A/N: Thank you all for the positive feedback! Here's a dark and action-packed chapter!

Chapter 10

.o.o.o.o.o.

Draco sent his owl to Potter the night before Christmas Eve.

The potion is ready.

D. Malfoy

He received a response the following morning.

Bring it to the safe house. Kreacher will take you there.

Harry Potter

Draco charmed a shoulder bag to expand and packed the entire cauldron inside. He then destroyed all evidence that he'd ever been brewing Polyjuice Potion at the manor. It was a class 2 restricted substance, after all, and it was technically a violation of his probation to brew or consume it.

He felt a strange sense of Deja Vu when Kreacher apparated him to a doorstep of a house in the middle of muggle London. It was an old building that had fallen into disrepair, but it was somehow familiar. When the houses began to shift aside to reveal a hidden, wizarding residence Draco realized that he had been to the house before when he was very, very young.

Fifteen years ago to the day, he remembered holding his mother's hand on this same doorstep. He'd been dressed in his finest, Yule clothing with his baby blonde hair slicked back for the first time. He'd cried, frightened, at the noise and the surprise of the moving houses.

"It's alright, dear," his mother had coaxed, "This is your Great Auntie Walburga's house. She can't wait to meet you. She may even have some presents for you."

She'd had a mountain of presents for him, in fact. But she'd been a very sad woman- dead behind the eyes. Now, it made sense to Draco, knowing she'd lost both of her sons in quick succession. One to the Dark Lord and one to a life sentence in Azkaban. She, herself, died only two years after that Christmas. Bitter, old, and alone, with all the family money but no worthy heir, she'd been living a pure-blood witch's worst nightmare.

Draco creaked open the door to a dark interior, wondering why Potter hadn't come to greet him. The walls of the foyer were bare and dusty with the wallpaper peeling, but in front of him hung one, large portrait.

"Oh my! Draco, child, is that you?" the portrait spoke to him. Old Walberga had worn the Black features well, even at her age. She was classy and well-groomed though she was depicted in dark mourning attire. She appeared to have tears in her eyes as she stared at him. "You are a sight for sore eyes, you beautiful, angelic boy. Come here and let me look at you."

Draco did as she asked, preening just the smallest bit under her praise.

"Wonderful! Wonderful! You've grown up so well. Such a noble and respectable pure-blood wizard. Your mother must be so proud. Please, make yourself at home. I'm so embarrassed at the state of this place. Those muggle-loving blood traitors stole everything they could get their filthy hands on. Scum not fit for the bottom of my-" A curtain suddenly flew over the portrait, cutting off Walberga's rant mid-sentence.

Draco's eyes flicked over to the staircase, where Potter was standing upon the second floor landing. He was bare-chested, evidently just having emerged from the shower. He was looking somewhat amused as he leaned over the railing with his wand in his hand.

"I've never heard her so delighted," Potter commented, "She usually just screams at people as they come in."

"Seeing as your lot counts house-elves and giants as people, I can't say I blame her," Draco retorted. Potter narrowed his eyes. He straightened to full height, and Draco quickly glanced away before he could stare too long at the droplets of water running down the muscular ripples of his chest.

"You can take your dear auntie with you when you go. She may actually unstick herself from the wall for you," Potter said, "Bring the cauldron up here. I have everything else ready."

A few minutes later, he and Potter were standing before the bubbling cauldron. Draco examined the hair in his hand and the set of female clothing laid out before him.

"Granger?" Draco sniffed, "Really, Potter?"

"What's wrong with Hermione?" Potter growled warningly. Draco knew better than to answer that.

"Give me Weasley's," he said, reaching for the ginger hair in Potter's hand.

"Back off, Malfoy. This was my part of the job. You'll wear whatever face I give you and be happy about it. If you really want to know why I decided to give you Hermione, it's because I'm too stupid and clumsy to be convincing as her, alright?"

Draco huffed, annoyed but also slightly mollified. He supposed he didn't have any room to complain. All of his own former ministry contacts were either dead or in Azkaban. It wasn't as if he could afford to be choosy.

They both put their hairs into their glasses. Draco's potion turned a warm beige color while Potter's turned a bright red. Essence of Granger was foul to say the least. He immediately lost several inches of height and his clothes became baggy around his shoulders. A frizzy nest of hair grew from his head and his sharp features became smoother and more feminine.

Both he and Potter turned their backs to one another and began to change. Seeing as neither one of them was in their own bodies, there wasn't much to feel self-conscious about. Draco slung his magically expanded bag over his shoulder. They then made their way back down the stairs to the floo, where Potter stopped and handed Draco his hawthorn wand with the grip out.

"Follow my lead, Malfoy, and don't be difficult."

The swirling fires of the floo enveloped them and spat them out again in the atrium of the ministry. The first thing that Draco noticed was that it was eerily quiet. There was none of the usual hustle and bustle that came with a normal work day. There appeared to only be a skeleton staff. A wizard was polishing the dark floor. A single auror in a red robe was standing guard near the visitor's entrance. He gave Potter, now with Weasley's appearance, a stiff nod when he saw him.

They walked with single-minded purpose toward the lifts. Draco was familiar with all the main areas of the ministry. He'd shadowed his father many times while the man had been attempting to buy members of the Wizenagamot, or when he was trying to push through a law that might benefit the Malfoy name and fortune. His father had never, however, allowed Draco inside the Department of Mysteries.

"Curb your curiosity Draco. There are projects going on down in the Department of Mysteries that are so horrible, so terrifying, that even the Dark Lord's necessary culling of muggles and mudbloods would seem tame in comparison," Lucius had once admonished a younger and more petulant Draco.

"Then why does the ministry hate the Dark Lord so much, if they're doing worse things?" Thirteen year old Draco had asked.

"Because if the average, insipid, muggle-loving sod has somewhere to direct his hate, he won't bother to notice what his own ministry is doing right under his nose."

The lift clanked down, down, down, and the disorientation Draco felt caused bile to rise in his throat. He put his hand on the wall and closed his eyes so as not to be sick. The small space also caused him to become hyperaware of his proximity to Potter. It had been some time now since they'd last touched one another, and the magic between them had built up like static waiting to be released.

The lift came to a stop and a cool voice announced their arrival at the Department of Mysteries. The door sprang open and Potter led the way into the deserted hall. Draco followed him, nearly unable to keep up with his longer stride. The door at the end of the enfilade was Potter's destination. He walked with the surety of someone who'd been here many times before. Behind the first door was a circular room that was nearly pitch black and contained many other doors. Only the glowing lights upon the wall allowed them to see anything. Before Potter shut them inside, he turned around and marked the door they'd just come through with a fire spell. Draco was puzzled for a moment before Potter shut the door and urged Draco into the center. The walls around them began to spin, making it so that they'd never be able to tell the door they'd come through if Potter hadn't marked it.

"I'm guessing one of these doors must lead to the main offices of the Unspeakables, but last time I was here, I did not find it." Potter said as he approached the door in front of him. He opened it to reveal a room full of stars and planets. "The Space Chamber," he said to Draco, before quickly marking it and shutting it again. The room began another spin cycle.

"The Time Room," he announced at the next one before shutting that one too.

"The Death Chamber." Draco got a glimpse of a large amphitheater with a stone archway before Potter shut the door frustratedly and continued the process. Waiting for the spinning to cease after every wrong guess was eating up a lot of their time. They only had one hour, and as they continued to try door after door with no luck, Draco was beginning to feel nervous. They'd discussed bringing extra potion, but in the end had decided that getting caught with Polyjuice was as good as announcing that they were imposters.

Potter threw open the next door and went very still. Draco tried to see past Weasley's tall frame, but only saw a sliver of the room before them. It was covered in grass and wildflowers. The ceiling was enchanted to look like the sky on a lazy, summer day. A fountain was bubbling in the center. Draco caught a whiff of something sweet-smelling. He inhaled again and was immediately hit with a sense of peace and nostalgia, as if the scent had brought up all the fondest memories of his childhood. This, Draco knew, was the sensation caused by smelling Amortentia.

"Potter, I don't think this is where we want to be," Draco warned in a hushed voice.

"I wasn't able to open this door last time," Potter said dazedly, "Let's go in, just for a second." Sensing danger, Draco reached in front of Potter and shut the door forcefully. He marked it the same way he'd seen the other man do it. Potter staggered back as the walls began spinning again.

"Thanks, Malfoy," he breathed, coming back to his senses. Draco didn't respond. He was already focused on what door ought to be tried next. There were, thankfully, only a few left. When the spinning stopped, he jerked open the one he'd been eying and was relieved to find it leading into a very long corridor with more doors lining both sides of the hall.

"This one!" Draco exclaimed. Beyond the threshold, the temperature dropped several degrees. It was like a dungeon, with the walls, floor and ceiling made of rough stone. Once shut inside, Draco could hear faint noises echoing. Someone in one of the rooms toward the front was playing Celestina Warbeck. Her muffled lyrics managed to reach Draco's ears.

They say that I'm a bad witch, and I know that it's true.

You're always so good, and I'm nothing like you

You'll come dry my eyes, the next I'm feeling blue

Oh, baby, how I wish I knew

What makes you think I'm so special…

The doors were solid iron with nameplates on them and there must have been hundreds of them. "Surely there aren't this many Unspeakables…" Draco whispered. He and Potter began to walk down the corridor, passing "Greengrass, Gareth," "O'Brien, Liam," and "Croaker, Saul." The next one had an interesting change. "Bode, Broderick," and beneath the name, burned into the metal was the single word, "Archived."

"I get it," Harry said quietly, "They just keep adding to the corridor every time there is a new Unspeakable. They don't give away any of the workspaces of the dead or unemployed ones in case they need to continue the work that was started in there."

Sure enough, as they walked further along, they began to see more and more doors labeled as "Archived." Draco expected that if they went far enough, all of the doors would become that way, with all of the previous owners long dead.

Many of the doors were ordinary, with nothing upon them but a name. However, sometimes they had notes and warnings posted. One warned that an Impervious Charm was needed to enter, with what looked like a corrosive liquid leaking out from underneath it. Another was wet and covered in barnacles with a warning that the Bubblehead Charm was required. A third door forbade entry during the full moon, and Draco thought he could hear growling and snarling coming from within. Another had a sign with a DMLE letterhead that read, "Unforgivables authorized beyond this point."

The door that Draco sought was further in than he expected, but he knew it even before he could read the name. It was decorated with a crucifix and there were words below it, looking to have been drawn in blood.

Heaven's Vault, it read.

There were no, additional, ominous warnings, but the door was covered in blast and scorch marks. The handle had been entirely dismantled and there were scratches and slashes. It appeared that the ministry had been attempting to break in, throwing every spell at it that they knew, with no success.

"Potter, wait!" Draco hissed, as he noticed, too late, that the other man was reaching for the door. Potter's fingers made contact and he was thrown violently backward into the opposite wall. Fortunately, this did not make an overly loud noise and nor did it seem to injure Potter much. He promptly picked himself up.

"We're running out of time, Malfoy. My vision is going," Potter gasped, having had the breath knocked out of him. He reached into his pocket and stuffed his round spectacles onto Weasley's perpetually dumbfounded face. It was then that Draco noticed that the bushy hair hanging in his field of vision was starting to turn from brown to blonde.

They'd come so far already and Draco felt that he couldn't turn back now that he was this close. He faced the door, heart pounding, and held out his own hand.

A spell greeted him like an invisible, slimy tentacle. It slithered its way up his body, coiling around his arm, then his torso, and then his hips, legs, and neck. Draco had to bite his lip so that he wouldn't let any panicked noises escape while the spell held him in its vice. Nothing happened for a long moment, and Draco got the distinct impression that he was being… tested somehow.

Then, without any warning, it released him and withdrew. The door it had been guarding unlocked itself and slowly creaked open on its hinges. The inside was dark, but suddenly the flame within a lantern flickered to life, illuminating a small section of the space inside. Another followed suit, then another, and another, slowly revealing an ever- enlarging room.

Not so much an office as it was a massive laboratory.

Rookwood's lab was covered in all the same drawings that had decorated his cell in Azkaban. It seemed like they had been etched obsessively, filling every bit of dead space on the walls. Draco could pick out at least three different conjuration circles upon the grimy floor, all slightly different in size and design, but all very similar to the one that had been used upon him at the Lestrange's. There were corkboards all pinned up with sketches, and chalkboards all filled with diagrams of human anatomy. Dusty jars on shelves looked to contain different samples of a red liquid that could only be blood.

Most chilling, though, were the cages. Some were small, looking like they might have once held small rodents. Others were larger, suggesting they might have held dogs or primates. A third set was even larger, and Draco did not want to think about what creature they might have been for.

"Let's go. Grab everything you can get your hands on," said Potter, reminding Draco of their dwindling time. However, as soon as Potter put one foot inside the room, a piercing alarm began to blare.

No…

They both flew into action, now realizing they probably had mere seconds to get what they came for. Draco opened his charmed bag. Potter ran to the boards, pulling down drawings and charts and pointing his wand over to a potions station, causing books and equipment to fly into the bag. There were already voices coming from down the hall. Draco dashed over to the desk. Sitting on top were three, dust-covered folders labeled in roman numerals.

I, II, III.

He shoved them into the bag. When he whirled around, Potter barreled into him. His arms wrapped around Draco in the same instant that he threw an invisibility cloak over their heads and shoved them both beneath the desk. There was a hand over Draco's mouth, and that was fortunate because the sudden surge of magic from being put in contact with Potter was the most intense that it had ever been. It was a whirlwind of a sensation that had Draco wide-eyed and wheezing for breath through his nose.

Two shadows were standing in the hall just beyond the open door.

"Rookwood's door! But how?! No one's been working on it today…"

The alarm cut off abruptly.

"Shall we call the aurors?" the same voice continued after a moment of thick silence. The answer must have been given in something other than words. "What about Croaker? He'll want to know." There was another beat of silence, "Haynesworth! What are you doing?"

"Aren't you the least bit curious to know what sort of secret that old bastard died to protect? I heard they offered him a full pardon and a new identity if he'd just let Croaker and Robards into the room. He chose the dementor instead."

"Best leave it lie. He was a dark wizard- a full on necromancer from the looks of it! And we're only interns."

Apparently, Haynesworth was not as fearful as his fellow intern. He walked boldly into the room, marveling for a moment at the chaotic interior just as Draco and Potter had. He was a young man but his features were entirely obscured. Whatever he'd been working on before he'd been interrupted by the alarm had been requiring him to wear a heavy apron, thick gloves, and a medieval plague mask. His partner stumbled in behind him, dressed similarly.

With the newcomers distracted, Draco and Potter began to crawl silently from out of their hiding spot. It was slow work, for they needed to stay pressed together and doubled over to be able to keep themselves covered by the invisibility cloak. Draco could feel the other man's breath on the back of his neck, and feel the warmth of his chest through their clothes.

He and Potter inched along the wall and rounded one of the rows of cages. Unfortunately the first intern decided to wander over in their direction, and Harry had no choice but to urge them into one of the open cages in order to clear the isle.

Haynesworth made a beeline right for them, and Draco held his breath, wondering for a moment if they'd been seen. When he was only inches away, the intern stopped and crouched down to examine the cage next to the one he and Potter had taken refuge in. He removed the plague mask from over his face to get a better view. Draco noticed that he was barely older than himself.

"Would you look at this!" the man exclaimed quietly, half curious, half disgusted, "I hear it's near impossible to get authorized for human trials. Seems like he just left them to die here once he could no longer come back."

Draco peered over into the next cage against his better judgment. There, curled all the way up against the wall so as to be hardly noticeable, was a human skeleton. With an ugly chill crawling up his spine, Draco felt the need to check behind him, to the shadowed back corner.

Potter's hand was in his hair in an instant, keeping his head straight and preventing him from doing so.

Suddenly, the intern screamed and threw himself back. A skeletal hand had thrust through the bars, and clawed at the air. There was a bang, and the rusted hinges of the cage gave way, allowing the suddenly living corpse to chase down and tackle its prey with inhuman speed. Haynesworth was scrambling and shouting with terror. His screams seemed to have awakened all of the corpses in all of the cages, and soon the unfortunate, young man was being devoured by undead rats, dogs, and humans alike. His shrieks were blood-curdling.

Draco was frozen, unable to take his eyes from the gruesome scene.

"Move! Now!" Potter yelled, abandoning his efforts to remain silent and hidden. He shoved Draco out and away, prompting him to run. Without the invisibility cloak, the Inferi noticed them as well, turning their eyeless sockets toward them before they even finished their meal.

"Pestis Incendium!" Potter yelled. Draco ducked beneath the hot blast of flame, but then Potter was grabbing his wrist again and tugging him toward the exit. More fire erupted behind them as the Fiendfyre Curse began to destroy everything it came in contact with. Smoke and hot ash plumed and slowly narrowed their path.

The second intern had nearly shut the door upon them when Potter thrust his arms into the crack and used Weasley's ape strength to pry it open once again, throwing back the man on the other side. Potter pulled Draco through the door before turning and shutting it himself.

Draco stood over the prone intern, who was cowering and crying, probably believing his death was at hand. Draco held up his hawthorn wand with light glowing from the tip.

"Obliviate."

No further obstacles interrupted their flight from the Department of Mysteries. The spinning room let them through on the first attempt and soon they were hurtling back down the corridor to the lifts. Draco's hair was only chin length now, and it had become sleek rather than bushy. His shoulders were popping the seams and buttons of Granger's blouse. Potter's transformation appeared to be progressing slower. His hair was still red and his Weasley features remained recognizable. Seeing this, Potter threw the invisibility cloak back over Draco once they were in the lifts, but he did not let go of his wrist.

The lift clambered upward and deposited them back upon the main floor of the ministry. It was blessedly silent and empty, the same as when they'd arrived, with no suggestion that the commotion that had been caused far below had reached the notice of anyone on the upper levels.

They stepped into the floo with their bodies still tense and throbbing with magic and exhilaration. Right as the swirling flames began to carry them away, promising to deliver them to safety and end their trial, Potter grabbed his face and claimed his lips.

.o.o.o.o.o.