Chapter Twenty Nine
Draco was beside himself. "It should have been me!" he ranted for at least the dozenth time as he shoved the blasted wardrobe again. He laced his fingers through his hair, yanked, and closed his eyes as he tried to take a deep breath to steady himself.
"No," insisted Hermione, causing him to open his eyes. "She was right, it was much more believable that we would leave her - you're a foot taller, two stone heavier and as far as they'd be concerned trained up to at least OWL level."
Draco snatched his hands from his hair and slammed them down on the balding man's desk. "She was supposed to be right outside the door! We only lost sight of her for a few seconds and now they've got her and they'll be angry!"
When he'd suggested his wardrobe plan, for everyone to hide and then have someone tell the guard they'd escaped, he'd fully intended to have himself be the bait. But Sarah had argued her point with such conviction, she'd swayed Ron and Hermione relatively easily. But the last thing Draco had wanted to do was put her in any more danger than he absolutely had to, he'd promised to protect her, he'd said the words to her face.
He'd refused as long as he had because he also suspected there was another reason Sarah was putting herself on the front line. He couldn't help but wonder if she wanted some sort of payback for what had happened to her last November; after being taken prisoner, maybe she wanted to get one over on them, even if it wasn't technically the same people or even the same world.
Eventually, Hermione had sworn they would abandon their hiding place as soon as whoever came left with the door open behind them, that way they could jump them from behind. But when they'd done just that, they'd emerged to find a deserted corridor waiting for them.
"She's only thirteen," said Draco, feeling physically sick. "I'm supposed to take care of her - me - her dad asked me to, not Harry, and I've handed her over to be tortured!"
"Now you listen to me, Draco Malfoy!" Hermione snapped, stamping her foot. He blinked in surprise. "Nobody wanted this to happen. We had a plan, and it went wrong. We're not going to help her by losing it here. We need to get out before anybody thinks to actually come back and check for us, then we can look for her, our wands, and anything else that will help us get out of this stupid place!"
Draco stared at her. He'd never even heard his own Hermione shout before, not like that. It was pretty scary.
Ron however didn't seemed phased at all. "She's right mate," he said, "we need to get going. If we get captured we'll end up right where we started."
"Go where though?" he demanded. "We have no idea where they've taken her."
"Anywhere," said Hermione, throwing her hands up. "So long as we're not here when they come back, we stand a better chance of remaining free to find her." She shoved her hands on her hips. "Now are you coming, or do we have to leave you behind?"
Draco was instantly irked at the idea Hermione would leave him behind and take Ron, so he gritted his teeth. "Fine then," he said, then marched out the door.
How had they disappeared though? Draco thought angrily as he stalked off to the left, back towards the elevators. He didn't think you could apparate in the Ministry any more than you could at Hogwarts. Unless there was a secret corridor or something, but without knowing exactly where or what those kind of things were impossible to find, so he didn't even bother to look as he stomped up to the lifts.
"So where are we going?"
Hermione chewed her lip and thought. "We know there are bad guys upstairs, so why don't we take a look and see what's down a floor?"
Draco shrugged and jabbed the number five button. He couldn't understand why the other two weren't more upset; maybe he was feeling overtly responsible because it had been his plan, or because he'd been living with her for the past few months and she was essentially just a stranger to them, but their apparent lack of panic or worry was making him even more angry.
The lift opened on the fifth floor, and the three students peered cautiously out. There didn't seem to be anybody moving, but there were a considerable amount of frozen Ministry employees stuck mid way between actions. Some were walking, some mid-conversations, complete with hand gestures. One skinny girl with limp blonde hair and a badge that read 'Temp' had a box of frosted doughnuts in her hands, people eagerly delving in to help themselves.
"Oh yes," exclaimed Ron, plucking a pink one between the fingers. "I'm starving." He saw that Draco and Hermione were staring incredulously at him. "What?" he asked, shoving a bite in his mouth. "It'll only go stale - you want some?"
Hermione shook her head, but Draco just curled up his fists and headed down the corridor. Eating was the last thing on his mind.
"Wait," said Hermione, looking between Ron's half eaten doughnut and a witch across the corridor who had been gesticulating with her wand.
"What?" said Ron guiltily through a full mouth. But Hermione waved him off.
"You just gave me an idea," she said. "Although I'm not sure a disaster such as this one gives you licence to steal."
Ron shrugged as if he couldn't care less now he'd had his doughnut, but Draco was watching Hermione as she moved over to the other witch. "As it is a disaster," she said, walking confidently up to her. "I'm sure some of these people wouldn't mind if we borrowed their wands."
Draco nodded. "Good thinking," he said as she wrapped her fingers around the wand, but as she pulled nothing happened.
"It's stuck?" she said, and tried pulling again. Draco frowned as he came to stand by her, but no matter what angle she tried, the wand refused to part from the hand of its owner.
"Let me try?" said Ron, licking his sticky fingers. Hermione huffed and stepped aside, but Ron had no more luck that she had.
Draco looked around at the other witches and wizards. "Here," he said, pointing at an elderly gentleman who appeared to be scratching his head with his wand. "Let's try someone else." But the wizard's wand refused to leave his hand just as much as the witch's. Even trying to pull several out of other people's pockets yielded them nothing, and eventually Hermione sighed in defeat.
"They must be melded to them," she said in disappointment. "As part of the spell."
Ron patted her on the back. "It was a good idea though," he said kindly.
Draco was disappointed too, but seeing as they were no worse off than they had been before, he suggested they move on, keep looking for Sarah.
The hallway had several doors leading off from it, most of which were open so their occupants could be seen. From the signs on the walls it seemed it appeared they were in the International Magical Office of Law.
As Draco was heading towards the T junction at the end, several of the Ministry people were looking up and towards the junction in surprise. Numerous others were moving from their desks, some leaning out of their doors in concern.
"What's going on here?" asked Hermione, weaving around several bodies to stand beside Draco.
He frowned. "I'm not sure. Let's keep going."
They reached the end of the corridor, but upon seeing down each of the left and right corridors, it wasn't hard to decide which direction to go in. To their right, halfway down, there was a great body of people, flailing out, and apparently shouting at people who were no longer there. Ron caught up to them, and the three of them walked up to the gaggle, who were spilling out of the office behind them.
"Kingsley Shacklebolt," breathed Draco, staring at the familiar, though very angry face of the agent he'd met in Germany and then several times since on follow up business. He looked at the name on the door everyone was gathered around. "This is his office."
"My dad said he got promoted after Sirius got his name cleared," said Ron, squinting at the man's frozen face. "Something top notch, dunno what."
"I think," said Hermione, stepping back to analyse the situation. "They were trying to stop people coming in."
"And then they got frozen," said Ron in wonder.
Draco rubbed his head to try in vain to ease the headache that still hadn't left him. "Perhaps," he said, rolling his shoulders. "We should try and find out why they didn't want anyone getting in the office?"
Hermione looked tentatively up and down the hallway, then nodded. However, getting into the office was easier said than done, as there was such a cluster of people packed in and around the doorway it was almost impossible to squeeze past the rock solid bodies. Eventually, Draco took the rather ungraceful route of crawling between their legs.
Kingsley's office was very neat, with several tribal looking artefacts hanging from the walls, as well as a calendar of water skiing puppies. There were several other people frozen in the room, a woman pulling at drawers in the desk, another yanking open a filling cabinet, and a man standing by the window. The woman at the cabinet's hand was held up at a funny angle, making it look like a claw. Hermione spotted it as soon as she'd crawled through into the room. "That's odd," she said, going over and peering at her and then in at the files.
Ron made his way in too and looked around. "I wish I could remember what Kingsley's new job was," he muttered to himself, going over to stare at the puppies splashing around under 'October. "Might explain why everyone's gathered around here."
"The Death Eaters must have wanted something," said Draco, already losing interest. "Probably a file that that woman had in her hand." He indicated over to her with a nod, and Hermione started riffling through the drawer the Ministry woman still had her other hand resting on.
"Dice," Hermione said, reading out names from the file separators. "Didcot Railway Authority, Dignitaries; Foreign -"
"A-choo!"
"Bless you," said Hermione without even blinking. "Dilberton, Walter -"
"I didn't sneeze."
Draco found himself going very still. "What?" said Hermione, looking up at Ron.
"I didn't sneeze," he repeated, and Draco turned to see him peering up from under the desk. "I was looking under here to see if there was anything dodgy - my dad has a trap door that he uses when he wants to avoid meetings."
"Then who did sneeze?" asked Draco. Because it certainly wasn't him.
Suddenly, the man standing by the window wasn't quite as frozen as he should have been any more. In fact, he was reaching for his wand as fast as he could. With a yell, Draco sprung off his feet and slammed into him, knocking them both to the floor. Ron scrambled up and joined in as the man started shouting.
"Get off me! Get off me!" he squeaked, but Draco didn't relent until he'd wrestled his wand off him and had it pointed at his head.
"Who are you?" he demanded, panting. Ron was scowling through his black eye, which he was once again cradling after the Death Eater had thumped it with his elbow. Hermione raced over and stood side by side with Draco.
"What are you doing in here, what do you want?"
The Death Eater, a fleshy, freckled man with strawberry blonde tufts of hair and beard, backed up against the fake window. "I'm not telling you anything!" he spat. "What the Hell are you doing here anyway, you're just kids?"
"Kids with your own wand pointed at you," said Draco, not able to help the hint of a smile that crept on his face. It felt good to fight back. "Who you are probably isn't important as if you're not frozen you must be a Death Eater." The man glared at him and pressed his lips together. "So that leaves why are you here, didn't you already get what you wanted."
This time the man actually spat, right at Draco's feet. He felt his anger bubbling. Channel it, he willed himself, you need information from this man.
"Ahh," he said softly in mock sympathy. "Weren't you allowed to hang out with the big boys? Did you have to hang out here and sit with the statues?"
The man curled his lip in a sneer. "You think you can goad me into talking?" he said, then puffed a few gasps of air that could have been a laugh. "You're even more of an idiot than I first thought."
"I am Lucius Malfoy's son."
All colour drained behind the man's freckles. "You...you what?"
"You heard him," said Ron, bolstering up to Draco's side. "He's Draco Malfoy, and we're his mates, so you'd better do what he says or he'll tell his dad."
The freckled man looked between them, mouth open. "But...why aren't you at the school?"
"Change of plan."
"Oh..." he said, eyes flicking wildly about in confusion. "So...so we're on the same side, you can give me back my wand?"
"I lost my wand," said Draco arrogantly, that old familiar Malfoy coming back to him again. He lowered said wand to a more casual stance. "I need to borrow yours. My father wanted us to check up on...things about the place." Inwardly he cringed at how stupid he sounded, but apparently the Malfoy name was enough to counteract it. "He didn't say anyone would be here though."
"Oh, oh," said the man eagerly. "I was going through all the other files, like I was told, in case there was anything else interesting."
"So you already got the file you needed?" asked Hermione, and the man nodded. Unfortunately he didn't elaborate, and Draco felt it would be pushing his luck to ask. So instead he said:
"We were told to go check on that girl next, the little Goth one, but she's been moved." He felt his throat go dry, but he swallowed and thought of Sarah. "Do you have any idea where she would have been taken?"
The man looked a little perplexed. "Well I've been here the whole time, I didn't hear anything about a girl." Draco was just weighing up what he should do next when the man cried out. "Oh! But I did hear someone say something about prisoners in the Quidditch offices. Even if she's not there they'd probably know where she went."
He looked very pleased with himself, which made Draco even happier. "Thank you," he said with a smile, before whipping the man's wand up again. "Stupefy!"
The man slammed into the wall and crumpled on the floor in an unconscious heap. "Where are the Quidditch offices?" Draco asked, turning away from him.
"Erm," said Ron, screwing up his face as he thought. "Definitely lower, on Level Seven or Eight I think."
"Fantastic," said Draco, "let's go."
"Wait," said Hermione, dashing back over to the cabinet. "I just thought I'd spied an empty label when he sneezed, it might tell us what they came in here to find." She started thumbing through the files again. And then her face dropped.
Draco and Ron looked at each other. "What?" asked Ron. But Hermione didn't answer, instead, she reached in and prised the label out of the holder. She walked over to the boys, and held it out with trembling hands for them to see.
"'Dimensional Hotspots'," read Draco aloud in disbelief.