Secrets and Masks

14. She did what?!

4th February

"She did what!?"

"It's not funny Theodore."

"Yes, it is!"

"No, it really isn't."

"Oh, but it is!" Theo's laughter bounced off the walls of the underground tunnel they were trying to sneak through. "Hermione fucking Granger, filthy Mudblood and stain to all purebloods of the earth, managed to get into your head - WITHOUT A WAND!"

Draco had never wanted to Avada someone more in his life. "I swear on Salazar's grave, if you don't drop this-"

"Not funny? Oh no, it's not merely funny. It's fucking hilarious!" Theo continued, not the least bit bothered when Draco pointed his wand - sparking with green magic - at his face. "It's so funny I can't breathe!"

Draco grit his teeth together. "Oh, how I wish that were true. How I wish you would choke on your laughter until you suffocate. Heaven knows my life would be so much simpler without your constant theatrical insubordination!"

They carried on walking through the abandoned London Underground, blindly following the disused tracks. It was like a void down there, any light snuffed out and replaced with that spine-tingling darkness that made your gut twist with each heartbeat, anxious for the tiniest movement. Even the Lumos charms the three of them cast felt muted.

The tunnel went on for miles and miles, and the sporadic and unpredictable drip of water from a burst pipe overhead was starting to wear thinly on Draco's patience - that, and Theo's incessant snickering.

The air was cold and unfriendly, the all too familiar chill that could only be caused by the darkest of curses hung in the air. Horrid, but unmistakable. There were thousands of skeletons and bones lining the walls. Although most of the bodies were scattered across the floor or sat up against the sides of the tunnel, some seemed to be fused into the wall like a catacomb. It would have been chilling if it weren't such a common occurrence these days. Bare skeletons completely stripped of flesh weren't fear-inducing when you'd seen thousands of them. Skulls didn't make your skin crawl when you had one branded on your arm for all eternity.

"I still don't understand how Granger managed it," Draco growled out as they rounded another dark corner. "It should have been impossible. She's been taking the anti-magic potions for month. She shouldn't have anything to draw from."

They should be close. If their intelligence was correct, they would be able to hear the refugees - the ones desperately trying to get to the Orders base - any minute. There was no way out of the tunnels, Draco had made sure of that. They were sitting ducks.

"Do you think she's built up a tolerance over time?" Blaise asked. "Or perhaps it could have something to do with that pesky tampering in her brain that you've been up to?"

"Yeah," Theo said, dragging his wand over the bones in the wall. "What's up with that? What exactly are you doing to her?"

Draco snorted. "That's a little above your paygrade, Gold Masks." He caught the sexually obscene gesture Theo threw him out the corner of his eye.

"What did it feel like when she entered your mind?" Blaise asked.

Draco rolled his tongue on the inside of his cheek. How was he supposed to answer that? That it felt wildly intrusive? That it intrigued him to no end that Granger - fucking Granger - had been able to enter his mind without a wand? That someone whose very blood was supposed to make her weaker than him had managed to do something so undeniably brilliant, that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since? That it had been so indescribably painful to have to see his mothers death all over again? And that somehow, the pity he'd seen on Grang- the Mudbloods face made him want to scream?