"Harry, don't!"
"Leave it, Hermione!" Harry tightened his grip around Malfoy's neck and tried to stop himself shaking. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "You've got nobody now, Malfoy."
Draco dare not take his eyes off the figure pointing a wand directly at him. The dizziness of his illness flooded what little the fresh air had cleared of his senses, leaving him once more with a throbbing head and blurred vision. He blinked slowly.
For a moment he glimpsed the rest of the room not obscured by his would-be-murderer; it was damp and dingy, reminding him of Alice's flat, with a worn carpet on the floor and pale, textured paper covering the walls. There was a faded green sofa sitting in the middle of the room, on which was perched a thin boy with red hair and a black eye - Weasley. Standing just to his right was Hermione, and it was she who clicked the door shut and moved hesitantly towards the potential conflict.
"Harry, this isn't constructive," she began. "There was a reason we were told to fetch him -"
"Told!" Draco broke in. "You said it was an impulse -"
"Shut up!"
Harry had now moved his wand, and had it positioned neatly right next to Draco's temple. "Another word…" he muttered.
Draco snorted, "Don't play games with me, Potter," he said, although his voice quavered slightly under its snide tone. Even though he hadn't moved his hands, he could feel the scars stretching across his torso, products of the inadvertent Sectumsempra curse. He winced and said, somewhat without confidence, "We all know you haven't got it in you to kill me."
"That isn't helping!" Hermione snapped, then, "For goodness' sake, Harry, don't listen to his provocations, just let him go!"
The green eyes were still boring into Draco's greying face, though for a moment they flickered to the right. Harry seemed to take in a great sigh, then released his hand from Draco's throat. His wand, however, remained where it was.
"Sit down," he said, pointing to the sofa. Ron stood up, backing towards the tiny window on the left-hand wall. A wave of vertigo washed over Draco, and he felt himself sink, rather clumsily, into the tattered cushions of the couch.
Harry was still pointing his wand at Draco, keeping his eyes firmly on him while he pulled Hermione over to one side.
"Where was he?" he whispered.
"In the hospital," she replied, "like they said. He didn’t look good. The Death Eaters got there before me and they had him."
"Had him?"
"They were dressed as policemen. Not very convincingly, but still."
Harry glared at the figure slouched on the sofa, and took in a deep breath. He threw a glance at Ron, who was pushing shut the window behind its billowing net curtains. His best friend had remained unsettlingly quiet throughout this whole affair, having hardly said a word for the past week. He moved his gaze back to the couch, where Malfoy had closed his eyes and folded his arms round him in a rather defeated manner.
"What's wrong with him?" he asked Hermione.
"I don't know, I didn't ask. But I doubt that he'd have risked staying somewhere so public for so long unless it was really serious. Do you know…" she paused, and Harry glanced at her.
"What?"
"Well… I think he might have had a Muggle girl helping him."
Harry frowned. "What makes you think that?"
"When I walked in to the ward," Hermione said, somewhat uncertainly, "the policemen already had hold of him and they'd hit a girl who was lying on the floor. Then, when we were leaving, he was very disorientated and kept asking what had happened to 'Alice'. Of course, I didn't know who 'Alice' was, but now I think it might have been her."
"Maybe she took him to the hospital?" Harry suggested vaguely. "Maybe he was so ill he thought she was a witch? How do we know he's not mental?"
"I suppose we don't," Hermione said.
Draco brought his knees up to his chest and hugged his arms round them, squeezing his eyes even tighter shut. What is happening to me? Where is my mother? My father? Why am I in this flat with Potter and his blood traitor friends?! Death Eaters, she said something about Death Eaters… but they didn't want to hurt me! Surely they wanted to help - to take me away! My mother… where is she? Where is… where… Mother!
"What's he saying?" Harry nodded towards the boy now sobbing into his knees. Ron's pale face seemed transfixed with horror as he observed the scene from the corner of the room.
Hermione frowned, "I don't know… What's the matter?" she asked tentatively.
"What..?" Draco blinked up at her; he hadn’t even realised that his mutterings had been audible. "My mother - where is she - something happened -?"
The lines across the girl's forehead deepened. "Have you been in contact with her?"
"No… well… I just -" his voice was suddenly demanding. He shoved himself upright to sit straighter on the couch. "I just want to know where she is so that I can get out of here and -"
"You're not going anywhere, Malfoy," Harry said quietly, a slight note of concern in his voice.
"Um… how long have you been in the hospital?" Hermione was now sitting on other side of the settee, inches from where Draco was now huddling himself as far away from her as possible. "Have you heard from anyone else? What do you know about your mother?"
"I haven't seen anyone!" Draco cried. "Why - what's happened to her?!"
Hermione threw a glance at Harry, whose narrowed eyes were still staring at the newcomer. She took a deep breath, "Draco, your mother went missing about five weeks ago -"
"Five weeks!" Draco half rose from the settee, eyes wild, his dishevelled hair and a face stricken with illness giving him all the appearance of a madman. Harry edged forward, his wand held out stiffly before him, and Draco, on seeing it, sat slowly back down. He stared at his hands folded in his lap, "I don't understand," he said quietly, then, "You must be lying! This is a dream - I'm still in the hospital -!"
"Shut up and we'll explain it to you!" Harry barked. "Whatever was wrong with you did you serious damage. From our sources, we know that you were out cold for at least three months, and nobody could bring you round. We got wind of the fact that some Death Eaters had discovered where you were and had plans to kidnap you. I was quite happy to let that happen, but -"
"But that wouldn't have been useful to us at all, would it Harry?" Hermione was staring directly at him, now. "To let the Death Eaters get what they want?" She paused for a moment, then turned back to Draco. "Let's start from the beginning," she said slowly. "Where did you go after - after that night, when you disappeared? We know that you didn't return to Voldemort's -"
Draco let out a short gasp as though he had been stabbed, "Don't!" he winced, and the dying light of wise blue eyes rushed into his vision. "Don't!"
"Alright, alright," Hermione said. "We know that you didn't go where - where you were supposed to."
"How do you know that?" Draco blurted out.
Harry was growing impatient. "We're asking the questions: What happened to you?"
The boy on the couch shuddered, and leant even further away from the bushy-haired girl to his right. Suddenly he seemed to grow tense and rigid, and he stared up at Harry with an expression of desperation and malfeasance. "I'm not telling you anything until you tell me where my mother is!"
His words were inflicted with such turpitude that Harry almost winced, as he struggled to maintain the position of his wand, his arm now aching. He glared at the almost haggard face, patches of deep yellow encircling bloodshot grey eyes and skin that had lost all of its colour except a faint reddish brown around the mouth. On one shoulder was a messy heap of scar tissue, and down that same arm was the unmistakable evidence of a drip having been ripped unceremoniously from its place. The roots of his hair were that familiar white-blonde, while the rest was inky black.
"What the Hell has happened to you?"
He suddenly noticed that Ron had moved from his place on the other side of the room, and was standing next to where Hermione sat, a half nervous, half protective expression in his stance. "I'm so bloody glad he doesn't have a wand," he muttered.
At these words, a bizarre shadow crept over the boy on the couch, and without warning, he began to tremble violently, large salty tears pouring out of his eyes. An unsettling, shuddering gasp escaped him, and with it seemed to tumble out all the wickedness and hatred that had been in his countenance before. Harry could hardly believe what he was seeing.
Hermione stood up. "Exhaustion," she said quickly, pulling her own wand from her jacket pocket. "That's what it must be - when I found him he could barely stand after having been asleep for so long. It does that to you." She flicked her wand slightly, the spell whispered clearly in her head, and the crying boy fell into yet another deep sleep.
Draco awoke with a start, his breath catching in his throat as he stared around him. A small, clean room with plain white walls and a threadbare rug on the floor. He was lying on a bed quite low down, and topped with mismatched blankets and a thin white pillow. The one little window had been nailed shut.
There was a knock on the door and he sat up straighter, clutching the blankets around him, as a slit of light eased open across the carpet. An anxious face peered over the threshold, and Draco saw a hand carrying a glass of water.
He eyed her suspiciously, "How did you know I was awake?" he asked.
"I didn't," she replied, some of the anxiety leaving her expression, to be replaced by a brusque coldness. "But I knew you wouldn't say anything even if I knocked, so I had to check."
Draco sniffed, then said, in a rather abrupt tone, "I'll take that water, thank you."
If she was offended by his rudeness, she showed no sign of it, but crossed the room to his bed and handed him the glass. The boy took a sip, it was lukewarm.
"Look," Hermione began hesitantly, "surely you can appreciated the others' hostility towards you, after… after what happened. But, you've got to understand, we're really trying to help you."
"You can help me by getting me out of here," he retorted.
"Yes, well… at the moment that isn't such a great idea."
She scratched absent-mindedly at the scar just under her left eye, and peered out the window at the sallow daylight.
"How did you get that?" He indicated the mark on her cheek.
Her eyes flicked back to him, and for a second it seemed she didn't know what he was talking about, or why he had bothered to ask. Then her hand flew back to her face.
"Death Eater," she said, somewhat indifferently. "Caught me with that curse that Harry used on you back at… He only managed to hit my cheek, though, he was running away and aimed over his shoulder."
Draco stared at her for a moment, absorbing this new information. So, Potter and his friends are now working against the Death Eaters… but with who? Surely not on their own? His mother's frightened face floated before his eyes, and he remembered -
"The Order," he said suddenly. "Is it the Order of - something - that you're working for… Dumble- his - lot?"
The girl's eyes narrowed. "How do you know about the Order? Through Vol- you-know-who?" Her change of direction mid-word had warranted a sharp intake of breath from the boy now glaring at her.
"Of course not!" he cried suddenly, his tone alarming her. "I was never important enough for Him! Never important enough to know anything - He didn't even tell me - He didn't -"
"Where did you hear it, then?" Hermione demanded, impatience overriding her sympathy.
"From…" he stopped, unsure of whether to reveal the contents of his dream. But, hadn't she said that his mother was missing? Did I dream that? Or was I really seeing it? I was right about the Order, wasn't I? God knows what's real anymore…
He sat up a little straighter, edging backwards to lean against the cold white wall. "While I was in the hospital, I had… I had a dream," he said quietly. She frowned, but he continued before she could say anything. "I saw my mother, at home - and she saw me. And she told me that I had to find the Order because otherwise they - the Death Eaters - would come for me. And just before the dream ended they… came for her…"
Hermione stared at him, scrutinising his expression of tired defeat. "Are you serious?"
He nodded. She glanced at the door, "I'll just… I mean - are you sure, because -"
"Yes," he said.
"And this was while you were asleep? Could it have been the time when you were comatose?" she had a business-like tone to her voice now, as though relieved that she had finally extracted something from him other than bitter exhaustion.
He paused, "Could have been," he mumbled.
"Right," she marched to the open door, "I'll just check, but I think I know -"
And she was gone, leaving Draco to frown after her departure.
Author's Note: I realise that not everything has been explained in this chapter that was requested, but trust me, it will all become clear. In the meantime, does anyone have any suggestions for further plot developments, or things that they would like to know about (aside from the obvious)? You don't think Draco's a bit too pathetic in this chapter? How's my portrayal of the trio?