How Did This Happen?!

Frustrated Hermione

Draco had searched approximately half of the school grounds before he gave up and decided to go back to the common room to rest and think. He lounged on the bed, his head propped up against the headboard.
'I'll just close my eyes for a moment.' He thought before falling into a deep slumber.

Hermione had stopped crying, her eyes were burning and itching as she sat at the broken window looking out at the unused Quidditch field. Oh how much she missed Harry and Ron! She wished that she could wake up and find that this had all been a terrible nightmare! Just a dream, a figment of her subconscious.

But it wasn't a dream and she was reminded of that wherever she looked at the damaged castle and listened to its silence due to the absence of people. The castle reminded her more of a solemn crypt than the dynamic school environment.

She hated being alone, being away from her friends – but being unable to help them felt even worse! She was used to helping them, to pulling them out of the holes they dug for themselves! She truly hated feeling so useless! She couldn't handle the thought of something happening to the people that she cared about; especially as she wasn't there to sort everything out afterwards.

Hermione leaned against the wall, staring out at the pitch. Her thoughts drifted to the happy memories she had of this school before this happened...
... Harry and Ron. Where were they? Were they hurt? Were they dead? Her eyes started to fill with tears and when she couldn't hold them any longer she, at last, let them drop down her face.

In the meantime...

Draco's dream almost seemed real. He was back at that house again from his last vision, only this time he was able to go inside. The house was very dark and dirty but it had an ominous feeling to it. There was a filth that was more substantial than the dust and dank... something foul lived here.

The house had minimal furniture, cracked, broken, and uncared for; the carpeting was just as dark as the walls, only the threadbare patches of filthy grey breaking the gloom. There was so little light that it would be easy to walk into a wall or piece of broken furniture because you couldn't see.

Suddenly he realized he wasn't alone. He walked with his Father through the house and finally met another being in one of the dark hallways.
The being was dressed in monotonous black, a long black cloak trailed behind him like a sinister mockery of a wedding dress trail. Draco saw the being's skin glowing faintly in the darkness, and probably would have made a remark about the odd appearance, had it not been the Dark Lord himself he was standing before.

Draco would have been lying if he'd said he was unaffected. He was terrified of the man, if 'man' is what you could have called him. The man's face was distorted, flattened, like a snake. His nose was almost completely flat, slits opened to reveal crimson eyes.

Draco found himself too distracted by the Dark Lord's appearance, he'd never been this close to him before. He could see the faint shadows around the scales on his cheekbones, the forked tongue that flicked as he spoke, ears that didn't protrude like a normal human...he didn't hear anything that the two men had said to each other.

The next thing he knew, they were in a room just as gloomy as the rest. It was full of figures in dark robes with their faces covered with the skull masks to maintain anonymity.
His father was talking out to everyone in the room but Draco could only barely make out some of the words.
"We will be watching... The plan will succeed I guarantee you all... she will fall, no doubt."
This was making no sense to Draco, what was he talking about?
"He will... she will be vulnerable to our powers... defeat. We will have victory for our lord."

Draco was only catching about half of what he was saying. He couldn't quite make out the rest of what he was saying. It was like he was hearing the conversation underwater, the other words were slurred or garbled in his hearing. It finally hit Draco what his father and 'The Lord' had been blabbing about as if they had said it again just so he would hear them.