I'm afraid to say that I'm officially putting this story on hiatus for a while (though it's already been on hiatus for a long time). I will probably continue eventually, but for now I'm working on something else that's taking up my time. It will be grand, it will be fantastic!—and it's been in the works for four years now and is almost ready to be published. But Smeghead, if you're still reading—this is for you.

Chapter 15: Vonyella Malfoy

Hermione woke up slowly, dreading what she was going to find. The last night was a blur of anger and she wasn't sure she wanted to remember what had happened. She recalled Draco kissing another girl. And dancing…

"You're awake," his voice said softly. "The elves brought food."

What he handed her was a blueberry muffin. It brought back memories of standing on a rooftop with him, thanking him for a laugh. She remembered when he'd protected her from his father. Images of Draco, lying pale on the bed while he requested that she leave his side to get him blueberry muffins flooded her mind. How cruel that he could remind her of times when she didn't hate him simply by handing her a muffin.

"Thank you," she said finally.

Then he handed her a cup of tea, and she remembered him distracting her during a storm. It seemed impossible to believe that she had been intending to leave today.

But he had kissed another girl.

And he had kissed her.

Hermione frowned while she chewed her muffin, suddenly confused and unsure.

Malfoy put the tray of food in the middle of the bed then stretched out on the other side. "It's a long story," he warned her. "Are you ready?"

She wanted to say no, but in the end nodded.

He sighed, then plunged into his tale. "I was not born an only child. In fact, I shouldn't be the Malfoy heir at all. My older sister should have the title, but…" he stopped, couldn't find the words. "Bugger, you're going to think I'm crazy." Draco ran his hands through his hair. "This is all her fault.

"My sister is the most powerful witch in the world. More powerful than Dumbledore was, more powerful than Grindelwald, probably as powerful as Merlin was, maybe more. No one knows that she exists. Oh, I suspect Dumbledore had an idea, but he never spoke to me about it and I doubt he ever figured out where she was. When Mum and Dad wanted her to join the Death Eaters she vanished, and took away everyone's memories of her.

"Merlin, you must think I'm crazy," he said. Malfoy refused to look at her, probably because he thought she would reject him. She would have, his story was ridiculous. "I'm serious, though. My sister, Vonyella, is that powerful. She erased herself from the memory of everyone except me. Any record of her life vanished, and she went into the forest to live by herself. She is a Seer—kind of. She dreams true, which was why she refused to join the Death Eaters. She saw…things…" he tried to muffle a shudder, but she saw.

"That was when she was ten, before she had time to start school or anything. The Dark Lord wouldn't normally let people join the Death Eaters that young, but my sister was special. She would have become his right hand immediately. He would have actually given her Aunt Bella's place." Draco shook his head. "I can't imagine any of this means anything to you."

"Not really."

"My sister has lived alone, without human contact besides me, for ten years now. Even so, she is the most powerful witch of our age. Even more powerful than you. I think she can help destroy the Horcruxes. I didn't tell you that I was going to get her though, because I was worried that she would say no, refuse to have any part in this. She hasn't left the safety of her forest in ten years, why should she now?"

Hermione was confused. "Are you trying to tell me that I saw you kissing your sister last night? Because I'm not going to believe that," she said dubiously. "And how can a person that powerful hide from the whole wizarding community?"

"It's because she's that powerful, Granger." He paused, "And yes, you saw her kissing me. It's something she does, with her magic. She gets mad at me every time I ask her to explain, but I gather that when she kisses someone she…for her, it's sort of like legilimency, but more powerful than that. When my sister kisses someone she can see what they've done and what they've felt. She can see their entire past and many of their futures."

He could see the suspicion in her face. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but I'm being serious here. Imagine if you were never told that people write with their hands and you had to figure out how to do it on your own. Perhaps you would end up writing with your feet, or with the quill clenched between your teeth. She left before she got her Hogwarts letter. There's been no one to teach her the 'proper' way to do magic, so she does it all her own way.

"Besides that, she doesn't understand…social boundaries. It's unnerving when she does that, and impossible to separate yourself from it until she draws away. I'm more surprised she didn't kiss you." Malfoy shook his head, brushed the hair back from his face and added, "And I think she was trying to see how you would react."

"I see," Hermione said slowly, even though she didn't.

He seemed to see the distrust in her eyes, because he got off the bed and said, "Come, you should meet her. You'll see."

As they walked down the halls, Hermione asked, "If she left when she was ten, that means she never went to school, right?"

"Right…"

"So how does she manage to control her magic?" She remembered how it was before she got her Hogwarts letter, things flying into her hands uncontrollably, a shattered vase that she'd knocked over repairing itself. Hermione couldn't imagine being able to control her abilities without her wand and the incantations.

Malfoy laughed. "She doesn't, not always." He looked at her sidelong, his expression hardening when he saw the doubt on her face. "You didn't grow up as a Malfoy, you wouldn't understand. She can handle herself."

That prickled at Hermione's ire, and she opened her mouth to shoot back an angry response when there was a sudden whoosh of air and suddenly she and Malfoy stood in the room where she had seen him kiss the other girl last night. The girl with white-blond hair sat on the floor in front of the fireplace calmly, stroking the head of her wolf. "Ellie, I told you to stop doing that," Malfoy said angrily, taking a step towards her.

"You were taking too long," she said simply, scratching the wolf's neck as it stood up. She rose to her feet gracefully and turned to greet them. Now that Hermione saw her again, she could see the Malfoy characteristics on her face and she thought that maybe Draco had been telling the truth.

Malfoy scratched his head in frustration, then said, "Vonyella, this is Hermione."

"We met," she said coolly. "This is the witch you think is better than me?"

"Come on, Ellie, I didn't say that," he growled.

She smirked in the exact same way Malfoy did. "But you meant it."

His cheeks flushed pink, and he said, "She's better at controlling herself."

Vonyella's smirk vanished, replaced with a scowl Hermione had seen all too often on Malfoy. That was the moment when she decided that she believed his story about her being his sister, but with her belief came her certainty that she could never be with him. He simply wasn't right for her. Hermione was lost in her thoughts when Malfoy reached out and touched her arm. His face showed some slight concern; she pulled her arm away from him and said, "Sorry, what?"

"Weren't you listening?" he asked in surprise.

"No…" she said slowly. "Why?"

Malfoy turned back to his sister. "Don't you dare, Ellie."

She smirked once more. "I challenged you to a duel," she said.

Malfoy scowled, and Hermione frowned. "I don't have a wand," she said.

"What?" Draco asked, swinging around to stare at her.

"The Death Eaters took it from me, I never got it back," Hermione said. "I haven't done magic since—"

His eyes, as silver as the knife, his smirk as the blade slid through her skin…

The next thing Hermione knew, she was lying in bed in a room she had grown familiar with. She could almost feel the Vigoratius Stone helping to heal her wounds, and thought bitterly that it couldn't heal the emotional scars. "I'm sorry," Vonyella said sadly from the foot of the bed. "I didn't mean to bring up such memories."

Hermione shuddered and drew the blankets up to her chin, keeping her back to the Malfoy. She had been fine for days, not realizing that she had shielded herself in a bubble, forcing herself to forget what had happened to her. Yet now the bubble was gone, and she felt nauseated, weak and uncertain. "If I may…" Hermione felt the bed move as Vonyella got up.

The blonde witch walked to the other side of the bed where Hermione had to look at her and shoved something into her palm; Hermione's fingers curled reflexively around it. She opened her hand and saw an oval shaped locket. Curious, she opened it up, but there was nothing inside. Vonyella knelt on the floor beside the bed, putting her face at Hermione's level. "This won't hurt," she promised, and placed cold fingertips to Hermione's temples, then leaned up to kiss her.

An intense calm filled Hermione. The world stopped. She was drowning. Flowers were blooming…

Hermione saw herself sitting on a blanket on a grassy bank, watching as children gamboled in the shallow river below her. She was grinning broadly and laughing as Harry, Ron, and Draco played with the children. Draco tossed a blonde girl high in the air and caught her as she squealed with delight. Ron's two redheaded boys were wrestling with him, trying to dunk him under the water. Harry, a shy girl half-hiding behind his leg, hailed her. "Hermione!" he yelled, "Come on!"

She smiled and shook her head, and Harry knelt down to whisper to his daughter. Her shyness vanished as she grinned and went to help Ron's sons. Draco seemed to catch on and put down his daughter to play with the other children and he and Harry shared a look. Hermione shot to her feet, groaning, "No!" as the boys started up the embankment towards her.

Hermione ran, laughing, until they caught her at last and dragged her down towards the water, ignoring her protests that she was wearing a new sundress. The children, all four of them, immediately converged upon her, and she was soon as wet and muddy as the rest of them.

That was when the scene went cold. Everyone stopped their playing, and the three boys shoved Hermione and the children behind them. "Run," Harry said desperately. Draco gave her a stricken look, and Ron was making sure his boys knew to listen to Hermione. Her three boys…she couldn't leave them…but one look at the face of Harry's shy daughter made up her mind.

The Death Eaters were coming into view, too many to count. None of them stood a chance, but Hermione had to at least try to get the children to safety…

"Hermione! Bloody hell…fuck! Ellie, what did you do to her?"

Malfoy's face was looking down on her, showing the same stricken look she had just witnessed in the vision. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"I—I think so," she said. She could feel her body trembling. "What was that?" she addressed Vonyella, who was sitting wearily in a chair.

"An accident," Vonyella said raggedly.

"No, I mean—"

"It's nothing but a possibility, Hermione," Vonyella told her gently. As Hermione watched, the color came back into the young woman's cheeks, and with it came a mask of indifference. "Here," she handed her the oval locket.

"What's this?" Hermione asked.

"It…" Ellie paused. "It's your feelings." Hermione's heart hammered in her chest and she looked at the locket with wide eyes. Where before the surface had been smooth, a dragon was now etched on one side. "No, not all of them," Vonyella reassured her. "Just the ones connected to…recent events. When you're ready to deal with them, all you need to do is break the locket. They will come back slowly, after that. At a pace you can handle." Hermione twisted the chain of the locket between her fingers and the oval rotated slowly to show the dragon's tail wrapped around a dagger on the back of it. She shuddered, but Ellie was right…all her feelings about that night were gone. She remembered everything, but the images didn't bring revulsion and terror anymore.

"Thank you," she said softly, looping the locket around her neck.

"If that's all you did, then why was she having a seizure, Ellie?" Malfoy demanded. Hermione had forgotten that he was there.

"She triggered a vision," Ellie said dismissively. "She wasn't ready for it and neither was I."

Malfoy's mouth was an angry white line, but at last he exhaled and shook his head. "Don't let it happen again."

Vonyella looked at Hermione, considering, but didn't respond. Hermione was still shaking, but was slowly calming down. "Does it mean we won't win?" she asked Ellie quietly.

With utter certainty, Ellie said, "It will never happen. You won't give up until the Dark Lord is dead. Ignore it." Her gaze turned to her brother and she cocked her head to the side. "Your daughter was beautiful," she commented. "I've never seen her before."

"Daughter?" he asked, his voice catching in his throat. Hermione looked at him questioningly, but an expression of indifference fell over his features before she could figure out what he felt.

"Anyway, we should go take care of those Horcruxes," Ellie said, rising from the chair.

Malfoy stood up and offered Hermione his hand. She took it reluctantly and he helped her to her feet. He tried to catch her eye but she looked away and instead followed Vonyella to the hall. Malfoy tried to ask her something, but she pretended not to hear and began to walk back to the rest of the house when she stopped suddenly. "Aren't only Malfoys allowed to walk down this hall?"

Draco coughed discreetly behind her, but Vonyella kept going, calling over her shoulder, "You're not walking in the hall."

Hermione looked down at the ground, her knees suddenly turning to water as she realized she was walking almost a foot off the floor. It had been fine when she didn't know she wasn't walking on solid ground, but now she was incredibly nervous, and wondered what would happen to her if Ellie's spell broke and what if she was too heavy for the invisible surface and what if…

Numb with fear, she was actually relieved when she felt Malfoy cautiously wrap his arms around her and pick her up. He carried her to the end of the hall, while Ellie looked on curiously. None of them spoke of it while they walked to the library.

"Hermione!" Ron yelled when she walked into the library. She smiled uncertainly at him, remembering his two sons. Harry stood behind Ron, a somewhat guilty look on his face, but he grinned when he saw her. "Where have you been?" Harry asked.

Hermione shook her head with a shrug. Images of the children flashed in front of her eyes, and she couldn't help but sneak a glance at each of the boys from under her lashes. Had any of the children been hers? Certainly Harry's wasn't, but…she stopped herself from thinking any further. Vonyella had said the vision would not come true, so it would be best not to dwell upon it.

Ellie glided smoothly over to the table in the center of the library, where the two Horcruxes sat ominously. Her skin was even paler than usual, and she stood staring at the innocuous objects. "Who's she?" Ron retorted.

"My sister," Malfoy replied coolly, moving to stand beside her. "Do you have a problem with that, Weasley?"

Ron looked suspicious. "You're an only child."

Malfoy smirked at him but didn't answer. Quite abruptly, Ellie closed her eyes, the room wiggled (there was no other way to describe it) and the two Malfoys vanished.

"What was that?" Harry gasped, alarmed.

Hermione was holding onto the table to steady herself and murmured, "She's very powerful, and apparently doesn't always have control of her powers. I'm sure they will be back. In the meantime…" she cast a significant look at the stacks of books on the table and sat, pulling one towards her to continue studying. Ron and Harry groaned but followed suit. They tried to ask her about Vonyella, but it was difficult to answer their questions, as she knew very little herself.

Draco was silent when he and Ellie appeared in her room, but he knew that she could feel his anger. "I've asked you to stop doing that," he growled at last, when the silence grew prolonged.

"I won't get in the middle of this," Ellie said firmly.

"What do you mean?"

"I will help, this time, because I'm already here, but I can't help bring down Lord Voldemort. Any other Horcruxes, you five will have to find a way to destroy them on your own."

"Five?"

"I meant four," she said exasperatedly.

Draco ran his hands through his hair and gave Ellie an assessing look. "All right," he said at last. "Are we going back now?"

Ellie smirked at him. "Just one last thing, dear brother. What exactly are you playing at?"

He stilled, and made sure to show no emotion as he politely asked, "What do you mean, Ellie?"

Her smirk widened. "I saw your thoughts last night, Draco. Very strange ideas you have in there. What is your ultimate goal?"

"To keep the four people that actually give a damn about me alive through all this," he said honestly. "Through any means possible."

"Be careful you don't presume too much," Ellie cautioned him.

Draco scowled. "What is that supposed to mean?"

The look of knowing in her eyes chilled him to his bones. "Do you not know of all the horrors that go on outside of the precious little world you have built?" When he said nothing she examined her fingernails, then added, "Besides, more than four people care about you. Perhaps you should have said the only four people you care about."

He winced. The reminder that so few people inspired his trust and loyalty bit deep, as it always had. Through years at school watching people make friends, giving their trust and loyalty as easily as they received it from others, Draco had always wondered what was wrong with him that he could not find it in himself to give his friends the same honors they bestowed upon him.

Ellie moved forward and placed a small kiss on the corner of his mouth, then the world swam once more and they were back in the library. He turned quickly so that the Golden Trio could not see the unease on his face and calmed himself before turning back and approaching the table where Ellie stood. The Horcruxes sat on the table before her, and as he watched she reached out to touch one and recoiled as if burned.

Draco walked towards his sister and put a hand to her shoulder. He himself had not touched the Horcruxes yet, since Harry kept them in his trunk. She looked at him nervously and then took a deep breath and held a hand out toward the Horcruxes, close enough to feel the weave of the spell, but not so close as to touch them. Curious, Draco did the same.

It was as he expected. The spell felt dark, and muffled like velvet, with the heavy stickiness of a blood price. A shiver ran down his back before he could stop it, and he reached closer to the Horcrux, trying to figure out how to unravel the spell. The spell was tight, as binding spells often were, but a few frayed edges trailed off…the cup was wrought much better than Ravenclaw's seal was, so he guessed the seal was the earlier artifact.

"What are they—"

Hermione shushed Weasley, and the room filled with silence once more. Ellie leaned over and sniffed at Potter. "I need your help moving this," she said, pointing at the cup. The blonde blinked, and a ripple passed through the room. Suddenly there was an annex directly behind where Hermione was standing. "Take it over there," Vonyella demanded.

Potter slowly moved to execute her orders, and she turned to the wolf beside her. "My chalk," she told him. "And the ashes and the dust, please," then she placed her hand on his head and the creature was gone with a crack.

Once the cup was in the new part of the room, Ellie walked around it a few times. Then, "Flip it up-side-down." Potter obliged, and she nodded. A flash of grey entered the room, and when it stopped beside Ellie it became the damned wolf again. Merlin, but he hated those things. Why Ellie kept those abominations around was beyond him.

The wolf had two drawstring pouches in its mouth, as well as a white hunk of chalk. Ellie put the chalk and one of the bags on the table and then took the other bag and opened it up then paused, looking curiously at the cup. "Pick it up," she told Potter. He did so, and she threw a generous amount of dust from the bag under the cup. Indicating that he should put the cup back down, she then shooed Potter away and filled the dip in the base with dust.

Ellie stopped and looked at everything, then reached back into the bag and began laying out the dust in tight spiraling patterns around it. When she finished, she carefully leaned over and dumped the rest of the bag out on top of the cup. She held out her hand and the wolf retrieved her chalk and dropped it into her palm. Ellie frowned at everything she had done and then began making new lines in chalk between and through the spirals. Snapping her fingers, the chalk changed color, and she drew in new things, expanding outward from the cup's position.

Draco had never been privy to so much of Ellie's before, and he watched curiously, trying to feel the weave of what she was putting together. Potter and Weasley had dropped into chairs and were staring dubiously at the whole affair while Hermione leaned against a table and watched in fascination. Draco went to lean against the table next to her. She didn't even look up at him.

In a three foot radius around the cup, Ellie drew a circle to contain all of the drawings she had made. She spat at one point in the circle, retrieving the bag she had emptied and scraping out a final bit of dust to put in the spot of saliva. Clicking her tongue to change the color of the chalk, she began working a second circle around the contained area with the second bag the wolf had brought.

Vonyella worked thusly for some time. It was hard to Draco to figure out what she was doing. He could usually feel spells, it was something that he'd practiced from a young age, but Ellie's unusual methods made it almost impossible. What he did know was that the bags her wolf had brought were dark and heavy with death. He was pretty the dust was ground-up bones and the ashes were the remains of some creature's flesh. What type of creature, he didn't even want to ask.

"What is she doing?" Hermione asked, finally glancing at him. Ellie had drawn a second circle six feet out from the cup, containing everything she had drawn to that point. She spat in the circle as she had before, exactly in line with the other spot and the cup, then poured the last of the ashes onto her saliva.

"You are asking the wrong person," Draco chuckled. That brought a small smile to her face and his shoulders relaxed a little. He hadn't realized how much tension he was carrying in them until that moment. Ellie snapped her fingers, changing the color of the chalk, and drew two more circles around the whole thing. Standing, she set the chalk on the ground and then wiped her hands on her clothes. Approaching Draco, she leaned against the table next to him.

"Death to counter death, unravelling to unbind, bright to oppose the dark...and yet I'm missing something."

"After all that, it's not enough?" Draco asked. Hermione had cocked her head to the side, listening to their conversation curiously.

"I'm missing something..." Ellie made a soft noise and fixed her eyes on Potter, then wafted over to him and bent over to kiss him. "I need your blood," she announced as she pulled away.

"What?" he asked stupidly. Weasley was glaring at Ellie, who didn't even notice.

"If you want me to destroy it, I need your blood. The man who made that cup attempted to kill you and failed and now you're the only one who can kill him. You do understand what a Horcrux is, right? By destroying this, we kill a piece of his soul and it needs to be done by you. Therefore, I need your blood. Draco, if you would, a knife and bowl from the kitchen while I fix this." She picked her chalk back up and went over to the spell on the floor.

Draco left to get the items she requested and when he came back, Ellie had erased the outermost two circles. Without ado, Harry took the offered knife and drew it across his palm. "How much do you need?" he asked, holding the bleeding hand over the cup.

"For both of them?" Draco's sister paused. "A cup or so. If you fill the bowl halfway we should be fine."

"I don't like this," Weasley grumbled.

Hermione moved to lean against the table next to him. "We don't have much choice, we don't know of any other way to do it," Hermione pointed out. "Plus, it makes sense. The prophecy says only Harry can kill him."

"Yeah, but Dumbledore did the ring without Harry's blood," Ron whispered back.

"Dumbledore was a very practiced and conventional wizard. And old. And you saw what it did to his hand to do it, it wasn't like it was an easy thing for him. She's not asking for a lot of blood, and I say if Ellie can destroy these two for us with only that much, it's worth it. Harry seems to agree."

"Blood is powerful," Weasley muttered. "I don't like the thought of Harry bleeding for anyone."

Draco was inclined to agree, but he knew his sister...sort of. He was reasonably sure she wouldn't do anything bad with Potter's blood, she may at most violate his privacy through it. When she was done, he would make sure he got rid of the rest of Potter's blood before she could get her hands on it. Hermione would probably blame him for any harm that came to Potter because of his sister. If only he could make her understand.

Now armed with Potter's blood, Ellie outlined the outer circle in blood, then picked up her chalk, drew a new circle outside of the blood, ringed that circle in Potter's blood, and finally chalked in a thick circle around the whole thing. In each circle she drew except the last, she spat, still in line with the other spots of saliva, this time mixing Potter's blood into her spit. Stepping back, she wiped her hands on her clothes again, leaving bloody smears.

Tearing a small strip off her shirt, she used it as a barrier between her skin and Ravenclaw's seal as she picked it up off the table. Her complexion greyed a little at even that much proximity to the object, but she returned to her drawing gracefully. "Ready?" she asked the room, though her back was to everyone.

Before anyone could answer, Ellie tossed the seal into the circle and brought her hands together with a sharp clap!

Lightning forked out of nowhere to strike the Horcruxes and the room exploded with light as it hit. Draco could hear an unbearable shrieking as well as the electric clash of lightning as another bolt landed in Ellie's circle. Heat was emanating from the place where Ellie had performed her magic in ever-hotter waves and Draco knew lightning was still coming. Over the deafening noise in the room, Draco couldn't tell if the shrieking was still there, but he worried that it may have been Hermione.

He blundered in the direction she had been, hoping against hope that she was safe. When he finally touched her arm he felt her shaking, and quickly swept her up into his arms, putting his body between her and whatever Ellie had unleashed. Draco put both his hands firmly over Hermione's ears and she buried her face in his chest and wrapped her arms around, him holding tight.

Draco tucked Hermione's head under his chin and shut his eyes against the storm in the room. His back felt like it was on fire from the magic behind him, but it hardly mattered. He was just relieved Hermione was safe.

Being with you,

Is so dysfunctional.

I really shouldn't miss you,

But I can't let you go.

–Kelly Clarkson, "My Life Would Suck Without You"