The words seem to resonate meaninglessly in Hermione's head, bouncing off the walls of her skull.

"Sorry," she said with a weak smile, "I think I may have misheard. Harry's what?"

Dumbledore looked sorry but there was also an impatient air in his demeanour, something that neither had witnessed before.

"I'm afraid you heard me quite well. Now, Draco?" The headmaster angled his elbow towards the Slytherin as if expecting him to take it.

Hesitantly, Draco took his elbow and looked at Hermione. Before the headmaster could disapparate, Hermione grabbed his arm, "Wait!"

"Time is of the essence," Dumbledore said sharply, but softened his voice at the panic in her face and continued in a kinder voice, "An imposter posed as Rufus Scrimgeour managed to abduct Harry this afternoon."

"I'm coming with you." The change in her attitude was instantaneous. Hermione went from a frightened child to a warrior ready for action in the blink of an eye. Draco was too conflicted to be impressed.

He wanted to help them, but he was afraid... and there was the matter of the fact that if a Death Eater had gotten hold of Harry, they would have used their Dark Mark to summon him instead of travelling to Draco's home. It didn't make sense, but if what Harry's months of confidence has taught him anything, it's that Dumbledore rarely did. He glanced into the headmaster's piercing blue eyes and scoffed internally, the old man was so confident that Draco's loyalties had shifted.

... how presumptuous.

"Could I... owl my mother?" Draco requested quietly but from Dumbledore's expression, he knew that it was a futile request.

"I'm sorry, Draco," and he really did sound sorry, "but we can't risk it. If your owl were to be intercepted–"

"Alright, I know... It was stupid to ask," he said bitterly.

"It is never stupid to love," the headmaster said gently, "now, shall we?"

The two Hogwarts students clutched his outstretched arm.

"Think of home." Dumbledore advised as they felt that a jerk in the pit of their stomach. Draco thought of the high hedges that ran parallel to the driveway and the hidden passages he would often use if he wanted to avoid being seen by his family. Lastly, he thought about his bedroom, filled with green and black and silver, how life was so much simpler back when the Dark Lord hadn't regained his power.

His desire to visit his childhood room was so strong that it slammed the three onto his bedroom floor. Draco, realising what he had done, looked around in alarm. There were protective wards around the house which should have alerted the occupants regarding the entry of intruders in his room.

Draco's presence wouldn't have been registered due to his lineage, that much he knew... but he has never apparated with anyone else outside of his family and he wasn't sure what would happen, his original intention being apparating outside a secret entrance.

When his bedroom door did not bang open, he decided that his presence alone would have been enough to disarm the wards, something that was decidedly unsettling. Anyone could have kidnapped him to enter their family home... though, who might have dared do such a thing?

He did have to give it to Hermione. Despite being in his home and bedroom for the first time, she did not waver from the task at hand. She did not look around, she dived right into the heart of business.

"Do you know where they may be holding him?" She asked, wide-eyed and brimming with adrenaline.

"Likely the cellar," Draco responded.

"Lead the way." Dumbledore said, "Quietly." He cast a few protective charms around them, one to muffle their footsteps and another, a vanishing glamour. It wasn't enough to make them invisible, but it helped keep any portraits from exposing them.

They crept down the hallways, following Draco in his travelling robes. He never would have guessed that he would be back at the place he had just left that morning to catch the train to Hogwarts. He had lied to Hermione – it wasn't his mother that didn't allow him to leave. There was nothing she would have liked more than for him to go as far away from the Dark Lord as possible, but knowing that there simply isn't a plausible explanation for Draco not to be home for the holidays, they had no choice but to endure it. The Malfoys were great at enduring.

Suddenly, he seemed to disappear into the wall, but as they approached it, they realised it recessed and there was a small passage leading into the darkness, where they could see a flaming ball of green seemingly floating in mid-air. It appeared that Draco had taken an enchanted torch off the walls and was making his way into the depths and the two made haste to follow.

When they finally got to the end of the stairs, Draco turned to whisper, "There's a door up ahead that opens into a cupboard." Hermione stopped in front of him and he took the chance to add against her hair, "Father thought concealing the servant's entrance was brilliant."

From the tone of his voice, it seemed that Draco seemed to think so too and she wrinkled her nose but it was hardly the time and place for a conversation about ethics and humane treatment.

Draco continued and stopped at the door, looking expectantly at the headmaster who had been silent throughout their little excursion through Malfoy Manor. Without uttering a single word, he gently pushed in front of Draco and murmured under his breath. The door shimmered and seemed to dissolve into ripples. Dumbledore glanced through the window he had made and shook his head. Harry wasn't here.

He opened the door with a click and the three of them stumbled into the dank cellar, smelling strongly of mildew. Dumbledore used a silent homenum revelio before turning to look at his two companions.

"Can you think of any other place that Harry might be held?"

Draco shook his head, "Not if he was being held prisoner." He kicked the musty straw underfoot. "If he was hidden, maybe the crypt... but what would be the purpose?"

"Now, listen carefully, the both of you. I don't think that Selgentar is from our time. She knows too much for someone we have no knowledge about – I mean it, she's an untraceable ghost... But she knew to approach Draco, Snape, and imagine Professor Slughorn's surprise when she turned up at his doorstep to demand what he told Harry Potter about Voldemort, whom she seems utterly obsessed with." Dumbledore confessed, "Hermione, you're familiar with Time Turners–"

Hermione shook her head but not in disagreement, "She can't be from the future, we smashed the Ministry's entire stock last year. Furthermore," she continued, delving into an academic voice, "as Eloise Mintumble demonstrated when she tried to jump back centuries, when she returned, she basically crumbled to dust. The kind of magical disturbances caused by that expansion of energy caused twenty-five descendants to disappear and–"

"I'm not sure Selgentar cares so long as she fulfils what she came to do." Dumbledore once again turned to Draco. "I have a suspicion that only you will be able to confirm. Are there any within his ranks, someone close to him, that may be with child?"

Draco turned a spectacular shade of green, hidden by the darkness of the shadows, but the disgust at the implication was still apparent in his face, "Are you saying that the Dark Lord... knocked someone up?" He looked as though he was about to vomit.

"That is exactly what I've been speculating." Dumbledore lowered his gaze so his blue eyes glimmered over the top of his half-moon spectacles.

"No!" Draco cried in horrified tones, "The only two Death Eaters close enough to the Dark Lord are Aunt Bellatrix and Alecto, and I doubt he would be charmed by that hunched broad."

Dumbledore straightened and nodded, deep in thought, though he did not offer any other insight. "Could you lead us to the crypt, please?"

They made their way back up the passageway as Draco made his peace with what Dumbledore suggested. The idea was so repulsive, it was permanently burned into his mind. He couldn't even entertain the idea – Voldemort was more reptile than man and he couldn't imagine who might be desperate enough to crawl into his bed. While he's heard the men share sordid stories about their romps with the bed-maids in Knockturn Alley, he couldn't picture the Dark Lord pawing between sheets... He was so disturbed that he almost missed the turning that would take him to the underground passage that led to the crypt. It was only then did he notice Hermione and the headmaster holding a muted discussion, one which the headmaster was clearly winning.

"... make sense, but without the limitations, it would have been immeasurably powerful..." Hermione said in resigned tones.

"Whoever thought to recreate them weren't thinking about the potential for destruction, much like many muggle creations..." Dumbledore responded, "In your own experience, you know how much good it can do."

Taking Hermione's silence as a sign that the conversation was over, Draco told them about the tunnel and what to expect when they emerged in the crypt. The passage opened into a fenced corridor which conjoined inconspicuously with the side entrance, giving them the ability to look into the crypt without fully entering it.

Just as he described, they found themselves looking into the crypt with carved marble tablets depicting names and dates. Among the tombs stood two figures, one looking earnestly up at the robed man.

"... you must believe me, you must!" The shorter figure screeched at the unmoving Voldemort.

"You think yourself superior? I 'must' nothing," The Dark Lord hissed, "Your mind is an open book and I see the laughable efforts you have enacted on my behalf. If you truly have come to save me from my doom, you would have more than empty hands."

"My hands are not empty," Selgentar laughed slyly, "I have the boy."

Voldemort's head whipped snake-like towards her, recoiling slightly as if he were a serpent ready to strike. "You've been withholding information?"

The professor bowed slightly under what seemed like an attempt at occlumency, "He's here!" She gasped.

Without wasting his breath, Voldemort dived into her mind sharply which made her crumple on the ground. Judging by the way she writhed on the ground, the pain must have been excruciating.

"Hah! Hah! Ha..." The Dark Lord laughed, "You call yourself my flesh and blood, but you are bested by the wards around this estate?"

The confirmation of Dumbledore's suspicion made Draco take a step back and he mouthed, 'What?' while casting a panicked glance at Hermione. She was as shell-shocked as he was. Only Dumbledore stayed passive, waiting to see if more information is divulged.

"I didn't want the wards to detect his presence. I wanted to bring him to you myself... father." She spat the last word out, "I have been more than a faithful servant. Where were your followers when they thought you dead? Yet here I am, from a future without you, to raise you from the dead. Who would you say is most true to you?"

Voldemort seemed to appraise her for a moment before gliding forward, "Silly child, you came for a father, not for Lord Voldemort." He waved his wand violently towards her and the glamour she had cast on herself melted away, revealing her pale blonde hair.

The striking resemblance to Draco's shade of gold was so shocking that Hermione turned to look at him with wide eyes and an opened mouth. During her time at Hogwarts, she always had dark brown hair. Why she opted to hide it was another curiosity.

"Come," He beckoned towards the young woman, "I shall entertain this notion of being your father as thanks for bringing me Harry Potter..."

"I am your daughter." Selgentar lashed out and suddenly spewed forth a series of hisses that gave Voldemort pause. The Dark Lord responded in kind and they continued to converse in Parseltongue until Selgentar whipped out her wand, spelling her name in the air and rearranging the letters so that it read 'Lestrange'.

"I am Delphini Lestrange, the last surviving member of the Marvolo family. I am the augurey, prophecy-fulfiller, and I will be victorious."

"The prophecy you bring holds no bearing. There are no spares to be spared here or fathers for you to kill... now come along if you want to see how prophecies are shattered..."

Before Voldemort could take another step, a number of things happened in quick succession. Dumbledore whispered urgently to his companions that they needed to find Harry at once, Delphini whipped her wand out towards Voldemort, much to his surprise, and Dumbledore stepped out from where he was hiding to send a blast at his old student and nemesis.

Grabbing Hermione's hand, Draco scrambled into another hidden passage which was concealed as a window and pulled her after him.