The snake was moving slowly across the floor towards him, twirling round the armchair in which Draco was slumped. Sweat glistened on his pale forehead, plastering his white hair to his head in silver streaks. His heart thumped within him, so loud he imagined it might burst right out of his chest. He was exhausted.
"Please…" he wailed softly. "Please… no more. I - I can't…"
The dark figure on the other side of the room was merely a silhouette, and so Draco could not see its piercing eyes staring across at him, their look utterly unreadable.
"It was difficult, at first," the cold voice told him, "to decide what to do with you. When I heard of your… ability I admit I questioned it at first. So rare, these days…"
The snake uncoiled itself from around Draco's chair and slithered over the floor to her master. Skeletal white fingers folded themselves over the snake's head.
The dim light from the only lamp in the room was flickering now, fading, and the fire was long dead. Briefly, he wondered how long he had been there, how long the towering figure had forced him to tear his soul from his body, to move without moving. He had finally achieved it, after what felt like days, but any sense of triumph was quashed by his own fear… fear of what this new ability might be used for.
A terrible coldness had consumed the room, causing Draco's breath to appear in an icy mist before his face. He closed his eyes, and darkness fell about him; cold, comforting darkness. From somewhere on the other side of the room, the snake hissed softly.
Eventually, the icy voice accompanied its pet, "I have your mother here, Draco," it said simply, but the words were enough to shock the boy back to consciousness.
"W-what -?!" he stammered, "Y-you have -?"
"Your mother," the voice replied, "yes." It was almost mocking in its tone, and Draco could almost picture the cruel smile that would be playing on the Dark Lord's lips. "And soon enough our allies will break out the prisoners at Azkaban, and your father will be with us too…"
A horrible silence lingered in the air following these words, as the crumpled boy contemplated what his master had said. Both his mother and father, here with him; surely that was worth staying alive for? But what will my father say when he hears - hears how I failed him? What will he do..?
But the figure's next words were gilded with a menace which removed all fears of his father in one. "I am not telling you this to lift your spirits, boy!" He snapped, jolting Draco upright. His eyes snapped open as he listened to the Dark Lord's words. "I, soon, will have both your parents in my power, and I hold their fate in my hands."
Draco's eyes widened as he realised what the figure was telling him. "You w-wouldn't -" he stuttered. "No. Y-you can't -"
"I will give you a task, Draco," the Dark Lord hissed. "A simple task, your completion of which will determine the fate of your parents, and indeed - your own fate as well…" he let his words seep into the silence which followed, drawing out the sting which they inflicted upon the boy. He squirmed in his armchair.
"Do you understand what I am telling you, Draco?" the figure asked, in a tone which made clear that he did not expect a negative answer. "Do you?"
Hesitantly, Draco nodded.
Hermione sat, cross-legged on the floor, the chain held aloft in her hands. She had tried the bowl of water, but with no luck. Hours of staring into its clear surface had given her nothing but blurred vision. Her cold was worsening, and she found herself sniffing heartily as she swung the crystal pendant over a wide map of London. He has to be here somewhere, he can't have gone that far…
The dizziness returned, and suddenly she felt simply like giving up and going to bed. She had left her wand in the other room to remove any temptation of using it - absolutely no magic. To remain undetected was key.
Magic older than the Ministry itself would not be picked up by its radars - the kind of magic that was buried deep in the earth, the kind used by pagans and druids, the kind that non-magic people could manipulate if they wanted to. The kind of magic that involved using herbs with particular properties, basic healing charms, and scrying - what she was trying to do now. Magic like astral projection. The kind of magic that sent young women or old crones to the stake.
It could not be detected, she was sure of this, vaguely remembering reading about it in The Ministry of Magic: A Revised, Updated and Fully Comprehensive History. Even though her synapses may be somewhat slowed down by illness, her meticulous memory never failed her.
However, she was beginning to have doubts about her ability to come up with ideas. It had seemed like a clever and rather ingenious way of finding Draco Malfoy without being spotted by either the Ministry or the Death Eaters. But after two and a quarter hours of trying to locate the blonde-haired fugitive, 'old-fashioned witchcraft' was proving to be trickier than she had surmised.
'This is ridiculous,' she found herself thinking, 'I mean - I've never had a problem with a single spell in my life, and now I'm struggling with something that can be done by even non-magic people!'
She blamed the illness, because it was easier than admitting defeat, and decided that all she needed was a cup of tea and an aspirin. Hermione got up and went into the kitchen, flicked the kettle on and poured herself a glass of water. She gulped down an aspirin tablet and through a tea bag into a mug, slumping into one of the seats at the kitchen table.
'I'm a witch,' she thought desperately. 'This should be easy for me. It's part of my nature…'
Fifteen minutes of scowling and staring at the clock allowed the aspirin to clear away the cobwebs of her headache, and Hermione to drain half of her tea. Seating herself in front of the map again, she picked up the chain, swung it around for a few seconds, then let it drop with a resigned expression. The pendant chain was still resting in her palm, but she was no longer moving it, merely sitting with her eyes closed, feeling the tendrils of exhaustion wrap around her consciousness.
But I'm not that tired…
She felt sweat on her forehead, the pulse of bruises on her limbs which she had not known were there. She seemed to be crumpled, slouched, cushioned by something rough and worn. There was a tenseness in her muscles, a fear, as though she wanted to run for miles but her own fatigue prevented it.
Terror. Awful terror. Bitter cold.
Her eyes snapped open, her breathing coming in short gasps, and she realised that there was no sweat on her forehead, no coarse material stifling her movement. A rush of energy swept through her - she knew she had not been that weary. She looked down at the map on the floor before her, and saw that her hand had moved.
The crystal was pinned to a particular point near the edge of the map, a cluster of run-down buildings in a bad part of the city. She peered closer, tugging at the chain to clear her view.
The pendant would not move.
"You think you are up to the challenge, boy? You think you can do what I ask?"
Draco daren't say anything in reply, in fact, he was not sure that he could even if he tried. He felt utterly drained, and could barely nod his head to show that he had at least heard what the figure had asked him.
"Remember," the figure continued, "that you have failed me before. And I, being a merciful Lord, forgave you. Once." He pointed a thin white finger at the defeated expression on Draco's face. "I hope not to entertain disappointment again. In fact, I will not tolerate it."
The boy tried to nod again, and found that he could not.
A horrible smirk was spread across the Dark Lord's snake-like face. "You are to use your new ability," he explained, with the air of someone delivering a death sentence. "You will travel to the place where Potter is hiding…" his tones drenched with icy menace, he presented the task to his victim with a mocking smile, "…and kill him for me."
A note to the reader: The next chapter will either be the ultimate or penultimate, and I can't decide whether it will have a happy or sad ending. Preferences?