I toootally uploaded three new chapters, and fixed up the last one to make it a bit more..understandable. So enjoy!
Chapter 7: Might the weather be clear for once?
"Harry," Hermione whispered through the corner of her mouth. "Harry, I think I've found the solution."
The Gryffindors were sitting at their table in the great hall, enjoying their third meal of the day, when Hermione made her third plan known. Harry was, after almost four weeks, starting to doubt whether or not this problem would be solved. However, he'd pushed on with the help of Draco's angry words at night and Hermione's zealous endeavors during the day. He couldn't let them down, after all.
Harry turned to Hermione, raising his eyebrows. "I was looking through an old divinations book- be quiet- and I ran in to a chapter on earthbound spirits."
"Don't tell me we've been reduced to trying séances or anything of the sort," Harry said skeptically, and Draco was thinking the same thing. No way would he stand in front of a group of awestruck students with odd incense burning and…
"No," Hermione said, shaking her head. "Nothing of the sort. How would that solve anything? The chapter had information for a locating spell. It- It plots out the location of an earthbound thing's source, I suppose you could say."
This sounded incredibly promising.
"When can we try it," Harry asked, already becoming excited.
"This evening, I think," Hermione replied, going over a mental list. "Yes, we can do it this evening. Let's go to the room of requirement at, say, nine?"
Harry nodded his agreement.
That night, Hermione and Harry slowly made their way to the room of requirement with surprisingly few items. Hermione had a large, dusty book, a strangely colored stone tied somewhat haphazardly with a piece of what looked like tinsel, and a piece of rolled up parchment.
They followed the procedure of walking passed the door, imagine what all they required, and walked in. They were greeted by a comfortable looking room in Gryffindor colors, with a large, round table and three chairs to sit in.
"Three," Hermione asked with a puzzled expression. Then both Gryffindors looked around and remembered their invisible guest. "I don't think Malfoy can sit down, can he?" The two shrugged and entered the room.
Draco was incredibly incensed by that comment, and did indeed forcefully anchor himself to that seat for the entire event, which lasted for three hours. Thirty minutes into the procedure and almost at the end of the beginning preparations, Hermione let out a cry of dismay.
"I just realized that we need a map to locate him with," she said, frustrated.
Harry waved the rolled up piece of parchment at her. "What's this then?"
"A map of Hogwarts," she replied, using a tone of obviousness. "I really doubt that Malfoy is going to be stuck somewhere in the castle. Wouldn't that be a bit noticeable?"
"Well, there are lots of hidden rooms," Harry said, but he, too, was full of doubt. Both sat in dismal silence for a moment before Harry snapped his fingers. "Wouldn't you say, Hermione, that we require a broader map at the moment?"
Hermione looked up at the boy, her eyes shining. "Harry, I would indeed say that we do." And without any sound or sight to signal its arrival, a neatly folded map appeared on the table. Hermione eagerly opened it and her face fell. "That might be a bit too broad." She lifted it for Harry to see.
It was a map of the entire northern hemisphere. "Yes, I don't think Malfoy's stuck on the North Pole."
There was another silence before Hermione looked at Harry and shrugged. "Well, it might give us some indication of where he is- at least what country he's in." Two hours later Hermione, Harry and Draco were staring down at the map, or more specifically down at one point, which the stone on tinsel seemed about ready to set on fire. It was creating the effect a magnifying glass has in the sun, where a focused point of light can burn a hole.
"So he is in Europe," Harry established.
Suddenly, Draco started feeling incredibly strange and awkward in his own- well- sort of skin. He looked down and thought he looked a little more like mist than before, and he started to panic. Was he really dying now? He felt a pain in his abdomen, which was as welcome as it was unwelcome, for he hadn't felt anything like pain in a long while. He stood up, and didn't stop going up. He was high in the air when he called out for Harry to help.
The hair on the back of Harry's neck stood on end, and he looked around the room. "Malfoy?" There was the hardly-noticeable sensation of something being sucked in the air, like a vacuum being used but infinitely bigger and quieter, and for a moment neither Hermione nor Harry could breathe.
"Harry, what was that," Hermione asked breathlessly.
Harry looked around, and called out Malfoy's name once more. "I think- I think Malfoy is gone."
One moment Draco was looking down at Harry, who was staring blindly straight at him, and the next he was looking down at his own feet.
And he was cold.
And desperately, desperately in need of some food and breath.
"I'm back," he whispered hoarsely. He tried to sit up, but was too weak. Instead he turned his head from side to side. "Mother," he whispered in the same hoarse voice. He coughed and tried to speak louder. "Mother," he called again, and he heard somebody stir from near his head.
"Draco?" Narcissa, or at least the ghost of what Draco knew to once be his mother, came in to view. "Draco, darling you're awake," she said breathlessly, not daring to believe. Countless times she'd woken up to the sound of her son calling her and every time she'd found it to be a dream. "Draco, my son." She felt his face, his chest as it rose and fell, his hands slowly warming up.
"Mother, what happened?"
But it was too late, for his skeleton of a mother had fallen to her knees, sobbing, resting her head near that of her son's. "All is ruined," she cried through shuddering breaths, trying to stifle her sobs. "I'm sorry, Draco, but they got your father. I tried to get us away, and the Draught I gave you was too strong…" Her words were becoming incoherent, but with each gasping breath her sobs slowly subsided.
Draco struggled, and made himself sit up. He brought his feet down from the table to dangle near the floor, and he rubbed his mother's thin shoulders, trying to comfort her to where she could talk.
Eventually she looked up at him and took one last breath before calming enough to speak. "Where are we, mother," Draco asked quietly. "And why are we here?"
"I can't say where we are, otherwise it will become plottable," Narcissa said. "As for why we're here, that takes much more explanation. You've known, for many years now, that we were not truly loyal to the Dark Lord. However, that was soon brought to the attention of the Dark Lord himself.
"Lucius sent us an owl, warning that the Dark Lord had found out, and it was amazing that it arrived in time. Your father, by now, must be- be dead…
"As soon as I received the owl, I started on our escape. I burned the letter and prepared two beakerfuls of the Draught of Death. It conveys all the symptoms of death while actually keeping the drinker alive. I also prepared two beakerfuls worth of poison, both of which I mostly threw in the fire but some of which I spilled. Do you remember me giving you a potion to drink?" Now Draco did remember that night, and his mother's frantic face as she gave him a potion to drink.
"This was the Draught of Death. Soon after you drank yours and fell into the deathlike sleep, I positioned you near where I'd spilled the poison. That way, the Death Eaters that I knew were on their way would think we'd poisoned ourselves. I then drank my own, and right as I swallowed it the Death Eaters started appearing, as if- as if out of the shadows, and then all went black.
"But I must have made a mistake when brewing your draught, for you were asleep for far too long. I was terrified when I woke up; I had no way of knowing whether or not you were dead or merely sleeping, so I hid us away here. For so long, now, I've waited for you to awaken, and now- now"- Narcissa broke into sobs again.
Draco looked down at his broken mother, and took her face in his pale hands. "Mother, it's been more than a month since you brought us here. We need to get out, and find the others that were caught. Yes, others were caught, including Blaise. I'll explain in a while; but first, you must tell me where we are. Is it safe to go out of this room?" Narcissa shrugged her shoulders- she didn't know, for she hadn't dared. "Are we somewhere in our home?" She shook her head, no. "Are we near?" After a pause, she nodded her head, yes.
"We're in grandfather's"-
"Please don't say it aloud," Narcissa whispered urgently.
"Mother, listen to me," Draco said firmly, still holding her face in his hands. "I'm going to go out. The Death Eaters must still think we are dead. I'm going to floo to Hogwarts, and find help." Draco pushed off of the table and stood, helping his mother to stand as well.
"But Draco, how did you come back? Where were you?"
"With Harry Potter," he replied grimly, an odd sort of smirk on his mouth. It seems he didn't need Potter's help figuring out the puzzle after all.
Draco stepped towards the door leading to his exit with resolve, and took a deep breath before opening it a crack. He peeked into the connecting room and saw it was deserted. He stepped through and quickly walked to the fireplace. He searched and found the pot with floo powder which he threw in a handful of, clearly yelled "The office of Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry", and jumped in.
He failed to notice the pair of gleaming eyes peering through the slightly opened doorway of yet another connecting room.