A/N: Another chapter, luck you! Also not quite beta'd yet, will update when it has been. I had such a truly awful day yesterday that I just wanted to post this chapter and feel productive and I'm self-aware enough to admit the positive attention does wonders for my mood.
You may also notice that chapter 21 is missing. This was the chapter where I announced and hiatus due to my father's death. I was just tired of it being there so I deleted it, but it did make the chapter titles suddenly wonky. I'll fix that eventually. Thank you for the reviews! They really do sustain me.
oOo
The sky was stunningly beautiful the evening Hermione Granger was laid to rest; a rich tapestry of brilliant violets and vermillions woven across the sky. A sea of tertiary colors. Harry Potter was insistent that the event be small, private and deceptively muggle to honor the memory of his best friend.
Draco hated every moment of it.
She's not dead you sodding idiots, the pureblood barely suppressed an exasperated sigh at the sight of Molly Weasley wailing in the middle of the muggle cemetery.
Or, at least, Draco was pretty bloody certain she wasn't dead, seeing as the casket the Weasel Matriarch was weeping over was quite empty.
What the hell is wrong with Potter? Draco wondered in annoyance as the Chosen One droned on in a eulogy praising the not actually departed Granger. Salazar's sake, she isn't that amazing.
I mean, she is fascinatingly brilliant, but also the most unbearably obnoxious swot to ever live. And her skin is flawless, what moisturizer does she use? I wonder what her skin care routine comprises? She doesn't wear much makeup, does she include sheet masks? Is it just the gift of genetics?
When the speeches had mercifully concluded (as her partner Seamus also had a few things to say and for some reason Lovegood had been given an opportunity) and the empty casket lowered into the ground, Draco clandestinely made his way over to Harry. Finding refuge under the shadow of a large oak tree, Draco waited for the other wizard to be momentarily alone.
"That was quite a show," Draco hissed from behind the Chosen One.
Harry whipped around, eyes narrow.
"What the hell are you doing here, Malfoy?" He demanded, fist balled, "This is a family event."
"Then why's the Weasel here?" Draco asked, nodding his head in the direction of Ron Weasley, who had the absolute audacity to make an appearance with one of the Patil sisters on his arm. Draco never could tell them apart, this must've been whichever one wasn't currently a werewolf. "Surely I was on better terms with Granger prior to her disappearance than that sorry excuse for a grieving fiance."
"Ex," Harry muttered almost inaudibly, his emerald orbs now locked on the freckle faced wizard huddled with the rest of the Weasley brood.
Probably for protection, Draco mused.
"What was that?" Draco raised an impeccably groomed eyebrow, knowing full well what Harry had said.
"Ex-fiance." The Chosen One growled.
Hmm rumors are true then, Ron Weasley broke off his engagement with a witch who was quite frankly way too good for him to begin with. Draco's lip curled into the slightest of sneers. "Oh really?"
"What do you want?" Harry growled, turning his attention back to Draco, "Funeral crashing is low even for you."
"Bit of a morbid affair this," Draco commented running a hand through his platinum locks, "a funeral for the not-actually-dead."
Harry's gaze turned vicious, "Is that why you're here, to ramble on about some stupid conspiracy theories?"
"First off, they're not stupid, they are quite well researched-"
"I don't have time for this, Malfoy. Fairies and bullshite"
"I would have met with you prior to this, but you seem to not be getting my owls."
"Ignoring. I've been ignoring your owls."
"Well, thats quite rude."
"I don't care."
"Tsk tsk, Potter, didn't they teach you manners under that staircase?"
What was it about Harry Potter that always seemed to bring out the worst in Draco?
"I swear to every god, Malfoy, if you don't get out of my sight in the next ten seconds I am going to end you right here, right now."
"Hollow threat, Potter, we're in a Muggle cemetery."
"I don't need a wand to kick your arse."
"Good luck, I'm a black belt."
That slipped out before Draco could stop it.
Bollocks.
"You-you're a what?" Harry frowned, adjusting his glasses.
"You heard me or are you having a inner ear problems?" Draco sneered, "I'm a third degree Judo black belt."
Harry's frown deepened, "But, Malfoy, Judo is a muggle martial art."
"Oh my goodness what?" Draco brought his hands up to the sides of his face in a wild exaggeration, "Oh deary me I had noooo idea! Good thing you told me, I was wondering why no one had a wand. You're a real gift from the gods, Potter, always the sharp wit and dazzling intellect."
Harry didn't rise to the bait, "Why would you take muggle martial arts classes?"
Draco placed his hands in his pockets, "A suggestion from a friend," he shrugged
"A friend?" Harry raised an eyebrow, "You don't have any friends."
"Salazar, I hate you." Draco snarled, "I'm a Malfoy, of course I have friends."
Harry made a face clearly indicating his disbelief.
Fuck. I have no friends.
Purebloods wanted nothing to do with him and and the rest of the wizarding world wanted nothing to do with him and he worked in the sodding finance department, most reviled branch of the Ministry and, in fact, the only humans who had treated him with even the barest shred of decency since the Battle of Hogwarts were the sorry excuse for a wizard standing in front of him and the muggleborn swot who only Draco apparently had an interest in actually finding.
"Y'know what, Potter," Draco spat, turning away, "you're right, Granger's gone, I'm a fool for thinking otherwise et cetera et cetera enjoy the remaining funerary rights, cold comfort as they may be."
Harry sighed and took a few steps towards Draco, "Malfoy, listen, you don't have to leave, I know you and 'Mione weren't friends, but you can stay."
"She hates that bloody nickname," Draco said over his shoulder as he continued to power walk towards the nearest designated apparation point.
"Malfoy!" Potter called out, but Draco was gone.
Back at his flat, the Malfoy heir fell into a high back emerald green chair by the fireplace, a grimace painted across his ivory features.
"That went about as well as I expected," he sighed, accio-ing a bottle of firewhiskey and a glass from the small bar in the corner with a wave of his wand. The floating bottle tipped to pour whiskey into the glass until Draco reached and plucked the glass from the air, bringing it to his lips for a languid sip.
Suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stood up in stark attention. Draco's eyes wandered down the hall to meet the piercing yellow eyes staring back at him, the pureblood wrinkled his brow.
"I don't know how I'm going to bloody do this," he grumbled as the half-kneazle sauntered with an easy grace out of the shadows, jumping onto the ottoman Draco had his feet propped on.
"Whoa now, off the furniture." Draco gingerly tapped Crookshanks with his toe, but the feline leveled him with such a stare that Draco decide it was best if he simply moved his own feet, giving up the ottoman.
"Hmph," Draco took another sip of firewhiskey, "you're just as unbearable as your witch."
Crookshanks glanced up at Draco with what the wizard swore was a look of pleasure as if he had received a compliment.
Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. "Potter wasn't ready to listen. I know, I know, it was a bloody funeral, but Granger's not actually dead and he was making it goddamn impossible to talk to him at any other time."
The feline began grooming himself, bored by Draco's excuses.
"Listen, you flea-bitten monstrocity, I am trying my sodding best."
Crookshank looked up as if to ask, are you really?
Draco sighed and slumped further into his chair, continuing to nurse the glass in his hand.
"You should've gone to Potter himself or Finnigan or Lovegood or Longbottom or literally anyone besides me. No one is going to listen to me, you bloody beast."
The cat continued his bath.
"Ugh!" Draco pushed himself out of the chair and stomped over to the far wall, waving his wand to illuminate the mad web of clues he had meticulously pinned up over the course of the last three months.
Draco, letting go of his glass to float in the air besides him, folded his arms across his chest. Narrowing his silver eyes, the wizard frowned.
First The Door had appeared. Potter had been initially fascinated, but after a week or so of being unable to open it and no one seeming to care how or why is was unopenable, Potter's interest had waned. But not Draco's. Why not Draco's? No one else cared, but he knew deep in his core that The Door was not normal, this made all the more obvious by everyone else's disinterest- it was almost as if The Door wanted to go on being unnoticed.
I've lost my bloody mind. Doors appearing, no one else caring. This bloody cat.
Then the dreams began. Horrific nightmares. Draco was not squeamish, he had seen and done his fare share of atrocities during the war and had suffered the mental repercussions as a result, but these dreams were so vivid, so real and so unimaginably awful Draco has started taking Dreamless Drought again. Each dream was different but ended the same way; with a dead baby that he stood over, but it wasn't him. He was there, watching, but it was as if someone else carried out the act, someone whose cackling mania felt all too familiar.
But the drought hadn't worked. In desperation Draco had stopped sleeping and slowly went insane as a result -maybe I'm still insane- until that bloody cat had showed up. Then the dreams had stopped. He could've written it off as a coincidence, but purebloods understand better than the rest of the wizarding community that coincidences are a muggle affair. Draco knew Hermione's cat showing up at his flat, uninvited and somehow slipping past his wards, had stopped the nightmares. He just wasn't sure how or why.
Draco shifted his weight between his feet while he ruminated, "You're a bloody enigma, cat. This whole thing is a bloody enigma."
Draco had followed countless leads. He'd tapped into Death Eater alliances across the continent and into the Americas, trying to rule out the most obvious conclusion: Hermione had been kidnapped. By now kidnappers would have made demands or sent back a finger or head or something.
You don't kidnap one of the most famous witches in history if not for the attention.
The second most likely option was that Hermione wanted to be gone, that she disappeared of her own volition; which Draco would certainly not blame her for considering the daft company she kept. However, why would she do so and not tell Potter or find someone to watch her demon cat? Furthermore, why could patronuses not reach her? Rumors, as they're want to do, spread quickly within the Ministry and it wasn't long before even Draco was aware that Hermione's friend's and colleagues were sending desperate patronuses that simply refused to well, go anywhere.
Granger was a talented witch, that could not be doubted, but was she talented enough to ward a patronus? Was anyone? Draco had rolled that possibility around for about a week, even going so far as to spend time at the Malfoy Mansion, using the library for research. His mother had been pleased.
She'd be absolutely tickled pink if I told her I was moving back, reclaiming my heritage. I'm never moving back to that sodding place.
And then one morning he had gone for a walk through the woods by his childhood home, a bit of fresh air to clear his senses after a particularly uncomfortable talk with his mother, when he had chanced upon a fairy ring. A few stones rolled into a circle, a few mushrooms here and there, to most muggles or even wizards, the sight would have been unremarkable. Draco, who had been raised with magic permeating his entire life, could not help but notice it.
It was there, standing besides that fairy ring, understanding the importance of not stepping into it, that Draco was struck by a peculiar thought. Where do fairy rings go? He knew they were doors, every pureblood was raised with the stories of banshees and aos si and children disappearing-
Disappearing.
Doors.
Granger.
Fairies.
Fairies?
No, no probably not. But doors.
Where do fairy rings go?
Draco traced his finger across a black and white newspaper clipping stuck to the wall, "Where do fairy rings go?" He asked aloud.
Crookshanks wandered over to rub against Draco's legs and purred.