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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
- 6
- 7
- 8
Wow. Here we are at chapter 7. If you've stuck around, I want to give you a round of applause and a virtual cookie. I thank you, humbly, from the top and bottom of my heart.
On to 7.
~A.
There is an answer in a question
And there is hope within despair
And there is beauty in a failure
And there are depths beyond compare
There is a role of a lifetime
And there's a song yet to be sung
And there's a dumpster in the driveway
Of all the plans that came undone
How could something so fair
Be so cruel
When this black sun revolved
Around you
~"Black Sun" by Death Cab For Cutie
Draco knew that he should be terrified. Something bigger than him, or his divorce, or his entire existence came crashing, literally, through the streets of London like a dirty muggle bomb. But as he watched as Ministry officials put out the fiendfyre flames that had crushed the Leaky Cauldron, he couldn't help the sense of purpose that washed over him like a baptismal hurricane. For once, in his sad, pathetic existence, he felt no fear. Instead, he wanted nothing more than for those burning embers to snuff out so he could get his hands dirty in the thick of War. This was what he had been waiting for. And he was ready to cut his teeth. He knew exactly what had caused that explosion -he'd seen it once before.
But, of course, Harry bloody Potter, the Head of the Auror Department for the Ministry, had other ideas. Yes, leave it to Potter to destroy all of the fun. As he stood in front of the vast majority of Aurors and trainees that had been called on the scene, Potter held a sense of command that Draco could hardly remember from his days at Hogwarts. Since when did Potter carry himself with such confidence?
"What has happened tonight is an alarming example of what Dark Magic is capable of in the hands of those who would seek to wield it. These actions are not to be taken lightly. -We don't know what we'll find when we open those gates to Diagon Alley, but we've received reports that the Flu network is down in many sections of Diagon, and thus children and the elderly have been stranded. Our job tonight is to get the wizards and witches out of Diagon Alley through the passage as quickly and efficiently as possible. Do not attempt to disapparate the wounded! It could be too dangerous, especially if they are disoriented. -That is our first priority. If you come under fire from enemies, your first priority is to the people! Is that clear!?"
The entire crowd rang out at once. "SIR!"
"I need all trainees to fall back and help St. Mungos attend to the sick and wounded that will come out of that gate. The rest of you, with me! We have a lot of ground to cover."
Potter stepped off of his makeshift podium at the fountain and began to weave through the crowd. Already, Ministry officials were heavy at work sealing the borders of Charing Cross Road from muggle eyes. The remaining muggles were sure to be given memory tampering spells after a thorough interrogation. Draco pushed through the crowd, tugging Granger along by the wrist until he came face to face with the Golden man himself.
"Potter," he started, even as Hermione tugged on his sleeve and whispered for him to shut it. "I need a word with you."
Potter's green eyes danced irritatingly towards him. "This isn't the time, Malfoy."
"Let us go too." Draco blocked the path between Potter and his destination, set on turning the tides. "We're more useful to you in there than out here, of that I can assure you."
"Draco," Hermione whispered, nudging him in the ribs. "Harry has given us an order."
"And he can un-do that order if he sees fit." He stood his ground. With a hearty cross of the arms and a wiggle of his superior eyebrows, he waited for his answer. "So, how 'bout it?"
"You have your orders. You'd do well to heed them. Besides, Malfoy, you smell like a brewery." Potter's gaze shifted over to Hermione. "Keep him out of trouble, will you?"
"You'll need us!" Draco shouted as Potter pushed past him and went on in the direction of the Leaky. When he had disappeared from sight, Draco turned his attention to his partner. "Some help you are, Granger. I could have pinned a flag on you -you were literally a pole."
Small strands of damp hair clung to Hermione's chin as she shook her head at him. Draco had the inkling to tuck it back behind her ear again (it irritated him, he convinced himself), but he stopped himself as she said, "And do you really think, in your condition, you'd be any good out on the field?"
"What condition?"
"You're as boiled as an owl, Malfoy."
"Was that supposed to refer to the level of alcohol in my system? Is that even an expression? Or did you make that up on the spot?"
"It is an expression! Honestly, let's just do what we're supposed to do and stop complaining."
"It isn't fair. We were at ground zero -we should have been-"
"No." She turned on her heels and glared at him. "You're right. We should be out there. But perhaps if you weren't sloshed, we'd be out there now. As you are, you are quite useless to the cause."
"Useless?" He glared at her. "You know what's useless? Following orders you know are ridiculous just because someone tells you to -that's useless. And a good way to get yourself killed." He stepped back away from her, his head sobering. "I'll show you useless." And with that he took off in the direction of the gate.
"Draco, slow down!" Hermione shouted as she and Malfoy tore through the streets of Diagon Alley. Dean was on their heels, clutching his possibly broken ribs, but keeping good time with them as Draco led the charge.
"We don't have time!" he shouted over his shoulder, weaving through a pile of rubble and some decimated bodies of… well, Hermione didn't want to stop to look. It was better if she didn't think about it. Her damp jeans weighing her down, she waved her wand and cast a protector barrier directly in front of Malfoy, blocking his path. He nearly hit the wall, but skittered on his heels and came to a deafening halt. "What the Hell, Granger?"
"What the Hell indeed!" she shouted back, stopping just short of him. "Do you mind telling me why we disobeyed a direct order from Harry and threw ourselves into the eye of the storm?" She glared contemptibly at him. "I get it, we're all shaken up, but this is no reason to-"
"Hermione, I mean this in the politest way possible, but kindly shove your assumptions up your arsehole and take down that barrier spell now."
"And if I don't?" she asked, sticking her chin in the air.
"Then a lot of innocent people are going to die. And that blood will not be on my hands. It will be on yours." His steel gray eyes bore into hers, warning her to heed him. Reluctantly, she waved her wand and dismissed the barrier. Draco nodded once to her in thanks before taking off in the direction of the middle of the city.
"Hermione!" Dean called, "Follow him! I can't keep up!"
"Right." She waved him on and attempted to control her breathing as she sprinted after Draco. When she rounded the corner to the left, she nearly toppled into his lean frame as he stood, frozen, in front of a large, glowing blue box. There were runes carved into every edge -ones that even Hermione herself didn't recognize off the cuff, and the box hovered inches off of the ground. It was the size of a traveling trunk, but shaped like a cube. It gave off a pulsing magical energy that Hermione instantly felt in her bones. Quietly, she moved to stand at Draco's side. "What… is that?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," replied Draco, chest heaving up and down from his vigorous running.
"We live in a world of magic, whomping willows, forbidden forests, and owls that seem to know where we are at all times. Whatever you're about to say, I'm most likely to believe it at this point."
"You ever heard the legend of Pandora's box? -Well, this is a byproduct of that magic. It's called a Pandora Mine." Hermione's instincts kicked in, and she made to take a step closer to it to examine, but Draco's arm shot out and pulled her back. He took a step between her and the box, scowling. "Do not, under any circumstances, touch that box, Hermione."
"This is what caused the explosion, isn't it?" she asked him. He nodded. "How do you know about this, Malfoy? I've never read about it any text book."
He blinked a few times, opened his mouth, shut it, and then opened it again. "It doesn't matter. What matters is that we have to destroy it before it goes off again."
"Again?" Hermione's eyes widened. She stared at the object and felt a pull. It didn't take her long to put the pieces together. "Pandora Mine… like a Pandora's Box. It swallows up all of the magic around it, doesn't it?"
"And then when it saturates enough magic- BOOM." Draco clapped his hands together and gestured and explosion. "All of that magic is released at once. And then it continues, until someone touches it again or it fills back up."
Images flew into Hermione's mind all at once like a hurricane, spinning and circling her brain. She saw Ron's bright blue eyes kissing her good morning- his last goodbye – "I'll be home for dinner. Could we have pot roast, Mione?" -The Ministry official at her doorstep, his hat held between his hands in solidarity -The papers that read 'Auror Weasley dies in fiery explosion' – The horrifying feeling hit her stomach once again, the one that had consumed her the day of his passing.
"W-What happens if someone touches it?" she asked, losing her battle with her nervous system. Her hands began to shake violently.
"The entire box explodes -not like if its left alone. It literally explodes, like a mine."
"Oh, God…" She put her hand to her mouth to keep from vomiting.
"Get a grip, Granger," Draco said sternly. "I don't need you passing out on me. We can still diffuse it. We just need to get it away from magic."
She struggled to keep her emotions in check, biting her tongue to keep herself from letting the questions pour out of her. Later, she thought. Stay in the moment. "We should tell Harry."
Draco reached out and put his hands on her shoulders, crouching to her eye level. "We can't tell Potter about this, Hermione. We can't tell anyone."
"What?" She glared at him, her anger lashing out. "Of course we have to tell them! The Ministry needs to know about-"
"If they find out I knew about this, and I didn't share the information, they'll throw me in Azkaban. Do you honestly think you're going to say a word to anyone?"
"Are you threatening me?"
"No." He leaned closer, shaking his head as if that thought had never crossed his mind. "I'm telling you this because, out of everyone, I know I can trust you with this. Because you're the type of person that wouldn't turn someone in without all of the facts. And I'll give you the facts, Granger. I will. But right now, I'm going to need you to trust in me for a change."
Her gaze was deploring. His was beseeching. She sighed, nodded, and said, "Fine. But… but you owe me."
"To the moon and back." He smirked, releasing a heavy breath he had been holding. "Right, it'll take both of us, but I think we can levitate it out of the city. When it's far enough away, we can hit it with an object and set it off."
"Over the city?"
"Well, we could just let it set off all on its own if you prefer. Have a residual cookout."
She glared contemptibly at him. "Your sarcasm isn't as charming as you think it is."
"Isn't it?" He released her shoulders and steadied his wand at the box. "Walk around it -carefully. The closer we get, the more magical energy it draws. -Yes, like that," He encouraged as she shifted around to the other side of the cube, "On the count of three, we'll need to Leviosa the shit out of this. We'll only get one good shot before it drains the magic. One. Two…"
On three, they both shouted, "Wingardium Leviosa!"
The cube began to rise, quickly, and Hermione attempted to match Draco's speed as it floated up, up, past the height of the shops and even higher past the bell tower. She could feel the magic being drawn out of her like sand dripping through an hourglass, and it took everything she had not to pull herself out of the vice of the Pandora Mine. It was high, now, and Draco shouted, "Hold it steady!" She felt his magic release from hers. The Mine became fantastically weighty, but she steadied her wand arm with her other and bit down on her lip in concentration.
"Do it!" she shouted.
Draco grabbed up a brick from a crumbled building side and levitated it in the air. With a firm hand, he shouted, "Alarte Acendare!" The brick was sent whizzing into the sky like a firework. "Drop the spell!"
Hermione released at once, watching as the Pandora Mine began to descend in the path of the flying brick. She didn't get a chance to see it go off- Draco grabbed the back of her head and sent them both tumbling down to the street below, his hand cushioning the blow to her skull as he landed atop her just as a wave burst over the skyline. This time, the heat was far worse -a current of wind slapped at their faces, and Hermione wrapped her arm around the back of Draco's head to protect him. It was then that she heard the BOOM, so loud and violent, and she screamed as it burst into her eardrums. Just like that, the heat was gone, as was the wind. Her eardrums felt bruised, and she missed whatever Malfoy had just said.
"What?" she croaked out, opening her eyes. She found him directly above her, nose to nose, a trail of blood trickling out of his left ear. He was covered in dust, his hair stuck up at odd angles, but his mouth was pulled up in a brilliant smirk that, despite the current situation, made her stomach do a somersault.
She could barely hear him laugh, but she read his lips just fine. "I said: let's never do that again."
"What the Hell were you two thinking?" Auror Diggle admonished the two as St. Mungos nurses tended to their bleeding ear drums. Hermione had lost all of the hearing out of her right ear, but given that she could have wound up dead, she took it the loss as a win. She cast a sideways glance at Draco in the next infirmary bed, sharing careful stares before she turned her eyes back towards Greg. "You could have gotten yourself killed. Harry told you to stay behind -why would you disobey a direct order?" Though his tone was fierce, he was rubbing her hand with the pad of his thumb delicately.
"I'm sorry, sir." Hermione stared into his green eyes for a moment, before shifting them down to her lap. "It… it was my idea. I thought I could help. I went in… Draco followed me."
"Is that so?" Diggle reached up and tilted her head back up to look at him. "Because I have a statement from Dean that says Malfoy ran in first. And it was the both of you that backed him up."
Hermione's heart raced. She had been caught in her lie, but she refused to go down without a fight. "No." She sat up, her head swimming with pain. "Dean must remember it wrong. I was the one that took off -if it wasn't for Auror Malfoy following me… I might be dead right now." So, it wasn't a complete lie. He had shielded her from most of the explosion. Greg searched her eyes, as if trying to make sense of her words, but gave up and nodded slowly. "Alright, Hermione. If you say so." He leaned over, kissed her atop her forehead, and whispered, "I'm just glad you're alright." He moved his attention over to Draco, who had his head propped up on three pillows. "I suppose I should thank you then, Malfoy."
Draco cast a glance over to Hermione, wiggled an eyebrow, and smirked. "I was just doing my civic duty, sir. Merlin knows someone has to watch out for Granger. She's a wonky spell ready to set off on most occasions." He mockingly blew her a kiss, to which Hermione rolled her eyes. Of course, leave it to him to be the arrogant hero in play. She supposed it would sell it better than him being humble. Lord knew he was anything but that.
"Right…" Diggle stood up from the edge of Hermione's bed. "I'll expect full reports on my desk Monday morning. In the meantime, you both should get some rest." He waved thoughtfully at her before he left the infirmary wing.
Hermione threw her head back on the pillows and sighed. "How did we manage to get out of that one?"
"The same way anyone does. Really, Hermione, that lie was well thought up. Are you sure you wouldn't have done better in Slytherin?" He tucked one of his arms behind his head and chuckled. "We're lucky Diggle has it hard for you. Otherwise we might have been thrown out of the Auror academy completely."
"I really wish he didn't. The whole thing makes everything so… complicated."
"How? Is he not dreamy enough for you? I wouldn't think your standards were that high. You did marry a Weasley."
That was it. Hermione shot up in her bed, though the force of it made her head ache. "I can take you teasing me about Greg. I can take the taunts. The jeers. But you will never insult Ron to me again, do you hear?"
Draco frowned. "Easy, Granger. It was just teasing."
"He's my late husband. I don't taunt you about your divorce. Stop chastising my relationship with Ron."
He stared down at the floor, thinking. "Alright. Sorry." He swung his legs over the bed and sat up to match her. "Sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brain. It was just teasing. I'm sorry if I crossed a line." The silver flecks in his eyes darkened. "Besides, I'm pretty sure I don't have much room for talk. I made a pretty shitty husband myself." He rubbed his tired eyes and yawned.
"You owe me an explanation." She stated.
"I know." Rising from his bed, he fumbled his way over to hers and sat down beside her. "And you'll get it. But not here."
"When, then?"
"When they discharge us, come back to the Manor with me." He turned his face to her and stared intently. Noticing her skeptical expression, he added, "You could have turned me in right then, Granger. But you didn't. You know that things don't add up. Thanks for believing in me."
"I only did it because I want answers. And if you go to Azkaban, I might never have them." Her head throbbed with pain, and her eyes went out of focus. She shook her head, trying to force herself to stay awake, and that's when she felt Draco reach out and cup the back of her neck. "What…?" Her eyes shifted in and out of focus, and she could feel herself falling. But Draco kept his hold on her and steadied her back against the pillows.
"Don't worry," he whispered to her, sliding his hand out from under her neck. His torso leaned next to her as he propped himself up on his elbow to hover over her, "It's just a side effect of the box. It'll wear off soon. That thing drained a lot of magic from you. You're going to want to sleep it off."
"Right…" She could feel herself slipping. "Don't… don't leave me alone…"
"Never." His eyes were serene pools of grey, and they allowed her mind to fall through the cracks. Her eyes closed, and before she knew it she was gone, lost in sleep.
Draco watched her fall timidly to sleep as he brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. So many emotions stirred within him: gratefulness, admiration, nervousness, agitation. A part of him wanted to lay down next to her and let sleep consume him too. A month of sleeping alone without the heat of someone was lonely beyond compare. But he shook his head and fought the urge. This feeling stemmed from loneliness, he told himself. He wouldn't let it drag him into lying next to his partner as if they were anything more than that. Because they weren't.
He shifted on the bed and sat up, giving a long stretch. As he stood, he heard the infirmary door open once more, and he turned to see someone he had never expected: Astoria. Her hair was slightly disheveled, as if she had thrown herself out of bed and put on clothes without a second thought. Draco was still wobbly on his feet (his equilibrium was off balance from his damaged eardrum), but he still managed to take a few lingering steps toward her. She came the rest of the way, lips pursed together as she threw her arms around him and hugged him tight.
"You stupid idiot," she cried into his chest. "You could have gotten yourself blown up."
"Tori…" He cautiously put his arms around her, and when he was sure she wouldn't rip away he gripped her tight to him "Tori, I'm alright."
Astoria sobbed quietly. "I know… I know… when they sent an owl to tell me you were in St. Mungos… I… I didn't know what to expect."
"Just a busted eardrum," he whispered into her hair. "Nothing serious."
"But it could have been."
"Where's Scorpius?"
"With my mother." She tilted her face up as tears spilled down her cheeks. "I didn't want him here when I…"
"Tori, before you finish that sentence, let me explain-"
She leaned up and planted a soft kiss on his lips. Draco groaned, falling into it, but she pulled away before he could deepen it. "I'm sorry, Draco. I'm so sorry to do this, but I… I just can't." She pulled away from him and reached into her back pocket. "I know you're trying to make up for what you've done. And I won't stop you. But I cannot be the one to hold your secrets. I'm sorry." She extended her arm and presented a folded parchment to him. "I won't tell a soul about what you've confided in me. I promise that on my life. But I need you to sign this, Draco. I won't sit at home waiting on an owl to tell me you're gone. And I…" She fumbled her words. "I-I won't forgive you f-for what you've done." She pushed the paper into his hands. "Sign the papers, Draco. Free me from this world you've hidden from me." And then she turned and walked away, her beautiful brown hair bouncing with each step as if to wave him goodbye. Draco gripped the parchment in his shaking hand as the door shut firmly behind her.
"Tori…"
He swore he could feel his heart shatter all over again.
So much emotion in this chapter...
I'm working on my action writing skills. I think that's why this chapter took me so long. There were so many things going on in my head, it was hard to put it down in words. I think, finally, after nearly a week, I've done it. Please let me know what you think! I should have another chapter here pretty soon. More plot. Possible romance starting?! Ooh, I wonder how it will develop. *sly smile*
I love everyone's comments on Greg Diggle, by the way. This character has really come to life in story, and I'm so glad everyone has been able to accept an Original Character so well! Usually I hate writing them in, but I think Greg has a way of making himself a living, breathing character. He is anything but one dimensional.
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How To Train Your Auror