Hi thanks for the reviews on the last chapter. This story isn't abandoned and will be finished, I just work very slowly! I am sorry that it's frustrating to wait and I really appreciate those who are sticking with me.


Hermione and Harry turned on the spot in an instant and cast a Stupefy and Expelliarmus at the same time, both hitting Umbridge square in the chest before she had even had time to lift her wand. She crumpled awkwardly to the floor as her wand skittered away from her into a dark corner. Hermione didn't even have enough time to feel victorious before a shifting in the shadows behind her former professor's body filled the pit of her stomach with dry ice.

"Incarcerous" a man screamed and saw Harry drop to the ground, ropes lashing around him like snakes. Draco managed to take Harrry's assailant out with a well aimed Petrificus Totalus.

Hermione saw as he fell, boardlike, that Draco had just jinxed the Head of the Betrothals and Marriages Office. How many of them were there?

"Crucio, shouted a man she didn't recognise and Draco buckled, his limbs twisted in agony. He and another wizard stepped over Aurelius Hazeldene, both smiling grimly. The two men could be twins, with filthy ragged clothes, long dark matted hair and crazed black eyes.

Hermione managed to aim a Diffindo at Harry to loosen his bonds sufficiently that he could free his wand, then started throwing curses at the new arrivals. Ron was doing the same. Hermione could see the tendons standing out on his neck from the effort he was putting into his casting.

One of the shambling, ragged pair advanced on Draco's prone form. The stinging jinx Hermione hit him with seemed to cause him little more irritation than a fly: this shell of a man had obviously endured worse pain than that in his past. Hermione gritted her teeth as she prepared to send something nastier his way.

"Ah Malfoy junior, not hiding under your mother's robes any more?" he growed through brown shattered teeth and chapped lips, "Time for me to finish you like I did your father."

Suddenly a jolt of recognition flew through Hermione as she and Ron duelled furiously with the man she now knew to be Rabastan Lestrange. So what Draco had thought he had seen was right - the Lestrange brothers were alive and worse, were working for Hazeldene.

She wielded her wand like a whip, slashing a white light across Rodolphus's back as he continued to torture the blonde Slytherin. With a roar of pain, he turned his attention to her. She and Ron were back to back now, firing out spells faster than they ever had before. Harry was now free and sending hexes at the brothers but they seemed to be almost impervious to the damage that was being inflicted upon them. A bolt of light grazed her shoulder, causing her wand to fly out of her hand. Rodolphus lifted his wand triumphantly. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Rabastan advancing on Ron similarly. She blinked rapidly to clear the tears of pain that were blurring her vision and kicked out at Rodolphus. His sneering grin turned to an angry grimace as her heel connected with his knee.

"You little bitch!" and his free hand moved towards her neck, as his wand hand levelled at her eyes. In that moment of inevitability, she thought of how Harry had faced down Voldemort and died bravely and just hoped she could do the same. Her parents' smiling faces flashed before her eyes. Harry's, Ron's. The vague imagination of a baby with russet curls.

Everything moved at once. Both dark wizards screamed "Avada Kedavra" in almost perfect unison. Ron turned and threw himself over her, knocking them both to the ground. Her head met the hard stone floor so hard that she bit her tongue and tasted blood but she couldn't get a breath to spit it out because Ron's body over hers was squashing all the air out of her. The green light washed over them both like acid, like poison, and she was blinded, lost in a sea of green.

Her eyes were still squeezed shut when she heard one thud, followed by another. Gingerly she moved, testing that she was still alive. Ron groaned and rolled off of her.

"Huh!" exclaimed Harry, sounding curiously amused. Hermione sat up to see what he was looking at. Both Rabastan and Rodolphus were flat on their backs, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. "This is exactly why I bang on to the new recruits about now standing in another wizard's crossfire!"

"What are the chances?" mused Ron, kicking Rabastan's foot to make sure it wasn't a trick, "Well you can tell them this story now, might spice up your lecture a bit."

Draco struggled to his feet with difficulty and looked down into Rodolphus' unseeing face, "My father is going to be hearing about this," he coughed, his eyes ablaze with triumph.

Harry hurried over to tie up Umbridge and Hazeldene who were both stirring feebly.

"Incubators?" Hermione repeated, horrified, "what do you think they're growing?"

She turned back to look at the girls again, flanked by Ron and Draco.

"Do you think we should disconnect them?" she asked.

"It might do more harm than good, that stuff might be what's keeping them alive,"

"Well, I know Amy," Hermione said decisively, striding towards the Welsh girl, "and she would rather be dead than growing whatever weapon or whatever it is that is happening here," she paused for just a moment before ripping the tube from the girl's arm.

They all watched, open mouthed, waiting. But nothing happened.

"Maybe it's too late?" asked Ron.

Hermione felt her neck with trembling fingers, "She still has a pulse but it's fading. What should I do?" her own pulse sped up in panic as the other girl's weakened.

"What about – I know we haven't tested it properly – but...what about the Dragora?" Draco held out the flask uncertainly.

"Do it," she whispered.

With shaking hands, Draco parted the girl's bluish lips and poured a little of the potion into her mouth. After a painful few seconds she started coughing, her eyelids flickering weakly.

"They've killed the Lestranges, that is regretful. They were ever so useful," Hazeldene speaking in his usual, calmly amused tone caused the three of them to forget the girl on the slab in front of them, all spinning simultaneously to face the man. He was smiling blandly, looking relaxed, although his wand was pressed to Harry's throat, who appeared to have his mouth bound shut.

"I suggest you step away from there. Go on. Drop your wands and put your hands up where you can see them. We don't want any more silly business or this one will have to go the way of those incompetent oafs on the floor."

The three of them dropped their wands and raised their hands cautiously.

"Good decision," he smiled grimly.

"I do wish these children would stop meddling. I told you Minister - I knew that nasty little Harry Potter was sniffing about," sighed Umbridge as she brushed off her robes and attempted to straighten out her hair.

"Well, it was as well that we installed separate wards with detection charms and our own floo point to this room then."

"What a wonderful idea of yours, Minister," Umbridge simpered.

"What is this? What have you done to those girls?" Hermione dared to ask.

"These girls, these mudbloods" hissed Hazeldene, "are helping with our plans for repopulation. These are Mrs Avery, Rookwood, Macnair, Flint and Rowle. Their husbands kindly volunteered them for this great honour. With the exception of Miss Greengrass here. We had hoped that you were going to carry out the task that she is undertaking. However, after some….persuasion, her parents signed up to our scheme. I think their friends were eager to see her escape the terrible fate that has befallen her sister,"

"I don't get it?" Ron asked, "if they're pregnant, why are they here? What's wrong with them?"

Umbridge giggled in her silly, fluttering way, "Not pregnant exactly. They are really just vessels,"

Hermione risked a glance at Amy – her stomach seemed to be slowly shrinking back to normal size and Hermione could hear her ragged breathing, although she was still unconscious.

"You've cursed them?" she guessed, due to the effect of the Dragora potion rather than any knowledge of what had been done to them. Hermione had never seen magic like this before.

"It was a particularly complex and old piece of magic. Mr Hazeldene explained it to me when he asked me to work for him, to help him with the cause," Umbridge explained, looking lovingly at her boss. She worried the skin at her neck, a habit Hermione had noticed before but only now saw the cause of – a patch of raw skin where the locket had been. It was the same as Harry had after Hermione had to pull the locket off him.

Hazeldene took up the tale, "I was working for St Mungos at the time of the Battle of Hogwarts, in the morgue. It was boring work but it gave me plenty of opportunity for study. I have always found death fascinating. From reading of old texts and practice on smaller mammals, I discovered that I was able to create life artificially from the corpses of other animals. The carrier animal always died so in terms of numbers of lives, there was no net gain, but if one life was worth more than another……if the life of a filthy mudblood was worth extinguishing for….After the battle, the bodies of the war heroes," Hazeldene sneered the words, "were sent home with their families for burial, but the losers – the war criminals, they called them – were brought to us for incineration. I couldn't believe my luck. I had the raw materials and the skills…Bellatrix Lestrange, Fenrir Greyback, Antonin Dolohov, Yaxley, MacNair, and most important of all, the Dark Lord," he spoke the name with the reverence of a loyal follower, "I was able to take a little from each of them and keep the samples under a stasis charm until the time was right. After that, it was simply a case of – Arrrgh"

Harry, perhaps having waited until Hazeldene was distracted by his tale, or perhaps couldn't wait another second to stop the plot to rebirth Voldemort, simultaneously slammed his head back into Hazeldene's nose and stamped on his instep before pushing himself away. With the fast movement of a seeker, Draco bent and snatched up his wand, hitting Umbridge with an outpouring of purple flame that left her twitching on the floor.

Hazeldene recovered quickly, and was duelling with Harry by the time Ron and Hermione had picked up their wands.

Jets of light were flying wildly, rebounding off the ceiling and the walls at the speed that made the Lestranges look like mere amateurs. Ron, Draco and Harry were barely keeping Aurelius at bay as his arm slashed so wildly through the air it was almost a blur.

Hermione ran over to check on Amy – some colour had returned to her cheeks but she was still unconscious,

"Here," Draco tossed her the flask of Dragora and she started ripping the lines out of the other girls and tipping the potion into their mouths.

"Confringo!" Hazeldene seemed to be aiming at the flask but missed, the curse zipping past, inches from her face. The spell hit the machinery that was pumping the green potion into the girls. It exploded in a ball of fire before slowly, almost gracefully, starting to tumble to the ground. The shrill creak it made as it fell sounded like a scream. Flames started to lick the wall and ceiling of the room. Hermione worked faster, with shaking hands, until all of the girls were stirring feebly.

The duel was still raging, the three young wizards circling Hazeldene who seemed to be equal to them. The room seemed to be collapsing – small chunks of the ceiling were raining down, covering them in dust.

There was a sudden flash and Harry was down on his knees. Draco was bleeding heavily from a head wound and Ron was holding his ribs with one hand as he fired out hexes with the other – he seemed to be the only one of the three able to continue the fight. Hazeldene's robes were ripped, revealing a nasty gash down one arm but he was still bearing down on Ron, his face in a wild grin, already assured of his victory. The time for restraint had passed – this was a battle to the death.

An idea, born of desperation came to Hermione so suddenly it made her gasp. Forcing her self to concentrate, she felt blindly for the magic flowing through her. Fumbling a little at first, struggling under its weight, she tried to push it towards Ron. For a moment nothing happened, then she felt it, only a trickle of molten gold at first, that soon grew to a torrent, so fast that she could almost see it surrounding him.

The flick of his eyes over to her told her that he could feel it. He stood taller, held his arm a little straighter, and even Hazeldene must have been able to sense it because he took half a step back, hesitated for just a moment. A fraction of a second was all Ron needed to blast him fully in the chest with a jet of gold that sparked all over his body as he flew to the ground, landing flat on his back.

Suddenly, with a screeching rumble, one of the beams supporting the ceiling gave way in a tumble of rocks. The heavy oak swung down, catching Harry with a glancing blow that knocked him backwards before burying him nearly to the waist in rubble. Hazeldene barely had time to look up, open-mouthed before the beam landed squarely on top of him and he moved no more.

Draco and Ron ran to Harry to try and free him but it was quickly apparent that whatever damage had been done to Ron's ribs was preventing him from working at pace.

"Ron!" Hermione took his place moving the rocks, "the whole place is coming down. Get those girls to the Burrow,"

With a grim faced nod, Ron wrapped his arm around Amy, who was now sitting up dazedly, the hideous bloating gone from her stomach, and apparated away.

Harry was white faced and sweating, his teeth gritted in pain. Hermione and Draco exchanged a worried glance as more of the ceiling crashed down, and worked faster.

With a pop, Ron returned and took away the second girl.

Harry was almost free when a groaning from across the room alerted them to the fact that Umbridge was coming to.

"Leave her," growled Draco, "let the building squash her,"

"I need to try something,"

Hermione picked her way through the rubble to the older witch who was lying on the floor. Her robes were in disarray, exposing the scar on her neck again. It was this that had given Hermione the unsettling thought that she just couldn't shake about Umbridge. Remembering how wearing the locket for just a few hours at a time made her feel, imagining how you would be affected if you wore it for so long it started to eat into your flesh, for the magic of it to work its way into every corner of your brain. Perhaps Umbridge – foul as she had been prior to wearing the locket – had been damaged in a deeper way by the horcrux that she had unwittingly carried with her.

Before she allowed herself a chance to second guess herself or wonder what Draco would think of her wasting the last of the hard-earned potion on Umbridge rather than his father, she tipped into the witch's open mouth.

Almost immediately, she saw that something was different. Black veinlike lines started spreading out from Umbridge's mouth and snaking down her neck. Whereas Ron simply passed out, and the other girls seemed to recover quite quickly, Umbridge's condition was clearly worsening. Whether the curse had woven too deeply into the toadlike witch's being, or perhaps due to the darker magic of a horcrux, the potion seemed to be feeding the curse rather than killing it. The scar was now crisscrossed with the inky blackness and seemed to be constricting, the skin around it, puckering and pulling as it throttled the toadlike witch. Umbridge's hands scrabbled at it uselessly for a few moments before they fell limply to her sides. Hermione just watched as she seemed to waste away, her face becoming sunken, her once plump hands growing clawlike. Before a coherent thought could fight its way past the horror, it was clear that Umbridge was dead, her skin a bloodless grey. The curse magic had consumed all of Umbridge that it hadn't already tainted, leaving her just a husk on the floor.

"I – I didn't mean…" she scrambled back away, unable to tear her eyes from the sight.

"Granger, we've got to get out of here. Potter's about to pass out and the roof's going to collapse any second," Draco called her back to the present. He was supporting Harry who was barely able to stand, his head lolling onto Draco's shoulder. She rushed over to take his other side as another beam crashed down into the place she had just vacated.

She glanced over at the stone tables. There were two girls left – Cecilia Macnair and Astoria Greengrass - both still out cold. There was no way they could apparate with all of them, not with her magic so depleted after the effort of transferring it to Ron.

"Leave them," hissed Draco urgently.

"We can't, what about Ron?"

"You really think he's coming back?"

Hermione hated to admit it but Ron had been gone for a while, and it wouldn't be the first time he had deserted her when the going got tough. She dismissed the shameful thought as soon as it had sneaked into her brain. It was the very fact that he had done it before and regretted it ever since that meant that he would never, ever, abandon them again. She nodded slightly, her face set in determination.

"Yes, and the whole place could come down on him when he does."

Draco rolled his eyes that suggested that he wouldn't much care about that. A small explosion came from the ruined machinery, sending fire above their heads.

"We're all going to die here if we don't go now,"

"You go then, take Harry with you. I'm not leaving them to die,"

Their eyes met for a moment and Hermione knew that Draco was considering it, really thinking about leaving her. Her heart broke a little bit as she stared at the Slytherin.

"Granger, don't be an idiot, come on. I'm not going to stay here and die like a bloody Gryffindor," he held out his hand for her but she didn't take it and after a second he dropped it back to his side

"Go then," she whispered. She closed her eyes to stop the tears from welling there and heard the sharp crack of apparition.

"Wow this place is really coming down,"

It was Ron. Hermione opened her eyes to see Draco standing there still, the agony of indecision still on his face.

"You came back!" Hermione breathed, relief flooding through her.

"Course, nowhere else I'd rather be," he threw her a lopsided smile, unaware of what he had interrupted, "Now quick Draco, you grab that one in gold and I'll get this one," he hoisted Cecilia over his shoulder, ribs obviously recovered, and motioned for Draco to do the same. Hermione switched up with Draco to support Harry.

"Now go!" Ron shouted as with a shriek of rending metal and a rumble of stone, the whole place came down.

They landed all in a heap on the ground outside the Burrow. Even as they landed, Hermione felt the rubble that had been caught up in their apparition crashing into her, turning the world into a confusion of noise and pain. Eventually she was able to work out which way was up and struggled to her feet, clawing dust out of her eyes. She felt something warm and sticky on her face and knew that she must be bleeding. The others were extricating themselves from the pile, almost indistinguishable under the thick coating of grime. Only one dusty figure wasn't moving – a large patch of red seeping through the grey covering their head and spreading with alarming speed.


I thought writing spicy scenes was the thing I found hardest - turns out it's fight scenes!