The room was circular with six pillars against the walls. On the section of the walls between every pillar was a brightly illustrated mural, each one displaying something different. A disgusting pot dripping with slime and slugs while bouncing on a copper foot, a large stump with a rabbit peeking out from under it mischievously, a shriveled up heart covered with thick black hair resting in a pool of dark blood, four figures going up a hill to a fountain perched precariously at the top, and the last one of three men each holding an object of their own with a dark figure posed behind them.
Between two of the pillars was not a mural, but five narrow archways, just barely wide enough for one person to slide through. It was here that had most of Draco's attention. He had spent the last couple of minutes going inside each archway to take a look around and find the exit of the room. All of them had a steep spiral staircase that he was only able to take a few dozen steps before realizing that the stairs were apparently endless and he was quickly getting nowhere.
The steps were obviously magic and he knew there were few ways to actually get somewhere with them. There could be a spell to let him go up. There was a simple possibility that only specific people were allowed to use the stairs. Perhaps the steps had a mind of their own and found it funny to give the illusion you weren't going anywhere.
Either way, he had no idea how to go up any of them. Maybe Hermione would know, but a large chunk of him really wanted to make sure she stayed unconscious so that he could get revenge on her for his eye which was slowly beginning to bruise thanks to the book she threw at it. The other chunk told him that he didn't have much choice and she could be the ticket out of there. Draco huffed and looked down at the girl sprawled unceremoniously on the ground. Hopefully she would be just as disoriented as he had been when he'd woken up.
Nervously, as if approaching the body of a deadly animal, he walked to her side and prodded her with his wand. He was prepared to jump away in case she made any sudden movements, but all she did was groan and shift. Draco stiffened and schooled his features to one of extreme indifference. Couldn't have her thinking he was nervous.
"What… Malfoy?" she said softly, staring at him with bleary and innocent eyes as if they hadn't just wrestled like Muggles a few minutes ago. She rubbed them with her fist as he sneered at her questioning tone.
"Who else, Granger? Get up. You better have an explanation for this!"
Her eyes focused and she gave him one of the dirtiest glares he had ever seen. He had a feeling she had never looked at anyone else with such venom. How flattering.
He raised an eyebrow at her expectantly. Licking her lips once, she rolled her eyes away from him to look around the room. Draco noticed her eyes didn't linger on any of the murals. The only reason he could think of as to why they didn't interest her was because they were either unfamiliar to her or she didn't care. After all, it was incredibly unlikely that a Mudblood would recognize the images from popular children's tales.
"Where are we? Are we still in the Room of Requirement?" she asked.
Draco looked around again, annoyed that he hadn't even considered that the room just might have changed while they had been unconscious. "I doubt it, Granger. I certainly didn't want to be trapped in this room alone with you." He thought about it for a while and barely managed to stop himself from shuddering. "Unless that's what you wanted."
She glared at him again and then turned away to nod at the five archways he had been exploring earlier.
"Well, those have to lead somewhere. Have you looked through them yet?"
"I tried going through all of them but they are all endless," said Draco. "Either there's no way out or there's something that has to be done before they open up and let us through."
"Do you know if they all lead to the same place?"
"Of course I don't know. I said they're endless."
Hermione shifted in her spot and then frowned as if she was sitting on something uncomfortable. Her hand went under her and she jerked out a book. They both stared at it, recognizing it immediately as the book that had caused the whole mess in the first place. Draco went to her side as she stood up and snatched it from her hand to open and get a closer look at it.
"It's not going anywhere, Malfoy," Hermione snapped. She jerked one corner of the book towards her. "We can look at it together."
To his annoyance, she had shut the book so that they could get a good look at the cover. It was heavy and colored a dark red. Gold and silver designs decorated the cover so that it framed a metal skull with two jeweled eyes in the center.
Hermione flipped to the first page.
It was blank.
She went two pages further but found nothing written on them either. Draco pulled the book away from her roughly and flipped through all the pages quickly. He tapped a page hard with his wand and said, "Aparecium!" Nothing happened. "It's blank! There's nothing there!" he snarled. He glowered at her. "This is your fault. You should have stayed out of that corridor."
"You shouldn't have followed me!" Hermione shouted back. Draco shoved the book towards her chest. She looked through it again with increasing frustration but there nothing except a few ripped pages at the end so she pocketed it.
"I was assigned to guard the corridor. I was just doing my job and obeying the rules that our headmistress gave us. If you did the same, maybe you wouldn't be getting expelled as soon as we get out of here."
She winced and Draco wondered if she had thought he'd forgotten about his plans for her. There was no way that he was not going to turn her in, especially after this. Her eyes flashed down to the pockets of his robes. He knew she was thinking about making a grab for her wand so he was relieved (not that he would ever admit it aloud) that she didn't do it and instead turned back to look at the stairs again.
"I'll take a look at them," Hermione said, extending her hand in front of her. Draco stared at it as if it were the most repulsive thing he had ever seen. She rolled her eyes. "I need my wand, Malfoy."
He scoffed. "What would you need your wand for?"
"Because then I can reveal anything that's concealed."
"I'm more than capable of casting spells like that."
"Ugh, fine!" Hermione groaned. "Just follow behind me and cast whatever spells I tell you."
His sneer intensified. "You think I haven't tried everything?"
"Malfoy, please, I really just want to get out of here."
"That makes two of us," Draco said. She seemed to take that as his confirmation that he would follow her and follow her he did.
Hermione chose the first stairway on the left and began climbing slowly, examining each step as she passed. Draco did the same, wondering if something different would happen this time. He counted the steps, waiting for them to begin repeating just as they had before.
They didn't.
"There's a light up ahead," Hermione said, surprise in her voice.
Draco stared ahead and saw it as well. He wasn't completely sure of what to think. Somehow he had been wrong about the steps being endless, yet he was sure he had walked through each one for a couple of minutes while the steps kept repeating. He and Hermione had only been walking for less than a minute. Had Hermione's presence really ended the enchantment? He scowled at the simplicity of it.
He hadn't even noticed that they had both stopped to stare at the light. Hermione looked over her shoulder at him as if asking what they should do. Finding the idea of himself making the decisions just as unappealing as having a Mudblood telling him what to do was what made him avert his eyes away from her, leaving Hermione to decide whether or not they should continue.
"I guess you should be prepared to defend us if something bad comes out of this," said Hermione nervously. She didn't look too confident in his ability to use a wand.
He just grunted, not even sure if it was just to let her know he heard her or that he would do as she said.
It took a while for Hermione to begin walking again. Draco stayed behind her, eyes fixed on the light to see if they were actually getting closer or not. Eventually the light grew bright, so bright that Hermione stopped to cover her eyes, causing Draco to bump into her. She turned around and looked at him questioningly but he ignored her, more focused on the light.
The light was moving toward them.
"Granger," he said, stumbling back.
She faced forward again and gasped. The light was approaching them quickly and seemed to be eating the walls and stairs ahead of them. Before they could completely react, they were also enveloped into it.
It was dark. Hermione knew she was awake and standing, but she didn't know where she was. She didn't want to move around too much in fear of bumping into something or falling down.
"Malfoy?" she called.
"Here," he replied from right behind her.
They were both quiet and Hermione could have sworn they were holding their breath as well. Both of them seemed too wary to move.
"It smells like dung," Draco said, breaking the short silence. "Lumos."
When she turned around, a bright light was highlighting the pointed features of Draco's face in a way that almost made him look intimidating. He wasn't looking at her, but instead around at their surroundings. From what she could see, they were in a small room with wooden walls and a dirt floor. What looked like a wooden block with a hole in it was against the wall closest to Draco. Like Draco had said so eloquently, it did smell a lot like dung.
Thanks to the light, Hermione was able to recognize the wall in front of her as an actual door. She cautiously opened it and was pleased to find it led outside. The question of where they were still remained, however, and they had best find out soon because the sun was going down quickly.
She squinted up at the sky where the sun was resting and shining brightly down at her from directly above her. At least the sun had been going down. Either quite some time had passed or they had just been transported somewhere across the world. That would probably be a problem, but not one that would be impossible to rectify.
"Disgusting," Draco grumbled from behind her while extinguishing his wand.
She frowned, snapping out of her thoughts. "What?"
He gestured at the tiny room they had left with his wand. Now that she had a view from the outside, Hermione saw that it had been an outhouse. Draco looked repulsed but otherwise unsurprised of where they exited. The thought that he was familiar with stepping out of toilets to new locations made her want to laugh. It seemed ridiculous, but the fact that this was the wizarding world probably made it not unheard of.
She shook her head to get her mind back on task. They had to find out where they were. The outhouse, to her surprise, was actually just a few feet away from a small house. Further away was a collection of other houses that looked exactly the same and a farmhouse further back. All of the houses were wooden, small and possibly all had no more than two bedrooms. Puffs of dark grey smoke came out of only one chimney a few houses down and would disappear the next second as if a Vanishing spell was cast upon it. As for the other houses, each piece of wood and stone was placed in exactly the same pattern. The yards gave the illusion of being well trimmed, but a few absurdly colored flowers sprouted cartoonishly across them.
To be honest, it all looked like something drawn professionally in a children's book but with a shocking lack of creativity. Hermione had not been too many small villages such as this, but even she knew something was wrong with it.
"What is this?" Draco asked.
"It's a village," she replied, knowing that wasn't exactly what he meant.
Draco snorted at her obvious observation. Without her friends or the rest of the Gryffindors as support, the response hurt a bit more than usual. At least he didn't actually say anything condescending.
"Never mind," Draco said, startling her. Had he noticed something wrong about the village as well? "I would think that it was an all-wizarding village because of how we got here, but that title is reserved solely for Hogsmeade. Even if the buildings are old it's probably a Muggle village."
"It could be a secret village," Hermione said tentatively. She highly doubted it because she's sure there would have been something about it in a book she had read regardless of how secret it was.
"Granger, believe me, if it was an all-wizarding village, I'd know." He preened himself and Hermione wasn't sure if it was intentional or not. "The Malfoy family is full of pure-bloods, there's no way that we wouldn't know about another all-wizarding village."
She scowled at him. "Not many Muggle villages look like this," she said. "Old-fashioned or not, we would have seen a bike or car by now."
"Just because you don't see any doesn't mean it's an all-wizarding village. Some wizards have cars."
Hermione knew that of course, but it was much more likely that they were not in a Muggle village. Perhaps they were somewhere across the world. It could even be a movie set, judging by the way everything looked so set up and that nobody was even outside. Asking for directions seemed to be out of the question so they would probably have to find some kind of sign or map to figure out where they were.
Without a word to Draco, she began walking down the wide path between the houses. It wasn't long before she heard the quick shuffling of robes indicating that Draco was following her. His footsteps were quick at first before he seemed to catch himself and slowed down to a leisurely pace as if to fool her into thinking he was completely calm though Hermione couldn't see why. There was no sign of another living person and the whole area seemed rather dead so it was expected to find this situation quite stressful.
"There is somebody here," Draco said as if reading her mind. She glanced over her shoulder at him. "There's smoke coming from the chimney of that house." He nodded at a house they were approaching.
Before Hermione could suggest knocking on the door to be sure, the door to the house swung open and an old man shuffled out looking tired. His skin was darkly tanned and his hair was white and gray, sticking out in several directions on top of his head so that it looked similar to a bird's nest. He looked up at them and his dull eyes instantly brightened. They watched as he quickly moved toward them and placed a rough hand on Draco's shoulder. The blonde looked horrified at the gesture and immediately stepped back.
"I've been waiting for you, my son," the old man said. Hermione stared between him and the pale Malfoy. How the man could have made a mistake like that was unfathomable.
"Son?" Draco repeated. "Look, old man, you need to see a Healer because I'm sure it's quite obvious we're not related."
The old man sighed as if he had heard this argument over a hundred times before. "We may not see eye to eye but I don't think we should disown one another just yet." His hand thumped down on Draco's shoulder's twice, almost knocking him over. "Come inside, there's something we must discuss."
"Excuse me, sir," Hermione said. "I believe you're mistaken. You see, we're not from around here and we've found ourselves quite lost. Can you tell us where we are?"
The old man appeared not to have heard her and just hobbled back into the house, hand clamped around Draco's wrist as he dragged him inside. The door slammed shut behind them, leaving Hermione alone with her jaw dropped.
Draco pointed his wand at the old man furiously, fully prepared to hex him into next year. He was stunned when the man pulled out his own wand to hover a tea kettle to a table. This was some form of relief to Draco since he now knew that there was a way to make contact with Hogwarts if he was in a magic household.
However, this also meant that the man had to get his minimal amount of respect.
"Sir, what do you want with me?" Draco asked stiffly. "I'm not your son."
The old man pointed his wand at a candle in the middle of the table so that it lit up.
"Sit down," he commanded.
Reluctantly, Draco sat at the table and fiddled with his wand in his hand. "Can you at least tell me where I am?"
He was ignored. At that point, Draco had been expecting it. It was like he was thrown into some weird world where nothing would go as he wanted. The old man was busy doing something with a pot so Draco took the chance to take a quick look around.
On the outside, the small house had actually been quite modest. Inside, however, was another story. Expensive looking fur had been used to fashion carpets and decorations. What looked like real gold and silver was used for simple things such as candleholders, silverware, boxes and mirrors. From what Draco could tell from one look was that there were probably only three rooms in the house. Two of the rooms were bedrooms while what looked like the den and kitchen were merged to form what was undoubtedly the largest room in the house.
"It's time we talk about what you're going to do with your life."
Draco turned back around to raise an eyebrow at the man. "I'm not your son."
"As you know, I'm getting older and my body is beginning to fail me."
"You're confused. I'm not your son. I don't know you. I need to get out of here."
"Gideon, I know you don't like Muggles, but the fact remains that once I die Muggles are the only company you're gonna get."
"Gideon?" Draco clenched his fist in an attempt to keep himself from doing anything rash. No matter what he said the old man seemed to think he was his son and it was beginning to get very annoying. He took a deep breath and glanced toward the door. To his amusement, Hermione was still stranded outside and peeking in at them which was almost enough to make up for the whole misunderstanding. He smirked at her and she glowered.
"Gideon, are you listening?" Draco looked back at the old man and hesitated.
"Uh, yes, father. Of course." He coughed awkwardly. "So… You said something about Muggles… We're the only wizards here?"
"Of course," the old man said. "It is relaxing to be away from so many other magic folk. I can think of no better place to live."
"I can think of plenty," Draco murmured.
He jumped a foot in his seat when the old man's fist slammed down on the table.
"I'm tired of your prejudice, Gideon! Muggles are people too; people that need our help! Every day all I hear from you is how pointless everything I do is! How none of this will benefit us in the future! All you ever think about is yo-yo-your…" The old man clutched his chest with his right hand and his eyes bulged. His lips sputtered like a fish as he tried to form his last words.
Before Draco's eyes the man collapsed onto the floor, dead.