A flash of green whizzed past Draco's ear, and the blonde swore loudly as he shot a stunner into the bushes to his left. "Watch behind!" he called out to Luna who was feverishly battling an unmasked, unknown Death Eater. She heard Draco's warning just in time, throwing up a shield behind her as a green flash from the bushes nearly collided with her. Instead, the light ricocheted off her spell and hit a nearby tree, causing the bark to sizzle and crumble into fine black ash. Luna met Draco's eyes for a moment, nodded her thanks, and then turned back to her winded opponent.
Draco swiveled his head, watching the battle around him unfold. Harry was taking on two Death Eaters simultaneously, hitting them with strange purple charms that Draco had never seen before, while Ron and Neville were working together to immobilize and bind a group of five Death Eaters. At least a half-dozen masked and unmasked men and women littered the ground, none of them dead or physically harmed. However, one Death Eater was conspicuously missing; Draco had been searching frantically for a head of platinum blonde hair, but had so far been entirely unsuccessful.
Determined, Draco dashed through the castle main doors and into what he knew was the main hallway. Dusty tapestries depicting medieval wizarding battles hung all around him, hiding the crumbling walls with their faded and worn threads. To his right, an empty doorframe lead to the dungeons, to his left a worn door would take him to the side gardens. About to turn into the dungeon hallway, Draco paused. Something's wrong, he thought, his mind swirling in a maelstrom of his own creation. She's not down here.
Against common sense, Draco whirled around and headed towards the side garden, pushing through the door and crashing through the overgrown shrubs to get to where he knew the path was. Emerging from the trees, what Draco saw stopped him in his tracks; Hermione, kneeling on the ground, her hair held in a fist by Lucius Malfoy whose face was inches away from hers. When the witch tilted her head to look at Draco, he could barely repress a gasp at her battered face and bloody clothes. However, the expression on her face gave him pause. Contrary to what one would expect, it wasn't an expression of defeat – rather, through her split lip, black eye, labored breathing, and bloody forehead, Hermione looked defiant, confident, and hopeful. Draco felt a stirring of pride in his chest, knowing that she was so strong. Keep it up Hermione, he thought, willing her to hear his words. Just a bit longer.
As Draco watched, Lucius Malfoy finally noticed his son's presence. Chuckling darkly, the older Malfoy pulled Hermione upright by her neck and pointed his wand at the ugly gash on her forehead. Her face a mask, Hermione's brown eyes stared meaningfully into Draco's. Emotions flickered like comets behind her irises, so quickly that Draco couldn't place any of them.
"Why darling Draco," Lucius hissed, pushing his wand lightly into Hermione's cut, "Come to pay your father a visit? How kind."
Draco's eyes narrowed and he pressed his lips tightly together. His wand felt heavy in his fingertips, the wood smooth and powerful. You could do it, his mind whispered. Just cast a spell Draco, a simple immobulus. But something was stopping him, some strange force within his chest was pressing on his heart, constricting it.
I can't!
But you have to. If not now, eventually. Who else can stop him and save Hermione?
Draco saw something flicker across Hermione's face; doubt? Fear? C'mon Draco, just cast a bloody expelliarmus!
But you know it would go beyond that, don't you? One spell becomes two, two becomes three, three becomes a duel, and in a duel with Lucius Malfoy there's only ever one wizard who walks out alive….it's never not been him, so far.
Jolting Draco out of his own thoughts, Lucius continued his one-sided conversation. "Unfortunately, we were just leaving."
No.
"Lovely to see you, son. Drop by again soon."
NO! DO SOMETHING DRACO!
"Actually, on second thought, there's no need."
A sudden surge of motion rushing to Draco's fingertips, the blonde cast a silent immobulus, sending the streak of blue light towards where his father stood. Meeting Hermione's eyes, however, he knew it was too late; brown met blue, and the only emotion that Draco saw was pain. Obviously she was more injured than Draco could see, and her wounds were draining her. She's so strong, he thought, watching his spell fill the space between them as if in slow motion.
Draco swore that he could still see her eyes after she'd disappeared, his spell crashing into the hedge behind where Lucius had stood moments before. The loud 'crack' of apparition filled the air seconds after the couple had disappeared, but Draco was still left staring at where Hermione had been just instants before.
He could've sworn that the pain he felt split his chest was the feeling of his heart breaking as he watched her slip away from him again.
Frozen, an expression of shock and dismay plastered to his face, Draco was still holding his wand out in midair when Ron, Harry, Neville, and Luna all arrived with their wands drawn. "Lucius?" Ron asked, panting, his eyes flickering around.
Draco managed to move, regaining his steely, emotionless façade. Compartmentalizing his emotions into a spiritual box to deal with later, the blonde turned to face his equally battered and exhausted school mates. He nodded curtly at Ron, moving towards where Lucius had stood, then grimacing at the blood that covered the area of grass. "Hermione's wounded," Draco said shortly, rubbing a bloody blade of grass between his fingertips. "Badly, I believe. It's imperative that we locate them again, soon."
Neville sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "He could be anywhere, Draco," Neville said, closing his eyes. "Now that he knows we're looking for him he'll follow no logical pattern."
"That's not good enough," Draco said coolly, matter-of-factly, pushing down the clawing beast of pain in his chest that wanted to yell at the stupid, stupid people standing in front of him. Undoing the sides of his vest to allow for easier breathing, Draco stalked past the speechless group and back into the house. Walking down the damp hallway of the dungeon, Draco cast a strong lumos and started jogging down the oppressively dark hall.
Reaching a door that remained slightly open, Draco closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He kicked the door open with his foot, and held back a strangled half-sob at what he saw; a disgusting amount of blood covered one specific corner of the pitch-black cell, and bloody boot prints led from that corner out into the hall. A burning red rage filled Draco's soul, and his frustration exploded out of him in a savage yell.
When the red mist had cleared from his sight, Draco realized that he'd been pounding his hand against the side of the cell, turning his palm into a shredded red mess. Barely even feeling the pain, Draco almost reached up to use his scarf as a bandage. He stopped just in time, holding his bloody hand as far away from Hermione's scarf as possible. Casting a quick healing charm, Draco dropped his arm to his side. Refusing to let the tears and the anger take him, Draco pulled Hermione's scarf over his nose and breathed deeply. He counted to ten, and when he opened his eyes they were dull, detached, the pain pushed into some far corner of his mind to deal with later.
How did you get out of here, Hermione? he wondered, looking around the terrifying room, feeling the darkness she must have felt pressing in on her.
Crouching down in the non-bloody corner, Draco's eyes immediately fell upon the thick, charmed door. After enduring countless lectures from his father about medieval defenses and Malfoy curses, Draco knew that this door was laced with anti-escape charms, blinding curses, burning curses, torture curses, and any other nasty form of pain-inflicting curse that one could imagine. Any genuine attempt to escape would trigger some curse or other, usually rendering the prisoner incapable of coherent thought let alone motion or escape.
Draco shuddered and crossed the small room to examine the door and lock, amazed that Hermione had managed to avoid triggering any sort of spell. What he saw when he got to the lock made his heart soar; there, illuminated by his dull lumos charm, was a blob of misshapen silver clustered around a clear gemstone. "Her key!" Draco whispered energetically, summoning the metal out of the lock to avoid touching the deadly door. The silver pulsed lightly when it felt the hand of its creator, before once more become a misshapen lump of metal. Lightly brushing his fingertip overtop of the half-hidden gem, Draco smiled faintly. The clear jewel remained perfectly transparent, showing clearly the twisted silver that surrounded it on all sides. The protection charm did its job, he thought, his heart twisting.
This particular key was special because Draco had charmed it specially to activate for someone who needed to escape; not just physically, but also from the world around them. Remembering his own surprise at Hermione Granger, Golden Girl, receiving the protection-key, Draco shook his head. All it took was a few weeks to know that she really did crave escape, but it wasn't so much escape from a prison – it was escape from society, and the pressures and expectations that the world put on her.
But she had to actually use it to escape, Draco thought bitterly, curling his hand around the wrecked metal, relishing the feeling of it digging into his skin. He was jarred out of his thoughts by a far-away voice calling out his name. "Coming!" he shouted up the hallway, looking around Hermione's prison one last time before returning to the world of hollow light.
The portkey that Luna used brought the battle-weary warriors directly to the Great Hall, bypassing Hogwarts' barriers and wards easily. No wonder Lucius could get onto the grounds, Draco thought angrily, feeling the metal of Hermione's key still pushing into the palm of his hand. Our wards must be littered with apparition and portkey seams.
"Oi, do you always leave a transport seam open?"
It seemed that Ron had just had the same thought that had occurred to Draco, and the redhead was intently questioning the confused-looking Professor Flitwick. "Well, yes – no. Yes." He was obviously flustered. "Mister Weasley, did you succeed in locating Miss Granger?!"
"Yes," Ron said shortly, "but Malfoy apparated away with her before Malfoy could do anything."
All eyes in the room turned to look at Draco, each face laced with suspicion, anger, or confusion. Malfoy felt like screaming, but instead he just narrowed his eyes. "If you'll excuse me everyone," he said coolly, controlling his tone carefully, "I'd like to go upstairs and clean up. I'll be down shortly to discuss the strategy for our next rescue."
Not even bothering to stay and hear the group's answer, Draco turned on his heel and walked quickly out of the hall. The emotions that Draco had bottled up so expertly were spilling over, bubbling and hissing until his vision was blurred with tears and his chest was trembling with the sobs that he was suppressing. Images of Hermione curled in dark corners of cells, under Lucius Malfoy's polished boot heels, crying, hurt, swam across his mind until Draco couldn't stand it anymore.
Sprinting up the final few staircases to the eighth-year dorm, Draco barely managed to fumble the door to his room open before sitting down on the bed and putting his head in his hands. "She's fine, Draco, she's strong," he ground out, not believing a word that he said. "Hermione will be fine. You saw her."
Yes, you saw her. And you did nothing. You saw their faces in the Great Hall, no one thinks you even tried, coward!
"I couldn't do anything! She was right in front of him, was I supposed to hit her too?"
You were supposed to at least take the chance, Malfoy.
"Don't call me that."
It's your name, isn't it?
"Yes, but it's his name too."
In that moment, Draco felt as if his blood was traitorous, poisonous, pulsing through his veins and eating away at his cells and tissues like a growing darkness. It was breaking down his body, soul, and identity until the only thing left would be his name, and that was not how he wanted to be remembered. It was a name he shared with an evil, and no matter how hard he tried to break away from that evil it would always be branded into his skin just as surely as the Dark Mark was – even more permanently, in fact. The Dark Mark he could cover up with scars, but his own blood was undeniably linked to his body forever.
His hand shaking, Draco reached under his mattress and pulled out a single, silver, muggle razor blade. Cleaned obsessively and sharpened regularly, it was beautiful and deadly in the dim lighting of Draco's room. Placing the instrument tentatively down on his side table, Draco pulled off his vest and shirt in one fluid motion, the laces on his battle gear already undone. He shucked off his boots as well, careful not to disturb the knives in the hidden pouches. Finally, Draco unwrapped Hermione's scarf from his neck and used a charm to rest it on the chair beside his bed. Not able to actually look at the scarf, Draco one again picked up the razor.
As if on autopilot, Draco placed the razor horizontal to his wrist in the middle of the almost scarred-beyond-recognition Dark Mark, just over where the skull's mouth opened to reveal the snake. He could feel the relief, just moments away, his blood spilling over his skin and relieving the pressure that was constantly building up inside of him, taking his traitorous blood and getting rid of at least some of it for a small while. The cool of the razor was welcome against his hot skin, almost like a kiss.
It was the thought of kisses that caused Draco to open his eyes, his gaze immediately settling on the scarf over the back of his chair. Kisses, he thought slowly. Real kisses.
Instead of the feeling of metal on his forearm, Draco could immediately feel the warm, light, feathery feel of Hermione's lip, the fluttering feeling at his elbow indicating that her eyelashes were moving slightly. With his eyes closed, Draco felt the kisses move up his arm until the warmth reached his own lips and he could feel Hermione's cheek against his. Her lips were like small patches of fresh air, or cool relief against his skin. "Draco," she breathed, even her breath feeling cool and merciful. "Don't. Please."
Letting out a harsh sob, Draco raised the razor in front of his face, his eyes locking on the offensive yet tempting metal. With a determination he had rarely felt before, Draco flung the razor into the rubbish bin, hearing the metal echo off metal. "Hermione, I need you," he whispered, running his fingers through his hair and wiping away tears that had leaked out the corner of his eyes. "You're my second chance….I don't want to make a fresh start without you. I can't."
Taking a deep, ragged breath, Draco sat up. Throwing on a loose t-shirt and Hermione's scarf, he left the room and headed towards the Headmistress' office where he was certain the students would be discussing strategy. "I'm going to get you back Hermione," Draco said softly, twirling a scarf tassel between his fingertips. "You're going to get home safely. I promise."
A/N: Ta-da! Next chapter! Before December, as promised! :) Ok, so the next one should be up before December 8th, but reviews might encourage me to work faster (hint hint ;-) ). So please R&R!
Also, thanks to Honoria Granger for pointing out my error about 'greaves' in the last chapter - I actually should have used the word 'vambrace', and I apologise for any confusion.