Chapter Twenty
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Harry woke up in St. Mungo's a full week later. Ron was sitting in a corner, half asleep, but awoke when he heard Harry begin talking. "Where am I? Where is Hermione?" Harry sat up so fast that he felt he'd be sick. He was thankful to see Ron; it meant Ron wasn't angry enough to let him lie alone in a hospital.
"Dunno," Ron answered gloomily. "What happened to you Harry? Who did this?"
"Draco." Harry looked around the room. Ron was the only one there, and by the state of him he looked like he had been there for a very long time, probably days.
"What?" Ron stood up and sped over to the bed.
"How long have I been here?" Harry demanded.
"A week. Where is Hermione, Harry?" Ron asked.
"He took her."
"Took her? Harry, the ministry got a letter from Hermione…."
"And?" Harry looked wide-eyed at Ron.
"She wrote that she had run away with Draco, that you had been injured in a jealousy spat."
"That's bollocks," Harry threw the blanket off of himself. When he tried to put his weight on his legs they hurt so tremendously that he crumbled and fell to the floor. Ron hurried to his side and put Harry's arm around his shoulder.
"I think it's bollocks too, Harry. I mean, she said she loved you and all…." Ron took a breath and looked around. It was obvious the thought still didn't sit well with him. "And she and Malfoy.... No, just can't see it. Besides, Hermione would never leave you hurt."
"We have to find her," Harry moaned in pain. He wasn't even listening to Ron.
"Yeah but Harry, you lost so much blood! That's why they kept you sedated for this long."
"You have to get me out of here, Ron, I have to find her," Harry was losing his composure and Ron could see that his best friend was close to falling apart.
"I'll take you to the Burrow. We can look for her from there!"
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Hermione sat in the window of her castle room - or prison cell, as she thought of it. All she could see was ocean for miles and miles. The full moon was reflecting on the black sea, somehow granting her comfort. It made her think of Lupin and little Teddy. The waves were crashing into the castle wall, and it looked like the castle just rose out of the sea. She listened to the waves, she had always been told that the sound of waves were calming, but it just made her feel lonelier, more isolated and more desperate.
Hermione had been practically on her own for a full week, Draco would look in every evening but she refused to speak to him. She had Mallory the whole time, but in reality a baby wasn't much company, meals were shoved through a hatch in the door.
She suddenly heard movement in Draco's room, she had yet to go and see where he lived. She looked down at the waves again. She couldn't brood on her own anymore. It was time, she needed answers. She gently tapped the door and he told her to enter. His room looked almost identical to hers; he was lying on the bed staring at the ceiling.
"Hi," he said and quickly sat up. She said nothing but just walked over to the bed.
"Are you okay?" he asked and she nodded.
She looked into the fire burning next to the bed. "Are you?" she finally asked.
Draco reached out for her. He wanted her so bad; well, he didn't know exactly what he wanted. Just for her to understand him, and he wanted her to comfort him. He wanted her to understand that he had done this for her, for them. They could be a family now! He hated having her close to Bellatrix, but at least she was away from Potter.
"I hate being here too, Hermione, I really do!"
Hermione quickly yanked her hand out of his reach. "Then let's leave. Now! We'll get on your broom and just fly out of the window."
"I don't have my broom, I don't have my wand. I have no idea where we are, Hermione. We can't make any portkeys and I -," his voice was desperate, and it scared her. She could hear the fright and extreme anxiety in his voice. "I get called here and taken here in a hood. I swear to you that I only brought you here because it was the only way to keep you safe," Hermione looked into his silver eyes. He looked miserable.
"How is Mallory?" he asked.
"She misses her dad," Hermione smiled kindly at him. "Do you want me to get her?" When he nodded, Hermione went back to her room and got her. She placed the baby in Draco's arms and he smiled at her.
"Hi, there," he whispered at her. "You are so lucky not to know what is going on here." Hermione felt sad, she missed Harry so much.
"Is still can't understand this, Draco," she whispered.
"I know."
"What is it you can't tell me?" Draco looked away from her.
"I have to get some sleep," she finally said.
"All right." Draco wanted to ask if he could sleep in her bed, if he could hold her, but he didn't dare. He knew she wouldn't allow it.
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Draco was sitting in the stone room on a chair far from Bellatrix. He had done this everyday since they had arrived at the castle, which was now closing in on two weeks. He still had no idea what was happening. She told him nothing and had given him no missions. Pansy came in once in a while, called from her flat - but she was told nothing, either. A few times everyday guards or Death Eaters came in and whispered things to Bellatrix and she gave them orders. Draco could never hear what they said. All Bellatrix had told Draco was to enjoy her castle, "Live as a king," she had told him, but he wasn't sure what exactly she had meant by that.
Bellatrix turned to Draco and addressed him for the first time: "I think it's time," she simply said and Draco looked apprehensively at her. At the same moment the doors swung open and a guard was dragging Hermione by the arm. Draco shot out from his chair.
"Let her go!" he demanded and Bellatrix immediately laughed. Hermione turned towards the laughter and at the sight of the woman she had thought dead for so many years she screamed in fright, instinctively she backed into the guard holding her.
"No, no it can't be!" she turned to Draco, a pleading look for explanation in her eyes. She begged him to tell her that this was a joke, someone drinking polyjuice or even that she was going insane.
As he lowered his head she knew it was true - Bellatrix LeStrange was alive.
"So, you remember me, mudblood?" Bellatrix laughed. She flew out of her chair and her long black skirts bellowed behind her. She walked quickly up to Hermione, her heels clicking against the cold floor.
"I believe we have some unfinished business." She pointed her wand at Hermione and took a moment before speaking. An intense look of pleasure came over her face as she said: "Crucio."
Hermione felt the pain, that excruciating pain she had felt during the war and that had visited her a few times in her nightmares. She fell to the floor, screaming.
"No, stop!" Draco screamed and made to run but was immediately grabbed by a guard. Bellatrix laughed and stopped the curse.
"This is so familiar. You, Draco, watching her get tortured. However, last time you didn't speak up for her. What has changed since then? Could it be that you l-l-love her?" she mocked.
Draco glanced down at Hermione on the floor and their eyes met for a second. Draco knew the pain he felt was nothing compared to what Hermione was feeling, but still he felt in more pain than he had ever felt before. Hermione looked over at the throne-like chair Bellatrix sat in and saw that behind her was a shelf filled with amputated hands. Bellatrix followed Hermione's eyes and saw the hands.
"Nice collection, isn't it?" she grinned. Hermione looked at Draco again.
"Oh look at that, Draco, she turns to you for help. Can you help her?" Bellatrix ridiculed. She aimed another Crucio at Hermione, who let out another pain filled scream.
"Bellatrix, please!" Draco yelled. Bellatrix ended the curse and looked pensive for an instant. Draco almost thought she was about to cast the curse on Hermione again when she said:
"Oh very well, take her back to the room then." Bellatrix waved her hand. The moment the guard released Draco, he ran to Hermione and carried her in his arms back to her bedroom, escorted by the guards.
As soon as they left, Bellatrix nodded and another door opened. Pansy Parkinson entered.
"It's nasty, isn't it?" Bellatrix said to Pansy.
"I don't understand, he seems… taken by her. Did she hex him - a potion, maybe?" Pansy stammered.
"Oh, please, men are always fanatical about girls they haven't had."
"So they haven't…?"
"No, I'm sure of it," Bellatrix answered. "Soon she'll open her legs to him and he'll get over his infatuation. Then he'll come fully to our side. And as I promised you, Draco and you will be married."
"But are.…"
"Do you doubt me?" Bellatrix shrieked and stood up, Pansy kneeled at once.
"No, of course not."
"You will get Draco and you will both be at my side. Don't worry; as soon as the mudblood has brought Harry Potter out in the open, they are both dead!" Pansy nodded contently.
"I just want Draco to myself."
"And you will have him," Bellatrix promised.
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Draco placed Hermione on the bed. She still hadn't woken up. He looked at her longingly - he wanted her so much. He had stopped denying his feelings to himself and was beginning to feel very overwhelmed by his emotions. He looked at her collarbones and gently let his fingers trail down one of them, wanting to lick it. Hermione's eyes started to flutter and Draco quickly pulled his hand back.
"Bellatrix LeStrange!" she mumbled to him.
"Yes, she's alive."
"We have to tell Harry."
"No!" He didn't want to hear anything else about bloody Harry Potter. Draco was the one who had saved her; she needed to forget about scarhead.
"But how?" she whispered.
"Well, my guess is that, if Voldemort would tell anyone about horcruxes, who would it be?"
"Oh my God, do you think she's made others?"
"I don't think so; she has said things like her second chance, this time she'll do it... I think he only told her it was possible to make one horcrux. Guess he was afraid his secret about his seven horcruxes might get around…."
"You have to reach Harry, please Draco!"
"No!" Hermione pushed him hard in the chest and Draco slid off the bed.
"You are being a fool, Draco! You know that Harry is the only one who can fix this."
Draco's eyes filled with fury and he hastily got up off the floor. He raised his finger in her face and hissed:
"I will fix this myself!" He left the room so quickly that Hermione didn't even have time to react.
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A few nights later Draco and Hermione had dinner together in the room as usual. Draco swept wineglass after wineglass. He kept throwing fleeting looks at Hermione.
"What?" she finally asked.
"Oh, nothing, just looking." She frowned, Draco was getting drunk.
"Wine?" he asked.
"No, I'm not in a very festive mood," she answered.
"We can change that," he joked.
Hermione was becoming more and more annoyed. Did he think she would start thinking this was a holiday? She was kidnapped, God knew what Harry thought. She still had no idea if he was all right or not. He was probably worried half to death about her. What about those horrible wounds? Her mind had often drifted to the fear that he might have died, but she soon cast those thoughts away. Bellatrix would surely have killed Hermione if that was the case.
"Have some wine!" Draco shoved the goblet towards her and she knocked it out of his hand, spilling wine over the carpet.
"Why did you that?" he slurred, irritated. "Let's just have some wine, like when we were living in those muggle houses!" he sipped his wine again. Hermione got up and walked over to the baby, she was sleeping peacefully.
"This is not like that, Draco, you need to realize that. You have taken me to this place, to Bellatrix, against my bloody will." Draco rolled his eyes and drank some more wine.
"You would be dead already if it wasn't for me," he mumbled inaudibly. This time Hermione rolled her eyes.
"I'm taking Mallory back to our room, I want to sleep." She left before he could answer. Draco made a
face after her and reached for a new bottle. He was far too good for this; he was by far too good for muggle-born
Hermione Granger. Who was she to deny him? But maybe she didn't know how he felt. Yeah maybe that was it,
Draco thought.
He drank some more before he stumbled towards Hermione's door. He quietly let himself into her room and found her asleep in her bed. He tiptoed to the side of the bed and looked down at her, she slept so silently. Almost like she was dead.
He went around the bed to the other side and carefully lifted the cover and slipped under it. He inched his way over to Hermione and held her from behind. She didn't wake up, but she gently pushed herself against him. Draco buried his face in her hair, and then he gently lifted her locks with one hand and started kissing her neck. With a jolt Hermione woke up and quickly spun around.
"Draco, what are you doing?" she whispered, careful not to wake the baby.
"Come here," he smiled goofily and, placing his hand on her back, he pulled her close. He kissed her violently and started reaching for the bottom of her nightgown.
"Draco, stop!" Hermione demanded.
"I want you so bad, Hermione," he leaned into her neck and licked it. He grabbed one of her breasts far too hard and Hermione cried out in pain.
"Draco, please stop. What are you doing?" Draco looked up at her, into her face.
"I hardly touched it," he continued kissing her neck.
"Draco, please stop!" she wasn't pleading, nor ordering him. It was more of a statement. "You need to stop this!"
"I - I'm…" he tripped over his tongue and then quickly rolled off her. He felt so humiliated, so hurt and so angry. He turned and staggered back to his room. Hermione kept her eyes on his door until she fell asleep.
Draco kept pacing in his room. He pulled open the overstocked bar and reached for the firewhiskey. He took a swing right from the bottle and started pacing. He couldn't get her out of his head; it was as if she had put a curse on him. Draco had never been in love - had he been, he would have known that feelings like this were normal. His heart beat quickly, how the hell could she deny him? And now he had made a fool of himself. Furiously he threw the whole bottle into the open fire. He thought about her stupid face for another minute, he couldn't be in love with her! In fact, he hated everything about her!
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At the same time back in England, Harry was busy looking for Hermione everywhere. He kept far away from the ministry; they did nothing to help him find Hermione. Gawain said that they couldn't look for her because Harry believed she was taken. The letter was in her handwriting and so they decided to classify her disappearance as voluntary. It didn't help that the last time Hermione hid from the world, she was also with Draco. Harry had no real clues on where to find her. He started going through everything connected to Connor Cowell, but it lead nowhere. He was sitting at the Leaky Cauldron with a firewhiskey in his hand, Ron silently at his side.
"What are we going to do?" Ron asked. He had left his team in the States for good to help find Hermione. It didn't matter how angry he had been at Hermione, he loved her and wanted her safe.
"We'll, well we'll just relocate."
"What do you mean?"
"We should go to the Malfoy Mansion and search it. Maybe there is something there!"
"Harry, we can't just walk into his house. If they find out, we'll be in prison!"
"We could go to the houses they hid in last time!" Harry tried desperately.
"Harry," Ron rolled his eyes.
"Okay, Ron, so should we give up? Let Malfoy just keep her then?" he raised his voice and gobbled another firewhiskey.
"Harry, I didn't mean…."
Harry tossed back Ron's drink as well, still not listening to Ron. He was irritated and aggravated with the situation and needed to take it out on someone. "Yeah, all right, Ron. I guess when your sister was taken into the Chambers of Secrets, I should have considered that I might have been tossed from school…."
"Shut the hell up, Harry!" Ron scolded and Harry looked at him in shock. "I want to find her too, Harry; I just think that getting arrested will keep us from what we need to do."
"I know you want to find her, Ron, I'm sorry. Maybe we missed something back in Hermione's flat!" Harry suggested. Ron doubted it and looked over at Harry. He looked so awful, he hadn't shaved or showered in days and he wondered if he had slept at all since she disappeared.
"Look, Harry, you'll never find her like this. You need to keep your strength up!" Ron tried carefully.
"I have plenty of strength," Harry slurred. In all fairness, Harry had not turned to the bottle at all during the weeks she had been gone, but they had reached a particularly hard set back this day. Harry had, deprived from sleep, seen what he thought was Hermione on the street and chased the poor muggle girl down an alley. He had become so depressed that he had gone straight to the Leaky Cauldron after that.
Ron helped him into bed. Harry was far more drunk than he usually got and he felt sorry for him. It felt undoubtedly weird that his best friend was this broken over his other best friend, his ex-girlfriend, for that matter. He didn't quite know how to deal with it. This was truly a man with a broken heart.
"Oh, Ron, we have to find her!" Harry slurred and reached for him.
"Yeah, we will."
"I will die if something happens to her," Harry looked seriously at Ron, but his eyes quickly became unfocused again. Ron looked down at him; he could see that Harry had truly meant it and didn't doubt one bit that Harry would literally die. Suddenly he realized that he was slowly losing both of his friends.
Harry fell asleep in Ron's bed and Ron laid down on his sofa in the living room. Ron put his head in his hands and started crying again. Ron had never been brave in the same way as Harry, but he had always wanted to do the right thing. When the war ended he had looked forward to a life without Dark Arts, Death Eaters, and Unforgivables. He had wanted to move to the states with Hermione and live a normal life. But now they were back in the middle of harms way, and she was in it in the worst way. Now Harry, the rock, was falling apart and Ron didn't know what to do. His friendship with Harry was true, strong, and brotherly; but Hermione had still been the one holding everything together. Now that she was gone and Ron finally realized that she had been the glue holding the lot together, he had no idea how to handle himself or Harry.
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Ron woke up, startled, to the sound of Harry's screams. He hurried to his side and found Harry thrashing from side to side, screaming. He shook him awake and Harry's face was ghostly white. He immediately told Ron, in small outbursts, about the nightmare he'd just had about finding Hermione's body without a hand, a knife through her heart just like Narcissa Malfoy.
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AN: Thanks to my beta Chelsey, thanks to all you who read my story and thanks to all of you kind enough to leave a review!
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