Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, et cetera, this work is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work. Any similarities to other fanfiction stories are completely coincidental.


"Malfoy, wake up!" Hermione hissed at me. She was sitting at her new table that was next to my window seat. "You're talking about your task in your sleep." My eyes grew big, I held my breath. "No one else heard, but you need sleep, go to the Room of Requirements and sleep if you have to."

"I'm fine."

"You're forgetting to glamour the circles under your eyes, I'd offer to remind you but it would draw attention to the fact that you willingly talk to me." I looked at her and just shook my head. Then I sighed.

"You're right. I just don't know what to do! I'm racking my brain for a way to save my family. I can't defy that monster, he will kill them." I looked out the window and watched some students walking and laughing down in a courtyard. "He'll kill me." I said it quietly enough but I knew she heard me.

"Have you thought about telling…"

"He knows about the task. And Snape took an unbreakable vow. One of us will kill him by the end of the year."

"Have you made progress with the cabinet?" I wished she would talk about something else. This was going through my head enough already. I had confessed everything to her within three weeks of the new school year when we finally found ourselves alone in the library.

"Enough to please him," we were quiet for a bit. Hermione turned back to her essay. She got another page done before I spoke again. "He'll kill my mother if I don't let them into the school." Her quill stopped.

"You know how to fix it already, don't you?" She didn't even look up at me.

"Just about, I will wait until a month before school ends though to actually open it. That's as much as I can delay it without risking my mother's life."

"I can hide the younger students in a dungeon room or something, far away from the fight. Minimize the damage." She set her quill down and was rubbing her neck with her hands.

"You'll only raise suspicion for yourself. Potter and Weasley would know that you knew the plan, that you were helping me."

"Draco, I don't care if they know anymore."

"You have to maintain the trust you have built up with them. You have to help Potter defeat him. Hermione, even I know you are key to that. Potter knows I am a death eater but he thinks I chose to be. He will see you helping me as a betrayal." I was watching her, seeing her reaction. She just rested her hands in her lap and looked at her essay.

"I just want to help you. I want to help keep you alive." That was the one thing we never did, we never focused on the fact that I could be killed at any point this year for failing my task or taking too long. And we had done it twice now in five minutes. She was practically killing herself doing research to try and help me, trying to figure out a way to remove the mark. She had only suggested that I run once. She knew she couldn't convince me to so she never suggested it again.

"I don't deserve to be alive. I want to turn myself into the ministry. I want to break my wand in half. I fucking killed people to prove myself. My father made me torture muggles. I saw them beg for forgiveness. I saw hatred in their eyes. And I didn't show any sympathy. I showed no restraint. I saved my own ass. I should have turned and killed my father…"

"Draco! You made choices. You can't go back and change them. You have to remember that your choices do not define you. You can regret and wish but it does nothing." I opened my mouth to protest. "I'm not finished, you know what you are doing is wrong, you still have a heart. I don't give a damn what anyone else thinks, I know who you are and I would put my life in your hands."

I sighed, she was waiting for me to reply. I don't want her life in my hands, I don't want to come to that point and watch her killed at my hand. I didn't want to get to the point where I had to reveal myself to my father.

"Don't put your life in my hands." I hung my head. Hermione reached out and grasped my hand that was in my lap. She lifted my face with her other hand and looked me in the eye.

"Hey, I have before, and I will until the day I die." I remembered back to a time in the forbidden forest when we were gathering potion ingredients. We ended up surrounded by giant spiders and barely made it out alive. I had to run her to the hospital wing because she had been bitten. Luckily it was late and there weren't students to see me. Madam Pomfrey was the only one who knew. I begged her not to tell anyone that I had brought her. My father couldn't hear about it. I broke eye contact with her and looked back out the window. She finally released my hand and moved back to her essay.

"How are we going to protect the students?" I finally managed.

"We're prefects, I could plan a mandatory tutoring session for that night, get the other prefects to agree. The older students would be able to fight because they would still be in their dorms or spread out in the castle. The younger students would have prefects to protect them though, we could choose a classroom deep within the castle, possibly deep in the dungeons, furthest from the cabinet."

"That just might work, I can't think of how to make that any better. Start planning it with the prefects about two months before the end of the school year. I will give you an exact date when we get closer." I moved to the desk and pulled out some parchment. "Now, have you figured out the ingredients for that potion Snape wants brewed for extra credit?"