A/N Sorry about the further delay guys. I know I'm not really on top of it lately, been going through a lot of stuff lately and it's all a bit stressful etc. Anyway I'm glad that your all still reading this and hope to read your reviews if you write any. I might not be on top of the posting in future dates but I'll try my best as always. Anyway, enough with the boring bits, let's get to the story already.
Chapter 38 - The Cronies
It was quarter to eight by the time Hermione reached the blank stone wall on the seventh floor corridor, excited for what she was about to do. It'd be like how it was before, her, Harry and Ron sneaking off to save the day. It felt normal, and nothing this year had come close to normal, not even her and Draco felt normal. Not really.
She could hear the distant scufflings of feet downstairs, the muffle of voices from portraits along the walls and the hoots of some early waking owls from the owlery. A loud mewing came from around her ankles causing her to jump half a foot into the air, startled. Mrs. Norris, Filch's cat. "Go away," Hermione hissed, nudging the cat with her foot. The cat hissed, amber eyes fixed on Hermione. "I'm not breaking any rules just standing here, go and spy on some first years," Hermione told the cat firmly. Mrs. Norris held her penetrating stare for a few more moments before turning towards a corner, fixing her gaze on something apparently only she could see. Hermione rolled her eyes. "Harry?" She asked cautiously, walking right over to the corner and snatching at the air in front of her - only it wasn't air. A flowing material met her fingertips and she pulled the invisibility cloak right off of Harry and Ron. "That was in the girls' dormitory! How -"
"Ginny got it for us. How did you know we were here?" Harry asked startled, pocketing the cloak. Hermione gestured at the cat, who'd arched its back on the appearance of Harry and Ron, hissing angrily. "Oh shut it," Ron snarled at the cat, who turned on its back feet and trotted off.
"Come on, lets go before she gets Filch," Harry muttered, turning to pace in front of the blank wall they'd stopped at. If only she had gotten Filch.
Hermione watched as a large oak door materialised in front of her eyes for the first time in a long while. Ron was the first to the brass handle and he wrenched it open, striding inside. Harry and Hermione followed, leaving the muffled noises behind them, into the silence.
The room they had entered was so enormous, they couldn't see the walls surrounding it. It was dimly lit from torches in brackets and large, dusty windows around the room. Random items from life size chess pieces to broken sets of brass weighing scales were piled high in dangerously leaning stacks in the middle of the room. To the right stood a large, ancient looking wardrobe covered in dust, which Hermione recognised as a vanishing cabinet. The one the death eaters had used to get into the castle last year. The one Draco had fixed... She tried to focus on the task at hand which was finding and destroying this diadem. "Accio diadem," she announced clearly. Nothing happened.
"That doesn't work, we've tried before," Ron muttered. Hermione gritted her teeth in annoyance.
They looked around helplessly, wondering where to start. "It'll be small, shiny probably. Just look around," Harry said with a thread of hope in his voice. They all broke apart heading to a different pile of objects each and began rummaging around.
Ten minutes of unsuccessful looking later, Ron let out a howl of pain, clutching his finger. "Ron, Ron are you alright?" Hermione shouted automatically.
"Yeah, Cornish pixie got me!" Ron growled through gritted teeth, gripping his now bleeding finger and staring at something in the stack. He proceeded to stoop down, pick up what looked to be the handle of a broomstick and stick it in a gap in the stack where he was staring. Suddenly, a swarm of angry blue pixies flew out of the hole and out of sight. Harry stared at Ron and shook his head. Ron gulped.
Two figures had seen Hermione get up from the table at dinner and had decided to follow her. They'd followed her up the flights of stairs and watched as the head girl talked to the fowl cat and then gaped as Harry and Ron appeared from thin air. They watched on stupidly from behind a pillar as Harry paced in front of a wall and to their astonishment saw a door materialise in the wall. "Should we follow the mudblood?" Grunted the larger of the two figures.
"Yeah," nodded the other one stupidly. They clicked their knuckles and headed boulderlike towards the wall, but the door had vanished.
"Uh, how do we get through?" Asked the first speaker.
"I don't know," said the other one, shoving the wall with his fists. Unsurprisingly, it didn't budge.
"Draco would know," muttered the first one.
"The Dark Lord told us not to trust the blood traitor," shrugged the second one, staring dumbly at the wall.
"We could just blow it up," suggested the first one, drawing his wand.
A few minutes after the two figures had left the hall, Draco turned to Blaise and asked, "You seen Crabbe and Goyle?"
"Yeah mate, left couple minutes after Hermione I think. Probably tired, stupid gits," chuckled Blaise.
"They'd never miss pudding!" Pansy laughed.
"Why?" Theo asked Draco. Draco bit his lip.
"Be right back," he muttered and he jumped up from his chair and walked across the hall in seconds.
"Where was Hermione meeting Harry?" He thought desperately, but she hadn't said. He could hear movements up the marble staircase and stopped to listen hard. He could hear the unmistakable grunt of Goyle and the heavy footsteps of Crabbe. Why were they up there? What the hell was going on?! He ran up the stairs up to the moving staircase where he stopped to wait for a set of stairs which would take him up two flights. He looked up and saw Crabbe and Goyle above him, at least five floors higher. And then with a sudden jolt of horror he saw Hermione, a flight above them. Panting, he jumped on the stairs before they'd come to a halt and ran up them, praying them to move faster. "Come on, come on!" He muttered. He had half a mind to accio his broom and fly up there, or even accio Hermione down to him! He soon wished he had.
Once the stairs had reached a point where he could jump to land on the landing he did just that; jumped, landed, and sped around the corner to the stationary stairs which he legged two at a time. "Damn it!" He hissed, looking up to see his old friends walking out of sight on what looked like the seventh floor. "Oh no you don't," he hissed angrily. Sweating and panting, he ignored the stitch which felt like a knife twisting painfully in his side, and instead flipped up a tapestry on the wall to his right, taking a route which he knew was a shortcut up to the sixth floor. Steps. More steps. Higher and higher he climbed, scraping his knuckle slightly on the wall beside him.
Finally, he tumbled out of the narrow spiral staircase he'd just ascended and ran down the sixth floor, clutching his side and groaning with pain. He'd cleared the corridor within seconds and was now climbing the final flight of stairs, sweat dripping down his already drenched face. "I'm not losing you again," whispered Draco to himself, pulling himself up onto the seventh floor and running down the corridor. He skidded to a halt at the end, spotting Crabbe and Goyle standing right in front of the entrance to the Room of Requirement. "We could just blow it up," Draco heard Crabbe suggest. He watched as Goyle nodded enthusiastically and without hesitation, without even thinking of the repercussions, he yelled "NO!" at exactly the same time as Crabbe yelled "Bombarda maxima!" Draco's eyes widened in horror as the wall in front of him, Crabbe and Goyle exploded in a shower of rubble and stone. Both Crabbe and Goyle turned to see Draco standing in shock. Goyle raised his wand but Draco was too quick for him. "Expelliarmus!" He roared and the wand Goyle was holding went soaring up into the air and landed with a clatter. He looked to where Crabbe had been standing but Crabbe had discarded his wand and had thrown himself at Draco. Eyes widened in terror, Draco fell backwards with Crabbe on top of him. His platinum hair clouded his vision as Crabbe drew his fist back for a punch. The head boy wriggled underneath the heavy weight, trying to get himself free. WHAM! Crabbe's fist had collided with Draco's left eye. Goyle stood, paralysed with shock, wand some ten feet away from him. "Crabbe, Crabbe stop!" Draco panted but to no effect.
"Blood traitor scum!" Crabbe spat back.
"You have no idea what you're doing!" Draco hissed through blood stained teeth.
"Is that so? You picked the losing side Malfoy," grinned Crabbe manically. With almighty strength, Draco heaved Crabbe off of him and staggered to get his wand. "I picked the right side," Draco spat, blood dribbling down his chin. Crabbe wrapped his gorilla like arms around Draco's lean neck from behind and the blond kicked backwards, tossing his body this way and that to get him off. "Stupi-," choked Draco but Crabbe had just aimed another fist to his jaw and he spluttered, blood dripping from his mouth. "Fuck you," Draco hissed, turning to send his own fist colliding with Crabbe's face. Crabbe blinked stupidly but that was all the time Draco needed. He ran like a bullet to the hole in the wall, jumped through, turned and cast "reparo," and watched as the stones magically repaired themselves. The last thing he saw through the gap was Crabbe and Goyle's stupefied faces before the last stone was in place.
And then he hunched over, clutching his knees and breathing hard. Beads of blood mingled with sweat fell to the floor, hitting the stone like bombshells. He swiped at his jaw, furious, yet winced in pain as he drew his hand away. "Episkey," he murmured, wand raised at his face. With a further wince, he felt his jaw mend and the split lip heal. Shaking his head, he got up and looked around. His heart plummeted like a stone kicked off of a cliff edge. He'd been here before. Many a time. This was the room he'd spent most of last year in. So why was Hermione allegedly in here? He raked his mind and found one and only one explanation. She was hunting a horcrux, hunting a horcrux with her god damned friends Potter and Weasel.
"POTTER!" Roared Draco outraged. There was complete silence. Then hurried footsteps from three directions coming towards him and the unmistakable gasp of Hermione. "Draco what are you -" Hermione began but Draco rounded on Harry, who'd just emerged from behind a stack in front of him. "Listen here Potter, you keep her out of this! She doesn't need to be involved in any of this shit you and Weasel are up to, just leave her alone!" He yelled, flecks of spit hitting Harry's confused face.
"What the hell are you on about?" Harry asked bewildered.
"Draco what happened to your face?" Hermione asked hesitantly.
"There are two people outside this door who want to beat the shit out of Hermione and stop you from destroying these horcruxes. Yes, of course I know you're hunting horcruxes, what did you think I was stupid?" Draco snarled at their stupefied faces, "Crabbe just blew apart the bloody wall in order to try and get in here and I stopped them, him and Goyle. Now for your information Potter, they just so happen to have been made death eaters so if they find out what your doing -"
"Crabbe and Goyle?" Harry clarified, holding back a snigger. Ron snorted.
"Yes, the two idiots Crabbe and Goyle," Draco sneered.
"They don't have half a brain cell to share between them. Do you honestly think they're a threat?" Harry smirked.
"Stop with the cockiness Scarhead, they're not as stupid as you think. They know how to use the killing curse and how to blow things up and to be completely honest that's all you really need to do to cause havoc," Draco spat.
"Alright enough!" Shouted Hermione, causing Harry and Draco to break apart. She stared at them indignantly before continuing. "You two bickering is not going to help us find the diadem and if Crabbe and Goyle really do want to get in here then they only have to pick up their wands to blow apart that wall again! Draco are you going to help or not?" Draco stared at her, dumbstruck. He was proud that she had the power to shut the two Gryffindor idiots up - then realised that she'd shut him up, too. Realising that she'd asked him a question, he quickly nodded his head. "Right then," she sighed. Everyone looked at each other before turning to continue looking for the diadem. "Wait," Draco said hesitantly, "Diadem, did you say? Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem?" All three Gryffindors turned to stare at Draco.
"Yes Malfoy the very same," Ron snarled. Draco smirked.
"Spit it out," Harry said impatiently.
"If you know something Draco then it would be great if you could -" Hermione began but Draco cut across her.
"It's over there," the blond boy said simply, pointing at a small pile of old books and a set of gobstones next to the vanishing cabinet.
"Of course it is," Ron mocked, rolling his eyes. Harry clicked his tongue and strode over to where Draco was clearly pointing.
"Come here," Hermione muttered to Draco, who looked at her shyly as if to say sorry. "I don't know what that look's for, I should be the one saying sorry for Harry's temper. He's a bit stressed lately. Look up," Hermione said quietly. Draco tilted his chin upwards and Hermione moved her wand under his jaw and muttered a few words. Instantaneously, a warmth spread through his face and he took a finger and prodded his jaw. No pain. He stared at Hermione. "When'd you learn to do that then?" He asked dumbfounded.
"Class," she said simply, "We are actually learning stuff at school you know, even if all you do is worry about me and play quidditch. Besides, don't you remember your wound back in November?" She laughed causing Draco to look at her in mock hurt.
"Excuse me, if I didn't spend my time worrying about you then you three would be subject to Crabbe and Goyle, and if I didn't play quidditch then you wouldn't have anyone to stare at in practice. As for the hole in my stomach, you healed that up quite nicely before losing all your magic for a week," mocked Draco.
"I hardly ever come to practice, and if you think Harry can't tackle Crabbe and Goyle yet think he can kill Voldemort then I'm intrigued to know why no one else has killed him yet," Hermione smirked, clicking her tongue.
"Fine, if I wasn't worrying about you then I wouldn't be able to do this," Draco smirked back and kissed her gently on the lips. Hermione closed her eyes briefly and chuckled under her breath. "Fair play," she laughed, breaking away from him. Ron coughed loudly. Draco ignored him.
"Ron," Harry called cautiously from by the vanishing cabinet.
"Yep," Ron called back.
"He's right you know," Harry grinned defeatedly, walking back with a shimmering, silver, gem incrusted diadem.
"He can't be, why would he help us!?" Ron shouted angrily, frustrated.
"Oh for good Salazar's mercy Weasley! I'm on your side! Not by choice personally, no one with half a brain cell would want to be associated with a bumbling hippogriff like you. I cast a frigging patronus to save your ass. Just -" but Hermione had cut across the head boy.
"Ron drop it. Draco, just calm down for Merlin's sake. Honestly, the day you two get along will be the day Voldemort joins the house elf liberation front. How do we destroy that thing anyway?" Hermione asked.
"We were originally using the sword of Gryffindor, found out Harry used it to destroy the diary so it kinda fitted," Ron said smugly, glad to answer something Draco could not. Harry tried to ignore the fact that he didn't actually use the sword to kill the diary.
"Great, where is it?" Hermione asked.
"Well, you see we kinda had to trade it with some goblin, Griphook I think, to get into Gringotts," Harry said somewhat awkwardly.
"Why the hell would you want to go into Gringotts?" Draco asked as if they were out of their minds.
"If you must know, Malfoy, the cup was being kept in your aunt's vault!" Snapped Harry, "It's not easy getting into a vault without the actual person who's vault it is you know."
"Yeah there was a dragon," Ron told Hermione enthusiastically. Draco rolled his eyes, disbelievingly.
"So you got the horcrux but now can't destroy it. Brilliant going chosen one," groaned Draco.
"There must be another way," thought Hermione out loud. Harry shrugged and pocketed the tiara.
"I'll put it with the cup until we find another way of destroying it," Harry sighed.
"Where is the cup?" Hermione asked sharply.
"Up with the tent in the boys dormitory. In a bag under my bed. Why?" Harry answered.
"Just wondering," Hermione sighed, tutting. Draco took a good moment to stare at Harry.
"What?" Harry asked.
"You keep the key to killing the Dark Lord under your bed?" He asked incredulously. Harry shrugged again. Draco stared at Hermione who shook her head in disbelief.
And then - BANG! The noise of a small bomb being set off echoed and bounced off of all the walls and all four heads turned to see a pile of wood and rubble where the door had stood mere moments ago. In place of it, stood two boulder like boys, each with a sickening smile on their faces. In a heartbeat, Draco had stepped directly in front of Hermione and drew his wand threateningly. Harry was quick to draw his wand too, and Ron just the same. Rolling her eyes, Hermione drew her wand too and tried to push Draco out of the way, but the head boy was not having it.
"What the hell do you two want?" Spat Ron.
"To know what you're up to. And to stop whatever it is your doing," Crabbe said simply. Draco could have laughed at how stupid they sounded, but he didn't.
"Get out of here you idiots, no one cares if you have a tattoo or not. Get out or I swear I'll -"
"What will you do Malfoy? Tell your father? He's not too happy with you at the moment you know, I was there, at the last meeting. Unlike some unloyal blood traitor," snarled Crabbe.
"Stupifey," Harry said plainly, not in the mood for any of this. To the three Gryffindors' and the Slytherin's utter surprise, Goyle deflected the curse.
"Expelliarmus!" Roared Ron at the same time as Crabbe, who'd yelled, "Crucio!"
Both spells collided with each other and ricocheted off course, hitting piles of objects which exploded and fell everywhere. Harry had to dive out of the way as a particularly heavy looking cauldron crashed to the floor mere inches away from where he'd stood. "Crucio!" Crabbe repeated furiously and this time it hit Ron.
"You bloody idiot!" Seethed Ron through gritted teeth as the weak spell washed over him momentarily.
Regaining his strength and motivated with anger, Ron ran at Crabbe who turned and fled into the depths of the room. Goyle stood clueless in the centre of the room. "Patrificus Totalus," Draco snapped, watching the spell fire at Goyle - who again managed to deflect it. "Bombarda!" Goyle roared angrily, aiming his spell not at Draco, but at the dangerously leaning pile of junk next to him. With an almighty bang, the pile of books, old quills and crystal balls exploded sending shards of glass and ripped pages raining down on all three of them. Goyle took the opportunity to run for it, out the hole in the wall and down the corridor.
"Damn it," muttered Draco, regaining his stance and looking round. Neither Ron or Crabbe were in sight. Harry put a hand to his pocket to make sure the diadem was still there, then called, "Ron?" No reply. "Are you two alright?" He asked Hermione more than anyone else.
"It's just a bit of glass?" Hermione scoffed, swiping a hand at her cheekbone and glancing at the blood she drew away.
"Your bleeding," Harry stated.
"Trust me, I've been through worse," Hermione sighed, staring around for Ron. Harry's gaze brushed bast her exposed arm and the letters forged within it.
And then they heard it, all three of them turned as one to the sound of a distant cry of horror. Draco looked into the depths of the room where he'd heard the cry and thought he saw the room flicker. Suddenly, the room started getting warmer and the flicker had turned into a dance of orange flames. They could hear Ron's roar getting louder and louder and without thinking, Hermione set off at a sprint towards the sound. "HERMIONE NO!" Yelled Draco, sprinting after her with Harry at his tail. He turned a corner, watching Hermione disappear into a faint cloud of smoke.
They were now in the heart of the Room of Requirement and Hermione could see Ron running in her direction. Draco and Harry skidded to a halt by Hermione's side and stared at something behind Ron. "He set the whole bloody room on fire!" Yelled Ron, dashing past Hermione and the others. They could now hear Crabbe's heavy footfalls as he thundered away from the towering inferno of heat and flames. Draco's eyes widened in horror as he yanked Hermione's arm and tugged her in the opposite direction, following Ron and Harry. Hermione needed no further encouragement. She ran full out away from the monstrosity of flames which were mutating into an assortment of wild looking beasts. One particularly vicious looking python of fire launched itself upon a stack of old school wear and broken furniture, consuming the many objects in whole with its fanged mouth until there was nothing but a pile of smouldering ash behind. She'd never seen anything like it before. It was terrifying, unnatural, and the way that the flames chased them, taking the easiest routes through the stacks of ancient junk, it was as though they were alive.
"WE'RE SURROUNDED!" Yelled Harry, tripping over his feet in an effort to evade the wall of flames. Draco whizzed around on his feet, staring at the enclosing hues of red and gold. "Aguamenti!" Roared Ron, wand directed at the towering inferno around them. The water shot out of his wand feebly and vaporised upon contact with the wave of heat.
"There must be a counter curse!" Hermione choked as she inhaled a lungful of smoke. Draco's terror filled eyes darted from stack to stack, praying for something, anything to get them out of this. Crabbe was nowhere in sight. Then he found exactly what he was looking for. Three, glinting handles poking out of a burning pile of astronomy equipment. In a flash, the blond boy was at the pile, yanking the handles out of harms way. "Hurry up Malfoy!" Harry yelled as with a final tug, Draco wrenched the three nimbus two thousands out of the junk which, within seconds, had been consumed by the ever growing inferno too.
Sweating due to the calidity, Draco threw one of the brooms to Harry hurriedly and the other to Ron. Then, without wasting a moment, he mounted the broom and yelled, "HERMIONE!" She turned and ran to the broom, mounting it as she had during Christmas but this time behind Draco and clinging to him around his middle. In a swift movement, all three of them had kicked up from the ground and had soared up, away from the towering bloodthirsty flames. There was an ear piercing scream and they all turned on their brooms to see Crabbe falling from a towering stack of burning tables into the flames which engulfed him in one. Hermione drew a sharp breath before burying her head in Draco's back as he, Harry and Ron shot towards the hole in the wall.
The hole grew closer and closer. The flames licked their ankles and breathed down their necks, desperate to consume them whole. "NEARLY THERE!" Roared Harry and within moments, they'd shot through the burning hole, tumbled off of their brooms and landed with a thud on the corridor beyond the Room of Requirement. They turned just in time to see the door reforming itself where the hole had been and then dissolve into stone. A wave of cool March air hit them.
Finally, Hermione looked up from the ground to see Harry murmuring with Ron and Draco standing, quite still, a blank expression on his face. "Hey," she murmured to him, getting up and walking over to where he stood by the window. Draco did not look around. "Hey, its over. We got out," she smiled weakly.
"Not all of us," uttered Draco into the silence. Hermione drew a breath, eyes flitting towards the place the hole had been minutes before. She bowed her head, understanding that Draco had been very good friends with Crabbe up until recently. "I'm sorry," she whispered, turning to go.
"Why the hell are you sorry?!" Asked Draco heatedly, finally turning to face her, "He brought this upon himself! He used that curse even though he didn't know how to stop it! He wanted us dead! He deserved to die. Why do I feel like he didn't."
"Because he was brainwashed into being who he is just like all the other death eaters. He didn't deserve what he got," Hermione reasoned, biting her lip. "You should probably, probably tell Goyle," she finished quietly. Draco shook his head.
"Not now. Now we need to destroy those God damn horcruxes before someone else gets killed," he said strongly, a new motivation breaking through him. Harry looked up at him and nodded and hesitantly, very hesitantly, Ron followed suit.
A/N So a lot of you previously wanted Draco to be a part of the horcrux hunt, I never intended to write this chapter but kinda felt like I could slip it in anyway now that we are so close to tying the ends up to this story. Only a few chapters left guys. It's going to be weird when this is done I'm telling you. See you soon.