Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or ideas which you recognise as being from JK Rowling's Harry Potter series or any other trademarked or copyrighted work. The plot of this story is my own, but I have no intention of making any money from it.

Chapter 8

Draco immediately found himself alone – he looked wildly around to find that Harry and the others had begun to walk purposefully through the crowd, blending in with the many faces. He followed suit, beginning to head towards the large edifice, somewhat like the Eiffel tower, which he saw in the distance. Though why anyone would paint the Eiffel tower red and white, ruining its aesthetic beauty...

He was still ruminating on this when he felt a green spell whoosh past his ear. Spinning on the spot, he saw a character in a Death Eater mask firing haphazardly into the crowd, clearly aiming at random and not minding who he hit. Around Draco, people were collapsing to the floor, and vanishing as soon as they touched it, only to be replaced by more and more charm-generated extras. He began shooting his own spells at the attacker.

As soon as the first stunner grazed past the masked man's ear, he turned at began concentrating all his fire on Draco. Hurriedly raising a shield, the blonde threw hex after hex, trying desperately to keep the upper hand. He shot a stunner, which rebounded against the shield, but followed it up immediately with a slicing hex which made it through, injuring the death eater enough that he dropped to the floor. With a flick of his wand, Draco incarcerated him in heavy chains, then began to move slowly forward, wand out.

To his left, MacMillan was fighting two burly death eaters. As Draco watched, he was hit by a blue flash of light and fell to the ground, where he vanished into thin air. Before they noticed him, Draco shot two stunners at the attackers, and they, too disappeared.

Ignoring the sounds of battle which surrounded him, Draco broke into a jog as he continued up the wide, but crowded, street. He would never admit this to them, of course, but this was quite some charms work on the part of Harry and Granger. It really did feel real, especially when...

He ducked the flash of green light which had just missed his ear, and shot a sectumsempra randomly behind him without looking. The extremely realistic cry of pain and the vanishing death eater on the floor made him pause, slightly, and give himself a slight grin and mental pat on the back. Suddenly realising, however, that had this been a real battle, such pauses were probably not a good idea, he turned back to his goal.

The tall tower at the end of the road was surrounded by a circle of Death Eaters. Draco surveyed them warily, calculating the best way to get past them. Surely the fact that they were massed there suggested that Voldie must be hiding in the tower... it suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea if anyone else had 'survived' to this point, but that there would be no way to get through the defences alone. He looked round.

A shock of red hair indicated that Weasley had made it – he was ducking into one of the little shops which lined the side of the road. The crowd appeared largely unaffected by the battle. People still streamed past like some kind of human treacle. Fighting his way against this tide, Draco followed Weasley in.

Inside the little shop were Harry, Weasley, Granger and Abbott. They all looked slightly mussed and out of breath, even the professional athletes. Harry's hair was even more ridiculous than usual.

"Draco, so nice of you to join us," Harry shot him a grin.

"Well, Potter, if you wanted to keep me out you should have made this thing more dangerous, it was almost too easy." Draco allowed himself a smirk, displaying a confidence he was not sure he felt.

Abbott tapped her foot. "Shall we get moving? I'd quite like to be out of here in time not to miss my train."

Granger. "You're right, we can get Malfoy's views on the simulation later. Harry, what do you think about the situation?"

Harry pushed his glasses up his nose. "Well, Flobberworm's clearly in the tower. I say that Hermione, Hannah and Draco all attack the ring of Ice-cream eaters from different directions. If you can keep them occupied for a bit, Ron and I will try and push through, then run up the stairs to get to Flobbers at the top. We're not sure who else got through, so we may as well do our best with just the five of us."

There were a series of nods.

"Right." Granger had on that irritating commanding voice again. "I'll go round and attack from the north, Hannah, head from the east. Malfoy, stay here with Harry and Ron, and attack from the south. Boys, when the distraction begins, head from here to the main entrance which is about ten metres to the west of here. We'll start our attacks simultaneously in precisely three minutes time."

Without waiting for confirmation, she ducked out the doorway, swiftly followed by Abbott. The three remaining men in the room looked at each other.

There was an awkward silence.

"Well," said Harry with false joviality. "This is nice."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Indeed."

Rond grunted and turned away. Draco wondered suddenly if he'd been more discomfited by the sudden kiss earlier than he had let on. He still wasn't sure quite what had prompted that. It had just seemed the right thing to do at the time. And a discomfited Weasel wasn't exactly a bad thing.

He shrugged, and headed for the door when Harry announced, looking at his watch, "T minus thirty seconds."

Taking out his wand, Draco prepared for battle.

"Five... four... three... two... one... Go, Draco!"

Shooting stunners almost faster than he could think them, Draco began felling the Death Eaters who stood guard at the base of the tower. They were not expecting him, and it took them a couple of seconds to get their shields up, by which time he had already felled three.

When they did start duelling back, it took all Draco's strength to keep up a shield and attack at the same time. Thinking on his feet, he grabbed a rather large gentleman from the crowd who happened to be walking past, and began to use him as a shield. This seemed to work rather effectively, through he noted that the man was too light. Had this been a real situation, it would have been impossible to lift him.

He saw Harry and Weasley make a break for the main doors, through the gap which between them, he, Abbot and Granger had cleared. Abbott had somehow moved across him, so he saw out of the corner of his eye as she fell to the ground and vanished. The Death Eater she had been fighting took a potshot at Harry, but it missed and hit Weasley instead, who vanished immediately.

Harry was still running to the doors. Noting that a way was now clear for him, Draco decided to screw the plan, and followed him in.

Harry was already up several flights of stairs by the time Draco caught up. His sides felt like they were splitting under the strain of so much physical exercise.

"Can't... use... stairs... too... obvious..." he managed to gasp out, as they continued at a more sedate pace to the higher levels.

Harry raised an eyebrow. Despite the running up four flights of stairs, he looked only a little winded. His green eyes were shining, as though he was enjoying the exertion. That bloody... athlete. Draco scowled inwardly.

"So what do you suggest, o ye of little breath?"

Draco allowed the scowl to show on his face at the sarcastic moniker. He looked up. They were only two floors from the top of the building, where the bastard and his minions were surely waiting. Perhaps...

He smirked at Harry. "How's your upside down magic?"

He was gratified at Harry's confused expression. "Upside down? What the-"

Mustering all his remaining strength and magic, Draco flicked his wand at his friend, and shouted "Levicorpus!" Harry was grabbed as if by one ankle, and levitated rapidly through the hole in the ceiling the the floor above. The last thing Draco saw before Harry tapped himself on the head with his wand and disappeared was the scowl. "I'm totally going to get you for this, Ferret-boy!"

Draco smirked, and sat down on the top step to get his breath back.

A few minutes later, he noted that he was no longer sitting on a step, but instead on something altogether more soft. The room was a veritable cavern, about forty metres square. The walls were painted a dull grey, matching the carpet on which he found himself sprawled.

Granger was standing with her wand out, in a duelling stance, a few metres away. Seeming to notice that there was no-one left to fight, she flopped onto the floor next him.

Harry and Longbottom were both at the other side of the room. They walked over to join the others. Draco raised an eyebrow at Harry, who shrugged.

"Thanks to your... unconventional... tactics, I managed to hit Flobberworm and take him out. Whilst upside down." He shook his head. "Not that I ever want to try that again, all the blood rushing to my head..."

Draco smirked, but was too tired to make the obvious innuendo. Harry, seeming to understand regardless, flushed slightly.

"Wow, Neville, you were great!" Bones said, as she and the remainder of the group appeared from a small doorway in one wall.

He blushed. "Thanks."

Bones explained to the others. "He was trapped in one of those little shops, fighting off four of them! He would have won, too, except that Harry killed Flobberworm."

Noting Draco's slightly confused face, Abbott added. "Those of us who 'died' before the practice ended saw everything from above. Also, as soon as the Flobberworm dies, everything vanishes, as you will have noticed."

He rolled his eyes in mute agreement.

Despite her posture, Granger's tone of voice was typically energetic as soon as she got her breath back. "What did you think of the illusions, Draco? I was thinking, maybe some more complex game plans for next time, and that some improvements to the animation charm on the bodies in the crowd could be-"

Before the rant could set in, he interrupted. "They're too light. I lifted up a two-hundred pound man without effort. Maybe some variation on a summoning charm towards the floor, proportional to mass?"

She raised her eyebrows, seeming rather surprised at the fact that he actually had a brain. Prejudiced Mudblood. The irony of the thought was not lost on Draco, who made a point of always knowing his own mind.

Granger was still talking. "That's a good idea Draco... it would involve charming each kilo of generated mass separately, though which is hard... maybe we could build it in to the activation charms..."

He raised a hand to cut her off. "Look, you're the genius here. I just have the ideas. Integrate it into the charms yourself!"

Instead of looking askance at his brusque manner, Granger gave one of her beaming smiles. "You think I'm a genius? Thank you, Draco."

Draco stared incredulously. Was she being... friendly? This was a turn-up for the books. No one was friendly to him! Supercilious, smarmy, or subservient yes, depending on Death Eater rank, but not friendly. Even Harry had gone directly from barely disguised hostility to almost-flirty banter, do not pass Alohamora, do not collect 200 Galleons.

Harry coughed. "When you two have quite finished the love-fest, could we please get on with the debrief so I can kick you all out of my house and get to sleep before the big game tomorrow?"

His over-exaggerated pout piqued Draco. "Feeling jealous? Don't worry, I have eyes only for you, my dearest Harrykins."

The assembled company groaned, and Harry rolled his eyes. Draco smirked. Business as usual, then.

Author's Note:

Apologies for the delay in posting this chapter... RL got in the way! There should be more frequent updates from now on, though this was the limit of what was pre-written when I started the story. Another ten points to the house of your choosing for anyone who gets the reference in Draco's last thought.