Disclaimer: So, I invited Ms. Rowling to my birthday party, hoping that she might give me the Harry Potter characters for a present, but instead I got stuck with socks. Gee, thanks.
Author's Note: I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update on this story. Slowly, sentence-by-sentence I've been making progress on it, but sadly not enough to make an update. Now, however, though I wanted there to be more in the chapter, I've decided it's got enough to post. Also, thank you very much for your concern for my friend. They decided its not a nerve contraction thing, and they went all over with it from epilepsy, to a brain tumor, and now they're thinking West Nile virus. It just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Anyway, she's doing fine and I was really touched by the reviews that expressed their concern.
Alenor: Thanks for the comment on my disclaimer. It made me feel less silly. I hope your days are less boring.
Asha Ice: Yeah, the quote is rather opposite from popular belief, don't you think? But, I figured in the Death Eater's circle it would probably swing that way.
ThousandI: Thanks again. And yes, they certainly do make quite the pair.
SwtMidnightDreams: No, good Carly! I'm so glad you're liking it and thanks for the input. The elemental equality is something I worry about.
Miss Mills: Thanks for the clarification! Mwa!
In Dreams: No problemo. I understand what you mean about not being in the mood to review. It makes me appreciate it all the more.
Chapter 15: Aila's Testimony
A quiet thump knocked against the door to the young Malfoy's bedroom. It, however, was too meek to wake the inhabitants of the room, and so, Ailanka Brumfrauer opened the door slowly and peeked her head inside, quite surprised by what she saw. On the massive bed in the middle of the room was her young master, in his usual green satin PJs, and beside him, beneath the covers was an unknown boy about the same age in much less flattering apparel. Draco was curled in the middle of the bed and the second boy, with black, unkept hair, was curled beside him closely. Draco let out a soft, gurgling noise like a baby starting to wake from a pleasant nap.
If she had been in her proper wits, Aila would have retreated from the room, keeping her mouth shut about what she had seen. She didn't leave the room, however, because she was glued to the spot by utter confusion as to what two young boys would be doing in the same bed in the chamber of her young lord.
Draco's eyes fluttered open slowly and he snuggled for a moment even deeper in the embrace in which he was held. He rolled over on to his back, with his eyes closed and sighed deeply until he heard a muffled noise from the end of the room. He lifted his head and opened his eyes, annoyed at whoever had intruded upon his slumber.
Of course he was surprised to see his nursemaid standing against the door with wide eyes and a stunned look of utter confusion marking her middle-aged face. He was even more surprised when he realized the exact reason for her astonished expression when he tilted his face to the side to meet the slowly waking semblance of Harry Potter, limbs wrapped about his own.
Being kind, I would say that Draco removed himself from Harry and woke him up to inform him of their less than upright appearance. However, to be honest, I must say that he screamed like a little girl and shot out of the bed wiping his hands on his pants as if to remove the presence that still lingered, which did wake Harry and made him realize just what Aila witnessed, causing him in turn to squeal and jump to the opposite side of the bed, wiping his hands upon his sleeves in a similar manner.
Aila was becoming even more frightened for the sanity of the Malfoy she adored so much and kept creeping backwards as if to shrink from the room while still watching the events.
"What was that?!" Draco shrieked across the bed at Harry.
"You tell me, lover boy!"
"Me?" Draco convulsed slightly and sputtered, "You were spooning me for goodness sake."
Harry inhaled through his teeth and crossed his arms, saying calmly, "I didn't hear any complaints."
Draco took a sharp intake of breath and brought his hand dramatically to his chest, replying in a high-pitched voice, "I feel violated."
"Please Sir..." Aila whimpered from her corner.
Both boys turned wildly to the woman facing them and glanced back and forth in a panic.
"Draco," Harry whispered out of the corner of his mouth, "What do I do?"
"Just be very still," Draco answered and crept forward to get Aila and help her to the bed.
"Now, Aila," Draco said quietly, holding her shaking hands in his, "This isn't what it looks like."
"God no!" Harry cried from behind.
"I said still!" Draco shot back and Harry sat on the floor obediently, tilting his head to hear the hushed conversation.
Aila nodded, mouth slightly agape as she slowly looked from Draco to Harry and back to Draco.
"Aila," Draco said, noticing her waning attention, "Are you listening to me?"
She focused on Draco and nodded limply.
"This is a friend of mine," Draco said slowly, "and he's had to stay here for a few nights." Draco continued uncertainly, "So, we didn't have anywhere else for him to sleep except in the bed..." Okay, he thought this was making sense so he kept up with it. "And I couldn't very well sleep on the floor..."
"Or in a bathtub," Harry said from the ground.
Draco closed his eyes in annoyance, "Or the bathtub..." He continued after taking a long sigh, "So we decided that it would be a perfectly reasonable thing to share the bed just until we could find a suitable sleeping arrangement for him."
"Why doesn't he stay in one of the guest bedrooms?" Aila asked quietly.
"Hmm," Draco brought his palms together and rested his chin on his fingertips in thought. "That is a good question, Aila."
"Because Mrs. Malfoy doesn't know that I'm here," Harry said and stood up, sitting on the center of the bed.
Draco shot a dangerous look at him. "She what?"
"Hey," Harry put his hands out defensively, "I'm only being honest, buddy."
"Yeah, well your honesty is going to get you killed."
"It seems like decent odds either way."
"Draco," Aila whispered in a raspy voice, looking much more calm now that they had both gone back to their bickering behavior, "Please tell me what's going on." She took his hand and, after getting no response, turned to Harry frantically, "I won't tell, I promise."
"Fine," Harry said, "You can tell her, Draco."
Draco took a step back in disbelief. "I can tell her?" He took a second step back, "Is that what you just said?" He stepped back into the wall, "I can't believe you just said that."
"Well," Harry said, twirling a corner of his shirt in his finger, "We've gotten nowhere with just the two of us. A third person could help, as long as she doesn't tell."
"Oh, I won't, young master," Aila assured him, taking his arm desperately.
Draco took a deep breath and closed his eyes, bringing his fingers to massage his eyelids, confusion marking his severe posture. After a moment of thought, he raised his eyes to meet Harry's.
"You don't know my father."
Harry took an understanding step toward Draco and patted his arm.
"I understand that, but the question is, how badly do you want to save Hermione?"
Draco's head shot up in surprise at the suddenness of the question. It was as if his motives were being laid out- it was now or never. How badly did he want to save Hermione? The question churned through his system, allowing itself to settle in his mind until he had reached a conclusion.
Draco finally spoke in a calm, sure voice. "Tell her, Harry... we could use the help."
Harry nodded, slightly taken back at the desperate inference in Draco's voice.
"Aila," Harry turned to the woman standing against the wall and took her hand. "You may need to sit down."
The fragile woman slowly sat on the chest at the end of the bed and peered up at Harry and then Draco with wide, curious eyes.
"Well..." Harry started, unsure how to begin the testimony. To be certain, it was a difficult task and the approach to it was a tricky one to decide. "I am Harry Potter," what how he decided to begin.
Aila looked unphased and nodded.
"You know," Harry continued, grinning as if waiting for her to start laughing and joke about how she was so honored to meet him, "Harry Potter... the Boy Who Lived... you've never heard of me?"
"No Sir," Aila said, "I stay out of public affairs."
"But living in the Malfoy house it seems would give you some clue as to who I am."
"Trust me," Draco said, "we keep what's private private."
"Is my identity really 'private', would you say?"
"Well, the fact that my father is plotting a seventeen-year-old's murder in a mass conspiracy involving an underground movement of Death Eaters is not something you want on your unblemished record as an upstanding citizen in the wizarding world."
Harry nodded as Aila's eyes continued to widen, "True," he said, "Very true."
"Anyway," Draco said to Aila, "Harry is what you would call my nemesis. We've been at each other's throats since the first day of school seven years ago... haven't we, old pal?"
"That's right... chum."
"So," Draco continued, "one of Harry's best friends is a girl named Hermione Granger. Being friends with my nemesis, she in turn became what you would call something of a rival to me."
"This last year," Harry picked up, "Hermione was shipped off to live in the world of muggles because her parents were flipping out over the war. Well, I haven't gotten all of the details yet, so I still don't know why it turned out that she came to live with..."
"Um," Draco picked up, "what happened was that Hermione caught me snogging a muggle girl at her high school and talked me into sneaking her into Hogwarts because she missed it so much. Well, the only sensible place to hide her was in my room because it was the only place they wouldn't look."
"After they had had their little fiasco going on for a while," Harry butted in...
"It was not a fiasco."
"Fine," Harry said. "After Hermione had been at the school awhile, I guess Lucius found out..."
"As did you."
"As did I, and he kidnapped Hermione. At this point, we're trying to get her back, because she's my future wife."
Draco stood back and looked at him with a dull curiosity on his face. "Just had to add that bit in at the end, didn't you?"
"Well," Harry averted his eyes from Draco, whose head was shaking slowly in shame.
"She broke off the engagement, you louse."
"Maybe she changed her mind."
"Sir," Aila asked, "Where is Hermione?"
"Here," Draco said softly, eyes lowered to the ground. "Somewhere."
Harry looked to Aila and continued from where Draco had left off, "We saw her two nights ago in the back yard, but she collapsed before we could get to her. We tried to revive her, but she wouldn't wake up. We heard shouting and got back in the woods before anyone saw us."
"My father took her down the back way," Draco finished, "We couldn't see them after they turned into the garden."
Draco turned with a sigh from the bed and walked to the window, a plaintive expression on his face.
"Sir," Aila whispered, approaching Draco and touching his cheek with her fingers lightly, "I think I know where Miss Hermione is."
Harry and Draco's heads both shot up at the words.
"Where, Aila..." Draco nearly stumbled into her from the shock and Harry ran to catch him before he fell. "Where is she?"
"And how do you know?" Harry asked again.
"Have you spoken to her?"
"Is she alright?"
"What's my father done to her?"
"Sirs," Aila trembled, becoming more and more overwhelmed, "I can't be sure, but I think that..."
"Just tell us anything, any suspicion that you have..." Harry began again, but Draco silenced him and they all moved to the corner, where Aila could sit in a chair and the boys sat on the ground beneath her, looking up expectantly.
"Well, Sirs," Aila caught her breath and thought for a moment. "I promised I wouldn't tell on you, so you must swear not to tell on me."
"Never," they both assured in some form or the other.
"I'll be very grateful to you for it," she said and then scrunched up her forehead before she began speaking again, "I don't know where to begin exactly, but I suppose it started nearly two months ago, when my daughter wanted to go play in the garden and neither my lord or lady were home, so I thought it appropriate for me to take her. We were in the garden and I turned for a moment... I can't exactly remember why, perhaps something caught my attention... anyway, when I turned back, my daughter was gone.
"Where she could have disappeared to, I was completely at a loss, but I did know that she couldn't have been out of the garden, because there was no door at the other end and the door that we had come through, I had closed. I, therefore, began searching for my Mika, for that's her name, and began calling for her. After a while, I heard her voice, but it was muffled and distant. You can't imagine how scared I was for her.
"I followed the voice until I tracked it to a certain statue... well, I guess it was more like an enormous vase, and I could swear that she was calling to me from under it. I looked for some kind of door, but there wasn't one on it and as I felt my way around it, a small sliver appeared in the side and slowly grew until it was large enough for a person to fit through. I assure you, Sirs, I don't know what I did to open it, but it opened and I went in because I could hear her voice more clearly then.
"I called for her and her voice became more urgent, as if desperate for me to find her. I was terribly concerned, you know, and I fled to her, disregarding everything else around me. When I finally found her, she was standing alone in an open hallway and I scooped her up, to calm her, because she was crying. Only then did I realize where we were. There were doors all around us and from some of the doors there were horrible noises coming from behind it. It must have been some type of dungeon or jail.
"Ahead of me, I could suddenly see a light coming towards us. After a moment, I realized it was Master Lucius holding the light and I was terrified, for I thought that he was gone, and I moved back into a corner, covering Mika's mouth so she wouldn't make a noise, so fearful I was of him finding us. He stopped two doors ahead of us and opened it after saying an incantation, though I don't remember what it was, and when it opened a voice... a girl's voice... came from inside of it. The voice wasn't scared or sad, merely blank, and I remember thinking that the voice could not be any older than you.
"No more than a moment later, such horrible screams came from the door that I could not keep my daughter there even a moment longer and I went the way I thought I had gone before to leave the place. After a bit of trouble, I found my way out and went immediately up to the house, warning my daughter not to say a word.
"That's the most of what I know, except for close to a week ago my daughter said that a pretty girl lived in the South guest house... you know, the one nearest the garden."
"Yes," Draco said, "I know."
"What did the vase look like?" Harry asked urgently.
"It was..." Aila paused a moment in thought, each description more difficult to form than the next, "sort of a dark purple and it had an inscription on the side."
"What did it say?" Draco asked, his voice calm and concentrated.
"I believe it said 'In the Secret'," she paused seeing both of their expression at the words, Harry's excited and angry and Draco's defeated, and continued, "but I could have been mistaken, Sirs. That only may have been it."
"No, Aila," Draco said, his face lowering further and further, "That's exactly what it said."
"That's 'In the Secret'?" Harry demanded, standing and pulling Draco to his feet. "You had us traveling all over the bloody world and that's he meant?" He pushed Draco hard into the wall; "We could have found Hermione that day if we had known it was here. Your own bloody house, Draco..." Harry moved to the bed and said under his breath, as if he still couldn't believe it, "Your own house."
Draco sat in silence; dread filling him to the brim of what he had done. He had endangered their lives plus every day adding to Hermione's misery by the mistake he had made. "Well," Draco said pathetically, "we'll get her now."
In the town where I was born
Lived a man who sailed the sea
And he told us of his life
In the land of submarines...
The song had been stuck in Hermione's head for at least two days now and she figured that maybe if she wrote the words in her journal she would no longer be humming it during the most inappropriate times.
So we sailed up to the sun
Til we found a sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine...
'Really', she thought, 'couldn't I have come up with something a little less juvenile?' For some reason unbeknownst to her, she was in the most cheerful mood she had been in quite a long time. 'Honestly,' continued her inner monologue, 'Yellow Submarine? I go from the Rape of Lucrece to Yellow Submarine? Couldn't the transition have been a bit more subtle?'
We all live in a yellow submarine
A yellow submarine, a yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow a submarine
A yellow submarine, a yellow submarine
Her head bobbed up and down to the chorus singing in her head. 'Oh no,' she thought to herself once again, 'I'm going insane. That's it. I've been driven insane. Well, obviously, the normal human would be crazy by now. Solitary confinement with a daily dose of rape. Is it really rape, at this point? I mean, honestly, I've given up caring by now... Wait a second,' she glanced back and forth in her cell as the thought came to her, 'If I'm crazy, maybe none of this is really happening. Holy crap, I've been raping myself.' She convulsed at the words. 'Ewe...'
And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next doorAnd the band begins to play...
'Wait, that part doesn't come until later, doesn't it? Shit, I am losing my mind.'
End Note: I understand that I'm a complete loser because I couldn't think of any lyrics other than Beatles ones. Gosh. I really was going to make it longer, or at least make more things happen, but I decided that it might be at least a couple more days for that to happen, so I decided updating was more important. Love you all and Happy Halloween!