**Author's Notes: All right, so in the previous chapter I said perhaps one more chapter would have us finished. I lied. This chapter plus one more will bring my unintentional epic to a close. Don't forget to participate in Portkey's Reader's Choice Awards! http://talk.portkey.org/index.php?showforum=26 Now… happy reading, and more to come soon…**
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They'd surrounded him like dogs on a bone, muttering under their breaths, and in an instant, they'd all been apparated elsewhere. As they dislodged themselves from him, thankfully separating their dank, malodorous bodies from him, Draco risked a glance around him. The rounded, cavernous walls dripping with constant condensation and the rats scuttling along told him all he needed to know.
Couldn't they have chosen somewhere less typical, he wondered idly, trying to keep his mind occupied and the panic at bay.
"Expelliarmus!" Pansy shouted, and his wand, barely under the touch of his worrying fingertips, flew from his pocket and into her hand. As she wrapped her grubby fingers tightly around the pristine wand, Draco winced. Her fingernails had each been filed to a razor point, and her index finger was liberally streaked with blood.
He hadn't really wanted to know how they'd fashioned their Dark Marks.
"I hardly think there's any need to disarm me, Parkinson, unless you have no trust for me." He tried for the regality that was so often effortless, the commanding tone that seemed second nature. But now, here, knowing that all he cared about lay above ground and all he dreaded below, it was hard to keep his voice from shaking.
All she had in the way of an answer was a binding spell, sending thin, chainlike silver cords from the end of her wand, strapping him up against the grimy, curving wall, the ends of the confines disappearing into darkness.
"The Dark Lord endured much pain," Pansy drawled, tilting her head back and regarding him speculatively. "And still he persevered, until the interfering, Muggle-loving fiend came along."
"Pain!" Crabbe said enthusiastically, rooting around in the muck behind Pansy for Merlin knew what. On the other side of him, Goyle rubbed his hands together anxiously and shot occasional glances at Pansy, as though confirming what to do next.
All that had changed from school years was the leader, Draco thought. The intelligence clearly hadn't even increased a mite.
Pansy extended her arms out to her sides, her torn, bedraggled black robes looking for all the world like wings, and she opened her palms. Crabbe straightened and slapped a large, mud-streaked shard of glass into his mistress's right hand just as Goyle placed a long, thick branch in her other.
"Let us begin," Pansy said, and stared directly into Draco's eyes. "My lord."
~~~
"I'm afraid I don't really understand," Arthur said, huffing to keep up with his daughter, who was walking through the Ministry hallways as though she owned them, her hair bannering out behind her like a handful of flames. "Ahh… if he's run away with Death Eaters, Ginny, love, how am I supposed to help?"
He'd barely spoken three words to her since her return to England, not knowing what to say to this woman who had once been his little girl. He'd been fretful and furious in turns and finally settled on passive, his wide eyes taking in everything and betraying nothing.
But now his little girl was asking him for help, and he'd not deny her that, even if he didn't have the slightest clue as to what she was nattering on about, referring now and again to the filthy wraith that had once been Narcissa Malfoy. All in all, Arthur Weasley judged, waving jauntily at a fellow Ministry employee who was blinking in surprise at the trio, it was the strangest situation he'd ever had chance to see.
"Taken, Ginny said demandingly. "He didn't run away with them. Father, I only need you to tell me where the Aurors are." She stopped, making Narcissa jerk to a halt, Arthur plowing into the back of her gracelessly.
"Beg y'pardon," he said mechanically, looking down at Ginny with a frown. "The Aurors?" he repeated.
"If there's anyone who knows where bad things are happening, bad people are gathering, it's them, isn't it?"
"We don't have time for this," Narcissa put in, thinking of masks and robes and nights spent away from home, ever-consuming obsessions and lies upon lies.
"This way," Arthur said, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily.
He wondered what Molly would say if he lost his job.
Thieves in the temple
Love - come quick
Love - come in a hurry
Thieves in the temple tonight
"I asked you specifically to wait," Mad-Eye thundered, looking down at Hermione and letting his magical eye swerve to pin Harry, as well. "And you, boy, you're the one who decided not to go into the field. You've no right to be tryin' now." The three of them were crowded into Hermione's cubical, the two friends looking glum and more than a little ashamed of themselves as Mad-Eye's voice carried over the whole of the floor, to surrounding cubicles and offices.
"Harry was only trying to help," Hermione said gently. "Don't blame him. He wasn't trying to do any of our work, as it were, he was just trying to get Ginny out of harm's way."
It had all seemed like such a good idea when she'd thought of it. After all, Ron would stop complaining about Malfoy, Ginny would stop moping around, and Harry wouldn't be so lonely anymore.
But Ron wasn't ever home, anyway, Ginny moped around without Draco, and Harry-
Well, Hermione thought, she didn't really want Harry to be with Ginny.
"That's not the point," Harry broke in, shooting a sharp glance at Hermione. "The point is, he told me about Pansy Parkinson and the other two. Pardon me for being so forward, but if he were in league with them, I hardly think he'd be trumpeting it to the world."
"You think those Death Eaters care about one another?" Mad-Eye asked, expectorating on the floor to punctuate his phrase. "Bollocks!" he roared, making both Hermione and Harry jump. "They only care about themselves, and he got you to look the other way, didn't he? Constant vigilance!"
"I'm sorry I asked you to go," Hermione said, looking at Harry imploringly. "I think it's best you leave. I'll take responsibility for all this."
"Lovely to see someone's going to," Ginny said, stepping up with her father and Narcissa in tow. Her anger warred with her worry now, as she'd overheard the bulk of the exchange among Harry and the two Aurors. "Hermione, darling, were you ever going to bother mentioning to me that you'd decided to interfere in my life?" But worst of all was Harry, who'd pretended so strenuously to care, and why?
All because Hermione had asked him to.
It seemed, Ginny thought, as if some things never changed.
"You knew," she said accusatorily to Harry. "And so if you knew about the Death Eaters, you knew as well," she addressed Hermione. "So now I've a bit of news for you. They've taken Draco, and you're going to tell me to where they've done so." The quaver in her voice had subsided, leaving only the surety of one who knows she is in the right.
"Ha!" Mad-Eye exploded. "You think anyone here's going to tell you, little missy, so you can help him?"
"He's not done anything wrong!" Narcissa pleaded. She could see that the boy, the green-eyed copy of James Potter himself, believed her, and her heart turned over. "Harry, please…"
"Hush, woman!" Mad-Eye roared, and Arthur shifted nervously, wondering at what point it would be prudent to step in and have a word or two.
Fed up with the hesitation and the bureaucracy, Ginny utilized a trick she'd learned from Draco, moving decisively, quickly, and unpredictably. Not even Mad-Eye saw it coming, and before any of them could stop her, Ginny Weasley had her wand pointed directly between Harry's eyes.
"Tell me what you know," she said quietly. "And do it now."