7.
28th July, 1997
Harry tells Hermione that Professor McGonagall told him about Malfoy, and asked him to inform Hermione that Malfoy was hidden safely with the Order. Her reaction to the news – bursting into a flood of relieved, wounded sobs – prompts Harry and Ron to question her until she gives up the entirety of the truth – save the cross-dressing – and the next few days are filled with awkward silences, and worried looks from the boys when they think she doesn't notice. It is as though they believe loving Malfoy must be an indicator of insanity. Hermione thinks that they might be right.
She can't appear to stop it though; she tries to starve the feelings she has for Draco, and push them away, but it does nothing. She still loves him. She thinks the words at night, lying in a bed across the room from Ginny's – I love Draco – and even if nothing else in her life seems to make any sense, somehow those words do. Everything in her life has gone backwards and upside-down, with no consistency to them, and Hermione feels very lost. How she feels for Draco, though – love, hurt, anger, guilt – those things are constant, even if they are mad. Hermione clings to consistency, holds it to her chest like a precious creature, and if Harry and Ron don't understand, well…she doesn't expect them to.
7th September, 1997
Harry receives a rare letter from Ginny by owl, and after dinner he shows it to Hermione, pointing to a place in the letter without explanation. She takes the letter curiously and reads aloud from where Harry's grubby finger points.
"And even Malfoy…is fighting now, which is a sign of how grim things must be." Her voice trails off to a whisper when she reaches his name, emotions overwhelming her in a tangle and her hand comes up to fist in her shirt over her heart. It is swollen and thudding in her chest, and tears burn behind her eyes. Hermione reads the one line over again, choking down her tears, her fingers indenting the parchment, she grips it so tightly. The tent is silent, and thick with emotion. Ron watches Hermione's reaction intently from his seat opposite her at the table, his expression shuttered, and Harry looks anywhere but at her as she tries to compose herself.
That she still loves Draco is a great gulf cutting between the three of them, because it is Draco Malfoy, and Harry and Ron can't even begin to understand that. But they reach and struggle and try to close the gap anyway, because that is what you do when you love someone like the three of them do each other. Ron does not make any disparaging comments about Draco, just makes Hermione a hot cup of cocoa and squeezes her shoulder, and Harry tells her she can keep the letter if she likes, his green eyes soft with sympathy. And Hermione thanks Ron for the cocoa, makes a magical copy of the letter for herself, and goes to her bed to read the line until her vision blurs, so that she doesn't inflict her quiet tears on the boys.
He is fighting on their side.
Draco is fighting the same side as her, and that has to mean something. He may still hate her, but Hermione knows for the first time – really knows – that she made the right choice. Because if she hadn't betrayed him then he would be fighting on the other side now, and one day she would have faced him across a battlefield, and his future would have been Azkaban or death. And now he has a present and one day a future that can be something worthwhile, something happy even, one day, maybe. She cries until her head hurts, and she isn't quite sure why, but she thinks it is relief, and happiness, and a deep, aching grief. She may have saved Draco and that is the most important thing, but she couldn't save his mother, or Dumbledore, or whatever it was she and Draco had, and it hurts.
20th November, 1997
In that kind, cautious sort of way he has, Harry asks Hermione if she thinks she'll ever get over Draco. It is unusual for them to talk about feelings, especially the ones she has for Draco, but with Ron gone the tent is very silent, and they are very alone. They sit close, in the evenings, and he talks about Ginny, his fear that he will fail, and how much he wants it all to end. Hermione lifts a shoulder in a shrug as she picks at a ragged edge on her thumb nail.
"I don't know," she tells the bespectacled boy on the narrow bed beside her. "I suppose so, eventually." It is only half a lie. Hermione knows that in the end everything passes eventually, even the things you want to cling to.
Except she's never thought about getting over Draco because she has never thought past the war, and Draco – and Hermione's feelings for him – are entwined inextricably with her concept of the war. She keeps on moving, keeps going day after day, but in the past few months she has never once thought past the final confrontation they are building towards; she has been focused totally on the present. There is the war, there is the point where it ends, and then there is nothing.
For the first time in her life, Hermione can't plot out her future, not even in broad, vague strokes. Her world consists of the search for Horcruxes, looking after Harry, missing Ron like a hole in her heart, and lying in bed at night unable to sleep, so afraid of failure and pain and death that the fear soaks into her bones like a winter chill. Hermione thinks of Draco at those times when she is huddled under her blankets with her heart beating leaden in her chest, and remembers the Room. It is like an escape.
26th December, 1997
"I saw Malfoy," Ron says suddenly, and Hermione's head snaps toward him, sitting at the end of the table, his glass of firewhiskey paused halfway to his mouth as he watches her closely. His blue eyes are bright, like pieces of the sky, and Hermione exhales with sharp, frightened shock. She opens her mouth but nothing comes out, because she is afraid to even ask if Ron spoke to him, afraid to know what Draco might have said about her, all filled with blame for his mother's death. She is perhaps more afraid that he will not have mentioned her at all, and she has broken out in a cold sweat, a small 'oh' escaping her open mouth.
"Yeah. He was at Grimmauld. The Order's re-secured it," Ron tells her after taking a measured sip of his firewhiskey. "The Death Eaters know about it, even if they can't get in, so it's not perfectly safe of course – mostly used as a rendezvous location, temporary infirmary, place to catch a quick kip. That sort of thing. The Order doesn't keep any sensitive information there."
He is testing and tormenting her, Hermione realises, waiting for her to outright ask about Draco before he says anything. They stare at each from opposite ends of the table for 33 unblinking seconds before Hermione breaks.
"Ronald Weasley if you don't tell me what it is you know about Draco that you're hinting at, I will smother you to death with my hair!" Her voice cracks and shrills, and she jabs a finger at him warningly, because she doesn't have the patience. Ron grins uneasily at that threat, and possibly at the blatant expression of Hermione's feelings towards Draco, which neither he nor Harry are comfortable with seeing yet.
"He was in the kitchen having a post-mission drink with a few Aurors when Terry Boot took me there to get away from the Snatchers," Ron begins, his finger running round the rim of his glass. "I joined them for a drink, and Malfoy kept staring at me, like he was trying to pry open my head and look into my brain." Ron sniffs and tips his glass, stares into it with a wrinkle to his nose as he remembers. "It was bloody weird."
Hermione tamps down on her itching impatience with an effort, because Ron doesn't respond to exhortations to hurry up; if anything, it makes him seem to take longer, hogging the limelight.
"It took about an hour and we were both pretty pissed by then, but finally Malfoy comes out and says, 'Where are your little Gryffindor friends, Weasel? Finally gained some sense and dropped your dead weight?'" Ron frowns and Hermione cringes. Ron draws a deep breath and runs a finger over the bruise that stains his jaw, and Hermione thinks she knows who gave it to him, and why his own knuckles are bruised.
"Oh Ron..." she sighs, both sympathetic over Draco's nastiness to Ron and tangled in her emotions because she has an idea how the rest of his story will unfold. Draco had hit a very sore spot of Ron's, and she can't imagine Ron controlled his temper with any success, and to be honest, she can't blame Ron if he took a swing at Draco.
"In my defence I was pretty drunk," Ron continues, and that does not bode well. "I don't know why I did it, Hermione; it just came out, honest." His blue stare is nervous and apologetic, and Hermione groans.
"Merlin, Ron, what did you do?"
"Well, Malfoy said that thing about dead weight, and I looked him in the eye, and said, 'she's dead, you bastard.'" Ron's lips twitch up at the corners despite his best efforts to stay straight-faced, and he ducks his gaze down to stare into the depths of his glass, which fails to hide his smirk.
"Jesus, Ron! You told him I was dead?" Hermione feels hysteria wash up over her, because how on earth could Ron do that to Draco? What had possessed him to say that of all things? She smacks her hand over her face and peeks out between her fingers, flushing and horrified, and holding in a laugh she is desperately ashamed of.
Ron grins sheepishly and shrugs. "It just came out, I swear."
The bubbles of nervous laughter are fizzing up in her, and Merlin it feels good to laugh, nervous or not. But Ron is speaking again and she focuses on his voice, bottling up her hysteria.
"He turned so pale I thought he was going to bloody well keel over." Her stifled laughter dies and Hermione stares hard at Ron, who is shifting uncomfortably in his chair. "And then it all turned to shit. The way he reacted...Merlin's balls, Hermione, it was intense. I didn't think..."
"You never think, Ron." Hermione's voice shakes and her fingers dig into her palms, because it suddenly isn't funny anymore, not in the slightest, because she imagines being told Draco is dead and knows it would be like a gut punch that drove her to her knees.
"He threw his beer bottle at the wall, and I swear to Merlin he looked like he was going to cry. Like I'd just smacked him in the face with a bit of wood. Like he'd just…lost everything that ever meant anything." Ron says it fast and factually, obviously hugely uncomfortable with the memory of Draco's emotions, and swills down half his firewhiskey before shooting Hermione an apologetic glance. "I thought he'd know I was just screwing with him. Honestly."
Hermione's heart is pounding, because if Draco really hated her then she is sure he would have been glad she was dead, or been indifferent at best. She doesn't know what the reaction Ron received means, but it makes her stomach flip and clench and her palms feel all sweaty. Something that feels a little like hope unfurls slightly in her chest, even though maybe it shouldn't.
"And when did you get that?" Hermione asks pointedly, gesturing at the bruise on his face beneath patchy ginger scruff. Ron looks abashed and slides his glass back and forth over the table between his index fingers.
"I'll get to it. Malfoy pulled out his wand, and for a second I thought he was going to curse me. Before I could tell him I was just messing with him, he said, 'who was it? Who. the. fuck. was it?'" Ron mimics Draco's low, dangerous tone, and delicious shivers crawl down Hermione's spine at the thought of him being so angry over her. "I tried to interrupt, but Malfoy wasn't listening. He got right up in my face and said, 'tell me who it was, Weasley, I'll fucking kill them.' And I said, 'fucking hell, she's not dead, Malfoy. I was just –' and that was when he hauled off and gave me this. It took two Aurors to drag him off me in the end, he was that bloody furious." Ron grins sheepishly at Hermione, blue eyes hopeful on Hermione's face. "Please don't kill me, 'Mione."
She manages to refrain from killing him, but she scolds him in a shrill voice for a good ten minutes for saying something like that, while inwardly feeling ridiculously elated. It is as though she is dying of thirst, and catches sight of a lake on the horizon; it may not be trickling down her throat right this moment, but it is there. Unless, of course, it is a mirage, she adds cynically. Later that night when Hermione goes to bed, her overactive imagination pictures the scene Ron had described over and over, until she feels like she had actually been there, watching.
It is stupid that something so small can make her so happy, but every time she sees the bruise on Ron's face she thinks, Draco cares – and whatever keeps a person going and sane through this lengthy ordeal of horcrux-searching is worth holding onto. Even if it is something distant on the horizon, that may be a mirage. So she holds on.
She catches herself looking at Ron's jaw multiple times a day, until he swears he's going to grow a beard to stop her weird perving, which makes her blush and fiercely deny that she has been staring at all. When the bruise finally fades, Harry offers to give Ron another in the same place for Hermione to keep fixating on. Ron protests dramatically, Hermione laughs and shakes her head and says it wouldn't be the same, and Harry just grins at the fact that Hermione is smiling and laughing. Hermione thinks it is odd, but the boys may finally be getting used to the fact that she loves Draco Malfoy; they are slowly closing the gulf her feelings caused between the three of them, with silliness and teasing, cups of cocoa and awkward hugs.
It's nice.
14th February, 1998
When they arrive at Grimmauld, Hermione hugs everyone so tightly that their bones creak, an enormous pressure in her chest breaking and leaving her able to breathe more easily than she has in weeks. The upstairs bedroom feels crowded with people, bright and warm and loud.
Tonks looks exhausted but happy, and Lupin lets go of his worry long enough to play the proud father. Teddy is tiny at two days old and when Hermione holds him carefully in her arms she prays that he will never have to know war – that this will all be long done before he is old enough to remember it. Because no child should have to grow up with the heavy weight of uncertainty and fear that the ones they love will never come home. They should not have to be brave, or put their lives on the line, or be afraid of evil suffocating all that is good in the world. She thinks that perhaps she is a little bitter about what she feels she must do.
Teddy blinks up at her, and Lupin, Tonks, Bill, Ginny, Harry, and Ron are gathered around, and for the first time in too long Hermione is surrounded by those she loves, and it is too much. Hermione hands Teddy to Harry – who holds his godchild like he is a bomb, smiling nervously down at him – and then slips away, brushing tears from her eyes. Her breath is caught in her throat and her eyes sting, and she doesn't want them to see her fall apart.
She doesn't want to distract them with her inability to keep it together, when they have so little time; only a few hours. They can't stay long, none of them, because while Grimmauld has been secured once more, it's not secured well enough for Lupin's liking when his wife and newborn child are at risk. Besides, Harry, Ron, and Hermione have a job to return to.
She pads through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea; just the thing to soothe her nerves. She isn't surprised to see someone else in the kitchen as Ron says Grimmauld has become a thoroughfare for the Order, but she isn't expecting to see him. Her feet root to the floor just inside the doorway as she stares at white-blonde hair and long fingers wrapped around a mug, from which steam rises in wisps and curls. He looks half-dead, slumped in a chair in a knitted jersey that has seen better days; holey and marked with dirt and old blood.
His eyes lift to her when she makes a small, inarticulate sound and clutches at the doorframe to steady herself, and the grey of them darkens with something like hate, and other things that she cannot decipher. They just stare, for a moment that seems to stretch on forever. His left cheekbone is marred by a thin, fresh scar, his bottom lip is swollen and bruised around, and Hermione aches with the need to touch him. Her throat is clogged and the words won't come; blocked up, and she thinks his name fiercely over and over. Draco.
His mouth flattens out and her gaze flies to his hands when he shoves the mug away from him and it grates on the wood of the table. His right knuckles are blackened and swollen. He stands with sharp grace and rounds the table, moves toward her with a faint limp that makes his boots noisy on the floorboards. Her heart is thundering and for a mad moment she thinks – hopes, prays – that he will grab her and kiss her hard and angry up against the wall. Instead he shoulders his way quickly past her, their arms bumping together inadvertently as she stands frozen, half-blocking the doorway.
She smells wood smoke and old sweat and the metallic scent of blood, feels the radiant heat of his body, hears his harsh intake of breath as his arm rubs hard against hers. Her stomach turns with excitement and misery, and then he is past her, limping down the narrow hallway to the front door. She turns, calling his name hoarsely. "Draco!" His boots hesitate long enough for her to call him again, pleading now, but he ignores her. Tall and lean, battered and limping in Muggle jeans and what looks like a Molly Weasley original, Draco Malfoy walks away from her. She yells his name once more, angry this time, but the only answer she gets is the front door banging shut behind him.
Hermione falls back against the doorframe, dizzy and sick, cheeks flushed. His scent lingers in the air around her and she breathes in deeply through her nose, her fists clenching so tight at her sides that her short nails bite through the skin of her palms. She doesn't notice, eyes shut and tears glinting on her lashes.
She feels like some kind of weird pervert when she sits in the chair he had sat in and drinks what is left of his hot cup of tea, but she is past caring. Besides, it would be silly to let the tea go to waste, and his chair is still warm and she feels so cold.
She buries her head in her arms and cries quietly for a while, and when Harry and Ron come back downstairs they find her sitting there with eyes that are reddened and too bright, and a smile that is pasted on. They don't know what to say so they don't say anything at all, and the hot crush of their hugs help warm her a little.
28th March, 1998
She wakes from nightmares to the dizzying haze of pain potions. Her eyes feel heavy and sticky and her throat is dry, and for a moment she can't remember where she is. She is safe, she thinks as she blinks blearily up at a low, white ceiling. She is safe at Shell Cottage. Her body is sewn through with a deep ache from the Cruciatus despite the pain potions, and there is a faint stinging in her left arm too. She had been dreaming of that. Only in her nightmare Bellatrix had been scrawling the word over every inch of her skin. It is over, she tells herself. She was very brave, and now it is over, and she is still alive. It takes her a moment to convince herself of that, and a moment longer for her heart to stop racing with fear.
Hermione looks to the bedside table for water and finds it there; a large glass pitcher coated with condensation, and a cup beside it. And through the warp of the pitcher and the condensation blurring him, she sees a platinum head and long limbs. Draco is slumped down, cramped in a small chair wedged in the corner, fast asleep with his head lolling in what looks like a very uncomfortable position against the wall. His legs are stretched out in front of him, his boots coated in dried mud, and his hair is sticking up in some places, and flattened in others.
Hermione wonders for a moment how strong the pain potions Fleur had poured down her throat last night really were, to make her hallucinate. But when she achingly shuffles herself up a bit against the pile of pillows to get a better look at him, Draco's head snaps up. His boots scuffle on the floor as he propels himself to his feet and his wand is out and ready before he sees her there.
"Shell Cottage," he rasps as if reminding himself, and slips his wand away, rubs a hand over his eyes and the faint smattering of pale stubble at his jaw. "Hermione," he says next, and his attention snaps to her, propped up in bed and staring at him with wide eyes. He is not a dream; Draco is really here, and Hermione's pain potion muddled mind races, trying to work out why he is here. The last time she saw him was at Grimmauld and he had walked away without even acknowledging her, and now he is sitting at her bedside.
"Dra...co?" Her throat is deathly dry, and her voice breaks halfway through his name and her cheeks go hot. He clenches his jaw and steps forward to pour her half a glass of water from the pitcher. His hands are ingrained with dirt, and when he hands her the glass their fingers knock together. He thins his lips and stands with his hands thrust in his pockets, watching her intently as she sips at the water. It is heavenly on her poor parched throat, but the way he just stands there silently, watching, makes her almost angry. She can accept him hating her for his mother's death, but not this guessing game. She is too tired and confused to try to figure out what he wants, or how he feels.
"What are you doing here?" she asks him, clutching the glass in her hands, and he frowns and his eyes flick away from hers.
"I heard that my father and Aunt Bellatrix captured you. T-tortured..."
"Tortured me? Yes." Her tone is brusque and tight – almost angry – because remembering hurts, but her gaze slides over every bit of Draco, drinking him in as greedily as she had the icy water. She is still half angry at him, though, despite the relief that floods through her at seeing him; he doesn't have the right to ignore her for months and then come here and act like he cares. "But why are you here?" It comes out sounding like an accusation, and hangs in the air between them, filling up the room. He is silent for a long moment, just staring at her hard-faced, the only sign of emotion a twitch to his left eye that seems to prompt his scowl as he blinks several times hard.
"Well?" It comes out sounding angrier than Hermione means it to again, and she scolds herself inside her head. Nothing comes out right when he is around. Draco rasps a defeated sigh and his scowl deepens.
"I had to know if you were all right." The words drag out of him angrily and he half turns away from her, his hands flexing and balling up.
"Why?" she asks him croakily, the question just bursting out of her without even thinking about how wise it was, because she needs to know if he cares or not, or whether perhaps, she should just try to go back to hating him like she did so long ago. And fail miserably, most likely, because even now with that horrid glower on his face, Draco is beautiful to her. He stares at her unblinkingly, and she is a frenzy of waiting and not knowing, every second like an eternity.
"Because –" He breaks off suddenly and his head cocks to the side, gaze sliding to the door, blond hair falling in a dirty sheaf over his forehead. Hermione frowns, puzzled, and then she hears footsteps on the stairs. Frustration builds like a ball in her chest, because she knows what is going to happen.
"Draco – why?" she pushes urgently, and his gaze slips back to her, and his tired eyes are dull and sunken as he lifts a shoulder in response. "I don't know."
"Draco…" He knows why – he just won't bloody admit it, and they are running out of time, footsteps on the floorboards of the narrow hallway now, and growing nearing. "Please." She opens her eyes very wide and tries to look as exhausted and wounded as possible. Draco sees right through her act, she knows it, and the corner of his mouth curves into a smile that makes her heart thunder and her stomach squeeze and flip. His hand lifts toward her cheek, hovers in indecision while Hermione holds her breath, and then his hand clenches into a fist, he pulls it back to his side like lightning as the door scrapes open.
"I have to go," he mutters as Ron barges into the room and fills it up with red hair and raucous life. "Be safe." Draco's eyes linger on her for a moment, as if he is taking a photo of her inside his head, and then he stalks away, side-stepping Ron neatly and clicking the door quietly shut behind him.
It isn't until Hermione can't hear his booted footsteps anymore that she turns her gaze on Ron and glares. "You just come barging in here!" she starts furiously, as Ron blinks in surprise at her, utterly confused and edging toward the door as her voice rises even further. She barrels on, her pitch and volume rising to what Harry and Ron would call banshee levels. "He was talking to me, for the first time in bloody months, and you come shoving in –"
2nd May, 1998
Battle is madness.
It is noise; the screams of the hurt and dying, the sobs of the survivors who find their loved ones dead, the explosions that gouge at the castle, the thunder of giants' feet, the constant crack of battle magic, and the rasping sound of Hermione's gasps in her own ears. Battle is vivid enough to burn into Hermione's retinas; the coloured lights of curses that streak the night, the crackling orange of fire, the pallid, soot-smeared skin of the fighters, and the dark crimson blood that is everywhere she turns her frightened eyes – including spatters and sweeps that arc over her own skin and filthy clothes.
It is chaos, terror, panic, and pain, and it overwhelms Hermione's senses. She has taken a slashing curse to her leg, her jeans from the knee down soaked with her blood, her left arm and shoulder feel like one giant bruise from a repulso that slammed her into a stone wall, and her chest hurts from the smoke and ash that fill the air. The enemy are everywhere, swarming the castle, and Hermione is alone in the frenzy, fighting her way through the corridors with desperation and anger the only things keeping her upright. Harry has disappeared in the thick of the madness, and Hermione left Ron sobbing over Fred not two minutes ago, and she feels naked without them at her side.
There is no time to think about it though – she is focused on trying to get out to the courtyard where the main of the fighting is. Her bruised left arm is pressed over her mouth to filter the air and it tastes metallic on her parted lips - the sleeve is soaked in the blood of an Auror who died while Hermione tried and failed to stop the pump of blood from his slit throat. He is only one of many she has seen killed tonight, and she feels numb and dead to it all, unable to comprehend it.
She lurches around a corner and slips in a pool of blood, feet skidding and going out from under her, panic rushing up like fire. A werewolf in his human form, hunched over a young girl, tearing her still body to shreds with blunt teeth. Hermione gives a strangled, alien cry of horror and shoves herself back from the werewolf and his prey with her feet, bum sliding on the blood-slick ground.
The werewolf raises his head – he looks more animal than man, a strip of the girl's flesh clutched in his teeth. Hermione flinches and slashes her wand, and the werewolf goes flying back to hit a wall hard enough that Hermione hears the deadly crunch of his spine. He falls like a puppet with his strings cut, and she spares him no more thought, crawling on all fours to the girl's side.
It is Katie Bell who lies in a pool of her own blood, her face ashen and her throat torn out. Hermione scrambles back and retches as her stomach roils and rebels, painful spasms racking her abdomen. There is nothing to vomit but bile that burns up her throat and nose, and Hermione chokes on it and spits it out. A curse flies over her shoulder as she struggles to her feet, and she whirls and sends a stunner flying on instinct. It misses the black-robed Death Eater at the end of the hall, and she flings up a shield as the Death Eater sends a sickly yellow-green bolt of light whizzing at her.
They trade curses for a moment, Hermione's heart thundering in her chest, her muscles trembling at the effort of duelling with advanced battle magic, terror in the back of her mind. Survival has taken over the forefront - the animal instinct to stay alive – and the brief, frenetic duel ends with a sectumsempra torn from Hermione's lips. She spins and runs, feeling sick to her stomach – this is the fourth time she has killed a person tonight, and it has gotten no easier. They may be evil, but they are still people, and Hermione feels like a murderer.
She passes the exhausted, set faces of people she knows as she makes for the courtyard. Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott are working as a team – Hannah levitating the wounded to safety while Susan tries to protect her. Hermione locks eyes with Hannah as she lopes past them, and they exchange a look that buoys Hermione up slightly. Camaraderie, courage, an acknowledgement of the fear they are both filled with – it passes between them and then Hermione is forcing herself to keep going.
Professor Flitwick is leading a charge at an entrenched cluster of Death Eaters, with students fighting close behind him. She falls in with them beside Dean and Seamus, who flash her tight grins filled with both fear, and relief at seeing another friendly face. In a flurry of fighting, they manage to neutralise the small cluster of Death Eaters; Hermione fights with Dean and Seamus, and it is a blur of chaos that etches her bones with terror.
It's hard to see by the light of distant fires and bright streaks of spells, and she is terrified of hurting someone on her side, or not seeing a Death Eater loom out of the madness that surrounds them all. But when the last Death Eater falls to Flitwick's wand work, she is still alive, and no one on their side has been killed, although Dean has taken a crucio and is still trembling on the ground uncontrollably. Seamus and Hermione cover Dean as he takes a moment to recover, and they exchange quick updates on who is dead and who lives still in half-drowned yells through the noise.
"–saw Nev– fighting – snake –vati and Padma – Great Ha– Malf– courtyard – woun– bloody maniac –" Seamus shouts, and Hermione's heart shudders – did he say Malfoy? Wounded?
She throws up a shimmering shield that should hold a moment, and stares at Seamus blankly with her chest tight as hell. "What?" she shouts, and Seamus shakes his head and shrugs, not knowing what she wants. "Malfoy? Where did – see him?" A string of small explosions half-smothers her words, but Seamus gets the gist.
"Yeah!" He bellows, before pausing to fire a hex at a woman ragged and animalistic enough that she could only be a werewolf. She howls shrilly and goes tumbling with her momentum as Seamus' severing curse cuts through both legs above the knee. He makes a sick gurgling sound that Hermione echoes, and then keeps yelling over at her. "Malfoy's in – courtya– wand arm – but still fight – total maniac, I said –"
Wand arm what? Broken? Severed? Hermione chokes down on the bile that burbles in her throat at the thought, and prays frantically that Draco will be okay. She near jitters from foot to foot despite her wounded leg, waiting impatiently until Dean is finally steady enough on his feet to fight again, a few long moments later.
"I'm heading for the courtyard, if you see Ron or Harry. Be safe," she yells at them both, and then pushes off from the pillar they have been taking cover behind, blocks a curse, and forces her legs to propel her onward in a hunched over run that makes every muscle in her body stretch and hurt. Dean yells something after her that sounds like 'good luck', and Hermione thinks that she will need it.
She hunch-limp-runs her way through the castle, keeping out of the battles raging in the corridors, her mind fixed on getting to Draco. Her lungs burn, her right jeans leg is heavy with her own blood and the leg itself feels clumsy and half-numbed, and panic shrills and thrills through her brain madly. A heap of rubble half blocks the corridor she skids into, and she grips her wand between her teeth as she attacks the pile, scrambling over it like a monkey. She slips and falls on precarious bits of masonry, banging up her already bruised and aching body, and her gasps for air are more sobs of pain and urgency than anything.
A fierce duel lights the corridor ahead of her in deadly rainbow bolts, and none of the people involved are Draco, and the Aurors seem to be winning. Hermione dithers for a moment over whether to help or not, but when one of the Death Eaters falls, she swears to herself and makes for a broken window, that opens onto the courtyard. The courtyard is lit in flame and curses so thick they strobe in the night, blinding her for a moment. She obliterates the remaining jagged shards of glass and hauls herself up with a grunt, falling out the other side.
Her hands fling out to catch her and pain erupts in the palm of her wand hand, a choked scream gurgling up her throat. A narrow piece of glass is thrust right through the meat of her hand, and Hermione can only hope it missed tendons. She grits her teeth and pulls the glass out, grunting and panting as she does so, stifling the screams she wants to let loose. Her wand, she realises then, as her bruised knees add their throbbing pain to the chorus of her hurts. Terror flares up and her heart pounds, her mind spins. Her wand! She is dead without it, and she searches the dark, rubble-strewn ground frantically, nearly hyperventilating.
"Looking for this?" A voice over the noise of battle, and Hermione's head jerks up. White-blonde hair and grey eyes are faintly amused on her as she stares up at him, on all fours, panicking and unarmed. Her heart beats so fast she feels like she is having palpitations, and her fingers claw into the ground hard in reaction.
"Yes," she says, watching him cautiously as hatred sweeps over his face, her wounded hand closing over the shard of glass she pulled from it just seconds before. It is no match for a wand, but better than nothing. She understands why he hates her, and she cannot fault him for that – she would hate her too, most likely. But if he aims to kill her – and by the crazed, fixed expression on his pale face, she thinks he does, then she will fight. Hermione fears the glass will slice her hand right through before it causes him any injury though – a chunk of glass is no match for a wand. Besides, even in the madness of battle, with the need to survive running high and adrenaline pumping through her blood, Hermione doesn't know if she can kill him.
"Please," she says, and his mouth twitches into a faint smile that holds no humour; a rictus that only makes fear crawl over her skin.
"You are the reason that my Narcissa was killed, mudblood. I will…enjoy watching you die," is all that Lucius Malfoy says, contemplatively – as if tasting the words, weighing them in his mouth. "I will make it last."
"I'm sorry! I'm–" Hermione is prepared to grovel and scrape and beg for her life, because dignity has no place when one is inches from torture and death. The frantic apologies streaming through her mind are cut short from leaving her mouth, though. Lucius Malfoy does not care for her apologies.
"Crucio," he snarls and the ash and flame filled world shatters apart into pain. It feels as though her skin flays off, her muscles tear by inches from the bone, her tendons tie in knots, her organs pop like firecrackers, her bones themselves are slowly crushed in vices. She knows vaguely that she is screaming her raw throat bloody, biting into her tongue, arching and thrashing on the ground. She can hear as if from another world, Lucius Malfoy snarling the Cruciatus Curse like a litany.
It hurts. Everything is pain. She would grasp and claw for death with greedy fingers if it meant the end of the pain. She would be Voldemort's willing slave if it would only stop the pain.
And then it stops. It stops and Hermione is left a twitching, shuddering wreck on the ground as the aftershocks rip through her, and her mind begins to slowly come back to her. Tears saturate her dirty cheeks and she swallows blood, her limbs jerking and seizing randomly. But the pain is just barely bearable. She wonders why he stopped, as she lies on the ground and stares at the night sky, utterly helpless. Is it only a temporary reprieve? Her blood roars in her ears, and everything seems very far away, except for the pain, which nestles close to her. She wonders if he is going to kill her soon, or if the abrupt end to the torture means she has been saved, somehow. The sky is so pretty. It still hurts.
And then a pair of grey eyes come into her field of vision; grey eyes just like his father's, ringed around with soot and blood that nearly coat his entire face, and are streaked through his white-blonde hair.
"Fuck," he pants, and his hand pats at her face frantically, little swipes over her cheeks and forehead, pushing her hair back off her face. Fear fills Draco's eyes and makes them huge in his face, prettier than the stars she can see past his right ear. She shivers involuntarily with the aftershocks, trying to speak, but her mouth refuses to cooperate. She imagines she must look like she is dead, or maybe driven mad by the torture, like Neville's parents were. "Fuck, Hermione."
He drags his filthy thumb gently over her lips, eyes urgent on her. "Say something. Damnit, say something, Hermione!"
Her eyes feel very heavy, and her tongue is swollen and thick in her mouth; she feels as though she and her lingering agony are separated from the rest of the world by a thick blanket of fog. Draco's face is hovering over hers, but she can't see clearly. She thinks he looks panicked, maybe, but it is all soot and blood to her, his heavy, breathless pants for air gusting hot on her chin the realest thing about him.
"Hermione…" he nearly groans the word, grief and desperation filling his voice, and then something goes splosh on her chin. She tries to speak, but all that comes out is strangled gurgling that sounds like she is being murdered. Splosh.
"Rain," she gets out thickly, eyes unfocused on the sky past Draco's head, which looks cloudless to her blurred eyes but a few spatters have caught her cheek and jaw. Drops, drip-drip-dripping on her face. They are strangely warm, and she wonders why, forehead wrinkling into a puzzled frown. Another jolt of pain sears through her and she feels her body spasm involuntarily, arching up off the ground, a gurgling wail ripping out of her throat. Darkness swallows Hermione up, nothingness enveloping her, and she sinks into it willingly.
3rd May, 1998
She sits on the steps into Hogwarts, in a patch that is not ruined by rubble or blood – the bodies have all been moved inside. It is late in the day; dusk is coming on swiftly, but Hermione has only been awake an hour. It seems that after she passed out Draco managed to get her to the hospital wing, and then went back out to fight while a Healer tended Hermione's wounds. She feels weak and shaky, and now and then a spasm will cramp her muscles, her whole body still aches, but she is up and walking and that is all she needs.
Harry tells her that Lucius Malfoy is in Azkaban awaiting processing at this very moment, where he will stay until his trial. Draco is alive, Harry says – Hermione thinks of Draco and remembers his tears warm on her face, which she had thought in her delirium, were rain drops. She remembers the way his face had filled up the night sky above her. The panic in his voice as he'd begged her to respond to him. She hasn't seen him yet, and she is frightened of what will happen. She is frightened he will walk away now it is all over, and leave her alone. And she is alone, right now.
Her parents are memory-charmed in Australia, Harry is with Ginny, and Ron with the rest of the Weasleys, and the list of the dead rolls on and on, people who loved Hermione, who she loved…all gone. They have left her – been torn away. She is alone, she thinks, stuffed full of self-pity, because right now grief is too sharp, too much. She walked the rows of the dead in the Great Hall just moments earlier, getting to Tonks' pale, dead face, Remus lying beside his wife, before she lost all control and fled like a coward.
And now here she sits, staring as the last traces of the sun's rays play about the horizon, feeling as though she would like very much to cry. It won't come though. She feels like concrete has been poured into her, filling her up beneath her skin – heavy and numbed, and the tears are trapped inside her. Her eyes sting and burn dryly from the trapped tears and the ash that still fills the air, and she coughs and rubs at her eyes, lets out a shaky breath. It is over, she thinks slowly. The war is over. There is a certain grave serenity to the air – or perhaps it is just shell-shock; she isn't sure. But she feels like she could sit here and watch the sunset forever, in a bubble of numbness that nearly feels like peace.
"You did the right thing," Draco says quietly, from somewhere behind her, and then there are sounds of scuffling and rocks skittering over stone as he sits down beside her. She looks over at him; his clothes coated in ash and blood, his hair a mess, his skin mostly cleaned, but the pristine whiteness of the bandages here and there show up the soot and blood that remain faintly on his skin. Hermione knows what he's talking about immediately, and her heart leaps and falls, a stone skimming over the surface of water.
"I had no right." Her eyes are unwavering on his face in profile as he looks out at the horizon.
"Maybe. Maybe not. But you were only trying to save me," he says and squints at her in the sunset's light, fine lines edging at the corners of his eyes, a vivid red split through the middle of his full bottom lip, a deep sewn-closed gash cutting down his cheek. His grey eyes are luminous and cautious on her, and he is beautiful despite faint rings of soot around his eyes, and a spatter of blood on his chin and jaw that he has missed when cleaning up. So beautiful. Hermione's blood rushes loudly, and her breath feels shallow. The concrete-feeling has been replaced by a shivering electricity feeling, and it sets her heart thrumming like a bird's.
"I loved you," she says very quietly, meeting his eyes.
"Loved?"
"I – I don't think I know what I feel anymore. Too much – I can't seem to comprehend anything right now, Draco. It hasn't even sunk in that Volde– that he's…dead." She tries to explain it; that she feels very fragile, that she can't put herself out there just yet, not when the dead are just inside and their blood still soaks the ground. Everything about her feels as though it is balanced on a knife's edge, and a nudge could send her over into the madness she barely avoided last night. He nods in undemanding understanding.
"I tried to hate you. I think I even succeeded for a while."
"But not anymore?"
"No. Not anymore." His grey eyes are fired by the dying sunset, and are unreadable to her. "Nothing lasts forever," he says with a small tip to his mouth, and that is a double-edged sword but Hermione will take it as a good thing right now, with Draco's fingers edging over to brush against hers. The touch sends hot shivers racing through her. "And besides, I missed you, in the end," he adds, and Hermione thinks she can see what is beneath that grave carefulness to his features. Need, lurking dark in those luminous eyes, and carved in the lines of his mouth.
His fingers lace through hers then and her heartbeat becomes a frenzied thrumming that she thinks will rip it straight out of her chest, even though a strange stillness has fallen upon the rest of her body. She doesn't know what to say and instead stares at him like a speechless idiot, licking her lips and squeezing his fingers so hard she thinks she might break both of their hands.
"I – Hermione, I think, maybe we should…" He is unable to finish, his voice too thick, and Hermione's chest is so tight. She smiles at his doubtful, worried face, blinking back the tears that are finally welling up now. Only they are not just grief and loss now, they are hope too, like the first rains after drought.
"I think…I think we… Yeah, me too," Hermione tries in a small uncertain voice, and then leans into Draco, her shoulder bumping into his upper arm, her head tipping so it rests lightly on his shoulder. He stiffens and then unwinds again, and twelve breaths later his lips brush lightly against the top of her head, before he lifts his face to the sunset. They watch the last of it, the gold and pink turning to blues and stars, their fingers intertwined and a peace settling into Hermione's bones. They do not talk, not yet; the future stretches on in front of them now, and there is all the time in the world to figure out what it is they think.
# # # # #
"We left the ending locked inside that room,
And you hold the key,
You push open the door,
And then you see..."
['The Black House, The Blue Sky', Stars vs Montag]
