"Long, Long, Long"
Chapter 13
Hermione was woken the next morning by bright sunlight streaming in through the window above the sofa onto her face. She groaned softly, turning over and pulling a blanket she didn't remember falling asleep with up to her chin. She was prepared to fall back into her deep, dreamless sleep, but someone shook her shoulder slightly, making Hermione open her eyes once more.
Harry stood above her, already awake and dressed. "Sorry, but Dumbledore says we've got a lot to do today," he explained apologetically.
Hermione nodded sleepily and sat up. She grabbed her unopened bag and headed for the bathroom to get ready. She noticed with disappointment that there was no shower in the tiny room, nor was there a bathtub. She washed her face in the sink and changed, wondering how they were to bathe themselves while they stayed in the cabin.
Hermione emerged from the bathroom to find a plate stacked with toast and a pitcher of orange juice on the house;s only table. Neither Harry nor Dumbledore appeared to be in the cabin, and didn't reply when Hermione called their names, so she shrugged to herself and sat down, helping herself to some breakfast.
Her two companions came in through the front door five minutes later. "What've you been doing?" asked Hermione, setting down the piece of toast she'd been eating.
"Just a brief walk while you were getting ready," said Dumbledore, smiling. "If you've had your fill of toast, I'd like to show you both around the area a bit."
Hermione nodded and stood, following the others out the front door. They walked in silence for bit and eventually Hermione thought she saw a clearing in the trees ahead. As they got closer, Hermione realized that in the middle of the forest was a small lake, its glassy surface reflecting the bright blue sky above.
"Both of you may have noticed earlier that Charles's cabin lacks certain features--a bathtub, for instance." Dumbledore smiled as Harry and Hermione nodded, looking up at him questioningly. "It is good, then, that we have this lovely lake for bathing instead. Do not worry; it is quite warm in summer and as no one ever ventures out here, very clean," he said, noticing the worried expression on the students' faces as the looked towards the lake. "It is also," Dumbledore continued, "an excellent place to practice spells involving the use of water. Freezing charms, for instance," he said, flicking his wand at the lake, which suddenly froze over.
Harry and Hermione exchanged looks that clearly said neither of them planned on using freezing charms in the near future.
Dumbledore flicked his wand at the lake again and started back into the forest. "Remember how to find your way here. Now, please follow me, I must show you the way to the nearest town."
They walked through the forest once more, still silent, and only paused when Dumbledore stopped to mark various trees with thin slashes. He explained when Hermione asked about these that they were arrows which only wizards could see, and that they pointed in the direction of the cabin, should any of them get lost.
"But Professor?" asked Hermione, thinking.
"Yes, Hermione?"
"If wizards can see them, wouldn't that mean Death Eaters that were looking for us could see them?"
Dumbledore nodded somberly, "Yes."
Hermione waited for him to continue, and when he didn't, she prompted, "So then…"
"I will explain later why I am not concerned about Death Eaters finding us," said Dumbledore, continuing to walk.
Hermione knew better than to question him further, so she asked nothing else as they continued their trip. After a while, Hermione looked up from the ground and found that Dumbledore had stopped suddenly before them, standing on the side of a deserted dirt road.
"Up this road not too far," said Dumbledore, gesturing to their left, "is a small town with a few scattered shops and houses, in case I should need either of you to fetch something. We won't venture there now--I would like our presence to go unnoticed for as long as possible." He turned from the road and Hermione took one look around, trying to remember what the place looked like, before following him back into the forest.
"There is something very important I need to discuss with you both," said Dumbledore as they headed back, "and that is how we are to hide ourselves from the rest of the world while Harry completes his training and I figure out various things. This is the reason I asked for you to join us, Ms. Granger," he said, turning to Hermione.
"What is, sir?" asked Hermione anxiously.
Dumbledore hesitated, as if still deciding whether or not to do what he had panned to. After a pause he asked, "Would you be willing to be our secret-keeper for the time we stay here?"
Hermione was a little startled by the question. Clearly this was the important and dangerous job Harry had told her she might be asked to do, though by the look on Harry's face she could tell that this was the first he had heard of her playing the role of secret-keeper for them. It wasn't exactly as though she could back out now, and she didn't really want to, so she replied hesitantly, "Yes."
Dumbledore smiled encouragingly at her and held open the door of the cabin as she and Harry stepped inside. "That's excellent," he said, sitting at the table with the two students, "in that case, we will hopefully perform the charm this evening, after I have told you some things, for it is very complex magic. I do not want you to be discouraged if we do not manage to complete it on the first attempt." Hermione nodded and Dumbledore put the tips of his fingers together characteristically before continuing.
"For safety reasons, it would be best for you to be with one of us or in the cabin at all times." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I do not know how long we will be here, or whether Voldemort will discover anything about our whereabouts during that time. Whether it will be possible to discuss…" Dumbledore's voice trailed off and he seemed to be a bit lost in his thoughts. He shook himself out of it and stood, looking at Harry and Hermione. "Well, there's no more need for talk just yet. Hermione, I would like you to read chapter three of this book," he disappeared momentarily into the bedroom and reappeared with a tattered old book entitled Hiding the Secret: Mastering the Difficulties of Secret-Keeping, which he handed to Hermione. "Harry, have you learned that Reflecting Charm I showed you the other day?"
"Er…not quite there, yet, sir," said Harry with an expression Hermione recognized from the days at Hogwarts when he'd forgotten to finish his homework.
"Work a bit on that. When Hermione finishes reading that section, perhaps she can help you." Dumbledore pulled his black traveling cloak over his head and shoulders and added, "I'll be back in the early afternoon," before leaving the cabin and disapparating.
"Does he leave you alone a lot?" Hermione asked Harry as Dumbledore disappeared.
Harry shrugged. "Sometimes. He doesn't like to, though. I think he's glad you're here now so I'm not entirely on my own."
"What does he do when he leaves?" asked Hermione curiously, flipping to the table of contents in the book she held.
Harry scratched the back of his head in thought and said, "Well, on the times he took me with him, he just met with people, asking them stuff, I guess…"
"What does he ask?" Hermione pressed, too interested to hold back.
"I don't know," said Harry honestly. Hermione looked a bit disappointed. "I usually just waited outside or sat in a corner. He hasn't told me anything about them, though, so I don't think he wants me to know yet."
Hermione nodded and looked down at the page of the book marked Chapter Three. She read the entire section fairly quickly, though it was long, and closed the book in her lap, thinking. The spell used to hide a place and whoever happened to be inside of it sounded, as Dumbledore had said, very difficult. Hermione herself was the only one who could perform the spell, as she was to be the secret-keeper, and so Dumbledore would not be able to help her that evening when she tried it.
Standing, Hermione opened the book once more and turned to a page with a small diagram showing a wizard casting a dome-like shape over a house with his wand. According to the book, an unnatural circular motion was required to create this dome, which was only the first part of the spell. Hermione practiced the wand motions for a few minutes before deciding to find Harry and help him with his reflecting charm until Dumbledore returned.
"Harry?" called Hermione once she was out of the cabin. No one replied, so she walked in the direction of the lake they had visited earlier. "Harry? Where are you?"
"Over here, Hermione," said Harry's voice, though Hermione couldn't see him. She stepped closer to the shore of the lake and finally saw him, sitting with his wand out on the grassy bank below her.
"Any luck with that charm yet?" she asked, walking to where he was and sitting beside him.
Harry shook his head but then said, "Well, I can't really tell, because no one's actually casting a spell at me."
"I could help you there," offered Hermione.
"You finish reading that chapter?"
Hermione nodded. "There's really not that much I can do to prepare, though, so I'm free to help you if you'd like."
"Yeah, that'd be great," said Harry, standing and dusting his robes off.
Hermione spent the rest of the morning and some of the early afternoon casting various jinxes and hexes at Harry, who managed to reflect only some of them back at her effectively. It reminded Hermione of the time she and Ron had spent preparing Harry for the final task of the Triwizard tournament, and she rather enjoyed it. By the time Dumbledore reappeared, Harry had nearly mastered the spell and Hermione couldn't help feeling a bit more confident and hopeful all the while that Harry would indeed defeat Voldemort.
…
It was two weeks after he had read the news of Hermione's disappearance and Draco sighed inwardly as Sean Miller told him they were to investigate an abandoned shack near the Atlantic coast to the northeast. He knew the place; he'd been there before for various meetings. Most of the time no one lived there, but the old house served as the perfect spot to brew very time-consuming potions due to its isolation.
Apparating with only Sean and two others--the number of aurors had been steadily decreasing since the start of the war--Draco soon found himself some twenty feet from a rotting wooden shack not far from a steep coastal cliff. The wind was blowing fiercely off the great expanse of grey sea and Draco heard the thunderous crashed of waves hundreds of feet below them where the rocky shore met the water.
"Draco and I will take a look inside, will you two search around out here?" Sean said, taking charge. The others nodded silently and set off in opposite directions, wands drawn. "Come on," said Sean, stepping towards the beat-up old shack and gesturing for Draco to follow.
Draco wrapped his cloak tighter against the bite of the wind and followed his colleague, trying to formulate a plan in his mind. He had to see the inside of the house before Sean did and chase off any unsuspecting Death Eaters that might be there. Picking up his pace, he tried to get past Sean and reach the door first, but he failed.
Sean reached for the doorknob of the broken-down place and pushed lightly. When nothing happened, he drew his wand and tried several unlocking spells, none of which worked. "There must be some sort of magical lock on it," said Sean, looking a bit puzzled, "what do you suggest?"
Draco had noticed the small Dark Mark burned into the wood beneath the doorknob a few minutes earlier, but obviously hadn't pointed it out. Trying to look as perplexed as his companion, Draco put his hand on the doorknob and in doing so casually rested the tip of his wand on the Mark. Blocking the door from Sean's view with his back, Draco waited for the Mark to glow green before pushing the door open.
"How'd you do that?" asked Sean as the door swung open.
Draco shrugged noncommittally and entered the house slowly, checking quickly for signs of another Death Eater. A short, chubby man dressed in grey robes was leaning over what looked like a cauldron. As the front door squeaked open, the man turned around and smiled in relief at the sight of Draco.
"Oh, Malfoy, it's just you…" the man, who Draco recognized but did not remember the name of, stopped speaking as Draco out a finger to his lips and shook his head.
Draco tried gesturing wildly to the man to leave without actually saying anything, but the man was too thick to catch on.
"What're you doing? Is someone there?" asked Sean, pushing past Draco. At the sight of the Death Eater standing over the steaming cauldron, he raised his wand. "Who are you?"
"Who are you?" asked the small wizard, also drawing his wand. "Draco, is he with us?"
To Draco, the entire situation was an absolute nightmare. He thought quickly about what to do, stammering, "I…well…"
"Is he a Death Eater, too?" asked the man impatiently, glaring suspiciously at Sean.
At these words, Sean quickly flicked his wand at the stranger, "Stupi--"
"Proteti!" shouted Draco on impulse, shielding the short Death Eater from the spell. "Get out of here!" he yelled at the man, who looked thoroughly confused but disappeared with a pop a split second later.
Sean, looking both shocked and outraged, turned on Draco. "You're a Death Eater?" he asked, disgusted, "You've been working against us all this time?"
Draco opened his mouth to explain, but no reasonable-sounding lie came to him. He was trapped. He was going to be sent to Azkaban for something he'd never wanted to do…. Panicking, Draco whipped his wand up once more and said, "Oblivi--"
But Sean caught on quickly and muttered, "Protego!" Draco's spell bounced uselessly off the invisible shield. "Expelliarmus!" cried Sean before Draco could re-attempt the memory charm. Draco's wand hit the opposite wall and fell to the floor. Draco tried to dive past Sean to get it, but the auror grabbed a firm hold of Draco's left arm as he passed, jerking him back.
Pulling quickly on the sleeve of Draco's robe before he could react, Sean's eyes widened at the sight of the Dark Mark on his supposed coworker's forearm.
Realizing that all hope of keeping his position at the Ministry after this incident was gone, Draco swung his unbound arm around and hit Sean forcefully in the side of the head. Sean shouted in pain and fell to the floor clutching his head. Draco snatched up his wand and without further hesitation, disapparated.
…
It was the early evening, and the sky was fading quickly from orange to twilight blue as the sun set. Hermione stood before the cabin, Dumbledore's book on secret-keepers in hand, biting her lip in anxiety as she reviewed the more complicated aspects of the spell she was to perform momentarily.
"Do you have any questions, Ms. Granger?" asked Dumbledore calmly, emerging from the cabin with Harry in tow.
Hermione jumped slightly at the disturbance of her reading and shook her head. "No, I think I understand, sir."
"Whenever you are ready, then," said Dumbledore, stepping off to the side and out of her way with Harry.
Hermione closed Hiding the Secret and took a deep breath, raising her wand. She cleared her mind of everything except the image of the house before her and did the complicated motion with her arm that she'd practiced earlier, muttering the incantation under her breath. When she finished the first part of the spell, she was relieved to see a transparent green dome covering the cabin, illuminating the forest around them with an eerie green glow.
Dumbledore smiled encouragingly at her and Hermione closed her eyes, focusing very hard, as the book had told her, on mentally shrinking the dome she'd created. Though she didn't open her eyes in her deep concentration, Hermione knew that the space between the wooden logs of the house and the magical enclosure was closing every passing second.
Wondering how much time had passed and when she would need to do the final step of the spell, Hermione's wand suddenly started to shake violently in her sweaty hand. Realizing this was the sign the book had described, she raised her wand as best she could against the resistance she felt and brought it quickly down, gasping, "Fidelius!"
Hermione opened her eyes just in time to see the green layer tightly enclosing the house disappear with a deafening crack. A silent moment passed in which Hermione stared at the small cabin, which looked, to her, exactly the same. Thinking the spell hadn't worked, she collapsed into an exhausted heap on the forest floor, muttering to herself in frustration.
She heard Dumbledore and Harry approach her and looked up when one of them tapped her on the shoulder. She looked confusedly from Dumbledore's proud smile to Harry's expression of awe. "Will I have to do it again tonight, Professor?" she asked wearily.
"Again?" asked Dumbledore, amused.
"Hermione, it worked! The cabin's disappeared," explained Harry.
"But…" Hermione looked back over at the cabin, which, to her, was very present. "It's gone?"
Harry nodded. To demonstrate the point, he stepped over to what appeared to him to be an empty space. Hermione watched in surprise as her friend walked through a wall in the cabin apparently without noticing.
"Oh," she said, "well, what do I say?" she asked, turning to Dumbledore.
"Perhaps allowing us to use the cabin freely is a start."
"Alright, well, you and Harry may use this cabin for whatever you want for as long as you need," said Hermione, feeling a bit foolish telling Dumbledore that he could use his own friend's house.
"Ah, excellent," said Dumbledore, squinting in the direction of the cabin. He patted Hermione comfortingly on the shoulder, "Wonderful job, Ms. Granger."
Hermione, still a bit dazed from the whole experience, followed the headmaster and Harry into the cabin. Sitting at the table with them, she pocketed her wand and yawned widely.
"Now that we are magically hidden from the rest of the world, we are safer to a certain extent," said Dumbledore. "However, for extra precaution, I would ask that whenever either of you need to go into town or even down to the lake that you use Harry's invisibility cloak as much as possible. Leave only when necessary or when I ask you to. Harry, will you get your cloak?"
Harry went over to his bag and pulled the invisibility cloak from inside of it. Dumbledore gestured to a coat hanger by the front door and Harry hung the cloak on it before sitting down on his bed.
"That's quite enough for today, then. You two are free to rest until tomorrow." The bedroom door closed behind him and Hermione stood slowly and headed for the sofa.
After changing and brushing her teeth in the bathroom, Hermione collapsed onto her makeshift bed and drifted off into peaceful, dreamless sleep.
…
Hermione had been their secret-keeper for several weeks the morning she woke up and sat at the kitchen table with her toast breakfast as usual, noticing the large pile of old Daily Prophet's on the fourth, unused chair at the table. She took the top newspaper off the pile--that day's--and started reading the front page as she took another sip of her orange juice. Deciding that there was nothing interesting in that copy, she tossed the paper aside and reached for the next one.
Glancing at the front page, Hermione suddenly choked on the toast she'd been nibbling away at and spluttered for a minute or so, trying to catch her breath. Recovering, she pulled the newspaper closer to her, a picture of an unhappy-looking Draco Malfoy blinking up at her from the page. The headline read:
MINISTRY WORKER DISCOVERED AS DEATH EATER
Draco Malfoy, hired as an assistant in Auror Headquarters in April, was discovered yesterday to be in service to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named while investigating Death Eater hideout reports with three aurors. Sean Miller, who found the Dark Mark on the Ministry employee's arm while fighting Mr. Malfoy, admits that when he was first hired, several aurors raised their eyebrows at the admission of a Malfoy to their department.
"But over the weeks he worked with us," said Miller, "Draco never did anything to make us suspect him. It was only yesterday, after he helped a Death Eater escape during the investigation, that I realized his loyalty wasn't with us. He may have been misleading us for months; now it's too late to tell."
Gloria Stone, who was responsible for hiring Malfoy, was fired yesterday afternoon after the Death Eater's escape. A thorough investigation of all other Ministry employees has begun due to this incident, and the Ministry assures…
Hermione stopped reading and threw the paper aside, taking a deep breath. Fighting off the strange suffocating feeling she hadn't felt since she'd nearly run into Draco in April, Hermione closed her eyes and rested her hand in her hands.
Harry walked in the front door unnoticed by Hermione, who Harry could tell was upset about something. "Are you alright?" he asked, looking at her in concern.
Hermione jerked her head up and wiped her eyes quickly before looking at him. "'Morning, Harry," she said, "I'm fine, I just…" she shook her head at herself and returned to her breakfast.
Harry shrugged and headed over to his bed, where he opened his bag and rummaged around for something in it. "Did you see that thing about Malfoy?" he asked, now emptying the contents of his bag. Hermione visibly stiffened, though Harry didn't notice. "Can't say I'm really surprised…"
"Mmmm," said Hermione, pretending not to really hear him.
"Well, anyway," said Harry, throwing all of his clothes back into his bag, "I'm going to wash some of my stuff at the lake while Dumbledore's out." He took his cloak from its hanger near the door, "You want to come?"
Hermione looked guiltily at the pile of dirty clothes gathered on one side of the sofa. "Maybe a bit later," she said noncommittally, wanting a bit of time to herself.
"See you, then," said Harry, throwing the invisibility cloak over himself and leaving the cabin.
Hermione watched the door close behind him and sighed, looking involuntarily at the picture of Draco on the copy of the Prophet she'd been reading. Feeling tears well up in her eyes at the sight of him looking so utterly miserable, she forced herself to look away and shove the paper further from her.
Not feeling particularly hungry anymore, Hermione put her plate and glass in the sink and flicked her wand at them so that they began to clean themselves. Flopping down onto what she had come to know as her sofa, she looked up through the nearby window and hoped silently that wherever he was, whatever he was made to do, Draco would be alright.
…
Author's Note: Unfortunately, school has started for me, so I will not be able to update as regularly as I have over the summer. However, I feel the need to press that reviews will encourage me to write more frequently (only two on chapter 12? Come on…) Thank you for reading, and I really am sorry about this.