Seventh Year, Part 4, 1997
Hermione managed to hide her sporadic messages from Lucius from Harry and Ron, but she knew her friends were deeply suspicious of the information she mysteriously received. Harry seemed hurt that she would not confide in him, and Ron was increasingly bitter over the secrets she kept. Still, the other tidbits of information Lucius shared with her bought her some trust with the Order, although her interactions with Sirius were tense.
Over the next few weeks, the Order was able to take out a number of Voldemort's supporters, while sustaining only minimal injuries and casualties on their side. Lucius assured her that he was safe, that he did not participate in the missions he shared with her to pass on to the Order. She was filled with relief that he was not setting himself up for failure. It felt odd and wrong somehow to be relieved, for it wasn't as if she wanted him to succeed as a Death Eater, but she did very much want him to stay alive and well and on the Dark Lord's good side. If Voldemort was pleased with him, then Lucius would remain as safe as he could be, given the circumstances.
For a time, life continued in relative quiet.
They were still unable to destroy the locket, and so they'd taken to wearing it in shifts to ensure that they did not leave it behind if they had to leave Grimmauld Place for any reason. Ron thought this was overkill, but Hermione agreed with Harry that it was a precaution they should take.
The first time she wore Slytherin's locket was unpleasant. It was heavy, and the metal was icy cold where it touched her skin. The worst though was the voice.
'I have seen your heart, and it is mine.'
That awful, hissing voice haunted her every time she wore the necklace, and it crept into her nightmares. Sometimes as she wore the locket, she heard Draco Malfoy in her head calling her horrid names: mudblood whore, filthy cunt. Other times she heard his taunts: 'You don't belong here, Granger. You're nothing. My father will never care about you. You're just a roll in the mud, a convenient fuck to him.'
If it was hard to stomach Draco's voice in her head, it was downright unbearable the times the horcrux whispered to her in Lucius's voice: 'How dare you presume to be good enough for a Malfoy? You stupid, silly little girl - you are only of value to me because you're Harry Potter's best friend. You'll lead me right to him won't you? I'll kill him while he sleeps and fuck you beside his corpse, my pretty whore.'
When it was not attacking her insecurities, the horcrux played on her fears, hissing horrific scenarios in which Lucius died at the Dark Lord's hand, or from spells cast by Sirius or even Harry. The nightmares that haunted her when she wore the necklace at night were bad enough to leave her gasping for breath and shaking in fear.
She had to find a way to destroy the necklace, she simply had to before it drove her insane.
~oOo~
She was not the only one frustrated with their inability to destroy the necklace. Harry and Ron disliked wearing it just as much as she did, and the longer they held onto it, the more they were all frustrated by the horcrux and their situation.
If they were stumped by the necklace, the boys could at least console themselves with the knowledge that they were making progress on other fronts. Hermione cajoled them into studying with her, pouring over books about Hogwarts and the founders. She steered their research and their conversation and waited impatiently for Harry and Ron to come to the conclusion that something of Rowena Ravenclaw's, as well as Helga Hufflepuff's cup were likely Voldemort's other horcruxes. It took longer than she would have liked for them to catch up on that front, and she breathed a sigh of relief when they were all three in agreement about those two items. She had to walk a fine line between telling them things she and Lucius had already figured out and limiting Harry and Ron's suspicions regarding the secret information she received.
Ron was convinced that Voldemort's giant snake, Nagini, had to be a horcrux as well, as rumour had it she was with him always. Hermione was unsure whether a living creature could harbor a bit of another living creature's soul, but Harry thought it unlikely that Voldemort would have gotten his hands on the sword of Gryffindor to make a horcrux of it, unless it had been done relatively recently.
The snake or the sword? Which was it? The snake was likely wherever Voldemort was, so getting close enough to it to kill it could easily result in Voldemort killing them all. If the snake was a horcrux, would killing her be sufficient to destroy the horcrux too? Or would the bit of soul seek to embed itself in something else? If the snake wasn't a horcrux, then was it really worth the possible risk of death to try to end the creature? As for the sword, it had last been seen at Hogwarts, but they couldn't exactly march in and ask Severus Snape - that bloody traitor - for it. Or was it even there?
They debated contacting Sirius and asking him to make some discreet inquiries into the location of the Sword of Gryffindor, but ultimately decided against it. The Ministry had refused to hand it over to Harry after Dumbledore's death, and with dark forces controlling much of the Ministry now, Hermione feared that any inquiries would result in someone taking additional efforts to conceal the sword. It was better, they decided, for the rest of the world to think the sword was merely an interesting historical artifact.
The trio was in agreement though that the Lestranges were likely in possession of at least one horcrux. The problem was that no one was sure where they would have hidden it. The Lestrange family's estate had been ransacked by Aurors following the couple's arrest and imprisonment in 1981.
Still, they could not rule it out, so under the relative anonymity of polyjuice, they slipped from Grimmauld Place late one night to stakeout the Lestrange family's ancestral home in York. Hermione had expected to have to painstakingly remove layers of wards to even get close to the place, but to her surprise, she detected only weak muggle repelling charms. The reason for this was clear as they crested the last hill before the edge of what should have been the property line for the estate.
"Blimey. Sure as hell didn't expect that," Ron said as he surveyed the site.
All that remained of Lestrange Manor was a crumbled shell of a building. Fire had obviously ravaged the once-proud manor home, leaving devastation in its wake. Hermione pondered what this meant. Did protective wards on a building fall when the building was destroyed? Or had someone removed them?
The trio approached cautiously, wands drawn, as Hermione checked again for wards, curses, and other spells. She would not have put it past the Death Eaters to ward the place to only look ruined, but she detected nothing.
"This is old," Harry said as they approached the ruin. "Look at the vegetation."
Hermione followed his gaze to the broken building and saw that in a few places, grass and other plants had begun to grown in the midst of the ruin, indicating that it had been years since the fire that destroyed it.
"I wonder when it burned," she mused.
"No telling," Ron said. "Although you'd think Sirius would have said something. Could've saved us the trouble of coming out here."
"How so?" she asked.
Ron shrugged. "Well, he spent all that time after Azkaban living as Padfoot, y'know?"
"So?" Harry said.
"Well, you don't think he was hanging out in the Shrieking Shack that whole time, d'you?"
"You think he came here?" Harry asked in surprise.
Ron shrugged again. "Why not? Seems like the sort of thing he'd do. Check it out, look for anything that might be of use. All the Lestranges were in Azkaban anyway."
He elbowed Harry then. "Maybe he set the fire."
Harry snorted. "Hiking his leg on the front door while in animagus form seems more like his style."
"Let's not waste any time," Hermione reminded them. Polyjuice only lasted an hour, and they were vulnerable outside of Grimmauld Place. "We can assume the Aurors examined the place after the Lestranges were arrested. Let's do a quick sweep and look for anything with dark magic."
She hesitated stepping across the threshold, waiting for some sort of magical attack that mercifully did not come. They moved swiftly, casting spells across the ruins of the manor, in search of magical items. There was precious little to be found.
"What's left of this place looks like it's been ransacked," Harry observed as they finished their search of the ruins.
"Plenty of people to hate the Lestranges," Ron said as he eyed the remnants of a burned picture frame.
"This was a bloody waste of time," Harry said in frustration as he kicked a bit of debris out of his path.
"Eh, it got us out of Grimmauld for a bit. Change of scenery and all that rot. Plus we know there aren't any Death Eaters hiding out here," Ron said. He was in what Hermione considered an abnormally good mood. He was right though - the change of scenery and the fresh air was nice, and it did make her feel better to know that they were able to cross this place off their list and move on to other possible hiding spots for the horcruxes.
As they apparated away, she felt the first tingling sensations indicating that the potion was wearing off.
~oOo~
Their foray to Lestrange Manor - or what was left of it - left Hermione's mind energised and kept her awake after Harry and Ron went to bed. She was alone in the library at Grimmauld Place with her wand and a book when her bracelet warmed.
All is well. No luck re destruction of H. Will keep researching. Miss you.
She sighed, knowing that Lucius had been patiently combing through his library in search of ways to destroy the horcruxes. It was unfortunate that he'd not found anything yet, but she was pleased to know he was alive and well.
She smiled and reached for her wand to return his message with one of her own.
"Hermione, have you seen my - what are you doing?"
She startled, her wand pointed at her bracelet, and looked up to see Ron standing in the doorway in his pajamas.
"I thought you were asleep," she said, tucking her wand away.
"I was, almost, but then I remembered I left my wand downstairs when I re-heated our tea. What are you doing?" he repeated.
"I think your wand might be in the kitchen," she offered. "But you should keep it with you at all times."
"You were communicating with someone, weren't you? It's the bracelet - that's how you're getting information from your source!"
She silently cursed. Of all the nights for Ron to have a burst of brilliant observation.
He reached out and grabbed her wrist, twisting her toward him to inspect the bracelet.
"What are you doing? Stop!"
"There's no clasp. No way to take it off. Who gave this to you?" he demanded.
She used her free hand to shove him back, forcing him to release her.
"Let go of me!"
"Someone could be using that to track you! It's a magical bracelet, do you even know what kind of charms are on it?"
Ron sounded as if he'd taken a page from the late Alastor Moody's paranoid playbook. The locket around his neck flickered in the candlelight, and she wondered just how much the horcrux was influencing his paranoia.
"Quiet! You'll wake Harry!" she hissed.
"Harry's already awake," a voice said behind Ron.
They both turned to see Harry standing in the doorway, hair even messier than usual.
"You two were making quite the racket," he said with a shrug. "What's going on?"
"Nothing, Harry. Ron was just overreacting," she said quickly.
"Overreacting? Hardly! She's got a magical bracelet, Harry! She's using it to communicate with someone!" he insisted, grabbing her wrist again and holding it up for Harry to see.
Harry was quiet as he glanced at the bracelet on her wrist and then at both of his dearest friends.
"It's Malfoy isn't it?" Harry asked in a quiet voice.
Hermione's heart dropped into her stomach, and she tried to make her voice sound normal and steady.
"What?"
"Malfoy. That's who your source is, isn't it? I mean, I figured it had to be someone who had some sort of connection to the Death Eaters, someone who had an in of some kind to get the sort of information you've been sharing with Sirius."
'Oh god, oh god. This is not happening,' she thought to herself.
"I've thought it was Malfoy for awhile. I know what you said in the hospital wing, about wanting to protect me, but you took a curse - a possibly deadly curse - for him," Harry continued.
Wait. What?
She tried to focus on what he was saying instead of the defense she'd been trying to create in her head.
"And then he locked you in that closet when the Death Eaters were in the castle. Like… like he wanted to protect you," Harry said.
"MALFOY? You think she's with MALFOY?" Ron thundered before looking at Hermione as if she had betrayed them all.
"It's Draco, isn't it?" Harry questioned, fixing his bright green eyes on her.
Harry had inadvertently come far too close to the truth for Hermione's liking, but if she looked objectively at the situation, she could easily see how her best friend had come to this conclusion. Draco Malfoy had the means to provide a witch with a gift as extravagant as the customised magical bracelet around her wrist. She had taken a curse to protect Draco, and he had, in turn, kept her out of sight from Death Eaters who would have not hesitated to shoot the killing curse at a mudblood. Of course, he'd insulted her and groped her before 'protecting' her, but she'd never told Harry and Ron about that. She was still debating whether or not to say anything to Lucius about Draco's hateful tirade and wandering hands.
She wanted to confirm Harry's theory, for it was far safer than admitting the truth, and she could not think of anyone else she could reasonably peg as her source who Harry would deem believable at this point. But she did not want to anger her friend. Harry needed her right now, he needed her help - and Lucius's help - to hunt down and destroy all of the horcruxes.
Harry ran his fingers through his hair and heaved a weighty sigh. "Look, I won't say that I understand it or even that I'm totally okay with it because Malfoy is a right git most of the time, and frankly, Hermione, when I came into that bathroom he was firing some pretty strong curses your direction."
"He didn't hit me. Not a single time. I had a shield up, and he was… he was angry about something," she whispered. "I was letting him work out his frustration."
Harry sighed. "It's...my uncle is not a nice person, and he yelled at my aunt, and I… I don't want you to be in that kind of a situation, Hermione."
"I'm not!" she insisted. "I'm not. I promise, Harry. I would never be with someone who was abusive."
He did not look as if he believed her.
She realised then that she'd not actually confirmed his suspicions and outright said she was romantically involved with Draco, but she'd said enough that Harry believed his suspicions to be true. It struck her that her non-confirmation was absurdly Slytherin in its vagueness.
"You get messages from the bracelet," he said, motioning to her wrist for confirmation.
"Yes."
"Like the galleons we used for the DA then?"
She nodded.
"How does he get your messages?"
"His ring," she whispered. She knew Draco had a signet ring as well, but only Lucius's was charmed to her bracelet.
"I don't trust him. Not with you. Frankly, I think you deserve a hell of a lot better," Harry continued as Ron gaped at both of them.
"He's using you to spy on us!" Ron insisted.
"NO!" Hermione shot back, shaking her head. "No, he's not. He… he doesn't even know where I am."
"Are you sure?" Harry asked hesitantly. "Because I mean, you obviously trust him, but I don't."
She thought back to her conversations with Lucius, about horcruxes and the mysterious objects they had to find and destroy in order to kill Voldemort. She did not dare tell Harry just what she'd shared with her lover. She felt bad lying to him, but really, she had no other choice!
"He...he never wanted to be a part of this. He volunteered information, I mean, after we were together. He's doing this to help us, and of course, I would never tell him anything about the Order or our plans!"
Harry sighed again, and she appreciated the enormous restraint and maturity he seemed to be showing. "I don't trust him, but I can't argue with the information he's sharing. For whatever reason, Malfoy is helping you, helping us, and as much as I don't like it, I don't have any right to tell you to stop whatever it is you're doing with him. Just know that if he hurts you, all bets are off."
Hermione exhaled and felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Harry - and by extension Ron - knew more than she wanted them to know, and they were far closer to the truth than they realised, but for now she would let them believe Draco was her source.
"But Harry, it's MALFOY!" Ron protested.
"And it's Hermione. You don't have to trust Malfoy. You don't have to like him. But it's Hermione, and I do trust her," Harry said quietly but firmly. It was clear from his tone that he considered this a closed matter.
She knew that Harry loathed Draco Malfoy, and she knew just how much it pained him to offer his support to her supposed relationship with Lucius's son. She looked at her best friend again and noted the dark circles around his eyes. He'd been quieter since Dumbledore's funeral, more serious. The weight of what he had to do, of what the prophecy foretold, rested heavily on his mind, and she knew her friend had been forced to grow up even more in the last six months.
"Just… do me a favour, yeah? Don't tell me any of the gory details. I don't think I can stomach it," Harry said, offering her a bit of a crooked smile.
Hermione blinked back tears of her own and hugged her best friend.