[Warning: the rubbish fairly literally hits the fan; the fuck word and the Mudblood word; violence (not graphic); multiple minor characters' deaths; Draco being right; submissive!Voldemort - not really but if you read too quickly it might seem like that - so don't read too quickly]
[Update: fixed Death Eaters' names]
"I Hate You" by Sick Puppies
Every time I end up breaking you / you change into / something worth keeping /
every time I'm close to saving you / you grow into / a sin worth believing /
you're everything I ever wanted but / it's never enough / you're never enough
I'll take / whatever I can take / whenever I can take it / if it ever comes
I hate you when you're gone / I hate you turn me on / I hate the way I need you / when I don't know where you are /
I love it even more / when I find you on the floor / I know you think you hate me / but I will always hate you more
I never knew until I got a taste / what a waste / for what I had been through /
'cause nothing ever really makes that change / I'm so ashamed / of what I did to you /
I had to let you in to feel that rush / you were too much / way too much
I'll take / whatever I can take / whenever I can take it / if it ever comes
I hate you when you're gone / I hate you turn me on / I hate the way I need you / when I don't know where you are /
I love it even more / when I find you on the floor / I know you think you hate me / but I will always hate you more
Round and round and... / I never knew until I got a taste / I'm so ashamed / of what I did to you
I hate you when you're gone / I hate you turn me on / I hate the way I need you / when I don't know where you are /
I love it even more / when I find you on the floor / I know you think you hate me / but I will always hate you more
I hate you when you're gone / I hate you turn me on / I hate the way I need you / when I don't know where you are /
I love it even more / when I find you on the floor / I know you think you hate me / but I will always hate you more
Hermione barely kept herself from panicking as she scanned the room for Ron and Harry. She and Ron made eye contact and rushed towards each other, tightly grasping each other's hands, and Harry collided into them when Remus shoved him their way. As soon as Harry's hand touched hers, Hermione Disapparated. They landed in the middle of a street, and nearly skidded backwards up into a fence before they managed to catch their breaths.
She felt as though she was in a trance for the following couple hours, everything went by so quickly - not just all the muggle traffic, but everything they did seemed frantic and rushed. Searching through her bag for changes of clothes, explaining where they were, ordering coffee...she only snapped back into reality when Harry screamed "DOWN!"
All three of them hit the floor right as two Death Eaters turned around and tried to hit them with curses, an effort which ultimately was unsuccessful. After both were knocked out, Ron contested that Hermione should Obliviate them, and she reluctantly altered their memories.
We should just kill them...she thought, although Harry had specifically vetoed that option. They're sure to have alerted Voldemort that they found us, so the Death Eaters would already know that we're here...we might as well finish the bastards off instead of leaving them to go spell havoc somewhere else.
"The wedding crashers are dispatched entirely, my Lord. They have successfully conducted their invasion of the Ministry, and have progressed to the Weasleys' home," Severus said flatly, glancing at Draco out of the corner of his eye. The man was remarkably composed, considering the topic of the night, which his aunt had no doubt taunted him with. Severus was almost proud, having played a major role in Draco's boyhood, most of which related to instructing him on various subjects, including that of public indifference, which Draco had mastered.
"Good...very good..." Voldemort spoke slowly, turning away from Severus and towards Bellatrix. "You have the papers, Bella, do you not?"
"Here, my Lord!" Bellatrix enthusiastically thrust the folder to him. In a manner which Draco knew Hermione would have compared to James Bond, Voldemort laid his pale hand on top of it just as it reached him, using his long thumbnail to push the folder open.
"Granger...Hermione...Granger..." he began. Draco forced himself not to gulp as every pair of eyes in the room pressed their vehement gaze upon him. After a moment he realised the weight of the silence in the room, as Voldemort waited for him to speak.
"What about her?" Draco said, nonchalantly slinging his arm back and acting as though he was barely more than indifferent.
"Your little girlfriend is tonight's target," his uncle Rabastan sneered, and Draco almost bit his lip whilst trying not to react to the comment.
"Isn't she at the wedding?"
"To our knowledge, she was," Snape answered, so quickly that he almost cut off the end of Draco's question. "Apparently, the Wonder Trio was able to duck out of the party before anyone was able to catch them. We've had a couple spies in muggle London all night, and they think they caught sight of them. They followed them into a restaurant, but we haven't had word since. Chances are, of course, something went down, but that would obviously mean that we have the right people, considering they have got to be the only ones haughty enough to engage in combat in the middle of a muggle establishment."
"Granger's from muggle London, you know," Draco said with an undertone of warning. "She's at home there - well, sort of. Hasn't spent much time in the muggle world past six years."
Hermione reached into her back pocket as she, Ron, and Harry rounded the corner onto Grimmauld Place. She gasped, grabbing Harry by the arm and whispering frantically.
"I think my bag is still at the restaurant. I have to go back and get it!"
"Sure we shouldn't come?" Ron asked worriedly.
"They're knocked out and their memories are wiped, Ron. What exactly do you think they can do?" she griped as she retraced her steps.
"So, what are our concerns to be?" Rodolphus barked.
"Her," Draco replied jeeringly, but then echoed the displeased sighs of his family. "She's a better fighter than you'd think. And don't think catching her alone will do you much more good. I don't doubt that she'd use Dark magic, or even Unforgivables, if she saw both necessity and opportunity. And that's just skill-wise. She's not easy to physically overpower, either."
"You would know," Bellatrix sneered, and Draco forced a laugh.
"Well, yes, I would," he scoffed.
"Crabbe, Goyle, Nott, Rabastan, Mulciber, Malfoy," Voldemort said slowly. Narcissa immediately gripped Draco at his shoulder, glaring at Voldemort.
"Oh, no, you don't," she snapped.
"Your husband," the man said condescendingly, and once his mother became less tense Draco shrugged her hand away. His father reassuringly grabbed her other hand, resting their pale, clasped fingers in between their chairs, as all three of them slowly acknowledged the statement.
Thank Merlin...that could just be the only good thing that's happened to me recently...fuck, my life is terrible. When did this- never mind, I have cigarettes, alcohol, and sleeping draught upstairs. I'll survive the night. Maybe. This meeting better fucking be over soon.
Hermione stepped gingerly through the back door of the cafe, and spotted her bag under the table where she had been sitting. She sighed of relief as she picked it up, thoughtlessly keeping herself faced towards the two indisposed men, just oblivious enough not to realise that she had been joined by six more until the front door closed. She stuffed her bag into her front pocket and slowly turned around to face them, tightening her grip on her wand. She barely stopped herself from grimacing when the first physical attribute she identified was silver blond hair, but was relieved that only the elder Malfoy was present. Only a couple weeks after the grand reveal, she'd bet anything that Draco was going to be their ammunition whether he was there or not.
"Well, well, well, Granger," sniggered one of the Death Eaters, whom Hermione did not recognise. "What happened to the boys?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she jeered.
"That would be very useful information, thank you," Rabastan spat.
"All the more reason you're not getting it!"
"Think you're clever, don't you, Mudblood?"
"Oh, no, certainly not!" she exclaimed, setting all the men off guard. "I am clever."
"More so than you are foolhardy?"
"If you're referring to a lack of fear, then...I fear I must say no," she sneered, and Rabastan advanced towards her, becoming rather visibly irritated but making some gesture to the other men that signaled them not to react to her. He made sure to invade her personal space, but she made sure not to budge a single centimeter as he growled at her.
"Heh...guess you are prettier up close."
"Don't worry, you're not my type."
"You're pushing it, Mudblood, really pushing it-"
"Wasn't that the point? If I weren't pushing it you wouldn't be here in the first place."
Rabastan had barely begun to twirl his wand when the ground erupted behind him; everyone was shaken off their feet with the vibration. Hermione, being the only person prepared for the impact, followed up with a few lighter curses for good measure as she alone rose to her feet. There was a rustling outside the door right as a couple of the men managed to stand, and Rabastan sneered at Lucius to go patrol the sidewalks until he was called back in. Lucius scowled, but ultimately obeyed, slamming the door behind him as he begrudgingly exited. At the precise moment the door shut, Hermione blasted the counter, sending shards of metal, glass, wood, and stone onto nearly all the men still on the floor, wounding the two behind the counter most severely. The slight lifting of their chests which she had been able to observe came to an abrupt stop.
Sorry, Harry...she thought, with more than a hint of sarcasm as she waited to further assess her situation.
Even after a good couple minutes, only three of the four men still present had brought themselves to their feet.
"Looks like your little boyfriend was right...you're a bit of a fighter, aren't you?" Rabastan continued.
Here we go... Hermione groaned internally.
"A bit?"
She looked at him with raised eyebrows, and knowing none of them were paying close enough attention to her hands to notice anything, loosened the screws of the ceiling fan. Rabastan became confused as she started to slowly back away from him, and his eyes widened when he heard screeching metal from above, mere seconds before the appliance crashed to the floor between he and Hermione. Being a muggle fan, it was connected to the electricity - which, of course, only Hermione knew - and the small spark she shot into the dangling wires prompted a shower of small flames to accompany the sharper curses she began to send. Goyle - whom she had never met, but looked just like his son, only plumper - was hit square through his chest with the Sectumsempra curse whilst still in the process of standing, and collapsed to the ground in the quickly expanding pool of blood. Hermione found herself able to detach her emotions, and used this to her distinct advantage - not as though they thought with theirs, but they still assumed that she did - and that her level of skill with Dark magic could be comparable enough to Harry's to even fret about - so even when they could hear the spells she cast, she conquered with the element of surprise.
Bellatrix sighed. "Well, no casualties at the wedding...that was so much less successful than it should have been..."
Half expecting her sister's response, Narcissa jumped into the conversation to follow.
"Lucius and the others should be back soon; it's been over an hour. They'll certainly have good news." Draco cringed in disagreement, but was very relieved that no one observed his reaction.
"Who knows, maybe Prince Potter and Weasel King flew in to save their perfect fucking princess," Rodolphus sneered, and Draco wasn't able to resist laughing, on multiple interpretations of his uncle's comment.
He has a point on the fucking perfect-ly part...
"If that was how the three of them worked together, they'd all be dead by now, you realise?"
"And why's that?"
"She's always the one saving their asses. It's almost never the other way 'round, 'cept a couple times when they got particularly tiffed with me over insultin' her."
"Is that so..." Rodolphus said in conclusion, his trailing voice clarifying that he was not making any sort of inquiry.
Hermione startled as the door shut again, and turned back towards it in time to watch Lucius' gasp in its entirety, not excluding his widened eyes, open jaw, and paling face. He seemed frozen in place, and she took the opportunity to finish off the last of the others, Rabastan. Lucius trembled in fear as the green light hit his brother-in-law, the sound of Hermione's voice declaring the Killing Curse more shocking than either could have imagined. Her expression was stone cold, and from her eyes as they met his a few seconds later she seemed heartless. She stood in place, her back still turned to him whilst her head spun around, and looked over at him for a moment, then let out a brief laugh which held some semblance of a cackle.
"Tell Draco I said hello," she taunted before walking to the back of the restaurant, waving what could have seemed, to an outsider, a flirtatious goodbye, and then, with one final look at the two Death Eaters behind the counter, Disapparating in a gust of white smoke.
