I Love(d) You (Once)

Chapter Thirty: How I Met Your Mother

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Pansy asked, when Hermione had called her for any advice on how to deal with Narcissa Malfoy. Pansy had insisted, demanded, Hermione come over to her place first before she headed over to visit Narcissa. Now, with so many beauty charms on her head, the tips of her fingertips crackled as Hermione ran through her hair strands. Clad in a full-length robe and heeled boots, Hermione supposed her outfit, makeup and styling were modern-day battle armour and war paint.

"Are you sure?" Pansy repeated. "Without consulting that special someone?"

Hermione nodded. She didn't know how long they would have access to all the Ministry files. "Yeah, I think it will be easier if I went by myself." Not to mention he is currently re-growing his right femur.

"I'm not going to stop you, but just… be safe. And if you're not out by half an hour, I'm telling Draco."

"I'll be fine. Her wand's taken away and we're not even going to be in the same room."

"Some words sting and hurt longer than any hex," Pansy reminded her. "If she finds any crack within you, she'll drive a sledgehammer through it with words. At least, she won't have anything to say about your appearance. You look perfect."

"Thank you, Pansy," she said and gave her a hug. She climbed into the fireplace, Floo-ing to outhouse of Nurmengard.

It was drizzling in Nurmengard. Fine droplets of water fell from the sky and streaked down Hermione's face as the wind swirled around her. She could have stepped into a setting of a gothic horror novel. The thin black ribbon that secured her robes fluttered across her sternum. The clouds swelled and swooned above her head. The shadows grew longer and as she entered the main building complex, it got colder. An irremovable malice hung across the eaves of the building. She shuddered at the thought of spending even an hour in here and wondered what it must've been like for Draco's mother.

The answer: Narcissa's time spent imprisoned casted an unflattering effect upon her. In her prison clothes, she looked like a peacock with its brilliant feathers plucked, with the last vestiges of aristocracy resting on the sharp slant of her nose and straight posture. The skin on her face looked was pulled taunt. As Narcissa sat down on her chair, she gave Hermione a stony glare.

Sad hours seemed long and she stared at Hermione on the other side of the glass pane. Here was karma at its finest. She had heard and knew from her inmates who loved to rub it in her face—her only son, for the better half of the decade was utterly besotted with a little Mudblood.

"Mrs Malfoy." Hesitation accented Hermione's words and she fought to maintain eye contact with Narcissa.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. Narcissa scowled at the errant thought popping up in her mind. Having a son obsessed with someone of lower-standing was bad enough. If this girl actually reciprocated his feelings…

"I need to ask you something personal." The young woman tugged at her hair, utterly forgetting the countless warnings Pansy had given her. Don't fiddle with your hair. It makes you look even more nervous than you are.

"I will never tell you anything."

"I will get straight to the point," Hermione continued, as there was no delicate way to put this. "Through several incidents… I have come across a memory of Draco's. An important one. You were in it. I would like to confirm the events on the night of Draco's initiation."

"And you want to know this why?"

Hermione pursed her lips. "I personally don't want to know. But it is important to Draco."

"Yet, you're the one here."

"He's currently occupied."

"As if he'd ever send you." Narcissa sneered and let out a shrill laugh. Hermione's eyes grew wide and she knew it was ridiculous to be hurt by someone you didn't care much for, but Narcissa's laugh burnt her by surprise like a mislaid hand on a boiling kettle. "Draco has a delicate disposition. He takes after me. Much more sensitive than most boys his age. If I told you the truth did do you think my darling son would have kept his sanity? Would it even make sense for me to tell you?"

"Usually no," Hermione agreed. "But he's gained a conscience and he craves for a piece of mind."

"The secret will be buried with my grave."

Hermione didn't know what she had expected. She reached for the bell, her fingers curling over the wooden handle. The light tinkering sound cut through the thick tension, and Narcissa smiled, knowing that she had not betrayed any secret to this… this…

"Thank you for your time," Hermione said and she stood from her seat. With one last look at Narcissa, she let the prison warden lead her out of the visiting booth.

"Could I please speak to the prison guard?" Hermione asked. The warden nodded and brought her through a myriad of well-lit corridors, each side with an uncountable number of steel doors leading into the prison cells.

The warden pulled out her wand and tapped the lock three times. The gears in the door cranked to life. The head guard was a fit and mean-looking woman. When Hermione introduced herself and offered her a handshake, she looked at her with a sort of disregard.

"Yes, Hermione Granger. I know you… the one who broke into Gringotts."

"Please," Hermione interjected quickly, trying to change the topic. "I will need some help with something, Mrs. McGahen." She handed in her Ministry-clearance. The guard's eyebrows shot up when she saw the inscription written on her pass.

Mrs. McGahen's expression soured when she read the limits (or therelackof) on the red-file clearance pass. The corner of her top lip curled upwards. "Please come with me. For security measures, even if you are… the Golden Girl, I must verify the authenticity of this pass."

Hermione shrugged and followed the lady. After several phone calls were made, the code on the pass verified three times, Mrs. McGahen directed a number of charms at the small token. The force of each spell threatened to snap, splinter, crack the token into smaller pieces, but it contrived to stay in one piece. Seemingly satisfied with the numerous checks done onto it, she then made Hermione drink a small potion and was made to wait half an hour—to counter potions and spells that might have made her shapeshift, or appear to be someone she was not.

Really, Hermione thought amused as she waited in the waiting cell, there is no one to blame but me. Their break-in into Gringotts had caused a bunch of wannabe copycat crimes and because of this, a plethora of security measures had to be put in place.

Exactly half an hour later, Mrs. McGahen appeared in the room. She sat down into the chair opposite Hermione. "Thank you for the wait. Now, what do you want?"

With such a permit in one's hand, the temptation to the power in an arbitrary manner was strong. The Ministry was trusting Hermione and Draco to use the pass only if it pertained to their assignment. But in the words of one of her favourite authors: the best way to rid temptation was to succumb to it. "I request under urgency, to obtain Narcissa's Malfoy's memory on the night of her husband's Lucius Malfoy's death. This will not be in any record… for security purposes," she said in a rush, hoping she sounded official and not exploitive.

Ms McGahen peered at the permit in Hermione's hand and re-read the words TOP SECRET INVESTIGATION on the top and gave another sigh. Orders were to be complied, no questions asked. "Under our process, the memory will be extracted in four days' time. No sooner."

Hermione swallowed and forced herself to nod. "Thank you."

The next day, Hermione took a on the seat beside Draco. "What have you got for me?"

"Something interesting to follow up," he said, pulling a file from the bedside table. "I checked the international customs records to track down Dr. Hwang's whereabouts. Then I confirmed it with tracing spells, just in case he did something sciene-cy to beat the system. Don't give me that glare; you said no moving, not no magic. I only passed out twice performing the spells. Anyway, he's checked out of Britain but hasn't checked in any country."

"He's out at sea or in the air? No, that's not right, magic barriers between the borders would pick it up," she said. "So where could it be?"

"He hasn't checked into any place and he's not anywhere in Britain," he said and was about to explain when she nodded. Her eyes shone bright as though their interactions were some substantial fuel for content. He grinned back because he knew he would have spent the last few minutes explaining to anybody else.

"He went somewhere with no jurisdiction."

Draco's eyes glinted. "A place which starts with A."

Hermione shot her hand in the air as though she were in class again. "Antarctica!"

"Azkaban, m'dear. We could make it a date and everything, you bring a blanket, I'll take care of the wine and cheese."

"You sure know how to treat a girl."

"Are you sure about this, I mean, I'm all for extra protection but…"

"Draco, you don't have to like Harry, he's one of the few people I trust who can cast a reliable corporeal Patronus on demand. Would you rather be Kissed or have Harry around for a while?"

"Sorry for not being light enough," grumbled Draco. Despite his change of heart and ways, he was still unable to cast even a flicker of silver mist from his wand (not from the lack of trying though!) "But what happened to this being TOP SECRET? Do you think the red colour of the file, the 74 pages of paperwork we had to sign was enough to impress onto you the secrecy of our investigation?

Hermione waved her hand. Despite her reputation, rules were never really her thing: she followed them only when it suited her. "I trust Harry with my life. Don't look at me like that. I trust him with your life and the whole Wizarding population okay?"

"I guess it would be safer to have two casters instead of one," he conceded. "It's ironic: for such an evil man to be running to Azkaban when there's nothing to stop the Aurors from picking him up from there."

"We can just tell Harry only what he needs to know. He's got a weapon capable of sending the wizarding community into chaos. Who knows what he can do with the Dementors," she sighed. Difficult matters still retained their head-pounding complexity. Draco and Hermione stood on Harry's doorstep, port-key for Azkaban leaving in fifteen minutes. It appeared the answer to man's salvation laid rest on one scarred-head again.

Harry stared dumbfounded at the two of them who in the middle of spring, dressed as if they were about to go skiing. "Hermione… Malfoy. Come inside?"

Draco groaned, hating himself for feeling his old school-boy pettiness rear its ugly head. Time's ticking. Adrian's missing, a mad man is on the loose, he thought. Hermione stepped inside Harry's house.

"We are actually working right now," he said, not wanting to seem like he was on a social call.

Harry nodded and he sat down before glancing at Hermione, looking more and more pale and nervous as they sat down and looked at him. She took a deep breath before saying, "We're on a rather delicate case and we need to your help…"

His eyes grew wide and he looked away. "I-I don't think I should."

"Really," Draco asked, not convinced by Harry's sudden loss of control in speech. "Look, Potter," Draco snapped, ignoring Hermione's glare. "People I care about—"

"Don't tell me anymore," said Harry, in complete panic and he covered his ears.

"Malfoy!" Hermione warned and she dug her fingernails into his arm.

"If he wasn't acting so darn suspicious I would stop," he countered and he glared at Harry again.

"What Malfoy means is," Hermione corrected in a rush. "We would like an extra helping hand. Would you be able to do it?"

Harry couldn't seem to sit still and he hated to hide things from his friend, and he had an idea who Draco and Hermione were looking for, but he couldn't tell them anything… out of the window, he could see the tall willowy shadow lurking beside the phone pole. He began to tap his fingers on the table. "What do you need protection from?"

"There's a dangerous person and we're going to a dangerous place," she started. When she saw there was no way Harry was going to say yes at this point, she added, "I—if you can't help us please don't tell anyone we've been here."

"This is definitely for one of P&P's blue file assignments, isn't it? Can't see why you would want me there."

Draco's face contorted into a stern frown. Hermione never relinquished her grip on his arm and nodded violently at Harry. Harry never stopped drumming his fingers on the table. Draco wondered if he caught the bad habit from Hermione too.

"Yeah that's right," Hermione said in a rush, she didn't dare look at Harry and kept her gaze trained on the dark-haired man's fingers as he flicked his them on the table twice while she spoke. "I don't know why I asked you."

"You'll be fine, trust me. Don't think there will be danger on your assignment."

Draco fought the urge to roll his eyes. "Yes, sure. Because we should just take your words for it."

Harry picked at the table cloth. "I have my own job. I'm not even supposed to be out right now. I have a family now. We should all just stick to what we're supposed to do."

Draco could not resist rolling his eyes at Harry's words. "That's fine, you don't need to come with us," Draco said and he stormed out of the Potter's home. "Fat lot of help he was," he said when Hermione caught up to him and he kicked a tree on the side of the road.

"He did everything he could, and more," Hermione said.

"Oh, stop it. I know you're best friends and all but he pretty much had a breakdown when he asked him to do a wee little favour—"

"No, I mean it," she said, holding up her hand. She cast a silence-charm around her as was their habit whenever they discussed cases in public. Then, because she wanted to, she leaned in close to whisper into Draco's ear. "Those finger taps; he wasn't having a mental breakdown."

"Well thank god that's cleared up!"

"He was sending a message to me," she said. "And if you weren't so bloody against Harry, you would have noticed too."

That stopped Draco. He had been too busy being annoyed with him to notice. "What did he say?"

"He tapped out 'A sf, H on ur sd' using the Prisoner's Code. He's telling us Adrian is safe and Hwang is on our side!"

Draco snorted. "Yeah, that's what it must be. Can you even hear yourself? If Harry—and that means the Ministry—knows where Dr Hwang is, why were we assigned to hunt him down?"

It was the sneer on his face that made her snap. "Oh yeah? Why shouldn't we assume we got our mission wrong in the first place!"

Hermione and Draco looked dumbly at each other. Time stopped and they stood, staring at each other in horror. Then Hermione said something that would have docked a thousand house points back in their Hogwarts years. "Oh, oh oh," she said, still wide-eyed. "What if you're right? Oh god, just because he was profiled to be the number one suspect. The wards on his house only activated in the presence of Dark Magic, he was guarding his house against evil people," she said in a rush. "And he's gone to Azkaban, for Merlin's sake! It's because dark wizards can't cast Patronuses!"

"There's also the timing, it's all wrong," Draco was forced to admit. "It took the Ministry a full day and the use of emergency powers to get P&P Ministry-approved. This is case is dealing with a national-emergency. If they were in such a rush, wouldn't it have made sense to deploy a team of Aurors to take this case?"

"Not unless Kingsley can't trust the people within the Ministry… and someone is watching the Aurors…" Hermione's eyes widened. "I—I—think something's going on in the Ministry, I think someone within the Ministry is the threat…"

The port-key flashed, signalling it was time to leave. "The brief, it didn't say, 'recover' or 'bring back', as one might expect from the words of this report if we were to hunt Dr. Hwang down," she said. "I don't think they want us to find any of the scientists, they want us to 'find out'—smoke out the rat out. The Ministry is asking us to catch the person responsible. We have to talk to go to Azkaban, find him and learn the truth."

Draco had the (mis)fortune to be acquainted with many people who had once been held in Azkaban, but they never talked much about their times there but say it was cold and dark. For all the scheming and lying they did, this was completely true. The winds which blew across the prison wasteland was a dry, marrow-sucking kind of cold and time seemed to run at a different rate here, making a minute seem like an hour, and an hour seem like a day. He had probably been there for about a minute but an ageing ache already settled over Draco's bones.

"We have to find Dr Hwang before the port-key reactivates in half an hour," she said. "It's the only way we can get the information and figure out who is good." How many Dementors were left on the island? What if I can't cast a corporeal Patronus in time? With a full spell, she knew she could keep them safe, but what if she couldn't? Bundled up in her down-jacket, she plodded beside him, her fluffy boots and sent rocks skidding down the steep slope. "If he's in Britain I am going to wring his neck," she said, gasping for breath as their thighs burned from the steep climb.

"We'll know once we get to the top of this hill," he replied. The two of them were making their way to the highest point of Azkaban. Their plan was dangerous and stupid: they would make their way to middle of the island for so they could be spotted by the Dementors... and fight them off to prove they were on the Light side. Ingenious.

"A perfect dating spot, don't you think? No one is in sight."

"If I am to be Kissed by anyone, I rather it be you than the Dementors," said Hermione and she tightened grip on her wand.

And then a murder of Dementors flew towards them.

They were a black shroud advancing. Hermione raised her wand and the ice-cold began to grip the extremities of her body—her fingers grew weak and her hand began to shake. They were twenty feet away as the darkness swarmed over, encircling them. Draco had turned completely white and froze stiff and the only sign of him of his being alive was the fact he was crushing her hand. "Think of something happy," she chanted to herself, and raised her wand. She closed her eyes, trying to fill her mind with a warm memory, pushing down her hysteria—

He stared directly at them, his body rigid with fear. Draco had never been this close to the Dementors; he'd always been too afraid and kept well away from them. The black masses, swayed like tattered cloaks in the wind. Icy fractals spread across his body and he shook uncontrollably.

"I can't concentrate," Hermione whispered, tears froze in the corner of her eyes. "It's like there's this shivering shroud over me.…"

Draco squeezed her hand tighter and pressed close to her as the Dementors came swooped at them like vultures, having closed the distance between them. They had yet to attack, but it was a matter of time, she needed to cast the Patronus now, or their chances of surviving…

One dived in front of Draco, leaving only inches between their faces. When he saw its face, he understood what the Dementors were. He supposed a person familiar with the Dark Arts could gain understanding if they stood close to one. They were a manifestation of pain and suffering people brought to life by deep-rooted dark forces. Draco Malfoy, familiar with magic and all things dark, could feel the source of its power in its presence. Dark Magic on principle always brought on suffering. Oh, and how he understood that pain. He was well-versed and a veteran in the awful, sick feeling they experienced now, one that spread across the mind. It felt like an infectious disease that plagued the senses until it drove him to the brink of insanity.

"They're terrible," Hermione whispered. "W-We shouldn't have come, I can't do it!"

What Dementors drove people to feel the effects of Dark Magic: depression, a cocktail consisting of loneliness laced with fear and hate. Hermione pushed herself close to him, cowering at the sight of them.

The Dementor made you think you were the only one in the world. The feeling of having the broken pieces of your soul glued together just to have them torn apart again. He knew this feeling well during his time spent with Voldemort and his family and even after the war, its after-effects lingered and made him so nauseous he would throw up. Facing the Dementor was like being dumped right back to that time six years ago.

He had never thought he would be thankful for the pain, but now he was… because he knew exactly how to deal with it. If he overcame the attacks of the caster of such Dark Magics—his family, who were supposed love and protect him—which had sent him to wallow in pits of despair, anyone or anything who dared to put him in something equally fatalistic had no chance of winning.

"Expecto Patronum," he whispered. He knew exactly how to feel when he said the words. He knew how to deal with this pain.

It was transient.

But hope?

One didn't stop hoping because things don't work out. Hope of love: hope that one day in a world where everyone is too busy, too indifferent, too invested in everything else—in such a world, someone would reciprocate what you offered. Hope to be with someone that you loved, who would live forever in your eyes. Draco turned his head and press his forehead against Hermione's hair, for she was the woman he had always hoped for and the reason why he could perform this spell, in his way.

A faint wisp light shot from his wand. That was enough to keep the Dementors at bay for now. As they hissed and screeched, Hermione in Draco's embrace, whispered the spell once again. From her wand, a blinding light engulfed the pair. The Dementors jerked away as if they had been burnt and they tried to attack, diving in, once, twice, three times before they gave up and flew away.

She kept up the shield for as long as she could. Finally, the silver light from her wand spluttered twice before it went out completely. Draco fell onto his knees in relief.

Hermione trailed off as she sank onto the floor with him. "How did you manage it that little bit?"

No words could ever suffice for what he had truly felt when he cast the charm so instead, he shook his head and kissed her on the lips and offered her his best explanation.

"You."