To RESimon and shestoolazytologin - I love you both dearly. Thank you for all that you do.

We have about 4 chapters to go before the two epilogues. The last few chapters are content heavy, so it's likely that one or two may be split, but regardless - we're quite close to the finish. Thank you all for coming along on this journey with me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Hermione heaved, spitting out the mouthful of snow she'd inhaled as she'd slammed into the forest floor, still thick with a layer of snow.

She scrambled to her feet, her heart racing as she spun, looking around the small clearing they'd entered. The thick canopy of trees let in little moonlight, shielding the clearing's patch of slowly melting snow that was otherwise untouched, a sharp contrast to the flora outside of the trees' cocoon whose winter coating had already been melted by the emergence of spring. Untouched, save for the disruption caused by the sudden arrival of three bodies that had tumbled into it seconds prior.

Which was why she knew that he wasn't there.

That, and the fact that she could feel him at the base of her neck, a ball of tension that tangled with her own, to the point where she couldn't decipher which was which. But— he was alive.

He was alive. He was alive. He was alive.

She looked down where Harry and Ron's bodies lay in the snow, Ron facedown while Harry had managed to sit up, still clutching his head hard and heaving heavy breaths that filled the still air.

She stumbled over to Ron, turning him over onto his back with as gentle a spell as she could and laying him back onto the snow. She waved a hand over his mouth, feeling the gentle brush of his shallow breaths.

"Harry!" she snapped, already starting to stumble around the perimeter and muttering spells under her breath.

"What — what are you doing?" Harry said, his voice dazed. She heard him stand, his feet crunching through the snow behind her.

"You need to snap out of it," she said, still jerking her wand in intricate movements as she stomped out a perimeter around them. "Check where he's wounded. Ron could die— do you understand that?"

Her head was throbbing in time with her chest as a thousand scenarios ran through her mind, each as bright and destructive as the spells that had lit up the sky as she'd Apparated away and left her husband alone with a Death Eater and the serpent behind him—

Harry's voice cut through her thoughts. "Malfoy—"

Hermione whirled on Harry, magic sparking between her fingertips. "He's alive!" she snapped, heaving. "He's alive because if he wasn't I would be cold—" The words jumbled themselves as they tumbled out, panic colliding with the memory of the frigid cold that had seeped into her soul as it stole it— "and then I would be dead, and I'm not so he isn't and I need you to bloody focus—" Hermione cut off, the rest of her words tangling together and resulting in a single strangled noise.

There was a shift in the air, the sound of Harry sucking in a breath to speak near intangible yet deafening because she knew the words that would come before he said them— "Hermione— I don't think—- there's no way that he—"

Hermione whirled on him, precious seconds bleeding away as the wards she tried to cast fizzled out at the tip of her wand, her grip on it slipping in her twitching hands. "I know because I've felt it, because the time you almost killed us— it was cold." Each sharp word hit him like a strike, his body flinching and contracting slightly inward in response.

She whirled once more, nearly tripping in the sticky wetness of the snow as she stomped out the perimeter once more.

He was alive. He was alive. He was alive. The air at the altitude they were at was cool enough that she paused and stumbled several times as she threw up wards all around them, the chill making her pause and wonder if she would soon be filled with that creeping, frigid cold once more, if she would feel him go first before she followed soon after —

No. He was alive. Alivealivealive —

She heard Harry's footsteps stop a moment before she turned again, watching as he sank to his knees beside Ron. "Hermione—"

"Shut up."

Her chest spasmed and contracted as the sickening reel of all that could be going wrong repeated itself once more. The loop that had her taking heavy, labored breaths that came out long puffs of air before her—

Alive. Alive. Alive.

"He's alive," she snapped. Her eyes were on Ron's limp figure, but she was simultaneously elsewhere, memories of her husband's figure outlined against the green sky clawing at her mind like poison. "And that's all that matters. We can't go back yet. Can you be assured that we aren't being tracked? We need to be certain before we go back, and we need wards first." Wards. Ron. Tracking orbs. Him. She shouted the order in her mind, a feeble attempt at drowning out what the rest of her being screamed.

She collapsed in the snow beside Ron as she finished the last of the wards. "Take out the tent — we need it set up now."

Harry was already ripping the bag off of her shoulder, the chain shattering into several fragments that littered the snow. Finally, he moved with the urgency she'd had since they had arrived, summoning the tent from the bag filled with endless things and throwing it to the ground, watching as it unfurled itself. They were ducking inside a moment later, Ron's immobile body suspended between them as he lay on the cot they levitated between them.

She sliced his shirt open with a simple spell and paused. Blood and milky white venom oozed from the wound in his abdomen, each several-inch-long incision weeping the liquids steadily and soaking the cot beneath him. His skin was sallow around the wound, the outskirts of the paler whiteness tinged black.

The silence in the tent was stiller than the night outside.

"Hermione—" Harry said, his voice tight. "It's — it's bad —"

"I know." Panic clawed up her spine as her hands twitched and fluttered over Ron uselessly.

Draco had only taught her so much in the time since she'd made him start teaching her after she'd been faced with healing him from similar wounds. The irony of it all cut deep, and she clutched her chest as she felt it spasming once more as it started to collapse inward —

Her voice was wild and unhinged as she spoke, the words forced out as they twisted in her throat. "We have to call—" She cut off. Could they safely call Kreacher, who still haunted the compromised halls of Grimmauld Place? She almost screamed because she could call him herself, but she didn't know if it was safe, she didn't know, and she was only wasting time —

A sharp pop of Apparition sounded nearby.

She almost sobbed because the elf had heard her regardless, and if he'd come then they would just have to deal with it—

She froze. If the elf had heard her, he would have appeared by her side, because the wards would never have kept him from his master. That meant that it hadn't been an elf all that appeared outside. Her frenzied spells hadn't uncovered any tracking orbs that had been placed on them, but perhaps a more sinister way of tracking them had already been invented—

She met Harry's eyes, him having obviously come to the same conclusion she had. His voice cracked as he spoke. "Hermione—"

She sprang up, wand aloft. "Stay here," she said, her hand tightening around her wand as she tried to force it to stop trembling. The flaps of the tent moved gently in the breeze, revealing only darkness outside and not a hint of what lay beyond the wards.

She would fight. She couldn't send Harry back to the Order without knowing if they were safe. And Ron— Ron wouldn't survive another trip. If it was a Death Eater— if one had found them, then many would soon follow —

She froze. Her fingers trembled and twitched around her wand, her heartbeat flying erratically in her chest. Many had always followed the first without fail, every time—

But it had only been the one. Only one crack of Apparition, and stillness. Her feet started to carry her out of the tent and she burst through the flap, her eyes frantic as she searched their surroundings.

Draco stood a dozen feet away, staring intently at the empty place where she had erected the wards.

Her feet pounded in the snow as she raced towards him, her eyes traveling over every inch of him — every solid, seemingly uninjured inch of him — until she barreled through the wards, wrapping her arms around him dragging him back until they were in the safety of the wards once more.

She bit her lip to stop herself from sobbing as he clutched her back, her hold on him desperate and unyielding as she inhaled his scent and her hands roamed all over his body.

"I love you— I love you—" She pulled back only far enough to whimper the words before she buried her face in his chest once more.

Alive. Alive. Alive—

"Are you hurt?" The words were muffled as she spoke into his thick jumper, her hands tangling in the heavy material. Her question was redundant because she already knew that he'd gone elsewhere in the countryside first to heal the worst of them. He'd only made it here because he was well enough to, but nothing stopped her desperate need to hear him say it—

"Not badly," he answered.

She nodded into his chest before she pulled back, her eyes searching his as deeply as he searched hers.

"I'm okay," she said, knowing that she didn't need to vocalize the words that he could read in her expression but said them anyway. "But Ron— he's—"

Draco was already moving towards the tent before she could finish, his hand clasping hers as he pulled her behind him.

She hadn't thought it possible for Ron to worsen in the scant minute since she'd left the tent, but somehow he had. His skin was rife with a sickly pallor, the life bleeding from him before them as the steady stream of blood and venom she'd only barely managed to quell somewhat continued to seep from the wounds on his stomach and thigh.

Draco's jaw was set tightly as he bent before Ron, a complex weave of diagnostic spells appearing in the air before them in an instant. Her eyes tracked the way each spell pulsed and shifted, the colors and movements an intricate tapestry unfolding itself before her, whispering a conclusion that rattled in her chest before thudding down heavily into her stomach, nearly taking her with it.

He was dying.

She knew — without having to open her mouth and ask Draco, without having to take a second glance at where the life steadily seeped from Ron's body — that he was dying.

Hermione's head pulsed and throbbed, trickles of darkness seeping in and out of her vision. "Maybe— maybe we should call Kreacher —"

Draco's shoulders tensed as he cut her off. "No," he said, his voice tight as he worked, his hands flying over Ron in delicate movements. "He barely saved me. He may be bound by blood to the Black family line, but he would do whatever he possibly could to make a Weasley's recovery as slow and painful as he could. He wouldn't last."

Harry's voice was laced thick with confusion as he spoke. "How did you summon —"

"That's a story for if your friend lives."

Draco's words had Harry's mouth snapping firmly shut, his entire form rigid with tension. Hermione reached out and close to hand over one of Harry's trembling fists, stepping closer when he did not pull back.

They watched in silence as Draco siphoned tendrils of milky white venom and blood from Ron's body, sending it into empty bottles that hovered in the air beside him, each filling too quickly. The sets of gaping wounds were stark against his skin, several inches wide. Unbidden, an image of the serpent's long fangs flashed in her mind's eye, and her head throbbed harder, the dark tendrils of panic seeping further into her vision.

He'll live, she wanted to assure Harry. She swallowed the words instead as he pulled away a moment later, sinking heavily onto the ground. She pulled out her wand, forcing her eyes away from where Draco worked as she assessed their priorities. Wards. Ron. Tracking orbs. Her movements were robotic as she uttered every spell she'd learned from the Order as she swept their belongings. She let her minds eye focus only on the spells and their complex incantations, carrying her as the minutes slipped past.

It was when she'd checked everything thrice that Draco stepped away from Ron. "The potions need to keep working overnight. We'll take him back to the Order in the morning."

Harry shot up from where he was on his knees at Ron's side, still Ron's hand tightly. "So he'll live?"

Draco gave him a short nod. "Probably." He crossed over to her, searching her eyes wordlessly.

Hermione let out a long breath, giving him a soft smile. Draco's arm dropped to her waist, holding her tightly into his side as though he felt how she was wont to collapse. Her heart continued to flutter, but she knew that it would subside soon with the knowledge that Ron would live comforting her.

"And you?" Hermione looked up at Harry's question, her mouth open in response until she realized that he wasn't looking at her at all. "Are you… alright?" Harry asked Draco, clearing his throat.

"Yes," Draco answered stiffly.

The room fell silent once more. Draco moved back to continue tending to Ron a moment later, working in a fluid silence. Hermione found her way over to where Harry had sat on one of the cots against the wall, sinking down onto the cot beside him.

"How does he know all of that?" Harry said, waving his hand at where Draco was applying a salve onto Ron's wounds.

Hermione tensed. "Certain circumstances made it necessary," she answered carefully.

Harry let out a short huff of air and she turned to him, feeling the wave of exasperation she'd been suppressing rise up, ready to lash out at him. She paused with her mouth half-open as she looked at him, the tension marring his features stark in the light of the candle that hovered next to them.

Her touch was soft as she lifted her fingers to his wound on cheek and then down t the gash on his collarbone. He winced but said nothing, gritting his teeth and sucking in a sharp breath as she murmured a cleansing charm. She stood up and stepped in front of him, wordlessly summoning a salve and dabbing it onto the wounds she found as she searched him.

Harry hissed, pulling back as she probed at a cut on his hairline. "You could be gentle," he grumbled.

Hermione quirked an eyebrow. "I could just not help at all," she shot back. Her eyes roved his form, now seeing how heavily his wet cloak clung to his form. She raised her hands to the tie, having only barely managed to tug at the string when a hand caught her by the arm.

She looked up to find Draco standing beside them, his eyes dark as he glared at Harry. "The Weasel still isn't dead," he said, jerking his head behind him.

Harry stood, making her stumble back a step. "I know that," he snapped, storming off towards where Ron lay.

Hermione turned to Draco, running a hand down his arm and clasping his fingers in hers for a brief moment before following behind Harry.

It was then that she realized that Ron was awake. He was sitting up, a hand pressed over a bandage wrapped around his middle.

Hermione sprang to her feet, rushing over to Ron's side. Her hands fluttered over him anxiously, her breath catching as she saw the way a patch of blood had still seeped into his bandage. "How do you feel?"

Ron's voice was gruff. "Alright."

Harry let out an awkward huff of air from beside her as if he had meant to laugh in derailed himself at the last moment. "Gave us a good scare there, mate," he said. A light tremble undercut his words.

Ron looked down, wincing at the small movement as his abdomen contracted. "Got me real good, didn't she?" There was a false smile playing on his lips that died away as quickly as it came as his eyes fell upon where Harry stood beside her once more.

Harry tensed suddenly, his entire form strung tight. His eyes were downcast, his hair long enough that it curled down to his eyes, covering his expression.

Hermione stepped towards him. "Harry—"

Harry pulled away, lifting a hand to his face and gently probing under his hair, pressing the spot where his scar lay. "I've seen her before," he said. "His snake. She was hunting me, not you."

"I know." Any traces of humor were gone from Ron's voice now, instead replaced by weariness. Weariness, and an edge of determination as he spoke again. "I couldn't let her get to you."

She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but it wasn't for Harry's eyes to flash as his face flushed red, anger lighting up his features as the fear that had been tying up his form fled. "So that I could have lost you too?" he snapped. "How many more people have to die for me?"

"Harry…" Ron faltered, wincing as he tried to shift forward towards Harry.

"We've already been down one for the better part of the year," Harry said, the disdain in his voice unmistakable as his eyes flickered to her, "and you thought it better that you die there? He was coming."

Something inside her twisted and burned, her mouth opening and closing as she wondered if speaking or not speaking would hurt them more. But the silence hung heavy in the room, the implication of Harry's words hanging thickly in it, forcing the words out of her before she could think on it further. "I didn't — I wasn't doing nothing," she said. The fight fled her voice as she looked down at Ron, seeing the way he shuddered with each breath he took. Not nothing, yes— but there was always more. There always had been more.

Obligation and choice had collided at some point during the months she'd spent in the cabin with Draco, the tangled mess of what duty and requirement had become at the center of the tangled mess her relationship with Harry and Ron had become.

Despite his struggles with even a simple breath, this time Ron forced out a hollow laugh. "It will always feel like nothing," he coughed and wheezed, "when you were anywhere but where everyone expected you to be." His eyes cut to Draco with his last words. Hermione watched his chest contract as he forced his jaw shut, his muscles straining under the cough he suppressed.

Heat flushed through her body. "He saved your life."

Another short, hollow laugh, followed by a wince of pain. "I'd already sacrificed it." His eyes cut to Draco once more, disgust radiating off of him in waves. "But you made your choice — you already sacrificed yours, too."

It was then that she recognized that the ball of angry tension rising within her wasn't her own, and her eyes shot Draco, where he was tensed to spring. She caught him by the forearm, holding him tightly. The tension within him didn't snap, but it didn't continue rising either.

Hermione's teeth ground together. "It's a marriage, not a death sentence."

"'If he dies, I die too?'" Ron mocked, spitting each word out like an accusation, "isn't that what you said?"

"Weasley—"

Hermione cut Draco off with another squeeze of his forearm. "How many times will we have this conversation? How many more times will you push me to apologize for him until you realize that I can't because I'm not—"

Ron's next laugh was hollower, darker. "But I've realized that maybe it isn't him at all." His tone shifted, pitched lower now. "He's part of it, surely. Everywhere you go — he's always just there, hovering. You're not even your own person anymore, and you don't see it. You're a part of him. Every movement you make involves him too, every step you take is in perfect sync as if you didn't know how to move before — as if you didn't know how to exist without him. But—" He coughed and clutched his chest, eyes burning as he never took them off of her.

Because I can't, she wanted to say. The words felt useless spoken aloud now, as the way Ron faltered said everything they'd left unsaid anyway. Draco shifted and her hand tightened on his. Ron's words hung in the air between the four of them, the truth of how irreversibly broken their trio was laid out before them. "Ron…"

He cut her off with another chilling laugh. "We always knew who he was, though." Ron's voice was hoarse as he continued, yet somehow carried more bite than it had in the moments before. "We knew exactly who he was because he's always shown us. But you— I thought I knew you."

"You did. The war changed things for a lot of people. I'm no exception."

"You killed them. Did you even notice?"

She expected the shame and distress first. What she wasn't expecting was a burning tendril of anger, propelling her next words forward before she could process them as all she'd been suppressing burst free at once. "They tried to kill you. A dozen times over. You almost died anyway— but that doesn't matter to you, does it?" She clutched a hand to her chest, a feeble attempt to stop the way she was unraveling inside as the truth she'd tried to ignore lay between them.

Ron's eyes flashed. "You're lethal. You cut them down in seconds without even a thought—"

"My thoughts were on you!" Her words echoed in the stillness. "My thoughts were on if you would live or die, because if you died, Harry would be next, and if Harry died then this would all be for naught. Do you think I'm the first? Do you think I'm the only person that's had to make that choice? If you do— then you don't understand a damned thing at all." She turned and moved toward the open flaps of the tent, fingers twitching at her throat as she found herself suddenly desperate for a breath of the fresh night air.

When Ron spoke again, his voice was softer but no less biting. "I don't — I don't know you 'Mione. Not anymore."

She finally turned back to him, meeting his blue eyes steadily. "No," she said, a hollow, empty laugh slipping past her lips, "I suppose you don't."

She turned and left the tent.

She walked and stopped only when she neared the outermost edges of the wards she'd erected, the canopy of the trees thick above her. She sagged against a tree, the weariness that she'd been steadily holding off for hours starting to take root.

A crunch of snow sounded nearby. Her head shot up, her body alert once more as her hand flew to her wand.

Her arm slackened as she recognized the figure that stood in the darkness some feet away. She didn't think she could recall when it had come to the point that she could recognize him by his outline alone. That, and the gentle brush of his presence nearing that she felt within, her body humming at the indication of his proximity.

Draco was silent as he moved forward, save for the sound of his boots moving through the snow as he moved closer, each step faster than the last.

"Dra—" She cut off as he descended upon her, drawing her into a hard kiss.

She gasped into the kiss, drawing him closer and lifting her arms to wrap them around his neck. His lips were hard against hers, near-bruising as he backed them into a tree. She slammed into it, cushioned only by his hand on the back of her head. His hand rose up and palmed her breast roughly as his lips moved to nip and suck at her neck.

"You're—" he sucked harder before pressing a soft kiss over the same spot, "you're good. You're so good—" He grasped at her shirt, roughly squeezing her breasts.

She moaned. He pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses down her chest, cutting open the front of her shirt and brassiere with a whispered spell as he went. A light breeze passed, blowing open the shirt and making her nipples pucker a moment before Draco's mouth closed over one of them.

"Draco," she gasped around another moan, fingers tangling in his hair. "Draco—"

"You are good—" His hands were gentler then as he cupped her bare breasts, thumbs brushing over her nipples, "you've never been anything but."

He caught her by the chin, forcing her to look at him. "You are good." Their breaths were heavy as they intermingled, their heavy pants the only noise around them. "Do you understand me?"

She nodded, her hand reaching up to cup his cheek for a moment before she dragged him back into a kiss more desperate than the last. She clawed at his shirt, dragging up the material and helping him pull it over his head. She took the breath of a moment that their lips were separated to mutter a warming charm before his lips were on hers once again. It had been long— too long— and her fingers were urgent as she tore open his trousers, managing only to grasp his pulsing hardness for a moment before he moved to shove the ripped fabric of her shirt off her shoulders and dragged her leggings down.

She kicked them off and he grasped her by the hips, wrapping her legs around him and backing them into a tree. He pressed his forehead against hers, one hand supporting her while the other brushed his cock against her, dragging it back and forth between her lips and down to her entrance. She moaned and ground herself against him, lips falling open at the sensation of his wet tip rubbing against her.

"You are— so good," he said gruffly. He shoved his cock into her in the same breath, ramming her back into the tree as she gasped and mewled. His hand caught the back of her head before it could slam into the tree, but she didn't care because he was so good, so good—

"The best I've ever known," he said, breathless as his cock slammed into her over and over and over again, their skin slapping together as he sped up his thrusts. "I swear it."

I often forget to do this, but if you're interested in my other WIPs, I have two: Impact (under fallingstars68 on ffn) is a Dramione 8th year parenting class fic (with a twist!). A Contract Most Inconvenient is a Marriage Law multi fic that features Dramione amongst 7 other pairings.

I'm on tumblr as blankfishxx and Facebook as Blank Fish. You can also join my Discord server: (remove all *'s, of course): h*t*tps*:*/*discord*.g*g/*GH6N7Sn.