Padma handed the Headmaster a steaming hot mug of tea. Strong and black with a slice of lemon, just how he liked it. Although he was still trembling slightly from his experience on the beach, he was feeling much better since they'd portkeyed back to the Headquarters deep under Snape Castle, as if the distance he'd put between himself and Miss Granger had done the trick. As he sat back in the chair and sipped the bitter liquid, savouring its taste, he thought about what had happened and how it had been possible. It had to be a side effect of the potion, there was no question about it. But what had it done exactly? This was bad. He needed to know more about what it was and how it worked. It wouldn't do for him to suddenly trance in front of staff and students or in the presence of any of the Death Eaters or Lord Voldemort. If the latter happened, he'd be as good as dead on the spot.
"Better?" Padma asked solicitously. She had been watching him and was worried. He looked up at her with tired and burning eyes and nodded.
"Much, thank you." He answered.
Harry turned and walked back from the fireplace, where he'd been shuttling messages through the private floo system to the other resistance cells. One message was to call Remus in and the other was to summon Blaise back from his self-imposed exile. If they were going to move they'd have to do it soon. The Headmaster hadn't talked about what had happened out there tonight yet, but Harry had been there and didn't need to be told the stakes had just gotten a lot higher. Snape said he wanted to wait until all the players were assembled so he'd just have to go through the story once. Harry knew where he was coming from. How many times had he repeated the same story to a new audience over the years. Far too many to remember. They would have to have a plan for the rescue in place by the time the wards came down--one with no flaws in it that could cause trouble for them. It looked like they'd be up all night brainstorming. He poured himself a cup of tea, added a drop of milk to cool it and sat down at the table across from the Headmaster to await the other arrivals.
***
Hermione's mind was reeling. First she'd been yanked out of the strangest and most real dream she'd ever had, and now it seemed she'd been thrust into another surreal situation. Here she lay, sprawled out naked on blood red satin sheets, offering succour to a tormented Draco Malfoy. Like the last time, he hadn't beaten her, just clung to her like a lost child, mumbling complaints she couldn't understand against her skin. What was with him? He'd never acted like this before. He'd always been cruel and deliberate and enjoyed behaving that way. It unsettled her that she couldn't predict his behaviour as she didn't recognize the snivelling form of this man lying at her breast. His features were drawn and pinched and the set of his shoulders spoke of great unhappiness. She shifted to get more comfortable and he squeezed her harder against him. Gods, this boy has some serious problems, she thought to herself.
"Tell me you love me, Hermione." He demanded in a petulant voice. She didn't want to answer, but the Imperius rose up and forced her.
"I… love… you… Draco." She fought against the words and swallowed down the pain and disgust at how easy it was for him to make her say and do things she didn't want to. She was happy her answer had sounded flat and forced, but kept the smile inside. It wouldn't do to provoke him, not when she was so unsure of what was going on with him. She drew back into the pillow as he raised himself up on one elbow to look at her, silvery white hair falling in a sweep across one grey eye. She was surprised at the look of abject disappointment on his face and waited for him to say something, anything, to break the moment.
"How was Snape?" he finally asked. She was thrown by the question. She'd been expecting anything but that and her eyes showed her confusion.
"What?" she asked, unsure of exactly what he meant.
"How was he when he visited you? Was he good?" No, she didn't want to answer this and closed her eyes.
"Why do you want to know?" she asked, biting down the bile rising in her throat as she fought the curse. Though Lucius had cast the more powerful Imperius, Draco had cast his first--she was supposed to obey him, first and foremost.
"Tell me." Draco demanded, rolling to lie with elbows propped on either side of her body, pinning her under him. Hermione closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to look at him.
"Gentle," she whispered, "and considerate," she felt tears leak from the corner of her eyes at the memory, "…a diamond." she finished. Her admission was greeted by silence and she cringed inwardly as she steeled herself for a blow. None came. She opened her eyes to find Draco staring at her, an unfathomable look in his shadowed eyes. His lowered his lips to cover hers, but instead of the usual hungry possession and biting and the bruising fingers digging into her flesh, his touch was feather-light.
"Like this?" he asked softly against her lips before claiming her mouth again.
Oh gods, when did I step through the looking glass?
***
Within the half hour, the summoned resistance members were stepping out of the fireplace and sweeping the soot off their cloaks and robes. Sirius and Cho had come with Remus from the Welsh cell. Ginny strode across the Hall in front of Blaise to come to a halt in front of her oldest brother. Bill looked up at her standing there, hands on her hips, displaying her advanced pregnant form proudly. The look on her face was just daring him to say anything about her situation. And she struck him as being so like their mother in that moment that it was painful to look at her. If she was hoping for a fight, she'd be disappointed.
"Hello, Gin," he greeted instead, before turning to acknowledge the young man who hovered behind her a little nervously. "Hello, Blaise." After his earlier talk with Padma, he'd decided to take the high road and give the young Slytherin the benefit of the doubt. Everyone else around here seemed to like him well enough and there was more than enough trouble in all their lives right now without something as little as this making waves.
"Uh, hello Bill." Blaise answered with an uncertain smile. Clearly, the greeting was not what he'd been expecting after the howler the eldest Weasley sibling had sent them both when he'd learned of Ginny's pregnancy. Of course, Ginny being Ginny, she'd sent him one of her own right back. He glanced over at her to gauge her reaction. Their half truce since then was prickly at best. Her mouth was gaping and she looked like a fish suddenly out of water as she opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again without speaking. Bill smiled. He loved throwing his sister off balance. He held out a small purple box to her.
"From Mum," he explained as she looked at it, "mostly stuff for the baby, but there are some things for you both as well." Ginny restored the box to its full size and started laying the contents of it out on the table before her. There were a number of delicately knit booties and bonnets, fine crocheted dresses and robes and thick and warm receiving blankets. She held her sniffles in check as she ran her hands over the items so lovingly made by her mother, but couldn't stop her bottom lip from quivering. Then she pulled out a delicately knit (but wonderfully warm looking), pale blue woolen shawl with a note pinned to it.
Ginny,
To keep you warm on all those mornings you'll greet the dawn with a restless baby in your arms.
Love,
Mum
Now the tears did flow unchecked and Blaise moved to comfort her, rubbing her upper arms and bending to whisper in her ear. "Sshh… It's okay, love."
"I know, I know, but I miss her and I'm all big and pregnant and hormonal and…" she sniffed, trying to stop her nose from running. "Do you have a hanky?" Blaise smiled indulgently and offered her the pristine square of linen he pulled from an inside pocket of his robes. After a moment, she was mostly restored to her former state and he folded the abused hanky up and stuffed it back into his pocket. She hugged the shawl to her chest for a long moment before throwing it around her shoulders and returning her attention to her mother's gifts.
Harry, Fred and Ron were peering over Ginny's shoulder as she finished unpacking the contents of the box and burst out laughing when she the last thing she pulled out was a large, black wool jumper with an ornate green B knit into the front left breast.
"It's official, Blaise, no-one can deny it," Ron managed to squeak through his snorting laughter, "you're one of us when Mum knits you a Weasley jumper." Blaise glared at them all, even as Ginny's tinkling laugh joined the mix, but his hazel eyes were smiling.
When the laughter had finally died down, Harry called everyone to attention. "Right then, let's get started with the reason we called you here. Headmaster?" He handed the chair off to Snape who had been sitting quietly, observing their easy camaraderie as an outsider would.
"You all know that I intended to use the Vestigium Teneo potion as a means of locating Miss Granger." He looked around the Hall as they nodded. "It worked. Miss Granger is in the heavily warded manor house found on the Isle of Man." The news was greeted by an excited buzz of comments and murmurs. He held up his hand to silence them. "However, there are some complications." The chatter stilled.
"How big are these complications, Severus?" Remus asked.
"Quite big, I'm afraid. There's a side effect to the potion, for one thing, and then there's the added problem that we're now working against the clock."
"What do you mean by working against the clock?" This time it was Sirius who posed the question. He stared coolly at Snape. They still didn't see eye to eye, even though they'd put their differences aside at Dumbledore's request a couple of years ago when the war was in full swing and their animosity towards each other quite a liability to the cause.
"Let me start at the beginning. First off, the potion has never been used to track a person before and I had no time to test it out beforehand, so I was flying blind. I can tell where Miss Granger is. It's not a big deal at a distance, but the pull is stronger the nearer I get to her."
"And this is a problem how exactly?"
"An inanimate object doesn't interact with the user of the potion the way an animate object does. You can fix it in your mind and know where it is. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. However, the closer I am to Miss Granger, the more aware I am of her state of mind and her emotions. It's very distracting to say the least."
"So what was all that on the beach then?" Bill spoke this time. Having seen the side effect of the potion, the curse-breaker was curious as to what had actually happened from Snape's point of view.
"You are all familiar with that uncomfortable physical feeling you get when using a portkey?" He looked from face to face to face. "Like your stomach dropping out from under you?" Another round of answering nods. "That's the feeling I got when we stepped off the brooms at the seashore, but magnified tenfold."
"No wonder you stumbled." Harry commented, relieved to finally understand what Snape went through on the beach. It had been very disconcerting for him to see Severus Snape as human. He received a menacing glare for his observation. Snape did not appreciate him sharing that piece of information with everyone.
Shut up, Mr. Potter. The Headmaster silently willed.
"It is controllable the further away I am from her but the closer I get, the more overwhelming the feeling. I feel that now I know about this effect, I can counter it but it may take some research to pinpoint how."
"Time that we don't have, according to you." Sirius chimed in. Snape had been expecting it.
"Exactly." He answered. "Bill, have you determined how long it will take us to dismantle those wards?"
"Three days, working around the clock in teams of two. And that's with four teams on the go--working in six hour rotating shifts. We have to bring another two crews on board as this is going to be more work than I first anticipated and working on complicated wards and weaves for longer than six hours at a time turns your brain to mush."
"Can't we work faster than that?" Sirius frowned.
"Not if we want to keep ourselves beneath their notice." Bill replied. "In order for us to have the element of surprise when the wards are all dismantled, we have to be careful and cover our tracks as we go. You want to see the set up they've got in place. Even if we didn't want to hide what we're going to do, it would still be quite the challenge." He shook his head, both in admiration and frustration at what he'd seen.
"I'm in if you need another curse breaker." Cho told Bill.
"Are you good?"
"Did Dumbledore have a sweet tooth?" She retorted and he smiled. Saucy and exotically pretty, an enticing package if ever there was one.
"She is good, Bill. I'd count her in." Lupin, who was head of the Welsh cell, spoke up for his cohort. After Cedric's death, Cho had thrown herself into learning everything she could about the dark arts and how to combat them. It had become an obsession she couldn't let go of, and if circumstances had been different, she'd have made a wonderful DADA teacher. "Now there's just the question of who the other three are going to be."
"I'm in." Sirius spoke.
"Sirius, you know very well your strong suits are Transfiguration and Charms, not Curses and Hexes. I'll grant that you're good, but you're too impatient and hot-tempered for work like this. And anyway, I think you'll need to be coordinating the rescue with Harry and Ron." Remus reasoned with his friend. Snape stifled a laugh at the look on Black's face. It was priceless.
"We are going to have to start tomorrow." he addressed them.
"That soon, Headmaster?" Harry questioned.
"Unfortunately, yes, Mr. Potter. According to Miss Granger, we have approximately a week and a half at the most if we want to rescue all nineteen prisoners at the mansion."
"Why is that?" Padma was curious as to his timetable.
"Voldemort has visited the brothel again." The revelation was greeted with silence but the looks of horror on everyone's faces said it all. "The last time he did, their numbers dropped to nineteen from twenty."
"But how do you know we have a week and a half?" Cho was puzzled.
"I don't--that's Miss Granger's estimate. Apparently the last girl he visited died after a week and a half of his attentions."
"Sweet Merlin…" Cho shook her head, trying to clear the horrific montage of images her mind's eye had conjured up.
"Do you know who it is? It's not Hermione is it?" Ginny asked, sitting forward with a frown on her face and a hand on her stomach. Her fear and repulsion was being transmitted to the baby, who had started to kick.
"Yes, I know who it is and no it's not Miss Granger." Snape reassured her.
"Then who?" Harry asked, feeling guilty that he'd been relieved at the news it wasn't his friend.
"Miss Brown." Snape's gaze flicked to Ron who had flinched at his words. There was a history between the youngest Weasley son and Lavender Brown and it hadn't been going well at all between them when the war began in earnest. They had fought day in and day out over the littlest thing and between their constant fighting and the stresses of being at war, their relationship had disintegrated well before the time the final battle had occurred.
"Lavender?" Padma's voice cracked as she spoke the girl's name. Her sister and Lavender had been joined at the hip at Hogwarts and, as a result, she'd spent a lot of time with her and knew her better than anyone else in the room. Well, anyone but Ron, that was. "Since when?"
"Last night."
"So why didn't you come to us last night with that information, then?" Sirius demanded.
"I didn't know until tonight."
What?!? What is that supposed to mean?"
"It's part of the side effect of the potion I was speaking about. I'm not sure of the circumstances, but somehow Miss Granger and I communicated directly through some sort of trance while I was on the beach across from her prison."
"Well, isn't this just friggin' wonderful." Sirius shook his head.
"That's bad, isn't it?" Ginny asked.
"Quite. Especially as I don't know exactly what it was that triggered the trance, so I have no idea what conditions have to be met in order to have it happen again. I do think that our proximity to one another factors heavily into the equation, though."
"So what are we going to do about it?" Ginny wondered.
"We're going to be far too busy to worry about that when there's so much more to for us to get done. For example, how do we transport them away from the scene? Portkeys? Something else? Mass apparition isn't something I'd recommend as there may be some who are unconscious or injured when we take them out. And I haven't even begun to touch on the battle that we'll have to face in order to get to that point."
"And where are we going to put them all?" Ginny asked, her mother's practicality winning through, as she thought about everything that needed to be done to clothe, feed and house nineteen extra bodies. "Let me know where we'll be putting them all and I'll prepare everything at this end. I've got this overwhelming urge to nest and nurture, so you should take advantage of it."
"Don't worry, we will." Harry replied with a smile. "Now, if we've got to start in on the wards tomorrow, we've got to get those teams drawn up. Bill?"
"Anyone have any suggestions for the other curse breakers? We still need three more on the crew."
"How good do they have to be?" Padma asked.
"Better than average. We can't afford accidents."
I'd suggest Neville Longbottom, Penelope Clearwater and myself then. Otherwise, you end up going out of the trusted circles and that's too big a risk for us to take."
"How long will it take to get them here?" Bill was drafting up teams, scratching names and a roster out on a piece of parchment in front of him..
"By first thing tomorrow morning, I'm sure."
"Bill, I'd appreciate it if you scheduled me for the midnight shift and didn't partner me with Mr. Longbottom." Severus commented dryly as he looked over Bill's shoulder to see what he was writing.
"Why? I thought he was good, according to Padma."
"He is good," Ron clarified, "just not at potions."
"Ah, I get it now." Bill smiled, wrote a few more things on the parchment and put the quill down. "How does this sound? I'll take the first shift with Blaise, then Penny and Neville will take the second shift, they'll hand things off to Cho and Remus, and Severus and Padma will take the last shift and hand off in the morning to myself and Blaise again, blah, blah, blah..."
"It sounds fine," Padma answered as Remus, Cho and Blaise nodded in agreement, "but I have a question for the Headmaster." Snape raised an eyebrow, inviting her to continue. "Will you be able to handle such intricate work while fighting off the side effect of the Vestigium Teneo potion? You said you thought proximity was a factor, and you'll be very close to Hermione, closer than you were when you tranced on the beach."
"That remains to be seen, Miss Patil, but if the gods are merciful I'll have had part of a quiet and uneventful day at Hogwarts to work on that particular problem before our turn comes."
"And if they're not merciful?" Harry pushed. Padma's question had given him something else to worry about.
"We'll find out, won't we?"
***
A/N - It's been a while since the last update. Real life can be so time consuming. ^_^ For those of you who are still following along, thank you.
There are 5 links to pictures at the end of this chapter. Four are done by me and one is done by my friend and fellow HP artist, Sidsel. She sent me a cover for my fanfic in the mail. Thanks, Sidsel!
Here's the link to her pic, it's done with colouring pencil and ink and she was inspired by the Moulin Rouge publicity shot.
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/denofdivinity/vwp?.dir=/Art+from+A+Night+To+Remember&.src=gr&.dnm=ANTR+cover+by+Sidsel.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/denofdivinity/lst%3f%26.dir=/Art%2bfrom%2bA%2bNight%2bTo%2bRemember%26.src=gr%26.view=t
The second pic is a portrait of Draco Malfoy.
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/denofdivinity/vwp?.dir=/Art+from+A+Night+To+Remember&.dnm=ANTR+Draco.jpg&.src=gr&.done=http%3a//photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/denofdivinity/vwp%3f.dir=/Art%2bfrom%2bA%2bNight%2bTo%2bRemember%26.dnm=ANTR%2bBlaise.jpg%26.src=gr
The third pic is a portrait of Ginny in all her pregnant glory and wearing the shawl her mum sent her.
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/denofdivinity/vwp?.dir=/Art+from+A+Night+To+Remember&.src=gr&.dnm=ANTR+Ginny.jpg&.view=t&.done=http%3a//photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/denofdivinity/lst%3f%26.dir=/Art%2bfrom%2bA%2bNight%2bTo%2bRemember%26.src=gr%26.view=t
The fourth pic is a portrait of Blaise Zabini.
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/denofdivinity/vwp?.dir=/Art+from+A+Night+To+Remember&.dnm=ANTR+Blaise.jpg&.src=gr&.done=http%3a//photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/denofdivinity/vwp%3f.dir=/Art%2bfrom%2bA%2bNight%2bTo%2bRemember%26.dnm=ANTR%2bDraco.jpg%26.src=gr
And last, but not least, is a picture of Bill and Severus, from the scene where Bill is making up the curse breaker roster.
http://photos.groups.yahoo.com/group/denofdivinity/vwp?.dir=/Art+from+A+Night+To+Remember&.dnm=Bill+and+Severus++from+ANTR+8.jpg&.src=gr
Hope you like the chapter and the art.
Karen ^_^