A/N: If some of the dialogue looks familiar, I tried to stay as true to the book as possible. It should be repeated that I am not JK Rowling, and I don't own Harry Potter.


They had split up to search the room.

The horcrux had to be here, she thought desperately. After everything that she, Harry, Ron, Draco, and the rest of the wizarding world had been through, she needed just this one stroke of luck. The rational portion of her brain was convinced that this was too easy, but she tried not to listen. After all, Voldemort had underestimated Harry, Draco, and even her, so maybe he had underestimated them again.

She was so focused on the search that she didn't even notice the voices coming from the other side of a large pile of furniture and other junk.

"Descendo!' she heard a voice shout, though she couldn't figure out exactly who had spoken. Suddenly the small mountain of discarded treasures came crashing down on her head. As the edge of an old trunk hit her shoulder, she screamed in pain.

Hermione! Hermione! Draco's voice sounded frantic. Are you ok? Are you hurt?

In her stunned state, she didn't respond. What was Draco doing here? But she hardly had any time at all to think before the mountain started to engulf her. It was like a painful tsunami of junk that she couldn't seem to escape from.

"Finite!" She heard Harry yell, stopping the rest of the mountain from collapsing, but she was to preoccupied to think of much else.


"No!" Draco shouted. He was so worried about Hermione. He could tell that she was alive, because he could feel her pain through their bond, but she wasn't answering him. He hadn't expected to run into her this early. After sneaking back into the school to get Crab and Goyle, he never expected them to have come up with a plan on their own.

Crab was now giving him an incredulous look, asking why Draco had stopped him from having fun.

"If you wreck the room you might bury this diadem thing!" His mind was reeling. He didn't know what the hell that was, but he had heard Potter talking about it earlier. It was the best excuse he could come up with, so he decided to run with it. After all, he was more concerned with finding Hermione than placating Crabbe.

"What's that matter?" said Crabbe. "It's Potter the Dark Lord wants, who cares about a die-dum?"

God, he had become accustomed to spending time with intelligent people instead of minions. He blamed Granger.

"Potter came in here to get it," he said, with the tone that suggested he was talking to an especially unintelligent cross between a first-year and a slug.

"so that must mean-"

"'must mean'?' Crabbe turned to Malfoy, giving him a look of hatred. What was the deal with Crabbe and Goyle? First they formed their own plans, and then they started disrespecting him. They had really changed.

"It's that mudblood, Avada Kedavra!" Draco was not going to let Crabbe kill Hermione. In a panic, forgetting he had a wand, he tried to wrestle with his former friend, but Crabbe's gargantuan size made it easy for him to overpower Draco. Before Draco knew what had happened, he had lost his wand, and Crabbe was running after Harry and Hermione.

Run. I couldn't stop him, he warned Hermione at the same time he yelled, "Don't kill them! DON'T KILL HER!"

What the hell was happening. His mind couldn't process the fact that Crabbe had started throwing around unforgivable curses. Draco was shocked that Crabbe even knew what the curses were, much less had the power to cast them. And to make matters worse, Hermione still wasn't answering him.

He figured the best thing to do was to stay out of the way. He didn't have a wand, and Potter and Weasley would perceive anything he did as a threat. Crabbe was so curse-crazy that he was more likely to hit Draco than his target.

Goyle had been hit with a stunning spell. Potter seemed to still be searching for the damn diadem, when he should be just getting the hell outta dodge.

And then Draco smelled the smoke.

Then there was fire.

The golden trio had run off, and the flames were getting too hot. He had to try to drag a stunned Goyle up a pile of old junk in order to avoid the magical flames. God, Goyle was heavy (at least that hadn't changed.) Draco was panting, fighting as odds and ends crashed around him. He must have been getting light headed because he kept seeing flashes of other areas of the room, but they never lasted very long. He felt dizzy. Crabbe was nowhere to be seen, and he had no control of his blazing creation. The smoke was getting thicker. He could feel Hermione's utter panic through their bond, and he selfishly hoped that at least some of it was for him.

Then his mountain of discarded knick-knacks was completely encircled in the angry consuming inferno, and there was no way out.

Maybe the fire would cleanse him. Burn away his sins. He thought that it was somewhat fitting that Voldemort had forced him to torture people by fire, and he was going to die by fire as well. Actually it was ironic. He had been living in fear that Voldemort, one of the most brilliant dark wizards who had ever lived. But it was really Crabbe, one of the stupidest oafs to ever call himself a wizard, who would be his downfall. As he stood holding up a still mostly unconscious Goyle, the flames danced closer, and his last thought was that he hoped Hermione made it out of the room.


Hermione was frantic; she had lost Draco. She knew that they both had their parts to play, and she also knew that he had absolutely saved her and most likely saved Harry by deflecting Crabbe's curses. She could also feel their bond weakening, almost like he was cutting her off, keeping her from feeling his death.

Damn it, DRACO MALFOY, she shouted. Answer me.

She tried to find him through their bond, but she could never make the full connection, and she was distracted by the fact that she was still running for her life. Harry had managed to find brooms, bless the Hogwarts rule-breakers. Though Hermione hated flying, they were the single most beautiful pieces of trash that she had seen in this horrible room. They took to the sky.

Draco, Draco, Draco, she chanted the litany.

She saw that Harry was circling the area, looking for the others.

"Lets just get out of here." Ron said.

Hermione felt sick- they were not leaving until she knew that Draco was dead. And he wasn't! They had to find him. She had to find him.

DRACO, DRACO, DRACO.

Then Harry dived into the thick smoke, and Hermione knew that he had seen something.

"Go," she pleaded with Ron. "We have to save him."

They arrived just in time for Hermione to see Draco grabbing onto Harry. He seemed unwilling to let go of Goyle, and his hand slid out of Harry's.

"IF WE DIE FOR THEM, I'LL KILL YOU, HARRY!" Ron roared, hoisting Goyle onto their crowded broom.

Thank God, Draco.

Ron was not waiting a second longer, and Hermione turned to watch as Harry and Draco trailed behind them. Finally they passed through the little square patch of light and clean air rushed over her entire body. Hermione had never been as thankful for the oxygen around her at that moment. By the time she had fallen off of the broom, sunk to her hands and knees, and taken several large gasps of air, Harry and Draco had appeared in the hallway as well.

Don't ever scare me again like that Malfoy, she chided. Somehow the words had come out as concern instead of anger because she was so grateful that he was alive.

Sorry Granger, he smiled, still slumped, wandless against the floor.

You are not allowed to die only hours after I let you go.

Well, you are going to have to leave me again. We're enemies, remember! He teased.

She smiled. He was covered in soot and ash that made his pale blond hair look dark and dirty. He looked incredibly masculine, but it was the smile. Those white teeth slightly smirking at her that made her realize something astonishing.

She was in love with Draco Malfoy.

Who else would have risked so much for her. Who else could keep up with her in intellectual conversations. And most importantly, who could make her smile just seconds after she had been convinced she was going to burn to death.

Everything slowed down as she crawled over to him and hugged him, running her fingers through his hair. They were both still breathing heavily trying to replenish their oxygen supply. She pulled back so that only their foreheads were touching, and she stared down into his unfathomable grey eyes.

Hermione, she heard him whisper.


Suddenly the whole castle shook, Hermione had almost forgotten about the battle with everything that they had just gone through in the room of requirement. She didn't have time for this. She needed to help Harry.

She saw that Harry, Ron, and Goyle were still gasping on the floor a few feet away. Standing up and turning from Draco, she walked over to her friends.

Hermione, please be carful.

She didn't answer because she was distracted by the tiara that Harry had around his wrist. It was oozing a dark, blood-like liquid, and it had fragmented. That must mean that the Horcrux had been destroyed, but then…
"It must have been Fiendfyre!" she whispered. Then she, of course, had to explain was fiendfyre was, and what that meant- the diadem was no longer a Horcrux.

Draco didn't know what Hermione was talking about. What did she mean, only the snake left? Did she need to kill Naguini? She had stopped as the group heard shouting down the hall. Potter and Weasley automatically started running towards the noise, but Hermione stopped.

Are you gonna be ok? She asked.

Yea, lucky for me, none of your people will attack an unarmed wizard. I think I am just going to try and get back to my parents.

Be safe.

You too. She had already turned to leave when he added, princess.


Draco knew that he couldn't stay in the hallway for the entire battle, no matter how appealing that sounded. Goyle had started to regain consciousness. They both ran down the hallway, trying to avoid the falling ceiling and cracking walls as the hallway crumbled around them. Finally they ended up in an open area where there were several students and death eaters all dueling. He tried to snake his way around the room, avoiding the curses, when suddenly he felt a horrible ache in the center of his chest. At first he thought that he must have been hit by a spell cast by someone in the room, but after he grabbed his chest and saw no visible signs of a curse, he realized that he must be feeling her pain.

Hermione! He cried, worried that she had been hurt.

Fred, Fred. She sobbed. He could tell that she didn't realize she was talking to him. She was so overcome with grief.

There was only one thing that would cause such an aching hole to fill his chest- Fred Weasley, one of the only Weasley's he actually tolerated, was dead. He wanted with every fiber of his being to turn around and run to comfort Hermione. If he was feeling this grief, he knew that her pain was probably unbearable. She was crying, and he could feel her anguish. In his mind he heard her trying to reason with Ron, scared to death that he was so overcome with anger that he was going to get himself killed. We can stop it. We can stop him, Draco heard her think. It was like a lifeline that she was clinging too- the slim chance that soon all of this suffering would end.

He couldn't help it; tears fell silently for the broken girl who felt the weight of the world.


Draco hadn't known what to do. He was stuck in a battle where he wasn't on either side. Everyone seemed to be doing something- either running, fighting, casting spells. After stealing the stunned Death Eater's wand, he found himself acting as a junior healer, treating the wounded on both sides. He had helped heal cuts and burns as well as helped reverse the effects from some particularly nasty jinxes. Sometimes it was enough, but other times he just didn't have the knowledge to help save them. Denis Creevy, an annoying Gryffindor who had always been obsessed with Potter, had died in Draco's arms from a spell cast by Dolohov. As it had happened, Draco couldn't do anything other than hold the smaller boy and tell him that everything would be all right, even if that was a lie. What was one more lie on the list of sins committed by Draco Malfoy?

Suddenly a Death Eater that he didn't recognize grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up. Pressing his wand into Draco's neck, the man said, "any last words, whelp?" His breath was horrid.

"I'm Draco Malfoy. I'm Draco. I'm on your side!" Draco replied, pleading. Man, this was really not his night. Then a stunning spell that came from behind hit the Death Eater right in the chest. Malfoy looked behind him, expecting to see an order member that had come to his rescue. No one was there.

Duck! Hermione warned through their bond, but she was too late. Draco saw the blur of a hand coming towards him, felt pain in his jaw, and fell backwards on top of the unknown Death Eater.

"That's the second time we've saved your life tonight, you two-faced bastard!" Ron yelled.

You ok? Hermione asked, already rushing to follow Potter and Weasley. He could tell that she was still incredibly upset. He watched her run down the hallway.

I'm fine. I'm sorry about Fred. If anyone can save the world- it's you Granger.

He could feel her surprise through their bond. She had stopped, and was about to turn and look back at him.

Go! Stay safe.

Then she had disappeared.

Then everyone had thought that Harry was dead.

Then his mother saved Harry.

Then Harry had explained how he, Draco Malfoy, was the true master of the elder wand, whatever that was.

Then Harry had killed Voldemort.

Then it was all over.

All. Over.

Over.

And she had survived.