All right so I think I'm kickin this off to a lovely new start. I'm working my way back to my old writing ways...not to mention building up the story a bit.

Hermione's slowly coming back into her old self again, and things will be changin soon so keep a sharp eye...

But enough give aways...

PS

Thanks for all the kind reviews. You guys are amazing, sticking by me and waiting sooo long for another chap. I will try and keep them coming quick...I love you all!!!

Disclaimer: I own Harry Potter!! (it was opposite day)

The Meeting

The carriage ride ended near the forests edge and the Whooping Willow loomed up sitting perfectly still, but everyone knew the dangers that tree brought. You couldn't get to close, for you would be smacked back by the violent branches. Draco stared at the tree wondering just how they were all supposed to get from there all the way to the shrieking shack.

They exited the carriages to stand in a group still bathed in shadow. Draco looked over his shoulder at the dark mass of forest behind him, hearing a slight rustle. He wondered if someone wasn't watching them, someone from his side. But his fears were put to rest when he remembered no one knew that he was attending a meeting with this Order.

"What now Potter?" Draco asked his arm around Hermione's waist.

"Professor." Harry said and Draco watched Professor McGonagall transform herself into a tabby cat. She ran under the shadow of the tree right up to the trunk and with one paw touched a knot in the tree.

"Come on." Harry said as a hole opened in the trunk and Professor McGonagall became her natural self again.

The group strolled up to the hole, Lupin entering first. Harry entered next and waited to help Hermione in. Draco followed, the others following behind them. Draco wondered how the giant Hagrid was going to fit into that small tunnel that barely seemed big enough for him, but when he looked back he noticed that the tunnel walls and ceiling seemed to be stretching for him.

They walked along slowly, Hermione beginning to move slower and slower. She was growing tired, but she was still going to try and make it. Her arms and legs were growing heavy and she could barely see straight anymore. She could feel Draco's hand on the small of her back, pushing her along yet steadying her at the same time.

"Hermione, you all right?" He whispered. "Can you keep going?"

"I just need to rest." She said in barely a whisper.

"That's it, I'm carrying you."

Though she attempted to protest Draco was too quick and soon she was being cradled in his arms. Her head bobbed along as he walked, carrying her bridal style down the tunnel that had once been nothing but dirt and dust. Now the ground was paved with cement, stringed lights hung from the ceiling lighting their way.

"We need to move faster. Hermione is growing tired." Harry said to Lupin in front of him.

They sped up a bit, walking quickly until they reached the door that led inside the shack. The door was just as Hermione remembered it, old and decaying the, what once must have been shinning handle, now covered in grim and dirt. Lupin climbed the small set of rickety wooden stairs and grabbed the handle.

When he pushed it open Hermione saw through blurry eyes a brightly lit room. The wall paper was faded and ripping, the floors made of old creaky wood, but where there had once been broken furniture and claw marks, there were chairs and shinning tables. All the furniture was new.

They'd walked into what must have once been the dining room. They'd entered through where you'd normally find a basement. The staircase that led upstairs was just above them. The kitchen was just off to their left, and that looked much better than last time.

Draco carried her over to a chair, carefully sitting her down. Upon sitting her down he felt her head, noticing that it was a bit warm. He looked at her and saw that she was shivering, and he knew that the fever was returning. Quickly he took off his cloak and draped it over her shoulders. She turned and looked up at him giving him a soft smile before she closed her eyes to rest a moment.

Everyone had been watching the pair, especially the blond when they walked in. Molly had been fussing over her children as they entered, but she watched, as did Arthur who greeted Lupin upon his entrance. It was then that Draco realized just what he'd gotten himself into. He was beginning to understand how Granger had been feeling all summer at the Dark Lord's mansion.

There were more people there than Draco had even imagined. He'd thought that it'd be mostly just the Weasley family and a few others, but it was many more than that. There were people there that Draco had seen in the ministry, people that he had seen his father speak to once or twice when he was younger.

Draco took a seat beside Hermione and reached out for her hand. It was cold, and her grip was loose. Everyone was still moving about, preparing everything for the meeting that would soon be underway. Draco just wished now that he sat there that he was back in their dorm, having refused to go.

"Are we all ready?" said Arthur Weasley standing at the head of the table.

"I believe so Arthur." Said Lupin who placed himself across from Harry who was on Hermione's other side.

Everyone walked to the table taking seats in whatever chairs were left. Some began to conjure their own chairs. Fred and George Weasley sat near their brother Ron who sat as always beside Harry. Ron's two older brothers sat by their mother the blond girl from Beauxbatons seated beside one of them.

Lupin's wife sat beside him, a large black man someone addressed as Kingsley seated beside her. Professor McGonagall and Hagrid sat at the other end of the table with Mad Eye Moody and a few other members of the Ministry. Even the old Minister himself sat in the back almost obscured in shadow.

"How to begin." Arthur said taking his seat. He paused a moment to try and find the right words but he was already interrupted.

"I believe we're here to discuss our marriage." Draco stated firmly, but not at all with the attitude some would have thought, his wife amongst them.

Everyone's eyes turned upon him, staring at the Death Eater's son. He glanced around, trying to keep his expression blank. Hermione was watching him and smirked slightly. He was attempting to keep his air of superiority about him, but it was slowly fading away. He was in foreign territory, just as she had been.

"Yes. We all saw the paper, but what is the real reason for this marriage?" Kingsley said leaning forward his deep voice making Hermione shiver a bit.

"It was an arranged marriage, always was, we just never knew about it." Draco said looking at the man.

"How so?" McGonagall asked.

"There was a prophecy, it was predicted around the same time as the one that was predicted about Harry. The prophecy stated that a chosen male and female would marry on the hottest day of the year after the male's seventeenth birthday." Hermione said trying to speak loud enough for everyone to hear her.

"The prophecy was relayed to my parents through a midwife, she's a recluse who only delivers the children of prestigious Death Eaters." Draco added.

"But there's more to it than that. It states that Draco and I must conceive a child before our first anniversary. But no one knows what will happen if I don't." Hermione lied.

"And it must be a male. Something good happens to the Dark side if she has a boy. No one knows the consequences of a girl." Draco added looking down at the table.

"But how did you know it was Hermione that had to be apart of this prophecy." Molly asked her voice quivering.

"The prophecy gave the birth dates of the two chosen, and a clue for each. The midwife knew it was me involved because she knew when my birthday was and what my parents were going to name me. Draco in Latin means dragon, and dragon was the clue. Hermione's birthday was also given as well as the clue H.L. Ion."

"But what does that mean?" Ron asked.

"H stands for Hermione Ron." She said softly. "L is for Lynne, my middle name. The letters ion are also found in my first name, and when you combine L and ion you get lion, as in Gryffindor."

"This summer after I came out of hiding I was taken home by my godfather and all this was revealed to me, along with my promotion." Draco continued.

"What promotion?" Arthur asked.

"My father was the First Minister to the Dark Lord, but he wants to make him a General of some sort, because of the coming war. So I'm to take my fathers place, as a high ranking official. I don't do any fighting, I'm a confidant. I'm supposed to receive my mark in the spring."

"After all this was revealed to me, we set to work on lists to find the girl. Eventually after looking through thousands of names I read her name, and it was like I knew it was her. My father went to the Dark Lord and told him we'd found her."

"But how'd you capture her?"

Hermione was curious about this part as well. She remembered how it all happened but she didn't understand how they'd managed to do it. Hermione was a smart witch, everyone knew it, but how had they managed to catch her off guard?

"Three groups were created to do it. One group to come up with a plan, another group to carry out the plan, and a third to research her. That was the group that I was in. We went through her entire school record, which we stole from Hogwarts, and spoke to anyone we could find that knew where she would be. Eventually we learned that she'd been staying at Grimmauld Place, and we'd already found the perfect thing to use against her."

"And what was that?" Hermione asked turning to her husband.

"The Imperius Curse. You were never able to fight off its effects. You did almost as bad as Longbottom that class. The only one able to fight it off was Potter." Draco said staring into her slowly narrowing eyes. "We sent out a letter addressed to one of you from the twins Fred and George. It was to get everyone except Hermione out of the house. When we were sure she was alone, we got in and took her."

"Where were you?" Harry asked.

"I had to stay behind and wait. I was there when she arrived though. They carried her in, and she was unconscious. They took her to the room that the Dark Lord prepared for her, all the windows and doors were sealed and locked, and the only way to get in or out was when he opened the doors."

"Is that the room she died in?" Harry asked seeing that specific room quite clearly.

"Yeah. That's where it happened."

"What happened there?" Arthur said no one truly knowing what transpired.

"Someone using a Polyjuice Potion disguised themselves as me and paid a voodoo witch to use her powers on Hermione. They caused a hole to form in her stomach and one in her arm. They also used their powers to strangle her, which was what stopped her breathing and eventually her heart. I pronounced her dead when the Dark Lord walked in."

"That's what Harry saw." Fred added. Draco merely nodded.

"The Dark Lord left and stopped the magic. We captured a surgeon from St. Mungo's and he repaired her, then we altered his memory and sent him back."

"So you were kept at that mansion until you were released?" Arthur asked.

"No." Hermione said softly. "After the wedding and my lashings we were sent to our home, Everwood Manor, Lucius bought it for us."

"Lashings?" Kingsley asked.

"Hermione and I were sent the day before the wedding to my house to be fit for the wedding clothes. Well we got into a fight and Hermione ran away, trying to escape through the forest. I chased her and eventually brought her back, but the damage had been done, she was punished with no food until the reception the next day and she would be whipped."

"Whipped!" Molly cried her eyes wide and shimmering with tears.

"Fifty lashings delivered by the Dark Lord himself. But after the first one something happened to Hermione and she was in a trance like state. He finished up with not a single sound made by her."

"You didn't scream?" Ginny asked in a whisper her eyes too filled with tears.

"No. I don't even remember anything after the first hit."

"And this wedding, was it like it was in the paper?" Kingsley asked.

Hermione could hear the sound of quills scratching. People were writing down every word said, making sure to have many different copies. The meetings were always recorded in this manner, but this time it was different this was her life.

"Not a bit." Hermione said laughing slightly.

"Those pictures were all created by my father. The wedding was similar, my mother making it a grand event and extremely beautiful, but there was no happiness that day." Draco said shifting his gaze back to the table.

"Voldemort was the one that performed it. All the vows were forced, so I couldn't say no. Like he said it was a beautiful day, but not at the same time." Hermione thought back to that day. "None of you were there."

"Oh Hermione." Mrs. Weasley said sniffing.

"Did you ever catch the person responcible for the attempted murder?" Moody asked his voice gruff.

"No. But that wasn't the only time they struck." Draco said his eyes connecting with Mad Eyes electric blue orb.

"You mean there were more times?" Arthur asked leaning forward a bit.

"She was attacked after the wedding. Someone again disguised as me entered her room while she was changing and chased her, stabbed her, and carried her away. I followed the blood trail to the woods that surrounded the mansion, the killer had taken her in to the lake that the Dark Lord keeps the Inferi in. They'd thrown her in. The Dark Lord however saved her life, and took her memories out to clean them up and make sense of them."

"Someone wants Hermione dead, someone not on either side of the war." Harry said contemplatively. "They're using Draco as a disguise because he's the only one that can get close enough to her without question."

"And that person is still at large." Ron stated in a whisper.

"Could they be the ones causing her sickness?" McGonagall asked.

"It's no spell." Hermione said. "They've used magic on me once before, to make me sick. It didn't feel like this."

"But you don't know what it is. We should take you to St. Mungo's and let them look you over." Molly said softly.

"I'll be fine. I've gotten through this before without a doctor. Narcissa's medicine will work when I take it this evening. I'll look much better."

"Now that we know just what happened to you this summer, we need to figure out a way to keep it from happening again."

"And what do you mean by that?" Draco asked looking at Arthur pointedly.

"We can not allow Hermione to continue to be subject to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." Said an auror Draco didn't recognize.

"It's too late for that now." Draco said glaring at the man.

"What do you mean Mr. Malfoy?" McGonagall

"He means that I'm considered by Death Eater law, a follower of Voldemort. I was inducted into the inner circle, as was Draco. I may still be a member of this order, but now I'm a mandatory member of the inner circle."

"She can't be kept from it, because it would only end badly for both of us." Draco said looking at the astonished glances. "I will be what he wants me to be, and she will be what he wants her to be."

"Not neccisarily." Hermione said looking up at him. "Not if we figure out a way to keep this prophecy from coming true."

"I can't allow that to happen. You know that's one of my missions." Draco said glaring at her.

"One of?"

"Yes, Draco's already being given missions to complete. My getting pregnant is one, and his finding the traitor to the Dark side is the other."

"Traitor?" Mad Eye Moody asked his magical eye swiveling around in it's socket, his scars gleaming in the candle light.

"Hermione no one's supposed to know." Draco cried.

"It may be mandatory that I serve in the circle but that doesn't mean that I have to be loyal to him. I do not want to be on your side Draco. I fight for Harry, and the Light." Hermione growled her eyes narrowed.

"If he finds out about this-"

"He won't. Only Harry can name the location, and nothing said here can be heard by anyone other than us. No one here will repeat anything."

"There's a traitor?" Harry asked leaning forward to peer past Hermione to Draco.

"So the Dark Lord says, but I've asked everyone and used everything I've ever learned to discover the truth, only to come up with nothing. Supposedly someone on the Dark side is feeding you information. At first he thought it was Hermione, but that was impossible because she was sick. But you haven't sent any spies out, which leads me to believe that whoever's doing it is doing it for their own gain." Draco revealed, leaning back in his chair.

"This is all too much." Molly said after a moment of silence. "They're but children. They're far too young for such dangers and tragedies."

The stories of the summer continued on, the Order revealing some things to Hermione and Draco that they hadn't known, like their die hard efforts to locate her and the letter that Voldemort himself sent to Harry. But soon it came down to the real business of the meeting, and that was to discuss the future.

"Hermione is there anything that you can tell us about attacks on Hogwarts?"

"No." Draco said sternly to them.

"Draco, though you are the enemy, Hermione is not. Any information is valuable." Arthur said looking at Draco.

"Voldemort, when addressing his followers on their progress, never seemed to make sense, and I've come to learn that he takes people aside individually and gives them missions, making them keep the mission in question a secret from others. No Death Eater knew any other one's missions." Hermione said. "So anything that I overheard made no sense at all."

"And the location of the mansion, were you able to discern it?"

"Well it was a mansion, surrounded on all four sides by woods. I'm not sure how thick the woods were, but I know that no road was visible."

"And your home. Do you think that was unplottable?"

"It's possible, but we did receive mail and papers. It was surrounded by woods on three sides with a wooded road connecting it out." Hermione said remembering the little poem from her dream so long ago.

Draco sat back and watched his wife answer all of their questions. She didn't pause to think about anything, or even look his way but instead just kept on telling them all that they wanted and needed to know. He knew that he couldn't stop her because she wouldn't listen to him anyway, but he also wouldn't try. He knew that she would stop at nothing to give them the information that they needed, even if that meant disappearing from him for a few hours to meet with them alone. She believed in her cause and would do anything to help, even if that meant going against the man she loved.

'I'm that man.' Draco thought. 'And she wanted to talk about our relationship. She's going to ask the one thing I can't figure out the answer to.'

His mind filled with thoughts of the summer. The kiss they shared in his bedroom and how amazing it had been. After it ended the feel of her lips lingered on until he fell asleep. He remembered touching her stomach when they spoke about having a baby, and the image of him touching it when it was round and full entered his mind. The dream he'd had, that child calling out to him, Daddy.

It made no sense. He was supposed to hate her. She was everything that he was supposed to detest and abhor all rolled into one beautiful package. She represented everything that they were fighting to destroy, Mudbloods and Potter. But yet a part of him, that same part that had once been so small, almost invisible, screamed that she was so much more than that. She was not just Potter's friend, not just a know-it-all, not just a Mudblood. She was his, his wife, his lover, his…

His what!!!!! Oh my goodness what could Draco be thinking now??? And what could the Order do with all this information?

Tune in next week and find out. This has been Starry reporting.

lol

Starry