A/N: Hey... wow... it's been a LONG time since I've updated this... Sorry everyone. Won't bore you with excuses, but I had a hectic week. I'm back though, and you can expect the next instalment in about three days.

Something is not exactly right with this chapter. I don't know what it is but I have a funny feeling about it. It's shorter than usual, but it's really just something I needed to get out of the way before the plot can get going (yes, there is a plot *shock*). Next one is already much longer and more entertaining.

As always, I'm begging you to take the time to review at the end of this chapter! Please, please, pretty please! It really helps me to write when I know that people care.

So on with the story!

Chapter 3: Ghosts, Shadows and Memories

Stake out duty. This was the lowest of the low. After he had recovered well enough to get back some of his conceited and haughty attitude, Draco seemed to have an abundance of time in isolation to sulk. How could it possibly be that a Malfoy ends up with such a trivial task? Isn't this what they had half-breeds and servants like Wormtail for?

Then again, Draco supposed that he was now even lower than Wormtail in the eyes of the Death Eater clan. The thought of the dishonour that he had brought to his family, coupled with the fear of how his father would react when he saw him next (he was very fortunate that his father was away on a mission when he was brought in) reminded him of how lucky he was to only have to endure a few hours of torture for the Hogwarts fiasco before being dumped in this miserable garden shack.

The Dark Lord's instruction was to guard the house and to not use magic or abandon post under any circumstances. He must remain ever vigilant for intruders, and deal with any such irksome pests accordingly. He thought that it had been at least a month since he had been outside. The time here seemed to melt into itself, making each day dissolve into the next. He was living with a near constant headache and a sort of haze clouding all of his thoughts, making the images flitting across his inner eye clouded and murky.

For the first few days he was in too much pain to allow the isolation to get to him. He was mostly asleep or delirious under the influence of the potions he needed to take. For a few weeks after that, he had tried to convince himself that solitude was what he wanted; no nefarious plots to plan, no complex magical objects to fix, no headmasters to assassinate, no mother to make him tuck in his shirt and behave 'like a Malfoy'. He had to admit that this last thing to be thankful for was a little absurd and trivial, but then again his whole line of thought had been escapism at best, if not outright denial. He busied himself with inventing games in his head, thinking about good times with his friends and planning revenge on all of those that he blamed for his current predicament. After the third week he was sure that the silence would drive him mad. It was choking him, bearing down on him, and leaving him far too much time alone with his thoughts and his nightmares. It was almost too much to bear.

It didn't help that Wormtail – the person who brought him here – had told him all about the fate of the cottage's last resident. An old muggle caretaker, he had said; one foolish enough to eavesdrop on the Dark Lord, and idiotic enough to dare to challenge him. He was apparently the second victim of the Dark Lord since his downfall that fateful Halloween night almost 16 years ago.

"He was so happy," Wormtail had said, "he was finally able to hold his wand on his own again. He took the more pleasure from the death of that worthless old muggle than any other since his first kill."

Ever since he had been told the story, he had been having dreams that he was an old man, who he imagined was named Frank. He would have visions of himself limping around the cottage and the grounds of the house, shouting at the local teen vandals, and nursing his leg, which would get terrible pains. He saw that those from the village would always give him a wide berth the few times necessity caused him to venture into town - and the whispers that followed him were anything but kind. And as Frank, Draco felt himself being eaten away by the same seclusion that he dealt with in his waking hours.

He was not sure what his subconscious meant by generating such stories. Perhaps he needed to feel as though someone had shared this pain once; as if he was not as truly alone as he felt, even if his only company was imagined ghosts. He had always had a vivid imagination, he supposed. Back when his family still lived in the East Wing of the manor he used to dream that he was his grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy, whom he had never met due to his early death. The dreams became so vivid that his father and mother had to move to the West Wing before they could stop.

His most pressing problem, however, was not the visions of old limping caretakers, but that his supplies were running dangerously low. He wasn't permitted to leave, even to stock up on some much needed food, until someone was sent to fetch him. The Dark Lord said that even if he had a prisoner, he just had to keep them until he was summoned.

I have no bloody idea why he's being so paranoid, Draco thought to himself, staring up at the old abandoned house, trying to read its mysteries as if they were written within its broken windows, missing roof tiles and graffiti. No one ever comes up here, and even if they did, why would they want to get into that dump? What could he be hiding?

Those were dangerous thoughts that he shouldn't be having. The less he knew about what was in the house, the better it was for him. He was no foolish Gryffindor; he heeded the moral of the story of that famed curious feline. After all, he reasoned, there was always the chance that there was nothing of any importance at all in the decaying house, and the Dark Lord was simply toying with him by dumping him in the middle of nowhere. Yes, this was an explanation that he much preferred – the one that would most help him sleep at night.

He wasn't even allowed to send owls in case someone was watching the house, or use any magic as it could easily be detected. Draco had gone without any news from the Wizarding World the whole time he was here, official or otherwise. He wouldn't even know if the Dark Lord had won or fallen. He was completely disconnected from everything and everyone. Some days he caught himself worrying whether his family was still alive, or perhaps being tortured by either side. He knew that he couldn't dwell on these kinds of thoughts either – his family was the only thing that kept him going, and if he let himself believe that they were anything but perfectly fine he would drive himself truly insane. Still, he wished that he could at least send his mother a letter and see if she was alright.

His thoughts turned for a second to the care packages his mother used to send every week, and as his stomach cramped again in protest to the minuscule rations, he could not believe how he felt embarrassed at the gesture. He swore to himself that if he ever got out of this war he would never take anything his mother did for him for granted ever again. What would he give now just to know that she was alright?

Draco attempted to keep himself awake but his eyelids seemed to weigh heavier as every hour dragged by. Between the dreams of Frank and those of staring into pitiless red eyes while pain unimaginable coursed through his body, he had been avoiding sleep for two days now. He was also afraid that if this stake out duty was just another of the Dark Lord's games, he might set him up by staging an intrusion – or worse yet, the decaying house really held something of importance, and there would be a real break in. Either way, if he failed again he wasn't sure that he would make it this time. Still, he supposed, even if someone did try something now, he was so tired that they could easily overpower him.

I'll just rest for a minute, he told himself, I won't even really sleep, just rest.

He lay down in his cot and stared at the decaying wooden roof, imagining pictures into the many swirls and knots in the planks. One looked disturbingly like a pair of angry, crazed eyes surveying his every move. He quickly flipped himself over to stare at a new patch of the ceiling

Just as he was lulled into a drowsy stupor, he heard a noise. Sitting up quickly, cursing himself for letting his guard down, he grabbed his wand and peered out of the window. In the evening mist he made out a figure climbing through one of the bottom floor windows.

"Well I guess that things are finally going to get interesting around here."

***

Harry crouched low in the bushes and surveyed his surroundings wearily. This was the third lead he'd gotten in the last month and he hoped to high heaven that this was not another dead end. The sapphire quill of Ravenclaw. It was hard to believe that this old abandoned house could possibly hold such a treasure with its missing roof-tiles, rotting doors, and its shattered windows that told of the village's young vandals. If his research was correct, then this was the Riddle House; the house in which Tom Riddle the first had lived and died with his parents.

Harry had done research on the house in the town's library. Its occupants had appeared many times in the local paper. The Riddles were a very wealthy family and often donated hefty sums of money to various charities and were the chief contributors to the hospital's children's wing. However, the snide images of Mr. and Mrs. Riddle added to his suspicion that they were not the loved and respected people that they were made out to be. When he read the story about the Riddles' mysterious death and saw the picture of the old house on the hill, as well as the familiar form of Tom the first that he had observed in Dumbledore's Pensive, he became certain that he had the right place. Although Dumbledore had made the general area of Voldemort's family home known to him before his death, the Dark Lord had been very thorough at planting decoys. The last house Harry had tried had yielded nothing more than a broken arm after he was ambushed by a particularly nasty group of goblins. However, after a few nights of stake out the house did indeed seem quiet and abandoned, so with a cautious yet determined air he edged closer to the house.

A/N: I wonder if anyone caught the hint about where the story is going to go... Cyber cookies to the one that figures it out!

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