Chasing Reality

No Sense

They were greeted by a burly man in a black waistcoat.
"Yes?" He asked in a bored voice.
"Uhhh...Blaise Zabini sent us." Draco said, unsure if that was the first thing he should have said.
The man looked at them for a moment and ten took out a key.
"Follow me." He said and stalked out from behind the dusty desk.
As they followed Draco pondered on the upkeep of the place. It was more than enough to make Draco hurl his last meal. He'd always considered Blaise as a rich, Italian fuckboy with impeccable taste. But this was worse than than the shrieking shack.

He walked up two flights of stairs and into a dead end on the second floor.
He pulled down a smooth metal piece on the wall that looked like any ordinary piece of decoration.
The wall opened up and a door, much cleaner and more beautiful than the others came into view.
The man turned to them, dropped the key in Draco's hands and disappeared.
"Well, that was.....mysterious." Hermione said, looking at the door and then at the corridor.
"Yeah." Draco replied and turned the key in the keyhole.
They came to a large, expensively furnished room with a single, enormous bed and set their few belongings down.
They took turns washing up and got ready to call it a night.
"Blaise and his family must've used it as a hide out. The room." Draco explained.
Hermione just nodded.
"Hermione, look...I didn't mean to lash out at you. I apologise." He said, rather abruptly
"Wow! You are really apologising. Never thought Is live to see this day." Hermione gawked.
"Savour it, Granger. It's not happening again." He smirked.
Draco wanted to berate her. But why did he care? He never cared. About anything. His heart, now blackened and tainted with anger, remorse and hatred, beats only for the sake of it, like a monotonous machine he no longer regarded.
His mood turned sour again.
"If you think this thing is gonna help you sleep, then you best be ready. I have a hunch it's gonna be a lot longer then you'd ever imagine." Draco warned and walked into the bathroom again.
Hermione stared at the place he previously occupied.
She shook herself out of this revelation and tiredly climbed into bed.
Draco had volunteered to sleep on the long couch in the corner of the room.

"Hermione." A woman called out.
"Mom." Hermione answered, looking around. The place was dark and smelled nasty.
The sounds around her echoed and the images blurred repeatedly.
"It's all your fault." Her mother wailed.
Hermione started crying too.
"I don't understand." She replies and turned around. The noises were coming from a rotting, wooden wardrobe.
She opened it and cried out at seeing her mother's severely dismantled body, exactly like Victor Pryce's.
"No." She yelled over and over again, until someone came and grabbed her.
The man wore a mask and as she struggled to get away from him, he kept saying her name. Soon the voice changed into a familiar one.
"Draco?"

Hermione opened her eyes, sweating while Draco still clutched her shoulders.
"Your awake. Or I'd have had to drench you in water. That was quite an agonising ordeal I presume?" Draco asked.
Still crying, she hugged herself tightly.
It was a bit awkward at first, Draco didn't know what to say.
"I'm sorry." She said.
He shook his head.
"Don't be. I'm sorry." He replied, still looking at her.
He took the time to observe her pathetic state. She'd had a rough time he could tell. Probably rougher than his.
"Go back to sleep, Granger. You're tired." He said.
She shook her head.
"I'm not tired anymore."She said.
He growled.
"What? You're going to kill me if I don't?" She scoffed.
"Might as well try." He said.
"I've got a better idea. Since you're hellbent on staying awake, let's go visit Ms. Declan, shall we?" Draco said, running a hand through his platinum blonde hair.
Hermione smiled. And then frowned.
"What's with the face Granger?" He asked.
"No no no!!! None of this makes sense. We catch Victor Pryce, using the scrying spells, clearly up to no good. But then we find him dead. And now we find out Rebekah has something to do with it." Hermione summed up.
"Well. It can't get worse than that can it?" Draco asked.
"Oh, but it can! You see Rebekah was never there for the ball. Or for a week before that. She told me she had to leave for someplace." Hermione finished.
"So she lied." Draco said, and after a minute, continued.
"They were stupid to think that the brightest witch of her age would engrave her initials on the murder weapon, let alone kill someone."
"I know you didn't kill McLaggen either Malfoy. You are many things Malfoy, but not a cold blooded killer." She smiled.
His face softened.
"Let's go then?" He added quickly.
"Let's!" She responded.

They apparated to a clearing near Rebekah Declan's household.