Chapter 27 -The Return to the Manor
After the war, the Malfoy Manor went under Ministry control. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had lived there for a couple of years after the war, but since the place and their name was tainted drastically and the Ministry presence had loomed over their daily lives, they had decided to leave the place of their ancestors and move out of England.
Nowadays it was a relic of old times; times when blood lines still mattered. It stood in the grassy plains of Wiltshire as a reminder of an old era. It had been abandoned for years, but certain magical laws prevented the Ministry to ever have full power and ownership of the place as long as any Malfoy was still alive.
Harry was on the outskirts of it, he knew it. The soft fabric of his Invisibility Cloak hung around him as he stood there waiting. He felt nervousness in his stomach. After all, he couldn't be quite sure this wasn't a trap. Out of nowhere, Harry heard the characteristic cracking sound of someone Apparating close by. He held his wand under the cloak and looked into the direction of the sound.
Sure enough, the rising mist around him parted as a figure approached him.
It was Draco Malfoy. Surprisingly for Harry, he wore Muggle clothing. A brown leather jacket over a paling black shirt. Draco's eyes were searching his surroundings, his wand raised. Harry took off his cloak.
Draco was momentarily startled and pointed his wand straight at Harry. They were standing a couple of meters away from each other. Harry was still gripping his wand, but he did not raise it. He wasn't afraid of Malfoy.
Draco seemed to understand this, for he lowered his wand the next moment and eyed Harry up and down.
"I didn't think you'd come. I had to go into hiding after Granger and Weasley were found. Let's go inside."
"I'm not so sure about that," Harry said slowly.
"We will be safer there. This is my home, and it will protect me." Draco lowered his wand and put in his cloak as a sign of truce. Harry nodded and did the same.
Harry hated walking through the house again since it wasn't that long ago when it had served as Voldemort's Headquarters. Sometimes he could almost smell Voldemort still being there, his ghost lingering. Steeling himself against these thoughts, Harry soon dismissed them from his head. After all, he had made sure nothing of Voldemort had remained. His past enemy didn't haunt him anymore, but there would forever be echoes of him.
Considering the house had been abandoned for years, except the settling dust the furniture was undisturbed. The only bit that was missing was the ornate crystal chandelier that had been destroyed by Dobby, Harry thought with a dull ache.
"Here we are, Malfoy. What happens now?"
Draco didn't respond immediately. He passed the cavernous drawing room until he reached a life-sized painting above a marble white piano. His father and mother were portrayed on the painting, with Draco standing in between them. He appeared to be around eleven years old, perhaps in his first year of Hogwarts as he wore the school robes with a large Slytherin crest embroidered on it.
Harry watched Draco raise his wand and do multiple intricate movements in the air. From behind the painting, Harry could hear the sound of clicking, similar to a Gringotts vault opening. The painting swung open and Draco took something out of it before he walked back over to where Harry was standing.
A small glass bottle was in his hand and inside it was golden dust. It shimmered and bits and pieces were floating around the bottle. Harry had a strong sense of foreboding before Malfoy started to speak.
"This is Memory Dust. This is why Granger and Weasley don't remember anything. It's a sedative and a drug to make people forget and if you play around with the substance, you can alter the subject's memories. It can be administered in a potion, but it's most potent if a person inhales it as it is, without it being diluted or weakened." Draco said it all automatically and without any emotion while Harry started to feel almost sick. The hair on his skin prickled uncomfortably.
He took the bottle from Draco and read through the little label carefully.
"Cure: unknown…" he breathed, his heart falling. "How did you get this? How do you know all of this? Are you involved?" Harry asked angrily, though he felt like he hardly had to. Draco averted his gaze and started pacing the room.
"I am giving it to you because perhaps there is a small chance you could use it to reverse the effects," he said, looking as though he was trying to figure out a way how. "It hasn't been attempted before, at least not that I know of, this substance is extremely rare, but if you could brew a potion…"
"How, Malfoy? Brew what potion? It says there is no cure for this!" Harry said incredulously, but he couldn't help feeling slightly hopeful.
"You really don't know how Potions work at all, do you?" Malfoy sneered, his eyes meeting Harry's suddenly, his nervousness gone the moment he could insult Harry about something. "Clearly your little help book from sixth year didn't ingrain anything into you except how to slash people open."
Harry couldn't help the onslaught of shame he had always felt when remembering the whole Sectumsempra incident. Malfoy seemed to be moving on though, as he resumed his pacing. "When creating most antidotes, you need the poison as well, or parts of it. With Wolfsbane Potion, you need actual werewolf blood for example, and so on. There are maybe ways you could create a cure with the dust itself as base."
Harry didn't like that the situation was becoming more confusing by the minute. Also the longer he remained at the Manor, the more uneasy he felt. The walls and wood around him breathed and creaked, as if getting ready to close in on him any minute now.
"You said plans were already in motion, in your letter…what does that mean?"
Draco was getting more and more nervous, as if he had been trying to postpone the moment of truth for as long as possible. "They want to finish what they started years ago."
"You keep talking about this 'they'…why do I have a feeling it's supposed to be a 'we'? Malfoy, why not just tell me the whole story since you went to the trouble to bring me all the way here and offer me this," Harry said slowly, holding up the bottle with the golden dust.
Draco stared at Harry for a long time, his eyes having a hard yet pained look about them. "I never wanted to do it in the first place!" he blurted out suddenly. "Goyle came up with the idea. A year with the Carrows really turned that boy around. Naturally after the war he was angry. Crabbe died, which he still maintains is your fault, his father rotted away in prison, and didn't even leave him any money. You took the wizarding world by a storm with your rounding up of the Death Eaters. Did you never stop to think what that would do to their families?"
Harry was just staring at Malfoy, shaking his head in disbelief.
Draco continued. "A few people got together and they wanted revenge. But you were untouchable. After your miraculous defeat of the Dark Lord, people would not dare to try and take you out again, especially since you will forever now be the most protected wizard that has ever lived. And for some, the idea of taking your life was not nearly as satisfying anymore. The boy who lived, the boy who didn't fear death. We...they wanted to strike where it would hurt the most."
"And so you took my best friends…" Harry stopped to think about how shrewd that plan was. He also felt guilty, that the main reason for Hermione and Ron's suffering was actually him. It still pained Harry immensely to think about all the people that had been hurt and that had died because of him. Draco's shaking voice brought Harry back to reality.
"I backed out…I couldn't go through with it…"
Anger started to swell up in Harry's chest. "You backed out? How noble of you. In all these years you knew and never said anything!"
"Don't you get it, Potter? Your friends were safer where they were, hidden and unknowing!"
"So you want me to think you were actually doing us all a favour by not coming forward with the information you had? And why should I even believe that you backed out? Why should I believe this is not just another game? It seems to me like you're giving up the charade because the tables have turned. Ron and Hermione, with their magic stronger than yours will ever be, found their way home. You're just trying to get yourself out of this mess. You disgust me, you can't even be loyal to your own band of rats!"
"I wanted to stop them, but they threatened me and my family. At first they were just blackmailing me for money. Setting up a fake life for someone in the Muggle world doesn't come for free. Then they wanted more. Potter, they wouldn't let me live it down, having had escaped Azkaban and being able to keep my parents out as well. I had to. I had no choice."
"What about my family?"
Draco looked at Harry long and hard, his eyes boring into him. "You may think I'm vermin," he began, saying each word slowly, "you may think I'm a coward and a villain, and maybe you're right, but here's the truth…my family comes first, before anything. It certainly comes before your feelings. It will never change."
The two men eyed each other silently, breathing deep. Harry still hated Malfoy. He felt like he was back at Hogwarts again, hatred bubbling inside of him when looking into that pale pointed face. At the same time, however, he realized: it probably was never easy to be in Draco Malfoy's shoes.
"Why the sudden change of heart then?"
Before Draco had a chance to respond, a gruff but smooth voice interrupted him. "Yeah, Draco, why?"
Both Harry and Draco spun around and were immediately knocked backwards with both their wands flying out of reach. Goyle smiled at them, his disillusionment charm fading. He had a disturbing smile, vacant and devoid of any feeling except malice.
Harry struggled against the spell, but it was far too strong, he couldn't move an inch. He looked at Draco in anger, but noticed that the man looked genuinely shocked to see his old schoolmate there.
"How did you…"
"Let's say your girlfriend doesn't handle pain very well," Goyle sneered.
Whatever Harry was feeling was not as strong as Draco's sudden flare of rage. Somehow he must've broken through the magic, or perhaps Goyle let him, because he was eyeing him with amusement as Draco tried to lunge himself forward. Goyle didn't falter when Malfoy charged, though. Sure enough, somewhere from behind him, a silver rope shot towards Draco and enveloped him in its grip.
He tumbled to the floor with a loud thud, spitting out blood the next second.
Two more figures walked out of the shadows. Harry immediately recognized them as Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini. It felt like no time had passed at all, seeing Pansy leering at him from behind Goyle. Harry suddenly noticed she was holding her wand like a leash, and with a look of horror he spotted the two figures behind her. Jerking her wand forward, she brought forward Ron, bound by the same silvery ropes as Malfoy had been. Tied with him was also a girl Harry didn't recognize.
"Sorry, Harry," mumbled Ron with a swollen lip. "They got me."
"We figured you would try and help him after you refused to help us," said Pansy, now looking at Malfoy with a look of utmost disgust. "Funny how you always try to squirm your way out of everything. You think that just because you found yourself a nice goody girlfriend, you can turn your back on who you really are?" She laughed coldly and bent down to take a hold of Malfoy's chin. "We took care of her, though, didn't we, Blaise?"
Blaise Zabini merely nodded his head, the look on his face mirroring indifference bordering on worry. Harry wondered whether Blaise, much like Draco, had regretted his involvement in this revenge plan with the passage of years.
"I can't believe we ever followed you around, the way we did," spat Goyle, pushing Pansy out of the way and kicking Malfoy in the stomach. "Should've known you'd try to cash another favor with Potter, eh?"
"What do you expect to achieve by all of this?" asked Harry, trying to buy some more time as he felt the spell's strength weakening. His hands were clasped tightly behind his back, but he could reach into his back pocket with one hand. There he rummaged for something until he felt the brush of something cold and metallic against his skin – a coin.
"I think we've achieved enough already. You almost fell apart after your friends disappeared. That was enough for us, but for some reason things didn't go according to plan," Goyle said bitterly.
"Never mind, this is perhaps even better. Maybe some of my companions were a bit queasy about killing Granger and Weasley years ago, since that old witch made the use of the unforgivable curses detectable. But now we can finish it all, and provide the Ministry with a very believable suspect."
Goyle looked down at the still panting Malfoy and smiled cruelly. For the first time Harry really saw the naked agression behind the stupidity of Goyle's face, a joy at the mere thought of someone else's suffering.
"It would've been nice to have the whole golden trio together and done with, but it's fine; Granger is damaged goods anyway," he said as Pansy laughed beside him.
Harry felt the last bits of restraint fall away and he lunged for his wand lying on the floor a few feet away from him. He grabbed and raised it quickly, but Blaise's curse was quicker, and Harry fell unconscious to the floor next to Malfoy.
Hermione spent her time reading and wandering. Her head was full of diagrams about her wandless defensive magic research mixed with all the reading she has done on the Swooping Evil and how its substance affects memories.
She kept having nightmares that took her back to the Malfoy Manor. Waking up from those without Ron beside her was more difficult than she was prepared for. In addition, every time she woke up, the room around her was in a state of mess as if a small earthquake had passed through it.
Harry having put various protective enchantments around her, she felt quite safe walking and wandering the outside world. Walking endlessly was the only way for her to truly calm down.
There was a blessing in this kind of movement. Today she was looking for an address she's found on some of the letters sent to her in later years.
There was a freshness in the air after a brief rainfall in the morning. It was midday and since most people were away at their jobs, the neighbourhoods Hermione passed through were pleasantly quiet.
Passing rows and rows of neat little houses with their recycling bins out, Hermione turned a corner and headed into a tiny alleyway. It was dark and quite dirty with lots of rubbish lying about, but there were leaves and roses overgrowing from the neighbouring gardens into the alley as well, which gave it a rather charming look.
Hermione hardly noticed her surroundings or where she was walking. Her feet just followed a random path automatically.
She was mulling once again about how and why her wand (and magic) was not connecting with her. It was all this memory and dust business. Just like her brain, with things only half being there. Half-memories and half-feelings and infuriating half-knowledge. Not gone, but hidden, covered, like it was only a matter of wiping it clear.
Hermione stopped in her tracks and looked up. A frame of a house towered above her. She had reached the end of the street, but she could swear that she didn't notice it before. That in itself was odd because the house was so much stranger than the rest. It reminded her of buildings back in Diagon Alley. She checked the address and it was the correct one.
The state of it, however, was a lot like her dead parents' abandoned dentist's office. It was ruined and neglected. Maybe that was why Hermione hadn't noticed it before since all the colours were paled in the dim light.
She stepped inside without really meaning to. It was one of those magical pulls she had experienced from time to time. Once inside, she noticed that despite its falling apart look, there were still so many signs of a life well lived. All of a sudden, Hermione heard a rustling sound on the next floor.
"Hello?" she called, a slight tremor to her voice. There were shuffling footsteps. Her curiosity overpowered her worry and she hurried up the stairs, ignoring the ominous creaking of the steps. Just as she emerged on the second landing, a bright sunlight hit her face and she realized that a chunk of the roof had been caved in.
"Hey." Hermione stood still in the doorway and looked at a startled George, sitting in the middle of the demolished room. There was a desk and a chair hidden in a shadowy corner where the sunlight didn't reach, right next to a tall bookcase full of dusty and attractive volumes. George appeared to be reading one of them.
"Now this is a coincidence," Hermione mused awkwardly, not knowing what else to say.
Considering how difficult it had been for Ron to break through to George, it was needless to say that Hermione barely had a conversation with him ever since they met.
"It isn't really," he said with a grin and motioned around. "This used to be your house."
That took Hermione aback. She glanced at the piece of paper where the address was scribbled and took in a deep breath as she looked around what used to be her actual home.
"Your and Ron's house, to be exact," George added. He wasn't smiling but his voice was gentle. Of course by now he must've heard about Hermione's finding out and Ron's finding out and their falling out. Gulping, Hermione looked around more closely.
Now that George had told her, she thought she could see signs and traces of Ron everywhere. Her dream came back to her, the one with the ring, the one in which they kissed on an ordinary morning but still as if their lives had depended on it. Other scattered images flashed through her head. She could almost hear Ron's voice again, his tone narrow like it is when they bicker. She could also hear his laughter ring from every corner of the room as well. Another image settled in her brain and she cocked her head to the side as she stared at the bookcase made out of beautiful chestnut wood. She could see Ron building it for her, hammers and nails and no wand to prove to her he could work things without magic.
The line between imagination and ghost memories was impossibly thin. What was real and what was just a dream? Hermione didn't really have a way of knowing because the only person who could prove her right or wrong was just as clueless as she was. But maybe, just maybe, there was very little imagination to these visions and a lot more reality. Perhaps it was also a thing of believing.
Shaking her head and turning away from the bookcase, Hermione sat down next to George and glanced at the book he was reading. It was One Hundred Years of Solitude, one of her favourites. She smiled at George appreciatively and couldn't help rising her eyebrows at him.
"Don't mean to be rude, but something tells me you've never really been the bookish type."
"Someone had to take your place and become the insufferable bookworm of the family!" he exclaimed jokingly, closing the book and leaning back on his arms. "I guess you got me. I come here and sometimes I read your books. I was never much of a reader, you're right. There was very little time left for books with so many pranks to take care of. But after the war, I couldn't sleep properly for the longest time, and you've lent me some books to keep me up through the night. They make me feel kind of...peaceful?"
"Yeah they do, don't they?" Hermione hugged her knees and rested her chin on top. "So how come this house is still standing?"
"I put enchantments around it to keep it safe and undisturbed after you disappeared. Maybe a part of me hoped you would be found one day, and maybe I just needed something to hold on to. That's how I roll, clinging to crumbling buildings that still have some imprint of life of my dead brothers."
George smiled slightly at the look of sorrow on Hermione's face when she realized he was referring to the jokeshop. "I'm sorry, the books have really enhanced my poetic side. I just like to come here and think. It's a place where I can't possibly be found, and I need that sometimes. I know the place doesn't look too well right now, most of the good stuff, including the books, has protective disillusionment charms around it against the weather and so that no Muggles can nick them. It's weird, I know," he said and cast his eyes on his feet.
"I think it's nice," she managed to say after a while. Taking a look around, Hermione breathed in the fresh air mixed with decay. "Thank you, George. It means a lot to me, that you've kept it. It's like there is a place for me after all, makes me feel less like a guest. I'm sure it would mean a lot to Ron as well."
George smiled. "You don't feel outrageously shocked that you guys lived together?"
Hermione blushed slightly. "Not anymore, I guess. We were engaged after all. I know you probably heard that I kept the whole thing a secret from Ron after I've found out."
"Well, we all kept it a secret from you, too, so I don't think you should beat yourself up about it too much."
"I appreciate that. Still, I left him out of such an important truth simply because I was a coward. And now he probably hates me."
Hermione didn't know why she was pouring her heart out to George like this. She hardly knew him, technically. She could've had talked to Harry or Ginny. Maybe it was because she found him here and she was missing Ron, and he had been missing Ron for years now. Maybe only now was she ready to talk openly.
"Come on, Hermione, you must know that he doesn't. I get that you don't remember a lot of things about Ron, but based on what I heard, you must know him better than he probably knows himself."
Hermione smiled again despite herself. She was looking at George and taking in his presence. He seemed to be locked in an endless battle against the grief that still hung in his eyes.
"I don't mean to be insensitive, I guess my problems are far from the pain you must've experienced…but how do you go on?"
Sighing, George shrugged his shoulders and looked at the ground. "You do and you don't."
You do and you don't.
Hermione pondered this for a while as they sat in silence. Hermione eventually grabbed a book of her own and they just read together. Minutes or maybe hours later the silence was broken by a swooshing sound. Hermione gasped as a silvery misty horse galloped into the house.
"They have Ron. Please help, quick. They've taken Ron and they've taken Harry."
Ginny's voice faded into the stillness. A terrible shadow passed over George's features. Hermione felt as though her stomach plummeted to the floor. Standing up at once, George held out a hand for Hermione to take. He pulled her to stand up in one swift movement and they Disapparated on the spot.
Author's Note: Thank you all for reading so so much!