Chapter Text
The sky over Scotland was scorched black, chocked with smoke and ash as spells lit the horizon like silent fireworks. Shadows moved across the battlefield-some cloaked in white, some in deepest black-and blood stained the trampled earth beneath their feet.
Hermione Granger ducked behind the jagged remnants of an old stone wall, her chest heaving with effort, her wand gripping in white-knuckled fingers. Her ribs ached from the last curse that had clipped her side, and her curls were matted with sweat and soot. Around her the Order pressed on, their resistance thinning but unyielding. The Death Eaters were advancing with brutal precision, and at the center of it all, like a silver-eyed serpent commanding the tide of death, stood Draco Malfoy.
He had changed since Hogwarts. The boy who once sneered in hallways had been replaced by a man of sharp steel and colder convict. His blonde hair was windswept, a cruel contrast to the blood on his robes, and his eyes-those pale, storm colored eyes held nothing of mercy. A general now, they said. Voldemorts prodigy. The architect of the southshire Massacre.
Hermione had seen the bodies herself.
And now she watched him cast spells with surgical grace, cutting down her friend with terrifying ease. She hated him. Hated what he'd become. Hated that part of her that still remembered the way his voice sounded when he wasn't snarling insults. She forced that memory down into the pit of her stomach.
A flash of green tore through the air beside her. Someone screamed. Another one lost.
"Hermione!" Harry's voice cracked through the smoke, urgent. "We have to fall back- Neville's down, Ginny's bleeding bad. We're outnumbered."
Hermione's jaw clenched. "We can't keep retreating! They'll take Inverness next."
But before she could argue further, the sharp crack of apparition echoed nearby- too close.
Hermione spun.
Draco Malfoy stood ten feet away from her, wand already raised.
For one split second, they stared at each other, two souls shaped by war and fire. No words passed between them, just recognition-old enemies, older wounds.
He was the first to speak.
"You should've run, Granger"
His voice was like ice cracking on stone-elegant, lethal.
"Not my style." She hissed, sending a hex towards him without hesitation.
He blocked her effortlessly, the force of his counter-spell knocking her backwards against the wall. Pain shot up her spine, but she was already up again, wand swinging. Their duel exploded in a flurry of light and rage, spells clashing in the air between them like sparks off a grindstone.
"You fight like a Gryffindor." he said through gritted teeth as he ducked another stunner. "All heart, no strategy."
"You kill like a coward." She spat, eyes wild. "From behind lines you don't dare cross."
His mouth twitched-a flicker of something that might have been anger, or maybe regret, but it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.
They moved in tandem, like dancers in a warborn walz. She grazed his shoulder with a blasting curse- he retaliated with a whip-like arc of black flame that singed her sleeve. Around them, the world was dying, but in this moment, it felt like nothing existed beyond their locked gaze and the fury burning between them.
Finally, he disarmed her with a twist of his wand. Her wand flew from her hand, clattering uselessly to the ground.
Malfoy stepped forward.
"This is war Granger," he growled. "And i don't have time for mercy."
Hermione fiercly kept her eyes open and waited for him to cast the spell, determent to show him she was not afraid of him. But he didn't kill her.
Instead, he stared at her like she was a puzzle he couldn't solve, some ancient spell in a language long forgotten. Blood dripped from his temple, and dirt streaked his face, but those eyes-they didn't look triumphant. They looked...tired.
And hers reflected the same.
Then he vanished, disapparated into the smoke and night-leaving Hermione on her knees, staring at the spot where her enemy had spared her life.
Behind her, the Order fell back. But she stayed just a moment longer, unable to shake the burning question that lodged in her mind like a thorn in her throat:
Why didn't he finish it?
And why in that heartbeat of silence, had she wanted him to?