When Draco left the bathroom and entered the bedroom again, Hermione was sitting in an armchair, reading a large book that she had rested on her lap

The Pale Boy's Secret

by Sophia ("Asleep")

Chapter 5

Note: Hey, guys. I'm really sorry about how long this took, but I had a lot of trouble. Oddly enough, things got easier when I started using Microsoft Word instead of Notepad. I guess that this way, it feels more like I'm writing a story, not HTML code for a website. Anyway, I'm seriously considering splitting up Draco at Hogwarts and Narcissa at Hogwarts. I think I'm probably going to do it. I'll make them companion stories. But I'll keep all the Narcissa flashbacks in this one…Well, I still have to sort things out.

Anyway, stay tuned after the story for some important messages and a thanks section!

Love, Sophia

* * * *

When Draco left the bathroom and entered the bedroom again, Hermione was sitting in an armchair, reading a large book that she had rested on her lap. She had apparently not noticed his presence, judging by the fact that she had neither made a snide comment about something like his brief ferret-hood in the previous school year nor formed that firm line with her mouth that she so often did at the very sight of him. She seemed to be immersed totally in the boring-looking volume, with her eyes squinted slightly and her fingers running absently through her loose curls...

Draco must have been standing in the doorway for at least two minutes, just staring at her. He really hadn't gotten enough sleep, had he? Shaking his head slightly, he walked towards his bed with the intent of shoving his embarrassing pajamas to the bottom of his small bag. He had to walk right in front of Hermione in order to do this and he glanced at her from the corners of his eyes as he passed. This time, he was sure she noticed him, for her mouth formed the line, but she didn't even look up. Draco was slightly hurt. He had been here—though he was still not sure where "here" was—for a few days at least, and he was quite sure he had rarely been without a companion for that long. At Hogwarts, he was very popular among his fellow Slytherins, unsure as he was as to why. At home, aside from his brothers and sisters, he had always had a nurse to play with, no matter how old he got. Sometimes he wished his parents hadn't done this—it had made him the dependant person he was today.

In all honesty, Draco was growing quite lonely. And if bickering with boring-bossy-Mudblood-Gryffindor-Hermione was the only thing there was to fill the void, then there was nothing he could do about it.

Heaving a sigh, Draco flopped lazily onto his narrow bed. His kidnapper (having tired of referring to her as "the woman," he had dubbed her "Narcissa the Second;" feeling after some time that this was utterly stupid, he had settled for a while on calling her the "Insane-Weirdo-Pollyjuicing-as-Mother;" he had found that the latter title became too long, and grudgingly decided upon "Narcissa," having nothing else to call her) had told them to wash and dress, assuring the incredulous pair that all would be explained once she returned. As he had no other choice, Draco had believed her. After all, what else was there to believe, lately? He was still in the never-ending process of convincing himself that he was dreaming. And still, he was damned if he knew why Hermione was there.

As they ate their breakfast, Hermione, who seemed to have taken a liking to Narcissa, had chatted with her. (Draco supposed that with all the danger and messes foolhardy Potter got her into, she was used to things being out of the ordinary.) Narcissa had fondly reminisced about her days at Hogwarts—about how all the boys had had crushes on Professor McGonagall. She seemed very interested in Potter's invisibility cloak. When she had spotted it poking out of Hermione's bag, she had asked to see it, and when she had held it in her hands, she had smiled at something neither Draco nor Hermione could see. Draco himself hadn't eaten much. In fact, he hadn't been feeling like eating much at all lately, even before school had started again. It worried him. Even his mother—or could it be a different person who wasn't really his mother at all?—who usually didn't bother noticing changes in him, had told him he was growing frail and sickly looking and that he was too short.

Draco didn't like what Narcissa had said about his father at all. He loved Lucius, Death Eater or not; he liked to think that his father loved him back. Lucius probably did love him, in a way. But not in the way a parent should love a child; more like the way one grows fond of a painting. That's what Draco was to his father: an image of himself.

And what had she meant by what she had said? How could she be Marielle? Although, he admitted, it wasn't that implausible. Now that he thought about it, the two women resembled each other somewhat, and his nurse had left quite suddenly. She hadn't even bothered to say goodbye...

But Draco didn't want to think of these things anymore. He tilted his head toward the ceiling, willing the frustrated tears that had begun to leak slightly to go away. He was distraught, that was all, because everything that had happened to him lately was a confusing blur. Again, he found himself wondering whether it was all just a dream...

After a few minutes, he staged a another loud sigh and turned to see if Hermione had lifted her head. Alas, even though she was almost entirely facing him, she hadn't. He sat up fully, leaning his back against the cold stone against which his bed was pushed and scowled at her, crossing his arms, poised and ready to play his favorite game: Gryffindor taunting. But still, Hermione refused to even to acknowledge that Draco was there, aside from her expression. Draco was now getting so bored that he was almost ready to sing "This is the Song that Doesn't End" or run, screaming, in circles around her chair, anything to get her to pay attention to him. He yearned for a good argument.

He decided against the impulse to do something drastic (no matter how much attention he usually received, his nurses had always taught him to be composed and civilized) and instead got up and began wandering around the room, which was far from empty. Aside from the two beds, there were bookshelves, cases with strange objects and instruments in them—all sorts of things that Draco supposed he just hadn't bothered to notice before. For a medium-sized room, it was pretty packed. After walking about for a minute or so, picking things up here and there, he decided upon a dark blue, very old-looking book entitled How to Provoke People into Arguing With You, Volume IV: An Advanced Study of Insults. After all, if he was going to read, he might as well read something useful to his situation.

Twenty minutes later, Draco was thoroughly enjoying his book. It had been a while since he'd had time to himself to read anything. At Hogwarts he could never get rid of Crabbe and Goyle, and he didn't like reading in front of them. During the summer, he was so busy with the activities his parents signed him up for that the only books he read were to his eight-year-old brother, Caius. Draco loved his little brother, but he often wished Caius would make him read something other than The Happy Hippogriff Goes to Hogsmeade. He was learning loads of new insults, ten of which he planned to try out on Hermione once she started paying attention to him again. Neither Draco nor Hermione noticed the door softly click open, nor were their ears sharp enough to detect the spell that was whispered a moment after

* * *

She looked fondly at her son. He gazed back up at her with the same fondness, but she knew what he did not.

"Where's Mama?" he asked.

It took all the willpower she could muster to keep herself from pointing to her own chest. "Here I am," she would have said. "Mama's here."

Instead, she said, "Your mother's in London. She's at a party with your father."

Her son sniffed and his chin quivered. "I miss Mama."

She smiled at him. "But I'm here, little baby," she said, holding his tiny and cradling him. "I'll be here forever."

Her son buried his face in the folds of her dress and sighed contentedly. She ran her fingers affectionately through his soft, blond-white hair and then kissed the top of his head. He smelled sweet.

Soon, he was fast asleep, clutching his mother's robes and breathing softly.

* * *

"Hey--"

"Shh!"

Draco opened his eyes partway and found that his face was inches away from Hermione's. Her hand was clamped firmly over his mouth and her elbow was dug firmly into his chest. They were lying very close to each other, but he couldn't make out where they were, as it was very dark. All he could see was a vague outline of Hermione, and she seemed to be concentrating very hard on hearing something.

Well, Draco thought, there's no longer any question: I'm either having an extremely weird and irritating dream, or else I'm in some parallel universe in which Hermione Granger does not mind having her hand on my face. He decided that he wanted some answers.

"Ow!" Hermione howled. Then, more quietly, she hissed, "Why the hell did you bite my hand?"

"I'm sorry," Draco said, thankful to be able to speak again, "but I couldn't get a word in edgewise with your fingernails digging into my cheek and your elbow in my chest, could I?"

"Well," retorted Hermione, glaring at him, "thanks to the fact that your big mouth's not used to going more than two seconds without saying something, we might just have been caught."

Draco's face fell for a moment and he opened his mouth to say, "Caught by who?" But he quickly recovered himself.

"How was I supposed to know?" he said defiantly. "Besides, I'm sure no one (whoever we're hiding from) heard."

He seemed to be right about this, at least, because no one came.

"There," Draco said. "See? Now, would you mind telling me what in the hell is going on? What're you worried about and who the hell are we hiding from?" He tried to sit up, but immediately regretted it.

"Shit!"

"Shh," Hermione said again, but this time with sympathy. She gently helped him ease onto his back.

Draco tightly shut his eyes, which were leaking tears of pain, and bit down on his lip hard. Now he knew why they were lying down—all over his body, he ached with bruises he hadn't noticed before because he had been lying so still. Someone had decided not to stop at stunning them. Someone…

Then, something occurred to Draco that made him want to sit up again.

"Where's Narcissa?"

Hermione frowned. "I don't know. That's something I've been trying to figure out myself. Do you think…you know…"

"Think what?"

Hermione shifted uneasily. "I mean, do you think that she was just having us on the whole time? That this was a trap?"

Draco thought about the way Narcissa had looked at him.

"No," he said. "I don't."

"Okay," Hermione said. "What were you dreaming about?"

Draco was startled. "What?"

"Well," Hermione said rather worriedly, "when you woke up, you looked really bothered about something. Were you dreaming?"

"Oh," Draco said. "No…I wasn't. I don't know what you're talking about.

He tried to lift his head to get a better look around, but this only made it throb. He tried to think in spite of the headache that was slowly consuming him. The last thing he wanted to do was to talk to Hermione, but if he wanted to know what was going on, he knew his only option was to cooperate.

"Listen," he began reluctantly, "Do you have any idea at all why you're here? Why Narcissa called you here in the first place?"

"No idea," Hermione said. "They just called me into McGonagall's office one night. No explanation or anything." She hesitated before saying, "What about you?"

Draco sighed. "I don't know. It seems like she's trying to get some sort of revenge on my father. But he's not a bad person."

There was a tense pause. Draco knew that Hermione was fighting not to say something about his father.

"So," Draco ventured after a moment, "d'you know how we got here?"

Hermione frowned again. "No," she admitted. "All I remember is being in the room with you, reading my book. And I haven't been awake for that long—maybe for fifteen minutes. I haven't seen anyone except you."

"Oh," Draco muttered, disappointed. Though he didn't know Hermione well, he knew that it wasn't like her to not know everything that was going on. "You don't even have any idea where we are?"

"Well," Hermione said thoughtfully, "I've been awake long enough for my eyes to adjust somewhat to the dark. I have deduced that we're definitely not in the same place we were before. Probably not even in the same building."

They were silent for a few minutes. Draco tried to get a grasp on what was happening to him. If he wasn't dreaming, then this must have been real life. And if this were real life, then what would become of him? Would he be doomed to die with a Mudblood? His father would be so ashamed of him. Lucius would probably not even bother with a funeral, just chuck Draco's body over the side of a volcano…

Suddenly, Hermione gasped loudly, interrupting Draco's train of wildly irrational thought.

"What?" Draco cried in alarm, forgetting himself and sitting up. "What's wrong?"

"I was just thinking," said Hermione. "Where are our things? What if I've lost the invisibility cloak? Harry will kill me a thousand times!"

"…Oh. I see." Draco rolled his eyes. Then, realizing that he had sat up and that he was in excruciating pain, he hissed in a short breath of air. He dropped back onto the floor with a thud and wrapped his arms around himself.

"I'm sorry," said Hermione worriedly, touching his shoulder, "I didn't mean to—"

"Never mind," Draco said shortly through clenched teeth, shrugging her hand off. He hated showing her that he was weak.

* * *

"Narcissa! Wake up, lazy girl!"

I groan and roll onto my stomach. A kitten has been sleeping on my back and mews indignantly. I want to remember my dream, but all I hear is Priscilla's shrill voice in my ear.

I hate it when they call me that wretched name. "Narcissa," a title given to me out of spite. "Marielle," what Auntie Clio calls me fondly, suits me much better. I don't have a real name, just like I don't have real parents.

Priscilla's voice continues to ring from the kitchen and I have no choice but to listen. Grudgingly, I sit up and look around. It's summertime, when Auntie and I sleep in the barn, but she's not here—probably gone to do her early chores. Auntie's absence does not shock me, but I don't want to get up if she's not there. It's her job, not Priscilla's, to give me orders anyway. I only answer to her, the one who is like my mother. Besides that, who wants to sort Mrs. Collins' dirty undergarments? Not me. I flop back into my bed of straw and curl up with one of the cats...

I smile as I hear Auntie approaching. She sits down beside me, facing my back, and reaches through my hair to tickle my ear.

"Go away!" I swat playfully at her with my tiny hand.

"Come on," she coaxes. "Up you get."

This is not a request. I squeal with delight as she heaves me over her shoulder and walks towards the bathing area as if I were light as a feather. The other servants, including Priscilla, glare at us as we go by.

* * *

"Hmm," Draco said. He and Hermione had long since managed to pull themselves into sitting positions. The room must have been pretty big—there didn't seem to be any walls for miles. They had, however, found a sturdy wooden box and were leaning on either side of it.

"What?" Hermione said.

"Well," Draco began, "I was just wondering."

"Wondering what?"

"Well, how come we haven't been put under any spells? It seems as though all they've bothered to do is kick the shit out of us."

"Watch your mouth, Malfoy," Hermione said tiredly. Then she added, rather suspiciously, "What is it you're getting at?"

"If this person is really dangerous," Draco went on as though he hadn't heard Hermione, something he knew she hated, "then why didn't they bother to put us under some sort of spell? You know, bind us, or something. Put us in an electric cage. I'm saying that it probably wouldn't do us any harm to get up and poke around a bit."

There was a pause. Draco found himself wishing (for perhaps the first time ever) that he were alone. Hermione was always loath to taking stupid risks; therefore, things would go much faster if she weren't around. But then, he thought with a smirk, he would miss the pleasure of her company.

"Well," Hermione started slowly and reluctantly, "I guess you're right. I just don't think we should underestimate our captors. If we've been captured at all, that is."

Draco, who had started to try to get up from the moment the words "I guess you're right" had come out of Hermione's mouth, said, "We aren't, stupid. We're just going to try to figure out where we are."

"Okay," Hermione said. "But don't call me 'stupid.'"

"Fair enough."

It took them a while to stand up fully.

"All right?" said Hermione when they finally did.

Draco looked her over. She was still bleeding from her forehead and the few patches of skin that poked out from underneath her robes were covered with bruises. She looked fragile, breakable almost. He shuddered to think what he probably looked like.

* * *

I'm laundering little Brett Collins' undershirts, and Priscilla and Aurora, who are mending clothes a few feet away from me, take up their favorite game: Narcissa baiting. Today, they've decided to talk about me as though I'm not there.

"I don't see," Aurora giggles, "why everyone likes her. She's really ugly."

"Quite," Priscilla agrees. "Although she sure doesn't seem to think so. What a narcissist."

I study my reflection in the basin of water. I don't think I'm beautiful. I can't help it if everyone says I am.

I dump a pile of smelly socks into the water and my reflection blurs.

* * *

"If only they'd left us our wands."

Hermione and Malfoy had been poking around for at least a half an hour. Hermione was beginning to wonder whether they were inside at all. They must have been, though. All she could hear was the "clack, clack" sounds their shoes made against the tiled floor.

"No," said Malfoy sarcastically, "I really love not being able to see anything."

"Look," Hermione snapped, not stopping walking, "I don't like being with you any more than you like being with me. Though if you'd adjust your bloody attitude and stop being so immature, things would be much easier for both of us."

Malfoy rolled his eyes and kept walking.

Hermione sighed. It was only just hitting her that she was walking aimlessly about in a potentially dangerous situation with Draco Malfoy. Of course, it just had to be him, she thought bitterly. How had she gotten into this? If Harry and Ron had been there, things would have been so much easier…

"What's that?" Malfoy said suddenly.

Hermione looked and saw what he was pointing at.

It was large and wooden crate and it looked like it was stuffed with fabrics of all colors. As they got closer to it, Malfoy, without hesitation, lowered himself to his knees and started rummaging through it.

"You know," said Malfoy after a moment, "you don't have to just stand there. You could come and help me. I won't bite, if that's what you're worried about."

This took Hermione by surprise. She hadn't realized that she was standing a good distance away.

"I'm not worried," Hermione said, coming up to kneel next to him.

"Then you're just afraid that this crate is going to spontaneously explode and blow us both to smithereens," Draco smirked.

"I'm not going to even comment on that," Hermione said, beginning to sift through the dark contents of the crate.

"You just did."

"Oh, stuff it up your—"

"Ah!" Malfoy cried suddenly.

"What?" Hermione said excitedly, moving closer. "What'd you find?"

Malfoy was holding a bundle of fabric and looking at it in admiration. "I've found," he said, "the only thing we're going to need except for our wands."

Hermione frowned, puzzled.

"Sorry if I missed something," she said, "but I fail to see how a piece of dirty fabric will help us."

Malfoy waved his hand as though to brush her comment away.

"No," he said impatiently, "don't you see? They're towels!"

Hermione thought a moment.

"Nope," she said. "I still don't get it. Must be dense or something."

"You never know when a towel might come in handy," Malfoy said, tossing her a shockingly pink one. "Read your Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sometime."

"Whatever," said Hermione, rolling her eyes. Not only was Malfoy extremely unpleasant, but he now also seemed to be a bit of a nut job. "Look, Malfoy, I don't know what you're…"

But Malfoy wasn't listening to her. His porcelain-colored skin was turning paler than ever and his eyes were fluttering.

"Malfoy, stop it," Hermione said, though she seriously doubted that he was faking it. "You're scaring me…"

Malfoy, his knuckles completely white from clutching at his towel, pitched forward and hit his head on the floor, blacking out.

* * * *

What has happened to poor Draco? What happened to Narcissa? What the hell's with those weird italicized passages that have somehow weaseled their ways into the "Draco" part of the story? And what of McGonagall's go-go boots? What of the go-go boots?! Tune in next time for the answers.

Alright, please inform me if there are errors or things that don't make sense. I'm too lazy to proof-read my own work.

Oh, by the way. I don't know if I'll be posting the next chapter before I go to camp for two months on the 21 of June. I'll try my best, though. And even if I don't, I'll probably finish the entire story while I'm at camp, so the few people who actually read this will have something to look forward to…

And here's the "Thanks" section, as promised (please review more!):

Hannah, Melody, Prongs, SaneLunatic, karina30, Emily, Hermione2, Thea, Mere, and Maya (hope you're having fun in Paris!).

E-mail me (luna@mail.nu) with any questions, or even if you just want to chat.