Third Time's a Charm

Chapter Three: Hag's Hill

Hermione completed her classroom training at the Academy at the top of her class--predictably. She hadn't slowed down a bit since the barrage of exams she faced at the end of her seventh year at Hogwarts, and Ron and Harry sometimes worried that she might burn out, but she never had. At the Auror Academy she studied Advanced Transfiguration, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts, as well as subjects that were never formally taught at Hogwarts: Curses, Dueling, Tactics and Strategy, and Hand-To-Hand Combat. She studied with determination she hadn't possessed even at Hogwarts. After two years of classroom study, she was given Auror robes and assigned to do one-on-one training with a senior level Auror named Roy Mazzarein. He was as ruthless about teaching as she was about learning.

Mazzarein didn't normally take on students, as he was one of the elite Aurors who worked offensively, investigating stray curses and finding and apprehending the criminals of the Wizarding world. Most Academy students were assigned to less skilled Aurors who worked primarily as security guards, patrolling Ministry buildings and escorting prisoners back and forth from Ministry facilities to Azkaban. But Hermione had done so well in the first half of her training and--though she didn't know it--Albus Dumbledore, still the highly respected Headmaster at Hogwarts, and Danon Dagmar, who now worked for the Department of Mysteries, had pulled some strings on her behalf.

Mazzarein did not put up with any sort of physical or mental weakness and acted like Hermione was a kid who tagged along as a privilege, which he could take away at any moment (he could). His work was dangerous and when they were on the job, if she didn't do what he said when he said to do it, no questions asked, someone could be hurt or worse and their assignment would not be completed. Everything was all about the business. Hermione didn't mind. She could take the physical and mental strain, and she wanted to be an Auror who could take on anyone. After learning everything her mentor had to teach her, she would be well on her way.

Unlike the Aurors who only worked in the daylight, Hermione and Mazzarein had four twenty-four hour shifts a week. During the day they did investigative work and at night they slept in bunks at the Division. The Department of Mysteries monitored wards all over Britain that detected dark magic, and when the alarms went off, they and the rest of their team of Aurors Apparated to the scene to neutralize whatever the found there. If there was no wizard to be found, they cast spells to detect residual magic and track the dark wizard down.

After less than six months of field training, Mazzarein and Hermione, by default, were sent to the Home Counties with five other Aurors. Massive amounts of Dark Magic were picked up near the house of the only Wizarding family in the immediate area--at the home of Ministry Department Head Annabel Archer. Massive meaning more than the usual amount picked up by the Ministry when someone got angry and cast an untoward spell at an old schoolboy rival who still tormented him. Massive, meaning Unforgivable.

When the Department of Mysteries sent the alert, most of the Aurors on duty were asleep. One of the dispatchers--who stayed up all night--roused everyone, and in two minutes flat they were dressed in standard issue Auror robes, briefed on where to go and what to expect, and Apparating out. When Roy heard the words "probably Unforgivables" he looked hard at Hermione. She shook her head up and down silently. She would go. That was the end of their exchange.

When they got there, the first step was to set up wards around the outside of the house so nobody, unless they were in Auror robes, could Apparate in or out. Once the wards were up they would go inside the house.

As Hermione was still pushing one of the portable wards into the muddy ground, the lawn exploded. Fireworks. They looked pretty in the air, but they were terrifying up close. The Aurors who had proceeded towards the house flew backwards as three dark figures ran through the incomplete wards. Roy rushed forward to see if any of his fallen colleagues were injured. Orion Buckley--who was in charge of the mission--yelled, "Mazzarein, Granger, MacDowell, go! Go after them!" But it was too late. They had already Disapparated, and more fireworks went off as two more figures ran passed the wards. Hermione shielded her face from the fiery flashes of light, but still she caught glimpses of the distinctive blue and gold fireworks. They looked ... almost familiar. When all was quiet a second later, her eyes were drawn over the house. At first she thought there was a Dark Mark in the air, but she realized in a flash that it was an Ouroboros. "Death Eater imitators?" she wondered.

A few eyebrows were singed, but none of the Aurors were seriously injured. Most of them went into the house, Hermione included. The rest went back to the Division and went to work on tracking the five Apparitions of the escapees. Inside the house, three were dead. So far in her training, nobody she knew of had actually died because of a dark curse. Several were mutilated or had endured severe pain, but none had died. It was a rite of passage for an Auror, Mazzerein had told her.

She later found out that they had been unable to track the dark wizards. There were residual traces of magic in the air that told that five had Disapparated, but when they went to check the log at the Department of Magical Transportation, the trail had turned cold. The Ministry tracked all witches and wizards who had passed the Apparation exams in their final year of schooling. Apparations could only be tracked as full trips, however--a wizard disappears, then reappears in another location a second later. If they do not reappear, it is not recorded in the log by the Department of Transportation's enchanted quill. Either the five where not legally allowed to Apparate, they had passed out of existence somewhere in between Disapparation and Apparation, or they had Apparated to a guarded location, which must have been heavily guarded indeed to evade the quill.

~~~

Two years later, when Hermione had completed her field training and graduated from the Auror program, the Serpent Eaters, as they were half-jokingly called in reference to both their ouroboros mark and the Death Eaters that had preceded them, had effectively terrorized the Wizarding world. There had been more attacks than Hermione could count on one hand, all against Muggle-borns, halfbloods, or Muggle supporters, though after their attack on the Archer family they never again attacked such high-profile wizards. Hermione's Tactics professor had said that this made sense: they were nearly caught that night because Ministry surveillance was so tight around the homes of its officials. It was even tighter after the attack, when people started to get scared. Still, the Serpent Eaters began to get better and better at breaking wards and evading monitoring charms. Things were tense around the Department of Mysteries and the Auror Division, as they tried desperately to discover the identities of the attackers, where they went when they disappeared, and most importantly, the purpose behind the attacks.

~~~

Draco told his mother that he needed a holiday. Some sun and harmless excitement would do him good. He told her that he was spending the summer visiting the Spanish isles of the Mediterranean, and not to worry because he would send her an owl every now and then. But she was preoccupied with other things and barely missed him.

In actuality Draco moved into Hag's Hill, which was located not in the Mediterranean but in the very northwest of France. Draco, Blaise, Emma, Gregory, and Vincent had been staying at the otherwise abandoned and forgotten Malfoy family residence in shifts. One of them was nearly always there, but Draco no longer felt that was enough. His plan was fully set into action, and Voldemort might make his appearance at any time now. That was the genius of Draco's plan--if Voldemort could not be found, the only solution was to make Voldemort come to him.

When Draco was a boy his father had told him a secret. The Malfoy family had built a guarded castle many hundreds of years ago. At that time there were more Malfoys, and some of them lived in France as well as Britain. Draco had some distant cousins who lived in Paris, but they didn't have the same sort of glory the Malfoys of the past once had. In Britain, the beginnings of the Ministry of Magic were being formed; already there were wizards who had notions of light magic and dark magic and wanted to regulate which kinds of spells could and couldn't be used. The British Malfoys were outraged because they knew the power of dark magic, and they knew that if dark magic were suppressed, then light magic would grow weaker as well. But other wizards, under the influence of Muggles who knew nothing about magic, were foolish and banned the use of dark magic under penalties of death and imprisonment.

The influence of Muggles, though growing, was still less in France. The British Malfoys knew they must do something to preserve dark magic, and with it light magic as well, so they went to their French cousins. Together they went to Brittany, where all sorts of sorcerers, hags, and dark witches and wizards still practiced their craft unhampered by the magical governments of France or Britain. They built a castle, huge and made of shiny black basalt. Into each stone as they built it they wove strong spells--some of which, if the bad wizards had their way, they might not be allowed to use anymore. The spells hid the castle from Muggle and wizardkind. It was impenetrable and could not be monitored by spells to detect dark magic, or anything at all. No wizards but the ancient Malfoys and their descendents knew it existed.

If you ever need a place to go Draco, go there. No one will ever be able to find you there unless you tell them where it is and give them permission to enter. The very stones will throw them out otherwise. You'll be safe there.

~~~

Draco looked around. He entered through the front door of Hag's Hill this time, instead of Apparating directly into whatever room he wanted to be in. It seemed fitting, as he was the master of the castle and he was there for an extended stay. "Lumos," he said in a clear voice that echoed through the empty entrance hall. The torches on the wall flared to life. There were no house-elves or anyone to keep the castle clean, but it was. The black floor was shiny as Draco walked across it to the staircase, reflexively avoiding stepping on the green marble snake that was set into the floor in the center of the room. The snake formed a large circle, ten feet across, and it was biting its own tail.

Upstairs on the second floor Draco chose a suitable bedchamber. He took his belongings out of his pocket and with a flick of his wand returned them to their rightful sizes, before visiting the village for supper. He certainly did not want to cook for himself, and maybe he would find something to do before a few of the others came to keep him company the next day.

~~~

One night less than two weeks later Draco had a dream. He was in a sunny glade listening to birds chirping, but all of the sudden felt a coldness sliding over him. He woke up, and there, in the faint light of the stars and moon, was a faint wisp of--something. Purple and blue and barely there, but it gave him chills down the back of his spine because he distinctly felt a presence.

"Who are you?" he said.

"It is I." A raspy whisper that he wasn't sure he had half-heard, or maybe it simply appeared in his head as a fully-formed thought. "Lord Voldemort. You are the Malfoy heir, are you not?"

"Yes."