14Disclaimer: I wish it was mine... but it's not.
Hermione groggily opened one eye, hastily closing it again when she realized that she was definitely not in Hogwarts anymore. Contemplating trying to sink into the floor to die, she lay still and strained her ears for sounds and was rewarded.
"Now we've just got to wait for Potter to show up," a voice muttered and several others laughed.
"This is too easy," one commented.
How could she have been so stupid! Hermione fumed at herself. Why on earth would Draco have asked to meet her at the Forbidden Forest so close to curfew? Especially when it was a well-known fact, at least in the Gryffindor house, that Voldemort was back in action. And now Harry and Ron might get caught and killed. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Finding her arms tied together tightly behind her back, she didn't have a hope of finding her wand, especially since it was almost a certainty that they would have taken it. Sure enough, upon opening her eyes again, the wand was sitting on a low-set nearby coffee table that looked like it'd seen better days. In fact, the whole room, large as it was, looked rather worse for wear. The floorboards were rough and the varnish had long ago worn off. Peeling wallpaper that appeared to have had numerous bowls of chicken soup thrown at it adorned the walls and the only window in the room was boarded up thickly so that no light from the outside world could light the room. Instead, dim white light shone from a bare bulb set in the middle of the ceiling, directly above Hermione.
The voices, she realized for the first time, had fallen silent.
"I think she's awake," one whispered but was answered with only a sharp tapping noise.
Following the voice, Hermione found the source. Three black-cloaked figures sat on rickety dining chairs, the only furniture in the room apart from the table, in the corner furthest away from the door set in the west of the room.
Straining against her bindings, Hermione managed to roll over onto her stomach and from there, struggle up into a kneeling position. The three figures stared at her.
"What do you want from me?" she asked them with as much force as she could gather.
The figures began to chuckle and chatter. "We don't want anything from you, mudblood. You're just the bait and if you don't shut up, you'll be a very pained and unconscious bait."
"Harry won't fall for this, you know. He doesn't even know that I left Hogwarts."
The chuckling very suddenly stopped and the figures were deathly quiet as they stared towards the doorway. Hermione reluctantly turned to find another figure in the doorway. However, unlike the others, this figure stood tall and regal, as if he truly believed that he was a king or such.
"Ah. Miss… Grunger?" the figure asked coolly with a hint of amusement in his voice from the doorway.
"My name," she growled, "is Hermione Granger. And I would like to be returned to my school right this instant!"
"Right now," the figure responded as superiorly he strode inside, "I don't care what you would like to do, or, in fact, what your name is. You, little mudblood, are just bait."
Hit with a strong invisible force that flew from the man's wand, Hermione was knocked rather unceremoniously back to the floor.
oOo
"What are you saying, Malfoy?"
"I'm saying, Weasley, that Hermione has been kidnapped, and I think I know where she is," Draco told him desperately for the seventeenth time. He'd almost knocked them over as he left the castle and on a spur-of-the-moment decision, he'd invited them along to find their friend.
"But-"
"She went this way!" A sudden force seemed to pull Draco towards the Forbidden Forest and, when they saw the disrupted earth just behind the large oak and Weasley fell quiet, he knew that he was right. But the force didn't stop pulling him there.
oOo
"Is the portkey ready for when he arrives?" The regal figure was pacing, obviously impatient.
"Yes, Mr Malfoy, sir," one of the others replied, holding up an empty rusty metal photo frame.
"He won't come, Malfoy," Hermione spat from the sitting position she'd worked herself into some twenty minutes earlier. "He's not stupid."
"I'm growing weary of you and your comments, Mudblood," Lucius drawled. "I don't want to kill you as it may interfere with my plans but, if I have to, I will. There are plenty more students that could be bait. Like that blood-traitor, what's his name? Oh yes: Weasley. Perhaps you've heard of him?"
She only scowled in return and looked pointedly at her knees.
"I take that as a yes."
The room was silent for some ten minutes until yet another cloaked figure rushed to the doorway. "Mr Malfoy? Someone is approaching."
"Excellent! Looks like Potter gave in after all," Lucius said in his usual tone of cool confidence and slight amusement.
The figure in the doorway hurried back outside, only to return within seconds.
"Mr Malfoy? It's not Potter. It's your son."
oOo
Draco glared intently at the man standing in the doorway of the rundown house, praying to Merlin that his two reluctant companions could not be seen from their place in the bushes.
"I want to see my father. How many times do I have to tell you?" Draco said, managing to maintain a cold, emotionless exterior while on the inside he was seething.
"Your father you say?" replied the man for the third time.
"Get out of my way!"
Draco stormed past the man, into the house. It was soon evident that the inside of the place was no better than the outside with floorboards worn down to little thicker than paper over what could easily have been four hundred years and crumbling plaster on the walls, covered in some sort of yellowing wallpaper.
A muffled voice caught his attention and he hurried towards the door at the end of the corridor.
oOo
Hermione didn't know whether to laugh or cry when Draco burst into the room, his eyes resting on first the gathering of figures then on her.
"What are you doing, Father?" he demanded, strolling casually towards his father but stopping when he was next to the girl on the floor.
"Get out, Draco. This is no place for you to be right now."
"What about her?" he retorted, pointing at Hermione.
Lucius' eyes flickered to the girl hunched at his son's side but quickly resumed their hold on Draco. "She is none of your business."
"She is all of my business!"
The man lowered his hood to reveal long white blonde hair, ties back with a black ribbon. "What, my son, are you implying?"
"Let her go."
The figures, still seated in the corner, snorted in laughter while Lucius stared down the blonde teen.
"Why should I?"
Hermione struggled against her bindings in frustration. Draco noticed and pointed his wand at her arms, freeing them.
"You're not taking her, Draco. It will spoil our plans."
"I will do what I please, Lucius," his voice was ice but when he turned his eyes on her, she could only see the desperate urging for her to run.
She willingly obliged, grabbing her wand from the table and sprinting for the door only to be hit with another binding spell halfway.
Lucius turned cold eyes and wand onto his son. "Would you like to join her?"
"Expelliarmus!"
A/N: Hello! Just wanted to thank KK1999, pstibbons, easytarget80 and Hermione's BOY for reviewing! Also, I need help! Would you prefer if Harry and Ron defeated Lucius and co. or if they all get caught and served up to Voldy (don't worry, it'll turn out ok)? I'm having trouble deciding and I'd love it if you could tell me what you want to happen. Also, any other ideas you have for this story would be most gratefully accepted! Thanks again to everyone for reading and reviewing... now... review: )