Hey hey hey! Thanks to anyone who stuck with me through the last 2 chapters! x)
So my little sister bullied me into posting this NOW so I haven't really checked it xD Damn her.
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"JUMP!"
"ARE YOU NUTS?!"
Harry took no notice of him and leaped off the dragon hide and straight into thin air. Ron, having survived many adventures by his side and knowing full well they had survived them all by following Harry's crazy instincts, flung himself into oblivion instantly. Luna followed, hands clasped with Ron's, a pearl of giggles erupting and she fell like a rock through space. Giggles!
Draco gripped his teeth to the point he feared they might shatter and squeezed his eyes shut. He had picked Slytherin for Merlin's sake! Being brave had not been in his life decisions then, nor was it now! He was perfectly happy being alive, thank you very much. Except he was riding a dragon. A real life, fully grown, fully hungry, prehistoric dragon. Oh Salazar's saggy balls.
He launched himself into the air, eyes still shut as tight as they would go, as he soared through empty space, wind roaring in his ears. He hit the water like a bullet from a nineteenth century canon.
Water rushed over him, around him, surrounding him. He couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything but the strain of his ears fighting the push of liquid.
And there was pain. His whole right arm seemed under attack, his nerves jolting from the burning sensation. It took a great feat of strength to pull himself to the surface, clawing his way to freedom with one hand, teeth gritted against the pain. It was only when he reached the near stone beach and lied on his back, chest heaving, that he understood what was going on. The fire in his arm was not physical, not really. It was a pale and perfect as ever, his muscles gently playing under his skin.
No, he knew what this pain meant. He stumbled to his feet as fast as he could, and finally wondered where the other three were. Morgana, if someone had said he'd be looking for Potter and his merry group for help a year ago, he would have hexed them into next week.
Shivering, Draco ran his wand over his clothes, drying them quickly, lifting the weight from his shoulders and transfiguring them back into a male wizarding cloak. From there, he climbed onto the rocks that littered this side of the lake, and in the distance, he saw three figures lying on a sandy beach. On of them sported a spot of bright red ginger.
With a grimace of pain, fighting the horde of mixed feelings that threatened to overrun him, Draco launched forwards, sprinting faster as he went, unaware of the bird that was desperately trying to keep up with his antiques, high in the dragon-disturbed sky.
As he ran over grass, jumped over rocks, his long legs ever accelerating, he thought that he had never run this fast before. Not at his Manor when he ran towards a retreating Hermione, not in Hogwarts when he ran for an endangered Hermione, never. It felt like he had been forever running for her, towards her, and yet he had never run so fast. Every second and every day that went by seemed to fuel his need for her, his obsession with her safety. Ever since he had been injured at Malfoy Manor, he had felt the tug in his chest increase constantly, building up until he could no longer ignore it. There was no separating him from her now, there was too much magic linking them together for it to be otherwise.
So he ran. Faster than ever, towards the allies he never thought he'd have.
By the time the blond man finally caught up with Harry, Ron and Luna, the owl above him had dived down and swooped in before Draco could utter a word of the well prepared insults aimed at Airhead Potter.
It landed in a flurry of massive feathers, forcing his victim to stretch an arm so he could land, ignoring the two wands that were pointed straight at it. There was a note attached to its claw. Luna, signalling the boys to lower their wands, turned to the owl and unravelled the piece of string that held it there, letting the package fall into his open palm. The bird flew away immediately.
She lost no time in unrolling the piece of paper, as Draco skidded to a halt next to her, snatching the parchment from her in a hurry. They all watched, intrigued, as a wartime steel cup fell out of its packaging. The blond simply slid a finger through the handle and read the few words that accompanied it. They said, in graceful calligraphy:
I did what you asked. Better join me. SS
"Now what?" Harry asked him, eyeing the note suspiciously.
"Now we find Hermione."
The group gathered to read the message, before Harry sighed and sat on the ground. He looked nothing short of an old man in that moment. They had all been through so much already.
"As I was telling Luna and Ron a second ago Malfoy, we have a problem. You-Know-Who saw into my mind. He's figured out we're hunting his horcruxes."
Silence followed. One single moment of silence before the storm.
"But he doesn't know how many we've destroyed," he carried on, in an effort to make the disaster less so. "And with the cup we got today, that makes three dead horcruxes, and two more in our possession."
They all nodded, before Draco froze. Remembering the feeling of his localising charm burning his arm barely a minute ago, he looked down in stupor. The feeling was gone. His arm felt ice cold. Too cold in fact.
"We have another problem." he barely whispered, his head still facing the ground, eyes fixated on his pale wrist.
"What?" Harry asked, dread in his voice. Draco looked up, and with a resigned sigh, spoke the words he had never really wanted to say.
"A few months ago I cast a charm over Hermione."
None of them flinched at this, they simply listened. They had come to trust him over the last few weeks, and this was proof as solid as rock.
"It allows me to find her whenever she uses a great amount of magic." he said, and when no one answered, he felt the need to explain. "I crossed Homenium Revelio with the Taboo Jinx, designing it specifically for her. I don't have time to explain why," he added, lifting his hand up to stop their comments. His words were more rushed now, but there were no comments. "It allowed me to save her several times, but since she got caught, I haven't felt a thing, obviously. Until now."
And it all dawned on them that something big had happened. Until that moment, Hermione Granger had been unable to use magic, from lack of having her wand most likely. The implications of this development were simple: she had either retrieved her wand somehow, or had been so desperate her wild magic had broken loose. Even for a moment, wild magic was more dangerous to its owner than anyone else.
"We need to find her," whispered Luna's frail voice.
Ron glanced at her kindly, before turning to Draco again. The blond still held the missive in his hand.
"And how would you suggest we do that?" Ron asked.
Draco bore his eyes into theirs, the metal colour swirling with anger and anticipation. He was going to murder those who had laid a hand on his Hermione.
He lifted his right hand for them to see. It was clutching the metal cup.
"Portkey."
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The awakening was painful, strange. The animal was at loss. It stumbled through the forest, blood on its claws, matted fur tangled. What should it do? It stuck its snout in the air and inhaled deeply. Something was approaching. As it picked up the scent, it froze, analysing it. There were three creatures, moving as a pack nearby. Somehow the animal registered the unknown smell to be one of humans, and it fled in the opposite direction, far away from the valley.
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Emergency Call. Emergency Call.
The robotic words echoed around them eerily, filling the empty air of the lake's surroundings. They had all had one hand on the portkey between them; ready to spin away, when they had been interrupted. Ron, looking baffled, took his hand away and pulled his Muggle radio out from his pocket.
"What the...?"
He fiddled with the dials, before tapping the Muggle technology with his wand, muttering under his breath. Then, Dean's voice came through the speakers.
"This is an emergency message to Lightening and anyone else who may be hearing this. This signal is being transmitted only to the radios that were connected yesterday to this channel. To Lightening, and anyone else out there, be careful. We've heard things, horrible things about a creature. To all we say these words: beware the Moonstone Wolf. We cannot say what this means, but if there was ever a time for trusting us, it is now. I repeat, this is an urgent message: Beware the Moonstone Wolf. Stay safe everyone. Tomorrow's password is Foxhound."
A light breeze blew through the valley, creating small ripples across the water.
There isn't much you can say after an announcement like that. They all glanced at each other awkwardly, before Draco explained what he knew of the Moonstone Wolf.
"So this wolf," tried to summarise Ron as the others let the news sink in. "Is going to bring Harry to You-Know-Who and get him killed?"
Luna slid her petite hand in Harry's, a small sign to him that he was not alone. Despite the news of his impending death, Harry couldn't think of anything else but the fact that Hermione would have done that had she been there. That brought him straight back to reality.
All they could understand after sharing everything they knew, was that something had started. Some prophecy had been set in motion, and saving Hermione was all the more essential. Not only for them, but for the sake of winning the war, they needed her help.
There was more though. Too much anguish for one group, too much darkness.
Four young people with two of the darkest artefacts ever created didn't stand a chance out here. And Harry was pretty sure Voldemort could find them if they wandered around with pieces of his soul in their pockets.
And so it was decided that two of them would take the horcruxes, and head back to Hogwarts, the only place that seemed even remotely safe. They would have the task of finding the goblin weapon and destroying both horcruxes.
Luna volunteered. Around her neck hung Salazar's necklace, a horcrux that seemed to have less effect on her than anyone Harry had seen wear it. To him, she was the Frodo Baggins of their group. She was meant to do this.
Ron immediately announced he was going with her, just as Draco stated he would not be stopped from looking for Hermione.
Harry thoughtfully watched Ron, wondering why his best friend wasn't desperate to find the girl he loved, before he noticed. Oh it was too obvious: the pain in his eyes was too great. Ron was too scared of what he might find, maybe he had lost hope entirely. But Luna was offering him a chance to fight, a chance to do good without breaking. Ronald was a Weasley through and through: family came first. Family always came first. And this moment, Hogwarts was his family. Ginny, too, was in Hogwarts. And just knowing that Ron would protect his sister with his life made Harry choose to follow Draco.
With a solemn nod and a tight brotherly hug, they bid they goodbyes, and as Ron and Luna stepped back, the Invisibility Cloak wrapped around their shoulders, two horcruxes in their pockets, Harry and Draco disappeared.
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"Severus."
The word held relief and fear all at the same time. Two hands gripped their respective wands tightly, ready for a fight.
Harry and Draco were standing in a clearing, a small metal cup left abandoned on the floor between them, their now useless portkey.
Without a word, his lips pulled into a tight line; Severus Snape turned around and led the way. They followed silently. It took ten minutes to walk down the steep slope of the valley. The sun was now high up in the sky, heating up the air and bringing smells out strongly. It smelt of humus and thyme.
When they reached the forest edge, Snape turned to them and warned them to stay behind if they didn't want to suffer the shock of what awaited them. His concerned tone carried much warning, but was only greeted with silence. So the three of them stepped out into the blaring sun.
The citadel stood just as lonely and dark as the night before, the sunshine doing nothing to brighten up the surroundings. From where they stood, they could just make out the entrance, doors flung open, darkness hiding the horror held inside.
Something else than the eeriness was wrong though. Something resounded in Draco's bones as he stared onwards, chills running over his body. Was it wrong? He felt afraid and uneasy to his core, but also... at home.
He felt at home as he looked at the blue light that filled the sunlit valley, making all else irrelevant.
Indeed, there was a huge dome, made of blue light, which stretched over the citadel in the centre and the grass around, stopping just before the undulating river. Everything in it seemed to defy the outside of the world with immobility. Where there were birds and water flowing in the valley, the dome held only emptiness and silence.
He looked to Snape, trying to form words to express his confusion, but then he realised: Both his mentor and Harry Potter, saviour of the wizarding world and curse survivor, were walking straight, as if they weren't fazed. As if they couldn't see.
Reluctantly, knowing full well Severus had already been into the dome with no visible effects, and somehow trusting the strange feeling of being at home, Draco followed suit, hand gripped tighter than ever around his wand.
They trudged through the dry grass in silence. When they reached the stream of water running between the mountainsides, they removed their shoes, crossed with little difficulty, before putting them back on. Harry couldn't help but feel as if they were having a ritual. The silence only made it worse. Draco, on the other hand, looked at the blue veil barely a meter in front of him with apprehension. The two other men's gazes went straight through it.
"Last chance." Uttered Snape, teeth gritted and forehead rippled with tension.
Again, no one answered him, so he lead them forward, lighting his wand as he reached the grand, slightly broken, doors. Behind him, Draco gritted his teeth, forced his eyes shut and took two steps forward. A cold feeling flowed over him, like walking through a ghost, and when he looked back, the immobile blue light was in its dome form, as if untouched.
So he turned and caught up with his two companions who had been unaware of his troubles. Draco was filled with a sense of panic now.
As they stepped over the threshold, they stopped, eyes taking in the spectacle. Around the first room, white sheets covered what were obviously bodies. The blood had soaked through some of them.
"I covered what I could." Snape said in a low voice that echoed around the room, before walking forward into the next area.
The teenagers followed, both Slytherin's unknowingly getting closer to each other as they dodged the white-sheeted mounds. Harry on the other hand couldn't help his gaze from wondering, before he came across a bludgeoned foot, still in its shoe. It was not attached to a body.
He desperately held in a heave of his stomach. After that, he kept his eyes on Snape's back. They went through the round, chaotic middle room in utter silence. And when they descended into the dungeon, no one spoke a word either. The only sound to echo against the walls was a whimper. Who had made the sound held no importance, they all felt the same.
They took one look around the room, and then silently backed out of the citadel. They couldn't miss the message on the wall though, the one painted above the resting figure of the monk.. That's when someone spoke for the first time.
"Shit."
Draco had spoken nearly in a whisper, but it sounded like a scream in the empty castle.
"What?" asked Harry, nauseous.
"Let's go outside."
They all gladly left the disturbingly obscure setting and Draco daringly stepped through the blue dome again, looking back to see that the other two men still had no idea. They all only breathed properly once they stood on the other side of the river. Even there, it still smelled of rusty iron. Then, Draco turned to their small circle and recounted what he could remember of Hermione's encounter with Sybill Trelawney to Snape. A silence settled when he was finished, interrupted only by the one bird that had been brave enough to return to the surrounding woods. Then Harry asked what had been on both their minds, though neither seemed to want to hear Snape's words. If there had been no news by now, surely, would there be any happy information?
"What happened to Hermione?"
The two young men looked to Snape expectantly, desperately. With a heavy sigh uncharacteristic of him, he gestured them to follow him and set off to the nearest trees where he had found her body, his anxious allies on his heels. It was unbecoming of Snape to look broken in such a way.
The walk up to the body of the young Death Eater only took about twenty seconds, but to Snape it felt like an eternity. He could see the young man with three claw wounds across his neck the whole time. It didn't faze him, the dark mark was a brandished flag he could easily spot from afar. However, as he walked up to the deceased and set eyes on the scene, he froze, halfway through a step, one foot in the air. He very, very slowly lowered his foot back to the ground, dread filling him like poison, sweat building along his spine.
"Severus?" Draco's voice came from seemingly miles away although he was stood just behind him.
He didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the large patch of burgundy grass, tainted with dry blood.
There was no body in sight.
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Soooooo yeah. TADAAAA XD
Plot twist?!
Tell me what you think ;)
xx
