Clichés, Kisses and Killing

Clichés, Kisses and Killing.

Chapter 8: Boredom Never Lasts.

I would bring down the moon and the sun

To show how much I care.

'Don't Wanna Lose You Now' - Backstreet Boys.

Harry could feel someone shaking him. Maybe I've overslept, he thought, I bet that's Ron, sent by Hermione to wake me up. His dream was shattered when he opened his eyes and found that the shaking was Ron kicking him softly every now and then, his whole body shaking violently. His friend was moaning as well, he was having a dream, or, more accurately, a nightmare.

"Ron!" he hissed. There was no answer. "Ron!" He leaned over and shook his friend until he was awake, staring up at Harry in surprise.

"What is it?"

"You were having a nightmare." Ron's eyes clouded over and Harry suddenly had no doubt that the nightmare had been about Hermione. "Are you okay?" Ron nodded and Harry ran his hands nervously through his hair, as he always did when he thought about Ron and Hermione, and how pissed off Ron was going to get.

"I'll be fine." They looked around their cell and Harry noticed sunlight streaming through the window high up in the wall of the area outside of their cage. He could hear talking from somewhere and realised it was probably coming from Draco and Ginny in the next cell.

He sat up, resigning himself to the fact that he wasn't going to sleep anymore, and stared up at the sunlight as it streamed through the window. Actually, it's hardly big enough to call itself a window, he thought, I'm sure there are rules about how wide and long you have to be to be a window. And you probably have to be part of a union or something. Oh my God! I'm going insane; I'm actually going insane. Any minute now I'll start hopping around singing 'The Twelve Days Of Christmas' and demanding that everyone calls me Josephine.

"Harry!" Ron's voice startled himself out of his thoughts and he looked bemusedly at his friend. "Are you...alright?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, you had a really weird little smile on you face, sort of insane, and you were humming 'The Twelve Days Of Christmas.'" Harry raised his eyebrows.

"How unusual," he sighed.

"Harry? Ron?" Ginny's voice rang out into their cell and Harry looked up.

"Hey, Ginny. How's Malfoy?"

"Oh, I'm just peachy, Potter, thanks for asking."

"Draco! He was just asking!"

"Yeah, well, talk about asking stupid questions."

"He was just concerned." They heard a typically Malfoy disbelieving snort.

"More like he was worried I was jumping you. He probably thinks I'm a randy bugger who can't keep my-"

"Draco!" There was a moment's silence.

"He would be right," Ron added into the quiet.

"Keep it shut, Weasley, or I swear I'll..."

"You swear you'll what?" Ron's smirk was obvious from his voice. "You'll jump the rough solid concrete and give me a beating? Well, by all means, please try and jump through the wall, I could use a laugh right about now."

"Not half as much as you need good fashion sense and a hairbrush. You're nearly overtaking Potter in the hideously messy hair stakes."

"How the hell can you tell what our hair looks like through the goddamned wall, Malfoy?"

"If what it looked like last night was anything to go by, it won't look very good now, in fact, it'll look ten times worse."

"Oh, I'm sorry we don't have hair that looks like a woman's, and we don't use an entire tub of Gerry's Gelatinous Gel on our hair every morning."

"I do not have hair that looks like a woman's!" Draco exclaimed. After a few moments, he added, as an afterthought, "and for your information, it takes me two days to finish a tub."

"Draco, let it go," Ginny said.

"But he said my hair was girly!" he whined.

"I love your hair, that's what matters." There were noises that sounded horrifically like kissing to Harry and Ron, and they grimaced. Ron stuck his hands over his ears and shut his eyes like that would help him to shut out the noises.

"Holy shit! Will you two get a room?" he hollered. The noises stopped.

"We have a room, Weasley, it's just uncomfortably close to yours."

"You know, Malfoy, in a minute I'm going to come into your cell and I'm going to make you wish-"

"I'd never been born, blah, blah, blah, Weasley, like I haven't heard it all before a million times. And if you can open this cell door and get me out of here, please do. I'd love you to, because then I'd be free to go and exact some revenge." They didn't have to ask on whom, and Ron looked momentarily sorry about how he was speaking to the boy who had just been nearly killed by his own father.

Momentarily being the operative word.

"Hmm, Weasley, maybe that's the way to get out of here. If I get you riled up enough, maybe you'll break through the bars and come to get me. Then I'll be out of here. But how to rile you up, that's the question. What to do, what to do?"

Harry could practically hear Malfoy tapping his finger against his chin as he pretended to think.

"Oh, wait, look at that, it's your baby sister. Well, I'll just have to help her out of this uncomfortable-looking blouse, won't I?" Harry could almost feel the heat of Ron's anger radiating into his arm as he sat next to him. Malfoy continued nonetheless. "Oops! There goes one button! Oh, there goes another one!"

"Malfoy," Ron growled.

"Well, would you look at that, three buttons at once!" With a growl, Ron leapt at the bars and Harry could only assume he wanted to rattle the door open. He kicked them viciously when he realised that wasn't working, and shrieked at Draco.

"Malfoy, if you don't stop that, I'm going to...!" With a defeated wordless shout, Ron sunk down the bars to the floor and buried his head in his hands.

"Draco Malfoy! Stop that!" Ginny's voice was sharp, shocking Harry. "Leave my brother alone you're being cruel!" There was silence and Harry and Ron frowned, as they heard nothing for several moments. "Draco, please don't, please."

"It doesn't matter, Ginny." Draco's voice was so quiet they barely heard it, but the emotion was clear.

"Please, Draco. I'm sorry, but you were being really spiteful."

"I'm not spiteful!" His voice rang around the cell. "You don't know the meaning of spiteful! Not until you've seen what I've-" His voice broke and Harry closed his eyes briefly, deciding he didn't want to know what had happened to Malfoy when he was younger, at the hands of his father.

"Draco!" This time her voice rang around the cell and then silence dropped and stayed for too long.

"Ginny," Ron called. "Ginny, are you okay?" There was nothing. "Ginny! Ginny, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Her voice was muffled, but they heard it. "It's Draco, he's cut his hand."

"How?"

"He sliced it on a piece of metal. He grabbed it by accident." Harry looked up at Ron and he shook his head, hanging it down. His remorse was clear.

"You going to be alright, Malfoy?"

"Fine. Apart from the copious amounts of blood, I'm just fine."

"There's not that much blood, Draco, it'll be good as new in a while."

"No it won't, Ginny, it'll never be good as new." He gave a small laugh as he spoke, but there was nothing funny about it, in fact, Harry felt distinctly sad at the tone of Malfoy's voice.

"Hey, Ron," Ginny called.

"Yes?"

"Do you think you could call him Draco? It is his name, after all, and I'm sure he'll call you Ron if you try." There was a snort from Draco and then silence. Something was happening, because there was a sigh next.

"Maybe we should start again...Ron." Draco was obviously being pulled into this, but Ron was a good enough person to notice he was trying, even if it was only for Ginny.

"Maybe we should, Draco." There was an exasperated sigh.

"You could at least say my name right, Weasley. It's pronounced Dray-co, got it?"

"Bite me, Malfoy!" Ginny gave a small shriek of irritation.

"Shut up! That's it! One minute, okay? You have to go just one minute without calling each other by surnames!"

"Fine!" said Ron.

"Fine!" agreed Draco.

"Fine!"

"Fine!" Silence settled again and Harry had to stop himself laughing.

"Hey, Ginny?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"This minute is going to be bloody quiet, isn't it?" He sniggered a little bit and she joined in. Pretty soon, they were laughing hard, and the scowl on Ron's face just kept Harry going.

"Harry," Ginny giggled. "Is Ron scowling just like Draco is?"

"Oh yeah!" They were set off again, their laughter ringing around the cell for several minutes until they finally lay back on the floor in their separate cells, quiet and exhausted.

"It wasn't that funny," Draco said gently.

And that just set them off again.

*~*~*~*~*

"It begins with 'r'."

"Harry, if it's your reflection in your watch face again, as soon as we're out of here I'm going to smack you."

"It isn't."

"Red," Draco put in.

"What's red, Draco? I have nothing red."

"Ginny's blouse."

"I can't see that, you pillock." Harry leaned against the wall and shifted about to stop his bum going numb. He failed, and resigned himself to numb butt cheeks.

"Railings?" asked Ron.

"Nope, sorry." There were several more minutes of silence and Harry just continued his 'funathon' of staring at the wall.

"It isn't me, is it?"

"Got it in one, well done, Ron."

"That so doesn't count," Draco said.

"Yeah, well, I'm kind of running out of things here. There are only so many times we can use wall, bars, and prisoner. Or breasts, Draco," he spat. There was laughter and Harry had to smile.

He couldn't recall how long they had been playing this game, but he didn't care. Since he had come to Voldemort's castle, he had lost all sense of time completely. He had no idea how long they had been at the castle, he had no idea how long he had been sitting on the cold floor playing 'I Spy' and he had no idea what the time was, as his watch had stopped working a long time ago. He had only continued to wear it out of habit, as a last grab at his old life and what he had used to be.

In between playing stupid games with Draco, Ginny and Ron, Harry had thought about Hermione and how he was going to rescue her. He had to admit, a lot of them were a little out of this world and involved him, his Firebolt, a particularly vicious Hippogriff and Voldemort screaming in intense pain.

Ah, well, it kept him amused.

*~*~*~*~*

Several hours ('was it only several?' wondered Harry) later, Harry was still sitting against the wall of the cell while Ron paced around and tried to stop thinking about what could be happening in the cell next to them. In Harry's opinion, it was too quiet for anything to be happening, but then what did he know.

He watched Ron walk up and down and smiled at his friend's worry. He was happy for it actually, because it meant he could sit in his corner and think about Hermione all he wanted without being interrupted.

"Oh, Draco!" Ginny's voice almost knocked him sideways, and Ron immediately stood stock still as several groans floated through the wall and smacked him around the face. The expression he was wearing was somewhat the same as one that someone might have if they had been hit four times around the head with a wet trout and been told they had just been knighted as Lady Ermintrude.

"Ohhhhhhh, Draco! That's perfect, oh yes!" Ron was now breathing so fast Harry thought he would...oh, wait, he was hyperventilating. Ginny moaned again and then, suddenly, she broke down into giggles. Harry frowned.

"Hey, Harry!" she called.

"Ginny?"

"Is Ron freaking out or what?" Harry shook his head and laughed disbelievingly.

"Yes, he is. You really are a devious little cow, you know that?"

"Yep."

"Was this Malfoy's idea?"

"Draco, Harry."

"Whatever."

"And, if you're interested, he's asleep. I had to do something to amuse myself." She laughed again and Harry chanced a look at Ron. He looked furious, but Harry knew he had never been so relieved in his entire life.

"Ginny, as your darling brother, I have to tell you that I'm never going to talk to you ever again!" Ginny laughed.

"I love you too." Harry leaned his head back as his two friends shared a lively conversation about their family, Ron's no-talking pact forgotten immediately. Harry would have liked to listen to them talk, but instead he stared up at the slit in the wall that was parading as a window and watched as the sun's rays slowly crept away from the window, showing him that the sunset was rapidly approaching.

They had spent one day in the cells, dong nothing, and they were in danger of going mad. Although, Harry thought, they weren't exactly normal people when they had been thrown in here. He was just about to go back to thoughts of how to save Hermione and get them all away from the godforsaken hole that was Voldemort's home, when the door slammed open. Honestly, Harry thought, can that door only be slammed?

He was jerked out of his internal whinging, and leapt immediately to his feet, when he saw whom the Death Eater was accompanying down into the dungeon. And accompanying was a very loose term for it; it was more like hissing obscenities while the person was shoved viciously every few metres.

Harry nearly dived through the bars and killed them. Because the person being hissed at, the person being shoved about, was none other than Hermione Granger.

The man threw her into a cell on the other side of the room and clanged the door shut, locking it with a wave of his wand, and then swept his hand towards the four people in the other cells.

"Look, whore, you have your friends for company." Harry narrowed his eyes as the man slammed out of the room and tried to control his breathing as he looked over at Hermione, curling up on the floor.

"'Mione! Are you okay?"

"Define okay," she muttered. Harry leant his head against the bars of the cell and stared at her. Ron was dong the same.

"Hermione, we love you," he called over. She curled up into a smaller ball on the floor and made no noise at all.

"Why are you down here?" Draco asked. The man storming in had obviously woken him up. She uncurled a little to tell them.

"I bit a Death Eater," she murmured.

"You bit one? Go, Granger!" She nodded and curled up even tighter.

"Shut up, Malfoy," she said softly.

"But-"

"I said shut the fuck up."

"Hermione, he's-"

"Shut up!" she screamed. "Just shut the fuck up! I don't want you to fucking well talk to me!" They all drew back, shocked. Hermione rarely swore at all, three times in as many seconds was very bizarre for her, and for them.

Harry and Ron sat down, still holding the bars as they stared at her. Draco took Ginny into his arms and they sat down together, watching Hermione as she lay on the floor, clutching her arms around herself, and shivered.

*~*~*~*~*

Harry hadn't taken her eyes off Hermione since she had come into the room, and beside him Ron was leaning his head against the bars of the cell, his eyes closed. It was taking all of Harry's self-control not to scream hysterically and rip the bars away from between them with his teeth. Yes, all his self-control, his love for his teeth and a severe dislike for pain.

He still sat and stared at Hermione's tranquil form and marvelled that something so beautiful could be subjected to such horrors. He firmly believed that she should be wrapped up in cotton wool and put in a library where no harm would come to her. Then she wouldn't have to be in so much pain, he wouldn't have to see it, and neither would Ron and Ginny. He still didn't feel enough for Draco to include him in that list.

He wished suddenly that he could just go back to being bored again.

"'Mione," he whispered desperately, and yearned with all his soul that he could take her suffering away, even if it meant he would have to experience it himself.

And suddenly all he knew was pain and light, and all he could hear was his own voice crying out.

*~*~*~*~*

Ron was sitting against the bars with his head down and his eyes closed as he thought about Hermione. His thoughts were slowly driving him insane, and they were all about Hermione. He had seen her broken by someone, and it was plaguing him. At first she had refused to make a sound, even when they touched her and even when they slapped her to make her cry out. But slowly, so very slowly, they had taken her will and bent it so that she wanted nothing more than to die.

He had heard her scream and cry, and he had cried himself. That was what they had sentenced him to every time he closed his eyes and tried to stop his brain working. They had made him witness it over and over again inside his head, and hear her cries, and see her face screwed up with such anguish that he would have ripped out his heart to stop it. And he couldn't hinder the thoughts; they always flooded back when he fell into the void that used to be sleep. Only now it was his private hell. A hell that he needed, a hell that he couldn't live without, and that was why he hated them more than ever before.

Because they had taken his friend, and they hadn't even killed her, so he could mourn for her and know she was never coming back, but they had changed her, damaged her, to an irreparable point.

He sat and looked some more as she shook with something that wasn't cold and wasn't tears. And he felt wetness on his cheeks and nose and knew he was crying without thinking about it. Before he had set foot in the castle, he hadn't cried since he was eight. But since he had arrived, he had cried more than he had in the last ten years. He would give anything to turn the clock back and change everything that had happened, and he would-.

But he didn't have the chance to finish that thought because at that moment Harry started screaming and threw himself backwards onto the floor. He was clutching at his forehead and eyes and he was scaring Ron beyond belief. Ginny and Draco were shouting something that he couldn't hear over Harry's screaming, and even Hermione had turned to see what was going on.

And suddenly Ron realised that the screaming wasn't the only sound he could hear. There was a strange growling sound in the air, and the atmosphere in the cell had changed to something heavier and more distressing than ever before.

He cried out as something crashed, and then he was thrown backwards and he couldn't stop thinking that he was about to die.

*~*~*~*~*<>*~*~*~*~*

Next chapter: Everything becomes clear, and the gang finally see a little hope. But only a little because, after all, they are taking part in an angst-ridden story.

Thank yous:

Beki - Thanks for the review, it was really intense! Gave me a bit of a shock actually. Anyway, Ron will not die, because I think he's the sweetest guy in the world, but I'm not promising I won't kill anyone else. And I'm not into Harry/Ron slash, so no problems there.

Lavinia - Greedy little weasel!!! I've never heard anyone call themself that!! Well, now you have to wait again!!

Erised12 - You'll have to wait for a while to find out when Ron finds out about Harry and Hermione, it's going to come into the story a LONG way into the future.

Annie Potter - Here is Hermione, just for you. No answers yet, I know, but they'll come, I promise! And, yes, suspense rocks!!

Lil One - Here I am posting, just for lovely reviewers like you!!

Crimson Ink - Thanks, and I hope this chapter was interesting enough to keep you from reading Wood magazine, because I wouldn't subject anyone to that.

Srox4690 - Here is Hermione!!!!!!

Buttonmoon - Ah, yes, a fellow Draco fan *sighs like a completely pathetic adolescent girl* And I do know how they're going to escape, I just wrote that bit. But you'll have to wait and see!!!

Clb - I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter, and thanks for the nice things you said about the way I write. I know the Ginny/Draco love wasn't right to you, but I'll explain.

Bexchick05 - Thanks for such a positive and lovely review!! And yes, Ron/Hermione and Ginny/Draco are the two BEST ships EVER!!!!!!! And I'm glad you like the plot too.

Liz R. - No!! I love Ron, don't hit him!! He was allowed to swear at Harry, he was being a big idiot!!!

Libertygrl413 - You'll find out what happens to the girls soon, and Harry/Hermione loving will be coming up, but a loooooooooooooong way away, I'm afraid!!

Camilla - Hee bloody hee again. You cow. And I know you only do it to make a point. But thhhhhhhhppppppppppbbbbbbbbbbbb. Hmph. Yeah, that showed you.

Tamz - Another PERFECT review from an amazing reviewer!! And, no, you can't borrow Draco, he's mine. Mine, I tell you!!! *Anais calms herself down, slows breathing to normal, and restrains herself from grabbing the mallet* Thanks for all you support, and all will be revealed soon, I promise!!!

Rosalyn - Thanks for saying my fiction is addictive, that totally rocks!!! And, yes, all the Death Eaters are bastards who should die, especially the nasty Hermione- and Ginny-abusing ones.

Tigerlilly89 - The rest is coming, I promise, just give me time.

Beth Potter - A good review form a first time reviewer. I hope you got my e-mail, and that it was helpful.

Darknessinhope - The story is coming to an end when everything will be revealed!! And I'm glad Cliché is being contradictory, I like that thought. Sweet in one part, dark in the next, that's sort of what I wanted to see.

Skiman327 - Yes, the first few chapters were H/Hr, and now they are more Dr/G, but both will be featuring later!!! And I can't believe you don't like Draco/Ginny that much, they are the best ship ever!!

Okay, my last chapter was kind of traumatic, for Ginny and Draco especially. And I had one person tell me they thought that there shouldn't have been Draco/Ginny loving because of what happened to Ginny. I see what they're saying, and I think I should explain myself. Ginny and Draco have a very adult relationship, despite their age, and this is because they have been through a lot in their years. Lucius Malfoy raped Ginny and, although this was horrific for her, she had to be there for Draco and took it into her head to comfort him any way she could. She felt she had to be there for Draco after what Lucius had just done to him, and so they had sex. It might seem insensitive, but I thought that a girl with a nature like Ginny's would only want to comfort Draco after his father had just told him he was failure and a complete nonentity, and had subjected him to the Cruciatus curse.

That may seem illogical and stupid, but I liked the idea, and it is fanfiction after all, it's creative. I'm sorry if my take on it offends anyone, I never meant it to.

Thanks for all the support!

Loving you and leaving you.

Anais, Queen of the World. Xxxxxxxxx;)