He'd been cruel, cold, uncompassionate, a liar, and a coward but this was the first time he'd been late. It made the hair on her arm stand up. Everything he did was a calculated move towards some opaque design. Everything except them. She rifled through her bag while another subway car rattled past. It was hard to find safe places to meet these days but she'd thought of the subway platform and he'd agreed. She rifled through her purse and pulled out a day planner, trying to calmly flip to the date. She'd ripped out May in a moment of misdirected frustration and now the pages didn't sit properly. "He might have died," a voice in her head prodded. She always worried too much, it was her way of being prepared. She'd only ever seen blind faith leave people dead or broken and she wasn't going to end up like that. A man watching her from across the platform offered her part of a smile. She couldn't return it. That's the burden of knowing too much, you end up spending all your time with your brow furrowed. A train came and the man got on it, rattling unknowingly into the dark.

"You shouldn't make that face," said a voice behind her. He ran his thumb over her forehead and down her cheek. She'd stiffened at his touch but let herself relax again. The way things were everyone she knew had gotten good at appearing and disappearing more silently than a cat.

"I worried about you!" she said, throwing a half serious punch at his shoulder.

"You shouldn't have," he glanced down the platform and at her again, "I don't deserve it."

He didn't and she couldn't tell him he did. Instead she said, "We all believed in different things then, we didn't know what we were doing."

He sat down on the bench next to her and crossed his arms stiffly. His eyes were ringed by a lack of sleep, a fact that was highlighted by his pale complexion.

"We still don't know what we're doing." He was referring to her, she could hear it. He didn't talk this way except to her. "There were more killed today, twenty-five at least. A small village."

She hadn't cried when their only hope died. She hadn't cried for herself or the people she knew. She hadn't cried when Harry Potter died, or Ron, but now, as another twenty-five strangers joined the tally, the tears found their way out. He couldn't comfort her, so he sat there waiting while she let it out. Finally she sniffled, "You couldn't have saved them?"

"Others," he said, "I saved others."

She looked at him and knew he meant it.

"Many wouldn't go, they wanted to fight and it's their blood right. If only the odds weren't so against them."
She'd noticed his use of blood right, he certainly was different. She needed to trust him. There was no one else left to trust.

"You did what you could," she said, putting her hand on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and let her run her fingers down his arm until he caught them in his.
He leaned into her and set his head against her bushy hair. They stayed that way for a while, two trees knocked over in a storm but kept upright by leaning against each other. Finally he sat up. His lips were tense with words he couldn't get out.

"Hermione," he ventured, "I-" She didn't let him finish pressing her lips gently against his. He let her kiss him. She pulled away sooner than she wanted to but it was no time to get carried away.

"I was wrong," he finished, though she knew that hadn't been his intent.

"Even Dumbledore was wrong." she said bitterly, "we were all wrong."

"He had faith though. If he'd been right the story would have ended differently. I've never believed in anything."
He put his arm around her.

"I wish I was like you. You had a chance to have faith in something."

He was right, she had believed in something, had known what it was like to throw her whole heart into a cause. Did it matter that the cause had ended in defeat? That even now the last of her allies were being hunted down and murdered? Harry Potter had gotten them through so much but now they had to fend for themselves. They needed to find a new thing to believe in.

Finally, she looked up at Draco and said, "You can have faith in me."

Author's Note: This story was written for a friend of mine who ships Dramione but I like the bleak post Harry Potter world. If I add more stories to this series they will probably explore other aspects of the fall out from Harry's death.