The change was in the wind. You could smell it so much you could (unfortunately) almost taste it; European beer and vomit and urine. You could feel it, summer warmth giving way to a sharp coldness. And you could certainly see and hear it. The muggle cried as Mr Nott jeered and spun her in the air, pleading for her kid as she was chased across the grass by an enchanted flame.
"Hope your daughter can run faster than you can! Fat bitch!"
Mr Crabbe's taunt was a false hope, however. The girl ran into his father, and he grabbed her wrist and held her fingers in the magic flame. The fire lit up his face as he held out her hand, and Draco smiled back at him as he showed them all her black, burnt fingertips.
The first Defence lesson of the year was a curious combination – mainly savagely boring, but with sprinkles of extreme entertainment. The new teacher was truly the spitting image of a Prophet artist's unkind impression of an ugly, heartless bureaucrat. But then, Father did say she had demonstrated cockatrice-like survival in the bowels of Ministry politics – perhaps she was the original inspiration. Administrations had come and gone and yet somehow, this squat, repulsive witch with pink reading glasses had remained.
In case any of the uninformed students couldn't put two and two together, the woman left them in no doubt as she spent the first 15 minutes of class opining about the vision of the Ministry for a harmonious approach to education with the Board of Hogwarts. The effect was something like a Lassitude Draught on almost every student, except the most obnoxious Mudblood of them all.
Granger had at least learned to not hop up and down like an eager rabbit when trying to get the teacher's attention. Her arms were folded, and her entire body was so stiff with attention and disapproval that Draco wondered how Professor Umbridge hadn't noticed it yet. Or perhaps the new teacher was used to poor receptions to her extremely boring speeches in her substantive role.
Granger's hand was up as the Ministry witch finally reached the end of her soliloquy to Cornelius Fudge and the importance of educational institutions and government working as one for a better magical society. Draco poked Pansy awake to watch the inevitable shitshow.
"Yes, Miss…"
"Granger, Professor. Why has Mr Slinkhard's text been selected as our main course textbook this year?" Her tone was even and polite, making Draco wonder for a moment if Granger had finally learned some sense of propriety.
"Well, Miss Granger," the bureaucrat started, "You know, I don't think your name is familiar, but be that as it –"
"Oh, well I don't expect it would be, Professor," Granger interrupted, leaning forward in her seat and watching Umbridge intently. "My parents are muggles, you see."
Pansy let out a very unattractive guffaw, and Draco also couldn't suppress a snort at the Mudblood's spectacular return to obnoxious, ineffective form. A faint, unpleasant smile crawled across the bureaucrat's face at this stupid admission.
"Well then, Miss Granger, I am not sure how they approach textbook selection in your world, but in Wizarding Britain textbooks are carefully assembled by Ministry educational experts," Umbridge said primly, sweeping the question aside and turning to her desk.
"You say that like it is not a recent change, Professor," Granger continued, as though the exchange had not clearly been ended by the Professor. "Up until now in both magical and muggle Britain, the government has not had unilateral control over academic sources." The bureaucrat turned back around.
"Here we go," Pansy whispered in his ear, watching Umbridge and Granger like a spectator at the Colosseum.
"I beg your pardon?" Umbridge asked quietly. Draco did not think you needed pure blood to recognise this was an offer to back away, and not a genuine question. But he supposed Mother might have been right when she said Mudbloods were raised like simple beasts, because Granger started to repeat her earlier statement word for word, until the Professor interrupted her to give her detention for rudeness.
"Ooh," Pansy whispered loudly. Even some of the Mudblood's fellow Gryffindors were looking at her uneasily, but the punishment did not seem to deter her one bit, as she carried on speaking.
"Professor, I was merely answer-"
"You were, and are continuing to be, deliberately rude and disruptive," Professor Umbridge said, a shrill tone entering her voice. "Now, I would like everyone to read the –"
"Is it the Ministry's view that asking questions in a class is an antisocial behaviour?" Granger asked loudly. Pansy and Potter's mouths both actually fell open in shock; Potter tugged on the Mudblood's arm at this point but it was far too late to stop the collision. The bureaucrat turned away from the obstinate Gryffindor girl and strode to her desk, busying herself with a quill.
"Because students asking questions has been a core component of education since Ancient Greece," Granger continued. Gods, the girl had no sense of judgment whatsoever. "This is quite a radical new approach to education from a Ministry that I thought, above all else, we could rely on to be conservative."
The Mudblood emphasised the last word of her rant, although Draco and it seemed the rest of the class did not know what she meant. A quick survey of the classroom revealed most students expressions ranged from shocked to (he glanced at Pansy) ecstatic. As for the new teacher, she merely paused while scratching away with her quill, and after a moment asked Granger to take her note to the Head of Gryffindor House. Pansy's oohs were now very audible as the Mudblood immediately took the note and stomped out of the classroom, slamming the door behind her and leaving several agape students staring at each other, mouths hung open in shock.
But this incident had perhaps used up all the excitement they each were due for several years. The following 40 minutes involved the driest, most boring reading that Draco had ever suffered through.
"…and you must be Malfoy's son," Umbridge said after class, looking up at him from a list she was reading off a Ministry embossed letter.
"Yes, Professor Umbridge," he said, attentive and polite, nodding his head towards her. She nodded back, satisfied.
"Yes, great supporters of Cornelius, the Malfoy family. A fine example for other wizarding households," she said, the slightest of emphasis on the word other.
He had expected an existing hierarchy would be both too troublesome and not good enough for a seasoned Ministry witch with an agenda. It was no surprise to hear her silly new adjectives and reinvented roles that overrode the prefect system. But to set up such a fresh new system, she needed respectable wizards and witches to demonstrate it. And Malfoy, Crabbe, and Parkinson came from such fine families, would they be interested in leading this new taskforce?
"Oh, of course, Professor," he said, perfected surprised laugh in his mouth. "Anything I can do for the Ministry. It would be an honour."
Pansy had gleefully tracked down Granger within the hour. She poured a Stink Potion down the back of the Mudblood's shirt, and he docked her five points for lack of basic hygiene, shoving past her and one of those wide-eyed Gryffindor twins on the way to Care of Magical Creatures.
"Is that why you've been carrying round that potion since we got on the train?" he asked Pansy, turning back to look at Granger twist unhappily as she tried to remove her shirt under her jumper.
"Papa said to expect it, first week," said Pansy, a relish in her voice and a literal skip in her step.
It turned out that Granger's reaction was not unusual, just the quickest. Most of the Gryffindors got angry over the coming weeks, and the hexes and detentions against them immediately following the taskforce being formed were a rush, like kicking off on a new and better broomstick. The Weasley blood traitors had the best reactions; Crabbe was very busy fighting them all in the corridors and after class and on the weekends. The youngest one in particular hardly ever made it out of detention, replacing widely-known sloppy behaviour with hours of getting drilled on Ministry propaganda or whatever the Umbridge woman had unruly teenagers doing on Saturday nights.
Overall though, in a few weeks the Mudbloods got very quiet, very fast. It was pure magic, like his parents had said; the change of protocol had learned them very quickly and they had fallen right into line. Even Granger, for all her firecracker entrance to Umbridge's Defence Against the Dark Arts fifth year class, transfigured almost overnight from an obnoxious know-it-all to a careful and avoidant student. Pushing on this performative ignorance was the most satisfying part of it all. Pansy's original prank had been, well, not so original, but by the end of the month she had managed to cut a chunk out of Granger's horrible bushy hair without so much as a verbalised refusal.
"Ugh," Draco shuddered as Pansy held up a thick curl of hair. "It's disgusting, I can't believe you touched that with your bare hand. Did she even -? Hey, GRANGER!" he shouted at her, voice hard and demanding. The tension radiated off the Mudblood as she turned heel to face him, and it flowed to him like a magical current, along his wand arm and down his back, making him stand up straighter. And it was a magical current, he recalled, they had started covering this in History of Magic classes. "Did you even notice Pansy trying to give you a haircut? Or is that thicket bush on your head so huge you couldn't even tell?"
Pansy gingerly held out the curl to show her, pinched between her thumb and forefinger like a Flobberworm. Granger's eyes widened at the sight, and she reached up to touch her enormous hair.
"Ungrateful Mudblood," Draco spat. "Didn't even say thank you."
"Well?" Pansy asked, tapping her foot to show she was waiting.
The Mudblood looked from the chunk of her hair that Pansy was holding to each of them, and ah, it was something to see. She had never looked so ugly. Wait, no, Draco thought, something was familiar about the screwed up look of hatred on her face. It took a moment but Draco eventually placed it – it was how she had looked before she slapped him, towards the end of their third year at Hogwarts.
He smiled at her, easily and happily. There would be no muggle duelling this time, they all knew it.
Granger finally let go of her remaining hair and walked off, past the door to Potions and towards the southern staircase.
"Missing class too? That's ten points from Gryffindor, you dirty, lazy cow!" Pansy screamed after her. But the bushy head just hurried further away, out of Draco and Pansy's sight, making the atmosphere a little lighter and better as she left.
The next day, the Granger Mudblood had wrapped her hair up into one of those Medusa-like knotted hairstyles, and beyond that, pulled her hair into a bun so tight it made that ancient Gryffindor professor look easy-going. Pansy dissolved into delighted giggles next to him at breakfast, pointing openly at Granger as she tried to sneak in.
"Oh, I'm cutting more of it off today," Pansy whispered in his ear. "She's gonna be bald by the end of this week."
A bald Granger, Draco considered. That which had seemed so unlikely was now very possible, now that the Mudbloods were being correctly put into their proper place.
After Potions, Pansy breathed quietly in his ear as they headed down to the dungeons that day. She won't be expecting it then. Draco realised she was right; they both usually prodded at Granger on sight. It would be easier and better to do it after she had breathed a hilarious sigh of relief.
He had worried for a moment she wouldn't be in class, as she had run away so upset yesterday and missed it, but you could never underestimate a Mudblood's drive for stolen knowledge. Granger was there with the rest of them, chopping up bullfrog livers and stirring in dusty, dried lavender to Forgetting Solution tests. The dumb bint even stayed behind after all her friends left to argue with Snape about a grade on a homework assignment being unfair.
"Merlin's balls, that girl is such a whiny bitch," he said to Pansy as they loitered in the hallway, listening to her loudly argue with the Potions teacher.
"I know! Who has time to – oh, shh!" Pansy crouched down beside Draco as the talking suddenly stopped and they heard footsteps. The door opened quickly and Granger stormed out, shoving a scroll of parchment in her bag and muttering something about a racist bastard under her breath.
As the door slammed shut Pansy leapt into action, hand in Granger's bun and wand out to cast a Diffindo hex.
BANG.
Draco registered Pansy's small body crumple violently for a fraction of a second, before the same curse hit him. His head hit the stone wall with a violent smack, and then his hands were out to try and stop his fall to the ground.
"Expelliarmus!" Granger hissed, and his wand was out of his hand before she ground a knee into his winded stomach. "Stupefy!"
Winded and disarmed, he merely waited for the Stun to hit. But a moment later, a wand tip was under his chin and the furious face of Hermione Granger was inches away from his. She must have hexed Pansy.
"You," she said, voice thick with rage. "Now you listen to me." Draco rolled his eyes at her dramatics as she lost control of her magic – he felt a cut under his jaw from her wand and froze, concerned she was about to hit an important vein by accident.
"You could never, ever, beat me in a fair fight," she breathed, the heat of her breath hitting his face. "Because I'm a more powerful witch than you. You know it. I know it. All you have is your bigotry."
Even her insults were muggle, Draco thought but decided it would not be clever to say. Granger carefully gestured her non-wand hand towards Pansy's unconscious form on the stone floor, and he felt his heart go out to Pansy, who had not expected such a sneaky trick to be hiding in the Mudblood's disgusting hair. "I know this has been fun. I know it makes you feel strong. Like you matter." She grabbed his collar and shook him, and he finally turned his gaze from Pansy to her.
"I know you never feel that way otherwise," she whispered, like it was a secret. "So weak." And then something in her eyes shifted, and the emotion behind her words dissipated.
"But I've had enough," Granger said matter-of-factly. "The next time you try this shit, I will make you regret it."
She let go of his collar gently, and continued aiming her wand at him as she backed up towards the staircase. "You might want to tell Parkinson. Or not. See what happens." And then the angry, filthy muggle witch was gone, leaving drops of his blood and a shaken confidence in her wake.
It took a small amount of persuasion, but Pansy eventually agreed not to report to the Ministry bitch that she was so incapable as to have been beaten by a magic thief.
"Pansy, I know it was a horrible trick," Draco said sympathetically after she had come to that evening. "I'm just saying, it makes it look like we aren't capable of dealing with the scum. Other people really want to be on the taskforce, you know." Crabbe had suffered no such embarrassing mistakes. And Goyle and other students were looking on them with a loathing and something like hunger, in a way that made Draco feel slightly nervous.
"She's not worth your time, she's just an ugly jealous cow," he lied smoothly, and Pansy sighed and smiled like she always did. She spent the next few weeks chasing simpler targets, and leaving Draco to dwell on what happened.
The only explanation was that Granger had set her hair as a trap, he concluded. She knew Pansy was going to try again, and she ambushed her. That gave her the opening to attack Draco and take them both down. A half second.
He shuddered at how brief the lapse in control had to be for the Mudblood's fury to be unleashed. They really were unholy beasts.
Worse still, Granger appeared to have taken up with one of those identical Weasel blood traitors, so she had a second wand at her side more and more often. Twice the wand power was quite different from her usual solitude. But the insult could not be allowed to stand. Draco could only imagine what she had told the other scum, and they could not be permitted to think he and Pansy were easy targets.
He watched Granger across the courtyard, bickering with her new boyfriend as his arm snaked across her shoulder. This would take careful planning.
The opportunity arose several weeks later, well into the last autumn light. Pansy made some disparaging comment about how the Mudblood spent Friday nights in the library, which Draco quickly verified with his own two eyes. The time spent mastering the Disillusion Charm was definitely worth it as he followed Granger silently out of the archives after 10pm, catching her completely by surprise (and carefully not grabbing her by her horrible hair). She had the poor judgment to walk back to Gryffindor quarters through an otherwise empty hallway with empty classrooms.
"Stupefy!" he cast, and her shoulders leapt up, but it was too late – the Stun landed straight between the Mudblood's shoulder blades and she collapsed like she'd been struck down by a god. Draco pulled her unconscious body into an empty classroom and locked the door behind him, pocketing her wand before reviving her.
"Ennervate," he cast quietly, keeping his wand pointed at her dirty face. Granger blinked in the half-moonlight as she awoke, and reached for her now-missing wand, making Draco smile broadly.
"Hello, Mudblood. Regret, huh?" he asked easily – words always came easy with this fucking Gryffindor bitch. "How does this feel for regret? Adm-"
But he scarcely started the fire hex before the Mudblood jumped behind a desk. Draco laughed mechanically, stepping around the classroom to aim at her again.
"Yeah, try running, Granger. I'd love to see it," he said. She must have crawled completely under a desk; he couldn't see her.
"Maybe while we hide from our inevitable punishment, we should consider the following," Draco called out, climbing up on a desk in the following row to more easily peer under the desks behind it. He couldn't see her. "Don't you EVER fucking threaten me again."
An uncontained giggle emerged from the desk nearest his left foot, and he pointed his wand at it immediately. "Alarte ascendare!"
The desk jumped into the air, but Granger followed it, tackling his shins and tipping him painfully over onto the floor, grabbing for a wand.
Draco shoved her off, a misaimed Stunning spell bouncing past her and hitting a bookshelf behind Granger with a thud. But it was too late – her wand was back in her fingers.
"Impedimenta!" she cast, unfortunately accurately. Panic overtook his slowed senses as control of the situation slipped away.
"Crucio!" he screamed. Granger blinked.
Nothing happened.
The Mudblood cast a Shield Charm and burst into laughter. "Ah, Malfoy, this is too good," she said, wiping her eyes like this was so funny she had cried. "You are so bad at this."
Draco could feel an unbidden, ugly blush crawl up his neck. The hatred bubbled up over his logic and burst out of him. "You're fucking dead, Granger," he snarled, as she finally shut up. "I'll kill you."
She started giggling again. "Draco Malfoy," she said rudely, "you couldn't kill me. If anyone here is capable of killing – it's not you."
The threat was obvious. "You are not killing me," Draco replied angrily, but yet again the Mudblood did not react the way she was supposed to. Her laughter finally, properly subsided at his challenge – but the look on her face was of confusion rather than fear.
"Why would I kill you?" she asked, eyebrows knotted together in genuine perplexity.
Well, he thought. She was right about that, at least. There was no cause for her to challenge her betters. "Indeed," Draco sniffed, crossing his arms, fingers still locked in a death grip on his wand. "You could never. You don't have the power for it."
She started laughing again – dammit, what was wrong with this witch? But this laugh was more unhinged than the previous ones. It was less of an escaped giggle and more a strange noise that grew stronger over time.
"Good lord you're dumb," she eventually said, eyes lit up in a way that reminded him of a fire and a child's burnt fingers in summer. "But do I tell you? Ahh, I shouldn't, but Draco - you make it hard not to!"
She dared to use his first name. The lack of respect was intolerable, Draco knew this, but her laugh was so crazy, and her taunts ripped at his curiosity –
But Granger continued before he could ask anything he'd regret. "Oh, I can't help myself. It's too good that you don't know. I did talk about a fair fight back in the dungeons, didn't I?" He could tell both of their minds suddenly flickered to the last time they had ran into each other. Him disarmed and Pansy unconscious. "So maybe I should untie one of your hands?"
She let down her Shield Charm, and Draco knew this was his chance to act, but she smiled like a cat caught destroying a priceless Persian rug. "Draco, your incompetence and weakness is a precious gift," she told him.
He blinked. Now Draco was the one feeling confused.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" he asked blankly. He should have been ruder, more aggressive about it, but the lack of understanding overrode everything else. Granger pressed a finger to her mouth, considering him, and then spoke again.
"I want to say a pinned chess piece? But it's beyond that. You're not just pinned, you are actively harming your cause by being there." She tilted her head while Draco tried to put thoughts of Goyle and Pansy and Nott and too many other Slytherins out of his mind. "You are impressively bad at this, and therefore, you can be left until last."
Her conclusion hung heavily in the air between them, like a fog on the castle that blocked vision two feet in front of you.
"What do you mean, can be left," he repeated, shifting slightly to aim his wand at her. But instead of demonstrating any fear, the Mudblood just sighed – again, was there any reaction he could anticipate?
"You're right. You won't be there at the end, will you? Someone else will get you first. Someone less strategic than me…actually," Granger said, pointing at him like this was a conversation about a homework problem and not strategising about murdering respectable wizards. "A fragging is more likely, isn't it?"
Draco didn't know the word; it must be a muggle one he hadn't unwittingly picked up in this cursed mixed school. "Oh, but you don't know what that word means, do you," she continued, echoing his thoughts. "Blind, ignorant nazi." Again with the foreign muggle phrases.
"That's truly what will get you killed," Granger said, rolling her eyes and unfolding her arms from around herself. "You could have had the hatred or the stupidity. But not both." And then she smiled at him, showing all her ugly teeth, eyes somehow sad.
"Ah, Draco. You're not getting out alive. But you're right about one thing," she nodded, strangely affirming after threatening his demise. "It won't be me."
She looked around at the empty classroom. "Well, this was very entertaining! I'd love to let it go. But I can't have you thinking you can get away with this stuff." It was curious, he thought through an internal howl of fury at the disrespect, how much she echoed his own thoughts. Granger clicked her fingers and looked at him, face bright with an idea.
"I've got it," she said, and she cast her Shield Charm again while picking up her bag. "Ok…well then."
She walked out of the classroom, too confident to even back out aiming her wand at him. It took a long time to remember that filth played mind games (it was the only underhanded tool they had, Mother had said) before he fell asleep that night.
It was only about a week later she attacked him again. His failed plot to get her under control had emboldened her significantly. Draco wasn't even bothering her, he was telling off some little second year shit for running into him when the jumped-up Mudblood ran at him like a mad woman. Broad daylight, and Disarming and Impedimenta spells. The twelve year old brat and his friends stood there gawping as Hermione Granger grabbed his left hand and started cursing it.
"Frangeretur," she exclaimed, over and over, pointing her wand at each of the fingers in his left hand. Snap. Snap. He tried to pull away, but her bloody boyfriend joined in, locking his neck in place while she broke his five left fingers.
"We've been waiting for you to fuck up," the Weasley said conversationally.
"It's only a little broken bone in each finger," Granger commented, waggling his hand painfully to watch the fingers flop around strangely. "I bet it barely hurts. I did tell you, didn't I, Malfoy?" Through the pain he registered the renewed use of his last name, and wondered if the muscled forearm around his throat might have anything to do with that. "Stop bullying the younger students," she finished.
The Weasley let his neck go and steered the shocked second years away, but Granger held onto his painful hand, looking at him mischievously as she raised it to her lips and brushed his fingertips.
"Well, Draco," she said, grinning at the horror on his face. "Until you fuck up again!"
But it would not be the Mudblood or her uneasy boyfriend who got the next slight in. The audacity of their assault spread through the school like Fiendfyre. Crabbe leant against the post of his bed. Casual, and waiting for him.
Potter elbowed the Weasley in their year as Draco tried to line up for Umbridge's excuse for a class quietly. The impoverished asshole laughed loudly and pointed, like a common troll.
"Look what Hermione did to you!" he yelled for everyone to hear. "Holy shit, what an embarrassment." Draco's gaze slid to the Gryffindor girls. All were wide-eyed except the Mudblood, who of course knew she had not broken his eye socket. The Ministry hag waved them all into the classroom, but he wasn't fast enough to escape Granger grabbing his wrist and locking the classroom door, holding him back from escaping this moment so miserable that he wished he would die.
"But was it someone else you picked on?" she asked. The Gryffindor held onto his wrist, pulling on it to stand on her toes and whisper into his ear. "Or was it someone a bit closer to home?" The words had laughter on them, and they ran down his neck, tickling it.
Draco wrenched his wrist out of her hand and tried to make his mind go blank, but she just laughed. She was always laughing. Like a hyena.
"I don't need to read your mind, Draco! It's literally all over your face. That broken cheekbone is a Crabbe special," she said, winking at him. "Ask me how I know."
The door swung open at this point, revealing an apoplectic Umbridge who seemed dumb enough to believe a day-old bruising injury was caused by Granger in the space of the few seconds she had closed the door. But Granger didn't dispute her at all. She agreed and nodded along with the lecture, an obviously fake look of seriousness on her face. Umbridge was too distracted to notice the Mudblood was watching him with a barely contained laugh, or that he slunk into class behind her back.
Draco sat down at dinner, though he'd never been less hungry in his life. Nott had the least hungry, ambitious look on his face, and was conveniently seated rather away from Crabbe, so Draco plonked down beside him, hoping to endure the meal without incident.
"So I hear the Mudblood got you again," Nott stated plainly. Draco closed his eyes and tried to breathe through the anger.
"She did not," he ground out through gritted teeth.
"Oh," said Nott, ripping apart a bread roll.
It was quiet, for one tolerable moment. Draco considered whether he could force down a bread roll, too. Then:
"Well, Pansy's gone to avenge you anyway."
Draco's seat was already scraping the floor before Nott could finish his horrible news. But part of him already knew, even before he found Pansy knocked out in the library, with a swelling egg on her freshly shaved head, that he was too late.
The Mudblood had taken most of his taskforce power away at this point, but he was still able to be out after official curfew. Draco waited outside Umbridge's office, arms folded against the cold from the snow falling over the castle, and he ran over the plan in his head, over and over again. This one had to go right. He was running out of chances. The power that had seemed so certain was really a fragile thing, it turned out.
Finally, close to midnight, the door opened and a bleary Granger emerged, along with the curious scent of iron. Draco jumped up to confront her. Head on, this time. Maybe that would work better – the past two sneak attacks had certainly not succeeded.
Granger merely blinked at him as he cornered her against a wall, an accusatory finger jabbing into her collarbone.
"Stay the fuck away from Pansy," he said, quietly and firmly. But of course Granger did not react like she should have; she merely smiled and looked away, like he had revealed a slightly embarrassing secret.
"Have to say, I don't really seek your girlfriend out, Draco," Granger replied, an obvious guilty lilt in her words. "Weren't you going to tell her to stay away from me?" Her hair had fallen in front of her face, and she raised a glistening hand to move it behind her shoulder.
He should have kept focus. It was dangerous not to. But somehow the shine and the movement and her exposed neck and ear was distracting.
Granger noticed the flicker in his gaze, and held her bloody hand back up, tilting her head and body closer to his so they could both see her outstretched hand. "Oh, did you want to see tonight's message? She's not going for subtlety anymore." It felt like a part of Draco's stomach fell away as he saw there was a message carved into the top of her hand, reaching down her fingers. I MUST NOT RAISE A WAND, Granger's blood screamed through her cut skin.
"Of course, what it means is, we must be getting close," she whispered softly. "The new world is almost here. It's right behind us." She pulled her hand in towards them both, and dragged a bleeding finger under his jaw. "Can you feel it?" His neck grew damp as she swiped her blood across it.
Draco grabbed her offending wrist and pulled it off him, and Granger grinned widely, and the moment was broken. Normally he loathed to see her smile, but he'd take it a thousand times over whatever Dark stasis curse she had just pulled them both into.
"Oh, Draco, we can't get cold feet now!" the mad Gryffindor exclaimed, chiding and laughing. "This is only the start. Do you know where this is headed? Here, check this out –" She rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a book she shoved into his chest. He pulled it away to look at the cover. The Pol Pot Regime, it stated, over a muggle photo of skulls.
"Oh, but not here," she said hurriedly, and then her arm linked his, as deftly as Pansy, and Granger dragged him away from Umbridge's office. "It's surely not Ministry approved. Look –" She reached over and turned several pages to reach a glossy insert in the centre of the book, pointing at a photo of a tired looking woman in front of a wall of human bones. "Do you take Divination? Just roll some of this out in your final exam, easiest Outstanding O.W.L. ever. Oh there's so many skulls, Draco," she said breathlessly, shaking her head with a faint smile. "Just piles of bodies, you have no idea. And the administrative work involved! The menial work you and your lot are going to have to do, shovelling and processing body after body of people in this genocide. Here, see?"
She flicked the page and jabbed a finger at a photo. Her blood smeared over it, but he could make out the gist – a pile of hundreds of glasses.
"Someone has to remove all of the personal belongings, see," she said matter-of-factly. "Especially the offending ones. So there'll be a huge pile of wands, right? To be taken and collected and sorted." Granger pulled her arm out of his and stood in front of him, holding onto his elbows. Draco snapped the book shut and tried to make her take it back, but she took no notice, and just stared at him intently.
"Do you want the wand sorting job?" she asked. "Seeing as you can't do the killing."
Anger erupted in his chest as he realised she was making a long-winded joke at his expense. How had he let her spill this poison in his ears?
"I'm not doing menial work," he spat back, stepping out of her grasp and making to leave. But Granger merely spread her arms as though in acknowledgement.
"There he is! There you are, Draco," she said, turning heel as he tried to pass her and grabbing his hand so tightly he could not shake it free. "No, you're right, menial labour for someone so well-connected – not at all." He hated the sarcasm in her voice but she continued to talk in his ear and hold onto his fingers like the giant squid. "Well, what job do you want then, in the new world order?" Granger asked, as though this were a casual conversation about career ambitions.
Draco couldn't get his hand free, and he knew if he reached for his wand he'd end up in the hospital wing with Pansy, and then they'd really be in trouble. All he could do was try to cut her down with words. "At least I'll be there, Granger," he said viciously, giving up on trying to escape for a moment to lean down and hiss close to her ear. "You'll be dead before long, the way you're going."
And again (again, again, again), she surprised him, sighing so greatly it ran physically through her body, rippling down her shoulders and to her fingers, finally weakening her grip.
"Oh goodness, we can only hope, Draco," she said, as he pulled his hand out of her weakened fingers and walked away as quickly as he dared.
It was disturbing how quickly control at Hogwarts started to slip, like the slabs of ice that fell off the castle as winter melted into spring. The school started to move as several different bodies, but all in a similar direction of confrontation. A few younger students started to follow Granger around like ducklings; the Weasley traitors used their numbers to spread rumours and coordinated attacks throughout the castle. Slytherins started coalescing around Crabbe, and Draco could practically see his and Pansy's stars fading as students started to gravitate to whoever had enough power to project beyond themselves. And as Granger and that Weasley boy she was fucking had made clear to everyone at Hogwarts, Draco and Pansy were firmly not on the shortlist of students with power.
Even the bureaucrat seemed to realise it. When Nott, Goyle and Davidson got added to the taskforce, Crabbe smirked and Umbridge barely looked at him.
Previous hierarchies which once seemed so rigid began to shift. Segregated houses started giving way to fluid, amorphous groups: The Ministry empowered Slytherins. An aligned, cowed, or uncaring group made up mostly of children of Ministry employees, properly afraid lessers, and Quidditch teams. And a rebellious, uncooperative gaggle of blood traitors, children of Ministry employees sticking it to their parents, and unruly Mudbloods.
The true extent of the change became clear the day after the Ministry bitch used her new legal delegation to make a rule that clubs required her permission. Draco watched with a sinking horror as Potter took over half the Gryffindor table with a motley crew of students from Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and even one angry looking first year in Slytherin green.
"What does Potter think he's doing?" Pansy said indignantly beside him, abandoning her scrambled eggs to stare as Potter clapped two fifth years from Hufflepuff on the back. Draco's gaze fell to Granger. She was leaned in to talk quietly with the treacherous Slytherin girl, who looked more furious than any eleven year old he had ever seen. The Gryffindor nodded and pulled out a stack of spell books, opening one and pointing at it –
"Ignore them," Draco told her, turning away and not thinking about that Pot government that Granger had gone on about. He could see Umbridge in the corner of his eye rushing over, and one of the Weasleys started to yell about how the Professor hadn't made breakfast illegal.
He picked up some toast and left, passing Crabbe and Goyle cracking their knuckles. He didn't want to get blood on his food just because Umbridge had left her power grab too late.
The Board met to remove the Headmaster and instate Umbridge as the Headmistress over the holidays, which meant Draco blessedly passed his father like a ship in the night when he returned home.
"Gaura Parkinson and I had tea, recently," Mother said over dinner one evening, staring out the window at the white tulips swaying in the night air. "She seems worried about Pansy."
Draco could guess where this was going. He swallowed and stabbed a tomato on his plate, considering how to evade. "Pansy is struggling," he said eventually, trying to sound bored. "I am trying to help her."
"A drowning man will push his saviour under the water in a bid for air," she replied. "Pansy's blood may be pure, but if she is merely dragging you –"
"There is no dragging," he cut her off, trying to stop his brain short-circuiting on the mention of blood and memories of Granger's glistening hand.
"And yet, Crabbe's father has suddenly been inducted into the Board of Hogwarts Directors," Mother said flatly. The disapproval rang in the room. "Do you need assistance in getting the Mudbloods in line? Your Father can -"
"No, it's under control," Draco replied hurriedly, standing up and bowing towards his mother. "Excuse me."
The new elf stared at him wide-eyed as he stormed out of the dining room, avoiding Mother's gaze along the way. He spent the evening in the library looking up unusual curses from Eastern Europe. Some sort of magical surprise might cut it? Draco had to stop relying on his words. It would not do to only have one effective tool against the Mudblood. Particularly one that let her pour words back into him, and put images of tired government workers processing thousands of dead bodies into his dreams.
The removal of the old Headmaster triggered a small outbreak of anarchy, and Draco watched and saw the pattern emerge. The Ministry's grasp closing in. The outrage it caused. The meaningless emotional outburst in response. Crabbe and his associates would then swoop in, light in their eyes and magic coursing out of them and their bloodied fists. The pain and anger from the beatings. The state's dissatisfaction at the uncontrolled student body. And then the repetition.
It went further than ever before a week after all the students returned, though. Umbridge's first end of year test ended in smoke and flames, a third-year Gryffindor climbing on her desk and screaming that Umbridge was no teacher but a prison warden. Or so he had heard, third-hand from whispers in the Slytherin common room. The offending student was no longer here to confirm it.
The silence that followed the first student death was frightening and long. For the first time Draco felt the fear of what was to come after the shock wore off and the anger remained. Now that he'd seen the pattern, he couldn't help it – he knew the student body was in lockstep with the Ministry's attempt at control. It was hard to sleep that night, after walking past the traitor Slytherin and two new younger, shaking Slytherins beside her, as they watched him all with pure hatred in their eyes. The tired administrative worker in his dreams started to instruct him in how the bones were to be labelled and stored.
The Defence class the next day had an Auror at the door, and Granger grinned like a wolf who smelled her next meal. She passed the armed man innocently at the door, and then immediately raised her wand at the stack of papers on Umbridge's new desk, blowing them with a bang across the classroom.
"Argh!" Umbridge screamed, and the Auror ran in, wand at the ready. Granger gazed at the Headmistress with faux concern on her face.
"Oh it was just a prank, Headmistress," Granger said, smiling. "I know, very unruly. Why, what did you think it was?"
The Headmistress grew very ruddy as her attempted cover up of the bombing was thrown back in her face. The Auror, seeing no mortal danger, rolled his eyes and left to continue to eying up students as they entered the classroom.
"Detention!" Umbridge screamed, but Granger smiled and walked back out, jerking her head at Draco and winking as she left. How many times would he want to sink into the floor in this cursed class? But Umbridge appeared not to notice.
"Malfoy!" she barked, pointing out the door. "Catch that obstinate girl and send her to the Headmistress' office! Challenging, dangerous –"
Potter and Weasley started sniggering and glancing at him jeeringly, and Draco felt his blood run cold. He didn't have a choice; if Potter and Weasley thought he was no match for Granger, he had to set them straight.
She was obviously expecting him to follow her – maybe that would put her guard down? If he could just Disarm Granger and curse her quick, that might be enough…
Draco gave them the surliest look he could and left the classroom, seeing Granger headed towards the castle entrance.
He swallowed his pride. He would only have to pretend for a few seconds. "Hey – Granger!" he yelled, wand carefully held up his robe sleeve, running after her. She turned around quickly, braids flying behind her, smiling. Got you.
"Expelliarmus!" he cast as quick as he could. Her wand flew to him and his heart leapt as he grasped it. But the thrill of success fell as rapidly as it had arrived. Draco turned to Granger, and she tucked her hands into her robe pockets and beamed at him. She had made no attempt to defend herself.
"So!" she said energetically, bouncing on her feet. "Crabbe's first kill! Mazel tov." She turned and continued on her way to the castle entrance, down a staircase. Draco frowned and followed her.
"Did he tell you what it felt like?" Granger asked, throwing her head back to look at him. "To watch that boy die?"
God, she was a miserable bitch.
"Did you know he was thirteen?" the mad girl continued, running down the last of the steps and entering a sunny hallway on the first floor. "That's about how old you were when I hit you, remember? Imagine how different it could have been back then, Draco, if I'd wrapped my hands ar-"
Draco cast a Silencing Charm and grabbed her arm, marching her along more quickly. He would not listen to this. She was a Mudblood and he would not listen to her terrible words anymore. He had her wand! He didn't have to. And he really did not want to -
Her head twitched and she screwed up her nose, and she started talking again like he had not magically Silenced her. "No, I don't think we're going to wherever you were planning on taking me," she said coolly, and he jumped back at the realisation she could do wandless magic. "Not on such a…"
She trailed off as he let go of her like she had scalded him, looking confused for a moment, and then grinning. "Not on such a beautiful summer day," she finished, looking at him with amusement. "Oh Draco, really? Did you not think the first thing the Muggleborns might have done when the world started to turn was learn wandless magic? I even bloody told you about it. Remember, outside Umbridge's office?"
Draco dimly remembered a muggle photo in the dark of winter, her bloodied finger jabbing at a pile of reading glasses.
"That –" he began, but Granger interrupted him, looking out the windows at the sun.
"I think we should hang out here, that's a much better idea than taking me to Crabbe or Umbridge's office or whatever you planned. Here," she said, unlatching the window and throwing it open, leaning her head out of it. "If you lean out here, you can feel the wind." She grabbed him and shoved him towards the window, and despite his resistance, the wind brushed his forehead. It made him realise it was beaded with sweat. Granger stood beside him and fiddled with a loose bit of metal in the window frame.
"I think Crabbe did tell you what it felt like," she continued. "Maybe not in words. But I bet it's written all over him." Draco thought back to the common room last night, where Crabbe sat by the fire like a respected king, his energy exuding over the dark room. "The heady power of state-sanctioned murder," Granger finished, and finally, the mad energy on her words was gone, and her tone was flat with disgust.
Draco pushed back off the window, now that she was distracted with the crumbling architecture of the castle or the government or whatever. "It was an accident," he said, thinking about what spell he could do that would overcome her wandless magic. If she Shielded…and he hadn't mastered the Unforgiveables yet…
Granger turned to look at him, expression questioning and disagreeable. "Why lie, Draco?" she said. "Everyone knows. You don't have to worry about saying the truth around me. In fact, I think it might make you feel better. Watch this," she said, leaning back out the window and cupping a hand beside her mouth. "Crabbe killed Jonathon Davis!" she yelled loudly, across the grounds and the sun beams.
Granger turned to him, yet again smiling. "See?" she said. "Now you."
Draco looked at her blankly. "I – I'm not doing something just because you tell me," he said childishly. How useless did she think he was, he thought, and immediately tried to stop thinking about, as he remembered the time she said I'll leave you for last.
"I promise you it will make you feel better," she said assuredly. But the expression on his face must have convinced her that was not a winning argument, as she quickly changed tack. "How about, if you do it, I'll go where you wanted to take me," she bargained.
This was new. "You'll go to the Headmistress' office?" he asked. Granger rolled her eyes.
"No imagination. But yes, if that's what you want. Say it." She started clicking a knuckle in her finger, watching him with anticipation.
All the power this girl had, and she wasted it on such frivolous things. "Fine," Draco said. "Crabbe killed that kid." He grabbed Granger's elbow and started steering her to the Headmistress' office again.
"No, no wait!" Granger said, taking his hand off her elbow and running to stand in front of him. She looked at him, her mouth slightly open, and her eyes looking between his expectantly. "Can you feel it?"
Draco frowned at her, annoyed she was dragging this out. "Feel what?" he said, shrugging her arms off.
She put a hand on his chest and dug her fingers slightly in, face turned away from him in apparent concentration, and frowned. "Maybe you can't?" Granger said quietly, and Draco realised she was trying to feel his heartbeat. "That would explain a lot," she said, finally removing her hands from him. She sounded disappointed.
He could have left it there and gone to Umbridge's office. But Draco was so sick of Granger's games.
"Feel what, Granger," he repeated, a pressure headache growing. "What happened was fucking horrible. What reaction are you looking for?"
It was a question he wished she would ask of others. Draco was truly sick of her off-kilter responses to everything he said and did.
Granger blinked, looking hurt. "Of course it's horrible! I didn't mean it isn't." She folded her arms, suddenly looking more like the teacher's pet and irritating student she had been before fifth year. "I meant saying no. The state told you to lie. And you said no…you said out loud what Crabbe did."
The sunlight shifted and fell over both of them. Granger squinted and raised a hand to shade her eyes, still looking at him. Draco felt has hands start to shake, and all of the anger and stress of the year came to a head.
"Who CARES, Granger?" he yelled at her, and finally, finally, she responded in kind; shock wiped the curiosity off her face and left it blank and frozen. "It means nothing! All this shit you do, it's completely useless!" His breathing was hard as he yelled at her as loudly as he could, trying to get through that thick fucking skull of hers how pointless her actions were.
"It's amazing you can't see it," she responded, folding her arms again and looking at him as though he were an interesting new specimen in Herbology. "Saying no is all any of us have left, Draco. It's the one spell stopping this school from falling completely into hell."
"It's going to get you killed," he corrected her, leaning in to hiss it at her. "How's that for the truth?"
But Granger just shook her head, and looked at him sadly, creases around her round, dark eyes.
"Draco – we're already dead. Both of us." She took a step closer to him, lowering her voice to a quiet half-whisper. "You haven't been thinking you're going to survive this, have you? Cause you're never making it in a world where people like Crabbe are in charge. How can you – he beat the shit out of you, Draco! You can't have thought you were going to make it?" Granger looked at him, worry written all over her face and bit lip.
"You don't know anything," Draco said dismissively, backing away and staring out the window so he didn't have to look at her. "You don't understand. I'm a favoured one in these new times, remember?" He put his fingers to his temples and tried to rub the headache away. "You're just a loudmouth Gryffindor who doesn't know anything about keeping your head down."
She didn't say anything, for a moment – for one peaceful moment, it was quiet and he had the last word. Then –
"You think I can live in this world, if I keep my head down?" she asked, her voice strained. Draco blinked and considered the boy Crabbe had strangled, and wondered if perhaps that was too bold a claim. Live in the muggle world, maybe. But still – live.
"Well," he started to qualify, but Granger misunderstood. She was beside him, and grabbing his hand.
"You forgot," she said, quiet but buzzing with tense excitement – he could feel it in her jumpy fingers. "Draco –"
"That's not what I meant," he started to say, but she was already cutting across him, grinning from ear to ear.
"Oh my god, you really did," she whispered, leaning around him to catch his avoidant gaze. "For a second. You forgot what all this was meant to be about, didn't you?" Mercifully, she suddenly let go, blinking her eyes and looking away. "Oh, fuck you, Malfoy," she said thickly, and to his great surprise Draco realised she had teared up. "Making me cry. What an asshole," she sniffed, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
Draco felt rooted to the spot. He wondered if he could leap out the window to escape this extremely uncomfortable and mistaken emotional display. But he couldn't – he had to drag Granger to the Headmistress' office, so Umbridge could cut her up with Ministry messages and Granger could flirt with getting arrested. The anger returned to him suddenly, and he spun around to tell her so.
"You're a fucking Mudblood, Granger. This is your fault! If you lot had never been introduced to the magical world, we wouldn't be dealing with this shit right now!" He thought of Pansy's head injury, and the broken bones around his eyes, and the small girls in Slytherin consumed with rage, and the humiliation Granger had put him through with her boyfriend. "And now we all have to go through this pain to wash you lot out!"
But Granger was back to form. Instead of accepting his rage, it simply swept past her wry, misjudged smile. "It's right there, Draco," she said, voice strong and carrying – he wished she would be quieter. "Don't let it pass through your fingers. You can do it. The truth is right there. You just need to grasp it."
He Silenced her and walked away before she could pour more lies into his ears. Draco left her wand in Umbridge's office. Hoping it would be good enough for the bureaucrat and his parents. Knowing it could not stop Granger.
Exams begun, quite unlike previous examination periods at Hogwarts. The first exam, for example, was interrupted by those Weasley twins dive-bombing the Great Hall with enchanted fireworks, reducing all of the Charms Theory O.W.L. papers to cinders as they literally flew off into the sunset. But this was the most gentle of the mass rebellion within Hogwarts. The ratcheting up of pressure continued at pace, growing exponential and rapid.
Umbridge enacted an official policy of temporarily taking the wands of students with more than three detentions, and an unofficial policy of targeting even muggles who had kept out of her way with punishment to try and de-wand them. The intention of the policy could not have been plainer, but Draco thought it was badly miscalculated. Even though any action from the Ministry seemed to trigger more reaction, this particular move swept up even those who had tried to stay out of Umbridge's way all year. The newly turned students were a particular type of angry. Perhaps their rage was simmering under the surface all year, or maybe this was the lashing out of people who had believed that if they kept a low profile, they would be safe.
Wands started getting stolen left and right, leading to the creation of a Wand Registry, which in turn caused even more backlash and mass disobedience. Students started walking only in packs, wands out. Any student who hadn't been aligned was now forced to pick a side for safety. The most aggressive de-wanded students started carrying Beaters' bats and weaponised potions in the corridors.
And of course, as Granger had forewarned, wandless magic quickly took over the school. He had been slightly surprised as whichever Weasley she was sleeping with left the school without her, but it quickly became clear Granger did not need a second to defend herself. The wave of wandless magic drowned the total student morale in fear as a Disarming Charm left some students powerless, and others dangerous and angered – and Granger, as the student with the greatest mastery of wandless magic, became one of the most powerful students in the school. She'd never been more popular, Draco thought jealously, as flocks of students surrounded her at every meal. Granger would hold court as students of all ages held onto her every word about how to do wandless magic, and how the administration could not take their magic nor their solidarity away.
It culminated in their Defence Practical O.W.L.. After Granger's examiner asked her if she would like to borrow his wand, she took the chance to interrupt the entire exam, yelling at Umbridge across the Great Hall that she didn't need a wand, she could pass the exam on wandless magic alone.
Teachers started to resign; it was unusual if it was only one a day. Umbridge hurriedly rushed the Auror she had asked to the castle out of it again. The bad omens kept piling up, and more and more rats started to abandon ship. Including Pansy.
"I'm not staying in this hellhole, Draco," she hissed at him while packing her trunk up hurriedly. "This place has gone to the fucking dogs and you know it. It's madness out there! How many times do I have to suffer getting attacked by some Mudblood filth? When is the Ministry going to arrest them already?"
She was too truthful; it made Draco worry for her and queasily struggle to keep down his dinner. "It's got to happen soon," he said, the memory of Granger's mad hyena laugh ringing in his head.
"Yeah, well, I'm not sticking around for it, and neither are most of the girls," Pansy said. "You can't protect me," she sniffed, turning her back on him and picking up jewellery from her bedside table. Anger prickled through Draco like a Stinging Solution at her cutting words.
"I have tried to," he said quietly. "All year."
"Yeah, well, it didn't fucking work, alright? You were no help when Granger jumped me and shaved my head!" she shrieked. "Salazar, I should have left then. That bitch is crazy, she should have been locked up ages ago! If she can do magic without a wand, she needs to be in Azkaban."
"Madam Pomfrey made your hair grow back in like a second," he said, unable to keep an impatient bite out of his voice – he had taken many more hits than Pansy from Granger. Pansy stopped packing and gave him a withering look.
"Stop acting all high and mighty, Draco. I know you'd have been out of here months ago if you thought your parents would take you," she spat.
He aimed his wand at her trunk. "Пожар," he cast, and left Pansy in shrieks as her clothing and books and their friendship burned.
Her offended yelping quietened as he approached the entrance to the common room, and Draco saw the first year girls' dorm door was closed. A tugging question made him knock on the door and open it.
It was empty – not just currently, but for what seemed like quite a while. Obvious gaps where personal belongings would normally be stood out everywhere – in the empty spaces under the beds, on the walls stripped of photographs. A seemingly innocuous note stating To Crabbe quivered with magic on one of the empty beds.
Draco slowly backed out of the room, an unpleasant realisation running down his body like a slow Disillusion Charm.
"Colloportus," he cast quietly, leaving the room as it had been, and he noticed the second years door was shut too.
He knew there would be nothing good in there, either. He knew before he opened it. But Draco couldn't live with the unknown fear. He lived with too much fear these days. It was a quick knock and charm to unlock the door to enter that room, as well.
The second year girls had chosen a more direct message. The room was coated in ash and the bedframes were all in ruins; they had set fire to all the furniture in the dorm. A message written in sparks and preserved in some advanced Ancient Rune circle was written on the ground at his feet. BURN IN HELL CRABBE, the girls' frozen message screamed.
In the third year dorm, he finally found one remaining girl packing her things, looking at him warily. Draco nodded at her. "Good. You – you should leave," he said haltingly, and he left the Slytherin quarters and locked himself in an empty Potions classroom.
In the last week of the school term, an eerie quiet fell over the castle. Hardly any teachers remained; he estimated half of the students had left.
Including Crabbe. A despairing Umbridge had told the remaining taskforce he was missing. Draco tried to persuade the witch to call in reinforcements.
"The disappearance of a student is very concerning, Professor," he said. "Perhaps the Ministry should se-"
"Don't be ridiculous, Malfoy," Umbridge snapped, turning to her desk and blank regulatory change parchments, murmuring about further law changes. He looked at Nott, confused, realising his error too late when Nott horribly mimed choking himself to death.
At least with Crabbe missing, he could return to sleeping in his own bed without fear for his life, Draco reasoned. The disappearance of the taskforce's default leader, and Umbridge's clear grasping at thin air had taken the wind out of many of the others' sails. And there were only a few nights left before he could go back to Wiltshire and try to persuade his parents that Umbridge had fucked it all up and there was nothing he could have done.
He was almost there. But almost was not the same as close enough.
"Ow – oi, quit it," Draco said the next morning, after someone woke him up by poking him in the eye.
He blinked as the room swam into focus, and upon seeing a group of young girls staring at him stonily, feral with wandless magic, reached for his wand.
One of them held it up in front of him, twiddling it in her fingers. He looked at her, and realised with a jolt the rather homespun necklace around her neck was a wand broken into several pieces, held together by its unicorn tail hair core.
That cannot be safe, Draco thought, wishing some other mad child was holding his wand.
"Hermione wants to see you," the chief eye poker said stiffly. "Follow us."
He looked over at Nott, Goyle and Zabini. The first two were Stunned. Only Zabini had escaped unscathed; he slept soundly as the Weasley girl and two boys stood over him, wands pointed in case he woke up.
"I wouldn't make them say it again, Malfoy," Weasley said quietly. Draco rolled his eyes and got out of bed.
Granger was sitting under a tree by the lake, surrounded by magical and muggle books, some sort of smoking stick in her mouth. She had undone her braids; her curly hair was free and moved gently in the lake breeze.
Draco thought the students gravitating to her earlier were too easily impressed by Granger's grades, or her anger. But looking at her now, as she radiated calmness and power, existing on the Hogwarts grounds with no fear – he understood.
"Thank you, Emily," Granger said, holding the stick in fingers and regarding the gaggle of small girls and Draco with a controlled amusement. "It all went to plan?"
"Exactly to plan," the girl apparently called Emily confirmed. Granger smiled.
"I'm glad. Please leave us," she said, and Emily gave him a filthy look as she retreated. Draco stood awkwardly where the eleven year old had frogmarched him for a moment, until Granger rolled her eyes and patted the ground beside her.
"Christ, Draco, sit down," she said. "Heaven knows those girls could do with seeing a man interact politely with a woman."
He sat down next to her, pulling out blades of grass as she watched the lake, smoke shooting from her nostrils like a dragon. "I only found out recently," he said. This was the only thing he wanted to tell Granger. "What Crabbe did."
"Mm," Granger said vaguely, passing him her smoking device. "If Slytherin house is lucky, those girls will return to the dorm next year."
"Have you been hiding them?" he asked, coughing as he tried to smoke what she had offered – it tasted truly foul. "I think they've been out of their dorm for a while." He passed it back to her, hoping one drag was polite enough.
Her eyes finally flickered to him. "Everyone's been hiding them, Draco," she said. "They've been double bunking in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw too."
Draco nodded, and looked out at the lake. "I take it you think Crabbe won't be returning, then?" he asked, trying to be casual. Granger smiled.
"No," she agreed.
"How did you do it?" he asked. She never acted normally; maybe she would just hand him a confession and that could be used to allay Father and Mother.
But Granger merely snorted, smoke billowing from her mouth. "You think it was me?" she asked, leaving Draco to consider the many, many enemies Crabbe had made over the course of the school year.
"Daddy dearest is on the school board, right?" Granger asked, obviously changing the topic. So she wasn't interested in broadcasting her crimes, he noted. Or maybe she really didn't have a direct role in Crabbe's almost certainly miserable death. "When do you think they'll intervene?"
He thought of his Mother's insistence that Umbridge needed to deliver results this year, and how Father's options on the board were limited as he had thrown most of theirs in behind her. "I don't know," he answered honestly. The current situation felt like a waking dream; surely the real world would come knocking shortly. "Why?" Draco asked suddenly, wondering if Granger was planning another attack.
But she only shrugged, pulling on a curl while she Vanished her smoking stick. "Just considering my options," she said. "What are your plans for the next lot?"
He privately agreed Umbridge should go, and was likely to be gone. But Draco still felt the pull to defend his family and the gold that had gone in behind the witch who was both too horrible and not horrible enough. "I wouldn't count that hag out," he lied, wondering if convincing Granger had any value. "Umbridge will just turn the screws tighter. Like she has all year."
Granger nodded, and he recognised that fake expression of serious consideration on her face. "Mm. Very true. Perceptive," she offered, picking up her wand to magically pack up her books and parchment into a neat pile. "And yet, Draco, you didn't hear what I said."
He looked at the weapon in her hand and closed his eyes, realising what she had done. "Granger," he said, rubbing his temples. Disappearing Crabbe was one thing. Killing a senior Ministry official was quite another. "You're fucking insane." Gods, Father would be so furious. All that time and gold, destroyed by one angry Mudblood.
Draco looked at her, remembering her earlier threat in the locked classroom. "Is that why you wanted to see me? Maybe I could go drown myself in the lake, and save you the trouble?" He leaned in to talk directly into her ear – the only thing that seemed to work on her was his words. "Shall we do it together? Or were you thinking of living the rest of your days in Azkaban?"
Granger looked away, a shade of red tinging her dark skin. "Well. About that. I was wondering if you might consider a new offer," she said in a rush. A strange mixture of nerves writhed in his stomach.
He leaned back. "I'm listening," Draco said, watching Granger in the corner of his eye as he focused on the gentle waves at the edge of the lake.
"We're collecting intel. Some insights into that horrible gang your parents run in would not go amiss," Granger said, hugging her knees. "As well as a watchful eye in the male Slytherin dorms. There will always be another Crabbe. Maybe you could be of more assistance to your fellow students next year."
He watched the breeze blow through her hair, across her collarbone. "The next lot will be far worse than Umbridge if you killed her," he said baldly. "And I will have no ins with them. Father bet it all on that hag."
"Not very strategic," Granger commented, staring at the water. "Are you so foolish?"
It was an interesting question. Draco looked down at Granger's hands, fingers spread across the grass, covered in scarred words and painted Runic symbols. He tentatively reached out and ran a finger across the scars and Runes on her pinky, and she turned very suddenly to look at him. "Not quite," he offered.
"Well, then this might help," Granger said, too hurriedly. She reached into her bag for a tiny bottle and handed it to him. "Spell is Imprimiss to place this false memory in your head. It might curry some favour if you or your parents take it to the Aurors."
He held the small bottle carefully, watching the smoky memory drift in the container. "What does it say?" he asked. Draco wasn't sure about giving Granger any more access to his head than she had already wrested from him.
"Says we duelled fiercely…has some crowing about how I killed Crabbe and Umbridge," Granger replied. "Could repair your reputation in the eyes of the Establishment, but most of the people who would tell the Ministry you came up short against me are gone. So this is mostly about covering your old man in glory."
She shoved her books into her bag and stood up, looking back at the castle and waving at the vicious small girls watching them carefully. "Emily will be your contact. Better that we not have a direct communications line," Granger said.
"You think you can evade the Ministry?" he asked. "I would have expected a vainglorious last stand."
Granger looked troubled. "I considered it," she said quietly. "But once I was out of the bounds of school book magic…and Crabbe, and I was alive…and Umbridge, and I was still alive…" Granger trailed off, looking at the gaggle of young students waving at her, and Draco watched the distress play across her eyes and understood. The very Slytherin anguish of having too many people to protect.
He felt very bold in this Gryffindor lucid dream she had forced into the real world. "Does it mean anything? That you want me to look out for them?" he asked, surprised at how clear his voice sounded. The witch was surely only hours from being listed on the Ministry's Undesirable list, but she looked at her shoes.
"Maybe," she said. "I'm going to be busy, while I'm away," Granger said, fingers tapping on the straps of her bag. "Wandless magic is our best chance at defeating this government, I think. I need to bring back more knowledge of it for the others."
Draco nodded, and reached out for her wrist. "I'll walk you out," he said, tugging her towards the edge of the Anti-Apparition wards. "Do you know how to Apparate?"
She nodded. "Fred taught me." Did she really have to bring up her bloody boyfriend now? He thought they were quite happily ignoring him. He let go of her wrist and put his hands in his pockets, but Granger did not seem to notice. They walked in silence along the edge of the Forbidden Forest to where the wards would cease, while Draco considered what an ambiguous space they found themselves in.
They were both meant to be dead. It felt like borrowed time. He pulled out the bottle with her false memory again.
"Don't imprint it until I've gone," Granger said suddenly. "Memory magic is so finicky. It needs to override the last time you saw me."
Somehow this did not make Draco feel pleased. "Am I going to forget this?" he asked her. She shook her head.
"There will be two memories. You'll need to think of the fake one only when the Ministry goes poking around," said Granger. "But the real one will be there, under the surface. You just need to think of something triggering to pull it up."
That was nothing if not an opportunity, he thought, grabbing her arm and pulling her into a kiss under the closest pine tree. Granger had the audacity to verbalise some sort of surprised noise, but it left as soon as it arrived. He felt her eyelashes follow her closing eyes as she kissed back. Anything was possible in this quiet control of the castle she had created.
"That should work," he said drily. She tried and failed to suppress a laugh, and Draco thought the challenge would rather be not thinking about how happy and tired and terrified Hermione looked in the summer shade, than forgetting this moment existed.
She breathed in deeply and took a few further steps back. "Well, then," she said again. Draco nodded and she Disapparated with a loud crack, scaring a few wood pigeons into flight, soaring over the castle she and Jonathon Davis and all the other fighters had held for a moment in time.
Thank you for reading! I'm considering writing a sequel, if you are interested in reading that please put this story on alert and I'll amend it to a 2/2 fic instead of a complete one shot.