Darling Croyant;

There are times, fleeting, wonderful, irritating times, when I wonder what I did to deserve you in my life. As yet, I'm unsure whether that is a negative or a positive thing.

Thank-you for the flowers. I can't believe you remembered my favourites! Any other time, I'd be berating my friends for telling you. However, somehow I doubt that was this case here. Furthering my amazement, I have actually learned something from you. Or did you just make up their symbolism?

You are such a smart aleck git sometimes.

Love, Eltanin

She smirked and showed him the short note, making a show of her raised eyebrow. Draco rolled his eyes.

"She toldme what her favourite flowers were! We were talking about it once...oh, don't give me that look, Weasley. We were fifteen; we had to stop snogging sometime!"

Ginny screwed up her face and made a disgusted noise, smacking his arm with the bunch of letters to wipe the smug look off his face.

"So what's yours then?"

"My what?"

She gestured with the letter.

"Your favourite flower"

For the second time in less than five minutes, blood crept across Draco's high cheek bones. He muttered something incomprehensible and then sighed dramatically as Ginny crossed her arms pointedly, tapping her fingers against her bicep with tangible impatience.

"Snapdragons, Weasley. My favourite flowers are Snapdragons..." he trailed off, pulling the ribbon entwined through his fingers across his knuckles like a caress.

"Eltanin told me once, in the fight I'm apologising for here, that they symbolise deception. I went and looked up what irises symbolise; wisdom and valour...friendship. Faith. And hope" he looked up, their eyes meeting, and for that one heartbeat, his walls were down and she saw his uncertainty, saw his pain and fear, the attraction and whatever it had become conflicting with family and blood and age-old loyalty; saw beyond the boy in the iron mask.

"Tell me. Tell me how the two of you ended up here" she softly demanded, putting the letters down. Draco looked suddenly tired and turned his head against the wall, eyes fixed out the window.

"June 29th 1996. Five men in masks come into my room and grab me while I'm asleep. They drag me into hall...I can hear my Mother, crying, my father's trying to shut her up...I'm...trying to understand what's going on-"

His voice was detached, fathomless, as though he was just reeling off facts, reading from a text that had been written long ago. The iron mask was firmly in place. Ginny did not dare to shift her position, lest she startle this flighty creature bathed in the silvery-red light of dusk to take to his heels.

"-Then suddenly, I'm in the ballroom. They...throw me on the floor, and I hear a sound...scales, on the marble...and suddenly I knew-" his voice cracked and he looked away angrily. Ginny Weasley held her breath, remembering all those conversations between Hermione, Ron and Harry, urgently whispered, faces pinched.

"-He-" Draco didn't have to say another word for her to know who he meant- "Told me that the only choice I had was to do as he said. That it was the only path left for me; to rise up and redeem my father...or watch my mother suffer the consequences before he killed me...so I went to Borgin and Botts and I...I swore allegiance"

It was about this moment, those conversations she'd distantly witnessed.

"Harry is under the impression that Draco Malfoy is now a Death Eater"

Only now, she recalled her memories of Hermione's features during those conversations and found herself, once again, fighting to make the broken illusion meld together into a clear picture. Hermione must have known; yet she fought at the Battle of the Astronomy Tower and seemed as shocked as they all were at Malfoy's betrayal.

"I didn't want that brand, Ginny-" Draco's urgent voice cut across her thoughts like a pleading scythe. She started and looked up, realising he had mistaken her expression of deep thought for one of judging.

"But I couldn't think about it. Couldn't think about why. It would only take a split second and hewould have gotten into my head and found out everything. Hermione. Her...dreams, and hopes, and me...every little touch, every look, every thought, would have been turned against me. Considered treason, betrayal. Everything, everyone...would have been purged. My mother, my father, my aunt-not that that would have been too much of a loss, but it would have been only the beginning"

His expression raw, he dragged a heavy hand though his hair, taking his own weight and beginning to pace. She was unsure if he had noticed Hermione's ribbon still wrapped around his hand. Ginny drew her knees to her chest and waited until he had stroked the coals in the brazier.

"So you took the job"

He glanced at her over his shoulder, trying to read her expression, and then returned to prodding the embers.

"Yes. I did. I did it because it was the.Only.Bloody.Way..."

"Then what?"

She tried to mould her voice to mimic his moments before; that flawless, emotionless hum of regurgitated information without inflection or commitment. It didn't work as well for her. Malfoy had spent years practising the art of hiding his emotions. On the other hand, she had spent years with her heart on her sleeve, every emotion written across her face.

"Then nothing. I ignored her owls. I tried very hard to ignore herbut...she doesn't give up easily, our Hermione..."

"Let. Me. Help! What's going on, Draco?"

"Leave me the fuck alone, Granger. Didn't you get the message? We're done. I'm done. You were a charity case that I am sick of funding"

Her arms were crossed over her chest and he watched his barbed words lash her face. She flinched as each one left his mouth.

"Are you done being a self-absorbed wanker, Malfoy, or would you like to continue ranting at the wrong person?" she asked calmly,no trace in her voice of the tears welling up in her eyes.

"Salazar's bloody fangs, you really don't get it,do you Mudblood? I'm sick of you.You're ugly and boring and I. Am. Sick of you"

Never let it be said that Hermione Granger was a weakling. She seized Draco by the front of his robes and shoved him back into the wall.

"You utter arse Draco Malfoy!"

He pushed her away by the shoulders, gingerly, as if she was diseased, a look of utter disgust painted on his aristocratic features.

"Think what you like Granger, just leave me alone"

Draco twisted past her, turning his back, and walking away. Hermione reached out and grabbed his arm; his left forearm. His response; jerking away with a cry of pain, was immediate. Hermione's eyes widened and under her breath a barely-uttered prayer made its way to some deity. Her fingers were still tightly wrapped around his arm. When he'd yanked, her hand only slipped down. Now she shoved up the sleeve of his robe before he had a chance to react and her eyes fell upon the tainted mar upon his perfect skin.

She gasped a strangled sound of dispute and raised her eyes to his. The answer, the terrible confirmation, was written in his eyes.

"Hermione..." her name fell past his lips and he pulled her into the polluted circle of his arms as she began to cry. Into the sweet curls of her hair, he did too; racking sobs which shook them both to their core.

"G-Godric and the Founders, baby, baby I'm sorry,I'm so sorry,Eltanin,Merlin,luv,I'msorry"

Who knew how long the two of them stood there for,entwined, their tears cleansing and staining the skin of the other.They held the other tight, hoping that if they stood close enough, if they embraced hard enough, the air between them and around them would ignite.They hoped that if the fire was burning hot,if it consumed them so fiercely,it would keep the rest of the world at bay.This horrible reality could not encroach. All they needed to do was find the spark and let the flames devour them, burn away their sins, and leave nothing but the ash so like the phoenix, they could rise anew.

"What now?" she asked later, curled with him in the Room of Requirement. How they made it there without being seen was a blur of quickly cast spells and lips and teeth and held-in gasps.

He kissed her swollen,reddened lips lightly, soothing the brutal marks of their attempt to light themselves on fire and sat up,swinging his legs out of the bed.He heard the covers they hadn't made it under shift as she moved to watch him.He went to his shirt and retrieved the Galleon she had merged with the Protean charm long before the DA waseven an idea and flicked it into the air.

Heads.

"You forget, Eltanin. For now, at least, we forget"

"You know I won't do that"

He turned tiredly.

"You have to, sweetheart. You have to forget all this or he's going to kill you, me, my mother, my father. He's going to hunt down your parents. If Potter looses, he's going to hunt down your friends anyway. We're on different sides at the moment, darling"

"Atthemoment.Just atthemoment?"

She was self-conscious about walking around stark naked, which he wasn't. She noted he held his left arm a little closer to his side; either because it pained him or because he was ashamed of the symbol writ on it, she couldn't tell. Probably a bit of both. Carefully tugging the sheet out, she held it to her front and walked across the room to stand before him. He was half-smiling, eyes lit beautifully with awe at her beauty; hair deliciously mussed, lips soft and swollen, the crisp white sheet a stunning, mouth-watering contrast to her light honey skin.

"Draco,was it you who cursed Katie Bell?"

Every muscle in his body convulsed and he couldn't move enough to even nod.His vocal cords seized up.She knew though; she nodded sadly and looked down.He couldn't stand her not looking at him, not being able to tell with a single glance what she was thinking, so he caught her chin with graceful fingers and forced her to look up.

"What's your mission, Draco?"

He dropped his hand to her shoulder and wordlessly shook his head. Her jaw shifted obstinately.

"Are more people going to get hurt?" she whispered, her mind warring with her heart as he juggled his possible answers.Part of her needed to know;the part of her that wasn't viewing an enemy,the part of her bent on protecting her friends at all costs.The other part,the part that was a girl looking at the boy she loved in nothing but a sheet, didn't want to know.

Finally, he nodded. Her face shattered and she dropped her forehead onto his naked chest.

"Is there any way to stop it?" she asked, choked. He kissed the top of her head sadly.

"Is terrorizing the students the objective? Getting Dumbledore fired?"

His wide blue-grey eyes blinked slowly and he lowered his head to taste the already bruised, sweet skin of her neck. She shivered as his words rumbled through her bones.

"Come back to bed, my darling"