The Enemy Chapter 11

A/N: Sorry for the delay. I was going to update this on the 21st but I got really sick, and then I had loads of family for Christmas and all that…anyway, here's the chapter. Exams were okay…good in English and Creative Writing, heh.

I backed away slowly, trying to distance her away from me. Her eyes—it was in her eyes. The brown was gone…replaced by the cold unfeeling black of the Dark Lord's eyes. "Hermione," I whispered, trying to get her out of the trance. It couldn't be her; she was Potter's best friend, strong supporter of the Light…no, I knew it was Voldemort behind this.

She blinked, twice, and suddenly the black was gone and the brown was back. "Draco," she said, looking confused.

"Yes?" I whispered.

"Was he in there? In my head? I can't remember."

I shuddered involuntarily, and for some reason, shook my head. She was already worried enough as it was; it would make it so much worse if I told her the truth, wouldn't it? "No," I said reassuringly, moving closer to her once again until I'd enveloped her in a hug, "he wasn't. Let's keep looking for a way out."

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I walked up to my room, feeling shaky and tired, confused and cold, and most of all, just this horrid feeling of uncertainty that I couldn't seem to shake off. Symbols seemed to carve themselves across my mind and I kept getting messages from the Dark Lord, but it was so confusing…I couldn't tell if the feeling was really my own or if it was a feeling put there by Voldemort.

"Hermione!" someone called my name from behind me and I turned, walking down the stairs and back into the common room. "Hermione!" the voice sounded again, and I was beginning to develop a pounding headache—the very voice was distressing, and I just wanted to put myself out of the misery.

My vision faded in and out of focus as my eyes scanned the common room, in hopes of finding the culprit that dared disturb the peace that I'd finally achieved. All at once, a white-hot anger consumed me and my eyes were burning intensely. I wanted to scream and my blood began to rush to my head, making the pounding even worse, the headache simply screaming with anger…

"Hermione!" I'd found the voice; it belonged to a sixth year that had annoyed Harry many times, a Colin Creevey with an odd fascination for the camera.

I didn't know how I did it but suddenly his body seemed to turn green in my vision. I wanted to hurt him, wanted to take my bare hands and snake my slender fingers across his neck and choke him until he couldn't breathe, until he stopped saying my name, wanted to rid the world of yet another blasted mud blood, wanted to…

Mud blood?

I shook my head, thoroughly befuddled. Obviously Voldemort was somewhere in here, and he was molding my thoughts and his thoughts as one. But if I was his heiress, a Muggleborn witch myself, then why did he still hate mud bloods? I turned, deciding to ignore Colin. I was worried for his safety. What if in a moment of fury and dismal distress I did something bad, what if Voldemort could instruct me to kill the whole school, what if I hurt someone, what about…Harry! Oh, no, I had to keep my distance from him, there was no way I could go near him…if Voldemort could make me think of Colin as an insufferable mud blood who did not deserve to live, then what about Harry Potter?

With a moan I raced up to my bedroom. I had to record these thoughts. This potion was much more powerful than I had thought. I needed to read up on it, needed to know every little bit the potion could do to me…I needed to prevent it.

I walked into my room and suddenly a wave of cold washed over me. I shuddered and made my way over to my bed, peeling off the down comforter and putting it around my shoulders. All this was to no avail. The cold, if anything increased and I closed my eyes, willing it to go away.

It will never go away.

I jumped and my body tingled with surprise and…well…the weird-factor of the whole thing. My eyes flew open and I wrapped the blanket tighter around me, but…oh, man. It would never go away. The voice had just formed inside my head…was I going crazy?

No. You are not going crazy. I am here to show you the ropes of being an Heiress to the Dark Lord.

I nearly slapped myself with realization. Of course. Of all the bloody things, it was old Voldemort himself who resided inside my head, bent on changing my opinions and molding me into his stupid minion. Well, it's not going to happen, I thought angrily, tears forming in my eyes.

Accept your fate. You are lucky, my darling muggle born child…I could have simply performed the Killing Curse on you like all the other mud bloods out there, those who do not deserve entry into the wizard world. Yet if I die, you will carry on in my place.

The tears fell now. I was so angry, so sad, and so vulnerable. I wanted to believe him, wanted it all to be okay, wanted it to end. What had I done to deserve this god-awful fate? To end up as the heiress to an evil, lifeless…

Do you really want to finish that sentence?

Yes! I thought, the word lingering on my tongue. And then suddenly my tongue was on fire, the flames licking hungrily at the wet, pale pink flesh. I screamed out, shutting my eyes and trying to forget everything.

I kept screaming, wishing that the pain would stop.

My tongue kept burning, letting out an incandescent glow about my mouth.

I wanted to melt into the ground, anything to stop it, someone, please help me…

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The next day dawned bright and clear, and along with my two "friends" Crabbe and Goyle I walked down to breakfast. Oddly, I was in a cheerful mood--something that hadn't struck me in many months. And lately, I'd been bogged down with too much information to ever be happy. I had been thinking about Lucius last night. I had realized, quite shockingly, that apart from the fact that he was a very active death eater, I didn't know broomsticks about him. We reached the breakfast table and I ate rapidly, consumed in thoughts about my father's life before I was born, before he was married. I was confident that he loved Narcissa very much--in fact, she seemed to be the only thing he cared for at times.

Double potions with the Gryffindors was my first class. We walked into the dungeons confidently and Snape shot us a rare twist of the lips that probably classified as a smile, but wasn't really very pleasant to look at. I found my seat and sat down, and Crabbe and Goyle flanked around me, looking for chairs nearby. I mused that had it been even last year, I would have sought out Potter and co. and teased them all mercilessly about the same things that I'd teased them about for six years. I still hated them, with the exception of Hermione, but I liked to think of myself as maturing slightly. Slightly.

I turned around to give Hermione a secret wave or something and to my surprise and worry, none of the three were present. I waited. Maybe they were late. In fact it had been quite often that Potter and Weasley slid into class late, only to have an enormous amount of points deducted from them, courtesy of Snape.

They didn't show up. I hated to admit it, but I was worried about Hermione. More than worried. Anxious. And to my surprise and disgust, nobody seemed that concerned about them. Perhaps they all knew what had happened?

I needed to approach some Gryffindors. I scanned the room, where everyone was busy picking partners for Potions…there was one that I didn't really know. She wouldn't hate me immediately. I racked my brain, trying to remember her name and finally came up with a Parvati Patil.

"Patil," I called out, hoping that she didn't already have a partner.

She swung around, the long black hair swishing noisily behind her. "Malfoy?" she asked, rather disdainfully.

But nevertheless, she did agree to work with me, by some miracle, and as she was dicing mandrake root and I was gathering some gillywater leaves, I casually dropped the question. "So, where are Potter, Weasley, and Granger?"

She looked at me with surprise. "You haven't heard?"

A cold dread filled me but I shook my head, pretending to be interested only for the sake of a good gossip. "No, I haven't."

Patil was in her element. Her eyes shone with excitement although she seemed a bit sad about the whole thing. "Well, a terrible thing happened to Hermione Granger last night."

It was as if my worst fear had come true. I struggled to keep a neutral face but it was difficult, even for me. Hermione. Her name was like an ocean wave in my ear, a constant, dull roar that I could not escape. I hadn't even realized I cared for her so much. So goddamn much.

"Well, what happened?" I asked, looking down just in case my look could be interpreted as anything but nonchalant.

"Oh…it was awful," she began as she slid the mandrake roots into the cauldron. I bit on my lip to keep my temper at bay but I was seriously getting very pissed off. How long did it take to tell me what had happened to Hermione?

Before I could pull out the wand and do some serious damage to the pretty black hair she began speaking again. "Around eleven or something like that, Lavender and I heard some screams coming from our dormitory. We raced up and we saw Hermione like, writhing on the floor. It was absolutely terrible. We yelled and dragged her down the stairs and then rushed to find Harry and Ron--you know, her best friends."

Of course I knew. What did she think I was, a transfer student from Albania who hadn't been at the school long enough to know that Crabbe and Goyle possessed three strands of brain tissue between the both of them?

"And so what happened to Hermione?" I asked as I stirred the cauldron, hoping that she would just think that my sudden interest was because of new torture material or something like that. Luckily, she didn't really seem to care why I was interested. Maybe she was too caught up in the story.

"Well, we couldn't find them anywhere so we just took her to the hospital wing. We were on our way there when we bumped into Harry. He was all panicky about it and the three of us finally got her there. Madam Pomfrey was like, wow, what happened, and we were like, well, she was screaming really badly, you know? But we didn't know why."

I waited, on the ends of my nerves, for her to continue. Gods. How long did it take to tell me a simple although probably gruesome story?

"Well, Madam Pomfrey checked her out all over and apparently, her mouth was scorched. It was the craziest thing. She was mumbling something, but then she began choking and Madam Pomfrey was like, yeah, don't talk anymore. And she shooed us all out. But then this morning, she requested Harry and Ron to come down at have a chat with her because apparently she wanted to talk."

"Well, what did she want to talk about?" I asked nervously, knowing full well that Voldemort was behind all of this. And the choking--she had probably forgotten that if she tried to tell anyone the truth, something would happen that would prevent it.

"I'm not sure. But we think it was something to do with the burning."

No bloody way, I thought sarcastically. Of course it was something to do with the burning. What else would it be? Besides homework, that is. The girl placed that ahead of almost everything, really.

The rest of Potions went by excruciatingly slow, for me at least. When it was finally over I nearly upset the cauldrons in my haste to leave and make it down to the hospital wing in time. As I entered I hoped that Potter and Weasley had already left. That would be something fun to explain. Why I cared about what happened to the 'long molared mud blood beaver' or so I had thought of her until recently.

Luckily for me, the hospital wing was nearly empty and the only occupant of the white beds was Hermione herself. I looked down at her, my heart beating rather erratically. She seemed okay. She was asleep but she looked anything but peaceful.

"Hermione," I whispered, wanting to prod her awake but worried that something bad would happen.

By some miracle, she awoke. "Hey," she said softly when she saw me.

"What happened?"

She sighed and nestled her head closer to the pillow. "Too much. I don't know, really."

"Well, try to explain it. We have to…you know."

"It doesn't matter, Draco. He already knows you aren't positive about getting into his circle and all that. Anyway, there are moments where I'm me--and then there are times when I'm him. I think like him. I'm mean like him. I could…kill someone," she said slowly, raising a hand to wipe away her tears.

For some odd reason, my hand beat hers to it. "Shhh. Just try to sleep right now. We'll figure it out."

"Last night," she said, if possible, in an even softer whisper, "last night, I could hear him inside my head. It was like having a conversation mentally. I said something--I can't even remember what, my memory is full of blank spots where I can't remember what I did or what I said or anything--and he got mad. He burnt my tongue and I was screaming but that's not even the worst of it, Draco…there were images, inside my head. And I could see what he had done to loads of people, the pain, agony, torture, and finally the death…" she stopped to take a large breath.

"I know. It's terrible what he's done," I sighed and look down. The situation was not something that would happen everyday. I was finding myself more and more ensnared in the world of Voldemort.

"No. That's not the worst of it…so I saw all these pictures, and I laughed inside my head. I liked it! I wanted to do stuff like that!"

We both were silent for a minute. "You didn't want to," I finally said. "He wanted you to. He controlled your thoughts."

"I know he did. But no one else does. My thoughts and actions are indistinguishable from his. The blame all goes to me."

The sentence was chilling.

The sentence was so true.

A/N: Thanks to all reviewers. Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me so far. Well, I'm wrapping this up, slowly but surely--for those who haven't read my bio, probably four chapters or so left. This chapter was longer than the last three or so, so I hope you enjoyed it. Please review.