Chapter Nine

Wolf Bait

Harry kept his distance from the small group, remaining as motionless as he could manage. The Malfoys would likely chalk up the mess in the library to Draco and Hermione, at least for the moment. Getting himself caught, too, would only make the entire situation worse and lessen Hermione's chances.

As Hermione and Draco stared up at the Malfoys, Lucius' expression twisted into one of cold calculation—a look Draco and Narcissa recognized in an instant. The Malfoy patriarch's gaze darted from the silver-eyed girl before him, to the incapacitated werewolf mere meters away, and back.

Ignoring whatever her husband was pondering this time—though, she was reluctant to admit that his recent behavior made her a bit afraid to wonder about what ideas ran through his head, at all—Narcissa delicately lowered to her knees beside her son. Relief at his return coursed through her, still, causing her limbs to tremble ever so slightly as she slipped her arms around his shoulders in a loose hug.

As she embraced him, she noticed that he had yet to drop his arm from around Miss Granger. His entire frame was rigid, and she found herself scrambling to understand the hard edge to his demeanor.

Perhaps he feared punishment for running away?

Leaning back, she placed her hands on his upper arms and met his gaze. "Draco, everything's all right now. You have returned, that is all that matters for the moment."

The young man recoiled, making an awkward attempt to shove Hermione behind him without releasing her. "Everything is not all right, Mother! You sent Fenrir Greyback after us—you're only lucky he didn't catch up to us until now! And I saw his eyes. What did you do to him?"

"What do you mean by calling me a prize?" Hermione asked, her gaze unerringly landing on Lucius Malfoy's.

The Mudblood girl's voice caused Narcissa's breath to catch in her throat. There was something about it . . . it sounded hollower than she recalled, yet was oddly crystalline at the same time. Like wind chimes, perhaps.

Lucius didn't answer Hermione's question, instead turning his attention to Draco. "We? We did nothing to Fenrir, he made himself that way."

Stepping over to them, Lucius reached down and slipped a hand around Hermione's upper arm, yanking her to her feet and away from Draco. Draco shot up, quickly latching his fingers around the girl's wrist and moving to stand beside her.

"Oh, no." Lucius' eyes narrowed as he met his son's gaze. "You are in quite enough trouble."

"Lucius . . ." Narcissa said softly, caution in her tone.

"I am taking her to the dungeon—"

"What? Why?" Hermione demanded, trying to pull out of his grasp and failing.

The elder wizard looked to her with feigned compassion in his slate-grey eyes. "Because that's what one does with a prisoner, my dear girl." He turned his head to regard his son once more. "And you abandoned us. I suggest you watch your step, or you will find yourself in a cell, right beside hers."

"So do it." Draco couldn't help the tiniest flaring of panic as he wondered what would become of Hermione in this state without him, or Potter, nearby. At least if he was in the cell beside hers, he could help her; he could keep her herself.

Narcissa climbed to her feet, a protest of her husband's words on her lips, but the girl beat her to it.

"Draco, please," Hermione said, shaking her head. "Go with your mother."

Draco's heart dropped into his stomach, his eyes widening as he blinked at her. "What?"

She tugged at her arm again, but Lucius held fast. Sighing, she looked up at the man. "I'll go, but can I just have a moment please?"

"You must be joking, Miss Granger."

The girl's silver-eyed stare hardened and she squared her shoulders as she said, "You clearly want me alive for a reason, and you're about to stick me in a cage. A moment is not too much to ask, under those circumstances."

Lucius' eyebrows shot up and he exchanged a surprised glance with his wife, to find she mirrored his expression. Fenrir had become more animal-like, indeed more feral, while the girl had maintained herself, and now had an air about her . . . as though she simply knew her words would be heeded.

He relinquished his hold, but drew his wand at the same time, training it on her.

The touch of Lucius' hand had done nothing, and Hermione could already feel herself slipping. It truly was only Draco and Harry keeping the void at bay, though there was precious little she could do about that realization just now. She lunged forward, throwing her arms around Draco's neck and holding him tightly.

Narcissa averted her gaze, feeling uncomfortable suddenly, while Lucius shook his head, his eyes rolling. A Mudblood with his son, honestly! But then, he supposed he could look at this as a positive thing. As that dreadful elf put it, she wasn't a Mudblood, anymore. She was something else, and Draco was now closely connected to whatever that something was.

Hermione shuddered in Draco's arms, sensation snapping back into her being. He held her tight, hoping his parents didn't notice her reaction. He didn't know what they were planning—or what Hermione could possibly have to do with it—and so wanted to limit their awareness of her condition's bizarre intricacies.

"You have to stay free," she whispered, her voice so low he only just heard her words. He ignored, for the moment, the brushing of her lips against his ear—this wasn't the time or place to notice it, really—only mindful of keeping his skin pressed firmly to hers as she spoke.

"You can't be down there alone," he said, trying to make his voice as quite as hers, the movement of his lips hidden by her hair.

"If we're both down there and Harry gets caught, then we're all out of luck. One of us needs the freedom to go about this castle as they please and find him."

"Granger—"

She pulled back in his arms, meeting his gaze. "Please, Draco, just go with your mother. I'll be fine."

His eyes were wide, the glint in them frantic. Even in her strange state, how could she be so calm? "No, you won't!"

Forcing a gulp down her throat, she stepped away from him and turned to face Lucius. Lord Malfoy reclaimed his hold on her arm and began leading her away.

"Granger!"

Her steps only faltered a moment as she let his voice echo through her head.

"Draco, please, listen to her," Narcissa said, linking an arm around her son's and tugging him toward the staircase.

Draco turned his head as he relented and allowed his mother to pull him along. As he watched Hermione disappear, back down the steps to the dungeon, he saw movement.

There was an odd ripple of motion in the air, and then, Potter's face appeared as the Gryffindor wizard lowered the hood of his Invisibility Cloak just a little.

Relief washing through him, Draco's shoulders sagged—Potter had been there the entire time. He knew exactly what was happening.

Nodding, Harry righted his hood, and then raced up the steps behind Malfoy. As he caught up, he lowered his voice, his whisper barely audible over the sound of Draco and Narcissa's footfalls. "I'll go stay with Hermione. But look, your parents know something about what's happening to her—or at least something about this silver-eyed business. You're the only one who can find out what they know. It could help her."

Draco simply nodded, feeling utterly useless as Potter backed away. He could only just make out the sound of the other young man's retreating steps over his own movements.

"What is it you want with me?" Hermione asked as Lucius led her through the Slytherin common room.

"At the moment? Nothing, really," he said, his tone strangely jovial. "However, you are quite the smart child; I imagine you comprehend rather well the need for experimenting with unknown things to better understand them."

They reached the cells and he tapped the door of the first with his wand. The cell opened, and he relinquished his grasp on her arm.

She realized dully how aware he must be that she was only cooperating because he had a wand and she didn't. He could easily incapacitate her—or worse—if she chose to fight back.

Never again shall we forget.

The words whispered through her mind as though someone stood beside her, speaking them in her ear. Startled—and mildly grateful for the ability to feel shocked—she cast her gaze about the chamber.

Lucius not only saw her sudden change in demeanor, he backpedaled a single step to better observe her. She looked as though she was listening for something. Odd, they were the only ones on this entire floor. He could only imagine that her perception had something to do with those metallic eyes.

Noting that Lucius hadn't seemed to hear anything, she forced the strange, beckoning whisper aside. Again, she felt herself slipping. Felt the snap of cold air, felt the sharpness of her fear and dread wrap around her before they started drifting away.

"What do you mean? What sort of experiment?" she asked, fighting to hold onto her emotions as she stepped into the cell and spun on her heel to face him.

He smirked, cataloging her behavior from a moment ago and filing it away for later. "Well, I now have in my possession two individuals suffering from the same, unique, malady. Yet, despite the similar circumstances of your illness, you are each responding to your condition quite differently."

She stood a bit straighter as her eyebrows drew upward. "Meaning?"

"Fenrir is more of a wretched beast than he was before, and yet, you . . . ." His gaze narrowed as he closed the cell door and tapped the lock with his wand. "You somehow seem, well, not beastly. I can only imagine this means that you—as much as I dread making this observation about one such as yourself—are a more evolved creature."

Hermione frowned, those silver eyes rolling so hard the lids fluttered. She didn't know how much longer she could hold on, and she didn't need her captor witnessing what her illness, as he put it, actually did to her. She didn't want to think what that strange, doll-like state might mean for his need to experiment.

"Are you ever going to get to your point, Mr. Malfoy?" she asked through clenched teeth.

His eyebrows shot up at her tone. If not for the bizarre situation, he'd have never taken someone of her blood-status speaking to him in such a manner. Offering a tight-lipped little grin, he forced aside his inclination to use the Cruciatus curse on her.

"It is as though you've both become different creatures, entirely," he said, his voice so cold she winced. "I am curious to see, given your very different responses to ingesting unicorn blood, how you two will behave around one another as you are now."

Hermione felt the encroaching numbness recede for the briefest moment as she stared at him, her jaw going slack. It wasn't enough that he kept calling her creature—as though he thought of her as no longer human—but now, he wanted her to interact with Fenrir? Just so he could see what would happen? There was no way he could think she would agree to that willingly after her history with the werewolf.

"You . . . you . . . . I don't understand."

"Yes, you do." Lucius took a few steps backward, watching her, still. "Quite simply, Miss Granger, I am going to leave this chamber and when Fenrir wakes, I am going to let him come and find you."

That terrible fear coiled in the pit of her stomach. She gripped her hands around the bars and peered out at him. "No, no, you can't!"

Smirking, he actually found he had to hold in a chuckle. "I can do whatever I like."

"You don't understand," she said in a pleading whisper. "He is the one who did this to me! He forced the blood into my mouth!"

"Huh." Lucius gave a sideways nod. "Well, that is one mystery solved."

She tried, again, to reason with him, but her words fell upon deaf ears as he turned on his heel and retreated from the dungeon.

Left alone, she spun in a slow circle, taking in her surroundings. The blank, rough dark-grey walls offered no comfort . . . no imagined safety from the knowledge that she had nowhere to run, nothing to hide behind. Fenrir was going to awaken, he was going to find her.

As soon as she acknowledged that the terror was still edging around her brain—dulled though knew the sensation was—she felt the void closing around her. She felt her fear, felt her awareness of touch, begin to ebb from her.

Trying desperately to hold onto to her emotions once more, Hermione sank to her knees in her cell. She willed herself to recall Draco's protests, her eyes drifting closed as she let his voice ring in her ears.