Answer to reviews: Thank you all for leaving reviews! Most people seem to want this story to be a dark!win story, so it might head this way. As for giving a romantic turn to the story, I'm opened to suggestions about a pureblood to pair her with, except for Draco. I don't have anything against Dramione but they are cousins in this story and I'd rather not have to write about incest even if it technically isn't.

The morning came too quickly for Hermione who spent the night watching the ceiling above her while trying to come to term with the idea of not being in Grimmauld Place anymore. After thirteen years in the same place, how was she supposed to accept the idea of never coming back? Worse, how would she survive outside without the painting's guidance?

Tired and anxious, she finally grew tired of the sight of her bedroom and left to go to the sitting room on the first floor where the family tapestry was. Seated in front of it, she read all the name of her ancestors, hoping to find some comfort in the familiar sight. For years, watching her name linked to so many others had given her a sense of belonging. Yet, all she felt now was loneliness. Her escape plan was ready, as well as her plans for what to do and where to go after her meeting with the Malfoy, depending on whether they wanted her to stay with them or not.

So caught up in her thoughts, she didn't notice the boy appearing at the door. She jumped when she felt him sitting on the couch next to her, and lifted her hand, ready to protect herself from whatever was coming at her. The sight of Potter, eyes wide and hands held up in front of him in a placating gesture almost made her laugh, but she stayed on her guards, unsure of his intentions.

"I'm sorry," he quickly said. "I thought you heard me coming."

"It's alright. I apologize for reacting like this."

The boy seemed uncomfortable, and she let him decide of what to say next without intervening. He was the one who came to her, after all.

"I'm also sorry for yesterday." His voice was hesitant, but his eyes seemed honest enough for her to accept his apology. "I was mad at everyone, but I shouldn't have talked to you like this."

Hermione nodded, and feeling his discomfort, chose not to give him a hard time about it.

"Let's start again then," she offered. "I am Hermione Lycoris Lestrange, it is a pleasure to meet you."

"Harry James Potter," the boy answered with a smile. "I was expecting to see you at breakfast since you didn't show up at dinner, but you didn't come so, err… I came looking for you."

"I didn't want to intrude on your reunion with your friends. I'm sure Mrs. Weasley prepared some sort of feast for you."

"Well, you know how she is."

Hermione didn't, at least not in the way the boy was implying, but chose not to say anything about it.

"Anyway, what is this place?" asked the boy, understanding she would not answer.

"The sitting room." The answer was mechanical, and the confused look on Potter's face when he laid his eyes on the tapestry told her she would have to be more precise. "This is the Black's tapestry. It shows all the Blacks, past and present."

Fully invested in her explanation, she rose to show a particular face.

"Here is Dorea Black, your great-grandmother. Well, Dorea Potter I suppose, since she married into the Potter family. And here I am, this is my mother, her sister, and here is Draco Malfoy, who I believe you met in Hogwarts. He should be in your year if I'm not mistaken."

"Wait, a member of my family is a Black?"

"Of course," she answered tartly, having expected him to be taught about his family like she had been of hers. "It's pretty common, all the pureblood families are linked at some point of the families' tree."

"And what are those black spots?"

He was referring to the burned patches covering some of the faces and she frowned at his ignorance. She wouldn't point it out, not when the Order was already talking about moving her out of the house. Offending their trophy-boy would only make them act faster, and she still needed to wait a few days before being able to leave. She settled on simply explaining, it wasn't every day that someone came to her with questions about her family anyway.

"People who are not family anymore. When someone is disowned, their face is blasted from the tapestry so neither them nor their descendance appears on it. Here is your godfather, his cousin Andromeda… Oh, and here is Cedrella, disowned for marrying a Weasley."

"So, the Weasley are also my cousins?"

"Distant cousins, by blood only. Since Cedrella was disowned, her descendance can't legally be recognised as Family, no matter how distant."

"It's stupid. Family is family, you don't get to choose who is and who isn't because they did something you didn't like."

"Yet here you are, leaving your aunts to spend the rest of summer with the Weasleys."

She had a smile, her tone was teasing, but the boy didn't seem to like her words. His fists were clenched, and she thought for a second that their chat was about to change into a screaming match.

"It's not…" the boy began with a hard tone. "It's not the same. They're muggles, anyway. They don't like that I'm a wizard."

Hermione took the opportunity of him facing her to look at him more closely. The boy was pale, like he hadn't seen the sun in ages, and his clothes were hanging loosely around his body. Was he purposefully buying ill-fitted clothes, or had he lost weight during the summer? He was obviously not properly taken care of, something she hadn't expected from the Order's protégé.

"Well, I shouldn't complain," he eventually said. "I have Sirius now, and I get to go to Hogwarts too. I also heard about your… well, life."

The last sentence was said in the most awkward tone the girl had ever heard, and everything about him screamed unease.

"My life not being ideal doesn't make yours any better," she declared. "You're allowed to say you don't like things or feel uncomfortable about it if that's how you feel. As for my life, I'm sure it's nowhere as bad as what they told you."

The boy was about to argue about her statement, but she stopped him with a wave of her hand.

"I don't expect you to be the perfect hero they all ant you to be, and I don't have any friend to gossip about you with. We both grew up without our parents and far from the rest of the wizarding world. I get it. I'm not the evil death eater they want me to be either."

She only got a sight for an answer and was about to apologize for being intrusive when he finally smiled. The rest of their conversation was lighter, like something had been pushed out of the way.

Three days passed and Hermione was happy to say she was getting along just fine with Harry. She had planned on being cordial at best, but a silent agreement had unconsciously been formed after their first conversation and was making all their interactions easy and natural despite their differences. They understood each other, to some extent, and it made it easier to open to each other. Their tentative friendship was applauded by the twins, and was meeting undisguised surprised from Black, Lupin and Mr. Weasley as well as Tonks, who came back for an afternoon and was shocked to see the twins, Harry and Hermione playing exploding snap in the living room. Mrs. Weasley, Ginny and Ronald were the only one who seemed truly opposed to their friendship.

Ginny was only expressing it by giving her a cold shoulder and sending glares her way, which was highly confusing. She couldn't understand what the problem was, and the twins had only laughed when she had asked before assuring her it was nothing she had done or said. Mrs. Weasley was doing her best to make the more distance possible between them, tasking Harry with various chores all over the house. Ronald was the louder about his discontentment. She had heard him several times arguing with his best friend about her being an evil creature trying to get closer to him in order to find the best opportunity to kill him, something Harry never listened to. On one occasion, he had even tried to confront the girl directly, which had only ended with him pinned against a wall by an overprotective Kreacher, something the twins had assured her they would never let him live down.

Hermione didn't care much about their displeasure, she was getting used to it after more than a month with the Weasleys. Having Harry and the twins to make her laugh was the only thing keeping her from freaking out at the idea that the time for her escape was fast approaching. She had sent a letter to Narcissa, telling her she would arrive to Malfoy manor during the night of the full moon, and she watched the moon every night with a mixture of fear and excitement. Kreacher had prepared everything for her escape and she could feel him getting nervous too as the full moon approached.

It was only the day of the full moon that the mood fell. Hermione had planned on spending her morning with the paintings and Kreacher, before going through the items she had packed in the beaded bag she had cast an undetectable extension charm on and making the potion she would need for the night's ritual. However, when she entered the dinning room for lunch, she was faced with stone-faced Black and Lupin instead of the happy chattering she was used to.

"Sit," ordered Black through gritted teeth.

The girl obeyed, suddenly scared they had discovered her plan.

"What is going on?" she asked, trying to display an innocent expression.

"You told Harry!" snapped the Animagus. "Now he's mad at me! That's what's going on!"

She looked, between the men, genuinely confused this time. Lupin sighted before putting a hand on his friend's shoulder, trying to calm him despite being agitated by the coming full moon.

"We agreed on staying calm," the werewolf reminded in a hushed voice.

"You agreed, I didn't say anything."

"Excuse me," intervened Hermione with a bored tone. "What is this about?"

"You told Harry about being confined here!"

Black's tone was bitter, but the girl couldn't care less. She was reminded of a conversation she had had the day before with Harry. The boy had asked her why she hadn't tried to leave the house to find the rest of her family, like he would have done had it been him, and she had been honest. She had explained how after his godfather had brought her here, Walburga had tied the then toddler's magical core to the wards of the house to avoid any kidnaping attempt. He had listened to her explanation of how she couldn't pass the ward without the Lord or Lady of the House of Black as long as she was tied to it, and only let his anger explode after she was over. She knew he was angry on her behalf, but she never thought he'd be angry at his godfather too.

"He asked and I answered," she explained plainly. "I didn't know it was a secret."

"That's not about it being a secret or not and you know it!" Black shouted.

"Then what is it?" It was Hermione's turn to get angry. She was seeing the man for what she hoped would be the last time and if he wanted to get angry at her for no reason, she was determined to be the one ending the conversation. "If it's not a secret but not something I'm supposed to tell either, what is it?"

"Harry already has a lot on his plate. There's no need to burden him with concerns he can't do anything about and is too emotionally fragile to handle."

She could see the werewolf struggling to keep his tone calm and neutral. Her first instinct was to mimic his cool tone to appease him, but she was done being nice with people who wouldn't return the gesture.

"I was able to handle it when I was five and learned it would probably impact my whole life. I'm sure a fifteen-years-old can handle it when it only concerns a girl he met less than a week ago. Stop wasting my time and tell me what your real problem is about, Black."

"Don't call me that," sneered the man.

"It's your name, isn't it? Lord Black."

"I never wanted this title! They threw me out when I was sixteen and I'm done with this family!"

"You're not, whether you want it or not. You distanced yourself from them as much as they did from you, but now you're the only one left to bear the name."

"You have no idea what it was like, growing up with them."

"I grew up here, just like you did! Except I'm not the one who had a whole family around them, you are! You had everything. The money, the status, the people, the fame, the power and even had the choice to back down from your position and let your brother become the heir multiple times. So you can cry all you want in front of Lupin, the Weasleys or even Harry, but don't you dare come to me with your whining because I was raised here too, and I know you're nothing but full of shit."

"You're the perfect pureblood kid, what happened to you beside being showered in praises and gifts?" Black was laughing, actually laughing at her, in a mean and dismissive way she immediately hated. "I was the heir; you just can't compare."

"Is that what it is? A contest to know who had it the hardest? You're even more pathetic than I thought you were."

"I'm not the one who pulled the orphan card to get close to Harry," taunted Black.

"No, you're the one who used the names of his dead parents and his dream of a family to have him hang on to you." Hermione was angry, and there was no going back now. "Look at you, Black. You could have been one of the most powerful men of Britain and you're nothing but a pathetic alcoholic locked up in his own house by a man who let him rot in a cell for twelve years. This is clearly the place you hate the most on earth, but you stay because of a simple order. The man keeps screwing you up again and again, yet you chose to stay loyal to him rather than take a chance at being half the man you were raised to be. Your stupid hatred for your family was your doom last time, but you keep hold on it because Merlin forbid you grow up and realise that the boy you were at eleven might have been wrong. You keep telling stories of heroism and war, but at the end of the day, you're nothing but a child who doesn't know how to deal with the frustration of his godson being mad at him and selfishly chose to involve his werewolf friend mere hours before a full moon to take it out on a fifteen-years-old you kidnapped, something you never had to be held accountable for either since you were too busy swallowing your guilt over something you're not even responsible of for twelve fucking years! Your godson, your best friend's child, was stuck with abusive relatives and yet you didn't get out of Azkaban before seeing the opportunity to punish a rat. I was here, alone for nine years after I had to watch the only human being I could remember meeting die, and you didn't come back before being ordered to. So no, Lord Black, I can't compare to you and I don't want to, because I'd choose being the evil daughter of death eaters and the perfect pureblood kid over being anything like you any day."

She had made her point, and now she wanted nothing more than to get as far away as possible from the men who were gasping at her like idiots. In the staircase, she was met with the same expression on the faces on the Weasleys and Harry, who had probably been attracted by the screams. She walked past them, not willing to have a second round, and went straight to her bedroom.

She needed to calm down if she wanted to be ready for the night, and there was still a lot to do.