Third Time's a Charm

Chapter Seven: The Ouroboros

It was a Friday, and it was Hermione's first day at the Department of Mysteries, but Draco didn't know that.

It didn't take him long to find out where she lived; she was listed in the Wizarding Directory of Cambridgeshire. Cambridgeshire, Draco remembered, was where her parents lived while she was at Hogwarts, and presumably still did. It was four thirty in the afternoon, and all the lights were out in Hermione's Muggle flat, so Draco realized that she wasn't home from work yet. He chuckled to himself as he opened the door with a soft "Alohomora."

With the light from his wand he found a sofa, and he decided that the best thing to do would be to lie there quietly and surprise her when she came in. Draco told Crabbe, who he had brought along in case Hermione proved difficult, to sit in a chair in the corner where Hermione wouldn't see him immediately. Draco almost drifted off to sleep, but rapidly came back to consciousness when he heard a key unlocking the front door.

This was it. He propped his head up on his hand. The door opened, and the lights went on.

Hermione shrieked, "Malfoy? What are you doing here? Are you out of your mind?"

"Can't I visit an old friend?" he asked.

"We are NOT friends." As she spoke she slid her wand out of her sleeve with a quick, practiced flick of the wrist and trained it on him.

"Easy, Granger," Draco said. "I've come to make you an offer."

"Or, I'll just call the Ministry and have you taken to Azkaban," Hermione said.

"Well the Floo's that way." Draco pointed to the fireplace, in front of which Vincent Crabbe was now pacing. "If you're even hooked up to the Floo Network, that is."

Hermione was still for a moment, then Draco spoke again. "I should have let Emma kill you, but I didn't and now I'm paying for it, apparently. I'll kill you now and make it nice and painful to make up for before, or...my offer is this: come with me, and join us."

She almost laughed. "Sorry, no. Death is looking ever so much--"

But before Hermione could finish, Vincent shouted, "Imperio!" and she fell silent.

"Thank you, Vincent," Draco said.

~~~

"Hermione must be convinced to join us," Voldemort said.

"I don't think she'll ever ... Why don't we just keep her under Imperious?" Blaise asked.

"Because, she will fight it off before too much longer. Quit questioning me, I have no more patience for it," Voldemort said. "Draco tells us she is more or less rational; she will come to see that what I intend to do is the best course of action. Until then, I want everyone but Draco and myself to stay away from her. She might kill you while you're not paying attention, and we can't have that, can we? Get out."

Blaise, Vincent, and Emma left the study. When Draco cast Finite Incantatum on Hermione, she did not scream. Her eyes went immediately to the half-visible cloud that was Voldemort, drawn more likely by the powerful sensation that someone was there than by what little there was to see.

"Is that...?" Hermione asked.

"Yes," Draco said.

Hermione felt for her wand.

Draco smiled, pulled it out of his sleeve, and brandished it in the air. "Nope, sorry."

Hermione took a better look at her surroundings. She was sitting in a chair pulled out from a desk in a small wood paneled room with no windows that she could see to jump out of.

"Where am I?" she finally asked, determinedly.

"Hag's Hill," Draco said. "The Chateau de Malfoi. Somewhere you can't leave; so don't try."

~~~

Hermione and Draco were in the study, sitting across from each other at the desk.

"How did you find Voldemort, Draco? I know Dumbledore tried, but we almost began to believe..." Hermione trailed off.

"This place was built to aid the Dark Arts. So that there would always be a place where they could be practiced, and so that there would always be a place where the Malfoys could grow strong enough to bring the Dark Arts to the rest of the world. That's why--you haven't seen it--there's an ouroboros built into the stone of the floor downstairs. It symbolizes magic, real magic, all of it. The dark magic is the serpent eating its tail so the rest of it can live; that part's the light magic. And it's a circle because it's a cycle that has to be carried out for magic to work. You can't have light magic without dark magic.

"My father, the first time he brought me here, told me that Lord Voldemort was the only non-Malfoy who had set foot in here for over five hundred years. So I knew he had seen the ouroboros in the floor, and I could be fairly sure he knew why it was built, as he is a dark lord and my father must've brought him here for a reason. The killings--I knew they would attract a lot of attention: the Daily Prophet, people talking. I picked Muggle-borns and Ministry puppets so Lord Voldemort would know I supported his ideas about Muggle blood weakening the magical blood. We left the ouroboros as--"

"A calling card," Hermione finished. "So he would know who had committed the attacks, and because he had been here, exactly where to find you."

"Exactly," Draco said.

"What is it you want me to do, Draco?"

"I want you to help us get a body for Voldemort."

"Why would I? I won't. And how would you expect me to do it, anyway?"

"I thought you knew better than that," Draco said. "No details until you agree to help."

She sighed. "Of course not."

~~~

Hermione sat on a stone bench inside an overgrown hedge maze. The bench was crumbling and covered in moss, and there were carved snakes twining out of the grass and around the legs of the bench that looked so real Hermione almost jumped out of her seat when she first looked down and saw them. Voldemort was outside with her, speaking directly into her mind, lecturing her.

"I understand that you believe I am 'evil.' Because you have the idea that there is good magic and there is bad magic. You misunderstand the nature of magic completely. There is only magic, and it is not a supernatural force, it is a natural force. It has a destructive side, which you call 'bad,' and a creative side, which you call 'good.' If you try to use one side and suppress the other, they both grow weaker. It is like another natural force, life and death. People, for example, are born and die. If nobody ever dies, eventually there would be so many people that there would not be enough food to feed them and space for them to live, and everyone would be miserable and unable to truly live."

"But you do want to live forever," Hermione reasoned. "So you can't really believe what you're saying."

"I, as you can see, consume no food and take up very little space."

Hermione gave a hollow laugh. "Not for long, if you have your way. Not to mention, all this about good and bad magic has nothing to do with wanting to kill Muggles."

"I do not want to 'kill Muggles.' I want Muggles to live peacefully and happily. Separated from Wizarding society. Wizards and Muggles can both live best apart from each other. Before the Ministry regulated the use of 'bad' magic, there were virtually no squib births; did you know that? I am interested in returning magic to its full power. This is the right thing to do. Magic, as I said, is a natural force, and if it continues to deteriorate the effects on wizards and Muggles alike will be war, disease, and weakness. Dumbledore taught you that magic can be and should be controlled. I am telling you that the opposite is true. Magic controls you. This belief you have, that there is 'good' and 'bad' magic, and you must only use the 'good,' you believe because your professors at Hogwarts told you so. But how do you know that what they taught you was true? They are the first of wizard-kind that you ever knew, and you were young when you were under their care, so you accepted whatever they had to say about magic. If they had told you that our ancestors really came from Mars and intermarried with the people of Earth, and that is where magical powers come from, you would have believed it. Perhaps I am right and Dumbledore is wrong; how do you know except that what I tell you makes sense?"

Hermione's thoughts were fuzzy and her head ached, as it had been almost twenty-four hours since she had slept now. "Because...you're wrong. Whatever you say, you're not good. You kill people and hurt people, and you can't explain that away no matter how you try to--"

"The 'good' wizards are not so different from me," Voldemort interrupted. "They do what they think they must, and if that means killing or hurting people, that doesn't stop them. Do not harbor any delusions about that."

Hermione thought about what happened to Gregory Goyle.

"Come, you can rest for a few hours in the study," said Voldemort.

~~~

Hermione awoke to the irritating voice of Draco Malfoy calling her name. Her bleary eyes focused on him sitting in a chair he had pulled up to the sofa where she was lying. "What, Draco?"

"You have to wake up. You have an owl."

"Couldn't it have waited?" she growled.

"It won't give the letter to anyone else, and Lord Voldemort said to wake you up anyway."

A large barn owl dropped a letter in Hermione's hands. Draco snatched it away from her, broke the seal, and read it. Hermione let him, because she realized that the only way they might let her read it is if they knew what it said first.

Hermione still refrained from saying thank you when Draco gave the letter back to her. It was from Ron, an invitation to her (and Harry) to come to a birthday party dinner at the Burrow for Ron's dad. Hermione folded the letter up and stuck it in her pocket, and wondered if she'd be able to go. If she'd still be alive on Arthur's birthday. Her thoughts were broken by a loud rumble of thunder from outside.

"Shall we go out?" said Draco. "It's too stuffy to talk in here; I'm sick of it."

"In the rain?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, it's still far away. It only sounds close."

Hermione, only because she was at her wit's end, agreed. "Fine." She shook her head. "Just, fine."

They walked the impressively large distance around the ancient castle. "Beautiful, isn't it?" Draco said, looking off at the lightening crackling across the distant sky.

"I suppose," Hermione answered as she carefully stepped over one of the many large rocks jutting out of the ground.

"Hermione," Draco said. "I wanted to warn you. Lord Voldemort's not going to give you much more time. If you don't agree to help soon, we'll kill you and we'll still work out a way to find him a body."

"I know you'll kill me, but you might not find him a body before he disappears completely. Or someone might notice I'm missing and come and find me before you have a chance to do any of that," Hermione said.

Draco laughed loudly, a real belly laugh, and Hermione knew he was laughing at her. "Believe me, no one will find you here, even if they do notice you're missing. Not a chance in hell you'll be rescued. A lot more people will die if you don't help us. Why don't you? We will find Lord Voldemort a body anyway, and I know you're not convinced it would be wrong. You're confused, though, but you should know that I'm not. I know that helping Lord Voldemort get a body is the right thing to do. And you know that I'm smart and I wouldn't tell you to do something really idiotic. That's why you should just trust me. See what I mean?"

She thought, and then she did the only thing she could think to do. "OK--I see what you mean. I can admit that, and I'll--I'll do whatever I can to help you."

A/N: There are other meanings and interpretations of the ouroboros. I only picked one for this story and shaped it a bit to fit with the idea of light and dark magic.