((A.N. Here I am, making excuses again, but honestly, do teachers and professors try to kill us at the end of the year with finals' work? Is it just me, or does it seem like they get together and say, "Let's all assign a ridiculous, impossibly large amount of homework right before final exams so they don't have time for ANYTHING else . . . " I'm not even halfway through tonight's load, but this is so much more interesting than that collaborative English essay! Well, on to more important things! I have finished this story, but as I mentioned before, I wrote it all by hand and I just haven't had time to type it as of late. There are about three more chapters to come, depending on how I split the writing up. I'm not going to apologize for taking Draco out of character, either. If there was a good side to Draco Malfoy, I believe that this is exactly the way he would act. I hope you enjoy, and more chapters to come soon! Review!))
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Harry Potter. I'm just borrowing the characters from J.K.!.
As the guards shoved him into his room, Draco felt the Imperius Curse lift and dove for the door. He slammed into solid wood a millisecond after it closed with a crash.
He let out a cry of long suppressed rage and slammed both fists against the door in frustration.
I am locked in my room like a three-year old! Draco thought heatedly. Servants of my own house have turned against me, and it's all Lemanus's fault.
He nearly laughed as he realized that this entire controversy was over a 'useless' mudblood girl. Why do I even care about her? Draco wondered angrily. I didn't ask for this, he fumed, pounding his fist against the door again. It's not my fault that I . . .
That you love her?
Yes, that I love her! I love her, okay? I hate everything about her but I love her more than I can say, Draco finally admitted to himself.
He realized that Hermione was the only thing that had ever really meant something to him, something besides money and power. She was also the only one who had put his feelings before her own, who hadn't tried to use him, who liked him for who was.
Draco Malfoy had hated nothing more than being out of control of his own feelings. He had never been more out of control in his entire life, and he knew that it was because of Hermione. Right then, Draco decided that he didn't so much mind being out of control of his emotions, if it always felt like this.
A cold fire lit his eyes as he stood up, facing the door. Draco was no hero like Harry Potter, and he never would be, but he decided that he could rescue one damsel in distress, no matter what the cost.
"Let go of my arm," Hermione said once they had exited the hall. She wrenched her arm out of the guard's grasp. "I can walk for myself!"
The guard simply chuckled and said, "I'm sure you can."
As Hermione walked, her mind drifted back to a time when she had thought that she knew all that there was to know in the world. If she just read books and studied hard enough, she had believed that it would be easy to make sense of the world and everything in it.
I know nothing, she realized suddenly. I know nothing about evil or good, love or hate, war or peace. And no matter how many books I read or hours I study, I won't understand until I have experienced it myself. She laughed inwardly as she realized how naive she had once been. Such sheltered ideas about good and evil. Now, looking at Draco, looking at her own situation, she understood that it was not as simple as she had once thought. People weren't just good or evil at heart, there were circumstances that made them who they were. She would never again be so quick to judge people.
Just as she realized she should be thinking less about her moral beliefs and more about a way to escape, the guards stopped in front of a doorway. One knocked tentatively and called out, "Master Gilroy? We have brought you the girl."
"Since when do you call him master?" Hermione piped up, trying to stall for time.
"Since this," the guard said, pulling out a jingling bag and giving her a wink.
"I should've known," Hermione muttered under her breath. The guards snapped to attention as the door opened.
Draco had tried every unlocking spell that he knew, every curse, every hex, and checked every window. He leaned against the wall, frustrated at his own incompetence. Suddenly he heard a thunk against the outside of the door, as if something heavy had been shoved against it.
The lock clicked, and Draco leapt for the door, throwing out all common sense on the way there. He wrenched it open and collided headfirst with something hard and heavy. He heard a muffled groan, and staggered back, dazed. At first his vision was blurry, but eventually a dark-haired figure covering his face came into focus.
"Damn you, Malfoy. You hurt me worse than those guards," said a deep voice groggily.
"Zabini?" Draco questioned, astonished and disbelieving. He looked around to see two huge guards, apparently unconscious. "What are you doing here?"
Finally Blaise took his hands away from his face, intense eyes making Draco feel as if there was a spotlight on him.
"Nice of you say 'thanks' for rescuing you," Zabini commented coolly, his eyes narrowing.
"But why? Last time I checked we hated each other. Our parents hated each other. I detested you almost as much as Potter!"
"That hasn't changed, Malfoy, and don't think that it ever will. I need your help to find that friend of your father's, Lemanus Gilroy. Listen, it's a long story, but I have my own reasons for hating that guy, and I didn't like what he said to that girl. This is the perfect chance to get rid of him. You know your way around this place, right?" He paused for a moment, as if considering, before adding, "And by the way you were looking at her back there, I take it that you want to be the first one to shag her."
Forgetting the circumstances for a moment, Draco grinned at Blaise's bluntness. There was no denying that, at least. He thought he saw a ghost of a smile cross Blaise's face.
"I still don't get it though, Zabini. You're sticking your neck out for a mud– a muggle-born girl you've never even talked to?" Draco asked, highly skeptical.
"Are you just gonna stand here and ask questions, Malfoy, or are you going to help me find Lemanus's chambers?" Blaise asked impatiently, crossing his arms in a fluid motion. Draco realized that Zabini was right, although he did avoid answering questions with remarkable ease.
"This way, then!" Draco said, taking off at a run. He only hoped that it wasn't too late.
((A.N. I know, a bit short, but I'm having issues splitting the chapters up. So why is Blaise out to get Lemanus? Tell me what you think in a review!))