Chapter Text
The light of the waning moon crept through the windows of the Sixth Year girls dormitory, but no one inside took much note of the silver soliloquy across the stone floors. All three girls were hidden away behind drawn curtains: Lavender and Parvati were gossiping in hushed tones, snippets of romantic fortunes and misfortunes being read over a deck of Tarot cards sliding through the air to the opposite bed.
Where within, Hermione sat cross-legged, watching the coin in her scarred palm, waiting for Draco’s second signal. She hadn’t moved for hours since he had set the numbers to all zeroes. She had been expecting it, and set everything into motion before he knew Dumbledore had left the castle. And now, he could open the cabinet at any moment.
Wrapped up in Draco’s warmth, in a room with no windows—ripped from one nightmare and flung into the next—time had lost all meaning. And she had been content to remain ignorant, as long as he was still there every time she opened her eyes—her light in the darkness.
Until she was rudely reminded that it was a Sunday—and not just any Sunday, the Sunday she was to meet with Harry and ‘talk.’ A whispered Tempus charm confirmed her worst suspicions. It was past noon and she was supposed to meet Harry now.
She wriggled from between Draco’s grip, managing to free her upper body and quietly sit up. He had woken up then, wordlessly dragging her back into his chest. She halfheartedly tried to pull free, citing she was going to be late—secretly revelling in every second they could steal—before she gathered enough resolve to peel his limbs off and escape his gravitational pull.
Hermione was, naturally, late. But she didn’t doubt that Harry would still be waiting. He had been saintly in his patience, watching her—them—closely from afar, but she hadn’t made it easy for him when she made the Room of Requirement her primary base.
Harry was unsurprisingly bursting at the seams with questions, but all Hermione could do was deflect, deflect, deflect. She couldn’t risk endangering Draco, at least not while they all remained in the castle and the task underway.
She assured Harry that Dumbledore was on board, and when she learned that he was leaving the castle with said Headmaster in the evening, she filled him in on her plan: get the Order ready and stationed around the seventh floor corridor. Harry was bright enough to understand the role of the Room of Requirement.
Several times over, the nature of her relationship with Draco had threatened to spill. It sat loose behind her teeth, and she tripped over his name. She didn’t know there could be so many intonations to Malfoy.
And Harry was relentless in his needling, twisting topics back onto themselves and pressing on her weakest buttons, asking different variations of the same question: do you fancy him?
But he needn’t have tried so hard, because she knew the answer was written all over her face.
When they were done, Harry had walked away unsatisfied and unconvinced. But he handed her what was left of the Felix Felicis and dropped the invisibility cloak and Marauder’s Map into her outstretched arms. He made her promise to use them, before parting with a warning.
I don’t trust him, Hermione.
That was fine by her. Harry and everyone else would know the truth of it soon enough.
Crookshanks crawled into her lap and demanded her attention, breaking her staring contest with the coin and reminding her—once again—to stop biting her thumbnail. Her impatient, shaking leg settled as he cranked out his engine of a purr.
She lightly scratched his impossibly tiny nose, and he sneezed, making her laugh. She stroked his belly, and he rolled on his back from side to side, his paws lightly swatting and scratching her in playful warning.
It will be fine.
The Felix Felicis vial was in the pocket of Harry’s invisibility cloak—already laid out on the foot of her bed.
Draco’s plan was solid.
They just have to go through the motions. Play out the moves they’ve been assigned on the board.
It will all be over soon.
Soon.
Which is when she had told Draco she would see him, leaving him in bed wearing nothing but that lazy smile she adored. But she didn’t expect it to be the bad type of soon.
The type of soon where fates could be altered in the blink of an eye.
Like how the coin suddenly glowed red in her hand, the heat of it shocking her from her reverie. She nudged Crookshanks off the bed, threw on the invisibility cloak, and tripped on her curtains in her haste.
Lavender and Parvati stilled, a surprised mid-sentence pause, before they carried on as before. After all these years, Hermione had trained them to think nothing of her stumbling in and out of bed at all hours.
She quickly followed Crookshanks down the stairs to the empty common room; there’s ample time repeating like a mantra as she hurried towards the exit while fighting against outright running.
She tried to keep her footfalls as silent as her cat’s as she approached Nearly Headless Nick, who stood guard in front of the portrait hole. Her plea had fallen on receptive ears. Surprisingly.
All afternoon, she had chased after the Grey Lady—with Harry’s map in hand—before finally cornering her in one of the courtyards.
Well, as much as ghosts could be cornered.
The Grey Lady had simply decided to hear her out, and evidently, silently agreed to rope the other ghosts into keeping students in their houses all night. Hermione wasn’t entirely sure about the Bloody Baron’s compliance, but Slytherin House was far flung from any action to realistically worry.
Crookshanks walked straight through Nick’s ghostly form, who dispersed in a smoky giggle before reforming. Hermione kept her distance, sticking to the wall as she moved behind the ghost, slipping after her cat when the portrait hole swung outwards.
Hermione instinctively ducked to stay out of sight of Tonks and Fleur, who were stationed outside Gryffindor Tower, momentarily forgetting she was invisible. But they were anyway distracted by Crookshanks, cooing when he weaved between their legs.
The little rascal.
She left them behind and made her way to the spot she had stalked out on the map: one of the corridors feeding into the main seventh floor corridor where she could get an uninterrupted view of the room’s door by simply peeking around the wall. Besides Kingsley Shacklebolt, there were no Order members stationed nearby, and it was a good choke point for stopping any Death Eaters following behind Draco on his way to the Astronomy Tower.
Walking down the narrow corridor that took her from Gryffindor Tower to the Room of Requirement, she mentally checked off Hestia Jones, who was stationed at its mouth. A little ways ahead, opposite Hestia and guarding the other corridor stood Remus. If she kept going straight, past Remus, she knew she would find Bill Weasley and Professor McGonagall standing guard in front of Dumbledore’s office.
Hermione slipped past Hestia then stopped in front of the stretch of blank wall for a brief moment, wondering what Draco was up to on the other side, wishing she could see through stone. Was he busy shuttling Death Eaters through the cabinet, or was he as nervous as she was, waiting on standby as the clock ticked down?
She gave the wall her back just as quickly, and walked down the main corridor, passing the Barnabas the Barmy tapestry and Kingsley, who stood tall in the centre of it all, his gold earring glinting in the light of the sconces as she approached.
Under the cloak, she took a left—Kingsley’s head cocking in her direction at the sound of robes rustling, before looking away again. She stepped into position against the wall and checked the time.
The Death Eaters should burst through the cabinet in two minutes, but Hermione set her countdown Tempus charm to six—taking into consideration the walk through the labyrinth and the inevitable triumphant peacocking.
She then conjured a small mirror that she suspended in the air to watch for the door’s appearance around the corner. She had timed everything perfectly, digging into her pocket and pulling out the small vial of Felix Felicis, watching the red flashing digits drop below 5:00.
Holding liquid luck in her hand didn’t give Hermione the confidence she was looking for. It was her first time flying solo, and she was sorely missing Harry’s tenacity and Ron’s grounding energy. Their annual showdowns had heavily relied on luck and instinct, which Harry had in spades. And despite her arsenal of spells, facing Death Eaters was like a pendulum swinging rapidly between life and death.
Hopefully, Felix would take care of that—but there was just so little of the potion left.
The timer dropped below 4:00. The cabinet was open.
At 3:00, Hermione uncorked the vial and trained her eyes on the reflection of the wall in the mirror. The doors could appear at any moment.
Would they all barge out at once, wands blazing or would they exit one at a time? Have they planned decoys or were they expecting an obstacle-free run to the tower?
Two minutes left on her timer.
She was tempted to drink the potion now, her dry mouth complaining in a body holding back waves of nausea.
One minute.
Was she even ready to see Bellatrix again? She thought she would be more nervous but her every fibre longed to attack her on sight. She wanted—needed—Bellatrix eliminated.
30 seconds.
She uncorked the vial and brought it to her lips, inhaling the escaping notes of honey and ginger as droplets leapt from the liquid’s surface like tiny goldfish.
10 seconds.
Her heartbeat echoed off the walls in the deathly silence. She counted down, her breath condensing on the glass vial.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1…
The countdown blinked several times at 0:00 then disappeared. Her eyes flitted back to the mirror but the wall remained blank, an unassuming grey. She peeked into the corridor herself, and by the time she was facing the mirror again she caught the faint edges of the door as they expanded into being.
She tossed the potion back.
At first, nothing happened. Then, her veins flooded with molten gold, electrifying her with an infinite sense of exhilaration. She flexed her fingers around her wand and felt the laws of probability bending to her will.
The door was now solid, and all three order members were standing alert. Something told her Draco wouldn’t be the first one out—he knew to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. So she waited, relaxing against the wall as one of the doors was pushed open.
Besides, she was only there as backup for Draco, everyone else could handle themselves.
An arm clothed in dark robes emerged first, before the rest of its body appeared, and then one body turned into two Death Eaters standing in a Hogwarts corridor. The Carrows—Hermione recognised them from the Azkaban mugshots she had studied.
A grin split her face. This was going to be easy.
The hefty siblings were awarded one second of gloating before they were hit with three stunner spells from different directions. The force lifted them in the air and knocked them backwards against the wall, their bodies thudding to the floor in a heap.
And then it was mayhem.
Two more Death Eaters emerged, shooting spells in every direction that ricocheted of stone walls and rebounded towards the Order. Remus and Hestia put up shields while Kingsley ducked and dived, gliding gracefully through the air as he dodged their attacks.
Every rebounding spell that approached simply zipped past Hermione, who watched the unfolding scene through the mirror, hidden behind a wall and underneath an invisibility cloak. She knew not to move.
The smaller of the two curse-happy Death Eaters managed to hit Remus—a violet spell grazing his cheek as he moved out of its way, blood spattering on the floor. Hermione didn’t feel the need to interfere, and a second later, Remus instantly recovered and stunned his attacker.
Tonks and Fleur then came bounding into the corridor, and helped Hestia fight off a quickly advancing Death Eater that could be Hagrid’s cousin in terms of size alone. As he stepped away from the door and pressed the women backwards into the corridor under an assault of curses, a crouching, snarling Death Eater—Greyback, she noted with distaste—appeared, taking off at a sprint, Kingsley in his line of sight.
Kingsley stared him down, his body pulled taut into a duelling stance, wand trained on the rabid werewolf.
Remus, who had bound and tied the third unconscious Death Eater to the Carrows, took off after Greyback. Hermione watched him shout Incarcerous straight down the corridor when an unmistakable head of blond appeared in the doorway.
Everyone else vanished for her.
She leaned around the corner, and whispered Protego directly at Draco. The magic that flowed out of her wand instantly flooded the corridor, siphoning energy from a bottomless well within her to crystallise into a protective, almost solid, shield around him.
That had never happened before with a simple Protego. Felix, or the bond?
Draco faltered backwards, raising his wand defensively. But when he registered the form the icy blue spell took, he swivelled his head, expectantly scanning the corridor.
Looking for her.
He didn’t waste time when he couldn't spot her, a line of determination settling in his brow as he stepped away from the door, Hermione maintaining the shielding spell in front of him.
Then suddenly, Bellatrix.
It was only a twist of Draco’s head that revealed her, where she had fallen in behind him, using him as a cover.
But Bellatrix was just another obstacle. Hermione only paid her attention to the extent of knowing where everyone stood in the scene in relation to Draco—who had just moved around Remus and Kingsley, both busy subduing Greyback.
When Bellatrix stepped out from Draco’s orbit to slice through the ropes suspending Greyback in the air, Hermione spelled a line of flagstones to enlarge, thrusting the stones out of the floor to jut upwards towards the ceiling—isolating Draco from the Order and Death Eaters.
Draco didn’t look back, running down the long corridor past where Hermione was hiding. She pushed off the wall and followed him. Her work was done, and it was up to the Order to wrangle the unwelcome guests.
Hermione didn’t feel the need to take off her hood, nor make herself known as she trailed Draco at a leisurely pace. The pace she knew was perfect, the pace that was going to take her exactly where she needed to be.
“You’re to be my guide, I take it?” Hermione greeted Crookshanks, who had stepped out into the corridor, halting her in her path. Up ahead, behind his bottlebrush tail, the door to the Astronomy Tower staircase stood ajar.
It was in Draco and Dumbledore's hands now.
Hermione followed behind Crookshanks as he went left, right, then down a staircase, and up another one. He stopped in an unfamiliar part of the castle, standing smartly next to a nondescript wall. When Hermione approached, a doorway to a hidden passage made itself known.
Once she stepped through, the doorway disappeared behind her and sconces flared to life, illuminating a staircase that extended unfathomably downwards. There was no better time than the present, she thought, descending the stairs at her own pace.
She anticipated a change in the air, and a second later her foot triggered a trick step. The step rebounded upwards, sending her flying. Below her, the stairs smoothed out into a slide, which caught her softly when she landed and propelled her downwards.
It was exhilarating, the feeling of weightlessness as she free fell down a steep drop. It reminded her of roller coasters and humid summer days with her parents, hands sticky with melted ice cream grabbing onto the ride’s rails as she looped through the air, the sky and earth bleeding into one messy painting.
And finally, the end was visible, a door waiting for her that quickly grew in size as she accelerated towards it. The slide deposited her neatly onto her two feet, and she lurched unsteadily forward to push open the door.
Hermione was led out to a small, damp storage area, with a trap door right above her that she easily popped out and climbed through. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the surrounding shadows took form. Rows and rows of Mandrakes and Venomous Tenaculas flanked her as she quickly made her way out of Greenhouse 3.
She relied on Felix to direct her feet, walking past the row of Greenhouses before she was overcome with a sudden desire to run. On her right, plumes of smoke towered in the distance behind the Whomping Willow, where she knew Hagrid’s Hut to be. But it wasn’t her concern—was it?
That was when she heard Harry screaming, spotting him flinging spells after someone in unmistakable billowing robes, until they—Snape—had enough and turned to face Harry.
Something was very wrong. And yet, she knew to continue running, her body navigating her towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest where she knew Draco would be. And there he was, standing in a familiar clearing, watching Snape advance on Harry through the gaps in the trees.
Hermione couldn’t shake the feeling of being deposited into some parallel universe where things had gone up in flames. She had left the castle under a perfect set of circumstances, only to emerge to… whatever this was.
“Draco!” she called out, shedding the cloak and sprinting the last few yards to reach him. He turned at the sound of her voice, his body stopping her momentum, and they hugged each other to the point of suffocating.
“Hermione”—he drew back and haphazardly patted her down—“are you okay? Nothing happened to you?” His eyes were red rimmed around an eddying grey, and dried tears had left their traces down his cheeks.
“I’m fine.” She pulled away fussy hands that were inspecting her face. “Is he? Did you?” she asked, still breathless from her run.
“I couldn’t do it. Bellatrix was right there, I—I choked. He’s going to know, Hermione. He said I had to do it. No one else—”
“Draco”—she grabbed his face with shaking hands, the relief that he didn't have to rip his soul apart to entertain a madman’s sick game did little to steady them—“what happened?”
He breathed in sharply. “Dumbledore’s dead. Snape stepped in when—when I couldn’t.”
“He betrayed Dumbledore?” she asked, frowning.
“Voldemort’s dog after all.”
Tonight had not just gone up in flames, it was downright catastrophic. Bellatrix made it to the tower. Dumbledore was dead. And Draco was running alongside Snape.
“Why are you here?” her voice wavered, hands dropping to her sides, pieces of the puzzle falling into place in front of her eyes. “Why are you waiting for Snape? Where is the Order?”
“Hermione…”
She hated how she could read him by the way he said her name.
She stepped backwards, her heart determined to break through her rib cage. “You’re going back to the Manor,” she said, shaking her head, as if she could negate the words. “You’re going back—I don’t understand”—nothing was making sense—“What about Dumbledore’s plan?”
“The Order is not coming.” He stared at an indeterminate spot beyond her shoulder. “They don’t know anything and they’ll—very rightly—believe Snape and I are behind this.”
“What—why?” she struggled to speak, her throat laced with panic.
“Dumbledore was never going to get me out, Hermione.” He looked back at her, and the anguish on his face was tangible. “He said I’d serve the war effort better as a spy.”
There. The bitter truth. The full force of a sledgehammer coming down to knock the wind out of her chest. The old bastard had another trick up his sleeve, and before she could comprehend the scale of Dumbledore’s betrayal, Snape's waspish voice interrupted, commanding Draco away.
It had all been for nothing. Now that they were on the other side, the fallout of their actions were much graver than she had imagined. And her body had emptied of the euphoric high of liquid luck, leaving behind a percolating desperation.
“Come with me,” she said, grasping onto his forearms. “We’ll find a way to end this, together.”
Draco only looked at her sadly, fresh tears welling in his eyes. She anticipated the words before they tumbled out of his lips in a broken whisper, “He’ll kill my parents.”
She choked on a sob.
He pulled her back into him, holding on to her like the ground was going to open beneath his feet at any moment. “Listen to me,” he said in a rush, “I owe you several apologies. Ever since that day in Herbology, I’ve been nothing but selfish. I’ve always been selfish. I dragged you into this mess—”
“I was already in—”
“And I know you asked me not to, but if I wind up dead—”
“Draco, you’re not—”
“Hermione, I love you.”
She stuttered, a compressed silence dunking her underwater, the weight of the lake’s heavy waters pressing on her chest. His lips moved, and she watched them, read the words as they were shaped.
Did you hear what I said?
But she only heard their heartbeats, a muffled thumping as the world came to a standstill.
She had imagined endless variations of this scene. Exchanging words of adoration in a quiet corner of the library, by the lake on a summer day, in a time without war…. And in every daydream, his dimples smiled down at her. Dimples that were notably absent as his desperate face watched her back. His scars, a cruel, twisted thing. His confession, a melancholy refrain.
“Draco!” Snape called again urgently.
And just like that, the sound of his name was the pop yanking out the stopper of the Great Lake. The receding water thrust her to the surface, and her heart restarted its thunderous pounding, sending roiling blood from its chambers out to the tips of her extremities. The sudden rush of air to her eardrums ushering in a startling clarity.
She heard the staccato of his breathing, and the roaring crackle of flames engulfing Hagrid’s Hut.
A match had been struck, and the smell of war was in the air.
This was the truth of it. The bitter truth. Not just of Dumbledore’s scheming, but of their coupling, of lines drawn in the sand before they were born. And here they stood, on the cusp of a severance neither were ready for. Draco waiting for a response that was as clear as the light of a guiding star.
“I love you too,” she finally spoke, dropping her head into his chest, her fingers twisting into his shirt. Like she could physically tether him to her. “I’ll get you out. I’ll get you out, I prom—”
He leaned down to desperately press his lips to hers in a bruising kiss, wanting to permanently etch themselves, stealing a lifetime of kisses in a few paltry seconds. Over before it began.
He wrenched his face away, and she saw his occluding eyes, the focus behind the gunmetal tint.
“Goodbye, Hermione.”
Draco slipped from her outstretched hands, turning and running towards Snape, who looked the part—murderous. Draco turned to glance back at her, but before their eyes could meet, Snape took his arm and Apparated him away.
One second he was there, the next, gone.
Like mist.
Hermione fell to her knees, raging silently. Sparks burst from the tip of her wand where it lay beside her, a spot of ever expanding singed grass.
They took him away from her.
She would resurrect Dumbledore just to kill him herself all over again.
Her fingers dug into soil, hands ripping out a clump of grass, when she felt something cool in her fist. Turning her hand over, a silver ring tumbled out of her palm.
She peered closer, breath hitching when her suspicions were confirmed.
His signet ring.
It stared back at her, and she watched it through a veil of tears. She didn’t know how long she stayed like that, imagining—willing—him turning back when confronted with the gates of the Manor. Apparating back to Hogwarts. To her.
“Hermione.”
A warm hand landed on her shoulder. She looked back and was met with Harry’s kind eyes. He was just as shaken, the cracks in his calm demeanour visible.
“Let’s get you back to the castle.”
She nodded slowly, then conjured a silver chain and threaded the ring through it, placing it around her neck and tucking it underneath her shirt. Harry helped her up and they walked back to the castle, dragging an oppressive silence behind them, all the way up to Gryffindor Tower. Neither of them ready to make heads or tails of what had just transpired, leaning into each other instead, her head resting on his shoulder.
Somehow she had made it to her bed. It was all a blur of faces and panicked voices, Harry pulling Ron aside when he called after her… and now, she was on her back staring wide-eyed at her canopy, still in uniform, with her shoes on.
She kicked them off. That was the extent of the energy she was willing to expend.
How was she supposed to just fall asleep? When his bed lay empty, his discarded robes no longer a fixture in The Room of Hidden Things. Knowing he was within the castle walls had been an underappreciated comfort.
It didn't make sense that she was supposed to go on without knowing when she would see him again.
If she would even see him again.
And then her thoughts raced away from her, endlessly, without a beginning or end, every anxiety feeding into the next. She turned on her side and buried her face in her pillow. Swallowing the lump in her throat that refused to budge an inch.
She couldn’t handle the uncertainty. Not knowing whether he was alive or dead. Whether he was being tortured or toasted to.
How would she even begin to make good on her promise of getting him out? The Order would never agree to it, and it would be nothing short of suicide, rushing into a viper’s nest to save a couple of Death Eaters that weren’t even on board.
He would never leave without his parents.
Maybe Draco was right. Maybe the stars spelled their fates, dooming them to repeating the storied histories of their namesakes. Because if he wasn’t right, then why did it feel like her heart was ripping her apart. Pumping her full of daggers that stabbed her when she breathed. When she moved. When she closed her eyes and screamed at her brain to shut up.
And when she tried occluding—opening the door to her space—she almost drowned. The water raging against the shore surged and swept her up in a great wave, battering her from all sides until she surfaced in the middle of the lake to an unbearable ache. An itch so deep she had no chance of scratching.
She tossed, twisted, and turned. And through it all, Crookshanks purred steadfastly and kneaded her where he could reach. But his efforts were in vain. This was a different type of pain. It sat like molten iron in her throat, and she overheated—kicking the covers off to grasp at fresh air.
She craved the oblivion of sleep. But her heart, overactive in its pumping, kept her awake—suspended in a fugue state where she silently cried until she was wrung out. Until there was nothing left in her to give.
Out of the emptiness, she whipped up a fiery anger. Consumed herself with the stupidity in her wilful ignorance that she hadn’t thought ahead. And now they had no way of communicating.
Right on the doorstep of another spiral, Crookshanks tapped her arm. She looked over and followed his gaze, her eyes landing on Draco’s coin next to his paw.
Of course.
Hermione swiped it off the bed and sat up, hastily casting Lumos. In the light of her wand, the dread doubled in the pit of her stomach. The numbers hadn’t changed since he had last set it ages ago. It seemed preposterous that only a mere few hours had passed. She had most certainly aged a decade since.
She lay back on her bed defeated, enveloped by the sound of her racing heartbeats and Crookshanks’ purrs once more. She then entered an endless cycle of managing a minute or two of sleep before she was inevitably jolted awake to check the coin.
Beyond the window, the heavens turned to the unyielding passage of time. The light of the dawn inched further into the room, until it seeped through her curtains. Birdsong erupted as another day bloomed, as if her world didn’t just shatter.
And then, when she had lost all hope, when she resigned herself to accepting the worst, a passing God took pity on her and the coin burned in her hand, where she held it over her chest.
She scrambled into a seated position, knocking both her wand and Crookshanks off the bed in the process, who meowed indignantly and padded away.
Her breaths suddenly came easier, the tightness in her chest dissipating as she looked down at the edge of the coin, watching intently as it cooled and new numbers appeared before her eyes.
12-20-25-24
She summoned her wand off the floor and pointed at her canopy. A string of wispy, smoky letters streamed from the end of her wand, arranging themselves in alphabetical order within the confines of her drawn curtains. She labelled each letter with its corresponding number, from 1 through 26.
When she realised the code spelled gibberish, she dispersed the numbers, and labelled the letters again. This time, starting the count from the letter D. But even then, no intelligible word formed.
She moved the starting number down to H—hoping that he didn't choose a code that was too complicated for her addled brain to figure out—then gasped, eyes quickly putting together letters that spelled:
S-A-F-E
She fell back onto her pillows, her heart fluttering, easing the tension in her spine, unspooling the thread of worry that had settled in her gut. Her hand closed into a fist over the coin.
Safe.
He was alive.
But for how much longer?
Hermione decided she wasn’t going to wait to find out, so she got up and put on her shoes with one destination in mind. Down the stairs she went, to the common room, where several First and Second Years were all sleeping together on a large, makeshift futon, older students scattered on sofas and plush chairs.
Nearly Headless Nick was no longer standing guard—not that he would have been able to stop Hermione from steaming ahead and pushing through the portrait hole. She marched towards the moving staircase, footsteps echoing her renewed determination off the flagstones.
She brushed aside thoughts of how the castle was eerily silent; when normally she felt the thrum of its magic weaving through the stones, she now struggled to find its voice. But she was too tired to pile more onto her plate—tired of things falling apart, of the old men that gambled with their lives. And she was especially tired of the shadow of death that hung over everyone she loved.
And so, her first order of business was ending Voldemort. If he thought secreting away parts of his soul was enough to evade death, he was in for one rude awakening. Because she would stop at nothing to end this war, to free Draco from his shackles.
It would take more than a petty despot to sever their entanglement. The blood bond alone was restless, sending out seeking tendrils, a yearning for its second half. It wrapped around the ring that sat above her heart, its cold weight seeping into her bones.
She would tame the ring. And after it, the world that refused to accept her.
Once she reached the entrance to Dumbledore’s office, she strong-armed the gargoyle into springing aside, threatening it to move lest it face a most painful Eldritch end, her magic crackling in the air as her impatience mounted. It acquiesced, and she sprinted up the spiral staircase to burst into Dumbledore’s office, freezing at the threshold, momentarily shocked by the normality of the scene—only, Fawkes was nowhere to be found, and all the paintings hung empty.
But Hermione wasn’t here to take inventory, her eyes immediately zeroing in on the bookshelf that sat behind Dumbledore’s chair. She raised her wand, aiming it straight at the cracked, leather-bound books, her voice ringing clear in the circular room.
“Accio Horcrux books!”