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A/N: Apologies for the lateness! First of all I had a proper IT GCSE exam, then a 'surprise holiday' at my sisters' where they have no internet (the horror… *shakes*) So it's been difficult. The exam went ok, and I'm getting the results late August. If I utterly vanish from the face of the earth around then, you know why. Oh, and since someone asked I'll say it again: GCSE's are government exams. Important ones. Ones that go on job and university applications.
Another reason I've been busy is that I'm soon going to be creating a website for my fics, poems and original stories. I'm hoping to do a lot of work on it shortly, so I'll bring you more information next chapter…
Anyway, onto the story.
~*~
'I ought to feel bad about it, I suppose. Guilty. But I don't, and I'm not going to pretend I do. What would be the point? I'm glad he's dead, I'm glad I killed him… and I'd do it again.'
Draco said this with a hint of defiance in his voice and a harsh glint in his eye, a glint which would have made anyone seeing him remember, dimly, a similar look in the eyes of his late father. Only slightly similar, of course, but the resemblance was there.
However, there was no one to notice the resemblance, or at least no one awake. Draco was sitting in the hospital wing of Hogwarts, by an unconscious Hermione's bed. She didn't look alive, but she was. Her skin was as white as the hospital sheets she was wrapped in, and she barely seemed to breathe at all unless he watched closely.
With a small sigh, he stopped himself from worrying and continued to talk. 'Anyway… It seems like everything that happened after I killed Lucius was a blur… I really did think you were dead, you looked it… You still do now. I remember my mother screaming, and Harry and Ron had got there somehow – by broomstick, but I didn't think of that at the time. It felt like a dream, or a nightmare. People always appear from nowhere in dreams, after all. I think a part of me kept wondering when I'd wake up in the Slytherin dormitory…'
He stopped himself with a snort. 'I apologise, I'm rambling. And I shouldn't. Slytherins don't ramble. I'd just… I don't want to sit here in silence.' Which was strange, considering that the Slytherin common room was never noisy with the laughter and chatter of friends. But silence was uncomfortable around Hermione, he didn't know why… there was something about her that made him want to talk to her. So he did.
'Anyway… if you can hear me – which I doubt – you probably want to know what happened. Harry and Ron could probably give you a better account; I don't know everything that happened… My mother was screaming, I already mentioned that, didn't I? Someone called the Ministry in, it was probably her but I didn't see her do it… My concentration was elsewhere, I'm afraid. The whole manor was suddenly swarming with officials, one of them hit me with the Stupefy curse – presumably on the grounds that I was suspected of being a dangerous psychopath.'
He paused, with a half-smile on his face as though the thought both amused and hurt him. 'I woke up at the Ministry buildings in London. Dumbledore was there, and I really thought I was going to get sent to Azkaban or something… but apparently he'd managed to get enough evidence to prove that I was acting in self-defence, or in defence of you, or some legal loophole anyway. They proved he was a Death Eater – it wasn't hard – and that he'd been torturing you. We collected all the evidence that he'd been threatening you, all his letters and things. Oh, and we found out who M.B. was. We've got a plan to get evidence against her, I thought it up. It's very, very cunning, but then again you could have guessed that it would be. I'll tell you all about it in detail.
He glanced at his watch, and his face fell. 'Well, I would, but I'm supposed to be there in one minute and it's on the other side of the castle. Damn.' He jumped out of his seat and grabbed his schoolbag, but paused to look at Hermione. 'I forgot to tell you who she was, didn't I? Mandy Brocklehurst. She's in Ravenclaw.'
He smiled, a wide smile that looked alarmingly out of place on a Malfoy's face. 'Get better soon.' he insisted, before turning away, racing out of the hospital wing and through the twisting corridors of Hogwarts.
~*~
Five minutes later, Draco, Harry and Ron were waiting just inside a small, empty storeroom, which led onto the corridor of the Charms classroom. The storeroom was filled with various items for Professor Flitwick's classes – feathers, pillows, socks, shoes, spare textbooks, and myriads of other items strewn carelessly around the place.
If the boys listened carefully, they could hear the faint noise of the Charms class chanting their latest spell in unison, and the thin strains of the professor correcting them – 'No, no, no! It's a long e, like this: Eeeeeeeeeee' This sounded so exactly like a small mouse that the whole class burst into laughter, which Professor Flitwick had a hard time stopping.
The laughter soon turned to the moans of students receiving homework and the surreptitious packing away of wands and pencil cases in order to be first out of the lesson – always important, as the first out of one classroom was the first into the next, and could therefore grab the best seat at the back. Draco's hand tightened on his wand.
'Remember, I'm going to do all the talking.' he said softly, and his eyes glittered dangerously for an instant.
'Yes, yes, because we're Gryffindors and we'll mess it up. We've heard it all before.' Ron replied, looking irritated, but the corner of Harry's mouth twitched. Draco glanced towards him with a look of surprised amusement, his fierce expression fading at Ron's unexpected comment.
'Actually, I didn't mean…' he began, but was cut off by the tumult of students who began to pour out of the Charms classroom, and their attention was diverted to something more important than their old argument. If this went wrong, it could wreak the entire plan… and Mandy would be onto them.
Fortunately, she was walking fairly close to the wall, near the back of the group. Her bag was of a size to rival Hermione's, her eyes were similarly brown – though quite a bit darker – and her hair was the same length, but blond and straight. Draco's sharp eyes picked out her arrogant walk, the cunning in her eye, and the way she held her left arm – the arm on which, he was sure, the Dark Mark was imprinted.
He reached out casually, grabbed her upper arm, and yanked her forcefully into the storeroom. She cried out, reflexively pulling away from him, but Harry had already slammed the door shut and locked it.
Mandy shook her arm out of Draco's and stepped back, away from the boys. 'Let me go.' she commanded authoritatively. 'Now, or I'll report this to the headmaster.'
At the word 'headmaster', Draco's cold grey eyes flickered uneasily to the corner of the room, where there was a curiously blank space amongst the boxes. It was only a glance, barely noticeable, and his attention was soon back on Mandy. The cruel, cold Slytherin part of him – it would always be there – took out its shining, razor-edged tools and went to work.
'But what for?' he asked silkily – but the silk held a threat, a menace. 'Have I done anything wrong? All I wanted to do was return this.'
He held up the white quill with her initials on it, twisting it gently in front of his eyes, pretending to examine it closely but letting his gaze fall on her instead. Ho one else would have noticed, but her muscles twitched, and now she looked afraid. She knew what was coming.
'I've never seen that quill in my life before.' she insisted. 'You've made a mistake.'
Draco smiled. 'Oh, I think not. We tested it. It's most certainly yours..' He paused, savouring the moment like fine wine. Mandy was uncomfortable now. The prey was fleeing the hunter, twisting and turning, but there was no way out. The trap was ready to spring…
'An interesting quill.' he commented. 'With an interesting story. You know, I found it right next to the scene of an attack on Hermione Granger? I'm sure there's a good reason it was there. A very interesting reason. Why don't you tell us?'
Mandy shook her head impatiently. 'My bag had a hole in and it fell out as I was walking down the corridor.' she told him. 'Not very interesting at all, is it?'
Draco raised an eyebrow. There was a power to this, an easy, sleek and cunning power, the power of a snake as it stalks its prey. It was so easy, so simple, so fun. He was enjoying it. Enjoying the Slytherin feeling of watching his opponent being forced into a corner, the joy of the hunt… the kill…
'Really?' he asked. 'I was under the impression it was dropped by an agent of Voldemort. Which of course, I would never suspect you of being. I suppose you should go to your next lesson, then. But first, let me see your left forearm.'
'No.' She started back, hand clamped over her sleeve.
'Why not?' he asked. 'It would set my mind at rest that it wasn't you. What harm could it do? Unless, of course, you really have the Dark Mark… which is plainly unthinkable.'
She shook her head. 'You can't make me…'
'Can't I?' He stepped forward with the fluid motion of the snake making his strike, grabbed her sleeve and pulled it upwards, to reveal…
The Dark Mark.
There was a moment of absolute silence.
'I'd like to know,' Draco said, and now his voice had a more menacing undertone, 'just what you've been doing.'
'I haven't been doing anything.' she pleaded. 'I was forced… against my will… my parents…'
'Stop acting, it doesn't work on me.' he spat, venom filling his eyes. 'Why. That's all I want to know. Why.'
Her entire face changed as though she'd thrown off a mask. Her pleading, frightened eyes hardened, froze over, like ice. She stood straighter and taller, becoming almost as intimidating a sight as Draco.
'And all I've ever wanted to know about you was why not. Why, Draco, why did you turn away from him? There's nothing to be gained by fighting on the Mudbloods' side. Nothing to gain, everything to lose. You could have been great, had power many of us can only dream of… you were a fool, an idiot to leave him.'
His eyes narrowed. 'I'd never work for him. Never. I've seen where that leads, and it leads to… to hate and nothing. Why have power when you aren't happy?'
'Power makes you happy.' Mandy replied simply. For some reason, Draco almost shuddered, but stopped himself.
'So, you worked for Voldemort. What did you do?'
Mandy shrugged. 'What you've seen. Carry messages, send lures to get that Mudblood brat whose caught your eye out of the school…'
Draco's blood boiled at her description of Hermione, but he kept himself calm. 'And it was you who attacked her? On Voldemort's orders?'
'Yes.' she hissed. 'He decided she was no longer useful in trying to control you… she was a pest to your father's plans. I would have killed her if you hadn't stopped me. I wish I had. One less filthy Mudblood…'
Draco almost attacked her, his eyes flashing, wand lifting and mouth opening to pronounce one of the nastier dark curses he knew, but a voice cut into their talk.
'Thank you for that, Miss Brocklehurst.' Dumbledore said gravely, removing Harry's Invisibility Cloak from around himself and Professor Snape. 'I believe that evidence will be enough to convict you before a Ministry court. I only wish I had known sooner…'
Mandy's expression turned to one of shock. 'But… but how? You can't prove anything, there's no way of taking anything I just said outside this room. And they'll never convict me on the word of a… a barmy old idiot like you!'
'Wrong, Miss Brocklehurst.' Shape said softly, holding up his wand. 'Aperi Memoria Virgae.'
A thin cone of light spread out from the end of his wand, revealing a perfect miniature of the room they stood in, just like a Muggle film. It began just as Harry slammed the door behind Mandy, whose recorded form pulled away from Draco and again demanded, 'Let me go. Now, or I'll report this to the headmaster…'
Snape flicked his wand, and the vision faded. 'It's all recorded, Miss Brocklehurst.' he told her. 'Every last word.'
'And now, we are going to my office.' Dumbledore told her, looking weary and grave. 'I presume your parent's don't know? Well, they shall have to be told. And then, the Ministry, of course. I can only hope they shall be lenient…
He led a pale and shocked Mandy away. Snape followed, but paused a moment to glance at Draco with a peculiar look in his eye. 'A very impressive intimidation, Mr. Malfoy…' he said. Draco, without knowing quite why, shuddered.
~*~
A/N: Half of you guessed who M.B. was. BAD REVIEWERS!!! You aren't supposed to figure out the mysterious M.B… *sob*
Anyway, Latin translations: 'Aperi Memoria Virgae' literally means, 'Reveal the memory of the wand.' The idea is that this is a spell which allows wizards and witches to use their wand like a sort of video camera. Presumably there's also a spell to record what's happening and a spell to wipe the memory clear.
And that's the end of the chapter! But not the story. Come on, they aren't back in love yet. Would I leave it here? There's also the house elf love triangle to sort out. Ah, romance…
