Thanks for the reviews. And to Lizard, I'll check that out, thanks.

Question: Let me know what you think of the magic lore in this chapter. Was it believable?

The Book Called Revenge

Chapter 7

Draco waited until Hermione was sound asleep beside him, before he gave in to his urges, and gently pulled her close to him. It was madness the way his once fiery, itchy skin, instantly cooled against hers. She was so soft and she molded to him with perfect symmetry. She was perfect.

No, she's not, a voice in the back of his head told him.

But she was, and he couldn't think otherwise. He sighed in bliss against her back and then breathed her in and down his lungs. She was all that he needed.

Stop it!

The voice in his head was deep and furious, but he couldn't listen to it. How could he when the proof of how wrong it was, was right next to him. He let his hand, starting in her soft hair, trialing down her slender neck and over her shoulder. Perfect.

She's a bitch.

He shook his head at the voice. His hand traveled farther, dipping from her ribcage to her waist and up the flare of her hip. They were meant for each other.

She doesn't even like you.

The voice was trying a different tactic, a new angle, and it was working. Draco knew on some level that his feelings and hers were not the same and it pained him. Why else would he have waited for her to have fallen asleep? But did it matter? He wanted to be with her anyway that he could.

Wake up! The voice yelled.

He was wide awake, and with Hermione here, he knew his place. With her.

She betrayed you, left you to rot!

She was probably just confused, he told the voice. She'd come back with him after all. She wanted to help him.

Sure she dose. The voice laughed sarcastically. Do you think she'll want to free you when she finds out that you're in love with her and willing to do anything she wants, including staying cursed so she doesn't have to?

Draco thought about that and as much as he wanted to say that he believed she'd still help him, something told him that the voice was right about this.

That's right. Once she finds out, you're stuck like this! I don't want to die like this!

Draco was shocked. Suddenly he realized that this voice in his head was him. And it was right. He couldn't let her find out about these feelings he was harboring for her. She'd use it against him. She'd leave him like this. He couldn't trust her.

Finally, you idiot! He and the voice said together.

Holly shit, he was losing his mind. But the good news was that he was in control of his body again. He slipped away from Hermione and let the burning and craving return to his skin. He rolled around onto his side, away from her and curled into a ball. He didn't know how long fetal position would protect him from her when they were sharing a bed, so he stood up, grabbed Revenge, and headed down stairs. He ended up on the carpet in the living room. Or through it, he supposed. The floor hurt and his body ached for her, but he fell asleep with the knowledge that he hadn't lost himself… yet.

Hermione woke up and was surprised to see that Draco was nowhere to be found. She stretched and yawned gleefully, having had the best night of sleep she'd experienced since the curse. It was already noon and she needed to get to work on the book.

She went down stars to find Draco and found him in the living room in the spot that she'd slept in on her first day at his house.

"What are you doing down here?" she asked and he sat up with a shrug. He had revenge at his side, but the book had yet to give him a writing utensil, so she assumed he wasn't going to answer. He must have left the one from Harry's upstairs.

She searched around and opened the drawer on the side table near the couch. She found a pen and tested it on her arm before throwing it to him. She sat across from him on the couch and sighed.

"I'm going to get started now and I need some paper and a work space. I don't know how close by you want to stick, in case the book has defenses for decoding," she said and he looked surprised.

'Sounds like you know what you're doing,' he wrote and she raised an eyebrow at him.

"I told you that first night, I'd started a new branch down at the ministry for this," she said "I've been studying books and the magic they can hold within them for years," she added and he nodded.

'Well, let's hope you have better luck this time around than you did before.'

She scoffed at that.

"I forgot rule number one last time, but it won't be a problem now," she said.

'What's rule number one,' he wrote.

"Never read the words in the book," she said seriously, "well not before reading the book's file first," she added and when he looked confused she continued. "Reading the book gives it power. You're opening yourself up to it. Like reading an incantation, without words a book holds no power," she said and he rolled his eyes.

'Well Revenge is blank but it's still got plenty of power from the looks of it, don't you think?'

She sighed angrily. He wasn't taking her seriously. He expected her to fail. Well, he was right to be worried.

"Yes, well, the book already had control" she said calmly, "it doesn't need its words anymore."

Draco shrugged and stood up. He waved for her to follow. They went upstairs and into the room that was a study.

'Will this do?'

"Yeah," Hermione answered looking the room up and down, "But if you have any furniture of valuables in here that you don't want destroyed, you better move them now as a precaution," she told him and he shrugged again. She went over to the desk and pulled out paper and pens and cleared everything else from the surface.

"You want to grab an extra chair?" she asked him, "we'll be here for a while," she said and he shrugged again sitting on the floor on the back wall so he could watch. "Okay," she said and took revenge from him. "Let's get started."

Draco watched for the next few hours as Hermione did stuff. Stuff he couldn't comprehend, but that he knew was complex. Revenge was suspended above her in what looked like a glass bubble. She spent a lot of time reading, and flipping through the many books she'd brought with her. She had accumulated quite a stack of notes on the papers she had out.

She looked extremely professional and concentrated, even in the tank top and sweat pants she'd slept in, with her hair in a long, messy braid down her back and his wand tucked behind her ear. She hadn't spoken a word since she'd started but every now and then, she'd grunt or sigh.

Draco watch, somewhat bewitched by every move she made and he didn't know that it had anything to do with Revenge this time. Seeing her in those work clothes had been nice for what it was, but seeing her looking so homely and enrapt in her work was something else.

His chest constricted and he gripped his shirt. Now that was Revenge…and right on time to try and add its own embellishments to what he was seeing. It was telling him that she was glorious and beautiful. He knew now that when adjectives such as those were pushed into his mind, that it wasn't him thinking them.

The distance between them, where he sat in the corner against the back wall, had afforded him some comfort, being just close enough to satisfy his need for her and stave off Revenge's attacks. But the longer he stayed in the room with her, the more tempted he was to get closer. It was also difficult to keep his distance when he was so interested in her work and how she conducted it. Still, he knew that he was pushing his luck by staying this close for so long and figured he should leave for a bit to stretch his legs and get Revenge out of his head for a bit.

He stood up and at the sound, Hermione spared him a glance before getting back to her writing. He smiled at her dedication and left to go for a walk through the woods.

Hermione had finally finished her preliminary study, compiling all of the known factors of the book. Now she just needed to test for them and identify each of them specifically so that she could use counter curses on them.

So far she was sure that Revenge was using a cloaking spell to shroud its victims and she knew that it wasn't a simple one that she'd find in her limited books, so she set that aside for now.

Next she tackled the silencing charm she knew was in the book somewhere. She pulled Draco's wand from behind her ear and cast a spell that she'd perfected only months ago. Perfect timing considering her predicament. The spell would reveal what spells were last used by the object in question. She'd thought of it one day when thinking of how this same spell, only less complicated, was used on wands of suspected death eaters and murderers.

Now though, she was searching for specific spells after laying out a few hypotheses. It was easier to first break whatever spells she was sure were involved, and then try to use the spell to find the other, more unobvious ones, since the spell would only show you one to two of the most recently activated curses.

She used the revealing spell and as she expected, grey smoke and white lightning erupted from the book, but was held at bay by the protective bubble she'd cast around Revenge. As a war continued to rage in the bubble, fighting to strike out, she referred back to her books. She flipped through the pages until she came to a page outlining grey spells. There were drawings detailing the look, consistency and movement of each spell. She found an area that depicted smoky, cloudy, misty or foggy grey spells and found three for silencing.

One of them she ruled out immediately because the plumes of smoke where too thin, and billowed up in curls, like the kind from a cigarette. What she need was thicker, more like cumulous clouds.

Here!

She fingered the one with the puffy of smoke and read the passage.

'Silencio Encarda: A silencing curse made popular in the early 1800's because of its use in discrete torture tactics. Used to quiet a specific person in voice alone, notwithstanding movement or breath. When the spell is cast, it may resemble a storm extending from the wand. Characteristics of this spell include white luminescent streaks of what may appear to be thunder.'

Hermione skimmed over the wrist movements and pronunciation, she wasn't planning on using the spell on anyone after all. Instead she continued to the more important area.

'See counter curse on page 1908.'

Hermione quickly flipped to the pages and loved this feeling. The moment when you figured things out, and breaking the first part of the curse led to a sense of rightness with the world.

She held up her want and pointed to the ball with Revenge in it, calming the smoke and lightning inside. She studied the counter curse, the movements and color and pronunciation. She had to get this right or she may cause more harm. She'd have to identify and undo her own messed up spell before she could continue and some times, that took longer than finding the original spell. She just hoped that Draco's wand didn't give her any trouble.

After ten minutes of this, she shot a test spell at a wall and when it looked right she felt ready. His wand wasn't making things easy, lacking her usually flawless ability, but it would do.

Taking a deep breath, she stood up and backed away from Revenge. She pointed Draco's wand at the orb and shot the spell. As she thought, the book retaliated, thrashing against its confines and shooting red angry streaks at her with loud booming sounds as proof of how fatal a strike from one of them would be. These were all good signs that she'd just done something right, but she would have to wait until Draco returned with a voice to make sure.

For now, she needed to let the book calm itself down. If she did things right the first time, then she wouldn't have to hit it a second time and it would let its defenses down again. Then she'd hit it with the next counter curse, and she was willing to bet that this book became more and more aggressive as she unlocked more of its secrets.

She'd stay clear of it until then, and take more notes. After this was over, she was going to start categorizing the danger levels of these books, and she needed to make a scale to go by, for when she would train new recruits.

Hermione carefully grabbed her notes, avoiding the orb as she did and headed down stairs to wait and concentrate. She meant to think about Revenge, but for some reason, she was thinking of Draco. She was slowly realizing that by the end of all of this, one of them could end up dead, or something like it and she couldn't let Draco die. How would she ever live with herself if he did.

Who knew why Revenge had cursed Draco for helping her? At this point, it wouldn't be a surprise to find out that Revenge could take his life whenever it wanted to. In fact, if they didn't break the spell, it was probably going to. She didn't imagine that Revenge sat around waiting for the seventy or so years it took for its victims to die, and longer still if the person was a Witch or Wizard.

Suddenly she was afraid that she was signing Draco's death warrant and it brought tears to her eyes, but it didn't make her want to trade places. Not yet.

She'd do her best the way she knew how. She was of more use this way. She could save them both.

Hermione wiped away her tears. Revenge wouldn't kill Draco so soon anyway. It had given her close to half a year, so he would be fine for another day or so.

When Draco got back to the house he smacked face first into the sliding door and fell backward. Hermione got up surprised and ran to the door to check that he was okay.

"Fuck!" he yelled as he held his face and both he and Hermione froze. He looked up at her in shock and she smiled happily, putting out a hand to help him up. He took it on impulse and instantly regretted it as his heart sped up and he found himself smiling in return.

"It, worked!" she said excitedly.

Even when he was standing completely, he didn't release her hand. Or he couldn't release it, it felt too good. Obviously, it hadn't worked because he was still feeling things for her.

"Well," she said, "say something!" she laughed and he almost laughed too. Her happiness was contagious and it sent a warm tingling through him, a strange tickling that begged him to laugh, but he fought the urge and ended up with a close-lipped smile.

"Something," he said and she giggled. The sound was so unexpected that this time he did laugh. If the curse was broken, why was he still feeling this way?

"Good," she started and then pulled her hand from his, "I broke the first curse. It's not much, but it's a start!"

She was so excited that even though he'd lost contact with her, her joy kept him sated.

"So what's next?" he asked and she took his arm and pulled him into the house.

"Okay," she said sitting on the couch and pulling him down beside her, "I've got to tackle the invisibility, but I'm worried that it's going to be more advanced than the resources I have here can help me with," she held up her notes.

"So what will you do about that?" he asked and she sighed unhappily, and Revenge told him he should feel sorry he asked, but he wasn't.

"I guess I'll have to go and get a more advanced book at some point," she said in thought. Then she pointed to her notes, "But that won't have to come until later. For now I'm going to tackle the tangibility in about thirty minutes," she said as if trying to get back on a higher note.

"What's stopping you from doing that now?" he asked curiously.

"The book is throwing a tantrum because I cracked one of its defenses, so it's not safe to work on it right now," she said nonchalantly, like it was to be expected, and he had a hard time understanding it.

"So what will you do until then?" he asked and she picked up her pen.

"Report my findings and identify the spell that Revenge was just trying to tear me apart with," she laughed as if it were a mundane occurrence.

Draco was pretty sure that right now he was enjoying her company. He, the real him, that is, was interested in the way she talked about her work.

"Explain this to me," he told her and she looked stunned.

"Explain what?" she asked confused.

"How this all works and how you figured out how to break one part of the curse, and why can't you stop the whole thing all at once?" Draco asked and the look of surprise she shot him made him realize how intrigued he was with all of this. It was a little embarrassing that his curiosity was so piqued, but they'd already shared a whole lot of embarrassment together, what was a little more?

"Well," she said in thought, trying to find a good way to start. "I can't break the curse all at once because it's not one curse that's affecting you," she said and then paused to check that he was with her. "There are multiple things that were put together and I have to figure each one out and handle them one at a time," she explained and he nodded.

"So how do you identify what curses have been used?" he asked and took the top page of her notes as she handed it to him.

"Well it's more of a guessing game at first really," she started, "I take what it know; Invisibility, silence, and intangibility to start with. Then I identify what spell was used to cause each one of the symptoms using a lexicon of common curses." Her apprehension was gone and she talked excitedly about the process. "Once you find the spell, you find the counter curse!"

This was interesting magic, Draco thought. If he hadn't forsaken the wizarding world, he might have even liked to give it a try.

"Right," he said thinking about what she'd just said, "So what happens when you can't figure out the obvious stuff?" he asked thinking about the love spell that had been magic-ed into Revenge's pages, that he was keeping a secret from her.

"Well, then things become tricky," she said with another sigh, "at that point I'll be able to force the book to reveal what spells it last used, but it will only show me colors and characteristics, not a name. So going through a lexicon to identify it, when I don't know what the spell is for, or what it does, will take some time," she explained and Draco felt his shoulders slouch.

He was going to have to tell her the truth, or he may be hindering her from breaking the spell.

From the kitchen, the phone rang and they both turned toward it.

"You want to get that?" she asked and he shook his head. It was probably his job calling to find out why he hadn't showed. He couldn't deal with that right now. When the ringing finally stopped they sat in the silence.

She watched him like she had something to say, so he gave her time to put her thoughts into words. When it looked like she wasn't going to get it out, he raised his brows at her.

"What?" he asked with a coaxing tone and she turned away.

"Never mind," she said shaking her head and he frowned, "I'm going to check on Revenge, see if it's calmed down any," she said and headed for the stairs.

Speaking of Revenge, he thought as his body forced him to follow her when she'd gotten too far from him.

Hermione had a vision of Draco's friends calling his phone and getting no answer. She could see them visiting his house to find he'd disappeared and Draco watching, invisible and unable to tell them that he was there and that he was still alive. She needed to get back to this curse breaking and make sure he never had to do that.

Her conscious was eating a hole in her right now and her resolve to save Draco was clearer than ever.

When, they got to the room, Revenge was still having a fit and Draco watched with interest as it lashed out, unable to harm anyone from inside its glass prison.

"So I guess you won't be getting back to work yet?" he asked and she shrugged.

"I guess not,' she said and her disappointment was thick.

Suddenly he wanted to make her feel better.

"Don't worry about it," he said and she looked up at him as he continued, "why don't you show me the lexicon and maybe I can help you figure out what it's trying to kill us with right now," he added and Hermione graced him with a half smile.

"Are you really interested?" she asked and he ran a hand through his hair meekly.

"Actually, yeah, I am," he said truthfully and she smiled at that.

She picked up the book and they headed back down stairs.

As they settled on the floor on the fur rug with the book between them, Draco was becoming concerned. He wasn't sure if the one who'd wanted to comfort Hermione had been him or Revenge, but either way, it had felt natural. Was he becoming one with Revenge? He answered his own question when he noticed Hermione shiver and turned on the switch for the fire place. It was becoming second nature.

"Thanks," she said and he shrugged to mask his happiness that she'd notice the small gesture.

As they sat together he felt that pull again, but this time it wasn't so urgent and he didn't fight it so hard. It was becoming one with him, and he couldn't even tell if he was upset with that or not.

Hermione spent the next few hours searching for the red spell that Revenge was shooting around. She'd been up to check if Revenge had stopped several times, but the book was showing no signs of slowing and she and Draco had only narrowed the spells down to thirty possibilities just by color and consistency matching only. Without knowing what the spell did, it was going to be a guessing game from here. Still, it was becoming more and more evident that if she was ever going continue her work on Revenge, they'd have to find out what it was trying to curse her with and get a counter curse to combat it.

"Fuck," Draco swore, "they all look the same now," he stated, obviously vexed and for some reason it cheered her up that he shared her sentiments.

"I know," she agreed.

"So what do we do?" he asked and she smiled at him.

"I guess we wait," she answered, "if I use any of the wrong steps in this process, it'll just make things worse," she explained and he growled in frustration. "But I did just realize something useful," she added and he gave her his full attention, "there's blood magic being used here," she said happily.

"Is that a good or a bad thing?" he asked and she laughed.

"It's a horrible thing," she told him.

"So why all the smiling?" he asked, obviously amused by her.

"Because, it gets me one step closer to solving this puzzle and protecting myself along the way," she said and when he looked as if she should explain, she continued. "Blood magic is used in paintings to preserve the memory of the person, or persons being depicted right?" she asked him, more to make sure that he knew what she was saying, than to justify her statement.

"Okay…" he said.

"Right," she continued, "so different kinds of blood magic sort of give cognitive reasoning to inanimate objects."

"What, like The Monster Book of Monsters?" he asked and she was thrilled to know that he was keeping up.

"Exactly, only that's a weaker version of what's going on here. Like child's play in comparison really," she said, "Now that I know this, I can assume that the book is aware and will change its strategies as it sees fit to protect itself, which it why it's still going crazy upstairs, whereas normally a book would have been on a sort of timer," She was practically bursting at the seams with excitement.

Draco looked confused.

"So you're saying that Revenge knows what it's doing?" he asked and she nodded.

"It most certainly does," she said, with a proud smile, "well to the extent of the blood donor's intent anyway."

"Wow," he sighed.

"I know right!" she said excitedly, "If this book wasn't trying to kill us, this would be an amazing find for studying. I mean, I don't think anyone could have imagined blood magic being used to this extent!"

Draco just watched as she rolled onto her back and the fire revealed her pink tinged cheeks. He smiled at how happy she was getting over a book that was sure to bring about one of their deaths.

Without warning he was kissing her and for once he didn't disagree with Revenge when it told him that this felt amazing…or was that him who was thinking that? Either way, he was kissing her and he felt like it was what he wanted to do.

She squeaked in surprise, but didn't stop him. Even so, he pulled away with a laugh and moved away from her. That he wasn't sure if he or Revenge had kissed her was probably a bad sign.

"What the…" she was breathing hard and her face was flushed and it made him want to do it again. "What was that for?" she asked and he shrugged.

She put a hand over her heart as if to slow it, and he knew the feeling.

"You don't know?" she asked incredulously and he shrugged again, not trusting his voice to sound indifferent.

Now she looked positively livid and it just made her all the more endearing. He stood up with a yawn and stretched.

"It's getting late," he said unable to hide his amusement, "We should check on Revenge one more time, eat some dinner and head to bed," he said and started for the doorway as she sat there shocked.

Hermione sat through dinner silently fuming. What was with him? Who just kisses someone out of the blue like that? The first time that it happened, she assumed he'd been caught in the moment of their little curse breaking afterglow. But there was no excuse for it now and it was driving her crazy.

Especially under these circumstances.

Hermione sat with him in the kitchen as he finished his food and when he was done she only waited long enough for him to deposit his plate in the sink before leaving him and heading up stairs.

She could swear she heard him chuckle before she'd made it out of the room.

Draco was feeling amazing. The itch for her was still there, but it was a soft hum under the surface. Seeing her face locked in that angry and confused expression was very satisfying and it had calmed his need by kissing her.

Maybe if he gave in every once and a while, he'd be fine. He also needed to keep his mind busy with other things. He'd felt like himself again today (for the most part), while getting into this whole book decoding stuff.

He headed upstairs just in time to see Hermione enter the bathroom in a towel and close the door behind her.

His mind and body went haywire at the site. So much for his moment of calm…

He waited for her to emerge and was in pain with need by the time she came out all wet and lovely, in a large shirt and pajama shorts. Now was a truly trying moment for him. Without a word to him, she sat on the bed, combed out her hair, braided it down her back and went to bed.

Draco tried to calm down; all he needed to do was to get closer to her and keep his mind intact. He slid in bed beside her and hoped that it would be enough, but the aching only got worse. God, his heart was going to pound right out of his chest.

He must have been breathing like he was having a heart attack, because suddenly Hermione's concerned face was above him.

"Are you okay?" she asked putting her hand over his, which he just noticed was squeezing at his chest.

She was making it worse by being so near.

"I'm fine," he tried to say but his voice was raspy.

"No, you're not!" she said examining him. She put her hand to his forehead, "You're burning up," she sounded frantic and he couldn't understand why.

"It's okay," he tried but she wasn't going to hear.

"It's Revenge isn't it?" she asked and he stayed silent, "What's going on?" she asked pulling his hand away from his chest and examining him, making the burning worse.

"Just stop," he tried to bat her hands away but she wouldn't let him.

"What if you die?" she asked and now tears were clouding her eyes.

"What are you talking about?" he asked and she shook her head.

"What if you die because of me? Because I was too afraid to take the curse back?" she asked and his heart constricted even more. She was worried about him?

He pulled her down for a kiss and Hermione cried against his lips. She pulled back nodding. When she started to pull her shorts off, he realized that she'd completely misinterpreted his intentions.

"I won't let you die for me," she whispered more to herself than him and Revenge was telling Draco to make her stop, but the real him knew that he needed to take this chance. But god was it painful.

Draco pulled her down for another kiss and turned her over. Self preservation was going to come first this time he told himself. Revenge was warring with itself on whether or not to take her and have her close intimately, or to stop her because her heart wasn't in it.

But this time Draco was in control and as he entered her, it was a battle that he was fighting to win.

What did you think about the curse breaking?