CHAPTER 30: IT ALL COMES BACK TO BLOOD 

Draco wanted to say that he'd been in worse situations than the one he was facing right now. He wanted to say that he was calm and collected and thinking of a way to get out this mess, and save everyone else too. He wanted to say that he felt no fear at the prospect of death.

But it was kind of a hard thing to do when all of them were petrified on the floor of a dungeon, and Hermione was gone once again. The masked bastard had taken her along with him, laughing like a maniac, the blood he'd collected from everyone present, floating along behind him in a line.

As the dungeon door had slammed shut, Draco had felt a sickening feeling in his stomach, like something was going to go very wrong, very soon.

He didn't know how long they were trapped in the spell for, but every second felt like hours, and it was almost frightening how much it was hurting him that he wasn't with Hermione. His mind was so occupied with the idea that he could lose her, that it took him longer than the others to realise that the spell suddenly broke and that he could move again.

"We can move again!" Blaise cried out triumphantly, struggling to his feet before hopping around as pins and needles kicked in. Ron stood up too, wincing before helping Pansy and Harry to their feet too, he didn't go near Draco, who seemed to be too deep in his thoughts.

"Fat lot of good being able to move around if we can't get out of here anyway," Pansy muttered, trying not to look at Draco in case she started bawling her eyes out as how sad he looked. This hadn't been how she'd imagined the story going, and it certainly wasn't what she wanted.

If something happened to Hermione, she didn't even want to think about what Draco would do to those responsible.

Everyone froze as Draco leaned forward and picked up the shoe that Hermione had taken off and left behind, his brows furrowed deeply and his lips pulled into a look that both Harry and Ron were familiar with.

It was an almost replica of Hermione's 'I'm thinking, don't interrupt me' face.

Blaise, however, wasn't as familiar with that look as the other two men were, and frowned at the shoe in Draco's hand in bewilderment, taking it off him to stare at it blankly, unaware of the wince of pity from the Golden duo and the anger steaming off of Draco.

"She took this off on purpose, right? Why would she leave us a shoe?" Blaise asked no one in particular, turning the boot this way and that, trying to figure out its secrets.

Draco stood up suddenly, and Pansy took a step away immediately, pulling Ron back with her. "Don't touch Granger's things." Draco stated, his voice low and tense.

Blaise looked up at his best friend and squeaked, before carefully handing it over, except, he was so nervous that he really was going to end up in a pink coffin, that he dropped it on the floor.

Everyone watched as the boot fell on the floor and bounced twice.

Draco grabbed Blaise by the collar, pissed off at everything in the world right now, ready to take his anger out on anything that slightly annoyed him.

And then the heel of the boot clicked open.

Draco let go off Blaise and bent down to pick it was.

Inside the long compartment of the shoe, was a wand.

"I'm a bloody genius," Blaise muttered, hiding behind Harry and thanking all the gods in the world for his luck.

Draco growled in anger and turning to face the barrier that was keeping him from the happiness of his forever and ever, blew up the door.

.*.

Hermione wondered if they'd managed to figure out that there was a spare wand in her boot, but the idea that they would just presume that she'd left her shoe there by accident did occur to her. she hoped fervently that Draco at least would figure that she wouldn't do anything so pointless and check it out, and discover the wand.

And then get the hell out of there.

Ron and Pansy were alive, but it didn't look like any of the other were though and it made her heart ache. All the others had really been killed, taken from their lives, gone, because she hadn't been able to figure it all out.

And now she was probably going to die too.

There was a part of there was joyful for her meddling from before, at least now, Draco and the others could escape. She'd been petrified that they would've been killed in front of her, but now she was steeling herself for whatever was to come next.

She could welcome death happily enough; the only regret she had was the fact that she hadn't been able to figure out that the love potion from all those years ago had worked and that she hadn't found Draco sooner.

Even if it had been one more day, just one more day with him, up on that hill. Or anywhere, as long as he was there, but those thoughts just made her sadder.

The masked man had made her body unable to listen to her, the special spell he'd cast on her outside the dungeon made her feel like she was under the imperio, her body was stiffly walking along behind him, not listening to the commands being sent to it by her brain.

And no matter how hard she struggled against it, the spell was hard to break.

"There really is no point in struggling, Granger. The one who created this spell was rather clever," the man said, laughing to himself. This wasn't one her spells, but it irritated her that she was so constricted.

Yes, it was true that she would welcome death happily, but not without a fight!

As they walked, Hermione began to recognise the area better, surprised and horrified by the fact that they were still in Hogwarts. It had been hours since the Aurors and such had arrived, why hadn't they started looking for Harry yet? For her?

"It's a cloaking spell, Granger. I've made this part of our wonderful school impossible to reach from the outside." The man said, as if he'd read her mind.

Hermione growled at him in her head, not liking the fact that he was calling her Granger. Only Draco was allowed to call her that. It was his thing, and she hated that this stupid idiot was ruining that.

They turned a corner and marched through an open, metal door and Hermione found herself outside. This was the Forbidden Forest, or at least, a part of it that she'd never seen before. Instead of the trees and wildlife and other interesting things that were often found there, they stood amongst gravestones.

There was a graveyard in the Forbidden Forest?

"Oh, not many people know about this place, Granger. A handful at most, but no one comes to visit the people who're laid to rest here. They're not important enough to be visited." The bitterness in the man's voice made Hermione paused, her mind trying to figure out what this all meant.

Apparently, he didn't feel like explaining because instead of speaking, they trudged through the headstones, most of them overgrown with nettles and vines, some of them broken and covered in cobwebs, all of them making Hermione's heart ache.

She hated graveyards. It only served to remind her of the people she'd lost in the war and the pain that they'd all suffered because of a mad man's obsession with power. She tried once more to speak, but it was like her lips were glued together

The man stopped suddenly in front of a headstone that looked newer than the rest. It had no name or details, but in front of it was a pile of fresh asphodels.

The masked man knelt in front of the gravestone, pushing aside the flowers like they were nothing, and grabbed the vials of blood from Harry, Ron, Pansy, Blaise, and Draco, and began to pour the contents onto the graveyard. Draco's, the three vials of it, were poured last, and the blood formed a puddle of deep red, the smell of it making Hermione sick to her stomach.

She hated that smell.

"Everything has been prepared," the man finally said, before turning around to face her, throwing the empty glass vials away. She heard them break on the gravestones of other people, the noise echoing in her ear.

For such a large place, filled with hundreds of creatures, the forest was deadly calm, as if even it knew that something terrible was about to take place.

For a moment, the man hesitated, looking at her with his dull blue eyes, "if there was another way, Hermione, I would have used that, but I don't have the time or the patience to find another way. Your ancestors were part of the family who had the Deathly Hallows at their grasp."

Hermione's heart skipped a beat. How did he know that? The only person she'd told that to, had been Draco, and he certainly hadn't told anyone else.

"Specifically, your direct family is descended from the man who had the resurrection stone, Cadmus Peverell. Your blood has that power in it, and I need it." He said.

Hermione felt sick. After everything. After all the people who'd been killed, all the people who'd suffered, all the horrible things they'd all been through, after a whole bloody war...it all came back to blood?

"If Harry hadn't lost the stone, I wouldn't have needed you to die, Hermione. If...if Harry had just saved..." his voice trailed off as he stared at the gravestone and suddenly, everything made sense to Hermione.

But it didn't make her feel any better.

Her blood, the blood of the second Peverell brother, who'd had the resurrection stone, this mad man thought that her blood had some kind of power to bring back the dead.

He'd taken Pansy, Blaise and Ron's blood because they were Pure-blooded, their ancestry had lots of magic infused into their body, and their blood would help to cultivate the magic this masked man wanted to perform to bring back whoever was buried in that grave.

And Harry, though a Half-blooded wizard, was the saviour of the Wizarding world. He had strong magic too, enough at least, to even out the flow of magic so that when her blood was added, especially if it did have the magic that he thought it did, then it would be enough of a conductor to produce something.

But there was no proof that her blood had that kind of magic at all, was he doing this anyway? Was he that desperate? Desperate enough to bring back someone, even though the last time this had happened, even Cadmus had taken his own life because of it?

And more importantly, Hermione was slowly becoming aware of the fact that this man was wearing a glamour disguise to cover his true identity, hence why he'd so carelessly and obviously showed Blaise his face, because it wasn't his.

And with Blaise amongst the others, they would go hunting for the wrong man if the ever made it out, giving the real man, a chance to slip away. It was a brilliant plan, and it also made Hermione realise that she was familiar with him. The way he talked about her and Harry, made it seem like he'd known them personally well, and it horrified her to think that this man was someone she knew that well.

"You've always been clever Hermione, that's why it took so long for me to set things up so that I could get away in case something went wrong. I hadn't intended to bring Malfoy into this at first, but he was the last of his family, leaving him with a lot of magical power, I had no choice. If Harry had just kept the stone, I wouldn't have had to do all this." The man's voice took a higher tone, his words getting delirious with sadness and anger, "so when you think about it, Hermione, this is all his fault! This is all Harry Potter's fault. It's because of him that you have to die."

Hermione felt her blood freeze in her veins as he finally took off the mask, and the spell that hid his identity, he removed easily with a flick of his wand.

No.

No!

Of all the people in the world.

Of all the people who could've done this...no.

He wasn't supposed to be...no!

"After the war, I was badly hurt. I've been injecting myself with healing serums for years now to keep myself alive," he showed her the needles on his mask, before tucking it away, "I didn't want to hurt you, Hermione, honest, but the spell requires you to be weak and broken. It's all Harry's fault, blame him, not me."

Hermione remembered the cruelty that he'd displayed in torturing her before. Crucio wasn't a spell that one could do just because they wanted to. It was a spell that needed the caster to mean it. It needed the caster to want the person to suffer, to be tortured, it couldn't be faked for the sake of a stupid spell.

He'd kicked her until her ribs were broken, and smashed her head against the floor too many times for it to be just for a spell. It had nothing to do with the spell.

He blamed her just as much as he blamed Harry, after all, she'd been part of the group that had gotten all those people killed in the war.

He hated her, but it was easier for him to justify his cruelty if he placed the blame on anything but himself.

"And now you must die, so I can bring him back to life!"

And then, Hermione felt her arms being lifted into the air, and he cast a spell that cut the skin of her wrists deeply. She felt no pain, her body numb with the fact that this was the man who'd put her through two years of hell.

This...boy...

Her feet moved her to the grave, and Hermione watched, her heart and her spirit broken, as her blood began to feed the puddle of blood that was already there, and magic began to pulse in the air.

.*.

Draco didn't know what it was, but something in his mind was yelling at him to hurry up and find Hermione. He knew, from the core of his being, that she was in danger, and it didn't help that even though they were clearly still in Hogwarts, none of them had any idea where they were supposed to go.

"You're telling me that the psychopath behind all of this, is Theodore Nott?" Harry asked Blaise, who nodded grimly as they followed Draco down a long corridor studded with doors.

Blaise shuddered at the memory of seeing his old classmate without the mask on, horrified that one of his friends, former friends now, was behind all the deaths and loss and pain in the past two years.

Draco was barely listening, too intent on finding Hermione to focus on who was behind it. He could deal with the thing who'd dared to stand between him and his promise after he made sure that Hermione was safe.

If she died before he got to her, he was going to kill her!

"But why would Nott do this? What's his motive? What did Hermione ever do to him? Plus, I thought Nott was deeply wounded in the war and at Mungo's?" Ron cut in, kicking open another door and tsking in irritation when it turned out to be empty too. Pansy double checked, just in case, but it was completely empty.

They'd all been searching all the rooms down here, but all of them were void of the one person they needed to find.

"I don't know, Potter. It's not like we were sitting down for tea and biscuits and discussing why he's turned into bat-shit crazy psychopath all of a sudden!" Blaise replied heatedly.

Harry didn't push it, trying instead to think of a better way to find Hermione than bombarding through every door they came across. He'd tried to contact the other Aurors, but there was a spell interfering with any attempt at contact.

And as if things were hard enough, it was like fate was playing a terrible joke on them, laughing at them from the shadows as they skidded to a stop, staring in dismay and the three paths in front of them that lead in three different directions.

"Should we split up?" Pansy asked, not keen on the idea herself. There were five of them, someone would have to go alone, and she didn't like that idea at all.

Blaise shook his head, "no, that's a bad idea. We don't know what we're facing, and splitting up wold only make things more difficult." He said, frowning.

Draco ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. Why was this so hard? All he wanted was to be happy with her, why did it feel like the whole world was trying to keep them apart? Did he not deserve it?

He sighed, and turned to face the idiot with the glasses, not liking the fact that he had to ask for help from the man who'd been part of the problem not even a day ago, "well Potter, let's see if your saviour of the world luck survived marriage, how do we find her?"

Harry blinked in shock, not knowing how to respond. Draco Malfoy was asking him for help. That had literally never happened before, and he'd never expected it to ever happen in his lifetime. He cleared his throat in discomfort.

Even if the marriage comment had been a bit snide, it was obvious to Harry that Malfoy needed Hermione for some reason. The desperation in his eyes was almost crazy, and it made him wonder what the hell had happened between the two of them that this had happened!

He cleared his thoughts and furrowed his eyebrows in thought, "Do you have something that belongs to her with you? Clothing or jewellery or hair? Anything that belonged to her that she gave you?" Harry asked hoping in all hopes that Malfoy said yes. He wished desperately that they'd bough the boot with them, since the wand that Malfoy had was relatively new and not Hermione's.

Draco glared at Harry like he'd never met a bigger idiot in his life, his mind too caught up in the frustration he was feeling to think properly. "Why the hell would she give me her hair, Potter? What kind of person gives someone their hair as a token? And her clothes, seriously? Why would I be carrying around her jewellery?

Ron, who'd been checking the last room in the corridor they'd been running down, arrived late and grimaced at the three-way pathway before them. He took a deep breath and glanced between the tension filled four people in front of him, not understanding what was going on.

Not fully understanding the situation, but knowing it was terse and dangerous, Ron frowned as he spotted the ring on Draco's finger in confusion. He poked Pansy's shoulder, "um...when did Malfoy get married?" he asked, trying to whisper, but his words came out louder than he intended, catching the attention of everyone there.

"What the hell are you on about Weasel? I am not marr-" Draco's eyes open as comprehension dawned his eyes. His fingers went to the necklace she'd thrown at him, the portkey, but he didn't want to take it out to show anyone. That was something that only he and Hermione needed to know about now, but he did have something else.

He turned to face Ron, scowling slightly, "I'll admit you have a brain in your head Weasel, and surprisingly enough, apparently, you know how to use it sometimes too." He told the red-haired man who looked conflicted on how to feel about such a comment.

Draco glanced at Harry, who was staring at the ring on his finger with a mix of apprehension and dismay. "Did...um...when...married...Hermione?" Harry whispered.

Draco frowned, what the hell was wrong with Pothead now? He didn't have time for stupidity. "You asked me if I had anything of hers, does her family heirloom count?" he asked Harry eagerly.

Harry decided not to address his fear yet, not wanting a confirmation on his theory, but he frowned, confused at Malfoy's words, "what do you mean family heirloom? Hermione doesn't have any heirlooms; her parents weren't the traditional type."

Draco huffed impatiently, and stuck his left ring finger in Harry's face, waving it in his face like he was trying to show it off or something. The wings of the eagle gleamed like it was proud to be presented so obviously to someone. "This is her real family heirloom; now will this do the job?"

"Real family? What are you talking about, Draco?" Blaise cut in.

Draco groaned and sighed, "I'm not going to stand around and explain all of it you lot now! Never mind Potter, I know what to do, I don't need you." Draco said, waving Harry away.

Harry didn't know whether to be irritated or offended by those words, but decided not to question the blond man further. Right now, the priority was finding Hermione.

Draco clenched his fingers and kissed the ring on his left hand, sighing in relief when the cold metal began to warm up against his skin. The one and only thing about family heirlooms that he'd always found less appalling that its other features, was its ability to track down the wearer of the heirloom easily.

It was like having a compass pointing directly to Hermione, on his hand, and Draco thanked whatever powers of the world there was, that he had her ring now.

Harry and Ron watched Draco in worry, wondering if the boy had finally gone mad, but Blaise and Pansy, who were aware of Pureblood heirlooms, glanced at each other at his actions. They were aware that the Malfoy heirlooms were a set of rings too, but not with eagles on them, and if it belonged to Hermione, as Draco had said, then that meant...Hermione was a pureblood witch?

Ron was about to ask Draco if he was feeling alright, but he was cut off by the ring that suddenly began to glow brightly, casting a heavy shadow across all of them as Malfoy's body was surrounded by it.

It was warm and kind of comforting, but the others stumbled back from him like he's just announced that he wanted to be a fairy.

"Bloody hell" Ron yelled out, pulling Pansy away as the light flared suddenly and then dimmed again, she made a face at him, but didn't push him aside, watching Draco's face contort in irritation.

"What the hell just happened?" Harry asked, his mouth hanging open.

Blaise sighed, "did you get a direction?" he asked his best friend, ignoring the two idiots who looked like they'd never seen magic before. Why didn't Weasely know this?

"It's not very clear. It's like something is blocking the power," Draco replied tersely, twirling the ring around one his finger before he took in a deep breath.

"No, seriously! What hell was that?" Harry asked, feeling a headache growing behind his eyes.

Blaise sighed, "family heirlooms of Pureblood families can act like tracking devices when necessary. It's a two-way connection too," he added quietly, tugging at the silver chain around his neck.

At least, even if he died, Astoria would know where to find the body.

Harry just looked more confused, but decided against saying anything further. The look on Draco Malfoy's face was enough to convince him to call it magic and leave it at that.

Draco was frustrated to say the least. The magic had done all it could, it had told him that she wasn't that far away, but to hurry, because her life line was webbing and slowing down, like she was dying. He was irritated that he didn't know more, but he couldn't solely depend on it for help. Hermione was his, and it was his job to find her and to protect her, not magic's.

Forever and ever. He needed to guard that.

"We take the left pathway, until the corner and then from there, we'll have to search. She's there somewhere." Draco told the four-people facing him.

Without so much as waiting for a response or a confirmation, he ran to the left pathway, not caring if they followed him or not.

Nothing in the world was going to keep him from Granger.

Nothing.

The others, surprising enough, followed him without question.