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Just as quickly as the color drained from Draco's face, his ivory skin turned red with rage. " What ?" He looked down to the broken Wishbone in his hand. "What do you mean we're ' bonded by our minds now' ?"

His head began to ache as her thoughts swirled with his. He picked up fragments of words as he tried to focus on his own thoughts.

'Wisdom Wishbone

"Be careful with whom you break the bone - a bond for life might cause you endless strife."

That must be…

Horcruxes'

He held a ringed hand to his head in an attempt to massage her thoughts out of his brain. His body was filling with disgust at the thought of her mindless, dirty, Mudblood mind mingling with his own. He felt violated, he felt sick. He felt -

"If you'd minded your own business and stayed put in whatever ferret hole you were weaseled away in," Granger muttered, her tone speckled with anger and fear. "I was unsure what the bond had meant when I read the text. However, I wasn't expecting to break it with anyone. Now it's likely useless."

Granger gripped the edge of the Headmaster's desk and hoisted her scrawny body up off the ground.

'Should stay where you belong' , he thought. Granger shot him a burning glare.

"Well, how do we get rid of it?" Draco was beginning to panic and his voice was giving it away as he rushed the words out of his mouth - he wanted to get them out quicker than she could read them in his mind. "I want your vile thoughts out of my head, now!"

Granger let out an exasperated laugh that held no mirth, no humor. "To be quite frank with you, Malfoy, I don't know how to get us out of this." Her mocking grin faltered before falling from her face instantaneously.

'If Malfoy can read my mind, he'll know every step of our hunt for Horcruxes.'

'Horcruxes' - that word again.

Draco curled his lip. "What in Merlin's name is that? Horcruxes?"

Granger thought before she could speak. She thought before she could stop herself from thinking.

'Voldemort's soul split into several items across the Wizarding World. To defeat him, we have to destroy them all.'

Upon seeing Draco's shocked expression, Hermione gasped and placed her face in her palms, shaking her head. Her nails clawed into her scalp and Draco looked on with pure disgust.

His thoughts were running rampant and he knew that she could hear at least most of them.

'Maybe this is how I redeem my family. If I come to the Dark Lord with this information, I will be rewarded greatly.

But what if he takes the information and kills me anyway from hiding?

Perhaps I will talk with Snape about what to do. He is bound to protect me after all.'

"You can't!" Granger snapped. In five long strides she stood before him and grabbed onto his waistcoat, yanking him towards her. "This is the only way. He will kill you, Malfoy. He'll kill you, he'll kill your family, and he'll kill us all."

"Like I care about you all," he retorted, "and never touch me again with your grimy hands." He gave her a light shove off of him. "Whatever, I don't give a shit about your bloody mission. I just want you out of my fucking head. And I don't to be in yours."

"Well I don't have time to figure it out today, obviously," her tone was hot, and she spit as she spoke.

'Gross, disgusting.'

"I need to go before the others come looking for me. But we will have to work together to figure out how to at least maintain this… this… predicament until I can find a solution for this mess," she said as she stepped around him and headed to the door.

She paused at the doorway. 'What if putting the Wishbone back together reset everything?'

"Give me your half," she demanded, her hand opened, facing up. "I'll see if I can put it back together."

'Yes, and give you the power it possesses? No way.'

Draco held the Wishbone to his chest and took an exaggerated step back. "And give you the power it possesses?"

"Yes, I already heard you once, thank you very much," Granger rolled her eyes. "Fine. Be that way. I have no time to argue. You figure it out. Take it," she tossed her half of the bone to him. This had shocked him, and he wasn't sure what to do. He looked at her with wide eyes.

"You don't want my help with it, that is on you. That's your job. I will figure something else out."

With that she marched away. But she was still there. Her thoughts whirling like a tornado in his brain - almost faster than he could catch them. He could honestly admit he had not expected that response from the girl.

With that, Draco hastily made his way back down to the dungeons and into his room.

Now what?

It had been a week since the incident , as she has grown to refer to it, and things have not gotten much better for Hermione.

Well, they are not as bad as the first day, but each passing day was still just as torturous as the previous. While their connection was not as strong now that they were apart, Hermione could still hear Malfoy's incessant and offensive thoughts riddling her mind. Sometimes, he would even have the audacity to comment on her personal thoughts. She was finding it increasingly difficult to pretend everything was alright.

Hermione was having a hard time coming up with excuse after excuse to avoid strategic planning meetings - meetings she was normally very adamant about attending and participating in. She just couldn't bring herself to risk Malfoy getting an in on Order planning, in case he were to decide to go back to Voldemort.

'Which would be a very, very stupid thing for him to do' , she had thought - both for herself and for him. Malfoy chose to ignore this thought, but she could feel his ire and annoyance.

Hermione first said that she had felt ill - she threw together some charms to increase her body temperature and snuck in some Puking Pastilles every few hours. That had worked for two days - any more days and she would have been sent to St. Mungo's.

Then, she started her cycle and was having a particularly hard two days of cramps and headaches.

Most recently, she went to visit home. It wound up being a nice visit, and she enjoyed the time she spent with her family. However, the recent killings of Muggle-born families had her wondering.

'What should I do to protect them?'

In this moment, Malfoy chimed in with his thoughts. 'Do them a favor and make them forget you ever existed. I wish I could do that.'

Unfortunately, Hermione had a feeling that, while Malfoy had been taking the piss out of her, he had been right. That Obliviating her parents was the only solution. She wanted to push that back as long as she could.

Now, Hermione found herself back in the Order's Headquarters, sitting at a table with Ron and Harry.

"Feeling better, Hermione?" Ron asked as he took a bite of a lemon pastry his mother had made. "Been a bit of a rough week, huh?"

'You have no idea ', she thought bitterly. She knew Malfoy was listening, but that he wouldn't chime in. He wanted to hear how she handled this, she was sure.

"Yes, it definitely hasn't been my best week. But it was nice to see my parents and get away for a bit. How have things been going on your end?" She quickly brushed over her parents. She knew if she didn't end with that, they wouldn't ask.

'How pathetic ', Malfoy chimed in with a snicker in his mind.

She had chosen not to comment on any of his thoughts, or to respond to any of his quips when he commented on her thoughts. You don't give a bully what they want, and she certainly wasn't going to feed on the only thing that keeps this snake alive.

'Ouch, that one hurt, ' he had said when she first thought that. However, despite his intentional snipe, she was also in his mind as much as she was in his. She knew that on some level, somehow, it had. Good. He tries so hard to hurt others, she didn't care that something she had done had hurt him. In fact, she relished it a bit more than she probably should have.

"Well, it's been a bit tough not having you around," Ron said as he wiped a lemon curd from the corner of his lips. Hermione paused and looked at him, and Ron blushed, wiping his hands on the front of his shirt. "I mean, you always ask the right questions and make sure everything is the best that it can be, you know?"

Hermione blushed and looked away. She knew. She knew Ron had still liked her. In fact, she used to like him for a long while too. When Ron was with Lavender last year, Hermione had been severely heart broken. However, things just didn't work out for Hermione when they had the chance to give things a shot.

He was her best friend and she loved him dearly, but she came to find her feelings for him are strictly platonic. Sadly, Ron did not feel the same way. Malfoy, for some reason, left these thoughts untouched. He had thought about them in his own mind, and his thoughts hadn't been particularly nice, but he didn't directly snipe at her.

Hermione gave him a soft smile and shrugged as she took a sip of her tea. "Well, I'm not so sure of that."

"No, you are," Harry said. "You're so important to the cause, Hermione. I don't know what we would do without you."

Hermione shut her eyes and set her tea cup down. "Actually, I've been needing to talk to you both." This was not going to be easy. Ron and Harry exchanged concerned looks before turning their attention back to Hermione, waiting for her to continue. "Um, well," she took another nervous sip of her tea. " I've been thinking, and I don't think it would be beneficial for me to go with you two," the words stung as they came out, and she felt tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

"What?"

"Come again?"

Hermione sighed. She had thought about this all week. If she went, she could potentially expose their entire mission and location to Draco, and she truly did not know where he stood. All she knew was that, based on his horrendous train of thought, he was still the bigoted, vicious, Muggle hating schoolboy he always was. And that made her a liability.

"With Snape gone -"

"Greasy, traitorous bat," Harry hissed as he tightened the grip on his mug.

"Yes, well," Hermione continued, "With Snape gone, we no longer have a skilled Potions Master on our side. I think it would be best if I took that on." She paused - Harry and Ron said nothing. "Look, we need someone to keep the medicinal and healing potions stocked, and we need someone who is willing to become experimental for attacks. I've never been a fighter. I think I would best help the cause this way."

This was actually part way true. Hermione was a strong witch, and she could hold her own in a battle. In fact, she had in the Department of Mysteries last year. And she was able to cast strong, effective hexes and jinx with little to no effort. But Hermione wasn't a fighter. She was a strategist - a brain. Those need to be protected and utilized in times of war.

There was a moment of silence in the room. In Hermione's brain, she was swimming in Malfoy's thoughts. He was reading a book on the complete history of Slytherin house - a book he had read before, one that brought him comfort. He was focusing hard on keeping his thoughts to himself, whilst also trying to keep track of Hermione's. He hadn't once tried to do anything with the Wishbone. She was annoyed. He knew she was annoyed, and he didn't care. His mind drifted to his mother and his overall demeanor in his mind softened.

Hermione felt invasive, so she pulled her attention back to the room she was actually in. "Well?"

"Well," Harry began, "this comes as a big shock, to be honest."

"Yea, you couldn't wait to get started on tracking down these Horcruxes. You were reading books and drawing out plans - what changed?" Ron asked - and he was right. She had been very eager to get started and to be involved. The last thing she had wanted was to be separated from her best friends. Now, the last thing she wanted was to expose them to the enemy. Her heart ached.

"Well, I had time to think. We need this, Harry. Without a Potions Master, we will eventually deplete all of our sources. We can't have that. You know I am the best person for this."

Harry sighed. "Have you told the others?"

She had. She had told Lupin, McGonagall, Tonks, Kingsley, and Moody in a private meeting she had held to go over just this.

"Yes," she nodded. "And they all agreed that it made sense."

"So what does this mean?" Ron sounded disheartened. "You're going to stay here?"

"No," Hermione said with her eyes squeezed shut. "I'm going to be sent to another Order safe house in the North of England to focus on my studies."

This was the bit that broke them. Not only was she not joining them, but she would not be anywhere they were likely to frequent throughout the duration of the war.

Ron stood up from his chair, knocking it on its back. "So that's it, huh? You're leaving us at the end of the summer and we're not going to see you until - when?"

Again, Hermione squeezed her eyes shut.

'Oh the Weasel is not going to like this, hoo hoo,' Malfoy interrupted her thoughts and she growled.

'No time for you - get back to your book, you useless piece of rubbish,' she gave in. She ignored his response - she had more pressing matters to attend to.

"Actually - Actually I am leaving tonight. I need the summer to study and prepare. Build up stock for healing potions I already know how to make."

Ron's lips pursed into a tight, narrow line. His face was so red that his freckles blended in. Instead of responding, he stormed out of the room and stomped up the stairs.

Harry sat there, stoic. "So that's it then? You make this decision without talking to us and you're gone by tonight?"

"Harry, you have to understand that this is absolutely necessary. I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't."

"Were you ever really even sick?" He asked in a scarily cool voice. "Or just setting your distance to leave?"

Hermione had paused a beat too long. Harry, too, got up and without a word, he followed Ron upstairs.

Suddenly, she felt violently, desperately alone.

'Well, that was quite the show! Just proves all your annoying fears and thoughts right - they will always be one team against you, when push comes to shove. '

Hermione wiped away a tear. She knew, even if they didn't, that this was the only way she could protect them. She would find a counter curse and break the bind, and by the time they are out to search for the Horcruxes, she would be maggot free.

She had to. Or, at least. She had to hope.

Thank you! I will be uploading the next chapter soon - Perhaps tomorrow during the day. Please let me know what you all think!