Unexpected Death Eaters

Draco awoke the next morning with a sore back and an extreme pain throbbing in his left arm. He tried to roll onto his stomach to relieve the aching of his back, only to find that some weight was bearing down on his body stopping him from doing so. As he tried to roll over he heard a protesting moan that he was quiet sure didn't come from his mouth. He opened his eyes to see a mass of curly brown hair, which belonged to none other than Hermione Granger. After realizing who was on top of him, he noticed that they were lying on the couch in the drawing room of the Malfoy Manor. Explains the sore back, he thought to himself.

Slowly memories of the night before returned to him and he knew why Hermione was laying on him. Nothing happened of course, but with all the wine they had consumed they ended up passing out on the couch the moment the Apparated back to the drawing room. Another pain shot up through his left arm signaling that Voldemort was calling him.

"Hermione," he said as he gave her a gentle shake.

"What," she sleepily groaned as a response.

"Hermione, you need to get off me now."

This seemed to catch Hermione's attention, because she bolted up into a sitting position and looked down at the man under her with wide eyes and an open mouth. "W-w-we d-didn't..." she stammered.

Draco smiled mischievously. "Don't you remember? I know I could never forget a night like that. Who ever thought Hermione Granger, the Gryffindor bookworm, could ever be such a wild cat in bed?"

"Oh shut up, now I know you're lying." She put her head in her hands and groaned in pain. "Why is my head pounding so loudly?"

"Honestly Hermione, I don't think I've ever seen a camel consume as much water as you did wine last night."

"Why were you watching a camel drink water?" she asked playfully. Draco just rolled his eyes at her in response. "You drank more than I did, why isn't your head pounding?"

"Malfoys don't get hangovers." It was Hermione's turn to roll her eyes. Then she suddenly took a quick intake of breath as she quickly grabbed her left forearm.

"I see he is calling you as well?" Draco observed. "He has been calling me for some time now. We should leave soon, or he will punish us for keeping him waiting." At this he heard Hermione make a small gulp. Punishment from Voldemort didn't sound too appealing to her as well.

They quickly murmured the spell to turn their clothes into jet black robes and Dissaparated to the Riddle House.

Instead of going down the hallway that Draco had gone down before on the night of Hermione's incitation, they went up the stairs to the second floor. They entered a dark room, where Voldemort was sitting in a high backed chair in front of the fireplace.

"My Lord," they said in unison as they both bowed.

"I have a job for the two of you," he began. Voldemort was the kind who went skipped the greetings and got straight to business. "Everything is quieting down in the Muggle world now that their most recent war has ended. Since it is over, we can't go about killing Muggles as easily when they are at war with one another. I want you two to find a way to kill a great number with out raising suspicions in the Wizarding world. Don't try any kind of explosions; the last people I sent out blew up some car or building, but the Muggles just counted as a random bombing and pointed fingers at certain miscreants; the result: no deaths. Obviously this is a very unsatisfying outcome, which disappointed me greatly. Both of you are young with clever minds, I'm sure if you put your heads together you can come up with something creative that won't disappoint me."

Draco and Hermione both could tell that this meeting was over by the tone of his voice. They both bowed one last time to their master before leaving the room. They didn't exchange one word with each other until they had Apparated back to the drawing room of Malfoy Manor.

"Have any ideas?" Draco drawled as he sat down on the couch.

"I'm thinking along the lines of tragic accident or some kind of natural disaster."

"There are many ways to create a tragic accident, but there always seems to be more survivors than victims and you're only destroying so much. Now creating a natural disaster can be quiet tricky, but usually the end result is precisely what you hoped for. You can basically wipe out a whole town of Muggles with the right kind. The only thing is you have to come up with just right kind of disaster or it wont work. Floods are easy to escape from, and when there are tornados they run and hide in those rooms that are under the ground."

"They're called storm cellars." Hermione inserted.

"Well whatever they are called, it's somewhere for them to escape."

"How about causing a volcano to erupt or an earthquake? It is harder for Muggles to predict when they are going to happen as opposed the other things you have mentioned."

"Let's go with an earthquake; volcanoes are too messy."

"Oh and buildings and highways crashing down isn't messy at all?" Hermione asked jokingly.

"Well then, volcanoes are just too hot." Draco paused for a moment with a look of slight confusion. After a few seconds of silence he asked, "What's a highway?"

Hermione just laughed and said, "I'll tell you when you're older." Draco was about to retort when Hermione cut him off by asking, "Have any ideas as to where you want to produce this earthquake?"

"Actually, yes, I do; Bam, Iran."

This was defiantly an odd response, even if it was coming from Luna Lovegood. "Why in Bam, Iran of all places?"

"It's kind of a play on words with Voldemort; he said no explosions and explosions go 'BAM!'." Draco silently laughed to himself at his amazing wit.

"Last time I checked, explosions went 'BOOM!' not 'BAM'."

Draco quit smiling and shot a look at Hermione. "Same thing; lets go."

Since Draco and Hermione had Apparated from England to the Middle East, they didn't arrive there until the early hours of the morning.

"How should we start this?" Hermione asked after they took a second to look at their surroundings.

It took a while for Draco to respond to her; obviously he was thinking the exact same question. "I guess we can start by placing very powerful Ostes charms everywhere, followed by some Huvere charms."

"Sounds good to me," Hermione said as she started to raise her wand.

For twenty minutes Draco and Hermione Apparated around the town of Bam and cast the Ostes and the Huvere charm all over. The ground started to shake violently at exactly 5:28 a.m. that morning. Knowing that their work was done, they conjured up the Dark Mark, to where only magical folk can see it so they don't arouse suspicion in the Muggles, and then they both Dissaparated back to the Malfoy Manor.

"Now all we can do is wait and see how well those charms worked. They've better work because I sure as hell don't want to end up like Crabbe and Goyle." Draco said as he sat down in one of the chairs in the drawing room.

Hermione threw herself on the couch. "What happened to Crabbe and Goyle?" she asked.

"You remember the people Voldemort told us about before he gave us our task?" Hermione nodded. "Well, those people were Crabbe and Goyle. Since they only injured a few Muggles as opposed to killing some as they were supposed to, Voldemort was more than disappointed. He used the Cruciatus, God knows how many times, on them and then used a form of Muggle torture on them. Right now they are in St. Mungo's, and this happened four months ago." For the first time ever, Draco saw those cinnamon eyes fill with fear. She was scared and she should be, after all she was dealing with Voldemort himself.

Draco let out a loud yawn as he stretched out. "It's been a tiring day with all this Apparating around the continent; I'm going to go catch up on my beauty sleep." Draco left Hermione and headed to his bedroom.

~*~*~*~

It was a cool spring day and he had decided to take a ride on his broom to clear his mind. He started to fly over and open field, which eventually led to a dark forest ahead. Instead of flying over the dark forest, he landed in front of it, where the shadows of the forest met with the rays of the sun. The quiet of the spring day was broken by a loud squawk. He looked up to see a large, black hawk chasing a small raven. Knowing that hawks usually preyed on smaller birds, such as sparrows and not ravens, he curiously watched the scene that was happening in the sky above him. It didn't take long for the hawk to catch the raven, in which it let out a screech for victory.

Suddenly, another small raven shot out of the forest towards the hawk. The hawk was obviously taken by surprise of the new bird and dropped the raven he had clutched in his talons. For some reason the hawk started acting strange as it looked from one raven to another; it almost seemed as if it was confused about which one to catch.

The sun was shifting as the time of the day moved along and shinned right into his eyes, blinding him from being able to watch the scene any longer. He put his hand over his eyes to block the violently bright light and to catch sight of the three birds again. When he was finally was able to see the birds again, he noticed something different; there was a hawk, a raven, and a red robin. What had happened to the other raven?

Once again, he was distracted from the birds because the earth beneath him started to rumble and shake...

~*~*~*~

Hermione gently shook Draco to wake him from his 'beauty sleep'.

"Two more minutes is all I need mom," he said groggily.

Hermione tried to suppress her giggle as she shook him once more. "Draco," she said softly.

His eyes fluttered opened at the sound of his name. "Can I help you?" he asked, annoyed at being woken up.

"I thought you'd like to hear about what happened in Bam, but obviously you don't so I'll just be going." She slowly began to slip off his bed until his hand shot out and grabbed her arm, keeping her from going anywhere.

"What happened in Bam?" he asked before letting go of her arm.

"I can tell you right now that Voldemort defiantly will not be disappointed in us."

"That still didn't answer my question," Draco said impatiently.

"We ended up killing almost 40,000 Muggles!" she shrieked, beaming down at him.

Draco couldn't believe what he was hearing. He didn't think they could make that big of a natural disaster. Another thing he could not grasp was how excited Hermione was about the news.

"The Muggles are also starting a bunch of rescue teams to try and find survivors in the rubble and stuff too; so there might be more to our number! Isn't this great?" she asked. Then after studying the wizards face she realized he didn't seem happy about it at all. "Well, aren't you glad that we did such a great job? Actually, better than great, more like grand, terrific, marvelous, or spectacular job!" Her voice rose higher and higher as she listed off different words of the same meaning.

"Yes, I'm more than happy, I'm shocked! I didn't think our spells would have worked that well!" The number wasn't the only thing that was shocking him, but Hermione's response. How could she so happy about killing that many Muggles? Especially since the first eleven years of her life she thought she was one.

"If this doesn't make Voldemort happy, I don't know what will!"

As if on cue both their left arms started to throb in pain, showing that once again their Lord was calling them.

~*~*~*~

Dumbledore was sitting quietly at his desk when the door burst open and in walked a worried looking Arbella Figg.

"Arbella is something wrong?" he asked.

She didn't answer his question, but threw down a Muggle newspaper on his desk in front of him. Dumbledore picked up the paper and to see the headline read 'Earthquake in Bam Kills 40,000'. After reading the article, he looked up at the old woman, who was now sitting in one of the chairs across from his desk.

"Now Dumbledore," she began, "I know that this may not seem like anything of relevance to you, but I have my suspicions on the matter. If you ask me, I think this was no regular natural disaster."

"I think your suspicions may very well be correct, Arbella. With out a doubt in my mind, I believe that this is the workings of the Dark side. Since the war in the Muggle world is over, they are finding new ways to slowly destroy it." Dumbledore studied the pictures that were in the article for a second. "Ah, I now see there is proof that it was Voldemort's doing. If you look in background of some of these pictures, you can see the Dark Mark floating above the city." He handed the paper back to Mrs. Figg. "Numbers like these shows signs that they might be growing stronger; and if this is true, we must move quickly, before their power exceeds to a level we cannot beat."

After Mrs. Figg had left, Dumbledore sat staring at the newspaper she had given him. He examined the pictures again, taking in all the damage that the earthquake had caused. Even though he had felt sorrow for those that had died, he felt even more for a certain witch that could have been involved in the creation of the disaster.