Author's Note: Hope you like it!! Please review! This may be quite a short story, but i hope i keep you all interested! ...
Hermione couldn't sleep but she couldn't get up. She was lying fully clothed on her bed feeling so much weight push down on her. Everyone else was stewing in the common room, she doubted very much whether any of the gang would move for days; they were so defeatist. But Hermione's mind was racing, already way over the death of her Headmaster and focused entirely on what Draco had said. Something in her head told her that he was not lying, an undeniable instinct said that against all odds she could trust him. But could she trust her instinct? Hermione went over to her window. The curtains were still wide open even though it was nearing midnight. The night was the darkest she'd ever seen it, but on the edge of the hovering cloud of doom she could see little flecks of orange where a teacher had their wand alight. She didn't envy them, huddled in the grounds, cold and alone wondering what was going to become of them and the thousand or so students under their care.
"Help me." She pressed her hands and face against the glass and felt hot tears of frustration run down the cold surface, "Help us." She whispered into the useless night. All she could see in her mind was Dumbledore's kind smile. He had no plan, no offer of help, no wisdom- just a helpless, useless, frail smile. Would Dumbledore trust Draco Malfoy when they were so desperate? Dumbledore trusted most people…then her first clear answer all evening came to her. Dumbledore was dead; it wasn't about who he trusted, it was about who she trusted.
Hermione grabbed her warm jacket and left the dormitory at a running pace. She careered down the stairs and skidded to a halt. Without even looking at the others she marched across the common room towards the portrait hole.
"Hey!" Busted. "Where do you think you're going?" It was a prefect,
"To the bathroom." Hermione lied smoothly, her back turned on him so he couldn't see her blush.
"Ok. But stick to this tower, understand?"
"Yep." She walked away quickly and out of the portrait. Hermione knew there was no point in looking in the Griffindor tower, she'd go right on down to the dungeons and see if she could find him, although if it came to getting into the Slytherin Common Room, she had no plan.
She made it without a hitch down to the ground floor, it made her worry slightly about Hogwarts' supposed security, if she could move around the castle so freely what was stopping others? Hermione opened the door to the dungeons with a loud chill-causing scrape across the tiles. She looked behind her nervously every few steps she ran down and by the time she reached the bottom her heavy breathing was forming clouds in the chilly corridor. She peered in all the rooms along the corridor but they were mostly empty, and a few students she passed gave her strange looks but said nothing, most were preoccupied in their own thoughts- either fear for themselves and their parents, or secret joy that 'their side' was winning. She reached the Slytherin portrait hole and tried the obvious,
"Can I come in please?" The portrait, a fussy looking old man with a crooked nose and dark eyebrows, frowned deeply,
"You should be in your own common room."
"Hmm, I thought not." She spoke to herself more than anyone. "Can you tell me something?"
"Well I, this is very, I mean, it's unusual, very strange indeed, I don't know whether I- I mean it's against…" He blathered on for some minutes while Hermione tapped her foot.
"Ok good you can." She decided in the end. "Could you please tell me whether Malfoy- er- Draco Malfoy is in the common room?" His face crumpled into yet more wrinkles.
"I don't know why you'd want to-?"
"Look could you just tell me!" She snapped, cutting through him.
"Temper, temper, typical Griffindor. As it happens no, he isn't. Now then missy…"
"Thank you!" She called back, already half way down the corridor at a run.
So she wasn't the only one going out of bounds tonight. She stopped in a pool of safe shadow at the side of the entrance hall. If I were Draco Malfoy where would I be? …Urgh, I have no idea! She crossed to the other side of the hall and looked down towards the kitchens and the Hufflepuff common room,
"Maybe, do you think?" She asked the puddle of moonlight by her feet. "No, don't be ridiculous.
"Maybe he's right here." Someone's voice hissed through the night. Draco Malfoy's shadow appeared silhouetted in the door way as he came in, Hermione spun round, startled but relieved. "Come on." He said. She went over instantly.
"I'm so sorry, I really thought they'd believe you." She shook her head.
"You do, that's a start." Draco muttered earnestly.
"Anyway come on where?" Hermione broke out of her self-pity.
"We've got to get somewhere I can show you the plan. A vantage point." When Hermione made no movement he spoke more urgently. "You want to know what The Dark Lord's up to or not?"
"Yeah…yes sorry! Take me." She whispered.
Draco moved quickly and skilfully in the dark where clumsy Hermione faltered. Every now and then she grabbed at the back of his robes to steady herself. They kept going up and up, deserted corridors and hollow feeling stairwells. There were no ghosts and even Mrs Norris and Filch weren't out on the scavenge, Hermione could sense the gloom that had spread, you could practically smell the trail that fear had left as it flitted from room to room, no tiny, dark corner escaped its undeniable presence. She shivered; Hogwarts had changed already. They didn't stop until the reach the top of the Astronomy tower. The desert classroom was as it had been left last lesson, charts still littering benches, telescopes pointing every which way. Draco lit a lamp with his wand which, if anything, seemed to create more shadows than light in the room, but it gave them enough illumination to see each other's faces.
"So…" Hermione whispered, listening with dislike to the echo of her own awkward voice. Draco ignored her and moved straight over to the window, surveying the outside critically and then inviting Hermione to do the same. Hermione could still just see the dim lights of wands, she counted 5 on this side and imagined there would be more on the other side.
"The plan." Draco began in hushed tones, "Has seven stages, for seven days. Today was day one, first phase; take out the headmaster. Then after that he'll take out the teachers one by one,"
"Voldemort will?" She interrupted,
"Not personally, he'll have someone do it, different people will sneak into the school and do it."
"They'll never get through the security." Hermione scoffed, Griffindor pride for its school kicking in by instinct.
"What are you talking about?" Draco whispered darkly. "The head master has been killed and it wasn't me, there are people in already." Hermione shivered.
"Can we find them, take them out?"
"I don't know who they are or where they are." He admitted, "And we couldn't by ourselves, we'd need the confidence of the teachers if not Harry and the others. Anyway," He moved on before Hermione could mull over her failure to have the others believe him. "After all the teachers have been taken out he'll make a perimeter round Hogwarts and move in for the kill, quietly, he'll destroy every animal he finds in the grounds and then burn the forest, then he'll block every exit for the students and capture and kill them one by one, until he gets to Potter." Hermione knew arguing with the fate of Harry would get her nowhere, that had been decided by a prophecy a long time ago, she needed to work with the things she could change.
"Which teachers and when?"
"Well Snape will go last, because the Dark Lord has told him he wont go."
"Does Snape know he's being lied to?"
"Oh if he hasn't figured it by occlumency then he'll have done it by common sense, Snape is no idiot, he knows Voldemort has no loyalty to anyone."
"So we can let Snape look after himself, he'll get himself out." Hermione mused,
"Don't rule out the possibility that he's the agent that is doing the killing." She shuddered, feeling more out of her depth by the second.
"So what do we know?" She was clutching desperately at straws.
"He'll get Hagrid and McGonagall first, to cut off ties with the order. Then when he's done with that he'll kill the rest of the Order outside of school." Hermione thought in horror of Tonks and Remus sat at home in front of the fire, Tonks supporting her ever swelling bump. "Next will be the weaker ones, Trelawny, Sinistra, Binns. Then the next day he'll go for Flitwick and Sprout and finally Snape."
"We have to protect them." She said firmly,
"By ourselves?" Draco was doubtful. Hermione was frustrated,
"We have to do something!" She almost yelled. Draco looked around furtively,
"Alright, alright. Keep it down."
"We'll go to…" She paused for thought, weighing up the options in her head, "We'll split." Draco looked more uncertain by the minute, "I'll go to Hagrid and you go to McGonagall. It's the only way!" She insisted, her eyes pleading with him.
"Oh…Ok." He agreed eventually. "Wait!" He grabbed her arm suddenly as she made to go away, "What's that?" Hermione followed the line of his eyes and noticed one of the lights, one inside the forbidden forest, was moving around violently. They watched, horror struck for a moment.
Hermione held her breath. Then without warning, the light went out, vanished.
"What?" Hermione whispered.
"Come on. We have to move." Draco told her urgently, tugging at the edge of her jumper. They tumbled from the room and Hermione began to understand, with horrifying certainty, why the light had gone out.
"Do you remember where it was?" She asked as they pelted down the stairs, heading for the main staircase. Draco flung his arm in front of her to stop her running, nearly knocking her over.
"Shh!" He hissed, as Filch, their school caretaker, passed across the bottom of the stairs. They waited for a good minute after he'd gone, Hermione fidgeting, before they moved. Draco looking left and right, drawing his wand as they ran towards the doors. Hermione did the same, glancing over her shoulder every thirty seconds or so out of pure paranoia. "I remember just about." He finally answer her question as they skittered down the main steps and onto the grass, damp with fresh condensation.
Draco led her down to the edge of the forest.
"I think it was here-ish." His voice even quieter than before, eyes darting round suspiciously. Hermione shook her head definitely, and then realised he couldn't see her in the gloom,
"It was more left." She was sure.
"No it was here." Hermione placed her hands on her hips,
"Draco I'm positive it was more left, I know-"
"Hermione, we don't have the time to argue about this." He strode off into the tree line. Hermione tutted irritably but followed nonetheless, muttering to herself under her breath. They stumbled on for about five minutes until Hermione decided to declare herself correct,
"See I told you it was the other way, there's no one-"
"Ssh!" Draco's voice came urgently from up ahead,
"Will you stop shutting me down every five minutes, you're as bad as-"
"No ssh!" He insisted, "We are in the right place." Draco's voice was cold, unfeeling, it scared Hermione to here it; the tone Harry used when things were going disastrously wrong. Tentatively she stepped forward, cringing as a twig cracked under her clumsy feet.
"Oh god." She whispered. There in front of her, horrifyingly real, was the dead body of Professor Trelawny. "Oh god." She took a hurried, scared step backwards, she though she might be sick, or faint, or both. She clutched at Draco's hand suddenly, biting her nails into skin, just so she could feel something real. He had frozen; still hadn't moved a muscle since he'd called her over. Then he stated the petrifying truth,
"The Dark Lord's switched the order. The plan's changed."
