I don't know how many of you even remember this story. I almost forgot about it. But I've resolved to try and finish it.

This is a short chapter, just to remind you guys that I'm alive! Leave me a review and let me know you remember me, please?

ThankyouIloveyou!

CHAPTER 4: AFRAID

Ron:

"Hermione!" the shout rips from my throat before I realize that it shouldn't.

Tonks comes running out. She saw the whole thing from the window. "Gods, what was that?"

"Hermione and Malfoy," I say, trying to ignore how fast my goddamn heart is beating, trying to stay calm, "and a fucking Death-Eater." Tonks wheels to face me, "What?"

"They hang around outside Grimmauld Place, waiting for us to slip up. I guess it finally happened. He must've grabbed on to one of them. If it was that bastard ferret-" I grit my teeth, envisioning all the kinds of pain that I will cause Draco Malfoy if he is the reason that a Death-Eater is currently latched onto my- ..Hermione.

"Oh no. Oh no," Tonks mumbles through her hands that are covering her face. "This is-"

"NOT anybody's fucking fault, Tonks. Don't you do that to yourself now. We need to get away from here. Gods know if the Fidelius is still valid."

I take her and spin into crushing oblivion as a massive headache begins to throb at my temples.

She's fine. She's brilliant. She'll figure it out.

But where is she? What if the Death-Eater hurts her?

She'll be back tonight. She'll fight him off or outsmart him..or both. She's fine.

We Apparate into the broom closet of The Burrow.

But she's with him.

I ignore the shimmer of rage that climbs my spine. My hatred for Malfoy is a consuming thing, and I cannot afford to be consumed by anything but searching for Harry and Hermione now.

I cast a Lumos and Tonks' face appears out of the gloom, pale and too-lined for her age. I sit down on a bucket, realizing that my shoulders have become too broad to comfortably fit in this space anymore.

"Start from the beginning," I bid Tonks, who remains standing, small enough that she doesn't have to stoop to keep her head from knocking the cobwebby ceiling.

She takes a breath and begins, "You know that Teddy and I moved in with my parents' after Remus..after the Order gave Remus his new posting?"

I nod, ignoring the voice in my head that is insisting that a thousand spiders are crawling up my back this very minute.

"But we kept the Fidelius Charm on our place to keep the Death-Eaters guessing, and once Harry needed a place to leave me Malfoy's intel, it served the purpose. But today, when I got there, I saw Remus."

Her eyes start to swim, and I push down my annoyance. I am impatient to hear the whole story, but she's in pain. I search for some sensitivity. "Why was he there?"

"He was with them," her nose wrinkles in disgust, "and they had the place surrounded, so I Disillusioned and hid. They were obviously searching for a way in and I watched Remus pretend like he couldn't see the house either and I wanted to go up to him so badly and he looked..oh he looked terrible. There were scratches all over his face and he was so thin and I don't understand why the Order even needs him to do this. Those creatures just do the dirty work, they don't know anything, and there is nothing to be gained from sending one of our own into that scum-"

"Tonks," I say, partly to stop her rambling and partly because my chest tightens when I realize that she doesn't know that Remus hadn't been given this new job, he had requested it.

"Sorry," she whispers, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

"Did they see Harry?"

"No, that's what I don't understand. Remus and those others left in an hour and I went in and checked but there was no message in the cellar and no sign of Harry. I searched everywhere."

"Could the werewolves have-"

"Remus was with them," Tonks says, her voice hardening, "of course not."

"And that was when you sent a Patronus to us?"

"Yeah."

The memory of Tonks' Patronus floating toward me as I climbed up to my room at Grimmauld Place, exhausted after the multiple Apparition jumps I took to and from leaving my message to Dad, and hearing "Harry's missing. Come now." makes my bloody migraine start to throb even more violently, so I shake it off.

"What do we do now?" I hate the way I sound. Helpless. Stupid. Ron Weasley- the bumbling bastard who managed to lose both his best friends in one evening.

The wry smile that appears on Tonks' face makes me so uneasy I actually shudder.

"Now, we go tell your mother that your father and I have been helping you lot hide Draco Malfoy for the past month, and that we've managed to misplace him and two-thirds of you three."

"Oh."

How is it possible that the fear the rises in my throat at this moment feels more intense than anything I have felt since this whole thing began?

My mother is in her nightgown. Her hair is mussed, her eyelids puffy. She hasn't been getting much sleep.

A surge of affection for her and shame for keeping this from her washes over me, freezing me to the spot on the spotless kitchen floor. Mum narrows her eyes. Her nose for suspicious behaviour is as accurate as ever.

"Tonks, dear. Why is my son here? And why does he look so guilty? Why do you?"

Dad trips down the stairs, his spectacles askew. "Oh! Ha-hello! Tonks! Ron! What are you doing here?!"

I cringe. My father is so transparent.

Mum turns to him. He takes a step back, blinking in apprehension.

"Arthur. Explain."

"Well, um. Well.." Dad falters, looking at me beseechingly. Fuck. We're in a War in the man still can't figure how to talk to his own wife.

"Ronald Weasley, start talking this instant or I will-"

"Alright alright, calm down!" I growl, stomping to the table and sitting down heavily.

"Harry brought Draco Malfoy to Grimmauld Place after You-Know-Who made him kill his parents. He's defected. We think. He's been giving us all the information that Tonks and Dad have been giving you guys over the past month. We didn't tell you because we knew you'd try to take him away, just like you took away our mission. But now..." I stop and try to breathe as anxiety closes off my vocal cords.

Mum's face has taken on an alarming shade of maroon. She opens her mouth, and I can hear the furious screech even before it begins.

But Tonks cuts her off, her words coming in a rush, "now Harry's gone missing on his way to my house to leave me intel and Hermione and Malfoy were waylaid by a Death-Eater as they Apparated to my house to find out what happened to Harry. We don't know where any of them are."

Tonks begins to hitch her breaths again, and my mother crumbles.

She sinks into a chair across from me, her hands covering her face. I watch the light purple cloth of her nightgown start to shiver where they cover her shoulders. I watch until my eyes lose focus, turning my vision into a blurry sea of lavender. Dad bends over her, wrapping his arms around her and saying something quietly in her ear.

I look away. Watching them makes my heart twist. What if I lose this? What if they lose each other?

What if I lose her?

Within a few minutes, her sobs have subsided. She points her wand at the stove shakily. The smell of tea fills the room and quietens the thundering of blood in my skull. Mugs float over to each of us. I put my hands around mine gratefully and take a scalding sip.

"Well. You did what you did. There's no point going over it. I'll let the others know. We'll start the search," she says, her voice quiet but firm. I am suddenly overcome with gladness that Tonks convinced me to tell her. Mum is always good in a crisis.

Unlike you, my delightful mind-voice snarks. I try to ignore it, but it's right.

Mum chivvies me off to my room, ordering me to get some sleep. I obey, knowing that it will help her state of mind for her to feel like she has regained some control over the situation. But sleep will not come to me tonight. Neither will solutions. My brain is too paralyzed by fear.

DRACO

I wake to a sensation that creeps up on me. Blanket-warmth to a vague, dull throbbing to fire that seems to have engulfed and paralyzed one side of my torso. I move to throw the blanket off me and have grit me teeth on a scream.

Fucking bitch splinched me!

Rage, hot and pulsing, makes my heart pound. This only serves to worsen the pain so I take a few deep breaths, which hurt like a motherfucker, too. I am still trapped on this tacky bed, under the blanket, and beginning to sweat.

I close my eyes. Hazy spots swim and burst against the darkness behind my eyelids.

I wake up again. The pain surges back into my consciousness faster this time. Too fast. I cry out, feeling my eyes prick and start to fill.

Don't you fucking cry. Don't.

Movement catches my attention and I turn my head. A nest of coffee-coloured hair pokes out of a blanket in the bed across from mine. She stirs, lets out a small noise- a cross between a sigh and a moan. My fingers itch for my wand. If I had it, I would kill her on the spot.

I watch her, my fury mounting with every second, magnified by how helpless I feel. She bolts upright suddenly and reaches out to me. But her hand drops by the time it has half-closed the distance between our beds. Her face is creased on one side- marks left by the pillow case. There are other creases, too. Lines of fear. A furrow in the space between her brows, two that traverse her forehead and indents that her teeth leave on her bottom lip.

I imagine Hexing her. Her stupid, scared face breaking out in warts.

"Malfoy, you're awake," she says, the sleep that weighs on her eyelids has a similar effect on her voice. Makes her sound like an idiot. She is. Idiotic, disgusting Mudblood.

"What. The. Fuck. Did. You. Do to me?" I hiss.

Her expression hardens. "I didn't do anything! I saved us!"

"You just managed to leave behind half of my chest?! Is this revenge? Yours and Weaselby's and Potter's idea of torture?" I struggle to sit up and feel triumphant when I do, even though the entire left side of my body is in sight-blurring agony.

"If we were going to torture you we would have done it already, you fucking idiot!" She is standing over me, now. Her fists are clenched.

"THEN WHY AM I IN SO MUCH PAIN?!" I roar, and then swallow heavily. My head begins to spin lightly, and it is all I can do to focus my eyes on her face.

But her eyes watch the motion of my throat, narrow as they travel the length of my body, and she doesn't say anything more. She retrieves something from under her pillow and turns back to face me. It is a tiny purse.

"Should be in here," she mutters to herself and snaps it open.

And then she sinks her entire arm into it.

I gape. And then I remember reading about this Charm.

Impressive. For a Mudblood.

She searches for a long time, and then comes up with a large, cloth-bound book.

I snort. "Only you would search for a goddamn book at a time like this."

She glares at me, her fingers running along the spine and thumbing through the pages already, like some sort of freaky muscle memory. She finds the page, peruses it quickly and raises her wand.

"Just kill me and be done with it," I say. And there is a part of me that truly means it.

She frowns. "Stop being so dramatic."

She utters an incantation and sweeps her wand over the bandaged part of me. And then grimaces a little. In harmony with that wince, my pain fades to an extremely manageable background ache.

"Numbing spell?" My voice reflects my relief. I barely manage to suppress a grateful smile. She did this. She'd bloody well fix it.

"Yes," she answers, "a strong one. I'll have to recast it every few hours and it won't heal you, but hopefully the Dittany and your own body will manage to do that part." She sits down on her bed with a thump, and I suddenly realize what that grimace was. Strong Numbing Charms feed off the energy of the Caster.

Disgust. Gratitude. Confusion.

I put all the emotions into boxes and lock them up. They are of no use to me.

The only one that refuses to be contained is the fear thrumming in my veins.

"What happened last night?" I ask, even though the last thing I want to do is speak to her. I need to reconcile the flashes of darkness and screaming that are my only memories of whatever happened.

"A Death-Eater grabbed my ankle. Just as we Disapparated."

She has closed her eyes, for whatever reason. I allow myself to crack momentarily.

Did they see me? Do they know I'm...with these people now? Have they told Him?

"Who? Which one?"

"I don't know," she snaps, as if that is of least importance. But, of course, she doesn't understand why I must know.

"He held on until we got to Tonks' but I knew I couldn't lead him there. So I did a couple of jumps, shook him off along the way, and brought us here. In...in the process, you got..." She trails off, those stupid lines appearing in her face again.

So it was a man. But that narrows it down only negligibly.

"Why were we going to Nymphadora's in the first place?"

She hesitates, now. Afraid to tell me too much.

But she is right to mistrust me.

I sigh. "Fine. What's the plan?"

"We wait until you heal. And then we try to contact the Order."

"How long?"

"A few days. Maybe four."

"Fucking peachy. Stuck in this ugly tent with your ugly face and a hole in my chest for four fucking days."

She ignores me and sticks her entire arm into that bag again.

"I'm going out to try and get us something to eat," she says, opening a book titled 'Edible Plants, Herbs and Fungi' and walking out of the tent. She exits and drops the flap back down. It crackles with purple light.

Before her shadow recedes, her voice filters in through the canvas. "I think it was MacNair."

I lie back down, my brain whirring with possibilities. But it is impossible to make a single, logical assumption. I have too little information. My thoughts become frenzied. I imagine them as a tornado inside my skull, ripping up pieces of my brain and turning it into mulch.

The library in Malfoy Manor has a book of nursery rhymes.

Aunt Bella would sing them to me. They failed miserably at sending me to sleep. Instead, they terrified me so abjectly that I stole the book and hid it, so she couldn't sing them to me anymore.

I still remember them, however. Complete with Aunt Bella's sickly-sweet, breathy voice.

There was a lady all skin and bone,
Sure such a lady was never known.

My ribs expand as my breathing accelerates and I vaguely register that I would be in an insane amount of pain if not for the Numbing Charm. I clench my fists. My left arm isn't actually wounded, but its proximity to the gash makes me leery of moving it. I wrap my right arm around my stomach and press down hard. Pressure usually helps.

Alcohol helps more. But I have none. Only the whirlwind in my skull.

When she came to the stile,
There she did rest a little while.

When she came to the door,
She stopt to rest a little more.

My teeth begin to chatter.

My parents scream on and on in my mind. Wordless. Inhuman. Screeching. On and on and on. Not nails on a chalkboard. No. Nails on my brain. Clawing across it. Digging into it.

The buzz of the Cruciatus vibrates in my bones.

A voice like flower petals and death. "You owe me this, Draco. Never forget that I own you. Your Master gives. And He takes away."

I want to scream.

I can't scream. She can't know.

The reek of urine and sweat. The smell of fear.

On looking up, on looking down,
She saw a dead man on the ground.

The way my mother smiled, the skin on her face stretched too tight. Her eyes bulging out of her face.

Insane. Driven insane by pain.

My father's pleas. Pleading with his Lord to spare him. To take his wife. His son. Anyone but him.

My voice. Begging for the same.

"Let me die. My Lord, please! Kill me, instead!"

Let me die.

Let me die. Let me die. Let me die.

And from his nose unto his chin,
The worms crawl'd out, the worms crawl'd in.

I clutch at my face with my hands, claw at my cheek, dig my knuckles into my temple.

My nails have broken the skin on my palms. The smell of blood is familiar to me. It colours my dreams.

The taste of it fills my mouth. Warm, liquid metal.

Then she unto the dead man said,
Shall I be so when I am dead?

But I do not scream.

Even as the fear crawls out of my heart and through my body, digging its claws into my organs, filling them with its tarry, indelible darkness, I do not scream.

I am breathing so hard that my back arches off the bed with every gasp. My legs shake violently.

I count down to the end.

In a minute, my blurry vision begins to darken.

Be still. It is almost over. Be still.

Panic attacks are par for the course, these days.

O yes ! O yes, the dead man said,
You will be so when you are dead.

HERMIONE

I stuff the armful of mushrooms that I have collected into my bag and turn to head back to the tent. I'd love to stay out here all day. The forest is beautiful and sunny.

I turn my face up to the sky when I step into a buttery puddle of sunlight. The canopy is back-lit emerald. The air almost sparkling where the golden rays pierce through. Green and gold. Half of Slytherin and half of Gryffindor. There's a thought.

The Numbing Charm will wear off soon. I should go back in time to re-cast it.

I wonder what the boys will think of my decision this morning. There was no real reason for me to give him some of my energy. He deserves a little pain.

But all I remember is the way he swallowed. The tightness around his eyes and jaw. How he'd gritted his teeth every time he'd moved. The pool of his blood that I had knelt in. I did that to him. I push away the guilt that makes my stomach clench. Managing his pain is the only way that I will survive the next few days. Malfoy reminds me of a wolf sometimes. So sly. Ferocious. And pain only turns them feral.

I begin to trudge back to the clearing, thoughts of Ron and Harry overtaking my mind as they are so wont to do. My fear for Harry's safety is bleeding into my dreams. All night I saw him being hurt. Tortured by Death-Eaters. A grinning Bellatrix casting an Avada, except it was Harry, not Sirius, that I watched fall through the Veil. Ron sobbing. Ron hating me. Blaming me, for not fixing things.

To think. To be brilliant. To have all the answers. That is my job, my role in this journey, and I am currently failing at it.

But my brain refuses to function. It is frozen by a blind, heavy panic. And the longer I remain without finding a solution, the worse it becomes.

I decided last night that I would take it one step at a time. There is no point being ahead of the game when I don't know which fucking game I'm playing anymore.

Step One: Heal Malfoy

Step Two: Find my way back to the Order without attracting suspicion

Step Three: Find Harry

I realize that the Order might somehow find Harry by the time I return to them. But something tells me that this is bigger than it seems. Maybe it is constant apprehension, eating away at my insides like acid, or the strange foreboding that has been weighing on my chest ever since we saw Tonks' Patronus, but I just know that this is going to take all of us. The game has changed, the rules with it.

I take a steadying breath as I lift the flap, steeling myself for more inevitable confrontations with Malfoy.

The reek of rust assaults my nostrils and I launch myself towards the beds.

What the fuck did he do?!

His face is smeared with it in long streaks. The sheets are matted. The piece of my tunic is no longer a makeshift bandage. It clings to his skin, half-dried onto it, now a ghastly blackish-brown. His wound must have opened up. One gore-covered palm lies on the pillow by his head, I see crescent gouges in it, still oozing thick ruby droplets.

Blood and fear.

This is a game of blood and fear.

AN:
Tell me what you thought.

The nursery rhyme is originally from Gammer Gurton's Garland. I modified it to suit the context.