Hey, guys. An update! At long last. Sorry for making you wait so long. As always, a massive air kiss to Catherine Morgenstern for editing this chapter and teaching me more about grammar and the intricacies of the Oxford comma. FYI, I've decided to omit it from my writing. Without further ado...enjoy!

They waited for an hour. An endless hour in which Hermione almost drove herself mad with worry. The others had ceased to glare at her as she paced up and down, instead sitting in a loose group at the table and ignoring her growing panic. There were a thousand things that could go wrong and no matter how much she racked her brain, she couldn't come up with a solution to ease the ever growing sense of danger she felt.

Twippy had appeared several times to speak to Lucius and that had increased Hermione's suspicion that he had planned something without her knowledge. But whenever she tried to creep near enough to hear their conversation, the hiss of a muffling charm filled her ears with static buzz. After several attempts she'd given up trying to eavesdrop and returned to her worrying. Her boots scraped the floor as she turned and, distracted by the unfurling list of protection spells inside her head, she didn't notice the Death Eaters push to their feet in unison.

"It's time."

Lucius' careless voice sliced through the silence. His words caused Hermione to freeze in momentary fear before a surge of adrenalin crashed into her heart. She pressed a palm to her breastbone, appalled by the rapid thud she could feel inside her chest. The world spun and for a second she thought she might pass out, but then she fixed her eyes on Lucius' calm facade and forced herself to breathe.

"Is everyone ready?" he asked, speaking to the other Death Eaters, but keeping his impenetrable gaze on Draco.

Hermione watched as the younger Malfoy lifted his chin and gave a sharp nod. "I'm ready," he said with only the slightest quiver shading his voice.

Once more, she wondered what it would be like to have such an unfeeling father. Draco was clearly petrified and yet Lucius did nothing to ease his fears; he didn't even appear to notice them. And if he did, they were swiftly ignored in favour of the task at hand. Satisfied with his son's assurance, Lucius moved his attention to the others.

"Twippy!" he called.

Confusion slid across Hermione's skin as the petite elf appeared carrying four new brooms. "What's happening?" she asked as the elf handed them to Rabastan, Antonin, Draco and Theo.

"A change of plan," Lucius said, retrieving his own broom and gesturing for her to approach. A smirk hovered on the contours of his lips at her suspicious frown.

"On the signal," he said.

Her eyes widened. "What signal?" She darted forward, fumbling her wand into her hand. "You didn't tell me about any signal!"

"Don't be absurd you stupid girl," he hissed. "Without a signal how is anyone to know the time to implement the plan has arrived." He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her towards the caved in area where they'd blasted through the stone to reach the library.

Hermione had to run to keep up with his ground-eating stride and she stumbled on the stones that littered the ground several times. Draco and the others were just behind them and the sound of their rushed breaths bounced off the dusty walls to form a macabre echo that followed their every step. It was happening so fast that Hermione barely had time to think. Lucius Malfoy was up to something, she knew it with every fibre of her being, but she couldn't figure out what it was.

They made it to the rubble-filled corridor and the writhing Inferi trapped beneath the stone. The creature rasped out a breath when it saw them and reached up with skeletal arms, its empty eyes seeming to stare right at her as it sought to free itself. Lucius paused to exchange a glance with the others before he dropped Hermione's wrist and climbed onto his broom with effortless grace. He gestured impatiently for her to join him. She did so with a little more ease than the first time, adrenalin stealing her fear of flying and the Death Eater she would be clinging to.

"On my word," he commanded, kicking off the ground.

Hermione tightened her grip on the wand and widened her eyes as a high-pitched whistle tore through the silence.

"Now!" Lucius called.

Every wand but Hermione's pointed at the piled stones which blocked their exit.

"Bombarda Maxima!"

Jets of white light shot from the tips of their wands to hit the rocks. They imploded with a loud boom before filling the air with dust and grit. It rained down on them as their brooms burst forward and into the ice-shrouded night. Hermione spotted the dark forms of the Dementors as they floated in the air above the broken shell that Hogwarts had become. Their robes rippled in a wind that she could neither feel nor see and doubted existed in this world. Several more explosions sounded and then the silhouettes of witches and wizards darted into view.

Hermione twisted around, earning a hiss form Lucius, and saw Draco and the others peel away to join the survivors peppering the smoke-smudged sky.

"Granger!" Lucius snapped. "Divert your attention to the task at hand or we'll both be dead within minutes!" He pulled the broom to the side, almost upending her in the process.

She was about to yell at him to be more careful, but saw the black shape of a Dementor hovering in front of them. The cavernous confines of its hood seemed to eat the darkness and left no hint of what the face inside looked like. Despair slammed into her and the air cooled until it felt like she was drawing ice into her lungs with every breath. She ground her teeth and lifted her wand.

"Expecto patronum!"

The faded shape of her otter trickled from the tip of her wand and ambled towards the Dementor. The creature floated backwards, giving them enough room to fly past and towards the bowels of the castle. Hermione had the awful feeling that Lucius was going to plunge into the jagged hole that she could see sitting amongst the ruins. She looked over her shoulder, desperate to see if the others had made it to the wards, but both her and Lucius' hair whipped across her face and obscured her sight. Panicked yells and the hiss of spells punctuated the night, but she couldn't see a damn thing; all she could do was hear the chaos playing out behind her.

Lucius forced the broom into a downward spiral and the unexpected move made Hermione shunt forward until she was pressed against the length of his spine. He twisted again, skillfully evading the chasing Dementors as he flew them into the hole that she'd spied earlier. It was as if they'd been swallowed by darkness or fallen into a bottomless pit. The air seemed to be a solid presence which pressed in on them from all sides and made breathing difficult. Hermione murmured a hasty Lumos, terrified they might crash into a wall or the waiting arms of a Dementor.

The light illuminated the dank hallways of the Slytherin dungeons and showed empty space in front of them. The shifting light turned every shadow into a monster and Hermione almost fired off several defensive hexes in reflex.

"Severus' office is just ahead," Lucius murmured.

Hermione took his word for it. The dancing shadows and damp walls were unfamiliar to her and with Dementors chasing them, she didn't have the time to study their exact location. She pressed closer to Lucius' back as she twisted around to check the hall behind them. It appeared deserted, but Hermione could feel the taint of despair that saturated the air and grew stronger with every second that ticked by. Something was following them.

They swerved around a corner, down a flight of stairs and towards a thick wooden door. It glowed faintly in the dull light, no doubt warded within an inch of its life. Lucius sped towards it, halting at the last second, which caused Hermione to topple from the broom and into the rough wall. She hit it with a dull thud, whimpering when her head connected with the hard stone. Her vision blurred, but she ignored it in favour of pushing to her feet and extending her wand towards the dark hallway behind them. Somewhere to her side Lucius was fiddling with the wards, whispering spells as he fought to unward Snape's door.

Hermione muttered a charm which would increase the strength of her Lumos and took a few wobbly steps away from him. The hallway was full of rippling shadows, damp air and the feeling that something was watching them.

"Hurry up!" she hissed at Lucius.

The elder Malfoy ignored her.

Hermione huffed, barely containing the urge to push him aside and attempt to undo the wards herself. The only thing that prevented her was that she knew he would be more familiar with Professor Snape's spells than she was.

Something warm trickled down her neck. She lifted a hand to brush it away, but paused when she felt liquid touch her fingertips. Bringing her hand down, she saw blood slide across her skin before dripping to the floor where it was immediately soaked up by the dust. Her eyes flicked back up to the hall as she used one hand to probe at the back of her head and the other to keep her wand pointed in front of her. Her hair was damp and when she carefully separated a few strands, she could feel a cut above her left ear. She winced and dropped her hand, knowing it would have to wait until later.

If there was a later.

Behind her Malfoy cursed and she thought she heard him call Snape a few less than complimentary names, but she didn't hear what he said because the sound of something moving beyond the darkness sounded. It was a dragging noise, as if whatever was making it was pulling itself across the ground towards them.

"Malfoy!" Hermione backed up until she felt the back of his robes brush her legs. "Hurry up!"

"Do you believe for one moment that I am dawdling, Miss Granger?" He tapped his wand twice against the handle of the door. "Because I assure you, I am not."

"Just hurry," Hermione said. "There's something coming."

His response was to pass her his broom so that he could spread his hand along the door's oily surface. He whispered a few more words and then held still for an endless moment. Hermione's heart felt like it had crawled into her throat and she was sure her eyes must resemble a startled deer's as she stared at where the crawling sound was coming from. A dark outline emerged from the shadows and Hermione stumbled back just as Lucius managed to snap the wards. A whoosh of cool air touched her skin as the door to the Head of Slytherin's private quarters swung open.

Her foot tangled with the broom and she fell into him, knocking them both to the ground. She landed on Malfoy's back, somehow managing to hit him with the handle of her wand. He hissed, shoved her off him and in one smooth motion, pushed to his feet and slammed the door closed. Something thumped against it a second later.

"How delightful, my dear. We can now add clumsy to your list of attributes. Well done," Lucius drawled as he brushed off his robes with meticulous precision.

Hermione glared at him from her position on the ground, but didn't respond, instead she switched her attention to their surroundings. Professor Snape's quarters were nothing like she'd expected them to be. They were decadent and surprisingly light. He must have had candles charmed to ignite when someone entered the room, because each of the cream candles dotted about threw out a cheerful warm glow. Thick rugs peppered the floor and a large velvet couch took up one wall. The others were covered by bookcases filled with hundreds of leather-bound books, each containing information that Hermione would offer up a small body part to get a hold of. The air smelt of parchment and ink. If these were her rooms, she would spend hours sitting on the couch and turning page after slick page, absorbing the information until her eyes resembled dried up husks.

"When you've finished drooling over books you could never hope to afford, perhaps we can move on to what we came here to do?" Lucius' condescending tone slashed through her daydream like a knife.

But unfortunately, he was right. They needed the ingredients to make the potion and dreaming about books wasn't going to make that happen. Hermione pulled her eyes from the bookshelves and onto the blond wizard. She nodded and regained her feet, watching as he made his way towards a door tucked beside the couch. She hadn't noticed it at first because it was the same patchy grey as the wall next to it, but now that she knew it was there, it was quite obvious. Lucius already stood in front of it and because his back was to her, Hermione noticed there was a smear of her blood on the tips of his hair. It looked very red against his perfect, silver-white strands. She opened her mouth to tell him, but he chose that moment to turn and give her a disgusted look.

She smiled sweetly and hoped her blood would stain his hair until the day he died. It was the least he deserved.

"His laboratory is through there?" she asked.

Lucius gave a dramatic sigh. "Why else would I be standing here?"

"Because you think it makes you look good?" Hermione muttered under her breath.

Her words earned a sharp look from Malfoy, but before he could reply she said, "Please just open the door."

Lucius surprised her by doing exactly what she'd asked. Perhaps he was as bone-tired as she was and wanted the day over with just as much. Beyond the door was a staircase which led down and into a fully stocked lab that smelt of burnt amber and crushed grass. Every surface was cluttered with glass jars and copper pots. Several large cauldrons were sat on top of a work bench that almost split the room in two. In the far corner, a huge cabinet stood, as if it were on guard duty, and anyone who dared take one of the potions that battled for room on the shelves would be gobbled up into its boxy interior and never seen again. Professor Snape's angry scrawl decorated the labels of each of the bottles and covered each of the parchments she could see strewn about the room.

"Tell me the list and I shall collect the ingredients needed," Lucius commanded in that arrogant way that seemed so effortless to him.

Hermione smiled tightly. "Willow bark, black salt, unicorn dust, goblin spit, hemlock, devil's snare, mermaids tears and of course, the Shadow essence."

She saw Lucius' surprise at her willingness to give up the list so easily and she shrugged. "Knowing the ingredients won't mean anything if you don't know which order to use them in."

Malfoy offered her a polite smile, but there was a predatory look in his pale eyes that screamed of the danger she was in. It was so easy to forget who he was. What he was. That carefully crafted veneer he wore hid the real Lucius Malfoy exceedingly well, but Hermione wasn't fooled in the slightest. He had no conscience, empathy or kindness in him. He was more of a monster than the ones waiting outside.

"Shall we?" she said, walking towards the back row of shelves and beginning to search for what they needed.

It was a moment before she heard him move and when he did, it was towards the other side of the room, which she was glad of. She returned her attention to the jars in front of her. She expected the rarer stuff to be locked away, perhaps in the stern-looking cabinet, but the willow bark, black salt, hemlock and devil's snare should be somewhere on the shelves surrounding them. Hermione leant closer to the bottles, gently pushing each aside to read the labels through narrowed eyes.

It took a long time before they located the first ingredient; hemlock, crammed into a small brown bottle and pushed to the back of a drawer. By this time, Hermione had begun to feel woozy. Her head ached and dizziness nipped at the edges of her vision. Sound became distorted until she felt that she had slipped into another world. Her name was called and she turned as if in a dream to see Malfoy frowning at her.

"I don't feel so good," she murmured as the world tilted nauseatingly. She caught a blurred glimpse of Lucius' irritated features before promptly fainting.

Annnnnd of course I leave you with cliffhanger. I'm nice like that ;) Please feed the hungry review box and thanks for reading!