Hello lovely readers. Thanks to all who have favorited or followed this story. I struggled a bit with this chapter, but I'm keen to get to Draco and Hermione having a chance to interact directly. Please write a review. If you haven't looked at my profile yet, you should know that my writing habits are directly proportionate to the number of reviews I get. Favoriting and following are for you, really, and reviews are incentive for me to keep writing for you. It's the only form of payment you can offer me, and let's face it, you screen stories based on the number of reviews received, don't you? So help me attract more readers by reviewing, please! Thanks!


"So they are in the Scottish Highlands." Snape paced once, then stood with his hands on the windowsill, looking at the grounds of the castle. "Things are coming to a head rather quickly. I must insist, Draco, that you keep watch on the Room of Requirement. Potter and crew will most certainly gain access to the castle, and they will make for that room. When they do, you must be there to aid them in retrieving that which they seek. Do you understand?"

Draco could see from the way Snape's fingers clenched the stone window ledge that this activity of Potter's, whatever it was, was of great importance.

"Yes, I understand," he said slowly. "Is this potentially it, then?" He left the last part unvoiced—the end—but they both knew what he meant.

"Yes." Snape said, standing to his full height abruptly. "Owl your father. As agreed."

Draco nodded and left the room swiftly, his feet automatically taking him to the Owlery with a rapid stride. He didn't notice that the beat of his footsteps matched the staccato beat of his heart.


"Did you hear that?"

Draco was disgusted by Vincent Crabbe's excited tone. Of course he had heard the golden trio, he was the one who had been following them! The fact that he'd picked up Crabbe and Goyle along the way was unavoidable. Hopefully he could keep them in line.

"Yeah, let's go," Greg Goyle said in a low voice as they rounded the corner of the corridor. Draco couldn't say he was surprised that Hermione was right in the thick of things. The trio had disappeared up the stairs to the seventh floor, and he knew where they were headed.

"Do you reckon it's safe to fly?" Ron whispered, gesturing to a small group of broomsticks as they made their way around the piles of junk in the Room of Requirement.

"Of course not, Ron!" Hermione masked her uncertainty with irritation. Ever since the events at Malfoy Manor, she had found Ron's presence to be more irritating than helpful. Despite how often her brain tried to remind her of his good qualities, she couldn't help but feel he wasn't it for her. His disappearance had pretty well cemented that, but now she was finding it hard to trust his instincts, too.

"Oh, okay 'Mione," he said, that apologetic look in his eyes again.

Hermione ducked her head to avoid making eye contact. Focus, Hermione!

It was odd to be back in Hogwarts. There was something there, beyond the malevolence of the Death Eaters running the place. Some niggling feeling at the back of her mind said that there was something else important here, something else she needed to find other than the Horcrux. Shaking her head to clear it, she took a deep breath as Harry crept toward the bust he remembered, a tiara dangling from it.

The heavy door swung open soundlessly for Draco with a flick of his wand. The Room of Requirement was full of all the things he had grown to know quite well during his time working on the vanishing cabinet. He sent Vincent and Greg off to the left, his senses telling him that Hermione had headed in the opposite direction with Potter and Weasel.

The room was eerily quiet, and Draco's unease grew as the seconds ticked away. They must have used a silencing spell. Finally he ran into Greg, who gestured with his head in the direction Crabbe had gone. They were not two steps away when Vincent fired at someone, then dodged a return hex. Greg fired his own hexes, apparently catching sight of another one of them.

Draco pushed his way forward, his wand out. "STOP! The Dark Lord wants him alive—"

Vincent ignored him. "Look, it's that Mudblood! Avada Kedavra!"

Draco felt his teeth lengthen as he snapped a curse at Vincent, consequences be damned. A convenient spell from one of the Gryffindors knocked a stack of debris over Vincent's head at the same time, and a quick glance at Greg showed that he was too busy casting his own spells to notice that Draco had just hexed Vincent. He could hear the Gryffindors now—they're unsilenced again, the bloody fools! More spells were being exchanged, the sound of running footsteps and crashes of piles of junk making it difficult to tell where Hermione was heading. He darted a look to his left, and saw Greg dodging and exchanging curses with Weasley. Draco himself dodged two curses from Potter, firing his own lazy attempts while he tried desperately to catch a glimpse of Hermione. He could smell her, she was close—around that stack of old desks—

"Like it hot, do you?"

Draco's head whipped to the right and he saw Vincent swirling his wand over his head, flames bursting forth with wrathful faces.

"Shit!"

He knew that spell, saw the moment of realization on Vincent's face as the Fiendfyre broke away from him. Draco's head whipped around, looking for Hermione. Her scent was being rapidly swallowed up by the growing fire. Shit shit shit!

"Ron!" Harry screamed, scrambling back to the pile of brooms as thick, choking smoke began billowing. Hermione's heartrate seemed to have skyrocketed to a million miles an hour. She had never been so thankful to grasp a broom handle in her life.

"We've got to help them," Hermione said, and Harry nodded, taking off quickly. It was difficult to see, the heat from the flames rampaging making it impossible to hear anything. She tilted right, hoping that it was where they had left Malfoy and his goons.

Draco couldn't tell where she was, but his own situation was deteriorating by the second. The flames were devouring everything, and he began to scramble up the pile of desks, vaguely aware that Greg was doing the same as the air filled with deep smoke. He could feel his shirt shredding—he would fly out, grab Hermione—all of his senses were consumed with finding her. He coughed, the smoke thick and acrid as the orange yellow flames licked higher. It was time—the seam at the back of his coat was giving way—

"Draco!"

He smelled her at the same time that he saw her. She was zooming toward him on a broom, her hand outstretched. Never had such a sight been more welcome in his life. He grabbed her hand and swung himself on the broom behind her, grabbing her waist tight as she navigated the piles of flaming debris toward the door. Draco's heart was racing, and his forehead dropped forward between her shoulder blades briefly, the warmth and life of his mate so treasured he couldn't do anything other than breathe in her scent.

She used my first name.

His mind buzzed with bone deep relief, aware that there were others on brooms. A quick look showed Potter, Weasley, and Greg. No sign of Vincent.

Fool. Years of friendship, all incinerated by the overwhelming dominance of his Veela genes. Draco didn't have time to think about how that made him feel, the flames licking at the broom straws now as they felt the first wisps of cool air from the open door.

They made it through the door and it slammed itself closed, the heat from the fire still palpable as they all tumbled from the brooms to the ground. Draco winced as his partially emerged wings hit the stone floor, rolling to his back so it wasn't obvious that something was under his mercifully intact coat. He coughed violently again and took a quick look: Greg was there, but Stupefied by the look of him, and Potter, and Weasley, and Hermione. And a diadem that looked strangely like Ravenclaw's diadem, but it was leaking a black, viscous fluid.

"I'll take that," Hermione said, grabbing his wand as he coughed again, his lungs mightily confused by the twinned scents of acrid smoke and his mate's essence.

"Hey," Draco protested, causing Hermione to turn back toward him with a skeptical look in her eye. He glanced quickly over: Weasley and Potter were dealing with Greg, moving him somewhere. "He's coming. Now. You need to get out of here, Granger."

"I know what's coming, Malfoy," Hermione responded hotly, "And I'm not going anywhere. Some things are worth fighting for. I'd suggest you run along and hide if you're not really so committed to your vaunted pureblood principles."

The vehement anger that exuded from her expression and her stance made Draco's Veela instincts cry in anguish. She turned away again, this time ready to go with Harry and Weasel.

"I hope you do!" Draco shouted after her as they ran off. Her head turned slightly, so he knew she heard him, and they were out of sight. His chest hurt, like someone had stabbed him with a stiletto, not to mention the scrapes and contusions on his wings and back. "Fuck, she really hates me."


The Great Hall was a mass of rubble, littered with still forms and the occasional burst of crying, a low murmur of conversation the background drone to the dismal scene of carnage.

"Draco! Draco, Draco," his mother wept, pulling him close, her tears wetting his neck. "Draco, it's over, it's over."

Draco absentmindedly patted his mother's back, her words a dull roar at the back of his head. "Yes, it's over."

"My son." Lucius didn't say any more than that, but the clasp he gave his family said it all. They were lucky, very lucky, to be alive. Draco breathed the scent of his mother's perfume, still clinging faintly to her like a wraith, while his eyes tracked Hermione, who was being swallowed in hugs and tears from the Weasley family.

"What now?" His voice was hoarse, but his father knew exactly what he meant.

"We will have to make it through our trials. I have already given our solicitors the information they need to prepare our defense."

Draco broke his gaze away from Hermione to look at his father. "I don't want it to come out in public. Nothing that would humiliate her."

"Of course not," Lucius sniffed, a hint of his old supercilious self showing briefly. "But she will be told, and arrangements will be made—"

"NO." Draco's tone was no less insistent for being low, in keeping with the need to not draw attention to themselves at the moment. "I will not have her forced, Father. I want time to court her, do it the right way."

"But Draco, the strain—" his mother began, but Draco shook his head violently.

"No. She hates me. The only chance I have is to court her. Otherwise they might as well sentence me to the Kiss right now," he said, nodding to the approaching Aurors.

Lucius nodded reluctantly, exchanging a glance with Narcissa and then taking a brief look to his right. The Aurors, trials—these were all a formality, really. Cissy would be free to direct their solicitors and their defense, the evidence already carefully collected. That's all right, then.

"Lucius. Draco."

Lucius stood reluctantly at the flat tones of Kingsley Shacklebolt. He knew full well what it was like to be held by the Ministry, but Draco had not yet had that dubious pleasure. He offered the only advice available for the moment, noting Draco's painful wince when the magical handcuffs were applied.

"Chin up, Draco. Malfoys still matter."


Hermione nudged her way through the looky-loos at the back of the entrance hall to the Wizengamot. Unlike them, she had a pass to the proceedings. She made it through Severus Snape's trial, and was privately relieved that her former professor had been found to not only be innocent, but an undisputed hero of the Light. Harry hadn't told her all of what he'd learned from the pensieve, but he had testified privately on Snape's behalf. The Ministry had refused to publish all the details of Snape's actions, citing continuing security risks from missing Death Eaters, but the Hogwarts board of governors had unanimously agreed to extend the position of headmaster to Snape again in light of his bravery. She hadn't heard yet if he had accepted it.

"Hermione, hey," Harry said, sliding down the bench to make room for her.

"Good morning Harry."

Hermione took her seat without much fanfare. Alvatore Beramine, the new head of the Wizengamot, had evicted all members of the press from the courtroom, so the trials were only observed by members of the wizarding public, who then ran out to the waiting reporters with Quick Quotes quills, Rememberalls, and some extremely dodgy memory recall spells. The Ministry published a daily report summarizing trial proceedings, but some of the trials were private due to information deemed too sensitive even for this limited degree of exposure.

"Should be interesting, eh?" Harry said, stealing a quick look at Hermione. She was still thin, but recovering now that she'd reconnected with her parents in Australia. "Did your parents make it back okay?"

Hermione looked away briefly, murmuring, "Actually, they've decided to stay in Australia for the time being—you know, they're not sure this is really all settled, so they are being…cautious."

Her slight, apologetic smile didn't fool Harry. He clasped her hand and squeezed it before returning his hand to his lap. Hermione's breath huffed out briefly, and she opened her mouth to say something when a door at the side of the main floor opened, and all the assorted wizarding solicitors and Aurors stood or flocked in, flanking the prisoner on trial today. Hisses and boos filled the air as the defendant was led in, his platinum blond hair tousled, his jaw unshaven. Hermione found her heart speeding up slightly, and she wished she had Harry's hand still to hold onto. No matter what had happened between her and the tall, blond young man in shackles, she didn't like to see anyone treated to such disrespect. He lifted his head briefly as he passed below them, but his eyes didn't quite reach high enough to meet hers. Was that dirt or a bruise on his cheek? Her brow wrinkled—was she disappointed to not see his eyes? She had no further time to contemplate it, however, as Alvatore Beramine entered then, swiftly settling himself in the Supreme Mugwump's chair.

"Draco Malfoy."

Draco stood hesitantly, the shackles on his ankles and wrists a clumsy confusion for muscles that had been frozen for so many minutes after being "held" by a petrification charm in the antechamber. He faced the stern faces of several Aurors and some previously junior ministers who had been promoted.

A cabal of judges for the pretense of trials. Everyone knew that those with Dark Marks were going to go to Azkaban as the default, and possibly being Kissed for their crimes. It was getting out of that prescribed fate that was the tricky business. There was no presumption of innocence when the Dark Lord had tattooed his ownership in your very blood.

"You are accused of being an active Death Eater and participating in numerous crimes against the Wizarding world. How do you plead?"

Draco cleared his throat, then fixed his level gaze on the Supreme Mugwump. "I claim the right to a trial by the Atrium Secretorum."

He heard a few gasps behind him in the gallery, then a low murmur ran through the courtroom audience. He only cared that Hermione was there. Perhaps there was some hope for him after this was over with, after all. Kingsley Shacklebolt leaned forward slightly to converse in a hushed tone with the Supreme Mugwump, then fixed his attention on Draco.

"And are you prepared to prove the right of this claim by Veritaserum or by blood?" Kingsley's low baritone could be heard through the far reaches of the courtroom, and you could hear a pin drop in the silence that followed.

Draco took a deep breath. "By either, actually."

The murmurs broke out into a full-fledged cacophony. Kingsley Shacklebolt stood up, wand to his throat as he roared, "Silence!"

The crowd hushed as Kingsley turned deliberately to come around to the front of the enormous table. His wand was quick, the shackles falling to the floor as he took hold of Draco's upper arm. "You with me. Now."

The fascinated eyes of all present tracked the minister-elect as he dragged Draco Malfoy from the room, two Aurors and the Supreme Mugwump trailing behind.