CHAPTER THREE: Lock of Silence

It was as if a sudden silence charm was cast among the people of the room. Then suddenly everybody had found their voices, and there were a number of gasps and whispers. I glanced around the room and spotted Potter at a far-by table, seated with the Weasel's sister, the Weasel himself, and I presume his date, Laura Madley of Hufflepuff. How he managed to get a date, I will never know, but a Hufflepuff? Then again...Hufflepuff was always a dim house. They were just a bunch of singing pansies in the rain. Even Cedric Diggory was no exception.

Then something odd happened.

I glanced sideways at Hermione. She had a strange expression upon her face. A look of revolted fear.

"Hermione?"

She glanced at me, stiffened, and then whimpered.

"Are you alright?" I asked her.

She closed her eyes...and then she collapsed onto the floor.

I bent down next to her and tried to shake her awake, saying her name repeatedly.

"Hermione?" I said, repeatedly. "Hermione?"

I then felt like there was not enough oxygen among the room because of the many bodies it held. I gasped for air. I struggled for breath. I then realized that the atmosphere inside the room had changed; it no longer held the gay sound of laughter and joyous melody.

I heard a faint muttering. A string of words. An incantation. A spell. A charm. A burst of golden orange light suddenly blinded me. A smell wafted through the air; an unmistakable scent of deadly poison and anger. A stench of guilt hung above it and underneath were the many heads with their bodies. Something then caught my senses, a smell, a very different smell...it was of cologne, very expensive cologne...my father's cologne.

Suddenly, a very large object was thrashed into my skull, knocking my breath out of me. Drowsiness came. A swirl of blackness took over, engulfing me, gobbling me up.

"Draco?"

"Eh?" I replied groggily.

"Draco, it's me."

"Who's me?"

"Hermione."

"Hermione?"

"Yes, where are we?"

I sat up then, my sight going in and out of focus for a bit until it steadied.

"I think we are in the "Malfoy Manor" dungeons," I whispered.

"Your house?" Hermione said meekly.

"Yes."

"Has dungeons?"

"Yes."

She groaned.

What were we doing in the dungeons? It definitely had something to do with my father. I looked over at Hermione, finding her very white and pale. Suddenly, a shout of pain came from her.

"Draco," she panted. "Please help?"

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I – I – do – don't – know," Hermione said, between gasps of breaths. She was clutching her stomach in agony.

I rushed over to her.

"Are you all right?"

Hermione closed her eyes, slumped against the wall and breathing heavily.

After a few minutes, she whispered, "It's okay, the pain has gone."

Suddenly, the dungeon door flew upon with a flash of yellow light. In came father!

"What is the meaning of this?" I said angrily.

"Quiet!" father hollered back.

"Mudblood!" he spat at Hermione as he walked over to her.

Hermione turned her face towards him.

"Mudblood, I have a little surprise for you!" he sneered at her.

My father grabbed the left side of her robe and ripped it from her left shoulder down to her waist exposing her left breast. I saw her eyes widen with fright and she scrambled to get up. Father slapped her hard across the face for attempting to run away, and Hermione slumped to the floor, doing her best to cover herself up. My father waved his wand, and Hermione flew up to the top of the low wall. Up there, he chained her hands to it and tied her feet, exposing the left side of her body. She whimpered. Father transfigured a stone from the floor into a whip and whipped the left side of her body, exposing her flesh, and her screams of agony echoed throughout the dungeon. The whip left a bright mark on her white flesh as it started to bleed.

"That will teach you a lesson, Mudblood," father hissed at her.

In addition, with that, he took the whip in his hands and once again was about to deliver a whipping. However, at that moment, I rushed to stand in front of Hermione, and the whip connected with my hipbone on my side. I bit down hard on my lip to stop myself from screaming out. My father stopped and glared at me.

"You'll pay, son!" he snarled. "You'll pay dearly for helping a Mudblood. If I didn't know better, I would say you had fallen for that thing!"

With a swish of his cloak, he stomped out the dungeon door, putting an anti-alohormora spell on it.