"Boy, why are you crying?"


There was a boy crying in her ear. Stop that.

Wendy Moira Angela Darling. No, that wasn't right. That wasn't her.. Just the story her mother liked to read.

Why are you crying?

Pain.

Hell.

No, that tastes bad. Oh. Relief, so nice.

Boy, why are you crying? No. No that was the story. Hermione, Dear, it's just a story. Magic is just a story. No pirates, no ships, no flying, crying boy at the window.

Mum?

"Why didn't you listen to me, stupid girl?"

Well, now. That's uncalled for.

Was she dying? That doesn't happen in the story.

Dying shouldn't hurt this bad.

Pain.

Stop. Stop. She was burning.

"Shhhh."

No. That was familiar. Don't listen to him, he can't tell you what to do.

"Shhh, Granger, quiet."

Don't tell me what to do.

"Merlin, Granger. Do you have a death wish?"

She cracked her eyes open. Hermione wasn't sure if she was awake or not. A bruised-eyed Malfoy stood beside her bed. That didn't seem right at all, so she assumed she was asleep.

Malfoy dipped his head to the side and pondered her. "Awake, are you?"

Hmmm. She didn't think so, and didn't bother answering.

"You almost died."

Yes, she definitely did. Wasn't sure if she didn't, to be honest.

"Your hair looks atrocious." He rubbed his nose. "Not that it ever looks anything but."

What had she done to deserve this circle of hell? She never thought her afterlife would be Malfoy insulting her hair while she lay silently on a cot in the hospital wing.

None of this made any sense. They'd been fighting and they'd been in a room. Neville… the men in masks… The one she'd silenced.

Oh. Hermione tried to surge up out of her bed, feeling somewhat lucid. She didn't count on the nausea tipping her to the side. She dry heaved, the pain around her torso multiplied. Stars burst behind her eyes and she fell back to the bed, desperate to stop retching.

Malfoy stood there still, his hands outstretched as if to catch her. So not a dream, then?

"We really need to stop meeting like this." He was trying to be funny, but as usual his humor fell flat. Comedian he was not. He didn't have the sense of timing for it.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy?"

"I asked the exact same question." A boy poked his head through the curtains. Malfoy's friend. The quiet one with the books and the dark, calculating eyes.

"Shut up, Theo."

Theo pulled back out of the curtains.

"I'm not sure how much longer I can keep the charm up," he said quietly from the other side of the fluttering cloth. "I've never been good at this one, so hurry it up Draco."

Malfoy scowled at Hermione's nightstand. "I wanted to check on you. See if you listened to me. Obviously you did not." His words were clipped and terse. "Merlin, Granger. You should have just listened to me."

Hermione didn't feel like being berated while in pain from her head to her toes, so she just closed her eyes and listened to Malfoy's voice. His voice was nice. Too bad he never said anything nice to match it

"Who else would teach me the patronus?"

She cracked her eyes open. Seriously? Still? He'd not been successful the entire year. She'd thought - hoped - he would let it go.

He smirked at her. "I'll find some other way to convince you to help me, Granger. You didn't think I'd settle for incomplete lessons, did you?"

"A girl can dream," she croaked.

His eyes were so grim. Had he really been that concerned? Something tilted inside her head. He'd tried to warn her. Oh, her chest hurt.

Draco Malfoy, the boy she couldn't puzzle out. The boy who wanted to learn the patronus, and blackmailed a schoolyard nemesis into teaching him. He was smart and vicious, and had mental walls of stone she couldn't break through. And he was standing at her bedside, for all appearances checking on her health. He'd tried to stop her from running straight into foolishness. They weren't friends.

She didn't understand, so she closed her eyes.

"I'm glad you didn't die." It was quiet, and by the time she opened her eyes to reply, his robes were slipping through the curtains hanging around her bed.

She didn't understand.


His arm was still on fire when he came-to. But it wasn't the flesh-being-stripped-from-his-arm pain. It was just regular old arm-is-on-fire pain. He could handle that. He could.

He rolled over and threw up.

"Finally!" Blaise was at his side instantly, vanishing his mess then fluttering his hands around uselessly. "You're awake. Finally. Your mom is worried! I need to tell her you woke up! Are you actually awake? Do you understand me?"

Blessedly, Theo entered the room. "Blaise, shut up. He's probably got the worst sort of hangover."

Hangover. If only. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and opened them. Time to look. Time to face the facts. He let his gaze drift down to his arm. It was there. Ugly and inflamed. He was officially under that creature's thumb. As if he never was. He was going to die. There was no way the Dark Lord was expecting him to succeed. But his mother. His mother.

He closed his eyes again. "Is she safe," he choked out. His throat felt raw.

Theo kneeled down by the couch and held up a vial of blue liquid. "She's fine. Worried about you. Blaise will let her know you're awake. Arm on fire, right?" He didn't wait for an answer, instead just uncapped the vial and pushed it at Draco's face. "Drink this. You'll feel cold all over, but that includes your arm."

It did make his body cold, he felt like a frozen stone. Ready to be tossed into the Black Lake and drown.

Theo must have caught his mood, because he dropped a hideous afghan around Draco's shoulders and whispered, "We'll figure it out. We knew something like this could happen. We'll figure it out."

Blaise strode in. "Got the notice off to your mother. She'll be relieved. Said not to come back for a bit, by the way. She'll cover for you for a bit, send a letter when it's okay to show your face around the manor." He took a hard look at Draco. "You look awful."

Theo snorted. "Of course he looks awful. You would, too."

Blaise gasped dramatically and put his hand to his chest. "Me? Never!"

Draco grimaced while Blaise pretended to fix his hair. They, all three of them were maybe a little vain, but Blaise was just being dramatic. He appreciated it, though, the way his friends were bantering in an effort to get his mind off the pain. Soon enough they would need to be serious. They needed a plan. Maybe he should cut himself off from them and make the plans on his own. Keep them safe.

It hit him suddenly, that he was no longer a safe friend to have, not even in secret. Not even if no one knew you were friends. But someone did know they were friends, and he trusted Theo, but even his best friend could be compromised. He needed to cut off Granger.

Something in his chest hurt. He didn't…. He didn't want to stop his lessons. Even if they usually ended up debating runes, history, spell origin, or books in loud voices. Even if half the time they ended up dueling. Merlin. Would anything ever be okay again?


Harry was quiet again. Sirius was gone. Dead, they all assured her. Because he'd come out to fight when Harry was in trouble. She thought telling him that Sirius wouldn't want to go any other way wouldn't help at all, so she didn't, even though it was true.

They didn't talk about anything. Not for a long time. Not until Diagon Alley.

Not until they saw Draco Malfoy in the Madam Malkin's and Harry insists upon following him into Knockturn Alley. Not until Harry latched onto the idea that Malfoy was a Death Eater.

Then that was all he wanted to talk about. It drove Hermione mad. She didn't want to talk about Malfoy at all. It made her feel shifty, like she was keeping a dirty secret. But she wasn't. She wasn't. She'd agreed to teach Malfoy one measly spell so he wouldn't turn them in.

But afterwards? Something in her mind whispered. You weren't always teaching spells. You didn't cut him off after.

She shifted uncomfortably against the tree she'd propped up against while the boys played quidditch. It was true. He'd sent her a letter completely in code without any key. It took her almost the entire summer to decipher. By the time she'd figured it out, she was too angry with Malfoy to reply. He'd used Hogwarts, A History as a code for his stupid threatening letter! The fact that he'd coded "Don't talk about it" at all rang so completely ludicrous, she'd sent him a reply coded the exact same way with a decidedly more obscure book only just referenced in the body of the code.

She'd burned his letter, as per his request. But she didn't see why. He'd simply reminded her she still would be teaching him that spell.

She hoped he spent a lot of time working out her letter. She took a vindictive sort of pleasure in her incredibly wordy letter that boiled down to, "Malfoy, piss off."

It made her happy. Anyone looking at the letter without the key or code would think she was an older gentlemen doddering on about the study of archaic latin. All of the discussion about it was true, too. She was immensely pleased with herself.

The boys landed in the grass finally. Neither of them were quite what Hermione would call 'high energy,' but they both looked windswept and upbeat.

But Harry's eyes were bruised and tired. He'd confided in Hermione that he was practicing emptying his mind before bed, but that it took time. So much time for him to let go of everything, especially Sirius. They walked behind the Weasleys towards the Burrow.

The boys rumbled and fought over the shower as Mrs. Weasley pulled Hermione into the kitchen. "You got a letter, dear," she said, already turning away toward her open potions book.

Hermione stared at the crisp white parchment, folded up with her name carefully printed on the outside. She could pretend she didn't recognize the handwriting, but felt silly trying to lie to herself.

"Did you recognize the owl that delivered it?"

"Hmm?" Mrs. Weasley glanced up from her book, her mind worlds away from the kitchen. "Oh, no dear. It wasn't a school owl. Proud brown thing, well mannered but a bit imperious. Didn't recognize it at all, must have been from an office."

"Thanks," Hermione murmured. She grabbed her letter and strode back out of the Burrow. She probably didn't need to worry about someone reading it over her shoulder, it was probably coded.

He'd used Hogwarts, a History again. He wasn't even trying that hard. The letter was short. "Releasing" her from her "obligation" to teach him the patronus. She should have felt relieved, but somehow felt let down instead.

That ass. He just couldn't make up his mind, could he? But something in her whispered there was a good reason. The Malfoy she knew and hated wouldn't have just let go of an opportunity to learn an advantageous spell for no reason.

She didn't want to think about it. It made her angry. It made her feel concerned for the stupid man. It made her pick apart their meetings and angry conversations; made her want to understand what was going on with him. Though, if Harry was right about the whole Diagon Alley debacle, that would explain…

She didn't understand.

She hated not understanding.

/

Hogwarts wasn't the same. Students were quiet, even the little ones. The first years weren't just awed and nervous, they were terrified. She was terrified. Her path to the library wasn't a horrendously long one, but there were footsteps echoing behind her. When she glanced over her shoulder to see who it was, the echoing stopped and there was no one there.

So determined was she to not be afraid, to not walk faster, she didn't notice when the footsteps caught up to her and shoved her into the door of an unused classroom.

"What," she yelled, pulling her wand from her sleeve. She looked around wildly, already encased in invisible protective shields.

"Relax, Granger," a quiet voice drawled, and Nott appeared out of thin air next to the door. "I just wanted to talk."

She didn't let her shields down, but she pretended to relax. "I need to get to the library. You have two minutes."

Nott's mouth twitched up on one side. "It's the first full day back," he murmured. "What do you need the library for?"

"To study. Don't ask stupid questions."

He held his hands up. "Okay, okay. I'm just here to clarify something. Don't talk to Draco. At all. It's best if you just pretend he doesn't exist, in fact. Don't draw any attention to your… lack of enmity."

She glared at him. It was stupid advice. Of course she wasn't going to draw attention to their 'lack of enmity.' "I'm supposed to teach him the patronus. It's not like those lessons will be public."

Nott shook his head. "No. Those lessons are over, and you and I both know it. It isn't safe to take up residence in his mind. Got it? And don't try and break into his thoughts, either. His mental wall is stronger than last year."

Well, she wasn't going to listen to Nott. She didn't even know him.

"Also, work on your shield, I can see it shimmering in front of you."

And he left.

Hermione made it to the library, but she completely forgot what she'd meant to study.

She didn't listen to Nott, but Malfoy was surprisingly evasive when he put his mind to it.

She watched as Malfoy steadily lost weight. She could see it in the way his robes hung off his shoulders. He wasn't attending meals. He was skipping classes. He wasn't even trying at Quidditch. It was as if the rivalry between him and Harry or Ron didn't even exist.

And she was quite certain he nearly killed one of her best friends. She stomped her way through the library until she hit her little alcove. Almost no students remained at the school for the weekend, she had the library to herself. Even then, she waited until she was tucked safely away behind her desk to cry.

He nearly killed two students. Two. His plans were awful, it was like he wanted to be caught trying to assassinate… someone. She hadn't quite worked out who yet. But there were a few obvious targets. Even if one of those targets was actually present at school a shockingly little amount of time for being the Headmaster.

He had to be stopped. There was no way she could live with herself if she stuck around her little alcove and cried until she had no tears left, all the while Malfoy plotted another near death. No.

He had to be stopped.


A/N: Sorry, I didn't know where to cut it off so it didn't become a monster chapter.
aaaand hey guys, sorry for the delay! I caught up to myself in writing, moved twice, and am now on vacation. So, please be patient with me, but don't worry, I won't be abandoning this at any point!
Um... feedback is much appreciated, even if you have something critical to say, just please be kind.
Thank you thank you for all those who have reviewed, followed, or favorited the story. I appreciate the feedback as well as the silent type of support.
Happy holidays to those who celebrate, and happy December & January to those who don't! To all those who are traveling for the holidays, stay safe! Have a good time! Make good choices!

LL