Author's Note: Well, you know the drill by now. Read, review, and most importantly, enjoy!!
The Search
Hermione fell into her bed. The change of elevation combined with her new orientation made the room spin. She gripped the blankets and twisted them, her eyes watering slightly from the pain she felt.
'Pansy got me worse than I thought.' She moaned into her pillow and curled up into a ball, wishing the pain to leave. 'I really hope I feel a bit better by tonight; I don't think I could handle Malfoy being right once more.'
With that thought, Hermione closed her eyes and napped, nonsensically hoping that when she woke up, she would not find that Draco had destroyed her house.
XOX
When she woke up, the sun was starting to set. 'I've been out for a while,' she thought, eager to find out if her head felt any better from her rest. She sat up and grimaced; her head still ached a bit. She stood, and felt the same. Content that the pain was not going to get any worse, she walked out of her room.
After taking a quick shower, and feeling much better because of it, she found Draco napping on the couch, a book limply in his hands. Hermione looked at him expressionlessly and debated about whether to wake him or not. She decided to let him sleep and slipped past him into the kitchen. She bustled about, making tea and thinking about their dinner.
Draco must have heard her moving about because a few minutes later, in he strolled, hair mussed and eyes bleary.
"Tea?" she curtly offered. Draco raised an eyebrow and nodded, reaching for a cup.
XOX
Draco could tell something was wrong with Hermione. 'Maybe her head still hurts,' he thought. When he asked her how she was feeling, she glared at him and said, "Fine."
He scoffed. "Granger, I'm not an idiot. What the hell is wrong with you?"
XOX
'I am not in the mood for this,' Hermione thought grumpily. Her head hurt and she was still upset, for no reason she was willing to admit, about finding Pansy in Draco's house and then learning that she was his lover. 'If he's too thick to guess that, then he doesn't deserve to know.'
"Nothing is wrong, Malfoy," she said in a convincingly normal tone. "Now what do you want for dinner?"
He raised an eyebrow at her, but asked no more questions. They decided upon shepherd's pie and supped in an uncomfortable and tense silence. They finished and Hermione glanced at the clock.
"8:00 p.m." she said. "Now what?"
"We wait," said Draco.
And so they did.
XOX
Draco was lounging on the couch and Hermione was curled up on a massive armchair. Both were immersed in books. The yellow light thrown on them by the lamps gave each of them an ethereal and glowing aura. Suddenly, the slightly ominous tolling of a clock broke the silence. At the same time, they looked up at the clock and turned to regard each other.
"Midnight," Hermione said, staring at him. Draco noticed there was a bit of concern in her eyes and, more predominantly, excitement.
"Let's go," he said simply.
They abandoned their books and readied themselves. Draco dressed in dark clothes, making it easier for him to blend into the shadows while he waited for Hermione outside the Ministry doors. She opted for tight-fitting attire that would not make as much noise as she moved. The clothes hugged her every curve and Draco had to really work to restrain himself from staring.
Within ten minutes, they were ready. Hermione slipped her wand up her sleeve; Draco's was in his pocket.
"You know where you're going, right?" she asked.
Draco gave her a look that seemed to say, "Duh."
"Just making sure," she said defensively. "See you there then."
XOX
She Disapparated from her house and landed outside the guest's entrance to the Ministry of Magic. Since Draco was along, she could not Apparate to her normal entrance. He appeared right next to her a few moments later. Hermione told him the code in the unlikely event that something went wrong.
She looked at him and him at her. Awkwardly, he said, "Good luck, Granger. And be careful, alright? I don't want to have to go through the effort of saving your life."
Hermione rolled her eyes at him, but knew that coming from Draco, this was as good as she would get. With a secret smile, she turned and stepped into the telephone booth. She dialed the code into the phone and heard the familiar voice of the woman, asking her name and her business. She always felt slightly silly stating her name and purpose to no one, but, as usual, it worked. The phone booth descended into the ground, stopping when she reached the polished wood floor of the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic.
Deciding against the elevators due to the noise it would cause, Hermione took a pinch of Floo Powder and said, "Research department!"
She spun through the chimney system quickly, blurred grates passing before her eyes. One of her elbows nicked the side of the chimney; she tucked them more securely at her sides. She spotted her exit grate and strolled out of the hearth, nonchalantly wiping soot and ashes from her clothes, face, and hair.
Her office was pitch black. "Lumos," she whispered. Now, it was faintly illuminated by her wand light. Shadows danced as she quickly walked over to Edgar's desk. She hoped the file would be somewhere out in the open. It was not.
She made a noise of frustration and moved over to the file cabinets. She opened the cabinet and almost threw her wand across the room in anger. It was a mess. Files were scattered everywhere. Only a few were alphabetically organized, the rest were just sitting around. A whole stack of them fell to the floor with a papery whoosh.
"This is what happens when a man is put in charge of organization," she said quietly, mentally noting that she was going to take care of this from now on. Hermione sighed and started going through the hundreds of files piled in the cabinet.
'It was a fairly recent file, so it should be near the top,' Hermione reasoned. But as she delved deeper and deeper, she was not having any luck with her search. As each minute passed, she became more and more frantic. She had already been searching for much too long and feared that she would see Draco's Patronus glide through the door at any minute.
Hermione was about to give up when she reached the bottom of the pile. Then she saw it. There, innocently sitting at the very bottom of the pack, sat the file. The red ink of "Entropy" glared back up at her from her wand light, casting a bloody shadow across Hermione's face. She smiled in triumph and grabbed the file.
"Got it!" she said into the darkness. She clutched the file to her chest and was tempted to wave her wand at the mess. She realized, though, that a clean cupboard where once a filthy one existed would be intensely suspicious. Hermione decided to deal with the mess on Monday.
'That was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be. And why the hell was the file all the way at the bottom?' she wondered as she walked to the door. 'But at least I didn't have any trouble.'
Suddenly, Hermione was hit by a spell from behind. Her wand flew out of her hand and she fell to the floor, as much for her own protection as for retrieving her wand. She turned over just in time to see another jet of light streak directly above her, exactly where her back would have been just moments before.
'Shit, not again,' she cursed silently.
She heard the footsteps of her attacker approach her quickly. Hermione got to her knees and scuttled towards her wand. It was just a few inches away from her fingertips when her attacker's hand gripped the back of her shirt. He jerked her backwards and flipped her onto her back.
"Well, just what are you doing here this late at night, Hermione?" asked a very familiar, nasal voice.
"Edgar," she wheezed; he was sitting on her chest, much like Pansy had done, except restricting her air intake. This time, though, both of her arms were free. One was currently holding the file, the other desperately reaching for her wand.
Edgar snatched the file from Hermione's hands. "Now, now. What ever could you be planning to do with this?" He taunted her with the file, waving it in front of her face.
'Just a few more inches,' Hermione thought, struggling to acquire the one object with which she could defend herself.
"Edgar, please, get off me and give me the file. It's important," she pleaded.
"Oh yes, I know it's important. I didn't even have to open it to know that. You know, that file was originally meant for you. The office head thought it would be best if the most thorough researcher on the team received it. Good thing I intercepted it. I wouldn't have wanted you to have known what I know."
Hermione stopped struggling for an instant. "But you said you didn't even open the file. How could you have known what was in it?"
Edgar's eyes widened, apparently realizing his mistake. "The world is full of secrets, Hermione. And that is one you shall never discover."
Venom laced his voice and Hermione grew frightened once more. 'I need to reason with him,' she thought. 'I need him off me. And I need my wand!'
"Edgar, please, get off me," Hermione started to beg. "Please, I promise I'll leave quietly and I swear not to mention anything to anyone about tonight. Just let me go."
He completely ignored her request and instead threw the file to the side. Leaning his head down close to hers, he hissed, "You know Hermione, I always thought you were…attractive."
Her brown eyes widened with fear at the statement. She did not want to hear what he was going to say next.
"And now that I've got you and you are a little, well, incapacitated, I think I may just have a chance with you."
She felt his interest start to harden against stomach. For the first time, Hermione was afraid. Knowing that Edgar was well beyond reasoning now, she started to scream for help.
"Silencio," he said and Hermione's scream muted completely. Fire blazed behind her eyes as she started to physically fight Edgar. Her small fists pounded anything they could hit but they did not seem to make a difference. He leered at her and bent down his head, trying to capture her lips. Hermione twisted her head out of the way, but not before getting a whiff of the very strong alcohol that coated his breath like a layer of paint.
He started to rake at her shirt, clumsily trying to lift it over her head while simultaneously pinning it down with his body. Edgar lifted his body up off hers a bit.
'Now is my chance,' she thought. Hermione jolted her knee up into Edgar's groin, stilling him for a moment. She rolled slightly to her side and seized her wand. She thought the counter-jinx for the Silencio spell Edgar used against her and at one regained the use of her vocal chords.
Her victory was short lived, however. Before Hermione's knee to the groin, Edgar was just interested in pleasure. Now, he was interested in her pain. He succeeded in lifting up her shirt and exposed her bra-clad breasts to the night air. He violently groped and pinched her. She screamed in pain and fear.
'I need help,' she thought. 'Malfoy!' She tried to think of a happy memory, but none came. All she saw was Edgar attacking her, what might happen if he succeeded images of a dead Harry, flashes of a broken Ron. Then, a thought came to her that had never happened before: she saw Draco bursting through the doors of her office, stopping Edgar, and rescuing her. She saw him saving her life.
She then felt the power she needed well up inside of her. "Expecto Patronum!" she yelled. A translucent otter materialized from the end of her wand and darted out of the room and presumably to Draco.
'He had better make it in time,' Hermione thought.
"What the hell was that, you bitch?" Edgar yelled and slapped her face. Not for the first time that day, stars flew before Hermione's eyes. She struggled to remain conscious, knowing that if she lost her awareness, she could also lose her life.