Chapter 25

A/N: Hello readers! I think I forgot to tell you that while I was editing this story it sprouted a new chapter. There will be 29 chapters and a short epilogue. We're approaching the end; it should be finished before Christmas. I'm both sad and happy... For those of you who were wondering, I plan to take another look at This Incarnation after November and see what I can do about finishing it.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed (over 600!) and to irianaceleste for betaing!

~Frosty

"I think you've been holding back when you tell us about your job," Ron accused as they carefully picked their way through the huge hole Draco had blasted in the wall. Harry nodded his agreement.

"You never tell us anything this interesting."

Hermione huffed and turned her nose up at the smirk Draco sent her way. "You two tune me out when I talk about my job because you always just assume that I'm going to talk about creature legislation."

"That's because you're almost always talking about creature legislation."

Her annoyed response was stalled when she finally glanced up and got her first good look at Malfoy's summer home. It had been completely obscured by the hideous stone wall before, so she wasn't in the least prepared for what the ugly wall had hidden. The place was beautiful. While the Manor was all old world elegance, the summer home was more modern with huge windows, sweeping arches on the roof, and a large front porch that held a comfortable –looking set of rocking chairs.

"It's beautiful," Hermione said. She could just picture herself curled up in one of those chairs reading a book, Draco in the other one sulking because she wasn't in bed and under him as he had planned for their vacation. Her eyes squeezed tight for a second so she could banish the products of her imagination and focus once more on reality.

Draco stepped up beside her and grinned down at her smaller form. "This is how it should be, elegance and clean lines, none of that splintering wood and dirty stone. It's just how I remember it – except for the zombies."

She did a double take, only then noticing the two undead creatures, both holding nastily sharp looking axes as tall as a person. It was a wonder she had missed them; they were standing on either side of the door, just to the left of the rocking chairs that Hermione had been admiring. She was really going to have to fight to keep her mind on the task at hand since it would obviously rather live in fantasy worlds than make sure she stayed alive.

"There's such thing as zombies?" Harry asked in surprise. "I thought they were just a horror movie thing."

"Don't be such a Muggle, Potter. Most of their horror movies are based off of their twisted versions of our reality."

The zombies, like the kelpies seemed content to just watch them approach. Hermione assumed that once they got close enough to the door, the creatures would attack. She had to wonder how in the world Kate had managed to convince kelpies and now zombies to risk the end of their existence just to protect her.

The wind shifted and the rotting corpse smell washed over the group, sticking to their clothing and hair as it oozed into their noses and down their throats, seeming to linger in a slick of horror throughout their lungs. Harry and Ron started gagging. Having been forewarned about the smell of zombies, Hermione and Draco were prepared and managed to keep control of their gag reflex, but it was a close thing. Draco shot the other two a smug look when Hermione wasn't looking.

"How do you kill a zombie?" Harry wondered.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "You don't, Potter."

Once again, Malfoy took it upon himself to rush the creatures. This time though, it was with his wand bared and not his sword.

"Incinerate them," Hermione answered grimly.

"You're not going to stop him from killing helpless creatures?" Ron asked. Hermione gave the redhead a slightly sour look for his mocking tone. She didn't appreciate that her care for magical creatures was a constant amusement for her friends. There were a number of common practices in the magical world that were so obviously barbaric and wrong, and the fact that Ron so freely mocked her attempts to right those wrongs was more hurtful than she would ever let him see.

"They're already dead." She forcibly restrained herself from adding that this fact should have been obvious, determined not to sink to his level.

With that, Hermione marched over to her partner's side just as he ducked a swing from one of the zombie's huge axes. The smell was so much worse so close to the foul creatures. It felt a little like the smell was actually soaking into her pores and her sensitive eye membranes. Hermione had to blink several times to clear the resulting tears from her eyes.

The problem with zombies was that they had to be completely incinerated. If even just a hand was missed, it would continue to crawl towards its victim. That sort of attack was really more disturbing than dangerous, but it could be deadly if one wasn't careful. It was unfortunate that they had to be exterminated this way, since the smoke from their burning bodies just made the smell that much worse.

"Incoming," Earl muttered in her ear. Obediently, Hermione ducked the axe that had been aimed at her head.

She cast several incinerating spells, but the zombies were proving to be remarkably flame-retardant. Harry and Ron caught on quickly and rushed over, their own incinerating spells splitting the air in front of them. Their combined efforts were enough to overpower whatever spells that were keeping the fire from igniting the zombie's clothing and the horrible creatures finally went up in flames. Hermione was sure she was going to remember the undead groans of the burning zombies for a long time. She knew that they couldn't feel pain, but the image and the sounds they made were still disturbing.

If the zombies had smelled bad before, it was nothing in comparison to what they smelled like burning. Ron actually had to turn to the side and vomit at the smell. If she had thought it would make anything better, Hermione would have done the same. However, she knew that vomiting would just leave a foul taste in her mouth to go along with the horrors of the smell and sights. She didn't need that.

Draco, having already had too much experience with fire and burning people, got a glazed, haunted look in his eyes. Noticing this, Hermione forgot about her anger and sidled over to him to grab his hand. She knew he was really disturbed because he didn't object to the comfort even though Harry and Ron could glance away from the still-burning zombies and notice them at any moment. Hermione had never thought of Crabbe as anything other than an unintelligent goon, but Draco had held some sort of affection for the brainless goon, and she knew that Crabbe's death had affected Draco more than he wanted anyone to know.

Draco squeezed her hand back after a few moments and then pulled away from her, walking past the burning zombies and examining the door.

After the kelpies and then zombies, getting into the house was surprisingly easy. The door had been locked, but between the spells Harry and Ron knew as Aurors, Hermione's vast knowledge of unlocking spells, and Draco's ability as a Malfoy to unlock nearly every door on the property, a locking spell didn't stand a chance – at least not this one.

Hermione was by no means out of shape, but she was starting to lag from all the excitement. The raid on the shack, the goddess in the garden, changing her back into herself, the sex, the running around the Ministry and then the magical creatures at Draco's summer home were a lot to handle in one day. She couldn't imagine her partner being in much better shape, even with the quick little nap he'd managed while she'd been at the Ministry.

"Where would be the best place to hide?" Harry asked Draco.

"Probably the master bedroom, it's been reinforced with extra protections."

Harry and Ron shared a glance and then raised their eyebrows, but Draco ignored the implied questions. If the idiots couldn't figure out that, as Malfoys, his parents had wanted extra protections on the place where they slept, then Draco wasn't about to enlighten them. They could just wallow in their ignorance like they did with everything else.

As they walked through the house, Hermione admired the decor – purely to ensure that they weren't under attack, of course. She was a professional and didn't do things like absorb decorating tips while she was supposed to be working. Nope, not at all.

She really needed to catch up on all of the sleep she was missing out on; the sleep deprivation was doing strange things to her poor mind.

Draco suddenly threw out his arm, hitting Hermione in the chest as she walked into it. She may have been focused on trying to decide if the first edition Jane Austen book resting on the coffee table was real or a reproduction. She immediately realized her mistake; they were the Malfoys, of course it was real.

"Do you hear that?" he whispered. Harry and Ron, following just behind them, paused as well.

They all tilted their heads and listened, but nothing out of the ordinary sounded. The house was perfectly silent – oddly silent.

"What are we listening for?" Ron eventually asked. He fell silent again when Hermione shushed him.

They waited another few moments to see if they would hear what Draco had. No sound broke the complete silence of the house, so they continued on their way, Draco glaring at Harry and Ron's mocking looks.

A spiralling metal staircase led up to the second floor. The gaps between metal clearly showed that there was nothing on the staircase lying in wait for them, which was nice. There was nothing worse than an ambush on a staircase, Hermione knew this from experience.

As it turned out, the ambush was waiting at the top of the stairs.

At first glance it looked like a lion, but the fire that shot from its nostrils when it snorted ruined that image. The goat head protruding from behind the lion's head as well as the snake for a tail added to the ruined the whole lion picture.

"How do we kill this one?" Draco asked Hermione, who was looking the creature over with a critical eye.

"It's a Chimera. Shoot it from above to kill it. But I don't see how that's going to work when we're inside. The ceilings aren't high enough to fly out of reach and still be able to shoot it."

Just like they'd been doing the entire time, Ron and Harry hung back and let the professionals handle the magical creatures. While Hermione appreciated their deference to her greater experience, they could have tried to be a little more help with the Chimera, or at least offered their assistance. She certainly would have had the situation been reversed.

Hermione glanced up at the ceiling and then grinned. For once she was glad that the Malfoys were so fond of expensive fixtures. There was a rather large decorative chandelier at the top of the stairs, just hanging there. She quickly ran through her repertoire of spells to find something that would work and then elbowed Draco to get his attention. At his questioning look, she gestured to the chandelier with her eyes.

It was against her morals to kill something that had only been placed in front of the door to guard. Unlike the kelpies and zombies, the Chimera didn't maliciously seek to kill people. It only guarded what it was told to guard and killed those who tried to gain access to whatever it was protecting.

"Harry, Ron, I need you to distract the thing," Hermione whispered. "Watch out for its breath, both heads breathe fire and the snake is venomous."

"Wonderful," Ron grumbled.

Harry patted his shoulder. "At least it's not giant spiders again."

"Don't even job about that, mate." Ron shuddered, but he did look less apprehensive about distracting the Chimera. Compared to Aragog and his offspring, one little Chimera shouldn't be much of a challenge for the Arachnophobic redhead.

Despite his reluctance to face the creature, he and Harry rushed towards it at her nod.

While they did that, Hermione bit down on her wand to hold it in her mouth as she ran at Draco, who laced his fingers and leaned down, boosting her up so that she could catch hold of the chandelier. Hermione's fingers slipped a little when she grabbed hold of the wrought iron bar closest to her, but she managed to keep hold of it. In a surprisingly coordinated move, Hermione used the momentum of her jump to swing the rest of her body up into the light fixture. She snatched her wand from her mouth and fired a series of spells at the Chimera while it snapped, hissed, and growled at Harry and Ron as they provoked it with loud noises and bright but harmless spells. The first few spells she fired missed because it was moving around so much as it tried to bite Harry and Ron with its lion head and snake tail, but she finally managed to hit it.

The snake tail was the first thing to show the effects of the heavy sleeping spell that Hermione had used. Its yellow eyes started to droop as its scaly body wilted to the floor. The other two heads weren't far behind, their blinks getting longer and longer until the eyes just stayed closed and then the whole creature sagged and fell to the floor with a thud.

"Hermione, that was amazing!" Harry exclaimed, looking from the unconscious Chimera to his dangling friend and then settling on the Chimera.

Hermione flashed her friend a quick, absent smile. Most of her attention was focused on trying to get down from the bloody chandelier. It was swaying dangerously as she tried to dislodge herself without landing on her arse. She was lucky it had been so firmly anchored to the ceiling; landing on her arse and then having the heavy light fixture landing on top of her would be very painful. She certainly hoped that magic may have been involved in the anchoring of the chandelier.

Harry and Ron were occupied with poking at the unconscious Chimera, so it was only Malfoy who noticed her struggles – and he was enjoying it greatly. Instead of offering to help, Draco just stood there, arms crossed and a big grin on his face while he watched her flail and shift around, trying to right herself.

"You're going to fall down."

Hermione glared while he moved closer, presumably to get a better look at her embarrassment. "You could help me."

"No, I think I'm good here."

She tried to untangle her legs from the iron branches of the light fixture and then lower herself to the floor, but one of her legs stuck and she ended up tumbling towards the ground. Hermione let out a screech and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, preparing for the impact.

The pain she expected never came. She thumped against something solid and warm – something she had a feeling was going to be insufferable about the fact that he had saved her from splattering on the floor.

"All right there, Granger?"

She cracked open an eye to see that Malfoy was holding her in his arms and smirking down at her.

"Shut up," she grumbled.

"Are you two quite finished making eyes at each other?" Earl asked, still perched on Hermione's shoulder. Somehow he had clung there for her entire chandelier adventure. Psyche, obviously the one with the sense, had flown off to watch events unfold from the safety of a curtain rod. "We've got work to do."

Draco abruptly let go of Hermione, leaving her to catch herself before she fell to the ground. She managed it, but not before she did some very ungraceful stumbling.

"Prat."

The Chimera had been guarding a door. Hermione ignored her partner's amused expression and went to investigate, hoping that Kate had been the highly important thing that the Chimera had been guarding. If it was another rare creature house in horrible conditions, Hermione wasn't sure she'd be able to stop herself from snapping.

Unlike the previous door, this one wasn't so quick to open. All four of them cast every spell they could think of and Draco even went as far as to prick his finger and smear the blood on the wood, something that was supposed to unlock any door on any of the Malfoy properties, but nothing worked.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Ron demanded.

Earl uncoiled on Hermione shoulder and scurried down her body. "I think I'm finally going to prove how useful I can be."

As he'd demonstrated before, Earl had no problem walking right through human magic. He just walked through the door like there was nothing there at all. Those waiting on the other side heard a click and then the wood swung open to reveal one very smug lizard... god. "You can praise me now."

Draco stepped right over Earl and into the room beyond. "I'll pass."

Harry and Ron were next, both of them ignoring Earl completely.

Sulking, Earl climbed Hermione to rest on her shoulder once more. He rested his chin on his folded feet and sighed, suddenly morose.

"Men and their egos," Psyche said, alighting on Hermione's other shoulder. Hermione nodded her agreement and followed them into the room.

Kate was there, huddled in a corner and staring at them with overly large eyes. Kate had seemed like some kind of super villain before, and Hermione had built her up to something huge and horrible in her mind, so it was jarring to see her reduced to something so small and scared looking.

"I'd be upset too if I had to go through the Chimera every time I wanted to get something to eat," Ron muttered to Harry. He probably hadn't intended for everyone to hear him, but he'd always struggled with everyday things like volume control and tact.

"Wait," Psyche murmured in Hermione's ear. "Something's not right."