Author's Note: Hello, my dear readers! I would first like to apologize for keeping you waiting so long. With my vacation and my schooling and NOW I have my wedding to plan (RIGHT?! I am so excited!), it has been a crazy month. Or however long it has been. But, like I promised and have always been promising, I did not forget, nor will I ever. Here is chapter 25. Enjoy.
25.
It was a very odd sensation. Having another person delve into your mind felt like diving into a twelve foot deep pool. Draco felt pressure pushing on all sides of his skull and like water shot up his nose at eighty miles an hour. He did not fight it. He knew that he had nothing to hide. Sure, he might have killed Hermione, but they would see that it was not his intention. They would finally see. Somebody would finally be able to understand exactly what was weighing down on him. Whether or not they decided to spare his life after unhinging his mind did not matter to him in the slightest. All that mattered was that he did not have to hide anymore and he did not have to find the words to explain himself. Images in his mind flipped over each other like pages in a book as Remus Lupin explored his thoughts, his memories, and his darkest secrets.
His mother beckoned him from the bottom of the staircase, her face white as a ghost and her hands trembling as she pinned them to her sides, attempting to hide her uneasiness. She pursed her lips tightly and kept her head bowed low as he passed her into the entry hall where a tall, slender figure stood before him. Draco stopped dead in his tracks, wanting to rub his eyes with his fists. Was he really seeing this? Voldemort was standing in his home, his father crouched down on the floor beside him in a cowering grovel. "Ah, Draco," he said with a hiss. "I have a job for you."
Draco stood in front of a large, oak cabinet in the middle of Borgin and Burke's. It had three large scratches going down the front of the door, exposing the splinters underneath. Fenrir Greyback laughed and recounted a story about an old Irish couple living at the end of a cove in Godric's Hollow. The deep scratches buried in the wood were from him, and he tore their skulls open before they could disappear through the cabinet. That was during his glory days.
His mother pulled him into a small alcove in Kings Cross Station, hidden away from Platform 9 3/4. She withdrew her emerald hood revealing her face, and Draco could see the bruise his father left on her right cheek after he struck her to the ground. She had burned the stew the night before. She pulled him close to her for a hug, and he was careful not to hold her too tightly, as he was sure her ribs were sore from falling against the marble counter top in the kitchen. He wiped away a tear gently from her cheekbone, pulled up her hood again, and boarded the train without looking back.
The sound of Hermione Granger's legs snapping echoed against the stone walls of the classroom and buzzed around his head like a demonic chorus. It was a horrific sound, and her face turned a terrifying shade of white as she grimmaced in buckling pain. Draco felt like running. Like running straight off of a cliff.
Draco sat at the side of Hermione Granger's bed in the hospital wing. Her eyelids fluttered slightly and her eyes bore holes in him as she expected him to kill her. To finish off the job. He felt like vomitting.
He pointed his wand right between her eyes. He was so angry. He was so afraid. But she looked so calm. He shouted at her to raise her wand. He wanted her to cause him pain like he had so often done to her countless times before. He deserved every ounce of painful revenge that she could muster, but she refused. She was giving him a second chance.
His heart pounded as Hermione stepped into the room in the library to meet him. He was going to take her up on her offer to change. He could not do it anymore.
Snape informed him that his mother was missing. Draco knew that she was probably dead.
Draco watched as the dramatic scene unfolded in front of him, and Hermione sat alone, her face in her hands and tears spilling from her eyes. Her scent wafted through the November breeze, intoxicating him as he sat down beside her and goosebumps ran across his skin. Even with a tear stained face and a bushy ponytail, she looked stunning in the silhouette of the moonlight. He kissed her, and for a fleeting moment, he felt the troubles of the world melting away, leaving only an ignorant bliss. Then, as quickly as it had happened, his stupor was broken, and Hermione fled.
He shoved a wand in Bellatrix Lestrange's face as she recoiled from him, her arms covering her face. "I'm the coward?" He said, then threw her wand to the floor and stormed out of the room.
Draco could see nothing but darkness, but could smell Hermione as her face came closer to his. Her strawberry lips grazed his gently, and fire surged through him as she kissed him. It was more exhilarating than he had ever imagined, and for once in a long time, he felt something close to joy.
"Dumbledore knows that Voldemort is planning to have him killed." Hermione said. Draco wondered if she knew. He hoped she did not, and though he was beginning to wonder if he loved her, he hoped he would be dead before she found out that it would be him who was supposed to kill him.
Ten pixies lay lifeless on the floor of the Room of Requirement as Draco hammered his fist against the Vanishing Cabinet. This had to work. He had to make it work somehow.
Hermione bit Draco's lip as she straddled him on the couch in the Room of Requirement. Draco wondered how long they had been doing this. A few minutes? A few hours? He did not care. Nothing existed when he was with her. Nothing but the intensity that exuded between them. He believed he loved her, which made this so much more difficult. He knew she could never love him after this night.
Dumbledore rested against the wall as Draco pointed his wand at him. "I have to kill you," Draco said. His vision was blurry, and he could barely see the old man standing in front of him. Then he heard a blood-curdling cackle and a sweet whimper coming from behind him. His beloved was stuck in the clutches of a black-maned monster. Her sweet face was stricken with fear as Bellatrix's wand dug into her neck. Draco had to force the air back into his lungs after it felt like he had just plummeted off the astronomy tower. Seeing Hermione like this was gut-wrenching. He knew it could only end one way. When Bellatrix instructed him to kill her, he let out a sigh of relief. Maybe this would work on her. It was the only way. He looked at Snape. 'You have to mean it,' he remembered him saying. He knew that this was what he meant. Mean it. He pointed his wand at her, saying one incantation, but non-verbally casting another. Hermione's body went limp in Bellatrix's arms and her skin turned grey. He had no idea if it worked, and he felt himself collapse.
Hermione's smiling face.
Hermione's scowling face.
They passed Dumbledore's body as they swiftly exited the grounds toward an apparition point. Draco just wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep forever. He wished he could just choke on his own vomit and die.
Hermione's dead face.
Tonks punched him in the jaw and his mother rushed to him as he hit the ground.
Hermione's sweet face.
He opened his eyes to the dusty walls of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place again, noticing the peeling wall paper that hung off of the walls. Remus Lupin stood over him with a blank expression on his face. He could not tell what he was thinking. Did he believe what he had just saw? Did he understand that Draco had no intention of killing Dumbledore, and that he in fact had planned to try to save him? Did he see that he did not mean to kill Hermione? That he loved Hermione? He wondered what Lupin would do with this new, sensitive information, but Draco was relieved that somebody knew.
"Well?" Draco said to him, feeling exhausted. Reliving all of those moments, whether they were agonizing or sacred, was almost too much for him to bear. Lupin wiped a hand across his forehead as he placed his wand in his vest pocket.
"Well, Remus?" Tonks said, echoing Draco. "What did you discover? Is he innocent?"
Lupin let out a long sigh. Draco knew he was no innocent. But he also knew he was not guilty either. He was somewhere in between, his fate resting on these people who stood before him, who hated everything he used to stand for. Who probably hated him just as much. "I discovered that we have a lot to discuss. I will gather the others. Take him to his holding cell." He said, then swiftly swept out of the room.
"Are you bloody joking? A holding cell? What the hell kind of a house is this?" Tonks started to laugh.
"Calm down, Malfoy. He's just being an ass. It's just a shitty little bedroom downstairs," she said, then she led him down a narrow staircase and into a room bathed in the light of a dimly lit lantern. "You will stay here. The door will be locked from the outside. And you don't have your wand, so there won't be much of a chance escaping."
"Better here than with my loony Aunt Andromeda," Draco muttered. Tonks held up her two fingers in a obscene gesture and shut the door behind her.
Lupin opened the door to one of the bedrooms on the second floor. Harry, Ron and Hermione sat on a bed, looking at the Marauder's Map.
"What are you three doing?" He said. The three quickly stashed away the parchment.
"Nothing!" Harry said quickly. Lupin cracked a small smile.
"There's an order meeting in fifteen minutes. Alert the others."
"What's the big rush?" Ron asked curiously.
"We have a prisoner," Lupin said as he began to turn aroud.
"A prisoner?" Hermione questioned. "Who is it?" Lupin exhaled deeply.
"We will discuss that at the meeting. Alert the others."
Hermione tiptoes past the kitchen where the Order Members were already beginning to assemble. She knew that she would find out who this new Order captive was soon enough when they had the meeting, but her curiosity got the best of her. She walked gently on the steps of the narrow staircase, treading lightly over the creaking stairs. There was a door at the bottom with dim firelight seeping out from beneath the crack of the door. She took out her wand as she reached the locked bedroom. She had to know who was inside.
"Alohomora."
Author's Note: Well, there ya go, kids. I know it isn't the longest chapter or the most exciting, or suspenseful, but it's all I had in the tank for right now. Working and school have taken a toll on my mental capacity these days, and I know that the worst is yet to come. Please bear with me. I will finish this story, even if it does take me a while to get there. Please follow, favorite, and review and thank you for being so patient and loyal followers of Shedding Skin!