Draco's arms slipped from around her and she was once again in Mina's body, hidden in one of the small secret passages that ran throughout Masarvas Manor. It seemed to Hermione that Arden and Sornious were preparing to go somewhere, bundling scrolls and instruments into a leather bag that seemed to small to contain it all. Mina shifted closer, wincing as the sound of her shoe scuffing against the stone filled her hiding place. While she was sure that they would not catch her, she did not want to tempt fate, it had become apparent that her presence in the Manor was somewhat abhorrent to Sornious.
As if to punctuate her thoughts, Sornious turned to Arden, his small eyes squinting up at the young wizard, his mouth pressed into a thin line of annoyance.
"I think it is time your lady left here." Mina's skin prickled with the feeling of being watched, as Arden surveyed the wall she hid behind in annoyance, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he slowly met his teachers gaze.
"I do not know what you mean." He muttered quietly, before busying himself with packing up yet more scrolls, a slight shake in his hand.
"You know of what I speak, she will get curious if she has not already and we need no distractions, no potential disturbances."
"She is loyal to me, heart and soul, she had stayed of her own free will. If that does not show that she believes in me then I do not know what will."
'If you believe that then you're a fool." Sornious bit out, turning his black wand through his fingers delicately, seeming almost bored as Arden froze and turned red with rage.
"She and I…I know her heart and her heart is with me." Mina felt mildly sickened by the statement. She realised that he had always believed that, and he had always been wrong. She shook her head, thinking of Sonyea. How could Arden have missed such open adoration from her friends and imagined it within her?
"You know nothing, and you can trust no word, no actions but mine."
"I trust Mina." Arden ground out and Mina was struck by a sudden wave of guilt, he still believed in her and she was betraying him over and over again. She managed to quell such idiotic feelings by remembering that by remembering all those he had betrayed in his quest or greatness.
"Do you? I have seen the way you look at her; desperate, wanting, suspicious. You no more know her heart than you know the depths of magic. Young, and naïve," Sornious scoffed as he appraised Arden with distaste and the young wizard shrunk back. Mina could not believe how different the wizard became, one-minute building Arden up and urging him to believe in his own wonder and majesty and the next squashing him beneath disappointment and disgust.
"It is my magic that is making everything possible, I don't need you." Arden spat it petulantly at the older wizard, but his head was lowered and submissive. Sornious' eyebrows rose into his wispy hairline, the threat seeming to amuse the dark wizard.
"Ah yes, your magic, and who is that had given your magic direction, that can be taken away just as easily as it was given."
Arden drew into himself even further, dark eyes boring into the floor as if willing it to swallow him up.
"She cannot leave, I will not allow it." He managed to glance briefly at Sornious before shifting his gaze back to his feet. Sornious shook his head but placed his wand back in his robes.
"Prepare the rest of our things," Sornious commanded at least a little tiredly and Arden nodded once, his expression grim.
Arden eventually turned to the stone wall behind him, muttering an incantation under his breath. Mina sucked in a breath when the door appeared, flashes of memories from a happier childhood overcoming her. It was the Masarvas family vault. There had been a prevailing legend that suggested the Masarvas family had supreme amounts of gold that they'd hidden away. Mina knew this wasn't true if they had at one point had a massive fortune it had disappeared rather fast and all that remained in the family vault was Arden father's strange collection of ancient artefacts and scrolls.
Mina had loved it when Arden's father opened up the vault and let her pore through the archives he'd amassed of magic that went right back to the very beginning of everything. Mina's favourite had always been the scrolls about the magical beasts that used to roam freely, living along-side witches and wizards and humans. It had been many hundreds of years since the magical beasts had disappeared into hiding, not trusting what the humans had become, not trusting what the witches and wizards had become, but when Arden's father spoke of them it was as if they had only disappeared the day before, everything about them still alive and obvious within their world.
Mina had met her fair share of magical beasts that still found it within themselves to trust magic users enough to interact with them. But some beasts, some beasts had been lost forever. Their location and magic too secret to ever be found again. Mina had always felt saddened by this fact, her fingers tracing the outlines of the drawings willing them back into the world. She would often traverse the grounds of Masarvas Manor calling out their names and hoping they would make themselves known to her. They never had, but she had never stopped hoping. Now she watched as Arden pulled out many of the scrolls that she recognised from her childhood and stuffed them unceremoniously into the small bag, his shoulders tense with anger.
"Now we…" Hermione blinked in confusion as a wave of nausea came over her the memory fading out of focus, mist curling around her. Hermione clutched at her stomach as it clenched painfully, voices called out in the mist, muttered conversations and an overwhelming amount of feelings that Hermione found it difficult to process.
The mist grew denser around her, swirling at an alarming speed, before settling into another memory rather violently. It took Hermione a moment to realise she was back in Mina's body and staring at the door to the dungeons. Mina's lifted her wand carefully, adjusting her grip as she decided on the best spell to use. Sornious and Arden had made their way down to the dungeons before they had left, placing wards around the door, powerful wards that Mina had never heard of before. Defeating wards had never been a strong point for her but she had to try, with Sornious and Arden gone it was the perfect opportunity to get all Lady Greengrass and the other prisoners to freedom.
Hermione still felt a little dizzy, the memories had never changed so abruptly and so violently before and the experience was disorientating.
"Miss, wait." Mina turned quickly, her eyes widening and grip on her wand tightening, heart racing in her chest. A small creature stepped into the light and Mina let out a breath when the familiar old eyes of Murry the house-elf looked up at her with worry.
"Oh, Murry." Her voice wobbled as she said this, letting her wand fall to her side.
"The wards will kill you, miss." Mina nodded her understanding, crossing her arms in front of her against the sudden chill of failure that had settled over her.
"I have to get them out, Murry, I have to get them to safety." Murry smiled at her sadly. The Masarvas house-elf, unlike many house-elves of the time, had always been treated with kindness by the family and as such the house-elf had quite happily taken on more responsibilities, such as looking after both Mina and Arden when they had been children. The small house-elf had been a constant staple in Mina's childhood, ever caring, ever annoyed and frustrated when both she and Arden gave her no end of issues. Mina felt slightly sickened at how easily she had forgotten the small creature.
"Where have you been?" Mina knelt before Murry, and the house-elf shuffled forward to meet her, her wrinkled hand reaching out to hold Mina's.
"There is darkness, miss, darkness in the house. I hid away, no room for Murry among such things, no room for Murry." The small creature shook her head violently, her large wrinkly ears flapping.
"I'm sorry, I should have, I should have found you."
"Miss need not worry about Murry, Murry has looked after herself and now she must look Miss. The wards are dark miss, will do dark things." Murry was gripping at Mina's arms, her old eyes earnest as she held Mina in place.
"I have to save them, I am their only hope."
"I know, but your death will not save them, Miss."
Mina looked up and Hermione noticed that Murry's face was fading out of focus, a wave of nausea once again overcoming Mina. She fell slightly, her hand reaching out to steady herself against the wall.
"Miss?" Murry's voice was distant and far away and then suddenly Hermione was no longer in the memory, her own hand against the wall of the Sensieve's room, the small paintings moving underneath her palm unperturbed. She shook her head in confusion. That had never happened before, while the memories had sometimes abruptly ended they had always felt somehow complete, having imparted all of the knowledge they wished to. This memory felt unfinished as if there were still things she needed to know and for whatever reason, the Sensieve was stopping her from seeing it.
Draco was a little way from her, kneeling down on the floor, Hermione noticed that his eyes were completely blue, as if the Sensieve's magic had moved into his eyes and taken over. Tears were falling down his cheeks and Hermione's breath caught, he looked so broken and she wanted to rush to him and make everything better. Instead, though, she waited for the memory to finish, rushing forward when the blue left his eyes, the mist retreated back into the bowl and Draco threw up onto the floor.
She rubbed his back gently, hand cupping his cheek, making him look up at her.
"Are you okay?" Her heart stuttered when he leaned into her, resting his head on her shoulder and taking deep shuddering breaths. She could hear Ginny's voice in her head telling her to not get swept up in Draco's crap, to keep some distance between them, but she closed her eyes against her friends' warnings. Whenever they experienced the memories it felt as if the rest of the world no longer existed and she wanted to keep it that way for just a bit longer.
"You know, seeing other people's memories sucks." Hermione despaired at the giggle his words elicited from her. she couldn't help it, his laugh was so nice, such a welcome change to his sneers and it proved to be incredibly infectious. She rubbed his back fighting off a blush as he pulled his head back to gaze at her.
"He saw you, he saw us." Hermione quickly looked around the room confused, wondering if someone was spying on them, but she couldn't see anything, it was just them.
"What? Who saw us?"
"Edward, he saw us. He looked into the future and he saw us." Hermione blinked rapidly trying to process the information.
"How?" Draco shifted, sitting on the floor and wiping his mouth with a shaky hand.
"Bearkiller, he had these runes and they all…they all had visions of the future. Edward saw us." Hermione's arms dropped into her lap in shock; she had read a little about runes but once again it seemed that she knew a pitiful amount. The memories never ceased to show her how little she understood about the wizarding world.
"What did he see?"
Draco shifted on the floor, leaning against the wall and taking a deep breath explaining before explaining all that he had seen. Hermione felt dizzy again, the thought of looking back into the past had been difficult enough to get her head around, but the past looking at into the future to see her was…she shook her head in disbelief.
"Stone giants?" Hermione paused, "what do you think that means?" Draco shrugged.
"Who know's, but we were falling from somewhere."
"But where?" Hermione muttered in frustration. Draco didn't answer but instead looked over at her smiling, his heart warming as she worried over her bottom lip. It never ceased to amaze him how much it annoyed her not knowing things. Suddenly her eyes lit up and she reached out to grasp his arm.
"Do you think that maybe it has something to do with what I saw in Mina's past?"
"Umm…"
"Perhaps there is something that we are meant to find."
"Granger," Hermione paused when he grasped the top of her arms looking into her eyes, "calm down, one thing at a time. More to the point what did you see?" Hermione was once again reminded of her strange experience in the Sensieve and sat back frowning.
"What?"
"It felt like…like the Sensieve kicked me out of the memory. Mina, she became dizzy and then…well then I was here."
"Huh." Draco stared up at the night sky glimmering in the ceiling shaking his head slowly from side to side. "It doesn't make much sense."
"It felt like something stopped the magic…like something blocked it." Hermione said matter of factly, leaning against the wall next to him, her arm brushing his, hand falling gently against his leg. His fingers twitched on his knee with a sudden want to lace his fingers with hers. He scratched the back of his head trying to distract himself.
"The only thing powerful enough to do that would be old magic." Hermione nodded slowly.
"Hmm…Maybe we should…"
"Check the library?" Draco interrupted grinning when Hermione cut her eyes at him.
"Well if you have a better option."
"Oh no judgement, Granger, you're just getting a tad predictable is all." Hermione opened her mouth to argue but something in the way he was smiling at her suggested that he did not find her predictable at all.
"So, we meet…" Hermione paused shaking her head, muttering a few curses under her breath.
"Something the matter?" Draco reached out, gently tracing the back of her fingers, trying to fight the hope that bloomed in his chest when she didn't move away.
"I just, I just need to meet a little later tomorrow, that's all." Draco grinned at her.
"I understand, little miss know-it-all has a busy schedule." Hermione rolled her eyes, climbing to her feet and holding out her hands for him to grasp. After only a brief hesitation Draco slotted his hands into hers and stood in front of her, his eyes not leaving hers.
Quickly Hermione tugged her hands back, blushing at her shoes before clearing her throat.
"So, we meet tomorrow then?"
"Whatever you say, Granger." She nodded in affirmation, striding across the room and opening the door.
When it came for them to part ways he turned to Granger, scratching the back of his neck as he worked up the nerve to ask her.
"Do you, do you still have the scroll I gave you?" Hermione looked up at him and nodded.
"I'll talk to you later then?"
"Talk to you later," she muttered as she watched him leave, a feeling of despair settling over her when she realised that in spite of everything she still cared for him a worrying amount.