Disclaimer: My therapist says I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters, and I guess I believe her. But I'm still not sure in the case of Oliver Wood, Remus Lupin, and of course, Harry himself.
Disclaimer Note: I just blatantly stole that disclaimer from my dear friend, Sulwyn of the North. Terribly sorry.
Author's Note: I will just continue to thank you kind readers. I'm listening to the Hair soundtrack for the first time in many months and I had forgotten how much I love it. I'm not sure why I think any of you will care, but if you're a fan of Hair too, then you are a friend of mine!
Chapter 10: Eleanor Rigby Takes Flight
The first thing Hermione did when Draco left her was take a shower, which left her refreshed and ready for a new day. As she walked through the larger room, a towel wrapped around her damp head, she glanced down at the letter on the table. Upon looking at it, chills rose along her spine and she shivered from cold. She thought that as she looked at it, she should be more frightened, but the more she thought the less afraid. She instead grew very cold.
Outside the window the snow was falling softly, covering the windowpane with a gentle frost, and the image calmed her. She went to the cupboard and removed a package of hot cocoa, which she made presently, sitting at the table and reading through the letter once again. A thought struck her most forcefully. How long had Snape had the letter? In the letter it said- 'you will wait, but not for long...' How long had already been waited? How much longer would she have?
Her thoughts grew a bit frantic at the thought and looked around the room, desperate not to leave it for very long. It was a home and haven and she had not seen outside of it, excepting the day she snuck out in the invisibility cloak, for over two and a half months. And, she would not only be leaving her home, but Draco. The thought played in her mind and she mused over why it such a profound effect.
She decided to leave the letter and go about her usual business; perhaps her time would be better spent thusly. She took two steps before turning back, looking at the letter, trying to intimidate it with her glare. It just sat on the table rebelliously. Fine, she thought, and she walked back to the table to turn the letter over on to its back, so that only a blank piece of parchment shown on the table. She smiled at her cleverness.
She then made the bed, humming pleasantly a Beatles song her father and uncles always sang around the campfire when they went for family reunions. As she made the bed, she began spinning happily with the pillows, dipping herself onto the bed, and sitting up, winking at the invisible audience across the room. Soon she had broken out, singing loudly and jumping on the bed, wrinkling the comforter she had just set correctly. She threw the towel on her head aside as she serenaded the room before her.
"Close your eyes," she sang, doing a little jig on the bed, "and I'll kiss you, tomorrow I'll miss you. Remember I'll always be true..."
She tripped on a pillow and fell on her face, giggling and continuing her song.
"And then while I'm away I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my loving to you!"
She jumped down from the bed, pulling a pair of Draco's socks from his dresser.
"I'll pretend," as she pulled the socks on, "I am kissing the lips I am missing and hope that my dreams will come true."
Standing, she cleared some of the debris from the middle of the floor.
"And then while I'm away, I'll write home every day..." the words were muffled by her grunts as she pushed the couch and pool table to the walls.
She resumed her place by the bed and rolled up her pants to her knees.
"All my loving I will send to you!"
She ran at full speed a few steps before sliding across the room. She squealed happily and continued to slide herself around, dancing to her own words.
"All my loving, darling I'll be true!"
Behind her she heard a very soft cracking sound- like a small lightning bolt. She froze mid-word. She clenched her eyes shut in foreboding as the person who had just entered leaned against the doorframe.
"All your loving?" the person returned in a fluid, baritone voice. "Tsk tsk tsk, that is a very strong statement you are making, my dear."
Draco was eating greedily at the Slytherine table in the Great Hall when he was bombarded by a very angry Harry Potter. Harry confronted him, pushing Goyle from his side, and demanded to know where you-know-who was. Several people turned their heads in surprise and he quickly apologized and explained that it was a different you-know-who.
Draco looked sideways at him and made a small gurgling noise that was inaudible over all the food in his mouth. When he had swallowed his food, he cleared his throat and turned his head to look at Harry.
"I'm sorry," Draco said, "was there something you wanted?"
"I want to know where Hermione is," Harry said, lowering his voice.
"She is in my dormitory, perfectly fine," he assured Harry and turned back to his bowl of fruit, stabbing a perfectly innocent grape and plunging it into his mouth.
"Well," Harry glanced nervously around before clearing his throat and asking Draco, "what happened when... when I left?"
"If you're thinking we shagged, she wouldn't hear of it," he said after swallowing the grape.
Harry sighed, perceptibly relieved.
"She always said she wanted to wait," Harry whispered to him.
"What do you mean?" Draco asked between bites of toast.
"I mean, when we were dating she said she wanted to wait until she was married."
"You mean you never...?" No other words were needed.
Harry shook his head.
"No wonder you were so bent about us," Draco said, both a little disturbed and proud that she would have lost her virginity to him that night.
"She probably wouldn't have gone through with it anyway," Harry said, trying to keep some of his dignity in tact.
"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as that," Draco said. "You didn't see her last night."
"She managed to stop herself on many a throw of passion while we were dating. You didn't see her then," Harry reminisced pleasantly for a moment.
Draco just shook his head and returned to his toast.
Hermione's jaw tightened and back stiffened as she heard the man taking soft steps across the wooden floor to her. She felt an iron hand grip the back of her neck as the other moved her still-damp hair. His thumb reached to the opposite side of her neck, pressing lightly.
"Sing for me," he whispered sinisterly in her ear.
She stood motionless in his grasp, unable to think, she was so gripped by terror. The pressure on her neck increased as he again asked her to sing. She refused in silence and the tension on her neck tightened further. The thought that he would snap her neck right there in the middle of Draco's dormitory crossed her mind, but it fled at the pain of the aching bone and muscle. She recoiled ever so slightly, drawing a grimace from the face behind her head.
He spun her to face him, but she kept her clamped eyes closed.
"Look at me," he demanded quietly.
This she could obey. Just as she thought, it was the luminous face of Lucius Malfoy. She kept her lips a clean line and blinked slowly, desperately keeping the panic she felt from manifesting itself through her face.
"Now," he smiled down at her, "that wasn't so hard... sing!" he demanded, tightening his grip on her neck almost to breaking point. She thought she would go unconscious or at least numb, but instead jolts of pain were sent through her limbs, setting them on fire.
He removed his hand and struck her across the face, sending her flying into the wooden board at the foot bed. She held her neck and massaged it for a moment, watching Lucius approach her slowly, menacingly. He struck her once more, making her head collide with the bed.
"Sing!"
"No!" she screamed back at him.
This was obviously the wrong thing to do. He grabbed a handful of her hair and tore it forward hurting not only her scalp, but burning her bare shins and knees by the friction of the wood floor.
She was rolled on to her back and panting from the pain as he stood over her. He placed his booted foot on her hair, keeping her securely in place as he reached into his robe to reveal a long, thin dagger. The dream that Hermione had had a few nights before came flooding back into her memory and she gasped, breathless in terror at the instrument that had been her death.
"Sing," he breathed ominously.
Draco had finished breakfast and slung his bag over his shoulder, deciding to stop by the library to bring Hermione some books for her to read in her spare time, which he figured she had her fare share of. Harry caught up to him, demanding to see Hermione.
Draco refused curtly and continued his way to the library. He cursed himself for telling Harry about the letter they had gotten from Snape that morning, because now that Harry knew 'his Hermione' was in imminent danger, he wouldn't leave Draco alone.
"You don't understand," Draco said, immensely irritated, "my father won't come and take Hermione until I'm there because he has to teach me a lesson or something. I mean, the letter was a threat to me too, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Harry said softly, still not convinced, "but how do you know he won't just get there and leave you a note and then take her..." he was struggling to keep up, because Draco has so drastically increased the speed of his gait to get away from Harry, "or torture her there until you show up and then take her?"
Draco groaned as he approached the library. He quickly moved to the bookshelves and pulled the first one out he could find, the drone that was Harry's voice still behind him.
"Potter," Draco said, more than a little fed up, "If you insist on following me around any more, I will not be responsible for what happens to you."
"Ooh," Harry said sarcastically before looking out the window and was cut off by an eagle owl passing overhead.
Draco saw it too and they both turned to look at the other, eyes wide in terror.
Draco dropped the book he held and ran at top speed from the library, Harry at his feet. Due to several uncooperative staircases and more than a few bothersome portraits, the pair took longer than desirable in reaching Draco's dormitory and Hermione.
Just looking at the blade was enough to make Hermione do anything he told her. It terrified her to the very marrow of her bones. Her mind searched momentarily for a song and found one, another Beatles, one that had been something of a lullaby to her.
"Eleanor Rigby..." she whimpered, trying to find a rhythm apart from her pounding heart.
"Louder," he demanded.
"Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been. Lives in a dream," she slowly became louder until she sounded nearly at conversational level. It sounded like shouting inside her head. "Waits at a window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door. Who is it for?"
Lucius bent and picked her up, sneering at her shaking words. She fell silent as his hand touched her arm.
"Don't stop," he told her as he led her across the room to the table.
She continued singing and sat when he forced her shoulders down into the chair.
"Eleanor Rigby died in a church and was buried along with her name.Nobody came."
He pulled a piece of parchment from his robes and glared up at her when she again paused her singing.
"Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walked from the grave. No one was saved."
He pulled a quill from his robes and began writing.
"Ah, look at all the lonely people," she paused in thought and completed subconsciously the song she knew so well, "Ah, look at all the lonely people."
Lucius rolled up the note and set it neatly on the table, coming to raise her from her seat, and she deftly followed. He moved her to the middle of the room and stood with his hand again securely on her throat.
After a long while of standing, the door opened and Draco and Harry both came bursting through. Hermione's eyes widened at the sight of them and there was just enough time for her to sing the last line of 'Eleanor Rigby' very softly to herself before Lucius vanished from sight with her in tow.
End Note: I sincerely hope that Beatles fans enjoyed that chapter. I know I did. I basically put in my own experience for her there. If you don't know fifty percent of the Beatles songs by heart, and at the very least recognize the other half, you are shunned in my family. At family reunions, that is all we do. We sit around the campfire, in our hotel room, on the beach, wherever we happen to be, and sing Beatles songs. Whether it's my dad and his brothers with their guitars, me and my cousins walking down the sidewalk holding hands and dancing, or the little toddlers humming and making up their own little garbles with the melodies, Beatles songs are ever present. It's actually a little sad.
Oh, also, I will make it my goal to update weekly. Because of how busy I suddenly am and the fact that Marcellus, my muse, has suddenly taken a vacation I am having to work very very hard on getting anything written. I already have the next two chapters written, but Chapter 13 is proving to be an annoying little bugger.