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Chapter Text

July 1997

The windows in the Gryffindor common room were black, and all Hermione could see was the dying flames of the fire reflected back at her. She and Ron had fallen into silence, side-by-side on the overstuffed couch across from the hearth where they must have spent hundreds of hours, studying, laughing, arguing, worrying about Harry. Always worrying about Harry.

They did it now, together. Ron’s thigh pressed solidly against hers, offering her the comforting warmth that Ron always provided. Ginny remained downstairs as well, but had succumbed to exhaustion and was sleeping, curled cat-like in the armchair facing the portrait hole, where she had been watching and waiting for Harry. Always waiting for Harry.

Hermione had been thinking of Harry seeking out Sirius in the same fireplace so long ago when the door to the portrait hole swung open, breaking the not-quite-peaceful silence. She searched Harry's face in the habitual way she had done for years: was Harry angry, was he anxious, had something bad happened, had things gotten even worse somehow since she’d last seen him?

Harry’s tired eyes met hers briefly before searching and finding Ginny. His face softened slightly, and he stepped quietly over to the armchair next to hers, shedding his robes as he sank down into the overstuffed cushions.

Ron cleared his throat but kept his voice low in an attempt not to wake his younger sister. “How’d it go, mate? What did McGonagall want?”

Harry didn’t answer for a minute. His eyes remained on Ginny's sleeping form, trained on the slight rise and fall of her chest. Hermione imagined he was drawing comfort from the sight of her there, safe, alive, even though he had hardly been gone an hour.

“To offer help, I suppose. To let me know I could confide in her about—about whatever Dumbledore and I had been discussing.”

She and Ron exchanged knowing looks.

“Muffliato,” Hermione whispered, encasing the three of them in privacy. Ron quirked an eyebrow at her in a mild challenge, and she remembered, with what felt like miles of distance, a time when something as small as a spell that she couldn’t find in her textbooks had bothered her. She shrugged in response and turned back to Harry.

“What did you say?”

Harry let out a frustrated sigh. “Nothing, really. If Dumbledore didn’t tell her—or anyone else—about the Horcruxes when he was alive, I still don’t think I should now, either.”

Hermione frowned. They had largely been avoiding the topic of the Horcruxes for days, in some sort of unspoken agreement that these last days at the school were better spent in this strange, suspended state of denial before the inevitable reality that hurtled toward them.

But that hadn’t stopped Hermione from privately turning over the question in her mind endlessly, wondering how to broach the subject with Harry, pondering the reasons Dumbledore may have had for keeping his secrets and the wisdom of those choices given everything that had happened, and agonizing over whether they really ought to do the same.

“Harry,” she began tentatively. “I think we need to discuss this further.”

Neither wizard looked particularly excited at her suggestion. A weary sigh from Harry was her only answer for a long moment, but she thought it sounded more like the one he used when he was resigned to listening to Hermione lecture him about a particularly boring homework assignment, rather than the recent exhalations under his breath that seemed to indicate his bones felt about a thousand years old. This encouraged her slightly.

“Alright,” he finally replied. “Let’s talk about it. Do you think I should have just told her?”

“No,” Hermione said, twisting her fingers in the tassel of the couch cushion. “But the thing is, now that Dumbledore is—is dead, someone else will be put in charge of the Order. They will be responsible for making decisions about where and when and who to fight, and planning a strategy to take down Voldemort. Only now it won’t be someone who actually knows the only way to win, like Dumbledore did.” She looked anxiously at Ron to gauge whether she was getting through to him before turning back to Harry. “That just… doesn’t make sense.”

The only sounds for a few moments were the crinkle of robes from Ron’s anxious shifting on the couch and Ginny’s measured breaths across the room. Harry dropped his head in his hands. His voice was muffled when he finally spoke.

“So… you’re suggesting we tell everyone in the Order?”

“No, not that either,” Hermione replied quickly, sensing she had her opening now. “That would be dangerous. Obviously, anyone who knows about the Horcruxes could accidentally—or intentionally, Merlin forbid—tell the wrong people about it. And our biggest advantage right now is that Voldemort doesn’t know we know about them. If he figured out our plan, he could move them and scatter them across the Earth so we’d never find them, and then—”

She drew up short, not quite able to finish the thought.

Ron looked ill at her words and Harry still hadn’t raised his head. She hurriedly continued.

“But the Order is an army, right? Or at least it’s going to need to be now. And three teenagers aren’t going to be the ones in charge of making the plans, but someone will be. So we just need to tell that person, or at least convince them to listen to us so they can organize around this as the endgame. Otherwise,” Hermione drew a deep breath and made her final point. “What if the Order was to plan some huge surge or attack or something? It wouldn’t work.”

The nightmares that had kept her up since Harry had first told them about the Horcruxes were spilling out of her now and she found she couldn’t stop the spiral in her mind that she had been keeping tightly under control. What had Dumbledore been thinking. How were they supposed to do this, how was she somehow responsible for keeping everyone alive. Alive, alive, alive.

“It will never work unless the Horcruxes are already destroyed, but they have no idea. People could be led into a slaughter, for nothing.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

“Blimey, Hermione,” Ron said quietly. He was so pale she could have counted every freckle on his face.

Harry ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up in a familiar way that slightly calmed her increasing hysterical train of thought, and sighed again. It was the bone-weary sigh this time. His green eyes looked hollow and she felt like she could see the weight of his tragic seventeen years literally pressing his shoulders downward.

“I know you’re right, Hermione,” Harry said quietly. “I just wish I could ask Dumbledore if it was what he would have done.”

The tension seemed to drain from his shoulders a bit as he straightened up in his chair and turned to face them more fully. Hermione felt very proud and yet horribly sick at how he pushed down the guilt and uncertainty in exchange for taking on the responsibility of making this decision for them. Because, ultimately, in the end, it was his decision. Wasn’t it?

“What do you think, Ron?”

As Ron’s brow furrowed in concentration in response to Harry’s question, Hermione had a vivid flashback to watching a gangly twelve-year-old boy plot out moves across a gigantic living chessboard. She realized suddenly that Ron would likely be very good at planning strategy for the Order in the coming world—the coming war—and the thought made her heart squeeze uncomfortably.

“I reckon you’re right,” Ron finally said. “We can’t divide the Order’s strength by having two separate approaches to this without either side knowing what and why the other side is doing something. But this information is dangerous. I’m not saying I think we’ve got another Snape,” his face twisted in disgust, “but Hermione’s right that people can get hurt for knowing things. Forget Crucio. Voldemort can fucking read minds.”

Despite the harsh conclusion, Hermione felt a rush of gratitude and affection for the redhead sitting next to her. “Harry, it’s up to you. But I think we can do it in a way that will only help. Possibly that can end everything faster.”

Harry smiled tiredly at her. “I trust you, Hermione.” She resisted the urge to throw her arms around him and offered him a small smile in return instead, the first time she could remember doing so in a while.

“Alright," he concluded, "but we say nothing until we all agree who to tell, and how to do it."

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.”

Conversation faded quickly after that.

They sat together for a few more minutes, the silence heavier than before, until Harry got up from his armchair and knelt next to Ginny’s sleeping form.

Hermione watched him place a hand gently on Ginny’s cheek and murmur something in her ear to rouse her. Ginny stirred sleepily and a look of contentment replaced confusion upon realizing who had woken her. Hermione felt very much like an intruder on an intimate moment and shifted awkwardly, causing her leg to pull away from where it had been resting against Ron’s. He started at her movement and caught her eye, his discomfort apparent as well.

They both stood.

Ron walked her to the steps of the girls’ dormitory, feet shuffling and hands stuffed in his pockets, not close enough to brush her arm but not as far as he once would have lingered.

It had been like this for weeks; Hermione had thought there was some sort of growing closeness between them, some understanding, when everything had settled after all that Lavender nonsense, and then shifted even more by the shock of Dumbledore’s death. But now, whenever she felt that they should’ve been turning further toward each other, neither seemed able to draw up the courage.

Or, she wondered sometimes to herself when she was alone at night in her bed and his comforting presence wasn’t quite as nearby, perhaps the desire?

But that was wrong, wasn’t it, she told herself, this was Ron and she’d wanted him for so long. The frozen state of the world was just keeping them in suspense as well, surely. Everything would change soon; she and Ron would have time to sort out whatever was going to happen between them.

Surely, they had time for that.  

…

Hermione awoke with a renewed sense of purpose the next morning.

They hadn’t agreed on any concrete action the night before, but their now-shared understanding that something would have to be done had sent her brain whirring into motion in a familiar pattern.

She was the one who would plan. Who would figure out the steps they would have to take, what order they should be in, and how they would take them. Action felt better than inaction to her, as it always had, but especially now when the looming sense of something ending, or maybe beginning but in the worst way, pressed in on the castle and in on her chest.

She dressed quickly and left for the Great Hall. It was early, even by her own standards, but she didn’t want the boys with her for what she had in mind. Better to fill them in later, she thought to herself, reaching the entrance to the Great Hall quickly in her haste.

Breakfast was nearly empty. She passed the Slytherin table and noticed Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass sitting alone at one end of the table, talking quietly. They stopped talking when she neared and Hermione met Blaise’s eyes by accident. He leveled her with an expression that she couldn’t read and didn’t look away as she expected he would.

Hermione averted her eyes and hurried to her intended destination.

Professor McGonagall was joined only by Professors Flitwick and Slughorn at the staff table. Each offered the slightly pained smile that every person left at the castle seemed to be mustering these days as she approached.

“Good morning, Ms. Granger,” Professor Slughorn said with an attempt at his usual geniality, gesturing to the seat next to him. “You’re up quite early. You are certainly welcome to join us rather than dine alone at your House table.”

She smiled in thanks at him but shifted toward Professor McGonagall.

“That’s kind of you, Professor, but I won’t be long. Actually, I was hoping to make an appointment with you, Professor McGonagall, whenever it is convenient.”

Professor McGonagall lifted her eyebrows, setting her teacup down. “Of course. I’ve time now, if that’s suitable for you.”

Hermione nodded quickly, relieved. “Yes, absolutely.”

She waited while the headmistress bade her colleagues goodbye and stood. As she trailed behind Professor McGonagall out of the Hall, Hermione thought she felt Blaise Zabini’s inscrutable eyes on her back once more.

Hermione settled somewhat uncomfortably into the chair across from what had until recently been Dumbledore’s desk. There was an air of melancholy in the room, as if it felt abandoned, too, though Professor McGonagall herself seemed unbothered and as stoic as ever. She summoned two cups and poured from a teakettle sitting on the desk, offering Hermione one before gesturing to the milk and sugar dishes.

Hermione splashed her drink with milk—no sugar, she did have dentists in her family, after all—stirred slowly, and took a deep sip before saying anything. The habitual motions worked to steady her nerves. Professor McGonagall made no sign of impatience, merely sipping her drink as well and waiting.

“Thank you for speaking with me, Professor McGonagall,” she began. “I understand you also spoke to Harry last night.”

A sad look appeared in the other woman’s eyes for a moment, making her lined face look even older.

“Yes, I did. Rather, I tried. I assume he has shared more with you than with me, to be frank. I can only say that I extend the same offer of support to you as I have offered to him.”

Hermione looked down at her hands, which were gripping the teacup too tightly.

“Thank you, Professor.” She gathered her courage again. “I think—I have spoken with Harry about taking you up on the offer, in some manner, soon. That’s sort of why I’m here, though I will admit that it is to ask you for something, rather than offer information, at least for the moment.”

This earned her a rare look of surprise. Hermione set her cup down firmly on the desk.

“Professor, I’d like to know what the Order’s current plans are. I intend to join the Order in any capacity you will have me, and I’d like to be as useful as possible. I’m of age, and I have no magic parents or guardians in any case to object—or to fight for me. I’m aware that I have not finished school, but,” she hesitated, “I mean no offense, Professor, but I find it quite hard to believe I’ll be back at school in the fall, one way or another. So I am not sure I’d have anywhere else to go anyway.”

Despite the somewhat pathetic-sounding conclusion, Hermione’s words rang oddly formal even to her own ears.  Unsure whether to continue, she paused, and an awkward silence fell. A few of the portraits in the room were visible from her angle; they had mostly been sleeping or pretending to sleep, but some were watching with interest now, which only added to her growing embarrassment at her little speech.

There was no judgment in Professor McGonagall’s reply, however, and possibly, Hermione thought with secret pleasure, there was a hint of pride.

“Ms. Granger, I want to first assure you that I will do everything in my power to keep this school open—not only to you but to any student who wishes to attend. But I am afraid that there may be a chance that you are correct.”

She sighed deeply and the heavy look settled into her face again.

“However, I also want you to know that you are not alone in the magical world, Ms. Granger. Anything but, in fact.”

Hermione blushed at these words but nodded gratefully.

“As for joining the Order, I wish for nothing more than that I could prevent you from having to do such a thing. If I could stop this war, and if I could allow you all to—” the headmistress paused and seemed to have to gather her emotions. “I know you are not a child anymore, though I may wish that you did not have to be an adult so soon, my dear.”

Professor McGonagall scrutinized Hermione's face for another moment, hands also wrapped tightly around her teacup. “You have already given too much. But the Order will certainly accept your offer, Hermione.”

She started at the use of her first name. Professor McGonagall smiled slightly, noticing. “And you must call me Minerva if we are to be soldiers together. Or, at the least, very soon, outlaws.”

Hermione felt her mouth tug upward in spite of the jolt she felt at the word ‘soldier’ so bluntly and felt, for perhaps the millionth time in the last six years, immensely grateful for Minerva McGonagall. “I can do that.”

A brisk nod and the moment shifted.

“Now. I assume you did not come here just to formally declare your allegiances. Am I correct?”

Hermione shook her head quickly. “That’s true. I was hoping you could tell me more about what’s going on, actually. For one thing, I was wondering who’s in charge now that—now that Professor Dumbledore isn’t,” she finished a bit lamely.

“Well,” Professor McGonagall began thoughtfully—Minerva, Hermione reminded herself, the informal address sounding odd even in her own head. “We have not had the time to officially vote, which we will, but it is assumed that Alastor will be leading our strategic decisions. Kingsley and Remus and I are the other most senior members, so to speak, but I will remain at Hogwarts as long as possible, and Kingsley at the Ministry until he is likewise forced to leave. Therefore, Remus will probably play the most active role in day-to-day planning other than Alastor, both assisted by Aurors who are also in the Order such as Nymphadora. We do tend to operate as democratically as possible, though, as things progress...” She sighed again. “War does demand organization and hierarchy in certain ways.”

Hermione nodded. That was essentially all what she had guessed, but she had wanted the confirmation.

“And are there operations right now? Are headquarters still at Grimmauld Place?”

“We are in the process of securing more safehouses. Grimmauld Place has been compromised with Severus’ betrayal.”

Minerva’s fury flashed through her calm and Hermione was reminded of the quiet but—at least seemingly—genuine friendship that she had observed between the two teachers over the years.

“He may have been able to tell the other Death Eaters about it given our Secret-Keeper has passed on. Therefore, it has been vacated temporarily. But I believe Remus has an idea of how to properly ward it again, and then we will likely resume the majority of operations from there.”

“Other than that, the Aurors who are on our side are continuing to gather as much intelligence as possible. Those of us with connections abroad have been contacting friends for support, in all forms. We need funds, primarily; we are also attempting to increase our stores of items such as healing potions that may be critical in times to come.” Her voice softened and her gaze leveled on Hermione, searching for her reaction. “It may seem drastic but we have to assume things will get much worse before they get better.”

She tried to absorb everything Minerva had shared as quickly as possible. It all made sense; she was sure there was even more happening than these common sense preparations. Hermione was already running through a potential list of ways she could help with the Order’s current efforts with half her focus.

“When will all of this... happen?” she asked, mind still churning.

Minerva looked grim. “The preparations are happening now, as I said. As for what happens next, we don’t know. We can only assume the other side is regrouping right now, just as ours is. However, they are coming off of a victory, not frankly, a devastating blow. We are hoping to send the students home after Albus’s’ funeral safely and then gather the Order in earnest, as well as ramp up our recruitment efforts.”

Hermione raised her eyebrows. “Recruitment?”

One side of Minerva’s mouth quirked in a sad smile. “I expected nothing less than volunteering from you, Hermione, but, yes, we have plans to approach any witch or wizard of age who is willing to fight and can be trusted. As much as I despise all of this, we need every bit of help we can get.”

Recruiting Order members of age meant many of her peers from Hogwarts who also hadn’t finished school. The thought of an empty Hogwarts next year, of spending most of what was supposed to be her seventh year on some extended and even more real version of the training sessions she’d done with Dumbledore’s Army, sunk in even harder.

“Right. Of course. I can help with that if you want.”

Minerva nodded. “I would appreciate that. We can discuss at once after the funeral. However, Hermione, given that your intent seems to be to join us imminently, we should discuss your plans to meet up with the Order, if you are ready, as I assume you will want to visit your parents’ home first.”

Hermione’s heart sank. This had been the conversation she had been dreading most, for days now, even more than the discussion with Harry and Ron the night before.

“I know,” she said quietly. “Prof—Minerva, I had a thought about that.”

She took a deep breath. “I’ve already been in more than one battle with Death Eaters. Rita Skeeter spread my name, and my blood status, all over the papers in association with Harry’s for a year. It’s hardly a secret that I’m one of his best friends, or that I am opposed to their cause in general. I am concerned that—that my parents may become a target, just as I might.”

The pity in Minerva’s eyes almost made her look away.

“I will not lie to you, Hermione,” Minerva said gravely. “That is entirely possible. It happened last time, and it has already started again. I can only expect the Death Eaters will grow bolder and more aggressive with such tactics.” She briefly placed a reassuring hand over Hermione’s where it sat on the table between them. “We can ward their home to the fullest extent possible, or they will be welcome at the Order safehouses, Hermione. We will not abandon your parents.”

She had already dismissed relying only on protective spells, having seen how most could eventually fail. But Hermione considered the second offer briefly. It was tempting. Having her parents nearby, being able to see them, possibly stay in the same safehouse with them, even if her responsibilities to the Order took her away for days or weeks at a time…

She shoved the image down. Her childish desire for comfort from her mother and father was not the most important thing right now. Forcing her parents into hiding in the magical world, to make them live full-time with the terror she now lived with in her gut everyday—only in their case without even a chance of defending themselves—it wasn’t right. And not when she wouldn’t really be able to know they were completely protected. Safehouses could be found. Probably would be found, she thought darkly.

Hermione had already made her decision.

“Thank you very much, Minerva. But I would appreciate your help with something else.”

…

Time moved in fits and starts after that.

Dumbledore’s funeral passed in a haze, Hermione’s emotional state torn between gripping anxiety that the Death Eaters would use the gathering to attack the huge number of Light supporters present and the complicated grief caused by the passing of their headmaster.  

Before they all left Hogwarts, Harry, Ron, and Hermione agreed to tell the Order, somehow, about the Horcruxes once they were reunited on Harry’s birthday, which was when he planned to travel to the Burrow, or, if possible, Grimmauld Place.

Instead of Ron and Hermione, Ginny accompanied Harry to the Dursleys’. It was hard to tell whether Molly or Harry’s relatives’ disapproval was greater. Ginny had managed to pull off such a thing by simply announcing it at the last minute and boarding the Hogwarts Express with Harry and Hermione instead of using the Floo connection that was set up for students with Wizarding families.

By the time Ron showed up at the Burrow alone, sheepish and mumbling excuses about not wanting to have been a third wheel and gone to Little Whinging too, it was too late to retrieve Ginny.

After the service, Hermione turned down Minerva’s offer to escort her to her parents’ house and went alone. Minerva had stayed up with Hermione the last several nights, teaching her the practical aspects of the complex magic of Obliviation, and never once passing judgment on her decision. Hermione was grateful, since she wasn’t sure she could go through with it if questioned too intensely by anyone else.

Her mother and father had been expecting her home from school.

They were brimming with questions for her about classes and Ron and Harry and exams and did she want tea or to go out tonight for dinner to celebrate finishing another year and Hermione thought she might vomit if she tried to answer. She locked herself in her room and recited the plan in her mind until she felt numb.

When she finally had the courage to turn her wand on her parents hours later, the enchantments took longer than she expected. The magic had drained nearly everything from her magically and emotionally, and she could hardly gather herself to cast a basic concealment charm on the house and Apparate away once it was done.

When she cracked into existence at the end of the familiar lane leading to the Burrow, her sobs drew Ron out of the house running. He found her collapsed on the ground and had to half-carry, half-levitate her inside.

When she came to in Ginny’s dark room hours later, her mind was blank. The others tentatively tried to talk to her about it at breakfast the next morning.

She didn’t answer.

…

Hermione had only been at the Burrow for a week when Lupin and Tonks showed up, a decidedly frenzied energy about them.

They announced in excited shouts that they had just eloped, that they were pregnant, and that they had figured out a plan to secure Grimmauld Place again. There was only a few seconds to contemplate the absurdity of their new wartime reality before Molly conjured several bottles of celebratory champagne (and cider for Tonks) and Lupin launched into an explanation of how they could harness both Tonks’ and Harry’s magic as remaining Black family members to seal Grimmauld Place again with blood wards on top of a modified Fidelius charm. It was quite brilliant, really, if, Hermione noted to herself, a bit Dark sounding.

Molly, Arthur, Fred, George, Ron, Hermione, Lupin, and Tonks stayed up past midnight that night, drinking far too much and eating the unending platters of food Molly couldn’t stop putting together while she watched Lupin and Tonks with shining eyes and gave Ron and Hermione suggestive looks that made Hermione cringe and gulp more champagne.

The following week, Moody, Lupin, Tonks, and Bill ventured to Grimmauld Place with a vial of Harry’s blood that Lupin had Apparated to the Dursleys’ to retrieve (“Creepy,” Ron snarked helpfully). A Patronus in the shape of a wolf appeared a few hours later in front of Arthur, proclaiming success and offering instructions on how to access the newly secured headquarters, protected now by a combination of Black blood magic and a new Secret-Keeper in Lupin.

Molly promptly refused to let Ron leave the Burrow again so soon after returning from Hogwarts, making many comments under her breath about how Ginny had managed to run off, but Hermione relocated with Lupin and Tonks to Grimmauld Place that night.

Despite their mildly nauseating public displays of affection (to be fair, they were more like Tonks’ displays), Hermione found it easier to be around the newlyweds than the much more parental figures of Molly and Arthur.

She was still trying to suppress the images her mind kept conjuring of her parents literally forgetting her as she watched.

The rest of the Order was busy setting up a series of safehouses, and Hermione understood from Tonks that Moody and Lupin were contemplating who would be assigned where once the need for the majority of the members to go into hiding realized. For now, she didn’t mind Grimmauld. It was at least familiar, though she supposed that living somewhere besides a Dark mansion filled with cursed objects, paintings that shouted slurs at her, and rotting house elf heads could be potentially more appealing so long as Harry and Ron were there.

She unpacked a few clothes and toiletries in the bedroom she and Ginny had occupied what felt like a million years ago, still leaving most of her belongings in the beaded bag she was now carrying at all times. A smirk crossed her lips as she wondered whether Ginny would even pretend to stay there once she and Harry returned.

Hermione would have paid money to see the expression on Petunia Dursley’s face when Ginny Weasley showed up on her doorstep and announced she’d be shacking up with Harry in their house for a month. They had only heard from the couple in the last couple of weeks via a few reassuring—and in Harry’s case, somewhat mortified—owls and then from Lupin’s quick visit to ensure the protection for Grimmauld. Molly had tried to demand he bring Ginny back with him but he’d pretended not to hear her before Apparating away quickly. In any event, Ginny had alluded, with a bit maniacal glee that was apparent even on parchment, that Petunia was not enjoying her stay.

The Order’s plan was to retrieve the young couple on Harry’s seventeenth birthday, when the Trace was no longer attached to Harry. Ginny’s decision to abscond with Harry had somewhat complicated this plan, as she would still have the Trace. However, Hermione and Tonks had been spending the last week researching how to make illegal Portkeys, which would make both the retrieval of Harry and Ginny as well as the general movements of the Order immensely easier.

Portkeys had several obvious advantages, as well as the benefit that the magic the Trace could recognize was the spell creating the Portkey, not the magic activated by the use of the Portkey—therefore allowing underage witches and wizards to use them without potentially having their location tracked.

Tonks was brilliant, as Hermione already knew, and quite enjoyable to work with on a tedious project. Over the next few days at Grimmauld, however, it became clear that the Portkeys’ creation was more complicated than Hermione had initially realized. The Ministry regulated their use not only for logistical and immigration purposes, but because the potential consequences of improperly made Portkeys were horrendous. It made splinching look inconsequential in comparison.

Ministry employees who made Portkeys were trained and licensed specially for the job. Among other tricky elements, the magic required that the maker’s magical ability and strength when casting the spell correlate to the distance a Portkey could carry someone. The Ministry required the testing of all Portkeys without anyone attached to them before it would allow the same employee to make another with the same spell and route.

After some initial disappointments and many coins, hairpins, and marbles lost entirely to some void in space, Hermione and Tonks had so far been successful in each getting a Portkey to travel properly from Grimmauld to the Burrow, Shell Cottage, and the Weasleys’ Aunt Muriel’s house. In a few more days, they planned on coordinating with Minerva to test their ability to send the Portkeys to Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, and then they would begin trying them with actual passengers.

It felt like actual progress to Hermione for the first time since Dumbledore had died. If they were successful, each member of the Order could carry an emergency Portkey that would lead them back to a safehouse, plus use them to travel between safe locations, and potentially even have a way around Anti-Apparition Wards. After the intermittent depression she’d felt since Obliviating her parents, the idea of providing such concrete assistance to the Order had been buoying Hermione greatly. Working with Tonks, who was somehow both darkly funny and brightly optimistic, also helped.

“Hermione!” a loud voice bellowed from the ground floor.

She had been attempting to read in the Black library, which contained a disturbing number of Dark texts she hadn’t found at Hogwarts when Tonks’ shouting interrupted her.

“Can you please come down here and help me shut up Kreacher from his rant about the misuse of proper pureblood silverware before I lose my fucking mind?”

Hermione smiled. Perhaps she could get Tonks to get along with Kreacher for the night if she distracted him with an offer to teach her again about which fork she was supposed to eat her salad with and which one was only for fish, or something. It had worked before.  

…

Ron arrived at Grimmauld on the same day that Hermione and Tonks successfully transported Hermione to Minerva’s office in Hogwarts and back with one of their illicit Portkeys. They celebrated by promptly sending Ron back and forth to the Burrow with a series of small objects until he got annoyed and stomped upstairs to unpack.

When he returned to the kitchen, Lupin and Bill were standing together near the fireplace eyeing the two witches incredulously. Hermione and Tonks were seated at the huge dining table, surrounded by random objects of varying sizes, Tonks’ handiwork clearly the items scattered haphazardly around them and Hermione’s the ones neatly organized in piles by what appeared to be destination, item size, and duration of the spell.

Ron whistled lowly. “I feel I’ve been a bit useless compared to you lot. Mum’s mostly had me charming paper flowers and making canapés and whatnot for your stupid wedding, Bill.”

His older brother glared at him briefly but ignored the remark.

“Well, this is incredible, both of you. You should probably teach some of the others how to do this as well so it won’t be your responsibility all the time, but this is a decent start. I reckon we have almost enough to give everyone an emergency backup transport, for now.”

Tonks nodded enthusiastically in agreement. “You’ll be able to pick it up quickly, Bill, given your cursebreaking background. The charm work is sort of similar. Remus, too. For now, we’ll give everyone a Portkey to keep wrapped and on their person at all times that would transport them back to one of the safehouses we have set up. The Hogwarts and Hogsmeade ones are certainly useful, but not right now.”

Hermione began tapping Tonks’ creations with her wand in order to sort them into her piles.

“I’ve made one for Harry’s relatives’ house as well,” she offered, turning to Lupin. “I know that we said we would wait until his birthday, but,” she hesitated. There had been a rash of attacks on Muggles in the outskirts of London that the Order was certain were the work of Death Eaters. Each time they’d shown up it had been too late to do anything but Obliviate the remaining witnesses and clean up the damage the best they could. Shortly after, the Order had received the horrible news that Amelia Bones had been found dead. “Maybe we could just do it earlier? Grimmauld is safe enough, right?”

Lupin smiled sadly at her.

“I think you’re right, Hermione. There’s no sense waiting anymore, now that you two have made it so easy.” He turned to face Bill. “Will you send word to Alastor and Kingsley? We should get a message to Arabella Figg, as well.”

Ron shuffled over to Hermione and took a seat as the other men conversed lowly while Bill pulled his cloak around his shoulders.

“So this is what you’ve been up to, huh?” he asked quietly. She glanced over at him to find his eyes intense upon her.

“Well, yes,” she said, confused. “And we’ve been stocking the potions stores, and when Remus or any of the other members are around I’ve been doing some defensive training with them.”

Ron shook his head. “Like I said, I’ve mostly been doing chores for Mum. I’m just impressed, Hermione.” He smiled ruefully at her, and she felt like she was missing something. “As always.”

She flushed, still confused at why his words felt like a compliment but also not, and looked back at the Portkey piles in front of her. “Well, that’s what we’re here for, right? To—to fight?"

Before Ron could reply, Lupin interrupted to ask Hermione for the Portkey that would take them to the Dursleys. She scrambled out of her chair and carefully picked up a small whistle with a handkerchief.

“Here,” Hermione instructed. “Don’t touch it until you’re ready; we’ve done it like—well, like the one that tricked Harry at the Triwizard—so the moment you make direct contact it will transport you. That way the traveler doesn’t need to use a spell or magic that could be Traceable.”

Lupin nodded in thanks and accepted the bundle. “Nymphadora and I can go together. Really, there shouldn’t be any trouble, but Alastor’s orders are that no one is to do a mission alone unless absolutely necessary.”

Tonks picked up another Portkey gingerly—a small silver spoon—and tucked it in her boot.

“This will bring the four of us back in a pop. Personally, I can’t wait to get out of this house for a minute. After another few months, I won’t even be able to use these Portkeys,” she mused wistfully.

Hermione felt a little jealous, despite Tonks’s reminder that her pregnancy was about to limit her traveling further. Tonks had taken a leave of absence from the Ministry, claiming abnormally terrible morning sickness, when Kingsley had instructed her that it was getting too dangerous to report to work. Both of them had been confined to Grimmauld for nearly two weeks at this point, which involved a serious lack of sunlight.

Bill shook Lupin’s hand and nodded at the others. “I’ll be going straight back to Shell Cottage after reporting to the others. Send us word when it’s done.”

He walked toward the front door to perform the careful, contorted Apparition on the porch that they had all learned in order to remain within the boundaries of their charms.

Tonks grinned at her husband and grabbed her wand a little too enthusiastically, causing sparks to shoot out and singe the wallpaper. “To the Muggles!” she declared, grasping Lupin’s hand. He smiled fondly at her and drew back the cloth from the whistle Hermione had given him.

“See you both soon.” He made a quick motion with his hand and when Hermione blinked, the couple had disappeared.

A second later it occurred to Hermione that she and Ron had not been alone since—well, since Hogwarts, certainly, but even then it was hard to say when exactly they’d last been completely by themselves. She felt incredibly conscious of this fact as she busied herself wrapping up the rest of the Portkeys and began to store them in conjured jars.

“I don’t suppose it’ll take them more than a few minutes,” she said lightly after a moment, avoiding Ron’s eyes. What was wrong with her? Was she going to act weird around Ron for the rest of their lives because they had—they had nothing, she reminded herself. Literally nothing.

Ron cleared his throat. “Er, right. Hermione, I wanted to say, though, you know, I’ve missed you the last couple of weeks.”

His hands were fidgeting nervously on top of the table and she had to resist the urge to remind him not to accidentally bump the uncovered Portkeys.

“I’ve missed you, too, Ronald,” she replied, turning back to face him. He was not quite looking at her now and she suddenly did not want to have this conversation, whatever it was, certainly not right now in the bright kitchen and possibly not ever.

“Do you want a Butterbeer or something?”

The fridge was only half open when she heard a muffled shout and a mess of tangled limbs and trunks appeared on the middle of the kitchen floor behind her. Hermione shrieked in surprise and clasped her hands to her chest. Ron leaped to his feet and drew his wand, looking bewildered more than defensive.

“Harry?” she wheezed, recovering. “Ginny?”

Lupin and Harry must have both been carrying the trunks, because they were wincing and partially obscured by the luggage. Tonks was giggling and looked delighted despite being sprawled across the floor half lying on top of Ginny. The redhead was wedged awkwardly between Tonks and Hedwig’s cage, which had crashed open and allowed the owl to flap out to circle the ceiling, hooting indignantly.

“’lo, Hermione!” she called brightly, attempting to yank a leg from under Tonks’ ribs. “How’s your summer vacation going?”

…

The arrival of Harry and Ginny without any major injury raised the mood considerably in Grimmauld that night. Molly, Arthur, Fred, and George turned up, as did Kingsley and Moody, and, to much fanfare, Hagrid, who somewhat unfortunately managed to bring Fang by Side-Along Apparition and had broken the front door in half precariously trying not to fall out of the wards while cradling the boarhound like a baby.

After many handshakes and hugs and early birthday wishes to Harry, who was only a few days shy now of his coming of age, Hermione, Ron, and Harry escaped quietly to the second floor. Harry glanced back guiltily at Ginny as they rounded the staircase. The redhead was sitting across from her mother, arms folded and scowling, clearly being lectured for the hundredth time about her semi-scandalous flight from Hogwarts.

“It’s fine,” Ron said, rolling his eyes and steering Harry down the hall. “She can handle Mum. Besides, she left me to deal with her all by myself for nearly a month. She deserves this.”

Hermione pinched Ron’s arm in response to this remark, eliciting a yelp, and brushed past the two boys into her and Ginny’s room. As soon as Harry and Ron were inside, she silenced and locked the room, causing both to raise their eyebrows at her.

“Listen,” she began. “It’s time.”

Ron flung himself onto her bed, not bothering to take off his shoes. Noticing this caused a flicker of irritation to distract Hermione for a moment.

“Knock off Hermione, Harry’s been here about five minutes.  Can’t we talk about this later?"

Before Hermione could snap at him, Harry raised a hand in placation.

“No, she’s right.” He smiled gently at Hermione. “It’s been really wonderful, spending so much time with Ginny, despite being at the Dursleys. But it’s also made me feel a bit mad, not being able to do anything to help, again, and not being able to talk about the Horcruxes with her—” a shadow crossed his face at this but he didn’t dwell on the subject “—I’ve actually been thinking about this almost nonstop the last few days.”

Hermione shot a pleased look at Harry while Ron looked a bit disgruntled.

“Well, I definitely want to hear what you have come up with, Harry, but I can tell you what I’ve been thinking. We should talk to Remus.”

She could barely contain herself; Harry wasn't the only one who had found it excruciating to keep their secret in the last few weeks, especially when Lupin and Tonks had brought her into their confidence discussing Order business.

Harry considered her thoughtfully. “Why Remus?” he asked. “I don’t disagree,” he continued quickly as she opened her mouth to retort. “But part of me thinks I want to tell Remus instead of one of the others because…” He trailed off and blushed, running a hand across the back of his neck. “Well, because of my dad, you know.”

Harry’s face made Hermione very aware of the crack in her chest that throbbed when she thought of her own parents these days. She smiled kindly.

“I understand,” she replied. “That’s not a terrible reason, Harry, first of all. But there are other reasons, too. Remus is around the most, at least now, and he’s taking the most active role in intelligence missions, as far as I can tell. Kingsley and Moody are going to be a bit more inaccessible, and possibly less understanding of us withholding anything but the entire story, for that matter.”

Harry nodded, looking relieved, but Ron’s brow furrowed. “Hold on, what are we withholding?” he asked, puzzled. “I thought the point was to tell someone the whole bit.”

She shrugged and tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the dresser as she paced. “I’m not sure. The less, the better, I think. Do they really need to know all we know about the Gaunts, for example, or the story about Professor Slughorn’s memory? Maybe not, not right now. It’s just more information that could be found out and used against someone, and it’s not particularly relevant to the remaining Horcruxes, as far as we know.”

Ron still looked puzzled but shrugged. “As long as I’m not the one who has to do the talking,” he said finally. “I trust you, Hermione.”

A shout of laughter could be heard from downstairs that sounded like it came from Fred or George, or both.

Hermione looked at Harry, who nodded, and then she took a deep breath.

“I think we should do it now.”

Harry’s eyes widened in surprise at Hermione’s declaration but he didn’t protest. Ron sat up quickly, causing the bed to creak loudly.

“Hermione, you’ve been with him the last few weeks—if you think now’s the time, let’s do it.” Harry looked determined, and a little green. She couldn’t help but feel the same.

Hermione returned to the room a few minutes later, slightly out of breath, with a very confused Lupin.

She found Harry and Ron sitting side by side on the bed, looking like they were about thirteen years old and expecting Lupin to give them detention. It took all of her restraint not to roll her eyes. Gesturing to the open armchair, she smiled nervously at Lupin.

“Thanks for speaking with us, Remus. I’m sorry to take you away from the party, but maybe it will be less noticeable while there are so many other people here.”

Lupin raised an eyebrow and settled warily into the seat. “It’s no problem, Hermione. Please, tell me what it is you would like to discuss.”

Hermione looked at Harry for final confirmation, which he gave with an affirmative jerk of his head.

“Remus, we have some information that we believe will help the Order. Dumbledore shared it with Harry before he died. But we have been very careful not to tell anyone else because…” She stumbled on her words for a moment and swung her eyes back to Harry.

He pushed off the bed and went to stand beside Hermione, a silent offer to be the one to explain after all. She imagined she was seeing him literally stepping into the Chosen One role as he began to speak, and it made her heart ache again.

“Remus,” he began solemnly. “It’s not about trust at all. It’s that we can’t let anyone have this information if it could possibly lead to Voldemort discovering we have it. Dumbledore asked me not to tell anyone besides Ron and Hermione, but, frankly, Hermione convinced me that things are different now that he’s gone. Ron and Hermione and I aren’t in charge of the Order, and we shouldn’t be the only ones who know how to win.”

“To win,” Lupin repeated. His face was incredulous.

Harry kept his gaze level. “To win.”

No one spoke. Hermione could see Ron fidgeting with his wand nervously out of the corner of her eye.

Then, to Hermione's amazement, Lupin broke into a smile.

“If this is not a matter of trust, Harry, but of the potential for the information to be unwillingly passed into the wrong hands, you do not need to worry about that in my case.”

The trio stared at him in confusion. Hermione started to worry that they were being too cryptic and she would need to rethink their approach.

“I am a werewolf, remember?” he replied calmly.

And then, understanding dawned on Hermione. She was too lightheaded with relief to even feel foolish. From Ron’s continued confusion and Harry’s wary expression, it was clear that they had not had the same breakthrough.

“Harry,” Hermione breathed excitedly, eyes shining as she beamed at Lupin. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. It’s so simple. Legilimency—it doesn’t work the same way on magical creatures as humans—” she immediately pulled a face at her choice of words and shot Lupin an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Remus.”

He waved it away.

“No need to be, Hermione. You are quite correct, of course, as always. Mind magic is complex. There are many different theories about why human minds are affected differently. Much seems to depend on the type of magical creature, as well. For example, I would be curious if Ms. Delacour has had the same experience as myself.”

Lupin looked thoughtful, like they were back in his Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom discussing the differences between a Boggart and a Dementor.

“But, in any event, I can say that my werewolf side seems to have come with a sort of natural Occlumency ability, one that takes much less practice and very little effort than something comparable would take of most wizards, who must usually work very hard to achieve the same results. There are actually similarities to the training one undergoes to become an Animagus as an Occlumens, you know; an ability to achieve good results in one area often indicates that the other will come easier.”

Lupin seemed to rouse himself from his musing, realizing Hermione was the only one still following him that closely.

“Anyway, it is a lot of interesting magical theory to contemplate, but it all goes to say that you should feel free to speak freely with me so long, of course, as you trust that I would not willingly divulge the information.” He dipped his head solemnly. “I can only promise you, as always, that you may trust me, and I hope I can do the same.”

Hermione thought sadly of Peter Pettigrew’s betrayal and knew Lupin must be thinking of the same thing.

“We trust you, Remus,” she said softly. “Completely.”

The older man’s lined face transformed into a grateful smile. “Thank you, Hermione.”

He turned to Harry. “Harry, do you still wish to confide in me?”

The relief on Harry’s face was palpable. It occurred then to Hermione how grateful she had felt in recent days to be living with adults who could shoulder the growing responsibility of the war with her, and she realized Harry must be experiencing some magnitude of that feeling for the first time in a while.

She caught sight of Ron’s expression and was surprised to see a similar look of understanding to hers on his features as he gazed at Harry and Lupin. It made her heart warm further.

The feeling quickly dissipated as she remembered the actual news that they had to give Lupin and the intense dread she had felt since learning it herself. Harry seemed to be steadying himself as well.

“Remus,” he began. “What do you know about Horcruxes?”

…

It turned out that Lupin did know something of Horcruxes, enough to cause him to immediately pale and demand to know as much as they could tell him. Harry had talked until he was hoarse, Hermione and Ron filling in when needed, and Lupin had absorbed everything in a kind of shocked silence. By the time they finished, Lupin had discreetly summoned a bottle of firewhiskey from downstairs and was passing around very full tumblers with a wild sort of expression on his face.

“Alright,” he said finally. “This is…”

“Horrifying?” Ron suggested.

“Good to know,” Lupin finished. He took a gulp of his drink and appeared to clear his head of lingering thoughts. “I understand why you thought you couldn’t tell anyone, but I also agree that the Order has to take this into account. It was wise to choose to tell as few as possible.” A thoughtful look fell upon his face. “Tell me again what you think the last ones are and where they might be.”

Hermione felt like she could recite the morbid list in her sleep. Perhaps she even did sometimes.

“The locket, the cup, the snake, and something of Gryffindor’s or Ravenclaw’s.”

Lupin nodded thoughtfully, a finger tracing the rim of his glass. “The snake will be with Voldemort. We can worry about that last. I’ll have to think about the cup some more. The locket is familiar for some reason. As for significant items belonging to Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, I know only of the sword and the diadem.”

Hermione nodded. “We think it’s unlikely to be the sword, given that Harry’s handled it before and seen it since. And surely Dumbledore would’ve been able to tell. So, more likely, something of Rowena Ravenclaw’s.”

“And you believe they are hidden in places of significance to Voldemort? Dumbledore believed this?”

“Right,” he confirmed. “We don’t have a lot of ideas about the other objects, though, besides possibly Hogwarts. He—” Harry hesitated. “Hogwarts meant a lot to him. It fits, to me. More than anywhere else.”

Another murmur of voices downstairs roused Lupin from his contemplative state. “I should return to Nymphadora. We all should go downstairs—we’ve been gone for some time. But I am very grateful you three have shared this with me.” He eyed them seriously. “You have probably saved several lives tonight alone. I will be able to influence our plans with this information. I promise you that.”

Gratitude swelled in Hermione again and she reached beside her to squeeze Harry’s hand. He gripped back tightly as he nodded at Lupin.

“I trust you,” he replied quietly, echoing Hermione’s earlier words. “Completely.”

…

In the days that followed their discussion with Lupin, Hermione noticed a subtle shift in the former professor’s tone in their strategizing.

When Hermione sat in on the meetings Moody, Kingsley, Lupin, and the other higher-ups in the Order held at headquarters, she noticed that Lupin suggested plans that kept Harry, Ron, and Hermione together but separate from other groups headed to various safehouses. He pushed even harder than before for the focus on the hiding of Muggleborns and the continual stocking of supplies and securing funding. When Moody growled on about attacking Death Eaters, Lupin advocated for surveillance missions first to pick Dark supporters off one by one, rather than risking a confrontation with large numbers or even Voldemort himself.  She wondered if Tonks could sense the change, and felt a stab of guilt as she thought of Lupin having to keep secrets from his new wife.

Currently, Hermione and Tonks were seated across from one another at the kitchen table of Grimmauld Place, quietly debating the merits of trying to acquire more bezoars rather than spend their limited funds on unicorn horn to make stores of antidote potions. Harry, Ron, and Ginny had given into Molly’s pleading to have a family dinner at the Burrow, but Hermione had elected to stay behind and keep Tonks company while she waited for Lupin to return from a late meeting with Kingsley and Moody.

She was just wondering how much longer they would have to wait when the fireplace suddenly roared to life. A tall, thin figure stepped through, brushing ash from his trousers, temporarily backlit by the green flames so the man’s features were shadowed.

It was Lupin, who they had been expecting for over an hour. Hermione could see Tonks relax almost imperceptibly from the corner of her eye; she’d been trying to distract Tonks with questions about Auror training in potions mastery as the minutes had gone by and made her new husband’s tardiness, while not unusual, more obvious.

“Remus,” Tonks stood quickly, reaching for his cloak and gesturing for the chair next to hers. Her tone was deliberately light. “We waited for you for dinner.”

“Thank you, Dora,” he replied quietly. Lupin sank wearily into the offered chair, eyes first sweeping around the kitchen as if to ensure they were truly alone. His gaze seemed to linger on Hermione longer than usual before coming to rest on Tonks and softening.

“There has been a… development,” he said slowly.

“What? Is everyone okay? Did something happen with—”

“No, no, nothing like that.” Lupin’s voice was reassuring, though he still seemed uneasy about something. “Apparently, the Greengrasses want to… defect. I just found out. They came to Kingsley this morning.”

Hermione frowned, trying to remember what she knew about the family. There was Daphne Greengrass, in their year, who she hadn’t had much interaction with, and she was fairly certain that she had a younger sister who had also been at Hogwarts. Amelia? Amira?

Ginny, Tonks, and Hermione had spent the afternoon Disillusioned, covertly gathering anything useful from neighboring gardens for their growing makeshift apothecary. At Lupin’s pronouncement, Tonks placed her forearms down on the table without looking down, crushing their carefully constructed piles of lavender and peppermint and eyed Lupin sharply.  

“Kingsley? Why Kingsley? How did they know he would be sympathetic?” she demanded, ignoring or missing Hermione’s wince at the partial ruination of their afternoon’s work.

“Apparently, Montgomery Greengrass and Kingsley grew up together. Their mothers were old friends or something. Sacred Twenty-Eight and all that.” Lupin shrugged. “Kingsley didn’t find it strange, and I trust him. And in any case,” his voice grew quiet, “Kingsley’s cover is thin these days anyway. Many are aware of his allegiances.”

The other two exchanged uneasy glances at this reminder. Kingsley had warned the Order just two nights ago that he was prepared to have to flee the Ministry at a moment’s notice. Moody, Lupin, and Bill had spent hours that night strengthening the wards on Kingsley’s flat in Muggle London where he planned to decamp.

“How involved are the Greengrasses with Voldemort?” Hermione asked, breaking the tense silence. “Is Montgomery a Death Eater, or…?”

“No, he’s definitely not. And as he tells it, they have done nothing at all but give funds to Voldemort’s cause. It doesn’t sound like they were given much of a choice about that, either. Which we already suspected about many of the older Wizarding families who never showed much interest in Voldemort before recently.” Lupin frowned. It was a problem that Hermione knew was already putting the Order at a serious disadvantage.

“As Kingsley explained it, the Greengrasses managed to avoid the whole mess altogether during the First Wizarding War. Montgomery’s wife Camile is a pureblood witch from France, and they were staying with her family after they married. When Voldemort was rising to power and his more fanatical friends began pressuring him to return and join the cause, the Greengrasses were able to justify staying in France and out of the fray because of the timing of the births of their two daughters. There was trouble with the younger one in particular; Camile and the child became quite sick, and she wanted to remain near her own mother and father. I think she and the child almost didn’t make it.”

“So what are we going to do with them?” Tonks arched an eyebrow. “Find a safehouse, put them up somewhere with us?”

“Perhaps,” Lupin said thoughtfully. “Though their preference seems to be some sort of arrangement where the other side remains unaware of their allegiance. Going into hiding completely would have repercussions for them down the road if their friends or Voldemort were to…” He trailed off. Hermione felt uneasy. “Well, essentially, they would like to support us, and thereby avoid the possible charges they would face later for supporting Voldemort, but without doing so publicly.”

Tonks snorted in disgust. “How noble.”

Lupin shrugged again but didn’t look bothered. “Others may be willing to do the same.” He smiled gently at Tonks. “Not everyone is as brave as you are, my love.”

With a roll of her eyes, Tonks gave a grudging smile in return and gestured for him to continue.

“They have offered money. It would have to be funneled to us inconspicuously somehow, of course, but we are working on that with others already. I am inclined to take them up on it. As you both know, we are sorely lacking in funding, particularly compared to the other side.”

“That’s not enough,” Tonks shot back. “They’d have to keep donating to the other side, too, or it’d be too suspicious and they’d be back at square one. So what's the real benefit to us? They would just be playing both sides, not helping.”

“I agree,” Lupin said simply. “As did Alastor and Kingsley.” At this, his gaze shifted back to Hermione again. She thought she could detect some hesitance in his eyes. “However, Alastor had another idea. I believe it may have been inspired by his own unfortunate experience a few years ago.”

Tonks looked intrigued now. While Hermione couldn’t help her own curiosity, she also felt a slight sense of apprehension at the way Lupin was watching her, as if for some reason her reaction was what he cared about most.

“You mean a spy?” Tonks asked excitedly. “Since we lost Snape, having someone that close to Voldemort again… Could Montgomery do it?”

Lupin shook his head slightly. “Montgomery doesn’t think it would be believable and Alastor and Kingsley agreed. He has never shown interest in the ideals nor the actual inner workings of the movement before, in this war or the last. It would be quite out of character for him to ask to be included now. Besides, he doesn’t know Occlumency. He couldn’t be that close to Voldemort without risking his role being revealed. Or to Severus or Bellatrix, for that matter.”

Hermione’s stomach dropped. For so long they had thought Snape had been able to conceal his double role from Voldemort because of his skill at shielding his thoughts, but now… Had he ever even bothered? Had he been using Occlumency successfully against Dumbledore instead all along?  

She tried to clear her mind of the depressing and unsolvable mystery of Snape’s betrayal. While she was distracted, Lupin had been continuing.

“…we think Montgomery and Camile can probably get away with telling their friends that they need to go back to France for some time to take care of Camile’s mother. She is elderly and it will be simple enough to bolster a story for them that she has taken ill through the Order’s contacts there.”

He paused. “However, there is an additional problem, one to which Alastor had an idea of a potential solution.” His fingers drummed absently on the table. “The two daughters are expected back at Hogwarts in the fall and if our intelligence is correct, by the time the first of September arrives, attendance will not be optional.”

Suddenly, it was hard to look directly at either of them. Her tea, forgotten when Lupin had arrived with news, had grown cold, but she took a listless sip anyway, trying not to dwell on the emotions that always threatened to come to the surface when this topic came up.

She had known, of course, for weeks, or even longer, really, that she, Harry, and Ron wouldn’t be returning to Hogwarts. When she, Lupin, and Tonks had first arrived at Grimmauld, a similar conversation to hers and Minerva’s had taken place.

“Hermione, a lot depends on how quickly and how openly the other side moves. We’re making preparations now for what we think will be eventualities.”

“Eventualities?” Hermione had repeated. “Like what?”

Lupin and Tonks exchanged a look. At Lupin’s nod, Tonks settled Hermione with a grim look.

“Right now, the other side is operating in the same way they did last time: in the shadows, positioning themselves to pull the strings, but making it near impossible to know who to trust or turn to. Countering that misinformation campaign and simply recruiting people to our side will be our biggest focus for the immediate future.”

Though she had discussed much of this with Minerva, Hermione felt a grim reassurance at the confirmation that the Order wasn’t planning any sort of surge. What they needed most was to buy time, whether they knew it yet or not.

“However,” Lupin picked up the conversation. “We will also be organizing to find ways to counter his accumulation of power. But at some point, it is likely that this war is going to spill further out into the open than it is even now. And that could be sooner than we think. We already know from our own sources in the Ministry that Muggleborns will need to go into hiding very soon. Known members of the Order and their families will be right behind them. Hermione,” Lupin shot another hesitant look at Tonks.

“You won’t be safe.”

The inability to return to Hogwarts felt inevitable, as inevitable as when she’d stood by Harry Potter’s side the first time they faced Voldemort. But the Order was also certain by now that Muggleborns would be unable to move about safely in general. Safehouses, Muggle identities, food stores, and extra supplies such as wands, brooms, and potions supplies—like the ones that Tonks and Hermione had been organizing alone when Lupin returned—were all being procured with as much speed as possible by the Order members who weren’t actively on other missions at the moment.

Tonks spoke again, dragging Hermione out of her swirl of thoughts.

“What do you mean, Alastor thought of a solution? Are the girls going to pretend to be sick as well?”

“No,” he said slowly. “Alastor thinks Minerva’s movements are going to be closely watched at Hogwarts, as well as anyone else known to be associated even in a remote way with the Order. As you said, we lost an asset—if he ever was one—with Severus’s defection. Alastor thinks a spy at Hogwarts would be beneficial.”

Tonks and Hermione shared puzzled looks. This time it was Hermione that spoke.

“Are you suggesting that Daphne Greengrass agreed to spy for the Order?” she asked skeptically.

“No,” Lupin repeated slowly. “But someone pretending to be Daphne Greengrass could.”

It took a minute for his words to sink in. Tonks had perked up and looked like she was about to ask about a million more questions, but Lupin was looking squarely at Hermione.

“Someone?” she asked warily.

“There are going to be at least four known Death Eaters at Hogwarts this year,” Lupin said, a tinge of bitterness in his voice. He took Tonks’ hand in his own, and Hermione realized absently it might have been for comfort.

“Four?” Hermione blurted. “Professor Snape and those Carrow siblings you told us about—and who?”

Lupin’s eyes held something uncomfortably close to pity, or maybe something entirely different. “Draco Malfoy was Marked last year, Hermione,” he said quietly.

Her face flushed and she chose to look at the ornate grandfather clock in the corner of the kitchen instead of at Lupin or Tonks. It was late. “Right. Sorry,” Hermione muttered, not quite sure why she was apologizing.

“Alastor thinks this could be to our advantage,” Lupin continued without commenting further on her slip, "and the Greengrasses were, frankly, amenable to keeping at least one of their daughters out of harm’s way. They would ask in return that the Order member promise to keep Astoria safe as a priority of their mission while at Hogwarts.”

“Hermione, we thought of you as the obvious choice,” Lupin finally voiced aloud, in a clear but soft tone. “You would have been in her year, and are her same age. You will need to be in hiding anyway at all times, as a Muggleborn, and a prominent one.”

He leveled his gaze on her. She felt too hot, and like her thoughts were moving through mud.

“And you are brilliant, and capable, and we believe you would be an asset in supplying the Order with information about what the Death Eaters are planning within Hogwarts.”

The words sounded far away to her ears rather than like the praise she would have normally been touched to hear from Lupin’s mouth.

“However, this is just a conversation. A conversation that has not gone beyond the three of us, Alastor, and Kingsley, and does not need to. If you are uncomfortable with the idea in any way and ultimately decide against it, no one would judge you, Hermione. And there are other options. Other female members of the Order that we could approach, for instance, and we could always come up with another way to hide the entire Greengrass family despite their current hopes.”

“Who else?” Hermione frowned and glanced at the older woman across from her. “Tonks can’t be spared, and in any case she can’t use Polyjuice while pregnant.”

“Well, I’ve considered Angelina Johnson or Katie Bell. They were close enough to your year and are likely going to go into hiding soon as well. But Hermione,” Lupin’s tone grew even more intense and he seemed to now purposely avoid Tonks’ curious gaze, “you have informed me previously that there may be another reason for you to need to be at Hogwarts at some point soon.”

Hermione stared back at him for a beat before it clicked.

The Horcrux.

They were almost certain that Voldemort would have hidden one there. If she could have access to the castle, undetected, for that long without raising suspicion… surely she’d be able to figure out both what the item was and where it was hidden.

“You’re right,” Hermione said quickly, shutting down the doubts that threatened to bubble to her surface. The chance of finding a Horcrux settled the matter. She could take months—maybe years—off the war if she pulled this off. “It should be me.”

Tonks, still confused, opened her mouth to ask a question. Hermione shook her head, cutting Tonks off before she could speak.

“It makes the most sense. And maybe it won’t have to be for long. I can use the library to research for anything the Order needs, too, and I’ll be able to help Minerva if she knows what’s going on...” she trailed off.

Parts of this sounded almost logical, but she couldn’t imagine what Harry and Ron would think.

“But won’t people notice I’m gone?” she asked, feeling a little silly. “I mean, the rest of the Order? We’d have to keep the truth to a small number of people.” How many times had she said that lately?

Lupin nodded. He seemed both more at ease and more purposeful now that she was following along with this plan.

“I can cover for you. So can Nymphadora. Everyone else will think you are with Harry and Ron, who we can tell the true story if you think it wise. We can have you join us at Christmas when others will see you, which will help with your cover. Daphne will stay hidden at a safehouse herself with her parents.” He looked like he was thinking as he spoke. “People will be rotating in and out of different safehouses for the next few months. I’ll just make it seem like you’re everywhere and yet… nowhere.”

Despite the look on her face—which made it clear she knew she was missing something—Tonks jumped in.

“I’m not particularly good, but we all learned some Occlumency during Auror training. I can help you with that, just in case.”

More details were flying through Hermione’s mind faster than she could hold onto any of them. She latched onto the most pressing issue.

“So,” she said slowly, “what does Daphne think about all of this?”

Chapter Text

August 1997

Daphne Greengrass, it turned out, was not entirely enthused about this plan.

The following morning, before Hermione had been able to fully wrap her mind around the idea that she had agreed to Polyjuice herself for an indefinite amount of time into a relative stranger, Lupin informed her that Daphne Greengrass was staying with her parents at the home of Andromeda and Ted Tonks, and Hermione should visit her there as soon as possible. She had gaped at him, cereal spoon poised in mid-air, until Tonks had shoved an elbow in her ribs.

“Er,” Hermione offered weakly. “Do you think I should bring a gift?”

Tonks guffawed loudly. Hermione had finished her breakfast quickly after that, avoiding meeting anyone else’s eyes, and feeling dread build in her stomach. What exactly were she and Daphne supposed to do? She barely understood the plan herself at this point. There were only four weeks left to learn how to act like a completely different person, in a castle run by fucking Severus Snape, sharing a dorm with all of their closest friends, one of which was—she shut that line of thinking down immediately. Anyway, was Daphne supposed to teach her how to talk differently? Dress fancier? Tell her all about what Purebloods did in their spare time?  Which, Hermione huffed, she really had no idea.

She scowled into the dregs of milk left in her bowl, deciding then and there that she would be wearing Muggle jeans and a sweatshirt to this meeting.

Tonks accompanied Hermione to her parents’ house, which eased her nerves slightly. She had met Andromeda a few times already that summer and had found her to be an older, less chaotic version of her daughter, with a warm and friendly manner. Yet, the jumpy sensation Hermione felt upon seeing the ghost of her other sister in Andromeda’s features had not quite worn off. Combined with her stress about her pending appointment with Daphne, she was of half a mind to throw back a Calming Draught, and so in any event she was very glad for the company.

Their Portkeys were working wonderfully. While Tonks was getting too far along in her pregnancy to Apparate without some risk, she still had a couple of months left of being able to take advantage of their illegal Portkey manufacturing. So, Hermione and Tonks grasped a spelled toothpick together and within seconds Hermione found herself in front of a familiar cottage in Wiltshire.

Andromeda was waiting in the doorway for them. She embraced her daughter as soon as they had righted themselves—the pair of witches had still not mastered a way for the Portkeys to deposit their travelers more gracefully than in a pile of limbs sprawled in whatever fashion they happened to land—and smiled kindly at Hermione. She tried to smile back but felt like it may have come out as a grimace instead.

“Hermione, it’s so lovely to see you again.” Andromeda greeted her, gesturing for both of them to enter the house. 

“You as well, Andromeda,” Hermione replied politely. “We do appreciate that you are hosting the Greengrass family.”

Andromeda’s eye twitched and Hermione almost laughed aloud as she watched the woman try to suppress the reaction. “Yes,” she managed briskly, “the girls are quite lovely.”

They continued into the small sitting room off of the entryway. Hermione paused anxiously to take in the occupants before following Tonks and Andromeda to a seat. A dark-haired, fair girl with bright green eyes sat on a wide loveseat, next to a smaller girl who may have been an identical copy of the other but for the pale, yellow hair that hung long down her back. The elder Greengrasses were dressed overly formally in full Wizarding robes and sat stiffly in matching armchairs by the fireplace, looking like some of the strangest houseguests she had ever witnessed. Ted Tonks, oblivious to any tension, was pouring tea into several mismatched mugs and chatting happily with the younger Greengrass sister. Astoria, Hermione reminded herself, rising fifth year. She had at least bothered to learn a bit about the family she was going to pretend to join before arriving there.

Daphne smiled at her, welcoming if a bit wary. “Hermione, it’s very nice to see you.”

Gratitude swept over her. “You as well, Daphne. Mr. and Mrs. Greengrass, I am very happy to meet you.” Hermione had a moment of awkwardness as she tried to remember whether pureblood wizards shook hands upon meeting and ended up making a strange jerking motion with her arm. No, she decided, stuffing her hand back in her pocket and offering a stiff nod instead that seemed to horrify Mrs. Greengrass with, she presumed, its lack of feminine quality.

Tonks was clearly suppressing a grin but seemed to take pity and bustled her into the room. “Yes, great to see everyone. Hullo, Dad! How’s the garden?” The two began immediately discussing some long saga involving garden gnomes, Astoria attentively chiming in, having apparently helped Ted with the infestation the day before.

Camile Greengrass, a surprisingly tall witch with dark hair like Daphne’s and a slender frame, rose and surprised Hermione by crossing the room to take her hand. She seemed to have recovered gracefully from her horror at Hermione’s own introduction.

“Ms. Granger, we are grateful for you agreeing to come, and are happy to meet you as well.”

Her tone was not unfriendly, if still overly formal. The man who was presumably Montgomery Greengrass only tipped his head downward, looking like he could not have imagined ever being in this situation. He seemed to be unable to look away from the monstrosity of Hermione’s faded denims, or perhaps her tangled hair thrown into a knot on her head, which gave her a perverse sense of satisfaction. That makes two of us, Hermione thought darkly.

After a maybe-socially-appropriate amount of mingling with the Tonks family and the Greengrasses, Hermione eyed Daphne and raised a brow. The other girl luckily caught on and slipped to her side after a brief squeeze of her younger sister’s arm. “It may be easier to talk in the other room?” Hermione murmured hopefully, and Daphne nodded readily in agreement.

She led Hermione into the kitchen, where they settled across from each other at a worn, round breakfast table. They were both still gripping their mugs of tea as if it could possibly help the situation to have a beverage to drink. Hermione cast nonverbal charms to silence and lock the room and Daphne looked mildly impressed after she explained what she was doing.

“I was never very good at those,” the other girl confessed. Hermione made a mental note of this information. This was going to require a lot of mental notes, she thought wearily. Maybe she should have brought an actual notepad, but she hadn’t wanted to seem that aggressive at their first interaction. After all, she had been known to come off a bit intense.  

“So,” Hermione said. She found she couldn’t really think of anything less awkward to start with. “It’s… it’s really odd, isn’t it?”

Daphne’s bark of laughter startled her. Hermione found it quite endearing when contrasted with Daphne’s perfectly smooth ponytail and pristine matching skirt and cardigan combo, and she remembered again that she really knew nothing about this girl at all, despite living in a castle together for six years.

“Quite odd,” the Slytherin agreed. “You pretending to be me for—what? A year? Who knows? While I hide out here and feed you information on my friends, correct? But I suppose you have done odder things for your Order.”

Considering that, Hermione took an absent sip of her cold tea.

“At times,” she finally confessed. “But this one’s fairly high up there. May I ask if you… Was it your idea? Did anyone ask if it was alright with you?”

The words tumbled out of her. She’d really meant to ease into this, but the thought had worried her endlessly since Lupin had approached her. Taking on someone else’s life, if they had advocated against it… Everything in war was essentially already done under duress on both their parts, but she didn’t think she could do it if Daphne told her to her face that she was not on board with this.

Green eyes that were surprisingly similar to Harry’s scrutinized Hermione's own. “I’m not thrilled,” Daphne said finally. “But I imagine you aren’t either.”

Hermione sighed. “No,” she agreed easily. “I’m not. But I’m not thrilled with a lot of things these days, you could say.” It was a long list. Ron, Horcruxes, her parents wandering around in Australia not knowing her, being hunted for happening to have been born to Muggles, the worry that any of them might be attacked and die at any moment, and now Polyjuicing into a stranger and living with people who hated her. It was a bit hard to be thrilled about much these days.

Daphne pondered this statement. “Yes, I feel the same. However, strangely enough, you may be the only person I trust to do this.”

These were not the words Hermione had been expecting to hear and she found her throat dry. “Daphne,” she said quietly. “We really don’t even know each other.”

“Yes,” Daphne said thoughtfully. “But you have not exactly maintained a low profile the last six years, Hermione Granger.”

They held eye contact for a moment, as if sizing one another up. Hermione finally spoke. “I know why I’m doing this, Daphne. If it’s all right with you, I’d appreciate knowing… why you want me to do it. Or at least why you can be alright with it.”

The moment dragged on without a response until Hermione felt tempted to speak again just to break the silence, which was especially jarring with her charms blocking out the sounds of the others in the next room.

Daphne answered before Hermione could start rambling again, fortunately. “I’m doing this because it’s the best option I can see,” she said.

Her voice was steady, but she appeared to be talking to herself as much as to Hermione. “My parents won’t run because they’re delusional and they still think there’s some chance their world is going to go back to normal if they can just hold out long enough. Astoria won’t go if they don’t, and, even if I Stupefied her myself and dragged her unconscious body out of the country, we can’t disappear without bringing suspicion on our parents. If I was sure I could protect my sister by myself, I might do it anyway. She might never forgive me for abandoning our parents, but I suppose…” Daphne spread her hands out to her sides, looking as if she was wondering again if she should have just done that instead of ending up in the kitchen of Andromeda and Ted Tonks, forced to spend the next month explaining the minutiae of her life to Hermione Granger.

Then she shrugged and her face was hard. “I believe that you can protect her if we do this. And I can’t bear losing another person that I love.”

The quiet fell again. Daphne was watching her. Hermione thought again of her own parents and felt a perverse gratitude that she didn’t have her own siblings. Despite the constant knot in her stomach she carried for the Weasleys and Harry and so many other friends, at least most of the time it didn’t feel like the weight of their lives was entirely on her alone, as her parents’ lives had.

“I Oblivated my parents,” she admitted.

The other girl’s mouth parted in surprise. “I’m sorry, you—what?”

“I sent them—out of the country,” Hermione replied, fiddling with the zipper of her jacket and avoiding Daphne’s wide eyes. “But first I erased all their memories of me. They don’t remember ever having a daughter. Or what their real names are. I’m not even sure if it’ll be able to be reversed. It was… a complicated spell.”

Though she had only told a handful of others the truth about her parents—Minerva, who had helped her practice the incantation, then eventually Harry, Ron, Remus, and Tonks—she had always felt defensive during her explanations, justifying the decision again and again to herself as she spoke. When she confessed to Daphne, she felt nothing but a deep awareness of the hollowness in her chest that had existed since she’d cast the spell.

“That was brilliant,” Daphne said firmly. Hermione looked up, now the one who was startled. Bright green eyes blazed fiercely back at her. “You saved them. That’s all that matters.”

Gratitude swelled in Hermione’s chest, slipping into the hollow crack and filling it just the slightest. She gave a small nod, and in that moment Hermione thought she understood finally how she might do the impossible thing lying in front of her. Perhaps Hermione Granger and Daphne Greengrass weren’t that different, after all.

…

And so began a strange month of Hermione’s life where she exhausted herself practicing countercurses to Dark magic with Harry, Ron, Ginny, and whoever else was in the house that day for several hours in the mornings, and researched Dark objects at night until her eyes blurred, but also sat down to take tea with Daphne Greengrass each afternoon and politely asked her questions like, “Have you ever been to Muggle France?” or “And are you a virgin?” while they sipped Earl Grey.  

There was only a month left before the Hogwarts term would start, and Lupin and Moody had given Hermione permission to spend as much time as she wanted with Daphne instead of helping with other assignments. Well, Moody’s granting of permission had been more of a terrifying lecture where she sat silently in Grimmauld’s kitchen while he loomed over her, listing the various ways he saw things going wrong and barking at her about how she was likely to accidentally reveal not only herself but, generally speaking, singlehandedly bring down the entire Order altogether if she fucked up. As if she hadn’t thought of that herself. Constant vigilance, indeed.

Daphne only smiled to herself when Hermione showed up at their next scheduled meeting and barely managed to remember to say hello before she began to prattle on about the lists of questions she had prepared and how she would study Daphne’s answers, if Daphne could provide them in writing, please, and if possible before the subsequent meeting so that Hermione could double check everything in case she wanted to ask follow-up questions. It felt to Hermione like a surreal version of speed dating, or maybe just studying for O.W.L.s, only with much, much higher stakes.

It took about forty-five minutes that day for Hermione to calm down enough from her anxiety spiral to realize that this would probably work a bit better if she treated Daphne more like—well—a friend, than an interview subject. And in fact, Daphne turned out to be helpful, gracious, and surprisingly witty.

They took their tea in the Tonks’ kitchen at each appointed time, and while at the beginning Hermione had tried to proffer her list of questions, Daphne had shaken her head and produced her own sheet of parchment. Hermione noted with envy how neater Daphne’s handwriting was than her own, a thought that was followed by an exaggerated stab of anxiety as she wondered if she should practice handwriting with Daphne. She would add it to her list.

There were easy things that Daphne could write down for her and she would study later—what classes had she taken since fifth year, who slept in which bed in the Slytherin girls’ dormitory, where was the girls’ dormitory, what were the names of all of the Greengrass relatives living and dead, and so on. She found that when she could forget the real purpose of their meetings, talking with Daphne about Hogwarts and their lives and everything in between felt almost like something close to having fun.

Hermione had discovered, both from her own observation and from Daphne’s telling, that the other girl was clever, that she didn’t like confrontation but would defend anyone she loved without a second thought, that she knew a surprising amount about Muggle culture for a pureblood (“Blaise used to pretend to invite us to tea at his manor but then sneak me and Astoria out for Muggle films,” Daphne had giggled, to Hermione’s astonishment), and that her relationship with her parents was a bit complicated, to say the least. It had turned out that Daphne’s list, unlike Hermione’s, was organized not chronologically but by the people in Daphne’s life. Hermione privately thought that this on its own said something important about Daphne.

But their meetings grew slowly harder as Hermione realized they needed to discuss more intimate details of Daphne’s life than what her favorite Hogwarts breakfast food was and did she know about the Room of Requirement (no, and she interrupted Hermione’s line of questioning for fifteen minutes asking astonished questions). Hermione felt incredibly guilty as she wondered how to pry further, but at the same time desperate to know as much as she could find out. The terror of being caught in the castle in this insane scheme won out over her sense of propriety every time.

The first major conflict came about a week later, as Hermione rattled off questions about Pansy Parkinson, who Daphne had confirmed was her closest female friend. Hermione’s tone must have been somewhat dismissive when asking about their friendship, her own dislike of the girl apparently coming through.

Daphne finally cut her off as Hermione read off another rote query about whether Pansy was close with her parents or not, followed by whether she and Daphne talked about boys, or clothes, or school—

“You don’t know anything about Pansy.”

Daphne’s voice had a dangerous tilt to it that Hermione hadn’t heard before. It took Hermione aback. Daphne was definitely not turning out to be the pureblood debutante Hermione may have assumed she would be, but she was rarely rude.

Hermione frowned and tried not to sound irritated. “You’re right. I apologize. But I need to. What should I know?”

Daphne sighed and her shoulders slumped. She took a slow sip of her tea, carefully arranging the cup and saucer back on the table, and then folding her hands primly back on her lap again, as if she needed the time to choose her words.

“I love Pansy to death. But Pansy has her own issues. It won’t take you long to notice yourself that she rarely eats a full meal and she probably drinks too much, although these days many of us do.”

She glared at Hermione for a minute as if daring her to comment. Hermione stayed silent.

“Her mother has probably never said a kind word to her in her life and that woman spends most of her time lecturing Pansy on her looks or her marriage prospects. Which, by the way, if Pansy’s father gets his way, include mostly aging Death Eaters or their friends who would love a pretty little pureblood to pop out some male heirs for them.”

“I didn’t know,” Hermione said quietly, feeling a bit shamed.

Daphne made an impatient noise but her next words had no bite.

“Of course not. Anyway, after living with all of that for so long, when Draco seemed interested in Pansy, I think she wasn’t just interested in him as well, she saw it as an escape. Draco may have been one of the only potential matches that she could have chosen herself that her father may not have objected to.” The two witches fell silent. Daphne frowned distantly at a stain on the table between them, seemingly lost in thought.

Hermione thought of her own parents, still so in love after decades of marriage that they chose to work together all day at their dental practice and still held hands when they went to the shops. They used to hire a neighbor to watch Hermione once a month as a child so they could have a date night. When she had written to them excitedly in fourth year gushing that Viktor Krum had asked her to the Yule Ball, her parents had teased her mercilessly, her mother’s responding letter arriving with all the i’s dotted with little hearts and a scribbled postscript from her father that said he was willing to get on board, but only as having an athlete in the family would be a bonus after spending his life surrounded by beautiful women utterly disinterested in sports.

Thinking of her parents made the crack in her chest ache. Alive, she reminded herself. Maybe they had date nights in Australia. She looked down at her notes to refocus.

“So, are they still… together?”

Daphne’s gaze returned to Hermione and she sighed before answering. “That’s probably overstating it in the first place, honestly. But no, I don’t think so. After everything Draco put her through last year, Pansy’s pretty through.”

They had been circling around the topic of Malfoy for a few days now. Avoiding it, really, if she was being honest, and at Hermione’s maneuvering, not Daphne’s. This was the most direct reference so far. Hermione had started with all of the other people in Daphne’s life on the other witch’s list, working through them one by one, but steering the conversation elsewhere when Malfoy came up. She had thought, somehow, that saving that conversation for last would make it easier; that having more context first would give her some better footing to discuss the person she was tasked to watch the most closely and was the most anxious about interacting with.

Now, however, there was really no other logical subject to move on to next. Daphne was waiting patiently for her to begin again. Hermione thought she might have seemed a little amused at Hermione’s discomfort, but was too polite to say anything.

“As you know, part of what I’ll be doing is—"

“Spying on my friends?” Daphne offered.

Hermione blushed and then felt a surge of annoyance at herself for the reaction. “Well, I suppose, yes. There’s more than one goal, as you are aware, including keeping you and your sister safe. But Draco is a known Death Eater now, and I will be expected to try to learn as much as I can about their… activities, and report back about anything suspicious that he’s doing. Like what he was doing last year… for example.”

Daphne rolled her eyes and settled back in her chair. “I’m not a fool, Hermione. I know what Draco’s gotten himself into and I know what you’re doing going back there.”

They were both quiet again. Hermione busied herself pretending to refill her ink as she regrouped. “To be honest,” Daphne said slowly, finally fixing her gaze on Hermione. “I think you’ll like her. Pansy. She reminds me of you, in some ways.”

She quirked a grin at what must have been a look of dismay on Hermione’s face. “Pansy doesn’t show the best of herself to anyone but her friends. You’ll get to see it. Come back to me after a few weeks and let me know what you think.”

Hermione shook her head skeptically but didn’t press it. “And Malfoy?” she asked bravely, returning to the subject she wanted to avoid.

Daphne released a long sigh and smoothed imaginary wrinkles in her perfectly pressed skirt. “I suppose I can only tell you my point of view, but, then again, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to know.” She looked sad and pensive. “Obviously you know Draco’s father was arrested after our fifth year.” Hermione nodded cautiously. Obviously, Hermione thought, as she had wound up in the hospital wing for weeks struggling to survive a Dark curse that almost killed her after the whole debacle. It occurred to her that Daphne probably didn’t know that, and maybe Draco didn’t either.

“Well, everything was different after that. We went home that summer and no one saw him for months. He barely responded to owls. Then he showed up on the train, acting as if all was right with the world.” Daphne’s voice was hard. “But I’ve known Draco a long time. Since we were children. Even from the beginning of the year, something was very wrong. He was anxious, and distracted, and he would disappear by himself constantly. Sometimes he was his normal charming self. He would apologize to Pansy and tell her he’d make it up to her, and drink with us on the weekends and sneak into the kitchens for sweets and act like nothing was wrong. But he was obviously stressed and he snapped at everyone that tried to ask him what was happening or tried to offer help. And his good days got fewer and far between, until the Christmas holidays, when… well, I’m not sure exactly.”

Her brows knit together. “He came back and just seemed gone altogether. He ignored all of us, including Pansy. He skipped meals and came back to the dungeons only after everyone had gone to sleep. We only really saw him in class, when he bothered to attend, and he barely spoke to us even then. Finally Pansy waited up one night until he came back to the common room and they had it out. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I know it was bad. From what I could get out of Pansy, he told her there was no way they’d end up together and he wanted her to leave him alone. So she did.”

Daphne’s face stayed tight and drawn. Hermione couldn’t decipher how she felt about this side of the story. It wasn’t exactly new information. She had seen Malfoy deteriorate in their sixth year herself and had felt pity for him despite everything, even after Dumbledore’s death, when even Harry grew weary of blaming Malfoy and told them how he’d looked lost and hopeless on the tower that night. But hearing Daphne talk about him, as someone who clearly cared about him, made her feel strange.

“I think she might have loved him.” Eyes troubled, Daphne sighed and then shrugged. “But even Pansy is only so tough. They barely spoke after that for the rest of the year, and she would change the subject whenever the rest of us tried to talk about him or what he was doing.”

“Hmm,” Hermione murmured, unsure of what to say. Neither spoke. Eventually, Hermione realized with a start that it was nearly supper and Andromeda probably wanted the use of her kitchen back.

“When was the last time you spoke to him?” she thought to ask first.

Daphne looked at her as if the answer was obvious. “Probably around the same time you saw him last, Hermione. That night.”

Hermione felt cold.

“Daphne."  She hesitated as they both began to gather their things to leave. “Do you think… do you think he was in love with Pansy?”

Now the look Daphne gave her was hard to decipher. “No,” she finally replied quietly. “But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her.”

…

Harry and Ron—well, Ron, really, Harry was fairly preoccupied with Ginny—complained incessantly about the amount of time she spent at the Tonks’ house with Daphne. When she told them about her assignment, each wizard had been furious, though Hermione had been immensely more irritated by Ron’s reaction than Harry’s. The former had ranted about Hermione being unprotected in a snake pit and some other sexist nonsense, while the latter had mainly been pissed off at Lupin and Hermione for making decisions affecting the Horcrux hunt without consulting him first. He was also concerned Hermione had been pressured into the mission. Hermione appreciated that more than Ron, who had not even bothered to ask Hermione whether she did want to go through with it. She could also understand Harry’s anger, though this was reasonably abated after a long talk between Harry and Lupin in Sirius’s study (which she suspected involved lots of firewhiskey). But her annoyance at Ron’s presumption that she couldn’t handle herself had not abated.

Nonetheless, the anxiety the trio felt about their imminent separation was growing. They had spent many of their nights after Hermione returned from her meetings with Daphne endlessly speculating about the Horcruxes, sometimes joined by Lupin, but mostly repeating the same lines to themselves. There had been a miraculous breakthrough only a couple of weeks after Harry had joined them at Grimmauld Place, when Harry recognized the initials on Regulus’s bedroom door and they realized the locket had been taken by Sirius’s brother. Kreacher had led them to Mundungus Fletcher, and Lupin had tracked down the thief and questioned him, finally leading to the discovery that it was Dolores fucking Umbridge that had the locket.

However, the Ministry was solidly under Voldemort’s control by then, Rufus Scrimgeour having been found dead in the first days of August. Kingsley had barely managed to alert the Order in time. The Weasleys and several other Order members still maintaining a semi-public presence, for now, had managed to survive several terrifying visits so far from “Ministry” officials, who were looking for Harry, or Lupin, or any other of the numerous newly minted outlaws. Unable to call attention to the Burrow further, Bill and Fleur had married at Shell Cottage. Dedalus Diggle served as the very charming officiant, as he had apparently learned bonding magic at some point. The members of the Order that weren’t out on assignment bore witness and shared a quick toast before scattering again.  

This was all unfortunate for a number of obvious reasons, but it also made getting to Umbridge and the locket extremely difficult. Lupin had promised to figure out a way to get Moody and Tonks, Aurors who would certainly know how to get in and out of the Ministry surreptitiously, to assist without telling them anything crucial. As hard as it was for her, Hermione’s anxiety couldn’t take much more, so she tried her best to leave the logistics of that one to Lupin, Harry, and Ron and focused on memorizing Daphne’s life story as well as preparing as much as she could for her quickly-approaching return to Hogwarts.

Harry had given her the Marauder’s Map, and they had argued over who should keep the Invisibility Cloak. She ultimately won that battle after pointing out to him that she could cast a much more proficient Disillusionment Charm than him, and, in any case, the entire point was that she had a built-in disguise to wear while she was there. Harry had grudgingly agreed to keep it. Comforted by the idea of her Portkeys, she had packed several in her beaded bag for every possible (relatively) safe destination she could think of, should the need to flee Hogwarts arise.

Ginny, who could tell she was being kept in the dark about something, was growingly increasingly irritated with Harry, who was clueless about how to reassure her. As Hermione had predicted, Ginny didn’t spend many of her nights at Grimmauld in their room, but when she did the redhead would rant about how closed off Harry was and how their relationship was never going to work if he couldn’t confide in her. All Hermione could do was pray to any god she could think of that Ginny would forgive her when the younger girl eventually found out that Hermione had returned to Hogwarts in secret and failed to include her in that scheme either.

Hermione had agreed with the others who thought telling Ginny, or any of the other returning students they knew, was too risky. It was asking too much of them; they would have to put on an act for an entire year, potentially, as well, and Hermione was already terrified she wouldn’t be able to do it herself. She couldn’t bear to force them into that position of danger without a choice, as she’d had. In any event, so many people already knew of the plan that Hermione was uneasy, especially compared to how closely the secret of the Horcruxes had been guarded. At Hogwarts, they had all agreed, it would be her, Minerva, and Astoria in on it, but no one else. The thought was somehow both comforting and made her feel terrifyingly alone.

…

The light in the kitchen was streaming over the table from the windows as the sun slowly set. Hermione was tired that day after a particularly difficult Occlumency training session with Tonks that had left her with the beginnings of a migraine, and now she was getting overheated in the stuffy, low-ceilinged room. Daphne seemed cranky as well. They had been avoiding the topic of Malfoy again, as Hermione was prone to do, and she was instead trying to get Daphne to talk about the other Slytherin boys in their year. The other girl was being uncharacteristically antagonistic about it.

“Daphne,” Hermione finally said, irritation slipping through her voice. “Did I do something to make you particularly reticent today?”

“It could be that you use words like ‘reticent’ in normal conversation, Granger,” Daphne muttered, scowling. Before Hermione could snap back at her, the other girl held up one hand, the other massaging the bridge of her nose. “I do apologize. For the record, that was more like something Pansy would normally say than me. I suppose she rubs off on me sometimes.”

Hermione arched a brow at her suspiciously. Daphne sighed. “Hermione, you have to understand that this is not something I… discuss often.”

The comment didn’t immediately make sense to Hermione. She looked back over her notes, brow furrowed. “What, your housemates? Daphne, I think I should know how you feel about Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott—I suppose Crabbe and Goyle, too, although hopefully I can guess that, ugh—given that I am going to have to—” Realization suddenly hit her and she stopped. Her irritation started to give way to embarrassment.

The only response from the other side of the table was a pained grimace. Daphne had her hands clasped tightly on the table and wasn’t looking at her. Hermione winced. Embarrassment it was.

“I’m so sorry, Daphne,” she began tentatively. “Are you… dating one of them? No one told me, and I didn’t know…”

Please don’t let it be Crabbe or Goyle, Hermione begged with silent horror.

The sound of a chair scraping back made her jump. Daphne, foregoing her usual composed demeanor, was on her feet, ostensibly moving to refill the teakettle but obviously upset. Her back was to Hermione before she spoke, her voice calm again.

“No,” she said in a final tone. “I am not dating either of them.”

Okay, so they were still on Blaise and Nott. Secretly grateful for that at least, Hermione refocused. As she watched the other girl fiddle with the tea setting, Hermione felt sympathy fill her as she thought, not for the first time, of how mortifying this whole ordeal must be for Daphne in many ways. Hermione was going to impersonate her, possibly actually affect the way people thought about Daphne, her relationships, and her life. And in the meantime Daphne had agreed, under some considerable duress, to just tell her anything she wanted to know, when she had only really spoken to Hermione for the first time a few weeks ago.

“Daphne,” she said softly. Discomfort twisted in her chest but she pressed on. “Would it help maybe if I told you… told you something like this about myself first?”

Daphne turned in surprise, eyes meeting hers. “Well,” she said in a small voice, crossing the room to sit back down and refill their mugs. “It certainly couldn’t hurt.”

Hermione thought for a moment about how to even explain the conundrum of Ron Weasley. She didn’t have many girlfriends, obviously, and the closest one she did have was the idiot’s sister. It’s not like she had much practice talking about boys. “I’m not sure what anyone—well, what gossip may have gone around,” she began, trying not to sound defensive. “But Ron Weasley and I…” She sucked in a breath and charged on. “ We’re not together. Not at all. But, there’s always been something. Since fourth year, maybe? I dated Viktor Krum, and he seemed horribly jealous and—I don’t know. Then we had a horrible falling out last year when he started going out with Lavender, and after they broke up, which may have had something to do with me, sort of, I suppose I thought perhaps…” She pressed her lips together to stop herself from rambling further.

Daphne’s eyes softened in understanding. “You thought something might happen,” she offered.

“Right,” Hermione replied, avoiding her gaze and running her finger over a groove in the table. “There have been a lot of moments, over the years, where I thought, maybe. But anyway. We were apart awhile after the school year ended—just staying in separate places—and when we were together again I couldn’t quite figure out how to interact with him anymore.” She looked up and shrugged. “I mean, we’re at war. Maybe it’s just still not the time.”

Daphne looked at her thoughtfully. “I’m not sure about that. Wartime seems to be when people tend to throw caution to the wind, don’t you think?”

That thought had occurred to Hermione before. She thought of Lupin and Tonks, and Bill and Fleur. If she and Ron were meant to be so in love and destined to be together, shouldn’t imminent separation, or even death, make them want each other more? “Right. Well. That definitely hasn’t happened for us. Which,” she drew a deep breath and admitted something she hadn’t said out loud before to anyone else, “means perhaps I don’t actually want it to.”

A delicate hand reached across the table tentatively and squeezed hers briefly. It startled her. A tentative, wistful smile tugged at Daphne's lips. “It might,” she said quietly. “But sometimes boys are idiots.”

The sentiment broke the tension and made Hermione snort with laugher. “In any case,” Daphne said wryly. “I appreciate you sharing because I can assure you that I am in a much more pathetic situation.”

Curiosity and the weight that had seemed to lift off her shoulders momentarily made Hermione forget her tact. “Blaise?” she blurted. “Are you in love with him?”

Almost ruefully, Daphne shook her head. “No,” she said. “Perhaps that would be easier in some ways. We could just have a mature conversation and he could let me down gently.”

“Oh,” Hermione picked up one of the biscuits Andromeda had left for them, and thought back to what Daphne had told her before about her classmates. “Theodore,” she said thoughtfully as she crunched.

A blush rose over Daphne’s cheeks but she nodded. “Theo,” she corrected. “You’ll have to call him Theo, don’t forget.” She drummed her fingers on the table and looked away. “He has no idea,” she said softly.

Hermione could sense that the other girl was gathering her courage to continue. “Or at least, I’ve never told him, and he has never indicated to me that he knows. But I’ve been in love with him for years.”

“Has anything ever happened between the two of you?” Hermione asked tentatively.

Daphne shook her head. “No. And Theo is… complicated. You’ll see. He can be so sweet, and funny, and smart, but he’s also infuriating. Sometimes he makes me feel like I’m the most important person in the world to him and yet other times I can’t even figure out whether he thinks we’re really friends. His family is—” she shot Hermione a dark look. “Well, you can imagine what it was like growing up with his psychotic father. Yet he’s this incredibly gentle person, if a bit odd sometimes.” She amended the statement, wrinkling her nose. “Actually, he’s very odd, a lot of the time, but that’s sort of the charm.”

Daphne gave Hermione a sad smile. “You don’t have to worry about it while you’re there. He’s never going to see me that way, and it’s not like I treat him differently than anyone else does. But I thought you should know, because Draco does.”

This startled Hermione. “What? You mean, Malfoy figured it out?”

Daphne laughed. “Hardly. I told him once in fifth year when we were extremely drunk. Theo had spent the whole night talking to me, flirting, I thought, like maybe something was finally going to happen, and then he just disappeared to Merlin knows where. Draco saw me looking terribly heartbroken and snuck me out to the Quidditch pitch to get me even more drunk to forget about whatever he was bothering me. I ended up telling him who it was I was so distraught over.”

She shrugged and daintily picked up a biscuit, too, her manners much more refined than Hermione’s as always. “He’s the only one though, not even Pansy. And I doubt he will ever bring it up to you. He never has again.”  

Hermione pondered this for a moment. Daphne’s apparently genuine friendship with Malfoy had been surprising, to say the least, but this was another glimpse into their relationship that she hadn’t expected. “I can’t imagine Malfoy being someone I would confide to about boys.”

“You’d be surprised,” Daphne’s pretty laugh rang out in the kitchen. “Draco’s complicated, too.”

…

It hadn’t occurred to Hermione until after her conversation with Daphne about Ron and Theo that, while he’d complained for a lot of other reasons upon finding out about her assignment, Ron hadn’t expressed any dismay because he didn’t want her to go. She arrived back at Grimmauld that evening to tantalizing smells wafting from the kitchen. Harry must have been cooking; no one else who stayed at the house regularly besides her was remotely competent in the kitchen. As she tugged off her boots in the entryway, Hermione tried to decide whether she was upset about being apart from Ron so soon.

She had been so focused on the preparations that the sheer number of emotions the pending separation was bringing to the surface had not exactly been dealt with yet. But when she thought now about being away from Ron, it was hard to disentangle the feeling from the same anxiety she had about being away from Harry, and Ginny, and Tonks and Lupin and the rest of her friends. They hadn’t exactly been spending a ton of time alone together since Ron had come to Grimmauld. He hadn’t sought her out either, she reasoned to herself.  

As if her thoughts had conjured him, Ron appeared in the hall, a grin on his face at the sight of her. “We thought that was you! Come in, what are you doing?” He moved toward her and she took a belated step as her brain tried to catch up with her, causing them to crash into each other.

He steadied them with a hand on each of her elbows and she looked down at his hands, frowning. His hands were big, and freckled, and very warm wrapped around her smaller arms. Too long had passed without her responding, she realized, and she looked up, mouth open to smooth over her awkward entrance. But now Ron was looking at her nervously and he was too close and she didn’t remember what she was going to say.

“Hermione,” he said quietly. She felt frozen. He started rambling, and his hands were still gripping her elbows. “I… it’s just Harry and Ginny in the kitchen. Lupin and Tonks went out—well, you probably just crossed paths, they were going to see her parents, I think.”

She nodded robotically. On its own, this was a perfectly normal sentence, but spoken only a few inches from her face and in that breathy tone, it was extremely not normal.

He shifted nervously and dropped one of his hands. The fingers of his other hand danced lightly on her forearm for a moment. “Maybe we could go out to the backyard and talk for a minute?”

She stepped back and cleared her throat. “Of course. Yeah. Lead the way.”

This was definitely new. Hermione followed Ron into the kitchen, where Harry was standing over the stove stirring something in a large pan that smelled just as delicious as the whiff she had gotten in the hall. Ginny was hovering over his shoulder offering unhelpful advice and trying to dip her finger in whatever he was making as he batted her away.

Ron opened the fridge and pulled out two Butterbeers. Hermione silently wished it wouldn’t be weird if she suggested something stronger for whatever conversation he wanted to have that required the privacy of the tiny, overgrown garden in the back of the house.

“We’re going to have a drink before dinner,” Ron announced casually, offering a bottle to Hermione and gesturing to the back door. Ginny turned around, noticing Hermione, and shot her a look, eyes questioning. Hermione shrugged and followed Ron outside. “Thanks for cooking, Harry,” she called over her shoulder. Harry waved halfheartedly without looking up, focused on guarding his sauce from his girlfriend.

Dusk had fallen by the time Hermione and Ron stepped outside. There was a tiny porch in the back of Grimmauld that must have once been a fairly posh place to sit and have society ladies over for cocktails while they looked out at the garden and gossiped, she mused. Now, there was only some rusted iron patio furniture and snarled roots creeping their way under the structure of the house. An ominous aura came from the overgrown flora that was distinctly magical. She hated it back there.

Ron leaned on the precariously stable railing and looked over at her. She took a sip of her Butterbeer and pretended to look out at the creepy plants.

“So how’s it going with Daphne?” Ron asked finally.

“Oh,” Hermione responded, surprised at his normal choice of topic. “Fine. Good, actually. She’s really quite sweet. And she’s been very helpful. I can’t imagine how nervous I would be if she wasn’t being so helpful, honestly.”

His eyebrows rose in a skeptical expression but he didn’t comment. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and took a swig of his own Butterbeer. “Are you nervous?”

She looked at him like he was insane. “Ronald, of course I’m nervous,” she scoffed, crossing over to lean gingerly on the railing beside him. “I would have to be insane not to be.”

A smile ghosted across Ron’s lips and he looked sideways at her. “You’re a little insane, sometimes.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and elbowed him. He caught her off guard when he caught her elbow as she tried to bring it back toward her, and she spilled a few drops of Butterbeer on the ground. What was with him and elbows tonight? She frowned.

“There was something I wanted to do before you left,” he was saying quietly, facing her now. Her heart beat a little faster and she couldn’t tell if it was excitement or panic. He was stroking her arm lightly again now and before she could think of anything else his lips were on hers.

Kissing Ron was exactly and nothing like she had imagined. His lips were warm, and chapped, and he tasted like the Butterbeer she was still awkwardly clutching to her side with one hand. Their noses bumped and she forgot to breathe. He was moving against her and she couldn’t remember what to do with her own arms and still she had this fucking Butterbeer so she felt trapped anyway—

His mouth parted. Ron had moved one large hand to her waist and the other to cup her cheek—where had his fucking Butterbeer gone?—and she felt hot and trapped and she tried to decide if it was in a good way. She thought involuntarily of kissing Viktor Krum and tried to remember if her brain had turned off when he touched her because she definitely felt extremely conscious of everything Ron was doing right now. Thinking of Viktor Krum made her remember that Ron had learned to kiss from Lavender Brown and suddenly Ron’s tongue pushing into her mouth felt completely unappealing.  

She placed a hand on his chest and stepped back. “Um,” she said, not very eloquently.

Ron’s face was flushed and his eyes were wide. Had he thought that was how it was supposed to be? Could he see what she was thinking on her face? What was she thinking? All she knew was she did not want to be on this tiny rotting porch one more minute.

“Hermione,” he began, his voice gravelly. “I—”

“I leave in a few days,” she said quickly, the words rushing out.

Ron looked like he couldn’t tell what she meant by that. Hermione didn’t know either, so that made sense. “I know.”

“So we should probably just…” She took another step back, toward the door, and tried to smile. “You know, go inside.”

Before she could see the answering expression on his face, Hermione fled back into the kitchen, the bright lights temporarily blinding her as she swung the door open too quickly.

…

Spending so much time with Daphne naturally meant that Hermione interacted with the rest of the Greengrass family fairly often. While Camile and Montgomery treated her with some sort of respectful wariness, Astoria was thrilled whenever Hermione came over, insisting she stay for dinner some nights after she and Daphne finished and asking her endless questions about her own time at Hogwarts, her life, and her adventures with Harry and Ron. How was Gryffindor tower, Astoria wanted to know, she’d been to the Ravenclaw common room but not theirs and she’d heard it was lovely, and what was it like growing up in the Muggle world, because her parents weren’t particularly keen on taking them into Muggle London but she’d been before and was dying to go again—and so on. Hermione found it very hard not to be charmed by Astoria.

She hadn’t thought to ask Daphne much about her sister yet, given that Hermione saw her on a regular basis. However, one afternoon as they wrapped up a fraught discussion about Daphne’s own beliefs about pureblood culture, it occurred to her to inquire what Astoria really knew or thought about the war. The question came out a bit awkward, but thankfully Daphne must have become accustomed to Hermione’s usual lack of tact on awkward matters.

“You’ll see.” A slight frown tugged at Daphne’s lips. “She’s not naïve, exactly, but she also didn’t have a front row seat to Draco’s spiral last year, or have to hang around people like Crabbe and Goyle who wouldn’t shut up about the terrible things going on outside Hogwarts because they were excited.”

Revolt flickered through Hermione at the reminder that she would have to do the same, potentially for months. Daphne continued.

“Astoria is just… good. She sees the best in everyone, and even shitty people end up being nice to her most of the time because they just can’t help it. The pureblood nonsense means nothing to her, but at the same time she hasn’t seen how toxic others have made it.”

Daphne’s tone was protective as she discussed her sister, but there was an underlying hint of frustration. “As I said before, I don’t think she would have fled with me. It’s not that she doesn’t understand how serious everything is, I just… I don’t know,” she finished helplessly.

“It’s not just her,” Hermione offered tentatively. “I forget sometimes that others haven’t been listening to the Order for three years; that some people didn’t even believe Harry after the Triwizard Cup. That some people have managed to avoid this whole thing somehow until now. It makes me feel crazy when they aren’t as scared, honestly.”

Daphne smiled sadly. “Exactly.”

There was quiet for a moment. “I’m not sure if I said this out loud before, Daphne,” Hermione began. The crack in her heart made itself known, pressure increasing. “But I promise I will do everything I can to protect her.” The vow lingered in the air between them, taking on a shape of its own.  

Tears filled Daphne’s eyes but didn’t spill. “I know,” she whispered. “I know you will.”

…

August had flown by faster than Hermione wanted. She seemed to blink and the calendar said she had only two more days before she had to board the Hogwarts Express, not as herself but as another.

Grimmauld Place had gotten quieter in recent days. Harry and Ron had been called to an Order safehouse to meet up with Hannah Abbott, Dean Thomas, and Susan Bones, who they would be training with and then paired for minor missions over the next month unless and until there were any new developments on the Horcrux front. When they left, Harry gave her a stoic hug but his bright green eyes were a bit glassy. She had to avoid looking directly into them so she wouldn’t cry. She thought she caught a muffled “Love you, Hermione,” into the top of her hair before he released her and went to say goodbye to Ginny.

Ron and she had been avoiding any discussion of their kiss. Dinner with Harry and Ginny that night had been uncomfortable, at least at first. Ron was even louder than usual and mostly directed his attention to Harry, who seemed a bit bewildered by the general tenor of the evening. Hermione had drank more than half a bottle of elf wine by herself, which helped, and then gone to bed immediately after they finished off Harry’s delicious Bolognese, claiming a headache. Ginny had given her an incredulous look and narrowed her eyes at her in a way that Hermione knew meant she’d be interrogated as soon as the redhead got her alone.  

She faked sleep that night when Ginny slunk in later (suspiciously later, Hermione thought, shuddering at the thought of what she had been doing with Harry). But the next morning Ginny pounced on her bed and demanded to know what in the world had been going on. Hermione had recounted the events, trying to keep it strictly factual.

The younger girl frowned at the ceiling. “So… you didn’t like it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Hermione said quickly.

Ginny propped herself up on an elbow and faced Hermione, an eyebrow arched. “Okay, so did you like it?”

“I—” Hermione’s mouth clamped shut. “I’m not sure.”

A snort came from Ginny’s side of the bed. “Well, I think that’s your answer, Hermione.” 

“That’s not true,” Hermione said defensively. “I was… caught off guard. I have a lot going on right now, you know.” She tried to adopt her most imperious tone.

Ginny just rolled her eyes. “Hermione, when you kissed Viktor Krum for the first time, which was inherently not that great because it was your first kiss, you squealed like an idiot for half an hour. And I had never heard you squeal about anything, literally, except a new book at the library you had been waiting for or a grade on an exam.”

She scoffed. “Well, I was fifteen.”

Ginny giggled. “Well, you’re eighteen now. Or you will be in a few weeks.” She waved her hand dismissively. “The point is, when Harry and I kissed for the first time, I would never have said I ‘wasn’t sure.'”

This wasn’t fair. “Not everyone ends up with someone as perfect for them as you and Harry are for each other, Gin,” she said quietly. “And in any case, sometimes love looks different, right? Ron’s my best friend, and it’s… different. There’s a lot to consider.”  

A sigh came from the other girl but she seemed like she was resigned. “Maybe. But Hermione, I think you deserve better than ‘I’m not sure.’”

Her goodbye with Ron was strange and stiff. They had promised to write, or something, because as soon as Ron had said it Hermione had pointed out it would look a bit strange if Daphne Greengrass was receiving owls from Ron Weasley who was supposedly dying of Spattergroit and anyway weren’t they searching the mail now? He’d looked at a loss and had just gruffly said they would figure it out and given her a brief one-armed hug. His warmth left her too quickly.

She had spent the first month of the summer without Harry and Ron and most of her time since then as well, but their absence hung around her conspicuously as she packed and repacked her beaded bag two nights later. It was her last night before she was to leave for Hogwarts, and Lupin and Tonks were downstairs, and, at her own request, Daphne and Astoria should be arriving for dinner soon. She felt bad for not thinking to invite them sooner, given that they had the use of the Portkeys and the ability to Apparate into the house regardless. It occurred to her as she refolded several of Daphne’s jumpers that her invitation to the headquarters had meant she—and Lupin, and Tonks, and the others—trusted them now, in a way she didn’t think she had a month ago.

Ginny was gone, too; the guilt Hermione felt was growing each moment the time drew closer that she would inevitably see the other girl at Hogwarts and not be able to talk to her. Since Ginny had no idea Hermione was on a months-long mission, they hadn’t been able to have a true goodbye. Molly had wanted Ginny home at the Burrow for her last night and Hermione had told Ginny she’d see her at the holidays, if not sooner, and she’d write if she could when she wasn’t out and on missions.   The deception came too easily and it made her feel dirty. She supposed that was going to become a commonplace sensation.

Lupin, Tonks, Daphne, and Hermione—with the occasional advice from Minerva, Moody, and Kingsley—had planned endlessly how they would communicate once Hermione was at Hogwarts. Daphne was to stay with the Tonks family for at least the foreseeable future, and Hermione had several Portkeys that could take her directly there if she needed any kind of immediate consultation with the other girl. Minerva and Hermione had agreed upon several code phrases to use in front of others at the school in case they needed to meet in private, and Astoria had helpfully offered to relay messages between them on occasion in order to make it less obvious the professor was spending more time with the seventh year student than usual. Hermione had practiced using her Patronus to send messages, but Lupin and Tonks were wary of the messages being received at inopportune times by Order members, exposing them and potentially Hermione, and had told her she could only use the spell in an absolute emergency. Harry and Ron had the charmed Galleons she had used fifth year for the D.A., but, though less obvious, the similar concern of them falling into the wrong hands or drawing attention meant that she was only to use them in an emergency, too.

Hermione would leave for Hogwarts tomorrow. She had her basic directions: keep an eye on the Death Eaters, using her Slytherin status as an advantage, and report back to the Order; use the library to research the founders; figure out what the Horcrux was and find the fucking thing; and keep Astoria safe and herself hidden. Alive. It had occurred to her rather belatedly that she could also gather some Basilisk fangs while there. Harry had taught her some rudimentary Parseltongue that may or may not work, but she had to try. Hopefully, she could get out by Christmas holidays and Harry, Ron, and Lupin would have made progress with the locket and the cup.

Beyond that, she wasn’t sure.

But for now, for the immediate future, everything was planned. Hermione could work with plans. This could work. She took a deep breath and closed her beaded bag for a final time before heading downstairs to join the others. This would have to work.

Chapter Text

September 1997

This was absurd. This was absolutely absurd and she was absolutely certifiable for agreeing to it.

Hermione Granger had been asked—and agreed—to do many absurd things since learning she was a witch, usually involving Harry Potter. This long list included, in no particular order, smuggling baby dragons, being placed unconscious at the bottom of a lake surrounded by merpeople, and traveling back in time to fly an escaped convict to safety on the back of a mythical creature. But returning to a Death Eater-controlled Hogwarts pretending to be Daphne Greengrass may have been the most ridiculous yet.

She ducked into the Great Hall behind Astoria as the doors were swinging shut behind another latecomer to the feast, praying desperately their entrance would be as inconspicuous as possible. Minerva had generously come up with a cover story so that Hermione wouldn’t have to ride the train to school, thus delaying this terrifying moment as long as possible. She had told the other professors that Daphne and Astoria had wished to see their parents as much as possible before they had to depart for France, especially given the sad circumstances, so they had been staying together in Hogsmeade up until the first of September. Therefore it would make much more sense for Minerva to simply escort the girls to Hogwarts in time for the welcoming feast rather than have them double back to London to take the train.

This story had the added benefit of allowing them to arrive early to the castle so that Astoria could show Hermione around the dungeons and the Slytherin dorms in person without attracting notice. She listened somewhat frantically to Astoria’s bright attempt at helpful commentary (“See those sofas there? First and second years usually sit there because they are incredibly uncomfortable, and also out in the open, and the older students always want the chairs arranged in circles in the corners anyway for the most privacy”) and mapped out the layout of the dorms and alcoves and bookshelves (Bookshelves! Why couldn’t the Gryffindor common room have had its own bookshelves? How odd). She sent a silent but fervent thank you to Daphne into the universe for the detailed drawings that she had drilled Hermione on for hours. They hadn't seemed as intimidating at the time.

Now, however, there was nothing else to delay this moment. Astoria continued chatting merrily to her as they walked over to the Slytherin table—Hermione wondered to herself how long it would take not to have to force her feet to go left instead of right when she entered the Great Hall—but she could barely hear the words. Daphne had given her very specific instructions on where she was to sit at meals, lest the others find her choices strange. If Draco, Blaise, Theo, and Pansy were all there, Daphne always sat across from Pansy and next to Theo, with Draco either next to Pansy or on Daphne’s other side, depending on whether he and Pansy were on speaking terms that particular day.

Blaise, to her Hermione’s mild surprise, was the most easygoing of the lot, or at least the most gracious, and adjusted to whatever arrangement had formed in this order by filling in the gap across from Draco whether that meant sitting next to Daphne or Pansy. Frankly, it made Hermione’s head hurt to think about, and she was still confused about how she was supposed to know what to do if she got there before everyone else. Well. No one had ever accused purebloods of being flexible, she thought to herself darkly.

With a gentle squeeze of encouragement to Hermione's hand as she turned to join her fellow fifth years at the other end of the table, Astoria gave Hermione a small push toward her own destination. Hermione saw the open spot across from Pansy, between Draco and Theo, and committed. Slipping into the seat, she smiled cautiously at the dark-haired girl across from her first.

“Hello, everyone,” Hermione said in her still-strange, too high voice. “How was the train?”

Pansy flashed her a brilliant smile and a wink and offered her a goblet of pumpkin juice.

“Peachy,” the slender woman said brightly. “We’re all just still catching up on what we did this summer. You haven’t missed much.”

Hermione felt rather than saw Draco tense beside her. She realized with a jolt just how close he was, physically closer than they had ever been, other than perhaps when she’d punched him in the face. It struck her that this was going to be a regular occurrence from now on.

Theo didn’t react, poking the potatoes on his plate rather absently as if he hadn’t heard Pansy. He didn’t look up at Hermione. Blaise leveled a calm look at Pansy before turning and offering to serve Hermione a piece of roast chicken from the platter in between them.

She started in surprise. Hermione could not remember a single time in six years when Harry and Ron had ever offered to plate her food for her. Without asking. Just to be polite. It dawned on her rapidly that, despite both their very noble efforts, there were going to be many things that were unusual to her that it would have never occurred to Daphne to warn Hermione about.

“Er, yes, thank you,” she said rather awkwardly, accepting the plate back from Blaise that now contained not just roast chicken but sprouts, potatoes, and a dinner roll with a pat of butter perfectly arranged to the side.

“We were all very sorry to hear about your grandmother, Daphne,” he said formally, his tone grave. “I apologize that our owls don’t seem to have reached you to say this earlier and offer any support we could. Communication has become… more difficult.” It was an innocuous way to say incredibly slow and often impossible because the Death Eaters had taken over monitoring and destroying most of the owl post. But accurate.

Hermione looked down at her plate before briefly meeting his eyes, not even having to fake the sad, grateful look on her face. “Thank you, Blaise. It’s been a difficult summer.”

A brief silence fell over the group. Pansy looked between the other four for a moment before breaking it again. “Yes. Well, now that that’s out of the way, maybe Draco can start sharing. We haven’t been able to get a word out of him yet, but you’ve always been a bit better at it, Daph.”

Hermione caught Malfoy’s eyes narrowing at Pansy from across the table. He remained silent. Pansy only rolled her eyes and glared back at him. It struck Hermione again that no matter how much Daphne had tried to explain the dynamics of this group to her, there was only so much one person could really know about other people. Besides, for that matter, Daphne’s information was really just Daphne’s perspective, not the objective truth. She felt monumentally unprepared for the task; yet, intrigued at the idea of understanding all the clearly simmering tension among this strange group.

Before Pansy could make another passive-aggressive comment at Malfoy’s expense or Blaise could offer another chance to steer the conversation in a better direction—Theo seemed uninterested in either approach and instead just continued not-eating his potatoes—there was a scraping noise at the front of the room.

Snape had stood to address the room. Fingers of hate curled around Hermione’s heart, squeezing so hard she felt like she might explode. As she had been warned, he proceeded to introduce the two new staff members, the Carrow siblings, who were just about as deranged-looking as she had been expecting. To her mild interest, the four students around her maintained only blank expressions, giving away no reaction to the news (if it was news to them, which seemed unlikely at least in some cases). She chanced a glance at the other House tables and saw, predictably, some poorly-suppressed anger from the Gryffindors and a mix of apprehension and confusion among the others.

Only a few Slytherins were openly grinning—including Crabbe and Goyle, which was no surprise, as well as some fifth and sixth years and stupid Millicent Bulstrode who had nearly murdered her that one time and had also been the reason she’d spent weeks in the hospital wing as a cat (though, she supposed begrudgingly, that couldn’t entirely implicate Millicent in any Dark crimes). Crabbe, Goyle, and Millicent had been sitting off to the side of their group, Hermione realized, not quite separated but also clearly not included in the circle or welcome in the conversation. She made a mental note on her unending mental list of notes to figure out those relationships.

Hermione listened halfheartedly to Snape’s short remarks announcing other staffing changes. Hagrid, who was officially on the run and working with the Order (and his giant half-brother), had been replaced by a terrifying-looking bloke named Magnus Doyle. The Order didn’t think that he was a Death Eater, though was assuming for now that he’d been willing and instructed to steer the curriculum toward Darker creatures and how to harness their power. Neville and Ginny were still enrolled in Care of Magical Creatures and had agreed to report to McGonagall on the class, so Hermione hopefully wouldn’t have to interact with him much.

The Sorting Hat was brought out and the normal rituals of the feast continued. Even the hat seemed to have got the hint that the move right now was to lay low—its song was the most boring and generic description of house traits Hermione could recall hearing. It felt surreal and horrifying to Hermione to be sitting here, watching the professors have to pretend like everything was normal while Dumbledore’s murderer casually filled his seat, all while outside the castle’s walls the relatives and friends of the people inside battled each other for control. It made her feel slightly sick.

She chanced a glance at Malfoy and saw his jaw was clenched tightly, his eyes hard. Was he thinking the same thing? For a bizarre moment, the thought felt true. Or, she told herself, perhaps more realistically he was annoyed he was here, rather than getting to be one of those battling outside. The unresolved question did nothing to ease the knot in her stomach, and she tried to shift subtly away from him on the bench.

The rest of the feast passed in a blur. Pansy was undeterred by everyone’s poor moods and forced everyone into stilted conversations about classes, House gossip, whether there’d be Quidditch this year at all, and other topics no one showed any interest in discussing. Hermione felt relieved to let her chatter the entire time, dutifully agreeing when asked something directly. Before she knew it, the benches were being pushed back and she was turning to follow her now-housemates out of the hall.

“Ms. Greengrass? Mr. Malfoy?” she heard over the low din of noise. It took her more than an appropriate amount of time to react to Daphne's name. Hermione cursed inwardly. This would get better. She would get better. She inhaled, counted to four, exhaled, counted to four again. Better.

Minerva was bustling over to them, not looking particularly pleased. “Ms. Greengrass, Mr. Malfoy, we’ve something to discuss before you return to the dungeons, if you please. Allow me one moment.”

Malfoy didn’t look at her but waited beside her until the rest of the lingering students had trailed out. He was taller, she realized, was that right? Or was Daphne shorter than she was? She had thought Daphne was a bit taller, really. He towered at least a foot over her at the moment, shoulders broad but lean and squared off away from her. How confusing, this Polyjuice business. She’d thought she’d become fairly adjusted to being in Daphne’s body after so much practice and found it disconcerting to be unnerved by Draco Malfoy’s height, of all things.

“I apologize for keeping you waiting.” Minerva returned, straightening her glasses and holding out a piece of paper to each of them. “This is a bit unusual, but due to—well, various changes to procedure this year—we have not announced the Head Boy and Head Girl or notified the selected students of their positions. The new Headmaster—” Hermione thought she saw the briefest grimace flicker across Minerva's face. “—waited until a bit late to make the decisions, and, well, here we are.”

Hermione and Malfoy both stared at her without moving.

“Well, come now, I don’t have all night,” she snapped, brandishing the papers again. “Obviously I am saying it is the two of you that have been granted this great honor and responsibility by the Headmaster.”

Hermione’s hand reached for the parchment as if of its own volition. It felt like a cruel joke, given that in her former life as Hermione Granger, Hogwarts prefect and student only part-time involved in Dark Wizard hunting, she had dreamt of this for years. Now, it was only an additional layer of complication to her very precarious situation. Hermione supposed she could have predicted this if she had given it any thought. Of course, Snape would have given up any pretense of not favoring Slytherin students, and now that she did think about it, Daphne and Malfoy must have the highest marks of the Slytherin seventh years.

But she would have to—Hermione forced herself not to look horrified. She would have to share living quarters with Malfoy instead of live in the dungeons with the other Slytherin girls. Her mind raced. On the one hand, she’d get her own room; that could ease her recurring nightmares about accidentally waking up as Hermione Granger and getting murdered in her bed by her roommates. On the other hand, she and Malfoy would be secluded, in a space only they had the password to, without a buffer. She and Draco Malfoy, the Death Eater that was more than half the reason she had been sent here on this mission in the first place.

Minerva could clearly tell the direction in which Hermione’s thoughts had veered, covering for the awkward silence by continuing to pedantically explain their new roles. Malfoy appeared to be listening, though Hermione still couldn’t tell if this was good or bad news to him.

She tuned back in to hear Minerva describing the rooming setup.

“Because you are both Slytherins, the castle has adjusted so that the entrance to the Head Boy and Head Girl dormitories is quite close to the Slytherin common room. However, they are not connected and you will still have a private entrance that you can set the password to amongst yourselves. There’s a small common area in there, with separate bedrooms and bathrooms of course, as well as a few other amenities. I trust this is acceptable to both of you, although if you prefer to remain in the main dormitories, that is of course available to you as an option.” She avoided looking at Hermione directly while sharing this last comment, but it felt meant for her.

“I’d prefer the single dorm,” Malfoy said quickly. He glanced over at Hermione. “It’s up to you, Daphne, but I would of course rather share a space with you than the rest of those idiots any day.”

Minerva pursed her lips but said nothing. Hermione had to suppress her amazement and then remind herself that Malfoy would potentially say nice (sort of nice) things to her now on a regular basis. She told herself not to overreact.

“I trust Draco was taught enough manners in his life as well to be tolerable in a confined space. It’s fine with me. Thank you, Professor McGonagall.”

She hoped Minerva would understand from her words that she’d decided it was worth whatever risk it posed in exchange for the advantages it could give her. Minerva seemed to gather she needn't push it, at least, and nodded briskly.

“Alright, then. The entrance to your rooms should be behind the portrait of Merlin about twenty paces past the entrance to the dungeons. The password for now is ‘Hippogriff.’”

Malfoy’s eyebrows lifted slightly at that but he said nothing.

Minerva bid them goodnight and the pair turned together to leave the hall.

Malfoy strolled beside her quietly, hands stuffed in his pockets, disturbingly tall, and Hermione wondered if she should try to start repairing his relationship with Daphne now or if it was too soon. Apparently, however, they were going to have plenty of alone time for her to figure that out.

Had she ever been alone with Malfoy before?

This thought paralyzed her. Before she could decide what to do, Malfoy spoke.

“Daphne, I hope you really don’t mind sharing the dorm. I wasn’t expecting this, but… I’m sort of relieved to have somewhere less crowded this year, frankly. I thought maybe you would feel the same way, especially with everything going on with your family.”

His words took her by surprise, though that was apparently going to be a theme. “I don’t mind at all, actually,” she replied quickly. “I was thinking the same thing. For you.” The words left her mouth without a lot of thought. They felt reckless once they hung between them, as if she was implying he should be troubled by his family’s situation.

Malfoy gave her a sharp, searching look but otherwise continued walking. They were descending deeper into the castle, the shadows growing darker and looming higher on the walls. Hermione mentally thanked Astoria again for having already taken this walk with her so it wasn’t the first time.

“Daphne, I am sorry that I haven’t been in touch this summer. It wasn’t…” Malfoy reached up a hand as if to run his fingers through his hair but stopped and it fell to his side again. Hermione couldn’t tell if his frustration was aimed at himself or something—someone—else.

“It wasn’t really possible. But I intend to make it up to you. To all of you.” He met her eyes this time and Hermione noticed the torchlight behind her reflected back in them, making the grey pools look swirled with gold. It was disconcerting.

“I would like that,” she finally said. They reached the concealed entrance to the Slytherin common room and stopped. Neither moved to enter, however, and Hermione waited for Malfoy, who seemed to be equally as reluctant.

“I suppose we should go in and explain why we won’t be in the dorms.”

“Yes,” Hermione agreed. “I suppose so.”

“Or we could… not,” he suggested, turning to face her. “I don’t particularly feel like getting interrogated by Pansy any further tonight. Do you?”

The relieved smile that she returned felt almost genuine. She was rewarded by his familiar smirk, which startled her so much that her own expression froze. It was jarring to see warmth behind it when aimed at her and not something else entirely.

“No, not particularly,” she managed.

He made a sweeping gesture with one hand to the end of the hall, which Hermione noted with slight nervousness was even darker and more shadowed. “After you, then.”

…

Malfoy said goodnight politely and went straight to his bedroom when they entered their new quarters. Hermione was grateful both for his quick departure and for the temporary reprieve from having to integrate herself into the larger Slytherin group. The last few hours had been simpler yet more confusing than expected, leaving a growing sense of unease under her skin.

More than that, she itched. It was nearly the longest she had spent continuously in Daphne’s form so far, and it had unnerved her on top of everything else. Turning in early meant she could let this dose of Polyjuice wear off and still have some time to spend as herself before bed.

She and Lupin had agreed that Hermione could—and should—refrain from using the Polyjuice whenever possible, but only as long as it was absolutely safe—though she’d had no idea that she would have her own room and therefore much more opportunity than previously thought. They had pondered temporary breaks in the Room of Requirement or in Minerva’s quarters, or simply on infrequent escapes to visit the Order and Daphne where she was to retrieve more of the potion and make reports.

This, however, was much better; whatever increased anxiety it gave her to know Malfoy—and no one else—was so close to her, she had become proficient with wards such that she was confident enough to sleep in her own body and not worry anyone would be able to get into the room, whether for innocent reasons or worse. Andromeda, who had taken over full-time as the Order’s Healer, had advised Hermione that her mental health would benefit greatly from these breaks, and even after only a few hours at Hogwarts she could tell this was true.

Hermione brushed her teeth (the soothing Muggle way she preferred, noting again that having her own bathroom was going to make her life infinitely easier), then dressed slowly for bed as she waited for the potion to wear off.

Though she too had retired to her room shortly, she had taken a long look at the common room in the Head quarters first. It was surprisingly comfortable, more like Gryffindor’s warm furnishings than the cold design of the Slytherin dungeon, though outfitted in rich tapestries and dark wooden details and looking altogether like she imagined a royal estate would have looked in the medieval ages.

There was a grand fireplace with an ornate iron mantle, bigger than she remembered seeing anywhere in the castle, and there were low tables set around two large couches and several ornate armchairs. Against one wall was a heavy wooden table that looked perfect for studying, and there was a large, cushioned seat along the entire back wall where the room, like the Slytherin dungeon, had a window into the darkness of the Black Lake, making the glass shimmer with blues and greens.

Unfortunately, if she wanted to be Hermione, she had to stick to her room rather than curl up in the much more alluring common room’s window seat. But that was no terrible lot; the room had a giant four-poster bed, much too large for one person, with curtains that could be drawn all around, and a beautiful vanity set in one corner where her trunk also rested.

Hermione found she didn’t hate the deep green tones as much as she had imagined, though how the Slytherins weren’t falling asleep all the time was beyond her. It was so damn dark everywhere down here. Didn’t they know anything about Circadian rhythms and needing light in the morning? Purebloods. She rolled her eyes to herself. And they thought they knew so much more than Muggles.

Hermione felt magic tickling down her arms and legs and looked at her hands, watching Daphne’s slender hands transform back into her slightly smaller and definitely more calloused ones. She touched her hair with satisfaction, feeling the rough tangles of her curls lengthening back to their longer style. Daphne’s hair may be infinitely more manageable, but feeling like herself was entirely more restful.

After setting up her wards and triple-checking them anxiously, Hermione laid down in the extremely comfortable bed and tried to clear her head. Tonks’ Occlumency lessons had involved hours of meditation practice, which Hermione tried to no avail to employ now to calm her nerves. But the sound of water rippling occasionally outside her window rather than the familiar sounds of the forest she would sometimes hear in Gryffindor tower was a bit unnerving.

More unsettling was the prospect of the task in front of her, as well as being so disconnected from knowing what was going on outside of Hogwarts. There had been several weird moments at dinner, too, where she had caught a glimpse of Ginny, or Neville, and her heart had squeezed painfully. She knew it still made sense logically that no one else know of her presence, but that didn’t make it less depressing to be so close to her friends and yet so alone.

At least, Hermione thought, rolling over and tucking herself further into the fluffy comforter, she could keep them safe here. Thoughts of Harry and Ron and the lack of her ability to say the same lingered as she drifted into an uneasy sleep.

…

The green light that filtered through Hermione's bedcurtains the next morning as she woke disoriented her momentarily. She blinked a few times and reality set back in. Hogwarts. Daphne. Horcrux. Malfoy.

Her brain struggled to catch up with her surreal circumstances as she tumbled out of bed. She checked her wards on instinct. They were in place exactly as she had set them, which only calmed her a fraction of what it should have.

Hermione downed the morning’s dose of Polyjuice—the potion with Daphne’s essence had been pleasantly tolerable, something light and elegant and fruity that became more complex as it lingered on her tongue—and dressed quickly after it had taken effect.

Daphne had literally written out instructions for Hermione on how to coordinate the pieces in her wardrobe after their first attempt at a full dress rehearsal, an attempt by Hermione that had horrified the Slytherin. While it had been rather insulting, Hermione had stuffed the charmed parchment into her trunk and felt at least it was one less thing she had to worry about screwing up.

Removing the wards made her heart beat a little faster. She had to force herself to open the door to the common room. As soon as she did, she breathed a sigh of relief. Malfoy was nowhere to be seen, presumably either still asleep or already gone to the Great Hall.

She debated skipping breakfast but felt, ultimately, that this was quite cowardly. After all, she’d avoided Pansy and the others the night before, and it’s not like it wouldn’t be noticeable if Daphne started skipping meals with all of her friends.

Right, Hermione told herself, gritting her teeth and attempting another of the hair smoothing charms that Daphne had practiced with her in the entryway mirror. Her ponytail flopped feebly and then fell again. Well. Here goes nothing.

…

Classes were easier than Hermione thought they would be. Daphne was a good student, but didn’t generally volunteer more than necessary, and it wasn't like her grades would really count (it wasn’t really Daphne’s schoolwork and yet it wasn’t really Hermione’s either, which made her brain hurt a bit, but she figured the Ministry's decisionmaking about how to evaluate her N.E.W.T.s eventually was the least of her problems).

Hermione’s focus was on learning for the sake of improving her usefulness for the Order, though she tried not to dwell on the disappointment she felt at the lost chance to attend Hogwarts this year as she'd imagined: finalizing plans for a career after graduation, earning every accolade possible to assure that future materialized, being able to imagine a future other than fighting a war.

There was the added benefit of not having to speak much in classes to her fellow students. Despite their many annoying qualities, the Slytherins were, as the House stereotypes promised, ambitious, and she realized she hadn’t noticed how hard the vast majority of them worked academically.

Perhaps she’d been distracted by the overwhelming stupidity of Crabbe and Goyle. But Blaise, Pansy, and even absentminded Theo were studious and focused during the day, and Malfoy, as she had already known, was usually at the top of the class.

She managed to survive the first few days without incident, which left her with a combined feeling of restlessness and relief. The former, because obviously her purpose here wasn’t to just exist, but the latter because it seemed like settling in before taking on more complicated tasks wasn’t a bad idea.

Though Pansy had predictably berated her and Malfoy Monday morning for failing to inform the rest of them of their new living situation, and for blowing them off on their first evening reunited, she had been too distracted that night by Hermione’s issuance of the prefects' rounds schedule to fixate on anything else.

Pansy was still a prefect and had been assigned rounds with Neville Longbottom for the next month, something she was pissed with Hermione about and therefore was ignoring her. This left Hermione free to escape early to her room for the next three nights when Malfoy did, too, which was fine by her.

When Thursday morning arrived, however, the atmosphere seemed to shift. Breakfast was tense, with even Theo snapping churlishly at anyone who dared to speak to him, and Blaise’s posture more rigid and closed off than ever.

Malfoy was tense next to her, where she could feel his warmth along her side in that same disconcerting way that served as a continuous reminder that she was spending an incredible amount of time in his physical proximity compared to ever before.

Pansy was scowling at her plate, not even going through the pretense of filling it with food she would push around before taking only a couple of bites.

Their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class was scheduled for immediately after lunch.

Hermione was suppressing severe anxiety at the thought of being in a classroom for the first time with Amycus Carrow, and she was curiously surprised to see that the other seventh years seemed, if anything, more reluctant than her about the situation.

Since Hermione hadn’t been able to talk to Astoria, she had no idea what the other years had experienced in the class yet. She wondered with a sick feeling if that was also because no Slytherin was going to say anything bad about Carrow and his teachings.

The sister, Alecto, had predictably forced them to sit through bullshit lectures in Muggle Studies for two days now about the stupidity of Muggles and their attempts to steal magic from Wizarding folk. Hermione could tell it would get worse but so far she’d spent the time watching others’ reactions covertly and alternating that with practicing Occlumency.

Malfoy was the first to glance at his watch. He looked up and locked eyes with Blaise. “It’s time to go,” he announced shortly, swinging his bookbag over his shoulder and standing. He turned and began walking out of the hall without another look back at the rest of them. Hermione straightened her shoulders and was the next to follow, Pansy quickly falling into step beside her.

They arrived before most of the other seventh years. The class was no longer optional or restricted to those with certain exam scores; Hermione realized she was seeing every student still attending Hogwarts in her year present—a number made noticeably smaller without the handful of Muggleborns and the other students who hadn’t returned, like Ron, Dean Thomas, and Susan Bones.

The classroom was largely unchanged from when Snape had taught the class, the gruesome pictures of Dark Arts practitioners and their victims making the room more suffocating than ever.

Hermione ended up in a seat next to Malfoy and behind Pansy and Blaise. She looked discreetly across the aisle to see Neville and Lavender, faces set grimly, sitting side by side. Seamus was near them, Parvati next to him.

She felt a familiar pang of despair and a surge of longing for Harry and Ron. At that moment she thought she’d even taken stupid Professor Quirrell with half of Voldemort hanging out the back of his head if it meant not having to sit through an actual, current Death Eater’s attempted indoctrination.

The door at the back of the classroom banged open and Amycus Carrow strode out, a sickening grin on his face. Hermione placed her hands under her thighs in order to physically stop herself from grabbing her wand. The class sat in an uneasy silence.

“Well, well,” Carrow began, clearly savoring the moment. “Welcome to a new year. As I’m sure you have guessed, we’ll be correcting the course of your education in this subject so far. And, as seventh years, you’ll be expected to learn more than theory, I assure you.” His words were heavy with promise, or threat, depending on your interpretation.

“We have new books for you,” the blonde, paunchy man announced abruptly. His robes were tight, as if he’d outgrown them in the middle region, and yet somehow wrinkled at the same time. Hermione thought darkly that he hardly looked like the most impressive of Death Eaters.

Carrow waved his wand and a textbook appeared on the tables in front of each of them.

Practicing the Dark Arts, the title read, for the Curious and the Daring. Hermione felt sick. Crabbe and Goyle alone reached eagerly for their copies; the rest of the students left them untouched.

“Open to the first chapter and begin reading,” Carrow demanded, bringing his meaty hands down to the desk in front of him. “At the next lesson you’ll be expected to know how to perform any spell in that chapter and we’ll be practicing them in class. If you have any questions,” he smiled cruelly, “feel free to ask.”

…

Living in close quarters with Draco Malfoy, in disguise, in the middle of a war, was shockingly… fine.

Hermione awoke each morning, waited for her first dose of Polyjuice to take effect before exiting her room, and then found a steaming cup of tea waiting for her in the small kitchen off the side of their shared common room.

Malfoy was usually gone by then. The gesture, which had begun the third day of living together when Malfoy realized that they had their own kitchenette kept stocked by the house elves, had thrown her at first.

It was for Daphne, she had to remind herself, but then again… She had never considered whether Malfoy treated anyone this kindly, even his closest friends. It was disturbing, though she had to admit to herself that the freshly prepared tea was not such a bad result of having to share their dorm.

Hermione had spent most of her time so far ignoring homework in favor of reading every book she could lay her hands on in the library that mentioned Godric Gryffindor or Rowena Ravenclaw. Nothing useful had come of this yet, but it had the unintended consequence of allowing her to escape spending unnecessary time with the other Slytherins. Astoria sometimes found her in the library, smiling softly at Hermione and sitting beside her to study. They couldn’t talk much, at least not about what Hermione really wanted to talk about, but it was comforting nonetheless.

Observing Malfoy was, theoretically, one of the objectives of being at Hogwarts. But after a while she felt foolish scrutinizing his movements that closely. He didn’t seem to do much of anything besides attend class, sit quietly through meals with the other four Slytherins, greet her politely when they saw each other in their common room, and then retire to his room.

Hermione had to remind herself that she had thought Harry mad for tracking Malfoy around the castle last year when in fact he had been up to something horrible. She resigned herself to the idea that perhaps she should be paying more attention to Malfoy than just trying to coexist with him without wanting to snap his head off, which would certainly reveal her as Hermione Granger and not Daphne Greengrass.  

She managed to pass most of the first two weeks of term in this manner before Pansy grew bored of her new studious habits and demanded that everyone attend a party in the Slytherin common room that Friday night. Hermione wasn’t sure how anyone could be in the mood to attend a party; they had found out that day that Carrow was expecting them to practice Dark spells on Grindylows the following week. Hermione had already decided, firmly, that it would be in character for Daphne to fail to produce Dark magic on a first attempt, but she had still thrown up in the prefect’s bathroom in between classes twice that day.

Pansy followed her into the Head dorm after dinner Friday night, lecturing Hermione—Daphne—about how she needed to let her hair down because it was going to be a stressful enough term without all of her incessant studying. Hermione couldn’t fault her for that sentiment.

When they entered the common room, Malfoy was lounging in an armchair already, a book propped open on his lap and reading glasses perched on his nose. She stopped abruptly, causing Pansy to stumble into her.

“I didn’t,” Hermione paused, flustered. “Erm, I didn’t know you wore glasses.”

Malfoy looked at her strangely. Hermione realized after a beat that Pansy was doing the same as she righted herself.

“I wear reading glasses, Daphne,” he said slowly, removing them and frowning. “I have for over two years.”

Hermione couldn’t think of a proper response to this, as her brain seemed to have short-circuited. Fortunately, Pansy just snorted and pushed her toward her room.

“Yes, Draco, well, we don’t all spend our days endlessly reflecting on what your face looks like.”  Once they were inside, Pansy slammed the door shut and flopped down on Hermione’s four-poster.

“Honestly, what is with you, Daph?” she asked breezily.

“Nothing.” Hermione shook her head briskly and pasted on a bright smile. “Just tired. Definitely could use a drink. What should I wear?”

…

Even Hermione had to admit that getting ready for an event with Pansy Parkinson—even one as inconsequential as a party in one’s common room—was sort of fun.

Pansy produced a flask containing some kind of very delicious rum drink and flipped through Hermione’s closet as they passed it back and forth. All Hermione had to do, apparently, was sit and wait while Pansy picked out her outfit and performed all of the hair and makeup charms that Daphne had relentlessly drilled her on but that she still was terrible at performing.

“How’s living with Draco going?” Pansy called from the closet, where she was obscured by Daphne’s seemingly endless collection of dresses and robes.

Hermione froze. Pansy had confessed a few nights ago that Malfoy had attempted some sort of strange and formal apology to her that day, one that she had informed him she didn’t accept but, as she later told Daphne, was actually quite touching.

“It’s alright,” she said, treading carefully. “He’s being very polite, you know. We don’t see each other much.”

Pansy’s head emerged from the clothing rack and tossed her a dress to try on. “Well, that’s probably a relief. He still hasn’t made up for being a complete prat in my book, you know.”

“I know,” Hermione replied softly, thinking again of Daphne’s description of Pansy’s sixth year. She took another sip from the flask and offered it to Pansy. The dress Pansy had chosen for her was short, tight, and green. Hermione sighed. This whole thing was ridiculous, but it was made even stranger being dressed in someone else’s body in clothes she wasn’t comfortable wearing in any situation.

“Got anything less… slutty?” she called to Pansy.   “It’s just the house common room, Pansy, not a nightclub.”

This apparently was not an out-of-character remark, as Pansy just sighed theatrically in a long-suffering way and traded the dress for a longer, flowier skirt and fitted sleeveless blouse that she had already picked out from the closet.

“You’ll never attract a man like that, Greengrass,” she declared grandly, swigging from the flask as well.

They made their way down the corridor to the Slytherin common room shortly after that, Pansy wrangling Malfoy on their way out as Hermione stood there awkwardly, not sure of her role in this particular scene.

Malfoy scowled and looked much more like the Slytherin that Hermione was used to when Pansy threatened to come over every night for the next week with Blaise and Theo and force him to socialize in his own dorm if he didn’t come with them. Hermione thought she should’ve objected at that point for her own sake, but fortunately, Malfoy grumbled and slouched behind them out the door.

She’d been in the Slytherin common room a handful of times at that point, but nerves still seized Hermione as she followed Pansy through the opening in the stone wall. An evening with no set purpose—not class, not a meal, not some organized activity—with all of Daphne’s housemates set her on edge.

Malfoy apparently wasn’t thrilled about being there and headed straight for the table in the back of the room where various bottles of what looked like extremely expensive liquor had been set out. That seemed like a reasonable idea, so Hermione abandoned Pansy to follow behind.

He was surveying the bottles with mild interest when she appeared at his shoulder. “What’s your poison, Greengrass?” he mused absently. The words caused her to freeze. She had to clear her throat before she could speak. This was Malfoy, she remembered, who had literally poisoned Ron once, whether sort of on purpose or not.

“Um, I’ll get it,” she said hastily, grabbing the closest bottle without looking and a tumbler from the table. She would pour her own drink, thank you very much.

He sounded vaguely amused when he replied. “Since when do you drink straight gin, Daphne?”

“Oh,” Hermione paused, looking down. “Well, since now, I suppose.” She looked back up at him—seriously, when had he gotten so fucking tall?—and saw him suppressing a smirk.

This made her more annoyed for some reason. “Gin is a perfectly reasonable choice of alcohol, you know. There are a lot of Muggle varieties too that are really quite good.” The words slipped out defensively. She hadn’t realized how hard it would be to stay in character all the time around Malfoy when he just annoyed her so much.

His eyebrows raised at this proclamation but he didn’t push her on it. “Well, by all means,” he just drawled, “pour me one as well, please.”

Hermione blinked suspiciously. Malfoy's smirk grew. Still clutching the bottle, she sloshed a heavy pour of gin into both of their cups and marched away to find Pansy.

…

Hermione’s appearance at the Slytherin revelry on Friday had appeased Pansy for approximately five minutes. She realized heavily that she was going to have to actually make more of an effort with Pansy, at the least, if not Blaise and Theo, if she was not going to give herself away. This resulted in an extended day with Pansy on Sunday by the lake, where Pansy pretended to study but mostly wanted to talk about what she was going to do once she got out of Hogwarts and escaped her family once and for all.

It startled Hermione, who didn’t understand from Daphne that Pansy had much of a choice in the matter, but she softly encouraged Pansy when she talked about how they would all first escape to Blaise’s vineyard for the summer, followed by potentially a tour around Asia, after which Pansy might consider writing for the Prophet if it got its head out of its own ass, or possibly planning events on a professional basis.

The entire thing made Hermione feel sad and tired. The Slytherins were extremely good at talking about everything except the war and what was actually going on outside the castle. In the meantime, her only scraps of news came from when she could find a way to catch Minerva alone after class, and so far there had been nothing to report other than the safehouses were still safe, no one Hermione knew had died, and, though Minerva didn’t know the details of what the mission was, Harry and Ron had made no progress on the task they had ostensibly been assigned by Lupin.

By the time classes ended Monday, Hermione was exhausted. Even though it was barely dinnertime, she crawled into her pajamas and thought about skipping the meal altogether in favor of closing her eyes.

As she was about to do so, however, a knock on her door made Hermione shoot up out of the bed. She cast a quick spell to enable her to see through the door and realized it was just Malfoy. Letting out a breath, she dissembled her wards as quickly as she could and swung the door open.

“Daphne,” he said, somewhat stiffly. He was still dressed from class, in his usual formal manner, hands shoved in his pockets as he lounged against one side of her doorway. It made her feel extremely underdressed.

“Hi.” Hermione wanted to slap herself for how squeaky and breathless her voice sounded. She told herself it was Daphne’s voice that had made it sound that way.

He shifted to the other foot, and for once Hermione could see discomfort on his face rather than the usual impassive gaze.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been spending most of your time in your room rather than… in the common room.” The pained look on his face deepened. “It seems like perhaps you have been avoiding me.  I know I haven’t been the most—” A frustrated sigh huffed across his lips and he stopped abruptly.

Hermione stared. There was no way she was going to prompt more conversation, whatever this was.

“I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable in your own common room,” he said finally. “If you’d like me to stay in my room more, I can do that. But you shouldn’t have to—to feel like you can’t be comfortable in your own quarters.”

Malfoy took a step back and avoided her eyes. His jaw was taut and his eyes had hardened. He looked almost… vulnerable, she thought bizarrely.

“No,” she said without thinking. “It’s not that. I’ve just been—I’ve just been tired. Please don’t. We can certainly share.”

As he visibly relaxed, Hermione opened the door further unconsciously. He seemed to take in her full appearance for the first time.

She was wearing flannel pajama pants and an overly large sweatshirt that was a souvenir from the Quidditch World Cup she had attended with the Weasleys, originally light grey but so faded it was almost white, and emblazoned with a leprechaun dancing across the front extolling the virtues of the Irish.

Malfoy’s eyes lingered on it, puzzled, before his usual neutral expression fell over his face again. “Not the sleeping attire I pictured, Daph,” he murmured.

Had Malfoy pictured Daphne’s sleeping attire before? The thought prevented her from coming up with any sort of reasonable response.

He quirked a brow at her. “I just meant that your family is even less Irish than mine, Greengrass.”

Oh, right. “I was cold,” Hermione said feebly. “Astoria must have picked it up somewhere.” Goddammit, Hermione. That didn’t make that much more sense.  

“Right,” he drawled. “Well, I won’t tell Pansy about the flannel, either.”

She scowled and brushed past him toward the small kitchenette. “Some of us like to be comfortable, Malfoy, instead of wearing a waistcoat around our own home at six o’clock in the evening when we’ve nowhere to be.”

His eyes widened in surprise. Hermione winced, realizing belatedly that she had let his surname slip, and in the context of a mild insult at that. She turned away from him, busying herself with the teakettle and pulling out two mugs from the cupboard.

“Tea, Draco?” she asked, forcing her tone into something resembling politeness.

It felt like his eyes were boring into her back, but it was probably her imagination. She wondered if she would ever feel less jumpy around him.

“Sure,” he replied evenly.

Hermione occupied herself with elaborating preparing their mugs of tea and returning the sugar and milk to their correct places before reluctantly moving toward the table in front of the window where Malfoy’s study things were laid out.

“Thank you, Daph,” he murmured. His long fingers brushed hers as he accepted his mug, causing her to jump slightly and spill some of the hot liquid over his notes. Thankfully, he merely raised an eyebrow and vanished the spilt tea.

“So should I ask about the slippers then, as well?” he smirked, deliberately drawing his eyes down to her feet. Instead of Daphne’s elegant silk slip-ons, they were encased in fluffy booties, each adorned with a snitch. They had been a gift from Harry for her birthday last year and she was ridiculously fond of them.

“Astoria,” she repeated defensively. “Like I said, she’s really gotten into… eclectic tastes.”

“Hmm,” was the only response she got to that, which was... fair. Hermione pulled out the chair across from him and fidgeted with the sleeves of her sweatshirt, pulling the frayed edges over her hands.

“What are you working on?”

“Potions assignment,” he said easily. “We’re supposed to be learning to brew Dreamless Sleep Potion, but I wanted to see if I could find some way to reduce the dependency effect. And I haven’t decided what the right ratio of lavender to valerian root should be, which might make it last longer than the usual brew, thereby reducing the cost.”

“Oh,” she said brightly, forgetting herself and drawing closer to lean over his notes. “Have you thought of adding passionflower, but then perhaps some peppermint bark or ginger? It might provide a more balanced sleep but the latter could counteract the mild hangover effect that remained.” She chewed on her lip thoughtfully. “I’m not positive it would work but it’s certainly worth a try.”

Malfoy looked up at her in amazement. “Daphne,” he said slowly. “You’re not even taking Potions this year.”

She blinked. “Well,” she stuttered. “I’ve been reading in my spare time. Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

He seemed disconcerted but didn’t press her. Hermione could see him jotting down her suggestions though, which made her feel a bit smug.

“Is this what you think you’d like to do after Hogwarts?” she asked absently, thumbing through his Potions textbook and thinking of her conversation the day before with Pansy.

The look she received in response took her breath away with its intensity. “Don’t be stupid, Daphne,” Malfoy sneered.

She gaped at him, the book dropping from her hands to the table. “I—I wasn’t—”

“We both know I won’t be studying Potions after Hogwarts,” he spat, yanking the textbook back toward him. His chest heaved and he looked less in control than she had seen him since they arrived at school.

“You should be more careful around me,” he said, tone still harsh. But the venom in his voice felt like it was forced. “We’re not ten years old, playing games and running around the Manor with Blaise and Pansy and Theo and pretending like we ever had a say in how our lives were going to turn out.”

He didn’t look back up, and Hermione couldn’t think of anything to say. Quietly, she slipped out of the chair and went back to her room, warding the doors again with a shaking hand once she was inside.

Chapter Text

September/October 1997

They managed to survive two more Defense Against the Dark Arts classes without any major incident. Dark Arts, Hermione reminded herself in disgust. Their syllabus reflected the new name.

In their next class, Carrow had been in the middle of announcing that they were about to practice on the Grindylows, as promised, when Snape swept into the room and asked to speak with the Death-Eater-cum-professor.

When he returned, Carrow seemed like his mood had soured. He barked out that the class should conjure pillows or whatever other destructible objects they wanted and practice the curses on those instead. Then he’d slammed his office door shut and, incredibly, left them alone for the next hour. The next Friday, there had still been no Grindylows and only more cursing of pillows. 

“What do you think?” Blaise murmured from her left as they entered the Dark Arts classroom the following week. “More pillows?”

Theo stumbled, catching Hermione’s heel as well and almost causing her to fall into Malfoy’s back. “Sorry,” he muttered, tugging his bookbag higher on his shoulder. “I just—I don’t think it’s pillows today.”

Hermione turned toward him as she righted herself and saw his face contract. “What do you—”

Before she could finish, a mocking voice called from the front of the room. “Don’t bother to take your usual seat back there, Nott.” Carrow’s lips were curled in a stupid, sinister smile. Hermione’s heart dropped.

She grabbed Theo’s arm involuntarily. He just shot her an unreadable look and pried it off gently. Hermione heard him take a deep inhale.

The other students were warily taking their seats, half of them watching Theo and the others fixed on Carrow. Neville had paused, half-seated, and Blaise looked furious as he continued to stand in the aisle near the door.

“Sit down,” Pansy hissed, tugging at Blaise’s sleeve. “You’re only going to make it worse.”

Hermione numbly followed her lead and shuffled into a seat next to Malfoy, who had an eerie sense of calm emanating from him.

“Had some trouble getting the clearance for those stupid Grindylow creatures,” Carrow announced from the front of the room. “But in the meantime I put in a lesson plan with our Undersecretary of Education at the Ministry—” Hermione screwed her eyes shut tightly in horror. That had to be Umbridge. “—and she agrees you’re ready to move on to human subjects.”

A low buzz broke out in the classroom as the seventh years around the room made involuntary noises of protest and shifted uneasily in their seats. Carrow continued as if he hadn’t heard. “So, I’ve asked some younger students who weren’t performing so well in their own Dark Arts classes this week to volunteer.”

The buzzing turned into a dull roar in Hermione’s ears as she watched Carrow open his office door with a flourish and reveal five terrified-looking students that were so little they could have only been first years.

“No,” Seamus said loudly.

Carrow just laughed mockingly. “Don’t worry, Mr. Finnigan, you’re not up first.”

It felt like she had known for some time this was coming and yet she still hadn’t prepared for what to do when it finally happened. Hermione watched as Carrow’s face split into a disturbing look of glee. He turned to Theo, who was still hovering near the front of the classroom, clutching his bag and holding his wand limply in the other hand.

“Nott, we’re going to be moving on from theory and practicing the Cruciatus Curse today on these volunteers.”  

Hermione felt like her chest was disintegrating. Her hand was gripping her wand so tightly it hurt. She was not Hermione Granger. She was Daphne Greengrass. She could not interfere. Could she? She choked as she struggled to force air into her lungs.

The silence in the classroom was deafening. Theo’s eyes were closed and he let his bag slip from his shoulder but didn’t move his wand.

“I haven’t got all day, Nott,” Carrow snarled, grabbing one of the first years roughly by the shoulder and shoving him to the front of the group of children, in line with Theo. 

The boy looked impossibly small to Hermione. He had dark hair like Harry though much less messy, and he was bravely glaring back at Theo. Had Harry been that small when they were eleven? She gagged and had to cover her mouth.

“If you can’t do it,” Carrow was continuing, “I can start the demonstration myself.”

At this, Theo’s arm raised almost automatically. His hand was shaking so hard Hermione was surprised he didn’t drop his wand.

The Greengrasses had wanted to appear neutral. Hermione had agreed to perpetuate that and, in exchange, they had fed the Order valuable information all summer. They still were. Details about the pureblood estates they had visited for years, about who was having an affair with whom or owed money to another and could potentially be blackmailed, gossip they’d heard about the Death Eaters’ plans before they had left Great Britain.

Neutral. This wasn’t neutral. Daphne was a good person, Hermione thought, her panic making it hard to reason clearly. She wouldn’t stand here, she couldn’t imagine her standing here, what if this had been Astoria, this was someone’s sibling, someone’s child—

“Don’t have your father’s guts, huh, Nott?” Carrow cackled and moved closer to Theo, whose eyes remained locked on the first year, face filled with some combination of fear and disgust and deathly pale. “Maybe we should practice a little on you first like I hear Daddy does—”

A sudden movement to her left shook Hermione from her paralyzed indecision. Malfoy had risen and was striding to the front of the room, face hard but eyes blank. She thought she could see the haze of Occlumency seeping into his irises and darkening them.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Amycus,” Malfoy said coolly. “I’ll help him practice later.” He stepped in front of Theo, physically blocking the other Slytherin’s wand and raising his own. Malfoy’s hand was steady.

Carrow looked pleased and gestured for Malfoy to go ahead.

There was a beat as Malfoy locked eyes with the horrified first year and Hermione thought wildly of whether she could pretend to faint or throw up, which wouldn’t even take that much pretending, without making this worse, and possibly distract everyone. But then Malfoy’s lips moved.

“Crucio.”

His voice was flat but echoed around the room. Theo turned away. Pansy and Blaise, like Hermione, couldn’t take their eyes off Malfoy.

The boy let out a shrill scream and thrashed on the floor. It lasted forever, or maybe a few seconds.

Some of the other first years that had been summoned to the room started to cry. Malfoy remained staring down at the cursed boy, who was completely still and staring right back. Even in her haze of disgust and fury, the boy’s expression and his ability to meet Malfoy’s eyes struck Hermione as odd. He looked… confused.

She had no time to process this, as several things began to happen at once.

The first years started to flee the room and she realized Pansy and Blaise had stood and were trying to block their exit from Carrow’s view with their bodies. Malfoy drawled something to the Death Eater, who looked disgustingly excited, which she couldn’t hear, but whether it had been Malfoy’s intention or not it kept Carrow’s attention from the door.

Theo had his hands wrapped around his head and was bent over at the waist. He looked like he might be having the panic attack that Hermione almost succumbed to earlier.

Neville and Seamus were screaming at Carrow, and the rest of the seventh years hovered between the door and the scene at the front of the classroom, clearly unsure how to help or react.

Hermione rushed to Theo and wrapped her hands firmly around his wrists, applying pressure. “We’re leaving,” she murmured. “Let’s go.”

Theo complied, letting her lead him out. She didn’t stop or release him until they had rounded the corridor and were within shouting distance of the entryway to the Great Hall, which allowed her to pretend they could call for help if they needed it.  As if there was anyone who could.

They were both breathing hard when she finally let go. He looked up and Hermione realized for the first time that his eyes were green like Harry’s, too, even more so than Daphne’s brighter ones. These Slytherins and their green, she thought wildly.

“I know,” he said suddenly.

He was looking at her, kindly, but more directly than she thought he had since they arrived at Hogwarts. Cold fear flooded Hermione’s veins. Her heart was still pounding from the scene they had left, but his words made it feel like the organ might leap out of her chest.

“Theo, I don’t—” She had no idea what she intended to say but Theo just squeezed her hand, which he hadn’t let go of yet. His green eyes were staring into hers solemnly, and it occurred to her that this would probably be an appropriate time to actually utilize some of that Occlumency training. She was also one hundred percent certain that she wasn’t capable of anything close at the moment.

“Okay.” He shrugged and dropped her hand. “Never mind.”

Before her bewildered brain could catch up, she saw Pansy charging toward them, fury radiating off of her in waves, and—to Hermione’s surprise—Neville Longbottom trotting along at her heels.

“Keep moving, Greengrass,” Pansy barked. “We’re going to fucking drink.”

…

Pansy and Neville led the motley group back to Gryffindor Tower. The sight of the portrait hole opening caused the crack in Hermione’s heart to simultaneously break open wider and fill with warmth.

They made odd drinking companions, or, given her particular predicament, perhaps not for her. Neville, Seamus, Lavender, Parvati, Pansy, Theo, Blaise, and Hermione fell onto the sofas by the fire, drawing no small amount of strange looks.

Before long, the group grew even more. Ginny turned up shortly with Luna and Hermione had to push down the urge to throw her arms around the redhead and sob. Luna actually did embrace Hermione, beaming and greeting her as if they were old friends, which made the others look at them very strangely. Hermione recalled that Luna had an irritating way of knowing things and it occurred to her that maybe Theo had something similar, given his vague assertion earlier. Which may or may not have been anything, she reminded herself nervously.

These thoughts all made her head hurt and she gratefully accepted the generous pour of firewhiskey Seamus offered her. She took an inappropriately large swig—at least, for Daphne, who she had begun to surmise drank just as much as her friends but did so in a much more elegant and subtle manner—but she couldn’t find herself to care much. It was a sign of how horrible the day had been that neither Pansy nor Blaise made a snobby comment.

There were a few minutes of mostly copious drinking and hushed voices while Neville filled Ginny and Luna in on what had happened. After Neville finished, Ginny looked enraged in the familiar way only a Weasley could. Hermione almost smiled.

“And Malfoy just volunteered?” she asked in disgust.  

“It wasn’t like that,” Blaise said evenly.

Seamus snorted. Ginny turned to look at Blaise in disbelief. Even Pansy shot Blaise a look of disdain.

“What do you call it then?” Seamus said rudely.

Theo hadn’t spoken a word since they had left the classroom. He was sitting next to Hermione, clutching his tumbler so tightly his knuckles were white. She wished weirdly for a moment that she really was Daphne and knew how to comfort him. Instead, she sat beside him in silence and refilled both their glasses when they had emptied.

“If he hadn’t done it, I would have,” Theo said suddenly, head snapping up so he could stare at Seamus and Ginny. “He did it for me. So I wouldn’t have to.”

Seamus still looked disgusted but he didn’t respond.

Neville stepped in and spoke in a low voice. “We can refuse. All of us. If none of us will do it, they’ll have to stop.”

Pansy scoffed loudly. “That’s incredibly naïve,” she snapped. “They can make you do plenty of things.”

She looked away and reached for the firewhiskey bottle again.

“Besides, we can’t do that.” She muttered the last words and took a sip of her drink, tumbler full again.

“You could,” Neville insisted stubbornly, frowning at her.

Pansy regarded him coolly.

“Yes,” she spoke slowly, as if to a small child. “Except that when word gets outside of this castle that I have openly refused to listen to the Carrows, I won’t be celebrated like you lot. Best case, I might be disowned. Worst case, I’ll be dead.”

Hermione saw Ginny pale across the room. Neville was still staring at Pansy, a peculiar expression on his face. He seemed torn between horror and sympathy, yet like he might still let his frustration win out and try to convince her differently.

Before anyone could speak again, the portrait hole swung open and a group of bedraggled first years tumbled through.

Hermione’s heart clenched. She stood up automatically, remembering distantly that despite being technically in the wrong common room, she was Head Girl, and should be checking on these children. One of whom was just tortured by the Head Boy. Jesus.

The others watched her go but didn’t get up to follow, remaining by the fire with mixed expressions on their faces, out of earshot.

The little first year—Blake? she thought—was being consoled by his classmates but they all drew back nervously when Hermione approached.

She knelt beside the boy and offered the most comforting smile she could muster.

“You were very brave,” she said quietly. “And what happened to you was horrible.”

The alcohol made her forget for a moment that she was Daphne Greengrass and not Hermione Granger and that she couldn’t do anything.

“It was a crime. I won’t forget,” she promised.  

The boy stared back at her, frowning in a sort of puzzled way. “Daphne? Daphne—right?” he asked tentatively. She nodded in confirmation.

He looked around furtively. “I don’t think—I don’t think that’s right, actually.”

Hermione’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean? Do you mean because you were in school? That’s not an excuse—”

The little Gryffindor shook his head emphatically and lowered his voice even further so that only she could hear. “Because it didn’t actually hurt,” he whispered.

Hermione couldn’t comprehend his words. “What are you talking about? I heard you scream, you don’t have to—”

There was an air of frustration now as he shook his head. He stared at her imploringly like he was desperate for her to understand.

“Right b-before Malfoy said the spell, I—I heard a voice in my head,” he looked rather anxiously at her as he announced this part, as if wanting her to somehow confirm that he wasn’t crazy, “and he told me that he could make the spell feel just a little uncomfortable, just pretend, but I had to scream and act like it was the worst pain I had ever felt in the world or he would have to do it again.” The words rushed out of him. He was pale but bright-eyed.

Hermione gaped at him. “You—it didn’t—it didn’t hurt you?”

His little face was solemn. “I was pretending. Just like he told me to.”

Shock flooded through her body for what felt like the hundredth time that day. She tried to regain her composure as her thoughts raced.

“I—I am very glad that you’re not hurt. I need to ask you something else, though, alright?”

The boy nodded quickly, as if eager to help.

“I don’t think you should tell anyone else about this.” She took a deep breath. “I’m—I’m afraid it could make things worse for someone else. But I appreciate you telling me and you can certainly come to me again.”

He gave his assent and then ran off to join his friends, seeming relieved.

Hermione sat back on her heels where he had left her. She glanced over at the students gathered by the fire again, feeling an odd sense of comfort once more at having her own friends assembled with Daphne’s.

Without saying goodbye, she drank in one last look and then rose and slipped quickly out of the portrait hole.

…

Hermione’s eyes landed upon Malfoy immediately when she entered their dorm. He was sitting in the armchair farthest from the door, head buried in his hands, not moving.

“I don’t want to talk, Daphne,” he growled.

Hermione ignored him and crossed to sit on the corner of the sofa adjacent to him.

“Draco,” she said softly, his name still feeling foreign on her tongue. “I spoke to that first year.”

He remained still, but Hermione thought she heard him inhale sharply.

“And?” he said flatly, finally straightening to face her. His eyes were still black and clouded from Occluding but somehow she could see in his face that it was thin, that he was straining to keep whatever walls he had constructed in place.  

Hermione bit her lip. “He didn’t seem as upset as I imagined he would be,” she said carefully, watching his face closely.

Malfoy’s grey eyes bore into hers and she thought of her own terrible Occlumency shields for the second time that night. The silence stretched for longer than was comfortable.

“Daphne,” he said deliberately. “I cast the Cruciatus Curse on that first year. That is what everyone saw me do. He looked like he was in a great deal of pain.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “Right,” she murmured. “That’s what we saw.”

Malfoy continued to hold her gaze for a minute. She watched in fascination as the black in his eyes seemed to recede, silver filling his irises slowly. The firewhiskey from earlier was making her lightheaded. The room was quiet; she could hear his even breaths and her matching shallow ones.

“You should get some sleep,” he said quietly, finally rising and stepping toward his own room. “It’s been a long day.”

Hermione stayed in the common room instead after he left, staring at the shimmering greens dancing in the window to the lake. In the morning, she was the one who got up early to leave out a mug of freshly prepared tea.

…

The following weekend had passed in a strange détente for Hermione and Malfoy, who avoided speaking directly but politely nodded at one another when they crossed paths on their way in or out of their rooms or as they sought something from the kitchenette.

Pansy, Blaise, and Theo kept up their usual pretense that nothing was out of the ordinary, but Hermione caught Pansy seething at Malfoy from across the table when she thought no one was looking. However, she didn’t have a lot of headspace to deal with Pansy’s dark mood, as she was grappling with her own confusion over what had happened with Malfoy, and Carrow, and the first year.

It wasn’t that Hermione had thought Malfoy pure evil. Between her own knowledge of the events on the Astronomy tower the previous year, the conversations she’d had with Daphne over the summer, and their interactions over the last month, Hermione knew that, as Sirius had put it years ago, Malfoy existed in a world that wasn’t divided into good people and Death Eaters—no matter what the Mark on his arm seemed to indicate.

But she had still thought him a spoiled, prejudiced brat. At best, after Daphne wore her down and Malfoy had surprised her with daily tea in the mornings, she had thought him selfish yet with a limited worldview that included only thinking certain people—perhaps certain types of people—were worthy of his concern.

But that day, he’d helped a first-year Gryffindor, at risk to himself, for no other reason than she could possibly see other than to do the right thing. Not only that, she reminded herself. He’d done it knowing others would despise him further, but that he would save Theo from the same fate.

This confusion followed her over the next few days.

She studied with Theo and Blaise on Sunday in the Slytherin common room while Pansy performed her prefect rounds with Neville, avoiding Malfoy again.

Monday, she slid into the seat to Pansy’s right in Transfiguration instead of her normal spot next to Malfoy. The other girl made no mention.

Tuesday, she watched Malfoy and Theo speak quietly at their Herbology table as they snipped Devil’s Snare and thought again of Theo’s shaking hand and Malfoy’s Occluded gaze as he raised his own wand.

Wednesday, she decided her time might be better spent refocusing her efforts on the Horcrux research rather than thinking so much about Draco Malfoy.

…

Another surprise came Thursday, when Hermione was drawing up prefect assignments again for the following month. Malfoy was, as he had been lately, absent. Pansy, however, had followed Hermione back to her and Malfoy’s rooms after dinner to complain about the massive amounts of homework she was not currently working on and was perched over Hermione’s shoulder, glaring down at the timetable.

“What exactly are you doing, Daphne?” she demanded.

Hermione started. “The rounds schedule,” she replied in confusion, not understanding why Pansy was getting worked up.

“Yes, but why have you changed my rounds?” Pansy asked, tone sharp.

Hermione stared at the parchment, puzzled. “I haven’t added any more rounds to your schedule, Pansy, it’s exactly the same as before—”

An exaggerated sigh came from the other girl and the parchment was ripped out of her hands. “No, Greengrass, I mean why am I getting assigned a different partner? I don’t want Padma bleeding Patil.”

Hermione turned fully now and narrowed her eyes at Pansy.

“Are you asking me,” she said slowly, “to keep you paired with Neville Longbottom on all of your rounds, despite the grief you gave me at the beginning of term?”

Pansy stood up quickly and shoved the parchment back at Hermione. “I’m not saying anything,” she replied defensively. “I’m just asking my best friend to leave what’s none of her business alone.”

Delight spread across Hermione’s face. She hadn’t felt this light in ages.

“Pansy Parkinson,” she gasped. “Are you asking me to contrive reasons for you and Neville Longbottom to spend time alone together?”

Now Pansy was scowling furiously at her. She opened her mouth, clearly about to start spitting something back at Hermione, when the common room door opened and Malfoy walked through. Pansy shut up faster than Hermione had ever seen her.

Hermione’s eyes were dancing now and Pansy was glaring daggers at her. “Draco,” Hermione called cheerily. “Such good timing! I was just finalizing the prefect rounds assignments.”

Malfoy paused in his path to his room, clearly nervous at the expression on Pansy’s face. “That’s nice,” he said warily. “Did you want my help? Apologies, I’ve been in the library working on this Potions essay…”

He trailed off as Hermione just grinned and Pansy stormed past him out of the room without a second glance.

“No,” Hermione replied gracefully to Malfoy. “I think I’ve got it covered.”

…

Friday brought yet another Dark Arts class.

The seventh years endured over an hour of Carrow lecturing almost devotedly about the Ministry’s new policies on the expanded use of dueling spells given the “high threat of civil disorder faced by Wizarding society today.”

Hermione was just counting the minutes left in the period, trying to figure out if they were going to escape without a repeat of last week’s disastrous episode.

“As we have discussed, the Ministry has decided it makes sense for you all to practice the practical aspects of these curses and I will be showing you how to use them properly over the next month. Mastering them may lead to you being… rewarded,” he embellished darkly.

Hermione felt sicker than usual. The class had been reduced to nothing more than thinly veiled recruitment offers to the Dark side and implications that using Dark curses was now not only legal but would be required in the new regime.

“The Dark Lord,” Carrow was continuing, “who, of course, has never been defeated—”

“That’s a lie,” Neville said sharply.

Hermione felt like she had been transported in time back to fifth year.  A black-haired wizard with green eyes and a lightning scar flickered in front of her, taking Neville’s place for a moment, shouting that Voldemort was back and he had seen it.

“Harry Potter already beat your master.”

Carrow’s eyes nearly popped out of his face as it contorted with rage. The rest of the class looked nervously between the professor and Neville, some wild-eyed. She felt rather than saw Draco stiffen beside her. Seamus grinned across the aisle from Neville.

“You are a worthless blood traitor, Longbottom, and you’ll shut your bloody mouth,” Carrow was howling.  

“He never beat Harry,” Neville was continuing, voice loud and firm. His expression was fierce. “And he also didn’t have a body for about thirteen years, which isn’t exactly that impress—”

Neville’s voice promptly disappeared, though his mouth was still moving. Carrow cackled and advanced toward him down the aisle. Before he reached Neville, Seamus started up in place of his silenced housemate.

The Irish student’s insults were no less creative if only for their color.

“You’re a piece of bloody shit and you’re going to spend the rest of your miserable life in Azka—”

Another flick and Seamus was silenced, too, his face reddening as he tried in vain to speak.

“That’s enough! We’ll see how brave you stupid Gryffindors really are,” Carrow was growling at Seamus threateningly, when all of a sudden Neville’s shouts filled the room again

“—surrounded by a bunch of cowards who can’t even think for themselves—”

“Silencio!” Carrow shouted, spinning back toward Neville, visibly confused.

Neville shut up again but now Seamus had somehow been released. He picked up where he had left off.

“—hope you get a double cell with Fenrir Greyback you motherfucking—”

Carrow was nearly screaming with rage now. A jet of red light shot from his wand and hit Neville, who buckled over in his seat. Unthinking, Hermione half-stood, panicked, and felt Draco’s large hand wrap around her wrist and yank her back into her own chair.

Neville looked back up, wiping his cheek, which was now bleeding steadily from a gash under his eye. He was laughing. Another angry wave from Carrow’s wand and the laughter was cut off.

The rest of the class was watching in awed horror at the unfolding scene. Seamus, still spewing obscenities, was now being yanked roughly by Carrow out of his seat.

A movement out of the corner of her eye distracted Hermione from the terror she felt for her friends. With a jolt, Hermione saw that Pansy had her wand out under the table, concealed partially by Blaise’s long legs, which were carefully stretched out under their table as if he was merely lounging. Pansy noticed Hermione turn in surprise and shifted her head slightly to offer Hermione a small smirk.

Pansy’s wand twitched and Neville’s jeering filled the room again.

Chapter Text

October 1997

Things escalated quickly after that.

Hermione, not exactly in the inner circle of Neville, Ginny, Luna, and the other D.A. members as she was, at the moment, ostensibly Daphne Greengrass, wasn’t privy to most of the scheming and tended to only catch the aftereffects of various rebellions by the students against the Carrows.

Neither professor had full control over their classes any longer, at least with the older students, but their retaliation was brutal. Neville, Seamus, Ginny, and Luna were sporting various cuts and bruises at least twice a week when returning from detention or classes. They seemed to wear these proudly, rarely going to Madam Pomfrey as far as she could tell, which made it only fractionally easier not to hyperventilate every time she saw one of them.

The other professors seemed to be finding creative ways to undermine the Carrows as well, scheduling mandatory ‘tutoring’ sessions at night whenever they found out a student had been assigned a particularly nasty-sounding detention, or interrupting the Dark Arts lectures with urgent requests for extra students to come assist with wayward Venomous Tentacula plants or misfiring charms.

Hermione was unsure how long all of this could last. In the meantime, she was going a bit mad from her own lack of progress with the Horcrux and the lack of news from the Order on top of everything else happening at Hogwarts. She and Minerva had managed to meet that week for tea under the guise of a Head Girl-related conference, but Minerva had only had minor updates to relay, like that they’d managed to smuggle several more Muggleborns and their families out of the country, that the Portkeys seemed to be working, and Tonks and the baby were healthy.

She was, of course, relieved that there hadn’t been much bad news. However, even though Minerva didn’t know of the Horcruxes, Hermione was fairly certain that if a raid on the Ministry had been planned and gone off that would have been worth mentioning. She had no idea why Harry, Ron, and Lupin hadn’t seemed to have made a move for the locket and was becoming frustrated without a way to find out.  

There was also the matter of Malfoy. It seemed like she should say something to Minerva, but she wasn’t exactly sure what that something was. Hermione had bitten her tongue when the other witch asked if the living situation was still all right and whether there was anything Hermione had noticed that concerned her about Malfoy since she and Minerva had last been able to talk.

Yes, she thought, there was definitely something concerning her about Malfoy. But it wasn’t that he seemed to be engaging in anything nefarious or really anything Death Eater-like at all. It was the opposite. But she hadn’t been sure how to tell Minerva without sounding childish that, actually, yes, she had found that Draco Malfoy was sort of, almost, pleasant to be around in the rare moments when he wasn’t completely moody and distant, and also maybe he had saved Theo and a first-year from being tortured but didn’t seem to want anyone to know.

With all of these thoughts plaguing her, Hermione did the only thing she really knew how to do at these moments, which was redouble her efforts to discern answers from the library.

She was in the midst of a very valiant attempt at this when she thought she might have heard someone begin talking to her.

“Hmm?” she murmured absently, not lifting her eyes from the book in front of her.

“Daphne,” Malfoy said again, clearly annoyed. Hermione snapped her eyes up, trying to focus them on the blonde-haired wizard standing across from her. They were blurry from staring at the text too long, and she didn’t think she had even heard him come out of his room, having finally found a reference to a descendant of Godric Gryffindor in the rambling nonsense this author had thought fit to print.

“Er, yes?”

“How long have you been sitting there?” Malfoy demanded, circling around to her side of their study table and staring suspiciously down at her notes.

She slammed the book she was reading shut and shoved the parchment with her messy scrawl under it quickly. “Oh—not long. Maybe a couple of hours.” Hermione glanced at the clock on the mantle hastily. “Well, maybe a little longer than that.”

Malfoy let out a dramatic sigh and disappeared over to the kitchenette. She strained her neck around to see what he was doing. “I think I may have to take one from Pansy’s book and get you to start drinking more on the weekends, Daphne. You’ve been weirdly studious this term.”

She frowned, mildly indignant on Daphne’s behalf. “I don’t think I’ve been weirdly studious, Malfoy. There’s nothing wrong with working hard during our final N.E.W.T. year—”

He rolled his eyes and cut her off. “Yes, yes, I actually agree with you, to some extent.” Malfoy reappeared by her side, a tumbler in hand. “But, in this case, I think you have taken it a bit far.”

She eyed the drink suspiciously and he laughed. “Just drink it, Daph. I’ll let you make the next one if it’s too strong.”

He tugged her up from the chair and maneuvered her instead to a seat on the sofa with her drink. “I’m bored, and the others are still too cross with me to want to hang out.”

She frowned. He hadn’t spoken to her again about what had transpired in their Dark Arts class, and she hadn’t known how or whether to force a conversation. A shadow crossed Malfoy’s face and he took a swig of his own drink as he sat down next to her, his long legs stretching out to rest on the small table in front of the sofa.

“Anyway,” he continued, tone indicating that subject was closed, “I like hanging out with you better.”

Hermione blushed and drew her legs up under her so her toes weren’t brushing up against Malfoy’s thigh anymore. Well, that was probably because she knew Malfoy wasn’t actually torturing first years and had been treating him slightly better than their housemates due to that knowledge. That was all.

“Quite the compliment, Malfoy.” She took a sip of the drink and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was some sort of ginger beer and firewhiskey combination.

“This is good,” she said in mild satisfaction, licking her lips. She thought Malfoy’s eyes flicked to follow the movement before quickly moving back up to her eyes.

“Well, you’re not a harsh critic then,” he drawled. “It’s hardly an original recipe.”

“Mmm,” she replied happily, taking another sip. Perhaps she did deserve a break.

“Daphne,” Malfoy said suddenly. Her scalp prickled. Whatever this new tone was did not bode well for potential relaxation, she thought darkly. “Why’ve you started calling me Malfoy?”

Crap. How many times had she done that? So many of Hermione Granger’s habits were being successfully suppressed, or so she at least thought. She’d only corrected Theo once when he was complaining about his Arithmancy charts refusing to add up properly the day before. When Pansy had called a house-elf to the Slytherin common room the weekend before to request assistance sneaking in party provisions, Hermione had only apologized to the elf twice for creating the extra work before shutting up at the looks everyone else gave her. Alright, so the others had noticed the excessive research—but that was for an extremely valid reason.

Apparently, however, calling Draco Malfoy by his first name still wasn’t coming naturally enough to her.

“I suppose living with you has caused me to feel the need to create some distance,” Hermione answered primly, in her best imitation of Daphne’s flawless diction. She deserved an award, really.

She worried for a second that he wouldn’t take this as a joke, given the others’ current moods, but fortunately Malfoy just rolled his eyes. “Sure, Greengrass,” he said airily. “Let’s pretend I believe that, despite the fact that you’re with me in our rooms on a Saturday night instead of anywhere else you could be.”

“You know,” she pointed out, ignoring whatever he was trying to imply there, “you call me Greengrass sometimes.” Which, to be fair, may or may not have been a new trend. Hermione had no idea.  

Malfoy furrowed his brow. “I—” he paused, looking at her curiously. “I suppose that I have.”

So… a recent development. Was there just something about her even disguised under Polyjuice that made him feel the need to forego pleasantries? That was irritating, and also probably not a very Daphne-esque thing to inspire. Daphne was lovely.

Malfoy had been continuing as she followed this confusing line of thought to nowhere. “Maybe you’ve just been a bit more fun to rile up lately, Greengrass,” he murmured.  

Before she could respond, and make a possible attempt to course-correct this conversation, which had veered dangerously toward—something—flirting? she shook this thought quickly from her head—there was a tap on their door. They turned to each other in simultaneous confusion.

“Should we… get that?” she asked, not moving. She couldn’t recall anyone knocking on their door before, given Pansy, Blaise, and Theo had the password and felt they had the right to barge in any time they wanted. Astoria had dropped by a few times, but seemed a bit too intimidated by Malfoy to do so without being accompanied by Hermione.

Malfoy frowned and rose to his feet, setting his drink down on the table.

“Wait!” she called suddenly. Hermione scrambled to her feet as well, a bit less gracefully, and crossed to his side.

“Transpicio.” An image appeared in the middle of the door, at eye level, revealing—to her great astonishment—Luna Lovegood standing outside.

“I’ll be expecting you to teach me that one, Daph,” Malfoy said, sounding mildly impressed, “but in the meantime, what the fuck is Lovegood doing here?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Draco,” she hissed. “It’s not a soundproof door.”

He returned her eye roll with great exaggeration. “Does it look like I care?” he said in a loud whisper.

“Urgh,” she replied, shoving him to the side and flinging the door open.

The Ravenclaw, who was barefoot and had her waist-length hair wrapped in an elaborate-looking twist piled on top of her head and secured with her wand, smiled serenely at Hermione. “It’s so nice to see you again, Daphne.”

Hermione may have been feeling particularly paranoid at that moment, but she definitely didn’t like the way that Luna seemed to conspiratorially raise her voice an octave when she landed on the word ‘Daphne.’

“Hello, Luna,” she greeted the other girl apprehensively. “May we help you?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “I’m here to retrieve you.”

“Retrieve us?” Hermione asked dumbly. “Retrieve us from where?”

Luna looked puzzled. “Well, your rooms, of course. Unless you believe you may actually exist somewhere else at the moment, in which case I may need to go get my shoes first after all.”

Malfoy snorted behind her. Hermione just sighed in slight exasperation. “Right, sorry, I mean—where are you trying to take us to?”

“The dungeons, of course.” Luna smiled brightly and brushed past Hermione into the common room. Malfoy leveled a pointed glare at Hermione as if she had invited Luna in herself.

Hermione scurried after the girl, who was now surveying their drinks on the coffee table with a significant amount of interest.

“And why would we be going to the dungeons right now?” she asked. The more pressing question occurred to her only after that. “And, um, why are you going to the dungeons?” She hoped this didn’t sound too rude, but she supposed Luna didn’t usually mind bluntness.  

“There’s a party, of course,” the blonde answered her, as if this was obvious. She turned to Malfoy and continued in her breezy tone. “Blaise and Pansy even said you could come, if you promise not to curse anyone while you’re there.”

The thunderous look on Malfoy’s face made Hermione quickly grab Luna’s arm and steer her back to the door. “Great, we’ll be right there, thanks, Luna.”

She literally pushed the girl out into the hall and wedged the door shut as politely as she could manage.

“Um,” Hermione said, wincing as she turned to Malfoy again. “I think that was meant to be kind, actually.”

Malfoy’s face was shutting down, the fury and shame transforming into a carefully blank, cold stare. She sighed. “Oh, don’t do that,” she said automatically.

His eyes narrowed but he didn’t respond, just walked back to the sitting area and grabbed his drink.

She trailed after him. “So, why do you think Luna Lovegood was here to invite us to the Slytherin common room?” Hermione asked, still mystified. “That was odd.”

He shrugged. “Probably because she slept with Blaise three weeks ago, and wants to do it again.”

“What?” she gasped in amazement. Malfoy’s face was still neutral and she couldn’t understand how he could discuss this so calmly. Well, even with the receding Occlumency he was annoyingly still exhibiting.

“Are you serious? How did I not know this?”

At that, he quirked a brow, his eyes now half-cleared. “Probably because every time we ask you about your sex life, you tell us it’s not a proper topic for discussion and to mind our own business and stop nattering about our extracurricular activities.”

Oh. Hermione flushed. She had a sneaking suspicion that this stance had a lot more to do with Daphne’s feelings for Theo and consequent lack of desire to hear about anything he got up to in the Hogwarts broom closets, but Malfoy obviously hadn’t put that one together.

“Well,” she replied indignantly. “I’m making an exception in this case because it’s been a very trying term. Can you please explain?” Hermione attempted again to make her voice sound more formal and Daphne-like so that her request for gossip wasn’t as eager. It didn’t work.  

“Well,” Malfoy drawled, “apparently, after you lot went slumming with the Gryffindors the other night, Luna asked Blaise to walk her back to Ravenclaw Tower.” He winked at her. “Blaise was nothing but a gentleman, of course, I’m sure. But somehow he didn’t end up sleeping in the dungeons that night, at least according to Theo.”

Hermione was too busy processing this new information to get flustered by the sudden jolt of attraction that she felt when Draco Malfoy winked at her. Much too busy. And it wasn’t that attractive, anyway. She had just been thrown off balance by this whole interaction. And the drink.

“Right,” she said decidedly. “Let’s go, then.” Hermione started searching for the cardigan she had been wearing earlier—one of the only ones that had been approved by Daphne for her to bring to Hogwarts as ‘theoretically something I would wear if I was ill’—but stopped when Malfoy didn’t move.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he muttered, avoiding her eyes and taking another drink.  

She frowned. “Listen, you were the one pestering me to be more fun tonight and made me stop reading. If I can suck it up, you can go make nice with your friends.”

Hermione waited, hands on her hips.

“Fine,” he grumbled, getting to his feet, “but only because Blaise has all of my good scotch over there.”

She rolled her eyes and shoved him out the door.

…

Not only was Luna Lovegood in the Slytherin common room when they arrived, but Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley as well. Hermione felt both cheered by the sight of her friends and depressed that she couldn’t ask them how in the world they had ended up there.

Pansy had commandeered her the minute they had walked inside, berating her for not coming over earlier and asking her what in Merlin’s name was the sweater she was wearing and did she want Pansy to get her something else from her closet because it was depressing to look at. Hermione said something vague about being cold and allowed Pansy to wrangle her into a complicated drinking game with Neville, Theo, and Ginny for the better part of the next hour.

It occurred to her only as Ginny was handing her a fourth—fifth?—shot of firewhiskey that she hadn’t seen Malfoy since they had arrived. Hermione’s eyes searched the room until she found him wedged into the side of one of the low-backed couches, seemingly boxed in by Luna, who was talking to him animatedly about something. She noticed Blaise on Luna’s other side, looking perfectly content.

Malfoy caught her eye as she marveled at her friend, and raised his eyebrows meaningfully. Hermione rolled her eyes, but waved away another offer of a shot from Ginny and got up to join him.

“Daphne,” Malfoy said in mock delight as she approached. “What wonderful timing—Lovegood here was just telling us about one of her many theories of why there are so many Wrackspurt infestations in the Slytherin common room.”

Hermione snorted into her drink but managed to turn it into a cough. “That’s interesting,” she said politely. “Luna, I think they need another over there if you—and, er, Blaise—are interested. It’s some sort of confusing version of Exploding Snap, but as far as I could tell everyone ends up drinking nearly every turn.”

Shrugging, Blaise stood and offered a hand to Luna, who took it happily and smiled at Hermione. “I am fairly good at games,” she pronounced, and they wandered over to the group circled around the table in the corner.

Hermione took Luna’s seat on the couch next to Malfoy, who sighed in relief. “She’s not that bad,” she whispered to him reproachfully. “She’s very sweet.”

Malfoy’s arm pressed against hers as he leaned toward her. “She’s very sweet on Blaise,” he said suggestively instead of responding, and he nodded significantly at the couple, who were now standing quite close together across the room. Luna did, in fact, look a bit besotted.

“I think it’s nice,” Hermione said wistfully. She realized belatedly that her tone hadn’t matched his playful one, sounding a bit pathetic instead to her drunken ears, and she felt a blush rise over her cheeks.

Malfoy glanced over at her and seemed about to say something, but they were interrupted by Pansy. An extremely drunk Pansy Parkinson, who flopped down on the couch beside Hermione and sighed loudly.

“How’s it going over there, Pansy?” Hermione asked, turning to her in amusement. Pansy scowled and crossed her arms over her chest.  

“Fine,” she said shortly.

Hermione had a sneaking suspicion that she knew what Pansy’s sudden mood swing may be attributable to. “Having fun with… Theo?” she asked carefully. “And Ginny and Neville?” Hermione kept her voice as innocent as possible.

The look that Pansy gave her at this may have cowered someone who wasn’t currently managing a strictly controlled regiment of secretly downing Polyjuice Potion every few hours in order to keep everyone in the castle convinced that she was Daphne Greengrass. Hermione wasn’t afraid of Pansy Parkinson.

“Neville looks like he’s having fun,” she suggested, unable to resist continuing.

“Yes,” Pansy burst out, her short temper on display. “I imagine he is. And yet apparently it’s Blaise and Loony over there who have managed to actually get their shit together.”

Malfoy choked back a laugh on her other side. Hermione elbowed him in the ribs sharply, and some of his drink spilled over both of them. However, it was too late. Pansy had heard and a look of fury was growing on her face.

“Is something funny, Draco?” she barked.

“Not at all,” he replied quickly. “I think Longbottom is an excellent choice.”

Hermione closed her eyes briefly as if she could imagine herself a way out of this conversation. Nothing good could come of this.

She could tell that Pansy had been raring to have a go at Malfoy for the last few weeks, the tension nearly unbearable to someone who had only just built up a tolerance for the Slytherins’ insane passive-aggressive behavior. The number of weighted glances and loaded statements that had been exchanged over meals lately had been exhausting. Blaise had apparently decided to become more impassive than ever, leaving Hermione to fill a lot more conversational holes than she preferred, and Theo seemed torn between guilt and shame at himself and sympathy for Malfoy. But Pansy…

“Choice?” Pansy hissed. “Should we talk about choices, Malfoy?”

Hermione felt rather than saw him stiffen beside her. “What’s that supposed to mean, Pansy?” he asked, his voice low.  

“It means that you apparently don’t want to hear my opinion on your choices, so you have no right to judge any of mine.” Pansy’s voice was too loud, whether intentionally or because she’d had too much to drink, and Hermione’s anxiety spiked despite the blanket of alcohol she had been pleasantly wrapped in until then.

“Pansy—” Hermione began, very ready to ward off this conversation.

“Shut up, Daphne,” she barked. “I don’t know why you’re Draco’s defender all of a sudden, anyway.” Pansy rounded on Malfoy, her face splotched red in anger. His face had slipped into the cold mask that Hermione hated so much.

“Do you know why I’m trying to make different choices, Draco?” The word rang out deafeningly every time Pansy said it.

The room had nearly fallen silent. Hermione looked up and saw, with a sickening clench of her gut, most of the Slytherins and their guests watching them now. Across from them, Neville’s jaw was tight, but his eyes were wide and fixed on Pansy. Ginny, to his right, had an indecipherable look on her face, her drink hanging forgotten in her hand.

Pansy let out a sob. “Because I don’t want to end up like you.”

…

There had not been much of a party-going mood after that. Neville had rushed to Pansy’s side and helped Hermione convince her to let them take her to her dormitory. At the steps, Neville had asked Hermione quietly to let him know if they needed anything, and then she had wrapped her arm around the other girl and gone up with her.

Pansy had cried herself to sleep on Hermione’s shoulder. She hadn’t wanted or had the heart to leave her, and stayed awake a long time herself after Pansy finally succumbed to exhaustion and the alcohol she’d consumed. Hermione laid beside the other witch in Pansy’s four-poster, her own mind fuzzy, thinking about choices and whether any of them had ever really had any.

In the morning, Pansy woke before her and returned with tea and pastries, asking quietly if she wanted to take a walk by the lake.  

They downed hangover potions—a clever Slytherin trick, Hermione thought to herself, to keep them handy—and trudged outside, where there was already a strong autumn chill in the air. Pansy was quiet for a while, picking at the croissant she was holding and mostly tossing pieces into the lake rather than eating them. Hermione burrowed into her apparently-not-Slytherin-approved cardigan against the cold and waited.

“I don’t think I meant it,” Pansy finally said, squinting at the Forbidden Forest in the distance, perhaps to avoid Hermione’s eyes.

“Which part?” she asked carefully.

“I don’t know.” Pansy sighed and it sounded like she was still hungover, or perhaps just exhausted with life in general.

Hermione considered her next words. “Neville is a good person.”

“I know,” Pansy said.

The sun was still rising, and it cast orange ribbons across the lake in a way that contrasted with the green shimmering waters with which Hermione had slowly grown accustomed.

“Do you think Malfoy is?” Hermione asked bravely.

Pansy shielded her eyes from the sun as it crested and still didn’t look at her. “I think he could still choose to be,” she finally replied quietly.

…

“What’s happened?” she asked in a hushed voice. Minerva drew her further into the room and shut the door quickly. “Who’s hurt?” Just tell me quickly, she begged silently, her legs shaking so hard she could barely stand. The practiced walk from the Transfiguration classroom to the Great Hall with Pansy and the others before she could make an excuse to return for a forgotten quill had been agonizing. There had been messages before, secrets exchanged, but the note had been different this time, short and purposely, it seemed, lacking reassurance: Come at once. Do not draw attention.

Minerva’s face was ashen. “Hermione, I am afraid I don’t know the details. I just received word through Aberforth this morning that there was—there was a skirmish between some on our side and several Death Eaters, outside of Godric’s Hollow late last night. By all means it was a success, because we captured another of theirs, but—”

“Who?” Hermione nearly moaned.

Minerva reached out and guided the younger woman to a seat on the low sofa in the corner of the room, her touch gentle. “He is alive, Hermione, but Ron Weasley was badly injured.”

Hermione’s eyes closed so tightly she saw stars. She could distantly hear an odd, strangled noise that she only realized after a few minutes was coming from her. A scream seemed to be trying to escape her throat but was stuck, lodged there with her breath which had stopped completely.

Minerva’s hands squeezed hers tightly, and she spoke quickly and urgently. “Hermione, you need to pull yourself together. Andromeda, Molly, and Daphne are doing everything they can. He knew what he was getting into, and he apparently saved several others, including Mr. Thomas and Ms. Bones, by taking a curse meant for them, but then became trapped under some rubble caused by the fight before he could get away, too.”

Images of Ron’s mangled body were flashing through her mind and she forced her eyes open to try to make them stop. Minerva was kneeling at eye level with her with a surprising amount of flexibility for a woman her age. “What’s wrong with him? Where is he?”

“He lost a lot of blood and apparently several—organs—were crushed. It is also not quite clear yet what damage is from the curse and what is from the physical blows.” Minerva spoke quickly and matter-of-factly, as if trying to maintain her own calm. “He is at Shell Cottage, where Mr. Thomas and Ms. Bones managed to return with him using one of your Portkeys.”

Hermione stood up dizzily, shrugging off Minerva’s hands. “Okay. I have to go, then.” She looked around for her wand, frowning, wondering vaguely where her stupid beaded bag was.

Minerva looked alarmed. “Hermione, absolutely not. I’m so sorry, but you cannot.”  

Her head whipped around. “What? What do you mean, I cannot? Minerva, Ron is—Ron is dying, that’s what you’re telling me, and I have to go—”

The other woman shook her head urgently. “Hermione, I do not believe he is dying. I swear it. And you have to understand our situation. If you were to disappear right now, if Daphne were to disappear, there would be no way to explain how she left the castle, let alone why. Particularly immediately after a skirmish between the two sides. Astoria is still here as well, and she would be in further danger. And you cannot help Ron or anyone else by leaving. But you can help here. You are helping here, Hermione.”

Her face was grim. “This is how this works, I’m afraid.”

Hermione stared dumbly at her. Ron. Ron, who she had maybe loved once and who she missed terribly like there was a hole in her heart. Ron, who was lying there, hurt, and broken, and who didn’t even know that she knew or wanted to come. Who was annoying, and irritating, and charming, and could be a blundering idiot, and who had dove in front of his friends to protect them just like he would have done for her.

She deflated. “I know,” she whispered. “I know that.” Hermione crumpled back onto the sofa, her head in her hands. “I just… what will he think when he wakes up and I’m not there?”

Minerva looked sadly at her. “He will know, as we all do, that you are sacrificing as much as the rest of us. You are doing your duty so that we can all be here for a day when these sacrifices are not needed.”

She closed her eyes and felt the other woman sit down beside her and take her hand. They sat there, not speaking, for a long while, until Hermione found the energy to rise. She kissed the older woman on the cheek softly and made to leave.

“Thank you, Minerva,” she said quietly. “You didn’t have to tell me. Dumbledore… others may have kept it from me. I am glad that is not your way.”

Hermione thought she saw a tear gather in Minerva’s eye before the witch blinked steadily and nodded at her.

“I gave you my word.”

Hermione nodded back and left, her steps echoing in the empty hallway and in her pounding head.

…

When she returned to the dormitory, her thoughts far away in a safehouse with a redheaded boy she missed so much it hurt, she didn’t register at first that Malfoy was in the common room. He looked up at her entrance, and her face must have shown her devastation because his own expression immediately darkened.

“What’s happened?” His words eerily echoed her own first words to Minerva earlier.

She managed to draw herself back to reality long enough to realize that she shouldn’t have let Malfoy see that she was upset in the first place. She had no way to explain her sudden despair, and there was some horrible chance that Malfoy knew about the Death Eaters’ fight with her friends. That he’d had some similar conversation with Snape or the Carrows as she’d had with Minerva just that same day, only in reverse, cursing the capture of their allies and celebrating the potentially successful attack on a blood traitor Weasley.

Fury suddenly coursed through her, the rage replacing her fear and sadness in an intensely satisfying fashion. This boy—this person—how could she have forgotten the reason she was here even for a minute and let herself believe he was redeemable? That maybe he wasn’t really what she had thought?

Ron. Ron had almost died. Ron could still die. And Malfoy probably wanted him to.

They stared across the room at each other, Malfoy’s brow furrowed in confusion and trepidation, and Hermione’s face and chest beginning to flush with righteous anger. The concern of giving herself away was suddenly very far from her mind.

“What’s happened?” she snapped. “What do you think has happened, Draco?”

He continued looking at her warily, standing from his seat on the window cushion and walking toward her with his hands out, palms facing up, as if gesturing that he was trying to calm her.

The movement infuriated her further. Hermione could feel her shoulders shaking and she clenched her hands to stop them from doing the same.

“I can’t stand to look at you sometimes,” she spat.

Malfoy froze. She watched with detached satisfaction as a flurry of emotions crossed his face before his usual cold indifference reappeared.

“Well, you’re not the only one who feels that way.” His voice was harsh but his face had that stupid fucking mask back again. She wanted to slap it off, or worse.

“All these years. You thought it was some kind of game. You fucking idiot,” she choked out furiously.

The mask remained but his eyes burned her. “Don’t you think I know that.”

It wasn’t a question. He’d moved toward her again quicker than she noticed, getting too close, so close that his height was forcing her to look up at him again. She shoved back at his chest with both of her hands and let out a growl of frustration and pain, but he was too fast, grabbing her wrists and pinning them to his chest between them.

“I know that I am a fucking idiot, Daphne.”

She could tell she was about to cry in earnest now, the beginning of hot, angry tears obscuring her vision. “Then fucking do something, Malfoy. Do anything!”

The switch to his family name made his face flicker again with some undefined emotion. He still gripped her wrists tightly, his fingers so long they wrapped all the way around, and she felt small and sad and flustered and angry and too warm.

“I’m trying,” he hissed. “I’m trying to keep you, and my family, and the other fucking idiots around here alive. Don’t you get that? I don’t give a flying fuck about anything or anyone else other than the very short list of people that I care about making it through this shit alive somehow. And like it or not, you are on that fucking list whether you hate me or not.”

Hermione’s anger was temporarily suspended, supplanted by ripples of shock. This brutal display of emotion and fear was the most honest thing she’d seen from Malfoy in the entire time she had been here, and it was completely at odds with her dark thoughts from minutes before imagining him celebrating Ron’s potential demise with his fellow Death Eaters.

“Malfoy—I—I don’t—”

He stared down at her, eyes still burning. “Just shut up. I don’t know what the fuck has gotten into you tonight but it’s fucking annoying.”

Her heart was pounding, from his outburst and from the realization that she still didn’t have, couldn’t give, an explanation for her own extreme behavior and had come very close to giving herself away. He was still so close and she could feel his uneven breath ghosting across her lips, the sensation sending a foreign jolt through her body. Up close, his lashes were longer and darker than she had noticed, and he kept staring at her with those grey eyes—

She blinked. Whatever charged moment they had been caught up in broke, and he dropped her wrists, shifting back. His face was already shuttering further and she could see from the slow rise and fall of his chest that he was working to get his own anger back under control.

“You should go to bed,” he said quietly, not looking at her anymore. “It’s late.” And with that, he picked up the book he’d been reading from the window seat and pushed past her into his own room.

His arm brushed against hers for a brief moment as he did. It burned where he had touched her as she shook herself and walked slowly to her own door.

…

Malfoy didn’t mention their heated encounter again. The next morning, his room was already empty when she woke, there was tea waiting for her in the kitchenette, and at breakfast in the Great Hall, he greeted her with the same cordial indifference as he did everyone else most days.

But over the next few days, she felt his eyes on her frequently. When she caught him staring and met his gaze, he never bothered to look away.

Sometimes his face was closed off and sometimes creased as if in deep thought. Once, when they were sitting in the Slytherin common room watching Blaise and Theo play chess for the millionth time and sipping firewhiskey that Theo had again mysteriously produced from nowhere, it was searching, intense, blazing again with a ferocity that scared her so much Hermione looked away quickly and couldn’t bring herself to look at him again the rest of the night.

There was no way Malfoy knew who she was.

The whole idea was so preposterous that there was really no way he could find out unless he somehow literally caught her in the act of making the switch. But the unshakeable feeling that he knew something, suspected something, made her so nauseous she found she couldn’t take another sip of her firewhiskey that night.

Chapter Text

November 1997

“Something odd is going on with Theo,” Hermione complained as she alternated restlessly between sitting on her bed and hovering over Pansy’s shoulder.  “He’s ignoring me and I don’t know what I’m supposed to have done.” 

There had been an incident at breakfast that morning, where she had asked Theo to pass the toast rack and he had simply stared at her for so long without moving that the rest of them had stopped talking to watch her awkwardly holding a raised hand between the table.  The night before, Theo had been the only one to decline Hermione’s offer to move to the Head dorm when it had become too raucous in the Slytherin common room to study due to an overly exuberant group of fourth years playing Exploding Snap. 

Discussing Theo’s odd behavior with Pansy perhaps wasn’t her best plan, but she also wanted to know if there was more to it than Theo’s usual strangeness—like any suspicion he might have mentioned to Pansy or any of the others. 

“Honestly, I think it’s more about what you haven’t done.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Pansy leveled Hermione with a look, one that was clearly supposed to convey something, but exactly what escaped her. 

“Am I supposed to have apologized for something?”  Hermione ventured, even more confused.

“You really are an idiot sometimes,” Pansy snipped, turning back to Hermione’s wardrobe with a roll of her eyes and resuming her rapid discarding of half of the potential options onto the bed.

A headache was forming behind Hermione’s right eye, and she was pretty sure if one more Slytherin called her an idiot that week she was going to either smash through one of these stupid aquarium windows and drown herself in the lake or throw the offending Slytherin underwater instead.  Both seemed like equally reasonable options at the moment. 

Instead, she sighed and stepped over to where Pansy was now eyeing her shoes distastefully.  “Have you quite finished insulting me?”

Pansy’s nose wrinkled as she gingerly held up a pair of simple black ballet flats. “Daphne, have you always had so many… practical shoes? I cannot believe your mother would have let you return to school with these, as distracted as she might have been. And I have certainly never allowed you to buy anything like this when we’ve shopped together.”

“Apparently not, then,” Hermione grumbled. Pansy had a point, though. She and Daphne had argued this point at length over the summer, Daphne insisting adamantly that her choice of footwear was going to be the key to Hermione’s downfall at Hogwarts. Hermione had insisted that the key to her downfall was going to be falling flat on her face attempting to wear Daphne’s ridiculous towering heels around a fucking castle with a million staircases and uneven cobblestone floors.

The resulting compromise, if it could be called that, had been Daphne’s purge and replacement of Hermione’s preferred worn-in, comfortable footwear (mostly Muggle sneakers, she admitted begrudgingly) with countless pairs of low-slung leather pumps, pointed flats, and beautiful suede ankle boots that must have each cost more than Hermione’s entire wardrobe previously. Other shoes that had not been agreed upon between the two of them had until now been left shoved to the back of Hermione's closet, untouched. 

Apparently, however, even Pansy could tell the difference between the shoes Hermione had been favoring for weeks among her new options and Daphne’s normal style. “You look like a peasant.” 

At least she hadn’t said Mudblood, Hermione thought darkly, snatching the shoes from Pansy’s hands. “Fine,” she growled.  “I’m sorry if I haven’t been in the mood to play dress-up when there’s a bloody war—”

The look on Pansy’s face shut Hermione up instantly. In her annoyance, she had forgotten momentarily that no one around here used anything close to the word “war” in their carefully orchestrated attempt to pretend like everything was normal. 

Hermione sighed quietly and conceded, offering Pansy the flats back in an attempt at a peace offering. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired. Pick whatever shoes you want.”

Actually, she was exhausted. In the days since Ron had been hurt, Hermione had largely given up sleeping, opting instead to roam the corridors with the Marauder’s Map after-hours, trying out increasingly complicated charms she found in the Restricted Section in books related to curse-breaking and wards on random parts of the castle, spells that should, theoretically, reveal ancient traces of magic. After running into dead ends with all of her founder-related research, she was now resorting to some desperate hope that some secret of Hogwarts would reveal itself and a Horcrux would magically appear. Even Hermione was not really impressed with herself at the moment. 

All of this had culminated in Pansy, as usual, insisting a social break was warranted. Unfortunately, this time it coincided with a weekend where students were actually being permitted to go to Hogsmeade, something that had startled Hermione with its air of normalcy when it was announced.  She had assumed, for some reason, that the students were basically hostages in the castle at the moment—she certainly felt like one—but now she supposed Hogsmeade may have been under Death Eater control at this point as well. The thought made her feel hollow. She was dreading the excursion, despite the warring temptation of any possible contact with the outside world and her own people.

Pansy emerged suddenly from the wardrobe, holding a pair of heeled boots and an alarmingly short cashmere sweater dress. “Let’s go. The boys will be waiting,” she declared briskly.

“Pansy, it’s November in Scotland—” Hermione tried to protest. Pansy rolled her eyes and added an extremely expensive-looking, and not at all warm-looking, wool cloak to the bundle she was thrusting at Hermione.

“Yes, and you are a witch. Get dressed.”

…

The walk to Hogsmeade felt surreal. Hermione trailed behind the others, unsure still if Theo was going to speak to her today or not. Half of her mind was still turning over her earlier conversation with Pansy. She had a feeling Theo's behavior had nothing to do with her (or at least her behavior over the last couple of months) and everything to do with the real Daphne. Daphne had said that she'd never told Pansy about how she felt because Pansy would have tried to interfere. Knowing Pansy better at this point, Hermione was sympathetic to this fear.

They were approaching the village now. Even before they reached the first building on the High Street, Hermione’s heart sank. Several shops were dark and boarded up, including Zonko’s, the bookstore, and the greengrocer’s. Darkly dressed figures were stationed outside of the post office and Hermione sped up as they walked past, not wanting to draw attention or linger near them. Though there were several other students on the street, mostly older ones who’d braved the trip, almost none of the village's residents seemed to be out and about.

Pansy’s face had gone tense, her earlier enthusiasm clearly waning quickly. She stopped abruptly when they got to the Three Broomsticks and gestured roughly toward the pub. “I think—let’s just have a drink, shall we?”

Theo, Blaise, and Hermione nodded quickly and followed her in.

Madam Rosmerta, looking thinner and moving slower than Hermione had ever seen her, like she was wary of something, narrowed her eyes at them as they walked by the bar. Lightheaded, Hermione realized why Malfoy had declined to come, citing something vague about catching up on potions reading.

The four of them shuffled into a table near the back and Hermione looked around warily. From their vantage point, she thought she might be able to eavesdrop on at least two of the tables nearby, both of which seated unfamiliar wizards conversing lowly as they sipped their drinks.

“Butterbeers?” Blaise asked, not waiting for an answer before he headed back toward the bar.

Theo and Pansy started up a conversation about the Charms lesson they’d had the day before, where Professor Flitwick had announced they would begin learning how to construct certain wards. Hermione had felt slightly disappointed, considering she’d mastered not only casting but creating her own wards nearly two years ago, but it was at least heartening to see other students learning protection spells rather than the horrifying curses that Carrow was still having them practice in Dark Arts classes.

Hermione sipped the butterbeer Blaise handed her upon his return and pretended to listen to the other three talk. Next to their table, a short wizard with tufted hair and glassy eyes was whispering, much louder than he must have thought he was, to his companion, who looked similarly drunk and was avidly listening.

“—and nowhere left to buy a wand, not with Ollivander’s gone—”

She frowned and strained to hear more than the snatches of conversation floating their way.

“—not like you can walk around without seeing those awful gangs of Snatchers everywhere anyway—”

“—besides, the Ministry has gone to shit at this point, so it’s not like anyone’s left there who’s not under their thumb—”

“Daphne.” Hermione swiveled her head back around and realized Pansy had been calling her name.  “We’re discussing Draco.”

The other three were eyeing her as if it was her turn to say something, but she had no idea what about Malfoy they were discussing, which could have been, if you asked Hermione, about one million different things. “Oh,” she replied lamely. 

Pansy rolled her eyes. “We’re discussing the mood that Draco has been in all week.”

Ah. That was fair. While Hermione had turned to haunting the halls of Hogwarts looking for Horcruxes that, at this point, she felt may not even exist, Malfoy had retreated even further after their fight. He made appearances at meals, in the Slytherin common room, and at classes. But other than feeling his eyes on her, Hermione hadn’t interacted with him directly in days, and she didn’t think the others had either. He was silent, and brooding, even more than usual for a person who was particularly prone to brooding. 

She picked at the nail on her index finger, which, in an un-Daphne-like fashion, she had bitten down to a stub that week. “He has been a bit distant,” Hermione agreed finally.

“Look,” Pansy declared, sipping her own drink as if it were fine wine and not a mug of lukewarm butterbeer that tasted like Madam Rosmerta had tapped a keg weeks ago and not received enough customers to finish. “I know Draco has… other things going on right now, but maybe he just needs to get laid.”

Hermione felt herself blush immediately and gulped her own drink. Theo snorted into his glass while Blaise simply arched an eyebrow at Pansy. 

“Pansy, darling, while I am in full support of any of us getting laid, I hardly think Draco’s mood is going to improve from a quick shag. You would know.” Blaise’s last words were accompanied by a meaningful look that made Pansy scowl.

“Yes, well, perhaps that didn’t work so well last year, but I’m not exactly a candidate right now anyway.” Pansy sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Not a candidate?” Theo suddenly engaged in the conversation again, grinning wickedly at Pansy from across the table and gesturing with his mug as if he wanted her to continue. “Please, do tell.”

A quick shower of sparks flung from Pansy’s hand and hit Theo in the nose, who winced and rubbed at his reddening face. “Many reasons,” she replied threateningly.

Blaise rolled his eyes. “This is irrelevant. We all know Draco has way too many feelings to work out whatever’s got his wand in a knot by trying to have a meaningless lay. He’d end up even moodier, worrying he needed to propose to the witch immediately or she’d be devastated.”

Theo and Pansy snickered and Hermione tried to smile as if she understood what they were talking about. It seemed like every day Malfoy became more of a mystery to her, which wasn’t reassuring when theoretically she was supposed to be spying on him. Although learning he felt too much angst about casual sex to lead a woman on wasn’t exactly a revelation that was particularly relevant to her mission.  She shook her head and tried her hardest not to think about Malfoy having sex any longer. 

“Well,” Pansy conceded, draining the rest of her butterbeer, “I still think something’s got to give.  I don’t want a repeat of last year’s Draco.”

The two boys shared a grimace.  Without any further discussion, Theo rose from his seat beside Hermione and made his way to the bar to refill their drinks. 

“Daphne,” Blaise said, turning his dark eyes toward her thoughtfully.  “You see him the most now.”

Hermione froze and averted her eyes from his. Was there a question she was supposed to answer? 

“And you’ve always been better at getting him to actually tell you anything,” Pansy added, rounding on her as well. 

Across the room, Theo was leaning against the bar and waiting for Madam Rosmerta to return from the storeroom in the back. The two wizards whispering at the table closest to them were standing to leave, each throwing down a handful of coins and casting furtive looks around as if they had been up to something more suspicious than just sharing a drink at the local pub. 

Hermione forced herself to look back at Pansy and Blaise across the table. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she finally replied. “Mal—Draco has been quiet in our dorm as well, but nothing else unusual has happened.”

The other two lapsed into a thoughtful silence as Theo returned with four butterbeers, which still looked flat and mildly unappealing. Hermione gulped hers down faster than strictly necessary and tried to think about anything other than Ron lying in safehouse re-growing his organs, or Draco Malfoy skulking around the castle analyzing the words she’d shouted at him last week in anger, or the distressing snippets of conversation she had overheard from the other patrons at the pub.

…

The depressing Hogsmeade outing had dampened everyone’s mood after they got back to the castle, and no one mentioned Malfoy’s particular sullenness for the next few days. Hermione tried to curtail her late-night wanderings, given their utter lack of success and her increasing exhaustion, but between the gloomy mood that seemed to have overtaken all of the seventh years and Malfoy’s continued absence from their shared sitting room, she found herself unable to stay still in the evenings alone. 

It only took another week before she slipped up so badly that she accidentally fell asleep in the middle of the dorm after returning from class one evening and attempting to start a Transfiguration essay instead of continuing researching or searching. 

Hermione woke gasping, a freckled hand just slipping through her grasp as a green flash of light bloomed beneath her eyelids. Something heavy was tangled around her arms and legs, and she was hot, too hot, and the struggle to get free of whatever the weight was made her alarm grow even further. 

“Hey.” A voice sounded from somewhere above her and the room began to swim into focus, blonde and grey replacing red and green. A blanket. It was just a blanket covering her, she realized, trying to calm herself.  One she didn’t remember being under when she had fallen asleep on the sofa.

“Malfoy,” she croaked. Rapidly, her awareness was returning. Malfoy was staring down at her, hovering with a look of concern that seemed greater than the situation warranted, even to her still sleep-addled brain.

“I came back, and you were…” he trailed off, brow furrowed. 

Hermione’s panic suddenly began to spike again as she remembered why she was careful never to fall asleep on the couch. How long had she been out?  She wrenched her arm free of the blasted blanket and blinked at her hand. Daphne’s hand. Still Daphne’s hand. 

“You don’t look great,” Malfoy was finishing.

Scowling, Hermione dropped her arm back onto the sofa as if she hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary and began struggling to sit up properly. Before she could get very far, Malfoy quickly placed his hands on her shoulders and gently stopped her from leaving her reclined position.

“Daphne, I’m serious,” he said, in fact sounding very solemn. “This is the first time I’ve seen you get any sleep in days. And you’re rather—” He looked puzzled. “Your skin is quite warm. Are you feeling alright?”

No, she felt like saying, obviously she was not feeling alright.

In a desperate moment two days before, she had even dug the charmed Galleon out of the concealed bottom of her trunk and tried to think of a safe message to send. She stalled for longer than felt reasonable, but holding the Galleon, feeling the solid grooves digging into her hand, and knowing Harry and Ron were conceivably on the other end, was calming. A small part of her was too terrified that no one would answer, or that the answer would be worse, despite Minerva’s assurances earlier that same day that she would have been told if Ron’s condition had worsened.

Is he OK? The words felt too small as she pressed her thumb into the gold surface and felt it heat.

There was no answer for several minutes, during which Hermione thought she might not have breathed. Finally, warmth flared in her hand again and a single word scrawled across the surface of the coin.

Yes.

It vanished after a moment and writing appeared again.

Are you OK?

The words made her cry harder than she had since Minerva had told her about the battle.  Hermione forced herself to press once more on the Galleon.

Yes.

Hermione realized Malfoy was squeezing her shoulder again to get her attention.

“I’m fine,” she said automatically.

Malfoy sat back on his heels, his eyebrows shooting up. Disturbingly, she noted that his height made him tower over her even from his current stance crouched beside her. 

“You are very clearly not fine,” he replied, tone slipping into haughty territory. “This is the first time I’ve seen you outside of classes, or when you deign to grace us with your presence during the occasional meal, in at least a week.”

Hermione opened her mouth to retort that he had also been avoiding them, but undermined herself by slipping into a sneezing fit. 

“See?” Malfoy exclaimed, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket—seriously, out of his pocket, he didn’t even have to conjure it?—and passing it to her delicately.

He arched an eyebrow at her suspiciously. “And why haven’t you gone to Pomfrey for a Pepper-Up Potion? Not that I approve of you substituting that for actual sleep, but the situation seems rather dire at this point.”

It took a lot for Hermione not to bring up Malfoy’s own lack of attention to his wellbeing the previous year, but she refrained, finding in spite of herself that his fussing was sort of endearing. 

Hermione blew her nose noisily into the handkerchief, which was, of course, monogrammed with a cursive “M” on one side in green silk.  The eye roll that this prompted couldn’t be helped, but she thought she managed to hide it well enough behind the cloth. 

“I don’t know,” she mumbled.  “I suppose I may feel a bit run-down.”

“I can walk you to the hospital wing if you want—”

“No!” she blurted. Malfoy had already been getting to his feet and looked back at her in confused surprise. “I mean, I’m so tired, I think it’s probably best I just sleep it off at this point.” Hermione was fairly certain Madam Pomfrey was capable of seeing through Polyjuice Potion when running her diagnostic spells, and that was not a conversation she wanted to have tonight.

“That’s absurd, Daph, you look awful.”

“Thanks, that’s flattering.”

He sighed in exasperation. “Will you at least let me make you some dinner or something, then?”

“Really?” she said skeptically.

“Well,” he blushed faintly, “I can make the tea. As for the soup, I will probably have to pop to the kitchens or call an elf.”

Hermione couldn’t help but laugh at that. “I will accept the tea.”

“And the soup?” he asked hopefully, moving toward the kitchen.

She rolled her eyes. “Let’s not bother the elves this late. Can you handle toast?”

“Yes!” Malfoy beamed at her and swung open a cabinet enthusiastically to rummage for bread.

A few minutes later, he was nudging her legs over on the sofa, holding a plate of buttered toast and a steaming mug of chamomile tea in his hands.

She sat up against the pillows on the side of the couch and accepted the tea gratefully. “Thank you, Draco.”

“You’re very welcome,” he replied, settling her legs on top of his so he could sit beside her.  She tried valiantly not to pay attention to how warm his thighs felt underneath her and busied herself with grabbing a piece of toast.  “So do you want to tell me why you’ve forgone sleep and food recently?”

Hermione chewed her toast slowly. “I think maybe…”  Her eyes flicked up to him and back down to her toast, choosing her words carefully. “I think that everything that’s been in the papers lately has just been getting to me.” 

Malfoy picked at a loose thread on the blanket that still covered her legs. “That’s understandable,” he replied quietly. 

“I’ll get a Pepper-Up in the morning,” she offered. Or Minerva could get one for her or something.

He shook his head, still looking down. “I’ll brew you one tonight.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said softly. 

“I’d like to.”

Their eyes met. “Okay. Thanks.”

He held her gaze. “You’re welcome.”

Hermione sipped her tea as they lapsed into silence and tried to think of something to change the subject to less loaded territory. “So, do you think Pansy likes Neville?”

He chuckled, and shifted beneath her, stretching his legs out under the table in front of the sofa.  “I think that I’m not supposed to comment on that subject ever again.”

“You can comment to me.”

“Well, if she does, I wish Longbottom luck.”

Hermione made a feeble attempt to kick at his leg with one of hers, which was still trapped under the blanket. “Don’t be rude.”

“I’m not,” he laughed, grabbing her feet and trapping both of them with one hand so her kicking was forced to stop. “Pansy could chew Longbottom up and spit him out.”

“I think she might like him,” she murmured.

Malfoy opened his mouth to reply but caught her trying to suppress a yawn. “I think it’s time for you to get some sleep that doesn’t take place on this sofa,” he said instead. He swung her legs off the sofa and offered her his hand.

“Eight hours.  I will accept nothing less.”

After a pause, she clasped his hand and allowed herself to be tugged up to a standing position.  “I make no promises.”

He rolled his eyes and sent her empty plate and mug over to the kitchen with a wandless wave of his hand. Hermione realized in turn that she was still holding his ruined handkerchief and, blushing slightly, cast a quick Scourgify on it and held it out. He laughed again and tucked it back into his pocket. “Go on, then.”

Hermione took a few steps toward her room and looked back over her shoulder as she reached the threshold. Malfoy was leaning against his own door, with his arms crossed, watching her with one of his unreadable looks. She blinked at him and he straightened before turning to go inside his own bedroom. 

“See you in the morning, Greengrass.”

…

True to his word, there was a Pepper-Up Potion waiting for Hermione with her morning tea the following day.  She downed it obediently and, though she wasn’t inclined to admit it to Malfoy despite his thoughtfulness, immediately felt better than she had in days.

Malfoy seemed to have already left, as he usually did in the mornings before her, so she grabbed her schoolbag and headed toward the Great Hall. Maybe she just needed to reset, she mused as she walked. Stop doing what wasn’t working—including running herself ragged casting draining spells on random parts of the castle—and begin anew on research. She knew how to research. Surely she had missed something.

These thoughts were circling her mind as she settled absently between Malfoy and Theo on the bench of the Slytherin table. Across from her, Pansy was sipping tea and holding a morning edition of the Daily Prophet, folded to show only a quarter of the front page.  Hermione began buttering a piece of toast and surreptitiously glanced at the headlines as she always did when one of the other students received the paper.

The knife she was holding clattered to the table with a sharp crash. Hermione barely noticed, her eyes fixed on the paper held in Pansy’s hands, the words jumping out at her as if they were being screamed at her. 

MINISTRY TERRORIZED:  WANTED CRIMINALS AND HALF-BREEDS ATTACK INNOCENT GOVERNMENT WORKERS!

The blood was ringing in her ears and Hermione fought to focus. Pansy had lowered the paper now and was looking at her curiously, as was Blaise from his vantage point across the table. She was too terrified to look to her right at Malfoy. 

“Pansy,” Hermione thought her voice sounded very far away, even as she fought to keep it calm.  “What’s this article on the front page of your paper?”

Pansy set her tea down and looked at Hermione imperceptibly. Slowly, she unfolded the paper another quarter and handed it to Hermione. “I suppose there was some sort of attempted attack on the Ministry,” she said lightly. 

Hermione accepted the paper with shaking hands and tried not to look outwardly as desperate for information as she felt. She scanned the article quickly, realizing immediately how much of it was rubbish and trying to discern anything useful.

…Ministry workers feared for their lives Monday morning when known lawbreakers Harry Potter, Remus Lupin, and Nymphadora Tonks staged an attack which spanned several floors of the government headquarters, injuring multiple innocent bystanders and disrupting the operations of hundreds of employees…

…The terrorists were unable to achieve whatever their goal may have been, as nothing was reported missing or stolen from the Ministry after their ransacking, and all Ministry employees have been accounted for…  

…Arthur Weasley, known to have consorted with Undesirable No. 1 in the past, has been taken in for questioning related to the break-in…

Hermione flipped the page in horror and then, with even greater shock, saw something that somehow felt even more disturbing.  

Accompanying the article, alongside pictures of Lupin, Tonks, and Harry, was a picture of herself.  Below, “Undesirable No. 2” was written in bold lettering. 

The Hermione in the photo stared up at her with a scared but defiant look, hair tangled and floating down around her shoulders, eyes darting back and forth as if watching for someone who may come up behind her. 

Hermione thought she might vomit. She shoved the paper back at Pansy and dug her nails into her hands, which she hid in her lap. 

The others weren’t speaking. She thought she felt Theo shift closer to her, and his warmth grounded her for a moment. Hermione focused on the feeling of pain in her hands from her nails and the solidness of Theo’s thigh pressing into hers and counted to four again, and again.

When she was able to focus again, Pansy and Blaise were whispering tersely to each other. Pansy was half-twisted in her seat and looking across the hall. Hermione realized that at the Gryffindor table, Ginny and Neville were huddled together, a paper between them as well, looks of grave concern etched on both of their faces. She chanced a glance at Malfoy and recoiled instinctively when she saw how blank and cold his eyes looked.

“Seems like a lot of talk about nothing.” Blaise’s voice sounded forced when he finally spoke, Hermione watching as he and Pansy also seemed to take in Malfoy’s distant gaze and reposition themselves into neutral, normal stances. 

“Yes,” Pansy added in a clipped voice. “Nothing stolen, no one seriously hurt. Honestly, that Skeeter woman has been giving me a migraine since fourth year.”

Blaise made a noise of agreement and they both seemed to make a show of returning to their breakfasts. Theo continued pressing against her, a solid weight as she floated adrift.

It was only when she was sitting in Transfiguration hours later, next to Theo again and calmed by the soothing tones of Minerva’s familiar voice, that she realized something.

If Harry, Lupin, and Tonks had been spotted at the Ministry, they must have finally made a play for the locket. 

Chapter Text

November 1997

The news that Harry and the others had potentially gotten their hands on Slytherin’s locket, combined with Minerva’s recent update that Ron was fully recovered and itching to get back into the field, served to jolt Hermione out of the funk she had been wallowing in. 

Researching the founders’ history in the library had led her essentially nowhere, but a stroke of genius—if she did say so herself—had led her to wonder if she could find the founders’ portraits somewhere in Hogwarts.  She’d never seen any of them, which was only now striking her as odd.  Perhaps, though, if she could ask Helga Hufflepuff or Rowena Ravenclaw about their lives, this would be infinitely easier. 

There had never been a portrait of Gryffindor in her own common room, nor was Slytherin’s in the dungeons, so Hermione felt it unlikely Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff were hanging out chatting with their own students in their respective quarters.  The headmaster’s study was a reasonable place to consider, but she’d been in there before and felt she would have noticed, or Harry, who’d obviously spent way too much time being lectured or otherwise confused in that room, would’ve mentioned it.  Hogwarts, A History, was annoyingly silent on the matter, too. 

Hermione spent a few nights looking closely at the walls of the Great Hall, the entrance hall, and other prominent parts of the castle, just to ensure she hadn’t missed something in the past six or so years.  This resulted only in more near run-ins with the Carrows, who fortunately were as stupid as they were belligerent. They never noticed her under a Disillusionment Charm, nor did their lackeys, which included the unpleasant cast of Crabbe, Goyle, and Millicent Bulstrode, who apparently didn’t feel the need to abide by curfew any longer and found it more entertaining to find younger students to bully in the halls in the evening. 

Her next tactic was to appeal to the portrait of Merlin that guarded the entrance to her and Malfoy's dorm.  Hermione spent days flattering him incessantly whenever she returned home, complimenting his star-spangled robes and wizened looks, even tolerating his blatantly sexist commentary about the scandal of modern witches using magic invented by wizards without even being married. 

After this baseline had been firmly established, she sidled up to the portrait after dinner one night and asked, as innocently as possible, if he had ever encountered any of the founders in one of the other paintings in Hogwarts.  To her immense disappointment, after a long rant about how Godric Gryffindor had been a foolish little man that waved around a fancy sword far too often for someone who had never fought in a battle, he informed her that he had never encountered any of the four in portrait form, for which he was quite glad. 

Hermione scowled and only managed to offend him further by asking if there were any other portraits around that might be more useful, at which point he refused to speak with her further.  In recent days, she was lucky if he deigned to swing the door open so she could get inside her rooms. 

Slightly grumpy after this disappointing and abrupt end to her newest plan, Hermione dropped her things on the table she and Malfoy used to study and turned toward the kitchen with the hope of stealing something chocolate from the stash of sweets she knew Malfoy hid from her before he returned. 

Hermione had gotten settled comfortably on the sofa and was vanishing the wrapper of a Chocolate Frog that had greatly improved her mood by the time her roommate finally made an appearance.  With only a nod acknowledging her presence, Malfoy collapsed in the armchair next to her, limbs sprawled out and eyes shut tight.  He looked as if he wanted to fall asleep and never wake up again. 

“Draco?” Hermione asked tentatively.  “Are you… alright?”

He didn’t open his eyes for a long moment.  “No,” he finally replied shortly.  “I’m not.” 

He straightened, spine lengthening and body shifting to face her, though with a deliberate weariness that made him seem a hundred years older than his seventeen years. 

He forced a smile.  “But it’s nothing that can be fixed tonight.”  Glancing toward the book in her lap, Malfoy reached over and picked up the mug sitting on the table between them.  “What are you reading?”

“Oh—” Hermione froze suddenly, realizing she was in a decidedly un-Daphne-like position, curled casually on one end of the sofa in her favorite flannel pajamas and reading a Muggle novel, of all things.  “Um, nothing important.  Just… nothing.” 

Draco frowned mildly at her odd discomfort.  He took a casual sip from her mug, and then his frown deepened even further.  “Daph, is this coffee?”  He grimaced and looked accusingly at her.  “Since when do you drink coffee?”

Panic flooded her again.  She’d grown too comfortable here, somehow, so much so that she had forgotten the most basic and minute piece of information on the long list of Daphne Facts that she kept written down on a charmed piece of parchment in her trunk and had memorized months ago, to Daphne’s own amusement.

Likes:

Tea with three sugars and no milk

Cauldron cakes

Charms class

Vacations in southern France

Her sister Astoria

Theodore Nott

Dislikes:

Coffee

Sausages

Potions class

Open-toed sandals

People who used the word “smashing”

And so on. 

“Right.  Well.  I called down to the kitchens for some more tea but they were… out.”  Hermione cringed inwardly at the words coming out of her mouth.  Hermione Granger may have switched between coffee and tea depending on how much caffeine she needed at the moment, but Daphne Greengrass certainly did not. 

Draco’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief.  “The house elves were… out of tea?  In the entire castle?  Just like that?”

“Yes,” Hermione replied more firmly.  “Some sort of mishap with Peeves.  I’m sure it’ll be fixed by breakfast tomorrow.”  She shut her book behind her knees and tried to shove it discreetly down the side of the sofa so Draco couldn’t see the cover.  He was still eyeing her like she’d hit her head and he was half-tempted to take her to the hospital wing. 

“Peeves,” he echoed disbelievingly.

“Yes,” Hermione sniffed.  “Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with trying new things.”

Malfoy gave her a long, searching look that did nothing to settle her nerves.  “Yes,” he replied quietly.  “I suppose that’s true.” 

“Where have you been, anyway?”  Hermione asked, eager to draw the conversation further from her ridiculous lie. 

“I was with Theo,” Malfoy answered vaguely, expression returning to his familiar and frustrating neutral default.

Hermione was fairly certain that wasn’t true, since Blaise and Theo had been heading to the library to work on an Arithmancy assignment when they had left dinner after Malfoy. But she was also fairly certain Malfoy wasn’t going to be any more forthcoming tonight than he normally was. She said nothing and picked up her controversial mug of coffee again.

“Merlin’s portrait was pretty riled up when I got back,” Malfoy commented suddenly.  He arched a brow at her.  “Would you know anything about that?”

“He’s always riled up about something,” Hermione replied, making a valiant attempt to keep her voice breezy.  “Probably visited that portrait on the third floor with the female knight again and got excited shouting about the chivalric code and how she was dishonoring it.”

“Hmm, probably.”  Malfoy stretched his neck from side to side, a satisfying-sounding crack echoing between them. He looked slightly less wearied. “Sounded more like a Gryffindor had pissed him off somehow, though.”

Hermione feigned disinterest even as she winced internally.  Perhaps she should have figured out a way to charm Merlin into forgetting about her line of questioning, whether magically or through old-fashioned bribery. 

“Isn’t it you that’s always pissed off by Gryffindors?” she teased.

Malfoy rolled his eyes.  “They’re slightly more tolerable these days.”

Hermione wondered idly about the merits of bringing up Harry or Ron—or even, as surreal as it would feel, herself—just to see what he would say.  However, her already-stretched ethics made her feel guilty about leading Malfoy unknowingly into that conversational trap. 

“That’s high praise, coming from you,” she said instead. 

Malfoy narrowed his eyes at her.  “I will deny this if you ever tell anyone else,” he began threateningly, and her curiosity was piqued, “but I may have begun to think that the she-Weasel is occasionally… funny.”

Hermione burst out laughing.  “You think Ginny’s funny?!”

He frowned at her.  “Now I’m not sure if you’re insulting me or the she-Weasel—”

 “No!  I mean, I think Ginny is quite hilarious.”  She shook her head and tried to catch her breath, still giggling a little.  “I just…” Hermione had no way to articulate to Malfoy how absurd her own life felt right now, as she pretended to be Daphne Greengrass and chatted with Draco Malfoy in their shared common room about his admiration of Ginny Weasley.  “I never thought you’d admit something like that,” she finally finished.  

He shrugged.  “She does a very good impression of Severus getting hit with a Tickling Charm.  It’s quite amusing.”

Hermione snorted again.  “I think the inter-house mingling going on around here has reached a very alarming level.”

“I’m not saying let’s have her over for tea tomorrow night, Greengrass.”  He eyed her mug again.  “Or coffee.  I’m just making an observation.”

“Well, I just didn’t realize you’d been observing Ginny,” Hermione said, still too entertained to get concerned again about his fixation on her choice of beverage. 

He looked indignant.  “To be clear, I’m not observing the female Weasley.”

Her amusement faded quickly as it was replaced by familiar anger.  “Right.  Of course.  After all, she’s a Weasley,” Hermione replied, an edge creeping into her voice.

Now Malfoy had tensed.  “I may not be dying to marry into a family that includes the Boy Who Lived’s idiotic sidekick, who we’ve somehow been spared from this year,” he shot back, “but no, whatever you are implying, that’s not what I meant.”

His words about Ron stung more than she thought they would and she tried to stay calm.  This conversation, like so many of her interactions with Malfoy, felt like it was spinning out of her control.  “Then what did you mean?”

The challenging note in her voice seemed to aggravate him further.  “I just meant that I am not interested in Ginny Weasley.  For many reasons.”

They glared at each other for a moment.  Hermione wasn’t sure what they were supposed to be arguing about at this point, but she was suddenly extremely annoyed, and he looked equally irritated with her.

“Fine,” Hermione spat.  “She’s taken anyway.”

Malfoy froze.  She watched as his eyes clouded and his face went carefully blank, confusing her for a moment before horror slowly dawned on her.  What the fuck was she doing?  Discussing Ginny, and her relationship with Harry, with a fucking Death Eater like that wasn’t extremely dangerous information, whether or not Malfoy these days seemed apathetic, at best, about the war?

“I mean, I don’t know—” she began, unsure of what she was going to say to attempt to backtrack.

“I apologize, Daphne, I think I may have been rude this evening because of how tired I am,” he cut her off, tone measured and distantly polite.  Hermione stayed quiet and averted her eyes from his cold expression.  “I should get some rest.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With that, Malfoy gathered himself from the armchair and slipped into his bedroom, the door shutting firmly behind him, leaving Hermione with a knot in her stomach and the familiar feeling that she had understood only about twenty percent of whatever conversation she and Malfoy had just had.   

…

“You’ve been researching the founders.” 

Hermione had been so absorbed in the book she was reading—a text she hadn’t encountered before detailing the partial reconstruction of the castle after a particularly damaging magical experiment had gone awry and blown off half of the north tower—that she hadn’t heard Malfoy come in.  She jumped at his words, knocking over her half-empty mug of tea (properly prepared this time with three spoonfuls of sugar) and scattering quills, parchment, and books onto the floor as she instinctively tried to cover the contents of her notes.

Malfoy didn’t comment on her overreaction as he came around to stand beside her.  He was too close and she struggled to recover a neutral expression. 

Research texts were, in fact, still spread over the table, notes scattered around, confirming exactly what he had said.  She had gotten careless recently, spending so much time with him in their shared space that she had forgotten one of the reasons she had avoided it in the first place.  Lulled into a false sense of domesticity and friendship.  Idiot. 

“Yes,” she replied, her voice dry.  She swallowed.  “An extra credit assignment for History of Magic.” 

This was a terrible lie, and he must have known it immediately.  Binns was about the least likely professor to be willing to consider a voluntary extra credit assignment that would, ostensibly, require the ghost to further interact with a student, and Daphne had, to Hermione’s knowledge, never shown a particular interest in the subject in any case.

He didn’t call her out on this, however, just hummed thoughtfully and cast another look at her array of books before moving away. 

“I don’t recall Professor Binns assigning that one.”  His tone was even.  She resisted the urge to slam all of her books shut and physically throw her arms over her notes to shield them.

“Ah, right, well, I asked for the extra credit on my own.  You know me, couldn’t resist the extra homework.”  She could have slapped herself in the face.  That was not a Daphne thing to say.  That was, literally, a textbook Hermione Granger response.  Get your shit together, Hermione. 

Malfoy was standing across from her now, removing his robes and slowly sitting down in the wooden chair across from her.  She chanced a glance up at him.  His face was passive. 

“It’s an interesting topic,” he continued lightly.  “The castle was built with truly extraordinary magic.  And there are other examples of their work, that sound quite impressive.”  A pause.  “For instance, I see you’ve heard of Ravenclaw’s diadem.”

Hermione’s blood ran cold.  She did, in fact, have a sketch of the diadem on the table, partially obscured by her books, which had been drawn from the sketchy bits of information and legend she’d learned from Lupin and later found in the library. 

“It’s a fascinating object, but it’s probably not real,” she murmured.  “The manipulation of runes and level of arithmancy involved…”  Hermione trailed off, unsure how to deflect further discussion on the topic.  

Malfoy’s voice was light when he replied.  “And are you interested in the theory or also the more… practical aspects of the magic?”

Now her eyes shot up to his. 

Malfoy’s gaze was still unreadable.  His strange phrasing and the careful question made Hermione’s heart beat faster and she couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to say.  What could he possibly have known about the diadem?  And more importantly why was he bringing it up to her—to Daphne?

“Well,” she said slowly.  “I’ve always found it hard to truly grasp theory without also understanding the practical elements, that’s true.” 

This answer seemed to satisfy him.  “How fascinating,” he drawled, demeanor suddenly shifting.  “Some of us prefer to have fun in the evenings though, you know, rather than pile on optional research projects.”

Hermione just looked at him, confused suspicion still evident on her face.  The speed at which Malfoy could switch from impassive and cold to charming was exhausting.  Not charming.  Friendly.  Whatever. 

“How about a drink?” he continued, winking at her.  Winking at her?  He stood and rolled his sleeves up, moving toward the kitchenette off to the side of their living area. 

“Er,” she began, trying to discreetly start stuffing papers back into her bookbag. 

He rolled his eyes at her and grabbed a bottle of firewhiskey from the top of the cabinets where he’d cast a concealing charm in case the house elves decided to confiscate his stash while cleaning. 

“Greengrass.”  Two tumblers flew out of the other cabinet with a lazy flick of his wand.  “It’s Friday night, and it’s nine o’clock, and we’re eighteen years old with no adult supervision in what is essentially our own flat.”

Hermione blushed furiously.  That made it sound way too scandalous for her liking.  “You’re seventeen.”  She pointed out.

Malfoy rolled his eyes.  “Well, I feel about seventy-five sometimes,” he muttered. 

Hermione finished smuggling the notes and books back into her bag and stood up.  At least this might distract him from the topic of the diadem. 

“What are we drinking to?” she sighed.

A glass was shoved unceremoniously into her hand.  “Literally nothing,” he declared.  “Just drinking.”  He steered her toward one of the large sofas by the hearth.  “Sometimes drinking is just for the sake of drinking.”

It was still unreal to her that in only a few months she had gone from being mildly terrified of living with Draco Malfoy to sitting across from him, facing each other on a couch in a living room they shared, willingly about to get drunk and pondering how Malfoy seemed trapped these days, really, more than anything else.  Her heart clenched for a moment and she looked down at her drink sadly.

“Hey, now, Greengrass,” Malfoy said, frowning, and straightening up from where he had sprawled out to lounge with his back to one arm of the sofa across from her.  “None of that.  What do you have to mope about?”

She just took a sip of her drink, not looking away from his eyes.  His feet were almost close enough to graze the sides of her thighs.  Daphne’s thighs, she scolded herself. 

“I was just thinking that…” she hesitated.  “It’s nice to see you relax every once in a while.”

This sobered him up and she thought she might have said the wrong thing.  His jaw tightened but then, to her surprise, relaxed again.  “It’s been easier lately, with…”  He trailed off and seemed to consider her.  “With you here when I get back.” 

A faint blush had appeared on his cheeks and Hermione watched as he quickly took a gulp of his firewhiskey.  Instead of answering, she offered him a small smile and then busied herself with finishing her own drink.

…

Hermione straggled into the Great Hall for dinner, feeling honestly like she’d rather nap than eat.  Between her never-ending research, actual schoolwork, and the copious amounts of drinking the Slytherins seemed to do to cope with the insanity of attending boarding school while the world outside burned, she wasn’t exactly spending her nights catching up on sleep.  There was also the fun bonus of the new nightmares she had started having, the most recent of which involved different variations of Harry and Ron informing her that Hermione Granger had never existed as her parents watched with vacant expressions. 

“Where’s Draco?” she asked absently as she sat down.  Pansy narrowed her eyes and shrugged indifferently. 

As she reached for a roll, Hermione automatically looked toward the staff table like she always did when she came to meals.  She frowned.  After another scan of the room to make sure, she turned her attention more fully to Pansy, Theo, and Blaise.  Snape and both of the Carrows were missing, too. 

“Has anyone seen him since lunch?” she asked sharply. 

Blaise arched an eyebrow at her and shook his head.  “I haven’t either,” Pansy said, though as if she really didn’t understand why Hermione would care.  Theo met her eyes and frowned before slowly shaking his head as well.  She stared back at him, concern growing. 

“I’m going to—I’m really tired, actually, I think I’ll just eat something in my rooms and go to bed early.”  Hermione scrambled to her feet and grabbed her bag from where she’d set it only moments before. 

“Do you want company?”  Theo asked suddenly.  She couldn’t remember him offering to be alone with her the entire time she had been there, let alone recently.  He was still looking at her, frowning. 

“I—no, that’s alright, thank you, Theo,” Hermione replied.  Besides the fact that she didn’t need a shadow she couldn’t share her suspicions with, the idea of spending time alone with Theo unnerved her, frankly.   

He nodded slowly and she felt his eyes follow her out of the hall. 

…

When she got back to their dorms, she knocked on Malfoy’s door immediately, fist pounding in rapid succession.  There was no answer, and after a minute of nervous indecision, she tried opening it.  Of course, it was warded, just as hers was, and nothing she tried made it budge. 

Fuck.  Hermione paced across the sitting area, trying to think.  Snape, Malfoy, and the Carrows, all gone from the castle, potentially, at the same time.  Should she go to Minerva?  Was she being insane?  No, she told herself firmly, this was part of the reason she was here. 

Without stopping to second-guess herself further, Hermione flew back out of the dorm and nearly sprinted toward Minerva’s offices.  The older woman had been at dinner, and she would just have to wait her out. 

Minerva walked around the corridor about twenty minutes later, time in which Hermione had managed to imagine about ten thousand horrifying reasons all of the castle’s resident Death Eaters might have been summoned out together.  The look of anguish on Hermione’s face must have helped Minerva overcome her surprise quickly because she cast one sharp look and then ushered Hermione quickly into her office.

“What is it?” she asked without preamble.

“Minerva, Malfoy—he’s not—I don’t know where he is and I saw that Snape and the Carrows weren’t at dinner and I—”  Hermione’s words rushed out in a panic. 

A grim look had settled on Minerva’s face.  “It’s good that you came to tell me about Mr. Malfoy, Hermione.  But I did notice the absence of my colleagues”—she managed to drip disdain into the word even as she spoke rapidly—“and I have already alerted the Order.  I’m not sure there is much else you or I can do, unfortunately, but you are welcome to wait with me here for news if you prefer.”

Relief and anxiety coursed through Hermione together.  She tried to smile in thanks. 

“That’s all right.  I appreciate it, but as long as you promise to let me know as soon as—if you hear anything, I think I should go back to my rooms.  Maybe Malfoy will turn up.  Maybe it’s nothing.”

Minerva eyed her carefully.  “It may be nothing,” she repeated quietly, not sounding as if she believed it either.

…

Hermione walked slowly back to her dorm after that, dreading the reality of Malfoy’s absence.  She lingered outside the entrance to the Slytherin common room as she passed, wondering if she should try to distract herself instead by spending time with Pansy, or anyone. 

After a moment, she trudged on, only hesitating slightly as she spoke the password to the portrait of Merlin to open their door.  He merely gazed down at her in a haughty manner and she didn’t bother trying to ask if he had seen Malfoy. 

Of course, it was empty. 

She debated sleep, but admitted quickly that it wasn’t going to be possible anytime soon.  After some indecision, Hermione gathered her most recent finds from the library and sprawled out in front of the fireplace with her notes.  She set an alarm on her wand to wake her in time for additional doses of Polyjuice, regretting that she’d have to spend another night in Daphne’s form but too anxious to be alone in her bedroom.  She clutched a blanket around herself and hoped desperately that Malfoy would turn up and she'd have been wrong.  

…

Malfoy never appeared. 

Hermione had stayed awake late, then woken, dazed, around four in the morning on the rug in front of the hearth, and been blearily confused until she remembered with a jolt that it was entirely possible that Malfoy was off helping to murder her friends.  She had knocked again on his door, realizing it was pointless, because there was simply no chance Malfoy had come home at a reasonable hour and left Hermione (Daphne) laying asleep on the floor in an uncomfortable heap of books and parchment.  Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat at the idea that she both thought Malfoy too considerate to let his roommate sleep on the floor and was at that exact moment unsure whether he was fighting alongside Dark wizards on behalf of a megalomaniac. 

She brewed her own tea, but had to run to her bathroom to throw up after taking the first sip.  The images of Malfoy, side by side with Snape and the Carrows and god knows who else, facing off with Harry, or Ron, or Remus or Hannah or Dean or Kingsley or anyone—

Hermione dumped her mug in the sink and left the dorm. 

Pansy narrowed her eyes at Hermione’s ragged appearance when she arrived at breakfast that morning.  No one commented on Draco’s repeated absence.  Before she had to pretend to choke down any food, Astoria interrupted them, asking politely if she could borrow Hermione for just a minute from the other seventh years.  When the two girls were in the corridor and out of earshot, she quickly told Hermione that Minerva would meet her in the Transfiguration classroom in fifteen minutes.  Hermione’s pulse skyrocketed. 

“Thank you, Astoria,” she breathed. 

The younger girl smiled softly.  “I hope everything is alright,” she replied, touching Hermione’s hand lightly before moving to reenter the Great Hall. 

“You have to come back in, too, remember?” Astoria called back to her when she remained frozen. 

“Right.”  Hermione’s mind snapped back from the quick spiral it had gone down and she followed Astoria back toward the Slytherin table.  

“And then make an excuse in fifteen minutes,” Astoria reminded her gently.  “It’s not that long.”

It felt like hours.  After she had waited as long as she possibly could to make her exit less obvious, Hermione lied to the others that she had forgotten a textbook and needed to meet them in class after running back to the dorms.  She waved off offers to walk with her a bit too overzealously and had to stop herself from half-sprinting away. 

When she arrived at the classroom, Minerva was already behind her desk.  She looked up when Hermione entered and immediately waved her wand at the door several times. 

“We only have a minute, my dear, I have the third years coming in shortly.”  Her tone was serious but not devastated and Hermione drew a little bit of fortitude from this.  She nodded quickly. 

“Last night, there was an attempt on one of the Order’s safehouses by a large number of Death Eaters.”  Hermione inhaled sharply and Minerva pressed on.  “Fortunately, because they had advance warning that there may have been Death Eater activity that night, precautions had been taken.  The Order had consolidated for the night into only three of the safehouses, plus Grimmauld, where they took the least experienced fighters and our more vulnerable guests, and a set guard was prepared to fight if any safehouse was attacked.” 

Harry Ron Remus Tonks Harry.  “What happened?  Which safehouse?  Who was—” Hermione could barely stand to wait to let her finish for the agony of not knowing.  She thought of Malfoy failing to return the night before and felt like she might be sick again. 

Minerva raised a hand gently to stop her and continued.  “The Death Eaters did attack one of the safehouses in which members were located last night.  While we think the location generally was compromised somehow, which is of great concern, we do not think that someone betrayed our movements last night—it seems to have been a bit of luck on their part and bad guesswork on ours that the safehouse was occupied.”

“I do not know much yet, but I know no one was killed.  The Order was able to apprehend Augustus Rookwood and Antonin Dolohov, and they are being held and questioned.  Dean Thomas and George Weasley were seriously injured.  I believe,” Minerva seemed to steel herself, “that George Weasley lost an ear.  However, both are stable and expected to pull through.”

George.  The room swayed. 

“The safehouse was secured and the Death Eaters were forced to retreat.  Of course, the location is now known, so the house itself will not be used again.” 

Fred and George wouldn’t be able to switch places anymore, she thought dazedly.  How odd. 

“Hermione,” Minerva was continuing, her voice sharp and cutting through Hermione’s fog.  “You must not forget that Mr. Malfoy—nor anyone else—can have any idea that you are aware that these events took place.  There would be no explanation.”

This reminder made Hermione’s blood run cold.  “And Malfoy?” she asked.  Her voice—Daphne’s voice—sounded oddly high.  “Was he there?”

The look on Minerva’s face made her uncomfortable.  It was something like a combination of pity and curiosity and another reaction Hermione couldn’t identify. 

“No,” Minerva said finally.  “Though the Death Eaters are often hooded, as you know, it does not appear—well, I inquired as to whether anyone had seen Mr. Malfoy, and others agreed that it did not seem like he was present.”

Hermione didn’t realize that she had been holding her breath.  “However, it does appear that Severus was the one who cast the curse that injured George Weasley,” Minerva finished, her voice hard. 

They didn’t speak for a moment.  Hermione heard the beginnings of movement in the hallway outside the classroom and realized their time to speak was running out. 

“Hermione,” the other witch called as Hermione turned to go.  She still seemed troubled but her eyes were fierce.  “I know you have your own personal history with Dolohov, and I am sorry for it.  You should know that… The Weasleys…  He murdered Molly’s brothers, the Prewetts, in the last war.  I believe that Mr. Weasley expressed some satisfaction that his sacrifice had led to his capture.”

Hermione felt her own eyes sting.  Minerva shuffled the parchment on her desk and sniffed conspicuously. 

“We are a long way from justice, Hermione.  But sometimes we take what we can get.”

…

Hermione only had two classes that day—Charms and History of Magic—which were not particularly stressful in and of themselves.   She found herself at dinner that evening without any clear memory of attending said classes, or what they had discussed, and she had to expend an incredible amount of effort to pretend to pay attention to Pansy and Blaise’s nonchalant discussion about the party they wanted to throw that Friday—she did not fucking care whether they still had enough Butterbeer left from last weekend or would have to get the house-elves involved, she’d find a way to conjure the alcohol herself—instead of fixating on thoughts of George, and Dolohov, and Dean, and Malfoy. 

Theo was the only person who acknowledged Malfoy’s empty seat, but it came off more like muttering to himself, so Hermione didn’t feel the need to respond.  She shoveled steak and kidney pie into her mouth and counted down the minutes until she could excuse herself.

When she entered the Head dorm this time, Malfoy had returned. 

She could tell not because he was in the common room, but because the kettle was not where she had left it that morning, and instead a near-empty bottle of firewhiskey was sitting on the counter.  

Hermione stood in the entryway for a long time.  She wasn’t allowed to seem angry at Malfoy.  Was she angry at Malfoy?  What had he done?  Where had he been?  She thought of the last time she had lashed out at him after receiving bad news, when Ron had been hurt, and the things they had yelled at each other.  Her mind felt stuck. 

Before she could decide what Daphne would have done in this situation, Malfoy’s bedroom door opened.  The blonde-haired wizard stepped outside and began to cross to the kitchenette before drawing up short as he realized Hermione had entered the room. 

“Daphne,” he said tiredly.  “I didn’t realize you’d come back.”

“That I had come back?” Hermione burst, her voice coming out shriller than she intended.   

Malfoy’s eyes were blank and there were dark circles underneath.  He merely looked at her and continued toward his destination, which was apparently the firewhiskey. 

“I was called home.”  Malfoy’s voice had no inflection and Hermione saw again the clouded look that told her he was Occluding.  For some reason, that was what almost set her over the edge.

“Home?” she demanded.  “And you didn’t think you should mention that to me?”

Malfoy leveled his gaze at her.  “I didn’t realize I needed to let you know of my whereabouts at every moment, Greengrass.  But thanks for the concern.”  He moved to retreat to his room, glass refreshed, and Hermione caught sight of the back of his neck.

“Draco,” she said suddenly, drawing closer to him without thinking.  “What is that?”

He turned and replaced the distance between them, scowling.  “What are you talking about?”

Hermione pressed forward, grabbing the neck of his shirt and pulling it down even as he tried to squirm away.  “Draco…”  she gasped.  

Malfoy shoved her hand away and yanked the collar of his shirt back into place.  His eyes were no longer clouded but black and furious. 

“Daphne, go the fuck away.”  His voice was low and dangerous, and Hermione’s pulse spiked. 

“No,” she said stubbornly, despite the way her chest had tightened.  Her mind was racing again.  If he hadn’t been at the fight at the safehouse, why was he injured? 

“I’m serious, Daphne,” he growled.  Had he really been at the Manor?  With whom?  Her confusion increased and words left her mouth before she could process the implications. 

“Let me help you.”

He bit out a sudden laugh, the sound harsh and jarring.  “Help me?”

Malfoy stalked toward her.  Hermione backed up instinctually, nearly tripping over the table across from the sofa.  “The only way you can help me is by shutting the fuck up.”

She sucked in a deep breath and craned her neck to look him in the eye.  “You don’t have to tell me what happened,” Hermione said, trying to keep her voice from shaking.  “But if you sit down and stop acting like a complete prick, I can help you.” 

They stared at one another for a long moment.  Hermione thought he might snap at her again, and his eyes were still stormy, with clouds now shifting them from black to grey and back again.  She thought distantly, in some detached, logical part of her brain, that maybe she should be more afraid than she felt. 

“You can’t help me,” he finally said. 

Somehow he had gotten even closer to her, and his height was causing him to tower over her.  “Sit down,” she ordered bravely. 

After another pause during which Hermione wondered distantly whether she knew what she was doing, Malfoy tossed back the rest of his firewhiskey and slumped down into the closest armchair. 

The fireplace had been lit, presumably by house-elves, hours before, and was casting low light across the sitting area that made his face look oddly shadowed.  Malfoy remained still, hands on his knees and face hard, while Hermione stood in front of him, unsure. 

“Can I—” she gestured vaguely toward him, and he said nothing.  She sat slowly on the edge of the low table, facing him, and drew out her wand.  He flinched. 

“I can help, Draco,” she repeated softly. 

He stared at her.  She thought the remnants of the walls he had been trying to force around his mind might have been crumbling, because his face looked angry, and haunted, and something else she couldn’t quite make out. 

With a slightly trembling hand, she reached toward him and began unbuttoning the top of his shirt, where she had seen the bruised skin.  He made no move to help, but just watched her with that same intense expression, eyes dark. 

Her fingers accidentally grazed Malfoy’s chest as she unfastened another button, and the unexpected warmth distracted Hermione momentarily.  That was, until she reached the next opening and saw the mottled skin underneath, blue and purple and almost black, broken flesh. 

“Draco,” Hermione inhaled. 

He didn’t meet her eyes and said nothing. 

She finished the rest of the buttons with shaking hands and he slipped the sleeves off of his arms, wincing so slightly he may have thought she didn’t notice.  The bruising across his chest wrapped around his torso, making its way up to the back of his neck where she had first caught sight of it, and skating down toward his abdomen and his lower back. 

Tears blurred her eyes and she wiped them away hastily.  “Please just,” she heard her voice hoarse and pleading and it was dangerously close to what Minerva had warned her not to do, “tell me what happened.”

Malfoy’s eyes shut tightly and when he opened them again the clouded haze was back.  “I didn’t do something I was supposed to do,” he said flatly. 

There was a choked sound that it took Hermione a second to recognize had come from her.  She shook her head and focused, beginning to cast her wand over his chest and torso and mutter the incantations that she had practiced with Andromeda and Daphne that summer. 

A low groan came from Malfoy and when her eyes shot to his face in concern, his were screwed tight.  “Are you okay?” she asked, panicked, pausing in her ministrations.  She didn’t remember if Andromeda had told them the spells were supposed to hurt while they healed. 

 “Yes,” he breathed heavily.  “I—yes.” 

Apparently whatever she was doing was working, though, and the sight calmed her slightly.  The diagnostic spell she had cast was quieting into a much less alarming web of colors and runes, and his bruises were fading, the swelling was decreasing, leaving only pale skin where her fingers traced her spells.  Hermione tried to shut out thoughts of how warm her fingers felt, blazing a path across Malfoy’s body, and focused on the magic she was attempting. 

After a few more minutes, she sat back, fingertips lingering on his collarbone where she had found a mild fracture and attempted to repair it.  “Draco, I think you might need to go see Madam Pomfrey, I’m really not—”

Malfoy cut her off, grabbing her hovering hand with his own.  “Daphne,” he said finally, clearing his throat.  His brow was creased.  “Where did you learn how to do all of that?”

From your aunt.

No.

A half-truth, then.

“I thought I might need to,” she replied softly.  “In case…”

His eyes, the soft grey returning and the clouds retreating, raked over her face like he was searching for something.  His hand was still holding her fingers flush to his chest.  “That was remarkable,” he said, just as quietly.  “Thank you.”

They were still.  Hermione broke her eyes away from his and they landed on his chest, where they immediately widened in surprise.  Now that the bruising didn’t obscure his skin, she could see three long slashes intersecting on his torso, silvery and thin. 

He caught her looking and dropped her hand, reaching for his shirt. 

She tried to sort out the storm of conflicting emotions running through her as she sat back on the table.  Did Harry know?  He never spoke of it and Hermione knew how much he regretted the duel he and Malfoy had stumbled into the year before.  The scars reminded her of her own, and of Dolohov imprisoned by the Order at that very moment, and of how it still surprised her sometimes when she looked in the mirror and saw that Daphne’s skin didn’t bear the purple mark she carried on her own body that still felt cold sometimes. 

“Draco,” she called as he opened the door to his room.  Hermione felt unsettled.  She realized she didn’t know what she intended to say.  “I’ll see you at breakfast, right?”

He blinked and then offered her a small smile before disappearing inside.  “Sure, Greengrass.”

Chapter Text

December 1997

Her nerves were frayed, to say the least, and Hermione was counting down the days until she would return to Grimmauld Place and be able to both spend multiple days in her own skin and see all of the people she’d been laying awake at night worrying about.  She had never been so eager to leave Hogwarts in her life, and the idea of having to return after the holidays left her with a feeling of dread. 

The rest of the castle seemed to feel similarly.  There was a current of cautious excitement palpable among the students at meals and in classes.  For reasons Hermione could imagine, the only ones who seemed reluctant to leave were the four other seventh-year Slytherins who occupied most of her time.  Malfoy had been quiet since the night she healed him, even more than usual, but Pansy, Blaise, and Theo also seemed more withdrawn the further into December they got. 

The strange mood must have gotten to Pansy too, after a while, because she corralled Hermione and demanded help planning a holiday party after midterm exams and before everyone scattered.  The temptation to spend time with the Gryffindors and her other friends in the castle, who she had to find excuses to interact with these days, was too strong. Hermione didn’t bother putting up a fight with Pansy, and even, after some lengthy internal debate, decided to let the Slytherin witch in on the relatively open secret that was the Room of Requirement. 

Malfoy already knew about it anyway, she reasoned, so it’s not like having the party there was technically giving useful magical information out that she shouldn’t be sharing with anyone with… unclear motivations.  And it came with the advantage of avoiding attending another party in the Slytherin common room where it was impossible not to chance having to interact with Crabbe or Goyle or other equally horrible people who couldn’t quite be kept out. 

Pansy had stared, slack-jawed, in a decidedly un-Pansy-like manner, at the Room conjured by Hermione on their first visit, which she had politely requested take on the appearance of Pansy’s bedroom at the Parkinson estate, but also provide a ceiling similar to the Great Hall on a brilliantly sunny day, with a pristine beach outside all of the windows, and, because she couldn’t resist a small urge to annoy Pansy, fill her enormous walk-in closet with only Gryffindor robes. 

The other girl recovered and demanded Hermione answer about one million questions about the Room, much as Daphne had, only to very quickly decide that it was outrageous that so many of the others had apparently known about this somehow yet left Pansy to throw parties in the common room like a, well, commoner this whole time. 

Hermione shrugged and then cringed when Pansy started speculating aloud about whether she should invite Neville there for a private party instead.  There had apparently been some significant progress since the last time she’d heard Pansy speak about Neville, but it was one thing to be theoretically onboard with the idea that she had her sights set on one of the Gryffindor boys Hermione had known for nearly seven years, and it was quite another to be forced to picture them having elaborate magical sex in the same room she’d learned how to conjure a Patronus. 

A traitorous voice in the back of her mind noted with curiosity that Malfoy must have never taken Pansy to the Room of Requirement for any of their… encounters last year, and before she could start down the road of picturing Malfoy having sex instead of Neville she reminded herself sternly what Malfoy had been doing in the Room instead. 

“Daphne?  Hello?”  Pansy was apparently calling her, and from the note of irritation in her voice must have been for several minutes while Hermione had been trying to control the direction of her erstwhile thoughts. 

Hermione focused in on Pansy’s tapping foot and crossed arms, face schooled into an appropriately apologetic expression.  “Sorry, Pansy, what were you asking?”

“I was asking whether the Room can conjure us alcohol.”

“Oh,” Hermione chewed her lip.  “Well, no, that’s one of the five principal exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration, or, rather, food is, which presumably includes alcohol.  The Room’s limits are similar to what we could conjure magically on our own, only the magic is just…” 

She frowned, now lost in thought.  “Well, it’s remarkable magic really, embedded in the castle somehow by the creator, presumably, and strong enough to continue in a self-reliant fashion rather than draw from our own magical cores, although it does seem to rely on some sort of magical effort being expended by a witch or wizard to be triggered, given you have to ask it for things—”

Hermione stopped talking at the incredulous look on Pansy’s face.  Apparently, Daphne wasn’t quite as prone to becoming distracted and launching into swotty rants when interesting academic puzzles were presented.  She cleared her throat awkwardly. 

“Or, you know, no.”

Pansy still looked like she thought Hermione had gone off the rocker, which, she supposed, was not an altogether unfair characterization these days at any rate, but she just turned back toward the replica of her own overly-grand four-poster bed and considered it shrewdly for a moment. 

“I’ll figure something out.”

…

Pansy figuring something out, apparently, involved making several more exploratory trips to the Room of Requirement on the evenings she was supposed to be doing prefect rounds with Neville for the next week.  Hermione did her best to ignore this development, which seemed to amuse Blaise and Theo to no end. 

They were making a valiant attempt at pretending not to snicker while they interrogated Pansy upon her (quite late) return to the common room the following Thursday as if Hermione hadn’t informed them already of her whereabouts.   

“Pansy, darling, we’ve just been so concerned about you, given the late hour—”    

“—no, we have not, Blaise is a prefect who knows perfectly well how long it takes sometimes to patrol the castle,” Hermione interjected steadily, keeping her eyes on her Astronomy chart.

“—but you do look quite out of breath, Pansy, did something happen in the halls, or—”

“I do not—”

“—and your tie is a bit loose, have you had to yell at some naughty Gryffindors who were out of bed?”

“—I will kill you, Blaise Zabini, don’t think I have forgotten what I walked in on you and Lovegood doing last month in that empty classroom and that I won’t start talking—”

“—perfectly acceptable to discipline other students who don’t follow school rules given the powers bestowed on you as a prefect—”

Pansy’s shriek cut off Theo’s suggestive tone as she launched herself at the couch where he and Blaise sat, wand in her hand.  Theo let out a loud snort of laughter and ducked behind his taller friend, who looked as unflappable as ever as he let Hermione yank Pansy back toward the floor.  

“I think we all have things we would rather not be discussed in the middle of the common room,” Hermione said briskly, still wrestling with Pansy for the other girl’s wand. 

Blaise’s polite smirk didn’t waver at all, but he was looking at Hermione with interest now.  “Oh, we all do?” he asked innocently. 

She returned his grin with a glare of her own, finally having gotten Pansy to quit struggling and sulk from the floor next to her instead, back leaning against the couch and arms and legs crossed stiffly. 

“None of your business, Blaise Zabini.”  Hermione felt a twinge of guilt at whatever she had accidentally implied on Daphne’s behalf as she saw Theo’s suddenly much more subdued posture out of the corner of her eye. 

Blaise merely rolled his eyes and picked his self-inking quill back up where it had been discarded next to his homework upon Pansy’s more interesting return.  “You’re as bad as Draco sometimes, Daph.”

Hermione was still thinking of Daphne and trying to observe Theo furtively, so she didn’t stop to think through what she said next.  “Please, at least I don’t Occlude every time someone asks me anything—”

The other three’s heads swiveled toward her as if on cue. 

“Excuse me?”  Pansy said.  The resentment she had still been nursing toward her pestering male friends seemed to have vanished in favor of frank astonishment. 

Hermione looked at Theo and Blaise for help, but the former’s gaze was unreadable again while Blaise seemed as intensely curious as Pansy. 

Bollocks. 

“I mean,” she began cautiously, “Draco—he’s very private, and he’s using Occlumency all the time, you know.”

Her brows knit together in confusion as they all just looked blankly back at her.  The familiar sensation of having accidentally stumbled into a conversation with these people that was littered with unknown hazards washed over her.

“You do see what Draco is doing, right?” she asked tentatively.

Pansy tossed her short hair back over her shoulders and fixed a sharp look on Hermione.  “What you mean, do we see what he’s doing?  I see he’s been acting like an ass, as usual—”

Hermione raised her hands in defense.  “I know, I know, but that’s not what I’m talking about.” 

Pansy’s eyes narrowed further and she flung herself down on the armchair next to Blaise theatrically.  “Get on with it, Daphne, I don’t have all night,” she growled.

Hermione wondered, for the millionth time, why she had not thought to ask Daphne something that should have seemed like an obvious need-to-know thing in retrospect; in this case, whether any of the other three friends had ever discussed this before or even themselves had taken up the same skill she now reluctantly shared with Malfoy, albeit much less proficiently. 

“He’s Occluding, Pansy,” she said quietly, dropping her voice so no one but Pansy, Blaise, and Theo could hear her.  “I know he’s always been—um—cold, but have you noticed his eyes lately?  They’re always getting darker but also… blanker.”  

She shivered a little, remembering the way her own eyes had scared her after too much training with Tonks over the summer, how her own mind had scared her a little.  “He’s Occluding so that his feelings and thoughts are all compartmentalized and frankly he’s also doing it too often, so it’s becoming easier to tell.  And which also means he’s basically a ticking time bomb of stored-up emotions because he’s spending too much time shutting them off.”

As she finished, Pansy’s mouth was hanging open and Blaise had actually set his quill and book aside again and given her his full attention.  A first, she thought wryly. 

“Daphne,” Blaise began evenly.  “How do you know all of this?”

Hermione blanched and avoided his eyes in favor of pretending to straighten the cushions that Pansy had thrown into disarray in her earlier mood.  “I’ve been studying for N.E.W.T.s, that’s all,” she said defensively, “and Occlumency is a relevant subject to study for the Defense Against the Dark Arts—”

Blaise silenced her with an impatient wave of his hand.  “I know that.  And I’m also aware of the risks of the overuse of Occlumency.  But how did you figure out Draco’s employing it at all?  That’s incredibly difficult to tell usually.  The entire point is to not reveal what you’re doing.”

Now Pansy looked suspicious, too.  “That’s true, Daph.  Merlin knows I used to spend a pathetic amount of time thinking about the color of that git’s eyes but I didn’t notice anything like that, whether I would’ve connected it with Occlumency or not.”

Shite.  Hermione tugged at the neat ponytail she’d affixed Daphne’s hair into that morning (as always when she ran her fingers through her hair and they didn’t immediately get stuck in her usual mess of curls, she felt a vague disconcerting sensation and then mild jealousy; Daphne’s hair was ridiculously smooth even without the millions of hair charms the girl had insisted Hermione attempt) and stalled. 

Was now really the moment?  Was there ever even supposed to be this moment?  Despite the conflicting thoughts she’d had plague her since Daphne had humanized these people for her, it had not been in her conscious plan to actually befriend them, nor to entertain the idea that she could get them to—Merlin, she thought dazedly.  Help her?  Take a side? 

But Pansy and Blaise and Theo certainly hadn’t been what she’d expected (and of course, neither had Malfoy).  In most ways, they had been even more potentially—something—than Daphne had even predicted.  For instance, the activities Pansy had apparently been engaged in earlier that evening did not seem like a development Daphne would have guessed. 

“I can tell because he does it whenever we talk about the war,” she blurted out.  So much for delicacy.  Her heart skipped a beat as she watched Blaise’s face cautiously.  Whatever Pansy’s reaction was, she’d hear it, and see it, and probably then continue to hear about it for the next several hours.  But Blaise, while not as confusingly aloof as Theo often was, was always careful with his words about the subject, even more than any of the rest of them. 

He blinked.  “What’s a time bomb?”

“Oh,” she was thrown for a moment.  “Well, it’s a—I suppose it may be more of a Muggle expression.” Goddammit, Hermione, are you trying to get caught?  “I must have picked it up from… Astoria, you know how she’s always hanging out with all of those Ravenclaws, I’m sure some Muggleborn taught it to her.”  The excuse, which she’d pulled out before in an equally nonsensical manner, sounded ridiculously flimsy to her own ears.  But Blaise merely continued looking at her expectantly.

She sighed.  “It means… a kind of explosion that is set, kind of spelled, to go off at certain time, and the time has begun counting down and can’t be stopped.  I suppose the expression just means—what I was trying to say is that there is no way Draco can keep all of that suppressed emotion built up inside forever behind his Occlumency, not at this pace, without it pouring out at some point in a proportionately dramatic manner.” 

The words were rushing out of her now faster than she may have intended, but she couldn’t turn back now.  “Hence, his mood swings, and some of the outbursts we’ve all had the pleasure of witnessing so far, followed by these periods of him basically ignoring everyone.  Draco thinks he can control everything so tightly but even the best Occlumens needs an outlet—look at Snape.” 

Blaise’s eyebrows shot up.  Hermione could have slapped herself.  Merlin, she was on a roll.  What was next, Horcruxes?  “Er—right.  Snape seems to be an Occlumens as well.  Perhaps that’s how Draco learned?”

Pansy clearly could not contain herself any longer. 

“Okay, fuck Snape for a minute, although we’re coming back to that.” 

Hermione winced. 

“You’re saying when we’ve tried to get him to talk about—things, that’s when he throws up these weird magical walls?  What does he think, that we’re suddenly all Legilimens that are going to try to read his mind?” 

She glared at Hermione.  “Although apparently, I don’t know what the fuck you’ve been reading, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what you’re about to tell us next.”

Hermione shook her head and began to wish desperately for a way out of this conversation.  This whole time, she’d been frustrated with the passive-aggressive, indirect way they all spoke with each other and yet somehow this was becoming much worse. 

“No, I don’t think that’s it.  I think it might be…”  She chewed her lip as she tried to think of how to explain her theories without going recklessly past the point of no return in this conversation. 

“For some reason, I think he doesn’t want us to even see how he really feels about what we’re saying.  And maybe…  maybe when he’s Occluding he also just wants to stop how he’s feeling at that moment from himself.”  Hermione took a deep breath and charged onward.  “Or block someone else.  Later.  From… seeing what he had seen and how he had felt about it.”

Despite the fact that she was practically whispering now, her last words and their implication hung out between them as if she’d shouted them. 

The sound of Theo’s robes rustling as he got to their feet broke the strained silence.  While Blaise and Pansy seemed to be absorbing what she had said in mixed states of emotion, Theo was just staring at her, an impossibly sad expression on his face, but no surprise. 

“Daphne,” he said quietly.  “If that’s what Draco is trying to do, perhaps we should let him.”

They locked eyes.  Hermione felt small and guilty for some reason as she searched his face from her vantage point on the ground, Theo’s vivid green eyes reminding her again of Harry as he looked down at her. 

“I know,” she said, equally as softly.

He held her gaze for another moment before turning away, something like a warning yet also a weary resignation in his face.  The other three watched as he disappeared into the corridor that led to the boys’ dormitory, the silence stretching between them so thickly that Hermione couldn’t bear it for long. 

“Theo’s right.”  Her tone was still low, but the other two faced her again.  “We probably shouldn’t say anything.  To Draco or… anyone else.”

Pansy now wore a hard look that made Hermione strangely nervous, until she spoke. 

“Daphne,” the other witch said firmly, “I know you’ve been kept out of this the most of any of us, and I am glad for that.”

Hermione frowned reflexively in confusion but said nothing.  Was that what they thought?  Was that true, or at least had it been true until the Greengrasses had come to the Order?  Pansy’s position tilted the frame she had arranged around the group a little, making her wonder what else she had missed, and what else Daphne may have even missed. 

 For Blaise’s part, it felt somehow like he knew what Pansy was going to say.  The determined set to his mouth, and matching rigid expression on his face, evidenced his agreement. 

“But you don’t need to remind us that Draco needs our help,” Pansy continued.    

She and Blaise exchanged a brief look and Pansy lowered her voice even further.  Hermione felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle as she tried to make out Pansy’s whispered words, the buzz of the other lingering students’ conversations almost drowning them out around them. 

“None of us have had many choices in our lives, but Draco has always had the least.  He may be a huge git most of the time, and he may be shutting us out, but whatever his reasons may be,” Pansy’s face seemed to soften fractionally, “we will always do anything he needs.” 

…

The holiday gathering in the Room of Requirement turned out to be an extremely popular idea, one which Pansy took the credit for not at all humbly.  When Hermione arrived, later than she’d promised Pansy and also wearing much lower heels than she’d assured the hostess she was intending to wear, the Room was already crowded and pleasantly loud with voices that sounded more relaxed than she remembered hearing the past few months.  Between the more neutral and hidden location and their pending departures from the castle, it seemed like all of the students in attendance had let out some sort of collective breath, for now.

She skirted around the wall, looking for familiar faces in the clusters of what appeared to be representatives from all four houses and at least three different class years.  Pansy had outdone herself with the decorations, the dark wooden paneling and roaring fireplaces making her feel like she was in some sort of cozy ski chalet. 

The ceiling had been charmed (or, she supposed, asked) to make it appear that sparkling white snow was falling, yet it stopped right above everyone’s heads.   There were fairy lights draping much of the room and it smelled deliciously like pine and fir and baked gingerbread.  It was ridiculous and it made her ache for her parents and the Burrow and something else indefinable but she couldn’t help but love it.

“Oi, Daphne!”  She paused in her admiration of an impossibly tall Christmas tree decked with what looked like strings of tinsel and Chocolate Frogs and turned toward the voice calling her name.

Seamus was beckoning her over, standing in a circle of people that made her already cheered mood lift even higher:  Neville and Pansy stood a respectable distance apart, sneaking very un-sneaky glances at each other, while Theo chatted with Seamus, Lavender, and the Patil twins.  As Hermione walked toward them, she spotted Blaise and Luna draped over each other in the corner in an oversized armchair, heads close together and looking for all the world like they were unaware anyone else was in the room. 

“You’re late!”  Pansy trilled, pecking Hermione on the cheek.  Her face was already prettily flushed and Hermione wondered amusedly whether it was from alcohol or the slightly dazzled look on Neville’s face or some combination.  

“Apologies, I got caught up in the—” Hermione remembered her cover in the nick of time, concocted carefully though belatedly so that she wouldn’t have to admit she’d been in the library, again, when exams were over.  “—the kitchens!”  She took her hands out from behind her back and offered Pansy the parcel of warm cakes and biscuits she’d begged off from the elves only fifteen minutes earlier. 

“Oh, I forgot to tell you!”  Pansy exclaimed, ignoring the offering and gesturing so excitedly toward something behind her that her festive-looking drink splashed onto the floor.  “Neville figured out how to get food, and drinks, from the Room, and it was quite brilliant.” 

Pansy’s eyes had lit up as they flitted back to the Gryffindor, who looked unabashedly pleased at her words.  Hermione decided it was probably not her first drink if Pansy was openly praising Neville in this mixed company but it was quite heartwarming nonetheless. 

“Apparently, you just have to ask it the right question.  He got it to create a passage to the Hog’s Head and—” Now Pansy’s head swiveled to Theo and Blaise and they all shared a knowing look.  “—obviously Aberforth’s had a deal with Theo for years.”

Theo shot her a cheeky grin, and Hermione thought she understood Daphne’s attraction for a moment as his boyish yet handsome features shifted into a rare display of sincere affection and happiness. 

“So we’ve got alcohol, I assume?”  Hermione laughed, peeking behind Pansy where she had been pointing. 

“Loads,” Pansy confirmed.  “And the food is barely decent from the Hog’s Head but Theo convinced Aberforth to swing by Honeyduke’s to retrieve supplies as well, which was a riot to watch.”

Hermione laughed and accepted a glass of mulled wine from Seamus, who was refilling and passing out glasses to the rest of the group.  She took a few sips and let the warmth fill her chest as she looked back out over the rest of the Room.  Unwittingly, she found herself looking for her missing roommate, absently scanning for white-blonde hair among the rest of the revelers. 

Before she could join any of the conversations around her, a different shade of yellow appeared at her elbow. 

“It is rather nice to see everyone together, isn’t it, Daphne?”  Luna greeted her enthusiastically, as if they had already been in the middle of a discussion. 

Blaise had followed Luna over, and the smug look on his face would’ve annoyed Hermione but for the way he was still so singularly focused on watching Luna that Hermione wasn’t sure he had even noticed she was there. 

“Yes, it’s quite nice, Luna,” she replied politely.  “Are you enjoying yourself?”

“Oh, yes,” Luna answered readily, her eyes dancing.  “We’ve already found several ways to get the Room to trick people into not being able to see what we’re really doing in that corner.”

Hermione’s abrupt choke of laughter caused her to inhale mulled wine up her nose, and her eyes teared up as she tried to regain control of her breathing.  Blaise’s smirk didn’t drop and he simply shook his head fondly as he pulled Luna by their joined hands toward the bar. 

She was still coughing when Malfoy materialized, replacing the infatuated couple at her side. 

“Have you been trying Finnigan’s enhanced firewhiskey, Greengrass?” he asked, amused. 

Hermione shook her head, eyes still watery and trying not to laugh.  “It was just Luna,” she gasped.  “I’m not sure you want to know.”

“I’ll take your word for that,” Malfoy replied firmly, taking a swig from the Butterbeer he was holding. 

“Where have you been?” she asked, finally able to sip her wine again without incident.

A blonde eyebrow arched at her.  “I’ve been here, per Pansy’s orders.”  His eyes flitted across her face and he seemed to consider her for a moment.  “But I’m not dying for people to associate me with this Room again,” he admitted quietly, the rare offer of honesty making her feel somewhat breathless again.  “I’m not even sure who… knows.”

Before she could say anything, Malfoy drained the rest of his bottle and eyed her own nearly-empty glass.  “Do you want another drink?”

“Sure,” Hermione said quietly.  Her fingers brushed his as he reached for her empty glass and she recalled how they had trailed over other parts of his skin when she’d healed him, unexpected warmth bursting where she touched. 

She cleared her throat and fixed a bright smile on her face.  “Maybe something stronger?”

The evening slipped by, the feeling in the room of drained tension remaining.  Hermione had danced with Theo and Blaise and Luna for what felt like hours, her heels long tossed to the side of the Room with Pansy’s, who after several more drinks had declared Cushioning Charms to be the biggest scam the male-run Wizarding world had ever tried to pull on her. 

Malfoy had declined to join them, but she had caught a glimpse of him making what appeared to be polite conversation with Ginny and Demelza Robbins, to her continued amazement, and at least hadn’t caught him looking especially broody at any point.  After she’d worn herself out, and possibly stepped on Theo’s toes more times than was really plausible for Daphne to have been capable of even drunk, Hermione found herself standing alone again with Malfoy near the bar. 

As they sipped their respective beverages in companionable silence, Hermione mused absently about how unfair it was that Malfoy had certainly had as many additional drinks as her, yet somehow managed to look as put together as he had at the beginning of the evening, while she was slightly sweaty, barefoot, and had somehow wrinkled Daphne’s bright-red dress beyond immediate magical repair. 

“You told me once you loved Theo.”  Malfoy’s statement was abrupt and Hermione was caught off guard.

“Oh.”  She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was coming to rescue her from this conversation.  “Er.  Yes, that’s right.  I did.”

He was looking at her with that intense look he got sometimes that she could decipher no more than when she had first started this whole ridiculous mission. 

“Do you still?” he asked brusquely.

She returned her eyes to his as she pondered the question.  Daphne did, right?  So she should say yes?  Daphne had been annoyed at having to admit it to her, but she’d never told her it was no longer true or that Hermione should deny it if asked. 

“Right.  I mean, I do.  Still.” 

Malfoy frowned.  He didn’t look surprised exactly, but Hermione still couldn’t tell if that was the answer she was supposed to have given or what he had expected her to say.  “I see.” 

“Okay,” she replied stupidly.  “Well, don’t… tell him.  Like, you know, we talked about before.  Because I don’t want him to know.”  

He continued staring at her as if weighing his next words carefully.  “You should tell him.  He has no idea.  You don’t act like it around him.” 

His voice was curt.  She imagined giving his friends advice on their love lives was not something Malfoy particularly cared to do. 

“Oh, erm…” Hermione stalled.  That was definitely true, at least since Hermione had been acting as Daphne, and she definitely wasn’t going to confess Daphne’s love to Theo for her and potentially start some sort of complicated Twelfth Night shit.  “I will… take that into consideration.”

Malfoy snorted.  “Right.  Great.”  He took a long sip of his drink and shook his head.  “You’re something else.” 

She stared at his back as he walked away, confusion clouding her thoughts.  Daphne had made it extremely clear that she had actively hid her feelings for Theo other than the one-off drunken confession to Malfoy fifth year, which had never been acknowledged again by either party.  And despite their odd interactions, Hermione was pretty sure she hadn’t messed up too badly in how she had treated Theo compared to Daphne’s usual nature.  So what the fuck had that been about, and why did she have a sinking feeling in her stomach like she had monumentally screwed something up?

Chapter Text

December 1997

Minerva had informed Hermione that the Ministry was tracking international travel so closely now that in order to keep up the pretense that the Greengrasses were really in France, she and Astoria would be first Portkeying (legally, courtesy of many Greengrass-donated Galleons to someone at the Ministry—international travel was barely manageable at this point under the Voldemort-controlled regime) to France, only to immediately use a series of Portkeys to return home that Tonks had created (illegally).  

Tonks had been unable to create an international Portkey spelled to go that far with enough confidence to take them directly from France back to Grimmauld Place, so there was a nauseating and convoluted travel plan that Hermione was dreading on each end. 

She would’ve been grumpier about it if not for the fact that she was literally aching to see everyone she had missed—and for that matter, Ginny, who’d been right there and yet frustratingly out of reach—and be in her own body for two straight weeks. 

As she packed her trunk and tried to decide whether it was really necessary to bring so many of Daphne’s clothes to Grimmauld Place just so they wouldn’t be suspiciously left here on the off chance someone looked in her closet, there was a knock on her door. 

“Oh,” Hermione said in surprise.  “I thought you’d be Astoria.”

Malfoy quirked a brow at her.  His hands were shoved in his pockets and she thought he looked tenser than normal, if that was even possible.  “Just me, unfortunately,” he drawled.

She rolled her eyes and turned back to her trunk to spell it shut.  “I just meant we’re supposed to be leaving in half an hour.”

“Portkey, right?”

“Um, yes,” Hermione replied.  She waved her wand at her trunk and it glided past Malfoy into the living room.  He watched with mild interest as she cast her wards and moved out of the room too.  “Shouldn’t you be on the train with the others?”

Malfoy’s face darkened.  “I have… other transport home.”

She paled and he must have noticed because he looked away quickly.  “The Headmaster’s Floo is connected to my home,” he finished quietly. She wasn’t sure whether she was more disturbed at this admission or just relieved that he wasn’t headed somewhere other than the Manor for some nefarious reason.

“Right,” she replied quietly.  As they both avoided looking at each other, Hermione suddenly felt inexplicably anxious at the prospect of not seeing him for two weeks. 

“Will it just be you and your parents at the Manor for the holiday?” she blurted.

Malfoy met her eyes, an impassive look affixed on his face.  “Yes,” he said in a flat voice that made her uneasy.  “Should be a normal holiday.” 

Before Hermione could think of a reply, the entrance to the dorm swung open.  Astoria smiled brightly and said hello as Malfoy moved to help the younger girl with her trunk. Hermione watched his back as he walked away and felt her apprehension grow without knowing exactly why. 

“Are you leaving tonight, too, though?” she pressed. 

Malfoy set Astoria’s things near Hermione’s and straightened, his posture stiff.  “Right after you lot, I expect,” he replied calmly.

Hermione twisted her hands around the strap of her beaded bag.  Astoria shot her a slightly puzzled look but she just smiled tightly in return. “Well,” Hermione said, “I suppose I’ll see you in the New Year.”  They needed to leave, to get to Minerva’s office to catch their Portkey, but she lingered for reasons she couldn’t articulate.

“Sure, Greengrass.”  Malfoy’s jaw tensed but he forced a smile.  “Happy Christmas.”

…

“Blimey!”  Ron’s delighted yell was the first thing Hermione heard when she and Astoria landed in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place about an hour later, stomachs rolling in the aftermath of repeated Portkey trips.

Despite the fretting Hermione had done about the mildly awkward way she’d left things with Ron, her sheer relief at seeing him whole and well and striding toward her made Hermione crash into his arms as soon as she could extricate herself from Astoria and their things. 

“There’s two of you!”  Ron was laughing as he hugged her back, Daphne’s extra height making Hermione feel slightly off-kilter as she embraced him.  When they finally parted, she realized what he meant.  Daphne was embracing Astoria beside them, and seeing her was jarring after pretending for so many months. 

“You’re wearing denims,” Daphne admonished as she separated from Astoria and turned to Hermione. 

“Hello to you too, Daphne,” Hermione replied, rolling her eyes and grinning as she was tugged into a hug by Harry. 

After another round of greetings by Tonks and Lupin, who’d come to the kitchen upon hearing the commotion, Hermione was ushered upstairs to her old bedroom to wait out the last of the Polyjuice dose she’d taken.  Ginny, accompanied by Molly, Arthur, Fred, and George, would be arriving shortly and none of them could exactly see her in this state.  Astoria and Daphne were to stay at Grimmauld for a few days before taking a Portkey to Andromeda and Ted’s for Christmas day, where their parents were still reluctant houseguests. 

“Daphne’s been staying here for now because each safehouse needs a Healer,” Harry explained to her later, as they all sat around sipping Butterbeers in the library before dinner.  “Andromeda’s been training her and she’s really good.”

Daphne blushed slightly and waved her hand.  “I’m alright.  But it’s certainly nice to get to contribute something, considering I can’t leave the safehouses since I’m technically supposed to be at Hogwarts.”

“She’s more than alright,” Ron scoffed, tipping his own drink at Daphne gratefully before taking a swig.

“And you’re really okay?”  Hermione asked for what must have been the thousandth time.  Her guilt at not being there during Ron’s injury and recovery was back in full force. It must’ve been obvious on her face because he smiled softly at her. 

“I’m fine, ’Mione.  I swear,” he replied.  “Mostly bored because I missed most of the good stuff while I was shut up at Bill’s for so long.”

Harry snorted from his armchair across the room.  “I think you had plenty there to entertain you.”

Hermione’s brow creased in confusion as Daphne shot him a sharp look and Ron’s face paled.  “Am I missing something?”

“No!”  Ron said hurriedly, shooting a glare at Harry.  The other wizard looked mildly abashed and scratched the back of his neck.  “He just means…”

Whatever Ron was going to say was cut off by the arrival of Tonks, who plopped down on the couch, as much as a person nearly eight months pregnant could really plop that well, and announced that she wanted to hear all of the Hogwarts news before anyone else got there.

“C’mon, Hermione, we can’t talk as much about it once the other Weasleys get here, they don’t know what you’ve really been doing,” she reminded Hermione, settling into the sofa and stealing Ron’s Butterbeer.  He looked indignant until she shot him a glare reminiscent of his own mother that made him shrink away. 

“Well,” Hermione hesitated, shooting a glance at Daphne.  “There’s not much other than what Minerva’s reported, I’m sure.”

Ron had sat back up now and was looking at her skeptically, as was Harry.  “But are you really living alone with Malfoy?  Merlin, Hermione, we had no idea McGonagall would allow that…”

She felt an uncomfortable lurch in her stomach.  “I’m not sure McGonagall really had that much say in that matter, actually.  I mean, it was Snape that made us—well, that made Daphne Head Girl.”

Daphne snickered.  “Well, I have to say that I am having a hard time taking any satisfaction in the fact that I beat out Hermione Granger for Head Girl given the particular circumstances,” she said dryly. 

Her comment didn’t seem to deter Ron’s inquisition, unfortunately.  “But how can you stand being around him?  He might have turned out to be a piss Death Eater but he’s still an insufferable git.”

Hermione opened her mouth to respond and then closed it again, frowning.  Daphne caught her eye and looked curious at her hesitation.  “Draco isn’t always an insufferable git, Ronald,” the other witch replied breezily instead, shaking her hair back.  Hermione couldn’t help but note how much better Daphne really was at doing her own hair, which at the moment hung flawlessly straight down her back, and didn’t seem to be prone to getting in random knots that Hermione had to sometimes resort to a severing charm to remove. 

“We’ve talked about this,” Daphne was continuing, a pointed look on her face as she stared Ron down.  “You don’t actually know anything about Draco, and it’s not helping anything to hold onto old prejudices.”

The redhead scowled, but there wasn’t a lot of effort behind it.  “Yes, yes, we have all had to suffer through your many lectures during your crusade for inter-house unity and whatnot, Daph.” 

Astoria giggled and Ron looked at her in surprise.  “It’s just nice to hear she hasn’t changed,” the younger girl offered, smiling at her sister.

Harry just scoffed.  “You know, I didn’t realize until we heard her tell Ron off for trying to get Kreacher to keep bringing him breakfast in bed even after he could walk again perfectly fine on his own, but Daphne and Hermione actually are scarily similar.  I guess I get how you’ve been fooling everyone, Hermione.”

Daphne shrugged primly and took a sip of her own Butterbeer as Tonks and Ron chuckled.  It sunk into Hermione for the first time that she’d missed not only the horrible things happening outside of Hogwarts to her friends, like Ron and George getting injured and Harry, Lupin, and Tonks barely escaping the Ministry alive, but also the small things, including all of those that had somehow created this easy familiarity between Daphne, Tonks, Ron, and Harry.  She felt her chest ache with something that felt like homesickness again despite being as close to home as she had at the moment.  

Before she could wallow too long, Hermione heard the front door open and a familiar chorus of voices filled the entryway.  Harry leapt up immediately, face brightening, and strode out of the room.  As much as she was longing to see Ginny herself—and actually have Ginny know who she was—Hermione thought she’d wait out their reunion. 

Molly came bustling into the library moments later, eyes landing on Hermione and filling with tears instantly.  The older woman tugged her up from her seat and threw her arms around her tightly. 

“Hermione!  We’ve been so worried!” 

For a moment, Hermione looked frantically at Tonks over Molly’s shoulder, forgetting what exactly Molly had thought she had been doing. 

“Er, I’m alright,” she said feebly, patting Molly on the back in what she hoped was a soothing motion. 

“I just can’t believe Remus has had you gone for so long, we’ve barely seen Harry either, but it must have been months since you’ve been to the Burrow or at headquarters when we’ve been here,” Molly was rambling now, pulling back to scrutinize Hermione’s face, which she held between her hands.  “I know the efforts to help the Muggleborns escape have been important to you, dear, but you’re going to burn yourself out.  You’re looking so thin.”

Ah.  Hermione remembered then what Minerva had told her she was supposedly off doing.  The Order had actually set up a network of contacts to assist Muggleborns and their families with going into hiding or fleeing the country, and Moody and Lupin had spread to the others that Hermione was acting as a point person to help shuttle people along the various routes, sometimes taking trips that required her to stay out of sight for weeks at a time.  Since the people who really were being concealed couldn’t usually stay in contact with anyone in the Order after they’d vanished, there was no one to question that Hermione was one of the members involved.  It was as good a cover as any, though she still wasn’t sure that the others wouldn’t have found it strange she didn’t find a way to run back to Ron’s side when he had gotten hurt.

“Mum!”  Ginny was elbowing her way to Hermione now, pulling her into a tight embrace.  “Leave her alone!”

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut against a sudden desire to cry.  The redhead smelled like her familiar mix of grass and citrus and something else that reminded her of both Gryffindor Tower and the Burrow. Hermione felt again the reality of how hard it had been to have to pretend to be someone else around her closest friend who had been at Hogwarts the last few months. 

“Hey there,” Ginny said, squeezing Hermione’s elbow as she pulled back.  “What is that look for?  Miss me?”

Hermione just sniffled and nodded, unable to respond.  Ginny threw an arm around her.  “In that case, let’s let the boys help with dinner and you can tell me what you’ve been up to.”  To Hermione’s slight surprise, Ginny looked over her shoulder and called back as she maneuvered them to the stairs.  “Daph, Astoria, you coming?”

…

Making up stories about Order missions she’d had zero to do with for Ginny was slightly easier with the help of Daphne and Astoria to interrupt and steer the conversation back toward Hogwarts when Ginny asked too many questions.  It was surreal to watch Ginny treat the Greengrass sisters with such relaxed friendliness, when Hermione had been the one who’d actually been with Ginny the last few months.  Daphne seemed taken aback, at first, but pleased, and recovered smoothly. 

The only dicey moment had been when Ginny grinned devilishly and broke the news to Hermione that Neville had apparently fallen hard for Pansy Parkinson, who if anything had been the one pursuing him; Daphne choked on her Butterbeer so fast that she turned red and couldn’t speak, while Hermione forgot to look surprised for a second.  Luckily, Ginny was distracted, slapping Daphne on the back with a look of confused concern, which gave Hermione time to school her face into a proper look of feigned shock.  She probably should’ve privately pulled Daphne aside earlier for that one, but it had almost been worth it for the look on her face. 

The next few days felt like a dream to Hermione.  She was torn between anxiety over the overload of information she was receiving about the war outside the walls of the castle and relief at being back at headquarters where she at least could find out what was going on and see everyone was safe.  At the same time, there were moments when she looked in the mirror and had a jolt of surprise that it was her own face staring back at her, or she caught sight of Daphne and felt an uncomfortable sensation like she suddenly couldn’t remember her lines in a play. 

Since Tonks couldn’t travel easily anymore at this stage in her pregnancy, her parents came to visit instead on Christmas Eve, before they would take the Greengrass sisters back to the safehouse with them where Camile and Montgomery were waiting. The addition of Andromeda, Ted, Moody, and Kingsley for dinner made the house even more crowded than it usually felt. Despite the festive mood conjured by Fred, George, and Ginny decorating the house with a ridiculous amount of mistletoe and baubles and multiple Christmas trees, Hermione felt increasingly frustrated that she, Harry, Ron, and Lupin had not been able to find time to have more than a few snatched moments alone.

While Ginny was distracted arguing with the twins over how to best charm the portrait of Walburga Black so that whenever she began shouting obscenities it was drowned out by Christmas caroling instead, Hermione dragged Harry and Ron into the Black family library, hoping to finally have a longer discussion about the Horcrux progress. 

They had been circling around an argument for days, each stolen conversation between Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Lupin exposing each of their frustrations and making her wish she could kick everyone else out of Grimmauld Place and demand answers from the only people who she could really get them from. 

Somewhat unfortunately, Daphne and Tonks were also in the room already, Lupin reading what looked like mission reports while the two women debated whether they were running too low on certain ingredients that Molly, Andromeda, and Daphne needed for restocking their healing potions. 

Though still forced to veil any words about the Horcruxes, Hermione at least didn’t have to worry about pretending she hadn’t been at Hogwarts for the last three months. 

“Remus, I feel useless.”

“I know, Hermione,” Lupin replied patiently.  “But you aren’t.  First and foremost, you are safe.  You have also been able to tell us about what is happening at Hogwarts—and what is not happening there, which despite seeming like you are not reporting back anything useful, is in itself very good news. We anticipated more Death Eater activity within the school than it seems is going on. The Carrows, for example, do not seem to be actively recruiting but rather making fairly weak attempts at indoctrination.”

Hermione sighed. “But I haven’t been able to find anything—” she snuck a frustrated look at Daphne and Tonks. “I mean, anything that might help us.” 

“Like what?”  Tonks wasn’t an Auror for nothing.  She was looking suspiciously at Hermione, who wasn’t doing a great job tiptoeing around things. 

“I’ve been researching the Dark Arts,” Hermione said half-truthfully.  “Since I have access to such a large library at school.”  This seemed to mollify Tonks’ curiosity slightly.  “But while I have certainly learned more horrifying things than I ever wanted to know, I’m not sure that I’ve found anything that could help us against Voldemort.”  She looked meaningfully at Harry, who was frowning.

“We’ve made some progress,” he began quietly.  “For example, the raid on the Ministry.”

Lupin cleared his throat and set the papers he was holding down on the table next to him.  “The raid was successful. Though we have not yet been able to execute a plan based on any of the reconnaissance information that we obtained there.” 

He looked at Hermione deliberately and she thought she understood his meaning: The Horcrux may have been found, but it was still intact. Her displeasure at her own lack of progress deepened. Without the Basilisk fangs and without anyone’s ability or willingness to cast Fiendfyre, she was at a loss to see how they would be able to destroy the locket or any others they would ever find.

“Well, what else?” Hermione pressed. “You’ve had Rookwood and Dolohov for weeks now, have you learned anything useful?”

This time it was Tonks who spoke. 

“Unfortunately, Voldemort seems to have carefully doled out information among his followers, which we knew was part of his strategy before.  Despite being under Veritaserum, Rookwood and Dolohov gave conflicting information on the details of several allegedly upcoming Death Eater plans, and neither could tell us many more names of those supporting Voldemort than we already knew.  That doesn’t mean we aren’t still trying to figure out how to make use of them, however.”

“But surely they knew—I mean, do you even have any idea where Voldemort is?”  Hermione burst out, frustrated. 

There was a long pause where she thought in annoyance that no one was going to answer her. 

“Hermione,” Lupin sounded strange, perhaps as if he wasn’t sure how she was going to react to what he was about to say. “We have reason to believe that Voldemort is… living at Malfoy Manor.”

Her brain didn’t seem to comprehend his words. 

“Living there?” She shook her head. “No.  Malfoy was just there—he—”

The look on Lupin’s face now seemed recognizable as pity, and she shrank away from it instinctually. 

“We believe he has been using Malfoy Manor as a base of operations since at least when Lucius Malfoy was freed from Azkaban, but, likely as early as when Bellatrix Lestrange was broken out.”

Bile rose in Hermione’s throat. “You mean…  Malfoy’s at home, right now, and Voldemort is there?” 

No one answered her.  She cast her eyes around frantically, finally landing on Daphne.  She didn’t seem to be surprised, though still looked equally as upset as Hermione. 

“What do we do? How is this—what are we doing? Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have—I would’ve—”

She didn’t understand why no one was reacting except for her, why this wasn’t earth-shattering news that changed everything. But no, now no one was meeting Hermione’s eyes except Daphne, whose gaze was fierce but pensive as she watched the other witch spiral into panic. 

“Hermione,” Lupin interrupted her. “The intelligence provided by the Greengrass family, among others, about Malfoy Manor and the other strongholds of the Death Eaters has been invaluable. Once we are” —he shared a brief but loaded look with Harry—“prepared, we do expect that we will move against Voldemort at one of these locations, likely Malfoy Manor. But you know better than most that we must do so at the right time.”

His words were heavy with significance.  Hermione tried to calm her breathing. 

The Horcruxes. She hadn’t held up her end of the bargain yet. This was all her fault. They’d found the locket, but the Horcrux that was supposedly at Hogwarts was nowhere closer to being found than it had been months ago. The cup, too, was out there somewhere, let alone the fucking snake. And they hadn’t actually destroyed anything. 

She felt like she might be sick. 

“We’ve made progress,” Lupin was saying gently as if the reminder was supposed to erase this horrible bombshell. Ron was hovering by the doorway, looking like he wanted to comfort Hermione but didn’t know how, an expression that was achingly familiar and equally frustrating. Harry’s hands were in his hair as he stared at the floor. 

“I would like to speak with Hermione alone.” 

Hermione’s eyes snapped up to Daphne. The brunette’s tone was polite but firm, and the others exchanged hesitant looks. 

“Yes, please,” Hermione whispered and she stared into the fireplace as Lupin helped Tonks from the sofa and Harry and Ron followed them from the room. The door clicked shut and she felt Daphne move to sit beside her.

“Hermione,” Daphne said quietly. “Do you want to talk to me about Draco?”

Hermione looked up, searching Daphne’s face.  There was no judgment there, only some kind of understanding that made Hermione feel exposed and confused.

“I…”  Hermione did. She really did, because no one else but the witch next to her could understand the position Hermione was in, or at least could try. But she found that she had no idea what she wanted to say or how to say it.  “Did you know?”

The look of sadness in Daphne’s eyes deepened.  “Not for certain until Remus told us last month.  But I suspected as early as last Christmas, when Draco returned to Hogwarts even more distraught than he had been.  Perhaps even earlier, though before that I wouldn’t have imagined that Lucius would have actually allowed Voldemort to take over their family home completely.”  She pursed her lips.  “I don’t think Draco did either.”

Hermione pressed her fingers into her temples.  “I wish I had known.”

“There’s nothing you could have done,” Daphne replied, her voice soft but firm.

“You don’t understand,” Hermione felt her voice crack and tried to swallow.  “He… last month, he disappeared and didn’t come back one night.  He told me he’d been called home.  I was angry, I thought he might have been doing something—it was the night of the safehouse attack where George was hurt, and Minerva said Malfoy hadn’t been there, but then I saw—he tried to hide it from me, but he was hurt.  Badly.”

Daphne took her hand and her slender fingers wrapped around Hermione’s. 

“I healed him.”

The other girl’s breath let out in surprise and Hermione looked up at her.  “He let you heal him?”  Daphne said carefully.

“Yes.  I don’t know.”  Hermione couldn’t find a way to describe the charged moment that had passed between them, how he’d watched her silently as she followed her magic with tentative fingers over his warm skin and lingered longer than she should have.  “I didn’t really give him a choice.”

“Hermione,” Daphne finally said, eyes inscrutable.  “I’m glad Draco has you.”

Chapter Text

January 1998

Blaise Zabini was, as a usual matter, purposeful, aristocratic, and charming.  He moved rather gracefully and cut an imposing figure, with his dark skin and expensively tailored clothes; unless, of course, you knew him and had also seen him sprawled on the floor of his dormitory throwing up into a wastebasket after betting Theodore Nott that he could swallow half a bottle of Muggle scotch mixed with a Pepper-Up Potion.  After Hermione had the good fortune of witnessing this lovely sight, his posh demeanor never quite could be thought of as intimidating again. 

Nonetheless, when Blaise strode into the common room, eyes wild and without bothering to hold the door open for the second-year girls who scurried out of his way in fright, Hermione found herself unnerved. 

“She’s missing,” he snapped.  

Hermione, who had just walked inside and said goodbye to Astoria, both tired from another series of elaborate Portkey jumps on the way back to Hogwarts, shared a look of confusion with Pansy and Theo. Blaise paced near them, unable to stop moving.

“Who’s missing?”  Pansy said slowly, as if talking to a small child.  Hermione shot a furtive glance at the recent arrivals from the train and then cast a silent Muffliato around the four of them. 

“Luna.” 

Her heart skipped a beat. 

“What do you mean, she’s missing?  You mean she hasn’t arrived back at the castle, yet?” Hermione asked quickly. 

Blaise jerked his head back and forth.  “No, and I—” 

His tie had come loose, and Blaise seized it madly as if it was choking him, yanking it out of the knot. 

“I owled her, during the break.  We had made plans to meet, and she was supposed to let me know where to come pick her up, but I never received a response.  I sent her three more owls that went unanswered.  I thought perhaps she was angry with me for some reason, but—Luna is simply not the type of person who would let me worry like that, even if she were pissed.” 

Blaise sunk into a chair as if the wind had gone out of him.  “I should have done something then.  I was a coward.  I thought she would be here when we returned but she’s not.  Something must have happened to her.”  Blaise’s voice cracked. Hermione felt it in her own chest.  “What am I going to do?  Who am I—who do I even tell?”

There was a stunned silence after he stopped speaking.  Pansy hovered at his side, seeming unsure. But Theo had a look of devastation on his face that Hermione thought must have mirrored her own.  

“I’ll—I’ll be right back,” she mumbled, getting to her feet.  The others looked at her in amazement, even Blaise, but Hermione ignored them and turned and sprinted out of the common room, down the corridor to her own dorm.  She said a silent prayer of thanks that Malfoy still hadn’t arrived and ran into her bedroom, tearing through the concealed dresser drawer. 

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” Hermione whispered, tapping her wand with a shaking hand to the Marauder’s Map once she had finally located it. 

Her eyes scanned the castle, seeking out first Ravenclaw Tower, then the kitchens, the Great Hall, the library, Hagrid’s, the grounds, and even the Astronomy Tower, which most of them avoided but where she knew Luna still loved to stargaze. 

Nowhere. 

She sat back on her heels, thinking fast.  Luna had been at the Ministry in their fifth year, and her father had been printing magazines declaring his support of Harry Potter as recently as November.  Luna was pureblood, though, Hermione reminded herself anxiously.  But… she had been thrown in detention now more than once after refusing to practice any of the Dark Magic they were supposed to be learning, and Luna wasn’t exactly subtle when she spoke about her reasons. 

Hermione closed her eyes.  Before she could second-guess the decision, she replaced the map and grabbed something else from her dresser before hurrying back to Blaise and the others. 

“Daphne, what the fuck?”  Pansy barked upon her return, only minutes later, but Hermione ignored her. 

“Blaise,” she said, struggling to keep her tone level.  “May I speak with you alone?”

His eyes snapped up to hers, still slightly manic.  There was a moment of hesitation, and then he rose. 

Pansy looked livid.  Theo didn’t seem annoyed, but was watching her with frank curiosity.  “There’s no one in the boys’ dorm yet,” he offered. 

“Excuse me?”  Pansy screeched, rounding on Theo as if he had betrayed her personally, which, Hermione supposed, in Pansy’s current worldview, he had. 

Blaise turned immediately toward the corridor and Hermione followed.  When the door was shut behind them, he watched intently as she locked and silenced it with a rapid but still shaky movement of her wand. 

Hermione suddenly felt the enormity of what she was about to do and wished she had perhaps slowed down to think for another minute.  But her fight or flight response was so easily triggered these days that she couldn’t have helped it—it was Luna, alone, captured by Death Eaters somewhere, or worse—

Hermione focused on the boy in front of her. 

“Blaise,” she began, steeling herself.  “Do you trust me?”

He blinked.  “I do,” he replied seriously.  “But, Daphne, I need to figure out—”

Hermione interrupted him.  “Your mother is in Italy, yes?”

Confusion spread across Blaise’s face.  “Yes, she’s been there since the summer.”

Hermione nodded absently.  “Good.”  She realized she had been fingering the cloth in her pocket obsessively and forced herself to stop. 

“Blaise, I agree that Luna is probably in trouble,” Hermione said softly.  The room was nearly dark, caught in the in-between time when the sun had mostly set but before the castle’s lamps would’ve been lit for the evening.  She barely caught the flash of pain on Blaise’s face. 

“And I don’t think that there’s anyone in the castle who can help us find her,” she continued.  Minerva’s face floated across her mind, but Hermione shoved it away.  This was her decision, and she wasn’t putting anyone else at risk by involving them with this, not the way she was about to recklessly do to herself. 

“I know that,” he practically growled, voice low and tinged with grief.  “But I don’t have any idea of where to go if I leave, either.” 

Hermione took a deep breath and drew the small bundle in the handkerchief out of her pocket, holding it out for him to see.  “I do.”

…

A short time later, Hermione returned to the common room, alone, legs shaking, blinking at the sudden brightness of the reflective green lighting.  Pansy and Theo were exactly where she had left them and leapt up immediately when they saw her. 

“Daphne,” Pansy hissed.  “Where is Blaise?  What is going on?” 

She braced herself.  If there was one thing Hermione had learned about Pansy Parkinson, it was that she did not like not knowing things.  The thought made her wince internally.  This was really not even at the top of the list of the things Pansy didn’t know that Hermione knew—that the real Daphne knew, for that matter—at this point.  Hermione was not thrilled for the day to arrive when Pansy came to that realization, particularly if this interaction was a preview. 

“Blaise is leaving,” Hermione announced quietly.  “To go and try to find out what happened to Luna.” 

Theo had a strange look of awe on his face. Hermione felt uncomfortable, unsure if it was at the idea of Blaise’s heroics or directed toward her for some reason. 

Pansy, however, was not done flipping out.  “Leaving for where?  What about the Ministry?  He’s going to get himself thrown in Azkaban!  And how in the world is Blaise going to figure out where Luna fucking Lovegood would have been—I don’t know—taken—or—”

Hermione yanked her further into the corner of the room.  “Pansy,” she interrupted, looking her directly in the eyes.  “I told Blaise of someone I knew that could help him.  That’s where he’s going to go.”

Apparently, even Pansy Parkinson could be shocked into temporary silence.

Hermione took advantage of this and continued before she could boil over again.  “Pansy, you are just going to have to trust me and not ask follow-up questions about this right now.  I know that is going to be absolutely infuriating for you, but, please, for Blaise’s sake, just do it.”

Maybe she should have talked to Minerva about this, Hermione thought with a sinking feeling.  But the look on Blaise’s face and the panic she had felt at not knowing if Luna was alive—alive.  It had been too much to wait and, if Hermione was being honest with herself, too much of a risk Minerva would say no. 

“Also, we can’t tell Draco,” Hermione remembered suddenly.

Theo’s wide eyes met hers and she saw his immediate agreement there.  Pansy, who had not calmed down at all, did not seem to have reached any sort of the same understanding. 

“What?” she said hysterically, gripping her short hair with her perfectly manicured hands.  “How is Draco not going to notice that Blaise is not here—”

“That’s not what I mean,” Hermione cut her off, trying not to let her burgeoning exasperation show.  This was going, somehow, less well than her mad proposition to Blaise that she secretly Portkey him out of the castle to an unknown location to unknown friends of Luna’s when he’d had no idea she’d even spoken to Luna more than a handful of times. 

“Daphne is right,” Theo urged.  Hermione looked toward him in grateful surprise.  His tone sounded sharper than she had ever heard before, and she felt the same when she searched his face, like he had been blurred and suddenly come into focus. 

“Draco is Occluding, Pansy, just like Daphne told us last month.  I can see it, too, now.  And I agree that it’s probably for a good reason.  Besides,” Theo hesitated and glanced at Hermione again.  “No one should know that we saw Blaise.  It’s mandatory that he be at Hogwarts.  He’ll—he’ll be on the run now.”

Pansy gaped at him.  “So you want to lie?  For—for how long?”

Hermione gave her a grim look.  “You both took the Floo back here, right?  We’ll pretend we never saw him, either.  Pretend that we think maybe they’ve gone on the run together once people find out Luna is missing, too.”  A sickening thought occurred to her.  “The only ones who will know that’s not what happened are people who might know where she really is.”  Like Malfoy...?

Hermione cleared her throat and gave Pansy her most intimidating look.  It occurred to her to wonder whose most stern look was more intimidating, hers or Daphne’s or the combination of whatever she was doing, but in any case, it seemed to have the right effect on Pansy.  Theo, a little green, was nodding already at Hermione in confirmation.

“I—”  Pansy shut her eyes in defeat. Then she straightened her spine, as if preparing for her role.  She leveled Hermione with her own glare, which was definitely scarier than anything Hermione was capable of conjuring. 

“When this is all over, Daphne Greengrass, I’m honestly not sure if I’m going to kill you, Blaise, or Draco first,” Pansy bit out, spinning on her heel toward the girls’ dormitory and stomping away. 

That, Hermione thought darkly, was probably a truer statement than Pansy realized.  

…

Hermione couldn’t bring herself to go back to the head dorm immediately, despite the warring urge to lay her eyes on Malfoy and ascertain that he was still alive after possibly spending his Christmas holidays under the same roof as Voldemort and assorted company.  She felt like a coward. But she also knew that if she saw him right now they’d end up having another impossibly confusing row or—and somehow the thought made her stomach clench even harder—another equally confusing and heated moment like when he’d come back hurt and she’d felt unmoored.   

Hermione couldn’t stop picturing Blaise materializing in Tonks’ parents’ house, with no idea where he was and only the words she’d told him to repeat.  The cottage had seemed a better option to send him than Grimmauld Place, given that it was more likely Camile and Montgomery Greengrass (and Andromeda, who had her own pureblood ties) would hear him out rather than cursing him on sight like she’d feared whoever was assembled at headquarters might. 

Instead of leaving for her rooms, Hermione sat with Theo for a while in uncomfortable silence, Theo alternating between staring thoughtfully toward the boys’ dorm that he hadn’t seen Blaise ever exit and at Hermione, who summoned a book out of her beaded bag to have something to train her eyes on instead of meeting his. 

As the adrenaline drained from her system, Hermione felt herself grow tired.  Not just from the stress of the past hour or so, combined with the extended Portkey travel she’d done before that, but from the prospect of having to again participate in the entire charade after her brief respite.  She felt guilty sometimes, at least sleeping in a comfortable bed with three meals a day, unable to participate in any of the active missions the others were conducting outside of Hogwarts.  But as Tonks had gently reminded her when Hermione admitted this a few days ago, there was still the perpetual fear of being discovered, the endless lying and remembering how she was supposed to act, the fact that despite her unexpected feelings about Malfoy’s presence there were still at least three people in the castle who’d probably kill her on sight if they knew who she actually was—at times Hermione thought she probably had the worse end of the deal. 

Her mind strayed inevitably back to Malfoy at this thought.  Now that she had been able to compartmentalize her fear for Luna somewhat, buoyed by the idea that the Order would know she was missing, the creeping fear that Malfoy might be hurt again—or worse—was returning. 

Ever since Lupin had told her of the Order’s suspicions, she’d been kept awake at night by horrible ideas of what might be happening at Malfoy Manor.  Sometimes these slipped into actual nightmares and Hermione would wake up sweating, having dreamt of Malfoy being tortured into insanity like Neville’s parents or struck down for no reason like Cedric Diggory. 

But even worse were the other dreams.  The ones where she saw Malfoy standing next to Voldemort, his parents beside him, wand drawn on faceless Muggles and eyes blank.

Eventually, she and Theo were the last two left in the common room and Hermione couldn’t avoid facing Malfoy any longer.  She stood, her knees cracking awkwardly loudly after being immobile for so long, and bade Theo goodnight as she stuffed her book back into her bag. 

He rose too.  After a moment, Theo reached out and grabbed Hermione’s hand.  He dropped it again so swiftly that she barely had time to register the gesture. When their eyes met, he spoke gruffly.  “You did the right thing.”

Hermione didn’t answer.  Had she?  She wasn’t so sure.

“It’s going to sort itself out.”  Theo’s voice was distant now, as if he was talking more to himself, yet the resolve there was oddly comforting. 

He offered a small smile, and then left her alone.

…

Hermione didn’t see Malfoy until the next morning, though she thought she saw light visible at the crack at the bottom of his closed bedroom door and that assuaged her enough to try to go to sleep.  When she stumbled into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, he was still there making their usual tea. 

“Hi,” Hermione said, mildly annoyed at how breathy her voice sounded. 

Malfoy turned and his eyes seemed to drink her in, from her rumpled hair down to her Quidditch-themed slippers and back up.  Though his eyes looked guarded, something in his face softened and he held out a mug.  “Welcome back,” he greeted her. 

“Thanks,” Hermione murmured, shuffling over to accept the tea he had prepared and perching on one of the stools near the counter. 

There was an awkward pause and then both of them tried to speak at once.

“How are—”

“Did you have—”

Both of them stopped talking again and exchanged sheepish smiles.

“How was your grandmother?”  Malfoy asked, genuine concern in his voice.

Hermione felt a stab of guilt.  “Um, the same,” she lied.  “Thank you.”

He nodded, taking a sip from his mug and drumming his long fingers on the counter next to where hers rested.  She fidgeted with the tie of her robe and tried to think of something safe to ask.

“How was your mother?”

A flash of surprise crossed Malfoy’s face but he smoothed it over quickly.  “Well, thank you.  Very happy to see me.”

There was a pang in her chest.  Hermione tried surreptitiously to scan the pale skin visible above the collar of the impossibly soft-looking long-sleeved shirt he was wearing, searching for any evidence of the marks she had seen him come back with before.  She thought he might have noticed what she was doing because he cleared his throat and gestured toward his room.  “I’d better get ready for Slughorn.”

“Right.”  She nodded mechanically and stood up, too.  “Me, too.”

He arched an eyebrow at her.  “I mean, not for Potions, but I should get dressed,” she corrected herself lamely. 

Malfoy chuckled and began walking away. 

“Draco,” Hermione called impulsively.  He craned his head back over his shoulder, pausing in his bedroom doorway.  “It’s really good to see you.”

…

Blaise’s absence was noticeable immediately.  Malfoy said nothing at lunch, even though Hermione knew he must have noticed him missing from Potions that morning.  But to Hermione’s horror, Snape swept over to the Slytherin table, glowering down at her, Pansy, Theo, and Malfoy, minutes after they had taken their seats. 

“Where is Zabini?”  he snapped, eyes darting between the four of them.  Hermione was frozen, glued to her seat, and she saw with relief that Pansy and Theo were, true to their house colors, much more practiced liars than she was even after her months of deception. 

“We’ve been worried, too, Headmaster,” Pansy said smoothly, inflecting her voice with a touch of distress.  “We haven’t seen him all day.”

Snape’s nostrils flared as he glared at her.  Hermione wanted to scream at her not to keep eye contact, to tell her not to look so innocently into the Legilimens’ eyes, but she bit her tongue. 

“He wasn’t in the dorms last night, either,” Theo supplied.  He had the sense to keep his eyes averted, seemingly frowning concernedly at the sausage speared on the end of his fork. 

Malfoy was silent, though when Snape turned his furious gaze on him, Malfoy met it coolly. 

“If I find out anyone has been in contact with him—or Miss Lovegood—there will be consequences,” Snape threatened.  Hermione, Pansy, and Theo managed a mix of frightened nods and mock confusion before he stalked off. 

“So, Lovegood is missing, too?”  Pansy feigned dismay but Hermione saw her narrow her eyes at Malfoy.  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his fist clench in his lap under the table. 

Theo shook his head.  “He’ll be okay,” he said quietly, in a tone that indicated the conversation was over.  Pansy huffed but returned to the essay she had been scribbling on when Snape had interrupted them. 

While the others stewed in silence, Hermione chanced a glance over her shoulder at the Gryffindor table.  As she expected, Ginny, Neville, and a few other former members of the D.A. were whispering anxiously in their seats.  She felt a stab of longing and had to force herself to turn back to her meal.  Blaise and the Order would find her, she thought grimly, and Luna was tougher than most people knew.

They had Transfiguration after lunch, and Hermione dawdled behind the others as they prepared to leave the Great Hall.  She was feeling guilty about seeing Minerva and debating whether to manufacture a reason to stay after class and confess what she had done. 

“Daphne.”  Hermione looked up in surprise from where she was staring distractedly at the last drops of her pumpkin juice.  Malfoy looked strange, and he was hovering over her in a nervous manner that didn’t fit with his usual demeanor.

“Yes?”  She frowned.  “I’m coming, just hang on.”

“No, that’s not—”  Malfoy’s eyes darted from her to the staff table and then back again.  “Can we talk?”

Curiosity winning out over any residual Hermione-like obsession with punctuality, she nodded and rose from her seat to follow him out of the Great Hall.  Before they got far, Malfoy had yanked her into one of the alcoves off the hallway and she nearly yelped in surprise at the tight grip of his fingers on her arm.

“Sorry,” he said quickly, dropping it.  “I just…”  There was a twitchy quality about him, and she noticed for the first time that he had darker circles under his eyes than she did these days.

“What’s the matter?”  she asked carefully, poking her head out of the alcove to make sure no one was still lingering in the corridor.

He stared at her for a minute, unspeaking, and Hermione thought she could see his walls crumbling behind the grey as he struggled to keep them up.

“Lovegood wanted me to tell you something.”  His words came out in a rush and she almost missed them. 

“What?”  Hermione replied slowly, trepidation mounting. 

He didn’t answer.  Malfoy looked like he wanted nothing more than to sprint away from her, or possibly Obliviate her, or both, but he held his ground.  “That she was having a nice holiday,” he said finally, something like desperation breaking through. 

Hermione’s heart pounded, hard, and she tried not to let her adrenaline rise again.  There was a narrow window in the alcove and she watched through the glass as a couple of younger students straggled across the grounds to the greenhouses, late for Herbology.  She could hear Malfoy’s own shallow breathing across from her and she focused on it.  

“That she was having a nice holiday?”  Hermione asked, her voice coming out higher than she intended. 

Malfoy somehow looked both relieved and horrified.  “Yes,” he whispered.

“Alright,” she said mechanically.  “That’s good to know.”

They looked at each other for a beat.  He seemed like he was on the precipice of saying something else, and Hermione shook her head.  “We’re late.”  She tugged his sleeve and slipped out of the alcove, not looking back to see if he followed as she half-ran and half-walked toward the Transfiguration classroom. 

Normally, Transfiguration felt like a sort of safe haven compared to the rest of her time in the castle.  Hermione actually learned something, and the idea of having Minerva close by was as comforting as anything could be in the circumstances.  But that day, the minutes dragged on.  Beside her, Malfoy seemed to have collected himself and was calmly taking notes on Minerva’s lecture about the stages of becoming an Animagi, no trace of the shaking mess that he had been minutes before they sat down.   

When the bell rang, Hermione shot out of her seat and had to force herself not to run immediately to Minerva’s desk. 

“I’ve got a question about our essay due next week,” she called to Pansy, waving her off.  “I’ll meet you back in the common room later.”  The other girl shrugged and followed Theo and Malfoy out of the classroom.  Hermione picked at her thumbnail anxiously and waited until the last of the other seventh years had trailed out before turning and rushing to the professor’s desk.

“Can we speak?”

Minerva’s wand flicked to the door before she nodded at Hermione and gestured toward the door to her private office. 

“What is it, my dear?” she asked, concern evident as she warded this door as well behind them.

“I need to tell you something,” Hermione said.  “Well,” she amended hurriedly, thinking of her assistance in Blaise’s flight from the castle, “two things.”

“I have no other classes, Hermione, you can sit down if you wish.”  Minerva looked like she thought this was a good idea given Hermione’s frantic energy, so she did as the professor suggested even though it was hard to keep still.

“Luna is missing,” Hermione blurted, and Minerva stiffened. 

“I am aware.  Filius alerted me only this morning that no one had seen her on the train back to Hogwarts nor in the castle last night.  I assure you, I have sent word to Remus, though unfortunately I know nothing more right now than the fact that she is not here.” 

“I think I do.”

A rare look of surprise registered on Minerva’s face.  “Pardon?”

“It’s Malfoy.”  Hermione squared her shoulders and met Minerva’s eyes.  “I haven’t been able to explain properly what he’s been—been like the past term, Minerva, and I apologize for that.  I still don’t know how.  But I think today he tried to tell me that he knew where Luna was.”

The older witch’s hand fluttered to her throat and she cleared it loudly.  “What exactly are you saying, Hermione?”

“I am saying that I believe Luna is being held at Malfoy Manor.  Where the Death Eaters have set up their base and where Voldemort has been residing.”

Chapter Text

January 1998

“It has to be me.”

They had been arguing for what felt like hours.  If Tonks hadn’t been absolutely so pregnant that it was nearly painful to look at her, Hermione thought she might have cursed the other witch by now.  Lupin, ever the attempted mediator, looked haggard, and Harry and Ron couldn’t seem to fully pick a side but did seem to be venting their frustration by alternating shouting at everyone.  Blaise, looking like he’d fit in there all along, was watching intently as he stood at Hermione’s side.  Susan Bones, who Hermione thought distractedly must have been on some assignment to headquarters, was hovering at the edge of the kitchen looking anxious. 

“I am the best chance we have at sending someone in who won’t be killed on sight,” Hermione repeated for what must have been the hundredth time. 

Dean moved again to her side.  “We’ll tell them we have information,” he backed her in a persuasive tone.  “It’ll buy us time.”

“That’s the entire point,” Tonks had been nearly exploding then, “we think Voldemort is staying there.  You will have to be in the same room as Voldemort.”  Her hair was jet-black instead of her usual bubble-gum pink, as if her mood couldn’t be contained, and Hermione thought of Andromeda and Sirius and was struck momentarily by the fact that these people were all Malfoy’s family, for better or worse. 

“Well—that’s—”  Hermione blanked for a moment.  This had occurred to her, in an abstract way, but in the rush to figure out how to even get into the Manor she’d lost sight for a second of what was potentially waiting for them there besides Luna.  

“He’ll torture you for information,”  Tonks said flatly.  “Just because you’re betting you’re the only one who might not get killed on sight, that doesn’t mean it’s safer for you.  It’s the opposite.  You can’t go, Hermione.”

Lupin looked uneasy.  Ron pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against and loomed over the table as well, knuckles white where his hands rested on the wood. 

“We can’t just leave her there,” Hermione said, but her voice sounded weaker and she hated it and she hated herself for hesitating. 

Harry cleared his throat and heads swiveled toward him during the stalemate.  He looked pained and he directed his words only at Hermione.  They were tinged with guilt and sounded like each one was costing him to say.  “He’s not there.” 

Dean and Susan looked extremely confused.  Ron looked resigned and angry.  Lupin and Tonks were having their own silent and furious conversation and Hermione let them be.  “How do you know?” she said quickly, ignoring everyone else’s muttering and feeling her momentary indecision evaporate again. 

“He’s out of the country.”  Harry sighed and his hand went involuntarily to his forehead, rubbing the scar there in his habitual manner.  “I saw him—looking for something—I’m not really sure what.  Something to do with his wand.  But in any case he’s been out of the country for days, and I don’t think he’s found what he’s looking for yet, so,” Harry’s face looked defeated.  “I don’t think he’ll be at Malfoy Manor tonight.”

Hermione’s mind had spun in several directions as she fought the urge to demand answers from Harry about how and why he was seeing Voldemort again and what else he knew about this wand business and what else had he and Ron, and Lupin, not told her over the holidays.  With substantial effort, she nodded at him in thanks instead and they shared a look of grim understanding.  After all, Hermione had gone with Harry on enough poorly-planned rescue missions that he owed her.  For that matter, she reminded herself, drawing her focus back to the others, so had Luna. 

Tonks growled in frustration again and threw a furious look at Lupin, who sighed. 

“I have no better ideas.”  He sounded defeated and Hermione felt only the slightest rebellious joy at the inclination that she had worn him down. 

It was the day after her confession to Minerva, and Hermione was, in a dizzying turn of events, back in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place only days after departing it to return to Hogwarts. 

Minerva hadn’t been one hundred percent convinced of Hermione’s own certainty that Malfoy had been trying to tell her that Luna was being held at the Manor.  But she had agreed reluctantly to let Hermione use one of their Portkeys to return to headquarters and tip off the Order.  They had concocted a possibly brilliant and possibly very flimsy story for her absence in case she was to be gone for more than a few hours, one that involved Minerva having Madam Pomfrey tell everyone Daphne was tied up in the hospital wing with menstrual cramps and would need to spend the night to be monitored while on pain potions.  

When Hermione had landed in the kitchen, she’d been disoriented for a moment to see Blaise eating dinner with Harry, Ron, Dean, Susan, Lupin, and Tonks, Kreacher doling out helpings of stew as they chatted amiably.  Upon her dramatic entrance, however, several of them quickly overturned said bowls of stew in shock, causing Kreacher to scowl horribly at her and mutter what were probably some unpleasant words under his breath about her blood status. 

Ignoring this, she had hurriedly told them of Malfoy’s cryptic warning and how she thought it meant that Luna was at Malfoy Manor, where he had seen and spoken to her over the holidays.  Blaise’s look of relief was so pronounced that she almost threw her arms around in him in solidarity, but she held herself back.

Blaise had wanted to immediately Apparate into the Manor, insisting he would still have access from his friendship with Malfoy and that he would ‘wing it,’ but everyone else had quickly agreed this was a horrible idea and also extremely unlikely to work.  He’d suggested an elf, who he knew would be able to Apparate in and out of the Malfoy kitchens, but Hermione insisted repeatedly that they couldn’t do anything that would implicate Malfoy as their source of information.  Blaise, or a random house elf, would be incredibly suspicious.  Albeit in some cases begrudgingly, the others had agreed this would be problematic. 

To solve this problem, Susan had helpfully posited that they needed to have someone from the Order lay eyes on Luna in the Manor before staging any kind of rescue attempt or somehow pretend to learn of her imprisonment in another way.  Hermione felt a rush of gratitude for the unexpected support and quickly agreed. 

Blaise immediately demanded again to go, but Lupin was the one who persuaded him it would only be distracting and possibly unsuccessful if he turned up at the Manor, as the Death Eaters may not even be aware that he had disappeared illegally from Hogwarts and the confusion over his allegiances could result in the opening of an entirely new and complicated scenario rather than his imprisonment in some locked down part of the Manor with Luna. 

It was Dean who volunteered an idea so inspired that Hermione had felt hopeful for the first time in days.  He was apparently on the Ministry’s newly-created wanted list for unregistered Muggleborns, as was Hermione, and thought it would make sense for them to ‘accidentally’ get captured by Snatchers in or near Wiltshire, who would hopefully and probably bring them to Malfoy Manor given Hermione’s ties to Harry.  They would likely put them wherever they were holding Luna, Dean argued, making it look like they’d discovered her by accident, and then they’d be able to use concealed Portkeys to get out of the Manor despite any Anti-Apparition Wards that might be in place. 

Tonks had been enraged, insisting that they were not using Hermione—or Dean—as bait with such a flimsy hope that they would be taken to the right place and, for another thing, not killed outright.  She wasn’t even convinced that Hermione was sure about what Malfoy had meant to convey, and wanted her to return and question him directly. 

They had been debating endlessly when Hermione finally had enough.

“Who else can do it?”  she shot furiously at Tonks, who was glaring defiantly at her from across the long wooden table. 

“No one has to do it, Hermione, we don’t even know for sure that this is worth the risk!”

Blaise’s mouth opened as if about to retort and Hermione answered instead, cutting him off before he could voice what was clearly about to be a furious response. 

“You would do it for me.”

There was only silence and Hermione dragged her eyes to Harry, who was shifting from foot to foot anxiously.  She could tell from the look on his face that she’d won, that he had no argument to offer her against this because it was true, and she felt the ache in her chest flare. 

“Hermione,” Tonks had lowered her voice and Hermione faced her again, registering with dismay the look of naked fear on the witch’s face.  “I just don’t want you walking into a slaughter.”

“I can do this.”  Hermione’s voice broke but she held the other witch’s gaze.  Finally, Tonks shook her head and her shoulders slumped in defeat. 

“I’ll help with the concealment charms,” Tonks said quietly.  “For the Portkeys.  You should both take extra wands, too.”

Hermione’s heart contracted and she opened her mouth to say thank you, or something like it, but Dean and Blaise distracted her before she could formulate a response. 

“We’re going to have to charm the Portkeys differently,” Blaise was saying, and Dean was nodding his head enthusiastically.

“What about timed ones, to go off at staged intervals?”  he suggested, running his finger through his short hair.   “So that if we miss one there’s another to catch a few minutes later?”

Tonks muttered something under her breath again at this.  “Hermione, you’re a shite Occlumens, so you’d better time the Portkeys to be quick.”

Hermione cringed and nodded obediently at Tonks.  Blaise looked pensive.  “We’d want to make sure the Portkeys directed you to somewhere other than headquarters, where there were members of the Order waiting—in case someone tried to hitch a ride.”

The two boys exchanged dark looks. 

“We’ll go tonight?”  Hermione asked abruptly and they both stopped talking to consider her.

“Tonight,” Blaise replied decisively.  For his part, Dean didn’t waver before quickly indicating his agreement. 

Hermione hesitated for a moment and then spoke quietly so only Blaise could hear.  “Astoria,” she said in a low voice.  “If something happens to me, you need to use the Portkeys to get to Hogwarts and pull her out and bring her here or to another safehouse.  Immediately.  Minerva’s covering for me until the morning, but after that Daphne’s absence will be apparent.”

Fierce agreement was evident in his eyes.  “I promise you.”  He paused and for a moment she felt almost uncomfortable under the scrutiny of his gaze.  “Hermione, I haven’t had a chance to thank you.”

She started.  “I—”

“No, wait.” Blaise cut her off.  “I spoke with Daphne last night.”  He rolled his eyes and looked briefly more like the Blaise she had come to know over the last few months. 

“Well, mostly Daphne spoke at me for hours.  And then I came here today and spoke with this charming lot.”  Hermione almost frowned in admonishment at him but realized his tone had no venom in it.  “They explained some other things, too.  My point is, I know what you did—what you are doing—at Hogwarts, and for Daphne and her family, let alone the fucking Wizarding world.  Perhaps I should be angry at being lied to, but I want you to know that all I am is grateful.”

The words hit Hermione like a sledgehammer and she didn’t know how to respond.  The fallout from her deception was something she avoided thinking about.  There seemed only two likely possibilities:  either it was going to happen because she was caught, and in that case, she’d probably be dead and wouldn’t have to explain herself, or it would mean somehow that they had won, and there was time for such conversations, and that was something she didn’t let herself daydream about while it still felt so impossibly far away.  

“Hermione.”  The velvety tone of Blaise’s voice was surprisingly gentle.  “You risked everything to help me, and now you are about to do it again.  I will never be able to repay that debt.”

Tears were blurring Hermione’s vision and she clutched the back of the wooden chair in front of her to ground herself.  “Blaise, I didn’t plan—I didn’t know that—I’m just so sorry.”

Despite the fear still evident in the creases around his eyes that had remained there since Luna’s disappearance, Blaise’s mouth lifted into a small smile.  “Hermione, like I said, you have nothing to apologize to me for.  I look forward to getting to brag about how I’ve become best friends with the indistinguishable Hermione Granger.  In fact, I’m particularly excited to tell everyone I know about how many times I’ve seen her so smashed that we had to levitate her back to her own bed while she drunkenly lectured us about the horrible example we were setting for the younger students and asked us to take her to the library instead of her room.”  He let out an actual laugh at that.  “Honestly, it all makes a lot more sense now.”

She blushed and rolled her eyes, but offered him a watery smile in return nonetheless.  “I’m glad I know you, too, Blaise Zabini.”

“Now, Draco.”  Blaise’s tone was suddenly deadly serious.  “You’re going to have a bit more trouble with him.”

Before Hermione could respond to this, she heard a voice call her from the other side of the kitchen.     

“Hermione?” 

She turned and saw Harry frowning at her from a few feet away, uncertainty clouding his face.  Leaving Blaise to debate the details of where they should fake their capture with Dean, she crossed the room to Harry’s side. 

“Hi, Harry,” Hermione said softly. 

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked, worry evident in his eyes.  They looked like Theo’s, she thought distractedly, or Theo’s looked like his?  In any event, it was comforting.

“No,” she laughed, somewhat nervously.  “But I have to try, right?”

Harry managed a wry grin.  “I think I’ve been a bad influence on you.”

She laughed, and she felt like she meant it.  “If you think that, you should see these Slytherins I’ve had to put up with.”

…

Hermione and Dean both poked aimlessly at the fire they’d scrapped together at their staged campsite, each of them jumping out of their skins at any unexpected sound. 

The plan was easy, she reminded herself.  The Order knew from various sightings that there were Snatchers in the woods here.  After she and Dean had spent a believable amount of time setting up camp, she was supposed to ‘accidentally’ venture out of their wards and reveal herself while looking for the nearby stream from which they had supposedly been catching fish for provisions.

It was a fine plan.

She shot Dean a look and stood up, wiping her sweaty palms on her denims.  “I’ll just go take a look, then.”  Hermione sounded ridiculous even to herself but she supposed she was still inside the wards and it wasn’t particularly important to maintain her polished acting skills quite yet. 

“Sure,” Dean replied easily, eyeing the edge of their campsite.  “If you find anything, call me.”

They locked eyes and she nodded once.

The woods here were fragrant, reminding her of some scent she couldn’t quite place.  A stillness filled the air despite the prickling feeling in her fingers that also told her the forest was teeming with magic and life.  Hermione gripped her wand—not her own wand, but the decoy one Tonks had given her that Ron had taken off some Death Eater or accomplice at a raid weeks ago—and crept along the bank of the stream flowing nearby. 

It took even less time than she’d imagined. 

A resounding crack filled the air and Hermione felt her heart lurch despite the fact that she was expecting, even hoping for, this to happen. 

Figures appeared around her, some shrouded in black cloaks and others looking tattered and betraying a hungry look of greed on their faces.  One of them advanced toward her and she drew the wand up, level to them, hand shaking only slightly. 

“What do we have here?”  The voice was laden with malice, and some tinge of excitement.  Hermione realized with dawning horror that it only sounded half-human. 

“Dean!”  She let out a strangled yell, as they’d planned, but also out of pure instinct, praying fervently that she hadn’t wandered too far and that he would hear. 

The outline in front of her came into focus and her suspicions were confirmed.  Fenrir Greyback, broad-shouldered and half-covered in what looked like matted fur more than hair, nails extending toward her, was grinning in a crazed fashion as his eyes raked over her. 

“You look familiar, girl,” his voice rasped.  Hermione thought her knees might give out. 

“Hermione!”  Dean’s voice echoed from the direction she’d left him and she whirled around.  Several of the shadowed figures did as well, and Hermione seized the opportunity to cast a few jinxes haphazardly into the tree line.  At least one body thudded to the ground and another cried out in fury. 

“Now there,” Greyback purred, advancing toward her, “I think I do recognize you after all.”

She felt like she might faint and considered her emergency Portkey for a wild moment.  Greyback hadn’t been in their plans.  The Order had said the Snatchers were low-level, bumbling idiots who were just looking for a quick Galleon, nothing that threatening.  She hadn’t been expecting to be that worried until they’d actually gotten to the Manor. 

“Get away from me!”  Her voice was strangled and she felt her foot bump into a tree root and cause her to almost stumble as she backed away.  To her left, Dean was struggling with another of the imperceptible figures, wands forgotten, trying valiantly to get closer to Hermione. 

“I don’t think so,” Greyback crowed.  He licked his lips and gestured to one of the nearby wizards.  “Bring her with us.”

The order was obeyed quickly.  Hermione cast a fruitless Stupefy at Greyback, which bounced off of him almost without notice, and then found herself falling to the ground, landing hard on her right wrist in a way that felt sickeningly like it had cracked, bound by her hands and her feet and the secondary wand summoned out of her hand. 

“I knew it!  This one’s Potter’s Mudblood,” Greyback said, a note of triumph in his voice.  “He called her Hermione.”

The Snatcher that had been fighting with Dean snickered in delight and shoved his foot deeper into Dean’s neck.  He had apparently succeeded in restraining Dean, who was lying on the ground and looking thoroughly pissed. 

Hermione tried in vain to summon her poorly constructed Occlumency walls as she felt Greyback wrap his claw-like fingers around her upper arm.  Before she could formulate any other thought, a tug pulled on her navel and the world twisted. 

…

They landed in front of ornate gates that Hermione had only imagined but were, at least, undeniably recognizable as guarding Malfoy Manor with their elaborately looping ‘M’s and other aristocratic-looking features.  Greyback appeared to briefly argue with an elf for a moment before they were granted entry, and then she found herself being dragged roughly through large wooden paneled doors and down a hallway—one decorated so richly with tapestries and art and Wizarding portraits and stone busts of what must have been Malfoy’s relatives that she was almost distracted despite her extremely precarious situation—and finally into a grand drawing room, where a brilliant chandelier dangled from the ceiling and caused hundreds of tiny fractures of light to bounce around the walls. 

She twisted her neck around as far as she could to reassure herself that Dean was still being yanked along behind her by one of Greyback’s associates.  He met her eyes briefly and gave the slightest movement of his chin that might have been a nod. 

They’d made it this far. 

Greyback’s nails were still digging into her arm and she became aware of the pain as some of her initial shock began to wear off.  Another wave of horror struck her as she tried to tell if they had actually pierced her skin.  Pages of a third-year essay flipped through her mind as she tried frantically to remember whether a scratch from a werewolf, untransformed, could do permanent damage.  Bill, had he been bitten or scratched or mauled or what even exactly had that meant when Pomfrey had said mauled?

These increasingly hysterical thoughts were interrupted by the sound of new voices and she tried to get a grip again.  From her half-standing, half-collapsed position, clutched to the werewolf’s side, she had to strain to look up and try to take everything in fully. 

She almost wished she hadn’t looked.

In front of her, the form of Bellatrix Lestrange had emerged, wild black hair and wilder eyes as striking as ever.  Next to her, the slender frame of Narcissa Malfoy stood in stark contrast, pale where her sister was dark and, even in physical appearance, sane where her sister looked unstable. 

“You have the Mudblood?”  Bellatrix yelled in breathless excitement, striding toward them.  Hermione tried valiantly to shy away, but Greyback thrust her in front of his chest. 

“It’s Potter’s,” he said proudly, claws still vice-like around her arms.  “See?”

Bellatrix grabbed her chin roughly in the hand that wasn’t brandishing her wand like a weapon already.  It already felt like a lost cause to attempt any Occlumency given the emotions she knew were already laid bare on her face—she apologized in her head to Tonks for being such a crappy student—but Hermione at least tried not to look into her eyes.  “Are you sure?”

“He called her ‘Hermione,’” another of the Snatchers chimed in.  Dean grunted as the movement of his captor pulled on his bindings and Bellatrix’s eyes snapped to him momentarily. 

“What is this, then?”  The witch seemed to be thinking furiously as she looked back and forth between Dean and Hermione.  “Surely not Potter.”

Greyback shrugged.  “He was with her.”

That seemed to satisfy Bellatrix momentarily.  She snapped her fingers and Hermione felt herself being pulled roughly by invisible hands out of Greyback’s grip and into a heap at Bellatrix’s feet.  Dean was crumpling onto the floor next to her, his face smacking the marble surface with a horrifying crack. 

“Well,” she cackled, “we’ll just have to see what they’ve been up to before we call the Dark Lord.”

Hermione tried to catch Dean’s eye but she was distracted by footsteps echoing above her to the left.  With great effort, still cradling her injured wrist, she turned her head again and tried to see who else had entered the room. 

And then the world spun.

Lucius Malfoy had appeared, ridiculous golden cane clicking on the floor in front of him as ostentatiously as ever.  But next to him, trailing just a pace behind, inexplicably, was Draco Malfoy.

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, trying to make sure she was seeing correctly.  Distantly, she could hear Bellatrix arguing with Greyback and the Snatchers and then a physical fight ensuing.  But all she could see was the horrified face of the boy now only several steps from her, wide-eyed and confused, gaping at her as if she was the last thing he had expected to see.  Which, Hermione supposed hysterically, she probably was. 

Bellatrix stalked back over, having somehow disposed of the Snatchers and the werewolf, which granted Hermione only temporary relief.  Her attention went back to Hermione and she dragged her to a half-standing, half-prone position by her hair, the pressure of her winding fingers painfully yanking at her scalp. 

“Draco!”  Bellatrix shouted.  “Come here.  It’s her, isn’t it?”

She could tell that Malfoy’s face had glazed over, the impassive mask settled again and making his face appear as if carved from stone, but a flicker of uncertainty appeared in his eyes.  “I—I don’t know.”

His aunt scowled, pulling forcefully on Hermione’s curls again.  “You went to school with Potter and the Mudblood for six years, Draco.  You don’t remember what she looks like?”

Malfoy’s face paled under the mask and, perhaps involuntarily, his eyes strayed to his mother.  Narcissa stepped forward, her own eyes fixed on her sister’s.  When she spoke, her voice was calm and almost dismissive, as if the entire affair was interrupting something else she would rather be doing.  “It looks like her, but I only met her once when she was a child.  I can’t be sure.”

Bellatrix scowled and let go of Hermione without any warning, who fell to the floor with an involuntary whimper, fiery pain still spreading across her skull.  With a flick of Bellatrix’s wand, Dean slid closer to her. 

“What about him?  He looks your age, Draco.  Is he an accomplice of Harry Potter?”

Now Malfoy stepped forward.  “I—I think he’s someone from Hogwarts, yeah.  But I don’t know his name.  Obviously, I don’t hang around Mudbloods or blood traitors, so I don’t know everyone.”  His voice was steadier this time but Hermione thought she saw his hand twitch at his side. 

An exasperated sigh escaped from Bellatrix and she rolled her eyes.  “Just take him to the cellar, Draco.  I’ll deal with him later.”

Malfoy bent down to grab Dean’s arm and all Hermione could see was their movement out of her sight.  Before she had time to wonder if this cellar might be where Luna was and whether this meant Hermione should try to escape now, Bellatrix had wrenched her up again, throwing her by her hair into the center of the room under the chandelier. 

“Let’s see whether we can get you to tell us anything useful before I call the Dark Lord and tell him we may have something interesting, Mudblood.”  Bellatrix’s wand was trained on her and Hermione had one more conscious thought before the first spell hit her:  But Malfoy wasn’t supposed to be here. 

It could have been hours and it could have been seconds.  Hermione floated in and out of her own body as the pain crashed over her in waves, excruciating waves that burned through every nerve in her body and then back again, never stopping.  She thought to cry out and beg for it to stop but she wasn’t sure if it was her voice she heard or someone else’s screams.  Dimly, she felt a sharp pressure on her left forearm distinct from the seizing in her muscles but it barely competed with the crushing agony filling her. 

A voice was screaming at her, asking her something, but it didn’t seem important.  Where was who?  Who was Harry?  She couldn’t remember for a second if she was supposed to know Harry, did Daphne know Harry, who was she supposed to be right now, what was happening to her and whose body was she in and why did it hurt so badly and where was she and why was Malfoy there—

Then darkness.  For a moment, the absence of pain felt as devastating in its shock as the pain had been as she tried to orient herself to the sensation.  

Hermione could faintly hear noises above her, and she made an effort to open her eyes but it felt like they had been sealed shut.  When she finally cracked one open, a man she hadn’t seen in years was wheezing his way up the stairs from the cellar that Dean had disappeared into, an exaggerated look of panic on his face. 

“Mistress!”  Pettigrew shouted, voice as squeaky as she remembered despite the volume.  “The girl—the girl is gone!  And the others!”

Relief flooded her.  Dean had done it, they must be gone, they had done it.  Luna was alive.  Dean was alive.  Alive.  All she had to do was get herself out of here somehow now. 

Bellatrix whirled around and Pettigrew shrank backward as her wand trained on him.  “What?!” she shrieked.  Lucius rounded on Pettigrew as well and while their backs were turned Hermione tried weakly to catch her breath.  Suddenly, before she could manage it, warm hands looped around her wrists. 

Hermione recoiled instinctively at the touch, pain flaring again in the right wrist she was sure was broken and somewhere on her other forearm, but when she looked up, familiar grey eyes swimming before hers were wide with horror. 

“Granger,” Malfoy whispered hoarsely.  Hermione couldn’t think, could only focus on how gently his fingers were as they clung to her, trembling slightly, and he seemed to be trying to pull her up, to help her somehow, but why?  And how?  To do what? 

Bellatrix and Lucius still had their backs turned, both yelling angrily at Pettigrew who was wringing his remaining real hand with his silver one and frantically gesturing toward the cellar door.  Hermione could see the blurry outline of Narcissa hovering behind Malfoy, her own arms outstretched uncertainly, eyes darting anxiously between her sister, her husband, and her son. 

“Draco,” Hermione heard herself rasp, and his eyes suddenly locked with hers again, confusion warring there with his terror.  Before either of them could move, their attention was drawn to a sudden orange glow emitting from the zipper on her jacket.  The wonderful sight almost made her cry out loud. 

The glow was intensifying, and for a second, Hermione thought wildly of taking Malfoy with her, away from here, to somewhere safe from whatever was about to happen when she disappeared, and her hand clenched involuntarily into Malfoy’s shirt.  But then, the impulse cleared, and she dropped the fisted fabric and wrenched herself away from him as hard as she could in spite of the splitting pain in her wrist and still lingering throughout her body. 

The familiar tug pulled against her navel and Hermione caught one last glimpse as she spun away from the drawing room floor, leaving Malfoy with a look of complete and utter shock on his face. 

Chapter Text

January 1998

Hermione didn’t remember how she got to Andromeda and Ted Tonks’ living room.  Later, Dean told her that she had shown up at the designated safehouse, which was empty except for several Order members prepared to fight in case she or Dean returned with someone unexpected along for the ride.  He’d said he was still there with Luna and Ollivander when she arrived, arguing with Harry and Ron over whether they should immediately try to get back to Malfoy Manor and pull Hermione out.  But then some minutes later there had been a flash of light and Hermione had materialized, blood spilling onto the floor, and collapsed unconscious at their feet.

Only after several heated Patronuses were exchanged did Harry make the executive decision that they had to Apparate her to Andromeda, who was the Order’s most talented Healer, despite the risks involved in transporting her.  Ollivander too was apparently very weak and had struggled with the trip, but they had made it without any—further—damage.

She finally came to hours later, and found herself lying in a dark bedroom, the curtains drawn and the door shut.  Her wrist still ached, but she could tell someone had mended whatever fracture or break had occurred.  There was a pristine white bandage around her left forearm, however, and she frowned at the sight, unsure what it was covering. 

Before she could investigate further, the door opened and light bloomed in several lamps around her bed.  Daphne and Andromeda entered, both clearly relieved to see her awake.  They exchanged a quick, undecipherable glance before bustling over to her side. 

“How are you feeling?”  Andromeda asked immediately.

“Luna,” Hermione croaked, trying to gather enough moisture in her mouth to swallow.  

“She is fine,” Daphne said gently, waving her wand over Hermione’s wrist.  She recoiled instinctively at the sight of the wand pointed at her, and Daphne’s eyes filled with pity.  Daphne retracted her arm and placed her other hand on Hermione’s shoulder gently instead.  “You saved her, Hermione.”

She let her head hang back against the pillow and closed her eyes again.  On her other side, Andromeda was applying something to her forearm, soaking the cloth bandage with some sort of solution that tingled in a not entirely pleasant way. 

“Please,” Hermione whispered.  “Tell me what happened.”

Daphne began speaking quickly.  “Dean said that when you arrived he was taken to the cellar fairly quickly.  He found Luna there, and she was alright, but she wasn’t alone.  Mr. Ollivander—you know, the wandmaker—he was there, and he was very weak.  One of Dean’s Portkeys activated while they were in the cellar, and he wanted to send the two of them and stay behind to try to get to you first, but—”  Daphne hesitated and the guilty, apologetic look returned to her eyes.  “—apparently, right before it was about to leave, one of the Death Eaters came down and almost grabbed them.  Dean was able to fight him off but the Portkey took Dean back here as well as Luna and Mr. Ollivander.”

Hermione tried to nod but found she was too tired.  “That was smart,” she replied, her voice still scratchy.  She meant it.  A small part of her, despite the fog in her brain, felt grateful that it had been Dean there and not Harry or Ron, who might have done something reckless, something that might have made things even worse than they had been.

A familiar set of runes was illuminated in the air above Hermione’s head, which she recognized as the diagnostic spell Andromeda had taught her so many months ago.  The runes weren’t red, or any color she’d been taught to respond to, she thought hazily, but flickering and black instead.

Andromeda caught her looking and quickly extinguished the spell.  “Hermione,” she said firmly.  “You are going to be fine.  I need you to tell us what happened, so I can make sure what I have supposed is correct.”

Hermione swallowed.  The memory felt fragmented, and like she was trying to recall a movie she had seen before but only in clips, long ago.  “I was… upstairs, while Dean must have been with Luna in the cellar.  Bellatrix used the Cruciatus Curse on me.”  She blinked and felt her muscles seize involuntarily at the reminder.  “I don’t know how long or how many times or what happened.  I think I might have blacked out.  But when it stopped—”

Remembering something, Hermione’s head swung wildly around to Daphne.  “Malfoy—Malfoy was there, I have no idea why, but Daphne—”

The other girl’s eyes widened in surprise.  “What do you mean?”

The memory was still hazy.  Hermione struggled to conjure the image of Malfoy speaking with his aunt, of him leaning over her and his mother hovering in the background, the palpable fear and anxiety radiating off of him. 

“I don’t know,” she said finally.  “He was there, and… and he lied when Bellatrix asked if he recognized me.”  The enormity of this made her head hurt.  “And then he was talking to me, he was about to say something, or…”  Hermione trailed off helplessly.  “I don’t know.  His father and Bellatrix had their backs turned, and Malfoy had come over to me and then…”

Her stomach flipped at the memory of traveling by Portkey while in so much pain.  “I don’t know,” she finished quietly.  “Then the Portkey activated and he saw it and he… he just let me go, I guess.”

Andromeda’s mouth was set in a hard line.  She was arranging a mildly alarming number of potion bottles on the bedside table next to Hermione, and didn’t speak.  Daphne was quiet as well, but her face was creased in thought. 

“I have to go back.”  Hermione’s voice broke the silence and the other two women turned toward her in mirrored shock. 

“Hermione,” Andromeda began firmly, “I’m so sorry, but you haven’t even seen the damage done to your arm, and on top of that your body is still suffering from muscular tremors from the Cruciatus Curse.  I cannot let you leave our care.”

She opened her mouth to protest and then stopped, momentarily confused.  “What do you mean, the damage to my arm?”

Daphne’s eyes were filled with sympathy again as she gently took Hermione’s right hand.  Andromeda hesitated, but slowly waved her wand to begin unraveling the bandage on her left forearm.  “My dear, you were very brave.  I’m so sorry, but I am afraid I don’t know yet how to repair the damage from the blade that was used on you.”

Hermione struggled to sit up, watching as the cloth continued to unspool.  “Damage?” she repeated. 

“It was a cursed blade,” Andromeda continued, voice kind but sure.  Her wand stilled and she met Hermione’s eyes.  “Are you certain that you are ready to see?  It is your choice.”

If there was one thing Hermione loved about Andromeda, it was the fact that she was unflinchingly honest.  Perhaps it was a function of having grown up with—and been outcast by—the Black family, but she didn’t tolerate nonsense despite her compassionate nature. 

“Show me,” Hermione said determinedly. 

Andromeda flicked her wand again and the rest of the bandage fell off, revealing bright red lines marring Hermione’s otherwise pale forearm.  She felt lightheaded as she stared down at what appeared to be letters that had been carved into her skin. 

Mudblood.

Hot tears filled her eyes as she gazed at her arm and this made Hermione even more furious as they fell fast and thick.  Andromeda looked equally as angry as she began preparing another bandage to wrap around the mark.  

“It’s cursed?”  Hermione asked, eyes still fixed on her arm.  “So it won’t heal?”

Andromeda took a deep breath.  “Most likely, no.”

Daphne’s hand was still clutching her right one.  Across the room, Hermione could see her own reflection in a smudged mirror above the dresser, and the sight of her own face and hair, next to Daphne’s, the contrast stark, gave her the oddest and tiniest bit of resolve. 

“It’s just a word,” Hermione said, her voice sounding unsure to her own ears despite her effort to convince herself as well as the other two women.  Tears were still falling down her face but she forced herself to sit up, this time successfully.  “I have other scars already.”

A choked sound came from Daphne and Hermione squeezed the other girl’s hand in return. 

“I have to go back,” she repeated. 

…

It was somewhat fortunate for Hermione that Tonks was too pregnant to Portkey to her parents’ house and that Lupin wouldn’t leave her side, because she was pretty sure if either of them had been able to confront her face-to-face the outcome would have been very different.

Despite the fact that it had felt like years since Hermione had left Hogwarts, it was in fact only two in the morning when she convinced Andromeda and Daphne to let her get up from her bed and move to the living room for a brief walk.  The sight of Blaise and Luna was enough to halt the fragmented and horrible images flashing through Hermione’s mind of the past eight or so hours. 

Luna was sitting across Blaise’s lap on the tattered sofa near the windows, one hand resting gently on his face and the other holding his right hand in their laps, and the expression on Blaise’s face was almost so reverent that Hermione had to look away.  She wondered in amazement at the intensity with which they were staring at each other and it made her both flustered and warmed.  

What else had she missed?  She had been so consumed by the fear of being discovered, by the obsession with finding the Horcrux, by surviving, and in the meantime people had… kept living.  Kept falling in love.  It was both incredible and yet baffling.

Luna disentangled herself from Blaise when she noticed Hermione stepping into the room, still leaning on Daphne for support, and crossed over to them, a smile breaking across her face. 

“I knew he would tell you,” she said contentedly.  “Thank you, Hermione, for rescuing me and Mr. Ollivander.  I was getting rather worried about him.”

Hermione struggled to follow, wondering if the Cruciatus Curse really had addled her brain more than she thought.  “I’m sorry, that who would tell me?”

Luna looked at her very seriously and lowered her voice.  “Draco, of course.”

“Luna,” Hermione gaped at her.  “You can’t be—what did you tell him?”

“Oh, don’t worry.”  Luna shook her head breezily.  “I told him to tell you.”  She tilted her head toward Daphne, who looked equally baffled.  “And it worked, didn’t it?”

Hermione and Daphne both seemed too taken aback to respond. 

The blonde’s eyes suddenly filled with sympathy.  “But I didn’t want you to have to go through this, though, Hermione, just to rescue me,” she said quietly.  “I am so sorry and so very grateful.” 

“You don’t need to thank me, Luna,” Hermione said hurriedly.  “But—”  Suddenly she felt her exhaustion catch up with her and couldn’t stand the vague insinuations anymore.  “Luna, did Blaise tell you what I’ve been doing at Hogwarts?”

“Oh, yes,” Luna said seriously.  “We did get to talk tonight.  But please don’t worry, Hermione.”  She turned to Daphne then and beamed again.  “Or either of you.  Hermione has a very distinct aura, so it was quite obvious.  No offense, Hermione.  But in any event, I do understand that people need to keep secrets sometimes.”

Luna smiled at them both and then returned to where Blaise was waiting for her, immediately folding herself back into his side the moment she sat down. 

Hermione blinked at her for a moment and then turned to Daphne in wearied confusion.  “Well, I don’t think she told Malfoy the entire story, at least.”

Daphne was eyeing Blaise and Luna with interested speculation.  “No, I don’t think so.  But I have to say that you are doing a very poor job of keeping me informed of what’s going on with our friends.”

There was a twist in Hermione’s chest at the phrasing, one that made her feel buoyed and also anxious.  “Our friends,” she repeated quietly, looking at Blaise and Luna. 

“Yes,” Daphne replied decisively, wrapping her arm around Hermione’s waist and steering her gently back toward the bedroom.  “I know Blaise told you that we spoke.”

Hermione nodded as she lowered herself gingerly to the bed, wincing at the residual aches in her pelvis and ribs and back.  “He did.”

Daphne helped arrange her pillows and drew the faded gingham quilt up to Hermione’s chest.  With the softest touch, she carefully placed Hermione’s bandaged arm on top of the cover and then returned to her eyes to Hermione’s.  “You know, I’ve changed, too, these last few months,” Daphne said quietly.  “And I’m also grateful to you for that.  To all of you, in the Order, really,” she amended.  “But after seeing Blaise for myself I think something else is happening.”

She used her wand to fill the glass on the small table next to Hermione with water and seemed to be formulating her words with careful deliberation.  “I still miss Pansy, and Theo, and Astoria.  But hearing you talk about them—” Daphne hesitated, and her eyes shifted toward Hermione’s.  “And hearing the way you talk about Draco.”

Hermione fidgeted uncomfortably, wincing as her muscles whined in protest at any movement.  “I don’t talk about Draco differently than anyone else,” she protested, and then immediately regretted saying anything.

Daphne hummed, tucking her face away in an apparent effort to hide the small smile that had crept up on her face.  “Sure.  I’m just saying, I have Blaise here with me now, and it’s truly wonderful to see him with Luna, and to hear him talk about how it’s been since you’ve been at Hogwarts, despite… everything.  And Draco, well…”  Daphne made a face and hesitated.  “He is the most difficult of everyone I love.” 

Hermione said nothing, but her own expression must have betrayed her lack of disagreement with that statement because Daphne just laughed. 

“The point is, I haven’t had hope in a long time, Hermione Granger.  At least, not for anything other than getting my sister and maybe, if I was lucky, myself out of the next few years alive.  But you’ve changed that for me.  And I think you might have changed it for a lot of people.”

…

The negotiations for Hermione’s return to the castle continued in the morning.  Camile and Montgomery Greengrass were conspicuously absent from breakfast, despite their continued residence at the Tonks’ cottage, but Daphne heatedly insisted that Hermione did not have to return.  They could find a way to Portkey Astoria out immediately and the Greengrass family would simply have to deal with the consequences of flouting the Ministry’s decree that all of-age students attend Hogwarts.  Hermione needed to recover, she maintained, and they could figure something out.

Hermione was tired, and sore, and was also dealing at this point with the constant hovering of Harry and Ron, who had been forcibly restrained from crowding Hermione further the night before but had appeared at the crack of dawn and were both demonstrating a lot of guilty hand-wringing and intermittent bouts of angry silence as they puttered around the kitchen trying to be helpful.  She loved them for it as much as she ever had but she was also exhausted. 

“There are other reasons I need to be at Hogwarts.”  Hermione had finally declared in a tone that she hoped left no room for argument.  Everyone except for Harry and Ron looked dismayed and confused, but she held her ground.  “I am going back, and I will be fine,” she repeated, itching unconsciously at the bandage on her arm.

“Then I’ll go back,” Daphne shot back anyway, a tinge of desperation creeping into her voice.  “Just for a week or so.  Until you’ve had time to rest.”

Hermione shook her head again stubbornly.  On top of everything, a small part of her mind thought, a week of sitting around on virtual bed rest with nothing to think about but the events of the last few hours and the anxious crowding by the other inhabitants of the Order’s various safehouses… that might actually make her go insane even if Bellatrix’s torture hadn’t succeeded. 

“As much as I appreciate the offer, you’d get caught,” she said flatly.  “I’m not saying my acting has been brilliant, but throwing in a disruption at this point when everyone’s gotten used to whatever version of you has appeared to have been around for months would just be a terrible idea.  You and I spent a month trying to prepare me to fake all of this knowledge I was supposed to have, remember?  How could you go back tonight and pretend you remembered what Pansy said to you yesterday in Transfiguration, or where Malfoy keeps the extra quills and parchment in our dorm, or what’s been going on with the Carrows?”

Daphne opened her mouth as if to protest and then shut it again, scowling.  “I hate this,” she finally pronounced.  A loud noise of what must have been agreement came from the other side of the table where Ron and Harry were glowering, and Hermione wasn’t sure which one it had come from. 

“It’s my decision.  That’s what everyone told me when I agreed to do this, and it’s still my decision now.”  Hermione’s voice was quiet but steady.  No one met her eyes again and there was a lot of scraping of cutlery and heavy sighing instead. 

Andromeda was mixing more potions on the table off to the side of the kitchen.  Despite Hermione’s position from the breakfast table, she couldn’t read the look on the older witch’s face.  “Portkey travel will be painful,” she finally said, tone matter-of-fact.  “And for that matter, you will have to use Polyjuice Potion while still trying to heal a cursed injury.  Your body will transform and the scar won’t be visible, but the pain will not go away.  Pain originates from the brain, and Polyjuice does not affect how you think or who you really are, only your physical appearance.  It will be painful, and more so, because of the injury.”

“I understand.”

The room felt thick with tension.  Hermione purposely returned to breaking her apple muffin into crumbles on the china plate in front of her.  To her left, Harry was gripping his fork so tightly she thought it might snap, and Ron didn’t look much better off on his left as he glared at his eggs. 

“I’ll be fine,” she repeated, and no one answered except by avoiding her eyes further and scowling at their breakfasts.  “It’s fine.”

…

Hermione landed in Minerva’s office with a soft thud and immediately crumpled to the ground. 

“What in the—Hermione!”  The professor hurried to her side, and the younger witch tried to smile reassuringly up at her, but thought it might have come off only as a grimace.

“Just dizzy.”  There were two velvet-seated chairs in front of Minerva’s desk, and Hermione sank down into one of them with the help of the older witch, closing her eyes.  “Andromeda warned me.”

“You are bloody insane.”  The sound of the familiar voice made Hermione’s eyes fly open in shock and she glanced automatically to Minerva in horror before twisting to confirm her suspicions. 

Ginny Weasley was standing a few steps from the door, arms folded across her chest and eyes narrowed in an expression of fury that she was well accustomed to but that had rarely been directed at Hermione herself. 

“I apologize for not consulting you first,” Minerva spoke firmly before Hermione could say anything.  “But I made the decision alone to tell Ginevra what has happened to you, as well as the truth about where you have been the last few months.  Even if she is not of age, she is herself inextricably involved in the Order and already has more knowledge than nearly anyone else in this castle about its affairs.  And Hermione…  I cannot in good conscience let you return here after what has happened with only myself for support.”  Her voice softened and the sharp eyes glistened behind her spectacles. “You do not have to do everything alone.”

Hermione really did consider being angry, or guilty, or panicking over the potential increased danger Ginny was in now as another keeper of this secret.  But she couldn’t muster any of those emotions up to compete with the overwhelming relief filling her. 

Instead, she crossed the room and threw her arms around the redhead, letting out a sob once the other girl’s arms wrapped fiercely around her in return. 

“You look bizarre,” Ginny said in a voice muffled by Hermione’s sobs and Daphne’s dark hair, which had not been brushed or charmed into any sort of semblance of style. 

Letting out a shaky laugh, Hermione pulled back slightly and used her right hand to wipe at her eyes.  “It takes a bit of getting used to.”

Ginny squinted and tilted her head as if trying to decide whether that was likely.  “Well, in any case, I’ll wait to yell at you for not telling me earlier until you look like yourself again.”  She nodded over Hermione’s shoulder at Minerva, and Hermione caught a look in her eyes that conveyed fierce gratitude as she did so.  Then Ginny gently steered her toward the door, one arm still tight around Hermione’s waist, the feeling more comforting than anything Hermione had felt at the castle in longer than she could remember. 

“Let’s get you fixed up.”

…

Having Ginny on her side was, Hermione could admit, incredibly useful.  The girl really should have been in Slytherin.  Somehow, within half an hour, she had finagled Neville into fetching Pansy to ‘help Daphne back to her dorm from the hospital wing’ where she had supposedly been for the past twenty-four or so hours.  Then, some sort of brief, discreet conversation with Madam Pomfrey before Ginny disappeared—after dropping a brief kiss on Hermione’s cheek with a firm promise to find her later—resulted in Hermione actually sitting in a hospital bed upon Pansy’s arrival, convincingly empty pain potions on the bedside table.  It occurred to Hermione that Minerva may not know everything about what was going on in the castle, or perhaps Hermione didn’t, because it certainly didn’t look like the first time Ginny had asked the mediwitch for something and received it with no questions asked.  

“Daphne,” Pansy scolded immediately when she arrived, hands on her hips as she stood over the bed.  “Why in the world didn’t you tell me what was going on?  I could’ve stayed with you.”

Hermione smiled weakly, genuinely happy to see the Slytherin witch.  “I’m sorry, Pansy.”  She slipped the covers off gingerly and made to put on the flats Daphne had lent her for her return.  “It came on so quickly, you know, and then I got a migraine too and Madam Pomfrey let me just sleep through it.”

Pansy let out an understanding sigh.  “All right.  It’s just been a rough few days, what with Blaise gone, and then finding out you’d gone to hospital without telling us, and then Draco being god knows where.”

The mention of Malfoy made her pause before she followed Pansy out of the door with an uncertain wave at an apparently unconcerned Madam Pomfrey.

“Where has Draco been?” she asked casually as they walked slowly down one of the enchanted staircases and waited for it to swing over and connect to the next portion of their path.

“Honestly, who knows.”  Pansy rolled her eyes.  “The library, the lake, brooding in his room, whatever.  Not at class or meals or in the common room, that’s all Theo and I know.”  Several third-year Hufflepuffs skirted around them hurriedly, and Pansy waited for them to pass before speaking again in a lowered voice.  “I think it must be like you said before, about his Occluding.  He doesn’t want to talk to us about Blaise’s—or Luna’s—disappearance.  So he must be avoiding us.”

Hermione made a soft noise of acknowledgment but didn’t otherwise reply.  It was sometime after lunch, and she wondered vaguely what classes she had missed, if any, finding that she couldn’t even bring her—Daphne’s—whatever—class schedule to mind at the moment.

“Do you want me to come in with you?”  Pansy asked as they drew up to Merlin’s portrait.  “I’m sure it won’t help your migraine to have to deal with Draco alone if he is hiding out in there.”

She hesitated and almost accepted the offer.  “That’s okay,” Hermione finally said.  “He’ll probably be easier to deal with if it’s just me anyway.”

Pansy laughed, but not unkindly, and nodded.  “I’ll see you at dinner?”

Hermione smiled and assured the other witch that she would be there before turning back to the portrait and offering the password (‘Chocolate Frogs,’ one chosen by Malfoy, and one at which she had to squash the odd, fleeting temptation to tell him of the sweet tooth and tendency to rely on it to conjure passwords that he’d shared with their late headmaster). 

The fire was lit and the room was warm, the cozy scent of something like toasted bread and cheese still lingering in the air, and despite everything, Hermione felt something loosen inside her as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.  The idea of her shared space with Malfoy feeling like something close to home after what had happened the night before was unfathomable, and yet.  Yet.

She heard a door click softly, and before she had time to decide whether she had intended to go directly to her own room or linger in the sitting room, Malfoy appeared.  He looked almost as horrible as Hermione must have.  Despite the fact that Polyjuice covered her fresh injury—one that hadn’t sunk in yet, perhaps because she’d only had to look at it for a few hours before the skin transformed again, painfully yet mercifully allowing her to pretend it wasn’t there—Hermione knew it couldn’t conceal the slump to her shoulders and the pale, drawn look in her face. 

“You’re back,”  Malfoy spoke first.

Hermione took an involuntary step closer to him at the sound.  She thought back to when he had disappeared before and she’d screamed at him in terrified anger for not telling her that he would be gone overnight.  Things had changed even more since then, she knew that, but Hermione didn’t know how exactly or how much and she hated it.

“I just left the hospital wing,” she replied uncertainly.  There was no discernible reaction from Malfoy other than a small nod, as if this was not new information.  “Pansy told me she hadn’t seen you in… in a bit.”

He looked at her for longer than was comfortable, and Hermione shifted uneasily under his gaze.  It was only late afternoon, but she longed for her bed and the Dreamless Sleep potion that Andromeda had tucked into her beaded bag. 

She was about to make an excuse when Malfoy suddenly rushed toward her.  Before she could process what was happening, Hermione found herself encircled in warmth, a heady scent of peppermint and bergamot enveloping her as Malfoy’s arms wrapped around her waist and crushed her to his chest. 

Whatever shock Hermione felt at the contact evaporated as she relaxed under the sudden embrace, her forehead falling to Malfoy’s shoulder and eyes closing reflexively.  She heard him draw in a ragged breath and thought she could feel his heartbeat under her own where their chests were connected.

“I’m sorry.”  Hermione heard a voice say distantly, and she looked up to find Malfoy’s face alarmingly close. 

“For what?”

He just looked at her.  Hermione was acutely aware of the sensation of his long fingers gripping her lower back. 

“I don’t know.”  Silver-grey eyes looked defeated as they bore into hers. 

“Okay,” she replied, unable to move.  

“Just… I don’t suppose you’ve fucking learned Occlumency?”  Malfoy’s voice twisted, something like hope coursing through it and her heart jolted.

“I tried.  I’m—I’m terrible,” she replied honestly, watching as his face fell.

“Okay,” he echoed her, dropping his hands from her suddenly and retreating a few steps.  Hermione watched in dismay as Malfoy’s face slipped back into blankness.

“Will you walk with me to dinner?” Hermione asked quietly, wrapping her arms around her torso to try and replace the sudden lack of warmth. 

“Sure,” Malfoy answered, back already to her.  “I’ll see you then.”

…

Hermione thought she was going mad sometimes.  She had erased all of her parents’ memories of her, essentially half of herself, and now here she was wearing someone else’s skin and living a lie full-time in the magical world, too.  It felt like whoever Hermione Granger had been was slipping away, like there was no tether to her own life.  Like she’d erased herself.  Even after the two-week respite, she was spending too much time pretending to be Daphne Greengrass, and she couldn’t talk to anyone besides Minerva—and thankfully, at least, now Ginny—who actually knew who she was now that she was at Hogwarts again.  But not her parents, and not Ron, or Harry, or even Neville or Seamus or any of the other faces she saw around the school whose eyes slipped over like she was invisible.  On top of the events at Malfoy Manor, it was enough to make her lose her sense of reality sometimes. 

Andromeda had warned her again over the Christmas holidays that this much Polyjuice use could have mental side effects.  But even after Bellatrix’s torture, she hadn’t told Andromeda everything, of her parents, of the Horcruxes and how she read about the rituals involved in splitting souls every night and how now she knew firsthand what Unforgivables felt like, too.  She had started having nightmares about fragments of her own soul getting stuck in Daphne’s body, or being unable to turn back into herself.  These would usually end with her waking up screaming, clutching her own hair and face to make sure it was really her own, panicking as she checked for the thousandth time that she had set the silencing charms so that Malfoy couldn’t hear her cry out at night. 

If it wasn’t that, Hermione dreamed of the letters in her arm, felt them carve into her deeper and deeper as Bellatrix and Greyback and Lucius Malfoy and other shadowy figures bore down on her.

A week had passed this way since Hermione had returned to the castle.  A long, strange week in which she and Malfoy circled around any topic that had to do with something other than lessons, the weather, or the possibility of the elves preparing shepherd’s pie for dinner.  Pansy had been uncharacteristically quiet, as well as absent, and Hermione suspected she had been spending her evenings with Neville instead of fixating on the absence of Blaise and Hermione’s own withdrawal.  Theo, not atypically, hadn’t commented on anyone else’s strange behaviors.

The dorm was dark and Malfoy was nowhere to be found when Hermione trudged back into the dorm after returning from the library.  Her mood worsened as she shrugged off her robes and threw them with her bookbag down on the closest armchair. 

She still had a foot-long essay to write for Transfiguration by tomorrow on the risks of poorly performed alterations to human features before she could go to sleep, but she had lost all of her ability to concentrate.  A flicker of irritation at Minerva flared.  Surely they could have worked out some arrangement at least in Transfiguration where she didn’t have to spend time doing homework, of all things, when she was still wearing herself to the bone searching the castle at all hours of the night among everything else she was trying to keep together. 

The irony that Hermione Granger, particularly after resenting being robbed of her own seventh year, was annoyed at having to actually do her homework was not lost on her. 

She stomped over to the kitchen and grabbed a mug from the cupboard, thinking caffeine was deserved at this hour despite how much she might regret it later.  As she turned toward the small pantry to find the coffee grounds, something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. 

There was a piece of parchment sitting out on the kitchen counter, folded over multiple times so its contents were hidden, and tucked halfway under the kettle.  Strange. 

She looked around again for Malfoy and felt a sense of apprehension wash over her.  The room suddenly felt off, and it made her skittish.  Her wand had been tucked in the pocket of her robes and, feeling foolish, she fished it out again and slipped it up one of her sleeves. 

This was ridiculous, Hermione told herself.  Alright, the note must be for her, she reasoned, but surely Malfoy had just wanted to ask her to revise the prefects' schedule for the week and didn’t want to forget, or—she shuddered—given their weird and unspoken détente, maybe he was informing her that he would be gone for a few days.

She finally plucked the note up. 

I thought this might be useful for your extra credit assignment.

Hermione stared at the parchment in confusion.  Before she could turn it over to look for more writing, the kettle disappeared and an object rematerialized in its place, presumably triggered by her picking up the note or opening it.  

Sitting on the counter, looking almost exactly like the sketch she had tucked away in her notes, was a diadem.

Chapter Text

May 1997

Flames.

Draco couldn’t remember how he had gotten from the Astronomy tower to the gate on the edge of the grounds, his mind not blank from his carefully constructed walls but rather shattered into jagged fragments that weren’t fitting together to come up with anything comprehensible. 

Something was on fire.  Was it him?  His mind searched desperately for some proof that the surging, sickening, electrifying horror that was shooting through his body and licking at his skin and his throat and his face wasn’t because he was actually about to burn to death—

His wand.  His wand was still in his hand.  He had been running.  He didn’t think he could be running if he was on fire, but he wasn’t sure.  Someone’s fingers were suddenly gripping his upper arm, hard, so hard it was painful, but he tried to focus on the intrusive pressure rather than the fiery feeling to ground himself.

“Draco,” Severus was half-dragging him again, his voice harsher than he had ever heard it, and before Draco could summon any further thought for why he was still seeing dancing, licking flames in his vision, Severus twisted and took Draco with him away, away from the castle where he’d opened the door to the end of the world.

They landed outside of the gates of Malfoy Manor and Draco turned to his left and vomited into the grass.  The flames had been replaced in his vision with white spots that were slowly growing larger and fuzzier. 

“Draco,” Severus said again, hissing.  “You must get control of yourself, now.”

He could hear Aunt Bella distantly ahead, laughing in her horrible shrieking voice, accompanied by gruff but jubilant voices of the other returned Death Eaters that must have been with her walking toward the house. 

“You cannot let him see you like this, Draco.”  Severus was gripping his shoulders now, forcing him to stand straighter.  Draco felt dizzy.

“He’s going to kill me,” Draco gasped, unable to look away from the other man’s black eyes, which were boring into his own.

“No, he will not,” Severus said quickly, speaking so low Draco almost didn’t hear.  “The thing he wanted done has been done.  But you cannot let him see what you discussed with Dumbledore—you cannot let him see that you almost—”

The choked cry that cut Severus’s words off must have come from Draco but it sounded unrecognizable even to him.  “I didn’t, I didn’t do anything, I wasn’t going to—”  He was babbling now, terror making the bile rise in his throat again and still Severus kept glaring at him. 

“Your walls, Draco,” Severus snapped.  “Now.  You will need them.  I will speak, and explain what has happened, and you will stay silent.”

Draco felt the fingers reaching into his own mind from under his fear.  As he watched the strained face in front of him, a distant vision of his own walls being reconstructed forcibly appeared, searing pain slowly washing away the fear as Severus invaded and tried to rebuild the refuge in his mind.  Faintly, Draco worried about what else Severus would see while he tried to hide the memories of his conversation with Dumbledore, how he’d felt, how he’d hesitated, how for a moment he’d fantasized that there was someone who could actually help him—

Draco shoved the arms off of his shoulders that had been holding him in place and forced Severus back out.  Draco’s head was pounding but clear and empty, his own magic now adding more layers to the walls they had summoned together than Draco had ever built before. 

Severus was breathing hard but had replaced his own strained look with one of his usual impassiveness. 

“Better,” he said quietly. 

Draco’s hands shook while he followed the dark cloak in front of him up the drive toward his home. 

…

September 1997

The Hogwarts Express was the most subdued that Draco had ever seen it.  Students sat in tight clusters, the different groups eyeing one another with varying levels of suspicion, hostility, and wariness, mostly from behind closed compartment doors.  Vincent and Greg had sneered at him when he passed, which only made him roll his eyes; they had both had no issue gloating about their minor part in ensuring the Death Eaters’ entry to Hogwarts months before, despite their contemporaneous lack of awareness of what was going on, and copying their fathers’ examples of shitting on Draco any time they had encountered each other that summer, all pleased with the Malfoys’ continued fall from grace.

At this point, Draco was too exhausted to feel anything but relieved at the idea that he might not to have to deal with them skulking around after him this year, whether because, like last year, they envied the Mark on his arm that had fucked up his life, or, now, so that they could try to involve him in whatever they planned on getting up to in order to try and impress their own fathers and the Dark Lord. 

Pansy, Blaise, and Theo were already in the last compartment on the train together when he entered.  Theo smiled tightly at him in greeting, and Blaise dipped his head in silent acknowledgment while he settled into a seat on the wooden bench opposite him.  Pansy looked up only to glare at him briefly and went back to staring out the window. 

He sighed internally and pulled a book out of his satchel.  Blaise and Theo resumed chatting quietly about—something—and before he could decide whether he had the energy yet to engage with Pansy, the train started moving out of the station.  She seemed extremely busy watching the station slide away and slip into the other familiar racing landscapes, so he decided procrastinating whatever overture he’d have to make was the polite thing to do for now, and opened his novel instead.

Draco had spent most of the summer reading, which wasn’t inherently unusual for him, but had usually been coupled in the past with other more social activities such as leaving his house and speaking with anyone for more than the absolute minimum amount of time possible.  It had turned out, however, that neither the Dark Lord nor the other lunatics who could often be found squatting in the Manor now did not, particularly, enjoy spending time in libraries.  He and his parents had taken, therefore, to spending as much time as possible in theirs.  

Lucius Malfoy’s return to the Manor from Azkaban had not been a happy homecoming, to say the least.  He had been frail, and shaken, and nothing like the man Draco remembered, though in the weeks between Dumbledore’s death and Lucius’ breakout—and if he was being honest, for months before that—Draco’s memories of his father had taken on different colors, ones that made him lie awake at night so angry he had to rely on Occlumency to fall back asleep. 

Narcissa had been overjoyed, at least initially, to have her husband home, so he supposed that made him happy on her behalf. But the renewed presence of the head of the house—if Lucius could really be called that anymore—had done very little to deter the Dark Lord from making and allowing threats against his mother and Draco, both ones that went ominously unfulfilled and sometimes ones that were immediately carried out. 

The only escape Draco had dared attempt was to use the Floo to flee to Theo’s some nights, when the senior Nott showed up at the Manor and Draco himself wasn’t required for anything.  The connections between the Manor and other Death Eaters’ estates, apparently, were the only ones still working and unmonitored, though Draco wasn’t deceiving himself into believing the Dark Lord and Aunt Bella knew exactly where he was at all times, including these. 

He and Theo would summon a house elf to keep watch on the Floo and warn them when Theo’s father had returned. Meanwhile, they hid out in the younger Nott’s wing drinking increasing levels of alcohol and didn’t talk about things like what their fathers were doing or what Draco had done or what was going to happen next. 

Draco had never had to tell Theo things, though, he mused, because Theo seemed to always know them without having ever been told.  Once, after their first Divination lesson in third year, he and Daphne had finally asked Theo if he thought he was a Seer like his grandmother had been, but Theo had only chuckled.  It had not lessened Draco’s suspicions, but as time went on, the idea of knowing his own future unnerved him too much to press the issue.  Nowadays, he got the feeling whatever extra intuition Theo had was causing him to unravel as well, and that made Draco feel hopeless when he dwelled about it, so he did what he usually did and blocked that thought away as much as possible. 

Accidentally ruminating too long on what Theo had potentially Seen this summer—and remembering how the idea that Theo knew things he shouldn’t have made Daphne absolutely crazy—caused him to realize for the first time that they were almost halfway to Hogwarts and Daphne wasn’t sitting on the train with them.

“Her grandmother is ill,” Pansy snapped, finally swiveling to face him when he asked the others if they knew where she was.  “Which you would know if you would have returned any of our owls in the last three months.”

Draco tried to tamp down the anger that rose at Pansy’s snide remark.  “I see,” he managed to say with as little sarcasm as possible.  “And while I am very sorry to hear that, what does that have to do with her absence from the train?”

“She and Astoria are with her parents in Hogsmeade, I believe,” Blaise cut in smoothly.  “They are returning to France to be with Camile’s mother and wanted to spend time with Daphne and Astoria before term started and they had to leave the country.”

“Not like we’ve heard from her either,” Pansy grumbled, slouching against the window again.  “Every owl I’ve sent has come back unopened since she owled us in July to let us know.”

Draco frowned.  He hadn’t spoken to anyone but Theo in months, that was true, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about Daphne being hard to reach, or having a family crisis.  To be fair, maybe Theo had thought he and Draco had enough of their family crises to focus on, but as a general matter Theo was more considerate than that.  Much more than Draco, in any event, he thought with a twinge of guilt.

“Obviously she and Astoria will be at school when we arrive,” Blaise continued as if Pansy hadn’t spoken.  “Given the new… attendance policy.” 

Blaise kept his voice deliberately light as he said the last words, but Draco’s stomach clenched anyway and he chose to wipe his mind clean again, picking up his book and staring blankly at the open page without seeing the words. 

…

The welcome feast had been tense, more so even than the mostly-silent train ride there, with the added stimulation of other students—though conspicuously quieter and less in numbers than usual—and the Death Eaters sharing the staff table with the other grim-faced professors, who were not doing a wonderful job of not looking like they’d been sentenced to life imprisonment.  Which, he thought with a not insignificant level of twisted understanding, he supposed they sort of had. 

Daphne’s obvious displeasure at being named Head Girl to his Head Boy—something that felt like an ominous reminder of… something from Severus, who he fully intended to avoid as much as possible despite this lovely new title—had hurt more than he expected, but he had quashed that quickly.  The temptation to have his own room and a place to escape from nearly anyone in the castle was too great to worry long about how far he’d alienated his oldest friend that she was horrified at having to share a dorm with him. 

As they walked awkwardly back to the dungeons, he summoned the courage to at least try to assuage whatever concern she was feeling by acting as much like a normal human as he could manage and not, as she apparently feared, like a psychotic would-be murderer. 

“Daphne, I hope you really don’t mind sharing the dorm,” he began, deciding impulsively to offer some mild version of the truth.  “I wasn’t expecting this, but…  I’m sort of relieved to have somewhere less crowded this year, frankly.  I thought maybe you would feel the same way, especially with everything going on with your family.”

The witch had seemed startled out of her thoughts. 

“I don’t mind at all, actually,” she said quickly, now surprising him.  “I was thinking the same thing…  For you.”

Draco inhaled through his nose and darted his eyes to Daphne’s face before schooling his features carefully again.  He certainly didn’t deserve her sympathy for ‘everything going on with his family,’ which was just about the mildest way to put it that could have been imagined. 

Maybe it was already time to apologize.  He’d never been particularly good at hiding things from Daphne.  She had a calm but deliberate demeanor that in their circle contrasted with Pansy’s brash tendencies, and the former always left him feeling exposed and guilty even when he hadn’t done anything if she cast her shrewd eyes at him with a question, while the latter often irritated him so much he found it easy to ignore any of her interrogations.

“Daphne, I am sorry that I haven’t been in touch this summer.  It wasn’t…”  

Even trying to articulate something coherent about what the nightmare that had become his life had been like recently gave an edge to his voice and he had to start over. 

“It wasn’t really possible.  But I intend to make it up to you.  To all of you.”  He tacked on the last part quickly as he preemptively pictured the knowing look in her eyes that would say, Draco Malfoy, you know who the person you’ve fucked up the most with is and you really should have started with her. 

Thankfully, she at least didn’t voice these thoughts and make him feel worse than he already did.  “I would like that.”

The familiar entrance to the Slytherin common room was before them now, and he suddenly knew that he wasn’t going to be able to brave crossing that bridge tonight. 

“I suppose we should go in and explain why we won’t be in the dorms.”

“Yes,” Daphne said, not sounding particularly excited either.  “I suppose so.”

“Or we could…  not.”  Draco hoped again she wouldn’t call him out on his cowardice, at least not tonight, and tried to convey this request with less dramatic words.  “I don’t particularly feel like getting interrogated by Pansy any further tonight.  Do you?”

Daphne’s returning smile seemed almost sincere, and he relaxed fractionally.  For some reason, this seemed to raise her defenses back up and she stumbled over her response.  “No, not particularly.”

One step at a time, he thought with a sigh, and offered with a motion to follow her to his—their—new rooms.  “After you, then.”

…

Draco had resolved to kick the growing habit he’d developed over the last three months of relying on Occlumency, Dreamless Sleep, or alcohol, or some combination of the three, to fall asleep. 

This meant that the first night in his familiar yet unfamiliar bed had been spent laying in the dark, wallowing in the guilt he felt at being glad to have gotten free of the Manor finally while still remaining wracked with fear for his mother, and, to a lesser extent, his father, who both now had one less ally there.  The emotional turmoil this caused was only exacerbated by his simultaneous dread of returning to the place where Draco had done the worst thing he’d ever done in his life, and being forced to watch the fallout for the next nine or so months.  Students on the train and at dinner had seemed afraid of, furious at, or, in the case of some younger Slytherins, fascinated by him, and all of the reactions had stabbed at him individually as they registered. 

The rest of the week he fared better in terms of sleep, though he was still averaging a disturbingly low number of hours per night.  The Head Boy assignment had been anticlimactic and, with the benefits of the private room, tolerable.  This was helped by the not unwelcome surprise that Daphne drew up all of the prefect assignments and schedules for the month without even asking him to help, something that he added to the mental list of things he owed her for but was perfectly content not dealing with himself.  In any event, no one in the castle seemed keen to wander about in the halls pushing their luck with the rules as they usually did. 

He had only been mildly insulted with how taken aback Daphne had been when he brought up the task expecting to contribute.  Apparently he’d been a big enough git the previous year that it had become incomprehensible to her that he would be helpful or responsible with anything as normal as assigning prefect rounds, Draco thought bitterly. 

This dark line of thought had spiraled for days, worsening when they began sitting through classes now literally taught by a Death Eater that he’d seen torture other people for fun in his sitting room.  Eventually, the tediousness of his guilt and self-loathing spurred him to finally drag himself over to the Slytherin common room and ask Pansy for a minute of her time. 

The shorthaired witch flounced into the hallway with her nose upturned in the biggest show of disdain she seemed able to conjure, almost making him change his mind. 

“Pansy,” he began stiffly, trying to remember the speech he’d rehearsed while not sleeping the night before, carefully constructed to sound as neutral as possible while still hopefully repairing some of the damage he’d done.  “I know I owe you an apology for how I treated last year.”

There was a long beat where he forgot what he was going to say next for a moment and she looked at him in disbelief.

“Right, er, so—I apologize,” he continued hastily, now fumbling for words.  Merlin, it was like he was fourteen again and trying to figure out how to act around Pansy when he’d realized she’d for some reason wanted to make out with him despite having seen him once naked and terrified running from one of the peacocks at the Manor when they were five. 

“For how terribly I treated you when we were—er, last year, and I know that I may have been able to handle my…  obligations…  better without taking things out on you.”

She was listening now, but one perfectly groomed eyebrow still arched suspiciously. 

“Your obligations?”  Pansy repeated slowly.  

“Yes,” Draco said firmly.  No way was he elaborating past that.  “Your friendship is, of course, very important to me and I hope that we can move past this.  Please let me know if there is anything at all I can do to help make you forgive me.”

Pansy just looked at him for a while and then sighed.  “I’m not having sex with you anymore,” she finally said bluntly. 

Draco had to stop himself from scoffing aloud at the idea that Pansy might think this was some brilliant plan he’d come up with to get back under her robes.  This was an apology, he reminded himself.  And Pansy should really be yelling at him.  He deserved a lot of yelling. 

“That’s really not what I was implying,” he replied, failing to come up with any way to make this sound like he wasn’t sort-of insulting her. 

Pansy rolled her eyes and uncrossed her arms from the tightly wound position she had been contorted in since they had walked out of the common room.  “Good.  But I want to be clear.  That was not a healthy relationship for either of us.”

Draco couldn’t agree with this statement more, but he didn’t imagine it would help to say so.  He waited with what was hopefully an appropriately somber and remorseful look on his face. 

“I don’t accept,” she continued, but her face had softened along with her stance and Draco knew Pansy Parkinson’s pride well enough to know he hadn’t been likely to get more than this reaction out of this conversation. 

“That’s alright,” he replied.  “I’ll be here.”

For a second, he thought this seemed to make her almost smile, but she caught herself and frowned imperiously at him instead.  “You better be,” Pansy shot back.

This time he did smile, and it felt like the muscles in his face hadn’t been stretched in that manner in a long time.  Pansy rolled her eyes, but somewhat halfheartedly, and dismissed him with a wave of her hand as she turned back toward the common room entrance. 

…

The small weight that had lifted from him at having sort-of-successfully apologized to Pansy settled back in his chest quickly.  While the first week or so he’d still been lost in a fog of Occlumency and shame and fear, as his head had started to clear and being in the castle somehow allowed him to breathe again despite the ominous overtones of the entire year, he had realized he’d barely seen Daphne despite living twenty paces from her bedroom door. 

While he’d thought—assumed, apparently, naively—that Daphne’s initial apprehension was fleeting and that they would get some semblance of normalcy back like he’d managed to achieve with Blaise, Pansy, and Theo, sort of, clearly he’d been wrong.  Daphne had always been better than the rest of them, he thought with not a small amount of bitterness; of course she didn’t want to be anywhere near a fucking Death Eater anymore.

He got back from class that Monday evening and found Daphne’s bookbag hanging on the hook by the door and her shoes trailing from the entrance to her room, which was tightly shut as it had been nearly every time he’d seen it.  Draco sighed and stood outside the door for longer than he was proud of, dawdling as long as he could before finally knocking tentatively.  

It seemed to take her a long time to come to the door, like he’d been interrupting her napping or studying or doing something, and he felt even more like an intruder.  When the door swung open, Daphne seemed disoriented and his discomfort increased as they greeted each other.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been spending most of your time in your room rather than in the common room.”  The words stung as they were spoken aloud and his self-loathing rose again.  “It seems like perhaps you have been avoiding me.  I know I haven’t been the most—”  Draco realized he had no idea how to finish the thought, because he hadn’t been the most anything, except the most pathetic fucking idiot in the world.

This hadn’t been a good idea, he thought sourly, making to leave her alone again.  Why did he think he could go around trying to have heartfelt conversations with people he’d treated like shit for a year?  Malfoys were not exactly known for their communication skills.  Lucius had come home from Azkaban and yet Draco had never heard a word from him about the place for the next two months.  For her part, his mother had pretended like he’d been on some sort of extended business trip that had been unfortunately delayed. 

Draco strained not to let this bitterness come across while he offered her an out instead.  “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable in your own common room.  If you’d like me to stay in my own room more, I can do that.  But you shouldn’t have to—to feel like you can’t be comfortable in your own quarters.”

“No,” Daphne blurted, looking surprised at her own words.  “It’s not that.  I’ve just been—I’ve just been tired.  Please don’t.  We can certainly share.”

The knot in his chest eased slightly and he tried to hide his relief.  She opened the door a bit wider and he tried not to feel overly hopeful that she had meant it out of more than polite obligation.  When he opened his mouth to say something again, despite how rusty he felt at normal interactions with anyone, even his closest friends, Draco realized suddenly what Daphne was wearing.

It looked…  ridiculous. 

He blinked.  It wasn’t even six o’clock and she was already in some sort of strange flannel pants with a sweatshirt that hung down almost to her knees that looked like it was...  charmed with some sort of Irish pride joke?  Or at least had been, years ago.  Draco tried to remember if he’d ever seen Daphne in anything that resembled flannel, let alone in clothes—even the silk pajamas in which she and Pansy occasionally lounged around in the common room—that hadn’t been immaculately tailored to fit her by the Greengrass elves. 

She made an odd comment about Astoria when he remarked on it and he decided he didn’t really have a lot of room here to judge any new fashion choices, considering the fragile state of their friendship. 

“Well, I won’t tell Pansy about the flannel, either,” he drawled, finding it amusing to think about how horrified the other witch would be if and when she saw how living on her own had already caused Daphne to slip from their carefully polished pureblood standards for appearances. 

“Some of us like to be comfortable, Malfoy, instead of wearing a waistcoat around our own home at six o’clock in the evening when we’ve nowhere to be.”

Draco’s shock at this unexpectedly biting remark barely had time to register before Daphne was moving past him to the kitchen, where he caught sight of her somehow even more ridiculous Quidditch-themed slippers.  And had she just called him Malfoy?  The smarmy tone and the use of his surname reminded him involuntarily of someone else, someone he absolutely had no business thinking about right now, and he shut it down quickly. 

Still puzzled, he accepted tea from a clearly still jumpy Daphne, who spilt half of hers over his Potions homework when she tried to hand him the mug.  Draco repaired the damage with his wand and thought to himself that he must have really fucked up with Daphne too if this was how awkward she was going to act with him now.

He sipped the brew and answered her nervous questions about the contents of the notes he’d left spread over the wooden table under the charmed window in their sitting area.  She seemed to draw bizarre comfort from the topic of his not-quite-technically-school-mandated Potions research into Dreamless Sleep dependency and became warmer and weirdly chatty for someone who’d dropped the subject two years ago with a declaration of relief after never having to sweat over a cauldron again for hours in the least ventilated parts of the castle. 

Draco held his tongue again, trying not to offend the witch who had just willingly come within six feet of him for the first time in nearly two weeks by his surprise at her useful insights.  He was writing one of her suggestions down in mild puzzlement instead when Daphne broke the silence. 

“Is this what you think you’d like to do after Hogwarts?”

The casual tone of her voice flicked some switch in his mind that filled him with rage.  He couldn’t tell if she was being purposely dense or actually wanted to get a cruel dig in at him despite her supposed agreement to peace.  She might not be Draco, or even Pansy, but Daphne had been sorted into Slytherin for a reason, after all. 

“Don’t be stupid,” he heard himself sneer, and through his anger, he dimly thought that she looked genuinely shocked at his reaction, which should’ve made him stop there.  But the idea that he had anywhere to go but back to the hell awaiting him at home after this, that he might even live long enough or stay out of Azkaban long enough to have a career—

He couldn’t think about it and the overwhelming emotion he’d finally identified as grief or he’d go even more insane. 

“We both know I won’t be studying Potions after Hogwarts.”  Draco’s voice was venomous and he saw Daphne visibly recoil as he grabbed his book back from where she had dropped it.  He took a deep breath and tried to shove the thoughts of the future, any future, anything other than this day and this week, behind the heavy wooden doors in his mind that his walls wove around.

“You should be more careful around me.” 

He felt exhausted.  He’d thought she’d understood, that she had been avoiding him for all of the right reasons, as much as he hated it.  She should keep avoiding him.  The walls around his doors climbed higher and he felt, with a sense of detached satisfaction, the soothing haze settle over the rest of his mind.

“We’re not ten years old,” he said, his voice sounding unpleasantly cold even to him.  “Playing games and running around the Manor with Blaise and Pansy and Theo and pretending like we ever had a say in how our lives were going to turn out.”

When Draco finally gathered the courage to look up again, she was gone.

…

If he had thought things were tenuous already, Draco had not given himself enough credit for how much worse he could make things.

He had no idea where everyone else had gone by the time he’d shaken off Carrow in the Defense classroom and only the fact that he didn’t have to see the looks on their faces again yet gave him a sick relief.

The boy—he’d been so small and he had looked up at Draco like he was a monster, like he was the fucking Dark Lord himself—

Draco shuddered.  He might as well be to that child. 

Somehow, he’d gotten to the dorm, and with more intense relief found Daphne missing from there as well.  He moved in a daze from the kitchen to the armchair in the corner, not bothering to cast any light or shed his robes but only stopping to grab the firewhiskey from where he’d tucked it away in the tallest cabinet out of sight from not only the elves who snuck in to clean but, in a hopeless attempt, himself. 

It wasn’t like he hadn’t been forced to cast that curse on others before, at the Dark Lord’s orders, both on other Death Eaters as punishment for supposed transgressions and for what Aunt Bella in particular loved to call ‘training.’  But to have to do it here, where he’d already done worse things, in front of everyone, in front of fucking Longbottom and the rest of the bleeding heart Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs…

He’d barely had time to think before stepping in front of Theo.  If there was one thing he had managed to do right in the last two years, it was somehow helping Theo escape the same cursed Mark he’d been branded with, and fuck if he was going to let his only remaining friend that might not completely hate him have to start down that road now.  Combined with Carrow’s taunt about Theo’s father and the implied threat that he’d start in on Theo himself if he didn’t hurry along, Draco had reacted, walls slipping automatically into place as he furiously came up with some semblance of a plan. 

It had been reckless, and he wasn’t sure he didn’t regret it already.  The boy could tell anyone.  Was that really better than him getting tortured, once?  Draco felt shame heat his face again at the callousness of that thought, but he couldn’t help recalling how many times he’d been subjected to the talents of Bellatrix or Dolohov or the Dark Lord himself at this point. 

Pain was bearable.  You could live through the Cruciatus Curse—the real version, even.  But if the boy—what the fuck was his name, although Draco wasn’t sure he wanted to learn—told someone what Draco had done, that he had slipped into the boy’s mind with the rudimentary Legilimency skills he’d cultivated and given him instructions to fake what happened next, the boy might be dead rather than just in pain.  And so would Draco, and probably his mother, and maybe even his father.

Fuck.

He’d finished three glasses of Ogden’s and was Occluding so hard that he knew he’d have a migraine tomorrow when he heard the door open and then tentative footsteps.

“I don’t want to talk, Daphne,” he growled. 

Unsurprisingly, his attempt to sound threatening did not deter her.  Draco waited for the screaming to start.  Pansy had been the one who yelled, usually, when Draco had fucked up or done something particularly suspicious, but Daphne had lost her composure and taken her turn on the worst occasions, of which this most certainly qualified. 

“Draco.” 

Her voice was soft and it felt like a trap.  Draco tried to Occlude even harder. 

“I spoke to that first year.”

“And?” 

Something was off about Daphne’s expression.  Even through the dull clouds he was seeing her through, she didn’t seem angry enough. 

“He didn’t seem as upset as I imagined he would be.” 

The room spun and Draco got dizzy looking into her wide, concerned eyes.  No, he thought, frozen but still locked behind his walls in a disorienting way.  This was exactly what he had feared.  He should’ve done it.  He shouldn’t have tried to do the right thing when he’d never done the right thing or known what the right thing was and now this boy was going to tell everyone and get them all killed and Daphne too—

“Daphne.”  Draco didn’t think his voice shook but it took considerable effort to make sure.  His increasing dread was threatening to break through his carefully constructed composure. 

“I cast the Cruciatus Curse on that first year.” 

The truth. 

“That is what everyone saw me do.” 

Definitely the truth. 

“He looked like he was in a great deal of pain.”

Close enough, hopefully. 

Daphne didn’t contradict him and he said a silent prayer of thanks to the gods for that small miracle. 

This time, he was the one to walk away. 

But when he stumbled tiredly into the kitchen the next day, there was a fresh cup of tea waiting in the spot where Draco usually left hers under a warming charm after giving up on sleep in the early hours of the morning.

The small gesture of something—he couldn’t understand or articulate what exactly—made his chest flare with something else unfamiliar that he thought reluctantly might be close to hope.

…

October 1997

Daphne had avoided him after that for the better part of a week, but, unlike the rest of the castle, it seemed to be with an air of some sort of polite bewilderment rather than active disgust.  Despite whatever that Gryffindor had apparently told her, he didn’t blame her. 

He knew he wasn’t Neville or Seamus or any of the other students who flatly refused to attend the Carrows’ detentions and suffered whatever consequences came their way.  He wasn’t even Theo who that first day had trembled and looked sick and had almost taken the Cruciatus Curse himself as he struggled to figure out what to do with the Dark Arts professor’s orders. 

No, Draco was the one who might have secretly spared a child sixty seconds of pain but had allowed himself to be branded with a tattoo that matched the one sitting proudly on the arm of the same person who had ordered that child tortured for fun in a classroom full of students. 

Draco had already had to repeat the charade twice, thankfully out of sight of any of his fellow seventh-years, most of whom had been either warily eyeing him again in classes with a renewed disgust or, in Pansy’s case, actively avoiding him and shooting him dark glares whenever she thought he wasn’t looking.  Carrow had caught him after dinner or on his way back from the library, summoned him to his classroom, and produced younger students who he deemed in need of punishment before Draco could figure out what was happening. 

There had been a moment, the first time this happened, where Draco thought frantically that he couldn’t fake it again, that the regret and fear he’d felt last time at potentially exposing himself was too great and that the risk was too high to outweigh any benefit he was offering them. 

But then the littlest one saw him, had looked up at him when he walked into the classroom while, thank Merlin, Carrow could only see the back of her head, and she’d had these huge, tear-filled brown eyes and curly hair that had made him think involuntarily of a different twelve-year-old that had learned the word Mudblood from his own mouth, and then—the girl had smiled. 

Draco had become so good at keeping a straight face that he could fool the Dark Lord, and yet he had still almost lost it at that.  The quirk of her lips had been fleeting but the girl lifted her chin slightly and kept her eyes on him, looking frightened, but somehow in a way that made him think for once it wasn’t of him. 

He recovered and flickered into her mind for the briefest moment—I can go easy on you but you’re going to have to scream like it hurts so much you think you’re going to die—and then raised his wand.

The screams that the little second-year conjured when he cast a curse no stronger than a tickling charm at her should’ve garnered her some kind of acting award.

Draco’s only release had been when Daphne had resumed spending time in their common room again.  Fortunately, this came without further insistence on continuing their last conversation about the topic, though for some reason it had involved copious amounts of studying in the evenings together as if Daphne thought N.E.W.T.s were in a week and not six months. 

Draco had obediently sat across from her at the ancient wooden table in their sitting room and gotten ahead on his homework as she ruthlessly worked her way through an alarming number of books, ones that didn’t look particularly relevant to any of their shared classes.  He had pointed this out mildly once, though, and she just snapped at him that the Dark Arts textbook Carrow had assigned that year was hardly a comprehensive text on the subject, so he’d shut up and returned to the Potions essay he was revising that wasn’t due for a month. 

He had even put up with this for an entire weekend, partially persuaded by the fact that she was willing to eat dinner with him in their rooms rather than the Great Hall so she didn’t have to change out of the pajamas she’d been reading in all day (an increasingly frequent new habit he also found slightly odd, given he’d once known Daphne to insist that he wear formal dress robes to accompany her to afternoon tea with his mother when they were twelve). 

On Saturday night, they had ended up eating sandwiches on the floor in front of the fire after Draco noticed Daphne rubbing her eyes so hard they were getting bloodshot and insisted she take a break from reading.  She judiciously allowed this break in exchange for Draco’s promise that he would keep her company in the library in the morning without any complaints about Madam Pince’s repeated admonishments that he turned pages too loudly.  He had sort of complied with those conditions.

The following Saturday, he played several rounds of chess with Theo, the only other person besides Daphne who seemed to still be remotely interested in his presence anymore, in the emptied Great Hall after dinner.  When Draco returned to the dorm, he found Daphne, who hadn’t appeared at the meal at all, so ensconced in her books again that she barely registered his appearance.  

Draco managed to badger her into giving up her reading in exchange for drinking with him, but unfortunately, she had then managed to badger him into attempting to socialize with other people, despite the perfectly lovely time he was having without said other people.  And she had done it with the help of Luna Lovegood, of all people, who had apparently wildly inserted herself into his social circle in the last few weeks. 

When Draco trailed reluctantly into the Slytherin common room behind Daphne, it felt immediately like a mistake.  Pansy swanned over and grabbed Daphne from him before he could blink, and his other choices of company seemed to include an astonishing amount of Gryffindors.

Fortunately, Draco spotted more alcohol and made a beeline in that direction.  He poured himself some of his own scotch, cursing Blaise for putting his expensive liquor out in a setting where people seemed to be chugging their drinks rather than tasting them. 

“Draco.”  He turned and saw the wizard himself lounging on the nearest sofa.

“Blaise,” he greeted neutrally.  The other wizard arched an eyebrow at him silently and Draco resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Was he going to have to conduct another apology tour?  The idea made his mood darken further. 

A scowl must have appeared on his face because Blaise sighed dramatically and waved his hand at the other end of the sofa he was seated on.

“I think it’s high time you rejoined polite society, Draco,” Blaise drawled, eyes scanning the rest of the room rather than facing Draco.

“I wasn’t aware there was any of that around here,” Draco replied, somewhat more stiffly than he would have normally.

Blaise chuckled and sipped his drink, still looking around.  “Well, we did let in quite a few ruffians this evening, I’ll admit.” 

Draco turned toward the group in Blaise’s line of sight and saw Daphne grinning wickedly at Neville Longbottom before shoving a shot of something toward him.  There seemed to be some sort of game involved in whatever they were doing, if evidenced by the singed feathers floating over the table in front of them, but as far as he could tell from watching for a few minutes it seemed to involve all of them drinking whether they were winning or losing. Ginny Weasley was arguing heatedly with Pansy heatedly about something, possibly one of the rules of their nonsensical game, and Draco thought he heard Pansy declare that they would all just have to drink twice because Weasley had accidentally obliterated the parchment that had been keeping their score when aiming for one of the feathers.

“They seem to be fitting in,” Draco remarked mildly.

“They aren’t the only ones.” 

He turned in time to see Blaise with a look on his face that Draco had never seen before, a quite annoying one at that, clearly aimed at the blonde Ravenclaw who was skipping toward them.

“Draco!”  Luna called much too loudly as she plopped down on the much-too-small sofa between them.  She was wearing a bright yellow dress and still wasn’t wearing any shoes, and she stood out vividly among the Slytherins who, perhaps predictably, tended to favor dark-colored clothing.  “It’s lovely you and Daphne decided to join us rather than continue drinking alone in your dorm.  Though it did look very cozy in there.”

Blaise’s eyebrow quirked at Draco at this and he rolled his eyes in response.  “Well, having a private dorm does have its perks.  Less people and all that.”

“I see,” Luna said seriously, accepting the drink that Blaise had summoned for her but still looking at Draco.  “So you do enjoy the perks of being alone with Daphne.”

“What?!”  Draco balked, gaze straying involuntarily to Theo.  “She’s a perfectly good roommate, Lovegood, and it’s obviously nice not to have share a room with four other wizards.”

Luna hummed thoughtfully and settled deeper into the couch.  “Yes, I imagine so.  And Daphne seems to be very different this year, in any event.”

He frowned.  “I don’t know about… very different,” he muttered. 

There had been a moment, or possibly more than one moment, earlier that night when Draco might have been more or less accidentally, possibly, flirting with Daphne.  He blamed the lack of other human interaction in recent days and the alcohol he’d consumed by that point, but it had unsettled him when he realized it, just as it unsettled him when she called him Malfoy.  If there was one thing Draco did not need, it was to screw up one of the only normal relationships in his life.  Daphne was a constant, literally one of the only remaining constants in his horrible swirling vortex of a life, and just because lately she’d been funnier than he remembered and surprised him nearly every time she spoke but not in an altogether unpleasant way—

Well, he certainly wasn’t going to dwell on that.  Nor was he going to discuss it with Luna fucking Lovegood.

He somehow tolerated another hour or so of Luna’s abrupt conversational detours and Blaise’s indifference to Draco’s discomfort.  They were now on the disturbing topic of potential reasons that so many Slytherins were, in Luna’s words, ‘often prone to negative thinking’—Luna’s explanation had something to do with invisible floating creatures that warped their brains—when Malfoy caught Daphne’s eye and sent a silent plea for rescue.  She mercifully disengaged herself from whatever game she, Theo, Weasley, and Longbottom had moved on to once they ran out of feathers, and miraculously managed to get rid of Blaise and Luna in short order. 

“I cannot thank you enough,” he sighed theatrically. 

“She’s not that bad,” Daphne scolded him, taking Luna’s seat in the middle of the sofa.  “She’s very sweet.” 

That was certainly one word for the Ravenclaw.  “She’s very sweet on Blaise,” he said instead of choosing another description, lowering his voice and smirking at the way Luna was beaming at Blaise as he dealt out cards.  Daphne leaned closer to him to hear and he caught a whiff of her shampoo, something familiar and floral. 

“I think it’s nice.” 

There was a strange lilt to her voice when she replied, and when he glanced down at her beside him there was a faint flush to her face.  He had the sudden urge to ask her something else, about what else she thought of Blaise and Luna and how different the two of them were, but it was cut off by the appearance of Pansy.

Draco sipped his drink instead as Daphne greeted the other witch and received a short response.  Pansy seemed dangerously drunk, an edge to her voice and a pissed look on her face he recognized from the moments before she’d been about to initiate yet another drag-down fight with him the previous year. 

For some reason, however, Daphne was pushing Pansy’s buttons rather than playing her usual role of peacemaker, being the only one of them ever that successful at deescalating Pansy when she was in the mood for a fight. 

“Neville looks like he’s having fun,” Daphne was teasing playfully.

“Yes,” Pansy bit out.  “I imagine he is.  And yet apparently it’s Blaise and Loony over there who have managed to actually get their shit together.”

The mere fact that this absurd statement was true made Draco want to laugh despite his better instincts, and he tried unsuccessfully to contain the sound.  He felt Daphne’s elbow jabbing him but it was too late. 

“Is something funny, Draco?”

“Not at all.”  Draco really did try to keep any sarcasm out of his voice.  “I think Longbottom is an excellent choice.”

“Choice?  Should we talk about choices, Malfoy?”

Any urge to laugh drained out of him.  “What’s that supposed to mean, Pansy?”

“It means that you apparently don’t want to hear my opinion on your choices, so you have no right to judge any of mine.” Her voice was rising, the words different than her usual script but the tenor familiar. 

Daphne finally tried to cut in and Pansy shot her down venomously.  “Shut up, Daphne.  I don’t know why you’re Draco’s defender all of a sudden, anyway.”

He didn’t know either, to be honest, because he certainly knew he didn’t deserve it.  Draco felt cold.  The rest of the room had largely stopped what they were doing to watch them now.

“Do you know why I’m trying to make different choices, Draco?” 

He stayed silent, frozen in his seat like she had immobilized him with her words. 

 “Because I don’t want to end up like you.”

…

Draco had known Daphne since they were children, possibly longer than any of the rest of them, prompted long before either of them were born by their families connecting over their respective French roots (as they all patted themselves on their backs for tracing their ancestry back so far, he presumed). 

She had even been his first kiss, the summer before their third year when they were vacationing with their families in the Malfoys’ villa in Normandy.  They had snuck off with way too much stolen apple brandy and dared each other to try it. After a couple of fumbling makeout sessions—if they could really be called that—Daphne had wrinkled her nose and said she thought it was excellent practice but perhaps a bit too much like kissing Astoria would have been.  Though Draco’s hormonal pubescent brain would probably not have been able to sort this out for himself at that exact moment, he could hardly disagree.   

Having established this early and peaceably, Daphne had been the closest female friend he’d had growing up, given his and Pansy’s tendency to blow up their friendship every few months by engaging in some sort of ill-fated tryst you could maybe call a relationship if you squinted really hard at it. 

Daphne was the one who scolded him when he messed around with girls in the library stacks that she knew he didn’t really have feelings for, and let him complain endlessly to her about how ridiculous it was that Pansy, and his parents, seemed to think there was some sort of inevitable marriage arrangement down the road in their future.  She would listen, then patiently point out the various ways Draco seemed to have gotten himself into the various predicaments he always claimed just happened upon him.  For some reason, when Daphne did this, it pissed him off far less than anyone else he knew, and she was, inevitably, correct.  Mostly, though, she would put up with him despite his incredibly prat-like tendencies and then offer him (sometimes devastating) insight into why he might be acting that way that forced him to (sometimes) listen. 

It had occurred to him over the years that he was a pretty shite friend to her—particularly now, after having essentially blacked out from stress and gut-wrenching anxiety their entire sixth year and largely ignored her attempts to help.  But nonetheless, whenever he did show up at her door, head hung low, needing her to shake her head at him and offer him a dry insult before calmly telling him how he’d fucked up and what he should do next—she’d do it. 

So, no, he reminded himself.  Other than for a cumulative total of about twelve minutes when he had been attracted to her because he had been attracted to literally any and all females not related to him at that particular stage in his life, he was definitely not attracted to Daphne Greengrass. 

Draco took another sip of his drink and nodded firmly.  That was definitely true. 

But.

There had been these moments lately—when he came home and saw her already there, curled up on the low-backed sofa in front of the fire and chewing the end of her quill as she devoured another book—moments in which he felt knocked off balance.  And when Daphne spoke these days, there was something different, something about the way she looked at him while she spoke like she was really saying more than one thing at the same time, and it was driving him crazy. 

She just had this sort of… mad energy about her lately, which for some disturbing reason was wildly compelling to be around and simultaneously gave him the insuppressible urge to try to take care of her, or at least to remind her to take a deep breath and maybe remember to eat something.  Sometimes when Draco gave in to this urge, he’d be rewarded with this look, that softer one she got in her eyes that made it seem like he might have actually gotten her to unwind for a moment and she was glad.  

At first, he thought it was some sort of distress over her grandmother and the situation generally at Hogwarts and also that maybe she was going to have some sort of nervous breakdown.  But when she’d carried on, he had realized slowly that it wasn’t nervous energy; it was more like she was operating at some higher level of intensity than everyone else, one that resulted in an often-frenzied quality to her speech or thoughts or hand gestures or general ability to contain her excitement about things.  And weirdly it made him feel more alive, too, drawing him slowly out of the fog he had existed in for over a year as he tried to survive each day rather than live it.

But he was being ridiculous.  She was the same girl he’d known for over a decade, and, he repeated to himself again, it didn’t make any sense that he was thinking about her so much when he absolutely did not think about her… that way. 

He winced internally.  The way that Theo did. 

For Merlin’s sake, Draco was the one who’d been telling Theo for years to get his head out of his arse and make a move before someone else did.  Theo alternated between following Daphne around like a lost puppy and avoiding her like the plague, something that normally irritated Draco on Daphne’s behalf and something that Theo adamantly refused to admit he did. 

But what the fuck was he thinking about this for?  Draco’s mood darkened further.  He glanced down and realized there was only about one sip of firewhiskey left in his glass, and decided immediately to remedy that. 

Draco had poured another two fingers of alcohol and was still brooding over these errant thoughts when the door to the portrait guarding their dorm suddenly swung open, so hard that it hit the wall with a resounding thud and almost made him nearly drop the glass he was setting back on the table. 

He hadn’t seen Daphne much since he and Pansy’s fight (if you could call it that) the weekend before, but he also hadn’t thought she was taking Pansy’s side (if there were sides to be taken).  All he wanted was to be left alone and not get dragged to any more parties where he would get publicly humiliated for being the worst human being in the castle other than the three higher-ranking Death Eaters.  He’d thought she was just respecting that, as Daphne often could tell when he was in these moods.

When she looked up at him, however, he could tell immediately that something was very wrong.  Daphne looked devastated, her eyes vacant and seeming to look right through him like he wasn’t there.  Hoping fervently she wasn’t about to re-litigate the blowup he’d gotten from Pansy right now, he eyed her warily from his seat in the window. 

“What’s happened?”  Draco asked slowly.

She said nothing in immediate response but he watched in dread as her expression contorted with fury, eyes glittering with it, her fists clenching at her sides as if she was struggling not to hit something, possibly him. 

“What’s happened?”  She bit out her words with more venom than he remembered ever hearing from her.  “What do you think has happened, Draco?”

He got to his feet and tried to make sense of her anger.  Before he drew closer, she spoke again, the tone just as vicious. 

“I can’t stand to look at you sometimes.”

Draco’s stomach clenched in a sickening swoop and he stared at back at her.  Daphne’s insane mood right now, the confusing way she’d been acting for weeks, his own uncontrollable and stupid thoughts this behavior had spurred and his own anger at himself for having them, and the entire idea that Daphne had suddenly decided to pick fights with him like Pansy—it all infuriated him suddenly and he found himself snapping back at her. 

“Well, you’re not the only one who feels that way.”  It was easy this time to slip behind the walls he had started taking down around her.  The circling thoughts stilled and he just watched with grim satisfaction as she stalked closer, eyes narrowing. 

“All these years.  You thought it was some kind of game.  You fucking idiot.” 

Despite himself, Draco felt her words invade the bricks he was still layering in his mind and they curled around him like flames, searing where they landed. 

“Don’t you think I know that.”

Somehow he’d moved toward her and she was looking up at him, about to cry now and still so angry.  He caught her hands automatically as she struck them against his chest and the crazed intensity he’d been thinking about earlier was visible in her wild eyes.  Draco tried to get his own breathing back under control as he held her wrists between them so she’d stop trying to strike out at him. 

“I know that I am a fucking idiot, Daphne.”  How did she not know that?  Didn’t everyone fucking know that he knew that?

“Then fucking do something, Malfoy.  Do anything!”  She was yelling now through her tears and his chest tightened, her fingers still trapped against him. 

His father’s name made the white-hot anger course through him again and he could tell dimly he was gripping her arms too tight.  Pansy had been right, didn’t she get that?  He made all the wrong choices, but now he had no choices, and he’d ended up here, with no way out, and he was going to drag her and Pansy and Theo and Blaise and everyone else he cared about down with him if she wouldn’t stop. 

“I’m trying,” he hissed.  “I’m trying to keep you, and my family, and the other fucking idiots around here alive.  Don’t you get that?  I don’t give a flying fuck about anything or anyone else other than the very short list of people that I care about making it through this shit alive somehow.  And like it or not, you are on that fucking list whether you hate me or not.”

It seemed like he’d finally scared her out of her own fury by matching it with his own.  Daphne’s frantic eyes stared back at him, searching his face for something. 

“Malfoy—I—I don’t—” 

And why was she still using his fucking family name?  It felt like she was doing it on purpose to provoke him during this conversation, to twist the knife a little further and remind him that he had done exactly what everyone expected and followed his fucking father into this nightmare.

“Just shut up.  I don’t know what the fuck has gotten into you tonight but it’s fucking annoying.”

Draco tried to get the walls to appear in his mind again and had a flash of panic when he realized he couldn’t.  Her eyes were still on his and they were wide and deep and somehow the rest of her had been pulled flush to him by their locked hands between them.  She was still practically shaking with the anger and confusion that she’d been caught up in and he could feel it reverberate along the length of his entire body.  Draco was paralyzed for a moment, doubting everything he had been thinking and feeling and saying and he felt like he was falling and couldn’t grab onto anything—

Then she blinked. 

The break in eye contact somehow slammed the walls back down that he’d been struggling fruitlessly with and he released her immediately as if he’d been burned.  From behind his walls, she was just Daphne again, and he just felt disgusted with himself for screaming at her and for whatever it was he had been about to do.

“You should go to bed.”  He avoided her eyes and grabbed the book he’d been attempting to read when she’d arrived, accidentally brushing past her as he tried to widen the distance between them. 

He didn’t look at her again before he shut the door to his room. 

…

November 1997

“I don’t understand how you win every time,” Draco complained irritably as he watched Theo rearrange chess pieces after his latest victory.  The other boy shrugged and waved his wand to send the entire set back to his dorm. 

He arched an eyebrow at his friend.  “We’re not playing again?”

“Changed my mind,” Theo replied, kicking his feet up on the small table they were sitting at in the Slytherin common room.  “It’s too boring beating you every time.”

Draco scoffed.  He wasn’t particularly fond of losing to Theo so often, either, but he was also avoiding Daphne and it was easier to hide out with Theo in the Slytherin dungeons than stay in his bedroom all the time and go slowly more insane.  And besides, chess was a decent excuse to sit in relative silence and ignore everyone else even when Daphne did appear in the common room at the same time he did.

“Daphne’s been acting strange,” Theo commented mildly, drawing Draco’s attention back hurriedly from where he’d been staring across the room at the very witch.  She was sitting with Pansy and working on what looked like their Astronomy charts that were due this week, but he thought she looked like she was thinking about something a million miles away. 

The absent look on Daphne’s face reminded Draco of the odd books he’d been finding around the dorm or caught glimpses of when she studied with him; not only Dark Arts texts but dense, obscure books related to the founders and ancient theories about the magic embedded in Hogwarts.  Daphne had always been smart, of course, and well read, but this newfound interest had perplexed him.  She was also terribly obvious about the fact that she didn’t want him to see what she was researching, and that had only made him more curious. 

“I haven’t noticed,” Draco said, possibly too quickly.  He picked up the Potions book he’d brought with him and tried to curtail any further conversation on this subject by flipping it open to his bookmark and bending his elbow down on the table in a way that blocked the two witches from his view while he read.

A sort of humming noise came from across the table.  Draco sighed and spared a glance at Theo.  There was a knowing look in his eyes, one of the looks Draco liked least to see on Theo because it often meant he was going to say something that was much too perceptive and much too personal for Draco’s preferred level of interaction. 

“I think you have noticed,” Theo continued solemnly, lifting his eyebrows.  “I also think it has something to do with you.”

“There’s nothing going on between me and Daphne,” Draco replied automatically.  The words made him cringe immediately as he realized there had probably been a number of other less suspicious ways he actually could have worded a response.  “Whatever.  You know what I mean.”

“It’s alright if there is.”  Theo suddenly pulled his feet off the table and looked intensely at Draco.  “It’s going to sort itself out.”

An uncomfortable prickling sensation rose on the back of his neck.  Draco absolutely hated it when Theo talked like this, his voice resolute with a strange confidence that he had figured out the inevitable outcome of something. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, mate,” Draco replied firmly, picking his book up again.

“Sure,” Theo said quietly, settling back in his chair and turning to face the girls across the room, fingers tapping the table thoughtfully.  “We’ll talk about it later.”

A week later, Draco found Daphne sleeping fitfully on the sofa in their common room, hair tangled and frowning deeply as she dreamed.  He stared at her for far too long than was appropriate, thinking about Theo’s odd words and even odder behavior as he tried to decide whether to wake her up so she could finally get some sleep in her actual bed.  While possibly he had now started avoiding her, Draco no longer had the sense that she was angry with him specifically but rather that she was channeling whatever frustration she couldn’t shake into a bizarre attentiveness to her Head Girl duties and homework assignments. 

He finally decided to pull a blanket over her and let her rest.  When Daphne woke, frantic as ever even upon opening her eyes, they argued until she grudgingly accepted that she may have run herself down just a bit, and then Draco had sat with her on the sofa feeling idiotically pleased that she was speaking to him again and letting him make her tea and toast. 

There was, of course, no way that Draco thought it was slightly endearing that she wavered between indignant and grateful when he tried to offer his help, and when she kicked his legs with her feet, clad in fuzzy socks and barely able to maneuver them from her prone position buried in the blanket he’d tucked her into, it was not at all adorable.  

A few weeks later, he picked an asinine argument with her because her tattered flannel pajamas and hilarious self-satisfaction at clearly thinking she’d cleverly gotten away with stealing his chocolate were so distracting that he accidentally forgot for a minute how dangerous it was to be discussing Harry fucking Potter or his friends with anyone. 

At that point, he thought Theo might have been wrong for once, and possibly it was Draco who was the one acting strange and not Daphne. 

…

The argument he’d had with Merlin’s portrait that night convinced Draco he was right that Daphne was up to something with her research, though he still couldn’t fathom what.  Merlin had refused to acknowledge Draco correctly giving him the password and open the door before he finished ranting about how Daphne had brought up that buffoon Godric Gryffindor and unjustly reminded him of the many wrongs Slytherin house had suffered at his hand. 

Daphne had denied any knowledge of the reason for the portrait’s rude attitude and he’d let it go.  But when Draco had gotten up the next morning, he found a stack of her notes left out on the wooden study table, possibly because she had been as disconcerted as him by their spat the night before and forgotten to clean up as thoroughly as she usually did every night. 

Chancing a glance at her bedroom door, Draco hovered over the table for a moment before quietly flipping the papers open to where a sheaf of worn parchment was sticking out.  He frowned. 

There was a sketch, depicting some sort of crown with a stone in the middle and runes scrawled across the surface of the headpiece.  It tugged at something in his brain, like a memory, and his curiosity grew.  One of the runes was ‘wisdom,’ he thought absently, or ‘wise,’ and another ‘laughter,’ maybe. 

He flipped to the next page. 

There was a list of spells, complicated ones that he recognized as requiring magic that wasn’t necessarily Dark but certainly wasn’t fully Light.  At the top, in messy handwriting, the words ‘to destroy?’ were scrawled, and then on the next page were what looked like initials or possibly an acronym—‘T.R.’—next to several locations in Wizarding Britain with dates and question marks. 

Draco carefully slipped the pages back into their original positions and returned to the kitchen.  As the tea brewed, he stared into his empty mug, thoughts swirling.

The crown had looked so bizarrely familiar.  And why was Daphne researching it anyway?  Or what seemed to be dangerous magic, and something else, something to do with Hogwarts and Godric Gryffindor—

The teapot whistled but Draco had frozen.  An image swam into his mind, of a Vanishing Cabinet and endless aisles of strewn objects, of a dark cavernous room where he’d seen many astonishing things but largely ignored all of them due to his singular focus on the repulsive task he’d been ordered to complete. 

There had been a crown.  A tiara, really, one with a large oval sapphire in the middle, scratched and not that impressive looking, really, but it had stuck out to him, because he walked past the same bust of some old wizard every day for months and then one day a tiara had just appeared on its head, and he had panicked for days that someone had gotten into the room somehow and discovered what he was doing with the Vanishing Cabinet. 

Not a tiara, he thought wildly.  

The runes appeared in front of him again.  Wit and wisdom. 

Draco looked shakily at Daphne’s closed door.  What the fuck was she doing drawing pictures of Ravenclaw’s lost diadem and how the fuck did it end up in the Room of Hidden Things?

…

It took him several more days to decide whether to confront Daphne about what he had discovered.  A million ideas of why she was interested in the diadem, and those spells, and those terrible books she’d been reading, had cycled through his head.  Logically, he reasoned that it would be extremely strange and unlikely for him to somehow not have been made aware that another of his classmates was in league with the Dark Lord.  But even if that weren’t true...  Draco kept returning to the same conclusion he couldn’t shake:  Daphne was good.  Daphne wasn’t him.  There was no way whatever she was doing was to help the Dark Lord’s cause.

Which left him with only two other realistic options.  Either it really was just some new research interest, one she was applying a weird zealousness to, or…  It was for the other cause. 

This thought terrified him almost as much as if she had decided to secretly join up with the Death Eaters.  All he wanted, all he had told himself he could possibly hope for out of this mess, besides for his mother to stay alive, was for Daphne, Pansy, Blaise, and Theo to somehow escape unscathed. 

He’d nearly shit himself a year ago as he willingly answered the Dark Lord’s questions about the younger generation of purebloods, dismissively describing Blaise and Theo as weak and better used for their Galleons, and telling the Dark Lord to his face that Daphne and Pansy would be best kept out of the line of fire so that they could make respectable marriages and help continue pureblood lines once things calmed down.  It had been one of the worst moments of his life, among many dark moments those first few months in that fucking house with him. 

But somehow, Daphne must have done something on her own, something stupid, to get herself involved.  He knew there were members of the Order on the staff; everyone did.  The Dark Lord kept them there partly so that he could strike another blow at the Order whenever he wanted and simply because he no longer feared any mutiny here anyway with Severus in control.  Daphne must have gone to one of them; McGonagall maybe, or Sprout.  He wondered feverishly if Pansy or any of the others had too and then quickly shut this thought down before it could take hold. 

He didn’t need to know that.  If Daphne was working for the Order, it was dangerous enough that Draco had guessed at it.  He absolutely did not want it confirmed and he didn’t want any more information than he already had. 

Draco closed his eyes and took a deep breath. 

“You’ve been researching the founders.”

Daphne jerked up comically, arms flailing and causing a jumbled wave of books, papers, tea, and other objects to crash dramatically to the floor.  He stepped further out of his room and moved toward her.  She made one of her ridiculously transparent attempts to cover up whatever she had been scribbling on and he almost laughed at how absurd she was.

Daphne blathered some idiotic excuse about an extra credit assignment for History of Magic and he rolled his eyes inwardly.  “I don’t recall Professor Binns assigning that one.”

“Ah, right, well, I asked for the extra credit on my own.  You know me, couldn’t resist the extra homework.”  Draco didn’t know quite what to make of these worsening attempts at lying, so he didn’t respond.  He took the seat across from her and deliberately avoided looking at the notes she so clearly had to stop herself from grabbing away from him. 

“It’s an interesting topic,” he offered.  “The castle was built with truly extraordinary magic.  And there are other examples of their work, that sound quite impressive.”  Draco stopped and sent a silent prayer to whoever was listening that Daphne wouldn’t flip out completely and either recklessly spill everything she had been keeping secret or hex him out of sheer terror that he had caught on to anything. 

“For instance, I see you’ve heard of Ravenclaw’s diadem.”

Daphne’s eyes slid involuntarily to something on the table and he saw a corner of the parchment with the sketch peeking out from under a book.  He sighed inwardly.  She really had no business getting involved in this shit if she was going to be this obvious. 

“It’s a fascinating subject.”  Her voice was low and tentative.  “The manipulation of runes and level of arithmancy involved…”

“And are you interested in the theory or also the more… practical aspects of the magic?”  He kept his voice carefully even despite the coupled increase in his heart rate.

She was staring at him wide-eyed now.  “Well,” Daphne replied slowly, and she seemed to be thinking furiously, “I’ve always found it hard to truly grasp theory without also understanding the practical elements, that’s true.”

Draco felt a thrill of relief and trepidation combined.  That was all he’d wanted to know. 

He forced a smirk onto his face and quickly began steering the subject in a different direction in case Daphne changed her mind and started asking why he was interested all of a sudden.  “How fascinating.  Some of us prefer to have fun in the evenings though, you know, rather than pile on optional research projects.”

Daphne’s skeptical look lingered and on a whim, he shot her a wink.  This seemed to fluster her enough, and he moved toward the kitchen swiftly.  “How about a drink?”

Behind him, he heard her muttering to herself along with the sounds of papers shuffling together.  Draco rolled his eyes and began preparing two glasses.  “Greengrass, it’s Friday night and it’s nine o’clock, and we’re eighteen years old with no adult supervision in what is essentially our own flat.”

He turned back around in time to see a bright red flush creeping up Daphne’s neck and realized how suggestive his words had sounded, particularly after his overly flirtatious wink.  Fuck.  He may have overcorrected in the distraction department here. 

“You’re seventeen,” Daphne pointed out, still blushing. 

“Well, I feel about seventy-five sometimes,” Draco replied darkly, wishing for a moment he didn’t have to feel guilty for flirting with Daphne, accidentally or not, not just because of Theo or because he didn’t really know why he was doing it but because there was a fucking war happening and he’d somehow gotten caught in the middle and didn’t exactly have the capacity to be thinking about these things in the first place. 

He passed her a firewhiskey and they settled onto the sofa, each leaning against an arm.  Draco took a few sips before he realized Daphne’s face had fallen.  “Hey, now, Greengrass,” he chided.  “None of that.  What do you have to mope about?”  Draco felt he really had the corner on moping right now. 

“I was just thinking that…”  There was an odd look in Daphne’s eyes, one that made him want to look away but also unable to.  “It’s nice to see you relax every once in a while.”

The softness in her voice was not helping him refocus on respecting the boundaries in their friendship. 

“It’s been easier lately, with…”  Draco stopped himself but then found more words falling out of his mouth anyway.  “With you here when I get back.” 

Draco busied himself with a large sip of his firewhiskey and tried to ignore the tiny smile Daphne tried to hide as she lifted her own glass to her lips. 

Fuck.

…

The light, yet terrified, feeling he’d had after talking to Daphne about the diadem had lasted all of two days. 

Draco had been pulled aside after Potions that morning by Severus, who looked grimmer than ever, and told he was to Floo home immediately.  A million thoughts raced through his head and the fear must have shown on his face because Severus narrowed his eyes and gripped Draco’s shoulder as he shoved him toward his office. 

“Control yourself, Draco,” the headmaster hissed, and Draco schooled his expression despite the resentment that coursed through him at the man’s words.

He stumbled out of the fireplace minutes later into the Manor, wand clutched in one hand, and looked around rapidly as he brushed soot from his robes. 

“Draco,” his mother breathed frantically, rushing toward him.  She wrapped her thin arms around him briefly and then pulled back to study his face.  “He is here,” Narcissa said quietly and Draco’s heart sank. 

“Who else?”  He kept his voice low as his eyes darted around the foyer. 

“All of them.” 

He felt himself pale at his mother’s words and she pressed her lips together tightly.

“You are expected in the dining room,” she continued quietly.  “Your father is there, and Severus came just ahead of you. I will go with you.”

Draco steeled himself, running over the walls in his mind to check for cracks, and followed her deeper into the house.

Occluding so much meant that, for better or worse, Draco lost hours of time in his memory.  There had been, as Narcissa had said, nearly every Death Eater present when he entered the dining room where he’d once eaten breakfast with his parents and complained about Harry Potter beating him at Quidditch and where now a psychopath fed his teachers to a giant snake. 

After that, he wasn’t sure.  Draco did everything in these situations to stay as inconspicuous as possible, which was made difficult by the fact that Bellatrix was seated next to his mother two spots down from him and did everything to draw all of the Dark Lord’s attention to her. 

He remembered listening as the others plotted and the Dark Lord gave orders and divided up assignments.  They were attacking the Order that night, he realized with a detached sense of awareness, apparently because someone had managed to Imperius that idiot Mundungus Fletcher during a dodgy and manufactured transaction in Knockturn Alley, and he’d revealed the location of one of their safehouses. 

Draco thought of Daphne and whatever she thought she was doing, if that’s even what was happening, and how futile it all was.  He would always win.  There was nothing to stop it. 

Beside Draco, his father stared at the table with vacant eyes and his mother looked straight ahead, back rigid.  Bellatrix crowed about how she would go after his pregnant cousin, and Draco withdrew further into his shields, so far that he forgot for a minute to be scared.

…

The Malfoys had been spared from having to go on the actual mission, Lucius still lacking a wand and Draco and Narcissa ordered to stay behind to receive prisoners as other Death Eaters returned from the scene.  The Dark Lord would be there to interrogate them, or worse, Draco thought, but then he realized he didn’t know whether he wished death on someone that was going to be tortured into madness instead by the most powerful wizard alive. 

He managed to slip away into his bedroom as soon as the others left late that night, and knelt on the floor trying to catch his breath as soon as he locked the door behind him.  It was coming in rattling gasps so painful that Draco thought his chest was going to burst. 

“Master Draco.” 

He shot up, adrenaline coursing through his veins again.  Mipsy, one of the Malfoy’s house-elves, was standing at the foot of his bed.  She looked terrified, trembling so bad could hear her teeth rattling.

“What time is it?”

“It is three in the morning, Master Draco,” Mipsy whispered, her squeaky voice wavering.  “You have been asleep.”

Draco looked around, disoriented.  It was dark outside of his windows, and he had been lying on the floor before Mipsy’s sudden appearance.  He must have passed out after Occluding to try and control the panic attack he had been having. 

“Are they back?”

She nodded desperately.  “You is being asked for downstairs, Master Draco.” 

The throbbing in his head made him unable to think for a moment. 

“Alright.  Go—go stay in the kitchens, Mipsy.” 

The elf shot him a grateful look, her tear-filled eyes lingering on his for a moment, before a crack signaled her departure. 

The scene in the main parlor was chaos.  Death Eaters were still arriving through the Floo, some injured, some yelling at each other, and others were cowering in the corner as the Dark Lord towered over them furiously.  Draco paused in the doorway, eyes scanning the room furiously for any sight of his mother or father.  With a horrified jolt, he saw his parents sprawled near the Dark Lord’s feet and realized with even more shock that Bellatrix was one of the other prone figures before him. 

His feet brought him toward his mother before he could stop to think. 

“My lord.” 

Draco didn’t know what else to say, but there was no opportunity anyway.  Voldemort turned on him immediately in rage. 

“Another useless Malfoy,” the wizard snarled, wand slashing through the air ruthlessly.  Draco felt himself slam onto the ground, his ribs seeming to take the brunt of the impact.  “With both Black and Malfoy blood, at that.  No wonder you have been the biggest disappointment of all, Draco.”

Narcissa was still on his left but he saw with dim relief that she was breathing, mouth set and eyes streaming with tears as she looked at him in a familiar expression of agonized guilt.  He could hear strangled cries from Bellatrix to his other side, what sounded like shouts of apology for whatever she must have fucked up during the mission, but the ringing in his ears stopped him from making them out more clearly. 

A flick of Voldemort’s wand summoned the giant snake that had been curled on the floor behind him, and Draco nearly blacked out in terror. 

“Apparently none of you can be trusted to do what you are told,” Voldemort hissed.  “I thought Bellatrix still more promising than Lucius turned out to be, but I have lost two of my best men tonight because your aunt acted on information that led us into a trap.  How many times do I have to make myself more clear to this family about the consequences of disappointing me?”

Bellatrix sobbed again, now prostrate beside him.  Draco closed his eyes. 

“Nagini."

His last thought before the snake’s weight enveloped him was that maybe he was the one with the Sight, because he’d had this exact nightmare before.

…

Draco awoke in his childhood bedroom, vaguely surprised to find himself not dead.  His mother was gripping one of his hands, her eyes vacant and staring into the fireplace across from his four-poster.  When he shifted, body protesting at the slight movement, she jumped. 

“My love,” she said.  “I am so sorry.”

He shut his eyes again briefly before opening them and staring up at the ceiling.  They had acted out this scene too many times for him to summon the energy to repeat it now. 

“Is he gone?”

Narcissa let out an almost inaudible sigh.  “No.”

“Is he going to let me go back to school?”  Draco asked numbly. 

She released his hand and conjured a glass of water for him to drink.  The task seemed to steady her nerves. 

“I believe so.  You have been asleep for most of the day.  Bellatrix is with him and they appear to be… reconciling.  Your father and I were sent away.  I think it best not to ask again but to just leave as soon as you are able.”

“He won’t hurt you again?”

The question hung between them.

“I believe that his focus has moved on.” 

Narcissa’s careful answer was no more comforting than it ever was, and Draco’s stomach twisted in disgust.  He thought suddenly of Daphne and whatever help she might have managed to find for herself and maybe even her family with the Order.  Meanwhile Draco had spent months watching his family get tortured, afraid the next time it would be the killing curse, unable to get his mother out of this fucking house. 

“Come with me to Hogwarts,” he said suddenly. 

His mother’s sharp look silenced him again.  “And do what, Draco?”

Whatever bruises and other injuries were spread across his torso ached.  There was a sharp twinge near his shoulder that hurt when he breathed or moved his neck or arm.  The pain combined with the exhaustion weighing on him and Draco felt utterly defeated.  “I don’t know.”

Narcissa sighed.  “You should leave as soon as possible.  I was—”  she drew in a shaky breath and fluttered her hand over his arm.  “I was forbidden from healing your injuries.  I would do it now but they may check my wand, and in any case I think it best if you do not linger.  Go to Madam Pomfrey and make an excuse.  She never asks many questions.”

Draco struggled to a sitting position, wincing.  His mother handed him a fresh shirt wordlessly and then waited while he dressed. 

“Mipsy.”  The small elf appeared again, still looking miserable.  “Please Apparate Draco to the Floo in the kitchens.  We would prefer he not be seen.”

“Mother—”  Draco began to protest, but Narcissa pasted on a smile and squeezed his hands in both of hers. 

“I will see you soon,” she said, eyes glittering, and then swept out of the room before he could speak again. 

…

Draco had been back in his rooms for barely an hour when Daphne surprised him on his second trip to the kitchen for a refill of firewhiskey.  It took only seconds for them to start sniping at each other, and between his aching head and the deep soreness settling into his bones, he couldn’t bring himself to give a shit. 

He had almost escaped back to his bedroom when Daphne suddenly startled him by appearing in his personal space. 

“What is that?” she demanded, and he flinched, whirling back around to face her.

“What are you talking about?”  Maybe if he acted horrible enough she would forget about this entire interaction and leave him alone.

But she didn’t.  Before Draco could stop her, Daphne had her hands on his shirt and was staring in horror at whatever she had seen.

The amount of alcohol he had consumed in a short amount of time prevented him from keeping his Occlumency in place against the bolt of fury that shot through him as he jerked away from her.  “Daphne, go the fuck away.” 

“No.” 

She was looking at him with a fierce expression, one that normally he kind of liked but that right now was making him angrier.  The idea of Daphne forcing him into a conversation about what had happened in the past twenty-four hours was absolutely unimaginable, and he needed her to fucking understand that and not push it this time.

“I’m serious, Daphne.”

“Let me help you.”

The words actually made him laugh manically.  “Help me?” 

He found himself suddenly only a few inches from her, looking down as she bit her lip stubbornly and glared back up at him.  How the fuck could she help?  Did she think whatever noble mission she might have been conned into doing for Potter’s precious Order was actually going to make any difference to anything?  Did she think suddenly she had all the answers when Draco had been trapped in this shit for years?

“The only way you can help me is by shutting the fuck up.”

“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” Daphne said.  “But if you sit down and stop acting like a complete prick, I can help you.” 

Draco stared back at her, brows creased, anger warring with confusion.  His head was hurting so much, and he knew he wasn’t actually mad at her but he also couldn’t think straight enough to figure out whatever she was trying to tell him right now and he just wanted to go to bed. 

“You can’t help me,” he finally decided to say, forcing his voice into something calmer. 

“Sit down,” Daphne replied instead, the command sounding firm despite the fact that she had to tilt her head up several inches to issue it directly to him. 

He noticed abstractly that there were circles under her own eyes, ones that hadn’t always been there.  She looked sad, and nearly as tired as him, and the thought made the fight finally drain out of him.  He drained his glass and collapsed onto an overstuffed armchair, the impact sending a jolt of pain through him. 

Daphne seemed to have lost whatever confidence had made her start bossing him around and she hesitated in front of him.  He still had no idea what she wanted from him as he watched her perch on the edge of the table in front of him, their knees so close they almost touched.  Before he could stop it, he recoiled at the sight of her wand.

“I can help, Draco.” 

He didn’t understand.  She couldn’t help, and they both knew that, and whatever this was should just stop now.  For a minute he considered her, forgetting to hide his emotions behind anything, the guilt at leaving his mother and the memory of the Dark Lord standing in front of him instead coming back to the front of his mind.

Daphne had reached out and was unbuttoning his shirt.  He felt drunk, which, he supposed, perhaps he was.  He should stop this, whatever this was, before she saw the rest of the bruises and couldn’t un-see the destruction.  But he found he couldn’t make himself move, the cool touch of her fingers too comforting against his tender skin.

He heard her gasp his name, and he knew she’d seen.  Draco had looked in the mirror, just once, when he’d gotten back, before he’d gone straight to the firewhiskey, and had almost thrown up at the sight of the striped bruises encircling his body.  The images made him remember the feeling of the snake’s hard, cold body wrapped around him, squeezing his throat and his chest so tightly he thought he was going to die but he couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything, could only listen as he thought he heard ribs and something else crack.

Daphne had stilled but then continued, shaking, and he tried not to let her see how much it hurt to remove the rest of his shirt.  He couldn’t meet her eyes anymore but he was fairly certain she was crying. 

“Please just tell me what happened,” he heard Daphne’s voice beg him. 

Despite the alcohol making it feel sluggish and ineffective, he forced some of the Occlumency back.  “I didn’t do something I was supposed to do,” he heard himself say.  He hadn’t killed Dumbledore.  He hadn’t protected his mother.  He hadn’t been the son his father wanted.  He wasn’t going to be able to save Daphne or Theo or Pansy or Blaise.

Before he could understand what was happening, a tingling feeling was spreading across his chest and Daphne was still crying but also seemed to be speaking some sort of spell softly in a tone that felt as comforting as the magic flowing from her wand.  Her fingers were still tracing patterns over his feverish, broken skin and the combination of her touch and the soothing feeling of the healing spells she appeared to be casting made him emit an involuntary groan at the sensations replacing the pain that had been steady for hours.

“Are you okay?” Daphne sounded worried and her hands stilled. 

“Yes.”  Draco tried to catch his breath, slightly embarrassed even through his fog.  “I—yes.”  He could feel skin and bones knitting back together and his tender flesh calming and suddenly he found his lungs were able to fill completely again. 

The sudden absence of magic made him open his eyes a few minutes later.  Daphne was biting her lip, studying his collarbone with a concerned look and still resting her fingers on him as if she had forgotten they were there. 

“Draco, I think you might need to go see Madam Pomfrey, I’m really not—”

Draco couldn’t resist grabbing her hand with his own.  “Daphne.”  His voice sounded choked and he tried to fix it.  “Where did you learn how to do all of that?”

“I thought I might need to,” she answered in a quiet voice.  “In case…”

Draco simply waited for her to answer, hoping despite his better judgment that Daphne might continue, that maybe she would say something that would explain what had just happened and how he was feeling and everything else in his life.

But of course she didn’t.  Her fingers were still clutched in his against his chest and he couldn’t bring himself to drop them yet. 

“That was remarkable.”  Draco spoke softly as if trying not to spook her.  “Thank you.”

Neither spoke, and Draco realized he felt calmer than he ever would have thought possible an hour or so ago.  Daphne’s eyes fell from his and he watched their path down to his chest.  But she had seen his Sectumsempra scars and was staring in shocked horror. 

He dropped her hand instantly. 

Daphne looked lost in dazed thought as he pulled his arms back through his shirt and stood, not wanting her to keep seeing the reminder of another terrible thing he’d done or almost done or whatever.  He turned quickly to his room.

“Draco.”  Daphne’s voice called out his name, tone sounding uncertain, and he paused in the bedroom doorway, exhaustion already returning.  “I’ll see you at breakfast, right?”

And now everything would go back to normal, he supposed.  Or whatever normal was around here anymore.  He offered her a tired smile. 

“Sure, Greengrass.”

…

December 1997

There was nothing Draco wanted less than to attend a party in the Room of Requirement, except for perhaps to return to the Manor again for the Christmas holidays.  He had gone anyway, Pansy’s repeated threats annoying him enough to temporarily cause him to ignore his misgivings.  This was not a new component of his and Pansy’s relationship. 

The truth was that Draco had also thought that, maybe, for a minute, it might feel like something close to normal or even—Merlin forbid—fun before he had to return to the Manor where he might be spending Christmas morning taking tea and opening presents with a mass murderer.  Alright, so probably not, but some version of that, he thought darkly. 

Pansy’s ridiculous decorations had, he admitted, been sort of festive, but it was something else about the atmosphere itself that felt relaxing—like some sort of tension had been unwound temporarily, and despite himself, Draco found it almost reached him.

Draco had been trying very respectably to give Theo and Daphne space—a lot of space—not entirely undue to the guilt he was trying to ignore over their loaded interaction after his last trip home.  She was well on her way to tipsy, he could tell, and was twirling barefoot around the dance floor with Theo and the others in an amusedly clumsy way—hadn’t she had as many dance classes as him growing up?, he thought absently—and Draco was absolutely not paying more attention than any other person would who happened to glance in that direction occasionally. 

Ginny Weasley had even, perhaps in the spirit of yuletide, engaged him in a long conversation with her housemate who’d also played Quidditch (back in the years when the sport was allowed at the school) about the national team rankings that had distracted him long enough that he felt surprisingly light.  This had been followed by a long conversation with Neville Longbottom, at Pansy’s not-so-subtle urging, about topics such as the relative rarity of Amazonian plants used in potion-making which weren’t actually boring but were things he’d never imagined discussing with Longbottom, of all people.  He supposed he should just be grateful somehow he had managed to get to a point where the Gryffindor was willingly socializing with him, though frankly, Draco wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done to achieve that milestone. 

Draco had just excused himself to find another drink when Daphne appeared at his side, cheeks pinked and looking rumpled in a way that, again, he absolutely did not find attractive.  She should pull herself together, really.

Or maybe it was him that needed to do that.

“You told me once you loved Theo.”  

The words came out of his mouth before he had fully formed them and cut off Daphne’s rambling story about Blaise and Luna’s first date, which she had just heard and to which he was now paying zero attention.  Shit.

“Oh.”  Daphne looked flustered and like she was about to bolt. 

They hadn’t spoken about this for years.  Draco had found himself thinking traitorously lately about why she had never brought it up again, and whether that meant it had been a fleeting thing, confessed in a moment of drunken weakness and not meant to be taken seriously.  Though, he had been trying to remind himself over and over again, Daphne didn’t really do things she didn’t take seriously.  And yet here he was, acting like some kind of insane person and having this conversation with her anyway.

“Er.  Yes, that’s right.  I did.”

That wasn’t particularly useful.

“Do you still?” he heard himself ask in a clipped tone, and Draco felt that he wanted to flee now as well. 

Daphne met his eyes, brow creasing in what seemed to be confusion.  He didn’t know what that meant.

“Right.  I mean, I do.  Still.” 

Of course.  What the fuck was he doing?  He needed to stop drinking so much.  Or something.  Or possibly drink more.  “I see.” 

“Okay.  Well, don’t tell him.  Like, you know, we talked about before.  Because I don’t want him to know.”  Daphne was babbling and Draco felt a little bad for making her so clearly uncomfortable. 

“You should tell him.  He has no idea.  You don’t act like it around him.”  The words tasted bitter coming out but he forced himself to think of Theo again.  Theo, the git, who wouldn’t do anything about it himself and who Draco had dutifully never told about his drunken conversation with Daphne fifth year.  He sighed to himself.

Daphne looked flummoxed.  “Oh, erm…  I will…  take that into consideration.”

“Right.  Great.”  Draco couldn’t help but let out a short laugh.  While he may feel guilty about whatever nonsensical thoughts he’d been having lately about Daphne, it was absolutely not his job to play matchmaker to these idiots.  Good riddance.  “You’re something else.” 

The party concluded hours after Draco returned to his room, feeling monumentally stupid and resolving to spend his time thinking about more pressing matters, like how to not get attacked by a giant snake again over his holiday break.

…

It turned out that Draco hadn’t needed to worry about that particular fear when he returned to the Manor. 

Voldemort and his terrifying familiar were nowhere to be found, and the relief he felt was only magnified on the faces of his mother and father when they greeted him.  His mother had decorated the Manor as if it were any normal Christmas and this was disturbing and made him feel queasy, but he didn’t want to upset her any further by voicing this out loud when she looked even worse than she had when he’d seen her only weeks before. 

There were several other things that couldn’t be ignored, however, despite the gratifying absence of the Dark Lord:  Bellatrix remained, instead lording over everyone, apparently having managed to regain whatever esteemed position she held in this hierarchy.  Selwyn, Mulciber, and Pettigrew were apparently skulking about day and night, and Rowle and Macnair made several appearances.  Draco resumed his summer routine of hiding in the library and his mother quietly sat with him, reading her own book and staring out the window with that frighteningly vacant expression. 

Draco might have been able to scrape by for the two-week break without any major distress if that’s all that he had to deal with.  But it wasn’t even Christmas before this illusion was shattered.

His mother had sent him downstairs to the cellar to retrieve a particular vintage of elf wine for their Christmas Eve dinner, something he was uncertain why a house elf couldn’t do, but he was loath to deny his mother anything at this point. 

The reason she’d wanted him to go became obvious immediately. 

The cellar had several rooms, catacombs sprawling under the house that he and Theo and Blaise used to play in when they were little until Theo had gotten locked in one of the antechambers accidentally and it had freaked them all out so efficiently Draco rarely went down there even now.  When he cast a Lumos to enter the main room, he thought his heart was going to leap out of his chest. 

There were people down there.

“Hello, Draco,”  a voice called to him, not sounding particularly surprised to see him, or displeased. 

He sputtered, wand held aloft, looking into the face of Luna Lovegood with nothing less than complete shock.  She looked nothing like when he had seen her only days before, dancing with Blaise in the Room of Requirement in another sunny yellow dress in the strangest fashion but looking rather beautiful doing it just for the expressions of beatific happiness on both of their faces.  Now, her face had a long cut running down one side of it, the blood dried but still caked in an alarming way.  Her long blonde hair, which had never been particularly kempt, was dirty and oddly uneven like someone might have torn a chunk out of it on one side.

“Your mother told me I would be seeing you soon,” Luna was continuing, stepping closer to the light cast by his wand.

“My—my mother?” he gasped. 

Draco’s gaze was drawn to the other occupant of the cellar, an old man who was resting wearily against a wall and looked even worse for the wear than Luna.  A jolt of recognition hit him as he realized it was the man he had bought his hawthorn wand from almost seven years ago.

“Oh, yes.  I rather like her.”

“Uh—Luna, what happened?” Draco burst out hurriedly, nervously glancing behind him.  The cellar was soundproof, he knew as much as that, but he thought he’d left the door ajar.  His stomach swooped as he realized the inability to hear what was happening within meant Luna and Ollivander could’ve been there for days, the latter maybe longer, and he wouldn’t have known.

Luna frowned.  “I don’t remember entirely.  But I know that I got off the Hogwarts Express and began walking toward the Apparition point—well, obviously I didn’t make it home.”  She looked over her shoulder at the wandmaker, who was watching with narrowed eyes.  “I woke up here, and Mr. Ollivander explained where we were.  I haven’t seen many other people besides your mother, who brought us dinner last night.”

“I—Luna, I—I didn’t know.”

She smiled gently at him.  “I know.”  The girl cocked her head to the side and appraised him.  “But now you do.”

Fear swirled in his stomach and he nodded mechanically.  “Yes.”  Draco’s words were barely a whisper.  “Now I do.”

The rest of the holidays passed in a blur. 

Draco didn’t dare confront his mother about the prisoners in the cellar, particularly since they were so rarely alone.  He had snuck down to the cellar each day when Bellatrix and the others were distracted, food in hand.  Luna had been bizarrely calm, and Ollivander mostly silent.  At all other times he watched the entrance nearly obsessively, foregoing his refuge in the library because of his terror that the other Death Eaters would disappear down into the cellar, but by some miracle it hadn’t happened.  Draco thought about Blaise, but had no idea how to contact him; he thought of Flooing to Theo, but wasn’t sure why Theo would have any better ideas than he did. 

Draco had been afraid to voice any of this to Luna, certain she was going to withstand torture—or worse—in his home after he left and terrified the little help he had given her so far would reveal too much.  His return to school was rapidly approaching, correlating with an increasing spike in his anxiety, when Luna finally pulled him out of earshot of Ollivander and looked at him seriously. 

“Draco, we need to talk.”

“Luna, I—”

“You need to tell Daphne.”

He felt his jaw drop and shut it hurriedly. 

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Draco said quickly. 

The girl eyed him thoughtfully.  “I’ve considered every other option.  I know you do not have many choices, Draco.”

There was that word again, he thought bitterly.  Choices.

 “But that’s alright.  Daphne will know what to do.”  Luna’s voice was firm and he didn’t know how to argue.

They looked at each other for a long time.  There didn’t seem to be anything that made Luna feel awkward, which Draco thought he would find irritating but actually had found very calming to be around.  He scuffed his foot against the damp floor, absently watching a mouse scatter away from the light his wand was scattering around. 

“I’m sorry, Luna,” he said finally.

She just nodded gravely.  To his surprise, she reached out and touched his hand briefly and the contact made his chest tighten.  “I know, Draco.”

…

January 1998

The anxiety he felt at having told Daphne about Luna was threatening to overtake him and his best attempts at compartmentalizing.  Every time someone walked behind him, Draco felt his neck snap around in paranoia, certain it was one of the Carrows or Severus or someone even worse who had found out about his deceit and was there to make him suffer the consequences.  Part of him was furious with himself for his ridiculously vague communication, worried that he’d taken a risk and she wouldn’t even understand what his meaning had been. 

But the unbidden fear that Daphne had understood his true meaning, and that he really had set something in motion, something that could hurt him, and his parents, and maybe Luna or really anyone, almost equally terrified him.  He’d let the guilt eating away at him from the knowledge of Luna’s horrifying presence in his parents’ cellar temporarily fool him into thinking that somehow—if it were even really possible that his absurd theory that Daphne was in contact with them was true, something he still seriously thought he was imagining—that the Order could help her.  

It was insane.  No one got out of that house.  He knew that better than anyone. 

These thoughts all sickened him, but Draco was used to that.  He skipped dinner in favor of holing up in the library in order to avoid more discussion about Blaise.  To be honest, his friend’s absence, presumably triggered by Luna’s disappearance, was baffling—how and where had he gone? 

A small, traitorous part of Draco was angry:  if Blaise really had somewhere to go, someone safe who was going to help him find Luna—that thought made Draco laugh darkly with its own impossibility—why hadn’t Blaise told him?  Maybe now, after everything Draco had done and given his efforts to keep Blaise away from him and the entire mess, he could understand.  But last year—last year when Blaise and Pansy and Theo had yelled at him endlessly for his horrible behavior—why hadn’t Blaise offered him help then if he really knew how to get it?

But it was more likely Blaise had run off on his own, with no plan, and was going to get himself killed.  This thought required Draco to draw in deep breaths as he stared down at the page of the library book he was pretending to read so Madam Pince would leave him the fuck alone as he just tried to sit in the dark corner of the stacks in silence.  His vision felt like it was going to white out as spots appeared in the corner of his eyes, pressure converging on his chest.  There was nothing he could do, nothing he could do again, what was the point of any of this, of Draco trying at all—

He let out a snarl, drawing the furious gaze of the librarian, but slammed the book shut and grabbed his bag before she could march over to his table to start screaming at him for disturbing the two other students there, who were tables and tables away and hadn’t even looked up.

The walk back to the dungeons calmed him down only slightly, but his walls felt stronger and his mind stiller when he finally reached the door to the head dorm.  Daphne was either shut up in her room or elsewhere, and he found himself secretly glad.  Nothing good could come of Draco dealing with her while he was in this precarious state, especially considering he had no idea how she had really reacted to their conversation that morning after she’d been the one to essentially make him stop talking and pull him into the classroom as if everything was normal. 

With only a stop at his wardrobe to pull off his outer robes and dig out a vial of Dreamless Sleep potion, Draco threw himself onto his four-poster, knocked the liquid back immediately, and hoped whatever he had done that day hadn’t just made everything worse like most of his decisions ever had. 

…

It only took another twenty-four hours for Severus to corner Draco again, this time catching him walking into the Great Hall for dinner and half-dragging him to the headmaster’s office instead. They were glaring at each other over the desk that had once been Dumbledore’s, the dead headmaster himself, absurdly, actually smiling down at them from his portrait behind Severus’s head as if delighted to see them together.  Draco was avoiding the sight of the twinkling blue eyes with every ounce of resolve he had. 

“I do not know what you are playing at, Draco, but if you know where Mr. Zabini has gone, you must tell me.” 

The words came out with more urgency than Draco was expecting but it made him no less angry with the man before him.

“I told you already, I have no idea,” he ground out.  Draco strengthened the walls in his mind, not daring to test them by trying to let something show so Severus would see that he really didn’t know where Blaise was in case the effort cost him any flicker of memory of the things he was desperate not to reveal. 

“I know that he and Ms. Lovegood had become—involved.”  There was a flash of something in Severus’s eyes and then they were stony again. 

“If you think I told Blaise about how Luna Lovegood is being held as a prisoner in my fucking house, you’re insane.” 

This was technically true, though in yet another dark place in his mind Draco felt grateful that it had been Daphne and not Blaise who he’d had to face, even if in the most cowardly of ways.  “I haven’t seen Blaise since before the holidays.”

“Then where do you believe he would have gone?  If he doesn’t know where she is, why leave?”  Severus pressed.

“I don’t fucking know!” 

The other man seemed to make an attempt to regain his own control, something rarely visible.  “Draco, I know you are angry with me, and I have respected—”

An incredulous laugh slipped out before Draco could stop it.  “Angry with you?”  he snapped.   “Yeah, I’d say that doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

The only response he received for this insolence was the noticeable tensing of Severus’s jaw.  Draco felt a wild desire to push the man farther, to give into the temptation that he had for months to see how honest—or how cruel—his own fucking godfather would be with him after everything that had happened.  Before he could act on the impulse, the fire roared to life with green flames, distracting both of them.

“Severus—”  To Draco’s shock, his father’s own tangled blonde hair and dull face had appeared in the Floo, looking agitated. 

“Father?"

The floating head swiveled instead to Draco and then back to Severus, excitement undeterred. 

“Greyback has found the girl.  The Granger Mudblood!  They will be at the Manor any minute.  Severus, come quickly and tell us if it is really her so we can call the Dark Lord at once.  There’s a boy with her, but they didn’t say whether it was Potter—if it is—” 

Whatever scenarios Draco had been imagining the last forty-eight hours had never included this.  He felt his stomach roil and couldn’t bring himself to move his eyes from the sight of the continued, animated spewing of words.  Granger?  Was this because of him?  They sent fucking Granger?  Were these people literally insane?

Things had spiraled too far out of his control.  Severus was speaking in a low voice into the Floo and Draco forced himself to pay attention. 

“—supposedly on the run with her parents, Lucius, that seems highly unlikely.  And Potter is exceedingly recognizable, do you not think they would have been certain?”

“I’ll go,” Draco heard himself say. 

The argument ceased and Severus’s eyes flashed toward him in complete surprise for a split second before his cool mask slipped back into place. 

“I would know them as well as you.  And you will be more noticeable to the other staff if you are gone from dinner unexpectedly.” 

The bold assertion went unchallenged by Lucius who was nodding furiously at the suggestion.  Only Severus was still, staring at Draco as if he might actually be about to force his way into his mind. 

Mechanically, Draco moved toward the fireplace and turned away from the headmaster. 

“If I’m not back soon, you can make excuses for me.” 

There was no response from behind him.

Before he could think any further, Draco was throwing a handful of glittery powder into the place his father’s head had just vanished and then he was swirling around, traveling miles and miles away right back to the place he had only escaped days before.

Draco felt his feet touch solid ground again, but his father yanked him out of the fireplace in the foyer of the Manor before he had a chance to move.  The enormity of what he had done, of where he was and what he was walking into, washed over him and he stumbled over his robes.  Hearing this, Lucius turned back only to frown at him imperiously—something far less intimidating these days when Draco knew the obnoxious cane in his hand held no wand and the man himself held no power in his own home—and then led the way toward the drawing room down. 

He had no plan.  All he had thought was to stop Severus from going instead, from making Draco’s own mistake even worse by throwing another murderous Death Eater into whatever situation he had created by triggering this chain of events.  And now Draco was going to have to face Granger, and possibly Potter, who he imagined had been left with his psychotic aunt and whoever else had been present at the Manor that evening among their merry band of followers while Lucius retrieved him, and he had literally no idea what he was supposed to do.

The drawing room suddenly opened up before him, the huge chandelier gleaming preposterously at him as if he’d walked into his mother’s New Year’s Eve gala.  Bellatrix was gesturing wildly, yelling at—fuck—Greyback and several grubby-looking wizards he’d never seen before who were cowering behind the werewolf slightly and eyeing his aunt nervously as the two faced off.  

But all of that blinked out of existence when Draco saw the sight sprawled on the ground a few feet away. 

Huge, messy curls had escaped whatever she’d tied them back with and framed huge brown eyes that stared back up at him with the strangest expression.  Granger was bound by the hands and feet, trying to protect what looked like a broken wrist from being crushed beneath her from her awkward position, one sleeve of her jacket ripped nearly all the way down her upper arm.  Yet, when he gaped down at her in horror, the look of fear in her eyes seemed like it was for him. 

The sound of his second to least favorite voice in the world—though it was close, he thought grimly—pulled him out of this bizarre standoff.  Only then did he notice the other captive looking even worse for the wear on the floor to Granger's other side.  Dean Thomas? 

Fury suddenly coursed through him, replacing his terror and discomfit at seeing Granger immediately.  The Order had concocted this doomed rescue mission in less than two days and had sent Granger with Dean fucking Thomas to execute it? 

His heart pounded harder as he watched Bellatrix yank Granger by her hair, that ridiculous hair, and thrust her toward him. 

“Draco!”  Bellatrix sounded as unhinged as he had ever heard her.  “Come here.  It’s her, isn’t it?”

With as much concentration as he had summoned the first time he’d looked Voldemort in the eye and told a bald-faced lie, Draco forced his Occlumency walls into place.  From behind the haze, he affected a tone of slight uncertainty as he looked toward Granger and replied to his aunt.  “I—I don’t know.”

Granger’s eyes closed with a wince as another brutal tug on her curls drew her head closer to Draco.  “You went to school with Potter and the Mudblood for six years, Draco.  You don’t remember what she looks like?”

Of course he remembered.  The thought startled him so badly that he felt his walls crack and his heart clenched in terror. 

Draco cursed himself instantly when he caught himself glancing toward his mother.  It had always been his downfall, his tell.  The Dark Lord may have bought some of his stories and his claims of loyalty and wanting to prove himself, but he’d always laughed when Draco inevitably sought out his mother the minute things went to shit.  Maybe at the beginning, it had been because he thought she could protect him.  That hadn’t lasted long.  For a long time, longer than he ever wanted to think about, it had been instead because the minute he slipped up Draco always knew it was going to cost not only him but also Narcissa. 

Lucius Malfoy’s wife had learned her part well, too, though.  He may have grown up and realized she couldn’t save him, but Narcissa knew how to cover up Draco’s missteps as well as either of them could attempt in the hopes that it would save them from whatever punishment the Dark Lord—or whoever he ordered to—would dole out. 

“It looks like her, but I only met her once when she was a child.  I can’t be sure.”  Draco thought his mother sounded impressively bored. 

Granger suddenly was released to the floor and a sickening crack that must have come from the impact on her head made him jolt.  Bellatrix brandished Thomas at him instead, but he managed to stammer off another half-hearted excuse as he watched Granger surreptitiously.  Where were their wands?  Greyback had been subdued and his cronies as well.  But Bellatrix and his father were seconds away from calling the Dark Lord to the Manor and then even wands couldn’t help the two idiots escape.

“Just take him to the cellar, Draco.  I’ll deal with him later.”  His eyes shot to Granger for a second and then Draco followed his aunt’s frustrated orders.  He’d forgotten the entire reason they were there for a second in his efforts to shield his thoughts and try to come up with any way for all of them to survive this ridiculous night. 

Thomas struggled against him and he gritted his teeth in frustration.  The cellar steps were dark and Draco threw the door open quickly, yanking Thomas inside.  Another flick of his wand and light filled the cramped space. 

“Draco!”  A voice called from the far corner of the low-ceilinged room.  He almost rolled his eyes at the note of delight in Lovegood’s voice.  The girl really was mad. 

Suddenly, something jabbed him sharply in the ribs and he hissed in pain.  “What the fuck, Thomas?” he growled angrily, shoving the other boy further into the room and shutting the door behind them with his wand. 

“Malfoy—”  Thomas was building up steam now, and Draco thought he was going to lose it.  He silenced him with another flick of his wand and watched in vicious pleasure as the Gryffindor’s mouth furiously opened and closed. 

“Thomas, if you will shut up for one fucking second, then I’ll let you talk,” he snarled.  Draco spun back around to Luna, who had drawn closer and was beaming at them both.

“Draco, I thought you were going to tell Daphne,” she said conversationally.  “What are you going to do now?”

He sighed in exasperation.  “I didn’t—I mean, I’m not—I wasn’t supposed to be here,” Draco finally settled on.  “Look, Lovegood, Granger is up there—”

The pleasant look vanished from Lovegood’s face and she looked fiercer than he’d ever seen her.  “Hermione is here?” she said quietly.  Draco gave a quick nod and turned back to Thomas. 

“Now, did you come here with a fucking plan or are you just winging it?” 

Thomas was looking between him and Lovegood in such complete confusion that it might have been comical if not for the fact that Draco was straining to hear what was going on upstairs and it was horribly silent.  He released the spell and words started spilling instantly. 

“—the fuck is going on but we have to get Hermione and get out of here—”

“None of you are getting out of here alive if we just go back up there,” Draco snapped.  “Do you have a plan?”

This seemed to shut him up and finally, Thomas nodded jerkily.  “Yes.  Portkeys.  They’re timed in—in intervals.”

Relief coursed through Draco’s veins so potently he felt lightheaded.  “Alright,” he replied.  “Good.  Okay.” 

“We need to take Mr. Ollivander,” Lovegood chimed in helpfully. 

Draco turned and saw the wandmaker slumped against the wall on the edge of the darkness where she had emerged.  He looked weaker than when Draco had seen him over the holidays.  It made him feel ill. 

“I don’t know what’s going on, Malfoy, but are you going to kill me or are you going to take these off my fucking hands?”  Thomas interrupted.  Draco frowned and vanished the ropes around his wrists.  Quickly, Thomas dug out a coin from his pocket and handed it to Lovegood.  “Take this, Luna.  It should leave any minute.  You can take Mr. Ollivander and I’ll get Hermione.”

Draco scoffed loudly at this.  “I’m sorry, you are going to get Granger?  How exactly are you going to do that?”

Thomas rounded on him to glower intimidatingly again, or at least what he thought must have been intimidating, despite the fact that Draco was about four inches taller than him and Thomas had absolutely no idea where he was and didn’t seem to have a wand anymore.  “I am not leaving her.”

Before anyone could say anything further, a noise rang out from behind the cellar door.  Thomas and Draco shared a quick look of oddly unified horror as they realized someone must have been coming down the stairs. 

“Thomas—take Lovegood and Ollivander and go,” Draco hissed.  He shoved him toward the witch, who took Thomas’s hand immediately and looked anxiously back at Draco.  “I will—I’ll figure something out up there.”

A look of agonized indecision crossed over Thomas’s face and he frantically turned to Lovegood for support.  She smiled softly and reached her other hand out to Ollivander. 

“Dean, you only found me because of Draco.  We should listen to him.”

The doorknob was rattling and Draco’s panic ratcheted up with the sound.  “Is it activating?” he demanded in a low voice. 

Thomas nodded and tightened his grip on Lovegood, his other hand wrapped around the glowing coin. 

“Thomas,” Draco said suddenly, as he heard the door swing open behind them.  “Do not tell anyone what really happened down here or I will kill you.”

Before any of them could speak again, a startled shout rang out behind him, and Draco raised his wand to level it at Thomas.  Please fucking leave, he begged the Portkey silently. 

“What is going on?”  The voice behind belonged to Pettigrew, which was at least a small comfort to Draco.  There was no more useless Death Eater than the rat. 

To Draco’s surprise, Thomas maneuvered a wand out of somewhere on his person with the hand still holding the coin.  He faced off against Pettigrew and Draco and shot something at the older man that missed and ricocheted off the cellar wall. 

“Expelliarmus!”  Draco shouted, aiming purposely at Ollivander instead of Thomas.  The spell bounced away harmlessly. 

Pettigrew had his wand out now and Draco could see him fumbling out of the corner of his eye.  Miraculously, before anyone else had time to act or cast, the sudden glow enveloped the cellar and Thomas, Lovegood, and Ollivander disappeared, leaving Draco only with a horrified, whimpering imbecile and a renewed sense of terror about how long he’d been gone while Granger was upstairs with his aunt. 

Pettigrew cowered in the cellar, ranting and rambling about how it wasn’t his that the prisoners had disappeared.  Draco pushed him roughly up the stairs and when they reached the drawing room again, shoved him brutally toward Bellatrix. 

The distraction worked.  Draco watched his aunt advance on Pettigrew as the rat cried pathetically, and his father turned to back her. 

He dropped to his knees next to Granger, who was so still he almost panicked again.  She looked up at him in bleary confusion and he was sure his expression nearly mirrored hers.  From another angle, he could see his mother watching him worriedly but ignored her.  Narcissa moved discreetly between him and Bellatrix, Lucius, and Pettigrew and he felt distractedly grateful. 

Tentatively, Draco placed long fingers around Granger’s own slender wrists, noting the bruises and, with growing dread, the blood seeping out of her left forearm.  How was he supposed to move her?  Could he get her to the Floo?  But he couldn’t leave his mother. 

Draco glanced back desperately at Narcissa, who was watching her own sister carefully. Would she come with him this time if he made a run for it?  As it always had in these moments, Draco’s mind froze.  If there was anything he was good at, he cursed himself, it was detaching, not making a decision, adapting.  He needed to act, and he didn’t know what to fucking do.

“Granger.”  He heard his voice come out low and needy and Draco tried to stop thinking and tug the little witch up to a sitting position.  He thought distantly he could hear his mother hissing at him to do something but he couldn’t make out what, couldn’t think past getting Granger away from the floor where Bellatrix would surely return to kill her. 

“Draco.” 

Granger’s voice shocked him into stillness again and he simply looked at her, frozen. 

A sudden heat seemed to spark near his hands, distracting him momentarily. 

Both of their eyes dropped to the orange glow that was building from the metal piece on her jacket and he realized with a start that she was somehow going to save herself.  There was a sudden pressure on his chest and he looked down to see that she had inexplicably wound her hand in his shirt, twisting as if she was holding on for dear life.  His eyes snapped back up to hers in confusion and before he could move she released him and jerked backward, her wrists slipping effortlessly from his loose grip.  He blinked and she was gone. 

Bellatrix screamed in rage and he felt his body lift off the ground and slam back against the wall before he crumpled to the floor again. 

His aunt drew her wand back again and with enormous effort Draco forced himself to shield his mind, instead forcing the image back in front of him of Granger looking up at him terrified and him grabbing her wrists, but blocking his own fear and indecision as he tried to figure out how to get her out of there.  He let Bellatrix see the Portkey start to glow and Granger tear herself away from him before disappearing, and that seemed to be enough to convince her of Draco’s lack of agency in what had happened. 

He felt Bellatrix leave his mind furiously and fling a disgusted curse at him instead. 

Only one more conscious thought floated across his mind before he was sucked under the wave of pain. 

She had called him Draco.

…

He woke up to his mother’s bedside vigil again.

Narcissa sat with him quietly for a long time while he rode out the tremors that shook his body.  When he finally felt capable of eating, she called Mipsy and had sandwiches and tea brought to them in his room.  It must have been midday by then.  He knew he should be getting back to school, that his absence would be noticed, and that it would only help everyone if he disappeared before the Dark Lord or anyone else found out that they’d had Hermione Granger in their home and let her escape.

But he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

“Draco,” Narcissa said, setting down her teacup and saucer gently.  She seemed to have been working herself up to something and he turned warily toward her. 

“The girl who was here,” she began. 

“Mother,” he cut her off quickly.  “She was no one.”

Narcissa pursed her lips.  The expression on her face, despite his mild annoyance and trepidation, made him wistful for a moment.  It was closer to anything he remembered from before than he had seen in so long.  “She did not seem like no one.”

Draco focused on his own tea and stirred another lump of sugar into it busily. 

“I was confused,” he said cautiously.  “There was… a lot happening.”

That was true, at least.  Draco tried for the hundredth time to push the image of Granger staring up at him out of his mind, her eyes wide with some sort of baffling combination of fear and yet… trust?  It had made no sense, and it didn’t do any good to dwell on it.  She had gone, and so had Luna, and Ollivander, and he needed to leave before more of the blame was placed squarely on him.

Hours later, Draco found himself in the head dorm, again, aching and exhausted.  Daphne was nowhere to be found and his mind had spun again.  When he had arrived back at the castle through the headmaster’s Floo, Severus had informed him that Daphne had luckily been in the hospital wing with some sort of migraine and wouldn’t have noticed his absence.  Draco had been staggered. 

Had she not been here?  Draco had thought she would tell McGonagall, or whomever she was in contact with, and Daphne herself would’ve stayed out of danger.  What part had she played in all of this?  There were so many tangled threads in his mind that he couldn’t follow any of them properly. 

He had told Daphne that Luna was at his home, or at least he had implied it, and then a day later he had ended up in the Manor watching Dean Thomas rescue the prisoners from the cellar and holding Hermione Granger in his arms after she was tortured by his aunt. 

He closed his eyes.  Whatever had happened to Granger, it had been his fault.  Even if he had been trying to help Lovegood, he had set this in motion.  The fucking Order.  Why were all of their plans terrible?  And why was Granger always charging headfirst into danger like she was alone responsible for saving the world? 

These thoughts were plaguing him when he heard the sounds of someone entering the common room.  Draco hesitated, then turned the knob on his bedroom door and walked back into the sitting area. 

Daphne was there, standing in the middle of the room with a defeated look on her face, shoulders slumped, exhaustion evident.  He felt a sudden rush of fear as he wondered again where she had really been.

“You’re back.”

She turned at the sound of his voice and seemed to move toward him without thinking.  “I just left the hospital wing.”  Draco nodded absently.  “Pansy told me she hadn’t seen you in… in a bit.”

He couldn’t stop staring at her.  Fear was creeping back, snaking up into his throat, blocking out all other rational thought.  He wanted to tell her how scared he was, how it had felt to rush from the cellar and see Granger lying on the floor, bright red blood spilling around her, and think she might have been dead.  He wanted to tell her how relieved he was to see her, alive, safe, whole, standing there looking at him like he was the answer to some question she’d had and it was the one she had been looking for.  None of these thoughts made any sense and instead, he crossed the room toward her before he could think further and wrapped her in his arms. 

Draco felt the witch soften against him, her own arms wrapping around his waist to return his embrace tentatively. 

This was fine, he told himself distractedly, he’d touched Daphne before.  Never mind the desperation he felt, the odd sensation that spread over him as his magic reached out to hers as if seeking to ensure that she was really there and okay.

“I’m sorry.”  His voice was small and Draco regretted breaking the moment with words even as he tried to tell himself to let go. 

“For what?”  She was staring up at him and he felt as confused as ever.  He thought involuntarily again of Granger looking at him fiercely as she gripped his shirt in her slender fingers before letting go with what looked like regret and vanishing. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Okay.”  Daphne seemed as confused as he was.

“Just…  I don’t suppose you’ve fucking learned Occlumency?”  He hated himself the minute the words slipped out, desperately. 

“I tried.  I’m—I’m terrible.”  The admission surprised him but he had already known the answer.  Every emotion was displayed on her face like an open book lately. 

“Okay.”  

Draco forced himself to let go and back away, summoning the walls that had helped him avoid exactly whatever confusing situation he had gotten himself into that evening.

Before he could slip back into his room, he heard a small voice.  “Will you walk with me to dinner?”

“Sure,” he replied, feeling his chest ache inexplicably.  “I’ll see you then.”

…

Draco had been thinking about what he did next for a while now. 

The door to the Room of Hidden Things materialized before him in the stone wall, déjà vu hitting him in the most uncomfortable of ways.  He had to count his breaths and force himself to move into the shrouded darkness. 

It took him only minutes to find what he was there for.  The diadem was sitting where he had last seen it, perched innocuously on the old bust only a few paces from where the Vanishing Cabinet had been.  It was gone, he noticed distantly, and he wondered who had moved it.

Maybe it was because Draco was aware that it held some significance now—though he still didn’t quite understand what—but when he picked up the object a horrible feeling washed over him.  The air seemed to weigh on him like a heavy blanket, the Dark nature of whatever he was holding readily apparent.  He stared down at it in concern, doubting for a moment what he was about to do.

No, he told himself grimly, he’d made up his mind.  Whatever the fuck Daphne was doing, it wasn’t for Voldemort.  She’d led the Order to rescue Luna—disastrous consequences aside—and he was sick of doing nothing.  Daphne was looking for this, and maybe it was nothing, but maybe it was something. 

Draco steeled himself and stuffed the diadem down into his satchel before walking quickly from the room, his steps echoing behind him.

Chapter Text

January 1998

Hermione had stood, frozen, for several minutes, staring at the Horcrux.  Because it clearly was one—if she had still held any doubts about whether Voldemort had managed to actually get his hands on Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem and despite the fact that she may have never held one herself, it was unmistakable.  The horrible Dark magic simultaneously repelling her and drawing her closer was more real and raw than any magic she had ever known.  The diadem matched the description she had cobbled together of the founder’s prized creation perfectly, and it felt exactly and nothing like what everything she had read had told her of what a Dark object cursed to hold a fragment of one’s soul would feel like. 

Malfoy.  Malfoy had brought her a Horcrux.  What the actual fuck.

The thought snapped Hermione into action.  Hands shaking only slightly, she conjured a wooden box big enough to fit the Horcrux inside.  After she realized she couldn’t levitate it inside—no spell like that would work on it, most likely, she reminded herself—Hermione held her breath and pulled her sleeve over her hand to pick it up gingerly, only allowing the fabric to touch the metal, and only feeling mildly foolish.  Nothing happened.  She nearly flung the object into the box and slammed the lid shut, casting a series of locking and sealing charms so fast that she actually had no idea if they had all worked properly or not. 

Hermione sprinted into her room and looked around frantically, finally deciding to hide the box in her trunk for lack of a more creative option while she figured out what to do.  She cast more spells on the trunk, a Notice-Me-Not, repelling charms, silencing charms for good measure (did Horcruxes make noise?), and anything else she could think of. 

Then she collapsed on the bed.  With another faint shock, Hermione realized the note was still clenched in her fist and she smoothed it out with shaky hands. 

I thought this might be useful for your extra credit assignment.

If there was anything Hermione Granger was good at, it was processing complicated information with logic. 

She took a deep breath and tried to think. 

Draco Malfoy had realized she was researching important magical objects related to the founders. 

Draco Malfoy had obviously seen through her flimsy excuse that she was doing it for a school assignment. 

Draco Malfoy had brought her a Horcrux.

Draco Malfoy had known where to find a Horcrux. 

She shook her head again, staring at the ceiling.  That wasn’t quite right. 

He had brought it to her, but that didn’t mean Malfoy knew what it really was.  He had known where it was, somehow, or—the thought was horrifying—had already been in possession of it.  Hermione’s brain whirled around endlessly again. 

It seemed extremely unlikely that Draco Malfoy knew the secret of Voldemort’s Horcruxes.  His own father had possessed one for years, at Voldemort’s choosing, yet still had not been entrusted with the knowledge of what it actually was and its true importance.  The idea that Voldemort would have years later told his youngest Death Eater his biggest secret, the key to his downfall, to a teenager who he had only Marked to punish his father and who the Dark wizard had fully expected to die within the year while failing to accomplish a doomed suicide mission—that made no sense, Hermione thought flatly, cutting off the spiraling train of thought. 

Was there a chance that Malfoy really just thought that she—that Daphne had taken an academic interest in Hogwarts’ history and the note literally meant nothing more than what he had written?

No.  Hermione dismissed this quickly.  For one, Malfoy was smart.  She could admit that now, even if there had been only a begrudging acknowledgment on her part in the past.  And he had grown up around Dark wizards; surely Malfoy would have felt the Dark magic on the object once he picked it up, even if he didn’t know what a Horcrux was. 

But if Malfoy thought Daphne didn’t know of the diadem’s Dark nature and would be surprised to find it was really a cursed object rather than just an interesting historical treasure, why write a cryptic note and leave it out for her, instead of just telling her he knew where it was, and warning her it might be dangerous, and asking her if she wanted to take a look?

And for that matter, how the fuck did he know where it was?

The beginnings of a not insignificant migraine were making themselves known to Hermione.  She closed her eyes, fisted her hands into the duvet cover in an effort to focus, and tried to clear her head, something that had been increasingly harder to do since her torture at Bellatrix’s hands. Hermione forced that thought away as quickly as possible. 

Malfoy must have seen the sketch in her notes of Ravenclaw’s diadem.  Hermione had not really known what it would look like herself until her research had filled in the gaps that Lupin’s limited knowledge had left—as unusual as diadems sounded, historically a lot of tiaras did exist in the world, particularly the magical one.  Perhaps he had seen this one before and only realized recently that it was the same one?

That seemed right, Hermione reasoned cautiously.  But it didn’t explain why he would give it to her.  Or why now.  For that matter, if Malfoy knew where to find such an important magical object, one rumored to be enormously powerful even without any imbued Dark magic—

The subtle prodding that Hermione had been resolutely ignoring as she tried to logic her way through the sequence of events that had led her to this point finally gave way.  If Malfoy had a powerful Dark object, whether or not he knew it was Horcrux, why wouldn’t he have given it to Voldemort or one of the other Death Eaters?

Hermione sat up and took a deep breath.  The green light reflecting from the lake through the window in her bedroom was oddly soothing, the cool tones calming in a way that the Gryffindor reds and golds were sometimes not.

Malfoy hadn’t wanted Voldemort’s side to have the diadem.  He had given it to Daphne instead.  After everything that had happened this term, let alone their history of friendship together, Malfoy inevitably knew, at least, that Daphne herself didn’t support the Dark side—and Hermione was fairly certain he suspected more than that, given his cryptic pass of information about Luna’s imprisonment. 

What she didn’t know is whether he thought—her heart seized painfully—did he know she was working for the Order? Whether he thought it was Daphne who was really the spy or had somehow figured out that Daphne wasn’t really Daphne—

Blood was rushing to her head and she could hear it pumping in her ears.  

Whatever he knew, Draco Malfoy knew she had a secret. 

…

The question of what to do with the Horcrux plagued her that night as she tossed and turned.  Destroy it in the castle somehow?  Smuggle it out to someone in the Order?  Keep it hidden until she was reunited with Harry, Ron, and Lupin and had better information about how likely it was that Voldemort would discover it missing? 

Hermione had not yet thought of a way to sneak down into the Chamber of Secrets and retrieve the Basilisk fangs.  The move was so risky that she hadn’t been planning on attempting it until the last possible moment, when she was set to leave the castle anyway.  But now…  The idea was growing more tempting and terrifying by the hour.  She had no idea how to cast Fiendfyre, despite weeks of research, nor control it, and no other ideas. 

Hermione hadn’t left her room again that night, unsure of how she was supposed to react when and if she saw Malfoy. 

Like with the incident in Defense Against the Dark Arts and Luna’s disappearance, Malfoy had constructed, or at least maintained, a tenuous cover that may protect him if someone were to look inside his memory—or hers, she shuddered, thinking of her still-poor Occlumency skills—and see what he had done (or not done).  She was certain that was why he hadn’t given the diadem to her directly, particularly after he’d point-blank asked her about her abilities, and Hermione knew no good could come from forcing the issue, even if she was dying to know how it had come into his possession, and, for that matter, why he had really given it to her. 

The important thing, Hermione reminded herself over and over again, was that she had it now, and that meant they were one step closer to ensuring the Order had a chance. 

Because of Draco Malfoy.

When she finally dragged herself out of bed in the morning, the kettle was in its usual place and Hermione’s steaming cup of tea was waiting for her as it always was.  Malfoy was still nowhere to be found. 

The thought of the Horcrux locked in her trunk continued to weigh like a physical presence on Hermione as she moved through her classes that day like a ghost.  Pansy gave her several sharp looks when she failed to respond to questions about weekend plans, and whether she thought Hogsmeade would be canceled again (yes). 

Malfoy nodded politely at her as he took his usual seat next to her in Transfiguration and she forced herself to smile back.  When his hand brushed hers as they spread out their parchment and quills to take notes, Hermione jerked back as if she had been electrocuted.  Then she giggled nervously out loud as she wondered randomly if any of the Slytherins knew what ‘electrocuted’ meant.  Malfoy and Pansy both looked at her like she was insane. 

Theo stared at her, brows furrowed, for the entire hour that Hermione sat at the dinner table forcing down steak and mashed potatoes like everything was normal.  She felt unnerved. 

After dinner, Hermione claimed rounds (a lie, one which Malfoy and even Pansy could probably see through) and rushed out of the Great Hall.  She had the Marauder’s Map in her bag and she slipped into an alcove to pull it out and check for anyone lingering on the route to Minerva’s office. 

With a sigh of relief, she tapped the parchment and hurried down the corridor, slipping behind a tapestry when she crossed paths with the students she had been able to see in her way, who were two Ravenclaw fourth years that looked terrified to be out of their common room and were in about as much of a hurry as her to keep moving. 

Minerva had given her the password to her office—‘endurance’— and after casting a quick Hominem Revelio to ensure that no one else was with the professor, Hermione slipped inside. 

The Scottish witch started when she saw Hermione, features settling after a moment of surprise.

“My dear, what are you doing here so late?”

Hermione felt giddy now that she was standing in front of someone who she could tell about the development.  This incredible development, that had somehow fallen into her lap like it was nothing.

“Minerva,” she said breathlessly.  “Can we—are we alone?”  It felt terrifying to say the words aloud despite the effort it took to hold them in.

The older witch wandlessly cast something, presumably a silencing charm, just in case, but nodded firmly.  “Yes, you can speak freely.”

Hermione grinned and this lately-uncharacteristic show of happiness seemed to take Minerva even aback more than the younger witch’s sudden appearance. 

“Minerva, I did it.”

“You did—” Minerva’s brows creased into a deep frown but moments later her eyes widened in shock.  “You mean you have—you have done whatever it is that you needed to return to the castle for?”  Her voice was low and fast despite the assurances that no one could overhear. 

Hermione nodded frantically.  Explaining the significance of what had happened without being able to properly tell the other witch the entire story was frustrating her into nonsensical rambling.  “And Minerva, it’s—there’s more, it wasn’t me, I mean it was, but—”  Even despite the holes she had to leave in, the story was too jumbled still in her own head to explain and she tried to slow down.

“Draco Malfoy helped me,” she finally blurted. 

There was probably nothing else she could have said that Minerva would have been expecting less.  The sharp, searing look on her face reminded Hermione, ironically, of when Harry had shouted out that he thought Malfoy was a Death Eater last year and Minerva had asked him with severe disapproval whether he had any proof.

“It’s true,” Hermione said.  She wanted desperately to say more.  “When I got home last night, he wasn’t there, and there was just a note that said—well, it said nothing, really, but…  it was him, Minerva, it was.  The thing I came here to do—somehow, he did it for me and I think he knew what he was doing.”

It was only as she finished speaking that Hermione finally absorbed the implications of her own words. 

Hermione Granger kept things in boxes.  She knew this about herself.  The Muggle world was in one box:  it was her before, and her parents, and her summers, or at least part of them; Hogwarts had been magic, and Harry and Ron, and her after.  Since Voldemort’s return, she had been on a side, one where she often drew clearer lines than were later visible in hindsight.  Even before that, really, she had a side—Harry’s.  Things were tidier this way, less complicated, less painful. 

But Malfoy had been sneaking his way out of his box, surprising her, challenging her, for months.  It wasn’t just that he had apparently risked his own safety to save younger students from the cruelty of the Carrows; or that he had helped save Luna from captivity in his own home at even huger risk to himself and his parents.  Or that he had let Hermione heal his horrific injuries when he returned from the very place where the people he was supposedly sacrificing everything to protect couldn’t protect him. 

Yes, these things were jarring and confusing and she hadn’t known how to categorize them in her carefully curated list of Things She Thought She Had Believed About Malfoy.  But he had also said and done quieter things countless times over the last few months that made her question whether she really had known anything about Malfoy, or at least whoever he was now.

Malfoy made her laugh.  He made her want to be around him, and made her want to figure out what was going on behind that sometimes infuriatingly inscrutable expression when he closed off.  Hermione had let her own guard down around him. 

She found herself arriving back to the dorm at night and feeling disappointed if he wasn’t there.  She sat next to him in classes and exchanged side-eyed glances with him when the professor said something they both found ridiculous or pedantic.  She watched surreptitiously as he read potions texts at night with his stupid reading glasses and wondered whether he had noticed when they slipped so far down his nose that he subconsciously started tilting his head back to compensate. 

And she had been ignoring all of this very well, thank you very much, but now he had delivered her a fucking Horcrux. 

Whatever box she had been trying to keep Malfoy in, Hermione suddenly realized it was long gone. 

As Hermione cycled through some near earth-shattering revelation, which had seemed to take ages but must have really been only seconds, Minerva had been watching her speculatively.  She had taken a heavy seat down in the chair behind her desk, and Hermione followed her cue belatedly, perching on the seat opposite, too agitated to relax fully, one foot tapping anxiously. 

“I don’t think—I don’t know that he knew the entirety of what he was doing, Minerva.  But I think…  I think he suspected that I—or Daphne?—that he had figured out a way to help me.  Somehow.” 

Hermione finally voiced aloud the idea that had been cementing in her head over the last twenty-four hours. 

“I think he wanted to help us,” she finished softly. 

Minerva stayed silent.  There was a photograph on the professor’s desk of her, Dumbledore, and Professors Flitwick and Sprout, much younger and sitting at the staff table at a Christmas feast years before.  Hermione’s eyes drifted to it as they often had when she was speaking to the other witch in these familiar positions.  It was the most sentimental thing in Minerva’s office, which was otherwise quite devoid of personal touches other than a tartan throw over the armchair in the corner and her beloved biscuits in the tin next to the photo.  Hermione thought she saw the moving Dumbledore in the photograph wink at her and she almost laughed aloud. 

“Albus spoke of the young Mr. Malfoy to me before, you know,” Minerva said, eerily echoing Hermione’s line of thinking.  “I believe that he thought Draco lost.”  A stern but not unkind gaze fixed on Hermione across the desk.  “But not irredeemable.  Like all of you, he was a child when he was asked to do certain things.”

The word ‘lost’ echoed in Hermione’s head in an uncomfortable way and she couldn’t bring herself to respond, staring instead again at the photograph of Dumbledore, where the former headmaster was now exuberantly waving his wand to conjure Christmas crackers for the rest of the table in the picture.  Weren’t they all lost? 

“In any event, what do you need?” Minerva demanded sharply. 

Hermione refocused.  “I’m not quite sure.  For now, I think I need to get a message to headquarters—to Harry, or Remus,” she hesitated, remembering the strange repulsion yet pull she felt toward the object.  “I think I need to act quickly in some way on… on this information I have.”

Minerva seemed to agree despite the lack of specificity.  “Do you need to get out of the castle yourself, or are you sure just a message is sufficient?”  She pursed her lips, frowning in thought.  “Doing either without Severus finding out seems unlikely.”

This had occurred to Hermione as well.  “I think I can give you a coded message to pass to Aberforth, if that is still an option.”

Minerva nodded briskly and handed Hermione a quill and parchment that she produced from a drawer in her desk.  “It seems like the wisest course.  Whenever you ready.”

The blank paper seemed to mock Hermione as she stared down at it.  To her credit, Minerva made no indication of impatience, simply sat back in her chair and remained silently thoughtful.  Nothing short of an absurd missive too close to the truth came to mind for a long moment. 

I found the Horcrux, but I haven’t destroyed it.  I could go down to the Chamber of Secrets and try to use a Basilisk fang, but I am not sure if Voldemort would notice it was gone and I’d be losing the war for us altogether.  Also, Draco Malfoy seems to be on our side and he’s the one who found the Horcrux for me.

Hermione sighed and began to actually put ink to parchment.

Moony,

I’ve stumbled across something related to our mutual research interests.  While I think it may be too damaged to repair, I have not yet disposed of it in case others may also be interested in my acquisition of it.  If you think it is likely of no concern to others, I will not trouble with bringing it to you for examination and will handle it myself here instead.  Also, I thought you would be interested to know that I had assistance in my research, from one who seemed unlikely to be as avid of a historian as either you or myself.  Perhaps people’s tastes change. 

Sincerely,  

Jean

Chapter Text

January 1998

Hermione had thought, when she first returned to Hogwarts that year, that the Astronomy Tower would be the most foreboding place she had to step foot in. Classes had begun and, along with the other seventh years taking N.E.W.T. level Astronomy, she was obligated to spend at least one evening there stargazing every other week, just as she had for the past six years. 

At first, it had taken a great deal of compartmentalizing to just get through the hours that Hermione spent on top of the tower where Dumbledore had fallen, the place she hadn’t made her way up to but had fought at the bottom of, scared for her life and for Ginny’s and Ron’s and Harry’s and everyone else who was somewhere battling in the castle.

But somehow, as the months slipped by, Hermione realized that she understood—or at least could relate to—whatever had drawn Luna to the highest point of the castle despite its tainted memories.  

It was peaceful.  The castle was haunted, in more ways than one now, and for Hermione, it was nearly impossible to escape the feeling that she might slip up at any moment and lose everything. But for some reason, at the top of the tallest tower, looking up at the stars and constellations and over the grounds, she felt less trapped. 

There may have been another reason, Hermione found herself musing as she curled into a windowsill tucked into a stone alcove in the tower late one night when she was supposed to be patrolling for Head duties (something she did conspicuously little of in actuality, but that really seemed to be the least of any of the staff’s concerns). 

Lately, she saw Malfoy. 

Harry had told her, at first summarily, and then later in more detail, of what had transpired that night. Malfoy looked scared, he repeated tiredly, maybe even more than I was. The raw admission had been offered in the middle of the night, when Hermione and Harry were huddled around the ancient kitchen table in Grimmauld Place in the early days after he and Ginny had returned from Privet Drive and neither of them was sleeping well, or really at all, and it had been hard to understand how everyone else was apparently able to make it through the nights so much more easily. They usually clutched mugs of tea until they were cold and sometimes added dashes of firewhiskey and sometimes they talked and sometimes they were just silent, drinking in the sensation of sitting together, alive, aware that (most of) their other loved ones were sleeping soundly nearby.

“He looked like me.”

“What do you mean?”  Hermione had asked uncertainly, her hushed voice echoing too loudly in the overly large kitchen.   

Harry sighed and his eyes seemed unfocused behind his round spectacles for a moment. “Like there was no choice he could have made that would have ended up with him anywhere else but on that Tower.  And he knew it, but he did it all anyway, because otherwise…” 

A noise somewhere above them distracted Hermione and she jumped. Harry hadn’t noticed, still frowning distantly and summoning the words he was looking for, and she reminded herself that it was an old house, literally full of moving portraits and house elves and Dark objects and who knew what else, in addition to its current residents who probably needed to use the loo in the middle of the night.

“I never had a choice.”  Anxiety still creased his brow, but Harry’s voice sounded firmer when he spoke again. “No matter what else I could have done differently the last six years, I would have always been on that tower. And I think Malfoy would have, too.”

“Hi.”

Hermione broke away from her reverie and looked up to see a slender silhouette framed at the top of the stairs. 

She tried to offer a hesitant smile. “Hi, Ginny.”

Ginny crossed the stone floor to Hermione, carrying two thermoses and with a brighter smile on her face. “Budge over.” 

Hermione scooted over to make room. Ginny’s hip bumped hers as she hopped up onto the ledge to sit next to Hermione, a somewhat athletic feat given she didn’t currently have the use of her hands.  

“Was it difficult to get here?”

Ginny rolled her eyes and proffered one of the drinks to Hermione. “What, sneaking past Neville and Pansy snogging outside the Gryffindor common room like they think no one knows they’re out there, or avoiding the Carrows’ watchdogs?”

Hermione couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. “Both. Either.”

“Someone taught me a pretty good Disillusionment Charm my fourth year, anyway.” Ginny nudged her side and winked. 

A not-uncomfortable silence fell briefly over the two witches. Hermione took a sip from the thermos, which was emitting a pleasant warmth in contrast to the cool stone against her back. 

“Where exactly did you get spiced cider?” she commented absently, enjoying the heady scent of baked apples filling her nose.  “Not that I’m complaining. Although—” Hermione cringed guiltily. “I suppose my various Healers may not approve of mixing pain potions with alcohol.”

“Neville and Theo have devised a fairly regular trade with Aberforth these days,” Ginny replied. She flashed a grin but it disappeared quickly as she glanced down at Hermione’s lap, where the arm not being used to hold her drink was drawn near her stomach. “But how is your arm?  Really?”

The urge to lie bubbled to the tip of Hermione’s tongue. Awful, was the real answer, excruciatingly painful and still horrifying to look at but also sometimes creepily easy to ignore because she could pretend she really was Daphne and the unmarked skin visible during the day was her own. 

She must have taken too long to answer. Ginny’s face fell further and she reached her hand out to gently squeeze Hermione’s. “I’m sorry. That might be a dumb question.”

“No, it wasn’t. You don’t have to apologize. I should be the one apologizing.”

Hermione felt another tight squeeze of her hand. “You’ve already done that,” Ginny declared, shaking her head quickly. “Multiple times. In fact, all you’ve done for a week is apologize. I’m right bored with it.” A mock glare earned a weak laugh from Hermione. “I’d much rather you start telling me how you’re doing with everything.”

The simple question still felt nearly impossible to answer. Hermione sighed. “Do I have to?”

A sympathetic look sank over Ginny’s features. She settled back against the wall opposite Hermione in the alcove, tucking her knees underneath her legs. “How about an easier topic?”

Hermione shot her a grateful look and took another sip of her cider. “Please.”

“What’s going on with you and Malfoy?”

The cider nearly came back up. “Wha—what?”

Ginny’s smirk was growing. Hermione did not like it. “Hermione, I think you’re forgetting that I may not have known you were—you know, you—but I’ve been around. ‘Daphne’ and Malfoy spend nearly all of their time together, and frankly I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”

Hermione couldn’t stop spluttering long enough to formulate a response. Ginny only looked more delighted. 

“C’mon, you can tell me—I’m not Harry, or Ron, Merlin forbid. No one thinks his father is more foul than me, obviously, but Malfoy’s been…” she trailed off thoughtfully. “He’s been different this year.”

This comment helped Hermione gather her composure enough to speak, though she was afraid to feel her cheeks in light of how flushed they felt.  “You’ve noticed that?”

Ginny nodded, frowning.  “D’you know the thing with the Carrows?  Where he’s supposedly… you know?”

Hermione gave a small sound of affirmation, nerves flipping her stomach.

“Well,” Ginny said slowly, “the younger Gryffindor students that he’s supposedly ‘punished’ for the Carrows…  I don’t think he’s really doing it, somehow.  They won’t talk when Neville and I try and ask, but they all look sort of… in awe when Malfoy comes up.  And not as if they’re scared of him, it’s more as if they’re… protecting him?”

The redhead shook her head as if she knew she sounded crazy.  “I don’t know.  I know that doesn’t make any sense.  But somehow they’ve been—okay, and sometimes even weirdly energized when they come back after something happens in class or detention.”

Hermione chewed on her lip for a moment as Ginny seemed to puzzle over her own strange statements.  

“You’re not wrong,” she said finally, and Ginny’s eyebrows drew up in mild surprise.  “He’s not—I think you’re right, he’s not really torturing anyone when they make him.  At least, not if he can do anything to avoid it.”

“But how?”

How much was too much for Ginny to know?  Hermione was so, so sick of all of the secrets but she’d come so far to protect everyone she loved that she couldn’t throw it all away now.  “I can’t tell you.  But I promise, I know he has a way.”

Ginny looked slightly put out by this but didn’t push back.  She tapped her own fingers against her thermos absently instead, frown still pulling her brow together.  “He’s also been generally… less Malfoy-ish.”

Hermione couldn’t help but laugh at that.  “Yes, I agree.”

The mischievous look returned to Ginny’s face.  “And you’ve been living with him.”

“I’m not living with him, Gin,” Hermione protested, feeling her blush returning despite her best efforts. 

“So has anything happened?”  The other girl wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

“What?!” 

“Oh, c’mon.  Throw me something here.  My own boyfriend is off doing Merlin knows what.  And even if she was around I can’t hear anymore about what Luna gets up to with Blaise, it’s too much even for my ears sometimes.”

Hermione tried to ignore the slight bitterness that crept into Ginny’s voice at the reference to Harry, feeling guilty herself about her knowledge of what Harry was up to.  “Ginny, I am in Daphne’s body.”

“So nothing at all?” Ginny asked again, eyeing Hermione shrewdly.

She faltered for a second too long, and Ginny pounced.  “What?!  I know that look, Hermione Granger, even if it is on someone else’s face right now.  You’re not telling me something!”

“It’s…”  Hermione stalled, trying to figure out if there even was something to tell Ginny.  “Nothing’s happened.  Not like that.  But being around Malfoy has been surprisingly… nice.”  She fiddled with the handle of her mug instead of meeting Ginny’s curious gaze.  “He’s smart, and he’s thoughtful, and sort of fun, honestly.  I haven’t had anyone to talk to, and I thought sharing the dorm with Malfoy would make that worse but instead… it’s been sort of wonderful.”

Ginny’s eyes were wide now.  “It’s been wonderful?”

“I just mean it’s been unexpected,” Hermione replied hastily.  “You said yourself, Malfoy is different.  And for the record, I think he’s more different than you may have realized.  He—”  Hermione cast a furtive glance around as if there could have been someone lurking in the shadowed edges of the tower, feeling paranoid.  “Ginny, he helped me with something.  Something for the Order.  It wasn’t—we couldn’t talk directly about it.  But it was big.  And you know that he’s the reason we saved Luna and Ollivander.”

“What?”

Hermione nodded in confirmation.  “He came from holidays and gave me this cryptic warning that he had seen Luna and she had a message for me, or something like that.  He looked terrified, Ginny.”  She felt a rush of relief again at finally being able to talk to someone about all of this, despite the confusion that still filled her.  “And he’s been under threat from Voldemort because of his parents, Ginny, but he told me anyway so we could go rescue Luna.  He had no guarantee that I wouldn’t give him away or that his parents wouldn’t get hurt or he wouldn’t if we tried to get into the Manor.”

The ghosts of the tower flitted through her mind again unbidden.

“I haven’t got any options.”  Harry had heard Malfoy say.  “I’ve got to do it.  He’ll kill me.  He’ll kill my whole family.”

Ginny’s mouth was hanging open now.  “I—wait,” she said suddenly, sounding confused.  “He told you?  Like, as in Daphne?”

“Right,” Hermione replied, “I think he might suspect Daphne is… well, I’m not sure exactly, to be honest.  We don’t talk about it.  But between all of this I think he must think Daphne is somehow in communication with the Order, or… or more.”

A low whistle came from the other witch.  “That’s a lot, Hermione.”

“I know.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“I told Minerva.  There’s so much I can’t figure out, Gin, but I just—I trust him.” 

The words were so simple, and yet as Hermione voiced them aloud it felt like she’d turned the page of a book she hadn’t read before, or taken a turn on a path she hadn’t ever noticed before, and the effect felt heavy on her heart.

Ginny looked at her thoughtfully.  “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

Hermione hesitated.  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You said spending time with him has been ‘wonderful.’  Before all of that stuff about the War, and what Malfoy might be up to.”  Ginny searched her face expectantly. 

There was so much more, but she had no idea how to explain how she felt, or how to describe to Ginny why she felt it.  She couldn’t figure it out herself.  “I like being around him,” she settled for.  Hermione could only make Ginny’s face out by the moonlight streaming in from the window, and the darkness made it easier to keep talking.  “When I was in the Manor…” 

Her right hand went to her left forearm involuntarily and the movement did not go unnoticed by the other witch. 

“He was there.  I don’t know why; he was here, obviously, when I left.  But according to Dean, he helped them escape the cellar, and then when he got back upstairs and Bellatrix—she left me alone for a minute and Malfoy came over and for a minute…  it was so odd, Ginny, I forgot completely that he didn’t know me—or, I mean, that he didn’t know that I was the one who’d been with him these last few months.  And he looked—he looked terrified.  If I hadn’t had my Portkey I’m not sure what would’ve happened but he was looking at me like—”

Hermione broke off, trying to clear her head and feeling embarrassed for how much she had rambled. 

“I don’t know.  I don’t know what I’m talking about, honestly.  It was just a moment and I was out of my mind.”

“Hermione Granger.”

“Yes?”  The look in Ginny’s eyes made her feel wary.

“I think you may be in trouble.” 

It was hardly possible to disagree with her on that. 

…

“So you’re saying you don’t want to.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So you’re saying you do want to.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and flipped another page of the book about recently rediscovered medieval runes that she was attempting to read.  “I am merely saying that we can eat a perfectly nice meal in the Great Hall, and I hardly think it necessary to go bother the house elves while they’re preparing dinner for something because you have a craving.”

There was a sudden tug on her book and Hermione felt it slip from her hands.  “Hey!”  she complained halfheartedly, straightening up. 

Malfoy merely grinned and tossed the book on the sofa behind him.  “What if we don’t have to bother the house elves?”

She arched an eyebrow at him suspiciously and attempted to swipe the book from behind him, but he easily blocked her by stepping into her path.  “And what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that perhaps I already have bothered the house elves, and I’ve got everything we need in the kitchen here.”  Malfoy looked enormously proud of himself and it reminded Hermione for a moment of his younger self, the one she’d once slapped across the face just to get that look off of it.  Somehow, incredibly, it made her want to laugh this time instead. 

“Wait—are you actually suggesting that we cook?”  The idea of Malfoy cooking anything for himself had literally never occurred to Hermione, and it was not an easy image to reconcile. 

Malfoy shook his head.  “No,” he replied, still smirking.  “I am suggesting that we bake.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Draco Malfoy?” 

This earned her an eye roll now, and Malfoy only responded further by placing his hands on her shoulders and steering her toward their dorm’s small kitchen.  “I like trying new things.  And I want apple tart.”

She had a sneaking suspicion that Malfoy had an ulterior motive for his sudden desire to spend their Saturday evening baking instead of eating dinner in the Great Hall, surrounded by other students.  Despite her best efforts, the strain of the last week had shown on her, and Malfoy had clearly noticed.  Hermione was jumpier than ever around crowds, and she was having trouble keeping her panic under control in the Carrows’ classes.  Meals where the Death Eaters were present and she was trapped with dozens of other students had become taxing, and Hermione had skipped nearly all of them in the last few days in favor of hiding out in the dorm or the library. 

On top of that, she had finally received a message back from Lupin that was, at best, disheartening.  In so many words, he had alluded that they had no way to destroy the diadem if she returned it to them, so he left it to her judgment as to whether it was safer to keep it with her for now or risk another excursion to headquarters just to hand it off to Harry or the others.  She’d only had time to dwell on this for a few days and had formed only what could be described as one of her haziest plans, which she wasn’t even sure she would be executing.

“How in Merlin’s name do you know how to make apple tart?”  she asked, allowing him to position her next to the butcher block in the center of the kitchen and watching as he started pulling various items enthusiastically from the cabinets. 

“I don’t,” he called over his shoulder, “but Weasley gave me her mother’s recipe.”

Hermione nearly fell over from shock.  “Excuse me?!”

Malfoy turned back to face her, arms brimming with butter, flour, sugar, and other confectionery goods.  “I know.  Do not ever tell anyone else about this or I’ll tell Pansy about the time you ‘accidentally’ charmed her shampoo to make her hair fall out when we were eleven because you were mad that she didn’t tell you about how she had a crush on Blaise before she told me.”

It was impossible not to laugh out loud at this piece of information, and Malfoy seemed to take this as encouragement.  “Here, take these.”  He shoved more ingredients in front of her along with a mixing bowl and whisk.

“But how exactly did you and Ginny end up discussing baked goods?” she pressed, picking up the whisk dubiously.

“She and Neville were studying with Pansy in the library this afternoon.  I may have mentioned a craving for apple tart and I may have also mentioned that you were in a mood.”

“I’m not in a mood.”

Malfoy paused his meticulous wand movements, which were apparently supposed to be charming the small knives on the counter to peel, core, and cut the disturbingly large quantity of apples he had miraculously produced.  The knives clattered back to the kitchen counter immediately, clearly not motivated enough to continue their efforts without his strict attentions.

The look he leveled her was dubious but not probing.  “Alright, Greengrass, whatever you say.”  He resumed his enthusiastic charming of the knives.  “I can at least admit that I have also been in a mood, and apple tart may be the solution.”

Hermione sighed and shuffled closer to the counter, eyeing the airborne knives with caution.  “Well, if it will help you feel better,” she mumbled. 

“That’s the spirit.”  Malfoy gestured with his right hand to the flour, salt, sugar, and butter and rattled off more instructions on how to prepare the dough. 

As she began measuring ingredients, Hermione marveled at the way Malfoy and Ginny had somehow conspired to manage her.  Well, she thought suspiciously, Ginny wasn’t exactly being subtle.  Hermione had confessed—something—to the other girl, against her better judgment, and apparently now the redhead was actively helping to contrive ways for her and Malfoy to spend time together, time spent doing non-war-related things, alone, in their dorm, at night.  She made a mental note to get revenge on the Gryffindor by telling Luna the next time she saw her that Ginny wanted to better understand, in detail, perhaps with visuals, the benefits of having sexual relations at the height of the full moon in certain parts of the Forbidden Forest. 

“Have you ever baked anything before, Malfoy?” she asked after another minute of watching him struggle to control his rebellious cookware, which were mostly now attacking the apples too zealously and causing splashes of apple juice to hit his scowling face.

“Of course not,” he grunted.  “Have you?”

Hermione laughed.  A piece of apple skin had flung into the air and stuck to the side of his nose and she fought the impulse to wipe it off for him.  “Of course I have.”

This resulted in a surprised raise of Malfoy’s eyebrows and a sideways look at Hermione where she was now rather capably folding the butter into the dough mixture.  “I wasn’t aware Camile did any such things herself and would be able to pass on that sort of knowledge.”

Oh, right. 

“Well, I learned some domestic charms and things,”  she replied hastily.  “The elves—at my grandmother’s estate in France.  They taught me, especially last summer.  It was soothing, I suppose.”

Malfoy’s eyes softened.  “I see.  Any news, by the way?”

“Oh, er, no.  I’m not sure how I would get any, in any event…”  She trailed off and Malfoy’s frown lingered as he turned back to the apples.

“I’m sorry, Daphne.”

“Thanks.”

She sought about for a change in subject, feeling the familiar guilt at dancing around another lie, a feeling that was growing heavier each day.  “I can’t believe you’re starting with a Weasley family recipe, though.”

Malfoy snorted.  “Neither can I.  That one is persistent, though.”

“Ginny?”

“Yes.  She insisted that if we were going to eat apple tart, it was going to be her mother’s recipe.  Odd one, that witch.”

Hermione felt a rush of affection for Ginny replace her annoyance and smiled to herself.  Molly Weasley’s apple tart, even made by her and Malfoy in their tiny kitchen with distinctly unpracticed hands (at least on his part), sounded like home, something she was sorely lacking right now. 

“Well, I think the apples have just about surrendered.”  Malfoy looked down at his pile of haphazardly cut apple slices and shrugged in defeat. 

“I can show you how to make the dough if you want,” she offered. 

“I think I’m supposed to be cooking to make you feel better,” Malfoy replied, waving the knives into the sink and coming to stand beside her anyway.

“I thought we were cooking to satisfy your craving.”

He was next to her now, right hip almost brushing her left, and looked down at her from his unnervingly tall height with a small smile dancing on his lips.  “Same thing.”

She blushed and busied herself with dusting the surface of the counter vigorously with flour to hide her reaction to his closeness and flirtatious words.  “Well,” Hermione said, voice slipping into her bossiest tone.  “You’ll need to scrape that dough out and knead it into a ball on this surface, just a few times, then sort of into a flat shape.”

Malfoy looked confused but followed her instructions obediently.  He leaned over her to retrieve the mixing bowl and even through the smell of apples and flour and sugar already permeating the air, the scent of mint and bergamot filled her nose for a moment.  “Like this?”  he asked, and she cleared her throat and refocused. 

“Um,” she replied, trying not to stare too aggressively at his fingers.  They were long and pale and really very strong looking as they worked the dough—

“I think that’s too much, actually.”  Hermione’s voice sounded high to her own ears and she cringed internally.

Malfoy paused and yet this was worse somehow, because now she was just staring at his still hands, which were now wrapped around the dough almost reverently, waiting for her instructions.  “Rolling pin.”

“What?”

“Rolling pin!”  Hermione repeated, and she summoned one wandlessly, and perhaps a bit overzealously, from the other side of the kitchen.  He moved his hands away and she stepped into the place he’d been standing, rolling out the dough also a bit too overzealously.  But he hovered, hands no longer on the surface but instead resting on the edge of the counter as he watched her work. 

“Shouldn’t you be using magic to do something of this?”  Malfoy asked, sounding bemused.

“Oh, er—”  Hermione kicked herself mentally.  Malfoy had used magic to cut the apples, the only task he’d attempted alone so far, and she’d done everything else the Muggle way.  To be honest, she wasn’t even sure she remembered any cooking charms or wandwork—despite Molly’s best efforts, neither her nor Ginny had shown much promise in the kitchen nor any real interest, and her own parents obviously didn’t teach her magical cooking.  “It’s faster this way, actually.”

He merely watched as she finished rolling out the dough and then placed it in the cupboard that had the permanent cooling charm.  Hermione used her wand to melt the butter—absolutely not just to prove a point—and set Malfoy to work on making the rest of the filling while she salvaged the apples discreetly. 

“So do you think Narcissa’s ever cooked?” she asked lightly as they worked. 

Malfoy snorted, but it came out a bit too harshly.  “No, and even if she has for some reason, she’d probably deny it.”

Even though she was the one who had brought his mother up, Hermione was unwillingly reminded of the last time she had seen Narcissa and felt her pulse spike momentarily.  “Yes, well,” she said lightly.  “Perhaps you’ll be the first Malfoy to break the mold.”

She hadn’t meant anything by it, had been distracted by her own self-inflicted anxiety, but Hermione realized instantly that Malfoy had stiffened at her words. 

“I’ve been trying,” Malfoy replied, voice quiet but suddenly deeper.  His eyes remained fixed on the spoon he was charming to stir the mixture of butter, sugar, salt, and vanilla in front of him. 

Whatever lighter atmosphere Malfoy had been attempting to create with the distraction of baking was suddenly thicker. 

Hermione thought of the Horcrux locked in her trunk, and of Malfoy’s panicked eyes as he’d watched her vanish in front of him from the Manor floor.  She thought of tracing her wand over his bruised chest, and how she’d laid awake the night after her own torture worrying not just for herself and her own sanity but about whether Malfoy had suffered when they had escaped.  When she had seen him after returning to Hogwarts and he had been whole and at least visibly unharmed and he had rushed to hold her, Hermione had felt inexorable relief and something else she didn’t want to name out loud.

“I know you have.”  She infused her words with deliberate intention so he couldn’t misunderstand her deeper meaning.

Then Hermione took a deep breath and crossed back to the butcher block to stand beside him.  He looked up and his wand stilled when he saw the serious look on her face.  “Malfoy, there’s something else I might need.”

His eyes searched her face quickly and she tried to keep her face as neutral as possible.  Surely he could hear her heart thudding as if it was trying to escape her chest.  “What is that?” he asked softly.

“If I asked you for help and I couldn’t tell you exactly why, would you trust me?”

The question hung between them.  He shifted fractionally so his body was facing hers, and Hermione fixed her gaze on his chest rather than look him in the eyes.  He had flour now on his ridiculously expensive-looking shirt, and when she did look up she finally gave into the urge to wipe the apple off of his nose.  He wrinkled it adorably as she did so and she smiled softly.

“Of course I trust you.”

Guilt twisted at her heart again and Hermione wondered, not for the first time, how this would all end. 

“Now, Draco.”  Blaise had said.  “You’re going to have a bit more trouble with him.”

Would he hate her?  Would it make him regret helping the Order once he figured out that she had been lying to him this entire time?  And even if he still wanted out—if she was right and that’s even what he wanted—would he want anything to do with her?

Hermione shoved her inner turmoil away.  Malfoy could hate her.  She could live with that.  At least they would live.  This was what she was supposed to be doing.

“Tomorrow night.”

Malfoy stared at her, eyes unblinking. 

“Tomorrow night,” he repeated.

…

The apple tart had been, in the end, not terrible.  Lopsided and inexplicably slightly burnt on only one side, but warm and aromatizing in a way that reminded her of the Burrow and her own mother.  They ate it out of the pan directly, too hungry and eager to bother with plates, balancing the dessert on Hermione’s knees and digging in with two forks as they sat facing each other on the sofa. 

Malfoy may have been trying to cheer her up from whatever dismal mood she’d been wandering around in, but watching him delight in their imperfect creation was the real entertainment.  She wasn’t the only one who had been walking around looking haunted since her—their—return from the Manor, and the sight of him relaxing again had its usual effect of doing the same thing to her. 

When evening arrived the following day, however, Hermione was anything but relaxed.  She had almost lost her nerve and was currently pacing back and forth outside of the Great Hall where she had told Malfoy to meet her in a whispered rush before slipping out from the Slytherin table with the excuse of a headache to Pansy and Theo.

She hadn’t waited long before the doors opened and shut quickly again and Malfoy appeared quickly at her side. 

“What did you tell them?”

“That I was going to check on you, and I’d see them at breakfast.”  Malfoy’s face was grim, and she hadn’t even told him her plan yet.

“Good, good,” Hermione murmured absently. 

Malfoy shoved his hands in his pockets and looked as if he was resisting the urge to start interrogating her.  “Are you going to leave me in the dark, then?”

She paused, fingers twisting the sleeves of her jumper nervously over her hands.  “I know that we’re not supposed to talk about certain things, Draco,” she began, and he stiffened immediately, as she had expected he would.  “But I have to do something, and it would be a lot easier with someone’s help.  I—I trust you, and I also know that you have the ability to keep what we’re going to do a secret.”

She’d thought of asking Ginny for help instead, but the idea of forcing Ginny to go anywhere near a Horcrux, or the Chamber itself, was awful.  Besides, betraying Harry’s trust by putting Ginny in danger by giving her the knowledge of the Horcruxes felt unimaginable.  Minerva would have been a logical choice, too, but she was terrified they would be caught, now or later, and Malfoy was still the only person she knew—and, she reminded herself with a sense of wonder, trusted—who was a sufficient Occlumens to hide the memory of what they were about to do. 

The sounds of dinner beginning to let out of the Great Hall could be heard distantly at their backs and they both moved without thinking further down the shadowed corridor.  “I have to do this because it could change something.  Fix something.”  Her words were careful and slow.  She wasn’t sure if she wanted him to understand the real meaning underneath or not. 

But his eyes were as open as she had ever seen them.  The grey and silver were swirling as he searched hers and she felt heat spread across her face, but she didn’t look away. 

“If you think you can fix things,” he murmured, breath ghosting across her lips.  It smelled like cinnamon and spiced wine.  “Then you should do it.” 

“I can,” she said softly.  She tried to sound brave but she thought her voice came out desperate instead.  “Draco, I know I can.” 

“What do you need?”

Hermione bit her lip and tried to remember the speech she had practiced earlier that day.  She drew a blank instead and blurted out the first thing that came into her mind.  “I have to get into the Chamber of Secrets.”

The shock on his face was so fleeting she almost missed it.  Malfoy seemed to be trying to wrestle his expression back under control as quickly as possible. 

“How the fuck do you think you can do that?”  His whispered voice was harsh, not with anger, but in surprise. 

“I know where it is.”  Hermione tried not to let her voice shake.  “The entrance—it’s in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.” 

He looked down at her for another moment before seeming to make a decision.  His eyes flashed toward the Great Hall and then back down the corridor where the entrance to the girls’ bathroom lay waiting.  “Then let’s go,” he said gruffly.  His fingers skated across her lower back as he turned them, and she felt goosebumps break out under his touch. 

…

Hermione had never been in the Chamber of Secrets, of course, as she had been Petrified while Harry and Ron (and Gilderoy Lockhart, she thought with a grimace) had recklessly descended into the bowels of the school to save Ginny.  She and Malfoy entered the bathroom and she remembered suddenly that this was also where Harry had cursed Malfoy, that terrible day, where Malfoy had almost died, and she whirled around in apology—

His face was tight and he shook his head.  “What are we looking for, Daphne?”

Hermione felt pained as her eyes flicked involuntarily to his chest, where the scars she knew were there lay concealed.  She felt an urge to reach out and feel his chest, and she quashed it immediately.  “Um,” she said breathlessly.  “There’s an etching, on one of the faucets.  It’ll be small.”

Malfoy didn’t ask how she knew this.  He scanned the sinks with her until finally Hermione called out.  She sent a silent prayer of thanks that Moaning Myrtle wasn’t there to harass them at the moment, and she was certain Malfoy felt the same way. 

 “Here,” she said, and he drew back to her side.  The tiny serpent was barely visible.

His brow furrowed.  “But how—” he began. 

She shook her head.  There was really no way to explain this part.  Doubt started to seep into her.  “I—um, I studied some Parseltongue.”

His eyebrows shot up.  “You studied Parseltongue?” he echoed incredulously.

She set her mouth in a hard line.  “It turns out it’s not as special as Slytherin wanted it to seem.”  Hermione said nothing more and turned toward the faucet, drawing a deep breath.  It took her a few tries to imitate the breathy whispering sounds that Harry had shown her before, miraculously, everything began to shift.  Malfoy looked stunned.  

Hermione shrugged.  “I told you, I studied.”  He shut his mouth and strode forward.  “I’m going first,” he snarled.  “Unless you know what’s down there.”

She grimaced.  “Not exactly.”  She peered down, over his shoulder.  “What if we conjure a rope or a ladder though?  I’m not sure we need to just jump in blind.”

Malfoy nodded in agreement and waved his wand precisely.  A rope ladder fell noiselessly down into the open cavern, one end hooking itself to the pillar of the sink above ground for an anchor.  “Daphne,”  he said grimly.  “Wait until you hear me call you.”  Without another word, he descended, moving so quickly she didn’t have time to react. 

He called to her what felt like ages later.  “It’s fine, Daphne.”  His voice echoed hollowly.  “Use the ladder and I’ll be at the bottom.  There’s nothing here.”

She descended shakily, never having been particularly fond of heights.  True to his word, Malfoy caught her at the bottom, gripping her waist to steady her as she tried to let go of the last rung.  She stumbled and his fingers tightened.  Despite their warmth, the feel of his hands on her did nothing to help steady her further. 

“This—I think this is right,” she said shakily.  He nodded grimly and cast a Lumos on his wand.  She did the same.  There was a long path, winding into darkness.  Harry had said that the Basilisk and the confrontation with Riddle had been near a body of water, down at the central part of the Chamber, away from the entrance where Ron had been caved in. 

“Let’s go,” she said firmly.  They walked in silence for several minutes, hands brushing in the darkness, his brief touch reassuring her that she wasn’t alone.  Their footsteps echoed in the tunnel.  After what felt like an hour but was probably five minutes, the tunnel gave way to a cavernous chamber, with a dark lagoon surrounding three sides and, there, at the end of the path and half submerged, the shell of a Basilisk.

She shivered.  Beside her, Malfoy did not look particularly at ease.  “Is this what you were looking for, Daph?” he asked grimly. 

She nodded wordlessly and moved toward the skeleton.  With relief, she saw rows of shining fangs still intact in the creature’s mouth, and she could have cried.  After all of this, all of this ridiculous plan and the waiting and the worrying about her friends on the other side, at least this had been worth it.  She had a Horcrux, and she had a way to get rid of it.

It had occurred to her that destroying the diadem anywhere else in the castle could be, frankly, incredibly attention-grabbing.  With that in mind, she had come prepared; the Horcrux was tightly wrapped in her beaded bag, hanging at her waist.  Hermione realized now that she had been right.  There was no point in waiting and every reason to destroy it here rather than risk bringing it back up into the castle when she was so close. 

Hermione turned to Malfoy, who was staring in appalled awe at the shell of the serpent.  “Draco, I’m actually fine here.  Thank you for accompanying me this far,” she was babbling now, unable to formulate a logical argument for once, “but it’s unnecessary, I can—um, now that we know this is still here and that it’s perfectly safe down here, I can do what I came to do and then return the same way—”

“Daphne,” Malfoy cut her off, his voice slow and deliberate.  He turned to face her, wrenching his eyes from the Basilisk, and something in his tone seemed to convey that his mind had been made up.  “As you said, I am the one who is an accomplished Occlumens.”

Her eyes widened at hearing him say it loud.  She had brought them dangerously close to—to something, by bringing him down here—by involving him at all.  But she wasn’t ready to speak openly about everything, not now, not with him.  After all, it wasn’t just her choice to reveal what she was really doing.  It belonged to Daphne, and Astoria, and Lupin and Harry and everyone else she was protecting. 

“You are not,” he had declared, still looking at her warily.  “I have seen you trying.  I don’t know why.  But I do know you’re shite at it and I know that you are not going to be able to hide whatever it is you are planning on doing down here from anyone that was to look for it.”

Hermione’s heart thudded in her chest.  The truth of his words singed her.  Was he threatening her?  She thought she should consider this, seriously consider it, but she found it hard to feel scared of him now.  Not when he had handed her a Horcrux with no questions asked.  Not when he had secretly protected the others all term, even though no one but her could see it.  Not when he had helped her save Luna.  Not when he brought her tea every morning and covered her with a blanket when she fell asleep on the sofa and asked her advice on his Potions homework. 

“But I can,” he finished quietly.  Their eyes met and she didn’t look away this time. 

“You’re right,” she finally said.  “I am shite at it.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, a smile almost tugged at his lips.  “Yes,” he agreed.  “So let’s just get on with it.”

She hovered for another moment, between the version of reality that was perpetual uncertainty and the other side which was trusting Draco Malfoy, maybe more than anyone else in this castle.  He waited for her, not pressuring her, watching patiently.  He looked relaxed, maybe more relaxed than she had seen him in months, which was bizarre because she felt about as high-strung as she ever had. 

With shaking hands, Hermione reached into her beaded bag and pulled out the wrapped Horcrux.  She heard Malfoy suck in a sharp breath.   

“It’s better you’re here,” she murmured.  “I think—I think there’s a chance it won’t be easy.”

He looked quickly from the Horcrux to her and nodded, a sharp jerk of his head.  “What do you want me to do?”

She hesitated.  “Just… keep an eye on that for a moment,” she said, setting the Horcrux gingerly on the ground between them.  He obeyed without speaking, looking warily at the diadem and drawing his wand halfway raised. 

She clambered over the skeleton and set about severing some of the fangs from the skeleton’s gaping jaw.  It was horrifying.  The feeling followed her as she fled back toward Malfoy, arms full of fangs and dripping with sweat.  He was looking at her in something like awe.  “We’ll need these,” she said grimly.

Hermione conjured another cloth and wrapped several of the fangs in it before tucking them back into her bag.  She kept one out, gripped it tightly, and looked nervously at Malfoy. 

“I’m going to need to hold on with both hands I think,” she said, thinking quickly to herself.  “So I can’t hold my wand, too.  You’ll have to be ready, in case—” She shrugged.  “I really have no idea, to be honest.  This is sort of my first time.”

Malfoy’s jaw was set and he nodded.  He knelt to the ground and held the diadem in one hand, his wand clenched tightly in the left.  “I’ve got you,” he said quietly.  “I assume you’re driving that thing straight into this, yes?”

Hermione almost laughed, but it would have sounded manic.  “Yes,” she replied.  “That’s what I’m going to do.”

And with a deep breath, she plunged.  

The diadem shook and rattled and Malfoy had to fight to hold on, just as she had to fight to keep the Basilisk fang engaged in the wrought metal.  There was a horrible scream, more horrible than anything she had heard before, and she felt like she might die hearing that sound as it went on and on.  Wind whipped around them and she shouted at Malfoy not to let go, her own arms burning with the strain of pressing down into the object.  He was steady, hand so tight on the diadem that she thought it was going to bleed from the sharp edges he was gripping. 

And then, just as suddenly as it started, it was over.  She looked down in shock and saw the mangled diadem on the ground, the Basilisk fang driven deep into its center.  With a start, she realized the object no longer felt like… anything.  The Dark magic that had felt so real it made her sick when she touched it was… gone. 

A crazed laugh left Hermione’s lips.  She looked up at Malfoy and he was staring at her like he had never seen anything like her in his life.  She laughed some more and felt tears dripping down her nose.  Dropping the Basilisk fang, she sat back and laughed again, feeling hysteria bubble up in her, unable to tell if it was shock or happiness or both. 

“Daphne,” Malfoy said, voice shaking.  “You—”

“We,” she corrected, still sniffling and laughing through her tears.  She felt pleasantly delirious.  “Let’s get out of here, okay?”

He just nodded, eyes never leaving her as she gathered the destroyed Horcrux and the remaining Basilisk fang and tucked them also into her bag.  She pulled out her wand and with a shaking hand lit the tunnel again that would lead them back upstairs. 

Chapter Text

February 1998

It was hard at first for Hermione to come down from the high of destroying the Horcrux. 

She floated through classes the following week, able to ignore the dull throbbing still emanating from her left forearm, sleeping more soundly than she had since the events at Malfoy Manor.  Malfoy, for his part, couldn’t seem to stop staring at her.  He looked dazed sometimes when she caught him, and Hermione tried nervously not to regret involving him.  Instead she drifted off during classes, consumed by thoughts of what still remained.  The destruction of one Horcrux had made the possibility of an actual end to this nightmare seem, for the first time in years, real. 

The locket.  The cup.  The snake.

She had a way to destroy the locket now, if Hermione could smuggle one of the Basilisk fangs hidden in her beaded bag out to the Order.  If they could find the cup…

That was where her thoughts usually whirred to a stop, the terrifying conclusion too overwhelming to dwell on.  If they could find the cup, it meant they could confront Voldemort. 

Hermione instead fixated on how to get the message to the Order that she—she and Malfoy—had actually destroyed the diadem.  While the messages she and Lupin had exchanged before had seemed innocuous enough, putting anything in writing that could remotely tip off Voldemort to what had happened seemed reckless. 

It took a few more days for her to come up with a solution.  Theo and Neville, as Pansy had informed her previously, were indeed doing a raucous trade with Aberforth these days through the Room of Requirement’s passageway to the Hog’s Head.  Before one of their runs the following weekend, Hermione persuaded Ginny to relay a message to Neville to relay to Aberforth to relay to Lupin as quickly as possible—annoying the redhead immensely with her refusal to explain its actual meaning. 

It’s done, she had repeated carefully.  Tell them it is done and that I can do it again. 

Hermione didn’t expect a response back, hadn’t asked for one, and didn’t know what she hoped for in any case, but the silence in the days that followed was agonizing.  Being stuck at the castle now felt odd, like she’d been working toward some purpose that had been taken away and she was drifting along in Daphne’s life truly unmoored.  Despite how much she tried to remind herself it was a good thing that she no longer needed to be searching the castle, this didn’t bring her comfort as long as Hermione would have preferred. 

If she had known how quickly things would go wrong again, Hermione may have been able to savor the temporary peace longer. 

“I need to tell you something.”  Pansy’s voice was hushed when she spoke, interrupting the quiet of their late morning studying.  “Neville overheard something.”

Hermione’s hand stilled where it had been reaching for a fresh piece of parchment from the stack on the table between them.  “What?”

The shorthaired witch kept her head carefully down, but Hermione could see the tightness in the lines around her mouth.  “It could have been nothing.”

“What, Pansy?”

“He was on his way back to Gryffindor Tower last night after he’d walked me down to the dungeons after… well, after.”

“Continue, please,” Hermione replied quickly, wrinkling her nose. 

Pansy didn’t have to be prompted again.  “The Carrows were arguing with Snape in the Defense classroom, and I suppose the door was still cracked open enough that Neville could hear them.  He snuck behind one of those old suits of armour and Disillusioned himself, and waited.”

She knew perfectly well that there was no one else in the head dorm, not even Malfoy, but Hermione reflexively cast a quick look behind her anyway, a chill creeping down her spine. 

“Neville said it sounded like they were fighting because—”  The quill in Pansy’s hand seemed like it might snap with the vice-like grip she had on it.  “Because Snape didn’t want other Death Eaters coming to the castle.”

A strangled gasp escaped from Hermione’s lips before she could stop it.  “What do you mean?  Why would others be coming here?”

Pansy shook her head jerkily.  “I don’t know.  That’s all Neville heard before he had to leave or risk getting caught because that miserable old bat was stalking out of the room.”

Other Death Eaters. 

Hermione felt dizzy, and the phantom cut on her left forearm burned as if it had come alive.  Bellatrix.  Greyback?  Voldemort?

“When?”

“I don’t know.”  Pansy’s normally haughty tone was instead a frightened whisper, and the difference was jarring. 

Hermione began packing away her books.  “We need a plan.”

“A plan?  What kind of possible plan could we come up with?” 

“I need to talk to Ginny.”

“Weasley?!  Your plan is Weasley?”  Now there was a shrill edge creeping back into Pansy’s voice, and the familiarity of getting berated by Pansy Parkinson was oddly calming. 

“Yes,” Hermione replied firmly.  She stood and looked again toward the closed door to Malfoy’s room.  He wasn’t there, and Hermione wondered now with a thrill of fear whether he had been unwillingly sucked into whatever was going on with the Carrows and Snape. 

“Are you coming?”  She was halfway to the entrance to the dorm before Pansy had gathered herself and managed to scramble to her feet. 

“Merlin, Greengrass,” Pansy muttered, yanking on her outer robes and gesturing grandly to the door.  “Do lead on.”

The halls no longer felt magical to Hermione as they had in her previous years there, and the loss weighed particularly heavily on her as they walked quickly from the dungeons toward Gryffindor Tower.  These days, she checked the Marauder’s Map nearly every time she went somewhere alone, attempting to ensure she wouldn’t cross paths with Snape or the Carrows on the way to her destination.  The urge to pull out the map even in front of Pansy was hard to ignore.  The entire line of thinking depressed her and made her wish for Harry and Ron with an almost fervent longing.  

Harry.  Was he okay?  Had something happened that had triggered whatever trouble was brewing at the castle?  And Ron.  She squeezed her eyes shut briefly, yanking her bookbag higher on her shoulder.  Ron, who had kissed her goodbye so earnestly last summer, and who she hadn’t been there for when he got hurt and who she felt more distant from than ever.  Uncomfortable guilt squeezed her insides again. 

The castle walls felt smaller and darker as she led the way, but the next turn was one she knew well.  She remembered a Deathday Party and a frozen cat, then thought again of her and Malfoy’s successful trip to the Chamber of Secrets and the Basilisk fangs that were currently stashed carefully in her beaded bag.  

Hermione suddenly stopped short, and Pansy nearly crashed into her back.  She closed her eyes and took a trembling breath before opening them again, now filled with warm tears that threatened to spill over. 

Scrawled across the wall, in shining silver graffiti, in what she was fairly certain was Ginny Weasley’s terrible handwriting, were the words:  “Dumbledore’s Army, Still Recruiting.”

Behind her, Pansy let out a low laugh.  “Stupid Gryffindors.”  But her voice sounded fond.

Hermione turned to her and tried to blink back the moisture still gathering in her eyes.  “I think you’ve lost the right to say that, Pans.”

The Slytherin rolled her eyes and tossed her short hair over her shoulder in as superior a manner as she seemed able to muster under the circumstances. 

“I may be shagging one, but I reserve the right to judge their insane lack of self-preservation.”

Now Hermione just smiled and tugged the other girl’s arm gently, and they hurried the rest of the way.  The portrait of the Fat Lady made her homesick for a moment when they arrived, and she felt grateful that Pansy stepped up first, rattling off a password that must have been shared with her by a certain seventh-year Gryffindor.  This routine was apparently not a new occurrence, because though the Fat Lady glared furiously at the Slytherin as if she wished she could deny her entrance, she reluctantly swung open to allow them passage. 

Hermione scanned the common room quickly and felt her chest fill with relief when she saw Ginny, safely curled in her favorite armchair with a book that had looping images of Quidditch plays on the front. 

“Her—Daphne!”  the redhead called in surprise when she and Pansy appeared, cringing immediately at her own slip.  Hermione glared at her briefly, but Pansy didn’t seem to have noticed anything.  “What are you doing here?”

“Is Neville here?”  Hermione asked quickly.  “Or Seamus, Lavender?  Can we all talk?”

Ginny’s eyes widened, but she hopped up eagerly.  “I’ll get Lavender.  Why don’t you meet us in the boys’ dorm?”

Pansy nodded grimly and dragged Hermione toward the seventh-year boys’ quarters.  A flash of sorrow hit Hermione as she thought of how in an alternate universe Harry and Ron would be up there waiting for her, and she pushed it away with as much force as possible.

If Neville and Seamus were surprised to see them, they recovered immediately.  Neville echoed Pansy’s story from earlier when Hermione demanded to hear it again, and Seamus seemed to have already heard this version, as had Ginny and Lavender, who appeared shortly. 

“What are you thinking, Daphne?”  Ginny asked in a low voice, and if the others were confused as to why Ginny was turning to Daphne for a plan, they politely didn’t show it. 

“I think that we need a plan in case this is true.”  There were several nods in trepidation.  Hermione tried not to sound afraid.  “Anyone who might be in danger by their presence—”  The others looked ill at this statement, and Hermione admitted it was hard to imagine exactly who wouldn’t be in danger.  “—they need to be on alert and we need somewhere for them to hide, I suppose.”

“Not fight?”  Seamus interrupted, a gleam in his eye that Hermione recognized. 

She shook her head quickly and tried to find the right words.  “It’s not time,” Hermione said carefully.  “We don’t know who’s coming, or how many of them, and there’s not enough of us here to fight back properly in any case.  Our best chance is to hide and wait for—wait for help from outside if we need it.”

Neville was watching her closely, a curious expression on his face, arms crossed.  “Daphne,” he finally said slowly.  “Is there something else you’d like to tell us?”

Hermione met his eyes and wondered, not for the first time, what Ginny or anyone else had told him.  Not that she wasn’t really Daphne, of course—she was sure Ginny would never divulge that part of the story without her permission.  But did he know about the Greengrass family’s defection and that Camile and Montgomery were really hidden at an Order safehouse? 

Not your secret to tell, she reminded herself, and then sighed aloud.  “No.  Just…  I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“The Room of Requirement,” Ginny suggested suddenly, distracting the others from her hesitation, and Neville’s eyes brightened. 

“That’s brilliant, Gin,” he replied enthusiastically.  “We can hide tons of people in there.”

“It has to be as a last resort,” Hermione cautioned, but she felt relieved all the same.  Seamus and Lavender had begun whispering excitedly, and Pansy was watching Neville with a proud glint in her eyes.  “We can’t have a mass disappearance of students unless the risk is necessary.”

The others nodded in agreement and Neville pulled out his wand.  “I’ll start preparing the Room.  We need to spread the word—but carefully—only to those we can trust.  And we’ll need a signal.”

“We still have a few of the coins,” Ginny mused thoughtfully from where she’d plopped down on Neville’s four-poster. 

“Coins?”  Pansy asked with a frown.

“Protean charmed Galleons,” Hermione replied automatically.  Five heads swiveled toward her automatically, Ginny’s face evidencing her concern at Hermione’s slip, and the others a mix of surprise and confusion. 

“I told her,” the redhead covered, tone light.  “Sorry, Nev.  But Daphne’s alright.”

“Excuse me,” Pansy cut in, annoyance obvious.  “What are we talking about?”

“Back in fifth year, for Dumbledore’s Army,” Seamus began.  He stopped for a moment and shot a belligerent glare at Pansy.  “You know, when you were busy trying to have us nabbed by Umbridge.”

The Slytherin witch shrugged but her tone was softer than usual when she retorted.  “We’ve discussed, Finnigan.  Bygones, remember?”

The Gryffindor rolled his eyes half-heartedly but continued.  “Well, Hermione Granger charmed Galleons so that we could communicate in secret.  They would tell us the times and dates of the next meeting so we’d know when to go to the Room, which were mostly random so there wasn’t a pattern you lot could figure out.”

Pansy looked impressed despite herself.  “Good on Granger.”

“Anyway,” Hermione cut in, unable to resist taking charge and also thoroughly done with this part of the conversation.  “How many do you still have?”

Neville looked thoughtful.  “Each of us brought ours to school—that’s four.  Parvati and Padma should have theirs, and Ernie and Terry.  I can ask around about any others.  If someone doesn’t have one, we can tell them to pair up and stick close to someone who’s carrying one for the next few days so they’ll get the message in time.”

“I’ll talk to Parvati and Padma,” Lavender volunteered.

“I’ll talk to Michael Corner,” Ginny agreed.

“What about Theo?”  Pansy asked sharply.  “I’m not leaving him.”

“Of course not.”  Neville placed a reassuring hand on Pansy’s arm, and Hermione caught the slight softening of Pansy’s posture in response.  “You can take mine in case you’re in the dorms when something happens, and you’ll be able to get Theo.  Seamus or one of this lot will be able to find me.”

A look passed between them that nearly startled Hermione with its intimacy, and she felt something twist in her stomach that felt almost like jealousy.

“Astoria,” she reminded Pansy, shaking herself mentally.  “You have to make sure Astoria gets out.”

Pansy nodded gravely, eyes locked with hers.  “I promise.”

A brief silence fell over the assorted students, which was broken a few moments later by Lavender’s tentative question.

“How long?”

Neville sighed and ran a hand through his hair in a gesture that reminded Hermione of Harry.  “I’m not sure.  But the way they were speaking—it sounded as if it was something imminent, like there was a reason for them coming, not just—a social visit.”  He bit out the last part with a slight noise of disgust.  

“But why would Snape try to stop it?”  Seamus asked, voicing the same question that had been bothering Hermione.

The others exchanged helpless looks and Neville finally shrugged.  “I have no idea.  Just different opinions on whatever strategy these idiots are running, I suppose.”

The explanation didn’t sit right with Hermione somehow, but she had nothing better to contribute.  She made eye contact briefly with Ginny, whose face wore a worried but determined expression. 

“There’s something else,” Hermione began quietly.  “I want to tell Draco.”

She kept her eyes on Ginny’s.  The others seemed to have no immediate response, though she heard a noise of what sounded like protest from Seamus.  Ginny was looking at her sadly now, and it twisted Hermione’s heart brutally. 

“Daphne,” Ginny began quietly.  “It’s too much of a risk.”

She couldn’t leave him.  The reality of what they were discussing seemed to land on Hermione all at once and she struggled to take a deep breath. 

“Draco will be fine,” Pansy said, but her voice was shaking and unsure.  “He’s not in danger, Daphne.”

“But—”  Hermione felt desperation rising in her throat but she couldn’t articulate anything properly to this group of people, half of who barely trusted the person who appeared to be standing in front of them. 

“We may all have doubts now about Malfoy’s loyalty to Voldemort, Daphne,” Neville said firmly.  “But we don’t know for certain that he wouldn’t sell us out.”

He wouldn’t, Hermione wanted to scream.  He’d already risked more than any of them knew for her, for the Order that had never reached out to help him.  But she was the only one who knew any of this, and even his oldest friend in the room didn’t fully trust him.  The surreal nature of the situation made her head spin. 

“He’s not one of them,” she offered weakly, and there was a flare of certainty in her chest that made it ache. 

“But we don’t know that he’s one of us,” Neville replied.  “And he has his own people to protect.”  Neville’s hand went instinctively to hover over Pansy’s lower back and Hermione’s heart clenched further. 

His own people.  Pansy, Blaise, and Theo, and Daphne.  And his mother and father. 

“We’ll tell him if we can, at the last minute,” Ginny offered suddenly.  “We don’t tell him the plan in advance, but if it seems like he’s in danger when it happens and we can get him out, we do it.”

Seamus and Lavender looked uncertain, but Pansy shot Ginny a grateful smile, and this seemed to be enough for Neville.  “Agreed,” he said, and Hermione nodded numbly.

…

She found it hard to look Malfoy in the eye when she returned to their dorm that evening, having successfully avoided interacting with him during lunch, afternoon classes, and dinner.  If he noticed her strange behavior, he said nothing.  They sat in front of the fireplace and read quietly, Hermione sneaking glances at him when she thought he wasn’t looking.  Malfoy’s reading glasses were reflecting the light from the fire, and the glow made his hair look more yellow than white-blonde.

Was this the last night they’d spend in their sitting room together?  Hermione had been so fixated on the day-to-day since she had arrived at Hogwarts, focused on not getting caught and, for months, on finding the diadem and figuring out what to do with it.  She had never given much thought to what she would do with her time after she found the Horcrux if she was still at Hogwarts, but now leaving also felt terrifying. 

The war had continued outside of the castle walls.  She had been dragged in and out of it even from her somewhat safe hiding place, agonizing over Ron’s injury, her friends’ battles, Malfoy’s mysterious disappearances and injuries, and then fighting for her own life at the Manor the month before.  But the last six months had also been spent here, sitting on their sofa or at a classroom table or on a bench in the Great Hall next to Draco Malfoy while he slowly tore down every notion she had constructed about him. 

She might never see him again.  Hermione could have to run, and he might have to stay, and one of them could end up—

That train of thought made her sick, and Hermione didn’t look away in time when he glanced up and found her staring anxiously at him as he read from his potions text. 

“Are you alright?” he murmured, pulling the glasses off and shifting his weight slightly so he was facing her more fully. 

Hermione nodded automatically, but her face must have still been giving away her anxiety. 

He slipped a bookmark in between the pages of his book—she couldn’t resist the surge of fondness she felt as he carefully closed the text with the silly green monogrammed ribbon instead of folding the corners of the pages down like almost everyone else she knew—and arched an eyebrow at her. 

“Would you care to talk about it?”

She shook her head and one corner of his lip quirked up.  “Alright.  Would you like to talk about something else?”

“Yes,” Hermione replied, closing her own book and setting it on the table in front of them.  “Please.”

He looked thoughtfully at her and then briefly glanced at the fire before turning back to her.  “I can tell you about the fascinating theory I’m reading about regarding the use of Wolfsbane for purposes other than controlling werewolves on a full moon.  Did you know it has calming effects that may be beneficial outside of the context of werewolves on those who’ve suffered from the Cruciatus Curse?”

Hermione's eyes widened and she was tempted for a moment.  Malfoy seemed to notice that she had perked up and chuckled at her. 

“No,” she said, “though that sounds fascinating.”  She took a hesitant breath and watched him for his reaction.  “Actually, I know you don’t like to talk about this, but…  Maybe we can talk about what life might be like if there weren’t a war going on.”

As she’d expected, Malfoy’s face briefly slipped into his familiar cold mask, the one he rarely wore anymore around her lately. 

“I don’t mean what it will be like… after,” she said hastily.  “I just…  I just want to pretend for a minute.  That none of this had happened and we were growing up like we thought we would, I guess.”

Malfoy softened and the mask faded again.  “I can do that.”

They were both quiet for a moment, and Hermione tried not to feel melancholy. 

“You were right, before, you know,” he began again and she looked at him questioningly.  He gestured to the book on the table.  “Potions.  I would have wanted to be a Potions Master, I think.”

“You would be wonderful at that,” she said quietly, and his face was tighter but still open to her. 

“I thought about teaching once,” Hermione offered.

“Really?”

She nodded and pulled the blanket around her lap further up her chest.  “Really.  Any subject, really.  I suppose I just felt at home at Hogwarts.”

He smiled and this time it looked natural.  “I understand that.”

“Would you live in the Manor?” she asked bravely. 

“In the alternate universe?”  Malfoy asked slowly, fiddling with the edges of the blanket where it was tucked under her feet. 

“Right.”

“Probably,” he said.  “Pretty much every Malfoy has lived in the Manor their entire life, as you know.”

“That’s odd,” she remarked, and he looked at her questioningly. 

“You wouldn’t have stayed at the Greengrass estate until you made a respectable marriage and moved into your husband’s ancestral home?” 

Hermione wrinkled her nose and Malfoy laughed, a throaty, genuine sound that warmed her.  “I think I’d like my own place.  Maybe in London somewhere, Diagon Alley, or even—”  She hesitated, realizing she was going a bit too far, yet beyond caring enough to stop.  “Muggle London, maybe.”

“I think in the alternate universe, I would have found that idea insane,” Malfoy replied, sounding thoughtful.  “But to be honest it sounds nice now.”

“Perhaps France.”

This brought his smile back and he pinched one of her toes under the knit throw.  “Perhaps France.  In any universe.”

“Would you be married to Pansy, do you think?”  Hermione asked softly, not sure why she wanted the answer.

“Maybe.  Probably.”  Malfoy narrowed his eyes at her.  “Don’t go telling Parkinson this.”

She shook her head solemnly. 

“I always thought I’d have an arranged marriage,” he continued, “or at least a limited list of choices approved by my parents.  And marrying Pansy would have been a logical choice for both of our families.  I think we would probably have made each other as miserable as we did in this life.  But I never thought about any other option, really.”

“Never?”

He searched her face curiously.  “Even now, Greengrass, aren’t your parents thinking about betrothal contracts?”

The idea made her inexplicably sad.  Hermione thought of Theo, and the fact that Daphne had never mentioned any sort of betrothal possibility—to anyone—to Hermione.  “I hope not.”

“I hope not, too.” 

His words startled her and she felt a slight flush rise to her cheeks.  “You mean, you hope your parents aren’t thinking about betrothal contracts?”  she asked slowly. 

He chuckled.  It sounded only slightly bitter.  “Right.”

“I’d like to let Astoria do the marrying, and I can be a spinster with a career and a lot of cats,” Hermione declared. 

“Really, now, pushing your familial duties off on the younger sister?”  Hermione watched him laugh again and felt again the desire to keep him happy and distracted for as long as she could. 

“Definitely.”

“You know, Lucius would’ve never allowed me to study Potions after Hogwarts,” Malfoy said absently.  “He would’ve wanted me to follow him into whatever he calls his backroom dealings, or just hang around and generally carry on the Malfoy tradition of being insufferable and wealthy.”

“And you would’ve done that?”

Grey eyes roved over her face and she felt exposed, even though he was the one baring uncomfortable truths.  “I was a prat, remember?”

A small smile tugged at her mouth involuntarily.  “You’re still a prat.”

“Hopefully not quite as bad.”

“No,” she agreed, and she could tell he saw that she meant it because he couldn’t hide his slight flush of pleasure at her words.

“Well, if life had continued on like we thought it would, I’d probably still believe a lot of things I… don’t believe anymore.  Including that my father was the most brilliant and terrifying man in the world and that I should do anything that he said I had to do.”  Malfoy seemed to be fighting to keep his tone light but Hermione thought she heard a hint of despair under his words.

“There is no alternate universe for me, Greengrass,” he finished quietly.  “I screwed up in this lifetime, and I would’ve kept screwing up in any other one.”

Hermione hated herself in that moment for being unable to say everything she really wanted to say.  She hated the Order, and Daphne, and Lupin, and Voldemort, and everyone else in the world whose fault it wasn’t and whose fault it certainly was that she was sitting there pretending to be someone else and lying to the boy sitting across from her. 

“You’re wrong about something,” she finally managed, voice hoarse with unshed tears. 

“What’s that?”  Malfoy asked, gaze fixed on the dying fire now.  

“This one’s not done yet.”

…

The next two days passed in a state of heightened paranoia.  Hermione and Pansy sat at meals exchanging furtive looks with the residents of the Gryffindor table, which Malfoy must have noticed but resolutely chose to ignore.  Theo, who’d been informed of the loose outlines of the plan and the situation, seemed to have decided to compartmentalize and was much more calm than the girls, who were also making up increasingly transparent excuses to never be apart from the others for too long.  Hermione watched Snape at every meal for signs that he had won or lost the argument with the Carrows, but the headmaster was as inscrutable, and dour, as ever. 

Ginny and Hermione had managed to briefly escape alone into an empty girls’ bathroom together the day after the meeting in Gryffindor Tower, and Hermione had informed the other girl that she needed to help her convince everyone in the Room of Requirement, if and when they arrived, to stay there until the Order could send Portkeys to retrieve everyone securely and bring them to headquarters or other safehouses.  They had shared an anxious embrace before hurrying to their separate classes, Ginny to Care of Magical Creatures and Hermione to Muggle Studies, where she endured a lecture on the savageness of Muggle surgery (not completely unfair from a Wizarding perspective, she almost admitted to herself begrudgingly, but presented in an entirely biased and insane fashion). 

Hermione had almost—almost—let her guard down again when things imploded that Friday.

She was sitting in Charms when it happened.  Professor Flitwick was describing, somewhat ironically, the Protean Charm and the variations one could use to link certain objects for communication or observation purposes.  He was about to show them a practical demonstration when Hermione’s own Galleon warmed in her pocket, causing her to nearly jump out of her seat in panic.  The sudden movement caught the professor’s attention and he paused, looking at her in confusion. 

“I—I’m sorry, Professor—” Hermione glanced around frantically and saw a mirroring expression of horror on Pansy’s face across the classroom aisle.  The other girl was clutching something in her hand and Hermione knew it must bear the same message that hers read:  They’re here.

“Is something the matter, Ms. Greengrass?”  Professor Flitwick asked curiously, looking from her to Pansy in concern. 

“I think maybe—”

Before Hermione could finish formulating whatever excuse she was going to attempt to use to bring an early end to the class, the doors behind them burst open and the other students swiveled around to see what was happening. 

“Sorry, Flitwick,” Amycus Carrow said loudly, not sounding the least bit apologetic. 

Malfoy rose to his feet beside her, but Hermione stayed in hers, slightly panicked as she took in the scene.  Amycus and Alecto Carrow, accompanied by a Death Eater she didn’t recognize, had their wands drawn and were searching the faces of the students in the classroom as they marched down the aisle. 

“You,” Amycus snarled, pointing at Neville.  “Get up.”

Neville stared back defiantly, his hand creeping toward his own wand where it rested on the table next to him.  Hermione caught the movement at the same time one of the other Death Eaters must have, because before anyone else could react it flew from Neville’s side and into the hand of the unknown man beside the Carrows. 

“I said now,” Amycus yelled, and he grabbed Neville’s collar.  Seamus was standing feet now, snarling at the Dark Arts professor as he tried fruitlessly to help Neville, and Professor Flitwick looked outraged as he swept from the front of the room. 

“What is the meaning of this, Carrow?!” he shouted in his squeaky voice, face bright red with indignation.  Before anyone answered, a red jet of light shot toward the teacher and he crumpled to the ground. 

Screams sounded from the rest of the class and Hermione gripped her own wand, trying to see through the students now scrambling toward the door to escape.  

Across from her, Ernie Macmillan and Terry Boot had their wands pointed toward Alecto Carrow and Lavender was behind them, hand trembling but face defiant as she stared down the third Death Eater.  With a surprisingly strong twisting movement, Neville suddenly managed to break free from the brother’s grip and he and Seamus were soon fighting wandless, struggling to wrestle the weapon out of Carrow’s hand as he howled in fury. 

“Malfoy!”  the third Death Eater called out, and Hermione saw Malfoy freeze out of the corner of her eye.  “Help get Longbottom off of him and take him with us!” 

Hermione didn’t wait another minute.  “Stupefy!”  she shouted, spinning to aim at the man who had barked orders at Malfoy.  Her spell hit, and he fell to the ground with a satisfying thud.  Alecto and Amycus both paused in their respective tussles to stare at her in furious shock, and the distraction allowed Neville to finally grab Amycus’s wand. 

Seamus seemed too angry to remember he could use magic and swung a punch at Amycus’s head instead.  It had the same effect, at least for now, and the brother collapsed unconscious as well.  Alecto’s cry of rage was cut off by a spell to her back, which Hermione realized with a jolt had come from a shaking Pansy. 

Silence fell rapidly over the remaining group.  Hermione said a silent prayer of thanks that Crabbe and Goyle had utterly failed their Charms O.W.L.s, leaving only a mix of Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs in the class to have borne witness to any of what had happened.  Though others might have caught part of the scene, Malfoy, Pansy, Theo, Neville, Seamus, Lavender, Parvati, Padma, Terry, and Ernie were the only ones still there, despite that the entire fight couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes.

“Neville,” Pansy whimpered, in a tone Hermione had never heard her use before.  She recognized it as naked fear, and it left her cold to hear, for the second time in days, the absence of Pansy’s usual brashness or affected annoyance.  The Gryffindor was breathing heavily but gave the Slytherin witch a strained smile.

“I’m alright,” he said quickly.  “But we need to move fast.”

“Do we wake up Flitwick?”  Padma asked, stress making her voice crack. 

“All of you need to get to the Room of Requirement, now,” Hermione said, voice shaking. 

Theo looked at her quickly.  “What do you mean, all of us?” he asked in a low, intense voice.  “You’re coming.”

She shook her head rapidly.  “I have to make sure Astoria’s okay.  I don’t know if she—if she’s with anyone who would have gotten the message to go to the Room.  And we don’t even know who sent the message in the first place.  Ginny, I suppose—”

“Daphne,” Malfoy spoke for the first time, and he looked like he might throw up.  “You attacked a Death Eater.  In front of other Death Eaters and a classroom full of people.  How do you not get this?  You have to get out now, too.”

“Maybe—maybe we can Obliviate them—”  she offered, fear choking her throat.  She could not leave Astoria.  She made a promise.

She couldn’t leave Malfoy.

She wasn’t ready for this.

“No,” Malfoy said harshly.  “That’s too much risk.  It sounds like you lot have some plan to hide and it might actually not be completely idiotic.  You need to go.”

Despite the urgency of the situation, the others were watching them argue in amazement. 

“No,”  Malfoy growled at her and looked like he was about to throw her over his shoulder and drag her out of the room himself when Neville cut in again.

“We need to get out of here.  We don’t know how many others might be in the castle, or why they wanted—wanted me.”  He looked a bit green.  “Or who else they might be after.”

Ginny flashed through Hermione’s mind again and she let out a strangled cry.

For her part, Pansy seemed to have gathered her composure and she strode over to the Death Eaters that were still passed out on the floor.  “Incarcerous,” she said flatly, and thin ropes wound their way around the three pairs of hands and feet, binding them together and to each other.

“We leave Flitwick,” she announced.  “He’s safer that way—they’ll assume he was still Stupefied during whatever happened to them, which is true.  The only thing they’ll remember is that Neville, Seamus, and Daphne fought them.” Pansy leveled her gaze on Hermione.  “Which means Draco is right and you need to get the fuck out of here with us.”

“But why didn’t he help them?”  Ernie said suddenly, and Hermione realized he was staring at Malfoy with a look of suspicion and confusion, wand still half raised defensively.

Malfoy didn’t answer. 

“We need to make it look like he did,” Hermione realized, and she turned to Malfoy, ignoring Ernie’s question directly.  “Help me find Astoria while the others hide, and we’ll figure out a way to make it look like you did once we do.  You can say you chased some of us or—or something.”

She was begging now, and when Malfoy looked down at her she couldn’t read his expression.  The walls had gone back up, and he was Occluding, and Hermione felt empty as she wondered if this was the way they were going to be separated. 

“Fine,” he said harshly, and the smallest bit of relief flooded her chest. 

Pansy suddenly threw her arms tightly around Hermione, and the pressure was so tight she couldn’t breathe for a moment.  “Don’t do anything stupid,” the witch muttered before releasing her. 

With mixed looks of apprehension, determination, and bewilderment, on the part of Ernie and Terry, who still didn’t seem to understand why so many Slytherins were involved in this plan, the group crept out of the classroom.  The hallway was still silent, and Malfoy and Hermione turned right while the others took off left for the seventh-floor staircase.  Theo shot them one last, indecipherable look but didn’t say anything else, and allowed Pansy to tug him along behind her. 

“This is bloody stupid, Greengrass,” Malfoy muttered.  He was yanking her by the arm now, as if to move her along faster in pace with his long strides, and she stifled her annoyance.

“I told you, I’m not leaving her,” she snapped. 

“Where do you think she is?” he asked shortly, drawing up near a statue of an imperious-looking witch holding a crystal ball and ducking behind it.  He drew Hermione with him and she faltered momentarily as his chest pressed against hers in the small space. 

“Potions.  I think.  She studies with me sometimes on Thursday evenings and I think she has Potions the next day.” 

Hermione could hear her heart pounding in the spot where her body was connected with Malfoy’s and the mix of terror and adrenaline and something else made her lightheaded. 

He released her arm to run a hand through his hair in agitation.  “We’ll have to get down three floors.”  Malfoy seemed to be thinking aloud more than talking to her.  “And what are you going to do when you get there?”

“I—I don’t know,”  Hermione replied dumbly.  “Wing it, I suppose.”

He let out a harsh laugh and pulled her into the hall again after checking to see if anyone was coming.  “You sound like those bloody Gryffindors more every day, Greengrass.”

They had been half-running, half-sprinting through the corridors for only a few more minutes when a loud crash reverberated from somewhere behind them, followed by several unintelligible shouts.  Malfoy swore and yanked Hermione toward the door of an empty classroom nearby. 

“Not there,” she hissed.  “We’ll be trapped.”

He growled in frustration and steered them instead toward the moving staircase. 

“This is the wrong way,” Hermione protested hotly as he forced her up the stairs.

“I’m aware,” he shot back in a loud whisper.  “But that noise came from the right way and we need to figure something else out.”

They emerged from the staircase in front of a familiar door.  “In here,” she said immediately, shoving him inside.

“What is this?” 

Hermione ignored him and cast several locking charms on the door they had just entered.  There was a tapestry on the wall opposite, something ancient and rotting and heavy that depicted a gruesome battle between several dragons and wizards who apparently preferred some sort of axes to wands at the time. 

“There’s a passageway here,” she said, gesturing toward the tapestry.  “I’m sure Snape knows about it, so it’s not really safe to use, but at least we’re not stuck in a dead end.”

Malfoy swept over to where she had pointed and poked at it suspiciously with his wand.  “Where does it lead?”

She shrugged helplessly.  “I don’t remember.  But outside on the grounds somewhere.  Not Hogsmeade, I think; maybe near Hagrid’s.”

The room was dark except for a dim light coming from a row of thin, barred windows near the top of the low ceiling.  Hermione could make out a desk and a wardrobe in one corner, and wondered distantly if it had been an old office for one of the teachers.

“We need to get you out of here.”  Malfoy was radiating nervous energy, pacing across the room, body practically vibrating. 

“I need to get to Astoria,” Hermione repeated, feeling like a broken record.  “I can’t just leave her.”  Her voice was growing more shrill and Malfoy looked like he was about to explode with frustration as he stalked around the room, looking as if he hoped to find a solution to their predicament somewhere in the corners or behind the dusty furniture. 

“I’ll find Astoria, I’ll get her to the Room somehow, we just need to get you there first with Neville and the others—” Malfoy sounded unusually frantic and was barely listening to her.

“I’m not going to the—Draco!”  Hermione’s raised voice finally brought a stop to his furious muttering.  “I’m not going to the Room of Requirement with the others.” 

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

They were interrupted by a sound Hermione had heard in her nightmares for weeks.  Bellatrix Lestrange’s high-pitched cackle, muffled by the door, but undeniable, echoed in the corridor outside somewhere.  Blood rushed to her head too fast, and Hermione stumbled as she tried to move toward Malfoy automatically. 

“Daphne,” his voice sounded horrified, and Malfoy reached out to steady her.  “You can’t stay here.  She’ll find out what you did to the Carrows—she’ll find out—”

Hermione’s eyes locked with his and she saw her own terror reflected there.

“She’ll find out whatever it is you did with that diadem.”

Bellatrix.  In the castle.  Hermione fought to quell the nausea building in her throat and tried to think.  She couldn’t walk out of here now.  Not now that someone who could reach into her mind and steal the secrets she had about the Horcruxes was apparently outside of the door.  Shoving her dread down as far as she could, Hermione dug her hand into the pocket of her robes, searching. 

“Astoria,” she whimpered, and Malfoy’s mouth tightened. 

“I will find her.”  His words were a promise, and despite the guilt she felt warring with her other sense of obligation to the Order, they reassured her.  And yet, she couldn’t stop the words that tumbled out of her mouth next. 

“Come with me.” 

Malfoy froze in his tracks and Hermione’s heart pounded harder in her chest. 

“Come—come with you where, Daphne?  What are you talking about?”  He spoke softly but the edge in his voice was growing harder as his eyes bore into hers, searching.  She felt as if he was looking for something, and she felt as if the weight of the guilt clawing out of her ribs might cause her to collapse. 

The noise coming from the hallway grew louder.  She could almost make out Bellatrix’s high voice screeching something to the rest of whatever group she was with. 

“Away from here,” Hermione said desperately.  “We don’t have to make it all the way to the Room.  Please, Draco, just trust me.  I can—I know where we can go.” 

She unfurled her fingers, the scrap of fabric falling open to reveal the Galleon she’d slept with under her pillow for the last year. 

Hermione would never remember how long they stood there, staring at each other.  It felt like if she reached out her fingertips toward him, he might take them.  But something held her back, and he didn’t reach for her.  Malfoy’s breath was ragged and she could hear each intake of air as her words hung between them.  She had spent the last six months trying to read him, watching him, thinking she had started to understand him.  But his face was indecipherable as he stared down at the portkey. 

Suddenly, the door behind them shook violently.  They both jumped, Malfoy glancing behind him and Hermione’s panicked gaze following.  She couldn’t tell if the force had been a spell or something else slamming against it.  Her adrenaline spiked even further, so much that she could taste its metallic echo in the back of her throat, and she dragged her eyes back to Malfoy’s.  He cut her off as she opened her mouth to speak again. 

“Go.”  His face was already shuttering, his posture straightening, and his body turning away from her.  “Get out of here.”

“Draco, no—” Hermione began, her voice pleading.  Her mind was racing as she tried to decide whether to just confess who she really was, or make up something for now about Daphne and the Order, whether there was any chance she’d have time to convince him to run with her in spite of how furious he’d be, whether there was any time at all and how had she wasted so much of it when surely she should have seen this coming all along, they’d been hurtling toward this for so long—

“I said get out,” he snarled, grabbing her arm and shoving her toward the passageway.  “They will be here any moment and then I won’t be able to stop anything that happens next.” 

Still she couldn’t make her feet move further on her own.  His hand was still wrapped around her upper arm so tightly she thought she would bruise.  He was looking over his shoulder at the door but his face was inches away from hers. 

“I’ll come back for you.” 

His eyes snapped back to hers and she saw them flash with shock and something else. 

“Don’t you fucking dare.” 

His voice was low and dangerous.  He lingered for one more moment, so close that she could see the lines tightening around his eyes and the set of his mouth, and she could smell sweat and something else spicy that she’d come to associate with Malfoy at some point.  A strange surge of regret shot through her, out of place with her other current emotions, and she realized that she wished she was in her own body right now, that right now when it may be the last time she saw him—surely not ever but she couldn’t think that now—she wished that he was looking at her and not seeing Daphne instead. 

“You won’t be able to stop me,” Hermione replied quietly before finally wrenching her arm away and drawing her wand again.  The tapestry was heavy as she pushed it aside.  Though she knew it must have swung closed behind her again as soon as she stepped through and started running, she could have sworn she felt Malfoy’s eyes boring into her as she escaped, watching her until she disappeared. 

Chapter Text

art by the talented ene / @chestercompany

…

February 1998

The sun blinded her momentarily as Hermione stumbled out of the passageway into the grounds.  Everything had gone so wrong, so quickly, and it had felt so dark and desperate in the castle, that the brightness was alarming and she felt her chest tightening again with panic.  She dug her fingernails into her hands and tried to blink away the white spots in her vision.  The Portkey was her only shot at getting to headquarters, but she needed to think. 

Why were the Death Eaters at Hogwarts in the first place?  What if something had happened, and Grimmauld Place wasn’t safe at the moment?  She’d left behind Astoria, and Minerva, and Ginny, and Malfoy—

Hermione whipped her head around frantically, sucking in the air.  She seemed to be south of the actual castle; the boathouse was visible a distant ways away, and the door she had exited had magically vanished back into the tangles on the edge of the Forbidden Forest where she had emerged.  Too far to get quickly enough to Hagrid’s, then, she thought grimly.  While she didn’t know exactly what good an empty hut would’ve been as a refuge, the openness of the grounds and the brilliant orange light of the setting sun made her feel too exposed even with the forest at her back. 

Using the Portkey needed to be a last resort.  Communicating with someone—anyone—first was an immensely preferable option.  Apparition seemed out of the question, as she wasn’t sure if even attempting it would trigger any Anti-Apparition Ward to set off some sort of alarm.  A Patronus could work, but to whom?  Who could she be sure was alone, and safe, and could help?  She squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that pain stabbed at her eyelids, trying not to let her anxiety overwhelm her.

Daphne.

Resolve helped her mind clear.  Daphne was supposed to be in hiding at all times, only seen by Order members, even if she was traveling to act as Healer to anyone in a different safehouse—given that Hermione was acting as her stand-in at Hogwarts.  Or had been, Hermione thought with a shudder.  In any event, if Hermione’s Patronus reached Daphne and she was somewhere where the otter would be recognized—well, that meant they were already in trouble, and it couldn’t make it that much worse.

The spell had never come easily for Hermione, a fact that irked her to no end.  Her hand shook badly as she pulled out her wand and summoned the silver otter with a whispered ‘Expecto Patronum,’ forcing herself to think of Christmases with her parents, summers at the Burrow, and the idea of seeing Harry and Ron and the others if she succeeded.  

“The last time we saw each other, I told you I needed to return here,” Hermione choked on the words as she gazed into the bright eyes of the shimmering creature before her.  “But it’s not safe anymore.  Can I come to the usual place?  Please reply immediately.”

She shrank back into the shadows of the Forbidden Forest as she watched the otter bound away and then disappear in a swirl of magic.  The grounds were quiet, and though Hermione strained to listen for any sounds of conflict still raging in the castle, she heard nothing. 

After an agonizing four minutes, which Hermione counted out in seconds as she tried to keep her breathing under control, a shining wolf materialized in front of her, one familiar enough to her that she felt delirious with relief. 

We are safe and together in the place you and I were gathered at the new year, it spoke in the comforting voice of Remus Lupin, come as soon as you can. 

Hermione almost wept with relief as she yanked the cloth off of the Galleon that she still gripped tightly in her left hand.

…

It had taken Hermione approximately three seconds to completely break down once she had arrived at Grimmauld Place. Harry and Ron were there, too, beside Lupin and Daphne.  They stared agape at her, helpless, as she wrenched her hands through her hair and tried to explain. 

“Daphne, I—I couldn’t get to her, I was trapped, I had to leave but—”

“What happened, Hermione?  Where is Astoria?”  Daphne’s voice was pained, and her stricken face made Hermione want to throw up with guilt.  Her eyes pleaded with Hermione’s own and there was no blame there, only a desperate desire for information.

“Death Eaters, they were—they were in the castle, I don’t know what they wanted but they tried to take Neville from class,” she choked, and through her haze, she could still see the others go very still. 

“They were at Hogwarts?”  Lupin asked quickly, the scarred lines around his mouth deepening with apprehension.  “How many?”

“I—I don’t know,” Hermione replied frantically, and she shook off Ron when he attempted to gently steer her into one of the ancient wooden chairs at the kitchen table.  “We had overheard that something might happen, so the rest of them should be hiding in the Room of Requirement.  We need to go, right now, we have to get to Aberforth and get back in to help, or to get them out if they’re already in there—”

“Hermione, you have to slow down—” Lupin moved toward her, and something about how he looked at her—with wary eyes, like she was a wild animal he needed to calm—made her snap. 

“I promised her,” Hermione nearly screamed.  She could feel her hysteria rising again.  “You made me do this, Remus, you made me, and I promised Daphne I would take care of her and then I just left her!  I left her and I left—I left—”

Now Lupin’s face was ashen as he reached for Hermione again, but she backed away.  “Hermione—”

“We have to fucking go back, you don’t understand what was happening—”

“Where are the Portkeys?”  Harry was asking loudly now, clearly beginning to comprehend what she was trying to explain.  She whirled around toward him, seeking support. 

“Ginny’s there, Harry, and she wasn’t in class with us when I had to run, so I don’t know where—”

“Where was Astoria?”  Daphne’s voice blazed now as she cut Harry off, her own hand reaching toward her sleeve to draw her wand. 

“Hermione,” Lupin continued to try to talk over everyone, hands raised in defense now.  “We do understand, but we cannot risk others’ lives to go in blind when we don’t have a plan—”

“Remus, Ginny’s in the castle with those lunatics!”  Ron chimed in angrily.  Even as she opened her mouth to respond to Lupin again, it occurred to Hermione darkly that if this was how Order meetings had been going in her absence, it was no wonder this war was dragging on. 

There was a sudden flash of light in the kitchen.  The argument ceased as the occupants of the kitchen looked at each other in fear, and Hermione was temporarily blinded once more.  She reached for her wand instinctively, but barely had it drawn before the sight in front of her registered and the rush of alarm was replaced with shock. 

An extremely pale Astoria Greengrass had materialized out of nowhere next to the stove, stumbling with an uncharacteristic lack of grace as she caught herself on the chair that had been recently vacated by Harry.  Behind her, clutching a glinting Galleon in one curled hand and his hawthorn wand just as tightly in the other, was Draco Malfoy. 

…

The kitchen descended into chaos.  Harry and Ron had drawn their wands on Malfoy so fast that she didn’t have time to process the pair’s arrival any further.  Daphne had rushed to her sister and thrown her arms around Astoria so hard that Hermione wasn’t sure the little witch could breathe, let alone speak.  Malfoy was shouting at Harry and Ron and had his own wand raised defensively, though she couldn’t decipher anything he was saying between Daphne’s relieved sobs, Lupin’s agitated calls for calm, and the threats Harry and Ron seemed to be yelling back at Malfoy. 

“Protego!”  Hermione cried instinctively, and a wave of defensive magic burst out of her wand, pinning Harry and Ron on one side of the invisible wall and Malfoy and Hermione on the other. 

The room fell silent, except for the soft cries still coming from Daphne, who hadn’t released Astoria.  Hermione lowered her wand slowly, adrenaline draining from her body so quickly that she felt lightheaded.  Before anyone could speak, she saw Malfoy register her presence for the first time.  Not just her presence—but Daphne’s as well, her double in everything except their clothing. 

While Daphne wore neatly pressed, light blue robes, rolled purposely up to her sleeves as if she had been in the middle of some task when interrupted by the events unfolding in the kitchen, Hermione still had on the rumpled button-down and pleated skirt she had been wearing to Charms class earlier that day, before everything had gone terribly and completely wrong. 

Another strange and frozen minute passed. 

Hermione had spent months cataloging the different expressions Malfoy wore, including the ones he tried to hide and the ones he used to hide other things.  She had learned the curve of his lip when he tried not to smile, the tension in his jaw when he struggled not to say something, the tightening of his eyes in worry, and the way the tips of his ears flushed when he was nervous or angry. 

But in that moment, he seemed to cycle through so many emotions in rapid succession that she couldn’t catch any of them before his eyes turned black, the silver and grey gone completely as if a wall had been slammed down in front of them. 

“What the fuck is going on?”

Daphne suddenly caught Hermione’s eye and extracted herself from her younger sister carefully, moving toward the center of the room as if afraid doing so too quickly would cause the fighting to resume.

“Draco, let me explain,” she began, voice steady despite the tears still staining her cheeks, flicking her gaze between Malfoy and Hermione. 

“What the fuck?”  Malfoy hissed, and Hermione flinched at the viciousness in his tone. 

“I—Malfoy, I—”  Hermione had no idea what she was going to say, had not actually planned for this moment despite the hundreds of times that she had imagined it—though certainly never like this—and she faltered. 

“It’s you,” he said slowly.  Malfoy let out a bizarre laugh, one that sounded slightly hysterical and also more cruel than she had heard him sound in months.  “It’s fucking you.”

“Draco,” Daphne said, her tone with a warning edge now as if scolding him. 

Malfoy turned toward his fellow Slytherin again with an expression of barely controlled fury, but before he could speak, Lupin cut in.  This time the authoritative edge in his voice stopped even Malfoy from talking, and Hermione mentally retracted her earlier thought about the possible lack of organization in Order gatherings. 

“There is no time for this,” he said swiftly.  “Draco, as it seems that you have gathered, Hermione has in fact been at Hogwarts for the last few months in Daphne’s place.” 

Lupin’s tone was matter-of-fact, but Hermione still felt her stomach drop.  Malfoy didn’t respond, but she thought she saw his fist tighten around the wand still clenched in his left hand. 

“There are many things we apparently need to discuss, but first we need to know what happened at the castle after Hermione left.”

Malfoy drew in a deep breath as he seemed to evaluate Lupin.  His gaze flitted around the wide kitchen, rapidly taking in the multitude of battered copper pans hanging from the ceiling, the scarred table running the length of the room, and the doors leading to the rest of the house that revealed parts of the staircase and several shadowed corridors.  His eyes fixed on these pathways, and he came resignedly to some sort of decision. 

“The Carrows and Mulciber appeared in our Charms class.  They knocked out Flitwick, and attempted to take Longbottom with them.  Da—Granger stunned one of them, and Pansy stunned the other.  I believe Finnigan knocked out Amycus with his fists.” 

Malfoy’s tone was haughty, as if he was annoyed at having to relay this information, but Hermione could tell by now when it was covering his nerves. 

“Longbottom, Pansy, and the other seventh years still with us ran for the Room of Requirement.  Granger and I went the other way to find Astoria when we were cornered by—”  His gaze, still cold, fell upon her briefly and Hermione’s heart gave a small contraction.  “—my aunt Bellatrix and others with her.  Granger… left, and I went into the corridor to meet them.”

Lupin was listening intently.  Her invisible barrier gone, Harry had moved unconsciously toward Hermione, as if trying to come to stand defensively between her and Malfoy, and she wondered if he realized he had done it. 

“I convinced Bellatrix and Selwyn, who was with her, that I had given chase to Longbottom when I realized the Carrows had wanted him for something, but that I had lost him somewhere.  I told them that I thought he and the others had gone for Gryffindor Tower and they took off again.  They thought I was following but I slipped away toward the dungeons and managed to find Astoria.  She was still in Potions class.  I guess no one had interrupted them, and you couldn’t hear anything yet down there, so Slughorn was just carrying on.  I had to wait nearly half an hour before I managed to get her alone before she went back into the Slytherin common room when class let out.  But then…” 

Malfoy’s jaw tensed and Hermione saw a flicker of something in his eyes, possibly fear. 

“I was trying to explain why she needed to leave, and we were arguing, and then—there were more of them.”

Astoria suddenly stepped toward Malfoy, who stood at the center of the strange group, a determined look on her still-pale face.  “Draco—” 

Malfoy refused to look at her.  “Don’t, Astoria,” he snapped. 

Daphne’s brow furrowed in confusion, but understanding was growing slowly in Hermione’s mind.  “What happened?”  she asked, and Malfoy only glared at the floor. 

“I’ll tell them if you won’t,” Astoria said insistently. 

Malfoy’s shoulders were slumping now, and Hermione took an involuntary step toward him.  Harry looked at her in surprise as she brushed against his arm in doing so, and she drew back immediately. 

“I convinced her that she needed to leave.”  He hesitated.  “But I couldn’t get her back to the Room.  There were—others.  I don’t know how many, but I could hear them coming, and then Astoria said she had another way.” 

Malfoy’s eyes flicked to Hermione’s briefly and she knew he was thinking too of how she’d held out her own Portkey to him and how it had felt for a wild minute like they were standing on some kind of cliff that they might jump off together.  Had that been only hours ago?  Less, even?  Hermione thought dimly.  It could have been minutes, or days.  She felt terribly tired all of a sudden, and if she hadn’t been so invested in Malfoy’s continuing explanation, she might have collapsed right there on the kitchen floor. 

“I didn’t mean to come with her.”  The bitter edge in Malfoy’s tone must have been evident to everyone now.  “We were still arguing about it in the corridor when the Carrows appeared.  Someone must have revived them while I was waiting for Astoria outside of Slughorn’s.”

Hermione’s guilt clawed at her throat.  This was her fault.  She could see it playing out even before Malfoy finished describing the scene, and all she could think about was the hundreds of other things she could have done to prevent this ending.  If she hadn’t been the one to Stun Alecto earlier, or if she had gotten to Astoria herself quicker, or if she’d told Malfoy from the beginning what they thought might happen so he could have stayed away…

“I think they were looking for Astoria,” he said quietly, and Daphne paled.  “Alecto fired off some kind of curse at her, and I pulled her out of the way.  Of course, they were confused, and then furious.”  Malfoy made a brief noise of disgust. “They’re both idiots, obviously, but they did turn on me pretty quickly.  They got a few shots in before I Stunned one of them again, and then before I knew it, Astoria had grabbed me and wouldn’t let go and then—the next thing I knew I was here.” 

He sounded defeated. 

“You saved her life, Draco,” Daphne said quietly, gratitude filling her voice, and then she turned briefly toward Hermione.  “And so did you.”

Hermione’s distress at Daphne’s interpretation of the day’s events must have been immediately obvious because the other witch shook her head and smiled gently.  “We always knew this was dangerous.  And if you hadn’t been looking out for her, she would still be there, one way or another, where they could reach her.  I am glad for you, Hermione Granger.”

This generosity was almost too much to bear under the weight of her current emotional state, and Hermione felt a lump in her throat block her from speaking.  She made some sort of jerky nod at Daphne instead, and Astoria, who was beaming tearfully at her sister’s side now. 

“Draco,” Daphne said hesitantly, “I know what this must have cost you.”

He didn’t answer, but Hermione saw a flash of desperation break through the mask of indifference he was working to maintain. 

“I’m sorry, Draco,” Astoria offered, her face dropping quickly and her teeth worrying her bottom lip nervously.  “I’m so sorry.”

“No,” Malfoy replied abruptly, and he met the young girl’s gaze briefly.  “I’m not.  Don’t say that, Astoria.”

“So what does this mean now?” Ron interrupted suddenly, clearly unable to contain his questions any longer.  Malfoy seemed to seize on annoyance as an easier emotion on which to fixate and responded immediately. 

“It means, Weasley, that I’m not going to be welcome at home anytime soon.”  Frustration seeped out of him, and Malfoy started stalking the length of the room in short strides, seeming to stop and veer off quickly every time he came nearer to Hermione.  “And it means that I have no way to contact my parents safely and that they’re—they’re going to be the ones to answer for what I did.”

Ron, whose own irritation at Malfoy had started to resurface, instead looked uneasy at the words.  Harry frowned at Malfoy as if he was seeing him there for the first time, and Hermione remembered vividly that the last image he had of Malfoy was a terrified boy crying on the Astronomy Tower about how Voldemort would kill his parents if he didn’t follow through with his orders. 

“Maybe it’s not that bad,” she couldn’t help saying nervously.  “Are you sure you can’t explain that—that you just reacted to protect Astoria because you didn’t know what was going on, and she’s—she’s a pureblood and a family friend?”

Malfoy closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.  When he opened them again and answered, he spoke to the others and not her. 

“There’s too much.  I didn’t help the Carrows when they tried to grab Longbottom.  I didn’t wake them up before leaving to supposedly chase after him.  I saw Bellatrix and told her some story but then I disappeared down to the dungeons by myself, and the Carrows found me there with the person who they’d decided to go after because her sister had attacked them.  And now I’ve just been gone for much too long for some sort of excuse to make sense.”

Hermione’s heart sank.  Images of the bruises on Malfoy’s body after his return from Malfoy Manor and her own scarring forearm burned into her brain.  She knew he was right, and she didn’t want him going back, but the horror at what might happen to Narcissa because of his disappearance made her want to throw up.  Merlin, even the idea of Lucius Malfoy alone with a furious Voldemort was chilling. 

Lupin had been watching Malfoy closely, and Hermione recognized the look on the werewolf’s face as the one he had sometimes worn last summer when she was preparing to go to Hogwarts and he was considering her readiness.

“Draco,” Lupin began slowly, “Hermione has spoken for you, in so many words.”

Malfoy’s eyes, still black, snapped to hers, and she looked back into them with a show of bravery that she didn’t quite feel.

“I told them that you helped me with the diadem,” she said quietly, only speaking to Malfoy.  “I told them you brought it to me and that you helped me destroy it.”

The expression reflecting back at her turned thunderous and Hermione backtracked hastily. 

“Only Remus and Harry and Ron.  And Minerva.  That’s all, I promise.  They needed to know.” 

Predictably, this did nothing to appease Malfoy’s anger, which was now palpable from his flared nostrils and pursed lips.

“I’m sorry for telling them that you were doing something good, Malfoy—” Hermione shot back, her own temper flaring for the first time since Malfoy had appeared and shattered her ability to think straight. 

He snarled, prowling toward her in a movement that made Harry start and try to shield her again.  Hermione shoved her way around him and faced Malfoy head-on, finding it easier to feel the familiar anger coursing through her than the despair that had been enveloping her. 

“I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, Granger, and apparently I had no idea who the fuck you were either—”

“You knew you weren’t helping Voldemort when you did those things!”  Hermione yelled, the ability to finally speak her mind in front of Malfoy suddenly causing her to slightly lose it entirely in front of Harry and Lupin and the others.  “You knew and you knew what you were doing when you helped us save Luna and when you helped those first years—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Malfoy roared.  “Are you out of your goddamn mind—”

“That’s enough.”  Lupin’s own voice thundered above both of theirs and even Malfoy jumped slightly.  “Draco, I do not have time right now to fully debate the ethics of why or what you have done for the past year or so, though I assure you I look forward to doing so one day soon.”

A look of mixed fury and dread crossed Malfoy’s face but he remained silent. 

“What I need to know is if and how we can evacuate the rest of the students who may be in danger.” 

“They had a head start on all of the Death Eaters that I encountered,” Malfoy bit out.  “I’m certain they would have made it to the Room of Requirement.  They may be waiting to call Aberforth until they know it’s safe, but if you can contact him, he can get to them.  There’s a passage to the inn.”

“I—before, I told Ginny to keep everyone in the Room of Requirement until the Order sent for them and not to try to leave on their own.  If they got there okay, they should be fine.  For a while.”  Hermione could tell her voice sounded shaky, and the tight look on Harry’s face told her that he was only minimally reassured. 

Lupin, however, nodded thoughtfully.  “How many students do you think will be there, Hermione?”

“Well, I know Neville, Seamus, Lavender, Parvati, Padma, Pansy, and Theo were going straight there.  Oh, and Ernie McMillan and Terry Boot were with them, so that’s at least ten.  Ginny.”  She bit her lip, sending a silent prayer that this was true.  “Whoever she was with when she got our message that she would have thought might be targeted, so probably other sixth years from the D.A.  Maybe five or so more.”  The dark thought that had been returning to her surfaced again.  “Maybe we should have warned more students.  The—the younger ones.  We thought it would be worse for them and their families if they just disappeared when we didn’t know why the Death Eaters were even coming but…”

Hermione trailed off, visions of the first-year Gryffindors who had withstood the Carrows now facing Bellatrix’s wand appearing in front of her. 

“You all did an extraordinary thing acting as you did, Hermione,” Lupin said quietly.  “I don’t know exactly why they were there either, but I suspect we will learn that they were targeting students connected to known Order members if they sought out Neville.  Your instincts were likely correct.”

“Remus, that means Ginny—” Harry broke in, frustration creeping into his voice. 

The werewolf nodded swiftly in thanks at Malfoy and Hermione and turned to Harry, who looked ready to explode. 

“You’re right.  You and Ron go find Kreacher; see if the elf can Apparate into the Hog’s Head.  If so, and Aberforth has a way to get the students out or the elf can help, we can start bringing them here.  If not, we’ll need more Portkeys, which could be trickier.  And send a message to the members on duty at Shell Cottage tonight.  I imagine we will need their assistance as well before the night is over.”

Harry didn’t need to be told twice, mind clearly fixated on Ginny.  He squeezed Hermione’s hand briefly, then half-sprinted out of the room with Ron, who threw one last suspicious look over his shoulder at Malfoy but followed.

“I have to leave,” Malfoy said immediately before anyone else could speak again.

“I’m sorry, what?”  Hermione replied before she could stop herself. 

Malfoy suddenly looked even less composed than he already had, and less so than she had seen him in recent memory.  “My mother is in the Manor, with Voldemort.”  His voice was harsh, and the jagged sound felt like it reverberated directly into the hollow spot in Hermione’s chest.  “He will kill her if I don’t go back.  I cannot just—just hide here, or defect to the Order, or whatever you lot think is happening here, unless you have a way to get her out.”

“He’ll kill you,” Hermione burst out, and Malfoy only fixed her with a defiant look in return. 

“He’ll kill them if I don’t.  If I go, maybe…”  He broke off, but Malfoy didn’t have to finish for Hermione to know what he had been about to say. 

“Maybe what, Draco?  He’ll kill you instead?” 

She was nearly shrieking now, and Lupin looked at her in concern.  Despite the confusing swarm of thoughts that was making her feel like she was seeing the others as if through a thick glass wall, Hermione still caught Malfoy flinching at her use of his first name. 

“I’m so sorry, I know how much you want to protect your mother, but you’re just going to get all three of you killed and maybe other people, too, if you go back there alone.”

Anger warred with despair on his sharp features.  “You have no idea what I want, Granger,” he spat, but Hermione was so furious that she could pretend the words stung less than they did.

Daphne had drifted back toward Astoria almost unconsciously and looked close to tears again, though her eyes were hard.  Astoria looked distraught, guilt wracking her delicate features as if she thought she was about to have the Malfoys’ blood on her own hands, which were now visibly trembling as she clung to her sister’s arm. 

Lupin only looked weary.  He was rubbing his lined forehead and appeared on the verge of intervening, but Hermione took a deep breath to calm herself and charged ahead. 

“What I know is that if you show up there right now, by yourself, with no plan, there’s a chance they’ll find out more than that you ran away tonight.  Right now, no one knows why you saved Astoria, or why you didn’t join the Death Eaters at the castle.  Your father is—”  Hermione successfully held back a grimace.  “—smart.  He’ll tell them that you’ve been friends with the Greengrass sisters for years, that surely you were scared and they should’ve told you what they were doing there before they showed up and then you would’ve helped rather than run away.  And maybe that will be enough to—to help your parents for now.”

Malfoy was looking at her now, really looking at her for the first time that night since he’d figured out who she was, and though his grey eyes still smoldered at her with suppressed anger, there was some sort of feverish quality to the way he watched her speak, as if he wanted to believe what she was saying at the same time he was trying to hate her.  Or, maybe, really did hate her, but she couldn’t think about that now.

“I know that you must be an incredible Occlumens to have gotten this far.  But Voldemort would question you until you either broke, or you were dead, and that helps no one.” 

Especially not me, a small voice protested in her head. 

“It’s better that they believe you are a coward than they find out the truth about anything else you’ve done this year, Draco,” Hermione finished quietly, and a flush appeared on Malfoy’s cheeks.

“Then what?  I stay here, hide out like the rest of you?  Wait until he kills my mother and then comes to kill me here?”

A strange look crossed Lupin’s face.  “We’re doing more than hiding, Draco.  If you intend to stay, as Hermione has compellingly pointed out is your best chance for staying alive, we can certainly discuss your options.”

The word ‘options’ had barely left Lupin’s lips before Malfoy’s face twisted into an ugly sneer. 

“Yes, Draco.”  Lupin’s ability to stay calm still amazed Hermione, who had never acquired the same capacity at any level.  “I am aware that you feel you have not had the luxury of such things in the past, and I am afraid none of us have very many at the moment.  But I still believe we can exercise some free will.”

“Will you help me go rescue my mother tonight?”  Malfoy asked abruptly, glaring boldly back at Lupin.

Hermione knew before Lupin spoke what he would say.  Remus Lupin had sacrificed nearly everything for his friends, for his family, and now for the rest of the world, and almost twenty years ago he had watched those he loved the most do the same.  He knew more than anyone what it would mean to tell Malfoy that he didn’t have a way.  She didn’t want him to say it.  But she knew he would, and her stomach dropped with dread as she turned away, blinking back tears furiously. 

“I am sorry, Draco,” Lupin said quietly.  “You must understand that I do not have the resources to retrieve your mother from the Manor tonight.  It would be a suicide mission.  But I will help you.  We will help you.”

Malfoy looked like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  Hermione thought again of Dumbledore, only offering an outstretched hand to a sixteen-year-old boy at the eleventh hour, after months of deception and lies.  She took a step to face him, feeling drained. 

“Draco,” Hermione said softly.  “You can trust us.”

His eyes snapped to hers once more.  They were searching and still more open than at any point yet that night and it was disarming.  The walls that had been fixed there were gone, to reveal more shades of silver and grey than she had thought existed, pinning her to where she stood. 

“You have not given me good cause recently to trust you, Granger,” he spoke slowly, his tone bitter. 

It hurt.  She had gotten accustomed to him speaking to her like he spoke to Daphne, or her as Daphne, or whatever the fuck had been going on.  Before she could respond, the actual Daphne stepped forward. 

“Draco,” Daphne called softly.  “What happened before, at Hogwarts.  Hermione and the others didn’t do all of this without my permission.  And they didn’t do it just for themselves.  They did it for me, and for Astoria, and for everyone.”

With what looked like considerable effort, Malfoy wrenched his eyes from Hermione and faced Daphne.  His blonde hair was mussed, matching his dirty robes, and his face was paler than normal.  He looked lost, and suddenly very young. 

Daphne gave him an encouraging, sad smile.  “They will help you save Narcissa, like they helped me save Astoria.  That’s the whole point.”

No one spoke for a long moment.  Hermione could hear the steady ticking of the grandfather clock that stood at the end of the kitchen, imperiously engraved with every symbol of the House of Black and looking as imposing as any piece of furniture could.  She had never quite decided whether she preferred the ominous pretension of this clock or the anxiety-inducing fortune telling of the Weasley family’s clock. 

“How?”  Malfoy finally said, resigned.  Lupin studied him again, fingers on his chin in thoughtful consideration.

“As I see it, you have two options, Draco.  You may remain here or in another safehouse, under the protective custody of the Order, where you will be further questioned about Hermione’s recounting of recent events but told nothing of the Order’s activities during your stay.”

“Remus—” Hermione began. 

Lupin did not pause and his voice raised slightly to speak over Hermione, though it remained even.  “Or you may help us, as I understand you have already done.  I assure you, the Order is not simply hiding out, something I think you have surmised over the last months.”

Malfoy stilled.  Lupin’s eyes were hard and unwavering as he stared back at the younger man.

Hermione felt the faintest pressure on her arm and looked quickly to her left to see that Daphne had drawn up close beside her, her pale and anxious face matching Hermione’s own. 

“I understand,” Malfoy replied quietly.  “I don’t want to hide, either.”

“In that case, there must be an Unbreakable Vow,” Lupin continued grimly. 

“Remus—”

Malfoy glared briefly at her.  “Stay out of this, Granger.”

“Unbreakable Vows are incredibly dangerous, and the phrasing—”

It was like she wasn’t even there. 

“Draco, I apologize, but others will not be as trusting as the people in this room about your motives or as believing about the things you have already done for the Order.  Until they have time to adjust, and understand, I cannot allow you to have access to sensitive information without this condition.”

“Absolutely not,” Hermione cut in again vehemently.  “This is completely unnecessary—”

“I’ll do it.”  Malfoy spoke without hesitation and Hermione looked desperately between Daphne and Lupin as if trying to get someone to agree with her that things were rapidly spiraling out of control. 

“We will need a binder,” Lupin said. 

Harry and Ron, Kreacher in tow, had apparently returned without her notice, and Hermione felt her fury turn on Harry when he spoke.  “I know the spell.”

“You have all lost your minds,” Hermione fumed.  “You’re going to get him killed.”

“That’s really none of your business,” Malfoy said coolly, and she felt it like a punch in the stomach. 

“Hermione, if you are going to interfere, I must ask you to leave,” Lupin said, tone gentle but firm.  She shook her head stiffly and folded her arms, moving away from the small circle now gathered in the center of the room.  Daphne dropped her hand from Hermione’s arm but followed her to the other side of the kitchen. 

“If I do this,” Malfoy said suddenly.  “You will save my mother even if I die.”

Hermione swayed and Daphne’s grip returning to her bicep was the only that prevented her from losing her footing.  The clock chimed again, and she realized dimly that it was only six o’clock.  It felt like years had passed since she had been sitting beside Malfoy in Charms, decades since they had eaten breakfast together where he had passed her berries for her porridge without asking and she had chastised Theo for speculating whether he could convince Minerva to try catnip when she was showing them her Animagus form again later that week.  

“Yes,” Lupin promised, and Malfoy looked as if he was searching for a reason to doubt the older man.  The older man simply gazed back at him and finally Malfoy nodded.

“The spell?”

Harry stepped forward and withdrew his wand.  “Ready.”

She watched in disbelief as the two men gripped each other’s wrists.

“Do you, Draco Malfoy, swear that you will do everything in your power not to reveal to Voldemort nor any of his followers the location of the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, nor the identities of any of the members?”

“I swear.”  Malfoy’s voice rang out into the kitchen. 

“Do you, Draco Malfoy, swear that you will not reveal, to anyone outside this room, what you know about the diadem of Ravenclaw and its destruction, until and unless one of us in this room has said otherwise?”

“I swear.”  Hermione felt rather than saw Daphne shift in confusion at this condition, but the other witch remained silent.

“Do you, Draco Malfoy, pledge that you will never return to the service of the one who calls himself Lord Voldemort, unless it is to aid somehow in the work of the Order of the Phoenix?”

And Malfoy’s answer came so quickly this time that Lupin had barely finished speaking, the words escaping his lips as if in a surge of relief as much as a vow.

“I swear.”

The light encasing the place where Malfoy and Remus were joined swelled and brightened before vanishing.  Malfoy looked like he was breathing hard, and Remus looked both profoundly sad and somehow hopeful as he watched the younger man gather his composure. 

“We’ll have time to talk more later,” Remus said quietly, and the spell that had kept the occupants of the room from speaking seemed to break.  Malfoy shot a swift look at Hermione, almost reluctantly.  She was rooted to the spot, still trying to grasp the consequences of the scene that had just unfolded in front of her. 

“Harry,” Lupin said, turning his attention now to the spectacled wizard who was lowering his wand and looking at Malfoy with a funny expression.  “Did you and Ron have any success?”

“Oh, right.”  Harry shook himself from his thoughts and turned to the elf.  “Kreacher, you can get into the Hog’s Head, yeah?”

An energetic nod came from the small creature beside him.  “Yes, Kreacher can go directly and won’t be seen, he is knowing how to be careful.”

“Bill, Dean, Susan, and Kingsley are going to start making preparations to house students at the other safehouses, and they’ll be here soon in case anything goes wrong retrieving the other students,” Ron added. 

“Good.  Daphne—please send a Patronus to Andromeda and warn her she may be needed for the other students.  I’m sure she would rather not leave Tonks and the baby but they’ll be alright with Ted and Luna there if we need a more practiced Healer here.  Hopefully, that won’t be necessary.”

Daphne gave a businesslike nod, practiced as if she had become accustomed to taking orders such as these, and her own noting of this caused Hermione to miss the significance of Lupin’s words for a moment.

“Wait—” she yelped suddenly, and the others reacted with various instinctive shows of concern.  “The baby?  Lupin, did Tonks have the baby?!”

A rare grin split over Lupin’s face despite the circumstances, making him suddenly look at least ten years younger.  “She did.  I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you, Hermione.  I know she can’t wait for you to meet him.  Teddy was born here a few days ago, but Tonks took him to her mother’s for the night earlier today.”

The shock of joy she felt was a foreign sensation in her body, and Hermione reveled in it for a moment.  “And is he—is he—”

“A Metamorphmagus,” Lupin said proudly.  “Like his mother.”

Hermione gasped in delight.  Harry smiled affectionately as he watched her, but she could tell he was still barely containing his urge to take off for Hogwarts, or Hogsmeade, and Ginny, patience hanging on by a thread.  He pulled Lupin’s attention back to their planning, drawing Ron into the conversation as Daphne summoned her Patronus and began instructing it to deliver a message to Andromeda.

Malfoy was standing in silence, but a peculiar look had crossed his features.  “Lupin and Tonks.”  His voice was very quiet, and she had to strain to hear him from the distance between them.  “It’s my second cousin, then.”

She didn’t know how to respond to this pronouncement, which was certainly true, if as surreal as anything that had happened that day.  Before she could think of anything to say, Hermione realized Malfoy hadn’t just deigned to look at her again but was staring at her now, eyes wide and stark.  With a jolt of understanding, she touched the tips of her hair.  Rough, tangled curls met her fingers, instead of glossy strands.  At some point during the last hour, the Polyjuice must have worn off.  Immediately, her eyes flew next to her left forearm and her right hand moved to cover it. 

Malfoy watched the movement closely, his face inscrutable once more.  Hermione felt incredibly exposed, standing in front of him in her own skin for the first time.  Guilt twisted in her stomach.

“It’s really you.”

She gave a half-hearted shrug, stomach still in knots.  “Yes.”

A pause.  Malfoy opened his mouth to say something else, but the conversation between Lupin, Harry, and Ron suddenly ceased and he closed it again.  Hermione wasn’t sure if she felt relieved or cheated.

“Hermione,” Harry called, and she refocused.  “Can you start making some extra Portkeys to the other safehouses while we start with Kreacher?  If they come here first, we’ll sort everyone out once we make sure they’re okay and then divvy everyone up at least for tonight wherever there’s room.  Daph can help you.”

She nodded quickly and moved away from Malfoy.  But as Hermione began delegating to Astoria the task of finding suitable spare objects and organizing them, and discussing the current inventory of Portkeys at Grimmauld Place with Daphne, she could feel his eyes boring into her back, the heat distracting her.

…

Ginny was the second to last to return from Hogwarts, after Neville.  Aberforth had been up in arms about the entire escapade, ranting about how he had already had Death Eaters crawling through his pub earlier that night, which meant that he had made them wait another two hours until the dinner rush was over before he would pretend to close up early due to a lack of customers and allow the students through the passageway from Hogwarts to be Apparated out by Kreacher. 

In total, the Order had evacuated nineteen Hogwarts students out from under the nose of the Death Eaters.  As it had turned out, Ginny had been the one to send the message on the charmed Galleon, but only because she had been warned by Minerva, who’d seen the Death Eaters herself coming up the front path to the school.  As she had been in the Gryffindor common room and not in class, Ginny had managed to gather essentially all of the remaining D.A. members and various siblings and get them to the Room of Requirement unscathed, a miracle that Hermione still couldn’t quite believe.  Harry wouldn’t stop looking at the redhead adoringly.

Given the fact that Death Eaters had attempted to abduct one of their own earlier that day and possibly would have tried to do more, there was a surprisingly celebratory mood at Grimmauld Place that night.  The excitement of being reunited was apparently too infectious for most to dwell on the why and how of the Death Eaters’ actions, and in any event, Ginny had been able to ascertain from speaking with several portraits that were able to reach them in the Room (a useful trick) that it seemed like they hadn’t lingered in the castle after their unsuccessful pursuits.  According to one of the monks who had made their way down to the Great Hall through various frames, even Flitwick had been at dinner, though Snape was notably absent. 

Hermione sat next to Harry and Ginny, numbly observing the different clusters of people.  She and Daphne had quickly convened before the other seventh years returned and decided it was best not to break the news tonight to Pansy or Theo (or anyone else) about their concealment over the past term.  While inevitably the new residents of the Order’s quarters would learn that the Greengrass family, or at least the two sisters, had joined their side, it seemed another unnecessary risk altogether to have over a dozen more people know Hermione had been at Hogwarts for months.  This had been easy for Hermione to agree to in the moment, not only for this logical reason, but also because it allowed her to avoid a confrontation with Pansy or an exhausting conversation with anyone else that night.  After Malfoy’s reaction, she wasn’t sure anyone else’s could hurt as much, but it wasn’t something she was looking forward to.

The blonde wizard in question was sitting in the corner of the library with Pansy, Neville, Theo, and Blaise and Luna, who had appeared at Grimmauld Place shortly after Andromeda had received Daphne’s Patronus.  Malfoy was clearly uncomfortable and had a permanently wary look on his face as he sipped a Butterbeer and glared back at the other revelers who were sending glares his way, and Hermione couldn’t stop herself from looking over at him every few minutes as if to check again that he was really there. 

Malfoy was part of the Order now, she reminded herself.  And, according to Lupin, he was going to live at Grimmauld Place for the time being. 

With her.

She shook her head to physically clear her thoughts and took a sip of her own Butterbeer in the hopes it would do the same.  The whiplash from the day was almost too much to process. 

It made sense that Malfoy would stay here; Lupin and Tonks, who were the most senior members of the Order (besides Minerva) that might be willing to trust Malfoy, were living there.  She, Harry, and Ginny would be as well, and given that it had the largest number of rooms—and the least number of people likely to be hostile toward any Slytherins—it seemed likely that a combination of Pansy, Neville, and Theo would be as well.  Astoria was headed to Tonks Cottage with Daphne, who had been staying with Andromeda and Ted along with Blaise and Luna.  Ron, Hermione mused, had been oddly quiet when she asked where he’d been lately, but she assumed he still had his room here.

Yet, the fact that Malfoy would be trapped in Grimmauld Place with her for the foreseeable future was weirdly daunting. Hermione had spent months living in theoretically closer quarters with him in the Head dorms, but this—with so many other people watching them, and his new (old) hostility toward her—made her anxious already.

Despite all of this, as she crawled into bed later that night, the old feather mattress groaning as it always did, the room Hermione had shared with Ginny off and on since she was fifteen felt incredibly foreign.  She suddenly missed the Head dorms with a tangible ache, and the odd comfort she had found there in knowing only she and Malfoy were there each night.  It was not lost on Hermione how insane it was that she had somehow felt safer alone with a Death Eater in the castle than she now felt back in her own body with her friends in a safehouse.

In the morning, Hermione thought with a twinge of sadness, she would have to make her own tea for the first time since September. 

Chapter Text

February 1998

“So, it really is you,” Pansy remarked, looking at Hermione with unabashed fascination as she entered the kitchen the next morning.  Hermione had purposefully woken up before everyone else, or so she had thought, hoping to have her coffee in peace before anyone started interrogating her or yelling at her or generally initiated any other forced emotionally fraught interaction. 

“Yes, Pansy, it’s me,” Hermione sighed, reaching for the coffeepot blearily.  “It’s been me the whole time.  I’m assuming Daphne told you that already.  You can scream at me as soon as I’ve had some caffeine, please.”

Pansy snorted and crossed the kitchen toward the breakfast table, cinching the belt of her silk dressing gown tighter as she settled elegantly into a wooden chair.  “I’m not in the mood to scream at you, actually.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow at her as she poured the steaming liquid into a mug.  “Really?” she asked skeptically.  “In my experience, you rather enjoy screaming at people.”

“That is true,” Pansy said, as if she was seriously considering changing her mind.  “I do reserve my right to do so.”  Dark eyes narrowed at her and Hermione braced herself warily.  “But actually I wanted to thank you.”

Pansy merely watched as Hermione nearly dropped her full mug onto the ground and swore in response.  “Thank me?” she sputtered. 

“That’s right.”  Pansy looked down at her hand, examining her nails critically.  “Don’t get used to it or anything.”

“Um, okay.”  Hermione sank into a chair across from the other witch and looked at her nervously. 

“Daphne is safe.  Astoria is safe.  I am safe.”  A soft look flitted across Pansy’s face before she straightened up again.  “And Neville is here.”

Hermione hid a smile behind a sip of her coffee.  “That’s true.”

“I’m just saying, you are at least partially responsible for several of those things.”  Her eyes met Hermione’s across the table again and they were hard but serious now.  “So, thank you.”

Hermione held the other girl’s gaze for a moment.  “You’re welcome.”  And she felt how much she meant it, Hermione’s unexpected fondness for the witch across from her making her throat tighten around the words.  The knot in her stomach that had been there since yesterday afternoon loosened slightly. 

A clatter from behind Pansy drew both of their attention, breaking the moment.  Neville had emerged from the stairs, blinking sleep from his eyes in a way that made him look distinctly like the eleven-year-old that Hermione used to stay up late helping with homework assignments when he was anxious about Snape’s insults or impressing Professor Sprout.   

“Morning,” Neville said to Hermione, smiling, and then he swooped down to Pansy and kissed her in greeting in a way so thorough that it absolutely did not remind Hermione of the eleven-year-old Gryffindor she had once known. 

“Ew, gross.  There’s, like, ten other bedrooms in this house, you know,” Ginny complained, padding into the kitchen herself and stumbling into this scene unwittingly.  Her disgust was somewhat undermined by the fact that Harry was trailing along at her heels, a dreamy look on his face that was a bit too self-satisfied for Hermione to stomach this early, either. 

The other couple started fixing toast and coffee and Neville had the decency to blush slightly before settling in the chair next to Pansy.  He took a sip from her mug of tea and she swatted his hand away playfully when he tried for another. 

Hermione felt suddenly and strangely like she was intruding, watching her four friends all interact comfortably like this domestic routine had been established long ago and not thrust upon them suddenly less than twenty-four hours ago.  She busied herself with another long drink of coffee and tried to ignore it.

“You know, it wasn’t Daphne.”

“Excuse me?”

“Daphne,” Pansy was continuing, tone light.  “She wasn’t the one who told me what you had been doing.”  She eyed Hermione with a look that was a bit too shrewd for Hermione’s liking.   “It was Draco.”

Ginny swiveled around from where she was standing at the counter with unconcealed interest.  “Was it really?” she said, her own voice suspiciously casual.

Hermione shot her a warning glare, but the redhead ignored it.

“What did he say?” Ginny asked Pansy.

The witch shrugged and didn’t take her eyes off Hermione.  “Last night, he told me and Theo and Neville that you had been Polyjuicing yourself into Daphne since we returned to Hogwarts on some sort of Order mission to spy on him and keep Daphne and her family out of the Death Eaters’ way.  That’s correct, no?”

“No,” Hermione retorted indignantly.  “That’s not correct!”

“So you weren’t using Polyjuice to pretend to be Daphne?”

“I—no, yes, I was.”

“Then you weren’t doing it because the Greengrass family defected to the Order and didn’t want anyone on Voldemort’s side to find out?”

“Well—yes, but—”

“Oh, so then you weren’t spying on Draco?”

Pansy smiled like a self-satisfied cat, and Hermione scowled at her.  It was way too early for this.  What was everyone else doing up, anyway?  She’d been the only one to go to bed at a respectable hour.

“I wasn’t spying on him, I was—” Even Harry was now watching her, eyebrows lifted in curiosity.  Hermione sighed in defeat.  At least Malfoy wasn’t here to listen to her first attempt to explain herself go so poorly. 

“I suppose, at first, I thought I might find out he was up to something—something like last year.” 

She shot a look at Harry, who actually had spied on Malfoy for nearly a year, but he only continued chewing his toast and listening in interest. 

“And yes, I thought if that happened, I would need to tell the Order.  But that wasn’t the reason I was there.  And I had no idea I’d be put in the dorm with him,” she added quickly.  Her defensive tone made even Neville look at her askance, which in turn made her blush. 

“Look, there were three other Death Eaters in the castle, and there were—there were other reasons I needed to be there, that had nothing to do with Draco.”

This time Harry’s face did settle into grim understanding.  Ginny, however, was still smirking, and Hermione thought, not for the first time, that it was quite unfortunate that she was now going to be subject to the joint efforts of Pansy and Ginny to get information out of her and just generally wreak havoc on the rest of them. 

“Well, it sounds like you got more than you expected.”  Pansy’s tone was loaded and Hermione glared at her as Ginny snickered.  From beside Pansy, Hermione saw Neville hiding a smile behind the mug of tea he’d poured himself and she sighed inwardly.  If Malfoy ever did deign to speak to her again, they’d apparently have a very invested audience in the outcome.

Before Hermione could dissuade further discussion on this topic, the kitchen door swung open and Tonks clattered through, her husband trailing behind her and looking completely knackered.  In the Auror’s arms, there was a bundle of yellow topped with a bright turquoise tuft of hair, and Hermione forgot all thoughts of how to silence Pansy and Ginny. 

“Teddy!” she cried in delight, jumping out of her chair. 

Tonks grinned tiredly.  “Wotcher, Hermione.”  She shuffled over to the group and hoisted the infant readily into Hermione’s waiting arms.  “All yours.”

A gurgle came from the baby in question, whose bright eyes settled on Hermione’s face with a look that seemed far too intelligent for someone who’d been born less than a week ago.

“He’s beautiful,” Hermione cooed.  Harry came over to her side, grinning sheepishly down at the newest member of the Lupin family. 

“He’s loud,” Tonks replied fondly, yawning as she conjured another pot of coffee from Hermione’s leftovers and grabbed two mugs from the cupboard.  “And about as much of a morning person as his mother.  But thanks.” 

The others broke off into conversation about the previous evening as Hermione and Harry stared down in awe at the precious thing in Hermione’s arms.

“Can you believe it?” she whispered.

“No,” Harry whispered back, her own wonder reflected in his voice.  “Did they tell you the other part?”

A chubby arm escaped from where it had been tucked snuggly into Teddy’s blanket and she stroked it carefully.  “What?” Hermione asked, distracted. 

When she looked up, Harry’s smile was even wider.  “We’re the godparents.”

Hermione whipped her head around to the new parents who were now sitting at the kitchen table, her jaw hanging open.  Tonks was watching them with her own grin, Lupin with a soft smile of his own next to her.

“If you’re up for the job,” Tonks said, laughing at the shocked expression on Hermione’s face. 

Tears filled Hermione’s eyes and she cleared her throat loudly.  “I—of course.”

With a reflexive ache, Hermione thought involuntarily of her own parents and what they might be doing.  While the hollow place in her chest throbbed predictably, a new feeling wrapped around her comfortingly.  She wondered at the novelty of Tonks giving birth in the middle of a war, of having a quiet breakfast with people she loved when yesterday she had been dodging curses from people who sought to kill them, at the tiny baby making babbling noises from her arms. 

Harry nudged her gently in the side with his hip and she smiled up at him, eyes still watery.  Without another word, Hermione could tell he was thinking the same things:  of James and Lily and Sirius, and how lucky she and Harry were to have been taken in by this assortment of misfits and now themselves entrusted with the life of one more.

…

A rap came from her bedroom door shortly after she had left breakfast.  Hermione had reluctantly returned Teddy to Tonks so he could nap and was contemplating going back to bed herself.  It felt like the last six months were hitting her all at once, the constant vigilance and multitude of things to worry about at all times in the castle still fraying her nerves and leaving her now in their absence with an odd anxious feeling, like she had somewhere to be and had forgotten to go.

“Come in,” she called.

To her surprise, it wasn’t Harry or Ron, who were supposed to be meeting her later.  Theo instead stood in the doorway, hair mussed from sleep and still in linen pajamas that made him look much younger than anyone looking at her with that serious of an expression should really be.

“Theo,” Hermione said, gesturing for him to come in.  “Is everything alright?”

He nodded and closed the door behind him as he went to take a seat at the small writing desk in the corner of her and Ginny’s room.  “Yes, thank you.”

She nodded, still puzzled, and sat down on the bed across from him, feeling slightly awkward.  “Alright.”

A beat passed and Theo still didn’t say anything.  He was looking around the room with mild interest, taking in the morning light filtering in from the large-paneled window overlooking the square in front of the townhouse, Hermione’s own trunk from her Hogwarts years resting near the door where she’d left it last summer, the two large fourposter beds with layers of patterned quilts Mrs. Weasley had provided after the girls had spent hours scouring the mattresses and throwing away most of the linens in the house the summer before fifth year. 

“I wanted to thank you,” he said finally, still absently observing their surroundings rather than meeting her gaze.

“What?”  Hermione hadn’t really thought Theo one to yell at her, but the grateful reactions of the Slytherins—besides Malfoy—were so far suspiciously calm.

Theo nodded gravely.  “For helping Daphne and Astoria.  And all of us.”

While the others had lingered for hours after the flurried arrival of the other students from Hogwarts the night before, Daphne had taken Astoria back almost immediately to Tonks’ parents’ house, the younger witch eager to be reunited with their parents and neither willing to leave the other’s side.  Hermione realized with dawning curiosity that Daphne and Theo may have not gotten to speak yet, at least not alone.

“You don’t need to thank me, Theo,” Hermione replied quickly.  “I’m sorry for having to lie to you.  I…”  The feeling of awkwardness returned.  These conversations had been sprung upon her so unexpectedly that she hadn’t had time to prepare, to organize her own thoughts and feelings and try to articulate them in a way that would hopefully make the others understand that she was grateful, too.  “It’s been a hard term.  But having you, and Blaise, and Pansy…  It was surprisingly wonderful.”

Theo smiled for the first time since he’d entered the room and it set her slightly more at ease.  “Well, the best part about all of this is that I know now that I finally got higher marks than Hermione Granger in some of my classes.”

She rolled her eyes and suppressed the urge to argue the point.  “Don’t get used to it, Nott.  I was a bit preoccupied.”

“Sure.”  The smile faded and Theo cleared his throat softly.  “I actually wanted to ask you something.”

The renewed intensity on his face took Hermione aback for a moment.  He looked not only deadly serious but nervous somehow, though unlike his usual manner of agitation at school which had often caused cups of tea to overturn at breakfast and inkpots to spill across their desks as he fidgeted, this time he was completely still.  “Of course.”

Theo took a deep breath.  “I would like to stay here.  With the Order.  I don’t know exactly whose decision that is or if they’ll let me, but I was hoping that you might talk to them for me.”

“Theo—” Hermione started and then stopped.  “No one is going to make you go anywhere.  The Order is going to protect everyone that had to leave Hogwarts yesterday, I promise you that.”  She frowned in confusion.  “Didn’t Lupin say that last night?”

“I know,” Theo said quickly.  “Yes.  But that’s not exactly what I meant.  I meant…  I meant I’d like to join.”

Surprise filled Hermione and it must have shown on her face because he continued in a rush.

“I don’t know how it works, of course, but Blaise and Luna said that if we’re of age that they let others join.”

“Blaise said?”

Theo nodded.  “Last night.  Hermione, I have to say, even I didn’t realize that this is where you had sent Blaise.  That was brilliant, really.  Quite incredible.”

Hermione felt too staggered to respond to his effusive praise. 

“Are you saying Blaise joined the Order?” 

Blaise, the only remaining member of the Zabini family in England, so intent on maintaining its neutrality that his mother and her newest husband had fled the country years ago when Voldemort’s return was hinted at and left him with instructions to keep his head down and join them immediately once he was out of school.

“Yes,” Theo confirmed.  “He told us that he and Luna officially joined a few days ago, once she had recovered from the” —he looked a bit ill suddenly—  “from what happened to Luna over the holidays.”

“Well, that’s great,” Hermione said, baffled.  Something nagged at her.  “Wait, what do you mean ‘even’ you didn’t realize?”

A shadow of guilt crossed over Theo’s face. 

“Nothing.  Though, Hermione, I should tell you…”  He hesitated.  “I’ve known for a while that it was you.”

“What?”

“Yes,” he confirmed.  “I mean, you did a brilliant job, really, top-notch.  It’s not your fault.”

“Er, thanks?”

“You’re welcome.”

Hermione sighed and crossed her arms over her chest.  “How did you figure it out?” she asked stubbornly.  “And why didn’t you say anything?”

A corner of Theo’s mouth quirked upwards and he looked away toward the door.  “I’ve known Daphne a long time, Hermione,” he replied softly.

That was hardly a satisfactory answer.  Something in his voice made Hermione’s heart twist, and she opened her mouth to ask him another question before snapping it shut again.  Not her business.  She’d done enough meddling in Daphne’s life, that was for sure.

“Malfoy didn’t know,” she pointed out instead, feeling slightly resentful and not certain why.

At that, Theo let out a low chuckle.  “Yes, well, Draco has his strengths.  Self-awareness has not always been one of them.”  He smiled at her and it looked too knowing for her taste.  “He’ll come around.”

She snorted, averting her eyes uncomfortably.  “Doesn’t seem likely.”  Hermione kept her own tone flippant as if this was an insignificant problem.  “Anyway, getting back to the matter at hand, I am absolutely happy to talk to the Order for you, Theo, but I don’t think you need me to.”

The amusement left Theo’s face and his posture straightened again, too formal for his rumpled pajamas.  “Yes, well.  I think many of them are familiar only with my father.”

Hermione thought sadly of Daphne’s description of Theo’s upbringing from their conversations the past summer. 

“Don’t worry about that, Theo,” she said firmly.  “There are a lot of people here who’ve made different choices than their families.”

…

Their first full day at Grimmauld Place seemed to last forever.  After Hermione spoke with Theo, she returned downstairs to the library and gave her full debrief on the events that had transpired at Hogwarts recently to Lupin and Tonks, where she did convey her full support for Theo, and Pansy, and, in more mild-mannered terms than the night before, explained Malfoy’s contributions to the cause in what she hoped was as honest but detailed a manner as she could.  They listened attentively and she left feeling somewhat assured. 

Immediately after, she finally showered and dressed before dragging herself to Harry’s room (which was really Sirius’s old room), where he and Ron were already waiting for her.  They listened in amazement as she described destroying the diadem in detail and then brandished the additional Basilisk fangs she had managed to get out of the castle in her beaded bag despite her narrow escape.  To his credit, Ron made only two snarky comments about Malfoy during the story, one to ask if Hermione thought Malfoy had seemed particularly at home in the Chamber and another to remind her of the Slytherin’s denial of his role in the endeavor during his outburst at Hermione the day before.  Harry brushed him off in shared annoyance with Hermione and unleashed a torrent of questions about what exactly the Horcrux had done when she had stabbed it.

“You know what this means,” he said excitedly.  “We could do the locket today.”

Hermione nodded enthusiastically.  “Yes.  I think we should wait only so that we know there won’t be anyone else around to overhear,” the new residents of Grimmauld Place, except for Malfoy, were extremely underfoot that day as they explored their new surroundings, “but there’s no real reason to wait.”

After some additional hypothesizing about potential locations for said destruction, the trio agreed to reconvene as soon as they could get Lupin alone, and Hermione tucked the fangs and the locket in her beaded bag.  Harry was getting to his feet and already halfway out the door, clearly eager to get back to Ginny and continue their reunion (Hermione cut him off when he started making sheepish excuses and just waved him off toward the exit).  Ron, however, lingered, and Hermione felt a sense of déjà vu wash over her as she remembered their more recent conversations in person.

“Hermione?”

She turned, busying herself with the clasp on her bag and avoiding eye contact for longer than was strictly necessary as Harry disappeared from the room. 

“Yes, Ron?”

“Er… do you think we could, you know, talk?”  The words sounded pained as they left Ron’s mouth, but surprisingly deliberate. 

It wasn’t like she hadn’t realized she would need to have some sort of this conversation with Ron upon her return.  They had left things in a strange place, after all.  Over Christmas holidays, she had been grateful that Ron hadn’t brought up the kiss they had shared that summer; not only did she not have the emotional capacity to have that conversation, but she had been so relieved to see him whole and healthy and with all of his organs functioning that she had been in perfect, if unspoken, agreement that they should push that discussion indeterminably down the road and focus on their mutual relief at having a brief respite from the war together. 

But everything had happened so quickly that Hermione had not had a moment to contemplate if and how she needed to speak to Ron about—everything—directly since she had been back at Grimmauld Place, for such a short period of time, and she was frankly floored when Ron beat her to the punch. 

“Of course we can, Ronald,” she replied, sitting back down on the sofa with only a bit of nervousness. 

Ron sat in the armchair across from her instead of beside her, and this small decision made her both confused and buoyed.

“So, I know that things have been difficult for you…” he began, spreading his hands wide as if in supplication.  She blinked back at him.  He scratched the back of his neck with his right hand instead, and a miserable look took over his face.  “I—I want you to know that I really did miss you, Hermione.  So much.”

The tone of his voice confused her more than ever, and she kept uncharacteristically silent.  This seemed to make him even more anxious and he rambled on.  “But you’ve been gone—well, you were gone awhile.  And the thing is, while I know that we—we almost—”

Understanding was slowly dawning on Hermione and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to cut off the painful admission that she suspected Ron was dragging out. 

“Ronald, it’s alright,” she said quickly, and he looked up in surprise.  “I missed you, too, you know.  You’re my best friend.”  She emphasized the last part, and he grinned sheepishly as she smiled in response.  “But it has been a long time.”

He nodded quickly, as if relieved.  “Right.  Yeah.  And while you’ve been gone, I’ve been…”

She arched an eyebrow at him.  “Should I guess?”

A blush crept over Ron’s cheeks and he faltered.  “Well, I don’t know…”

“Ron, it’s alright,” Hermione said, and she realized that she meant it completely.  “You know.  If you have… feelings for someone else.”

His face sagged in relief and a large exhale escaped his lips.  Hermione observed him clinically for a moment, realizing with certainty that she was watching a chapter of her life close in real-time, one that had already passed without her fully comprehending but that she hadn’t quite acknowledged, not just a chapter but a possibility, one that she had always held theoretically in the back of her mind as if she could pick it up at any moment and make it a reality.  It bothered her less than she thought to let it go finally, though the space that it had filled suddenly pressed down on her as she tried not to think about what she wanted to go there instead. 

“I do,” he admitted quietly, fidgeting with a loose string in the seat cushion of the velvet-backed chair he was sitting on.  “I’m not sure if she feels the same way, but she’s something.”

Ron’s voice sounded reverent, and Hermione’s heart twisted.  She didn’t want him to speak about her that way, not anymore, but the obvious affection in his words made her ache.

“Can you tell me who it is?” she asked curiously, and he grinned crookedly at her.

“Susan,” he said, a bit shy, and a piece of the puzzle clicked into Hermione’s brain.  Susan Bones, who had been staying at Shell Cottage while Ron recovered for weeks from his injury, and who had been oddly, at least to Hermione, present at Grimmauld Place when Hermione appeared to warn the others about Luna’s captivity.

“Ah,” she said, smiling, “she seems wonderful.”

The awkwardness lasted only a minute before Ron transformed back into the boy she had befriended long before Yule Balls and hormones and other things had gotten in the way. 

“She is,” he said ruefully, “and I have no idea why, but I think she might feel the same.  I just get tongue-tied around her.”

Hermione smiled encouragingly.  “You should go for it, then, Ron.  Really.  I’m happy for you.”

The redhead smiled at the carpet as if lost in thought for a moment before remembering himself and casting a searching look on Hermione.  “I didn’t intend to—you know.  I’ve always…”  Ron hesitated and his voice became gruff.  “I thought you and I would… you know.”

Before the awkwardness could settle over them again, she rolled her eyes and pressed on.  “We would’ve fought every day for the rest of our lives, Ronald Weasley.”

He chortled in response, and her heart felt lighter.  “Well, we may still do that anyway.”

…

“Granger.”

Hermione had known, logically, that Malfoy would be at dinner that evening, despite the fact that somehow she hadn’t seen him at all since the night before.  While breakfast and lunch had been casual and relatively disorganized affairs as the various new occupants of the townhouse settled in and the previous residents recalibrated their own plans around those new arrivals, Lupin had requested that everyone living in Grimmauld use this meal as a time to have a formal discussion, one with other members of the Order present from other safehouses. 

And yet, the sound of his voice, speaking her name in a stiff, formal tone that she had never heard him use toward her before, caused her to nearly jump out of her skin.  Harry shot her a bizarre look from across the table, as if she wasn’t already completely aware and self-conscious of how strange she was acting. 

Malfoy sank down into the seat beside her, which was by an unfortunate stroke of luck the only one still vacant, and resolutely stared at his hands folded in front of him on the wooden surface of the table.

“Draco, wonderful,” Lupin greeted him pleasantly, ignoring the already-palpable tension emanating from Hermione and Malfoy at the opposite end of the table.  “Now we’re all here.”

The dining table was as crowded as Hermione had ever remembered it, even in the early days of her time at Grimmauld Place after fourth year.  Moody, Kingsley, Lupin, and Tonks were gathered at the head of the table, while Harry, Ginny, Pansy, Neville, Theo, Ron, and Hermione—and Malfoy—were crowded around the sides.  Fred, George, Bill, and Arthur had arrived shortly before everyone sat down as well, a mixture of surprised greetings and introductions, only some of them awkward, taking place before they settled in.

Hermione tried to concentrate on what Lupin was saying as Kreacher doled out helpings of beef stew to everyone, looking beyond thrilled to have so many dinner guests but annoying and especially exhilarated when he arrived at Malfoy’s side.  It was hard to pay attention when the table was so crammed that she had to stay perfectly still lest her knee brush against Malfoy’s one more time and cause him to violently jerk away from her.

“As we were saying,” Moody was growling when she tuned back in, “we’ve settled most of the Hogwarts students in semi-permanent locations, though anyone who participates in Order business will rotate as usual as convenient.”

Tonks nodded, hoisting Teddy over one shoulder where a cloth was draped to catch any spit-up and looking as determined as ever.  “We’ve also evacuated several other family members of the Hogwarts students who fled the school.”  Hermione saw Pansy glance quickly at Neville, whose jaw tightened but looked unsurprised.  “Yesterday could have been quite catastrophic, and instead we don’t believe there were any serious losses.”

Malfoy scoffed loudly from beside her, and Hermione froze.  Tonks, and nearly everyone else, turned to look at him, but he kept his eyes on the table. 

“That doesn’t mean yesterday didn’t change a lot of things,” Tonks continued, her voice softening, “but as far as we know there have been no casualties.”  Hermione thought again with a surreal feeling of the family ties between Malfoy, Narcissa, Tonks, and Andromeda, and now little Teddy. 

“We still aren’t sure why the Death Eaters chose to attack Hogwarts,” Moody picked up where the younger Auror had left off, magical eye swiveling intently onto Malfoy while the regular one resumed a normal view of the group.  “But we suspect it was to abduct family members of those with known connection to the Order, such as Augusta Longbottom, and it was in retaliation to the appearances of said members on a certain Wizarding Wireless Network program.”

To her left, Fred and George managed to somehow look simultaneously solemn and proud. 

“In any event, the attempt was unsuccessful, thanks to the quick thinking of you lot.”  Moody’s praise seemed begrudging somehow, as if he was hard-pressed to admit that the Hogwarts students had managed it.  “And now you’ll be more use to us out here anyway.”

Lupin interjected quickly.  “Only if you wish to be, that is,” he said, eyeing Moody warningly.  Kingsley nodded his agreement from beside him, though Tonks shot Hermione a wink.  “We want to reiterate that no one here is under any obligation to do more than they have already done for the Order, just because you are of age.  You have sanctuary here for as long as you wish to take advantage it, and we hope you do.”

Malfoy stirred beside her again, and Hermione thought of the wording of his Unbreakable Vow.  Had he really agreed to fight, then, or just to keep their secrets?  He’d demanded a promise from Lupin in exchange; did he intend to sit on the sidelines and see what happened?  She had been caught up last night and so terrified of what was happening that she hadn’t analyzed everything as intently as she normally would have.

Before she could follow these thoughts further, Malfoy spoke in a quiet yet commanding tone.  “And if we want to?” 

There was a pregnant pause after he voiced this question aloud.  

“The Order functions now as an army only because we have to,” Lupin finally said, just as quietly.  “In reality, we are just the collected individuals who oppose the reign of the one who calls himself Lord Voldemort.  If you truly feel the same, you have every right to fight amongst us.”

Malfoy finally looked up, his gaze fixed on Lupin’s and ignorant of the other stares from around the table.  “Tell me what you want me to do.”

…

“So you’re here to stay?”  Hermione asked tentatively, stepping out onto the porch. 

She pulled her cardigan tighter around her instinctively at the lingering winter chill in the air.  Malfoy didn’t look at her.  It occurred to Hermione that the last time she had been on this porch, Ron had kissed her as she had wondered whether she had felt nothing or everything.  Particularly after their earlier conversation, the memory felt like a hundred years ago.

Malfoy was clutching the railing, looking off into the shadowed corners of the small backyard.  Despite the dark, Hermione could see the white of his knuckles where his grip had tightened at her words.  “It looks that way.”

The gulf between them felt harder to cross than it ever had when they were at Hogwarts, somehow even more so than when Hermione had first arrived and been terrified that if he found her out Malfoy might turn her in.  

“Do you intend to stay angry at me the entire time you’re here, then?” 

The question came out meaner than Hermione had meant, but the hurt she was feeling was hard to ignore, something like rejection stinging her every time he avoided her eyes or left a room when she entered.  After the meeting, Malfoy had had a series of murmured discussions with Lupin, Tonks, Kingsley, and Moody, each of whom seemed to want to question the Slytherin individually further out of the earshot of the entire gathered audience.

“I’m not angry at you,” Malfoy replied, still not turning, tone even. 

“You clearly are,” Hermione retorted, forgetting her plan to apologize again, to offer explanations and whatever else he wanted from her.  “You won’t even look at me.”

At this, he finally did move to face her, releasing the railing and straightening up.  Malfoy’s height always surprised her, and she tried not to appear flustered. 

“Fine, Granger,” he said flatly.  “I’m looking at you.  Are you happy?”

She felt her face burn and now she was the one to avoid his eyes, fixing them resolutely instead to the space above the left of his shoulder.  “No.  I’m not happy.”

“Well, I’m afraid I don’t know what to tell you.  I’m not thrilled to be here, either.”

“That’s not—I am happy you’re here.” 

The words burst out of her before she could stop them, and they hung between them as palpably as if she had spelled them out in lights with her wand.  Hermione thought Malfoy looked startled for a moment before the cool mask slipped back into place, and both reactions only raised her temper even more.  She had really meant to come out here to be conciliatory, to try and sort through whatever weirdness had overcome them, but Merlin, he was so irritating. 

“Why are you acting like this?” she snapped in frustration.

He lifted a brow at her, arms crossed over his chest, over his ridiculously soft-looking cashmere sweater.  Where did he even get clothes like that, she wondered, when he had fled in the middle of the night like her without any of his belongings?  Completely fucking irritating.

“Acting like what, Granger?”

“Like you don’t—like we don’t know each other or—or—” Hermione sputtered now, unsure of how brave she was feeling and unable to continue.

Malfoy’s eyes were cold as they swept over her face, down her neck, then down the rest of her.  “You and I don’t know each other, Granger,” he said, the iciness in his voice hitting her like a stab in her chest.  “I am not angry with you any more than I am angry with any other bloody Order member here.  You’ve done what you had to do, and now I’m doing what I have to do.  I want Voldemort gone, and I want my mother alive.  But that doesn’t mean you know anything about me.”

With that, he moved past her quickly into the house, the porch door swinging shut behind him with a resounding clang, and Hermione suddenly viscerally aware of the cold again. 

Chapter Text

March 1998

Grimmauld Place felt almost as oppressive as he had always imagined it.  Draco had heard stories from his mother, and more recently, his aunt, about the Black family home, and how dreadful it was, which was a shame because it was in such a prime location in London, and how could that blood traitor Sirius have somehow managed to get it passed onto Harry Potter under their noses, and so on.  Even in his younger, more stupid days, he’d had absolutely zero desire to own some unknown townhouse his mother had once described with as much tact as possible as a ‘living museum of the Dark Arts,’ so this last fact had never bothered him. 

Now that he was forcibly confined to its physical boundaries for the foreseeable future, Draco found himself wishing he owned it simply so he might have the pleasure of burning it down one day.

The first two weeks at the Order headquarters were a blur.  Draco had spent most of his nights drinking with Theo or Blaise and laying awake alternating between fury at everyone he could possibly blame for his current circumstances and agonizing over what was happening or had happened at the Manor.  In some ways, it felt similar to when he had first been back at Hogwarts that September.  His days, on the other hand, had been slightly more productive, at least when he could channel his anger into training or brewing or anything that distracted him from the tedium of life with his new roommates.

He didn’t mind the drills or the potions, Draco mused reluctantly.  Lupin had been a good teacher, back in third year, even if Draco had been a little shit to him.  He was a bit long-suffering for Draco’s tastes, but the man had been supportive of Draco’s turning the backyard into a practice dueling arena and had even helped teach several useful spells to the new recruits when he wasn’t busy. 

Having his cousin around was odd, made even more so by the fact that she’d had her own baby, which brought his new total of non-estranged relatives up to an astonishingly high number.  Draco still felt awkward acknowledging the connection, though Tonks had sought him out a few nights before to tell him that Andromeda had asked if he would come to dinner with her soon. 

The reflex to shut down was hard to turn off.  Draco had realized, after this encounter, where he’d politely and reflexively declined and left a disappointed look on his cousin’s face that lingered for days, that perhaps he ought to make a bigger effort now that he was theoretically not actively trying to block Voldemort from reading his mind and could, you know, possibly have more normal interactions.  Actually, if he was being honest, Daphne had forced him to realize this when she had heard about it from Andromeda and marched over to lecture him. 

The familiarity of being dressed down by Daphne Greengrass—the actual Daphne Greengrass—had been so wonderful that he hadn’t been as annoyed as he usually was by the intrusion, and she’d tricked him into agreeing to come over for Sunday brunch the following week.  He still wasn’t sure how he felt about this very strange impending social obligation. 

The only thing possibly stranger than having several blood relatives around that he barely knew and had never thought he would ever speak to was the sudden and inescapable presence of Hermione Granger in his life.

Well, Draco thought bitterly, apparently her presence wasn’t a new development, just new to him.

Still, after a couple of days, the perverse satisfaction he’d gotten from watching her slink around headquarters with a look of miserable guilt on her face had faded, and Draco had instead been vacillating between anger, which made it easier to ignore her and all confusing thoughts of her, and obsessing over every single interaction they had shared during their time at Hogwarts.

The ease with which everyone else had just accepted her deception and moved on irked him.  He had made the mistake of saying this petulantly to Pansy one night, however, and she had fixed him with a glare that made him shrink away immediately.

“You’re not exactly one to talk about spending a year lying to your friends, Draco,” she’d snapped, hands on her hips imperiously.  He’d opened his mouth to refute this statement and then thought twice at the narrowing of Pansy’s eyes in response.  “At least Granger was pleasant to be around.”

“She saved Luna’s life,” Blaise had added, which had been his infuriatingly calm response every time anyone brought up the subject.  “And you said yourself that you had figured out awhile ago that she was working for the Order.  What is the problem, Draco?”

Draco had no response to this and simply scowled and went back to trying to read one of the books he had pilfered from the Black family library. 

The problem, he thought angrily, is that he’d thought she was Daphne, not an undercover self-righteous Gryffindor with ridiculous hair and annoying friends who’d used him to do her dirty work.

Ridiculous hair.

Before he could force himself to focus on the text in front of him, which was describing the proper way to break some of the nastier curses found on Wizarding tombs over the years, one of said annoying friends appeared in the doorway and cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Dinner’s ready, if you lot are hungry,” Potter said, and Pansy, Blaise, and Theo started getting to their feet.  Draco remained where he was, uninterested in enduring another meal of stilted conversation with Order members who still seemed baffled by his presence most of the time.

“Malfoy.”  He looked up and found that Potter was still lingering, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans and a contemplative look on his face.

“Yes?”

“We wanted to talk to you about the diadem, actually.”

Draco stilled, checking again to make sure that his friends had really left earshot.  “We?”

Potter looked uncomfortable but soldiered on.  “Me, Ron, Remus, and…  Hermione.”  He frowned and ran a hand through his already-messy hair, which stuck up in a manner that made him look about twelve years old.  Draco sighed internally and wondered again how he had ended up on this side of the war with Potter as his trusted leader.

“I know you’re under a Vow,” Potter was continuing.  “But there’s actually a bit more than you already know about that thing.”

Draco arched an eyebrow at him.  “Yes, I figured as much.”

“Well, we think you ought to know.”  After a pause, Potter rolled his eyes and seemed to correct himself grudgingly. “Actually, Hermione thinks you ought to know.  The rest of us were on the fence.  But you know her.  She usually wins these types of arguments.”

He didn’t feel like dignifying this backhanded yet congenial comment with a direct response.  “What is there to know?  That diadem had obviously been cursed with something horribly Dark.  Presumably not by Rowena Ravenclaw.  But it’s been destroyed.  Voldemort can’t use it.  Wonderful job, as always.  Fifty points to Gryffindor.”

Potter looked very much like he was regretting beginning this conversation.  “Malfoy,” he gritted out in annoyance, “I’m trying very hard to tell you something important.”

“Do go on, then.”

“If I tell you, you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone else.”

What did these people want from him?  He’d taken a literal Unbreakable Vow.  Draco wasn’t stupid; there were ways around such things, but his had included a prohibition so open-ended about helping Voldemort that he could accidentally off himself if he betrayed the Order at this point.  Not that he wanted to, mind you, but he also very much wanted not to die, given that he’d gotten this far.

“Potter, if you don’t think by now that I can keep one of your precious Order secrets—”

“No,” the other wizard cut him off.  “You can’t tell anyone else in the Order.”

He paused at that.  “Anyone else besides whom?”  Draco asked carefully.

“Me.  Hermione, Ron, and Remus.”  Potter was wearing a very grave look now and even Draco found it hard not to feel the weight of his words.  “We haven’t told anyone else because it might get them killed, or worse.”

“I’m an Occlumens,” Draco said shortly, and Potter nodded.

“I know,” he replied, “Hermione told us.”

Of course she did.

“Which means between that and your Vow, you’re probably the safest other person to tell.”

Right, not because of anything like actual confidence in him or his intentions.

“Potter,” Draco said, fighting an urge to voice these irritable thoughts.  “Spit it out, please.”

Apparently there was still more buildup to Potter’s little speech, because he continued as if Draco hadn’t spoken.  “We also think that if we tell you, you may have information that could help us, given… your family’s connections.  Again, Hermione’s idea, but I reckon she’s right.”

“Why are you telling me all of this and not Granger, then?”  It slipped out of his mouth before he could think about who he was asking, and Draco regretted his peevish question immediately.  There was nothing he wanted to do less than discuss Granger with Potter.

“She asked me to do it,” Potter said shortly, as if he was even less interested in having this conversation, and Draco felt relieved.  “Remus is busy tonight, and Ron… well, we thought it’d be better for you and I to talk.”

Draco could hardly disagree there.  “Fine, Potter,” he replied, and tried to make his tone less combative.  “What’s the big deal about this tiara?”

A brief hesitation, and then Draco’s world was altered.

“The diadem was a Horcrux.”

…

“She’s trying, you know,” Theo said conversationally.

Draco sighed and moved a knight across the board.  Immediately, it was taken down by a vicious rook and he wondered why he even tried. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered, still pretending to stare at his losing game.

Theo tutted, an annoying sound that only Theo could make sound quite so annoying.  “I think you do.”

“She doesn’t get to try,” Draco snapped, grabbing his drink.  “She’s a liar.”

The other Slytherin sighed deeply.  “Hermione’s a lot of things, mate, but she’s not a liar.”

“Then what exactly do you call pretending to be someone else for six months, Theo?” he snarked, feeling even more petulant.  Why his friends thought he wanted to continue talking about this, he had no idea.

“In this case, pretty brilliant,” Theo remarked thoughtfully.  “The point is, you’re not mad because she lied, you’re mad because you were the one she lied to.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

He tutted again, and Draco very seriously considered punching him despite really not being one to resort to Muggle-style violence.  It was really quite barbaric.  He thought involuntarily of Granger slapping him in the face years ago and his eye twitched.

“You’ve been happier the last six months than I’ve ever seen you,” Theo carried on, ignoring the signs of Draco’s irritation rising.  “And that’s pretty wild considering the circumstances.”

“I legitimately would rather stab my wand into my eye than continue to have this conversation any longer.  Or better yet, your eye.”

“She seemed pretty happy, too,” Theo continued blithely, and somehow still managed simultaneously to direct his chess pieces to savagely take down Draco’s remaining pawns.

“Well, she was probably faking it,” Draco snapped, and Theo’s hand stilled on its way to his drink.  Draco wanted to take the words back as soon as he uttered them, despite the way he knew he feared they were true, felt them sting as they left his mouth, and he cast about for something else to say.  “I’m not the one who needs to talk to someone, anyway,” he added meanly. 

A frown settled on Theo’s features, and Draco experienced a stab of guilt.  “I knew it wasn’t her, you know,” he said quietly. 

Draco looked up from the board in surprise.  “You knew it was Granger?”

Theo nodded slowly.  “Not at first.  But after a bit, yeah.  Maybe October.”

He felt confused by this information, and was unsure how to react.  Before he could decide, a sudden commotion from downstairs interrupted their argument, and both wizards shot up to their feet, wands drawn hurriedly.

Draco reached the landing overlooking the entrance hall first.  The scene below caused him to stop so suddenly that Theo crashed into his back, nearly sending them both toppling down the narrow staircase.

“What the fuck?” he growled.  No one responded, clearly too focused on the chaos unfolding to even hear him.  It was eerily reminiscent of his own dramatic arrival at Grimmauld Place, only with more blood.

A lot more blood.

Half-conscious and with robes more bright red than black at this point, supported only by the thin, dark figure of Severus Snape holding her forcibly upright, was Minerva McGonagall.

Potter was yelling, as usual, while Granger waved her wand frantically over McGonagall, looking at least as panicked as he remembered ever seeing her. 

“Get Andromeda!” she cried to no one in particular, and Draco felt Theo bolt past him down the stairs. 

“Portkey?” he heard Theo demand, and Granger nodded frantically at the table near the front door.

“Tonks Cottage is the pile of buttons in the left drawer.”

The wizard nodded quickly and within a minute he had vanished.  Draco tried to regain his focus, the shock at seeing his godfather here, in this place, still fixing him to the spot he stood. 

“Potter, back away!” Severus was shouting in a threatening tone, both arms occupied in lowering the Transfiguration professor to the floor as carefully as he could while Granger hovered. 

“You back away from her!” Potter retorted angrily, brandishing his own wand toward Severus’ throat, and for once Draco agreed with him.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Severus hissed, and he drew his own wand as he brushed Granger out of the way.

Draco watched as she exchanged an anxious glance with Potter, as if trying to decide whether she should stop him.  Before she or Potter could make up their minds, there was another flash of light and Theo reappeared, Andromeda, Daphne, Tonks, and Lupin with him. 

“Oi!” Tonks yelled, casting some sort of nonverbal curse quickly at Snape.  He was instantly immobilized, the furious expression on his face frozen in time. 

Andromeda rushed to take his place by McGonagall’s side and immediately began murmuring incantations.  Daphne dropped to her knees across from the older witch and was casting a familiar diagnostic charm that reminded Draco uncomfortably of when Granger had discovered the marks Nagini had left on him.  Andromeda paused only to look up briefly at Severus, and then her son-in-law.  “He was healing her,” she confirmed shortly, and then returned to her spell work. 

At this announcement, Tonks looked incredulous, but that was nothing compared to the exaggerated look on Potter’s face of mingled fury and confusion. 

Draco, however, thought he understood.  A slow, white-hot rage of his own was building beneath the surface of his skin, but it was a controlled burn.

“Potter,” Draco said as he descended the stairs finally, and the raven-haired wizard seemed to register his presence for the first time.

“Malfoy,” Potter muttered, eyes still fixated on the headmaster. 

Lupin and Tonks had been conversing in low whispers.  When Draco slipped to stand beside Potter, his own arms unconsciously folded in a mirror image of the other wizard’s, his cousin broke off the conversation and turned toward him. 

“Draco,” she said grimly, “come with us.”

He was startled for a moment before he gathered himself and followed Tonks, Lupin, Potter, and Severus into the library.  Granger had shaken her head at Tonks’ unspoken invitation and refused to move away from her vigil by McGonagall.  Before the double doors closed behind them, he caught one last glimpse of Daphne’s white face looking to Andromeda for instructions as Granger and Theo watched anxiously and McGonagall lay silent and pale on the floor.

“Severus,” Lupin said immediately.  His voice was level, as it almost always was, but Draco could detect the suppressed emotion behind it.  “Explain yourself.”

With an uncharacteristic lack of sarcasm, Severus did. 

…

Potter looked like he had been hit by a Bludger. 

He wasn’t the only one, but Draco supposed learning that your least favorite teacher, and presumed murderer of your mentor, had really been in love with your dead mother, was a particularly nasty shock. 

For his own part, the simmering rage was still bubbling. 

Draco thought back to the last proper conversation he’d had with the headmaster.  It had been before Draco had leapt, for some godforsaken reason, through the fireplace into the nightmare that had been the rescue mission for Lovegood.  Severus had tried to get him to tell him where Blaise had gone, had told him he was trying to keep his distance because he knew Draco was angry with him—

“How could you not tell me?”  The words burst out of him involuntarily and Draco regretted them immediately when every other person in the room turned to look at him in surprise. 

“Draco,” Severus said slowly, and his face was as inscrutable as ever, except for the exhaustion that was evident in every crease.  “What would you have had me do?”

The nerve of the question rattled Draco to his bones. 

“What would I have had you do?” he yelled, jumping up from the seat on the sofa he had been occupying.  “How about, tell me Dumbledore was already going to die so I didn’t have to try to actually kill him?!  How about, tell me the truth so I didn’t spend the last two years thinking I had no other options when you and Dumbledore were planning all of this behind my back?  How about, tell me you weren’t really fucking working for the Dark Lord when he was threatening to kill my family, including you?”

The last words rang out in the silent room.  He felt embarrassed and childish. 

Potter was staring at him again in the way that the wizard did sometimes, as if he had been unwillingly reminded Draco was an actual human, and it annoyed the shit out of him as it always did.  Tonks, normally so stoic, looked like she wanted to cry as she stared back at him with an otherwise peculiar expression, and Lupin wore his usual expression of weary resignment.  Draco stared at the floor, wondering distantly if Granger could hear them through the library doors. 

“I am sorry,” Severus said finally, and Draco looked up in disbelief. 

“You’re sorry?” 

“Yes.”  Severus closed his eyes briefly and then looked straight into Draco’s eyes.  “I have been angry with Dumbledore for a very long time for the things he did not share with me.  I realize I have done the same thing to you, in many ways.”

A mixture of emotions pressed on Draco’s chest, and he merely tightened his jaw and said nothing. 

Before anyone else could say more, the library doors swung open again haphazardly and Granger appeared, still frantic but looking relieved.  Daphne trailed behind her, a similar expression on her face.  “She’s going to be alright,” Hermione announced, and her voice cracked on the last word as if she was holding back tears. 

A collective sigh of relief let out among the occupants of the room.  Granger was looking at Severus now with a curious and wary expression. 

Lupin turned to the headmaster.  “Severus, I presume you will return.”

Draco whipped his head away from Granger and back to his godfather.  He was nodding grimly.

“Wait—”

“The circumstances are different, Draco,” Lupin cut him off.  “Severus can make excuses that will not give away his position.  And he has obviously lied to Voldemort successfully thus far.”

“I will tell Voldemort that Minerva killed the Carrows,” he said simply, and Draco felt cold.  “I must get back quickly, though.  Is there a way for me to contact you or another at the Order, Lupin?”

Lupin nodded and withdrew a Galleon from his pocket.  “Take this.  It’s connected to others here.  I’ll make another for myself that will be linked as well.  We use them sparingly, but you can send us messages.”

Severus nodded quickly and slipped the Galleon into his robes.  Draco saw Granger’s head swivel back and forth between the two men in confusion, but she kept silent. 

Tonks seemed to remember something suddenly and dug a few small objects from her own pocket.  “Here—Portkeys.  This one’s back to Hogwarts, and the others will bring you to headquarters, as well, like the one Minerva must have brought you with.”

There was a pregnant pause, and then Severus turned to Potter.  “I have something for you as well,” he said slowly, and Potter looked so startled that Draco almost laughed inappropriately.

“Yeah?”

To the general astonishment of the room, Severus withdrew from his cloak a shining sword encrusted with rubies, one that must have been hidden in a magically extended pocket.  “Dumbledore instructed me that you would need this.  Obviously, I have not been able to find a way to give it to you before now, but I’ve been carrying it with me in case.”

Everyone besides Tonks and Draco looked staggered but thrilled.  Draco and his cousin exchanged confused looks. 

“Ms. Granger.”  Severus cocked one eyebrow, eyes lingering purposefully on Daphne standing beside Granger for a moment.  “Dumbledore left something for you as well.”

Now it was Granger’s turn to nearly fall over with surprise.  “I—he did?”

Severus withdrew a small, tattered book and Granger looked down at the thing in awe as if he had handed her the keys to Gringotts itself.  “Yes.  Though I have absolutely no idea why a book of children’s stories was so important that I had to carry it with me for the last ten months.”  He grimaced.  “Also, you are a terrible Occlumens.”

“Excuse me?!” the little witch gasped loudly, distracted from her adoration of the book.  “You mean you knew it was me?”

“Obviously,” Severus replied dryly.  Granger let out a little indignant huff and crossed her arms over her chest angrily. 

Draco was torn between satisfaction at seeing Granger’s irritation at this revelation and a flicker of annoyance given that he had been tricked like most everyone else for months.  It hadn’t been that obvious. 

Severus was watching Potter with an odd expression on his face, but he seemed to shake himself from it deliberately.  “Please tell Minerva I am… glad she will recover,” Severus said quietly. After a pause, Lupin extended his hand.  A beat passed before Severus clasped it quickly, then disappeared. 

…

Minerva’s condition was apparently stable, but still precarious enough that Andromeda insisted she be taken to Tonks Cottage to recover where she could watch her closely.  Granger hovered anxiously until she was gone, clasping the older woman’s hand and repeating supposedly reassuring things to the very sleepy professor. 

“Do you think she’ll really be alright?” Granger asked for the hundredth time, nibbling her bottom lip between her teeth. 

Draco managed to refrain from rolling his eyes out of respect for the situation.  “Yes, Granger,” he repeated for the hundredth time.

She sighed and collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table, rubbing her forehead with one hand.  “Tell me again what Snape said happened.”

“He said that McGonagall walked in on Carrow about to teach fourth years how to use the Killing Curse.  Using house elves.”  Draco’s voice was dull.  Granger had already heard most of the story from Potter, though he had been so disoriented that it had come out in confusing fragments that Draco could tell even Granger had struggled to follow.  Nonetheless, the devastated and furious look on her face was as forceful as it had been the first time. 

“And they argued.  McGonagall must have turned her back on Carrow to tell the students to leave, and he—he struck her down with something.  One of the fourth-year Slytherins ran for it and found Severus.  When he got there, McGonagall was unconscious and Severus—” Granger stilled, jaw tense.  “Severus killed Amycus.”

“And he brought Minerva here,” Granger finished quietly.

Draco nodded, spinning his wand between his fingers on the table.  “Yes.”

They were both quiet for a minute.  The rest of the house was empty, Draco realized with an odd feeling, which meant he and Granger were actually alone for the first time in days.  Pansy, Ginny, and Neville had been at Tonks Cottage already when Severus and McGonagall had appeared, having dinner with Blaise and Luna.  Daphne had returned there with Andromeda, and Theo, even more shaken than the others for some reason, had followed Daphne there without asking.  Potter was still brooding, presumably, but was now doing so at Shell Cottage where Weasley had been that day.  Lupin and Tonks were still out, having gone to fill in the members of the Order stationed at the other safehouses on the recent developments. 

The moment wasn’t right.  Granger was distraught, and Draco was still coming down from his newfound fury at Severus’ betrayal.  But he found himself uncomfortably thinking anyway of Theo’s words from earlier, before the monumental mindfuck that had happened shortly after. 

He stole a glance at her and thought maybe Granger had come to the same realization about the current population of the house, because she was suddenly looking a bit shifty.  A light pink had risen in her cheeks, and it made the freckles stand out on the bridge of her nose.  Draco was distracted briefly.

“Draco,” Granger said tentatively, and he cleared his throat.  “Do you think…”  She ducked her head and brown curls hid her face from him as she mumbled the next few words.  “…maybe we could just pretend you don’t hate me for tonight?”

The hesitancy in her normally assured voice broke his resolve. 

“Yeah,” he replied quietly, feeling suddenly very tired.  “We can do that.”

Her shoulders sagged, and Draco heard a small sigh of something like relief.  Granger shook her hair back after another moment, offered him a tentative smile as she stood up, and slapped her hands on the table.  “So you’ll have a drink with me?”  Her voice was teasing and hopeful, and Draco found himself trying not to smile despite his best efforts. 

“Sure, Granger.”  He watched as she spun around and started searching for where Theo and Draco had started stashing the good firewhiskey.  After a few fruitless minutes, Draco took pity on her and summoned it himself from the library. 

“I knew you were hiding it!” Granger declared, hands on her hips. 

“Well,” he drawled, “I can’t have Potter and Weasley drinking my expensive alcohol, Granger.”

She rolled her eyes at him in an exaggerated fashion and offered him two tumblers from the cabinet.  “Well, at least you’ll still share with me.”

He saw her falter for a minute as she started to sit back down, and wondered if she had meant her words the way that he had heard them, as if she had referenced their last few months at Hogwarts together so naturally.  

“It certainly seems deserved tonight,” he replied lightly, pouring her a generous serving. 

Granger accepted the glass and tipped it to him in thanks silently.  Draco had barely filled his own when he saw Granger slam hers back down on the table, already empty. 

“What?” she said when she caught him watching her with mild surprise, a bit defensively.  She grimaced.  “I might be, um, a little nervous.”  

He paused, and then made a decision.  Draco drained the rest of his own drink, Granger’s own eyes widening at the sight, and then poured them both another round.  “That seems reasonable.”

Granger blushed again, and she took a more civilized sip of her firewhiskey.  “So… how are you liking Grimmauld Place?”

“Oh, I’m thrilled to be living in the ancestral home of my mother that somehow belongs to Potter now, taking orders from the do-gooder society that seem to mostly involve cooking and laundry despite the fact that the Wizarding World is under the reign of a psychopath.”

She blinked at him.  He sighed.  “It’s fine, Granger.”

“Harry thinks you salt the eggs too much,” she replied after a moment, a sly smile growing on her lips.  “Maybe if you let him teach you, he’ll share the house with you.”

Draco stared at her indignantly.  “My eggs are perfect, Granger.  Potter’s are incredibly bland.  And overcooked.  It’s like he’s never heard of French cooking.”

Granger let out a peal of laughter that did funny things to his stomach.  He busied himself with another sip of his firewhiskey and ignored that.

“Yes, well, he grew up in Little Whinging, not a manor and a country house in France,” Granger replied, still giggling. 

“Where did you grow up?” Draco blurted out, and he could tell by how Granger nearly spilled her drink that it was a strange thing for him to have asked.  Of course it was strange, he thought sourly.  This whole interaction was strange. How was he supposed to act around her, when the only time he’d known her as Granger she had despised him? 

“Um, Hampstead.”  Granger suddenly looked very interested in examining the etching on her glass tumbler, avoiding his eyes.  “Northwest of London.”

“That’s… kind of posh,” he said, unthinking, just relieved she had responded. 

This had definitely been the wrong thing to say.  She whipped around to glare at him, scowling.  “Did you think Muggles couldn’t live in nice suburbs, Malfoy?”

“No,” he shot back, annoyed, “that’s not what I meant.”

“It sounded like what you meant,” she sniffed, and his tabled anger flared. 

“Is this how it’s going to be, then?” Draco asked furiously. 

Granger kept glaring.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re Granger again, and I’m just Malfoy, and we’re back to everything I say must be because I’m a prejudiced git.”  He took a swig of his firewhiskey and let the burn fill his throat.  “Excuse me if I thought the last six months might have made you give me the benefit of the doubt before you jumped down my throat like that anymore.”

At this, her face crumpled.  It made his heart twist automatically, and he tried valiantly not to feel regretful over the sharpness of his words.  She had deserved them, he reminded himself stubbornly. 

“Well, I thought the last six months might have made us friends,” she replied softly, and the constricting feeling in his chest bothered him again.  “But you’re the one who’s been avoiding me.”

“I’m not avoiding you,” he muttered, and her eyebrows raised in slight disbelief. 

“Then I’m right,” she said stubbornly.  “You just think it doesn’t count.”

“Merlin, Granger, that’s not—”  Draco’s frustration surged and he curled his hand more tightly around the tumbler.  This was not how he wanted this conversation to go, nor was it a conversation he wanted to be having right now.  He tried to resist the urge to use Occlumency to clear his mind and settled for taking a deep breath instead.  “I thought we were pretending for tonight.”

She was quiet for a minute, and he thought tiredly that she was going to yell at him, or cry, or storm off. 

“My parents are dentists,” she said instead, and Draco felt slightly thrown, but relieved. 

“I know,” he said without thinking, and Granger looked floored. 

“What?” Draco asked defensively.

“Why in the world do you know that?” she asked, amazement clearing the lingering hurt from her face.

Suddenly he felt embarrassed.  How did he know that?  He had absolutely no idea.  Just like he had no idea why he knew that Granger was an only child, or that she liked sugar quills, or that she hated Quidditch but had come to all of the matches anyway to support her friends and usually stuck her nose in a book, or that the ugly orange monstrosity of a cat creeping around the house belonged to her.  

“It’s a small school,” he tried to say flippantly.  “Hard not to hear your loud voice everywhere yammering on over the years.”

She was eyeing him very strangely now, and Draco felt an incredible need to stop talking about this.  He cast about desperately for something safe.

“Anyway, do you think we’ll get to go on that surveillance mission to Diagon next week?”  He was striving for a very casual tone but was not certain he’d pulled it off.  Thankfully, Granger followed his cue and accepted the change in subject. 

“I’m not sure.”  She swirled the remaining liquid in her glass idly.  “I don’t know if Remus thinks we’re ready yet.”

Draco snorted.  This had been an ongoing point of contention between him and the werewolf already, though Draco could admit, only to himself, that he was slightly nervous about the idea of facing people he knew from the other side of the starkly drawn line that he had somehow crossed so thoroughly.  “Seems unfair.  I’m a former Death Eater and you’ve been undercover for six months under the noses of a herd of them.  You’d think that qualifies us more than the Chosen Git and his sidekick.” 

She swatted him in the shoulder, but he could tell that she was hiding a small smirk.  “Don’t call them that.”

“I am certain they call me worse, Granger,” he said wryly.

A thoughtful expression came over her face.  “Actually, I think they’re starting to like you.”  Draco scoffed and she smiled somewhat sheepishly.  “Alright, perhaps ‘like’ is a bit strong.”

The alcohol had brought the pink color back to her cheeks now, and Draco watched as she tucked a flyaway curl behind one ear only for it to spring forward again instantly.  “I think they’re tolerating me because of you,” he retorted, accidental honesty slipping forth.

Startled by his words, her lips parted in mid-thought, and his eyes flew toward them automatically.  Draco tried extremely hard to remember the millions of incredibly legitimate reasons he had for being angry with her, but somehow none were coming to mind. 

“That might be right,” she murmured, and he felt his own face warm at the softness in her voice.

“Hey!” 

Granger jumped so high in her chair at the sound of another voice that she might have fallen off if he hadn’t lurched to steady her with one arm.  He sat up, feeling a bit dazed, and caught sight of an unknown quantity of redheaded Weasleys streaming through the kitchen door. 

“We heard about Snape,” one of the twins was saying as he swung his legs over a backward-facing chair next to Hermione and grabbed her drink.  George, Draco thought distractedly, one ear. 

“We’ve come to gossip, of course,” the other one finished, taking the drink swiftly and reaching for the bottle still sitting between him and Granger on the table.  Ginny had apparently accompanied her brothers back to Grimmauld Place and was doling out fresh glasses already to the new arrivals.  He thought vaguely of protesting the blatant thieving of his nice liquor, but decided trying not to engage at all would be vastly preferable.  Dwelling on his conversation with Granger was going to occupy most of his brain for the foreseeable future, anyway.

He sat back and half-listened as Granger filled the Weasley delegation in on the evening’s events.  They reacted with indignation and shock in all of the right places and were soon peppering Granger with questions as they dissected the new information. 

Maybe, a small thought betrayed him, he’d missed talking to Granger.  Their stumbling conversation played over in his mind, her flushed cheeks and hopeful smile flashing unbidden in front of his eyes.  Merlin, she’d looked so pleased just at the idea that he was willing to have a drink with her.  How had he ever mistaken her for Daphne?   Granger’s every emotion spilled out of her as soon as she felt it, unable to be contained, easier to read than any book he’d ever opened.  The idea made the funny feeling in his stomach return.

Currently, she was bright-eyed and gesticulating wildly as she recounted more specifically Snape’s description of the events that had led to McGonagall’s injuries.  Granger’s dark brown eyes gleamed with suppressed rage at the thought of the attack on her favorite professor, and her agitation over the Carrows’ potential abuse of elves kept derailing her storytelling, causing the Weasleys to have to interject and gently steer her back on track.  The alcohol she had gulped down earlier out of apparent nerves still left a slight flush to her cheeks.  There was a streak of dried blood on her right sleeve that seemed to have escaped her scouring charms, and her left sleeve was pushed up to reveal the still-healing slur carved into her arm, but she didn’t seem to notice, or care.

She was obviously insane.

Draco took another slow sip of his firewhiskey and pretended the warmth that had bloomed in his chest came from the alcohol.

…

Granger lingered at the table after the others had dispersed.  For reasons he did not articulate to himself, Draco found himself doing the same.

She stole a glance at him after the youngest Weasley finally disappeared upstairs to see if Potter had returned and gone straight to his room.  He raised a questioning eyebrow at her and waited.

“So, I know Harry spoke with you,” she finally began again.

“I have the misfortune of speaking with Potter on a regular basis now, Granger,” he drawled, enjoying the way she rolled her eyes at him automatically in response.  “You’ll have to be more specific, I’m afraid.”

Granger wrapped her hands around her empty tumbler and looked over her shoulder.  “You know.  About the Horcruxes,” she whispered significantly, and Draco felt his insides chill considerably.

“Ah,” he said, “yes.  That he did.”  It had only been the new source of his nightmares the previous evening, leaving him waking up in a cold sweat every few hours after he drifted back to sleep intermittently amidst horrified thoughts of an immortal Dark Lord.  Potter had acted as if he was bestowing a gift of hope upon Draco, like the knowledge that Voldemort had created multiple fucking Horcruxes was a secret weapon.  However, Draco had not yet reached the point where he was buoyed by the fact that they now not only had to defeat all of the Death Eaters and Voldemort as well as destroy at least two more separate pieces of his soul before even attempting to do so. 

“Snape didn’t mention them,” Hermione said slowly.

“No, he didn’t.”  Neither had Granger, he realized, in her retelling to the Weasley siblings.  Though the others had speculated endlessly about what had left Dumbledore with such a horrible cursed injury he’d expected to die within a year, Granger had carefully omitted details about why Dumbledore had been near that ring in the first place.

“Doesn’t it seem like there must be something he’s holding back, though?”

Draco made a considerable effort not to sound as bitter as he felt at this phrasing, but he could tell he had failed by Granger’s flinch.  “There were apparently a lot of things Severus was holding back.  I would assume there are more, yes.”

Granger was quiet. 

“The sword,” he asked, controlling his resurfaced anger a bit better.  “What was that about?”

This made her face brighten for some reason.  “The sword belonged to Gryffindor,” Granger replied, some of her earlier enthusiasm returning.  “But Harry used it to kill that basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets.  It’s goblin-made, which means—”

“That it can destroy Horcruxes,” Draco finished, realizing immediately why Dumbledore must have been trying to get it to Potter.

Granger beamed at him.  “Exactly.  Of course, we have the basilisk fangs now, but it’s excellent to have additional weapons, especially when we need to go after the snake.”

The casual reference to Nagini made Draco start, and it didn’t escape Granger’s notice.  She frowned. It looked like she was about to say something, so he cut her off before she could.  “So what about this locket, now?”

“Oh,” she said, sounding disoriented and brow still drawn together slightly.  “Right, well, actually I’ve wanted to ask you something.  We’re planning on destroying it tomorrow, and we thought you might like to join us.”

Draco almost laughed absurdly at the polite way she posed this offer, as if it was an invitation to afternoon tea and not to destroy a piece of Voldemort’s soul, and she grinned back at him shyly when she realized how it had sounded.  “Ron and Remus said it would be a good birthday present,” she continued.  There was apparently some sort of large, joint celebration happening for the two later the next day, which Draco had found bizarre and secretly sort of comforting despite himself; that in this weird place where he was trapped people were doing things still like celebrating birthdays.

“I’d be delighted,” he said, in his most proper society accent, and he tamped down the flutter in his chest at the way she smiled at him in return.

…

They destroyed the Horcrux the next day.  Lupin had been wary of doing it anywhere near headquarters, none of them comfortable with the unpredictability of what might happen when they attempted it unfolding so close to and within earshot of so many people who didn’t know the extent of what they were doing. 

It had been Granger who finally suggested they Apparate under the Invisibility Cloak—of course, Potter owned an Invisibility Cloak—one by one to the Forest of Dean and set up protective enchantments in a remote area.  She and Draco had debated which wards would be most useful with a bit too much bite to their words until finally Lupin had interceded and weighed in. Potter played his usual role of the determined hero, annoyingly self-sacrificing as ever, while also failing to provide any particularly useful ideas.  Draco was unsure what use Weasley was at all.

It had been surprisingly anticlimactic after that.  Their plan had worked well, no one around for miles when they arrived in a soft clearing of grass still half-frozen with the lingering winter chill.  Potter had insisted that Weasley be the one to destroy the locket; apparently, he had suffered a trying ordeal of becoming extremely grouchy the previous fall after they had come across it, or something like that, and Weasley felt particularly vindictive toward the object.  Draco wasn’t following.

There had been a scramble when they realized they still didn’t know how to open the locket, which made Draco almost scoff aloud in disbelief at the sheer fact that Weasley and Potter had managed to stay alive while Granger was gone if this was how far they had gotten.  Granger had interceded and, seeing the tiny etching on the locket, instructed Potter to try Parseltongue. 

The entire ordeal was quick, the locket fizzling out faster than the diadem had once they all braced themselves and Weasley swung clumsily with the venom-laced sword, and it made Draco think inevitably of when he and Granger had journeyed to the Chamber of Secrets. 

He had been so terrified.  She had turned to him, the night before, eyes wide and trusting, and she’d wanted his help and he had known at that moment he would’ve done anything she asked.  When she had clambered up the skeleton of the giant snake and triumphantly returned with the monster’s teeth clutched in her hands, Draco had been nearly speechless.

Thinking about how it had been Granger, and not who he had thought it was, that had done those things with him made his mind churn.  Her slightly crazed laughter when they’d finished, the way she had flung herself onto the diadem with a look of determination and held on while Dark magic swirled around her…

Draco watched as Granger wrapped her arms now around Weasley, she and Potter and Lupin smiling broadly at their victory.  He remembered with a lurch in his stomach that she and Weasley had been involved the year before, and it made him think traitorously of the way he had first felt when he saw her standing in Grimmauld Place, shrinking slowly back into her own form, Daphne’s dark hair elongating into riotous curls and Granger’s familiar stubborn face appearing instead:  for just a moment, before the anger sunk in, he had felt something like delirious relief. 

Chapter Text

March 1998

Hermione slipped into the study, casting one last furtive glance over her shoulder before shutting the door as quietly as possible.  She had been detained after the official Order meeting concluded by an agitated Pansy, who wanted to discuss whether or not Hermione thought Neville’s grandmother was actually going to attend next week’s meeting, as had been alluded to by Kingsley. 

“You’re late,” Malfoy greeted her coldly, and she fought the urge to scowl back at him.  Ron was sitting across from Malfoy with his arms folded, and did it for her.

“I was trying to be subtle,” she replied calmly, taking a seat next to Harry on the faded loveseat by the fireplace.  “It was hard to get away from Pansy without telling her what I was doing.”

“Right,” Malfoy sneered, “though you’re supposed to be quite good at that by now, aren’t you?”

Lupin cleared his throat sharply and Hermione’s retort died on her lips.  “If you’re both quite finished.”

She avoided Malfoy’s eyes and offered a sort of apologetic grimace to Lupin, who just raised an eyebrow.

“Er, anyway,” Harry broke in awkwardly, clearly also not interested in refereeing another argument between Malfoy and Hermione.  He’d been the one stuck with them that morning during training when they’d squabbled over the proper way to layer a shield charm and had been moments away from proving their points by practicing some fairly nasty spellwork on each other.  “You haven’t missed anything, Hermione.”

“Good,” she said, ignoring Malfoy as fixedly as possible.  “Any more word from your Welsh contacts, Remus?”

“No,” Lupin replied, sighing.  “They’ve never heard of any sort of significant site associated with Hufflepuff.  And I wasn’t able to dig much deeper than that, anyway, in case word got out that we were asking around.”

Malfoy folded his arms across his chest.  “I still think that’s a dead end.  Vol—he wouldn’t care about where Helga Hufflepuff used to live, not if he hid the others in places that were important to him.”

“As much as it pains me to agree with Malfoy,” Ron said, garnering him a glare from the blonde wizard, “I reckon we shouldn’t waste more time there.  After Godric’s Hollow was a bust, anyway…”

Hermione still felt her insides clench at the mention of the night Ron had nearly died. 

“We have no other leads.”  Harry’s frustration wasn’t new.  They’d met already several times since destroying the locket, Ron and Harry reluctantly agreeing that Malfoy should join them, and it had been nothing but the same conversation over and over again.  Hermione was starting to feel like she had back at Hogwarts, when she’d read the same books every night and wandered the halls with no idea where to actually look for the diadem.

“Let’s go over it again,” she insisted, and Lupin was the only one polite enough not to groan or roll their eyes. 

“The locket was in the cave,” Ron recited dully. 

“The ring was in the house his mother grew up in,” Lupin offered, sounding more thoughtful than downtrodden.

 “The diary was with my father,” Malfoy added quietly.  This had been news to him, and it hadn’t been received particularly well. 

“And the diadem was in the castle,” Harry finished.

For the thousandth time, Hermione sought out any connection.  “All places he’d been before, or that were important to him,” she mused aloud.  “Except for Malfoy’s father.”

Though she was still looking resolutely at anyone else but him, Hermione could see Malfoy stiffen in the corner of her eye.  “Presumably he… trusted my father,” he finally said in a short voice.

“Then perhaps the only other option besides continuing to seek out significant places from Riddle’s life is to search the homes of other Death Eaters.”

Harry’s face was determined, though Ron looked a bit queasy at Lupin’s grave pronouncement. 

“You said the Greengrasses have been giving you information on the old estates,” Malfoy said coolly, directing his question at Lupin.  The werewolf nodded, frowning.  “If you show me what they’ve provided, I can fill in the gaps.”

“We haven’t actually gone inside any of them,” Ron reminded the others, sounding wary.  “Just watched them, seen who comes and goes.”

“Maybe it’s time to try something new,” Harry said quietly, and he was looking at Malfoy with an unreadable expression. 

No one spoke for a moment.  Hermione tried not to think about who would be sent in to infiltrate the home of someone like Bellatrix Lestrange or—her brain froze.  Theo.  Would he end up on some sort of dangerous Order mission to sneak into the place where he’d grown up, where his own father might be at that moment?  She must have looked pale because when he caught sight of her face, Lupin straightened and offered her a kind smile.

“I’ll think about if and how we can justify it to anyone else.  It’s not something the five of us could do alone, in any event.”  He raised an eyebrow at Hermione and changed the subject.  “Have you made any progress with that book from Albus?”

“Oh,” she replied, startled from the terrible images playing in her head.  “A bit.  Some of the runes are unfamiliar, and it’s going to take me a bit of time to get through the entire translation.”

 “Sorry, ’Mione, can’t help you there,” Ron laughed, looking a bit too self-satisfied that he was off the hook.  Harry shrugged apologetically at her. 

“It’s alright, I’m sure I can—”

“I can help.”

Forgetting that she was annoyed with him, Hermione turned toward Malfoy in surprise.  He had that blank expression on his face, like he could not have cared less about the topic of their conversation, but she thought she saw his jaw tighten.

“I took Ancient Runes, too, remember,” Malfoy said, his tone neutral. 

“I—yes, of course, I—I remember,” Hermione replied stupidly.  She’d sat next to him in the class for the last few months, actually, traded notes and argued—much less antagonistically than their norm these days—about the proper way to interpret some of the more obscure passages in their texts. 

Lupin eyed them both for a moment.  “Well, that will certainly speed things up.  Thank you, Draco.” 

Hermione flushed.  “Er, yes, thanks.”  Malfoy didn’t respond.

“I’d better go relieve Dora,” Lupin said, becoming immediately distracted at the mention of his son.  Harry and Ron stood, too, though Harry still looked troubled, perhaps by the lack of progress wrought by this latest meeting.  

“And I’d—er—better go see if Bill still needs help with planning that new supply line to France he and Fleur mentioned at the meeting…”  Ron flushed and hastily scrambled out of the door with an awkward sort of wave to the others.  Hermione rolled her eyes to herself, hiding a small grin.   Ron’s transparent excuses to spend time at Shell Cottage—where Susan and her family had been housed since they’d gone into hiding full-time after her aunt’s murder—were increasingly amusing. 

Though it might have once bothered her that Ron was inventing (extremely flimsy) reasons to spend time with another witch, Hermione was glad to discover that she found it oddly sweet every time Ron disappeared and then turned up eventually later with a bit of a giddy, puppy-dog expression.  It helped that she knew Susan well enough from Hogwarts to be fairly certain that there would be no repeat of Ron’s previous tendencies toward lavish displays of public affection while in a relationship, once he finally worked up the nerve to ask her out.

With or without Ron around, it had been jarring to go from the false reality of Hogwarts to the new one of Grimmauld Place, Order of the Phoenix headquarters.  Hermione, of course, had lived there before, but things had progressed and coalesced now to a different degree, both with the official business of the Order and her friends’ lives.

Though she, Harry, Ron, Neville, Lupin, Tonks (and Teddy), and the Slytherins (minus Daphne and Astoria) were the only ones living there on a semi-permanent basis at the moment, there was a constant influx of other Order members, some who stayed for only a few minutes or hours to report to Lupin on various business or others who had been shuffled around from other safehouses temporarily, including so that a Healer could tend to them while they stayed somewhere secluded, which meant that Daphne frequently spent the night in one of the spare bedrooms and joined them for meals when she was called upon for these duties.  The amount of sheer activity each day was sometimes overwhelming after the privacy that the head dorm had provided. 

For their part, Harry and Ginny seemed to be sorting through their issues, which involved a lot of spending time behind closed doors.  While Hermione was sure some of this really did involve long discussions about Harry’s hero complex and proclivity for self-sacrifice and Ginny’s resulting insecurities, as the redheaded witch claimed, she also knew both of them well enough to guess that the majority was being spent improving on a different type of communication.

In any case, between the limited free time Harry and Ron had left after these obligations, and Lupin and Tonks’ busy schedules taking care of Teddy and managing nearly everyone else, Hermione found herself left spending much of her days with the other newest residents of Grimmauld Place, including her sort-of former housemates.  As it had at Hogwarts, this also involved a lot of drinking firewhiskey in the evenings, though Neville was now in regular attendance, and Luna usually appeared with Blaise at some point if they weren’t obligated to be elsewhere.  Malfoy, though inclined to join for the firewhiskey part of the night before he disappeared, presumably to brood alone, still seemed to be avoiding any sort of direct interaction with Hermione. 

She had, apparently naively, really thought she might make progress with Malfoy after the first week or so. 

Hermione had convinced Harry and Ron (and Lupin, though he’d been notably easier to get on board) that Malfoy should be confided in about the Horcruxes, a feat she was still not sure how she had accomplished.  It had taken a serious amount of cajoling, and arguing, and lecturing, but Hermione had been determined.  After all, Malfoy had already destroyed one, and he was the only reason they’d gotten it in the first place.  And, as she had told the others repeatedly, Malfoy’s own father had once been given a Horcrux for safe keeping and it was possible Malfoy may have unknowingly acquired some useful information about the others at some point in his life. 

“Right,” Ron had mocked her when she first pointed this out, “Malfoy might know more about Dark objects because at one point he fancied he might want to be a Dark Lord.  Really helpful, that is.”

She’d yelled at him after that until she was nearly hoarse, but eventually, as she usually did, Hermione had won.  Ron had cast his begrudging vote to allow Malfoy into the strange society they’d formed in the end only upon Lupin’s assurances that the Unbreakable Vow would essentially negate Malfoy’s ability to do anything nefarious with the information.  Harry had been half-convinced Malfoy already knew what the diadem had been anyway and had too given in when the Unbreakable Vow was raised. 

Hermione felt exhausted over it, and mainly wished Malfoy would be at all grateful that she’d stuck up for him rather than keep repeating his performance of earlier that day, which was to get up and leave the lunch table immediately when she’d sat down.

And then again, after the night that Snape and Minerva had appeared at Grimmauld Place, Hermione had somehow let herself believe that she and Malfoy had reached some sort of truce.  But apparently, one semi-civil interaction hadn’t been a sign of larger things to come, because a few days later, he’d blown up at her again while they were assisting Tonks in the makeshift potions lab in the basement, so much so that they’d been told to leave by the Auror until they could get it together and be in the same room again.  Hermione had been furious and embarrassed, particularly when Tonks gave her a knowing look behind Malfoy’s back that she didn’t want to analyze further.

“Granger.”

Hermione jumped.  Her back had been to the door as she brooded—not that she was turning into Malfoy, she thought defensively, she just deserved some peace and quiet to feel sorry for herself every once in a while—and she had been certain Malfoy had left the study when the others did. 

“Yes?” she asked, trying to school her expression into something that resembled casual politeness. 

“The book,” he replied.  It was stretching into the late afternoon, and the windows that faced the narrow alley between Grimmauld Place and the other townhouses on the street were the only real source of light in the study.  The shadows made Malfoy appear silhouetted against the open door from where she stood, and it was hard to see his face.  “When did you want to meet?”

“Oh,” she felt flustered, having assumed he’d refuse to work on it together and would demand to trade off with the thing, “I’d planned on doing some work on it early tomorrow morning, but you don’t have to—”

“I’ll be there,” he cut her off, and she shut up quickly.  Malfoy turned toward the door and Hermione let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. 

…

Hermione was still in the darkened study, though she’d conjured several jars of bluebell flames to brighten the room, when Pansy found her a couple of hours later.  By that point, she was cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by several books, none of which she had yet to be able to concentrate on reading.

“Granger,” Pansy greeted her, looking around the rest of the study and raising an eyebrow at her when she saw it was otherwise empty.  “Why are you in here alone, looking like someone told you Flourish & Blotts banned you for life?”

She rolled her eyes.  “I just needed to get some air.”

“In the mustiest room in this house?” the other witch asked, wrinkling her nose.

“I like it.”

“Yes, well,” Pansy said.  “You and Draco are the only people in this house that I have found willingly spend time shut up in this windowless, depressing room, and that’s saying something considering the state of this entire house.”

Hermione must have unfortunately made a face at the mention of Malfoy’s name.  “Oh, so you’re sulking over Draco?”

“I’m not sulking.”  Her tone did, in fact, sound sulky. 

“What did he do this time?”  Pansy asked, in a tone as kind as Pansy Parkinson possessed.

“We just got into a bit of a spat at training this morning,” she admitted reluctantly, “and now I have to deal with him first thing tomorrow for something Lupin needs from us, and I’m sure he’ll be equally unpleasant.”

Pansy sighed and placed her hands on her hips, looking down her nose at Hermione. 

“Granger,” she began, in a long-suffering tone.  “I thought you learned something about each of us while you were sneaking around the castle the last six months.”

Hermione tried to summon the energy to aim a withering stare at the taller girl but it didn’t seem to convey the proper effect.  “Not helping.”

“Au contraire, little lion,” Pansy laughed, not unkindly.  “I’m trying to remind you that, while some of us graciously swallowed our pride and have generously forgiven you for your deception” —Hermione did manage to roll her eyes then— “getting Draco Malfoy to do the same was never going to be as easy.  He has both an obnoxious abundance of pride and a severe lack of tolerance for being lied to.”

Briefly, Hermione wondered if she could get to her wand fast enough to push Pansy out of the room and lock the door before she could stop her.  It was tempting.  “Again, not helping.”

“Mmm.”  Pansy perched on the edge of the loveseat that Hermione was curled against on the floor, crossing her ankles delicately.  “Of course,” she said lightly.  “There could be another reason he’s particularly irked with you about all of this.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes at the other witch.  “Now that I don’t have to pretend to be a Slytherin, Pansy, I’m not as willing to put up with these types of cryptic remarks all the time.  If you have something to say, just say it.”

While the sentiment was true, she found herself dreading directness from Pansy all of a sudden as much as further snide comments pretending to be advice.  Brutal honesty was never particularly fun coming from her new friend, either. 

Pansy seemed to settle for something in between. 

“I’m just saying, Granger,” she said finally.  “What you did helped all of us—for which I am eternally grateful, thank you, et cetera, by the way, again.  That includes Draco.  He knows this.” 

The witch cocked her head thoughtfully and considered Hermione. 

“But I think he’s probably mad that he let himself be so vulnerable around someone who wasn’t doing the same with him.  It’s not something he does often.  Or ever.” 

Hermione blinked at her.  At that, Pansy stood up and smoothed imaginary wrinkles from her dress. 

“You might have to work a little harder for him to get over that.”

…

Hermione spent an excruciating three hours with Malfoy the following morning in the main library.  Determined not to be the one to start off another bickering match—and, though she found it hard to admit to herself, having stewed a bit on Pansy’s words from the day before—Hermione had a pot of tea and a rack of toast waiting when Malfoy appeared.  She smiled as brightly as she could manage at him, and gestured at the seat and mug of tea across from her.  

He had stared at her for a moment and then said something stiffly that may or may not have been “Thanks.”

She found herself fidgeting excessively as he studied her previous translation work, which she’d copied for him.  “I’m about a fourth of the way through, you see, but I think it might be easier for you since Ron mentioned they’re fairly well-known stories in the Wizarding world.”

Malfoy hummed in what may have been agreement and didn’t look up.  “I can see that.”

The parchment rustled as he paged through it, but otherwise the library felt deathly quiet.  She thought again about what Pansy had said and wondered what exactly it meant for her to ‘work harder’ for him to get over what, at this point, seemed like his renewed general dislike for her.

Before she could suppress it, Hermione heard herself let out a little dispirited sigh.  Malfoy’s eyes flicked up to hers with a questioning glance, and she flushed.  “Something wrong, Granger?” he asked. 

A pause.  “No.  I suppose not.”

His brow creased and he held her gaze for a moment.  Then it passed, and he was studying the parchment in front of him again.  “Do you have an extra Spellman’s?”

“Oh, um.”  She rummaged through the pile of books on the table and produced a copy.  “Yes.  It’s an earlier edition that I found here, which may be useful.”

Malfoy nodded and accepted the book.  “Why don’t I go back over what you’ve already done, and when I catch up we’ll divide it from there?”

“That sounds fine.” 

Hermione twisted her quill in her fingers and thought briefly of saying something else.  They hadn’t been this alone in awhile, maybe since the night Minerva had been attacked, and the stillness of the early morning made it feel even stranger somehow.  But she swallowed her tongue instead and buried her head in her notes, trying to ignore the way her chest ached at the way they were sitting reminded her of a hundred other days and nights and mornings spent across from each other, books and papers scattered about, steaming mugs of tea slowly being emptied, and no one else around. 

It hurt to think that he might have found it completely unfamiliar. 

…

Hermione popped into existence alongside Harry, Ron, and Malfoy as close to the outskirts of the normally busy thoroughfare as they had been able to manage with their illegal Portkeys.  A Disillusioned Ron jostled her with his elbow, unable to discern where anyone else had landed, and nearly knocked her over.  He whispered a harried, ‘Sorry!’ only to be shushed immediately by Harry, whose outline Hermione could faintly make out a few steps in front of her. Malfoy, somehow, was already perfectly steady on his feet and concealed several steps to her left. 

Diagon Alley was unrecognizable. 

The absence of noise was the first thing she noticed.  Usually, chattering crowds walked the streets while shopkeepers called out specials and various magical advertisements rang out across the way, competing for each browsing passerby’s attention.  Owls flitted to and from above the people below, hooting busily, while bits of conversations and occasional shouting drifted out of the Leaky Cauldron and the other pubs and restaurants scattered among the storefronts and other establishments.

Now…

Nearly every store was shuttered, save for a few seedy-looking establishments that Hermione didn’t recognize and couldn’t recall ever having seen before.  Ministry posters covered most of the advertisements, black and white photos staring back at them instead.  There were almost no witches or wizards anywhere in sight, though she could make out, in the distance near Gringotts, several cloaked figures that made the back of her neck prickle when she caught sight of them.

Harry was gesturing for them to follow him, and Hermione shook her head to clear it of the depressing thoughts the sight was prompting.  Their destination wasn’t far:  a disreputable-looking pub not far from where they had arrived that Lupin had informed them was known to be a Death Eaters haunt these days.  She grimaced at the thought.

Their objective was simple.  Apparently, at least three times a week Order members conducted routine excursions to gather any intelligence they could gleam from observing and listening in on the conversations that could be heard from those coming and going from the pub.  Hermione had been simultaneously anxious to get out of headquarters and do something, and also terrified to be in the real world again, but she’d been mostly relieved when Lupin had agreed to let her join the next group. 

After they were briefed by Lupin, Harry and Ron had admitted privately to her and Malfoy, who’d also been allowed to come for the first time, that it rarely resulted in anything interesting and usually involved a lot of standing around learning nothing while freezing to death, because it was rather hard to cast a Warming charm while simultaneously holding your Disillusionment. Malfoy had scowled at this but said nothing. 

Never one to be deterred, Hermione had taught the others the spell that Malfoy had admired when they were at Hogwarts, one that would enable them to see, temporarily, through a solid surface and observe whatever was going on the other side.  Combined with a neat piece of magic that Tonks knew from her Auror days that could allow the caster to choose a specific place from which sound would carry back to the listener, it would allow them to eavesdrop for short periods of time on any Death Eaters frequenting the pub while they were inside. 

Harry and Ron had been appropriately awed by her immediate improvement on the mission’s odds of success. Malfoy had rolled his eyes once she’d showed him the charm and informed her that a slightly modified wand technique would enable the spell to last longer without draining their magic.  While they were glowering at each other, Harry had hastily procured the Portkeys and Ron had become abnormally interested in discussing Teddy’s latest magical outburst with Tonks, who was watching with a sort of bemused air.  

She couldn’t help but feel secretly satisfied, however, as it became clear immediately that this mission was going to be loads more useful—and efficient—than the others had been.  They had only had to wait forty-five minutes (a tense forty-five minutes, where no one spoke except for when Ron trod on Malfoy's toes for the fifth time and he tersely threatened to Body-Bind the other wizard until he learned to stop fidgeting) before a couple of dark-hooded figures appeared at the Apparition point in front of the pub and swung the door open to enter.

Malfoy had stiffened immediately, something Hermione felt rather than saw from beside her since they were all still concealed, and the warmth of his arm pressing against hers distracted her before she managed to focus again. 

“Rowle,” he hissed into her ear, and the inappropriately timed frisson this caused in her knees was harder to ignore.  “And Macnair.”

She turned to murmur this into Harry’s ear.  As they had agreed, Hermione cast the spell to enable a one-way window through the pub wall, while Harry and Ron cast notice-me-not charms and stood guard on the sides of their little group to ensure no one passing by could see what they were doing.  After the two men settled into a small table, Malfoy used the charm to carry the sounds of their conversation back outside to them as if they were standing right next to them.

Hermione had no time to marvel at the wonders of magic before her attention was sucked into the conversation between the two Death Eaters.

“Thought we’d never get out of there,” Rowle, a blonde, hunkering sort of wizard, grunted.  He drained half of a glass of some kind of dark ale faster than Hermione had thought possible even for someone of his size.

The shorter, thicker one she had recognized before Malfoy named him snickered and tapped his own glass against Rowle’s.  “It’s our duty in these times to support our illustrious Minister, isn’t it,” he said in a mocking voice.

“Never liked those parties,” Rowle replied after their laughter died down.  “Bit more of a lark, now.”

“How much longer do you really think Thicknesse can hold on, though?”  Macnair mused, and Rowle shot him a sharp look. 

“I don’t know, now, do I?”  Macnair looked appropriately chastised and downed the rest of his drink hastily.

There was silence for a moment as the two men gestured for another round from a harried-looking witch who seemed terrified when she noticed them.  She deposited their drinks with shaking hands and backed away so quickly that she nearly crashed into another table as she fled.  Hermione saw Rowle watching her with a sickening look on his face and felt her stomach turn.

“Speaking of holding it together,” Rowle said quietly, after they had settled back to their drinks.  Macnair raised an eyebrow in cautious surprise and leaned in.

“Have you heard whether he was happy about… the most recent fuckup by his pet bitch?”

Hermione felt a chill unrelated to the cold run through her.

The shorter man chortled, though he looked over his shoulder as if to make sure no one could overhear and kept his voice low when he replied.  “I wish.  It was her brilliant idea to make up for what happened at the Manor by nabbing hostages from Hogwarts, and then instead a bunch of kids just vanished altogether.”

Rowle looked thoughtful, or at least as thoughtful as someone so stupid could look.  “It hasn’t been in the papers or nothing.”

Macnair scoffed.  “Of course not.  Anyway, Selwyn said he still hasn’t been back to the Manor.  Maybe he doesn’t know yet.”

There was a pause where neither seemed to want to comment on that piece of information, lest the other think it may hint at disloyalty. 

“Well, wait until he finds out Snape let one of Carrows snuff out on his watch.”  Another round of quiet laughter passed between the two men.

“Snape will be fine.”  Hermione watched Macnair rolls his eyes.  “Seems like they had it coming.  Cushy job, ain’t it, sitting around in a castle full of kids.  Not Snape’s fault they couldn’t even handle that.”

The blonde grunted in agreement.  “Shall we get to it?”

“Oh, yeah.”  Macnair ambled to his feet, swallowing the last of his ale down.  “Where are we off to, then?”

“We’ve got instructions to go to Hampstead, remember?”

They donned their cloaks again and dropped a few coins on the table.  “You know, not sure why she can’t do her dirty work herself,” Hermione heard Macnair complain.  “She’s the one that let the Mudblood get away.”

Rowle rolled his eyes.  “When have you ever known her to do something herself?”  They both snickered and moved through the now-crowded pub toward the front entrance. 

Hermione suddenly felt someone’s hand grip her wrist where she still had her wand suspended, arm locked in place, holding the observation spell despite the pending exit of the Death Eaters. 

“Granger,” a voice breathed into her ear urgently, “let’s go, now.”

She dropped her right arm and clutched the hand encircling her wrist with her left hand before she could stop herself. 

“We’re going,” Malfoy said firmly, and he didn’t shake her off.  Two other invisible bodies pressed into her, solid warmth on either side, and she clung harder to Malfoy’s fingers as someone activated the Portkey home and her stomach lurched, taking her far away from the cold streets of Diagon Alley.

They landed with the normal lack of grace in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, where a collection of Order members had been waiting up for them.  Lupin, for a debrief, and Daphne, in case there were any injuries, and various other residents of headquarters who must have not been able to sleep.

Hermione was having a hard time hearing anyone else over the sudden pounding in her ears as blood rushed to her head.  Dimly, she could make out Malfoy looming in front of her, stance rigid, face stricken. 

“Potter, what’s the closest Apparition point to Granger’s house?”

“I—what?”  Harry sounded startled.  He was watching Hermione with a look of sad understanding, and it made her eyes well with tears.  Even through her hazy awareness, she registered that Susan was there, too, presumably waiting for Ron’s return and too anxious to do so at Shell Cottage.  Her heart squeezed as she saw Ron move toward the other witch automatically, half his attention also still fixed on Hermione with a look of great sympathy on his face.

“Her house, Potter,” Malfoy was barking, and Hermione was having trouble following.  “Did you not hear them?!”

Lupin cleared his throat.  “What happened?  Who and what did you hear?”

Malfoy whirled on Lupin instead, a frantic motion that seemed to take Lupin aback.  “Rowle and Macnair were there and they were—they were talking about Granger.”

Daphne rose from her seat at the table next to Susan, her own face paling, and moved toward Hermione.  “What did they say?”

“They’re going there now,” Malfoy’s volume was rising and a tinge of panicked disbelief was threading through his voice, as if he couldn’t understand why no one was reacting to this news.  “They are literally on their way to Granger’s parents’ house.  We have to go right now—”

“Draco,” Hermione heard herself say, and she realized she was still clutching his hand in a grip so tight her own was white. 

“Granger,” he replied, turning back fully toward her.  He hadn’t let go of her hand, either, and the look he gave her was beseeching.  “I—we can go right now, it’s not too late—just tell me how to get there.  We can save them.”

Her mouth opened and then closed, words failing to formulate properly.  Malfoy misunderstood the tears filling her eyes, and an even more agonized expression crossed over his face. 

“Malfoy,” she heard Harry say quietly, and she let go of Malfoy's hand like it had burned, shame filling her.  “Her parents aren’t there.”

Confusion etched into his features, and Malfoy looked slowly at Harry instead.  “What?”

“They—they’re not in England,” Harry replied, and he met Hermione’s eyes.  She bit her lip and nodded at him.  “Hermione had to send her parents away.”

Malfoy took a step back and ran a hand through his white-blond hair, face flushing.  “You—what?”

Hermione felt her legs shake and wished desperately that she could sit down.  Despite the fact that everyone in the room—except, she supposed distantly, Susan—knew about what she had done, having to say it out loud, and to Malfoy, in front of so many people, hurt. 

“I Obliviated them,” she whispered.  “They aren’t—they aren’t at my house, and they won’t find them.  I think.  They don’t even know me.  I was—I was careful.” 

Hermione’s voice broke into a sob on the last word and she felt a small hand slip into her own, not Malfoy's this time but Daphne’s.  She felt immense gratitude, and remembered the understanding they had shared when she’d confessed her secret to the other witch so many months ago.

Hermione could tell Malfoy was still looking at her but she couldn’t find it in her to meet his eyes now.  All she had wanted, for weeks, was for him to look at her again.  Now she was afraid she would look and see revulsion, and Hermione had seen enough of his anger directed at her over the last few weeks that, after the emotional upheaval the night has cost her, she didn’t think she could stomach seeing something even worse. 

Lupin had started questioning Harry and Ron about what they had overheard and she could hear their low, fast voices from the other side of the kitchen.  Harry was shooting her anxious looks over his shoulder as if he thought she might collapse, and Hermione shook her head wearily at him.  Still unable to meet Malfoy's eyes, she squeezed Daphne’s hand and turned toward the kitchen doors.

“I think I should… get a shower.  The others can fill everyone in on what we learned and decide if… if anyone should go after them.  I mean, if it’s worth it since we know where they’ll be, but…” she trailed off and shrugged.  “The house is empty.”

Daphne gave her a quick hug and offered to make her tea when she came back downstairs.  Hermione tried to smile in thanks but wasn’t sure what it looked like.  Hermione made a similar effort to acknowledge Susan, but the other girl had only a solemn look on her face as she nodded back.  She felt both a stab of grief as she remembered Susan’s own family’s history and a simultaneous rush of gratitude for the girl’s apparent understanding.  

The Mudblood.

Her forearm started to sting again, as it had been off and on since the minute they had overheard the Death Eaters referencing the Manor and Bellatrix. 

Exhaustion seemed to overtake her the minute she reached the stairs that led to her bedroom, the sustained adrenaline from the mission and then the subsequent terror at hearing herself as the topic of discussion and possible plans among the Death Eaters leaving her feeling carved out inside. 

It was dark in the corridor, and though Hermione had craved solitude after the scene in the kitchen, she almost turned back at the intense loneliness that seeped over her as she started up the stairs. 

“Granger,” a hoarse voice came from behind her, and Hermione nearly jumped out of her skin, the leftover adrenaline surging. 

It was Malfoy.  He was standing on the floor a few steps below her, the dim light of the corridor making his features look softer than normal, or perhaps it was just that he’d looked so angry lately whenever she was around and now at least something seemed different in his expression. 

She didn’t say anything, but stopped and faced him slowly, gaze remaining downward as one fingernail worked nervously at a chipped piece of wood on the banister.

“I didn’t know,” he said quietly. 

“I know.”  Hermione closed her eyes briefly.  “This isn’t… how I would have preferred that you find out.”

“Granger, I can’t believe you did that.”

Hermione opened her eyes again wearily and waited for the look of disgust.  The evening had left her too tired and too sad to be defensive.  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she said flatly. 

“No, I…” Malfoy shook his head as if frustrated.  There was a different look on his face than she expected, and it was familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it.  “I’m just glad they’re not there.  I’m glad…”  He stopped abruptly and she wondered what he had been about to say. 

A beat passed and neither moved away.  Hermione thought now of the way he’d insisted they get to her parents immediately, with no plan or thought for what might happen once they got there, and her heart ached for more reasons than she could name. 

“I…  I should thank you.”

He tugged at his hair with both hands and let out a strangled laugh.  “Thank me?”

“You offered to help them,” she said in a small voice.  “To help me.”

Malfoy moved closer, so that suddenly he was standing on the bottom step, and her face was almost level with his.  Her breath quickened a little. 

“Of course I did,” he said, just as softly. 

There was a swell in the noise from the voices still floating from the closed kitchen doors down the corridor, but neither of them moved.  Perhaps from the comedown from the evening’s events, or the dim light in the hall, or the fact that he’d come after her, Hermione felt braver than she had since they’d arrived at Grimmauld Place.  

“That day,” Hermione said quietly, and of course, he knew what day she meant before she said it, “in the Manor.  Why did you try to save me?”

Malfoy clenched and unclenched his fists.  One gripped the banister, inches below where her hand rested.  Hermione watched him, carefully, and it seemed as if he was trying hard to figure out what he wanted to say.  She saw his throat bob as he swallowed, and her eyes followed the motion unconsciously.

“I didn’t do enough,” he managed, and his voice was ragged with some unspoken emotion. 

Hermione looked at him in puzzled amazement.  “Draco,” she said calmly, “you led us to Luna.  And then you helped Dean get her and Ollivander out before you came back up to look for me.”  She paused, a different question on the tip of her tongue than the one that she spoke aloud.  “Why were you even there?”

She saw him hesitate.  “My father called for Severus to identify you,” Malfoy finally replied.  “I was in his office, and I… I came instead.”

The brief look of shock on her face didn’t escape his notice.  “I didn’t—I didn’t plan it,” he muttered, running his fingers through his hair in agitation.  “I just couldn’t let… I didn’t want…”  He broke off, seeming uncomfortable with how she was staring at him.

“Didn’t want what?” Hermione repeated, voice less steady.

“I didn’t want you to get hurt!” Malfoy burst out.  “But you did anyway, didn’t you?” 

His eyes snapped to her forearm, which was covered by the navy jumper she was wearing, stolen from Harry or Ron at some point, that was about three sizes too big for her.  He shuddered, as if remembering that night.  Hermione thought of the way he had clutched her wrists, blood making them almost slip out of his hands as she struggled against the desire to cling to him tighter. 

“I’m alright,” Hermione said softly, drawing them both back out of the memory. 

“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” Malfoy repeated, and she felt her heart speed up.

“Draco—”

Hermione saw his eyes flutter closed for a second before they opened again quickly, his hand sliding away from hers on the banister, his feet carrying him back down to the bottom of the staircase, away from her.  The visible shift did something to her already bruised heart, and she swallowed. 

“You should get some rest.” 

His voice was low.  Hermione suddenly flashed back to their dorm, to the times they’d fought and he’d cut their more significant conversations off with a sudden withdrawal into his Occlumency or simply retreated to his room.

Her chest ached, and she couldn’t bring herself to push it further.  “Good night,” she whispered, and he turned in a sudden, jerky movement back toward the kitchen, leaving her in the dark staircase with only a renewed sense of exhaustion that seeped into her bones. 

…

The Sunday after this extremely taxing week, Hermione found herself invited to brunch at Tonks Cottage, and she was incredibly suspicious. 

She loved Andromeda dearly, and Ted, and all of the other current residents of the cozy dwelling, but something had been off about the invitation.  Daphne had stumbled into the library on the morning after their mission to Diagon Alley, which was the second time that Hermione and Malfoy were meeting to work on the translation of the little storybook, and her eyes had widened in an almost comical fashion at, what she referenced to Hermione as later, the palpable tension in the room. 

Hermione had insisted it was fine, had informed Daphne that she had decided to give Malfoy space and stop trying to push whatever friendship she’d thought they’d had onto him when he clearly wasn’t seeking it out.  And she’d meant it.  The night before, Malfoy had nearly thrown himself into danger without a second thought if it meant trying to save her parents, and then later he had admitted to actually having done so for her at the Manor, leaving her stunned and some small part of her wondering.  But then he’d closed off immediately, leaving her cold and confused again, and then this morning he had barely looked up and said hello when she had dragged herself into the library yawning and found him already there studying. 

Frankly, she was exhausted.  Hermione had given Daphne an abridged version of this explanation, at which Daphne had pursed her lips and given the other girl a shrewd look that Hermione liked even less than the one Malfoy had leveled at her earlier that day when she’d mistranslated ‘family’ into ‘clan.’   

The next day, Daphne popped by Hermione’s room before she left Grimmauld Place for the night with a bright smile and an innocent-sounding request that Hermione bring baby Teddy by the cottage the following day, accompanied by a claim that Lupin and Tonks were much too busy but Andromeda was dying to see him.  Hermione, who’d been even more down than usual after the confirmation that she and her family were being particularly targeted by the Death Eaters, had been so swayed by the dangling of an offer of a day with her godson that she’d failed to realize Daphne’s smooth excuses about her own inability to pick up Teddy were shoddy at best. 

Sure enough, when Hermione arrived, obediently toting a squirming infant with bright-blue tufts of hair, Malfoy was already seated at the breakfast table between Blaise and Ted, looking supremely uncomfortable.  Her presence, when he noticed it, did nothing to alleviate his discomfort. 

“Er, hello,” Hermione said awkwardly, disengaging a piece of her hair from where Teddy had begun mouthing it wetly.

Malfoy just stared at her, and then Teddy, for a moment before returning his gaze fixedly to his tea. 

“Hello, Hermione, dear,” Andromeda said, floating over to the door and scooping up her grandson from her arms.  “So wonderful of you to agree to bring Teddy over.  I can’t thank you enough.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Andromeda, who ignored this completely.  Daphne was waving her wand at something in a pan at the counter while Astoria and Luna chatted on the other side of the table from the men.  With a resigned sigh to herself, Hermione dropped into an empty chair. 

“It’s no problem, Andromeda,” she replied, accepting a cup of tea from Ted with a grateful smile.  “Part of the job, right?”

Andromeda snorted from where she was fixing Teddy’s bottle.  “Tell Harry that, please, I think he’s still a bit terrified of picking him up without supervision.”

Hermione smiled and then caught the slight frown of confusion on Malfoy’s face.  “Harry and I are Teddy’s godparents,” she informed him, feeling charitable. 

“Ah,” he said stiffly, and before she could get too annoyed at his lackluster response, Hermione remembered with a jolt of pity that this was Malfoy’s first time interacting with his aunt, and uncle.  She decided to make an effort to tamp down her irritation at his hot and cold behavior toward her for the day.  Perhaps Daphne hadn’t been up to something so devious when she’d invited Hermione, she thought, but just wanted Malfoy to feel like there was less of a spotlight on him.

“Where are your and Daphne’s parents, Astoria?” Hermione asked politely. 

The younger girl smiled brightly at her.  “Oh, I expect they’ll be down soon,” she said, but Hermione caught a hint of feigned casualness in her voice.  And maybe the Greengrass family was still adjusting to being under the same roof again.

“Minerva would have loved to see you, Hermione, but she just moved to Kingsley’s yesterday,” Daphne called. Hermione nodded, having heard this news from Lupin earlier in the day.  

“I’m just glad she was feeling well enough to travel,” Hermione replied, shivering at the reminder of her mentor’s near-miss.  

“Draco, dear, can you please get some more milk out of the cabinet?”  Andromeda asked, still fussing over Teddy.  Hermione observed Malfoy from the corner of her eye, who looked so startled at being addressed directly that he nearly jumped before getting to his feet and obediently crossing the kitchen. 

“Here you go,” Malfoy murmured as he handed the carton to her, eyes flickering uncertainly to the infant that was sucking on a bottle in Andromeda’s arms. 

“Thank you,” she said distractedly, and poured some milk into her own tea. 

Daphne came over from the stove and began doling eggs out onto waiting plates before taking her own seat.  When she had settled, a somewhat awkward silence fell over the table.

“Well, this is nice,” Ted boomed, breaking it.  Hermione nearly giggled into her food.

“Very nice,” Luna said happily, spreading a pat of butter onto some toast. 

“We should do it more often,” Blaise added dryly, and Hermione did snort out loud this time.  She covered it discreetly with a cough into her napkin.

Malfoy was sipping his tea in rigid silence, and Daphne finally seemed to take pity on him.  “Draco, no one here is going to curse you, you know.” 

This blunt sentiment caused Malfoy to nearly splutter into his tea, a very un-Malfoy-like reaction, and Hermione had to fight a small smile.  “That’s—I don’t—”

“I’ve told Andromeda a lot about you,” Daphne continued quietly, but firmly, and this seemed to give him pause. 

After a long, heavy silence, he spoke.  “I’ve heard a lot about her—you, as well, Mrs. Tonks,” Malfoy finally offered with strained politeness, his reply directed instead at his aunt. 

Andromeda gave him an appraising look, one Hermione had been on the receiving end of many times now and knew could make you squirm, and then the witch nodded briskly.

“I’m sure that’s not entirely true, but it’s not your fault,” she said, not unkindly.  “Your mother was never a talker, anyway.”

Malfoy looked slightly scandalized at this blunt reference, but managed a strangled reply.  “Still.”

Andromeda seemed to soften, as if she wanted to believe him.  “I have missed Narcissa for many years, Draco,” she said quietly, and looked directly at Malfoy.  Hermione’s throat squeezed and she caught Daphne’s eyes briefly, where she saw a similar emotion on the girl’s face to what must have shown on her own.  “But I didn’t invite you here simply to speak of things long past, Draco.  You are here now, and you are my family, too.”

A complicated look of devastated shock flitted across Malfoy’s features before he managed to mask it.  Hermione ached for a minute to be able to actually talk to him, and tell him about how wonderful Andromeda and Ted and Tonks were and how she knew Andromeda meant it, would not say it lightly.  The conversation in the room was suddenly hard to hear.  Get a grip, she thought determinedly.  When had she become so invested in Malfoy’s emotional state? 

“Thank you,” he replied in a softer voice.  Malfoy’s posture remained stiff, but he kept his gaze steady on Andromeda’s face.  Hermione thought she glimpsed Luna give him an encouraging thumbs up from across the table, as if proud.

The rest of brunch passed nearly as awkwardly but with what seemed like genuine effort on each party’s end.  Malfoy loosened up as time went on, even, when asked, volunteering a bit about his own interests in potions and how he’d played Quidditch in school.  When Andromeda pressed him to hold Teddy, he’d frozen as if she’d proposed he eat a Blast-Ended Skrewt, which made Blaise nearly choke on his bacon with laughter. 

While Andromeda handed Malfoy the baby, Hermione had to squeeze her napkin to try to minimize the strange tingling feeling in her fingers at the sight of Malfoy gingerly cradling the infant in his arms, a look of terrified awe on his face. 

It had gone surprisingly well, at least without knowing what to expect.  It wasn’t until hours later, when she, Malfoy, and Teddy had shared a Portkey back to Grimmauld Place that things went downhill again. 

Tonks had been waiting for her son expectantly in the foyer where they arrived to put him down for a nap, and Hermione handed him off with a twinge of sadness.  When Tonks disappeared and she turned around, however, Malfoy was still there, glowering at her.

“What’s wrong?” Hermione asked warily.

“Nothing,” he replied shortly, arms crossed over his chest.  “Just not clear on why you had to interfere with things that are none of your business, as usual.”

Hermione gaped at him.  Whatever she had been expecting this time, it wasn’t that.  “Excuse me?” 

“I don’t need you and Daphne conspiring behind my back again—”

“Conspiring—” she cried, affronted.

“Yes,” he spat, “why else were you there when Daphne forced me to show up?”

“What?!” Hermione’s head was spinning now at how fast Malfoy could work up to being furious at her again.  “You mean at a meal, with my friends, and my godson?”

“Oh, come off it.”

“I will not come off it,” she retorted angrily, and then let out a frustrated noise as he turned on his heel and began storming down the hall instead of responding.  “Hey!”

“What is your problem?” Hermione cried, starting off after him up the stairs.

“I don’t have a problem,” Malfoy shot back without turning around.

“I don’t understand,” she burst out, the simmering anger and hurt she had been nursing suddenly right on the surface.  It felt like since he’d found out the truth, for weeks, Hermione had been clinging to these moments he doled out to her, where she’d felt like they might get back to something like what they had been, or at least what she had thought they had been or might be, but then suddenly after each one she would blink and they were back to square one and she was left feeling like an idiot.  

Hermione was so sick of it, so sick of waiting for him, not when she didn’t even know what she was waiting for. 

They reached the third-floor corridor quickly, propelled by their combined anger, and he didn’t slow down, his longer stride making it difficult for her to catch up to him. 

“What is so different?  You’ve forgiven everyone else, you’ve been working with Remus, and Moody, and Tonks, and even Harry, and Pansy and the others aren’t mad at me anymore either, so—”

He finally stopped abruptly and she stumbled over her own feet trying not to crash into his back.  The muscles in Malfoy’s back were taut and she could see the tension leading down to his clenched hands.  He still didn’t turn around. 

“What, Malfoy, just tell me, so we can get over it and you can stop treating me like I’m—I don’t know, like I did this just to spite you!  Are you forgetting that I might have not known that much about you a year ago either and maybe the way I feel about you has changed?  That I got to know you and I—I know you feel like that wasn’t fair because I was pretending to be someone else, but it was still me, and it happened.  And I know we didn’t like each other before and maybe for you, that’s what it feels like again now but—I like knowing you."

She stopped, face burning.  Malfoy had this way of immediately making her so angry or confused or both when she tried to talk to him that she lost control too quickly to remember what she had intended to say and always started saying too much and too little at the same time.  Before she could catch her breath and start over, Malfoy whirled on her, eyes flashing and furious. 

“I can’t forgive you because you fucked with my head, Granger.  Don’t you get it?  Everyone else in the Order, and everyone that knew something—yes, it pisses me off, but in the end maybe it’s going to help my mother and maybe it’s even given me a way out of this shit.  But you—you made me think—” he growled in frustration and stalked toward her.  She took a step back involuntarily but he quickly crossed the space in the small corridor again. 

“I thought you were Daphne, this whole time, while we were going through all of this, and it made me insane because it didn’t make any sense.  The way—how I felt.  And then when you suddenly weren’t Daphne after all, you were—you were you, and everything felt like it did make sense and I could—”

He broke off raggedly, and something else she couldn’t name flickered over his face for a moment, but when he gathered himself the anger had returned.  “You don’t get to control everything, Granger.  You don’t get to decide how I feel and when I forgive you.” 

“I’m not—” Hermione started to protest, her muddled brain trying to sort his words into something more sensible.  Her chest felt suddenly again like it had become uncomfortably tight.  “What do you mean, how you felt?”

Malfoy just stared at her, face still hard.  “Draco—” she began, trying to sound calm.

“Don’t call me that.” 

“What, your name?”  Now he was just being ridiculous.  The annoyance at him that had set her off in the first place returned in full force.  “You’re so mad at me that the sound of me saying your name is too aggravating for you?” Hermione snapped. 

“No,” he retorted, sounding just as irritated.  “Because it makes me want to do this.”

They had been standing closer than she realized.  It took him only seconds to do the thing he apparently was trying to avoid, and crash his lips onto hers so suddenly that their teeth clashed.  His right hand crept into her hair at the base of her neck and Hermione felt the heat from the other on her lower back through the thin silk of the shirt she was wearing, long fingers yanking her nearer. 

She softened instinctively, and his mouth molded to hers in a way that drew a whimpering noise out of her that she didn’t realize she was capable of making.  It would’ve made her embarrassed but for the low groan that she felt vibrate from him against her entire body in response, causing any further coherent thought to fly from her mind.

Hermione wrapped a fistful of his jumper around her hand where it had somehow come to rest on his chest and tugged him toward her with an unbidden urgency.  Somehow, at the same time, he managed to back them up so that she felt the molding of the wall press against her back, though his hand rested protectively against the back of her head. 

It may have been a few seconds, or a few hours.  Malfoy’s nails scratched her scalp as he pulled gently, tilting her head to allow him further access, and she thought her eyes might have rolled back in her head at the sensation.  His other hand skimmed the bare skin above her jeans where her shirt had ridden up in the back, fingers dipping tantalizingly under the waistband for the briefest moment, and Hermione thought she might burst into flames where his touch landed.

Malfoy’s hair was softer than it looked, she thought distractedly, and she ran her own hands through it as he pulled her bottom lip through his teeth.  This made her suck in a breath in surprise, and he must have noticed her reaction because he did it again before dropping his lips to the spot where her ear met her neck and pressing them there.  She could feel her pulse beating under his mouth and simultaneously in her chest, thrumming so strongly she thought she might burst. 

A loud noise rang out from downstairs suddenly, like a plate clattering to the floor.  It broke through the hazy awareness that had seemed to narrow the world to only the two of them and Malfoy pushed back from her immediately.  Hermione could hear voices and realized dimly that lunch must have still been going on.

“Malfoy, I—” 

If she hadn’t been leaning against the wall for support, Hermione thought her knees might have collapsed when he’d let go of her so quickly.  She had no idea what she was going to say. 

“I’m still mad at you,” he cut her off, breathing heavily.  His eyes did look dark, like they did when he was angry, but they weren’t black, but a dark slate color she hadn’t seen before, like the water churning after a storm.  It made her mind go blank again.

“Okay,” she heard herself say, in a breathless voice that didn’t sound like her own.

“Okay,” he said, as if to himself, and then he spun on his heel and marched down the hall toward his room.

Hermione watched his back retreat, lips and skin humming like she could still feel where he’d touched her, and then stood there a very long time before she gathered the strength to follow his footsteps and slip into her own room.

Chapter Text

March 1998

“Pansy, I’m just asking whether you think that Neville’s grandmother will want to hear about the time that you had to go skinny dipping in the Black Lake on a Veritaserum dare because you didn’t want to answer Blaise’s question about how far you and that bloke from Beauxbatons you met over the summer before fifth year—”

“Theodore, I swear to every god that exists, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to throw that boiling tea kettle in your face.”

“I think it’s a brilliant anecdote, really, makes you out to be a much more approachable sort of bird—”

“Have I mentioned that Ginny’s been teaching me a time-delayed version of her Bat-Bogey Hex?”

Theo’s snickering and Pansy’s furious threats only half-registered to Hermione as she stared blankly into the charmed cooling cabinet, ostensibly trying to decide what to eat for breakfast.  She had definitely been standing there for too long, she could tell, but her brain was having a hard time translating the contents of the cabinet into some sort of achievable plan for her to execute. 

There had been a lot of that going on in the last twelve or so hours.

She finally reached inside randomly for the eggs, attempting once again to shake herself out of the dazed state she had been in since—well.  Since. 

But, as Hermione ducked out from behind the cabinet door, she stumbled immediately backward into something solid that made her struggle not to fall over back into the cabinet, a very warm something that let out a strangled yelp and that had very, very strong hands that gripped her upper arms to steady her. 

The carton of eggs flew out of her hand and spilled out across the kitchen floor, the crack of the shells breaking on the tile echoing smartly throughout the room.   Theo and Pansy ceased their argument. 

“Oh!”  Hermione heard herself squeak, and then promptly wanted to die.

She had somehow half-turned as she righted herself and become tangled in his arms, and Malfoy colored instantly when their eyes met.  He dropped his hands from her as if he had been scalded.  He opened his mouth, but nothing came out, and he shut it again quickly.

Hermione was fairly certain that her face was even redder than Malfoy’s. 

“The eggs,” she croaked, dragging her eyes down to the mess that now coated the bottom of her dressing gown in addition to the floor.  “S—sorry.”

“I’ll just—” Malfoy said hastily, and made a vague, flapping hand gesture as he backed up rapidly toward the door that he had just entered moments earlier.  “I’m not hungry anyway.”

“Right.  Me neither,” Hermione replied quickly, eyes wide.  She watched in bewilderment as Malfoy fled back to where he had come from, unable, herself, to move. 

She was allowed one, precious moment of silence, and then Hermione heard a distinctive sound from the table behind her.  Someone, or perhaps more than one someone, was choking back laughter. 

She twisted her neck over her shoulder, mortification settling in further, in time to see Theo and Pansy share an incredulous look.

“What,” Pansy demanded to Hermione, eyes glittering, “the fuck was that?”

Hermione grabbed the milk for her tea and slammed the cabinet shut decisively this time, then purposefully settled herself into a chair at the breakfast table across from Pansy and Theo before bothering to respond. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she finally replied, feigning a level of calmness she was not experiencing.  She drew her wand from her pocket and cast a somewhat-clumsy cleansing charm on herself and then the floor in as dignified a fashion as she could currently muster. 

“Oh, absolutely not,” Pansy declared.  Hermione cringed. 

“It’s nothing?” she tried feebly, stirring her tea noisily instead of meeting Pansy’s eyes.  Theo cackled, and she leveled him with a glare. 

“You and Draco have been sniping at each other for weeks,” Pansy said, “and now that.  Which was, by the way, the most ridiculous thing that I have ever had to witness in my life.  Spill, Granger.”

Hermione shot a hesitant look toward where the kitchen doors had swung shut behind Malfoy and weighed her options.  They were not great.  Giving up on any hope that Pansy would let this go, she lowered her voice. 

“I… suppose… there may have been a moment.”

Pansy looked utterly delighted.  The shorthaired witch leaned forward in her seat, excitement clearly growing, and Hermione nearly drew back in alarm.
“Describe it.  Now.”

“Um…”  Hermione shot a pleading look at Theo, but he only grinned and shook his head as if to indicate he wasn’t going to help her out of this one.  “We may have” —she paused and winced slightly in preparation for Pansy’s reaction— “kissed.”

Pansy’s shriek was so loud that Hermione was certain it had woken everyone else in Grimmauld Place, let alone traveled back to Malfoy’s room on the third floor.  She scowled at the witch, who didn’t look the least bit apologetic.  “Keep it down, please!”

“Theo, do I win the bet?!”

“Excuse me?!”

“I think it was Luna, actually,” Theo said thoughtfully.  “Bloody hard to get past that one, even for me.”

“Bollocks,” Pansy said, pouting, and Hermione just gawked at them, unable to speak. 

“Oh, come on, Granger.”  The Slytherin witch smirked and tapped a slender, manicured finger on the hand that Hermione was using to cling to her mug of tea like a lifeline.  “Not much other fun to be had around here what with a war on and all that.”

“I have no idea why anyone would be betting on me and Draco,” Hermione sniffed.  “It’s not like I was expecting this to happen.”

Theo and Pansy both started laughing so hard at this that she wished fervently she hadn’t cleaned the ruined eggs up, just so she could have flung the whole mess at both of them instead. 

Hermione decided not to mention the extra twenty minutes she had dawdled in front of her and Ginny’s bathroom mirror fretting over the state of her tangled curls and staring critically at the dark circles under her tired eyes before coming downstairs this morning. 

“Granger,” Pansy tried, catching her breath between chortles, “you don’t have to lie to us, you know.”

“I’m not—”  Hermione’s insistent response suddenly died on her lips at the knowing look on Pansy’s face.  It looked awfully like a look that she had given Pansy a few times in the fall when Neville was being discussed, and it occurred to her that she may have been due for some comeuppance.  She slumped over the table, covering her face as much as she could on her folded arms and groaning weakly.  “Well, I wasn’t expecting it to happen.”

She didn’t have to glance up to know that Theo and Pansy were exchanging smirks again. 

“Granger, you’re really the least subtle person in the world,” Pansy said, and the cheerful pity in her tone made Hermione wince.  “If you’re not arguing with him about every single thing, you’re sneaking longing looks at Draco with those sad puppy-dog eyes.”

“I do—”  Hermione’s indignant response died on her lips as she thought back to her spat with Malfoy the previous morning followed by Pansy’s discovery of her hiding from him in the study.  “Am I really that obvious?” she asked in a small voice.

“Yes,” they both said at the same time.

Hermione peeked out from under her hair and scowled at them half-heartedly. 

“Hermione,” Theo said, “we’re very big fans.”

“Devoted,” Pansy echoed.

“Rabid, really.”

“Let us enjoy this for a moment.”

“This is ridiculous,” Hermione huffed. 

Pansy cocked her head.  “Is it?”

“Well—” Hermione paused, flustered again, and then shook her head.  “Yes,” she concluded firmly.  “I have no idea what possessed him last night, but it wasn’t what you’re thinking.  You shouldn’t get so worked up.” 

Her heart squeezed and Hermione flushed as she repeated the words to Pansy and Theo that she’d been whispering to herself sternly since the day before. 

“It didn’t mean anything.  He doesn’t—Draco’s still furious with me.  He just—I don’t know, got carried away, or something.”

“Hmmm, I bet he did.”  Pansy’s self-satisfied smile was hidden momentarily as she sipped her tea, and Hermione suddenly wished desperately that someone else would turn up in the kitchen and interrupt this conversation. 

“Hermione,” Theo said abruptly, face a bit more pensive, “I think I should probably tell you something.”

Pansy and Hermione turned to look at him, both taken aback by his switch in tone.  “Theo—”

Before any of them could continue, however, Hermione’s belated rescue appeared in the form of Harry Potter, hair mussed even worse than usual, yawning widely and looking like he’d slept about two hours.  He drew up short when he realized the three current occupants of the kitchen had immediately stopped talking upon his entrance.

“What?” he asked defensively. 

Pansy snorted into her mug.  Harry looked befuddled.  Theo slurped his tea nonchalantly, and Hermione just sighed wearily. 

“Nothing, Harry.  I hope you didn’t want eggs.”

…

Hermione had planned to spend the day with Andromeda and Daphne, learning additional healing techniques that advanced upon the lessons she had participated in that summer, and she had never been more pleased for an excuse to flee Grimmauld Place.  She stamped down the tiny voice in her head that was, at the same time, wistfully regretting not having a morning translation session scheduled with Malfoy, and as soon as Harry started puttering around the kitchen, she gave Theo and Pansy an insincere look of apology and hastily exited to her room to get ready. 

The previous night, she had lain awake for far too long, unable to comprehend what had happened between her and Malfoy.  She hadn’t seen him the rest of the day; Sunday night dinner had been a typically disorganized affair at headquarters, and he hadn’t turned up when she had been in the kitchen eating with Harry and Ginny.  Hermione had been a bit put out that he may have been avoiding her, but then she couldn’t really blame him when she had scarfed down her soup in exhilarated anxiety and fled to her room shortly after.

The idea of seeing him again so shortly after their kiss had apparently put her so on edge that Harry had asked in confusion if she’d been testing the latest batch of Pepper-Up Potion that Tonks was brewing in her makeshift potions lab. 

Ginny had only appeared to grab some clean pajamas before sneaking off to Harry’s room, and though normally this didn’t bother Hermione, she felt torn as the redhead flew around their bedroom.  Half of her wanted to confide in the other witch, to ask for advice from the only non-Slytherin in the house that might be willing to discuss this turn of events, although really she had no idea how to articulate her own feelings on what had happened.  Hermione pondered what Ginny’s reaction would be, became even more nervous at the various scenarios her brain conjured, and before she could make up her mind, Ginny had bid her goodnight and vanished. 

Hermione tried to push all thoughts of Malfoy from her mind as she trudged up the stairs to get dressed for the excursion to Tonks Cottage.  But when she reached the third floor, she froze mid-step, suddenly terrified at the prospect of running into Malfoy in the same place that he—that they—

She covered the twenty or so paces to her own door faster than was entirely necessary, something she was not entirely proud of, but she let out a sigh of relief nonetheless once it slammed shut behind her.

Really. 

Deciding that using a Portkey to travel directly from her bedroom to the cottage was not cowardly at all but clearly just a sensible thing to do, Hermione slipped out of her dressing gown and pulled on a pair of denims and a jumper.  Her hair was even unrulier than usual, and when she pulled her fingers through to tie it into a knot at the base of her neck, it summoned the memory of Draco’s tangling in her curls while he pressed her against the wall. 

“That’s quite enough,” Hermione said sternly to the empty room.  A portrait hanging above her dresser of an ancient-looking Black ancestor who looked quite mad herself raised an eyebrow at Hermione, and she flushed. 

Really, there was a war going on.

Hermione yanked the handkerchief off the button it enclosed and let the Portkey whip her away before this line of thinking could go any further. 

…

“Hermione!”

She started and waved her wand quickly at the rapidly bubbling solution in front of her, causing it to immediately sputter to a stop and turn a not-quite desirable shade of brown instead of the desired gold.

“Maybe that’s enough for today,” Daphne said, eyeing the remains of the potion in the cauldron between them in mild concern. 

“Sorry,” Hermione replied quickly.  “Just got a bit distracted.”

Daphne used her own wand to set the flame beneath the cauldron back to a low simmer and smiled slyly at her companion.  “I can certainly see that.”

“I can fix it,” Hermione said defensively, already cycling through the recipe’s steps in her head and thinking about what would correct the overheating problem she’d caused. 

They had finished with Andromeda an hour or so before, and she had lingered at the cottage with Daphne to help brew some rather basic healing potions to soothe various types of burns—embarrassingly easy potions to brew, actually, which made it even more ridiculous that it looked like Hermione’s inattention would require them to use up an entirely fresh batch of calendula to fix this one.

“It’s fine,” Daphne said, gently swatting Hermione’s raised wand arm away.  “I’ll set it to rights later.  Clearly, you need a drink.”

That didn’t sound entirely wrong. 

Hermione trailed after Daphne to the kitchen, where the other witch summoned a bottle of wine and two glasses and then steered Hermione into a seat in the small sun porch.  The glass-enclosed room was cramped, but cozy, like much of the cottage, with only room for a few cushioned, wrought-iron chairs low to the ground and a little side table for drinks, and was enchanted to stay warm year-round.  Hermione loved it.

“Alright, then,” Daphne declared once they were settled and each clutching a generous pour of what looked and smelled like very expensive Bordeaux.  Hermione took a moment to appreciate the fact that Andromeda and the Greengrasses, without little else in common, did share excellent taste in wine. 

“What has Hermione Granger so flustered that she messed up a fifth-year potion when I recently found out from an inebriated Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter that she brewed Polyjuice by herself at the young age of thirteen?”

“To be fair, I turned myself into a cat,” Hermione offered. 

Daphne rolled her eyes as she sipped her wine.  “Technicalities.  Talk, please.”

Hermione squirmed and bought herself another minute by taking a large swig of her own drink.  After years of spending time with only Harry and Ron, it was still difficult to adjust to having female friends who wanted to discuss things like this with her—other than, of course, Ginny, who in any event had been her possibly-something’s sister.  Not just female friends, too, Hermione reminded herself—Theo and Blaise were certainly as nosy as anyone else who’d somehow wormed their way into her life. 

Reeling from her awkward interaction with Malfoy, she had cracked that morning unusually quickly and given in to the demands for information from Theo and Pansy despite her unease.  But Daphne, who had spent hours talking to Hermione about so much of her own private, inner thoughts, even before Hermione had earned the right to her trust—Hermione found herself very much wanting to hear what the witch thought. 

“If I tell you, will you please promise not to tell me about any bets you may have placed on this event?” she finally asked.

The green eyes across from her gleamed momentarily and Hermione resisted the urge to drain the rest of her wineglass.  “I can promise not to mention any such wagers I may or may not have heard discussed, yes.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Draco kissed me last night.”

Daphne let out an involuntary and happy shriek that was quite discordant with the normally composed pureblood.  She then beamed at Hermione in a way that made her feel only slightly less nervous than when she had been cornered in the kitchen earlier that morning.

“He kissed you?” Daphne asked.

Hermione hesitated.  “It was definitely… on his initiative,” she confirmed.

“But you kissed him back.”  Daphne stated this as if it were a foregone conclusion, and Hermione sighed inwardly.  Daphne hadn’t even been at Hogwarts, how could she possibly have developed such strong convictions about how Hermione felt when Hermione herself was still puzzling through it?

“Yes,” she replied.  “It was, um, both of us by the end.”

Daphne shot her another sly look.  "And obviously you enjoyed it."

It was unfortunate that Hermione had never become more accomplished at Occlumency, but equally unfortunate that her tendency to blush ridiculously would have always given her away in any event.  

"Yes," she said in a small voice, "it was pretty enjoyable."

“And how did it end?”

The red wine remaining in her glass suddenly looked very interesting, and Hermione studied it intensely as she answered. 

“Well, there was a noise or something, and we sort of—er, came to our senses—and he stopped it.” 

Hermione felt herself growing red at the admission, thinking of how she’d certainly not been thinking at all of stopping anything when Malfoy had pulled back from her.

Daphne was undeterred. 

“And then what?” she demanded.  “Did you discuss it?”

“No,” Hermione hesitated, her stomach sinking as she remembered the reason that she actually hadn’t been sure that she wanted to have this conversation with Daphne, in particular.  “He said he was still mad at me, and then… he left.”

Another un-Daphne-like sound escaped, this time more akin to a snort.  “Well, that sounds like Draco.”

“I mean, he is still mad at me,” Hermione muttered, staring now fixedly at the quivering Flutterby bush behind Daphne’s chair. 

“Perhaps,” Daphne said, a tad slyly, “but he can’t be that mad.”

Hermione snorted this time.

“I’m serious.”  

As she talked, Daphne used her wand to pour them both a refill without spilling a drop in an impressive bit of magic.  Hermione wondered idly if purebloods taught that trick to their own children, because she’d seen Malfoy make the same flourish with his wand countless times. 

“Draco isn’t exactly used to long discussions of his feelings, Hermione,” she continued.  “I know you know this by now.  But I also have gotten to see you together now and that idiot is a lot more than just mad at you.” 

A knowing look followed Daphne’s pointed words. 

Hermione blinked.  “Daphne, I—” 

Her throat felt dry as she thought of her next words, and she felt a wave of despair suck her under again, not helped by the two glasses of wine she’d nearly finished in such a short span of time, as she finally tried to voice the fears that had been plaguing her for weeks, or maybe months. 

“What if it’s not me,” she said in a rush.

Daphne cocked her head quizzically.  “I don’t understand.”

Hermione tried with every ounce of pride she had left to sound less pathetic than she felt. 

“What if it’s you?” she said quietly.

The meaning of her question seemed to dawn slowly on Daphne’s face, and then her features, ones that Hermione now knew, strangely, nearly as well as her own, settled into a look of kind understanding. 

“Hermione,” she began again patiently, “if Draco kissed you—”

“But he’s barely spoken to me since we got back,” Hermione persisted, suddenly unable to keep her anxious thoughts from spilling out now that she’d broken the seal on them.  “And there were all these—these moments at school, when he thought I was you.  I thought, maybe, somehow, he knew it was me, but that was definitely not the case, so I just need to—”

“Hermione,” Daphne repeated, loudly this time, in order to talk over Hermione’s continuing rambling.  “I promise you, there is no scenario in this world where Draco Malfoy would have fallen in love with me.”

Hermione started so suddenly in her chair at this that wine sloshed out of her glass and onto the ground.  “I didn’t say—”

Daphne ignored her and continued as if she hadn’t spoken. 

“I’m guessing he was mildly horrified if he ever even felt slightly attracted to you at Hogwarts during any of these ‘moments.’”  She said the last word so suggestively that Hermione almost spilled her wine again. 

“Daphne,” she stressed, “I did not mean to suggest that we—we did anything while I was—”

The other witch snickered.  “I believe you.  Thank you, by the way, for that.” 

She waved off Hermione’s continued protests about how inappropriate that would have been and how she respected Daphne’s boundaries and how she had thought seriously over the last few months about the troubling ethics of Polyjuice use and had a lot more to say if they really needed to get into it— 

“Hermione,” Daphne cut her off again, looking exasperated, “I am perfectly confident that you did your very best to manage an incredibly awkward situation as well as anyone could, and that you didn’t go around snogging people pretending to be me.”

Hermione blushed scarlet at the thought and Daphne rolled her eyes before she accompanied her next words with a pointed look. 

“I’ve also been briefed very thoroughly by now on how absolutely terrible you were at impersonating me.”

“I wasn’t that bad.”

Daphne stared at her in disbelief.  “Pansy said that you wore fuzzy slippers with some sort of Quidditch theme on them to hang out in the Slytherin common room.”

“I did that once!”

“And Blaise said you drew him up a color-coded exam schedule without asking.”

“Well, he was being terribly cavalier about his remaining preparation time,” Hermione said defensively.

“Theo said you always looked like you were going to murder someone whenever they asked a house elf for something without saying ‘please.’”

“You’re not cruel to elves!  You could have been trying to help them!”

“And everyone said you spent nearly all of your time with Draco alone in your dorm,” Daphne finished with a satisfied smirk worthy of a Malfoy. 

Hermione’s mouth snapped shut. 

“I’m just pointing out that if Draco developed some sort of feelings during the last six months, it wasn’t for me.  It was in fact because you weren’t doing a very good job of pretending to be me, I’d imagine.”

Hermione didn’t have a good response to that.  She busied herself with another mouthful of wine. 

“Besides,” Daphne continued, now almost sounding like she was enjoying herself, “Draco has treated me exactly the same as he always has since he’s been here—like the annoying platonic sister he didn’t ask for.  Don’t you think if he was suddenly harboring secret feelings for me, he’d be spending his time acting odd around me instead of fixating on you and then kissing you?”

“Well,” Hermione tried to think of a logical explanation for this and found she didn’t quite have one.  “He did say something right before about me—I don’t know, fucking with his head or his feelings or something.”  She winced.  “It wasn’t particularly flattering.”

“There’s something else,” Daphne said casually, sipping her wine and looking at Hermione over the rim of the glass. 

Hermione frowned at her suspiciously. 

“Draco’s been attracted to you for ages, you know.”

“Oh, please,” Hermione scoffed, feeling some of the tension she’d been holding during this conversation draining out of her at this ridiculous remark. 

Daphne laughed at the expression on her face and settled back into her chair with a smug look.  “Hermione, Draco may be good at hiding how he really feels now, but he wasn’t always like that.”

“You’re being absurd,” she informed the other witch, craning her neck toward the floating bottle of wine to see how much of it they had apparently consumed. 

“Am I?”  Daphne replied teasingly.  “When you showed up at the Yule Ball looking like you’d been Transfigured, we had to listen to Draco go on about it for weeks.” 

She laughed again when Hermione’s jaw dropped. 

“As you might imagine, Pansy was not pleased.  It wasn’t exactly the nicest phrasing of compliments that he couldn’t keep to himself, but, trust me, he liked what he saw.”

“That… that doesn’t mean…” 

The delight on Daphne’s face at Hermione’s discomfort was annoying enough for Hermione to gather her wits again. 

“Thinking I looked good in a dress when we were fifteen doesn’t mean he’s been carrying some sort of torch for me, Daphne,” she said, adding as much emphasis as she could manage to the other witch’s name. 

Daphne looked unfazed.  “Maybe.  But he’s certainly paid quite a lot of attention over the years to someone he supposedly disliked so much.  What’s that Muggle phrase?  ‘There’s a thin line between love and hate?'”

“That’s ridiculous,” Hermione said flatly.

Shrugging, Daphne twirled her wand in the hand not holding her wineglass, and absently sent a green and red shower of sparks into the air above her.  She watched them flicker out of existence for a moment before responding, a thoughtful look on her face. 

“Well, you certainly seem to have crossed right on over it.”

Hermione’s hand stilled on its way to bring her wineglass to her mouth.  Her stomach flipped in the irritating fashion it tended to lately when discussing Malfoy.  Or seeing Malfoy.  Or thinking about Malfoy. 

“That’s…” She struggled not to sound defensive. 

Daphne’s gaze shifted from the fading sparks above her head to meet Hermione’s narrowed eyes, and she felt the last of her very thin and very poorly constructed defenses evaporate.

“Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of her age,” she mumbled weakly before letting out a sigh. 

Her head fell back against the chair with a distinctive thunk and Hermione rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, where panes of glass enclosed the little porch but showed the sky above.  Whatever sunlight had been sneaking through the heavy layer of clouds overhead was quickly fading with the late hour of the day, and she felt slightly more courageous about continuing this conversation under the softer blanket of the evening light. 

When Daphne broke the brief silence, her voice had softened. 

“It’s not ridiculous to have feelings for Draco, Hermione.  I’ve seen enough to know that.”

“There’s the fact that he doesn’t return them,” Hermione replied quietly.  “Or the fact that until very recently we were on the opposite sides of a war?  That he still hasn’t forgiven me for lying to him for months?  That even if he did feel something for me after all that time we spent together, he really felt it for you?”

Daphne let out a frustrated sigh at this. 

“Darling,” she said, in a gentle yet firm tone Hermione suspected that she normally reserved for Astoria, “you know I disagree.  But I think Draco is the only one who is going to be able to convince you that none of those things are true nor do they matter.”

“He doesn’t want to talk to me,” Hermione muttered.

“Yet he kissed you.”

The reckless warmth that had taken root in her chest the day before and was competing with the despair she’d felt since returning to Grimmauld Place flared.  Hermione allowed herself a tiny, indulgent sigh and held out her wineglass for a refill. 

“Yet, he kissed me.”

…

It was late when Hermione got back to Grimmauld Place.  She hadn’t exactly intended to stay the whole day away in order to avoid Malfoy, but it had been an ancillary benefit.  However, when she arrived in the foyer, she mentally steeled herself and tried to calm her fluttering heartbeat.  She could be normal.  It wasn’t like they were going to be alone.  No matter that half the people in this house now knew what had happened and would be watching them.  That was fine.  Perfectly normal. 

Despite the lingering lightheadedness she felt from splitting a bottle of wine with Daphne, she wished suddenly for another drink and headed straight to the kitchen.  When she drew nearer, she was surprised to find no one there.  Dinner had come and gone, but surely no one but Teddy was already asleep.  There were normally at least a dozen people roaming around the main rooms in the house in the evenings, either tired of being trapped in headquarters and looking for something to do or actually working and bustling around on Order business.  Hermione frowned and wandered upstairs, poking her head into the large parlor on the second floor.  

“You’re back.”

It was Ginny, who was curled into a tight ball on the armchair furthest from the door, chewing methodically on her thumbnail and watching Theo and Ron with an intense focus, who were themselves engaged in what seemed like a very heated battle of wizard’s chess.

“I am,” Hermione said cautiously, stepping further into the room. 

There was a crackling fire in the hearth, and Pansy, Luna, Neville, and Tonks were also gathered on various pieces of furniture or cross-legged on the floor, clutching either drinks or mugs of tea and looking about as anxious as Hermione for some reason. 

“What’s… going on?”

Theo looked up from the chess board and met her eyes.  Something there told her it was very serious and she felt her a swooping sensation in her stomach that was distinctly unnerving. 

“Everything’s fine,” Tonks called out with a false note of cheeriness in her voice.  “Fancy a firewhiskey?”

With growing unease, Hermione accepted the glass that the Auror thrust into her hand and settled into one of the low chairs by the hearth. 

“Is there something I should know?”  she asked finally. 

Neville was the one who spoke first.  It wasn’t the first time Hermione had noted how much older he looked, but in that moment she certainly felt terribly young. 

“There was an emergency call earlier today,” he said calmly, “the people who were here, and rested enough, had to answer it.”

Pansy stiffened next to him and Neville seemed to sense her unease, shifting so that he could grip her knee with one hand. 

“Remus, Harry, Blaise, and Draco left immediately.”

Hermione felt sick.  The hand holding her glass of whiskey was suddenly clammy and almost slipped.  What the fuck had she been doing?  Drifting around all day wondering what it meant that she and Malfoy had kissed, whether he had some sort of lingering feelings for Daphne?  That didn’t matter.  None of that mattered.  He was gone.  He could be gone.  The oxygen seemed to have left her lungs and she struggled to sound normal.

“What message?”

“There was an abduction in one of the safehouses we’ve set up for Muggleborns.  The Order members on duty there were injured, but they survived.  They were able to alert us to the attack, and by another stroke of luck, we had someone on surveillance duty at the Parkinson estate—which appears to be where they took them.”

Hermione looked automatically at Pansy, whose jaw was trembling but who met her eyes defiantly.  Her heart ached for the other witch, and she stepped toward her instinctively. 

“Like I said, Remus, Harry, Blaise, and Draco went to join the rescue attempt.”

Neville’s last words brought Hermione to a halt. 

“A rescue attempt?” she managed.  “Wait—they didn’t just go to the safehouse?  They’re going to the Parkinson estate?  Without—without a plan?  They just left, right away?”

Tonks was the one who spoke this time, and Hermione could sense, without having to ask, her frustration at being left behind. 

“We don’t exactly expect that they intended to keep the Muggleborns alive long, Hermione.” 

The grim words were like a stab to Hermione’s gut, and she sat down heavily next to Ginny. 

“Okay,” she whispered, and took a large gulp of the firewhiskey that Tonks had given her.  “Do we know what their plan was?”

No one answered.

“So there was no plan?”  Hermione finally asked.  Something like fury was about to burst out of her and she tried to contain it. 

Ron cleared his throat, and the difficulty it took him to speak calmly was obvious. 

“We had standard procedures for raids already drawn up,” he said gruffly.  “And the Parkinson estate is one of the ones that we had been given information on.  So they have a rough idea of where everything is, and what the wards will be like.  Pansy gave them blood that should get some of those down.  They left about two hours ago.  I expect they’ll be able to get in, and they have Portkeys to get out.  We’ll just have to hope that’s enough.”

It didn’t escape Hermione that Ron’s recitation of the strategy didn’t have a lot of substance to what happened once they were inside the estate, but there was nothing else to be said.  Hermione met Pansy’s eyes again and tried to convey something supportive, anything, but the other witch’s gaze had grown somewhat vacant.  She knew that her parents had been involved—or at least her father—in the war, but Hermione hadn’t known that it had gone this far.  Maybe Pansy didn’t either, from the look on her face. 

For what felt like hours, the others watched Theo and Ron, who were surprisingly well-matched, play chess, sometimes trading half-hearted jabs but mostly restricting any conversation to instructing their pieces on where to move.  After Hermione felt like she couldn’t bear the tension in the room for one more moment—and an additional two glasses of firewhiskey—she stood up and declared herself ready for bed. 

Tonks had already turned in, but Ginny and Luna were sitting in a strange sort of solidarity while Pansy and Neville conversed occasionally in low whispers.  Ron gave her a strangled smile and she nodded back.  Theo didn’t look up. 

As she undressed in her room, she struggled not to picture Malfoy and what he might be doing at that moment.  Was it normal for a rescue mission to take this long?  What could they be doing?  Did it mean something had already gone wrong? 

Hermione blinked back tears and considered taking a Dreamless Sleep potion.  The traitorous voice in her head told her not to risk being unconscious if Malfoy—and the others—returned in the middle of the night. 

She was resigning herself to a horrible night of not-sleeping when she heard a light knock on her door. 

“Theo?” she said in confusion when she swung it open.  Hermione felt stupid immediately for the way she had instinctively hoped it was somehow someone else, miraculously home already.

“Can I come in?”

It would be the second time they’d had what was already bound to be, she could tell, a strange conversation in her bedroom, but Hermione didn’t say this aloud. 

“Sure, Theo.”  She widened the door dutifully. 

He stepped inside and shut the door behind her before taking the same place he had before, at her desk chair. 

“I was going to tell you something earlier,” he said, looking at her closely, “and I think maybe now it might be even more important for you to hear it.”

Confusion must have been apparent on her face because he smiled wryly.  It didn’t meet his eyes. 

“It’s sort of a long story,” he confessed. 

She raised an eyebrow and considered him.  Theo was prone to telling long, rambling, nonlinear stories that were unrelated to anything going on at the present moment, as if he thought you had been having an entirely different conversation all along and he was just continuing it.  Between the late hour, her slightly alcohol-muddled mind, and her increasing anxiety over their still-absent friends, Hermione almost thought to tell him nicely that she’d rather have this particular discussion another time. 

He was very uncharacteristically solemn as he waited for her to respond.  Sighing, she gestured for him to go on and took a seat on her bed across from him. 

“Well, alright,” she said.

While he considered her, Hermione stifled a yawn as politely as she could, and waited. 

“One night back in fifth year, I Saw Draco and Daphne together,” he said suddenly, and Hermione’s stomach twisted unpleasantly.  Together? she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“They were older, but not much older.  I had never thought once that they had feelings for one another.  But it was so obvious in the glimpse I got—that it was something big.  They were somewhere at Hogwarts, and they were arguing.  It looked like Daphne was pleading with him, to do something, I’m not sure what, and then Draco kissed her.” 

Theo looked pensive. 

“After a minute, there was a bright flash of flight and Daphne vanished.  That’s all I Saw.”

The scene sounded oddly familiar to Hermione, scraping at her brain, but she couldn’t bring herself to articulate why.  At the same time, Theo’s phrasing was not making sense—not that many of his stories did—and she willed her sluggish mind to work faster.

“After that, I watched them for a while, expecting something to happen,” Theo was continuing despite Hermione’s confused silence, “but it never seemed like anything had.”

He fiddled with the signet ring on his finger, a small frown tugging at his brow. 

“This year, when we went back to school and it seemed like you and Draco were growing closer, I thought that it was finally going to.”

“Wait,” Hermione broke in, sudden awareness trickling into her brain, “so you didn’t actually—do you mean that you think—that you Saw them?  Like you had a vision of them in the future?” 

Her skepticism must have been readily apparent, because Theo let out a low chuckle. 

“I remember you storming out of Divination, you know,” he said conversationally, “I thought it was quite brilliant.  That old bat was obviously a fraud.  Envious I couldn’t do the same.”

“That… well,” Hermione began defensively, “I do not regret walking out on that foolish woman, but I can admit that I may have been hasty to judge the entire branch of magic altogether.” 

That was true.  It had been years since she had stormed out on Professor Trelawney, and still years since she had heard Harry describe the words of what Dumbledore had called a real prophecy.  Privately, she still had her doubts about everyone’s obsession with the latter, but there had certainly been a difference in the concept than in the nonsense Trelawney often spouted about tea leaves.

“My grandmother was a Seer,” Theo informed her.  “I never met her.  So I didn’t believe it at first, either, even when my own mother told me, nor did I understand why it had anything to do with me.”

Hermione had never heard Theo speak directly of his mother.  Daphne had briefly mentioned her sudden death, which had happened when Theo was very young, and that it had subjected him even further to the cruel whims of his father without anyone else in the household to intervene.  It made Hermione cold to think on it now.

“Was your mother a Seer, too?” she asked tentatively, hoping she wasn’t overstepping.

Theo’s face softened as he shook his head.  “No,” he replied, “but she had watched her own mother… suffer from visions for years.  She was worried about me after she realized I had inherited it as well.”

It seemed like Theo had been wanting to tell someone about this for a long time, because once he started speaking, Hermione felt like he was unable to stop. 

“When I was little it seemed innocuous enough—sometimes I’d be able to figure out where she’d hidden the sweets, or I’d ask about some outing she had planned for the weekend that she hadn’t actually told me anything about yet.  Once, I drew Draco a picture to make him feel better because he had broken his ankle flying on the new toy broom that his father had just bought him, and it scared my mother and my governess because he hadn’t actually broken it yet.”

It was odd to hear Theo, a person she found genuinely intelligent and reasonable, despite his eccentricities, describing an ability to actually do what Professor Trelawney had feigned for years.  Hermione found that she really didn’t think he was lying, exactly, but she was bursting with questions already so much that she had to bite her tongue, her brain itching to poke holes in his theory of what his magic did.

“So did he end up breaking up his ankle, then?”

Theo looked at her in surprise, but it was a sort of pleased look, as if he wanted her to have grasped this point. 

“No,” he said finally.  “My mother invited Narcissa and Draco over to the estate that day instead and convinced everyone to go have a long lunch in Diagon Alley instead of playing outside.  But,” his eyes darkened momentarily, “he broke his arm two weeks later in almost exactly the same way.”

It was only a broken bone, something she’d unfortunately had to watch people suffer from Quidditch matches for years now, and an injury that Hermione had slowly become accustomed to treating more as wizards and witches did than Muggles:  one with a simple fix and very little recovery needed if healed correctly.  Nonetheless, the story was a bit chilling.

“Is that how it normally works?” she asked, unable to keep her inquisitive tone to something gentler.  “Do the visions change, too?  Did you See him break his arm, later?”

Theo shook his head.  “Not that time.  It’s not always the same.  And I’m not sure everyone with the Sight has the same abilities—I don’t think my grandmother and I did, at least, and I’m fairly certain Luna has something different entirely but related somehow.” 

This offhand comment resonated with Hermione, and she felt an academic desire to interrogate her as well.  Getting a straight answer out of Luna about anything after she got in one of her moods to offer only cryptic commentary was only slightly less difficult than Theo most days, though, so Hermione couldn’t imagine Luna sitting down to explain to her the logic of her own Sight.

“For me, it’s more like this,” Theo continued.  “I mostly See flashes of things.  Sometimes just an image, but sometimes more like a dream where it’s a whole scene or sequence of events.  Sometimes I can tell who’s in them and sometimes it’s less clear.  I also don’t have any context because they can be out of order in time, and some of them can end up coming true and some of them might not, and then some of them come true, at least arguably, but they happen differently—like the one about Draco’s arm.”

“Why do you think some of them change?” Hermione asked.  She had been sitting back when Theo started talking, drained from the day, but as their conversation progressed, she now found herself leaning forward on her knees, drawn closer in interest and her tiredness forgotten.

“I’m not sure,” he said, but his voice was a bit cagey.  “As I said, I don’t always know."

As someone who often carefully proposed explanations or plans to others that she knew would seem ten steps ahead or possibly a bit too ambitious or preposterous, Hermione could tell immediately that he was holding back. 

“But you have a theory,” she insisted. 

“Yes,” he sighed again, “several.  One factor seems to be that when people’s decisions are in flux, I can see different outcomes, and I don’t know which ones are things that are going to happen or which are outcomes that are becoming possible based on whatever the person is considering at the moment—whether consciously or subconsciously.  That makes it hard—well, it makes it foolish—to rely on my Sight for anything with certainty because it often never materializes.” 

Theo paused as if trying to get his next words right. 

“And the more important the decision and the factors going into that decision, the more that seems to be true.  Getting on a toy broom and making the wrong move such that you fall off—that’s relatively low stakes, so even changing your mind about what day you do it, perhaps it’s going to happen one way or another, and I just saw one of some set of predetermined outcomes.  But when people may take wildly divergent paths—say, if they are wavering between decisions which may each in their own way alter the course of a war—I have no way of knowing which of the connected visions are going to come true, if any, that I might have Seen a glimpse of because so many things are affected.”

Hermione absorbed all of this in silence for a few minutes while Theo fidgeted with the Biro that had been laying on her desk, clicking it over and over again in a supremely irritating way as he stared at it in mild interest.

“Okay, so, just so I understand…” she began.  “When you see one of these ‘visions,’ you are saying sometimes it comes true, sometimes it doesn’t come true at all, and sometimes it comes true but in sort of a different fashion?”

He gazed at the pen thoughtfully, twirling it around his fingers.  “Essentially.”

“And if someone hasn’t made up their mind when you See something, or if they change their mind after you’ve Seen a vision—that seems to play a role in whether one of the things you’ve Seen may or may not happen?”

He gave a vigorous nod, looking at her now directly. 

“So…” Hermione said slowly.  “If that’s really what’s happening, then it’s sort of analogous, or even related, to the Wizarding world’s theories about time.  How there are multiple timelines branching out from one another depending on how people exercise their free will.”

“Exactly!” Theo looked pleased someone else had reached this conclusion.  “Particularly because the visions also work similarly to how wizards believe the timelines do—some outcomes have stronger pulls than others, and even though lesser things change, the larger arc bends in the same direction as many other similar arcs, because of the things that always remain the same no matter what people’s choices change along the way.”

“‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’”  Hermione murmured. 

“Pardon?”

“It’s a Muggle quote,” she said, waving her hand dismissively.  “And often a bit misused.”

Theo looked intrigued, as if he wanted to veer off topic to ask her more questions about this, but managed with some visible effort to refocus. 

“Well, in any event, it’s neutral things or even bad things, too, in this case, but yes.  For example, I—”

His earlier hesitation returned in full force and he shot a glance at the closed door as if he could somehow ascertain whether her silencing charms were holding.  They were.

“No matter what things changed along the way, ever since third year I have Seen the Dark Lord’s return to power, in some form or another."

She stiffened immediately.  “Does that mean—”

Theo interrupted her gently, to her great relief.  “That I can see the end of the war?”

A shaky nod escaped her. 

“No,” he said sadly.  “Sometimes there are flashes where it sort of looks like he might be gone, truly gone, but I can’t really place them in time.  And the visions have never gone particularly far into the future, thankfully, only a few years or so.  Often they’re so vague it’s hard to place them in any kind of context—for example, I may have had a five-second vision of you and me sitting in this room discussing something, but there was no sound.” 

He shrugged. 

“If I had, that wouldn’t have told me much at the time, even if I did know then what your bedroom in Grimmauld Place looked like.”

Hermione burned with curiosity.  Did that mean he thought the war would go on for at least another few years?  What had he Seen past this day that could’ve involved Voldemort, or any of them, or even the Horcruxes?  If Voldemort moved one of them or made another, would he be able to See it? 

With that thought, dread washed over her like a bucket of ice-cold water and she realized with horror just how dangerous Theo’s gift was.  She immediately felt guilty regret for the way she’d blurted out the question about the war without considering how much of a burden it must be for him as well. 

The sad expression on his face meant that he had watched her come to this conclusion as well. 

“You can see why I’ve worried the Dark Lord would find out about this.  I may understand that it can be foolish, or even dangerous, to rely on the accuracy of these glimpses, but the temptation of possessing information like that is pretty strong, for anyone.  My mother instilled that in me that well before she died.”

They were both quiet for a minute, Hermione thinking in awe of the woman who had somehow ended up married to a monster like Theo’s father and had managed to protect her only son long after her own death.

“Theo,” Hermione said finally, “I really appreciate you telling me this, and it’s quite fascinating, but, well, I do understand why you’d need to keep it a secret.  So… why are you telling me, exactly?”

A brilliant grin broke out on Theo’s face, and the shift in mood was jarring.  “Well, I realized recently that it wasn’t Daphne that I’d Seen with Draco, was it?”

Hermione stared at him.  “I—well,” she replied, flummoxed.  “I’ve never kissed Draco.” 

Theo’s grin transformed into a smirk and she felt the need to quickly clarify this point. 

“I mean that I certainly didn’t when I was pretending to be Daphne.”  

His earlier description of the scene he had apparently witnessed still sounded familiar to Hermione, reminded her of something, but now she couldn’t bring herself to ask the question aloud.  Didn’t know if she wanted to know the answer.

“Well, as I said, the visions don’t always come true exactly like they first appear,” he said as if they were agreeing with each other. 

A glint then appeared in his eye momentarily.  “Though it sure looked like you wanted to.” 

Hermione opened her mouth and then shut it again promptly, sure that her face was scarlet.

“Well.”

“Indeed.”

A beat passed as Theo watched her in amusement.  “Anyway, I hadn’t connected all of these things because I didn’t know about the Polyjuice.”

There was not much to do but continue to gape at him. 

“Connected what things?” she finally managed to ask.

“The other visions,” Theo said, again like she should know what he was talking about already.  “The ones I started having last summer.”

“Oh?” Hermione replied faintly.  “And these were?”

“I saw Daphne, again, and she and Draco doing all sorts of things.  Arguing.  Laying in front of a fireplace eating sandwiches.  Studying in the dungeons.  Once, in a giant cavern, with some kind of skull laying nearby and magic crackling everywhere—that one was quite mad and extremely bizarre, so you’ll have to tell me if that was real.  More arguing, mostly.  But always around the same age—our age now, actually.”

“Well, that’s…”

Hermione trailed off, feeling overwhelmed.  She still had no real reason to have thought Theo was making all of this up, despite her cynicism about Divination and related things, but hearing him describe things he really couldn’t possibly have known about was unnerving. 

“That’s all very interesting,” she finished in a strangled voice.

“Yes,” he said with a mischievous grin.  “But then a few months ago I Saw you with Draco.  The real you.”

The tone of his voice and the waggle in his eyebrows left no room to wonder what exactly he meant about ‘with’ Malfoy.

“I—well,” Hermione said again, feeling instantly foolish at the tinge of relief audible in her own voice.  “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Mmm, perhaps,” Theo replied noncommittally.  His eyes were twinkling in a way that made her irrationally annoyed.

Hermione sighed inwardly. 

“So you Saw me and Draco and you just… figured out I was under Polyjuice?” she asked doubtfully, trying to bring the conversation back under control.

“Well, you also wore a lot of flannel pajamas.”

She rolled her eyes.  This again.  “Is it really that hard to believe that Daphne’s taste in evening wear might have changed during a very stressful war?”

“Yes,” Theo replied seriously, as if this were a ridiculous question. 

He looked at her intensely, and she resisted the urge to shrink backward.  Knowing someone could See your future, or at least some potential slice of your hypothetical futures, was quite unnerving, it turned out. 

“It wasn’t just that.  It was the way he looked at you.”

“The way he looked at me?”

“Yes,” he said simply, “it was the same in the vision from fifth year when I thought he was looking at Daphne.  But it was really meant for you.”

Confusion flooded her and she felt her cheeks flush with heat.  “It doesn’t matter, Theo,” she replied quietly.  “You said it yourself—they’re all just visions.  Possibilities.  It’s not real.”

Theo nodded amiably.  “Right again.  Possibilities, I suppose.  Different outcomes, some more fixed than others.”

Hermione’s mind seemed to have filled with static.  Under everything, however, a small piece of understanding surfaced. 

“Theo,” Hermione said slowly, “did you say you thought since fifth year that Draco and Daphne were going to end up together?”

Theo’s slight smile faltered and a more neutral expression crept carefully over his face.  “Well, that was my assumption, yes.”

“And what if you… what if you hadn’t thought that?”  Hermione’s resolution not to interfere in Daphne’s life ever again was sorely tested with this revelation.

He eyed her suspiciously.  “Then… nothing, Granger.” 

They looked at each other for a beat, neither giving.  Hermione thought the tips of Theo’s ears were slightly pinker than normal.

Hermione let it go.

“Theo, this is all fascinating, but, again, why exactly are you telling me?”  she asked curiously.  “I mean, I swear I won’t tell,” she added hastily.  “But why me, why now?”

His answer didn’t respond to her question, something that was not unusual for Theo but was exceedingly frustrating in this bizarre conversation. 

“Sometimes I’ll go months without a proper vision,” Theo was saying, “with either nothing at all or just simple feelings here and there, like knowing what lesson a professor is going to lecture before it starts, or what the elves at school are making for dinner.  But other times I’ll have so many at once for weeks that it’s hard to think straight, to keep track of them and what’s real at the same time.”

“That sounds awful,” Hermione admitted and he nodded absently.

“It is.  I don’t know what triggers it, exactly, but it seems related to what I told you about before—that my Sight is sensitive to times when people are choosing between very different paths, and significant outcomes are particularly up in the air.” 

Theo’s voice still sounded far away. 

“This past summer, and the beginning of term, when I was seeing you and Draco, and Draco and Daphne, and a million other odd things, it was like that.”

The hair on the back of Hermione’s neck prickled.  

“But like I said before, even when there are so many uncertainties, things tend to bend toward fixed points.  Once I can See what that is, the visions start to get clearer.”

She remained silent, but the air between them felt heavier.  Hermione wondered if Theo had discussed this with anyone before, other than his mother, as a child.  The thought that he may have been avoiding Daphne for years out of some sort of noble gesture to his friends’ imagined future relationship saddened her.

“It took me a while to figure out the connection between all of the conflicting visions I’d been having the past year,” Theo mused, “to understand what thread tied them together.  Whose choices.  But once I did it was fairly simple.”

“What?”  Hermione asked hesitantly. 

“You,” Theo said simply, and she felt her heart constrict.  “You and Draco are the fixed thing, Hermione.”

Her head spun and she just stared back at him.  “Theo,” she said softly, and then stopped. 

The solemn look on Theo’s face as he spoke next caught her off guard once more.  “I did start telling you all this because I wanted you to know something, Hermione.”

His redirection to answering her previous question threw her once again.  “What’s that?” 

“I can’t be sure, as I explained,” Theo replied sadly, “but I wanted you to know that I saw you and Draco, together, somewhere I’m pretty sure that you haven’t been back yet since your first… visit.  Which means it must be something still to come.”

Dueling feelings of foreboding and hope bloomed inside Hermione’s chest.  “Where?”

Theo hesitated. 

“Malfoy Manor.” 

Hermione had to dig her nails into her thighs to steady herself.  “Malfoy Manor,” she repeated, voice tinny.

He looked apologetic.  “Yes,” Theo replied, “and I can’t be certain it’ll even happen.  But I just wanted you to know that Draco—that I’ve seen him alive.  Later than this.”

More than anything, Hermione found herself wanting to believe him so badly that it hurt. 

“But you said earlier that sometimes the visions change.”  The words tasted bitter as she forced them out.  “So something could still go wrong, right now, and that vision could never come true.”

 “That’s true,” he conceded, but then he hesitated and offered her a sad smile.  “It just seemed like you needed something to hold onto.”

Chapter Text

March 1998

“Hermione.”

She couldn’t remember falling asleep, consumed for hours after Theo had left imagining all sorts of scenarios where the mission had gone wrong, including particularly sickening ones where Malfoy was struck down by Bellatrix, or his own father, or any of the Death Eaters she could put a face to. 

But she must have at some point, because the harsh whisper coming from the entrance to her bedroom caused her to throw off her covers in alarm and aim her wand at the unknown intruder, hand trembling. 

“It’s just me,” she heard the voice say quickly, and somewhat sadly.

Hermione cast a Lumos on her wand.  It took several beats of her thumping heart for the rest of her body to catch up with her brain and acknowledge that it was only Ginny framed in the doorway, looking at her with a wary but understanding expression. 

“Ginny, I—I’m sorry,” Hermione managed, forcing her wand arm down with considerable effort.  The other girl politely didn’t comment further and just gestured for her to follow her out of the room.

“They’re back,” Ginny said, and then vanished.  

It was still pitch-black outside, Hermione could tell from the window overlooking the square, and her heart sped up again as she yanked on her dressing gown, nearly tripping over a sleeping Crookshanks in her haste.

She followed the only lights apparent in the townhouse downstairs to the second-floor parlor, where Hermione found nearly everyone else already gathered.  If she frantically sought out Malfoy before she looked for Harry, Hermione was too tired to make excuses to herself for why that might have been. 

He was there, standing, but half-slumped against the mantle, some sort of dark smudge obscuring his face and shadowing his blonde hair as well, dirt, or ash, maybe, and his cloak must have been lost altogether at some point.  But he was whole, and alive, and there, and the only blood she could see was on his shirt and she just prayed it wasn’t his own. 

“Are you all right?”  she blurted out. 

Hermione resisted the urge to run toward him, instead trying to satisfy herself by drinking in the sight of him standing feet from her in the parlor instead of fleeing killing curses in her imagination, searching for any sign that he was more hurt than he was letting on, so preoccupied that she almost missed his eyes raking over her in return. 

“I’m fine, Granger,” he replied quietly, and she blinked furiously. 

Trying to distract herself, and perhaps anyone else, from how flustered she felt, Hermione turned toward Harry and Ginny, the latter of whom was now wiping something from Harry’s jaw with a conjured cloth.  “What about—”

Before she could finish, Remus suddenly appeared in the doorway behind him, supporting Blaise on one side with Tonks holding him up on the other.  Luna shot up and rushed toward them—Hermione felt a strange pang of jealousy at the unassuming nature of this movement—and pulled out her wand. 

“What happened?”  the blonde witch asked, tone unusually brisk. 

Blaise offered his girlfriend what Hermione supposed was intended to be a reassuring smile but it looked quite pained. 

“Caught a slicing hex to the leg.  I’m alright.  We had some blood replenishing potion.  But,” he grunted, about to continue saying something, and Luna shushed him instead, directing Remus and Tonks to lay him down on the sofa and hovering over him, whispering softly.  Daphne, who had stayed the night at Grimmauld Place to wait for their return, was at her side immediately. 

“Will he—”  Lupin nodded before Pansy could get the rest of her choked sentence out. 

“He’s alright,” he said quietly.  “We all are.  Blaise and I arrived back just after Harry and Draco.  Tonks was still waiting up in the kitchen.”

“The hostages?”  Ron asked, face pinched.

“Alive,” Lupin confirmed, and the others in the room let out a collective sigh of relief.  “They’ve been taken to a different—a secured—safehouse.”

“Why—” Tonks cut in, tone brisk, but had to stop almost immediately to clear her throat rather noisily.  She was still standing near Blaise, looking down watchfully at Daphne and Luna as they worked over his leg, but her question was clearly directed at her husband.  “Why did it take so long?”

“The wards took longer than we expected to break through,” Lupin replied quietly, resting a hand gently on Tonks’ lower back.  She didn’t uncross her arms but leaned slightly into his touch.  “All night, actually.  By the time we were done with that process, we had all been fairly depleted of our magic.  We thought it best to hide somewhere and rest in shifts before we made any attempt to get inside.”

“Once we deconstructed the wards, though, we could use that spell of yours, Hermione,” Harry shot her a grateful look, which she returned weakly, “so that we could see inside through the walls.  We had to be careful and make several trips around the entire house before we could map out where everyone was.  That took a while, too.”

Hermione nodded, listening, but her eyes strayed back to Malfoy.  He was staring at the ground now, fists clenched, and despite the relatively positive recounting of the group’s excursion by Remus and Harry, something about the obvious tension in his posture made her grow uneasy again. 

“After we had a sense of how many Death Eaters were there and where they were holding the hostages, we decided Malfoy and Zabini would cause a distraction while Remus and I went for the Muggleborns.” 

Harry took a moment to shoot Malfoy and then Blaise an apologetic sort of grimace.  The former didn’t look up but the latter made a sort of frivolous wave from his prone posture, despite the subsequent grunt of pain he made as Daphne’s wand flashed over his leg. 

“We didn’t think there’d be time for the Muggleborns to understand they were on our side if they were the ones who showed up to rescue them, so…”

Now it was Malfoy who jerked his hand dismissively.  “Get on with it, Potter,” he snapped. 

“Er, right,” Harry said.  “Anyway, it worked, sort of.  Zabini created some sort of explosion in one end of the estate while Remus and I broke in and started trying to Portkey the Muggleborns out.” 

He hesitated. 

“The Death Eaters caught a glimpse of Zabini and took off after him.”

“Yes,” the dark-skinned wizard drawled from the couch, as if bored.  “I suppose my allegiances may be more apparent, now.”

Malfoy let out a dark laugh and finally looked up. 

“It was Selwyn and Mulciber.  They’re not that bright, but they’re ruthless.  We managed to keep them distracted long enough for the Muggleborns to get out, but Blaise went down from Mulciber’s slicing hex.  While I was helping him, one of them cast Fiendfyre at us before they disappeared.” 

There was barely enough time for the significance of this to hit the others listening before he continued ranting, a frustrated hand running through his hair. 

“I don’t even know how they got out.  There were Anti-Apparition wards over the entire place.”

“Those can be cast in a way that allows certain people to still have the ability to Apparate out,” Lupin reminded him, and Malfoy just grimaced.  

“Did they see you?”  Hermione asked suddenly.  Several other heads swung toward her, but she was still too tired to care about any of them except Malfoy’s. 

He shook his head slowly.  “No,” Malfoy said quietly, holding her gaze steadily.  “I’m certain they didn’t realize who I was.”

The relief in her chest was a tangible thing, so much so that she almost expected the others to be able to feel it, too.

“So,” Neville broke in, his voice hesitant, his hand gripping Pansy’s knee where they sat on the loveseat farthest from the fire, Pansy looking as if she was stewing in a combination of guilt and anger, “by all accounts, other than Blaise’s injury,” he swiveled toward the Slytherin and offered a quick look of apology, “this seems like it was a success, right?”

No one spoke for a minute, and Hermione’s unease resurfaced.  Finally, Malfoy took a deep breath, straightened, and turned to his friend.

“Pansy,” his voice almost broke on the final syllable of her name, but he kept his gaze steady on her, “your parents wouldn’t surrender.”

A knot formed between Pansy’s brows, and Hermione saw her fingers grip Neville’s forearm tightly.  “I’m sorry, what does that mean?”

“As I said, the Death Eaters set the estate on fire before they fled—cursed fire—and we were still rescuing the hostages. Once we got everyone else out, Remus offered your parents sanctuary if they would surrender.  He offered to take them with him by Portkey.  But they wouldn’t come.  There were Anti-Apparition wards on the property left by the Death Eaters, which we couldn’t disable, and there was nowhere else for them to go except for with us.”

Pansy’s eyes were hard as she absorbed Malfoy’s words.  “What does that mean?” she repeated, tone icy. 

“It means we had to leave them or we would’ve been burned alive, too, Pansy,” Malfoy finished quietly, and Hermione felt the already horrible world they lived in shift a little further off its axis.

“It means they’re dead.”

…

Despite the late hour, it seemed unthinkable to return to bed.  With no other idea of what to do, nearly everyone eventually straggled into the kitchen, Theo and Malfoy immediately plunging into the cabinets in order to dole out glasses and summoning alcohol from their various stashes. 

Blaise and Luna did bid the others goodnight, the former looking exhausted even though the cut on his leg was freshly healed, and Lupin kissed Tonks quietly and headed upstairs to sleep.  Despite his own weary expression, however, Harry accepted a drink gratefully and collapsed into a chair next to Ginny, whose own anxiety was still etched into the lines around her eyes as she watched him obsessively, like she wasn’t sure he was really there. 

“Should we… toast to them?”  Theo finally said awkwardly, and Pansy shot him a withering glare that made him shut up immediately. 

“They don’t deserve any toasts,” she snapped.  “No one needs to sit here and pretend like we’re going to mourn my parents.”

“Pansy,” Daphne said quietly, but Pansy shook her head viciously. 

“They were horrible people.  My father was cruel, and bigoted, and my mother cared about nothing except herself.  We barely tolerated each other.  I’ve done everything I can to avoid them since I was eleven and could escape for school.”

Hermione thought she saw Malfoy stiffen at this description, and she chanced a glance at him.  He had snuck upstairs for a quick shower before they reassembled, and his freshly washed hair was still damp, strands hanging loosely over his forehead in a way that made her fingers suddenly itch to sweep it back.  He looked tired, and sad, and angry, but Hermione felt dizzy with relief that he was there. 

“They’re still your parents,” Daphne’s soft voice cut in, but Pansy just glared defiantly at her.  “You’re allowed to be upset.”

“I’m not upset that they’re dead, Daphne.” 

The weight of all of the attention on her seemed to be wearing Pansy’s patience thin, and Hermione didn’t blame the witch. 

“It’s not like I was expecting to have a happy family to go home to after this,” Pansy said bitterly, “nor were we ever happy.” 

No one spoke, though Malfoy quietly refilled half-empty glasses with another bottle of firewhiskey.  Pansy gripped hers closer to her afterward. 

“But even still,” she continued, a false lightness to her voice that Hermione recognized with a pang.  “I suppose it’s quite a different thing to be completely alone in the world.”

“You’re not alone,” Neville said intensely, and his words rang with so much conviction that several heads turned away from Pansy to look at him. 

Pansy seemed to soften slightly, but still just gazed at him sadly. Hermione saw her squeeze the hand that hadn’t left hers in hours. 

“My parents are dead,” the witch continued in that flat, casual tone, “and who knows what will happen to our home before the stupid war is over, or anything they might have left me.  If they even did—maybe it’s all supposed to go to some distant male relative that my father liked better than me.” 

“We’ll figure it out,” Neville said firmly.

Hermione thought she saw her flinch slightly, and Pansy forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.  “I’ll survive.  I always do.”

“Marry me.”

The quiet clinking of ice in glasses and occasional sympathetic murmurs that had been audible in the room ceased altogether.  Hermione stared in amazement at the couple, one of whom looked more determined than when he’d stood in front of her in his pajamas and intended to stop her from going to find a three-headed dog, and the other of whom looked more terrified than she had even when they had fled Hogwarts after facing off with Death Eaters. 

“I mean it,” Neville continued urgently, grasping Pansy’s hand tighter even though it looked like she might have tried to pull it back out of shock.  “I want to be your family, Pansy Parkinson.”

Daphne let out a quiet gasp.  Hermione’s eyes were drawn involuntarily to Malfoy’s across the table.  He was already looking at her, grey eyes carefully blank, and she looked away quickly. 

“Neville,” Pansy said shakily.  “You don’t know what you’re saying.  You don’t have to do this.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” Neville said, and to the collective astonishment of everyone else in the kitchen, he used the hand not currently gripping Pansy’s to reach inside his robes and pull out a small, velvet box. 

Pansy looked like she might faint.  She sucked down half of the tumbler of firewhiskey in front of her instead and then refocused on the box.

“What is that?”

Neville’s calm seemed to be slightly wearing off.  “It’s what you probably think it is.”  Pansy’s eyebrows flew up even further.  “I took a Portkey to Muriel’s and asked my grandmother for it last week.  She packed all the family jewelry that’s not at Gringotts when she had to go into hiding,” he added nervously.  “There were a few choices, actually.”

“You…”  Pansy sounded faint now, and Hermione began to have serious concerns she might actually pass out.  “You asked her a week ago for an engagement ring.”

With a slightly trembling hand, Neville popped open the small box.  Inside was an antique ring with a small, yet beautiful, emerald, with diamonds scattered around the golden band. 

“It’s green.”  Pansy let out a sort of mad laugh, and Neville grinned in an equally absurd sort of manner. 

“I think there are some Slytherins in our family tree.”

He took a deep breath.  Nerves filled Hermione’s own stomach. 

“I was going to wait.  I didn’t know if you’d want—you’d want your parents to give their blessing, even if they weren’t—even if you didn’t have the best relationship.  I know you care about some of those things, and I’d do them for you.  Court you, have some fancy, traditional pureblood wedding, whatever you want.  And I can wait as long as you want.  But after what happened today, I don’t want you to ever think that you’re alone, because I intend to marry you as soon as you’ll let me.”

Pansy let out a choked sob.  “You’re insane,” she croaked, but she was smiling now. 

“Maybe.  But I think you are the most terrifying, brilliant, beautiful witch that I could ever have dreamed of finding.”  He hesitated, seeming to remember for the first time that they had an audience. He shot a quick glance around and blushed slightly.  “I did intend to plan something slightly more, er, romantic.  There are these flowers I was growing in the backyard, you see, but they needed another few weeks for their everlasting blooming quality to really be at its best, and I was—you deserve—”

Before he could get another word out, Pansy lunged forward and pressed her lips to his, flinging her arms around his neck so hard that he almost stumbled backward out of his chair. 

A small squeal came from Hermione’s right and Ginny gripped her arm excitedly under the table. 

“Is that a yes?”  Neville asked dazedly once Pansy had finally pulled back, her own eyes still shining with tears.

“Yes, you idiot.  Now let me see that ring.”

…

Kreacher was summoned to bring up the most expensive champagne he could scrounge up from the Black wine cellar, and the originally grim atmosphere became markedly lighter as the residents of Grimmauld Place celebrated.  Hermione was too afraid to cast a Tempus and see how late the hour had really become, because the concept of having something to be cheerful about was too wonderful to contemplate going back to bed. 

Pansy clung to Neville while others congratulated them, looking emotionally exhausted yet happy—or peaceful, perhaps? —in a way that Hermione was sure she had never seen reflected on the witch.

Daphne couldn’t stop crying, so much that Malfoy had to keep Scourgifying handkerchiefs for her every five minutes, and Theo hovered at her elbow looking like he couldn’t quite figure out if he should be comforting her or what.  Harry was eyeing Neville suspiciously, as if trying to discern whether proposing might be contagious. 

Hermione sat on one of the cozier loveseats in the parlor, squashed between Ginny and Tonks, who had apparently become quite tipsy after only two glasses of champagne given how little she’d had to drink since Teddy’s birth.

“Who would’ve thought Neville Longbottom would be the first of us to get married?” Ginny mused, tilting the last of her own champagne down her throat. 

“To Pansy Parkinson,” Hermione added with a giggle.  Perhaps she was also a bit tipsy.

Ginny guffawed.  “You know, one night when we were still at Hogwarts, Neville got really drunk on peppermint schnapps and we had to keep him from leaving Gryffindor Tower to go find Pansy because he was rambling about how he was going to marry her.  And also how pretty her hair was.”

“What?!”

The redhead nodded enthusiastically.  “Oh, yes.  And I’m not even sure they had officially gotten together at that point.  It was quite pathetic, honestly.”

Hermione laughed again, letting the warmth from the champagne and the happiness for her friends loosen the last of the lingering tension in her body from waiting for the others to return and the shock of learning of the Parkinsons’ fate. 

“Pansy wouldn’t let me put her with anybody else on the prefect patrol routes,” Hermione confided, “so she could find excuses to spend time with Neville.”

Ginny and Tonks snickered. 

“You know, Remus says Neville’s parents got engaged in their seventh year as well,” Tonks said.  This sobered them all a little. 

Hermione watched, heart constricting, as a grinning Neville swooped down and kissed Pansy on the lips, dipping her back and making her laugh as both of their champagne glasses spilled out and she tripped slightly in her heels only for him to pull her back up into his arms. 

“They’ll have a happier ending,” she said resolutely, and the other two women said nothing. 

…

Hermione entered the library the next morning with a large mug of coffee in one hand and a pile of notes in the other, yawning already.  She was trying very hard not to do the math in her head to figure out how many cumulative hours of sleep she had actually gotten in the last two days. 

It was only once she’d stepped inside and closed the door that she realized she was not, in fact, alone as she had assumed she would be. 

“Draco,” Hermione said involuntarily and then they both grew even more still.  The single word hung between them tangibly, and it was starkly clear to her that she was not the only one thinking of the last time she had called him Draco to his face.  

He was the one to break first. 

“Granger,” Malfoy said slowly, and he watched as she fumbled her way into her usual seat across from him.  “Good morning.”

“Er, good morning,” she said dumbly.  The idea that he would show up that morning to assist in their translation work had never even crossed her mind. 

Malfoy arched an eyebrow at her.  “Coffee?”

“What?”  She looked down and followed his gaze to the steaming cup in her hand.  “Oh.  Yes.  I mean, yes, it’s coffee.”  Merlin, had she forgotten how to speak?

He seemed to consider this very intently for a moment, though she couldn’t fathom why. 

“So you prefer coffee in the mornings?”  Malfoy asked, and Hermione grew even more confused.  Clearly, she needed to actually consume the coffee to deal with Malfoy.

“No, I—I prefer tea,” she replied, “but when I really need the caffeine, I suppose I drink coffee first.”

Malfoy nodded seriously, apparently satisfied with this answer, and she continued to stare at him in baffled awkwardness. 

“I didn’t expect to see you here today,” she finally decided upon saying, settling somewhat more naturally into her chair and reaching for a quill for lack of anything better to do with her hands.

He looked at her with one of his inscrutable expressions.  “I told you I would be here.”

“Yes,” she said, “but surely you needed—er—to catch up on sleep after everything.”

Malfoy cleared his throat and his eyes drifted to the parchment in front of him, which was already half-filled with neat handwriting.  “I’ve never slept that well, no matter how tired I am."

Hermione sat with this response for a moment, watching as he began to scratch out notes in a completely casual manner.  It certainly seemed as if Malfoy was determined not to bring up what had happened between them only two days before, but she definitely wasn’t going to be the one to do it given how he had left things.  At least he was being sort of friendly, if strange, or at least neutral, she thought. 

“I’m glad everything went all right yesterday in the end,” Hermione tried tentatively, and Malfoy’s quill stilled.

“Yes,” he said, “I am, too.”  There was yet another awkward pause and then he cleared his throat.  “You know, Potter isn’t bad on his feet.”

This elicited a small chuckle from Hermione.  “Yes, well, a mostly-improvised mission is quite his speed.  Planning isn’t particularly his strong suit.”

Malfoy smirked at her, and she felt her cheeks warm.  “Yes, I imagine you usually handle that for him.”

The slightest glimmer of hope flared in Hermione’s chest.  She cast about for another safe topic of conversation. 

“So…  Pansy and Neville.”  She waggled her eyebrows. 

Hermione was rewarded again, with a laugh. 

“As I have said before, I wish him the best of luck,” Malfoy replied easily.

The casual reference to one of their conversations at Hogwarts caught her so off guard that her elbow slipped from the table, and Hermione had to grab her inkpot to stop from knocking it over and spilling the entire contents onto their shared work.  She hurriedly set it to rights and pretended as if nothing abnormal had happened. 

“Everything alright there, Granger?”  he asked, sounding amused. 

“Brilliant,” she replied, voice slightly higher than normal.

He laughed again, a low, rumbling sound that did dangerous things to her.  “Well, I’m just excited that we’ll get to watch Longbottom’s grandmother and Pansy have to plan a wedding together.  She sounds like a delight.”

“If anyone can handle her, it’s certainly Pansy,” Hermione said agreeably, unable to stop herself from smiling back at him. 

The moment stretched between them, and she was reminded of Theo’s words from the night before, that he had Seen her with Malfoy in a hundred different variations of the same scenes, and Hermione thought wistfully that she might have traded their kiss, as wonderful as it had been, for a chance to have more of these quieter moments with Malfoy again.  Then he bit his lip as he studied her and her breath hitched and that thought seemed patently absurd. 

“You know,” Malfoy said, face growing serious, “I’ve known Pansy’s parents my entire life.”

“Oh,” Hermione replied, unsure.  “I… I should have realized.”

He shook his head.  “As Pansy said, they were really quite awful.”  Malfoy drummed his fingers lightly on the table where his stack of notes lay and fell silent again.

“Is there—” she hesitated, the atmosphere so confusing between them still that she wasn’t sure whether he would grow angry with her for prying.  “Is there any more news of your parents?”

His fingers stilled, and then Malfoy shook his head once.  “No,” he replied shortly, but it didn’t carry any sting toward her.  “Severus still hasn’t been called to the Manor, I guess.  He said he’ll find a way to ask about them directly if he’s not soon, but that in the meantime he believes that it must mean that they’re… alive if he hasn’t heard otherwise.”

This was essentially the same report that she had heard from Remus only days before, but it made Hermione’s heart sink nonetheless. 

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.  He met her eyes briefly and nodded again before pulling his notes back toward him and bending his head.  Hermione understood the subject to be closed and, with an inward sigh, opened up the runes dictionary waiting to her left and pulled out her own fresh sheet of parchment.

“Hermione,” Malfoy said after another few minutes, ruining her concentration completely. 

The sound of her own name on his lips, something she wasn’t sure she had heard before, did something visceral to her and she blinked at him dumbly for a moment.  Visions of him snapping furiously at her for calling him Draco before pulling her flush against him flashed yet again through her head. 

“Um,” she managed to reply in a brilliant show of intelligence, distracted heavily and wishing it didn’t suddenly feel so warm in the claustrophobic, windowless library. 

“I am very sorry about your parents,” he said seriously. 

“Oh,” she replied.  That jolted her out of the imagery he had conjured.  “Thank you.”

Malfoy continued, “I haven’t…  we haven’t had a chance to discuss it further.”

“That’s—that’s alright,” she said, thinking to herself that there were many things she’d like to discuss with Malfoy if he’d just let her.

“Is there…” he hesitated.  “Is it reversible?”

The crack in her chest had already started throbbing predictably at the thought of her parents, but at this the ache was accompanied by a swooping feeling as if she was suddenly standing on nothing, about to fall into the unknown.  Hermione dug her fingernails into the back of her opposite hand and focused with enormous effect on the sensation to ground herself until the dizziness passed. 

It could only have been a few seconds, but when she composed herself, Malfoy’s eyes had drifted to the red, crescent-shaped marks she’d left in her skin.  She dropped her hand immediately and placed it in her lap, hidden under the table. 

“I have not—” she cleared her throat and tried again, “I do not know that it will be possible.  Minerva—she helped me with the theory, and she warned me that it would be—quite difficult.  If I even attempt it, the cost of the recovery alone…”

Malfoy frowned and she avoided his gaze. 

“It’s unrealistic,” Hermione said firmly.  “And maybe it wouldn’t even be the right thing to do.  They’re happy, and I—the important thing is that they’re alive.”  She knew she was repeating things she told herself, told others, to justify what she had done, but the wound Hermione had from losing them was still raw and it was the only way she could speak about it. 

“So there is a treatment?”  Malfoy pressed, though gently. 

“There are…  ideas of how one might do it, but it’s not a simple spell.  Not like—”  

She choked a bit as she remembered how easily it had come in the end to remove herself from her parents’ lives, and steeled herself. 

“Not like what I did.  It would be months of treatment, re-acclimatization, therapy, specialized private Healers…  so many steps.  Expensive steps.” 

Malfoy looked like he was going to say something else, and Hermione shook her head. 

“I can’t think about that now,” she said busily.  “I don’t even know if I’m going to make it through this war, anyway.” 

Hermione tried to shrug half-heartedly as she said this last part, to make it sound like the idea of dying at eighteen in a decades-spanning fight over blood supremacy was a normal thing to worry about, or at least somewhat ironically amusing, but Malfoy’s grey eyes immediately swirled with anger instead and it was clear he did not agree.

“You will not be dying in this war,” he said harshly, and she saw his knuckles whiten around the quill he was still gripping. 

“Draco—”

“We should keep going,” he clipped, turning back to the parchment in front of him. 

She stared at him for a second, and then pulled her dictionary toward her again and took up her own quill as well. 

It might have been another ten minutes before he spoke again, ten minutes during which Hermione reread the same passage about twenty times and translated approximately zero runes. 

“Granger, we should—” his words caused her to look up immediately, but he hesitated as her eyes caught his, and her heart pounded a bit erratically.  His tone was oddly formal, and gave nothing away.  “I know we should probably speak about what happened the other night.”

“Oh, right,” Hermione added helpfully, feeling her insides cave in on themselves.  “I mean, it’s fine.”

Malfoy’s brow knitted together in confusion.  “It’s ‘fine’?” he asked questioningly.

She felt a flush creeping up her neck.  “I mean, it’s—it’s fine if you just want to forget about it.” 

The words tumbled out of her mouth faster than she could process them, but it was too late to take them back.  Malfoy’s expression shuttered immediately. 

“Forget about it,” he said flatly.

Fear seized her so intensely that Hermione thought she might suffer from some sort of accidental magic outburst unlike anything she had triggered since the age of ten.  It coursed through her bloodstream and clouded her vision and she thought she might throw up. 

“Yes,” she said hurriedly, even more unsure of the words that were spilling out now, “I just mean, I know that you didn’t mean to—I know you were mad, and I know you didn’t mean it, and that’s fine—”

The blank expression on Malfoy’s face suddenly became extremely cold instead. 

“Right,” he said nastily.  “I suppose you would be an expert in knowing when someone means something or not.”

They stared at one another, Malfoy’s expression more of a glare and Hermione’s more one of confused terror.  Hermione thought suddenly that she might have steered this conversation in a horribly wrong direction and wished she could go back, but it was too late.  

“It’s fine that you didn’t mean it, but I would like it if you didn’t hate me,” she said quietly.

It was silent for a beat.  Hermione still felt desperately like fleeing the room but somehow remained where she was. 

“I don’t hate you,” Malfoy finally said briskly, and the newly lodged knot in her stomach loosened only the slightest bit.  “Let’s just keep going.”

He didn’t look at her again the rest of the morning.

Chapter Text

art by the talented ene / @chestercompany

…

March 1998

There were a number of things that Hermione had never told Harry or Ron. 

That she had let Viktor Krum snog her behind the greenhouses for several weeks during their fourth year, when she’d told them she was tutoring younger Gryffindors at the library, for example.  Or that she had, in a moment of weakness sixth year, once casually told Padma who told Parvati who told Lavender that Ron really loved being called sickeningly sweet nicknames because it reminded him of his mother. 

Regardless, none of these white lies—or whatever one may call them—had prepared Hermione for the fact that she was now living in extremely close quarters with a large number of people, the vast majority of whom knew, one way or another, that there had been an incident between her and Malfoy, except for possibly Harry and/or Ron. 

This may or may not have been the reason her foot was engaged in some sort of involuntary and frantic jiggling motion while she sat squashed between her two oldest friends at the crowded kitchen table, half-listening to Lupin as he led the impromptu Order meeting that had been called that Friday night. 

Malfoy appeared to be the only one who noticed her odd fidgeting.  Or perhaps Hermione was paying too much attention to Malfoy than she should have been.  She had lost track of what it meant to act normal around him. 

He quirked an eyebrow at her silently from his vantage point across the room, where he sat casually with one ankle crossed over the other leg and his hands folded casually on the table in front of him, and she forced herself into stillness.  A small smirk tugged at his lips. 

Hermione tried very hard to look at places other than Malfoy’s lips. 

She surmised that Pansy may have told Ginny, who may have had told Harry, but the redhead had been preoccupied the last couple of days, enough that Hermione hadn't even had a chance to tell her about it directly herself.  With Lupin’s permission, Ginny had been visiting the other Hogwarts refugees since their arrival at Grimmauld Place, ascertaining whether those of age wanted to become more involved in the Order, assisting the younger ones with reuniting with family members that could be contacted safely, and so on. 

Her latest excursion to visit Parvati and Padma, whose pureblood parents had been visited by Death Eaters after the twins’ disappearance, had meant an overnight stay and Hermione hadn’t seen her since she had returned.  The Patils were extremely shaken, according to the message they had managed to get to their daughters once the Order sent word of their safety, but unharmed, and after some persuading by Parvati and Padma, had agreed to remain at their home and report back any information that might be useful for the Order.  Ms. Patil worked at the Ministry in the Department of Floo Regulation, and already had been able to smuggle out a list of useful information about whose Floos remained unmonitored. 

All of this had, in fact, led to the meeting at which Hermione presently sat, distracted yet again by the convoluted circumstances between her and Malfoy.  Ms. Patil had confirmed that the Floo in Snape’s office, as he had suspected, remained free of Ministry observation, and Lupin had gathered the residents of Grimmauld Place in addition to the other available Order members to discuss the possible usefulness of this information. 

“We can’t exactly pop our heads into the Leaky,” Tonks said, mildly exasperated.  Unfortunately, there had been a longwinded discussion so far in which no one had produced any solid ideas, despite the seeming advantage this gave them.  “Or Malfoy Manor, for that matter.”

Malfoy’s smirk dropped and he seemed to snap to attention at this mention of his family home.

“Might be a bit of a laugh, though,” Fred said seriously, “give old Voldy a scare if Moody’s face appeared in the fire while he was taking his afternoon tea.”

Ron and George snorted, and Malfoy managed to glare frigidly at all three Weasleys simultaneously.

“No one is popping into the Manor,” he snapped. 

Lupin interceded before the conversation could devolve any further.  “Of course not,” he said, “but if Severus does get called to the Manor, for instance, he may be able to signal to us when one of the fireplaces there is unmonitored.”

What little color was left in Malfoy’s face seemed to drain.  “And what?  We would sneak someone in?”

“It’s just a thought,” Bill interjected.  “It gives us options.”

Malfoy looked like he wanted to say more, and a bolt of fear hit Hermione.  The fact that there was a potential way into his home, where his mother was, made her suddenly terrified he would do something reckless.  She thought of the night they had arrived and how he had almost fled back to Hogwarts, how he had demanded they go immediately to the Manor even if it cost him his life.

“Why don’t we see what else Ms. Patil can confirm before we make any plans?” she asked quickly, attempting to draw the conversation in a different direction.  “We don’t need to access the Floo in the Manor—or anywhere—right now.”

“My father’s Floo is probably still unmonitored.”  Theo’s voice was quiet.  Daphne, who was sitting beside him, stiffened wordlessly.  “Draco and I used to—use it.  Last summer.”

“That might be useful,” Bill said pensively. 

Daphne’s gaze drifted to Hermione’s imperceptibly, and she recognized the naked fear there. 

“We will consider every option,” Lupin said with a tone of finality, and Hermione’s stomach twisted. 

…

Despite her best efforts, thoughts of impending, necessary Order missions and of Malfoy Manor plagued Hermione for the rest of the weekend.  She could tell she wasn’t the only one anxious after the last meeting, but other than Harry, no one seemed inclined to dwell on this ad nauseam until the next Order meeting on Monday.  Instead, the others reached an unspoken agreement that they would take the weekend to avoid discussion of the war, for once, or at least as much so as they could in the present circumstances. 

Still, it had taken a ridiculous amount of needling, first from Pansy, and then from Blaise and Daphne, in turn, to get Malfoy to agree to take Sunday afternoon off and escape into Muggle London, one of the few places members of the Order could still sometimes manage to go without heavy numbers and disguises and feel somewhat normal.  

It appeared to be Pansy’s crusade, at least at first, and so Hermione had naively assumed it was borne partially out of the fact that Malfoy was the only one who hadn’t participated in such an outing yet and partially out of Pansy’s own genuine boredom.  She had been wrong, as she often was when trying to ascertain the intentions behind Pansy’s schemes. 

“Draco, you have been here for over a month, and you have left Grimmauld Place less than ten times, and those were all life-threatening missions or visits to your estranged aunt’s house.  Hardly restful jaunts.” 

He had arched an eyebrow at Pansy and simply returned to sipping his firewhiskey and perusing his book—something that looked decidedly Dark and depressing and not relaxing at all that was only mildly distracting to Hermione because she thought she had already found all of the interesting texts from the family library and this one looked unfamiliar—

“Draco,” Blaise barked.  “Pansy is right.  You have to get out of this godforsaken dump for the night.  Everyone else takes breaks.”

Pansy shot him a grateful look.  “Draco, he’s right, even Remus thinks it’s a good idea every once in a while as long as we’re careful—”

“I am perfectly content right here,” Malfoy had drawled, continuing to ignore Pansy’s glare. 

Daphne had wandered into the library to join the fight and was leaning against the doorframe near Hermione, arms crossed. 

“But please, do tell, what is so incredibly wonderful out there in the world right now that I should risk my life just to,” his face grimaced, “relax?”

“Well,” Daphne stated plainly, “Hermione took us for curry last time.”

“It was cracking,” Blaise confirmed. 

At this, Malfoy only scowled at Blaise and then glared very deliberately at Hermione as if to warn her not to start with him, too.  “I’ve risked my life enough lately for you lot to earn the right to read my book and drink my whiskey in peace in the modicum of safety we have carved out in this horrific world.”  

Daphne marched over to him and grabbed the book from him.  Spluttering, Malfoy barely managed to save his drink from spilling onto his lap and looked, Hermione thought privately, adorably indignant. 

“I was reading that.”

“Yes,” Daphne snapped, rolling her eyes.  “But I’m bored of you skulking around this house.  I’ve been trapped here or in another safehouse for months and thought it couldn’t get literally any more depressing, and yet now here you are, bringing down the mood even more.”

“Draco,” Pansy announced decisively, “you can either spend the evening with me, and that means me and Neville, or you can go with Granger, but you are leaving Grimmauld Place tonight.”

“Wait—” Hermione whipped around toward Pansy suddenly.  “Aren’t we all going together?  Daphne—where’s Theo?”

The other two girls’ faces turned suspiciously blank at this.  “Theo and I have plans to babysit Teddy tonight, Hermione,” Daphne said sweetly.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And frankly, Granger, Neville and I aren’t interested in a third and fourth wheel.  We’re still celebrating our engagement, you know,” Pansy couldn’t hide a smirk.  “So you are on Draco duty tonight.  Good luck.”

Hermione stared furiously at the two witches, in mild disbelief that she hadn’t seen this completely obvious setup coming.  Pansy had the audacity to wink at her. 

The wizard in question was still sitting on the edge of his armchair, draining the last of his firewhiskey and scowling toward Daphne, who had tucked his book behind her back. 

“I have not agreed to this.”

“You do not have to—” Hermione began, trying to sound somehow nonchalant and also apologetic. 

Before she could get out the rest of her sentence, Blaise had swiped Malfoy’s tumbler and was sweeping the other occupants of the room toward the door.

“Yes, actually, he does,” Blaise said smoothly, throwing a wink at Hermione out of Malfoy’s line of sight.  “Have fun, you two.”

Summoning whatever Gryffindor courage remained in her after so much time with these bloody Slytherins and the resulting mess she had created, Hermione turned to Malfoy and offered a weak smile.

“Do you like curry?”

…

It turned out Malfoy had not, in fact, had much Muggle food in his life, something which surprised Hermione exactly zero percent.  The startled look on his face when he took a bite of his chicken tikka was so charming that she had to remind herself sternly that he had been tricked into this outing, not volunteered, and it was absolutely, under no terms, anything resembling a date. 

Unfortunately, Hermione had always had a vivid imagination, even before she found out about magic, and it had been particularly difficult to rein in lately. 

She had been so petrified during their conversation early Tuesday morning, too cowardly to bear the thought of listening to Malfoy offer some stiff explanation of how he had made a mistake by kissing her, her and not Daphne, or her at all, Hermione Granger who he had despised for most of his life—or of him saying anything remotely similar—of the potential that he would take it back—and she had realized only later that night that she had taken it back first without realizing.  Regret had followed her since, combined with a burning curiosity about what he might have said if she hadn’t stupidly opened her mouth. 

Their conversation was stilted only for the moments in between the usual business-like task of following Order (Moody) protocol to Portkey to a designated location, then another, then another, before Hermione took them on the tube to their actual destination.  She was surprised by the way Malfoy let her take charge, but secretly pleased, and watched with delight as he marveled at the way she slipped through turnstiles and maneuvered through crowds of Muggles making their way home from their weekend shopping and visiting. 

For her own part, Hermione was distracted from thoughts of Malfoy’s overwhelming presence by the complicated, heady relief of being in the Muggle world, where she could be reminded that there were people who—that most people—had no idea who Voldemort was, who cared not what a Horcrux might be, and whose biggest concern at the moment might be whether they’d have time to grab a pint with their mates before catching their evening train home.  She ached for her parents, and herself, and at the same time felt a strange distance from the scenes playing out around them of what used to be her normalcy.

After Malfoy had consumed an inordinate amount of food at the curry house (“Edible,” he’d pronounced in his old aristocratic drawl, but with a twitch of his lips that forced Hermione to disguise a giggle as a cough into her napkin), Hermione found herself unwilling to let the evening end.  The relief at being with Malfoy, alone, outside of the often-oppressive atmosphere of Grimmauld Place was making her a bit giddy, and maybe reckless. 

Malfoy didn’t ask where they were going but allowed her to lead the way without comment.  Hermione walked purposefully as if she had a plan, and if he could tell she was faking this sense of control, he didn’t mention it.  She allowed herself to indulge in the hope that he, too, wasn’t in a hurry to return. 

They walked for a few blocks, Hermione pointing out various Muggle oddities to Malfoy as they did (“That’s a telephone booth, you see, but not like the one that goes to the Ministry, it’s really for telephoning”) and alternately panicking when he disregarded basic rules of human society with an ignorance only pureblood wizards could truly muster (“That’s not the Knight Bus, Malfoy, it won’t just stop if you walk in front of it!”). 

It was only when they stumbled across a small store tucked between a pub and a seedy-looking tattoo parlour that Hermione felt an inexorable desire to stop.

“It’s a record store,” she explained again, patiently.

Malfoy continued looking at her blankly.

“It’s a shop where Muggles purchase records—recordings—of music that they can take home and listen to whenever they want.”

Hermione resolved for the millionth time to revisit the curriculum of Muggle Studies and the mandatory nature of the class with Minerva if and when they made it through this fucking war.

“Like a Pensieve?” Malfoy asked, still skeptical, as he peered over her shoulder dubiously into the—admittedly grubby-looking—store. 

“No,” Hermione replied, exasperated.  She yanked his arm and propelled them both into the small establishment. 

Malfoy’s eyes widened comically when he took in the rows of chaotic, yet meticulously organized, records.  Hermione thought she could make out some sort of punk rock band blasting overhead from the store’s speakers; the mohawked clerk nodded vaguely at them before returning to whatever cataloging task to which he had been tending.

“It’s just the way that Muggles listen to music,” she offered as they rambled down one of the aisles, now feeling a bit defensive.  Malfoy was looking at her intensely, almost as he had when the server had brought them menus and she’d suggested he try the daily special.  Like she was something rare and odd, but also perhaps not as he once might have done so—like that was a bad thing.  It made her feel exposed. 

“So the music is somehow in these… files?”  Malfoy asked seriously. 

Hermione giggled, and some of her tension released.  “Well, sort of.” 

She took pity on him and plucked an album at random from the classical music section.  Malfoy’s eyes popped. 

“This is a sleeve,” she instructed, “and the music is on these discs inside—you need a record player—a gramophone—to hear it.”

Malfoy peered inside at the record and made a noncommittal noise.  She replaced the record, and they wandered in silence for a few minutes, Hermione’s fingers skimming the collections in each section with a familiar rhythm, flipping titles faster than Malfoy could follow. 

“So you like music?” Malfoy finally asked.  He wasn’t touching any of the records, only trailing behind her, hands clasped behind his back.

She laughed.  “Of course.”

He nodded absently.  “There’s… a lot more here than in the wizarding world.”

The enormity of this statement felt too overwhelming for Hermione to tackle at that moment.  She turned to face him instead, the surreal pleasure of being in a Muggle record store with him overtaking her. 

“I thought purebloods were taught all sorts of society things as children,” she teased, “like piano, and dancing, and whatnot.”

Malfoy’s eyes gleamed and he was looming over her before she knew it. 

“I’m good at all of those things,” he said quietly, and she swallowed, “and other things, too.”

The moment was broken by the bell above the front door ringing, signaling the entrance of another customer. 

Hermione stepped away, off-kilter, and turned quickly toward the next section of music. 

“My dad used to take me here,” she admitted suddenly, Malfoy’s continuing presence a bit flustering.

He paused.  “What did you do together?”  Malfoy asked softly, and her heart throbbed with an unexpected intensity.

“Well, we—we both picked an album we each liked,” Hermione said shakily.  “It could be anything.  When I was young, it was usually just something I thought—well, that I liked the cover art.  And then he would buy them both, and we’d go home and listen to them all the way through while we ate ice cream.”  She laughed shakily and ducked her head to hide what might have been the start of tears.  “But of course later I developed some actual music preferences.”

“I like ice cream.”

Hermione looked up, startled, and saw Malfoy still much too near, watching her closely.

“What was your favorite?” he asked, voice steady, as if she was acting completely normally and not like an emotionally unstable loon.

“My favorite?” Hermione asked, confused.

“Record,” Malfoy replied, and she could see this time that he actually refrained from rolling his eyes.  It didn’t bother her.  “Did you have a favorite record?”

“Oh,” she said dumbly.  “Well, yes, of course.  A favorite record, but it’s because it has my favorite song in particular, really.”

She moved a few paces down the aisle and flipped through a few slips before landing on what she had been looking for.  Malfoy’s fingers grazed hers when he accepted the album without speaking.

“It’s the whole album, really, but—number twelve,” Hermione said, pointing to the song she meant and feeling a familiar twinge of nostalgia.  “It’s quite lovely.”

There was a pause as he studied the slip, and then to her surprise Malfoy burst into laughter, the deep, throaty, genuine laugh of his that she had heard only a handful of times before, mostly when they were at Hogwarts and only rarely since they had arrived at headquarters. 

“Granger,” he chortled.  “You are telling me that your favorite love song literally, actually, has the word ‘book’ in the title?  Do you try to make this easy for me?”

Her secret plan to make Malfoy not hate her, which was possibly not that secret at all given the number of annoying and interfering Slytherins in the household, and to possibly find an opening to bring up their third-floor encounter again, was patchy going.  It did include allowing Malfoy to make jokes at her expense, which had always been a favorite pastime of his.  Granted, she thought, these days they had a different tenor to them than when they were twelve. 

She rolled her eyes and made a grab for the album.  It was completely ineffectual, given he had a head of height on her and the longest fingers she had ever seen on a person that were stretching the sleeve away from her—

“I mean, seriously, is this about loving homework or about doing homework in order to learn how to fall in love?  Because either way you realize that is hilarious.” 

It was taking him exactly zero effort to keep the record right out of her reach, and he smirked as she stretched up uselessly on her toes, huffing a bit for good measure.

“I will have you know, Malfoy—”

“Oh, it’s Malfoy again, is it?” he grinned down at her, and she ignored the way her heart fluttered.  

“—that it is an incredibly romantic song, and I don’t like it because it has the word book in the title, and while I don’t know what sort of nonsense wizards listen to besides that awful Celestina Warbuck shite, Muggle music happens to be metaphorical sometimes—”

He snickered.  “I hope you believe that we’re past the point where I am going to argue with you that Muggle music is inherently inferior, but I am still not above thinking it is hilarious that you like your music to really just be about books.”

She huffed again, eyes narrowing.  “First of all, it’s one song, and second of all, it’s not like it’s a musical rendition of Hogwarts, A History.” 

Malfoy laughed again, making her mild irritation fade and replacing it with a curl of pleasure. 

“Alright, Granger,” his eyes sparkled but his voice was serious now, “so tell me really why you like it.”

She looked back up at him in surprise.  His face was expectant, as if he actually wanted to understand.  It rattled her, as his sudden shift in moods often did, and she tried to take a step back.  She bumped against the shelf behind her instead. 

“Well,” she faltered.  “I heard it for the first time when I was sad, I guess, and…” 

Hermione sucked in a breath and mentally shoved her feelings of awkwardness to the side.  The point was to get him not to hate her, right?  Better act like a human and not the mindless Order robot that he seemed to sometimes think she was. 

“Have you ever felt like you were remembering feeling something before you had even felt it?  Like it was a memory but you hadn’t—hadn’t gotten to have it yet, but you wanted to.” 

Her face heated and she tried very hard not to look at Malfoy’s mouth, despite its proximity, let alone think of the way it had felt on hers a week ago. 

“The song is lovely.  I don’t think it’s meant to be sad exactly, but it’s sort of wistful, and…  I don’t know, it made me feel that way when I heard it.”  She flicked her eyes up to his bravely.  “As if you missed something that you’d never even had before.”

Malfoy didn’t say anything for a minute.  Deep grey eyes simply gazed down at her, and she couldn’t tell if he had noticed that he was still boxing her in between his height and the arm holding the record to the side, which was now resting against the shelf behind her. 

“I have,” he finally said, quietly, still unmoving. 

“Have what?” she asked, her voice betraying her a bit with its breathless quality.

Malfoy’s voice was steady, but soft.  “Felt that way.” 

Neither of them moved for a moment.  Hermione felt very aware of how close his face was to hers, and of the fact that their kiss in the third-floor corridor might have been the only other time they had been this close, at least without yelling at each other, since they had been at Hogwarts and she had been Daphne and not Hermione and he had been Malfoy and not Draco and her head spun with trying to grasp why she felt so warm and nervous and yet didn’t really want him to widen the distance between them at all. 

“I—” Hermione hadn’t even been sure what she was about to say when she was cut off by another customer jostling her left side while reaching across the shelves behind her to search for something. 

Before she could realize what he was doing, Malfoy pulled her protectively and quickly away from the stranger, who was apologizing absently, but then he straightened and took a deliberate step away from her, dropping his hands from her arms quickly.   

“We should probably get you back,” he said lightly.  “Weasel and Potter will be wondering where you are.”

Hermione’s face still felt hot but she cleared her throat and tucked her hair behind her ears, mostly for something to do with her hands. 

“Right.  I mean, no, they won’t, but we should go anyway.  It’s getting late.”  

Malfoy turned immediately and began weaving his way through the aisles to leave the store. 

Hermione watched him for a moment, thinking of books and love songs and how lately words seemed to mean so many things at once she couldn’t decipher them, and then followed him outside. 

Chapter Text

March/April 1998

“Malfoy, I—”

Hermione drew up short, arms hovering awkwardly over the spot where she had intended to drop the stack of books they currently encircled.  She stared down dumbly, at the innocuous and yet completely astonishing sight of a still-steaming mug of tea resting on the wooden table at her usual seat across from Malfoy.

“It’s just tea, Granger,” he said gruffly, not pausing in his writing. 

She kept staring.  It didn’t feel like just tea.

“Er—right.”

She sat down, and tried to focus on arranging her workspace as if nothing abnormal was happening.  Malfoy continued taking notes quite diligently.  Perhaps it wasn’t.  Perhaps it was just tea. 

A quiet minute passed, in which Hermione cast furtive looks at the spirals of steam emitting from the mug of tea in front of her and wondered half-seriously whether Lavender or Parvati would have been able to divine their meaning for her. 

“So—I suppose we’re almost done with the translation work.”  Hermione broke the silence when she could bear it no longer.  “Though I’m not sure if we’ve actually figured out what any of it means with respect to Voldemort.”

Malfoy sighed and looked up.  He did not spare a glance at The Tea, though he took a casual drink of his own beverage. 

“I agree.”  He rolled his shoulders back and cracked his neck from side to side, and Hermione busied herself with finally taking a sip so as not to ogle.

“It’s simply a children’s book,” he said, sounding frustrated.

The continued mystery of Dumbledore’s bequest was sufficiently annoying to draw her attention back from not-ogling Malfoy and his remarkably broad shoulders, though, somewhat unfortunately, Hermione had always been very good at multitasking. 

“Well, perhaps we should look into spells that might reveal some sort of hidden text in the parchment?” she offered, frowning a bit at her notes.  “We’ve really been focusing on translating the runes that appear to make up the stories themselves, but perhaps whatever Dumbledore wanted us to see is something else altogether concealed in the guise of a children’s book.”

Malfoy let out an exasperated groan and threw his quill onto the table, tipping his chair onto the back two legs to stare up at the ceiling.  “That sounds like starting from scratch.”

“Well,” she replied, biting her lip fretfully, “that’s true, but I don’t see what good it does to keep searching for alternative translations of these runes when we know these stories are all fairly common ones in the Wizarding world.”

His chair thudded back softly onto the carpet and Malfoy looked resigned. 

“I suppose researching the basic structure of magical texts is the next way to go, then.  Maybe spells or potions that people use to create magical diaries, and whatnot, too, just so we understand the basics first.” 

Her academic curiosity was piqued at these suggestions, and she reminded herself sternly that this was not intended to be a titillating research project, but rather an important component to figuring out whatever remaining instructions Dumbledore may have left them in his exasperatingly difficult fashion.  She swallowed another mouthful of tea while she contemplated potential next steps. 

It was really quite a wonderful cup, Hermione thought absently, with exactly the right amount of milk to cut the bitterness—

“Malfoy,” she blurted. 

He raised an eyebrow at her questioningly. 

“How did you know how I take my tea?”

He merely looked at her in that inscrutable fashion that made her want to retract the question instantly, or possibly slap him.  One or the other.

A brief moment passed where she contemplated both options.  Then, to her surprise, Malfoy laughed and his cold expression dissolved.  The sound was so unexpected that she nearly dropped the mug altogether.

“Because I’ve been making it like that for you for months,” he said, a smirk tugging at his lips. 

She blinked at him in confusion. 

“When we got to Hogwarts, obviously I made you tea as Daphne drinks it—three sugars, no milk.  And you fixed it that way at breakfast for yourself, too.”

Malfoy looked much too self-satisfied for her liking, but she was still too flabbergasted to interject.

“But you always made this funny little face when you took your first sip, like you thought it was disgustingly sweet.”  He chuckled again, the sound making her chest ache in a peculiar way.  “I thought it was the strangest thing, honestly.  Why would you drink your tea that way if you didn’t even like it?  But, it bothered me, so I started preparing yours differently when I left it in the mornings.” 

He shrugged, as if this was a completely normal thing to do and have done and now be explaining. 

“I had you down to two sugars, then one, then nothing, week by week, and then I added a bit of honey or milk, and eventually I noticed you start fixing it at breakfast the same way I had made it, and you seemed much happier with it, so I… stopped there.”

“Malfoy,” Hermione said in amazement, and then halted.

Two tiny spots of pink appeared on his cheeks, and she too felt unexpectedly very warm. 

“You really were a terrible spy, Granger,” he said busily, shuffling his papers as if suddenly very consumed by their stunted research again.  “You can be horribly unobservant.”

Hermione pondered this in the context of new information. 

“Yes,” she finally agreed in a small voice, “I suppose that’s true.”

The moment stretched, longer than was comfortable, but she couldn’t figure out, yet again, how to say what she thought she might really want to say, and Malfoy didn’t volunteer anything further. 

Instead Hermione picked up her own parchment and reviewed, half-focused, the remaining items on her compiled to-do list.  Despite the lack of good it had apparently done, she figured she might as well finish this one off thoroughly before starting on what was sure to be a mindboggling new one for their next research phase. 

Malfoy had straightened his reading glasses again and was glaring at something in the Spellman’s Syllabary he had open in front of him, apparently offended by whatever answer it had proposed to his research question.

“Malfoy,” Hermione said slowly, and he looked up, the grey eyes looking at her over the wire rims of his glasses slightly impatient. 

She ignored this, as well as the heat that pooled in her stomach when he looked at her like that.

“I have one rune left in my portion, and I have no idea what it is.”

He sat up more fully, long fingers sliding the small book around so that he didn’t have to read it upside down.  

“Which?” 

She pointed to the small symbol above the title of the story they’d finished translating earlier that week.  “See?”

Malfoy didn’t reply, merely frowned down at the page with an odd intensity, and she felt herself growing restless as the seconds ticked by. 

“Well?”

“Granger,” he said slowly, tapping his index finger firmly beside the strange symbol.  “That is not part of this book.”

“What?”  Hermione grabbed the book quickly to turn it to face her again.  She barely registered him huffing in irritation.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he drawled, looking a bit smug, which certainly wasn’t deserved, “that this symbol wasn’t printed with the rest of your little book—someone drew it on.”

Stunned, Hermione held the book closer to her face and squinted.  He was right, she thought with astonishment, if you really looked, the little triangle and the line and circle going through it seemed to each have been inked on by some other writing instrument, not type-set like the rest of the words in the book.

Her face flushed with excitement, and she looked back up at Malfoy.  “This must be it!”  Hermione exclaimed.

Malfoy rolled his eyes, though she could tell he was trying to hide his own interest.  “It could just be some random doodle, Granger.”

She shook her head fervently, gazing down at the drawing again. 

“No, we have to figure out what this means,” Hermione insisted.  “Before we move on to all of these other ideas about concealed messages or hidden spell work.  Dumbledore must have meant for us to find it.”

A shrug was her only direct response, but Malfoy drew his textbook back toward him and picked up his quill.  “Better get at it then, shouldn’t we?”

…

Harry sighed and flopped down on his back on the floor.  “Honestly, you two, if you couldn’t figure out what that symbol means, I don’t know how you expect I’d be able to come up with anything better about it.”

Malfoy sniffed haughtily at him, as if wholeheartedly agreeing but finding the need to express how disagreeable he found this nonetheless. 

“It’s really not a rune like I’ve ever seen before,” Hermione said for the millionth time since they had discovered the symbol three days before.  “It’s quite rudimentary looking, but it doesn’t fit with any of the other groups of depictions that match that sort of level of detail such that I can trace it to a particular period…”

She trailed off, lost in thought, and allowed Malfoy to tug her quill out of her hand, the end of which had slipped into her mouth as she began to chew thoughtfully on it.  He grimaced and set the instrument aside gingerly before shoving another sheet of parchment under her nose. 

“Try it with this key,” he said, “the triangle and the circle overlapping reminded me of the patterns in some of the ones here.”

Hermione frowned and drew the page closer to her.  “I’ll try, but—”

A voice floated across the room to them and interrupted Hermione’s objection.

“It seems obvious to me that you’re talking about the symbol of the Deathly Hallows.”  Luna flipped to another page of her book, tone only one of polite interest. 

She was lounging against Blaise’s shins while he played with the ends of her hair from his seat on the couch, and neither had seemed to be paying much attention to the conversation being held by the other occupants of the parlor. 

Malfoy and Hermione exchanged a wary look. 

“Luna, what are the Deathly Hallows?”  Hermione asked patiently, already itching to make an excuse to exit the room and refocus their discussion somewhere without the Ravenclaw’s commentary. 

Luna tittered, and Hermione’s surge of annoyance was reflected briefly on Malfoy’s face. 

“The Deathly Hallows,” she repeated, looking up for the first time and leveling her gaze on Hermione, “the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility.  Daddy’s been after them for years.”

“Er, Luna,” Harry tried, sensing Hermione and Malfoy were already collectively losing their patience, “what do you mean ‘after them?'” 

He sat up somewhat reluctantly, pushing his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose.

“It’s a quest, isn’t it?” she said cheerfully, and set her book aside. 

Hermione could now see the title:  Muggle Sightings of Kelpies Over the Years and How the Ministry Has Conspired to Conceal Them. 

“Seekers of the Deathly Hallows want to reunite all three objects.” 

Luna leaned over and traced the symbol on Hermione’s notes with her finger. 

“See?  The wand, the stone, the cloak.  That’s what the symbol stands for.  It tells others you are also on the Quest when you reveal it.”

Malfoy, Hermione, and Harry all stared blankly down at the parchment.  It was outlandish to believe Luna could possibly know what she was talking about, but, then again, Dumbledore had been an outlandish fellow. 

“Well,” Hermione said finally, “that certainly gives us something to go on.”

…

“But I have the cloak!”  Harry was shouting excitedly again, and Hermione felt a migraine forming behind her right eye.

“And we have no idea where the stone might be, or if any of this is remotely real,” she reminded him. 

Ron had returned from Shell Cottage (“Bill and Fleur need someone to bring them some more Portkeys from the stash at headquarters,” he’d offered loudly to absolutely no one asking before he left) to find Malfoy, Harry, and Hermione locked in the library on hour three of the most circular conversation in which Hermione had ever had the pleasure of partaking. 

“I still fancy the wand, though,” he mused helpfully, propping his feet up on the low table across from the sofa.  “Do you reckon Voldemort ever found it?”

“I don’t know, do I?”  Harry scowled.   

This was a major point of contention in the Great Hallows Debate thus far.  Harry was convinced that Voldemort’s flight to the continent, and his imprisonment of Ollivander, were absolutely linked to the Dark wizard’s own search for said all-powerful wand. 

Hermione was of the opinion that this was all irrelevant, because wands only channeled the power and magic of the caster.  Malfoy had argued that, to his utter lack of surprise, none of them seemed to have a very thorough knowledge of magical objects and that was of course a ridiculous position for her to take, but, in any case, he’d himself witnessed the Dark Lord claim his father’s wand for his own use and Malfoy was fairly certain that it had to do with some sort of connection between Potter’s and Voldemort’s wands, not an unmentioned Elder Wand. 

“Yes, but now he must be after something better,” Harry said again to this impatiently, and Malfoy raised his eyes to the ceiling. 

“Fine, Potter,” he said with mock patience, “but it doesn’t seem like he’s found it, and we’re certainly not going to.  It could be literally anywhere in the world.  Shouldn’t we be focusing on the cup?”

Harry looked disgruntled.  “Right.  I guess.”

“And shouldn’t you be focusing on actually employing the Occlumency that you’ve been learning from basically every Occlumens in the Order?”  Hermione reminded him sternly. 

Indeed, a rotating cast of Aurors had been giving Harry lessons, all using their own variation of teaching method, including everyone from Kinglsey to Robards.  As the head of the Auror office, the latter had been a useful undercover asset for the Order for a short-lived time, but was now grumpily assisting Moody in the retired Auror’s more radical endeavors given that Voldemort’s Ministry had essentially shut down the force altogether. 

Harry was still terrible at it, however, though Hermione wasn’t really one to talk.

“I haven’t seen anything in ages,” Harry said defensively.

“Well, let’s keep it that way,” Hermione said primly, and she stood up.  “I think we ought to break for dinner.  Shall we?”

…

The four of them trudged back to the library after a quick meal, this time with Lupin leading the way.  They first had to make various excuses to the others who had been lingering over second helpings of Kreacher’s treacle tart and dessert elf wine.  Ron and Harry had both looked longingly back at the table on the way out, but managed to leave with what appeared to be extreme self-discipline.

“I have to agree that, while interesting, this Deathly Hallows theory is not enough to distract me from our primary goal of finding the cup,” Lupin said as soon as they were all settled around the table at which Hermione and Malfoy had belabored over their translation work.  Hermione felt a small surge of satisfied vindication.

“But Dumbledore—” 

Harry’s renewed protests were silenced by Lupin’s raised hand.

“Dumbledore gave you explicit information about the Horcruxes, Harry,” Lupin said, though gently.  “I cannot prioritize Order resources to look for something that may or may not serve the ultimate goal of defeating Voldemort when we have a clear path forward already.”

A heavy silence followed.

“So,” Malfoy said, unable to keep a bit of smugness out of his voice at Lupin’s pronouncement, “did you bring them?”

Lupin nodded and then waved his wand.  Several huge scrolls of parchment materialized on the table before them, writing scrawled over some of them so densely that Hermione could barely make it out while others had large gaps.

They all pitched forward to get a closer view.

The werewolf flicked his wand again, and the pieces of parchment in front of him floated above the table momentarily and then reorganized themselves as they settled back down on the scratched wooden surface.  He studied them for a moment.

“We have information here on the Nott and Lestrange estates, but not a complete picture,” he gestured.  “With Theo’s help, we have a more comprehensive one of the former, of course, but we should still set up further surveillance on these properties for the next couple of weeks to get a better sense of what we will need to search.”

“You know, the Parkinson estate burned down with Fiendfyre,” Hermione said thoughtfully. 

Lupin raised an eyebrow and considered her words.  “You’re suggesting that the Horcrux could have been inside and been inadvertently destroyed?”

Ron goggled at them.  “Now that would be a bit of luck.”

Malfoy snorted and crossed his arms over his chest.  “No chance.  Pansy’s father was such a prick even Voldemort could barely stand him.”  This earned a begrudging grin from Harry.  “Besides, he wasn’t an actual Death Eater during the first war.”

“What do you mean?”  Ron asked, and Hermione winced at the unthinking question.

“He didn’t have the Mark yet, Weasley,” Malfoy said quietly, and Ron’s face darkened with understanding. 

Lupin was the one to break the subtle tension that had arisen after this exchange.

“It stands to reason that Voldemort wouldn’t trust someone outside of his inner circle with something so important, Draco.  I am sure you are right.” 

The largest of the sketches, which resembled some sort of magical blueprints to Hermione’s eye, faced her and Malfoy.  Her stomach turned as she observed him magically adding labels, in his own neat and ridiculously elegant handwriting, to some of the rooms, hand clenched a bit more forcefully than usual around the hawthorn wand.

“The issue with the Manor is that Voldemort has been there,” he managed to bite out after a few minutes of glaring down at the depiction, “and things may have been changed even in the last months.  Structurally, or otherwise.  That amount of Dark magic…  I’m not certain how it could have affected things even in recent weeks.  We’ll need to do more reconnaissance before I could say how we should approach entering it.”

She watched as Malfoy’s wand flew along the parchment.  He paused once to correct something he’d written across the diagram that appeared to describe a concealed entrance to the servants’ quarters. 

“I’ll have to go myself, of course,” he said without looking up.

Hermione made an involuntary noise of protest that caused the others to glance toward her.

“It makes the most sense,” Malfoy said shortly.  “Obviously I know the Manor better than anyone else.”

Hermione’s heart nearly stopped.  Theo had Seen her and Malfoy there:  Was this how it happened, or were they altering the course of his visions now?  Should she insist that she go, too, or ensure that she stayed behind in some sort of twisted effort to protect a timeline where Malfoy was still alive at some future point in time, with her, there?  Every scenario sounded equally horrible as she considered them.

“Our wards aren’t designed to alert anyone when an immediate family member passes through them,” he was continuing, “and they hadn’t been altered the last time I was there.  I should at least be able to get on the grounds, inside of our property, if not inside the house.” 

From her left, Malfoy’s eyes suddenly flashed to hers, and for once she understood with perfect clarity what he was thinking:  of the last time they were both there, and it was as if he was seeking reassurance that she was still here, and not pinned to the drawing room floor under his aunt’s wand, blood dripping from her arm and glazed eyes frantically seeking him out. 

Some sort of desperate bravery seized Hermione, and she grabbed his fingers under the table and squeezed, their shaking likely betraying her own anxiety. 

Her head caught up with her a split second later, and she immediately tried to draw her fingers back. 

She couldn’t.  Instead, she felt Malfoy grasp her hand tightly in return, not letting it go, and her heart skipped a painful beat. 

No one else had noticed, which was strange, because Hermione felt like the literal ground beneath her had shifted.

“I’ll run all of this by Moody and some of the others,” Lupin said finally, his brow still furrowed as he stared at the assembled sketches.  “As for Malfoy Manor, I do think eventually…”

He stopped talking and the words lingered heavily in the air.  Harry, who sat to her right with one hand rubbing his scar in a familiar gesture, picked them up. 

“Eventually we’ll have to confront him there,” he said quietly, his own voice steady.

“Not yet,” Hermione burst, Malfoy’s hand slipping from her grip as she whirled toward Harry.  “We don’t have the cup, and we don’t even know where it is!  It could be months, it could be—could be—”

She stopped short of saying years, the idea unfathomable in itself.  The look Harry was giving her was something akin to sympathy, like he understood something she didn’t, and it only made her want to argue further. 

“Hermione,” Harry stopped her gently, “we have to make plans.”

The irony of Harry Potter telling her that they needed to plan was not lost on anyone in the room, and somehow it broke the tension.  She sighed heavily and slumped back in her seat. 

“I reckon we should continue with similar groups at the Nott and Lestrange homes.  Anybody else that seems like a candidate?”  Ron directed the question a bit too pointedly at Malfoy, whose lips thinned as if he was restraining himself from snapping back at the redhead.  He only shook his head curtly. 

“Dolohov and Rookwood, maybe, though they don’t have large ancestral estates,” Malfoy shrugged.  “But if they’d been entrusted with taking care of something like that for Voldemort, the Order would have uncovered something by now from their interrogations about it.  Even if they didn’t know it was a Horcrux, like my father.  Neither is a good enough Occlumens to hold something like that back under Veritaserum.” 

This logic was hard to dispute, so Lupin and Ron turned back to the scrolls and the notes they contained from Malfoy and the Greengrass family about the other estates.  Malfoy stared down at the parchment in front of him, the bones of his family home laid out before them, his familiar mask firmly in place. 

Hermione and Harry looked at each other, and he offered her a little smile of encouragement. 

“Cheer up, Hermione,” he whispered into her ear teasingly when they all adjourned a short while later, “maybe you and Malfoy can go stake out Nott’s father’s house for your first date.”

Hermione flushed brilliantly, and made a mental note to hex Ginny Weasley. 

…

The Weasley twins still knew how to throw a party, even in the middle of a war.

The first of April arrived, and with it a larger gathering at Grimmauld Place than had occurred since Hermione’s return.  Lupin’s ever-present anxiety was on a whole new level at the prospect of so many Order members in one place, and Hermione suspected the only thing keeping him remotely calm was the fact that his wife had been slipping additional splashes of firewhiskey into his quickly emptying glass whenever he wasn’t paying attention. 

When Hermione caught her, Tonks winked and whispered conspiratorially that she had declared herself the designated sober parent and Order watchdog for the evening, gesturing to her glass of water, and assured her not to worry.  There was no one that needed a night off more than Lupin—except for Harry, perhaps, at this point—so Hermione made a gesture as if zipping her lips and pretended to nod along seriously when Lupin informed her sternly, though with a glassy sheen to his eyes, that he would be kicking every non-resident out at midnight no matter what sort of shenanigans Fred and George had up their combined sleeves. 

It was astonishing, really, to think that they had been at Grimmauld Place for nearly two months.

Hermione sipped her Butterbeer—Ginny had (unnecessarily) warned her within two minutes of the twins’ arrival not to drink out of the smoking cauldron of punch they were delightedly offering everyone—and skirted around the edge of the parlor, wondering at the mix of people assembled. 

Andromeda and Ted sat with Molly and Arthur on one of the long sofas, the Black sister bouncing a currently brilliantly redheaded Teddy happily on her knee while the Weasley matron looked on with what could only be described as granny lust.  Across from them, Augusta Longbottom was presiding on a velvet-backed armchair and had finally managed to corner Pansy and Neville, but the only one who looked uncomfortable was the future groom, whose dazed expression made Hermione giggle into her bottle.  Pansy and Neville’s grandmother were both gesticulating animatedly with their own drinks as they conversed and seemed to have forgotten entirely that he was there.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

Hermione jumped a little, then smiled warmly at Daphne, who had appeared at her side and nudged her softly as they both observed the little scene.

“It is, actually,” Hermione agreed.  Her eyes wandered to the other side of the room, where Malfoy and Theo were locked in some sort of heated, though friendly enough looking, debate, the latter’s cheeks flushed from what she could only guess had been the unwitting consumption of the dubious Weasley punch. 

Daphne bumped her shoulder into Hermione’s again, a little laugh escaping as she did so. 

“Is that all you think is nice, Hermione Granger?”

She didn’t dignify this with an immediate response.  Daphne giggled again, and Hermione realized that she might have also indulged in the twins' concoction. 

“Hermione, he’s been looking over here every five seconds.”  Even tipsy, Daphne’s innate ability to sound completely self-assured—a trait Hermione was sure she had never quite captured convincingly—was holding strong. 

“Daphne,” Hermione whispered quickly, “you’re speaking louder than you think you are.”

The other witch harrumphed into her drink.  “Well, it’s true.  Are you going to tell me whether anything else has happened between you two?”

Some sort of raucous laughter exploded from the kitchen, accompanied by a flash of blue light, distracting them both momentarily.  Hermione used the interruption as an excuse to take a moment to formulate her answer, her own brain slightly fuzzy from the two—three?—Butterbeers she’d consumed. 

“He’s been… a bit different,” she said hesitantly, and Daphne’s eyes widened in interest. 

Hermione sighed and shrugged.  “Not that different.  I don’t know.  He made me tea.”

Daphne looked puzzled.  Hermione didn’t blame her.  

“It’s a long story.”

“Hmm,” Daphne replied, sipping her drink and casting her eyes around the room again.  “I still think you’ll need to do something about this yourself.”

They were both quiet as they leaned companionably against the parlor wall, the sights and sounds of their combined loved ones collected for something other than a strategizing session or for the receiving of bad news soothing Hermione’s frayed nerves. 

The last few days had been some of the worst she could remember at Grimmauld Place: True to their plan, Lupin had organized Order members to stake out the Nott, Lestrange, and Malfoy estates, which now meant nerve-wracking hours of waiting for her friends to return from long trips spent skulking around the edges of the giant properties, listening for anything useful, and mapping out the holes in their compiled blueprints for further exploration. 

Hermione herself had been spared the Lestrange or Malfoy homes, but had gone with Theo once so far only to be horrified by the Dark magic radiating from his childhood home and the way that it had caused him to shut down immediately.  They had stayed for only forty-five minutes that day, the house apparently empty of inhabitants, and Theo’s vacant expression almost too much for her to bear.

The worst, however, had been watching Malfoy Disapparate alone from the sliver of space on the front porch of Grimmauld Place in order to travel to the only remote location on the grounds of the Manor where, he informed them, no one would be able to hear the sound of his arrival but where he’d also be safely inside the wards, provided they still admitted him.  His face had looked haunted when he disappeared, but just as haunted when he returned, though the stark relief in his voice as he told them he’d glimpsed his mother alive through the Manor windows loosened the knot in her chest considerably. 

“Daphne?”  

The brunette raised an eyebrow at her questioningly, though her gaze remained fixed elsewhere.  Hermione followed it. 

Hermione wanted to ask if she was scared—if Daphne had felt the same way when she had to watch Theo instruct the others on how they would approach his own home without being detected with an abnormally hard glint in his usually soft green eyes—but the words caught in her throat. 

Instead she settled for something more indirect.  “How are things with Theo?”

Daphne stiffened, and despite their renewed closeness, Hermione almost apologized and took the question back.  The subject was one on which she had tried hard not to overstep, her own awkward involvement at Hogwarts making her feel like an intruder, particularly when combined with her emotionally fraught and confusing discussion with Theo about his visions of their entangled futures.  

There was no reluctance or animosity in Daphne’s voice, however, when she replied.  Instead, she sounded uncharacteristically shy. 

“Theo is…” she paused, blushing prettily, “he’s well.”

Hermione tried not to sound too eager.  “Well?”

Daphne gave her a look, seeing through Hermione’s feigned casualness immediately. 

“I mean, I don’t know what exactly, but lately it does feel like something has changed.”  She was thoughtful, and also a bit perplexed.  “He’s always… around.”

This almost made Hermione laugh.  It was obvious to nearly everyone else at Grimmauld that Theo had had very little agenda since arriving other than to be near Daphne, at all times, whenever she would allow him.  He was almost as bad as Ron, sneaking off to Shell Cottage at all hours of the day and night, though Theo rarely bothered with coming up with any excuse—he just followed.

“Daphne,” Hermione said gently, “I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

They both surveyed the wizards across the room for a moment.  Malfoy was bent over at the waist, laughing at something Theo had said, one hand clutched to his chest as if to catch his breath, and she was struck by the rare glimpse of him in such a carefree moment.

With a suggestive raise of her eyebrows, Daphne leaned in to whisper in Hermione’s ear.  Her next words were still much too loud.  

“Maybe we should both take our own advice.”

…

The collective hangovers from the birthday party caused everyone a delayed start the next morning.  Only Hermione appeared in time to eat the breakfast that Kreacher had prepared while it was still fresh, something that seemed to aggravate him endlessly, though he only muttered about the others’ lack of courtesy and her own unkempt state under his breath as he served her various types of carbohydrates and offered her copious amounts of water with a judgmental sort of sniffing.  Hermione and Kreacher were still in a state of tense détente over the number of meals per week that he was in charge of serving for the large group of people living in the townhouse, so she let it go.

When Pansy finally straggled in halfway through Hermione’s third stack of pancakes, she was feeling quite better.  Pansy requested coffee with sugar and fried eggs from Kreacher—an uncharacteristic departure from the two cups of black tea she consumed with little else for breakfast each morning—and glared at Hermione as if she had personally poured liquor down her throat the previous evening. 

“Did you actually let me drink two bottles of red currant rum with Neville’s grandmother last night?”  Pansy’s accusatory tone was somewhat muffled due to the way her hands were gripping her head as if trying to hold it upright forcibly.

“Oh, I think that was your idea, actually,” Hermione replied breezily.  “I believe you challenged her to some sort of drinking contest.”

Pansy groaned louder. 

“I think she rather liked you,” Hermione said, shoving another bite of delicious, syrupy gluten into her mouth.  She felt better already.

“Who liked you?”

Both witches turned their heads—Pansy with considerable more effort—to see Daphne strolling into the kitchen, looking considerably more put together than either of them did.

Pansy cracked an eye open narrowly in order to exchange a confused look with Hermione. 

“Daphne,” Hermione said slowly, “didn’t I see you leaving with Blaise and Luna last night?”

Daphne paused as she accepted a mug from Kreacher. 

“Did I?” she said.  “I mean, did you?”  Her face reddened suspiciously and she busied herself with meticulously mixing sugar into her tea.

“Daphne Camile Greengrass,” Pansy began loudly, both eyes widening now and suddenly looking much brighter. 

“I stay in the guest room here all the time!”  Daphne squeaked defensively, at such a high pitch that Kreacher jumped in alarm and nearly dropped a frying pan. 

“But did you?!” Pansy shrieked, hangover clearly forgotten.

Daphne shot Hermione a desperate look as if for rescue.  She made a diligent effort to suppress her own laughter and waved her fork at Pansy as threateningly as she could manage. 

“Pansy, leave her alone,” Hermione called.  Pansy ignored her.

“I thought we discussed at length how you were never to keep secrets from me again, Daphne Greengrass,” Pansy said in what was actually quite a frightening tone.  Daphne and Hermione both winced slightly at the allusion.  “Sit down and explain yourself immediately.”

“This house is really much smaller than it seems,” Hermione offered to Daphne, with an apologetic grimace. 

“If the two of you would be quiet,” Daphne hissed, glancing frantically at the kitchen doors as she took a seat, “I might be more inclined to share the details of my private life with you.”

Pansy straightened up eagerly.  Hermione admired Daphne’s ability to hold strong longer than she had in the face of Pansy’s morning interrogations.

“I may have—had a bit too much to drink,” Daphne admitted, and she fiddled with the handle of her mug.  “You know I’m a bit of a lightweight.”

“Yes,” Pansy said dryly, casting her eyes at Hermione, “that was one thing the two of you had in common.”

Daphne rolled her eyes.  “Yes, well, I think that punch may have had some sort of—I don’t know—potion in it, because I found myself—saying things.  To Theo.  That I—wouldn’t have otherwise said.  Please do remind me to curse the Weasley twins later.”

Hermione’s heart swelled.  “Oh, Daphne.”

“Although,” a small grin tugged at Daphne’s lips and she hid it behind her tea, “he may have said them back.”

Pansy let out a cackle of glee and knocked over the pitcher of syrup next to her elbow.  “Daphne,” she yelped, and then immediately clutched her forehead in pain.  “I am so torn between my raging headache and how happy I am for you.”

Apparently unable to bear this display of female hysteria any longer, Kreacher began shoving additional platters of food between them and badgering Pansy into drinking the water that he had forced in front of her rather than the coffee still clutched to her chest as she crowed in delight. 

During this distraction, Hermione met Daphne’s eyes across the table.  She looked tired, and happy, and scared, but they sparkled like they hadn't in quite a while. 

“Your turn,” the other witch mouthed, and Hermione felt her stomach flip.

Chapter Text

April 1998

Hermione dwells on Daphne’s words for days.

She thinks about the way Malfoy has started treating her with a strange combination of formal civility and—something else—something closer to what they had been at Hogwarts, whatever that was.  She thinks about how sometimes they still quarrel an average of ten times a day, whether about the proper way to prepare a long-lasting calming draught or whose turn it is to sweep the draperies for doxy eggs.  These arguments usually arise at the end of the day, Hermione observes, after everyone has been trapped in the townhouse without any other purpose for far too long and the others are off doing whatever it is they are doing. 

Hermione thinks about all of these things as she watches Daphne and Theo take tentative steps closer toward each other, heads bent quietly together at dinner as if they are the only two there and not sitting squashed among five to ten of the most nosy people she has ever known.  Theo still trails after Daphne, only now he smiles more, and so does Daphne, and Daphne reports to Hermione in confidence that he’s been doing oddly endearing things like taking Astoria aside in order to babble on for nearly twenty minutes about his intentions before the younger girl stopped him and said kindly that she had been onto him since about Daphne’s third year and would have certainly expressed her objections sooner if she’d had any. 

Daphne cackles in a very Pansy-like way when Hermione asks curiously whether Theo has spoken to her father and mother as well and informs her that Theo is only so fearless, but that is all right.  Her parents are fairly in debt to her at this point, she declares with a gleam in her eye that makes Hermione proud.  She’ll do what she likes.

There is a peculiar atmosphere around Grimmauld Place these days.  Hermione has realized suddenly that she and Malfoy may in fact be the only—technically—unattached ones living in headquarters. 

If Theo and Daphne are like shy newlyweds, Harry and Ginny essentially act like an old married couple, so in sync that it’s practically boring.  Hermione supposes that once you resolve—or perhaps agree to table—your disagreement about your boyfriend’s impending showdown with an immortal Dark Lord, there is not much left that feels worth arguing about. 

Pansy and Neville, for their part, visibly glow since the engagement, in a way that makes Hermione’s stomach twist sometimes when she looks at them.  Though sometimes they argue and it carries into the common spaces of the townhouse, annoying everyone, it usually ends with Neville’s steady resolve winning out over Pansy’s instinctive fight or flight reactions and with very public and—Hermione has to admit—occasionally charming reconciliations.  

Then there is Ron.  Hermione barely sees him now unless Susan is called to headquarters for some reason or another, in which case he adopts a strangely solemn demeanor and does things she has never seen him do, like pull Susan’s chair out for her at dinner and use a napkin to wipe his mouth between bites of food.  Harry informs her after a few too many firewhiskeys one night that Ron, who just seems rather intimidated by Susan herself in an entirely ingratiating way, had become flustered upon learning of her returned interest and without thinking asked the witch if he could court her, which is also shockingly sweet.  He had then, apparently, promptly had to ask Arthur for clarification on what that actually meant.  As far as Harry and Hermione can tell, it has so far involved a lot of Ron blushing like a fire hydrant whenever Susan looks at him and sheepishly asking Neville for lots of advice. 

Of course, Lupin and Tonks and Teddy run the household, albeit somewhat loosely, as Hermione knows the couple looks the other way quite liberally when it comes to the actual sleeping arrangements among the many teenagers now staying there.  She supposes they have other priorities, at the moment, there being a war on and all. 

Molly’s remarks, what felt like eons ago, ring in her mind:  It's all this uncertainty with You-Know-Who coming back, people think they might be dead tomorrow, so they're rushing all sorts of decisions they'd normally take time over.  It was the same last time he was powerful, people eloping left, right, and center—”

At the time, Hermione had looked at Bill and Fleur and been unable to comprehend what kind of feeling might have the power to distract anyone from the inevitable and crushing despair of the war and the singular drive it had inspired in her to simply get through it.

But now.

…

Harry has his first full-fledged glimpse into Voldemort’s mind in weeks. 

It is just the three of them, something rare these days, and he and Ron are at the kitchen counter making sandwiches, bickering about something, and Hermione is watching them with a lazy smile on her face as she sips a cup of tea. 

A knife clattering to the counter startles her out of her contemplation and she sees Harry sink to the floor, clutching his forehead, and her stomach wrenches. 

“Dumbledore,” Harry gasps, and Ron looks at Hermione with wild eyes, half-crouched next to Harry, one hand still holding a forgotten slice of buttered bread hovering in the air. 

She is there faster than Ron snaps out of his own shock, holding Harry’s sweaty hand.  It takes a few minutes for his eyes to turn green again.  He throws up in the sink twice.

Ron seeks reassurance from Hermione again, his own face taut.

“What did you see?” she breathes.

Harry doesn’t turn around.  “The wand.”  She can see his knuckles, white as marble, where he is clutching the sink.  “He’s got the Elder Wand.”

…

Hermione and Malfoy fall into a familiar pattern in the mornings.

Despite the abrupt conclusion of their research on The Tales of Beetle the Bard, Malfoy is sitting in the library each day when Hermione arrives, a cup of perfectly prepared tea waiting for her.  At any other time, there is an inescapable undercurrent of noise in the townhouse, which teems with people and visitors and spell work and shared meals, and the hushed hours in the morning before the others even straggle down to breakfast feel like a shared secret. 

He works mostly on compiling and organizing the notes from the surveillance missions that the Order’s been conducting at the Death Eater estates they identified, including his own, and Hermione researches.

Sometimes she searches for information about the Deathly Hallows, of which there is basically none in any of their texts, and other times she resumes her desperate hunt for information about the Horcruxes.  She thinks about Snape, and Dumbledore, and how they’d discussed more than the headmaster had ever divulged to Harry.  He had said only Harry, and Hermione and Ron, knew about the Horcruxes—but then he had given Snape the sword.

Her unease lingers, and the books don’t tell her anything she doesn’t already know.

…

One night, Seamus Finnigan appears in the foyer of Grimmauld Place, shaking so badly that Luna has to force-feed him chocolate before he can speak.

Moody has been killed, he says, and they can’t find the body.

There is no funeral, and Tonks stays in her room for three days.  Harry snaps at everyone who tries to talk to him and tries to leave headquarters for god knows where.  Eventually, Ginny is the one to get through to them both by some combination of tough love and knowing how to weaponize Teddy’s insistence on seeing them at the right moment. 

Even still, whatever peace they had carved out in their London hideaway feels fragile.

…

It had been two hours and thirty-six minutes.  Hermione is certain because she literally cast a Tempus charm, modified to mark time passing, and is sneaking glances at the output on her wand when she thinks no one will notice.

Thirty-seven minutes.

He’s been gone longer before, she reminds herself, forcing another bite of toast through her lips.  It feels like sawdust as it slides down her throat.  Just because this time he was going to be closer, that this time they had all agreed he could go alone so that the wards would be easier to get through—

She hears the front door slam open and the sudden commotion causes everyone to stop talking at once, several of them reaching for their wands instinctively.  Malfoy strides into the middle of the kitchen, almost like a ghost with his pale skin soaking wet and looking nearly translucent, cloak dripping and brushing water out of his white-blonde hair impatiently.  He freezes and his eyes search the room frantically. 

“The cup.”  His eyes meet Harry’s. 

Hermione and Ron shoot up from their seats fully, exchanging terrified looks.  A thrill goes down her spine. 

“Potter, I know where it is.”

Ginny, Susan, and Dean look extremely confused.  Hermione spins around and attempts to look apologetic.  “I’m sorry, um, we have to—”

“There isn’t time for this, Granger,” Malfoy snaps. 

She fights back the urge to roll her eyes.  “Okay, fine, go upstairs to my room and we’ll be right there.”

Malfoy looks furious but spins on his heel and stalks out, presumably upstairs to her bedroom.  Everyone but Ron and Harry gapes at her in astonishment, their food forgotten. 

“Listen, we’ll explain later, okay?  I promise,” Hermione says quickly, grabbing Ron’s upper arm and shoving him toward the door.  “Harry, where’s Remus?”

Deflecting Ginny’s enraged glare with a rushed apologetic glance, Harry matches her pace and bolts up the stairs with her and Ron to the third floor.  “He’s out, he’s camped out at that stakeout with Bill watching Nott and Avery and trying to figure out whatever they were smuggling into the apothecary in Knockturn.”

She tries to think.  They reach her bedroom and Malfoy is already there, of course, still dripping water everywhere and looking quite mad. 

“Okay, explain.”  She slams the door and casts her silencing and locking charms twice just to be sure. 

He turns to her now and his gaze is so intense that her breath catches.  “I heard them talking about it.  Bellatrix, she was telling Mother that she needed to go to Gringotts because the Dark Lord wanted her to check on something.” 

The other two nearly pitch forward in their eagerness to hear.  Hermione feels faint at the mention of Malfoy’s aunt and their apparent proximity. 

“My mother, she—she asked what Bella meant and she just laughed and said it was much too important to worry her about.”  He looks sick. 

“But I—” Malfoy’s face grows whiter as he tries to continue.  “They were in the gardens, under the veranda since it was raining.  I was there, hidden, using your eavesdropping spells.  Her mind wasn’t guarded and I—I looked inside just for a moment—I don’t think she could feel me.  She couldn’t.  I was quick.” 

He seems to be trying to reassure himself of this more than anything and Hermione moves toward him involuntarily.  She catches herself and has to clench her fist to stop from reaching out to him.

“I saw it,” Malfoy says flatly, in a tone that leaves no room for argument.  “It’s the cup.  It looks just like you described.  It’s at Gringotts and it must be in the Lestrange vault.  Otherwise, it’d be in ours, or the Blacks, but I’ve never seen it in my family’s and Potter has access to the Black one now and would have known.”

Harry is pacing now, right hand gripping his wand and left rubbing unconsciously at the scar on his forehead.  The familiar posture makes Hermione’s chest ache even as she focuses again on the wonderful and terrible impossible thing Malfoy has revealed. 

“Can you get in?”

It’s Harry who speaks.  But Malfoy is looking only at her now and she feels as if she can’t breathe. 

“No.  But it’s on the same level as my family’s vault,” he replies quietly. 

…

Kreacher is doling out servings of tomato soup and toasting cheese sandwiches when Hermione hears something in the other room.  Still half-listening to Pansy and Blaise, who are somewhat morbidly debating the odds of Pansy being able to ‘borrow’ Blaise’s vineyard for her honeymoon, she doesn’t turn.

“Any left?”  The timbre of Malfoy’s voice gets her attention first, but then she is suddenly rooted to the spot.

He’s addressing Kreacher, casually, surveying the lunch spread, but there is blood caked on the side of his face.

Hermione’s sharp inhale must catch the attention of Blaise and Pansy.

“Draco!”  Pansy barks.  “What is that?”

Malfoy is now busy pulling off his cloak and hanging it on a hook near the doors, but casts a confused glance her way.  “What?” 

“Your face.”  Hermione’s voice is much less composed.

A hand reaches up to touch his forehead automatically, and then his face relaxes in understanding. 

“Oh,” he grimaces.  “It’s stupid.  Thomas and I were on the Diagon Alley shift and he set off a fucking tripping jinx, of all things.  It was some kind of extra ward they had set up with the Anti-Apparition ones, I guess.  Anyway, he knocked me over on his way down, and I hit my head on a stone or something.”

His offhanded shrug does nothing for Hermione’s mounting panic.

“He healed it, but I guess we forgot to clean it up before we Portkeyed out.”

Blaise responds, but she can’t make it out.  Everything sounds very far away to Hermione.  She can’t stop staring at the blood. 

“Sit down,” she finally snaps, wrenching herself out of her chair.

Malfoy’s brows pull together rapidly and he pauses where he is about to accept a bowl of soup and a plate from Kreacher.  “Granger—”

“Sit.  Down.”  Her voice is a hiss and he looks slightly alarmed, but obeys, awkwardly shuffling into the chair she has vacated and setting aside his meal.  

Her wand is already at his forehead and she thinks distantly that he doesn’t flinch this time.

“Tergeo.”

Nothing happens.

“Granger—” he tries again.

“Tergeo.”

If anything, the dried blood congeals more firmly in its place, mocking her.

“It’s fine, Granger, leave it alone,” Malfoy protests, bewildered, twisting in his seat to watch her as she rushes for the kitchen cabinets.  After some frantic rooting around in which Kreacher tries falteringly to assist her, she finds a faded washcloth and uses her wand to wet it with warm water.

Something in her face shuts him up, and Malfoy stops arguing with her.  She places her hand gently on his jaw and starts working the cloth over his forehead, fixated on the red.

“I didn’t even know you were gone.”  Her voice is shaking, but at least it’s not her hands.  Her eyes blur, and Hermione realizes it may have been the sight of her tears that cut off his objections. 

The cloth snags on the dried blood in his eyebrow and she uses her index finger to smooth it carefully after it’s clean.

“It was a last-minute switch,” he says quietly.  “Theo was supposed to go, but we were mixing potions in the basement and he burned his hand.  It was going to take a few hours to heal, so I went instead.”

“I didn’t know,” she repeats. 

After they had parted ways in the library that morning, Hermione had been exhausted by one-on-one defensive training with Lupin and then taken a long nap before joining the others for a very late lunch.  She’d thought Malfoy was still somewhere else in the house.

Malfoy looks confused.  The rest of the kitchen is quiet, Hermione realizes, and distantly she registers that Blaise and Pansy have left them alone.  Maybe later she’ll feel embarrassed, but all she can think about now is getting the last lingering bit of blood out of Malfoy’s fringe.

It isn’t like it’s the first time she’s seen him injured.  It isn’t even a particularly bad injury.  And the night Pansy’s parents had died, Hermione had woken up to find Malfoy in the parlor with Blaise’s blood nearly covering him. 

But then she had known.

Her hand is still cupping his other cheek, and his skin is warmer than she remembers.  The sensation grounds her, and makes her impossibly sad. 

Hermione takes a step back. 

Malfoy watches her with wary eyes, like she is a spooked animal and he’s not sure what she’s about to do.  It’s an accurate assessment. 

She takes another step back, and busies herself wringing the washcloth out into the sink.  She supposes she could banish it, or clean it, or a million other things with her wand, but doing it the Muggle way comforts her. 

“I don’t want to do this anymore.” 

Her chest deflates when the words leave and Hermione wonders if she feels heavier or lighter.

“You don’t want to do… what?” 

Hermione steals a glance back at him over her shoulder.  Malfoy is still.  The left side of his face is still flushed pink, from where she scrubbed it clean, and she thinks that’s why for a moment he looks vulnerable.

“This.”  The washcloth lands with a splatter in the bottom of the sink, and a hand gestures vaguely between them as she faces him again, back pressed against the counter.  “I don’t want to—to have to find out you were out, somewhere, where you could have been—”

The wooden chair scrapes against the floor as he pushes it back to stand, and Hermione suddenly feels like he’s much too close.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Malfoy says steadily.  She glowers at him, unsure why. 

“Well, you did.”

“I can see that.”

Hermione’s staring at his left shoulder fixedly, determined not to look at his eyes, because surely she will say something stupid, or at least more stupid than she already has.  The intense panic she’s felt since seeing him show up bloodstained in the kitchen is receding and instead she feels bared, hollow, and also much too hot.

“Granger.”

“What?”  Hermione straightens from where she’s leaning against the counter and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, for something to fidget with, and looks longingly toward the door.

“Granger.”

“What?!”  Hermione snaps, and then the funniest thing happens.  He takes a step closer, and then another, instead of letting her leave.  Malfoy’s eyes are unguarded, and it makes her falter in her mission to exit as soon as possible.

“I don’t understand why you would want me.”

She gapes at him.  “Why I would want you?”

He hesitates. 

Hermione notices, not for the first time, how beautiful the unusual silver-grey of his eyes is against the inky black of his long lashes, especially when he isn’t Occluding and she thinks she might sink into the depths of the strange shade. 

Why she wouldn’t want him?  It was hard to remember a time she hadn’t, though the logical part of her brain knew it had been most of their acquaintance. 

Hermione thinks of slurs and sneers aimed at her in the corridors, and of a boy standing on the top of the tallest tower, hand shaking with indecision and regret.  Her heart aches, for herself, and for Malfoy, and for everyone else their age growing up in this pointless war being fought in order to validate the arbitrary beliefs of the ones who came before them.

Then, she thinks of tea, and of a charged moment in the Room of Requirement watching the others dance and standing too close but still too far away, and blankets tucked around her when she overworked herself, and of the blazing look in Malfoy’s eyes as he forced the diadem down while he waited for her to fling the Basilisk fang onto it.  She thinks of a hand, stretched out as far as she could reach, desperately offering him a way out and how he had refused to take it once again in order to save someone else. 

There was no choice left to make.

“But I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding.” 

He takes another deliberate step toward her. 

“I want you.”

If she had hoped before, it had been nothing compared to how she allows herself to hope now.  Something fierce rips through her chest so violently that Hermione has to concentrate on Malfoy’s eyes, trained on her, to stay present. 

“I want you, Hermione Granger.”

He reaches for her. 

Chapter Text

April 1998

Earlier that day, Lupin had drilled Hermione again and again on wandless incantations. 

She had grown exhausted after hours of cajoling her magic into expelling itself through her very skin rather than channeling its power through an external instrument crafted explicitly for such a purpose.  Though she had long been able to do simple spells without a wand—summoning objects, lighting a candle, filling a water glass—the ability to cast a magical shield or stun someone with only a word or a thought was still usually beyond her grasp.

Instead, during her many attempts, Hermione felt the trapped magic rippling beneath her body’s surface, like an electrical current seeking an outlet, frustrating her and yet oddly energizing her at the same time.  She was always left feeling like a live wire, ready to spark at any moment, with release just tantalizingly out of reach. 

Kissing Malfoy brought back the same sensation.

One of his hands was cupping her face, almost reverently, and the other had encircled her waist.  Something in her thrummed beneath his fingertips where they skimmed over her ribs, and Hermione’s stomach clenched pleasantly. 

If she'd had any desire to do magic at that moment, Hermione thought she could have taken down Voldemort himself without a wand.

Malfoy’s mouth disconnected from hers only long enough for him to let out what sounded like a ragged gasp.

“Granger, I—” 

Whatever Malfoy had been about to say was cut off by a sudden pop. 

Hermione stumbled back, immediately acutely aware of the absence of Malfoy’s lips on her own, and looked around blindly.

“Er, Kreacher?”  she asked dumbly when her eyes finally focused on the source of the interruption. 

The elf glared up at her with beady eyes before turning deferentially to Malfoy.  

“Kreacher is leaving the kitchens and letting this go on for some time, but the dinner rolls are going to burn now if—”

“Alright,” Malfoy said hastily, drawing Hermione with him toward the door.  He sounded flustered, and it left her with a novel sense of satisfaction at having evoked such a response in the normally controlled wizard.  “We’re going.”

Still lightheaded, Hermione nearly laughed out loud as he pulled her into the corridor and began tugging her toward the stairs. 

“Malfoy, it’s only three o’clock in the afternoon, I think we’re going to have to wait to continue that—”

A groan of frustration slipped from Malfoy, and she allowed herself another moment of self-indulgent smugness. 

“Maybe later?” she offered, and their eyes met. 

Malfoy’s eyes were dark and pinned her to the wall behind her almost as firmly as if he’d pressed into her again.  But then his hands slipped from her waist, and she took a step back involuntarily, suddenly nervous.

“Granger,” he said with a sense of finality.  Before Hermione could say anything a door flung open to their right and light spilled out into the hall.

They sprang even further apart, avoiding each other’s eyes.

“Hermione?” 

It was only Neville, emerging from the basement where he must have been delivering potions ingredients to Tonks and the others. 

“Oh, hi, Malfoy.” 

The Gryffindor strolled over to them, wiping his hands on his trousers absentmindedly and oblivious to the tension between the two other people facing off in the corridor. 

“I think Theo’s looking for you.  Wondered if you’d gotten back yet.”

“Ah.  Right.” 

Malfoy shot a quick, unreadable glance at Hermione and then disappeared down the hall.

…

Dinner was unbearable.

Hermione barely remembered what she spoke with Ginny and Luna about during the hour she forced herself to sit at the long wooden table in the kitchen that night.  Perhaps nothing, like Luna’s proclivity toward harvesting Gurdyroots at particular strange hours of the day.  Perhaps something very important, like Ginny’s suspicions that Harry knew more about Voldemort’s weaknesses than he had divulged to her. 

She really had no idea. 

Malfoy sat two seats down and across from her, mostly conversing quietly with Theo as he stirred his cauliflower soup in a sort of mindless fashion rather than actually eating it.

Hermione knew this because she was inappropriately fixated on his lips for most of the meal.

When the others had finally excused themselves to the parlor, she lingered, offering to help wash the dishes given Kreacher was on one of his (Hermione-mandated) evenings off.  Malfoy had slipped out of the room almost immediately.

Hermione dragged out the task so long that her hands were thoroughly pruned, methodically swirling a rag over each of the plates before placing them to dry in the rack next to the sink.

Despite this procrastination, Theo, Daphne, and Pansy were still very much awake when she passed by the parlor on the second floor.  Before she could think of a way to escape without saying ‘no thanks, I’d really like to find Draco and see if he wants to continue snogging, actually,’ they shoved a glass of wine into her hand and demanded she tell them again about how Muggles could fly aeroplanes (yes) but didn’t know how to travel by Floo (that’s not what fireplaces were really for in the Muggle world, she tried yet again).

This latest round of pureblood education took up an annoyingly long ninety minutes before Hermione was able to claim exhaustion and retreat upstairs without suspicion. 

She caught Theo’s eye as she was about to leave, and he inclined his head.

“Told you,” he mouthed from across the room.  Her eyes widened in surprise. 

Theo merely grinned and turned his attention back to Daphne, who was nestled into his side and gesticulating wildly as she told Pansy about some film that Blaise had taken her and Astoria to see once where the Muggles flew in an aeroplane to the moon.  Despite the potential hilarity, Hermione had no desire to step in and correct their misconceptions about space travel that particular evening.

When she finally reached the third-floor corridor, Malfoy’s door was closed.  A strip of light spilled out through the crack at the bottom. 

The air felt heavy even in the privacy of her own room, like it was watching her as she weighed her next move, and Hermione struggled to breathe normally as she quickly traded her denims and jumper for a nightgown. 

It was later than she had realized.  She should probably just go to sleep.

I want you, Hermione Granger.

The words were stuck on some sort of fixed loop in her mind, like a stuck cassette tape.  The analogy made her want to laugh out loud, a small smile creeping onto her face at the reminder of Malfoy’s bewilderment in the record store they had gone to together in Muggle London.

Malfoy.  Draco Malfoy, who had kissed her, again.  And by all indications seemed to want to keep doing it.

Hermione sucked in a breath and dug her fingernails into her palms to steady herself. 

It was only a few steps.  The rapping sound her knuckles made on the wooden surface made her cringe immediately with how they echoed into the corridor.  She had foregone shoes partly to avoid making further noise, but now the thought of her bare feet was making her oddly panicky. 

Hermione stilled. 

“Granger?”

It had only taken a few seconds for Malfoy to open his bedroom door, and she wondered madly if he had been waiting for her the whole time.

“I—um—”

He swept her inside and slammed the door shut without another word. 

Hermione barely had time to process the four-poster canopy with the deep green sheets and the bookshelves lining the walls before his lips were on hers, tugging insistently, nipping, sucking, making her forget what she was doing.

Hermione let out a little gasp.

He froze immediately.  “I’m so sorry.” 

Malfoy lurched back and she felt the loss of his body heat immediately as if she had been doused in ice water. 

“I shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have assumed—”

“No,” she said hurriedly, and then continued just as quickly at the stricken look on his face, “I mean, yes, you should have.”

Hermione felt herself blush furiously.  Malfoy raised his eyebrows silently, but didn’t reach for her again.  She could see his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“Hi,” she said softly, twisting her fingers nervously in the fabric of her nightgown.  It dawned on Hermione suddenly that he was still wearing the clothes he’d had on at dinner, while for some reason she had shown up at his door already half-naked.  Embarrassment at this not-thought-out choice made her cheeks flush further.

The corner of his mouth quirked.  “Hi.”

“What you said before,” Hermione began, but then faltered. 

Malfoy’s left hand twitched, as if he wanted to reach out to her but stopped himself. 

As she tried to gather her thoughts, it occurred to her distantly that this was Regulus Black’s room. 

She had never been fully inside before.  It was rather grand, and there were pictures on the wall of people she had only ever seen in photographs, and there was a fireplace crackling merrily in one corner.  Hermione was jarred momentarily by the reminder, yet again, that Malfoy was in some way related to the ghosts that haunted Grimmauld Place.

“Hermione,” Malfoy was saying, and the rough edge to his voice as he said her first name catapulted her back to the present.

She focused her gaze on his. 

“I want that, too.” 

Her voice came out smaller than she’d meant it to, despite that it had taken every bit of her Gryffindor courage to say the words.  Hermione shook her head in frustration and made sure her next words rang with resolve.

“What I mean is, I want you, too.” 

Malfoy’s warmth was so close.  She could feel her own skin tingling as if trying to jump off of her and fuse with his. 

“I mean it,” she repeated.  “And if you don’t understand why, I’ll just have to explain it to you.  Thoroughly.  In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m quite good at explaining things.”

Tension seemed to drain out of Malfoy’s shoulders as he laughed quietly. 

“Yes, you are,” he said, and he closed the distance between them by wrapping long fingers around one of her wrists, slightly more tentatively this time.

She felt rather than heard him murmur his next words against her lips as he bent to kiss her again. 

“I look forward to it.” 

…

Malfoy twirled a lock of her hair around his finger and stared at it contemplatively.

“I still reserve the right to be pissed at you,” he said matter-of-factly, and she rolled her eyes.  “But I can’t be that upset when—”

Malfoy dropped her curl and shifted toward her so he could look her directly in the eyes.  Hermione tried not to let herself be distracted by the feeling of his body pressing all the way along the length of her side.

“Well, when, if it hadn’t happened this way, I’m not sure how I would have ever been comfortable around you.” 

He sounded slightly embarrassed, and Hermione propped herself up on an elbow so she could frown at him properly.

“I’m serious,” he continued.  

They had laid down on the four-poster bed, at some point, and Malfoy’s hair was delightfully mussed as she watched him speak.  She was fairly certain hers was in a much worse state.  

“At school, you were this sort of untouchable person to me, this wonderful, infuriating, mad idea I sometimes had.” 

“I was?”

Malfoy stopped to drop a kiss on the tip of her nose.  While he spoke, he trailed the fingertips of his right hand slowly over her hip and back up again in absent movements. 

“Yes,” he confirmed.  “I just mean, as much as it fucked with my head, thinking you were Daphne meant I got to spend time with you without being in my head.” 

Malfoy seemed to ponder this for a minute. 

“Well, at least at first.  Please keep in mind that it was very disorienting to start falling for you and yet be completely confused about why I wasn’t sure if I was physically attracted to you half the time.”

She stilled at his words.  “Falling for me?”

Malfoy’s other hand remained spread across her ribs and its warmth was immensely distracting. 

“I’m not sure what else you thought I was doing, Granger.”

Hermione’s brain seemed to short circuit.

Malfoy used this to his advantage and trapped her lips between his again. 

Now his hands were suddenly everywhere once more, wrapped up in her hair, stroking from her shoulders down to her fingertips, tugging her somehow even closer to him, then splayed across her stomach and her thighs.  It was like he was mapping out every inch of her body, savoring it and yet marking away the information for later. 

It was wonderfully arousing and incredibly disorienting. 

“Can I ask you something?”  

Hermione’s voice was slightly breathless when she finally spoke a few minutes later, trying valiantly to summon a coherent sentence despite the delightful haze threatening to overwhelm all of her senses. 

“Of course,” Malfoy replied, but then he diverted her train of thought briefly by nuzzling the space between her collarbone and her neck.

“It’s not like I’ll be upset,” she said, and he paused in his ministrations to meet her eyes, now looking slightly concerned, “I just think I need to hear it from you.  What it was like.  In your own words.”

“Hear it?” he echoed, puzzled. 

“I just mean, if—if at first you wanted Daphne, not me, that’s okay,” Hermione’s words came out in a rush, “I mean, obviously, I put you in that situation, and it’s only natural, and I can accept that for you it’s been different than it has been for me because—”

“Granger,” he cut her off abruptly, and she froze, wary. 

The guarded expression on her face seemed to soften his exasperation, and he rolled her smoothly onto her back so that he was above her, all that she could see or feel, one arm cradling her head and the other wrapped around her tightly. 

“Yes?”  Hermione said weakly, the feeling of her body flush against his betraying her resolve to have this conversation at the current moment.

“I really need to spell it out for you?”

It was hard to avoid his eyes with so little space between them, which she realized immediately must have been his intention.  He looked, and sounded, genuinely surprised. 

“Yes, please,” Hermione replied, voice small.  His thumb traced her bottom lip briefly after she spoke.

“Alright,” Malfoy said, adopting a slightly businesslike tone, “then first I will assure you that I do not, and have never, wanted to be with Daphne Greengrass.” 

She almost rolled her eyes but he pulled her chin gently toward him before she could get that far. 

“I will admit, I was baffled for a very long time by the fact that I suddenly wanted to spend all of my time with her, and by how adorable she was when she went on unexpected rants about academic subjects I knew she’d never been interested in or when she used a book as a pillow to nap on our sofa, and by many other such things.”

This time she did manage to roll her eyes.  “I don’t go on that many rants.”

“Yes, you do.”  Malfoy dropped a kiss on her jaw.  “It’s very adorable.  And sometimes very annoying.”

He kept talking over her when she tried to protest again. 

“But I also spent all of that time trying to figure out why I felt so differently about this person who I had known forever and at the same time felt exactly the same about her as I had always felt.  It was maddening.”

Something inside her was mending a little bit as he talked, and Hermione felt a reluctant smile steal onto her own face. 

“Alright, keep going.”

“You are maddening,” he repeated, and then her smile disappeared because their lips were meeting again and his tongue was slipping in between hers and his fingers were trailing down her neck to her chest in a way that felt equally as lovely as his words had.  

It took a moment for her to catch her breath when he pulled back, slight disappointment momentarily displacing the warmth still blooming under her skin. 

“I mean no offense to Daphne,” Malfoy said, and he studied her face like he wanted to memorize it, “but I was half out of my mind by the time we got here.  Trying to figure out what in the world was going and how everything had somehow changed while I wasn’t paying attention—I mean, Daphne, larking about on crazy secret missions to find Basilisk fangs and destroy Dark objects and sending Blaise off to Merlin knows where under the Death Eaters’ noses in the middle of the night—yes, I figured that one out, obviously—so when I saw you standing there in the kitchen that night—”

His voice caught. 

Hermione’s face flushed at the memory. The way they had screamed at each other in front of everyone, the sudden release of being able to say whatever she wanted to him triggering such a torrent of emotion; it had caught her—perhaps both of them—completely off guard.

“I know I was angry,” Malfoy continued quietly, “and I was awful to you.  But when I knew it was you, it was like some huge piece of a puzzle slid into place.  I mean, rather literally, but also, because earlier, I felt as if—”

He cleared his throat and started again. 

“When you were at the Manor,” Malfoy’s right arm tensed around her and his eyes darted to her left, which was currently resting on his chest and still healing from his aunt’s knife, “you said my name.  In your own voice.  I’d never heard you do that before, and yet it sounded so familiar.  And…” 

He hesitated. 

“You looked like you cared for me.”

She melted a little more inside.

Malfoy brushed a curl back from her cheek and looked down at her with something like wonderment. 

“It was so strange.  And so fast, and then you were gone.”

Her arms tightened around his waist involuntarily and his mouth tugged up at one corner. 

“It was like my heart had cracked open.  I don’t—I don’t know how else to describe it.  Then when I got back to school, and I saw you—only it wasn’t you—I still felt it, and I was completely wrecked.”

Hermione thought of that night and how he had pulled her to him as if she might disappear. 

“Me, too,” she whispered, and he dipped his head to capture her lips briefly.

“I was quite out of sorts, Hermione Granger,” he replied wryly.  “You had me very confused for a long time.” 

The hand that had been sprawled across her lower back snaked around and pinched her waist at the end of this proclamation and she let out an undignified squeak. 

“You’re not exactly the easiest person to interpret sometimes, Malfoy,” Hermione replied, pointedly. 

He just smirked down at her, and she stifled the urge to kiss him, wrinkling her nose at him instead.  Not for the first time, Hermione wondered what her fourteen-year-old self would say if she could tell her that in a few years she’d be laying underneath Malfoy—very willingly and wearing very little clothing—as he leveled that familiar smirk at her, and she’d want to kiss him for it.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she said suddenly, and he quirked an eyebrow at her.

“What is, Granger?”

“Being able to talk about… whatever we want,” Hermione replied, “I mean, at Hogwarts, you had to be so careful around all of us, and then we got here and we were mostly fighting or I was trying to figure out how to act around you…” 

Her words trailed off, mild embarrassment creeping back in.   

“I rather liked talking to you at Hogwarts,” Malfoy replied easily, nipping her jaw.  “And I like fighting with you, too, actually.”

“Malfoy.”

He paused to grin at her.  “See, you say my name in that adorable way.  It’s not as much fun as the other way, mind you…” 

The sentence lingered suggestively as his mouth returned to her skin. 

Hermione’s fingers slipped into the soft hair at the back of his neck, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment.  This was going to be a problem.  He was far too good at making her lose her concentration.

“Besides,” he spoke again between nips and licks as he made his way down her neck and then back up to the dip below her ear, “now we have plenty of time for all of those things.”

Despite the growing heat his lips were causing which threatened to suppress all rational thought, Hermione felt a flicker of uncertainty at his phrasing. 

Was that really true?  Gringotts, the cup, the snake, Malfoy Manor in Theo’s vision…  Her brain spun for a moment at the idea of time. 

She wanted it desperately to be true.

…

Hermione awoke in the morning, disoriented by the unfamiliar bedroom and panicked by the dark.  She reached for her wand instinctively and found Malfoy instead, already reaching for her. 

“Good morning,” he murmured, drawing her near and searching for her lips in the darkness. 

His voice was husky with sleep and it made her want to get him to say other things.  The confusion cleared and she returned his kiss eagerly, wondering at the notion of waking up in Draco Malfoy’s bed.

She was rewarded with a low groan, which made her toes curl where they were pressed against Malfoy’s shins, tangled in the silk sheets. 

“Why weren’t we doing this all those nights we had our own rooms?” he muttered.  His fingers played at her waist, inching up the hem of her nightgown in a rather agonizing way. 

Hermione snorted automatically with laughter, and she felt him smile in return against her lips. 

“Oh, right,” Malfoy chuckled.  “That.”

They whiled away a very pleasant hour before Hermione slowly grasped that the room was only dark still due to the lack of front-facing windows in Malfoy’s room compared to her own. 

With a start, she realized aloud that her potential opening for sneaking back to her own room without running into anyone in the corridor had decisively closed.  Malfoy simply laughed at her chagrin and offered to walk her to her bedroom door if it would make her feel more proper.

“My hair must look ridiculous,” she groused, “you don’t have any sort of comb?”

Malfoy looked at her fondly from where he was lounging against the headboard. 

“It does,” he confirmed.  “And I do not.  I share the washroom across the hall, unfortunately, with Potter and Weasley, and all of my combs are there.”

“I don’t even have shoes!” she wailed, glancing around his room frantically as if some of her belongings might somehow appear.

“Yes, the long journey down the hallway might be quite treacherous without them,” Malfoy drawled.

She glared at him. 

“This isn’t funny.  You’re not the one who might get caught by—by Remus, or,” Hermione shuddered, “Kingsley could have stopped by.”

Malfoy did look momentarily green at this possibility. 

“Kingsley hasn’t been here in ages,” he countered, finally emerging from the bedcovers and striding over to the wardrobe on the other side of his room.  “He’s too busy gadding around the country ordering about his devoted lot of rogue Aurors.”

Hermione thought of the last time she had seen the imposing hopefully-future-Minister-of-Magic.  With Moody’s death, he had taken over at the helm of the Order’s more active operations.  When he had appeared at Shell Cottage a few days ago, describing an uncovered Death Eater job trafficking Dark creatures into the city from the countryside, Kingsley had looked positively delighted to announce he’d be going into the field personally to lead a raid on their suspected warehouse. 

Okay, so Malfoy was probably right that he wasn’t likely to make an appearance in the corridor outside the row of bedrooms on the third floor this morning.

“Well, I still don’t fancy running into anyone else in this house in this state of dress,” she replied.

Malfoy snorted, still rummaging through clothing. 

“You sound like you’re in a Victorian romance novel.  You’re perfectly covered.”

“It’s a nightgown,” Hermione stressed.  “And what would you know about Victorian romance novels?”

“I read, Granger,” he said, and tossed her something.  “And, though I would like to state that, for the record, in principle, I do not support you ever putting on more clothing—take this.”

Hermione caught the jumper he had scrounged up for her, and immediately felt a secret curl of pleasure.  It was unfathomably soft, and forest green, and smelled deliciously like Malfoy.

“Where did you even get all of these clothes?” she asked as she pushed her arms through the sleeves.  “We both fled Hogwarts.  I was lucky I had my bag on me.”

Malfoy didn’t bother concealing his own apparent delight at the sight of her in his clothing.  He swept over to her, running his hands up underneath the loose fabric immediately. 

“Blaise sent Kreacher to his estate ages ago.  We all had some things there.”

“Malfoy!”  Hermione cried reproachfully, but he just smirked and kissed her nose. 

“I thought you needed coffee,” he reminded her, and with a wistful look, removed his hands and placed them instead on her shoulders.  “Since you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

She rolled her eyes at his leering and left the potential reckless endangerment of their headquarters’ house elf to rest for the moment. 

“Wait at least ten minutes before you come downstairs,” Hermione insisted, allowing him to steer her toward the door. 

She thought regretfully that she would have to take off the warm jumper now enveloping her before getting to her much-needed hit of caffeine, it being very obviously not her own.

He just laughed.  “Sure, Granger.”

…

The kitchen was mercifully empty when Hermione entered twenty minutes later, after a somewhat successful attempt to tame her hair and changing reluctantly into presentable, non-Malfoy-owned clothes.  

She was just finished preparing the first of what seemed likely to be multiple giant cups of coffee to be imbibed that day when Malfoy appeared, freshly showered and looking much more awake than she did.

“Morning,” Hermione said, feeling strangely shy all of a sudden.  She blushed.  “Again.”

Malfoy positively beamed back at her as he reached for her, setting her coffee down quickly on the counter so he could maneuver her closer more efficiently.  She almost laughed at herself for the absurd way it made her feel, like she was about to burst.  

They were acting ridiculous.  Pansy was going to be insufferable.

“It’s been a very good morning, actually,” Malfoy replied.  One of his arms crept around her waist and he trapped her against the counter.

“Malfoy, someone could walk in—”

He did pause, and a crease formed between his brows as he considered her.

“You know, Hermione, this morning—”

Before Malfoy could finish whatever he’d been about to say, the kitchen door swung open and Hermione jerked away from him without thinking.

Something vulnerable flashed across his face and she hated it and hated her own reflexive movement immediately.  Mask schooled perfectly back in place, however, Malfoy had already smoothly stepped away from her and was greeting Ginny nonchalantly.

Hermione sighed and followed Malfoy to sit at the table.  She missed their head dorm again with fervent longing.

“Hermione, is everything alright?”  Ginny asked absently as she dropped into the seat across from Hermione and next to Malfoy, snagging an apple from the bowl in the middle of the table.  “You’re usually up earlier than anyone, and we missed you at breakfast.”

Hermione’s mug froze on its way to her lips.  She snuck a glance at Malfoy and saw he was carefully preparing a cup for his own tea, face neutral.

She cleared her throat.

“Actually, Ginny.”

The redhead casually summoned a paring knife from a drawer to slice her apple and it zoomed into her hand, a use of magic for which Mrs. Weasley would certainly not have approved.

“Hmm?”

Hermione set her coffee down with a decisive thud and turned her full attention to Malfoy now.

His eyes widened fractionally.

“That’s because Draco and I overslept.”

The slow smile that she was learning she liked the most of all of Malfoy’s expressions returned.  Hermione grinned back sheepishly.

Meanwhile, Ginny’s mouth had gone slack as her head whipped between the pair of them.  

“I’m sorry, what?!”

“I know we didn’t really get to discuss telling anyone yet, Draco, I’m sure Ginny will keep it to herself if you want.”  

Hermione winced.  

“Well, she’ll probably tell Harry.”

Ginny made a sort of strangled noise, half-indignant and half-surprised still.

“No, I don’t mind,” Malfoy replied firmly.  

Then he eyed Ginny warily.  

“Perhaps we have this conversation without a knife in this one’s hand, though.”

Ginny and Hermione both looked automatically at Ginny’s hand, which was indeed still clutching the paring knife midair in a sort of manner that could arguably be construed as threatening.

Rolling her eyes, Ginny straightened in her seat and flung a piece of apple at Malfoy instead.  He dodged it easily.

“You better be afraid of me, Malfoy,” she snarked, but her eyes betrayed her by sparkling with delight.  “My brothers aren’t the only ones who will hex you if you fuck things up with Hermione.”

He snorted and opened his mouth to retort, but was interrupted by the arrival of a yawning, rumpled Theo.

“Morning, lovebirds,” he drawled.

Hermione accidentally put her elbow in the butter dish as she tried not to blush. 

Chapter Text

May 1998

The revelation that the cup was at Gringotts palpably altered the atmosphere at Grimmauld Place even further, though only a handful knew the true reason.

Plans that had been half-made and languishing for weeks for various reasons—lack of funding, lack of intel, lack of available Order members to conduct such missions—to surveil and potentially capture known Death Eaters and sympathizers were suddenly pushed aggressively to the forefront of strategy meetings by Lupin and Ron. 

Discussions of their dwindled reserves of healing potions, brooms, and other such useful and potentially lifesaving things, currently managed by a handful of residents across the safehouses, were renewed with the larger group. 

Hermione tasked Theo and Blaise, two of the best at potions among the younger residents of Grimmauld Place and Tonks Cottage, with replenishing draughts, and Neville and Luna with finding additional means to gather the needed ingredients. 

Pansy turned out to be exceptionally clever at creating increasingly helpful variations of the illegal Portkeys the Order was using now almost nonstop, and recruited Ginny to help her for hours each day on restocking their cache.  Between the two witches, there were soon a handful of objects charmed to transport multiple members on command to the inside of the outer wards of Malfoy Manor, a feat that had involved a not-insignificant amount of Malfoy’s blood and stunned even Hermione when Pansy not-quite-humbly announced it late one evening over dinner, looking exhausted but triumphant.  

The others could clearly sense that Harry and those privy to his more secretive plans were suddenly accelerating—were suddenly acting toward something, not just treading water or buying time as it had felt for so long.  It galvanized everyone in a way that made Hermione realize just how listless it had been sometimes around headquarters, the news day after day of another blow to the Order—or, sometimes oddly worse, the lack of any news—slowly leeching under each of their skins until it settled there like a weight. 

And in the midst of the growing intensity surrounding her, Hermione felt torn between her increasing dread and her insuppressible, unforeseen happiness.

One minute, she was so panicked she couldn’t breathe over things such as their pathetic supply of spare wands and nightmares of Harry standing before a leering Voldemort, and the next she was drifting off during conversations, remembering what it had felt like that morning when Malfoy had cornered her in the backyard after everyone else departed training and slipped his hand under her shirt while he kissed her.

The problem was that, for the first time in as long as she could recall, the end of the war felt not just plausible but—close.  It was surreal, the kind of thought you didn’t dare breathe as it crossed your mind, but simultaneously wanted to savor and turn over and over again as it filled you with something foreign like hope.

When Hermione had imagined a future with Ron, something pushed off until after they had gotten through not just Hogwarts but Horcruxes and Voldemort and keeping Harry alive as long as he needed them, she had never really pictured anything specific, just the concept of—then.  Perhaps a blurry, vague concept of more extended Weasley family gatherings continuing to feature prominently in her life, though—the thought struck her with a touch of nerves—that hopefully would still be true.

But now, she found herself sitting at breakfast across from Malfoy, watching as he fixed her tea, only to start imagining a different world where he was pouring her milk into her mug in their own flat, without all of these other people clamoring for their attention around them.  He would make her tea, and scrambled eggs, and she would make him go to the farmer’s market with her on Sundays so they could buy vegetables and she could always have fresh flowers for the kitchen table. He would complain about how much hair Crookshanks left on the furniture and they would both stay up too late reading on the couch and she would make him learn how to use a Muggle record player and a television.

“Hermione?”  Ron called loudly, in a tone that suggested it was not the first time he had said her name.  She jumped nearly a foot in her chair.  “The bacon?”

“Oh.”  Heat was creeping across her face.  She grabbed the platter next to her and thrust it into Ron’s outstretched hand. “Um, here.”

Hermione’s brain had always, unfortunately or fortunately, been very capable of multitasking.  She blamed this for its new tendency to amplify these previously suppressed imaginings of a post-war future—or perhaps the way Malfoy was looking at her like he might also have been thinking about her, though maybe more inappropriate than some absurd domestic fantasies about farmer’s markets.  Or perhaps it was Malfoy himself, and he’d unleashed something in her she wasn’t sure how to stopper any longer now that he was there and looking at her like that and later she could snog the living daylights out of him when she wanted.

“So, when do you want to do it?”

Hermione choked on a blueberry that had been hidden in her porridge.  “I’m sorry?!”

Ron was still chewing an obscenely large bite of bacon, but he looked disturbed.  “The meeting,” he said slowly.  “When do you lot want to find Lupin and talk to him?”

She coughed into her napkin, eyes still tearing.  Malfoy appeared to be biting the inside of his cheek, but he answered Ron casually.  “Granger and I are free after lunch, Weasley.  We have to check on the calming draughts we started yesterday to make sure they haven’t overcooked.”

The calming draughts had been bottled perfectly earlier that morning.  Hermione caught Malfoy’s eye as she finally recovered and he winked once. 

Hermione realized she was gripping her spoon in one hand rather tightly.  It hit her hard, in the place in her chest where her heart had broken so many times already that year.  She wanted that future. 

“We’ll meet you at noon,” Malfoy drawled, and popped a blueberry into his mouth.

…

The Weasley twins showed up for lunch with Dean and Seamus, and the afternoon was filled with too much activity for them to be any kind of subtle about a secret planning session.  Instead, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Malfoy, and Lupin stole away after another late-night meeting in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place had finally wrapped up, Lupin pacing the library with a sleeping Teddy cradled carefully against his shoulder.  Tonks had been too grateful for the break to shoot them the suspicious looks she often did when the group made excuses to gather without anyone else. 

Hermione was sitting next to Malfoy on the worn leather sofa across from Harry and Ron, right knee bouncing up and down in a frantic manner that belayed her anxiety at what Malfoy had already told her he was going to propose. 

“As we discussed before, the Lestrange vault is on the same level as my family’s.” 

Harry nodded automatically, his own hand tapping his wand rhythmically against his thigh.  Ron looked grim, as if he knew where Malfoy was going with this.

“I’ve been down there hundreds of times,” Malfoy continued.  “More importantly, I think I can get down there now.”

Hermione closed her eyes briefly, wincing.  This was the part of the plan they had already argued about for what felt like hours the night before, the piece that was too uncertain for her to fully be certain it was the right decision, the only way, which was why they had finally heatedly agreed that he would pitch it to the other—Lupin, really—and let the group decide. 

“The Dark Lord may think I’m a traitor, but that doesn’t mean the goblins won’t take me to my vault.”  Malfoy’s voice was firm, hard, as if he could convince the others of his own certainty by his carefully controlled tone.

Ron goggled at him for a moment as his words sunk in.  “Mate, are you—are you saying you think you ought to just walk in as yourself?”

Malfoy gave a curt nod.  Hermione privately acknowledged the jarring feeling she experienced at Ron calling Malfoy ‘mate’ and tucked it away to analyze later. 

Harry and Lupin were exchanging a slow look, one that looked far too much like they were seeing merit in Malfoy's idea for Hermione’s liking. 

“It’s absurd,” she burst out, ignoring the dirty look Malfoy shot her direction.  “They’ll call Voldemort instantly, if they even let him in, and he’ll be trapped down there—”

“The goblins aren’t under Voldemort’s control—”

“You don’t know that—”

“What I know is that he thinks them too stupid to be worth even bothering to—”

“Draco,” Lupin’s voice interrupted, quiet so as to not interrupt the sleeping infant that he held but still commanding enough to halt the argument that Hermione and Malfoy had been rehashing.  “How would you get into the Lestrange vault once you were on the correct level of the bank?”

“I—I would have to Imperius a goblin.”  Malfoy looked slightly ill as he said the words, but he met Lupin’s gaze steadily.  “I can’t think of any other way.  They would never let someone into another’s vault without authorization otherwise.”

Lupin nodded absently, brow furrowed, but didn’t object.  Harry looked only resigned. 

“Wait—how do you know you haven’t been disowned?”  Ron suddenly asked.  “I mean, even if the goblins aren’t going to stop you just because Voldemort told them to, your dad might’ve done something to prevent you from getting into your own vault, and then they wouldn’t allow you down there.”

Hermione could tell, even from her vantage point next to Malfoy, that he was barely restraining an eye roll. 

“Weasley, I thought you were supposed to be a pureblood,” he said coolly.

Predictably, Ron’s affability toward Malfoy evaporated and his face reddened. 

“What’s your point, Malfoy?” he shot back indignantly, but Lupin was the one who answered.

“Magical disinheritance is … complicated, Ron,” the werewolf said in a distant tone. 

Sirius, Hermione thought with a jolt of sadness.  Another Black family member who’d left his home behind, who had lost his mother, and father, and his brother, only to lose his life first to the betrayal of chosen family and then finally to the second coming of the war for which he’d chosen a side in the first place.  She suddenly felt any frustration with Malfoy evaporate and in its place there was only sad, desperate fear. 

Lupin was continuing, still sounding as if he was pained and trying to conceal it by adopting his professorial tone. 

“Draco would know if his father had attempted such a thing.  And in any event, in most cases, it would require some sort of… ceremony with Draco present.”

Malfoy had averted his eyes and was staring, hard, at the floor in front of his feet. 

“I haven’t been, Weasley,” he growled, and Hermione saw Ron’s frown as he retreated from his reactive anger. 

Harry chimed in, redirecting the conversation.  “So, you stroll into the bank, ask to go down to your vault, Imperius a goblin once you’re down there to take you into the Lestranges’ instead…” He folded his arms over his chest as he too frowned at Malfoy, though it seemed to only reflect that he was deep in thought.  “Then what?”

“We need to speak with Bill,” Hermione said immediately, ignoring Malfoy, who had opened his mouth to reply.  “Even if Draco gets down there, he said it could take twenty or thirty minutes—Voldemort—well, more likely, Bellatrix—will have been alerted by then.”

Understanding seemed to be dawning on Ron. 

“Yeah, Bill might have some ideas,” he said slowly.  “But how will we explain why we need to do this?”

Harry shrugged, looking slightly defeated at this reminder.  “Everyone knows by now that we’re up to something.  I reckon we just tell him he can’t ask but that it’s important.”

Lupin shook his head. 

“It will have to be more than that,” he said quietly, and the way his gaze fell upon his sleeping son so intensely as he spoke made the others fall silent.

“If we succeed, we’ll be ready.”  Hermione’s stomach dropped.  “And if we don’t—” 

Lupin took a deep breath, but Harry was the one who finished.

“It is very likely that he will know that we are hunting the Horcruxes.”

A thrill of fear raced up Hermione’s spine. 

Suddenly, she wondered again at Harry’s newly adopted recalcitrance when any mention of the Hallows was made.  

After he had seen Voldemort breaking into Dumbledore’s tomb to retrieve the Elder Wand—a shudder coursed through her at the conjured visual—Harry had become uncharacteristically reluctant to discuss the subject.

“If we destroy the Horcruxes,” he said simply when Hermione had gotten up the nerve to ask only days before, “then he’s a mortal wizard with a very powerful wand.”

It sounded so much like what she had been saying to him for ages on the subject that she was momentarily stymied.

“Right,” Hermione confirmed slowly.  “And we know he doesn’t have the cloak, or the stone, even if we were to buy into any of it.”

Harry hummed in a sort of noncommittal manner that she thought could have been assent, and returned to slurping his onion soup.  After a last searching look, Hermione picked up her own spoon and tried to ignore the suspicions floating unbidden into her mind.

Horcruxes, not Hallows.

She shook herself back to the present, dread still settling in her stomach.

“So we… prepare as if it’s the end?” Hermione said softly, and Ron looked at her sharply.  Harry just set his jaw determinedly.

“We have the others ready to go,” Malfoy spoke rigidly.  “To the Manor.”

Lupin nodded grimly.  “That’s what I mean, yes.”

They stayed up far too late that night, only pausing for Lupin to take Teddy up to his own bed to sleep, then return with Kreacher, who had firewhiskey and sandwiches and gave them a strange, trembling look as if he somehow had guessed what they were discussing. 

The debate over if and how much to tell Kingsley, Minerva, Tonks, and the other senior members of the Order about why they thought now was the potential moment to take such a final stand lasted hours.  Ron was the one who finally laid out an agreed-upon strategy with careful, layered contingencies that satisfied them all. 

If by some miracle all went according to plan and they found the cup in Gringotts and escaped back to headquarters without alerting any of the Death Eaters to the theft, they would have time—not much—to organize, but they would have no reason to wait and every day would increase the risk of the cup’s, or another Horcrux’s, absence being discovered—or Voldemort creating another, Merlin forbid. 

If all didn’t go according to plan… 

They went through a multitude of scenarios, all of which were dependent on just how spectacularly they screwed up at Gringotts, whether they could ascertain whether Voldemort was at the Manor, whether the cup was or wasn’t in the vault after all. 

Hermione’s head spun.  The crux of it seemed to be that the climax of something was hurtling toward her faster than she was prepared for it to arrive, one way or another.

“We’ll each have a Basilisk fang,” Hermione said again. 

“And the sword,” Ron added. 

Malfoy’s hand twitched against her thigh where it had settled around the time Harry had brought up the snake in the first place.  She covered it with her own.  His fingers were cold.

“Kingsley and the Aurors will be on the offense to capture the other Death Eaters,” Harry repeated grimly, “the rest of the Order will each have their assignments.  And I’ll be the one to find him.”

They had been building toward this for years, Hermione knew this, and yet to hear her best friend declare it so matter-of-factly was as arresting as it had been when he was only a scrawny eleven-year-old boy with broken glasses and had charged off headfirst to be the one to stand sacrificially between Voldemort’s shadow and an alchemist’s promise of immortality. 

“We’ll all find him,” she said, voice shaking.  “I can’t imagine it will be hard.”

Malfoy’s hand tightened on her leg again.  No one spoke.

“I’ll contact Snape,” Lupin finally affirmed, and an alarming number of cracking sounds echoed from his joints as he stretched his arms above his head. 

He sighed.  “He won’t like it, of course.”

Harry snorted.  “He won’t like any plan that he didn’t come up with himself.”

Hermione saw Malfoy’s lip quirk slightly. 

“No, he won’t,” he agreed.

…

They called a full Order meeting the following evening.  

Even though they had stayed up irresponsibly late the night before, lost hours of sleep which Hermione could not regret in the slightest, Malfoy woke at his usual early hour.  She found him in the library already furiously scribbling away by the time she’d made it downstairs for a sorely-needed cup of coffee, surrounded by the detailed, annotated plans they had compiled of his childhood home.

Though she sat with him for a while trying to go over her own research, Hermione eventually left him to it and spent most of the day in an odd state of spiked adrenaline as she drifted from task to task, mind whirling through what was about to happen over the next few weeks.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she tried again as they eventually wound their way downstairs together to the meeting. 

There was tension radiating off of him, the muscles in his back taut through the thin shirt he was wearing, and Hermione was torn between the impulse to try to smooth them out and her irritation at his short temper.  

“Granger, we don’t have to talk about everything all the time,” Malfoy snapped. 

She tried to ignore the sting that these words left as she trailed after him into the kitchen.  They were among the last to arrive, apparently, and the scarred wooden table was filled with more people than Hermione had seen in ages:  an assortment of Weasleys, the Aurors and other Ministry personnel who had defected, former classmates from Hogwarts, and other familiar faces were conversing in low whispers, some with more agitation than others.  Hermione’s anxiety ratcheted.

“Must you leave your ridiculous junk everywhere, Weasley?”  Malfoy snarled as soon as he drew up to the table.  Littered across the wooden surface were bits of what Hermione assumed were Weasley products in half-stages, some that looked oddly Muggle and others that were already sparking or smoking dangerously.  Malfoy was glaring at them venomously. 

“You’re awfully cantankerous today, Malfoy,” Fred replied with a sunny smile.  He waved his wand with a mockingly gracious flourish and the chair across from him leapt backward from the table.  “Please, do join us.”

Malfoy glared daggers at him as he shoved aside several of what might have been Extendable Ears to deposit his pile of parchment on the table.  “I am not.”

Fred raised an eyebrow in silence at Hermione, who ignored him.  She took the proffered empty seat, while Malfoy disdainfully yanked out the last remaining chair next to her.  

Lupin cleared his throat loudly, and many of the whispered conversations that had been audible throughout the echoing room ceased.  

“We all appreciate the risk you have come to be here today.”  Lupin sounded pained.  “We know it is dangerous for so many of us to gather in one place, even here.  However, that risk is worth it this time.”

He cast his eyes around the room, and the atmosphere felt heavier as everyone let his words sink in.

“As many of you know, we have long suspected that Voldemort is using Malfoy Manor as his base of operations,” Lupin said plainly.  “And as some of you also know, we have called this meeting to discuss your willingness to join us on an operation to launch a full assault on Voldemort at the estate.”

The murmuring broke out again.  Hermione caught sight of a gleam of anticipation in Kingsley’s eyes, as well as Bill’s grim nod. 

When informed earlier that day, Bill had been unimpressed with their plan to stroll into Gringotts and simply travel down to the vault from which they wanted to steal a highly protected object.  Nonetheless, he rolled up his sleeves and joined them in the study where he drew complicated maps of the tunnels and the levels of the underground vaults, identified as many curses as he could remember that might trip them up, and listed names and any relevant personality traits of all of the goblins he had ever worked with during his employment.  With his help, they had added about six layers to the plan that none of the others would have thought of on their own, which was both reassuring and disconcerting to Hermione.

Lupin continued.  “We finally feel that we have significant enough intelligence to act on Malfoy Manor in a way that could be a decisive blow to Voldemort and his supporters.  There may only be a limited window in which we have this opportunity.”

“When?”

The choked cry had come from Molly Weasley.

Hermione felt ill at the sound of pure terror Molly had clearly tried to suppress in her question.  All of them had so much to lose:  but who more than Molly Weasley?  She had seven children and a husband who would be there, would be putting their lives on the line, could be taken out in one single fell.  Hermione’s head swam and for a rare moment, she felt thankful that her parents were in Australia, as Grangers or Wilkins or any name.

Kingsley’s deep voice returned the question.  “Soon, Molly,” he said gently.  “It could be a week, or several, but we must be ready at a moment’s notice, which is why we have called this meeting.  It is time.”

No one else was explicitly told why the ancillary mission to Gringotts would be necessary, but Lupin’s authority in his pronouncement was not questioned.  While Lupin and Bill began explaining some of the logistics of their plan to the larger group, with the occasional interjection from Harry, Ron, or Kingsley, who had been looped in earlier that day, Malfoy stared straight ahead at a spot over Fred’s shoulder, face hard. 

At first, Hermione listened intently while people debated how to best go about infiltrating the Malfoy estate.  But then Robards began gesturing emphatically to the magical drawing in front of them after a dubious comment from Charlie about the likelihood of Voldemort staying in a guest room rather than kicking Lucius out of the master suite, and it hit her with a force like a slap.

This was Malfoy’s home they were talking about.  Not only were his parents going to be there—an obvious complicating factor that the larger group didn’t seem particularly sensitive to at the moment—he was being forced to sit there and listen to this detached, clinical analysis, by people who she knew he feared still mostly despised him, of how to invade and lay ruin to the place where he had once learned to play Quidditch on a toy broom, stolen sweets from the kitchens, helped his mother garden in the summers. 

Swallowing hard, she slipped her hand to his knee under the table and curled her fingers around the clenched fist resting there.  He didn’t move his gaze or clasp her hand in return, but Hermione felt him relax marginally under her palm.  She didn’t pull it back for the remainder of the meeting.

…

Everyone else shuffled out of the kitchen slowly after the meeting broke up, conversing in low whispers, some straggling upstairs and others leaving for the Apparition point on the doorstep or grasping Portkeys.  Most of their faces were drawn tightly, grim expressions exchanged as they nodded their goodbyes.

Hermione watched Malfoy with a frown as he gathered books and the parchment containing the maps of the Manor that they had been using during the discussion.  He wasn’t looking at her. 

“Draco.” 

“What?”

There wasn’t a bite to his voice anymore, but it sounded flat.  Hermione ran a fingernail over a ridge in the wooden surface of the table, buying time while she chose her words. 

“I’m afraid,” she finally admitted, and he paused his movements to look up.  “For you.  About Gringotts.  Well, about everything, honestly, but in the immediate moment, that’s at the top of my list.”

A sad smile flitted across his face.  “I know.  But someone has to do it, and it makes the most sense that it’s me.”

She chewed her lip as he resumed packing up.  There was a sick feeling in her stomach that had been simmering there for days and it surged. 

“You don’t have anything to prove, you know.”

He stiffened.  “I know that.”

Hermione couldn’t stop herself. 

“It’s not your job to single-handedly end the war.”

He laughed cruelly.  “Right.  That’s Potter.”

She let out a sigh of frustration and grabbed his arm to stop him from continuing to shove their belongings back into his satchel. 

“No.  It’s all of us, Draco.  That’s the deal.  We’re in this together.  And as for the cup—we could find another way,” she finished softly.  “It doesn’t have to be you.”

He stared down at her hand where it rested lightly on his arm. 

“Except it’s my family,” he finally burst.  “My father had a Horcrux, I’m the one who let them into the castle, he’s living in my fucking house where we have to fight him, now my aunt apparently has another bloody piece of his soul laying around—my aunt that—that you were tortured by—”

His voice broke, and Hermione threw her arms around him quickly, hesitation forgotten.  After a beat, she felt him return the embrace, a hand slipping up the nape of her neck and burying into her hair. 

“You aren’t responsible for this war, Draco Malfoy.”  Her words were muffled, but she didn’t move her face from where it was pressed against his chest.  “And you have more than proven that you have learned from your own mistakes.  That’s what matters.”

The only response was his hand tightening in her curls, clutching her closer to him.

“It matters to me,” she repeated quietly.

Chapter Text

May 1998

Despite Hermione’s attempt to close the door as quietly as she possibly could, the old knob still creaked jarringly as she twisted it behind her.  She cringed as she tiptoed into the dimly lit room.

Grey eyes danced with amusement from where they watched her.  “You know, I’m not sure why you insist on scuttling around in the dark after everyone’s asleep like some sort of demented cat burglar.”  

“It’s not demented,” Hermione huffed.  She finished making her way over to the four-poster bed where Malfoy was already waiting.  “I just think it’s polite to at least pretend we’re not—I don’t know—living in sin or something.”  

A little contented sigh escaped her unwittingly as she slipped into the silk sheets and tucked herself into his side.  Hermione’s toes immediately sought out Malfoy’s calves.  “You know,” she continued busily, “so Lupin and Tonks have a little plausible deniability.” 

“Ugh, Granger, you’re freezing,” Malfoy complained.  But he grabbed her closer, entwining their legs into a ridiculous pretzel-like shape, and reached around to tuck the blankets more securely over them both.  

“How do you even know what a cat burglar is?” 

“What, is that supposed to be a Muggle phrase?  What should I call you instead?  A kneazle thief?  Kneazles aren’t exactly very stealthy.”  Malfoy snorted.  “Then again, neither are you.”

She rolled her eyes even though he couldn’t fully see her face.  “I suppose I’m just used to having to learn all sorts of silly idioms.  Do you know how many wizards and witches I’ve heard say, ‘don’t count your owls before they’re delivered’?  Why is that?  The Wizarding world is perfectly aware of and also regularly interacts with chickens and eggs.  I mean, there’s ‘in for a Knut, in for a Galleon,’ I suppose I get the reason that the expression differs there but—mmph.”

Malfoy had suddenly leaned forward to capture her lips with his own, and Hermione felt her thoughts melting away in favor of focusing on the sensation of warmth spreading through her, fueled by the way he sucked her bottom lip between his briefly before running his tongue along it and then slipping inside her mouth, drawing out a moan which he swallowed greedily.

When he pulled back, she was quite dazed.  “I cannot stress how fun it is that I get to shut you up like that now,” Malfoy said with a heavy note of self-satisfaction.

She swatted his arm, heart still pounding unnecessarily hard.  “Hey.”

“I like the rants, too, Granger,” he assured her, “but it’s still fun.  And now I get both.”

Hermione grumbled halfheartedly but decided to make better use of her energy enjoying the way his body felt curved around her, drawing his arms tighter around her and letting his warmth cocoon her under the blankets as she shifted against him. 

“Anyway,” he continued casually, tucking some of her hair under his chin so it didn’t impede his breathing, “I think technically we would have to be having sex to be ‘living in sin.’”

Hermione stilled.  Her brain instantly supplied a number of very vivid and very detailed images of what types of sins they could have been performing at that very moment.  “Um.”

“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Malfoy continued hurriedly, “but I think I should say, for the record, I am very much in favor.  If you were to want to.  But, if you didn’t, I am also completely and one hundred percent alright with that.”

He dropped a reassuring kiss on the side of her neck and Hermione moved her face toward him automatically.  

“No, I’m—I’m in favor.”

She caught his eyes widen as his lips paused on their way to seek out hers.  

“Really?” came a sort of choked sound from them instead.

Hermione laughed, a little breathless already, and Malfoy regained his composure rapidly.  Before she could respond, his tongue was swiping insistently along her bottom lip again, one hand moving in tandem to tilt her head back more fully.  A rush of heat jolted straight from where his fingers curled under her jaw to where he was tracing patterns on her lower stomach through her nightgown.  

For a few delirious moments, Hermione thought he meant for them to just jump into such sins right then, and she couldn’t help arching back into him, one arm wrapping up around the nape of his neck to pull him even closer.  A muffled groan feathered across her lips from his, and she felt a responding thrust of his hips into hers that made her very aware of his reciprocal and rapidly growing arousal.  

“Draco.”  

He broke off their kiss with something like a shudder, but his grip on her waist tightened even more securely.  

“I thought we talked about you saying that,” Malfoy rasped, and he closed his eyes briefly.

“I’m sorry?”  Hermione offered weakly, not meaning it.

She felt the curve of his smile as he pressed his lips to her shoulder.  “I'm sorry.  It’s very hard to be able to kiss you now whenever I want and—well, not.”

A relatable feeling, she thought hazily.  Hermione’s fingers skimmed lightly along the forearm wrapped around her middle and she watched the gooseflesh appear where they touched.  Almost as slowly, Malfoy trailed his other hand down from her neck and then across the swell of her breast.  It slid along the soft underside until he held her cupped firmly, then his thumb brushed upward to graze her nipple where it was hardened and visible under the thin cotton covering her.  Hermione felt like she might combust as heat swirled from every place he touched her.  

“You’re perfect,” Malfoy murmured, lips ghosting across the shell of her ear.  “I still can’t believe I am able to touch you.” 

“I want—”  There was a matching falter in her voice as her confidence suddenly waned.  “But I’ve never—I mean, I haven’t.”

Malfoy drew in a shaky breath and his hands stilled.  “I—I know.  And I want to be with you.”  He chuckled softly.  “Merlin, I want to be with you.  But I want to go as slow as you want because I want you to know that this is—more than that.  To me.”  With her head half-turned to him, Hermione could see that Malfoy’s brow had furrowed in seriousness.  “I want more than that.”

Hermione thought again of flowers from the farmer’s market and reading glasses slipping off Malfoy’s nose when he fell asleep in front of the fire.  Malfoy’s face was vulnerable as he watched her.  Then she thought of golden cups and haunted manors.

“I want that, too,” she said firmly, and her lips met his.

…

Malfoy was taking an inordinate amount of time with his conversation.  

He was at the very end of the grand hall, at the most ornate of the gilded counters in the bank, with a wizened and important-looking goblin that he had previously explained was his family’s personal Gringotts liaison.  

Hermione had snorted and rolled her eyes at this so hard that he’d immediately kissed her rather thoroughly to shut her up despite Harry’s presence.  The other wizard had gagged dramatically and threatened to withdraw his permission for their relationship to continue under his roof.  Before Malfoy could bait Harry further, Hermione had threatened to tell Molly Weasley how many nights Ginny really slept in their room.  They had all begrudgingly agreed that they were at an impasse, and no one would be telling Molly anything.

Currently, Malfoy was out of earshot from Hermione and Tonks, who were pressed against the wall closer to the entrance to the bank, still positioned to Confund the human security guards stationed outside the bronze doors again if necessary.  

Hermione only hoped from the lack of raised voices or drawn wands at the other end of the vast hall that the extended length of Malfoy and the goblin’s discussion didn’t foretell any difficulty with this step of the plan.

A bead of sweat dripped down her neck and Hermione let her eyes leave their fixed point on Malfoy’s back for a brief moment.  

The Polyjuiced forms of Bill and Theo were still chatting quietly as they waited in a different line near the middle of the hall, one for customers of lesser importance than Malfoys.  Another pair of wizards with tightly drawn expressions stood in front of them transacting their own business as quickly as possible.    

It was fine.

Everything was as Bill had described, with the unexpected addition of the Probity Probe-equipped human guards, which had been quickly dealt with, and the unusually tense atmosphere among any person who’d ventured out into public that Hermione had felt on other excursions to the changed Diagon Alley. 

Their plan wasn’t complicated:  Hermione and Tonks would follow Malfoy and the personal-liaison goblin into the vaults.  Bill and Theo would keep guard in the lobby.  At Malfoy’s instruction—and following an Imperio—the goblin would open the Lestrange vault instead of the Malfoy one.  They would get the cup, and they would leave.

It was not the worst plan, she reminded herself with a deep breath.  They had executed many worse plans.  For example, dashing off to the Ministry after Harry in fifth year with exactly zero plan, in order to save Sirius, who had not actually been at said Ministry.  

This line of thinking did not help.  Hermione’s ribs throbbed painfully with the reminder of their failure.  

Malfoy and the goblin were still discussing something rather intently, as far as she could tell, and at one point she thought she saw the flourish of a quill quickly passing over some parchment.  That seemed odd, but Hermione chanced another glance at Theo, who had a better vantage point on Malfoy’s facial expression, and saw that he didn’t look concerned.  

It was the result of many heated arguments that Theo, and not Harry or Ron was there with them.  Another, much larger group was, at that exact moment, waiting for their signal to Portkey to Malfoy Manor at a moment’s notice.  Only after nearly tearing his hair out in frustration had Harry conceded that he would need to be with the rest of the Order rather than at the bank—leading, sticking closer to Voldemort, closer to the end.  Though it had killed her when she realized it herself, Ron looked stricken when Hermione pointed out that there were only a handful of them who knew the true significance of the Horcruxes, and it was safer for them to be evenly spread out.  

Malfoy, for his part, had been furious when she stared him down and asked if he would really rather her go to Malfoy Manor without him than come along to Gringotts first, and for once been unable to come up with any retort.  

Bill was an obvious value, and Tonks and Lupin agreed amongst themselves that Tonks would head up the Gringotts heist while Lupin was needed to coordinate the larger strategy.  Theo had volunteered to round out the group with the idea that if they were discovered there he may have the most plausible deniability for where he’d been for months—unlike someone like Blaise, who’d been seen with the Order already by the Death Eaters.  

It was a fine plan.  

She hated all of it.  

A slight movement at the front of the bank caught Hermione’s eye.  Malfoy had clasped his hands behind his back, signaling that whatever preliminary conversation he’d been having with the goblin was apparently concluded.  

Tonks pressed two fingers into Hermione’s wrist.  She nodded, and together they moved carefully in tandem across the white marble.  Tonks had cast a clever charm on their feet before they left Grimmauld Place so that their footsteps wouldn’t make noise, and the silence of their movements in the normally echoing room felt eerie.  

They were almost level with Bill and Theo when it happened.  

“That won’t be necessary,” she heard Malfoy’s voice say firmly, volume suddenly raised, in a way Hermione knew instantly was because he meant it to carry to her and the others.  

She saw the goblin frown at him and turn to murmur something in a nearby colleague’s ear.  The second goblin nodded imperiously and stepped out of sight.  Hermione’s stomach dropped.

“Mr. Malfoy, I am afraid that a personal visit to the family vault will require us to obtain the permission of your family’s head of household.”

“I am the direct heir to the Malfoy vaults,” she heard Malfoy retort in an arrogant tone she hadn’t heard him use in quite a while.  It might have made her laugh if not for the dread beginning to grip her.  “I have been visiting my family’s vault alone since I was twelve.”

“As I said, Mr. Malfoy,” the goblin was clearly irritated now, but making a lackluster attempt to maintain the deferential tone he presumably normally employed for such patrons of the bank, “protocols have changed.  We have called for the senior Mr. Malfoy to verify your visit, and we should be able to let you proceed in moments—”

Her heart stopped. 

Bill had silently turned toward the scene, wand drawn inconspicuously at his side, and Theo was looking between Malfoy and the older man with a fierce concentration as he waited for instructions.  The two wizards that had been in the queue before them appeared to be uneasily edging toward the door, clearly eager to get away from whatever trouble was about to happen.  

“That won’t be necessary,” Malfoy said quickly, smoothing his voice over into something friendlier.  “We can skip the visit to the vault today, if we must.  If a withdrawal can be made of Galleons, there’s no need to bother my father.”

His own wand was in his left hand now, and Hermione quickly tried to see where the second goblin had gone.  Despite their cramped positions Disillusioned and concealed under the cloak, she could feel Tonks doing the same thing.  They would only have a brief window to Imperius them without the other goblins or customers in the bank noticing, something they had hoped to avoid doing until Malfoy, Tonks, and Hermione were safely underground in the vaults with only the single goblin and needed to force him to allow them to search the Lestrange vault while Bill and Theo kept watch upstairs.

“It is no trouble,” the goblin said again, sharply, and she saw Malfoy freeze.  “We have a Floo connection for such purposes.”

In that moment, Hermione realized how incredibly, incredibly naïve they had all been.

The door through which the second goblin had disappeared swung open wildly, and a horrifyingly familiar figure appeared, gaunt face framed by long, limp hair still a bright blonde color nearly identical to the one she had become achingly familiar with.  

Like a reflex, Malfoy twisted halfway, and in that second Hermione saw his eyes seek her own over his shoulder, despite her concealed position.  

As the crack in her chest broke open anew, she watched him make a decision.  

They had recited the plan to each other in hushed whispers for the past week when one of them woke up startled in the middle of the night, afraid somehow that the other had already disappeared, and tried to fall back asleep with some semblance of reassurance.  

He had a Portkey in his pocket, one that would work—they were fairly certain—in the lobby of the bank, though not downstairs once the protective enchantments grew stronger.  

If he grabbed it now, he could escape—all of them could—without anyone getting hurt.  But it would pose more risks for the Order:  Bellatrix might report to Voldemort that he had been at the bank, might wonder herself why he’d really been there.  They would question where he’d gotten an illegal Portkey, and if they’d already theorized that he was in hiding with the Order, this would likely give weight to that—and they might connect too many things.  The Horcrux might get moved.  

Hermione begged him silently to reach into his pocket.  

He faced the counter again.  

“Father,” Malfoy cried, and the distress in his voice was so completely convincing that Hermione nearly had a flashback to third year.  

Lucius Malfoy looked at his son in a combination of amazement and something else hard to decipher, like either anger or maybe dismay.  

“Draco?  What are you doing here?  Where have you been?” he hissed.  

Malfoy’s words tripped over each other in his haste to get them out.  

“I—I’ve been hiding at Blaise’s—there was a fight, or something, at school, and I didn’t know what to do—Father, I haven’t had any way to contact anyone or known if I should.”

His expression grew more frantic as his mother and aunt materialized at his father’s side, but Hermione was sure the panic displayed there was genuine now.  The former flung herself into Malfoy’s arms, a small sob of relief on her lips. 

Hermione could only watch in a trapped state of horror as Bellatrix yanked Malfoy’s mother back almost immediately and rounded on him instead.  

Malfoy’s wand flew into the wild-eyed witch’s outstretched hand at a silent spell.  

The memory of Bellatrix’s hands and magic on her own body threatened to displace her and she forced herself to stay in the present, in the current nightmare unfolding before her.  Involuntarily, Hermione lurched forward, eyes wildly skipping from Malfoy to Bellatrix to Narcissa to Lucius to the irritated and suspicious goblins observing the dubious family reunion but not interfering.  

She felt a firm hand press into hers through the invisibility cloak, and Hermione blinked back hot tears.  

“You’ll make it worse,” she heard Tonks murmur.  The witch’s voice hitched.  

“You little brat,” Bellatrix screeched, her own wand shoved against Malfoy’s throat.  

Hermione could see him swallow, the movement visible against the wood flush with his skin.  

“You coward!  You betrayed the Dark Lord, didn’t you?”

“Bella,” Narcissa snapped, and she wrested both her and Malfoy’s wands out of the enraged witch’s hand while Bellatrix’s fury was fully trained on Malfoy.  “Don’t be absurd.”

Bellatrix Lestrange’s focus wavered only momentarily from her nephew to her sister.  “Cissa, I would think very carefully about the next thing you do.”

Narcissa Malfoy clamped her hand around her sister’s arm.  Hermione felt a flicker of awe for the witch’s boldness even through her growing despair for Malfoy.  

“He is your nephew, Bella.  This is a family matter,” she hissed, and dug her nails in.  

Bellatrix snatched her walnut wand back from Narcissa with a look of disgust and aimed it threateningly once again at Malfoy.

“Yes,” she snarled, “it is.” 

And with a flash of harsh light and sudden burst of dark smoke, too fast for Hermione to even catch a glimpse of the expression on Malfoy’s pale face, the foursome had vanished from sight.

She choked, her bubbling scream of anguish silenced by someone else’s quick-thinking charm.  Tonks shoved the Portkey roughly into her unmoving palm and with a sickening twist in her gut it spun her away, hurling her further and further into a world that made even less sense than it had before.

Chapter Text

May 1998

“How do we know he isn’t just right back where he wanted to be?” 

The wizard whose suspicious tone broke into Tonks’ delivery of the news was a youngish Auror that Hermione knew only by sight.  Fury coursed through her like fire, and Hermione wasn’t sure if would be words or magic escaping when she opened her mouth.

“Draco Malfoy has proven himself loyal to us several times over,” Lupin responded firmly before she had the chance to find out.  “And if his actions in the last few months have not been enough to show you that, he voluntarily took an Unbreakable Vow when he entered this house that would prevent him from betraying us.”

Bile rose in Hermione’s throat. 

“Remus,” she croaked, and the others crammed into the parlor of Grimmauld Place who weren’t already looking furtively at her in concern turned in her direction, “the Vow—”

“The magic doesn’t work like that,” came Lupin’s quick reply, but his eyes looked troubled.  “It will prevent him from speaking if necessary, not harm him if they attempt to force him.”

That fucking Vow. 

Hermione sought for her memory of that night, for the exact wording of Malfoy’s exchange with Lupin.  What if he was wrong?  Images of Veritaserum interrogations, Cruciatus torture, the Imperius curse, Legilimency, and a million other possibilities of how Voldemort and his followers might try to drag information out of Malfoy flashed rapidly through her mind. 

She must have whimpered aloud.  Daphne’s grip on her hand tightened.  The other girl’s face was hard, green eyes blazing with unshed tears and barely controlled anger.  Hermione wondered dimly what her own expression must have looked like.

Tonks had brought them back, Hermione’s knees collapsing the minute they landed on the faded carpet.  Harry had taken one horrified look at her and sent a Patronus to Snape, who was waiting in his office at Hogwarts to activate the Floo connection to the Manor. 

The next half hour or so was jumbled already in Hermione’s mind:  she thought she remembered Snape swooping into the kitchen with his billowing robes, nostrils flaring in disgust as if they had confirmed his expectations of their failure; Harry, Ron, and Lupin trying to ask her more about what had happened in Gringotts, and Theo jumping in with a protective glance, explaining in a shaky voice that she had seen nothing he hadn’t; Daphne, pressing a vial of something fragrant into her trembling hand as she twisted indecisively between the conversations around her, and Luna leading her to the velvet couch where she now sat. 

It was still only late afternoon.  The fading sunlight creeping in from the dusty windowpanes in the parlor taunted her as Hermione pictured the darkness that might surround Malfoy at the moment. 

The indignant Auror was trying to argue again, but Robards yanked him into the hallway out of earshot. 

Ron was standing a few feet to her left, whispering furiously to Harry.  They both still wore their boots and wand holsters slung across their shoulders, the protective vests someone had thought at the last minute to spell with basic shield charms for each Order member just visible under their Muggle clothing.  They looked too old.

She tried to focus on their words but whatever potion Daphne had given her seemed to only be halfway working.  Her body still hummed with adrenaline, but it was like a blanket had covered the edges of her nerves, dulling them.  Thoughts were clearer, but in some ways this was worse because her imagination had sharpened, too.  

“When are we going?” she interrupted loudly, and the two boys jumped at the sound of her voice.

Harry eyed her warily.  “Hermione, we’re waiting for Snape to make a new plan.”

“Since when do you wait?” 

Hermione winced.  It wasn’t fair.  She knew that.  But nothing at the moment felt fair.

Green eyes met hers and she remembered with a jolt of pain that the sooner they arrived at the Manor, the sooner Harry might have to face death.  Hermione wrenched her fingers from Daphne’s and buried her face in her hands.

“Hermione.”

Dead.

Alive.

“Hermione.”

She forced her glassy eyes open and found Harry kneeling in front of the couch, filling her vision.  “I learned it from you,” he said seriously.

“I know,” Hermione managed.  “I can’t think.”

She was the one who planned.  The one who figured out what steps needed to be taken, what order they should be in, and how they would take them.  Guilt roiled in her stomach as the blank vacuum in her mind mocked her. 

Harry squeezed her knee, still crouched before her.  She could see Ron behind him, hands shoved in his pockets and mouth set in a hard line.  “Lucky you have us.”

…

Snape didn’t return until much later that night. 

Hermione was back in the parlor, curled on the sofa, flipping mindlessly through a disturbing account of some Black ancestor who had made a hobby out of forcing his friends and enemies alike into Unbreakable Vows that she had found in the library.  Pansy had tried to take it from her but had been unsuccessful.  After the third attempt, Pansy resigned herself to sitting next to Hermione and creating additional Portkeys, the rapid flaring of magic from her wand as she summoned random objects and enchanted them a suitable match for Hermione’s barely controlled anxiety. 

When Snape’s dark silhouette appeared in the doorway, Hermione leapt up, book forgotten as it slid to the floor. 

“You’re back.”

“Astute observation as always, Ms. Granger,” the familiar voice answered coolly.  The sarcastic insult barely registered.  Snape arched a dark eyebrow at the group gathered in the room.  “Where is Lupin?”

Harry exchanged a quick glance with Ron and clambered to his feet, too.  “He’s asleep.  Should I wake him?”

Snape shrugged carelessly.  “I have little time.  I did as he asked and made an excuse to go to the Manor.”

“Was Draco there?  Did you see him?”  The urgency in her voice didn’t go unnoticed by the new arrival.  He frowned at her sharply.

“I did.”

“Was he alright?”  Hermione had moved involuntarily closer to the headmaster, and distantly she thought to be embarrassed at the desperation in her voice that was causing Snape’s lip to curl distastefully.

“He was alive.”

Alive.

“But—”

Snape cut her off sharply.  “Alive is a miracle, Ms. Granger.  If the Dark Lord had any idea where Draco has really been, he would most certainly be dead.”

Harry shot Hermione a worried glance but she shook her head tightly.  Nervous energy was rolling of her again, and she wanted to go—

“I believe Draco wanted me to deliver a message,” Snape continued.  “Either that, or I believe that we should be concerned for his sanity.”

It must have sounded wry, but images of Neville’s parents wandering vacantly around St. Mungo’s flew unbidden into Hermione’s mind and she was nearly knocked back into her seat at the blow.

“What did he say?”  Harry interjected, still eyeing Hermione. 

“Draco’s Occlumency is very good.  Despite whatever they have put him through, it was intact.  But with such strain, I do not think that he could handle lowering it even for a moment while I was there,” Snape said slowly, “not when he is in such a precarious situation and Bellatrix and the Dark Lord are nearby.” 

It seemed as if he was still trying to piece together the real meaning of whatever Malfoy had said while he recalled it.  “I asked him if he was alright, and he told me he was fine.”  Snape paused again.  “He said, ‘at least they had given him something to read.’”

“What?”  Ron asked after a beat.  His confusion must have shown on the others’ faces.  

Snape glared at him but resumed his tale.  “He was being held in a guest chamber that had been emptied completely.  There were no books in the room.  Nonetheless, he kept speaking of a book that they had given him while he was being held there, one that was ‘long and boring but at least made things bearable.’”

A small noise of surprise burst from the back of Hermione’s throat.  Black eyes darted to hers from where they had been watching Harry and narrowed. 

“Does that mean something to you, Ms. Granger?” 

“Tell me again, please,” she said shakily, and, to her surprise, he complied.  

“He said the book was ‘long and boring but it made things bearable.’”  

The prickle in her chest grew stronger with each emphasized word.  She tried to focus, not to linger on the sensation, when there must have been something more important to which Malfoy was trying to get her to pay attention. 

“And then what?” Hermione pressed.

Snape frowned imperiously at her, like he was studying a potion she had created in class and trying to assess its strength despite his misgivings. 

“Then I asked where the book was, if it had been given to him to occupy his time.  He told me that they had moved it, but he was sure it was still in the house somewhere.”

Lightheadedness filled her.  “Harry,” she said urgently, and to her relief, he already understood, excitement alighting his green eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses. 

“It’s the cup,” Harry said, and Hermione nodded fervently. 

“He’s telling us that they took the cup to Malfoy Manor.”

…

She was supposed to be sleeping.

Everyone else had retired to their rooms—or, to the multitude of cots that had been conjured in the various common spaces in Grimmauld Place for those gathered for the long haul—at Lupin’s insistence that they all get some sleep in order to be freshly rested for tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Was it tomorrow?

Hermione forced her eyes to focus on the ancient grandfather clock again.  Yes, then.  Tomorrow, technically. 

The second hand of the clock, a ridiculously elaborate golden wrought thing, shuddered again as it marked the next minute passing, and Hermione wondered what Molly’s clock would have shown if one of the hands was for Malfoy.

Home?

Lost?

Mortal peril?

She should really go back to bed.  Squeeze in the last few hours of sleep she might have before—before.  But in some strange sequence of events, Hermione had become used to the warmth of Draco Malfoy lying next to her at night, whispering soothingly in her ear when she woke up gasping from a nightmare, strong, pale arms wrapped around her like he was anchoring her to him.

And now he was gone, and she couldn’t sleep.

No, Hermione reminded herself fiercely.  Not gone.

The clock ticked another minute away, and she sipped her cold tea, which tasted too bitter.

“Hermione.”

The voice that tore her from morbid musings belonged to Susan Bones.  With a tight smile, the other witch quietly crossed the kitchen and drew up across from Hermione, hovering for a moment above the seat before her.

“May I?”

Manners returned to her slowly.  “Of course,” Hermione replied, and took another mechanical sip from her mug.

Susan had never been a particularly loquacious person, and though Hermione was very grateful at the moment of this fact, the silence still felt stretched.  She wasn’t sure if she cared enough to remedy such a thing at the moment. 

Hermione tugged a sleeve down over the scar on her left forearm, which had been burning nonstop since the sighting of Bellatrix.  It was another of Malfoy’s jumpers, something ridiculously expensive, and soft, and predictably green, and if she concentrated hard enough there was a lingering scent of his cologne detectable in the fabric. 

How had this happened?

The cup.  The snake.  Voldemort.  Harry.

She was meant to be focused, and determined, and by Harry’s side as they finished what had been set in motion so many years ago.

Instead, Hermione had veered off track.  Somewhere in the months prior:  during late nights spent at Hogwarts with people she had never thought to befriend, watching others struggle to distance themselves from the evil growing in their own world, where she had been challenged herself in what was right and what was not so clear.  And even more so, in the past weeks spent falling even more deeply for someone than she had ever imagined possible; things had shifted. 

Whatever motivation she had for helping end the war—that burning desire that had fueled her somehow enough to sneak back into Hogwarts, disguised, despite the dangers involved—it had become inextricably, irrevocably, tied up in one sarcastic, complicated, ridiculous, wonderful git, so much so that defeating Voldemort was now conflated in her mind with Malfoy’s survival, as much or even more so than her own. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like that.

“You know,” Susan suddenly began conversationally, “when I was in sixth year, I used to be in the library almost as often as you.”

Confusion was sufficiently distracting to draw Hermione out from her despairing spiral of thinking.  “Um—yes, I remember.”

There was a deliberate nonchalance as Susan carefully placed a cube of sugar in her own tea and stirred slowly.  “I saw you and Draco there once.”

The involuntary scoff that Hermione almost gave died on her lips as she saw Malfoy vanish in front of her from the golden lobby again in her mind’s eye.  “I—I don’t remember that.”

Gentle blue eyes held hers.  “He was at that table you liked, with the view of the Black Lake, and you were pestering him about moving because you needed the better light to look at this really old arithmancy text, or something, and he had been hogging it for hours.”

The crack in her chest hurt.  Any memory of bickering with Malfoy in the library felt like a hundred years ago. 

“When you wouldn’t let it go, he finally grabbed his books and stormed off.”  Susan’s lips quirked.  “But first he said, ‘only for you, Granger.’”

Her face flushed.  “Well, he was just being a jerk,” Hermione muttered, fiddling with her sleeve again.   

“That’s probably true,” Susan agreed, taking a sip of her tea thoughtfully.  “I wondered, though.”

“Wondered what?”

The brunette shrugged.  “I’d never seen him do anything for anyone before.”

Hermione stared at her across the table, discomfited.  “He probably just wanted me to leave him alone.”

“Mmm.” 

A brief silence fell between them, the clock’s slow ticking the only interruption.  The bitter tea coated Hermione’s tongue unpleasantly, but her stomach turned at the idea of attempting any further breakfast.

“Susan?” 

“Yes?”

“I’m not ready for him to leave me alone.”

Susan’s solemn gaze met hers, and the steadiness there was oddly comforting.  “I know.”

…

The zipper on her jacket was stuck, and Hermione couldn’t stop thinking about it.  She knew it was irrational, and the rational part of her brain was telling her that she was probably overcompensating for her actual anxiety, and yet the fact that she had dragged the zipper halfway up her chest and then been unable to move it back up or down without resorting to a severing charm was still making her absurdly panicky.

“They’re in,” Harry murmured from beside her, and her heart quickened where it was exposed under her half-drawn zip-up.  She touched the magical vest underneath with her fingertips. 

“How much time?” she heard Neville whisper in response.

Wands flickered out with silent extinguishing spells and they were ensconced in darkness.

“Snape said wait two minutes,” Ron repeated the instructions calmly, but Hermione felt him brush against her as if seeking reassurance.  She pressed back into his side briefly.  He was solid and warm. 

“Harry,” she whispered to her other side, “are you sure he’s not there?”

After a pause, Harry answered.  “He’s not.  But he’ll come when he knows I am.”

There was no grandfather clock in Snape’s office to tick away the seconds, but the watchful eyes of the former Hogwarts headmasters, uncharacteristically silent, drilled into her back.  Hermione chanced a glance at Dumbledore’s portrait hanging alone in the nook behind the mahogany desk, but he was absent from the frame.  She turned back toward the fireplace with a sinking heart.

Green flames suddenly flared to life in the hearth.

“Harry,” Ron said gravely, “you first.”

…

The kitchens of Malfoy Manor were brighter than she had expected, and the light jarred Hermione into the reality of what they were doing.

Nearly a dozen house elves stood quietly before them, most pressed back into the shining steel counters or ancient stone walls that filled the space, unreadable looks on their pinched faces.  They watched intently as Neville, then Pansy, and then finally Theo tumbled out of the fireplace behind Hermione, joining Harry, Ron, Daphne, Hermione, Tonks, and Lupin in the center of the room. 

“Er—thank you,” Hermione whispered, and only one of the elves nodded jerkily at her before stepping further back as if burned.  Hermione tugged fruitlessly at the zipper hovering over her ribs again before forcing herself to stop.

“The others are waiting for our signal on the grounds,” Lupin began, wand already drawn and aimed warily at the archway that must have been the pathway to the rest of the house.  “We’ll start searching for the cup while you all attempt to find Draco.  As soon as anyone finds the cup—or if something else goes wrong—activate the Galleons.”

She was sure that Lupin’s paraphrased recitation of the plan was meant to be inspiring, but no one seemed to be listening.  Harry’s gaze was somewhat vacant as he stared down the dark pathway where Lupin’s wand pointed.  Ron was watching him uneasily. 

“Remus,” she called back as Theo and Daphne began to move with her toward the passageway.  Her heart hammered through the thin vest clinging to her chest.  “Don’t forget about Narcissa.”

“I will not,” Lupin said evenly, and beside him Hermione saw his wife’s eyes flash as she dipped her head in confirmation.

Hermione lingered, allowing herself to drink in the sight of Harry, standing straight and already staring down something the rest of them couldn’t yet see, for one long moment. 

Then, they left.

…

“Snape said it was a guest chamber in the west wing,” Daphne said again. 

Theo ran a clammy hand through his brown curls, a slightly manic look on his face.  “I know.”

“We should have found it by now.”  There was an edge to Hermione’s voice that she knew shouldn’t be directed at Theo, but it was hard to contain.  She counted the doorways again, wand lit dimly so that the light wouldn’t carry further than a few feet but still illuminating enough that she too could tell they had reached the end of the hall.

“This is where Draco’s bedroom is,” Theo said hurriedly, “and Snape said it was a guest chamber three doors down.”

Hermione squinted as her eyes searched the corridor again.  They were taking too long.  She could tell. 

They had already had to silence several Malfoy family portraits, and she could spot a few more down the way that might cause trouble.  As expected, there had been a winding staircase that led to this portion of the manor, one that she pictured, with a pang in her heart, a younger Malfoy sneaking down to pilfer late-night snacks from the kitchens. 

“Wait.” 

Hermione drew the hand not clutching her wand over the wall again, to be sure.  Magic pricked there at the tips of her fingers, and she focused on discerning its intent as Tonks had taught her.

“There’s something hidden here.”

Theo rushed to her, Daphne right behind.  “You’re right,” he said excitedly, and pointed his wand at the spot she had touched.  “Alohamora.”

“Theo, no—”

Something like an alarm shattered the air, but instead of the high-pitched noise Hermione braced herself for, it came in a rush of cloying magic, wrapping around her hotly and sticking to her throat and her nose as she struggled not to breathe it in too deeply.  For a moment, she couldn’t move.

Hermione gasped as the spell released her.

“Well, and what have we got here?”

The shrill voice might as well have been a brick wall slamming into her chest, because the sensation it invoked was identical.  Hermione froze of her own accord, gripping the grooves of her wand between sweaty fingers so tightly that it shot spasms of pain up her arm.

Devastation had already filled Theo’s face to her left, and she didn’t dare chance a glance at Daphne, now behind her, to confirm that she wore a similar expression.

“I had a feeling there might be some sort of wayward rescue for my idiot nephew, and it appears I was right.”

There was a gleam in Bellatrix’s already mad eyes as she considered the three of them, wand aimed at Hermione’s chest almost lazily from where it dangled across her palm.

“The other blood traitor scum, I understand.  But Hermione Granger, too?  I am not sure I would have predicted it would be Potter’s precious Mudblood herself doing the bidding,” the witch continued with an appraising look.  Then her haughty eyes narrowed further and she straightened.  “But no matter.  I do like to finish what I’ve started, and I’ve been dying for the opportunity.”  

“Impedimenta!” 

Before Hermione could even decide how to react to Theo’s impulsive cry, Bellatrix had batted away the spell like it was no more than an annoying gnat.  Hermione stilled as indecision coursed through her veins, the walnut wand already leveled at her once more.

“Theodore,” Bellatrix crowed in mock-delight as she stalked nearer to them, “you know I’ll be more than happy to let daddy dearest know that you’ve returned.  I am sure he’ll have plenty of his own ideas about how to celebrate your homecoming.”

“What about mine?”

Tonks.

It was with a heady sense of relief and lingering terror that Hermione raised her wand higher and watched the two growing shapes sweeping down the corridor toward them, some sort of protective enchantment visible and crackling with magic surrounding them.

“Aunt,” the pink-haired Auror greeted her coolly.  The outline of Lupin’s lean form filled in beside her as he drew nearer, and Hermione’s pulse steadied further.  “I understand you’ve been making threats against our son.”

Bellatrix flicked her wand carelessly at Tonks, as if testing something, but her magic bounced harmlessly off whatever warding the pair was sustaining.  Fire flared in her eyes again, but she looked savagely delighted. 

“If you are referring to the abomination that you bred with that beast and further sullied our line, of course I have.”

A snarl ripped from Lupin’s throat.  Despite his completely human form, Hermione was reminded vividly of his werewolf alter ego in that moment.  Something warning of danger rippled off of him in waves, and his eyes were flashing nearly yellow.  He stood tall, and Hermione realized distantly that he must purposely make himself more unassuming in his daily life so as to subconsciously reassure people he shouldn’t be feared. 

“And tried to murder his godmother,” Lupin added in a harsh growl, and Hermione felt a surge of warmth under her pounding heart.  

Bellatrix let out a guffaw, but she raised her wand into a more defensive stance.  “Do not forget I already managed to kill your precious Sirius, dog.”

Another sound erupted from Lupin that didn’t sound quite human.  “I haven’t.”

Red light shot from Lupin’s wand, which Bellatrix dodged easily.  It seemed to have been a distraction, however, because Hermione watched white flames erupt from where Tonks flanked her husband and land low, catching Bellatrix’s robes and spreading rapidly upward. 

The Death Eater shrieked and waved a hand to extinguish them while simultaneously sending a violent jet of green light toward Tonks that made Hermione’s heart leap into her throat.

It seemed Tonks’ Auror training had taught her even more than Hermione realized, however, because she was already prepared.  Bricks flew from their rightful places lining the hallway, soaring rapidly to form a wall in front of Lupin and Tonks that absorbed the curse and then crumbled, dust, to the ground.

Hermione dithered, and she could see Theo doing the same from the corner of her vision.  The other two witches and the older wizard were dueling so quickly now that she couldn’t figure out how to help without accidentally hitting one of Lupin or Tonks, and they were making so much noise, surely this was going to alert the rest of the Manor if anyone wasn’t already aware of the Order’s arrival—

“Last chance, Aunt Bella,” Tonks called tauntingly, agile steps carrying her out of the way of another blast of angry red magic.  “If you beg, I might take you to Azkaban instead.”

Rage seemed to be causing Bellatrix to lose her grip on her own spellwork, which was getting more aggressive but progressively sloppier.  “I’d rather die,” she hissed. 

Tonks laughed, an exhilarated sound so reminiscent of another Black cousin that it conjured images of a room with a haunted veil, which Hermione herself hadn’t actually seen Sirius fall through but had dreamt about for months anyway. Lupin threw a shield in front of his wife, eyes hard, and another blast echoed off the walls as it rebounded and swirled with Bellatrix’s enraged howl. 

Then, her countenance shifted, and Hermione rapidly saw, for the first time, a different family resemblance.  The fury in Tonks’ face had a mad quality almost mirrored in the enraged Death Eater before her, and when she cast her next spell, her mouth quirked viciously.

The burst of green light burned her retinas and Hermione felt temporarily blind.  When she could see again, Hermione met Tonks’ gaze after a beat and found any similarity between the fallen witch and her friend gone.  In her bright eyes, there was only a resigned combination of quiet triumph and lingering anger. 

“Nymphadora.” 

Lupin rested a hand gently on the witch’s arm, and she relaxed.  After a quick look around, Tonks raised her wand again and moved it in a complicated series of little movements around the witch lying—the body—lying on the ground. Hermione shivered as Bellatrix’s wild hair, still striking in death, disappeared under a disillusionment charm.

“We’ll have to hide her in one of these rooms,” Tonks said grimly, “so no one comes across her before they figure out we’re here.”

Theo let out a breathy little laugh, tugging a hand nervously through his already mussed curls.  He seemed unable to tear his eyes from Daphne, who, while pale, stood stoically by his side.  “I reckon they know.”

“Maybe,” Lupin replied, eyes flicking down the dark hallway behind him.  “Though I cast a fairly strong silencing charm when we arrived, so that really depends on whether Bellatrix had a chance to warn any of the others.”

A thread of relief wove through Hermione’s brain, clearing the fog slightly.  Her forearm burned, she noticed, and with a sense of detachment she wondered how she would feel about Bellatrix’s death once she had time to process it.

“Over here,” Daphne called, grounding her.  A determined look was fixed again on the witch’s face, and Hermione saw her square her shoulders.  She pointed a steady hand at a door a few feet down from where they had triggered whatever trap Bellatrix had set.  “Draco’s must be this one.”

The door was almost suspiciously easy to open once Tonks set at it, and Hermione’s knees shook as it swung inward.  There was only low light in the room, and as her eyes adjusted, she saw that it had a distinct air of being unused in addition to a lack of furniture.

“Hermione.” 

Malfoy’s ragged gasp matched the terrified look on his face, like he was afraid to believe his own eyes.  She could see perspiration streaking his forehead and though his hands and feet appeared bound by invisible restraints, he looked like he had just sprinted miles. 

“Hi,” she said softly. Alive. “I got your message.”

He just kept looking at her. His body was unnaturally still except for his eyes, which were flitting across her face and neck and down her ribs, warming her with their trail. Hermione did the same, cataloging the cuts on his face, the bruise blooming faintly across his right cheekbone, the dark circles under his eyes, but mostly the way he was alive and in front of her.  The urge to trace her fingers over the mark on his face was hard to suppress. 

She took a frantic step toward the chair where he sat, alone in the middle of the otherwise empty room.

“I could hear.  Outside the door—your name—I saw the green—”  Malfoy shuddered. 

Someone else released him from the bonds before she could and he grabbed for her with trembling hands.  He smelled like sweat and salt and smoke and, when she bent down to bury her face in his hair, Malfoy’s arms coming to wrap around her waist tightly, still faintly like his own familiar combination of peppermint and bergamot.  She breathed in deeply and wondered if he could feel her heart pounding where his head was cradled on her chest.

“Wait,” Lupin said from the door, and Hermione found the strength to pull back slightly.  “We need to ask him something.”

For a brief, delirious moment, Hermione considered informing the others that she knew it was Malfoy because of how he smelled.  “Remus, I—”

Malfoy’s thumbs smoothed over the bottom of her ribs.

“No, Granger, it’s okay.”  He looked at Lupin thoughtfully.  “I should ask one, too.”

To Hermione’s surprise, Daphne spoke before anyone else could. 

“Draco,” she said, eyes bright.  “What did we drink the first time I told you I was in love with Theo?”

A startled noise came from the wizard standing beside her, but Daphne kept her eyes trained on Malfoy.  Despite the tightness around his eyes that still betrayed his fear, a small smile stole over his face. 

“I believe it was a bottle of Lucius’ finest aged elf wine.  I called a house elf to bring it to school from the Manor because I wanted to cheer you up.”

“When was this?”  Theo demanded, gaze swinging wildly between Malfoy and Daphne.

“I believe we’ve got a war to win, lads,” Tonks interjected, though amusement colored her voice.  She and Lupin were still poised at the entrance to the room, wands drawn and ready, and Hermione’s thoughts flew instantly to Harry and Ron and the others.

“She’s right,” Malfoy said.  He let his hands slip from Hermione’s waist, using them to push unsteadily to his feet from the chair where they had found him tied.  She caught him wincing and wondered with a tinge of worry when the last time he’d been allowed to stand up was. 

“I’ve got to ask my question for you lot, though.” 

Theo, still caught between awe and indignation as he stared at Daphne, let out a snort.  “You think someone else disguised themselves as five Order members and came to rescue you, mate?”

Malfoy rolled his eyes.  “This could be a trap, for all I know.  We could be headed to a different room of torture in this prison.”  But he swooped down to bestow a kiss on Hermione’s cheek as he spoke.

“Oi!”  Tonks bellowed, and he coughed as he straightened back up. 

“Right,” Malfoy said, and he faced Daphne.  “When was the second time we had that vintage?”

For some unfathomable reason, Daphne lit up. 

“We found a bottle at Grimmauld in the wine cellar,” she replied, green eyes sparkling at Hermione as she answered.  “And, because it seemed poetic, I made you open it the night you told me that you were in love with Hermione.”

Words escaped her, which didn’t happen often.  Hermione cleared her throat, the warmth flooding her chest almost unbearable, and intertwined her fingers with Malfoy’s.  He stroked her knuckles with his thumb, once, and she took a deep breath to steady herself. 

Across the room, there was a funny look on Theo’s face.  He was looking at her and Malfoy, and then around the empty, dusty room, and then again at them like he was trying to understand something.

“So, the war?”  Daphne inquired innocently, and Hermione came to her senses, albeit belatedly.

“Oh!”  She ducked her free arm into her beaded bag.  “I’ve brought you a wand.”

This seemed to perk Malfoy up considerably.  He shot her a grateful smile and accepted the spare, a bendy, eleven-ish inches of willow which had been taken from a Snatcher weeks ago. 

“Though I suppose you could also use your aunt’s.”  Hermione chewed her lip anxiously and glanced toward Tonks, who had pocketed the walnut wand. 

“Might as well see which one works better.”  The Auror tossed Malfoy the wand and he let go of Hermione to catch it easily.  She frowned, disliking the feel of Malfoy’s magic wrapped around the faint pulse of darkness she could somehow sense from the wand that been used to torture her.

He seemed to notice her discomfort.  “I probably won’t need to use it,” Malfoy said reassuringly, tucking it into his waistband. 

They couldn’t have been upstairs long, and Lupin and Tonks had said it had still been quiet when they split from Harry, Ron, Neville, and Pansy to search the west wing. 

Pansy knew her way around nearly as well as Malfoy and certainly as well as Daphne, who had been able to successfully navigate through back staircases and rarely used passages until they had found the hallway where Malfoy had been kept.  They were counting on her to lead Harry and Ron around without alerting the Death Eaters so they could search as long as possible before any fighting began.  Neville, for his part, had refused to stay behind when Pansy volunteered for the job.

But when Malfoy led them out of the darkened corridor, on a path that he said might get them to the library without encountering anyone on the way, Hermione quickly realized something had changed.  There were distant shouts coming from somewhere below, overlapping and echoing around the cavernous foyer into which the grand staircase they were trying to creep past emptied, unintelligible except for the undeniable tenor of conflict. 

Malfoy caught her wrist, tugging her closer to him, and shot an anxious glance at Lupin.

“I think they’ve discovered someone’s here,” the man said quietly. 

“Hermione, Malfoy—you need to find Harry and Ron.”  Hermione nodded, realized no one could see her clearly in the dark, and gave a quiet word of affirmation instead.  “Tonks and I need to figure out where the others who were on the grounds are.  I haven’t felt my Galleon, so they may not have been summoned.”

“You can get to the grounds through the servants’ staircase on the other side,” Malfoy said in a low voice, pointing toward the gap between their hiding spot and another dark hallway across the frighteningly exposed landing.  “Go all the way down, and when you see the kitchens, go left instead.  You’ll come out on the north side of the manor and you should be able to get to the tree line if you’re lucky.”

Tonks tapped Lupin on the shoulder with her wand and Hermione saw him shimmer out of sight.  Somehow, she found Hermione’s hand, squeezed once, and then disappeared after casting her own disillusionment charm. 

“C’mon,” Malfoy muttered, and with a last look behind her at the invisible forms of Lupin and Tonks, Hermione followed him back the way they had come.  

…

“Here.”

There was a faint outline, if she screwed her eyes together tighter, barely visible on the floorboards.  It looked like a trapdoor, or at least a place where there could have been a trapdoor, except there wasn’t a handle or even really any cut carved into the wood. 

“How does it work?”  Hermione asked, curiosity flaring at the idea of magic she hadn’t heard of before and distracting her from why they had been looking for the passageway in the first place.

“You have to know the spell,” Theo informed her rather than Malfoy.  “I had one in my room, too.  Nifty when I needed to hide from dear old Dad.  Not as nifty when the governess wanted to find me to finish lessons.”

Before Hermione could dig further into the mysteries of pureblood households, Malfoy crouched down by the square and began moving his hand over it like he was searching for something.  

“You know, this isn’t exactly how I pictured getting you into my bedroom,” he mused to Hermione, who was leaning over his shoulder, as he poked at the floor inquiringly.

Heat flushed across her cheeks.  “You pictured me in your bedroom?”

Malfoy turned to face her and opened his mouth to respond, a wicked gleam in his eye, but Daphne waved her hands impatiently in front of his face. 

“Hello!  Is now really the time?”  she cried, and Theo snickered behind her.

Hermione had the decency to blush.  Malfoy merely shrugged and offered her a wink instead. 

“Er, right.”  Perhaps the adrenaline was getting to her.  Heightened arousal, and all that.  Hermione blinked and focused again.  “So, the passage?”

“It’s right here.”  Malfoy stood, brushing off his knees.  “My magical signature’s still detectable, so the spell should be the same.”

He ushered the others through, one by one, casting a quiet incantation each time.  Hermione went through after Daphne and Theo.  After what felt like blinking, she found herself suddenly standing in a spacious suite of rooms that must have been on the first floor, judging by the view of the gardens from the bay window.

Malfoy materialized at her side.  “Alright?”

“I sort of miss your old governess,” Theo pondered in response, glancing idly around the sitting area they had arrived in.  “French, wasn’t she?”

“Really not the time, Theo,” Malfoy replied, and he strode toward an exit that Hermione hadn’t noticed.

“Wait,” she said, and cast her transparency spell before he could open it. 

“Harry!”  Theo cried, then was promptly shushed by the other three.

“What are you lot doing here?” the wizard asked in surprise when they tumbled out next to him.  Then he saw Malfoy.  “Oh, thank Merlin.”

“Didn’t think you’d ever sound so happy to see me, Potter,” Malfoy retorted, but Harry just rolled his eyes back at him halfheartedly.

“Any luck with the cup?”  Hermione interrupted in a low voice.  Harry and Ron exchanged a significant look.

“Actually,” Ron said, and from his pocket, he miraculously, wonderfully, withdrew a small, mangled, golden object.  Malfoy and Hermione both pitched forward eagerly.  “We found it in a drink cart in the dining room, which was sort of ridiculous, like Bellatrix” —Hermione flinched at the reminder of the dead woman upstairs— “really thought hiding it in plain sight might be a good trick.”

“Is anyone going to tell me what thing actually is?”  Pansy whispered, her voice rife with annoyance.  Dark hair uncharacteristically mussed, she was scanning walls behind Neville, wand alight.  As far as Hermione could tell, she’d had the same idea about silencing portraits and was checking for any they had missed that might run off and give them up. 

Ron shrugged.  “Anyway, the problem is, we made a bit of a racket destroying it.  Rowle and Mulciber came to see what was going on, and we got away, but just barely.  Unfortunately, so did they.”

“So who’s fighting?”  Malfoy asked in confusion. 

Collectively, the faces across from him darkened.  “We can’t be sure exactly, but it sounded like Rowle and the others thought we took off outside to get away.  Some of the Order members closest to where they came out of the Manor must have been found, or just started fighting when they saw them.”

A tense silence fell. 

“Has anyone seen my parents?”

Hermione’s chest throbbed.  Pansy stopped what she was doing and frowned at Malfoy, troubled. 

“No,” Harry answered quietly, “do you know if they were being kept somewhere like you, or…?”

Dirty strands of blonde hair fell into his eyes as Malfoy shook his head.  Hermione ached to push it back for him.  “No one told me anything, but I haven’t seen them since I got here.  When we arrived, Bellatrix locked me in that room and—” he hesitated, and only Hermione could tell that Malfoy had affected a more casual tone when he resumed speaking. “Well, I’ve been there the whole time, and anyway, I haven’t seen them.”

Suddenly, heat flared in Hermione’s pocket.  There was a flurry of hands scrambling to retrieve their own Galleons as everyone else received whatever message hers must have read. 

“It’s time,” Harry said quietly, and her heart thudded sickeningly.

“We’re supposed to go to the kitchens,” Theo said softly, and Hermione caught him giving her a strange look again.  “To join the fight.”

“Mine says—” Hermione hesitated.

“To find the snake,” Ron finished.

Before anyone else could speak, there was a large boom from somewhere inside the Manor, loud enough that Hermione nearly jumped. 

Ron’s face paled.  “That sounded bad.”

“You think, Weasley?”  Malfoy snapped.

“Look,” Hermione said quickly, eager to maintain as much peace as possible at the moment, “we need to go.  All of us.”

Neville clapped his hand onto Harry’s arm before he slipped his hand into Pansy’s.  There was an odd moment where Hermione remembered that, at least according to prophecy, it could have been Neville and not Harry carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders all these years.  It might have been on Harry’s mind, too, she thought, because his eyes softened as he watched the other boy, like he was drawing strength from the idea that someone else had been spared.  It made her want to slap him and hug him at the same time.

“We’ll see you soon,” Pansy whispered fiercely, and she and Daphne both embraced Hermione tightly.  Over Pansy’s shoulder, Theo was looking at her funny again.

Murmured words of goodbye filled the air around her.  Pansy and Malfoy conferred quickly about how the other group would get back to the kitchens. 

“Theo,” Hermione finally said, drawing closer so no one else could hear, “what is it?”

He shook his head slowly, but Hermione tugged on his hand insistently.  With a grimace, Theo’s eyes flitted to Malfoy and then met hers again.  “Earlier, where we found Malfoy…”  he trailed off.  The hair on the back of Hermione’s neck rose.  “That’s where I had Seen you two here.”

Shock coursed through her and she tried not to overreact. 

“Okay,” Hermione said, keeping her voice as steady as possible.  Malfoy’s back was to her, and she itched to touch him again, feel that he was there.  “That’s okay.”

Theo looked worried.  “I’m sorry, Hermione, this is why I don’t tell people things—”

“It’s okay,” she said firmly, and she meant it this time.  “Just because you haven’t Seen anything further doesn’t mean anything.”

Theo was quiet for a moment.  Then he cracked a soft smile at her, though his eyes were hard to read. 

“Of course.”

…

Harry was strangely calm, and Hermione hated it.

There were no more Horcruxes to find, she thought desperately, just the snake, who was either here somewhere or would come with Voldemort, and that should be a good thing.  Except it meant Harry—Harry.  

The sounds from the south end of the Manor, where the dining room and the other larger rooms stood, were growing louder and more chaotic as they drew closer.  Malfoy had explained in hushed, slightly horrified whispers that he had known the snake to lie about in the cellar where it was damp and cool, and they were trying to wind their way down to the drawing room so they could see if it was there.  Hermione was trying very hard not to think about her last visit to the drawing room.

At the end of a twisting row of doors that had seemed endless—and made Hermione crazy wondering if someone was going to jump out of one of them—Malfoy suddenly stopped in his tracks.  Ron tripped into him, grabbing Hermione’s arm to steady his own balance and nearly bringing her down with him. 

“We’re going to have to cross the main foyer,” Malfoy announced.

Harry exhaled and gripped his wand tighter.  “Okay.”

Ron recovered and straightened to his full height.  “Ready when you are.”

Malfoy stole a glance at her, eyes searching, and she nodded. 

They stepped out into the light together.  The foyer was, indeed, bright and airy, at odds with the spaces they had been sneaking around in so far.  It took only a few minutes to realize that the fight had spilled out into the grounds from the grand set of doors that were flung open at the end of the hallway, the same one that Hermione thought she must have been dragged through months ago.

Even from where she stood, Hermione could see jets of brilliant light clashing, could smell the acrid scent of dark magic as it lingered where it had been cast, and, with growing horror, could make out what must have been bodies already strewn over the grass. 

“We have to go help,” Harry said urgently.

“Potter, the cellar,” Malfoy said, but he sounded rattled.

Harry tore his eyes away from the scene outside and nodded stiffly.  Without another word, Malfoy grabbed Hermione’s free left hand with his right and made a dash for a second set of doors Hermione had forgotten to look for. 

She could hear Harry and Ron behind them; unlike Malfoy and Hermione, whose footsteps were still silenced by Tonks’ quieting charm, theirs seemed to clatter as loudly as physically possible on the marble floor.

“Harry!”  Ron’s jagged cry made her heart seize, and Hermione whipped around.

Malfoy’s eyes darted to the entrance, clearly afraid someone had heard, but Hermione was transfixed by Harry’s expression.  “What is it?” she said hoarsely. 

Sweat shone on Harry’s brow.  “He’s coming.”

Ron cursed.  “How soon?”  Malfoy shot back, and Harry closed his eyes again. 

“He’s at the gates.”

Terror clawed at Hermione’s throat.  “Harry.”

“The snake is with him,” he continued, almost conversationally.  “So, no need to go to the cellar.”

With a hand from Malfoy, Harry got to his feet, shaking slightly, and then they moved together.

The busts in the hallway were quiet, the unsettling stone eyes swiveling to watch, as they hurried past.  Hermione wondered if they had been silenced or were refraining from commenting on the destruction of their ancestral home. 

Malfoy and Hermione drew up on one side of the wood-paneled doors, Harry and Ron sheltered across from them.  As she gazed out, Hermione recognized faces she had known, in theory, were coming, but still felt a frisson of surprise each time she glimpsed one. 

Professors Flitwick and Sprout, and Minerva, and, towering over them, Hagrid with his half-giant brother; Molly and Arthur Weasley with Augusta Longbottom, Bill and Fleur, Fred and George, even Percy; Katie Bell, Oliver Wood, Angelina Johnson, Seamus, Dean, Parvati, Padma, Lavender.  Her heart thrummed with anticipation and agony at the idea of so many people she loved in one place, gathered for the end.

“I still don’t see my mother,” Malfoy whispered in her ear, and his worry was evident.

Hermione scanned the fighters, searching for a glimpse of blonde, but the only one she found turned out to be Luna.  The slender witch was battling a masked Death Eater she didn’t recognize, Blaise and the Weasley twins beside her.  She nearly gasped when a curse appeared to narrowly miss Fred, hurled at the last minute instead to a nearby tree, which split neatly down the middle like lightning had struck. 

“We’ll find her,” Hermione replied.  “Maybe—”  She hesitated, unsure if this was a better or worse possibility at the moment.  “Maybe she is being held somewhere, Draco.”

His face was grim, but Malfoy nodded.  “I think you’re right.”

Ron whistled quietly, and they turned back to face him.  He was gesturing toward a particularly nasty-looking duel between two dark-robed figures and a witch that Hermione thought might be Tonks, now sporting black, cropped hair that made it hard to tell.  “I’m going,” he said, and with a flash of a crooked smile to Hermione, he stepped outside.

Harry opened his mouth to speak, clearly about to follow.  But his words were drowned as a different voice echoed in the foyer.  It was high, cold, and clear:  There was no telling from where it came; it seemed to issue from the walls and the grounds themselves. 

“You have chosen to attack needlessly,” said Voldemort’s voice.  “I do not wish to spill unnecessary magical blood.  Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed.  Give me Harry Potter, and I shall allow you to leave this place untouched.”

The four or five feet that separated her and Harry felt impossibly far.  Hermione wanted to race to his side, Apparate him away, something, but instead her feet remained frozen.

“I will order my followers to withdraw for half an hour,” the cold voice continued.  “If Harry Potter is not brought to me in that time, I will not be merciful.  If Harry Potter is not dead after that time, anyone who tries to fight will be killed.  If you try to flee, we will find you.”

The witches and wizards on both sides of the battle had nearly all stilled at Voldemort’s ringing intonation.  When Hermione tore her eyes from Harry, she saw in astonishment that the Death Eaters were vanishing, small pops resounding where they had stood. 

“What—”

Malfoy grabbed her arm and hauled her over to Harry’s side.  The two wizards seemed to have some sort of unspoken conversation, and the next thing she knew they were slipping into a room behind a statue of what must have been a Malfoy born in the Middle Ages, Hermione barely processing her feet moving.

“We can’t be out in the open like this,” Malfoy hissed as the door swung shut behind them.

“What is this place?” Harry asked, sounding distant.

“Just a receiving room.”  Malfoy gestured to the hearth behind him.  “For guests who arrive by Floo.” 

“I need to go—”

“Absolutely not, Harry Potter,” Hermione interrupted furiously, and Malfoy gave her a wary look, like he wasn’t sure if he needed to stop her from doing something.

Harry stared at her in frustration.  “Hermione—”

Their burgeoning argument was cut off by a sudden knock on the door.  All three of them froze. 

“Well,” Hermione said uncertainly, drawing her wand out in an action that mirrored those of Malfoy and Harry.  “That can’t be good.”

Before she could cast the spell that would allow her to see through the thick wood, it swung open. 

“Snape?”

The headmaster shot a withering glance at Harry as he stepped out of the hole in the wall where he had emerged. 

“Potter,” he said, “I need to speak with you.”

“How did—how did you even know I was here?”  Harry said in amazement, hand flying to his forehead.  He rubbed at his scar anxiously, and Hermione wondered how much it must have been burning right then. 

“I have my ways,” Snape said shortly.  Despite the tension, Malfoy snorted at this.

“Potter, I assume you are thinking of going to the Dark Lord.”  Hermione let out a strangled sound that was ignored by everyone but Malfoy, who stepped closer to place a warm hand on the center of her back, steadying her.

“Dumbledore gave me two other… directives.”

Harry faced the man squarely. She could see his chest rising and falling with barely-controlled breaths.

“The ring. The one that was imbued with the curse that cost Dumbledore his life.” Snape’s gaze flitted to Malfoy and Hermione felt a surge of complicated anger at the man standing before him.  She couldn’t fathom what Malfoy himself was feeling.

“He asked me to give it to you, at the end.”

Her heart lurched, and with it Hermione stepped involuntarily toward Harry, letting Malfoy’s hand fall away.  Harry hadn’t moved at all, eyes fixed steadily on Snape, wand clutched in his hand so tightly she could see the tendons in his forearms standing out on his pale skin.

“The end?” Her voice was far away, even to her, and no one turned in her direction.

Snape continued with what looked like a great deal of effort, his face contorted strangely. Was it guilt? “Potter—”

“I know,” Harry cut him off firmly, and Hermione’s heart tore neatly in half. Funny—she’d thought there wasn’t even enough of it left to do that. “You don’t need to tell me the other thing.  I know what I have to do.”

“You need to know more,” Snape insisted.

Hermione felt Malfoy’s hand again, bunching in the fabric of her shirt at her lower back, drawing her toward him again, closer, and she wondered if he felt the odd shift in the air as well. Something ominous, and final, and suddenly she understand how he felt without asking: like he wanted to physically pull her back from the edge of some precipice they were all dangerously close to falling off. 

“I couldn’t bring myself to give you the stone earlier for selfish reasons,” Snape said, and his normally cold voice, while still controlled, sounded more wretched than Hermione had ever imagined.

“You knew about the Hallows,” Harry said thickly, tone slightly accusatory.

“Yes,” Snape said, and offered no other explanation. “I wanted the stone for myself. I was as foolish as Dumbledore.  More, perhaps.” 

His eyes closed briefly and he seemed to force himself to get the next words out. “The temptation to use it to contact Lily—your mother—it was consuming.”

Hermione watched Harry’s face shatter, reflecting the tear in her own heart back to her, and she ached for her friend.

“But I could not,” Snape said at last. “Not because—because of the stories. Of how the dead return only as fragments of themselves.  I am a selfish man, and I would have rather had any piece of her than nothing.  It was because…”

“You couldn’t bear it if she hated you.” Malfoy’s fingers still gripped Hermione tightly, as if something about this blurry retelling of past and present was somehow going to cause her to vanish from his sight, but at these words, she felt him shift slightly away from her.

Snape tore his eyes briefly away from Harry’s to meet Malfoy’s.

“Yes,” he said bitterly. “I suppose I am no more than a coward, even after all this time.”

Hermione thought of Lily Evans, the Muggleborn witch whose sister had abandoned her and whose parents had also died too young, and the man she had married that she once thought an arrogant prat, and the other boy who had loved her secretly all along.

She reclaimed the small space Malfoy had created between them, pressing herself solidly back against his chest, where she could feel his heart pounding erratically.

“I don’t think she would.”

A sound came from somewhere outside the study, a deafening crack that sounded as if something in the Manor had been split at the foundation and that rattled her teeth, and Hermione’s own heart leapt back into her throat. “Wasn’t the fighting supposed to stop?” she asked in a high voice. “What is that?”

“He may be punishing one of his own,” Snape said impassively, and Malfoy flinched. 

“We can’t stay here,” Harry said, too calmly.

Snape’s mask had fallen back into place, but he turned toward Harry and spoke once more.

“I will go with you, if you wish.”

Harry looked at him for a long time, more time than they had, and then shook his head. “No. You’ve given me everything I need.”

…

After Snape swept out of the room, Harry turned to Hermione before she could formulate anything to say.

“You’ll have to get the snake,” he was saying, and he pulled something dirty and yellow out of his jacket.  “You, or Ron, or Malfoy.  That’s all that will be left.”

“Harry,” Hermione choked, accepting the Basilisk fang he was pushing into her hands automatically and passing it unthinking to Malfoy.

He smiled sadly at her.  “You knew, didn’t you?”

She shook her head in denial, but something about the tears filling her eyes must have betrayed her.  “I—I guessed.”

“It’s alright,” he said softly. 

“I’ll come with you.”

Malfoy tensed, but Harry beat him to it.  “No,” he said firmly, “you’ll stay here, and you’ll get the snake, and then you’ll get him, and then you and Malfoy will get to run off and be disgustingly happy.”

“No,” Hermione protested, but through her crying she could see another sort of silent conversation happening again above her head.  Malfoy nodded, jaw hard, and then Harry reached out to hug her.  She clung tightly to his neck, rapidly trying to think of how to stop him even though she’d already been trying, pointlessly, for months.

“C’mon, Granger, don’t you want to be disgustingly happy?”  Malfoy said lightly, and he brushed the pad of his thumb over the base of her neck when Harry finally released her. 

“Tell Ginny I love her,” Harry said, and then he pulled out his Invisibility Cloak.  “Please.”

“I—Harry, of course.”  She watched as he vanished beneath the glittering fabric, such an achingly familiar sight, and dug her nails into Malfoy’s arm so she didn’t grab him and stop him from leaving.

“Malfoy,” came a solemn whisper as the door appeared to open on its own. 

Warm breath ghosted across her cheek as Malfoy let out a shaky exhale.

“Potter.”

And the door slipped shut again. 

…

Only twelve minutes had passed. 

Hermione stumbled out of the Manor and into the grounds, clinging to Malfoy’s hand like a lifeline, which perhaps it was.  They stuck to the side of the Manor, trying to stay in the shadows.

The Order members had retreated, somewhere, and she could feel the Galleon burning at her hip that would tell her where.  She couldn’t bring herself to pull it out, though she needed to figure out where to go.  She also couldn’t bring herself to look at the piles strewn around the green in front of her, terrified to look and see a face she recognized.

“Hermione,” Malfoy said quietly, and she looked into the grey eyes gazing down at her.  “I am going to walk you to where it’s safe, and then I have to go.”

The words hit her like a blow to the chest.  “What?”

He drew her closer and pressed his lips to her forehead.  “You need to tell the others what has happened.  I need to make sure you are safe, and then I need to go find my mother.”

“I’ll come with you.”  The words tasted like ash in her mouth as she repeated them for the second time that night. 

He shook his head, expression fierce.  “I can’t lose both of you, Granger,” Malfoy said, and he kissed the corner of her mouth this time.  “And you have to go tell Ron about the snake, and what we need to do.”

Despair filled her.  Hermione felt like shouting, like screaming for Harry to come back out of the Manor and stop being ridiculous, and for Malfoy not to leave her again when she had only found him again hours ago. 

“Listen, Granger.”  Malfoy’s eyes darted over her shoulder, and his next words came out in a rush.  “At Gringotts.  When I was there, before I did anything else, I opened an account for you.”

“You—you what?”  Hermione’s brain couldn’t process anything he was saying, the way he gripped her arm and the almost-painful beating of her own heart the only things she could focus on. 

“It’s connected to their branch in the Wizarding part of Sydney.”

She felt faint.

“There’s money for you, and for your parents—enough so that you can get them help there, and you can all disappear wherever you want to go.”  He dragged his gaze back to her and Hermione stared back at him in stunned silence.

“Granger, are you listening to me?”  Malfoy’s tone was half-irritated, half-begging now.

“I—I’m not leaving, Draco,” she finally replied.

A sound of frustration escaped him.  “If—if something goes wrong, though,” Malfoy insisted urgently, “I know you have a Portkey on you, and you can make another—”

“Draco.”

“I have to know you’ll be safe if something happens.”

“What about me?  What about me knowing you’re safe?”

“I’ll be fine, Granger,” came the quick response, and he bent to distract her with his mouth. 

“Malfoy—”

“What’s that song?”  he said suddenly. 

“What?”  

“The book—” Malfoy laughed a bit desperately and pulled her more tightly to him. 

She stared up into his stormy eyes, confused.

“I want that.”  He met his lips with hers again, hard, and then removed them too quickly.  “I don’t want anything to go wrong.  I want the long and boring part.”

Realization washed over her and Hermione choked back tears.  “Malfoy.”

“I stole that album, you know,” he said ruefully.  “I mean, I would have paid if I’d had any Muggle money on me, but I didn’t.  So I had to nick it.”

Tears had resumed flowing down her face now and she dashed them away furiously. 

“You just looked so…”  He trailed off.  “I wanted to hear the song that made you feel that way.  I had to ask Ted to help me figure out the Muggle way to play music, though.  Took me a while.” 

A combination of a laugh and a sob escaped Hermione’s throat. 

“I wanted to surprise you,” Malfoy continued, swiping a thumb over her cheek to catch some of the moisture there.  “I’m not sure you fully comprehend how much of a ridiculous, romantic sap you’ve turned me into, Granger.”

Something in his face made her entire body clench, and Hermione ached with the urge to grab him and take them both away from there as fast as possible. 

“We’ll get that,” she said fiercely instead.  Summoning the tattered remains of her determined hope, Hermione grabbed his face and pulled it down so it was level with her own.  “We will get the long and boring part.”

He let out a shaky laugh and pressed his forehead to hers. 

“Okay, Granger,” Malfoy whispered.  “I’ll hold you to that.”

…

Thirty minutes.

The guilt slowly destroying Hermione felt like a physical weight.  Ginny had taken one look at her, alone, and turned away with some sort of silent scream.

Ron sat on a small outcrop of rocks with her, hand scrubbing over his face every so often in a gesture that reminded her too much of his absent best friend.  There was a hushed silence marking the atmosphere of the strange camp, Order members watching the Manor from their vantage point among the ancient oak trees with wary eyes. 

Hermione was steadfastly ignoring the dead that lay to the side of the clearing where she and Ron waited, the dozen fallen friends who had already lost their lives and may only have been the firsts.  She closed her eyes and tried to block them out again.  Lavender, Colin, that stupid, annoying Auror who’d suspected Malfoy.  Even the last one had shaken her to her core when she had seen him.  But Lavender, who she had shared a dorm with for six years, and little Colin. 

“I think it’s time,” Ron muttered beside her.  Numb, she allowed him to haul her to her feet.

At the edge of the forest, Pansy and Neville were leaning against each other, the latter’s arm wrapped around the small witch’s waist like he might be holding her up.  When Hermione had arrived without Malfoy, Pansy had only shaken her head and pressed her lips together, eyes trained on the lights visible in the windows of the upper floors of the house.

“I think that’s them,” came a small whisper, and Hermione looked askance to see Daphne, a very pale Theo clutching the hand on her other side.

Sure enough, shadowy figures were spilling onto the steps, ominously quiet. 

Hermione’s breath hitched as she recognized a stringy blonde head of hair—Lucius Malfoy, gaunt and stricken looking, had materialized near the front of the group.

The Death Eaters spread out in a line. 

Behind them, Hermione caught sight of a writhing mass of shiny black, and her breath caught.  Nagini.  The only thing more horrifying was the tall, stark-white figure that stalked next to the snake.  She was too far to see his face, but her gut twisted at the way he carried himself, proud and uncaring. 

A gasp came from behind her.  Hermione saw the cause only a second later.

Someone was levitating—something—before them, and as they came further into the grounds, a shock of black hair and a glint of metal were visible in the air.

“NO!”

It had been Molly Weasley, but her scream of anguish barely matched her daughter’s.  Others echoed into the night, wrapping around Hermione’s heart like a vice.

“Harry!”

“No!”

“No!”

“SILENCE!” cried Voldemort, and there was a bang and a flash of bright light, and silence was forced upon them all.  “It is over!  Set him down, Nott, at my feet, where he belongs!”

Theo retched beside her.  The advancing army moved closer, and Hermione tore her eyes from Harry’s unmoving form to search for Malfoy among the crowd.  She couldn’t find him. 

“You see?” said Voldemort, and Hermione watched him stride back and forth beside where Harry rested.  “Harry Potter is dead!  Do you understand now, deluded ones?  He was nothing, ever, but a boy who relied on others to sacrifice themselves for him!”

“He beat you!” yelled Ron, and the charm broke, and the Order members around her were shouting and screaming suddenly until a second, more powerful bang extinguished their voices once more. 

“He was killed while trying to sneak out of the Manor grounds,” said Voldemort, and there was relish in his voice for the lie, “killed while trying to save himself—”

But Voldemort broke off:  there was a scuffle, and a shout, and then another bang, a flash of light.  Hermione saw a figure hit the ground in front of the ring of Death Eaters, and a cry escaped her throat unbidden.  Malfoy had done something, she thought, had somehow appeared unnoticed—at first—by the other side and, by the looks of it, tried to go for the snake in some sort of suicide mission.  Anger and panic flooded her.  Ron grabbed for her where she had moved forward involuntarily and yanked her back into the fold of the others.

Voldemort was laughing as he kicked Malfoy’s wand further from where it had fallen beside him.

“Draco, Draco, Draco,” he said in his soft snake’s hiss.  “You are quite as dramatic as your father these days.”

The older man seemed to seize as eyes turned toward him, a frantic step carrying him closer to his son and then, eyes darting to Voldemort, freezing again. 

Hermione whimpered, and Ron’s grip tightened on her arm.

Dead, alive, dead, alive.

“Not dramatic,” Malfoy was grunting, sounding pained.  “Just sick of you.”

There was a delighted sort of laugh from Voldemort as Malfoy struggled to his feet, unarmed and unprotected, in the no-man’s-land between the Order and the Death Eaters.

“Very well,” said Voldemort, and Hermione heard more danger in the silkiness of his voice than in the most powerful curse.  “If that is your choice, Draco, so be it,” he said quietly. 

Hermione wasn’t the only one who reacted this time; movement came from all sides as Theo, Blaise, and others she couldn’t see drew their wands higher.  As one, though, the Death Eaters raised their own wands, holding the Order at bay.

“Draco here is now going to demonstrate what happens to anyone foolish enough to oppose me,” said Voldemort, and with a flick of his wand, Malfoy collapsed again to the ground, an agonized scream escaping wrenched from his body.

Screams split the dawn, and Hermione could not bear it:  She had to act—

And then many things happened at the same moment. 

Dozens of people were appearing with cracks around the edges of the great lawn, and they were not dressed in black robes, but all manner of things. 

With more shock than she had ever felt in her life, Hermione saw the shape that had been Harry, immobile in the air, leap to the ground, more gracefully than she remembered him ever looking in life, for that matter, and, very much alive-looking, draw a wand from somewhere. 

At the same time, Malfoy sprang from where he had fallen and pulled something from his own pocket.  While the confused Death Eaters surrounding Voldemort were distracted, torn between raising arms against the Order’s newly arrived reinforcements and trying to get to Harry, Malfoy rushed at the giant snake coiled near the steps.

Hermione broke away from Ron’s grasp and took off at a run.  It took her maybe twenty, maybe thirty seconds, to reach Malfoy, flinging Stunners and Body-Bind jinxes at several hulking figures that tried to stop her and not caring to check if they landed. 

He had flung the Basilisk fang into the thick neck of the serpent and it was thrashing, but he held on.  Without thinking, Hermione plunged a hand into her beaded bag and withdrew a sword. 

“Malfoy!” she shouted, and their eyes met.  Something almost like a smirk flickered onto his face and he pinned the snake harder to the ground.

“All yours, Granger,” he panted, and Hermione felt deliriously like she wanted to smack him as she brought the shining metal down, watching with fascinated horror as the two halves of the snake broke cleanly apart, still.

“You absolute fucking idiot,” she yelled, and Malfoy did grin at her now, wiping a grimy hand across his brow. 

“You look good with that sword,” he called, and she watched in disbelief as he cast a wandless summoning charm for his dropped wand.

“I’m going to kill you.”

“I’m going to kiss you, as soon as we finish this,” he replied seriously. 

Chaos reigned.  The Death Eaters were retreating back into the Manor, Voldemort had vanished from sight along with Harry, and even as the battle raged, more people continued appearing to storm up the front steps.  Staggered, Hermione thought of the Portkeys Pansy had been obsessively making and wondered who had distributed them to what appeared to be anyone with any connection to an Order member at all who hadn’t already been part of the initial plans.

Charlie Weasley and Professor Slughorn, who was wearing emerald pajamas, dueled what looked like Selwyn and Jugson simultaneously.  She saw Yaxley taken down by a cackling Andromeda Tonks, who was supposed to be watching Teddy and waiting for patients in need of Healing.  Perhaps Astoria was with the baby, Hermione thought dazedly. 

She felt Malfoy tug her hand and pull her toward the doors.  They raced across the wrecked entryway, where smoke and dust and tattered portraits crowded their path.  Malfoy, for his part, didn’t seem fazed by what looked like the utter obliteration of his family home. 

Voldemort was in the giant ballroom that had been opened to the foyer, at the center of the battle, and he was striking and smiting all within reach.  Hermione cast about for Harry, wondering madly if she had actually imagined him rising from the dead—

The ballroom was becoming more and more crowded as everyone standing forced their way in.  Malfoy threw a shield in front of her at the last second as Macnair charged them, but he was flung back by Lee Jordan, who waved cheerily at them and ducked back into the fray.

Hermione saw Ron and Neville bringing down Fenrir Greyback, Arthur and Percy flooring Thicknesse, and then, with a jolt, Lucius Malfoy cowering in a corner.

“Malfoy—”

He had followed her gaze, and nodded shortly.  “I know.”

“Your mother?”

At this the corner of his mouth actually lifted.  “Bruised, but alright.  I expect you’ll be seeing her in a moment, actually.”

Before Hermione could ask Malfoy to expand on this confusing comment, she caught sight of Luna and Ginny battling two masked figures to their right, and lunged to help them.  When they finally wrested them to the ground between a series of well-timed jinxes and something a little nastier looking from Malfoy that she felt was justified, Hermione looked up to find that Voldemort was now dueling Tonks, Lupin, and Kingsley all at once, and there was cold hatred in his face as they wove and ducked around him, unable to finish him—

“Protego!”  came a roar, and a blinding shield charm expanded to fill the space in between Voldemort and his three adversaries, pushing them apart and catching the attention of the rest of the room. 

The yell of shock, the cheers, the screams on every side of “Harry!” from those who hadn’t seen that he was really alive, and those who must have been unsure, like Hermione, if they really had, were stifled at once.  The crowd was afraid, and silence fell abruptly and completely as Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and began, at the same moment, to circle each other.

The high voice sounded even crueler than it had earlier in the evening.

“What is your plan now, Potter?” Voldemort hissed.  “You may have discovered my Horcruxes somehow,” Hermione felt a bolt of shock at the revelation that he had figured this out, “but you still have to defeat me when no other wizard has before.” 

“You’ve forgotten several things, Tom,” Harry called, and he twirled his own wand in his fingers as he circled the ballroom. Voldemort watched him with furious eyes, so red they looked like they were bleeding.

“I’ve forgotten nothing. You are nothing but a foolish child. You have no power compared to me.  Others died so you could live.  Whatever luck you may have had after that came from some connection in our wands, but it is gone.  I have the Elder Wand.”

“It hasn’t worked for you though, has it? It hasn’t recognized you as its true master.” Harry laughed.  “You say you broke into Dumbledore’s tomb?”

Fury was visible in the snakelike face, fury so raw that it almost made Hermione stagger backward.

“But Dumbledore wasn’t the master of the Elder Wand when he died,” Harry continued conversationally.

“Lies,” Voldemort seethed, but he was still watching Harry like he was stalking prey.

“Well, Severus Snape did kill Dumbledore,” Harry offered.

“I shall kill Severus after I dispose of you—that is no matter.” Voldemort raised the wand impatiently, though something like uncertainty still flickered in his inhuman face. “He has betrayed me for the last time.”

Harry inclined his head, as if acknowledging this as true. “But of course, it wasn’t really him that night to whom the wand switched allegiances.”

Something pricked at Hermione’s brain, but she couldn’t grasp it yet.

“It was Draco Malfoy.”

Beside her, the wizard let out a strangled gasp.

Voldemort let out an even louder cry of outrage, whirling around as if looking for the young wizard, and Hermione stepped in front of Malfoy instinctively. He tried to shove her behind him, and they fought that way for a minute, clinging to one another.

“That won’t do any good, Tom,” Harry continued seriously, drawing the attention back to him. “Because Draco Malfoy is no longer the master of the Elder Wand either.”

“Of course he isn’t,” Voldemort snarled, “that brat has been held here at my command for the last two days, and then was disarmed at my feet.”

Harry chuckled. “Something like that. But from what I understand, he was actually disarmed at Gringotts a few days ago.”

Understanding washed over Hermione like cold water, and she stopped struggling against Malfoy.

She had seen it.

“By whom?” Voldemort snarled, and Harry suddenly grinned.

“Funny you should ask.”

From somewhere in the crowd gathered behind her, Narcissa Malfoy emerged, looking as regal as Hermione had ever seen her despite the tattered state of her silk robes and the blood drying on her cheek from an alarming-looking gash.

“I can’t say I’m disappointed in this turn of events,” she said calmly, and there was a split second where it seemed Voldemort couldn’t decide whether to attack Harry or Narcissa, and instead he chose both.

Red light erupted from Voldemort’s spell, a white shield erupting simultaneously from Harry’s, but Narcissa had drawn her own just as quickly.

“Avada Kedavra.”

Chapter Text

August 1998

In the end, Pansy Parkinson and Augusta Longbottom had ended up agreeing on a shocking number of details about the wedding.

The Longbottom estate, despite having been raided at some point by Death Eaters looking for the elderly witch, had survived the war largely unscathed. When Neville had taken Pansy there for the first time, she had apparently declared it “suitable,” before promptly bursting into tears.

Both witches favored a formal, yet celebratory, and quite large wedding. They had also immediately decided that the luxury of having months to plan such an affair would be sacrificed in favor of the grounds of the family’s property getting to be the site of one of the first post-war celebratory events of the season.

The result was breathtaking.  As Hermione strolled down the winding lane from the gardens where the ceremony had been held to the sprawling terrace where dinner had been laid out, pale red and white flowers bloomed over and over again in the hedges lining the path.  Flickering balls of light winked ahead of the guests, illuminating the way. 

“It really is beautiful,” she sighed happily, accepting a glass of champagne from a floating tray. 

Warm breath tickled the shell of her ear and Hermione shivered.  “Not as beautiful as you.”

“Not your most original line, Malfoy.”  She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek in thanks anyway.

Malfoy snagged his own drink before they took their seats.  “No need to mess with a classic, Granger.”  His knuckles trailed suggestively down her spine, where there was decidedly more bare skin than was usually available to him in public.  “Especially if it’s true.”

“Hermione!”

With a warm, if slightly belated, smile—distracted still by Malfoy’s wandering hand—she turned to greet the new arrivals at their table.  “Luna, it’s so lovely to see you.”

The blonde witch was dressed in sunny robes, matched by her date’s golden silk tie.  Hermione’s thoughts drifted to another bright yellow dress that Luna had worn, at a party when Pansy and Malfoy had fought about Neville and choices.  Oddly, the memory felt light now.  She knew how it would turn out.

Hermione brought her attention back to the conversation around her in time to hear Luna finish explaining the plans she and Blaise had for the fall.  

“…and then we’re going to spend some time in Sweden so I can continue my father’s search for the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks,” Luna was saying to Malfoy, who was studiously looking at his champagne and, Hermione could tell, trying valiantly not to snicker into the flute.

“That sounds—erm—exciting, Luna,” she interjected before his self-restraint dissolved. 

Malfoy’s eyes still sparkled with mirth as he arched an eyebrow and leveled his smirk on Blaise next.  Feeling her own face heat, Hermione suppressed a sudden, ridiculous urge to pounce on him, which she blamed on the two glasses of champagne she had downed so far and the fact that they had spent the last two nights apart.  At the bride’s request, Hermione had obligingly agreed to keep a nerve-wracked Pansy company at the Greengrass home and Malfoy had sulked back at Grimmauld Place with Theo about the temporary separation. 

“And what will you do in Sweden, Blaise?”

A lazy smile stretched across the wizard’s face, softening its usual angles, and he tipped his own flute at Malfoy in a salute.  “I shall ski, and drink brännvin, and follow the woman wherever she wishes to go.”

Laughing, Malfoy toasted him with his glass, and then there were others joining them and Hermione lost track of Luna’s itinerary for their hunt for elusive magical creatures across the continent.  Susan drew her into a discussion about whether the rebuilding efforts at Hogwarts were going to finish on time for the first of September, and then in a blur of motion as she made her rounds, Molly was hugging Hermione tightly and asking how were her parents doing with their treatment and was she coming to the Burrow on Sunday because if she was bringing Malfoy then Molly would make that apple tart she knew they both liked. 

Ron blushed furiously while Fred and George pestered him about whether it was really proper for him and Susan to be sitting quite so close together when he still hadn’t properly declared his intentions.  The witch in question paused in telling Hermione about the library reconstruction progress and cut off this line of inquiry with an impressive lip-locking jinx.  The feat earned her admiring and almost convincingly contrite looks from the twins before they scampered off to find their own dates again. 

Theo and Daphne materialized at her shoulder, pressing glasses of champagne into both her and Malfoy’s hands.  “It’s time for my speech,” Daphne said imperiously, and she took a heavy swig of her drink before setting it down by her plate and primly offering her cheek to Theo to kiss.  He decided instead to slip his tongue into her mouth in a rather enthusiastic manner, and Hermione had to clear her throat loudly before Daphne finally remembered herself and got back to it.

“Pansy Parkinson is a witch who knows what she wants,” Daphne began after waiting for the rest of the wedding guests to quiet and casting a Sonorus on her own voice. 

“No one can attest to that better than Neville, by now, I’m sure—”

There was a murmur of laughter, and Hermione relaxed further into Malfoy’s embrace as Daphne continued.  His chair was pulled close, arms wrapped around her from behind, and her back pressed against solid chest and warm skin.

“This was a year of choices.”  Hermione saw Theo reach up to entwine his fingers with Daphne’s where they rested on his shoulder.  “But Pansy and Neville didn’t just give us hope for what we could have after, they showed us that it was possible to choose happiness along the way.”

The minutes slipped by. 

A familiar hand on the back of her neck drew her attention away, slightly cool in the warmth of the summer evening. 

“Granger,” came the accompanying murmur in her ear, “dance with me.”

Before she could answer, Malfoy stood and offered his hand, palm facing upward, toward her instead.  It hovered in the air for a moment before she slipped her smaller one over it.

“I have somehow found it hard to resist you so far, Malfoy.”

The answering smirk made her roll her eyes, but there was no way to stop the smile that crept across her face as he led them toward the dance floor.  There were already several other couples that had finished dinner and forgone dessert to twirl under the gossamer tent that covered the guests, the warm summer air making everything feel even more ethereal. 

Malfoy’s hand slid around her ribcage, roaming dangerously low again.  His index finger trailed for a moment under the silk hem of her dress where it skimmed her lower back before he wrapped his hand more securely around her waist.  With the other, he brought their joined hands to his chest.

“I get you back tonight, right?”

His tone was teasing, but between his words and the way Malfoy had drawn her so close that she was nearly flush against him as he led her through vaguely familiar steps, Hermione felt her stomach twist pleasurably.

“I—”

“Hermione,” someone called lightly behind her, and she turned to look over her shoulder.  Narcissa was there, arm-in-arm with Lupin, who winked at Hermione as he led the other witch nearer.  “Would you mind terribly if I cut in to dance with my son?”

A small smile quirking his mouth, Malfoy squeezed her fingers where they were clasped between them, and then brushed a quick kiss over her lips.  “Remus, I expect her back at the end of this number.”

With a graceful movement that Hermione might have envied if she hadn’t been the one on the receiving end, Malfoy smoothly handed her off to Lupin and took his mother by the hand.

“You look happy,” Lupin observed once they had moved a few paces.  He was slightly less adept at leading than Malfoy, but Hermione felt a different sort of comfort from his large hand guiding hers.

“I think I am happy,” she said with a slightly rueful grin.  “Isn’t it odd?”

His answering smile told her that he still found his own contentedness strange, too. 

“You deserve every happiness that this world has to offer you, Hermione.”

“Remus—”

“No, please.”  She was startled to find his gaze suddenly serious.  “Hermione, you did something remarkable this year.” 

There was a burst of laughter as they passed the table where she had left Ron, Susan, Luna, and Blaise. 

Over Lupin’s shoulder, she saw that Seamus and Dean and some of her other classmates from Hogwarts had joined the group, slinging themselves into the seats that she and Malfoy had vacated and drawing up more chairs to crowd around the table.  The low warmth of the evening made the scene seem to glow, the liquid in the drinks her friends held reflecting the hundreds of lights strewn under the canopy of the tent and the enchanted everlasting peonies on the center of the table almost shimmering as they continuously bloomed, again and again, as if the petals were absorbing the happiness radiating around them and then releasing it anew. 

“I’m quite proud of you, you know.”

“Well, I—”  The automatic protest died on her lips.

She saw Malfoy from the corner of her eye.  He was smiling, leaning to whisper something in his mother’s ear.  Narcissa looked up, her eyes brightening, making the deep lines that had formed around them seem to fade away as she laughed at whatever her son had said. 

A sharp ache filled Hermione’s chest, and she let it fade before she tried again to answer. 

“It worked out pretty well for me, Remus.”

Lupin’s eyes followed hers to where Narcissa spun in her son’s arms, that strikingly similar blonde hair making it easy to distinguish them among the crowd. 

“It worked out pretty well for all of us, Hermione.”

…

The moments, and the days, after Voldemort’s death were a blur. But in all of the chaos, a single image was seared into Hermione’s memory. She suspected it had been similarly engrained for most of the others who had been there that day. 

Narcissa Malfoy had fallen to her knees after her spell.

Face blank, she merely stared at the strange, not-quite-human body of the dead Dark Lord laid before her, wand hanging limp at her side.

There was a moment where he seemed rooted to the floor, raw relief visible on his face, and then Harry surged toward the woman.

But, before he could reach her, Malfoy and another appeared at her side.

Andromeda and her nephew each knelt and gently gripped one of Narcissa’s elbows.  They pulled the witch to her feet and enveloped her in an embrace so tight that all she could make out was the protective curve of Malfoy’s back and a tangle of pale, clasped arms.

As she watched, the crack in Hermione’s chest split anew, and then filled again.

Dead, dead, dead.

Alive.

Before she could see where Malfoy and Andromeda were leading Narcissa, Hermione was caught up in an embrace of her own, red hair and freckles descending on her with blazing warmth.

Ron picked her up at the waist and spun her around in a half-circle, her legs jostling clumsily.

“We did it.”

She choked out a laugh.  It was muffled against Ron’s shoulder where her face was smashed to the point where she almost couldn’t breathe.

“Yes,” Hermione rasped.

Ron let her go and stepped away, a grin splitting across his face as bright as the sun that was dawning over the horizon outside the Manor.  She smiled back at him, and something like seven years passed between them in that moment. 

They both turned toward Harry, like an unspoken agreement, and saw Ginny locked in his arms, a look of mingled joy and fury on her tear-streaked face. Ron squeezed her hand, and Hermione squeezed it back.

Then suddenly there were others, before she could decide if she wanted there to be, Neville and Luna and Theo and Pansy and Blaise and Fred and George and Lupin and Tonks and Hagrid and everyone who had fought and survived and won.  The press of hands and bodies and voices in the immediate celebration was claustrophobic and too much and wonderful and it all made her feel like she was outside of time, somehow.

“Hermione!”

“Hermione!”

“Harry—”

“And Malfoy’s wand—”

“It was Narcissa, did you see?”

“Narcissa—”

“I know,” Hermione said shakily, and found that she was laughing through her tears,  “I know.”

…

Lupin drew his focus back to Hermione.

“In any event…”  His tone was thoughtful, conceding.  “I think you should appreciate how much of that is due to you and not to chance.”

Hermione stilled for a moment, accidentally bringing them both to a stop.  Then she nodded, blinking back tears, and he smiled gently, and they resumed their steps. 

A few moments passed in companionable silence before the song ended and she drew back from Lupin’s arms.  There was something in his face like fierce pride that made her want to find Tonks and tell her to ruthlessly tease him for being a huge sap, and also made another piece of her own heart knit back together.

“My mother has retired from dancing for the moment, but she’s told me to advise you that Andromeda expects a turn as well, Remus.” 

Malfoy was by her side once more as he spoke amiably to the other man. 

“I shouldn’t keep her waiting, then,” Lupin replied with a laugh, and he pressed Hermione’s hand into Malfoy’s before disappearing into the crowd.   

Another song had picked up, and Malfoy wasted no time in resuming his efforts to lessen the space between him and Hermione as they started dancing. 

“How’s your mother?”  Hermione asked softly. 

As he gazed back at her, it was hard to imagine a time when she had found anything but warmth in Malfoy’s eyes. 

“She’s well,” he replied, and then smirked.  “She says that a hangover is no excuse for either of us missing dinner tomorrow.”

Hermione threw her head back as she laughed, and at the same time, pulled Malfoy even closer with the hand that grasped his upper arm.  “I will do my best,” she said in her most solemn tone, “but no promises.”

Snippets of conversation floated around her as they danced.  Hermione reveled in the still-novel, still-fragile sensation of being safe and able to gather with so many people she loved.

“Severus stayed behind at the castle to prepare for the students’ arrival,” a very red-cheeked Pomona Sprout was informing the bride and groom.  “He sends his regards.”

“Not really the reception attending type, Severus,” Minerva remarked dryly from beside the Herbology professor.  “Despite his—ahem—newly discovered romantic side.”

Halfheartedly, Hermione tried to sympathize with the former Death Eater, who had been forced to listen to Harry defend him in his post-war hearing by revealing the real reason Snape had become Dumbledore’s spy.  It had worked, but the two reluctant associates were currently in a very immature spat over the whole business that involved a lot of lengthy and passive-aggressive owls to one another, as far as she could understand.  Hermione was absolutely not getting involved in no matter how much Harry complained to her, thank you very much.  They could hash it out themselves.

“He also asked me to pass along that his wedding gift to the happy couple is that he won’t tell Minerva what he walked in on the two of you doing in Greenhouse Two last December whenever Mr. Longbottom returns to apply for his teaching apprenticeship.”

The headmistress gagged on her redcurrant rum, whose brilliant shade of red was suddenly replicated nearly perfectly on the groom’s face.  Next to him, Pansy ducked her head, presumably to hide her own cackling. 

Before Hermione could catch Neville’s response, Malfoy snickered and twirled her away.

“Think McGonagall would give us back our old dorm when we go back to school?”

Still breathless with laughter, it took a moment to answer.  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Harry and Ginny revolving across the dance floor with a giggling, turquoise-haired baby in the former’s arms. 

“I’m not sure.”

Malfoy dipped her down suddenly, one large hand pressed into her lower back where she hung suspended in the air, the other clasping the fingers of her left.  Hermione’s heart thudded in her chest. 

“Well, perhaps she’ll bend the rules if the Brightest Witch of Her Age, one-third of the Golden Trio, our beloved War Heroine, asks,” Malfoy teased, leaning forward to brush his nose against hers, once.

They straightened and he drew her close again, skimming the silk of her golden bridesmaid dress where it covered her hip as he did so.

“Or a war hero,” she said softly.  Hermione tilted her head up so she could meet his eyes. 

Amusement faded from the grey, replaced with a contemplative seriousness that had become familiar over the last few months.  Instead of responding, he bent and captured her lips with a gentle kiss. 

…

Healing wasn’t linear:  That was a difficult lesson that they were all learning, again and again, in the aftermath.  But every day it seemed Malfoy got a little closer to some sort of peace with his complicated role in the events of the war. 

The rest of wizarding society was, strangely enough, having no such trouble. 

This was due in large part to the previously unforeseen development of Narcissa Malfoy and Harry Potter emerging as adored co-saviors of their world, an opportunity that Narcissa—with Pansy’s help—had wasted little time in seizing.

With a swiftness that had baffled Hermione, who observed her machinations in a sort of shell-shocked daze, Pansy orchestrated a series of calculated leaks about how exactly the Order had brought down Voldemort’s reign in the days following his defeat, mainly through the Quibbler. 

These included carefully worded mentions of Malfoy’s defection, Theo’s rejection of his father, and Lupin’s steady leadership.  Those who had been at the final battle spread their own stories by word of mouth:  of Malfoy and Hermione killing the giant snake together with a giant sword, of Harry sacrificing himself to save the rest of them and then miraculously reappearing, of the final, split-second look of disbelief on Voldemort’s face right before Narcissa’s killing curse struck its mark.  There was a Pansy-approved narrative running rampant through the wizarding world before Hermione had even processed the fact that it was safe to walk down Diagon Alley again. 

Meanwhile, Narcissa spent two weeks at Andromeda’s, hidden from anyone but her sister and her son, before emerging as composed and intimidating as Hermione could ever remember.   

In no short order, and quite predictably, Harry developed an enormous soft spot for the woman who had helped him bring down the Dark Lord who had ruined his childhood and nearly taken his own life. 

Despite Harry’s own aversion to the press, this meant that he had a complete inability to say no when Narcissa asked him sweetly to co-host a ball with her, or do a joint interview in the Prophet, or make an appearance at some event or another in support of post-war reparations.  Everyone found it amusing, though Ron, in particular, could barely hold it together every time that Harry came home late and muttered that he had been trapped at a luncheon or tea with the Malfoy matriarch again. 

She never heard her say it out loud.  But Hermione saw—perhaps clearer than anyone—that what Narcissa was doing, as always, was for her son. 

Not long after the battle, Malfoy had been called to give a full statement in front of the newly formed post-war tribunal, despite Hermione’s absolute fit to Lupin and Kingsley when she found out.  It had been a terrible day, even with the assurances from the former Order leaders that no one on the panel had any intention of charging Malfoy with anything, and that it was necessary for healing and transparency and other things Hermione knew she should care about but couldn’t after the sight of Malfoy’s face when he found out. 

But Narcissa’s ongoing publicity tour—where she humbly and sympathetically described the horrors she (and, impliedly, Malfoy) had experienced at the hands of Voldemort and his followers in their home—served its purpose. 

The Prophet ran a full feature about Malfoy’s hearing, effusively describing the way he had bravely defied his father and joined the Order, only to provide crucial information needed to bring down Voldemort multiple times, risking his own life at various turns.  Wizards and witches began stopping him in the street to wring his hand gratefully almost as often as Harry.  He received a few too many letters from random witches proclaiming their undying affection for Hermione’s taste, but she supposed she was just grateful the ‘War Heroine and Former Death Eater:  Star-Crossed Romance’ angle hadn’t hit the papers (yet).

After the article ran, Malfoy emerged from his room at Grimmauld Place for the first time in days and agreed to go with Hermione to their newly established weekly dinner at Tonks Cottage.  Hermione had turned toward Narcissa that night while Malfoy was distracted by Teddy’s enthused flinging of mashed potatoes at his face, unable to form the right words.  The witch just smirked softly back, patted her hand, and poured her another glass of wine. 

Some of her other interactions with Narcissa had been more fraught:  only a few weeks after the war ended, Hermione had the unusual experience of accompanying her boyfriend and his mother to a criminal trial for his father, whose alleged crimes included several against her own person.  Malfoy was gripping her hand so tightly the circulation had long disappeared, but she clung back as hard as she could manage.  On her son’s other side, the wife of the disgraced Death Eater sat tall; only from their vantage point could Hermione and Malfoy see Narcissa’s own pale hands trembling in her lap. 

The following weekend, the surviving Black sisters surprised her again. 

“Now, will Lucius appeal his sentence?” Andromeda’s tone was carefully schooled. Hermione froze with a forkful of arugula salad halfway to her lips in the air, not sure if she wanted to hear the answer. 

“Hmmm,” Narcissa mused, and she placed a small bite of her fish meunière in her mouth. She chewed thoroughly before continuing.  “How long was that creature in our home, darling?”

Beside her, Malfoy sputtered on a sip of his wine in a very un-Malfoy-like fashion. He and Hermione exchanged slightly nervous looks. “Er—about two years, I suppose.”

Narcissa set her fork down on her plate, carefully crossing it with her knife in a precise gesture that Hermione remembered vaguely from etiquette lessons her parents had forced upon her as a child, and then picked up the cloth napkin resting on her lap.

“Well,” she replied, patting her mouth delicately, “as Draco and I are now the ones with the financial means to do so, I suppose we can discuss whether we should hire a solicitor to look into Lucius’ appeal in about two years.”

Andromeda’s soft grey eyes, so similar to Malfoy’s, lit up with barely-concealed satisfaction.  Ted barely suppressed a snort.

“Mother,” Malfoy began, eyes narrowing, but then promptly stopped.

Narcissa smiled beatifically at him and then turned to Hermione.  Ignoring Malfoy’s bewildered expression, she gestured to the bottle chilling next to her.  “More wine, dear?”

Hermione had decided then and there that she could live with Narcissa Malfoy as a mother-in-law.

…

“So, if she doesn’t?”

“If she doesn’t what?”

Hermione almost missed Malfoy’s answer, distracted as she was by the dizzying sensation that came from some combination of his kiss, the swirling in her stomach as they revolved around the dance floor, and the champagne she had consumed.

“Give us back our old dorm.”

“Then… what?”

“Then,” Malfoy drawled, but Hermione heard the nervousness hidden there, “I’d still like to live with you.”

Her breath hitched as she puzzled through this response, and if there had been any question in Malfoy’s eyes, whatever her face had shown him seemed to resolve it. 

“I asked McGonagall already if—don’t worry, I mean, I didn’t ask about you—not that I’m trying to hide it or anything, I just would never presume to—oh, Merlin.”  Malfoy looked so flustered that she had to hide her own grin by pressing her cheek to his momentarily. 

“Draco.”

“Yes, sorry.”  He cleared his throat.  “What I’m saying is, I’ve confirmed with McGonagall already, actually, that returning eighth-years can live off-campus, if they want.  They prefer Hogsmeade, to be close to the school, but anywhere with a Floo is probably acceptable.”

“I thought you didn’t like how much I kick in my sleep,” Hermione blurted out, and she couldn’t help but grin reluctantly when Malfoy barked out a laugh.

“Actually, it’s the fact that you recite spells in your sleep sometimes as if you’re studying for N.E.W.T.s.  It’s bloody creepy, makes me think you’re going to start casting them on me.”

“Well, you snore.”

“I do not.”

“I think it’s from when I punched you third year.  Your nose is a bit crooked, still.”

She wanted to preserve the scandalized look on Malfoy’s face in a Pensieve. 

“Malfoys have excellent bone structure, we’re practically known for it, so if you’re suggesting that your violent tendencies somehow—”

There was a muffled groan as Hermione cut off any further snarky comments from Malfoy in the most effective way she had figured out so far.  

“I want to live with you, too.”  A helpless sort of laugh came from her own lips before she could help it.  “And I don’t care if it’s in Harry’s godfather’s townhouse, though I’m incredibly sick of it, to be perfectly honest, or some cramped flat in Hogsmeade, or even in a Hogwarts dormitory—”

“I do have some extremely fond memories of that dormitory, though.”

“—I just want to be with you.”

Malfoy’s steps faltered, the hand on her waist fluttering tighter, and then he drew in a shaky breath that sounded like wonder.

“It won’t be a cramped flat,” he informed her, resuming his pace.  “I’m quite rich.”

Her soft snort of amusement was lost in the sound of clinking glass spreading through the crowd.  As she and the other guests watched, a blushing Neville wrapped an arm around Pansy’s waist and snogged her thoroughly. 

Turning forward again, Hermione looked at Malfoy very seriously, and he quirked an eyebrow.   

“You know, I love you, Draco Malfoy.”

When he replied, it was in a tone just as serious.  His eyes were bright. 

“You know, I love you, Hermione Granger.”

She smiled.