I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters of story lines. If I did, the amount of money in my checking account would have some extra zeros on it...thank you all who are reading, I appreciate it and would love to hear your thoughts! And now, back to the story...sometimes there is nothing worse than being trapped with your own thoughts for company...

Draco felt like screaming, if for no other reason than to break the monotony. The past couple of weeks had been, in their own unique way, just as excruciating as Voldemort's torture curse. He spent his days wandering around the manor, occasionally pausing to glance longingly out a window, counting down the days until his return to Hogwarts. If that Dark Lord allowed him to return, that is. The confinement was making Lucius more irritable than ever, and even Narcissa was sober and moody. And Bellatrix...well, he just stayed out of her way. His aunt had not mentioned the fact that Draco had exchanged a "look" with Hermione. He was hoping against hope that she had forgotten about it with all of the events that followed, but one never knew with Bellatrix. She wasn't quite as dangerous without her wand, but Draco wasn't taking any chances. He felt a small degree of superiority, knowing that he was the only one in the house still in possession of a wand, although he was afraid to use it. Lucius and Bellatrix thought that Narcissa's wand had been lost in the chaos of the night Potter escaped, and Draco did not feel it was wise to have them know otherwise. His mother, of course, knew that he had her wand. Sometimes she would come to his room late at night, and they would sit on his bed and use the wand to project images of happier family times on to the wall. It was in those moments that Draco felt a measure of happiness, and it was due to watching his mother smile. During the day, she generally kept to herself and didn't speak much to anyone.

It was on the third day that Draco found his thoughts absently wandering over to Hermione, as he tried to picture what she was doing, how she was, if she was safe. He knew what Bellatrix could do, and shivered when he thought of Neville Longbottom's parents. He hoped that he had stunned Hermione in time, that she had suffered no lasting damage as a result of Bellatrix's torture. On all of the subsequent days of his two week confinement, Draco thought of Hermione almost constantly. He thought back to all of the times he had been mean to her in school and felt a degree of shame. The fact that she had mostly ignored him and had never really insulted him back made him feel even worse. He had to laugh when he remembered the day in their third year when she had slapped his face. Crabbe and Goyle had teased him mercilessly about that, when they weren't busy dreaming up countless appropriate punishment for the "mudblood." He wondered if he would ever get the chance to talk to her again. He began to devise scenarios where they would meet in different places, start talking, and she would smile at him. Draco found that he rather liked the idea of seeing friendship and laughter in her brown eyes instead of contempt, or more recently, fear and pain. That thought made him remember again what Bellatrix had put her through, and he rolled the wand between his hands as he considered, and not for the first time, removing the memory from his head. He always decided against it, though. It was if a part of him wanted to remember, wanted to know what the supporters of Voldemort truly were and the lengths that they would go through to protect their own interests. The side of Light would never do that, he thought almost bitterly. He knew that this was always dangerous territory, because his mind and memory would involuntarily jump to Dumbledore's pleading face that terrible on the tower...Draco gave himself a mental shake and forced himself to think of Hermione and imagine her showing him how to brew a potion...maybe they could make a love potion together...

"Draco!" Narcissa's anxious voice came from the other side of his closed bedroom door. Draco jumped off of his bed and tried unsuccessfully to push his current thoughts of Hermione into a safe place in his mind to return to later. He opened the door, and felt his heart sink when he saw the expression on his mother's face. Something was wrong...something was happening... "He has returned." Narcissa said, and started wringing her hands. "He is in the conference room, everyone is with him..." Draco nodded, trying to appear strong. They had all known, of course, that the Dark Lord would return from his secret mission eventually. Well, that day had unfortunately arrived, and how he had to deal with it.

"He expects us there, then?" Draco started to move out of his room.

"No!" Narcissa cried, placing both hands on his chest to keep him from leaving. "He has not summoned you or I to be there, just your father and Bella...I was coming to tell you that no matter what you hear, no matter what happens, you are to stay in this room."

Instead of answering her, Draco asked "Where will you be?" She had already started down the hall and she replied without turning around.

"In the dining room in case I am needed. I have to know that you are safe from him..." She turned the corner, and he watched her long blonde hair fly behind her for a moment as she disappeared. It was then that Draco remembered the wand.

"Mother!" He hissed, afraid to shout. "I want you to take the...wand." he stopped when he realized that she was gone and couldn't hear him. Draco Malfoy had done some terrible deeds in his life, but hiding out in his bedroom with the only weapon while his mother faced danger wasn't going to be one of them. He decided that his best course of action would be to see what the Dark Lord was up to. The manor contained many secret rooms and passageways (a few of his imaginings about Hermione had involved showing her some of them) and there happened to be two that led to the conference room, formerly the Malfoy dining room. Draco shut and locked his room door, leaving some music lightly playing in case his mother decided to come back up to check on him.

Draco crept silently down the hall, and then stopped when he reached a portrait of his great grandfather. His elder relative's eyes followed Draco's every move as he touched his wand to a barely discernible spot on the wall. Immediately, a small arched doorway appeared and Draco entered, turning to seal it again behind him. Lights on the wall came on automatically as he moved stealthily down the stone staircase. At the bottom, he chose the left side of a narrow stone passageway and knew he was approaching the dining room. As he got closer, his sense of misgiving grew. If the Dark Lord somehow sensed his presence...if that hateful snake knew he was here...none of these would be good for Draco. He tried to think of a logical reason for being in the passage, but could not come up with one. He took a deep breath as he reached the end of the passage. He pressed his ear against the stone, but could not hear anything. Hoping that he would not be cursing his own stupidity shortly, Draco spoke the spell that would unlock the door and stood back as it appeared before him. Casting a Silencing Spell on it, he opened it slightly...just a crack so that he could see and hear...

The sight that greeted Draco was strange. The lights were dim but he could make out the Dark Lord standing in the center of the room. The table had been pushed up against the far wall. Some of the Death Eaters were standing in a semi circle around Voldemort, looking fearful. There were some other wizards there too, but Draco didn't recognize any of them. A small, quaking figure was kneeling at Voldemort's feet. Draco thought for a moment that it was a child, and then realized that it was a goblin. He searched for his father, and caught sight of him standing in the spot farthest away from the door, terror etched in all of his features.

"What did you say to me?" Voldemort's voice was high and cold as he addressed the goblin. The goblin started to look up, and then lowered his eyes again, visibly trembling. "Say it again!" Voldemort commanded. "Say it again!"

"M..my..Lord," stammered the frightened goblin, "M..my Lord...we t-tried to st-stop them...Im..imposters, my Lord...broke...broke into the...into the Lestranges' v-vault..."

"Imposters? What imposters? I thought Gringotts had ways of revealing imposters? Who were they?" Draco felt his heart racing. He didn't know what was going on, why someone would break into his aunt and uncle's Gringott's vault. His father had mentioned something, once, an important item...he hadn't identified exactly what, that the Dark Lord was keeping there.

"It was...it was...the P-Potter b-boy and t-two accomplices..." Draco gasped, and then clapped a hand over his mouth in terror. Fortunately, the Dark Lord was so focused on the goblin that he had not noticed. Had Hermione been one of those accomplices? He felt an involuntary stab of admiration for Potter. While he, Draco, had been basically sitting in his room for two weeks, Potter had been breaking into one of the most powerful wizarding institutions in their world to bring the Dark Lord down.

"And they took?" the Dark Lord cried, his voice rising. "Tell me! What did they take?" Draco suddenly knew that there was no answer the goblin could give that would appease the Dark Lord.

"A...a s-small golden c-cup, m-my Lord..." It was the last thing the goblin would ever say. Voldemort gave a scream of rage and slashed his wand through the air. Draco closed his eyes and held up his hand to block the vision of the green light that was erupting through the room. He raised his own wand, knowing as he did so that he was no match for Voldemort...where was his father...Draco opened his eyes in time to see Lucius sprinting for the door, pushing others out of his way. Bellatrix was right behind him. The Dark Lord was in a terrible rage as again and again the wand fell...those who were left behind were slain...Draco wanted to run back to his room, wished he had listened to his mother and yet he was unable to look away. If the Dark Lord should catch him here...

Voldemort paced up and down the room, viciously kicking bodies out of his way. Then he stopped, and spoke in the strange language that he used to call his snake to him. Before Draco could shut the door, the Dark Lord walked purposely from the room. Not wanting to be alone with the bodies, Draco closed the door and let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He sprinted back through the passageway and up the stairs, through the secret doorway and down the hall. He slid back into his bedroom and fell on to his bed, breathing heavy and trying to close his eyes against the terrible nightmare he could not seem to wake up from.

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