The Dragon s bride Page 0,193

throw off Blaise's Imperious and she wondered if this came from a lack of practice or whether it said more about the level of magic Blaise was working with.

He had used the spell before. That much was for certain.

The force of it was staggering. She had seen Harry struggle, knew what it cost him to fight the curse. Try as she might, she could not do the same.

And so, during the mad rush from Hogwarts to wherever she was now, in the absence of free will she did the next best thing. She paid attention.

One of the first thoughts that popped into her head when Blaise had taken her prisoner, was that Harry was going to get drawn into proper battle. Finally. The realisation made her want to weep.

Secondly, it occurred to her that Blaise was not following Voldemort's orders to the letter. Whatever those orders may have been, they apparently did not include stealing her away from Hogwarts under Dumbledore's nose.

She knew this because he had smuggled her into the Death Eater hideout. He obviously knew the layout of the place very well. At several points, they had waited behind a wall or rushed along a corridor to prevent being discovered.

To her amazement, he was stashing her in his room like some guilty child trying to keep his new pet away from his parents' notice.

This either boded very well for her or it meant she was in even greater danger due to Blaise's limited ability to protect her from further harm.

That was the other thing. He didn't paw at her again. She supposed it was a small consolation that Blaise considered himself to be cut from better cloth than your run of the mill raping and pillaging, Voldemort follower. Blaise had told her this too, several times.

His ego was indescribable. He did other things that made her skin crawl, though. All through the mad rush from Hogwarts to the hideout, he had rambled on about the future; a new order, a new government and their respective places within this yet-to be community.

She would not hate him forever, he assured. He said that after the necessarily bloody revolution, that the logic of it all would appeal to her. And that talent like theirs would find its rightful place.

Hermione thought Blaise's rightful place was in the secure mental ward at St Mungos, but of course, she was not able to tell him so.

The last realisation came soon after Blaise had shoved her into his room, located at the top floor of the building. There was a pounding at the door. He had put her up against the wall beside the door and transformed from out of breath and flushed, to cool and collected before opening it.

The voice on the other side belonged to someone called 'Travers'.

They had a problem, the man said. Draco Malfoy was here. They had him. Hermione had stood, perfectly still, without a flicker of emotion passing across her face. Inside herself, she had collapsed to the ground.

Harry had been correct. Love was a very risky thing to be afflicted with during a war.

She nearly smiled, thinking that Draco would have preferred the world 'inflicted'. He didn't want her love. He'd tell her he didn't need it.

But he needed her help right now.

Had he come for her? Did the school already know she was missing? It couldn't be. It was all happening too quickly for word to spread that fast.

Blaise had left her standing there, as he went to check his other prize. His parting look was actually very affectionate, delusional madman that he was. Hermione wanted to claw at his face.

She had remained standing against that wall, for hours it seemed. Her heart pounded in her chest. She was unable to scream or cry or move a muscle of her own volition.

And then came the indirect Cruciatus, courtesy of Draco and Fida Mia. Draco was in the building and he was being harmed. One Unforgivable cancelled out the other. Blaise's Imperious dissolved like so much smoke in the face of Hermione's renewed connection with Draco.

With the effects of the curse now gone, it took Hermione a few minutes to calm down long enough to be able to think clearly. All she seemed able to do, for a time, was clutch her hands together and pace.

She only allowed herself the luxury of a few moments of panic, and then she whirled around and began searching Blaise's room for a weapon. It didn't help that Blaise was downright Spartan

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