Author's Notes

Here we are then, update number two for today, in which Hermione goes flying and there is rather a large plan afoot!

I hope everyone is having an amazing day. Thank you all so much for the continued love and support that this story is receiving, your supportive comments make writing it all so worthwhile.

Thank you again to my wonderful writing partner champagneandliterature, your help is very much appreciated. :-)

See you all next time, Lots of love, Claire (phoenix.)

Beyond The Sea - Chapter 13 - Flying

Hermione

"You think we should do what?" Hermione asked, staring at Draco in alarm and blinking at Ginny's hearty laugh.

"Well, I thought it was a good idea. What's wrong with a little flying?" Draco asked, looking thoroughly bemused by her reaction.

"Hermione doesn't really do flying," Ginny explained once she had gotten her mirth under control. "She's spent her entire magical life avoiding it as much as possible."

"Why?" Draco asked, looking incredulously at Blaise.

"Don't ask me," Blaise shook his head, "I'm too busy plotting, as you all like to call it, to wonder about such things."

"Is it world domination again?" Theo asked, looking up from the giant Elemental Magic book that was currently balanced half on the kitchen table, half on his lap.

"No," Blaise smirked and held up a cookbook, "that's for later on this evening. Right now, I'm plotting dinner."

"Good. My nerves prefer the sound of dinner. So does my stomach, for that matter," Theo grinned, peering over to see what Blaise was planning to cook.

"Come on, Hermione. We've got, what an hour?" Draco glanced at Blaise, who nodded. "Let's go flying for a bit. We are the air element after all." He tipped his head back to keep her in his line of sight as she stood up then moved to stand beside him. "Why don't you like to fly?"

"I find flying a bit…. scary," she confessed after a moment's pause, "although I am fully aware of how lame that sounds. I'm just not very good at it, the broom never does what I want at the best of times, and with my magic being as erratic as it is at the moment, I'd be apprehensive that something would go wrong."

"Come up with me then, on my broom?" Draco appealed, giving her an endearingly boyish look that she hadn't known he was capable of. It was so effective that she agreed before she realized what she had done. She ignored Ginny's incredulous look and laughed at Blaise, who swatted Ginny smartly on the bottom with the oven gloves to stop her from gawking at Hermione in surprise.

"Have fun. Dinners in an hour. Here you are, Nott, get chopping." Blaise tossed Theo an onion which sailed straight over his head when he ducked out of the way. Harry caught the onion on his way into the kitchen and stared at it in confusion, making Hermione laugh harder. To this day, she had never seen Harry miss a catch.

Apparently, Theo hadn't either. "Is there some kind of seeker magnetism attached to you that makes you catch everything that comes your way?" he asked, plucking the onion out of Harry's hand and kissing him soundly, "I mean, that was ridiculously good timing-"

"Well," Ginny grinned, wriggling her eyebrows as she passed Theo a chopping board, "he caught you pretty well, didn't he?"

"That he did," Theo agreed, turning to smile at Harry again. "A bloody long time ago too. Listen, Red, I've not actually said anything yet, so this is rather overdue. Thanks for being alright about this," Theo waved his hand vaguely between himself, Ginny, and Harry.

Hermione smiled as Draco took her arm. "Broom. Flying. Come on. If you don't like it, I'll bring you straight back down."

"All right," she conceded, although she didn't need any more convincing. The thought of being in such close proximity to Draco was enough to tempt her to join him on the broom, even if it did mean that her feet would leave the safety of the ground. Following him out of the room, she took a moment to revel in the feelings of contentment washing over her. It was lovely to see all of her friends so happy.

The evening was cool, bordering on chilly, and Hermione took the quidditch jersey Draco offered with a smile. She held it up to her face and inhaled deeply, then slipped it on over her head. It smelled of him, subtle and deeply intoxicating, and she smiled as she glanced down at the green and silver color scheme. A quick look over her shoulder made her smile widen into an incredulous grin. The silver letters on her back spelled out the name "MALFOY."

"It suits you," Draco said with a reverent look in his eye. "Come on, on you hop." He swung his leg over the highly polished broom handle then waited for her to settle herself comfortably behind him.

"Oh," she exclaimed as she sat down, "it's quite comfortable, isn't it? It's a lot better than the school brooms were anyway. And that dragon we rode out of Gringotts was incredibly uncomfortable."

"I should think it was!" Draco said with a disdainful snort. "And the school brooms were appalling. This is a Firebolt 360. It's a top of the range broom. It's got built in cushioning charms, a luxury seat finish, and a thousand other features that I won't bore you with right now. It's nothing like those erratic school Cleansweeps or Comets."

"It is a lovely broom," Hermione replied truthfully. "Can you take it steady though, please? I'm not always the best balanced in the air."

"Of course." She tightened her arms around Draco's waist, leaned her head against his back, then screwed her eyes tightly shut as she waited for the bottom to fall out of her stomach. Strangely, it didn't. As promised, Draco kicked off smoothly, and to Hermione's surprise, their take off felt less alarming than a fast acceleration in a car.

"You are allowed to breathe when you fly," he said, his voice colored with amusement. Rolling her eyes behind their still closed lids, Hermione released the whoosh of breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Don't you find it just a little bit strange that you're an air witch, and yet you're terrified of being up in the sky?" he asked, finally leveling out to fly in a straight, steady line.

"I've just had a few bad experiences, I suppose. They kind of put me off." She grimaced, thinking of her own disastrous attempts at flying, both at Hogwarts and at the Burrow, and then her doomed thestral ride with Kinglsey Shacklebolt. She shivered at the memory of being ambushed by Death Eaters while attempting to escort Harry away from Privet Drive.

"Ah." Draco nodded. "I see. You can open your eyes if you want."

"How do you know they're still closed?" she asked with an indignant huff.

Draco chuckled. "Because I've known you for years, and if your eyes were open right now, you'd be commenting on the cove below us. You haven't seen it yet, and it's beautiful."

Hesitantly, Hermione opened her eyes and gasped in surprise. It was indeed beautiful. They were flying directly over a tiny, heavily secluded beach that looked like something out of a muggle holiday brochure. To their left was an expanse of pristine white sand backed by sheer, dark, rocky cliffs, and to their right, there was nothing but sparkling, crystalline blue sea that appeared to stretch onwards towards eternity. Carefully, Hermione turned her head to see Transmarina Cottage, complete with its beloved gardens standing solidly on the shore and looking as if it had simply evolved over the centuries as part of the natural landscape. It was a stunning scene.

"Who owns this house?" she asked.

"I do," Draco replied. "It belonged to my parents, but they never came here unless they had to. My father strongly disliked the place, and my mother said it unnerved her. I think the house was hostile to them because it's a semi-sentient home, and it didn't recognize them as part of the fabric of its magic. I remember coming here as a child occasionally, on fleeting visits with my father to check everything was still standing. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it, and I never wanted to leave. Even back then, it felt more like home to me than the manor ever did. Father was going to have it bulldozed once so that they could build something else, but I managed to stop him."

"Wow!" Hermione said, not bothering to hide how impressed she sounded. "I've read the chapter in the Elemental Magic book about sentient buildings, and I've come across them in other various ancient magic books, but I've never seen one in real life before now."

Draco glanced at the house himself as they flew steadily away from it. "Well, sentient houses are very rare, and they only activate for the people who are bound to act out their prophecies and are compatible with the elemental magic they contain,'' he said. ''Most witches and wizards still consider Elemental Magic to be dark magic anyway, so the Ministry purged most of the books on it after the first Wizarding War."

"That's such a shame," Hermione said sadly. "So much ancient knowledge would have been lost when they did that. I hate the destruction of any knowledge. I wish the Ministry wasn't so short sighted. Draco, when all of this is over, I want to study this, in depth," she continued, pausing as he nodded, "and maybe if you would be willing to help me, you and Blaise and the others, maybe we could try to regain some of that lost knowledge."

They fell silent for a few minutes, and Hermione turned back to face the direction they were traveling. Somehow flying with Draco didn't seem to be scary. She felt more secure in the air with him than she had ever felt before. "How do your Light Mark's work?" she asked, voicing the question that had been hovering in her mind for a long time.

Draco turned to consider her as he flew in a lazy, spiraling, height gaining circle. "It's an adapted spell that mixes a simple messaging charm with a protean charm. Theo adapted the spell the Dark Lord uses to brand the Dark Mark onto his followers, and between us we came up with our own version of it. You can't pass messages on with it, but any one of us can press our mark, and the others can follow it's call. To follow a summons, you just begin to apparate while focusing on the pull of the mark, and it steers you to the person who called you. That part works the same way the Dark Marks do."

Hermione nodded, stealing herself for her next question. "Can I get one?"

Draco turned to look at her properly, and she tensed as the balance of the broom changed. "Sorry," he said, rebalancing them. "In theory, yes, but you'd need to understand every stage of the magic that's involved first."

"Will you explain it to me then, please?" she asked, "because you've obviously already spelled it out to Ginny, Harry, and Ron, and they've all chosen to have one. I'm quite sure my decision will be the same as theirs."

Draco nodded, although his back still felt strangely tense in her embrace. "After dinner, we will. Blaise wants to explain the plans for the raid on Finnigan Cottage, and we need to have a full strategy meeting. Why don't we add this subject to the list and discuss it fully when we're all together?"

Hermione nodded. "Okay."

Draco turned to smile at her over his shoulder. "Thank you. For now, I want to show you something. Hold tight."

Hermione squealed as Draco pulled the broom handle up, rapidly gaining height and brushing through the thin layer of cloud above them. The water droplets felt damp against her cheeks, it was just like walking through a thick mist on an autumn morning. She gasped when they emerged above the clouds. A fluffy layer of white was now visible beneath them, looking like a soft, billowing carpet, and they were all alone in the endless, sparkling blue sky. A few seagulls rose and fell gracefully on the thermal air currents, and Hermione smiled. Up here, it felt as if they had escaped from everything. They were completely isolated from the world down below.

She found it utterly mesmerizing to be this high in the sky. For the first time ever, she truly understood why Draco, Harry, and some of the others loved to fly. She felt invigorated. Swooping along above the clouds was a very liberating experience. "How's this?" Draco asked, glancing around and smiling at her look of delight.

"It's…. I've never flown like this before," she admitted breathlessly. "It's beautiful!"

"That it is," Draco agreed, kissing her briefly on the lips. "We're the air element, Hermione, you and me. That's why it feels like this for us. This is healing to us. Anytime you want to come up here, just let me know. Now, are you holding on, and do you trust me?"

Before she had a chance to second guess herself she nodded, then screamed as he accelerated into a dive, streaking through the sky like lightning, then pulling up to an abrupt halt before turning to kiss her in mid air. ''Sorry,'' he said with a wink, but she found she didn't mind in the slightest. It had been a thoroughly exhilarating experience.

"That's okay," she said breathlessly, then laughed as he turned around and raised a brow in a silent question.

"Go on then!" she laughed, squealing loudly as he repeated the maneuver.

Once Blaise, Ginny, Harry, and Theo's dinner was eaten, and the last bites of home grown apple crumble was washed down with a glass of wine, Hermione sat back in her chair feeling wonderfully full. It was a feeling that she was still struggling to get used to, after so long on the run and then in captivity, feeling half starved had become unnervingly natural to her. She looked down, pleased to see that several weeks of wholesome home cooking had caused her to start filling out in places that had previously looked unhealthily thin.

She felt much better too. She had even started to use magic in her day to day life again, and in the three days since she had kiss-bonded with Draco, her strength had skyrocketed. Consequently, she was now starting to feel restless. She wanted to do more to help the cause the others were all so heavily invested in.

"Is now a good time for a meeting then?" Blaise asked, watching Ron and Pansy set the dirty dishes to wash in the sink.

"As good as any," Theo said, spelling the wine bottle to float around the table topping up everybody's glasses. "Just remember though B, if you get-"

"You killed, you'll haunt me?" Blaise asked with a grin.

Theo saluted him with his refilled glass. "That's the one. Come on then, Zabini, out with it. Let's hear the plan."

Blaise glanced at Draco, who nodded sharply. "Alright. But, be warned. When I told you that this plan will probably kick everything off and bring forward our defection, I wasn't joking. Listen to the plans, then make up your own minds if you want to be involved."

"Isn't it a bit late to opt out?" Pansy asked, ruffling Blaise's hair as she squeezed past the back of his chair, sat back down, and leaned her chair back on two legs, "I mean, we've come this far-"

"Just hear the plans first, Pans. Please," Blaise said, looking serious. He spelled her chair back down with a wave of his hand, and she poked her tongue out as she tipped it back again. "You'll see why I'm saying all of this in a minute. Can I have all of your reports first? Just in case anyone has any new intel that affects what I've got in mind here. Ron, Harry, Gin, how did you all get on at Finnigan Cottage?"

Hermione saw Harry glance guiltily at Ron, who shrugged then looked down at the table. "We got the hair," Ginny said. "We got a good clump from each of them, but the cloak slipped when Dean whirled round and he caught a look at me. We had to use the Obliviate spell on them both, and we were trying to avoid doing that."

Hermione gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth. "It was only a small one, 'Mione, don't worry. We just removed the previous ten minutes of the afternoon from their memories. No lasting damage was done, I promise," Harry said, eyeing her sympathetically.

Draco nodded, scooting his chair sideways so that he was close enough to take her hand in a gesture of support that she found very touching. "No matter, I take it the Obliviate worked?" He asked.

Harry nodded. "Yes, it did. We got the walkthrough of the cottage and the memory maps you asked for as well. They're in vials upstairs."

Blaise ticked something off on his parchment plan. "Thanks. Well done. Theo, what did you find out about Yaxley?"

"You were right, as always, B. His memory is locked and all you can see is what's been put there. My gut feeling is that he's alright. He's always with Thorfinn and Antonin, and I think they'd shun him if he was actually on the Dark Lord's side. I think, as you suspected, he's just a terrible Occulmens."

Blaise looked satisfied as he added another tick to his plan. "Draco. What about you? Have you got anything to add?"

Draco gave a long sigh. His fingers tensed in Hermione's hand, and she stroked her thumb across his palm in an effort to relax him the way he'd previously helped her. "Only that You Know Who is suspicious. When he held us back the other day, he was just going on and on about how he suspects there to be a traitor in the ranks. It's obvious that he doesn't have a clue who it is. Bella was screaming hysterically about what she'd do if she caught them, but it was clear from the way he indulged her that he doesn't have the faintest idea of what's going on."

"And how did Dolohov behave when you three were held back?"

Draco snorted and ran his fingers through his silky hair. "The same way he always behaves. The man's more guarded than Gringotts. He just nods, yes Sir, no Sir, of course My Lord. He behaves the same way I do."

"Pans? Did you-" Blaise trailed off, flashing a guilty look at Ron before continuing, "did you find anything out from Thorfinn when you were in the bank?"

Pansy shook her head, sending her glossy black hair flying. "I couldn't do it," she admitted, landing all four legs of her chair on the ground with a thump before glancing at Ron with a soft smile. "I just couldn't do it. I know Ron would probably have been okay with it if I had, but I just…. I couldn't."

Blaise looked as if he was hiding a smile of his own. "Good," he said simply. "But you think Thorfinn and Rodolphus ambushed you in an attempt to get information out of you?"

Pansy nodded. "I do. I think it was supposed to be Antonin that was the ambusher, but since he was held back by You Know Who, I think he sent Roddy insead. Well, he's a piece of cake to get around, isn't he? The moment I looked like I was channelling his wife he backed down like a naughty puppy. He's about as intimidating as a puppy too. What?! He is! The man's a big softie really," Pansy said, turning to thump Ron on the back as he choked on his wine.

Ron recovered, then wiped his face on a napkin. "So says the girl who picked up the biggest spider I've ever seen outside of the Forbidden Forest the other night, stroked it, stroked it, I might add, then dropped it out of the window-"

"Well, you were going to hit it with a slipper!" Pansy exclaimed while throwing him a scandalized look.

Hermione caught Harry's eye then quickly covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a snort of laughter. Ron looked horrified. "It was a spider, Pans. I don't like spiders-"

"It was a house spider. He wouldn't have hurt you-"

"Did you say Rod murdered a Goblin while you were at Gringotts?" Theo asked, raising his voice to cut through Pansy and Ron's bickering.

"Oh. Yeah. He did do that," she admitted, while still giggling at Ron's outrage, "but I think that was my fault, I'd annoyed him by outing his true motives for being there."

"Which proves that you'd gotten to him and that you were right," Blaise surmised. "You'd seen through his little intimidation act, and he was annoyed, so the goblin took the fallout. I think that entire episode proves a point in itself. Right. Thanks, all of you. Now, Theo, I've got one last question to ask you. Is there any chance that your intel is clouded because of what you're doing at the time you get it? I'm sorry to ask this of you, but if we're all committing to doing this, we need to be sure of everything."

Theo raised his eyebrows as if to challenge Blaise but backed down when Blaise leveled him with a cool stare. "No. None at all. I'm very careful with how much and what I do, and I've always got a stash of sober up in my robe's pocket just in case anything goes too far. I will admit that in the heat of Harry and Ginny's break up I could have been a little more careless than usual, but even then I know I didn't let anything slip. I can't promise that Dolohov didn't get inside my mind at that time though. I went a little bit further with some, uhhh, substances than I would normally-"

"That's how Dolohov found out what we're up to, isn't it?!" Draco thumped his hands down on the table, pushed his chair backward, then stood up, making Hermione jump and Pansy tut in a way that reminded Hermione inexplicably of Molly Weasley. "Oh, it's alright, don't worry. I'm not mad at you, Theo. Actually, it's a good thing that it's happened. This has been bugging me for a while though, and now I finally understand what's happened. Dolohov didn't detect you in his mind when he was with Pansy. Even he's not good enough to do that. He saw what you'd both done by invading your mind with Legilimency when you were stoned. It all makes sense now!" Draco exclaimed, pacing back and forth in the kitchen, "I couldn't figure out how he suddenly knew so much of what we were doing. It just didn't make sense that he felt your presence because you're the best Legillemens out of all of us. Tell me, was he hanging around you a lot at Chateau Lestrange?"

"Well, yeah," Theo said, now looking highly disconcerted, "he was. Which I thought was odd, given that he can't stand Bella and he never touches the stuff himself-"

"That's it then!" Draco exclaimed. "He knows so much because he delved into your mind and saw it, and that's fine, because we've done the same to him. I'm certain we're all coming from the same place now. Antonin, Thorfinn, Corban, your Father, Theo, Roldolphus, and Rabastan are all doing exactly the same thing we are."

"Right, "Blaise agreed. "So this is the plan I'm proposing. We all apparate to Finnigan Cottage together, we'll take you three by side along to avoid anyone hearing your apparition pops. Harry goes under the invisibility cloak, and Ron and Ginny are disillusioned. Harry, you're in charge of marking Nagini. I want you to follow her wherever she goes. Distract her, give her opposing commands, just generally confuse him by altering her behavior. Ron, Ginny, when you arrive, you put Dean and Seamus under the Imperius curse and tell them to hide, I'll work out where once I've seen the walkthrough of their cottage. You tell them not to emerge until we tell them to, no matter how long that takes. You follow them to their hiding place, and Ginny, your disillusionment spells are the strongest. You'll need to disillusion them as an added layer of protection."

Blaise paused, looking from Harry, to Ron, to Ginny to check their reactions. When they all gave him a grim nod, he carried on. "Theo, you take one of the Death Eaters we choose, and I'll take the other. We Imperio them, make them polyjuice into Dean and Seamus, then run them through the onslaught while making them aim mid-level jinxes at everyone as if they were defending their property while trying to escape.

When they're killed, which they will be, of course, their polyjuice disguises will fade, and the Dark Lord will see that two of his faithfuls are dead-" Blaise paused to wince at the collective intake of breath in the room. "I predict, and Draco agrees with me, that the Dark Lord will immediately call off the raid. He'll pull us all back to the manor under the power of our Dark Marks, and he'll lock the place down so that none of us can leave. Once we are all inside the manor, Draco will drop the Malfoy blood wards, which, incidentally, he and Theo will have previously keyed the three of us into, so that we can leave safely. Once the wards are safely down, Draco will officially defect. The Dark Lord is bound to lose it. We predict he'll hit out with everything he's got and that he'll rain fire and brimstone down upon everybody there. I think his sheer terror will be our best weapon at that point. Under our cover, Draco will announce what we're doing, then anyone who wants to join us can grab onto us and apparate back here with us."

"Meantime," Blaise continued without looking up, "Harry, if you can keep Nagini with you at Finnigan Cottage, do. Once we've all left, bring her here. Obviously if he takes her with him, forget it, but my gut says he'll save himself and sacrifice her because he'll be panicking. Ginny, Ron, you then release Dean and Seamus from their Imperio's, explain what's happened, then bring them back here because they'll be in indescribable danger if we leave them where they are. And I think," Blaise finally glanced up at Draco, "I think that's it."

Draco nodded his agreement in the silent room. He turned away from the sink and walked back to the table, looking determined. "There will be a fight at the Manor, a vicious one at that, I'd wager," he said. "We all need to shoot to kill, and to kill as many of the Death Eaters as possible. When we go, we take as many of our opponents down as we can. I'm going to give Antonin a heads up of what we're planning on the morning of the raid, then he can warn his group, and if they want to defect with us, they can."

Blaise looked up, held Draco's eyes, and nodded once. "So, that's it. That's the final master plan. Draco and myself are committed, and we are fully aware of how dangerous this is going to be. So, it's decision time. Who's doing this with us?"

"Well, I am, for sure," Theo nodded. "I've been in from the start. Can we remember that my father is in league with Antonin though, please? Would anyone object to me giving him a heads up beforehand too?"

"Duly noted," Blaise said, "and no, I have no objections to you doing that. In my opinion your father is a good man. Pans?"

"Hell yes!" she said without hesitation. "Count me in."

"Considering I was signed up for this at birth, I'm in too,"Harry confirmed.

"Yep, and me,'' Ron agreed.

"You know I'm with you," Ginny said, glaring at Ron as if daring him to protest.

Blaise reached across the table and took her hand in his while giving a troubled sigh. "That's settled then," he agreed. "That's the official plan."

"Wait a minute," Hermione said, suddenly feeling rather shaky, although her voice came out calmly, "I know why you've left me out of the plans, and I appreciate your concerns, but I'm feeling a lot better now. I want to help."

A full beat of silence greeted her words and when she looked up at Draco she saw that he was frozen, staring at her with what looked like terror in his eyes. "No," he said quietly. "Just no."

"Draco," Harry began as Hermione clenched her eyes shut, "I can tell you from experience here, if Hermione's made up her mind to do this, you won't stop her."

"The fuck I will!" Draco stormed. "This war has taken more from me than you can ever know. He killed my parents in front of my very eyes. He's stolen my home, my childhood, and my entire fucking life. He is not taking Hermione away from me too, especially given that I've only just found her properly." Abruptly Draco strode towards the kitchen door, then stopped short as Harry blocked his path. "The answer's no, Potter, and I suggest you don't push me on this."

"He killed my parents in front of me too," Harry said quietly. "I was only a year old. His servants took my godfather, his best friend, and left my godson an orphan. He's killed me, fought me and taken every single thing I have, apart from Theo. Now Hermione knows that, and if she wants to join in, you're not going to stop her. You can't expect me to cheerfully wave Theo off into the fray while you make Hermione stay here and play the dutiful girlfriend. What about the Elemental bonds? We're a unit Draco, you can't hold her back."

Draco said nothing, just stared at Harry for a long moment. When Harry refused to back down, Draco pushed past him aggressively then stalked out of the kitchen into the lounge. Hermione stared at Harry in shocked silence as the patio door banged violently open.

"Go after him!" Theo hissed as Hermione blinked back sudden tears.

"And say what?" she gazed helplessly at Theo, thoroughly shocked by the apparent depths of both Draco and Harry's feelings.

"I don't know," Theo exclaimed, "just go fix him. All I do know is that he feels he's leading us all into an impossible situation right now. As usual, he's blaming himself for dragging us all into the sorry mess, and he's trying to protect us all again. He forgets that we all have our own free will and can make our own decisions. He's scared he's going to lose you and that your potential death would be yet another stain on his overused conscience."

"Right," Hermione stood up uncertainly, and walked out onto the patio. Draco was nowhere to be seen. She turned back, looking through the lounge to the kitchen where Theo was now embracing Harry tenderly. "He took his broom," she said quietly as Ginny stepped up behind her.

"Okay,'' Ginny said, reaching for her own, "Come on then.'' Without a word of complaint Hermione settled herself behind Ginny, held onto her tightly and squealed loudly as she accelerated up into the sky like a rocket.