The room was plunged into darkness in that instant by one of Draco's carefully contrived blackouts- and in the very next second an earsplitting alarm rang out, chilling in its implications. It had been one of Dumbledore's final acts before he had fallen in battle; he had strengthened the wards on the school, made it impossible for an unforgivable curse to be performed within the castle, and added the feature that was being experienced by the Hogwarts population for the first time right now; an alarm that would sound whenever a person wearing the Dark Mark (other than, of course, the castle's resident ex-Death Eater and potions professor) set foot inside the door.

This could mean only one thing; at least one, and possibly more, of the Azkaban escapees were here- inside.

Though she could no longer see Draco in the pitch black, Hermione heard his sharp inhalation and felt him stiffen, his hand coming up to grip her shoulders hard. "Granger-" he said, then broke off as McGonagall's voice, magically magnified, boomed through the room;

PLEASE REMAIN CALM. ALL STUDENTS ARE TO RETURN TO THEIR COMMON ROOMS AT ONCE. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. PLEASE REMAIN CALM. ALL STUDENTS ARE TO RETURN TO THEIR COMMON ROOMS AT ONCE. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

This announcement was followed by a chorus of screams, running feet, sounds of collisions and general chaos from within the Haunted House, which was still in blackout mode, all set to the continuous wailing of the alarm in the background.

"Bloody hell," Draco swore then. "Bloody fucking hell. I had a feeling he might come today." His fingers on her shoulders tightened painfully. "Granger- find Potter and Weasley and stay with them, all right? And whatever you do, try to keep out of sight and away from the front door."

"But what are-"

He shook her then, once, hard, just as he had that day out on the grounds. "Just do it, damnit! Look, I don't have time to explain right now, but... please just do this. For me. I'll tell you everything when the danger's past."

She swallowed, her heart pounding in her chest. There was a dangerous intensity to Draco in this moment that both frightened and exhilarated her; she could feel it practically radiating out from him. Could feel it in how tightly he was holding onto her, could feel it in the coiled tautness of his body in the dark. And she recognized it, oh yes- she hadn't gone nearly seven years with two male best friends for nothing. It was protectiveness- Draco had been exhibiting anxiety ever since the news of the prison break, but now he clearly thought her in imminent danger... and he was pissed as hell about it, too.

"Yeah, okay," she said finally, all of her usual eloquence seeming to have fled her at the stupendous realization of just how much Draco must care.

"C'mon," he said then, letting go of her shoulders and taking her hand. "Let's get to the entrance hall. Potter and Weasley were right by the door, right? So they're probably there already. Until the lights come back on in here, don't let go."

But of course she did.

Not by choice, obviously; it happened shortly after he'd pulled her out from behind the sheet which had been concealing them, and back onto the pathway. The pathway was lined on both sides with flickering tealights in hollowed out miniature pumpkins, so it wasn't as dark out here, but nevertheless pandemonium reigned. Students ran this way and that, most, like Draco and Hermione, making for the exit; but not all. Some, apparently panicked, were racing about seemingly at random. A few had lit their wands, but most had not- had most likely not even brought them in here in the first place. Hermione had brought hers, and was just reaching up with her free hand to pull it out of her bun- she'd been using it again to hold her hair in place, a common practice of hers- when someone running the wrong way shoved right in between her and Draco, tearing her hand from his.

"Draco!" she shouted, realizing, even as she did so, that she had just addressed him by his given name for the very first time- but he was being swept along with the crowd toward the entrance hall.

"Stay with me, Hermione!" she heard him call back to her, but just at that moment she heard a voice hiss in her ear- Quietus Totalus!- and then she was being yanked behind the nearest sheet, for the second time that night- only this time, by her hair.

DRACO! She tried to scream again- but no sound came out.

00000

The instant they were off the path and concealed, her attacker's hands found her throat- and squeezed. She bucked and fought for all she was worth, but he simply increased the pressure until the shouts of the students on the other side of the sheet- was that Draco she heard yelling her name?- faded, until she saw bursts of light in the darkness before her eyes, and slumped back against his chest, not quite unconscious, but no longer able to offer any real resistance.

"All right, my little mudblood," Lucius Malfoy- of course it was Lucius Malfoy- murmured to her then, his voice almost gentle in her ear, "it's time for us to go. A swift death is too good for you, see... I intend to take my time, and time is not a luxury we have within these walls. Not to mention, all the wards on this bloody place cramp my style. So-" she felt him reach forward around her, draping some sort of- of- cloak? she thought hazily; yes, it's an invisibility cloak. No wonder no one saw him enter- over her, and heard him mutter an enlargement charm when it didn't quite manage to cover the both of them completely. Then they were moving; they were back out on the pathway, which by now contained far fewer hysterical students, and so they were unimpeded as he half-carried, half-dragged her toward the entrance hall, one hand still fisted in her thick hair, should she recover herself enough to attempt another escape.

She did not, but she did have the presence of mind, when she felt her wand, which had been knocked loose in the struggle, fall out of her hair, to squeeze her eyes shut and concentrate with all her might, envisioning it lying on the floor, shining brightly in the dark, a beacon begging to be found; a distress signal. She mouthed the word Lumos, praying that her magic would be strong enough, even wandless and soundless, to accomplish this task and bring help.

Please find me... Harry, Ron, Draco, please... oh God, please!

00000

He dragged her through the entrance hall, right past Harry, Ron and Draco who were running back toward the Great Hall- Draco had apparently enlisted them to help him search for her in there. She gathered all her strength and lunged toward her boys, but Lucius had seen them too and had anticipated her reaction. He was ready for her, yanking her back, hard, against him, his fist tightening in her hair until she screamed out in agony- but silently, of course. And then he was pulling her through the front doors- they were open already, as many students who had bought butterbeer at the stand in the entrance hall and brought it outdoors to drink were now being shooed back in. Hermione had a brief revelation that that must have been how Lucius had managed to sneak inside while retaining his invisibility; by timing it with one of the butterbeer drinkers either coming or going through the great doors- and then he murmured in her ear again, a single word-

"Imperio."

It was all downhill from there. Literally, as he proceeded to lead her away from the castle, down the long, sloping lawn toward the lake, both of them still underneath the invisibility cloak, the silencing spell still in place as an added precaution, just in case she should manage somehow to throw off the Imperius Curse.

And she was trying- but to no avail. Lucius was quite accomplished in the Unforgivables, after all- they were, one might say, his area of expertise- and she was still in a weakened state from her near-strangulation just moments ago. The best she managed was to slow their progress somewhat by repeatedly tripping over her own feet, each time earning herself a sharp yank forward by the hair.

He finally stopped on the lakeshore, far from the light and noise and hubbub of the castle. He whipped the cloak off both of them, muttered a quick binding spell that forced Hermione's arms behind her back, then released her from the Imperius Curse and shoved her backward, against the trunk of a nearby tree. Hermione cried out instinctively at this- only to realize that although the Imperius was off her, the silencing spell was not. She still could make no sound- not that anyone in the castle could have heard her now anyway; they were too far away.

Lucius, haggard from his time in prison and on the run, yet still wearing the same expression of haughty disdain she remembered from the past, looked her up and down coldly. "It's been a long time, mudblood," he sneered. "What a happy coincidence that I saw you hand-in-hand with my son in that ridiculous funhouse up at the school... I never would have recognized you otherwise, especially with your hair the way it is. Let's remedy that, shall we? I think I'd like to see you as you truly are." He tangled his hand once again in her hair, which now fell loose and disheveled, a jumble of thick ghost-white curls reaching the middle of her back, and said, "finite incantatum." Her ethereally pale hair was flooded with color then; her own rich chestnut brown returning in a wave from the roots to the tips.

"That's better," Lucius said matter-of-factly, resuming his appraisal of her. "This is what I wanted to see- the girl who made a traitor out of my son."

I don't understand! she tried to scream out, more in a bid for time than anything else- because she was beginning to understand- she'd been having inklings all day. But of course, it was to no avail, and it appeared that her time was up.

Lucius took a step back from her, his right hand still extended toward her- he's been doing all this without even a wand, she realized then, sickly- and shook his head, an expression of bitter amusement vying with disgust on his face. "I just don't see what the attraction is, really," he said. "Sorry. And so, mudblood- enough talk."

Her eyes widened, the thought find me, Draco, find me find me find me PLEASE racing through her mind in the split second before Lucius Malfoy opened his mouth once more;

"Crucio."

00000

Up in the Great Hall, Hermione's wand, which had indeed been glowing softly- red, the color of distress- but had gone unnoticed up til now, due to the unfortunate fact that it had fallen into a deep fold of one of the black curtain-like sheets- abruptly began shooting off huge quantities of bright red sparks, accompanied by loud sizzling and popping sounds. A clearer distress beacon could hardly be imagined, and it finally managed to capture Draco's attention as he rounded a bend in the pathway, shouting Hermione's name with his own wand out and ready for anything.

Upon seeing the sparks being shooting out into his path, the words "oh, shit" and "accio" all left his mouth in a rush, almost before he realized he'd spoken at all. The wand fairly leapt into his outstretched hand, giving Draco the distinct impression that could it have spoken, it would have been screaming for haste.

He thrust his own wand into his costume's sole well-concealed pocket, laid Hermione's flat on his palm, and said, "point me. Point me to your owner. Point me to Hermione!" The wand spun, then came to rest pointing straight toward the castle's nearest outer wall. It was quite obvious to Draco that Hermione was not between himself and the wall; that could mean only one thing. That what he'd feared the most had come to pass; his father had gotten Hermione out of the castle somehow.

He was running for the door then, not even pausing to alert Harry and Ron; they had ceased to matter, to even exist for him. His world had narrowed down to three people only; himself, Hermione, and his father.

He took the castle's front steps two at a time, then was racing across the grounds, down the slope toward the lake, running faster than he ever had before. To have traveled any more quickly he would have needed to be on his broomstick... and even so, he was nearly too late.

00000

Lucius hadn't wasted very much time torturing Hermione. A brief yet intense Cruciatus was sufficient, he'd apparently decided, to get his point across. Lucius was not a stupid man; stupid men did not rise through the ranks to become the Dark Lord's Right Hand, nor did they successfully engineer and carry off massive prison breaks from the world's most feared wizarding penitentiary. He realized that even outside the castle, time was of the essence, and he had his priorities straight- and his number one priority was the death of the mudblood who had, whether intentionally or not, caused his only child to turn against him and his whole way of life. There was nothing left for him; the cause he had fought for and the wife he had loved were both lost to the war; his freedom and his dignity stripped from him in its aftermath; and his son, the culmination of twenty generations of proud Malfoy blood, had become a mudblood-loving turncoat. He would never be able to reclaim any of it- would live out the rest of his life a hunted, haunted man- but he could have the satisfaction of killing her- that, by Merlin, he could have.

He had told her all this, rapidly, as she lay gasping in the wake of the curse, arms still bound magically behind her, and then had gone on to tell her that in his opinion, she didn't even deserve a magical death; he had wasted entirely too much magic on her already, and when it came to killing mudbloods, Muggle means would do.

His hands had closed back over her throat.

00000

That was when Draco arrived on the scene, dropping Hermione's wand in his haste and hurling himself at his father, knocking him off Hermione with such force that the two Malfoys went rolling over and over each other, now locked together in mortal combat, grappling with all thought of magic forgotten for the moment- until Lucius, gritting his teeth, still dead set on finishing what he had started, managed to shoot an arm out toward Hermione, who was attempting to struggle into a sitting position... and without a word- with only his will and a violent flinging gesture of his arm- hurled her magically through the air and into the dark, frigid lake.

Draco heard the splash and disengaged. When he'd first launched himself at his father, he had caught enough of a glimpse of Hermione to realize that her arms were bound behind her, and now the words can't swim with bound arms, can't swim with bound arms were flashing through his mind as he stumbled to his feet and tried to make for the lakeshore- but Lucius caught him around the ankle and yanked his legs back out from under him, causing him to fall hard, knocking the wind from his lungs.

Even so, Draco was twisting around in the next instant, attacking his father with renewed, desperate fury, fighting now only to get away, to reach Hermione before it was too late.

Lucius, for his part, was fighting merely to subdue his son. His goal was apparently to immobilize Draco rather than to hurt him- to prevent him from interfering until nature could take its course. "Don't you... understand..." the elder Malfoy panted as he struggled with his son, "I'm doing this... for you, Draco! You will... thank me... someday, I swear it! Think of the blood that runs through your veins... twenty generations of Malfoy pride... of Slytherin pride... as if I'd let you... my only child, my only heir... the sole continuation of our noble line... throw all that away... to consort with some Gryffindor mudblood... when you come to your senses, Draco, I'll gladly accept... your apology... for your actions in the war... and tonight."

"Fuck you," Draco snarled, in no mood to debate, frantic now to escape and reach the lake. "Fuck you, fuck you, I wish you were dead!" Managing to get the upper hand now- he was younger, after all, and healthier too; life in Azkaban and then on the run had not been kind to Lucius- he straddled his father, grabbed him by the hair two-fisted, yanked his head up, and slammed it back on the ground. Then he did it again- and again. Knowing that so long as his father was conscious, he would not be able to reach Hermione unimpeded. He needed to knock Lucius unconscious- or kill him, whichever came first; he didn't particularly care at the moment.

Actually, that wasn't true. He bloody well wanted to kill him.

Then there were hands on him, pulling him backward and up, off of his father, and he was struggling against them blindly, in the grip of a red rage that demanded he keep pounding Lucius' head against the hard, October-chilled earth until there was nothing left but pulp.

"Malfoy!" someone was shouting insistently in his ear. "Malfoy! Where's Hermione? Goddamnit, Malfoy, where is she?!?"

Potter, he realized, and then awareness returned in a flood; he'd forgotten for a moment why it was he'd even been attempting to turn his father's head into mush, but now- "Hermione! Oh, FUCK!" He wrenched himself away from Harry and Ron, but then stood where he was for a space of several heartbeats, torn now between going after her, which was already, he sensed, a lost cause- and finishing what he had started here- namely, committing patricide.

Harry grabbed him and spun him around so that they were standing face to face. "Malfoy," he said in a voice of forced calm, "leave your father to us. He's not worth the guilt you'd carry if you killed him. But, and this is important- if you know what he's done with Hermione, you must go and get her, NOW! Do you understand?"

Draco took one last look at where his father lay- Ron now crouched beside him, wand out, muttering the words of a complex body and magic binding spell that even Lucius, when he regained full use of his faculties (at the moment he appeared to be in a deep and harmless daze) would be unable to thwart.

"Malfoy, GO!" Harry shoved him hard on the shoulder and then, finally, his limbs were obeying him again and he was moving.

He backed away one step, and then another- then turned and pelted the short distance to the lake, stumbling, tripping over his own feet in his frantic haste, his normal easy grace gone, swept away in a tide of panic. He skidded to a halt on the lakeshore, his feet throwing up the little pebbles that lay close to the water's edge. Whipping his wand from his pocket, he extended it over the water, which was now lapping at his shoes, and shouted "Accio Hermione Granger!"

There passed an instant in which he was sickeningly sure the spell had not worked; that Hermione was lost, never to be found again by anyone save perhaps the giant squid, and he actually fell to his knees. Then there was a disturbance in the still, black surface of the water, and Hermione's body shot into the air, the desperate force of his magic hurling her toward him, toward his arms which were, he noted with some mild surprise, extended to catch her- he didn't remember having raised them.

She slammed into him, knocking him flat onto his back- but only for a second. Then he was shifting her off of him, scrambling to his knees, pulling her, from where she lay crumpled on her side, onto her back, straightening her, releasing her arms from the binding spell, taking her by the shoulders and starting to shake her, repeating her name over and over again.

Not 'Granger'.

Her real name. Hermione.

"Hermione! Oh, Merlin, no- Hermione!"

There was no response.

"Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit-"

Being submerged in the chill waters of the late-October lake had cleansed her of the makeup she had applied as part of her costume; Draco registered first this fact, and then the fact that this meant the blue tinge to her lips must actually be real. Her sopping, bedraggled hair lay half over her face; he pushed it away with shaking fingers, feeling a cold fist of despair clench around his heart. The white sheet which constituted her ghost costume was tangled about her, wrapped around and around her legs, soaked through and nearly transparent. It reminded him of a shroud.

"Hermione, please... snap out of it!"

Her skin was like ice.

And he was pretty damn sure that she wasn't breathing.

"No. Oh, no. Granger, come on!" This couldn't be happening. Please no.

He was no healer; he didn't know what to do. Shaking her had no discernable effect- neither did 'ennervate', nor slapping her, which was the next thing he tried. When Harry and Ron arrived back on the scene some thirty seconds later, he was kneeling on the gravelly shore, the painted bones on his costume, and his messy halo of silver-white hair, standing out eerily against the black of the night. He had Hermione clasped to his chest; he was rocking her.

"She isn't breathing," he said simply, as they threw themselves to their knees beside him. He raised gray eyes to them that were wide, glazed windows of shock and horror. "She isn't breathing."

Ron, ashen, fumbled for something concealed beneath the orange vest he still wore from the Haunted House. He drew his hand out clutching a miniature pumpkin, barely larger than a good-sized gumball. "Portkey," he said, both his voice and his hand shaking. "It'll get us back to the entrance hall. Grab on." He placed the tiny object against Hermione's cold cheek, waited only long enough for Harry and Draco each to touch a finger to it, and said "activate." The four of them were whirled away.

They thudded to the floor of the entrance hall, landing hard; Hermione was wrenched from Draco's arms and it was Harry who gathered her up again, for in the next instant Draco was on his feet, screaming- and not for Madam Pomfrey, or any other staff member for that matter, but for Neville- Neville Longbottom.