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sharight

When the world stopped spinning, Hermione stepped out of the fireplace into an unfamiliar room.

"Where am I? This isn't Grimmauld Place…"

She looked around the new and different room. It was dark, damp and cold. "I'm in a dungeon," she thought. A shiver ran down her spine. "I am not alone."

She pulled out her wand and muttered "Lumos." A dim light filled the small room. Hermione screamed. On the wall directly in front of her were the tattered remains of a girl who could have been no older than herself. Her body was torn open and chunks of her flesh were lying on the ground at her feet. Blood spattered the wall.

"I suppose you like McNair's handiwork," said a grim but familiar voice.

Hermione turned around and aw Draco Malfoy standing next to the fireplace.

"Draco?" Hermione asked, puzzled, "where the hell am I?"

"Welcome to my basement," he said in a mocking tone, spreading his arms as if presenting the scenery to her. "My guess is you tried to Floo out of the battle and wound up here. No worries though. You won't be staying long. My father already knows you're here."

"To hell with you Malfoy, I'm getting out of here." She made for the fireplace and Draco made no move to stop her. There was no Floo powder. She turned and looked around the room, carefully avoiding the place where the woman hung on the wall. There were no doors. Hermione turned back to Draco and glared.

"Let me out of here."

"I can't."

Hermione pointed her wand directly at Draco's heart.

"I said let me out of here."

"And I said I can't. Believe me, if I knew how to get out, I'd be long gone." He leaned his back against the wall and slid to the floor.

"So you're telling me that you would leave if you could?" Hermione asked with surprise in her voice. "I thought he was a hard-core Death Eater."

"Sure I'd leave. You would too if you had to stare at your mother ripped open and hung on a wall."

"Your mother?" Hermione slowly turned to look at the woman on the wall. Sure enough, she could see the platinum blonde hair hanging limply from the woman's head.

"Draco, I'm so sorry," said Hermione. Draco may have been an enemy, but everyone deserved sympathy if their mother had been brutally slain.

"I don't need your sympathy Mudblood," Draco replied spitefully. "She was disobedient and disobedience is punishable by death in a pureblooded, Death Eater family."

"Well, I see you haven't changed much over the summer."

"I said I don't need your sympathy," he said with a sigh, rising from a seated position, "but I do need your help, Hermione."

"Did you just call me Hermione? You've never called me anything but Mudblood."

"I want to defy my father, prove him wrong," he continued, "I want to show him that the Dark Lord does not rule and that blood is not as important as if once was. I don't want my mother's death to be in vain. I want freedom."

"You've been putting me down for six years now, calling me Mudblood, and constantly making sure that Harry, Ron and I were in trouble. You've made my life hell. How can I trust you?"

Draco looked Hermione directly in the eye. With a sigh and a small smile, he replied:

"You can't."

TBC!