Thank you guys for your patience with me while so much has been going on.
So, so much love goes out to my incredible alpha/beta team, shestoolazytogin and RESimon. I love you both more than words can express.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The sky was still inky black and netted with a glimmering weave of stars when Hermione awoke some hours later. The bed was empty beside her, the sheets cold where she ran a hand over the place where her husband had lain when she'd finally drifted off.
She slipped out of the bed, her eyes traveling to where the soft candlelight spilled through the slightly cracked door. She stepped outside to see Draco sat at the desk, hunched over the parchment scattered across it. She padded closer, watching the tension in his shoulders and the hard set of his jaw as he focused on what was before him.
"What are you doing?"
If he was startled by her quiet approach he didn't show it. He continued working steadily, the line of tension between his brows deepening the harder his quill scratched away,
She didn't expect a response and instead peered over his shoulder. "Oh," she said, as she recognized their plans for getting into Gringotts. She lowered herself into the seat beside his. She gathered her nightgown and twisted it in her hands, letting the silence stretch between them.
"Go back to bed," he said, his voice gruff.
Hermione's fist clenched around the mound of satin beneath her palm. "Why do you always send me back to bed? Is that all I am to—"
Draco sighed and let his quill topple to the desktop. "I'm tired of having this conversation with you."
Hermione's nostrils flared. "Which one? Because by my count, we barely speak at all—"
His lips curled into a sneer as he turned to her. "Is that all you can do? Wonder why I'm not there to coddle you at every moment you find something new to be upset about?"
Hermione forced away the emotion that bubbled up at the string of his words. "That's not what I'm talking about and you know it!"
"Do I? Am I privy to your every thought?" he laughed derisively. "And to think that all this time you were against me taking even a hint of a peep."
Hermione's jaw tensed. "I'm afraid to discuss anything with you because you've always shut me out, always turned me away when all I want to do is understand you—"
Draco scoffed. "Talk about what, exactly? Our feelings?" He drew out the word as though it were a curse.
Hermione's heart stuttered at yet another reminder of the tumultuous situation their tumultuous relationship was caught up in. She sighed and stood, padding over to the kitchen. She wrapped her arms around herself as she observed the moonlight glinting off the back of his platinum head, drawing out the tense silence.
"We're somewhere between a dysfunctional marriage and the… nothing we were back at Hogwarts, and I don't know how to define it. I don't even dare bring it up for fear that you'll shut me out again, or end up back out here, away from me when I don't even know if I can sleep alone anymore—" Hermione clasped a hand over her chest and sucked in a breath as she caught the tremble in her voice. A lump has risen in her throat, exacerbated by the tension that had arisen in the air and hadn't yet abated.
The longer the silence stretched the further the tight, burning sensation in her chest radiated, yet she couldn't make her feet move from the spot they'd planted themselves in. Finally, the deep breath she'd been holding in shuddered out, and she felt her muscles start to respond—
"Stepping in front of those snakes was a choice, Granger." His words hung suspended in the air, echoing as loudly as though they'd somehow managed to suck out all the other sound in the room. She supposed they had.
She only realized that her heart had stopped again when it restarted in a stuttered staccato. "W-what?"
He stood and stepped into the darkness of the kitchen, the glint of his steely grey eyes still visible as they focused on her. "You think you know everything," he said, stepping closer. "But you don't."
He didn't stop moving toward her until he was a breath away, her chest brushing his with every heaving breath she took. She couldn't find the ability to move even when he lifted her bodily and deposited her upon the countertop, lifting her nightgown to her waist as he went. It was when his tongue swiped expertly across her nether lips that her limbs shuddered into action, her thighs closing around him. He did not complain and instead let his tongue probe deeper, propelled by her gasps and moans as he carried to her a swift completion, the sounds of her pleasure filling the air.
X
She woke the next morning to find Draco walking back into the room, a towel slung low on his hips and droplets of water glistening on his skin. She watched him silently, admiring the planes of muscle stretched under pale skin. It was rare, she realized, to see him at any sort of peace outside of slumber. Now, however, he was almost calm as he spelled himself dry. It was only when she realized that her eyes had strayed to his flaccid length that she snapped her eyes up to see him watching her.
She cleared her throat and forced her eyes to stay on his face. "Morning," she said softly.
He watched her for a moment before grunting a greeting and turning to pull on his clothing. She smiled to herself and stood, uncaring of her own nakedness even as she felt his gaze upon her as she slipped past him on her way to the bathroom. By the time she'd showered and changed, the smells of his cooking had begun to permeate the cabin. She crossed over to the desk and ran a finger over their notes, looking at the long list of potential contingencies they'd accounted for.
"Stop," Draco's voice sounded from behind her.
She turned to see him watching her. "Stop what?"
He jerked his chin toward their notes. "We'll find it — whatever it is. And we'll destroy it."
She relaxed her fists then, not having realized until he'd spoken that her nails had begun to press sharp crescent moons into her palms. She looked into his eyes, seeing the determination she wished she had shining in his eyes.
"Eat first. Then we work." He didn't wait for her to respond, turning and making his way back to the table.
X
It was night by the time she pulled open the front door and stepped outside, seeking fresh air. Instead, she found herself nearly stumbling over a small object, denoted only by the white sheet that was stuck to it, barely visible in the night. She bent down and closed her fingers over it to discover a small radio. She pulled off the small note attached to it and lit her wand to find only a short note: There is no such thing as darkness — only an absence of light. 8 p.m. Phoenix.
Hermione's brow furrowed as she cast a series of spells, looking for some other clue as to what the note — or the radio itself — meant. She twisted the knobs and was met by garbled static, followed by a series of high-pitched screeching noises and low thrums. She looked up at the tree line and back down at the radio, knowing that she'd need to cross out of safety if she wanted to hear anything.
Whichever of the four people who knew their location wanted her to hear, well, whatever it was at eight p.m. — which gave her forty-two minutes to decide. She sat down on the porch steps and toyed with the radio, twisting it this way and that.
At 7:59 pm, her foot crunched in the untouched snow beyond the wards. She transfigured a branch into a small bench and sat down, watching the hand on her watch tick closer to the hour. As soon as the minute hit, she tapped her wand to the radio and listened.
She didn't know how much time had passed by the time she felt a familiar shadow fall over her. She looked up to see a figure she knew was Malfoy, despite the fact that she could not distinguish through the tears that had gathered in her eyes, looking down at her. She gave him only an absent nod before she turned her eyes back to the small radio that they hadn't strayed from since she'd activated it.
He crouched beside her in the snow, and she watched his arm slip into her vision and gently pry the radio from her tight grip. "Is that...Shacklebolt?" he said, nodding down toward the object from which the man's familiar deep rumble drifted.
Hermione nodded mutely, still transfixed as she listened to the voices. "And...Lee. Remus, and… Fred too, I think." Her voice was so quiet that it nearly disappeared on the air.
"Granger—"
"They've made a Muggleborn Registration Commission," she said. "Did you know?" She looked up at him once more. He was clad only in a jumper with sleeves pushed up to his elbows and a pair of trousers.
He was silent, his eyes were focused intently on her. His expression was still slightly blurred behind her tears.
"We haven't gotten a paper in months and yet— yet— I knew, without needing to know, because Seamus' parents—" she sucked in a panicked breath, "And now hearing people I know recite something I've tried so hard to detach myself from, I—" She stopped short as the voices began speaking with urgency. Snatchers. The last location they'd been seen at, and—
"That's all for this evening, I'm afraid," the crackling sound of Lee's voice drifted through after a somber silence. "Friday's password is Meadowes." Another crackle, and silence.
She reached up and snatched Draco's hand. "There are Snatchers in Dorset, in—"
"I know where," he said.
She stood hastily and wiped her eyes. "I— I have to try. I have to do something, Draco. I know Bellatrix, and Hrocruxes, and everything is so much bigger, but I can't—"
His hand clamped down on her arm in an iron grip. "Like hell you are."
Hermione wrenched her arm from his grip. "You don't understand, Draco! You don't know what it's like to have half the people around you want you dead for no reason other than blood purity—"
"And what do you propose doing, then? Go searching through all of Dorset, just hoping to stumble upon a band of Snatchers who would just love to kill you? Brilliant fucking plan, Granger."
She glared at him. "Don't patronize me." She ran a shaking hand through her hair. "You don't need to remind me that my damned life is tethered to yours—"
Draco's eyes flashed. "Is that what you think this is about? Do you even—"
"You don't understand!" Her grip was tight around her wand. "You won't even try to!"
His mouth curled into a snarl. "You don't think, Granger! You bloody Gryffindors never do—"
She lifted her want. "I need some space," she said, trying desperately to think of somewhere where she could be at peace long enough to see through the grief, to think—
She realized too late that his hand had clamped down on hers in an iron grip, the expletives he said lost as she felt the familiar pull of landed in a heap on the soft blanket of snow that covered the forest floor. "Draco?!" Her voice was desperate as her hands scrambled over her husband's prone form. She ran desperate fingers over his entire form, looking for where he'd been splinched, or injured, taking comfort in the fact that she didn't feel that horribly familiar cold seeping through her form.
"Stop." His voice was a wheeze as he sat up gingerly.
"Are you alright?!" She cupped his chin and twisted his face this way and that, still looking for injury.
He pried her hands away from his face. "What the fuck, Granger."
Hermione scowled. "I never told you to follow me!"
"Where the hell are we?"
"We're in Wales—" she stopped short and turned to her wide eyes to meet his. The sound was low, but their well-trained ears had caught it nonetheless.
Voices.
His wand was in his grip, already casting disillusionment spells over them just as hers pointed at him, warping his features into someone unrecognizable not a moment before his arm closed around her waist and pulled her to him. Her heart fluttered in her chest as the voices grew nearer. She prayed that they were muggles, but a growing foreboding in her chest told her that they were not.
Draco's hand slid up and he pressed an open palm above her heart. "Breathe," he murmured into her ear.
The voices approached, growing louder with every second that passed as the approached.
"...Andromeda wouldn't dare try and contact us, but I know she hasn't slept," a man was saying.
"And Harry has barely slept in months, either," another male voice said.
Hermione's head snapped toward the sound, trying to place the voice— because she knew it, she knew this person.
"And neither have any of us," a gruffer voice answered, "so what is your point?"
"My point is that—"
Dean. It was Dean. Hermione's stomach leapt as she craned her neck and tried to see if she could get even a glimpse of his face when she felt Draco's arm tighten around her. It took her only a breath of a moment to realize why: They'd stopped speaking, too.
The air burned with tense energy, teeming on the brink of an explosion as she all but heard everyone collectively hold their breaths—
And then the night ignited.
She and Draco leapt out at the same time. She brandished a shield at the same time as Draco shot off a series of offensive spells. A spell had one of their opponents suspended in the air but a leg, the light of the spells colliding in the air around them igniting their small body. In the midst of the fray, a lone figure stood with a wide-eyed look on his face, staring straight at her.
"Hermione?" Dean said at the same time Hermione screamed, "Stop!"
It took a moment for spells to stop bouncing off shields and the battlezone to freeze to a halt.
"You know her, Dean?" A tall, dark-haired wizard spoke as he canceled the spell that still had his companion — a goblin, she realized — suspended in the air.
"She's— Hermione Granger, and—" he looked at Draco, cocking his head as he took in the misshapen nose and shaggy dark hair that fell into his face. "Who the hell are you?"
"What the hell is going on?" Draco ignored Dean's question, pitching his tone an octave lower than how he usually spoke.
There were two goblins, she realized, among three men.
"We're—"
Dean's answer was cut off as sudden cracks of Apparation sounded from all around them. Hermione caught Dean's face twist into a horrified look before she was whipping around and throwing a curse that burned deep red in the night at the figure nearest her.
It struck the man in the chest, but not before he shot out a killing curse the flamed bright green as it struck one of the goblins dead.
Her next curse severed one of the attackers' legs at the knee, sending him screaming in a heap on the forest floor as the curse continued to burn an invisible inferno of pain through his form.
There was a low growl to her left, and she caught a crouched figure leap through the night and land upon one of the male Wizards. He ripped out the man's throat with ease, pulling back his claw-tipped fingernails and drawing the dripping blood across his lips. A spell whizzed past him then, igniting his face. She'd thought the figure to be a man, but his features were a grotesque cross between man and beast. His long hair was matted with dirt and blood, some dried across the thin layer of fur that covered the skin of his twisted features. He was a werewolf in its wildest form, his humanity having been swallowed by the wolf.
She knew without a doubt that this was Fernir Greyback.
Greyback's eyes snapped to her, narrowing with a predatory delight. Ice encased Hermione's heart as she caught the manic look in them, knowing then that any human features were but a thin facade that barely contained the beast within.
"Granger!" Draco's shout was laced with a horror and desperation so thick that it had her turning to see his face twisted in shock as he looked beyond her. There was a low growl, barely had a moment to turn toward the sound before a heavy figure was upon her.
Hermione's mind went blank with horror as Greyback bared his teeth and descended them upon her, his dirty hand clamping down over her mouth. Her wand pressed deep into his belly as a wordless curse formed in her mind, but it was late, too, late, and she was suffocating in the rotting stench of the man as his fangs glittered in the night—
Greyback was thrown off of her and sent careening across the forest floor. Draco stood over her, breathing heavily with that stricken look still written all over his face. He took a step toward her, but she turned away, scrambling to her feet as she heard another growl. This time, Greyback was crouched to spring at the other wizard, the werewolf's teeth bared as he snapped the man's wand with ease.
Hermione took off at a run toward them, ignoring Draco's shout from behind her. She shot a spell at Greyback and watched his body go careening through the night, hitting a tree with a sickening crunch. She caught Dean moving beside her, clutching his injured thigh as he ran toward the fallen wizard. The remaining goblin followed close on his heels.
The man was still looking at her, his eyes shining with gratitude. "Thank you—"
"Go!" she screamed, watching a spell whizz past their heads and crash into a tree. Only a split second after the three disapparated she was dragged backward violently.
"Fuck!" Draco shouted as he clutched her to him, shielding them from an onslaught of curses that the remaining Snatchers rained down on them.
Hermione lifted her wand and thought of their cabin, the space forming in her mind just as a Snatcher grasped her arm, grinning maniacally.
No, no, no— she thought, trying to tear her destination to anywhere but their home—
It took a moment for Hermione to process where they'd landed, and when she did her mind clouded with terror.
It was the Muggle village.
The Snatcher still held onto her in a tight grip, and Draco blasted him away only to see that his leg had been splinched. Still, five more appeared and surrounded them, continuing an onslaught of deadly spells.
From somewhere nearby, a muggle woman screamed.
Draco dragged her by the arm and started running, cutting down the Snatcher that was on their heels.
The woman's screams stopped abruptly, and Hermione raised horrified eyes to see one of the Snatchers giving her a chilling grin as he stood over the woman's body. There was movement at the window of the building behind him, and Hermione recognized the pharmacy they'd gone to what now felt like a lifetime ago.
The man's eyes followed hers. His grin widened while her mouth twisted open in a horrified scream, watching as a jet of fire erupted from the man's wand and burst through the building in the shape of a flaming snake, consuming the figure in its wake.
Blood rushed in Hermione's ears as her sorrow swirled and coalesced in an inferno within her. She thought of Seamus' parents, of her own, of the look on Dean's face when the Snatchers had appeared, of all the pain, of all the suffering that had led them to this, again—
"SECTUMSEMPRA!" The word formed before she could stop it, the curse bursting past the boundaries she'd forced upon herself to maim but not murder, her anger unleashing itself in an explosion of blood as her curse slammed into the man, ripping him open at the seams.
She barely registered that two of the other assailants had fallen to Draco's wand, her eyes only seeing red as she watched the final Snatcher grasp the bleeding man and disapparate. She didn't move when Draco forced her toward him, his voice low and urgent as he spoke, the words drowned out by the blood that continued to pound in her ears. Her mind continued to replay the way the man's chest had burst open in a sea of red even when they landed back in their cabin. The images did not stop even when Draco tried to move her from where she stayed frozen on the floor.
It was only when his arms wrapped around her that she buried her face in his chest and started to scream.
You can find both my beta and my alpha on tumblr as RESimonfics and shestoolazytologin. Please go shower them with love for all their work on this, about their own work, or even harass them about Entanglement spoilers and tidbits (especially shestoolazytologin - she knows everything, lolol).
As always, for updates on my writing progress or just to chat with me, you can check my tumblr (blankfishxx), my Facebook (Blank Fish), or join my Discord server: (remove all *'s, of course): h*t*tps*:*/*discord*.g*g/*GH6N7Sn.
