Of Crimson Joy

Story: Of Crimson Joy

Storylink: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6391019/1/
Category: Harry Potter
Genre: Tragedy/Romance
Author: LittleRobbin
Authorlink: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2270314/
Last updated: 04/01/2011
Words: 108331
Rating: M
Status: Complete
Content: Chapter 1 to 18 of 18 chapters
Source: FanFiction.net

Summary: "Life isn't always black and white, Granger. There are just
shades of grey," Hermione learns about the price of forgiveness and trust
when Draco Malfoy joins the Order, three years in to the war.
*Chapter 1*: Prologue
Author's Note: Here it is - the revised version of 'Of Crimson Joy'.
Chapters should be coming quite quickly now, but I make no promises
:P Enjoy :D

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or plot connected with

Rowling's original books. Just the Fanfiction plot

Oh, rose, thou art sick.

The invisible worm,

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson Joy:

And his dark, secret love

Does thy life destroy

- William Blake, The Sick Rose

The first time Draco Malfoy saw Hermione Granger since that fateful night
at the tower was in his own sitting room, while she writhed and twisted on
the ground before him. It had been difficult, despite that he had hated, hated
Granger and her pompous brains and her annoying hair, because it was
always difficult to watch his Aunt Bella torture someone. The light in her
black eyes, and the way she licked her lips, shuddering at each pained cry
that tore free from Granger's hoarse throat... it was enough to send echoing
shudders of disgust through his own too-thin, too-pale form.
But this was Granger, the girl who had sat not three seats away from him in
most lessons, her bushy hair obscuring his view more than once. This was a
piece of his childhood, a part of the life where he had been the one on top,
and for this, he craved her presence. She screamed and lashed and
convulsed and clawed and it was enough to resurface his own memories of
the Cruciatus, tearing through his body like a thousand white hot knives.
But this was Granger, and he had always known her. So he didn't look
away. He forced his eyes to remain fixed on her arching figure, not blinking
once, not even when his vision began to blur from the dryness of his eyes.

And when Bellatrix finally, finally let up - because the Dark Lord was
insane but not stupid, and Granger had information - always had
information - the bushy brunette lay shuddering on the ground for all of six
seconds. Then, in halted and obviously pained movements, she moved. One
hand flat on the ground, then the other. Arms bent, then gradually
straightened. Knees pushing her up the rest of the way. She wobbled
precariously on her feet and Draco had to resist the urge to run forwards and
steady her, because this was his childhood and he should be the only one
making her tremble like that.

She'd spat at the Dark Lord's feet.

The second and third curses were no less in intensity and utter malice than
the first. But something seemed to have cracked in Granger. Something had
broken. She was numbed to it all. She writhed and twisted, and screeched
and cried. But when Bellatrix lifted that wand again, sure enough, she rose
to her feet and this time a triumphant smirk, worthy of any Slytherin, curled
the corner of her mouth, a trail of blood spilling down her chin - red, just
like his own, not black or brown or dirty, but crimson and wet.

He thought that he'd never seen her so beautiful as she looked in that
moment, proud and defiant and knowing that death was about to take her
and having the nerve to smirk at her soon-to-be killer. And the insight that
her death would be no less painfull than any pure-blooded fool that had
been stupid enough to defy the Dark Lord hit him like any Cruciatus he had
ever experienced. Her death would be no less unnecessary or soul-
shattering. It would be no less.
Even months after they had escaped - all parts of that bloody Golden Trio,
with some help from a house-elf that had once been loyal to his family and
brought him cookies, even when he didn't deserve it - the image of her
blood, gently tracing the slope of her chin, had haunted him. Mocked him.
Because once again, Hermione Granger, Gryffindor know-it-all, Head Girl
wanna-be, was undeniably right.

The second time he saw Hermione Granger, two years had passed, he'd
been tortured within an inch of his life and his mother had just died.

It had been the Dark Lord's plan. Personally, he'd thought it was rather
stupid and incredibly see-through. He, of course, kept this oppinion to
himself. Because, while it wasn't illegal to have such thoughts - the Dark
Lord insisted there were no laws, and therefore nothing was technically
illegal - Draco was quite certain that death would be the result of that
particular comment, one of the highest-ranking Death Eaters or no.

"Ah. Draco," the Dark Lord's drawl sent a shudder through Draco's spine
that was familiar to him. It was a feeling he had always hated, and thought
he probably always would, even now after all the crimes and sins he had
committed - that deep, dark, breath-stealing fear that felt like ice and
adrenaline and fire pounding through him all at once. But today... today he
welcomed it. Reveled in it. It made his heart stutter to life - the first emotion
he had felt in days (weeks, months, years).

The Dark Lord was happy with himself. Draco had come to learn how to
read the Snake's emotions over the years through the level of fear in the
room. There was that glint in his eye that was rather smug for someone who
proclaimed themself an immortal God. At first, Draco put it down to the
third aniversary since the war began - that night on the tower when his
wand had sparked it off. But then he noticed Bellatrix lurking in the
background, the disgruntled frown that marred her otherwise beautiful face.
Snape, only a few feet to the left of her, expression as blank as Draco's own.
Other faces too - Rabastan, Rodulphus, Avery, Crabbe Sr., Dolohov, Goyle
Sr, Greyback, Macnair, Mulciber. The Inner Circle. What was left of it,
anyway.
"Look at him," And everyone's eyes snapped up to Draco, obeying the
command without a second thought. Draco remained straightbacked, feet
slightly apart, face unreadable - the perfect soldier. The Dark Lord smirked.
"My heir. My son. My protégée."

Draco bowed low at the waist and, as he did so, remembered the countless
times he had bowed in this room before, when it had been the most
spectacular ballroom in all of pure-blood society and he'd had his pick of
beautiful women to spin in his arms.

"Rise, my son. Stand before me that I may appraise you. Tell me, Bellatrix,"
he added after a moment. The woman at his side snapped to attention with
all the eagerness of a puppy being called to their master. "Is your nephew
not a fine wizard?"

"He is.. honoured to have your praise, my Lord," Bellatrix breathed,

chancing a distasteful glare in Draco's direction. A risky move indeed,
showing such dislike for the Dark Lord's own heir. But, where at another
time he might have killed the woman for such an open display of
disobedience, now the Dark Lord merely chuckled. Draco's hairs might
have stood on end, had he allowed his body to respond in any such way.

"Do not worry, Pet," their Lord crooned mockingly. "You are still my
favourite." It was a taunt at best, a downright insult at worst. Still, Bellatrix
simpered under the praise, a flushed crimson spreading over the cheekbones
that so resembled his mother's. But the Dark Lord was turning his attention
back to Draco and so he crushed any thoughts of his mother, and stared
straight ahead, allowing the public inspection.

"Strong. Powerful. Cunning... but is he willing to do whatever is necessary

to serve me, I wonder?"

"My only wish is to serve you, My Lord," Draco replied calmly, not too
fast, without hesitation. And yet, the Dark Lord's mask of light amusement
slipped, and his gaze was suddenly pouring into Draco, searching,
searching. Draco allowed the intrusion. It was vital that the Dark Lord feel
he had complete control. But there were ways of hiding memories other
than Occlumency. The invasion lasted barely seconds, and then the Dark
Lord was smirking once more, moving to circle Draco.

"Good," he praised. "Impressive. But even my most willing servants have

their flaws." His eyes flickered behind their slits to some nameless face on
Draco's left and he thought he heard a gasp."Weaknessesss." The 's' sounded
low and long and Draco fought the grimace it provoked.

"I have no weaknesses, my Lord."

"Yes. Well. We shall see," his voice was louder now, directed at the rest of
the gathering. He always was one for theatrics. Draco swallowed his
annoyance easily. "I have a mission for you. One I would only trust with
one of my most loyal servants. It will require you to use your every ounce
of stealth and cunning."

Draco waited, because inturrupting would surely end in a Cruciatus, and he

didn't mind being patient. The Dark Lord waited until he had reached his
throne before continuing, smiling lazily at Draco from the over-extravagant
chair. "The Order of the Phoenix have been looking to convert you for years
now. For some reason, Potter-" Here a low hiss ran around the room. He
stifled it with an impatient wave. "- seems to think you will betray me."

"An unfounded notion of Gryffindor bravery, I assure you," Draco replied,

with enough of a drawl to have a few other Death Eaters snickering.

"Undoubtedly," the Dark Lord agreed. He leaned forward on his knees,

observing Draco over the steeple his long, pale fingers created. "But you
cannot deny the opportunity such notions present." Draco quelled any
curiosity the comment stirred, swallowing down any questions. After a
pause, the Dark Lord continued, "I want you to go with Snape to their
Headquarters. I want you to beg that Potter filth for asylum. I want you to
promise him you will fight for him, that you have betrayed me and wish to
help him and his pathetic rag-tag army. And then, just when he thinks he
can trust you... I want you to destroy him."

"You wish for me to spy on the Order?" Draco asked after a pause, the first
hints of uncertainty creeping in to his tone.
"Not exactly. I have Snape as my spy. And even while they believe him to
be loyal to them, no one ever truly trusts a spy. No," the Dark Lord
concluded, "I want you to be one of them. Talk like them, fight with them.
Sink into their inner-circle. Bring them down from the inside."

When the Dark Lord paused expectantly, Draco nodded his head once - as if
he could have refused. Lips curving up in to a sneer, the Dark Lord clapped
his hands together, the sound making several of the Inner-Circle shift
anxiously. Fear was a second Master in the room, commanding,
domineering, leaving them wondering which reaction would be the right
one to any given comment. But the Dark Lord was apparently in no mood
for punishment tonight. In fact, he barely glanced at his audience, his sole
focus on the man directly before him.

"Excellent. I knew you would not let me down. But..." The hesitation, the
uncertainty, the slight pause - it was all for effect, of course. For a brief
moment, Draco wondered what would happen if he were to simply stop
playing. If he were to roll his eyes or sigh his frustration. Demand that the
Dark Lord make himself clear for once, or simply remain silent. But the
Snake's lips were thinned and pale, and his eyes danced with anticipation.
The wondering lasted a mere second before Draco stepped up to the role.

"Yes, my Lord?"

"It would look terribly suspicious for you to turn up unscathed, the picture
of perfect health. You are renowned for being one of my most favoured
servants. Why would you turn away now, when you have everything to
gain?" He did not wait for an answer. "No. It would simply not do. We will
have to work to make it... realistic." There was a glint in his eyes that Draco
recognised and his stomach rolled at the suggestion. But he was a Malfoy, a
soldier, and he knew his part in this. So he clenched his jaw, bowed his
head, lowered his eyes.

And in the low tone of his father, he replied, "Your wish is my command,
my Lord."

He did not look up to see the Snake draw his wand, or the way he twirled it
lazily between his fingers first, as if contemplating how best to execute his
plan. He heard the calm declaration of "Crucio!" White pain took over,
burning, agonising, thought-robbing, and he did not know anything else for
a long time after.

::

She had been on a mission that night he first arrived. It had not been a
success. They were misinformed and unprepared and the Aurors leading her
were inexperienced because the older ones were off on far more important
missions. Fighting six to one, it hadn't taken long for the retreat flare to
shoot through the battlefield. Not before a Severing Charm sliced cleanly
through her shoulder and out the other side. Not before Seamus Finnegan
fell, the green light of the Avada still in his eyes.

She was supposed to be returning with the rest of her team-mates to some
Ministry-designated safe house on the coast. But she was cold and wet and
tired and she had just seen someone she had known since the age of eleven
crumple at her feet. She needed home and warmth. And the nearest thing
she would get to that would be Grimamuld Place.

She'd been expecting the usual glow of the fire to be lighting the kitchen,
and the smell of Molly's cooking lingering in the air. Had relied on Harry's
sulking presence, and his poor attempts to hide the fact that he resented her
amount of freedom, even if it did have her coming home covered in blood -
not always hers, but always, always there. But the portkey threw her in to a
scene of chaos.

Her first thought when she saw the figure sprawled and convulsing on the
kitchen floor was God no, please not Harry, please not Ron. But then she
caught a flash of white-blond. Her second thought had her pulling her wand
out on instinct, before it could register that there were at least four other
highly trained Aurors surrounding him and he was clearly in no condition to
fight.

He was pale. No, pale was not the right word. He had always been pale
(with a complextion she had always secretly envied, but would never, ever
admit to), even in the very height of summer. But the man lying in front of
her was like a faded version of Draco Malfoy. A thin sheet of sweat coated
his skin, giving it an almost ectoplasmic glow which made her sleep-addled
mind wonder if he wasn't already dead and Molly's healing spells were all
for nothing anyway. But his body was convulsing too hard for a ghost. And
the ground out curses escaping his clenched teeth were enough to make her
wince, stumble back at the venom in his tone.

Her foot knocking a chair had Lupin finally noticing her and thrusting a
damp cloth in her hand. The smell of Ether, thick and heavy, reached her
nose and she retched when it mixed with the iron tang of her own blood.
But Lupin was giving her orders - press it down over his nose for five
seconds, every fifteen seconds, and for Merlin's sake Hermione, don't let
him suffocate! - and orders always had to be followed. So she dropped to
her knees and pressed the cloth to Malfoy's face. She thought maybe she did
it a little too hard because he coughed and spluttered before he passed out.

She counted - one, two, three, four, five - lifted the cloth away, started
counting again. One, two, three, four - Molly was running spells over
Draco's bare chest with a familiar urgency, muttering observations under
her breath out of habit. - seven, eight, nine - There were no physical
wounds, as far as she could see. But Hermione knew that meant nothing.
There were curses far worse than the Cruciatus, which were designed to lay
dormant until hours after the victim was hit, before tearing their way
through that person's body.

Malfoy stirred. Her eyes flickered upwards only to lock with his gaze. She
expected the usual venom and hatred and disgust through the haze of the
Ether. But there was only some mild sort of curiosity. And then he was
reaching up one hand and for one horrifying moment, she thought he might
caress her. Her breath stuck in her chest, her spine turned to stone. But his
finger slipped down her cheek, to the cut that would probably leave a scar
on her chin. When it came away, her blood stained the skin there, dark and
glistening in the dim light of the kitchen.

She almost choked when his hand fisted in her hair and he dragged her
down with a painful tug so that her face was mere inches from his.

"See?" He ground out, and it took a moment before she did see the cut
trailing down the side of his neck, blood pooling behind his head on the
faded linoleum floor. "It's just like mine." As if she had been the one to ever
dispute the fact.

She held his gaze the entire time she held the cloth over his mouth, waiting
for the moment when he slipped back in to oblivion. She didn't let him stay
consious long enough to talk after that.

Later, when Molly had done all she could do, and Malfoy had been moved
up in to one of the spare rooms, Lupin would explain to her how Snape had
seen him defy the Dark Lord - had shown them all the memory - and how
he had been tortured until he was begging them, pleading with them to kill
him. She would make the appropriate noises of agreement when Molly
expressed her sympathy and hatred of children being forced into war, and
pretend not to see Lupin's pensive frown that had him silent the rest of the
evening. She would calm Harry's almost-violent declarations that Malfoy
was most definitely up to something.

But, that night, when she was finally tucked up in bed, Malfoy asleep just
one floor above her, all she would remember was the way he had stared at
her blood, almost transfixed, and the childlike certainty when he'd
proclaimed that, "See? It's just like mine." She would think that maybe
Malfoy had started to heal. Maybe there was hope for him. She would curse
her abominable habit of being drawn to undeniably lost causes and
determine to be extra unforgiving, just to make up for the weakness of her
own thoughts.

She would think of his finger coated in her blood. "See? Its just like mine."
And the unspoken message - we are the same.

::

It was three days before Draco recovered enough to last an hour without the
constant pain potion top-ups, and a further four before the Weasley mother
proclaimed him fit enough for interrogation. He refused to speak to the tatty
werewolf he recognised as an ex-professor. He refused to even
acknowledge the Aurors they sent in, one after another. Whenever the
Weasley mother would come in with a meal (always heavily guarded) he
would make one simple request.
"I want to talk to Potter."

The Weasley woman made a clicking sound behind her teeth but otherwise
ignored him. He might have grunted his annoyance, if not for the fact that
just breathing sent shudders of pain up his spine. He settled for glowering at
her until she left the room, then sinking back in to his flimsy pillows,
exhausted by that small effort. It was hours before his door creaked open
again and, from the otherwise stillness that had settled over the house while
he slept, he could assume that it was late.

The figure moved stealthily across the room, and Draco tracked his
movements with a carefully masked wariness. A long moment passed,
during which the two men simply regarded each other. It was surreal in a
way, Draco mused, to be faced with one's childhood nemesis after so many
years. Potter had changed - he was a man now, less scrawny, and there was
a light dusting of stubble covering his face. He looked tired - not because of
the late hour, but the kind of tired that came of a child who had been forced
into adulthood too quickly and spent most of their time simply trying to stay
afloat. The kind of tiredness that sucked you dry and left you a hollowed-
out shell.

It was the kind of tired that Draco had been feeling since he was sixteen
years old. And he wasn't sure how he felt, seeing that same feeling reflected
in a boy he had always prided himself on being so different from.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" Potter asked, and Draco wondered if
the pondering frown that crinkled that famous scar meant he was having the
same thoughts and feeling just as disconcerted by it all.

"Well," Draco said, somehow finding it within himself to drawl. "Since the
last thing I remember is passing out from the pain and then waking up here,
I can only assume I have been kidnapped and am being held hostage until
further notice."

Potter regarded him coolly for a moment. "This isn't a game, Malfoy."

He tried to smirk, but had a horrible feeling it simply came across as a tired
smile. "Life is a game, Potter. All we can do is play the hand we're dealt and
hope for the best."

"Is that what you're doing? Playing with us?"

"I've heard your lot have been looking to recruit me," Draco answered
instead. "Severus is apparently more insightful than I gave him credit for.
He seemed to realise I was going to switch before I did." He sighed when
Potter didn't reply. "I have information. Names, places, plans. I am limited
in what I am actually able to reveal. But I shall do what I can."

"How would we know you weren't just lying? Sending us headfirst into
traps your precious Dark Lord has waiting."

"Because your Aurors have more than one way to tell if a person is lying -
even the most skilled Occlumens. And there's no way they would follow
any information without having it backed up by at least three other sources.
You wouldn't be relying on my word alone."

"In that case, what makes you think we even need you?"

This time, Draco knew his smirk was fully-formed. "Because I'm Draco
Malfoy, son of Lucius Mafloy, Public Enemy Number Two, until someone
did me a favour and finished him off. I'm the Dark Lord's heir - ex-heir-" he
added with a slight grimace. "I doubt he'll be welcoming me back with open
arms any time soon."

"And why now? Why now, when Voldemort is at his most feared? Surely it
would be more profitable for you to stick to the winning side?" It was
Potter's turn to smirk. "Or do you expect me to believe that you've had a
sudden change of heart and come to your senses?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Potter, it's like you don't know me at all. I'm tired of
tiptoeing around that hypocritical, half-blood Snake's feet. I'm done playing
the snappy sidekick. Being rid of him would be more profitable to me."

There was a long moment of silence. Seconds ticked by, counted by the rain
now tapping a light stacato tune on the window. Draco was only mildly
surprised when Potter sank down in to the chair beside his bed, leaning
heavily on his knees. There was an odd sort of weariness behind those
glasses, that made something in Draco's chest burn. Because this was Potter
and Malfoy, arch enemies by nature, meant to eternally hate and bicker and
duel. This was a part of his childhood that he wasn't ready to let go of yet.
And bloody Potter had already gone and left him behind.

"Is that the truth, Malfoy?"

His smirk faltered. Flickered. Died. His eyes shut without him making the
conscious decision to do so. The silence pressed down on him, and he
blamed it for the thick tone of his voice when he finally spoke again. "The
truth."
*Chapter 2*: Chapter 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No Profit is made from this fic

"The greatest obstacle to building truly good relationships is a feeling of

justified self-centeredness, a selfishness that, deep in our souls, feels
entirely reasonable..." - Larry Crabb

The first time Draco was sent on a mission with Granger, they had almost
ended up killing each other. It was all rather stupid, of course. He had been
on countless missions before and never once let his own or anyone else's
personal feelings get in the way. A year on and most Order members had
accepted him - or at the very least, could care less about his presence and
therefore managed to tolerate him most of the time. And he was a good
soldier - one of the best. It was not uncommon for the younger generation
of Death Eaters to swap sides after realizing that there was no glory in
watching people you had known all your life being tortured and raped
before your very eyes because they had the wrong blood.

Indeed, Draco had been surprised at the sheer number of Death Eaters who
had followed him to the Order. It was as though his turn had been a
precipice for the others, and he wondered if this hadn't been half the reason
the Order wanted him in the first place. Vincent and Gregory came first,
then Theodore Nott - the biggest surprise to Draco, who had always viewed
the mysterious lad as some sort of closet sadist. When Pansy came -
tortured and bleeding and three weeks pregnant from the dungeons of
Malfoy Manor - the numbers increased.

What with all the Slytherins either in hiding or fighting under the Order,
Draco wondered where the Snake would get his young followers from in
the future. But there were always others, only too willing to fill the spaces
lost. So-called 'purebloods' whose ancestry was dubious at best, half-bloods
just seeking power and the rare Muggle-born, stupid enough to believe that
service was protection.
The older soldiers were too busy fighting the real war to see the
undercurrent beneath their feet. The students who Draco and Vincent and
Gregory had spent years tormenting and bullying were not so easy to
forgive or forget. But Saint Potter campaigned on their behalf and
eventually the strong hatred simmered down to mild disgust. There were
even those who were only too happy to strike up friendship in a war that
stole any companionship away in the blink of an eye.

But Granger... Granger was different. She was still the same sickeningly
kind, sympathetic, goody-two-shoed Gryffindor she had always been. She
broke up arguments and scolded anyone obviously tormenting any new-
comer. She even went as far as to sit with them at given times in the day,
with blatant disregard to the much-needed line drawn between them and
everyone else. Or the fact that she was very much unwanted. And,
eventually - reluctantly - it began to work. Others began to do the same.
Friendships were struck up and, if not friendship, then a certain acceptance.

Granger was the Goddess of Forgiveness. To every other Slytherin that

crossed her path. To Draco, she was a demon. She snapped at him for the
slightest of things. She disregarded his every opinion, ignoring it at best,
fiercely opposing it at worst. It seemed the harder he tried to be civil, the
angrier she became. There were incidents where they'd had to be separated -
not to different rooms, but to different locations.

So Draco blamed whichever blind, ignorant Auror in charge of the mission

for pairing them up in the first place. He wasn't entirely sure how it had
started. Things had been going well. And then they'd gotten lost. (Draco
knew it wasn't her fault that the map was inaccurate, and the landscape had
changed over the years, and smoke from the battlefield just behind them
made it impossible to see three feet ahead of them anyway). But it was all
Granger's fault.

Some exhaustion-driven comment about her mane of bushy hair perhaps

obscuring her view had led to the familiar old ferret comment and suddenly
they were raging at each other in the middle of a forest, hexes flying left,
right and center. It took an intervention from that buffoon, Longbottom, of
all people, and some other Auror Draco did not recognize to break it up.
They were called to a disciplinary hearing - which basically meant Lupin
reprimanding them in that tired, disappointed way of his which bored Draco
but had Granger biting her bottom lip and looking very much like she
wanted the ground to swallow her up.

But when they left the office, drawing their wands to apparate to their
designated safe houses, she met his gaze for the first time in a year. And
nodded. It was just a nod. It didn't mean anything. It certainly didn't make
up for the fact that they had almost killed each other, not to mention
compromised the entire mission.

Still. Draco couldn't help but feel some of the anger had lifted. If only a
little bit. The next time they met, he made sure to comment on her pompous
tone.

::

She had thrown a plate at his head.

Hermione grimaced as the scene replayed once more in her head, pressing
her face into her pillow, as if this might somehow stifle the shame now
coursing through her. Because, while she was a good fighter, with a mean
left hook and a dozen hexes at the tip of her tongue that could have any
enemy begging for mercy, Hermione Granger was not a violent person. She
did not believe in violence. She did not condone it. She had spent most of
her school days trying to convince Harry and Ron that it was never the
solution.

She prided herself on being a logical person with a level head and oodles of
common sense. But when that - complete and utter bloody prat - man was
around, something took over. They had argued - always argued - over
something stupid, and, as usual, it had escalated in to a full-blown war, with
verbal insults and screams loud enough to have half the house running to
find out what the commotion was and the other half - the half that knew just
how explosive these fights could be - staying well clear.

He was infuriating. He was a twisted, evil, cruel, vile, foul, disgusting

creature and she wished she had never had the misfortune to lay eyes on
him.

But still. Throwing a plate may have been a bit far.

Thankfully, her aim was poor at the best of times, and it had crashed almost
harmlessly into the wall a mere foot from his head. She had to admit,
though. The look on his face had been priceless. It was as if even he
couldn't believe that the virtuous, sickeningly moral Hermione Granger
would ever act in such a way.

And now she was ashamed. Ashamed because she was not a violent person.
Ashamed because, despite this and knowing that what she did was wrong,
she could not deny that it felt decidedly right. It was like hitting him back in
third year all over again - that same shocked expression, and then that glint
of... something else flashing through his grey eyes. Something that made
her stomach coil tightly and her breath catch. Because, even though she
knew he would never hurt her really - except that sometimes she thought he
might - she could not deny the fact that he scared her.

So when she headed down to breakfast that next morning, it was with more
than a little apprehension. They were at some safe house or other. It was
one of her favorites, if she was being honest. Close enough to the sea to
smell of salt and seaweed, but far enough that she did not feel that sickly
ocean spray on her skin whenever she stepped outside. Theodore Nott was
already there, nose buried in some book or other that Hermione recognized
as one she had leant him only a few days before. Parkinson was there too.

The two girls exchanged a brief glance-and-nod, the silence tinged with a
slight awkwardness. Of all the Slytherin new-comers (except Malfoy, of
course), Parkinson had been the most difficult to break. The girl was sulky
at best and downright spoilt at worst. Unlike her comrades, she had not
chosen to live under the Order, but was more forced in to it by duress of
circumstance. And she made damn sure they all knew it too.

Hermione hummed loudly in her head to distract herself from the

aggravating thoughts and reached over to set the Muggle-kettle to boil (yet
another reason Parkinson hated most of the Order's accommodation. They
were filled with both wizarding and Muggle devices). Over the rising stir of
the heating water, Hermione heard the door open and shut.

She knew it was him simply by the way the room was suddenly far too
small for her to breathe comfortably. The counter she was leaning against
no longer seemed comfortable, but more like a cage - the perfect place to be
cornered. She fought the urge to react - other than the instinctive tensing
that occurred when any enemy approached - and focused on the mostly
grime-obscured view from the cracked window.

If he greeted his friends, she did not hear it. Though this could have been
due to the almost deafening thrum of her own heart in her throat. But she
could practically sense his every movement. Her mind tracked him through
the kitchen to the larder, ears pricking at the sound of the bread bin being
rummaged through - and probably left completely disorganized, despite her
best efforts.

So it came as somewhat of a surprise to her to discover that, despite her

new-found Malfoy-radar, she did not feel his presence until his body was
mere inches behind her own. His arm snaked up and around her, dropping
the bagels into the toaster, before both hands came to rest either side of her
own on the chipped counter.

She knew that the bagel could not possibly stay in there forever. She knew
that, eventually, God, or whoever, would have mercy and that blasted bit of
bread would pop up and set her free. She knew it, but she couldn't quite feel
it. She could feel every one of those three minutes pass by, each second
counted by the heated breaths puffing evenly through her hair.

She gritted her teeth. Clenched her hands. Refused to react in any way that
might give him even the slightest hint of satisfaction. Finally- pop! He
caught the bagels before they could settle back into the toaster, pausing to
take a slow bite before taking that one step out of her personal space.
Hermione took a deep, calming breath. She would not, would not, would
not give him the satisfaction of yelling, screaming or showing him in any
form just how bloody frustrated he made her. She would not pull out chunks
of her hair or hex him into the next millennium.
His footsteps clipped neatly across the linoleom floor and she counted
them, waiting with growing relief. Perhaps it had worked. Perhaps he had
gotten bored of tormenting her for one day. Perhaps he believed her farce of
total disregard. The footsteps paused at the door.

"Oh, Granger?" he drawled. "You might want to sort out your hair before
you stumble down here in the mornings. I'm afraid it will actually snap one
day and strangle me to death."

Perhaps not. By the time she had spun round, bag of bagels in hand, the
door was shutting on his lazy chuckle.

"I wouldn't let him bother you." Parkinson's voice snapped her out of her
seething reverie enough to make her realize her mouth was still working
silently over retorts he would never hear. Hermione eyed the Slytherin
suspiciously, still struggling to contain her frustration. Parkinson gave her a
brief glance and sighed, as one might at a particularly slow child failing to
understand a simple problem. "Draco. I wouldn't let him get to you."

"He does not get to me," Hermione snapped.

"Sure. Well then perhaps you might want to release the bagels from your
death-hold. Some of us actually like to eat those in the mornings."

Hermione quickly dropped said bag onto the counter, cheeks flushing from
both anger and shame. Parkinson sighed once more, pulling down two mugs
and the coffee jar.

"I'm serious though. He only does it because he wants you to stop hating
him."

Hermione had always prided herself on catching onto things rather quickly.
This, she did not get. "I'm sorry?"

Parkinson shrugged. "I don't know. I guess he thinks if he riles you up far
enough, you might finally get all that anger out of your system or
something."
"That makes no sense," Hermione muttered, absently taking the proffered
mug and cradling it in her hands.

"Hey, I didn't say it made sense. This is Draco we're talking about. There is
little he does that actually makes sense to the reasonable person. Then
again," she added with another shrug, "he wouldn't be able to pull off half
the missions he does if he weren't at least a little insane."

There was a pause. Nott chuckled lightly, before turning a page. Hermione
thought back over what Parkinson had said and frowned.

"I don't hate him."

Parkinson sighed another exasperated sigh and moved to sit back at the
table. "Don't tell me that. I'm not the one with an apparent death wish."

Hermione's frown deepened but she couldn't think of a suitable reply to

that, so she remained silent and sipped from her mug instead. The scowl
quickly creased into a grimace. "I like two sugars in my coffee."

Parkinson fixed her with a blank look. One perfectly-groomed eyebrow

lifted delicately into an arc. "Granger," she said. "I don't care." But she
kicked out the chair opposite her and, after a slight hesitation, Hermione
moved to take it. It was just a coffee. A badly-made one, at that. But who
knew? Maybe that was how friendships started? Or, if not the start of a
friendship, at least the end of a rivalry. She had always known Ron and
Harry and the Griffindors would die for her as she would for them. Maybe,
in the real world, away from the cosy common room, it wasn't as simple as
taking down a troll and living happily ever after. Maybe it had to be this
way, with a bad cup of coffee and a barely-civil conversation.

They sipped their coffee in a silence broken only occasionally by the

rustling of Nott's pages.

::

Draco was in Hell.

Darkness surrounded him. Thick, impenetrable black, pressing down on
him, pushing, squeezing, gripping his body in an iron clasp that had him
gasping for breath, drowning, until -

He was standing alone in a meadow of cherry trees. A carpet of soft pink

petals caressed his bare feet and the sweet aroma that filled his nostrils was
enough to have him thickly stumbling to his knees, his head moving to rest
for just a second-

Metal objects hurtled past him at lightening speed. The sound of rubber
screeching against the rough ground made his teeth ache and his heart
pound. Headlights blinded him, making his stumbled journey across the
highway a blur of white. A horn, too loud for his already aching head. He
turned in time to see a truck pounding towards him, the two beams of light
growing until they morphed into one-

Draco spluttered, the bitter-tasting potion that had been forced into his
mouth dribbling down his chin. It took several moments of struggling
before he recognized the twin faces looming over him, the usually
simultaneous expressions of mischievous glee decidedly lacking.

"You need to drink it, Draco," Fred - or was it George? - told him.

He resisted a second longer before deciding that, if they were trying to

poison him, death would be preferable to this pain anyway. The potion was
foul and he dry-heaved for several moments after swallowing.

"What the fuck was that?" he rasped, when he felt he could speak without
vomiting.

"That, my friend, is our latest invention," Fred replied, grin back in place
now it was apparent Draco would survive.

"What's the last thing you remember?" George asked. He had one of those
odd-looking Muggle quills in hand, nib poised over a pad of white paper.
Draco pressed his eyes shut against the migraine building in the back of his
head and thought. He dimly recalled strolling into the kitchen, hoping to
sneak some of those delicious Muggle treats he'd come to love recently
(Pop Tarts, or something ridiculous like that). There'd been a worn-looking
boot on the table and he remembered with sudden clarity the firm tug
around his middle the second he had touched it.

"A Portkey?"

"Ah, he catches on well," Fred commented.

George smirked arrogantly. "It's like a Portkey. It resembles it in every way.

The useless object, the blue light, the characteristic tug-"

"There's just one very important difference," Fred cut in.

"And what's that? Its ability to cause a killer migraine."

"No. Though we are sorry about that. An unfortunate side-effect we have

yet to amend. It does a number on the mind when it is compressed in such a
way."

Draco raised an eyebrow at that. The first stirrings of panic were beginning
to rise in his stomach. "Compressed?" Thoughts of brain tumors and
abscesses and other horrifyingly complicated medical conditions that the
manic twins had probably inflicted upon him flashed uncomfortably
through his mind.

"Don't worry," George rushed to say. "It's perfectly safe."

"All we did was make your mind believe you had been Portkeyed out of
here. Those places you saw, the images in your head were just that - images.
It wasn't real."

"Sure felt fucking real," Draco muttered, shooting them a mildly

contemptuous look. It was difficult to hold onto his fury when curiosity and
intrigue were quickly taking its place. The migraine had already faded to a
dull ache and, as his awareness began to return, his interest was rapidly
peaking. He pushed himself up on his elbows, studying the brown boot
from where it lay innocently by his feet. With one brief glance at the twins,
he reached out and pressed one finger to the toe.
- a snow-covered hill caught in the throes of a blizzard, a storm-beaten cliff,
a forest of trees tangled together at the branches, grasping at his shirt,
tearing his skin -

"It's a part of our capture range," Fred informed him once he could breathe
again.

"Get a Death Eater to touch one of these and they'll be lost in the recesses of
their own mind until someone administers the revival potion."

"Genius," Draco murmured, staring at the boot with a new-found

appreciation.

"Of course..." At George's hesitation, Draco glanced up. And resisted the
urge to shrink back. Both twins were staring intently at him, an eager glint
reflected in their identical blue eyes.

"Our experimentation can only go so far without a willing volunteer," Fred

continued with a shrug.

When George heaved a theatrical sigh, Draco felt the alarm bells start to
ring. "If only we had someone brave enough to step forward and sacrifice a
few hours of his free time a week in order to help us in our noble task."

"And why exactly can't it be tested on one of you?" Draco demanded.

"We've already taken it in turns testing it out. We'll never advance unless we
have a third party to experiment on while the two of us make observations."

"And, after all you've put our family through..."

Whoever said Griffindors were incapable of blackmail had never met the
Weasley twins. In fact, Draco might almost have gone as far as to say that
they should really have belonged in Slytherin, if they weren't so bloody
noble. He stared from one knowing grin to the other and realized too late
that he had played directly into their trap. It was impossible. It was
degrading. A Malfoy playing guinea pig for the blood traitor Weasley
twins? Forget turning - his ancestors would have decimated their graves by
now. He pressed his eyes shut against the migraine returning with sudden
vengeance and breathed heavily through his nose.

"Why do I get the feeling I'm going to regret this?" he asked. The
borderline-evil laughs that greeted his question brought him no ease of
mind.

::

Hermione knew she should be focusing on the battle surrounding her. She
knew that the hexes bursting back and forth were bare seconds away from
ending her in a flash of light. Yet, still, she remained frozen, eyes fixed on
the exchange before her. She had watched Zabini approach Malfoy, seen the
recognition flicker across the blond's face before determination set in. Had
stared transfixed at the exchange of curses, just as full of venom and hatred
and urgency as the others around them.

But then, there had been a hesitation. Malfoy had held up his wand, lips
parted, curse bubbling up in his throat. And then - nothing. No flash of
green. No flash of anything. The two men stood facing each other, barely
seven feet apart. There was a speculative gleam in Zabini's dark eyes and
when he tilted his head, Hermione was strangely reminded of the way two
duelers bowed at the end of a particularly satisfying match. He turned on
the spot and vanished.

Mafloy stared at that spot for a long time, apparently lost in thought. Then,
without so much of the barest of hint of a pause, he turned and threw
himself back into the battle, an unidentifiable blur amidst the fighting.

Later, after the fighting was finished for the day and the injured had been
carted off to St. Mungo's, she sought him out. The safe house they were
staying in was large enough for most of them to share only two to a bed. It
was something she had become accustomed to - had to become accustomed
to - sleeping with strangers. There had been the odd male who had tried it
on with her. She never bore a grudge. This was war and she was no longer
the naive seventeen year-old who believed that sex was only something
people in love did. For most, it was a form of escape. In a time where the
boy you sat next to in class for seven years could be killed in a brief flash of
light, everyone sought out their own source of comfort. Ginny had once told
her it was just about being close to another human being without having to
worry whether or not they would be killed the next day. Hermione had told
her she'd understood. (She didn't.)

So that night, like any other, the house was filled with the low grunts of the
carnal activities going on behind closed doors. And usually, this would not
have bothered her. She would have closed her eyes and buried her head into
the pillow and fallen asleep before she could even think to be embarrassed
anyway. Except ten minutes ago, she had seen Neville lead a blushing
Parvati to the room just next door to her own. She had spent exactly eight
seconds trying to pretend that those particular grunts were just like the
others - irrelevant and nothing to do with her. (But this was Neville and this
was Parvati and there were some things one just simply could not ignore, no
matter how many pillows she piled over her ears.)

She lightly mused that she must be the only one not enjoying some form of
a bed as she pulled on her duffel coat and boots over her pyjamas (and
worked hard at pushing any thoughts of Grimmauld Place and the
comforting straggle of Weasleys that would be waiting for her there). Well.
There was Malfoy, too. She had been somewhat surprised to find him out
on the front porch, lying flat on his back on the wooden porch-swing. A
cigarette was balanced between the one hand that dangled over the edge, his
other arm bent up and under his head.

He didn't react to the door opening or her heavy boots on the wooden
planks. She hesitated, half-turned back towards the house. Made a decision.
Leaning back against the now-closed door, she folded her arms over her
chest and contemplated him. His expression was quite peaceful. It was a
little odd to see him without that cool mask of indifference tightening his
expression. He looked almost content.

"I saw you today, you know," she said, and maybe she imagined his grimace
at the broken silence. "With Zabini," she added when he failed to respond.

"You should really focus more in battle," he drawled after a slight pause.
"Wouldn't want that pretty little head of yours being blasted to pieces just
because you weren't paying attention."
"Why did he let you go like that? In fact, why did you let him go?"

"Maybe I was feeling charitable. He's always been an appalling fighter,

poor chap."

"Seems like a pretty chummy view to have of the enemy."

He was on his feet before she had a chance to process the fact that he had
moved at all. His wand was clutched tightly in his hand, but the offensive
tip was pointing uselessly at the ground. She aimed hers at his head. After a
tense moment, his lips twitched up into a smirk.

"See, Granger," he said, stashing his wand away once more and resuming
his earlier position, "we've been on the same side for a year. But you're still
more than willing to pull your wand on me."

"I don't trust you."

He sobered for a second. Their gazes locked. "Good. You shouldn't." The
moment passed. Hermione shifted, uncomfortable with the sudden intensity
that had entered his eyes. But then it was gone, and his expression was
almost wistful. "If you switched sides tomorrow, would you be willing to
kill your precious Weasel? Or the Boy-Who-Wouldn't-Fucking-Die?"

"I would never betray them."

He lifted his gaze to hers again. "You could never know that. You don't
know what it would take to make you a murderer. No one is born with the
ability or desire to kill. No one comes into this world feeling hatred. It is
something we learn."

"Hatred isn't learnt. It's planted inside you by the words or actions of
another," Hermione said. His smirk confused her.

"Such a pious little Griffindor. I wonder if you even know what real hate
is?"

"I hate you," she said truthfully. His smirk didn't falter.
"I have no doubt." He lifted the cigarette bud to his lips, inhaled deeply,
smoke curling passed his lips like dragon's breath. "Take a seat, Granger."

The only seat was the one he was currently sprawled across. "I'm fine,
thank you."

"Do you want to hear this or not?" She hesitated. He fixed her with a mildly
amused look. "Granger. Sit. Down."

Lifting her chin an inch, gathering her dignity around her like a cloak, she
perched on the edge of the bench by his feet, glancing distastefully at his
muddy boots. Smirking again, he shifted so she had more room to sit back,
regarding her thoughtfully while she struggled to get comfortable while not
touching any part of his body with any part of hers. When she settled, he
held out the cigarette to her.

"Don't you have a fresh one?" she asked, wrinkling her nose at the prospect
of putting her mouth somewhere his mouth had been just seconds before.

"Rations, Granger. It was hard enough to get a pack as it is. Stop being such
a prude and take a drag."

Shooting him an indignant glare, she took it anyway, enjoying the familiar
tingling of the nicotine entering her system. Her own monthly stash had run
out weeks ago and she had not realized just how much she needed one until
now. By the time Draco began to speak, cigarette back in his possession,
she had lost enough of her anger to feel her interest piqued.

"You're an only child, right Granger?"

"So are you," she returned quickly, unsure why she felt it was an insult. But
Draco simply shook his head.

"When you are a pureblood, you are never an only child. We are a dying
breed, Granger. Truly pureblooded families are rare, if not non-existent.
We've all got half-bloods and Squibs and the scandalous marriage to a
Muggle somewhere in our family tree. You look surprised."
"Surprised that you're admitting to it," Hermione confessed. He shrugged.

"Despite what you may think, I'm not that snotty little kid anymore."

"You're still a bastard."

"I'm still a bastard," he agreed, smirking. He took a long drag. Passed the
cigarette back to her. His expression became contemplative. "We all grew
up together - Pansy, Crabbe, Goyle, Theo - I can't remember a time when
they weren't my... if not friends, then acquaintances. But Blaise and I... we
were like brothers. We shared the same wet nurse. We literally grew up
together. Somewhere along the lines, his blood and mine are the same." His
lips turned up into an amused smile. "My mother always used to say that we
were like Siamese twins. We were forever causing havoc together - went
through a record number of nannies."

He was quiet for a long moment, accepting the cigarette with a brief glance.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, if still a little cold. "We are
brothers. In childhood, in Hogwarts, in war. That will never change. I could
never kill him. It would destroy me."

Silence fell and settled. Hermione shifted so that her back was to the
wooden arm-rest, her knees curled towards her chest. If Malfoy noticed her
unabashed observation, he said nothing, and his face remained as
unreadable as ever.

"Why are you telling me this?" Her voice seemed too loud in the still of the
night and she grimaced despite herself. He didn't answer straight away. The
bench unsettled as he moved to sit up, drawing his own knees up in a
parody of her position. His eyes were full of meaning she could make no
sense of, hard as she might try.

"Because," he said at last, "I want you to understand why I didn't kill him
today. I want you to understand why, if ever the situation arose, I would not
be able to protect you from him."

She held his gaze. Resisted the growing need to blink. "I don't need your
protection."
"What do you need, Granger?" The question, so softly uttered, caught her
off guard, and she blamed that tone for the answer that slipped so readily
from her lips.

"The truth." She grimaced and turned her gaze out to a garden she knew
was there but could not see in the darkness. "You want me to stop hating
you. I want to stop hating you. But I don't... I can never read you. You're
always so indifferent. I can't work you out."

"Always wanting to know it all, hey Granger?" His tone was teasing, but
there was a cool edge to it. She sighed. Forced herself to meet his gaze.

"If you want this to work, I need to be able to trust you."

"And my promising you this will make it all go away? I think not, Granger."

"No," she agreed with a shrug. "But it would help. It's like the troll in the
bathroom."

"The what now?"

She waved her hand dismissively. "Semantics. Everything has to start

somewhere. Or, I should say, every rivalry has to end. I'm not saying it'll all
be sunshine and roses from now on. But it's better than throwing a plate at
your head."

She expected him to mock her, or at the very least, call her out on her
stupid, Griffindor ways. But when she managed to lift her gaze from her
flustered hands, his expression was contemplative, no traces of amusement
lining his mouth. Three seconds passed. Six.

"No lies," he said.

"No lies," she repeated.

He nodded. It was just a slight movement of the head. One inch up, one
inch down. It didn't mean anything would necessarily change. It didn't mean
anything at all, really. But some of the tension left her stomach. And by the
time that cigarette had been reduced to little more than a stub, she had
forgotten to mind that his legs were just barely touching hers, or that he had
selfishly taken the last drag of that smoke, instead of offering it to her. She
tilted her head back, picked out her favorite stars. She stifled a giggle,
ignoring the confused look he sent her way.
*Chapter 3*: Chapter 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of
creation - Fredich Nietzsche

The first time she used his first name was no momentous occasion. They
were in the kitchen. She and Pansy had been bantering about the 'Most
Shaggable Quidditch Player.' (Krum had won out, being the only one either
of them had actually gotten to see up close.) Pansy had said something
about craving chocolate and Granger - the sneaky little bitch - apparently
had her own secret stash, hidden at the back of the larder. She'd moved to
get it and, when she'd reached the door, had half-turned to look at him, as if
only then remembering his presence.

"Draco, do you want some?"

His pause lasted barely a fifth of a second. Granger didn't seem to notice,
her bushy head already disappearing into the cupboard, in search of
chocolate treasure. But Pansy shot him a knowing smirk, one eyebrow
arching like a question. He ignored her, moving to the kettle in an attempt
to escape her smug smirk.

He decided that he liked the way she said his name. It sounded crisper on
her tongue, without the drawl of a Slytherin, or the distaste of those who
used it like an insult. There was no hidden agenda behind it. No power
game. She said it simply because that was his name. And he liked that.

It frightened him that he liked that. He spent the next three weeks avoiding
her.

::
They were in Harry's bedroom. Grimmauld Place was almost empty, for
once, and, this many floors up, they could not hear the tell-tale sounds of
strategy meetings, people arguing, injured people being treated by Molly's
skilled hands. They lay on the two single beds Harry and Ron had pushed
together, Hermione in the middle, both boys spread out either side of her.
This close together, she could feel the warmth their bodies radiated, the
length of their arms and legs brushing against hers, their pinky-fingers
barely touching her own.

They had talked about everything, from the various houses she and Ron had
been staying at, to the balance of the war and the slowly tipping scale
(though to whose favour it was turned, nobody was quite sure). They talked
for three months worth of separation, and then fell silent, oddly exhausted,
as if simply being together took some great emotional effort nowadays.
Hermione felt a pang for the days when conversation had come as easy to
them as O's came to her, without being laden with war and death and
unmentioned thoughts of those missing or dead. For a time when Harry's
mood had not been burdened with the suffocation of never being allowed to
leave Grimmauld Place, or hers and Ron's exhaustion from too many battles
in too short a space of time.

The silence held for too long. Inevitably, Ron was the one to break it.

"You know what I miss most about not being in a war?" Harry grunted to
show he was listening. "Madam Rosmerta." It took him a moment to realise
that they had both turned their heads to look at him. He frowned
defensively. "What? She was brilliant! All rosy cheeks and rounded
cleavage..."

"I can't remember the last time we saw her," Harry commented after a slight
pause.

"Dad's birthday. Just before things properly took off," Ron returned easily,
and Hermione could hear the wistful smile playing across his lips. "She was
wearing emerald robes and her hair was in curls."

"Hang on a minute," Hermione frowned, propping herself up on her elbow,

so as to get a better look at him. "We were together then."
His cheeks flushed with the sheepish grin he shot her. "Of course, I was far
more besotted with you! I just couldn't help but notice her, that was all. You
looked beautiful."

"What was I wearing?"

His mouth opened. Closed. Opened. Closed. "Something... pink?"

"Ronald Weasley! When have you ever seen me wearing something pink!
And you said I was an inattentive partner!" But she was laughing now -
they all were - proper, stomach-clenching laughs that had her curled up on
her side, gasping for air, tears rolling down her cheeks. When the chuckling
and giggling and chortling finally simmered into the occasional snort, they
lay together in a lighter silence than before, bodies pressed closer now so
that Hermione couldn't breathe without feeling Harry's chest against her
back, or Ron's back against her chest.

Sometime later, her mind already hazy with the beginnings of what
promised to be a deep sleep, Hermione felt Ron stir beside her, shifting onto
his back. She snuggled closer, her hand snaking unconsciously behind to
link with Harry's.

"I would have married her, you know," Ron murmured through a yawn. "If
ever anyone, it would have been her."

Harry's amused snort was the last thing she heard before she was shaken
awake four hours later to the panic-stricken face of Mrs. Weasley. That was
the night Luna was rescued from Malfoy Manor bruised, bleeding and two
months pregnant. That was the night Angelina Johnson died.

::

Draco dreamed of a river at night. The moonlight filtered down through the
thin cloud-cover, illuminating the faces of those gathered across the other
side of the stilled water. Faces of those he had cared for, those he had
known, those he had seen tortured, raped, killed, those his own wand had
destroyed. They waited for him, contented smiles lighting their lips.
"We are here," they said, and it sounded like home. "Join us, brother."

::

Hermione and Ron drew straws. Ron lost. She parted with a too-brief hug
and a guilty smile. There were two Aurors guarding Luna's room at St.
Mungo's. They nodded shortly at Hermione, running through the procedural
security spells and questions, checking her ID thoroughly, before allowing
her to pass. Dean was slumped across the only chair in the room. His mouth
hung open, though no snores escaped. His hair stuck up in tufts that rivalled
Harry's. Moving with caution, she gently placed a hand on his shoulder,
rubbing it soothingly until he stirred.

"Hey," she whispered.

"Hey. What time is it?"

"Late." Hermione followed his gaze to where it had flown the second his
eyes had opened. Luna was still, only the shallow rise and fall of her chest
giving any indication that she was alive at all. Her skin was a pale alabaster,
healed of all except the very worst of the cuts. Her hair had been scooped
into a messy plait, trailing over her left shoulder. Her eyes did not flicker
behind their closed lids. "How is she?"

"Better. They've put her in an induced coma so her body can recover.
They've had to be careful over what spells they use in case they hurt the...
the baby..." Dean's voice trailed off, what little colour there had been left in
his cheeks fading quickly with the whispered words.

An awkward silence ensued.

"Dean, why don't you go back to Grimmauld Place? Just for a little while,"
she added quickly, pushing over the half-formed protest that tried to escape
his lips. "Go have a shower and a sleep. Eat some of Molly's food. I'll stay
with Luna."

He struggled with himself for a moment, before exhaustion and the need for
clean clothes gave in. When he bent his head close to Luna's, Hermione
turned her gaze to the window and didn't look back again until she heard
him straighten up. His eyes darted to hers briefly, then dropped back to the
floor.

"Thanks, Hermione."

"It's no problem. Take as long as you need."

"I'll see you in an hour," he said, the door closing softly behind him.

Hermione moved to take the chair he had just exited, pulling it until she
could reach out and take Luna's hand in her own. She gave it a squeeze and
waited for Luna to tell her that she ought to be careful in hospitals; didn't
she know that Nargles infected every corner? When Dean returned - exactly
one hour later - he brought an extra chair with him. They sat together in
silence, watching over the sleeping girl until Shacklebolt came, full of
apologies and embarrassed authority, to call Hermione to a mission.

::

Draco opened his eyes to find the smiling face of Fred Weasley hovering
above him.

"How was it that time?" he asked.

"Splendid," Draco replied, then proceeded to lean over the side of the bed
and vomit. Fred's hand shot out, bucket at the ready, before he could spoil
the carpet. Begrudgingly accepting the proffered towel, Draco pulled
himself up in to a sitting position and waited for the waves of nausea to
pass.

"I take it potion number seven is a definite no then?" Fred asked, already
making rapid notes on his 'notepad,' as he liked to call it. (Personally, Draco
didn't see what was so bad about plain old scrolls.) "So that leaves us with
potions two, four and five being maybes, one, three and seven definite noes
and a dubious yes on number six."
"Dubious because I can't actually remember anything for six minutes after
taking it," Draco reminded him.

Fred gave a dismissive wave, his smile more than a little satisfied. "I'd say
we're making some real progress, wouldn't you? Now, do you want to move
on to potions eight through to sixteen or wait until after dinner for that?"

"After," Draco groaned, his stomach rolling at the mere prospect of any
more tester-revival potions.

"Fair enough." Fred moved to stow away his notes, throwing Draco a clean
shirt from his own drawer. Draco wrinkled his nose at the crumpled item.

"What exactly am I supposed to do with this?"

"Wear it. Your own shirt is filthy. Mum'll get suspicious if she sees it. And
once mum gets suspicious about anything Wizard Wheezes related, she's
like a Hippogriff with a rat - she never lets it go."

Draco grunted but pulled off his own shirt and replaced it with the
significantly more crinkled article. It smelled of damp and mowed grass and
the wooden barn where he had lost his virginity to Pansy. His face looked
awful but there was nothing to be done about that now. He pinched his
cheeks to bring back some of the colour and hoped the others would put the
deep bruises under his eyes down to too many sleepless nights.

"I might ask George if he wants to join us after dinner." Fred's tone was
light. Too casual to be completely normal. Draco nodded but chose to keep
quiet. He had never been one for offering good advice or comfort - he was
too selfish for any of that - and this was a matter he had little (no)
experience in. He'd never been in love and therefore had never lost the love
of his life. Neither had Fred, and Draco had a feeling that the man was at a
loose end, suddenly disabled by this lack of experience, unable to
understand the silence that had replaced his twin's laughter, or the way he
refused meals, vomiting if anyone tried to force him.

Draco considered telling Fred that he should just give it some time - that
George would come round in the end. That everything would be alright and
he would not be forever stuck with the label of 'The Lucky Twin' who didn't
lose his love to a stray Avada.

He opened his mouth. "We should hurry," he said, the words coming out
like a sigh. "The others will be waiting."

It was only a small gathering - most of the Weasleys, Potter, Granger, Lupin
(looking tired and worn as ever). George's absence weighed heavily on the
table, his plate (which Mrs. Weasley insisted on setting out) screaming
volumes at the others. The conversation was - not awkward exactly, but
significantly dimmed. On his way up for second helpings (all the house-
elves in the world could not make a meal as good as that woman's. Draco
would have to look into employing her, if ever he lived through this thing)
he brushed past Granger.

She almost made as if to completely ignore him, but seemed unable to resist
pausing, her forehead crinkling in confusion.

"You smell different," she said.

"I'm sorry?"

"You don't smell like you."

He arched an eyebrow. "And why exactly have you been smelling me?"

Her cheeks flushed deliciously, as if she had only then realised what she
had said. Had she been anything less than a Griffindor, she might have told
him to forget it and scrambled off to avoid further humiliation. As it was,
she simply drew herself up slightly and fixed him with her best
'McGonagall-gaze.' "You've been avoiding me."

"Have I?"

Annoyance flashed through her eyes. "Don't play games with me, Malfoy."

"Oh, so it's Malfoy now, is it?" Unable to stop himself. "What happened to
Draco?"
"If you didn't like me using your first name, you should have just said," she
snapped in a heated whisper that suggested she had known this had been the
reason right from the very start, and had simply been waiting to call him out
on it. "There was no need to go running scared to a safe house on the other
side of the country."

"You really think that's why I left?" That was exactly why he had left.
"Don't be so childish, Granger."

Some of the anger left her face, only to be replaced by more determination.
"Why don't you like me saying your first name? Is it..." She broke off,
pulled her bottom lip anxiously between her teeth. Draco's eyes dropped to
her mouth, a familiar tensing building in his lower stomach at the
unconscious action. "I mean... I know we fight a lot, but... I just... well, we
aren't enemies any more, are we?"

Draco couldn't help but find some of his annoyance slip away at her
obvious fluster. He smirked his amusement and took a step closer, crowding
her a little too much to be polite.

"No lies?" he asked.

"No lies." She nodded.

He paused. Let his eyes track her blush across her cheeks, down her neck,
disappearing into the fabric of her latest, hideously oversized jumper. "I
didn't dislike you saying my name. In fact, almost the complete opposite.
You see, I don't think I dislike you anymore, Granger. And I'm not entirely
sure that's a good thing."

"Because I'm a filthy Muggle-born?" she demanded quickly.

He sighed. "Because you're Hermione Granger."

"And you're Draco Malfoy," she returned when he failed to elaborate,

rolling her eyes exasperatedly. He simply nodded.
"Exactly," he said, then walked back to the table, leaving her to her
confusion.

::

"Tell me something I don't know about you."

Draco frowned at her question, lifting his head off the wooden arm-rest in
order to shoot her a questioning glance. "I'm sorry?"

She propped herself up onto her elbows. Lying this way - with her head on
one arm of the porch-swing and his on the other, their legs on opposite sides
of each other - Hermione could see down the entire length of him, from his
tatty socks, to the mop of blonde hair that kept falling into his eyes. "Tell
me something I don't know," she repeated.

"And why would I want to do that?"

"Because," she explained, impatiently, disliking the mocking arch of his

eyebrow, "that's what friends do. They tell each other things."

"Oh, so we're friends now?" But his tone was teasing so she ignored him.

"I don't know anything about you. You're such a closed book."

"Ah, so that's what this is really all about." Draco smirked. "The nosey little
book-worm detests not knowing all."

Hermione huffed and let her head drop back onto the arm, glaring up at the
night sky. "It was just a simple question. I'll tell you something in
exchange."

"I already know you, Granger."

"Liar." Because she had been just as much a closed book as he had, and it
was this realisation that had led her to ask her question.

"Ah, but I do," he insisted, the bench jostling as he moved his own head
back. "You won't believe anything unless you've looked it up and
researched it to death. You hate to be corrected and will argue until the
cows come home, even when you secretly know you're wrong. You're bossy
and stubborn-"

"That's not knowing me," Hermione interrupted, disliking this particular

analysis of her. "Anyone could tell you all those things."

He was silent for a long moment. "You put sugar on all your cereals - even
those chocolaty things that clearly don't need it. You hate all types of eggs,
except scrambled, which I find rather peculiar since eggs are eggs, whatever
way they're cooked." He paused once more. "I think you've probably got
some mild form of OCD, though you hide it well."

"Oh, great. Anything else you would like to add? Because this is a real ego
boost." She frowned when he didn't answer, suspecting he was probably
laughing at her in that quiet way of his that infuriated her beyond all reason.

"I had a phobia of the dark until I was fifteen years old."

Her head lifted off the arm-rest too quickly. "What?"

"You heard me." His tone was cool but there was a slight flush to his
cheeks. "My father hated me for it. Used to lock me in dark rooms for hours
on end. I think he thought he could just... scare it out of me. When I was
about six, he forgot about me. I was stuck in that room for three hours
before mother found me."

"That's terrible."

"I don't need your pity, Granger," Draco drawled, rolling his eyes and taking
a long drag from the cigarette they were sharing (from her supply this time).
"It is what it is."

"It's wrong," Hermione insisted. "Your father should never have done that
to you."

"He did what he thought was best by me. Fear is weakness. He didn't want
me to have that weakness." He passed the cigarette to her, his eyes still
fixed on the canvass of black above. "Nothing in life is black and white,
Granger. There are only shades of grey."

Hermione stared at him a long time before lowering herself back down,
cigarette clutched loosely between her lips. Silence reigned for several
minutes and when Draco spoke again, his voice startled her slightly.

"Go on then."

"Sorry?"

"You said you would tell me something in return," he reminded her, though
she suspected it had more to do with ridding the air of the awkward silence
that had fallen than actual curiosity.

She thought for a moment, her mind flitting across a few things that seemed
too trivial now in the light of what he had told her. It was just a childhood
memoir. But Draco kept his childhood close, along with the rest of him, and
it had taken a large amount of courage for him to tell her that, though she
doubted he would ever admit to it. So she inhaled deep, feeling the rush of
nicotine course through her veins, the smoke twisting in curved patterns
above her head.

"I don't think I'm going to survive this war," she said conversationally.
Draco did not reply. He could not possibly know how much it had taken for
her to impart that small bit of truth on him, or that she rarely even admitted
it to herself (because she was Hermione Granger, Queen of Optimism, and
if she didn't believe everything would be okay then the world must really be
going to shit). Except, when he took the cigarette back, his fingers brushed
hers in a barely-there caress against her wrist. And she thought that maybe
he did understand after all.

"Yeah," he said, smoke lining his words. "Me niether."

::

He began to enjoy her company. Or, at the very least, to tolerate it. It was
not so much a desperate need on either of their parts for friendship (they
both had their friends) but more a result of the boredom that inevitably
came of the in-betweens. It was during these periods of time, the other side
of the war - the side of waiting for the next call to battle, of hearing the list
of the dead or missing, of not knowing where your friends or family were
from one day to the next - it was during these times that the two of them
were often thrown together.

Still, he thought they might not actually have seen all that much of each
other (there were, after all, at least twelve other people in any safe house at
any given time) except for the disturbing fact that she seemed to have struck
up some sort of friendship with Pansy. This was something he had not
anticipated, and therefore was not prepared for. He had accepted their
strange little morning ritual of coffee together before the rest of the house
rose as a woman's thing. (Though, with all the moaning Granger gave about
her coffee being wrongly made, he didn't see why the crazy woman had
stuck at it.)

But now it wasn't just the mornings. It was a ten-minute lunch break in
between planning. It was giggling together through whispered
conversations, breaking off with secretive smiles whenever any man came
too near. It was exchanging sex-stories and comparing old boyfriends (a
session he sincerely wished he had not accidentally over-heard). They were
- dare he say it - friends. And that made it just all that little bit harder to
avoid seeing Granger.

And avoid her, he tried. Because, despite the fact that he no longer gave a
shit if her blood was brown, black or a suspicious shade of blue, she was
still Granger and it was hard enough dealing with the thought that he no
longer could not stand her. In the evenings, it was different. In the blanket
of the darkness and under the haze of the pungent, cheap cigarettes, the
whole thing seemed less... real, somehow. They were just two soldiers
ending the day in a peaceful fag-break. (The fact that he had come to look
forward to these quiet evenings, even going as far as to feel disappointed
when one or both of them were unable to make it, was irrelevant.)

So, even though she was there most of the time, joking with Pansy, or
discussing some book or other with Theo, he remained in his own stony
silence. He suddenly found himself longing for the once-constant presence
of Gregory and Vincent. (He had seen both only a few times since their
original acceptance into the Order.) They would speak for him, as they used
to, and do his every bidding. (Except they wouldn't, and he wouldn't really
expect them to.)

It didn't matter anyway. He still refused to speak. Any comment from any of
them, even his own friends - the bloody traitors - was met by little more
than a cold glance or, at best, a grunt. He actually expected Granger to call
him out on his bad mood a few times - saw the look of annoyance flash
through her hazel eyes. But each time she reigned it in, as if she had already
accepted that this was simply how it would be with him sometimes and she
just had to be patient. That thought sparked a further swoop of anger in him
- how dare she think she knew him? - and he made sure to shoot her a
particularly cold glare the next time she caught his eye.

The door to the kitchen swung open too quickly, the permanently damp
wood ricocheting off the wall. Dean Thomas stood there, clearly having
arrived in a hurry, face flushed and eyes frantic as they sought out
Granger's.

"Is it Luna?" she asked, colour draining immediately from her face. "Is she
okay?"

"Not... Luna," Dean managed to choke out in panted breaths, doubling over
and clutching at his side. "Harry, Ron sent me. Needed back at HQ. Said to
tell you it was to do with the cup. That you would know what he meant."

Draco watched the fear crash through Granger as it did in those few seconds
before battle. But it left her as quickly as it always did, or at least, she hid it
well and a fierce gleam of determination lit up her expression.

"Go back and tell them I'll be there in three minutes," she ordered, attention
already off Dean and on the kitchen larder. When she came back out again,
her arms were laden with the emergency rations of energy food used only
on missions that would require an overnight stay. She had enough for a
week. Dumping it on the kitchen table, she disappeared briefly up the stairs,
returning only seconds later with a small bag Draco guessed to be filled
with clothes and blankets. She waved her wand across the food until it fell
into the rucksack, small enough to fit in the palm of one hand.

She lifted her wand, then faltered slightly. Her eyes fell on Draco and there
was a lot of hesitation there. "If you see Lupin and he asks where I've
gone," she said, pausing only briefly to pull her rucksack over her shoulder,
"lie."

With one last turn, she was gone.

When Lupin arrived that evening - as pre-arranged, for the weekly meeting
- his tired eyes fell over the small group, confusion clouding them when
they failed to make up the right number.

"Where is Hermione?" he asked, the question directed at Cho Chang.

"Grimmauld Place," Draco answered before the girl could blab anything
about Dean's much-noticed entry or Hermione's sudden disappearance. "She
said something about feeling a cold coming on and getting one of Mrs.
Weasley's cold potions."

"She didn't come back?" Lupin frowned.

Draco shrugged. "Guess she decided to catch up with her little boyfriends."

He was a good liar. He knew this because he had always had to be a good
liar. But suspicion flickered in the ex-professor's eyes, along with a growing
sense of dread, as if this was not an unusual occurrence and he was
sincerely hoping his suspicions were wrong. Draco put it down to Potter's
epic skills when it came to sulking in his room that nobody noticed his
absence for a full sixteen hours. He'd half-expected Shacklebolt to order out
half the Order in search of the precious boy. But the head of security simply
accepted the news with an exasperated sort of resignation before moving on
to other issues.

Granger was missing for five days. Four evenings of sitting alone in the
night on that bench, smoking a cigarette that suddenly seemed much too
greedy for just one person, and her absense was beginning to weigh on
Draco the way one noticed the sudden disappearance of an ache they had
gotten used to over a long period of time. He put it down to fate that, on the
fifth night, when his patience had finally come to an end and he had grown
restless with something that was most definitely not concern for Granger's
welfare, and he had sought distraction in the arms of some woman whose
name he could not for the life of him remember, she returned. He put it
down to his own notorious bad luck that she should cross the staircase to
her room just as he was exiting the nameless woman's.

It seemed impossible the damage that five days had done to her. Her clothes
were torn and covered in mud. Her lip was split. Even her hair had lost its
usual ferocity, hanging limply around her face. He knew, simply from the
look of defeat dimming her eyes, that her mission had not been a success.

She took one look at his crumpled, sweaty appearance, the smell of sex
hanging clearly in the air between them. Opened her mouth, as if to deliver
some disparaging remark. Then turned on her heel, the door to her bedroom
closing softly behind her. She did not leave her room for three days.

::

"She's still sleeping." Cho worried her lip between her teeth, scraping the
barely-touched food into the bin. "She could barely lift her head to eat. I
had to hold her up."

"So she's tired." Draco shrugged off the unease stirring in his lower
stomach. "Just let her sleep it off. She'll get up when she's good and ready."

"What if something happened on that mission?" Lavender asked,

unconsciously voicing the very fear that had been nagging at the back of
Draco's mind since he'd seen her dishevelled appearance. "I've never seen
her like this."

"She'll be fine." Theo did not notice right away the stunned silence that
followed his statement. It was a rare thing to hear him talk at all, let alone
express any form of opinion. He sighed with the impatience of someone
who thought himself a lot smarter than present company and took his time
in closing his book and lifting his glasses from his nose. "This isn't the first
time this has happened."

"It isn't?" Lavender echoed stupidly.

"Potter has been missing at least four times before, only once without
Granger and Weasley. Each time, she comes back exhausted and usually
disappointed, though not every time. And she is always back to her usual
self within a couple of days." He must have sensed the dubious looks sent
his way, despite his head already being buried back in his book, because his
lips twitched up into a wry smile and, for some reason, his eyes lifted to
Draco's. "I'm right. Just wait and see."

He was right. Granger came bounding down the stairs on the fifth day of
her return - not right as rain, exactly, but definitely not the zombie of the
previous days. She waved off any concerns to her health, because she was
not the sort of person to be fussed over. She smiled and laughed and
chattered along with the rest of them. When Lupin came with Schacklebolt,
there was a resigned look of determination in her expression and when they
finally let up on their interrogation, just one hour later, she looked tired but
triumphant. She gossiped with Pansy and lightly chided Neville when he
unsettled a pile of plates.

But that evening, she was already on the bench when he stepped outside,
cigarette in hand but unlit, as though she had been waiting for him. She did
not open her eyes when he settled beside her (though her eyebrow twitched
slightly when he swiped the cigarette from between her fingers).

"You look like shit, Granger," he said, because she did with her pale skin
and tired mouth.

"I'm tired," was all she replied. They were silent for a long time and she
refused the cigarette when he offered it. Her voice was slurred by sleep
when she spoke again, a defeated edge to it that shook Draco more than it
should have. "Tell me something I don't know," she requested. It sounded
too much like a plea for his liking.

"I think I'm becoming dangerously addicted to Muggle food,"

She let out a tired, breathy laugh at that. "I hate all eggs, even scrambled."

"Why do you eat them then?"

"Molly made them for me once when I stayed at the Burrow and I didn't
have the heart to tell her I didn't like them. Now she thinks they're my
favourite and makes them for me every time I'm there."

He snorted his amusement. "That's pretty stupid."

"I guess it is," she replied after a pause and there was a smile to her tone. It
wasn't until her head softly hit his shoulder that he realised she had fallen
asleep. He stiffened, fighting the natural urge to poke her in the ribs and
send her off to her bed, where she should be. His body stayed that way -
tense and rigid, coiled to spring at any sudden movement. But he didn't
move and when Cho stumbled across them, clearly stunned, Draco pressed
his finger to his mouth, shooting the woman a warning look. The clear
exhaustion on Granger's face must have outweighed her need for gossip,
because she simply nodded and crept back into the house.

He awoke an hour later to Granger being lifted from his arms, her head
lolling against Shacklebolt's shoulder. Both men regarded each other coolly
for a long moment, suspicion clear in the Auror's eyes. Draco came down to
breakfast the next morning to discover that Granger had been transferred
overnight and no, Pansy did not know where to, but she just loved it when
Draco woke up in a fucking foul mood.
*Chapter 4*: Chapter 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a
crime. ~Ernest Hemingway

The first time he saw her cry was nearly a year and six months after that
first fateful night in Grimauld Place. They were at some shit hole of a safe
house or other, which was inevitably too small to hold the thirty-odd
members of their team. Chivalry be damned - the war for the few beds
available was brutal, most people forced to pair up. Draco had been lucky
enough to wind up with Pansy (he'd brave the floor before he struggled
through Longbottom's animalistic snores again). Theo had not been so
fortunate, stuck with a woman twice their age (and twice his size) who
apparently called out to her lover in her sleep. He wasn't sure who Granger
had been paired up with originally, because on the third day, the youngest
Weasley arrived, and by some unspoken law (probably the one that held this
was more than likely to be Potter's future wife) she was instantly designated
a bed.

Draco didn't think he'd seen Granger quite so as stupidly exciteable since
that time McGonagall had decided to advance her on to NEWT level
Transfiguration a year early. She all but smothered Ginny in a bone-
crushing hug, apparently too consumed in the happiness of the reunion to
immediately notice the other woman's lack of response. And when she did,
she soldiered onwards anyway, taking the indifference and cool remarks
with a pinch of salt (she later confided in Pansy that she thought Ginny
might be going through a rut of depression. It was something that had
happened to them all, and the best thing for it was to drag her up by the
bootstraps and set her back to work). Ginny could not cope with the death
and the dying. So Granger would cope for them both.
For almost five weeks, Draco stood in the shadows and watched the farce -
saw how Granger's smile would falter, just a little, at some cold comment
from Ginny, before it would widen and brighten and she would move on
with a seemingly endless rope of patience. Her time became consumed with
'Fixing the Weaslette', as Pansy liked to call it behind their backs (Draco
thought she might actually be jealous), while the red-head moved through
the house like a ghost, eyes wide and absent, when they were not flashing in
anger. Granger might have been the only one not to realise that, sooner or
later, the Weaslette would snap.

Draco wasn't there when it started. He, like several others, had only
gravitated to the kitchen when the second plate collided with the wall and
Ginny's screams could be heard from three blocks down. She was livid. For
one heart-stopping moment, Draco was painfully reminded of his Aunt
Bella in a rage. And Granger was just standing there, taking it. Nodding
even, as though this were really all her own fault.

"I understand it's been upsetting for you, Ginny," she was saying, in her
infuriatingly-calm Head Girl voice. "But it was for your own safety.
Everyone knows how important you are to Harry and if-"

"Oh, important, am I?" Ginny was histerical, her shrill laugh forcing a
grimace out of Draco before he could stem the reaction. "Is that why I
haven't seen or heard from him in over a year? Is that why every letter I
send returns unopened? Or why I'm not allowed within a hundred miles of
Grimauld Place? Because I'm so fucking important to him?" She gave no
pause for a response, and Granger did not seem ready to stop her. "Is it
because he loves me so fucking much?"

"He loves you! We all love you Ginny! He's just worried about you,"

The red-head's laugh was a bitter, humourless bark. Her tone dropped
dangerously low. "You all love me. Then why don't you tell me about that
little project of yours? If you all love me so much, why don't you tell me
what it is Dumbledore has you skipping off and doing for him beyond the
grave, while the rest of us are left wondering if this time, you really won't
come back?"
Draco observed the almost instinctive reaction in Granger with much
interest. Her expression closed off, her mouth snapped shut, a look of causal
indifference washed over her entire being. It was a look he had seen only
once before, in an Order member Voldemort had summoned to be
personally interrogated. The man had died with a scream on his lips, but
nothing else. Ginny sneered, unsurprised by the response.

"That's what I thought. Tell me, Hermione," she took a slow step forwards,
her drawling tone enough to rival that of any Slytherin, "what does a girl
have to do to stay in with the famous trio? What could possibly hold the
interest of two young men for so long?"

Granger sucked in a breath, reeling as though she had been physically

struck. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that, Ginny. Because I know
you don't mean it,"

"Oh, have I struck a nerve? It's not that hard to imagine. You've already
fucked one third of the trio, why not the other-?"

"What in Merlin's name is going on here?" In the time it took for

Shacklebolt to take in the scene - the broken china glass, Granger's shell-
shocked state, the tears tracking Ginny's cheeks - Fred had already crossed
the room in three long strides, Ginny pulled tightly against his chest, her
face pressed in to his jumper, stemming the violent words as though the
damage had not already been done. As though Granger was not standing
there with an expression akin to having just witnessed one's close confidant
crumble and vanish before their very eyes. Ginny was sobbing now, all but
falling in to her brother and he had to stumble backwards to avoid
collapsing under her grief.

"It's fine, it's nothing." Granger's breathless tone, coupled with the
hysterical sobs of the red-head before him, had Shacklebolt sighing in a
way that suggested to Draco that perhaps Ginny's coming to this particular
safe house had been no coincidence after all.

"I said this was a bad idea, right from the start," he grumbled, and his glare
was directed at Fred. "I won't have my soldiers attacked because your little
sister is feeling overly-emotional."
"I'm fine, Kingsley, really." Granger's comment went largely ignored,
overpowered by the glaring competition between the two men. Fred
relented first, his gaze dropping to the kitchen table. Shacklebolt nodded.

"I want her packed and ready to leave in an hour. No excuses, Weasley. And
you lot!" Most of the gathered crowd had already scattered the second his
crumpled glare had swung in their direction. "Go find something better to
do, before I find a few jobs for you!"

Draco caught a glimpse of Granger exactly an hour later. They were in the
hall, Ginny's bags packed and gathered in her arms, Shacklebolt a stern
presence at her side. She looked much as she had when she'd first arrived -
unresponsive, eyes glazed, skin too pale for the warm glow of her hair. She
didn't react to Granger's embrace, or Fred's parting words. When Granger
left the room, a comforting arm around Fred's waist, she was the picture of
self-control and motherly tenderness.

It was much later that Draco actually sought her out. She didn't notice his
silent presence on the porch right away, the darkness perhaps blending with
the black of his robes. She was struggling with that Muggle lighter she
always insisted on using, and which he always mocked her for (why carry
around that flimsy bit of plastic, when one simple spell would do?). Her
hands were trembling, and maybe this was why she couldn't seem to flick
the switch just right, so that it sparked a flame. He observed the scene
coolly from his place in the shadows for almost a full three minutes before
taking the first step towards her. She very near dropped the damn thing in
her surprise, the sound of his heavy boots on the thin, wooden planks
startling a small cry from her.

"O-oh, Draco. I didn't see... was just trying to work this stupid... must be
broken!" She spoke in fragmented bursts, hands flying to her cheeks to
angrily swipe at the tears there.

He had never been one for comforting - had always been far too selfish for
any of that - and, in all honesty, crying girls made him uncomfortable. It
would have been far simpler to turn on his heel and scurry back inside the
house. In fact, he was sorely tempted to do just that. But Granger had
already turned her back on him, still fumbling with that bloody lighter, and
he realised that was exactly what she expected him to do, and how dare she
bloody well think she know him so well? So he reached over and firmly
took the lighter from her fluttering fingers, the small flame bursting forth
after only his second try. She let him light her cigerette and by the time
she'd taken her first drag, her eyes were dry, the only evidence of her minor
breakdown in the trembling of her hands, and the barely noticeable shudder
with each breath she took.

Draco gave her time to recover, before commenting on the particularly wild
direction her hair had taken that evening. The stingy bitch refused to share
the rest of the fag.

::

"You know what I miss?"

"Hot water that doesn't run out after an hour?"

"Quidditch."

Hermione paused momentarily in the act of drying her hair to wrinkle her
nose at Fred. He smirked, hands folded behind his head, legs dangling off
the edge of her narrow bed.

"Come on. You're a witch - how can you possibly hate flying so much?"

"I do not hate flying," Hermione corrected, voice muffled by the towel she
was rubbing vigourously over the mass of tangled curls that was her hair. "I
can get on a broomstick and hover. It's being twenty feet in the air I don't
like."

"Scaredy-cat."

"It's pure common sense. Gravity is there for a reason. If God had wanted
us to fly, he would've given us wings."

They sqaubbled childishly for a further ten minutes, until Hermione finally
declared a truce and proceeded to wrestle him out of her room. She fell
asleep determined not to speak to him for at least three days for calling her
a 'Sissy-know-it-all'. She never got a chance to test her own resolve though,
because when she woke up that morning he'd been called for a mission in
the middle of the night and she spent the next week worried sick instead.

::

They came to take George away the fourth week after Angelina's death. It
was not the dramatic exit of his sister only two weeks before. Lupin came in
Shacklebolt's stead, all soft assurances that they would stay in touch and
George would be able to stay with Ginny, somewhere safe where he could
recover. Fred smiled broadly at the twin that was no longer so identical,
pulling him in to a one-armed hug and sending him off with instructions to
reek havoc on their sister.

When he wandered in to the kitchen at three in the morning, eyes red with
lack of sleep, Draco said nothing to console him. Simply reached under the
sink and produced the emergency Vodka, pouring it steadily into two
glasses. They drank until the bottle was empty and the sun had spilled out
into the sky.

::

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Draco had never been one for the
battlefields. He was a good soldier. He could fight fiercely, while keeping a
level head. He knew when to retreat or advance. His reflexes had made him
famous in his Death Eater days. But, no matter how many crumbling shacks
of houses he lived in, or who he surounded himself with, he was a
pureblood - a Malfoy. And some things were engraved so deeply into
oneself, they were impossible to escape.

He would always be a cunning Slytherin, faring better in the underground

warfare of assassinations and spying. He did not like the flood of fear and
adreneline that overwhelmed his senses in those crucial few seconds before
rushing in to battle. He did not like to hear the screams of his fallen
comrades all around him and not be able to see if it was someone he cared
about because there were curses flying at him from every direction and he
was not ready to die for any of them yet.
He did not like seeing the faces of those he had once considered friends,
pale and sightless, gone to a place he prayed he would find no time soon.

The second time he and Blaise met in battle, it was without the heat of the
moment clouding his senses, or the rush of curses flying passed his head.
They had won - a small victory, with heavy losses on both sides. But a
victory none the less. He had been moving through the forest, making his
way back to the designated Apparation point. The instant he became aware
of the presence following him, he had changed course, delving deeper and
deeper into the trees until he could take just one side to the left and he had
vanished.

He watched the Death Eater step into his line of vision, mask glinting in the
dappled sunlight falling through the thick canvass of leaves above. There
was a tear in his black robes, and Draco caught a glimpse of a bloody gash
shooting through the otherwise flawless, dark skin. He leant back against
the tree, arms folded over his chest. Wand clapsed loosely between his
fingers.

"You should really look in to getting a new seamstress," he called, his voice
oddly muted in the thickness of the trees. "You're looking a little shabby."

"It's all gone to shit since Madame Malkin went into hiding," Blaise
returned. His mask dissolved with a swift wave of his wand. His face was
smiling when Draco finally stepped forwards. "You look fucking awful."

"I've found a new appreciation for the days of Ostrich feather pillows, and
egyptian silk sheets." There was no humour in his voice, and Blaises' smile
was quick to fade. Both men contemplated each other a long moment, the
air oddly still after so long in the heat of battle.

"What are you doing, Draco?" The question, so softly uttered, contrasted
with the sharp glint to his black eyes.

"What we all should have been doing from the start," Draco returned. "Tell
me. Is it satisfying, running around as that lunatic's lapdog all the time?
Putting yourself in the line of fire while he cowers inside his Manor?" (My
Manor).
A flicker of confusion startled across Blaise's expression and his eyes swept
the clearing, as if expecting to find someone there. He took a cautious step
forwards, slowly closing the distance between them. "Draco, it's me. We've
known each other forever. There's no one else around. You can talk to me
here."

Now it was Draco's turn to be confused. "What are you on about? I can't
talk to you! I can barely stand to look at you anymore!" His voice had risen
somewhere along the lines, and he was shouting now, fists clenched tightly
against his frustration. "This isn't how it was supposed to be! They lied to
us, Blaise! This isn't about honour, and preserving the Wizarding world.
This is slaughtering thousands and millions of innocent people. People we
went to school with, people who grow up with us - just like us, with parents
and worrying about grades and whether or not they would get in to the
Quidditch team or not!"

"They are nothing like us!" Blaise spat, disgust lighting his eyes. "They are
scum! Filthy Mudbloods who would see our kind ruined, grovelling at the
Muggle world's feet, as opposed to the superior beings we are!"

"They are innocent people! Do you enjoy killing women and children? The
Blaise I knew believed in protecting those weaker than himself."

"And the Draco I thought I knew believed in creating a better future. There
is no end this way. The war will never end, the fighting will never end, the
dying will never end. He will not give up until every single one of them has
been destroyed." He paused, some of the anger leaving his expression to be
replaced by a careful wariness. "What happened to you? It's like I don't
even recognise you anymore."

"I don't know, Blaise," Draco said, and his anger, too, was already seeping
away, leaving only a strong exhaustion that seeped in to his bones and made
him feel suddenly much older than his twenty-one years. He leant back
against the tree, pressing his fingers in to his aching temples. "I want it all
to be simple again. I want it to make sense. But... well, you were there the
night I was banished. You saw what happened."
Once again, confusion turned down the corners of his mouth. "What are you
talking about? You aren't making any sens.," He shook his head, slowly, but
there was no frustration to his actions now. "You're changing. Every time I
see you, it's more obvious. Don't tell me that Potty and his dirty friends
have actually gotten to you." His weak attempt at humour fell flat. Draco's
gaze shifted to some spot over his left shoulder.

It didn't stop him seeing the subtle shift in Blaise's expression - the cold
mask of indifference that slid seemlessly in to place. "Oh. So that's how it
is. Tell me, Draco, do you all gather round the campfire at night and cry
over how fucking righteous you all are? Do you hold Potter and Weasel
when they sob at how hard their lives have been? Did they forgive you and
embrace you as a brother?" The last word was spat with enough venom to
have Draco biting down the grimace it called.

"They never forgave me. Not really." He had never asked it of them.

"Then what? Surely not the filthy Mudblood?" The silence was heavy in the
air between them. This time, the disgust twisted his mouth and widened his
eyes. He stumbled backwards under the weight of it, and later Draco would
wonder at how brainwashed he was by it all, that the thought of one girl
could render him speechless and tripping over his own feet. "Merlin, Draco!
Of all the stupid, suicidal things-"

"It isn't what you think." It's exactly what you think.

"So what is it? Because I'm having a pretty damn, difficult time imagining
how one woman could change a lifetime of beliefs."

Draco swallowed. Because he was having a pretty damn, difficult time too.
"It isn't Hogwarts anymore. We aren't children playing stupid power
games."

"Oh, this is no game, Draco, be sure of that," He turned, only to whirl back
round seconds later. "It's always about the women with you! I mean,
Merlin, it was one thing to risk our friendship over Pansy back in school.
But this? You're going to let one inferior witch come in between us?"
There was a genuine note of sorrow and panic hidden among the anger and
disgust, and it was that which held Draco's tongue and forced his grip on his
wand to loosen. Silence fell and held. The heat of Blaise's glare was not
enough to bring Draco's gaze up to meet his.

"I have to go," he said finally, pushing off from the tree.

He half-expected Blaise to stop him. Or curse him, or punch him, or

demand that he stand and finish this once and for all. Something other than
that cold, damning silence. But Blaise didn't speak until he had long passed
him, and even then it was not to stop him. "Nothing good can come from
this, Draco. Remember that. You want to fuck her? That's fine. That's your
business. Everyone likes to slum it once in a while. We all need our
hobbies. But you make sure you leave it at that. And if you've really
deluded yourself into believing you care for her, then you do yourself a
favour and leave her well alone. Because a girl could get herself killed,
being involved with you."

He slunk into the shadows long before Draco could think to draw his wand,
or wonder at the fierce reaction those words provoked.

::

"Is it difficult?"

Hermione was already watching Draco, so she saw the trademark flicker of
annoyance twitch in his eyebrow, as it always did whenever she broke the
silence of the night. It did not make her regret asking her question. He
always answered her in the end.

"Is what difficult?" he asked, tone more bored than irritated.

"Being here. With us. The Order, I mean."

"There isn't so much aminosity towards me now," he replied after a pause.

"That makes it easier."
"But, doesn't it feel wrong to you, somehow?" He had opened his eyes now
and was staring at her with more than a little confusion, annoyance still
there, lurking in the corner of his mouth. She frowned, unsure exactly how
to put her recent thoughts in to words. "It's like... for me, this is all there's
ever been. Right and wrong, good and bad. Dark and Light. I've always
known which side I would be on, when the line was drawn. I can't imagine
just... switching."

His eyes were closed again, and she thought that maybe she had annoyed
him more than usual this time, because it was a long while before he
replied. When he did finally speak, the lazy drawl had left his tone, a rare
softness left there instead. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and
women merely players. They have their exits and entrances. And one man
in his time plays many parts."

"You know Shakespeare?" Obvious shock lined her words, and the look he
shot her was almost indignant.

"Of course I know Shakespeare."

"I just thought..." She hesitated, because he'd been in a bad mood since he'd
returned from his mission, and she didn't want to fight with him this
evening. But it was too late. He was already sitting up, annoyance
shadowing his eyes.

"You thought what? That just because I'm a pureblood, I wouldn't have
heard of William Shakespeare?"

"No." Yes. She tried again. "I just didn't think you liked that sort of thing.
Books and stuff."

"You shouldn't be thinking about what I do or do not like at all, Granger,"

he spat her name like a curse and it made her flinch. The bench unsettled
beneath her as he pushed up to his feet, striding away with enough anger to
make her think he would actually leave her there alone. But he stopped only
four paces away.
"Did the mission go badly today?" she asked in a careful tone. She expected
him to snap at her to mind her own buisiness and shut her bloody mouth.
His silence was worse somehow, prolonging the tension building in her
stomach.

But when he spoke, it was in a calm, cool tone she had not heard since the
early days of their friendship, and he did so with his back to her. "I don't
think we should be friends anymore."

She frowned. "Oh really? And why is that?"

He must have caught the skeptism to her tone, because he turned to face her
then, irritation evident in his eyes. "Look. I'm not... good, Granger. I'm not
one of your fucking projects. I won't get better in time. I'm wrong. My head
is fucked up."

"Everyone has been fucked up by this war."

He shook his head with a bitter laugh that reminded her suddenly and
painfully of Sirius, those last days in Grimauld Place. "I was fucked up long
before the war, Granger. I'm not good," he repeated, and later she would
wonder at the silent 'for you' that had been tagged at the end.

They didn't see each other for almost a month after that - though she wasn't
sure if that were because he was avoiding her, or simply the sudden burst of
attacks overwhelming their time. The day he returned from his fifth mission
that month, she was on watch duty (one of Moody's ideas, where one person
waited on the designated spot at which all returning members would
Apparate to check they were not simply Death Eaters in disguise). The
familiar crack had her wand lifting to the new arrival, instinctively aimed at
their chest.

It looked like Draco. Had the same disgruntled expression Draco always
seemed to wear. But magic was clever that way, and she could never really
be sure (except that she was, because she had always known those cold,
grey eyes, and she would know if they were not his). He barely spared her a
glance, though he made no attempt to move past her until she had asked the
security question she was supposed to have thought up the night before.
"Tell me something about myself." It was not what she had planned. Indeed,
until the moment she'd said it, she had not realised she even would.

He paused in the act of tugging his bloodstained shirt over his head to raise
an eyebrow at her. But he did not mock her, as she had expected, or even
comment on the unusual nature of her demand. "You hate scrambled eggs,"
he said, after a pause.

She nodded. "Now ask me."

"Sorry?"

"Ask me," she repeated patiently.

He rolled his eyes, but complied, as she had known he would (because, for
some reason, he always gave in to her in the end). "Tell me something about
myself."

She waited for him to stop fidgeting. To lift his gaze from the inspection of
his wounded arm to meet hers in curiosity. Only when she had his full
attention did she reply. "You're a good man. Even if you don't want to be."

She thought he might be annoyed at that, the obvious reference to their last
conversation. But he did not yell, or roll his eyes, or try and correct her. He
might have stared at her the way he was until she burned under the intensity
of it all, if not for Dean snapping into view only moments later, already
grumbling about his mud-soaked clothes and the ignorance of their
commanding officer. They never spoke of the moment again, except in
brief, accidental passing. But sometimes, Hermione caught him watching
her, and she thought that maybe he knew what she had really meant to say
that day. That she had stopped hating him that evening on the porch, when
he'd let her sleep against him, despite his own obvious discomfort (because
she was tired and disappointed and she needed to feel the warmth of another
person, even if it was only him, and he had known that somehow).

But she still hadn't trusted him. She wasn't sure exactly when that last part
had changed. She did know that it was somewhere between the scrambled
eggs confession and the incident with the lighter. She trusted him. Maybe
not in the same, unconditional way she trusted Harry or Ron. But it was still
trust, and she had a feeling that he had seen the change. She wondered why
it made him so sad.
*Chapter 5*: Chapter 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

"There was so much going on it was impossible to comprehend everything.

The human mind cannot take that many inputs, so it rules out a lot of them.
- Mike Van Wagener

The first time Draco realized that he was attracted to Granger was really not
the first time at all. The knowledge had always been there, lurking below
the surface, happily drowned out by more important things, like battle plans
and trying not to kill her just to shut her up. It was there in the evenings
spent with her, smoking (hopefully in silence, though that was a rare hope
indeed with Granger around). It was there in the few times they actually had
any physical contact - usually by accident, and always very brief. But he
had never openly acknowledged it - not even to himself. In fact, he actively
ignored it. Even after Blaise's melodramatic speech that day, he had brought
the idea out for light examination before shutting it firmly back behind
closed doors, where it would do no harm.

But there was that one stupid fight over something small and insignificant
that would fade easily from his mind later. She was shouting that he was a
selfish, insensitive prat, and he was trying to explain it to her but she
wouldn't bloody listen! And he grabbed her in his attempt to make her
focus, if just for three seconds, on something other than the sound of her
own voice.

It hadn't been his plan to kiss her (or maybe it had been, somewhere in his
subconscious). But at some point in the space between gripping her upper-
arms and pinning her to the kitchen counter, his lips had crashed over hers.
It was not a pleasant first kiss. Nor was it the romantic experience of those
cheap romance paperbacks Pansy had always insisted on reading. It was
brutal. It was teeth scraping, and lips caught between them. It was just
about shutting the damn girl up.
But she had fought him over it every step of the way, and that had annoyed
him. So he'd softened the kiss, until only his lips were pressed against hers,
caressing them through her half-hearted protests that were already dimming
down to nothing. Still, her response had been too timid. Too unsure for the
bossy know-it-all he had always known. So he'd pulled her bottom lip
between his teeth. Not too hard, but enough to draw a reluctant moan from
her throat. She'd paused a second longer, as if startled by the sound, and
then she was kissing him back.

He shifted her in his arms, so that she was seated properly on the counter,
settling himself between her legs, lips pressed back to hers before she could
find that small seed of doubt again. He needn't have worried. There was no
hesitation to her actions now. It was as though she had come to some
decision in her mind, and he somehow knew that she would not turn back
now. Her hands slid up his arms, over his shoulder, one slipping into his
hair to pull him closer. He slipped his hands down to cup her bottom, lifting
her to meet him, and they both moaned as his pelvis pressed into hers.

She broke away to draw breath, but he could not make himself take pause.
Already his mouth was trailing across her cheeks, her jaw, down her neck,
teeth tugging lightly at the skin above her pulse point. She gasped then,
arching towards him, and his hand travelled up her back, to clutch the back
of her head, bringing her lips back to his.

Later, he would imagine just how far she would have let him take it. But at
that moment, a door somewhere in the house opened and shut. The sound
was enough to remind them both of where they were (who they were). She
slid off the counter and he stepped back, giving her enough space to stand,
but not without every inch of her body brushing his. She was breathing hard
- they both were - and he thought she might say something. But she didn't,
and the blood was pooling in her cheeks at an alarming rate now.

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Then pushed straight past him. He didn't
turn to watch her leave, only breathing again when the kitchen door shut
softly behind her. Later, when the blood had left certain troublesome places
and returned to his head enough to let him think, he would close his eyes
and picture her, flushed and panting and arching into his body, and groan at
the injustice of the universe, that once again something good, something
wonderful, had been just within his reach, and then snatched away after that
first tantalizing taste. Because he truly believed that, had he been given just
five, ten, fifteen more seconds, he could have brought her to the point of no
return.

He avoided her for a few days afterwards. It was easier that way, and he
was not ready to have her tell him that it was a mistake that should never be
repeated. Still. He liked to believe that he would have confronted her.
Eventually. When he was ready. Except that was the week that the Death
Eaters simultaneously attacked four secure safe houses. That was the week
that everything fell apart.

::

The attacks had come at night and without warning. Afterwards, once back-
up had finally arrived, and the survivors had been pulled from the rubble
and evacuated to the pre-designated emergency points, Hermione
discovered that they had also been simultaneous. This was no mere
coincidence. It had been well planned - weeks, perhaps even months, in
advance. The Death Eaters had known how to bypass every ward, every
layer of security, every guard on duty. They had moved like silent shadows,
Wraiths in the night. Hermione would think back and remember vaguely
that they had not worn masks - had not expected to need them, for the quick
extermination they were about to perform. But by some miracle, they had
apparently not been informed of the intruder alert charms set up within
twenty kilometers of the building. Which was how what should have been
an outright slaughter had been mercifully turned into a battle.

A brutal battle. An uneven battle - at least until back-up arrived. Death

Eaters did not surrender, nor did they retreat. They died in the name of their
Lord. And they took whoever they could down with them. The list of the
wounded was long. The list of the dead was shorter somewhat, but no less
devastating. Hermione had seen it in its entirety, but only a few names stuck
with her now. Katie Bell, Terry Boot, Amos Diggory, Marietta Edgecomb.
Vincent Crabbe. Theodore Nott. Remus Lupin.

Grief was like a water-logged blanket clinging to the very walls of

Grimmauld Place. It pooled on the floor of the kitchen, where Fred and Ron
were consoling a near-hysteric Molly. It crept under the floorboards of the
living room, brushing against those unlucky enough to be sleeping on the
floor. It followed Hermione up the stairs, whispering against her ankles in a
bittersweet caress. And yet, she could not feel it. She thought of Remus, and
then of Tonks and little Teddy, tucked away somewhere in the remote
countryside. She imaged Amos Diggory, and the way he had screamed his
son's name as he fell. She pictured Theo, bent over some book she had leant
him, and waited for the inevitable pang of pain. But there was nothing.

She remembered reading once that the body could only take so much pain.
In the end, the brain began to shutter things out, numbing the blows that
would otherwise cripple. It was the mind's way of protecting itself.

A low chime announced the arrival of midday. Her eyes were drawn to the
grandfather clock hanging where the house-elves' heads had once been. Ten
hours, thirty two minutes, and seven seconds, give or take, since everything
had fallen apart.

It had taken that long just for everyone to be accounted for. To sort out
those whose wounds did not constitute a trip to St. Mungo's to those who
might never battle again. (She was ashamed to find she could not honestly
say which group she would rather be in.) Hermione had spent the better part
of those ten hours calling registers, taking names of the missing, completing
the standard report procedure, before finally submitting to Molly's
examination (and only because Harry and Ron had threatened to hold her
down with force if she didn't).

The eight-inch gash had not seemed so bad while high on pain potions and
whatever Muggle painkillers she had been able to get her hands on. But
now the effects were wearing off and a feeling akin to a hot electrical wire
being pressed to her stomach was flaring up, making it difficult not to itch.
Slowly, with careful hands, she lifted the hem of her shirt and brushed a
finger over the first uneven stitches. Already they were dissolving into her
skin, the rapid healing process stretching her wound just slightly beyond
comfort.

"There's one to show the grandkids."

Hermione's eyes snapped to the top of the stairs. She had not seen Pansy
since the battle, when she'd accidentally stumbled across the woman, trying
helplessly to cajole life back into the obviously lifeless body of Theo. She
had been hysterical when they arrived. Draco had had to wrestle her up to
their bedroom, ignoring any offers of calming potions and glaring at
Hermione when she tried to help.

"How are you?" she asked now, then cringed at the inadequacy of the
question. Pansy's smile was more of a bitter twisting of the lips.

"Fantastic. Yourself?" Her gaze dropped to Hermione's stomach, now

hidden by her shirt. She made no comment though, and Hermione was glad.
She did not want to have to relive that moment when some Auror unknown
to her had recognized her for who she was (Hermione Granger, treasured
friend of The Harry Potter) and decided that her life was worth more
somehow as he'd shoved her to the ground and taken the purple jet of light.

"Draco's in the shower." Hermione had no reply to that, so she remained

silent. Pansy shrugged. "He needed to be alone, I think. He never did cope
with.. with death very well."

Her eyes turned glassy too quickly for her to completely hide it when she
turned her face away. Hermione knew this was her cue to leave (because
Pansy Parkinson cried for no one, no matter what. Ever). She didn't even
notice the girl reaching out to her until her hand was on her arm.

"Here," Pansy said, and in the hand that wasn't holding Hermione in place
was a necklace Hermione had seen her wear often. The chain was a puddle
of gold in her palm, a tiny teddy-bear pendant afloat in the middle. Pansy's
eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere over Hermione's shoulder while she
spoke. "My grandfather gave it to me on my first day of Hogwarts. I was
really nervous and he said it would keep me safe. I know it's stupid but..."
She trailed off with a shrug that was too awkward to belong on her
shoulders. At any other time, Hermione might have commented on
succeeding in finally making the famous Parkinson blush. As it was, she
simply allowed the necklace to trickle into her palm.
"Why are you giving me this?" she asked, and it was difficult to speak past
the lump in her throat, which was stupid because this was nothing. It was
just a necklace. Not even a very expensive one, from the looks of it. It
shouldn't make her hands tremble. It should not have felt like a goodbye.

Again, Pansy shrugged, though some of her usual arrogance had returned
now, the difficult part of her speech perhaps over. "You're such a klutz,
Hermione. I need some assurance that you're going to be safe."

"What about you?" she could not help but ask.

This time, the smile was a real smirk. "I'm a Slytherin. Taking care of
myself is what I do best." There was a silence that bordered on awkward,
Pansy apparently having said all she planned to. She heaved a sigh, and if it
was slightly shaky, Hermione pretended not to notice. "Sometimes, I wish I
could just run away from all this. Just grab a train ticket to wherever and
start a new life somewhere that never gets any rain and the men all walk
around topless. I guess that makes me an abominably selfish person in your
eyes."

"No," Hermione said, and was surprised to find that it was the truth. She
fought in this war because she had to fight. She was fighting for her friends,
for her family. For her right to hold a wand without feeling ashamed of her
heritage. Pansy was fighting for nothing. She was not a skilled soldier, only
being trusted with the most menial of missions. She did not delight in
killing, as her sadist of a father had.

"Would you hate me if I did, though? It's so odd." She laughed through the
tears gathering in her eyes, though it was more of an incredulous sound than
one of humor. "To think that just seven years ago, hating you was as natural
as breathing. And now I'm so afraid of you despising me. You wouldn't,
would you?"

"I would never hate you. Never, Pansy. You may be a spoiled bitch," she
added, somehow finding it within herself to dredge up a smirk, "not to
mention a filthy slut. But I love you, you daft cow. Whether you like it or
not."
Pansy smiled. "Oddly enough, I think I do like it. You aren't so bad
yourself, you know. For a stuck up know-it-all."

Hermione let out a breathy laugh, and turned to leave. Pansy watched her to
the end of the hall before calling out to her once more. "Hey, Granger. This
doesn't mean we're friends, you know."

Hermione's smile was effortless this time, called up from some place inside
that hadn't been numbed to it all. "I know," she replied, closing the door
softly on Pansy's wry smile.

::

"Muggles are so drab," Pansy commented in a disgusted mutter. At Draco's

snort, she shot him a playful glare. "I'm serious. All any of them wear are
jeans and those weird hood-top things-"

"Hoodies," Draco corrected, his mind flitting unconsciously to a discussion

with Granger about her Muggle attire.

"Whatever," Pansy said dismissively. "My point is, they all wear the same
boring clothes. There's no color, or extravagance to it."

"Yes, because we're the poster children for elegance and style." Draco
glanced pointedly at the worn-out jeans that were slightly too big for her
around the waist, and the torn shirt she was wearing. It did nothing to
dampen her mood.

"We're in the middle of a war. We don't have time for fashion."

"So are they."

"But they don't know they are," Pansy persisted. "They have no reason to
think that they shouldn't waste what could be their last morning on earth on
make-up and trying on three different outfits. I envy them."

There was nothing to say to that, and so Draco did not reply. A glance at his
watch told him that Shacklebolt would be expecting them back at
Grimmauld Place fifteen minutes ago. He could not bring himself to point
this out to Pansy. This was the best he had seen her looking in days. Maybe
all she had needed was to get out of that suffocating house. Her cheeks had
regained their healthy flush, and even her eyes looked brighter, despite their
pink tinge from too much crying combined with too little sleep. She had
jumped at the opportunity to run a mission - a simple case of delivering a
message to some member neither of them knew by name. They had finished
in ten minutes, but she had pleaded with him to have just one more minute,
just two more, in the fresh air. And he found he could not refuse her.

"My grandfather used to bring me here to watch the trains," Pansy said, and
Draco realized they had arrived at King's Cross. "I used to dream about
boarding the Hogwarts Express, and attending Hogwarts for the first time. It
was never as good as I imagined, somehow."

"Anticlimactic," Draco explained with a shrug. "You build up an ideal

image of something in your mind and it's never as good as you pictured."

Pansy smiled, but he wasn't entirely sure she was really listening. She had
seated herself on a wooden bench and, after a slight pause, he joined her.
They sat in silence for a long time, watching the trains roll into the station,
lights flickering, smooth and efficient, but with none of the elegance of the
old steam train that had carted them to and from school a lifetime ago.

"This place makes me feel free, somehow," she continued after a pause.
"Like I could just go buy a ticket and escape. Like it could be so simple."

Draco grunted non-committally. If he was honest, anywhere Muggle gave

him the creeps. His father had not been the type to educate him in Muggle
culture and he always had the distinct feeling of being out of place
whenever he was in the vicinity of their technology. It was not a feeling he
was otherwise familiar with, and he generally tried his best to avoid it
altogether.

He turned to tell Pansy that they should head back before Shacklebolt had
an aneurysm, only to find that she had been crying all the while. Silent tears
tracked down her cheeks, slipping into the soft corners of the smile still
gracing her lips.
"Pans-"

"It's strange, isn't it?" she said, interrupting what would have been, no
doubt, a poor attempt at consolation. "We are dead. All of us. We are
already dead. We might survive for a year, maybe two. But, in the end, we'll
die. We're fighting for a future that we will never see, except as ashes and
bones."

It was a rather profound thought, and Draco was so startled that it had come
out of this particular mind that he did not immediately notice Pansy had
moved to take her wand from its hiding place up her sleeve.

"Vincent proposed to me, you know. I told him he was crazy. That girls like
me did not marry men like him." Her smile was bitter and without humor. "I
was only trying to keep him on his toes. No, that's a lie. He's been pursuing
me for years. To the point of being a damned nuisance. I wished he would
just bugger off and leave me alone. And then I woke up the other morning
and realized I would never have to reject his pathetic, romantic gestures
again. I wouldn't have to turn my head away at the last second, just when he
was about to get a kiss. I saw my future without him. We were always
breaking up and getting back together again. I guess I just figured that, one
day, it would all work out in the end."

"Pansy," Draco tried again, when her voice had trailed off absently.

She blinked, as though only now remembering his presence. Her wand was
pointed directly at his heart before he had a chance to defend himself.
"Petrificus Totalus!"

The effect was instantaneous. He could not move, except for his eyes which
tracked her movements as she leaned over to press a kiss to the corner of his
mouth. "I'm sorry, Draco. I love you. So I have to leave. Before you leave
me first. You understand, don't you?"

He tried to convey with his eyes that he did. (He didn't.) She nodded and
stood quickly, already stashing her wand away in her pocket. There was no
hesitation to her movements. She walked quickly, efficiently, to the edge of
the bustling crowd, and when she spoke again, her voice barely lifted over
the drone of activity separating them. "Look after Hermione. She likes to
think she's strong, but you can only run on adrenaline for so long. Make
sure you're there for her went it runs out."

And then she was gone. She had never been a particularly strong witch and
the effects of her spell had already worn off completely within just ten
minutes. He reasoned that she could not have gotten far; even if she had
bought a ticket, the next train to leave was not for another three minutes.
And there were always tracking spells, and locator devices, and a million
different ways to find a person. He could have caught up with her in seven
seconds flat.

He turned and left the station alone, wand stowed safely inside his pocket.

Granger was the only one awake by the time he got back. She was seated at
the kitchen table, writing a report of some kind. He did a vague mental
check and tried to remember the last time he had seen her with empty
hands, no heavy task burdening her mind. (He could not.) She glanced up
when he stepped in through the back door and smiled breezily.

"You're late." Always a stickler for the obvious. "Shacklebolt was pretty
annoyed. I had to make some excuses just so he wouldn't AK your ass when
you got back here."

He didn't reply. Moved for the cupboard under the sink. There was no
vodka there. He suddenly missed the safe house.

"Pansy," Granger said, and, though it was not a question, he answered her
anyway.

"Gone," he said. One word. Not really an answer at all. But she nodded, and
she did not look surprised.

"I thought as much. We'll give her a couple of days before reporting her,
shall we? Let her have a head start." She was already gathering up her files,
clutching them to her chest like a child might clutch a night blanket. "She's
smart. I'm sure she'll be able to evade anyone Shacklebolt might send to
check on her. You should get to bed soon. Sleep's what you need."
She was gone before Draco could even think to tell her that she had put her
jumper on inside-out.

::

"Avada Kedavra!"

The first time the curse had left Hermione's mouth, it had been pure
desperation. It had been the early days of the war, when she was
inexperienced and panicked, and the sight of Luna backed up against a wall,
wand useless on the floor three feet away, had forced the words up and out
before she could even think of an alternative. Harry had once told her that,
when you used an Unforgiveable, you had to mean it. What no one said,
what no one felt the need to warn her of, was the way you could feel that
curse every second of the way, from the dark burning in your throat as you
uttered the words, to the rush of heat when it finally burst from the tip of
your wand.

After that first time, she actively avoided using it for a while. But it was a
futile attempt. Death Eaters did not use Stupefy. They aimed to kill. And so
she learned to use it - but only when there was no other choice. And she
never got used to the feel of it.

But as the jet of green soared into the chest of her attacker, she was mildly
surprised to find the usual burn missing. The curious sort of numb that had
taken over after hearing the news of Lupin's death had persisted. It acted
only as a thin sheet, blanketing the other emotions pounding through her
body. She could feel the adrenaline in her veins. Knew her heart was
thumping erratically against her chest. But she knew it in a detached
manner, as one knows the sky is blue, but does not often think of it. The
mind's way of protecting itself, she remembered, and, as if this thought had
been some sort of summons, she found herself staring into the tired eyes of
Lupin. His suit was shabby as always, and there were patches on his jaw
where he'd missed shaving. He was watching her, hands in pockets, an
observant expression in his eyes, as he had once regarded her in the
classroom, when faced with a Boggart.
And though his lips were not moving and, even if they had been, the roar of
the battle in her ears would surely have drowned out any other sound, his
words filled her ears in their usual, soothing tone. It was something she had
heard him say to Harry once, after Sirius' death. She did not know why the
words came to her now, but in her mind's eye she could still see Harry
screaming and fighting and sobbing, trying to reach that veil, and Lupin's
quieter, though no less devastating, grief as he muttered, "There's nothing
you can do, Harry ... nothing ... He's gone." He's gone. They were all gone.

"Granger!" Draco crashed into her hard, giving her no time to recover
before grabbing her hand and tugging her painfully along behind him. Her
feet stumbled across the rubble of the fighting, and she clung to his arm
with the hand that was not in his death-grip. The Apparition point was
empty and, at first, Hermione thought it was because Draco had dragged her
there early. Until they arrived at the safe point to find everyone already
waiting for them.

"Hermione!" The relief that flooded Dean's face was reflected on those of
her teammates who were not too wounded to care. "You aren't hurt, are
you? Hermione?"

If Hermione heard him, it was in some distant part of her mind that was not
panicking over the fact that she could not see Lupin. He was nowhere to be
found in the small clearing and, when she began tracking round the edge,
she could not see him in the shadows of the trees.

"Hermione," Neville called, and his voice was careful. "What are you
doing?"

"I have to go back." But she said it too softly, or maybe she did not say it
out loud at all, and so she had to repeat it.

"Go back?" Neville looked horrified. In fact, a distracted glance around told
her most of them looked horrified. "You can't go back there!"

"But I have to," she replied, calmly, already striding towards the middle of
the clearing.
"Granger." She knew that when his tone was low like that, it was generally
a bad thing for her. He must be in one of his moods again, she mused
without pausing. "Granger." Draco's voice was sharper that time and more
like an order. She frowned but did not stop. Ignoring him was, of course, a
useless exercise. When words failed to get his message through, he
inevitably resorted to a more physical approach, and his grip on her wrist
was not gentle. She must have struggled against him still, because he let out
an angry growl and shifted his grip to her shoulders, whirling her around to
face him so hard, her teeth jarred in her head.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"I have to go back."

His eyes widened incredulously. "Are you insane? Are you out of your
fucking mind? What the hell happened back there? You just froze! Do you
not understand that you could have gotten yourself killed? And now you
want to go back? What is wrong with you?"

Hermione blinked. Lifted her hand to rest it softly over his cheek. It was
coarse from the cold weather, and he needed to shave. Her thumb brushed
the corner of his lips. She'd often wondered over the past month, when she'd
allowed herself to think of it at all, whether she had simply imagined the
soft texture of his lips. Surely a mouth which constantly poured forth such
venomous words could not be so soft. But it was just as she remembered,
and when she pressed her thumb against his lower lip, it yielded, his mouth
parting easily. She collapsed to the memory of his breath mingling with
hers, the combination of them both sweeter than she would have ever
guessed.

::

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose and focused on the task of breathing,
as opposed to that of strangling the man before him. He could not
remember the Auror's name - he was new and young, barely a year older
than Draco, and the inexperience showed heavily in the smooth skin of his
hands and the arrogant gleam in his eyes. Usually Neville dealt with the
Aurors. He negotiated the plans and chose who would be paired with who
for which mission. But he, along with half the house, had come down with
some mild form of the flu that had him sniveling and bed-ridden. Leaving
Draco to deal with this incompetent shit.

He had just drawn breath to explain exactly why the imbecilic plan would
not work when a giant bundle of clothes burst through the door. Draco
could only put it down to the fact that Granger really did have eyes in the
back of her head, that she was able to navigate around the small kitchen to
the door that led down to the cellars. She jumbled the bundle in her arms,
head turning slightly to the side, and only then did she realize that the
kitchen was not empty.

"Oh! I'm sorry." She let out a breathy, apologetic laugh and nodded to the
clothes (as best she could nod without moving her head). "I'm just trying to
do some laundry."

"Laundry," Draco repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Granger, it's two o'clock in

the morning."

"Is it?" She frowned distractedly before shrugging, hands fumbling to find
the door handle. She finally succeeded, a brief smile lighting her face.
"Well, I won't disturb you any longer. Keep up the good work!"

It wasn't until the Auror left, over an hour later, that Draco realized the silly
woman still hadn't re-emerged from the cellar. Sighing - she really was a
pain in the ass - he pushed the door open and moved heavily down the
stairs. The sound of those weird Muggle machines (clothes-washers, or
something) filled the room with a deep, droning hum. Granger lay curled in
the middle of the room, arms still hugging what was left of the clothes
waiting to be washed, head turned in to her chest. Her mouth was parted
ever so slightly, and her eyes moved rapidly beneath her lids. Whatever she
was dreaming about had her muttering agitatedly beneath her breath, brow
furrowing into tiny creases.

The smirk came unbidden to his face. Even in sleep she was a bossy know-
it-all. She shivered then, perhaps sensing his presence - though the way she
hugged herself suggested she was just cold. He took a step towards her,
arms already lifting to - what? Nudge her? Scoop her up and carry her to
bed like some little kid? 'Surely not the filthy Mudblood?' Blaise's words
drifted to the surface of his memory with startling clarity. His hand dropped
to his side. He looked upon her sleeping form for no more than a few
moments longer. Then he took a step back. Another. He was halfway up the
stairs, halfway out the door, halfway out the kitchen.

He lay awake in his room until he heard the unmistakable shuffle of her feet
on the stairs as she made her way up to the room Potter had surrendered to
her, and only then did he finally sleep.

::

In her dreams, she had found the locket Horcrux, but someone had already
gotten there first and broken it, a thick, black substance pouring over her
fingers from the heart of the cursed object. She stumbled forwards,
determined to throw the blasted thing into the lake, but her feet knocked
against something and she found herself staring down at Harry's limp body.
He was dying, that much was certain. The same black liquid, thick and
glistening like ink, was leaking from the corner of his mouth, his eyes rolled
into the back of his head. And somehow she knew that if she could save the
locket, she could save him, because they were linked in a way she had only
ever contemplated once and dismissed immediately after.

She clamped her eyes shut and squeezed down hard on the locket, hoping to
stem the flow of blood, or whatever, from the core. But it vanished and
when she opened her eyes, she was standing alone in a field of withered
posies, the cold, dewy chill of the morning enveloping her in a barely-there
caress. She wrapped her arms around her middle. Fell to her knees and
prayed.

::

The news of his cousin's death came to them just three days after Pansy left.
According to the brief telegram he received as a blood relative of the
woman, one Nymphadora Tonks had fallen in the line of duty. Later he
would hear how she and four other women had left the safety of the remote,
secure houses they had been sent to in order to avenge her late husband. He
would listen to Shacklebolt's description of the insanity Lupin's death
brought on the woman and would find himself wondering, not for the first
time, if mental illness wasn't burrowed somewhere in all the female
members of his family. The five women had apparently discovered the
location of several Death Eaters suspected to have been involved in the
invasions of the safe houses. They went down fighting, dragging seven of
the enemy with them.

His aunt Andromeda was dismissed from duty in order to care for little
Teddy Lupin, an orphan before he could know any other way. Shacklebolt
had commended the women's actions. Had said they were a standing
example to the rest of them, so willing to die for the cause and those they
loved. But the light of glory could not calm the waves of grief and that
night Grimmauld Place was filled with the low drone of weeping, broken
only once by a typical Potter outburst. Draco stumbled across the man later
that evening, his head pillowed in Granger's lap while she, dry-eyed and the
picture of calm, made soothing noises and ran her fingertips through his
hair. Draco did not make a sound, but she glanced up anyway, her eyes
locking with his for barely three seconds, before her attention was dragged
to Potter once more.

::

Harry would not sleep. He alternated between sobbing and shouting,

swearing and pleading - "My family, Hermione! My whole family is gone!"
- until Hermione's head spun with the emotions tearing at him from the
inside. Three times Ron had to wrestle him to the ground, lest he actually
force his way out of the house to hunt Voldemort down single-handedly. In
the end, they all managed to get a few hours sleep before the sun rose again.
Hermione awoke, arms curved protectively around Harry, both squeezed
onto the narrow bed. Ron snored softly from the chair in the corner.

He stirred slightly when she shifted, and she was careful not to jostle him as
she extracted herself from around him. It was still early enough that
Neville's snores broke the silence of the halls and those who had spent the
night in another's rooms had not yet begun the guilty creep back to their
own bedroom. Hermione made her groggy way to the kitchen, stifling a
yawn behind her hand while flicking the switch on the kettle. Her eyes
itched with the lack of sleep and she cursed her inability to doze on once
she had awoken.

It wasn't until the feeble whistle signaling the water boiling filled the
kitchen that she realized her mistake. On the counter in front of her were
not one, but two mugs, both filled with coffee, ready to be mixed with
water. Her sleep-addled mind had clearly not gotten the memo about
Pansy's disappearance, because while her own mug contained a rather
generous amount of sugar, the other was bare, just as Pansy liked it.
Hermione counted to ten. Focused on breathing deeply, in through her nose,
out through her mouth.

It was just a mug. It was not even one she had seen Pansy use before. And
yet she could not help but turn towards the kitchen table, could not help but
notice how much lonelier it seemed, empty that way with no one chiding
her along impatiently to get the coffee done. It was just a mug, but it had
her legs giving way and her face crumpling in a way it had not been able to
in weeks. It was like a slice through the fog that had descended on her
mind, the sudden return of emotions flooding her eyes and choking her
breath.

She took the mug with her as she slid to the floor, cradling it to her aching
chest through the choked sobs that racked her exhausted body. She turned
her face in to the wall and curled in on herself, and still that mug was
clasped tightly in her hands. She cried until the hysterics melted into
pathetic whimpers, and then only the occasional hiccup. And when Draco
found her half an hour later, still on the floor, still gripping that mug tightly
to her stomach, he did not raise a mocking eyebrow, or look at her with that
glint in his eye that told her he was questioning her sanity. He simply shut
the door behind him and crossed the short distance to her. It was not a small
kitchen and there were plenty of chairs, but he lowered himself to the
ground, close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm with each
shuddering breath she took.

"It couldn't last forever, Granger," he said after a while, and she was not
sure if he was referring to her temporary zombie-state, or the brief period of
almost-happiness that had been so spectacularly blasted to pieces. She
nodded anyway, then nodded again, because the movement seemed to clear
her head.

"No," she agreed. There was a pause. "I never got to tell her I didn't really
think she had a pug-face." Draco snorted his amusement, and when she
turned to look at him, her eyes widened slightly in mock-disbelief. "Why,
Draco Malfoy. Were you actually smiling just then?"

His features had already rearranged themselves back into a carefully-

disciplined scowl. "I was not smiling, I was smirking," he corrected.
"Malfoys do not smile."

"It looked like a smile to me."

He didn't reply. Maybe it wasn't a smile. Maybe it was simply the dim
lighting of the kitchen, or the angle of his face. But some of the ache left
her chest, and the knot in her stomach no longer made her feel like she
wanted to vomit. It made her wonder slightly, that his presence might
actually relieve her pain, rather than cause it. But she pushed the thought
from her mind, more concerned with forcing him to admit that he had
indeed smiled, and then winning the verbal battle that ensued. By the time
they were done - and only because Dean came down to yell at them for
waking the whole bloody house with their bickering - she was feeling better
than she had in days, no, weeks. And when the tears threatened to return
only three hours later, she sought him out again to yell at him for not
putting the bread away where it belonged.

Later, she would think back to this moment and realize that this was where
it had started. This was the moment it all really began. Not with silly
confessions lined by the smoke of a shared cigarette, or the slow process of
gaining each other's trust, but with the two of them bickering on the kitchen
floor, an empty mug laying, maybe not forgotten, but removed to one side.
She would think of how, even then, even before she realized what it was she
was doing, he was a form of escape for her. And she would think it odd that
she had ever considered herself capable of stopping when she wanted to. As
though they weren't already far past the point of no return.
*Chapter 6*: Chapter 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the
self is not something one finds, it is something one creates. ~Thomas Szasz

The first time he actively sought comfort from Granger was exactly one
year and six months since he had first arrived, a bloody, convulsing mess, in
the kitchen of the very house he now lived in. He did not remember much
about that night. Indeed, most of his memories from around that time were
more than a little fuzzy (something which he took to be a side-effect of
roughly six hours of non-stop torture). He did not know how Snape got him
to Grimmauld Place. He did not know whether there was any struggle, or if
he had simply been accepted as the half-dead lump he was. He did know
that the whole damned place still gave him the creeps. The entire
experience was made a hundred times worse by the fact that Loony - no,
Luna - Lovegood had been released from St. Mungo's.

Maybe she point blank refused to be isolated in the countryside or maybe it

was decided that Grimmauld Place really was safer - Draco didn't know, but
after five days of every woman in the house discussing possible baby-
names, birthing techniques and schools (Schools, for Merlin's sake! The
thing probably resembled little more than a sea-monkey at this point!), he
was just about ready to kill himself. He got the feeling he was not the only
one. At least, Dean and Neville were only too happy to sign up with him
when Shacklebolt requested a small team. It was only supposed to be a
simple mission - in and out in under an hour, Shacklebolt had said.

Except the questionable artefact they were supposed to be checking was

merely a distraction for the six Death Eaters hiding in wait for them. There
was an unspoken rule amongst the soldiers - never kill the younglings.
Racism and hatred had no age-limit - Draco himself was living proof of that
- and Voldemort had no qualms with sending children as young as fifteen
out to die for him. They were arrogant and inexperienced and blinded by
their prejudice - and that made them all the more dangerous. There was no
technique with them, no pattern to follow. Their behaviour was controlled
by their hormones, when it wasn't dictated by their hatred.

Even the trap they had set was amateur, something which made Draco
seriously question the capability of Ministry Aurors. It took little more than
some well-honed reflexes and practised aim to disable five of the
younglings before they could do any serious harm. But then Neville let out
a cry and he was cornered, his wand useless at his feet, the one Death Eater
who had been clever enough to hide aiming their own wand at the base of
his throat. For one startling moment, Draco's mind went completely blank.
He did not think of rules or age or any alternatives. One single curse
bubbled up from behind his lips, and the Death Eater lay dead at Neville's
feet.

This was usually the part where Draco would look away. He could not stand
to wait for that moment where the illusion of the silver mask would fail,
revealing the enemy for a very real person. Someone who might be a
mother, father, uncle, nephew. Someone he may have sat next to in Potions
for six years. But in that moment, it was as though some invisible force had
taken over and he could not, would not, lift his eyes from his victim. The
mask faltered and faded and he found himself staring down into the face of
a girl. She could not have been more than sixteen, cheeks still plump from
the end stages of an awkward adolescence, eyes still glowing with the light
of his Avada.

The others had seen - must have seen - but nothing was said as they called
back-up and waited for their captives to be transferred to a holding cell
somewhere. Back in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, Draco waved off the
offer of a night cap and sprinted to the nearest bathroom where he
proceeded to vomit what felt like the entirety of his stomach. When there
was nothing but bile, he got rid of the mess and brushed his teeth
thoroughly. (He could not rid his mouth of the bitter taste.) He was
somewhat surprised to find Dean waiting for him outside the door.

"I just thought I'd see if... you know, you were alright. Or whatever." He
shrugged awkwardly, and Draco was suddenly very aware of the fact that
this man's girlfriend had been raped and tortured in the cellars of his
childhood home.

"I'm fine," he said, his voice coarse from the vomiting.

Dean nodded. Turned, as if to leave. Hesitated. "You know," he began, still

facing away from Draco, "with those stupid masks on, it can be so hard to
tell. You couldn't have known."

Draco considered replying, but there was nothing to say to that and,
anyway, Dean had already started off towards the room he, Luna and Fred
Weasley shared. Draco grimaced at the idea of returning to the room he and
Neville now occupied. Even from the spot he currently stood in, four doors
away from their room, the man's animalistic snores hurtled across the space
towards him. He imagined climbing into that narrow, cold bed, lying awake
for hours with only those snores for company. Made a decision and turned
in the complete opposite direction.

Granger's room was on the very top floor and he had to climb a flight of
stairs to reach it. She must have been sleeping but the sound of him easily
opening the once-locked door roused her and he was faced with an
obviously sleep-addled, bushy-haired mess brandishing a wand in almost
the complete wrong direction. Her hand fumbled over to the bedside table,
light flooding the room when it found the lamp there.

"M...Malfoy?" she mumbled, voice slurred with sleep, and the regression
back to his last name hurt more than he cared to admit. "What are you
doing?"

Draco shut the door behind him, locking it with a muted click. "Either I'm
sleeping in here with you or you're going to have Neville's murder on your
conscience."

"What time is it?" She started at the sound of him kicking his heavy boots
off.

"Late. Or early. Depending on how you look at it." He lifted his shirt over
his head and this finally seemed to bring Granger from her stupor. At any
other time, her reaction might have been comical. Her eyes widened, the
blood pooled in her cheeks, her gaze darted to the ceiling, the floor, the
window - anywhere but his naked chest.

"Draco! What do you think you're doing?" she hissed. "You can't just come
into my room and strip!"

"There aren't enough beds," he lied. "I thought we were friends."

As predicted, this seemed to stem any protest brewing on her tongue. "We
are!"

"Then, this is fine, isn't it?" At her panicked expression, he heaved a sigh.
"Relax, Granger. I'll leave my underwear on." Her eyes all but popped from
their sockets when he deftly undid the zipper of his jeans, shoving them
down around his ankles and kicking them unceremoniously into a pile. He
expected further protest, or at the very least an indignant shriek. When he
was only greeted with silence, he turned to find the woman peering at him
in that unsettling way of hers that had his Occlumency flaring, even if he
knew she was not by any means a skilled Legilimens. "What?"

"You look..." She trailed off, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.

"I look what?" he demanded, somewhat agitatedly.

"You look like you used to." She shrugged. "Your expression is so cold. Did
something happen on the mission?"

A lump of ice had settled like dead weight in his stomach. He said nothing,
gratified by the slight squeak she gave when he ripped the covers back
without so much as a 'by your leave'. The shirt she slept in must have once
belonged to a man and struggled to cover her thighs, despite her best efforts
of tugging it down. He ignored her flustered state and slid easily in beside
her. He had hoped she might drop the topic, but already she was looking at
him in that way again. He let out an aggravated growl.

"Just for once in your life, leave it, Granger. Okay?" He did not wait for her
reply and ignored her grimace as he leaned around her to shut off the light.
Minutes passed. He pressed his eyes firmly shut and willed sleep to come. It
was no use. Her gaze alone was like a third presence weighing on his back.
He sighed heavily and peered up at her form in the darkness. "What is it
now?"

"There's not enough room for both of us!" she snapped, giving him a nudge.
"Move over some!"

"Oh for the love of-" He reached up and tugged her down, settling her body
in the cradle of his arms so that her back was pressed to his chest. "There,
happy now?"

"You could have at least given me some warning," she muttered instead.
But perhaps she sensed that tonight was not the night for one of her petty
arguments because she said no more and, by degrees, she began to relax.
They were silent a long time, though neither of them slept. Each time Draco
closed his eyes and attempted to sink into the unconscious, his mind would
flood with the image of that girl, the way her expression would be forever
frozen into that look of horrified realisation as the green soared towards her.
He wondered if there were parents waiting for her to return tonight, siblings
laying pranks to trip her up as she came in.

"Draco?" she whispered, but he startled as though she had shouted in his
ear.

"What?"

"You're trembling."

He was. The arm draped over her waist shuddered harder with the
realisation and he clenched his fist in an effort to reign it under control. "Go
to sleep, Granger."

"Are you hurt? Should I go get some pain potions?" The idea was tempting
- they would knock him out for sure. But he found his head shaking of its
own accord. Then her hand, all hesitation and uncertainty, lifted and
touched down on his arm. He thought she might have expected him to yell
at her for that, because she didn't move right away and when her hand did
start its soothing journey up and down his forearm; it was too timid, too shy
to begin with. He let out a long, shuddering sigh.

"Tell me something I don't know."

She stiffened, perhaps because this was the first time he had ever initiated
that kind of conversation, or maybe it was just the result of his words
rushing warm and breathy across the back of her neck. Silence held for
almost a full minute before she spoke. "I'm not an only child."

This was not the childish anecdote he had been expecting and he raised his
head slightly off the pillow, all the better to frown at her. "What?"

"I'm not an only child," she repeated patiently. "I obliviated my parents
before the war. I don't know where they are. I deleted that memory too in
case... just in case. But Shacklebolt keeps track of all the families in hiding,
and keeps us updated. A couple of years ago my mum had a baby - a boy.
They called him Lucas."

She turned in his arms so that she was facing him, their faces only a foot
apart. "What happened today?"

He pressed his eyes shut. "No lies?"

"No lies."

"I killed a child." The confession fell into the hollow silence and Draco
could not suppress the grimace it arose. He waited for her to tell him that it
wasn't his fault - that he couldn't have known through that mask and that it
could have happened to anyone. That was the thing though. He had known.
Deep down. It was there in the girl's inexperience, the way she hesitated to
kill. He could have chosen to simply stun her. But he had not.

"Better her than you." His eyes snapped open. Through the darkness, he
could just make out the outline of her face, her eyes wide and open, lips
slightly parted. When he did not reply, she lifted her hand and cupped his
chin with more strength than he would have guessed her capable of. "Rather
her dead than you," she repeated. She turned back round a while later and
maybe he imagined her shifting closer. He turned his face into the pillow
and when he found himself with a faceful of her wild mane, he breathed in
deep and chose not to explore the realisation that maybe her hair wasn't that
bad after all.

::

Hermione came home from a mission cold, tired and near-tears, to find
Draco and Neville waltzing through the living room. Their audience -
consisting of Luna, Dean, Fred and a giggling Mrs. Weasley - applauded
enthusiastically as they made their final turn and bowed to each other.
Hermione stood frozen in the doorway, wondering if she hadn't passed out
and this was all merely a dream.

"Oh, Hermione dear!" Mrs. Weasley managed through her laughter, dabbing
her eyes on her apron. "I didn't see you there."

"What in Merlin's name is going on?"

"Draco is teaching Neville how to dance," Luna replied. Her hands were
folded over her rounded stomach and Hermione had to make a conscious
effort not to stare. It took a long moment for the words to process.

"Right," she said, and Draco scowled at the way she drew the word out.
"And is there any particular reason Draco is teaching Neville to dance?"

"Every young man should know how to waltz!" Molly returned. "Dancing
is the perfect way to woo a woman."

Hermione might have said something about that, but Draco's frown had
faded into mischievous contemplation and she was suddenly overcome with
the urge to reach for her wand.

"Is that so?" he murmured thoughtfully. He pounced before Hermione could

think to move out of the way. She squealed - actually squealed - when he
lifted her into his arms, feet dangling off the floor, hands fisted in his shirt,
arms partially trapped between them. She yelled too, but even she could
hear the annoyance quickly melting from her voice and then she was
laughing like she hadn't in weeks (months, years). She clung to his
shoulders and buried her face into the crook of his neck, eyes closed against
the spinning of the room. When he finally stopped and set her down, she
stumbled and tripped until they were all laughing and he held her again just
to stop her falling.

"How about it, Granger? Do you feel wooed?" There was real laughter in
his voice - not teasing scorn or amused taunting - and Hermione laughed all
the harder for it.

A creak in the hallway had her eyes darting to the door. Harry stood there,
expression unreadable, though his clenched jaw was telling. She did not
stop laughing - could not stop - and when Draco saw who she was looking
at and made to move away, she held on all the tighter. Harry rose an
eyebrow at that but the message was clear and he moved on with little more
than a curt nod. No one else had caught the exchange, the conversation
already moving on to other far more important matters (namely Neville's
two left feet). But when she turned, Draco was watching her and, though he
was no longer smiling, his eyes held none of their usual chill. This time, he
was the one to cling tighter when she made to move away.

::

"Have you ever been in love?"

The question, so typical for Granger, made Draco pause on the drag of
smoke he had been taking. He exhaled slowly, the smoke curling in long
tendrils above his head. They had not been able to do this since the attack
on the safe houses. Grimmauld Place had no porch and the only bench had
rotted beyond all recognition. But he had returned from a mission earlier
that evening to find Granger struggling with an old sofa from one of the
rooms that was very rarely used. He had not needed an explanation, had
simply moved to the other side and pushed until finally it was out in the
back garden.

It must have been beautiful once, but the rose bushes had thrived in their
abandonment, twisting a cage of thorns. She'd spliced a section out of the
sharp forest so that their sofa could have a place to sit, and then charmed
the area to protect them from rain. He'd told her she was stupid for going
through so much trouble just so they could sit outside. She'd told him he
could bloody well bugger off if he thought it was so stupid. He'd stayed.

"I thought so once," he said now. "But I think it was just the whole thing of
wanting something I couldn't have."

"Why couldn't you have her?"

"She was Blaise's girlfriend." She didn't reply to that and silence fell for a
few moments. "Have you?"

"I don't know. I used to think I was in love with Ron."

"Weren't you?"

"I loved Ron. But I wasn't in love." She sighed and he felt her shift to sit up.
"What does that even mean, anyway? 'In love.' It's not real. I can't see it. I
can't feel it. It's just a concept made up by people who don't want to believe
that this really is it. There isn't anything else. Life is just one long rehearsal
for a show that will never play."

Draco frowned. "I never took you for a cynic, Granger."

She sighed at his words, sinking back into the seat. "I used to believe in it
when I was a kid. I wanted it too - the whole package, a shining Prince who
would serenade me and make me his princess. God, I can't believe I just
said that out loud."

"What made you stop? Believing, I mean."

She shrugged. "I don't know, really. It was after I came to Hogwarts, I
guess."

He moved to sit up. His arm brushed against hers and she shifted slightly
closer in response. "I always thought that love was more of a Muggle
concept."

She turned to frown at him. "Really? How come?"

"Love is the closest thing Muggles have to magic. That's why they need it
so much." They were quiet for a long moment. Her head snapped round to
look at him when an amused chuckle slipped past his lips.

"What?"

"Nothing. I was just trying to imagine the Weasel serenading some poor
girl."

"Draco!" She tried to smack him but he grabbed her arm before she could
touch him. A short wrestling match ensued. The sound of Granger's
laughter rang clear through the night.

::

Hermione leant against the doorframe, a small smile turning up the corners
of her lips. Luna lay back on the sofa, shirt hiked up over her rounded belly.
Dean knelt on the floor beside her, ear pressed against her skin, listening
intently to something the rest of them could not hear. He nodded, made a
murmured sound of agreement, then straightened up. With a solemn
expression, he said, "The babe and I have conferred - it's definitely an
Archibald."

Fred snorted and even Draco looked mildly amused. Luna simply smiled in
that dreamy way of hers and patted the rounded slope of her stomach.
"Archibald. I like it."

"Won't the adoptive parents want to name it?" Harry asked. Hermione's
smile widened at the sight of him, cheeks slightly flushed, eyes bright,
happier than she had seen him in a long time.

"Well, we figured the baby will probably be kept in one of the safe houses
for a while after the birth," Dean replied, moving to sit behind Luna, her
head rested in his lap. "Molly said it could be months before they find
suitable parents."

"And he can't go without a name for that long," Luna added. "Blibbering
Humdinger's are notorious for swapping nameless babies with
Changelings."

Where once the comment might have incensed Hermione beyond all belief,
now she merely let out a breathy chuckle, shaking her head slightly at the
girl's whimisical ways. The air stirred behind her and she glanced back to
find Ron standing there, eyes fixed on the scene before them.

"I used to think she was pretty barmy," he commented. "But sometimes I
think she's the only sane one around here anymore." Hermione laughed at
that, leaning her head back against the doorframe. Dean had his hand
pressed against Luna's stomach now, eyes wide as the baby shifted beneath
his touch. When Hermione turned to Ron again, it was with the realisation
that he had been watching her, a sad smile gracing his lips. "Do you ever
think things might've worked between us if we'd had our baby?"

His words sent a distant ripple of - not pain exactly, but more like the echo
of pain, of a heartache that had never really healed but had gotten better
over time - through her chest. Her own smile was just as small, just as sad
as his. "It would never have worked, Ronald. You would have wanted us to
be tucked up safe somewhere like Tonks and Teddy and I would have just
resented you for it. I didn't want to bring a baby into this war."

"I understand. And I know you're right. It's just..." He trailed off, his eyes
slipping back to Dean and Luna. "I think about it sometimes though.
Whether it would have been a boy or girl, with your curls or mum's eyes.
They would've been smart, I reckon. Like their mum."

His eyes were misty now, and when he nodded, he let his head stay bowed
just a little longer than was necessary. Hermione swallowed hard around the
thick lump that had taken residence in her throat. "You're smart too, Ron,"
she said, because she could think of nothing better. He let out a choked sort
of laugh. He wouldn't meet her eye, but he slid his hand into hers before he
left, the warmth of his hand leaving her skin cold and bereft in its absence.

::

"Draco..."
Draco let out a low growl at the sound of his name on her lips, a breathy,
urgent whisper against his own, quickly dragging her lower lip between his
teeth and sucking lightly. Granger's hands were everywhere - over his
shoulders, across his back, up his shirt to run along the ridges of his
stomach. His own hands were resting more passively on her waist, his mind
still reeling with the sudden turn the events of the evening had taken. One
moment he had been seeking Granger out in the garden, hoping to pinch
one of her cigarettes since his own supply was quickly diminishing, the next
her hands had been fisted in his collar, lips crashing against his. The
demanding movement of her mouth on his had left no room for protest - not
that he was by any means looking to protest.

Still. He could not help but wonder what had brought on this not-
unwelcome burst of activity. She had certainly seemed moodier since that
talk with Weasley. Annoyance flared briefly in his lower stomach at the
thought of Weasley saying something to upset her, confusion quickly on its
tail at the idea of Granger being upset annoying him. Granger moved to
straddle him and all thoughts of Weasley and annoyance fled with the press
of her against him.

He groaned when she tugged lightly on his hair, dragging his mouth back
up to meet hers. "Merlin, Granger," he muttered, their lips still bumbling
lightly against each other. "You should most definitely argue with the
Weasel more often."

"Try not to mention Ronald right now," she said, her voice a low, husky
sound that sent a shot of warmth straight to his groin. He thought she might
have said something else, but they were kissing again now and there were
more important things for his mind to be occupied with, like those delicious
curves he traced beneath the shelter of her hideous jumper, or the soft
whimpers that escaped her mouth when he lightly dragged his fingernails
down her back.

"Miss. Granger! Is that you out there?" The deep, abrupt tone of
Shacklebolt had them jerking apart. She did not move back far, her mouth
still close enough that every one of her panting breaths fell onto his lips, the
sensation pleasant on the already hypersensitive skin.
"Ignore him," she whispered.

"It might be important."

"It won't be. He knows I'm out here with you."

"But-"

"Draco. Stop arguing and kiss me."

It was getting difficult to remember exactly why he was arguing in the first
place, especially when she ran her tongue along his lower lip like that. But
Shacklebolt's voice had been like a splash of cool water on the heat of their
lust, and Draco could not fully quash the growing sense of dread sitting like
an ice block in his lower stomach. He pulled back once more and this time,
Granger did not try to stop him.

"I think you should go in," he said and it was a testament to three years of
training that his voice did not waver once. The confusion in her eyes was
enough to have his hands clenching against the urge to pull her to him
again. No, he wanted to scream, it's not what you're thinking! Except it was
exactly what she was thinking and Blaise's words were spinning round in
his head, an endless cycle he could no longer silence. He bit back a groan
when she clambered off his lap, leg unintentionally brushing against his
erection. If she noticed, she did not say anything. She would not meet his
gaze.

He waited until he heard the backdoor shut, counted to fifty, then buried his
face in his hands and swore. Loudly.

::

"This is hopeless!"

At Harry's sudden outburst, Hermione glanced up from the book she had
been reading and frowned. "It is not hopeless, Harry. We knew it would be
difficult when we first agreed to do this by ourselves."
"This is not difficult, this is bloody impossible! It's been nearly five years
and so far we can only account for the ring, the diary and the locket. We
still haven't the slightest idea where to find the cup or the diadem!"

"At least we know the sixth one is Nagini," Ron said. Harry gave a reluctant
nod. None of them commented on their previous speculations of the
seventh.

"I'm just saying. Maybe Dumbledore was wrong to trust us with this,"
Harry persisted after a slight pause. He was pacing again - a habit he had
picked up as of late whenever he got frustrated - and Hermione tracked his
movements from the corner of her eye while she returned her gaze to the
book. "We were just kids when we found out about this all."

"Dumbledore knew what he was doing," Hermione said firmly. It was an

argument as old as their hunt for the Horcruxes themselves and an
exasperated glance at Ron showed he was just as tired of it as she.

"But if we had asked for help, who knows? Maybe we would have the cup
and the diadem by now! And all those people... maybe they wouldn't be
dead."

"We can't think like that, mate," Ron said, his voice breaking the heavy
silence that followed Harry's words. "If we start believing that then we'll
never get this done. Besides, Hermione thinks we've got a new lead, don't
you Hermione?"

"Hm?" Hermione caught Ron's pointed glare and nodded in what she hoped
was a convincing way. Guilt tickled her chest as she realised she had once
again allowed herself to become distracted by thoughts of Draco. She might
have scolded herself, had Ron not already told her off for talking to herself
twice. So what if they hadn't spoken since Shacklebolt interrupted them that
night? He could spend the rest of the war avoiding her, if he wanted to be
childish. She didn't care. (Except that she did.) Releasing a frustrated huff
of breath, she frowned and turned back to her book, Ron pretending to read
over her shoulder. Harry resumed his pacing.

::
He had gotten used to sleeping in Granger's bed. The realisation was
enough to have him sickened at himself. He, Draco Malfoy, did not get into
the habit of drawing comfort from any one witch's bed. But somewhere
along the way, it had become routine. Yes, he would admit it (if only to
himself) - sleeping with Granger was routine. He concluded that she must
have bewitched her bed somehow (because it was most definitely the bed
and not her he missed) for him to have such, deep, dreamless sleep when he
was in it. And it was the absence of this spell (and not Granger) that had
him standing on that bank again and him on one side and all those dead on
the other, watching him as he watched them.

There were more gathered now - Theo and Vincent and Lupin and the girl
he had killed. She lifted her arm and the billowing sleeve of the white gown
she wore tumbled past her elbow. The moonlight cast its beams on her pale,
smooth skin, unblemished where the mark should have been. He did not
look away until his own sleeve was rolled up far past his elbow. He glanced
down. No skull. No snake. His arm was naked. Beautifully, wonderfully
naked. He dropped to his knees and sobbed.

::

Hermione could feel the exact moment the knife entered her body. One
moment she had been fighting, wand drawn, hexes flying around her so fast
she could no longer tell which were hers and which she should avoid. And
then suddenly, a strong grip lifting her nearly clean off the ground, a thick
forearm curving round her throat tighter, tighter until the tears sprang to her
eyes and her heart slammed painfully against her ribs. It took several
agonising seconds to realise that it was her legs stumbling over four hours
worth of rubble and bodies, and not the ground rushing past in a sudden
flow of moment. She was being dragged away from the battle.

Real fear coursed through her veins now, pumping adrenaline into her
exhausted limbs. She bit, scratched, kicked, pulled, pinched, clawed -
anything to get away. Anything to stay where she could be seen. If there
was one thing Moody had drilled into her during training, it was never let
yourself get separated from your team. On the battlefield, the rules were
clear - you duelled until someone fell, and then you duelled some more.
Hermione was an incredibly talented witch. But with her wand tucked in the
other hand of her attacker, she was suddenly all too aware of her size
compared to his. She had never been physically strong - even now, she was
tiring after just a few minutes of vicious struggle.

They were moving faster now, down a hill, mud making her kicking legs
slip and slide dangerously. He stumbled, his arm slipping up from around
her throat for one blissful second. She did not stop to appreciate the sweet
oxygen singing through her veins. Her teeth sunk into his flesh and she did
not stop until she tasted blood. The man yelped loudly, stumbling again and
she used the momentum to shove him away. Run. Her hands clawed at the
ground as she scrambled back up the hill. His heavy breathing was close on
her tail. Faster. Not fast enough. His hand clamped around her foot. The
ground was rushing past her and she was distantly aware of her arm
cracking beneath her own weight. Flat ground rushed up towards her body
and she was off again, running, crawling, anything to get away.

Firm hands gripped her shoulders, swinging her round until her back
smacked painfully into the nearest tree. A wave of sickening pain rocked
her stomach as her injured arm jolted at her side and she swallowed down
the urge to vomit. And then, suddenly, there was nothing. She had not
passed out, she was sure - her eyes were still open and she could still see
that monstrous face looming above her. She could see him snapping her
wand in two, could hear his muttered comment that a filthy Mudblood like
herself should not think herself dignified enough to hold one. She could feel
his fingers digging too tightly into her arms, but she could not truly feel it.
She was a third party, a fragmented section of her own mind, simply content
to watch the scene play out. The mind's way of protecting itself, she
remembered.

She thought of her mother and father, and the baby brother she would
probably never meet. She thought of Harry and Ron, so dependent on her
knowledge and comfort. She remembered Draco and the way his eyes
barely flickered when he told her he was no good. She remembered the
reasons she was supposed to fight and, as though her body had picked up on
the command before she could think to issue it, she was fighting again. And
when his fingers moved to tear at the front of her shirt, the sound of ripping
fabric joining her own frantic panting, she fought all the harder. Her arms
were pinned to her side, but she lifted her knee and pushed it up. Hard.

The Death Eater grunted in pain and Hermione took advantage of his
momentary weakness to run. It seemed she had only gotten a few feet away
before she was once again being tugged, this time to the ground. The
second his body heaved on top of her, she knew she had lost. There was no
way in her tired, weakened state that she could fight him now. His weight
alone knocked the breath from her lungs, his hand digging agonisingly into
her injured arm.

"Filthy Mudblood bitch!" he hissed, then spat at her face. His saliva landed
on her cheek and burned as it trickled down the side of her face. He was
fumbling under his robes and all she could think was 'Please, Lord, no! No,
no, no, no-'

A flash of silver. She somehow knew it was a blade, and not a curse, that
tore through her flesh. She waited for the rush of pain, but it was drowned
out by the ever-increasing panic touching her every nerve.

"I'm going to enjoy watching you die, Granger," her attacker said and her
body fell still of its own accord. A wave of his wand had his mask
disappearing. Marcus Flint had not changed much over the years, except for
the odd scar littering his once handsome face. His lips twisted up into a
sneer. "You're going to die now. No Potter or Weasley stepping in at the last
moment. You're going to die all alone with only me to wa-"

The last word seemed to stick in his throat. Hermione watched the anger
play out on his face and at first she thought he was trying to stand up - until
she saw Draco dragging him backwards by his hood. He was calm and cool
and all the more terrifying for it, and somehow Hermione knew she would
always think of him like this - tall and fierce, wand digging into the hollow
at the base of Flint's neck. A man in his element. The wand was out of
Flint's hands and in two before the man could do little more than growl his
protest. Draco held him by the scruff of his neck, wand pointed at the
hollow of his throat.

"Why, Marcus. How lovely to see you again."

"Traitor," Flint hissed.

Draco had, until that point, kept his eyes on his captive, but they flickered
to Hermione now and she thought that perhaps he had not realised just quite
how bad it was, or maybe he had but seeing it was different to simply
knowing. His eyes flickered over her torn blouse, her partially exposed
breasts, the blood seeping slowly through the cotton of her shirt. She
thought that she had never seen him so furious as he looked in that moment,
and later it would confuse her that seeing her in danger would incense him
in such a way. She tried to move and the muscle in his jaw jumped.

"Stop fidgeting about, Granger, before you injure yourself further," he

ordered in a low voice that had her scowling through her pain. She wanted
to tell him that he was not the boss of her, that she was perfectly capable of
sorting herself out. The pain made it difficult to speak.

"Really, Flint," Draco said, attention back on the man kneeling before him,
and his tone was deceptively light. "Have you learned nothing from your
pathetic excuse for a master? Talking away about the evil genius of your
plan and how perfect it's all going to end is only going to give some idiot
enough time to come along and save her. If you want someone dead, do it
and quit the theatrics. If the Dark Lord hadn't wasted so much time
revelling in the drama, I'm sure Potter would be long gone by now."

"Fuck you, Malfo-"

Draco's wand, which had been resting lightly against Flint's throat, was
suddenly digging hard enough for the man to choke slightly before he could
recover. "Don't fuck with me, Flint. That was just your first mistake, you
pathetic excuse for a human being."

"Oh, really? And what was my second mistake?"

Draco's jaw clenched. He turned the angle of his wand slightly so that it was
pointing at Flint's chest. "Goodbye, Marcus."

"I'll be seeing you in Hell," Flint snarled.

"Ava-"

"Wait!" Hermione's hand was on his arm before she could make the
conscious decision to do so. He very nearly rounded on her incredulously,
but Flint shifted then, sensing a window of escape, and Draco's wand was
trained on him once more. Hermione swallowed. "Wait. Don't kill him."

"Excuse me?" Draco chanced a glare in her direction.

Hermione's head was racing with the quickly receding adrenaline and the
ever-increasing pain throbbing through her left side. "Tie him up. Stun him.
We'll wait for back-up and they can take him to the holding cells."

"Granger-!"

"Listen, Malfoy, it's me he tried to kill so I get to decide what to do with

him! Now stun him before I find a rock and knock him out myself!"

Draco did not move. His eyes remained fixed on Flint's. The moment held
and stretched, the tension so tangible, Hermione thought that if she stuck
her tongue out she might actually be able to taste it. Finally, Draco's lips
moved in a muttered spell and ropes were stretching out through the space
between them, binding themselves in an impenetrable hold around Flint's
body. The man's lips twisted into a smirk.

"My, my. The famous Draco Malfoy submitting to none other than the most
famous Mudblood in the wizarding world. What would your father say?"

The sharp crack as Draco's fist collided with his nose made Granger
grimace and sway, her hand moving to lightly finger her shirt and the
blossoming bloodstain growing there.

"Draco?"

"What?" he demanded, the anger evident in his tone.

"I think I may need you to Apparate me to St. Mungos."

"Why?"
"Because Flint broke my wand."

"No, I mean why-" He broke off, his eyes dropping to the now warm flow
of blood trailing down her side. He swore, then swore again, loud enough to
have her wincing. "You're a fucking idiot, Granger!" He might have yelled
at her some more, but perhaps he noticed her chattering teeth, or the fact
that it was getting increasingly difficult for her to focus on his face. Instead
he gave a growl of frustration, before wrapping his arm around her waist
and Apparating them both with a muted pop. She must have passed out at
some point because when she awoke she was lying in a narrow bed, Fred's
worried face peering down at her. Draco was gone. It was not until the
Healers finally agreed to discharge her that she realised she was wearing
Draco's shirt over her own, hiding the torn fabric and exposed skin.

She gave him time to cool off before seeking him out. He was laid down
flat on the sofa, so that she might have missed him altogether, if not for the
tendrils of smoke curling into the air above him. The silence was heavy,
weighed down by Draco's anger and her own frustration. But she made no
attempt to break it. It stretched and held, until the cigarette clutched limply
between Draco's lips was a mere stub, and the very last rays of the fading
sun had given way to endless black. When she did finally speak, his eyes
had been closed for near ten minutes and she was only half-certain he was
still awake.

"You're angry."

His eyes did not open. His voice was a tired drawl. "I'm always angry."

"You're angry with me."

This time he did open his eyes, if only to fix her with a highly patronising
look. "You're smart, Granger. Figure it out."

"There was no need to kill Flint. You had him at wand point, unarmed and
harmless. He will be locked away until his trial after the war."

Draco was sitting up now, and the anger in his eyes was enough to have her
resisting the urge to shrink back into the leather upholstery. "The bastard
deserved to die. Do you not care about what he did to you? Do you really
think he would have stopped at just killing you? He would have
dismembered and distorted your dead body, only after presenting it as a gift
to the Dark Lord. He would have sent pieces of you to each and every one
of your family and friends. He would have been honoured as a hero for
killing Potter's little Mudblood bitch."

His words stung, as he had known they would. "Have you ever wondered
why all the Weasleys have at some point lived here, and yet we never see
Mr. Weasley around?" She felt Draco's gaze on her and did not need to look
at him to see the slightly raised eyebrow, or the thin line of his lips. "His
son, Percy, was killed in the first few months of the war. Arthur tracked
down the murderer and killed him. It wasn't the same as killing someone in
battle. He could have captured the Death Eater and brought him back to
await trial. The man was unarmed and alone. But Arthur killed him. And he
hasn't been able to look any of his family in the eye since."

There was a long pause. Draco released a breath that sounded more like a
hiss than a sigh. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I want you to understand why I stopped you today. I don't want
you to grow up and not be able to look into your children's eyes because
you're afraid they'll see a cold-blooded murderer there."

"I've already killed, Granger. What difference does one more make?" His
tone was light, almost resigned. But Hermione thought she saw the grimace
of pain at the confession before he could really hide it. She did not answer
for a long time, and when she did, it was with a tired shrug.

"I don't know," she said. "I guess that's up to you to decide."

He did not say anything for a very long time. His eyes were on hers though,
and she thought the burning intensity in them was caused by something
other than the anger, though she could not say for sure exactly what that
something might be. He did not snap at her again. And when she retired to
her bed that night, he followed her, sliding into the narrow space behind her
without a word.
*Chapter 7*: Chapter 6
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

We were designed to love and when we do, something good develops inside.
We feel clean, rich, whole. Even better, we become less concerned with how
we feel and more concerned with the lives of others. - Larry Crabb

The first time Draco returned to Hogwarts since his hasty flight as a
trembling, seventeen year old wreck was on the eve of his twenty-second
birthday. The old castle had long since ceased to be the magnificent
structure of his teenage years. The turrets had crumbled and fallen, only a
few able to stand against the storm that had raged. If the First Battle of
Hogwarts had left it bruised and aching, the Second and Third had
decimated it. There were few areas of the place that were safe to enter, and
even those were dubious at best. Only once the stone had given way and the
grass had shrivelled and died, and the Forbidden Forest was the only
recognisable feature of the once beautiful grounds, did the fight for territory
finally change directions.

Three years on, and what little of the building still stood had been snatched
into the greedy clutches of thick, ropey vines and weeds. The Order had
been sent to investigate strange lights spotted flickering behind the tower
windows late at night. At worst, they had expected a few rogue Death
Eaters, perhaps a deserter or two. What they'd found was a group of nearly
twenty feral children, apparently orphaned by the war and clubbing together
in an effort to survive. They had commandeered most of the seventh floor,
the only floor left largely unscathed by the horrific battles that had shaken
the rest of the castle. The little vagrants had painted graffiti over most of the
walls, too. Portraits lay abandoned by their usual residences, torn at the
seams, frames stolen to use for firewood.

Draco put it down to the genius of Albus Dumbledore that his old office had
remained untouched. It was oddly surreal to be standing there in the centre
of that circular room, a thick carpet of dust muting any sounds he might
have made. Fawkes' perch rested where it had always been and Draco half-
expected to see the faithful bird soar in through the window at any moment,
awaiting his master's return.

But it had been many years since Fawkes had been spotted and he made no
return now. Most of the Heads had abandoned their frames. In fact, Draco
only recognised one or two of those remaining. Phineas Black dozed
uncomfortably against his frame. McGonagall gave a distracted glance
before returning to her paperwork. Dumbledore sat so still in his chair,
Draco thought he was asleep until he realised that the man's eyes were very
much open.

Of all the portraits Draco had seen of the elderly man, he thought this was a
particularly poor representation. The lines were blurred. His eyes were only
a dull sort of blue, with none of the piercing clarity they'd held in life. Even
his expression looked too uncharacteristically bland for Draco to feel
anything more than an echo of guilt in his stomach for the painting of the
man he had effectively killed. The man in the portrait looked old, Draco
realised - what Dumbledore might have become when his age finally caught
up with him, but not the man so beloved by the Light.

His eyes moved to take in the rest of the room briefly and he recalled with
startling clarity the last time he had been summoned to this very office. It
must have been some time during fifth year. He and Pansy had been caught
snogging when they should have been in lessons. He closed his eyes and
there was Pansy's poorly concealed smirk, Dumbledore's voice a dull drone
in the background.

"I didn't even do those detentions you gave me," he confessed in a low
voice. "I bribed one of the prefects to sign me off as having been there. But
I guess you probably knew that, didn't you? You always did have a strange
habit of knowing everything."

He turned to leave.

Paused. Turned back.

"You should have saved yourself, you daft old fool!" He was suddenly
furious, fists clenched, chest heaving. "What did you think? That I would
abandon my family? For you? Did you not care that everyone would suffer
without you? Did you not care that it would all fall apart once you were
gone?"

His hands grabbed the nearest object they could find and flung it at the
opposite wall with enough force to have it shattering into tiny pieces. "You
shouldn't have left us! You should have stayed! You should have killed
me!" Two more objects met the same fate as the first. The anger left as
quickly as it had arrived. Draco's breaths came in heavy pants, rattling in his
suddenly painful chest. He backed away until he hit a wall, then slid down
it so that he was hunched on the floor, eyes locked on the slightly concerned
gaze of the un-Dumbledore. Silence struck and held.

And then - Dumbledore was leaning forwards, spectacles flashing in the

reflection of a sun Draco would never see. His lips parted on a sigh. "Every
story must come to an end," he said.

Draco sobbed.

::

"I feel like I'm getting dumber every day."

"I highly doubt that, Granger."

"I'm serious. I left school nearly five years ago. The only things I've studied
since then have been..." She remembered herself. Hesitated. "Well, things I
hopefully won't need after all this."

Draco did not speak for a long time. "So? Knowledge is relative. You only
need to know what you need to use at the time."

"But that's my point!" The sofa shifted as she sat up and Draco shot her an
irritated frown. She ignored him. "When this is all over, what am I going to
do? I never even got to finish my education. I couldn't tell you how to pass
your NEWTs but I can list seven different ways to kill a man. I know more
about war than peace. I know more about killing than how to live."

A long silence followed her outburst. The panic left her in degrees, until her
breathing was a steady flow again and her throat no longer burned. She
relaxed back into the sofa, Draco's feet beside her head, her own feet barely
reaching his shoulders. She took a long drag from her cigarette. The smoke
itched as it hit the back of her throat but she bit down the cough and did not
exhale until black spots began to appear in her vision.

"Sometimes I wonder how we will be able to live with ourselves after this is
all done." Her confession was a soft whisper almost lost in the noise of the
night. "We've lived in war for so long, what if we've forgotten how to live in
peace? For so many of us, this battle has been our whole life. What will we
do when it's gone?"

Draco took the cigarette from her and let it rest between his fingers. "We
start again," he said, and put like that, Hermione could almost believe that it
was really that simple.

::

Draco waited until he and Granger were separated by some mission or other
before putting his idea to Moody. He did not ask Shacklebolt because the
man did not like him and had made no secret of the fact. Lupin might have
sympathised, but he was clearly not an option. Most other Aurors were of
the same opinion as Shacklebolt. Which left Moody. Draco was pretty
certain the ever-vigilant (if not slightly insane) man would certainly
sympathise with his plight, or at least keep it between them if he didn't.

He did. Draco went to see the prisoner first himself, somewhat gratified at
the trembling mess he had become. The second time, he brought Fred.

"What exactly am I looking at?" The twin had questioned, wrinkling his
nose in disgust at the pile of rags that was Marcus Flint. "I mean apart from
scum of the earth."
Draco placed his hand on Fred's shoulder in a gesture so brotherly, the red-
head actually looked quite startled. "Fred. I've brought you a new test
subject." And he did not need a mirror to know his own grin was a
terrifying replica of the man who had used him as a guinea pig so many
times in the past year. He found he did not care as much as he perhaps
should have.

::

Hermione was coming to - if not understand, then recognise - the pattern

that was Draco's actions. She knew, for instance, that he would never reject
her advances, the few times she actually worked up the courage to approach
him first. (It was generally he who instigated the first move, with her being
the one reluctant to end it.) She also knew that when he sighed that way, the
kiss losing heat rapidly, as if he had simply breathed it all out, the encounter
would inevitably come to an end shortly afterwards. Her clutch tightened on
his collar, as if that could possibly keep him there. He did not pull away.
Nor did he make any protest, other than a low groan, when she worked at
deepening the kiss. But all too soon, he was bringing it to an end.

They stood there, in the shadows of the hall, his forehead resting against
hers so that his fringe tickled her face. (She thought he was due for a haircut
and wondered if he would let her be the one to do it, as she did sometimes
for Ron and Harry.) Her eyes had drifted shut at some point, but they
opened when Draco drew breath to speak.

"Granger-"

"Don't," she whispered. She smiled at Draco's curious frown. "I'm trying to
pretend you're my Prince Charming." Her smile turned wry. "It's much
easier when you stop talking."

She pushed herself up on her toes, planted a swift kiss on the corner of his
mouth and ducked under his arm before he could think to ruin the moment
with some snarky reply about her hair.

::
"This place used to be my whole world."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "I always thought Diagon Alley was a little too
cramped."

"Not Diagon Alley." Her hand twitched and he just knew she was itching to
hit him, but would not risk any sound above their current whispers. "This.
The magical world."

Draco did not reply. It was cold, the hazy fog that had not yet receded after
the three hours of intense battle blocking what little there was of the weak,
autumn sun. They were both crouched just inside the remains of what Draco
was half-certain had once been Ollivander's. A general smell of decay and
blood flooded his senses and he was trying his very best not to breathe in
through his nose. Granger sighed and shifted so that her legs were straight
out in front of her. She looked perfectly at ease in the dirt and Draco shot
her an envious glare. She did not notice.

"How much longer do we have to wait in here?" she asked, and he raised an
eyebrow at the whining tone of her voice.

"Half an hour more, at least," he replied, checking the watch on his wrist.
"We can't be sure they aren't still out there."

Blissful silence for almost fifteen minutes. Draco bit back on a groan when
Granger huffed impatiently.

"I hate this."

"It's your own fault you can't sit still for more than two minutes without
needing some form of distraction." She did hit him this time, hard enough
to make him grimace.

"Not this, you idiot," she hissed. "I mean the waiting. It makes me nervous."

"You're only nervous because you hate not knowing every single thing that's
happening outside of this shop." It was not an insult and she did not take it
for one, merely shrugging in response. Draco marvelled briefly at the
progress they had made, that such a comment did not spark World War
Three between them. Granger sighed again and he knew she was trying to
put her thoughts into words. He waited patiently, shifting once in a while to
check the deserted streets through a crack in the boarded-up window. A
glance at his watch told him they would soon be able to leave. His legs
screamed their impatience, but he refused to shuffle restlessly like the
undisciplined creature beside him.

"I just feel like the whole world is burning and all I can do is sit here and
wait," Granger chewed out at last. She blinked when Draco stood suddenly,
pulling her up by the elbow as he went. For a brief moment, they were far
too close to be proper - near enough that, had they not been in the middle of
a battlefield, (and had he not been Draco Malfoy, and she Hermione
Granger) he might have been able to count each of the freckles that
sprinkled her nose. It scared him that he wanted to. He pushed her back
with more force than was necessary.

"Look out the fucking window, Granger. The world isn't burning. It's
already burnt."

He threw himself back into the smoke and wondered at the fact that he no
longer choked on the metallic taste of death in the air.

::

Hermione hated hospitals. She had always hated hospitals and suspected
she always would. It was not so much the atmosphere of the dying or the
dead - she had seen plenty enough of that in her short life to have grown at
least a thin layer of immunity. She was not even fazed by the idea of being
around sick people, as she knew Ron was. It was the endless maze of
blinding white corridors, and the rigid plastic of the uncomfortable, orange
chairs in the cramped waiting rooms. It was Hannah's quiet gaze as she
rested her head against Neville's chest, and the sharp taste of disinfectant in
the back of Hermione's throat. It was Molly hunting down every doctor
unfortunate enough to come within ten metres of them, barking out endless
questions, until finally an elder Healer with a kind smile and good sense
asked for her help sorting some paperwork.
Magical hospitals were much the same as Muggle hospitals, Hermione
noted absently. Once you stripped away the potions and flying memos, and
the hum of magic that lingered in the air, what you were left with were the
things that never really changed from one world to the next. The grief and
the hope... the waiting. They had been waiting for two hours, nineteen
minutes and thirty-two seconds now. Hermione found her mind trying to
drift back to how they had ended up here in the first place, and she forced it
back with a silent scolding. The mission had failed. That was all she needed
to know. Remembering would just bring on hysterics and she did not think
Ron would be able to cope with that.

Neville shifted. Hannah sniffed. Dean stood abruptly and began pacing.
There was still blood spattered across his face, and Hermione found she
could not watch him without trembling helplessly. Ron's grip on her hand
tightened. Twelve minutes passed.

"I can't stand this," Dean muttered. Hermione grimaced. "What's taking
them so long? We haven't heard anything in hours!"

"No news is good news," Neville said firmly.

Dean shook his head, a shadow passing over his expression. "Right. For all
we know, he could be lying in there dead and they haven't even bothered to
tell us! That would be just like those pompous, stuck-up Aurors. You know
it was three weeks before they thought to let me know Seamus had died."

"Dean, mate? Do us a favour and shut up?"

Dean's fists clenched and, for a short moment, Hermione thought he might
actually strike Ron. But Parvati let out a tired sigh and the sound seemed to
bring him to himself. The tension in the room shifted almost imperceptibly,
and then it was as though the small blip had never happened. Neville
stretched out his legs. Dean resumed his pacing. Hermione let her hand
drop from her mouth, where it had flown to cover the involuntary sob that
had escaped at Dean's cold words.

The clock on the wall breathed out fifteen more minutes before the door to
the waiting room finally opened.
The Healer was a man and young - perhaps only a few years older than they
themselves were. His face was tired and his eyes were fevered. He must
have had the decency to Scourgify his robes because they were clean now,
as they had not been two hours ago when he last burst in. He ran a hand
through his thick hair and sighed a sigh that had the knot in Hermione's
chest tightening painfully.

"How is he?" The question came from Ron, when nobody else seemed able
to speak.

The Healer - Mathews, Hermione suddenly remembered - sighed again.

"Mr. Malfoy was hit by some sort of severing curse. It is not one we have
encountered before and until we know what it is, we cannot find the
counter-curse."

Mr. Malfoy? Hermione opened her mouth to tell him that Mr. Malfoy was
Lucius Malfoy. His name was Draco. Draco, Draco, Draco.

Dean spoke before she had a chance."So what do we do now?"

Healer Mathews removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Mr. Malfoy is losing more and more blood by the second."

"Can't you just replace it?" This was Parvati and Hermione thought it odd
that the girl should be so concerned over Draco's well-being. A flash of
something hot and angry burst through her chest without lingering. She
refused to acknowledge it.

"We could. But Mr. Malfoy's blood type is extremely rare, and there's a
shortage as there is-"

"One of us could donate," Ron suggested.

"It would be highly unlikely that any of you would be a suitable match and
in the time it would take to test you all-"

"I'm type O." The small nugget of knowledge suddenly floated to the
surface of Hermione's mind, a momentary break from the fear that had
otherwise occupied her mind for the better part of the afternoon. "Anyone
can take type O, right?"

Healer Mathews was nodding slowly and she was suddenly very grateful
for the science lessons her parents had forced her to take during the
summer. "In theory, that is correct."

"Then let's do it!" She was on her feet, the idea of doing something,
anything other than this endless waiting, shooting energy through her
exhausted limbs.

"Miss. Granger, it isn't that simple. There are procedures - forms to fill, tests
to take."

"I'll do them all."

"It isn't just that. Blood transfusions between magical beings are not the
same as a simple Muggle transfusion. Our magic runs through our blood.
There are dozens of complications that can arise-"

"I don't care!" Hermione cried, and later she would think to tell Draco of
this moment, if only to prove that she was not the incessant know-it-all he
claimed her to be. Mathews hesitated a second longer before nodding. The
walk to Draco's room was quick and panicked, and Hermione barely had
enough presence of mind to be polite while refusing Ron and Molly's offers
to accompany her. They stormed through one set of doors, then another, up
a long corridor where loud, pained moans seemed to reverberate from every
room. She thought she had never heard anything more horrifying in her life,
until she reached Draco's room and heard the silence there.

He was attached to some sort of machine - too complex to be Muggle, but

clearly based on their technology. His chest rose and fell in short, uneven
pants - though it was hardly visible through the blood-clogged bandages.
Kingsley sat, a lone figure in the corner of the room, oddly still compared to
the flustered actions of the Healing staff. Hermione thought he might have
said something to her as she stumbled in. But her eyes were on Draco, and
then the Healer's hands, deftly preparing the needles and tubes and bags of
fluid.
"Miss Granger, over here please."

She moved to the chair Healer Mathews gestured to. At first she tried to
distract herself by watching him as he worked. But the sight of the needle
made her stomach heave, and so she watched Draco instead. It was the first
time she had seen him injured - really injured - since that time in
Grimmauld Place. He looked much as he had then - vulnerable and tired
and somehow smaller than usual. She was suddenly very glad she had not
allowed Molly or Ron to see this.

Her arm stung and she glanced down to see the needle disappearing under
her skin. It took Healer Mathews only two attempts to find a vein.
Hermione tried to relax into the chair, knowing from dim memories of
childhood jabs that it would only hurt more if she did not.

"You let me know when you start to feel weak," Mathews muttered in a low
voice when he had been working over her for several minutes.

"I'm fine." She was not. Her head felt fuzzy and there was a growing nausea
in her stomach. She glanced over at Draco. Saw him as he was now and as
he had been that night in Grimmauld Place. Pictured him smirking at her on
their sofa, cigarette kept out of her reach. She tried to imagine leaving this
place without him and found she could not.

Closing her eyes, she said, "You can take it all if you want. I don't care."

Mathews let out a breathy sound that might have been a chuckle, if it hadn't
been so grim. "I'm sure that won't be necessary. The Healers tell me his
bleeds are finally beginning to close."

She did not move, even after Mathews had taken all he needed (or all that it
was safe to give). She sipped obediently at the revival potion she was given,
then curled up in the chair and watched the Healers work. Kingsley was a
constant presence near her side, though they did not speak. Healers came
and went as their shifts ended and began. There was a constant hum of
noise in the room, Draco's rattling breaths counting the seconds as they
melted into minutes, then hours. He stirred around midnight, after Healer
Mathews pronounced him well on his way to recovery. Only then did
Hermione close her eyes and give in to the tide of sleep pulling at her
consciousness.

::

Grimmauld Place was empty when Draco returned from St. Mungo's. He
was high on pain potions, and antibiotics and his stomach felt as though it
might rip apart with every step he took. Molly Weasley fussed over him and
for once he allowed it - though he refused to let her levitate him up the
stairs. He collapsed into the bed he and Granger shared, and Mrs. Weasley
had another douse of potion down his throat before he could think to
protest. He dreamt of snakes coiling round his body, tighter and tighter until
he couldn't breathe. His mother and father sat on thrones high above him,
Ron Weasley dancing for them in a jester's suit. Potter and Voldemort sat
together at a small table, offering tea-filled china cups to Pansy and Theo,
who wore crowns of daisies.

He awoke to find Granger leaning over him, finger trailing a barely-there

path along his left forearm.

"You were talking in your sleep," she said in a low voice.

"Potter kept trying to give me three sugars when he knows I only like one."

Granger raised an eyebrow at that, lips twitching. The amusement faded

quickly. Curiosity took its place, creasing the soft skin of her forehead. Her
eyes fell back to his arm. "Your mark," she said, and he tensed
imperceptibly. "It used to be black. But it's grey now. It looks like
somebody drew it on with ink and the ink was washed away."

He did not glance down. He did not need to. The image of the skull was
burned into his mind, and he had actually noticed the dimming colour
himself just a few days before. Besides, there were more interesting things
to look at. Like the way the evening light from the window cut through
strands of Granger's honey-blonde hair so that it almost appeared as though
a halo of light framed her face. Or her bottom lip, pulled stubbornly
between her teeth as she worried it in thought.
"The mark fades as the loyalty grows weaker," he murmured, and then his
hand was reaching up, his fingers tugging lightly at her lip until her teeth
released it. He traced it, feeling the moisture there and shuddering. Her eyes
were closed when his arm dropped back to the bed. A wave of sadness like
nothing he had felt since his mother's funeral suddenly crashed over Draco.

"Are you in pain? Should I get more pain potions?" Granger was already
standing, having jumped up at the small grimace he gave. "I can get Molly."

His hand was on hers before he had made the conscious decision to touch
her. She stilled. He met her gaze. "I'm sorry," he whispered, eyes already
drifting shut, as if they could hold their own weight no longer.

"For what?" Seconds passed. "Draco. For what?"

He pretended to sleep until the soft click of the door finally signalled her
exit. By the time the tears came, he could not remember why he was crying.

::

Harry disappeared for three days. Three days of worrying and panicking
and searching and finding nothing. Hermione could not count the times that
Kingsley had come to her, could not count the times that she had answered,
no, she did not know where he was, and no, as far as she was aware, it was
nothing to do with Dumbledore's mission. By the time he arrived in the
kitchen of Grimmauld Place - soaked, torn and exhausted, but no more the
worse for wear - she was ready to kill Kingsley. Or herself, she hadn't made
her mind up yet.

Molly burst into tears and fussed over his battered face. Kingsley had that
look in his eyes that meant he wanted to yell at someone, but Molly shooed
him out, along with the rest of the gaping crowd - Hermione and Ron being
the exceptions. Harry glanced up at them and offered a weak smile. Ron
scratched the back of his head in that awkward way that she had once found
adorable. He smiled, but the tips of his ears were burning and, after only a
few moments, he turned on his heel and left. Hermione did not wait to see
the crestfallen expression on Harry's face.
She wanted to smash something - or someone. She wanted to shake Harry
until he saw that this was not a battle between just two men. It was a war -
one that had dragged her away from her family and had taken her friends.
She had just as much right to it as him - more so, a bitter voice in her head
muttered. She almost turned back, ready to remind him of the summer
Ginny had spent, helping her to perfect her Bat-Bogey hex. But he was her
friend and she would only regret it later. So she stormed on, muttering
darkly under her breath as she went. And when she happened to cross
Draco on the first landing - eyebrow raised, clearly wondering whether it
might be safer simply to retreat back into his room - she could not stem the
sudden flow of insults.

The usual, petty bickering soon gave way to louder, crueller words, and the
further they went, the deeper the need to hurt him, until he finally caved,
one frustrated growl escaping his lips before they came crashing down on
hers. Her back hit the wall with enough force to knock the breath from her
lungs and the thoughts from her mind. But that was okay, because she didn't
want to think, and breathing came second to the growing burn in her lower
stomach. Draco pulled her sideways, his hand fumbling around behind her
until he found a handle and the door gave way.

His lips left hers then, and she thought he had once again ended it before it
could even really begin. It was too much rejection for her overly-emotional
state and she might have cried, except her feet left the ground in a quick
motion that had her stifling a squeal. She landed on the mattress with a soft
grunt, Draco's body moving to cover hers before she could think to
complain of the prolonged lack of contact. His hands were everywhere -
down her arms, across her thighs, up the back of her shirt. Her own hands
moved in frenzied response, slipping under his shirt. Her lips parted on a
sigh at the feel of warm skin and he took advantage of the opening, his
tongue sliding deftly inside.

When his hands slowed and his kiss softened, she recognised the signs of
the inevitable end. Disappointment crushed her chest, making it difficult to
drop her hands from his waist. She let her head sink back into the pillow,
away from him, waiting for the muttered apologies and hasty exit.
Except... except his hands were moving again now. Moving towards the
buttons of her shirt, the first three popping open slowly enough for her to
refuse. She didn't, and the others followed at a quicker, more impatient
pace. His head lowered, his breath caressing her neck before his lips
followed suit. She gasped, hands reaching up to grasp his shoulders.

It was heat and urgency. It was skin-on-skin, and his chest was pressed so
close against her own that she could feel his heart pounding furiously. The
anger and disappointment, confusion and betrayal of Harry's sudden
departure was - not gone, exactly... but definitely subdued by the
overwhelming need for more - more skin, more warmth, more kisses. Heat
trickled into the cold hollow Harry's absence had created, spreading through
the rest of her body until her skin tingled restlessly and her hands gained a
life of their own, tearing at his shirt until he pulled back long enough for her
to rip it over his head.

They both seemed to come to a decision at the same time, the kiss brought
to a halt as their hands dropped to each other's trousers. Hermione was
wearing nothing but a loose pair of tracksuit bottoms tied at the waist and
he had worked out the trick to hers while she still fumbled, clumsy and
uncoordinated, with the zipper of his jeans. Twice she had to stop - his
fingers working in wicked ways to distract her - but finally the button gave
and he groaned, low and deep, his face buried in the crook of her neck.

They kissed for a while, sometimes with a heated longing, other times
distractedly, lips brushing sloppily in butterfly caresses. A few times, she
had tried to take it further. But he thwarted her at every turn, until she
settled for hands and movement, rather than the anger that might surface,
should she push him too far. When kissing became too much, he rested his
forehead against hers, his hot breath falling into her mouth with each
panting gasp he took. She reached the edge only a few seconds before him.
For a long moment, she was too far gone to notice much of anything, except
the delicious warmth coursing through her body. Then, slowly, her senses
began to return to her. Her toes unfurled, her body relaxed back into the
bed.

Draco's weight pressed down into her, though not uncomfortably so. He
remained motionless for several seconds, and when he did move, her body
felt bereft for the loss of his body-heat. She thought he might be leaving,
but he returned seconds later, wand in hand, pointed right at her. He's going
to Obliviate me. The wild thought crossed her mind in the second it took
Draco to mutter the cleaning spell, and a twinge of guilt quickly followed.
She expected him to leave then, but he placed his wand down on the
bedside cabinet and tugged at the covers until she took the hint and lifted
her body enough for him to slide them out from underneath her. He kicked
off his jeans, pulled down her own trousers. By the time he crawled under
the quilt beside her, her eyes were already half-shut, her body a tingling,
satisfied heap of limbs.

"You shouldn't be angry at Potter." He had been so silent for so long,

Hermione jerked at the sound of his voice. Her eyes snapped open.

"And why the hell not?"

"He doesn't get what it's like for us. It isn't his fault. He's walled up in here
with no escape. His family is being killed left, right and center."

"He has us." He has me.

"It's not always enough." She bristled at that, and maybe he noticed,
because his hand came up to brush over her hair. "I'm just being honest.
You aren't his mother, Granger, hard as you may try. Sometimes, he needs
to get out. Being here hurts him."

"And you would know this, how?" She was being spiteful, she knew, but
could not stop. His words had stung her more than she would care to admit.

"He told me."

The surprise at his statement battled with her anger, until curiosity finally
won out. "You two speak?"

She felt the motion of Draco's shoulders as he shrugged. "Sometimes. When

no one else is around."
"I thought..." She hesitated here, unwilling to break the fragile moment of
peace between them. Draco nudged her and she continued. "I thought you
hated Harry."

He did not reply for such a long time, she thought she had made him mad
anyway. But she would not apologise (because she was Hermione Granger,
and besides, she had said nothing wrong). He spoke just when she thought
he might leave.

"I have always found it very difficult to like Potter. But, whether I like the
fact or not, we are very similar. This similarity leads to an... understanding
of sorts. Sometimes your enemy can know you better than your closest
friends. And it is often easier to unload your problems to someone who
does not truly care. Who won't smother you with sympathy, or try to make
it all better."

"I can understand that, I guess," Hermione said, after a pause.

Draco fell asleep soon after that. Hermione lay listening to the steady rise
and fall of his breathing for longer than she would ever admit. When she
was sure he would not stir, she pressed her ear against his chest and listened
to the thrum of life beneath his ribs. She closed her eyes and breathed in his
scent, and ignored the familiar stirring in her chest she had only
experienced with one other man. Because she was Hermione Granger, and
he was Draco Malfoy, and there were some lines that should just not be
crossed.

::

On their first trial, Flint was only under for half an hour, and his sleep was
fitful, broken by short (deadly) bursts of consciousness. He spat at Fred. He
glared at Draco and called him a filthy blood traitor. The second trial had
him vomiting so hard, Moody had interfered and refused to let them at him
for another week. ("You can experiment all you like, but if he dies, I'm the
one with all the bloody paperwork!") The third time, things had begun to
look up. Flint had been out cold for almost three hours, and when he awoke,
there were no signs of any (lasting) brain-damage. Though, as Fred pointed
out, one could never tell with someone as thick as Marcus Flint.
The fourth time went off without a hitch. They approached Shacklebolt the
next day. He remained silent throughout their presentation, his expression
shifting only once, when Fred revealed that Draco had, in fact, been the first
test subject. He sent them away so that he could think it through. When they
returned two hours later, his mouth was so solemn, Draco felt sure the man
would reject their request. But he agreed to it all - money for funding, test
subjects, a proper laboratory. It was the first time that Draco had ever
worked for something - really worked for it. His father had not been pulling
strings and making threats behind the scenes and his mother had not been
sending hefty donations to this place and that.

It took a while for him to realise that the warm feeling spreading throughout
his chest was pride - not the arrogant pride of having been born with the
right blood, but the pride of a job well done. He thought being a blood
traitor might be worth it, just to have that feeling again
*Chapter 8*: Chapter 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?"
~Eve Merriam

The first time Draco spent Christmas with Granger was by no means the
extravagant event of his childhood celebrations. In fact, it was not even the
first time. It was just that, by some unspoken agreement, Christmas was
never really acknowledged throughout the Order. Whether it was a
conscious show of respect for their fallen comrades or simply the utter
ridiculousness that would have been celebrating in the middle of a war,
Draco did not know. But in his two, nearly three, years as a member, he had
not once seen a person utter so much as a 'Happy Christmas' in passing.
This was fine with Draco, who had not actively taken part in any holiday
celebrations since the year he took the Mark. And he had expected this year
to be much the same.

Except there was an attack on one of the outer safe houses - the ones
reserved for families who would be targeted by Death Eaters - and Draco
suddenly found himself meeting his four year-old cousin for the first time.
Teddy was a peculiar mix of both his parents, his eyes a quiet brown, while
his hair shifted sporadically from one vibrant color to the next. He had a
solemn expression which did not belong on such a young child's face. He
was mute. Nothing could coax a single word from his throat. Not Molly's
healing potions, nor Granger and Fred's play sessions. Even Andromeda
seemed resigned to the fact, having spent every day since his mother's
funeral trying to draw the speech back out of him.

Draco made no such attempt on the boy's attentions. Cousin or no, the
child's parents had been murdered by people Draco had associated himself
with from birth. Besides, the others in the house fawned over the boy
enough to make up for it tenfold. He was pampered and smothered and
never left wanting. And so it was no real surprise to Draco to find that
Grimmauld Place was suddenly strung up with poorly made tinsel and a
few floating baubles that Fred had somehow managed to pilfer. Luna began
wandering around the house with antlers attached to her head at all times,
and even Weasley restrained from glaring at Draco as often as usual.
Granger hummed tunelessly to herself while she, Mrs. Weasley and
Andromeda chopped vegetables. Her curls were wild as ever in the humid
heat of the kitchen and her cheeks flushed horribly. Draco almost smiled.
He managed to catch himself in time.

The meal was the most spectacular Mrs. Weasley had cooked up in a long
time. It had taken most of that month's meat ration and a lot of bargaining
on the black market to achieve. For weeks afterwards, there was nothing but
watery vegetable stew for lunch and dinner. But the mood in the house was
lighter than it had been in months (years) and Draco thought it might be
worth a crappy diet, just to see Granger smile so often.

::

"I slept with Scott."

Hermione's eyes flickered briefly to Cho before settling back on the small
radio in Harry's hands. "Scott?"

"The Auror who came in a couple of weeks ago? Tall, dark and
smoldering?"

"Isn't he married?" Cho didn't reply. Hermione shot her a sharp look.
"Classy."

Her voice was cold and edgy, and she knew by Cho's shocked silence that
she'd hurt the girl's feelings. But Draco had disappeared on some mission
that morning and had yet to return, and the anxious knot of worry his
absence had wrought bothered her more than the absence itself. She was
worried - as worried as she had ever been for Ron when he left - and the
knowledge of just how deep Draco had managed to burrow scared her.
Mrs. Weasley hummed tunelessly in her corner and Hermione focused on
the familiar sound.

"It's not like I planned it or anything," Cho muttered.

"Of course you did," Hermione returned, eyes still fixed on Harry and the
radio that surely must be broken. "That's what you do when you're
miserable. Sleep with men you know you shouldn't sleep with. That's your
thing."

Hermione did not turn to watch Cho leave - though she did flinch at the
slamming door. She spent the rest of the day cleaning, working
systematically from one room to the next, as she had that first time in
Grimmauld Place, when Sirius was still sulking around the house and the
war had been a worry for the future. She told herself that Draco could take
care of himself, and why should she worry anyway? If he was going to be
rash and reckless and get himself blown up, well, that was his choice! She
would not work herself up into a frenzy over a man who spent most of his
time being angry at her. She would not worry.

And when there was nothing left to clean, the rest of the house having fallen
into sleep long ago, and she moved to sit on the staircase, eyes on the front
door, she told herself it was not because she was waiting for him. It was
nothing to do with him at all.

::

"Are you sure about this?"

"No." Draco lay back on the narrow bed and clipped the plastic device onto
his index finger. The monitor beside him suddenly came to life, a steady
beep filling the otherwise silent room. He shifted. Forced himself to relax.
Fred shot him a look to tell him exactly what he thought of this plan. But he
did not attempt to dissuade him, and Draco could see the eager glint in his
hazel eyes as he moved through the procedures of checking the equipment
and taking down his stats.

"Have you got the insulin shot ready?"

Fred gave a short nod. "You should only be under for twelve minutes
anyway. Any longer than that and I'll stick you." He smirked at Draco's
glare. "Now lay back. I need to strap you down."

The leather was thick and cold against Draco's bare forearms. He stained his
arms, testing them. They did not give.

"You don't have to do this, you know," Fred said, and perhaps their
friendship had gone further than Draco had even realised, that the elder man
could see past his mask of indifference to the pure fear thrumming in his
chest. "Moody said we could use other prisoners, so long as the paperwork's
filled out properly."

"It could take months to go through all those procedures. The war could be
over by then and all this will have been for nothing," Draco said. It was not
a lie. The paperwork would take months to process. But Draco did not
know that he could bear to see another fellow Slytherin, another man or
woman he had fought beside for two years, strapped to a bed, so pumped
with potions he no longer knew Voldemort from that fool Lockhart.

"Right." Fred did not feel the need to argue with him further, possibly
seeing it for the fruitless excersise it would be. "Anything you need to tell
me in case you die? Like where the key to your family's hidden fortune is?
No? How about smooshy declarations of love for Hermione?" Fred's grin
turned mocking at Draco's blank stare. "Oh, please. The smoldering looks
you give each other alone could set the house on fire. And for a Slytherin,
you're not very sly. I actually had to divert Harry's attention the other
evening when you jumped her in the kitchen."

If he was expecting a thanks, he would get none from Draco who

summoned his darkest scowl. Fred held his hands up in a placating gesture.
"Don't worry, your secret's safe with me. Though I feel obliged to give you
the brotherly, break-her-heart-I'll-break-you speech."

"I think your brother and Potter have the over-protective guardian thing
down already," Draco muttered. Fred snickered, but let the matter drop,
much to Draco's relief.
Fred reached into his pocket and pulled out a cloth bag. The reminder of
exactly why he had been strapped to a bed had Draco sobering slightly. He
watched with feigned calm as the Weasley revealed the two perfectly
cylindrical balls, their smooth surfaces gleaming slightly in the light. He
pointed the tip of his wand and whispered, "Somnium Una."

There was a faint humming sound and a growing light which reminded
Draco of the Obliviate. It lasted only a few seconds before the two balls sat
in Fred's hand, still and looking much as they had before. With a gloved
hand, Fred gingerly picked up one and moved the short space from Draco's
bed to where Flint lay, only a few feet away. His eyes were open but they
rolled in his head, seeing nothing. His lips moved over silent words. His
hand curled reflexively around the sphere Fred placed there. It was a
process Draco had watched a dozen times before, and yet, knowing he too
would soon undergo the same transformation, he found himself observing
with a newfound interest.

There was a split second where the ball appeared to do nothing at all. It sat,
nestled in Flint's fist, for maybe a second or two. The changes, when they
happened, were subtle. First, his eyes stopped rolling, fixing on some point
slightly to the left. The motion of his lips stilled, though they remained
parted. His body turned to stone, the muscles seizing for almost six seconds,
before finally he relaxed back into the bed, a soft sigh leaving him as his
eyes drifted shut. To any outside observer, it might appear as though he
were simply in a deep slumber. There was no outward evidence of the
mental turmoil he was surely suffering.

"Last chance to turn back," Fred said, and Draco found the plea on the tip of
his tongue before he managed to swallow it back down with a forceful gulp.
He said nothing in reply. Simply pushed himself back into the bed and
closed his eyes, hand outstretched ready. There was a brief second where
the ball rested, strangely cool against the heat of Draco's palm. And then he
was falling. Gravity sucked him, faster, harder, and he was standing in a
burning field, a desert sandstorm, the remains of a massacre lit only by the
cold glare of the moon. The scenes of Flint's worst nightmares played out
before Draco, and all the while Flint was there, eyes wide, mouth open.
Within touching distance, but unreachable.
When Draco came to, exactly ten minutes later, he leant over the side of the
bed and vomited onto Fred's worn trainers. It was the worst experience of
his life, second only to the night he had left Voldemort's ranks. And yet,
despite Fred's protests and the fact that Shacklebolt was already willing to
mass-produce their Dream Balls - as Fred had named them - ready for
battle, Draco knew that he would delve into Flint's mind again tomorrow,
and the day after that, and the day after that. Because he could build a
hundred new weapons for the Order and it still would not be enough. He
could fight for the rest of his life, and still find himself on that bank at
night, the dead beckoning to him from the other side of that river.

::

Hermione arrived at Grimmauld Place from her latest (failed) mission to

find Harry frozen in the doorway to the kitchen, face paler than she had
seen it in a long time. His scar, usually hidden by his mop of hair, stood out
sharply in contrast and his eyes were fixed on the form of little Teddy
Lupin. The boy had been boosted up onto the kitchen side, expression
crumpled slightly in concentration. His hair changed from blue, to violet, to
red, his nose becoming first a beak, then a pig's snout. Harry's fist was
clenched so tightly, his knuckles had turned a startling white.

Hermione placed her hand on his shoulder, massaging it gently. After a

moment, she slid it down to cover his, her thumb rubbing soothing circles
across his knuckles. On the first try, he resisted her, seemingly frozen to the
spot. On the second, he allowed himself to be tugged gently away from the
door, through the hallway, up the stairs, to the bedroom he shared with Ron
and Fred. She pushed him down onto the bed, grimacing at the tell-tale
dampness staining his cheeks. She turned to close the door. Draco rounded
the corner. Opened his mouth, as though to speak. It snapped shut, almost
comically, at the sight of Harry on the bed behind her, grief hidden in the
darkness of the room. His eyebrow raised mockingly, but the clenching of
his jaw gave him away.

She almost followed him down the stairs, not entirely certain as to why she
felt the need to defend herself, but knowing it would probably be better in
the long run. But then Harry whispered her name, his tone low and
pleading. She hesitated, torn. Then closed the door with a final click.
::

Draco knew it was probably not what it had seemed. He prided himself on
being able to read people, and he'd be damned if he'd read their relationship
wrong. Mother, sister, psychiatrist, maybe. But lover? No. Except the short,
sharp jolt of jealousy that had spliced his chest at the sight of him waiting
on that bed for her scared Draco. And so he started to ignore her. Leave
when she entered a room. Grunt in response to her many attempts at
conversation. He endured Neville's snores to avoid her bed, and the soft,
inviting warmth of her body. He threw himself into the experiments and did
not return to Grimmauld Place until the rest of the house had retired.

He found he was a coward. But then, he had always been a coward and, like
before, the realisation was not enough to stop him.

::

Hermione and Ron set off in high hopes for their latest 'Horcrux Fact-
Finding Mission'. Three days in and those hopes were beginning to
dwindle. Part way through the second week, when they discovered the lead
they had been following had come to an abrupt and inexplicable end, they
were forced to return, empty-handed yet again, to Grimmauld Place.
Hermione ignored Ron's brave attempts at optimism. She refused his offer
of whiskey. She could not summon up enough guilt through the whirl of
disappointment crushing down on her chest at leaving him to break the
news to Harry. She trudged up the stairs, exhausted and aching, in more
ways than one, ignoring the concerned glances of those she passed.

She showered, because the smell was unbearable. She washed her hair
twice and scrubbed thoroughly until the water ran clear down the drain. She
dabbed at her skin with a towel until she was dry enough to wear the
oversized t-shirt and shorts she liked to sleep in, and gave up on her hair
quicker than usual.

Draco was in their room, fully dressed despite the late hour. He was
stretched out across the bed, eyes fixed on the page in front of him, though
they did not seem to be moving. He did not blink at the door clicking shut
behind her. It was a long moment before he spoke.
"Back from our little adventures, are we?" he asked, and though his
expression remained blank, there was a harsh edge to his voice. When she
did not answer right away, he glanced up. Then glanced again, this time his
gaze lingering. Slowly, moving as one might move in the presence of a wild
animal they did not want to startle, he placed the notepad onto the bedside
table and rose to his feet. His eyes flickered over her body briefly before
returning to her face. Standing was becoming an effort and she rested her
weight against the door. She thought perhaps Draco misunderstood the
movement as one of rejection, because he faltered slightly in his approach.
But she made no protest and he continued until he was standing close
enough that she could see the light scattering of stubble across his jaw
where he had forgotten to shave.

"Granger? Are you okay?" His voice was impossibly soft. She swallowed
around the sharp lump in her throat. Opened her mouth to tell him the
favourite party line that, yes, she was fine and yes, everything was just so
fucking fantastic.

"Hermione. Look at me."

She did, if only because this was the first time he had spoken to her in days
and she wanted to remember the moment if he was going to start ignoring
her again any time soon. His hands were on her shoulders, thumbs rubbing
soothing circles over the aching muscles.

"Are you bleeding?"

She shook her head.

"Hurt? Have you sprained anything? When was the last time you ate?"

They were standard, procedural questions. Questions she would have asked
had any other soldier member returned in her state. The answers were there
on the tip of the tongue. But she found she could not push them forwards.
She pushed herself away from the door, tilting further, further until her
forehead rested against the solid wall of Draco's chest. He tensed. She half-
expected him to reject her. They had only ever been intimate during, or
after, the few times their kisses had developed into something more, and
even then it was with all the awkwardness that came with the beginning of
any relationship.

His arms did lift, eventually, returning the embrace with a hesitancy and
caution that did not suit him. It held none of the familiarity that Ron or
Harry would certainly provide. But she was willing to work through the
awkwardness because it was Draco she wanted, not Ron or Harry, and then
he started to kiss her, gaining confidence as they finally moved into territory
they both knew. It had been weeks, and she could taste the absence in the
barely-suppressed urgency behind his kiss. One hand moved to her hair, the
other working to press her body closer to his, and she wondered if he had
missed her too.

He was uncharacteristically gentle and she was grateful for this. He

maneuvered her to the bed and covered her body with his, lips moving over
hers in an unbearably slow, searing way that had her heart drumming an
almost painful rhythm against her ribs. She slid her hands under his shirt,
desperate to feel bare skin and released an uneven sigh at the warm, solid
ridges of his stomach. His own hands traveled downwards, sliding under the
band of her shorts and stealing a gasp from her hoarse throat.

"I want to kiss you," he murmured some time later.

He had been teasing her mercilessly for near ten minutes, pushing her to the
edge more than once, only to slow and stop before she could tumble over.
Subsequently, her mind was an incoherent mess and it took a long moment
to form the appropriate response. "I thought you already were."

Draco paused in his slow torture to allow her time to gather herself. "No.
I'm not talking about your mouth."

"Then what-" Realisation dawned, staining her cheeks a dark red. She
hoped he would put it down to her arousal, rather than her naive
embarrassment. It was something she and Ron had discussed once, but she
had been young and inexperienced, and the idea had seemed as foreign to
her then as it did now. "I don't know. Isn't that kind of gross?"
"Not at all," Draco returned, with a conviction that had her brow raising
slightly. He was already moving, scattering feather-light kisses over her
skin as he slid down her body. Hermione cringed inwardly when he hooked
his fingers over the waistband of her shorts and deftly tugged them down
her legs.

"Draco, wait..."

He paused, one eyebrow arching in question. He was settled between her

legs, hands resting on her inner-thighs, and she could not control the shot of
pure lust the sight sparked within her.

"It's..."

"Yes?" He drew the word out with a pretentious drawl that reminded her of
Hogwarts corridors and his sneering childhood companions.

"Embarrassing!" she blurted, hating the crimson blush that must surely have
stained her entire face by now. She expected him to mock her, or make
some crude comment. So she was somewhat startled when he turned his
head to the left, lips pressing gently against her inner-thigh. His warm
breath so close to the apex of her thighs had the coil in her stomach
tightening again and she was already half-gone before the words even left
his mouth.

"What if I promise to distract you?" he said.

He waited patiently until she finally gave one short nod of her head. The
smile he shot her before his head dipped down was almost affectionate, and
she would think of it later and find it odd, but for the moment his tongue
made the first, tantalisingly slow contact and he proceeded to show her just
how distracting he could be.

::

Draco entered the kitchen to find Teddy Lupin alone at the table. His first
response was to turn on his heel and get the hell out of there. But then
Granger's chiding tone filled his head, scolding him for being afraid of the
boy - which was, of course, ridiculous. And then the chit of a girl had the
nerve to compare him to Potter and all his sulking glory. Draco was no
Harry Potter, and it was this certainty that had him continuing on his path to
the kettle, after only a slight hesitation. He flicked the switch, then leant
back against the counter and studied the boy.

He was too thin. His eyes were a little too close together. His upper lip was
thinner than his lower. He would be a short man. All in all, not the best
example of a Black. Sensing the weight of Draco's gaze, the boy looked up.
Draco half-expected him to flush and look away, as so many adults did
when confronted with a stare honed to perfection by three years' worth of
lessons from Aunt Bella. But the boy met his gaze evenly, his dull brown
eyes peeking passively from unusually long lashes.

The staring competition continued until the sound of boiling water rose to a
crescendo, and the shrill whistle broke the silence. Draco turned and busied
himself with making the coffee. He almost left after that, except that it was
so strange to find the boy alone without his fanfare of simpering mother-
figures that he could not resist the opportunity to observe. He glanced over
the boy's shoulder, eyebrows raising in mild surprise.

"You like Quidditch?" he asked.

The boy looked up from his cards to stare at Draco briefly before nodding
once. His eyes dropped back to the previous task of shuffling his cards and
Draco had the annoying sense of being dismissed.

"I used to play, you know," he said, if only to grab the boy's attention once
more. It worked, though the boy tried to hide it. Draco hesitated, then sat
himself in the chair beside him. His eyes scanned the cards briefly, hand
darting out to snatch up the right one. "I was the Seeker."

The boy pointed to the slight figure of the player gliding in slow circles in
the photo, then to Draco. His eyebrows turned down in a question.

"I used to be a lot smaller," Draco explained. He shuffled through the cards
some more. "You've got some good ones here. You've nearly got all the
Chudley Cannons. Not many of Puddlemere, though."
The boy pointed to the pile of Chudley Cannon players and then to himself.
He repeated the motion several times and Draco nodded in understanding.

"They're your favourites?" The boy nodded, once. Draco sighed. "Figures.
Don't worry. I'll fix that. You see, Puddlemere United is where you want to
be. I used to go to school with Oliver Wood, you know. Played against him
loads. Can you fly?"

The boy raised his hand, tilting it slightly from one side to the other.

"A little." Draco frowned distractedly at the cards. "I can teach you. If you
want."

The boy nodded his head vigorously. His eyes gleamed, his cheeks flushed,
and Draco realised this was the most reaction he had seen out of the boy in
the month since he had arrived.

"I'll bet I can get a broom your size off Fred. We'll just make sure not to tell
Granger. She thinks the whole thing is barbaric. Silly woman."

Ten minutes passed in the companionable silence of two males sharing their
love of sport. Draco continued to sort the players into their respective
teams, much to the pictures' delight.

"Hm. You've got quite a big collection going. Who got them for you?"

He was still staring at the cards, and so missed the subtle shift in the boy's
silence at first. He glanced up to find Teddy's hair faded to a dull sort of
grey. The boy gathered the cards into his hands and left the room without a
word. It was only as Draco moved to follow him out the door that he
noticed Andromeda stood quietly in the doorway.

"How long have you been there?" he demanded, oddly defensive for no
reason at all.

"Long enough," Andromeda returned, and then shot him with an inscrutable
look that was so reminiscent of her sister that Draco was forced to drop his
gaze, if only for a moment. "I find you much changed, Draco," was all she
said, before turning and following after her grandson. Draco avoided the
boy for a while. He made the decision to leave the kid alone to his grief, lest
he do more damage. It did not stop him writing to Fred in regard to any
junior brooms that might be found.

::

Hermione lay in the tangled mess of overgrown grass that was Number
Twelve's back garden. It was cold and the last of the melted snow crept
through the coat she had borrowed from Harry. But she did not move. Lying
on her back this way, with only the green around and the blue above, and
the busy activity of the returning birds, she could have been anywhere. The
Burrow. The house she grew up in. A particularly overgrown spot next to
the lake in Hogwarts. She closed her eyes and remembered summer days
spent at the Burrow, and thought of nothing else for a long time after.

::

The first of the victims of the Dream Balls began to appear in the cells of
the Order. They lay, perfectly docile, eyes staring unseeing at the walls,
black spheres clasped tightly in their fists. Shacklebolt (grudgingly)
proclaimed them to be one of the most effective methods of restraint
available to the Order. And ten miles away, in their cramped lab, Draco
delved endlessly into the recesses of Flint's worst nightmares. He convulsed
and vomited, and bled from his nose more than once. But each time he
found himself closer to cracking the complex code that was Flint's mind. He
felt less like an intruder and more like a traveling companion as he learned
to fool the brain's natural defenses into ignoring him as a threat.

He found the trick to picking secrets as though they were merely locks to
poorly-warded doors. He progressed from having to view each sordid,
disgusting image of Flint's subconscious to the information that even
Veritaserum could not extract. And the deeper he delved, the harder it was
to come back.

::

"The end is coming soon, isn't it?"

Draco's voice, though barely above a whisper, startled Hermione from the
half-slumber she had been drifting into. She had thought he had fallen
asleep long ago. He usually slept before her. But there was no slur to his
voice that suggested he had just awoke and, now that she was alert, she
could feel the tense line of his body beside hers on the bed. She rolled over
to face him, just able to make out the shape of his face in the dark, and
thought about his question. It was true that there had been a heightened
sense of... something, these days. Battles were more frequent but on a
smaller level, fighting for fighting's sake.

Hufflepuff's cup had been found and destroyed at last. But there was still
the diadem, and the snake. And they did not know the identity of the
seventh for certain, for all Hermione's research and theories.

"Not yet," she said. "But soon, yes."

She felt Draco nod, and then he was silent for a while.

"What will you do after?"

"After the war?" The question stumped Hermione, if only for a moment. "I
don't know. I haven't really thought about it that much. I guess I'll go back
to Hogwarts."

Draco sighed a tired sigh and it occurred to her some time later that she felt
as though she had failed some test she had not been told she was taking.

"What will you do?" Silence. "Draco?"

She lifted her head slightly to peer at his face through the darkness. He was
asleep. She shifted closer to the warmth of his body and closed her eyes,
and breathed in his scent which was as familiar to her now as Harry's or
Ron's. His arm was draped over her waist and the steady rhythm of his
breathing was already lulling her back to sleep when the thought suddenly
arose that she would not mind at all spending a few months after the war
recuperating on a beach someplace where it never rained. She dreamed of
gentle waves lapping golden shores and Draco slumped in a hammock,
suncream smudged across his nose. She awoke with a smile on her face that
even Draco's grouchy comment about the state of her hair in the mornings
could not dim.
*Chapter 9*: Chapter 8
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

All warfare is based on deception. - Sun Tzu

The first time he began to suspect the deterioration of his sanity was on
Pansy's birthday. He had not told Granger, had not wanted to see the pain
and sorrow flicker across her expression, a loss as potent to her as any
death. He had planned to let the day slide by without notice. But perhaps
the event had affected him more than he had expected, or maybe it was the
build up of stress as the Final Battle drew ever-closer. All Draco knew was
that one moment he had been standing in the kitchen fixing himself a
coffee, and the next he had startled awake to find himself in the hall, knees
digging into the unforgiving, wooden floor.

Potter's face swam into his vision, blurred and distorted, and it took several
moments to recognise the salty wetness staining his own cheeks. Potter had
pulled him to his feet, all goodly concern and anxious comfort. He was
asking questions, or maybe just talking. But all Draco could think of was
the painful trembling in his own legs and the blistering burn scarring his
right hand. He allowed Potter to heal him, though he refused the pain
potions. Oddly enough, he did not fear that Potter would somehow use the
episode against him. It was too Slytherin for the Chosen One. There was an
unspoken agreement between them to never speak of it again.

And when Draco awoke to find himself on the kitchen floor a week later,
Potter hovering anxiously above him, he began to remember why he had
detested the man so much at school. St. Potter the hero, and, quite frankly,
the good Samaritan act grated.

::
Hermione could remember only one other time she had seen St. Mungo's in
such utter disarray. It had been in the early days of the war, when pain in
such massive quantities was a thing of the past, remembered only by those
old enough to have experienced the First War. Beds of screaming patients
littered the already cluttered halls. Rooms were overfilled and overcrowded.
Healers were a blur of pristine white, sprinting back and forth.

"This really isn't necessary," Hermione insisted for the fourth time. "There
are other people far more injured than me. I can fix this myself."

"A severing wound like this left for too long can do irreparable damage,
especially when it is the wand arm." Healer Matthews shot her a look. "I
don't particularly want you returning two weeks from now only to have me
amputate."

Hermione pushed air through her teeth, but made no further protest. Her
eyes followed the movements of the needle apparently weaving itself
through the skin of her wound with some fascination.

"Most people get squeamish about this part."

"I used to want to be a Healer," Hermione commented.

"It's a rewarding career, despite the many gruesome aspects."

"I always imagined I would take a course after the war."

"But not anymore?" Matthews brought his wand down in a gentle, sweeping
movement. The needle made a final jab, neatly pulling away from the
invisible thread holding the six-inch gash in her arm together. "What
changed?"

"My optimism," Hermione replied. At his questioning frown, she offered a

small smile. "After the war is a lifetime away."

"You don't believe you'll survive it?"

Hermione shrugged. No one had thought to ask the question so bluntly, and
she realised she did not have a reply. She turned her arm this way and that,
examining the already healing skin.

"You need to lie down for a while. Let the blood-replenishing potions do
their work." Hermione did as she was told, aching body only too happy to
obey. Matthews peered down at her, eyes observant through his fringe.

"What?"

He shrugged, nonchalant. "I don't know. I guess I just didn't picture you to
be a quitter."

A female Healer bustled into the room, not bothering to knock. She did not
look at Hermione and waited impatiently for Matthews to check the forms
she handed him over. He nodded and muttered something Hermione could
not hear.

"Well, I guess we're all done here," he said, and his brisk tone had
Hermione wondering if the previous conversation had even taken place at
all. "You'll need to wait here until someone can get you a discharge form."

It took Hermione all of five seconds to make the decision to follow him.
Her tired limbs screamed their protest and she ignored them, stumbling out
of the room and into the hallway.

"Hey!" she called. Matthews paused and turned back, but he did not really
look surprised to see her at all. She closed the distance between them,
prodding her finger into his chest the second she was close enough to do so
without falling. "I am not a quitter. I fight really hard, every day, and... and
you don't even know me!"

"So?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"So... so don't judge me when you haven't got a clue what I've been
through." She knew that her nose was stuck in the air and her hands were on
her hips, and she couldn't bring herself to care when he was smirking at her
in that infuriating way. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a business
card.
"This is my work number. Call me when all this is done if you're still
serious about that career in Healing," he said, and she wondered if that
hadn't been his plan all along. She stared after him, then down at the small,
Muggle-like business card. His name was printed neatly across the top -
Healer James Matthews. When she glanced up, he had already disappeared
into the ever-flowing mass of white robes.

"Mum's been going mad looking for you, you know." Her lips were already
turning up at the familiar voice before she could process the words it spoke.

"Your mother's here?"

Ron nodded, and she absently noted the sticky streaks of crimson darting
across his face. "Fred was hit with a Severing Curse. He's alright." He
smiled apologetically at the panic that must have struck her face. "Sorry, I
should have said that first. He lost some blood though and he needs to
recover."

Hermione swallowed. Nodded. There was more. She could tell by the lines
of his mouth and the tired set to his eyes. She briefly debated going back to
her room and sleeping until the day was gone. Better to hear it now. Better
to tally up the losses while she was still running on adrenaline. "Who else?"

"Neville broke a couple of ribs, but he's fine. Luna-"

"Luna? What is Luna doing here?"

"One of the safe houses was attacked. She's alright though. She's gone into
labor, but the Healers say at this stage in the pregnancy she'll be fine. Dean's
with her."

Hermione pressed her eyes shut and nodded, refusing to allow the low
tingle of relief before she had heard everything - every last name. "Keep
going."

"Goyle's still unconscious. Lavender's broken both legs in that explosion."

He stepped closer, his hands picking up both of hers and holding them
close. She inhaled deeply and nodded for him to go on. His voice was sad
and low. "We lost Cho."

Her breath escaped in a shuddering, painful sigh. She tightened her grip on
his hands and squeezed, released, squeezed, released. Inhaled slowly,
exhaled. She nodded and opened her eyes, and realised that Ron had been
waiting for her.

"I'm okay," she said.

"We should go back to Grimmauld Place. Be with Harry."

She sucked in a breath. Felt her chest sink as it flooded out. "Okay."

"Okay?"

She nodded. "Okay."

::

Draco awoke to the stained ceiling of his bedroom and no memory of

having passed out. There was the faint metallic tang of pain potions on the
back of his tongue and his quickly-healing ribs bore the signs of Mrs.
Weasley's work. He fingered the pristine bandages gingerly. The ache was
still enough to have him sucking in a sharp breath, but it no longer hurt to
breathe. Flash memories of Fred and the latest exploration into Flints' mind
arose suddenly and painfully. He vaguely recalled crashing to the floor with
a thud before passing out completely. A quick mental examination revealed
one, maybe two, broken ribs.

It was a testimony to the pain potions that, when Draco finally did notice
Teddy Lupin perched at his bed side, he was more curious than surprised. "I
don't suppose you know how I got here?"

The boy glanced around the room. He spotted a book resting on the bedside
table and jabbed a finger at it.

"Ah, Granger." Draco relaxed back into his cushions. Fred would, of course,
have invented some plausible excuse for the injuries which did not involve
Draco plummeting into the filthy mind of her would-be rapist. "Of course. I
expect she left you here to keep an eye on me?"

The boy's gaze was fixed on his cards. Draco closed his eyes and when he
opened them again, seventeen minutes had passed. The boy was closer now,
hair lifting a shade with his curiosity.

"You're my cousin."

Draco did not startle, though perhaps he might have without the pleasant
cotton-wool sensation of the potions numbing his brain. The sudden return
of Teddy's speech was a shocking revelation, to say the least, and he wasted
several moments trying to decide whether he wasn't still asleep. Finally, he
nodded, the movement a stiff and painful jerk of the head.

"Second cousin, actually. Or something like that. I was your mother's

cousin."

The boy frowned in thought, lips pursed as though he had difficulty forming
the words he needed. Draco waited silently. "Grandma told me. But my
mummy never spoke about you." He tilted his head to the side, his nose
becoming sharper at the end. "Why?"

Draco swallowed. "We only met a couple of times. And that was when she
was pregnant with you," he said.

"Did you not like each other?"

"We didn't know each other enough to like each other."

The boy contemplated this a moment. "How come I don't know your
mummy even though she's my mummy's auntie?"

"My mother is dead." The words came with surprising ease. It was the first
time he had spoke them aloud in almost five years.

"How did she die?"

"Some bad people cursed my mother and it made her ill for a very long
time."

The boy nodded and his hair faded from a pale pink to a shade of grey
Draco had never seen before. "Yeah. Some bad people killed my mum too,"
he said, and this time when the silence fell, it wasn't awkward at all.

::

"What is it with you and blonds?"

She smiled instinctively before she could think to scowl. "What're you
talking about? I went out with Ron! And he's ging-"

"Red-headed," Fred corrected with a warning glare. It quickly morphed to a

teasing grin. "First there's Krum-"

"He was brunette!"

"He was mousey-brown, which is dark blond. And then Cedric-"

"Cedric?"

"-staring at him, and don't think me and George didn't notice! And what
about that blond Healer? The one who gave you the card-."

"-trying to help me advance in my career-"

"-and now Malfoy."

Her mouth snapped shut. Her chin lifted and it was an effort to resist the
urge to plant her hands on her hips. She met his gaze evenly with a steely
stare of her own. "And now Malfoy."

Fred's smile widened into a grin and he lifted his hands in a peaceful
gesture. "Look. Ron may hate him. And he may still be a miserable git most
of the time. But, you know. He's alright. For one of them." His expression
sobered with the last comment and Hermione felt her defences rising.
"So is this the part where you tell me I'm being stupid and he's all wrong for
me?" She folded her arms across her chest, turned her gaze to somewhere
over his left shoulder. He closed the space between them. One hand came
down to rest comfortably on her shoulder, the familiar weight grounding
her, pushing her away from the instinctive anger. The other he used to tilt
her chin up, waiting for her eyes to meet his before speaking.

"You're being stupid. And he is most definitely all wrong for you." There
was a warmth in his eyes that contradicted the harsh nature of his words,
and her lips turned up into an answering smile. After a moment, he released
her and shrugged. "I guess I should have seen it coming."

"Oh really?"

"You're a sucker for hopeless cases."

"Fred Weasley! I am not!"

"No, it's true. I mean, you always paired up with Neville in potions and he
was useless-"

"-so unfair, Neville is a brilliant wizard now-"

"-trying to take on all those lessons Third Year-"

"-Time Turner saved Sirius' life-"

"-even get me started on Spew-"

"It is not Spew! It is S.P.E.W!"

::

"Don't think I don't know you're up to something."

Draco raised an eyebrow, making no attempt to hide his blatant enjoyment

of her undressing. She paused in the act of unfastening her bra to fix him
with a frosty glare.
"Draco, I'm serious."

Sensing the onset of an argument (and the likeliness of her continuing with
that last, irritating item of clothing should he ignore her), he sighed and
lifted his eyes from her chest to her face. Yes. She was definitely mad.
Thought not quite furious yet. He made a quick calculation and judged that
he had near thirty seconds to talk her down before the Third War broke out
in the middle of Order Headquarters.

"You're going to have to be more specific," he hedged.

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm talking about you and whatever had you writhing
on the kitchen floor in agony yesterday. And don't give me that bullshit that
Fred tried to feed me," she cut in before he could do exactly that. "You
think I haven't known that man long enough to know when he's lying?"

His Occlumency flared out of habit, and he thought that maybe she noticed
the internal change because something like disappointment shot across her
expression. She turned her back to him, stepping out of her underwear and
into the shirt she liked to sleep in. The light flickered off and he expected
cold silence and an uncomfortable night spent trying to remain on his own
side of the narrow mattress. But she slid under the sheets and curled herself
around him, pressing her cold feet against the warm flesh of his thighs.

"You know you can trust me, right?" He wondered distractedly if that had
been her motive in shutting out the lights. Because, for all her endless
babble, and his incessant mocking, she was still shy, and he emotionally
retarded. And any subject that even marginally skated their... arrangement
was generally and most reverently avoided by one or both. She shifted
against him. Pressed her face into his shoulder so that the words fell onto
his skin. "I mean, if you were doing something... not quite legal. Or
dangerous. You could tell me. You know that, right?"

"I know."

Her head jerked once in acknowledgement, body tensing with the awkward
silence that followed. There was a split second where she made as if to
move away. Draco made a decision. Slipped one arm underneath her body
and rolled so that his weight pinned her to the mattress. Her muffled
protests died easily at the touch of his lips to hers.

"Run away with me."

She huffed a laugh at the request, warm air brushing against Draco's nose.
"You're kidding."

He shrugged, burying his head into the crook of her neck to escape a
searching look he could not see through the darkness. He pressed his lips
against the soft flesh of her neck to distract her while he spoke. "I have
some money saved up. We could go somewhere hot. Somewhere the war
can't touch us."

"I have always wanted to visit Fiji."

"I have some money saved up. Not much, but enough. We could get your
parents and leave." Her sharp intake of breath whispered through his hair.
He raised up, his face mere inches from hers. "We could be safe."

He thought, for one tense moment, that she would shove him off her. She
drew breath, perhaps to yell. But it slid out of her in the next instant, and the
tension melted away with it. She pressed her palm to his cheek and he
refused to lean into the touch, afraid of what the gesture might tell. He had
already been too revealing. His chest clenched at the thought.

"You know I wouldn't leave."

"I don't want to hurt you." The confession tumbled from his lips
uncensored. Her grip on him tightened briefly, holding him almost to the
point of pain. She took his hand and placed it over her breast.

"I trust you." A simple statement, and yet the breath rushed from Draco in a
winding gush and blood rushed to his groin. His fingers found the frayed
hem of her nightshirt and she did not stop him from tugging it up and over
her breasts. The room was cold and her nipples pebbled before his tongue
could make the first contact. He caressed her lightly a few moments, before
tugging the hardened nub into his mouth and sucking hard enough to have
her arching into him. Her fingers slipped into his hair, and his hands found
her bare thighs. He kissed and sucked, nibbled and licked. He pinned her
hands with his own and dragged them both down deeper, to the point of no
return.

::

She entered the kitchen, wand at the ready to find, not the raid her sleep-
addled mind had feared, but a panic-stricken Draco Malfoy. The kitchen
was in a state of destruction. Drawers hung open, their contents spilling out
onto the linoleum floor. A bag sat packed at his feet, growing bulkier with
each item of food he shoved in there. It was a testimony to his state of mind
that he did not immediately notice her presence until she flicked the dim
light on.

"Granger." Her name passed his lips on a shuddering breath. He did not
lower his wand, pointing it warily at her chest. She dropped her own a few
inches in an attempt to appear less threatening, though she could not bring
herself to leave it altogether. His eyes were wild - wild in a way she had not
seen since their sixth year, and all those sleepless nights and failed plots. He
looked like a man on the verge of a breakdown. She did a mental
calculation of how close he could get before a hex left her mouth, then
silently berated herself for doing so.

"Draco, what's wrong?" That's it. Reasonable. Calm. Talk him down.
Remember your training. Think how many bodies he's seen this week,
month, year. How the stress has been building.

"Fuck. Fuck." The first curse was barely audible, the second spat with
enough venom to make her flinch. His wand dropped to his side, his free
hand rising to clutch fistfuls of his hair, until she thought he would simply
wrench it all out. A fresh wave of panic washed over him and she very
nearly cried out when he charged at her, before she realised he was reaching
for the light switch. They were thrown into darkness. She startled at the
sudden clamp of his hands on her arms.

"Granger... Hermione. I need you to listen to me. I have to leave."

The words hit her hard and heavy, a Crucio to the chest, a bullet to the
brain.

"Leave?" But it came out as a strangled whimper, and she had to clear her
throat and try again. "Leave for where?"

"Away. From here." He was moving again now, and the words came out
skittish, disjointed, as though the time to string full sentences was not a
luxury he could afford. Hermione tracked his movements with her eyes.
Watched him dump a small supply of food in the rucksack at his feet before
sealing it.

"Draco. You need to sit down. You need to calm down."

He rounded on her, and it was little comfort to see desperation rather than
anger in his bright eyes. "No, Hermione, you don't get it! This... all of this!
It's a lie! And he doesn't even fucking understand what he's done!"

"Who?" But he froze at the sound of something she could not hear, and
when he fell to his knees, his hands on her shoulders brought her down with
him. She started to protest. A hand slipped over her mouth and he was
muttering frantically into her ear.

"Listen to me, Hermione, you must listen." The hand that had covered her
mouth traveled across her cheek to slip into her curls, caressing the back of
her head with a tender urgency that had the pit of her stomach twisting in
anxiety. "I have to go. I can't tell you where, it's too dangerous for you to
know."

"Draco, what are you-"

"No, Hermione. Listen."

"No, you listen! You can't leave! We need you!" I need you, I need you. She
did not say the words, but his expression softened, panic abating for the
moment into something warmer. Both of his hands were cupping her face
now, and he used his grip as leverage to pull her to him, pressing his lips to
hers in a clumsy caress that made her chest clench painfully. She had not
realised she was crying until she tasted the salt as the tears mixed into the
kiss. With his lips still touching hers, he said, "Hermione, I-"

She felt the moment the spell hit him. His body tensed in her arms, the red
glow of the Stupefy casting his pale skin in a crimson hue for a brief second
before he collapsed against her. Her eyes darted up in panic, only to meet
the flash of familiar glasses. Harry lowered his wand slowly, expression
blank, though his eyes were wide behind the lenses.

"Are you hurt?"

She shook her head, no.

"Is he-?"

"He'll be fine." They were speaking in whispers, though she did not know
why. She could not make herself meet Harry's questioning gaze. "Help me
get him to our room?"

He nodded, stashing his wand in the waistband of his pyjamas in order to

use both hands. It would have been easier to Levitate him, but neither of
them mentioned this, perhaps both as disturbed by the prospect of floating
his body to the bed as though he were some lifeless corpse. Harry slid one
arm around Draco's waist and Hermione did the same from the other side.
They heaved and Draco stood slumped between them.

"This has happened before?" Because she could read Harry like a book, and
he did not look sufficiently surprised. He jerked his head up and down.

"Hermione-"

"Don't, Harry." And that was all they said on the matter.

::

He found the boy by accident, having been searching for somewhere to

escape the growing storm of anger washing through the House of Black. A
safe house had been attacked and someone's mother, sister, aunt, niece had
been killed. The Order members available had mobbed together in the
kitchen, readying themselves for the counter-attack. Draco was not foolish
or Gryffindor enough to offer himself up for the mission. He was a Death
Eater, renounced or not, and it would take less than a stray Avada in the
heat of the moment for him to end up dead as a retaliation for someone
else's crime.

The bathroom had been the only room with a lock. It was more of a surprise
than an irritation to find Teddy curled up in the bath tub, fully-clothed, eyes
furiously tracking the players on his Quidditch cards. Draco briefly
considered braving the final set of stairs to his bedroom. But something
stopped him. He liked to think it was more to do with some deep-buried
sense of compassion, rather than the tired ache of his limbs at the thought of
walking any further. Teddy did not glance up as he climbed into the bath
beside him. The usual silence held for a long moment. A plate smashed two
floors below and Teddy sorted his cards with renewed urgency. It took
Draco almost three minutes to realise the boy was trembling.

"Why are you afraid?"

"I'm always afraid," Teddy replied. Then, in a whisper, "It was like this in
that other house. Before she left."

He thought back to that telegraph he had received. Distant memories of

eavesdropping on Andromeda while she told Mrs. Weasley that the house
had shaken with Nimphadora's and her follower's fury. His hand lifted
without him making a conscious decision to move it.

"I'm pretty scared too," he said. Teddy watched his hand shake for a long
time before he finally nodded, and Draco dropped his hand as though this
was the approval he had been waiting for. They sat in the tub until
Andromeda came and called Teddy away for some dinner.

"Well," she said over her shoulder when Draco did not move, "are you
coming?"

His hesitated only a second. "Yeah. Okay."

::
There was a memory she always carried around with her, tucked safely
away for times when the darkness was so suffocating, so overwhelming,
when death clogged her every pore, and filled her to the brim. It went like
this:

She, Harry and Ron had met up at the Burrow, as tradition dictated, for the
last two weeks of the summer holidays. It was third year, or maybe fourth.
She never could remember exactly. She did remember the heat wave, and
the way they would all take turns to spray each other with the Weasleys'
enchanted hose, just to keep cool. There had been a waterfight, or maybe
Ron had simply gotten over-zealous. This part of the memory was never too
clear.

But then they were lying there, the three of them, spread out with their
heads side-by-side so that they formed some strange, three-pointed star.
Hermione could remember the feel of the sun rolling across her wet skin in
stifling waves, and the way her shirt clung almost see-through to her breasts
and yet she could not work up the energy to revive the newly-found self-
consciousness that had recently awoken whenever the boys were around.
Ron was telling a joke - she remembered it wasn't funny - and Harry read
his latest, near-indecipherable letter from Sirius aloud to them all.

The memory was a stream of images and sensations, sounds and warmth.
But what she remembered the most were their faces. Smooth and
unblemished, and rounded in their youth. What she rememebered most
were their eyes. Shining with their own amusement, and all three of them
laughing for no real reason at all. Laughing so hard, it hurt to breathe and
she had to roll onto her side, just to stop the stitch underneath her ribs.

It was not always easy to recall. She would see the new scars that littered
Harry's face, or the far-off look Ron would sometimes get in those milky-
blue eyes, whites tinted red through lack of sleep. And it would get just a
little harder to see them how they were. But sometimes she would close her
eyes, and she was right there with them, lying in the over-grown weeds of
the Burrow, soaking up the innocence of the delicious summer sun.
*Chapter 10*: Chapter 9
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and
the sculptor. ~Dr. Alexis Carrel

The last time Draco saw Blaise Zabini was in the midst of a battlefield. A
sickly yellow smog clogged the air, blinding, choking, suffocating. Draco
heard someone stumble across his path and yelled a Stupefy (because he
could not be sure, could not be certain that it wasn't a fellow member and he
did not think he could bear to see Fred or Granger laying dead at his feet).
He clambered onwards, towards the point where he thought he was
expected to Apparate out, though, of course, he could have been heading in
the complete wrong direction.

He half-tripped over a body and, as he glanced up, he caught sight of

Blaise, just visible, dark skin tinted sepia in the haze of the curses. Blaise
did not see him. He was too busy laughing at the soldier writhing on the
floor before him, body arched with the pain of the Crucio. His face was
twisted in his own sick amusement, eyes darker than Draco remembered.
And suddenly he was a stranger, just another Death Eater dressed in black.

A glint of a silver mask in what weak sunlight had managed to penetrate the
smog, and Draco's attentions were elsewhere once more. When he looked
back, Blaise was gone. Later, Draco would force himself to think back.
Think back to before all the hatred. To when Blaise had been a boy so
insecure as to research the average amount of chest hair teenage wizards
were supposed to have. To that time that Marcus Flint had challenged Draco
to a duel, and Blaise had been his second. But, if he was honest with
himself, it would always be this Blaise that lingered behind it all, with his
manic eyes and bloodthirsty smile. Because there was no before the hatred.
There was only their fathers, and all they had ever known, and the fact that
they were smarter, purer, better. Except that they weren't, and being a
pureblood did not stop Blaise from dying.

::

She did not know what curse had hit her, just that there must surely be fire
coursing through her veins, because nothing, nothing had ever hurt this bad
before. White hot knives carved patterns into her stomach, scalding pokers
pierced her neck. She tried to open her eyes and the light was blinding, and
it hurt to move but she could not stop her body convulsing, could not stop
the natural urge to claw at her own skin, as if she could peel it away and put
an end to it all. Firm fingers wrapped themselves around her wrists, pinning
her arms to her sides. She thought briefly of fighting this person, because
the last thing she remembered was being in a battlefield, but then the
possibility that if this person killed her, the pain would have to stop arose,
and she fell limp in his arms.

"Granger. Stop thrashing about or I'll splinch you!"

She knew that voice. Knew the arms lifting her. But all her mind could
think of was the word 'splinch' and how it would not possibly matter if he
splinched her a hundred times over, she could never hurt any more than this.
Maybe she told him so, because he huffed a laugh, and the air was
squeezing her from all sides, throwing her into a blinding white room with a
loud crack. Voices swamped her. The warmth of his body disappeared, a
change she barely noticed through the fresh surge of agony crashing
through her, arching her spine off the bed.

"-need to stop her moving."

She caught the unfamiliar voice and struggled against the sudden pressure
of someone leaning over her, until he growled in frustration and forced her
hands flat on either side of her head.

"Granger, open your damn eyes!"

She did, if only because she had begun to worry that she was blind and had
not realised they were closed in the first place. Draco hovered, flushed and
panting above her, fringe brushing her forehead. A flash of white, and her
eyes were trailing downwards, to the other side of the bed where the Healer
was cutting through her shirt.

"Eyes on me, Granger," Draco ordered, fixing her with a hard stare. A
pressure in her stomach, then something gave and she was screaming,
screaming because it hurt so fucking much! Draco anchored her to the bed,
pressing her down onto the thin mattress. "-her some fucking potions!"

"We need to keep her awake, Mister Malfoy. Keep her talking. Do not let
her drift off."

"What's wrong with me?" It came out as a strangled mess of words, but
Draco seemed to understand.

"Don't worry about it. You've just got a little cut." Draco was breathless,
and she wondered why before she realised she was convulsing against him
again, chest heaving with sobs. Her eyes closed and when she opened them,
he was slapping her, the motion jolting her head painfully to the side. "-fall
asleep! Tell me something I don't know, Granger."

Pain rocketed through her, leaving her throat raw with the scream it forced
from her. "I can't think," she sobbed.

"Then go some place where it doesn't hurt. Think of somewhere that makes
you happy."

She began to drift off again, awakening to his sharp slaps before she
remembered. "The porch swing."

"What?"

"The porch swing. At that house. I don't remember...with blue shutters?" He

was nodding and she forced her eyes to track the movement. "That was...the
first time we spoke - ah!" Her spine curved with the wave of pain and
Draco forced her down again. She was panting now, and sobbing, and the
sweat and tears clung to her hair, matting it around her face. "It was the...
only time you said I was pretty."
Confusion flashed briefly through the concentration for his task. "What?"

"You said my 'pretty little head' would be blasted to pieces... if I didn't pay
attention. You never called me pretty before."

The surprise was clear in his face, and when he laughed the sound rumbled
through her chest, mixing with the aftershocks of pain. "You're the most
fucking idiotic smart person I've ever met, you know that, Granger?"

She would have said something about that, except the pain suddenly rose to
a crescendo, rocketing up through her, and in the next moment she was
gone.

::

"'-clang went the cooking pot's single brass foot upon the floor, but now its
clamor was mixed with the bray of a donkey and human groans of hunger,
echoing from the depths of the pot'." Draco glanced up from turning the
page to find Granger's eyes on him, an amused light cutting through the
haze of the potions. He closed the book with a snap, leaning forwards
anxiously before remembering to look nonchalant. "You're awake."

"You were reading to me?"

He met her gaze evenly, refusing to feel embarrassed. "Tales of Beedle the
Bard. It was the first book in your trunk. The Healers said I should talk to
you, but apparently I'm far too used to you interrupting me every five
seconds and I ran out of things to say. So I got this." He shrugged. "My
mother read them to me as a kid."

"Which one were you reading?"

"The Wizard and the Hopping Pot. Although I must say, this is not a version
I've heard before."

"It was Dumbledore's," Granger answered with a shrug that morphed into a
grimace. "He left it to me after he died."

"The one they used to tell us was... not so forgiving as this."

"How so?"

"Well, in my father's version the Pot ate most of the wizard's neighbors until
the rest promised to leave him alone and apologised for being so
bothersome."

Granger huffed a laugh, but it turned into a cough seconds later and it was a
long time before she stopped again. "That sounds terrible."

He shrugged and shot her a wicked grin. "I liked his version better." His
eyes tracked her yawn, taking in the dark shadows under her eyes and the
sallow skin of her cheeks. He quashed the uncomfortable pressure in his
chest and fixed her with a frosty glare. "Now stop talking, and go to sleep,
before they kick me out for bothering you."

"Will you keep reading to me?" He did not think she would have asked, had
the potions not been clouding her mind, already weighing down on her
drooping eyelids. He opened the book and found the page, and by the time
he started reading again she was already gone. He did not stop.

::

Healer Matthews had been making notes on a clipboard for some time now
and when he did finally meet her gaze, he smiled, tired eyes lighting
slightly in a way that made him seem suddenly younger.

"Well hello there. I thought you would never wake up."

"What time is it?" Hermione croaked.

"Five o'clock in the morning, three days after you first arrived," he replied
smoothly. "How are you feeling?"

She took a moment for a mental evaluation. "Hungry," she decided at last.
"And sore. What happened?"

"From what I gather, there was an explosion. Some piping got impaled in
your stomach. Luckily it missed any major organs, or you would not be
lying there talking to me at all." He tugged gently at her pajama shirt and
she watched it slide up her stomach with a mixture of curiosity and horror.
The wound was hidden by an extensive number of bandages, but she could
see the blood seeping through the gauze. "It'll heal up just fine, but you'll be
out of action for a while."

"Did you heal me?"

He flashed her a smile. "No. I'm just here out of interest. When I heard my
favorite patient was back in I simply had to stop by and check she was
alright. I'm actually just on my way out of the night shift." He slipped her
notes back into the slot at the end of her bed and smiled. "Actually, I'm
lying. I do have an ulterior motive for being here. Not that I wasn't
concerned for your welfare, of course."

She tracked his journey to the chair beside her bed with tired eyes and
noticed for the first time the duffel bag resting there. He pulled out a thick,
leather bound book. "I was going to give it to you after the incident with
Mr. Malfoy all those months ago, but you were gone before I had a chance."

Hermione frowned and reached for the book. It was not old, though the
leather was worn, and she could tell by the creases at the corner of the
pages that it had been read often. Large, spidery letters pronounced it
'Cruorem Alicia - An extensive guide to Blood Magic' by Eldred Worple.

"It's not in great condition," Matthews apologised. "I got it second-hand

when I moved on to Advanced Healing, and it was tatty back then. But you
can still make out the words. There's some side notes I made too, if you're
interested."

"Thank you." Hermione's failed attempt to taper her enthusiasm did not go
unnoticed by Matthews, and, where this knowledge of her love of books
may have shocked, maybe even scared her just a few years ago, she was
older now. Wiser. Not so naive as to believe that being Harry Potter's genius
friend was not a sort of celebrity status in and of itself.

Matthews shot her a crooked grin and shrugged his bag over his shoulder. "I
thought it might be interesting to you. In your situation, I mean."
Panic, cold and fresh, crashed through her mind, clearing away the
excitement of the gift. Because he could not possibly be talking about
Harry's secret and the Blood Magic Lily provided that all three of them had
agreed was too dangerous a secret to spread. But Matthews was still
smiling, distracted in the act of pulling on his coat, and did not look up as
he said, "I actually tried to give it to your friend, Mr. Malfoy? But he was
rather insistent that he knew all he needed to. And, between you and I, he
can be quite terrifying when he wishes to be."

Hermione's smile was weakened by the sudden knowledge that she was an
outsider in this conversation. Her initial thoughts - that he had brought the
book to her to pique her interest in Healing - were dashed the second
Draco's name was mentioned. She knew Draco. Knew all about his hopes of
traveling after the war, and knew that, Order member or not, he was a
Malfoy through and through, and a Malfoy would never, never make a
career of running around after people. But she kept quiet and nodded her
head (because she was Hermione Granger and, for all the improvement she
felt she had made since she was that infuriating eleven year-old girl, she had
never really gotten over her proud streak, and could not quite bring herself
to admit that she did not understand).

"Well, I hope it's interesting to you, even if you do both know all you need
to," Matthews was saying, heading quietly towards the door. "Chapter seven
in particular should be useful. And make sure you get some rest. I don't
want to see you back in my hospital for at least a couple of months."

"I'll try." Hermione grinned, the smile lingering as she cast her gaze onto
the heavy book. She flicked through the yellowed pages, too curious to be
careful with the age-worn paper. It took two minutes just to unstick the
pages to discover the desired chapter, and another four to shift into a sitting
position, book opened comfortably in her lap.

"Chapter seven," she murmured, following the words with her index finger.
"Partis Cruor - in which the blood of one magical human is transferred to
another..."

The smile vanished somewhere along the third line. The nausea arrived
shortly afterwards. And when the last page was turned, and the chapter was
read, she could think of only two words that Matthews had said - 'he knew.'
Draco knew. He knew all along. And she had been such a damned fool.

::

"They're calling your generation the Masters of Wizarding Wars."

Shacklebolt's tone was casual, almost bored, and Draco could smell the
alcohol on the man's breath from the other end of the sofa. Another evening
he might have left the room without comment. But the whiskey glass
cradled in his own hands had warmed his stomach and dulled the usual need
to be snide. "This war isn't like before. The people fighting in it have grown
into it. You've inherited it before you were truly old enough to comprehend
what it was you were dealing with. One of the terrible side effects of a
generation growing up in a war - a strange immunity to death."

Draco thought of Theo. Of having to tear Pansy away from his lifeless
body. Saw Ginny Weasley that night at the safe house. Pictured his own
parents, side by side at the window some random night when he was small,
swaying together in time to the wireless, too wrapped up in one another to
notice his small, spying presence. "There is no such thing as an immunity to
death," he said.

Shacklebolt grunted and blissful silence fell awhile.

"We'll be alright, you know. We Brits," Shacklebolt clarified when Draco

shot him a frown. "We're made of strong stuff. A generation filled with men
and women meant to be heroes."

"Be proud of the country with so many heroes." Draco drained his glass.
"Surely you should pity the generation that needs them."

::

The safe house Hermione found herself in for two weeks' recovery time was
small enough to be cramped rather than cosy, had it not been for the fact
that only four other people resided there. From the window of the bedroom
she shared with Ginny, she could see the ocean - stretching and rolling for
miles and miles, dropping out of sight over the edge of the world. During
the day, the dull cry of the seagulls drifted in through the open window, but
at night all she could hear was that ocean, and the push and pull of the tide.
It was a simple sound, but it distracted from the poor attempts of humor
from George, or Ginny's tired silence. There were two other Aurors, but
Hermione did not know them and they kept to themselves usually.

Draco arrived on the third day, all quiet anger and frustration as he stormed
into the room without a word, except to throw every silencing and locking
charm he knew on the bedroom door. He would not let her speak, growled
when she attempted to sit up. The silence passed marked only by the rusted
clock hanging on the wall. It was exactly seven minutes late. There was
some irony in there somewhere, but Hermione was too tired to give a crap.

"Are you just going to sit here all night, or do you actually have something
to say?" She had to force back the grimace at the harsh tone of her own
voice. She did not want to fight, was far too tired, and she suddenly wished
that she had skipped her last dose of pain potions, if only so that her mind
was clearer. Draco made a sound somewhere between annoyed and
exasperated. He reached into his bag and pulled out the book Matthews had
given her - the one she had left on the hospital bed where she knew Draco
would find it. She turned her gaze to the window, focused hard on picking
out the sound of the ocean over Draco's frustration.

"Come on, Granger. Normally I can't get you to shut up. I'm finding it
difficult to believe you're just going to lie there in silence until I leave."

"Why don't you just read my mind?"

His lips pressed into a thin line, fists clenching. "That's not how it works."

"Well I wouldn't know. This is all still news to me, so excuse me if I haven't
researched the finer details yet." She could not research. For the first time in
her life, she could not bury herself in the familiar comfort of facts and
figures. It scared her that he could do that.

There was a pause.

"You're angry," Draco said. Hermione grunted, a noise that might have been
bitter or amused. "At me." He sighed into the silence, running a hand
agitatedly through his hair so that it stuck up in odd places, a windswept
halo that she itched to smooth down. "Look. I'm not good at this... this
whole, talking about it thing. You're going to have to help me out, or we'll
be here until the end of the war."

"You lied to me."

"I did not."

"A lie of omission is just as bad as an outright lie."

He considered this. "I fail to see how it truly matters either way. If I had
told you, you would only have been thinking about it every time we were
together."

"That's not the point, Draco! You're in my mind! Every day! Every fucking
minute! And I never even knew!" Shouting hurt. Pain exploded in her lower
stomach. She forced herself to breathe, in through the nose, out through the
mouth. Draco waited patiently for her to gather herself before retaliating.

"You Gryffindor are so melodramatic. Firstly, I am not in your mind. I can't

tell what you're thinking. Just your emotions. And I've developed my block
well enough to only pick up on the major ones."

"When did you first notice?"

"That night you jumped me after Potter returned from fuck knows where. I
felt anxious. And I knew it was most certainly not on Potter's account. Then
I was just angry."

"Did you know right away that it was the blood?"

He shook his head slowly. "I don't know if you remember that night, but
you'll excuse me if I had other things on my mind. Try dealing with two sets
of lust. It was a strain simply trying not to disgrace myself like some
inexperienced adolescent."
Hermione grimaced at his words but refused to be swayed. "How long did it
take you to work it out?"

"Not long. A week, maybe two. There were several books of blood magic
residing in Malfoy Manor when I was there last. I had read about something
similar and put the pieces together."

"What else does it do?"

Draco shrugged, folding his arms over his chest as he leaned back in the
chair that was obviously too small for him. "Not a lot else. Transferring
blood was a ritual performed between wealthy Purebloods and their wives,
to ensure fidelity. He would take her blood and know if she was lying, or
cheating. It can be used to track as well, but only if a certain ceremony is
performed exactly three full moons after the initial ritual, so we don't have
to worry about that."

"And nothing else?"

"Something about being able to draw on each other's powers, if ever one of
us is in danger severe enough to need both. But if that's not just pure myth, I
have no idea how it would be accomplished."

Hermione closed her eyes. She breathed deeply through her nose, felt her
lungs expand with the sweet flood of oxygen. The knot in her chest did not
lessen. Draco shifted on the chair beside her.

"Granger-"

"Don't." Her voice was a soft whisper, but he stopped in his tracks and
waited for her to speak again. "I just... I need..."

"What do you need, Granger?" His fingertips ghosted across the back of her
hand, the movement halted and uncertain. It would have been so easy to
turn her hand, link their fingers and let him make her forget. She opened her
eyes and fixed him with a firm stare.

"I think... I need you to go."

At first she thought he might refuse. But his hand left hers after only a
moment's pause. She closed her eyes again, and did not open them until she
heard the sharp click of the door shutting.

::

"So what's it about?"

"Hm?"

Fred raised an eyebrow, as if to communicate to Draco just how lacking his

intelligence could sometimes be. "You and Hermione. This little lover's tiff
you've got going on." There was a pause, and Fred sat up slightly from his
slumped position beside Draco to shoot him a stern look. "This isn't because
of my brother is it? Because Ron can be an envious little shit sometimes,
but-"

"It's not him." Draco part-growled it, if only because the suggestion that
Weasley could ever be a threat to him was utterly absurd. Fred relaxed back
against the wall, cigarette balanced idly between his yellowed fingertips.

"Oh. So what is it then? Her time of the month? You said something stupid?
Merlin, tell me you didn't answer the 'does-my-bum-look-big-in-this?' trap."

"It's nothing like that." And Draco longed for the normalcy of such a
relationship. But that was the thing. He and Granger did not have a
relationship. They had an understanding. And he wasn't so sure he could be
angry for her sudden disregard for him, because they never did commit
themselves. She never did have any obligation to him. The thought only
angered him further, and he stubbed the short end of his cigarette out
against the wall with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary.

"Don't worry," Fred said, after a time. "You're too much like Spew."

"Sorry?"

Fred just grinned and winked as he flicked his own cigarette over the hedge.
Draco opened his mouth. Then closed it. Sometimes, it just wasn't worth the
headache to understand the Weasley.

::

Hermione lay staring through the darkness at the distorted stains decorating
the ceiling. The house was too quiet, and she strained her ears but the ocean
seemed far away that night. Ginny had long since joined her, the mattress
dipping under her weight. She was not shifting about, but Hermione knew
she was awake. She could hear it in the stillness of her silence, and the lack
of deep, even breaths.

"I kissed Malfoy." She did not know where the confession came from, or
what had possessed her to tell Ginny of all people. While Fred may have
assumed, and Harry might suspect, she had never openly admitted anything.

"If I were you, I'd have done more than just kiss him." The response was so
the last thing she had suspected that Hermione could not stifle the amused
snort. She felt Ginny shift to lean up on her elbow, and imagined that
suggestive smile that had once been a familiar part of the red-head's
features. "Why, Hermione, you dirty cow. Have you shagged him?"

"Ginny!" But she was laughing, giggling like she hadn't since she was a
fourteen year-old girl, crowded round a covert magazine with animated
pictures which had her and the rest of the Gryffindor fourth years in
stitches. Ginny was laughing too, and when they both managed to catch
their breath, they were closer, no longer awkwardly striving to stay as far
away as possible.

"Are you... like, together?"

Hermione wrinkled her nose at the question. "I don't know. I don't think so."
She let out a harsh breath. "If we were, we aren't now." She thought Ginny
might ask about that, but perhaps she sensed that Hermione's throat was
burning, and she did not want to talk about this, because she left it. "He's
changed, you know," she added, because she thought it should be said.

"Wow," Ginny breathed, after a pause. "Hermione Granger and Draco

Malfoy. I won't pretend I saw this coming."
"I know, right?"

"And I'm not going to say I get it. But I guess it's up to you."

Hermione smiled. "He makes it alright. You know? Like I don't have to be
scared every second of the day anymore."

Ginny was quiet so long, Hermione thought she had drifted off. But then
she rolled on to her back, and her voice was gentle when she said, "I guess
that's okay then."

"Yeah," Hermione said. "I guess it is."

::

::

Draco opened his eyes to a scene of chaos. The curtain rail lay tangled with
the velvet curtains in a heap on the floor. A chair had been overturned, quite
violently by the looks of it. Andromeda waved her wand over a shattered
window, glass flying back into place like thousands of drops of ice,
gathering to form a clean sheet of water. Potter crouched over him, glasses
slightly askew.

"Again?" Draco rasped, and he was trembling too hard to care that Potter
had once again witnessed this weakness, or that his own aunt was in the
room. Potter did not answer, but stooped to help him sit up, propping him
against the disheveled sofa. Draco brought his hands to his head, only to
feel the warm smear of liquid. Blood, dark and thick, oozed from a gash in
his left hand. He could not quash the wave of panic rising in his throat
anymore than his eyes' instinctive dart to meet Potter's. "What's happening
to me?"

Potter's mouth opened, closed. Opened, closed. "I'm sorry," he whispered,

the words melding together in one breath as he fled from the room. Draco
stayed slumped against the worn leather of a sofa that might have been
grand in another life, the smell of damp filling his nostrils with each
gasping breath. He thought he might have stayed that way a long time
gathering his wits, if not for the pale, slender hand which stuck itself
underneath his nose. In another lifetime, Andromeda might have resembled
his mother strongly. Now, though, stress and time had softened her features,
turned down the corners of what had once been a full, well-balanced mouth.
Her eyes were just a shade too light, her hair just a tad dark.

"Come on," she said, wrapping her fingers around his wrist. "Let's get you
cleaned up."

And though she was not his mother, not even close, he allowed her to care
for him in a way no one had dared since he was fifteen years old. She
flashed him a smile as he clambered to his feet - the first she had directed at
him since they had met; a sign of comfort, from one blood traitor to another.

::

Hermione was aching, and cold, and would very much have liked nothing
more than to bury herself within the familiar warmth of Draco until he
made her forget exactly why she hurt so bad. But it was not an option, and
so she sought out Harry, and tried to push aside the guilt that she should
think of him as a second choice - a consolation prize to what she really
wanted. He tried to make conversation at first, commenting on small things,
reading his latest letter from Luna and her tales of Archie's quickly-
developing body. It was times like these that Hermione remembered he was
cooped up in this graveyard of a house for months and months on end, and
she made a quick promise to herself to put aside more time. But she could
not bring herself to co-operate now, and after a time he lapsed into silence.

"What are we fighting for?" She thought he might have presumed she had
fallen asleep, with the way his body startled beside hers on the bed.

There was a long pause, and she wondered if he would not answer. But then
he said, "That the world is not all bad. And that the good there is worth
fighting for. We're fighting because we're the light in the darkness."

"Like the Order."

"Yes."
"Like Dumbledore."

"Yes. Like Dumbledore. I'm sure he is proud of what we're doing, even if
we aren't doing it as fast as we had hoped."

There was a moment where the anger bubbled up fast and hot inside her,
and then she was off the bed, pacing the floor, liked a caged animal. Her
hands were in her hair, pulling at it in her frustration, and she blamed the
pain for the tears. "I don't know what we're fighting for anymore! Everyone
is relying on us! Everyone! And all those people who died, and all those
things they did, it's all such a waste! Because how can things be good again,
Harry? How can we ever make things right. If we just told someone-"

"Dumbledore told us to protect the secret for a reason, Hermione." Harry

watched her cautiously, eyes tracking her movements carefully, and this
only enraged her further.

"You think he's watching us? You think he's up there, keeping tally of all the
good things against the bad? Handing out gold stars for when we do extra
well? There are no gold stars, Harry. And no one is watching over us."

The anger faded in degrees, as it always did, and within minutes she was
back on the bed, body resting alongside Harry's, barely close enough that
they touched. Her breathing came in steady, even drags, but her voice
quivered when she spoke. "Sometimes I hate Dumbledore for what he left
to us. For making us keep the secret."

There was a long silence. She thought Harry was mad at her, or hurt at the
mention of the man who had caused such conflicting emotion within
himself. But after a while, he slung his arm over her waist and pulled her to
him, burrowing his face in her hair. "Yeah," he said, quiet enough that only
she could ever have heard him. "Sometimes I hate him too."
*Chapter 11*: Chapter 10
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

I suppose it is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be

sane and have one's doubts. ~G.B. Burgin

The first time Draco became aware of just how lucky he was to be an only
child, as well as an orphan, was the day he witnessed Molly's breakdown at
the news of Fred's disappearance. Not much was known. Just that he had
been in a battle - a losing battle - and when the dust had cleared, and it was
safe to count and collect the dead, he was gone. They found him just three
days later, relatively unharmed, in a holding cell near Kent. He had been
shaken by the event, but whoever had captured him had been stupid enough
not to recognise him as a Weasley, and low-ranking enough that no one
thought to check his prisoners.

But it was not the circumstances, or Fred's disappearance in itself which

struck Draco. It was Molly Weasley's face the moment she heard her son
was missing. The way it seemed to crack, right down the middle, so that her
eyes creased and her lips turned impossibly down, like those Muggle
clowns he had seen at a circus once. She hadn't cried, or made a sound. She
had just sat there in the kitchen, the resignation in her eyes turning them a
deeper, darker blue than usual. And he could not help but think of his father,
sat in his corner of the Manor, trembling, wandless, waiting for the Dark
Lord's next command. Or his mother, and the weeks and months and years
that she had been so ill, and all Draco could do was watch her wasting
away.

They were gone now, and it was just him on that battlefield, without all the
shadows of a clan of brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, uncles,
aunties, clouding his mind. Parts of himself, like extended limbs, or vital
organs, constantly in his awareness. Searching the list of the dead each
week for a sibling. But then he saw Fred's return, and how the whole house
rejoiced, crowding the Weasley with hugs and kisses, and cries of triumph.
He watched Molly take her son in her arms and smile so hard, it pushed the
tears from her eyes. And Draco thought it might be worth that extra weight
of worry, just to have someone look at you like that.

::

Harry was in the kitchen when Draco entered, and it was this which stopped
Hermione from making a hasty (and, yes, cowardly) exit the second she
caught sight of the blond She might have risked it anyway, except that
Harry had commented in a would-be casual tone on her sudden change of
sleeping accommodations, quickly assuring her that, while he did not mind
sharing his room, was there any particular 'Malfoy-related' reason that
might mean he and Ron would have to 'hex the albino bastard so hard,
Lucius would be feeling it in the grave?' She had been quick to assure him
that he was being ridiculous, and it was just easier having her own bed with
her stomach still slightly sore - she did feel some remorse for having forced
Ron into sleeping with Neville.

(Also, hot chocolate packets had been added back to the ration list for the
first time in two years, and she'd be damned if he took her enjoyment away
now.)

So she did not move from her place, opting instead to turn her back on the
whole scene and enjoy her hot chocolate while viewing what she could of
the overgrown garden. She could not stop her mind tracking his every move
behind her. And when he reached to turn the tap on, and his arm brushed
against hers, she most definitely did not lean into his warmth with all the
eagerness of Crookshanks before the common room fire.

::

It was the worst battle any of them had participated in for a long time.
Draco had not been able to hear over the cries of destruction, and then some
sort of explosion had happened three feet away and he could not hear at all.
He stumbled aimlessly forwards, shouting curses he could not hear in
random directions. The smog had thickened so that it was impossible to see
a foot ahead of him, and he damn near hexed Fred's arm off when he came
charging out of the mist towards him.

He might have been yelling something - at the very least, Draco could see
his lips moving - and when Draco just stared at him, he whipped out his
wand and pointed it directly at Draco's face. His mouth moved over a spell
Draco did not recognise. An unbearable pressure filled his head, and for a
confused moment Draco thought he had been hexed. But then there was a
pop, and the sound came rushing back in a chorus of screams, cries,
explosions. Fred was talking again, but he gave up when Draco only stared
blankly at him, signalling an impatient 'follow me' wave before darting off
into the smog.

Others were heading in the same direction as them, faces he recognised and
others he didn't. It wasn't long until buildings began to rise out of the fog,
old remnants of shops Draco had once bought his school supplies from.
Fred dropped suddenly into the rubble, and Draco almost missed the
opening until he was right above it, and by then he was falling, legs
tangling in stone and rotting wood, until he smacked the back of his head on
a random plank and passed out before his body could even crumple to the
ground.

His eyes opened to the sort of impenetrable darkness that could swallow a
person whole, and he panicked in the brief moment it took for Fred to reach
him and cast a dim lumos.

"Where am I?" he asked on a groan, propping himself up with some

difficulty. The ground was cold, but oddly cushioned, and while the ceiling
was only roughly four feet off the ground, it was not a cramped space.

"Underneath the rubble of Madam Malkin's," Fred replied. "You've been

passed out nearly an hour. Orders are to wait here until further notice."
Which loosely translated to, they were losing and in a few hours they would
be released, only to dig out the bodies amongst the rubble and return home
empty-handed, once again. He might have said something further, but his
eyes caught sight of movement and he realised for the first time that they
were not alone in the hole. Neville Longbottom, Dean Thomas and
Lavender Brown sat huddled together in the far corner. Lavender had a gash
to the head, but looked only slightly pale, and the rest of the group seemed
relatively unharmed.

Granger was separated from the rest, and so it took him a moment longer
than it should have to spot her. The panic hit him a second later, flooding
his senses, tempting him to give in to the fight or flight adrenaline coursing
through his body. It was an effort to erect the mental barrier and push her
out, until her anxiety only skitted around the edges of his consciousness.

"What's wrong with Granger? Is she hurt?"

Fred shook his head, his wand twitching with the movement.
"Claustrophobic."

Draco swore. "What can we do?"

"Nothing." He shrugged at Draco's hard look. "I've seen her this way
before. She'll be alright once she's over the panic attack. Then she'll mostly
just sleep. But if you touch her now, she'll freak out."

She was already freaking out. Her legs were drawn up to her chest, and,
with her head tipped back that way, Draco could make out the frantic
fluttering of the pulse at her neck. He thought her lips might be moving,
tumbling shakily over some silent prayer, but then the light vanished and
that suffocating darkness swallowed her up with the rest of them.

"No magic," Fred breathed. "Shacklebolt's orders."

"Don't we have any of those light-up things?"

"Apparently they need some sort of battery." Draco could practically feel
his crooked grin in the dark. "Who knew?"

Sometimes, Draco hated being a wizard.

::

It had been thirteen minutes exactly before her heart slowed enough to give
her lungs a chance to breathe. Fifteen minutes after that, a brief debate
struck up between Fred and Neville over whether or not it should be
considered entirely inappropriate if they spooned in order to share body
heat. Lavender promptly solved the problem by shoving herself between
them both and Neville's snores had risen to join the heavy breathing of the
others within just seven minutes. Hermione kept her eyes fixed on the neon
numbers flashing on the wrist-watch Harry had bought her for her
eighteenth birthday. It was exactly eleven minutes past midnight. If she
were at Grimmauld Place, she would be in bed, warm, comfortable, and still
stuffed from one of Molly's home-cooked meals.

She tried to relax her body, to trick her mind into believing she was right
there, covers pulled up and over her chin. But that just made her shiver
harder, and sent hunger pains rippling down her stomach, so she shifted her
focus back to the consistent flow of time around her wrist.

At seventeen minutes past midnight, movement struck up a few meters to

her left. She knew it was Draco before his familiar smell assaulted her
senses. He was the only one still awake, and she could not imagine the
others leaving the warmth of their nest to bother her. She kept her eyes on
the numbers, neither acknowledging, nor disputing his presence at her back.
The silence held until twenty-seven minutes past midnight.

"Fuck, it's cold down here." His voice was barely a whisper, but he was
closer than she had thought and she could not help startling, just a little.

"I'm sure Neville wouldn't mind if you snuggled up to him," she returned
after a pause.

He snorted softly. "I bet he wouldn't. I actually caught him ogling me the
other day when I came out of the shower. If he wasn't so blatantly in love
with Hannah Abbott, I'd think he was gay."

Hermione stiffened slightly. "Neville and Hannah?"

"Merlin, you really are blind."

She did not reply and silence fell awhile. Draco shifted restlessly beside her.
She briefly considered snapping at him, but she was exhausted from her
minor meltdown, and her own body was shivering so hard she was
practically convulsing. He moved again, and his arm brushed against her
back.

"Are you cold?"

"No, I'm fucking boiling." The quivering in her voice rather spoiled the
effect, but she thought he caught the sarcasm. Perhaps she should have
batted away his arm when he placed it over her waist, or struggled, if only
for show, when he tucked her body neatly against his, her back pressed to
his chest. But he was warmer than the ground, and less claustrophobic than
the nest of people on the other side of the large hole, and her body had
already melted into his while she was trying to decide what to do anyway.

"How much longer do you think we'll have to stay down here?" It came out
slurred and disjointed, hindered by her close-to-numb lips, but he seemed to
understand.

"Until the Apparition blocks go down. Or until back-up gets here to finish
those bastards off." They both knew the likeliness of the latter. The number
of fully trained Aurors was dismal at best, and most of those were used for
strategy and training up further recruits. They would be lucky if even fifty
more members could be spared.

Draco's hand was roaming, brushing her stomach, her thighs, her hips,
sliding up her arms and rubbing them to create warm friction. It was all
innocent enough, and maybe she was more perverted than she'd realised to
be getting so restless because of this, but it had been weeks since they had
last been together, and she had become far too accustomed to using him as
some form of release from daily frustrations. She managed to stop her
breath catching in her throat when his rough palm slid back up her body,
accidentally dragging her shirt and brushing bare skin. He must have felt
some change in her, though, because his movements became slower. More
calculated. He leaned up slightly and pressed his face into her hair, blasting
hot pants of air across her sensitive ear.

"Don't..." she tried, weakly. His lips pressed against her, teeth tugging at her
earlobe.
"You're freezing." His voice was a whisper of breath across her neck, and a
reflexive shudder had the hairs on her arms standing up, her nipples
pebbling beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. His mouth moved down her
neck, lips pausing to suck and tease the place where her shoulder began. His
hand slid up her stomach, fingers ghosting over the curve of her breast. She
longed for him to make the final move, to press just a little closer, just a
little harder. But his hand remained still, his lips working their way back up
to her ear. "Let me touch you."

He surely didn't think she would stop him now? She nodded her head and,
when he didn't move fast enough, arched her chest into his hand. He met
her halfway, lifting the weight of it in his hand, and they both let out small
groans of pleasure. He cupped her breast whole, drawing his hand back to
run his thumb over her stiffened nipple, before cupping her again. He
became less patient at the soft moan that escaped her lips, dragging her shirt
and bra up over her breasts with an almost clumsy tug. His fingers found
her left nipple, rolling it between his finger and thumb, and when he nudged
her onto her back, his mouth dropped to her chest, lips latching urgently to
her.

She slipped her fingers into his hair, arching desperately up to him. When
his hand started to trail down her stomach, she tensed. "Not here. The
others..."

"They're asleep."

"They'll wake up."

"Not if you're quiet."

The button on her jeans gave with little effort, and his hands slid down
beneath the band of her knickers. She gasped loudly, hips bucking up into
his hand, even as her own hand wrapped around his wrist to stop him. "Too
loud."

He smirked and took her hand in his, planting a kiss over her palm before
pressing it to her mouth. She might have protested further, but his fingers
were moving now and she was helpless to do anything but move back
against him, pressing her palm tightly over her lips. It was an effort to hold
back the noises that so desperately wanted to break free. The pressure was
building inside of her, filling her every pore, spreading down to her toes and
fingers. Draco had long since started up a steady rhythm against her thigh.
She pressed her leg up against him as his pace sped up, her free hand
drifting over his shoulders, feeling muscles tensed underneath smooth skin.

She felt as though she would burst, and when Draco's thumb moved up to
brush her clit once, twice, three times, her body tensed, limbs freezing in
place for a split second of suspended animation. She came against him, the
intensity of the orgasm only increasing in her attempt to stay silent. It was
several long seconds before she drifted down enough to feel Draco's head
pressed into the crook of her neck, his breathing just as laboured as hers,
body limp against her.

"It's not the blood."

"What?"

Draco moved his head, rising up on his forearms so that their heads were no
longer touching, but she could still make out his whispered words. "This.
Me. Wanting you. It's not the blood, or the bond, or the life debt, or
whatever stupid thoughts have been making you avoid me." He paused, and
she thought he might leave it at that. But then he ran a hand agitatedly
through his hair, and let out a noise too quiet for her to make out clearly.
She thought he sounded frustrated. "It's... you're so stubborn."

"I am not!"

"And you have OCD worse than anyone I've ever known. You're generally
infuriating. And your eyes," he added, as though the thought had occurred
to him just then.

"My eyes?"

"They go all dark when you're angry. Or horny. I like that."

"I'm still made at you," she said after a pause, but she did not resist when he
tugged her into his arms, tucking her head neatly under his chin, and the
hole did not seem so claustrophobic anymore, with him there.

::

Draco watched Hermione shuffle around the room in what had to be the
worst attempt at stealth he had witnessed since Longbottom's 'sneak attack'
on Fred. She stubbed her toe on the edge of the bed, only remembering to
muffle her curse halfway through. She stumbled over her own feet whilst
struggling to slide her legs into her tracksuit bottoms.

"Granger, as amusing as this display is, I hope there is some reason as to

why you are clambering around the room like an elephant at..." he checked
his watch and groaned, "three in the morning."

"Teddy had a nightmare." Even her whisper was loud. "He doesn't want to
be on his own."

"So you're what? Taking him out for a walk?"

She shot him a glare. "No. But I didn't think he would appreciate me
slipping into his bed with nothing but your t-shirt on."

"Fair point," he conceded. He watched her struggle a moment longer. "Why

don't you just bring him in here with us?"

The way she suddenly froze might have been comical, had he not been so
fucking tired. Even through the dim light of the room, he could practically
feel the disbelief rolling off her in waves. "It wouldn't bother you?"

"I wouldn't have offered if it did." The warm smile curling her lips had him
shifting uncomfortably. He turned his face into the pillow and shut his eyes.
"Just hurry up before I fall asleep and you wake me up again."

Teddy was still sniffling pathetically when she led him into the room. Draco
rolled to his side to make room. The mattress was narrow, but with
Hermione tucked against his body, and Teddy curled into hers, they
managed to fit with only a little discomfort. He slung his arm over
Hermione's waist, his hand settling on Teddy's stomach. It was strange, the
way both those bodies could fit into his grasp, and an overwhelming wave
of something he didn't quite recognise had him pulling them closer, tugging
on one to draw the other back.

He was already half-asleep when his father's voice suddenly drifted to the
surface of his mind. It was something he had told Draco the day they
discovered the Dark Lord planned to murder him. This is yours now, Draco.
Take care of it. He had been talking about his mother, and their quickly
depleting family. In fact, Draco was fairly certain his father would be
convulsing in his grave, just to see Draco now. But his arm curled tighter
around the two bundles of warmth against him. And when he awoke the
next morning to find Granger's elbow in his gut, Teddy sprawled out across
them both, it was an effort to be annoyed with them both.

::

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to dance with you."

Hermione's eyebrow arched in an expression usually reserved for Ron when

he tried to make a joke. But Draco ignored her, or perhaps it was not as
effective on him, because he continued to slide the yellow, rubber gloves off
her hands, depositing them with a look of distaste into the sink. The kitchen
door was open, and if Ron or Harry saw them like this, it would lead to an
argument that Hermione was too tired to deal with in that moment. But she
did not stop Draco lifting her hands and placing one on his shoulder, his
own hand gripping her other. He wrapped his free hand around her waist
and tugged her into his body, and when he moved, she moved with him. She
had only ever danced with one guy before, and that was Victor Krum. But it
hadn't really been like this. They hadn't been holding each other, for one. He
had been too much a gentleman to try, and she too shy to initiate anything.

She liked dancing this way, she realised. Or maybe it wasn't the dancing at
all. They could barely hear Molly's scratchy record drifting down the hall
from the living room. She didn't really think they were moving in time to
the music at all. But her head was pressed against his chest, her face turned
up into the crook of his neck. And his arm curved round her back, holding
her to him, his hand on her hip shifting to trace circles over the soft wool of
her jumper. It was the most physical contact they had had since the
argument that did not involve sleeping or sexual contact. Hermione felt
some of that tension in her stomach start to creep away. She pressed herself
just a little closer to him, and he hummed, a low satisfied sound.

For three blissful minutes, there was only the wavering voice of some
singer she did not recognise, and the soft brush of her jumper on his shirt.
No bitter arguing, or uncertain silence. Just quiet. And Hermione wondered
if that hadn't been the point all along.

::

"Why are you telling me this?"

Draco blinked. Turned his gaze back to Hermione and frowned in

confusion. "What?"

"You were saying..." But she trailed off, a cautious look in her eyes that he
didn't like, and turned back to cutting up Teddy's sausages with a small
shrug. "It doesn't matter."

"No, what did I say?" She glanced at him, all quiet hesitation and
uncertainty, and he felt something in his stomach go cold. "I was doing it
again, wasn't I?"

"It doesn't matter, Draco. You just must have spaced out for a moment."

But that was the thing. Because, now that he stopped to think about it, he
remembered Hermione asking Teddy what he wanted for tea, and he saw
her slicing up the food into manageable pieces, but there was nothing in
between. No journey from A to B. His fist unclenched, and a black pen
dropped on top of the pad of paper below. There were three numbers there -
572 - and the name Bogswallow written in the carefully scripted hand of a
Malfoy. Hermione slowly sank into the chair opposite him, eyes tracking
his expression carefully.
"Tell me," Draco whispered.

She swallowed, and he thought she would deny him again. But then she
sighed and said, "You were talking about Quidditch with Teddy. And
then...you suddenly stopped and asked for a pen and paper. You wrote down
the number, and that name, and told me if ever the situation arose where I
was in danger and you weren't around-" Her voice became slightly
strangled here, and she cleared her throat with a blush. "If ever I should
need to, I should go to Gringotts, and ask for a goblin called Bogswallow.
He would take me to Vault 572. You said there would be enough money in
there to get me and Teddy by." She paused. "You said the goblin would be
expecting us. That he would have made arrangements to get us out."

Draco stared at the words until they wavered around the edges, the numbers
and letters blurring to make indecipherable marks upon the off-white page.
"I don't remember," he whispered. Had never even heard of Vault 572, or
Bogswallow. Hermione's hand traveled across the table, and he thought she
might take his. But she changed her mind at the last minute, and snatched
the piece of paper instead, crumpling it easily in her palm.

"It doesn't matter," she repeated, firmly. She stood, taking Teddy's half-
eaten meal and adding it to the small pile of waiting dishes. Teddy was
watching him, Draco now realised, and his hair was a shade of blue that
made him think of the Lake at Hogwarts, reflecting a sky that was about to
burst into rain.

"Are you dying?" he asked, and there was a sort of resigned fear to his tone
that made Draco's chest ache.

"No one is dying," Hermione snapped, and when she dropped the plates into
the sink with too much force, sending soapy water down her shirt, she made
no move to dry it, leaning heavily against the kitchen counter with her head
ducked out of sight.

Draco watched her, even as Teddy clambered almost painfully up onto his
lap. She breathed deeply a long moment. But then she was back to the
dishes, and the tension had left her body on a sigh.
"Don't worry," Teddy whispered, and Draco realised he was watching
Hermione too. "Sometimes I forget things too."

"That's right," Hermione nodded. "It's just stress, or exhaustion." And then,
almost to herself, "You're fine."

::

They slept together for the first time on a night when Fred returned to
Grimmauld Place with coveted fireworks and promises of a display that
managed to lure out the few residents still living in the House of Black. She
hadn't really been planning it. Not even when Draco caught her eye, that
familiar smirk on his face as he flashed his eyes once to the door, then
disappeared up the stairs. But it had been on her mind for a while. It was
something she had decided she wanted to do. Because, even though this
thing that they had could not possibly be described as a healthy, functioning
relationship, she was beginning to understand what Ginny had told her all
the years ago, about needing someone, just to feel the warmth of another
human being.

But it wasn't just anyone; it was Draco, and when he lowered her back to
the bed, already trying to travel down her body, she tugged him back up. He
did not understand at first, and she blushed (because she was most certainly
not going to ask him for it). Besides, she thought she might chicken out if
they started a discussion. So she raised her hips until her intentions were
clear, and blushed again at the curious eyebrow he raised. He was hesitant
at first, and not at all like his usual demanding self. She found she did not
like that, and suckled on that spot on his neck that never failed to provoke
strong reactions, grinning briefly in triumph when his actions became less
careful.

It was not anything like it had been with Ron. Not that it had been bad with
Ron. Just that back then they were so inexperienced, and it was more about
the being together because they were supposed to, rather than the burning,
addictive need that had her clutching at Draco's shoulders, moving under
him, with him, until she wasn't sure who was setting the pace anymore. She
came before him, head tipped back, body arching almost painfully. Her eyes
snapped open to catch his own release, and she greedily drank in the sight
of him, eyes clenched shut and mouth open on a silent groan.

She thought she would always remember him like this, with all those walls
down, vulnerable and completely hers, if only for that one moment. She
held him to her when he tried to roll away, and he quickly gave up the
struggle, resting his head on her chest. And when she awoke the next
morning, blushing and uncertain, he kissed the hesitation out of her, until
she forgot that it was supposed to be awkward and different now. Until she
forgot to think at all.

::

The day Marcus Flint died was the day Shacklebolt put a hold on their latest
experiments. Trapping people within their minds was one thing, he had
said. Breaching the very sanctity of the mind is wrong. Wrong. As if it were
really that simple. Just draw a line in the ground. Right and wrong. Right
was throwing people he had grown up with, shared a dormitory with, into
nothing short of a living nightmare. Wrong was doing something which
meant paperwork had to be filed, and an investigation would be set up after
the war.

He stared down at Flint's dead, cold body, and the sharp angles which had
baffled so many people. How could a child with such beautiful, pure parents
be so ugly? So flawed. His eyes were still behind his lids. His lips no longer
turned down at the corners. It was the most peaceful Draco had seen him
since he was sixteen years old, and Flint had passed out from drinking too
much coveted Firewhiskey.

He did not go to the funeral, despite a surprise letter from Greg asking him
to come. He did drink himself into a stupor, using up the last of the House
of Black's whiskey supply. He woke up to a hangover, Granger's stern face,
and a letter from Shacklebolt informing him that his and Fred's funding had
been cut.

::

"Sometimes, I think I could marry those boys."

Hermione wrinkled her nose at Dean, but Neville just laughed. Hannah and
Lavender exchanged pointed looks, clearly meant to question Dean's
sexuality, but he ignored them both, staring down at the sleeping Death
Eater with a mixture of pride and bitterness. It was a youngling though,
barely older than Hermione had been when she had first entered the war,
and so the usual hatred was lacking somewhat.

Three other bodies littered the ground, each slumped in a deep slumber,
fists clenched around the Dream Balls Draco and Fred had created. There
had been twelve of them originally, mostly younglings, with a few more
experienced eyes keeping watch. A training exercise, Ron had thought.
Rose Riley, a middle-aged Auror who could bake a cake to rival Molly's,
then kill a man in the blink of an eye, had agreed. The other Aurors and
Order members had come to the same conclusion. It was an introduction
into the war - bring out the children and see what they can do when mummy
and daddy aren't around to supervise them anymore.

There were still a few struggles here and there - those who would not give
in so easily, until Dream Balls were forced into their palms. Hermione
caught Neville dealing with one particularly fierce one, who somehow
managed to split his lip on her elbow, despite the tight bonds restraining her.
Neville shot her a thankful smile when Hermione rushed over to help. She
was busy pressing the Dream Ball into the Death Eater's clenched fist
without touching it herself, so she did not see the exact moment Parvati
Patil died. Maybe there was a flash of green in the corner of her eye -
though later she would suspect her memory had added that detail itself.
Parvati made no sound. By the time Hermione turned, she had already
fallen, eyes glowing with the emerald shine of her death.

Others were running to her side - as if that could help. As if it would do any
fucking good at all. Parvati was dead. Deaddeaddeaddeaddead. And
Hermione knew she could not possibly have heard it over all that noise.
Over all the screams, and shouts, and sudden flood of Death Eaters into the
area. Her eyes had darted up to where Blaise stood, wand falling from
where it had been pointing at Parvati, and her mind must have made up the
rest later, when she took the time to piece it all together. Because there was
no possible way she could have heard his laughter from twelve meters
away, over all that noise.

Hatred as she had never felt it swelled within her. Building, crushing,
pulsing, until it consumed her, became her. She was running across the
battlefield, and the curses and hexes that missed her did not even make a
blip on her radar. Her eyes were set on one man, and he had seen her, had
seen her and grinned. And she knew that when he ran, she should have left
him. Remembered Moody's warnings in training all those years ago - that,
whatever happened, whoever it was, you never, never let them draw you out
alone. But she was still running, sprinting, darting over bodies and debris.
Something exploded a few feet to her left and she stumbled, dropped to her
hands. But she did not stop, pushing forwards, until the battlefield faded
away and it was only her and Zabini, and his maniacal grin.

The jet of purple from her wand told her that she had cast a spell, before her
mind could process the action. Zabini deflected it easily, and the next, but
made no move to do anything but block her off.

"How very Gryffindor of you, Granger," he called, his voice ringing out in
the silence that enveloped them. "Offering yourself as a sacrifice so that
your little friend might not go to the Spirit World alone."

She hurled another curse, and this time the jet was emerald - the shade of
Harry's eyes when he was furious. Zabini laughed and she thought he might
have clapped, had it not meant dropping his wand.

"Better, Granger. Very brave. But not good enough, I'm afraid."

She wanted to hurt him. To make him feel that acid burn that consumed her
chest every time a friend, or classmate fell at her feet. Her chest was
heaving, and her throat burned. But she could not spit out the right words.
Could not make her mind settle enough to think. Zabini stepped to his left,
and she realised that they were moving now, edging around in a slow circle,
like some kind of twisted dance.

"How does it feel, Granger? Knowing you'll never truly be a witch."

"How does it feel knowing a dirty little Mudblood has powers and
intelligence that you'll never be able to compete with?"

Some of his calm left him, and anger flashed briefly through his black eyes.
"You're a fraud! You're nothing but a fraud!" Orange light crashed through
the air towards her, and she dived to the left before she could think to block
it. Zabini's control was slipping visibly now. His eyes were burning, his hair
mussed from his hand sweeping through it agitatedly while he spoke. He
strode closer to her, yelling another curse, and this time she managed a
weak shield. "Your magic - it's not real magic! It's like those Muggle
magicians who wave a plastic wand and pull a rabbit from the hat! It's not
real!"

Hermione was almost entirely certain that he had completely lost it now,
and the thought was enough to fan a flame of fear amongst the anger and
adrenaline. In a duel with a sane, reasonable man, there would be no
contest. She was the better fighter. She was furious. But there was nothing
sane, or reasonable about this man. Jets of light shot dangerous close to her
body, red, orange, purple, green. She ducked, dived, forgot everything she
had ever been taught in favor of her own sense of survival. A crimson jet
struck close enough to have her clutching the side of her face in pain. Warm
liquid oozed over her fingertips, and Zabini's lips twisted into a snarl. The
next curse hit her in the chest. She stumbled, and the one after had her on
her knees.

Zabini was drawing closer now, and her wand - her wand! She saw it at the
same time that he did. She lunged for it, stretching out her arm, but he was
upright, and faster, and he kicked the stick away from her before she could
do more than brush her fingers against the wood. There was a pause, and
then his foot came crashing down on her arm. Her own scream did not
completely drown out the crunch of the bone breaking. Her stomach
churned. Zabini only looked marginally more disgusted when she vomited
at his feet.

When she was done, he reached down and lifted her by the hair so that she
was kneeling before him. "Smokes and mirrors, Granger. Illusions. Nothing
but a pretender. Crucio."
A scream tore through her throat, her body convulsing, arching desperately
away from the agonizing heat that tickled her bones. It ended after only a
few seconds, and the foot connecting with her stomach was only enough to
steal her breath on an inhale, her mind too spent to acknowledge the pain.
He drew her upright again, one hand fisted in her hair, tipping her head
back so that her throat was completely exposed, and he spoke with his lips
pressed against her skin. "It's your fault he's gone this way. It's your fault.
You've made him ill. Sick in the head." His lips slid up until his words fell
into her ear, and her throat began to burn with the acrid taste of vomit again.
"You poisoned him. But once you're dead, he'll realize. And he'll come back
to us."

The laughter bubbled up inside her chest before her mind could think to
process it. The sound was harsh and bitter, and wet from the blood pouring
out of her nose. "I bet it really pisses you off, doesn't it? I bet it just makes
you sick to your stomach. Knowing that he's had his hands and his mouth
on me, desiring me and my filthy, disgusting blood."

His hand came down hard on the side of her head, and bright dots filled her
vision for long seconds. She thought she might vomit again, and when
Zabini slid his index finger down her cheek, gathering the blood there and
placing it in his mouth, she was sure she would.

"You're insane," she whimpered, the words catching in her throat. Zabini
chuckled, and the sound made her skin crawl.

"There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad, which none but madmen know."
His wand dug into the base of her throat, and she suddenly could not help
but think of how she had wanted to be a magician once. When she was
about seven or eight. She had read a book about them and the ambition had
come on so suddenly, she had later wondered if that hadn't been her
subconscious acknowledging the magic within her. Her father had bought
her a beginner's magic set one weekend. She had worn the pointy hat, and
star-covered cloak, and held up her plastic wand. Are you watching closely?
she would ask, then draw a coin from her mother's ear, a fake flower from
midair, vanish the ball underneath the plastic cup.
Zabini's hand in her hair tightened painfully, and it was difficult to blink
back the tears of pain. "Any last words, Mudblood?"

Her eyes darted to the left. To the sight of Neville approaching, slowly,
silently, wand drawn over his head. He did not meet her gaze, and she
wondered if she looked desperate, or just resigned. But she saw the moment
he drew breath, and quickly turned her face towards Zabini's, her lips
twitching up into a smirk. "Are you watching closely?" she whispered.

He did not cry out, though the curse must have been a painful one, to have
so much blood, blood everywhere, pouring from great, gashing wounds that
criss-crossed his chest. He lay on his back at her knees, and she only knew
he was still alive because a dead man could not watch her with a gaze so
full of pure hatred. She was not breathing, she realised, and dropped her
weight to her hands as she sucked in a painful gasp of air. She was hovering
directly above him now, their faces barely a foot apart. This close, she could
hear the rattle of his breath when the blood rose like bile in his throat.

"It's not real, you know," he wheezed, and how he could find it within
himself to be cruel as he lay dying before her, Hermione would never know.
"Whatever he may have told you. Or made you think. It's all lies." He
grabbed her arm before she could think to move away and dragged her
down. His head lifted, his eyes boring into hers, and it was strangely
reminiscent of the time Draco had arrived at Grimmauld Place, and the
wonder in his eyes as he had tracked the blood on her chin. Zabini sneered.
"You think he's so fucking perfect? So fucking redeemed? Ask him how his
mother died. You ask him that."

"Hermione." Neville stood over her. One of his arms was bleeding, and he
held it against his chest. In his good hand, he held her wand. He took it, and
he helped her stand, grimacing with the effort but not letting her go until
she was steady on her feet - or as steady as she ever would be.

Zabini still bled on the floor between them. His eyes were shut, but she
knew he was listening. Waiting. There was a Dream Ball in her pocket. She
could have pressed it into his palm, and watched him drift away. Perhaps
the Healers at St. Mungo's could have done something for him. She lifted
her wand, and pointed it directly at his chest. "Avada Kedavra," she said,
and then he was gone.

::

Draco was with Teddy when they started to arrive. There were not many of
them - others had been sent to different safe houses, more still winding up
in Mungo's. The members who had made it back to Grimmauld Place were
silent. They had failed. Or perhaps they had not. It was difficult to tell these
days. In the beginning, any victory had been greatly celebrated - a step in
the right direction. Now, each death was a failure all its own, and a victory
today could easily mean a failure tomorrow. The Aurors who were just
passing through and would be gone in a few weeks to be replaced by others
did not pause in the kitchen. But Neville collapsed into a chair while
Hannah fetched the first aid kit, and Lavender flicked the kettle on, moving
to stare out of the window. Fred took the whiskey out from under the sink,
and made as if to fill a glass, but changed his mind and chugged straight
from the bottle instead.

The kettle boiled quickly, that thin squeal filling the room, but Lavender did
not move and it began to cool untouched. There was a lot of blood on the
kitchen table now, thanks to Neville dripping everywhere, and Draco
wondered briefly if he should remove Teddy from the room. But the boy
had crawled up into his lap, as he had taken to doing recently, and was
watching Hannah treat Neville with curiosity, rather than horror.

"Who?" Draco asked, because Hannah was crying silently, and Lavender
had still not moved.

"Parvati," Fred replied. Draco had not realised how afraid he was of hearing
Granger's name until his body sagged against Teddy's. But he had known it
could not be her really, because the death of Hermione Granger would be
the end of the war as they knew it. He might have risked Fred's knowing
smirk and asked where she was, but there was a commotion at the back
door, and they were all jumping to their feet, wands drawn at the ready.

Granger half-stormed, half-stumbled in. The first thing Draco saw was the
blood - endless amounts, covering her skin and clothes, clotting in her hair
so that it rested lank around her shoulders. There was a cut above her
forehead and she clutched her right arm against her chest in a way that told
Draco it was broken.

"-to see a Healer, Hermione."

She paused, but did not turn to face Dean. She breathed deeply before
answering, and Draco thought that a smarter man would have seen the
warning signs by now. It was all there in her clenching fists, and tightly
closed eyes. Anyone less than a Gryffindor would have backed out. But
Dean pressed on, clearly frustrated.

"Your arm is broken, your stomach is bleeding- you took a fucking Crucio
to the chest!"

Hermione sucked in a breath through her nose, and Draco lifted Teddy off
his lap. "Go find your Grandmother," he whispered in the boy's ear, shoving
him a little when he hesitated. Draco expected shouting, screaming, even
went so far as to push his chair back, lest he should have to intervene. But
the air rushed out of Granger in such a way that she looked almost as
though she had entirely deflated. Her shoulder dropped, her head bowed.

"Hermione." Fred's voice was low and soothing, and when he placed his
hand on her shoulder, she did not flinch away. "Why don't you let mum take
a look at your arm, hm? We'll get you some painkillers, and then we'll clean
you up, okay? Hermione?"

She stepped out of his reach, and when she limped towards him, Draco
thought she might ask him to help her. But she reached into her pocket and
pressed her palm down onto the table in front of him. He recognised the
wand before her hand fell away. Did not need to see the family emblem
carved into the dark wood to know who its owner was. He glanced up, but
Hermione had not stopped, and the door clicked shut quietly behind her.

::

Hermione managed to summon the energy to climb the three flights of stairs
to the bathroom, and flick on the shower before she collapsed. Not literally.
She could still function. Still managed to cling to the toilet seat as she
vomited until there was only acid bile left in her stomach. Still dug up the
will to clamber up and into the bath tub, fully clothed and clutching her
broken arm to her chest. It did not hurt so much now, but her mind was
filled with the dull, pulsing ache of it. She could not stop trembling, and she
knew she ought to have gone to Molly straight away. The remnants of
Zabini's Crucio still shuddered through her body, catching in her throat and
making her leg twitch occasionally. But she was just so damn cold! The
kind of cold that seeps right through clothes, and skin, and blood, and clings
to the bones.

Zabini's blood lifted off her skin and clothes, pooling in the tub beneath her
with the rush of the shower, mixing with her own blood - her filthy,
horrible, unworthy, wrong blood. For a split second, she thought she could
almost tell the difference - see the point where he ended and she began. But
then the water carried it all to the drain, and it did not matter anyway.

The bathroom door opened, and she hoped for Ron or Harry. Draco drew
the curtain aside, his pale features obscured slightly by the billowing steam
which rose from the tub. His expression was unreadable, but she thought
suddenly of the hatred in Zabini's eyes, that utter disgust when he had tasted
her blood, and something inside of her snapped. Her head tilted backwards,
knocking against the tile wall, and a sob caught somewhere between her
throat and her chest. Draco was there in the next instant. He gathered her up
into his arms, and she worried briefly about dripping over him, before she
realised that he was already soaking wet. She curled her good hand into the
heavy fabric of his wet shirt, pushed her face into his chest.

"Do you hate me now?"

Draco stiffened at the question. She thought he might pull away, but he only
moved enough to cup her face in his hands, tilting her head up towards him.
"I could never hate you. Never. Do you understand? Never."

He pressed his lips to hers in a hard, bruising kiss that lasted only a brief
second. The next touch was gentler - a mere brushing of his mouth against
hers. He took her bottom lip between both of his and sucked lightly, barely
touching his tongue to hers before tilting his head to rest his forehead
against hers.

"Did he..." His voice stuttered and shook. He cleared his throat. Started
again. "He didn't touch you, did he?"

"No. Not... not like that."

"And you're alright?"

"I'm alright."

She expected him to say something more, to ask how it happened, or if

Zabini had said anything before the end. But he simply nodded, his wet
fringe sticking to hers, and then he stood, switching off the shower. He
tugged her up by her good arm and helped her out of the tub.

"Let's get you fixed up," he said, and they never spoke of it again.
*Chapter 12*: Chapter 11
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

Today I felt pass over me

A breath of wind from the wings of madness.

~Charles Baudelaire

The first time Granger approached Draco with the proposition to venture
out in to Muggle London to take Teddy to the park, he had laughed at her.
Not the outright, mocking chortle he might have risked once (because it
really was not worth a sexless week as a result). Just a slight snicker in the
back of his head. Because only a fool would risk leaving the safe house in
broad daylight - or what counted as broad daylight with the Dementor-
induced smog layering the sky. Not without a good, solid reason, such as
delivering a message - and even then, someone as targeted as Granger
would never be allowed.

Teddy was fine how he was.

Except. Well, now that he paused to think about it - how long had it been
since the boy had last been outside Grimmauld Place? Six months? Seven?
Draco did not know much about the previous places the boy had lived. But
he knew that most of the family safe houses were in the country - meaning
lots of space to run about and do... whatever it was that small children did.

And now that he had noticed, he could not help but notice. The way Teddy's
eyes would light up whenever anyone opened the front door, before his hair
sank in to a depressing shade of grey. The way he would choose to sit at the
kitchen window and stare up at the dark sky, rather than actually go to the
back garden and play as he had before. Draco supposed there was only so
much exploration to be gotten out of the small wilderness. The second time
Granger asked, he was still dubious.
Teddy began to regress, his silence outweighing the times he would actually
talk, and Draco agreed to ask Shacklebolt. The request was, of course,
denied. So the next day Draco and Hermione padded Teddy up in a coat that
was a few sizes too big and twined a scarf around his neck. If Molly's
calendar was right, they were supposed to be on the way out of Summer by
now. But the sun was a thing of the past, in a time when Dementors did not
stalk the streets, sending even Muggles in to the safety of their homes. They
could not see the beasts, but they could feel them. Draco read in a Muggle
paper that suicide rates were at there highest - though Draco wondered how
many of those 'suicides' were simply the Muggles explanation for random
Avada's that could not be detected by Muggle science.

Hermione fell silent the second they stepped out of the front door. Fred and
Ron came with them, potions dying their hair a deep brown - because two
red-heads and Granger's famous frizz would be sure to attract danger. Teddy
seemed to sense the need for caution. At least, he did not skip about with
the excitement Draco had seen brewing in his expression before they left.
Then again, maybe he was scared too. He did not look so happy now.

But then they reached the park, and there were other children, mothers
gossiping idly on the sidelines, fathers reading newspapers and checking
their watches with bored frowns. Teddy was hesitant, the urge to rush off
clear in his posture. He glanced up at Granger, waiting for her approval.

"Go on," Draco urged, shoving him a little. It was all the encouragement he
needed.

"We'll do the rounds a few times," Fred muttered in an undertone. "Check

things are alright."

He and Ron set off in opposite directions, circling the large play area. Teddy
stood by the monkey bars, seemingly content to watch the other children
swing from one bar to the next. Hermione bounced lightly on the balls of
her feet, wringing her hands together at her stomach.

"Granger," he tried, then in a firmer voice when she did not reply,
"Hermione. Stop. He's fine. We're fine. He's going to play on the swings
and the world is not going to fall apart."
She nodded, then nodded again, harder the second time. "You're right. Of
course he'll be okay. I just - what is that girl doing?"

"While I'm not entirely accustomed to the Muggle way of things," Draco
drawled, "I believe she is asking him to play with her."

They watched the scene unfold - the small, brunette girl shoving him in the
shoulder with a crooked grin before darting off. Granger would have rushed
forwards, if not for Draco's hand slipping round to hold hers. A second
later, the girl was back. A short discussion followed, the girl speaking
slowly as though to a child much younger than herself. This time when she
ran off, Teddy followed.

"You don't think we should be worried that he's already chasing after girls,
do you?" Draco asked lightly.

"It's tag," Hermione muttered. At his blank expression she sighed. "It's this
game where one person hits another and - oh, never mind."

"How...utterly barbaric." He drew her closer to him when she failed to react,
turning his face in to her curls to speak in to her ear. "Granger, will you stop
looking like you're about to jump him any second and swaddle him in
cotton wool."

"But what if he falls over and scrapes his knees? Or his hands! Maybe we
should have given him wrist guards..."

Draco short her an amused smirk. "Death Eaters and Dementors around
every corner and you're afraid he'll bang his head."

"When I was eight, I fell off the swing and broke my wrist! It was a very
traumatic experience!" He was sitting, with no recollection of having
approached the bench. Draco blinked the vertigo from his mind, and
Hermione startled at the sudden grip of his hand on hers. She turned her
gaze towards him, concern obvious in the hazel of her eyes. "What is it?"

He forced his grip to relax. "Nothing. I'm fine."

"You know, considering you keep telling me to relax, you should really-"

Teddy's face crinkled with silent laughter as he came soaring towards him.
Draco's outstretched hands caught the swing, sending it arching off in to the
air again on reflex. He blinked. Turned full circle. The swing came back to
him, and this time he caught it. Teddy was not smiling anymore. A hand
came down on Draco's shoulder, and when he flinched away Hermione
grimaced.

"Draco? What's wrong?"

"I feel a bit strange..."

He tilted back, falling to the bed with a cough. It was dark enough for him
to have a momentary panic attack over his lost sight. But then his eyes
adjusted and landed on Potter, the silver glint of his glasses as they caught
the moonlight, that scar barely visible behind his tufts of hair.

"Is that the truth, Malfoy?"

"The truth..."

The scene shifted. Sharp wood pressed against the base of his throat.
Harry's eyes glinted, cold and determined behind the protection of those
lenses. Draco's eyes drifted shut, waiting, waiting...

"Harry, stop!" Another voice, a commotion. Heated whispers. And Draco

knew that voice. Knew it so well. He yearned to open his eyes. To take
comfort in the familiar sight of her. But his lids were too heavy, and that
wood was at his head again, this time cooler, not pressing so hard. He
thought the room was calmer now, the bed softer beneath his aching body.
Then he heard those whispered words, and he did not think again for a long
time.

"-fine, he suffers from epilepsy. Happens all the time." Sound came
crashing back at the call of Fred's voice. Draco groaned, resisting the urge
to clamp his hands over his ears. Children calling, swings creaking, a
collective drone of murmuring voices. He opened his eyes to find
Hermione's face hovering above him, framed by a dull, gray sky. Relief
swam in her eyes, dropping on to her cheeks when she blinked too quickly.

"Thank God," she breathed, not bothering to dash the tears away as he
would have expected. She placed a hand on his forehead, brow crinkling at
what she felt there.

"What happened?" Was that his voice, so hoarse and dry?

"Fuck knows, mate." Fred dropped to a crouch beside him, the curious
onlookers having finally moved on. "You just fell to the ground and started
twitching like that time Dad stuck his finger in one of those plug locket
things."

"Socket," Hermione corrected absently. Then, to Draco, "Can you walk?"

He nodded (because this was humiliating enough without having to be

carried back to Grimmauld Place). He managed to rise to his knees, and
Fred heaved him up the rest of the way. Ron was studying him with a
mixture of pity and curiosity. Hermione just looked plain scared. Teddy
sniveled quietly to himself throughout most of the journey home, until
Hermione scooped him in to her arms, patting his head absently. Draco
spent the last few minutes of the trek trying to think of something
constructive to say, but Teddy slid out of Hermione's hold the second they
were through the front door and did not stop when Draco called to him.

"I'll go," Ron muttered, stalking off up the stairs.

Draco's eyebrow rose as he bit back his own annoyance. "That kid can sit
there and stare at Longbottom's bone poking out through his arm, but he
can't take a little dizzy spell?"

Hermione made a strange noise in the back of her throat which was half-
grown, half-groan and stormed off down the hall. The kitchen door
slammed shut behind her. Draco managed to resist the urge to gawk
(because Malfoys most certainly did not gawk).
"Why is everyone mad at me?" he demanded, and had it been anyone other
than Fred, he might have simply kept his mouth shut. He expected some
sarcastic comment, or a cocky grin at the very least. But Fred's expression
was grim when he glanced at him, his blue eyes lacking their usual mirth.

"It was pretty scary, mate," he confessed with a shrug. "One minute you
were fine, and the next you were on the floor. Your eyes were still open, but
you wouldn't wake up. You looked kind of dead."

Draco blinked. "But I'm fine."

"Now you are, yeah. But for those two minutes, we couldn't be was pretty
much ready to whip out her wand, right there in front of the Muggles. I've
never seen her lose it so quickly."

The sounds of Hermione's 'stress-cleaning', as Fred liked to refer to it,

echoed down the hall from the kitchen. A braver man might have attempted
to reason with her there and then. But Draco was no Gryffindor, and the
part of his mind that still clung to his Slytherin tendencies had him hiding
up in their room until the banging had faded and Mrs. Weasley was finally
able to claim her kitchen back.

He found her on their sofa, shivering in the confines of her thin cloak. She
did not speak when he sat beside her, and when he offered a cigarette she
threw a pointed glance to the one already resting between her fingers before
settling in to a stony silence. He lit up. Dragged the smoke in to his lungs
and held it there a long moment before it rushed from his mouth in a
billowing cloud.

"Teddy's mad at you," Hermione said, because she had never been one to
put up with silence for more than a few minutes. Draco rose an eyebrow at
the implication that Teddy was the only one with the problem, but bit back
the snarky comment. "He was really scared today."

"I'll speak to him later, when he's calmed down. Tell him that I'm fine. It
was just a fainting spell."
"He thinks you're dying." She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.
Worried it, until it was moist and swollen. "You would tell me, wouldn't
you? If something was seriously wrong?"

He made sure to hold eye contact as he answered, "Yes". The most basic
rule to lying undetected. She sighed in a way that made him think she didn't
believe him anyway.

::

Hermione made the decision to visit Gringrotts. It was foolish, of course,

and a complete suicide mission, according to Fred. There would be Death
Eaters everywhere, the Goblins were corrupt, Snatchers roamed Diagon
Alley when the war wasn't beating down the crippled streets. She was
completely out of her mind, he had said. (It did not stop him helping her to
perform the complex Disillusionment charms on them both and
accompanying her to the building).

It was not as bad as they had feared. Death Eaters were dying in battle too,
and not many could be spared to ward a bank that no longer held a quarter
of its former intake. The Goblins sat slumped behind their desks, some
writing dully on paper, others abandoning the presence of work to stare
blankly at the walls, ceilings, windows. A few had recent scars littering the
crinkled skin of their faces. All looked malnourished. While Goblins were
not quite as hated as disgusting little mudbloods, they were not treated
kindly, and those who did not drop their gaze at the sight of her glared, cold
black eyes bearing in to her skin.

She shivered, and almost pulled her wand, before remembering the sleek,
black hair dropping down her back, and the expensive robes which
pronounced her to be, if not Pureblood, at least wealthy enough to buy the
status. She and Fred crossed the hall quickly, targeting one of the more
nervous creatures with his head bent over a large, dusty book.

"Um, excuse me...pardon me..." She squinted at the faded name-plaque,

swallowing around the unfamiliar tones of her new voice. "Wagglesnorn, is
it?" The Goblin grunted, but did not raise his eyes. Hermione cleared her
throat and pushed forwards. "I was wondering if you could possibly help
me. I'm looking for a particular Goblin, by the name of Bogswallow?"

This time, he did look at her, beady black eyes that darted to hers and had
her Occlumensy flaring for no reason other than the piercing quality of that
stare. "I might know a Bogswallow. Then again, I might not. I suppose it all
depends on what a... distinguished young woman," and the way he snarled
it made it sound like an insult somehow, "would want with a lowly
employee such as him."

Ah. She had worried briefly that her disguise was not good enough, but now
she realised it was too good. He believed she would harm the Goblin. She
felt a brief pang of sympathy with a fellow creature who must live in
constant fear of harm or death, then a surge of pride that he was willing to
endure what would probably have been a beating for his insolence, had she
really been who he thought she was. "I'm not here to hurt him. A friend sent
me."

"A friend?"

"A friend who would prefer to remain unnamed." Wagglesnorn's eyes

narrowed suspiciously, and she realised she would lose him if she did not
act fast. "We are... were very close. He told me, should the situation arise
where I might need help, I would find it here."

Something in Wagglesnorn's expression shifted, and when he looked at her

now there was no hatred or suspicion in his eyes. They swept across her,
down the finely trimmed robes, over the expensive boots, taking in the
button nose and pale complexion, and she felt it all strip away under his
gaze. When he nodded, she felt the breath she had been holding rush from
her nose.

"Follow me."

She expected him to lead her in to the dank tunnel of vaults, so it was
somewhat of a surprise to step in to a small office, only slightly grander
than something she might expect to find in a Muggle bank. The Goblin sat
at the desk was near buried in paperwork, his gnarled hands flying back and
forth as he worked. He did not glance up when the door opened, and it was
not until Wagglesnorn spoke that he finally paused.

"Visitors for you, Bogswallow." The Goblin was smaller than Wagglesnorn,
and Hermione thought he looked older. He nodded once in response, but his
eyes did not leave hers. Wagglesnorn grunted. "Be quick. We haven't got all
bloody day to be catering to the needs of some pompous human."

The door clicked shut quietly behind him. Bogswallow held her gaze a
moment longer, before nodding, as though reaching some internal
conclusion. He dipped his quill in to the ink well resting on his desk,
drawing the wet nib across the page in a long, scrawling signature.

"What can I do for you?" he asked, after a pause.

"I need to get inside a vault."

He barely glanced at her this time. "Not my job."

"I was told to come to you specifically."

"All keys are to be handled over the front desks."

"I don't have a key."

His smirk was an ugly twisting of the lips. "Then you don't have a vault."

Hermione glanced at Fred, ignoring the sharp jolt that went through her
when black rather than blue eyes met her gaze. The tall brunette shrugged,
the gesture too loose for the otherwise stiff posture of his body. Hermione
sighed. Closed her eyes, counted to ten, and came to a decision. Stepping
forwards, she waited until Bogswallow lifted his eyes to hers again.

"The vault I'm looking for is number 572. And the person who sent me is
Draco Lucius Malfoy." He stilled. She tracked the changes that played out
across his face, subtle but there. The widening of the eyes, before they
narrowed in suspicion. The hesitation as he weighed her statement in his
mind.
"Mr. Malfoy may have opened a vault with us over the passed year." His
eyes swept over her in a deceptively dismissive gaze. "But you are not who
he spoke of."

"You can hardly expect that person to risk coming out in to the open, in
such times as these."

"Then, equally, you cannot expect an old Goblin such as myself to go by

faith alone. In such times as these."

"He must have known she would not simply turn up." She dropped the
banter, impatient to leave. "Is there not a password? Something only she
would know?"

Bogswallow hesitated, but for only a moment this time. "There is a way," he
began, the words slow and calculated, a careful caution in his eyes, "to
determine the rightful owner of the vault, and any who might have been
granted entrance."

"Okay, let's do it." Hermione stepped forwards, eager to begin so that they
might leave this blasted place.

"It is only a simple procedure. Should you be telling the truth." Bogswallow
clambered down the tall chair, and Hermione tilted her head down to hold
eye-contact as he reached the floor. "Should you be lying...well. Let it
suffice to say that death would be a more preferred option to most."

Fred's body tensed beside her, and Hermione felt his protest brewing before
he spoke. "Wait. Maybe this isn't such a good idea."

"I need to see what's inside that vault."

"And if you haven't been granted access? This is a Malfoy vault. Who
knows what crazy curses have been put on it!"

"Draco-"

"Is completely off his rocker half the time, and a broody bastard the rest."
Hermione bristled. "You're his friend. You should trust him."

"I trust him in so much as he trusts himself." When she raised an eyebrow,
he frowned. "Draco hasn't got a clue about this vault. Do you think if you
told him where you were today, he would be alright with this?"

"If I always stopped to think if Draco would approve of something I did, I

would never leave the house." She turned back to Bogswallow. Swallowed
down the trepidation rising in her throat. "This vault was meant for me. I
want to know why. Do it."

Bogswallow's head was tilted ever so slightly to one side, and she thought
he was regarding her with a somewhat thoughtful expression. Then again,
Goblins were a far cry from humans, and it was often impossible to pin
point their thoughts. He could have been contemplating the weather, for all
his eyes revealed. He turned to his desk without a word, using a key he
pulled from a chord around his neck to open the bottom drawer. He
positioned his body so that it shielded her view, though Hermione could not
have seen inside from where she stood anyway.

"All the vaults in Gringotts have a key," he said, and in his hands was a
small, black box. "These keys will only work for one vault. And sometimes,
only one person. The owner can charm a key so that it will curse anyone but
the person for whom it was intended. An archaic practice, largely ignored in
recent decades," he added with a dismissive shrug. "Most people do not
even know such a charm exists."

"But Draco did."

"The Malfoys have been clients of Gringotts for many, many years," was all
he replied. His index finger ran over the velvet of the box as he spoke, and
there was the muted click of a lock turning. The lid opened smoothly, with
the noiseless grace of a well oiled hinge. Nestled in a bed of violet silk sat a
tiny, silver key. Bogswallow lifted it to her, and there was a definite glint in
his eyes now - intrigue, she thought, but could not be sure. "If you will..."

She swallowed. A glance at Fred told her exactly what he thought of the
matter. She ignored him, clenching her fist, unclenching it. She reached for
the key. Fingers brushed smooth silk, touched down on cool metal. No pain.
No shift in the atmosphere. The world did not tilt on its axis. Her breath
rushed out on a nervous laugh. Fred shook his head like he thought she had
lost it, but he only grinned.

"Very well, Miss Granger," Bogswallow said, and he did not acknowledge
the brief panicked-surprise that must have flashed across her face. "If you
will follow me, I will personally escort you to vault 572."

"See. I told you it would be fine." Hermione flashed Fred a smug smile.
"And when we get down there-"

"There will be no 'we' I'm afraid." Bogswallow grinned, revealing several

missing teeth. "Only the key holder may enter the vault. He stays."

"She's not going alone!" Fred protested.

"He stays," Bogswallow repeated. "Or you both stay. Your decision."

Hermione met his blank stare and knew it was an argument she could not
afford to lose. Fred sighed at the apologetic smile she sent his way. "You're
fucking insane," he said, but then he placed his hands on her shoulders and
planted a kiss on her forehead. "Fifteen minutes."

"What?"

"That's how long you have before I start blowing this building to pieces
looking for you."

In the end, it only took a few minutes to reach the vault. It was not
particularly deep in to the maze of twisting tunnels - closer, she thought,
than her own vault - and the cart sped dangerously around each turn. She
half-expected Bogswallow to take the key and open the vault himself, until
she remembered what he had said about the thing being cursed. It was
suddenly a very daunting thing, to be standing there outside a vault Draco
had opened for her with no recollection of having done so. The thought
briefly entered her mind that this was a trap. But if it was, the Death Eaters
had gone to very elaborate lengths to capture her. She had been a sitting
duck since the moment she crossed the threshold in to Gringotts.

Summoning up some of that good old Gryffindor courage, she slid the tiny
key in to the lock and turned it. There was a symphony of clicks from deep
within, locks and bolts sliding past one another, until the whole thing tilted
open, creaking like an old man's joints. Hermione waited for the harsh
grating of stone against stone to stop before stepping to the space. The
content was impressive. Perhaps not as many Galleons as was in Harry's
vault (or had been, until he began donating to the war effort and the supply
quickly depleted). But there was enough. Enough to get away. Enough to
buy a place somewhere in the country, where she and Teddy would be safe.
That's what he had said, wasn't it?

She almost missed the envelope completely, only catching it as she turned
to leave. Her palms were sweaty, her fingers stiff, and it made it difficult at
first to peel away the seal and pull out the thin sheet of paper within. One
word lay on the page, scrawled in the elegant script of a Malfoy.
'Remember'.

Remember what? Remember him if he was dead? Remember something he

had yet to tell her in one of his fits of insanity?

Bogswallow's expression was carefully blank when she stepped out in to the
dimly-lit halls again, and so she could not tell if he had noticed the smarting
of her eyes.

"Miss?" he inquired, and she realised he was waiting for her.

Hermione breathed in deep - tasted the dank air on her tongue, the rich earth
on the back of her throat. "Let's go," she said, already clambering in to the
cart.

::

"It's rather predictable of you to want to become a Healer."

"Why? Because I have some Gryffindor Hero Complex that can never be
satisfied?"

He shot her a look she could not see in the darkness of the rubble they were
crouched under. "No. I just mean-" he shuffled, trying to shake life in to his
numbed legs without disrupting any loose debris. "I guess I figure there's
not much difference - being a soldier and being a Healer."

"How so?"

"Either way, it's you everyone's looking to. There's all these lives depending
on you - someone's mother, father, grandson, niece. And all you can do is
work as hard as you can, for as long as you can, until they're safe. Because
it's your job to save them."

Granger was silent a long moment. Her body was unusually still beside
him, and it bothered him because she was the one who could not stand these
long waits for the battlefield to be cleared, hiding among the debris like
sewer rats. But then she huffed a laugh, and he could just make out the puff
of air as it disturbed the dust around them. "For a Slytherin, that was a very
Gryffindor thing to say."

"That hurt, Granger."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

She was silent a moment. Then, "Some might even say the insight and
compassion you just displayed was worthy of a Huffflepuff."

He refused to speak to her for the rest of the wait.

::

"Maybe we shouldn't let Teddy fall asleep in here so often," Hermione

commented to the sight of Draco lowering the limp child in to their bed.
The boy let out a low whine in his sleep at the loss of body heat, but did not
stir. "He hardly ever sleeps alone anymore. And I don't mind him being in
with us, but it can't be healthy for his development."

"It's war. He's hardly going to develop normally."

"But I read in a child rearing book that-"

"Granger." His smile was small but amused. "He's fine. Leave him be." She
might have argued further, if not for the way he was looking at her, eyes
dark in a way that she could not recognise. Almost as though a shadow had
past over them, crowding the gray so that the black from the pupils seemed
to spill out across the iris. Sadness. Resentment. Anger. There was longing
there too, but not the usual hunger that meant he might pounce on her at any
moment. When her hands moved to unbutton her shirt, he watched her, but
made no move to help.

"What's with you tonight, anyway?" she asked, draping the blouse over the
back of the chair. The rest of her clothes fell off systematically until she
stood shivering and nude in the dim light. Draco held out the worn robe she
had stolen from Ron years ago and she tugged it around her gratefully.
"You've been acting weird all evening."

He said nothing, simply watching her from his seat at the end of the bed. It
irked her - that air of detachment that surrounded him - and she turned her
back on him, gathering her hair up in agitated handfuls to pin it up at the top
of her head. She was suddenly and irrationally angry, seeing him so
controlled. So unreachable. She snatched up the bottle of scented shower
gel from the dressing-table - a coveted gift from Fred, purchased, she
suspected, on the black market - and stormed past him to the door.

"Fine," she hissed. "Have your secrets."

It was not until she reached the bathroom, three doors down, that she
realised he had followed her. The anger in her chest rose and peaked,
slowing her movements, clouding her mind. Draco paid no heed to her
glare, closing the door behind him with a gentle click. He leant against the
wood, watching, always fucking watching, with that infuriating calm of his.
The bath was slow to run and she dumped too much of the sweet scented
soap in to the water in her anger. The loss of such a rare item was poignant,
and it was this which had her eyes smarting. This and only this. And still
Draco watched.

"Get out." She did not shout it. The anger was quickly subsiding in to that
bitter exhaustion which sometimes overwhelmed and she wanted, needed to
be alone for this. He did not move. "Draco, please. I want you to leave."

Her eyes were pressed tightly shut when he finally did move, but she could
sense the nearing heat of his body, and his hands slid soft and warm across
her cheeks to cup her face in his palms. "Why are you crying?" he
whispered, his thumbs moving over the wet trails there.

"I'm not crying," she returned, and even she could hear the petulant tone to
her voice. "I'm angry, that's all." And scared. So fucking scared all the time.
Scared for the war, scared for her parents, scared for Teddy. Scared for
Draco and his mind. Tired of seeing the flash of confusion and despair in
his eyes as he lost chunks of time, no recollection of where he had been,
what he had done for hours at a time.

His thumbs were still caressing her face, and his lips brushed her mouth in a
barely-there touch. "I'm sorry," he muttered, then again, as though he had
found the magic word to make it all okay and all he had to do was say it
enough. Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry, again and again as he kissed her in an
achingly sweet caress of his lips against hers. When his hands moved to the
fastening of her robe she pulled back. He followed, but his fingers were still
on the sash.

"Let me touch you," he whispered, the words a rush of warm breath against
her cheek. "Please." And she melted against him, his forehead coming down
to rest against hers as he slowly drew the robe apart, rough material
brushing her skin as it slid from her body. She worked at the buttons of his
shirt while he ran the rough palms of his hands over her breasts, her nipples
hardening at the sensation. He helped her to unbuckle his belt, pushing his
jeans down over his hips. She stepped in to the warm bath while he worked
on his shoes and socks, and the hunger in his eyes as he paused to watch her
body sink in to the steaming water sent a shot of heat straight to her groin.
She thought he might grow impatient then. Sex with Draco was certainly
never a rushed affair, but she had come to learn that he preferred it to be
passionate, bordering on slightly rough. But he took his time, kicking his
jeans off and stepping carefully in to the tub. There was an awkward couple
of moments where the small bath tub struggled to accommodate them both,
water sloshing over the sides until Draco took the initiative and scooped her
up to sit in his lap. She moved to take him in her hand, but he stopped her,
smiling at her confused frown. He held her face in his hands and kissed her,
slow and deep, a delicious heat seeping from his mouth to hers, spreading
through her body.

"You're so lovely," he whispered against her, and she felt something sharp
catch in her throat as he moved down to kiss it. She blinked hard, but it was
not enough, and the tears spilled hot and steady on to her cheeks. It took
Draco a moment to notice, and when he did he did not say a word. He
tugged at her thighs and she positioned herself over him, meeting his steady
gaze before sinking on to him with a shuddering gasp. Draco's lips parted
on a silent groan, head tipping back slightly, but he did not break eye
contact.

There was a brief moment, a flash through her mind, where Hermione was
almost overcome by a sense of deja vu that had her brow crinkling in
confusion. But then they were moving, slowly at first, but gathering speed
and depth until she did not even notice the water sloshing over the side of
the tub to pool on the tiled floor. Her hands travelled over his shoulders,
fingers clasping at the back of his neck. His own hands rested on her hips,
clenching, releasing, clenching. Sliding up and over her breasts, her
shoulders, down her arms to link with her hand and bring it to his lips, and
her heart almost broke with loveliness of it all.

She came hard, with an intensity which robbed her of her breath, head
dropping on to his shoulder as she convulsed around him. He was groaning
too, biting down on her shoulder to muffle the noise. It was a long moment
before either of them moved. Draco reached a clumsy hand over to the sink
where their wands lay side by side, grabbing the closest - which happened
to be hers - to clean the water of the mess of their passion. He dried the
floor too, but only after she made him. When he was done, he turned her so
that she was nestled between his legs, her back to his chest, head tipped to
lay against his shoulder. He took up a sponge and began rubbing lazy
circles over her chest, spilling luke warm water over her breasts.

"One day," he said, and she forced her tired eyes to open, "we'll be like a
normal couple."

"Nothing about us is normal," Hermione replied, only after a long silence

had lapsed. He tugged on a wet curl for that and she smirked. There was
quiet a moment longer before he spoke again.

"I'll take you out to a restaurant - nothing too fancy because you'll only
moan about it being pretentious."

"And there's always the fact that we're both incredibly broke."

"And that," he agreed. "We'll get a place somewhere outside London - close
enough to Diagon Alley, but away from the press. Somewhere with a
garden, for when Teddy comes to stay."

"Draco Malfoy, are you asking me to move in with you?"

"A Malfoy never asks anything. He demands."

She smirked at that. "And I suppose you think you can just force me to bend
to your will?"

"Woman, if there's one thing I know, it's that no man could force you to do
anything you didn't want to." She heard him snort at her approving hum.
"But you'll still move in with me."

"Oh will I now? And why is that?"

"Because you want to."

She could practically feel his smirk against her temple when she could think
of no reply. The smug bastard.

::
There was a memory Draco had of his mother. It was before the days when
Death Eater was a common turn of phrase and Voldemort was just another
guest in the house that had become his prison. He could only have been
eleven or twelve, which he knew because it was before that over-
exaggerated ordeal with the Basilisk, but after his mother's last miscarriage
before she and his father simply stopped trying. She had been making him
read Muggle stories again, fables and myths and parables from the antique
bible she had snuck in to the manor without his father's knowledge. (He had
always hated those stories, but had never complained, because it made his
mother smile to hear him read them aloud).

He had just finished the child's version of Adam and Eve, and the ending
was disappointing to say the least. "It's stupid. And unrealistic," he had
complained.

This had made his mother laugh - not the light, tinkling giggle saved for
public occasions, but a real, head thrown back, lips stretched wide laugh.
"Oh, Draco! You're always so cynical! The point of a story is not for it to be
realistic. It's to communicate some message, or lesson."

"Well there's no message to this! That stupid woman eats the apple, even
though there's all this other great fruit around, and then goes on to tempt
poor Adam in to taking it too. If I were him, I wouldn't have stood for it.
Why should he have to leave when she was the one who broke the rules?"

His mother considered this a moment. "Well, suppose Adam wanted to

leave."

"Why on earth would he choose to leave? He was living in Paradise."

"Maybe he would rather live on Earth with Eve than spend an eternity in
Paradise without her."

At the time, he had snorted and put it down to another of his mother's
'ridiculous romantic notions', as his father often called them. But years later,
sat in the squalor that had once been the renowned House of Black, clad
only in jeans that had seen better days long before he came in to ownership
of them, and a t-shirt that was two sizes too big, he watched Granger and
Fred attempt to teach Teddy how to ride his newly acquired child-size
broom round the decrepit living room. He fell off twice before managing to
catch his balance, and the layer of dust on the floor alone was enough to
have him resembling some sort of street rat, his flushed cheeks hidden by
black smudges.

The whole place was a shack, nothing compared to the former glory of his
childhood wealthy. He thought of all those many balls, and the floating
candles and silk dress-robes trimmed in fur. He thought of the pureblood
girls he had twirled, one after the other, around rooms of glittering gold.
Fred yelled, Teddy squealed, and Granger laughed, loudly and without
abandon, clapping her hands together wildly as Teddy managed to hover
three feet in the air without assistance. Molly insisted the occasion deserved
using the last of that month's flour ration to bake a cake, and Potter doubled
over with laughter when Teddy shot straight in to Longbotton, knocking
him clean to the floor.

Granger turned and caught Draco's gaze, eyes flushed with the light of her
amusement, hair a tangled mess of untamed curls. And Draco thought that
maybe he knew how Adam felt after all. Because the Paradise of his youth
may have been perfection, but it was fucking lonely at the end of the night,
in that house too big for just three people. Teddy clambered up on to his lap,
dirty hand prints staining the off-white of his shirt, and Draco failed to hide
completely his smile. Maybe there was more than just one kind of Paradise,
Draco mused, and he thought that might have been his mother's point all
along.
*Chapter 13*: Chapter 12
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

A man who is "of sound mind" is one who keeps the inner madman under
lock and key. ~Paul Valéry, Mauvaises pensées et autres, 1942

The first time he saw Snape since the night the man had pulled him, broken
and bleeding, from Malfoy Manor, he almost did not recognise him. Later,
he would realise how ridiculous it was to think the man would still be the
same professor Draco had always known, greasy-haired, pale-faced with his
black cloak billowing around behind him. But the war had aged Snape,
aged him beyond what was fair for any man to have to endure once, let
alone twice. He saw the lines in the man's face, the exhaustion in his eyes.
And he thought Dumbledore a cruel, heartless man, just to expect Snape to
do it all again, having suffered through the first war in much the same way.

Snape did not notice Draco - or if he did, he did not acknowledge him. He
was in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, speaking in a rushed undertone to
Molly, who nodded occasionally, as if taking mental notes. His hair was
short now, hacked off unevenly. Draco wondered if it was out of choice, or
simply to accommodate the new bald patches cropping up here and there.

It was the last time Draco saw Severus Snape alive. Later, Hermione would
tell him that none of them really saw Snape over the last years of the war.
He would think to regret having wasted the moment simply observing the
man, as oppose to striking up a real conversation. But then he would
remember Snape's disheveled appearance, the way he dragged his hood up
over his head before he left, not because he was afraid, but almost as though
he were ashamed. The man in the kitchen that day was not the man students
had loathed and feared. And Draco thought that maybe it was better this
way. To forget the shell of a man he had become, in order to keep alive the
memory of whom he had once been.
::

Hermione awoke to the sight of Harry's pale face hovering in the air before
her. His eyes were wide and bloodshot behind his glasses, and when she
made as if to sit up, he shook his head and pressed his finger to his lips,
glancing pointedly at the tangled mess of limbs surrounding her. Draco lay
sprawled on his stomach, one arm draped over her stomach, the other
disappearing off the side of the bed. Teddy was curled in the space between
their legs, fingers clenched tightly around the material of Draco's track-suit
bottoms in his sleep.

Hermione met Harry's panicked gaze and nodded once. He slid from the
room with a stealth that surprised her. The soft light of dawn filtered
through the worn curtains, and she did not move for a long moment, despite
the urgency pressing down on her from all sides. Despite knowing, from the
second she saw the fevered anticipation in Harry's eyes, the rucksack on his
back. She took the moment, because it was never possible to tell when one
would come again. She felt the warmth radiating off Draco's body, his moist
breath rolling through her hair in gentle waves. Her hand slipped down,
fingers whispering through the fine, baby-soft strands of Teddy's hair. She
breathed it in, long and deep.

They did not stir, despite the cold adrenaline pulsing through her veins,
making her movements halted and less than graceful. She crept to the
wardrobe and dragged out her only pair of jeans, as well as her thermal
undershirt and a hoody Harry had outgrown years ago and given to her. Her
rucksack sat on the wardrobe floor, packed and loaded as it always was. She
did not pause to take one last look at the two sleeping figures in her bed -
did not think she could bare to see them lying there, soaking up the weak
morning light, and still bring herself to leave.

"We've found the diadem." The boys had frozen when the door first opened,
but they were all action now, pulling on clothes, shrinking the piles of
camping food they had already taken from the larder the night before.

"Where?" Not how, or when, because there was no time, never enough time
for these questions, and she understood that now.
"We were right in thinking it was at Hogwarts. But Voldemort had it
removed after the first battle, and it's been jumping locations ever since."

"So how do we know where it is now?"

"Ron."

He blushed when Hermione's surprised gaze turned to him, the tips of his
ears glowing. "I sat in on the Dolohov interview yesterday morning. Moody
thought it might be... therapeutic for one of us to be there." Because this
was the man who had murdered Lupin, and his wife would not be there to
see him face justice. Ron paused to allow the awkward moment before
continuing. "He raved mostly - useless things that made no sense. Those
Dream Balls Fred and Malfoy made really screw a guy up, you know? But
then he was talking about a diadem, and how it had been his duty, because
the Dark Lord trusted him above all others. None of the others noticed. Just
put it down to more nonsensical ramblings."

"What did he say?" Hermione breathed, tugging the hoody over her head
and clipping her rucksack into place over it.

"It took them a while to find it in all the rubble of Hogwarts. They moved it
around a bit. But Voldemort was suspicious like. Didn't want too many
people knowing about it. Dolohov and this Selwyn guy were the only ones
who knew the location. But Selwyn dies, see, so it's only Dolohov, and we
reckon he panicked, because he kept raving about taking it back to the
source, to its roots. That it would be safe there. He dumped it into the lake."

"And no one else knows about this?"

"We can't be sure," Harry replied. "But the sooner we move, the sooner we
can get it."

"It almost seems too easy, doesn't it?" There was a split second where they
all seemed to freeze, the weight of what they were about to encounter
pressing down on them. Hermione swallowed. "I've packed the books about
breaking curses and antidotes to poisons. We'll probably need them."
"What about the burns lotion? We don't want to get caught out like we did
last time."

"I've got it," Ron said, patting his bag.

"If only we had some Gillyweed," Hermione mused. "This is probably

going to be really hard."

"Huh. I wonder what it would be like if life was really hard all the time,"
Harry said, and suddenly there were laughing, stuffing hands in their
mouths to muffle the chortles, and giggles, and snorts, sweet hysteria to
cover the fear. It died quickly enough, leaving her stomach feeling oddly
empty, as though someone had carved the insides right out of her. They
crept through the halls, down the stairs, past the sleeping portrait of Mrs.
Black and into the empty kitchen.

"We should leave a note," Ron muttered, pulling a notepad and pen from a
drawer. "Or mum'll do one when she wakes up to find us gone." And if any
of them noticed the slightly gruffer tone to his voice, they made no
comment. He scrawled three words across the page - Be back soon - and
signed off with his initials. Hermione's limbs buzzed with adrenaline. She
felt fidgety and desperate to be on the move, even as she longed to stay in
the security of the house, curled up in the warmth of her bed. Ron adjusted
the position of the note twice before he managed to let it go, nodding to
himself and striding quickly to the back door, Harry close on his heels.

Hermione made to follow, then hesitated. Picked up the pen in her hand and
balanced it lightly between her fingers. Pressed the nib to the paper and
paused.

"Hermione?" Harry raised an eyebrow, eyes darting from the pen in her
hand before lifting to meet hers in a question. She dropped the biro onto the
table and heaved her rucksack onto her shoulder.

"Sorry. Let's go."

It wasn't until later, when he asked her what she told Draco that Hermione
realised Harry had known all along to whom she had been writing. She told
him nothing. She couldn't. She just...couldn't.

::

"Where is Hermione?"

"Away."

"Away where?"

"Stop asking so many questions and lift your arms." Draco tugged Teddy's
shirt off the rest of the way and replaced it with his pajama top. Teddy stood
patiently while Draco slid the buttons into place, one at a time. "Did you
brush your teeth?"

"Yes."

"Let me see." He peered into Teddy's open mouth, making a show of

inspecting each individual tooth. Minty fresh breath filled his nostrils. He
nodded once and Teddy's mouth snapped shut again. "Into bed."

He held the covers back while Teddy clambered up and onto the mattress,
tucking them around the boy so that no cold air would sneak under the
blanket. He watched Draco with a quiet expression, his hair a demure grey.

"Is she coming back soon?"

"I don't know."

"She's been away a long time, huh?" Eight days. Not that Draco was
counting. "I miss her."

His hands stilled in their task of smoothing out the already smooth blanket.
"Yeah," he said, after a moment. "Me too."

"Do you think she misses us?"

He managed to meet Teddy's eyes this time, summoning up a stern look.

"Of course she does. And she'll be pi- annoyed if she finds out you wouldn't
sleep because you kept asking too many questions."

He patted the blanket down one last time. Teddy was still watching him
when he turned back at the door. "Leave the light on, okay?"

His lips turned up slightly at the corners. "Okay."

::

Blood. Thick, oozing, darker and darker as it poured from him until it
looked almost black in the dim light of the retiring evening. Hermione
moved on autopilot, cutting away his shirt, pulling out the medical supplies
from her rucksack. A wave of her wand and the wound cleared, offering a
brief, horrifying flash of the mangled mess that had once been Ron's hand.
The blood swelled forth again, obscuring her view, with a speed that made
Hermione think of nicked arteries and that she didn't know, had no idea
what to do if he was bleeding out like that. Harry knelt beside her, panting
from the effort of wading through thick, murky water, Ron dragging
between them both. They were all three of them soaking wet and, Hermione
realised upon glancing down at Harry, covered in Ron's blood. The diadem
lay four feet away, where it had fallen when they finally managed to prise it
off Ron.

He was watching her, propped up on his good arm, eyes tracking the
expressions that ran over her face with pain-fevered eyes. She sucked in a
deep breath. Swallowed tightly before meeting that gaze. "Ron," she said,
and he grimaced like he already knew. "I don't think I can save it, Ron. It's
too severed."

The remaining flush in his cheeks from the mad sprint through the water
with the Horcrux left his face at an alarming rate. Harry made a strangled
noise in the back of his throat. "But, the dittany-"

"Will only seal the wound. And with the hand hanging off like that... well, it
isn't plausible."

"We could get him back to HQ-"

"He could bleed to death long before we make it there! I don't know any
spells to stop infections getting in, and I can't seal the wound with his hand
hanging off like that!" The hysteria was creeping into her voice now, each
word punctuated by short, gasping breaths as her oxygen-starved lungs
struggled to make up for the time spent underwater. Harry's eyes darted
from Ron's face to hers, and suddenly everything stilled. Ron's labored
breaths continued, his blood pumping hot and thick into her hands. The
diadem throbbed hatred to her left. But it was all white noise, unable to
permeate the moment.

Because this was not how it was meant to be - the three of them. The
Golden Trio. They were supposed to be complaining about their new
careers, meeting other people, getting engaged, married, having bundles of
children. The hardest decision they should be having to make should
concern who's turn it was to host the weekly meal. Not this. Never this. And
it was so unfair! So unjust! What had they ever done? They were just kids.
Just kids. But they weren't anymore, and the blood was pouring thick and
fast into her grip now.

Ron nodded - just one jerk of the head, an inch up, an inch down - and
movement struck up on all sides. Hermione tore the sleeve of Harry's shirt,
ordering him to tie a strip tightly around Ron's arm, just beneath the elbow.
She saw Ron wince, but her hands were in her rucksack, pulling out the
dittany, clean gauze, antiseptic. She froze with sudden, painful horror.

"Oh, Ron. I'm so sorry. We don't have any pain potions." She was blinking
back tears, which was ridiculous because when did crying ever help? Ron
simply smiled weakly, tilting his head to the sky.

"This is really not my day."

"I'll just Stupefy you, mate," Harry muttered, reaching for his wand. "We'll
wake you up when... " He swallowed. "When it's done."

"No."

"Ron-"
"I'm not going to be knocked out while you two faff around my bloody
arm." His face had lost any and all traces of colour now, but there was a
firm sense of determination there.

"It will hurt," Hermione warned, softly. Ron shot her a smirk, as if to call
her out on her habit of always stating the obvious, but he said nothing. The
muscle in his jaw clenched, relaxed, clenched and held. The blood flow had
slowed to a light dribble, the band around his arm cutting off the supply.
She Scourgified it and bit down the urge to retch at the mutilated mess of
blood and bone that had been his hand. "Get the dittany ready," she told
Harry.

Ron grabbed at a stick on the ground beside him and placed it between his
teeth. It was on the tip of Hermione's tongue to tell him how unhygienic he
was being. A hysterical bubble rose to her lips at the ridiculousness of the
thought, and Harry shot her a strange look. She placed the tip of her wand
against the wrist at the same time as he moved to unscrew the lid on the
dittany.

"Ready?" she asked, not sure to whom the question was directed. They both
nodded. She swallowed, hard. "Diffindo."

Ron's scream was only partly muffled by the twig in his mouth. Hermione
moved quickly, taking the dittany from Harry and spreading five drops
across the bloody stump at the end of Ron's arm, all the while apologising
repeatedly in a low sob. She waited for the wound to close, slowly and in
shimmering patches, before clearing away the rest of the blood and winding
the bandage tightly around the stump. Ron had fallen silent now, slumped
on his back, eyes wide and unblinking as he stared up at the grey sky.

"Do you want something to eat?" she asked, when it had been too quiet for
too long. He shook his head, slowly. "Water?"

"Please," he croaked.

Harry reached into his bag and pulled out one of their last bottles, tipping it
to Ron's lips and holding it there as he slurped messily. When he felt he
could rise without vomiting, they helped him to sit up, Hermione slipping
her arm around his waist so that he could lean his head against her shoulder.
They stared, all three of them, at the diadem, its silver, untarnished band
glinting in the last light of the evening. It looked ridiculously harmless
sitting there, almost like the extravagant plastic crown Hermione's mother
had gotten her when she was eight and went through her Princess phase.

"I feel like I need to sleep for the rest of my life," Ron grumbled. Then
groaned, loudly. Hermione followed his gaze to the torn remains of their
tent and felt her heart sink into her stomach.

"It must have gotten caught in that blast when we first got the diadem
loose," Harry commented, weakly.

"When this is over," Ron said, "I am never, ever going camping again.
Ever."

::

Draco blinked his eyes open, hand reaching for the wand stashed under his
pillow before he caught sight of the disheveled figure leaning over the bed.
Her eyes were fixed on Teddy and he thought she hadn't noticed his staring
until she spoke.

"He always looks so peaceful in his sleep."

"You look like shit." No small talk, because he was not that kind of person,
and he was too fucking tired to try. She did though, and it was this which
stemmed his anger, concern creeping up in its stead. Her face was pale, her
eyes bloodshot like she had been crying, or had just not slept in a very long
time. Her hair had been pulled back from her face, but he caught sight of
twigs and leaves tangled there. Blood covered her shirt, and it was this
which had him springing up, eyes assessing for damage.

"You're hurt."

"Hm?" She glanced down at herself, blinking as if noticing the blood for the
first time. "Oh. It's not mine. Ron lost a hand."
"Lost a hand."

She hummed and nodded, eyes fixed on Teddy, and the steady rise and fall
of his chest. "I had to cut it off myself. It was horrible." A giggle burst from
her lips and she clapped a hand to her mouth, body rocking with suppressed
laughter. Draco edged round the bed, pulling her onto her feet when he
reached her. The room was only dimly lit from the lamp that Teddy insisted
be left on, but he tilted her head towards it, peeling her eyelids back and
running his finger over the gums above her teeth. No injuries. Only slightly
malnourished, perhaps suffering from a touch of exhaustion.

"You're in shock," he informed her, and the words seemed to put a halt to
her laughter.

"I tried to get it off me." It took him a moment to realise she was talking
about the blood, plucking forlornly at the hem of her shirt. "But my wand
wouldn't work right."

He brought his own wand up in an absent swishing move, muttering a

Scourgify under his breath. The stains left but the stench of dried blood
remained. He thought maybe the spell had startled her somewhat, bringing
her out of her daze, because she was suddenly tearing at her clothes, almost
yanking her own hair out in her flurried attempt to get them off. He did not
help her - mostly for fear of his own safety should he step too close, but
also because he thought she might break down if he touched her now, and
he did not want that.

When she was clad in only her underwear, he passed over the shirt of his
she liked to sleep in and a pair of shorts that were so worn the fabric turned
translucent in the light. The room was not cold but she shivered, trembling
with her arms wrapped around her torso. Still, he did not touch her. Not
until she had clambered into bed, adjusting the sprawled figure of Teddy to
make room for the both of them. He slid into the space behind her, molding
his body to hers. Slipped an arm over her waist, under her shirt to feel the
warm skin of her stomach. He rubbed soothing circles there until her body
was still against his, her breath no longer shuttered, and only then did he
speak.
"It'll be over soon."

It was not a question, but she answered anyway. "Yes."

"And what you've been doing over the last week. It was all to do with that?"

"That's right."

"But you can't tell me what it was?"

He managed to breathe four times in the space it took her to speak. "Not
yet. But... after. Maybe."

"Teddy."

"Someone will wait here with him until it's over. They have instructions to
take him and run. Should the end not be... favorable to our side."

"And I suppose if I asked you to stay here with him...?"

"I would tell you to stop being a bigot and let me live my life the way I
wish." But she closed her hand over the top of his as she spoke, the strength
of her hold softening the harsh nature of her words. "It'll all work out. In the
end. Harry knows what he's doing. We have a plan."

He hummed, because it was late and he did not want to strike up an

argument over Potter's competency. He kissed her instead, just one chaste
brushing of his lips over her shoulder. He held her until her chest rose and
fell in the steady rhythm of sleep. That night he dreamt of rooms he
recognised but had never seen. Windows looking out onto dusty cobbled
streets, busy city life, isolated forestry. He saw Granger's face hovering over
his, sobbing as she spoke. And, try as he might, he could only make out one
word from the flurried movement of her wet lips. Sorry. Over and over.
Sorry.

::

Hermione tried to protest - because, really! They were in the kitchen and
anyone could walk in! - but Draco was in one of his strange moods, and
when he looked at her with those eyes, so broken and pleading, she could
not turn him down. It was just a kiss. A gentle press of his lips to hers. His
hands moved to cup her face, thumbs tracing her cheeks as though to
memorise her. And suddenly she was swallowing back tears.

"Why do you always kiss like you're saying goodbye?" she whispered
against his mouth.

Later, when she remembered this, she doubted he would have answered her
anyway. But the creak in the doorway cut him off, and Hermione jerked
back to the sight of Ron's open mouth. It was almost comical the way he
gawked at them and, had Draco been in his right state of mind, she thought
he might have smirked. The anger came quickly after, flushing Ron's face a
deep crimson, the tips of his ears a furious red. And for one heart-stopping
moment, she actually considered drawing her wand, lest he should seriously
consider killing Draco. But then he sighed, and the anger seemed to leave
him on that breath. There was something like resignation when he
shrugged, and Hermione thought she might be dreaming when he strolled
passed them both with only a nod of acknowledgment to Draco, eyes
already on the fridge.

"Anybody want a sandwich? I thought I'd practice making it with only one
hand. Fred's got a Galleon on me cutting off a finger from my good hand,
but Harry's pretty certain I can do it."

"Um, no. Thank you." Hermione was panicking slightly, mostly out of the
confusion that came with suddenly stepping into a world where Ronald
Weasley could walk in on her and Draco kissing and not blast him to pieces.
Or at least turn him into a ferret (a spell he had taken great care to learn
when Draco first joined the army). Draco looked agitated, though she
suspected that was more to do with her reaction at having been caught than
to the actual interruption. She couldn't help it though. It wasn't like she was
ashamed to be with him! And, really, she'd made no attempt to hide it from
the others. It was just that she didn't really understand. And when Hermione
Granger didn't understand, things become a little panicky.

"I'll leave you guys to it," Draco said, in a way that told Hermione she
should talk to Ron, if it made her so bloody uncomfortable. She made sure
he caught her smile before he left and felt a tinge of relief when he returned
it, however weakly. When the door clicked shut behind him, she turned her
anxious gaze to Ron. Maybe now, now that Draco had left, the lecture
would begin. The accusations and anger. The hurt. But he continued on with
his quest, balancing the jar of peanut butter between his bandaged stub and
his chest, using his good hand to try and unscrew the lid. She resisted the
urge to help him.

"So," she began, hesitantly. He cursed loudly and the fear was only as
strong as the relief. Finally. Now here was a Ron she knew! He would
finally blow a fuse, round on her, yell at her until she managed to verbally
outwit him, then sulk away in his room for three to five days.

"Fred was right, the bastard," he groaned instead, dropping the jar to the
table with little grace. "Although technically, we said nothing about the
appliances used to make the sandwich. Only the preparation."

Hermione was beginning to think she had gone into shock slightly, because
it took her a moment to pick up on his hints. Numbly, she crossed the room
and effortlessly unscrewed the lid. Ron glared ruefully at the jar a second
longer, before picking up the knife and jabbing it awkwardly into the sticky
mess inside.

"So," Hermione began again. "Don't you want to... I don't know. Talk about
it."

"Hm? Talk about what?" He scowled when the jar slid away from him
under the pressure of the knife as he tried to scoop up the peanut butter.
Hermione placed her hand against the glass, holding it still while he
worked. He shot her a distracted smile, slapping the covered knife down
onto the bread.

"Well about... about what you just saw. Between Draco. And me. What you
just saw between me and Draco," she clarified, cheeks warming at the look
he sent her.

"What is there to talk about? I mean, it's kind of gross." He wrinkled his
nose to emphasise his point. He blinked, pausing as a thought suddenly
occurred to him. "Wait. You think I didn't know?"

"Well... yeah."

He snorted unattractively, already back to hacking at the bread. "Please.

Everyone knows. Even mum knows. It couldn't be more obvious. Especially
since you smell like him now."

"I smell like him?"

"Yes. It's not a bad thing," he rushed to assure her. "Just odd, you know. It
took some getting used to."

Hermione frowned at this. It was something she had never really considered
before, though she could see now that it was ridiculous of her not to have.
She shared Draco's bed, his clothes, his body. It only made sense that she
should smell like him. She wondered if he smelled like her at all. The
thought was intriguing, and she might have asked Ron, but he was already
talking again.

"Anyway, I think I was more confused as to why you guys took so long to
get down to it. I mean, when he first arrived here he was all broken and
'poor-little-Death-Eater-turned-nice'. Face it. He was irresistible to you." He
dropped the knife twice and swore when his fingers fumbled to hold it right.
"I actually thought you two would be all together after that whole trip you,
him and Harry took. Ah, fuck it. This isn't worth a Galleon. I'll get mum to
do it."

"Trip?" Hermione frowned. "What trip?"

He tried (unsuccessfully) to wash the sticky spread from his fingers. "You
know. After Draco first arrived. Everyone was so stressed about it at the
time. You guys just took off. Without me, might I point out. Don't worry
though," he added, glancing up briefly. "I'm grateful you did. I probably
would have killed the bastard if I'd had to spend seven months alone with
him like that."

"Seven months," she breathed.

"And at least you managed to destroy the locket while you were at it. Shit.
I'm like a fucking two year old. Can you pass me that dish cloth?
Hermione? Hermione."

She blinked at him, slowly. A feeling of cold dread had begun to wash
through her system, numbing her in that familiar way she always
experienced right before entering the battlefield. The realisation that her
memory had been erased was really not so shocking, she later realised.
People in the Order constantly had their minds wiped, for their own
protection or others. Hell, Shacklebolt had Obliviated her after she had
secured her parents somewhere in Australia. But that had been one scrap of
information. One location. One memory. Not seven months. Seven months
and the destruction of a Horcrux which, now that she thought of it, she
could not remember ever having had in her possession.

"Ron, will you please tell your fool of a best friend that you have given up
so that I can collect my winnings."

"And would you please tell your brother that making bets on a recently
disabled-"

"Hey!"

"-sorry, Ron- person, is totally immoral and...and...Hermione? What's

wrong?"

"She's just freaked out because she thought her and the ferret's little fling
was oh so secret." Ron slung an arm over her shoulder, crushing her body
against his. "But don't you worry, 'Mione. I won't judge you for this obvious
lapse in mental health."

"Harry, can I talk to you, please?" It was a marvel that her voice was so
steady. The rest of her felt as though her bones had upped and left, leaving
her body a trembling, unsupported mess.

"Sure, Hermione."

"Alone."
That caught his attention, though Fred was tactful enough to steal Ron's.
She did not wait for Harry's response, and she couldn't be sure he was even
following her until she heard his footsteps on the stairs behind her. She led
him up to his room, because Draco and Teddy could be in hers. Harry raised
an eyebrow at the locking and silencing charms she threw at the door, but,
wisely, stayed quiet. When she was done, she stayed that way awhile -
facing the door, hands pressed against the wood, breaths shuddering
through her aching throat. By the time she brought herself to face him, he
was looking more than a little perturbed.

"I have something to tell you."

His forehead furrowed. "Okay."

"I don't want you to panic. If we just stay calm I'm sure we can figure it
out." She sucked in a deep breath of air through her lips, desperate to ease
the ball of panic lodged firmly in her throat. "Harry. I think we've been
Obliviated."

"What?"

"I know. But listen. Ron was going on about you, me and Draco being away
for seven months all those years ago when Draco first arrived. But I don't
remember it. Not one second of it. And Draco's never mentioned it to me,
so it only stands to reason that, that, why are you looking at me like that?"

"Hermione-"

And she knew. She knew that he had known all along. Knew him too well
for too long not to see the subtle shifts across his face: guilt, anxiety, fear,
stubbornness. It was the same way he had looked at her after he told her he
had snuck into the Prefects' bathroom during fourth year, or when he had
spent the day spying on Draco during their last year of Hogwarts. That I-
know-it-was-wrong-but-it-was-for-the-greater-good look. "You Obliviated
me?"

For a moment, she thought he might lie and deny it. But then he swallowed
and there was a straightening of his shoulders, a stiffening of his back. A
soldier preparing to meet battle. Or a man bracing himself against a storm.
"Yes."

The hurt rippled through her. She stumbled under its weight, body falling
back against the decaying door. "Why?" She flinched when he stepped
towards her, but his step only faltered for a moment, continuing until his
hands were on her shoulders, warm, heavy weights, as familiar to her as her
own hands. He smiled but it seemed sad somehow.

"Because you asked me to, 'Mione."

::

"What's going on?"

"A safe house in the South of Wales was ambushed at sixteen-hundred

hours this evening. We've had to split up the residents."

"Merlin, Moody, just tell the boy everything!"

Moody only shrugged, frowning at Shacklebolt. "People are going to ask

why the entirety of the Order is attempting to squeeze into only a handful of
buildings, Kingsley." He grunted, sitting heavily on the kitchen chair. "I
wouldn't mind bloody knowing either. This is the seventh safe house in a
year to be attacked. Thank you, Molly."

Mrs. Weasley nodded stiffly, placing a second steaming mug in front of

Shacklebolt. Her face was pale and drawn, and Draco thought she looked
older now than he had ever seen her before, with her greying hair and
withered hands dotted with liver spots. The older generation was on its way
out, he realised with a pang of something painful in his lower stomach.
Soon, they would be the ones with wrinkles and stooped backs.

"The strange thing is," Moody continued, ignoring Shackebolt's stern looks,
"he doesn't even send his best lot. It's just the younglings, mostly. Hardly
any match for a house full of Order members, ambushed or not."

"It's probably just training for them," Shacklebolt muttered lowly.

Moody grunted. "No. He's up to something."

"You think everyone's up to something."

But Moody was no longer listening, his eyes fixed at the darkness outside
the window, and the warm kitchen did not feel so warm anymore.

::

"I want you to tell me everything. Don't leave anything out."

"And you're sure?"

Hermione swallowed. "I'm sure."

They were sat, the both of them, on either end of the bed, her back against
the headboard, while Harry sat cross-legged opposite her. The space
between them was more, perhaps, than was usual for them. But there was
nothing usual about this conversation, and so maybe that was suiting,
Hermione mused. Harry paused a long time before he spoke. But when he
did, his eyes met hers and they did not waver, not for one second.

"It was just after Malfoy got here. We were all uncertain about him. And he
kept asking for me, but Shacklebolt said I shouldn't talk to him. That he
would just try to poison my mind with some sob story lie. That's the thing
about Malfoy though, isn't it? He doesn't need to lie. Because he knows just
how to use the truth." His lips twisted into something like an ironic smile. It
reminded her briefly, startlingly of Sirius, and his bitter sense of humor.

"I went to him. I asked him what he was doing here. And he told me the
truth. That Voldemort had sent him to infiltrate the Order, then betray it at
the crucial moment. And then he asked me to kill him." He held her gaze. "I
would have done it. I would have. For the good of the Order."

"What made you stop?" But it came out too quiet, and she had to clear her
throat and ask again.

He smirked. "You did. You came storming in, all indignant and moral. Told
me I couldn't just kill someone like that. It wasn't right. Except it didn't
matter if I was the one to kill him or not."

"Because Shacklebolt would have ordered his death anyway, the second he
heard why Draco was here."

Harry nodded. "So we took him away. Me and you. We had a lead on the
cup, and we still didn't know how to destroy the locket anyway. We didn't
take Ron because he would have killed Malfoy anyway. We were gone for
seven months, and at the end of it we realised the only way Malfoy would
ever be accepted was if he truly believed that he had switched over for real.
So his memories were wiped."

"You Obliviated us both? Are you out of your mind? You could have done
some serious damage!"

"I Obliviated you because you asked me to!" He did not yell, but there was
a tinge of frustration, or maybe desperation there now.

"Why on earth would I ever ask you to do that?"

"Because you didn't want to be in love with Malfoy when he didn't

remember being in love with you!" There was a stunned silence after his
outburst, and Hermione wondered if the statement hadn't been as much a
surprise to him as it had been to her, judging by the startled widening of his
eyes. He cringed awkwardly, then reached over the space between them.
Slipped his hand over hers and held it tight. "I Obliviated you because you
asked me to," he repeated. "But I didn't Obliviate Draco. You did."

It was like a Bludger to the chest. No. A Bludger to the head, the arms, the
legs - any inch of her the blasted things could reach. She felt numbed and
on fire and freezing cold all at once. Her mind, the one thing she had prided
herself on, the one thing that she had clung to, was no longer her own.
Someone had come along and stolen some of the pieces, then jumbled up
the rest so that nothing made sense anymore. She pulled her hands out of
Harry's grip and fixed him with a stern look.

"I want to remember," she said. "I want to remember it all."

Harry swallowed, and she thought he might deny her. But he simply
nodded, drawing his wand from the folds of his jumper. She closed her eyes
to the cold press of its tip to her forehead. There was a pause, before she
heard his whispered words, "Finite Incantatem."

There was a rush, like water slipping gently over the forest floor. Pressure
building against the front of her skull. The world flashed red and orange
behind her eyelids. And she remembered.
*Chapter 14*: Chapter 13 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

The Past lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body. ~Nathaniel
Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables

"Is that the truth, Malfoy?"

"The truth," Malfoy repeated, and then his smirk was fading, crumbling in
to an expression so exhausted that Hermione suddenly felt weighed down,
as though the light-weight material of the invisibility cloak had turned to
lead, heavy metal hanging over her head. His eyes moved, passed Harry,
over the space where she stood, up to the ceiling. When they settled again,
there was a somewhat stony determination there. It was the same look
Harry got in his eyes whenever they were about to search for a Horcrux.
That 'You're not going to like this, but I don't give a shit' look, when he
knew she would argue. "The truth is, that's what he wants you to think."

"Voldemort?" Harry asked, and if Malfoy had wanted to flinch at the name,
he hid it well.

"Yes."

"You're saying he sent you here?"

"Yes. He seems to think for reasons unknown to me that I would be

successful in infiltrating the Order to the point where my turning back
would have devastating affects." Something of his previous sneer managed
to return fleetingly to his face. "I do not pretend to understand the inner-
workings of the Dark Lord's mind. However, I'm sure there is some pure
genius to this apparently lunatic plan." And the way he said it, almost
sounded like sarcasm.

"Or he's just sending you to your death. He seems to like doing that."
Malfoy's smirk faded, but he made no retaliation, and Hermione did not
think he looked angry. The silence fell and held, thick, heavy, drawing out
her breath in nervous pants, magnifying the sound until she stuffed her own
hand over her mouth to quieten the sound.

"I suppose you're hoping we'll be lenient on you for being honest." Harry's
chin lifted an inch in the air. "If so, you're wrong."

This time, the sneer was almost a smile. "I see you've finally grown up,
Potter. All ready and willing to do what's necessary."

"For the greater good." And although Malfoy could not have known the
significance of those words, he sobered. His eyes drifted shut and Hermione
thought he might be in pain. Harry's face remained stern, expressionless,
just as Snape had taught him. But there was a tensing of his jaw, a twitch of
his left hand. All signs of his hesitation. "Why are you still here, Malfoy?
Shouldn't you be trying to escape right now? Running away is what you do
best after all."

"Weak, Potter." One eye opened, almost lazily, then both, his smirk fading.
"Kill me."

"What?"

"It's the only way." He shrugged. "We both know it. You can't let me go
now. I'll only go back to him. And I can't stay here. Who knows how much
I might see or hear? I'm a liability. A dangerous one. If you kill me, you'll
be doing everyone a favour."

He was a lunatic. Because only a mad man could talk about his own
execution in so flippant and factual a tone. There was no fevered glint to his
eyes, hinting at pain induced madness she had seen so often before. No
flush of fear or anticipation. There was nothing. His eyes were two mirrors,
only reflecting. Two orbs of glassy nothingness.

"You're bluffing," Harry said at last.

Malfoy lifted his arms off the bed, grimacing for the effort. He spread his
hands wide, a peace offering, or perhaps a surrender. He had pianist fingers,
Hermione thought. Long and thin, free of the calluses that littered her own
palms.

"We're all alone in here, Potter. You have the only wand. From what that
Weasley woman was muttering earlier, everyone seems to think I'm about to
kick it any day now anyway. No one would ever have to know." Pure
madness. The persuasive, practised tone, the enticing glint to his eyes.

The silence was too thick, rolling over her in waves. Tension dripped from
the walls, filling her mind until she could hardly think. And then Harry
moved. He took the two steps to Malfoy's bed and lifted his wand, the
wooden point pressing into the man's pale throat. Malfoy tipped his head
back and closed his eyes, and later Hermione would think that she had
never seen him so peaceful.

"Harry, no!" The words were out before she made the conscious decision to
form them, her hand reaching up to tear at the slippery material of the cloak
until it pooled at her feet. Harry froze, but his wand did not drop and he did
not turn to face her. "Harry, you can't do this! This isn't a battlefield! If you
kill him now, it's murder."

There was a split second where she thought he would ignore her and kill
Malfoy anyway. But then his arm dropped, slowly, and he took one step
back. Another. Another. Hermione grabbed him the second he was within
reach, gathering up the cloak with flustered hands and dragging them both
to the door. She shoved Harry out first, grimacing when his arm caught on
the door frame but making no apology. She glanced back at Malfoy, but he
was not watching her. His eyes were closed, chest almost deathly still, an
imitation of what might have been.

::

"They'll never let him stay. Whether he confesses or not."

"They won't kill him."

"No. But they'll lock him away in Azkaban."

"Good. He deserves to go there."

Harry shot her a look, glass paused on its way to his lips. "You don't really
believe that. We both know he's hardly a mastermind criminal."

"He's practically Voldemort's right hand man."

"Which consists of nothing more than kissing that Snake's arse and
worshipping the ground he walks on."

"And recruiting new Death Eaters."

"Hardly the crime of the century, 'Mione." He grimaced on the gulp of

vodka he had taken and set the glass down on the table with a heavy thud.
"Look. You weren't there in that tower. He didn't want to kill Dumbledore.
And he refused to identify us at the manor that time. I don't think he ever
really wanted to be a part of all that."

"He could have left. There was nothing stopping him. And don't give me
that bullshit about his parents. We've all had to sacrifice things to do what's
right." And she could not quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. She
thought of her parents, of the blank expressions on their faces as they
thanked her for her directions to the nearest airport. And she thought that
life wasn't fair for any of them, but that didn't mean you could go around
hating people because of their blood. "And he's killed people."

"Only in battle." He moved as though to pour a shot, then changed his mind
and drank from the bottle. "Just like us."

"He's not like us," Hermione said, pushing her chair back and moving to the
door. "He's not."

::

"I've been thinking."

"Careful."
"About Malfoy," Harry clarified.

"Not this again," Ron grumbled, and Hermione felt a swell of affection for
her recent-ex that had been lacking as of late.

"He's wounded at the moment, so they're letting him stay here. But soon
Shacklebolt will want rid of him."

"Good riddance."

Harry shot Ron a look, but otherwise ignored him. "I think we should take
him with us on our next...you know. Trip."

"I really don't think that's the best-"

"Hell no is that bastard-!"

Harry's sigh put an end to the sudden outbursts, and Hermione could not
help but track the subtle telltale signs of exhaustion lining his face. Maybe
Ron saw it too, because he dropped the subject, despite the telling clench of
his jaw. She wondered when they had started to tiptoe round one another,
walking on eggshells to keep the fragile peace.

::

She did not know why she had offered to bring Malfoy his nightly meal.
Only that Mrs. Weasley had been rushed off her feet, and Fred and George
had exploded another stink bomb next to the horrified portrait of Mrs.
Black, and the next thing she knew, the tray was being shoved in to her
hands and she was sent up the stairs with an encouraging pat on the back.
His room was terribly dark, and she wondered if that was because he liked
it that way or simply that nobody had thought to open the curtains. She fully
expected him to ignore her presence with that 'too-superior-to-even-deign-
you-with-my-acknowledgement' attitude she so loathed. But his eyes were
on her when she entered the room, as though he had been waiting for her,
and he stared unashamedly as she drew closer with his meal.
There was no table, and she thought he must eat off his lap. She could not
quite bring herself to place the tray there, as though she were some Healer
looking after the invalid, and so settled for putting it well within reach on
the bedside table. He did not touch it. Did not even glance in its direction.
Later, she would think that maybe if he had just started eating, silently,
obediently, with all the snide remarks of their youth, she could have left him
there and never once looked back. But she supposed so many consequences
were put in to action by that one meeting that it was implausible to imagine
it out of existence.

His expression was blank, but she thought how she might feel, trapped in
enemy headquarters, alone, waiting for death.

"It's not poisoned, you know. In case you were worried," she added when he
failed to react. No response. The silence was awkward, but that was to be
expected. Her body ached to move, to back out of that dark, suffocating
room and forget the very existence of this man. "You could try saying thank
you. We don't have to feed you." She had not been planning to say it, and
the harshness of her voice made it difficult not to grimace.

Malfoy's eyebrow rose in a perfect arch, and she braced herself for the
stream of insults. "Thank you. I do not deserve hospitality. From you, least
of all."

"Right." She was blinking too much. And nodding excessively. She was
certain her bewilderment must be showing all over her face, screaming
volumes, but she had never been able to hide her emotions and she could
not start now. "Yes. Right, well. Your welcome. I guess."

She did not wait for his response. Did not stop walking until she reached the
kitchen - the furthest room from him - and promised herself never to think
of him again. Except she kept seeing his eyes in her mind, so different to
the eyes she remembered, and the sincerity of his statement. She saw him
bleeding and broken on the floor, eyes tracking the blood that dripped down
her chin. It was a mystery. And, try as she might, there was nothing so sure
to entice her as a good mystery.

Damn her curiosity. Damn it to hell.

::

"-can't bloody well keep him here in Headquarters! Don't know what Snape
was thinking-!"

"That we're losing. Badly. And could use all the support we can get."

"Not from that lying piece of scum-"

"-could be the factor that tips this war to our favour-"

"-be trusted with a toothpick, let alone the lives of-"

"-think I don't know that, Shacklebolt damn it!"

"Alastor, Kingsley, please. There are people trying to sleep."

"I'm sorry, Molly."

When he spoke, Shacklebolt's voice was softer. Under control. "Alastor,

you must be reasonable. We cannot possibly house a renowned Death Eater,
You-know-who's right hand, for Merlin's sake! It is a risk that, at this point
in the war, I am unwilling to let you make."

A long pause. Then, "Aye. You're right, I suppose. Him being a liability and
all."

"Excellent." The sound of hands clapping together, chairs scraping back. "I
will make the necessary arrangements."

"Where will you take him? Azkaban?"

"Molly, dear. Azkaban stopped being secure long ago. And we have no
room in our holding cells to be hosting prisoners who are of no use to us."

Molly's sob was quiet but poignant in the following silence. "He's just a
child! A child, Shacklebolt. A child who didn't understand what he was
doing. The same age as my own son."
"I understand. But this must be done. For the greater good."

Footsteps. The whoosh of the Floo activating. A much longer pause, broken
by the tell-tale sounds of Molly cleaning. It seemed a long time before she
finally stopped, her sigh tired in the quiet. In the darkness of the larder,
Hermione turned her horrified gaze to Harry. But he was not looking at her.
He was staring at the wand in his hand, twirling it between his fingers, as he
had that night in Malfoy's room. She slipped her hand around his, stilling
the movement, and did not let go until he met her gaze again.

::

"Mrs. Weasley said you wanted to speak with me?"

"Miss. Granger. Take a seat."

Hermione fought not to fidget under the fixed gaze of Moody's magic eye
and lowered herself cautiously in to the only available chair. She thought it
odd for Moody to keep a chair in his bedroom, and then wondered if he had
had it sent up especially for her. He waited for her to settle before speaking
again.

"I expect your natural curiosity is burning to know what brings you here."
There was a teasing glint to his gaze that Hermione might not have
recognised just two years ago, and she smiled lightly.

"It did cross my mind."

"What do you think of Mr. Malfoy?"

"Malfoy?" The question was so the last one she expected that she found
herself thrown for a moment. She had been anticipating a mission of some
sort, or maybe a delivery. But not this. "He's...well, he's Malfoy!" Because
in all her life, that had honestly been enough of an explanation. A whole
novel of adjectives and meanings she had bundled into that one name.

Moody was nodding though, like he understood, and so she willed her blush
away. He paced a moment, putting his weight on his good leg. "You are a
smart witch, Miss. Granger. One of the best. It is because of this, as well as
yours and Mr. Potter's little habit of eavesdropping, which leads me to think
you might have realised that a recent decision has been made as to Mr.
Malfoy's fate."

This time her blush would not be controlled, and she fought the urge to
lower her head in embarrassment. "Yes, sir." And then, before she could
stop herself, "You're going to murder him in cold blood while he sleeps in
his bed."

His smirk was a twist of gnarled lips. "You do not approve. I cannot say I
am surprised. The young are often naive in aspects of life such as this-"

"It is not naive to oppose the death of a defenceless prisoner of war. There
are laws, Alastor-"

"Some might say that laws are made to be bent in times such as these. In
any case," he added before she could spurt forth a string of indignant
retorts, "I find myself leaning to agree with you, Miss. Granger."

"...Oh." Her confusion must have shown, because he laughed - a harsh,

bitter sound.

"Do not be foolish enough to think this some buried sense of compassion. I
am not one for lost causes. Unlike yourself, from what I gather." Her glare
only made him laugh again, but he sobered quickly. "I believe Mr. Malfoy
can be of some use to us. And I have never been one to put an opportunity
to waste."

"What happened to all that 'constant vigilance'?" And if there was a slight
mocking tone to her voice, he did not acknowledge it.

"A man can be vigilant and resourceful at the same time, Miss Granger.
Right now, Mr. Malfoy is being surveyed by seven different pieces of
magical equipment."

Hermione's mind darted back to that night, with Harry and his wand pressed
so firmly to Draco's chest. She forced herself not to pale. Not to give herself
away. Drew up the Occlumensy she had learned for when they cornered her
and interrogated her about Dumbledore's mission. Moody smirked.

"Relax, Miss. Granger. If I were going to report you and Mr. Potter, I would
have done it the second you snuck in to Mr. Malfoy's room."

"Then what is it you want exactly?" Because she was not so naive now, did
not blindly follow adults, Dumbledore's confidants or not.

"I believe Mr. Malfoy would be entirely willing to co-operate with us,
should he have some... incentive."

"Incentive?" Hermione repeated, drawing the word out, tasting it between

her teeth.

"Something to change the tide of his current, conflicted beliefs. He is not

the racist bigot he was in his youth, Miss Granger. The right person could
be the final push in the direction we need him."

"And you think I'm the right person?" Her face could not be attractive,
twisted the way it was into that incredulous scowl, but she could not seem
to make herself stop. "Malfoy hates me. I'm not talking about some
childhood rivalry, or grudge. He hates me!"

"Which is why it would be so significant if you could change his mind!"

"And how do you propose I do that? Shower him with love and affection?
Tell him my deepest hopes and secrets? Or perhaps I should just slit my
wrists and remind him that my blood isn't nearly as dirty as he would like to
believe."

"Nothing quite so dramatic, Miss. Granger." And the way he said it annoyed
her, because if she was being dramatic, it was only to be expected. "You and
your little friends have a trip planned for the recent future, I believe."

She blinked at him, face relaxing in to a neutral expression. "I don't know
what you're talking about."
"I'm sure. But let us just say, hypothetically, that you were to leave for a
while. You could take Malfoy with you. Just until the heat dies down. Until
I can convince Shacklebolt to let him live. You could persuade Malfoy that
there is more to you than blood status and school houses."

There was something about the way he said it, some subtle shifting of his
magical eye, that had Hermione's back stiffening in suspicion. Her eyes
narrowed. "When you say persuade...?"

"You're a bright, attractive young woman. I'm sure I don't need to tell you
how to use those skills to win a man over."

She was on her feet now, drawing on her anger to push through her
mortification. "How dare you! You think I will whore myself for the likes of
Malfoy? No, forget that. Do you think I would whore myself for anyone?"

"I'm not telling you to shag the man in to submission! I'm just saying that a
feminine touch is what the situation requires right now."

She was breathing too heavily - a disgusting habit she had failed to grow
out of and could never seem to repress whenever she got emotional. "I'm
going to pretend this conversation never happened." She made it to the door
before he stopped her. She did not turn to face him while he spoke, could
not bring herself to meet his gaze.

"Think about it, Miss. Granger. Unless someone does something, Malfoy
will be killed. You could save his life."

She knew he was right, even as the door slammed shut in his face. And she
knew he knew it. Because she was Hermione Granger, and what would the
world be if she was not chasing after some lost cause or other?

::

"Is there any particular reason as to why we're stood in the middle of a
forest?" He somehow managed to find it within himself to sound perfectly
pompous and superior - Percy Weasley, but with an aristocratic drawl. As
though he wasn't stood with his arms bound behind his back, wandless. As
though they hadn't just practically kidnapped him and forced him at
wandpoint.

"We're looking for something," Harry replied, when it became clear that
Hermione would not.

"And you've brought me along because...?"

"We're just keeping you out of sight until things cool down back home."

"By keeping out of sight, you do, of course, mean kidnapping an official
prisoner of war."

"We went to a lot of trouble to get you out of there without being detected!
So the least you can do is sit down, shut up and maybe think about the fact
that Harry's willing to put himself at risk in order to keep you alive!" She
waited for the anger, for the torrents of abuse about her blood, her hair, her
teeth. But he only glared, and, after a long, tense moment, lowered himself
to the dirty ground, settling his back against the nearest tree-trunk. She
turned, drawing her wand to begin the protective barriers around their
camp.

"You should have just killed me." She almost didn't hear it over the sound
of the tent collapsing for the third time, mixed with Harry's curses. She
paused, wand poised expectantly in the air. Made as if to turn, but stopped
herself. Took a deep breath and brought her wand up in an arc. "Cave
Inimicum," she muttered, before moving on to the next charm.

::

"-think it's safe to go out in to the open like that-"

"-never find it if we don't-"

"-just going to stroll in to Dublin flashing your scar and expect not to get
caught-"

"-use a Glamour-"
"-unpredictable, not to mention we've never cast a particularly powerful
one-"

"I don't know, Hermione, okay? I haven't got a clue what to do! I don't
know where the locket is, but there's a chance this guy might and I just don't
fucking know!"

He breathed heavily a long moment, his shoulders heaving with the effort.
When he took his seat beside her, she slipped her hand in to his and gave it
a squeeze. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

::

They ended up in a motel which looked suspiciously like a brothel and

smelled distinctively of sweat, piss and the faint musk of sex. But the rooms
were cheap, and the owner did not seem the sort of man to ask questions.
They got a room with only two beds, and Hermione made sure to Scourgify
hers and Harry's three times before she let him near it. A moment later she
remembered Draco's wand, locked safely away in Grimmauld Place. He
glanced up in surprise at the cleaning charm she shot at his bed, and she felt
almost smug at the startled widening of his eyes until he thanked her and it
was her turn to feel shocked.

::

"-see why I can't come with you-"

"-iculous to risk both our lives-"

"So you stay and I'll go!"

"You don't know who you're looking for!" He sighed, pinching his nose
between his finger and thumb. The natural urge to submit, to back down
and cater to his needs when he was so clearly exhausted, was overwhelmed
by the increasing panic swelling in her stomach.
"Harry, I can't stay here alone with Malfoy. I just cant'," she whispered, and
cringed at the pleading undertone. For one blissful second she thought he
might cave. But his expression hardened and she knew she had lost before
he began to speak.

"I have to do this, Hermione. I'll only be a few days. Someone needs to stay
here and watch him. And besides, Malfoy hasn't even got a wand anymore.
How bad can he possibly be?"

Malfoy raised an eyebrow when she returned alone, but made no comment,
turning back to his intense study of the ceiling when she failed to explain.
He was lying on his bed, arms folded under his head, with all the posture of
someone used to slumming it in dank, dirty motel rooms, as oppose to the
spoiled rich boy he truly was. He did not even seem the slightest bit curious
as to Harry's failure to appear. The sight angered her, and she pushed air
passed her teeth before dropping down into her own bed, pulling from her
beaded purse the first book her fingers brushed. She fell asleep before
Malfoy, and when she awoke some time in the middle of the night, he was
still staring, eyes fixed unblinking on the ceiling above.

::

Malfoy was a mute. A creepy ferret mute, with blank, translucent eyes and
blank, translucent skin.

Not that she wanted to talk to him. Or would reply if he spoke to her.

But still. It was just plain weird. Not to say anything. At all. Ever. Not one
single word in the whole three days since Harry left. Only polite nods and
vacant grunts. Maybe his brain had been taken out while in the Dark Lord's
service. She'd heard of brainwashing, but did that mean that a person was
only left with half a mind later? Or maybe this wasn't Draco Malfoy at all.
Maybe he was some sort of robot, sent to end the human race! She'd read
somewhere that robots didn't have belly button, since they weren't born and
all. She'd never actually seen his belly button, had she?

Later that night she caught him stretched out on his bed, shirt ridden up
over his stomach as he scratched absently at a spot above his left hip. Her
eyes trailed over taunt, pale skin, compact muscle, a white blond trail of
hairs disappearing down in to his trousers.

The hand scratching paused. Her eyes snapped up to his. His eyebrow was
raised in a question, but she thought his cheeks were a little redder than
usual and his chest seemed to be moving quicker. She turned on her heal
and moved to face the window, pressing her forehead against the glass in an
effort to cool her warm face.

At least she knew for definite now that he was, in fact, human.

::

"Do you want to play snap?"

She had fully expected Malfoy to ignore her, had not even bothered to
glance up from the cards fanned out over her fingers. But he only paused a
moment before saying, "I've never heard of it."

"It's a Muggle game," she said, and she thought that would be the end of it
until he slid down from his bed and came to kneel beside her on the floor.
There was a brief suspicion that maybe he was up to something, luring her
in to a false sense of security. But it seemed far more likely he was just as
bored as she was, and there were only so many days of silence and solitaire
a person could take. Hermione personally drew the line at three.

"Each player gets a pile of cards. They take it in turns to place one card
down, and if there are two that match you have to shout snap and stick your
hand down before the other player."

"Well that sounds positively thrilling."

She glared at the drawl to his tone and shuffled the cards agitatedly between
her hands. "I didn't want to challenge your mind with anything too
complicated. We both know how your mind copes when forced to make its
own decisions." That might have been a step too far, and she thought he
might blow up at her for that. But he only cringed a little, before snatching
the cards from her hands.
"Poker."

"What?"

"Let's play poker." His fingers jerked up, and the cards moved with them,
shuffling back and forth in such a way that she might have suspected magic,
had she not seen his wand locked away in Moody's room with her own two
eyes. The pale digits jumped and lifted, manipulating the pieces of card as if
they were no more than puppets under his control.

"I don't know how."

"Hm?"

"I don't know how to play."

She thought he might sneer at her, or make some crude remark about the
know-it-all not knowing it all. But he simply cocked his head to one side,
his expression neutral as always. And when he spoke, he was almost
unrecognisable to her, without the drawl, or mocking undertone. "Then I'll
have to teach you," he said, and it was not the intellectual conversation she
so craved, but she thought it was a start.

::

Hermione was not really surprised to receive the message - though,

admittedly, the postcard it had been scrawled on had baffled her at first. She
did not know any Vernon Dursley, and could not imagine the man of
Harry's nightmare childhood ever writing to her, even if they had met. It
was actually rather embarrassing, how long it took her to figure it out. But
really. It had been almost five days, and she was nearly out of her mind with
worry. And the letter was really quite cleverly disguised. It took her three
attempts with her wand to break the code.

The message was not particularly revealing. Just a note to tell her he had
been delayed, not to worry, and a hotel address somewhere in Cork. At least
Draco did not question her enough to reveal her ignorance over the sudden
change of location. They side-long Apparated to the address, Hermione's
hand hovering awkwardly over Draco's arm, before the hesitation in her
bones irritated her and she simply grabbed on to his elbow. The hotel was
not much different from the previous. In fact, the rat that scuttled across
Hermione's feet on her way to the front desk looked oddly familiar. She
narrowed her eyes suspiciously at it, until she noticed Draco's eyes
narrowing suspiciously at her, in a way that suggested he was questioning
her sanity.

The room was smaller than the last, but the bathroom was markedly
improved and the water did not lose heat after only ten minutes. She turned
the taps over the bath, adding soap as the tub began to fill.

"You're not very good, you know."

"At anything in particular, or just life in general."

Malfoy smirked from where he leant against the bathroom door. "At lying.
When that guy at the front desk was looking at you funny, you just rambled
on about back packing around Ireland, and slumming it."

"Well, he had a point. We don't know how long we'll be staying, but we
have barely any luggage between us. We'll have to work around that
somehow." She wrinkled her nose at the thought of lugging a transfigured
pillow as a suitcase around Ireland. "And I'll have you know I'm a skilled
Occlumens."

"Which means nothing if the person you're lying to is a Muggle."

He was right, which she hated. He also had a very good point, which she
hated more. She straightened up and planted her hands on her hips - all the
better to stop herself grabbing for her wand and silencing him in a fit of
irritation. "Well what would you have had me do, oh Master of Lies?"

"Master of Lies." He drew the words out, tasting them in his mouth. "I think
I actually kind of like that. Draco Malfoy, Master of Lies. Have them write
it on my grave."

"Will you stop talking like that? You're not going to die."
The pause was awkward in that terrible, stomach clenching way it often is,
made worse by the fact that they were near-strangers. Malfoy regarded her
almost thoughtfully for a long moment, before nodding once and stepping
out of the bathroom, the door clicking shut quietly behind him.

::

Hermione threw her arms around Harry's neck and breathed in the very
scent of him - sweat and boy, and the aftershave she had gotten him last
Christmas. He allowed the suffocation, holding her close for several
seconds before taking a small step back. His hair was a mess and there were
bags under his eyes. He clearly hadn't slept in a while, and the stubble
littering his chin did not suit him. The disapproving frown was there before
she could think to curb it. Harry held up his hands in surrender.

"I know, I know. But before you start mothering me, don't you want to hear
what I found out?" He stepped farther in to the room, closing the door
behind him. "Where's Malfoy?"

"In the shower." Harry sent a quick Muffliato at the door, tugging Hermione
to sit opposite him on her bed. "Did that man know where the Horcrux
was?"

"No. But he knew where it had been, and he knows some people who might
be able to get us the information we need." There was a fevered excitement
in his eyes that was contagious and Hermione found herself grasping at his
hands - because any clue, any hint, any information was treasured in a
mission where their leader had up and left right off the Astronomy Tower.
"We went to visit them - they're right here in Cork at the moment, but they
like to keep on the move, what with the war. They're Deserters, Hermione.
Ex-Death Eaters who don't want to join the ranks again. And they're willing
to help. Or they will be, once I gain their trust-"

"Surely you didn't show yourself! Harry, you know the risks! If Voldemort-"

"I didn't! Or, they didn't know it was me. I was in disguise the whole time."
"But that's still risky! Glamour only last for so long, and what if one of
them got suspicious and tried to end the spell, on the off-chance you were
using one?"

"Hermione, you worry too much. Nothing bad happened, and nothing will.
Once I get the information-"

"Wait. Just... hold up and backtrack for a second." Hermione blinked hard,
her mind struggling to process the information being thrown at her. "Tell me
you aren't planning to go back." She knew him. She knew that press of his
lips, and that stubborn glint in his eyes - had seen it often enough in Ron
when he was readying himself for an argument. "Harry-"

"Don't, Hermione. Please?" He turned his hands in hers, linking their

fingers together and squeezing her tight. "Look, this is the first lead we've
had in months. And we need this. I can get the information, and we can
destroy this bloody thing once and for all. Isn't that what you want?"

"I want nothing more than I want your safety."

"But that's the thing, isn't it Hermione? I'll never be safe. Not really. Not
until he's dead. That's why I have to do this. I have to get this done." His
gaze held hers, unwavering and steady, and everything she loved about him
shining there, plain for her to see. "You understand, don't you? Tell me you
understand."

"I understand." She didn't. Not when he had her, and Ron, and the whole
damn Order fighting so that he didn't have to. She might have said more.
Might have told him he was being reckless, or asked to see the charm he
used so that she could improve upon it. But the sound of running water had
long since stopped, and the bathroom door opened to reveal Malfoy, wet
hair dripping on to his white shirt. He blinked at the sight of Harry, but that
was the only outward sign of his shock - if he felt any shock at all.
Hermione was beginning to revert back to her robot theory.

"Malfoy."
"Potter." He inclined his head, eyes darting to Hermione before leaving
them altogether. He clambered on to his bed, pulled out the Muggle
newspaper that appeared outside their door that morning and began an
intense study of the sport section - though Hermione was unsure whether he
understood or cared for what he read there.

They talked a little longer, but it was not the same with Malfoy there and
Harry had to leave soon anyway. She saw him to the door, then out in to the
corridor, wrapping her arms around him tight, leaning in to that familiar
warmth. She thought of Hogwarts, and summer days spent round the lake.
She thought of the Burrow, and suddenly, desperately wished Ron was there
with them. It would not be so hard, if he were leaving them both.

"Is he always like that?" Harry asked, and for a confused moment she
thought he was referring to Ron.

"Always. I don't think he's human anymore. It's like they sucked the human
right out of him until he was just some... anti-human."

"Anti-human?" he repeated, a smirk lining his lips.

"Oh, shut up." But she was pulling him close again, reluctant to let him go.

"I'll be back in a week or so to check in with you," he murmured in to her

hair. "Try not to kill eachother while I'm gone."

"Don't be ridiculous. Anti-humans are much to despondent to kill. That

would require some kind of emotion."

"Ah, of course. Silly of me." He smiled down at her, tracing the lines of her
face with his calloused thumb. "Be safe. Okay?"

"I will if you will."

"Deal." He planed a kiss on her forehead, lingering a second longer than

was necessary. And then he was gone.

::
"Do you know what I don't get?" Malfoy did not reply, but that was to be
expected. He was in one of his mute moods, only grunting occasionally and
shooting her strange looks when she annoyed him or said something he
found odd. She soldiered on regardless. "Why Voldemort always insists on
using things like trolls and giants and... other big things. I mean, what if
they turn on him? They don't have magic but they're a lot stronger and they
could... could crush him. Or squash him. Or a giant might step on him by
accident."

There was a long, long pause. "You're worried because a giant might step
on the Dark Lord?"

She glanced back at him from her seat at the window. He had not moved,
was still laying on his back staring at the ceiling. But some of that absent
glaze had let his expression, and he was frowning now. "I'm not worried. I
just think it's something I would consider. If ever I was hell bent on
genocide and world domination."

"You're forgetting one thing." He met her questioning gaze with a slight
quirk of the lips. "Trolls and giants are embarrassingly stupid. In fact, when
you think about it, most of his followers suffer from particularly low IQs. If
you want to use something bigger than you, it has to be dumber than you
first. That way you can treat them terribly and still have them at your beck
and call."

Hermione frowned at her reflection in the window. She thought of Crabbe

and Goyle - big and lumbering, and always blushing with some scathing
remark Malfoy had made about them. And yet they still followed him
around, still waited desperately for his commands. "Well, if it were me, I'd
just treat them well. Then they'd like me and do what I say anyway."

"They would rise against you. They'd see you as weak."

"Hm." She pursed her lips in thought. "I suppose I could lock a few up.
Make an example of them. Just the ones that behave badly, of course."

Malfoy considered this a moment. "Hermione Granger's evil plan to take

over the world. There's a poetic sort of irony there." She might have
retorted, except that he was very nearly, almost, hardly, but kind of a little
noticeably, smiling. It was nearly impossible to tell. Just a tiny quirk of the
lips, and a slight glint to the eyes. It was nothing really. It most definitely
did not have her breath catching in her chest, her eyes drifting over his
expression, greedy for the rare sight.

"You have to be insane to plot world domination," she said, by way of

distraction when he frowned at her questioningly.

"You lost it long ago, Granger, some time in between Potter's seventh or
eight near-death experience and all that tripe with Spew."

"You better be nice to me. Or you'll be the first person to go."

"I'm terrified, Granger." He drawled.

"As well you should be. It'll be a painful death. With blood, and fire, and...
terrifying pain."

"Then again, I'm terrified of you most nights. With our beds this close
together, I sometimes fear your hair might actually sneak over and strangle
me in my sleep."

She shot him a warning look. "Blood and fire, Malfoy."

::

Malfoy was crying in his sleep. Well, whimpering would probably be a

more accurate term. At first, when she had awakened to the sound, she had
thought he was mocking her - referencing that hair-strangling joke he had
made days before. Because Malfoy never slept. Robots generally didn't
need to rest. But lo and behold. There he was, sleeping, though most
definitely not resting. Sweat beaded at his forehead, trailing down his face
to mix with the tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. He was speaking
too, though she only made out the occasional word, and none of it made
sense. She sat up, briefly considering waking him. But this was Draco
Malfoy, and not Ron or Harry. And so she lay back down and closed her
eyes, and pretended she was asleep when he jolted himself awake,
disappearing into the bathroom only moments later.

::

"I spy with my little eye, something... green. And patchy."

"Mould."

"Hm. Okay... I spy with my little eye, something large, and round, and
dotted in different places-"

"Mould."

"I spy-"

"Mould. And just as a random guess - mould, mould and mould."

"It's hardly my fault there's nothing in here but mould."

"Why are you even playing this stupid game anyway? You aren't five
anymore, though your intellect sometimes fails to reflect the fact." She did
not comment at the fact that it had not been simply her playing the game, as
his guesses most definitely constituted as participating. She let the comment
about her brain slide, her mind still buzzing with the heart wrenching sobs
that had torn through his chest just last night.

"I'm bored, is all."

"Yes, it must be terribly difficult for you being stuck in here, rather than
risking your life every five seconds. It's a marvel you and the wonder-boys
haven't been killed already."

That stung, more than it should have. More than it would have, had Harry
not been gone with no word from him in nearly five days. The silence was
uncomfortable, though the burn in her throat and the frantic blinking of her
eyes prevented her from feeling its usual sickening force. Six minutes
passed, marked by the loud clock hanging on the peeling wall, before
Malfoy spoke again.
"I spy with my eye, something beginning with P."

"You're supposed to say 'little eye'."

Malfoy snorted. "There is nothing little about a Malfoy."

"Well you can't just say 'my eye'! It's stupid!"

"As oppose to this conversation?" But then he thought for a moment, and
said, "I spy with my bionic eye-"

"Bionic?"

"Yes, Granger, bionic-"

"I knew you were a robot."

And really, who was he to look at her like she was crazy? He was the one
going round with bionic eyes.

::

It was strange to glance up at the sky, only to find herself peeking out from
behind a fringe of thick, black hair. Stranger still to catch a glance of herself
in the reflection of the window and see blue, rather than brown, eyes
startling back at her. Strangest yet to turn to her companion and see a young
man with dark hair, light stubble, lips that were meant to be kissed. Harry's
eyes were brown, but with just enough of their usual colour that they were
more hazel than anything else. His grin was just as lopsided as always, and
it was this which gave her the strength to look passed the glamour and see
the boy she knew.

"You look tired," she said, because he did, and she could not help herself.

"I'm alright. The guys like to stay up late. They're mostly night creatures.
Kind of hard to keep up with. I actually think I'm getting used to it though.
You have no idea how painful it was waking before twelve today."
"Come home with me." His grin faded, though the light in his eyes
remained. "We can find another way."

"What other way?"

"I could do some more research. Read some more books."

His hands slid over the rough bumps of the metal table, capturing hers and
holding them tight. "There's more to life than just books, Hermione," he
said, and how dare he look at her like that? Like she was just some naive
little girl, working aimlessly around after him. Because she was the one.
She was the one on the battlefield day in, day out. She was the one who got
to see friends she had known all her life fall at her feet, crumple to the
ground as the very essence of them vanished from their eyes. And it may
not have been his fault that he had to stay holed up in Grimmauld Place,
and he may have hated it. But that was only because he knew nothing else.
Had not smelt, tasted, the tang of burning flesh in the air. Not heard the
screams of the dying.

"You're putting yourself in needless danger," she said instead, sliding her
hands out from under his, placing them neatly in her lap.

"Needlessly? I'm doing what is necessary to find the Horcrux!"

"No, you're doing this because you hate being cooped up all day and can't
stand not being a part of everything. But that's just it, Harry. You can't be a
part of everything."

"And why the bloody hell not?"

"Because of the prophecy! Because you're our only hope at defeating that
snake once and for all! Because if you die, the rest of us are buggered to
hell, that's bloody why!"

She was breathing too heavy, too hard. Her eyes stung, her throat burned.
Harry stared at the table hard for a long, long moment. When he looked up,
there was anger in his eyes, but it was overshadowed by something else,
something she could not recognise.
"I need this, Hermione. I need to find this thing, and destroy it. Dumbledore
died for it. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

And she did not reply, because she did not need to. He knew. He knew it
meant everything to her. To them. When he left, he held her tight, muttered
in her ear that everything was going to be okay and he'd see her soon.
Handed her some money, newly transferred from his Galleons in to Muggle
pounds. He left her with a promise to keep safe and keep her updated. But
none of that mattered, because he left her all the same.

::

"What kind of a name is Draco anyway?"

"A perfectly noble one. I am the sixth Draco in a long line of Malfoys, and-
"

"Well it's still stupid. Why do people always insist on naming their kids
after dead people?"

"It's honourable."

"It's creepy, is what it is. And old-fashioned. When I have a baby, I want to
name it after something pretty. I want to be able to look at it and not feel
like its just there as a reminder of someone else. A replacement."

Malfoy did not speak for a long time, and she thought that maybe he was
giving her time to gather herself together again. It wasn't that she was
crying for any particular reason. It's just that copious amounts of alcohol did
this to her. Made her all emotional and flushed. And maybe it hadn't been
the best of ideas to order several bottles of wine up to the hotel room (all
expensive and all paid for with Harry's money) only to drink it all in one
sitting with a near-stranger. Especially when said stranger had once been
her enemy and, while almost three months of sharing hotel rooms had
helped to chip away at any remaining animosity, Hermione still wouldn't
say they were friends exactly.
Companions. Comrades. Drinking buddies, now. But not friends. Certainly
not someone she should pour her heart out too. Except that's exactly what
she had spent an hour doing and, why was she standing again? Oh, yes. The
bathroom. She could not sleep in her daytime clothes, no matter how tired
she was, or how much of a struggle simply changing in to her pyjama
trousers turned out to be. Twice Malfoy came to the door to see if she had
killed herself yet. Both times she disappointed him. When she slid to the
floor for what must surely have been the six-hundredth time in the space of
five minutes, she decided to listen to gravity and remain where she was.
Because, really. Who needed beds? Birds didn't have beds. Nor did fish, or
Hippogriffs, or Mermaids.

She awoke the next morning to a stinking hangover and the vague stench of
the bathroom floor. Malfoy hovered over her, that stupid smirk on his face,
and had he been anyone else, he might have done the gentlemanly thing and
lifted her to her room the night before. But this was Malfoy, not Ron, not
Harry, and really, what had she expected?

"I'm never drinking again," she groaned, then groaned again because
everywhere hurt.

"I don't know. Drunk Granger is a lot more fun than sober Granger." She
thought there was an insult there somewhere, and made to glare, only to
find he'd already left her to it. A whole string of words rose to the tip of her
tongue - arrogant, stupid, selfish, lazy little toerag. Then she spotted the box
of Muggle painkillers on the side, a glass of water waiting patiently next to
it. And she thought that maybe he wasn't so bad, after all.
*Chapter 15*: Chapter 13 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is

brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual
and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be
impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

Hermione stood on the mattress, wand at the ready, eyes fixed on the crack
in the wall where that slimy tail had disappeared exactly seven minutes ago.
It was Him. The One. That same rat that had haunted her at the first motel.
He had been absent for the last couple of weeks, but she knew he'd return.
He was following them. Taunting her by darting around the floor at night,
only to slither back in to his hole whenever she tried to jump him. He
always got away. But not this time. No. This time she was going to defeat
him, once and for all.

She just had to wait.

And wait.

At exactly seventeen minutes passed two, the soft beginnings of movement

drifted out from behind the wall. Hermione's body tensed, legs slightly bent,
wand arm raising. She was prepared. A nose. Whiskers. Beady eyes darting
back and forth, checking the coast. A whole head, soon followed by a sleek,
black body, its grotesque tail trailing out behind it. Hermione briefly
wondered if that tail was constantly covered in the dust that blanketed every
inch of these grimy hotels, or if the rat had some means of cleaning it. She
dismissed the thought as it crawled closer, nose twitching cautiously in the
air.
She let it come, let it scent out the crumbs she had stacked in a pile by her
bed. Waited patiently as it edged closer, closer. Just a little farther-

"STUPEFY!"

A red flash. The silhouette of the rat darting to the left just in time.

"Stupefy, Stupefy, Stupefy!"

She followed it across the room, sending three more jets of light in to the
wall before tripping on the boots she had left on the floor that evening and
landing on her arse with a painful thud.

Light flooded the room, crowding her senses painfully for a moment. Her
eyes adjusted to the sight of Malfoy clad only in his tracks bottoms, hair
rumpled, cheeks flushed, shoulders heaving with the weight of his pants.
She thought he almost looked endearing in that moment, all crumpled and
sleep-addled as he was. "What," he began, his voice deceptively steady in
comparison to the breaths raking his chest, "the fuck are you playing at
Granger? Are you fucking insane?"

"The rat..." Hermione gestured at the crack in the wall, only to stiffen at a
muffled squeak. Was it laughing at her? Maybe if she just stuck her wand
up there and aimed random curses, she would get the bastard before the
whole wall collapsed.

"The rat? Fucking hell, Granger! I thought we were being attacked!"

"We were! By the rat! It's the same one from the last four hotels too! It's
following us!"

His blinked at her, slowly, and in a way that reminded her strangely of Ron
whenever she tried to talk to him about Ancient Runes. But then his eyes
narrowed and he leaned forwards, peering steadily in to her eyes. "Granger,
be straight with me. Have you taken anything you shouldn't have?"

She wrinkled her nose. "What?"

"Smoked something? Snorted it? Or are you actually just this level of crazy
all by yourself? I can't really say that any of those options would surprise
me."

"I was doing you a favour!" She was clambering to her feet now, and not
making a very graceful job of it. Her trouser leg caught under the opposite
foot and she had to slap her hand against the wall just to keep from
tumbling back down again. "That rat could crawl in to your bed whilst you
sleep and gnaw your face off! And then you'd be sorry!"

"Somehow I don't think I'll have as much trouble sleeping with that as I will
with your incessant screeching at two in the morning!"

"Well I can't sleep knowing that thing is still out here!"

"And you really think you're going to catch it like that? Merlin, Granger, it
should be wilful neglect for the Order to let you enter any battle with an aim
that appalling!"

Later, she would think of how this had been the most emotion she had
gotten out of him in three, nearly four months. But in that moment she was
furious and agitated, and exhausted from her stakeout in the dark, and all
she could think was that she wanted that rat gone so that she could get to
sleep at night without worrying about waking up missing some vital body
part! She was storming towards him, wand raised and the way he flinched
made her think that maybe he was preparing himself for her to curse him.
"You do it then, if you think you're so bloody brilliant!"

The fact that she was offering her wand to Draco Malfoy did not hit her
until she saw the surprise light his features. His eyes widened slightly, the
anger left his face, though the flush remained. His gaze darted to the wand
hanging in the space between them, but did not linger there long, seeking
out her eyes instead. There was something in his stare that she could not
remember seeing there before - something reminiscent of the quick-witted,
intelligent boy that had been her only intellectual challenge in all her
schooling career. She remembered Harry telling her that he was a skilled
Legillamens, but could not think to pull up her blocks, could not bring
herself to look away.
It seemed as though he was waiting - perhaps for her to change her mind, or
snatch her wand away at the last minute and laugh in his face. Even when
he reached for it, the movement was slow and cautious, so unlike his usual
demeanour that she found herself holding her breath, unwilling to burst the
moment. Something crossed his expression as his hand curled round the
wood, something that might have been relief, or maybe just wonderment
that she had actually allowed him to take it. But it was gone in a moment,
the blank mask back in place, and his shoulders straightened as he stepped
away from her.

"Get on the bed," he said, and had he been Ron or Harry she might have
made some stupid sexual innuendo. As it was, she did as she was told,
tucking her feet underneath her as the light flicked off. There was a pause,
and then the mattress dipped beside her under Malfoy's weight.

"What are you going to do to it?"

"Nothing if you don't shut up because it's never going to come out of that
hole."

Silence fell a long moment. "You aren't going to kill it, are you?" She
whispered it in the hopes that Malfoy would answer without some snarky
comment or biting remark.

"What would it matter if I did?" he asked, after a pause. "It's just a rat."

"It still has a right to live." Just not where she was sleeping.

"If I don't kill it, it'll only come back again and we'll be right back where we
started."

"We can stun it and set it free somewhere far away. Then it won't find us."

"No, it will just be lost and alone in an environment completely unfamiliar

to it. It would be more merciful to kill it, Granger."

"Maybe he'll like it more in this new place. Maybe he's only at this other
place because he had nowhere else to go, but when he reaches this new
place he'll realize how much better and nicer, and safer it is and be much
happier there than he ever was at that other place."

"Or maybe you're forgetting the fact that he was forced and all but
kidnapped to reach the new place and never wanted to be there in the first
place."

"Maybe he'll meet other rats and make lots of friends who won't be horrible
to him, like his other rat friends were."

"And maybe you should just stop trying to fucking fix everything all the
time, Granger." It was not shouted. Nor was there much emotion to the
statement. He had been more riled when she called him a robot that one
time. But her mouth snapped shut and she felt hurt welling up within her,
which was as frustrating as it was ridiculous. She knew they were not
friends. He had never given the illusion that they were. But the thought that
he would rather have been killed than have been forced to share a hotel
room with her for the passed three months was certainly less than flattering.

"Well maybe if the rat wasn't actually a creepy robot with no emotions and
no social skills he would be a lot happier!"

He didn't reply, but she hadn't really expected him to. She scooted herself
up against the headboard, relaxing back in to the pillows. She fell asleep to
the sight of Malfoy, coiled and waiting to spring, wand hanging loose
between his fingers. When she awoke, he was in the shower, wand placed
neatly on the bedside table. The rat lay unconscious in a shoebox he had
summoned from somewhere, ready to be transported someplace else.

::

Another postcard with another address. This time the message to Hermione
was shorter. Hastily scribbled. If Malfoy noticed the frustrated way in
which she turned the postcard over (twice) eyes scanning the blank card for
something, anything - a hint, a clue, a sign that he hadn't completely
forgotten her existence in light of his new life - then he said nothing. They
packed up their things (a job which took ten minutes at most) and
Apparated in silence to a back alley somewhere near the latest place they
would be staying. For a while, the hotel rooms had almost been nice. Or at
least adequate - running water, relatively clean sheets. But as of late, the
places seemed to be getting seedier. The toilets did not always flush. The
walls peeled, revealing brown stains and mould.

They crossed to the front desk, and Hermione tried to ignore the lecherous
look the man there gave her. His eyes roamed up and down her body, until
Malfoy stepped up to her side, his shoulder pressing slightly in front of
hers, and the man suddenly became a lot more co-operative in finding them
a key. Hermione did not look up at Malfoy, and he did not say a word,
though he remained by her side until they were out of sight of the
receptionist.

"This is what Hell looks like. Isn't it?"

Malfoy did not reply, but a muscle in his jaw was jumping in that way it did
when something was bothering him. The room stank of dust and decay, and
many other things Hermione did not allow her mind to process. The beds
were narrow to the point of being ridiculous, barely a foot apart in order
that they both fit in to the tiny room. The sheets had either once been a
sunny yellow and had faded over the years, or were meant to be white, and
had not been washed in a decade. (She preferred to think the former). She
glanced briefly at the bathroom door before deciding that there were only so
many horrors the mind could take in one afternoon and she could save that
particular hurdle for the evening.

"Huh," Malfoy grunted, in a way that was altogether too light and casual for
the atrocity that was their room.

"What?"

"Well, I always assumed that you and Potter were fucking. But now I
realize I must have been wrong. No man would ever set the woman he was
sleeping with up in a hole like this."

"Must you always be so crude?"

"Must you always be such a prude?"

"If I'm a prude around you, it's only because I find you so disgusting."

"Or you're secretly attracted to me and have to hide it beneath layers of

dislike."

"Trust me - the dislike is real. Maybe if you weren't so annoying all the
time-"

"Oh, I'm annoying? Because I'm not the one who-" And so it went on.

::

"The water runs clear, but you have to bang the pipes a few... what are you
doing?"

"The people next door are having sex."

Malfoy's lips twisted in to a smirk, his hands pausing in the task of towel-
drying his hair. "Why, Granger. I never knew you were such a pervert."

"Oh, shut up, Malfoy."

"Really, it's nothing to be ashamed of. I actually think it's a good thing
you've decided to dislodge what I can only imagine to be that very painful
stick up your arse."

She snorted. "As oppose to you? You freak out if I so much as grab your
arm to Apparate us somewhere-"

"I don't not 'freak out'. I simply enjoy my personal space-"

"-by personal space you actually mean never coming in to any kind of
physical contact with another human being, then yeah, you enjoy your
personal space."

Malfoy scowled but said nothing further and, after a moment, crossed the
room to join her at the wall. "So why exactly are you still listening to
them?"
Hermione shrugged, shifting slightly on the bed to relieve the growing
sense of pins-and-needles in her leg. "I'm bored. And it's really quite funny.
She's clearly faking it."

Malfoy frowned, and Hermione found herself tracking the lines the
movement made across his forehead, between his eyebrows, beside his
eyes. His mouth turned down at the corners slightly in what might have
been distaste - or maybe just disgust. "Not very well, either. Poor bloke. I'm
surprised he hasn't offered to gag her."

"Maybe he likes it. Don't you men prefer women to make a song and dance
about it?" She did not wait for his reply, moving instead to grip the
headboard with her hands. It was weak, the wood poor quality and slightly
rotting, and it moved easily under her push. She shoved forwards until it hit
the wall, leaned back, surged forwards again.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Shih!" She repeated the motion, until the momentum picked up and the
headboard banged repeatedly against the peeling wall. The pounding on the
other side slowed, paused, before picking up pace, driving faster, louder.
Hermione stifled a giggle in to her palm and picked up the pace, driving the
headboard in to the wall, speeding up whenever the corresponding noise on
the other side of the wall did so.

"Help me out here," she hissed to Malfoy, who rolled his eyes but placed his
hands on the wood beside hers anyway, his added strength causing plumes
of dust to trickle down from the weak ceiling. Hermione had a brief worry
the thing would fall down on their heads, before she was overcome with
another fit of laughter and had to sit back on her knees, clutching at her
stomach, shoulders shaking with the ridiculousness of it all.

A loud, piercing moan broke the symphony of wood pounding wall,

followed by a further succession of cries, shorter though no less in volume
(or falsity). It took Hermione several shuddering gasps of breath before she
could stem the laughter enough to moan back. The competition escalated,
until both women finished - the stranger on the other side with a loud,
shriek of a cry, Hermione in fits of giggles she could no longer suppress.
She fell on to her back, gasping for breath, cheeks flushed from her efforts.
It was the sort of thing she and Ginny would have done, had they been in
Grimmauld Place and been unfortunate enough to be stuck next to two
strangers who felt the need to fuck each other in to oblivion every hour of
the night.

Except Malfoy was not Ginny, not even close, and the realisation struck her
the second her eyes landed on his. He was kneeling over her, hands still on
the headboard, and his shoulders were rising and falling hard, as though the
game had taken it all out of him. Her gaze darted down his arms, caught
sight of the raised tendons there, to the white skin of his knuckles, and she
wondered at the fact that the weak headboard had not split under his grip.
When she lifted her eyes to catch his again, they were on the move,
travelling over her heaving chest, pausing too long on the fluttering pulse at
her neck. They traced her lips, the flush of her cheeks, before landing on
hers. They were darker, the same colour they got when he was angry, but he
was not angry now.

She made as if to laugh again, eager to break the suddenly tense silence.
The giggle came out strangled and strangled. It was not so funny anymore.

::

Hermione knew that something was wrong the second Malfoy stepped back
in to the hotel room. He had only been gone a couple of minutes, five at
most. Had grunted something about the morning newspaper not being
delivered, and slipped out of the door, warning to be careful following him
out. She froze at first sight of him. Was on her feet before she could glance
again.

"What is it?"

"Death Eaters." The words came out strangled, his eyes widened in a panic
she had never seen in him before. It was terrifying because he had always
been so unshakeable, and answering pangs of panic were rising in her chest.

"How many?"
"Two." And he was moving now - they both were - throwing things into
bags, until half of her things were in his rucksack, and most of his were in
her purse. "I recognise them, but I don't know their names."

"Did they see you?"

He shot her a look, as if it were some reflection on her intelligence that she
even had to ask that and she rolled her eyes in response.

"What are you doing?" he hissed, dragging her back when she moved for
the door. "We can just Apparate out of here."

"I have to leave a message for Harry. He'll never be able to find us
otherwise." Malfoy growled in a frustrated way that told her he knew she
was right but he didn't have to bloody like it. "Just stay here with our stuff.
I'll-"

"And what if they see you?"

"I'll curse them, of course."

"In front of Muggles?"

"We have Obliviate for a reason, dimwit."

"It is against the law to Obliviate a Muggle without explicit Ministry

permission-"

Hermione felt sure her eyebrows would disappear in to her hairline if they
rose any higher. "Are you kidding me? Since when do you care about
government protocol?" She wanted to shake him - or punch him. Whatever
would snap him out of this insanity. She settled for grabbing his hand off
her arm. "I'll only be a few minutes. I'll make sure I'm not seen."

It was not the strength with which he gripped her hand to stop her moving
away which had her pausing in her tracks, so much as the fact that he had
tried to stop her at all. His hand was warm on hers, soft in comparison to
the harsh glint in his eyes. "If you aren't back here in five minutes, I'll come
and fetch you myself. And it will not be a pleasurable experience, I promise
you."

She might have said something about that clear threat, except that his thumb
was ghosting along the inside of her palm, drawing patterns there and
building up a storm in her chest. He was too close. She couldn't think with
him all up in her personal space like that. He was too tall, too broad, too
much for her senses to cope with. His eyes were less opaque up close, and
she could see flecks of amber there amongst the grey. There was a scar on
his left cheek that she had noticed before, and her eyes lingered for too long
on the fullness of his lips.

When she managed to lift her gaze again, there was a strange look in his
eyes. Curiosity and something darker. His whole body shifted, swaying
towards her so that his fringe brushed her forehead, and each breath she
breathed, he had to breathe too. For one moment, she thought he was going
to kiss her. His face drew nearer, her eyes going almost cross-eyed just to
keep her gaze on him. But then he leaned back, his hand squeezing hers
once before letting it go completely.

"Try not to get yourself killed," he muttered - was his voice slightly gruffer
than usual? - and she was stumbling out in to the hall, wand drawn at the
ready.

She did not know what the Death Eaters looked like, but that was okay
because it meant they would not recognize her. She briefly considered
pocketing her wand, but decided she would rather deal with odd looks from
any Muggles than a curse in the stomach. The halls were empty. The lobby
was not. The couple at the front desk looked harmless enough - a man and a
woman, about the same age as herself, drooping all over each other in a
way she might have laughed at in any other situation.

"Excuse me?" The man behind the desk grunted, but did not look up from
his book. "My friend and I will be leaving a little earlier than planned-"

"No refunds."

Hermione blinked. "Oh. No, of course. That wasn't actually-"

"If you broke somethin' up there, you can pay for it. I probably won't notice
though, to be honest. Whole place is a shit hole."

"That isn't it. I was wondering if I could leave a message with you. A friend
of mine might be passing through here soon, and I need to tell him we've
moved on."

The man's hand fumbled across the desk, until it reached a crumpled napkin
and a pen. It would have to do. Her pen hovered over the worn tissue a
moment, uncertainty staying her hand. But then Malfoy's warning came
back to her, and she scribbled the first thing that came to mind - 'Harry,
hope you are okay. All is well here, but M and I ran in to a few of his old
friends and decided to move on. We will be in touch with our new address.
Love, H'. She smoothed down the crumpled napkin a few times before
giving in it up as a lost cause.

"Please make sure he gets it."

The man grunted, eyes still glued to the pages of his book. One hand
reached out to grab the napkin, sticking it on top of a haphazard pile of
paperwork.

Malfoy was stood by the window when she opened the door, tensed in a
way that suggested he had been expecting an attack. His body did not relax
as she stepped in to the room, but she thought there was a softening to his
eyes, a slight give in the tension of his shoulders. "You came back."

"Of course I did," she returned, crossing the room in three steps, grabbing
up her purse and tossing him the rucksack. "I said I would, didn't I?"

This time, when she moved to take his arm, he shifted, drawing away
before slipping his hand around hers. He did not speak, his eyes fixed on
the wall ahead. Hermione paused in her task of scanning the room for
forgotten items. Felt the warmth of his skin. Curled her fingers over his and
pressed their palms together. Later she would think that it must have been
her mind tricking her memory. But in that moment, she did not feel the
sickening pull of her Apparation. Only the long outlines of his fingers, and
the way his thumb brushed over hers in a whisper of a caress. And she
remembered thinking she would never forget the feel of him in that
moment. Not if she lived for a hundred years.

::

"Why does the thought of Obliviating someone disturb you so much?" It

had been four days. They had found a hotel that was disgusting enough to
accept the remainder of their funds from Harry. On the down side, she had
already spotted three cockroaches. On the plus side, that was three
cockroaches less than the last hotel. Unfortunately, however, they had only
been able to afford one bed and had been taking it in turns to sleep on the
floor. It had been her go last night, and her back was still suffering for it.
"Did it happen to someone you know?"

Malfoy was quiet for so long that she thought he would not answer. "I just
think it's the ultimate theft - to steal someone's memory. A part of them that
contributes so much to their character. You could destroy everything a
person is just by taking one memory away - one moment of kindness or
love that defines them for the rest of their life." He did not glance up from
his game of Solitaire as he spoke, though Hermione rolled on to her side to
watch him over the side of the bed. "I've always thought Obliviate should
be one of the Unforgiveables."

"Really?"

"Well, think about it. When you use Avada, you're stealing a life. When you
Imperio someone, you steal their right to free will. When you Crucio them,
you're stealing their comfort, sometimes even their mind off them. So why
is it okay to steal a memory? Isn't that just as important as free will, or the
right to live?"

"But what if it's for their own safety?"

He shook his head. "Everybody has a right to decide what sacrifices should
be made for their own safety. No one should take that right from them."

Hermione was silent a long moment, rolling on to her back to stare up at the
ceiling. It was cracked in places, yellow stains seeping over the cheap
white-wash paint. "I Obliviated my parents." The sound of cards shuffling
ceased. "It was a few years ago now. Just before everything kicked off. I
sent them somewhere in Australia, then erased my memory of where so
they could never be tracked."

For a long while, Malfoy said nothing. And then, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't
have said what I did. I spoke out of turn."

"It's okay." She swallowed, hard, because it was very dusty in the room, and
she had allergies.

"What were they like? Your parents?"

"Really great. You know. In that, come to every school play, even though
you only have one line, kind of way." She turned her head and found him
sitting against the opposite wall, head tipped back, though his eyes were on
her. "What were your parents like?"

He snorted. "You met my father, didn't you?"

"I always thought there might be another side to him. When he wasn't
around... people like me."

"Oh, don't worry. He was a bastard to everyone. Made my mother

miserable." There was something bitter in his expression, but it faded
gradually, and then he just looked tired. "No. That's a lie. There was a time
when things were good. When we were happy. Before Potter killed that
Basilisk and wrecked that diary. That's when everything changed. I've never
known exactly why."

Hermione said nothing, because she would not lie to him and say that she
did not know either, but she could not tell him about the Horcrux - his
father's one task, bleeding and broken under the penetration of that fang.
She blinked when he stood suddenly. "Where are you going?"

"All this talk has depressed me. And when I'm depressed, I find there is no
better cure than copious amounts of vodka."
"Mr. Malfoy, I'd say that's the best idea you've ever had."

::

"Adults are stupid."

Draco's smirk was spoiled by the glaze of his eyes. "We're adults."

"Yeah but, not really. We're still pretty young. If I weren't a soldier, I'd only
just have finished university."

"Where would you have gone?"

"Oxford. If I got in."

"You would have."

That was damn well close to a compliment, and Hermione might have said
something but for the fact that the cards fanned out in her hands were
blurring beyond comprehension now, and it was her turn. She placed them
down, face up, wobbling dangerous as she did so.

"You lose, Granger," Dra- Malfoy said, grinning stupidly. "Take them off."

Hermione huffed, but reached for her socks with little other protest. Having
already forgone a jumper and a shirt, her socks were a small loss in
comparison. She tossed them over at Malfoy, who caught them easily
before they could hit his face. Two and a half bottles of vodka plus several
sherbet lemons later and his Seeker reflexes were still intact.

"Ha! You lose!" Another round passed - or was it two? Hermione lifted the
bottle to her lips, only to find it empty. Her sulking was interrupted by the
sight of Draco - Malfoy, damn it - rising to his feet, fingers at the bottom of
his jeans. He slipped them off easily, kicking them to the corner of the
room, and sat back down clad only in a pair of black boxers. Hermione
lifted her gaze from his torso, huffing at the smug grin on his face. "I swear
you're losing on purpose. I thought you said you were the champion of
Poker?"
"I am. When we're actually playing Poker."

They weren't playing Poker anymore? Hermione blinked at the hand she
had been dealt a moment, before dropping them to the floor with a sigh.
"Well, I guess I lose as well, then. I haven't got a clue what we're doing."

"You know the consequences of losing a round, Granger." His eyes dropped
to her last remaining item of clothing, other than her underwear - her jeans.
She rolled her eyes, but fumbled around until her hand caught the edge of
the bed and pulled herself up to her feet. "Ah, ah, ah. Not so fast."

She scowled. "Merlin, Draco, do you want them on or off?"

His grin was devious, to the point of being downright evil, and it cut
through her clouded mind like a knife. "Oh, trust me, Granger. I want them
off. But," he continued, before she could interrupt, "you gave up the game.
Which means that I get to choose an extra forfeit."

"And that would be?"

He paused only a moment, his amusement evident in his eyes, along with
something else that she couldn't name, but which had her gaze fixed on his.
She wondered briefly if he was a hypnotist of some kind. Or maybe it was
just another of those creepy robot side-effects. "I get to take them off."

She frowned at that, her nose wrinkling in confusion. "If you really want
to," she said, upon realising that he was waiting for her reply. Because,
really? How bad could that be? She had been thinking he would send her
streaking through the hallways, or some other humiliating task. This was
weak in comparison. She put it down to his inebriated state that his usual
evilness was not up to scratch. (She put it down to her own inebriated state
that she had no qualms about Draco Malfoy removing articles of her
clothing).

He closed the distance between them, and she blinked when he dropped to
sit on the bed, pulling her forwards to stand between his legs. His fingers
moved, but did not touch the button, landing instead on her waist, trailing
down her hips until they reached the hem of her jeans. Still, he did not take
the button right away. He took his time in reaching it, his nails scraping
lightly over the skin of her lower stomach, until goosebumps rose in their
wake. His breath hit her stomach the second he slipped the button through
the hole, and Hermione felt her own breath catch in her throat, her heart
picking up the slack as her lungs gave out.

His eyes lifted to meet hers for a brief moment before his lips pressed
against her skin in a barely-there caress. His second kiss was bolder,
lingering so that hot air rushed out across her skin. When his tongue darted
out on his third kiss, her hand came up to grasp at his shoulder. His skin
was hot under her hold, and she could feel the muscles shifting as he drew
down the zipper of her jeans. His hands came back up to rest on her waist,
massaging her hips. His mouth was hot and wet on her stomach, tongue
tracing around her belly button, dropping lower to swipe at the hem of her
pants.

It was a struggle to get her jeans free of her legs, and she almost fell, twice,
when they got caught on her feet. They laughed, until Draco's mouth
reattached itself to her skin, and then she was whimpering lightly, one hand
returning to his shoulder while the other slipped in to his hair. For a brief
moment, she was all too aware that she was standing in nothing but her
underwear in front of Draco Malfoy, and that his head was buried
somewhere in between the valley of her breasts. She thought that Ginny
would kill herself laughing when she told her about this. Then Draco bit
down lightly on her neck, and she didn't think of anything much after that.

His hands slipped round to the back of her thighs. She did not need much
encouragement to clamber up on to his lap. She miscalculated slightly and
almost toppled off the bed altogether, before he managed to catch her,
settling her legs either side of his so that she was effectively straddling him.

"Are we going to have sex?"

Draco blinked at the question, his head pulling back a second before his lips
captured hers. "Not if you don't want to," he said, after a pause.

"Oh, I want to." Maybe she sounded a little too enthusiastic, because his
lips twitched then, like he was trying not to laugh. "Do you? Want to, I
mean?"

His hand slipped in to her hair, cradling the back of her head, his other arm
moving to wrap around her back. "Yes, I want to, Granger," he murmured,
rocking up in to her to show her exactly how he wanted. She moaned at the
feel of him, tilting her head down to meet him in a kiss. She thought it
would be bruising and rough, like every other part of Draco. But he kissed
her with a gentleness that somehow managed to calm the frantic beating of
her heart and fuel the fire in her lower belly all at the same time. He took
her bottom lip in to his mouth, nibbling lightly. His tongue ghosted over
hers, and when she followed it back in to his mouth, he sucked on the tip of
hers.

She moaned, her hips grinding down in to his, and he broke the kiss on a
groan. She built up a slow rhythm against him, her forehead coming down
to rest on his.

"Hermione..." The sound of her name on his lips affected her more than she
could have imagined, and she pressed her lips to his, frantically now,
deepening the kiss the second her tongue touched his.

"Hermione."

That wasn't him. They both froze.

"Hermione. Open up." That sounded like Harry. She would know him
anywhere. But then, so would any Death Eater. Draco's arm released her,
his hand tangling painfully in her hair for a moment before he managed to
get it free. She slid down off his lap, pulling on the shirt he tossed her while
he reached for her wand. There was a brief pause before the handle began to
rattle from the other side. Hermione cast around for something, anything,
that she could use as a weapon and caught up the umbrella Draco had found
three hotels ago. She was on the bed when the door burst open, the weak
lock giving easily under pressure.

Harry blinked at the sight of them, head tilting to one side. "Why are you
both in your underwear?" His frown deepened. "And why does Malfoy have
a wand?"
Draco's arm did not drop. "What's the last thing Dumbledore said to me
before he died that night on the tower? Before any of the other Death Eaters
got there?"

Hermione understood instantly. A question that only Harry would know the
answer to. A scene that only three men had been witness to, one of those
dead, the other two present in this room. Harry blinked, and she thought for
a second that he did not know. Her grip on the umbrella tensed, fear spiking
in her chest.

But then, "He said, 'It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now'."

Hermione glanced at Draco, ready to - to what? Beat the impersonator to

death with her umbrella? But Draco was nodding, wand already lowering,
though the tension never left his body. Harry stepped in to the room, and his
body fell back heavily against the door the second it clicked shut behind
him.

"Are you okay?" Hermione's eyes were already scanning his body,
assessing the potential damage, seeking out blood. Harry's eyebrows rose,
his gaze doing an assessment of its own.

"Tired. But fine." He smirked. "I'd ask how you are, but I'm not sure I want
to know."

"We were just changing. For bed. Separately, I mean. To get in to bed
separately. But then you called out and we both ran in here. From having
been in separate rooms..." Harry's eyes swivelled to the closed bathroom
door and back again, amusement now outweighing the clear exhaustion in
his eyes.

"And then you just fell in to Malfoy's clothes, right?"

Malfoys...? She looked down at the shirt - realising simultaneously that the
thing swamped her in a way her own shirt shouldn't have. Looked over to
Malfoy, who had chosen now of all times to revert back to creepy-robot
mode. Looked back to Harry, who's suppressed laughter was now jerking
his shoulders.
"Oh, shut up."

::

"I know where the Horcrux is."

"When do we leave?"

Harry's smile was a mixture of so many things - warmth, love, affection,

sorrow, guilt. It hurt to stare at it for too long, sending a pang through her
chest. "There's no 'we', 'Mione."

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm coming with you. We agreed," she added, cutting
off his protest. "We agreed. All three of us. You won't do this alone."

"And I won't. For the others. You and Ron will be there with me." He took
her hand in his, linking their fingers. "But, just this one. Okay? Just this one
has to be alone."

Because it meant something to him. It meant something to all of them. But

especially to him. This was the thing that Dumbledore had died for. The
thing which only he and Harry were supposed to have captured. And she
didn't understand it. Not really. Could not imagine charging on without him
or Ron. But she nodded anyway, squeezing his hand in hers, pulling him
into a hug.

"How long until you leave?"

"Five days."

The shower shut off in the next room. The sounds of shuffling. Cotton
against skin and a toothbrush scrubbing teeth.

"So. You and Malfoy, huh?"

Hermione shrugged, her brow crumpling thoughtfully. "We were drunk,

Harry."
He hummed, eyes on the bathroom door. She thought he might be angry,
but his expression was clear behind his glasses, his forehead only slightly
creased. "He's not a bad man, Hermione."

"He's a Death Eater." He had eyes that were made for breaking hearts, and a
mouth that was altogether sinfully distracting. No man should be able to
kiss like that.

"And a good man. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive."

She snorted. "When did you go and grow up, Potter?"

His smile was far too sad. "We all grew up a long time ago."

And just like that, the fun went out of it.

::

They had managed to upgrade to a room with two beds. Which meant that
they had the same sized room, but now with no space to breathe. The
bathroom was smaller, Hermione would swear it, and there was never
enough hot water for three people. Thankfully, Hermione had always been a
morning person, and could generally be awake before most human beings.
Unfortunately, Draco Malfoy, as previously established, was no human
being, and it was this which had her standing (once again) on the complete
wrong side of the bathroom door. And, really, this was just further proof of
Draco's robotishness! Because no human could withstand this much
pounding on a door. Even Harry had bailed ten minutes ago, muttering
something about breakfast and waking up to crazy women in his room.

"Malfoy!" she screamed for the tenth (hundredth) time. "Will you just open
the bloody door-"

But then he did, and steam was billowing out, and he was covered only in a
towel, and just standing there, staring down at her, in all his (partially)
naked glory. There were droplets of water trailing down his shoulders, over
his chest, staining his navel with their long, silvery trails.
"Merlin, Granger! Can't a man have the bathroom for five minutes without
you screeching on like a bloody harpy!"

It was terribly cliche of her to find her stomach melting in to a warm

puddle, her eyes riveted to the goosebumps that were breaking out across
his skin, but, of course, she could not help herself. She tried to think of
some witty comeback. Some scathing comment that would have him rolling
his eyes, or huffing in that way he did when he knew he had lost. But her
gaze snapped up to his, and all she could think of was his lips and hands on
her, all over her, his tongue dipping in to her mouth, coaxing hers back in to
his. He rocked forwards slightly, his expression shifting from annoyance to
something darker, something that had the knot in her lower stomach coiling
tighter. And she thought that maybe he couldn't help but remember either.

"You have goosebumps," she said, because her brain had a way of
abandoning her around Draco. "Are you cold?"

"No." And his tone had her eyes drifting back to his again, taking in the
darkening shade of them, the familiar hunger. Her hands touched down on
skin before she could remember lifting them. She squeezed his shoulders,
felt the skin slide wet and hot beneath her touch. Malfoy's hands were
slower - more hesitant. He placed them on either side of her waist, thumbs
moving indecisively. Maybe she should have been worried about that - his
reluctance, and that slight glimmer in his eyes, like he was about to do
something that was crazy and wild and potentially disastrous, but was
powerless to resist. But she was already leaning forwards, chest pressed to
his, lips brushing over his jaw, his chin.

"Where's Potter?" he asked, and she was glad at how gruff his voice
sounded.

"Not here," she returned, then kissed him. It started off much as it had last
time - slow, gentle, explorative, only without the taste of alcohol blurring
her senses. Lips sliding carefully over each other at the unfamiliarity of it
all. But she soon grew tired of it, and the knowledge that this could last only
so long before Harry burst in had her hands sliding up in to his hair,
dragging him down deeper in to the kiss. Her tongue pushed in to his mouth
and he groaned, low and deep in his throat. She had control for three, four
seconds, and then he was the Malfoy she knew, forcing her out of his mouth
only to chase her back in to hers.

His grip on her hips tensed, relaxed, tensed. Lifted her to him in the same
moment that he stepped forwards so that her back was to the wall and he
was so close that she could do nothing but drink him in. All attempts at
gentleness abandoned him. All hesitation, gone. He was overwhelming,
hands roaming her body, mouth claiming hers completely. He palmed her
breast, kneading it expertly, swallowing her moan. She could not contain
her disappointed whimper when his lips severed contact from hers.

"Why are you-?"

The door handle jimmied again, the sound breaking through the haze of lust
clouding her mind. At first she thought Malfoy would ignore it and keep on
kissing her anyway. She wasn't entirely sure if she would object or not. But
then he was stepping back, his body leaving hers, hands skimming down
her arms before breaking away too. The disappointment was a crushing
force in her chest.

Harry stepped in to the room a second after the bathroom door closed. The
grin he wore was lopsided and so like Sirius that Hermione had to spend a
brief moment battling down the routine pang of grief. "This place really is
rotten, isn't it? None of the keys bloody work." And then, in a much lower
voice, "Sorry, Hermione. I didn't even think you guys might want some
alone time until I already opened the door."

She decided it would not be ethical to kill Harry Potter, no matter how
successfully he was destroying her potential sex life.

::

Harry left after five days, just as he'd said he would. Hermione walked him
to the door, and then through the lobby and out on to the street, because it
was just that difficult to watch him leave again. He did not tell her when he
would be back, and she did not ask. He was back in his glamour, barely
recognisable to her.
"Stay safe," she warned, straightening his collar. "Don't do anything
reckless or stupid. And call us if you need help."

"Try not to worry so much," he returned, but then he pressed his forehead to
hers, clasping the back of her neck in a fierce hold. "Whatever happens, I
want you to know that I could never have asked for a better family than you
and Ron."

"Getting soppy on me, Potter?"

He grinned, a lopsided thing, and there was a dim shadow of the Harry she
knew. "Not for one second." He swallowed, his throat working with the
action. "Love you, 'Mione."

"Love you, Harry."

And then he was gone.

*Chapter 16*: Chapter 13 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

"Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see
him. We draw the magic cap down over our eyes and ears as a make believe
that there are no monsters." - Karl Marx

"It was my mother's," Malfoy said, even though she had not asked. She ran
her thumb over the smooth silver, tracing the engraved B with her nail. The
chain which held the ring around Malfoy's neck clinked softly with the
movements.

"Was it her wedding band?"

"No. This is from the House of Black." His bare chest rumbled beneath her
head as he spoke, and she turned her face in to the warmth that radiated
from him. The arm holding her to him tightened its hold. "She always said I
was more of a Black than a Malfoy. Drove my father to distraction." He
turned his face into her hair as he spoke, his words tickling through the wild
strands.

"He must have admired the Black family, though. To have married your
mother."

"I think he envied them. They were more powerful and wealthier."

"But what about all the blood traitors? Sirius and Andomeda?" And
Regulus, she did not say, but the fake locket that Dumbledore had died for
flashed to her mind.

"Every family has a few blood traitors, the occasional Squib. It just depends
on how well you hide them."

"That's terrible."
"No, what's terrible is your inability to let me sleep." He turned suddenly,
pinning her body beneath his own. The ring brushed against her chest
before he flicked it impatiently over his shoulder. His fringe brushed her
forehead. "I'm exhausted, woman. I need rest."

"Come on. Where's that famous Malfoy stamina all the girls at school
talked about? Or can you just not handle a Gryffindor?"

His smirk was her only warning before he pounced, attacking her neck with
a series of harsh nips and slow, warming kisses. "I'll show you stamina," he
muttered, and her laughter quickly dissolved in to moans.

::

Hermione chewed thoughtfully on the mouthful of toast she had taken, eyes
fixed on Malfoy (partly because he was still a puzzle to her, but mostly
because she knew it ticked him off). The muscle in his jaw twitched, but he
said nothing. She thought that he was always much more patient after sex,
and spent a few ridiculous moments contemplating the idea that, had she
slept with him in Hogwarts, he might never have yelled at her and her
friends at all. Malfoy raised an eyebrow when she snickered under her
breath.

"You're really weird, you know that, Granger?"

She thought about pointing out the fact that, of the two of them, she was not
the creepy robot. But that turn of conversation always seemed to lead to that
expression on his face, as though he were questioning her sanity, and so she
asked instead, "What did you want to be when you were a kid?"

"You mean as a career?" He shrugged, eyes on the window. "A Qudditch

player, I think. Or maybe there was a brief phase where I wanted to be an
explorer. What about you?"

"Well, before Hogwarts I wanted to be a dentist." She blushed at the look he

shot her. "What? My Dad was my hero!"

"What about after Hogwarts?"

"A Healer. Before Dumbledore died, he arranged with Madame Pomfrey for
me to spend my Seventh year training with her in the infirmary before I
went on to my proper course."

"Will you do that once the war is over?" He took the breakfast tray from the
bed between them and placed it on the floor. She smiled when he settled
over her, head resting against her chest. His hand slid up her arm until it
found hers.

"I don't think it will be that simple." At his questioning grunt she shrugged
again. "The world won't be done with us so easily. We're the Golden Trio,
you know. The heroes who will defeat the Dark Lord. I imagine those titles
come with a lot of baggage."

"It's still your life."

"Not really. Just as Harry's life isn't truly his. He's always belonged to the
public. And now me and Ron will too. It's a small sacrifice to make when
you consider all Harry's had to do for us."

Draco was silent a long time, before his fingers shifted to twine with hers.
"Wonderboy Potter," he muttered, but she did not think it held the same
sneer as it once had.

::

At night, she thought of Sirius, and his smiling eyes, and the way that smile
never left them as he died. Just seemed to glaze over, the moment of
excitement trapped forever behind that whispering veil. They had not been
close, except through their mutual worry and need to parent Harry. But she
thought now, two weeks after Harry set off for the Horcrux, that it would
have been nice to know someone else was worrying about him. Someone
else was counting the days (hours, minutes), going out of their mind with
visions of the boy dead or injured somewhere unreachable to her. Would
have been nice to be able to enjoy Draco and this new found thing which
they had, without feeling guilty (because Harry's parents were dead and so
she was the one who had to worry).
She thought that maybe if Ron were there, it would be different (except she
knew that it would not be, because as much as Ron loved Harry, he had
handed over the leading reigns to Hermione years ago). Still. She wished
she could write to him. Or maybe Molly, who also loved Harry. So many
people loved him, she thought, and it was not tainted with the pang of
jealousy she used to experience when they were kids. And they might worry
for him, and miss him when he was gone. But they didn't get it, because
they weren't the brains of the Trio, and they weren't the one holding it all
together.

"I can feel your brain working, Granger. It's keeping me up."

"Sorry."

Malfoy groaned, turning so that they were facing each other. "Potter will be
fine. That boy was born with Felix Felicis in his blood."

She didn't bother asking how he had known what she was thinking. "What
if he isn't?"

"Then you go back to the Order and you keep fighting." He sighed at the
tensing of her body. "I know you love him, Hermione, but he isn't the be all
and end all of everything. The war will go on without him. Life will go on."

"It has to be him," she breathed, because that had been her reasoning for
knowing that when he went away, he could not possibly die. "There was a
prophecy-"

"I know about the prophecy." She thought to ask him how, before she
remembered Lucius' face when it had smashed, and his wand digging in to
her neck. "A load of horse crap if you ask me. We all have a right to fight
against oppression. Maybe it would be easier with Potter. But it wouldn't be
impossible without him."

And it was something she had always known, in the back of her mind. A
logical reasoning. Because Harry was just one man, and it would be the
entire army who would win.
It did not stop her from worrying the rest of the night away.

::

"How did your mother die?" She had been wondering for a while now and
had been so concentrated on how to broach the subject that it just blurted
itself out. She did not blush or back down, however, and Draco did not look
angry. He watched her for a long moment, eyes calculating in a way that
made her shuffle, uncomfortable.

"You really want to know?" he asked. She nodded, suddenly nervous,

though she couldn't say why.

Draco nodded, once, almost to himself. He met her gaze and said, "I killed
her."

Hermione blinked. Might have laughed, if not for the fact that Draco was so
clearly not joking. Had a brief moment of panic that her robot theory was
actually a psychopath theory, and he would turn on her now that he had
revealed his deepest, darkest secret. Her hand edged towards her wand. His
eyes tracked the movement. "You... you killed her," she repeated, and the
words tasted sour on her tongue.

"Yes." He did not move when her fingers closed around the familiar wood,
but his shoulders tensed, straining muscles clear to her in his naked state. It
occurred to her fleetingly how ridiculous it was to be having this
conversation, both of them nude the way they were. But then so many
things in her life had been ridiculous, and she could not work past the panic
to be amused.

"Why?" The word came out slow, almost a drawl. Draco's expression did
not change.

"I'll tell you when you stop looking at me like I'm about to jump you at any
second." A flicker of irritation broke through.

"Well, what do you expect when you spring something like that?"
"I expect a little trust on your part!"

A tense moment passed. Her grip on her wand slacked. Released entirely so
that it rolled into the dip the mattress made between them both. Draco
relaxed slightly, though his eyes never left hers.

"Explain," she said.

"My mother fell sick sometime during our sixth year. By then, our money
had pretty much all but depleted, thanks to the Dark Lord. We could not
afford the potions to make her better. So the Dark Lord, being the generous
leader he is, provided for his followers. In exchange for a price."

"Your service."

"He already had my service. It was my absolute loyalty he wished for. It

wasn't until after my father's death that I discovered that my mother was not
sick at all. She was being poisoned. Had been for years. Her body had
already weakened beyond all recognition. Most days she was not even
coherent. By the time I discovered the cause of her ailments, she had
already gone in to renal failure."

His eyes were still fixed on hers, never wavering, not even for a second. But
she didn't think he was seeing her anymore. Something in her chest twisted
and ached. She blinked against tears that had no right to be there. "He had
been using her to get to me. Knew that it was the only way to ensure I
would never betray or abandon him. She died because of me."

"It wasn't your fault."

"Of course it was. I should have known better than to let the extent of my
feelings for my family show. I should have been more like Theo. He hated
his parents, poor bastard." He barked a humourless laugh, the sound
drawing a grimace from Hermione. "She asked me to. I mean, she'd asked
me before. But this time, I don't know. I couldn't deny her. It was my fault
she was sick. How could I not put her out of her misery?"
His smile was strained, the whites of his eyes tinted red with the moisture
that gathered there.

"Draco..."

He shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose even as the first of the
tears dropped on to his cheeks. "I know, I know. Tragic, right? I'm like a
walking disaster."

He flinched when she first reached for him, turning his head to the side. She
was not deterred. Her wand clattered to the floor as she crawled into his lap,
knees settled either side of his waist. She kissed his forehead, his temple,
the tip of his nose. Travelled over his cheeks and ears until his arms came
up around her, pulling her to him, lips rising to take hers. It was slow and
gentle, more for comfort than anything else. But she felt him swell beneath
her after only a few moments, and could not stop the downward grind of her
hips into his. He let out a harsh breath at the contact, his skin hot and ready
against hers.

She moved to kiss his neck, but he stopped her, cupping her face so that all
she could see was him and his darkened eyes. They were stormy, as they
always were in moments such as these. But there was something else there,
something that made her chest swell until it felt as though it would burst.
Something she did not want to examine, because it could not, should not be
there. Had no right to be there.

"Hermione..."

"Don't," she whispered, the word escaping before she could stop it. Her
fingers flew up to rest against his lips. "Please."

He took her finger in to his mouth, suckling the tip, drawing back to plant a
kiss there. "You're so lovely," he muttered, and then she was rising over
him, positioning herself. She took him in, all of him, until the lines blurred,
and she could no longer tell where she ended and he began.

::
Hermione startled slightly at the loud pounding on the bedroom door. Draco
shifted awake in the same instant, his body moulding closer to hers in the
next. His hand slid up her thigh, over her hip, tracing patterns through the
thin material of her night shirt.

"Mm...door," she mumbled, even as she pressed her back in to his chest.

"It's just that bloody manager again," Draco returned, mouth moving
against the curve of her neck. "If we ignore him, he'll leave."

"Hermione."

She froze. Tensed. Moved to rip back the covers at the same time as Draco's
arms pinned her to the mattress.

"Wait." His mouth was still at her neck, his words moist against the wild
thrum of her pulse. His hands clamped down on her shoulders. "Hermione.
Wait. It might not be him."

"And it probably is."

"Any Death Eater would know how to impersonate his voice, Hermione-"

"Malfoy, don't treat me like some first year novice! I realise the risks! But I
have my wand, and there are two of us!" There could be ten of them. If
Draco thought it, he did not say it. For a brief moment, she thought he
might not let her go. But then his grip left her, and he was on his feet,
pulling on a pair of boxers. She did not wait for him to be ready, her hand
on the door knob the second it was within reach. Her palms were sweaty
and her wand trembled in her grasp.

She turned the handle. Inched the door open, slowly. Peered out in to the
darkness. Harry's tired eyes stared back, familiar despite the Glamour. She
bit down the almost overwhelming desire to run to him. Fought against the
natural instinct to search him for wounds.

"What does Grawp call me?"

Harry swayed. Only Draco's hand on her shoulder stopped her from running
to him, and to hell with protocol. But then he swallowed, and his gaze
seemed to hone in and focus on her. "Hermy. He called you Hermy," he
said, and then he collapsed.

::

Harry slept for three days straight. When he awoke, he ate enough food to
last them a week, water spilling down either side of his mouth in his attempt
to glug down as much as possible. After he had bathed, and Hermione had
dressed the charred skin over his stomach, he showed her the twisted and
blackened remains of the locket - the real one this time. He smiled at her,
the first real smile she had seen from him in a long time. He clutched it to
his chest as though it were a loved one. Caressed it as though it could bring
back the dead.

::

"He's not getting any better."

"He'll be fine."

"All he does is sleep. We can barely get him to eat, let alone bathe."
Hermione's eyes drifted to the soaked material of Draco's shirt. She might
have laughed had she not seen him carry Harry's limp and naked body from
the bathroom floor not five minutes ago. Draco tore his hand through his
hair. He did not meet her eyes as he spoke. "You need to take him back."

"You're right." Draco blinked at the easy acquiescence. "I'll take him back
in the morning. Molly can look after him better than I ever could."

"Exactly."

"I'll leave a note telling him our next address, and he can just write us when
he's feeling better."

Draco's eyes were on her now, hard and heavy. She ignored him, tucking
the quilt around Harry's shuddering form.
"He needs you, Granger."

"He's a grown man. He'll have the others."

"They need you. The Order needs you." His voice was soft. Unusually so.
Her eyes fixed on a tear in Harry's discarded shirt and she tutted.

"Well, obviously. But you can't go back yet. Moody said he would contact
us when it was safe for you." It would be simple enough to cast a sewing
charm. Molly had taught her how years ago. She shuffled around in her
purse until she found the emergency sewing kit and pulled the torn shirt in
to her lap. "Besides, I can still do my research from here."

"And you're perfectly fine with letting your friends storm off in to battle
while you cosy up here with me?"

"Life here is hardly cosy, Draco," she returned primly.

"How will you explain your abandonment to them?"

The needle jammed in to Hermione's thumb. She swore, then swore again at
the bead of blood which swelled over her skin. "Now look what you made
me do." And the tears brimming were there because it hurt, and she was
tired, and Harry lay half-dead beside her. And that was all. She pressed her
eyes shut, and when she opened them Draco was there, kneeling in front of
her.

"Hermione," he said, hands resting on her knees. "You knew it couldn't

last."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

His smirk was really more of a smile. "You're so stubborn, love. But you
can't ignore this forever."

"You could go on the run." She sniffed miserably, and hated how small her
voice was.

"The Dark Lord has control of all my bank accounts and estates."
"I have money. Enough to last a year. Maybe even two, if you use it well."

"Hermione-"

"Ron's brother and his wife own a cottage on the coast. It's protected by all
sorts of charms. I bet if I spoke to them, they'd let you stay. You'd be safe
there. For a while anyway. I could write them tomorrow-"

"Hermione. Stop."

And she did. Because there was a glaze to his eyes that had been absent for
so long, she had almost forgotten what it looked like. It was the same look
Harry sometimes got, when another one of his family members was
snatched away. A look she had seen in Mr. Weasley's eyes after Percy's
death. The look Draco had when he'd first asked Harry to kill him. And she
thought it was more terrifying than Death Eaters and Voldemort put
together.

::

Her eyes blinked open to the feel of cool metal being pushed over her
finger. She stared down at the band of silver in silence for a long moment.
"Why are you giving me this?"

Draco smiled, and it reached his eyes for the first time in days. "I was
supposed to pass it on to my heir, but that's not looking like a possibility at
the moment."

"You should just keep it."

"I want you to have it," he said, and she was almost happy for all of three
seconds. "It's not like I can take it where I'm going, anyway."

His mother's ring weighed heavy on her hand. It kept her awake all night.

::

"I'm worried about Malfoy." The words had slipped out before Hermione
came to any real decision to say them. But Harry was lucid for the first time
in days, and she was so tired of the sick knot of anxiety that had taken up
residence in her throat. "I think..." She swallowed. Blinked. Started again.
"I think he's going to kill himself."

Harry did not reply immediately, but she had learned to wait for him these
days. "Yes," he said, at last. "I know."

"You... you know?"

He nodded, and the movement seemed to rob him of his breath for a long
moment. "He spoke to me. Last night, while you were out getting food."

"What did he say?"

"That his time was up. That he was tired. Fuck, Hermione, we're all tired.
I'm so tired, some days I don't want to wake up." He sighed a deep,
shuddering breath, and the air rattled through his chest. "He made me
promise him something."

"What?"

He met her gaze for the first time, and there was too much pity there, too
much knowledge. "He made me promise not to let you stop him." His hand
found hers. "He said, he knew he didn't need to tell me to take care of you,
because you can do that yourself. He said he knew you were strong, but he
didn't think you could be strong enough to make yourself leave him."

Hermione's gaze fell downwards - over Harry's chaffed lips, and the new
scars littering his neck and shoulders. Over the bandages she had fixed, to
the shallow rise and fall of his chest. "I won't give up on him."

"Maybe it's not your choice to save him, 'Mione."

"It's not fair."

Harry's smile was too bitter. She wondered when he had begun to look like
an old man. She wondered if they all looked that way now, and if it could
ever be changed. "It never is."
He held her to him until the tears came, hot and heavy down her cheeks.
And then he held her until they stopped.

::

She found Draco by the window. It was where he spent a lot of his time
these days, eyes glazed with that far off look that made her want to scream
and shout until he came back to her. He did not blink at the tilt of the
mattress as she settled behind him. Did not respond to her soft greeting. Did
not react when she wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her chin
on his shoulder. They stayed that way awhile, the silence of the room
broken only by the occasional car passing by outside, and the shifting of
water as Harry moved in the bath. Draco relaxed against her by degrees,
until it did not feel so much like embracing a statue anymore.

She turned her head and pressed a kiss to the soft skin beneath his ear. "You
know I love you, right?"

He might have sighed, or maybe it was a breathy laugh. "I thought we

weren't allowed to say that?" he asked, but he turned slowly and captured
her lips in a kiss - the first in too long. "I love you, too."

"Just not enough to stay with me."

He sighed again, but she did not think he looked mad. He never looked mad
these days. Only tired. His gaze turned back to the window, and silence fell
again. Hermione pressed her forehead to Draco's back, and if he noticed the
wet of her tears there, he said nothing.

"Do you remember the first time we met?" she whispered. "You looked at
me like I was the scum of the Earth or something."

"I was intrigued, actually. I'd never met a Muggle-born before. My father's
descriptions of bloodsucking demons did not quite live up to my
expectations."

"I used to hate you so much. How is it even possible to go from hate to
love?"
"Do you regret it?"

She swallowed. "This would be easier if I still hated you," was all she said.
Except she knew that wasn't true, because this was Malfoy, a piece of her
childhood that she had always assumed would linger somewhere, like her
spellbooks, or the robes still buried at the bottom of her trunk. "I don't want
to let you go."

"I know." His hand tightened around hers, almost to the point of pain.

"It's not just because I want to keep you," she continued, as if he had not
spoken. "You have so much potential, Draco. There's so much good in you
that you haven't even found yet." The hand that wasn't holding his slid
down his back. Fumbled across the bed. Found the cold handle of her wand
and closed around it tight. "I hope you can understand that. And... and I
hope that one day, you might find it within yourself to forgive me my
selfishness."

"You are the least selfish person I have ever known, silly woman." He tried
to turn, but she stopped him, shaking her head slowly against his back.
Because he was wrong, and one look at her face might give it all away. She
found herself wishing suddenly that she could have looked into his eyes one
more time. Just to see that gleam there - the one reserved only for her. She
could do it. She could ask him to turn, and drink him in all over again. But
her wand was already positioned at the base of his skull, and she was crying
hard now, silent tears soaking his shirt.

"You'll meet a man. When this is all over. He'll be good to you, and keep
you safe. You'll fall in love, and forget you ever knew me." But his voice
was tight and strained, and she thought that he might be crying too.

"Draco."

"Yes?"

"I'm so sorry."

"What-?"
"Obliviate."

He did not struggle. Did not tense, or turn to her with accusation in his eyes.
She drew the memories away with practised ease, sifting through,
extracting every detail, every insignificant glance or absent smile. Every
conversation. It took only minutes. Hermione pressed her forehead to
Draco's back, and she was sobbing still, wand dropping to the mattress,
rolling off on to the floor.

It was a long time before she could move again. Draco waited, patient,
obedient. Absent. He did not blink as she knelt in front of him, though his
eyes were trained on hers. His head tilted under the soft command of her
hands, forehead coming to rest against hers. She held his face, thumbs
caressing the bruised skin beneath his eyes.

"Draco, listen to me. Seven months ago, Voldemort called you to him. He
doubted your loyalty. He beat you, and tortured you." She paused, her voice
catching at the painful lump in her throat. Slipped one hand into the warmth
of his hair, before continuing. "He would have killed you, but Snape
managed to save you. He brought you to the Order, and Harry offered you a
deal. You could stay, as long as you worked for us. Understand?"

Draco's head dipped against hers, nodding once. His eyes were becoming
clearer by the second, the white glaze of the Oblivate sinking into the
pupils, as though drawn there by some invisible force. Hermione pressed
her own eyes shut against the confusion settling in on his expression. Her
hand found her wand again.

"When you wake up, you won't remember the last seven months." She was
whispering now, commands rushing out of her in one shuddering breath,
then another. "We never left the Order. You never met me again. I wasn't
even there the night that Harry spoke to you."

"Hermione..."

"Stupefy."
He slumped to the side. Might have fallen off the bed completely, had she
not guided him onto his back. To anyone else, he might have looked as
though he was merely sleeping. His eyes flickered lightly behind their lids.
He looked peaceful for the first time in weeks.

::

Hermione was seated cross-legged on the spare bed when Harry limped
from the bathroom, fully clothed with a towel around his neck. He shot her
a tired smile, eyes drifting briefly to Draco.

"And I thought I'd never see Malfoy sleeping in my presence," he muttered,

and there was an amused tilt to his tone as he sorted through his dirty
clothes.

"I had to put him to sleep."

"Hm?"

"Otherwise the spell wouldn't work."

"Spell?" He paused, turning at the dull tone to her voice. "What spell?" The
skin between his eyebrows creased. He made his way towards her slowly,
kneeling beside her, and she wondered at how she must look, to have him
suddenly so worried. "Hermione, what spell?"

A hysterical laugh burst past her tightly pursed lips. "It's ironic. He'll never
forgive me now, and he won't even know that he hates me. But he's always
hated me, hasn't he?"

"Hermione, what are you talking about?"

She was rocking, she realised. Harry's hands were tight around her own.
She forced herself to still, eyes leaving Draco for the first time to seek out
Harry's. "I Obliviated him," she whispered, the horror of what she had done
hitting her all over again. "I took away his memories, so he won't know he's
supposed to betray us. Shacklebolt won't be able to kill him now, and he
won't remember to kill himself."
Harry blinked. Opened his mouth. Closed it tight. Clasped her hands hard
enough to cause her some pain. "Hermione..." he breathed, pity weighing
down his voice.

"I guess he was right," she muttered, eyes wondering back to the sleeping
form once more. "I wasn't strong enough to let him go after all."

::

They told no one but Moody and Shacklebolt what had happened.
Hermione repeated the story twice - once for them to hear, and again for the
recording device Shacklebolt had insisted upon for evidence, should there
ever be a trial. She signed forms releasing the Order from any and all
responsibility for Draco's condition. She didn't watch Moody levitate
Draco's limp body to a spare room. Could not stand to be there when his
eyes opened and he did not know her. Not beyond the bushy-haired little
twit he had once tripped over in a Hogwarts corridor for fun.

She locked herself in her room for three days, and refused Molly's pleas for
her to eat. And on the fourth day, when Harry came to visit her, she begged
him to take her memories. He protested. But in the end, he agreed. (Because
he loved her, and could not bear to see her on her knees, pleading with him
to do as she'd asked).

She sat opposite him on the bed. Took his hand, and placed Malfoy's ring
there. Closed her eyes as he pressed his wand lightly to her temple.

She felt the moment the spell hit. Memories sliding away from her, like
water in her cupped hands, or sand through a timer.

Memories, flashing before her eyes one last time - a taunt, or a gift, she
could not decide. His smile, the hotels, the card game, the rat, the
invisibility cloak that night in Grimmauld Place.

Moments. All vanishing in this one.

*Chapter 17*: Chapter 14
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but

he can never know that he is dead. ~Samuel Butler

"When you woke up, it was like it never happened." Harry's smile lacked
any real humour. "The last seven months were an empty space. Whenever
anyone mentioned it to you – to either of you – you just spaced out for a
moment, then changed the subject."

"I didn't see him. Draco. I never went on a mission with him for ages after."

"Shacklebolt's idea."

Hermione laughed – a harsh, bitter sound. "He always did hate Draco."

"Actually, he was worried that being around each other too much so soon
after the spells might incur some sort of damage." There was a small
hesitation at the end of that sentence, and Hermione shot him a sharp
glance.

"You think my spell damaged Draco? I've cast that spell a dozen times,
Harry. If something went wrong, it wasn't the casting."

"I'm sure you're right," he said, and she glared.

"Harry, I…" And then it hit her. "The blood magic."

"What?"

"When I gave Draco my blood, it caused some sort bond between us."

"And what? You think this bond is messing with the spell?"
"It makes sense. Blood magic is powerful stuff. It overwrites most other
spells or curses. You should know that better than anyone, Harry."

"My mother…"

Hermione might have praised him at any other time for understanding so
quickly – an annoying habit she had never truly grown out of. But her mind
was racing, reeling, aching with the memories pouring into her, and she felt
so slow all of a sudden. Harry's hand was heavy on her shoulders, offering
none of the usual comfort.

"You okay?"

It hurt to nod, she discovered. "Headache. I'll be fine."

"I'll get you a pain potion."

He paused at the door. Moved back to the bed and ducked underneath, until
he found the locked chest he kept under there. She had seen the contents
only a few times – a few of Sirius' old letters, and some photo albums. But
what he withdrew now was small, wrapped only in a worn handkerchief.
She knew what it was before he dropped into her palm. Malfoy's ring was
just as she remembered it. The door clicked softly shut before the tears
could come.

::

Nobody knew quite what had happened. One moment Potter was there,
looking harried and pale, demanding headache potions from a concerned
Molly. And the next he was gone. Vanished. No pop of Apparation. No
flashing lights. Nothing.

Molly gasped. Fred frowned. Teddy giggled from his place on Draco's lap,
clapping his hands in childish glee. Draco stood, lifting the boy in his arms.
He moved to the space where Potter had stood, then peered out in to the
long hallway. Granger stood there, a small frown marring her brow.

"What-?"
But then the back door was opening, and the world froze in the second that
his eyes caught sight of the silver mask. He pulled his wand. Shouted a
curse. Three hooded figures burst in to the kitchen. The sound of windows
smashing echoed throughout the house. He heard a scream – Lavender? –
and then he was running, clasping Teddy to him with one arm, wand firing
curses over his shoulder with the other.

Granger had not moved, and he only managed to slam into her a second
before the purple jet of light exploded against the wall behind her.

"Granger, take Teddy!" He thrust the child into her arms, scowling at the
hesitancy with which she grabbed him. But then there was more shouting,
and he turned to see a Death Eater rounding on them. He managed to block
the first few spells, might even have been able to stun the bastard. Except
five more were closing in, and Fred's unconscious form was being hogtied
to the ground. He heard Mrs. Weasley's screams, Moody's curses, Teddy's
whimpers behind him. He pushed himself back, crowding Hermione and
the boy into a corner. But it was no use, and the next curse threw him into
oblivion.

::

Hermione held Teddy to her, his body trembling in her grasp. Or maybe she
was the one trembling. She felt slow and groggy, but her head was not so
painful now and she could think. And thinking was so very important.
Because they were caught. This was it. Worst case scenario. Point blank.
The Death Eaters had won, and here they were in the dungeons of Malfoy
Manor again – only this time, the large spaces were overcrowded with too
many people she knew. Ron sat to the left of her, his good hand holding a
scrap of fabric to a wound on his head. Lavender sobbed in Neville's hold.
Dean clutched Hannah's hand. Mrs. Weasley sat silently, an unconscious
Fred's head resting gently in her lap.

Draco had gained consciousness nearly an hour ago. He had yet to stop his
pacing. Hermione thought distantly that she had never seen him look quite
so crazed. He was feral, switching between muttering maniacally to
himself, while studying the damp, brick walls, to storming up one end, then
down the other, swearing frequently and with enough force to make her
flinch. And all the while she watched him, eyes tracking him on his journey
back and forth, back and forth.

"Malfoy, mate. Sit down. You're gonna wear yourself out." Ron's voice was
hoarse, his breath rattling noisily through his chest. Draco ignored him,
except to swear again.

"What do you think they're going to do to us?" Hannah pondered aloud.

"Don't be naive, girl," Moody growled.

Teddy began to whimper softly against her chest. She rocked him slowly.

"What happened to Potter?" Draco asked suddenly. "He just vanished."

"I implanted a portkey inside of him that activates whenever his location is
placed under threat," Moody replied.

"Where is he now?" Molly said, her eyes never leaving Fred.

"Somewhere safe. Hopefully with Shacklebolt and the other contingencies."

He was quiet a moment. "They've been planning this a long time."

"What do you mean?" Lavender's face was drawn and pale, and the little
remaining colour was leaving quickly.

"It was too much of a coincidence. So many of us there in one go. We were
wrong, when we thought they were simply attacking houses at random."

"They were herding us. Gathering us all into a concentrated area before
attacking properly." It was Draco who spoke, and his voice echoed into the
following silence.

It was a long moment before anyone spoke again. An Auror Hermione did
not recognize was the one to break the quiet. "So what do we do now?"

Moody's magical eye swivelled, fixed on some point far above them. "We
wait," was all he said, and silence fell once more.
::

Draco strained his ears, trying to discern any sounds from above. Useless,
of course. These dungeons were completely soundproof. It would not do to
have your dinner guests subjected to the screams of some prisoner or other
over dessert.

"Draco." Hermione was distorted in the darkness which permeated every

corner of the dungeons. But he could make out the gleam of her eyes, and
Teddy sleeping quietly against his chest. "Sit down."

"I'm not tired."

"You need to keep up your strength, in case… just, in case."

He remained standing only a minute longer, before complying. The wall

was cold and damp against his back. Water dripped from somewhere,
hitting the stone floor and mingling with the sound of Neville's snores.
Hermione shifted beside him, leg banging against the floor.

"What are you doing?"

"Pins and needles. Teddy's been sat on my leg for over an hour now."

"Give him to me." It took a moment to heave the boy's body, heavy with
sleep, from Hermione's lap in to Draco's arms. Teddy did not stir, his head
lolling against Draco's chest. He was small in his arms, shoulders too thin,
and his face was slack in his sleep. Draco felt something hot and tight burn
in his chest, before rising to his throat.

"Children have a natural defence against fear," Hermione said, her hand
massaging her leg.

"Let me." Draco placed his hand on her leg, rubbing to get the blood
flowing. She shot him a grateful smile before continuing.

"When they're scared, they sleep. Protects them from experiencing things
that are too much, I suppose." She sighed, and, though the sound was small,
it seemed to whisper through the silence for a long time. "It will be alright,
you know. Harry got away. He'll gather up the rest of the forces, and they'll
battle it out and win. It had to come down to this in the end."

"I admire your optimism."

"It isn't optimism. It's logic. When this is over, I'll tell you things. And then
you'll see." Her voice was so strong, so certain, and in that moment his
chest ached with a longing for that kind of willpower. To believe that
something would happen, and never waver from that belief. He felt Teddy's
warm weight in his arms, the length of Hermione's leg beneath his hand. He
thought of his father, and the way that man had allowed their house to
become a playground of torture and horror. He wished for the strength to do
what Lucius never could - protect his family, no matter what the cost.

::

Fred did not awaken. Not when they called his name, or slapped his cheek.
Not when they splashed some of the sour, stagnant water they had pilfered
from the floor on to his face. Molly held his head in her lap, muttering
soothing words in his ear, stroking his red hair.

Hermione thought of how she had seen worse victims make miracle
recoveries. How the pale complexion of Fred's face, or the bruises under his
eyes, meant nothing really. Meant nothing at all.

Except, once she caught Moody watching him. His magic eye was still for
possibly the first time since they had met. It was fixed on Fred's chest, and
the shallow rise and fall of his breaths. It seemed to hone in, its focus placed
solely on whatever it saw there. And when Moody looked away, there was a
shadow to his eyes - a darkening she had seen in the eyes of countless
others.

She knew that Fred would be fine. But it did not stop her bowing her head
and praying to a God she was no longer sure she believed in.

::
She decided to remove the Obliviate. Her arms were free now, Andromeda
having relieved her of Teddy twenty minutes ago, and Draco dozed fitfully
against the wall. His mouth was pursed in a firm line, and his eyes were still
behind their lids. She didn't have a wand, but wandless magic for such
simple spells was something Moody had taught in her first year of training.
And she couldn't help but wondering if she hadn't erased something
important. Something he might need. And her mind thought back to the
blood magic and the look he sometimes got in his eyes - wild, deranged, the
colour of insanity. Damaged.

"Finite Incantatem."

It was not the spectacular event she had been expecting. He did not gasp, or
cry out, or jerk awake with accusation in his eyes. She almost thought it
hadn't worked at all.

"Casting spells on a person while they sleep." His eyes did not open. "A
rather Slytherin thing to do, wouldn't you say?"

"It doesn't matter," she muttered. "It didn't work anyway."

"Don't feel bad. I'm sure your skills in wandless magic are fine. Your
charming little memory spell, however, has been malfunctioning for months
now. I'm afraid to say it is all but gone by now." His eyes glittered coldly in
the dark. Unreadable.

"How long?" she asked, and her voice was a broken whisper.

"A while. At first I thought you were just pretending to forget too. But then
I started dropping these hints, and that night in the kitchen when you found
me trying to leave... I realised that something must have happened after you
erased my memory."

"Harry Obliviated me. I asked him to. He only removed it the night we were
taken." She did not say what he perhaps wanted her to - that, had she known
earlier, had she remembered, she would have removed the spell. Would
have given him back the memories she stole. She was not a good enough
liar for that. "How much do you remember?"
"Not everything. The hotel rooms, the managers, the things we saw...it's
hazy. Potter's there somewhere, but it isn't clear."

She swallowed, because the lump in her throat was really quite painful, then
blinked because the action seemed to push the tears into her eyes. "Are you
mad?"

His laugh was a bitter bark, lacking any real humour. "I was. I was furious."

"Was?" she whispered, because she couldn't help but cling to the word.

He sighed, perhaps hearing the thickness to her voice. "Oh, Hermione," he

said, his voice low. "You think everything is so simple. Black and white,
right and wrong." And there was too much pity there for her not to feel
some flare of irritation.

"I'm not sorry," she said, stubbornly.

He laughed again, and this time it was not so harsh. "Of course you aren't.
Stubborn wench."

She couldn't see much in the darkness of the dungeons, but she felt the air
shift as he moved, and then he was there beside her, not quite touching but
near enough that she could feel his warmth.

"Are we still...?" But she stopped there, because there had never been a
label for what they had, and while she can't stand the thought of being
without him, the term 'boyfriend' did not seem to cover how she viewed
him.

"Yeah," he said, after only a slight pause. And then he took her hand. It was
not the contact she craved, and she had to resist the urge to crawl up into his
lap and cuddle against iliar warmth there, like some happless child. But his
hand was warm in hers, and his thumb traced patterns on her skin, and she
thought that maybe this was okay too.

::
They came for him, as he knew they would, on what Moody estimated to be
the fourth day of their captivity. Hermione made as it to protest when the
masked figure gestured for him, but Draco shot her a look and she fell silent
before the argument had even left her lips. Perhaps she thought he had a
plan, and he tried to silently communicate exactly that. Because he was
almost certain that he was being lead to his death. And he was almost
certain the knowledge of it would have her screaming and fighting, and he
could not stand to see her killed for him.

He walked with his head down, wincing only slightly at the sudden burst of
daylight when they left the dungeons. He allowed himself to be lead down
the now unfamiliar halls of his childhood, up one staircase, through another
hall, to the parlour where his Aunt Bella had first tortured Hermione. The
memory crept up his spine, a tingling of foreboding, of horrors that were
surely to come.

And so he was all at once surprised, and not at all stunned to find Bellatrix
standing there instead of Voldemort. She had changed little since they had
last met. Maybe an extra grey hair here or there. A stronger coat of insanity
covered her black eyes. He thought back to a time before the madness had
taken his mother's sister - before her only child, a squib she would never
admit to, had been taken, screaming, from her arms while she cried to keep
him. His mother had told him many stories of their happy childhood, but
Draco could not see that sane woman now, with this monster standing
before him.

"Draco," she said, and the sound was too thin, too high-pitched.

She wore dark robes, finer and cleaner than those she was used to picturing
her in. Her hair was wild, but in a way that suggested power, rather than her
never ending insanity. She took herself for royalty, he realised, and the
thought was enough to have him smirking. Fury flashed over her face, the
emotion taking hold suddenly, without warning.

"You dare laugh in the presence of your Queen!"

"My Queen?" His laughter would not be contained. "The Dark Lord would
kill you the second he gained power."
"Lies!"

"We both know our Lord does not share."

The force of the Crucio hit him hard in the chest, and he fell to his knees
with the force of it. When it was done, he stayed down, because it would
not do to waste his strength in some juvenile show of defiance. Bellatrix
seemed calmer now, in control once again.

"You always did think you were so clever. So important." Her lips twisted
in to a snarl. "But you're just a spoiled little boy who never could see the
truth."

"And what truth is that, Aunt?"

She smiled, slow, satisfied, the knowledge of something sweet in her

mouth, like a child with a secret. "You were never the Dark Lord's
favourite. He hated you. Despised you for your father's weakness. He
thought to break you through service. But you were... Perhaps more
resilient that we had given you credit for. And then your mother died. And
we had to find some new way to keep you. Damage you."

"What are you talking about, woman?" The ache under his ribs that the
Cruciatus had left had him snapping with impatience.

Bella's amusement did not fade. "Did you really think the Dark Lord would
entrust you with such an important mission as to break down his enemies?
A little boy, with no family and a worthless name?"

"Where is the Snake anyway? Couldn't stand to be in your presence a

moment longer?"

"You will not talk of our Lord in such a way!" The words were screamed,
crashing against the walls, and Draco heard several of the few gathered
Death Eaters hiss. He expected a Crucio, braced himself against the coming
wave of pain. But there was only silence, and then the uneven clip of
Bellatrix's heels on the stone floor. She circled him, slowly, and her wand
left a trail of black mist in the air.
"Our Mighty Lord is currently predisposed. You see," she said, and there
was too much glee there for Draco not to feel a surge of panic, "while you
and your friends having been trembling down there in the dungeons, Potter
and his oh-so-noble followers have marched off into battle. The Dark Lord
will meet them at the remains of Godrick's Hollow."

"Why there?" Draco asked, because his mind was reeling and he could not
let her know.

"That is where it all began. And there it shall end."

"Our Lord always did have a taste for the theatrics." He expected
punishment, but only a maniacal sort of chuckle escaped her.

"Which brings us back to our main focus - you."

"Me?"

"Yes, Draky, you. It wouldn't be enough just to kill you. That would not be
sufficient enough punishment for your many crimes against the Dark Lord."

"I was nothing but loyal to him before he cast me out-"

"DON'T PLAY COY, DRACO!" Sparks flickered from the tip of her wand.
He did not flinch. "Did you think you could trick the Dark Lord? The most
powerful wizard alive? Foolish boy! He knew you doubted him! You had
no real loyalty! You would have run away like the coward you really are
eventually, anyway. But this way, we could get some use out of your
cowardice."

"What are you talking about? You never got any use out of me! I haven't
seen or heard from any of you since I left that night!"

His outburst seemed to cool her anger. Fanned the flames of her
amusement, until it glowed in her eyes and twisted her lips into some
semblance of a grin. "No, Draco. But we have seen and heard from you.
Everything you ever did, every word you ever said. You've been betraying
the Order for years, and you didn't even know it."
"You're lying."

"How do you think we knew the locations of so many safe houses? Could
get past all the wards undetected?" She was circling again, ticking off the
points on her gnarled fingers. "All those files, all those secrets. You were
always just a spy, Draco. A traitor. Only you were too stupid to see it."

He was on his feet, running at her, clawing at her with his bare hands. The
curse she aimed at him had him writhing on the floor to the broken chorus
of her cackles.

"If you know everything I know," he croaked, when she let up, and he could
make it to his knees, "why keep me alive? Why not just kill me?"

He had hit a nerve and he didn't know why. Her smile faltered, cracked,
crumbled to anger in the blink of an eye. Her pupils were dilated and her
nostrils flared.

"Unless... Unless it stopped working. Whatever device, or spell you put in

my head. Because..." And it came to him, suddenly, brilliantly. The blood
magic. Hermione's rightful ownership of him, the life debt he owed her,
cancelling out all other allegiances. Everything paled in comparison. There
was nothing stronger. And a part of him couldn't believe that the Dark Lord
had failed to see it again. That powerful, ancient magic that had already
foiled him once before.

"Irrelevant," Bellatrix hissed, and her face resumed some of its earlier
excitement. "You aren't here for an interrogation, Draco. This is my reward.
My gift from the Dark Lord for my unwavering love and loyalty. He
rewards those who are good to him, and I have been so good."

Draco grimaced. He could not be killed. He realised that now. Nothing but
Hermione's death, or the sacrifice of his life for hers, could release him
from his life debt to her, and, while time might weaken that bond, he would
not be allowed to die until that debt was complete. But he would still feel
pain. And he knew how Bellatrix loved pain. It was something which he
himself had never had any real threshold for. One slash to the arm from a
Hippogriff in third year and he'd been shaken enough to make sure the
damned beast was killed.

"Getting fwightened, are we, Dwaky?" Bellatrix mocked.

And he was no Gryffindor, but he had his dignity, and so he grit his teeth
and said, "Do your worst."

::

"We need to get out of here."

It was the eighth time she had said it since they had taken Draco. She knew
her constant pacing was playing on frayed nerves. She could not stop. They
had heard nothing. No screams, no cries. Every now and then, Moody's
magical eye would flicker towards the ceiling, and she would tense,
waiting. But if he ever saw anything, he revealed nothing.

"We're all worried, Hermione." And maybe Mrs. Weasley had meant to say
more, but Hermione met her gaze and she trailed off, pity weighing heavily
on her expression.

"There must be a way! There are almost fifty of us down here! Moody," she
spun on her heel to face the old man," how many of them are there?"

"Thirty. Maybe more. They do not stay still."

"See! We can take them!"

"Without wands or magic?" Dean asked, and the silence that was her
answer echoed around the dungeons for several long moments.

"We take them by surprise," she muttered, adrenaline making her pace
faster. "We wait until they come down here, and we ambush them! Grab
their wands and fight our way out!"

But there was no response in the darkness, and she did not need to turn to
see pity in their eyes. They had given up, she knew. For one moment, her
steps faltered. She caught sight of Teddy, crouched only a metre away,
thumb stuck firmly in his mouth. She held his gaze as she began to pace
again, plan after plan forming behind her eyes.

::

"Have you had enough, Draky?" Bellatrix crouched over his body, and he
might have gagged at the stench of her rotten breath, had he been able to
move. His muscles were locked in to place, bones turned to cement, organs
pumped full of sawdust. Pain like he had never known filled every inch of
him, driving out anything but the need to make it stop.

Bellatrix grinned. "Or maybe we just need a new game? A couple of extra
toys, perhaps?" She straightened up, and the invisible vice clenching his
body vanished. He did not try to stop the gasping, choked breaths, or the
low groan of agony which escaped him. Bellatrix was watching him, and
there was a feral gleam to her eyes now. "I'll admit to there being one part
of our Lord's genius plan which I did not predict. Did not think even you
would dirty yourself with. At first I wanted nothing more than your
immediate death. To involve yourself with that stinking, disgusting
Mudblood!

"But as usual, our Lord saw reason. Saw how to use it to our advantage."
Terror seized him, more powerful, more consuming than the pain. Bellatrix
grinned, her yellowed teeth gleaming in the dim light of the room. "You see,
Draco. When you stood before us five years ago, you told us you had no
weaknesses. Now you have two." Her gaze did not leave him. "Bring in the
filth."

Hermione did not struggle against the two Death Eaters daring to lay their
disgusting hands on what was his, and his alone. She walked with her head
held high, and though the fear was clear for all to see, the effort to hide it
made something like pride swell in his chest. Except that it crumbled in to
pure, unadulterated fear when he realised that she was not alone, and saw
Teddy clasped in her arms.

Bellatrix chuckled, her eyes ever leaving him, the sound low and slick in
her throat. Because she knew, and there was no point in even hiding his
reaction, because she knew! Had always known! And he had been a
damned fool to think that he could have this slice of heaven, and not destroy
it! Because this was what happened when a Malfoy took something good
and pure for his own. It died. They were of the Bad Faith, and this was how
they had gotten their name all those long centuries ago.

Hermione's eyes met his, and her clutch on Teddy visibly tightened. He
stirred against her, and she frowned. "No, Teddy, it's not okay to open your
eyes yet. Hide and seek, remember?"

Bellatrix cackled, high and loud, and Teddy burrowed his head further in to
Hermione's neck. "Hide and seek! Perfect! Yes, we do love to play our little
games, don't we? And things are only going to get more fun now that the
guests of honour have arrived! Bring the girl to me!"

And he tried to cling on to the light, to hold his head above the irresistible
darkness that was sucking him under, but it was rolling over him in
sickening waves now, and the next thing he knew, Hermione was being
thrown to the floor beside him. He did not know if she had been cursed, or
beaten, or how long he had been out for. He turned his head, and she shifted
closer until her mouth was at his ear.

"...a few more minutes now I promise, the others are coming and..."

Footsteps, screams, the heat of curses flying over his body. Moody's shouts
and Mrs. Weasley's cries - "-never hurt my family again!".

A weight of another body pressed against his chest, and Hermione's

concerned eyes staring down at him. "Godrick's Hollow," he managed, and
she repeated it loud enough for the others to hear, and there was the crack of
several Apparitions all at once, and then quiet.

He opened his eyes to the sight of Hermione's tears and his Aunt
Andromeda's solemn gaze. They were not looking at him, and it was several
long moments before either of them noticed that he was conscious.
Hermione's hand fell to his face, stroking his cheek, and she pressed a kiss
to his forehead. He glanced to his left and saw Teddy, curled up silently on
a nearby chair, waiting, tensed.
"Don't try to speak," she whispered, and had he been trying? He hadn't even
realised, did not know what he would say, here on his deathbed. And maybe
he would have noticed that the ground was much softer now, and that the
ceiling was much more the ceiling of his mother's old room than the
decimated parlour, but he hurt so bad, and all over, and he was just so tired.

"-be able to do something!"

"...internal bleeding...too far gone..."

"...refuse to let this happen!"

Words. Some he understood, others muffled, as though spoken from a great

distance. Only Hermione's hand on his chest, and her eyes on his were real.
She bent down, and she was whispering in his ear, that everything was
going to be alright, and other things that he forgot only moments after she
said them. And then her lips on his, soft, pure simple. Filling him with
warmth. And he was glad that she would be here in his last moments, filling
him with this... fire. Not warmth. Burning, aching, flames licking at his
chest.

She gasped and he knew she felt it too. He wanted to pull away, but his
arms were lead at his sides. And then he didn't want to move at all.
Something was pulsating inside him, flowing from her and in to him, and he
remembered something about blood magic, and drawing off each other's
powers, but he was too far gone to truly notice. There was only Hermione,
and the flames. The fire grew, an inferno raging inside of him, drowning out
everything else, and it was just the two of them, alone, floating in an
endless see of white oblivion.

::

There was a river where she and her parents used to go. They would take a
picnic, and fill their plastic wine glasses with grape juice, and Hermione
would giggle and sip like it was really alcohol. She lay there now, with the
tall grass swaying around her, and the blue sky stretching on and on, until
her mind reels with the enormity of it all. Her hand reached, reached, and
there he was, his fingers brushing over hers, and his sigh lifting to mingle
with the gentle breeze and the sound of bird song in the air.

He tightened his hold on her hand, and rolled over until he was above her,
the blue sky framing his face, and with the sun coming down through his
hair that way, it almost looked as though he sported a golden halo. The
thought made her giggle, then laugh outright, and they were both laughing,
and floating on the sound of their happiness. She thought that maybe
heaven existed after all, and that maybe this was it - her and Draco, and the
fields and the sun.
*Chapter 18*: Chapter 15
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the cannon characters.
No profit is made from this fic.

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
~Havelock Ellis

Light.

Gaping, blinding, overwhelming.

Pulling him forwards, a hook around his middle that he could not resist.

And then faces. Voices. The sounds of machines, and the masked faces of
Healers he did not recognise, and some that he did. And Moody was there,
and Shacklebolt, and they were telling him that it was over, that He was
dead, that Potter had done it - actually done it. His body seized, his limbs
locked into place. He heard words like 'seizure,' and the warning ring of a
machine. A prick of a needle entering his arm, and then he was gone again.

::

"She's fine, Draco. A little worse for wear, but... well, we're all a little worse
for wear."

Draco did not remember asking, though he knew instinctively who

Shacklebolt was talking about, and wondered briefly if he had been calling
for her in his sleep. "Where is she?" he tried to ask, except that it came out
as a choked rasp. Shacklebolt held a cup of water to his lips, ignoring
Draco's glare at the show of his own weakness.

"Hermione is in the ICU at the moment. Now, calm down." His hand was
on Draco's shoulder, forcing him back into the bed. "She's perfectly alright.
Just exhausted. Her magic drained out of her and in to you, saving your
life." Draco watched the man carefully for any signs of accusation, but there
were none.

"I want to see her."

"I had a feeling you would." And he did not deny Draco, as Draco had
thought he might. He simply called for a Healer, and a wheelchair, and he
did not say anything when Draco had to lean heavily on him to move from
the bed to the chair.

The ICU hummed with magical energy, the air making Draco's already
fuzzy head feel as though it had been stuffed with cotton wool. Hermione
lay perfectly still, save for the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Her face
was pale, contrasting hideously with the darkness of her hair. Bruises lined
her eyes. Her lips were cracked and dry.

Potter was there, and Weasley, and they nodded once to Draco, who nodded
once back. And for once he did not resent their presence in his life, or their
shared love of this girl lying between them. He thought it was almost a
relief, not to have to carry the burden of worry alone. To know that there
were at least two other people who were just as scared, just as anxious. He
reached over. Found her hand and squeezed it. She did not stir. And she did
not squeeze back.

::

He first knew he would leave the moment Hermione's eyes blinked open,
blood shot, drained, glazed with the exhaustion of what it had taken to save
him. And no, it did not matter that Matthews assured him there would be no
lasting damage, other than the destruction of the blood bond they had once
shared. And no, Potter's desperate pleas to at least speak to her before he
left, just once, did not touch him in the slightest. Because all he could see
was Hermione lying there, and not knowing if she would ever wake up, and
seeing her strapped to those medical machines for eight days before she did.

He did not write a note. He could not find the words, and she had always
been smarter than him. Would figure it out. He slipped his mother's ring,
which had been returned to him via Potter, onto her finger, and stared down
at the silver against her pale skin for a long moment before he worked up
the strength to walk away.

And he did not look back. Not once.

::

One Year Later

::

The first awards ceremony for veterans of the Second War was to be held at
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hermione supposed there
was some sort of poetic irony there. Ending everything at the place where it
had all began - the castle where a war had so recklessly been sparked in
their sixth year, all that time ago. Personally, she didn't see the point in
these awards. It was just yet another way to bring up the painful past.
Another day spent mourning those who had not made it. A piece of
parchment with her name on it, which was supposed to represent all those
years she had sacrificed, all those deeds she had done.

She might not have gone at all, except that Harry still hated to leave the
safety of his house unless Ron and Hermione were there with him. Her
parents were proud, of course, in that embarrassing way that had them
trying to snap photos of her every three seconds, and bursting into random
bouts of tears.

She first noticed Draco as she stood on the makeshift wooden platform set
up for the special event, shaking hands with Minister Shacklebolt and trying
not to grimace at the click of too many cameras from the press section. It
was not the dramatic moment of some cheap paperback romance. Her heart
did not stop, her cheeks did not flush. Her stomach clenched a little, but
then again she'd had the crab for lunch, and it had tasted a little funny.

He hadn't changed all that much since the last time she had seen him, except
that his skin was a shade darker, and his eyes a little brighter. He did not
break her gaze, and when she nodded to him, a little uncertain, he nodded
right back.
And then she was being ushered on, as the next person rose to take their
award, their moment in the spotlight. From her seat at the front, she could
not see Draco without turning around and craning her neck to the left. But
Harry must have already noticed him, because he took her hand in his and
squeezed her tight. He was trembling slightly, but there was colour to his
cheeks, and she thought he looked healthier than he had in a long while.
She slipped her other hand over the space between the seats until it found
Ron's. He took it without looking at her, and rubbed the stump of his
missing hand against her arm.

Her chest swelled with something almost painful in its intensity. It was
difficult not to flinch at every small sound, not to keep her hand trained on
her wand at all times, and see Death Eaters lurking in every shadow. But
they were safe, at last, and here, and together. And there were people
missing - Fred's face flashed painfully through her mind. But it was done
now. It was over. Finally over.

::

"They fixed this place up pretty good, didn't they?" Draco did not turn, his
eyes fixed on the twin gargoyles eyeing him with boredom. Hermione came
to a stop beside him, near enough that the scent of her perfume floated
towards him. He inhaled deep. Shut his eyes and savoured the moment.
"They tried to make it look like nothing really changed."

"Everything changed," he muttered.

"Not everything." By the time he looked at her, she had already stepped
forwards, expression out of reach. She smiled politely at the two gargoyles,
who seemed to soften somewhat at this new approach. "May we please get
past?"

There was a pause, then stone shifting against stone. The wall parted; the
staircase appeared. Hermione danced up the first few steps, turning to smile
expectantly at him. "Come on, then. Don't you want to say a proper
goodbye?"
She did not wait to see if he would follow. He realised it would probably be
easier if he simply turned back now and saved them both the hassle. (He
followed anyway). The Head's office had not changed much since he was
last here - and yet, so much was different. A new desk, styled as the old one
had been, but with a fresh sheen to the cherry-wood. The portraits had been
dusted until they shone in the afternoon light. Fawkes' cage was gone.

"It feels weird to be back in here, hm?" Hermione's eyes swept over the
office, taking everything in. Draco's eyes remained fixed on her, hungry for
every detail he had missed over the last twelve months. The details he
would soon be leaving once more. She looked different from when he had
last seen her. Fuller. Healthier. Her tan skin seemed to glow with good
health, and relaxation, and he realised that he had not seen her look so
carefree since their fifth year.

"You're staring." She glanced at him, a small smile on her lips. He did not
look away.

"You look really good."

"Well you look awful." She laughed at his glare. "I'm serious! You look like
you haven't had a half-decent meal in months! And there are bags under
your eyes, which means you haven't been sleeping. Did you get any rest at
all after the war?"

He shrugged. Leant back against the desk, so as to appear unaffected by her

presence (his heart raced, his stomach clenched). "Not really."

She frowned. "I'd have thought you would have taken advantage of being
out of the public eye, in a hot country."

"How do you know I've been somewhere hot?"

"Your face has caught the sun," she replied, with a small shrug, and a blush
that told him he should probably be wondering who she had gotten to track
his location. "I actually didn't think you would turn up today."
He tracked her movements with his eyes. Watched as she made her way
over to the tall bookcase, running her finger delicately over the ancient
spines of rare tombs. Could not resist stalking towards her, until he could
almost feel the heat radiating from her body - or maybe he was imagining
that. "I didn't either. But the Ministry has finally granted me access to the
rest of the Malfoy funds. And they need my signature to transfer ownership
of the manor to them."

She turned to him in surprise, startling a little at the lack of distance

between them. "You're giving up the manor?"

He nodded. Brought his hand up and caught a stray curl that had escaped
from her bun around his finger. "Too many bad memories. The Ministry can
sell it and use the money to rebuild. Or they can let it rot. I don't care."

She was intoxicating this close up, with her scent invading his every sense,
and her cheeks flushing so deliciously. He leaned forwards, his fingers
brushing her neck, and trembled slightly at the shiver that ran up her body.

"Don't." She only whispered it, but he froze seconds from her lips, as
though she had screamed. "Don't do it if you don't mean it," she continued.
"I don't think I can stand it if you kiss me and then just leave again."

Guilt filled him, cold and sickening. He sighed, and the breath stirred the
hairs around her face. "Hermione... You know why I left."

"Some misplaced sense of guilt, or bravery, I imagine." And she sounded so

prim and proper that he had to take a moment to bite down the laughter.

"I know that you're better off without me. I almost got you killed." He
pressed his forehead against hers before she could interrupt him, and her
eyes fluttered shut at the contact. "But I'm no Potter. There's only so much
self-sacrifice I can do before the Malfoy side kicks in. I can leave again. I
left you once, I think I can take it. If I think you'll be happy, and safe. I'm
not expecting you to hold to any promises made in the midst of a war, when
you don't know if you're going to wake up the next day. But-"
"But?" Her eyes were open again, and full of something like hope, and he
knew that he could never leave now, not if both their lives depended on it.

"But," he whispered. "I'm still a Malfoy through and through. And you're a
big girl now. You can make your own decisions. If you want me to stay, I
won't leave you again. But it goes both ways. If you're with me, that's it. No
going back."

"Do you have to be so melodramatic about everything? You're starting to

sound like some bleeding heart Gryffindor, you know." And then she was
pushing up on her toes and kissing him, and her lips were soft and warm,
and just as he remembered them. His arms found their way around her
waist, and hers around his neck. Her body pressed in to his, and it was a
little awkward with her belt digging into his groin that way, and his fingers
caught in her hair a little, and it wasn't perfect, but that was alright.

Her lips disappeared, her arm drew back. His head reeled with the force of
her slap. He gaped at her. "What the hell?"

"For being an idiot," she replied primly. Hermione stepped back and lifted
her chin an inch. "Honestly. Men are such idiots. Now stop gaping at me
and hurry along. The others are all dying to see you again. Teddy practically
wet himself with excitement. I had to convince them to let me go after you
first, so you wouldn't get scared and run again." She faltered suddenly, hand
pausing on its way to his. "You are coming with me this time, right?"

He closed the rest of the distance between them. Drew her to him, kissing
her once on the mouth. "This time. Every time. Until you get bored of me,
or we end up killing each other in some stupid argument."

"Don't be stupid, darling." She grinned cockily. "We both know I'm the
better duelist. There's no way you could kill me."

He let her tug him along, away from the desk. Glanced back at the circular
room, pausing as his eyes caught on something. Hermione stopped with
him, eyebrow raising in curiosity.
"Give me a moment. I just need to do something." He caught her hesitation
and smirked, pulling her hand up to his lips and planting a kiss there. "I'll be
right behind you. Promise."

She might have argued some more, but seemed to think better of it,
shrugging instead and shooting him a look which told him exactly what she
would do to him if he didn't hurry up. He watched her leave. Listened to the
quiet click of the door closing, before turning to face the old portrait
directly above the Headmistress' desk. Dumbledore sat back in his chair, a
scroll of parchment resting open on his lap. His spectacles balanced
precariously on top of his uneven nose. His lips were turned into a quiet
smile.

"Mr. Malfoy," he said, with a nod.

"Professor."

"I had a feeling you might be back here again."

Draco shrugged, but the guilt that usually accompanied the thought of this
man was taking its time to rise, and when it did it was duller now. Not so
sharp as before. Not quite gone exactly, but a pain he could live with. "I
guess I thought I should come back here one last time. Now that everything
is over."

Dumbledore smiled, as if he could sense the nostalgia seeping into the

room, taking up all the air. "Every story must come to an end, Draco." And
he had said the words before, but now he was leaning forwards, and there
was almost that glint in his eyes that had always annoyed Draco when the
man was alive, but only warmed him now. "But in life, every ending is just
another beginning."

And he knew that it was only a portrait, and that the real Dumbledore was
gone, along with so many other good people who did not deserve to die. He
thought of Theo, and Crabbe, and Snape. Of Fred, who had never woken
up. Of Pansy, who had been caught before she ever made it to the coast. Of
his mother, and the man his father had once been. They stood around him
now, expressions peaceful in a way that they had not been in life. He bowed
to his old Headmaster once at the door, his chest aching a little with the
finality of it all. This part of his life was over now. The school, and the
fighting, and the war. And it was still a little sad. Still enough to bring a
lump to his throat, and have him blinking uncomfortably. But that was okay.

Hermione waited for him outside of the office, hands on hips, glaring at him
for the delay even as her lips turned up into a grin. She kissed him once on
the lips, perhaps because she sensed he needed it, and took her hand in his.
He glanced back, eyes seeking out the ghostly figures of his memory once
more. But the room was empty now, and there was only Hermione tugging
him down the stairs. Into the waiting arms of Teddy, and the awkward
smiles of the Weasley clan, and Potter. Into a new life.
 Table of Contents
*Chapter 1*: Prologue
*Chapter 2*: Chapter 1
*Chapter 3*: Chapter 2
*Chapter 4*: Chapter 3
*Chapter 5*: Chapter 4
*Chapter 6*: Chapter 5
*Chapter 7*: Chapter 6
*Chapter 8*: Chapter 7
*Chapter 9*: Chapter 8
*Chapter 10*: Chapter 9
*Chapter 11*: Chapter 10
*Chapter 12*: Chapter 11
*Chapter 13*: Chapter 12
*Chapter 14*: Chapter 13 1
*Chapter 15*: Chapter 13 2
*Chapter 16*: Chapter 13 3
*Chapter 17*: Chapter 14
*Chapter 18*: Chapter 15