Sami Sue: Thank you as ever. My head will probaby explode should more compliments come from you. However I'm sure I will still look pretty so I guess keep 'em coming! And was looking on your profile and wanted to read your HGTR stories but they didn't seem to be on your list... am i just being blind? 12 times! well i'm glad you've got an addiction to something healthy... we all need our addictions... hmmm... chocolate...

Clever Witch: am very honoured, you are very wonderful and I hope you keep R'n'Ring.

ThingsMakeMeHappy: Glad to see a bubbly person. More interaction here!

The Cursed Pixies: How do you feel about faeries? Thanks for the review!

Fidelity Russell: Nice review, please read more soon.

VV (for short, to minimise spelling mistakes): Can't complain, do the saem myself. More contact between 'em here but no what you mean wink.

Dragon Navi: Well perhaps I should put this story as suspense instead of horror... i think it's under horror...More sweet moments in between the sour... Promise! though this chapter subtitle is a lie...

AN: I love you alll! Okay am feeling a tinsy bit high atm so you may find scattered sarcasm in your review replies. And those who are not reviewing... well enjoy it anyway but I don't like you as much... oh... the strangeness of my mood...

Chapter Six

Kissing Bones

Hermione arrived at The Abbey at ten o'clock. She was perhaps a little early. But the place held the mysticism which so inspired her academic mind. And it was the peace which quietened her raging thoughts this evening. She had been pondering, in her spare thoughts all day, what had happened up in Scotland. If anything had happened. But she refused to go and see Bill again. She did not want to be told she was risking her life.

It was her life to do as she wished with. And she trusted her Correspondent.

Thinking of him her hand went to her hair. She smoothed the little which was ruffled out of the low bun she had placed it in. Mindful of the cutting comment he had delivered at their last parting she had made sure to look presentable but by no means like she had tried to be presentable.

A little drizzle began to fall down. Thinking of her appearance again she walked into the shelter of the large Abbey. The building was one of the last remnants of the pre-Henry VIII Catholic Church in Britain. It had been saved by a descendent of the Ravenclaw line who had hidden the Abbey in a deep web of spells to stop it being looted and burnt. It was therefore erased from Muggle history but began appearing in Wizarding history. She had done a project on it when she still took Muggle Studies which is where her appreciation for the building came from. This appreciation may have slightly waned when she had to start attending it for the commiseration services.

In the books it had said that the building was charmed to echo the most beautiful melodies ever sung in it when there was no service going on. And now she heard a lifting duet sung in Italian with the most beautiful but slightly rugged voice on the part of the male. The song was obviously a love song, the Abbey not being used for religion since Rivena Ravenclaw had possessed it in the fifteen-sixties. Outside the battering of a lazy rain could just be heard on the stained glass, vast windows of the magnificent building.

Hermione walked round the outside alcoves. In every space of wall there were photos. Little murals of lives that had been so happily lived. Some faces she recognised. Luna, as a baby, as a child, as only sixteen; the day before she died. Sturgis Podmore had one, sparse and limited but with the worst photo of himself and his son, proudly staring out at the camera. Dumbledore had an entire alcove to himself, letters, photos and candles shining light into the gathering gloom of the Abbey. Hermione felt her heart beat a terrible pang in her chest, tears rushing to her eyes. His smiling face winking out at her from the largest of all the photographs. His image represented something to her that she could never define. Those six years spent at Hogwarts. The best years of her life.

Sirius was notably absent from these displays of affection.

She looked at her watch. Twenty to eleven. The wind had picked up to batter the rain against the large windows of the Abbey. She set herself, gathering her thickest cloak to her and pulling the hood up, to wait the remaining time. And she set her mind to the Wizard's, who was no longer a wizard, identity.

--

He never failed to surprise her with his entrance. Slinking in from the ever blackness, silent and deadly. She rose to greet him as he walked out from the alcove before Dumbledore's shining beacon. The blocked the light casting himself entirely in shadow. "Ms Granger."

"When we first met you called me Hermione."

He didn't move. And that made Hermione think she had surprised him. "Hermione," he said almost mockingly correcting herself, "if you so wish. But it was not the first time we have met. Come." His voice was back to that sweet melody and gentleness. "This place has too many shadows to stay."

Hermione looked with distaste towards the doors, where she knew the wet and wind were beating, before pulling up her hood and wrapping herself deep within the layers of blackness. He held open the door for her. "Did you get what you wanted? At the training camp?"

He drew back slightly as if shocked. But then recovered himself, quickly as he always did. "Yes, Hermione, I did." His voice was reassuring so she walked out into the storm. He joined her a second late, seemingly untouched by the raging weather around him. No cold seemed to affect him, nor wind, nor rain. They walked in silence together for some time.

"I am here to make a personal request." Was the first thing to interrupt the silence, though it caused another one by the content. Hermione could make no sense of it. "I warned you I might and I believe it has become important enough, and I trust you enough, to ask it of you." They were walking towards the gates which led unto the Second Wars deaths. She opened it for him this time, but he insisted she go through first.

"What will I get if I can perform the task?" Hermione asked stumbling over this information. He had walked on past as she had stopped in front of Sirius's grave, where she was stroking his head with the affection she always possessed for him. She was about to repeat the question, fearing her voice had been lost to the wind, but he held up a quelling hand to silence her.

"You will get a lifelong burden." He replied staring down at a grave in front of him. The wind died down and she could hear him much clearer. He walked away again to the far side of the gated enclosure.

"Then why-?"

"Would you do it?" He completed the question for her. She knew he was smiling at her. She could feel it in the back of her neck. She rose from her kneeled position in front of Sirius's grave and walked purposefully towards him stopping only a metre away from him.

"I have a very important job in this war. I'm fighting with my friends as well as with you. I've got enough of a fucking burden on my back without you adding to it!" And for the correct attitude to match the meaning she whacked his arm. He jumped back defensively. And she recognised the humanity, the human nature of him. Whatever was left from when he was a wizard had just shown itself. The cowardly ungainly jump backwards. And he realised it too.

Even without a hood she could feel the darkness radiating from him. The anger at himself and her. Were she a weaker person she would have trembled. His hood turned from her to the grave and he seemed to be recomposing himself. She kept her gaze on where she estimated her eyes to be. "You should do as I ask you, Hermione." He sneered at her. "You'll regret it otherwise."

To Hermione this seemed a weak and empty threat. But she waited for his to expound his 'personal request' to her. "Go to London. In Croydon, a street called Hanover. Hanover House. Muggle London." He confirmed to her, he must have seen the sceptical expression on her face. "Merlin, Granger." He glared at her exasperated. "You'll know what to do when you're there." He added.

"Is this to do with Voldemort?" She asked slightly hesitant (and in total disbelief that she would have any clue as to what to do when she was there). But as she said so she saw the man in front of her regrow into the dominant, calm and calculating man she had seen so many times before. The name had reawakened his sleeping dragon.

"No. This, as I said, is personal." His voice was deep and low. She imagine it was a snake's ready to snap. "I entrust it to you. I will contact you when I need you again. However I have most of the information I need already for the next few days." He looked down at her again. "May Merlin protect you."

She felt a warm glow spread about you. Care. She felt it in him. Care. It shocked, amazed and warmed her so. It was... like molten chocolate being poured into her skin, spreading through the very tips of her fingers and expelling the coldness in her stomach. "Thank you, Draco."

Madness. What madness conceived to make her say that! What would happen now. Had she ruined all she had worked for? Would he disappear? Would the world end?

He turned away from her to look fully down at the grave. His grave. "If Potter ever gave me a reason to hate him, it was that." He said nodding to the gravestone. Hermione looked down ashamed in herself for letting Harry do that; befoul a memory. "I knew it was only a matter of time. I tried to make sure I never underestimated your intelligence. But... You always were the best." He was looking away from her now back towards the Abbey. He had lowered his hood and that trademark white blonde hair glimmered in whatever light there was. "But you would have found out when you went to Croydon anyway."

Hermione nodded numbly. He had removed the white mask in front of his face. And was slowly turning round to face her. If she had expected scars or something horrific she would have been surprised. But by expecting nothing she was completely flabbergasted. She had not seen him since he had fled the night Dumbledore died. But with time he had grown. Whether it was the slightly ethereal light that came from his startlingly white cheeks and hair or whether it was the startling cheekbones, sculptured in such a way as to make the ancient gods jealous she did not know. But whatever it was it a masterwork.

Never had Hermione Granger felt sexual attraction to Draco Malfoy (or rather had she felt attraction which she had allowed herself to admit). He had been a weak, spiteful, little child. But it seemed maturity had caught up with him and all his sufferings had made him stronger. Or at least, disturbingly, he wasn't as dead as he was suppose to be. An errant Ron in the back of her mind told her she should inform him so. She subdued the Ron, but then a Harry started ranting on about Malfoy in the back of her mind and she had to drown them out by thinking of her practice.

"That was pretty impressive." The voice said. She awoke from her mental turmoil to find Draco staring up at the sky, where a shower of red sparks were just fading out. "And without a wand." He said removing his gaze back down to her, pride in his features. "Quite the witch," she blushed, "for a half breed." It took a second in Hermione's mind to register teasing. His method was more subtle than Ron's. It had more art and more cruelty. She preferred it. Opps.

He had drawn his hood back over his face, but without pulling on the mask. The rain had started its infernal drizzle again and she pulled her own back over her face hurriedly. She was conscious of Draco's attention being diverted from there conversation. His hood had moved to the forested area beyond the small fence, where the land rose sharply up onto hills. Danger?

"Hermione, hide your face. Go home, but apparate several places first and make sure no one follows you. I shall try to prevent it. Even hide in Muggle world if you have too. Go now!" She nodded and was about to turn away, he was already moving towards the forested area.

"But what about you?" She said drawing her wand and turning back, berating herself already for forgetting which of them past Defence Against Dark Arts with higher grades. His authoritarian manner, though annoying, was highly effective. It was used in such a very practised and manipulative way. Slytherins.

"You forget," He said whirling her round and pushing her back, still advancing on them, but with no wand visible. His eyes met hers for a second and they burned a deep red, from under the dark hood. "I'm already dead."

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