To Get Back Life
A huge thank you goes to-
Louiebugooey,
neostar,
Danish Pastry 28 – thank you for the support, you said that my summary made you sceptical is there any way in which you think I could improve it to attract more readers? I' love to hear your suggestions. Thanks.
Chapter 4
Voldemort
The day was upon them, House elves ran around the house frantically cleaning up and preparing for when the Dark Lord would be arriving. Draco remained in his room in his Muggle clothing. Since various arguments with his father he had gone into Muggle London and brought clothes from various Muggle shops. He loved the reaction he had gotten so he had continued to wear them. The robes that he was supposed to wear were lain out on his bed. A house elf had put them there a few hours before but he had made no move to put them on.
His cousin had arrived that morning with his wife, Clarissa, and their son, Adam. Luckily they were staying on the floor below so the only place he wouldn't be able to avoid them would be the staircases.
The door swung open and his mother walked in.
"Draco!" She barked, "Get out of those ridiculous clothes and get dressed!"
She picked up the robe and threw it at him with force. He caught it before it hit him and slipped it over his head wordlessly.
"The Great One shall be here soon and you shall join us for dinner and loose the attitude." She ordered. "I shall send a House elf for you when it is time."
--
An hour later the house elf appeared in his room and announced that he was wanted downstairs. Draco considered refusing to leave his room but he knew that the punishment for that would be something that he didn't want to experience. So begrudgingly he got to him feet and made his way downstairs to the Entrance Hall where the rest of his family was stood.
Thomas had his arm around Clarissa who was holding Adam in her arms. His parents were stood next to them, dressed in their best robes and stood up very straight waiting eagerly for their boss to arrive.
And soon enough he did. A green flame sprang up in the large ornate fireplace and Lord Voldemort stepped out. Everyone save for Draco quickly stooped down into a bow. A few seconds later after a threatening glare from his mother he followed the example.
"We humbly welcome you into our home My Lord." Lucius gushed.
"Yes, yes, get up." Voldemort snapped as he walked towards them from the fireplace.
They all straightened up and looked at the figure that they followed. He was tall, thin and very pale. The contrast of his black clothes was amazing against his icy white skin. It made him look surreal and very terrifying.
"If you would join us in the Dinning Room we can begin out meal My Lord." Draco's mother informed her and Voldemort nodded his head.
Once all seated, with The Dark Lord at the head of the table, pleasantries exchanged and the first course served they got onto new plans that Voldemort was making.
"So I've got a whole castle full of the horrible things and the fun of killing them is starting to get less so I've decided to make some money off them instead." He explained his new plans on what to do with the Muggle-borns. "I'm going to sell them to the Pureblood families as slaves."
"Oh how very smart!" Clarissa exclaimed excitedly. "We should get one Thomas! I could do with a new maid; the house elf we have at the moment is completely hopeless."
Everyone else agreed that it was a very good idea, everyone except Draco, at least, who stayed silent. He thought it was a horrible idea, as was everything that sprouted from the lips of the man that sat just three seats away from him.
"Well I thought as House elves are becoming such a bore." Voldemort explained as the main course was severed up and they began to tuck in, "What with them all getting the stupid idea about their rights and rubbish like that. They actually have the cheek to ask for sick leave! What is the world coming to? I ask you!"
Draco had to hold back a laugh at the look on his parents face, it was his old house elf, Dobby, whom had gotten the idea about being paid from someone and had got other house elves round to his way of thinking.
"I know exactly what you mean!" his mother was agreeing gushingly, "Our elves just are not up to par anymore. I don't know where these stupid ideas sprouted from but the person who started it deserves to be Arvada'd."
"Well Thomas dear tell me what have you been up to? You're working down in my ranks in Devon now aren't you?" The Dark Lord asked him.
Draco sighed as his cousin went into a long winded account of everything he had been doing. Giving great detail to one merciless killing of a family of Half-bloods he had found living in a half demolished house in one of the raided towns.
As he told what he had done to torture the children Draco excused himself and stepped out into the hall, waiting for a period of time he deemed long enough for them to have started talking about another topic of interest, before returning.
"So Draco what are you up to nowadays?" Voldemort inquired as he took his seat and looked down at the dessert that had been placed there while he had been outside.
"I'm still in school at the moment. I started the four year course when I finished Hogwarts; I'm in my second year at the moment."
"What is the course you're doing?" He asked him
"I'm training to be a doctor." Draco explained.
This was the truth, as soon as he had finished his seventh year at school he had started his course to be medically trained. It had brought him some time, everybody respected doctors and if he was training to be one they wouldn't ask him to do the Deatheater duties until he had finished his schooling.
"So we still have a few years until you'll come in to the fold then, I presume?" Voldemort asked.
"Oh yes, such a shame really," Draco's father interrupted "but he'll be much more useful as a medic than just another desk job."
While Lucius had been speaking Voldemort had been intently analysing Draco's face. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat under the gaze and looked down at the table.
"Oh yes so very useful." He said with a tight-lipped smirk, "or would be if you were ever considering actually joining us, isn't that right Draco?"
The table fell silent as all eyes turned to Draco's blushing face. He looked up at Voldemort's as he rose from his seat and walked over to his side of the table.
"Stand up." He commanded and Draco found himself unable to stop himself submitting to her tone.
"My dear boy, you don't want to be a Deatheater now do you?" He inquired menacingly.
Draco stayed still, not moving, hardly even breathing. He didn't have to answer the question; he already knew the answer anyway. He could see it in his face, the fear mixed with disgust when he looked at him.
He began circling him like a bird of prey would circle their victim from the air, making him feel more uncomfortable still.
"You're not going to become a medic and help us; you're not going to get your mark." He hissed before raising his volume considerably to yell "BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO SCARED!"
The whole family visibly flinched as he shouted, they could feel the anger in his tone and it was although it was bouncing around the room as a ball of hate.
"I am not scared." He replied through gritted teeth in a low hiss.
He balled up the front of his robes in his right hand. He had such a strong grip Draco couldn't move at all.
"You're going to be a problem, I can tell that you are going to cause your wonderful family such grief. You are going to dirty up the Wizarding name and I quite frankly can't stand for that." He hissed in his face venomously.
His parents watched with looks of fascination instead of concern, in fact the only one who looked slightly worried was Adam and that was only because his mother had stopped feeding him to watch the scene.
"You're just a Mudblood lover." Voldemort spat.
"Well you are one." Draco retorted, trying not to choke.
There was a collective gasp around the room and The Dark Lord quickly dropped him as thought he had been scorched. He looked shocked and hurt. He sniffed in a great gasp of oxygen and drew himself up to his full height.
"Your thoughts interest me." He told him, as though his remark had not been said, "They are very confused, you are torn between family ties and you own want. You flick between the two so quickly I can hardly read them at all."
Slowly he raised his hands, the index, middle and ring fingers rested of each hand on either side of his head, on his temples. He started to push slightly against his skull. It started to aches as his nails pierced the skin, but no blood came from it. Instead the area began to glow and his fingers sank inside Draco's head. They disappeared until the joint then he stopped.
Images had started flashing through her mind; these were Draco's thoughts and memories. Voldemort focused and the masses of swirling pictures slowed and he began to sort through them.
There were, first, the many arguments with his parents about the Dark Mark and becoming a Deatheater. All the anger and hatred that he felt, Voldemort now felt too.
Next came Cassandra; all the letters he had written or received. The summer they spent talking about things, the school friend he had stayed with. She now felt the warmth that he had felt when he had been with his only true friend; The Muggle-born.
Happy years at school, away from home, came next; the time with the people who didn't constantly argue with him and make him feel unloved, so he didn't have to worry about becoming a Deatheater or any of the other grief that Draco had to go through. But even then he had to live a lie, he was a Slytherin and all Slytherins must hate muggle borns right? He couldn't let that one slip with his father keeping such close tabs on the school.
Finally Voldemort came to the ones that interested him most; the ones with Hermione. The ones of her telling all about her life and more importantly about the safe houses. She watched the memory of Draco walking Hermione home. Watched her walk into the place that was keeping the Muggle borns safe.
Quite suddenly Voldemort removed his hands from his head and a wide grin spread across his face.
"Well it looks like you've been more useful then I could have ever imagined." he told him.
Draco, having seen what he saw, had a pained expression on his face.
Not her too, he pleaded in his head, he wasn't really sure who to, don't take her from me too.
"What is it My Lord? What has our poor excuse for a son shown you?" Draco's father asked, unable to keep the delight from his voice.
"He had shown me a safe house. One very close to here. The one that holds his Mudblood friend. He's just given me a few more slaves to sell. And a few followers to fry."
Without a further word he disapperated back to Riddle House. He needed to collect a team to raid the place. But he needed to give them instructions first. He wanted the girl alive; she would be a good means to torture Draco with.
--
Within the hour they were back, standing outside the house where Hermione was curled up inside sleeping soundly.
Not for long though as a loud bang startled her from her dreams and made her spring to her feet. She groped about in the pitch-blackness for her wand that should have been at her bedside but she had managed to knock it off onto the floor.
She was still crawling about helplessly when they burst into the room. One large man seized her around the waist and carried her in an awkward fireman's lift down the stairs.
Once outside she was hauled into a large cart along with all the other occupants of the house. Apart from the actual owners of the house; the Bennett family. They were stood outside on the pavement. The Dark Lord Voldemort was stood before them. He was pacing up and down looking at each one of them, taking them in. But this time the racket they had been making had drawn a crowd, neighbours had come out onto their lawns, still in nightclothes, to watch the goings on.
"This," he shouted to them "is what happens when you harbour Mudbloods in your home!"
With no warning he then turned his wand upon the family and killed them in a flash of bright, blinding, green light.
Before the last body had even had the chance to crumple to the floor Voldemort had disapperated, taking with her the cart that Hermione had been pushed into.
When they landed Hermione knew exactly where they were, she had spent nearly seven years or her life there and although it was now used for different purposes it still looked almost exactly the same. Hogwarts. When she knew it; a school, what she was going into; a prison.
Other things had changed too, she noticed as she stepped inside; very few of the candles were lit making the rooms seem dank and dreary. The castle now felt cold and unhappy, far from the warm, welcoming place that Hermione remembered. They were all pushed, roughly, into the first room they had gone into in at Hogwarts. The room they had all waited in before being sorted, and many people, Hermione noticed, had the same nervous and fearful expressions.
After a few painstakingly anxious moments the door was flung open and Lord Voldemort marched in. He had his wand in his right hand and he was idly twiddling it between his fingers. Twelve solidly built Deatheaters followed him into the room and surrounded the small group of Muggle borns.
"Line them up." Voldemort ordered and the men quickly pulled Hermione along with the others into some sort of orderly line.
They stood and watched him as he slowly made his way up the line and inspected each of the people. He pulled four people out of the line of the original seven; these four were dragged from the room; leaving Hermione and the other two left to face Voldemort's evil smirk.
"Where are you taking them?" One had the nerve to ask.
"Don't you worry about them now!" He cackled happily, "You'll never have to see them again. But you lucky few, I have great plans for you!"
He turned and walked out the door and the other Deatheaters left grabbed Hermione and the other two left and dragged them after her. They were taken to the Great Hall, and to the most shocking sight Hermione had ever seen.
