Disclaimer: Nope, still doesn't belong to me, no matter how much I dream.
Chapter 3
When she next came to, feeling weary but relatively pain-free, Hermione was able to better examine the room she being was kept in.
There was a slight musty scent, with the drip drip of water the only sound in the background. The walls of the room were made of stone, and there were battered, but still intact green and silver decorations bedecking the surroundings.
The bed opposite hers and the space around it was obviously occupied, and very neat. The other beds however, were in different states of disarray, but empty, and occupant-less, going by the lack of personal possessions adorning the shelves and cupboards. She was in one of the Slytherin rooms. Why?
She turned around on her side and stared at one of the walls. The Slytherin dungeons were bereft of the usual wide, expansive windows that were common at the Gryffindor Tower.
She felt strangely numb. She knew, technically, that Ron, Harry, Dumbledore and Lupin, amongst others, were dead, but for some reason the fact of the matter had not hit her yet. Oh, they were dead then. And so? The problem was that she kept thinking that if she walked out of this room right now, and walked back to the Gryffindor common room, that she would still see Harry and Ron, sitting in their usual seats on the comfortable couches, either playing Exploding Snap, Wizarding Chess, or talking about Quidditch or something like that. She still expected to see Dumbledore's twinkling eyes and cheeky smile round the corner if she went walking in the halls. She still clung on to the impossible dream that Professor Lupin would be at the next Order meeting, smiling wryly at her whenever Harry and Malfoy got into an argument. She could not believe otherwise. And so she stood up, walked out, and left the dungeons.
She did not start crying till she saw that the Gryffindor Tower had turned into a pile of rubble, large stones collapsed on top of one another, with a seared and strangely forlorn orange Chudley Cannons banner trapped under the devastation.
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It was Neville who had found her, sitting against a pillar, whimpering and struggling to control her sobs. "Oh my goodness Hermione, you're up! What're you doing wandering around the halls on your own? You're supposed to be recovering in Malfoy's room!"
He lifted her gently and put her arm around his neck, walking her back to the dungeons. She was too distraught to register the fact that she had been staying in Draco's room the entire time. "Neville…wha…what happened here?"
"Oh," he grimaced as if remembering a very unpleasant fact. "There was an attack."
"How?"
"One day ago. You've been asleep for three. A good thing too that you were in Malfoy's room and no one was in the Tower." He gave a short, self-deprecating laugh, "Well, no one was in the Tower because everyone who's supposed to be in there was either dead or in the Infirmary." He caught himself and bit his lip. "I'm…I'm sorry, Hermione. I…I… didn't mean to…"
She looked bleakly out a window and asked, softly, "Tell me about the attack."
It had been all a ruse, they found out. While they thought they were winning, they were actually being sucked, slowly but surely into a trap.
"Hah, and we thought we were doing so well too, what with all the Death Eaters usually retreating after our attacks, them never attacking us, and us catching so many of them. We should've realized, huh, that they were just bait to lull us into a false sense of security. I mean, look at all the people we put in Azkaban! Crabbe, Goyle (and not Crabbe and Goyle Seniors either, but Juniors!), Greengrass, Stevens, half the under-aged students from Slytherin…all the important ones, the ones in You-Know-Who's inner circle are still out there. The Zabinis' are one slippery family. Macnair, Nott, the Brocklehursts, of course, C&G Seniors, and the Lestranges." His face darkened at the last name.
"They were trying to make us think we were cornering them in a spot, so that we'd come out with our big guns in the supposedly 'Final Battle'. They wanted all our important people in one place so that they could eradicate the whole lot of us at one go. Too bad for them that Malfoy sounded the retreat."
Hermione looked up, surprised, "That was Malfoy?"
"Yeah, and he saved you too. Boy, Hermione, was he worried about you! Didn't let you out of his sight till Madam Pomfrey had treated you."
Hermione felt strangely touched at Malfoy's concern. She owed him. But she put this to the back of her mind for now and pressed Neville, "So, the attack?"
"Oh yeah…sorry about that. Well, the whole lot of us retreated as fast as we could back to Hogworts to regroup and tend to our wounded and things like that. And then two days later, a whole group of Death Eaters attacked, trying to bring Hogworts down on our heads! Luckily Malfoy took control of the situation and strengthened the wards around the castle along with a group of Professors, so only the Gryffindor Tower was damaged…or, well destroyed for that matter. The wards were the weakest around there. We wondered if Malfoy did it on purpose…"
Hermione furrowed her brows. Malfoy again. Why was he everywhere?
Nevilled continued, as they reached the wide open door to the Slytherin dungeons, "I think…Or, well, Malfoy thinks that now they've gotten our big guns, that they're gonna start coming out from where ever they were hiding, attacking us, the ministry and the muggleborns too. I mean, there's not many of us to stop them now and…"
But Hermione was no longer listening to him. "Yes Neville." She dismissed him absently, "Thanks for walking me in here, I'll be alright now."
"Oh…okay Hermione, you go back to bed, you should get some rest. Madam Pomfrey says that you need at least a week before you're completely cured."
She walked in, ignoring Neville as the portrait door swung closed. She was stopped in her tracks, however, when she saw a familiar figure with golden hair sitting pensively in front of the fire.
Author's Note: DHr interaction in the next chapter.