A/N: Go ahead, hate me. I deserve it. I had written this chapter, then lost it (long story) so I had to rewrite it. It's split into two chapters otherwise it would've been super long. There's a Draco and Hermione reunion in this one for the fans of Fear and Loathing. I apologize for the very long awaited update.
Chapter Twenty-two: A Bad Feeling
Rescue me
Oh take me in your arms
Rescue me
I want your tender charms
'Cause I'm lonely and I'm blue
I need you and your love too
Come on and rescue me
Come on baby and rescue me
Come on baby and rescue me
'Cause I need you, by my side
Can't you see that I'm lonely
Rescue me
(Rescue Me-Aretha Franklin)
At first, Harry wasn't worried about Hermione. She was just angry and she needed her space to think things through. When he hadn't heard from her in two days, tiny alarm bells went off in his head. He called Luna to ask if she had been into work and Luna said that Hermione told her she would be on assignment for a few days. Although the explanation was plausible, Harry couldn't shake this feeling that he had. Two more days passed without word and Harry really began to worry. Luna called him at his office saying that Hermione didn't show for the morning meeting and that she should've been back by this time. At this news, Harry was near panic, he was just about to leave his office for Hermione's flat when the most unlikely visitor walked in.
"What is Oliver doing here?" Harry didn't bother hiding the surprise in his voice.
Neville turned and looked at Harry. Oliver was sitting at one of the aurors desks apparently deep in discussion.
"I was going to get you. He's here to file a missing persons report," Neville said quietly.
"Hermione?" Harry asked and Neville shrugged.
Harry didn't bother with formalities when he walked over to the desk, he just interrupted.
"Have you seen Hermione lately?" he asked Oliver directly.
Oliver looked up at Harry, his face a mixture of surprise and anger.
"Since you are the one shagging my wife, I figured you would've kept tabs on her. Apparently not, did she leave you again?" Oliver's tone was biting and it took all the self control Harry had not to throw Oliver against the wall.
"Luna called and said she missed a meeting this morning at the paper," Harry said with control.
Oliver looked away and sighed, he rubbed his hand across his mouth, his rough hands making contact with a five o'clock shadow. "She missed a meeting today with our lawyers."
"That's it, I'm checking her flat." He looked at the auror who was taking the report. "Any news on this and I want it reported directly to me, understand?"
"Yes sir," the auror replied.
Oliver got up from his chair and followed Harry. "I'm coming with you."
~*~
"A little left…Stop! Okay, now back up a bit…no, the other way! Back me up! You move forward!"
"Well you said back up!"
"I meant to move so I could back up!"
"Whatever!" Hermione whispered in a huff.
"Okay…stop!" Draco whispered.
Hermione and Draco were sitting back to back in chairs, a rope binding the two of them together. There were in the middle of a large drawing room and had managed to scoot themselves over to a large desk that was off to the side. They had managed to look through some of the drawers and were in the process of looking in the last one. Draco lifted his foot, hooking it underneath the drawer pull and pulled the drawer open.
"Anything?" Hermione asked.
"Fuck! Just a bunch of papers and envelopes. Any other bright ideas, Granger?" Draco sighed.
"Wood!" Hermione corrected him.
"Wood, Granger, Mrs. I-Wish-It-Was-Potter, it's all the same."
"God! You are such a jerk!!"
"I just call it as I see it."
Hermione huffed and scanned the room again. She had had enough of him the past few days. The console table on the other side caught her eye. There was a globe resting on it and next to it was a silver object. Muggles usually had these in their homes. A map of the world, labeled in tiny print so people usually had magnifying glasses resting next to them.
"Malfoy, let's move over to that table," she ordered.
"All the way over there?" Draco whined.
"Do you have any other ideas?" she hissed.
Half an hour later, they managed to reach the table and sure enough, there was a magnifying glass. Even more lucky for them, the globe and the glass were resting on a runner. They maneuvered to one of the table and Hermione very carefully and very slowly began to tug on the runner.
"Easy Granger…careful…careful," Draco didn't dare move a muscle, a nervous sweat began to bead on his forehead.
Hermione concentrated on her task, the magnifying glass slowly making its way toward her.
"Ready, Malfoy?" she asked. "Don't drop it."
Draco flexed his hand as the glass neared the edge of the table. Slowly, slowly, gravity began to pull it over and it landed in a soft thud in his hand.
"Did you catch it?" Hermione asked.
"Of course I did!"
"Good, now we need to move back over to the window."
The window she was speaking of was, again, on the other side of the room, streaming the afternoon sunlight into the room. They had reached it, with careful maneuvering, in fifteen minutes.
"What are you doing?" Draco asked as Hermione took the glass from him.
"It's a muggle trick," Hermione explained and Draco let out a huff, mumbling under his breath.
Hermione did the best she could with her limited peripheral sight to angle the magnifying glass to the sun. She waited.
"Ow!" Draco hissed. "Something's burning my hand!"
"Oh, sorry! I'm doing the best I can," Hermione said, adjusting the glass.
"Great," Draco said sarcastically, "that's just great."
Hermione waited again.
"Hey, do you smell smoke?" Draco asked.
"If I did this right," Hermione explained, "the rope should be burning."
A few moments later, Hermione heard the crackle of a flame then Draco tugged his bound hand releasing it. Hermione followed suit and soon they were both free from their binds. Draco picked up the magnifying glass and examined it.
"I'm surprised you didn't know about that," Hermione said, watching him. "Muggles use it to torture ants."
~*~
"Hermione?" Harry called out as he entered her flat.
Crookshanks greeted him, meowing loudly, and rubbing against his legs. He went to the kitchen to open a can of catfood for him. Oliver went over to her desk, thumbing through the stack of mail she had received. There were no signs of attack in the apartment, it was neat and clean just as Hermione had left it. Harry walked over to her answering machine and hit the play button to listen to her messages. There were only two, both of them from her mother.
"She wasn't at her parents'?" Harry asked Oliver.
"No," he answered.
Harry frowned then proceeded to check out the rest of the flat, walking into her bedroom next. At first, Harry was overcome with awkwardness when he realized some of his clothes were in here. He could feel Oliver's eyes burning in the back of his head but he was quickly distracted when an object in the room caught his attention.
A jewelry box.
Harry quickly walked over to it.
"What's that?" Oliver asked.
"The jewelry box she used to keep while she was at Hogwarts," Harry carefully rifled through the contents, then suddenly, it hit him and he looked up sharply.
"Go back to headquarters and finish your report," he told Oliver.
"Why, what's going on?" He asked Harry who walked quickly to her fireplace.
Harry grabbed a handful of floo powder then flooed himself to his own flat.
"Harry!" yelled out a startled Sirius. "What's going on? Luna and Ron just flood panicking about Hermione. Ginny is in hysterics!"
"Ron flooed?" Harry asked.
"Yes, he's at the Burrow with Luna."
Harry grabbed a pinch of floo powder, tossed it into the fireplace.
"Ron!" he called out. He was facing the table in the kitchen at the burrow and he could hear footsteps running towards the fireplace. Ron ran into view, skidding to a halt then dropping to his knees to face Harry.
"Did you find her?" he asked breathlessly.
"No but I need you to do something for me. Do you remember those watches Hermione gave us in our final year?" he asked.
Ron didn't need telling twice, he ran up to his room. Harry pulled his head out of the fireplace and ran into his own room. Sirius followed him.
"Hermione is missing," Harry said as he heaved the trunk from his closet. "I'm not sure how many days she's been gone because she told Luna she was on assignment." He rummaged through his old school things.
"Is she okay? Is she alive?" Sirius asked.
Harry let out a sound of triumph when he found what he was looking for then looked up at his godfather. "Whoever took her better make sure she's damn fine." He pressed a button on his watch. "God I love that she's smart," he said. "The Milanio."
Time was of the essence. Harry took the watch from Ron, made a quick stop at Hogwarts to call in a favor then headed back to Headquarters.
"Neville!" he said when he saw his fellow auror. He tossed the extra watch to him. "Put that on, we're going to the Milanio."
~*~
Never in a million years did Draco Malfoy think she would be in this situation with Hermione Granger of all people. After the resurrection of Lord Voldemort in his fourth year, he was expected to follow in his father's footsteps and become a Death Eater. Something that he really wasn't interested in. The Malfoy's were known for their cunning and ambitiousness, associating themselves with those that were more powerful and could give them the connections they needed. His father chose to associate himself with Lord Voldemort, Draco was more ambitious and chose to make his own fortune.
After the defeat of the Dark Lord, Lucius was tossed into Azkaban and later given the kiss. The Malfoy fortune went into ruin…his father's fortune that is. Draco had seen this coming and during a family trip before his sixth year had a fateful meeting with a powerful wizard…Antonio DeMarco. Antonio was a very rich wizard, his fortunes mostly coming from his casinos and shady business deals. The way he ran his business and accumulated his fortune was one tale of wizard mob tactics after another. How could Draco not resist that? And as soon as he came of age and got his greedy little hands on his trust fund, Draco emptied it and poured it into his new obsession. Unbeknownst to her father of course, he had already lost his son to another.
Draco rose quickly in the ranks, just as cold and ruthless as his mentor and idol. It was inevitable, as what happens with all pupils that you one day wake up and discover that you are in fact better and smarter than the teacher. And Draco was very smart indeed. He possessed a truly snakelike trait…patience. Like a snake, coiled, paused, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
The moment soon came.
DeMarco wanted to expand his casino business further North, and Draco was the perfect one to oversee casino construction in London. And he did the job well, a little too well, for Draco was making some powerful connections of his own in London, as well as other areas in Europe untouched by DeMarco. Draco had a plan already in formation on the take over of the casino, and a couple of other health prospects of DeMarco's. Unfortunately, Antonio must have caught wind of this and immediately set forth to London to make it clear, once and for all, that HE was in charge of this business. Quickly taking over the Milanio, Draco's plans were temporarily on hold, waiting again for the perfect moment.
It was by sheer accident that Draco discovered his boss' unhealthy obsession with the Dark Arts and an even more unhealthy fixation of Lord Voldemort. That was why he was so keen on accepting Draco Malfoy into his business, the son of an infamous Death Eater, right hand man of Lord Voldemort himself. Draco was like another collectible to add to his fetish. Draco's future seemed even brighter when Voldemort's Biggest Fan was in the land of Saint Potter, hound dog of the Dark Arts. A plan formed in Draco's mind. A plan to wave red flags in front of Potter, having him do the dirty work of getting rid of DeMarco and letting him slide easily into his place. Bait…all he needed was bait. Potter came sniffing around at the first signs of Dark Magic but DeMarco had managed to steer him away (or so it seemed), and Draco needed something bigger to grab Potter's attention.
DeMarco had many vices, but none of them were as notorious as his one for women. Easily falling in love with the bat of an eyelash and he was sent swooning, sparing no expense and eliminating the competition until he won the object of his affection. Then he quickly lost interest and dumped them, moving on to the next conquest. So imagine Draco's delight, and disgust, when DeMarco fell for of all people, Hermione Granger (sorry, Wood), Potter's little mudblood. It was all he needed to set Potter on DeMarco like a pit bull. All Draco had to do was give him a little nudge by telling him to back off.
However, things went downhill from there. DeMarco quickly backed off when he learned of Granger's and Potter's torrid past and that any connection to her would keep Potter sniffing around. He had almost lost hope until Granger walked in, actually she broke into, DeMarco's office.
Never one to waste an opportunity when he saw one, he told her everything. He was about to take her to DeMarco's mansion outside of London when he soon realized he was not alone in the room.
"Well, well, well, Mrs. Wood, it has been a long time, hasn't it?" Dolohov appeared out of nowhere, a folded invisibility cloak in his arms.
And now, here he was in this strange room, in a strange house, with the person he never expected to be in this situation with.
Hermione was about to reach for the doorknob when Draco yanked her hand back.
"Perimeter charm," he muttered at her questioning look. "You can feel it," he hovered his hand in front of the door. Hermione followed suit and yes, she too could feel the slight vibration of the charm around the door.
"Well there's got to be another way out of this room," she said as she took a look around. She walked over to a bookshelf and examined the books there, pulling random ones out hoping to trigger some sort of mechanism that would open a secret door.
She wasn't having any luck.
"You could help, you know," she shot at Draco who was staring at the large window in the room.
"Maybe we need to set off the charm," he said quietly. Hermione looked at him.
~*~
Easily stunning the secretary, Harry and Neville searched DeMarco's office. Harry was hoping to find the office in a mess, signs of a struggle everywhere, chairs overturned, tables broken. But unfortunately, the office was in pristine condition, just as DeMarco had left it.
"I don't believe this, there's nothing. Are you sure she's here?" Neville asked.
Harry looked down at his watch, she was supposed to be here, right here in this office. He sighed and got down on all fours, searching the floor closely.
"Damn it," he muttered, reaching under the large desk, drawing out Hermione's watch.
"Well, you were right," Neville muttered, "she was here."
Just then, the doors burst open and robed figures poured into the room. Harry was momentarily stunned at the sight he hadn't seen in a few years, but it was enough time for the Death Eaters to disarm him and Neville.
"Well, well, isn't this a surprise," DeMarco chided the aurors as he stepped into the room, "and highly illegal as well. I believe you have no right to be here."
"Where is she?" Harry demanded as he and Neville struggled against capture by the Death Eaters.
"Oh, don't worry. You'll be reunited with her soon. In fact, we're all going to have a nice little reunion, aren't we?" DeMarco laughed and the Death Eaters joined in.
"If you hurt her in any way," Neville struggled in the Death Eater's grasp.
DeMarco swooped on him. "Play nice, Potter and you'll be reunited soon," he snarled.
"Stop it! Just do everything he says," Harry told Neville, giving him a meaningful look.
"Let's go!" DeMarco barked out, leading the group out of his office.
~*~
"Malfoy, I don't think this is such a good idea," Hermione's voice was quiet.
"Shut up and just be ready," he said sharply.
He picked up one of the chairs and tossed it at the window, shattering it and setting off a high pitched alarm. Draco and Hermione scrambled through the window and onto a narrow ledge. Hermione's stomach flipped dangerously as she looked down at the ground far below her. She hated heights.
"Come on, move!" Draco hissed.
On shaky arms and legs, Hermione carefully lowered herself off the ledge, praying that her fingers would hold her as she dangled just under the window just as the door opened. Two Death Eaters walked into the room.
"Find them," one of them said to the other.
Draco and Hermione swayed gently as a strong gust of wind blew. The sky was graying and they could hear a distant rumble of thunder as the Death Eaters searched the room. Hermione's arms were burning and she didn't know how much longer she could hold. Finally, one of the Death Eaters looked out of the window.
Suddenly, Draco reached up and grabbed him, tossing him out the window to his death below. He dodged a stunning spell as he scrambled into the room, tackling the other Death Eater to the ground. Hermione lifted herself back on the ledge and into the room as Draco struggled with the remaining Death Eater. She ran over to them, pinning the Death Eaters arm with her foot and yanking his wand out of his hand.
"Stupefy!" she cried as Draco ducked out of the way. The Death Eater fell still. "Are you alright?" she asked Draco.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, wiping a little blood from his lips.
He walked over to the fallen Death Eater and began to tug at his robes.
"What are you doing?" Hermione asked.
"Summon the robes from the guy below," he told her then looked up at her. "We're getting the fuck
out of here."
Disguised as Death Eaters, they walked out of the room into a corridor. Looking over the banister they could see the
large foyer below them.
"Come on," Draco whispered, heading toward the stairs. As they descended, silence filled the house.
"Where are we?" Hermione whispered.
"DeMarco's mansion."
Voices suddenly filled the room and Draco and Hermione quickly hid in a dark corner. At the end of the room was a large fireplace, the back of which disappeared with the grinding sound of stone against stone. A group of Death Eaters walked out of it and the two in disguise waited silently for them to pass. Draco stepped out of the shadows, followed by Hermione, he gave her a glance then headed toward the fireplace.
"Did you know about this?" she whispered.
Draco nodded, "No and I'm not going to stay and find out where it leads." He turned to leave but the same group of Death Eaters walked back into the room.
They were accompanied by more Death Eaters and DeMarco leading the front. A small and barely audible gasp came from Hermione when she saw that they had Harry and Neville bound and captive. Draco's mouth had gone a bit dry and he found it hard to swallow the lump of fear that had developed in his mouth. He had a bad feeling about this.
"Open the passageway!" DeMarco barked at them.
Draco's bad feeling suddenly worsened.
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