Hermione glanced up at the towering Malfoy Manor. It's gates guarded a blackened house crouched in the countryside. She never thought that she would be back here again. The scarred word on her arm itched and she pulled her sleeve self-consciously back over it. The evil and somehow odd attraction of the place played with her emotions and she stood in silence, fighting with herself at the next step to take.
"Ma'am, where do you want us to head?" A voice brought her back down to earth. They were here to clean out this old place. She checked her clipboard. Owner: Deceased. She stepped towards the house, taking a deep breath.
"This way, follow me."
They reached the entrance to the mansion, and a wave of horrible memories overwhelmed Hermione. An impulse to run nearly overtook her, but she resisted. A turn of the lock, and a push at the door released all the details forgotten in her memories.
The inside hall she had remembered very accurately indeed. Apart from the withering bodies of a hundred Goblins and men, slashed on the neck and in the head. She recognised many of them, and Griphook took pride of place, snapped at the spine and placed over a throne made of black skulls, that still, even after his death seven weeks previously, still reeked of Dark magic.
Hermione glanced around the room, and spotted something she hadn't before. A door, leading out of the room, partially concealed by a old wooden bookcase.
"Stop!" She gave a shout, and her employees froze in the act of staring, disgusted at the dead creatures. Then, in the ringing of the silence came a sound. A cry.
Hermione recognised the voice. The voice that had followed her throughout her school days. Tormented her. But she had thought he was- . She ran towards the door, and slid through the gap.
"Malfoy?" She found herself in a dark passage and as she called, she picked her way, more cautiously. " Draco?"
The cries stopped. A man so close to Hermione that she was shocked she had missed him looked up.
"Granger?" She looked for him in the dark but saw nothing.
"Here. Her-Hermione?"
She spotted him, and horror shot through her. He was thin as a rake, his wrists barely thicker than her own. His face was even paler, and his hair full of muck. She muffled a scream, and crouched down beside Draco slowly. He lifted his hand as her face grew level with his own, he raised his hand.
"Your alive, Granger." he said the words with surprise but his raised hand moved towards her own face. Hermione dropped her hand to Malfoy's, and held it tight, surprised by the warmth going through her.
"So are you, Malfoy. So are you"