"Hi kids, Five Iron Frenzy, 'When I Go Out': 'WhenIgooutIplayinthestreets,Igethitbycars,Imakemashedpotatoes,Igethitbycars!!!' *dunh, dunh, dunh8 Yeeeeaaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!!!";} Draco's POV again~
Chapter 6
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"And what do you think you'd ever say? I won't listen anyway…"
"You mean that bloody git has to work with us?!?!?!" the infamous Harry Potter was shouting at Professor Dumbledore. I hadn't seen him since the end of my fourth year. He had grown several feet, and his head finally fit proportionately with his body. Well, almost. I was sitting in Professor Dumbledore's office again; only this time, Ron and Harry were there. It had been several weeks since I had first come to the headmaster, and now he was telling Ron and Harry about their new co-worker. They were obviously a tad on the unhappy side.
"Professor Dumbledore, he's a bloody Death Eater!!!!! Do you have any idea what he could do? He's probably just spying on us so he can go back to his bloody father, and give away our secrets!!!" this coming from the six-foot something, red haired weasel sitting to my left. That statement finally got a reaction out of me. I jumped out of my seat to pound his face in; the man was not my father. But before I could reach the lanky git, Dumbledore stopped me.
"Boys! Settle down, and behave. Ron, if you will be patient, perhaps Mr. Malfoy, here, can explain a few things to you." With that, Dumbledore nodded at me to proceed. As both the Weasel and I sat back down, I glanced at the scarlet faced prick sitting next to me. Potter also faced me with a look of pure hatred. Before I could even begin speaking, Potter spoke up.
"Professor, forgive me, but I will not believe a word that comes out of that ferret boy, no matter what you say. This is a waste of time."
"Then perhaps, Mr. Potter, would believe him if he took some Veritaserum? He could speak nothing but the truth, and you would have to believe it. That is, if Mr. Malfoy agrees to take it." I nodded at the Headmaster, silently agreeing at this. We had already predicted that this would happen. The two gits were too stubborn to trust their leader. At the suggestion, Potter seemed to settle down a bit, contemplating the situation.
"Alright, Headmaster, if he drank some, then I would believe him. As long as I get to ask him any question, I will agree to listen." The weasel also nodded at Potter's proposition. They were both glaring at me now, challenging me to make one move against them.
"As long as the questions are within reason, then I believe we have a deal. Excuse me a moment, while I go retrieve the potion." The Professor then got up and walked out of the room through a small door behind his desk. I sat there staring at the two comrades. I had to give it to them; they never let their guards down. Tension was building. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a movement by Dumbledore's desk. It was Fawkes, the Headmaster's pet. He was on his perch, eying us, probably making sure we didn't slit each other's throats.
Potter and Weasley both were still glaring at me. Yeah, I was being very intimidated by their powerful staredown. Right. If they thought they were threatening me, they were obviously still the naive little brats I remembered. Once again, we were interrupted by the Professor. He walked back into the room with a glass phial of the liquid that I would be drinking. Potter and Weasley both eyed the liquid suspiciously. Dumbledore made his way over and handed the glass to me. Without hesitation, I pulled out the cork and lifted the phial to my lips. As I drank the entire contents in the phial, I kept my eyes on the other two. They also never took their eyes off of me.
"Well, then. Shall we begin? Mr. Potter, you first," suggested the Headmaster. Potter looked over at the headmaster, as if he were trying to gain some last encouragement. Geez, you'd think the boy was going to his grave or something. Finally, Potter looked at me and asked his first question of a very long night.
"Where's Hermione?"
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The rest of that night, I was asked so many questions by the two of them, it all became a blur. They asked me why I was there, and wasn't I a Death Eater? Then, once they realized that I was on their side, they asked me why I switched sides, why I changed. Feeling the full effects of the potion, I, of course, answered everything to the best of my knowledge. I told them about my Mum, my Father, and Lucius. Although I didn't go into great details about my story, I told them enough to convince them of my loyalty to the Light Side, as I guessed it was called. Then, when I was finished my explanation, I started the unfamiliar process of apologizing.
I must say, that, up until this point, that was the hardest thing I had ever done in my entire life. Here I was, the infamous Draco Malfoy apologizing to Harry Potter and his faithful sidekick, Ron Weasley. These were the guys that I had spent my last five or six years detesting. I had hated them every moment of every day for so long, that the thought of actually apologizing to them, admitting that I was wrong, was almost inconceivable. Yet, there I was.
I did eventually get through it, trying to keep my dignity the entire time by looking at them straight in the face. But there were moments where I had to look away, because I couldn't handle the way they were looking at me. They weren't looking at me with hatred anymore. No, it was something entirely different. At first I thought it was pity in their eyes, but it wasn't that either. Later on, as I had thought back on it, I realized that it was approval. I guess they had accepted my explanation, and already, they were ready to look past all of my mistakes.
After I had eventually apologized, they both kind of sat in their seats for a few minutes while I looked at the floor. I knew that they needed time to process everything, but the suspense was killing me. Wait, why was I so anxious about having their approval all of a sudden? I didn't really know the answer to that, but the truth was, I was anxious. I wanted them to accept me, and possibly let me in their world of all that forgive and forget stuff. I know this must be confusing, since I am contradicting myself. When have I ever cared about what others thought of me?
All the time, came the next thought. I had to make myself realize that this was my chance. I could possibly gain a few friends if I acted civilly. If I had these two people's acceptance, I just might be able to become normal, and do what I want to do. I could say anything, and not be afraid that I would be cursed. My thoughts were becoming more confused by the moment. One minute I was trying to be the stubborn, I-don't-need-anyone git that I had become, and the next I was the desperate softie in need of a friend. Just when I thought I was going to go crazy, Potter's voice brought me back to reality.
"Apology accepted," he said, and his friend to my left nodded in agreement. That was it? I mean, there were no accusations, no name calling? No comebacks and threats? I looked at both of them, questioning their answer. If they really did accept my apology, where do we go from here? Of course Dumbledore came to the rescue.
"Well then, why don't we move on to other business-"
"Wait, Professor, I wanted to say something else." It was Potter. He was looking at me intently now, and seemed as if he was struggling within himself. "I.. I wanted to say, that is, I … I wanted to apologize also." He looked relieved to have finally made that declaration. Weasley looked shocked as usual. Then Potter started again.
"I guess we both owe you an apology for the way we also treated you. The fights weren't all one-sided and I know that we were also at fault." He stopped there, and Weasley seemed to realize that Potter was right, and nodded again in agreement. I wasn't quite sure how to take that. They were apologizing to me after all that I had done to them? Yet, somehow, I felt better, like finally, something was right. It dawned on me that I had just gained their acceptance, and that I had accomplished what I had been waiting to do for a long time. We weren't at each other's throats anymore, and it felt somewhat peaceful. And, judging from the way they were looking at me, I figured the feeling was mutual.
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That night, Dumbledore explained to me about what kind of things he would need my help with. He also explained how I would be working with Harry and Ron, as I eventually learned to call them. I went back to living with Lucius, the bastard, and I would still go back to the deatheater meetings. Voldemort didn't suspect a thing, he didn't even know I had even gone back to Hogwarts. I would report to Dumbledore every Tuesday and Thursday when Lucius went for his private meetings with Voldemort. Dumbledore was able to cast some advanced spell that covered my tracks, whenever I went to Hogwarts. I would get as much information from all of the paperwork that I kept track of for Voldemort, searching for anything that would help my new team.
For almost a year, I worked under those conditions, watching my back everywhere I went to make sure I wasn't caught. I worked closely with Harry and Ron most of the time when I was at Hogwarts, and soon, we began to hang out and actually have fun together. It felt weird at first, joking around, laughing with the boy-who-lived and his sidekick. But I found that we had a lot in common, like our obsessions for Quidditch, and tastes in, ahem, witches. I know it must come as a shock to you, but being in their good graces and, shockingly, friends with them was somewhat satisfying. Granted I couldn't talk to them about everything, but I did have people I could finally relate to. Harry and Ron soon became my closest of friends. They would always sympathize with me after an excruciatingly painful day with Lucius, and they were always there to support me.
I'm sure by now you are all falling out of your seats in shock, but you are also probably asking a question. Where was know-it-all Granger? Good question. That first night with Harry and Ron, when they asked me about Granger, I truthfully answered that I had no idea. According to them, she had disappeared about a year before that night, and they had guessed she was kidknapped by the death eaters. But I had never heard of anything about her at any of my meetings. There was no trace of her, like she had completely disappeared off the face of the earth. But I continued to keep an open eye for her. Harry and Ron talked of her constantly, to the point where I felt as if I knew her myself. They got more worried about her as each day passed, hoping without cause that she might one day be found.
One day, Dumbledore came across something in all of his parchments and books that definitely changed history for the Light Side. He found a spell, one that would require many things. He wouldn't tell us any specifics about it, only that we needed to find Hermione, if she was still alive. I didn't understand what was so special about her that she needed to be rescued above anyone else, but I followed orders. I spent several months trying to look for any sign of her in all of the files that I had organized. There were so many files that it took forever to go through them all. That's when I came across the files for the deatheater "camps."
One day, about a year after I had started working for Dumbledore, I came across the files for the camp at the Campbell Manor. It was somewhere out in the highlands of Scotland, and it was one of the largest of the camps they had. The file had a list of prisoners, and there cabin assignments, as well as the date of their arrival at the camp, and death, if it came to them. The list was able to magically update itself, so the names changed every once in a while. But there was one on there that caught my attention so quickly, I almost fell off my chair. I was alone in Voldemort's file room, and I could hear no one around. Thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me, I decided to look at the list one more time.
My jaw dropped in shock again when I realized that I wasn't being tricked. The person who was listed as a cabin leader in the seventh bunkhouse was none other than Hermione Granger. The paper gave her ID number and told the date of her arrival, the same day Ron and Harry told me many times was the day she disappeared. I quickly glanced around to make sure no one was near and slipped the entire file into the pocket of my robes. Voldemort was too confident in himself and his security that he didn't even put any spells on all of his paperwork. So, that meant I could take anything I wanted and no one would know. I stood up from desk, closed all of the file doors, and walked out of the room. As I came out, I almost bumped into someone.
I looked up to see that it was another office worker, Tim, who worked just down the corridor from me. I muttered an apology as he kept walking, not even bothering to turn around. As he rounded the corner, I let out a sigh of relief. I didn't know why, but I was really tense. I mean, all that I did was find the information for Dumbledore that I had been searching for, for so long. It's not like I was doing anything that could get me discovered and killed by Voldemort or anything.
I locked the door to the room and walked down the corridor and into the reception room, where I apparated back to Hogsmeade. I needed to get a hold of the Professor quickly so that we could figure out how to get Granger. She was in a camp, one of the many camps that the Light side had been trying to break into for so many months, to rescue the prisoners, but each time we failed horribly. How the hell were we going to get her out?
I made my way to the headmaster's office as quickly as the carriage I had hailed, allowed me. Soon, I was at Hogwarts and rushing through the main corridor. I was going so fast that I didn't see someone coming from one of the many doorways to my right. I collided with the bent, graying old man who been heading towards the opposite direction. As I stood up, I helped the Headmaster to his feet, himself looking a bit ruffled. Without waiting for him to say anything I was the one who spoke first.
"Professor, I found her. I found Grange." That was probably the last thing he was expecting to come out of my mouth; the first was probably an apology for knocking him over, which I hastened to do after I helped him up. H looked at me in shock, as though I had told him the sky was purple with red olka dots or something. But then he sobered, and nodded his head. He motioned for me to follow him to his office, and so I walked with him there. As soon as we arrived, I sat down in my usual chair as the professor sat in his own.
I proceeded to tell him about the file I had come across and about its contents. I brought it out of my robes and showed it to him, who in turn, looked at the file as if he was just given a present for his birthday. Really, you'd think that a man that old wouldn't be able to facially express much emotion, but if you caught him on a good day, it could be as entertaining as a fireworks show. He read through the file silently, his eyes smiling wider by the moment.
"She's alive, then. Good work, Draco, very good. Now all we have to do is get her out of there." I nodded silently, agreeing that we were in quite a dilemma. For the next hour or so, we both sat there, trying to come up with a way to rescue Granger. I could not think, for the life of me, of a way to get her out without being discovered and/or killed. Each plan that I came up with sounded more ridiculous than the one before it. Then Professor's face changed from pensive to enlightened.
"I have a plan…"
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A few weeks later, I found myself being tattooed by the witch at the Campbell manor. The pain, although sharp, was bearable. I then proceed with the rest of the group of muggleborns into the same wide courtyard that Granger first come into several years before. I took in all the bleak surroundings. The same grey buildings that were slowly rotting, the same rocky avenue that she walked down every day, the same bunkhouses she had grown used to. I looked at all of the new prisoners who were scared out of their minds. They had no idea what would happen to them.
I remembered why I was here. Dumbledore's amazing rescue plan involved me becoming a prisoner of the camp, finding her and, and apparating back home. Well the plan didn't quite turn out that way. We found out about the ways they kept track of their prisoners, and how they kept them in line. I had to be able to disband the spell on Granger's bracelet before she could leave without anyone noticing. I also had to be able to get a bracelet myself, as well as an ID number, and truly become one of the prisoners. My wand was enchanted by Professor Dumbledore fit in the palm of my hand, too small to be detected by anyone. I took on the identity of someone else, someone named Daeron Bailey. I altered my physical feature just a little to make sure that no one could recognize me.
That's when I was placed in a cottage by myself and captured by deatheaters who had found my "records" of being a muggleborn mage, and hunted me down. I was brought into and through the exact same buildings as Granger, and went through the same process she did. I was jolted back to reality by one of my new fellow inmates, who had stumbled in a rock in the courtyard we were in. He mumbled something, probably an apology, and walked off to another group of people. That's when we were called to attention by a guard of some sort. He made us line up, silently, and then the prisoner leaders of the units came into our courtyard, and stood silently as we were sorted into our new bunks. I looked for Granger, and I almost missed her, if it hadn't been for her dark auburn hair that stood out from the others.
I almost didn't recognize her. She had changed so much. She was much thinner, and much paler than I remembered. And her clothing was worse. The camp had given her a robe that was meant for a ten year old, it was so short, and ripped in several pieces. Her hair was in knots, a mess of the untamed curls that I remembered. Her face had changed too. She no longer smiled, only watched the people being sorted with no emotion, no expression on her face. I was, thankfully, put into her unit, and soon, we were ordered to march. I fell in to step behind my new cabinmates, and marched silently. We passed several long, one-story buildings that were decaying, until we came to one and stopped.
Granger turned around, and motioned for us to go inside. I watched her the entire time, as she helped several of the new ones into the cabin. She smiled assuringly at each one of us, as if she hoped it would calm the prisoners' fears. As I passed her, and walked into the rotten-smelling bunkhouse, I didn't look her in the eyes, and she didn't recognize me. We were herded in and she asked us to sit on the dirt floor, in a circle. We all sat down as she introduced herself to us.
"Hello, I am Aguila."
She proceeded to tell us about the work we were going to do, and what was expected of us if we wanted to survive. I tuned out a bit, while trying to figure out what Aguila meant. Why didn't she go by Hermione? I couldn't think for long, because Granger told us to go around the circle introducing ourselves. One by one, each person told their name, and where they were from. When it came time for me to introduce myself, I quietly spoke up.
"My name is Bran, I am from London." That was all I said, and I looked around at he others as they acknowledged my identity. And then I looked over at Granger. She had been looking at me questioningly, as though she felt she remembered me from somewhere. I looked up into her eyes for the first time, and finally got a reaction from her. Her eyes got so big and everything in her expression shouted recognition. She knew who I really was, without a doubt. She let out an inaudible gasp as she realized that the one and only Draco Malfoy was sitting in front of her. It was quite entertaining, actually.
Her eyes scared me though. They weren't what I remembered them. They used to be light blue, and smiling, especially when she was with Harry and Ron. But now, they were, well, they were dead. It looked as if there wasn't any life left in them, as though she had grown up too fast and seen too much. I couldn't believe that she had lost all of the emotion from her eyes. What could have done that to her? How badly had she been treated? I suffered another wave of guilt as I realized that this was all the deatheater's fault. She had lost all happiness because of them, because of Lucius. And yet she was still alive.
As quick as lightning, she took control of her expression, and set it back to indifference. None of the others had taken any notice of her reaction, and she moved on to the rest, eyeing me every once in a while, probably to make sure it was really me. After everyone was finished, she said we had a little while to talk to eachother before it was lights out time. As everyone stood, she came towards me, with a glare in her eyes, warning me of some possible danger coming. She came up to me and, quietly, so that no one could hear said:
"Follow me."
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A/n~ Sorry bout the long delay, folks. It's nearing the end of school, and I'm trying to pass with decent grades and all. It's not like I don't need to get into any colleges or anything. We all know education is highly overrated, right? Well anyway. I thouroughly enjoyed that cliffie, cuz I got such a great reaction. I think I shall do that every once in a while, just to keep you on your toes:}*smiles evilly* HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
I want to thank all of my reviewers:
Silverdust172~ Yeah, you're right, the whole camp thing was somewhat inspired by the death camps during WW2. I was reading the book Night when I first started plotting the story, and I guess it worked itself into the story! Thanks for reading!!!
Catherine~ That's exactly the same question I'm asking!!!!!!!!!!!
And to~ Stacey, Stephanie, Girl-named-Belle, Ann22, Fire Dragon, my #1 homie, Quicksilvermad, Gr8Sk8er, Whitney!!!!!!, Draco Lover, and Yuriko
Thanks for the reviews, they really make my day better!!!