Next chapter! Special thanks to ariadne0318, LovelyAshes, harrypottergeekychick16, EmoPrincess21, InsaniumArtisan, FreeSpiritSeeker and snapplexo for the reviews, I really appreciate you taking the time to leave feedback :) I have made up a few OCs but the rest of this all belongs to JK Rowling. Hope you like this chapter!
Before Draco knew it, the Easter holidays were upon him and his NEWTs loomed ever closer. He spent every waking moment studying – usually with Hermione in the Room of Requirement – and he went to bed each night with Charms principles, Potions ingredients and Transfiguration incantations swimming around his brain. It seemed that the anonymous letter writer was beginning to panic, too; since the holidays had started Draco had only received one letter, which had simply spat ink at him and smoked feebly when he tried to pick it up. Draco supposed that whoever sent it was far too busy studying to put more effort into their curses.
The Dark Mark was still burning on his arm.
He was bandaging it every day now, because even the slightest little movement – even something as small as the sleeve of his robes brushing against it – could set off a stabbing pain that flared all the way up to his shoulder. He'd tried adding Essence of Murklap to the bandages, but it had not worked – clearly, the Mark was too well-cast to be affected by it.
The Death Eater was still trying to call him.
He would never know when it was going to happen, but every few weeks a blinding pain would sear along his arms and the edges of a dark forest would appear in his mind's eye. It was an unfamiliar, brutal place, where the trees thinned out onto an enormous, rocky slope, but that was all he ever saw of the place.
He thought at first it was Yaxley trying to call him – he had always been a brutal, vengeful man. But a few weeks ago Yaxley had been arrested and sentenced to life in Azkaban. He'd gone after Remus Lupin's son, along with Fenrir Greyback and Dolohov, but the old Order members – many of whom were now Aurors – had stopped him. Dolohov had been killed – and gruesomely so, if the rumours were true – but Greyback had escaped and was still at large, and there ended Draco's list of suspects. As a werewolf, Greyback had never been given the Dark Mark – Voldemort had not considered him worthy of it – and so, he would have no way of contacting Draco. He was the only supporter of Voldemort still at large, even though he had never technically been a Death Eater, and Draco was fairly certain that the forest he was seeing was not part of Azkaban.
Draco placed a hand on his left forearm. Even through the bandages, he could still feel the Dark Mark burning.
Who on Earth could be contacting him?
Draco and Hermione were in Greenhouse Seven, keeping a wary distance from a Venomous Tentacula. Draco's month of detention had long since finished, but he had carried on helping in the greenhouses anyway. It was, he reminded himself, an excellent way of studying Herbology.
He watched as Hermione tucked a stray curl behind her ear. She turned and smiled at him, pulling on her dragon-hide gloves. Her brown eyes were shining.
Yes, he thought, it was an excellent way of studying Herbology.
"Look here," Hermione was saying, pointing at the mass of green, spiky leaves, "you'll need to be able to tell if the leaves are healthy enough to be used in potion-making. If they're good, they'll be nice and fat, with sharp ridges along the sides, and about the size of a –"
He had a split second's warning.
There was a strange, rushing sound. The plants at the west end of the greenhouse quivered away from the wall and Draco felt his stomach twist in fear. Something was coming...
Then, the greenhouse exploded.
The glass in all the frames shattered, bursting outwards as though they had been hit by a bomb. The greenhouse was split into huge glass shards, flying in all direction, and Hermione looked up, and raised her wand, just as a piece of glass sharper than a blade plummeted towards the back of her neck…
Draco lunged for her. He threw his arms around her and forced her to the ground, rolling off into one of the flowerbeds. The piece of glass flew into the ground and stuck there, gleaming wickedly, on the exact spot where Hermione had been standing seconds before.
"Are you all –"
Her eyes widened. She pointed her wand somewhere behind his back and yelled "Protego!"
At once, a protective shield sprang into being above their heads, and Draco felt a strange ripple of energy as something hit it.
He turned around.
A glass shard the size and shape of a guillotine blade was hovering a few inches above his back. It was pointing right at him, and he knew with absolute certainty that if Hermione hadn't acted when she did, he would have been sliced in half.
He turned to her.
He was almost lying on top of her, her face just inches from his. She was incredibly pale, her eyes wide with fear, and he could feel her trembling underneath him.
"You're shaking," he whispered.
She swallowed nervously. "Well, the greenhouse just exploded."
He let out a hollow laugh. "Are you all right? You didn't get hit?"
She shook her head. "Are you?"
"I think so. What happened?"
"I don't know."
Glass rained down all around them, bouncing off Hermione's Shield Charm. She was staring up at him, her eyes still wide and frightened, but she was looking at him as though she had never seen him before. The look in her eyes – frightened, yes, but there was something else there, something he could not place – scared him in a way he couldn't begin to understand.
"Hermione? Hermione!"
Someone was calling, and Draco could hear someone's frantic footsteps running towards them. The last pieces of glass clattered to the floor, Hermione released her Shield Charm, and Draco felt someone tugging on his arm and hauling him upright. It was a skinny little Gryffindor prefect with curly hair, and as he helped Hermione up he looked at Draco as if he was a murderer.
"Are you OK, Hermione? He didn't hurt you?"
Hermione stared at him.
"What did you say, Lysander?"
The prefect – Lysander – pointed at Draco and spoke in a slow, calm voice. "Did he hurt you, Hermione?"
Hermione swelled like a bullfrog.
"Are you asking me if the man who saved my life tried to kill me?" she said, in a dangerously quiet voice.
"Well…I…"
"I don't believe it!" she yelled, "do you know what has just happened? A greenhouse has just exploded on my head! I was almost sliced in half and he," she yelled, jabbing her finger in Draco's direction, "just pushed me out of the way! He was almost killed! So no, Lysander, he did not try to hurt me, and if you speak to me in that calm voice ever again I will jinx your fingers together!"
Lysander and Draco both stared at her. She was so angry that her face was white and she was shaking all over. For a split second, she glared at them both, and then her knees gave way and she collapsed into the flowerbed, trembling violently.
Draco glanced at Lysander. "Does that usually happen?"
Lysander shook his head. His cheeks were almost scarlet, and he placed a hand on Hermione's forehead. "I think she's going into shock. We'll have to get her to the hospital wing."
Draco nodded, and scooped Hermione up in his arms. She was still shaking, and as he picked her up she jabbed a finger in his chest.
"Don't you ever do that again," she murmured, her words slurred.
He smiled at her. "Don't be ridiculous, Granger."