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Draco groans when he sits up. He woke up on his back on a cement floor he didn’t recognize. There’s faint light coming through the crack beneath the door, and he can hear muffled voices outside, and a lot of shushing.
He tests his limbs out gingerly, stretching his fingers and pointing his toes, slowly making sure nothing is broken. His shoulder feels wrenched, and he thinks vaguely that should be less of a shock than it is, considering where he’s woken up.
And that’s a silly thought too, because he isn’t really sure where he’s woken up. There are no defining features on the walls. They’re just a dull, grayed out green with what looks like pretty significant black mold growing in the corners. The air is chilly and damp, and there are no windows. There’s no furniture in the room either, and he shivers, wishing for at least a blanket.
It’s not the first time something like this has happened, and it probably won’t be the last.
Belatedly, he realizes he ought to check if he has his wand. He runs a palm over the holster on his right wrist, and finds that the length of hawthorn wood is still there, but the usual hum of magic he feels under his fingers whenever he touches it seems to have stilled. Even so, he pulls it out and attempts to cast, hoping that his kidnappers are simply shoddy, and didn’t leave him with the wand because they knew it would do him no good.
The lumos he manages is flickery and pale, not the normal solid golden glow he’s accustomed to, but it’s there, and he breathes a very quiet sigh of relief. He’s not entirely helpless, even if he doesn’t think he’ll be able to put up much of a magical fight. Whatever wards surround the basement he’s been trapped in clearly aren’t strong enough, or placed correctly, to completely prevent magical activity. He wonders if they extend to the rest of the house. Perhaps if he could unlock the door and get out of the basement, he would be on a more even playing field.
He refocuses on the door, listening for the same voices from before. They’ve drifted further from where he’s trapped, and he very slowly shifts towards the light, pressing his ear against the wood to listen closer. From this distance all he manages to catch are some muffled half sentences.
“They’ll pay…”
“I told you… it’s too high.”
“Shut up. No one…you”
He waits a little longer, and eventually hears receding footsteps. Taking a deep breath, he presses his wand against the door and whispers, very quietly.
“Alohomora.”
He has to wait about a minute, and he’s worried that it won’t work, that the lumos was a fluke. Eventually though, the lock on the door slides undone with a near silent click, and he grins to himself. Whoever these kidnappers are, they’ve done a terrible job.
Just to be safe, he casts a silencing spell both on the door and himself, though he can feel that it’s even weaker than the alohomora he just cast was, and that makes him nervous. The door swings open quietly enough however, and he slowly shifts out of the basement onto a steep staircase. The light at the top of the stairs is distinctly artificial, and he can hear a faint buzzing he only associates with the electric lights at Harry’s flat.
He smiles at that. Harry claims he can’t hear what Draco is talking about, that electricity doesn’t make sound. Draco tells him it’s just because Harry’s been desensitized to it. The presence of electrical lighting means that this is more than likely a muggle place, because anyone trying to kidnap him for ransom is almost surely someone pureblooded, and therefore unlikely to have a blended technology flat like the building where Harry and his friends live. They probably think they’re clever for trying to stay under the radar in muggle London. If it is a muggle place, the wards are probably even weaker than he first thought, especially now that he’s out of the basement.
He slowly shifts up the stairs, testing each one for creaking boards before he puts his full weight on it. If he doesn’t think too hard about it, it’s almost like sneaking down to the cellars in the manor to sneak food to his cousin and her friends during the war. Though that’s also not a particularly cheerful thought, and he attempts to push that from his brain as well.
About halfway up the staircase he hears approaching footsteps, and curses under his breath. At his current position, there’s no way someone who looks down the stairwell won’t see him. He holds his breath and tenses, but the steps pass right by the door, and he sees just the top of a head over the top step. The footsteps stop and a faucet starts up. He uses the sound of the running water to cover his footsteps as he climbs further towards the doorway. The higher he climbs, the stronger he can feel the familiar buzz of magic coming from his wand, and he breathes a quiet sigh of relief.
Reaching the top of the stairs, he pauses. He has two options. He can either cast a notice me not and attempt to sneak out of the house entirely undetected, or he can prepare for a fight. Just as he’s considering though, the decision is made for him. The woman at the sink turns around and makes direct eye contact with him. He doesn’t recognize her he doesn’t think, she’s got long blondish hair and wide brown eyes he might have found pretty if in another situation.
In the split seconds it’s taking Draco to figure out if he knows her, she’s got her wand out and is aiming it at him.
“Stupefy!” she cries, and Draco jumps back down a stair, just dodging the spell. He doesn’t want to find himself pushed back down the stairs though, so the second the spell diffuses against the molding of the doorway, he launches himself into the kitchen, wand held high.
She’s waiting for him, and whips another stunner right at his chest, which he has to duck to avoid.
He whips one right back at her, and catches her in the shoulder. She stops and goes down, sliding to the floor against the cabinets, and he breathes out shakily. It’s beyond unlikely she’s working alone, so he can’t let his guard down now.
He doesn’t waste time going to see if she’s okay on the floor, opting to cast a casual petrificus totalus behind him as he shifts out of the kitchen towards what he hopes is the front door.
He makes it down a long, thin hallway without running into anyone else, before suddenly finding himself face to face with a bulky man coming in through the front door. The man’s eyes widen, and Draco just barely manages to dive out of the doorway he’s standing in before he’s hit with a wandless incarcerous.
Auror grade spells. That’s not a good sign.
He doesn’t have time to consider his options, dashing up the staircase to the second level to his left. He can hear the man coming up behind him, and he has to deflect another two spells before he manages to slam a door between him and his pursuant.
“LANDRA!” he hears the man yell, just outside the bedroom he’s put himself in, “WHERE ARE YOU? HE’S OUT!”
Draco locks the door with the strongest locking spell he can think of, knowing that even that might not be enough in a muggle house facing off against someone who can cast aurors spells wandless. He uses the few seconds it buys him to glance around the room. It’s only marginally better kept than the basement he was just in, the wallpaper peeling and there’s framed photos on the wall. He doesn’t really have the time to look them over, but he’s naturally curious, and the man at the door seems to have stormed off, figuring Draco’s trapped himself for the time being.
The photos are a mix of magical and muggle, some perfectly still in that unnerving way muggle photos are, and some moving slowly, slightly jumpy the way very old or poorly taken wizarding photos do. He doesn’t think he recognizes anyone in them, but that changes when he gets to one of the final wizarding photos on the wall.
Twelve year old Harry stares out from the photo, grimacing slightly and trying desperately to turn it into a real smile. He frowns, going back to examine the other photos on the wall. When he looks closer, he finds that almost all of them feature Harry somehow, somewhere around Hogwarts. One of the ones he’d passed over earlier, assuming it was just a photo of the courtyard, finally jerks into jumpy motion, and a very young, vaguely familiar face pops into frame, along with another rather put upon looking Harry.
He turns away from the photo wall, wracking his brain for anyone who might have been as obsessed with Harry as he was in school, though clearly had a different outlet for it.
It isn’t until he crosses the room to the writing desk that sits under the window that he makes the connection. There’s a stack of muggle notebooks sitting neatly on the surface, with the name Colin, written on them in neat capitals.
It hits him like crashing to the ground after failing a Wronski Feint. Colin Creevey. The Gryffindor the year below them at Hogwarts who had been obsessed with taking pictures of Harry, who’d died in the Battle. He’d had a younger brother, Dylan? No, Dennis. And apparently a younger sister Draco hadn’t known about. That wasn’t surprising. Dennis had been three years below them, and Landra must have started his sixth year.
Now that he knows, he can see the family resemblance. If the young man had grown up, he would look just like the adults currently in the house with Draco right now. He thinks he remembers hearing something about the Creevey parents being caught up in Umbridge’s sweep of Muggle-born wix. He spares a half second to consider that he was wrong about his captors being pureblooded, not that the fact helps him any.
Putting all the pieces together in his head doesn’t make Draco feel any better. The thing about their plan, which he’s mostly figured out by now, is that Lucius and Narcissa won’t be willing to pay any ransom for him. His “life choices” as they’d referred to them as, had pretty effectively cut short any familial relationships they might have tried to salvage after the war.
He leans over the writing desk, looking at the drop from the second story. Now that he’s got his wand working again, he can probably survive the fall, at least with only minimal injuries. It’s been too quiet outside the door for a while, and he thinks maybe he’ll try his luck with the front door when he hears the heavy footsteps of Dennis coming towards him again.
“MALFOY,” he roars, “WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER!”
Window it is, then.
Draco scrambles to unlock the window and raise it high enough for him to climb out. He’s just got both legs out into open air when the door bangs open violently behind him, and he hears the crack of the plaster wall under Dennis’s shout as he launches himself out of the window.
Dennis barely manages to catch his wrist, and Draco’s arm jerks in its socket, setting the nerves in his already wrenched shoulder screaming. He cries out, and as Dennis slowly hauls him back towards the window, aims a stinging hex at his fingers. Dennis lets go with a yelp, and Draco plummets towards the ground, just barely catching himself with a rushed cushioning charm on the grass below. It knocks the wind out of him, and he takes a gasping breath to fill his lungs, knowing he really needs to get moving before Dennis makes his way down the stairs again.
He stands, planning to disapparate on the spot. He’s not even sure to where, just away, when the telltale crack of apparition and then Harry’s voice screaming his name stops him.
“DRACO?” Harry yells a second time, and Draco finds his voice.
“AROUND BACK!” he shouts in response, heedless of the fact that he’s also alerting Dennis and potentially Landra to his position.
He takes off towards the side yard at a sprint, yelling Harry’s name. He hears approaching footsteps and skids to a stop, ready to turn and run the other way if it’s Dennis, but he’s instead met with the sight of Harry, eyes manic, hair unbrushed and wild.
Harry crashes into him, wrapping his arms around Draco tight enough to squeeze the air out of his lungs once again. Harry buries his face into Draco’s shoulder, and the two of them shake violently for a moment. A moment later, Granger and Weasley skid into view, followed by two Aurors Draco vaguely recognizes from Hogwarts.
“Harry!” Weasley sounds exhausted, “we told you to wait! Cho and Ernie were going to handle it.”
Harry doesn’t reply, still shaking in Draco’s arms, and Draco watches as the female Auror, who must be Cho, firmly but gently moves Weasley out of the way to approach the two of them.
“Mr. Malfoy,” she starts formally, “we’re glad to have found you. Are your assailants still on the property?”
“Er, yes, and you should know. It’s—” He’s cut off before he can finish the sentence, as Dennis Creevey charges around the corner from the front of the house, nearly bowling over Granger and Weasley.
He looks murderous as he sprints towards the two of them, and Hermione shrieks a little. Cho calmly but quickly places herself between Dennis and Harry and Draco, and Ernie whips himself in front of Dennis, wand out and aimed at his chest.
Dennis sweeps his arm out to the side wandlessly, and Ernie stumbles but doesn’t fall.
“INCARCEROUS” he roars, and Dennis overbalances and topples to the ground. He’s practically foaming at the mouth, screaming incoherently, and Draco shudders, wrapping his arms tighter around Harry.
Cho grimaces and shoots a silencing spell towards her coworker. Dennis’ mouth continues to move, and suddenly it's quiet in the yard. Cho nods to Ernie, who levitates Dennis up and towards the front yard, out of sight. She turns to Harry and Draco, a sympathetic look on her face.
“I think it’s time we got you to St. Mungos. I’ll take your statement once you’ve been looked over there.”
Draco nods. “His sister is still inside. I had to stun her when she attacked me.” Harry’s arms tighten around him.
“I’ll tell Ernie. You four can go wait in the front yard, and we’ll get going in just a moment.”
She turns on her heel and strides towards the front of the house. Draco reaches a shaky hand up to brush through Harry’s hair.
“You look dreadful,” he whispers
Harry pulls back just enough to give him an unimpressed look. “I’d like to see you look any more put together if I went missing for more than twenty-four hours.”
“Understood. I hope this doesn’t take too long, I want to go home,” Harry’s face falls slightly and Draco corrects quickly, “with you. I want to go home with you.” He tightens his grip on Harry as though the other man might leave.
Harry hugs him back just as tightly. “Okay, let’s finish this and go home.”