Chapter 7
Hermione awoke hours later. Her book across her chest where it had fallen when she had finally fallen asleep. Reading, her passion and her solace had failed her last night. After leaving Draco she had felt like her blood was on fire. She had tried to read to distract herself from the magnetic pull she felt as she resisted the urge to return to his room. She had finally fallen into a fitful dreamless sleep.
Now her wand was glowing blue and warm to the touch. It was summoning her to Draco. She hopped out of bed and ran to his door. He was rolling his head back and forth murmuring incomprehensibly. Automatically, Hermione cast the incantation that sent her tumbling into Draco's dream.
She found herself in the very bedroom she had just left. The room she had been occupying during her stay at Malfoy Manor. The room was dark save for the light of the fireplace. Malfoy stood facing the fire. He wore wizarding robes. One hand clutched his wand so fiercely that his knuckles were white. The other hand was balled into a fist at his side. The soft sound of a woman weeping caught her attention and Hermione turned to see Narcissa Malfoy on the sofa. She was curled in a fetal position.
"I'm going to kill him." Malfoy spoke still facing the fire, his voice raw with anger and emotion.
"Draco, dearest, please listen to me. Please don't say such things; you know it pains me to hear you say them."
"What! More than being beaten by him pains you, mother?" Draco spat and whirled around to face his mother "Why? Why do you stay with him. You can return to your family, they won't fault you for leaving him."
"He'd never let me take you away from him, dearest. And I won't leave you."
"He's a monster."
"He wouldn't be, Draco," Her voice broke on her words as she rushed on in a thin tight voice. "I-if you would just do what he asks!" Narcissa shifted and light from the fire fell across her face as she spoke. Hermione gasped to see her face was a swollen mass, covered with fresh cuts and bruises. She was dabbing at her face with a damp cloth. As she spoke, her misshapen lip distorted her words.
"He is angry with me because he thinks I have not tried hard enough to convince you to take the mark, Draco. He says that the Dark Lord begins to wonder why you have not taken it yet, and that puts us all in danger. Your father just wants you to submit to the mark, and then it will all be better. Our family will be happy, back to normal."
Draco closed his eyes, grimacing at hearing his mothers' words. His mother who had always been his support, his ally against his father's dark objectives had finally been broken. Lucious had finally gotten her to do what he knew she never wanted to do. She was encouraging him to become a Deatheater.
Suddenly feeling overwhelmed Draco opened his eyes to looked at her face. He wanted to see her eyes. Was this really what she wanted? Had she been so thoroughly broken?
He was surprised when he looked at her. He saw that her eyes were not on him, but on the bronze sculpture statuette of Ravana, a demon of Hindu legend. Draco recognized it as a gift his father had given to his mother only the week before. He had taken a brief business trip to East Asia and brought the statuette back as a gift.
The demon had ten heads all capped with pointed glittering crowns. Ten arms sprouted from each side of the torso, all twenty hands held pointed daggers. All in all Draco had thought it the most unappealing gift a man could ever give to his wife.
His father had been in raptures over the ugly thing, insisting that Narcissa place it on display in her rooms. "That way I know you will think of me first thing in the morning and the last thing before you go to sleep." His father had said as he helped her set in on a stand in her rooms.
At the time Draco had thought the flowery words strange. Endearments coming from his father to the woman he tormented and humiliated? In truth, he rarely treated his wife with respect unless they were in public.
Now a chill ran down his spine as his mothers attention was fixed rigidly on the statue.
Looking carefully at the statue himself, Draco was stunned to see that one of the miniature heads of the statue had glittering clear blue-grey eyes, the same shade and color as his fathers. As he watched, the blue eyes snapped about the room before returning to stare straight head at his mother.
The penny dropped and Draco realized that his father was witnessing the conversation between himself and his mother. The statue had a spy charm on it. No wonder his mother had been beaten so savagely. Just that morning she had stood in this very room begging Draco to find a way, any way out of taking the mark.
He stood and embraced his mother. She clung to him, stroking his hair like he was a small child, though he appeared to be around seventeen. "I see it," He said into her ear in the slightest whisper.
Then aloud he said.
"I will do anything, mother to keep this from happening to you again. I'll take the mark.
Draco hugged his mother tighter and the dream shifted.
It was, Hermione surmised, during the same time period as the previous dream. Draco's height and hair were the same. Hermione's heart nearly jumped out of her chest as she realized that he was in a forest.
Before him a bewitched fire of green flame danced out of the ground making the surrounding trees appear to twist and dance in the darkness. Draco was kneeling before the flame in a small clearing. A ring of hooded men surrounded him in a circle. Ten masked death eaters stood nearer the fire and Voldemort.
As Draco continued kneeling Voldemort said something she could not hear. Then, Lucious who stood on Voldemort's right stepped up and gripped Draco's right wrist, drawing back the sleeve of his robes. The pale skin of Draco's bare forearm seemed to glow in the darkness.
Draco flinched as Voldemort extended a grey skinned finger to touch his forearm, etching the outline of a snake and skull into his flawless skin. Hermione watched Draco grit his teeth as the mark smoked, the smell of burnt flesh filled the forest.
Horror-struck she continued to watch as Voldemort traced the mark, it filled itself in magically with black and green ink. The serpent writhed and slithered through the mouth of the skull as it came into being on Draco's arm. Hermione could see the silent agony on Draco's face and wanted to cry out to him, to shield him from the pain of it.
When he was finished, Voldemort pressed the palm of his boney grey hand to the mark and pulled Draco to his feet by it. Draco, still silent in his pain lumbered to his feet.
"Now boy, you are a Deatheater. From this day until you die you swear your loyalty and your life to me and no other." He gripped Draco's head and forced him to lock directly in his eyes.
In the next moment, Hermione was startled by Voldemort as he shrieked with fury. Draco was immediately wrapped in thick braided black ropes that glistened like snake scales in the moonlight night.
Then, Voldemort struck with blinding swiftness. A jet of green light flashed from his wand and hit Severus Snape in the chest. "No!" Draco bellowed, but he was bound tightly, unable to move to help his Godfather. Snape fell backwards and writhed on the ground under the pain of the cruciatus curse.
Voldemort's shrill, high pitched voice filled the still night air.
"Traitor!" Voldemort roared and raised his wand. His features were contorted in rage. The death eaters on either side of him cowered further into the darkness as Voldemort moved closer to the now still form of Snape.
"Who else, Severus?" He cooed with deceptive quite. He knelt beside Snape and used a gnarled finger to brush the hair almost tenderly from his eyes.
"Ah, Severus, my most loyal, most trusted, most devoted Deatheater. You will die tonight. But, if you have betrayed me…who else? Who else here has done the same?"
He swept around as he spoke these last words, looking at his Deatheaters, who were by now cowering near the trees that ringed the clearing as if ready to flee.
"Surely not you Marks?" Marks fell to his knees crying out that he was loyal to his lord.
Voldemort went on as if the man had said nothing
"…or you McNair, Riggins, Craine?" All the men he named fell face down in the underbrush of the forest as Marks had done, shouting that they were loyal Deatheaters and had not betrayed the Dark Lord. Voldemort spoke over them without pause his voice an angry hiss.
"… Perhaps, someone less loyal, less devoted, newer… more…corruptible."
A jet of green light flew out of his wand and Draco was catapulted through the air and landed, still bound, on the ground near Snape.
"My Lord!" Lucious stepped forward, "He is innocent of treachery, he-" .
"Someone younger, weaker!" Screamed Voldemort, his anger peeking again as he cut off Lucious without sparing him a glance.
He cast the cruciatus at the two men lying on the forest floor and both contorted wildly for a full minute.
Hermione thought she'd die from the agony of watching Draco endure such horrendous torture. The cruciatus curse was, in essence, a transfiguration of hatred into pain. The casters hate transfigured and manifested into pain on the body of the victim.
Hermione knew that the hatred that Voldemort could muster would be more intense, more painful than what any normal, sane witch or wizard could deliver.
Her eyes filled with tears and her knees failed to support her, she sank to the damp forest floor, still unable to take her eyes off of the two men as they writhed in agony against the wet leaves and forest debris. Finally Voldemort lifted his wand.
"Speak, Draco." He cooed almost lovingly, stroking the tip of his wand across Draco's forehead, "Tell me you have not betrayed me! Tell me it is only Severus who has been working for the Order and I shall spare you, I will even let you kill Snape yourself."
"My Lord!" Lucious cried again taking a step toward the three wizards in the center of the clearing. "He is no traitor, he would never betray-" Lucious was slammed backward against a thick tree trunk with a flick of Voldemort wand.
"Silence!" Voldemort spat. Then his voice, changed back to a silky beguiling tone again, "I will have it from the boy." Voldemort bent over Draco who inhaled and exhaled rapidly on the thick mat of forest floor, still trying to catch his breath after the torture he had endued.
"Such a good looking, pure blooded boy," Voldemort caressed Draco's cheek with his boney livid hand. "Surely he would not do such a thing."
Draco attempted to sit up but was unable to do so with the thick black ropes that bound him. Voldemort stepped away from him and flicked his wand again, instantly the ropes fell away. Draco rolled onto his stomach and rose to his hands and knees still gasping for breath. Bits of wet twigs, leaves and dirt clung to his clothing and hair.
He was about to rise to his feet when Voldemort pulled back his own sleeve, exposing his dark mark. He pressed his ghastly finger to the mark. Immediately all of the Deatheaters, Draco and Snape included cried out in pain, clutching the marks on their forearms, dropping to their knees if they weren't there already.
"I said speak boy!" Voldemort raged.
Draco, again on his hands and knees rose his head defiantly. Pain and fury was etched on his pale face. "He-was-not-alone!" He ground out through his gritted teeth.
"DRACO!" His father and godfather yelled in unison, the former in shock and the latter as warning not to confess, to save himself.
"The Order knows about your master plan. The two of us may die here tonight, but the Order will finish you, mark my words. They will stop you because they're stronger…and you are a madman." The words boomed in the cold forest air like cannon fire.
Voldemort's eyes gleamed red and seemed to narrow into slits as he raised his wand. Just as he was set to slash down with it and end Draco's life a bolt of red light erupted from the tree line at one side of the clearing.
The spell was deflected by Voldemort but no sooner did he shield himself form the curse than dozens more shot out from different directions all around him. The air was suddenly filled with shrieks of pain and hexes being cast. Order members and aurors clashed with death eaters in streams of white and black smoke. Draco ran to shield Snape and pull the older man to cover. The Order of the Phoenix had finally arrived.
The battle raged for twenty minutes or so. Enough time elapsed for Draco and Snape both to recover themselves and enter the fray on the side of the Order. Finally as casualties mounted on both sides, Harry engaged Voldemort.
The two wizards battled in the center of the fighting, each side covered the other from aiding either wizard. Spells filled the air, but the mammoth power behind the curses that flew between Harry and Voldemort was like a stellar light show. Another ten minutes of battle and it seemed that Harry was gaining the upper hand.
Suddenly from the side of the clearing Lucious leapt forward, his wand raised at Harry, who's sole focus and attention were on Voldemort. An instant later, Draco blocked his fathers shot at Harry and a jet of green light exploded from his wand into Lucious. In an instant Draco's father lay on the ground, dead at his son's feet, his eye still wide with shock.
Snape was pulling Draco to the ground just as Voldemort hissed something in parsletounge and whipped his wand in an odd arch. Harry winced as blood stained the front of his shirt. But then ignoring the injury, he stood and refocused his attention. With a final mighty effort he cast the killing curse at Voldemort and in a flash of light the maniac lay in a crumpled heap on the ground, dead.
Hermione started to run toward Harry and Draco, then reminding herself that this was all a dream memory, she reconnected with her physical body, almost not believing the events she had just witnessed had happened two long years ago. She felt Draco's hand warm and living in hers. She exited the memory to find herself laying partially across him as she knelt at his bedside.
Overcome for a moment, her eyes filled with tears and she clutched him in a fierce hug. Then not wanting him to relive the nightmare any longer than he had already, she gently shook him until he was awake.
He bolted upright, his skin clammy and his breathing rapid. He nearly knocked her to the floor as he awoke with a start. His skin was clammy and his breathing was rapid and shallow. He looked around with unseeing eyes for a few moments, then, his eyes rested on her. Hermione took in the haunted vacant look in his eyes and waited until moments passed and he seemed to really see her. When she knew he was truly awake, and he was actually seeing her, he pulled her against him in a bone jarring hug, crushing her against him as he buried his face in her neck.
Hermione hugged him back, rubbing her arms gently up and down his back and shoulders until he seemed to recover somewhat. When his hold on her slackened some, she pulled away to look at him again, cupping his face in her hands.
"Draco, I-I never knew. Why, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell anybody?" Draco closed his eyes as if the question would go away.
"It doesn't matter now, Hermione. The war is over. What is past is done."
"No, Draco, it's not." Hermione said firmly. "You have never been recognized for your work during the war. People still think of the Malfoy's as a Deatheater family. You were as much a hero as any other Order member, more so, because of the danger of working so close to Voldemort!"
"Hermione! Don't." He had a hard edge to his voice and Hermione knew it was not the time to push him. She let the matter drop.
"It was the dream Draco, it was the dream with the curse. You saw it, you just didn't realize it because you were so focused on…your…on Lucious." Her eyes met his and she knew this was another subject he was not willing to discuss right now. He had killed his own father to save Harry Potter.
She leaned forward and hugged him for a long moment again, because he looked like he needed hugging. He encircled her with his arms and they lay there silently for a few minutes.
"I have to floo to Bills. He and the other curse breakers will need to get right to work on the counter curse. They'll need to see the memory as soon as possible. Bill Weasley has a pensive at his flat and-"
As she spoke Hermione stood and took a step toward his fireplace.
"Like hell your going to Weasley's dressed like that!" Draco said standing up and giving her an over my dead body kind of look.
He turned and strode from the room, returning seconds later with a set of his over robes. He pulled them around her and buttoned them together securely. She tried not to smile at his disgruntled expression as she picked up the too long robes so she could step into the fireplace with her floo powder.
"Bill Weasley's flat!" She shouted and in a blur of green Draco was gone.