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Ring A Ring O' Roses	By : Gallivant Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 16640 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 11
- 12
- 13
Hermione and Draco seek shelter with the mysterious Dolores; but have they found sanctuary or wandered into a trap?

12. Crows Nest

'Stay here!' Dolores commanded, circling what appeared to be the main living room in her tiny house, trailing a luminous white spark from her finger, which then crackled and faded.

The front door bolted, the curtains snapped shut, a fire in the grate burst into brilliant turquoise flames, and a number of candles, arranged at strategic points around her small, cramped living quarters, instantly sprung into life. She then disappeared into a room situated behind them, casting defensive spells in low, guttural Spanish.

Draco stalked the main window facing the road outside, breathing heavily, his body tensed, sneaking glances behind the curtain to check they hadn't been followed. His wild-eyed prowling was making Hermione feel dizzy; her ears were still ringing from the explosion that had liberated them from the morgue.

Draco shook his head in wonder. 'Doesn't make sense,' he murmured. 'Where is everybody? This place is a bloody ghost town!'

'Es el miedo mortal. Everybody is very frightened, no? Unexplained deaths, and then Los Rojos…. Many people have left or are hiding in their homes,' Dolores explained, re-entering the room holding a tray with three glasses and a silver teapot.

She settled herself on a plump red cushion next to a small round table and offered them each a glass of Mate which Draco refused.

Hermione accepted, wanting to show her gratitude to the witch who had probably saved their lives. She was a striking looking woman that was for sure, with lustrous, velvety dark eyes, a long, bony physique, and a torrent of thick, black hair which tumbled freely down her back.

'You alright?' Draco said to Hermione, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

Hermione almost jumped in surprise. 'I'm fine,' she said, gulping back a sudden wave of emotion that threatened to swamp her. 'And you?'

Draco nodded wearily. 'That was a close shave.'

'Poor Jonas,' Hermione croaked. 'We should have done more to help him.'

Dolores watched them closely, a serene expression on her face.

'You must not blame yourselves,' she asserted, replenishing Hermione's glass with the strangely soothing Mate. 'Los Rojos would have found a way to enter the morgue and do what they wanted to do there without your presence here.'

Hermione wasn't so sure. She couldn't shrug off a niggling feeling deep inside of her, that the presence of herself and Draco had somehow led Jonas' attackers into this fatal course of action.

'How did you know what was going on?' Draco asked Dolores, a suspicious gleam in his eye. 'This house is a good few hundred yards from the morgue.'

'I have extremely powerful wards which protect the perimeter of my property,' Dolores declared. 'The destructive magic that was unleashed by Los Rojos was so powerful that it triggered an alarm.'

'Do Los Rojos use a special type of magic? Kind of like an anti-magic…?' Hermione asked in tremulous tones. She shuddered as she recalled the burning blue ball spinning towards them, zapping poor Jonas. She'd never seen a weapon like it.

Dolores's eyes scanned Hermione's face inquisitively. 'You felt it too?'

Hermione nodded. 'I could feel my magic surging violently and then dying inside of me.'

'There are others in Santa Maria who have experienced this same phenomenon since the arrival of Los Rojos. It is most troubling, no?' Dolores said. 'But you are safe now, I can assure you. I insist you rest here until dawn.'

'Thanks, but no thanks. We still have work to do,' Draco said in a firm, determined voice. He gestured towards the turquoise flames flickering in the fireplace. 'We could Floo straight out of here… '

'No Draco Malfoy!' Dolores warned, her eyes suddenly stern and hard, 'there is very great danger for you in this place beyond this house, of that I am sure.'

Draco turned a dull shade of green. 'How – how do you know my name?'

'I knew you were coming,' she said in low tones.

'Who told you?' Draco snapped.

'I see things.'

Oh, lord, no, Hermione thought with an inward groan. A Seer.

A Seer who had neglected to mention that they had introduced themselves to Jonas Arbuthnot within her earshot at Bar Santa Maria, just a short while ago.

'And I also see that you need to rest, Draco Malfoy,' Dolores purred. 'You have much pain.'

Draco winced reflexively, his hand instantly covering his shoulder as though to protect himself from Dolores's dark-eyed scrutiny. 'It's not so bad,' he muttered.

'We both know that is a lie,' Dolores said snippily. 'Let me tend to your pain, then you must rest.'

A thin, reedy bleating suddenly rang out - the cry of a baby.

'Disculpeme,' Dolores said, smiling an amiable apology at her guests. She gathered a small baby from a wooden cradle hunkered into a dark corner of the room, and held it close, gently rocking it to and fro in her arms.

Hermione couldn't remember seeing the cradle when they had first entered the house, but then again she had been in such a state of confusion that it was hardly surprising.

Draco continued to covertly inspect the street outside from behind the curtains. Hermione couldn't help but notice the ashen tinge to his complexion. There was also an uncharacteristic stiffness in his movements which worried her.

Dolores was right. He needed rest, and hopefully some pain relief. Hermione hoped Dolores had something else to hand as Senor Canaro's potion which had helped him so much earlier, was currently stowed in a locker, far away at El Calafate Airport.

Dolores beamed at her visitors. 'This is little Paco.'

The baby in her arms was making throaty gurgling noises, his small hand tightly gripping her fingers. Despite the fraught circumstances, Hermione was instantly suffused with a soft, melting warmth.

Dolores seated herself on her plump, red cushion, cradling the baby in her arms. Then, to Hermione's amazement, Dolores peeled back the left side of her robe to reveal a creamy expanse of breast, her nipple standing bulbous and erect from an expanse of brown, mottled areola. The baby attached himself greedily, his small hand padding his mother's breast in tandem with his soft, mewling sighs of contentment.

Dolores beamed at Hermione and Draco.

Hermione considered herself an open-minded, earthy sort of woman and had happily breastfed both Rose and Hugo, but never in public. And definitely not amongst strangers, in the midst of a potentially life-threatening situation.

She smiled bravely in return, even though her cheeks were glowing with a sudden flush of awkwardness. She cast a nervous glance at Draco who was still standing by the window. To her surprise, he seemed transfixed.

'Astoria never breastfed,' he said gruffly, breaking the heavy silence which had fallen on them. 'I have a son,' he said to Dolores, by way of further explanation. 'Scorpius. He's seven years old.'

To Hermione's astonishment, Dolores suddenly grabbed his hand and pulled him closer, her eyes shining feverishly.

'And you also have a beautiful little girl, Draco Malfoy,' she said dreamily. 'She is waiting for you to take her home.'

Draco instantly tried to retract his hand from her grasp, but Dolores clearly had a vice-like grip.

'You don't believe me,' Dolores said. 'I can see it in your eyes.'

'No. I – I don't know what to think,' Draco said, his eyes wide with panic. He cast an anxious glance in Hermione's direction, but Dolores tugged at his arm, compelling him to return her gaze with his own.

'Your daughter has a look of you, your eyes especially… the colour of molten mercury.'

Hermione groaned in exasperation. Dolores might well have saved their lives tonight, but she was clearly a kook.

Dolores blinked rapidly, as though an unwelcome image had impinged on her reverie. 'And… she has her mother's hair.'

'Where are they now? What are they doing?' Draco asked in a slightly strangulated voice.

'Rest assured, your daughter is amongst those who love her very much,' Dolores intoned.

'And my wife?'

Dolores's eyes darkened. Her hand released his, clasping his neck instead. Her fingers slinked along the length of the silver chain supporting Katya's pendant. She unfurled the silver rose from the confines of his shirt, and enfolded it in her palm. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly and deliberately.

'She is alive, isn’t she?' Draco implored, half-swallowing the words the moment they sprung from his lips. He looked ashamed and angry with himself for asking such a thing, almost as though it was a betrayal.

Hermione could feel red-hot anger boiling up inside of her. Toying with Draco's emotions like this seemed cruel and unfair.

'I cannot answer this. All I know is she's not in this world,' Dolores said curtly.

'But what exactly does that mean?' Hermione asked in agitated tones. Was Katya Malfoy dead? Or had she quit the wizarding world to live as a Muggle, as Draco likely believed?

'That is all I can say on the matter,' Dolores declared, with an air of finality, releasing Katya's rose and fixing Hermione with an admonishing glare.

Hermione heaved a pained sigh. Maybe it was best if they took their chances and headed back to El Calafate for the night…

Dolores was watching her with dark, beady eyes. 'I mean no harm,' she said dejectedly. 'When I see things, I have to say it… I see things about you too, but I know you will not want to hear them at this moment, so I will say nothing at all…'

'Probably for the best,' Hermione scoffed.

Draco jumped to Dolores's defence. 'Merlin, Hermione! She's just trying to help us; that's all!'

'Is that so? We're hear to find out about Dark Flux… not some bloody gibberish about your wife!'

Draco's silver eyes blazed with anger. 'She says I have a daughter! Don't you think that means something?'

'Sorry, but no. I've always maintained that Divination is stuff and nonsense, and I'm not about to change my tune,' Hermione retorted.

She eyed Dolores and her contentedly suckling child with a steady, unflinching gaze. 'Really, it's not personal.'

'I know,' Dolores said with a kindly smile.

It was the smile that did it. It had all been too much.

'I'm sorry,' Hermione gasped, her throat suddenly dry and aching with unshed tears. 'Can I get some water?'

XXX

Hermione stumbled into a small, dark kitchen illuminated by only a faint glow of streetlights from outside, streaming through the window.

She plucked a glass from a sideboard and turned the tap on, waiting for the water to chug through creaking pipes into the glass. She gazed out of the window at the dark backstreets of Santa Maria. It was a lifeless, drab little place.

She sipped her water in silence, dawdling for what soon passed into long minutes, reluctant to return to Dolores and Draco.

She took a deep breath, fighting to stay calm.

It had been a long and terrible day… the ghastliness of the memory at Senor Canaro's, losing her wand, the horror of poor Ana's lifeless blue corpse, uncannily similar in colour to the evil blue ball which had tortured Jonas Arbuthnot before he was so cruelly murdered, and now this… a sense that a whole new world of dark danger was closing in on them and there was nothing they could do about it.

She desperately needed to rationalise their situation, to apply a little cold, logical thinking. Experience had taught her that this was a surefire way to dampen down her fears and emotions when they were running high, which was certainly the case right now.

Dolores might have unnerved her, but she also lived and worked in Santa Maria and had discovered Ana's body. This meant she had crucial information.

Hermione turned away from the window, already feeling a lot better, when something - she couldn't tell what it was - drew her attention back to the view outside.

There had been a moment. A presence. A feeling that she was being watched.

But there was nobody there. The lane outside the window was deserted.

She pressed her nose directly to the window, her breath fogging the glass, to peer outside.

Nothing. A flutter of large black birds balancing on a telephone wire high above the street, silhouetted against the night sky, that was all.

How odd, she thought, that a wizarding town like Santa Maria even bothered with telephones.

'Dolores met this Danish chap Jonas told us about,' Draco's voice rang out behind her. 'His name's Henrik Thyssen. He came into the bar where Dolores works.'

Hermione could see Draco reflected in the darkened window; a ghostly figure, his pale hair gleaming brightly, partly obscured by the reflection of her own face. His shirt was gaping open, so she guessed Dolores had been checking his wound.

'She says he was heading down to the glaciers. Some place called Perito Moreno,' Draco continued, in what sounded to Hermione like conciliatory tones. 'Maybe we should head that way tomorrow and see what he has to say?'

'I'd rather get going tonight, if we can,' she said uneasily.

Draco's reflection was growing in size as he slowly advanced towards her, until he was so close she could feel the warmth from his body.

'This witch saved our lives tonight, Hermione,' he whispered. 'So please play nice.' His breath was ticklish against her neck. She shivered involuntarily at the sensation.

'I suspect she's very powerful, and we know nothing about her,' Hermione said, turning her head to one side.

Despite his obvious proximity, she was still surprised to find his face so close to her own. In this shadowy half-light, he looked eerily beautiful. All signs of tiredness and stress were erased. Instead, the clear-cut lines of his finely boned cheeks and chin and the shape of his lips were more strongly defined, while his eyes were glowing pools of liquid darkness.

She found she was holding her breath, almost scared that she had ever thought such a thing out loud, even in her own head.

'Let's at least wait till it's light,' Draco murmured.

'I'm sorry about what I said…' Hermione started, but halted, almost unable to speak as an unexpected rush of hot tears flowed down her cheeks. She brusquely wiped them away with the back of her hand. 'The bloody gibberish bit… you know…' She shuddered at the memory. 'I didn't mean any disrespect… I'm not that kind of person, Malfoy.'

Draco didn't reply. She could feel his eyes studying her in the dim light afforded by the faint outside lighting, and flushed with sudden self-consciousness. She had to look dreadful, she realized, after such a harrowing night.

'I don't know what's wrong with me,' she said, looking away to pour herself a fresh glass of water. 'My brain has gone to pieces.'

The sound of Paco crying and Dolores cooing words of comfort drove them back to their current reality. Draco's eyes flicked to the open doorway, then back to Hermione.

'I thought we were going to die tonight, Malfoy,' Hermione said, staying Draco with a glancing touch of her hand on his arm.

'Yeah. Me too,' Draco mumbled, shuffling uncomfortably. 'Kind of concentrates the mind, doesn't it?'

'I feel like we've been set up and I don't know what for,' she added. 'I mean, the original plan was to come here tomorrow… if it hadn't been for what we saw in that false memory… the baby… we would never have been in that morgue tonight.'

Draco sucked his lower lip thoughtfully. 'So you think we were lured here to be killed?'

'I don't know,' Hermione sighed. 'It all seems a bit of a coincidence, that's for sure… but way too elaborate…'

'I agree. Nobody could have known that we would change our plans and come a day early.'

'So there has to be another reason that memory was modified,' Hermione said. 'Maybe a clue about Dark Flux?'

'The best bet then is to find out who modified the memory, don't you think?'

'Oh, that's obvious,' Hermione said flippantly. 'It had to be Senor Canaro! He had the time and the opportunity.'

'So did Senor Asusto… Or maybe Los Rojos accosted Senor Asusto, cast a false memory charm and Obliviated him?''

'I guess that's possible,' Hermione conceded, tightly pursing her lips. 'But don't forget, it was also Senor Canaro who alerted you to this memory in the first place!'

'Well if that's the case, he can't be working for Jeroboam.'

'Really? I'd have thought Canaro would jump at the chance to rid the world of Muggleborns and Muggle spawn!' Hermione said with a sardonic sneer.

'There's no way Jeroboam would want anyone snooping around Dark Flux sites… especially someone like you!'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'You're a respected Ministry lawyer. People listen to you.'

'So if we were snooping around,' Hermione said pensively, 'he'd probably want us killed, wouldn't he?'

Draco smiled wolfishly. 'Based on the evidence of this evening? I'd say that's a certainty.'

'Well Malfoy,' Hermione said heatedly, 'my gut feeling tells me that Senor Canaro knows much more about this business than he's letting on. The simple fact is we were panicked into coming here by a suspicious memory that he showed us. Moments later he's conveniently disappeared and his house is magically sealed! I want to know why!'

'Since when did you go by gut feeling?' Draco said, eyeing her sceptically. 'Okay Hermione. Here's a plan. Once we've finished up in Santa Maria, let's go see that Danish fellow, then we can head back to Buenos Aires and quiz Canaro.'

They stared intently at each other, forging a silent agreement.

'Is everything alright?' Dolores asked from the doorway.

'Just coming,' Draco muttered apologetically, finally dragging his eyes away from Hermione's, before moving back to the living room.

Hermione turned to retrieve her glass of water which was still standing in the sink - and, in so doing, she caught a quick glimpse of Dolores's face, reflected in the window.

She gasped audibly.

In this half-light, Dolores's large, soulful eyes appeared as two huge black coals swallowing all the light from her face.

Of course it was an illusion, a trick of the night… but for a split-second, Hermione shivered with pure, unadulterated terror.

XXX

Dolores swiftly confirmed that she had met a Senor Asusto on a number of occasions when he had come into the bar to speak to Ana.

'I can't say I warmed to the young man,' Dolores said. 'And I was surprised how much he liked Ana.'

Dolores was tending to Draco's wound, a look of deep consternation on her face.

'Why's that?' Hermione asked.

'Because Ana was a Muggleborn,' Dolores said dolefully. 'Jonas wanted everyone to forget their differences in Santa Maria, but this Senor Asusto thought differently. He was always very pleasant to me, of course, because I'm pureblood, and he took a great interest in the progress of my pregnancy, always bringing me gifts, helping out at the bar when it was busy… although he was more of a hindrance, if I'm being honest. But since… since my husband died, I sometimes take whatever help I can get.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' Hermione said sorrowfully.

'Thanks,' Dolores said tight-lipped. 'Please hold still, Draco! How can I treat you when you keep squirming?'

Draco looked suitably chastened. Dolores doused her fingers in a rosy pink lotion and delicately prodded Draco's bullet-wound. He instantly baulked, but gritted his teeth, shutting his eyes to block out the pain.

'It was a very ordinary day when it happened… the day Ana died,' she said. 'Nothing remarkable.'

'How was the weather?' Hermione asked.

Dolores shrugged. 'Perhaps a little windy? Paco was crying a lot. He's never liked the sound of the wind whistling around the house! And he was so very, very young! Hardly alive. We were both sickly after the birth, although I still had business to attend to at the bar of course. Which is when I found poor Ana…'

'It must have been awful for you!'

'It was shocking, it is true,' Dolores sighed. 'Although I was confused at first because I had seen that same vivid blue skin colour before.'

'Really?' Hermione asked, prickling with curiosity.

'My husband's mother died of Gimlott's Disease. Her body turned a similar blue just before she died.'

'That's fascinating,' Hermione said. She recalled how Tony Goldstein was a leading expert in this field and determined to talk to him as soon as she returned to England.

'Yes, I believe this is usual with victims of Gimlott's Disease. Poor things. They suffer a long, lingering death,' Dolores said, with a mournful sigh.

Draco jerked violently in response to Dolores's cleansing of his wound. His face was flushed scarlet, and he was panting.

'That bloody hurt!' he scolded. 'You trying to kill me?'

Dolores smiled weakly at his outburst, and continued treating and dressing Draco's wound with an air of stolid indifference.

'Of course, I realised it was impossible for poor Ana and the other Muggleborns here who died, to have been suffering from Gimlott's Disease, because it only affects half-bloods, and they also died very suddenly… Please, Draco, stay still!' Dolores yelled.

She placed her hand over the wound and incanted something in Spanish. A yellow glow emanated from her palm, encapsulating the wound in a bubble of golden colour.

'That's scorching hot,' Draco groaned in discomfort. He threw a pained look in Hermione's direction.

'Did you know the other victims well?' Hermione asked, ignoring Draco's histrionics.

'For sure,' Ana said. 'This is a very small town and they were regular visitors to my bar.'

Moments later and the glow had subsided, and Dolores was cheerily bidding Draco get dressed and suggesting he take the sofa for the night – which was a rather unwelcome, lumpen-looking thing, slouched in the corner of the room - while Hermione shared the one and only bedroom with herself and Paco.

Hermione hesitated. Under the current circumstances, she didn't really want to be separated from Draco - not because she craved his company, but because he was her only link to reality.

XXX

Long, sleepless hours had passed, and there was a faint grey light gradually blanching the curtains from the outside, signaling the approach of dawn. Hermione was lying on the bed next to a peacefully sleeping Dolores, half-smothered by Dolores's long black tresses, which had extended onto Hermione's pillow.

Paco was an astoundingly good sleeper, Hermione thought a little enviously, remembering with astonishing, almost nostalgic clarity, the difficulties she had experienced with Hugo. Rose had always slept soundly, but Hugo was too engrossed with the land of the living. He was also a bit of a pig, and had guzzled her dry, she recalled, a broad smile on her face.

She was thirsty again. What was it about this place? She toyed with the idea of slipping out of the bedroom to get a glass of water from the kitchen, but that meant passing through the living room where Draco was sleeping. It really wouldn't be fair to wake him.

She listened to Dolores's deep, sonorous breathing, and the faint whinnying snuffles of baby Paco swaddled in his Moses basket beside his mother's bed.

Come on, daybreak, she pleaded silently. She wanted to get to this glacier. Meet this Henrik Thyssen. And then back to Buenos Aires, first to retrieve her wand from Miguel, and then to face up to Senor Canaro…

She sighed, her brain aching with a confusion of tumbling thoughts and overwhelming tiredness. Dolores' contented sleepy sounds were definitely beginning to grate.

Enough was enough. Hermione swung her legs out of bed and tiptoed out of the bedroom, easing the door closed behind her. She glanced over at Draco's slumbering form on the lumpen sofa and then instantly looked away, her face flooded with burning embarrassment.

Draco was topless and his boxer shorts had slid down over his hips in his sleep, meaning he was much more exposed than he would have liked. He was lying on his side, his face mushed into a cushion. The thin covering Dolores had offered him had fallen off.

His skin glowed silvery smooth in the grey dawn light.

She chanced a quick, curious look, reluctantly caught in unexpected admiration at his lean-limbed physique. His bed sheet had bunched up at the front of his body, concealing most of his chest and groin, but the long sweep of his back leading to the rounded curve of his buttocks was in full view. Her eyes lingered guiltily on the shadowy v-shaped gap between the crumpled sheet and the crook of his thigh and his flat and muscled lower torso.

Hermione hurried into the kitchen. She'd admired him twice in the space of a few hours. This was so very, very wrong. This was none other than bloody Draco Malfoy, for God's sake…

She hastened to the sink, grabbing the same glass she'd used earlier. She splushed fresh water into the glass, allowing it to spill over as she found herself increasingly fascinated by a long line of crows sitting on the grass verge a few metres beyond the window.

They weren't eating, or rooting for worms, or preening themselves, or any of the other everyday birdlike activities she normally associated with such creatures. There was simply an occasional fluttering of wings as one crow moved from one part of the line to another, almost as though they were sharing a conversation. But, for the most part, they seemed to be looking about themselves, heads cocked this way, then that, their dark beady eyes glancing furtively from one end of the lane to the other, glancing upwards, downwards, even straight ahead at the window where she was standing.

What were they waiting for? She wondered. What were they watching?

She raised the glass of water to her lips, the water sloshing over the sides and trickling down her hand as she drank.

One of the crows – the largest, with bold, bristling feathers crowning his sleek black head – suddenly lurched forwards from the rest of the group. With a frenzied flash of wings, he was perched on the windowsill, gazing directly into Dolores's kitchen.

Hermione instinctively pulled back from the window, her heart thumping wildly with an unformed, primal fear.

She could sense the crow's reddish-brown eye scanning the room, so she moved into the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, hoping to avoid its notice.

Surely its eye was too red for a standard crow? Too searching? Too knowing? There was something both familiar and awful in the feeling it gave her.

And then it struck her. The unseen pair of eyes at the morgue had sent a similar frisson of alarm careening through her.

She shrieked, the glass crashing from her hand, and smashing onto the floor. The crow hopped in response to the furthest end of the windowsill and peered deep inside.

'What is it?' Draco yelled, flying towards her from the sofa, his bed sheet wrapped clumsily around him like a makeshift toga, hair mussed with sleep.

She ducked out of the crow's view, frantically pushing Draco away from the door, out of sight.

'We have to get out of here! This instant!' she gasped.

'Why? What's happened?' he shouted, holding his bed-sheet closed in one hand, while straining to hold her still with the other.

'We're being watched,' Hermione spluttered, pointing to the kitchen. Draco made a move towards the open door, but she grabbed at him, her hand sliding across his chest as she pulled him towards her and away from the kitchen. 'Don't let them see you!'

'Who?' he asked, his eyes wide and staring.

'The crows, Malfoy!' she cried. 'It's the crows! Los Rojos are Animagi… And they've been waiting for us all night… We have to get out of here fast, or they'll kill us!'

XXX

CHAPTER TRACK: "EL NINO" by AGNELLI & NELSON

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my original characters.

Thanks to Apurva & Lou.
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Ring A Ring O' Roses