A/N: Once again, hi everyone. Hope you enjoyed ur three day weekend (even though school always manages to have a sadistic way of assigning huge term papers on long weekends). Anyways, thanx once again to A Very Interested Reader, Lbj5411, DanielRadcliffesChick18, and a new reader, Hannah. To Lbj5411: Yes, I did think of the unicorn thing by myself, although a unicorn does appear in one instant in the first and fourth books. Some of you guys were wondering whether or not Draco was living a cursed life, the fate of whoever murders a unicorn and drinks its blood. My answer is yes, although it will appear more obvious in later chapters. Personally, I think growing up with a father like Lucius Malfoy automatically makes u cursed, dontcha agree? But I also think it doesn't have to be obvious from the outside. (I myself wasn't very sure about what Rowling meant when she mentioned it in the first book).
In this chapter: Hermione gets waayy too much trouble than she bargained for, we encounter the Death Eater everyone loves to hate (no, not Snape, u gotta feel kinda sorry and guilty about hating him cause he's on Dumbledore's side now, at least I do), Ron and Harry do a lot of running around the castle, and I throw into the mix some swimsuit models…..Huh? Yeah, you did read that last part correctly. How does it all fit together? Read to find out! And don't forget to review, please, please, pretty please!!! All those who do will be blessed by the fanfiction gods to have 150 reviews for each of their stories.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Pursuit and Capture
"Your father??" Hermione cried. She knew that Lucius Malfoy wouldn't be exactly jumping for joy if he saw his son flushed pink and panting, alone in a room with a Mudblood Gryffindor of all bloody people.
She was so shocked she didn't see Draco pointing his wand at her. Hermione then realized that he didn't want her blazing red Gryffindor patch showing, and after a flash of golden light she saw that he had changed its colors to silver and green. Another set of three knocks resounded against the door, more aggravated than the first. Draco got up to open the door.
"But-" Hermione began to protest that her father had seen her before but her mouth slammed shut when she saw the tall, looming figure of Lucius Malfoy, ink black robes draped down to his knees. The candlelight in the hallway sent shadows across his face, deepening the lines near his eyes and mouth. His eyes were narrowed and he was staring—staring straight at her.
Hermione felt her breath catch in her throat. She was half expecting him to look astonished, half expecting him to jinx or torture her. But he shook off his momentary, mild surprise and looked politely curious—yet the barely hidden sinister aspect of his never left him.
"Hello, Draco. Was I….interrupting anything?" he asked, one pale eyebrow raised.
It took Draco a while to find his voice. " No, um, we were…..er……we were…um…."
Lucius was beginning to become impatient. "Well can you at least introduce me to your, er, charming friend?"
Hermione almost opened her mouth in shock, but stopped herself. Didn't he recognize her? He knew she must have been a Mudblood, and he hated Mudbloods. And one doesn't easily forget what one hates. But he was merely looking at her in fascination, as if he was having a strange déjà vu, and was trying to remember exactly where he had seen her before.
"Oh, father. I thought you remembered….Pansy Parkinson."
'What??' Hermione thought. She didn't look anything like Pansy! …Or did she? She finally tore her eyes away from Lucius and his fascinated stare, and noticed her curls. Her blond curls. She stole a quick glance at one of Draco's mirrors (he had a lot of them in his room, not surprisingly). Her face looked pretty much the same, except for the mere fact that she had curly golden locks; blue eyes looked out where her brown ones used to. Draco had changed her appearance as well as her robes. He was looking at her from under his eye to play along.
Lucius raised both eyebrows this time, tilting his head back. "Oh, you must excuse me. For some reason, I remembered you….differently."
Hermione piped up. "Oh, well, I've been using a few glamour charms, you know."
He gave a curt nod. "Yes, your father always specialized in glamours and disguises," his lip curled slightly.
"Yes, Pansy and I were just working on a project for school," Draco added.
"Hmmmm," Lucius said. "Make sure you two do a good job. I will not have anybody thinking themselves better than Slytherin. That's why I made sure Draco became Head Boy. Pity that the position of Head Girl went to someone who wasn't even raised to become a proper witch. A Mudblood Head Girl—another proof of school's downfall under the crooked nose of Dumbledore."
Hermione nodded, although her fists were instinctively clutching. Draco was glad her sleeves were long enough to hide them somewhat. But she replied as silkily as possible, "Yes… May I ask, to what do we owe the ….pleasure of your visit here?"
'Not bad,' Draco thought, impressed. 'With a little practice, she could lie like a Slytherin.'
Lucius answered, "After an army of Dementors surrounding the school, how could I not come and check for myself if the er, students were alright. I am a school governor, after all. I had to especially see my dear son, of course." He said the last part with a venomous smile at Draco. Hermione immediately saw where Draco had gotten all his facial expressions from: he learned from the best. Hermione noticed that he was eyeing the uncorked bottle of liquor on the table.
Draco nervously cleared his throat. "I think I need a few moments with my father, Pansy. Why don't we continue our project later?"
Hermone nodded. Then Lucius stepped toward her and shook her hand. his fingers felt like they were made of ice. His eyes were the same gray, but Draco's were stormy and enticing; his were chillingly sharp. The searching, slightly suspicious look never left them as he stared at her. Hermione quickly made her way toward the door—perhaps a little too quickly. As Draco let her out, he didn't really say anything, but his face told her quite clearly, 'Don't follow us.'
And he shut the door in her face. Hermione stood there, struck by what she narrowly escaped.
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"Did you get a chance to talk with Hermione?" Harry asked Ron as they walked up the stairs in the entrance hall to the castle.
"Well, yes," he said, squirming evasively.
"And?"
Ron didn't answer immediately, but Harry saw that he was wrinkling his brow, as if remembering things he didn't want to. They walked for a few minutes, then Ron suddenly halted to a stop, sighed, and threw up his arms. "Harry, I…I don't know what to do."
Harry gaped. "You mean if Eve wakes up, and what everyone is saying is true, then you might…" he gulped at the prospect, "leave Hermione?"
Ron's ears reddened in anger. "Don't be a bloomin' prat. Of course I'd never leave Hermione. Trouble is, I think she'll leave me."
"Now you're being the prat. Why would she do that?"
"Harry, I came out and told her, 'You know how I feel.' But I guess she got a bit unnerved at what happened this morning. She said-" but he couldn't bring himself to continue.
"Ron, what'd she say?"
He took a deep breath. "She said she didn't know if we should, you know, stay together. 'I don't think we should do this anymore,' those were her exact words, Harry." He looked extremely downtrodden, and the circles had darkened and deepened beneath his eyes.
"C'mon Ron. I bet it was just nerves, like you said. Just take it easy with her these next few days. She'll be alright, especially when Eve wakes up and this mess is all settled."
Ron looked unconvinced. Harry said, "Alright, then maybe you should talk to her again."
"I don't think she'd want to talk to me at this moment," Ron said quietly, "maybe you should."
Harry was in no mood to get in the middle of another Ron-and-Hermione fight, especially since they were romantically involved now. But he shrugged in agreement and took out the map to check where Hermione was. He gaped, "What's she doing in Malfoy's room?"
Ron looked as if somebody told him he had to snog Aragog the giant spider. "What?? Let me see that!" He seized the Marauder's Map and cried, "Oh my God, his father is coming right to them!"
"Lucius Malfoy is here too?" Harry asked. Ron nodded. They both looked at each other for a split second and dashed up the stairs.
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Draco put on his most charming Slytherin smile. "So what do you want to talk about, father?"
But Lucius had immediately given up all pretense of politeness. He sneered, "Don't act like an idiot, boy. After what happened today, you don't need to prove that you are one. Do you realize," he hissed as he came closer, breathing down Draco's face, "that you could have ruined everything."
"How could I have known that bloody Snape wouldn't have shown up for class?"
"I presumed that you would have done what anyone who has an iota of a brain would have done, and checked beforehand. You're close friends with Eve, you could have asked her before class."
For a rare moment, Draco was at a loss as to what to answer. Lucius continued with his tirade. "And you don't even care. You're supposed to be after Eve, but here you are, drunk and bringing a girl into your room."
Draco immediately protested, "She's not-"
"The Parkinson women have been whores for ages," Lucius sneered. Draco trapped his mouth shut and bit his lip.
Lucius immediately regained his composure. "Normally, you know what I'd be doing to you right now, boy. You'd be begging me to kill you. But consider yourself lucky that the Dark Lord wants you alive and well tonight." He paused, a nasty smile creeping on his lips. "Then again, perhaps you're not that lucky," he said silkily. He motioned with his cane for Draco to follow him.
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"Hurry, Malfoy is already in the room!" Harry cried. He was looking back at Ron, and didn't see the very solid thing he ran into.
"Whoa, hold it there, mate!" Fred nearly fell backwards to the floor.
"There you are, you little bastard," George smirked when he saw Ron. "We've been looking all bloody day for you. Jesus, you go off almost dying and you don't breathe a word to us if you're alright."
"I'm fine, George. Now that I've told you, Harry and I have to run, so if you'll excuse us-" Ron moved forward but Fred held him back.
"Oh no. You're not going anywhere. Mum's about to have kittens over you. She's here at the school with Dad right now, and they want to see you."
Harry piped up, "Listen guys, right now is not the best time. We're in a bit of an emergency and-"
"What's wrong?" George frowned.
"Nevermind, just cover for me for once, will ya? You owe me. Remember the time you guys snuck out to be with those Quidditch Illustrated swimsuit models? I had to figure out an excuse for you guys being gone for three weeks!"
A stupid, dazed grin flashed across George's face. "Oh ya, I remember that."
"Yeah, we sure had a wild time," Fred said nostalgically. " I got sand in places I never knew I had."
Harry was getting frustrated at the thought of what horrible things might be going on with Hermione alone in the room with two Malfoys. He looked at Ron, indicating they had to leave. Now.
"Ok guys, just say I'm indisposed or something. Say you put that Engorgement potion in my shampoo," Ron said hurriedly as he started making his way up the stairs again.
"We can't, Dad already caught us stealing that!" Fred called, but both of them were already out of earshot. He sighed and shrugged, "We have to make up an excuse, George. We don't want our little brother falling too short of the infamous Weasley tradition of getting into trouble."
A sly smile played across George's lips. "Too bad we can't tell Mum and Dad what part of him we planned to engorge next."
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Hermione had never left the hallway right outside the door to Malfoy's room. But she had turned herself into a phoenix, and was leaning against the door, listening: phoenix hearing was much more better than a human's.
Not that she needed to really strain herself; Lucius Malfoy, had a loud and clear voice when it was raised slightly in anger. But after a whoosh of what sounded like wind, a sudden silence rang through the door to her ears. Had they gone somewhere? Did they realize she was there? She held her breath. But she still heard silence. What was that wind noise she had heard before? Perhaps they had used a Portkey. She decided to fly out the nearest window and perhaps spy on them from the outside. She flapped her wings across the hallway for a few seconds before she finally found a window. It was closed. Cursing silently, she remembered that after the events with the dementors, Dumbledore probably would put magical wards on all doors and windows in the evening. Being a magical creature at the time, she was more sensitive to magic around her, as if a foggy mist had been removed from her eyes, and she could finally see, or sense things, for the first time. And now she could almost feel the magic crackling all around the windows, all around the castle. She had felt it also as a sudden rush in Draco's room, but then all she sensed was nothing. There was no other way out besides a Portkey other than the passageway from that same room. She had to do something.
Finally, she decided to go back in the room, disguised as a phoenix this time. If they were still in there, she would act like she was delivering a message to Draco from Dumbledore. If not….well she would think about following them when she got there.
She gave out a low whistling noise, and the door slowly opened. She hovered inside, and found the room completely empty. She fluttered onto Draco's bed, transformed again, and thought, 'should I use Draco's passageway and go outside?' She then realized something with shock: Draco had actually saved her from his father. He disguised her and lied for her. Why? He could have quite easily said that she snuck in here (which she did) and now he very conveniently had a Mudblood, someone they could have a little sadistic fun with. But he didn't; Draco surely knew what his father would be capable of. Did that mean he actually did something nice for her?
The thought was almost incomprehensible. Maybe he just didn't want a distraction from wherever they would be going. She looked down at her right wrist. She could still see his finger marks, which left small, blue, aching bruises. He had been hurting her himself a few minutes ago, insulting her and looking as if he relished her pain. If he did, then why did he do her a favor?
She considered going back, perhaps telling Ron and Harry all this and sneaking out with them; but she didn't want to put them in trouble, and yet she didn't know if she could go alone—she had never gone anywhere alone until that day she spied on Eve, and she could have easily gotten caught by Voldemort. The Ron and Harry would most certainly put their lives on the line to save her, and she did not want to live with that. She sighed, decided to go back and not say anything to anyone except Dumbledore: it was the safest thing to do.
She opened the door but shut it immediately: she had heard thundering footsteps coming from a lower floor toward the room: she leaned against the door for a second—only Slytherins would know the password to Draco's room. She opened the trap door and shut it quietly behind her. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She transformed again and the strange inherent light from her feathers (something which she particularly liked about being a phoenix) was enough for her to see. She thought she'd might as well fly go out the castle.
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"It's a good thing we got past the portrait to the entrance. It would take too long to go to Eve's room and use the passage from there," Harry breathed as they ran.
"I would have thought the git would have been more original with his password—'pureblood,'—that would be anybody's first guess," Ron said disdainfully.
"Wait!" Harry said as he skidded to a halt. He still had the map in front of him. "Both of the Malfoys are gone!"
"What? You mean they just disappeared?" Ron said as he looked at the map. "Hermione's still here, though. Look, she's right outside the room." They continued on until they came in front of Draco's door, with no Hermione. They went inside, and the room was empty.
"Harry, look!" Ron said as he picked up a shining blue feather from Malfoy's bed.
"Well she's outside the castle now," Harry pointed out.
"How did she get out? Dumbledore said this morning he put wards all around the doors and windows," Ron said.
Harry was trailing a finger across the parchment. "Look, there's a secret passageway out the castle—from this very room!"
Ron fell to his knees, searching for a door similar to the one in Eve's room. He found it, and opened it with a slam. Harry and him both climbed in: but before that, Ron had taken the feather, and put it in one of the pockets of his robes.
"Lumos!" Harry whispered, and they crept along the passageway, the tip of his wand glowing and castling eerie shadows against the walls. Although it took Hermione a few minutes to fly out the passage, it would take them a bit longer on foot. Harry was merely following behind Ron—he kept his eyes glued to the Marauder's Map, following the dot labeled Hermione Granger.
Suddenly he stopped again, and felt like his insides had suddenly filled with lead. His fingers went cold.
"Whassa matter?" Ron asked.
But Harry could only watch in horror, his eyes widened. Ron looked over his shoulder. Out of nowhere, right in front of Hermione, appeared a dot labeled Lucius Malfoy. They sprinted, running faster and faster. But then the breath caught in Harry's throat and it felt like his heart stopped—one second he was watching two dots, and the next second he couldn't find them. Both of them had vanished—vanished. He grabbed the back of Ron's shirt, nearly choking him in the process. He shoved the parchment toward him, and he stared, his blue eyes scanning it, looking, looking. Finally he stopped, and he slid down to the floor with his back against the wall of the passageway; it dreadfully reminded Harry of the moment he had heard that his sister Ginny had been taken into the deadly Chamber of Secrets. He gazed blankly to nothing in particular. The light of Harry's wand sent shadows across his face, deepening the lines against his mouth, his woeful eyes.
"Ron-" Harry began, but stopped when he saw Ron wasn't paying attention to him. He merely pulled out the feather, stared at it for a moment, and weakly loosened his fingers, watching it flutter to the ground, right before closing his eyes shut in agony.
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Hermione flew across the trees, past stinging branches, mysterious shadows, and rustling leaves. Thankful that birds usually had such good vision, she scanned all around the forest, trying to sense traces of magic; of course there was always a lot more magic than usual in the Forbidden Forest, but she was looking for Dark Magic, which always had its own signature feeling of foreboding and malevolence.
And then she sensed it, condensed into and emanating from a single form, and Hermione could pick it up as if it were a scent. She hid herself on one of the branches of a tree and watched around like a hawk.
Suddenly a flash of red light hit her seemingly out of nowhere and she fell to the painfully hard floor. She was wounded and unable to fly. She craned her long neck up to see her attacker and stared straight into the viciously cutting eyes of Lucius Malfoy. He was grinning—and to Hermione it was sadistic and blood curdling. She noticed Draco was not with him.
"Well, well, well. Haven't I shot a fine catch this evening?" he said in an oily voice. He bent over to look at her and she shot out her sharp beak at him to try and prick his eyes out—they were unnerving, piercing and icy, like the silver flash of light from a blade.
But Lucius was to swift and caught her throat. He was crushing it with his fingers, his face impassive to her struggles to breathe.
"I wondered if the spies that Dumbledore sent were always human," he said lazily to himself; he raised his wand and a flash of blue light hit her. A split second later, he was staring into her terrified human eyes, her brown curls tangling with his fingers. Hermione knew the flash of recognition in his eyes. His grin crept even wider, as if the prey he had caught in his trap had wildly exceeded all his expectations.
He loosened his grip slightly, but only enough to barely keep her alive. She was beginning to feel dizzy from lack of air and the outright horror at what might happen to her. The last thing she remembered was his voice, sleek and dripping with dangerous pleasure. "Looks like tonight will be much more enjoyable than I thought."
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