Lies My Parents Told Me by plural_entity [Rated PG-13]
Celebrate the Season fic request for Kelly/Marionette
A special thank-you plural_entity for writing this volunteer fic as part of the free for all!
Title: Lies My Parents Told Me
Author: plural_entity
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, really. Everything belongs to J.K. Rowlings. Title and some quotes lifted from ‘Buffy the Vampire: Season Seven’; character of Crowanis is a shoutout to my bud Skiecrow, who owns the little devil (even though I did change a couple things, such as the spelling - s replaced r - gender and the werewolf instead of bear/tiger gryphon).
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Torture/Abuse/Sexual Assault, Language, Character Deaths
Author Notes: I tried to stick to your request as much as possible. I found it a bit hard to work in a special Christmas present, and I didn’t really put anything in there about that, but I answered everything else.
Summery: A letter to Hermione changes everything.
|x|x|x|
As years go by,
I race the clock with you.
But if you died right now,
You know that I'd die to.
I'd die too.
You remind me of the times,
When I knew who I was.
But still the second hand will catch us,
Like it always does.
“Until the Day I Die” - Story of the Year, ‘Page Avenue’, 2003
The boy was startled from his sleep. He blinked, rubbing his hands in the creases of his eyes to clear the mist from them. He listened from his bed, trying to figure out what was going on and what exactly awoken him.
Then Draco heard it. An earth-shattered scream.
He was used to that by now. Except for the fact that it was a woman’s scream. Normally, the Death Eaters had the decency to kick their kicks out of their woman with a hand over their mouth or a rag stuffed in it instead. You never normally heard a woman scream.
Something was terribly wrong.
He slid slowly from his bed, wincing slightly as he pulled on his nightshirt, feeling his muscles stretch painfully across his lean body. He bent down to grab his trousers and pull them on as well. He started for the door, going to open it. He stopped before his hand touched the knob. He turned around and grabbed his wand, before throwing the door open.
Draco headed for the dungeons.
Shadows loomed in front of him as soon as he turned the corner and he threw himself painfully hard back against the corner of the hall. He paused in the shadows of a corner, hoping that the incoming Death Eaters would not notice him and trying to calm his rapid breathing. He could already feel his back beginning to bruise from the strength with which he’d thrown himself back.
He was fortunate. The Death Eaters were drunk. They wouldn’t even do anything if they did see him. Even so, he remained hidden until they had turned the corner through which he had come, his slate eyes narrowed angrily. ‘That’s probably why I could hear that woman scream,’ he thought to himself, feeling anger burn within him. ‘They were too pissed to even cover her mouth.’
He practically launched himself into moving. His bare feet made slight slapping sounds as he paced down the stone hallway, his eyes swinging from left to right. The Death Eaters had a rule. When you had your way with a woman, you put a red X on her door. It would stay that would for a full 24 hours. So the woman had time to recover before someone else put her through her paces. There were eight red Xs he had passed. None held a crying woman. They were quiet.
He was getting worried. He was getting close to the end of the dungeon and he couldn’t see anymore red Xs. That is, until he got to the very last door. He spat the unlocking charms so fast it sounded like he was spitting curses.
The first thing that told him he’d found the woman was the strong scent of blood and burnt flesh that filled his nostrils. He could practically feel the bile rising in his throat from the stench. From now on, he breathed through his mouth.
Then he turned to the woman, still lying on the floor, covered in her own blood. He nearly screamed himself.
“H-h-h-help m-m-m-me...” Pansy Parkinson moaned; her face squeezed so tightly that her eyes looks like her eyes were little slits amongst the skin on her face. She was wearing nothing but a flimsy, grimy white nightshirt and a pair of graying socks. “S-someone... p-p-p-please...”
Draco just about ran to her, dropping down to his knees next to her, rubbing his pale hand along her forehead, shushing her. His wand lay forgotten in a pool of Pansy’s drying blood. “Don’t cry, Pansy,” he whispered, brushing her blond hair out of her eyes. “If you cry, they’ll come back.”
She opened her eyes, blinking at him through tears of pain and anger. “D-D-Draco...they took him!” She closed her eyes, wrapping her blood-stained hands around her body in an attempt to comfort herself.
“Pansy, what the hell are you doing here?!” he said harshly, not exactly understanding her. “They took who?”
Tears ran freely down her cheeks and pooled around her eyes. “M-m-my b-baby.”
Draco stopped dead, his mercury eyes widening as he pulled her to him in a hug. “I have to get you out of here. You’re going to bleed to death.”
He turned trying to locate where his wand was. He found it under his leg. He picked her up, carrying her over to her dirty cot. He was beginning to set her down when she grabbed his shirt, starting up at him with wide eyes. “D-d-don’t l-leave me D-Draco!”
He wiped her forehead again before placing a kiss on it. “I’ll be right back, I promise. I need to go send an owl.”
She nodded weakly, leaning back and lying against her cot, painfully pulling her tired legs to her chest and clutching them like a little girl who had a nightmare. Draco ran back to his room. He couldn’t have run faster unless he was Mercury himself.
His hands sought out the parchment on his desk, nearly knocking over his ink bottle as he went. He wrote furiously despite how severally his hand was shaking. There were great blots around it and he’d smeared some blood in the top corner from what had been on his hands when he’d picked up his wand. He turned, nearly shaking his eagle owl to wake him up.
“Take this to Hermione Granger, Pollux,” he whispered frantically to him as he tied the parchment to the owl’s leg. “Fly hard. Get it to her p. d. q.”
Pollux looked boredly at him but nipped his bloody finger before flying out the open window. Draco sighed, looking at his hands. He’d done what he could. Now what he needed was a shower and to burn these clothes.
|x|x|x|
Hermione Granger was used to everything happening at night.
Not like it was a big deal or anything. Just, if you worked in darkness, you got kinda used to it. Candles and wands were used most, and they had lived in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place for so long, that they had practically every single corner memorized. But there were those nights when the lights were on bright and there was noise in the old place!
But that normally wasn’t a good thing. Unlike tonight.
“Fred, I’m going to kill you!” she screamed, shoving him roughly out of the way as she raced after her cat. The grinning Weasley held up his hands in mock defense.
“Come on, Hermione!” he called after her, throwing out his right arm to catch his twin and half-support him before he collapsed from laughter. “Crookshanks looks better green!”
“Wanker!” was the only reply. Fred bent over himself, letting George fall to the ground and grabbing hold of his sides. Ron and Harry echoed their cackles from the kitchen. And they carried on, even after Fred and George starting screaming for help. Hermione soon followed, holding her wand in her outstretched hand.
“Come on, boys! You’ll look better green too!”
Ron pretended to wipe his eyes. “Blimey, I forgot how much fun Hermione could be when it wasn’t us that Hermione was screaming at.”
“Amen to that,” Harry echoed, biting deeply into his sandwich. He used his shirt-arm to mop up the mayonnaise that splattered on his cheek. “Mrs. Weasley, you’re an angel,” he mumbled with a half-full mouth, his head turned to look at the plump woman still cooking.
She smiled heartily at him, nodding. “You just eat up, Harry, dear. You too, Ronald. You both look like you haven’t had a proper meal for a month.”
Ron nodded, piling some sliced chicken and turkey, as well as Swiss cheese onto another piece of bread. “You’re right. Hermione can’t cook for shit.”
“Ronald Weasley!”
“Ron!”
Harry grinned at his friend, covering his mouth with his already-sticky hand. “You walked right into that one, mate.”
Ron grinned despite himself, twisting his head around so that the returning Hermione wouldn’t be able to see. “Yea, yea, I figured that much.”
“Ron, that’s an awful thing to say about your girlfriend,” the now spiky, black-haired Tonks murmured as she walked into the room, carrying a large silver bowl. “I don’t think you’re good at everything.”
Ron didn’t say anything, but just took a giant swig of his butterbeer. Harry glared at him out of the corner of his eye.
“I’m not good at Wizarding cooking,” Hermione grumbled, sitting down and picking at her eggs with her fork. “I can cook a pretty good Muggle-style meal. But you guys rush everything and have to get your food five minutes after you ask for it. Give me one day when you won’t be screaming in my ear to hurry up, and I’ll have you won over.”
Harry turned and blinked at her, before raising an eyebrow and smirking. “You want it so bad, you got it. You can make our Sunday night dinner.”
Ron mad a gagging noise as he got up to go put his dish in the sink. ‘I’m going to go shower. So no one screw with anything, okay?”
“You know if you say anything about someone not messing with the hot water, someone is going to mess with it.” Tonks turned her head to regard the teen. But they were all soon distracted by Tonks dropping her plate and shattering it instead.
Hermione turned around quickly, rushing over to Tonks to make sure she was alright. “Are you okay?”
Harry nearly jumped to his feet, but he instead narrowed his eyes as he watched Ron leave. Tonks was absentmindedly rubbing a hand over her bulging stomach, her green eyes (the eye-color she was currently most fond of) wide and worried.
“Yes, I’m alright Hermione,” she said shakily, patting the girl’s hand. “The baby just kicked, is all. I’m quite fine. Still feeling rather peckish actually. Just wasn’t expecting it. Startled me. Sorry about the plate, Molly.”
Molly, whose plump face was reddening from not screaming that this was the fourteenth plate Tonks had broken at the top of her lungs, was slowly loosing steam, a bittersweet smile forming on her face. “Circe, Tonks, you’re having a baby. I can’t be mad at you for dropping a plate when you felt the baby kick!”
Tonks grinned and Molly helped Tonks into a seat. She then descended into the one across from her and swung her wand in a steady arch that sent the broom and dust pan into motion to clean up the fallen china. Then, in true motherly style, started fixing another sandwich for the witch.
Harry glanced over at Hermione as he heard the water above them start to run. ‘Good,’ he thought, getting up and putting his dish in the sink. ‘I can talk to Hermione now.’ He shook his head slightly before walking over to her (she was standing behind Tonks, chatting with the two older ladies) and pulling on her arm slightly.
She turned to look at him but he shook his head quickly and nodded then toward the family room. He walked out of the room and the quick mutter of an ‘I’ll be back in a moment’ and the scuffling of Hermione’s sock-clad feet made him sure she was following him. When he reached the far end of the room, he swung around, nearly colliding with the approaching Hermione.
“Ron’s cheating you.” He blurted it out so fast he wasn’t sure he had said it clearly. But he could see the change in her eyes to know that she had understood.
“Are you certain?”
He sighed, running a hand through his shoulder-length hair. “I’m positive. It’s been going on for about two months now.”
He glanced up at her eyes, watching her cheeks redden in hurt and anger. “And you never -!”
He grabbed her arm, shushing her while he put his finger to his lips. “He promised me he would tell you. He’s my best mate. I believed he’d do it. You and him haven’t exactly been on the best of terms for the past couple weeks. You’ve be snapping at each other every three minutes. I had figured he told you.”
He could see that she was slowly becoming less angry at him and more angry at Ron. At the time, he was just happy she wasn’t angry at him. “And you knew that he didn’t when?”
“When Tonks commented about how he shouldn’t talk about his girlfriend that way.”
She sighed; plopping down onto the ground and sitting cross-legged, her arms wrapped comforting around her. “Do you know who?” she asked in a weak, little-girlish voice. “What I mean is did he ever tell you?”
Harry nodded, sighing slightly as he leaned down onto his knees so he could be more level with her. “Yea. Yea, he did.” He put a hand on Hermione’s shoulder and rubbed it slightly. “It’s Anna.”
Hermione’s face dropped. “Oh,” she said, her mouth resting comfortably on the palm of her hand. “Oh.”
“I’m real sorry, Hermione,” Harry said, pulling her into a half hug, which she resisted; stiffening instead. “Ron’s stupid.”
“What you mean,” said Hermione, her voice thick, “is that Ron goes for the brainy girls who are actually beautiful. The prettier ones, the smarter ones, the ones with the bigger boobs and less questions.”
She turned her head to the side, clenching her eyes shut. “The ones not like me.”
“Hermione, you know that’s not true!”
Hermione practically cut him with her nails, she avoided his arms. “And you know it is!” Her eyes flared angrily, and she shook her head, tears spilling down onto her pastel-blue blouse. “Because Viktor was my first real boyfriend and Ron’s always held that against me. Because McCormac was the one right after that, and he’s never forgiven me for that either. Everything he does, he does to hurt me. And he was my first real kiss as well.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. He knew Ron was still angry about the whole Viktor Krum thing, and he knew that he was even angrier with her about the whole McCormac thing. And then there was that other thing that Ron had only mentioned once. But he didn’t know much about that. He couldn’t answer her. Everything Ron did seemed to be exactly what would hurt Hermione worse. And he did know it. ‘I’m just...i’m sorry. Dead sorry. In fact, I’m so sorry; I could die of being so sorry.”
She shook her head, getting to her feet and pushing him away again. “I need to go think Harry. Don’t follow me.”
He stared after her, green eyes wistful of a time when his two best-friends seemed like doting love-birds and when he could be at Hogwarts, avoiding his Potions homework and playing Quidditch.
|x|x|x|
“Harry, you’re acting like bleeding lunatic,” George’s muffled voice echoed, biting into an apple. His twin sat next to him fuming and glaring at Hermione. Apparently George had sacrificed Fred and used him as a human shield. Fred still couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the green in his hair.
Despite his anger, Fred concurred. “He’s right, you know, Harry. There isn’t anyway that that could happen. We would have known by now, wouldn’t you?”
Harry was too adamant on the subject to be shot down. “How do you know!?”
“You. Are. Not. A. Horcux!”
Harry shook his head, mussed up hair frazzled to the last strand. “But it’s the only thing I can think of!”
Remus blinked, dropping his head into his hands as Hermione jumped to her feet again, banging her hands against the table like she was a marching-band drummer. “Harry Potter, just because you can’t come up with any ideas of what the Horcruxes are, doesn’t mean you should make stupid suggestions!”
“But it’s not a stupid suggestion!” He pulled his glasses off and rubbed the palm of his hand against his eye. “Think about Hermione,” he said, lowering his voice. “I’m the only person to survive Avada Kadavera -”
“Don’t -”
“- and no one has yet to figure out exactly way.” He turned, flashing a glare toward the ebony male grinning toothy at him from the other end of the table. “Enough Blaise.”
“I was just going -”
“Going to say that I shouldn’t brag anymore about it ’cause I’m too much of a bloody martyr. I’ve heard it before. I’m just stating my facts.”
Remus lifted his head, eyes looking tiredly over toward Harry. “But Dumbledore proved that Harry. Remember,” he said nodding to him, “It was because Lily gave herself for you. Her love to sacrifice herself to save your own life provided you with that protection.”
“Yes, but Voldemort (everyone gasped, coughed, grunted, or took in a breath at the same time) killed Dumbledore. Yes, he didn’t do it himself, but he figured out a way. He went directly through Malfoy and then indirectly through Narcissa Malfoy and Snape. You remember, the conniving bastard?”
“I’m sitting right here, Potter.”
Ron snickered from his spot on the couch in the other room. “I know,” Harry retorted back automatically. “Though we’ve proved your innocence through memory charms and veritaserum, I still don’t forgive you. And Ron, aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”
He coughed. “I am asleep!”
Hermione had apparently spoken to Ron shortly after he’d gotten out of the shower. She’d then thrown a plate at him and Ron had been stupid enough to dodge and get Hermione more pissed off that it hadn’t hit him. He’d then confessed that he had an upset stomach and couldn’t come to the Order of the Phoenix meeting planned for that night.
Hermione chuckled, but turned swiftly when Moody, who was sitting next to Remus, grunted sharply. “Retexere!” he shouted gruffly, pointing his want to the door. The door vibrated, and little strands of brown, vein-like material unwound themselves back into their normal position: one of Hermione’s new and modified spells for locking doors without the use of actual locks.
The door opened and a thin, lanky, ebony-skinned figure walked in through the door. She was quickly followed by a tall, powerfully-build woman with short, cropped blonde hair. A pure white she-wolf with a black streak down her spine and tail darted in at the large woman’s side.
Hermione practically growled as she stared at Blaise’s sister. “Anna, Rose, what are you doing here?” She narrowed her eyes scathingly. “And since when do you need to have a dog deliver your letters? Aren’t owls good enough?”
Moody snickered, shaking his head. “That’s no dog,” he growled, pointing a finger to the wolf’s pierced ears and fancy collar. “That’s a semi-transformed werewolf.”
Hermione jumped back, her clutched fist pulling out her wand and pointing it at the she-wolf’s face. “What do you mean, half-morphed werewolf?! What the hell does that mean!?”
Moody let out a cackling laugh that sounded like wood breaking. “Means she was bitten when it either wasn’t the full moon, or when the biter wasn’t transformed. That or she used experimental magical medicines to try and heal herself.”
Instantly with a loud howl of pain, a pale, raven-haired woman was standing there with the letter the wolf had been clutching in her mouth. She wore a pair of dark sun-glasses, pointedly charmed to appear completely black. She pulled a black-clawed hand up, and grabbed the letter. “Both really, Alastor, you should know,” she said pointedly.
Remus stood wearily, rubbing his temple with a hand. “For those of you that don’t know, this Crowanis -“
“- Crow -”
“- Greyback.”
Molly stifled a gasp, her eyes wide with fear. Ron let out a series of hacking coughs from his spot in the other room. Fred and George glared, slouching in their seats, their arms crossed over their chest. Bill shifted in his own seat. Harry narrowed his green eyes as he watched the eldest Weasley child.
“I’m Fenrir’s sister,” she answered their silent question.
“Get her the fuck out of my house,” snapped Harry.
Snape started to intervene, “Potter, let’s discuss this first,” but Harry wouldn’t let him.
Tonk’s stood up, a hateful look on her normally good-natured face. “No, Severus. Harry’s right,” she said calmly, placing a protective hand on her stomach. “I saw what that bastard did to Bill. Fleur’s dead because of him. Bill’s raising that little precious little girl by himself because of that beast.”
The entire time, Rose hadn’t shifted an inch. She stood her ground beside the she-were and showed no backing down. Anna, however, had slid her way into the other room, obviously to find Ron. Hermione hadn’t failed to notice this. She had just chosen to ignore it. There were more pressing matters. “Harry, let them explain before we go throwing her into the street.”
“Better have a good reason, Crowanis,” Moody muttered, shifting his seat to face the group of standing wizards.
Crowanis growled, snatching her sun-glasses off her face. Hermione audibly gasped a hand over her face. Crow stared blankly ahead, her eyes milky-white, pupil less, and blind.
“You know that I wouldn’t have risked my life for you people like this,” she snarled. “Fen can sniff out your scents. It’s not hard for a werewolf to discern where others have been running to. That wretched brother of mine will have reported my absence to the Dark Lord a while ago. I wouldn’t have gotten the letter unless that little worm of a wizard Pettigrew hadn’t handed it to me and told me to discard of it properly.”
“Wait!” Harry seemed quite ready to talk now. “What do you mean, Wormtail told you? He gave you the letter? That would mean that they would know by now.”
Crow nodded. “I’m a higher-ranking Death Eater. Not as high as Severus, or Lucius had gotten, got pretty high. Being Fenrir’s sister got up me up there pretty high, despite the fact of being blind. I’m one of those trusted with the tasks of discarding unwanted...material.”
“And bodies.”
“And witnesses.”
The she-were growled when both Moody and Snape spoke. She used her middle and index finger to flick the letter at Hermione. It hit her on the chest and rested on the ground. She saw ‘Hermione A. Granger’ hastily scribbled across the top of it. “It’s addressed to Miss Granger.”
Hermione bent down and picked it up, ripping it apart as she rushed to open it. She stared as she read aloud:
“Granger,
No time to talk. Pansy in trouble. They took the baby. She’s in the dungeons. Last cell on the left hand side, and then look for the one with the red X on it. Hurry.
- Draco”
Harry paled; his green eyes wide as he turned to Moody. ‘We have to go!”
Moody let out a bark of laughter. “There’s no need,” he growled, taking a swig from his hip flask. “No reason to go risk lives for the lives of traitors.”
Energy practically crackled around Harry as he grew angry: one thing that always happened when the boy got angry. Things blew up, blew out and swelled up. Right now, the lights were flickering. Molly and Tonks already had their wants out, just incase the lights when out.
“That’s Pansy you’re talking about right now, Moody,” said Harry angrily. “You want to be responsible for her death?”
“Potter, this is the way that wars are won!”
Harry shook his head furiously. “Don’t really care, Moody, can you tell? The war’s not worth anything if the people that we love have to die for it to work.”
He spun around, facing the blind werewolf and nodded. “Take us to them.”
“There’s a great possibility innocent lives are going to be ended, Potter,” she reminded him quietly as she put her charmed sunglasses on. “Are you willing to risk those lives for traitors?”
Harry narrowed his eyes, green darkened to an almost black in the light. “That’s my wife.”
Crowanis nodded her head, pulling her raven-black hair up into a high pony-tail and turning to Rose, who was still firmly at her side. She smirked. Even though Rose was her companion and cohort, she still didn’t trust her. But then again, the Parkinsons had lost their fair share of lives to her brother’s claws. “Let’s suit up, then. This is going be a lot harder than just a raiding party.”
Hermione sighed, her eyes tired. “What do you want us to do?”
Crow sat down in the chair that Remus offered to her and rubbed her temple with a finger. “We’re going to need a distraction - a diversion.” She turned to Remus and blinked at him. ‘Remus and I should be able to provide that. They’ll know him to be a werewolf and that’ll set Fenrir off. I can transform, but I’ll need someone to do a glamour spell on me, so they won’t notice me. Most likely a disillusionment spell, rather than a color change.”
“I can do that,” Blaise said, getting up from his seat and walking over. “Draco was my best mate. He got my ass out of a number of different spots. I wouldn’t be a true friend if I didn’t help in his rescue.”
“I want to go to!”
“No, Ginny, it’s too dangerous!” Molly stepped up at once, grabbing her daughter by the shoulders.
The fiery red-head stared stubbornly at her mother, eyes defiant. “But if everyone else gets to go -”
Harry shook his head, looking over at Ginny. ‘You can’t go, Gin. I’m sorry, but your mother’s right. This is too dangerous. We wouldn’t even be going in if it wasn’t for the fact that they’ll be killed. This isn’t some social outing. We all could die tonight.”
She glared at Harry, fully ready to protest her case. “But Malfoy and Parkinson are my friends too! Why is it just because I’m a year younger - only half a year till I’m seventeen - then all of them!”
Hermione snorted good-naturedly, despite the present circumstances. “They are nothing of the sort,” she said, turning a reproving gaze toward Ginny. “You hate Pansy for ‘stealing Harry’ from you,” she made little quotation marks with her fingers, “and you can’t stand Malfoy because he’s a prat. You just find him easy on the eyes. I’m sorry, Gin, but I must agree with Harry here. It’s not a matter of whether you’re too young. It’s the fact that you’ve got no real reason to be out there.”
“And you’re going to go out there because you’re trying to save Malfoy and Parkinson?!” Ginny was practically screaming. Blaise tried to put his arm on her shoulder, but she shrugged him off. “The boy that called you a Mudblood for six years of your life and the girl who called you a buck-toothed hag?! Bloody Slytherins as well!”
Hermione eyed Ginny coldly. Ever since that night, Ginny had been very rude about her accepting Malfoy and Pansy as friends. To hear Ginny talking about that term to her face and what Pansy had said while in school made her fists clench at her sides. “As was Blaise one of the bloody Slytherins that you called a blood traitor.” She narrowed her dark eyes at the girl, watching her pull away from all of them angrily. “Don’t blame me for your problems Ginny. If you’ve got a problem about me being friends with Slytherins, then take a look at who you’re bedding.”
Hermione turned back to Crowanis, who was watching the whole exchange with a bemused _expression on her normally blank face. “What else?”
“We’ll need waves as well, because you can sure, the Death Eaters will have them.”
“I’ll lead one.” Bill stood up, offering a scarred hand to Crow. She shook it somewhat leniently. “It’s the least I can do. For Charlie.”
Remus nodded wisely, his arm unwrapping from around Tonk’s middle. “Okay... this is what we’re going to do...”
|x|x|x|
Hermione pressed herself against the wall, watching the lithe form of Crowanis and the larger more hulky Rose slide along the corridor far more gracefully than she herself was able to. Close behind her - she could feel his breath on her neck - Harry was pressing in, with Ron and Anne somewhere else behind her. Her mouth thinned in slight McGonagallish way when she heard their soft murmuring.
The bangs from outside made her shudder when she thought about the hexes and curses that were being thrown around.
“Crowanis!” she whispered hastily, as she nearly tripped for the fourth consecutive time. “Crowanis, where are we going!?”
The she-were stopped, turning and nodded her head toward the steps that lied in front of them. “We have to get down to the dungeons,” she explained, pointing a clawed finger toward the shadowy staircase. “That’s where they’ll be kept.”
“If they’re still alive, that is,” Anne muttered from behind her.
Hermione turned her head and shot the girl a withering glare. “They’re alive.”
Crowanis nodded. “They are alive.”
Ron coughed. “They are?” he asked incredulously.
The woman nodded. “I can smell them. Alive scent, not dead scent. I would be able to smell they’re deaths. I can smell their blood, that’s for sure. But I don’t death.”
Hermione shivered as she Crow talk. Smelling death. It didn’t seem like a very nice profession. “Lead us on.”
The she-were nodded her head and began to slither her way back toward the steps, waving her hand in the air when she figured it was safe for them to follow.
|x|x|x|
The trip down the steps was fine enough. But once Hermione reached the landing - the entrance to the dungeons - she knew what Crowanis meant. She could smell the death that clung to the air. It smelled like rotting flesh and burnt hair and sex and blood. It hit her like a stunning spell to the stomach and made bile rise up the back of her throat so much that she could practically taste it. She hated the fact that she knew what all those things smelled like. Sex was one thing. But blood and rotting flesh. It made her sick to her stomach.
From now on she breathed through her mouth.
Crowanis was running down the hall and Hermione could see the faces of Muggles, Muggleborns and Half-bloods alike that were pressed up against the bars of their animalistic cages. As she jogged half-heartedly after the werewolf, she caught Harry’s green eyes lingering on her. She nodded her head. There was no time to rescue everyone.
Moody’s earlier words echoed in her head. This is the way that wars are won. She understood it. Not everyone could be saved, as much as she hoped they could. The humans that surrounded them - caged like beasts - were marked and injured and she knew that behind those calling out for help were those that were either too weak to call out or already dead. They were here to rescue Pansy and Malfoy.
It seemed strange to her. Everything passed by in a haze. She could almost feel their cries in her heart and she couldn’t tell whether they were hurting her or helping her. They were rescuing pureblooded traitors that had infuriated and called her names and made her Hogwarts days practically miserable, but yet innocent people that she had never met before were crying out for her help and she was forced to ignore them. She hated it. It wasn’t fair!
She felt Harry’s arms wrap around her shoulders and she started to snap a sharp retort, but then she heard the casting of a spell (Sufflaro!) and a loud explosion in front of her that splattered her with dust and rock. Harry’s hand was covering her face as to keep the dust from irritating her. She pulled away from him, pushing through the fog of debris toward Crowanis. She blinked at the witch, who sighed, slightly panting as she leaned on Rose. Her shoulder was bleeding heavily.
“What happened?” There was no use keeping quiet. Anyone would have been able to hear the explosion.
Crowanis grimaced. “Rock hit me when I blew it up.” She shook her head as if to clear the rubble from her very head. “Enough though. We need to get going. They know what we’re going for now.”
Hermione nodded and watched as Harry had already made his way into the room. His cry of “PANSY!” was enough to make her heart wrench from her chest. The blonde was lying on a dirty cot, coughing and sputtering as she latched her arms around Harry’s neck. Her patted her back and smoothed her hair, whispering things into her ear as she sobbed into his chest. Just the condition that woman was in was shocking. But the thing that scared her the most was the limp form against the back wall.
“Malfoy!” she called out, jumping over a couple larger rocks to get to him. ‘Please don’t let him be dead... Please, God. Just don’t let him be dead...’
His head was resting against his chest and it rose slightly, but then dropped back down, his chin hitting his chest with a loud smack that made Hermione wince. She could see Ron watching her from the corner of his eye as he helped Pansy out of hysterics. You couldn’t transport a witch that was half out of her mind. “Malfoy!” she called again, hoping that he would respond with more than just a slight head raise.
A cough answered her. Better than nothing. “Stop yelling Granger,” he croaked; his normally silky voice raw and hoarse. “You’re making my headache worse.”
She reached his side and brought a hand up to her face when she saw the full extent of his injuries. He was half-naked and chained to the wall at the wrists by manacles that were coated with blood. His body looked like a walking bruise. Cuts lined his well-toned chest and blood streaked across the pale skin, causing a strange clash of colors that made her want to cry. His left eye was half-closed as he observed her almost calmly.
The last time she had seen him his hair had been fully one length and all the way down to his shoulders. Now it was chopped raggedly at his ears and was almost as bloody as his chest was. His lips looked like one huge scab: he’d bitten straight through the lip.
“So are you going to get me out of these things, or are you thinking up useful ways to use me for my information?”
She was startled from her thoughts when she saw him smirking at her, and he looked so much worse when he smirked! “We have got to get you out of here; you’re going to end up bleeding to death!”
He let out a gravelly bark of laughter. ‘I’ve already taken my blood-replenishing potion for the day. I won’t die of blood loss anytime soon.”
“Shut up, Malfoy,” she said coldly as she cast the Alohomora spell to release the manacles.
When they fell off his wrists he pulled his hands toward his chest, using one hand to rub against the sores on his other wrist. And then he started to fall. She caught him haphazardly, but he was so much larger than she was that she couldn’t hold him. She started to slide until she found Crowanis helping to hoist him back up. She nodded to the werewolf. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Crow answered, looking around. Harry was sitting on the cot, Pansy sitting like a child in his arms, while Rose offered her sister water from a hip flask. Ron and Anne were standing by the broken prison-like door, watching for Death Eaters.
“Here they come!” Hermione heard Anne shout, while at the same time, Ron let loose a flurry of spells (Impedimenta!, Incarcerous!, Petrificus Totalus!, Stupefy!) which sounded more like a barrage of curse words.
Crowanis nodded to her and Harry. “Apparate out here! It’ll work down here! This is the only place in the area it can work, as long as you’re not in the chains!”
“Meet me back at home!” Harry shouted as he wrapped his arms furiously around Pansy and with a sharp Crack! he was gone. Rose’s Apparation soon followed and Hermione looked over Crowanis worriedly.
The she-were grinned and shook her head. “Don’t worry about me! Just go!” she shouted over the sounds of Anne and Ron Apparating away.
“But I can’t leave you!’
“I’ll get back to Grimmauld Place safely enough, just go!”
Hermione nodded as she wrapped her arms around the now-unconscious Draco and Apparated away. Crowanis transformed in a large arctic wolf immediately, and she watched Hermione leave in a blink, but not before she jumped toward the girl and snapped at her arm, taking a patch of Hermione’s rob with her and a splatter of red across her muzzle.
The forms of Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange walked their way into the dungeon cell, grimaces as they stepped carefully. Fenrir followed them, heaving deep breaths through his flaring nostrils.
“Did’ya get one, Crow?” he growled, turning to look at his sister as she drew a snow-white paw up to wipe the blood from her muzzle.
She transformed back into her human form, her sunglasses askew on her face and splashed with blood. “The Mudblood Apparated with the boy before I could get her. I got a good chunk of her arm and robe, but nothing too vital.”
Bellatrix spat at the ground. “Pity. I would have loved making her scream.”
Crow shook her head, pushing loose strands of black hair out of her face. “How the hell did they know?”
Lucius shook his head. “I’m not quite sure.” He turned accusing grey eyes toward the she-were. “Are you sure that you discarded of that letter properly?”
Her own eyes narrowed from behind her glasses. “Are you calling me a traitor, Malfoy?”
A growl that sounded from around him made the silky hairs on the back of his pale neck rise up unconsciously. “No, of course not, Crowanis,” he said, shaking his head as if she was speaking in riddles. “Never. I was just making sure that the letter hadn’t accidentally fallen into the wrong hands.”
Fenrir let the growl die in his throat and nodded approvingly, turning to his sister with a wide-fanged grin. Crowanis grinned herself, pulling her hair back again, and running her hands through the coarse mane that formed from the tie-back’s hold. “Good.”
Pulling her sun glasses off, she watched both the witch and wizard flinch at the sight of her disfigurement. “Good. Because I am.”
With a loud Crack she Apparated out of the dungeon, leaving two confused men and a fuming witch.
|x|x|x|
Hermione sobbed against Tonk’s chest as she turned away, unable to look anymore. “No, it’s just not right!” she mouthed against the woman’s shoulder, who nodded, smoothing Hermione’s hair motherly.
Hermione turned her head, staring at the limp form of Ginerva Weasley. “Stupid Ginny,” she said, shaking her head furiously, tears spilling down her front. “Barmy girl. Should have stayed home like we told her to!”
Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Pansy - huddled in a large shirt of Harry’s and a pair of Hermione’s old jogging trousers, which were far too big for her - standing white beside Harry. Ron was pounding his fists into the wall on the other side of the room, swearing and swearing and panting furiously. She couldn’t tell if it was just sweat or if he was crying. She suspected both. Anne sat on the couch, staring lazily down at the body in front of her. She looking in a trance, with her eyes wide and staring, but tears ran down her ebony cheeks just the same.
Crowanis and Rose stood against the back wall. Rose’s eyes were red with tears - despite the fact that she had hardly known the girl. Crow had removed her sunglasses, vouching instead to stare blindly into that which she knew she didn’t want to see. She held a large white towel to her shoulder, and it was steadily growing red with blood. Crowanis didn’t like medicine; whether Muggle or Wizarding.
Blaise and sped up to his room, screaming about something or another, but Hermione knew that he had loved Ginny, despite how reluctant he was to admit it. He’d never told her, either.
Her eyes floated to the form of Bill Weasley, who was staring ahead, looking completely lost. Mr. Weasley had taken his wife upstairs already, unable to stay and sit vigil with their youngest child’s body.
Fred and George were sitting beside Ginny’s body, holding her cooling hands in theirs and smoothing her hair over her face. Fred’s hair was still green. He hadn’t reversed the spell that she had used to change it colors yet. She remembered how just twenty-four hours earlier they had been so much happier. Hermione shook her head, pulling away from Tonks.
“I-I-I can’t! I can’t s-stay down here!”
|x|x|x|
It was registering. She turned up the stairs, clutching Ginny’s bloodied hair-ribbon in her hand: the only thing that she’d ever have to remind her of the young girl who’d she’d loved so dearly. She ran all the way up the stairs, to the top of floor and down the hall to the last door on the right. It was where her, Harry and Ron had been staying.
Where Draco was staying until his wounds healed all the way.
She flung the door open and slammed it shut just as quickly behind her. Her back pressed against it for a few moments as she caught her breath. Then she pulled her wand out of her pocket as she stared at the boy - no, the man - resting on her bed.
They had been able to heal most of Draco’s wounds. Cleaned up a lot of the bruises. His left eye would be permanently lazy, and he would walk around with more scars than even Bill Weasley had from Fenrir’s attack. He was still without a shirt - though the blood was gone from his chest. His legs were up and his arms were wrapped around his knees. His hair was slightly wet and sticking to his forehead. He didn’t even look up at her when she marched over.
Hermione could smell him. Not the sickening smell of blood and burnt human flesh that had covered him when she’d Apparated him there, but the way he was supposed to smell. Lilac shampoo wafted from his hair - he’d used hers - and then the deep, sandalwood and peppermint smell that was completely Draco. It had always given her the impression that he’d just had a couple shots.
“I should kill you now,” she said softly.
He gave a kind of half-shrug half-jerk, still not meeting her eyes. “Go ahead.”
“You won’t fight me?”
He looked up finally at her and Hermione felt her heart hammer inside her own body. It felt as thought it was doing the salsa ten-times faster than it should be performed. Hermione had never shut the window to this room, despite how cold it made it. Now Draco’s corn-silk hair was lighted silver with the moonlight that drifted in through it and his eyes had darkened to a marble-like sheen.
“Hermione, I don’t want to fight anymore.”
She hissed, “Don’t call me that!”
He stared at her, never breaking eye-contact. “Hermione...”
Her wand was pointing at his chest. He flinched slightly and she could tell that his time in the dungeons of his own house had made him afraid of any wand pointed at him. Hermione felt her heart snap when she knew that she had frightened him. The Draco she knew was never frightened by anything. She wondered what they had done to him and what he had seen. “Say it.”
Draco blanched slightly, but his face never lost that emotionless quality it had always had. “Why?” he asked, in a strangely deep voice that sounded child-like to Hermione’s ears.
“Just say it!” she screamed, her wand-hand shaking with the effort.”
He shook his head, wet hair falling into his eyes and obscuring them slightly from her view. “I can’t. I won’t. Not with you like this.”
“Goddamn you! I hate you, you bloody bastard!” She shot at him with a stunning charm that she’d screamed so loud in her head it had accidentally erupted from her wand. It hit him in the shoulder, and he answered it with a grunt of pain, but nothing more. She froze, her hand dropping her wand as she brought both of them to cover her mouth in horror.
“I’m sorry...I’m sorry. I’m so sorry...”
She turned to run toward the door, but Draco’s silent footfalls followed her. He grabbed her roughly by her shoulders, spinning her around, staring into her face in a fuming rage. “Why are you sorry?!” he shoulders, shaking her slightly as he gripped her shoulders. “Stop being sorry!”
He breathed freely, practically panting as she looked at the look of fear on her face. He blinked at her, recoiling swiftly and pulling his arms to his side. He took a step back but Hermione stepped forward a fraction and slid her arms around his waist.
He stiffened. Despite those few kisses that they had once shared - yes, there had been too few for his liking - he had never been so to Hermione. The kisses that they had shared had been out of pure need and hormones. Him, just turning traitor and experiencing the death of his mother and her in a fight with Ron. They had kissed out of nothing more than the need to feel something. Nothing more.
It was strange to him how such a small gesture could be so damn intimate.
Slowly, his arms moved around her, wrapping gently and pulling her closer towards him. He sighed deeply, closing his eyes slowly. “Please,” she whispered against his bare stomach, feeling her heart practically heave with the effort to breathe. “I want to hear it.” She sobbed against him, her arms pulling him closer. “I need to heart it.”
He leaned down and slowly unwrapped her arms from around him, holding her wrists in his hands as he looked into her doe eyes. “I need to feel it,” she whispered softly, a tear trickling down her cheek.
His lips crashed against her cheek, kissing salty tears and loving every minute of it. Her eyes closed of their own volition and she leaned into his kiss. He pulled black slightly, using the tip of his finger to push her chin up so that he could kiss her easier. There was no grace to the kiss, nor any finesse or refinement. Just pure heat and anger and pain and need. His right hand sifted through her hair as his left wrapped around her waist, pulling her against his body. Her hands slid awkwardly up his arms, gently wrapping around his neck.
But as time passed and their kiss grew slightly less clumsy and more skillful, Hermione needed to breath. She pulled back, resting her forehead against his. Draco stared at her shoulder, where his right hand rested. She could felt Draco watching her then and could feel when he looked away.
“What is it?’ she asked, feeling almost as thought she had done something wrong.
Draco pulled back slightly, resting his left hand on her hip as he held his right in front of his face, beside Hermione’s head. “Nothing,” he murmured, untangling her arms from about his neck and pulling away. He walked away from her then, walking towards the door as if to leave.
Hermione could feel her heart slowly slide into a painful rhythm that was too deliberate to bear. She had heard it pound in her ears only seconds before, when Draco was still kissing her and when she had felt wrapped in his warmth. And now he was walking away from her. Again. Walking away from her after kissing her for the second time ever. All at once, Hermione felt like a little girl again, crying in Hagrid’s hut after Malfoy - this Malfoy - had called her a Mudblood for the first time.
Draco pulled of the ring from his finger, holding it in front of him and staring at the intricate details on the silver band. Pure silver, with the elaborate scrawling of the words “Always Pure, Always True, Always Malfoy” in old French. He stared at the emblem on it, recognizing it exactly for what it was. The Malfoy Crest: a large M with a snake entwining around it.
He stared at the spot in the snake’s eye were the glittering emerald should have set.
“Nothing,” he said again as he dropped the trinket into the rubbish bin - which swallowed it with a loud slurp and belch.
He turned around and practically glided, ghost-like, back over to Hermione. He stared at her, the tears still glistening wet on her cheeks. He hugged her, arms enveloping her smaller body as her arms wrapped around his back. He arched his back, burying his head into the crook of her neck, where he took a couple deep, gentle breaths, inhaling her scent greedily.
“What was it, then?” she asked, her breath ruffling feverishly against the top of his bare chest. Her arms slid up and wrapped around his neck. Draco pulled back and kissed again. His hand massaged the side of her face and she melted into his grasp.
He pulled back, resting his head against the crook of her neck as he kissed the tender spot of skin just below her ear. “Just another lie my parents told me.”
|x|x|x|
Three things you want your fic to include: 1.) Either totally hardcore fluff or complete and utter angst. Which one, I don't care, but it has to be one or the other. Heh. 2.) Take place year after HBP (what would have been their seventh year). 3.) A very special Christmas present.
Three things you do not want your fic to include: 1.) Slash 2.) Smut 3.) Having a 'secret crush' on each other for years and never truly admitting it
Thank-you for Celebrating the Season with Draco and Hermione!
A special thank-you plural_entity for writing this volunteer fic as part of the free for all!
Title: Lies My Parents Told Me
Author: plural_entity
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything, really. Everything belongs to J.K. Rowlings. Title and some quotes lifted from ‘Buffy the Vampire: Season Seven’; character of Crowanis is a shoutout to my bud Skiecrow, who owns the little devil (even though I did change a couple things, such as the spelling - s replaced r - gender and the werewolf instead of bear/tiger gryphon).
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Torture/Abuse/Sexual Assault, Language, Character Deaths
Author Notes: I tried to stick to your request as much as possible. I found it a bit hard to work in a special Christmas present, and I didn’t really put anything in there about that, but I answered everything else.
Summery: A letter to Hermione changes everything.
|x|x|x|
As years go by,
I race the clock with you.
But if you died right now,
You know that I'd die to.
I'd die too.
You remind me of the times,
When I knew who I was.
But still the second hand will catch us,
Like it always does.
“Until the Day I Die” - Story of the Year, ‘Page Avenue’, 2003
The boy was startled from his sleep. He blinked, rubbing his hands in the creases of his eyes to clear the mist from them. He listened from his bed, trying to figure out what was going on and what exactly awoken him.
Then Draco heard it. An earth-shattered scream.
He was used to that by now. Except for the fact that it was a woman’s scream. Normally, the Death Eaters had the decency to kick their kicks out of their woman with a hand over their mouth or a rag stuffed in it instead. You never normally heard a woman scream.
Something was terribly wrong.
He slid slowly from his bed, wincing slightly as he pulled on his nightshirt, feeling his muscles stretch painfully across his lean body. He bent down to grab his trousers and pull them on as well. He started for the door, going to open it. He stopped before his hand touched the knob. He turned around and grabbed his wand, before throwing the door open.
Draco headed for the dungeons.
Shadows loomed in front of him as soon as he turned the corner and he threw himself painfully hard back against the corner of the hall. He paused in the shadows of a corner, hoping that the incoming Death Eaters would not notice him and trying to calm his rapid breathing. He could already feel his back beginning to bruise from the strength with which he’d thrown himself back.
He was fortunate. The Death Eaters were drunk. They wouldn’t even do anything if they did see him. Even so, he remained hidden until they had turned the corner through which he had come, his slate eyes narrowed angrily. ‘That’s probably why I could hear that woman scream,’ he thought to himself, feeling anger burn within him. ‘They were too pissed to even cover her mouth.’
He practically launched himself into moving. His bare feet made slight slapping sounds as he paced down the stone hallway, his eyes swinging from left to right. The Death Eaters had a rule. When you had your way with a woman, you put a red X on her door. It would stay that would for a full 24 hours. So the woman had time to recover before someone else put her through her paces. There were eight red Xs he had passed. None held a crying woman. They were quiet.
He was getting worried. He was getting close to the end of the dungeon and he couldn’t see anymore red Xs. That is, until he got to the very last door. He spat the unlocking charms so fast it sounded like he was spitting curses.
The first thing that told him he’d found the woman was the strong scent of blood and burnt flesh that filled his nostrils. He could practically feel the bile rising in his throat from the stench. From now on, he breathed through his mouth.
Then he turned to the woman, still lying on the floor, covered in her own blood. He nearly screamed himself.
“H-h-h-help m-m-m-me...” Pansy Parkinson moaned; her face squeezed so tightly that her eyes looks like her eyes were little slits amongst the skin on her face. She was wearing nothing but a flimsy, grimy white nightshirt and a pair of graying socks. “S-someone... p-p-p-please...”
Draco just about ran to her, dropping down to his knees next to her, rubbing his pale hand along her forehead, shushing her. His wand lay forgotten in a pool of Pansy’s drying blood. “Don’t cry, Pansy,” he whispered, brushing her blond hair out of her eyes. “If you cry, they’ll come back.”
She opened her eyes, blinking at him through tears of pain and anger. “D-D-Draco...they took him!” She closed her eyes, wrapping her blood-stained hands around her body in an attempt to comfort herself.
“Pansy, what the hell are you doing here?!” he said harshly, not exactly understanding her. “They took who?”
Tears ran freely down her cheeks and pooled around her eyes. “M-m-my b-baby.”
Draco stopped dead, his mercury eyes widening as he pulled her to him in a hug. “I have to get you out of here. You’re going to bleed to death.”
He turned trying to locate where his wand was. He found it under his leg. He picked her up, carrying her over to her dirty cot. He was beginning to set her down when she grabbed his shirt, starting up at him with wide eyes. “D-d-don’t l-leave me D-Draco!”
He wiped her forehead again before placing a kiss on it. “I’ll be right back, I promise. I need to go send an owl.”
She nodded weakly, leaning back and lying against her cot, painfully pulling her tired legs to her chest and clutching them like a little girl who had a nightmare. Draco ran back to his room. He couldn’t have run faster unless he was Mercury himself.
His hands sought out the parchment on his desk, nearly knocking over his ink bottle as he went. He wrote furiously despite how severally his hand was shaking. There were great blots around it and he’d smeared some blood in the top corner from what had been on his hands when he’d picked up his wand. He turned, nearly shaking his eagle owl to wake him up.
“Take this to Hermione Granger, Pollux,” he whispered frantically to him as he tied the parchment to the owl’s leg. “Fly hard. Get it to her p. d. q.”
Pollux looked boredly at him but nipped his bloody finger before flying out the open window. Draco sighed, looking at his hands. He’d done what he could. Now what he needed was a shower and to burn these clothes.
|x|x|x|
Hermione Granger was used to everything happening at night.
Not like it was a big deal or anything. Just, if you worked in darkness, you got kinda used to it. Candles and wands were used most, and they had lived in Number Twelve Grimmauld Place for so long, that they had practically every single corner memorized. But there were those nights when the lights were on bright and there was noise in the old place!
But that normally wasn’t a good thing. Unlike tonight.
“Fred, I’m going to kill you!” she screamed, shoving him roughly out of the way as she raced after her cat. The grinning Weasley held up his hands in mock defense.
“Come on, Hermione!” he called after her, throwing out his right arm to catch his twin and half-support him before he collapsed from laughter. “Crookshanks looks better green!”
“Wanker!” was the only reply. Fred bent over himself, letting George fall to the ground and grabbing hold of his sides. Ron and Harry echoed their cackles from the kitchen. And they carried on, even after Fred and George starting screaming for help. Hermione soon followed, holding her wand in her outstretched hand.
“Come on, boys! You’ll look better green too!”
Ron pretended to wipe his eyes. “Blimey, I forgot how much fun Hermione could be when it wasn’t us that Hermione was screaming at.”
“Amen to that,” Harry echoed, biting deeply into his sandwich. He used his shirt-arm to mop up the mayonnaise that splattered on his cheek. “Mrs. Weasley, you’re an angel,” he mumbled with a half-full mouth, his head turned to look at the plump woman still cooking.
She smiled heartily at him, nodding. “You just eat up, Harry, dear. You too, Ronald. You both look like you haven’t had a proper meal for a month.”
Ron nodded, piling some sliced chicken and turkey, as well as Swiss cheese onto another piece of bread. “You’re right. Hermione can’t cook for shit.”
“Ronald Weasley!”
“Ron!”
Harry grinned at his friend, covering his mouth with his already-sticky hand. “You walked right into that one, mate.”
Ron grinned despite himself, twisting his head around so that the returning Hermione wouldn’t be able to see. “Yea, yea, I figured that much.”
“Ron, that’s an awful thing to say about your girlfriend,” the now spiky, black-haired Tonks murmured as she walked into the room, carrying a large silver bowl. “I don’t think you’re good at everything.”
Ron didn’t say anything, but just took a giant swig of his butterbeer. Harry glared at him out of the corner of his eye.
“I’m not good at Wizarding cooking,” Hermione grumbled, sitting down and picking at her eggs with her fork. “I can cook a pretty good Muggle-style meal. But you guys rush everything and have to get your food five minutes after you ask for it. Give me one day when you won’t be screaming in my ear to hurry up, and I’ll have you won over.”
Harry turned and blinked at her, before raising an eyebrow and smirking. “You want it so bad, you got it. You can make our Sunday night dinner.”
Ron mad a gagging noise as he got up to go put his dish in the sink. ‘I’m going to go shower. So no one screw with anything, okay?”
“You know if you say anything about someone not messing with the hot water, someone is going to mess with it.” Tonks turned her head to regard the teen. But they were all soon distracted by Tonks dropping her plate and shattering it instead.
Hermione turned around quickly, rushing over to Tonks to make sure she was alright. “Are you okay?”
Harry nearly jumped to his feet, but he instead narrowed his eyes as he watched Ron leave. Tonks was absentmindedly rubbing a hand over her bulging stomach, her green eyes (the eye-color she was currently most fond of) wide and worried.
“Yes, I’m alright Hermione,” she said shakily, patting the girl’s hand. “The baby just kicked, is all. I’m quite fine. Still feeling rather peckish actually. Just wasn’t expecting it. Startled me. Sorry about the plate, Molly.”
Molly, whose plump face was reddening from not screaming that this was the fourteenth plate Tonks had broken at the top of her lungs, was slowly loosing steam, a bittersweet smile forming on her face. “Circe, Tonks, you’re having a baby. I can’t be mad at you for dropping a plate when you felt the baby kick!”
Tonks grinned and Molly helped Tonks into a seat. She then descended into the one across from her and swung her wand in a steady arch that sent the broom and dust pan into motion to clean up the fallen china. Then, in true motherly style, started fixing another sandwich for the witch.
Harry glanced over at Hermione as he heard the water above them start to run. ‘Good,’ he thought, getting up and putting his dish in the sink. ‘I can talk to Hermione now.’ He shook his head slightly before walking over to her (she was standing behind Tonks, chatting with the two older ladies) and pulling on her arm slightly.
She turned to look at him but he shook his head quickly and nodded then toward the family room. He walked out of the room and the quick mutter of an ‘I’ll be back in a moment’ and the scuffling of Hermione’s sock-clad feet made him sure she was following him. When he reached the far end of the room, he swung around, nearly colliding with the approaching Hermione.
“Ron’s cheating you.” He blurted it out so fast he wasn’t sure he had said it clearly. But he could see the change in her eyes to know that she had understood.
“Are you certain?”
He sighed, running a hand through his shoulder-length hair. “I’m positive. It’s been going on for about two months now.”
He glanced up at her eyes, watching her cheeks redden in hurt and anger. “And you never -!”
He grabbed her arm, shushing her while he put his finger to his lips. “He promised me he would tell you. He’s my best mate. I believed he’d do it. You and him haven’t exactly been on the best of terms for the past couple weeks. You’ve be snapping at each other every three minutes. I had figured he told you.”
He could see that she was slowly becoming less angry at him and more angry at Ron. At the time, he was just happy she wasn’t angry at him. “And you knew that he didn’t when?”
“When Tonks commented about how he shouldn’t talk about his girlfriend that way.”
She sighed; plopping down onto the ground and sitting cross-legged, her arms wrapped comforting around her. “Do you know who?” she asked in a weak, little-girlish voice. “What I mean is did he ever tell you?”
Harry nodded, sighing slightly as he leaned down onto his knees so he could be more level with her. “Yea. Yea, he did.” He put a hand on Hermione’s shoulder and rubbed it slightly. “It’s Anna.”
Hermione’s face dropped. “Oh,” she said, her mouth resting comfortably on the palm of her hand. “Oh.”
“I’m real sorry, Hermione,” Harry said, pulling her into a half hug, which she resisted; stiffening instead. “Ron’s stupid.”
“What you mean,” said Hermione, her voice thick, “is that Ron goes for the brainy girls who are actually beautiful. The prettier ones, the smarter ones, the ones with the bigger boobs and less questions.”
She turned her head to the side, clenching her eyes shut. “The ones not like me.”
“Hermione, you know that’s not true!”
Hermione practically cut him with her nails, she avoided his arms. “And you know it is!” Her eyes flared angrily, and she shook her head, tears spilling down onto her pastel-blue blouse. “Because Viktor was my first real boyfriend and Ron’s always held that against me. Because McCormac was the one right after that, and he’s never forgiven me for that either. Everything he does, he does to hurt me. And he was my first real kiss as well.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. He knew Ron was still angry about the whole Viktor Krum thing, and he knew that he was even angrier with her about the whole McCormac thing. And then there was that other thing that Ron had only mentioned once. But he didn’t know much about that. He couldn’t answer her. Everything Ron did seemed to be exactly what would hurt Hermione worse. And he did know it. ‘I’m just...i’m sorry. Dead sorry. In fact, I’m so sorry; I could die of being so sorry.”
She shook her head, getting to her feet and pushing him away again. “I need to go think Harry. Don’t follow me.”
He stared after her, green eyes wistful of a time when his two best-friends seemed like doting love-birds and when he could be at Hogwarts, avoiding his Potions homework and playing Quidditch.
|x|x|x|
“Harry, you’re acting like bleeding lunatic,” George’s muffled voice echoed, biting into an apple. His twin sat next to him fuming and glaring at Hermione. Apparently George had sacrificed Fred and used him as a human shield. Fred still couldn’t figure out how to get rid of the green in his hair.
Despite his anger, Fred concurred. “He’s right, you know, Harry. There isn’t anyway that that could happen. We would have known by now, wouldn’t you?”
Harry was too adamant on the subject to be shot down. “How do you know!?”
“You. Are. Not. A. Horcux!”
Harry shook his head, mussed up hair frazzled to the last strand. “But it’s the only thing I can think of!”
Remus blinked, dropping his head into his hands as Hermione jumped to her feet again, banging her hands against the table like she was a marching-band drummer. “Harry Potter, just because you can’t come up with any ideas of what the Horcruxes are, doesn’t mean you should make stupid suggestions!”
“But it’s not a stupid suggestion!” He pulled his glasses off and rubbed the palm of his hand against his eye. “Think about Hermione,” he said, lowering his voice. “I’m the only person to survive Avada Kadavera -”
“Don’t -”
“- and no one has yet to figure out exactly way.” He turned, flashing a glare toward the ebony male grinning toothy at him from the other end of the table. “Enough Blaise.”
“I was just going -”
“Going to say that I shouldn’t brag anymore about it ’cause I’m too much of a bloody martyr. I’ve heard it before. I’m just stating my facts.”
Remus lifted his head, eyes looking tiredly over toward Harry. “But Dumbledore proved that Harry. Remember,” he said nodding to him, “It was because Lily gave herself for you. Her love to sacrifice herself to save your own life provided you with that protection.”
“Yes, but Voldemort (everyone gasped, coughed, grunted, or took in a breath at the same time) killed Dumbledore. Yes, he didn’t do it himself, but he figured out a way. He went directly through Malfoy and then indirectly through Narcissa Malfoy and Snape. You remember, the conniving bastard?”
“I’m sitting right here, Potter.”
Ron snickered from his spot on the couch in the other room. “I know,” Harry retorted back automatically. “Though we’ve proved your innocence through memory charms and veritaserum, I still don’t forgive you. And Ron, aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”
He coughed. “I am asleep!”
Hermione had apparently spoken to Ron shortly after he’d gotten out of the shower. She’d then thrown a plate at him and Ron had been stupid enough to dodge and get Hermione more pissed off that it hadn’t hit him. He’d then confessed that he had an upset stomach and couldn’t come to the Order of the Phoenix meeting planned for that night.
Hermione chuckled, but turned swiftly when Moody, who was sitting next to Remus, grunted sharply. “Retexere!” he shouted gruffly, pointing his want to the door. The door vibrated, and little strands of brown, vein-like material unwound themselves back into their normal position: one of Hermione’s new and modified spells for locking doors without the use of actual locks.
The door opened and a thin, lanky, ebony-skinned figure walked in through the door. She was quickly followed by a tall, powerfully-build woman with short, cropped blonde hair. A pure white she-wolf with a black streak down her spine and tail darted in at the large woman’s side.
Hermione practically growled as she stared at Blaise’s sister. “Anna, Rose, what are you doing here?” She narrowed her eyes scathingly. “And since when do you need to have a dog deliver your letters? Aren’t owls good enough?”
Moody snickered, shaking his head. “That’s no dog,” he growled, pointing a finger to the wolf’s pierced ears and fancy collar. “That’s a semi-transformed werewolf.”
Hermione jumped back, her clutched fist pulling out her wand and pointing it at the she-wolf’s face. “What do you mean, half-morphed werewolf?! What the hell does that mean!?”
Moody let out a cackling laugh that sounded like wood breaking. “Means she was bitten when it either wasn’t the full moon, or when the biter wasn’t transformed. That or she used experimental magical medicines to try and heal herself.”
Instantly with a loud howl of pain, a pale, raven-haired woman was standing there with the letter the wolf had been clutching in her mouth. She wore a pair of dark sun-glasses, pointedly charmed to appear completely black. She pulled a black-clawed hand up, and grabbed the letter. “Both really, Alastor, you should know,” she said pointedly.
Remus stood wearily, rubbing his temple with a hand. “For those of you that don’t know, this Crowanis -“
“- Crow -”
“- Greyback.”
Molly stifled a gasp, her eyes wide with fear. Ron let out a series of hacking coughs from his spot in the other room. Fred and George glared, slouching in their seats, their arms crossed over their chest. Bill shifted in his own seat. Harry narrowed his green eyes as he watched the eldest Weasley child.
“I’m Fenrir’s sister,” she answered their silent question.
“Get her the fuck out of my house,” snapped Harry.
Snape started to intervene, “Potter, let’s discuss this first,” but Harry wouldn’t let him.
Tonk’s stood up, a hateful look on her normally good-natured face. “No, Severus. Harry’s right,” she said calmly, placing a protective hand on her stomach. “I saw what that bastard did to Bill. Fleur’s dead because of him. Bill’s raising that little precious little girl by himself because of that beast.”
The entire time, Rose hadn’t shifted an inch. She stood her ground beside the she-were and showed no backing down. Anna, however, had slid her way into the other room, obviously to find Ron. Hermione hadn’t failed to notice this. She had just chosen to ignore it. There were more pressing matters. “Harry, let them explain before we go throwing her into the street.”
“Better have a good reason, Crowanis,” Moody muttered, shifting his seat to face the group of standing wizards.
Crowanis growled, snatching her sun-glasses off her face. Hermione audibly gasped a hand over her face. Crow stared blankly ahead, her eyes milky-white, pupil less, and blind.
“You know that I wouldn’t have risked my life for you people like this,” she snarled. “Fen can sniff out your scents. It’s not hard for a werewolf to discern where others have been running to. That wretched brother of mine will have reported my absence to the Dark Lord a while ago. I wouldn’t have gotten the letter unless that little worm of a wizard Pettigrew hadn’t handed it to me and told me to discard of it properly.”
“Wait!” Harry seemed quite ready to talk now. “What do you mean, Wormtail told you? He gave you the letter? That would mean that they would know by now.”
Crow nodded. “I’m a higher-ranking Death Eater. Not as high as Severus, or Lucius had gotten, got pretty high. Being Fenrir’s sister got up me up there pretty high, despite the fact of being blind. I’m one of those trusted with the tasks of discarding unwanted...material.”
“And bodies.”
“And witnesses.”
The she-were growled when both Moody and Snape spoke. She used her middle and index finger to flick the letter at Hermione. It hit her on the chest and rested on the ground. She saw ‘Hermione A. Granger’ hastily scribbled across the top of it. “It’s addressed to Miss Granger.”
Hermione bent down and picked it up, ripping it apart as she rushed to open it. She stared as she read aloud:
“Granger,
No time to talk. Pansy in trouble. They took the baby. She’s in the dungeons. Last cell on the left hand side, and then look for the one with the red X on it. Hurry.
- Draco”
Harry paled; his green eyes wide as he turned to Moody. ‘We have to go!”
Moody let out a bark of laughter. “There’s no need,” he growled, taking a swig from his hip flask. “No reason to go risk lives for the lives of traitors.”
Energy practically crackled around Harry as he grew angry: one thing that always happened when the boy got angry. Things blew up, blew out and swelled up. Right now, the lights were flickering. Molly and Tonks already had their wants out, just incase the lights when out.
“That’s Pansy you’re talking about right now, Moody,” said Harry angrily. “You want to be responsible for her death?”
“Potter, this is the way that wars are won!”
Harry shook his head furiously. “Don’t really care, Moody, can you tell? The war’s not worth anything if the people that we love have to die for it to work.”
He spun around, facing the blind werewolf and nodded. “Take us to them.”
“There’s a great possibility innocent lives are going to be ended, Potter,” she reminded him quietly as she put her charmed sunglasses on. “Are you willing to risk those lives for traitors?”
Harry narrowed his eyes, green darkened to an almost black in the light. “That’s my wife.”
Crowanis nodded her head, pulling her raven-black hair up into a high pony-tail and turning to Rose, who was still firmly at her side. She smirked. Even though Rose was her companion and cohort, she still didn’t trust her. But then again, the Parkinsons had lost their fair share of lives to her brother’s claws. “Let’s suit up, then. This is going be a lot harder than just a raiding party.”
Hermione sighed, her eyes tired. “What do you want us to do?”
Crow sat down in the chair that Remus offered to her and rubbed her temple with a finger. “We’re going to need a distraction - a diversion.” She turned to Remus and blinked at him. ‘Remus and I should be able to provide that. They’ll know him to be a werewolf and that’ll set Fenrir off. I can transform, but I’ll need someone to do a glamour spell on me, so they won’t notice me. Most likely a disillusionment spell, rather than a color change.”
“I can do that,” Blaise said, getting up from his seat and walking over. “Draco was my best mate. He got my ass out of a number of different spots. I wouldn’t be a true friend if I didn’t help in his rescue.”
“I want to go to!”
“No, Ginny, it’s too dangerous!” Molly stepped up at once, grabbing her daughter by the shoulders.
The fiery red-head stared stubbornly at her mother, eyes defiant. “But if everyone else gets to go -”
Harry shook his head, looking over at Ginny. ‘You can’t go, Gin. I’m sorry, but your mother’s right. This is too dangerous. We wouldn’t even be going in if it wasn’t for the fact that they’ll be killed. This isn’t some social outing. We all could die tonight.”
She glared at Harry, fully ready to protest her case. “But Malfoy and Parkinson are my friends too! Why is it just because I’m a year younger - only half a year till I’m seventeen - then all of them!”
Hermione snorted good-naturedly, despite the present circumstances. “They are nothing of the sort,” she said, turning a reproving gaze toward Ginny. “You hate Pansy for ‘stealing Harry’ from you,” she made little quotation marks with her fingers, “and you can’t stand Malfoy because he’s a prat. You just find him easy on the eyes. I’m sorry, Gin, but I must agree with Harry here. It’s not a matter of whether you’re too young. It’s the fact that you’ve got no real reason to be out there.”
“And you’re going to go out there because you’re trying to save Malfoy and Parkinson?!” Ginny was practically screaming. Blaise tried to put his arm on her shoulder, but she shrugged him off. “The boy that called you a Mudblood for six years of your life and the girl who called you a buck-toothed hag?! Bloody Slytherins as well!”
Hermione eyed Ginny coldly. Ever since that night, Ginny had been very rude about her accepting Malfoy and Pansy as friends. To hear Ginny talking about that term to her face and what Pansy had said while in school made her fists clench at her sides. “As was Blaise one of the bloody Slytherins that you called a blood traitor.” She narrowed her dark eyes at the girl, watching her pull away from all of them angrily. “Don’t blame me for your problems Ginny. If you’ve got a problem about me being friends with Slytherins, then take a look at who you’re bedding.”
Hermione turned back to Crowanis, who was watching the whole exchange with a bemused _expression on her normally blank face. “What else?”
“We’ll need waves as well, because you can sure, the Death Eaters will have them.”
“I’ll lead one.” Bill stood up, offering a scarred hand to Crow. She shook it somewhat leniently. “It’s the least I can do. For Charlie.”
Remus nodded wisely, his arm unwrapping from around Tonk’s middle. “Okay... this is what we’re going to do...”
|x|x|x|
Hermione pressed herself against the wall, watching the lithe form of Crowanis and the larger more hulky Rose slide along the corridor far more gracefully than she herself was able to. Close behind her - she could feel his breath on her neck - Harry was pressing in, with Ron and Anne somewhere else behind her. Her mouth thinned in slight McGonagallish way when she heard their soft murmuring.
The bangs from outside made her shudder when she thought about the hexes and curses that were being thrown around.
“Crowanis!” she whispered hastily, as she nearly tripped for the fourth consecutive time. “Crowanis, where are we going!?”
The she-were stopped, turning and nodded her head toward the steps that lied in front of them. “We have to get down to the dungeons,” she explained, pointing a clawed finger toward the shadowy staircase. “That’s where they’ll be kept.”
“If they’re still alive, that is,” Anne muttered from behind her.
Hermione turned her head and shot the girl a withering glare. “They’re alive.”
Crowanis nodded. “They are alive.”
Ron coughed. “They are?” he asked incredulously.
The woman nodded. “I can smell them. Alive scent, not dead scent. I would be able to smell they’re deaths. I can smell their blood, that’s for sure. But I don’t death.”
Hermione shivered as she Crow talk. Smelling death. It didn’t seem like a very nice profession. “Lead us on.”
The she-were nodded her head and began to slither her way back toward the steps, waving her hand in the air when she figured it was safe for them to follow.
|x|x|x|
The trip down the steps was fine enough. But once Hermione reached the landing - the entrance to the dungeons - she knew what Crowanis meant. She could smell the death that clung to the air. It smelled like rotting flesh and burnt hair and sex and blood. It hit her like a stunning spell to the stomach and made bile rise up the back of her throat so much that she could practically taste it. She hated the fact that she knew what all those things smelled like. Sex was one thing. But blood and rotting flesh. It made her sick to her stomach.
From now on she breathed through her mouth.
Crowanis was running down the hall and Hermione could see the faces of Muggles, Muggleborns and Half-bloods alike that were pressed up against the bars of their animalistic cages. As she jogged half-heartedly after the werewolf, she caught Harry’s green eyes lingering on her. She nodded her head. There was no time to rescue everyone.
Moody’s earlier words echoed in her head. This is the way that wars are won. She understood it. Not everyone could be saved, as much as she hoped they could. The humans that surrounded them - caged like beasts - were marked and injured and she knew that behind those calling out for help were those that were either too weak to call out or already dead. They were here to rescue Pansy and Malfoy.
It seemed strange to her. Everything passed by in a haze. She could almost feel their cries in her heart and she couldn’t tell whether they were hurting her or helping her. They were rescuing pureblooded traitors that had infuriated and called her names and made her Hogwarts days practically miserable, but yet innocent people that she had never met before were crying out for her help and she was forced to ignore them. She hated it. It wasn’t fair!
She felt Harry’s arms wrap around her shoulders and she started to snap a sharp retort, but then she heard the casting of a spell (Sufflaro!) and a loud explosion in front of her that splattered her with dust and rock. Harry’s hand was covering her face as to keep the dust from irritating her. She pulled away from him, pushing through the fog of debris toward Crowanis. She blinked at the witch, who sighed, slightly panting as she leaned on Rose. Her shoulder was bleeding heavily.
“What happened?” There was no use keeping quiet. Anyone would have been able to hear the explosion.
Crowanis grimaced. “Rock hit me when I blew it up.” She shook her head as if to clear the rubble from her very head. “Enough though. We need to get going. They know what we’re going for now.”
Hermione nodded and watched as Harry had already made his way into the room. His cry of “PANSY!” was enough to make her heart wrench from her chest. The blonde was lying on a dirty cot, coughing and sputtering as she latched her arms around Harry’s neck. Her patted her back and smoothed her hair, whispering things into her ear as she sobbed into his chest. Just the condition that woman was in was shocking. But the thing that scared her the most was the limp form against the back wall.
“Malfoy!” she called out, jumping over a couple larger rocks to get to him. ‘Please don’t let him be dead... Please, God. Just don’t let him be dead...’
His head was resting against his chest and it rose slightly, but then dropped back down, his chin hitting his chest with a loud smack that made Hermione wince. She could see Ron watching her from the corner of his eye as he helped Pansy out of hysterics. You couldn’t transport a witch that was half out of her mind. “Malfoy!” she called again, hoping that he would respond with more than just a slight head raise.
A cough answered her. Better than nothing. “Stop yelling Granger,” he croaked; his normally silky voice raw and hoarse. “You’re making my headache worse.”
She reached his side and brought a hand up to her face when she saw the full extent of his injuries. He was half-naked and chained to the wall at the wrists by manacles that were coated with blood. His body looked like a walking bruise. Cuts lined his well-toned chest and blood streaked across the pale skin, causing a strange clash of colors that made her want to cry. His left eye was half-closed as he observed her almost calmly.
The last time she had seen him his hair had been fully one length and all the way down to his shoulders. Now it was chopped raggedly at his ears and was almost as bloody as his chest was. His lips looked like one huge scab: he’d bitten straight through the lip.
“So are you going to get me out of these things, or are you thinking up useful ways to use me for my information?”
She was startled from her thoughts when she saw him smirking at her, and he looked so much worse when he smirked! “We have got to get you out of here; you’re going to end up bleeding to death!”
He let out a gravelly bark of laughter. ‘I’ve already taken my blood-replenishing potion for the day. I won’t die of blood loss anytime soon.”
“Shut up, Malfoy,” she said coldly as she cast the Alohomora spell to release the manacles.
When they fell off his wrists he pulled his hands toward his chest, using one hand to rub against the sores on his other wrist. And then he started to fall. She caught him haphazardly, but he was so much larger than she was that she couldn’t hold him. She started to slide until she found Crowanis helping to hoist him back up. She nodded to the werewolf. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Crow answered, looking around. Harry was sitting on the cot, Pansy sitting like a child in his arms, while Rose offered her sister water from a hip flask. Ron and Anne were standing by the broken prison-like door, watching for Death Eaters.
“Here they come!” Hermione heard Anne shout, while at the same time, Ron let loose a flurry of spells (Impedimenta!, Incarcerous!, Petrificus Totalus!, Stupefy!) which sounded more like a barrage of curse words.
Crowanis nodded to her and Harry. “Apparate out here! It’ll work down here! This is the only place in the area it can work, as long as you’re not in the chains!”
“Meet me back at home!” Harry shouted as he wrapped his arms furiously around Pansy and with a sharp Crack! he was gone. Rose’s Apparation soon followed and Hermione looked over Crowanis worriedly.
The she-were grinned and shook her head. “Don’t worry about me! Just go!” she shouted over the sounds of Anne and Ron Apparating away.
“But I can’t leave you!’
“I’ll get back to Grimmauld Place safely enough, just go!”
Hermione nodded as she wrapped her arms around the now-unconscious Draco and Apparated away. Crowanis transformed in a large arctic wolf immediately, and she watched Hermione leave in a blink, but not before she jumped toward the girl and snapped at her arm, taking a patch of Hermione’s rob with her and a splatter of red across her muzzle.
The forms of Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange walked their way into the dungeon cell, grimaces as they stepped carefully. Fenrir followed them, heaving deep breaths through his flaring nostrils.
“Did’ya get one, Crow?” he growled, turning to look at his sister as she drew a snow-white paw up to wipe the blood from her muzzle.
She transformed back into her human form, her sunglasses askew on her face and splashed with blood. “The Mudblood Apparated with the boy before I could get her. I got a good chunk of her arm and robe, but nothing too vital.”
Bellatrix spat at the ground. “Pity. I would have loved making her scream.”
Crow shook her head, pushing loose strands of black hair out of her face. “How the hell did they know?”
Lucius shook his head. “I’m not quite sure.” He turned accusing grey eyes toward the she-were. “Are you sure that you discarded of that letter properly?”
Her own eyes narrowed from behind her glasses. “Are you calling me a traitor, Malfoy?”
A growl that sounded from around him made the silky hairs on the back of his pale neck rise up unconsciously. “No, of course not, Crowanis,” he said, shaking his head as if she was speaking in riddles. “Never. I was just making sure that the letter hadn’t accidentally fallen into the wrong hands.”
Fenrir let the growl die in his throat and nodded approvingly, turning to his sister with a wide-fanged grin. Crowanis grinned herself, pulling her hair back again, and running her hands through the coarse mane that formed from the tie-back’s hold. “Good.”
Pulling her sun glasses off, she watched both the witch and wizard flinch at the sight of her disfigurement. “Good. Because I am.”
With a loud Crack she Apparated out of the dungeon, leaving two confused men and a fuming witch.
|x|x|x|
Hermione sobbed against Tonk’s chest as she turned away, unable to look anymore. “No, it’s just not right!” she mouthed against the woman’s shoulder, who nodded, smoothing Hermione’s hair motherly.
Hermione turned her head, staring at the limp form of Ginerva Weasley. “Stupid Ginny,” she said, shaking her head furiously, tears spilling down her front. “Barmy girl. Should have stayed home like we told her to!”
Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Pansy - huddled in a large shirt of Harry’s and a pair of Hermione’s old jogging trousers, which were far too big for her - standing white beside Harry. Ron was pounding his fists into the wall on the other side of the room, swearing and swearing and panting furiously. She couldn’t tell if it was just sweat or if he was crying. She suspected both. Anne sat on the couch, staring lazily down at the body in front of her. She looking in a trance, with her eyes wide and staring, but tears ran down her ebony cheeks just the same.
Crowanis and Rose stood against the back wall. Rose’s eyes were red with tears - despite the fact that she had hardly known the girl. Crow had removed her sunglasses, vouching instead to stare blindly into that which she knew she didn’t want to see. She held a large white towel to her shoulder, and it was steadily growing red with blood. Crowanis didn’t like medicine; whether Muggle or Wizarding.
Blaise and sped up to his room, screaming about something or another, but Hermione knew that he had loved Ginny, despite how reluctant he was to admit it. He’d never told her, either.
Her eyes floated to the form of Bill Weasley, who was staring ahead, looking completely lost. Mr. Weasley had taken his wife upstairs already, unable to stay and sit vigil with their youngest child’s body.
Fred and George were sitting beside Ginny’s body, holding her cooling hands in theirs and smoothing her hair over her face. Fred’s hair was still green. He hadn’t reversed the spell that she had used to change it colors yet. She remembered how just twenty-four hours earlier they had been so much happier. Hermione shook her head, pulling away from Tonks.
“I-I-I can’t! I can’t s-stay down here!”
|x|x|x|
It was registering. She turned up the stairs, clutching Ginny’s bloodied hair-ribbon in her hand: the only thing that she’d ever have to remind her of the young girl who’d she’d loved so dearly. She ran all the way up the stairs, to the top of floor and down the hall to the last door on the right. It was where her, Harry and Ron had been staying.
Where Draco was staying until his wounds healed all the way.
She flung the door open and slammed it shut just as quickly behind her. Her back pressed against it for a few moments as she caught her breath. Then she pulled her wand out of her pocket as she stared at the boy - no, the man - resting on her bed.
They had been able to heal most of Draco’s wounds. Cleaned up a lot of the bruises. His left eye would be permanently lazy, and he would walk around with more scars than even Bill Weasley had from Fenrir’s attack. He was still without a shirt - though the blood was gone from his chest. His legs were up and his arms were wrapped around his knees. His hair was slightly wet and sticking to his forehead. He didn’t even look up at her when she marched over.
Hermione could smell him. Not the sickening smell of blood and burnt human flesh that had covered him when she’d Apparated him there, but the way he was supposed to smell. Lilac shampoo wafted from his hair - he’d used hers - and then the deep, sandalwood and peppermint smell that was completely Draco. It had always given her the impression that he’d just had a couple shots.
“I should kill you now,” she said softly.
He gave a kind of half-shrug half-jerk, still not meeting her eyes. “Go ahead.”
“You won’t fight me?”
He looked up finally at her and Hermione felt her heart hammer inside her own body. It felt as thought it was doing the salsa ten-times faster than it should be performed. Hermione had never shut the window to this room, despite how cold it made it. Now Draco’s corn-silk hair was lighted silver with the moonlight that drifted in through it and his eyes had darkened to a marble-like sheen.
“Hermione, I don’t want to fight anymore.”
She hissed, “Don’t call me that!”
He stared at her, never breaking eye-contact. “Hermione...”
Her wand was pointing at his chest. He flinched slightly and she could tell that his time in the dungeons of his own house had made him afraid of any wand pointed at him. Hermione felt her heart snap when she knew that she had frightened him. The Draco she knew was never frightened by anything. She wondered what they had done to him and what he had seen. “Say it.”
Draco blanched slightly, but his face never lost that emotionless quality it had always had. “Why?” he asked, in a strangely deep voice that sounded child-like to Hermione’s ears.
“Just say it!” she screamed, her wand-hand shaking with the effort.”
He shook his head, wet hair falling into his eyes and obscuring them slightly from her view. “I can’t. I won’t. Not with you like this.”
“Goddamn you! I hate you, you bloody bastard!” She shot at him with a stunning charm that she’d screamed so loud in her head it had accidentally erupted from her wand. It hit him in the shoulder, and he answered it with a grunt of pain, but nothing more. She froze, her hand dropping her wand as she brought both of them to cover her mouth in horror.
“I’m sorry...I’m sorry. I’m so sorry...”
She turned to run toward the door, but Draco’s silent footfalls followed her. He grabbed her roughly by her shoulders, spinning her around, staring into her face in a fuming rage. “Why are you sorry?!” he shoulders, shaking her slightly as he gripped her shoulders. “Stop being sorry!”
He breathed freely, practically panting as she looked at the look of fear on her face. He blinked at her, recoiling swiftly and pulling his arms to his side. He took a step back but Hermione stepped forward a fraction and slid her arms around his waist.
He stiffened. Despite those few kisses that they had once shared - yes, there had been too few for his liking - he had never been so to Hermione. The kisses that they had shared had been out of pure need and hormones. Him, just turning traitor and experiencing the death of his mother and her in a fight with Ron. They had kissed out of nothing more than the need to feel something. Nothing more.
It was strange to him how such a small gesture could be so damn intimate.
Slowly, his arms moved around her, wrapping gently and pulling her closer towards him. He sighed deeply, closing his eyes slowly. “Please,” she whispered against his bare stomach, feeling her heart practically heave with the effort to breathe. “I want to hear it.” She sobbed against him, her arms pulling him closer. “I need to heart it.”
He leaned down and slowly unwrapped her arms from around him, holding her wrists in his hands as he looked into her doe eyes. “I need to feel it,” she whispered softly, a tear trickling down her cheek.
His lips crashed against her cheek, kissing salty tears and loving every minute of it. Her eyes closed of their own volition and she leaned into his kiss. He pulled black slightly, using the tip of his finger to push her chin up so that he could kiss her easier. There was no grace to the kiss, nor any finesse or refinement. Just pure heat and anger and pain and need. His right hand sifted through her hair as his left wrapped around her waist, pulling her against his body. Her hands slid awkwardly up his arms, gently wrapping around his neck.
But as time passed and their kiss grew slightly less clumsy and more skillful, Hermione needed to breath. She pulled back, resting her forehead against his. Draco stared at her shoulder, where his right hand rested. She could felt Draco watching her then and could feel when he looked away.
“What is it?’ she asked, feeling almost as thought she had done something wrong.
Draco pulled back slightly, resting his left hand on her hip as he held his right in front of his face, beside Hermione’s head. “Nothing,” he murmured, untangling her arms from about his neck and pulling away. He walked away from her then, walking towards the door as if to leave.
Hermione could feel her heart slowly slide into a painful rhythm that was too deliberate to bear. She had heard it pound in her ears only seconds before, when Draco was still kissing her and when she had felt wrapped in his warmth. And now he was walking away from her. Again. Walking away from her after kissing her for the second time ever. All at once, Hermione felt like a little girl again, crying in Hagrid’s hut after Malfoy - this Malfoy - had called her a Mudblood for the first time.
Draco pulled of the ring from his finger, holding it in front of him and staring at the intricate details on the silver band. Pure silver, with the elaborate scrawling of the words “Always Pure, Always True, Always Malfoy” in old French. He stared at the emblem on it, recognizing it exactly for what it was. The Malfoy Crest: a large M with a snake entwining around it.
He stared at the spot in the snake’s eye were the glittering emerald should have set.
“Nothing,” he said again as he dropped the trinket into the rubbish bin - which swallowed it with a loud slurp and belch.
He turned around and practically glided, ghost-like, back over to Hermione. He stared at her, the tears still glistening wet on her cheeks. He hugged her, arms enveloping her smaller body as her arms wrapped around his back. He arched his back, burying his head into the crook of her neck, where he took a couple deep, gentle breaths, inhaling her scent greedily.
“What was it, then?” she asked, her breath ruffling feverishly against the top of his bare chest. Her arms slid up and wrapped around his neck. Draco pulled back and kissed again. His hand massaged the side of her face and she melted into his grasp.
He pulled back, resting his head against the crook of her neck as he kissed the tender spot of skin just below her ear. “Just another lie my parents told me.”
|x|x|x|
Three things you want your fic to include: 1.) Either totally hardcore fluff or complete and utter angst. Which one, I don't care, but it has to be one or the other. Heh. 2.) Take place year after HBP (what would have been their seventh year). 3.) A very special Christmas present.
Three things you do not want your fic to include: 1.) Slash 2.) Smut 3.) Having a 'secret crush' on each other for years and never truly admitting it
Thank-you for Celebrating the Season with Draco and Hermione!