Disclaimer: JK Rowling and a few other people own everything, I don't.

Of Loyalty and Traitors

Chapter 9

And Then In Time Itself

Draco was pleased he now had a bit of time to himself without having to constantly be procrastinating.

As he slumped back against the velvet chair, he absent-mindedly tossed his latest purchase between his two hands. It really did strongly resemble a time-turner, in the boy's opinion. He expected that it would work in a very similar way, regardless of what old Borgin had said. It was clear the man knew very little about the object; what he did know was hardly likely to be reliable.

A snort sounded from the back of the room and was followed by tired groaning. Remus Lupin was returning to the world of the living.

Jumping to his feet and retrieving his wand, Draco then waved it in the direction of his former professor.

"Stupefy"

The room fell back into silence as Lupin was sent back into his unconscious state.

Draco settled back down into his chair. So far, things really were seeming ridiculously easy. He assumed they would continue to go just as well, as long as Lupin made that much noise each time the stunning spell wore off.

He was unable to resist smirking to himself.

His spirits were slightly dampened, however, as his mind drifted to the meeting his mother was currently attending. The fate of the werewolf would be decided there.

And also whether Draco now had his name wiped off the 'Death Eater who may have Befriended the Order of the Pheonix and is Passing on Valuable Information and Therefore must be Subjected to Curses, Torture and Death' list.

Either way, Narcissa had made it clear to her son that anything extra he could do for their lord would definately work in his favour. Capturing Lupin was probably the first step, he would have to do more to secure his position in the ring of Death Eaters.

Wincing at the thought of this, Draco attempted to distract himself from his unclear future by turning his attention back to the time-turner he was grasping in his left hand. Unusual magical objects intrigued him a great deal. And this was certainly appeared unusual. Once more, he pondered the meaning of the pictures carved into the sides.

As he did so, the eagles seemed to stare back at him from their frozen positions aside the hourglass.

Placing a finger on each side of the tiny hourglass, not too firmly - the glass looked impossibly thin, Draco lightly pushed it around. It spun easily, perhaps a bit too easily...and the room around him transformed into a whirling mist of colours, his feet were pulled away from the ground...or maybe the ground was in fact no longer there...

A second or two later, Draco felt his feet slam against hard concrete. The force of the impact caused hin to fall backwards and he lay sprawled on the pavement as the world around him began to materialise.

Struggling to take his new surroundings in, he pulled himself up onto his feet. His whole body was aching and in all honesty he felt rather dizzy.

Draco had read a fair few books mentioning time-turners; he was sure that the effects of using one weren't quite the same as this. He glanced down at the object warily, wondering what it was exactly. Maybe it had been a mistake using it without researching it first.

Would spinning the hourglass back the other way be sufficient to take him back home? At that moment, he couldn't bring himself to try. The results of it failing could prove disastrous.

The street that Draco now found himself standing on was rather dark. It was obviously nighttime, Draco reasoned, before mentally smacking himself in the forehead for pointing out something so obvious.

Street-lamps lined the edge of the street, casting a faint illumination over the road and houses. From what he could make out, the street was unlike anywhere that Draco had been before. It was all too...too... neat, maybe.

Identical white picket fences surrounded the carefully pruned garden that lay out the front of each house. The houses themselves appeared to have been each made to a very similar design. Something about the perfected of the street cast a shadow of doubt over Draco's mind.

Something about it all didn't seem quite right. He wasn't quite sure was it was, but he was sure of one thing about the street.

It was Muggle.

Thoroughly, totally, one hundred per cent Muggle.

Of all the places he could have wound up, he ended up on a muggle street where, in Draco's humble opinion, no wizard should ever have to be. Something about the street spelled it all out - anything unusual to them was NOT welcome.

Which was why Draco stood rapt in amazement when the street lights began to switch themselves off in a rythmical manner that he felt could only be desribed as magical.

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Back at Grimmauld Place, the Boy-Who-Lived dragged a wooden carton over to where the shelves were. He cautiously placed his weight on the box, a bit at a time. When it seemed certain that it would hold his weight, he stood up fully and moved the beam of light from his wand over the topmost shelf.

He could now see the extent of the dust covering the shelf, which he had ran his hand through minutes before. At the very far side of the shelf, however, something metal was reflecting the light.

Sure that this must have been the cold surface that had made him jump earlier, Harry blew the dust of it and used his wand to drag it closer to him.

He could now make out what the object was.

Harry was sure his heart skipped a beat as he took in the image of the silver locket lying on the shelf before him, melted straight through the centre.

He could just make out near the edges, the remains of a design that had once formed the letter 'S'.

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Harry managed to restrain himself from awakening his friends until the first rays of sunlight began

to shine through the bedroom windows.

"It certainly seems convincing." Hermione murmered as she carefully examined the locket.

Harry and Ron shared beaming smiles. Ron's grin hadn't left his face for even a second since hearing Harry's story that morning before breakfast.

"Well, that was simple enough, old Regulus did it all for us. I have to admit, I thought we were all kind of wasting time, not getting anywhere, but now..." Ron said cheerfully.

He took the locket from Hermione and chucked it in the air, high enough that it was close to scraping the library roof. Harry intercepted it as it fell back down through the air. Ron let out a sound of good-humoured protest.

Hermione watched the locket silently.

"What's wrong, Hermione?" Ron asked, bewildered at the worried look forming on his friend's face.

"Do you...do you think that it might have been a bit too simple?" Hermione asked tentatively.

Harry felt an icy chill run through his body, and shuddered. Not again, he pleaded silently, please not again.

"No." Ron said, straight away. "This is the locket, the horcrux must have been destroyed - hence the melting, and everything ties in with our theories. I think that this time, it is as straight-forward as it appears to be."

Harry looked up at at him thankfully and Hermione, who appeared reassured by Ron's direct statements, broke back into a grin.

"I realise all that, of course, but it just seemed a bit too good to be true for a second there...there's still a few unanswered questions, isn't there? I wonder how Regulus found out about it, it took Dumbledore himself long enough to work out, didn't it? More importantly, how did he destroy it?"

"I guess we might never know the full answer for the first question, but as to the second, well, we're going to have to figure that out at some stage, aren't we?" Harry answered, shrugging slightly.

"Actually, that reminds me, I was doing some late night reading last-"

Hermione was cut off by a knock at the door.

"Come in." Harry called. Hermione had put a nice little charm on the door so that no one could enter without direct invitation while they were speaking of the horcruxes.

Arthur Weasley walked into the library with McGonagall close behind. Their expressions were grim, which wasn't uncommon anymore.

Another attack, Harry mentally groaned. The locket might be out of the way now, but he had better get a move on with the other three, or there wouldn't be any muggles left.

"Harry, I have some news that you may find quite unpleasant." Mr. Weasley began, and Harry's stomach clenched as he realised that it directly involved him this time.

"Remus disappeared earlier this morning. We don't have many details so far, but it may be best for you to expect the worst. I'm so sorry, Harry." Mr Weasley patted Harry on the back.

Their former Transfiguration teacher hovered in the background. McGonagall looked rather apologetic as she watched the scene before her. Ron looked rather shocked, but Harry and Hermione appeared most affected by this information. Seeing the tears forming in Hermione's eyes and the defeated, wary expression that Harry wore to much as of late returning to his face, Minerva looked away.

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Squinting his eyes, Draco could decipher the formation of a person walking down the street towards him. It was the street-lamps in the path of this figure that were the ones sinking into darkness.

This confused the pale-haired boy somewhat; he wasn't sure what someone who clearly seemed magical would be doing in such a place. However, before he had time to think this over too much, he remembered a basic law of time travel; you shouldn't be seen. Draco ducked down into the shadows of the garden behind him, hoping that the muggle inhabitants were asleep.

As the mysterious figure moved closer, he observed that it a robed man, no doubt a wizard. Tall and thin, his face remained in the shadows. Draco felt the cold taste of fear come over to him...a feeling that he perhaps knew already the stranger's identity.

It seemed the wizard was going to walk past where Draco was crouching, half-hidden behind a shrub. He looked around for a better place to hide, but could see nowhere suitable. He dreaded confronting this man, for a reason that he himself wasn't totally aware of.

However, before reaching the house outside which Draco was hiding, the man stopped and pulled himself up into a sitting postion upon a brick wall. Draco watched carefully, noticing for the first time the stationary shadow of a cat upon it. He blinked twice as the cat transformed into a witch. The dim light prevented recognisation, yet he happened to know the only witch with the ability to become a cat at will.

McGonagall.

He hoped against hope that the she hadn't been there for very long. Or that if she had, she hadn't noticed his arrival. And then something else made sense...

Draco Malfoy shivered unintentionally as he realised who the wizard was.

Dumbledore.

The two were talking quietly, unaware of the boy watching them from a garden not terribly far away. Then, from what Draco could tell, they turned their attention to the sky. And an extremely large man on a flying motorbike.

Surely the muggles would hear it? Draco contemplated this, glancing back at the dark windows of the house behind him. How could they miss seeing it, if they woke up? Wouldn't Hagrid's size in itself be enough to make them realise something was happened?

What was happening?

He couldn't hear what was being said between McGonagall and Dumbledore. They were talking to the half-giant now, looking at something...Draco moved out from behind the shrub a bit more, attempting to see what Hagrid had passed to Dumbledore.

There wasn't enough light for him to tell.

Hagrid suddenly let out a howl that even Lupin would have had trouble beating, and it took everything Draco had to stop him from jumping out from his sanctuary.

Hagrid's voice was louder now, though muffled as though he was crying. Draco managed to make out the names 'Lily' and 'James' and something about muggles. This made slightly more sense to him, no doubt this was the night that Lily and James Potter had died, and all those muggles that Wormtail killed.

Draco ducked out from the shrub and moved to behind a bush a couple of feet closer to the older wizards and witch.

He glanced down at the time-turner, still clutched tightly in his fist. Why had he arrived in this time and place? He replayed Borgin's words in his mind, looking for something that may offer him answers.

Connects you to the life of someone. That's what he had said... it connects you to the life of someone you think strongly about.

The puzzle pieces started to fit together in the back of his mind. He remembered struggling to bring himself to kill Dumbledore, someone he despised...but at the same time...admired? He wasn't sure about that.

But it seemed likely that any time-travelling he did would be connected to the wizard whose face had began to haunt his nightmares each night.

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A/N- REALLY sorry I took so long for this chapter. We were out of town for my great-grandmothers 105th birthday (Yikes!) and I didn't have computer access.

Thanks again for the reveiws!