**I don't own anything in the Harry Potter universe; if I did, things would have ended very differently and I wouldn't have a mountain of student loans.**
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We are our choices.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
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Draco awoke to find Blaise leaning over him on the bed, wand gripped in his hand and his lips pressed into a tight line.
"She stunned me, didn't she?" he asked groggily as he propped himself on to his elbows, already knowing the answer. Blaise nodded as he drew back. "Fucking hell… is she already gone?"
"I think so – I didn't wait around."
Theo appeared behind Blaise's shoulder, a stoic expression on his face.
"We should get on with it," he said, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms, "Milan awaits."
Draco dropped back onto the mattress and stared up at the dark blue canopy. He squeezed his eyes shut and drew in a breath. Time for Plan B.
"I'm not going," he said. The room went silent, he couldn't even hear Blaise breathing next to him.
"Yeah," Theo finally said with a sigh, "I thought that might be the case."
"What the – I didn't – what the hell are you talking about?!" Blaise exclaimed, outraged.
"He's going after Granger," Theo explained calmly. Draco wordlessly pointed at him in confirmation, keeping his eyes shut.
"No, no fucking way. I'll stun you again myself if I have to," Blaise said. "You aren't running headlong into a firefight. Any Death Eater not hellbent on capturing Potter will be trying to kill you!"
"You're right," he replied, blinking his eyes open and sitting up again. "It'd be a lot less dangerous if I had someone there to watch my back…"
Blaise scoffed and stood up, crossing the room with his fists balled at his sides in anger. Theo, on the other hand, looked contemplative.
"My father is going to be there," he said thoughtfully.
Draco nodded. "Mine too."
"I suppose I do have a bit of a score to settle."
"Couldn't think of a better place for it, mate."
Blaise spun and marched back toward them, fuming.
"Well I don't have any patricidal inclinations," he growled, "where the hell does that leave me?"
"In Italy if you want," Draco said, sitting up again and looking at him. "We aren't going to drag you."
Blaise looked murderous about how quickly the situation had changed. He started toward the door and Theo stepped into the room and out of his way as Blaise walked out, stomping down the hallway until his footsteps faded.
The remaining boys stared at each other. Draco opened his mouth to speak but Theo quieted him and held up a finger. A second later footsteps could be heard approaching again, growing louder before Blaise burst back into the room.
"If I die," he said, voice low and dangerous, "I will come back and haunt you, Draco. I swear to Circe, you won't have five minutes of peace to wank for the rest of your sad, privileged life."
Theo smirked and started bouncing on the balls of his feet while Draco looked up at his friend with eyebrows raised and mouth slightly agape. Blaise huffed in annoyance and shook his head before stepping closer and extending a hand to pull him to his feet. The three boys stood in a triangle, looking at one another.
"Oh Merlin…" Blaise said, shaking his head. "Is this what Potter feels like all the time? No wonder he's such a prat, it's exhausting."
Theo barked out a laugh before taking point as they left the room and descended the stairs.
"We should raid the potion stores in the basement again before we leave," he said over his shoulders. "Blood replenisher, dittany, murtlap, wiggenweld, burn paste…"
They made their way through the kitchen and into the dark, dank cellar, turning into a side room lined with shelves of both potion ingredients and already full vials. They magically expanded their pockets and began sorting through and grabbing anything that looked like it might be useful, casting unbreakable charms on the bottles before dropping them in.
"This is absolutely barmy," Blaise muttered under his breath. "Running into a battlefield with a turncoat and a deserter… I'm going to get myself bloody killed…
Having eventually razed everything they could, the trio trooped back up the stairs, through the kitchen and out the front doors into darkness.
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Hermione arrived in Hogsmeade with a pop, stumbling a little and pushing down a wave of nausea. She was glad she had listened to Theo – if she had tried to apparate directly from Brighton she was sure she would have either fainted or splinched herself.
She looked around to find the village deserted.
"Wait, Aberforth, we have another one," she heard someone call over her shoulder. She spun around to see the Hog's Head in the distance, a body hanging out the front door with their head turned to look inside. She drew her wand and approached slowly.
"It's…" he turned to look at her and she saw it was Seamus Finnigan. "Merlin's beard, it's Hermione!"
"Seamus!" she shouted, running forward and wrapping him in a hug. He wavered for a second before squeezing her quickly and then pushing her back by the shoulders.
"Wait, what did I do to the feather in our very first charms class at Hogwarts?"
"You lit it on fire – the same thing you did in nearly every class that year. That's a fairly poor security question Seamus, anyone that's met you could guess the answer."
"Gallopin' gargoyles, it really is you!" he exclaimed, this time hugging her tightly and eliciting a breathless squeak.
An old man appeared behind his shoulder and Hermione had to bite back a yelp. He looked exactly like Albus Dumbledore, but his hair was grey instead of white and his beard was a much more reasonable length. Her mind went back to Seamus referring to him as Aberforth and she concluded that this must be the brother she had read about in Skeeter's vile book, but she bit her lip. Now was not the time.
"Can we get on with it?" he grumbled, in a distinctly un-Dumbledore fashion. "My pub has already seen more people than King's Cross tonight."
"Yeah," Seamus responded, pulling away from Hermione and turning back toward the door. "Everyone else is already inside reinforcing the wards and getting ready. He isn't here yet though."
She nodded, trying to steady herself. She didn't need to ask who "He" was. They entered the pub and she followed him back behind the bar, stepping into a room she had never been in before. It was sparsely furnished, which was not of note, but there was a giant open passageway on one of the walls that led downward into darkness.
Seamus turned back to Aberforth. "If anyone else comes through-"
"I'll be telling them to sod off," he finished, shooting daggers at the boy.
Seamus raised his hands in surrender and tipped his head toward the passage, indicating Hermione should follow him.
"Lumos," they muttered simultaneously, wand tips lighting as they descended into the tunnel.
"Where've you been?" he asked as they made their way along. "We saw the Prophet and thought…"
"It's a bit of a long story, but the short version is that that wasn't me. I've been locked up for the past month, someone was impersonating me with Polyjuice."
"Locked up… Everyone thought you were dead until that picture cropped up in the paper last week."
"Whoever's been running around in my skin is going to be dead when I get my hands on them…" she muttered.
The passageway was starting to slowly incline upward.
They finally emerged in a cavernous room Hermione had never seen before. There were hammocks and cots pushed to the side against the walls, and different house colors draped from the ceiling overhead.
"Where are we?" she asked in wonder, turning to survey the gigantic chamber.
"Room of requirement," Seamus replied with a cheeky grin. "It really does give you whatever you need."
Suddenly a red-headed blur tackled her to the ground.
"What did I say to you in my fifth year after I broke up with Dean?"
Hermione blinked rapidly and tried to breathe around the weight on her chest. Ginny Weasley was pushing a knee into her diaphragm and she felt a wand jabbed against the side of her throat.
"Ginny, I already-" she heard Seamus try to explain weakly from off to the side, but Ginny viciously shushed him.
"You said he wasn't a bad guy," Hermione wheezed, "he just wasn't the right guy. You were talking about Harry."
Ginny sat back on Hermione's thighs, straddling her, and clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob.
"We thought you were…" she started, voice shaking.
"Yeah, Seamus said," Hermione explained, rubbing her neck. "If everyone on our side reacts like this when they see me, I'm not going to last five minutes when the real fighting begins."
Ginny grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her into an awkward hug, red ponytail batting her in the face. She finally climbed off and helped Hermione to her feet.
"Where's Harry?" Hermione asked, once again trying to get her bearings.
"After he came through with Ron they ran off with Luna," Ginny explained. "They were looking for something."
Hermione processed this. If they had gone off with Luna they must be trying to find the Ravenclaw horcrux.
"Which way?" she asked, crossing the room quickly to a door hanging open into the hallway.
Ginny pointed left and Hermione started running without a backward glance. She took the stairs in the general direction of Ravenclaw tower but didn't see her friends anywhere. All around her she heard bits and pieces of exclamations as she darted past, people recognizing her, but she didn't have time for it.
She rounded a corner and stuttered to a stop. In front of her, Professor McGonagall was levitating two bodies swathed in black cloaks and bound together down a corridor and shouting instructions at those around her. Hermione had seen a lot of wonderful and terrifying things in her time in the magical world, but her eyes widened in shock at the battle-hard glint in the elderly witch's eye.
"Pomona, find Longbottom and head to the greenhouses, grab anything that might be of use," she shouted over the general din echoing throughout the castle. "Fillius, Charlie Weasley is around here somewhere, tell him- "
She came up short when she saw Hermione.
"Please don't attack me," Hermione spit out quickly and raised her hands. "Ginny and Seamus already checked. I'm me, I promise."
"Miss Granger, what are you – never mind," McGonagall said quickly. "I'm glad you're here."
"Please, I need to find Harry," she pleaded.
"Mr. Potter is just fine, Mr. Weasley and Kingsley are with him, they think they have a lead on the last horcrux. I could really use your wand working on wards and closing off entrances into the castle."
Hermione blinked in shock at the casual reference to the horcruxes before her shoulders sagged in relief, releasing a tension she hadn't known she'd been saddled with. Harry had told The Order what they had been doing, he had gotten help.
She was fighting back the urge to shout at the witch in front of her when she heard Draco's voice echoing in her head. Potter thinks you're being held captive at the ministry, he doesn't expect you to be there.
If she distracted Harry now… she pulled in a slow breath and let it out.
"Where do you need me?"
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Hermione was down near one of the side entrances to the castle, sitting cross-legged on the grass overlooking the Black Lake and facing the school. It was much quieter down here, the voices and clattering within barely audible.
"Custodius revelare," she whispered, almost dropping the spell in shock at the sheer number of wards she sensed around her. There were more behind her, general shields and barriers wrapping about the grounds, but she could see spells actively being added around the structure itself.
McGonagall had said Bill was working on the wards too, on the other side of the school; he was intimately familiar with all sorts of protections from his work as a curse-breaker.
Hermione was no expert, certainly nowhere near his level of skill, but she was much more advanced than most witches and wizards her age, or any age really, having learned all she could in the time spent preparing to go on the run with Harry and Ron. And, more than that, it got her out of the castle where Harry could see her. After her conversation with McGonagall, she'd determined that was something that they couldn't afford right now. Voldemort was presumably on his way to the school, Death Eaters and all manner of dark creatures in tow, and every second mattered.
She tried to calm the chaos thrumming in her mind and slowly raised her wand, beginning to weave her own magic into the ancient protections. It would buy them minutes at most, but in a battle like the one they were facing, minutes could change everything.
She was shaken from her concentration a short time later when a cold voice echoed out across the grounds.
"I know that you are preparing to fight. Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood. Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight."
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A/N: "Even one extra wand being there can mean lives… in a battle like the one they were facing, minutes could change everything."
Something I want everyone to bear in mind as we get into the thick of things: I'm not going for a full-on butterfly effect canon-divergence, it's just not that kind of story. It's more of a broad-strokes 'what if' scenario, savvy?TanzaniteWrites rocks, next chapter will be up on 11/20.