Disclaimer: Please see previous chapters.

Important A/N: If anyone checked my profile you'd see that I decided to make the last chapter, chapter 22, the end of Part II (Hogwarts) in a sudden change in decision. No worries as all will still be explained here. I know thus far transitions haven't been especially clear so look below to see how the story is divided. That being said, thanks so much for your faithful reviews and I hope you like what's in store. Things are about to change… but I promise there is a lot of fun to be had.

Stolen

Part I: Hermione's Trap (Chapters 1-13)

Part II: Hogwarts (Chapters 14-22)

And now… Part III: Christmas

Chapter 23: Change of Scenery

From where he was standing, Draco could see everything on the grounds of his Father's estate. While the view may not be particularly appealing to most of the manor's inhabitants, with the land covered in grey and frost bitten in the absence of any fleecy snow, it was his favorite time of year. As it sat now, everything held a mysterious fog and the frost gave a slight shimmer to all it touched. No harsh light. No sticky sweat. If dismal, it only reflected thing as they really were rather than hide them in shadow, or parade them in color. The world ought to always look like this.

Wrathfully, he kicked the soft green arm chair in his family's tea room. This was so unbelievably, insufferably, unfair! How could this be his destiny? He was supposed to sacrifice everything for the good of his entire family, be their honored scapegoat? Why him? He hated this, absolutely hated it. They wanted too much of him, they all did. She did especially, they way she looked at him, trying to figure him out, wanting to trust him. Who looked at people like that?

Hermione Granger infuriated him with her arrogant brilliance, her high and mighty compassion. On the other hand, he had underestimated her abilities time and time again, but her unexpected strength only made her intimidating and therefore made him wary. She had attacked his mad aunt, attacked him, taken up for him to her friends, and even saved him from being torn apart by wild beasts. Sure, he had saved her life as well, twice. He had to keep the status quo even. The very last thing he needed was another complication, most especially one such as being in Granger's debt.

He slammed his hand forcefully down on the table, shaking the tea tray. A man had needs damnit! If that goodie wanted nothing to do with him, then he had no choice but to find female attention elsewhere. He would get stuck with the only seventh year at Hogwarts who… She had no right to look hurt like she had over the Pansy fiasco, no right to be surprised. What had she expected? Loyalty? To her?

At first, he had thought so little of his new fiancée, but over time she infested his mind until he thought of little else. He wanted to hate her for it, but found it was no longer that simple. He sighed. Such things as simplicity were scarcely more than childhood dreams he now knew. Nothing was simple, not even plain emotions like hate and love. Sometimes they were obvious, like right and wrong, but other times, like with right and wrong, they masqueraded as each other. She was just some clever mudblood, some ridiculous Gryffindor. He could never be expected to love anything of the kind. But, it was also true that he could no longer hate her. Not now that he had been forced to spend so much time with her, had tolerated her company, grown used to her sense of humor, seen her the soft evening light that made her hair have a golden gleam and her skin look so incredibly soft he could barely contain himself.

"Draco!" his mother's voice gently exclaimed, startling him from his thoughts. She crossed the room from the hall door to embrace him and his lonely body relished her distant warmth. "Welcome home."

"Thank you mother." He smiled.

"There's someone who wishes to speak with you as soon as you arrive. I'll send her to you, shall I?" she explained formally.

He nodded, looking instantly embittered. "Come now," Narcissa Malfoy reassured her son. "It won't be too much longer now, will it?"

Again, he attempted a smile, but such thoughts no longer brought the relief they once did. "Let her in."

"Don't forget to tell her that the winter guests will begin arriving tomorrow."

"Yes, mother." Draco answered. He turned again to survey the view. Behind him a door cautiously opened. He found himself closing his eyes. He was hiding his face like a coward again, but he hardly cared. "How have you been?" he asked the figure behind him, his voice steady. A hand gingerly touched his shoulder. He turned around to take in the stunning face of Morrissa Gouge.

Hours later, Draco used a skeleton key to unlock a door on the upper hall. Once again he found himself closing his eyes, preparing himself mentally. As the door opened he was ready for anything but what followed. Hermione pounced on him. He had braced himself for an attack, his body rigid, but this, though it restricted his breathing and pinched his arms, was not an attack. Unless he was very much mistaken this bushy haired little girl was hugging him. Actually hugging him. The nerve.

He blinked in surprise and confusion. "Miss me?" he asked dryly.

"You have no idea." She sighed, laughing at the irony of such a statement. He could not help but raise his eyebrows. She was serious. This muggleborn was off her rocker. This was not at all the welcome he had been expecting considering that the last time he had seen his fiancée her expression had been very different.

It had been during the first of their mid-term exams. He had been seated several tables away, and looked back at her to catch that good luck smile she offered him. If he could just remember that little rhyme she had taught him when they studied the last few days, then he would be able to keep all the Goblin Wars straight. What was it? Oh yes, 'my mother gave me seventy-five knuts…'

As the group groaned and sweated and wept over their History of Magic exam, they were suddenly interrupted by the loud clank of the Great Hall doors being swung open. A mass of ministry officials entered behind Headmaster Snape. Every head turned, every eye locked on the officials, the armed officials. Snape spoke with Binns and Flitwick briefly. The teachers protested quietly, looking concerned. The hall was poised and hushed. Only one quill still audible scribbled across their parchment. Hermione's focus was not broken. Draco would have rolled his eyes if had not known what was about to happen. But really, did they have to do it now? Here? Like this?

Snape cleared his throat and addressed the hall, startling Hermione. Swiftly, Draco pivoted in his seat to face forward again, scowling to himself. He would look ahead or at his paper, he told himself. He would not watch what was about to happen.

"All the muggle-borns will please exit to the back of the room calmly and collectedly. We will have no unreasonable behavior, do I make myself clear?"

A hand was raised.

"Sir, aren't we going to finish our exams first?"

"Absolutely not, this is a matter of the ministry importance and of student safety. You will evacuate immediately. Everyone else will stay seated. The timer is still going." He indicated the hour glass on the podium that would indicate when time ran out for their exam.

Commotion spread across the hall faster than a darting snitch until it was ended by Snape, who said with such force it surprised Draco, "There will be no commotion. There will be no panic. There will no unseemly interruptions. Muggle-borns to the entrance hall, and muggle-borns only. Anyone found guilty of disobedience of this order will be suspended indefinitely and further dealt with by the ministry."

A din of objections and fear rose again. "Silence." Snape snarled. Silence fell.

Those who did not come quietly were drug. Draco mentally prayed Hermione would sense another force here at work, feel the importance, foresee the consequences and just obey, not make a scene. Of course he knew his luck was far too poor to ever allow it and his fiancée too stubborn. Just as he suspected, it wasn't long before he could hear her struggling; hear the officials trying to coax her to come.

"There's a good girl, come along now."

"No, but I'm almost done, just this one more line and I'll-"

"Come along!" That's when he made it, his grand mistake. He was not supposed to look back, eyes forward on his paper as he had told himself. It was the thud of the stick impacting her ribs and the painful oomph she made in response that bid him to look. Immediately, he saw her as she him. From across the sea of confused heads their eyes locked. Hers were pleading.

He was trapped, unable to move, and lost as to what he should do. Interfere and cause problems for the Order and the Death Eaters, or stand by and watch, losing her trust? There was no good choice, nothing he could do that would bring him any sort of benefit, as usual. Like a mouse in the wand light, he was quite literarily caught, unable to move but also unable to look away. He sat frozen, fear shinning in his wide eyes.

"Draco!" she called as they bodily drug her from the hall.

Just let go!' he mentally begged. 'Why do you have to fight everything?'

Her hand wriggled free. She reached for him. His eyes widened in fear. Don't ask him to do that! Don't put him on the spot like that. What should he do? His eyes darted about the room, edged away from Snape's furious glare. They grabbed her arm and made it several meters further before she wriggled free again.

"Draco, help me!"

Then, he saw it. She was crying. Why in bloody hell did she have to do that? Didn't she know how he hated that sight, tears, faces contorted in fear and anguish? Didn't she know the sound of his name being called in that chocked voice made him sick? Without thinking, he leapt forward, running towards her despite cries rising all around. Everything sped by his peripheral vision in a colorful blur. A sharp voice ordered him to stop. He hesitated a foot away. Then he grabbed her hand, tightly. She sighed in relief, smiling tearfully over her large ministry escorts' shoulders. They pulled harder, shoving him off and telling him to be a good lad and sit down. He grabbed to her coat. This time they jerked her away, hitting him hard across the jaw and he fell to the floor as his fiancée disappeared behind the doors.

Quite a few seats empty, the great hall had lapsed into a stunned silence. Draco stood before the doors, wiping his lips and panting.

"Finish your exams," Snape calmly ordered as he left, walking past Draco and grabbing his shoulder. Draco was to accompany the headmaster to his office. When they reached his the stair, the great oaf Hagrid stood outside his stairway. He offered Snape a single nod and he and the headmaster passed by him without hesitation.

"Well done." He commended as Draco took the seat across from him.

"Sir?" Draco asked, puzzled.

"The school has been evacuated of muggle borns as the ministry desired. It is their belief that the previous attacks are Voldermort's attempt to purge the school of them , as he had no doubt led them to believe. Meanwhile, they fear that Sirius Black is nearing Hogwarts and have put their dementor forces within the Forbidden forest. In reality, that is only a very convenient cover of Voldermorts that the ministry is playing directly into. The true reason that the so called evacuation was allowed by me is this and this alone: to serve as a distraction to Voldermort and the ministry alike to smuggle Harry Potter 

from the castle. It has been accomplished. What's more, thanks to you and Miss Granger, the diversion was carried out flawlessly."

"So Hermione was right," he said, mostly to himself. How is it that still surprised him?

"About?" Snape inquired.

"She said Harry falling sick, the nundu, and the dementors were all part of a plan of Voldermort's."

"Explain." He requested.

Recognizing his teacher's stern request as curiosity, he obliged. "She said the nundu was being used as bait. Voldermort knew Harry would investigate if it attacked one of his friends. It was meant to lure him outside to make him susceptible to the dementors. This, at the very least, would weaken him considerably. She said Voldermort must have been close that night for Harry's scar to react so violently. She is certain he must have an informant within the castle, perhaps one of Potter's trusted friends."

"She is very clever, this fiancée of yours."

"Unbearably."

"So she will understand? This explanation will satisfy her curiosity?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"Then I had better send word to her."

"Sir, do you believe the move of Potter away from the vicinity of the dementors will help him?"

"I cannot say at this time. Why do you ask?"

He paused, just a second too long. "Just curious." He answered. Damn. That was not the truth, and Snape feel it. He could sense that much from his former head of house though the man said nothing and his expression was as indecipherable as always. Draco was dismissed.

For the remaining days Draco spent nauseating amounts of time with his old chums. They told the same classless jokes and drank the same pints and whined about the same old problems until he was sick of them. The rest of the time he sulked, unable to study for his exams. Words haunted his would-be happiness. Even from a far that girl could ruin his fun. His thoughts, no matter what else he was doing, drifted back to that fateful conversation he had shared with her when they had left the hospital wing that day.

"The Prophecy!" she had declared in sudden understanding.

"What?" he asked.

From there she had gone into her explanation of the how the nundus were bait to get Harry close to the dementors, to weaken him. But why would Voldermort want to weaken Harry? Perhaps to fight him more easily, Draco had wondered.

"No, I think it has something to do with the prophecy. It said 'neither can live while the other survives'. We assumed, of course, it meant that in the end one would have to kill the other, that they would destroy each other. It means so much more than that!" she whispered urgently. Once confined in their room with several charms cast on the door for good measure, she divulged the secret of the prophecy, the secret Lord Voldermort most dearly wanted.

"So you see, don't you? Their life force and power must be linked. As Harry grew for eleven years, Voldermort was unable to fully regenerate. Harry is so weakened when Voldermort regains strength, and Harry's powers strengthened when Voldermort loses his. That's what made Harry so unusually powerful at such a young age, the loss of Voldermort's powers. Now, he wants to weaken Harry to discourage his opposition and give himself more power. He's biding his time, which means he's up to something. Of course, to know when Harry was outside and make sure the Ministry ordered dementors there that first day he must have both a spy high up in the ministry as well as one close to Harry. Very close." Her expression darkened and she grew quite and pensive.

His eyes were wide, but not with this epiphany. Why had she done that? Didn't she know what a horrible position he had put him in, that he could easily win himself and his family Voldermort's favor by giving him the Prophecy word for word, just as Granger had memorized it? Yet he had not. He told himself he was just bidding his time, saving this information until it was most needed and could perhaps used to perhaps save his life. Yes, that was why. His way he was covered. If Potter's side won, Hermione would vouch for him. But if he had a spy high in the ministry and one close to Potter he had an upper hand they had not known about. There was a good chance things would turn out the other way and he and his family could still come out in good standing. No smirk crawled across his face this time. He may not be smiling but he was not about to join the Potter fan club that was for sure.

After all, what sort of world would there be if Potter won the war? They'd make him a bloody king, worship even more than they did now. Squibs and mudbloods and half breeds and werewolves and probably house elves would infest Hogwarts. He grimaced at the thought, but still he did not speak to a soul about the prophecy. For now at least he had Hermione's trust and therefore the Order's protection, and if the time came that he most desperately needed it, he could win the Dark Lord's favor.

Careful Draco, he told himself, watch were your loyalties lie before trip over them. Merlin, sometimes it was hard to keep things straight and tempting to go astray from the plan. Now, to add to confusion, this nutter of a fiancée of his was hugging him.

"How's Neville? Did they get Harry out alright? What about all the other muggleborns?"

"Whoa, hold on. Let's close this door." With a furtive glance up and down the hall he shut said door. Locking it and putting a silencing charm on, they sat on her bed to discuss the state of things. Without warning, he leapt up, making her give him a queer look.

"Something wrong?" she asked innocently, sickeningly innocent.

"No," he sighed, sitting back down. "I thought you'd be angry…furious actually."

"Why would I be? You tried to save me?"

Why that presumptuous little- "I beg your pardon? I was making a diversion. Besides, with you screaming and crying I couldn't exactly play the honorable boyfriend by sitting dumbly in my chair."

"Oh." She looked so stupid when she was naïve. He smirked, pleased to see her look stupid for a change.

"Well, it's not as if you had anything to do with it, and now that I know it was just a cover to save Harry- Is he alright?"

"Don't know. I couldn't exactly go up to Weasley and ask."

"Right." She sighed.

"But Longbottom is up and at em." He told her, hoping to lift her spirits. He had been rather discouraging to someone who had had no one to talk to for over a week.

"Oh that's wonderful." Why was she so happy for him? "And the other muggle-borns,"

"As far as I know they are fine, just no longer at Hogwarts."

"Well, I suppose they'll be able to go back once Voldermort's defeated."

That was awfully cocky. He felt himself frowning. "A tad overconfident, aren't we?"

"Well not really, just a bit more now that we know how to defeat him."

"Do we?"

"Yes."

"And how exactly do we plan to do this?"

"I can't tell you just yet, but I'll need your help when the time comes. Can I- I mean, are you going to help us?"

"I'll do whatever I have to to clear my family name, like you said, when the time comes. If the time comes rather." He added darkly.

"How do I know?"

"What?"

"How do I know you will?"

Well, she was being very forward for a change. She must have spent a lot of time meditating on this in the past week she had spent alone in this room, waiting for him to return home for the holiday. "I saved your life!"

"I know you wouldn't kill me. I asked how I know you'll do what I need to help me."

Fair point really, he mentally conceded. "You don't. You have to trust me, like you chose to trust Snape. You decide your destiny by choosing the people you trust. But there's something to be said in that I haven't sold the prophecy to Voldermort or let you die or poisoned Longbottom. If I wanted to betray you, I could have already."

"Fair point really." She answered, still unsure. At least they had a bit of honesty between them. A bit.

"We're going to have guests." He suddenly announced.

"Goodie." She responded with sarcasm.

"Family mostly."

"Even better." was her sour response. He ignored it.

"They will begin arriving for the holiday tomorrow. You are to stay in your room unless with me, and out of sight of them at all times, until our family dinner. Understand?"

"Yes, master Malfoy." She teased.

"You better be nice to me, Granger, if you plan to see the light of day anytime soon." He warned.

"Remember I taught you how to ski."

"You taught me how to fall down a hill with planks of wood strapped to my boots." He snapped, standing up. She laughed. He remembered that afternoon on the grounds while everyone thought the had Dragon pox so they had to lay out of school. That hadn't been too awful, all things considered. He had taught her to ice skate. Now that was hilarious considering she had all the grace of a mountain troll.

"The elf will bring you your food."

"Will you eat with me?" she too stood. It took a minute to answer. He had not expected that.

"That desperate for company?"

"Obviously."

"I can't. We have guests."

"I thought you said your family didn't start arriving until tomorrow."

"They don't, but this isn't family. It's politics."

"Oh."

"Precisely."

"Then where will you say I am?"

"Under the weather. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Take me outside?"

"I suppose." She stopped him as he was leaving. Why did his shoulder react like that? He hadn't been expecting that touch. That was it. With a sly smile that somehow rather fit she got closer.

"I know you missed me a little bit somewhere deep down." She teased.

"You think so Granger?"

"I do." She answered with somewhat less confidence.

"Don't count on it." He scoffed, and then added. "Well maybe I did, a tiny little way, way down. I probably just missed that kiss." He licked his lips suggestively.

"What kiss?" she looked puzzled, almost blushing. God that was hilarious when she blushed like that.

"Exactly." He jibed, shutting the door sharply behind him.

If she would just go ahead and kiss him he might shut up about it. What was the big deal anyway? The girl acted as if she had never been kissed. Of course there was a possibility that she hadn't. He could certainly teach her a thing or two if that was indeed the case. Or maybe she was holding out on him again. Whatever her reason, the resistance made him curious, not to mention he enjoyed annoying her with it, making her blush. She almost looked cute when she blushed. Almost.

A/N: Well, I seriously hoped you liked it. The plot has definitely thickened. As for the change in point of view, it was planned long in advance. I'd like to know how you felt about it. It's not permanent. During this part there will be shifts back and forth from chapter to chapter, but never two in the same one. On the one hand you will certainly see more of Draco and his thoughts this way, and what those Death Eaters are up to… On the other hand you may not like what you see of that gang… Just between us, Part III was my favorite part to write, so I hope you all keep reading and reviewing! Thanks!