A/N: Thank you all so much for your lovely reviews, faves and follows. Though there wasn't a lot of feedback on the last chapter, there were a slue of new follows and faves so I feel good about posting another chapter! Thank you all again for your support!

We will be entering a little bit more storyline here and a little more fighting between our hero and heroine. Don't fret! It will all work out, I promise!

Without further ado...

Hermione marched resolutely up a tall sandy dune, slipping slightly as she fought to keep a pace that properly conveyed her mood. At the moment, she couldn't care less if her two companions were lagging behind her, one floating drunkenly through the air completely unconscious and the other trying to direct him with little luck as he raced toward her. She had never been more horrendously utterly disgustingly enraged in he whole life. She knew that if she dug a little deeper, she would feel other things as well; hurt, maybe even betrayal. For the moment, however, all she could do was look ahead to the silhouette of a small cottage on the edge of the beach with warm glowing windows.

When Hermione had first appeared on the edge of the secluded beach property, one hand clutching tightly to Luna Lovegood while the other grasped Dobby's thin fingers, she had felt something she hadn't felt in a long time: a sense of relief and accomplishment. Sure, they were still at square one as far as the Horcruxes were concerned, but at least they had actually saved some lives. Just the two of them, herself and Harry, had infiltrated a Death Eater's strong hold and managed to free both Luna and Ollivander. Her relief, however, had been short lived.

Moments after arriving, she quickly noticed the absence of one key figure.

Harry was not with them.

Immediately she had felt through the bond, but it was shrouded and cold, the way it was when there was great distance between the two of them. Wherever he was, he was no where near the beach.

With lightening speed, she turned to Dobby and knelt to his level, not caring that the sand was pushing painfully into a newly acquired gash on her leg. "Dobby, where is Harry? He was supposed to come back with us!"

Dobby looked at her with his giant round eyes, guilty tears swimming and ready to spill as he bit his lip. "Harry Potter asked Dobby to take you and his Loony back first and come back for him once you were safe."

"WHAT!?" she had shouted, nearly pulling the house elf's brightly colored jumper from his tiny chest. "You have to take me back to him! He could be in serious trouble! He could be dying! How could you just leave him in that place?

"Harry Potter told Dobby that you would say that and that Dobby was not to let his Hermy go back to the Manor." He shook as the last word left his mouth as if remembering something foul.

"I don't care what he said! You have to take me back!"

Suddenly, Dobby tilted his head as if someone in the distance were telling him something only he could here. "Dobby is sorry, Miss," he whimpered before snapping his fingers and disappearing with a crack.

Hermione stared at the blank space of air where Dobby had just been, her blood pressure rising rapidly with every passing second.

"There are people coming out of the cottage," Luna said, dreamily pointing over Hermione's shoulder. "I think I am going to help Mr. Ollivander over to them. He's quite ill, you see." And without a second more, she hefted the frail man's arm over her shoulder and began helping him walk across the expanse of beach and sand dunes.

Still frozen, Hermione stayed where she was, looking stupidly at space where Dobby had been. He was back there. Harry was at the Manor without her and with little to no protection. Thoughts were racing through her mind as she quickly formed plans of rescue and discarded them just as quickly as images of capture, brutal torture, and death played sick games on her imagination. She had never been more worried and terrified in her life.

Her thoughts, however, kept snagging on a single thought.

Why had he stayed behind in the first place?

A loud crack announced the return of he house elf, this time he had what seemed to be two passengers instead of one. Hermione rushed forward, launching herself at Harry's shaking form, relishing in the relief of having her bondmate safe and in her arms. She was so happy in fact, that it took a few moments for Harry's apprehension filtering through their connection to register. It was only then that she forced herself to look through the tears stinging her eyes and to see the figure slumped behind him, unconscious.

An acidic stream of anger began to trickle into her system, spreading through her veins causing her blood to run cold and her vision to redden. She dropped her arms from Harry and took several steps around him to look at the person before her, slowly studying the platinum blond hair that seemed to glow in the moon light.

"I can—" Harry began, but she raised her hand cut him off.

"Tell me that isn't who I think it is." Her tone was deadly quiet.

"I know—" he tried again before being cut off once more.

She whipped around coming close enough to Harry that she could see the dim light on the whites of his eyes wide around their green center pieces. "Let me tell you what I know, Harry James Potter," she said punctuating each of his names with a sharp jab to his chest. "You just brought a Death Eater and someone wearing the Dark Mark to a safe house of the Order! You just put countless lives at risk! And you lied to me!"

Harry looked at her shocked until the last sentence. At hearing her accusation of a lie, his eyes narrowed. "Because you are so innocent of lying!"

Hermione recoiled as if he had just slapped her. With a swish of her hair, she marched over the dunes toward he small cottage in the near distance, ignoring Harry's desperate attempts to keep her pace while maneuvering Draco's limp form.. She didn't even care that she was marching her way into another complicated situation altogether. All that mattered was getting away from the hurt and blocking out the sounds of his voice.

"Hermione!" he shouted once more as she reached the path that led to the front door. "You don't get to be angry at me for lying!"

She turned around, her anger becoming to great to hold her tongue. "How long are you going to hold my lie against me, Harry? How long are you going to use it as an excuse to make me hate myself? Because let me tell you, I don't need any help with that!" Tears flowed freely down her face as she yelled. "I know I mucked everything up, but this is what we have! This is it! You and me, for the rest of our lives!

"I won't let you destroy yourself because you are angry with me! I would rather die than watch you go down a path of darkness under a banner of good intentions fueled by anger at me! So don't you dare tell me this was the only way!" She gestured to Malfoy's floating form. "And don't you dare use my deception as justification for your deceit!"

With that she turned toward the glowing light of the open door, ran past the wide eyed Bill Weasley down a narrow hall, and opened the first door she came to before slamming it behind her. It only took a moment for her to realize that she seemed to be in a coat closet of some sort. A sudden rush of embarrassment took her to her knees and she curled up, wrapping her arms protectively around her own shoulders. Taking out her wand, she muttered a heavy duty locking charm and an imperturbable jinx before dissolving into tears amongst an assortment of wellington boots caked with sand, soft robes and coats letting the aftermath of the evening take her into unconsciousness.

~-*\/*-~

Fleur looked at the door to the closet with wide eyes before looking to her husband in shock. Bill held the door open, looking as shocked as she felt, ushering in a very thin battered Harry Potter and a blond boy who seemed to be unconscious. She set the bowl of cool water she had intended to take to their two previous arrivals to clean their wounds on the kitchen counter and walked to the front hall.

"Hello, Bill, Fleur," Harry said, nodding to each in turn. "I'm sorry to barge in on you so late, Dobby brought us here. He mentioned you have become a safe house of sorts."

Bill nodded, forcing his mouth closed. "Yes, of course! Come in, come in."

Harry nodded his thanks and walked through the hall and into the cozy kitchen looking completely calm—the exact opposite of the girl who preceded him.

Bill shared a look with his wife, mumbled a few spells to strengthen the wards, and followed his guests. "Harry, it is good to see you and all, but do you mind telling me what's going on?"

Looking past Bill, Harry glanced at the closet door where Hermione had just disappeared. From what Bill had gathered from his brief meetings with his youngest brother, the two had been more than close when Ron left them; however, Hermione running into a closet didn't seem to concern Harry at all. Rather, he looked after her with mild derision, as if she had somehow fouled up a grand entrance. As Harry's gaze landed back on him, the curse breaker took an involuntary step back. He could have sworn he saw a flash of red in the young man's green eyes.

"I don't mean to be rude," Harry began in a cold voice, "but Malfoy will be coming around soon. He needs to be restrained otherwise he will use the Dark Mark on his arm to call the Dark Lord."

Fleur gasped and looked at the blond with ill-disguised fear and disgust before looking to her husband to proceed.

For a moment, the man stared dumbfounded at the pair before him. He felt a twinge of fear at the look on Harry's face. Though he was the eldest brother of seven, Bill suddenly felt very subordinate. He was not used to being easily intimidated by anyone—it was part of what made him a prime candidate for his work with the goblins. Yet as he looked into the hard green eyes of Harry James Potter, he felt a chill run down his spine the force him into action with out question. Something about the messy haired former friend of his youngest brother had changed.

The boy who had left them at the wedding was not the same man who stood before him.

Bill waved his wand, summoning a kitchen chair and began muttering spells under his breath while transfiguring a set of dishtowels into heavy chains. When the chair was complete, Harry roughly lowered Draco Malfoy into it, smiling slightly as the boy's head lolled on his limp neck. As if on cue, the chains coiled their way around the unconscious boy's limbs before locking tightly in place, eerily echoing those found in the lower courts of the Wizengamot.

Now that the immediate danger had been staved off, Bill began to feel himself come out of shock enough to become properly annoyed at being brushed off. Drawing on his Gryffindor courage, he straightened his back and narrowed his eyes. "I don't mean to be rude, Harry," he said echoing the Boy Who Lived sarcastically, "but what the bloody hell is going on here?"

Harry blinked, looking up at the people in front of him as if seeing them for the first time. His eyes suddenly softened and he began to gasp for air like a man emerging from deep underwater. His gaze gravitated toward the closet door, an immense mask of grief overtaking his pallid features before looking to Malfoy's chained form then to Bill and Fleur in confusion. He dropped his head into his hands, scrubbing his face hard. If Bill hadn't known better, he might even say Harry seemed more like a lost child than the man who had just mad his blood run cold. The change was so drastically different, he could hardly believe it.

"I just...I-I..." Harry gasped, reaching a hand out for the kitchen counter to steady himself.

Taking a large stride forward, Bill got to him just as the he collapsed, wincing at how little weight seemed to fall.

"Bonté divine!" Fleur exclaimed, clasping her petite hands over her heart. "Is he alright?"

Pressing a finger to Harry's pulse, Bill nodded. "I think he's just passed out. I need to get him to a bed. Will you send word to the Order? We will need all the help we can get to sort this all out. Not to mention dealing with that one." He gestured toward the stirring Malfoy as he lifted Harry toward the stairs.

Nodding, Fleur pulled out her wand muttering a quick Expecto Patronum. A lithe swan sprouted from her wand to which she began whispering a message to the others in the dwindling Order of the Phoenix.

The message was simple, "Lightening has struck shell cottage, assistance is needed immediately."

~-*\/*-~

A/N: Reviews=love!

P.S. The french that Fleur says is supposed to mean "Dear Heavens!" I got it from a translator, so do let me know if the phrase was misused. I am a lowly English speaking American...