Hello! First of all, apologise to anyone who was reading this when I abandoned it for a while. With my oneshots and other stories getting more readers/reveiws, I sort of lost the inspiration for this story as I didn't think as many people were enjoying it - however I'm back now and ready to concentrate on writing again! I hope people are happy to see the story back, and I hope you can forgive me for leaving this update so long. I promise now, I will see this story to the end. :)

Chapter Five

When Ron was satisfied he'd cast every detection charm he could think of over the parchment (Hermione had, of course, explained that they had already done this, but Harry had been too tired to fight him on it) he sat down at Harry's kitchen table with the letter spread before them with a hard, stubborn expression which often overcame him when Auror meetings on strategy were called. Ron, given his natural abilities in wizard chess, had found the strategic planning elements of the career easy even as early as their training. Harry, despite calming considerably since his Hogwarts days, still had much more of an 'act now, think later' approach. Yet with – he glanced at the clock for what he knew must be the nearing the fiftieth time since he received the letter – two and a half hours to go until the meeting he knew he could afford to indulge Ron in his scheming. Besides, he would freely admit, his best friend often had some fantastic ideas.

"Well, it's clear that he wants you to come alone." Ron stated flatly, stating the obvious in a way which often riled Harry; picking over already obvious details was tedious to him and, when Draco was alone, Merlin knows where with Merlin knows who… It was a colossal waste of time.

"But we can't have that!" Hermione interjected from her chair, to which Ron nodded.

"Obviously. That's why we'll go under disillusionment charms." Ron said, holding up a firm hand as Hermione opened her mouth to raise an objection. "Not standard ones, Auror regulation. Harry and I can cast them no problem. The only way to reverse them is time – they last about three hours – or the counter charm which is known to Aurors only."

Hermione's lips closed and she shrank back in her seat, nodding in agreement. In any other situation Harry would have found Ron's intelligence for magic Hermione didn't know existed amusing to watch but now, of course, the only thing he cared for was Draco.

"We'll have to apparate perfectly in sync to hide the sound. Perhaps even arrive earlier. It'd be good to stake out the scene anyway, but I bet they'll already be ready with wards and-"

"So won't the wards prevent anyone but Harry from entering?" Hermione interrupted.

"To have wards that block out everyone but specific people, you'd need to know that persons magical signature to key into your wards and I doubt they know Harry's… If they do, we have a much bigger problem on our hands." Ron's face turned ashen and grim has he mulled over the thought and Harry had to physically bite down on his lip to prevent himself from interrupting with his unspoken thought 'could there be any bigger problem than Draco being missing?'.

Harry tuned out as Ron and Hermione strategized, comforting himself in repeating in his mind the incantations for some of the more colourful curses Draco's dark art's books had boasted and taking great pleasure in simultaneously ranking them in terms of pain and in the order in which he would cast them. There was no doubt about it; as soon as Draco was safe, his captors would suffer.

At eleven, Harry could take no more, and leapt up from his chair. "So are we going?" He demanded impatiently.

Ron blinked and looked across the room to his best friend as if he had forgotten Harry was even there.

"Well, we can mate, I mean, we know what we're doing." He said, pulling himself to his feet and pulling out his wand.

"Well we do." Hermione interjected, her gaze settling on Harry as she stressed her words. "But you haven't been listening at all, have you?"

Harry's cheeks reddened slightly in embarrassment of the knowledge he'd been caught out, yet he raised his chin defiantly (a trait that all the Weasley's had taken great pleasure in pointing out, he'd got from Draco). "Excuse me if I find it hard to sit around and talk when Draco is missing." His voice lowered into a hiss over the last syllables, his bubbling anger spilling out and flying into the faces of his best friends. He knew they didn't deserve it, but they were the only ones there.

Shame filled him as Hermione stood and moved toward him to place a soothing palm on his shoulder. "We'll find him Harry. Together. That's why it's important we all know what we're doing."

Harry sighed, giving in with a nod as he watched his friends take their seats again. He forced himself to listen to their plan but now he was up he couldn't force his legs back into the chair; he was stood, his body poised and ready for battle, his wand burning against his forearm in the easy access holster it was in. He paced the kitchen as he listened, eyes wide and body alert. His ears were filled with Ron's strategy, which he had to admit worked well. They would attempt to apparate in early, hoping that any wards had been lifted in anticipation of Harry's arrival. If they were simply thrown back, they would wait until midnight to arrive. Harry didn't like that part of the plan, so chose not to dwell on it. He preferred acting now, being closer to Draco, being closer to his revenge. So instead he focused on the plan that would see them arrive at the meeting place for half past 11, giving Ron chance to silently test the limits of the wards and search the area for any clues. Hermione would remain by Harry's side, cool and observant in a way they had (quite rightly, he had to admit) they knew Harry wouldn't. They had thrown around the idea of placing tracking charms on the captors who appeared, yet they knew that such magic would mostly likely be warded against and would only end up making their situation worse. Harry had been unable to, at that point, hold back his previously unspoken thought of "How can anything be worse than Draco being taken?" to which Hermione had immediately and, very sternly, with an air that reminded Harry of Professor McGonagall, shut him down with "If they take you too, Harry James Potter, there won't be a lot you can do to help Draco, will there?".

With their approach decided, Ron had had to concede that there was no difference in attempting to arrive at twenty past eleven rather than half past. Once both Ron and Hermione had been disillusioned Ron's voice floated eerily from nowhere, counting them into their apparition;

"Three, two, one…"

-oo-

Draco couldn't force himself into sleep. He had no idea how long he had been awake; the dark, tight containment of his cell was starting to play tricks on his mind. He tried with all the power he had to focus, to stay alert and active, stubbornly fighting against the memory of what became of his when Bellatrix had kept him in the Malfoy cellars…

Dwelling on the memory, of course, was completely the opposite of what would help keep him sane this time around. So instead he thought of the conversation he had with his captor; when he had had it, he couldn't say. It could have been as little as an hour ago, or as long as a day. Time had blurred into nothing for Draco, his only anchor to reality was the gnawing hunger in his stomach; his thirst had been quenched by a trickle of water seeping through a crack in one corner. Yes, it had been stale and putrid, no doubt the remnants of rain which had sept through the layers of stone which caged him, but to Draco it had been as crisp and refreshing as an aguamenti on a burning summer day. He had kept himself in the corner, allowing the steady trickle to run over his chapped lips, soothing his dry tongue and aching throat, until the stream had run dry.

So now he sat, with his mind back on the time, and back on the conversation he'd had. His captor had spoken of his letter for Harry, of arranging their meeting. But how long had it been? Surely it had been long enough for him to have sent the letter and for Harry to have received it? Had it been long enough that they had already met? A cold shiver ran down Draco's spine; if they had met and Harry wasn't here… Had Harry decided he wasn't worth saving? He determinedly pushed the thought away and, not for the first time, began to stroke the cool mental of the bonding ring Harry had given him. He wouldn't let old doubts destroy him; he and Harry had faced tough times and have proven their love. They had been tested against family, friends… Against the whole wizarding world. But they had shone through. Harry wouldn't abandon him now.

The next shiver that ran through Draco left an even colder desperation in his chest. What if Harry had received the letter and had met his captors as they desired? What if he had walked straight into a trap? What if he had been taken too? After all, if it were Death Eaters they were dealing with, it would be Harry they really wanted. It was why Harry had been so against so many of his relationships; ever the martyr, he had never wanted to put another person in the risk of danger for his own happiness. Naturally, they hadn't let Draco go, because for them he was the perfect side prize. A traitor to the Dark Lord – and, in their eyes, even worse – he was a traitor who had fallen straight in with the enemy.

"Harry?" Draco yelled, although scalding himself for the idiocy. He knew that if Harry had been taken they would have kept them apart. Even if their cells were physically close, they'd be separated by countless silencing and captivity charms. Yet the logical working of his mind only pushed his heart to yell louder, more desperately. "Harry? HARRY?" He could feel his throat growing hoarse; yes, the water had sustained him and given him the fluid his body desperately needed, but it had given him nowhere near enough strength to descend into such theatrics. Nevertheless he pushed on, his heart overruling his head, calling desperately for his lover.

He opened his cracked, aching lips to call once again when the door swung open, a low, spine-tingling chuckle emerging from the door way.

"Shouting will do you no good, you're quite far enough away that no one will hear you." His captor assured him as he loomed in the doorway, once again bringing nothing but darkness behind him. "As it happens, I'll be seeing him very soon. I'll be sure to pass on your message." The sneer, the mocking, was clear in his captor's voice. It made Draco bristle with anger, although he knew better than to fight back. The figure stood, staring down at Draco for moments that lasted lengths the blonde could only speculate. Finally, he placed his hand into the pocket of his robe. Draco instantly froze, awaiting the spell, the curse, the torture, whatever it was his captors wand would deliver…

When a lump of stale bread landed on the floor, smacking against the dirty, damp floor with a thud.

"Can't have you dying on me before I've killed you myself, can we?" The voice asked, the sneer as smooth as silk and as sickening as poison. Draco held himself, staring definitely ahead into the darkness, waiting until the door slammed closed.

Although he hated himself for the need with which he leapt forward to claim the food from the ground, he allowed himself, at the very least, that he hadn't done so until he was alone.

-oo—

As Harry's feet smacked against the hard, heavy mud of the ground below him and pulled out of the apparition, the first thing he became aware of was the cold. The wind whipped around him, whistling with its ferocity. He pulled his cloak tight around him, his Auror training instinctively coming in as he moved seamlessly from his apparition landing to a stance which positioned him ready to defend against an attack at any angle. He looked up to see that – as Draco's captors probably wanted – the dark of the night concealed any number who could be hiding. He trained his eyes over the scene, squinting to try to make out anything he could but it was no use; he could only see a few inches in front of his face. His wand, which had remained firmly in his hand since the moment he apparated, drew up and with a non-verbal lumos, Harry had light. He began to inch forward, knowing that Ron would have already begun to stalk out the area around them. He had only taken a few steps forward when two columns of flame flared into life.

The lines of fire illuminated those who stood between them; Harry glanced his gaze over them, quick and calculating. His first thought was, of course, of Draco. A single glance told Harry that no one of his shape or size was within their ranks, that none of those standing before him held a prisoner. His second glance estimated number; there were maybe 8 – no more than 10 - wizards standing before him. All wizards, Harry easily deduced, because they were all of an extremely similar build; very tall and, whilst not muscular, broad in the shoulders. Each stood completely cloaked in black. Their bodies were all clad in the same midnight robes, each face hidden by a plain, shapeless mask of black. A third glance confirmed Harry's original estimate; twelve stood before him, definitely all wizards. He had learnt, during his time as an Auror, to make observations about a scene within the first few seconds from which he entered it. Therefore he had easily counted the number standing before him before the front most figure spoke.

"Very punctual, Mr Potter. Whatever hopes you may have had to ambush us by arriving early have, I'm afraid, failed." The voice rang out into the freezing night air, the voice so heavily and clearly distorted by voice charms that Harry had to concentrate hard on each word spoken to have a hope of understanding what the voice said at all. He chose not to respond, setting his jaw in a hard, determined manner. He would not dignify these men with small talk.

"I imagined you to be much more of a talker." The voice mused, unwavering from the spot in which its speaker stood. "Perhaps it is best we complete our business in few words."

"I have no business with you. I'm here for Draco." Harry snarled; in the field he knew better than to respond to criminals in such a way, but his emotions bubbled deep and hot under his skin, hissing with the need to attack. These people had his lover; he could not allow rational thought to control him. He didn't take the main focus of his gaze from the wizard who addressed him, but allowed the outer limits of his vision to take count of the figures beside him again. Not one had moved; all eleven of the others stood, as perfectly still as statues, unspeaking and unwavering. The number told Harry that it must be one of the new, rising groups of Dark Wizards who had sprung up over the years, trying to take Voldemort's place. Personally, Harry didn't believe that any of the groups had the raw power, the magical knowledge, the abilities – however dark – that Tom Riddle had possessed. They would never make a match to him.

Although, Harry knew, that was precisely what made them more dangerous.

Determined not to let his thoughts unsettle him, Harry returned all of his attention to the first wizard.

"Where is he?" Harry demanded, boring his eyes straight ahead, dark and unblinking.

"Where is not your concern. Why, should be your concern." The voice told him, making Harry bristle with an annoyance he couldn't hold back.

"The why is obvious. It's the same time every one of you pathetic, miserable –" Harry knew insults weren't the way to negotiate, and he knew that if this were the field he'd be facing a dressing down from Kingsley when he arrived back at the Ministry. But this wasn't the field, this wasn't Kingsley's mission and the Ministry didn't know. "- things tries something like this. It's me you want. Me or my galleons."

"But as you read in my letter; we are different, we have succeed where others have failed." The voice repeated the words of the letter with a chill which made Harry fight back a shiver. "We are not just different in our success; we are different in our desires."

"Well what do you want?" Harry demanded. He was unnerved by the calm, completely composed tone of the speaker's voice. It wasn't delirious, crazed with the success it was claiming. It wasn't making foolish mistakes, betraying vital information, safe in the belief that they had already won. They weren't making rash, mad demands on the back of the ground they had already gained. That, Harry thought with a swallow deep in his throat, was what unsettled him most of all. Most dark wizards the Auror's caught reached a point where they came to believe their power was indestructible and, more often than not, the careless mistakes they would begin to make would betray them and lead them straight into the Auror's awaiting binds.

This voice, however, wasn't so stupid.

"I believe what we desire will become…." The voice paused and, although he couldn't see it, Harry could hear the smirk that laced the next word "… apparent in good time."

Before Harry could demand what the voice meant – what was 'good time'? What would become apparent? How… would they send another letter? Ask to meet again? – its owner disappeared. It disappeared in complete and utter unison with every other figure on the field. The sounds of their disapparation cracked through the air as a single, harsh sound as each body disappeared as seamlessly as if they had synchronised their exits by magic. Without even knowing if such a thing was possible, Harry took a moment to gape, open mouthed at the empty field before him. Then he took a moment to expel his anger – he allowed himself a lone, solitary roar of raw pain, tearing from his lips in the most primal of screams when he realised how far he was away from seeing Draco again.

When he composed himself to apparate home, Hermione was already pacing his kitchen floor. The sight unnerved Harry – he hadn't seen Hermione display such nerves since their Horcrux hunt. Even when Rose was days away from her due date, even in the depths of labour, she had been nothing more than cool and collected, safely in possession of the facts she'd gained from the entire directory – or at least, the most popular 100 - of birthing manuals from both magical and muggle worlds.

She froze, startled as Harry's crack announced his arrival. "Oh Harry!" She wailed, springing forward as she recognised him. "They were so many of them! I counted twice to be sure, there were seven. The most powerful magical number. Do you think that's a sign to something? They were all the same build too, I mean, the masks and robes hid them but they all seemed the same height, I circled round several times to check… Do you think they were polyjuiced as one person? It's definitely possible if they wanted to go to such lengths to hide themselves…. But why seven? Does that mean anything? And they never actually said what they wanted…" Hermione dove from theory to theory so rapidly that Harry's head swam; he was still smarting from the pain that had hit him when he realised how close – yet still, how far – he had been to Draco. He couldn't pick out the points Hermione was making and, in all honestly, he didn't think she could either. She continued even as Harry's thoughts drifted away, leaping from observations she had made to speculation, yet provided no concrete evidence of where in Merlin's name Draco was.

Harry instantly scolded himself for the scorn in his last thought; if he, a fully trained Auror, hadn't picked up on any clues, how could he expect Hermione to have?

This, Harry now understood, was why they never let family or those involved with victims deal directly in cases. Emotions whirled, came to the forefront of your mind however hard you focused, leaving you struggling to piece the facts together.

Harry had almost sank into thoughtless oblivion, blocking out Hermione and dreaming of Draco, when another crack sounded through the kitchen. Hermione froze again, yet instantly relaxed at the sight of her husband.

"It wasn't polyjuice." Ron said simply – Harry guessed that when Ron arrived Hermione must have been rehashing her theory of all seven wizards being polyjuiced to take the same form. His tone was flat and his words were short. His face was set in a hard, concrete expression and his eyes were grim with the news he was about to deliver. From the depths of his robe pocket he pulled a small, cube shaped device that looked completely inconspicuous to Harry.

"It had been glamoured pretty well, hidden right behind them all. I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't seen the spark of magic around it when they all disappeared. Most people would have walked away but…" Ron shook his head, staring at the cube in his hands with a deep, furrowed brow of thought "I recognised it, somehow, through the glamour's and removed them."

"What is it?" Hermione asked, stepping closer to Ron to peer at the object in his hand.

"It's a magnificatiuum." Ron explained, his face taking on a more ashen expression than Harry had thought possible. "It literally means magnifier. It's a product which magnifies the desires of any witch or wizard who enchants it – all illusion, of course." He hastened to explain as Hermione's mouth opened. She hurriedly closed it again and Ron continued; "clearly our wizard in question – the one who was speaking – wanted to look powerful. The magnificatiuum gave him six exact replicas of himself to make seven… power in numbers, looking as if he has an army, power in the most magical number of seven…. that was how they disappeared so in sync. It wasn't seven wizard; it was one wizard, six exact replica illusions."

"How do you know all this?" Hermione breathed, finally breaking her silence.

"What the magnificatiuum did for this wizard I've worked out for myself from knowing how it works. Recognising the magnificatiuum itself?" His last words were poised as a question and turned his expression from anxious to disgusted. "It's a Weasley's Wizard Wheeze product."