AN: The action will start picking up from here on out!
Mariposa64: Thanks!
DramioneForever: Glad you're liking feisty, angry Hermione! She is so fun to write.
Guest: Hopefully you can see chapter 10 now; it looks like it is successfully posted.
Kaydid42: Thanks! Hope you enjoy!
Mega700201: You're welcome!
It wasn't difficult for Draco to feign panic as he appeared outside the ruins of the Burrow. He was willingly running towards the enemy, hoping to be captured and there was so very much that could go wrong with his plan.
The formerly ramshackle architectural monstrosity looked like the Whomping Willow had taken a good thousand swings at it, and scorch marks pocked the dried grass around the old house. It smelled of smoke and blood. The last time he'd been there had been to wedding crash, but he'd heard about the battle that had ensued after Weasle had escaped his family's dungeons.
But Hermione wouldn't know about that and she would be looking for ways to find her friends and allies. And if she were weak and not able to Apparate very far, she'd probably come here rather than a farther off, better hidden safe-house. He hoped at least that that logic had enough Hermione in it not to be questioned.
He scanned the property for wards, channeling what he'd seen of Hermione's quick mind. She would try to trip anything that would alert the Weasley's of her presence while avoiding anything that tipped off Death Eaters.
He was almost disgusted for find no trace of wards from his camp - really, how stupid were some of the Dark Lord's minions? Good at smashing, less so at subterfuge. He also didn't detect any other wards or warning spells; it seems the Weasley's hadn't returned since that battle.
He growled in frustration, surprising himself when it came out much higher pitched than he was used to. Being a girl was weird. What would Hermione do? The panic was bubbling in his gut as doubt whispered in his ear.
He cast his eyes around again, before seeing the front door - a garish, purple slab with the word "Welcome!" half burned off. Most wizarding families had a Evigiloportus on the door, to alert them of guests. He prayed as he carefully picked his way across the silent lawn that they'd gotten the door from a reputable manufacturer who'd set the door-bell spell firmly into the wood and not tried some simple hedge spells that would have faded. Although who knew how even the best laid professional home spells interacted with Unforgiveables... He placed his hand on the door and waited for the tell-tale warming sensation. Nothing. Dammit. He kicked at the purple monstrosity in frustration, rewarding himself only with a scuff on his tiny boots and a very sore toe.
He cast a Tempus charm and saw he'd already wasted half an hour. He had expected them to have kept some sort of watch over the property, not having realized how thoroughly destroyed it was.
Choosing not to spend longer than necessary in the ruins of his schoolyard nemesis, he took a deep breath and Apparated to northwest London.
Draco appeared in front of a square brick house flanked by unruly hedges. As he felt the thick, sticky wards surrounding it, his pulse started racing. He'd been wrong about the Order's monitoring the Burrow, but not about their attention to Hermione's childhood home. He thought he felt his heartbeat waver, as he desperately wanted to flee.
Instead, he began the slow dance of identifying each warding spell. Several would be fine-he had no intention of harming the inhabitants, and for another… he was fairly certain being Polyjuiced as Hermione would get him across them. As for the warning spells, well he was hoping to set those off! After double-checking his work, he darted across the wards, wand out. He tried to channel the determined face he'd seen on her face when she'd been dragged into his home. He felt a little bubble of relief that her house still stood, that he hadn't lied to her about her parents' safety. The home appeared thoroughly abandoned, a hunch confirmed by his Hominum revelio. Quickly, he cast a discrete Alohomora on the door and entered Hermione's Muggle home. It looked shockingly normal. Clean, tasteful decorations, a nice china cabinet. Besides the creepily still photos, it might have been a wizard's home. Not his home, but a poorer wizard's home.
He'd barely turned a full circle when he heard the tell-tale pops of Apparition outside. He rushed to the window to see who it was. Relief warred with panic as he saw his houseguest's favorite henchmen.
Draco knew that Hermione would have asked questions to ensure that Nitwit I and Nitwit II were in fact, Nitwit I and Nitwit II. However, given that he didn't want to cue up any reciprocal questions from them for her, he planned to refrain. And hoped his assessment that Hermione was the brains of the operation was correct. It would have been six years of pretending for Potty and Weasel to have faked idiocy that well throughout Hogwarts.
As they approached the porch, Draco ran out and flung her arms around the red-head. He'd seen the way she watched the gangly git with rapt attention during Quidditch matches, and he'd heard the tortured screams from the dungeons while she was tortured. Say what you want about Slytherins, but we know our enemies he thought rather smugly.
"Ron, Harry! Oh my gosh…" He deftly cast a cutting charm on his leg to help tears flow, an update from the pinching-himself trick he'd done as a child to increase the attention and sweets from his parents. Weasle was patting his hair, his long fingers getting caught on small snarls and pulling at his scalp. Scarhead was hugging them both from the side and sounded like he might be crying as well.
"Let's get back inside!" Draco commanded. Bossy Hermione was never far away, he'd learned.
Weasel seemed to agree. "We've had her back for ten seconds, and she's already bossing us around!" He tousled Draco's long curls. Draco internally grimaced before deciding Hermione's hair couldn't get much more mussed anyway. Potty at least was already casting wards and herding them inside.
"How did you escape?" Potter asked before cutting Draco off before he could answer. "Merlin, Mione, I'm so sorry. How are you? We saw you with Malfoy and saw the picture in the Prophet; I swear we tried so hard to find you and get you out of there. I-"
Potter's voice broke, "I… whatever he did to you, I swear I will make him suffer for it."
Draco huffed internally. Damned Savior Boy would never believe that Draco had risked his own life to save her, treated her like a princess… Nope, just evil Draco, ready for retribution. Potter laid his hand on Draco's arm, as if reassuring himself Hermione was really there. Ron hadn't stopped stroking the unruly curls and was far closer than Draco would have ever permitted, by several meters.
"It seemed they really just wanted me to lure you out, Po-ssibly." Shit, he'd almost called him Potter!
"I played along, emphasized how terrified I was, how I didn't want to be tortured again, and they seemed pretty content to have me serve as bait." He spit the last phrase the way Hermione had told him to get out of her room.
"I will cut off every finger the ferret has for even placing his hand on you," Weasel vowed.
Draco wanted to roll his eyes. Unoriginal and evidenced the fact that Weasel's knowledge of basic facts-like wizards had 10 fingers-was beyond his grasp.
Nevertheless, Draco leaned into Ron and continued doggedly, "They tried to pump me for information of course. I fed them some information they already knew-location of the Burrow, that sort of thing. My Occlumency is good enough that when I showed them that we'd been out in the woods, away from the Order and any information about what's going on they thought I was useless. The bigots probably didn't think a Muggle-born was capable of knowing anything useful anyways."
The two boys hung on his every word as if it were gospel. He felt a little stirring of jealousy at that, then crushed the feeling without inspecting it.
"So you're okay?" Mop-head asked hopefully.
Draco took a deep breath. A piece of the truth would make this whole thing go easier. He forced a brave smile onto Hermione's face.
"Well, I… I do have some lasting effects from the Cruciatus," he admitted. "I have chunks of memory that are missing, things I can't remember sometimes. A few spells, probably some events, but it's tricky to remember what's gone."
"Wait, they let you keep your wand? And it took you this long to escape?" The ginger idiot sounded insulted.
"Anti-disapparition jinxes and Death Eaters crawling all over the place," Draco snapped back in the voice he'd heard her use on the Weasel when he said something particularly idiotic in class. This part, at least, was fun.
"How bad?" Potter asked. He looked tired now that Draco really saw him. The dark bags under his eyes matched his inky hair.
"Not terrible, and I think they're coming back slowly," Draco lied. He hoped this would buy him some lee-way in asking more questions without suspicion. He watched Potter's face closely.
"Did your crazy experimental cyanide-pill memory spell backfire?" he joked weakly.
Draco almost grinned; he knew Hermione had purposely wiped her memory! He felt strangely proud-of her for being so brilliant, and himself for recognizing it. Although he had no idea what cyanide was. It reminded him vaguely of a color his mum had once wanted to paint the parlour.
"I don't know," Draco lied again, trying to sound chagrined. "It obviously didn't succeed fully."
Potter laughed at that, earning him a baffled look from Weasel. "Only Mione would sound disappointed her memory wiping spell didn't succeed in turning her into a mindless automaton."
Weasel joined in, and Draco permitted himself to look peeved. Really? They thought her spell was a total wipe of her mind? Did they even know how brilliant her spell-casting was? She'd left herself enough that she could function but not enough to betray her friends. And these two were giggling about her supposedly botched spell.
"Memory loss from the Cruciatus is also very common, so it's impossible to tell if it's a natural side-effect or that my spell didn't work. I think the former is likely, as I don't think my spell was faulty," Draco sniffed in the swotty make-fun-of-Hermione voice he'd perfected back at school. Really, now that he thought of it, he had been preparing for this moment for years.
"Oh, come off it Mione! We're just glad you're still you. Hopefully all the missing memories are the precious few time we're jackasses?" Weasel elbowed Draco playfully.
He smiled weakly and changed tacks. They didn't seem to suspect him at all above their joy at her return.
"How are things going? Did you find it?" Draco took a major risk in hazarding their quest. But what else does one break into Gringott's for other than to find something? Surely not to socialize with goblins.
The room turned sombre again.
"No. Griphook betrayed us almost as soon as we got into Gringotts," Potter started. Draco made a polite inquiring noise.
"Shite, sorry Mione. Bill let us know that Bella had come into Gringotts in a panic and was asking questions about whether someone broke into her account… throwing out wild accusations that the goblins were colluding with the Order and that the Dark Lord would make them all suffer. She went into her vault and was apparently satisfied by what she saw there…" He trailed off dramatically.
"And?" Draco would have waited silently, unwilling to show weakness, but Hermione was impatient.
"So, we thought there is a good chance she has one of the Horcruxes there. We made a deal with Griphook that he'd help us get into her vault in exchange for the sword, but apparently bartering with goblin-made goods is a crime in their eyes so we were set upon as soon as we entered."
Draco's mind was reeling. The Order had a spy at Gringotts. And were looking for whorecruckses, whatever those were. And they were apparently important enough to try to break into Gringotts for. A fool's errand. For a moment, Draco considered berating the pair for not knowing about how goblins felt about their craftmanship-hadn't they been paying attention in History of Magic? But he didn't know enough about this Bill character to know if Hermione would have deferred to his judgement on this… or what whorecruckses were and what that meant for this story. So, he decided to fish for other information instead.
"So how many are still left?" Draco hazarded.
"Still three. And still no idea where the diadem is or what the last one is," Weasel whined.
Draco adopted Hermione's determined face again. "So we have a lot of work left to do."
They talked for hours, going over theories about the Hogwarts founders and, confusingly, what sort of baubles some bloke named Tom Riddle would find attractive. He was apparently central to these whorecruckses, whatever they were. Draco wished he could Apparate home and find out then rejoin the conversation. He was fairly pleased with this ability to contribute; Hermione wasn't the only one who read lots of books on magical history.
He'd sipped some more Polyjuice under the guise of getting drinks for all of them from the still stocked pantry. Overall, this was going much better than expected. He'd been right about Hermione's memory spell, so neither Gryffindork thought the memory loss odd, which helped explain little missteps he made, and apparently his careful attention to Hermione over the last several weeks and in school had made him an expert mimic. And so, the only hopes of the wizarding world were sitting here, spilling secrets to a disguised Draco Malfoy. He briefly contemplated stunning them and bringing them back to the Manor, but he'd seen Potter duel and didn't really want to take the risk when he was accomplishing what had been asked of him at significantly lower risk.
"Should we maybe focus more on figuring out how to defeat the D-evil incarnate rather than these horcruxes?" Draco cursed himself for almost slipping at calling the red-eyed monster the Dark Lord. He was busy berating himself mentally when he noticed his two companions had gone very still.
"Hermione," Weasel asked shakily, his wand suddenly drawn, "how did we become friends?"
Draco felt his heart go cold. He'd finally done it and said something that made them suspect. Asking if they should focus on killing the big evil git? These whorecruckses, from all he'd gathered, were definitely not weapons, so it's not like they needed those to attack him. Maybe he'd made some weird gesture? Or the Polyjuice was fading? He resisted the urge to touch his face.
"In Gryffindor," Draco said primly.
"When?" Potter barked.
"First year." Draco was getting nervous. He couldn't pull his wand without getting hexed, he was sure.
"One more chance: specifics," Ron growled.
"I don't remember," Draco babbled. Shite, shite, shite. "I told you, some of my memories were damaged while I was being tortured."
"What did you give Harry to help him with the second task for the Triwizard Tournament?"
Draco shook his head.
"What is Ron's rat's name?"
"Scabbers," he offered in relief. He knew that one.
His relief was shattered as he felt the Incarcerous hit him in the chest.