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Author’s Note: I’m baa-ak! Thank you to all who have been sticking with me through this fic! Also, thank you to my betas RAfan2421, Ruaidhri, and Oblivion2000 for helping me with this chapter, which I’ve been struggling with for a while. As well, thank you to everyone for your lovely reviews and follows and favourites, both here and on FF.net! I will remain forever grateful to my readers and I sincerely hope that you enjoy this chapter!

Disclaimer: All that you recognize is not mine.



Duality: The Silent Pinch

OoO


“Sorry, Daph. I hit a grouse with it a couple weeks ago. There’s a giant hole in the radiator and it blew my engine – feathers everywhere. My mechanic couldn’t bloody believe it until I showed him,” Harry heard Astoria say through the loud phone speaker cradled between Daphne’s ear and shoulder. They had gone outside the restaurant to get some fresh air, mobile reception, and to get away from the sickening scene that a tipsy Hermione and Zabini were making while they waited for dessert.

Daphne was standing near enough to him that he could hear the entire phone call and she paused to take a giant swig from the bottle of Ferme Blanc she brought out with her. “Well there goes that plan,” she said with a sigh, inhaling deeply from the fag in her other hand.

“Have you asked Johnson?” Astoria asked. He noticed that she had this slight European accent that he couldn’t place.

Leaning against the wall, Harry cupped his hand around his cigarette as he lit it to block the wind. The cool breeze felt good against the alcohol-induced flush underneath his glamour.

“No. Johnson’s in Vladivostok for the rest of the week,” Daphne said through a long breath full of smoke. “He stays off the grid when he’s in Russia.”

“Bummer. I’d borrow you my car but I need it for work. Sorry I can’t help.”

Daphne looked over at him, frowning. “That’s alright. We’ll just have to figure out something else.”

“Good luck with that – oh, are you coming to Christmas dinner on Friday?”

Rolling her eyes, Daphne took another swig from her bottle of wine and passed it to Harry, who clutched at it before it could hit the ground. “No,” she replied simply.

“Come on, it’ll be great! You can bring your friends.”

“I’d rather not make them have to deal with our fucked up family unit, Astoria. I’ll see you tomorrow when you bring my owl, yeah?”

“Fine. Have fun with your little kidnapping.”

“Bye.” Daphne clicked the phone off and let out a drawn out sigh. “Well that’s that idea gone to shit. Have any bright ideas of where we can get a car?”

Harry shrugged and tried Daphne’s wine of choice, feeling even bolder than he was earlier in the night - before all the wine and cappuccinos and cigarettes. It gave him a euphoric uninhibited edge to his thoughts.

Smirking languidly, he said, “Maybe.”

It was only midnight – the night was still young.

oOo


They stood in front of the driveway of house number 4 on the street and Harry half expected his aunt’s horse-like face to peek through the curtains of the master bedroom at any second. Daphne had apparated them near Mrs. Figg’s a couple blocks over and they walked the rest of the way. There were a few measures of alcohol in the bottle of wine that she held at her side and he took it from her, renewing the euphoric level of his buzz. He knew that Daphne was possibly very pissed from the dazed look in her eyes – more than he was anyway – and she still managed not to splinch them when they landed.

Assessing the situation, he carefully stared at the house. There was another car in the driveway at number 4, so Marge was definitely visiting for the Christmas holiday. Damn. They had to be extremely quiet, lest they wake Ripper and everyone else in the bloody house.

“Do somnus spells work on dogs?” Harry asked, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Daphne, who had taken her wand out and looked entirely too eager to break the law.

He passed her the bottle of Ferme Blanc and she shoved it into the magically extended pocket of her trench coat.

“Works on Millicent’s cat.” Daphne’s lips pursed and she glanced over at him. “So what’s your plan? Knock out a dog – break in…?”

“Follow me,” Harry instructed, walking around to the side of the house to the faux rock that held the key that opened the back door. He had to make this look very Muggle – or possibly as if one of Dudley’s stupid friends had done it. “As soon as you hear or see a dog,” he said quietly, shoving the key into the door handle, “somnus it.”

Waving her hand absentmindedly, Daphne whispered, “Yeah yeah, this isn’t my first break-in.”

As silently as possible, Harry opened the door and snuck inside. He felt a nonverbal spell hit his shoes as soon as he set his foot down onto the tiled kitchen floor, completely muffling the sound of his footsteps.

Not her first break-in, indeed.

He could hear Ripper snoring in the lounge and directed Daphne toward it to make sure the bastard dog stayed asleep while he made his way into the foyer to search Uncle Vernon’s coat. In the dark, it was a bit hard telling the difference between his and Marge’s coats. Burrowing into the puffy polyester tent that was the coat rack, Harry ended up with two sets of keys and, for a brief second, he considered wasting time debating over whose keys were whose when he heard a clinking noise coming from the kitchen.

And the sound of the fridge opening.

What in Merlin’s name was Daphne doing?

Side-stepping noiselessly toward the kitchen door, he peeked through it to see Dudley digging through the fridge and grabbing a pot of fruit-at-the-bottom yoghurt with a spoon dangling from his mouth. Where did he come from? Surely he would have noticed if Dudley had come down the stairs.

Then he realized that he couldn’t hear Ripper snoring anymore.

Fuck.

In the light of the fridge, he watched as Daphne strode into the kitchen all fucking nonchalant and – even through the slight haze of alcohol – his seeker reflexes kicked in. Harry leapt straight onto Dudley, his forearm stifling his cousin’s protesting scream. The struggle nearly took them both down to the floor and the spell that Daphne reflexively fired off just barely whizzed past his shoulder, making a dull thud as it struck the cupboard behind him.

Confundus, from the sound of it – good, at least it wasn’t something dangerous.

“Shut up! It’s ME, you great dolt - do you want to wake up everyone in the house?” Harry furiously muttered into Dudley’s ear. Both sets of keys were still in his fists and cutting into his palms as he tried to keep a hold of his squirming cousin.

Fucking hell, he was strong.

A jet of purple light soared straight into Dudley’s chest and his eyes widened. “I don’t know who the fuck – what did you do to my voice?” Dudley furiously exclaimed, though it was muted several decibels.

“Simple volume adjustment. If you want to keep your voice box intact, I suggest you stop struggling,” Daphne threatened, her wand trained on the boy’s throat. Dudley froze immediately. “In case you forgot,” she continued, glancing over at Harry, “you’re still glamoured.”

Harry rolled his eyes. He didn’t forget.

But Dudley’s eyes got even wider. “WHAT DOES THAT MEA-”

Dropping a set of keys onto the floor, Harry put his hand over Dudley’s mouth. “Listen,” he said gruffly. His voice was still the same; the voice charm wore off ages ago and Daphne didn’t bother to redo it. “It’s just me - Harry.” His cousin’s eyes narrowed and Harry sighed exasperatedly. “You know - I lived in the cupboard under the stairs for ten years, went off to Hogwarts, saved you from the fucking Dementors - who else do you know who has magic?”

"Oh... Why do y–what are you doing here? I thought you weren’t allowed home on holidays. And who in the bloody hell is she?” He was likely speaking in a normal volume, but it sounded like a barely audible whisper thanks to whatever spell Daphne had put on him.

Merlin, what were they going to do with him?

He looked at Daphne for help and she shrugged, practically reading his thoughts as they spilled out onto his expression. Leaning against the countertop, she reached into her pocket and fished out her silver case, lighting her fag with a quick flick of her wand.

“Just call me Harry’s girlfriend, yeah?” Daphne muttered, blowing out a long breath full of smoke. He could tell that she was still rather pissed from the way she held herself. “Now, we’re not sure what to do with you. We could rid of your memory that we were ever here and you’ll wake up with a nasty headache and be none the wiser. However, I think that – if you’re good – you’ll never breathe a word of anything that transpired here. If you do say something though, I’ll make sure to magic your bollocks off and keep them in a jar to use as a paperweight. Got it?”

Dudley glanced up at him warily out of the corner of his eye. “You’d let her do that to me?”

“If you say anything about this, I’ll let her do worse to you. She knows where you live. She knows where you go to school. And I will tell her where you hang out with your stupid little friends so you won’t be able to get away from her,” Harry threatened without preamble. Merlin, it felt so good. “If anyone asks about tonight – you didn’t hear anything and you didn’t see anything.”

Dudley nodded slowly, his eyes as wide as dinner plates. “I didn’t hear anything or see anything.”

“Good,” Harry said sternly, letting his cousin free from his grip and picking up the set of keys he dropped. “She’ll be performing a ward on you that’ll alert us if you speak of anything about this. We’ll know if you do.”

With a wave of her wand and a brief flash of light, Daphne muttered some spell that made Harry think she was actually casting a ward that would do what he said, but that threat was all for show. Dudley wasn’t going to talk – any threat with magic would solidify that. She really didn’t have to ward him.

Better to be safe, he supposed.

Harry silently shut the back door behind him and he heard Daphne end the volume control spell on Dudley’s voice with a quick ‘finite’ through the kitchen window as they passed it. Following him to Uncle Vernon’s BMW, she got into the passenger seat and stopped him just before he put the key into the ignition. “Just turn the key a little bit, but don’t turn it on – slide it into neutral. We can push the car out of the driveway and down the road without alerting anyone,” she whispered, flicking the ashes off her fag out the open car door. “Then we can start it.”

Harry’s brows furrowed. “Have you done this before?”

“Of course.” Daphne smirked. “I used to help Astoria sneak out of the house all the time.”

Once they were half way down Privet Drive, Harry started the car and took off, shutting his door and putting his seatbelt on one-handed. He breathed a sigh of relief that Uncle Vernon pressed Grunnings for an automatic due to some sort of golf-related ‘stress injury’. He didn’t know how the hell he’d deal with a manual gear shift, given his lack of driving experience.

Once they were settled and headed toward the motorway, Daphne passed him a lit cigarette, which he accepted. “So,” he said slowly, taking a long drag. “Girlfriend, huh?”

“Why not,” Daphne stated casually, shrugging and blowing smoke out the car window.

Why not? That was a good question.

“Well, I still haven’t forgiven you.”

“We’re in Muggle world with a captured Draco Malfoy and we just coerced your cousin and committed Grand Theft Auto together. You’re unlicensed – we’re pissed. Oh, and-” she dug into her pocket, pulling out the Ferme Blanc that still had a bit of warm wine left in it, “here’s an open bottle of alcohol in a moving vehicle.” She downed the rest of it. “You should definitely forgive me.”

Harry let out a breathy laugh. “Breaking laws with you doesn’t make up for everything you’ve left me out of.”

“Everything I’ve left you out of was just more law-breaking,” Daphne replied, setting the bottle of wine in the centre counsel.

“Sure, there’s that. Then there’s the information about Malfoy and you, and…” Harry shook his head and flicked the ashes off his fag out the window. “Many things, really. I mean… I want to. I’d love to be in an actual relationship with you-”

“But?” Daphne asked expectantly, continuing his sentence.

“I know very little about you.” He inhaled a breath full of smoke, letting it settle in his lungs. “Yet, somehow, you know so much about me.”

“I’m not all that interesting, Harry,” Daphne said and he watched her smirk from the corner of his eye. “Just your typical Slytherin doing typical Slytherin-y things.”

“I somehow doubt that kidnapping a fellow Slytherin to help a Gryffindor constitutes as ‘typical Slytherin-y things’,” Harry muttered, shaking his head. He took a drag from his cigarette and flicked the ashes out the window. “Tell me something about you that I don’t know.”

“Like what?”

“Anything.”

“I like breaking laws with you and mussing you up a bit,” Daphne said. “It’s fun.”

“Yeah, it is,” he had to admit. “But I was looking for something more personal.”

“Well… if you’re so hard pressed on getting to know my deepest darkest secrets. What is it that you want to know?” she drawled, leaning back in her seat and tugging at her seatbelt.

His mind blanked and he carefully focused on merging onto the motorway while he tried to think of what he wanted to ask. There were so many questions swirling in his mind – too many – and to think that he may not get another chance at this. Perhaps the next time she decides to down a quarter bottle of Montrachet and most of the Ferme Blanc?

Could this be considered taking advantage of her in her inebriated state?

She wasn’t that pissed if she could apparate them from London to Surrey without splinching them and that was a while ago so it had to be wearing off, right?

Fuck it.

Steeling his nerves, he said, “Okay. What exactly went on between you and Malfoy before I came into the picture?”

“Oh, that. We fucked,” she said boldly. “There’s not much else to it except mental illness and bigotry.”

“Right,” Harry muttered doubtfully. “Would it kill you to be a bit more open?”

“It’s not like I ask about your relationship with Cho Chang,” Daphne retorted, taking a drag off her cigarette. “Or any other girls you’ve been with.”

“There’s only been you and Cho – and you and Malfoy obviously had a lot more going on than Cho and I ever did. What with the blood ritual kink or whatever that was.”

“Some things are very hard truths, Harry,” she said, sucking down her fag and blowing her smoke out the window.

His expression softened and he glanced over at her. “I can handle it.”

“Promise not to murder Malfoy?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I promise not to murder Malfoy.”

“Alright.” He heard Daphne let out a long breath, a thin cloud of smoke trailing out her lips. “I coerced Draco into bed because I was an idiot.” Daphne sighed again, continuing in controlled and nearly detached tone, “We’ve always hated each other, but – you know – attraction is stupid. And he’s always hated that I was able to get one up on him and take advantage of him so he made it his sick twisted goal to try and conquer me because that’s my place. How dare a half-blood best a pureblood over and over, especially one who grew up in the Muggle world. I’m practically a mudblood,” she said, her accent mimicking Malfoy’s perfectly for a brief moment. “End of story.”

“Yeah… that’s – mental,” Harry said, glancing over at her. “What did he do to you?”

“Oh, everything in the book. Typical domination and control tactics – with and without magic. He even tried out sex magic and forced me to drink a pint of his blood.” She paused, burning down the rest of her cigarette. “But the spell doesn’t stick if you vomit it all back up. Small mercy that he’s an arrogant twat.”

Harry’s jaw clenched and he gripped the steering wheel. “I’ll kill him.”

To his surprise, Daphne laughed. “You promised – don’t be such a Gryffindor. What we’re doing to him now is much better than killing him anyway.”

Harry let out short, angry breath through his flared nostrils. “We should try every trick in the book on him. Maybe even force him to drink a pint of blood and see how he likes it.”

At least he wouldn’t feel too bad about accidentally cutting too deep into Malfoy’s throat now.

“That’s not the worst he’s done,” Daphne said, rolling her eyes. “And, quite frankly, I’m not willing to tell you any more if you’re going to react like a hotheaded bastard. You can’t kill Draco Malfoy, even if you want to. That’s not smart. You just have to bide your time, like I have, and strike at the opportune moment – as I have. And now he’s helpless, alone, afraid, and miserable. It’s fantastic.”

Harry didn’t want to think of what more the sick bastard could have done to her that was worse than forcing her into a blood ritual. But… he had to ask. “What did he do to you in the Room of Requirement when you followed him?”

“Oh, that was nothing. He just attacked me – thought I was you because I had Theo’s cloak. So we fought and he tried being all git-like till I kneed him in the bollocks and broke three of his ribs.”

“Wow.” Harry’s brows rose as he exhaled a breath full of smoke. “That’s how you hurt your shoulder?”

“Well, he is stronger than me so it took a little maneuvering,” Daphne said with a shrug, pulling out her silver case and lighting up again. “Ended up injuring my shoulder in the process. Not a big deal.”

Harry didn’t know what else to say about it. It was all very… strange.

“Look,” Daphne said suddenly, breaking through his reverie. “Draco and I had a really fucked up relationship – very abusive. You can kind of leave it at that because, while I’m with you, I’d rather not think about all the bad stuff that’s in the past. We’re onto revenge now. And it’s going well – it’s beneficial for both of us.”

It made so much more sense why she was so cooperative. It wasn’t altruistic in the least. They were gleaning information for Harry’s cause in a way which satisfied Daphne’s thirst for revenge at the same time.

Well, if there was one thing he was clear about, he had to admit that she definitely knew how to capitalize on a situation. Draco Malfoy giving Katie Bell that necklace was the perfect catalyst, but to think that that had led to all of this…

Slytherins were fucking mental. And he could barely wrap his mind around just how mental they actually were.

oOo

“This is the car you were picking up? I thought Daphne said it was an Austin Princess,” Hermione questioned, staring perplexedly through the newspaper covered window at the BMW that was parked in front of the warehouse. It was within the boundaries of the ward, which made it invisible to anyone that wasn’t allowed to enter them.

“Err-” Harry shifted on his feet and set both sets of keys that he stole on the table in the middle of the control room. “Actually, Daphne’s cousin said that the Princess died, so we stole Uncle Vernon’s car.”

“Harry!” Hermione admonished, whacking him over the back with her stack of papers on warding and Merlin knows what.

“Ow!” Harry winced, rubbing his shoulder. “Jesus, Hermione.”

“You know he’s going to report that car as stolen as soon as he finds out its gone! And we can’t have the police looking out for it when we’re kidnapping Goyle! Honestly!” She threw her hands up exasperatedly.

“It’s fine! Don’t worry – Daphne has it covered. She went to find the same model to switch the license plates with. It’ll work out. We’ll have it back to Uncle Vernon after the job’s done.”

He wasn’t all that concerned. It seemed simple enough and it wasn’t that big of an issue to ‘borrow’ Uncle Vernon’s car for a bit. Granted, he accidentally forgot to leave Marge’s keys behind, which was an honest mistake. He was far more concerned with getting out of Surrey unnoticed at the time.

But deep down inside, he sincerely thought that the Dursley’s deserved this.

Daphne probably didn’t take the somnus spell off the dog as well.

What a shame.

oOo


It wasn’t until Daphne came bustling through the door, chatting loudly with who he assumed to be Astoria in the corridor, that Harry realized it was morning and he had been up for over twenty-four hours. He had just finished his brief – slightly angered – chat with Malfoy about every Death Eater the Slytherin boy knew of and was currently copying the list that Nott recorded on the giant blackboard. He’d have to consult Mr. Weasley, and hopefully Tonks, about some of the names he didn’t recognize whenever they were going to go back to their normal lives. Hopefully one of them was the MLE mole. If not… maybe Goyle would know some more names once they got a hold of him.

Doubtful, but maybe.

A large tawny owl flew past his head, perching on top of a pile of books, and Daphne followed with her cousin in tow. Astoria wasn’t at all what he expected from the little information he knew of her. He thought that she would be a lot older, considering that she had twin toddlers at home, but she wasn’t too much older than them. Maybe twenty-five at the most. And she was intimidatingly pretty. Statuesque with dark eyes and bleach-blonde hair, which suddenly made him think of the memory of Ron trying to ask out Fleur Delacour in fourth year.

“When you said dress for tropical, I thought you were kidding,” Astoria said, taking off her jacket. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, offered one to Daphne, and lit up before throwing the jacket over the back of the chair where Daphne usually sat. She was clad in tight jeans and an equally tight t-shirt.

Yeah, if Ron were here, he’d definitely have a go at flirting with her.

“We had a problem with the climate control spell and haven’t been able to undo it,” Daphne explained, turning her attention to the room. “I suppose we should get started. This is Hermione Granger, our bookworm and spell expert; Harry Potter, our interrogator; Theo Nott, our tactician and interrogation expert – and, well, you know Blaise,” Daphne introduced, gesturing to everyone casually. “I’m just going to give her a quick tour of the place so she knows what she’s working with.”

“Nice to meet you all,” Astoria said vaguely, eyeing the scrying mirrors on the wall with interest. There was a murmured typical response from all of them and Harry sat his list down on the table.

Nott stood from his seat to grab a drink from the mini fridge. “So what kind of experience do you have in interrogation?” he questioned, eyeing her carefully over the rim of his reading glasses.

Daphne rolled her eyes and Astoria’s brow arched. “A little. It depends on what you mean by experience,” she drawled, her lips quirking.

“Really,” Nott responded in the same drawling manner, twisting open the cap on his bottle of coke. “I thought Daphne said you worked with explosives for a living.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed toward Nott. What was he playing at?

“I do.”

“Where do you get interrogation experience from that?”

“I was captured by a terrorist group and interrogated when I was stationed in Bosnia. That’s where I met my ex-fiancé – the interrogator,” Astoria answered blankly. “May God rest his soul in hell.” She took a drag off her cigarette and flicked her ashes into the ashtray on the table.

“Alright then,” Daphne said, forcing a wide grin and interrupting Nott before he could ask any more questions, “the tour!”

Nott glared at her but she ignored him. “This is the control room, where we do most of our work. The whole place outside of Draco’s room is spelled properly and the baby monitor is one-way so you don’t have to worry about him overhearing anything. You could scream bloody murder and he’d be none the wiser.”

“Are you sure? Your walls seem pretty thin…” Astoria commented as Daphne ushered her out the door. Whatever Daphne’s answer was, it was muffled.

“Don’t be fooled by her pretty face, Theo,” Zabini said after they left. “She’ll fuck you up. Where do you think Daph gets it from?”

“Oh, she fucked you up, did she?” Nott retorted, taking his seat across from Harry.

Zabini’s lips formed a straight, unamused, line. “No.”

“I think she did,” Nott whispered loudly to Harry before taking a sip of his drink. “He wouldn’t be so bitter about it if she didn’t.”

Harry bit the inside of his cheek to keep from snorting in amusement at the contemptuous look on Zabini’s face.

“What did you do to her? Turn on your Zabini charm and try to wet her knickers?” Nott continued bantering. He must’ve gotten into the leftover wine.

“It was a much better approach than yours,” Zabini snarked.

“You two,” Hermione scolded before they could continue any further, shaking her head. “She’s right in the next room – the least you could do is be respectful to our guest.”

“How was I being disrespectful?” Zabini asked, turning toward her with his eyebrows raised.

Giving him a stern look that clearly told him he was very mistaken, Hermione went back to the book on automotive spells in her lap, moving Crookshank’s paw in order to turn the page.


OoO


The preparations were complete. Everyone had downed their shots of pepper up potion and gone over the plans of the Goyle estate until they had it etched into the backs of their minds. They had just sent Zabini to the estate to check on the area and make sure it was okay for them to go through with the whole ordeal.

All of this build up and waiting around was making Harry increasingly nervous. Even Daphne seemed more nervous than usual, but she didn’t show it outwardly. He could tell from the way she burned through the fags alone. Hermione, on the other hand, had a different way of dealing with her nerves – by triple-checking everything. She made him drive Uncle Vernon’s BMW around the warehouse a few times to make sure the motor was sufficiently silent. Then, when he was done, she applied about fifty more silencing spells to various parts of the car. He was certain that the bloody thing wouldn’t make a damn sound even if you deliberately tried to make it make noise.

“I don’t think we need to silence the keys, Hermione,” Harry said seriously, staring at her with his eyebrows raised as she poked her wand around the ignition.

Doing it anyway, she shrugged. “You never know.” She crawled out of the driver’s side and went over her list under her breath as she paced around the car. He could just barely hear her. “…everyone’s boots are done, clothes are silenced, the car’s done, back seat’s enlarged, everyone’s glamoured… Astoria’s watching Malfoy, the warding spells-”

Daphne was sitting on the bonnet of the car, burning down another cigarette. “Oh, come off it, Granger. Everything is ready; we just have to wait for Blaise to get back.”

As if on cue, Zabini came walking out of the warehouse with Nott declaring, “We’re set to go!”

They all piled into the slightly expanded and altered BMW – equipped with new license plates – and shut their doors, which made absolutely no noise. Not even the leather seats made noise as they slid across them. Harry turned the keys in the ignition and, due to the lack of sound, he had a hard time determining if the car was actually on before he shifted it into drive and took off.

“Is it okay if I turn on the radio, or did Granger silence that as well?” Daphne quipped, testing the knobs in the centre of the dashboard and rolling down her car window to get rid of her cigarette smoke.


OoO

“Could you pull up along-side the wards here?” Hermione asked as they approached the Goyle estate. Daphne quickly turned the radio off and Hermione rolled down her window, which also happened to make absolutely no sound what-so-ever.

Through her open window, Hermione flicked her wand, tugging back a thin, nearly-invisible membrane that started to glow as it moved closer to the tip of her wand. Watching her work with it was strange. It was almost as if she was playing with it – studying it; she kept squishing it between her wand and her hand, kneading it and twirling it with the tip, until – suddenly – a hole opened up in the ward, big enough for the car to fit through.

“First line of defense breached,” Harry heard Nott say softly from the back seat, almost as if he was checking off a list.

“We still have the internal wards to get through,” Zabini muttered in response as Harry drove closer toward the gate. These wards were much different than the ones that Hermione punched through. For one, they were visible and, two, they looked rather menacing. The magic they contained crackled with energy, surrounding the entire perimeter of the Goyle estate. It reminded Harry of a tesla coil, firing off electricity.

For these wards, both Zabini and Hermione silently vacated the car and approached the gate. It was so quiet, only the sound of their breathing penetrated the air.

Surprisingly, Hermione didn’t think of silencing that as well.

“Oh, they’re good,” Daphne whispered, vanishing her fag with a wave of her wand and not taking her eyes off of the two as they started cutting a chunk from the wards over the back gate.

According to Hermione, getting through wards was a lot like performing surgery. You could cut bits off of it and the wards stayed intact while allowing them to get through (the Muggle way, anyway – anti-apparation and anti-broom wards were apparently impossible), but you had to know what parts of the wards to cut. Cut the wrong bit and the wards would break or sound the alarm, alerting everyone, and all hell would break loose.

As soon as Zabini and Hermione got back into the BMW, Harry held his breath and pressed down on the gas pedal. The wrought iron gate looked tall and imposing as they drove through it and Harry’s heart rate sped up. All he could see around him were vast fields of venomous tantacula, which occasionally snapped at the car as they passed by.

“Just keep driving straight. You can’t possibly miss the house,” Nott directed, calm as bloody ever.

Meanwhile, the butterflies in Harry’s stomach were doing some sort of rain dance.

The grass under the wheels of the car crunched under its weight and, out of his peripheral vision, he saw Daphne hang herself out the window – likely to transfigure the wheel tracks as they drove along, just like they planned.

The Goyle estate was a short drive to get to, but Nott was right about not being able to miss it. The blasted thing was absolutely gargantuan. The enormous Roman-style columns in front gave way to more Gothic architecture, with gargoyles curving around every corner and hiding in every niche of the dark stone archways and pointed windows. There were only a few lights on in the house, sparsely spread out – possibly making it easier for them to find Goyle.

As he parked in front of the estate, Harry stayed put inside the heavily warded and silent car while the four of them got on the move. They worked like a well-oiled machine, spreading out and entering the house swiftly. The first light on the ground floor of the estate went out and Harry could see wand light bouncing off the curtains in the window.

It was like that for every light, one by one; they went off like clockwork. Anxiously tapping his silenced foot, Harry watched and waited, wanting to move or do something – anything. They were in there for a long time and he swore he saw spells shoot across the windows every so often.

Then, what sounded like a pack of dogs started barking and that was almost enough to make Harry exit the car and want to investigate. His fingers paused on the door handle and he stopped himself just as he heard a yelp.

And then silence.

Pulling out his red case, he lit a cigarette with Daphne’s gold lighter, inhaling deeply

He kept reminding himself that they had to cover their tracks and remove every trace they could without setting off the wards. That was probably what was taking so long.

Yeah… that had to be it.

After all, they only had to stun Goyle and get out of there. They knew the layout of the house very well so they would know where Goyle was likely to be.

But, maybe Goyle wasn’t an easy target? What about his parents? Did he have any siblings? He obviously had dogs… that, they didn’t know about beforehand.

His cigarette burned down to the filter and he lit another, not daring to blink as he watched the house. There were only a few more flashes of red and yellow light in the windows – that was good. Nothing green… yet. Definitely a good sign.

He was nearly halfway through his second fag when the four of them came bursting through the front entrance, a large body suspended in the air above Nott, Zabini, and Hermione while Daphne limped behind them. She had her wand trained downward and was shooting spells at the ground.

Springing into action, Harry bustled around inside the car, opening all of the doors with his fag dangling from his lips

“Drive,” Daphne ordered through gritted teeth as soon as the last door was shut and she maneuvered herself back out the window to continue transfiguring their tracks.

There was blood running down her trouser leg, soaking through the fabric, but Harry stomped on the gas pedal and took off down the dirt road that led to their exit.

Everyone in the car was panting, out of breath. He could vaguely hear Goyle snoring, so they obviously got him down with a somnus spell of some sort. Daphne’s blood was starting to spread to the seat, dripping onto the pristine beige leather.

When they got to the gate, Zabini exited the car to reopen the wards that must have closed after they drove through. He made a new parting that was barely enough to fit the car into and it took a bit of maneuvering but, once they were out, they were basically free.

Zabini ran after them and Harry stopped long enough for him to hop back into the BMW. He had just gotten the door shut as they made it through the outer perimeter, which Hermione closed with a wave of her wand behind her.

Taking a drag off his cigarette, Harry coughed and stubbed it out quickly, wincing at the taste of burnt filter. “So… how did it go?” he asked carefully, glancing at the backseat through the rearview mirror. Goyle was bound and nestled between Zabini and Nott, fast asleep.

“Pretty well,” Nott spoke. “Until Daphne ran into the dogs – that woke Goyle’s father up and… which of you took him out? I didn’t see.”

“I did,” Zabini answered gruffly. “Slicing hex to the neck – I didn’t bother to check if he was still breathing.”

Daphne snorted. “He wasn’t when I passed him.”

“Nice one,” Nott commented.

“Yeah…” Harry heard Hermione mutter. “He got me with a spell, though. I’ll have to look it up when we get back. Good job you were there, Blaise; he popped out of nowhere. I didn’t expect…”

“You’ll be fine. Whatever he hit you with wasn’t Dark,” Zabini assured. “I checked while you were breaching Goyle’s door.”

“Well it’s a good job you bastards left me to deal with the bloody dogs,” Daphne sardonically intoned around her freshly-lit cigarette. “I had to stun all fucking seven of them.” She pulled up her trouser leg with an inaudible hiss.

“The important thing,” Nott rejoined, “is that we got Goyle out of there. If he knows anything about the plan to seize Hogwarts for the Dark Lord, it’ll make all of this worth it.”

Out of Harry’s peripheral vision, he watched Daphne make a face at the large gaping bite in her leg.

“Tell that to my bloody thigh. I think I might need stitches.”

OoO

Author’s Note: Thank you for reading and please review!