A/N: What are you doing? Do you read fanfiction for the Author's Notes or the fanfiction? Read the story!

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ObsessivePuffin: Thank you for your review! Yes, I will be almost constantly changing POV— though I will favor Draco, considering this story is mostly about him. Even though this is not the usual story you read, I do hope you enjoy it thoroughly. Read and review!

Disclaimer: No, I don't own Harry Potter— and, unfortunately, I don't own Draco either. It's a pity, really...

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The Star Crossed

Chapter 3: The White Guard

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Pop!

Mad-Eye Moody, both his eyes roving wildly, appeared between two birch trees.

Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! POP!

"Is this the place?" Hermione asked quietly.

"No, it's further that way." Moody said gruffly, already starting to stump off in the direction he pointed.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Tonks, and Lupin followed.

"Was this creature at all aggressive?" Ron asked in a whisper, gripping his wand meaningfully.

Tonks sighed; both Moody and herself had been interrogated almost constantly throughout the day about the 'white guard'. "It was fluffy, humanoid, and could run very fast. All we did was chase it, really— it was trying to run off with my wand."

"It was leading us away from something— like I said!" Moody said over his shoulder.

The group stopped when they reached a small clearing, all wands raised and at the ready. Everyone looked around the clearing warily, eyeing everything from the pine needle flooring to the thin leaf canopy above that would have let soft moonlight filter down to the ground— had there been any that night.

"This is where we first saw him." Tonks said.

"I thought you said you weren't sure whether it was a him or she?" Hermione whispered back.

"Ha!" Moody said, limping across the clearing to pluck something off a prickly bush in the shadows.

As the others huddled around to see what Moody had found, they discovered it was a short strand of white fur. Harry marveled that Moody had even seen it with so little light.

Moody then pointed to the needle bedding beneath the bush, where it was just slightly scuffed— if one looked closely enough. "I think something's been crawling under this bush quite often recently." Moody said.

Remus knelt to sniff the ground. He frowned. "I think I smell a human... and something else." He sniffed again, frowning. "Definitely not a werewolf though." Then, getting down on his elbows, he proceeded to crawl under the bush.

The others followed— except Moody, who simply blasted the bush out of the way rather than crawl.

The group came out into another clearing, this one surrounded by thick, prickly brambles; in the middle of the clearing stood a mound of ivy.

Harry walked up to it. "This can't be all that's here..."

"It's not." Moody said gruffly. "Diffindo!" He said to the ivy, causing a good portion of it to sever itself from the rest of the plant. What was revealed was an ancient wall of crumbling stone. But, it was soon hidden again as the ivy grew back rapidly to cover it again.

"Must be enchanted..." Ron said quietly.

"You know what? I think I know what this is!" Hermione said, suddenly excited. "This is the reason why I thought one of the Horcruxes might be here— it's the ruins of the castle of a very powerful witch that used to live here hundreds of years ago in Merlin's age. But it sunk into the ground during an earthquake or something... and this disappeared off the map about twenty years ago— it was supposedly made Unplottable or it was destroyed or something!" Hermione was jumping up and down on the balls of her feet.

"So you thought Voldemort planted a Horcrux here?" Tonks asked skeptically.

"Well... it's possible..." Hermione said, and stopped bouncing.

Harry raised his wand. "Incendio!" He frowned as this came to about the same result as Moody's diffindo.

"Perhaps there's a door somewhere?" Tonks ventured.

Mad-Eye made his usual harrumph and started walking around the mound, his magical eye penetrating the ivy. He led the group around to the West side and stopped. Raising his wand, he said, "Diffindo."

The ivy cut away to reveal a rotting wooden door leaning at an angle along with the rest of the mound.

"Nice." Ron said appreciatively.

After the door had been kicked into nothing but rotting shards and the ivy had been sufficiently shortened with diffindo spells, the group warily entered the ruins.

What the group found inside was a staircase spiraling downwards— and lots of spiders.

Ron went pale and jumped back— only to be hindered by the ivy that had covered the doorway again.

"Come on, Ron!" Hermione whispered and grabbed his sleeve to tug him along.

"You know I don't like spiders!" He answered in a squeak.

Nonetheless, everyone followed Moody down the stairs. A couple of lumos did the job of lighting the dark room at the bottom.

It was indeed, a room; it was square, made of stone, and not at all cave-like— for some of them had been sort of expecting that. The room was empty and decrepit with dirt and dust everywhere— several creatures seemed to have been making nests in there over the centuries.

Lupin was sniffing the air. "It's been here— that white thing I smelled in the bush. But the scent is very strong here, I bet it lives here."

Moody scowled his near-permanent scowl. There were four corridors leading out of the room, one leading to the stairs they had just come from. "I say we split up, and check all of these passages."

"C'mon, guys!" Harry, as if he had been waiting for this, started to lead Ron and Hermione down the passage straight ahead of them.

"You kids be careful, now!" Lupin warned them before he went down the right passage with Tonks.

Moody stumped off down the left passage, not caring that no one had volunteered to accompany him.

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The Golden Trio returned only a couple minutes later to the dusty main room, all looking disappointed.

"That was a bit of a let down..." Ron said.

"Well, what did you expect?" Hermione said matter-of-factly, "Did you expect the entire castle to remain intact after it had fallen into the ground during an earthquake?"

"Still... we walked all that way for a dead-end..."

Harry was glancing at two passages on either side of them. "Do you reckon any of the others found anything?"

"Harry! That you I hear?" Remus Lupin called from down the dark hallway. He and Tonks appeared out of the shadows moments later, both looking slightly shaken.

"Did you find anything?" Harry asked eagerly.

"Oh, yes," Tonks said, leaning marginally towards Lupin. "We stumbled upon a lovely bottom-less pit."

Remus smiled with chagrin and put an arm around Tonks. "Yes, we almost—"

The conversation was cut off suddenly by a scream coming from the last unexplored passage. Everyone spun around to look at it.

"Moody's the last one I'd expect to scream like a girl..." Ron mused, sounding scared.

"C'mon!" Harry said, raising his wand and leading the way down the passage.

The five ran down the dark, winding corridor that was the last passage, tripping on more than one jutting stone and once Ron caught his foot painfully in a small trench in the floor. Soon they became aware of an eerie green flickering light reflecting off the stone walls; they found the source when they turned the corner— a small magical fire lit a very small room with its green light.

And in this light Mad-Eye Moody looked creepier than ever with the harsh shadows emphasizing his scars and a maniacal grin to top it all off. "Look! Look!" He crowed, his wand pointing to what appeared to be a ball of matted, dirty fur he was bouncing off the walls, ceiling, and floor. "I've found our little 'white guard'!"

Harry, Hermione, and Ron (with a lingering sense of glee) were reminded of a certain fourth-year event that involved a bouncing ferret.

"And just wait until you see who it really is!" Moody said, guffawing with a malicious look in his eyes. He finally let the fluffball drop to the floor, where it crumpled onto a mass of green silk sheets that hadn't seen a washing very recently.

The mass of fur made a noise that sounded like a cross between a groan and a squeak. Moody strode forward and poked it with his wand.

"C'mon, now! Upsy-daisy!"

In answer, the furball curled in tighter on itself, groaning softly.

"Get up!" Moody grabbed a handful of white fur gone gray with dirt and pulled.

The fur Moody had grabbed turned out to be attached to a shoulder, along with a neck and torso and the rest of a mostly humanoid body. The others saw, as the creature uncurled itself, that it was in fact very human indeed— it was even wearing a pair of pale green silk boxers. He (for its sex was now obvious to everyone) hung its head, unwilling to show his face. It had a full head of creamy blonde hair— also darkened with dirt and grit— and from its hair protruded two furry bumps, which turned out to be its ears, flattened against his skull with fear.

Moody laughed coldly and took a handful of hair this time, and pulled up the creature's head so its face could be seen.

Hermione, Ron, Harry, and Lupin gasped. Tonks just stared, not recognizing him.

Two fearful gray eyes peered at them from a very human face— a very familiar human face.

"Malfoy!" More than one person exclaimed.

Harry, suddenly furious, brought up his wand to point it at the boy's throat. "Malfoy!"

Draco squeaked with terror, jerking in Moody's painful grip.

Lupin reacted then. "Don't, Harry." He said gently, pushing down the boy's wand. "He's already defense-less."

Harry fumed, glaring at the Malfoy.

"Malfoy?" Tonks asked quietly, wide-eyed. "As in... Draco Malfoy? But... how?"

Moody cackled and poked Draco with his wand. "Yes, we're all wondering that, Malferret."

"Moody," Remus said warningly. "Let him go. He's already sufficiently terrorized, I think."

Mad-Eye chuckled and obliged, Draco crumpled to the floor again.

Remus knelt beside the trembling mass of dirty fur and nudged it gently. "Hey... we're not going to hurt you..."

The ball of fur shook more violently as Draco emitted a tremulous sob.

"He's such a mess..." Hermione said, regret and sympathy detectable in her voice.

"You can say that again." Ron said, scrunching up his nose. "He also stinks."

Tonks looked around the tiny room— it was really hardly more than a broom closet. Her eyes alighted on a stack of books, a sack of what looked like honey cakes, and a large traveling trunk. "Well, I don't think the Horcrux is here." She said over Draco's crying. "I think we should take him home—"

"No!" Draco cried out suddenly. His head jerked up so he could fix Tonks with his streaming eyes. "No..." He was shaken by another sob. "P-please..."

Remus patted his head comfortingly. "Okay, okay... we're gonna take you someplace nice— safe and secret, alright?"

"Back to the hideout?" Harry exclaimed, sounding disgusted at the idea of having Malfoy in his home.

Remus shook his head. "I was thinking more along the lines of Hogwarts."

"Will they let us?" Hermione asked doubtfully.

"McGonagall has already offered to make Hogwarts the new base for the Order." Tonks said, "After all, it's not going to be used as a school anymore."

Lupin nodded. "Nymphadora, could you get his things? This kid needs a bath and a warm bed sometime soon." He gently took hold of Draco's upper arm and started to pull him up, muttering comforting things to him. After all, Lupin knew what it felt like to be the furry freak.

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A/N: Poor Draco...