Gilded Soul

Chapter 38 Panic and Loss

Hermione was having pleasant dreams involving pale flesh pressed against tanned, and swollen red lips hovering over her own, when it was tragically interrupted. She was being shaken awake, and she recognized the feel of her intruder immediately and opened her eyes. “Harry, “ she whispered, sleepily, hoping it didn’t come out as a moan.

“Mione, he’s gone,” Harry shouted, still shaking her even though it had already completed its intention of waking her up.

“Who? Draco?” Harry nodded. “I’m sure he’s just in the castle somewhere. I’ll help you find him,” she groaned, already feeling the loss of her fantasy slipping through her fingers.

“No, you don’t understand. Voldemort has him.” At this name several of the other girls in the dorm began whispering.

“How do you know?” Harry merely glared at her petulantly.

“Really, Mione. You’re supposed to be the clever one.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Right, the marks. Sorry, I’m still a bit groggy.”

He pulled her up out of bed and kept pulling as he rushed them from the room. They didn’t stop until they reached the headmaster’s office. Harry leapt on the rotating platform, which had revealed itself the moment they came upon it, and Hermione followed.

Dumbledore looked more frantic than he ever had before. He was shaking his head and muttering things that Harry only got bits of, such as ‘ terribly unexpected’ and ‘most unfortunate’.

“So you already know?” Harry asked as he burst into the room, seemingly startling the old wizard.

“What? Oh, yes, yes. I felt the shift in the castle. I felt Draco being transported alone. It was… unanticipated.”

“Clearly,” Harry shouted. He was trying to keep his calm, but this was just too much. Draco was gone, in the hands of Voldemort now, and being tortured even as they spoke. He could feel the pain Draco was in emanating through their shared marks. He was getting angrier by the second and Hermione’s cool hand in his wasn’t the same as Draco’s.

Dumbledore looked concerned as his eyes fell on Harry’s angry features. “Harry, your marks, tap into them. I can’t have you losing your head for this.”

Harry nodded and focused on Ember, and through her, Quill. The calm washed over him, but it wasn’t the same. Along with the calm came Draco’s panic and fear and Harry collapsed to his knees sobbing. He scarcely felt Hermione’s arms wrapped tightly around him as his body shuddered with the force of his grief. “He’s being tortured,” he choked out.

Dumbledore didn’t look concerned with that though. “He gave Voldemort the wand, he’s being punished for his indiscretions with you.”

“What wand?” Hermione asked, getting angry at Dumbledore’s lack of concern.

“The gilded soul, that’s what it was, a wand holding part of Voldemort’s soul. I felt it leave the maze, and now I can feel it in Voldemort’s hand.” He was still pacing about his office, the portraits of former headmasters mumbling above him.

“I have to go to him, can you see where they are?” Harry pleaded.

“Malfoy Manor, of course. Voldemort must have been using the boy more than I expected. I hadn’t foreseen this; his connection with Draco must be very strong. Tell me Harry, does Draco bare the Dark Mark?”

“No!” Harry and Hermione shouted in unison.

The old wizard looked perplexed by the joint admonishment. “You’re sure, it may not be on his forearm?”

Harry rolled his eyes, getting angrier. “I would know.”

Dumbledore nodded, seeming to believe him. “The connection is no longer important, the fact is, Voldemort now has the wand, and there is only a small window of time to act. Once he reunites his soul to his body, a transformation will begin. That is when he will be most vulnerable.”

“What kind of transformation?” Harry let Hermione ask the pertinent questions before he exploded with rage and hurt her by accident.

“I can see his plans clearly now, and I was foolish not to see them sooner. He wants to become Tom Riddle again, at least have that body. He found it much more influential than his current form.”

Hermione gaped. “Voldemort did all of this… to be pretty again?”

Dumbledore laughed, but it wasn’t his usually light chuckle, it was dark and wicked. “No dear girl, this is only a fraction, the smallest part, of his overall plan. We must destroy him now; “ the old wizards eyes locked with Harry’s as he spoke, “and Harry must be the one to do it.”

“Fine, send me then. I’ll rescue Draco, and then kill the snake!” he spat.

“Draco is lost to us now. Your priority is Voldemort.”

Hermione backed away as she felt the otherworldly heat burn her fingers and singe her hair. “Harry,” she whispered, “please, please…”

Harry took a deep breath and tapped into that part of Draco he carried with him, feeling the rush of calm drift over him. “My priority is Draco. It always will be. The only reason I’m not obliterating this entire school is because he needs me.”

Dumbledore narrowed his eyes. “You’re very naïve if you think I would let you do anything of the sort.” He sat down in his chair and glared at the petulant Gryffindor. “Go and calm yourself down. I’ll come and get you when it’s time.”

“What?” Harry shouted. “No, I’m going right now!”

Dumbledore shook his head abruptly. “We must wait, I told you, the window will be slim, and this must work. It may be the last chance we get to destroy him. Spend time with Hermione and your friends. You’ll be leaving them all soon, and you may not come back.”

Hermione gasped at this and Dumbledore shook his head sadly. “Miss Granger, you knew this was a possibility. Please help Harry prepare for what he’s about to face. Calm him down.”

The door to his office opened of its own accord and Hermione shuffled a dumbstruck Harry through it.

--

Hermione sighed and pulled Harry into her arms. “You’ve really got to get this temper thing under control, Harry.”

“All I need is for Draco to come back safe and sound. What was he thinking going off to Malfoy Manor?”

Hermione ran her fingers through his hair. They were outside by Harry’s favorite tree, watching the giant squid make bubbling ripples in the smooth surface of the lake. “Maybe Dumbledore was right, maybe Voldemort had more of a hold on his mind than any of us had thought. Who knows how deep his influence could have gone.”

“Hermione,” Harry started through gritted teeth. “Watch what you’re about to say. Draco was loyal, if to nothing else, he was loyal to me.”

Hermione sighed. “How can you be so sure, Harry?”

“I just know… I … I can prove it!” he said at last, excitedly. She looked at him skeptically. “He had a journal, in the Slytherin dorm. He would write in it whenever he woke up.”

“How do you know that?”

Harry gulped. “I saw it when I was,” Harry paused in order to cough. It was only a moment later that Hermione realized he had said ‘a bunny’.

Hermione tried to conceal her mirth at the statement. “Really? While you were an adorably fluffy black bunny?”

“Yes, while Draco took care of me and kept me out of harms way, unlike you.” Harry was trying for a teasing voice, but he was still too angry to make it sound like a joke and Hermione winced.

“Let’s go find it then. We can put all our minds at ease,” she said, pulling him up to his feet.

“Fine, if it will make you feel better, but I already know the truth. Draco loves me and that’s all I need to know.”

--

“This can’t be right,” Harry stared down at the traitorous leather bound journal in disgust. Hermione’s hand was covering over his own despite the occasional flinch when his power flared up. They had been in the Room of Requirement for a little over an hour with still no news from Dumbledore.

Hermione’s face was tracked with tears as she read a letter, written in delicate scrolling handwriting, over and over again. “I just… can’t believe it. In my wildest imagination I didn’t think he was capable of this kind of manipulation. “

Harry shook his head, clearing away thoughts of Draco, lying naked and vulnerable beneath him, of the feel of his caress, the sound of his voice, the sound of those three little words rolling off his tongue. “He was lying to me?” It was a question. In the pit of his stomach he couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it. He was his pale dragon, marked by his own hand, touched by his own heart. He was his Slytherin.

It all seemed false in light of this new information.

It was fairly tame to begin with. The journal described the dreams Draco was having every night, same as Harry, but he already knew that. Occasionally there would be some sort of commentary about his father, or one of the other students. Harry’s own name was even mentioned a time or two, always joined with biting remarks, or burning questions like ‘ why didn’t he just accept my friendship from the start?’

Those were hard enough to read, but the worst was still to come. He wrote about Voldemort’s plan for him at the school, about the cabinet in the Room of Requirement, and how he was tasked to bring Death Eaters into the school, and how he was supposed to kill Dumbledore. It had suddenly clicked as to why the old wizard was so wary to trust the Slytherin. Harry couldn’t find a valid reason as to why Draco wouldn’t tell him about it…except if he were lying.

Harry shook away the thought. He couldn’t think about it.

Even those passages would have been bearable if it hadn’t been for the other things he found. A list on the back page detailing his plans to make him trust Draco, that was impossible to ignore. It was all right there, everything that had happened before Christmas, spelled out in black and white. Everything that Harry had attributed to fate, to love… all just a scheme to get Harry to trust him.

Even Ron.

That might have been the worst of it. He knew it was for Hermione. The note they found from Draco’s mother made it obvious that he was acting on Voldemort’s orders, and that getting rid of Ron was all part of the game. Poor Ron, when he thought of how he treated him that day, how reviled he was to even look at his best friend… it made him queasy. Ron was probably just trying to protect him.

Harry sighed, feeling dejected. He no longer wanted to kill Voldemort, he only wanted to crawl into a hole and die. He felt ignorant for sticking up for him, for falling in love with him. He wanted to claw the phoenix off his back, bloody his skin, rip all the remnants of Draco away from himself.

“There has to be an explanation, there just has to be…” Even as the words left his mouth he wasn’t sure he believed them.

“Should I read the letter out loud, Harry, would that help it to sink in?” Hermione huffed.

Harry didn’t answer, because his eyes were on the doorway where Dumbledore stood with a solemn face. “It’s time.”

--

Author’s note: For anyone who wants to re-read Draco’s note from his mother, you’ll find it in chapter 8 Past, Present & Future. Go ahead and let the hate mail pour in. lol