Disclaimer: you read the other chapters, didn't you?

AN. Poemzie: thanks once again for reviewing. I have a sneaking suspicion you are slightly prejudiced in my favour, but I really appreciate the sentiment all the same. And I love you dearly for it.

Shyngr8: thank you for worrying about my university education: screensaver-Lucius most heartily agrees with you ;-) I am afraid between the two of you, I am going to have to listen. Nevertheless I am seriously pleased with your review (does happy-dance) every time I post another chapter, I find myself looking forward to your reviews. This really is addictive! Couldn't someone have at least warned me, before I got myself into this? Anyway, I couldn't resist posting another chapter, just for the joy of reviews... please indulge me!

(Okay, small note here: I love the word 'indulge'. Every time I read it or write it down, I hear Alan Rickman saying it...gods does that man have a delicious voice... If you have no idea what I am talking about, go and see Sense and Sensibility and watch carefully as Colonel Brandon explains to Elinor why he rushed off the day they were supposed to have a picnic!)

Just a general question for whoever feels compelled to answer: what rating do you think this story should have at the moment? I rated it 'R' just to be on the safe side, but I have a feeling the rating's a little too high for now.

Anyway... I'm getting side-tracked here. Please review! Indulge me! (ooh, did it again! swoons)

To Save a Malfoy

Ch. 4 The truce

Hermione knew her lips were moving, but there was no sound as she looked from one man to the other.

"What...? How...? But..? I don't..." she managed very eloquently.

Neither of the men seemed to hear her. Professor Snape's gaze was fixed on Lucius' face, the strangest half-smile Hermione had ever seen on his own. The man in the bed seemed more at ease than she had yet seen him. Although he was still very weak, his eyes had a gleam to them that hadn't been there before. The medi-witch, still sitting on the side of the bed, was trying to come to terms with the fact that her surly Potions professor was convinced that her patient was Lucius Malfoy. The Lucius Malfoy that had been involved in Death Eater activities over the last fifteen years, the Lucius Malfoy that she had met in Diagon Alley in Flourish and Blotts at the beginning of her second year, the Lucius Malfoy that had been captured and was awaiting sentencing.

Looking at her patients face, she supposed there was a resemblance between him and the man she had come to known as Lucius Malfoy. The differences between the two would probably be all but eradicated the moment her patient had regained some weight. Merlin knew the hair wasn't something one came across with regularity. And although she had not been so close to the other Lucius as to be able to judge the exact colour of his eyes, she had been almost literally nose to nose with Draco often enough to see that there was a great resemblance between -his- eyes and her patient's.

Draco.

Now there was another complication. Draco Malfoy, much to everyone's surprise, had come back for his sixth year at Hogwarts a changed man. When he had entered the compartment Harry, Ron and Hermione had been occupying on the Hogwarts Express, all of them expected insults, a brawl. Harry and Ron had been surreptitiously checking their wands and Hermione had felt on edge immediately. To their utter surprise, he had asked in an even voice if he might sit down for a moment.

Harry had narrowed his eyes at him and snapped: "What do you want, Ferret?"

The pale Slytherin had considered that an invitation apparently, for he stepped inside their compartment, closed the door behind him and sat down, casting a Silencing Charm for good measure.

Of course, by then he'd been staring at both Harry's and Ron's wands, pointed straight at him. Malfoy had merely smirked at them, laying his own wand on his lap. Within easy reach, but it was down nonetheless.

The two Gryffindors had exchanged a glance. "I repeat: what do you want, Malfoy?" said Harry.

By then Hermione had figured she's better step in, before her two overeager friends would get themselves expelled. "Where are your sycophants, Malfoy? Aren't you afraid if you leave them to their own devices for too long, they'll start thinking for themselves?"

Hogwarts second-best student had turned to face her, one raised eyebrow and a smirk showing his amusement. "I left them with a pile of cauldron cakes and told them not to eat them, Granger. That'll keep them busy until I get back." The remark was casual, dry, reminding the Gryffindor girl of their prank with the Polyjuice Potion and the drugged cake in their second year. She almost snorted, before narrowing her eyes at Malfoy. Did he know something he wasn't telling them?

"Look," he'd said, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees, "I have not come here to have wands pointed at me or to discuss Crabbe and Goyle's IQ, however entertaining that may be. I want to offer a truce."

"And what makes you think we'd accept a truce from a backstabbing Slytherin like yourself?" Ron of course.

Malfoy had smirked again. "Glad to find there are some constants in the universe."

"Why do you want a truce?" Harry.

"Let's just say I have been doing some thinking and I concluded some alterations were in order."

"But why?" Harry again.

"Does it matter?" the blond young man had asked, "I am offering you the opportunity of a truce, do you really need to know why?"

"As a matter of fact, we do Malfoy. We don't trust you," Harry, through gritted teeth this time.

"And you shouldn't," the Slytherin had grinned, "Just accept the chance I'm giving you."

"You're giving -us- a chance? Now that's undiluted Malfoy arrogance if I ever saw it! You're the one that came to us!" Hermione had burst out.

"Exactly. And we're not falling for your plan whatever it is, so you can go and tell the other Slytherins they should've sent someone who'd be more convincing than you!" Ron cut in heatedly.

"Do you see any other Slytherins?" Malfoy'd asked, for the first time loosing some of his calm demeanour "do you think I go around casting Silencing Charms because I need the practice? Better yet, in the past five years, how many times have you seen me without Crabbe and Goyle outside of the Quidditch pitch?"

His arguments were about to be discarded by Ron and Harry, but Hermione had been turning things over in her mind. She had noticed the change in his attitude before he had stepped into their compartment: he hadn't insulted any of them or called her Mudblood even once that day, in spite of ample opportunity. She was puzzled by it, but for as far as she, or anyone for that matter, could tell, he seemed to be utterly sincere. For a Slytherin at least.

"What harm is there in giving it a try?" she'd asked.

"Finally," Malfoy muttered.

She'd fixed him with a glare. "Don't think you have won me over, Malfoy! I will be watching your every move!"

"I'll be sure to pass your sentiments on to Dumbledore when I have a talk with him later," Malfoy had answered haughtily. As he had undoubtedly anticipated, the Headmaster's name caused a stunned silence.

"You're going to talk to Dumbledore?" Ron asked, stunned.

"That's what I just said, wasn't it?" Malfoy rolled his eyes.

"Eventually you are going to have to explain to us exactly why you are doing this," Hermione had said, once again stepping in before the boys got into a full-blown sparring contest.

Malfoy had looked her calmly in the eye and even though his cool grey eyes gave no indication of his thoughts, for once the sneer on his face was absent. The girl absently noted that when he wasn't looking at her as if she was something that had just crawled out from under a rock he wasn't half bad-looking. And besides, it wasn't as if they were suddenly declaring themselves best friends. They were merely suspending the hostilities.

After a moment's consideration she held out her hand to him.

"Truce."

He shook hands with her. "Truce."

She raised an eyebrow at the two boys on the opposite bench. They glanced at each other and shrugged.

"Oh, what the hell..." said Ron, with an expression as if he had just agreed to become Percy's personal assistant.

"Stranger things have happened...." muttered Harry, looking as if he wasn't so sure.

But they placed their right hands on Hermione's and Malfoy's.

The Slytherin got up after that, turning to Hermione before releasing the Silencing Charm. "Thanks, Granger." Hermione felt her own face forming a smirk that would have done Malfoy himself proud at the thought of him thanking her. His calling her Granger was proof of the subtlety in which the Slytherins lived: no first name, because they were by no means friends, but she supposed it was a lot better than being called 'Mudblood'.

As he slid open the door, Harry asked: "This is not going to change anything at Quidditch, is it?"

"Hell no!" Malfoy smirked.

"Good," Harry said, "I'd hate to loose the only bit of decent competition I have."

To the Gryffindors' amazement, the Slytherin grinned at that and said something that sounded suspiciously like: "Likewise, Potter." as he slid the door closed.

After that they'd never gone back to being enemies. Oh sure, Draco had still been an insufferable arrogant git at times, but... well... he was still a Malfoy, wasn't he? And of course Ron and Harry found enough reasons to get into arguments with the Slytherin. Hermione had found herself more than once yelling at the pale boy, infuriated even more by his obvious amusement of her annoyance. There'd been more than one occasion she'd been sorely tempted to hex the arrogant smirk off his face. And even though they still didn't know his reasons for the sudden change of heart or trust him a very great deal, their truce was not broken, much to the surprise of everyone.

That had all changed though, when one night had found Ginny knocking urgently on Hermione's door, telling her Harry had asked her to come to their dormitory as fast as she could. Worried, Hermione had complied immediately, thinking Harry or Ron was in some kind of trouble. Nothing had prepared her for what she actually found, though. Harry was sitting on the edge of his four-poster bed, while Ron was anxiously pacing at the foot. At her entrance, Ron stopped in his tracks and Harry looked up at her. "He didn't want to go to Madam Pomfrey," he said, an apologetic tone in his voice. As Hermione walked towards the bed, she saw that there was one more person in the room: on the bed lay Draco Malfoy and from the looks of it, he was unconscious. It turned out the Slytherins were not too happy about Draco's decision to make a truce with the Gryffindors and they made their sentiments known in a decidedly non-Slytherin way; a group of them had been waiting for him as he finished practicing his flying and beat him up. Harry and Ron, in a most extraordinary coincidence had been studying the Marauders Map at that very moment, as they were planning an unauthorized trip to the kitchens. Apparently Draco had been adamant about not going to the hospital wing, so they'd brought him with them to Gryffindor tower under the guise of the Invisibility Cloak. Hermione had applied her considerable skills to heal his bruises, cuts and broken bones and the three of them had managed to keep him in the Gryffindor dormitory for the night and keep an eye on him, without the other Gryffindor boys noticing that Ron did very little sleeping that night or seeing the impression of the weight of another two people on Harry's bed the following morning, as Hermione and Draco sat waiting under the Invisibility Cloak, till they could leave the dormitory unseen and go to Dumbledore.

Like the troll incident, it had proven to be an experience one cannot go through together without becoming friends; especially since they found out that night, that their truce and the Slytherins' rage were brought on by the same fact: Draco Malfoy had switched sides. He had chosen the side of the war that placed him exactly opposite the people he had considered his peers for most of his life and his own father. As Dumbledore had put it, it was bravery worthy of a Gryffindor, but only feasible to a Slytherin.

And now his life might once again change drastically. Because the man who had been his father for the last twenty years, might not actually be his father. As Hermione looked at her patient's face once more, she knew she had to have some evidence at least, before she could even think of telling Draco about their suspicion. And of course Dumbledore would have to be informed.

But first things first: she had to go and find Harry. She had a favour to ask of him.