Call Me Psyche - Dramione

24

Pansy Parkinson was also there, rushing toward the Floo Draco had just stepped through. "Oi, Pansy!" he called to her, ignoring the brutes holding him. "Where are you going?"

She blushed. "McGonagall has sent me home. I panicked when Potter showed up and the – the voice started. Made a right arse of myself and now this is me skulking off in shame."

Crabbe jostled Draco. "Come on, Malfoy. We got to hurry."

"Don't go yet," Draco called back to Pansy as they dragged him toward the marble staircase. "We might need you."

"We?" she shouted after him as he got farther away.

He tried to wave at her but Crabbe held his hand pinned, forcing him to walk submissively between them, like their prisoner. It was dangerous, and it wouldn't do.

"Oh, for stars' sake," Draco said, elbowing himself free and moving to the front of their procession. "Neither of you knows where you're going. Every time I brought you to stand guard outside the Room, you acted like you'd never seen the place before. Now get out of my way."

Goyle was openly relieved to see Draco acting like his old self again, and he let him march ahead. Pushing against the flow of foot traffic on the stairs and corridors, they made their way to the seventh floor and the space on the wall where Draco knew the door to the Room of Hidden Things would appear.

Goyle fiddled with his wand, restless and a bit sweaty. "Potter won't find it," he said. "No he won't. He better not. I got a bad feeling."

Draco snapped at him. "Oh, so you're a seer now, are you Goyle? How sensitive of you. Quit your whinging and get your Disillusionment spell started. As I recall, it takes the pair of you for-flaming-ever to cast it. And one of you will have to do mine since Potter nicked my wand. So hurry."

"Potter better find the Room," Crabbe was saying, fighting to coil the spell around himself. "What I wouldn't give for a proper go at him."

"That's what you won't have," Draco hissed at him. "Only the Dark Lord can kill him. Don't forget that or we're all done for."

Between the two of them and a lot of complaining and bossing from Draco, Crabbe and Goyle managed to get him Disillusioned. More tense than ever, the three of them waited as motionless as they could. They didn't move even as the door appeared and people came streaming out of what was currently the Room of Requirement. There were students but also adults from outside the school, members of the Order of the Phoenix and even turncoats from the Ministry, like Weasley's spectacled brother Percy.

Last to come out of the Room, shutting the door and waiting to open it again as the Room of Hidden Things, were Weasley, Potter, and Hermione herself. They were talking quickly and quietly, speaking one word more intensely than the rest: diadem.

Crabbe tried his best to repeat it. Goyle hushed him and sank further into the tapestry at their backs.

Though he meant to keep silent, Draco gave a small gasp at the sight of Hermione. He hadn't seen her since she'd broken into Gringotts and escaped on the back of a dragon. How could she have planned, executed, and survived all of that and still looked as fragile and kissable as ever? Beneath his spell, Draco's cheeks and throat flushed, and his heart beat out a thud. This woman...

"What're you gawking at?" Crabbe needled at his side.

Draco answered with a sharp elbow to Crabbe's gut. "Keep quiet, you idiot."

"They're going back in," Goyle said in a whisper. "We weren't supposed to let them go in the Room. What do we do now, Malfoy?"

Crabbe answered for him. "We get 'em."