Chapter 4: Meetings Of All Sorts
"I don't hate her!"
Ginny rolled her eyes. "Yeah right. You like her just as much as I like this dress!"
She picked up a floor length wool moo-moo, with bright blue lace trimming around the neck and pockets.
"Okay, I don't like her," admitted Hermione. "But she did marry Bill. We have to give her some credit for that. I mean, with the way he is now."
"What's that supposed to mean?" said Ginny, putting down the hideous ancient dress. "Just because he grows a tad more hair and tends to crave raw meat doesn't mean he's all that changed."
"He's not the same either," Hermione said as she looked through some vintage knitwear. "Jiminy, I could make better sweaters that these!"
"Not if you littered the Gryffindor common room with them first."
"I've stopped that, thank you very much," snapped back Hermione. "Didn't want to free Kreacher by mistake you know."
"How do I look?"
A heart-shape faced woman stepped out of nearby changing closet wearing lime nylon pants and a hideous orange tank top. Ginny burst into giggles as Hermione gawked in horror.
"It's certainly loud," said Hermione.
"I don't think its that's bad!" shouted Tonks. "Look!"
She shook her head until her short pink hair turned into stripes of matching lime and orange. Ginny didn't think it could get any funnier, but she was wrong. Not only did Tonks match her hair, but her finger nails miraculously changed color too.
Ginny fell to the floor with laughter.
"It does suit your, um, taste," Hermione said, controlling her own giggling.
The girls had been shopping for hours. It was nice for Hermione to actually do girl things for once. She was always cooped up with Ron and Harry, and they weren't the best to do anything, well girly with. After leaving Gladrags Wizardwear, where Tonks unfortunately did buy the revolting attire, the girls headed to the Three Broomsticks for some butterbeer.
Rosmerta unfortunately had to be taken away from there when she was revealed to have helped Draco Malfoy almost murder two students. In her place was a mute fellow in a dark robe. But with his square, broad shoulders, you could tell it was a male. Besides his gender, you could not tell much else.
His face was hidden by a robe and thick twill scarf. His hands were gloved with rough dragon scales. No one knew his name, nor did they know who hired him. However, he ran the place just as well as Rosmerta did before being put under Voldemort's Imperio curse, making sure all orders of drinks were full and that no suspect customers entered.
"Excuse me, sir?" Tonks said to the bartender and temporary owner. "Could we have three butterbeers please?"
The man raised hand and waved it slowly across the countertop. Sparkling gold from thin air came three mugs full of the delicious treat. Impressed by the man's skills, Tonks thanked him and asked,
"What's your name?"
But he did not answer her. Instead, the man turned around and started to clean with a dirty rag a barrel full of liquor.
"How rude!" she exclaimed and gave the drinks to Ginny and Hermione.
"Oh, don't mind him! We've been trying to get him to talk for days now!" two voices sounding exactly the same yelled from a booth across the room.
"Fred! George!" Ginny exclaimed seeing her twin brothers.
"Who else?" they said and smiled.
The group sat down with the two tall young men both drinking some purple concoction that was bubbling over onto the wooden table.
"What are you two doing here?" asked Hermione.
"Can't two hard working wizards have a lunch break?" said Fred.
"Really!" George seconded.
"It's good to see you again. The wedding was very entertaining to say the least with you two around," said Hermione after sipping some butterbeer.
"Wasn't a dry eye there 'cause of us!"
"Yeah, thanks to your laughing gas beetles!" Ginny said.
"Everyone was happy, weren't they?" said George.
"Happy? Try delusional and high!" Hermione chuckled. "But still… I don't think I'll ever forget the look on your mother's face."
"Priceless!" the twins said at once.
"Ginny, you're glowing," said Tonks.
"What?"
Tonks pointed at Ginny's front left pocket. A coin-like shape started to flash bright colors, beaming through her light jacket. She hadn't worn that jacket since the year or so prior, when they were having regular meetings. Ginny immediately reached in and stared down at her D.A. communicator, which she rarely checked nowadays.
"What's going on?" asked Hermione.
"Looks like we have a meeting," Ginny quietly said, in great shock.
Hermione took the coin from Ginny's hands and examined it, making sure it wasn't bewitched. The time and date on the coin had changed to reveal a new meeting at 9:00 o'clock in the morning the next day. Hermione raised her brow and was just as puzzled as Ginny by the shocking, abrupt meeting.
XXX
"Sir? Why did you do it? He's going to kill me now!"
"You should have thought of that consequence more seriously the whole year!" Snape yelled back.
Draco Malfoy stood face to face with Severus Snape. Their surroundings were very dark except for some off-white candles in the distance, flickering in and out, that barely illuminated their faces.
"I couldn't do it. I would have died trying," cried Draco.
"Of course you would have, you stupid boy! The Dark Lord had no intention of you surviving the ordeal. Now, you will do as you're told or else face death like the coward you've become."
Draco nodded, but still looked confused. "But I've failed him! Even if I do as you say, he might kill me anyway! And my parents…. Oh…"
He began to cry. Streaks of salty tears stained his ghostly pale cheeks. Snape flinched at the sight of the once so mighty son of Lucius Malfoy now trembling in fright.
Bam.
Snape slapped Draco across the face with the back of his hand, breaking blood vessels and causing him turn bright shades of fierce red.
"You are a Death Eater! You will never succumb to feelings of mudbloodish guilt again. Do you hear me?"
Draco cleared his throat of phlegm. "Yes, sir."
"Louder!"
"Yes, sir!"
Snape nodded approvingly. "Better. Now, we've got much to discuss. For starters, where are your so called friends now?"
"Crabbe and Goyle," said Draco, "I ordered them to fight off the little Gryffindor twerps."
"I didn't ask that, Draco! Listen to me," Snape replied. "NOW? Where are they now?"
Draco shook his head. "I don't know. They haven't tried to contact me, ever since you kidnapped me, imprisoned me in the forsaken cave."
"Kidnap? You ungracious, thick-headed boy! I saved your life. If I hadn't brought you here, then you surely would be in Azkaban right now."
"I'd rather be there with my father than here," whispered Draco to himself.
"Your father isn't there," said Snape sneeringly. "Now, I'll show you I only have good intentions toward you, Draco. I'll loosen your chains in exchange for your silence."
Draco's legs were bound to the dirt ground below. Although he was standing, Draco could not move more than a few feet all around him. He looked at Severus Snape with bloodshot, watery blue eyes. He knew it was time.
"No."
"Excuse me?"
"No. I, I won't stay silent."
"Think about what you're saying, Draco," said Snape as he grabbed the boy's shoulders tightly. "If you dare speak a word to anyone who finds you, the Dark Lord will know. You're as good as dead."
"I'm dead to him anyway! You even admitted that! No, I'm not doing this anymore." Draco was shaking terribly, as if someone had jinxed his legs to dance. "All last year, you encouraged me, made me think what I was doing was right… that I just needed to be careful, take my time. You just wanted all the glory to yourself! Now you've got it. I'm not your, nor the Dark Lord's, puppet anymore! I'M NOT EVIL!" Again, Draco wept, but these tears were different. They were not full of sorrow but of rage and redemption.
"I see you've made your decision," Snape said coolly. "Unfortunately for you, I disagree with it."
Snape turned around, raised his wand, and then without even giving Draco the time to say another word or attempt to defend himself, Snape spun around and shouted,
"Petrificus Totalus!"
Draco stood temporarily frozen. His mouth was wide open, as if he were going to try to protect himself.
"Now, let's see if the spiders want to play."
Surrounding both Snape and Draco were a den of hundreds, perhaps thousands of humungous hairy spiders. Black diamond eyes glittered from every wall and cavern- candles did not light the room at all, but tarantulas eyes instead, and seemed to be moving closer every second.
They were in a lair which had belonged to the late Aragog. With his death, his children turned to the dark side and having little fresh meat in the forest, were quite hungry.
Draco, although literally petrified, could still see the spiders scurrying toward his body. Snape said something softly to himself, and then within a second, apparated into thin dark air.
XXX
"Any word of the whereabouts of Severus or Mister Malfoy?"
"I'm afraid not," the painting replied.
"How am I supposed to ensure the health and safety of my students, when a killer is on the loose?" McGonagall said as she walked in circles inside her new office.
"Hogwarts remained open when Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban," the painting reminded her.
"But he wasn't a killer!"
"You didn't know that at the time, Minerva."
A man spoke to McGonagall through an oil painting. He was tall and stood next to a safari scene with lions, beige sands and whisking fire weeds.
"You do have a point," she said, still pacing around her beat up rug. "But things were different then. Dementors guarded the school. Extra security measures were taken."
"And why not do the same?"
"What? Have a dementors check in every student? No," she said. "I never liked them around. Thought it was a terrible idea. I've already made my decision. Hogwarts will remain open, but I must consider new defenses."
"Isn't that what Defense for the Dark Arts is for?"
McGonagall shuddered. "Oh dear, I forgot! Severus taught them last year, taught every spell he wretchedly knew to the students. HE knows exactly what they know and how to use that against them! This is much worse than I had ever imagined!"
She fell into a large velvet chair behind her desk and sulked. She thought desperately and frantically how she could possibly find more security within a few short summer months. If young Draco Malfoy could allow dozens of Death Eaters into Hogwarts fairly easily, by just fixing an object, then anybody could do the same in the following year.
There was only one thing that could ever put Headmistress McGonagall at ease. If the source of the terror was put to an end, then there would be nothing to worry about. Harry Potter had to defeat Lord Voldemort as quickly as wizardly possible or else Hogwarts may never be safe again.
"Should Harry speak with you?" McGonagall asked the painting.
"I don't think that would be a very wise idea. Voldemort, although weakened, will still retain the abilities he had before. Allowing Harry to led him here to my whereabouts would be disastrous."
"But it isn't fair!" cried McGonagall. "Just seeing you would give him all the confidence he needs!"
"I'm afraid it would give him all the vengeance he doesn't need as well. He must not abandon love for such an awfully lower emotion."
McGonagall stared off into the distance, as if imagining what Harry was doing at that very moment. "I believe that with his most cherished loved ones gone, and all quite terribly at the hands of HIM, vengeance will go side by side with love."
"If that is the case, Minerva, then Harry will most certainly die."