Hi friends! Thanks so much for reading and for your feedback. Some notes: yes, this is very much multichapter, and I think it'll probably be pretty long. Updates will take at least three days, but should be no more than a week apart, at least while my city is in lockdown. If the update speed looks like it will change, I'll let you know. :)
Also—it's Dramione!
Off we go again.
xo
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Two weeks later
It was lucky the house at Grimmauld Place had several stories and a basement still strewn with Dark artifacts, because if it had been smaller or duller, Draco thought he might have surrendered himself to the Dark Lord out of sheer boredom.
"Draco," said his mother one evening, when he made the mistake of saying this to her. "That is nothing to joke about."
He didn't miss the way her eyes—icy blue and slightly feline, as if his own had been saturated with color—flicked nervously to the door. He knew she was remembering the manor, which for nearly a year had housed a steady stream of Death Eaters, all monitoring each other's words for hints of weakness or disloyalty.
Draco yawned and sank down in his ancient leather chair. "Please, Mother. You know how hard I worked to get us this exclusive reservation. I'm not going to leave it all to you."
Her expression softened, and her lips pulled briefly in a near smile. She returned to the Evening Prophet.
Draco watched his mother for another moment. She looked, he realized, healthier than she had in a year. Her long blonde hair, which had been lank and dull every holiday, was brushed and clean now, and though her eyes still had the red tint of sleeplessness, her movements were less nervous. Her posture had regained the rigid perfection that Draco associated with black pearls and silk robes, the lavish parties of his childhood.
In general, she looked the way Draco felt: as if the previous year had been physically siphoned out of his body, leaving him lighter, able to breathe.
Draco ran his fingers over the chair's cracked, faded arms and experienced a rare moment of contentment. It was mid-July and pleasantly hot, and they'd pushed up the windows of the drawing room to let in a breeze. The Wizarding Wireless in the corner was humming with the Clantham Crickets' Symphony, and his mother was, if not happy, at least safe and comfortable. To top it all off, they'd received word two nights ago that Lucius had been smuggled the Draught of Living Death in Azkaban and was to be freed this weekend.
There was no owl post to the house, but the Prophet and any messages came through the Floo twice a day, ejected unceremoniously onto the kitchen hearth. The most eventful bit of news in the Prophet so far had been their shared obituary, which had run the week after their "deaths." Draco had read the piece out loud in a somber, priestlike tone that had made his mother smile with teeth, which she never did; there was a sharp canine she didn't like.
"Anything worth reading today?" he asked her, propping his feet up on an ottoman whose ivory legs looked like they might have been carved out of troll tusks.
"Not particularly," she said. "The Ministry is conducting an internal investigation of the Department of Magical Games and Sports. They suspect someone there has been compromised."
"Magical Games and Sports?" Draco snickered. "Of course. All part of the Dark Lord's master plan to take over the International Association of Quidditch."
One corner of his mother's mouth twitched. "They think it's a side door into the Auror Office. Lax security in one department could mean a chain of Imperius Curses, et cetera, et cetera."
"Oh." Draco paused. "And? Has someone been Imperiused?"
His mother arched one thin eyebrow. "I don't think it's appropriate to discuss such things while we're here, Draco." She turned a page pointedly.
Draco stayed quiet and kept watching her, amused. His parents always withheld information from him for about twenty seconds. They seemed to regard it as a good exercise in patience.
On cue, his mother sighed and looked over at him. "I didn't hear of any plans for that department. Of course, the Dark Lord will have jettisoned anything I did hear. He'll think I was interrogated thoroughly before my death."
"Of course. If Dumbledore's known for anything, it's his brutal interrogation tactics."
"He is an accomplished Legilimens."
"Yeah, well, that didn't stop me from getting Death Eaters into his school, did it?" Draco stood and stretched. "I think I'll have the elf make me a cup of tea. Do you want any, Mother?"
"No, thank you, Draco. … I'll call him if I need him." Though she didn't look up from the Prophet, she reached up absentmindedly to touch Draco's arm as he passed, as if to remind herself that he was real.
In the end, Draco headed down to the basement kitchen to make the tea himself. He wasn't fond of the elf—Croucher, or whatever his name was—who had a bad habit of popping up suddenly, looking like a demented gnome. Two days after their arrival, the hideous old thing had shown up, sent by Dumbledore and apparently delighted to see both of them. Since then, Draco's mother had been giving the elf orders, and under her instruction, the house had grown cleaner and cleaner. There was only one type of mold left on Draco's bathroom ceiling, for instance. Or, rather, Regulus Arcturus Black's bathroom ceiling; he'd been sleeping in the man's bedroom.
"Master Draco!" yelped a deep, throaty voice when the kettle was halfway to boiling. Draco flinched and looked back to see the elf scurrying into the room, looking stricken. "Kreacher did not know Master Draco was in need of tea … Kreacher would have been honored, honored to serve the noble son of Malfoy … Kreacher knows he takes his tea strong, as befits his pure blood, yes …"
Draco moved back with slight disgust. Mercifully, the elf had replaced his old rag of a loincloth with a more presentable towel, but he still reeked with the scent of decay. Probably it was all the mold.
Then Draco registered the words. "How do you know how I make my tea?" he said, frowning. "You've never made me any."
The elf shifted guiltily, his bloodshot eyes sliding back and forth. "Kreacher watched … that is to say … Kreacher was forced to watch Master Draco last year, at Hogwarts, under—" his expression soured— "Master Harry's orders. Kreacher was made to supervise Master Draco at all times, and to tell Master Harry information, yes, he was, though he didn't want to."
Draco stared at the elf, repulsed. "At all times? What, even when I was asleep?"
Kreacher looked like he greatly regretted coming into the room. "Kreacher felt such remorse," he gasped, his eyes swiveling violently now, "such remorse, to pry and spy on a Malfoy … such shame …"
But before Draco could ask any more questions, there were footsteps and whispers from the front of the house. Then the door was swinging open, and Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were walking into the kitchen.
"—if even he doesn't know who it is, then—" Granger was whispering to Weasley, but as the door swung shut behind them, she broke off.
Motionless, they stared across the kitchen at Draco for a long moment. He stared back.
The last time he'd seen Weasley, they'd been near the entrance to the Astronomy Tower during the fight. Weasley and his sister had been shooting hexes at the Death Eaters, mysteriously sliding under every counterattack at just the right time. Draco could still see the flashes of multicolored light reflecting across his freckled face. After two weeks of sitting in this silent house and doing nothing more exciting than Banishing a centipede down the drain, the memory of the battle—the yelling that echoed in a thousand directions, the taste of rock dust in the air as the castle took the marks of their anger—felt unreal.
It was even stranger to remember the last time he'd seen Granger: the day before the fight, waving her hand around in the air during one of Slughorn's Potions lessons, making him suffer slightly from secondhand embarrassment as always. It didn't seem possible that anything so normal could have been happening only two weeks ago.
The creak as Kreacher slunk back out through the door brought Draco back to himself. "Don't mind me," he drawled, though his voice didn't sound quite as nonchalant as he'd wanted. "I'll be gone in a moment. Don't want to interrupt your … what is this, are you eloping, or something?" He eyed Granger's fingers, which were wrapped around Weasley's arm. "Actually, I don't think I want to know."
"You've got some nerve," Weasley snapped as Draco went back to poking through various boxes of tea. "Enjoying your vacation, are you?"
"I've had better. Doubt you have, though, Weasley." He shot a smirk over his shoulder. "This place does have multiple bathrooms, so I suppose to you it's practically a five-star hotel."
Before Weasley could retort, the door opened again. Four more Weasleys poured into the kitchen, whispering among themselves: the twins, followed by the parents.
"—don't care what Remus thinks you're ready to—" Mrs. Weasley was hissing at one of the twins under her breath, but as the entire party spotted Draco and stopped in their tracks, she lost her voice just as Granger had. Silence fell again, even more uncomfortable than before.
The kettle began to whistle. Draco turned his back on them and poured his tea, suddenly aware that his mouth was dry. As he poured, he imagined spilling the boiling liquid over his fingers, imagined skin scalded red, injured skin, like Bill Weasley's.
In the two weeks he'd been in this place, he'd watched Order members come and go from the first floor landing. He thought he'd heard the Weasley parents' voices once or twice, during meeting nights, but he hadn't seen them yet. He didn't want to be in the room with them, or to know what they wanted to say to him.
With the steaming cup in his hands, Draco strode for the door, brushing past the mother, a dumpy little woman who smelled of cooking oil and some kind of cheap cleaning potion. He didn't look at her. He only spared the rest a glance, but he thought, oddly, that none of them looked especially angry except for Ron. Even Granger was giving him a wary, critical look rather than her usual vehement glare.
Draco didn't exhale until the kitchen door was shut behind him. He climbed up the short stairwell into the front hall to find that other members of the Order were amassing in the dusty light of the front foyer: Dedalus Diggle, bouncing on his tiptoes; and Kingsley Shacklebolt, a head taller than the rest; and his cousin Nymphadora, her hair an outrageous shade of tangerine. Tonight must have been a meeting of the entire Order.
"Draco, hello," said a weary voice. Remus Lupin had emerged at the front of the group. Draco couldn't help eyeing his robes, which had been patched so many times that they looked practically quilted.
Draco jerked his head in a nod of greeting and moved away from the kitchen door, but Lupin didn't go through. His old professor sidestepped with him, instead, allowing the other Order members past. Mad-Eye Moody's magical eye tracked around to stare at Draco as he clunked by on his wooden leg.
"How have you and your mother been doing?" Lupin asked, voice lowered. "I know this can't have been easy for you. This house is …" His tired eyes traveled over the peeling wallpaper. "… not the most welcoming place."
Merlin, spare me, Draco thought with irritation. Lupin obviously hadn't changed since coming to Hogwarts in their third year. He had been like this then, too, annoyingly serious beneath his mantle of exhaustion, treating everyone like they were also nursing some private injury.
Well, Draco wasn't. He was alive and safe and had no interest in being looked at like he was on the verge of breakdown. Even at the worst of things, he'd never needed pity, and especially not from a werewolf.
"We're both fine," he said coldly. "I'm going up to her now."
"Oh, that's nice," said Tonks indignantly as he stalked past her and Lupin. "We did bring her here, you know, your mum. You'd think she'd have been less rude to people saving her life. I s'pose it runs in the family."
Draco's steps faltered. It was the first time his cousin had ever actually spoken to him. With a Mudblood for a father and a mother estranged from the family, Tonks had never been invited to the family reunions, or the Christmas parties, or the summer gatherings that fell all the way down the manor lawns in cascades of pastel umbrellas and platters of choux pastry. Draco had never wondered about that side of the family—why would he be curious about anyone who'd married a Mudblood?—but now it occurred to him that his mother and Tonks's mother had probably visited this house together growing up. He didn't know why, but the thought made him feel oddly young.
The rest of the Order had all filed into the kitchen now. He avoided Lupin's and Tonks's eyes and didn't answer her, starting up the long, carpeted steps instead.
But as he reached the landing, the door opened again. He glanced back and saw two final Order members: Snape, impassive and hook-nosed and greasy-haired as ever; and Dumbledore, who was moving slowly, deliberately, as if every motion caused him a hint of pain.
Draco watched them pass down the hall and into the kitchen. Dumbledore clearly hadn't recovered from whatever had happened to him the night of the attack, but the old man was still sticking close to Snape, still clearly trusted Snape. It was a miracle Snape hadn't found an opportunity to kill him yet. Of course, in this weakened state, the headmaster probably had to delegate everything to other Order members; he was probably surrounded all the time. Maybe Snape was trying to do it in absolute secrecy, so that he could stay in the Order's ranks even after Dumbledore's death.
Draco glanced back down the hall to the drawing room door. He thought of his mother reading inside, thought of her look of anticipation when they'd gotten word about his father. Suddenly the rescue didn't feel like as much of a guarantee anymore. With Dumbledore in this state, it looked like one weak poison could finish him off.
Draco made a decision. He fetched the book about blood magic he'd been reading, sat on the top step, and waited for the kitchen door to open again. He knew it was no good trying to listen to the meeting; he'd tried it several times with smaller gatherings, but there was always some kind of Silencer on the door.
This time, the meeting lasted hours. Draco had finished both chapters about blood as a potion ingredient by the time the door cracked open again. He hurried downstairs as several Order members reached the front door. Green flashes were coming from the kitchen as others took the Floo out; he hastened for the entrance, not wanting to miss Snape and Dumbledore.
He was in luck. When he reached the threshold, Snape and Dumbledore were still there, along with Granger, Weasley, and Mrs. Weasley. Dumbledore was listening patiently to Mrs. Weasley, who was saying, "—younger Order members as little more than bait, Albus …!"
Dumbledore raised a hand. Mrs. Weasley glanced over, saw Draco, and shut her mouth.
"Good to see you looking so well, Draco," said Dumbledore with a small smile. "How may I be of use?"
"I wondered if I could have a word with Professor Snape," Draco said.
Snape glanced at Dumbledore, who inclined his head slightly. "Go on," said the old man. "I will wait for you here, Severus … Molly and I have more to discuss, clearly …"
Draco felt slightly unnerved. Even Dumbledore's voice was noticeably weaker than usual. Draco wanted to watch the headmaster for any more warning signs, but soon Snape had crossed the kitchen and ushered Draco out into the now-empty hall.
"Yes?" said Snape. His black eyes were, as usual, unreadable.
"I'm not going to try to stop you," Draco said quietly.
Snape's expression did not change. "I have no idea what you mean."
Draco lowered his voice further. "I know you made the Vow to my mother. I know you're going to kill the old man. I'm not going to tell anyone."
Snape reached out a hand and pushed the kitchen door all the way shut. "Then why say anything?" His lip curled. "Is this a threat?"
"No," Draco said. "I'm … I'm asking you to wait until the Order gets my father out of Azkaban. None of the others will want to help us after he's dead. And I'm asking you not to tell the Dark Lord we're alive." He paused, then added reluctantly, "Please."
Snape looked coldly back into Draco's face. It occurred to Draco, oddly, that he was an inch or so taller than Snape now. In his mind, Snape was still the towering presence he'd been during their first Potions lesson, the one professor in Hogwarts with the kind of power and mystique that Draco had wanted to learn himself.
"If you had accepted my help early on," said Snape in his cool, sibilant voice, "last year would have been a great deal easier for you, Draco. … You said you didn't want me to—what were the words?—ah, yes … to steal your glory." His lip curled. "Clearly something changed."
Draco looked down at the grimy old carpet. "Fine. I couldn't do it," he ground out. "Is that what you want to hear? I couldn't kill him."
"Yet you would allow me to do it."
Draco couldn't help a bitter laugh. "Like I could stop you." He shook his head and spoke more urgently. "But even if I could stop you, I wouldn't. That's what I'm telling you. Just because I'm here, it doesn't mean I'm working against the Dark Lord. My mother and father won't, either. We're not a risk to him. You can let us live and it—it won't change anything, do you see?"
There was a long silence. Snape considered Draco, and Draco looked into his cold black eyes, daring Snape to use Legilimency on him, to see he was telling the truth. But he didn't feel the familiar probing sensation. He wondered, with a sudden lurch in his gut, whether Snape had already revealed the truth to the Dark Lord, if, even now, the Death Eaters were just waiting for Dumbledore's death to close in on Draco and his mother.
But then Snape said, "Very well." He spoke so quietly that his lips barely moved. "As long as I know you are no threat to the Dark Lord … you may remain among the dead."
Draco took a deep breath, relief flooding him. "Thank you, sir," he said, dipping his head. "You know we'll repay you if we ever can. You can always count on us."
"I know," Snape said.
Then the Potions Master turned and swept back into the kitchen. Soon there was a flash of green light. He and the headmaster were gone.
Moments later, Molly Weasley stormed past Draco toward the front door, muttering something to herself about "reckless" and "so young." He heard the muffled crack as she Disapparated on the front step, and when he headed down into the kitchen to return his teacup, he found Granger and Weasley still standing at the edge of the table, talking in low voices.
Again they stopped at the sight of him. They exchanged one of those looks that they and Potter were always trading with each other, as if the three of them could read each other's minds. Draco wondered how it felt to be so readable, so predictable to another person. It seemed like it would be boring.
The silent transmission of information took only an instant. Then Granger seized Weasley's upper arm in a viselike grip. "Ron," she said in a warning tone. "Ron, don't—"
"Get off, Hermione." Weasley tugged his arm free and took a step toward Draco. His ears were already red again. "I know what really happened," he said darkly.
"Oh?" said Draco idly. "Well, that might sound a bit more threatening, Weasley, if I had any idea what you were talking about."
Weasley's face turned a shade redder. It was too easy with him, actually.
"I'm talking about the Vanishing Cabinet," he said furiously. "The Room of Requirement. Dumbledore might've told everyone else a version of things that makes it sound like you didn't have any choice, but we know you did. You're not a hero just because you got cold feet at the last second."
Draco's eyes slid onto Granger, whose face was a web of shadows in the weak electric light of the kitchen. She didn't say anything, but she didn't contradict Weasley, either. She was studying Draco with the same hard, critical look as before, the kind of look he'd seen her direct at difficult assignments.
The pair of them had probably discussed all this at length already. Anger filled Draco as he pictured it: these two debating back and forth with Potter, deciding how best to judge him—as if the last year of his life had been some sort of theoretical moral argument. Sanctimonious little toerags, he thought viciously. What was the hardest choice the three of them had ever had to make? Whether to go with each other to the Yule Ball? Whether to keep their mouth shut in front of Umbridge so they wouldn't get detentions? What a struggle.
Draco spoke only when he could be sure his voice wouldn't betray his anger. "You think I need your approval, Weasel King?" he said, softening his voice to the same cold sneer that Snape had just used on him. "You think I give a damn whether you think I made the right choices or not?"
"No," Weasley snapped. "I don't think you give a damn. I think you only thought about yourself, like always, and that's why my brother's going to be scarred for the rest of his life!" His voice had risen to a yell. He took a deep, shaky breath and tamped down the volume, though his voice still trembled with fury. "It all just went away for you, didn't it, Malfoy? The second you're out of danger, everything's back to normal, eh? Well, it didn't go away for me and my family. My brother nearly died for you Death Eaters to get a second chance you didn't deserve."
Draco just looked at him. The accusation had not hurt him. Actually, hearing the words, all of the heat in Draco's body had seemed to drain, and now he felt as if he were standing several paces away from himself, watching himself be lectured, watching his own blank face. It was like the feeling of Occlumency: the numb remoteness, the total closure of himself to external force, and the strange accompanying hyperawareness of what was happening inside his own mind.
Inside, odd fragments of memory were surfacing. He remembered the Quidditch pitch in second year, watching Weasley's curse backfire, the slugs that had oozed out of his mouth. He remembered laughing so hard at Weasley's embarrassment and discomfort that no sound came out. And during sixth year he'd guffawed over the dinner table at the way he'd broken Potter's nose. He remembered the satisfaction he'd felt as the bridge crunched beneath his foot and blood streamed down over Potter's face, Potter getting what he deserved, pain and humiliation, the arrogant fool. He remembered, too, the Christmas holidays last year, when the Dark Lord had come to the manor accompanied by a Muggle man from the neighboring town who had drunkenly mocked his robes. Draco remembered the Muggle man's glassy look, and how it had broken when the Dark Lord lifted the Imperius Curse, and how all the other Death Eaters had laughed to see him try to get away. Draco remembered the way the man's naked feet had slipped and scrabbled comically on the shining parquet floors. The syncopated rhythm of his ragged breaths. The pain and terror on his crimson face as he spun, asphyxiating, into the air, directed by the Dark Lord's wand. Draco had tried to make himself laugh, told himself it was funny, just a filthy Muggle getting what he deserved; that was the phrase that went through his head, cold and clear and mechanical, as if it were something he had memorized rote out of a textbook. Anyway, when commingled with the others' laughter, the sounds he forced out of his throat sounded mostly natural, and Bellatrix looked at him like she was proud.
All of this flickered and died in his mind within an instant. He was back in the kitchen and legally dead. Weasley was still flushed, but the redness of his skin had lost its humor. Draco left his teacup on the counter and walked out of the kitchen.
#
Two weeks later
Hermione looked into Ron's eyes as he told her everything was going to be fine.
Some doubt must have shown on her face, because he repeated, "It will."
"Yes," she said. "I—yes, I'm sure it will. You're right."
She didn't sound convincing even to herself. Ron sighed. "Well, if you don't feel safe with Shacklebolt, Mad-Eye, Lupin, and Dumbledore there, I'm not going to be able to talk you into it, so I'm going to stop trying. You ready to go?"
Hermione nodded, feeling slightly sick. It's for Harry's sake, she told herself. You're going to see Harry in a matter of minutes. Then she shot a guilty look at Ron. Maybe she was imagining it, but she felt as if he'd started acting odd whenever she brought Harry up of her own accord.
She'd been at the Burrow for most of July now. Maybe she'd been stupid to expect it at a house filled with Ron's family, but she'd thought … she didn't know what she'd thought. That Ron would make a passionate declaration? No, maybe not, but she had hoped that without Harry there, Ron might move in that general direction.
She felt as if she were going mad. Whenever they found time to discuss their hunt for the Horcruxes—discussions that required them to be hidden away in Ron's room or Fred and George's, where she was staying—she felt the tension in the air between them, and in her own body, pleasurably tense, like a string about to be played. And sometimes she could swear she felt Ron looking at her from across a room, or the crowded dinner table, but when she looked toward him, he was always in the middle of turning away.
She supposed it was reasonable to ask herself why she hadn't tried to move things along. Ginny had asked that precise question when Hermione had fretted to her one evening about Ron's behavior.
"I—I don't know," Hermione said, taken aback. "I suppose …"
"Is it because Ron's a boy?" Ginny said, flicking through a page of Quidditch Quarterly. "Never thought you'd be so old-fashioned, Hermione."
"No, it's not," she said hotly. "It's because … because … well, this thing that we have to do with Harry … if Ron and I are seeing each other, it could strain the whole situation."
"Oh, right, and it'll be much less strained like this," Ginny chortled. "The both of you looking like you're constipated whenever you finish a completely average conversation."
Hermione sighed and lay back on Ginny's bed, while Ginny settled herself deeper in the pouf by her window. Unfortunately, Hermione couldn't be entirely open, because a secret part of her dared to ask the question that neither Ginny nor Ron ever would: did she feel something for Harry? It felt almost impossible to separate the tangled threads of what she felt for her two best friends. A feral kind of protectiveness, affection and tenderness, even jealousy—she felt it all for the both of them, so strongly that she wondered whether she might be mistaking it for romance with Ron, or missing it with Harry.
She wondered whether, if Harry had been here instead of Ron, and they had been having these private and intense discussions, she would have felt a similar tension. She even wondered whether, if it had been Harry who had been poisoned last year, Harry whose bedside she'd attended for weeks on end, her feelings might have developed that way instead. Or had she attended Ron's bedside precisely because she'd been so hurt by his relationship with Lavender? She couldn't tell, and her logical mind knew perfectly well how ridiculous it was to try and cross-examine previous possibilities as if they changed anything, and also they were fighting a war, and all of this seemed pathetic and trivial and still somehow like the most important thing in the world, all her feelings amplified by the danger they faced as if the constant possibility of disaster were a drug. Now or never, and more likely never.
Of course, she couldn't tell Ginny any of this. The idea of revealing that she might have feelings for Ginny's ex-boyfriend, with whom she was about to undertake an undercover mission, would have destroyed Ginny. Hermione knew that. She also knew that if she felt anything for Harry it would destroy Ron, too, his fragile self-confidence. These threads of guilt spun another indecipherable dimension into what she felt.
So Hermione had been keeping it all inside. And now, on the brink of seeing Harry again, she was feeling a kind of relief that made everything even more confusing. Why relief? When Ron's presence made her feel a kind of fluttery agitation, when she'd become this attuned to his voice and his glances, why on earth was she relieved that they'd failed to start things while they had the time and privacy? Was it because, secretly, she didn't want to be with Ron? Or was it because it would have been too much to start a relationship when they would soon be in such danger? Was stasis reassuring because this kind of stasis was already too much to feel?
Well, if she knew one thing, it was that if she'd tried to talk about any of it with Ron, he would have stared at her as if she were speaking another language. So she kept quiet.
When the time came, she, Ron, Bill, Fleur, and Mr. Weasley gathered in the yard around five brooms. Mrs. Weasley kissed her husband, Ron, and Bill, then hugged Fleur and Hermione. She performed their Disillusionment Charms for them before retreating, checking her watch. "You'd all better go now," she said breathlessly. "I'll see you soon. Very soon."
"We'll be back before you know it, Molly," said Mr. Weasley.
The last thing Hermione saw before she kicked off was Mrs. Weasley's weak, unconvincing smile.
#
"Harry!" Hermione threw herself into his arms.
When she drew back, he was grinning. "Hi, Hermione," he said. "Hi, Ron, mate." Ron clapped him hard on the back, and the anxiety of the previous month eased off Hermione's shoulders. She could see in Ron's ear-to-ear grin that he felt it too—the comfort of being together again, a perfectly assembled puzzle.
Dumbledore let Mad-Eye explain the plan: seven Potters, seven guardians. Harry protested, as she and Ron had known he would, but eventually relented, as he had to.
Hermione shuddered through the hot, melting, slightly painful process of Polyjuice transformation. When they were all dressed, Dumbledore began to pair them off. Harry was matched with Hagrid, Ron with Tonks, and Hermione with Dumbledore himself on a Thestral.
Hermione felt a nervous flutter. "Would—wouldn't you prefer to guard Harry yourself, Professor Dumbledore?" she said.
"I don't think so, Miss Granger," he replied with a warm smile. "In the case of an attack, it will be best to distribute the Death Eaters' attention. They will likely expect Harry, skilled flier that he is, to take a broom; he will, instead, be on a motorcycle. They will also likely expect him to be with me or with our Aurors; he will, instead, be kept safe by Hagrid."
"I can go with Dumbledore instead," Ron said quietly. "I don't want you to be a target."
"I don't want either of you to be targets," Harry muttered, his eyes flashing.
"It's all right, you two," Hermione said, trying not to sound worried. She saw Harry's worry just beneath the surface of his anger. "It was bad enough flying here. You know how I am with brooms. I'd rather be on a Thestral."
Soon, too soon, the brooms had been distributed, the Thestrals mounted, Harry tucked safely into Hagrid's sidecar. Hermione had a gut feeling of foreboding. She didn't want them to take off; she wanted them to wait. She wanted them all to be safe so badly that she felt as if she were holding her own hand just above a rising flame, waiting to feel a burn, praying it wouldn't happen.
Dumbledore, at her back, raised his voice and began to count down. "Three," he called, "two … one!"
Feet hit the ground. Thestral wings snapped out. A motorcycle engine roared. Seven Potters and their protectors shot up into the night sky.
Hermione felt a snap as if of surface tension as they broke out of the protective enchantments.
She screamed. Dozens of Death Eaters were shooting toward them from all directions, black bullets out of the dark.
"Hold on!" Dumbledore ordered. Hermione bent low over the Thestral's neck, and the winged horse flung itself forward, letting out a strange wild cry of alarm as a streak of light shot over its head. Hermione threw a look back, trying to see any of the others, but all she could see were multicolored lights bursting in clusters like roman candles, each a little pocket of battle. Already they were so far away from each other.
Harry had gone due North, Dumbledore had mentioned that. She squinted that way, gasping as the wind buffeted her, and saw that Dumbledore's instincts had been good. The lights there were fewer and thinner.
Clutching to the tiny bit of reassurance, Hermione turned her eyes forward again, only to realize that they hadn't been nearly so lucky as Hagrid and Harry. The Death Eaters who had targeted them were stabilizing around them, preparing to fight. They had drawn half a dozen, maybe more.
A Stunning spell spiraled toward her out of the black. "Protego!" she cried, before remembering all the practice she and Ron had done to master nonverbal Shielding at the Burrow. The instinct had gone out of her—it felt safer to scream, to let out the fear somehow—but at the next burst of light she forced herself to think, Protego! and the Death Eater's curse rebounded back at him.
She could feel Dumbledore moving behind her, blocking several curses and hexes with a single long sweep of his wand. "Parasalvus!" he cried, and a shivering translucent wall seemed to curve around Hermione, blocking everything that came near her. She could feel Dumbledore shaking. It's the cold, she thought wildly, he's only shivering from the cold, and yet she was horribly aware of his dead hand, and the thinness of his other wrist.
He was sending spells so quickly now, and with such immense power, that she couldn't believe the Death Eaters were managing to dodge them. Dumbledore sent a stream of silver light humming toward Bellatrix Lestrange, making her and her broom freeze in midair; in the wake of it, Hermione felt the hair on the nape of her neck stand up. Another he encased in a web of what seemed to be purple electricity, and the man dropped like a stone, disappearing almost at once. We really are going to be all right, Hermione told herself. We are.
Then a familiar face rose up before them. In the center of a cadre of Death Eaters was Severus Snape, his face twisted, shocks of light cartwheeling across his sallow features. Hermione's stomach plummeted. Why was Snape here? And why, when Snape was supposed to have fed Voldemort incorrect information, had there been Death Eaters here?
There was only one answer to both questions.
Snape raised his wand. Hermione knew he was going to say the words before he said them, knew he was going to snarl, "Avada Kedavra!"
She knew the shield around her would break.
She knew Dumbledore's body would topple off the Thestral behind her, and yet the sudden absence of his reassuring weight—the way his robes brushed her knee as he plummeted—was so horrible that she nearly let her wand fall out of her nerveless hand.
Her mouth was wide open but hardly any sound was coming from it, only a high keen that hit her own ear like the sound of an animal in pain. Horror reverberated through her. She couldn't lift her wand, couldn't breathe. She could only wait for Snape to kill her, too, or to take her, as Harry, back to Voldemort.
Then the Thestral lurched and bucked. One of the Death Eaters' curses had struck the creature across the flank.
Hermione's grip on the Thestral had loosened. She was off-balance. Still in shock, she grappled too late for the Thestral's neck.
She toppled, the scream finally tearing free of her, into thin air.
"That isn't Potter's wand," she heard Snape roar as she fell. "Leave that one! We must find the real …"
It was terrifying how quickly his voice evaporated. Hermione was moving so quickly, plummeting like a stone. She had fallen a hundred feet, maybe more. The Death Eaters were no longer even in sight.
Then she caught a glimpse of something in the night air, falling through a wisp of cloud: Dumbledore's body, several dozen feet beneath her, falling toward the Earth.
Something in her ignited. Some of the madness cleared out of her head. She clutched her wand, spreading her arms to stabilize her body, Harry's body, and screamed, "Accio!"
Dumbledore's body slowed in its descent, then, in a sad, almost graceful motion, lifted toward her like a piece of ash, as if he were weightless. Her hand closed around his wrist. His bones were as brittle as a bird's.
Then a voice above her roared, terrifyingly close, "Petrificus Totalus!"
Hermione flinched. The spell missed her by a centimeter. She turned, thrown off-balance, to see the twisted face of Antonin Dolohov. He clearly hadn't believed Snape. And now she was tumbling head over foot again, the wind snatching the duplicate of Harry's glasses from her face, the houses below transforming into a blur. Dolohov's vague form was rocketing toward her on a broom, stretching out a dark shape that must have been his arm—
Hermione focused with all her might on her destination and turned in mid-air.
Crack.
#
"If we're sent to the United States," said Draco's mother, lifting a bite of pie to her mouth, "I know an excellent school where Draco could finish the last of his education. It's quite exclusive. The headmaster is a friend of my father's."
"Narcissa," said Lucius, "by the time it would be safe for us to use that kind of contact, Draco would hardly be school-aged anymore." He sipped from a glass of elf-made wine that Kreacher had pulled from somewhere beneath the house. There must have been a cellar Draco hadn't found.
Draco tapped his fork against the stem of his own wineglass. "Don't either of you want to know what I think about my own education? I am of age."
His father opened his mouth to reply, but then there was an almighty crack.
Three people exploded out of the air, falling in a pile of limbs to the kitchen floor.
Narcissa let out a scream and leapt to her feet. Lucius, still weak from Azkaban, staggered out of his seat and had to clutch to the counter to remain upright. Two of the figures on the ground were already writhing up to their feet—one a boy with untidy jet-black hair, the other a man with a familiar twisted face.
Draco was on his feet, too, though he couldn't remember standing. He stared with horror at Antonin Dolohov, who was raising his wand.
Then Dolohov saw the Malfoys and froze. His face went white. "You," he croaked. "You!"
Narcissa reacted first, slashing her wand up, but Dolohov ducked her curse. It rebounded off one of the pans hanging from the ceiling, forcing Lucius to throw himself flat. Draco looked back to see Potter raising his wand—and to see Dolohov's finger colliding with his left forearm.
"Stupefy!" Draco yelled.
But even as his spell struck Dolohov, causing the man to fly back into the wall and crumple, Draco felt the Mark burn black on his own forearm.
Silence dropped, except for the heaving of breath. Only then did Draco register the third figure: a crumpled body with long silver hair and beard, motionless.
Draco looked up at Potter, who was gasping, an uncharacteristic wild panic on his face. He looked unfamiliar; he'd lost his glasses.
"Draco," his mother cried out. "Draco, we must go! Now!"
But Draco was still staring at Potter, whose face had begun to change, melting, softening. For a second Draco thought he really had gone mad, that all of this was the result of a psychotic break. But a moment later the hair was growing bushy and wild, and the green eyes were turning brown. The chin lifted. The lips grew smaller and fuller. He blinked his eyes hard, and when he opened them, Hermione Granger was standing before him, panic written all over her face.
Lucius strode to the mantel and seized a jar full of Floo Powder. "Where?" he said, turning to his wife. "Somewhere safe. Where?"
Narcissa just shook her head, looking like she was about to faint.
"The Burrow," gasped Granger. "Go to the Burrow!"
Narcissa didn't hesitate. She took a pinch of green powder and flung it on the grate, stepped over the massive hearth, and said, "The Burrow!"
Nothing happened. The green flame died around her.
"The opposite grate is closed," Narcissa said, turning back. Her composure had cracked completely now, her blue eyes wild. "They'll be coming now. He touched—they'll be here any minute, Lucius—Dolohov, he saw—"
"Here, then!" said Granger. "Hurry!"
All three Malfoys stared at her for a moment. She was holding out a hand.
"Oh, for God's sake," she yelled, panic in her voice, "would you rather touch a Mudblood or die? Take my hand now!"
Draco was the first to move. He seized Granger's hand, and his mother and father formed a chain with his other hand. Granger stooped to grasp Dumbledore's wrist.
In that moment, Narcissa let out a little cry, her eyes fixed across the kitchen. Dolohov was stirring again.
Lucius lifted his wand with his free hand. There was a blast of green light, and Dolohov toppled, lifeless, to the ground. Draco jumped so violently that he nearly let go of Granger.
There was a crack somewhere outside the room, down the hall. A second crack. A third.
Loud, indistinct voices.
Granger turned on her heel. The crushing darkness of Disapparition closed in around Draco's head. He couldn't breathe, couldn't shift an inch, could only clutch to his mother's hand in his left, the coldness of her silver rings pressing against his fingers, and to Granger's in his right, warm and small and holding on so hard that he thought she might crack a metacarpal.
They reappeared on a stretch of hardwood floor. Draco let go of his mother, who instantly folded, still gasping, her eyes wild, into his father's arms.
Granger, breathing hard too, was facing away from Draco. For a long moment she didn't move at all. Then she knelt slowly beside Dumbledore's body and slowly, deliberately arranged him into a relaxed position, as if he were sleeping. She moved the silver hair out of his face. The half-moon spectacles were cracked in one lens. Granger lowered her wand to them and whispered, "Reparo."
The fissure sealed over, but Granger didn't stand. She stayed on her knees, trembling. Draco watched her with a sense of impossible distance. He'd known this would happen, had known Dumbledore would die. He just hadn't known he would see it. He remembered the weight of the wand in his hand as he stood atop the Astronomy Tower, and a terrible, thunderous kind of relief dropped onto him that he hadn't done this. Even so, he heard his own voice saying, two weeks ago, I'm not going to try and stop you.
Don't let it be Snape, he found himself thinking now. Don't let it have been him that did it.
"Who …" he forced out. "How did it happen?"
"Pro … Professor Snape," said Granger. She was crying, he could hear it in her voice, but she didn't turn around, didn't want him to see. Maybe she thought he would mock her if he saw.
Draco looked around the room in a daze. It was a large and finely furnished sitting room. A large Persian rug stretched out beneath a long, elegant leather couch. A wall of bookshelves stood opposite an empty fireplace. On an oak table, across from the couch, stood a strange black box with two metal spindles extending from its top.
"What is this place?" he said.
Granger had wiped her face. She rose to her feet and looked over at him, her eyes red, her cheeks pink.
"It's my house," she answered.
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