morning. I don’t know what you were dreaming about before or why you were dreaming that particular dream but I do know that it scared you and you were thinking of Draco the whole time.”
Hermione grunted, angrily stabbing her egg yolk with a fork and then glaring at it with all the rage she could muster. If she had been blushing because of Cassius’ revelation about Draco, it was hidden beneath a wall of redness caused by anger. “I am so sick of this.”
She picked up a piece of egg and shoved it into her mouth with such force that Cassius almost worried she’d stab her gums. For another two seconds, they ate in silence until he had swallowed a large gulp of pumpkin juice. “So aren’t you going to ask me?”
“Ask you what?”
“About myself.”
Hermione scoffed. “Narcissism seems to be a running trait in your family.”
“It’s an interesting story,” he said, playfully smiling as he anticipated her reaction to the rest of his revelation. “I promise.”
He took Hermione’s resentful silence as a cue to continue his story. “Well, as you know I am a legilimens, and though a certain part of it was learned, a lot of my skill was actually inherited. All the teachers at Durmstrang had to do was show me how to harness that power.”
The bitterness in Hermione seeped through, emerging as a dramatic rolling of her eyes. “Your parents are not that powerful. Mad, yes.”
Cassius was enjoying her snappiness. Her anger at Draco, her frustration with secrets and her irritation with all things related to this Manor was now coming out in a very amusing sequence of sarcastic remarks. She was trying to assert her power, trying to regain her authority as Hermione Granger, strong witch with a brilliant intellect. She was trying to find some flaw in his logic, prove that she was smarter.
He smiled again. She would fail.
“I’m not the son of Rodolphus Lestrange,” he said. He watched with satisfaction as, once again, the anger gave way to curiosity. At first, he saw her open her mouth to retort but as the words settled into her, he started to see the knowing look form on her face. “Thought you knew everything about me, did you?”
Hermione pursed her lips, nostrils flared. “You’re not as scary as you think you are,” she snapped but her bite was less ferocious. She wanted to know more.
“I am the son of Bellatrix Lestrange, though,” he continued. “And you’re probably right, the woman was as crazy as they ever got. I was sent away to Durmstrang as soon as they could where I trained in the dark arts, perfected my legilimency, learnt all that I needed to until the time was ‘right’.”
He could feel the anticipation building up in Hermione, torturing her as each second went by and he didn’t speak. “Go on,” she urged.
“I was introduced as the son of Mr. and Mrs. Lestrange, for convenience purposes. It made the whole situation a lot less complicated-”
“Does Lestrange know?”
“Know what?”
“That you’re not his son,” Hermione said, irritated as Cassius grinned, enjoying the build up. “You two look nothing alike. He had to have known.”
“Of course he did,” he said, the bitterness in his voice very pronounced. “That leech has been living off me for years now. Do you have any idea how much glory, stature, money, women he got just by pretending to be my father? I was his long term investment. He never had any children and I don’t blame him. I mean, anything with his genes deserves to be put to death immediately.”
Hermione was caught off guard by the sheer resentment and austerity in Cassius’ voice. His playful demeanour was gone now. “My father was a very powerful man, nothing like the sick rat Lestrange is. I was only given the name ‘Lestrange’ because it was my mother’s name.”
Again, resentment. She felt her hands grab her glass of juice and drain half of it in a few sips. Cassius had turned away too, realizing he’d lost control of himself. The two of them sat in silence, finishing the last of their meal as the sun rose up further in the sky. “I don’t scare you?” he asked, suddenly.
“No,” she replied, confident. “I don’t see what others see.”
His control had been regained and he twisted his lips into a smile. “That’s because you don’t know what others know. Even though very few people knew about my origins, rumours floated through death eater circles like wild fire. Draco knows, that I’m sure. Lucius had been part of the plan all along, or at least, he’d been told about it. I’m guessing he told his son; that’s why Draco’s such a good occlumens.”
Hermione’s eyes shot up. “You can’t get into Draco’s mind?”
“Not even a little,” he said. “I’ve tried, Merlin knows I have but I think Lucius always knew that compared to me, Draco would never match up to death eater standards. There would always be, and there always has been, a very vague underlying competition between us. He tried to protect his son in every way: he gave Draco all the same training in the dark arts, taught him occlumency, trained him fiercely so that he wouldn’t be overshadowed by me. That was of course, when my father was still alive. Now things have changed.”
Cassius watched carefully as Hermione’s face tensed, her eyes darting over his face as comprehension dawned on her. “Would it scare you, Hermione, to know that I am the only living heir of the Dark Lord?”
---
A/N: Some day when I finish this story, I will write a huge blog about how ridiculously bizarre the process was and how different this is turning out than I had originally planned (in a good way!)
Hope you all enjoyed that!
much love, erin
Chapter 31
“On one condition,” he said, unable to hide the smile on his face. “You have to marry me first.”
Draco held the ring in his hand, twirling it between his fingers. Despite the bright morning, the glitter of the emerald that sat on the gold band emulated the beauty of the day. The stone had been carved with great care and detail, or so his mother had told him as she had removed it reluctantly from her fingers and given it to him. An era of Malfoys lived within this very ring, passing it on from generation to generation.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he asked her, enjoying the look of amazement as her eyes widened at the ring.
“Beautiful? Draco, it’s gorgeous!”
She reached for it but he, having anticipated her reaction, pulled it back and held it above where he knew her tiny frame wouldn’t be able to grab it. “Come on, let me see it!” she said, her blue eyes veiled beneath her golden lashes. “Please!”
“On one condition,” he said, unable to hide the smile on his face.
She pouted, brushing her wavy hair from her face. He waited for her to nod and then bent down on one knee. Natalie’s face turned a bright shade of pink and she watched with an awestruck expression as he held the ring out to her. “You have to marry me first.”
The words had barely escaped his mouth when he felt her warm lips against his own and her hands found the back of his neck. He stood up, kissing her with all the strength he could muster until she pulled back and smiled at him. “Of course.”
“You’re bleeding.”
Draco looked up, startled by the new presence. It took him a second to remember that he was sitting outside, on the stairs of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Pansy was looking at him fearfully and Draco felt the warm sticky feeling of blood against his chest. He pressed his hand against his shirt and the colour transferred onto his hands, staining the pale skin.
“I need another dose of antidote,” he muttered. The blood was becoming as much of a part of his life as breathing was.
“You need to find Hermione,” Pansy replied. She sat down beside him and he felt her eyes wander over to the ring, still twirling between his fingers. “You need to stop.”
Draco didn’t respond to her, instead choosing to examine the thickness of the blood that had begun to seep through the fabric of his shirt. Hermione had told him that the bleeding was normal since the body would try to get rid of the thin blood but this blood wasn’t thin, which meant that he was regressing. “Did Potter and Weasley ask you questions?”
“They wanted to know why you think Hermione is safe with Cassius.”
“You didn’t tell them.”
“I didn’t,” Pansy said. As the wind began to howl, they allowed a moment of silence to sweep between them.
She pulled out a handkerchief from her jean pocket and pressed it into Draco’s chest, trying to add pressure to the open wound. Her thick black hair covered half her face, her eyes intently fixed on the growing blood stain.
Draco remembered a time when Pansy had been the contender for the emerald Malfoy ring. She was a pureblood, Draco’s ‘girlfriend’ and an amazingly attractive woman. And now, here they were, so many years later with nothing but friendship remaining between the two of them. He felt a slight sting as she pressed harder and Draco felt glad that he hadn’t proposed to Pansy. She had been spared the anguish and punishment of being a Malfoy, of having to spend a life with him and his broken soul.
“I guess Cassius was right,” he said. “History is repeating itself.”
“Not all of it,” Pansy said suddenly and elaborated as Draco looked at her curiously. “Not the part with Cassius.”
“She went to him.”
“That’s because she trusts him,” Pansy countered. “She doesn’t love him, not the way Natalie did.”
---
“So it was all a plan?” she asked. All past indications of anger had now disappeared. “As a backup for Voldemort?”
“I guess so,” he acknowledged. “And who better to bear his child than his most loyal officer?”
The facts were sickening Hermione. Polygamy, hidden agendas, twisted relationships, murder, revenge… what kind of life was this?
Lord Voldemort had a son. That was a terrifying thought, no matter what angle she approached it from. It made sense now, she thought, when looking at it from Voldemort’s perspective. He had always had backups, the horcruxes were there to ensure that if weakened once, he could not be destroyed and it made perfect sense to have a child that could carry the “pure” blood that he so deeply craved to instil in the magical world. The child would be trained in the finest of arts but the world would not know of him until he was ready to be revealed. He would be safe, away in another country studying with his mother’s given name and preached to by the darkest and most immoral of wizards out there. Then he would return by his father’s side, show himself and prove that the blood of Slytherin still ran deep within the magical world.
In its own way, the plan was still in motion. Voldemort’s demise had lent its own importance to Cassius’ survival. And judging by the fear the death eaters harboured, he would have done his father proud. He had the charm of Tom Riddle and the presence of Lord Voldemort – a combination that even his father could not have managed to balance. He had taken his position a step further; while Lord Voldemort remained to be feared by his death-like appearance, Cassius still sustained Riddle’s original charm which made him all the more deadly.
And yet he still hadn’t killed her.
He had spared her, helped her and saved her. Naturally, he didn’t have the genuine kindness that both Harry and Ron possessed but his actions still spoke loud. He had denied wanting to continue his father’s plan for ultimate domination. So what was he doing?
Hermione shook her head, hoping that the rapid jerks of her skull would dismantle the array of thoughts that was assembling. This was another day’s problem
“Haven’t I scared you yet?”
Hermione inhaled and blinked twice. “You won’t kill me, I know that.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. “But I could torture you.”
“You won’t,” she countered. She watched a flicker in Cassius’ eyes and she knew her confidence was amusing him. Part of him probably wanted to pull out his wand right now just to prove her wrong.
“And why won’t I?”
“Because there’s no purpose,” she said, saddened by her own words. “If the fact that I killed your mother really upset you, you would have done away with me long ago. I didn’t kill your father and as far as I know, you have no personal reason to kill me.”
Cassius pondered her statement. “Draco wouldn’t be too happy if I killed you.”
“He has a wife.”
“He had a wife,” Cassius corrected. “And it interests me greatly to see that his having a wife bothers you far more than the fact that you are sitting next to the son of the Dark Lord. Come on, you must be a little… shocked?”
Was she shocked? The revelation had certainly surprised her, disturbed her and even gone so far as to scare her. But she wasn’t shocked. She guessed the day of unpleasant revelations had left her fairly desensitized. “Why have you gone unnoticed for so long?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have any plans for evil world domination. I was all prepped for it when I was a teen but the pursuit of power has lost its interest for me. Until a few weeks ago, I was studying the behaviour of mandrakes in Germany and then Lestrange dropped in to let me know he was planning on getting back into England. Incidentally, he mentioned he was planning on killing you.”
“He’s failed so far,” Hermione said, unsure of why this comforted her. But she gave no more thought to her comment. “I think, after a point, it just becomes a game of survival.”
“You are a survivor,” Cassius agreed.
The notion lingered in the warm air as Hermione exhaled, exhausted by revelations. She wanted to go back to a world of blissful ignorance, where secrets were secrets and lies remained buried. It was just so much easier that way. Her body was beginning to feel numb, as if resisting the urge to continue fighting. All good things must come to an end, it was telling her. Your time has come to an end, Hermione. It’s time to give up and go home.
“Sorry, will you excuse me?” Hermione said, feeling the sledgehammer in her head again. It had found the back of head and started its ritualistic drilling, digging into her brain. “I’ve got a headache.”
Before Cassius had even answered her, she pushed past the door and strode into the hallway, the sledgehammer calmly banging into her head. The mystery’s over. There’s nothing left. Go home.
---
Draco re-entered the house right before lunch, nursing the swollen, open wound on his chest. He changed into a new shirt, took two doses of the antidote and reappeared in the living room right before one o’clock where Ron and Harry were talking with Pansy.
“What did I miss?” Draco asked as he took a seat.
Pansy lowered her gaze, looking away and Harry spoke up. “What’s…” he paused. “What’s the purpose now, Malfoy?”
“For what?”
“Why are Harry and I still here?” Ron interjected. “We were here because of Hermione and it doesn’t seem like she’ll be coming back.”
The bitterness in Ron’s voice was thick, tainting every word that escaped his mouth. He squinted, rubbing his eyes with his palms and heaved a frustrated sigh. Harry, on the other hand, seemed a lot more sympathetic.
“I need to stay at Grimmauld Place for a few more days,” Draco said in a low voice. “Regardless of Hermione and her involvement, Lestrange still needs to be killed.”
“We’ll help,” Harry replied quickly, not giving Ron a chance to talk. “The place is yours for as long as you need. Lestrange’s a wanted criminal – there’s no chance we’re letting him walk free in England.”
A general nod of consensus floated through the room before Draco looked back at Harry, pursing his lips and trying to ignore the throbbing in his chest. He could feel the same sharp stab in his chest as the wound pulsed, swelling up and reddening. The searing sensation of heat that came after each pulse was stronger now, more intense and it could only mean one thing: the end was coming. He remembered asking Hermione how long he had before he wouldn’t be able to talk or walk and it seemed that he didn’t have much time left. But before he became a mute invalid in one of the beds at St. Mungo’s, he had things to finish and he would finish them, at all costs.
“Do we talk strategy?” Ron asked, he seemed to have calmed down a little. Now that he had something to do, something to keep him occupied, he wouldn’t be as jumpy.
“Maybe later,” Pansy said, eyeing Draco with concern.
“No, now.” Draco inhaled deeply before continuing. “We’re going to have to go back to the Manor whenever Lestrange returns. It should be within the next two or three days. His death eater gathering will be happening soon so we need to be fast.”
“He doesn’t have a lot of men, right? Three?”
“Hector, Mulciber and Marcus were his three guys. Marcus is dead but Hector and Mulciber can be a handful.”
“And what about Cassius?” Ron asked. “I reckon one of us should take him.”
Draco prepared to tell them that Cassius wouldn’t be a threat and would probably leave, but the words never escaped his mouth. He felt the knife in his chest start to stab harder and faster, drumming along with the rhythm of his heartbeat. He took a second and held his breath, waiting for the pain to subside before he could speak again.
“Cassius is the Dark Lord’s son.”
Pansy had uttered the words with such speed that Draco probably wouldn’t have realized what she said had it not been for the awestruck expressions on Ron and Harry’s faces.
“What?” Harry asked.
“I’m serious.”
“Voldemort’s son? THE Voldemort’s son?”
“No, the Voldemort down the street.” Pansy bit sarcastically. “Do you know of any other Voldemort’s?”
“Oh this is just great!” Ron burst out. “Does he have a sister too? Maybe an uncle? We can have the entire bloody Riddle family over for dinner!”
“That’s not possible, Voldemort never had a son,” Harry said, ignoring Ron’s string of swear words. “I mean, we spent all our Hogwarts years researching him and tailing him. There’s no way he had a son.”
Draco felt the heat in his skin pulse and he wasn’t sure if it was from the pain or from the anger that Pansy had revealed something totally unnecessary. It would have made no difference if they knew he wanted to tell her but her eyes averted his with skill.
“He was in power,” Pansy said, starting her story. “He was strong, mad and triumphant and he wanted his legacy to continue. Bellatrix-”
“Oh, Bellatrix!” Ron said, comprehension dawning on him. “Sweet old Bellatrix wanted to play mummy? This is absolutely mad!”
“She was eager to please,” Pansy continued. “… in all senses. She just did what he told her and when he said, ‘Bear my child’, she jumped at the opportunity. Nine months later…”
Ron turned to Harry, red in the face. “Do you really believe this?”
Draco could sense the knife starting to ease up, but the pain still prevented him from hearing Harry’s response. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like right now, sitting there in the kind of pain that makes you want to kill yourself but it seemed that neither Ron nor Harry had noticed and Pansy’s gaze was fixed on the pair, avoiding all eye contact with Draco. She knew he hadn’t wanted her to say anything.
“Doesn’t this suggest that we have to kill him?” he heard Harry say.
“He’s not evil,” Pansy replied. “Well, I mean he’s evil but not evil like his father was. Any and all murders that he committed are probably untraceable. In the eyes of the Ministry, you’d be killing a man on pure suspicion.
“I don’t think the Ministry would particularly mind if we killed Voldemort’s son,” Ron added.
The stabs were less frequent now. “He’s very strong,” Draco heard himself say. He felt collected now, not totally recovered but better. “He could snap you in half.”
“Oh please, don’t be too optimistic,” Ron snapped. It was amazing how much Hermione had rubbed off on him. “Strong or not, we can’t just let him walk free. And allow me to add, the fact that we’re letting Hermione stay with him doesn’t make me feel that great either.”
The intensity of the knife was low, allowing Draco to refocus on the room in front of him. Harry had his fingers interlaced, his green eyes observing. Ron was red in the face while Pansy had buried her head in her hands. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, Malfoy,” Ron started, staring at Draco straight in the eye. “Why do you think Hermione’s safe with this creep? Unless of course, you don’t really care about Hermione’s safety a-”
Draco stopped Ron midsentence, feeling the heat in his cheeks flush him. “Don’t go too far,” he warned. “I have spent the last months of my life doing nothing but protecting her.”
“Then what are you hiding?” Ron challenged. Pansy threw Harry a nervous glance but it seemed Harry was just as curious as Ron was, only not as vocal about it. “I want answers.”
“Weasley, you could want blood and I wouldn’t give it to you.”
The stifling air of the past had filled the room, leaving an awkward silence that persisted with the angry glances and mistrusting actions. Draco had been foolish to hope that Ron and Harry would accept his weak explanations about Cassius, without questioning. He had hoped they’d be distracted by their need to kill Lestrange but it seems they had just as much interest in the whole story.
“This is ridiculous,” Harry said, twirling his wand between his fingers. “You can’t expect us to help you if you don’t tell us.”
“Draco, tell them,” Pansy insisted.
“No.” Draco pushed the table back with force, rattling the glass vase atop it as he stood up. He felt the three sets of eyes in the room follow him as he walked to the other end of the room and back, running his hand through his hair. Somewhere in the middle of his heart, the knife had started to prod at his chest again, threatening the action that would ultimately take his life.
He would die. In a few days, weeks, months… whatever it was. He would die because they had failed to destroy Adria. He would die because he couldn’t do what Ron, Cassius and Hermione had managed to do: find happiness. All three of them had suffered burns and neither of them had had the reaction that he did. They had been hurt, felt the pain but they had moved on and that was the one thing Draco had failed to do. He felt her blonde hair flying in the hair, hitting his face with a distinct softness.
“I’m sorry, Draco.” She was crying, the tears glistening over her blue eyes. She couldn’t look at him and he couldn’t face her.
His fists were curled up, his knuckles white from all the pressure he was applying to them. It was all that was keeping him from smashing the large vase in the dining hall in half. He heard her sobs in the background, echoing within the empty room. “I’m so sorry.”
Draco closed his eyes and felt a monster within him. It was a creature that he’d kept dormant for years now, forcing him into hiding but never truly getting rid of him. ‘She betrayed you, Draco,’ the creature was telling him. ‘She’s made a fool out of you.’
“Please just talk to me!” she pleaded. “Say something.”
‘She’s making fun of you, Draco,” the creature had started to say. It was the same creature that had held his hand as he repaired the vanishing cabinet in his sixth year, the same creature that had held his wand up to Dumbledore in the tower that night. ‘Punish her. Show her that you’re a true Malfoy and that you will not be humiliated like this.’
The blurriness in his vision made the figure clutching onto his body seem like a dark blur but Draco could tell from the voice that it was Harry. Pansy was in front of him, her hand on his shoulder as he placed one hand against a wall and leaned over, feeling the blood force itself out of his mouth.
“We’ve got to get to St. Mungo’s!” Pansy cried.
“It’s not safe,” Ron said, pushing the centre table aside as Harry held on to Draco’s shoulders and guided him over to the couch.
Pansy disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the two men to help Draco as he took a seat on the floor and continued coughing, the blood dripping down his blue shirt. She reappeared a few seconds later with a large bucket, angling it in front of him so that most – if not all – of the blood landed in it. Another set of hands – most likely Harry’s – had placed a towel on the front of Draco’s chest, presumably to stop the bleeding that was inevitably occurring.
This is it, Draco thought. This is the end.
---
Hermione had ended up, despite herself, in the one room she probably should have avoided. It looked different than she had imagined it but also somehow very familiar, from the smell to the dark green hangings over the bed. Draco’s room was large, crowded with a closet, two large armchairs, a huge bed, a desk and a large set of drawers alongside a metal chest.
She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling herself melt away against the soft fabric. The bed was soft, draped in silk and laying below the seemingly never ending ceiling tiled with marble. It was only when she felt the mattress bend to the curves of her back and the bright rays of sun hit her eyes that she realized this was not Draco’s bed.
It was Draco and Natalie’s bed.
This was not Draco’s room. It was Draco and Natalie’s room.
Instantly, she felt her knees snap and she stood up, absentmindedly dusting off her clothes. She was an intruder, a stranger in another world. She didn’t belong here and, she closed her eyes as she thought this, she never had belonged here, not in this room, not in this Manor and not as Lady Malfoy. The real Lady Malfoy was buried somewhere, nothing but a pile of dust and bones beneath the earth and a faded memory in the mind. The real Lady Malfoy was Natalie Baudelaire, a French healer and wife to Draco Malfoy.
She was not Natalie Baudelaire. She was Hermione Granger, ex-girlfriend of Ron Weasley, healer at St. Mungo’s hospital and a lonely, lost woman. She had been a Lady Malfoy for a brief time, forced into it by necessity – a fact she had forgotten. Natalie had stood in front of her family and friends and been declared Lady Malfoy whereas Hermione Granger had fallen from a roof and cowered under the title.
As the sun rose higher into the sky, it hit Hermione that she had never been in this room before. The weeks leading up to this disastrous mess in her life had been spent in the master bedroom of the Malfoy Manor, but never here. She stared at the furniture, gathering dust as if it hadn’t been touched in months. It echoed the cries of its former residents. Hermione walked past the large arm chair and pulled open the top of the set of drawers, unsure of what she was looking for. The wood grazed her fingers and with a hint of disappointment she saw the stacks of clothes that were lined in the storage structure. The second and third drawers were also similarly filled, brimming with Draco’s robes and clothes.
The urge to find something took over the fatigued woman and she opened the metal chest. This time, she dug through stacks of books and papers, all lined against the rusting surface. She pulled out the titles, examining them with little interest until she reached the bottom of the chest and sighed, eyeing the thin layer of dust with a surge of frustration. Hastily stuffing the books and papers back into the chest, she sat down on the floor, burying her face in her hands.
What was she looking for? Some proof that this was all a silly joke and that Hermione still was the only Lady Malfoy – albeit an imitation one? Or maybe some indication that Draco really didn’t love this Natalie and that the only person he ever thought about was Hermione?
Harbouring this deluded notion, Hermione got up off the floor and opened the large closet. She bent down, first exploring the thick piles of clothes neatly folded on the floor – which turn out to be more of Draco’s – before scanning the hanging outfits at the top. There were two sets of black dress robes, a large woollen sweater, two pairs of pressed pants and probably more, but by then, Hermione had felt her hopes sink once again and she stopped looking. It was only when she placed her hand on the highest shelf that she managed to pull out a large book, bound in a hard cover with a silver ‘M’ engraved on the cover.
She removed it gingerly – giving its size – and held it in her left palm, flipping the cover open. Her heart sank once again but it wasn’t disappointment that she felt but the realization of ultimate stupidity. Something – it might have been the sudden loss of the desire to keep searching – indicated to Hermione that this is what she was looking for but now that she saw what it really was, she felt like an idiot. Was this really what she had been looking for? Like a mad woman?
The photo album started out with a black and white shot of tall, lanky Draco in his Hogwarts years with his parents beside him, holding up his graduation diploma. He stood between his parents with a forced smile on his face as Lucius and Narcissa looked at the camera with a resigned happiness. Beside them was another couple, aged and solemn in appearance as they stood beside a young girl with light hair tied up in a braid.
Hermione didn’t even have to read the caption, ‘Draco and Natalie, post-graduation party at Malfoy Manor’, to know who the girl was.
She flipped through the second page, seeing two photos side by side under the same caption: ‘Engagement dinner, Baudelaire Mansion’. Her stomach did a small back flip as the two pictures depicted Natalie, in a gold dress, arm in arm with Draco who had developed some of his strength by then, outgrowing his childish awkwardness. They were smiling at the camera in the first picture but the second image had captured a candid moment when Draco was leaning into Natalie, his lips close to her ear as they shared some intimate secret. And if that made her stomach lurch, the next set of photos seemed to push Hermione past a point of depression.
There had been a marriage, so why did it surprise her to see wedding photos? There had to have been a wedding and yet, Hermione looked at the photos with such an awestruck expression.
A large wedding gown, silk dress robes, hundreds of friends and family, the opulence of Malfoy Manor, a crystal centerpiece… it was all there, surrounding the happy couple as they waved to the camera. There was also a photo of Natalie with her arms swung around Draco’s neck as he placed a kiss on her lips, one with the two of them amongst family members and two or three on the dance floor.
By the time she had gotten through the wedding pictures, she felt almost relieved to see just lone pictures of Natalie, without Draco. The next set of pictures depicted Natalie, in a black dress smiling as her eyes beamed with happiness. Her bright glowing skin, full cheeks dominated the photo and her blond hair was swept to one side of her neck. There was something different about these set of photos but Hermione couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Maybe it was because she was always picturing Natalie with Draco that it felt odd to see her standing by herself. She had been, at one point, a happily married woman. The next set of photos was another family portrait with the Malfoys and the Baudelaires, with the happy couple front and center
It was only a few seconds later that she felt her eyes welling up with tears and she closed the album, letting it fall to the floor. Her knees bent and she sat on the ground, leaning against Draco’s – no, Draco and Natalie’s – bed watching her life collapse right in front of her.
---
Incidentally, Draco had been wrong. It was not the end. It was, in fact, a painful beginning to an hour long detoxification that two healers from St. Mungo’s – whom Harry had called – performed. They had drugged him with potions, prodded his wound with probes and knives and sixty minutes later, concluded with the very same diagnosis that Hermione had produced three weeks ago.
“You’re dying, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco felt a strange urge to laugh at the severity of their expressions. Tell me something I don’t know.
They left soon after, prescribing a bucket full of pills and potions that would ease the pain, if not prolong his inevitable death. The crescent shaped scar on Draco’s chest had been retreated and re-bandaged, adding a whole lot of extra bulk that was visible from underneath his shirt. They had assured Draco that if he continued his medication, he would be able to lead a ‘fairly normal’ life and then, grudging adding that it would not prevent his death. They hadn’t managed to deduce that it was an Edacium curse feeding off Draco, and that the only way to live was to kill the creature that produced the curse.
“Harry’s paying the healers right now,” Pansy said as she walked into the bedroom. She looked old. “I’m sorry, Draco.”
“Because you told them about Cassius or because I’m dying?”
He regretted his harsh words as soon as they left his mouth, observing the hurt look on Pansy’s face as she sat on the edge of his bed. “Because you’re sick,” she said. “I don’t regret telling them about Cassius.”
“Them knowing changes nothing about the plan ahead; we still need to get back into Malfoy Manor and kill Lestrange and destroy Adria.” He felt like a father reprimanding his daughter but Pansy was no pushover. She wrinkled her forehead and creased her brow, conveying her irritation.
“They trust us,” she said, biting down on each word to place more emphasis. “Don’t you see that? If I hadn’t told them there would always have been this suspicion between them and us; you can’t win without trust. I don’t care if Cassius’ lineage is of no importance and I don’t care if his relationship with Natalie is of no importance – they need to know that Hermione is safe. She was theirs before she was yours.”
The comment caught Draco off-guard and he lowered his gaze. “She was never mine,” he said bitterly. “And you won’t tell them about Natalie and Cassius. That story will go to the grave with me and it will die with me.”
“You know what?” Pansy said, angrily getting off the bed and glaring at Draco. “With the way things are going now, you just might get your wish! And along with Natalie’s story, Adria’s murder, your parents’ wrongful convictions and the Malfoy blood line will go to the grave with you, where they can fester with your rotting body. Do you really think anyone’s going to fight for you, Draco, after you’re dead? No one will. No one’s going to seek out Lestrange and avenge Adria or clear up your family name. You have to get your justice yourself because the rest of the world? They don’t give a shit about you. You’ll degrade under the earth while your tombstone will turn into another piece of rock that a grave keeper has to sweep once a month.”
Draco watched her push past the door and storm into the hallway, her steps audible as she walked down the stairs. He cursed himself and stared at the white bandages on his chest, thinking of the shell of the man he had become.
---
Hermione gazed intently at the burnt frame, her fingers running through the ripped canvas. Instantly, she remembered the way Draco had looked at her that day so long ago when she’d touched the frame and her fingers pulled away, feeling guilty. The rip in the canvas was harsh, the edges of the cloth jagged. It wasn’t a spell that had done this to the painting… it was a hand. Then, just as easily as she took her next breath, the words escaped her mouth. “Draco ripped this painting.”
She heard Cassius smack his lips. “How can you tell?”
Hermione put her hand on the top left corner of the wooden frame and then, with her right hand touched the point where the rip had started. “He held the frame with his left hand and pulled the fabric with his right.”
Hermione spun on her heel and looked at Cassius. “Something came between them,” she continued. “You said so yourself, right?”
His upper lip curled inwards before he bit it and spoke. “She fell in love with someone else. Natalie was this soulful girl and she just didn’t feel right with Malfoy… not a spirit like hers.”
And it was in that moment that Hermione understood.
The way Cassius talked about her ‘spirit’ and the way his mind seemed to wander to another dimension when he spoke of her… Another lurch in her stomach but this one was more like a prod than a kick. She couldn’t quite decide whether she felt pity for Draco or for Cassius. She turned towards the painting and pondered the only thing of certainty and that was that both Draco and Cassius had been in love with Natalie.
She could see it manifest in his face now, from the little glimmer in his eye to the slight twitch in his cheek as he watched the photo. Every part of his body was focused on the painting in front of him, the little shell of a human being that remained within the wooden frame. Was she angry? Upset? She couldn’t tell but a wave of nausea took over her body and she turned away from the rip, facing the small snake statue that, like many other things here, reminded her of a better time.
“You fell in love with her,” Hermione said softly, hearing the shuffle of Cassius’ footsteps as he faced her. “Right?”
“I was always in love with her.”
There was a heavy pause and the only thing Hermione could hear was his soft breaths as he stared at the canvas behind her. She felt like now, finally, she was getting the full picture. Her fingers wove into the fabric of her pants and she wondered how she could have missed it.
And Draco knew. Draco had to have known. The way he looked at Cassius and the way he avoided him almost all the time were clear indications that he knew.
“Shall we continue the story?” Cassius asked, motioning towards the same white empty room by the entrance doors. Hermione didn’t need to be asked twice and she lead the way, hoping that her silence was enough to confirm that she would rather get her arm chewed off than miss this story.
---
He saw her whimpering, sobbing uncontrollably against the wall with her blue eyes focused on his livid face. But he wasn’t livid, or at least he didn’t feel livid. He felt confused, as though there was nothing more to life than this very moment and no one more in this world than the two of them. What made it worse was that he could feel her guilt and her shame and he didn’t care.
She only deserves pain, the creature said.
“Please say something,” she pleaded.
The creature was becoming impatient now and it forced Draco’s arm up, his wand tight in his hands. She had betrayed him, he agreed. She had destroyed the only thing in his life that had been worth living for and she should pay.
Natalie’s red face gave him her unwavering attention, watching him with the intensity of her swollen blue eyes. She was just as confused as he was. She was just as broken as she was. They were the same.
No, the creature interjected. She humiliated you and your family.
She had saved Draco. She had made him want to reconstruct his life. She had made him want to change the way he hated the rest of the world. She had shown him happiness. And in the blink of an eye, she had taken that all away from him and whatever remained within Draco was now a hundred times stronger. He wanted to break down this new image he’d built, quit his auror training and he hated the world in a way that no one else ever could. He hated this sick game he was playing and the festering piece of nothingness that his life had become.
Kill her Draco, the creature insisted. You can pass it off as an accident. You don’t even need to use a spell… just throw her off the roof. You can do it, Draco. You can do it.
---
Chapter 32
"I swear to you on my magic, I will not fight Lestrange without you.”
“I met Natalie before Draco did, for the record.” Cassius readjusted his position as he leaned back against the white sofa in the piano room before continuing. “We were fifteen and I had been sent to Beauxbatons for my occlumency training. She wasn’t as beautiful as she was when she married Draco, not to others at least. She was a little pudgy, short, extremely wavy hair that her mother always insisted on tying in two braids and she had the tiniest face with the biggest nose.”
The smile that had manifested on Cassius was so pure, unlike anything Hermione had seen before. She knew he’d left their conversation and had wandered back years ago, to his own little bubble where the future did not exist and the past did not matter. All that was important was the present and the two people who shared it. “I fell in love with her that day… that second. There was something so instinctively innocent about her that I had never seen before. My mother had been the epitome of monstrosity and in contrast, Natalie was just so jovial about life and herself.”
“So I loved her,” he said. “And it wasn’t even until I was nineteen that my father was defeated and by then, she had become the only thing in my life. I loved her and she loved me, that was it.”
“But…” Hermione began slowly. “What happened?”
“What always happens,” he said, sadly. “I told her about me, about who I really was and eventually it came to a point where neither of us could really handle living with each other. When my father was defeated, every death eater in the world turned to me and I began to fall deeper into their world. Do you remember asking me why I don’t have plans to take over the world like my father did? It’s because I lost the only thing that mattered to me when I tried to. Natalie left me and I couldn’t have cared less about power, immortality… anything.”
Hermione eagerly listened on.
“She had an infectious charm to her that no one could resist.” He stopped, pursing his lips as if he’d tasted something bitter. “Draco’s couldn’t resist it. It had taken him only a few months before he asked her to marry him.”
Now Hermione felt the bitter taste on her own tongue and she dropped her gaze. Cassius registered her reaction but continued on. “He couldn’t have loved her as much as I did but compared to me, he had a simpler life to offer her.”
That notion triggered a strange familiarity in Hermione’s mind and to her own horror, she realized she knew exactly how Natalie must have felt. No matter how much you may love someone, no matter how much their touch triggers a fire within your veins… sometimes, you can’t help but wish you’d lead a simpler life. Ron was her uncomplicated option, or at least, he had been. They shared an undeniable history, he adored her and she adored him and sometimes, love just wasn’t necessary. Maybe Natalie had felt the same way about Cassius and Draco. Maybe Draco had given her the chance to lead a happy life away from the reckless emotions of love. Maybe she was fond of Draco and maybe she believed she would grow to love him like she had done with Cassius and maybe she just couldn’t handle the pressure and pain and heartbreak of being with a man so unpredictable and complicated.
“So they got married,” Hermione said, finally.
“It was a very quiet ceremony, barely anyone heard of it since most death eaters were still in hiding. But word spread of a marriage, with vague references to who the girl was and how long the marriage has been. That’s why it was so easy to masquerade you as Draco’s wife. There was already a Lady Malfoy, who was to know that it wasn’t really you?”
It was starting to make sense now. “And I returned from my self imposed exile a month after they got married.” Cassius heaved a deep breath and flushed his cheeks. “I had no idea she’d married Draco.”
“Didn’t you read her thou-?
“I would never have done that to her,” Cassius interrupted, almost offended that Hermione would suggest something like that.
The day was colder, unusual given the approaching spring weather and Hermione felt a chill pass through her bones. She gazed around the large shadows that were cast by the bright sun and felt a looming sense of dread.
“You can’t hide who you really are. When I saw Natalie after all that time, no matter how much she tried to change herself or convince herself about the way her life was, I knew she loved me, still. She was still mine.”
Again, Hermione felt that Cassius had drifted off into his own world but just as that thought entered her mind, he faced her with his probing dark eyes. “When I kissed her after all that time apart, it felt as if something had been reinstated to my body. It didn’t matter if she was Natalie Malfoy or Natalie Baudelaire or even Natalie Lestrange, I loved her.”
“You had an affair?” Hermione asked, cursing herself a second after the words had escaped her mouth. She expected Cassius to snap at her for accusing them of having an affair but surprisingly enough, he nodded with certainty.
“The plan was for her to leave him. But regardless of what I wanted, she still respected him and she had grown very close to him. She didn’t want to disrupt his auror training and so we decided that within a year, we’d tell him. But things happened and he found out earlier than Natalie had hoped and she told him she couldn’t be with him. That was it. H-”
Cassius suddenly froze midsentence and his eyes unfocused, rolling back into his head. For a second, Hermione thought he was having some sort of a seizure but his body remained in control and his brown eyes came into focus a few seconds later with a thin smile on his face.
“There’s an owl for me,” he explained, “from Lestrange. I’ll be right back.”
Hermione didn’t protest and waited till Cassius had pushed past the door and exited into the hallway that she gasped at the horror of reality. How many times had Pansy told her that Draco had led a painful life? A complicated life? Had she ever really believed her?
Not in her wildest dreams could Hermione have imagined that this was the story behind Draco Malfoy. He was arrogant, yes. He was reserved, sure. He was stubborn, hell yeah. But given the circumstances, he had every right to be those things. She had no business to judge him or his character because no matter how bad she had thought her life was, it was nothing compared to Draco’s.
She suddenly felt a wave of memories wash through her head. Memories of accusing Draco, of yelling at him, of telling him off for every single thing he did that bugged her. She certainly was an arrogant bitch, wasn’t she? Her egocentric demands, her pleas for attention and every other tantrum she’d had were all thrown into a new light; this new light, incidentally, made her look like a monster.
She then remembered the way she had behaved back at Grimmauld Place with Draco. He had asked her- no, he’d told her- to stay and what had she done? She could vaguely remember and the odd sensation of time relapse happened again, as if yesterday had been a whole different decade. She’d pulled away from his hand, stared down his confused gaze and then said something. ‘You don’t know’? Or maybe it was ‘You have no idea’?
“Damn,” she muttered softly, her eyes moistening.
The truth was that she had no idea. She had had no idea that Draco was all she wanted. The fighting, the sarcastic remarks, the annoyingly perfect blonde hair, those deep grey eyes… she felt like she could give up everything to see those things again. She wanted him to want her. She wanted him to need her and she wanted him to love her like she loved him, her… not Natalie.
She hadn’t had a clue and now when everything she could possibly have wanted was so out of reach, things were clearing up.
“Damn,” she repeated, burying her head between her knees and locking her arms above her head. The tears flowed out of her like a river and she knew the only thing in the world that would make her happy now was that perfectly formed smirk.
---
Draco awoke from his sleep, disturbed by the shuffling sound above him. He gazed around as he inclined his head and saw that it was almost night time. He then looked up to find the source of the sound which turned out to be the portrait of Regulus Black.
“She left?” he asked, getting directly to the point.
Draco nodded quietly. Regulus had a very distinctive similarity to Draco and it wasn’t hard to figure out what it was. His face was hollow, echoing the remnants of the vibrant youth that once harboured the body, much like Draco’s. As he looked into the mirror across the bed, he observed his sunken cheeks, dark eye circles and insipid skin. Draco wondered if instead of looking at the face of Regulus Black, he was looking at his own future. He was already so caught up and drained by his failing attempts at redemption, just like Regulus had been. Maybe he would eventually lose all will and make one last attempt to rectify things before accepting his inevitable death with peace. And that was the keyword: peace; death would bring him peace. He would be able to rest, without the world looking at him like a stranger.
“You destroyed one of the horcruxes, right?” Draco asked, sitting up.
“I know what you’re thinking and it’s not the right answer. I shouldn’t have given up on life.” Regulus pushed his hair out of his face and observed Draco with his dark eyes.
“I think what you did was courageous.”
“It wasn’t,” he replied bluntly. “Compared to the life I was leading, death was simple. Killing yourself is not as hard as you think when the only other option is to face the mess you’ve made. What you are doing, that’s courageous.”
“I’m not doing anything, I can’t do anything.”
“You’re living, Malfoy.” Regulus urged. “You’re fighting for your life and I don’t mean life versus death, I mean you’re fighting for your respect, your dignity, for what you want, not just the bare necessities. That’s courage. You’re doing what I failed to do and what I wish I had done.”
Draco opened his mouth to respond but Regulus interrupted him. “The world talks about Sirius Black, the hero who fought till his dying moment for redemption and respect, the hero who stood by his friends in the worst of circumstances, who survived in Azkaban for thirteen years. No one gives a shit about the little prick that abandoned everyone who ever mattered to him and then in one last hope of clemency, sacrificed himself. Don’t look for your future in me.”
Draco knew that without Hermione pushing him, the desire to fight would dissipate. He was already feeling it now, hoping for death and wishing that everything would just end. But he couldn’t call her back, or go to look for her. He couldn’t force her to come back to him, regardless of what he wanted. Surprisingly, for all the lies he’d told himself, this one truth couldn’t be hidden. She left.
She left.
Just like Natalie had left him, Hermione had walked out too. The circumstances were slightly different but Draco couldn’t see past the similarities. He was plagued by visions of his days with Natalie and the way Hermione had spoken to him. Cassius had been right, history was repeating itself.
He’d fallen in love with a woman who was never his to begin with. Natalie had loved Cassius, Hermione had been with Ron… and he had intervened both times and tried to find a place in their happy lives. He’d driven Natalie away with his ego, stubbornness and given her no choice but to go back to Cassius. He remembered forbidding her from ever seeing him again and that only drove her further away, angered by his unwillingness to be reasonable. She saw more of Cassius, though she had claimed they were just ‘close friends’. That’s why he’d let Hermione go and meet with Cassius as much as she wanted; he didn’t want to drive her away like he had done with Natalie.
But he’d lost them both in the end, both to Cassius. He wasn’t sure if Cassius had any feelings at all for Hermione but he could see the interest in his eyes. He knew that Hermione reminded him of Natalie though she was a little more headstrong and definitely smarter. But would this fascination ever develop into something more? It didn’t even matter because whether or not Hermione wanted to be with Cassius, she didn’t want to be with Draco.
There was a brief knock on the door before it creaked open and Pansy stuck her head in. “Do you want dinner?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, starting to stand up slowly even though he wasn’t hungry.
Pansy nodded briefly, looking away as Draco put his feet on the ground. She stood at the door in silence, staring at her shoes, and waited for him to get up completely. “Are Ron and Harry downstairs?” he asked.
She nodded again. “I can bring you food up here if you don’t want to talk to them.”
Draco turned his head and saw that Regulus had left his portrait. “No, get them in here.”
Pansy’s dull expression suddenly lit up with confusion and curiosity. She didn’t ask twice and turned towards the stairs, calling out to Ron and Harry. “Hurry!” she added, and Draco heard rushed footsteps follow.
While Harry appeared in the doorway ten seconds later, Ron dawdled behind, grunting as he entered the room with resentment. “What?” he asked.
He had to do it fast, before he changed his mind.
“Natalie was in love with Cassius,” he began. “They had met a long time before I met her and they separated because of his involvement with death eaters and Voldemort. So, when he came back to find her after all those years, he had given up that life. The reason Hermione’s safe with him is because Cassius doesn’t kill; he wouldn’t do that to Natalie, even to her memory. He would never harm Hermione, not as long as he still loves Natalie.”
---
The paper in front of her eyes was moving in and out of focus as her mind wandered away. Hermione sat in her room, on her bed and held the large sheets of parchment in her hand, feeling the coarseness of the material but ignoring the words that were on it.
She shut her eyes tight and then reopened them, hoping to focus better.
“Matilda Frogwart married Marius Duval,” she said, reading out the names to ensure that she paid attention and didn’t get distracted. “They had four children: Arthur, Paris, Elizabeth and Castor. Of them, two died before the age of twenty. Paris was killed in a riot at the age of twenty nine and Arthur, having two children with Maria Valkare, mysteriously vanished. Arthur Duval’s two children were Tobias, who died of disease shortly after his wife, and Mandela Breech who married Holmes Breech and they had one son, Elliot. Their daughter was married to Duke Embry and had twin daughters, both of whom carry variations of their grandmother’s name: Magdalene and Mandy.”
Hermione flung the genealogy maps across the bed. They were not as interesting or revealing as she had hoped. The mystery was already solved, the connections already made. The only thing left now was the execution of some plan to ensure that Adria was put to rest and the banshee destroyed.
But was Hermione really a part of this plan?
Hadn’t walking out on Draco – a memory that had become very clear and vivid to her in this last hour of reflection – meant that she was no longer a part of this adventure?
“I swear to you on my magic, I will not fight Lestrange without you.”
Her world had collapsed, leaving behind nothing but smouldering remains. Everything she had once hoped for her life was disappearing with each passing second. This was not how life was supposed to be. There weren’t supposed to be fears and worries and stresses. There was just supposed to be happiness. There was supposed to be peace. Now, everywhere she looked, there was darkness in her life. There was uncertainty, confusion and the most daunting fear that life would not turn out the way she had hoped. She feared that she would wake up one day, old and scarred and wish that she had chosen a different route. She would wish that she had stayed with Draco that day, that she had never broken up with Ron, that she had never received her Hogwarts letter not because it made her any happier to think those things but that they gave her the slightest hope that life could have been a little different and the regrets that now tainted her memories would never have existed.
---
“Lestrange will return to the Manor in two days,” Draco began. “We’ll go to the Manor then.”
“Is that basically the plan?” Harry asked. They were all sitting at the dining table. “Two days and we go kill him?”
“I will kill him,” Draco corrected. “You take Hector.”
“I’ll take Mulciber,” Ron agreed. “How are they both on the duelling front?”
“Strong.” Draco’s voice was deep and calm but Pansy heard the rush of adrenaline.
“Nothing we can’t handle,” Ron concluded, satisfaction appearing on his face in the form of a twisted smile. He looked at Harry and nodded, who responded with an equally confident expression.
“Keep watch for Mulciber’s cruciatus curse,” Pansy added to Ron. “His wand moves faster than a Chudley Cannon seeker in the Quidditch finals. But I think he usually aims to the left, so he can hit closest to the heart.”
The day was coming to an end, another twenty four hours gone. Pansy felt as though time was slipping through her fingers. Every second was so fleeting, every moment was so brief that life itself was becoming a blur.
Draco chimed in with the next piece of advice. “Hector has a weak left leg. Most of his bodyweight falls towards his right and most of the time, if not always, he duels with his right even though he’s left handed.”
“Noted,” Harry said.
Eli brought out a tray containing small floral teacups and placed them in front of each of them, allowing the smell of tea to mix with the cool evening breeze. The four of them paused to sip their drinks and Pansy watched with a heavy heart as Draco struggled to get a proper grip on the handle. His thumb and index finger clasped around the fine cup but his coordination seemed to fail him and he flinched as a sting of pain shot through his arm.
“Cassius will leave most likely,” he said, as Harry and Ron’s eyes wandered over to his stiff hand. Instantly, their attention was diverted. “He might stick around to watch the fight but he definitely won’t interfere.”
“You’re sure?” Ron asked, unable to mask his scepticism.
“He fights when he has a reason to,” Pansy answered. “If you attack him, he will kill you.”
“I can’t take him?” Ron asked, half jokingly.
This time even Pansy managed to form a smile on her face, followed closely by Harry. “You need just a little more practice,” she answered.
The momentary dissipation of the intense mood helped ease the tension in the room. Pansy took another sip of tea while Ron reached the counter behind him and grabbed a box of chocolate tarts. Even Draco managed to get the grip on his tea cup and lifted it with seemingly little pain. Pansy could imagine the dryness in his mouth and when she saw the warm liquid slide down his throat and create a little bulge in his Adam’s apple, she felt her own body ease up.
“What about Hermione?” Harry asked.
The subject had to be raised sooner or later and it seemed that even Draco had accepted the fact. He nodded and delivered his response with ease. “She’ll stay to fight, I’m guessing.”
The other three did not question or protest. “Alright.”
The rest of the conversation veered off topic, eventually ending up as a discussion of Ministry policy at Azkaban as compared to other international wizarding prisons. Eli served some warm biscuits and then excused himself to go wash up for bed, leaving Draco, Ron, Harry and Pansy to themselves. The awkwardness that had once existed was gone and these four people were now joined under one common goal, unified by the hope to avenge, the hope to bring justice and the hope to restore life back to its old self.
---
It didn’t surprise Hermione that she couldn’t apparate in the Manor anymore but a new wave of depression settled itself over her as she stood in the middle of the room, feeling like a fool and anticipating the tug at her navel which never came. In a pitiful attempt to distract herself, she made her way out of the Manor and through the large stone archway that acted as a marker between the Malfoy grounds and Beech Hill. The wind was strong and warm, filtering through her hair as she made her way on the hard path that spiralled through a set of trees before bringing her out into the tiny village.
… immediately after they buried Adria’s body in Beech Hill, that’s the village nearby on the other side of the forest
Her feet dragged across the hard pavement as she entered the main part of the village, which was a lot quieter than the last time but that was mainly due to the late hour. The darkness had set in though the area still contained a few people finishing up the day’s shopping.
The Beech Hill graveyard was surrounded by a thick, black iron fence that allowed entry only from the large wired gates at the North side of the field. As Hermione treaded on the moist soil, she began to wonder if what she was doing was really sane but it didn’t really matter. She was already through the gates and passing the first couple of graves when this thought hit her.
Past the large skeletal oak tree in the centre of the field, Hermione saw the headstone.
Here lies Natalie Malfoy. August 25 1982 – September 15 2005.
Running her hands along the tombstone set the entire story into reality. Seeing the grave and knowing that below her feet lay buried the real Lady Malfoy, Hermione felt herself sink to a new low. It was almost the same feeling as when she found the photo album in Draco’s bedroom; it wasn’t just a story, it was reality.
Hermione knelt down beside the heavy piece of stone and read the epitaph etched meticulously into it. Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts, not amid joy.
“Draco chose that epitaph.”
Cassius walked up from behind Hermione and silently knelt down beside her. He looked at the grave, taking a deep breath for a few seconds and his dark eyes twinkled under the moonlight.
“Why do you think he chose it?” Hermione asked, not the least surprised that Cassius had managed to find her. She was beginning to realize the indications that he was in her mind – this time, it had been the small ticklish feeling when she had been walking.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve never been able to penetrate his mind. I usually gather information about him from what I can see in others’ minds.”
She watched the wind rustle amidst the few remaining leaves on the oak tree and her stomach began to sink towards her feet. Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts, not amid joy. He was sending her a message. Hermione could only imagine the pain that must have gone through Draco’s mind when he’d found out that Natalie and Cassius loved each other. Strangely enough, he must have felt what she was feeling now: the feeling of being a stranger in a love story, of being the unwanted character that had no place to begin with.
“Does Draco know that it was his father who…?” Hermione trailed off, waiting for Cassius’ response.
“Killed Natalie?” he asked, finishing her question with a harsh bitterness. “No, I don’t think the louse ever told Draco.”
Hermione recoiled slightly and then bit back her next set of questions. She hadn’t ever really considered Cassius’ point of view on this. Natalie had, quite literally, changed his life and in doing so, changed the future of the wizarding world. Who knew what he was capable of had he chosen to pursue his father’s footsteps?
“I just don’t understand why Lucius would kill her. Draco really seemed to love her,” she thought out loud. “I’m sorry if talking about this makes you uncomfortable,” she added as an afterthought.
Cassius smiled and leaned against the large tree. “Not many people talk to me about these kinds of things,” he said. “It’s nice to be told upfront than having to pry through minds.”
Hermione silently agreed. Having to pressure Draco into talking about things was so much different than sitting here and listening to Cassius volunteer information. She felt like she could understand Cassius whereas Draco remained hidden beneath the many layers he’d created.
“Pride,” Cassius said, answering Hermione’s first question. “I think Lucius killed Natalie because she had damaged his pride and his family’s. Father’s are often very protective of their sons.”
The wind howled once more and brought with it a collection of dusty, sweeping it against the tombstones. It was then that Hermione noticed two long stemmed lilies lying on the side of Natalie’s grave, tainted with dirt but still white and delicate. “Are those yours?” she asked.
“One is mine,” Cassius nodded. “The other is Draco’s.”
He observed Hermione drop her gaze and she put her arms around herself to rub them against the cold. It was probably past 11 p.m. now but neither of them showed any desire to leave.
“I don’t hate Draco,” Cassius said, answering the question that Hermione was thinking. She looked up in surprise but then, realizing that she probably never had to ask anything out loud anymore, listened intently to his response. “Draco keeps his distance from me but I don’t hate him.”
“Because you won,” Hermione said.
“I did win,” Cassius agreed. “Which is why when Natalie died, I ended up losing the most. If I could have, I would’ve given my life to save hers. And Draco knew that.”
“Is that why he let her leave without a fight?” Hermione asked.
This time, Cassius laughed. “He didn’t go without a fight.” He watched with great attention as a streak of moonlight fell on Hermione’s face. “There was a lot at stake.”
---
Hermione lay in her bed, thinking of her conversation with Cassius. It was almost four in the morning but her body felt no desire to sleep. It knew... she knew there was something still missing in her puzzle.
Puzzle.
She liked thinking of this whole situation as a puzzle that needed putting together. It helped her see everything from a logical perspective. Each new revelation wasn’t a knife to her heart and the sound of another dream shattered; each new revelation was a piece to the puzzle. And, just like when she was much younger, when she finished this puzzle, everything would be okay. The game would be over and life would resume to its normal state. Deep down, of course, she knew that was all a load of garbage but it gave her solace to think of Draco, Natalie and Cassius’ story as a puzzle.
Cassius fell in love with Natalie when he was very young. They grew farther apart by the time Voldemort was defeated and when all the death eaters of the world began to look to Cassius as a new leader, Natalie could no longer handle it. Then she met Draco. He was a much more uncomplicated option, a good man and someone who truly loved her.
Hermione took a sharp breath at this point in her mental recollection. She sat up in her bed and looked out onto the courtyard of Malfoy Manor. The large rose bushes were starting to wilt under the cold weather and because they had lacked the proper care for weeks now.
Draco fell in love with Natalie and they got married. Cassius came back, giving up the need for power, and Natalie realized that she still loves him. They have an affair and somehow, Draco finds out a year into his marriage. He leaves to go to Belize to focus on his auror training and in the meantime, Lucius Malfoy decides to have Natalie killed. Hermione now paused. Paralleling the timeline of the first story was a secondary plot involving Adria. Right around the time Natalie was killed, Lestrange came to Malfoy Manor to seek refuge and the Malfoys denied it to him. He returned a few days later and burnt the courtyard and tortured Adria, killing her.
Over the years, Hermione had come to trust her instincts and they told her there were fragments missing from this tragedy. Then a question came into Hermione’s mind which, she was surprised, hadn’t ever crossed her mind before. It seemed like an obvious question to ask when the sequence of events was placed into this particular order.
Why Adria?
There was an army of house elves and from what Hermione had heard, a fair few other human servants who served the Malfoys. According to Pansy, Draco had relieved them of their duties after his parents’ incarceration. But why Adria then?
The idea of rape had crossed her mind but if the primary motive was lust, then wouldn’t that have been visible in her death? Why torture her to such a degree that her body essentially became a shell of dark magic? Why put her through the pain of burning her body alive when it would be just as easy to use the killing curse on her?
Hermione had seen enough crime in her life to distinguish a crime of hot passion from a cold blooded one. Adria’s murder was done in cold blood. She had been murdered in a small shack on the outer edge of the grounds and her body had been dragged back into the Malfoy dungeons. This had been a calculated and well thought-out crime.
Questions were circling Hermione’s mind, igniting a seething urge in her to collapse. Her mind was straining, trying to find some sort of a connection between the two stories and the drain was beginning to manifest itself physically. Hermione felt her head hurt, a cold and numb feeling starting to surface from the bottom and make its way into the core of her brain. A light pulse dominated her senses and she took a deep breath. She knew she was getting way in over her head with all these facts and dates and coincidences.
Drawing a sharp sigh, she got off her bed and grabbed a piece of parchment from the oak desk straddled against the wall.
“Lumos,” she said, allowing her wand to produce a small glow that enabled her to find a quill and an ink bottle on the far edge. She sat herself down on the desk and rubbed her eyes fervently. Snap out of it.
The numbers ran through Hermione’s head with speed but she wrote with extreme caution, ensuring that the words were clear and accurate.
September 15 – Natalie murdered
September 16 – Draco returns from Belize
September 27 – Adria killed
“Okay,” she said, sitting back and staring at the sheet of parchment in front of her. She took a deep breath.
And in that one breath, her mind cleared up and the number jumped up at her. Hermione wasn’t sure what had triggered the memory – it might have been that with everything written so plainly in front her, she couldn’t avoid it – but things were starting to clear up. The holes in the story were becoming more and more evident and with each passing second, the story Hermione had just recounted to herself seemed less and less likely.
“He came to find me, you know? Lestrange, yes he did. Two years ago on September 27th, when I was in Belize facilitating auror training, he showed up to my house, pointed a wand in my face and almost killed me.”
Rodolphus Lestrange had been in Belize the day of Adria’s murder. He had been in another continent that day and given the difficulty of entering London for him, there was no way he could have been in both London and Belize on the same day. That could only mean one thing:
He didn’t murder Adria.
Hermione repeated the phrase in her head three times before running her fingers through her hair in complete confusion. Rodolphus Lestrange didn’t kill Adria. He couldn’t have killed her. Unless Skeid had been mistaken but the conviction with which he had told her about Lestrange had been so strong; people rarely forget traumatizing moments like these.
A cold gust of wind blew into the open window, sending a sharp chill down Hermione’s spine. She shivered in her thick sweater and enveloped it tightly around her body before pulling the window shut. The light from Hermione’s wand had faded and she sat in the darkness, preferring the silence as the new facts sunk into her aching mind.
She kept scanning through the books at her desk, mindlessly. She hoped that there was something she had missed, something that could shine light on these new bizarre facts. Her fingers grazed the rough parchment and she gazed at the words.
It would be another forty five minutes before she found what she was looking for in those very books.
---
Draco looked out the window in his small room, sitting on the slightly dented mattress that had become a sense of comfort for him. In fact, the whole room was becoming a familiar abode and more often than not, Draco had to remind himself that this wasn’t his house. His house was under siege right now by a man who had taken away his entire life from him.
Lucius Malfoy’s body had been buried on the small patch of land circled the island on which Azkaban sat, or at least, that’s what the official documents said. Draco knew that the loose dirt on the ground was eventually engulfed by the hard tides of the surrounding body of water. Ninety eight percent of the bodies eventually washed away into the ocean, getting lost in the sea. But Narcissa wouldn’t suffer the same fate. She would be buried in the Beech Hill Cemetery, just like the Malfoys before her. It would take the intervention of death before Draco let his mother’s body degrade at the floor of the sea.
His gaze dropped to his bare chest which looked silver in the moonlight. Judging by the softness of the flesh that shaped his crescent scar, death could intervene before Draco finished his mission.
Harry had agreed that getting back into Malfoy Manor as soon as Lestrange returned would give them the element of surprise. But now, Draco wondered if either Ron or Harry or even Pansy really understood that invading Malfoy Manor in two days wasn’t the best option but rather, the only option.
His last episode had rendered him very weak. His legs felt like boulders, weighed down by the stiffness in his back. His arms, on the other hand, had taken on a flaccid quality, requiring a huge amount of effort to perform the smallest of tasks. He feared that two days was all the strength he could afford to lose; any more than that and he knew that he’d be cutting it close. If the rate at which his body lost strength remained the same, then he knew he’d be able to pull through in two days and get his revenge. He’d be able to go to the Manor and avenge his family.
He’d be able to say goodbye to Hermione.
He had thought about what he would say to her if he saw her again. There were so many things he wanted to express but once again, time was limited and in the end, Draco decided he would say farewell by telling her he loved her. He hoped that in realizing his love, she would forgive his lies. She would at least know that he had meant well and that the man she had spent so much time with wasn’t a facade. That had been the real Draco Malfoy: a man who had been branded with scars that most people never experience in their entire lifespan, let alone the first twenty five years. He was a broken man and in Hermione, he had forgotten just how broken he was. In her company, he wasn’t the man whose wife killed herself because their marriage had been a lie; he was happy with Hermione.
But that was too much to say to a woman who couldn’t stand the sight of him. He would see her just long enough to tell her that he loved her and then he would move on, be it with life or with death
For now, he was content with watching the moon as it floated amongst the clouds. He wondered if Hermione was watching the same thing he was.
---
Miles away, Hermione’s heart began to race as she discovered the missing link between both stories. She could feel the throbs echoing in her ears as each piece of the puzzle came together. It made so much sense but the clearer it became, the more worried Hermione got.
She read the words in the book again, confirming that she had not lost her mind. She needed to see them again, and again, as if the revelation was a dream. It was coming together... her little puzzle was starting to make sense and the more she found out, the harder her head ached.
And in a flash, her headache disappeared.
Hermione froze. Her short, cold breaths were the only noise in the room. The fog from her bated breath hovered in the air for a few seconds before disappearing. A cold shiver passed through her.
She understood the pains in her head now, the way they had been plaguing her all night.
She reached for her wand but he was too fast for her. Before her fingers even grazed the wood, his spell had filled the room with a bright red light. Hermione felt a sharp pain in her arms as a force pushed her against the wall. Blood trickled down her nose as his face came into view, his eyes filled with a calm disposition.
Cassius’ lips curved into a smile. “I was wondering when you’d figure it all out.”
---
Chapter 33 - Words couldn’t escape her mouth, her tongue was paralyzed and all she could do was feel the cold chills pass through her bones.
I'm so sorry about the delay! This and the following chapters are really important so I was ironing out some of the kinks! And on top of that, exams and school take up a lot of my time! I apologize for the delay and I promise it won't happen for the next chapter =)
Hope you liked this chapter! Let me know what you think!
-Erin
¬Hermione quivered, cringing at the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. She was against the floor with her arms pressed into her stomach, locked under her body weight. Cassius’ curse had left a sharp pain in both her legs and shoulders. Her left cheek was against the cold ground, grazing the soft carpet.
“You really are quite a witch, Hermione,” Cassius remarked. His voice was smooth and calm, as if he was discussing the weather with her. “I was hoping you wouldn’t figure anything out until after Draco came back for Lestrange. I had a whole dramatic reveal planned.”
Hermione wanted to say something but her jaw was aching, stained with the blood from her cut lip and injured nose. Cassius circled her body and seated himself on the chair at the desk. He leaned back and propped his legs up. His face was the same as Hermione had always seen it but hidden beneath his veneer of charm, betrayed by the moonlight, was a distinct resemblance to his father. His lip was curled upwards into a twisted smile that stretched across his pale face, beneath the dark eyes that were surveying Hermione.
“Why’d...” Hermione cringed at the pain in her jaw. “Why?”
“But you already know,” he replied. He feigned a sympathetic expression as he bent down and placed his fingers against Hermione’s face. She shook it off violently. “Are you in pain? Let me help you.”
He got off the chair and waved his wand. Hermione’s body convulsed under the white light and she felt herself being lifted and thrown into the now vacant chair. The pain in her limbs had subsided greatly and all that remained of her wounds was the taste of blood still fresh in her mouth.
“But you were wrong,” Hermione said. “You killed Adria because you thought Draco loved her. You were wrong. She was in love with him but he didn’t feel the same way about her.”
“It would have been fair,” he shrugged. “His father killed my love and so it would be fitting that I killed his. An eye for an eye.”
Hermione felt her heart racing. She had to keep talking; she had to keep Cassius talking. Her mind was racing through any and all options she had which she, finally, concluded were very limited. She was sitting across the son of Voldemort and whatever she had ever thought about him was wrong.
“You never could read Draco’s mind so you never figured out that he didn’t love her,” Hermione said. “You just read Adria’s.”
“I was in your mind when you discovered that.” His eyes wandered over to the book that Hermione had been reading only a few minutes ago. He smiled. The page that had been ripped when Cassius had attacked her from behind but the words could be easily made out.
“I thought the curse affected Draco the most because he had pain but I was wrong,” Hermione said. She could still remember the words as the book had presented them: Effects of the edacium curse are mediated not by the victims but by the one who casts the curse. Due to the strong effects of the curse that manipulate mental and emotional aspects and manifest themselves physically, the degree of damage depends on the one who casts the curse. “The reason Draco is so affected by the curse is because Adria was in love with him. There was a stronger connection between the two of them and so the curse had a stronger effect on Draco. It’s not his pain that’s eating away at Draco’s life, it’s Adria’s love.”
She had to keep Cassius talking and thinking; she couldn’t afford to have him in her head again, not with the escape possibilities filtering through her mind. “So I figured out the Adria loved Draco,” she muttered.
“And I told you that I can’t read Draco’s mind,” Cassius said. “And then that wretch Skeid gave you that one little fact that ruined my plans.”
Cassius strolled across the room and shut the door that was still ajar. He turned back to Hermione with a slight smile on his face but with the moonlight hitting his pale skin, he looked almost silver. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
“What is?” Hermione asked, keeping her hands from trembling in the chilly wind. She was still in her chair, not bound but unable to move.
“That it’s love that’s killing Draco.” Cassius said; Hermione swore she saw him stifle a little laugh. “Of all the things that could eat away at his life, it’s the one thing that’s supposed to instil life.”
Hermione looked away and tried to find her lost wand. “That’s not true,” she said, her answer caused Cassius to look up and straight into her brown eyes. “Not all love instils life... “
“Do I detect a hint of bitterness in your voice?” The smile became fuller and Cassius took a few steps towards Hermione, his wand twirling casually in his hand as if to remind her that he still had control. “Of course, you’re referring to unrequited love, yes? The kind of love that doesn’t give life? The kind of love that you have with Draco?”
Hermione’s expression hardened and she felt herself stiffen. It hadn’t really occurred to her that Cassius had access to those thoughts as well but now that she realized it, she felt anger boiling in her veins. Cassius registered her sudden rise of emotions and he sat down on the bed, still twirling his wand.
“Unfortunately, I only began to realize this when you started to as well,” Cassius explained. “That day in the hospital? You sent me that letter to meet you in the cafeteria and I could feel the affection for Draco growing in your heart. And you’ve never really known how to deal with it since.”
Hermione glared at Cassius, feeling both helpless and foolish as he read into some of her most private thoughts. She knew that he had seen all her thoughts associated with Draco, all those nights when she had done nothing but think about how much she loved him and about how she wished she was the real Lady Malfoy.
Cassius stood up and sat in front of Hermione, his wand positioned between his fingers. “You’re wrong, by the way,” he said. “I haven’t imprisoned you because you know that I killed Adria.”
His left hand gently caressed her curly brown hair and Hermione felt a knot in her stomach. Words couldn’t escape her mouth, her tongue was paralyzed and all she could do was feel the cold chills pass through her bones. “Draco didn’t love Adria but, Hermione, he does love you.”
Hermione’s eyes widened at the horror of the information. “An eye for an eye,” Cassius whispered.
---
Draco had woken up at five thirty that morning. Hoisting himself out of the bed, he had quietly started to walk in large circles around the room. His ears were filled with the shuffles of his heavy feet, the faint chirps of birds celebrating the crack of dawn and the warm summer wind as it hit his window. For the next hour and a half, the walking was all he did. And so, by the time he heard Ron, Harry and Pansy convene in the kitchen, he descended the stairs with a lot less pain and lot more fluidity than he could have hoped for.
Pansy smiled as she saw him make his way over to the dining table and Harry and Ron nodded. Eli was making breakfast, looking visibly more fatigued than he had done in years. His twinkling eyes had lost their mirth, surrounded by deep dark circles. His face was paler, blending into his white lips. The moustache that dominated his upper lip was now wearing thin, withering away and revealing little follicles of ingrown hairs under.
“Eggs, Master Malfoy?” Eli asked, ushering to the large omelette cooking on the fire in front of him.
Draco pursed his lips and took his seat. “Eli, are you alright?”
The old man nodded dismissively and Draco felt a pang of guilt hit him. He hadn’t realized what this whole ordeal had been doing to Eli. He had served the Malfoys for longer than Draco could ever imagine and no matter how much wisdom and loyalty a man may carry, his body and age will only permit him to go so far.
Eli emptied the omelette onto Draco’s plate and turned back to the stove. “I will have the toast ready in a few minutes. Would anyone like some tea?”
Pansy and Harry looked at Draco with a concerned expression, followed by Ron turning to Harry and then back to Draco. They all seemed to be silently electing him to be the one to tell Eli to stop overworking himself. He nodded quietly and put his fork down, turning to Eli.
“Eli, you’ve done enough. Thank you.”
“But Master Malfoy, there’s barely enough food for-”
“There’s enough food here to keep Weasley stocked up for two days,” Draco assured him, smiling as Harry and Pansy laughed.
“And that’s really saying something,” Harry chimed in. Ron patted his stomach and smiled as well. “You should rest.”
“I’m quite alright, Master Malfoy,” Eli said wearily. “I can help you prep-”
“I’m ordering you to go and sleep, Eli,” Draco said. “I will wake you if we need your assistance.”
The old butler didn’t refuse this time, nodding politely and thanking the four of them as he gave them a smile and left the room. Draco turned back to his eggs, digging into them. Ron had reached over to grab another piece of toast and Harry brought the tea pot over, setting it on the table.
“He’s not coming, is he?” Pansy asked. “This must be so taxing on him.”
“I’m not sure yet,” Draco said. “It depends on what we decide today.”
As he sipped some tea, Harry reached into his pocket and produced a thin, unsealed envelope. He put it on the table and pushed it towards Draco. “I made it official last night,” Harry said. “And I received this from the Italian Ministry this morning.”
“So do we have jurisdiction?” Ron asked.
Harry nodded with satisfaction. “Lestrange is officially confirmed to be in London and so now we are in full authority to arrest and detain him. Without the Italians demanding extradition, if you do kill him, we can bypass a lot of international protocols.”
“Thanks,” Draco said, feeling better as these small hurdles were overcome one by one. Now that they had full jurisdiction over Lestrange’s arrest, no evidence from his death and confessions, including evidence that Narcissa Malfoy was innocent, would have to go through the Italian Ministry. The sooner his mother got out, the better.
“What’s left to do?” Harry asked.
“Are there aurors on standby?” Draco asked and breathed a sigh of satisfaction as both Harry and Ron nodded.
“My team’s ready,” Ron said. “They’ll be stationed at the end of the forest.”
“We’ll get to the Manor before ten tomorrow night. Weasley, you take the North Tower entrance and head down east towards the dining hall, it’s four doors down from the room that you were staying in. Potter, you take the South Tower entrance from the bottom and follow the stone path until you hit wood flooring.”
“We’re aiming in the dark here, mate,” Ron intervened. “The Manor’s huge and we’re searching for three men and a woman. They could be anywhere.”
“The Manor’s charmed,” Draco said, pouring himself another cup of tea. “My wand can trace anyone in it who doesn’t have Malfoy blood.”
Pansy turned to Draco with a confused expression when it suddenly dawned on her. “That’s how you found Hermione, isn’t it? When they were killing that man and she was in the closet?”
Harry and Ron maintained their confusion while Draco nodded. “We need to cover the three exits that Lestrange knows about: the south tower, north tower and the main entrance, which I will take. Potter, if you and Weasley follow the paths I gave you from your entrances, you’ll both hit stone staircases that lead down to the dungeons. That’s where Adria is most of the time.”
“Why do we need Adria there?” Pansy asked. “We’re already way in over our heads.”
“With Lestrange’s death, any and all magic of his should break,” Draco explained. He couldn’t block the image of Hermione as she had explained the very same thing to him only a few days ago. “It was the dark magic from his wand that, two years ago, killed Adria and bound her to the banshee.”
“Ah,” Harry said, understanding.
“Destroy the magic and you destroy the bond that binds Adria to the banshee,” Ron said, amazed by the simple logic the plan followed. “Brilliant.”
“It’s a theory,” Draco offered. “But it’s worth a try.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Ron said, slipping a piece of toast into his mouth. “Hermione’s theories are almost always on the mark.”
A perpetual silence followed. Hermione was like the elephant in the room, but even more than that, she was so intimately linked with all four of the people seated at the table that mentioning her reopened healing wounds. There was the thing with Draco, a relationship so tangled with threads of the past that it had driven both of them away from each other. What was worse was that everyone knew that Draco loved Hermione and Draco knew that everyone knew but no one could mention it. Ron was caught in the middle as Hermione’s ex-boyfriend and one of her best friends, Harry was thrown in as Hermione and Ron’s best friend and Pansy was also awkwardly fitted in as Draco’s ex-pseudo-lover. All of this revolved around, of course, the one lingering question in the air: did Hermione feel the same way about Draco?
“Don’t enter the dungeons until I give you the signal,” Draco said, awkwardly ending the silence. “They are the size of a village and you only go in there if you don’t want to come back out. Cover the exits until I find Lestrange and his men. Pansy and I will lead them to the dungeons.”
“Why Pansy?” Ron asked, annoyed that he was stuck of defence.
Pansy clicked her tongue and raised her eyebrow. “Because I can do something you can’t, Weasley.”
There was a small pop in the room and Pansy suddenly disappeared, her black hair vanishing into nothingness. Ron scoffed, letting out a laugh. “You can apparate? That’s great, so can half the kids at Hogwarts. Let’s bring them along too.”
“Look closer, Ron,” Harry interjected.
Ron opened his mouth to argue but the small chirps of a distant bird caught his attention. He looked up at the ceiling and saw a little sparrow, wings spread, floating through the morning air. She circled the table twice and then folded in her wings to aid her smooth descent onto the center of the table. She chirped twice at Draco who affectionately ran his finger along her feathers. She then turned her head towards Ron and bit at his finger.
“Bugger!” he clamoured, withdrawing his hand and both Draco and Harry laughed as the sparrow flew overtop, allowed Harry to graze her feathers and then reappeared in her human form.
Pansy’s black hair, fair skin and dark eyes materialized in front of the three men, bearing a satisfied expression on her face. She raised her eyebrow again and waited for Ron’s counter argument but he didn’t make one, instead choosing to grunt and ask Draco to continue.
---
The warm air that had been a comforting farewell to the cold winter was now as chilly as winter itself. It circled Hermione’s shivering body and danced through the drapes, providing the only break in the silence that lingered over what she had just realized.
Cassius was going to kill her.
He hadn’t attacked her because she knew the truth. He had attacked her because he wanted to torture her and then kill her, just like he had done with Adria two years ago.
Hermione took a sharp breath and observed Cassius as he wrote something on a sheet of parchment at her desk. His tall figure was bent over, seemingly absorbed in the words in front of him but Hermione knew better than that. Any escape attempt she made would surely be blocked and then followed by a painful punishment. She couldn’t risk making any brash attempts at freedom; if she was going to survive, she would have to plan it with careful calculations.
“You ruined Draco’s life,” Hermione said, breathing slowly. “He had nothing to do with Natalie’s death. Lucius was the one-”
“And Lucius did pay, Hermione,” Cassius agreed, still not looking up from his parchment. “I made sure of it.”
And then Hermione understood. It was something Draco had said a long time ago, mentioned in passing but today it held an enormous amount of weight. “Lucius didn’t die escaping, did he?” she asked, fearful of the answer.
“Poor Narcissa was too weak to even recognize me, so I let her be. But Lucius, he had blood on his hands.” Cassius looked up at her this time and the charm from his face had faded. For the first time, Hermione began to see Voldemort, as he had been in his last years. “I’m quite good at the imperius curse. When the guards found Lucius at the doors, they didn’t even suspect that he was under my spell. They didn’t even try to stop the dementors.”
Hermione tried to block out the horrifying image of the dementors descending down on Lucius Malfoy’s body, sucking the life out of him. Keep talking, she urged herself. “An eye for an eye,” Hermione whispered. “You killed Lucius, it’s even.”
“Hermione, do you remember what I told you at the graveyard tonight?” Cassius asked, his voice smooth. “I told you that there was a lot more at stake than you could ever have imagined.”
His thin smile returned and he held up the piece of parchment to Hermione, who was still bound to the chair. The wooden posts of the bed were pressing in her sides but the pain had become a dull sensation in the back of her mind. The fear in her veins was now governed by the fact that her limbs were completely immobile.
“I thought you didn’t kill,” Hermione said.
Cassius clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Incorrect. I said I don’t kill unless I have to. I prefer not to kill but these are special circumstances. Now, I am going to go and send Lestrange this owl and you will sit very still over here.”
Hermione sucked in a sharp breath as the pain in her limbs increased. Cassius’ fingers hovered over her face with a gentle precision and when he withdrew them, the pain disappeared, leaving Hermione breathless and with tears in her eyes as the first signs of dawn hit the horizon.
---
Ron trotted through the hallway at Number 12 Grimmauld Place without really focusing on his steps. His mind was concentrating on the unusual circumstances surrounding Draco and Natalie and Cassius. It was odd for Ron to be the one trying to find the missing pieces of the puzzle; usually, he had his wand in his hand and was ready for any sort of confrontation. However, with Hermione gone, the responsibilities of discovering the hidden story had fallen on him and Harry equally.
He had resolved that a warm shower was what he needed right now to clear his head. Wasn’t that what everyone always did? He felt odd being the thinker but it was also a little exciting to face a new challenge. He turned around at the top of the staircase and then headed for the bathroom, hoping that he would have an epiphany moment just like Hermione always did and the entire story would fall right into place.
As he approached the door, his thoughts wandered farther and farther away from the present, trying to recollect the facts in his head before the cleansing ritual. He opened the door absentmindedly and entered the bathroom, only to be met with a high pitched scream.
“RON!”
Ron looked up suddenly, catching a glimpse of a very red Pansy in the bathroom as she grabbed a towel from the counter and covered up her bare body. Ron didn’t even realize that Pansy had been undressed until after she had completely drawn the towel over her torso, looking both confused and livid. He immediately covered his eyes with his hands, extremely embarrassed.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” he muttered.
“DON’T YOU KNOCK?” she yelled. She turned her back towards him to readjust the towel at her front, ensuring that it was tucked in securely and wouldn’t betray her. “Are you really that thick?”
“I wanted to take a shower. I didn’t hear you inside!” he defended.
Pansy made a disgruntled noise as Ron removed his hands from his eyes. She was fully covered in her towel now, revealing only her fair calves above her feet and her bare shoulders, drenched with beads of water. Her hair was wet and messily tucked behind her ears, forming little cascading waves as the breeze from the hallway came into the bathroom.
“Do you plan on leaving any time soon?” she asked sarcastically.
“Okay, don’t need to make a huge deal out –” He suddenly stopped midway through his sentence and looked at Pansy.
“What are you staring at?” she asked, but her voice had lost some of its anger. Ron wasn’t looking at her face or her towel but in fact, her right shoulder. His gaze wandered over the small piece of skin at the top of her shoulder blade that wasn’t quite as smooth as the rest. There was something very penetrating about the way Ron was looking at her shoulder and Pansy knew what he saw but she couldn’t understand how he had noticed it so quickly. At first she was worried that he would ask questions but his gaze seemed to harbour more than just curiosity.
“Wh-” he began.
“Ron, what was that scream?” Harry asked, appearing in the doorway from behind. He suddenly stopped abruptly at seeing Pansy wrapped in the towel and dropped his gaze, turning away from her. Pansy held the towel tightly in her hands and raised it, as if she felt exposed.
She lifted her dark eyes to match Ron but his gaze had dropped to the floor as well and he turned away. “Sorry,” he muttered, distractedly and ushered Harry back downstairs.
---
Harry watched with confusion as Ron left him at the top of the stairs and went to his room silently. As Harry descended the creaky wooden stairs, he thought about the way Ron and Pansy were looking at each other and knew he had intruded on something. But the way Pansy was looking at Ron wasn’t anything like he’d seen before; she looked almost afraid, more so than one would be after being walked in on in the shower. But since Ron had abruptly left his side as well, Harry didn’t have much of a chance to ask him what had happened and with all that was going on tomorrow, there was already so much to deal with.
“Potter.”
Draco’s voice was very quiet and Harry found him leaning against the kitchen door, ushering him over. The sun had now risen completely, illuminating the scratched floors and worn down walls. “What’s going on?” Harry asked.
“There is something I need you to do,” Draco explained, looking visibly fatigued. Harry wondered if Draco would make it to tomorrow night but he kept that thought to himself. Draco reached into his pocket and produced a neatly folded parchment, pressing it into Harry’s palm.
“What’s this?”
“It’s something that I want you to read in case I don’t make it out in one piece.” Harry opened his mouth to respond but Draco cut him off. “We both know that my chances are slim. The charade is mainly for Pansy. I can barely stand on my own.”
Harry nodded slowly and turned the parchment around in his hands. “Don’t you think that you should talk to Hermione face to face instead of a letter?”
“It’s not for Hermione,” Draco said. “Pansy won’t be able to stop herself from opening this right away and she won’t like what’s inside. Weasley and I have our own issues to deal with so you’re the only one I can trust to keep this safe and sealed until necessary.”
“Alright,” Harry agreed, suddenly feeling the burden he was bearing. He slipped the letter into pocket and nodded to Draco who thanked him.
Harry paused for a second and watched as Draco walked over to the kitchen table and sat himself down. The blonde man looked at Harry with a curious expression and as the light filtered in through the drawn blinds and the shadows looked like prison bars on his face, he spoke. “What do you want to ask me?”
Harry didn’t realize he was being very obvious but now that Malfoy had brought it up, he thought he might as well give it a shot. “I know you’re not telling me something,” he said.
He walked over and sat down on the chair adjacent to Draco, letting his pale skin bathe in the golden sun. “You’re hiding something.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Fine,” Harry said. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”
“Yes,” Draco admitted, his answer appearing a lot quicker than Harry had anticipated. “But it’s not relevant to the circumstances at hand and so, you don’t need to know.”
“Fine,” Harry replied, not bothering to prod any further.
Draco nodded appreciatively and tilted his head towards the ceiling observing the irregular pattern of waves and circles that had been engraved into the ancient house.
---
Cassius watched intently as Hermione finished the last of her toast. She was still strapped to her chair but as it was breakfast time, he had loosened her hands and allowed her to eat anything from the extravagant breakfast spread that the elves had prepared.
“Did you warn Lestrange?” Hermione asked, her fear having been put on the back burner. She knew that Draco would invade the manor in the next few days and with him, Pansy and Eli. She hoped that Harry and Ron would have returned back to Ginny. After all, Harry had only come to save Ron and now that Ron was okay and recovered, they would both have to return. That made things so much easier for her; she now only had to bear the piercing fear and endless hollow feeling in her stomach that Draco, Pansy and Eli were in danger.
“Why would I do that?” Cassius asked, slipping a slice of apple into his mouth.
“Draco’s going to try and kill him... because he thinks killing Lestrange will break Adria’s curse.”
“Exactly,” Cassius said, a smile forming between his twisted lips. “And that can end in one of two ways. Either Draco succeeds in killing Lestrange, in which case I will be more than happy to be rid of that leech. I estimate that there will be a fair bit of chaos during which you, my dear, will accidentally get in the cross fire. I’m thinking either a simple killing curse or perhaps, you will have been hit with a paralyzing curse and then consumed by the fiendfyre.”
Hermione swallowed roughly, feeling the lump of crisp bread as it sluggishly made its way down to the hollow pit in her stomach. “And what’s the other way that it can end?”
“My father survives and kills Draco. In that case, Hermione, killing you would be to no avail. You are, after all, an extraordinary witch. If Draco dies, you survive.” He paused, analyzing the horrified look on Hermione’s face. “It will then be completely up to you whether you want to live or perhaps to join your beloved. If it is the second option, I would be more than happy to oblige.”
A clear mist began to form on Hermione’s dark eyes and the tears flowed out slowly, sliding over her pursed lips that contained the scream from her pierced heart. She flexed her fingers and rotated her ankles, feeling the ropes tighten around her body even though they hadn’t changed. The rough fibres that had been pushing on her skin a few seconds ago now felt as though they were cutting right through her bone.
“Natalie would hate you for the monster you’ve turned in to,” she spat.
Cassius’ movement was swift and before Hermione could blink, she felt his wand pressing in to the bottom of her chin. “Don’t test my patience, Hermione.”
“What would any of this accomplish?” she said, the rapid movement of her lips allowing the salty tears to drip in. “What is the purpose?”
The wand didn’t budge but the pressure Cassius was applying to it decreased ever so slightly. He matched her gaze. “Balance, Hermione. Our world revolves around balance and for every life that was taken away from me, it is only fair that Draco loses the same.”
“Then how can you justify killing me if you’ve already taken away one life?” she asked, her breaths heavy.
Cassius looked at Hermione with an odd stare, one that didn’t parallel the madness in his eyes. His dark eyes examined her face and then he withdrew his wand, placing it into his back pocket. And in that one flash, Hermione knew.
Her memory took her back to the photo album in Draco’s room and she understood what she had not quite comprehended back then. She understood why seeing Natalie alone in those pictures had been so odd to her...
“She was pregnant, wasn’t she?”
Natalie’s glowing face was like a burned image in her memory. The fullness in her cheeks, the puffiness at the edge of her eyes and the endless happiness in her smile. She had been expecting a child. She was carrying another human life when her life had ended... when Lucius Malfoy had decided to save his son.
“She was... wasn’t she?” Hermione asked, louder.
“I didn’t lose just Natalie,” Cassius said, his face now sullen and hollow. “Lucius Malfoy took my whole family from me and so now, Draco has to lose his.”
---
Reviews are much appreciated!
Love, Erin
“Draco.” Her voice was weak but he recognized it instantly and he stiffened slightly. He continued sorting through the stack of papers in his study without turning around.
“I’m busy, Natalie,” he began. “Not now.”
He felt cold and heartless treating her this way but their marriage had been on the rocks for a few months ago. Natalie had started spending more time away from home and though she would not admit it, he knew it was to see Cassius. He had already applied for the advanced auror program in Belize despite her wishes and asserted, quite loudly, that if necessary, he would go by himself.
“This is important,” she said and Draco felt the rage within his veins boiling as he tried to find the copy of his application to Belize from the stack of papers.
“We can talk about it later,” he snapped.
He reached the end of the pile and realized that he had been through it twice already without finding a single trace of his application. “Where is my letter?” he asked harshly, turning around and facing his wife.
Compared to the vivacious girl he had married, Natalie now looked like a haggard version of her younger self. She looked exhausted, stressed and most of all, unhappy every moment she spent at the Manor. Her gold lashes that once veiled her sparkling eyes now shielded those same eyes from Draco’s cold piercing gaze.
“Where is it, Natalie?” he asked. He dug his nails into the stack of envelopes and grabbed it off the table. “I put it in here two days ago.”
“It’s in the garbage,” she said, her voice noticeably more severe, “where it belongs.”
“That’s not your call,” he retorted. “We’re married, not chained together. If you don’t want to go to Belize then you’re more than welcome to stay here with whomsoever you wish and if-”
“Draco, I’m pregnant.”
Draco stood in a stunned silence as Natalie’s light eyes observed his expression. The tresses of gold hair against her face suddenly seemed softer and the glow in her skin, almost heavenly. He wanted to say something, to ask more questions... to articulate one of the million things that were coursing through his mind but his tongue was paralyzed.
Natalie moved forward, approaching him. “Draco...”
Suddenly, the woman he had been so distrustful of had disappeared in front of his eyes and he saw Natalie again, the young girl he had married. He knew, at that very second, what he wanted to do and what he should have done a long time ago.
His foot fell forwards and he pressed his torso against her frail body, meeting her lips with his. His right hand found the curvature of her waist and his left hand moved the small curls from her cheek and rested against the side of her head. The sensation in his lips tickled his every sense and he felt he had been parched for the last few weeks – he had been missing that which had given him happiness in the first place and that was Natalie’s touch, her scent and the soft feeling of their lips together.
Every suppressed emotion in his body had now risen to his throat and he felt complete again. The disposed application didn’t matter, Natalie’s’ friendship with Cassius didn’t matter and any and every problem they had faced didn’t matter. All that mattered was now. All that mattered was that they were together.
“I love you,” he said, his lips pulling away a fraction away from Natalie. She responded with a heavy breath and Draco felt her cool, minty breath against his cheeks.
His hands moved around her body and cupped her stomach, his fingers gently pressing into her skin. “Whatever I said before... it doesn’t matter. I’ve always loved you and I always will.”
Draco woke up with a jerk and looked around, allowing his hazy vision to adjust to the light. He heard the creaky stairs of Grimmauld Place and realized he was lying on the couch in the living room as Harry came in.
“How long have I been asleep for?” Draco asked, looking around absentmindedly for a watch.
“About two hours,” he replied. “We should be ready to go in a couple of hours which means we should get to the Manor by about nine tonight. So we’re on track.”
“Where’s Eli?”
“He and Ron went to the Ministry to deal with the last bit of paperwork.” Harry hesitated for a fraction of a second and continued. “Eli didn’t seem too well.”
“Damn,” Draco grunted as he sat up on the couch and rubbed his forehead, trying to gather his thoughts. “I haven’t even given him the time of day. He’s been getting worse for days and I didn’t even...”
“This is almost over,” Harry assured him.
“Yeah,” Draco agreed. He examined Harry with his ashen eyes and then looked at a crumpled piece of paper stuffed in Harry’s pocket. “What’s that?”
Harry grabbed the paper and sighed as he examined it. “Another failed attempt to write a letter to Ginny.”
There was a brief silence before Draco took his eyes off the paper and looked at Harry. “Hermione told me that you’re taking care of Lupin’s son now.”
Harry furrowed his brow at the odd statement but responded nonetheless. “Andromeda is his guardian but he pretty much spends all his time at our house. I tell him stories of his parents... of Remus and Tonks. It helps lessen the guilt.”
“You have nothing to feel guilty about,” Draco said. He had risen completely now and grabbed a biscuit from the coffee table.
“I may not have wielded the wand that killed them but that doesn’t mean that I feel any better that they died fighting my battle. I understand guilt, Malfoy and that’s why I didn’t step in when Hermione left to avenge her parents and why I’m here right now. I know why you feel guilty about Adria’s death and I can understand why you feel guilty about your wife’s death... guilt can consume our lives. Not a day goes by when I don’t look at Teddy and wonder that if I had been a little swifter, done something differently then maybe he would be able to grow up with his parents.”
Draco listened intently as Harry continued. “Rationally, neither you nor I nor Hermione need to feel guilty about the death of our loved ones. But we think with our hearts and the heart doesn’t care for rational arguments. That’s the worst part of it, you know? Knowing that you couldn’t have done anything to change history but still feeling that gut wrenching sensation in the pit of your stomach and spending sleepless nights wondering what if. That’s what separates the good from the evil in this world: our conscience... our sense of responsibility. For what it’s worth, you’re a good man.”
“It’s funny,” Draco said and when Harry looked confused, he got up. “That’s what Hermione said to me.”
Harry shrugged. “It’s true.”
---
The carriage jerked to a halt and awoke Ron from his light sleep. At first he yawned, stretching his body as it readjusted to state of wakefulness and then opened his eyes. The Ministry carriage had stopped on the roof of a building, high above the ground and as Ron peeked through the heavy curtains, he spoke to Eli.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Mr. Weasley,” Eli said and when Ron turned to face him, he saw that the pallor that had once governed particular areas of his face had now spread across the aging visage. Eli’s eyes were dark and fatigued and his body was hunched over, as if maintaining a straight posture took more effort than he could muster.
“Eli, are you alright?” Ron asked. He reached over to help the man into a seated position. “We need to get to St. Mungo’s.”
“Mr. Weasley,” Eli repeated, his voice was low and his words slightly slurred. “Mr. Weasley, I am ill.”
---
Hermione opened her eyes slowly and felt her limp body stiffen as it reacted to the hard frame of the chair she had fallen asleep in. She looked around the dark room with blurred vision and was already sitting up straight by the time the images in front of her face sharpened. She felt a light throbbing sensation in her neck and she turned to look left and right, trying to loosen her muscle. Grabbing the edges of her seat, she pushed herself up and realized that her arms were no longer bound together.
“Miss, you is to stay still...”
Hermione flinched at the foreign sound and saw a little house elf standing by her side with a box of ice in his hand. He took a step towards her, to which Hermione pushed her seat further back and swallowed slightly.
“Is... is Cassius here?” she asked.
“Master Lestrange?” the elf asked. “No, he is left. He asked Darwinkle to give this to you when you awake.”
The elf held out a small piece of paper for Hermione and despite the pain in her neck, she leapt forward and unfolded it. “I will return by 8 this evening. I think you know that escape will be futile. Darwinkle will accompany you until my return – we all know what happens when you’re left alone. C.”
Hermione looked up at the little elf in front of her and observed his tennis ball sized eye watching her curiously. “You have to... you have to let me go.”
“I is understanding your problem, miss. But if Darwinkle lets you go then the master will punish him. Darwinkle doesn’t want any more pain, miss.”
But Hermione’s mind had moved past her desire to leave the Manor and into something a little more important. She realized that she hadn’t yet completely answered all the questions plaguing her mind and so if she was to remain trapped in Malfoy Manor, then she wouldn’t waste her precious hours of freedom.
“I need to go to Master Malfoy’s bedroom,” she said, turning to the little elf. “The instructions say that I cannot leave the Manor and that you have to accompany me wherever I go. I promise you I won’t try and escape.”
The elf was sceptical but Hermione pushed more. “You know there is something bad going on here, Darwinkle. I think I can stop it, please.”
“Master Lestrange will find you, miss,” he warned. “If you is trying to escape... he will know.”
“I know,” Hermione assured him. “He knows I know and so he knows that I won’t be able to escape and even if I do, I can’t hide from him. I promise you that I won’t be leaving.”
The elf hesitated only a little longer before moving out of the way and drawing out his wand. With a gentle flick, a white streak of light wove itself around Hermione’s wrist and she recognized it to be a binding ring. Ensuring that the spell was complete, she stood up and allowed the little elf to lead her down the hallway.
---
“Where’s Draco?” Pansy asked, descending the stairs draped in dark robes.
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. I think he said he was heading out for some fresh air. I can’t really blame him – probably wants to clear his head.”
Pansy then paused and looked around cautiously before stepping off the last stair and turning to Harry. She swept her body across the large living room and sat on the dining table, opposite Harry who was working on a large stack of papers. “What are all of those?”
Harry sighed. “A whole bunch of distractions.
“We’re getting closer,” Pansy said quietly. “I feel like I’m getting ready to walk into a blood bath. I don’t know how you do it every day.”
Harry shook his head. “This is not what being an auror is like. I track down poorly equipped and often inebriated wizards who couldn’t cast a proper curse if their life depended on it. This is...this is not what life was like every day.”
“And the Dark Lord? Was it the same?” Pansy asked and then suddenly reproached herself. “I’m sorry for seeming so curious. I’m just having a hard time keeping my mind off things.”
Somehow Harry felt that the ‘things’ that Pansy wanted to keep her mind off weren’t related to the events of tonight. “My friends and family are safe this time. That, unfortunately, wasn’t a guarantee when I fought Voldemort. I know Ginny and Teddy are alright. Hermione is safe at the moment and Ron’s... well, Ron will be fine.”
Pansy looked away momentarily and checked her watch absentmindedly. “Draco has been gone an awfully long while,” she murmured.
Seated at the little dining table, Harry felt an odd restlessness emanating from Pansy. Her knee was rocking up and down, her fingers anxiously tapping on the edge of the wooden surface and she couldn’t keep her eyes still for more than moment. But before he could get to asking her any questions, he heard the front door click open.
“Draco, we’re in here,” Pansy called.
Both of them got up off the table and turned the corner to enter the living room. As they got closer, the warm spring air let in from the open door filtered through the warm house and allowed Pansy a moment of calm breathing. “Draco?” she called again.
They approached the front door and Pansy and Harry both paused in surprise.
“Ginny...” Harry said, staring at the ginger. She was standing at the doorway dressed in a green blouse and jeans. Her hair was twisted into an untidy ponytail and as her eyes met Harry’s green ones, she swallowed and opened her mouth to speak.
“Harry!”
The words didn’t escape Ginny’s mouth and Teddy suddenly ran in from behind her. Harry’s confused expression broke out into one of happiness as the little boy ran into his arms. Teddy’s little hands encircled Harry’s neck and as he was lifted into the air, Ginny smiled.
“Teddy wanted to see you,” she said in a muffled tone. “He wanted... um, he wouldn’t sit still until we visited.”
“How did you find us?” Harry asked. But his question was answered only two seconds later when Draco walked in from behind, a knowing expression on his face. “Malfoy-”
“Pansy, have you met our newest guest?” Draco asked, ushering to Teddy as Harry put him back down on the floor.
Teddy looked up at Pansy and her utterly confused expression morphed into one of curious delight. “No, I haven’t had the pleasure.” She knelt down in front of the little boy and held out her hand. “I’m Pansy. And you are?”
“Teddy,” he said, shaking her hand. He then pointed to Harry. “That’s my uncle Harry.”
“Yes, I’ve met him,” Pansy replied. She held onto Teddy’s hand and pointed to the kitchen. “I have some chocolate covered mints in the kitchen. Do you want to go and get them?”
Teddy nodded and Pansy got up, leading him into the kitchen with a smile on her face. Draco followed not much farther behind and before leaving the living room, he nodded once to Harry.
---
Hermione appreciated the immense gravity of the few hours to come because it allowed her absolutely no instance of reflection. She had re-entered Draco’s room and couldn’t allow herself a moment to think about him or his wife or the baby that she had been bearing. This was just another series of questions that had to be answered... just another mystery to be solved.
“Nothing else,” she promised herself.
Darwinkle looked at her oddly and she corrected her posture, entering the room swiftly. She closed the door behind her and without giving a second look to any of the small artefacts that reminded her of Draco, dove straight into the photo album she had carefully stored away.
Hermione opened the collection of photographs to the pictures of Natalie smiling by herself. She held back her breath and scanned through the set of ten. That’s what hadn’t made sense to her. Natalie looked so happy and so carefree and it didn’t make sense.
The Malfoys had commissioned a portrait of their daughter-in-law which meant that no one knew she was with child yet or Natalie told Draco it was his own child or...
“Oh,” Hermione gasped. “Oh no no no no...”
---
Harry waited until Teddy had gone into the kitchen with Draco and Pansy before looking back at Ginny. She was as beautiful as always and the way the light from the windows hit her fiery hair, she seemed almost ethereal.
“Har-” she began.
But he didn’t let her finish her sentence. He took two steps forward and pressed his lips into hers, pulling her body and wrapping it in his arms. He felt her surprise at first but within seconds, it had given way to a racing heartbeat as she kissed him back. “I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“I was rash,” she said, pulling back a fraction. “I was stupid and stubborn. You know I’m always like that... why didn’t you just come back?”
“We’re dealing with people who don’t exactly keep to a moral code, Ginny,” he said. “I love you and I love Teddy and if being away from you meant that you were safe, it was fine.”
“I love you too,” she whispered, pressing her lips into his one more time. “And I’ve been going crazy thinking about you and wondering if you’re safe every minute of every day.”
“It’ll be over soon,” he promised. “Everything will be back to normal...”
“That’s what I want,” she said. “I want everything to go back to the way it was, exactly how it was.”
Harry held onto Ginny’s waist and pulled back, a curious expression manifesting itself onto his face. He swallowed once and then placed another brief kiss on her lip before speaking. “Exactly how it was...” he agreed. “Except for one change that I want to make.”
---
Pansy and Draco were sitting with Teddy in the kitchen when they heard the scream originate from the living room. Immediately, the little boy was startled and pursued Draco as he ran into the living room followed not far behind by Pansy.
Swerving the large column in the hallway, the three of them emerged into the bright living room to find Harry on his knee and Ginny staring at him in complete awe. There were tears streaming down her face and she looked over at Teddy with an overwhelming sense of joy. The little boy ran towards her and Harry lifted him up and placed a kiss on his cheek, standing up.
“Ginny’s going to marry me,” Harry explained, a huge smile on his face. “Would you like that?”
Teddy nodded exuberantly. “Like my mummy and daddy were?”
The comment caught Harry off guard and he smiled sadly. Ginny reached over to grab Teddy from Harry’s embrace and squeezed him tightly, kissing him twice on the forehead. “Exactly like your mummy and daddy were,” she promised.
Draco and Pansy had stepped back from the emotional scene and felt a strange mixture of happiness and emptiness. Draco realized, for the first time, what it would have been like if he had been raised in a loving and normal house. It was all so simple from where he was standing: love and marriage. What else was there? He felt happy for Harry and probably more so than that, he felt happy for Teddy. He felt that that little boy was spared the pureblood’s curse of eternal unhappiness. Teddy’s grandmother, Andromeda, was his mother’s sister and so he was technically related to Teddy. But the little boy would not suffer the same fate as all the pureblood men had done so before him. His grandmother had broken free from the shackles of her caste and married into true love. She had risked her own life and lost the lives of her daughter and husband to give Teddy a happy and normal childhood. Part of him wondered whether he would have been spared a lifetime’s worth of pain if his mother had chosen the right side.
“You did a good thing,” Pansy said, turning to Draco.
He thought back to his initial reasons for choosing to bring Ginny and Teddy here to Grimmauld Place. Harry had told him, in not so many words, that Teddy and Ginny were his family. He had left his family to help Draco and Hermione and no one knew the pain of losing your loved ones better than Draco did. He wouldn’t have wanted Harry to go into the fight without reconciling with his family. He wanted to give Teddy everything that he had missed out on as a young boy and that included a loving father.
“Thank you, Malfoy,” Harry said, coming over to Draco and nodding.
Draco smiled back, trying to push his medley of thoughts to the back of his mind. “Congratulations Potter. If I had known that this was going to happen, I would have probably asked Eli to prepare something good.”
Harry’s smile suddenly faded and he checked his watch. “It’s almost four,” he muttered. “Ron and Eli haven’t returned. I don’t understand – they’d gone to fill out some simple judiciary papers. They should have been back by now.”
“We’ll give them until six,” Draco replied. “And Potter listen, the moment we enter that Manor and Lestrange’s men see you, they’re going to head back to find the future Mrs. Potter. I think it be best if Weasley and Teddy stay here until after everything’s cleared up.”
But Harry’s answer never came as the door burst open. Draco, Harry and Pansy both drew out their wands within fractions of seconds while Ginny pulled Teddy into her arms and stood up. The bright light filtered in and a huge hunched body came in. However, as it drew closer, Draco realized that it wasn’t one figure but two – Eli’s arm was wrapped around Ron’s shoulders and his weight was supported by the ginger.
“What the hell happened?” Draco asked as they all dropped their wands and Harry helped hold Eli up. “Weasley, is he alright?”
Ron was white in the face and didn’t resist as Harry and Draco removed Eli from his grip and helped move the barely conscious old man onto the couch. Ron was breathing deeply and leaned against the walls, turning his head ever so slightly to see Eli being positioned on the cushions. Harry was telling something to Pansy while Draco came back towards Ron and shut the front door.
“What happened, Weasley?”
“It’s... it’s alright,” Ron muttered, still pale.
“He’s unconscious,” Harry called. “I can feel a pulse.”
“Ron! Ron! Are you alright?” Ginny cried, coming over to her brother and putting her hands on his clammy face. “What’s wrong?”
“Ginny, what on ea-?” Ron asked. But his question remained unfinished as he watched Harry and Pansy struggle to get Eli conscious. “It’s... it’s alright, Harry! He’s... not going to die. He’s just terribly weak.”
“Are you sure?” Harry asked. “He’s barely breathing.”
“Just trust me,” Ron assured him, some of his colour returning at an extremely slow pace. “Put him... put him upstairs.”
The chaos in the room continued to increase as Teddy began to cry. Ginny held on to him and looked at Ron fearfully one last time before taking him into the kitchen. Draco looked at Ron with confusion but insisted that Harry transport Eli upstairs with a spell while Pansy retrieve some water for him.
“Here’s a... here’s a potion,” Ron said, handing a bulky flask to Draco. “He... uh, he collapsed in the carriage and I took him to St. Mungo’s. They gave me this to give to him every hour. Just a small spoonful for every dose... that’s what they said.”
“What else did they say?” Draco asked, taking the flask from Ron. “Will he be alright? What caused it?”
“He just... it’s been too much on him,” Ron explained. “Stress... is what they called it. They said that he needed to rest and that the potion should keep him recovering. Occasionally some water and liquid food but he shouldn’t be awake for that long. Why is my sister here?”
Back in the kitchen, Teddy’s cries had started to settle and Harry remerged from the room upstairs with his wand in hand. “I put him down,” he said. “He seems so weak, and frail....”
“It’s probably time for his potion,” Ron muttered, taking the bottle upstairs. “Is anyone staying back here to make sure that he gets it on time?”
“Ginny could do it,” Harry offered. “If she has to be here with Teddy...”
Draco nodded silently and turned to face away from Harry, cursing and kicking the chair in front of him as he moved into the living room and sat down on the couch, burying his face in his hands.
---
Hermione had now to face the utter horrifying possibility that the baby Natalie was carrying was actually Draco’s.
Not only was it possible but highly probable as well. Maybe it was Cassius to whom she’d lied instead and said that she was carrying his child... maybe Cassius hadn’t even asked her and jumped to the conclusion that it had to be his baby.
“Miss... miss, you is alright?” Darwinkle asked, watching as Hermione sat on the edge of the bed in confusion. “Miss?”
“I’m, I’m alright,” she said hastily.
But Cassius couldn’t have killed Natalie. Hermione knew from the way he spoke about her... the way he looked when she was mentioned... he really did love her and he couldn’t have killed her. Stop jumping to conclusions, Hermione! You don’t know if Natalie was carrying Draco’s child. She could have just lied to him...
There was still something missing and as Hermione checked her watch, she realized she only had two hours to find it.
---
Natalie pressed her cheek to Draco’s and he felt her body shivering, the heaving of her chest against his torso. Draco brushed his fingers through her hair and as he moved his lips to hers again, he felt the moisture against his face. He moved back and saw the tears flowing from Natalie’s face, tainting her pale skin. She was looking at the floor and her blue eyes moved up slowly, finally matching their gaze with Draco’s and it took less than a fraction of a second to see the truth behind them.
The hand that had been gently placed against Natalie’s stomach now became forceful and pushed her back. “Draco, please...”
“It’s not mine, is it?” he asked.
“Draco...”
“Answer me, Natalie.”
“Please...” she pleaded.
“Answer me!” he yelled. His hand lashed out against the wind and hit the wooden oak desk. “Is that baby mine?”
Natalie put her hands protectively around her stomach and looked at Draco through her tearful eyes. “I don’t know.” Her cries were muffled. “I don’t know if it’s yours or... his."
---
There was an ominous feeling hanging above Grimmauld Place as the sun finally began to set and its residents felt the ticking of the clock as the hour to depart neared.
Draco was sitting at the foot of the stairs behind the kitchen, away from everyone else and away from the sounds of daily life. Tonight was a night that he had thought about for over two years and now that the time had finally come to avenge Adria’s murder and punish Lestrange, the future seemed surreal. Natalie and Cassius and Hermione were never a part of this plan but his past was resurfacing, reopening old wounds and refreshing repressed memories. Vivid recollections of his arguments with Natalie flooded his consciousness, the unsettling feeling and gnawing at his heart was resurfacing, much as it had when she had professed to him that the baby she had been carrying could have been Cassius’.
No one knew that Natalie had been expecting a baby except Cassius, Lucius, Narcissa and himself.
No one - except them - knew that when Natalie had ended her life, she also ended the life of the heir to the Malfoy estate and fortune or the heir of Lord Voldemort. She had been carrying a child that could have changed the future of the Wizarding World.
But most of all, she had ended the life of what could have been his child.
The problems of the world had become nothing but insignificant specks when Natalie had told him she was pregnant. Their marriage had been in trouble and she had been spending more time away from the Manor. Cassius had come back into their lives and Draco couldn’t bring himself to allow his relationship with Natalie to resurface – ironically enough, now that he looked back on it, forbidding her from seeing him had probably pushed her to him. But that baby had changed everything. That baby had reminded Draco why he loved Natalie and how she had saved him from himself.
Her cries were muffled. “I don’t know if it’s yours or... his."
Draco felt an odd numbness in his hands and feet. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry and he wanted to get as far away from this godforsaken place. Natalie’s eyes were gazing at him, a plethora of emotions twinkling in those blue orbs.
“Draco...” she began.
“Go.” That was all he could say... that was all he could allow himself to say lest he break down right in front of her. The creature was resurfacing within him... the creature that had been silent nowadays.
“Please go.”
He saw her whimpering, sobbing uncontrollably against the wall with her blue eyes focused on his livid face. But he wasn’t livid, or at least he didn’t feel livid. He felt confused, as though there was nothing more to life than this very moment and no one more in this world than the two of them. What made it worse was that he could feel her guilt and her shame and he didn’t care.
She only deserves pain, the creature said.
“Please say something,” she pleaded. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” he said. The creature was guiding his words. “Sorry for sleeping with Cassius? For lying to me? For taking the only good thing that has happened to me in a long time and destroying it?”
“Drac-“
“You promised...” he said. “You promised to love me till death do us part... you stood up in front of hundreds of people and promised.”
The creature was becoming impatient now and it forced Draco’s arm up, his wand tight in his hands. She had betrayed him, he agreed. She had destroyed the only thing in his life that had been worth living for and she should pay.
Natalie’s red face gave him her unwavering attention, watching him with the intensity of her swollen blue eyes. She was just as confused as he was. She was just as broken as she was. They were the same.
No, the creature interjected. She humiliated you and your family.
She had saved Draco. She had made him want to reconstruct his life. She had made him want to change the way he hated the rest of the world. She had shown him happiness. And in the blink of an eye, she had taken that all away from him and whatever remained within Draco was now a hundred times stronger. He wanted to break down this new image he’d built, quit his auror training and he hated the world in a way that no one else ever could. He hated this sick game he was playing and the festering piece of nothingness that his life had become.
Kill her Draco, the creature insisted. You can pass it off as an accident. You don’t even need to use a spell… just throw her off the roof. You can do it, Draco. You can do it.
Draco clenched his fingers around his wand, his skin turning red and his veins popping. He yelled, tossing it aside. His scream caught Natalie off guard and she moved towards him, her hand protectively around her stomach. “I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused you,” she said, her tears still running down her cheeks. “I do love you.”
“Then why are you standing here telling me that the child I have grown to love more than life itself may not be mine?” His tone was harsh but she deserved it.
“I love him,” Natalie said, her words stifled by her sobs. “I was always his and I’ve always loved him.”
“Ah I get it,” Draco said bitterly, his anger growing. “You thought you’d wrap up your ‘this baby is not yours’ speech and your goodbye speech all in one, I see?”
“That’s not tr-” she began but Draco cut her off.
“Does Cassius know that this baby might be mine?” he asked.
As his questions got more personal and his tone harsher, he watched Natalie’s face give way to anger. She was angry too and he would get his answers before he let her walk out of his life. “He knows it’s his,” she said. “He doesn’t have any doubts.”
“But you do, don’t you?” he asked maliciously. “Come on, Natalie. We’re playing the honesty game here. Let’s be honest.”
Natalie’s body had stiffened. Her eyes were still red and swollen but they now harboured a livid glare. The passion that Draco had once loved about her was now coming out in the form of sheer anger. “I promised Adria I would help her prepare for her interview at the Ministry,” she said. “It’s in two weeks - I’ll be gone by then.”
That was the last thing Natalie had ever said to him. That same night, Draco requested his training to be moved back to Belize and he left the next morning, never saying goodbye and never apologizing for the things he had said. A week before Natalie was supposed to leave the Manor, he got word that she had gone to see a healer at St. Mungo’s for the baby. A few hours after her return from the hospital, Eli found her body at the foot of the North Tower and Draco received a letter from her in Belize.
That had been the end of it. The end of a marriage, the end of two beings and the end of life as Draco had known it.
“Pansy and Ron are waiting outside,” Harry said, appearing in the kitchen. “It’s time to go.”
---
A/n:
I hope you enjoyed this chapter. It was one of the more uneventful ones but things need to be set up ;) Let me know what you think of it!
Love, Erin
There will be no more quote previews for the next chapters because I don't want to spoil anything.
Warning: There is a mild language warning on this story but I've never really used many of those words. This chapter does contain some swear words so please, be aware of that.
---
Hermione was locked in the room behind the library where she had found the book about Matilda Frogwart. However, this time there was no stroke of brilliance to comfort her but rather a terrible sense of dread looming over her. Cassius had left in a hurry after locking her in here which meant that Lestrange was back at the Manor or even worse, Draco had returned.
Physically, she was no match to Cassius. She had realized a long time ago that even on her best day, it would be near impossible to fight Cassius and win. He was a legilimens, he was incredibly skilled at Dark Magic and worst of all, he had nothing left to lose. Hermione, on the other hand, had quite a bit to lose and she was determined to come out of this alive. The fight with Voldemort had claimed a lot of innocent lives but that wouldn’t happen again.
There was something else to Natalie’s death that had eluded her. There was something missing and Hermione knew, in her gut, that figuring out that missing piece would help put an end to this madness. There were two things she was sure of and those were a start: judging by the state of Draco and Natalie’s bedroom, Natalie didn’t kill herself and Lucius Malfoy wasn’t the one who killed her.
---
There were about a hundred different things going through Draco’s mind as his broomstick swerved over the dark forest just before the clearing of Malfoy Manor. Of those hundred, one of them was Hermione. Worrying about invading the Manor had kept Hermione out of Draco’s immediate conscious which wasn’t to say that she didn’t appear in his dreams, nightmares and subconscious thoughts. However, she was now a few miles away from him and as the distance between them breached, Draco began to worry. What if she got caught in the crossfire? What if Lestrange finds her before he does? What if...?
“This is my stop,” Pansy’s voice called as Harry’s broomstick pulled up close.
Pansy was sharing the broom with him, sitting behind with her arms anchored on his waist. Draco nodded. They had covered half the forest and in the far distance the twinkling lights of the opulent Manor were beginning to show. As they passed the twisting river below, Harry leaned his broomstick up and Pansy blew Draco a quick kiss before jumping off and falling into the darkness.
For a few seconds, both Harry and Draco kept their gazes fixed below and flew forward with bated breath. A few hundred meters away, they both then heard a soft call and saw a sparrow flying off into the distance at twice the speed of their brooms. Relieved, Draco’s mind then moved on to the next part of their plan.
“Another eight hundred meters and we split up,” he called to Harry. Ron was flying a few meters behind them, having detoured to set up his auror team at the edge of the forest. “Signal Weasley to fly west. You go east and I’ll head straight.”
He checked his watch which read 9:30 p.m.
---
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Lestrange said, his voice hollow and low as he stepped into Malfoy Manor.
Cassius smiled and shrugged, his body conveying a much friendlier message than the thoughts he was thinking. “I thought I’d wait to greet you.”
Lestrange ushered Mucliber and Hector into the lavish entrance and pointed to the stairs at the far end of the right hallway. “Take those up to the third floor and see if you can spot them.” He turned back to Cassius, bearing a sick smile. “You’re just in time for the show.”
“We’re expecting visitors?” he asked, casually.
The look of carnal hunger surfaced on Lestrange’s beady eyes. “Three, as a matter of fact.” He watched the back of Mucliber and Hector’s heads as they disappeared into the stairwell. “Draco made an appearance sooner than I would have thought but he’s brought some friends.”
Cassius clicked his tongue, nonchalantly. “Shall I leave you to it then?”
“No, no, stick around, my boy. You’ll enjoy watching this. Malfoy is here which means that his little wench must be near as well. I saw that fire in her eyes – she wouldn’t sit this one out.”
“I do think it’s rather pathetic the way you seem to be bending over backwards trying to kill a mudblood,” Cassius said, trying very little to mask the distaste in his voice. “Mother’s dead and has been for quite a while.”
“The hunt is what makes it fun, Cassius. You have so much to learn.” Lestrange took out his wand and pressed nose against the rough wood, inhaling deeply with his eyes closed. “When they run, it makes it all the more fun to catch them and to see them squirm and plead before they die.”
“Is that how you plan to kill Draco as well?”
“Draco...” Lestrange pondered. “There needs to be some sort of poetic justice in Draco’s death. The betrayal he has shown to our family and to the loyal servants of the Dark Lord, it cannot be forgiven.”
Cassius thought about the sheer hunger in Lestrange’s face and maintained his look of disgust. It was shameful to have been associated with a man of so little self control. His instincts dictated his actions, not his thoughts and that made Lestrange a weak man. Cassius nodded to him once before straightening his robes and making his way up the staircase.
“Did you see them?” he asked as Mulciber descended the stairs. “Were there three of them?”
The big man shook his head. “We saw only one: some redheaded idiot who didn’t even realize he was flying in plain sight. It’s no worry. Hector’s got Drew on the job – he’ll take of the redhead in a split second.”
“Drew’s here?” Cassius asked, raising his eyebrow. “I suppose that means Mathias and Carter are here as well?”
“Of course.”
Carter and Mathias were twin brothers who stowed away on a merchant vessel from North America. Their parents had fleed an Azkaban sentence by escaping to North America but after their deaths, the brothers had found a calling in the entourage of Rodolphus Lestrange. They had a particular taste for innocent muggles and had slain at least twelve since their arrival six months ago. They were particularly close with another one of Lestrange’s henchman, Drew Brescot who had managed to avoid an Azkaban sentence by living in the muggle world as a stock broker. Naturally, the moment he got his chance, he flew right to Lestrange’s side.
Cassius nodded and continued up. Lestrange had been useful in providing him with one key piece of information and that was that Draco was arriving with some friends. Cassius spared a few seconds to wonder who those friends might be but he dismissed the thought. It didn’t matter. Tonight Lucius Malfoy’s entire family would perish just like Cassius’ had.
---
Drew watched with a satisfied smile as the stupid redhead continued heading towards the Manor, unaware that he was completely visible to anyone who looked out their window. He was flying at the level of the window as well which made shooting a curse at him a cinch; a small child could hit him without missing.
The redhead continued heading towards the Manor, staring below presumably to keep an eye out for danger.
“Look up, you poor soul,” Drew whispered, allowing the wind from the open window to ruffle his black hair as he tasted the night. “Your biggest fear is right in front of you.”
He raised his wand up and pointed it at the man, deciding which of the many curses in his repertoire to use. He didn’t want to use the killing curse – that wouldn’t be fun unless the man knew he was going to die. Killing someone who wasn’t expecting it wasn’t nearly as fun. The imperius curse would certainly be amusing; he could probably make the fool do a few flips in the air but Lestrange – or worse, Cassius – would probably not be too pleased.
“Expelliarmus!”
To Drew’s own surprise, the spell didn’t come from him but from behind him. He turned a fraction of a second too late and felt his wand fly out of his hand as a sheath of black hair dominated his vision.
“Hi Drew,” Pansy said, a smile on her face as she held his wand in her hand, twirling it casually.
“Pansy!” he said, a twisted smile curving on his lips. “It really has been too long. I see you’re just as skilled as you always were.”
Pansy’s upper lip curled up in disgust but she maintained her smile. “Don’t tell me you’ve taken to the good side?” he asked. “Well, it’s no matter. I like a girl with a bit of fight in her.”
Her smile widened as Drew felt a rush of air behind him. “Then you’re going to love me,” the redheaded man said as he climbed into window. Before Drew even opened his mouth, Ron pulled his hand into a fist and made contact with the dark haired man’s jaw, feeling a large pop as he fell to the floor. Pansy used her wand to secure a binding spell around Drew’s limbs and as Ron dragged the unconscious body to the edge of the room, she snapped his wand in half.
“I can’t believe he fell for it,” Ron remarked. “I thought these guys were skilled.”
“They’re also egomaniacs,” Pansy replied. “They like to think that they’re the best at what they do and everyone else is thick. He was so absorbed in trying to attack you that he didn’t even hear me transform from my animagus form.”
“But the bad news is that everyone else now knows that we’re here.”
Pansy shook her head as Ron grabbed his broomstick and secured it against a wall corner. “They’d have found out soon enough. This way at least we took one down. This is Drew Brescot and if he’s here that means the Baringer twins are here too.”
“Carter and Mathias Baringer?” Ron asked, unable to hide the contempt in his voice. “Those bastards have a nice long sentence in Azkaban with their names on it.”
“Well let’s go find them then,” Pansy remarked, looking at Drew one last time with a disgusted expression on her face. “I just hope Harry and Draco landed safely.”
---
Hermione wasn’t expecting Cassius back so soon, so when he entered the small room while she was deep in thought, she jumped a little which made his calm face break out into a smile. He sat down beside her at the large oak desk, a gesture to which she abruptly stood up and moved so that there were at least three seats between them.
“Hell hath no wrath like a woman scorned,” he mused.
“What do you want?”
Cassius’ expression remained calm. “I’ve been sensing a lot of anxiety and restlessness from you. I take it you don’t believe Lucius Malfoy murdered Natalie?”
“I don’t,” she said.
“Your hate for me is clouding your judgement, Hermione. She didn’t commit suicide.”
“I know,” she said and Cassius raised his eyebrow. “I know she didn’t committed suicide. Her room was... average. There was no sense of closure to it. It was as if she had left to run errands and never come back. I saw photos of her leading up to her death and she was... she didn’t seem like she was going to end her life.”
“She was going to come with me. She said she was going to stay at the Manor for a couple of weeks after Draco left to tie up some loose ends and then we would have left all this behind and been happy together.”
Hermione felt Cassius loosening up. His cold, calm face was giving way to vulnerability and it was in this state that she knew she could try to reason with him. “Lucius Malfoy didn’t kill Natalie. He wouldn’t murder the woman carrying his heir.”
“She wasn’t!” Cassius said, his voice louder.
“But he didn’t know!” Hermione cried, trying to make him see reason. “Don’t you understand? He thought Natalie was carrying his grandchild and as lowly as he was, he wouldn’t kill his heir.”
“Draco found out that the baby Natalie was carrying was mine,” Cassius explained. “A couple of weeks before leaving, she told him. Lucius could just as easily have found out.”
“That’s speculation!” Hermione retorted. “You have no proof!”
“Now that’s just not true,” Cassius said, his calm face back on. Now, he had logic on his side and allegedly, had proof that Lucius Malfoy had killed his child. Hermione sat back in still fear. She hadn’t known that there was actual evidence that pinned Lucius Malfoy as the killer.
“What proof?”
Cassius reached into the back of his pocket and produced a neatly folded piece of parchment. It was ragged around the edges and despite having been in Cassius’ pocket for the duration of his visit, it was intact. He held it in his hand for a few seconds and Hermione watched his fingers twitch, feeling the paper against his skin and listening to the soft rustling sounds as his coarse hand ran against the parchment. He looked at Hermione and put the letter on the table in front of him, pushing it carefully towards her.
Hermione unfolded it and read the writing.
She paused, extremely confused at first. Then she read the note again, and then a third time. Her titled head suddenly straightened and her eyes widened in disbelief. She read the note a fourth time before looking back up at Cassius. It was no wonder that he thought Lucius Malfoy killed Natalie. In fact, according to this letter, Natalie herself had told him that very fact.
---
Draco felt an eerie sense of calm as he descended his broom and onto the terrain. He was returning to the Manor after such a long period of time and despite his fears of losing Hermione, the outcome of tonight’s fight and the fact that every move he made caused an aching pain in his body, he felt at home. This was where he had grown up and this was where he would, if he had to, die.
Draco drew his wand and whispered the incantation, watching the faint white light emanate from his wand and morph into a flat square in front of his eyes. The light grew more intense and black lines emerged on the flat square, forming lines and curves that made the whole object resemble a map. On the map and amongst the thousands of lines that defined Malfoy Manor, there floated eleven dots to indicate the presence of its current inhabitants.
A brief smile crossed his face as he saw Hermione’s dot floating in the one place that he knew he’d find her: the library. The moment, however, was short lived when he saw Cassius in the same location. His eyes wandered over to Lestrange who was lounging in the winery in the west wing on the second floor. Hector had just been there and it seemed as though he was now walking east towards the main entrance of the Manor. Ron and Pansy were heading towards the ballroom and at the foot of the North Tower, Draco spotted the names of the Baringer twins who had decided to join the party.
With one breath of the night air, Draco felt a tug at his navel and he disappeared from the courtyard, appearing a second later at the top of the North Tower. His presence caught Harry by surprise, who turned on his heel and pointed his wand straight at the blonde.
“Oh it’s you,” Harry said, sighing and release his tight grip around the wand. “I thought someone figured out where we were.”
“There are three more guys that Lestrange brought along. I assume you’re familiar with the Baringer twins?” As Harry nodded, Draco continued. “They’re at the bottom of the tower and patrolling the area. Pansy and Weasley took care of one other man.”
“Did you find Hermione?”
Draco nodded. “She’s with Cassius in the library.”
“Someone should go tell her what’s happening now,” Harry said. “I mean, if she wants to stay and fight then she needs to be prepared.”
“Cassius has already told her most likely but once we deal with the twins, you are more than welcome to inform her.”
There was a momentary pause between the two of them and Draco turned around, heading towards the entrance of the North Tower. He