Mitzvahs
Chapter Seven
by Capella
A/N: Enjoy, and review! Can't believe this took like -- three months because I'm a lazy jerk!
The red telephone box was in the same place it had always been in. He'd had a rough time remembering where it had been located after so many years, but a few well-placed questions had finally led him to the dingy street with the graffiti-covered wall.
He dialled the number, 62442, with shaking fingers. The box seemed to be closing in around him as he waited.
A woman's voice spoke almost immediately, sounding as if she was standing right beside him.
"Please state your name and your business," she said, her voice clipped. He supposed the caution was because of the breakout from Azkaban.
"Ethan Erickson," he said. "I have information that I need to give to the head of the Department of Law Enforcement."
He was sure she would hear his voice tremble. The obscure Dark charm he had put to change his facial features had worked perfectly -- ever so slightly, but enough that he wouldn't be recognizable; he was not strong enough to completely change his face. But since he had only found a small reference to it, he did not know everything about the spell. Would it last? Had it worn off even now as he stood here trying to break into the Ministry of Magic? Would the Ministry suspect that persona he had stolen was that of a dead man whose blood was only just cooling?
There was a long pause.
"This information --" the witch started.
"Is classified."
Another long pause.
"Very well, Mr. Erickson." There was a little click as a shiny silver badge popped out of a slot on the telephone. Draco took it and peered at it cautiously. 'Ethan Erickson' was printed on the badge. There was a jolt as the lift began descending.
He could hardly believe it had been so easy. How had Voldemort's followers never infiltrated the Ministry of Magic?
He paused, and reconsidered. He really had no way of knowing whether the Ministry had been infilitrated already. He would have to be watchful.
Finally the doors opened.
Draco stepped out onto beautiful, polished dark wood, the heels of his smart black shoes clicking on the floor as he walked down the large hall. Gilded fireplaces lined the left side of the hall, and Draco saw a plump older witch step out of one, brushing ash off her plum robes and looking hassled. He glanced up at the ceiling, distracted by the moving gold symbols on the rich blue background. A young witch, hurrying down the hall with a handful of paperwork, gave him a quick, darting look and blushed when he winked.
Draco passed the Fountain of Magical Bretheren without a glance for its statues and finally came to the golden gates at the end of the long hall.
"Wand, please," said the bored-looking security guard at the stand. Draco handed over the real Ethan's wand, and the security guard -- whose namebadge said Eric -- registered it and handed it back without a second glance at Draco, who immediately took off through the gates towards the series of lifts beyond.
As the lift rattled up towards level two, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Draco spun Ethan's wand between his fingers and smirked. It had taken him several weeks to prepare for this visit, but it would all be well worth it soon.
The temporary dementia he had experienced in the weeks past had faded to a managable level. From his readings, he determined that it was the effects of the dementors; and that the longer the stay in Azkaban, the longer the insanity afterwards lasted, and that although it would eventually go away, it would never completely fade. He would always be prone to fits of dementia in cases of extreme emotional distress.
The lift slowed to a stop, and he stepped out onto a scene of madness.
Wizards and witches looking harried rushed by him onto the lift, which hurtled away as if it sensed the urgency of the ones riding it. As Draco walked through the hallways that led to the Auror headquarters, the magical windows streaming in sunlight, witches and wizards rushed by him, yelling out orders and information. He managed to snatch little parts of conversation here and there.
"Some witch just called in with a lead on a Death Eater in East London --"
" -- reported sightings near Hogwarts --"
" -- don't know what happened, but goddamn if I'll let them get near Harry --"
Draco froze as he stepped into the Auror headquarters. That last voice was familiar. He looked through the rows of desks and saw the backs of a witch and a wizard, one with long bushy hair, the other one tall with bright red hair. They were talking furiously to each other. Draco's heart thumped painfully in his chest.
"Mr. Weasley?" he said, but his voice did not penetrate through the other voices and noises. He trotted to catch up to them. "Mr. Weasley?"
Ron turned to face him, eyes a furious, bright blue in his face, red with anger, and suddenly Draco was hurled back ten years into a dark, damp little cell, and he was on the floor trying so desperately to catch his breath and hoping to God that the last kick had not driven a broken rib throug his lung, and angry blue eyes stared down at him vindictavely, hoping for his pain and his anguish and his death because of something he had not done. Draco was caught staring, his mouth open, and Ron's face grew redder. Hermione placed a soothing hand on his arm. Finally he was able to speak. Phantom pain throbbed in his side.
"Mr. Weasley, I'm Ethan Erickson, and I --"
Hermione interrupted Draco gently, as if she did not trust Ron to speak. "I'm really very sorry, Mr. Erickson, but neither my husband or I have much time to speak with anyone. He is one of the Aurors working to find the escaped Death eaters. We have only found a few in the months they have been out, so I'm very sorry but we must get back to work."
They turned to leave. Draco caught Ron's sleeve. Ron spun around angrily.
"Didn't you hear Hermione?" he asked incredulously. "We have to --"
Draco tamped down his pride, which was demanding rather bossily that he rip out Ron's throat with his bare hands. "Please, I know that you're busy --"
"-- find out where the Death Eaters are, and --"
Draco tried to interrupt, but Ron's voice was raising in volume exponentially. Finally, after several minutes of imagining tearing out Ron's spinal cord through his neck, Draco shouted,
"They're going to try to kill Harry Potter!"
The entire office quieted immediately, and two pairs of incredulous eyes -- one blue, one brown -- focused their attention on him. All of their attention.
"Excuse me?" Hermione said softly.
"I have come upon certain -- information that leads me to believe that the Death Eaters -- will try to kill Harry Potter very, very soon."
Ron looked half disbelieving, half angry. "There's no way they'd ever find him," he said. "Trust me when I say that Harry Potter is in a very safe place."
Draco looked around at the interested faces among them. "Perhaps we should take this to a more private location?" he suggested pointedly. After a moment, Hermione nodded.
They ended up in a closet across from the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. Ron squared off from Draco as if he were expecting a fight, angry furrows in his forehead. Hermione looked intrigued.
"Now, I don't know who you are," Ron hissed, "but this information of yours is complete bullshit. Harry is safe where he is --"
"If you're talking about the Fidelus charm, forget it," Draco snarled in return. "That charm did not save Lily and James Potter from dying, and it will do no better on Harry."
Ron's face grew even redder, if that was possible. Hermione spoke next.
"Why are you telling us this?"
Draco's heart pounded erratically in his chest.
"I can give the information to you," he said slowly, saying the words he had been rehersing for a week. "But not here. I have certain connections to the Death Eaters, familial connections which I came into involuntarily and which I find distasteful. Come to this address --" he handed a slip of folded paper to Hermione -- "tomorrow night at one in the morning."
Hermione looked at the slip of paper, and blinked. "This is in Surrey." She peered at him. "Do you live there?"
Draco raised an eyebrow. "Do you know anyone who lives in Surrey?"
Ron looked over her shoulder, and looked shocked. "That's Harry's old house!" He looked up at Draco, eyes narrow. "Who did you say you were?"
"Well, it isn't as if anyone lives there anymore," Draco pointed out coolly. It was true; after Harry had stopped needing the Dursley's protection, they had immediately moved far away from Surrey, to some unknown location.
"Why can't you give the information to us now?" Hermione asked, but Draco was already leaving.
"This is not a good idea," Hermione said again, frustrated and worried, and Ron shook his head. His eyes were focused.
"I'm an Auror, Hermione," he said firmly. "I have to follow the leads that I recieve, just like the other Aurors do. I've been doing it for four years. I can handle this."
"Ron, other Aurors operate in teams! You didn't even tell anyone!"
"If Harry's life is in danger --"
"Your life may be in danger!" she said, hating how high-pitched her voice had become. Ron just shook his head again.
"You were the one who insisted on coming," he said, glancing over at her, and she pressed her lips together tightly.
"I couldn't let you go alone," she muttered as they mounted the steps to the house.
Ron touched the doorknob and opened the door, and suddenly there was a white flash of light so bright that she shut her eyes and screamed, and when the light receded she was sitting on a moldy couch staring down at her husband on the floor, blinking stupidly and wondering when her hands had been tied.
"Hermione." The voice came in a sibilant hiss from the other side of the room, and she squinted to see in the dim light of only a few candles.
She gasped when the figure stepped into the candlelight.
"Draco?" she whispered, disbelieving what she saw even as she stared at his glittering gray eyes, his shining blonde hair and the same arrogent, sneering curl on his perfect lips he'd worn in their years at Hogwarts.
On the floor at her feet, his hands similarly bound behind his back, Ron moaned as he began to awake.
Hermione wondered how she could have been so blind.
"You were Ethan Erickson," she said, and it wasn't really a question. Draco laughed.
"Of course I was," he said, sounding amused. "I really don't see how you got through seven years at Hogwarts at the top of your class and couldn't figure out that something was suspicious when someone you'd never met asked you to met at a deserted house. I can't believe you agreed. It could not have gone better if I had cast Imperius on you."
"Why are you doing this?" she said, hating the way it came out pleading.
Ron stirred again, and let out a long string of obscenities when he tried to sit up but was unable to because of his tied hands. Draco's eyes had gone deadly cold and serious.
"I need to know how to find Harry Potter."
Ron coughed, and started laughing. "Bastard," he choked out. "You little rat bastard. I don't know how you escaped from Azkaban, but when my backup team of Aurors arrive, they'll boot your arse back there so fast --"
"You don't have a backup team, Weasel," Draco said mockingly. "Stupid little Ron, wants to be the big bad Auror after four years of languishing out of the spotlight. Thought he could rope himself some Death Eaters and maybe get some fame and a few pennies out of the deal." Draco smirked. "And if you do have a team of Aurors coming, let me assure you that all they'll find here is an empty house and two desiccated corpses."
"No!" Hermione said, panic flaring, at the same time that Ron growled, "Keep your dirty hands off her, you little bastard!"
Draco laughed, and the sound of it sent chills down Hermione's spine.
"You're listening to me now, aren't you?" he asked. "Maybe if you had listened to me eleven fucking years ago, you both wouldn't have to die."
"Listen to what?" Ron demanded, twisting around on the floor until he managed to get to a sitting position. "Listen to you tell about how you had worked for a year and a half to gain Harry's trust, just so that you could stab him in the back -- oh, I'm sorry, the shoulder; you have pretty piss-poor aim -- and then take his dead body back to your impotent lord so he could give you a few prisoners to play with and a pat on the back?"
Draco was across the room in a heartbeat, and Ron was flung back to the floor from the force of Draco's slap.
"You speak of what you do not know," he seethed, as Ron struggled to sit up again. "Keep talking along that same vein and I'll rape your wife while you watch."
Ron froze.
Draco relaxed, walking back to the other side of the room and pulling a chair out of the corner. He dragged it to the middle of the room and sat down, studying Hermione and Ron as he pulled a vial of clear liquid out of his pocket and tapped it consideringly against his leg.
"There is a way you can save her life, Ron."
"Anything." Ron's reply was instantaneous, and Hermione winced. She knew what Draco wanted.
Draco's eyes glittered. "I know that you're Harry's secret-keeper. If you want to save Hermione's life, you'll tell me where Harry is."
Tricky, tricky bitch, Hermione thought angrily, watching as her husband was torn apart between his love for her and for his best friend. But even though she seethed inside, a little kernel of pity grew in her stomach for Draco. She didn't know if he was innocent, but her suspicions grew every passing moment.
"Hermione --" Ron said, eyes glistening, glancing back and forth between her and Draco. "I don't --"
"Don't worry about me, Ron," she said, hating how trite and cliche it sounded. She was his wife. Of course he would worry about her; she could see his mind being made up. "You can't betray Harry."
"But Hermione --" he said, sounding so anguished that her heart broke for him. Draco was smiling, his eyes dark and hooded, and it made her shiver.
"Ron," he said. She could feel rather than see Ron's attention slide involuntarily to their tormentor. "Let me make this easier for you. I have a vial of Veritaserum --" he held up the little clear bottle for their inspection " -- and if you refuse to willingly give up Harry's location, I will administer this to you, after which I will kill both you and Hermione anyway." He narrowed his eyes. "If you choose to tell me now and you lie to me, I will return and kill your wife and your baby that I know you have living at the flat your mother managed to help you buy in London."
Tears were coursing down Ron's cheeks now. "Why?" he choked out, and Draco laughed.
"You can even ask that?" he demanded. "I go through eleven years of hell for something I did not do, and you can ask me that? You come to my cell and torment me, and you can ask me that?" Draco leaned foward, an intense look on his face. "I want to be able to go to Harry and tell him, right before I kill him, whose fault it was that I found him. I will enjoy his betrayed expression almost as much as I'm enjoying this."
Ron slumped in his bonds, and instinctively Hermione knew what he would do.
"Godric's Hollow," he said tiredly, his voice flat. Hermione widened her eyes. She had expected him to talk, but not to tell the truth. "He rebuilt the home where his parents had lived." Ron's voice cracked at the last.
Draco let out a short, surprised bark of laughter. "His parents' old home?" He shook his head. "I really should have known. How like Potter."
"We had a deal," Ron said, looking up at Hermione with bloodshot eyes. The glare he sent Draco was venomous. "You said you'd spare her life."
"Don't worry about your wife, Weasley," Draco said softly. "She will live. I think that you should be worrying about yourself now."
Draco got up and walked slowly over to Ron.
"I remember every single wound you inflicted on me in Azkaban," he said quietly. Hermione wanted badly to close her eyes from watching what she knew was coming. "Every single broken rib -- " he dug his foot forcibly into Ron's stomach, and Ron let out a choked cry and vomited on the rug, doubling over. "Every single punch --" Draco grabbed Ron's collar and dragged him up, only to slam a fist into his jaw. "Every bruise." He dropped Ron to the floor, where he lay moaning softly. Hermione's body felt frozen, unable to move as she heard the slam of a shoe on flesh and the crack of broken ribs.
"Draco," she whispered, and he paused. "Please, don't kill him."
"Are you serious?" he asked, sounding surprised. "Do you know for how many years I have longed for this moment?"
She shook her head, feeling as if the world had suddenly dropped out beneath her feet. "What happened that night, Draco?"
"Do you care?" he shot back venomously.
"Yes."
He stared at her for a long moment. "My father wanted me to kill him," he said flatly. "He gave me poison to put in his drink. I couldn't do it. He gave me a poison dagger, so I went up to Harry's room after dinner and even then I couldn't do it. I knew my father would kill me if I refused, so Harry offered to make it look like I had tried to kill him. He almost died for me." There were tears in Draco's voice.
"Then, after I was arrested and brought to court, my friends turned against me. My family turned against me. My father -- he denied ever telling me to kill Harry Potter. It was foolish of me to think he would actually protect me.
"The I find out that Harry denies the whole incident, and what the fuck am I supposed to think? That he just happened to forget?" Draco's voice was furious.
"That's why you want to find him," she said. "To kill him."
"You're damned right I'm going to kill him."
"Then why do you have to kill Ron?"
He seemed at a loss for words, but he had drawn his wand from his pocket. Hermione's heart beat hard in her chest.
"Please, Draco," Hermione whispered, hot tears streaming down her face. "For the sake of what you and Harry once shared."
Draco looked up at her, beautiful gray eyes wide and startled.
"What the hell are you talking about," he hissed, taking his attention away from Ron.
"Oh, Draco," she said softly, her voice sympathetic even as Ron lay half-conscious and bleeding on the floor. "You could pretend to everyone, but you're not so good at hiding as you think to be."
"What --"
"I saw the looks," she pressed on, insistantly. "I saw the little touches, when you thought he wasn't paying attention or in the middle of a fight. Even before you suddenly decided to stop tormenting him, I knew. Maybe even before you knew. Maybe you don't even know now."
"I think you don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Draco said viciously, but there was a tremble in his voice.
"You're in love with him, Draco," she said, her eyes soft, pity welling inside her as Draco's eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
"Shut up!" he screamed, dropping his wand, running both hands through his long hair, curling his fingers into the strands and looking as if he was trying to tear chunks of hair from his head. He did not look sane. Hermione thought she knew why.
"Draco, when Sirius came back from Azkaban he was barely sane," she said gently. "You must be experiencing the same. Please, please do not do something you'll regret."
Draco turned his crazed eyes on her, letting go of his hair in favor of reaching down and grabbing his dropped wand. "Regret?" he said, and laughed. "You think I regretted killing Blaise and Pansy and Mandy? Because I didn't. I enjoyed it. Just like I'll enjoy killing this bastard."
"Draco." Her voice seemed to cut through his killing haze. "Please. For Harry."
He deflated almost immediately, his head drooping, hair sliding forward to cover his face.
"He told you what he knows," Hermione said, refraining from adding 'involuntarily' on the end of it. "Just -- let him live."
Draco looked at her, and his eyes were sane now but strangely more frightening -- because the bloodlust was still in his expression and the vengence was still in his eyes.
"For Harry's sake," he said quietly, "I'll make it quick."
And before she even had time to scream Draco had pointed his wand at Ron, and she had just enough time to see a brilliant flash of green light the same color as Harry's eyes, and see her husband's limbs go limp, before she fainted dead away.
