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How To Train Your Auror	By : Alcoholic_Rootbeer Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 7512 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I will not make a profit from this story.

Chapter List
- 28
- 29
- 30
Chapter Song of Choice:
"Fixin" by Walk The Moon
Don't even tell me where we are going
Hands over my eyes, hands over my eyes
Don't even tell me where we are going
Just walk, just walk by my side
Special thanks to MissPancake for editing this!
For someone who had done most of his childhood running away from things, this had to be one of the only times in his life that Draco wished that he could have done more. Before the goal was simple: stay alive, whatever the cost. Now, as they struggled for breath in the Ministry elevator that moved this way and that, trying to find a proper landing spot, he only wished that he maybe had missed it all together to stay behind with Diggle. As if reading his expression, Dean spoke.
"There's nothing we could have done for them back there."
Draco gave an irritated huff.
"You know that, right?"
"Sure." But his thoughts fell on Aeris and her arthritic hands that shook as her magic was being drained from her. They could have at least tried to rescue one of the others… But it always came down to Saint bloody Potter. Every single time.
"We need to wake him up," Dean said, changing the subject as he nudged his friend's head cradled in his lap. It looked like Potter had lost a bit of blood, and unless they got him to a proper healer soon, there were going to be repercussions.
"Diggle's sleeping powder is strong," Draco told him,. "sSo there's not much else we can do but wait for it to wear off. Not unless dear old Greg decides to have a change of heart."
"That's not bloody likely…"
The elevator careened to a definite stop, and Draco scrambled to his feet, wand drawn. At a snail's pace, the doors opened. What they found sent shivers down their spine.
They were staring into the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, which appeared as if it had been given a boat sized load of its own medicine. Remnants of burn chafing sat at the base of their feet along the threshold. Blood splattered every wall. There was something down on the end, but Draco couldn't quite make it out. That was, until he stepped out of the elevator; Ron Weasley stood across from him. Half of his face was burnt beyond recognition, and he was glaring with those piercing blue eyes like the many times he had tried to defend himself back at Hogwarts.
"It's your fault!" he shouted, raising his wand slowly to eye level. "I'm dead because of you!"
"I-I…" Draco stumbled backwards into the elevator. He nearly tripped over Potter's legs as he went, but it didn't stop Weasley from approaching.
"How many people died because of you, Malfoy?" Ron Weasley was screaming at him. "How many lives did your precious Mark snuff out? Was it worth it? -You don't deserve Hermione! You don't deserve anyone! Those are my friends!"
"Malfoy…" Dean called to him, gentle. Draco carefully turned his head, eyes wide, heart stammering. "Malfoy, it's a boggart."
He blinked once, analyzing Dean's words. With a heavy heart, he raised his wand back at Ron.
"You gonna kill me a second time, Malfoy?" Weasley stopped when Draco's wand met his with only inches to spare. "She pities you. That's why she cares about you. She loved me. I was worthy of love - but you. You're nothing but a worthless-"
"Reddikulus!" He concentrated all of his power on thinking of a simpler time, before there was War; when there was nothing but childish rivalry. Before War and turned them all into pawns. The boggart, disguised as Ron Weasley, hunkered forward and doubled up clutching his stomach. There was a sound like stomach acid churning, and then Weasley upchucked a thick, slimy, disgusting slug. Despite his guilt, Draco cracked a smirk.
"That never gets old, I'm telling you."
The boggart panicked, honing in on anyone but Draco. It caught sight of Dean and smiled. Ron Weasley's body burst - literally burst- in front of them into hundreds of black feathered ravens with beady black eyes. Draco scrambled back into the elevator, pushed the closed door buttons, and shouted, "Protego!" The birds beat against the spell as the elevator doors screeched together and started their decentdescent downwards.
"So…" Draco said to Dean, . "Not that way then?"
"Doesn't look like it."
He collapsed to the floor in a puddle of nerves. All of this time, he would have thought it would have been Cane for his boggart of choice. And really, maybe it had been until he'd discovered someone who could make his cold dead heart spark back to life. Now… he wasn't sure he could ever go back to the way things had been before. If he got out of this - no, when, he scolded himself, when he got out of this… he was going to find Hermione and tell her exactly how he felt, reciprocated feelings be damned. He just hoped he'd have the opportunity to.
Hermione stared out into the crowded streets of police officers and military quarantine set up in a perimeter around the Ministry, which to any muggle would have just appeared out of seemingly nowhere. Guns were trained on the top of the building, which stood five stories up, where there used to presumably be an abandoned construction site. The rest of the Ministry was deep underground, but that didn't mean that the offices of Muggle Relations wasn't in immediate danger from the guns and tanks trained at them.
"It just came out of nowhere…" Someone was whispering as Hermione tried to nonchalantly pass through the gathering throng of onlookers.
"Did you see the television, Dolly?"
"That man said that people with magic exist. Do you think this is a stunt?"
"Well, where did this building come from then?"
"Terrorists, I'm telling you."
"What if it's real?"
"Wasn't just here."
"Castle appeared in Scotland."
"Did you hear about the invisible city?"
The hushed murmurs were like waves crashing against the beach, bringing another piece of the mysterious puzzle back with it. This was bad. This was very bad. The Gray Magic inside of her tingled her finger tipsfingertips like an itch wanting desperately to be scratched. Hermione glanced around at the crowd of muggles, catching eyes with a few people she knew were magical. Her sense of magic was heightened beyond anything she had ever experienced. She could feel it in each and every random wizard lost through the crowd. She could sense it in the trees, in the air, under the pavement. She closed her eyes, concentrating.
Hermione wasn't sure how she made it past the barrier inside the Ministry that prevented apparition, but she was thankful for it when she landed inside of the Entrance Hall. But her joy was short lived when she glanced around and saw the rows of workers with their hands over glowing blue boxes. Shining above each of their heads was a timer, and only one was counting down. In bright red, it shimmered '3:45' and moving to zero. She made a step to inspect the boxes, but a soft, low voice from the side called to her.
"I wouldn't do that."
Every muscle in Hermione Granger's body clenched tight like a seizure; her heart skipped a beat. That voice… She'd know that voice anywhere. It was the same one that had haunted her dreams for the past year. The one that made the butterflies in her stomach fly frantically for escape. She grasped her wand tightly in her hand and turned on the spot.
Blue eyes. That's the first thing she saw. Not the red hair. Or the freckles. Not even his warm smile. It was those sky blue eyes that had captivated her since she was eleven years old. "R-Ron?" She forgot every bit of the fact that she was dead, and she took off to him at a dead run. She slammed hard into his chest, arms wrapping around him in a grip that clung for dear life. Big, warm arms draped around her shoulders. He even smelled the same. "Ron…" She felt the tears already dripping down her cheeks. "You… you can't be… you're…"
"I'm right here, Hermione."
Her name on his tongue sounded foreign and yet familiar. "You can't be. You're dead." She peeled her face off of his chest and reached up to cup his cheek. "You're dead, Ron." He closed his eyes to her touch, leaning in. As his eyes opened, he bent his head lower and mimicked her by tracing his fingers across her cheek. "How are you here right now?"
"You really loved him, didn't you?"
A thick, foreign smile broke out across Ron Weasley's lips, and he chuckled. Hermione frowned, glancing about the room for some sort of trickery. "You… you're not Ron." She made to pull away, but his fingers wrapped tightly around her arms and kept her in place against him.
"Of course I'm not," he replied. "Ron Weasley is long since dead." He leaned closer, brushing his nose up against her; it was then that Hermione felt the Gray Magic spring to life within her body, reacting to the Gray Magic in his. She swallowed hard and narrowed her eyes.
"Bastian Cane."
"There's the bright witch we all know." The fake Ron gave a sly wink and pushed his lips down onto hers. Hermione screamed into the kiss, jerking, trying to summon up her Gray Magic to push him off, but the panic sunk in and she lost control. The hall around her vibrated, and when his lips pulled away from hers, green eyes replaced blue. Cane's hair wasn't that infamous silver-white, but rather brown and moppish. His skin wasn't pale; it was sun kissed. And his smile was an all too familiar one.
"G-Greg?" She scrunched her face in confusion.
"Someone's had their hand in the cookie jar," he smirked, releasing her. "So you dabbled in Gray Magic, did you? Feels thrilling. I can feel it pulsing through you."
"It was you." She reached up and smacked him hard across the face. Greg Diggle simply took it, closing his eyes as if he relished in the pain. "You're Bastian Cane!"
"The one and only. Or rather," he sing-songed, ."Bastian Cane is me." His eyes shot back open.
Hermione backed away from him and brandished her wand at his chest. "If that's true… you killed Ron."
"Well of course I killed your little husband." Diggle rolled his eyes as he tucked his arms neatly behind his back. "I suppose there's no point in denying that now. The ball is already rolling, so to speak."
"Why?"
"You could ask that question," he said, "Or you could save that man's life over there. Your call, Hermione. I think we both know which one you'll choose."
She glanced back at the man with the ticking timer. '00.:32' and counting. Hermione thrust out her arm and concentrated all of her Gray Magic on the blue box, sealing it in with a protective barrier. The tiny man with a paper thin mustache slammed his hand down, but the barrier caught him and rebounded him back. Hermione hadn't witnessed a Pandora Mine exploding first hand (Draco had shielded her from the last one) - as it set off under her magical barrier, it released a beautiful cobalt smoke that glistened like the twinkling stars in Draco's bedroom -. iIt was like looking into the universe itself. Its destructive force pushed against the Gray Magic, but the Gray was stronger, swallowing up all of the magic quicker than the box could deliver. Soon, there was nothing left but ash and a puff of smoke. As soon as the last bit of it fell to the ground, the man's glassy eyes faded into a brilliant shade of lavender. He twitched his upper lip, eyes widening, before he fell to the floor.
Hermione dashed across the room and fell to her knees in front of him. His body was shaking and out cold, but he was still very much alive. "Oh, Thank heavens…" She looked over to her shoulder to the center of the room, but Greg Diggle was nowhere to be found.
Draco, can you hear me?
Draco Malfoy raised his head from against the stuffy elevator wall and glanced around the container. They'd been in the hot box for nearly thirty minutes and had heard the explosion of the first bomb set off rippling through the Ministry (Draco prayed silently that it wasn't Aeris). The elevator had tried to find a good enough spot to stop, but with most of the exits closed off by rubble or perhaps magical interception, the trio of men were stuck in a sort of magical limbo, careening through the Ministry. They'd tried their best to avoid the boggart floor altogether.
"Did you hear something?" Draco asked Dean, who was busy tending to Potter's broken leg. Dean glanced up at Draco with his tired, brown eyes and yawned.
"What? No. Did you?"
"I… no, I suppose I didn't." He guessed it was a trick of the elevator sounds and leaned his head back against the wall.
Draco? Damn it, why isn't this working…
This time, there was no denying that there was a voice calling out to him in his head. He quirked up an eyebrow and glanced up towards the ceiling. Could this possibly be Diggle attempting some sort of interception into his head? It was hard to distinguish a voice. It shimmered in ripples across the metaphorical waters of his mind, echoing and distorting.
Draco Malfoy! I know you can hear me! Answer me right now or I swear I will transfigure you into a pair of ears the next time I see you.
"Hermione?" he asked out loud, earning an inquisitive look from Dean.
The voice in his head sighed, and it honed in on Draco's thoughts, forming a solidified, feminine voice.
There you are. I've been trying to find you for half an hour.
"How are you in my head right now?" He gave Dean a look as if to say, 'I'll explain in a moment.'
It's a long story.
"No, it's a concerning story," Draco scolded, picturing her face perched above him, even though no one was actually there. "No one can penetrate my mind. Believe me, we'd all be worse off if they could."
Well, I can. I've been in your mind before. We share a connection - it's how I was able to decipher you out of everyone in the Ministry.
"Where are you?" he asked. "Are you hurt? Is Scorpius with you? Diggle said he had-"
They're fine. Scorpius, Astoria. They're both fine. Diggle thought he could outsmart me, but he clearly has a blind spot when it comes to his feelings for me. I found it, Draco. I found the Gray Magic.
Draco's insides grew cold, and he drew his knees up to his chest. "You're playing with fire, Hermione. You don't know what that kind of magic is capable of."
There was the sound of a tiny POP, then there, standing above him with her beautiful brown eyes and flustered face was Hermione. She smiled down to him, offering out a hand. "I think I've got a firm grasp on it now."
He could hardly believe she was real, but when he reached up and brushed fingertips with her, he knew. There was no denying that this was his Hermione. He struggled to his feet and jerked her into a fierce hug that shook the elevator. "Hermione."
"No offence," said Dean from the side,. "But how do we know she's the real deal?"
"Thomas-" Started Draco, but Hermione cut him off.
"No. That's fair." She nodded. "Ask me something - only I would know." She looked around patiently for a response.
Draco smirked. "I've got this one. Ice cream flavor, Miss Granger?"
She smiled back. "Chocolate mint with a bit of cookie dough."
They both burst out laughing.
"Yeah…" Dean tapped his wand on his leg. "You know that didn't make sense to the rest of us in the room, right?"
"Honestly," Hermione said, waving her hand over Harry's face, "I think you'd rather not know." Potter's eyes burst open, and he sat up instantly as he coughed. "Hello, Harry. Welcome back."
"Her…mione?" he whispered, eyes still slightly out of focus. Dean pulled Potter's glasses from his pockets and slipped them back on his face. "Hermione! What - what are you doing here? Where is here?" He jerked his head around the compartment in surprise.
"Diggle knocked you out cold," answered Dean. "But s'alright. Draco and I were bloody heroes."
"Dean was the hero," Draco scoffed quietly. "Don't dare count me in that bunch."
"Everything's going to be alright, Harry." Hermione assured him as she set her hand on Potter's leg. Draco watched in a mixture of awe and terror as she healed his broken leg with one touch.
"Herms… how did you?"
"It's a long story." She told him.
"Yeah?" Draco narrowed his eyes, letting his anger set in. He didn't know it really would until he witnessed the Gray Magic first hand. "And what price did you pay for it?"
"Does it matter?" she asked quietly.
The elevator came to a sudden, raring halt that made everyone wobble for balance. Dean helped Harry to his feet, and the four of them watched, mystified, as the elevator doors opened to reveal a sullen darkness.
"We're not even at a floor," Draco whispered to them, nudging up to the number dial that read out floor levels. It was stuck between levels one and two. Hermione pushed her hand out, feeling with her Gray Magic. She blinked a few times, then withdrew her hand to her side.
"Wherever we are, we're no longer in the Ministry."
Harry stepped up beside her. "Where do you think we are, then?"
"I can't say for sure." She furrowed her eyebrows together, looking between all three men. "It feels familiar, and yet…"
"Diggle?" Draco asked.
Hermione nodded. "This definitely has his magic written all over it."
"Out of the frying pan, into the fire," said Harry. "This is obviously a trap."
"Well of course it is," sneered Draco. "Seriously, Potter, I think I liked you better when you were just a useless sack of potatoes."
"The question is," chimed in Dean, "Do we step out into the yellow brick road or stay put in our house hoping for another tornado?"
Draco didn't get the reference, but Hermione and Potter did, because they smiled at one another.
"Well, boys? What do you say? Do we go defeat the Wicked Witch of the West?"
"After you, Dorothy," Potter laughed.
"Who the bloody Hell is Dorothy?" Draco scowled.
"I'll explain it later." Hermione reached over and slipped her hand in his. His heart gave a tiny leap, and his lips pulled upward in a smirk. "But just so you know, you're totally the lion."
Potter chuckled. "Spot on observation, Mione."
Dean snorted. "Does that mean I get to be the tin-man?"
"You're more like the scarecrow. Sorry Dean. Together then?" Hermione offered her other hand out for Potter, who took it. Dean came to Malfoy's side and set a firm hand on his shoulder.
"Together," Draco replied. And with that, they stepped out into the vast darkness, ready to face whatever might lay ahead.
Climactic event next chapter. Answers. All of the answers.
Please leave a review if you have the time.
~A
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How To Train Your Auror