The Long Lost Zabini

Chapter 12

Though the elderly headmistress stayed behind at the castle they called home, Lily Potter and a newly informed Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley accompanied Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini to save their friend and sister, Hermione Zabini. Well, she wasn't much of a sister to Draco as she was to the others. To Draco, she was something else entirely.

With grim expressions on their faces, they packed their wands and weapons, including—but not limited to—the Sword of Gryffindor, a basilisk fang from the chamber of secrets, a thin silver dagger, and Instant Peruvian Darkness Powder from Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes.

They were almost ready to go when Harry pulled a wand out of his robes. A very familiar wand that was certainly not his. It was the Elder Wand, Draco realized with no small amount of shock.

The Elder Wand that Harry Potter supposedly "broke" at the end of the war. Luckily, even he wasn't stupid enough to actually break such an important and powerful artifact. He instead made people believe it was broken so no one would go searching for it. "I've kept it locked away in the Black house. It never really responded to me anyway, so there was no point in keeping it. I think I was wrong when I said that it belonged to me because I disarmed Malfoy. It's rightfully his," Harry said to no one in particular, pointedly looking away from the Malfoy in question.

Draco narrowed his eyes slightly before letting out a huff and grabbing it from his hands. He walked a few feet away and tried a simple accio to see how the wand would respond to him. Harry's Firebolt zoomed towards Draco in such force he stumbled back from the impact. The Boy Who Lived, who'd been sitting on said Firebolt before it jumped out from under him, scowled up at Draco from the ground.

Draco tried again with something in the castle to see if it would summon with the same speed. Accio butterbeer, he thought, trying to gauge the reaction to a nonverbal spell.

His mug of butterbeer from the Head dorm sped to him with unnecessary speed and spilled all over his front shirt. Ugh.

As the others started snickering and Draco tried cleaning himself up with a scowl on his face, two whole cases of bottled butterbeer came flying to him with the same force as the previous objects. He looked up just in time and narrowly dodged them, but they hit a tree and the glass shattered, spilling all of that butterbeer on the forest floor.

With a bemused expression, Ginny walked to the smashed butterbeer cases. "Where did this even come from..." she trailed off as she gingerly picked up the remains of one. "This is from the Three Broomsticks! In Hogsmeade!" she exclaimed incredulously.

Everyone turned to Draco. Lily Potter floated over to him and stated quietly, "not even Dumbledore had that much raw power with the Elder Wand."

Although Draco brushed it off and assured the others there was nothing to worry about, a nugget of doubt was starting to grow in the back of his head. He shoved it far back so as to focus on the rescue mission.

They finally mounted their brooms and took off.

As they mounted their brooms,

The next four hours were spent flying from England to Albania on broomstick. None of them particularly liked traveling via Portkey, and they were worried that if they arrived by Floo it might tip off Voldemort.

Three hours was a long time to fly in silence, so they made small talk to try to distract themselves from the gravity of their mission.

"So," Ginny started. "Nice weather we're having..."

At one point, they took to talking about Voldemort, even though they'd been trying to avoid the topic. Blaise wondered aloud, "I still don't understand how he's even alive. The Death Eater lady said they revived two eighths of his soul, and that one was the eighth that was still in his body when Potter killed him. What about the others? The horcruxes were all destroyed right? There couldn't have been another part of his soul to bring back."