Slytherins in the Attic | By : elruefaerie Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 3909 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, the characters, or anything else that was originally by J.K Rowling. I also did not create this for profit or make any money off its existance. |
All allusion phrases and their meanings were found at www.phrase.org.uk
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CHAPTER 3
"Hoist with your own petard" - Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others.
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The first thought Draco had was that they had found him at last. ‘They’ being either Death Eaters or Aurors, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t care. They had come to kill him in the forest, that much he knew, and he wasn’t going down without a fight.
He had begun to creep towards the sounds of footsteps in an attempt to take his closest captor by surprise when an upturned root sent them sprawling clumsily through the air.
“Expelliarmus!”
The wand of the person who had been chasing him flew to his left hand, and he used the already lit tip to shine upon its owner.
Hermione's bushy hair blocked her face from his view at first, and for a moment Draco thought he was hallucinating. From behind, he could see the curvature of the person was female and her shapely legs sprawled out on the dirt floor of the woods. Slowly, she turned around and moved the mass of frizzy curls away from a heart shaped face. Draco was lost in the image for a moment as recognition stole over him.
Hemione Granger. Hermione Mudblood-Know-It-All Granger was at his feet, helpless, wandless, and frightened as a rabbit in a fox hole.
Frightened eyes searched the darkness around Hermione for a view of her captor and a smile crept its way across Draco's lips as the thought of his reward flew through his mind. At last he had caught a break! Granger, the best friend of Potter and Weasley, teacher favorite and, above all else, desperately hunted by the Death Eaters; She was his for the taking! Finally! This was his salvation, his chance to fix the blunders of the last few months and the key to his return to glory!
"Well, well, well...What have we here?"
Every muscle in Hermione's body stiffened at the sound of the voice. Like oil flowing through water, and just as deadly.
She knew that voice.
"Malfoy," she breathed through parted lips. It wasn't a question.
Hermione heard him mutter something as Draco brought her lit wand closer to his own face, now cracked in an evil smile. Hermione let a terrified gasp escape her. The Draco Malfoy she remembered had had shiny blonde hair and clean, pressed robes. His face had been flawless and, although he had never been overweight, had also been full and healthy looking, with eyes that shone like polished silver.
This Malfoy, the man who stood in front of her, was none of these things.
Hermione took in the sight of his skin stretched taught across his face, so much that it reminded her of one of the bare skulls sitting in the back of Snape's potions closet. His eyes were a dead, lifeless shade of grey, and his hair had grown out in a dishevelled manner. Small clumps of dirt and bracken clung to the almost browned strands of hair surrounding his cheekbones. She could see the faint outline of his other arm still pointing towards her with his own wand clenched tightly in a hand that looked too much like a skeleton’s wrapped in leathery skin and warped from famine.
Draco twitched. He watched as her eyes roamed over his face, took in the sight of what he was. He watched as the shock melted away to...
Draco dropped both wands and in a moment had crossed the few feet between them and slapped her, the sound echoing faintly in the darkness.
"You bitch! Don't you...you dare..." He grabbed her clothes and lifted her slightly, shaking her as he half shouted through the whisper of his rage. "Don't you DARE pity me!"
Hermione cringed slightly at the sour smell of his breath brushing against her skin. She turned away in disgust and fear as she felt his grip tighten on her robes before throwing her back on the ground. She felt the air being knocked out of her as he kicked her in the stomach, the force causing Hermione to roll onto her back as he beat her.
Gasping for air between kicks, a small light caught the corner of Hermione's eye. Her wand! Malfoy hadn't moved to pick it up yet. Hermione braced herself against his foot once more before lunging across the bare dirt floor for the small light. Draco's leg swung at empty air and his brow furrowed in a moment's confusion before Hermione's hair caught in the light of the wand laying on the ground. He screamed and lunged after her, landing somewhere on top of Hermione and reaching for the wand himself. They fought and scratched at each other, knocking the wand further away and rolling towards it at the same time. Muffled cries rang out into the night as they fought one another for dominance.
Draco punched below him, his fist coming in contact with what felt like a nose, a soft crack and Hermione's moan of pain followed to prove him right. He reached out for the wand again, feeling her trying to kick and push him in the opposite direction. Draco used his knee to kick her again; the wand was so close...
"LEVICORPUS!"
Draco felt a pull from behind his navel and immediately heard a long ripping sound as his left hand remained clenched around a piece of Hermione's robes as he flew several feet into the air. The motion stopped abruptly about twenty feet from where he and Hermione had been lying. He looked down, seething at the darkness below him and twisting forcefully in the air to gain purchase of nearby tree branch.
Hermione still had her wand arm pointed directly above her. She gasped for air through her mouth, ignoring the painful pounding around her nose. She closed her eyes briefly to shut out the look of pure outrage on Draco's face as he glared down at her and the wand he hadn't reached fast enough. Tears trickled down her cheeks and she fought against the sobs threatening to tear through her chest.
Slowly, she moved her left arm against the earth and pushed until she was able to sit up again. She held Draco in the same position with her right arm while pushing and grunting against the dirt floor to the nearest tree, finally leaning against the trunk to catch her breath again. His wand was at an arm’s reach and she grappled for it for a few moments, trying to keep from toppling over, and finally wrapping her bloodied fingers around its polished wood. It buzzed in annoyance at her, not recognizing the witch as its owner, so she placed it in her lap to keep it silent.
When her heart began to beat at a more normal rate, Hermione registered the quiet of the woods surrounding her. She couldn’t hear the fight anymore in the town below. Hermione gulped lungfuls of air through her mouth in an attempt to quiet the wheezing sound strangling out of her and strained her ears to listen again, but heard nothing. Panic washed over her. What had happened? Where were Tonks and Harry and Ron? Were there still Death Eaters out there? Could she even make it back to the shop by herself like this?
Opening her eyes, she came face to face again with Draco Malfoy, still suspended in mid-air, and looking more bored than angry now. He had stopped thrashing and hung like a kitten being held in its mother's teeth. The scene would have been comical if the two weren't covered in bruises and blood. Hermione's stare hardened as she thought of what to do.
"I'mg going to leth you downg gnow." The restriction of air through her nose made everything sound strange as she watched Draco nod his head once showing he understood.
Slowly, he began to lose altitude and about six inches from the ground, she released him completely. His body, not expecting to be dropped, flopped onto the dirt, his face landing in a pile of leaves. Draco made a sound that Hermione could have translated to a 'Hmph' before pushing himself up to his knees.
"Sloppy, Granger," he said nonchalantly while brushing the dirt off his already filthy robes as though they hadn't just been wrestling each other in a death match. Hermione scowled slightly and shrugged, explaining his reaction as force-of-habit. She was too tired and scared to argue with him right now.
Draco made a note of her wand, still pointed directly at his chest, as well as his own wand in easy reach from her free hand as it lay in her lap. He moved his legs beneath him and landed back on his heels again to rest. Draco took in the sight of her torn robes and multiple cuts on her face, bruises already beginning to form beneath them. Had he done that? Her nose looked different than it had just a few moments earlier, twisted and bulbous against her skin. She looked like she was having trouble breathing, too.
For a moment, Draco felt uneasy and shocked. As though he had done something he should be feeling sorry for. If he’d experienced it even once in his life, he would have recognized the emotion as “remorse” or, to his unending horror, guilt.
His anger mounted again. Malfoy’s don’t feel guilty for dominating someone of lower rank. Draco clenched the piece of fabric he still held in his left hand that was once the front of Hermione’s robes and considered throwing it back at her when a throng of voices filled the darkness.
"Hermione?! Hermione!"
He froze as he recognized Harry's voice amongst them. She was about to be saved... and he was about to be as good as dead in her hands. Fed to the Aurors, or worse: thrown straight into his own cell in Azkaban. He moved to get up and run, but froze again at the sight of Hermione’s wand still pointed in his direction. He was trapped.
"HERMIONE??"
"Overg here!" She shouted back, relief flooding her senses. Hermione turned to look at Draco, her smile fading as she took in his reaction. The blood had drained from his face, turning him paler than even she could have believed possible. He looked as though he were already in Azkaban as his skin turned ashen in fear. The Ministry’s interrogation team would starve and possibly torture him for information. The Death Eaters would try to silence him...
Without realizing she had made the decision, Hermione rolled Draco’s wand across the dirt towards where he sat and let her hand drop to her side. The light at the end of her own wand pointed straight at the ground into nothingness as she counted to ten under her breath, before raising it again to the sky and sending red sparks shooting above her head. She paused once more, moving the lit wand back in the direction where Draco had last been standing.
He was already gone.
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Author’s Notes:
Please leave a review! Thank you to all who do!
And Thank you to my Beta, Carolib!
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