Labyrinth of Life

Chapter 9: Deafening Silence

By coeurnoir

A/N: Hope you enjoy guys! Each time I put a line in it means that it's changing scene/perception of the story.

Hermione had been on her own for hours. The silence in the cell was deafening. It wasn't your typical fairy tale cell full of rats and filth. Rather it was far too clean, there wasn't any vermin in sight and there were no bars or even cracks in the doors. She'd felt every inch of every wall trying to feel a single tiny weakness.

Unlike many other witches, and despite being a muggle born, Hermione had natural magic. This means that she was able to sense magic without her wand and had started studying wandless magic with Dumbledore after class. The problem was that she'd only been studying it for a couple of weeks so she could only perform simple spells.

She used her natural senses to feel the magical barriers on the cell.

There were silencing charms, hence the silence that was sending her insane, anti-unlocking charms on the door and charms on the walls that prevented any type of erosion or breaking down of the walls.

She was screwed in other words.

After her extensive search she resigned herself to at least being stuck in the cell until something in her circumstances changed. Curling up in the corner she tried to get

some sleep.

Draco woke to find himself tied to a very familiar pole, his hands were above his head and he couldn't feel them. He guessed that meant he'd been unconscious for a while. He winced as he moved, the pain in his back a reminder of what happened before he passed out. He wasn't surprised that his father had laid into him worse than ever before. That was probably why he was still hanging here.

He heard movement behind him. A man came up and loosened his hands. Not bothering to catch Draco, he fell to the ground with no small force, which caused him to cry out in pain. The man chuckled evilly before walking out and shutting the door behind him. The room went black again.

The cell door opened and a man walked in. it wasn't a death eater that she recognised.

Without a word he hauled her upright by her wrist and dragged her out the door. She

questioned him relentlessly but he wouldn't answer her. Instead he brought her to another room on the dungeon level. This room didn't contain anything more than a table with a chair on either side.

Hermione was pushed into one of the chairs. It was an uncomfortable chair that made her sit upright. A light flashed and she found that chains were winding around her torso, arms and legs. She found that she couldn't move a muscle apart from her head. She growled in frustration as the man left her in the room on her own to struggle against chains that there was no hope of escaping from.

The door opened again and her favourite person walked in, Lucius Malfoy. He looked tousled and his collar was sticking up at one corner. That was odd seeing as from what she had seen of this man he was a meticulous dresser. At a closer inspection she was worried to see flecks of dark red on his shirt. It was blood, and Hermione retched to think of who's it was.

Draco woke up in his chambers in the Malfoy mansion. Looking through the window of the room he calculated that it would be around midafternoon. He'd been there for awhile. They would have figured out he and Hermione were missing by now. He just hoped they would be able to figure out what happened.

The room was just as he had left it, his belongings scattered over the surfaces. He tried to sit up and fell down again in agony, his back was plastered to the bed with dried blood. He couldn't get up without breaking open all the wounds on his back. He lay back and sighed. He would just have to wait and see if someone would take it off. Otherwise… he'd have to rip himself off it.

Back at Hogwarts…

Dumbledore paced his office. He had received a message from professor MacGonnagal that morning informing him that both the head students had been absent from advanced transfiguration that morning.

Dumbledore had gone straight to their dorm with her to search for them. What they had found wasn't exactly what they had expected. They found the place in a shambles. Hermione's wand was on the floor snapped in half, her dressing gown was on the floor where she had tried to put it on when she heard noises. In Draco's room nothing was touched, but the common room showed where he had put up a struggle.

Dumbledore almost ran to his office where he sent off a series of messages through his fireplace. He then left for 12 Grimmauld place with McGonnagal through the fireplace.

When they arrived the meeting room was close to full. Dumbledore called them to order before telling the assembled members the circumstances.

"Where on earth can they be?" cried Tonks, "there isn't anyone after them is there?"

"Not after Granger there isn't" an oily voice from the back of the room mentioned quietly. A hooded figure that had arrived late pulled back his hood to show Severus Snape. "I just came from a meeting. Malfoy sent some of the deatheaters after Malfoy, turns out they wanted to send along Granger too. Seems they were seen together in the holidays. They think she knows information about the order."

Lupin swore. "Where have they got them? Is it Voldemort that is holding them?"

He got up and started pacing the room. Snape smirked.

"No, Lucius has them at the moment. Voldemort is yet to gain an interest in the girl. If my information is correct then Granger is being held in the cells at the bottom floor of the Malfoy mansion and Draco is being held in his chambers."

Dumbledore cleared his throat. "Now, my friends, the question is, how are we going to get the students back?" there was instantly a cacophony of sound as everyone put forward their opinions.

Lucius had been questioning Hermione for ages, and he wasn't getting anything useful. He had dosed her with veritaserum and it should've kicked in ages ago. But no matter what he asked her about the Order of the Phoenix, she said she couldn't remember or kept telling him that it was a book written by the owner of Zonko's.

Lucius got so frustrated, he had asked her other questions to make sure that the veritaserum was working and it had worked fine, that old man had most probably spelled the girl so that she couldn't talk about the order. Well, it may stop him from getting to the information – but she wouldn't be able to hide anything from him when he gave her to the dark lord.

He looked at the girl. She was still under the effects of the serum and was severely fatigued. Her head was drooping onto her chest and her face was pale and drawn. Lucius sighed, he wasn't going to get anything more out of her. He stood and walked to the door, to the death eater outside the door he gave orders to return the girl to the cell.

The death eater came in and picked her up once the chains had been spelled back, he slung her over his shoulder and turned to walk out.

Without really knowing why, Lucius changed his mind about something.

"Put her in with the boy."

Hermione woke up on the floor of a place that was most certainly not the cell she had become acquainted with. There was a large bed next to her, and the sunset streaming in through the window. She pushed up onto her hands and knees to get a better look.

She heard a groan coming from the bed and froze, looking over she could see a tuft of blonde hair and a bare chest. She wobbled on her feet as she tottered over to the bed. She landed on the bed with a bit of a thump and shook Draco's chest gently.

She jumped back at his cry of pain. His eyes flew open and he clamped his jaws shut on his cry. When his back stopped screaming he lay still on the bed.

" 'Mione? What are you doing in here? I thought they would keep you downstairs. Are you okay? I was so worried."

Hermione gave a wan smile. "Am I okay? I think I should be asking you that question. What happened?" Draco grimaced, "this? This is pretty normal. I just usually have my wand to clean it up." Hermione used gentle fingers to get him to roll over a little. Laying her hands on his back, she whispered a gentle cleaning spell. This cleaned away the blood so that she could get him onto his side. From there she whispered a weak healing charm. She sighed, the effort had given her a headache.

Amazed Draco sat up and looked at her, his mouth agape. "How did you do that? You don't have a wand, you –" he shook his head and stared at her.

Hermione smiled, "I can do simple wandless magic, Dumbledore started privately tutoring me this year. I can't fully heal your back though, that would be too hard a spell."

Draco pulled her into an embrace, "it doesn't matter, I'm so thankful that you did that for me." He pulled back and searched her brown eyes with his grey ones. Then pulled her back towards him and kissed her hard. "Hermione, I am so sorry I got you into this. No matter what happens I will do whatever I can to protect you."

Hermione curled into his embrace and said nothing. She was just glad the deafening silence of the cell was broken.

A/N: Sorry this one took me a while. I tried, I truly did! Please review I need the reviews to keep me happy enough to write!!!