Hi guys, long time no see! I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to get this chapter up, I've just been really busy with uni work for the last couple of months. Luckily, I'm on break for the next few weeks, so I'll hopefully be able to get a few more chapters up for you guys before I go back next semester.
I just want to say a huge thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far, you guys are the reason I keep on updating, even if it does take a while sometimes! :D
Also, sorry this chapter might be a bit anti-climactic after such a long wait, but it's essential for setting the scene for the next few chapters, which is where it really starts to get interesting!
In the weeks following the Dark Lord's second visit, Draco tried desperately to think of a plan that would help him avoid murdering his headmaster and endangering the lives of his fellow students, and more importantly, that would minimise the chances of he and his family being brutally killed. Unfortunately, he hadn't had much success.
He had never had to organise his life around murder before, and he didn't plan on starting now—and certainly not with Dumbledore, who probably had the ability to turn Draco into a bug to be squashed under his foot without so much as drawing his wand. Not to mention the fact that Professor Dumbledore was the only real chance the wizarding world had of defeating the Dark Lord, and thus of saving Draco from the horrific future that faced him as a member of the Dark Lords so-called elite. Everyone raved about Potter being the Chosen One and everything, but even the Boy Who Lived wouldn't stand a chance without Dumbledore; he was only a teenager who had managed to escape the Dark Lord so far through sheer dumb luck and the help of adult wizards more powerful than him. Draco certainly couldn't rely on Potter to help him with this, even if he had been prepared to stoop so low as to ask the prat.
The only plan Draco had thought up that even came close to having a chance at working was to tell Dumbledore about the Dark Lord's plan and ask for his help. He wasn't particularly keen on that idea though, because, no matter how much Draco liked Professor Snape, he had absolutely no idea whose side the man was really on, and Dumbledore trusted Snape so much that he'd tell the Potions master what Draco was up to in a heartbeat. If Professor Dumbledore's faith in Snape was as misplaced as the potions master would have the Dark Lord believe, then it wouldn't be long before the Dark Lord heard of his betrayal, in which case Draco would find himself on the wrong end of a killing curse faster than he could fall to his knees and grovel for his own life. Unlike Saint Potter, Draco didn't really fancy his chances of surviving the ordeal, so he'd scrapped that idea almost as soon as it crossed his mind.
With the plan to avoid the task of murdering his Headmaster in cold blood going nowhere, Draco chose to shift his focus onto just how he was going to sneak a group of Death Eaters into the most well-protected building in England, with the possible exception of Gringotts. It would be an added bonus if he could manage to sneak them in without anyone inside the school being seriously injured or killed, but considering the kinds of people the Dark Lord allowed into his inner circle, the odds really weren't in his favour there.
Failing to think of anything useful on that front either, Draco grew bored of pondering his impending doom and decided to pause his planning for a moment. He crawled under his bed and pried a small box full of George's letters from its hiding place under his mattress. He knew he should burn the papers, just in case they were found, but he hadn't been able to persuade himself to do it. They were excellent at putting him in a good mood (even though most of the content involved insults to his looks, personality and intelligence), and reading them always made him think about how much he missed their regular correspondence.
Draco thought back to the first time he'd approached the twins, and considered how far they'd come since he'd insulted their entire family and they'd threatened to stuff him into a vanishing cabinet.
That thought made Draco sit up straight. The vanishing cabinet on the third floor that the twins had apparently shoved Montague into just last year bore an uncanny resemblance to the antique cabinet in the front display at Borgin and Burkes.
Draco's mind whirled as he tried to work out how to make sure the cabinets really were twins, and where he could move the Hogwarts cabinet to so that no one would become suspicious of him spending all of his free time lurking in the corridor in front of a filthy old cupboard.
Of course, if the cabinets were twins then he would have to think of a way to fix the connection between them so that the Death Eaters they were supposed to be transporting into the castle didn't instead spend weeks stuck in limbo between the two locations before eventually turning up completely mind-addled in one of the school toilets. Those setbacks were minor though, and he was sure he could fix them with relatively little trouble. Mostly he was just relieved that he now had something resembling a halfway decent plan that he could bring to the Dark Lord without being fed to that horrible snake that followed him everywhere. At the very least it would prove that he was working on something; and, hopefully the excuse of fixing the cabinets would buy him enough time to think of a plan to worm his way out of killing Dumbledore that wouldn't end in his own life being forfeited in the older man's place. He didn't want the Dark Lord to win this war, but he wasn't sure he was willing to sacrifice his own life so Dumbledore could continue to help Potter and co. He wasn't that selfless.