I've never written a Harry Potter fanfic before. I've always been a little intimidated by the thought of it, but here I am now, writing one. The prologue is short. he chapters will be longer.

This is Draco/Hermione. It's set in some kind of alternate reality, where the war didn't end and it's still going. Everyone's older, in their twenties or so, and the war has been going this entire time. Lots of people are dead, everyone's a little crazy blah, blah, etc.

I hope you enjoy it.

Of Great Men

Prologue

The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

"Go on, ask me."

Her hair's wet, curling around her face, sticking to her cheeks, which are flushed and damp from the rain. A set of nail shaped gouges stand out vividly along the right side of her face, blood trickling sluggishly from them and sinking into her shirt. Her clothes are soaked, her jeans are dripping a puddle on the ground at her feet. Her cardigan is ripped to shreds, charred holes allowing the odd patch of badly burnt skin to peek through. Her shoes are covered in mud and her hands are unnaturally pale and blotchy from the cold. They're covered in blood too and he can't tell if it's hers or someone else. He can't tell which he wants it to be either. She doesn't look pretty or attractively dishevelled like the girls from films; she looks like a mess.

He wants to tell her she shouldn't be here, because in theory, he should be killing her on sight. He knows at least some of that blood is from someone on his side and he knows that the fact that she's here means that someone else isn't coming back to the manor that night. He knows he should be angry and he is; only for all the wrong reasons. So he doesn't tell her she shouldn't be here.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Not that." She shakes her head, steps closer. He thinks he should move away, but he doesn't really want to, so he stays. "Don't ask me that. Ask me what I want."

He swallows hard, eyes drifting over her shirt again. Her visible skin is a mottled red, pink and white, the top layers beginning to peel away from the less damaged skin beneath it. The left side of her bra is hanging out from the shreds that remain of her shirt and cardigan. He recognises it; it's the same one she was wearing the first time.

"What do you want?" he asks gruffly, although he can think of a thousand other questions he would rather ask her.

"I want you to mean it when you ask me a question, Draco," she says harshly, shoving her wand into her pocket. She seems blissfully unaware of the second degree burns covering her upper body.

"Who did this?" He can't stop the anger flaring up in his voice. The fact that he thinks he already knows the answer to his question doesn't make it any easier to ask.

She ignores him, like the stubborn bitch she can be sometimes, and steps closer again. He doesn't move away, although they're practically chest to chest now, the door to one of the random buildings in the random village that she's apparated them to inches away from his back. He towers over her, but he might as well have been kneeling down for all the difference that seemed to make to her.

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me!" he hisses back.

"Ask me again."

"For Christ's sake, Hermione-"

"Please," she says, and for the first time he hears a hint of begging in her voice. The ground under their feet crunches as she shifts her weight from foot to foot. Her hand comes up, touches his chest, fists into the lapels of his thick winter coat. It's only then that it occurs to him to give it to her, although it seems a rather useless move now, because he knows she'll only toss it off.

"Jesus," he says and he shakes his head and slides the coat off anyway, just because he feels like he should. "What do you want then?"

"Change sides," she says. Her breathing is still a little off, her shoulders heaving as she tries to get it back under control. He can feel her bones jutting out through her too thin skin when he tugs the coat onto her shoulders. To his surprise she doesn't shake him off.

"You said you wouldn't ask that." His voice is low, verging on a growl, because he's somewhere between annoyed with her and livid with his own allies. Her eyes are wide, the only part of her body that isn't marred by some kind of blood or water or dirt. Even now, when they're asking something impossible of him, he still can't help but remember how much he's always loved her eyes.

She shrugs and shakes her head like that's meant to be an answer or an apology or something. Her eyes are fierce though, defiant.

He shakes his head right back at her, looking down at the ground because despite himself he feels guilty. "You can't ask that."

When he looks back at her she's still staring at him with those fierce eyes, so intently he almost can't take it. Then suddenly something snaps.

"Fine," she says, her tone unreadable, although he thinks he detects the slightest hint of desperation; a tone that on her has always scared him. She puts her hand on his chest, pushing him back roughly into the wall, her fingers dig into his torso through the thick fabric of his shirt. Then she kisses him, her lips aggressively pushing against his, her teeth scraping his lips. The kiss is frantic and greedy and so rough it almost hurts. It hurts and he loves it.

When he tugs his face away from hers he can hardly breathe, his heart racing in his chest like it's trying to beat its way out of him. A piece of her hair has attached itself to his cheek and it hanging there, stretched between them like a bedraggled bridge. Her breathing's just as bad as his – maybe worse. Her skin is seared and blistering in places.

"You need to go to hospital," he says.

"Shut up," she says, so he does and instead he just kisses her again.

And so Draco Malfoy fucks Hermione Ganger in an alleyway in some deserted muggle village while a million miles away a war rages on between their two sides. And all he thinks about is how pointless it was giving her his jacket when less than a minute later he's ripped it back off her shoulders again and left it lying in a puddle on the wet ground.