Into the Wind
By: Kigomae

Chapter Four: Draco Malfoy, Self-proclaimed Hero

We sat in the grass, staring out over the empty graveyard in silence. Her eyes kept on drifting closed as if she were exhausted, but I could not think of a reason why she should be so tired. I had awoken her upon our arrival to find only gravestones and eerie grey trees awaiting us. The branches rustled with sparse black leaves and above us the moon was barely visible between rain-swollen clouds. I could not think of any cause to linger. We had been waiting for well over an hour.

"Granger, we should go back to the house. We will catch our deaths out here waiting for nothing," I said quietly, my voice seeming like an interruption to some silent spell.

But when I rose and turned to her she just sat there, looking at me.

"No."

I scowled down at her, looking so small in her white garb, surrounded by the blackness of the graveyard, "No?"

"No," she replied gravely, giving me a helpless look as her eyebrows puckered. I could not comprehend what she was thinking, only that there were too many reasons swimming behind her brown eyes for me to pick through.

I didn't know what to do. I stared at her as she calmly fell back into the grass and let her eyes close once again. I wanted to do what any Malfoy in their right mind would do. I wanted to leave her there in the graveyard by herself. I wanted to leave her to her insanity and her pensive silence. I hated that she was so calm. I wanted to scream in her face.

But I found myself sitting back down in the grass beside her. Her eyelashes fluttered and she cast me a sidelong glance. I found myself gazing intently at her face, studying her brashly. Something was wrong with her. But then again, something was wrong with me, too. All the same, it seemed different with her. She was not as I knew her to be, a know-it-all, do-gooder mudblood. Could she do nothing to deserve my disdain? How I wanted her to fight me then.

Why was it that I was left in the dark? I could not tear my eyes from her, from the gash along her cheek that jumped out at me, taunting me with its crimson contrast to her pallid coloring. How had this come to be? I picked absently at the grass, trying to discern what was happening behind her closed eyelids. I was looking at a small freckle on the tip of her nose when I noticed that she was staring back at me.

Clearing my throat, I looked away. The rustle of her robes made my head snap back up just in time to see her run to the crest of the hill we sat upon. I thought she was trying to escape and was about to draw my wand when she stopped. Her braid bounced down her back with the wind and she looked over her shoulder at me, her face expectant. I sat there, unmoving and confused.

"Come on. We must go this way now," she said to me as if I should have already known.

"Why? Where are we going?" I asked, desperate for some answers.

"Come now. There is no time to waste," Granger urged, her expression pained and her hands frantically motioning for me to follow her. She disappeared over the hill. I had no choice but to follow.

"But where are we going?" I called as I ran after her.

When I caught up to her we stopped and she turned to me, "There, we are going there."

As she began her quick walk again, her breath shallow and faltering slightly, I followed the direction her finger had been pointing. In the valley below there stretched a mass of tombstones, but I knew to which one she pointed. Her bare feet carried her as if she knew the terrain well, but her eyes were nothing short of hysteric. When we came within a few feet of her destination she stumbled.

I caught her and gently lifted her off her feet. She had gone limp, as if something had instantly left her. I looked down at her and she looked up at me. I felt so disgusted with myself. In my arms was a mudblood, so vulnerable beneath my power, and all I could feel was some distorted version of sympathy.

It was the only kind of sympathy I could produce, this pity for her weakness. But it was laced with a jealousy I could not understand, an envy for her coolly realistic nature. I felt wild in her presence. I was an animal of instinct, a production of two creatures of evil gone horribly wrong. I felt revolutionized to fit the new ages of mixed blood, but brought up on the wrong side, trapped between two unlikely worlds.

And should I truly choose a side, neither world would accept me.

"What am I doing?" she asked me, her voice barely a whisper.

Did she want my reassurance or my scorn? I could not say.

"Your purpose eludes me, I am sorry to say," I murmured in response.

"Luckily I am present to make up for the stupidity of all the clueless twits around here. Ms. Granger, kindly remove yourself from Mr. Malfoy's person so I can… refresh your memory."

My gaze lingered for a moment on Granger's face, trying to detect any reaction to the startling and sudden presence of Severus Snape. I felt it like a physical blow, the brave way she glanced at Snape before wrapping her arms around my neck so she could drop her feet to the ground. There was no fear in her as she faced what I was sure was her certain death. I held my breath, hoping for any sign of hesitation that could somehow redeem my own cowardice.

I may have imagined her fingers lingering longer then necessary on my neck. But I knew her fear existed beneath her invisible mask as her hand clenched in my robe for one heart stopping moment, as if she was grasping my own meager strength in her palm for herself. I let her have it. I let her take it so she could console herself in a way I could not.

"I have no doubts, Snape. Clearly I should refresh your memory," she said. I was shocked and more than a little confused.

"Oh, that is entirely unnecessary."

She sneered, an expression I think she may have been borrowing from me, "If you say so," Granger said with a bold streak of criticism flashing across her face.

The sneer was disturbing. With that cut along her cheek she took on an astonishing transformation. A vulnerable young woman in the throws of something entirely too sinister for her, I realized. Maybe it was not that there was something wrong with her… Maybe the world around her was strange, the world of Lord Voldemort. She just did not fit here.

"Children, children, that's enough," said a voice from behind us.

Granger spun on her heels, which looked painful considering the cuts I knew were there on the bottom of her feet, " My Lord," she said breathlessly, her face flushing as she fell to her knees with a thump.

"Let us not delay any lo-" I flinched as I turned to see the Dark Lord peering speculatively at Hermione Granger's face, his lips pursed and his red eyes mere slits into his fiery soul.

"My Lord, you must understand that this incident was not intentional and we tried our best to heal the wounds, but the dark magic has infected her bloodstream and they will heal only with time," Snape stumbled through the drawn out explanation, obviously trying to smooth over Voldemort's anger.

Why was it such a dramatic deal? This girl would not be with us for very much longer and her appearance meant nothing unless the Dark Lord intended to have his way with her, which actually caused me to shudder. Granger just sat there, her face turned to the ground, the very picture of innocence. Was this her plan? Did she think bowing before Voldemort would earn his mercy?

"I ordered Ms. Granger left unharmed and treated with care," Voldemort ground out, his anger palpable in the air around them.

I felt my mouth go dry as the Death Eaters began to appear around us, their masked faces silently watching the scene unfold. I felt as bare and revealed as I had been that night two years ago. There were four of us without masks. The rest were gone into an obscure world. Now that I knew what that world felt like I was less inclined to take on the mask. But being so outside was unnerving.

"My Lord, I do not mean to interfere, but this seems to concern me. I must admit that the harm was my own fault, for I provoked what I should not have," Granger looked up with wide eyes. Did she think she was making things better?

Lord Voldemort eyed me suspiciously. I took a deep breath but did not follow my inclination to take a step back. I just watched as he put a finger under Granger's chin and lifted it until she was forced to stand. Her white robes billowed around her and suddenly they were on the ground, revealing the dress beneath and a sight that made me cringe. There were gasps all around me.

Voldemort stepped toward her until she was pressed against the Riddle tombstone, mere inches away from the Dark Lord. She was drawn up proudly to her full height, a full foot beneath him despite her 5'7" stand. I frowned, unsure of what was happening. Did he intend to take or something of the sort? I wanted nothing to do with such sordid affairs and almost turned my back. But I found that I could not. I desired nothing more then to run away. And I wanted to drag her with me.

He took her hand and placed a kiss upon it as if it were delicate and precious. I knew beneath her mask she was terrified. Was she thinking about heaven and hell, about what happened after death and where she would go? I wanted to know so badly that my tongue almost slipped to ask. Snape glared at me viciously as a small mumble escaped my lips.

The Dark Lord gazed intently at her wrist. I was so focused on his scrutiny, wondering what he was looking at, that I never saw it coming. My world crashed around me. Good turned to evil, everything was backwards and the chords of crimson plunging into Granger's forearm were snakes of tantalizing lies that had weaved through my life for years, for an entire lifetime. A lie, she was experiencing the lie that I had lived through for the past two years.

Part of me wanted desperately for her to see. She must see what I endured, why I did the things I did, what my life had become to make me so… Me. But Granger, Hermione Granger. She was so… Her, so Granger. What had she ever done to deserve this? She had never tortured first years. She had never believed the deceptions of a man entranced by the power his pure blood gave him. Once again the world was wrong.

So very, very wrong.

I saw the warning glance that Snape shot in my direction. I saw the masked faces close to me turning to peer at my curiously. But most of all I saw those little snakes plunging into Hermione Granger's innocent flesh, saw the wrongness of it, the total epitome of the backwards world I had suddenly entered.

In those moments I am not sure what I thought, exactly. It could have been guilt at the wrong I had done her with those wounds all over her body, or even all of those years back at Hogwarts when I had tortured her. It could have been those years building up inside of me and snapping, my control just disappearing when it came to Lord Voldemort. It was ridiculous what I had endured to earn his favor. Why should one more innocent have to be corrupted?

No one moved when I ran to the tombstone. What could they do? Never had one of their own physically turned against the Dark Lord. No one except me. He fell to the ground with a thump and my hand swiped frantically through the streams of blood, breaking the bond that was forming between Granger and Voldemort. I gathered her in my arms like a small child and looked around for a way out.

"No, Malfoy. You can't save me, please. You can't suddenly be brave, not now, please not now," she whispered, her finger's clutching the front of my robes as I strode towards the nearest gap in the circle.

I ignored her plea and continued up the hill. When she began to kick I looked down at her face to see the pain there, the desperation. But I also saw that gash, that damnable cut that had condemned me to this fate from the moment it had appeared on her skin. Her eyes said take me away, but her mouth spoke words that made no sense, words of protest.

Suddenly her two cool hands were on my cheeks, forcing me to look directly into her gaze, "If you understand nothing, understand this: I want this," she said.

I said nothing in reply. So she began to kick and she began to scream. I held her as long as I could but halfway up the hill when I finally heard the frenzy I had expected coming from below I hauled her over my shoulder. With one arm around her legs and her head behind me I hurried along, trying to escape the wrath I knew was coming up fast behind me.

"Please, Malfoy," Granger cried.

The first emotion I heard from her was nothing like I expected.

I had assumed anger would be the first to show its claws.

But I was wrong.

"Harry, " she sobbed, her fists pounding against my back and her body shaking violently with her crying.

"Harry!"

Her fierce scream echoed through the valley and I was sure that everyone below could hear it.

"Harry," she whispered again as she went limp against me.

When I knew she was unconscious I cradled her in my arms.

I gave the only comfort I could offer.

And we ran away.

I knew I would never look back.

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A/N: Yes, another chapter down! So, I decided to share my plans with everyone! This story is probably going to be about… 20 chapters long. And please, please, please tell me if I make any mistakes, contradict myself, completely confuse you, or just totally fuck everything up. I am known to do that….

Oh yeah, if you review I will gladly give you a cookie.

A really big one.