A/N: I'm sorry for all of the mistakes in the last chapter… I was upset and having one of those days where I wonder why I even write… But anyways I went back and fixed some of them. This is the Longest chapter by far :P lol Hope you enjoy it.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter… or anything to do with it… if I did I wouldn't be writing fan fiction I would be shopping in the worlds largest mall…. Lol I do However own Mira-Bella Brianne and Amethyst Holloway-Riddle… and the plot of this story… : )
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Chapter twenty eight: When Death Comes a Knocking…
"Sir," The memory Tom Riddle said, "I was wondering what you knew about… about Horcruxes?"
Slughorn watched the boy for a few moments before speaking, he apparently wasn't sure how to answer this question. "Ah, Is this an assignment for Defense Against The Dark Arts?" He asked knowing that Professor Merrythought would never assign anything on Horcruxes.
"No, sir," Tom said, "I came across the term while reading and I didn't fully understand it."
"No, well I doubt you would ever find a book here at Hogwarts that would be Dark enough to tell you." Slughorn said looking at the hour glass on his desk. "Tom, a Horcrux is a name given to an object that is used to conceal part of ones soul." He said with out hesitation.
"I don't quite understand how that works though, Sir." Tom said
"Well you split your soul ,you see," said Slughorn, "and then you hide an object and hide it away from your body. That way if you are attacked or even destroyed, your soul remains earthbound, alive and undamaged." Slughorn saw the funny look in Tom's eye and mistook it as the boy being appalled by the though. "Very few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable."
"How do you split your soul?"
"Well…" Slughorn said becoming very uncomfortable with this particular conversation. Hermione looked over at her best friend and sister with wide eyes. It was all Slughorn's fault. "By an act of pure evil." He finally said, "It takes a lot to split the soul, it is a very un natural thing." Slughorn continued on with what he was saying and they watched as Tom Riddle asked more questions.
Then Tom did the un thinkable and asked if seven would be to many. This question threw Slughorn into a frenzy. 'Why would anyone want to kill one person let alone seven.', they all thought, but the answer was right in front of them. Power, power was the answer, and that is all Tom Riddle had ever wanted.
They caught one last glace of Tom Riddles face as he turned to leave. His expression could only be described as Power hungry, evil and cruel happiness of knowledge. They were looking into the face of evil.
They were all thrown from the memory and laded back in Dumbledore's office. They had expected it to be bad but they had never thought that they would whiteness a teacher giving that much information to a student.
"I have been waiting to get that particular piece of information for years now." Dumbledore said looking at the three of them, "It confirms my theory, I believe that he succeeded in making all seven Horcruxes, maybe more."
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Hermione couldn't believe what she had just seen and heard. It was so horrible and cruel. He had everyone wrapped around his finger and none of them had noticed anything. She hated how her father had fooled everyone, her mother included, it was a nightmare.
She wanted nothing more than to crawl up in her bed and cry, she had known that her father was a bad man. It wasn't like she thought he was innocent of all crimes, because she didn't. She had just never realized that he was never the good person her mother always told her about. Amethyst had said that he loved her and that she loved him, but was he capable of loving another human being. A human being that was in his opinion lower than him.
She stopped when she remembered how Ron had told her back in their forth year that Amethyst had been the reason Voldemort hated Muggleborns. What had her mother done? Was it leaving him that sparked the hatred toward her kind? That was something she was going to have to figure out, maybe her father wasn't a lost cause. But how insane does that one sound.
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"Harry, you should go." Hermione told him as they read the letter Hagrid had sent them. His long time pet Acromantula, Aragog, had died this morning.
"Hermione, It is a spider and he wants to hold a funeral for it." Harry said not sure if he wanted to go to this funeral. "If I go, you go." He said looking at his two best friends.
"Umm, I think Hagrid would understand if I didn't come, I'm terrified of the thing." Ron said shuddering when he thought of the giant spider that had tried to feed him to its young.
"And I never knew Aragog, Harry." Hermione said truthfully, she had been in the hospital wing frozen in place.
"Fine, I will go." He said handing the letter to Hermione and walking towards the portrait hole.
"Thank you Harry, He will really appreciate it." Hermione said as the portrait swung shut and Harry disappeared.
"So tell me again ,Ron, Why do you have Harry's map?" She asked looking back to Ron who was sitting across from Ginny who was looking through Harry's potions book.
"I'm keeping an eye on Malfoy." He grumbled angrily. He was still under the impression that Malfoy gave the poisoned bottle of wine to Slughorn, but Malfoy hadn't known about that. It had been who ever gave Katie the necklace.
"Ron, maybe you should let it go. I mean you have no proof that it was him." Ginny said looking up from the book.
"I don't need proof." Ron said turning the folded surface of the map and then he stopped. Ginny was the first to see the look in his eye that set everything into motion.
"It's time for some payback." He said throwing the map on the ground before dashing out of the room with his wand drawn. Ginny dropped the potions book and picked it up and her eyes grew wide.
"Draco." She said looking up at Hermione who turned and ran as fast as she could out of the common room. She heard Ginny's footsteps above her. Hermione picked up pace but didn't know where Ron had gone. "MIONE, MYRTLE! GO TO MYRTLE'S HAUNT!" Ginny screamed and Hermione ran back up a flight of stairs so that she was in the right corridor.
As she neared Moaning Myrtle's bathroom she heard Ron shout Sectumsempra. She felt the tears well up in her eyes as she ran through the open doors Ginny close behind her. "GINNY GO GET A TEACHER!" She yelled as she ran over to Draco and fell onto the wet ground.
"Mione I didn't know it would do that." Ron said and that earned him a yelling at from moaning Myrtle.
"Draco," Hermione said placing her hand where he was bleeding the most and she heard him groan. "Draco, hold on okay. Ginny is going to get help, just hang on." She said as Snape and Ginny ran into the bathroom. Ginny screamed when she saw all of the blood that was mixed in with the water.
This was Hermione's worst nightmare and she knew she had tears streaming from her eyes. How could he have done this to Draco, even if he did hate him. His skin was so much paler than it usually was and his body was limp giving him the illusion of being dead. Seeing him like this made her hurt for him. Snape had his wand out and was muttering the spell in reverse and the blood slowly left the water and went back into his veins.
"Mione, why are you crying?" Ron asked a little shakily, he was going to be in so much trouble.
"Because, even though we hate him," She lied, "I still care, he is another human being Ronald." She said.
"Miss Weasley, Miss Holloway, could you help Draco up to the Hospital and wait their with him until I get there. You are to tell Madam Pomfry what has happened." He ordered " I will be there as soon as I have taken care of this buffoon." He glared at Ron.
"Yes professor." Both girls said and walked over to Draco. Hermione was the first to reach him and she grabbed a hold of his hand and tried to lift him up.
"Drake, Me and Gin are taking you to the Hospital wing, okay. You're going to be fine." Hermione said once they got him on his feet but honestly she had no clue if he would be okay or not.
"Hermione…" He mumbled and she felt fresh tears come to her eyes.
"I'm right here." She said squeezing his hand. Ron noticed how torn up she was over this but he didn't understand it. He suspected absolutely nothing that was even remotely close to the truth.
Surprisingly they didn't encounter other people as the supported him all the way to the hospital wing. They didn't know what they would have said if they had. When they actually got to the hospital they ran into Blaise, Taylor and Cherokee.
"OH MY MOLDYSHORTS!" Taylor shouted "What happened?" She asked as she helped support the slightly bleeding boy.
"Ron happened." Hermione said and her voice sound think and upset. She knew she would start crying any moment now.
"Oh Mione, I'm sure Draco will be okay." Taylor said once they got him onto a hospital bed. Madam Pomfry came running out of her office when she saw him.
"What happened to him?" she asked as she unbuttoned his shirt so that she could see the scars.
"He got hit with a curse called Sectumsempra. He lost a lot of blood." Ginny said seeing as Hermione was a white as a sheet. She was still living in her worst nightmare.
"Oh, this is going to require some dittany." The woman said and then summoned a little brown bottle and some little bits of cloth. "Who did this to him, this appears to be very dark magic." The woman sound appalled as she rubbed a little bit of dittany over the area of the scar, "Can one of you help me?" She asked clearly afraid that she wasn't going to be able to stop scarring.
Hermione stepped forward and put some of the dittany onto a little piece of cloth and started rubbing it over the other scar.
"Ron Weasley did it." Ginny said and she too decided to help with the dittany.
"Ron Weasley?" The woman sounded genuinely shocked. She obviously hadn't expected that.
"Is. Is he going to be okay?" Hermione asked when she finally gained the strength to talk again. She crossed her fingers and prayed that she would wake up from her nightmare. 'Oh Merlin' she thought to herself in terror. 'Don't let this turn into Romeo and Juliete. I cant lose him.' she wanted to scream.
"Yes, he is going to be fine. He will have to stay here for a few days but he will be fine." The woman said as she bandaged him up.
"Oh Professor Snape." The nurse said seeing the Slytherin head of house. "I wont have to come find you now."
"I was the first teacher on scene so you wouldn't have had to come find me." He said a little to nicely, seeing as it was Snape and all.
"Is Mr. Malfoy going to recover, his mother would simply kill me if he doesn't." Snape said looking at the boy whom madam Pomfry was giving a pain potion.
"Yes he will be fine, his scars should heal up nicely." She said smiling. "A few minuets later and he would have had horrible scaring, though he will have the scars on his abdomen for the rest of his life." She said.
"Well at least he will be okay, Narcissa and his Fiancée would have been devastated." Snape said, she knew that he knew, he had in McGonagall's office that one day.
"He's engaged?" The woman was shocked, "They sure are marrying young." She looked at the boy and then at everyone else "You should all leave, he needs his rest you all can visit him again tomorrow. Off you go."
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Hermione snuck up to the hospital wing every night for the next week. All she wanted was to be with him, she felt so lost with out him. She would lay in his bed next to him for hours at a time and no one would ever notice. He still hadn't woken up and they had stopped giving him the sleeping potions. They had told Blaise the day before that he could go when he woke up.
This time she fell asleep next to him. She hadn't really slept in the last week. She dreamed that he was awake and that they were already married and the war was over. She smiled in her sleep, she was so at peace. It wasn't until she felt someone's arms around her that she woke up and nearly jumped out of the bed.
"Kind of skittish aren't you?" Draco said from next to her.
"Draco, you're awake!" She said loudly. She was glad that she had placed a silencing charm on Madam Pomfry's office.
"Very observant of you." He said. He kissed her forehead and she buried her head in his chest. She felt so safe and whole while he held her in his arms.
"I missed you so much." She said closing her eyes. "I was beginning to think that you were never going to wake up."
"Well, I'm up now. Though for a while I though Weaslebee had killed me." he shook his head. "Where in the name of Merlin did he learn that spell?" Draco asked in confusion.
"Harry's potions book, Harry got a book from the supply closet on the first day that had all sorts of stuff written in it." She explained. "Ron picked up on a few things out of it."
"Should have figured it was Potter's fault." Draco joked with her and earned a punch in the shoulder.
"It was not Harry's fault Drake." She looked up into his eyes. "If it were it would be Harry I am mad at. Ron just had Harry's potions book and well his map as well." Hermione said.
"Of course he did. He had to go and make Harry apart of his crime." Draco said still joking. This time Hermione didn't punch him she just laughed. I was the first time she had laughed in a week, not that he knew that.
"I guess in a way, but it wasn't Harry's fault." She said still laughing. Suddenly she stopped laughing when she saw the light in Madam Pomfry's office turn on and she looked at the clock it was six a.m. Hermione jumped off of his bed and shot him an apologetic look and she ran out of the Hospital wing.
She sat down on a bench that was just outside of the hospital, she was going to wait for Draco to come out. Finally at about six thirty he came out of the hospital wing and walked over to her.
"Hey, Mione." he said pulling her up from her spot on the bench and kissing her. "Thanks for waiting on me." he smiled at her.
"You know that if anyone walks by they will see us, and then we will have only a million questions to answer." She said thinking about how his hands were on her waist and hers were around his neck.
"I think I'm willing to risk that." He said not moving in any way. "I mean yeah the questions would be difficult but you are going to be my wife in a couple of months."
"Draco, your father would kill you and you wont be doing anybody any good if you are six feet below the surface of the earth." She said in the most serious voice that she could. She knew her words were the truth and that his father would kill him in a heart beat.
"Damn, I keep forgetting about him." Draco said and he looked pained. "You know I'm not sure who is worse; My father, Aunt Bella or Voldemort."
"I think that they are all equally horrible." She smiled up at him and before she could say anything else they heard someone walking in their direction and they went their separate ways.
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"I told her it was a Hungarian Horntail," Hermione heard Ginny say while they all sat alone in the common room a few days later. "Much more macho than a hippogriff." They all began laughing. I was so sad that with all the crap going on in the world, all Romilda Vane cared about was if Harry had a tattoo on his chest.
"And what did you tell her Ron's got?" Hermione asked as she smiled. Looking into the fire gave her ideas.
"A Pygmy Puff." Ginny said cheerfully.
"You didn't?" Ron shouted in anger. The girls had been finding every excuse to make Ron miserable, they hadn't forgiven him. Ginny and Harry had even told him that they were dating.
"I did." She was still smiling because she most definitely wasn't lying.
"Now I'm never going to live that one down Ginny!" He shouted and stormed up to the boys dormitory.
"Harry," Jimmy Peaks said walking into the common room with a scroll, "I was told to bring this to you." the boy said handing it to Harry who immediately opened it. He stood up quickly and said bye to the others and left the room.
"That was odd." Ginny said a few minuets later and looked at Hermione who had gone pale. The girl was looking at the book in her lap and her jaw hung open in terror the word on the page ringing through her mind like some one had shouted the words into her ear. 'Tonight. The death eaters are coming tonight. I fixed it!'
"Hermione?" Ginny asked hesitantly the girl closed her eyes. "Are you okay?"
"I…" Before she could answer Harry came back into the room.
"Dumbledore has found one! We are going to get it tonight." Harry said summoning his cloak, the map and a pair of socks.
"Why do we need socks?" Hermione asked in confusion as he handed them to her.
"Felix Filices…" He said. "I have a bad feeling about tonight, get all of the D.A. members together and have them patrol the halls." He said and kissed Ginny before leaving.
"Ginny you said that you, Luna, and a few other people from the D.A. won some of this stuff as well, right?" Hermione asked.
"Yeah…"
"We need to get everyone together." Hermione said taking out her book.
Mi: All D.A. Members that are at least forth years, I need all of you to patrol the halls, we received word that there may be an attack tonight, prepare to fight. Also if you have a vile of unused Lucky potion bring it, we need all the luck we can get.
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"Hermione, are you sure about this?" Neville asked as the crouched down behind a statue on the seventh floor. She had her bag slung over her shoulder.
"Positive." She said taking a small drink of lucky potion, it tasted like cotton candy.
"How do you know…" he started to say, but then it happened. She saw Bellatrix, Draco, Lucius, Narcissa, Greyback and all of the other notorious Death Eaters walking out of the Room of requirements.
"Oh, god." She heard Neville say quietly, he was still surprised even though she had told him about this.
She pulled out the book.
Mi: Potion now! I see them, a bunch of them… I see more coming out of the room. Prepare to fight. Be careful we need the element of surprise.
When she looked up she saw that Narcissa was near her and she got an idea.
"Miss Narcissa!" She hissed quietly and Neville tried to clamp a hand over her mouth but she swatted it away. Narcissa had turned around confused. "Cissy." Narcissa saw her this time and hurried over to them.
"Hermia, what are you doing this isn't safe." The woman said and Neville was shell shocked.
"I know but I have a good feeling about this." She said smiling at her future mother in law. "What does he have to do?" she asked.
"Mia, you know what he has to do." The blond said.
"Oh, right. Well Dumbledore isn't here, neither is Harry." She saw the woman relax a little.
"NARCISSA!" Someone shouted.
"Hermia, stay safe okay, you don't want to miss your big day." He woman said before slipping out from behind the statue claiming that she had dropped her wand.
"You have some explaining to do." Neville said.
"Not now, later maybe." She said as she watched people walk by and she saw Draco looking at her. She smiled weakly trying to comfort him and she mouthed 'don't worry, you have us'.
They were in for a tough night and she prayed that Taylor, had contacted the order, like she had said to, and that they were on their way. In her opinion she could really use a wish right now.
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"Luna, we have to find Hermione, they could be in trouble." Ginny said as she took a small drink of the potion and then handed it to Luna.
"Okay, but what we need are some Nargles' they are very mischievous and like taking part in these things." Luna said in her usual absentminded voice.
"Well we don't have any so we will have to make due with what we've got." Ginny said peeking around a corner. She pulled her head back when she saw them, dozens of them walking down the hall. She glanced back at Luna and they waited, waited for the people to walk around the corner.
They stood with their wands raised in front of them ready to attack and prayed that the potion was working.
"STUPEFY!" They started shouting when several of the Death Eaters started to turn unaware into their hall way. They knew that they were found out, and they knew that the rest of the D.A. would be on their way.
More D.A. members and teachers began appearing in the hall way, and in the chaos Luna tossed the potion to Draco. He stared at the potion but then raised it to his lips and took a small amount of it then tossed it to his mother who did the same. Once she had some of it she tossed it back to Luna, they were now lucky.
"Ginny!" Hermione shouted and ran towards her sister and began fighting. "We cant let them hurt Drake." She whispered then yelled "SECTUMSEMPRA!" A Death Eater with short dirty blond hair fell to the ground and screamed. "I guess that spell can be useful."
"Petrificus Totalus!" Luna and Neville shouted at the same time. The battle was now all over the castle. They ran down a flight of stairs and found Amycus and Taylor dueling, that meant that they were back, Taylor wasn't supposed to leave her common room until they were spotted on the map.
"Impedimenta!" Taylor shouted and the Death Eater went flying into the wall with a pig like squeal.
"We gave Draco and Narcissa some of the potion. Hopefully they are okay him." Ginny said throwing an unforgivable curse at Lucius Malfoy and sadly he dodged it.
"That was very unforgivable little girl!" he shouted.
"You're a very unforgivable man! CRUCIO!" She shouted again and this one left him withering on the floor and then un conscious.
"Ginny, that was a good one but we need to hold off on those curses." Hermione said and she froze. Ginny couldn't see what her sister saw but the girl ran towards the Astronomy tower.
"HERMIONE!" She shouted but the girl was already gone. She ran over to Taylor and started fighting some random Death Eater.
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Hermione ignored the screams and explosions that were echoing off of the walls. She had seen Draco heading for the Astronomy Tower. "Draco!" She shouted not caring who heard, apparently he hadn't heard her. "DRAKE!" she ran up the winding stairs of the tower. He had reached the top a lot sooner than she had.
She didn't want him to kill Dumbledore, he just couldn't. She knew that he wasn't an evil person, he was just raised by an evil man. She ran into the tower and saw him with his wand pointed at Dumbledore, he had tears in his eyes.
"Draco, you don't have to do this." Dumbledore said, he wasn't angry at all.
"I don't have that option!" He yelled clearly torn on what to do. Hermione began to step forward and she saw Harry watching from behind a wall. "What 'he' says is law to those of us with this." He said raising the sleeve that covered his left arm. He was showing his mark to Dumbledore.
"Drake," She said softly and his wand lowered as he spun around. "you do have that option."
"Mione, you shouldn't be here." he said sadly he didn't want to see her hurt.
"I'm not going to let my fiancé kill a man." She said looking right into his eyes. "You don't have to do this." she took his hands in hers. "Don't do it. Do that one little thing for me." She pleaded still looking into his silver eyes.
"Hermione, I'm a Death Eater, I have no choice." He said and she saw how depressed he was, she wanted to help him with all of her heart but she didn't know how to.
"Draco, you don't have to do this…" She said again just as she heard a group of people coming up the stairs. "Please." She said as she ran and his next to Harry.
"Draco!" Bellatrix said as she walked in and saw Draco just standing there with his wand pointed at Dumbledore. " Just kill him already!"
"No." Snape said as he walked in.
"Severus… Please." Dumbledore said and before anyone knew what was happening Snape shouted "Avada Kedavra." Dumbledore fell from the edge of the tower and he was gone, just like that in a blink of an eye. Hermione wanted to scream as she watched all of the Death Eaters Disapparate, now that Dumbledore was gone, all of the enchantments were as well.
When Harry and Hermione were alone she broke down crying. Dumbledore shouldn't have had to die, he had trusted Snape and that man had just simply with out difficult killed him. Why was the world crumbling apart? Oh right, because of Voldemort.
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The end of the school year and Dumbledore's funeral approached rapidly. Hermione missing Draco affected her a lot. She seemed to walk around school like a zombie, she rarely ate and she hardly talked any more. She wanted him there with her, but he wasn't. She knew that she would be seeing him again soon. Seeing as her and the rest of the people who were going to the wedding were to meet him, Narcissa and Amethyst at the Ice cream parlor in muggle London.
The funeral came and went quickly, lots of people attended and paid their respects. It was a rather nice funeral, several of the students spoke at his funeral, one being Taylor. She had been picked by McGonagall to give a speech. She spoke about how everyone would miss him and it was very heartfelt. She had always been on of his favorites along with the golden trio, who also spoke at the funeral.
Once the funeral was over they placed his body into a marble tomb that was built by the black lake and sealed it. He was gone, and there was nothing they could do. Hogwarts wasn't safe anymore, who knew what would happen to it now.
Then the day came for them to go home, they were all packed and ready to go. Hermione had packed a few extra things, for example some books on Horcruxes that she had summoned from Dumbledore's… I mean McGonagall's new office. She knew that she probably wouldn't be coming back to this magical place she liked to call home, and it saddened her. She knew that her, Harry and Ron would probably go looking for Horcruxes and she knew that She wouldn't see her soon to be Husband twenty four seven, she would make it work though.
She, Harry, Ron, Ginny and Luna all walked to the train together and when they got there they heard the phoenixes song. It was long, sad and brought tears to everyone's eyes. Things had only just begun, and it could only get worse…
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A/N: There you have it… My longest chapter by far lol… I hope you liked it! Please review I like knowing what you think! My updates aren't going to be as frequent… updating so quickly is wearing me out… put I promise not to keep you waiting to long… I'm just gonna start posting them when I finish and I'm trying to take my time and not rush through them, I got some questions for you … So do you think Voldemort should be a lost cause… If you had to choose between Harry and Voldy who would you choose lol. What's your favorite thing about my story and what would you like to see happen? Okay that was the last one :P sorry I couldn't save Dumbledore, but he was already dieing because of the ring… Review please I will update soon : ) ~Taylor (Slytherin at heart)