I really enjoyed writing this chapter! Please review, and READ THE AN AT THE BOTTOM!
Being one third of the Golden trio, after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione had gotten used to the staring and gawking done by witches and wizards around her, and the media attention that came with it. But this, this was…Different. People were stopping in their tracks to stare at her as she passed them in the corridors, some awestruck, others with huge grins. Well, she mused, it could possibly have something to do with the fact that she was walking shoulder to shoulder with one Draco Malfoy, and, for once in their lives, they weren't bickering or trying to inflict pain on each other. As they turned into their corridor, Malfoy swore as an owl bomb-dived him, hitting him hard over the head with a copy of the prophet. Hermione decided to find the owl and feed him treats later.
"Merlin, it's started," Malfoy muttered, handing her the paper. Hermione choked on her coffee as she read the headline emblazoned along the top of the paper in huge, black font: "GRANGER AND MALFOY: BRITAIN'S NEW POWER COUPLE." Hermione paled.
"Oh, dear." She shoved it back at him, as if it was contagious, and he tossed it with well-aimed precision into the nearest wastepaper basket.
"Ow!" He exclaimed, as yet another owl attacked him. This time, the paper was pink and glossy: the Witch Weekly, Hermione realized. She caught the words "Hermione" and "Draco" and "star-crossed lovers", and when Malfoy tried to shove it at her, she ducked with a shriek, feeling mildly ill. Just at that moment, Blaise decided to come round the corner, grinning widely.
"There's our newest celebrity power couple! Tell me, Hermione, Draco," he began in a falsetto tone. "When was it that you realized you"-he inhaled dramatically-" loved each other?" Once in her life, stunned speechless, Hermione threw the magazine at him, hoping half-heartedly that it would inflict enough paper cuts for him to bleed to death. Draco's teeth came together audibly.
"I will crush you," he informed his extremely amused best friend, who waved off the threat nonchalantly.
"Before you do that, we want all the goss on your crush on the Gryffindor Princess!" Blaise gushed, and then looked pleased. "See what I did there? You said crush, and I-"
"Did you really just use the phrase goss in a sentence?" Malfoy asked with a frown. Blaise winced.
"Erm, yes, I think I did. Someday, my masculinity might recover. Someday. Whenever it does, at least I am comforted to know that yours, my friend, will still be far behind, since it's rumoured the lovely Hermione calls you Drakey-Wakey behind closed doors." Draco's hand strayed to his wand, and Hermione shoved him.
"Don't, it's not worth it," Hermione hissed.
"It is," Malfoy gritted. "It really, really is."
"If we kill Blaise, we'll get fired. And the whole point of this was that we didn't want to get fired, remember?" He scowled at her logic.
"It's too early to be reasonable, Granger."
"And besides," Hermione said, sounding very put out, "I would never call anyone such a sickeningly horrid nickname." Blaise winked.
"Not even your 'lil Drakey here?" Upon instinct, Draco reached for his wand, but Hermione's hand shot out and grabbed it, taking off with a laugh down the corridor.
"You little…Give it back!" He yelled, taking off after her. "Oi, Blaise, help, would you, she's got my wand!"
"Which one?" His best friend called back, to the general amusement of the auror department. "Because you're a great mate and all, Malfoy, but if you think I'm going to fight Granger in a tug-of-war over your wand, you've overstepped the bounds of our friendship." Malfoy decided right then that as soon as three months were up, he was going to take an early retirement. Just as he started gaining on Granger again –and that wasn't easy: he had long legs, but he'd be damned it she wasn't moving hers at the speed of light-there was a roar, and Draco was tackled to the ground with a crash.
"MALFOY!" A very pissed off voice bellowed, and his eyes snapped open.
"What the actual fuck, Weasel?" He yelled, grabbing the other man's shoulders and fairly throwing him off him. He crashed into a secretary and then the opposite wall, but then stumbled towards Malfoy again, swinging a punch Draco easily deflected.
"If you dare hurt Hermione, Harry, Ginny and I will feed you live to a bloodthirsty gang of goblins," Weasel hissed. Draco's eyes snapped to the Idiot-Who-Lived, who gave a shrug, as if to say "Not my choice of methods, but it's true, watch out" and Malfoy sneered.
"I hope you realize how pathetic you sound, Weasel. Granger is more than capable of looking after herself." Weasel's eyes narrowed.
"I know that, dumb fuck, but you're a slimy, evil little toad, and you'd better watch out." He noticed that Granger was standing a few feet away, her arms crossed, wearing a very pleased expression, and that the entire Auror department were discreetly or not-so-discreetly watching the famous Specialized Cursebreaking Unit brawl in the common room with amazement and pleasure. Malfoy's eyes narrowed, deciding to deal with the problem at hand first.
"Watch your mouth, slug. I will make it as simple as I can for you to understand, he said calmly. I have no intention whatsoever of harming Her-" he swallowed hard, realizing with an oh holy fuck moment that he had nearly called Granger Hermione- but then finished with a shrug. "Alright? I have no intention of harming her." Points for him. Disaster averted.
"Malfoy, Blaise, Potter, Weasely and Granger," Shackbolt's tired voice said. "What did I do that was so terrible in my past life to deserve dealing with a brawl this early, on a fucking Monday morning?" His dark brown eyes flashed around each of them, then fixed on Malfoy. "Explain yourselves, please." In unison, they all clamored to provide an answer.
"They're the newest power couple, haven't you heard, Minister?" Blaise crooned. "I was simply the harbinger of good news, messenger of Aphrodite, perhaps, some may say, Cupid himself, devoted endlessly to uniting star-crossed lovers. Although in this case, Hermione and Draco are more like meteorite-crossed lovers, capable of destroying life as we know it should their paths cross too explosively." Shackbolt eyed him suspiciously, clearly weighing his options.
"Remind me to have you drug tested," he said dryly.
"I didn't do anything," Granger said sweetly, actually batting her eyelashes at Kingsley, who didn't buy it for one second, thank Merlin. The expression Granger wore was of complete and utter innocence, she looked every inch the Gryffindor Princess, and everything about her too-good aura made Draco's-and clearly, every other man's instincts scream "she's planning to murder, RUN THE FUCK AWAY!"
"I did nothing," Potter chimed in. "Absolutely nothing."
"Somehow, I find that incredibly difficult to believe," Shackbolt muttered. "When have you been not somehow involved in any shitstorm to take place in your entire life, Potter?" The dark haired wizard considered this, and then shrugged.
"That's true, I suppose. Alright, all I did was tell Ron that Malfoy was coming."
"Thanks, Pothead," Draco growled, rubbing a bruise on his shoulder where the oaf had tackled him.
"Any time, Ferret," his not-really-but-kind-of-enemy shot back. Kingsley looked at Draco with a hint of desperation in his eyes.
"Please. You look sane. Ish," he added as an afterthought. Draco decided not to take that personally, and gave a dramatic, long-suffering sigh.
"Granger grabbed my wand, then Weasel tackled me, and it hurt," he emphasized in a wounded tone.
"What hurt?" Blaise interjected. "Granger's wand-grabbing, or weasel's tackle?" The minister for magic gave a small sound akin to a whimper of pain.
"You are the reason we have a bad reputation," he told Blaise reproachfully. Draco nodded his agreement, and then continued his story.
"So then he threatened me and so I threw him at a wall-I think the wall's all right- and Granger's still got hold of my wand, Minister, make her give it back," He finished, and by then, nearly every person in the room was fighting a smile.
"Mr. Malfoy, what you and Ms. Granger do in your private time is not for me to mediate." He turned to Hermione. "I would advise you, though, Ms. Granger, not to do any more wand-grabbing in here. Health and Safety standards, you understand." It was clear the Minister had absolutely no idea of the double entendre, but the rest of the department most certainly did as Granger went pale and Malfoy flushed so hot it was painful. Blaise and Potter managed to pass their laughs off as hacking coughing fits, but only just.
"I hate to interrupt something so thoroughly amusing, but we have an emergency," Pavarti's voice cut through. She brandished a case file, her face looking grim. "We have to go, now."
"Please just get through the day without killing each other," Shackbolt sighed, dismissing them.
"What is it?" Hermione asked worriedly as they made their way to the Apparation site.
"It's an old muggle house we think you-know-who made one of his residences," Dean said grimly. Hermione's stomach sank.
"I thought we got them all," she murmured unhappily.
"Apparently not," Ginny chimed in. "It's seriously cursed. They tried to knock it down and two Muggles were killed. We think it activated some kind of detection charm."
"Meaning?" Harry asked, worry furrowing his brow.
"Meaning that any surviving death eaters will know it's being demolished," Malfoy said grimly, to the team's general horror. Suddenly, Pavarti cursed.
"Son of a bitch, we can't Apparate, it'll raise death eater suspicions. We'll have to take a porkey." All of them groaned, jogging down to the front of the ministry to grab a hold of the nearest porkey.
Unfortunately, as they spotted the innocent-looking roadmap that was the porkey, a bunch of reporters in the foyer spotted them. Even worse, they were from Witch Weekly- and they were renowned for being completely and utterly ruthless. Just their luck.They were eyeing Draco and Hermione as if they were about to become their next meal.
"Oh no," Hermione hissed. "Go, go, go!" She yelled.
"Hermione!"
"Draco!"
"Look this way!"
"Give us a smile!"
"Or a kiss!"
"Yeah, go on!" Blaise chimed in.
"PAVARTI, HURRY THE FUCK UP!" Malfoy bellowed.
"I'm trying, you idiot, but it has to warm up-"
"Are you in love?"
"When's the wedding?"
"Hermione, are you pregnant?"
"How long have you loved each other for?"
"NOW!" Hermione yelled, and they all lunged for a corner of the paper. Somebody grabbed Hermione's shoulder as the ministry began to spin so fast it was nauseating, until sound and sight became mixed and confused and darkness took over.
They landed in a pile with a heavy thump, rolling away and coughing. It hadn't been the most graceful of landings, but then again, they hadn't had time to prepare properly. At least we left those horrid reporters behind, Hermione thought grimly, but then her jaw dropped. Oh, no way… Two of the reporters, one woman with bright purple hair and another peroxide blonde, were slowly getting to their feet.
"Hermione! Draco! Just one picture!" The purple-head exclaimed.
"Ladies, we are at work," Harry said tiredly. "And it's essential we proceed very quickly." The admonishment from the Boy-Well-Actually-Man-Who-Lived stumped them for a moment, and the team took that opportunity to turn on their heels and began making their way up the rolling hill towards what looked like a ramshackle old mansion. The sky was darkened, it looked like it was nearly nighttime when in actual fact it couldn't have been more than midday. Hermione spotted a small, decimated graveyard in one corner of the spooky-looking gardens, complete with ugly gargoyles and beady-eyed crows circling lazily. Honestly, it looked as if the place was straight off the set of some terribly bad muggle horror movie, but the fact that, given whose residence it had once been, the horrors inside it had been very, very real made Hermione shiver.
"Smile for us!" The blonde witch squealed, running in front of Draco and Hermione to snap a picture in their face, the blinding light of the flash making both of them wince. As they reached the top of the hill, Blaise rounded on the two pseudo-journalists with a cold expression in his eyes that made even Hermione want to take a step back from him. At nearly six-foot-three and broadly built, he cut an intimidating figure in his dark suit and cold expression, and towered over the reporters with a menacing smile.
"If you two reporters do not get out of our way right now, I will call your superiors and have them know you are obstructing a highly classified, extremely important operation. Furthermore, I will see to it you lose your jobs and have your wand license revoked," he said icily. The two witches took a few timid steps back, and Blaise's eyes darkened.
"Now," he growled., and they jumped out of their skins, scrambling over each other to get down the hill and back to the porkey. Blaise raised an eyebrow at Draco and Hermione in the impressed silence that followed.
"It's okay, you don't have to tell me, I know I'm your savior," he said loftily, a smirk on his face. "But should you feel the urge to show your appreciation, you may kiss my feet. Alternatively, my bank account number is-" as Hermione and Malfoy exchanged oddly unified looks of pain that said "I really wish we could Crucio him", the house gave a low, groaning kind of sound, and the windows rattled.
"Hermione?" Harry asked, sounding unsure.
"I-I don't know," she stammered, feeling oddly vulnerable. "We'll have to go in." They proceeded uneasily, fanning out into a line and casting curse-detecting spells.
"Nothing from over here," Ron called from where he stood in the kitchens, seeming perplexed.
"It's clean in the main entryway too," Ginny said, shifting her weight as a few doors slammed open and closed. A very fine trickle of plasterboard was floating down from the ceilings, and Dean was busy giving a particularly murderous-looking hole in the floor that had most definitely not been there when they walked in the evil eye. Suddenly, Hermione was struck by a thought.
"Guys, wait, we're going about this all wrong. If he used this place as some kind of meeting place, the room with the most dark magic would have to be the one they spent most time in. We need a room big enough to seat them all in. There's nothing down here, and I read that most of the bedrooms upstairs are inaccessible because the floorboards are rotten. They wouldn't have bothered to fix it if there was an easier option, so that leaves-"
"The dining room," Malfoy finished with a tight nod. "She's right." Hermione blinked.
"Can you say that again, so I can record it?" She asked, and he rolled his eyes.
"Your maturity knows no bounds," he drawled. She made a face at him.
"Dining room's this way," Harry called. Pausing at each of the three doorways, every witch or wizard held their breath, feeling the hum of dark magic all around them.
"On three!" Blaise called over the now-howling wind. "One, two, three!" As they stepped over the threshold, there was a deafening crack of thunder from above, and the glass from all the window frames burst.
"Start with a standard detector!" Hermione ordered. "Harry and Blaise, find it's strengths. Ginny and Dean, weaknesses. Ron and Pavarti, I want you to tell me how long whatever the hell this is has been here. And we-" she turned to Malfoy- "need to figure out what made this room special, and why it's so dark." He nodded, a single strand of golden light emitting out of his wand.
"The trembling and shaking are aftershocks of powerful magic," he started. "We triggered a defensive response."
"But what was the magic?" Hermione murmured to herself. "What could possibly happen in a dining room- something that happened at a meeting, perhaps…Something special…"
"He made an important plan," Malfoy suggested. "Or met someone important. Whatever it was, he got attatched to it, and wanted to protect it." Suddenly, it clicked in Hermione's head, and she couldn't get the words out fast enough.
"The Horcruxes!" She exclaimed. "This is the place where he made a horcrux. He was in slytherin, I bet it was the locket-or the snake- whichever it was, it doesn't really matter, it just means that those aftershocks are going to get even worse."
"That backs up what we found," Pavarti called. "It was cast a long time ago, with an incredibly powerful wand. Pheonix tail or unicorn hair. Probably phoenix."
"It's strong," Blaise said grimly. "But not particularly aggressive. More protective than anything, really, which is strange."
"Time has weakened it a little, especially now he's dead. It's still going to be a hard battle though," Ginny informed them, her knuckles going white on the grip of her wand as her eyes flashed with determination.
"Alright," Hermione said slowly. "Let's start with a normal removing charm, and test the reaction we get. If he was protecting it, he would have known the Aurors would come some time, and in his time, they worked in groups of four. So four of us should cast at the same time to maximize the optimum reaction. Harry, Dean, Ron and Blaise." She deliberately picked two of the stronger and two of the weaker removalists, with a strange kind of intuition that if this got ugly, which it would, Voldemort would have aimed to take out the top cursebreakers and thus she should ensure that they split their skills.
In unison, all four case identical non-verbal spells at each four corners of the room, and the second they hit the walls, the result was instantaneous. They rebounded with a crack, ricocheting and meeting in the middle with a huge explosion that started out golden and then faded to a green kind of smoke. The walls rattled as they fought to clear the haze, and as it evaporated, all of a sudden, everything was very, very still. For a few heartbeats, nothing happened, and none of them dared to move. That had been far too easy. Then there was a low humming noise, and the green spoke began to spin as the air thickened in intensity, reaching the threshold of pain. At the same time, both Malfoy and Blaise doubled over, then fell.
"Malfoy?" Hermione stammered, approaching the kneeling blonde wizard who was grimacing, a thin sheen of sweat coating his face.
"Get-out-" he managed, turning to look at her desperately as he forced himself to stand despite the pain. "You have to get out. They're coming." Hermione threw Harry a confused glance, but then a cold kind of understanding washed over her, making her blood turn to ice.
"The removal charm triggered the Dark Mark!" She gasped. "He set us up! The Death Eaters are-" she stopped dead in her tracks, trailing off in horror. The shimmering green mist twisted into a darker, blacker kind, forming the dreadfully-familiar shape of the Dark Mark, making both Blaise and Malfoy fight to stay standing once more.
"Harry, we need to get outside. We can't fight in here, the house will kill us. I'll-I'll stay with him." He nodded grimly, and quickly, they moved out. She threw a concerned glance at Malfoy, who was leaning on the table, his eyes closed, perfectly still, jaw clenched. His eyes flew open, startlingly silver.
"You're stupid," he said hoarsely. "Get out, Granger, they will kill me."
"How many are there?" He winced.
"Three. Four at the most."
"Come on, we have to go," she hissed, and they navigated their way through the maze of rooms and corridors, well aware that the storm was picking up again.
"Run!" Malfoy yelled all of a sudden. "They're going to apparate inside the house, and once they get in, the doors will seal shut. GO!" They spied the front door and bolted for it, but just as they reached for the handle, there was a loud crack, and the knob of the door turned white hot. They stepped back, neither wanting to get their hands burned off, both breathing heavily as they assessed their surroundings.
"It's too late," Hermione said, a dreadful kind of calm washing over her as they stood, back to back, staring back at the house as if it was an enemy about to attack them. Hermione swallowed hard, gripping her wand tightly as she met cold, serious silver eyes. They-they were here all along. They were watching us."
"What?" Malfoy said incredulously, but then the realization seemed to dawn on him, and its enormity hit like a ton of bricks. Hermione took a shaky breath, steeling her nerves.
"They waited. They knew we'd be the last ones out." She bit her lip hard, a shudder running up her spine. "They were already here, Malfoy."
HERE'S AN IDEA: Leave me a review saying who your favorite character was in this chap, (or just your favorite character out of the team in general) and the next chapter will be partly written from the winning character's point of view. XTHXBYE!
Em xx