A/N: *Saunters in, humming the tune from Jaws*
*Smirks as she hands over the chapter*
xx-Kitten.
Tip of My Tongue
By Kittenshift17
Chapter 24
Hermione looked up, startled at the sound of the Floo roaring before hurried footsteps filled the room. It was late – she'd put the boys to bed hours ago after a swath of questions she either couldn't or wouldn't answer. She'd been waiting by the Floo ever since, unreasonably worried about people she had no right to be fussing over.
She didn't know Astoria Malfoy well enough to care what might've become of her. She certainly shouldn't be sitting awake well after midnight and waiting for any scrap of news that might be delivered pertaining to Astoria's abduction and Narcissa's arrest. But no matter how she'd told herself it was none of her concern and none of her business, there she sat; still awake, still wondering if the woman would even live out the night, wherever she happened to be. Merlin, for all Hermione knew, Astoria was dead already and it was just a matter of time before the Aurors found her mangled corpse.
Drawing her wand, Hermione rose swiftly to her feet just in time to see Draco Malfoy dashing into the room. He hadn't called out to locate her, but he seemed to know that he would find her in the den, sitting by the fire with a book she'd been too distracted to pay much attention to.
"Oh, thank Merlin," he muttered when he spotted her, and Hermione lowered her wand, frowning at him.
He crossed the room to her quickly and she almost turned the tip of her wand on him again when he reached for her with both hands, curling them around her jaw as he invaded her space before he leaned down and planted a frantic, desperate sort of kiss upon her lips. Hermione blinked in surprise, attempting to pull back, wanting answers and surprised by his show of affection. Malfoy refused to release her, kissing her hard, his tongue sweeping out to part her lips before tangling with hers.
Hermione would admit that she rather forgot her protests when he snogged her hotly, his hands sliding into her hair as he pressed his body to hers. She kissed him back without thinking, sensing that for all the passion and magic that crackled between them thanks to the urgency and intensity of the kiss, he wasn't snogging her for the sake of some paltry seduction.
"I need you to pack your trunk," he said urgently, his voice husky when he pulled back several dizzying minutes later.
"What?" Hermione asked, frowning at him and trying to reorganize her scattered wits.
"Pack a trunk for yourself and the boys," Malfoy said seriously. "Now, Granger. I've got to get you out of here."
"What do you mean? Get me out of here? It's almost one o'clock in the morning, Malfoy!" Hermione protested.
Draco stared into her face intently.
"Hermione," he said quietly in a voice she was certain she'd never heard him use; one that was stern and yet soft, almost imploringly and yet entirely unyielding. "I need you to pack a bag and prepare yourself and our children to leave this house within the hour."
Hermione frowned all the more.
"Whatever for?" she asked, unknowingly imitating his mother in both tone and word-choice, even in expression. "What's happened? Where is your mother? Where've you been, for that matter?"
"Mother is still in MLE custody," Draco told her seriously. "I've been with my father. And then I was with the Aurors while they questioned me before Horatio managed to force them to release me. You need to pack, Granger. You need to pack now. Pack, and I'll wake the boys."
"Why?" Hermione asked, a chill spider-walking down her spine.
"Because I know who abducted Astoria and I know he'll target you next," Draco answered quietly.
"Do Harry and the Aurors know, too?" Hermione asked, narrowing her eyes on him.
"Not yet," Draco admitted. "That's not my secret to confess and it's not my crime to go down for."
"Crime?" Hermione asked.
"Hermione," Draco said seriously, and more than anything his use of her first name in that low tone made her think that whatever was bothering him, and whoever it was that had taken his wife was someone that scared him more than anything else on the planet.
"You want me to run?" she asked, frowning at him.
"I need you to run, Granger," Malfoy said quietly. "I need you to take those boys and I need you to run. I need you to go someplace safe and to hide there until I come to find you."
"Who?" Hermione asked, whispering. "Greyback?"
Draco shook his head.
"Please pack," he asked, his expression imploring. "I have to get you out of here, Hermione. I have to get you someplace safe."
"I'm safe here," she said, frowning. "This house is warded within an inch of it's life. Nothing gets across my wards that I don't want in this house, Draco."
"Granger, the person who took Astoria was Antonin Dolohov," Malfoy said quietly, and Hermione's heart actually seized inside her chest, the ache permeating her entire torso as the very mention of that man's name sent jolt of terrible burning agony through the scar that still marked her flesh from his attack on her eleven years ago.
"He's dead," Hermione said stubbornly through gritted teeth, unwilling to believe that it had been him; that he was alive; that he might be hunting her.
Draco shook his head.
"My father's been holding him captive in the very deepest bowels of the Manor for seven long years since the Dark Lord's fall. When he needed a solution to having Astoria kick up a fuss at my intent to divorce her, he made an Unbreakable Vow with Dolohov to have Dolohov remove Astoria from my life and to ensure she would never cause us another problem. He made Dolohov swear that no member of the Malfoy family by blood would ever be harmed by him should he seek to retaliate thanks to his imprisonment. He made Dolohov swear never to harm my mother. But he couldn't make him swear anything else and still have Astoria expunged from our lives. And if he's got the ability to hurt my wife, he's got the ability to hurt the mother of my illegitimate son, too."
Hermione gulped, knowing he was right.
"If he finds out that you and I share a son, he'll come after you, Hermione," Draco said. "Hell, even if he doesn't find out about Aurelian, he might come after you. During my days as a trainee Death Eater, he was often one of my tormentors and my teachers. And he's obsessed with you. He asked ceaseless questions about you whenever he saw me, intrigued by the way you'd survived his curse at just sixteen. I'm surprised he hasn't come for you, already, if I'm being honest. He's been free for more than a week. So, I need you to pack. I need to take you somewhere safe. Safer than here. I don't care how good your wards are. He's a curse-breaker, and he has a one-track mind. If he gets it in his head to hunt you down, only one thing will stop him."
"Oh?" Hermione asked.
The expression that twisted Malfoy's lips made her nervous and she got the feeling that she wasn't going to like what he might soon show her. She got the feeling that whatever could keep her safe was going to be something that would make her blindingly angry.
"Please pack your things, Hermione," Malfoy said in a low, hoarse voice. "Please? Please let me take you and my sons someplace safe where I know he can't get you before I return to help Potter hunt down the bastard and hopefully, to save my wife from that evil bastard's clutches."
Hermione frowned at him.
"Where would you have me go? I can't just… sit idly by locked in some tower, Malfoy. I'm not the damsel-in-distress, type. I'm certainly not the type to rest on my laurels when others are in danger and I've never been one to allow misjustice to flourish when I can do something to stop it."
"Damn it, Hermione! We're not sixteen, anymore!" Draco growled, running a frustrated hand through hair. "We're not hair-brained fools, anymore. You can't just go charging headlong into danger alongside Potter and Weasley, anymore. You have a son. A five-year-old son who needs his mother. I have a three-year-old son whose mother is already in the clutches of this monster, Hermione. I will not allow you to endanger yourself, too. I'm going to have to learn to live with the fact that, if she's not already dead, Astoria likely soon will be. If Dolohov doesn't murder her – and if he's abducted her instead, I can guarantee you that wherever she is, she is begging for death right now – then she will likely die of this illness infecting the pregnant witches before we manage to find her.
"I know I don't have any fucking right to tell you what to do, and I know that you're stubborn as a mule and that my asking it, or even begging it of you will like make you do the exact opposite of what I want. But for the love of Merlin, Granger, please run. Please let me hide you. Please go somewhere safe and let me avenge the mother of my youngest son without worrying that the mother of my oldest might soon end up in the clutches of a man who has described to me in the most intimate, gore-filled, disgusting detail all of the reprehensible and abominable things he would revel in doing to you. You're proud, and you're strong, and you're the fiercest witch I've ever met – including my mother – but I need to know you're safe. I need you to hide. I need you to use all that fierce, protectiveness to defend my sons knowing that no matter my best efforts, this arsehole will try to track you down. Knowing there might come a time when he will find you, no matter how well I hide you. Please, Granger. If not for me, then do it for Aurelian. Don't let both of my sons lose their mothers to this bastard. Please."
Hermione stared at him for a long time when he finished speaking, and it occurred to her rather poignantly that Draco Malfoy actually, truly did give a damn about her. He looked poised to fall on his knees and beg her to hide and to protect their sons, in fact, and Hermione wondered when Draco Malfoy had grown from the arrogant, smirking, sneering git she'd always thought him, to instead be the type of man who looked ready to do absolutely anything to protect his family. She wondered what he'd do if she said no.
"Where is it that you want me to go?" she asked, crossing her arms over her chest and raising her eyebrows at him.
"We've a house in France," Draco said quietly. "No one knows about it except for Mother, Father, and I. None of us would ever willingly share its existence or its location with anyone. Had the Dark Lord won the war, we'd have fled there before the battle ended. It is… very well protected."
"Protected by what?" Hermione asked.
Malfoy's expression twisted into the uncomfortable expression again. The one that made her think she wasn't going to like the answer.
"Creatures," he answered after a few minutes of tense silence. "Enslaved creatures from many different magical races. Fey. Giants. A Cerebus or two. It's not safe to leave the confines of the house whilst on the grounds, if I'm being honest. They roam within the outer wards, and they can and will kill anything they come across. Dolohov won't be able to find you there. Even if he manages to find it and disable the wards, the beasts will slaughter him before he gets within one hundred feet of the house."
"You think such a place would be a safe hideout for two boys under six?" Hermione challenged.
"It's warded inside, too," Draco admitted. "They would have to kill themselves and split their souls to cross the wards and enter the grounds."
"That's worse," Hermione frowned.
"They're not dangerous," he held up his hands. "Even within the house, you or I couldn't actually reach the wards to think about crossing them. They're too powerful. You won't want to try and leave, and the boys will be deterred."
"You want to ship me off to France where I'll be surrounded by dangerous magical creatures and will be trapped indoors with two rambunctious children? I'll go mad. They'll go mad," Hermione protested.
"You won't. The house is large. There's plenty of space for them to play. They just can't breach the perimeter of the house," Malfoy protested. "And you will all be safer there than here. Granger, please… Just… Pack your things. Every minute we stand here arguing is another minute Dolohov has to torture Astoria."
Hermione pressed her lips into a thin line, not liking that he'd resorted to guilting her into agreeing for the sake of rescuing the witch.
"It's going to look terribly suspicious if I disappear with the children when your wife just so happens to be missing, too, Malfoy," Hermione pointed out.
"And I'm sure that Potter might question you unless I can convince Father to confess his crimes, but since you'll be beyond his reach, he'll just have to wait until this mess has been dealt with. Granger, we don't have any more time to argue about this. He might very well be torturing information about your existence out of Astoria as we speak. He might be on his way here."
Hermione scowled.
"Fine," she hissed, though she was none too happy about the idea of running away to some hideout in France just because he doubted her ability to protect herself and her son. "But if this isn't proof enough that every choice I made to keep Aurelian's existence from you was the right one, then you're a fool, Draco Malfoy."
His left eye twitched like he wanted to tell her it was a cheap shot to kick him when he was already down, but he kept his mouth shut.
"I'll wake the boys," he said.
"Let me pack some things for them, first," Hermione argued. "They'll just be in the way, grizzling and tired if we wake them before we're ready to depart."
"Fine," Malfoy nodded in agreement. "I'll help you pack."
Hermione got the feeling he simply didn't trust being able to let her out of his sight when he feared Dolohov would burst into her home at any moment, intent on abducting her, too.
"What happened at the Ministry?" she asked, frowning at him while she threw a collection of clothing into her trunk for herself, before invading Aurelian's room and packing many of his clothes and toys too. She had a small collection of Scorpius's things in the house, thanks to the number of times she'd looked after him in recent weeks, and she packed all of those into her trunk, too.
"Mother is still being held, though Potter seems to know she's not responsible. He's got every Auror on the force invading every known location in Knockturn Alley and the other dodgy parts of our world where Dolohov might hide."
"You said he doesn't know it's Dolohov," Hermione pointed out. "Why didn't you tell them?"
Malfoy scowled.
"Because even if he was being held captive by my Father, he was still technically considered to be 'on the run', and as such confessing to any knowledge of his whereabouts, his detainment, or his existence could be considered a felony. I'm not about to risk being charged with obstruction of his arrest, or with aiding and abetting a fugitive. The last thing I need is anyone accusing me of shielding that bastard from the Ministry," Malfoy said seriously.
"How is Harry supposed to hunt him down and save Astoria if you won't tell him who's captured her?" Hermione wanted to know.
"Why do you think I need to hide you somewhere safe, Granger?" Malfoy asked. "I'll track him down myself. When I find him and kill him, I won't be deemed in league with him, and I won't be accused of protecting him."
"If you kill him – no matter his crimes – you'll be arrested for murder, Draco," Hermione warned, frowning at him.
"Don't make the mistake of thinking I'd let the MLE find his body, Granger," Malfoy said quietly, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose when she looked over at him sharply.
He wore a grim expression. One she'd never seen on his face before. Indeed, it was the sort of expression she'd once seen on the face of Professor Snape. Never on the face of the frightened boy who'd been bullied and pressured into taking the Dark Mark. The look on Draco's face then wasn't the look of a scared teenager who'd been ordered to kill someone or torture someone and didn't want to do it. No, it was the look of a man who would commit murder without remorse when the time came. Worse, it was the resigned expression of a hunter who knew it was only a matter of time before his quarry laid dead at his feet.
His expression then wasn't that of the boy she'd known all through Hogwarts, nor that of the man she'd come to know through the years following the war when she'd been his colleague. This was the look of a man willing to seek revenge for the abduction and likely the murder of his wife. The look of a man willing to kill to protect his children. Most intriguingly, Hermione realised that it was the look of a man willing to kill for her sake, alone. After all, if what Lucius had told Draco was true, Dolohov couldn't harm Lucius, Draco, Aurelian or Scorpius. He couldn't harm Narcissa, either.
He could only hurt her. He was likely already hurting Astoria, and probably enjoying every minute of doing so. To make matters worse, given the fairy virus and her pregnancy, even if Dolohov decided not to kill the woman he'd abducted, the virus would soon kill her – or at the very least force her to miscarry her unborn child. She might very well die before Draco could find them. And Draco knew that. She could see it in the slant of his mouth and in the flat, deadened look in his grey eyes. He knew that it would likely be too late for his wife by the time he got to her. His willingness to kill the man responsible was born only of a need for revenge, and a need to protect Hermione.
That, more than anything else she'd learned tonight, terrified Hermione. Not because she was unaccustomed to men willing to kill to protect her. Even with their fallout and the infrequent interaction between them, these days, Hermione knew that Ron would still kill to protect her. She knew Harry would kill to protect her. George. Neville. Percy. Bill. Charlie. Arthur. Hagrid. All of them were men whom she knew would likely be willing to kill Dolohov if it meant protecting her.
And that knowledge, knowing that Draco Malfoy had somehow ended up keeping the same company as those men she'd known and loved for more than half her life, terrified Hermione Granger more so even than knowing Dolohov was alive, and likely coming for her. Because if he was willing to kill for her, that meant that he cared about her. Cared about her deeply enough to risk his immortal soul for her sake. Enough to risk his freedom; risk his life; all for the sake of protecting her. He didn't have to do it. His nature as a self-serving bastard ought to have dictated that he be willing to protect himself, both from danger and from possible imprisonment, before doing something to protect another. Unless the one he was protecting was of more use, or more importance to him than himself. And in someone like Draco Malfoy, that was rare.
Hermione gulped as she met his unrelenting gaze, recognizing that whatever the hell was building between them was likely going to complicate her entire life. She nodded her head only once, not bothering to try and argue any more against the notion of him killing Dolohov, if and when he managed to track him down.
And Draco wasn't the scared, blustering git he'd been as a teenager. Not anymore. He was a Hunter, now. The best in the DRCMC, in fact, though she didn't imagine she'd ever be foolish enough to inflate his ego by admitting it out loud. He was the one she relied on to track down and bring back any creature she set her interests on. Even those she was half-convinced couldn't possibly exist, he had managed to track down. The Jabberwalkie still caged in her office was a testament to it. Draco Malfoy was a predator; a skilled and deadly hunter trained to track down his prey by whatever means necessary. He was willing to put his life on the line for it, more often than not, and the scars littering his body beneath his clothing were proof of that fact.
He'd gone out into the woods, alone, and hunted down a creature she'd been certain was just a myth. He'd gotten himself poisoned, bitten, and almost eaten just to drag it back to her lab in a cage. When he went after Dolohov, Hermione suspected he would find him. If what he'd said about being mentored by Dolohov as a Death Eater was true, he would likely know a good many of Dolohov's habits, his hideouts, and his thought-patterns. Hermione got the feeling it wouldn't take him long to find the man – but she rather thought from the look in his eyes and the ice in his voice that it might take him a good long while to kill him, if only for the simple fact that he was going to enjoy killing Dolohov.
Hermione didn't know what to do with that information, either. She'd never known anyone who could savour a kill. She'd never imagined she would hold her tongue rather than insisting that a plan to torture someone slowly into madness was abominable. Clearing her throat as she closed her trunk, Hermione licked her lips.
"We need to make a stop of my lab," she told him. "If Astoria is still alive, she'll be in desperate need of my cure when you find her."
"You have a cure?"
"Not one ready for human testing. Not yet. But yes, there's a cure," Hermione nodded. "I'll finish working on it when we get to your safehouse."
Malfoy nodded his head, moving over to the bed where both of his sons slept – the two of them having crawled in to snuggle beside each other in Aurelian's bed despite the additional bed Hermione had transfigured and setup in the corner for Scorpius to sleep in on nights he stayed over. Reaching for her own son, Hermione decided it would be easier simply to transport the sleeping boy without waking him than it would be to fight with the tired and grizzling child.
"Just carry them," Hermione said quietly to Malfoy.
"Apparating will wake them, anyway," Malfoy pointed out. "And we'll have to take a portkey to reach France."
Hermione nodded. "Do you have one? I assume that if this is your escape plan should things ever turn sour again, you keep an illegally obtained international portkey somewhere?"
He smirked just a little bit, fishing a hand down the neck of his robes, showing her what appeared to be a goblin-made silver pendant in the shape of the Malfoy family crest suspended on a long chain.
"You keep it on you at all times?" she asked, surprised. "Even after all this time?"
Malfoy's mouth twisted unpleasantly.
"We turned Blood Traitor when we betrayed the Dark Lord and sold out every marked Death Eater and associate who'd been in league with him, Granger. The number of attempts that have been made on my life – and on Mother and Father's lives – since the war would boggle even your brilliant mind. I've had to activate it more than once, though not in more than a year, I'm sure. Believe me, I'd have been dead long before I ever sired your son if not for carrying this thing with me."
Hermione's eyes widened a little at that fact, surprised to find that even after all this time – as frequently as a year ago – someone had attempted to take his life for what he'd done during the war. She wondered if she even truly believed him.
"Come on," he said quietly when he'd scooped Scorpius into his arms before circling the bed and reaching for her and Aurelian with his free hand. "To your office. And then to safety."
Hermione nodded, closing her eyes and thinking hard about apparating the four of them to her lab. As she did, she tried very hard not to think about just what she must mean to Draco Malfoy that he was willing to kill for her, and she tried very hard not to notice the way he weaved his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck in a touch as possessive as it was comforting. When there was time to address all of this, Hermione got the feeling she was going to be in for a rather rude awakening to some more uncomfortable truths where this wizard was concerned.