Revenant

Disclaimer: I own nothing, I claim nothing.

Revenant

Chapter the Eight: Nexus. We find out why graveyards are just so classy for Dark Magic.

It was late when Draco showed up at Hermione’s house the next day, less than an hour before dusk. He was robed in the heaviest black cloak she’d ever seen him wear. The bulk of the fabric made him look larger than he was, and hid his frail form completely.

He looked around warily as he entered, his gaze softening as he spied the mostly empty coat rack. He spoke quietly, “Harry and Ron?”

“Gone.” Was the only word she’d offer him. She hadn’t been able to catch up with them after the break-in, and while a part of her was worried for the two men, another part of her burned with a smouldering rage. The two of them had always been closer to each other than they had been to her, and while they never went out of their way to exclude her or make her feel like an outsider, sometimes their negligence of including her wounded her deeply.

Draco nodded solemnly, his demeanour quiet and unlike any she had ever seen from the loud and self-assured man. She watched him carefully as he unwound a package from his voluminous cloak and handed it to her.

“You’ll need to put this on.”

“What is it?” She asked, as the package unfolded to reveal a thick black cloak, so dark it managed to steal the colour from out of the paintings that lined the walls. A silver sheen of fabric hissed free of the folds and collapsed into a small coil at her feet.

She looked up at Draco, seeking confirmation of her thoughts in his eyes, but he was closed off from her, his face as hard as stone and as unreadable.

“I also have items for the Professor.” He said, unfolding another bundle from beneath his robes. He turned away from her and approached the despondent man behind Hermione, shaking the silver mask into a waiting hand. Draco reached out and slipped the mask over Snape’s face and Hermione felt a moment of vertigo, and a overwhelming urge to vomit overcame her. Panic and claustrophobia beat at her temples and she felt a cry not her own well up within her throat.

She lunged forward and grabbed at Draco’s arm, halting him in the middle of throwing a dark cloak over Snape’s shoulder. “Wait, please don’t-”

His eyes were dark as he looked over his shoulder at her; a silver so dark as to make Hermione think she was looking down the barrel of a gun. “I don’t know of any other way Granger.” His voice was still soft, but now it was cold as well. “I wasn’t lying or even exaggerating when I said that Daven’s Cross was dangerous. This is the best camouflage I can give any of us.”

Hermione looked away from him and nodded. She knew that Draco was right, that he was just trying to help, but she couldn’t explain the nausea that rose in her throat as she saw Professor Snape standing before her, only his eyes bare and forlorn before her gaze. She shook herself and bent to retrieve her mask from the floor –of course it was only her imagination, whatever feelings Professor Snape might have the ritual had hidden away; there was no way that he could be sad or unwilling to wearing the mask and cloak, and she told herself that there was no way –here she cringed, knowing she was lying to herself- there was no way for her to even be able to guess the Professors thoughts on any matter, not until he was healed and could speak for himself.

The mask was lighter than she would have expec and and the fine mesh of metal slid easily through her fingers, almost like a thick silk or satin. She knew as it slid smoothly against her hand that it wouldn’t snag in her hair or chafe against her skin. With a determined grimace, she slid the mask over her head and settled it so thatwoulwould drape comfortably. She fumbled with the cloak ties for a moment before settling that weight around her shoulders as well. She turned back to Draco and Snape, and Draco reached passed her to pull up the hood, covering her distinctive hair. The nausea rose again in her throat, and she pulled her gaze away from the dark figure of the Professor, cloaked and md asd as he was.

“If we meet anyone –and we shouldn’t- let me do the talking, and try keep the Professor from being recognized.”

Hermione opened her mouth to question him, but sighed and shook her head resignedly. “Fine. how are we getting there?”

“This way.” Draco dug through his cloak before pulling twisted branch from the depths of some hidden pocket. He reached out with his other hand and pulled Snape closer to them. The older man stumbled for a moment, knocking into Hermione who reached out automatically to steady him. As her hand touched the Professor, Hermione had a moment to glimpse the branch in Malfoy’s hand as it twisted and writhed into a lunging snake as the spell activated.

There was a sickening lurch and everything slid sideways. Hermione found herself clinging to Snape and struggling to contain her nausea. Once again, she found herself wondering if she would ever come to feel comfortable travelling with the wizarding modes of transportation. Next to her, Snape stood stoically, his presence serving to steady her. when she looked up at him, the vertigo returned, almost as if she were seeing him and herself in a nauseating double vision. She blinked her eyes rapidly to clear away the illusions, for forced herself to look away from the professor.

She looked up and found that the Port Key had taken them to a mossy grove of sprawling oaks that were thickly shrouded with wild vines. Draco looked away from her and Snape, his expression hidden behind his mask, but his stance was obviously uncomfortable. He tossed the now inert Port Key to the detritus of the forest floor and rubbed at his nose through the mask, all the while refusing to look at Hermione or Snape.

Hermione found herself blushing as she once again untangled herself from the dark figure next to her, pulling her cloak and mask to rights. She wondered at the source of her blush; was it the implication of merely touching the professor? Or was it the thought of having someone like Malfoy witnessing such a scene? Hermione mentally shook her head, and made a note to herself to investigate her thoughts later.

“Are we-” She began.

“Shhh!” Draco’s response was quick. With his voice very low he began to speak. “We’re near the old church yard. If we took that path, we’d end up in the old church buildings. If we take this path, we should end up in the graveyard arehat’hat’s what the files in the Ministry mentioned…”

Hermione nodded, and dropped her voice to match his. “Yes. I’m not entirely sure what we’re looking for, but I’m hoping I’ll know it when I see it.”

Draco pulled himself into the vines that clung to the trunks of the trees. Hermione could barely make out the glint of his mask as he nodded. “It’ll need to have been someplace with a lot of space. It was proy ony one of the larger tombs, so I suggest we search there first...”

“Couldn’t it be the church proper?” Hermione asked.

Draco was slow in replying; so hesitant that Hermione thought she caught a faint hint of deceit in his voice, astherthere were more to what he was not saying. “The files in the Ministry talked about the Churchyard.” He tried to shrug dismissively, but his cloak and the vines masked the motion. “I think we should start with what we know.”

Hermione didn’t say anything, but as she followed him she threw glances over her shoulder, seeing to catch a glimpse of the old church as they moved through the forest. He moved swiftly and surely, as if he had travelled these paths before, at times when the lighting was not so fitful, when the darkness was perhaps less oppressive.

Hermione caught up to Draco just as the last of the sun’s light was leaving the evening to the meagre moonlight. Draco was standing in the middle of a small, poorly-used path before a wrought iron gate. Beyond him, Hermione could make out the solemn stone statues and effigies of the graveyard proper.

“Why have you stopped? Is it warded?” Hermione moved closer to the quiet young man, the dark figure of the Professor sharp at her heels.

Draco’s held himself proudly. “I wouldn’t want you to get lost Granger. It’s dangerous out here.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and moved passed him to peer at the gate that barred the way. A quick Um’Bhendh and the gate swung open, a hastily added Silentium quieted the shriek of unused hinges.

The greenery had grown around -and through- the wrought iron fencing; vines and leaves mingling with the stark blacks of the iron, the shapes fitting gracefully into each other. Sporadically, tree trunks had overgrown their lanes, and had pushed through the iron, bending and shaping the bars in a reflection of the green madness that surrounded them. Where the fence had grown so old and derelict in this sea of green, the ancient tree trunks and boughs dipped and twisted, forming their own formidable barrier against the outside world.

Hermione fought down another surge of claustroia aia at the sight of the darkened forest that blended with the graveyard, and hesitantly moved past the gatepost. Snape followed along behind her, so close that she could feel his breath panting at her neck as she paused again. He crunched along behind her, the weeds and roots tripping at him and causing him to bump unceremoniously into her.

The evening sounds of the insects and birds changed as she crossed that threshold, the boundary so clearly marked by not only the mundane marker of the fence, but also by the subtle shift in the very air around her. Ash, oak, and yew tangled about the ancient and protective iron, not necessarily blocking anything out, but most definitely blocking somethingthings in.

A softer noise filled the background, a white noise of wind rushing and of a soundless pressure. Hermione swallowed, trying without success to pop her ears back into the normal spectrum of sound. Only the sound of her voice, breathing softly within the mask sounded normal to her.

“Draco?” she whispered, her voice taking on odd echoes. “We should start from the centre and move outwards. Keep your eyes open for any runes or glyphs that might be… erm… magical.”

Draco slipped along the shadows next to her, the glint of his silvery hair peeking out beneath his metallic mesh of his mask. “I believe the centre is this way, over by tomb of Sebastian Viderian. It’s one of the larger tombs.” He added as an afterthought.

Hermione nodded to herself andlowelowed the man as he slid passed her. He moved with a grace that she would have envied, if she hadn’t been so surat hat he knew exactly where he was going. As it was she turned her attention to guiding Snape quietly through the broken twigs and through the leaves that littered the grounds. It was ironic that after years of dodging Snape’s attention, those very same skills would now be used to help guide the broken and shambling form of the Professor himself.

They followed the pathway deeper, pushing passed the ancient trees and vines. Sporadic headstones peeked shyly from behind tangles of night-blooming wild flowers. Hermione looked up and be die dizzy with the sight of all the trees meeting, a cathedral of dark green that lazily waved to the night sky. With a quick shake of her head, she refocused on the dim path before her and the Professor.

The trail broadened out into a circle, and Hermione found herself before a larger than life statue of an angel who lay collapsed upon a sunken tomb, grief etched into every curve and angle of the stonework. Roses bloomed madly around the weeping stone figure, hiding the finer details of the effigy in a dusky shroud, and filling the air with a soft musk that reeked of times past.

Draco stopped and turned to look at Hermione, unease clear in the way he kept turning to glance over his shoulder at the tombs surrounding them. “Well? I imagine you’ll ’know it when you see it?’”

“Erm….” Hermione turned a full circle, taking in the graveyard as a whole. She cautiously admitted to herself, if there ever were a graveyard to fit the image of “haunted,’ this would indeed be the one. “I don’t… see anything… Revelarium!”

A thin glow of a hazy pale greenish-blue leapt up from the stones, eerie in the gloom. Pale outlines glowed around the tombs and trees, and arcane symbols danced across the headstones, mimicking the carvings, only to melt if directly looked upon. With a frown, Herm tur turned her head to a brightness that glowed steadily in the corner of her eye.

She bit out a shocked gasp as the unwavering form came into view. It was a long thread, pulled taunt and firmly separating the graveyard into two halves. Throughout the trees, she thought she could see another such line, pale and unwavering, almost paralleling the first… almost parallel, but actually set to intersect with it where the church buildings themselves were located!

The steady lines glowed with subtle sparks and Hermione gasped in realization. Faint tendrils of power coiled and thrashed slowly in the air, while a hint of heat-waves, blue and green, pooled and rippled around them.

“They’re Ley Lines Draco! It’s not the graveyard at all that’s important at… it… it’s the church Draco, I’m sure of it!”

She heard a muffled squeal behind her, and turned right into the fist of the masked man as he swung at her. Her eyes blurred with pain, and as her vision darkened and finally fled, she saw Snape held slumped in the arms of two men, and Draco thrashing ineffectually against two other men.

Then there was a brief respite of nothingness.

[a/n:
This whole “let’s go to the graveyard thing” sounded good when I was watching Buffy, but now, it’s kinda lame. Sorry.

Also, sorry about the cliffhanger. But I do have the next chapter mapped out… so it’ll not be *too long in coming.

In other news: we’ve now a story from our challenger: http://www.lordandladysnape.net/viewstory.php?sid=4205 by JestersTears called Hallow Man.

Also, serious thanks and nods to LittleBird and AquiliaSevera, who reminded me that I needed to update. I…am… uh… a slow writer… y’all know that, right? However: I’ve got some future chapters written… so, I’m not going to give up… I’m just slow.]