A/N: Does not belong to me. Please read and review!
"Up! Wake up!" Draco blinked his sleepy eyes open. He scrambled quickly to his feet at Thorin's shout. He made sure that Granger was awake before retracting from her side. Yes, he was majorly pissed off at how she couldn't look past her pride and prejudice and accept that he was a good man, but he had made a promise to Potter, and a Malfoy never broke his word. Yes, they could twist the truth and find a loophole out, but simple requests were the hardest to wriggle out of. Take care of her. It was as simple as it got, and whether he was unable or just unwilling, Draco knew that he would protect Granger, at whatever cost.
His stomach dropped as the floor beneath them vanished and they began to free-fall. They tumbled down into the depths of Merlin-knows-where. Someone was swearing, using language that would have made a sailor proud, until he realized that someone was him. Embarrassed, he clenched his jaw and bit his tongue to avoid screaming like Pansy did when she had accidentally charmed her eyebrows blonde. They fell for a long time until they all crashed one on top of the other, Draco falling on top of the fat ginger dwarf, and the hobbit on him.
Before the group could gather their bearings, a group of slimy, shrieking, rabid, house elf looking things began pulling at them, hauling them to their feet. They pinched and prodded at him, tugging at his hair.
"Get away from my hair!" Draco bellowed at the thing that was currently reaching its filthy hands towards his hair. It screamed and pulled back, but another took its place. The company was herded like cattle across bridges and brought beneath perhaps the ugliest thing Draco had yet to encounter on this quest.
It was sitting upon a crudely crafted throne and jumped down when he noticed the group approaching. It had an abnormally large head with bulging eyes. Its stomach jiggled with every movement it made, its loud footsteps rattling the ground. Draco didn't know whether it was his chin, or a beard made of fat that hung beneath its face. And to top it all off, on top of his head sat a crown. By Merlin's saggy left-this thing was the king!
"Who would be so bold as to enter my kingdom? Spies? Thieves? Assassins?" it wailed.
"Dwarves, your malevolence." One of their captors replied.
"Dwarves?" The king questioned, his eyes flickered to Draco, who stood a great deal taller than the dwarves, and his gaze settled on Granger.
"And what would two humans be doing in the company of dwarves?" he leered at Granger. Draco could see that she was trembling in fear, but she raised her chin bravely and said nothing.
"Very well, if they will not talk, we'll make them squawk!" He yelled. "Start with the woman."
Draco's heart sank into his stomach. He was supposed to protect Granger. He struggled to get to her side, but three more creatures jumped on him, holding him back. He watched as Granger shrank in fear, and was relieved when the dark haired dwarf and his blonde brother stepped in front of her, shielding her from the King.
"Wait!" Thorin bellowed and stepped forward.
"Well, well, well," The King's eyes lit up as he recognized Thorin. "Look who it is. Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King under the mountain." He bowed mockingly to Thorin who clenched his jaw. "Oh, but I'm forgetting you don't have mountain, and you're not a king. Which makes you, nobody really."
Thorin said nothing at the King's degrading comments. "I know someone who would pay a pretty price for you head. Just a head, with nothing attached."
Suspicion flickered in Thorin's eyes as the King continued. "A pale orc. Astride a white warg. You know of whom I speak?"
"Azog the Defiler is no more. He was slain in battle long ago!" Thorin insisted.
"So you think his defiling days are done, do you?"
The King then sent his cackling, deformed scribe to tell this 'Pale Orc' that he had captured Thorin Oakenshield. And if that wasn't enough, the bloody thing began to sing.
"Bones will be shattered, necks will be wrung! You'll be beaten and battered, from racks you'll be hung! You will die down here and never be found, down in the deep of Goblin Town!" He wailed at the top of his lungs.
Goblin Town? Draco wondered. So these were the goblins of this world? He almost preferred the greedy long fingered goblins of earth to these ugly little creatures. A goblin picked up Thorin's sword, and unsheathed part of it before it screeched and backed away as if it had burned him. The Goblin King recoiled back onto his throne.
"I know that sword! It is the Goblin Cleaver! The Biter! The blade that sliced a thousand necks! Slash them! Beat them! Kill them! Kill them all! Cut off his head!"
The three goblins that were holding him back began attacking Draco with renewed vigor. Before he could draw his wand, they had tackled him the muggle way to the ground. There was a flash of white bright light, and the goblins fell off him as if hit by an impedimenta.
"Take up arms," It was Gandalf! "Fight! FIGHT!"
Draco say the dwarves around him get up groggily. He stumbled to his feet and drew his wand from inside his robes. Frantically searching through the piles of bodies, he helped Granger to her feet who was pulling her wand from her beaded back. Unfortunately, as the dwarves revived, so did the goblins. Draco through curse after curse towards the mass of goblins.
"This way!" Gandalf yelled. The company hastily followed after Gandalf.
Draco tugged Granger insistently as they ran after Gandalf who was leading the way. The two cursed, jinxed, and hexed anyone that approached them or the dwarves. Draco felt like he was beginning to get the hang of this constantly running for your lives kind of adventure. It was a whole heck of a lot different than the sort of 'adventures' he had had back home during the war.
Before they could cross a bridge however, the Goblin King climbed up and blocked their way.
"You thought you could escape me?" He swung his giant mace, which knocked Gandalf back a few steps.
"What are you going to do now, wizard?" He taunted Gandalf.
Gandalf then promptly poked the Goblin King in the eye and used his sword to cut open his stomach. Draco shuddered involuntarily. That was just bloody disgusting.
"…That'll do it." The Goblin King nodded before Gandalf cut his throat, and ended his life. He fell forward and the bridge they were standing on creaked and moaned at the added weight, then collapsed.
Draco pushed Hermione towards the dark haired dwarf, Kili, who was standing closer to the center of the falling bridge. Draco clutched onto the first thing he could grab, which happened to be the dwarf with the funny hat and braced himself for the impact of when they would finally hit the bottom of this pit.
The company groaned as they fell to the ground and lay in a heap of splintered wood.
"Well that could've been worse," a dwarf grunted in a semi-optimistic way.
Who ever it was, Draco suspected it to be the one with the weird hat, let out a yell of disbelief and pain as the body of the dead Goblin King promptly fell on top of them.
"You've got to be joking!" they cried out indignantly.
"Gandalf!" Kili called in panic as he helped Granger to her feet. He glanced at the walls of the pit they had fallen down, and thousands of little goblins were quickly making their way down to them.
"Run!" Gandalf yelled.
Draco bolted with the dwarves hot on his heels. They all knew there were too many goblins to possibly fight, so they followed the tunnel, which by some odd stroke of luck did indeed lead to the way out.
They burst out of the mountain into the sunlight and sprinted towards the trees. Draco led the way and brought them deeper into the forest before stopping so Gandalf could take a head count.
"Draco, Oin, Gloin, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, Thorin, Fili, Kili, Hermione, that's twelve. Thirteen, fourteen, Ah! And Bombur, that makes fifteen." Draco, however noticed that they were one short. "Where's Bilbo?" Gandalf looked around as if to see the tiny hobbit was only hiding behind a tree.
"Where is our hobbit?" He asked with more urgency.
The dwarves bickered amongst themselves over who had last seen the hobbit. "Let me tell you where Master Baggins has gone." Thorin began to rant about how Bilbo had thought of nothing but his warm hearth and his books. Draco agreed that Bilbo probably did miss his home quite a bit, but didn't everyone?
"You should not doubt him so, Thorin," Hermione said quietly.
"Why not? He has only ever proved himself incompetent." Thorin fired back at her.
"That is not true!" Hermione talked back. "Who was it that saved you from the trolls? If it wasn't for Bilbo's quick thinking, you would have been long gone. There is much more to Bilbo then meets the eye, and he will prove it, not only to you or this company but to himself as well."
"Enough," Thorin growled at Hermione. "He is long gone."
"No he isn't," Bilbo suddenly appeared from behind a tree.
The dwarves let out cries of shock, but immediately welcomed Bilbo.
"Bilbo Baggins!" Gandalf smiled. "I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life!"
"How ever did you get past the goblins, Bilbo?" The blonde dwarf asked in amazement.
"Well…" Bilbo hesitated and Draco noticed that he slipped something within his pocket. Whatever it was, Draco supposed it was that that helped him escape the goblins virtually unharmed.
"Well, what does it matter?" Gandalf passed the moment off. "He's back now!"
"It matters," Thorin spoke for the first time since Bilbo's unexpected return. "I want to know - why did you come back?"
Bilbo took a deep breath, "Look, I know you doubt me, I know you always have. And you're right... I often think of Bag End. I miss my books, and my armchair, and my garden. See, that's where I belong, that's home. That's why I came back... 'cause you don't have one, a home. It was taken from you. But I will help you take it back if I can."
The dwarves were touched, Draco noted. And, he mused, it seems like Granger was right, yet again. The midget with large hairy feet did have much to prove still.
Alas, that touching moment of reunion and relief was ruined as a howl echoed in the trees.
"Bloody hell," Draco muttered.
"Out of the frying pan," Thorin began.
"And into the fire," Gandalf confirmed. "Run."
Bugger, Draco thought, as they once again sprinted for their lives.