A/N: Hope you like it!

Chapter Twenty-One:

"The first and most important part," Thomas began, aligning his firearm with an empty soup can in the distance. " … is trigger management. Don't even think about putting your finger anywhere near the trigger unless you mean to shoot. In order to get to that point you first have to align your sights, make sure you're aware of your surroundings and then and only then when you've made a conscious decision to shoot, do you place your finger within the trigger guard and press it down."

With that he slowly and carefully did exactly as he described, effortlessly putting a hole through one of the cans in the distance, the quiet ding of it echoing through the forest in the seconds after.

Draco tensed, having read countless articles on Muggle firearms and the dangers of them.

The idea of shooting holes through his enemies made his stomach turn as if he'd eaten Granger's cooking, but it was for her sake that he'd forced himself to at least learn.

If The Collective were so intent on shooting holes through his body, he figured it was only polite to show the same kindness in return.

"Do you want to give it a try?" Thomas asked, breaking the wizard's train of thought.

Swallowing hard, Draco nodded, carefully taking hold of the firearm as Thomas gave it to him in the quiet of the forest.

By then it was morning, the events of the previous night weighing heavily in Draco's chest.

"Okay," Thomas interjected, breaking the wizard's train of thought. "Hold it with both hands like I showed you, bend your knees slightly for more stability and then slowly raise your weapon," he instructed, waiting until Draco followed before continuing. "Now this is what most people have a hard time with on their first try. Once you've aligned your sights on that can, you've got to press down on the trigger slowly as if you're squeezing the shot out instead of firing it off at random."

With a deep breath Draco gave it his best, aligning his sights on his target, which happened to be an empty soup can, the trees behind them ruffling in the morning winds as he then grazed the tip of his finger along the trigger and gave it a slow, firm squeeze.

Ding.

His eyes widened in shock.

"You're sure you've never done this before?" Thomas asked, just as shocked if not more.

Carefully lowering the weapon, Draco released his breath. "Quite sure."

"Well, shit. I guess we can move on to combat shooting faster than I thought."

"Won't we run out of rounds?"

"Not if we make every shot count," Thomas clarified. "You're better off with one round that you know how to use than twenty that you don't."

Draco lifted an eyebrow at him. "What are you, ex-military?"

"No, but I was raised by a guy who was."

"Your father, you mean?"

"That's one word for him," Thomas snorted, taking hold of the second firearm, the one Weasley had swiped from a Black Coat, before then effortlessly shooting another hole through the can. "I take it you grew up pretty nice?"

Raising his firearm and aligning his sights, Draco gave it a moment of thought. "That depends," he decided, squeezing out another shot only to frown as he missed his target by inches. "Shit."

"It can't have been that bad."

"It wasn't bad. Just complicated," he offered, resisting the urge to go into further detail. The less he said, the better. "What about you? Is your mother ex-military as well?"

"No, she was a writer."

"Was?"

Thomas nodded. "Got sick when I was really young. I don't remember much about her outside of those last few months when I was nine."

Fixing a quick look in the bouncer's direction, Draco was wordless for a moment. "Sorry to hear that."

"It was a long time ago," Thomas shrugged, pointing his firearm at the can for a third time before then squeezing out another shot and allowing the echo of it to fill the silence that followed. "You know … most people would think to stay away from the guy whose girlfriend they snuck around with for five months."

Draco stilled at the sound of that. "Most people live in fear."

"You don't?"

Pressing down on the trigger again, he put a hole straight through the top of the can. "I have my fears like everyone else. I just don't let them get in the way of what needs to be done."

Thomas allowed those words to sink in. "I guess that's one thing we have in common."

"One more thing, you mean."

"Right. Anna."

"Er … I was thinking more along the lines of a complicated childhood," Draco quickly inserted. "But Anna works, too."

Glaring at him dully, Thomas pressed down on the trigger once more, this time hitting the can in such a way that it went flying backwards and flattened perfectly against a tree all in the space of one second. It was safe to say he wasn't ready to joke about Anna.

And that he'd probably imagined Draco's face on that can.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, he'd heard two different voices.

One man and one woman. Both of them familiar. Although he couldn't work out the words they were saying, he sensed they were helping him, memories of what happened in the forest coming back to him in pieces. Every inch of his body was in pain, but the most painful aspect of it all were the choices that he'd made leading up to this moment.

The choices that were all slowly coming back to him as he drifted away again.

She was beautiful of course, but almost suspiciously so. When she wasn't going for morning runs around the block where she lived or snapping photographs of various buildings and street corners around the city, she was either sipping on a glass of wine in the quiet of her lounge or waiting for someone to buy her a drink at the pub down the street. It was a different bloke each time but they were always consumed by her every word, movement and glance before then ending the night in the dimness of her apartment as she shrugged her dress off and rode them in plain view.

The first time it happened, Ron had lowered his omnioculars to give her privacy, having watched her from the shadows of the empty apartment across the street, waiting for even the smallest sign that she was the same squib he had been sent there to find, but as the days had turned swiftly into weeks, he began to wonder if maybe after years of hiding, some small part of this woman wanted to be seen.

On the fifth day of the third week, when she extracted a folded piece of parchment from within the book on her bedside table and spent hours marking it before then heading out to the pub, he decided it was time to finally introduce himself.

"Sorry to bother you, but … I believe you dropped this on your way in," Ron began, the ambient rhythm of music, chatter and clinking drinking glasses bouncing within the walls of the pub as he smoothly made his way over to one of the women at the bar.

She was tall, leggy and dressed in a top that left little to the imagination, and the very second she glanced over to him to find her slim, smooth black phone in his grasp, her eyes widened and she immediately stopped rummaging through her designer bag. "Oh! I'm such an idiot! I-I thought I forgot it on the train," she blurted, hurriedly taking the device into both hands as she breathed the longest sigh of relief he'd ever heard. "Thank you so much. Honestly, I-I was so worried that I'd never see it again. All of my work messages and photos from back home are on there. You're like … such a good person for bringing it to me. Seriously."

Making a hand motion as if to brush off the last bit, Ron ordered himself a whiskey neat. "It was the least I could do," he then said. "My first week here I forgot my laptop in a café and returned a minute later to find that someone had already swiped from the table."

Her mouth fell open. "That's awful!"

With only a shrug, he sipped on his drink.

"I'm Rachel by the way," she introduced, after a moment of hesitation. "Originally from Sonoma and completely terrified of New York so far … in case I haven't made it obvious enough."

He chuckled, lifting his drink to her in hello as she did the same. "I'm Hugo."

"From England, I take it?"

"Born and raised," he nodded. "Also … New York isn't so terrifying. Give it a month or two and you'll be glaring random people up and down like the best of them."

She softly laughed. "That'll be the day. My family was so worried when I told them I was going to be moving here. I'm the youngest, so they all still think of me as the five-year-old who got her head stuck in the dog door that one time."

Lips twitching with amusement, he couldn't help but ask. "Exactly how hard did they laugh when they found you like that?"

"Oh, they had tears streaming down their faces," she added, snorting at the memory. "Got to love the fact that they left me like that for an entire twenty minutes before even trying to get me out."

"That's family for you."

"Right? I mean, shit, I'm already starting to miss them and it's only been a week." Releasing one deep breath, she shook her head as if to shake those feelings away, looking to him after. "Enough about me, though. What's your story, Hugo? If you don't mind my asking."

He gave it a moment of thought. "Er … not much to it. I grew up in London with just my parents and older sister, studied law in school, took up writing when I realized law wasn't for me, moved here about a year ago and still haven't unpacked all of my things despite my girlfriend's constant reminders."

Falling silent at the mention of a girlfriend, Rachel opened and closed her mouth multiple times, hurriedly trying to find something to say to distract from the brush of disappointment in her eyes. "That's … cool."

In part Ron felt bad involving her in his plan, but it was important that he established himself as a man who was completely and utterly unavailable, because as it happened, there was a woman a couple of stools to his left who had been listening to every word he'd said.

From the moment he'd first approached Rachel with the phone that he'd summoned out of her bag when she had entered the pub twenty minutes prior to meet with a Tinder date that had coincidentally never showed.

"I, uh … I should probably get going before I miss my train," Rachel decided, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears as she rose to her feet. "It was nice talking to you, though."

"You as well," Ron said to her, sincerely. "And for what it's worth, Rachel, I'm sure New York will feel like home to you in no time."

She smiled at that, as if without knowing. "Thanks, Hugo."

Moments later, after the beautiful, leggy Rachel from Sonoma had pushed through the front door of the pub and made her way onto the glistening pavement where she then called a cab instead of taking the train home like she had said she was going to, Ron turned his body to the front of the bar, quietly swirling his whiskey as he felt the woman to his left fix a swift, indiscreet look in his direction.

Without missing a beat, she smirked, taking in a small sip of wine before bothering to utter even just one word. "That was quite the performance."

He glanced over, taking note of the fact that her glass was still mostly full and that she had pulled together a more casual ensemble of jeans, white shirt and leather jacket that night, as if she'd not intended to pull.

Only he knew better. "Sorry?"

"That girl back there," she clarified, a knowing glimmer in her eyes. "She was about ready to get on her knees for you before you said you had a girlfriend."

For a moment he said nothing, allowing the silence to speak for him as he sipped his whiskey. "I s'pose it matters to some people."

Her smirk deepened. "Not to you, though."

"What makes you say that?" he calmly asked.

"Body language," she uttered, as if it were that simple. "You were turned completely towards her the entire time, smiling at her with your eyes instead of your lips and hanging on the edge of her every word to distract from the fact that you had memorized the outline of her nipples within the first ten seconds of your conversation."

His eyebrows shot up, in more of an amused fashion than anything else. "You got all of that from a quick chat about phones and dog doors?"

"No, I got all of that from the little lie you told her."

"What lie would that be?" he smirked, only a touch nervous.

"You don't have a girlfriend," she plainly stated, taking in another sip of wine. "In fact you don't even want one and the only reason you said you had one back there was to remove any hopes she may have had in turning what could have been a quick fuck in the bathroom into the relationship she wants and probably needs."

He narrowed his eyes at her, curiously. "And if you're right?"

"If I'm right," she smiled, gathering her soft, pale waves of hair to one side, revealing her neck to him in such a way that it may as well have been a different part of her body entirely. "You can go ahead and tell me all about your little girlfriend over a drink at my place."

Wordless for a few seconds, he could hardly believe that his plan had worked. "Count me in, er …"

"Gemma," she introduced, her first lie of the night. "And your name?"

"Hugo," he repeated, even though he was sure that she had already overheard that bit from when he'd talked to Rachel earlier. "Now how about that drink?"

Without another word she motioned for him to follow her through the door, and he did, knowing in the back of his mind that he had to put on an even better performance at her apartment if he'd any hope of getting his hands on that parchment without waking her.

Hermione washed her hands in the bathroom sink, having changed Ron's bandages again for the second time that day. Although she and Corvus had managed to stop him from bleeding out the previous night using Dittany and other forms of Healing magic, they had quickly discovered the following morning that there were still traces of anti-magic in his wound, which had slowed his recovery from the hours it should have taken, to possibly days.

Releasing a deep breath, she stretched her neck along both sides, grasping the edge of the sink as she then tilted her head down and gave herself a moment to gather her thoughts.

To her knowledge Malfoy and Thomas had left hours ago to practice shooting and to stand guard over the safe house in case any Black Coats came wandering through the forest with another one of those trackers in hand.

By Hermione's suggestion the group had relocated from camp to the safe house that morning, where they had enough supplies to go around and where they could keep an eye on Psyche, Eric and Ron at once.

Only in the seconds after, as she heard a knock on the door, did she snap out of it, quickly turning the water down before then blurting the first words that came to mind. "S-sorry, I'll be out in just a moment."

Corvus said something on the other side, his words muffled by the door until Hermione opened it to find dinner on the kitchen table. A full spread of food and drinks. Her stomach rumbled at the sight of it, reminding her that she'd not sat down for a proper meal in nearly a week.

"Did you make all of this?" she asked, glancing to Corvus as he finished setting the table.

Nodding once, he carried on setting down forks and placing glasses in front of each of the chairs. "I figured we might as well have a nice dinner together. There are only so many campfire dinners I can have before I want to throw myself into one."

Hermione quietly chuckled, settling into one of the chairs. "Well, I'm certainly not complaining. I've had coffee for dinner for three straight days."

"It's a miracle you and Draco made it five months."

"Oh, I know. He's not so bad in the kitchen, though. Just lazy."

"Where is he anyway? And Thomas for that matter."

"Er …" Glancing through one of the back windows, Hermione saw nothing but darkness, the sun having already vanished beneath the horizon. "They should be on their way."

With a small shrug, Corvus sat down, plating dinner for just him and the brunette as if to say the other two could eat the dirt form the bottom of their shoes for all he cared. "So, uh … I've given some thought to what you said and I've decided that I want to help," he began, after a moment of just chewing and swallowing. "I'll speak to Psyche first thing in the morning."

"That means a lot," Hermione made sure to say, with the utmost sincerity. "Truly. You've already helped in so many different ways. If it weren't for you, Ron would have … he would have …"

"If it weren't for me, Ron wouldn't have been shot," Corvus confessed, his face paling as he said the rest. "Those Black Coats were after me before he jumped in."

Only then did Hermione see it, the weight that Corvus had been carrying on his shoulders all that time. "It's not your fault, Corvus."

"You weren't there. If I hadn't frozen up, he would never have had to come save me."

"That doesn't matter. All that matters is that you haven't left his side since," she countered, softly but firmly all the same. "You're a strong wizard. I mean that."

He hesitated a moment, as if he'd never heard those words directed at him before. Not once. "Do you really?"

"Of course," she said to him, unquestionably. "Malfoy and Thomas would have raced out of that tent the moment the blood started pouring out. But you didn't. You stayed and you took control."

Exhaling deeply at the memory, Corvus gave her a look of thanks. "I, uh … I know this is going to sound kind of weird coming from someone you've just met, but … I'm beginning to see why Ron respects you so much. You're like … a really nice person."

Hermione couldn't help but chuckle, lightly. "I've had my moments when I've not been so nice."

"Like when?"

"Well, for one, I smacked Malfoy across the face in third year."

"He probably deserved it, though."

"Oh, he did," she smirked. "But of course, violence is never the answer. The following morning I went into Potions class early and placed a vial of Murtlap Essence on his desk before he arrived."

Corvus snorted with laughter. "Surely you didn't hit him that hard."

"No, but I did hit him hard enough that he fell to the ground and split his lip against the toe of his friend's boot," she remembered, pressing her mouth closed to keep from laughing at the memory. "Oddly enough I think he knew the Murtlap Essence was from me. In part because he looked at me the moment he saw it and realized what it was, and in part because he then flung it across the room and shattered the vial to pieces."

Eyebrows twitching up, Corvus held the silence for just a moment before he smirked, knowingly. "So, not only are you a nice person. You're also nice to people who don't deserve it."

"Malfoy's not so undeserving. Not anymore."

"What about Psyche?" he then asked, bringing a long stretch of silence to the conversation in the moments after. "Most people would have done far worse to her than lock her up in a wood shed."

Hermione took in a small bite of food, gently swallowing it as she fell deep into thought. "I could be wrong, but after having read a few pages of her journal, I feel that maybe she's not the person she's made herself out to be these past few months."

"Years."

"Sorry?"

"Years," Corvus repeated, poking at his food now. "She changed a long time ago."

"In what way?"

He shrugged. "In all the ways. It started when we first discovered the cave together years ago. At the time I just thought it was something we were doing as family, to feel more connected to what we lost. But then she began going on about actually using the anti-magic. Making rings and other devices from it like what our mother's aunt wanted to do before she was locked up." Gulping at the memory, he forced his eyes closed. "I-I never would have agreed to open the cave for her had I known this was going to happen. Sh-she promised me that she wasn't going to involve Kharon. I've always hated that guy. He's the same manipulative piece of shit that he was back then. If it weren't for him … if it weren't for him, none of this would be happening right now."

Allowing those words to sink in, Hermione opened her mouth to offer some encouraging words, only to stop as she heard one of the last bits again, in the back of her mind. "Sorry, did you say that you opened the cave?"

Corvus nodded, distantly as he tried pulling himself out of those painful memories. "The First Ones sealed it with blood magic from the outside. Once the war had ended. Psyche tried to open it using her own blood at first, but given that she's a squib, it didn't work."

"How did you know where to find it? The cave, I mean."

"My mother's aunt spent her entire life searching for it," he explained. "Without her research, we would never have found the cave. It's that side of the family that's connected to the First Ones. In fact the first known anti-magic ring was passed down on that side of the family for years. They didn't know its true power at the time, and they never wore it for obvious reasons, but Gemma Clarke was a squib, so it didn't have the same impact on her that it did everyone else. When she finally got her hands on it, she put it on and started having these weird dreams. It was like a … a window into the past or something."

Hermione said nothing, opting only to listen as she carefully began taking notes as if she were in class.

"Whoever that ring had originally belonged to, their memories began seeping into Gemma's head as she slept," Corvus went on to say. "She tried drawing what she saw, writing it down … telling her family about it. But no one took her seriously. She was the only squib, the only one with the power to awaken the ring and the memories attached to it. For years she tried finding the cave that she saw in her dreams, but the cave was sealed, hidden away for our own protection. By the time she realized she needed blood magic to open it, the magical friend that she had turned to for help, had then gone straight to the MACUSA and told them that Gemma was looking into blood magic."

"And then she was locked away," Hermione gathered, the pieces all slowly falling into place.

Corvus released a deep breath. "So, what's your family like?" he jokingly asked, moments before the back door clicked open to reveal Thomas and Malfoy, finally having returned from shooting practice and immediately sitting down at the table the second they laid eyes on the spread of food that had been waiting for them.

Later That Night

Once he'd finished his dinner and had a quick shower, Draco made his way onto the front porch, where he knew she was going to be.

"How was it?" Granger asked, instinctively making room for him on the topmost step. "Your day with Thomas, I mean."

He shrugged, his shoulder brushing up against hers as he sat down. "I'm still alive, so it didn't go as horribly wrong as I'd thought it was going to."

Laughing at that, Granger glanced to him, the warm brown of her eyes softening a little. "I have a question."

"Go on."

"Did you know the Murtlap Essence was from me?" she asked, earning a confused look from the wizard before he realized what she was referring to.

"The Murtlap Essence that I threw across the room, unbeknownst to the fact that Professor Snape was standing directly behind me, you mean?"

"Er … yes."

He smirked in response. "Of course I knew. Who else in third year would have been able to brew a potion like that but you?"

"Is that why you threw it across the room?"

"That and the fact that I didn't want to admit that I needed it."

Exchanging an amused, knowing look with him, Granger then inched closer, wordlessly resting her head along his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around her, lightly. "About what happened last night …" she then said, quietly. "I just … I want to thank you for … for …"

"For kissing you?" Draco asked, slowly lifting an eyebrow.

Granger rolled her eyes at him, playfully. "For being there for me," she clarified. "The kiss was a nice touch, though."

"Is that why you ran off like a little fifth year after?"

"That and the fact that I didn't want to admit I needed it," she quipped, earning a soundless laugh from the Slytherin before he slowly leaned in and ghosted his lips along hers in another kiss, this time deepening it just enough to show that he needed it just as badly.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Thoughts?