Holy cow. It's been over two years since I've updated this story, and that really sucks. I'm so terribly sorry.
In my time away from this work, there honestly hasn't been a day that I haven't thought about working on it or felt guilty that it's taken me so long to get back to this. The truth is that the last two years have been a little hellish in my personal life, and for whatever reason, fic writing felt like more of a chore than a release. What's more, this chapter is probably my weakest yet (though not for lack of trying… I've returned to this countless times over the last two years), because it's nearly all action, and I'm just so unenthusiastic about writing that. The next chapter should be a return to form, as it goes back to my comfort zone. We're nearly done!
Thank you, thank you, thank you to those of you who have stuck with this and not given up on me! I know how frustrating it is to enjoy a fic that goes years without updates. As I've promised numerous times before, I won't ever abandon a story and I'll try my best to update this in the next few weeks. We only have a chapter (maybe two) left, and then the Epilogue, which I've had written since I started this fic. Nearly there!
Leave a comment if you feel kind, but if you don't, I won't hold it against you. I have no room to ask for favors, though I do so enjoy reading your thoughts!
This chapter is un-betaed, and all mistakes are my own. As always, I own nothing HP related.
Ch. 33- On Answered Questions
Hermione considered herself a smart woman. She was able to speak at 10 months old and read by age five. At age seven she was reading chapter books, and by 11 she was off to Hogwarts and well on her way to proving herself the Brightest Witch of her Age. She did crossword puzzles in pen and considered putting together a 3,000-piece puzzle to be one of the best uses of a Saturday evening. She'd scored well above average in every IQ test she'd ever taken, and there were a lot of them. Yes, she'd always considered herself to be decently intelligent. How, then, could I have not seen this coming? she thought, blinking the intrusive light out of her tired eyes and angrily sizing up her jailer as he walked through the door.
Draco felt the uncomfortable pull of dark apparition, taking him who-knows-where… he hadn't felt this terrible sensation since the previous May, when the evil git had died. Apparition, while uncomfortable, didn't leave you feeling as though your heart hurt and your stomach was filled with acid… but dark magic always worked a bit differently. Draco loathed dark magic, but Hermione was worth everything to him. He had worried he might need a way to find her, and luckily (or perhaps unluckily) no one was better prepared to blindly find someone like a former Death Eater. It had been necessary for Voldemort to equip his followers with a way to find him even when they didn't know his location, and copying his methods gave Draco an ironclad way to track Hermione in the event of an emergency.
He landed in a regal sitting room, with button-tufted chaises in an elegant shade of cream, and an ornate, golden chandelier overhead. Without Hermione's consent- or her blood, really, if he were being honest with himself- he could only get himself so close to her… but he knew she had to be close. Taking a moment to adjust Potter's invisibility cloak, he slowly took stock of the room he'd materialized in. It was vaguely familiar, though it was clear the room had recently been redecorated; it didn't appear as though anyone had ever sat on the sofas and the ornate rug under his feet had certainly never seen foot traffic.
Draco took another minute to take in the room around him. Everything appeared to be brand new… except one thing. He knew those draperies. He'd hidden behind them once playing hide and seek when he was five years old. The thick woven fabric had kept him hidden for what felt like hours, waiting for his playmate to find him. He'd marveled at the shiny, gold design swirling through the ruby curtains; they had been new at the time, and he'd never seen such a lovely fabric before. It was the only time he could ever recall Theo's lovely mum being cross, as she'd scolded them for playing in her new draperies.
Nott Manor? he thought, Why would MacMillan bring her here?
"What are you doing here?" Hermione asked, struggling against her restraints. They appeared to be magic-dampening cuffs, as none of her non-verbal spells seemed to be working.
Theo Nott crossed the threshold into her cell. "Come now, Granger", he drawled, his hands behind his back and his face contorted into a mad imitation of smugness. "Your mind is superior even if your blood is disgusting."
"You've been behind all of this? But you're Draco's friend…" Hermione reasoned, trying to work through what was going on as if it were an Arithmancy problem she could solve.
Theo cut her off with a mirthless chuckle. "I am Draco's friend, and I'm helping him, as he's clearly lost the plot." He strolled into the room leisurely, moving towards her with a put-on oiliness to his voice although Hermione could see the venom in his eyes directed at her. "I seem to be the only real friend he has left, as everyone else is content to let him mess about with Mudblood slime, trashing his reputation and besmirching the name 'wizard' like a fool." He spit at her feet.
"Draco is ten times the wizard you'll ever be, Nott," she asserted, wriggling imperceptibly in her shackles. If she could distract him long enough, she thought she might be able to squeeze herself out of her binds.
"My my my, and here I thought he was the only one caught up in this stupid love affair. I was beginning to think you might have bewitched him. After all, the Draco I knew never would have fallen in with a dirty slag." He sneered at her in a way that would have made Lucius proud. "It would seem, though, that you're just as mistakenly besotted as he is. To think that there's any place in the wizarding world for your kind, let alone thinking that you might be worthy of sharing a bed with a Pureblood."
Hermione rolled her eyes. She'd been fighting this type of antiquated Pureblood ideology since she was 11 years old. Nott was merely parroting the same filth that she'd heard for years. It was labored and uninspired, truly, and that might have been what annoyed her the most. Something was legitimately bothering her, however. "How did you manage to rope Ernie into your plans?"
Theo gave off a derisive snort and said, "He volunteered, at first. Idiot. I was looking for an ally and I didn't let him in on the extent of my plans, of course—he thought I simply wanted to break you and Malfoy up. That would have worked out nicely for him, filthy blood traitor that he is, as he wanted you for himself." He appraised her contemptuously for a moment, and then continued, "He helped me sneak the first note into your rooms and tale you around the castle a few times. When it became clear to him that my aims weren't just to frighten you into breaking up, he tried to back out. He even pieced together that I was the one behind all the Mudblood murders, though it certainly took him long enough. When he thought he would back out on me and let you know what I was up to, I decided to take a page out of Malfoy's book and Imperiused him. That's when the real fun started." At Hermione's sharp intake of breath he laughed. "It was quick and easy, Granger. Painless. That McMillan prat is fine. For now, anyway… I expect they'll be carting him off to Azkaban soon. I've modified his memory, you see."
"So this was all to… break me and Draco up?" she asked skeptically, still slyly wriggling in her shackles so that he wouldn't see she was working to break free. "That seems a little extreme, Nott, even for a pathetic, wannabe Death Eater."
She seemed to have hit a nerve. His plain face contorted into ugly fury. "I'm not a wannabe anything, Granger. The Death Eater's aims were noble, sure, but they took their commands from the Dark Lord. I take commands from no one."
"That sounds like a great deal of talk, to me," Hermione goaded. "In fact, it would seem that the Death Eaters didn't want you. Weren't you good enough? They took Draco. Is that what this is really about? Are you bitter because Draco is the better wizard?"
Nott raged, pointing his wand at Hermione's throat with an angry, menacing growl. "You're a stupid slag. Draco's daddy earned his way into the Death Eater ranks, and as I've already told you, I didn't have any desire to join the Dark Lord. But comparing us is silly and futile. I've known Draco my whole life. He can't compare to me in any way."
Hermione was afraid but determined not to let it show. She wouldn't cower. She wouldn't shrink. She was resolved to break free—to evade death like Harry had done countless times and get justice for the Muggleborns who had been murdered and for herself. "You aren't even half the man Draco is, let alone half the wizard he is. Draco would never senselessly kill Muggleborns and terrorize people for sport."
"Don't you get it, Granger?" he taunted, unaware that she had just wriggled free of her binds. "This isn't about sport or Malfoy or even your stupid relationship. All of this is about you. You are the Mudbloods great, white hope. You and your 'Brightest Witch of Her Age' moniker have deluded the wizarding world into thinking that Mudbloods can be more than the disgusting, subservient scum that they are born. You are a cancer to wizardkind, Granger, and you must be destroyed so that the world is right once more. Malfoy is an idiot for putting himself in my way, but you… you have always been my target."
Draco made his way through the dark house toward the dungeons, navigating the well trod halls by memory. He passed a gold framed family portrait from the 1600s, each member clad in richly colored garments and sleeping soundly, unaware that an intruder was quietly and carefully making his way deeper and deeper into the ancestral home under cover of Potter's magnificent cloak. He'd never seen the Nott dungeons– old families were always so private about these things– but knew where the door was hidden, tucked discreetly behind a crushed velvet armchair at the end of a forgotten hallway.
Standing at the door, he listened; whoever had brought Hermione here would likely have set intruder charms, and he needed to make certain that Hermione was indeed here before sending word to the Aurors. It was no use, as the door seemed to have been Imperturbed. Making haste, he sent off a patronus to Potter and pulled the invisibility cloak off, tucking it in his pocket. There's no point in trying to sneak attack, Draco thought, assessing the situation, the only way through this door is to get rid of it. After attempting to cast a silencing charm on the door, he called out "Bombarda!" then determinedly watched as the door exploded into thousands of tiny shards.
A loud "boom!" echoed from somewhere up above, announcing itself with an all-consuming thunderousness and reverberating through the walls of the stone dungeons.
"Oh, good!" Theo purred wickedly, turning away from Hermione for the briefest of moments to look towards the door, before turning his attention back to her with an evil smile. "Your rescue party appears to have arrived, Mudblood. I had hoped to take down a few of them along with you and was beginning to wonder what was taking them so long." He walked closer to her, lifting her face with his wand under her chin. "Who do you suppose it is, then? The halfblood hero, Potter? His gormless, blood traitor sidekick, perhaps? Maybe it will be your darling Draco?" At that he laughed. "I've never known Malfoy to go out of his way to help anyone, but perhaps this will be a first. Maybe you're that special? Although last I heard, you weren't even putting out."
The metal door flew open with a deafening"bang!".
"That's a very impolite thing to say to a lady," Draco growled, venom in every word and a murderous look in his eyes.
Theo Nott turned to look at his oldest friend with a look of pure hatred. Hermione took Nott's momentary distraction to send a wandless, non-verbal shield charm in Draco's direction, as Nott cried, "Malum laedere!"
"Been taking notes from Dolohov, have you?" Draco fumed from behind his own shield charm, and Hermione instantly recognized the purple flamed curse Nott had aimed at Draco as the same one that gave her the jagged scar that cut across her chest. She inconspicuously inched closer to Draco, convinced that the element of surprise would work in her favor. "Consaucio!" she heard him bellow, sending Nott leaping out of the way of his hex.
"And that's one from your dear Aunty Bella, I believe?" Nott jeered with a powerful flick of his wrist, sending a nonverbal curse in Draco's direction.
Hermione watched them weaving around one another with expert precision flinging curses and hexes of the darkest variety, the carefully measured dance of two people who had known each other their whole lives and could predict what the other might do next. She'd seen Harry and Ron duel with that amount of measured skill, though of course, never with the same ferocity, as they'd never actually tried to hurt one another.
Draco sent a powerful Confringo at the ceiling, and Hermione watched as the stone began to crumble into rubble and fall to the ground. Under the cover of the rumbling noise Draco said, "here!" and shoved something shimmery into her hands. It felt like water running through her fingers. Draco put up a shield charm, and then pulled her close. "Put it on and get out of here!"
"I'm not leaving you!" Hermione told him, shaking her head and feeling debris fall from her bushy, untamed mane.
"Hermione, I have a wand. I can protect myself. I'm going to stay here until the Aurors arrive. He can't get away with this!" He saw tears fill her eyes and when she started to shake her head again he said more forcefully, "Do it, Hermione. Now. Get out of here!" Then, in a hoarse whisper he added, "I love you."
"Crucio!"
Hermione recognized the hooked wand motion at once. Before the curse was fully out of Nott's mouth she leapt in front of Draco, without even thinking, taking the torture curse straight to the chest.
White, hot pain coursed through her body in a horribly familiar way; it was as though someone were turning her inside out, setting her blood on fire, liquifying her organs. She felt herself screaming, felt the tears falling from her eyes, without even being aware of what was happening to her. All she knew was pain– terrible, horrible, unending pain– like she hadn't endured since the awful night on the drawing room floor at Malfoy Manor and she prayed for it to end, prayed that death would come and be her sweet release. Her body fell to the ground with a hard "thud!", her skull ricocheting off the hard, stone floor with a terrible crack, and her vision went fuzzy.
In an indistinguishable, jumbled rush she heard Draco's scream of fury and Nott's thunderous, "Avada Kedavra!" She screamed out, unable to lift her head from the ground to see if Nott's curse had hit its aim; she was rapidly losing blood, and with it, consciousness. The world was going black.
The last thing she heard was an angry, forceful "Stupefy!" (from Harry? Surely that couldn't be Harry?) and then her world descended into darkness.