Chapter Twenty-Five

Draco stood in the foyer, hidden neatly behind a grandfather clock. The floor was icy and he was barefooted. He waited until the chiming of the clock finished and then listened very carefully for the voices that were coming from the library.

His parents were awake, despite the hour, and were obviously having another argument. That was nothing new to Draco, though it was the topic of the argument that had caused him to investigate further. He knew he'd be in trouble if he was caught out of bed, but he decided that he'd risk his father's formidable temper, for George.

He would risk a lot for George.

It wasn't until Draco heard his mother say his name, was his curiosity genuinely piqued. He was awake anyway, and in much too much of an excitable state to go back to sleep. The search for George outweighed any other concerns. Poor Toolip had been run ragged accompanying her young charge through the Manor grounds, looking for the dog.

There was no sign of him anywhere, no matter that Draco had put out the best cuts of meat Chef had to offer and had called and called for the dog until his throat was raw.

"I won't have it," his father was saying. He was talking in a low, sinister voice which meant that he was passed annoyance and had progressed to anger. It was not wise to be around Lucius when he spoke that softly. Regular people tended to get scared and make hasty retreats. But his mother was not 'regular people'.

Draco crept down the corridor, past old family portraits, some of which gave him conspiratorial winks. He wanted to smile in return but this was not a happy adventure. George was lost and his parents were angry with each other.

He hoped one thing had nothing to do with the other.

The double doors to the library were wide open and candlelight cleaved out into the darkness, lighting the patch of hallway directly outside the doors. It didn't seem odd to Draco that he was not afraid of the dark. Magic was light and he carried it wherever he went, or so Mother had told him. This left no logical reason for fear.

Draco peeked around the door, taking care to flatten his fringe, lest his parents notice that a bit of messy, bright, blond hair was sticking out around the door. He realised that his toes were probably visible too, and quickly curled them back.

His mother was pacing the room, still dressed in the airy, silk, scarlet dress robes she had worn to attend a soiree at the Parkinson mansion. She had tucked him into bed six hours before and Draco recalled that she smelled like gardenias that evening. His mum always smelled very nice indeed.

"You're despicable," said Narcissa.

Draco had never heard his mother use that tone on her husband before. He was suddenly more worried for her than he was for George, which was an awful lot of worry for a five year old to cope with all at once.

Lucius growled and knocked over a chair. It toppled, making a muffled thud noise against the carpeted floor. Draco covered his hand over his mouth to stifle his surprise. Luckily, his parents were in the middle of a full-fledged row and did not hear him.

"Coddling that boy will not do. Draco needs to learn harsh lessons. He's old enough!"

His mother's ice-blue eyes narrowed. "There's plenty of time for him to learn just what kind of life he's had the good fortune of being born into."

"Five is old enough to learn that one does not bring mongrel vermin to live under this roof."

"Bastard," his mother hissed.

For a moment, it looked like Lucius was going to let the insult slide. Draco was incredulous. Nobody called his father a 'bastard' – a very, very nasty word you didn't use, unless you wanted to be dragged into a duel – and lived to tell the tale. But then his father very calmly put down the brandy glass he had been holding, walked across to Narcissa and slapped her across the mouth.

It was the first time Draco had ever seen Lucius lay a hand on Narcissa. What was even more alarming was the fact that his mother's response was to smile. It was a knowing smile showing no surprise at Lucius' treatment of her. She looked like she had already won the argument or had uncovered some previously hidden truth.

Something in Draco went quite cold and dead at the sight. It occurred to him that the games adults played were so very different from the games that children played.

This was not something he wanted to see.

He didn't quite realize that he had done it (his feet had suddenly developed their own mind), but he found himself standing at the entrance of the library, in full light, with his hands balled into fists at his side, and tears running down his face. His father's back was to him, so luckily only Narcissa saw him. She blinked in surprise and then very subtly, shook her head in clear warning.

Feeling relieved, and then ashamed of that relief, Draco crept back into the shadows where he shook with fear and suppressed fury.

"Remember whom you are speaking to," Lucius told his wife, though much of his rage seemed to have gone. He sighed and then reached up to stroke her face. "Remember," he repeated, sounding apologetic, and something else Draco didn't know how to describe.

More words were spoken. Soft words that Draco did not understand and was not sure he wanted to.

He suddenly felt like an intruder. A very private moment was taking place.

His mother was not fazed by his father's change in demeanour. Or then again, it might have been because she knew her son was watching. She pulled away from her husband.

"I don't love you."

Lucius laughed. It was a humourless laugh. "You do. And you hate yourself for it."

She smiled thinly. "Severus hates me for it too."

"Do not mention the name of that traitor in this house!"

Narcissa retrieved her embroidered velvet wrap that was draped across one of the lounges. "He's not going to be like you, you know. I'll see to it myself."

Lucius flung his glass into the fireplace, causing the flames to momentarily leap, but he did not respond.

Narcissa walked to the doors and calmly shut them behind her.

"And you! What are you doing out of bed?" she demanded, dragging Draco along by his elbow. Her long, honey blonde hair, which had been in an elegant knot before, had come undone. It tumbled down her back, stray tendrils tickling Draco's face.

"I…I'm looking for George," Draco explained.

They stopped briefly so that his mother could wrap her shawl around him. "Draco, really. You'll catch cold," she scolded.

They didn't stop again until Draco was once again in his room. His mother put him into bed again. Toolip, who had been slumped asleep in a chair, continued snoring. Narcissa rolled her eyes at the old creature.

"I'm sorry you had to see that. Your father isn't in the best of moods tonight, darling." She smoothed his hair, which was lighter in colour than hers and did not curl quite as much.

Draco's tutors often told him that he had a fine mind for deciphering riddles. A strong mind for logic, they said. Maybe that was why he asked the question.

"Mother," Draco began, wishing he was as dull witted as Pansy often accused him of being. "Has Father done something with George?"

His mother's blue eyes hardened for a moment. She seemed to be deciding on something. And then, she reached into a hidden pocket located in her robes and pulled put a black, leather collar.

"I'm sorry."

There was nothing that could be done. George was obviously gone. Draco's heart felt like a heavy stone, sinking down and down beneath the dark water of one of the old wells in Thimble Creek.

He took the collar with a small, shaking hand, but he did not cry, not even when his mother gave him a kiss on the forehead before she said goodnight.

"Never love anything more than it loves you, Draco," she whispered. "Never be like your father."

Or you, Draco wanted to say, but did not. It took him a while but he eventually fell asleep, still wrapped in his mother's shawl and the scent of gardenias.

Toolip helped him to bury the collar out in the garden the next day.

**

He wasn't dead.

Hermione knew this because all she had to do was close her eyes and search for him. He was there, somewhere in the back of her mind, breathing and alive, his heart beating steady and strong. He wasn't feeling much of anything, though. Not pain, not annoyance and not that other phantom feeling which was her own presence in his mind.

Therefore, Hermione concluded that Draco was merely unconscious.

In his panic, Ron had obviously reacted to sheer amount of blood from the cut on Draco's forehead.

As the two injured Slytherins were tended by an extremely harried Madam Hooch and Professor Flitwick, Ron had run to fetch the Deputy Headmistress. McGonagall, once recovered from a near heart attack courtesy of Ron, had in turn gone to fetch Snape.

Harry was with Snape at the time and recalled that he had never seen the Potions Master so furious.

"Apart from the time he found you in his Pensieve," Ron reminded, eager to draw attention away from his admittedly amusing over-reaction.

According to Ron, both students had suffered bludger hits to the head and chest, with Draco taking the brunt of the 'assault'. The injuries were not deemed to be lethal by any means, but the boys would be carrying bruises, lumps and in Draco's case, a concussion.

Once informed of the incident, the rest of the School (with notable assistance from Pansy Parkinson and Ernie McMillan), was torn between being impressed and being amused. There were words of praise for the courage of young Tadpole, who had ensured that his name would live on in Hogwarts annals under the heading of 'Extreme Tomfoolery'.

Not since the Weasley twins had any student exhibited such a reckless disregard for the rules for no other purpose than to cause mischief.

The rest of day passed excruciatingly slowly, in Hermione's opinion. She was still reeling from her encounter with Draco in the Prefects' Bath, having come away from it with two conclusions. They were extremely problematic, hard to digest, nearly impossible to consider, conclusions, and she didn't like thinking about them at all.

So she didn't. It was a splendid example of emotional procrastination.

Despite how badly things had gone between them on the Wednesday, she could no longer deny that she had feelings for Malfoy.

The trouble was that the feelings were not tender. They did not cause her to day-dream or sigh or draw little hearts around the letters H and D.

The fact was that when she looked at him, she felt ill. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way which meant that she forgot herself. Her unwilling husband had a very dangerous effect on her, whether he knew it or not.

And unfortunately, Fida Mia was not all to blame.

Hermione found it almost obscene to be worrying about matters of the heart when one of their own, Tonks, was probably in mortal danger.

**

It was not unusual to find Harry in the common room at odd hours of the night, packed away into one corner of a couch. Sometimes, he sat and talked with Ginny, who never seemed to need as much sleep as the rest of them. Other times, he played chess with Ron, or cards with Neville.

That evening, he had reading material. He looked up as Hermione came down the steps. "Hi."

"Hi," she said, sitting next to him on the sofa. She saw that he had on mismatched socks, and she squeezed one of his big toes in greeting. "Can't sleep either?"

He yawned. "That seems to the common student condition lately. I'm just looking over Snape's notes on my Occlumency Exam. We were supposed to be discussing the results this morning when Snape was called to the infirmary."

"Let me see? Ninety-eight percent! Harry that's brilliant."

"Yeah, I suppose."

She understood his lack of enthusiasm. Tonks' disappearance was foremost on their minds. Dumbledore's absence from School had them all uneasy and on alert. Bad things happened when he was away.

There were absurd suggestions that Tonks and simply run off with Donald Bligh, but no one who knew Tonks (or Bligh, for that matter) would entertain the thought. An Order meeting had been called for Monday and then postponed.

Harry was on tenterhooks of anticipation to know what steps Moody was taking to locate his missing Aurors. Hermione leafed through Snape's highly critical, meticulous notes in silence. The Common Room was very quiet.

"Did you want something?" Harry suddenly asked.

"Yes, as a matter of fact." Hermione was unsure how to put it, so she just laid out the request, plain and simple. "Harry, can I borrow your Invisibility Cloak?"

"You're not thinking of trying to find Tonks yourself, are you?"

She gave him a look. "Of course not."

"Because as you told me before, it would be extremely foolish to do anything without consulting Dumbledore and the others first."

"Yes."

"And going off on your own would just make the rest of us worry about you…"

"Harry, yes, I know that."

He nodded. "Right. Just making sure."

Puzzled, Hermione watched Harry rise to his feet, stretched for a bit, before telling her to wait. He then went up the stairs to his room and returned a minute later with his cloak.

"I'm not going to ask you why you need that," he said, pointedly. "But I'll trust that you'll tell me if you need me."

Her boys were all grown up, Hermione realised. She suppressed the desire to burst into tears.

Impressively unfazed, Harry patted her on the shoulder. "He's a lucky boy, whoever he is."

Her head jerked up. "What makes you think it's that?"

Harry shrugged, but there was a ghost of a smile on his face. "Seems like you only break rules for boys you care about."

She honestly hadn't thought about it that way before.