A/N: Thank you for the wonderful response so far! Please enjoy this penultimate instalment.
CHAPTER XI
It was, Hermione realised, no wonder the Order had been so completely taken by surprise. The Death Eaters' attack was fierce, swift and from all angles.
She and Draco used the library doorway for shelter, shooting off spells then drawing sharply back as their attackers returned fire.
Hermione pressed her back to the wall. She could hear the shatter of glass, the crash of furniture, a cry from Molly in the kitchen. For a moment, her heart juddered in panic, but then Mrs Weasley yelled again, followed swiftly by a floor-rocking explosion, and she realised it was just the older woman's battle cry.
Give them hell, Molly, she thought with vindictive pleasure.
On the other side of the door frame, Draco recoiled with a sharp hiss of pain.
"Did I hit you, sweetie?" Bellatrix mocked from the hallway. "Did I hurt you?"
He gritted his teeth, breathing heavily, and clamped a hand across his bicep.
"You hit?" Hermione asked, a little out of breath herself. He grimaced.
"Yeah."
"Draco," Bellatrix crooned. She sounded closer, so Hermione whipped a curse around the door. It sizzled as the older witch batted it aside.
"Remus!" Hermione cried, and across the hall, from behind the living room door, the wizard released a barrage of spells. Bellatrix let out a screech of outrage and turned on him, hissing and spitting like a wild cat. It gave Hermione the opportunity to dart across the doorway.
"Is it bad?" There was blood seeping right through his jumper. "Dammit," she cursed, catching his sleeve. "Dammit. Let me look."
He tried to tug away.
"It's fine."
It really wasn't. His jaw was clenched in pain.
"Poor little Draco." Bellatrix's voice drifted through the open door. "Does it hurt, darling? It's the least you deserve for what you did to Cissy."
Draco's head jerked at the mention of his mother.
"The Dark Lord was furious," the witch sing-songed. There was a loud crack as she blocked another of Remus's curses, and her voice grew shrill with sudden rage. "You betrayed him!" she screamed and Draco flinched. "You betrayed your blood! And my sister paid the price!"
Draco inhaled a shaky breath. He'd gone so pale, and Hermione didn't know whether it was loss of blood—Merlin, it was everywhere—or the thought of his mother and what Voldemort had done to her…
"Don't listen," she said urgently, lifting a hand to his chest. "Draco, don't listen to her."
But Bellatrix didn't stop.
"Did I hurt you, Draco?" she crooned again. "Are you bleeding like Mummy did when we punished her?" Her voice was getting closer, low and sickly sweet like syrup. "She didn't scream at all, you know. Not once. And he tortured her for hours."
He flinched again, pain and guilt written plainly across his face, and Hermione realised that if Bellatrix rounded that door, he wouldn't be able to defend himself. Might not even want to.
"Draco," she whispered. "We need to move."
He was breathing harshly, his chest rising rapidly beneath her fingers, but let her tug him along the wall. She could hear fighting in the kitchen still, so she steered him swiftly across the room towards the study. They would be safer there, in a room with just one door to defend.
She didn't know where Remus was. She hoped he hadn't been hurt—or worse. She hoped no one had.
"Granger!" Draco grabbed her with sudden and bruising force. He took her down, hard, and the next thing she knew, she was on her back, shielded by his body as a blast of blistering red light struck the wall above them.
His face had dropped into her neck, and with it went Hermione's stomach.
No. Not again.
"Draco!" She grabbed his shoulder in panic. "Draco?!"
A moment drawn long and tense, where Hermione thought she might burst with terror, but then he reared up over her, and relief washed over her like a wave.
"You okay?" he asked, searching her face with frantic eyes. She pressed a palm to his blood-soaked shoulder.
"Are you?"
"Oh look," Bellatrix cackled from the doorway. "The little Mudblood's playing nurse."
With a vicious cry, she whipped another spell their way. Still on her back, Hermione blocked it with a hasty charm, then Draco dragged her by the leg behind the sofa.
She sat up, heart pounding, as she glanced wildly around for an escape route.
They needed to get out of here, and fast. She should have expected it—had been stupid not to—but Bellatrix had set her sights on her nephew. He had betrayed the Dark Lord. He had humiliated his family. He had, no matter how unintentionally, caused his mother to be tortured.
And his mad aunt wasn't the sort of person to let a crime like that go unpunished.
"Poor Cissy," she said, and for the briefest moment, sounded truly sad for her sister. But then she was stomping across the room towards them, screeching her fury. "Shame she spawned such a coward!"
Her next curse blasted the bookcase behind them. Books, paper, ornaments exploded everywhere as she fired again and again and again, until finally, and with an almighty groan, the entire cupboard came toppling down.
Hermione flung her arms over her head—a weak attempt, certainly, in the face of eight foot of solid wood—but the crushing blow never came. With a loud crash, the cabinet came to a juddering stop, wood splintering, books raining down all around them.
A moment of silence, then Bellatrix let out a shrill peal of laughter.
"Whoops-a-daisy."
Hermione peeked out from beneath her arms to find the bookcase lodged on the back of the sofa, barely a foot above her head.
Her breath shuddered through her chest. Merlin. She'd thought it was the end.
"Granger?" Draco panted from beside her. He caught her arm, then brought his hand up to briefly cup her face. "Okay?" When she nodded, a little dazedly, he gestured for her to follow him. "Come on."
She did so, dragging herself to her knees and crawling carefully over the scattered shards of broken china and fractured wood.
"I'm coming to get you, Draco," Bellatrix sang, voice getting louder with every step. "You and your Mudblood girlfriend."
Hermione heard the witch draw closer, heels crunching on the carnage, and felt her heart speed up in fear.
They were running out of time. This was her last chance, her last loop, and she was running out of time.
"I think I'll kill her first," Bellatrix mused, and she sounded close. Too close. Hermione twisted sharply back towards the sound, her wand out, her heart pounding. She was well aware of how vulnerable she was, trapped on the ground beneath the bookshelf, no way up or down.
"Shall I make you watch, Draco baby?" Bellatrix crooned, and her razor-sharp boots stopped in plain sight. "Shall I make you watch her die?"
Behind her, Draco wriggled free. His arms went around her middle at the exact moment the witch crouched, black lace pooling on the ground around her, a maniacal grin on her face.
"Gotcha!" she crowed, launching herself towards them.
And Hermione saw her chance.
"Evanesco!" she cried, and with a muted pop, the sofa vanished into thin air. Draco hauled her backwards, and not a moment too soon: with nothing to hold it up, the bookcase fell. Bellatrix's eyes widened briefly, but then she was gone, the cupboard crashing to the ground on top of her.
Silence, as she and Draco stared, stock still on the floor, breathless. Was... was she...?
But then the witch started screaming.
"Get me out!" she screeched. "You'll regret this, you stupid Mudblood bitch! Get me out!"
"You keep your hands off her!" Remus burst through the door, wand drawn, ready for battle. Then he stopped, short, mouth dropping open as he took in the scene.
The fallen bookcase. The shocked look on Hermione's and Draco's faces. The notorious witch kicking and screaming beneath several hundred pounds of solid oak.
And then he started laughing. Loudly. Uninhibitedly. And as the sound echoed off the rafters, Hermione felt a weight lift from her shoulders. She leant back into Draco's warm wide chest and smiled as he tightened his arms around her.
It was done. It was over.
"Oh Merlin," Remus said after a minute. "I can't tell you how much I needed to see that."
"Get me out, you stupid dog!" Bellatrix howled. "I'll kill you. I'll kill you all!"
"Quiet," he ordered, moving round the sofa to where she lay, pinned liked the Wicked Witch of the East beneath Dorothy's house. He eyed Hermione and Draco, still sat together on the floor, in concern. "Are you two alright?"
"I'm okay," Hermione said as Malfoy stood and helped her to her feet, "but Draco's hurt."
He gave a one-shouldered shrug, a hand pressed to his wound.
"I'm fine," he said, although the pool of blood had spread right across his chest. "It's just a graze."
"I'll do more than graze you next time, you treacherous little weasel!" Bellatrix screeched, punctuating her threat with several kicks of her legs.
"There will be no next time," Remus said severely, then vanished the cupboard from atop her. "Petrificus totalus," he cursed when she instantly lunged for her fallen wand, and Bellatrix slammed back to the ground, her whole body rigid.
"Is everything all right in here?" The door banged as Molly hurried into the room, closely followed by Arthur and George. At the sight of them, dust and plaster in their hair but otherwise unharmed, Hermione felt her breath whoosh through her lungs.
Everyone was well and accounted for. They were safe. It was over.
"Are you going to kill me?" Bellatrix sneered through her jammed teeth. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she fought the curse, lips curled, body twitching, but her eyes, black and glittering like onyx, were fixed unerringly on Draco. "Are you going to Crucio me? That's what we did to Mummy."
"Incarcerous," Remus said blandly, and the witch hissed and bared her teeth, all twitching ceasing as ropes lashed themselves tightly around her.
"She's your sister." Draco's voice was as dark as her eyes, hot with anger, but Bellatrix simply smirked.
"I do whatever the Dark Lord asks of me." Her lips stretched wide and thin and wet with blood. "Whatever he asks."
"Where's your wand?" Remus asked sharply, eyes searching the floor. Bellatrix laughed once, wild and cruel, and all the hairs on the back of Hermione's neck bristled with a terrifying moment of premonition.
"And he asked me to kill you!" she screamed, ropes gone, spell broken in an instant, and lunged towards Draco.
The curse was fast and white hot, and Hermione had time for just one lucid thought.
My turn, Malfoy.
The words rang clear in her mind, and then she hurled herself in front of him.
...
A/N: Another cliffhanger - sorry! Stay tuned for the final chapter.
EDIT: Reading back through, I have decided that Remus would hardly leave Bellatrix conscious and unbound, given how dangerous she is, and have adjusted the ending of this chapter accordingly. I figured Bellatrix could break an Incarcerous, even a Petrificus Totalus, if she had to.