My Life As A House-Elf

My Life As A House-Elf

Chapter Fourteen - The Calm, the Storm

* * * *

The firelight blazed ceremoniously unto the tall, silhouetted figure, as he stood leaning against the carved mantelpiece of the roaring fireplace. Outside, there were stars dotting the sky in glittering, random patterns, but no moon accompanied them, and the forests surrounding the Manor whispered in shadowed, powdery starlight.

Draco had his eyes closed, and the room was deathly silent. Occasionally his eagle owl - a regal-looking bird named Majestic - ruffled its feathers and gave a distracted cheep, but besides these, the only sounds filling the deafening silence were the mutterings of the forlorn fire.

But throughout Draco's turbulent mind, he heard echoing shouts, earth-shattering whispers, tormenting murmurs, ringing sobs.

"He's all alone in this huge, cold Manor ... I wish I could help him some way ..."

Draco swallowed hard; shut his eyes even tighter, willing himself not to feel the two slender trails falling softly across his cheeks, as if the blizzard within his eyes was finally thawing. "Damn her," he muttered. "Damn her, damn her, damn her."

He'd angered her before. He witnessed with satisfaction her fiery retorts and her flushed cheeks, and the offended blaze in her eyes when he uttered the name, 'Mudblood.' His cheek still stung with the remnants of a harsh, fury-driven slap. He'd taken delight in her infuriated actions, enjoying the flaring outbursts of hate in her eyes, the furious head-tosses, and the spitting comments that countered his own.

But he never felt guilt before.

Majestic was suddenly agitated. Almost in an instant, the silence of the room was shattered by ear-splitting shrieks.

Draco watched in faint irritation at the alarmed owl, almost falling over itself, tumbling from the carved golden perch in frenzy. "Shut up, you pathetic bird!" Draco snarled, throwing a shred of firewood at the owl. "What's wrong with you?"

Majestic threw its master one confused, doomed look, before gently flapping over to the barred window. It tapped frantically at the thick glass. It seemed to want to get away, and quickly.

"Oh fine," Draco snapped, striding towards the bolted window, and throwing it open with an Unlocking Charm. "Leave me. I won't care."

Majestic hopped gratefully onto the window ledge, and almost immediately launched itself onto the warm night air, and into the moonless night. Draco watched as his owl fled away till it was nothing but a dot in the cobalt horizon. He re-cast the Binding Hex around the window and drew the blinds, wondering what could have alarmed his owl so much.

Majestic, meanwhile, was relieved to have finally fled from that cold tower ... just an instant before, he sensed a peculiar, sinister spectre threading its way into the Manor, its presence like a faint scent of oncoming shadow. Majestic didn't want to be anywhere near the Manor when it chose to arrive.

* * * *

It was a moonless night. A tiny figure dressed in partly-wet rags stood at the doorway of Malfoy Manor, staring out in silent disbelief at the dark, unlighted sky.

Hermione cursed, then threw numerously objects around in a brief spell of despair, but stared bleakly out into the cloudy, cyan heavens still stained with lingering traces of evening storm. There wasn't a single trace of moon in the sky, and the stars seemed to glimmer in subtle confusion, as if they were missing something very important. Hermione sighed unhappily, twisted her fingers into the scarf in her hands, and wondered.

Her original plan involved stealing numerous items from the Manor - which included a dress, and a wand (Pansy could afford replacements) - then running barefoot across the elegant countryside towards the nearest town for help. This included any sort if help. An owl to deliver a letter, a pinch of Floo Powder, a kind person to give her a ride to the Leaky Cauldron.

From there, her elaborate plan came to a dead still.

Hermione still held Pansy's stolen wand in hand, and Draco's scarf in the other, breathing out in a slow, tired sigh. How am I going to get home? she thought morosely, glancing out at the moonless sky, then at her mottled green hands.

She still worried about Draco.

A sharp pang pierced her heart when she thought of him again, biting deep and tender, to be replaced by a frosty bitterness. He released me, she thought, it was his own fault and his own desperate stubbornness that he never listened to me. Biting her lip, she wondered if she truly believed this. She felt oddly cold, though the night was warm.

Suddenly she heard footsteps behind her. What looked like to be an unstoppable blizzard of beige ruffles and silver sequins turned out to Pansy Parkinson, who looked exceptionally furious. She crossed the Great Hall like a hurricane.

"You!" she shrieked, descending upon Hermione in a truly awesome spectacle of cream-coloured poufs. She jabbed a finger at Hermione. "You took my wand! You took my robes! You stole them from me! Explain, you wretched little elf, before I skewer you with my nails!"

Hermione shivered at the imagery of the threat. She thought fast. "Um. I'm taking them away," she said in a rush, "for cleaning."

There was a thick, significant pause. Pansy furrowed her eyebrows, muttering something under her breath. Supposing Pansy had believed her, Hermione said, "Excuse me, Ma'am," and tentatively made her way pass the pink-robed figure.

The collar of her pillow-case garment was suddenly seized. "I never asked them to be cleaned," Pansy said, in a very sinister, very icy tone of voice, clutching Hermione's robe in an iron grip. "And all the House-elves address me as Mistress, or Miss Parkinson." Her lips formed a thin, dangerous smile, almost Snape-like in its cold menace. "Who are you?" she demanded. "What do you want here? Who sent you?"

The white marble floors, the night time dark and the brilliant chandelier light seemed to melt away and shift slightly around Hermione, spiralling away into unfocused pallor. By this time tomorrow, the boy will be dead ... like a burn, the threat was clearly impressed in her mind. Hermione's thoughts raced, seeming to hover between dread and sickening fear, between hope and spiralling courage.

She thought of finally going home, finally being free of this cold and empty Manor, never having to run across hallways, fetching petty items, or drag horrendous items from chimneys.

She also thought of moonlit nights, whispering candles, and sighing starlight. She thought of midnight debates and brooding firelight, darkness and stormy grey skies. With a sad smile, Hermione said, "I'm not going home. Not just yet. I'm still needed here."

She snapped her fingers. And vanished.

Realizing she was now keeping a firm hold of nothing but of thin air, Pansy frowned. She heard distant, light footsteps bound upwards. Then regaining her composure, she flounced after in an avenging, fawn-coloured blur, calling out in a battle cry, "Give that wand back this instant!"

* * * *

Draco Malfoy shifted slowly in bed, already asleep. He dreamt of milky-white starry skies scattered with piercing black stars, he dreamt of music boxes and empty ballrooms. While he transcended from one dream to another, he could still curiously hear Hermione's voice, echoing brilliantly throughout the realms of sleep.

"If you refuse to listen to my words," he heard her say, while he walked across candle-lit space, " then at the very moment before you step onto the brink of oblivion, know this: During the moonlit nights when the candles whispered and the starlight sighed, my heart was yours, and always will be."

Draco breathed in, and could almost smell the perfume of her hair. He reached out to catch hold of her hands, but the candles whined softly as if they had been caught in the rain, and they extinguished gently, leaving Draco caught in an overwhelming pool of dark.

He tried to breathe. Couldn't. He tried to wake up, shake off the watery dreams, tried to draw in a breath, but his chest ached with the effort.

He opened his eyes.

And screamed.

* * * *

Outside, a dark carriage the colour of night stopped beside the oaken doors of Malfoy Manor. The horses whinnied in anxiety as soon as they approached the Manor, as if they sensed something the passengers could not, stamping the dusty ground in desperation to get away. The driver desperately tried to calm them, apologising profusely to his master and mistress inside.

A tall, sable-cloaked figure stepped out of the carriage. His robes billowed behind him like great, black wings; his grey eyes scanned the area like a hawk's.

"Quickly, Lucius!" a voice called from the curtained depths of the carriage. Narcissa Malfoy wrenched the necklace from her neck with spectacular force, and handed it anxiously to Lucius. "Here, take it, and be quick! I can hear it - it's already in the Manor -"

Lucius Malfoy strode into the glimmering hallway, his heavy footsteps nearly causing the hallway to shudder in echo. He surveyed the Great Hall with a sharp, piercing scepticism, searching for ornaments out of place, bits of finery missing, or a blazing, fiery a trail of carnage and disorder.

When he saw the spotless marble and the suits of armour still lined in their orderly, methodical stances, he became extremely worried. A House-elf timidly stepped forward to take the Master's cloak, but Lucius simply regarded him indifferently.

"It's started already, hasn't it?" he asked softly, with gravity. And, without another word, he strode towards the marble steps and ascended quickly, drawing his wand as he went.

* * * *

Draco grappled with the shadows, sparred powerlessly against the dark. He couldn't breathe, he was blind, the silence was deafening in his ears. He was engulfed in terror. Nothing was worse than this, fighting against an invisible, silent enemy. He felt as if his eyes, his throat, his mouth were filled with black, wet clay, suffocating him - blinding him -

Desperately, he reached underneath his pillow for his wand, tangling his fingers in the sheets in search of it. It wasn't there ... his hand reached out and grasped nothing.

He felt his chest being crushed, his lungs crumple underneath the weight of suffocation, his body growing colder, colder, as he slipped towards unconsciousness. His throat screamed for a breath of air, but what was left of his voice instead cried out, in volume that nearly shook the Tower apart -

"Hermione Granger, help me!"

That was when everything that could possibly happen, happened all at once.

* * * *

Beneath, the doors leading towards the Tower Room flew open at the sound of Draco's voice.

Hermione Granger and Pansy Parkinson rounded into the hallway leading towards the doors, and, seeing the them fly open as if being torn by a massive, invisible force, they surged forward. Hermione was first to reached the doorway. She brushed past all the defensive spells woven about the doorway as if they were cobwebs, and ascended the stairs with an unearthly speed.

Pansy, meanwhile, crashed unceremoniously into the shield of hexes, and was blown back with a force that knocked the air from her lungs. She stared in breathless outrage at the advancing form of the House-elf before her, carrying her wand.

"Oh perfect," she managed to gasp, "How magnificent. Go, then ..." She leaned back gracefully and dropped in a dead faint, the effects of the Dizziness Hex taking over.

Hermione climbed the stairs with staggering agility. The clamber seemed to take forever; each step took and eternity to climb, each second stretched farther than Hermione could understand. A burning flame had taken residence where her fear should have been, and it consumed her heart in blazing curiosity ...

Later, Hermione would recall that climb on those stairs. She would say, fondly, how in those desperate moments, she had felt nothing but strength - windmill winds where gravity should have been. She thought of no one else but Draco. Her resentment had melted away, her anger broken off like a husky shell ... like a phoenix rising from her ashes, she thought, discarding the embers of her previous life. Like a phoenix.

The stairs ended in a staggering stop. The room was encased in billowing clouds of darkness, and the air was frozen in a remarkable chill. The fireplace harboured nothing but shadow and cold, black darkness, and the candles perched upon the walls stood unlit.

Hermione glanced through the darkness, towards the bed. The canopy curtains were billowing back in the frost-bitten wind, the window nearby had been broken - shards of glass lay scattered across the carpet. From the bed, two shadows sparred, fought in deep blackness, and the greater shadow - what seemed to be a frightening, thick sheet of the deepest night, with wings spread like ribbons of black flame - overpowered the smaller of the two.

Draco gave a strangled cry.

Hermione closed her eyes in desperation. Happy memories, she summoned. Happy memories ... Gryffindor winning the House Cup. Scoring perfect marks in Transfiguration. Reaching the top of the class in Arithmancy. Spending the night at the Burrow, with Ron and Ginny and Harry.

She thought of sunlit gardens, moonlit nights, a pair of cloud-grey eyes staring into hers. She breathed in; opening her eyes with a determined spark, and knew.

"Expecto Patronum!"

A silver light shot from Hermione's wand.

* * * *