The other man didn't say anything but stood, pulling Hermione to her feet with his knife still pressed into her side.
"We're going to go for a little walk, then we're going to side-along apparate you. Try not to fuss; I'd hate to splinch you."
The three of them took off down the street, Hermione's bag forgotten under the café table.
Draco came to in the toilet and sat up slowly, holding his head. Whoever had knocked him out hadn't meant to hurt him, just incapacitate him for a bit, and he wanted to kick himself for falling prey to such a simple curse. He felt for his wallet and, when he found it was still there, wasted a minute wondering why his assailant hadn't robbed him once he was passed out before one thought began to scream in his brain.
Hermione.
He'd left her alone. He'd left her alone even though they were in Italy, even though he knew someone had cursed her, and now someone had attacked him, gotten him out of the way.
He scrambled to his feet and raced, stumbling over chairs and past swearing restaurant patrons to their table. Money sat next to his still uncleared plate and for a brief, painful moment he hoped she'd just paid the bill and gone back to the flat to find Blaise.
Then he saw her bag.
He darted out into the square and looked every way, begging the fates to let him see her, let him see whoever had hauled her away but no familiar, beloved bushy head was in sight.
He slowly returned to the table, mouth set into a grim line. He'd told one person they were coming to Rome; he was fairly sure Blaise had told none. Habits of trust die hard but now they were dead. She was dead to him; she'd be dead to everyone soon enough.
First, though, he and Blaise needed to get their witch back.
. . . . . . . . . .
The note was attached to the door of the flat when he got back, nearly running up all the steps.
Agree to put her out of your life and we'll obliviate you both from her memory and release her otherwise unharmed. Refuse and she dies. You have 24-hours to respond.
. . . . . . . . . .
"She's gone," Draco said as soon as Blaise walked in. "Gone and you can lecture me later after we fetch her back." He tossed her bag at the other man who caught it.
"Wand missing?" he asked and when Draco nodded he dropped the bag to the floor without a second look. Blaise was nothing if not efficient when he was working. "Any idea whether it was a random snatch and grab or something more targeted?"
"The note suggests targeted," Draco said, handing it over. Blaise skimmed it and rolled his eyes.
"Blah blah blah or we kill her."
"Pretty much."
"One thing," Blaise said, walking slowly over towards his best friend, romantic partner and occasional co-worker. "How did your loving mother know we were here? Because this is clearly mommy's handiwork."
"Could be your friends'," Draco objected, narrowing his eyes.
Blaise snorted. "My 'friends' may think I have an unpleasant habit, they may think she's filth, but they don't care who a man fucks, not really, not as long as I don't expect them to receive her at their horrid parties, and the ones who might dabble in kidnapping damn well know I'd kill anyone who touched her so they certainly wouldn't be so stupid as to leave a bloody note behind letting me know I have 24-hours to find them. No, this reeks of your mother: amoral and sloppy at the same time.
"So I'll ask you one more time, Draco. Did you tell your mother we were coming to Italy?"
Draco had barely spit out, "Yes" before Blaise's fist connected with his nose.
"You fucking arsehole," Blaise said. Draco put his hand up to his face, took it away and then, looking at the blood, glared at his partner.
"Oh, I'm the arsehole, am I," he said. "How about you? Go ahead and justify how your little games are for the greater good all you want, go ahead and tell yourself your work makes our world safer for her in the long run but on a day-to-day basis it paints a target on her and you know it."
"Fuck you," Blaise said, breathing hard. "That's a load of shite. What I do, the risks I bloody well take, are to make her safer."
"Bullshite," Draco said. "You just like the fucking romance and danger. We didn't load that ring up with protective charms to keep her out of my mother's clutches but out of the hands of the people you cultivate. If you were, what did she suggest, just a really secretive accountant, she wouldn't need thousands of galleons worth of bloody spells!"
"Try to remember that I am under-fucking-cover with those arseholes, Draco. They think I'm on their side. Sure, I may have a dirty fiancé but half of them envy me that. They think between the both of you I've found a way to have my proverbial cake and eat it too. Their speculations about what she's like in bed are vile and crude but they have no reason to kill her, no interest in killing her. If someone found out I've been selling them out? Yes, then she'd be in danger, we all would. But they wouldn't fucking suggest I 'give her up'; they'd just kill her and dump her body on our doorstep."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better? Make me think your bullshite work doesn't put her in danger?"
"And yet," Blaise's tone had shifted from anger to a quiet drawl, "despite my 'bullshite work' as you call it, the person who orchestrated her kidnapping, who is threatening to kill her, isn't some blood purist who who's decided to relieve me of my little mudblood problem or send me some kind of message but your mother. Your loving mother."
"We don't know that," Draco said, but the look on his face belied his words.
"I'm going to kill her," Blaise said, very quietly. "Just as soon as we fetch our witch, get her de-cursed and go back to London."
Draco rubbed his hands over his forehead, avoiding his nose, and sighed. "Just… nothing brutal. The war – "
"For you," Blaise agreed, voice cold, "I'll end your broken, prejudiced mother quickly. In her sleep, even."
"Thank you."
They stood and stared at one another, Draco still wiping the blood from his face and Blaise breathing hard. Finally, Blaise muttered, "I'm sorry."
"You should be. Arsehole."
"Bastard."
Draco snorted at that. "I should be so lucky but, as you may have noticed, I'm almost an exact physical copy of my wonderful tosser of a father."
"I love you," Blaise said, stepping forward to dab at some of the blood.
"Abusive cretin," Draco said and Blaise sighed.
"I said I was sorry."
"You owe me," Draco muttered.
"Blow jobs every night for a month?"
Draco looked at Blaise and snorted. "You think you can buy your way out of nearly breaking my nose with offers of sex?"
"Can't I?"
"Probably," Draco admitted. "As long as you offer up enough of it. But let's go rescue the witch first."
"Did she still have the ring on?"
"She did when I left and it wasn't on the table when I got back," Draco said. "Why?"
"Location beacon on it, of course." Blaise said pulling out his wand and heading for the door, "Shall we go wreak a little mayhem on whoever thought to take our witch?"
. . . . . . . . . .
Hermione sat with her hands tied behind her in a chair, gag in her mouth, and worked on seeing whether she could manage wandless, voiceless magic and undo the knots restraining her. She was feigning a dispirited slump and had let any obvious fight leak out of her once the smaller man had slapped her across the face.
She recalled the articles she'd read about the torture Draco's aunt had put her through and wondered how these men were stupid enough to believe anyone could survive that and be broken by a bloody lip.
Blaise was going to be really angry about that lip though. And Draco – she had a feeling he'd be unamused as well.
"How does the man explain her, anyway?" the smaller man was asking as she tried to focus her will on the knots. "Kind of hard to work your way into the circles he's accepted in with some mudblood whore warming your bed, wearing your ring."
"He's also got an actual Death Eater in that bed," the larger man scoffed. "Maybe not the bravest of the bunch but he's got that Voldy fellow's little tattoo and everything. That'll give a man a little credibility with the blood purist snots. And the large monetary donations don't hurt." He looked up at Hermione. "Did you know lover boy makes regular and generous contributions to groups who, whatever pretty verbiage they put on their fliers, really just want to wipe people like you out?"
"Or enslave them."
"An excellent point."
So. That's what Blaise did. Hermione had to fight back a smile. No wonder he didn't want her to start asking questions; it was surely already tricky to maintain the illusion he was a dandy who liked to go to pureblood parties when he was away from her, that he was sympathetic to the cause. She wondered how much the pureblood elitists trusted Blaise, trusted Draco. Such perfect little pureblood boys, marked by Voldemort. There only flaw, really, the 'mudblood whore'. She'd be willing to bet vile men sat around and planned their vile plots while speculating on the things you could do with a mudblood you'd never ask a well-raised pureblood girl to do. She could almost hear them in her head. "And you wouldn't even have to pay her." "It would be like having a trained animal always to hand."
Fools.
She knew almost nothing, remembered almost nothing, but she knew both Draco and Blaise loved her. Anyone stupid enough to think otherwise, to think she was some toy in their hands, deserved everything he got. Or she got.
Of course, even Ron, who was apparently her best friend from childhood, thought that. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised prejudiced strangers assumed the same.
She wondered what Blaise did once he had the trust of pureblood elitist fools. She suspected it was morally rather grey.
These particular fools in front of her had just kidnapped the wrong woman.
And they'd bloodied her lip. If she could just get these knots undone, of course, she could free her hands, untie her gag, accio her wand and save the boys some trouble.
She returned her attention to focusing on the always tricky combination of wandless, silent casting.
. . . . . . . . . .
Blaise and Draco tracked the ring to a rather unprepossessing apartment building and glanced at one another before starting climbing the stairs. The pull of the spell on her ring led them to the fourth floor where they heard her voice raised in obvious anger.
"Take my wand, will you, you bastards?" they heard her nearly scream. "Poke me with a knife?" There was a loud crash followed by swearing in Italian. "Oh, don't even try; you are not going anywhere."
"I think whoever did this might have pissed her off," Draco said. "That was a mistake."
"Do you remember the time she left you stuck to the bed for three hours?"
"I had my wand in my hand and still couldn't get the incantation to release," Draco reminisced as another loud crash came from inside the room.
"Che befana! Che cazzo hai che non va?"
"I don't believe we've been formally introduced," Hermione was saying, venom in her tone, as they opened the door and watched their witch standing over two men, both of whom appeared to be stuck to the floor. "My name is Hermione Granger and I helped bring down Lord-fucking-Voldemort and, if that weren't enough, if I weren't perfectly capable of defending myself against worthless trash like you, I'm engaged to two men who'd kill you as soon as look at you. If you think you get to fucking kidnap me and escape unscathed you have a few things to learn." She huffed and then turned to the door and brushed her hair out of her eyes with an impatient swipe.
"Hi." Draco grinned at her, a cocky grin that hid his relief she was spitting mad rather than hurt. "Have you been good at your playdate?"
"I'm afraid I might have been a little rough with them but, in my defense, they deserved it; they hit me first." She shoved her wand back into her pocket and flung herself into his arms and let him reassure himself that she was okay before turning to include Blaise in the embrace.
Blaise had his eyes narrowed and was studying her swollen lip. Without speaking he squeezed her and then crossed the room and kicked the first man he came to in the mouth. Draco smiled at the sound of teeth breaking.
"Wrong one," Hermione offered, still wrapped in Draco's arms, and Blaise nodded at her and then kicked the other man first once, then again.
"Before they drown in their own blood," Draco said, "is there anything you want to ask them."
"Who hired you?" Blaise asked. One of the men spit blood and a broken tooth at him, muttering "Amante di sanguemarcio," and Hermione sighed.
"I'm sorry, Draco," she said and he shuddered and held her tighter.
"My fucking mother," he said. "I'm so sorry."
"Do you two want to leave me to clean this up?" Blaise asked and Draco nodded and jerked his head towards the door.
"They talked a bit. No sense of discretion, these two." Hermione said, looking very seriously at Blaise. "You don't have to protect me."
"I understand," he said, meeting her gaze. "Habits die hard." They looked at one another for a few moments and then the man grinned. "Maybe you can tend to Draco's nose while I take care of this unpleasant chore?"
"His nose?" She looked at Draco and began to follow him out of the room. "Why would his nose need tending? Draco? What happened to your nose?"
As they began to go down the stairs Blaise could hear her screech, "He did what?" and he had a feeling he'd be making amends for his punch to not one but both of his partners.
There were worse fates.
Like the one he meted out to the two men Hermione had left stuck to the floor.
. . . . . . . . .
A/N – This story is actually done. It worked out to two more chapters. I'll post every day or every other day until they're both up.
Thank you all for your thoughts and feedback and encouragement as I wrote this one. Fun to write a reasonably fluffy mystery instead of a plot-heavy dystopia where you can't trust anyone. I hope both the Blaise/Draco confrontation and the way the resuce wasn't actually necessary suited :)
If I mangled the Italian, please let me know and I'll fix it. The intent was: "'Si cagna pazzo! (changed on reader suggestion) Che cazzo hai che non va?' – You crazy bitch! What the fuck is wrong with you? and 'Amante di sangue fangoso' – mudblood lover" (also edited thanks to a reader far more proficient in Italian than I am.)
Many thanks to BipolarDragon and ga-4-ever for the Italian corrections!