:: Chapter Five: Everything Changes ::

"Why is it so hard to find her?" Ron said angrily. "She's supposed to be our best friend and we can't even find her, or retrace her steps without coming across some problem." Ron sat down on the dewy grass. Harry stood on the sidewalk in the streets of London.

"We're getting closer." Harry said.

"How do you know? We've practically been going around in circles for the past three days." Ron said exasperatedly. He rested his head against the tree behind him and closed his eyes.

"I can feel it. There's something going on here and I want to find out what exactly it is." Harry was looking around the streets for any signs of abnormal activity that could be magically related. "Who do you think would be put in control now that Voldemort." Ron gasped and Harry just rolled his eyes. "Now that Voldemort is gone?"

"Malfoy?" Ron laughed at the thought. "Yeah right. They don't just hand that job over to any bozo. Bellatrix? Umbridge?"

"Do you actually think Umbridge would join them?" Ron looked at Harry with a raised eyebrow. "Alright I know she was bad but she was a ministry employee."

"As was Lucius Malfoy." Ron pointed out.

"Something isn't right with this picture, didn't someone escape from Azkaban a few days ago?"

"I think so, why?"

"Well Hermione is kidnapped around the same time that someone gets out of Azkaban? Isn't that a little fishy?"

"Maybe, but you do have a tendency to be a little paranoid."

Harry cast one last fleeting glance at the street before helping Ron get up off the ground. "Come on let's keep moving." Unbeknownst to them they were closer than they thought.

Hermione woke up late the next afternoon; it had taken her a long time to fall asleep in the cold dark basement. Dark circles coated her eyes and she was shaking from the cold and her lips were a slight shade of blue.

"How are you this fine morning?" Draco asked walking down the stairs at a leisurely pace.

"Fine." She shivered.

"You sure?" He smirked. She nodded, not having the strength or the will power to fight back. Draco sighed and climbed back up the stairs returning moments later. He threw a dark green blanket to Hermione.

"What was that for?" She asked confused.

"We can't have you dying just now." He pulled a chair over in front of her and spun it around backwards. He sat on it his arms resting on the back of it. "What happened to you and the other two Gryffindorks over the years?"

"Why are you asking?"

"I have nothing else to amuse me, so amuse away."

"We drifted apart is all. Harry and Ron became Aurors and I wanted to teach. That's all that's happened. What about you? Any interesting. eh. deaths caused by you?"

"No." He said swiftly but upon seeing the look she was giving him he continued. "It's not a very sharing job. This is my first real job and I'm not going to screw it up."

"So that's all I am? A job assignment?"

"Yeah. Pretty much." She shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Is sarcasm a new thing you picked up?"

"Only when I'm around people I despise."

"You despise me? I'm flattered."

"There's that traditional Malfoy cockiness."

"Cockiness? I'm not the one that believes she's a know it all, Miss Perfect, you can't kill me Harry Potter is going to save me, heroine."

"I am not a heroine. I am defiantly not the heroine."

"You're right, you're the damsel in distress."

"That's right, and you're the evil dragon keeping locked in here."

He smiled at her. "You know me oh so well." Hermione wanted to gag, one more sarcastic remark and she was going to attack him.

"You're pitiful."

He mock pouted. "And you're the one locked in a basement. Poor pitiful me, huh?" They sat in an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. "I'm sick of people like you."

"Mudbloods?" She snapped.

"No, people who can't just sit with their mouths shut. People who can't understand how much danger they're putting themselves in." He paused and licked his lips. "And yet I admire you all at the same time. I would never have you're guts in your position. That's either very brave. or very foolish."

"It doesn't matter whether I'm being brave or foolish, I'm doing what I need to do to stay alive."

"Or you're just killing yourself and don't even know it."

"What am I supposed to do? Just hope and pray that Harry will come save me so I can be killed or pray that he doesn't come so I can sit here in fear until that one fateful day comes when you put me out of my misery?"

"That's pretty much it."

"I'm just another plaything in your reign of terror aren't I? You're dangling me in front of his face to try to lure him here. I'm bait." She sighed and rested her head on the wall behind her. "I don't want to play anymore Draco. I want to be free to do what I want. To live without fear."

"You sure screwed that up then didn't you?"

"I did, didn't I?"

"Yes. You did. This is my game Granger, and you will be a part of this until your time comes. Think of this as a play and your characters role is to die." Silent tears rolled down Hermione's cheeks. Draco sighed deeply. "I never meant for any of this to happen."

"So you planned on just being a horrible person forever and having the perfect life with that Pansy pig?"

"Don't call her that." He snapped. "And that's exactly what I had planned."

"Well what happened?"

"Pansy got mixed up in some bad stuff and, well. she was killed. So I got involved in this."

"And now I'm supposed to feel bad for you?"

"I never said that."

"But that's what you want isn't it? You want me to get all sappy so that I feel bad for you and will shut my mouth and be a good little toady and allow you to do what you have to isn't it?"

"No." He snapped. "I was trying to be civil to you. Anything I say to you, anything I do to you nobody will ever know about so here's my one chance to be a normal civilized person with you. Damn Hermione you're supposed to be the smart one."

"Don't tell me these things! I don't want you to be yourself. I want you to be the Draco Malfoy that I met at school and hated. It's so much harder to hate you when you're yourself. And I'm trying so hard. I keep telling myself that you hate me, that you think I'm nothing but a worthless Mudblood, that you would never understand my feelings, my life. I can't help but feel that at some points I have feelings for you that aren't dripping with hate."