By early Friday evening, Draco was immensely irritated after having to deal with some of his subordinates fighting amongst themselves. Now, Draco was his way to speak with the Dark Lord about their punishment. He'd been called away from home to handle the pair of them fighting and had spent all night debriefing all the witnesses and making his stupid reports as he was obliged to do. Being in charge was not fun when it means I have to deal with this shite paperwork, he reflected as he listened to his own echoing footsteps.
He was in the vaulted hall of the LeStrange Villa where Voldemort had decided to spend his winter as soon as the leaves began to fall. The air had a strange quality to it, which Draco was trying to figure out when he heard a pained groan from the end of the hallway. Not knowing if he should expect friend, foe, or some other lunacy he'd yet to meet in the last few years in the asylum of the Death Eaters, Draco cautiously stepped into the drawing room at the end of the hall.
Not seeing any immediate danger, Draco looked around the room. A high placed Ministry man was lying in a heap in a corner. Draco only recognized him by the absurd combover the man kept. His incurious gaze swept over the man long enough to identify him and then sought out Voldemort.
The Dark Lord was himself in a heap on the floor in front of the high backed chair he favored with his own hand around his throat. Draco looked around in a minor alarm, hoping to find himself alone other than the two men and was pleased to find no one else in the room. It gave him more time to analyze the situation.
"She's dead!" He heard the Harry/Voldemort thing screech before apparently lifting himself by the neck and slamming himself back into the floor.
Draco made a quiet thoughtful noise in the back of his throat as he put the pieces together. Voldemort apparently knew now that Hermione was 'dead'. It seemed like the Harry part was somehow taking at least partial control over their shared body to attempt to kill both of them in his grief. Interesting Draco thought. Now the question was did he attempt to help or continue to stand back and watch?
"-ilth Mu-Blu-" the Dark Lord responded in a broken rasp. Then the sound of footsteps made Draco's decision to move. He chose retreat rather than any other option, feeling confident that he could probably not talk himself out of this one. He silently stepped backward until he was back in the hall just as he heard another door in the room open. He left the door cracked just a bit to avoid the sound of the lock clicking back into place.
"My Lord I-" The voice of Bellatrix LeStrange came through the crack in the door clearly. She stopped talking when she must have believed the room to have been empty. Then Draco heard a few more steps and a sudden flurry of skirts and a cautious "My Lord are you-" She cut herself off then continued sounding panicked, "Are you- What are you d-?!" She had ended on a screech and then Draco could hear thick choking as she attempted to speak.
Again, he debated what he should do. He glanced around to be certain he was alone. The choking sound was becoming quieter but then there was a loud thump and rasped breathing. Draco glanced at his watch and noted it was the time he was to see the Dark Lord. He frowned, unhappy to interrupt but realizing he could easily be blamed for the situation if he didn't step in now.
He cast a nonverbal silencing spell on his shoes and walked away from the door. When he was at the end of the hall, he ended the spell on his feet and walked quickly toward the door, rearranging his thoughts until he was thinking he was late and irritated about the situation with his subordinates taking time away from his weekend and not thinking at all about anything he had just heard and seen.
He knocked on the door just hard enough for it to swing open. He put on an air of irritation and jerked in surprise when he found Bellatrix LeStrange kneeling between the feet of the Dark Lord with her head in his lap, apparently helping him with a very specific problem using her mouth.
Draco's mouth curled in disgust and the Dark lord leered at him. Unfortunately, this was not the first time he had found Voldemort in the middle of fucking his aunt, in either body. It seemed to be a personal favorite activity for the Dark Lord to be caught in the act, especially by her relatives. At least there hadn't been enough time for the pair of them to rearrange the chair so Draco would be forced to actually see the slick rod going in and out of Bellatrix's mouth. Draco had thrown up the first time that had happened. He hadn't been able to get an erection for a week after the first time he had found them mid coitus.
"Draco, oh yes, we had a meeting didn't we," The Dark Lord intoned blandly. He seemed to be pretending to be remorseful with his words but his voice sounded sarcastic.
"Yes My Lord," Draco responded. Draco felt the slimy fingers of Voldemort in his brain, searching for information for the briefest of moments.
"Well go on, then. Don't let dear little Bella distract you."
Draco swallowed the bile in the back of his throat. He said, "Craig and Sanders have gotten into a fight again. This time, it went beyond words. I want permission to punish them."
"Punish?" The Harry/Voldemort thing said as he ran a hand through his hair, groaning and closing his eyes in pleasure at whatever Bellatrix was doing to him. Then, without opening his eyes, he moved his arm so he could grip Bellatrix's head in the same hand and started roughly forcing her to take him harder and faster in her throat. She made sick gagging noises and the Voldemort creature seemed to find more pleasure in every noise. "KILL them," He grunted as he roughly pulled Bellatrix as close to his pelvic bone as he could.
Draco could feel himself near vomiting. That this creature had just orgasmed by thinking about Draco killing two of his…
"Now, if you're planning to stay, come stick it in your aunt's-"
"No thank you," Draco answered and then bowed. "I've work to do." He answered in a tone of finality. When he looked up, the Dark Lord dismissed him with a wave of his hand while he was dragging Bellatrix to sit on his lap. Draco turned and exited the room quickly. He walked as quickly as he could to the nearest lavatory, silenced the room and vomited until he had nothing left. He ran his hands under the cold water at the tap and rinsed out his mouth and then splashed the water onto his face.
He looked into the mirror at his own reflection for a moment, simply collecting his thoughts as he watched the water droplets following his cheekbones, beading on his nose and chin. He looked pale and sick. He needed to finish this. His body could not take much more of this stress. His mind couldn't take much more of the horrors the Dark Lord seemed to revel in.
He stood straight once more and dried his face and neck. Took the time to fix his collar. He looked a bit better. Smoothing a hand through his hair and examining himself he found it hard to find any emotion in his face but determination. Determination could be useful, especially when he had just been ordered to kill two of his own. He was determined. Determined to see this murder through so he could pass the information of it all along to the Order.
Draco gathered the required group of men and executed the sentenced men before them. He made some speech about how they had proven their disloyalty by fighting when they had been warned or some other such nonsense that he'd barely paid attention to. The troops were inspired and afraid in equal measure and so Draco knew he had done his job. Then had a few new recruits dispatch of the bodies.
The group looked tired. They had all been up all night because of all this madness and now enough time had passed that the adrenaline was wearing off.
Draco felt ill, still. He needed sleep and food and possibly a long walk or his violin to process all the stress of today but he could only have food at the moment. Yet food was repulsive after he had just murdered two people. Sure, they weren't exactly innocent youths, indeed they were loyalists to the Pureblooded cause, yet taking their lives felt disgusting to say the least. He decided to take a shower in the gym of the barracks of what used to be the Auror Department at the ministry.
The world didn't need the old Aurors according to Voldemort. So He had ordered their offices and training facilities given to the more militarized Death Eaters which Draco was now a leader in. This had all been disguised as a reformation of the Wizarding police force by rebranding people like Draco as heroes and calling them Aurors. In no way were they otherwise similar to the previous honored men and women of the same title.
He hated wearing the title.
He had actually wanted to a be an Auror when he was a child. His father had become madly enraged when Draco had told him about it. A few years later, he finally understood that Lucius had been imprisoned by Aurors so of course he would have lost his mind when his son had wanted to become one.
Draco's eyes wandered to his arms as he rinsed and he examined the tattoo which Granger had quizzed him on. Why had she been sorted interested in the goings on of Voldemort? Was it so simple a task as an attempt to kill him off once and for all? Did she believe that Potter was still alive in there?
After what he had seen today, Draco knew for certain Potter was in there somewhere. He would need to tell Granger somehow. He couldn't tell her about the ministry official he had seen on the floor, but he might be able to tell her what he had seen. It could be important to figuring out how Voldemort had taken over the body and how best to kill him. When he finished bathing, he checked the barracks, approved an order for some new equipment, and went back to his office. He finished up his last signatures and put his paperwork on his desk to be filed by his secretary when she came back on Monday. A large yawn surprised him as he finished putting away his quills and he glanced at the clock. 36 hours almost. Time to get some sleep.
Friday evening for Hermione was spent just as Thursday had been. She was in a window seat overlooking the small yard of the little cottage she had first come to when she had arrived. She was supposed to be reading, but the falling snow had caught her eye and now the swirling flakes held her in fascinated gaze. For a rare bit of time, her mind was actually calm and quiet.
The quiet had actually been filled with soft music for more than half an hour before she noticed it. A distant violin finally broke through her calm and she looked around as she suddenly came back to herself.
Could that be Floppy? Or Malfoy? she wondered as she cautiously climbed down from her perch. She was a few doors down from her own set of rooms and around a corner, which she unashamedly looked around to check that the coast was clear. The hall was empty but the music was certainly coming from the off-limits west wing of the house. She whispered for Floppy, but the elf didn't appear. She tried again in as normal voice, but still, no elf showed herself. Hermione darted into her room for the only weapon she had come across, a letter opener which was almost as sharp as a dagger, before cautiously crossing into the forbidden half of the house. She didn't realize that she was half crouched with the weapon held out to her side in an attack pose. She did realize that she was utterly calm aside from the edge of nervousness she felt.
When a figure stepped into the hallway in front of her, Hermione suddenly found herself up against the wall behind a pillar with the knife held to her chest with no clear memory of having moved there. She took a slow breath in and peeked around the pillar cautiously.
There, in the hallway, was a pajama clad man who resembled Draco. He was walking slowly across the hallway and Hermione could just see part of his face. Most of the resemblance came from the blonde of his hair and something in the bridge of his nose.
The stranger shuffled across the hall and then directly into the wall as though he hadn't seen it. Hermione felt a twinge of guilt and then a stronger stab of pity, mixed with a desire to help the man. Before she could move, though, Floppy came from behind the man and quietly spoke while leading him back the way he had come. Hermione couldn't hear anything beyond the tone of Floppy's voice.
The music still filled the air and had grown louder as she had come this direction. She bit her lip as she tried to decide if she should find out where it was coming from or just go back to the east wing. That's the whole reason she had taken this risk to come down this way in the first place, after all.
She heard the door close behind Floppy and the man and had just decided to go forward to try and find out when she heard the music stop. Then another door closed further away and she peeked around the pillar again to see Draco walking swiftly down the hallway with his shirt open and flapping behind him, still holding his violin and bow and frowning deeply. One mystery solved Hermione thought as she tried to ignore the movement of his abdominal muscles as he walked.
He turned and walked into the room where the man had come from. Hermione felt safe enough to go back to her wing of the living quarters. But the questions of what could possibly be going on in this house swirled and held her mind more than even the falling snowflakes had before this whole endeavor had begun.
A/N: Thanks for the follows and favorites. I would love some reviews for this story... I haven't gotten any in a while.