Well, let's start by not talking about my appalling tardiness. Apologies all: between a bit of light fraud, a sick better half and the joys of retail, it's been a busy few months. Many thanks and adulation to the lovely people who reviewed and favourited – thank you Geeky-DMHG-Fan, Lady of the Sphinx, felidae82, eucalyptus, Captain Universe, Kanawha, WuHaoNi, N (Done! Hope you enjoy ;) ), mentarisenja, lenour, theladyisatiger, Lady Arianne of Ambers Valley, Rebecca (Hate reading about Luna as in her situation, or her character? She's not to everyone's taste :) ) dEll-x0, dpdmstla, voldyismyfather, Isabella120, Nnmos (thank you! Glad you like it), TheCullenCrest, Erilin-chan, Draco's treasure, SnowCharms, MaskedGoddess, Aastha Panit, LadySol (Thank you – I've tried to think very hard about the details and do a bit of reading around what that sort of regime would be like.), Yours Always, Nina (I love a good cliffhanger...and continued!), Chasadie Wagner (Update here! Thank you!), writerzcramp, Zibreal, feeling free x, Hypnotised Angel, JLMischief, unfortunate star, JenCarpeDiem, Siberia, mezz09, izzybee, einnoczg (I have a bit of a love of X-Men fandom myself. If you have any recs, I'd love to hear 'em! Pleasure – I'm having huge fun with this, though I'm not the fastest writer in the world.), InsufferableKnowItAll61093, darkerxthanxblack, Noon's Phoenix, ButterflyRei, TwilightFanatic0810, AC Storm, arrayan, A White 95, lavaducks, lelongbottom, Athenias, kazfeist, xZacklan s2, ali-lou, J Parsnips, Isabel Antonette, Lilian Rayne, vitalai, the bloodinside, Paparate, queen Alexander, angelsharry850, MerelyPassingBy, KateKazoo, theTwilightLamb, Kyra Jack, Praefecta Praetorio, bamagurl01, ring of rubies, chromaticnoises, Tiiu, bookfanatic123, Mesha11885, LegendKillerlover4ever, eclectic-music-lovur, Hep Alien, two fish, Erin Ashlyn, sarahiola, aucouvent, cara eats books, rmarylou91, Brynndabella, OrangeJuice7, DramioneLover94, flygirl-2008 and last but by no means least, the lovely Maria Higgins.
Please bear with me while I catch up on replies. Any comments, thoughts and criticisms are very much loved!
Midnight
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock
- Rhapsody On A Windy Night, T.S. Eliot
They tore through the winter morning like meteors, dark blurs that marred the horizon, as deadly and uncaring as if they'd tumbled from the cold immense emptiness of space. The city glimmered below, a metal toytown full of puppets and prisoners.
And one person who was neither.
When he thought of Hermione - no, Granger – it evoked a great rush of feelings that rose around him like briars, thorny, complex and tangling. The war had changed her in ways he had not expected, but then it had changed him too. It had changed them all.
The war had made him what he was, shaped him with its horror and its relentless regime. Some days, days when he woke from dreams as thick and dark and choking as fog, he had thought of defiance, and somehow, of her. Because though she did not know it, and would not, she had shaped him too.
It had been only a moment in the shrieking babble, in Hogwart's last battle, but Hermione Granger had forced him to choose and left an impression upon him like her handprint on his heart.
Draco could not say whether he had become better for her intervention, only that he was different. And as he spiralled down to the world he needed to change, he could not help but think of her and the library, and that long ago choice.
X - X - X - X - X
Ernie hears the commotion from his desk. It pervades the ambient noises of the office: quills scratching, memos swishing through the air, murmured conversations of stationery and supplies. Footsteps fall like rain upon the carpet outside. There is the distant sound of Bellatrix Lestrange's mad laughter, which fades into nothing.
But he doesn't look up. He knows better. Instead he goes on writing in his patient childish script, stolid, stupid – and listening. Whispers reach him as others with less to fear and less to lose gather.
...one of Dumbledore's Army...
I thought they were all accounted for?
Heads turn his way. He writes, the scrape, scrape, scrape of his quill as rhythmic as his breath. Involved in his careful report about Owl speed, he is nothing, no one, pitiful as a day-old kitten. Mouth a little open, eyes vacant, Ernie ensures he is only a picture of dull conformity.
Apparently not. Might be Longbottom. Heard he's not in Scotland anymore. His parents are still in St Mungos.
Any idiot knows that's a trap waiting to be sprung. Even an idiot like Longbottom. Nah. Could be Smith. Who'd'a thought that snotty brat would have turned out to be a blood traitor?
I heard Smith was in France.
Well, I heard he was caught trying to cross the Welsh border and dismembered.
His report grows. Knots of people form and disband, carrying away news like the strands of a web.
What about Weasley? You know what they say...
Nah. After what happened to Arthur? And his son – what's his name, the pen-pusher...
Percy, Ernie thinks, the word a soundless shape he bites back. He cannot even name the dead, let alone mourn them. They are ashes in his mouth, ashes in the ground.
Percy?
Yes. That's the one. Bossy little prat. And they've still got the mother, haven't they? Nah, any of the kids that are left won't be causing trouble. They wouldn't dare.
Well, who is it then?
Eh, who knows? Won't be long before they're caught though. I hear the whole of Special Services is out scouring the streets.
All of them?
Every last one. Whoever it is, they want 'em bad.
It's what he's waited to hear. The opportunity he has sought so assiduously opens out before him like curtains drawing back: the stage is set, and now he has only to play his part.
Ernie doesn't get up, he doesn't stop writing; he tunes out the gossip, and while the office trembles with the news that spreads in whispers soft and persistent as moth wings, he grounds himself in work. Same as always, hard work, which matters so much – which will carry him out into the empty halls, unassuming and unwatched, to deliver his report.
And if he takes a little longer returning, then who will notice on a day like this?
X - X - X - X - X
It was funny, how the memories stayed with Draco so clearly. He'd managed to forget a million other details – the colour of a girl's eyes, the taste of Butterbeer, the sharpness and the heat of pain, how to sleep as if there was nothing to fear – but he could never erase that day, the last battle.
Everyone had seen Potter overthrown outside the walls. There had been only the soft thud of his body crumpling senseless to the ground, glasses askew on his nose, and then a vast, terrible silence. Everything seemed to stop: heart, breath, hope.
Bellatrix's screech of delight shattered it. "Kneel before the Dark Lord!" she cried. "There's your hero, your little boy who lived, nothing but a crippled child."
Voldemort smiled his cold, mirthless smile. He drew back his sleeve, and the Dark Mark was livid on his cloud-white skin. Those thin, spidery fingers pressed to it: Draco felt the answering pain bite deep into his arm.
Beside him, Draco's father knelt, slowly, as if he could not be sure the ground would support him. "The Dark Lord," he said in a voice that sounded strangled.
Around him, the Death Eaters knelt, and all around, the ripples echoed, exultant, bemused, muted and loud, whispers and shouts. The Dark Lord.
Draco gazed across their bent heads. It did not seem real. Potter, ignorant, stupid, pompous Potter, could not be so still. Potter was never still. But that was the lightning bolt on his forehead, that was unmistakably his wand beside his limp hand.
And he had done this. He had let them in, some small part of him convinced that it would not end this way, because it was Potter, the short-sighted saviour, the mussed messiah, the Boy Who Always, Always Lived.
He started when a hand closed around his wrist, and he looked down, dazed, to see his mother's pale face taut with fear. Kneel, she mouthed.
He obeyed her, as he always did, sinking into the sea of subordinates. He whispered "The Dark Lord," with the rest, head bowed to the grass.
"You see how easy it is," Voldemort crooned, his amplified voice echoing across the grounds. "You need only kneel, and I will be merciful."
He heard cries. Draco looked up.
Potter dangled in the air, spreadeagled, eyes open but unseeing. With a lazy twist of his wand, Voldemort broke his arms: first the left, then the right. The gristly sound was one Draco hoped never to hear again.
"Resist," Voldemort said softly, gentle as a seducer, "and you will find out just how little mercy I truly possess."
Bellatrix stood, teeth bared. "Kneel!" she screamed.
"No." Her voice was broken and raw, but Ginny Weasley forced her way through the crowd to face down the Dark Lord. Tears streaked down her face. Grief turned her prettiness into a grotesque mask, into something quivering and unrestrained. "You haven't won. We won't give in to you."
She raised her wand, arm steady.
"Expelliarmus," she snarled, as if using Potter's spell could keep her from Potter's fate.
Voldemort deflected it with barely a twitch. And he flung back a curse, a jet of red that hit Ginny in the chest and sent her staggering backwards.
But as if she'd called them to action, other voices joined hers – her family, her friends, all the optimists and fools. Magic filled the air with light and pain and the sharp scent of ozone: the Death Eaters rose like a sea of ink, and Draco found himself caught in the tide, with no choice left but to fight.
From the outset, it was a rout. The Order refused to cast the Unforgivable Curses, and too many of them were young and half-trained and hesitant.
He wheeled through duel after duel, Dark Mark burning on his skin, knocking down people as if they were skittles. A hundred faces passed before him, but he could not remember a single one, only the colour of his curses: red, blue, orange, silver.
But never green. Not the green of luck, of envy, of his house, not ever the green of death.
As he tore through the castle, friends and enemies alike were left behind. Bellatrix swirled by, giggling, hair black and cloudy around a face radiant in triumph, stark contrast to the bodies so mangled by her curses. He saw his mother, briefly, weeping in a corner, a child in her lap and her mask cast aside.
He did not see his father. No one did.
Later, that would be remarked upon.
Battle drew him onwards. He did not feel his aches, his burns, his cuts and bruises. He did not recognise the halls or the classrooms. Like a man enchanted, he went on, not thinking, not feeling, only obeying. Dimly, he was aware that that the struggle was ending, that people were kneeling, lying, dying in the rubble.
Someone ordered him to search for survivors. He went, one of many scouring the halls. Shouts and screams punctuated the eerie silence as the Death Eaters winkled out the last few from their boltholes.
And then the roar of battle died away. He blinked, and for the first time since the moment when the world stopped and the war started, he was aware that he lived, breathed, moved.
Draco wandered into the library, inhaling the smell of paper and of wood varnish. Someone had left a book open, and he thumbed the page over to find himself looking at the formula for Felix.
Too late for manufactured luck now.
He turned away and began to check through the library, the pad of his feet the only noise.
Almost the only noise.
He heard a rustle. Draco spun, peering into the dark narrow lines of bookcases. A breath – and he dodged as a red flash of light streaked past him. Draco rolled and came up with a hiss of Expelliarmus!
A wand cartwheeled through the air. And then a body collided with him: a fist clipped his jaw with more emotion than strength, and Draco fought a swift, savage fight that ended with his opponent beneath him, his wand at her throat.
Granger.
Her face was smeared with blood, lips parted as breath after breath sawed through her. Anger was fierce in her eyes, and if she was afraid, the only sign of it was her pallor.
"Malfoy," she spat, her voice grim.
Everything he had not allowed himself to think or to feel crashed down upon him. It was all real, horribly, intimately real and personal.
It was Hermione Granger looking down his wand. Hermione, who was so smug, so righteous, so wickedly clever. He had seen her waving her hand in class, bent over books in here, blushing at Krum at the Yule Ball and almost beautiful in her fairytale robes. She'd punched him, sneered at him, despised him.
And he despised her too. She was everything he had been taught to hate.
"Go on then," she said, voice hard. "Get on with it. Be a good little Death Eater and make Daddy proud."
His mind filled with the knowledge of everything he had done to make his father proud. His arm was tattooed with his father's damn pride. The halls were strewn with corpses, the castle a ruin because he'd thought so much of his father's pride.
Yes. He hated her. But that was no longer a good enough reason to kill her.
He stepped back. She scrambled to her feet, wary.
"Go," he said. "Get out. Run, before I change my mind."
Her eyes widened, and she stared at him.
"Run, you stupid Mudblood!" he snarled.
She flinched back, and then she ran, as he had said. If she thanked him, he did not hear it. Draco had already turned back to the main halls, back to the spoils of a glorious victory. Back to his family. Back to the Dark Lord, and the world he'd shaken to pieces as casually as if it were a snowglobe.
X - X - X - X - X
Three years later, and he was back in the same position. Granger pinned beneath him, though she didn't know it, and the Dark Lord waiting in the flush of victory.
Pressed to the Firebolt, Draco kept pace with the rest of Special Services as they whipped through the clouds. Kings Cross was not far, and he had only one chance to warn her. One dangerous chance.
He took a breath that tasted like rain: and then he thought of betrayal. It came easy – it was in his nature, after all, the serpent, stamped on his arm. And part of him wanted it badly, wanted to know the Dark Lord's mercy. He'd seen so little of it.
There was, then, a kind of comfort in the thought of handing her over, of how she would fold into tears and despair as the white strangler's hands stroked her hair and Voldemort's smiled bared like a blade above her bowed head. He would sleep empty of invasion or dread that night, knowing that the Dark Lord was elsewhere, meticulously and lovingly prying her apart, piece by piece, fracture by fracture.
The Vow began to burn. The cold air was a balm on it.
He thought of his home, and his mother and father dancing in the living room to old ballads. In the hall, the fire would blaze, and he'd never know its burn. Unlike Granger, whimpering in the corner of a filthy cell while metal heated and glowed and sizzled on her skin.
The pain was intense now, spreading up his shoulder until he had to fight to keep hold of the broom.
Granger as she had been before Bellatrix – vapid, dull, broken.
And then his mind sheered away from it, throwing up another image: Granger challenging him, unafraid, relentless. Her rage when he'd tricked her into eating that hideous dinner, her words as cutting as her glare.
And oddly, he thought of Granger waking from nightmares, of how she'd seemed so small in the four-poster bed, flushed and with her hair fanned over her shoulder and the sheet draped over the curve of her hip. He'd been unnerved by that glimpse of her vulnerability, and even more unprepared for her pity, for the shock in her eyes when she'd looked at him and seen the scars of three years loyal service.
He didn't want her pity. He wanted...
He wanted to stop thinking of her.
The wizard ahead signalled they were to descend, and Draco realised the Vow was still burning on his wrist – too late now if she hadn't realised. Far too late.
And he felt, briefly, as if he'd stepped back three years – as if he was still shouting run, you stupid Mudblood, and hoping she had heard.
X - X - X - X - X
"...if we take the Portkey paths, it should be safe..." Luna was murmuring, thoughtful.
"We have to go," Hermione interrupted, the Vow like fire on her wrist. "Now."
Those grey eyes snapped to her, clearing like fog. Whatever Luna saw in her face was enough: she wasted no time. "They've found us."
"Yes," she confirmed, her mind whirring through possibilities. In Hogwarts, she always knew her escape route. Here, she had no such luxury. "We need to go."
They moved towards the exit. To her surprise, Luna shrugged from the long robe as they went: beneath, she had on black robes, practical enough to pass as an ill-fitting wrap dress. A small bag was her only other adornment.
Hermione looked back only once: her treacherous memory filled Platform Nine and Three-Quarters with people, with the steam of the train, with the past.
But nothing remained of those days: there was only the indigo robe, shed like a discarded chrysalis.
"Somewhere crowded would be best," Luna remarked quietly. "If it's Special Services, they'll have brooms, so I think it'd be wise if we kept out of the open..."
They burst out into the station. And as Hermione gazed through the milling people, she saw the answer: somewhere dark and packed and labyrinthine.
"Come on," she gasped, and sprinted through Kings Cross, Luna close on her heels. A couple of people running down the platforms was hardly anything new; a businessman was jogging in the opposite direction, looking faintly panicked.
The Vow was tightening, as if someone had wound hot wire around her skin. Her fear climbed with the pain until every sense was crystal-clear.
They dodged the crowds, nipped under the stone archway and there it was – the gleaming sign that marked the entrance to the Underground.
She yanked out her travelcard and a wedge of notes. "Take this," she told Luna as they clattered down the stairs. "Meet me at Covent Garden tomorrow, same time, outside the opera house. Piccadilly line, buy a ticket. Get Muggle clothes."
Behind them, she heard a terrible noise: people screamed, and then a vast wind buffeted them down the final steps. Hermione staggered and nearly fell, but Luna pulled her upright, her blond hair blown about her face in disarray.
People glanced up, mild alarm on their faces. There were always odd sights and sounds in the capital.
"Freak wind," a tourist called from the top of the steps. "Someone got blown onto the tracks."
And that was it: life resumed, oblivious to the danger that had come in on the very currents of the air.
Luna's gaze was direct, that bruise on her throat clear reminder of the very least Hermione could expect if they were caught. "They're here, then. What about you?"
Hermione swallowed. "I'll leave a different way. I just want to make sure they don't follow you. Don't worry, I won't do anything..."
Valiant, was the word that came to mind, carried on the low snarl of Malfoy's voice.
"...stupid," she finished.
"If they catch you, I'm afraid you'll live for quite a long time. Whereas if they catch me...I'm very uninteresting."
The calmness with which she said it astounded Hermione: then she saw the tears glimmering at the corners of Luna's eyes. She thought of Malfoy Manor, and of that girl they'd brought forth from the darkness, who'd said nothing of her pain, who'd only endured.
"No," she said fiercely. "You know more than I do about the Order. It's logic, that's all."
Luna looked away. Her smile had a watery quality to it. "The Hat put you in the right house," she said softly.
"Go," Hermione said, and pushed her towards the gates where commuters were hurrying through. People streamed past her: she watched as Luna slipped the ticket into the gates. The crowds swallowed her, and she was safe. As safe as she could – and would – be.
She turned back to the station. She wished she'd brought Felix with her, because she'd never needed it more. Around her, the human world seemed slow and glutinous, and she slipped through them with ease.
It was a simple plan. It was a dangerous one. And her timing had to be perfect.
As she came back to the main station, she saw them. Dark, flitting shapes that prowled among the Muggles, lit only by that silver streak of lightning. People staggered in the wind of their passing, newspapers flapping, faces set against the strange winter weather.
She set her back to the wall. She drew her wand, low at her side. And she watched, she waited, and the anger grew with her fear until the two were indivisible.
For all they had done, for all they would do, she loathed them. For the bruises lacing Luna's throat like a necklace, for Viktor pinned in his own body like a butterfly on a collector's board, even for Borgin in his tatty clothes.
And yes, even for the scars on Draco, which had chipped away at his flesh as they had chipped away at his humanity, which had led him to betray her so effortlessly. And for herself: for three years of ghosts dying in the midnight hour, for the fear and the anguish and the terrible future reflected in a mirror blown to dust.
Special Services paused: there they were, gathered together in a knot like crows hovering over carrion, six or eight or ten of them discussing what to do. And among them, the bitter realisation that she'd know that blond hair anywhere. Damn him.
She struck, the spell like a lightning bolt on her tongue.
"Expulso!"
The spell blew them apart in a shockwave of air.
They spun wildly in all directions, wizards clinging to brooms, wheeling out of control. The glass roof quivered dangerously as it was hit by bodies and magic. Muggles screamed – Special Services were visible, and there was uproar as people saw them, unsure whether it was a stunt or a trick or the impossible materialising before their eyes.
"There!" came a shout – a masked wizard righted himself, face turned to her. His wand raised – and for a precious moment, she froze before instinct kicked in and she turned as if to shield herself, but a fraction too late...
He was hit by a dark blur – no, by Malfoy! - and his aim skewed for an instant, only a second but it was enough.
Green light fizzled uselessly into the bricks where she'd stood as Hermione Apparated.
X - X - X - X - X
"It was her!" Croxley snarled, murder in his eyes. "Granger. If you hadn't knocked me..."
Draco cut him off with a jab of his wand. His heart was like thunder in his chest. He wanted to kill Granger for such a showy, stupid stunt. What on earth had possessed her?
Unfortunately, that would have to wait. Right now, he had another problem. "You'd have killed her, you idiot."
"Idiot?" sputtered the wizard.
Draco leaned in, his voice soft as silk. "Hermione Granger. Potter's little friend. No one's seen her for three years, just like no one's seen the head of the Order. Now tell me, Croxley, who do you think's been running all these thorough, clever campaigns against the government?"
The wizard's breath was hollow inside his mask. "You think..."
"I suspect. Either way, Granger is no use to us dead. Living, she's the answer to all our problems – or she's bait. Dead...well, maybe you can tell the Great Lord why you couldn't have used one of a dozen curses to incapacitate her."
There was silence. His eyes shifted under the mask. Below them, the others were subduing the Muggles, wiping memories, restoring order until they moved through like cattle once more.
"I didn't see you cursing her, Malfoy," Croxley breathed at last. "Or do you have a soft spot for your old school chums?"
He laughed. Croxley shifted away from him at the sound, as f it unnerved him. "I don't know, Croxley. Why don't you ask Davies? Or Clearwater? Or maybe Weasley? I'm sure they can tell you just how soft I am. I want Granger alive. I want her secrets. All of them. I want the damn Order!"
Truth, every word of it. Even Draco could not separate the rage and the hope that filled him at the thought. His wrist was burning under his sleeve, the pain enough to turn his temper deadly.
The wizard hissed. "Very well, Malfoy. I'll be sure to include your – actions – in my report."
Draco smiled. It was a knife-edge smile, designed to cut. "You do that, Croxley. And I'll make sure I return the favour when I report to the Great Lord."
Croxley flinched. Both of them knew that Voldemort despised carelessness. Under his careful hands, prisoners rarely died from their interrogation. Usually they wished for death, of course - begged for it, sobbed and screeched and gasped for it, but their wish was not granted until the Dark Lord saw fit.
To have nearly killed so valuable a prisoner…
It was an effective deterrent; a life of soft-voiced questions, wound about with pain as fine as filigree, a life of cuts and burns and gouges sculpted with terrible vision. What remained after – flayed and shivering and bloodied – was, his aunt had breathed in his ear, nothing less than art.
"Perhaps...I might omit certain facts," Croxley mumbled.
Another member of Special Services joined them. "Sirs. We've traced her down, but..."
"But?" Draco enquired.
"She's apparated again. We've managed to track five jumps so far, but she'll be long gone by now." Frustration laced his voice; Draco felt an odd pride at Granger's competence. "There was nothing on the platform but a robe. A woman's, we think, but there's nothing to identify it."
"Could be Granger's," he said. "Take it back to the Ministry. In the meantime, I want patrols out on all the main routes, and anywhere we've caught rebel activity before. Every man you can spare."
The wizard glanced at Croxley, as if unsure who was in charge. "Uh..."
"As he says," Croxley said in a heavy voice.
Draco waited until the wizard had left them. "I think it's best if you're absolutely truthful in your report, Croxley. After all – we wouldn't want the Great Lord to think you have anything to hide." He raised his eyebrows. "I certainly don't."
He heard the wizard's low groan of despair. But there were too many eyes who would have seen him cannon into Croxley; too many people who might ask questions, who might wonder what it was he had to hide. Better to hide nothing and slide the blame away like a casino dealer stacking the hand.
He did not think of the man's face under that mask. He did not think of what awaited Croxley in the Ministry.
Instead, he thought of Granger, skipping like a stone across London, free and unfettered and out of her bloody mind. Why on earth hadn't she just run? She could have been killed, and that would have been the end of any chance they had.
She'd been protecting someone then – she'd succeeded. That robe had belonged to an Order member. She'd sheltered them in a typical display of compassion, selflessness and utter folly.
Now the whole wizarding world knew that Hermione Granger was alive and well. Bloody brilliant.
There was nothing else to do but join the wizards searching for her. Draco swept back into the winter morning, just another dark smear upon the sky.
She was out there. Somewhere, in the depths of London, no longer invisible – no longer his secret.
X - X - X - X - X
He trundles down the halls of power, eyes down. He is slow, his progress as unstoppable as a glacier. He steps aside as more important wizards pass, mumbling the right phrases, hardly noticed. His report is rolled neatly in his hand, safe passage.
The archives are enormous, all perfectly catalogued. All his reports are stored here somewhere. Usually, Special Services guard them fiercely. Now, there is only a junior official sitting at the desk. He glances at Ernie as he closes the door and dismisses him.
First mistake.
"Incoming report," Ernie announces in his stolid tones. "Owl speed, version three. The Minister wanted it urgently."
The official rolls his eyes. "Yes, I'm sure. Let's have a look..."
He unrolls it, checking for the stamps and signatures. As his head bows over the paper, Ernie is quick: his wand whips from his pocket, and he whispers, "Duro."
There is the sound of stone groaning. Before his eyes, the wizard atrophies. His heart becomes granite; his veins are mica, his eyes the smooth round curve of marble. He is nothing but a statue where a man was.
The next door is securely locked, but for a man as skilled with charms as Ernie is, that's hardly an issue. It took eight months of quiet work before he found out the six spells which seal it: another four months before he had the countercharms down pat.
He casts them one by one. Any of his colleagues would be astonished to see his easy magic, the focus sharpening his face. The door opens soundlessly onto a treasure trove.
Here is every spell one could imagine. In better times, dark magic was shut away in the Department
of Mysteries. Now such spells are stacked among the household charms and party tricks as if there is no difference.
He scans the catalogue, looking for the three incantations Neville spoke so grimly of. New spells, shoved in among the old and familiar, made to hurt.
There. He pulls out the first, scanning through. His stomach turns at the description of just how one inverts the body of one's enemy, but he searches it through it for the counterspell. Yes, it's there, thank Merlin, with a list of effective potions and salves for the wounds.
He can feel time pressing in on him with claustrophobic intensity. The second spell takes him an inordinately long time to find: his palms are sweaty as he pulls it out. The anatomical descriptions are horribly exact, but the charm that releases the curse is just as exact. He memorises it.
The third spell is at the very back of the archive. He glances back at the door, pulse racing. But the Order need the answers only he can provide. There are wounded in King William Street who lie untreated, twisting in the throes of curses that potions and incantations cannot touch.
His hand closes on it. As he unrolls the scroll, he hears something at the periphery of his hearing – a creak, slow and ominous.
Someone else has come into the archives.
His breath is shallow and rapid, his fingers taut about the manuscript. Ernie carefully walks to the end of the aisle, as far from the door as he can get. Then, careful, he tests his weight on the shelving.
It holds. Shelf by shelf, step by cautious step, he climbs it. Through the gap between the top shelf and the books below it, he can make out the threshold, and the figure stood upon it, wand drawn, advancing.
Blaise Zabini.
X - X - X - X - X
At sunset, Draco left the search. He'd scoured every inch of the city, and found nothing of Hermione. That was, he supposed, a relief.
He sent a spell winging to Bellatrix, carried on a twist of air. She was close to Westminster, organising the search, her fury building like a storm.
"Draco," she said, his name like the lash of a whip. "I hope you have had better luck than these fools."
"Aunt Bella," he said coolly. "I've had no luck, I'm afraid."
She chuckled, a low throaty sound. "Are you, Draco? You don't sound afraid...but then, you're not much like your father, are you?"
"No," he said curtly. "Have you found anything?"
"These incompetents can tell me where she's been, oh, every dusty dirty shitty city place she's been, but no one knows where she is!" Her hiss rattled down the magical link between them. "And now you disappoint me too, Draco. So sad, so sad...I want the girl – Potter's pwetty girlie, I'll make her talk and sing and scream." She breathed in, a slick sound of joy. "We'll break her together, the Dark Lord and I, and when there's nothing left of her but gore and heat, the Order will fall too."
Draco felt nauseous. But that was just about par for the course in any conversation with Bellatrix.
"Quite," he said. "Happy hunting, Aunt Bella."
"The hunt is fine," she said dreamily, "but it's the kill that tastes so sweet..."
Draco ended the spell with a shudder. He flew back to Grimmauld Place, certain that he would arrive to find Granger already there, demanding to know where he'd been.
But the house was empty.
He ignored the unease that swarmed up through his veins. Instead, Draco began to prepare potions, chopping ingredients with ruthless efficiency. Herb-scented steam filled the kitchen; stalks and pips and skins piled up.
Five o'clock. No sign of her. He brewed, stirred, filtered.
Six o'clock, and he found himself pacing around the table. Grimly, he sat down to write his report. The scroll filled up with his incisive script. He threw Croxley to the lions without a qualm.
When he looked up, it was gone eight o'clock. And Hermione wasn't back.
He bottled the potions, cleaned out the cauldron and wrapped up his report. He walked through every room in the house, even the bedroom he'd given her, unable to sit still. There was little indication of her presence here: an indent on a pillow, an empty bowl in the kitchen, a set of footprints trailing through the dust.
His nerves grew tauter and tauter. Where on earth was she?
When his fireplace burst into flames, and a head appeared, Draco nearly decapitated a member of Special Services. Now that would have been unwise.
"Mister Malfoy," it said gruffly. "There has been an arrest. Lady Bellatrix requires your presence tomorrow."
It was gone before he could answer, leaving nothing but embers, and his hopes crumbling into ashes.
She'd been caught. It was over.
X - X - X - X - X
Again and again, Hermione Apparated. She went to every tourist spot she could think of, ignoring the startled gasps, the disbelieving glances as she appeared and vanished in the space between two heartbeats.
Nelson's Column, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Camden Market, travelling as if her life depended on it, which wasn't so far from the truth. Her life, and dozens of others. For half an hour, she Apparated until she was shaking with exhaustion. When she appeared at Piccadilly Circus, she wound into the crowd and let them carry her for a while, borne on a sea of language and wonder and ennui.
Eventually, she left the main streets and filtered down the back roads, crammed with boutiques and restaurants. She paused for a cup of tea, anonymous in the back of a café. Then she ventured back out, keeping an eye out for figures in the sky. When she glimpsed them in the distance, she would swing into the nearest shop and wait it out. She dared not use her magic.
So she whittled away time, drifting from place to place with elusive whimsy. Only long after darkness had fallen did Hermione dare to slip back out into the pandemonium of the city, darting between the pools of fluorescent light, her features recast by the shadows.
She felt unnerved and revealed in the tube, but Special Services were nowhere to be seen. She stood on the trains, ready to bolt if she needed to, nearly dizzy from tiredness. When her stop came, she stumbled off, glad to be back in darkness and the safety it offered.
She could not risk Apparating into Grimmauld Place. Instead, as it bulged between the buildings either side, she strolled up as if she was a casual observer. The handle turned beneath her hands, and though she was tensed for cries, for disaster, it did not come.
She slipped inside, surprised at how safe it felt.
X - X - X - X - X
Hermione paused at the kitchen door. Draco was sat at the table, head in his hands.
"Draco?" she said, bemused.
He looked up. The look on his face was on of absolute incredulity. "Granger?" Incredulity became anger. "Where the bloody hell have you been?"
"Hiding," she said. "You might not have noticed, but I'm a wanted fugitive."
"Yes, strangely enough I had noticed after you decided to reveal yourself to the entire Ministry," he snapped back. "What were you thinking?"
"That I'd been betrayed. That I was on my own," she said, and all the anger swelled up like a wave. She could not put aside that terrible moment when the earth under her feet had dropped away, launching her into freefall, into the surety of his treachery.
Outrage flashed on his face. "I saved your life!"
"When you said you'd warn me, I didn't think that was what you meant!" She stared at him. "And just how did you sidestep the Vow, Malfoy? What did you have to do to activate it?"
His mouth drew tight. And she had her answer.
"You considered it, didn't you?" she whispered. "You thought about handing me over to him."
His face was emotionless, as if she didn't matter – as if none of it mattered. "Of course."
She wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. But another part of her was frightened by that confession: if even the Vow would not stop him, just how close had he come to tossing away her allegiance and her life. What could Voldemort do that was terrible enough to make him consider it?
"Would you do it?" she challenged, needing to know, needing the answer. "Would you give me to him?"
She saw his mask ripple: then it smoothed into that arrogant smirk that had to be some sort of family trademark. "If the price was right. Can you say the same?"
It was a flippant answer, meant to drive her away. She saw that: and it stoked her fury. But she didn't show it – no, she'd play him at his own game. If he wanted to pretend and dissemble, then so could she.
She had to know. One way or the other, she had to be sure. Because if death didn't frighten him – then what was to stop him betraying her?
"Sometimes, Malfoy," she said in a bored, smug tone that she knew was absolutely guaranteed to enrage him, "you're so predictable."
His eyes were thick and dark as thunderclouds. "Am I, Granger," he said softly. "Am I now?"
"You play these endless games," she said. "Everything is just another chance to prove me inferior, to show me I haven't got the stomach for this. But do you really think I don't understand what this entails? I know people will die. I know...I know I will have a hand in that. That doesn't mean I have to like it, or find it easy!"
"And you think I do?" His eyes glittered. His voice was rising. "Do you think I like what I do, Granger, that I kill because it's fun?"
"No." She looked at him, gaze steady. "I think you kill because you need to."
"You have no idea what I need, Granger," he said in a voice scraped raw. "You think you can read me like I'm one of your bloody books, like you can learn me. You have no idea who I am!"
She saw the intent in his face before he moved: a fusion of anger and ferocity and something she could not fathom at all, some dark stirring mystery. And he was all motion, her mind able only to process details – his sudden closeness, the heat of his body, the hands he slammed either side of her head.
"No damn idea," he snarled, and the distance between them was shrinking, shrinking, as if he wanted to subsume her completely. And suddenly she saw the emotion he was holding back, and it pierced through her like an echo.
Anguish.
She saw: and he knew it, and he jolted away as if her compassion was repellent.
Hermione was left trembling, feeling as if she'd been hauled back from a precipice, from some teetering great height from which she could fall or fly and she didn't know which. There was heat in her cheeks, the wall a much needed support.
The silence was charged. She reached out, but he didn't see it. And she said, "Draco-"
He moved so quickly she was defenceless, unprepared: she only saw the flash of light, and heard his voice, rasping, tying to mask pain with fury. "Silencio!"
And the words of comfort were snatched away as if he couldn't bear to hear them. She was stunned: the pettiness of it, denying her voice as if he could deny her, and himself, and the fractures he bore across his heart.
With a silent counterspell, she broke the curse, struggling with her anger. His expression was full of contempt, of his old familiar haughtiness.
"How dare you!" she said. "Do you think you can silence me because you're afraid of what you might hear?"
He laughed, and the sound had jagged edges. "You mean you didn't see it coming? Maybe I'm not as predictable as you thought, Mudblood."
The epithet landed between them like a grenade.
"Wrong," she snapped, and thrust herself forward. She had the satisfaction of seeing him step back, as if she was a threat. "You're exactly as much of a bastard as I've come to expect."
His eyes were flat as mirrors, giving her nothing of himself. "I think you'll find my lineage is impeccable."
"Yes, that long history of intermarriage and incest has created quite the pillar of society!"
"Don't you dare insult my family," he hissed, fingers jabbing at her as if he wished he was holding his wand.
His sleeve slid back and she saw what his warning to her at Kings Cross had cost him.
All the anger was snatched from her. An immense, blistered burn looped around his wrist like a Celtic knot, following the lines of the Vow. Angry red mixed with small blisters, with raw flesh. It must have been agony.
She met his eyes. There was shock there: she hadn't been supposed to see.
And although she knew that those thoughts of betrayal must have been real enough to trigger the Vow, she knew too that he must have borne that pain long enough for her to feel it.
And, too, Hermione knew that he had thought of betrayal – and turned away.
"I can heal that, if you'll let me," she offered.
He eyed her. Then begrudgingly, he nodded.
Polite as strangers, they sat opposite one another at the table. Draco bared his arm, and she cast her spells, and they did not talk about all that had preceded it. In silence, she healed the burn which was proof of his betrayal and proof of her deliverance until it was nothing but another set of scars on his body.
When it was done, she said quietly, "I'm sorry. I should have trusted you."
His smile was crooked, but his eyes were dark and unfathomable. His voice, when he spoke, was laden with regret. "Don't be sorry, Granger." He drew back his sleeve further, and she saw the Dark Mark.
"I carry this too," he said softly. "I'll wear them both until the day I die. The only question is which will kill me first."
He left her in the dim kitchen then, unable to forget those words. They had the ring of prophecy.
X - X - X - X - X
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