((A.N. Hey people!!! Thanks for the great, great wonderful reviews last chapters and I'm sorry this took a while to get up also. Thanks so much to: Moon Burst, kat, katie, Draco-Malfoy-Severus-Luna, Apollonia2, Draco_Fan, Catherine, hinkypunk2, and Twisted Silver Dagger. About Pansy in the previous chapters, I decided to make her a bit different from the cliche' Pansy that everyone uses, just to add drama to this story! And I'm sorry if I have to take Draco even more out of character. This is my favorite chapter so far and I hope that it will be yours too! Read and Review to see!))
Disclaimer: J.K. owns everything. I own the plot. Thank you J.K. for the inspiration.
Hermione stumbled as they began to climb the stairs out of the dungeons. She noticed Draco looking nervously ahead, his eyes intent on the top of the stairwell. He cautiously sidled around every corner they turned. Finally they reached the top of the stairs and Draco inched the door open.
Hermione quickly found that it was daytime because the second the sun hit her eyes, she was blinded.
"Argh!" she screamed, throwing her hands up to shield her burning eyes. It had been nearly a month since she had seen sunlight and Hermione felt as though she had come within an inch of the sun.
"Granger!" Draco growled in a fierce whisper, silencing her with a wave of his hand. He crept through a doorway to the left and Hermione followed him as best she could. She was still blinded, however, and banged stupidly against a wall.
"GRANGER!" came Draco's strangled cry. "You must be the biggest klutz I've ever seen!" His head appeared in the doorway.
"It's all clear," he said suddenly. "My parents have gone out to dinner and they've taken the floo network. I don't know when they'll be back, though," he stated, seeming a bit apprehensive. Then he asked, "Can you see anything at all?" He crossed his arms over his chest in a solid manner.
"Well, sort of," she said, removing her hands from her face cautiously. She tried squinting around but found everything to be hazy, as if seen through dirty glass.
"Fine, then, let's go," Draco said impatiently. They began walking out of the living room ant into the foyer. To her surprise, he opened the front door and they strode down huge stone steps and off of the pebble path.
"May I ask where we're going, and why?" Hermione questioned huffily. She began taking long strides, keeping directly behind Draco.
"There's some woods behind my house. That's where we're going," he said in a dismissive tone. She noted that he'd never answered the second part of her question. She eyed the back of his head suspiciously.
"How do I know you're not just taking me into the woods to hurt me or something?" she questioned, narrowing her eyes.
He turned around and grabbed her wrist. He was wearing what looked like almost an amused expression as he said, "Granger. If I had wanted to hurt you, I could've done it back in that cell. Trust me this once, okay?"
Then he turned around and continued walking in front of her at a faster pace. Hermione considered his words for a few moments, then replied, "That's asking a lot, you know, Malfoy. Trusting you, I mean."
Without turning around he replied, "I know. But you know what's asking even more? Asking you to be quiet."
"What, is my talking annoying you?" Hermione said, feigning a hurt tone. Draco grinned, but didn't let her see.
"It's not so much the talking, it's the talking to you," he retorted.
"Oh, I see how it is. Okay then, I'll be quiet," Hermione said regally.
They tramped closer and closer to the woods, which to Hermione seemed a dark and forbidding as the Forbidden Woods behind Hogwarts.
In the late afternoon light, Draco asked himself why he had taken Hermione out of the cell. He had risked his father seeing them, he had risked everything he had. Why? For some mudblood he hated?
At the same time Hermione realized that Draco was taking an awful gamble letting her out. She shooed this out of her mind as they reached the edge of the woods.
Without a word Draco plunged into the dark forest, crunching nosily through the undergrowth. Hermione reluctantly followed him, feeling apprehensive about the whole situation. She wondered for the thousandth time why they were even there.
After a few minutes of noisy silence, Draco decided to say, "You know how I said that if I let you out of that cell you'd have to do something for me? Well, that's why we're here. The thing I want you to do is in here."
Although he couldn't see it, Hermione's eyes widened comically.
"In . . . in here? What is it you wanted me to do in here?" she asked, not bothering to hide the tremor in her voice.
"You'll see," Draco said. He turned around and smirked at her, and he looked oddly sinister in the half darkness that prevailed. Hermione shivered inwardly but had no choice but to follow.
After five or ten minutes of picking their way through the woods, it became noticeably lighter and the trees thinned overhead. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the translucent leaves above, causing the air around them to hold a shimmery glow. Soon Hermione even heard the soft trickle of a nearby brook.
"Here is it!" Draco said, a hint of happiness in his voice. They reached a clearing and Draco pulled a fern aside, revealing what was within.
"This is what I want you to do, Granger," Draco said, a smile playing at his mouth.
Hermione's eyes widened in complete and utter disbelief. She turned to Draco, a million questions racing through her head.
((A.N. What sinister object or person do you believe lies in the clearing?))