A/N: Hello friends! I wanted to warn you that after this installment, there are only TWO chapters left to the story, the final being etched out as we live and breathe! Fear not- I am drawing it to its inevitable conclusion, one that I didn't necessarily envision at the start of this project over a year ago, but it makes the most sense now. I hope you stick through the continued angst for the next couple chapters and have faith that Dramione will indeed find peace... of a sort.
Two-fold Betrayal
"…grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." -Serenity Prayer
Once, Hermione relished the solitude that could be found in her out-of-the-way alcove in the library. She used to feel the anticipation add extra bounce to her steps as she wound her way through the many, many aisles to that sacred corner.
Now, though, Hermione felt at such a loss when she found herself alone in the cozy space that she succumbed after dinner to inviting Luna along in an attempt to stave off the loneliness. The dreamy, dangerous girl smiled her affirmation and upon arrival, took the comfiest chair. Hermione halted at the remaining cushioned chair, taking in her friend with newfound appreciation.
Clearly she is not as fanciful as everyone believes her to be.
Luna had taken out a single sheet of parchment, quill, and textbook- which Hermione gathered from the cover was for Divination- before immersing herself in her studies. Shaking off the bout of reflection, Hermione finally seated herself and spent the next twenty minutes arranging the dearth of information she had for Arithmancy revising. Luna seemed to find the whole process amusing as out of the corner of Hermione's eye, she could see the blonde's lips tilted mischievously at the corners.
The amusement of the situation entirely escaped Hermione; in fact, she felt a bit miffed that a Ravenclaw- the brainiest house of the castle- seemed to find such delightful triviality in the diligent method Hermione applied to her studies.
Beggars couldn't be choosers, however, and with Luna the only one available to help fend off the isolation, Hermione opted to keep her opinions to herself and finally get to work. Just as she was about to begin a rather absorbing problem, Luna cleared her throat.
"Hermione, do you mind helping me on this?"
Luna twisted the sheet and textbook so Hermione could see the topic- Centering your Eye for Advanced Crystal Ball Gazing. Involuntarily she made a face.
"You know," Luna started, not missing the reproof sketched on Hermione's face, "Divination isn't very different from Arithmancy."
Hermione couldn't control her eye roll at Luna's deduction. She scoffed, "Luna, your reasoning just shows that the branches of magic are in fact entirely different, if one could even consider Divination a legitimate branch- "
Hermione cut off her rant when she saw Luna's face harden.
"You should try to be more open-minded, Hermione," and the snappish scold caused the overzealous brunette to flush. Luna had pulled her school things back to her side of the table, staring at the paper with enigmatic eyes. Her pale fingers moved up and down the shaft of the quill a few times before putting it to paper to scratch out a few words.
Hermione sat, completely abashed yet unable to scrounge up any sort of concession as she did actually believe Divination to be a load of tripe; so instead she watched the thoughtful, feather-light movements of the girl's hand until it lulled.
Luna murmured, "My mother had the Sight."
She halted without elaboration, leaving Hermione to audibly sputter at the divulgence of such intimate and unanticipated knowledge. Before she could find a polite way to barrage her friend with questions, Luna continued her incredible narrative.
"She predicted her passing."
Hermione's mouth clicked shut.
"It was a conversation she had with me quite often as a child," Luna turned her eyes back onto Hermione, the stalwart gray gaze making Hermione tremble with emotion. Luna spoke, unflappable. "I asked why she wouldn't do something so that what she Saw wouldn't come true. She told me that to see things didn't necessarily mean to change them."
The homework lay abandoned as Luna paused in her story. Hermione's mind churned from the information that Luna provided even as long-standing logic fought against the idea that Seers actually existed. Never mind the two of us almost died trying to protect a prophecy from one last year.
Overwhelmed, Hermione opened her mouth to question the merit of taking such a passive stance on Seeing the future but Luna pressed on before she could say anything.
"My mother believed that Seeing meant more than changing. She felt it sometimes meant for one to gain perspective. Sometimes to appreciate or practice humility."
With that perplexing final note, Luna turned back to her homework as if she just didn't provide some astonishing riddle that required hours of discussion to unravel. Hermione was desperate for clarification- where does the Sight come from? How often does it occur? She fingered the heavy Arithmancy textbook, trying to allay the itch in her hands to scour the whole library in order to find a thorough reference book on the topic.
Luna's quill made a shushing sound as she dragged the feather across the parchment and for a moment, Hermione centered back on her friend and the last words she uttered.
Perspective and appreciation were all well and good, in Hermione's mind, but she near burned from the internal riot that one shouldn't attempt to change the things one sees.
What was the bloody point of sitting on that knowledge?
"Have you tried to change anything since I Saw for you?" Luna asked conversationally and Hermione startled at the way her train of thought flowed from Luna's mouth. Biting her lower lip until the skin chafed, Hermione tried weakly, "Luna they were just- "
"A portent of potential knowledge?" She remarked lightly, lethally. A scalpel with her syllables as she cut down through the meat of it. "I don't recall your reaction to the tea leaves being anything close to just."
Indecision shifted suddenly to indignation; Hermione had thought Luna was her friend, whose dreamy demeanor could be the haven that she needed on a lonely evening, but it seemed Hermione was wrong.
She pushed herself up and roughly gathered her things, uncaring at the order they fell into her bag. Petulant words peppered her tongue, making it hot, and she longed to unload them on this friend who had the audacity… who was conceited enough to-
Be right.
Hermione turned her back on Luna, who was serenely doing homework, as the petulant words melted into something a bit more pitiful. They slid down her throat and it burned- her speechlessness at a time when she once felt confident she could defend her beliefs unbelievably burned. Now an insidious kernel of doubt had winnowed its way in to shatter such beliefs because, bloody hell, Luna was right.
She had been right all year, probably as far back as that Quidditch game when she knew Hermione's mind had wandered to Draco's whereabouts. And she was right now because even if Hermione still clung to the idea that Divination was hardly worth pursuing, it was with the same strength she clung to that tea leaves reading.
Swallowing hard, she felt the burn work its way up her throat and into her eyes. Hermione refused to let the tears fall as Luna had revealed quite enough of her vulnerability for one day; so, with a swipe of one hand masked by the shouldering of her bag, Hermione walked towards the exit of the alcove.
"So?" The word drifted up, forbidden fruit longing to be plucked. Hermione twitched her head just so to find Luna still bent over parchment. "Have you tried to change anything?"
At the last second she raised her gray eyes, brimming with cautious curiosity, to Hermione.
"No," Hermione whispered back, the muscles in her neck cording in an attempt to hold back the tears that wanted to fall. They didn't; she'd had a lot of practice holding them back.
Luna only nodded and returned to her homework. "I'd say that was wise. My mother certainly was when she taught me that knowledge isn't meant to be wielded like a weapon."
"What would your mother's take have been on using it as a shield?"
Whipping her neck back around, Hermione saw Blaise and Theo flanking the small opening on the alcove. She shamelessly reached a hand out to the former.
"Hello, Hermione," Blaise greeted as he took her hand for a moment. A dark urgency pulsed from his fingers to her own before he let her go. Blaise weaved past, leaving Hermione and Theo with some semblance of privacy.
Theo broke first. "I'm so sorry, Granger," and in the pitifully small shared space he pierced the tension by laying his warm hands on Hermione's shoulders. The certitude of his statement sunk past her robes and cardigan and blouse until she felt thawed out from the frozen, futile shell of a girl she had been these past weeks.
Hermione smiled broadly her forgiveness and looped Theo into her arm, turning then to find Blaise gazing intently at Luna. "We need to speak with you," and he moved his assessing gaze to Hermione then, "in private."
The implication hung there and inwardly Hermione keened to reach out and grasp it like some shining lodestar that would finally provide direction. Considering Blaise's face more closely, her body stiffened as she organized the disarray of her mind, as she relived the conversation with Luna- much of it still too esoteric to fathom- until a few moments of silence stretched to many, discomfort stirring in her companions.
Instinctually she knew Luna had become too much of a support and so declared to Blaise, "You can say what you need to in front of Luna. At this point, she's just as integral as any of us."
Theo pierced Luna with an odd look whereas Blaise hadn't even blinked.
"You've been found out," Theo said, the words dripping deliberate vagueness and yet they shot right to the center of Hermione, freezing her.
Sighing- likely to cover up his atypical disquiet- Blaise added, "It's only a matter of time before You-Know-Who knows."
The stoic snakes stared, as if there wasn't so much that sat in between the space of the words they uttered. Story not scratched out, color left off the canvas, and Hermione yearned for clarity despite the numbness starting to spread again through her body. She felt her breathing slow to a preternatural stillness, a fact Luna picked up on as she moved away from the table to put a hand on Hermione's arm, the grip surprisingly firm.
Steady. Present.
Hermione drew strength from it and pushed feeling back into extremities already tingling with futility. Stumbling forward, she tried to string together coherence.
"Wait- but how?" A shaky inhale and then, "Is he okay?"
Blaise sidestepped the question. "He doesn't want you to go home for Easter hols."
Underneath the despair of being discovered, Hermione felt a slowly growing irritation that these boys would come here and feed her pieces of information like it was a sampling at tea as if she would end up at all satisfied with that.
She wasn't and the lack of information was starting to grate.
Breathing through clenched teeth, she modulated her voice carefully as she said, "I need to see him. We need to figure this- "
The hand on Hermione's arm turned to a vise when the brunette made to leave. Hermione merely glossed over the boys' interested expressions as she threw a look of blatant impatience over her shoulder.
Luna remained unmoved as she rationalized, "Hermione. Seeing him will only make it worse. Didn't you hear Blaise," who at his name shot Luna a look of unveiled suspicion, "earlier? They are telling you so you're protected. Draco's trying to shield you."
Her voice had turned earnest, coaxing, as if the significance of the two conversations held in the alcove that night would coil together and ensnare Hermione's curiosity.
But the volatile mixture of emotions churning in her blood diluted whatever shred of curiosity may have been left. What remained was indignation, and purpose- crystal clear purpose that filled her veins like alcohol.
Hermione backed up so that the whole group fell into her purview as she blazed, "He's the one that needs protection!"
Ignoring their raised protests, she rushed out, down the first floor corridor to the stairs that brought her standing, vacillating, in the Entrance Hall. As much as she craved Draco, Hermione had learned at least one thing this evening and that was this- Luna Lovegood is a truth giver, and that included her final statement about it being very bad if she sought out Draco just then.
All the same, she craved.
Hermione turned her sights up the main staircase and as the soles of her sensible shoes slapped the stones underneath, a tangle of thoughts whirred through Hermione's mind, attempting to form a coherent string.
A pearl necklace of knowledge.
A bullet-pointed leg to stand on when she finally confronted Harry and Ron.
She was halfway down the 4th floor corridor before Hermione could get a grasp on the internal chant beating in furious time with her heart.
Harry can convince Dumbledore. The man's calculating blue eyes flashed across her vision and she shuddered disquietly but the voice in her head persisted.
If anyone can do it, Harry can. I waited too long- or was it too late, her heart throbbed- too long, she emphasized. But now, now they will help because I'm in danger.
I'm in danger.
Hermione paused at a threshold, away from the curious eyes of portraits and the potentially occupied staircases and released a single sob. Danger- had she ever been out of danger in all the time she was a witch?
Self-pity was left to dangle as the swiftly spiraling time pressed upon Hermione's shoulders, forcing her to withhold the emotion as she rounded the corner for the stairwells.
Danger means they will help. And by helping me, they help Draco.
The justification was weak, utterly so, but Hermione had subsisted on logic for so long that her supply of it was long diminished, allowing for the emotion of the situation to run unchecked through her body.
Panting frantically, Hermione reached the Fat lady's portrait; the look on the tower keeper's face smacked of shock but Hermione had no time to evaluate what was likely her bedraggled appearance.
She shouted the password, voice already hoarse, and the picture swung aside with mouth still agape. Hermione tripped into the common room, her limbs already leaden with dread. She scanned faces- Dean, Seamus, barely recognizable second-years, Ginny- and there, nestled close on the couch with the vivacious redhead was Harry. His incurably messy black mop was to her front but Hermione caught the easy set of his shoulders and she already felt doomed.
She stood on the razor sharp edge of devastation and was unhesitatingly about to pull her best friend in alongside her.
Having stood frozen in the arched entryway for too long, the residents of the common room had begun to take notice, including Ron who sat opposite Harry with his back against the hearth, for once lacking his girlfriend-shaped shadow.
The fire framed him with a riotous sort of halo, his freckled face thrown into relief so that she could barely see his eyes but for the fact that they were directed at her. Hermione moved toward the fire as Ron thrusted away and then the two were standing face-to-face rather conspicuously in the center of the room.
His gaze circled her face, tilting up to take in her hair and then down to scan her body, the fiery fringe of his eyebrows raising each second that passed. Her name came out on a thread of worry. "Hermione?"
"I need to talk to you," she whispered fervently, "and Harry." Hermione's eyes traveled past Ron's arm to land directly on the boy in question, whose face was drawn and pale as he took in the exchange.
The trio soon whisked themselves away out of the common room and to an abandoned classroom, the one, Hermione noticed, she and Draco visited after the Quidditch game many months ago.
Upon entering she conjured one of her signature blue flames, the pang of nostalgia twofold in its bitter sweetness, before locking the door with a ward. Harry muffled the room.
"What is it, Hermione?"
"What happened?" Harry asked and Hermione couldn't even relish the concern in Ron's voice, in his body's cant toward her own, for the way Harry cut the air with his long-simmering impatience.
"I'm in danger," she managed to say. Their eyes widened at the news.
"How? What happened?" Harry repeated and Hermione dropped her eyes, chewing the thoughts until they were manageable bits.
Completely insane, manageable bits.
"You-know-who," Harry pursed his lips unpleasantly, "Voldemort," Hermione corrected, "knows about me. About my heritage."
Ron, this time- "How?"
The question failed to become any easier to answer the more she heard it; Hermione sucked in her bottom lip, the skin there too raw to be more than a heap of nerves.
"Well," she drew out, "you see, Parkinson- "
"This has to do with Pansy Parkinson?" Harry exclaimed but Hermione couldn't register much over the flare of panic that this explanation was taking too long... that she was, in fact, too late…
Growling, Hermione glared at the slack-jawed boys until their mouths were closed. "If you let me talk, I can tell you what this has to do with," she clipped.
Once the boys dipped their head in acknowledgment, Hermione cleared her throat and decided to plow forward, for better or worse.
"Parkinson was ordered to spy at Hogwarts and has been sending reports back to Voldemort. She's discovered that… she's telling him…" the words stuck, their order too unwieldy, too blunt, so Hermione attempted to backtrack. "I'm in danger because Draco is in danger."
Ron's ears turned red as his breath backed up angrily into his lungs; he spat, "Malfoy?" Yet, Hermione was more concerned by the sudden stillness of Harry.
"Draco?" And the question dropped from Harry's lip in all its implicative coldness. Hermione blinked away sudden tears as the ice in Harry's tone hit her face.
"Yes, Harry. Draco. He was sent to spy on me over the summer because I'm leverage for you," she rushed out, the 'you' ringing with accusation, "and I caught him and held him hostage for a time and that's when we… well, we- learned things."
Ron muttered darkly as he paced like a caged lion, his frame outside the blue flame's cool light. Harry's eyebrows rose at Hermione's admission.
"What kind of things?"
"Nothing of import, Harry," she snapped. "I initially tricked him with false information. It's irrelevant anyhow," Hermione continued, her voice softening, pleading, "when it came down to it, he wasn't so much Malfoy with me during that time. He had layers, contradictions."
Ron paused at this and whirled toward her, the agitation that drove his pacing now fully focused on her. "He's not a bloody cake, Hermione!" Ron shouted, rushing towards her with arms outstretched as if he was going to shake the crazy right out of her.
Harry placed a hand on Ron's shoulder to stay his movements. Looking at Hermione, he bid, "Keep going."
She clenched her fists, using her nails to prick feeling back into a body numb with fear. Ron's edgy exasperation was predictable, serving as an anchor to ground her against the tightly controlled movements Harry was making- so unlike her friend's typical brashness. Inhaling shakily, she continued.
"We came back to school and occasionally ran into each other in the corridors, usually after Slug Club. We talked, or more often bickered, and one of us would storm back to our dormitories. But they were things out of place… he wasn't acting normally and after what I saw and learned over the summer… I had to know."
"You had to help, you mean," Harry corrected. Their eyes collided over the small, dim space and she saw his irises darken with the beginnings of betrayal. Ron had shrugged off Harry's hold so that he could grasp Hermione hard by the shoulders; her breath caught at the unfamiliar touch, at the downward spin playing out in front of her like some Greek tragedy.
"What are you saying, Hermione?"
She forced her eyes up to Ron's face, shaking off the undeserving shackles of shame and with it, his hands so that she could state unequivocally, "I love Draco. I learned who he is and I love him for it and by doing so, the two of us are now in danger, I'm sure both our families are in danger!" Pause. "I've been told not to go home for Easter hols."
Ron staggered back, gaping for words as they fell inarticulately from his mouth in disbelief. "No! 'Mione… you can't! It's Malfoy. How-" he cut off, turning to gauge Harry's reaction who already moved to finish Ron's question.
"Could you. How could you?" Harry's voice was shaking as he leveled Hermione with a bitter glare. "This whole year, you've lied to us. I suspected Malfoy and you brushed me off because you needed to lie to protect him," Harry seethed as he stalked to be even with Ron, her two friends becoming an impenetrable wall between her and the classroom door.
Her blue flame levitated just to the left of their bodies and casted an eerie shadow across Harry's enraged features, Ron's devastated ones. The ginger shook his head and urged, "Why would you do this-" but was cut off by Harry who vibrated with rage.
"He's a Death Eater, Hermione. Scum. A bully who picked on you for years. And you chose him over us?"
The twin stares of accusation bore into Hermione and she felt utterly exposed, but for all the wrong reasons. She forced herself to keep her eyes on them as she jumped back into the argument.
"He is a Death Eater and he may have bullied me but you don't know everything. There's history between us…" Unbelievably, their stares turned colder so Hermione changed tack. "I didn't choose him over you. It's been complicated," she supplied albeit weakly because in a way, it hadn't been all that complicated.
And essentially, she did choose Draco.
A fact that Harry knew intimately as he scoffed then retreated for the door. "As if I can believe anything you say now, Hermione."
The ward she had placed prevented Harry from doing anything more than turning the doorknob futilely. "Let me out," he gritted but the words broke on Ron's back as he took his turn to loom over Hermione, to lambaste.
"Why would you do this to us? We're your best friends and you forget that so- what? You can try to save the fucking enemy?"
Hermione stared at Ron, traced the conviction etched into the furrows of his face, and deflated when she realized that she was only just skimming the surface of things with Harry and Ron.
Like stones skipped across the Black lake, each smack rippling outwards but not downwards where she needed them to come- into the shadowy depths where things weren't all black or white. Weren't all light or all dark but a communion of the two.
So when Hermione stared at Ron, when she settled on the dogmatic light reflecting from his blue eyes, she deflated because she knew there would be no help to be found here.
"You don't understand," Hermione started, still helpless to do anything but try and explain; Ron, though, was relentless, drinking in the rage that poured from Harry's form.
"No! You don't understand," he steamrolled, "He's not a house elf. He's not misunderstood-"
"LET ME OUT!" Harry then roared and both Ron and Hermione jumped as the words echoed around the room.
Harry wouldn't look at her and the loss of kinship shattered the most fragile section of her heart. She gripped her wand in shaky palms and muttered the spell to deactivate the ward, repeating the words when her breath hitched halfway through.
He stalked out and Harry still wouldn't look at her and as his back disappeared into the blackness of the hallway, Hermione crumpled to the ground and sobbed.
She heaved from the force of it, the tears running down her face to pool on her chin, to drip onto open, pleading palms. Through the blur, she could feel Ron move until his shabby shoes slid into her vision, the material not dragonhide leather but something much commoner and the observation left her empty.
"You can't blame us," he said and Hermione glanced up to find his tall frame unyielding, his arms crossed like a shield against her messy emotions, even though his face was soft with worry.
She caught his eyes and murmured, "I don't. I don't blame either of you." Hermione sighed then, the jagged truth of her next words scraping the roof of her mouth, making her rawer, "I blame myself.
"I need your help, Ron. Please."
He scowled and took a step back, as if the effort of craning his neck to view Hermione on the floor was more than he could afford.
"You need our help to save the ferret? Not bloody likely."
Hermione pushed herself off the ground then and said simply, "Saving him saves me."
Ron paled under his freckles at the statement, stripped of anything but sheer honesty, and after a moment held in the bowels of tension, he nodded slowly.
"I'll try to talk to Harry," he conceded, "No promises."