A/N: Welcome readers! This is a slightly AU multi-chapter I've had in mind for a while and finally had the chance to write. I know it's a bit vague but I promise it will get better, please review and let me know what you think :)
Amnesty
Number twelve Grimmauld place was looking quite worse for wear nowadays, much to the disgust of Mrs Walburga Black's portrait, her screeching evidently airing her displeasure more often times than not. This of course due to the Order of the Phoenix members having made themselves increasingly comfortable within the walls of her former place of residence, bustling in and out frequently, whether bloodied, beaten or Merlin forbid, cheery.
The place was filled with undoubtedly more life than it had possessed in the days since Sirius' childhood and subsequent departure. The abundance of red-headed teenagers along with their parents and consequently their copious numbers of un-biological children created an unseemly amount of noise, yet not a single one of the house guests could manage a night of rest without the presence of so many other restless bodies.
Perhaps it was the unsettling whisper of war in the quiet recesses of the minds of all that allowed for the however strained, generally amiable atmosphere within the home of aristocratic purebloods. Each order member was –not that they'd dare speak such a thing aloud, comfortable.
This feeling of course temporary, fleeting as it remained the case for the course of a mere month after a young boy of the Chosen One's age had his life fall apart. The inhabitants of the house knew his name, one in particular better than the rest, a girl with the bushiest hair Walburga Black had ever seen, a fact she announced habitually. Hermione was well aware of this however, she was a witch for goodness sakes and there was not even a potion to cure her particular ailment!
However, the state of her hair truly had ceased to bother her these past few months, she'd hardly been idle a minute. And those rare seconds in which she had been, her thoughts had drifted to a boy who had managed to convince her that her atrocious bird's nest was not truly that horrific.
Thoughts of him however left her melancholic, lounging alone in the first floor library, her nose buried within a book that was of very little use to their current situation, trying desperately not to remember what it was like to read with him.
X
The boy however was similarly plagued with unwanted thoughts of the girl who had broken his heart, it had been a month ago, the truth had been revealed and in a flurry of tears and apologies and she left without ever having explained herself. All he knew was it had been a rouse, the entirety of their whirlwind three months together was false, for she and the order she worked for had discovered his particular fondness for her and used it to their advantage.
At first the boy had been numb, not from firewhiskey or the cold, perhaps a tad from the cold, he had sat ramrod straight for three days in the exact place where she'd abandoned him, the fire he had lit for her comfort dying out with the removal of her presence.
While he did not indulge the local villagers their ghost stories by moaning and yelling, he remained silent in the Shrieking Shack as his shock gave way to a fury that simmered and grew. This of course had brought the anger which seared his veins and destroyed priceless artefact after artefact inside his family's Manor upon his eventual return, it was however not very long before he sought to share his pain with those who would recognise how unfair it was to hurt so very much. While the Dark Lord and his father alike noticed his adaptation, neither rose eyebrows nor questioned his newfound commitment to the cause, rather commending the boy as they relished in the contempt which led him to act as though they had wished he would all these years.
That was until the day Fenrir Greyback and his fellow death eaters were captured or killed in their attempts to take the Weasley's burrow, a plan he'd exposed through his transparent demand for knowledge of her whereabouts. A plan the brightest witch of their age quickly recognised between their kisses, as desperate as he was for her word that she would not be in the vicinity, for the possibility of losing her drove him half mad. And in the days that followed, the spectacularly botched mission and subsequent questions, suspicion came hurtling his way.
X
The alarm of the infiltrated wards set panic fluttering in her chest, she didn't know enough to protect neither herself nor any other occupant of this house from an intruder, particularly of the kind they should be expecting. Moody's shouted "constant vigilance!" taunted her, though she hardly had the time to berate herself. She'd spent the week reading up on ruddy healing spells, with Madame Pomfrey's absence she was all the order had, studying all she could just in case.
Stupid, she cursed herself, books would be of no use to her now, she was virtually alone, with the exception of an otherwise occupied Ginny and Dean, though given the sounds she'd heard escaping their unsilenced room before her assistance, she doubted they'd be of any use. Merlin, she couldn't do this.
Calm yourself, Hermione, she instructed, every inch the Hogwarts Head Girl she had never quite become as she crept silently towards the front door. Her stealth placating the portraits who appreciated her attempts to remain unseen, nothing unsettled them more than a mudblood strutting their halls.
With a steeling breath and silent prayer to an entity no one of this world knew of, Hermione Granger leapt into the blackness, her Gryffindor courage at an all time foolish high. However, this fled her system at record speed, only to be replaced by fear of bone-chilling, all consuming variety as the girl rushed and dropped to her knees beside the crumpled body of none other than Draco Malfoy.
Thankfully, she had the presence of mind to bite her tongue on her scream, it would not do to draw any further attention to those that surely lurked about.
She felt nothing but dread as she reached for him, a tentative hand to the body she'd touched a thousand times. Only upon the marriage of her fingers to his soaking robes alerted her to a greater dread than she had initially acknowledged, Draco had not been stupefied, nor would she wager his less than impressive complexion had much to do with far too much time spent indoors, no, the man was bleeding out on the doorstep of a location he should not have known.
With urgent panic, Ginny and Dean be damned, Hermione sent for any occupant of the home to know of her desperate need for assistance.
Reaching for Draco once more she had confirmed his ink of the night robes were drenched in blood, liquid ruby staining her fingers and palms as she could not quench her need to touch him, soothe him in the only manner with which she was aware. She felt more than heard the pitiful and terrifying brush of air that was his words, her excitement so intense she very nearly laughed with relief. She hushed him gently; knowing his futile attempts to speak would only further weaken him, a fate she could not bare to see him suffer.
On his next attempt to speak, Hermione cupped his cheek, his brilliant mercury eyes snapping open at the perfect fit of their skin, though they were unfocused as all his energy was devoted to his croaking request.
"Amnesty," he breathed and pleaded all at once before his eyes drooped and his breathing shallowed, leaving Hermione Granger unable to be deterred from screaming, "no!" in the misleadingly empty darkness of this cool spring night.
