A/N: Here's chapter 8, in which Hermione is in for a fair few surprises, and the residents of the Kensington safe house begin their tale. Thanks for reading! Enjoy. :)
The carriage driver looks wary at my statement.
"Are you sure this is Hermione, Malfoy?" he asks, still staring as though I might disappear at any moment. "The Hermione I know thinks 'Merlin's pants' is a swear word…although I suppose she did call Ron an arse that one time…"
"Do you really think now's the time to be asking stupid questions?" Malfoy hisses through gritted teeth. "I don't care what sort of language Granger does or doesn't use, but she looks ready to hex your head off."
"I'm going to hex all of you to hell and back if you don't tell me what's going on!" I shout. I'm so confused, and my eyes are stinging with unshed tears, but I refuse to let myself cry. The carriage driver is spouting things that only one person should know…but it's impossible…
"Honestly, Granger, isn't that what I said I was going to do?" Malfoy asks in exasperation.
"Granger?" Colette says in confusion. "Hermione Granger?"
"Shut UP, all of you!" I screech. I sound like a bloody harpy, but I couldn't care less. "I'll deal with you," I snap at Malfoy, "in a moment. As for you…" I round on the carriage driver. "Your Patronus."
"What?"
"Your Patronus, dammit!" I hiss. "Cast your Patronus!" Security questions are all well and good, but they're not infallible. Patronuses, on the other hand, never lie – no matter what sort of disguise you wear, the only Patronus you can ever cast is your own. Even with the impossible details, I refuse to believe what I'm seeing without irrefutable evidence. I choke on another gasp when the carriage driver raises his wand without hesitation.
"Expecto Patronum."
The silver stag bounds gracefully around the room before coming to stand beside its owner. I hear a whisper of a spell behind me, and the mousy brown hair darkens to black, the brown eyes to green, soon covered by a pair of familiar round glasses the young man pulls from his pocket.
"It's good to see you, Hermione," Harry Potter says.
"Three years, seven months, twelve days, seventeen hours, thirty-one minutes, and fifteen seconds," I whisper. He looks at me in confusion.
"What?"
"Three years, seven months, twelve days, seventeen hours, thirty-one minutes, and twenty-six seconds!" I repeat, my volume rising rapidly even as I mentally account for the passing time. "I've thought you were DEAD for three years, seven months…" I can't take it anymore and collapse onto the sofa, sobbing hysterically. I feel someone sink into the cushion beside me and instinctively know who it is, and I wrap my arms tightly around my best friend.
"How c-c-could you?" I ask. "How could you just leave us…" How I even manage to get all that out, I have no idea, I'm crying so hard.
"I didn't leave you, Hermione," Harry says firmly, squeezing me tighter. "I would never leave you."
"B-b-but you were DEAD!" I sob. "A-a-and I guess you weren't but why didn't we know?"
"Because I couldn't find you!" Harry says. "I only just got to London in September, and I haven't had any luck finding the Order! This city's huge, and I've only got so much time to look, since this one" – he jerks his head in Malfoy's direction – "has to be all sorts of places, so I've got to play my part." I quickly sit up and dry my eyes at the reminder that we're not alone. I'm not embarrassed to have been caught bawling my eyes out in front of my longtime enemy, per se, but I do know that I need to calm down if I'm to get any sort of explanation. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, counting slowly backwards for a few seconds. Satisfied that I'm no longer in danger of screaming at someone or bursting into tears again, I open my eyes and speak.
"I need to know what's going on," I say, repeating my earlier demand. My voice is still thick with emotion, but at least I'm no longer in hysterics, and my request is much more polite this time. Malfoy steps forward slightly so that he's in my range of vision.
"It's a long story, Granger," he warns. "We need to go all the way back to the Battle of Hogwarts."
"I don't care," I say firmly. "GHRS won't miss me – I'm supposed to be out this way on patrol all night anyway."
"Grrrs?" Harry asks, not sure if he's heard me correctly.
"We dropped the Order moniker soon after the Battle of Hogwarts," I explain. "It was too much of a target, so we needed something new. Grrrs – GHRS" – here I spell out each letter – "is our new name. Luna coined it with the phrase 'God help our restless souls', and it utilizes all the founders' initials, so we kept it."
"Typical Gryffindor unity nonsense," Colette mutters. I glare at her.
"Not that it's any of your business, but Luna was a Ravenclaw, and for good reason," I snip. "And just who the hell are you, anyway?"
"Don't recognize me, Granger?" the girl says with a smirk. "Come on, Draco – take it off, then." A wave of Malfoy's wand, and the girl's blonde curls morph into a smooth black bob, she shrinks a few inches in height, and her blue eyes turn dark brown. If I'd still been unsure of her identity, the pug-like nose would've given it away.
"Parkinson?" I say.
"Brilliant as always," Pansy drawls as she finally finishes descending the stairs. "Ten points to Gryffindor."
"Pansy…" Harry says, his tone warning. She rolls her eyes but drops into a chair, looking expectantly at the two young men.
"Allow me to formally introduce Pansy Nicolette Parkinson," Malfoy says dryly, somehow managing to sound both overly pompous and quite sarcastic at the same time.
"This is too weird," I mutter. Harry and Malfoy in the same room without hexing each other? Harry addressing Pansy Parkinson by her first name? Harry and Malfoy are alive? What is going on?
Then it really hits me, what Malfoy just said. Pansy Nicolette Parkinson…Nicolette…Colette…Pansy is Colette…
Oh, this is rich. What would Ron say if he knew? What would Pansy say if she knew? I can't help it – I let out a snort, and then I burst out laughing.
"What's so funny?" Harry asks, at the same time Pansy comments, "She's gone mental, that one." The sound of her voice nearly sends me over the edge again, but I manage to calm down and stop laughing…for now, at least. As for when I'll actually have to explain what was so funny? No promises.
"Nothing, nothing," I say, knowing I haven't convinced them in the slightest. "Just something that occurred to me, is all. Now, you were saying?" I look expectantly at Malfoy.
"I told you it was a long story, Granger," Malfoy says as he too takes a seat. For a moment, he looks as if he expects me to lose it again, but when I don't, he crosses one leg over the opposite knee, looking as if he hasn't a care in the world. "And I believe, in order to make sense of it, we'll have to start with me."
"Get on with it, then," I say. Malfoy takes a deep breath, nods, and begins his tale.
Draco coughed and waved his wand to clear away some of the smoke, immediately wishing he hadn't. The antechamber off the Great Hall had been blown to smithereens, and the floor was strewn with rubble, both pieces of stone from the destroyed wall and bits of bodies caught in the explosion. Draco wanted to vomit as he caught sight of the remains of someone – he couldn't tell if it was friend or foe – who'd been hit with some sort of flesh-eating spell, the body looking like it had been ravaged by a wild animal, as well as Hannah Abbott, that blonde Hufflepuff girl, her eyes unseeing and her neck broken. Slytherin had shared several classes with Hufflepuff over the years, and Draco knew Hannah was as harmless as a Pygmy Puff – yet here she was, never to rise again. Pulling his robes up to cover his face, he exited the room and crossed the Entrance Hall, trying – and failing – to avoid the blood and entrails strewn all across the stones. Greyback had had a field day when Voldemort ordered his forces to attack after announcing Potter's death, and the carnage was unbelievable. Bellatrix, too, had gleefully cast curses like her life depended on it, and Draco could see a few victims unfortunate enough to still be alive still twitching as the aftershocks of her signature Cruciatus curse wracked their destroyed bodies.
Draco quickly put them out of their misery – what remained of the Order had already fled, so no one was coming back to help them now, and it was better than leaving them as playthings for any lingering Death Eaters. He was pretty sure they'd all left as well, no doubt off to celebrate, but one could never be too careful. One of the front doors had obviously been hit with more than a few curses, and he had to navigate the crack between the doors very carefully to avoid skewering himself on the wicked-looking splinters of broken wood as he passed through.
Draco stopped then at the top of the main steps to the castle, unable to believe his eyes. The scene in the antechamber and the entrance hall had been horrific, but it was nothing compared to the total devastation that was the Hogwarts grounds. The grass looked like someone had painted it red, there was so much blood, all too much of it still glistening wetly in the weak light of dawn. Bodies, whole and broken, Light and Dark, lay strewn about, a giant crater bisected the lawn about halfway to what remained of the Quidditch pitch, and something nearby was on fire – Draco couldn't see any flames, but he could smell the smoke. His wand clattered to the ground beside him as he fell to his knees.
"What have I done?" he whispered to himself. He was under no delusions that the entire thing was his fault, but he'd certainly helped things along when he brought Death Eaters into the castle and orchestrated Albus Dumbledore's death the year before. Maybe if he hadn't been such a coward…maybe if he hadn't been too damn proud to accept Snape's help…maybe if he'd listened for once…maybe things could've turned out differently. But he hadn't, and so here they were. Hogwarts was bathed in blood, and Voldemort reigned supreme.
Voldemort…he couldn't believe he'd ever followed that monster. Of course, he knew now that he'd been Marked not because he was special, but as punishment for his father's failure in the Department of Mysteries – Voldemort had never intended for Draco to survive his attempts to assassinate his headmaster. When Draco, Snape, and the others returned to Malfoy Manor after that attack, Voldemort praised Draco for his magical skill in successfully mending the Vanishing Cabinet, then promptly Crucioed him right afterwards for his failure to kill Dumbledore. It didn't matter that Dumbledore was still dead – what mattered was that Draco had failed to follow orders, and that marked him as weak. Voldemort never took him seriously after that, allowing the other Death Eaters to kick him around like the helpless child he was. He and his parents were prisoners in their own home, fallen from grace, and over the course of that summer, Draco learned the hard way just how wrong he really was. He'd started questioning himself midway through the school year when the weight of his task had started getting to him and he'd had to silence his bed every night so he wouldn't wake his roommates with his frequent panic attacks, but he'd still been at least somewhat sheltered from the horror of it all at school. There was no such shelter at Malfoy Manor – you can't un-see a giant snake swallowing a professor whole. It had only gone downhill from there.
"Damn you, Potter," Draco muttered. "The one time I actually needed you to win…" Sitting there on the castle steps, overlooking the massacre that had left a former safe haven in ruins, Draco vowed to himself that he was going to fix this. He wasn't sure how, and he knew if he made even one tiny mistake it could mean his life, but he damn well had to try.
"Draco?" The blond, who'd been staring listlessly out the window for the last twenty minutes, turned to look at the dark-haired young woman standing in the doorway.
"Is everything alright?" Pansy asked. Draco sighed.
"You know it's not, Pans." Pansy hurried to his side and sat next to him on the window seat, clasping his hand in her own.
"How much longer can you keep this up?" she whispered. Draco looked at her, his eyes betraying nothing.
"That sort of treason could get you killed, you know."
"Don't pretend I don't know the truth, Draco," Pansy snapped. "I'm worried about you." Draco's stoic façade crumpled at that, and he allowed Pansy to pull him into a tight embrace. Nearly four months had passed since the Battle of Hogwarts, and the Death Eaters were showing no signs of slowing down. Draco was doing his best to blend in, but his failure at the Battle of the Astronomy Tower had permanently marked him as a weakling, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep going before someone decided he wasn't worth it and got rid of him for good. His death certainly wouldn't be as simple as an Avada Kedavra, either – the Death Eaters liked to play with their food. He was absolutely terrified.
"My mother's worried, too," Pansy continued. "She's talking about us fleeing the country." Draco looked up at her, unable to hide his shock at that.
"Where would you go?" he asked. "How would you go? You know they'd find a way to find you." Pansy shrugged.
"Spain? Italy? America? I don't know, really. I don't think she's really considered the logistics – she's just afraid for us."
"That's never going to work," Draco insisted. "Your father might have bought his safety early on in the war, but that's only going to last so long – sooner or later, they'll come for you, and money won't be enough anymore."
"Don't you think I know that?" Pansy hissed. "Every single day when I wake up, I'm terrified at the idea that it might be my last. Of course I don't want to die. Merlin, I don't want to die!" Her voice trembled on this last statement, and her eyes glossed over with unshed tears. Now it was Draco's turn to pull her close and hold her tight, her tears spilling over and dampening the shoulder of his robes. He didn't care – let her cry. Their romantic relationship had fizzled out long ago, those feelings long gone on both their parts, but Pansy was still one of his closest friends, and he still cared about her deeply.
"I don't want you to die either, Pans," he whispered. Squeezing her one last time, he pulled back so he could see her face. It was still streaked with tears, although she seemed to have stopped crying.
"We'll find a way," he promised, reaching up to wipe away the last of her tears. "I'll speak with your mother, and we'll find a way to keep you safe." Pansy just nodded, her dark eyes wide and her hands still gripping his shoulders like a lifeline.
Draco spoke with Pansy's mother that very afternoon. As it turns out, Mrs. Parkinson had inherited a house in London from her own great-grandmother, and as it had stood empty for years, it would be an ideal hiding place. No one would think to look for them in London when they should have been at their family estate.
'Them' quickly turned into just Pansy, however, when Pansy's parents were killed not two weeks later, her father for finally refusing to join the Death Eaters outright, and her mother simply because she was with her father at the time. It was only by the grace of Draco having overheard talk of the attack beforehand that he was able to get Pansy to safety before she too was killed. Much sooner than they'd anticipated, the London house was now home. Pansy was distraught over her parents' deaths, and Draco knew that the time for sitting on the periphery was over. He was going to have to make a more permanent move. His plan was a bold one, to be sure, but if he somehow succeeded, they might actually have a chance to end this hell for good.
