Hermione was trying her best to actually listen to Voldemort as he spoke but her mind kept drifting away. He'd resumed the meeting after the brief intermission of Draco's death. It had been suspiciously easy – as easy as killing your significant other could be. She couldn't help thinking Voldemort was playing her instead of the other way around.
As a feeling of being watched came onto her, Hermione turned her head to the right to subtly glance over everyone in the room. As her eyes landed on Dolohov, she followed his gaze to her left hand and realized she was fidgeting. She had got used to fiddling with Draco's ring when she was nervous and she had inadvertently started doing it again, regardless of the ring not being there anymore. When she raised her eyes again, Dolohov was staring directly at her, with a vague amused smirk on his lips. Hermione clenched her fist and looked away as fast as she could, as she felt panic overwhelming her. Fear that he knew, that he'd figure it out if he hadn't already. She knew Dolohov was more of a behind-the-scenes player, whispering in people's ears and careful to note everything people said or did.
It took all she had to try and clear her mind and not lose it before Voldemort was done speaking. When he did, she almost jumped out of her seat. The only thing that stopped her was knowing Draco's life was on the line and she couldn't afford to act out of impulse. As Voldemort dismissed them, she finally got up and lightly bent her head in goodbye, meaning to go look for Narcissa for the next step of the plan. The elves had brought his body somewhere for the funeral preparations but she had no clue where Mrs. Malfoy might be.
As she was almost running through the hallway leading to the main sitting area of the Mansion, Hermione heard steps behind her. Coming to a stop, she turned around with her wand in her hand just to find Dolohov had followed her.
"Cal I help you?" She forced out, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, then resumed her walking.
He smirked and approached her, keeping up. "I couldn't help but notice you lost your pretty ring, Miss Granger. How so?"
Hermione clenched her jaw and took a deep breath. She considered playing dumb for a brief second but she knew that wouldn't work with him. He noticed everything.
"I don't think that's any of your business."
A low chuckle answered her. "Don't get yourself killed, Miss Granger."
Hermione stopped and looked back at him. "What game are you playing?"
He smirked again turned to face her. "Why, I've already told you, Hermione. I don't kiss and tell."
Hermione narrowed her eyes. He'd never called her by her given name before. Before she could say anything, he turned his head to his left and nodded at someone in acknowledgment. "Narcissa."
She turned around as well, mildly glad she wouldn't have to look through the entire Manor for her but any good feeling she'd had disappeared as Mrs. Malfoy looked at her. "Antonin. I'm afraid I'll be needing a word with Miss Granger," she said without ever taking her eyes off of her. Hermione barely acknowledged Dolohov leaving before Narcissa turned around, motioning for her to follow and leading her towards a part of the house she'd never been in. After a few minutes of walking in silence, they'd arrived in what seemed to be the entrance hall to the dungeons. Narcissa opened the door and waited for her to walk in before entering and closing it back after herself. She placed the tip of her wand on it and the entire room glowed of an eerie blue before lighting up. They were in a crypt, Hermione realized. Draco's body was laying on a stone bed in the middle of it and another tunnel connected the room with what she guessed was the rest of the burial crypt.
"Mrs. Malfoy, I can explain," Hermione blurted out.
"I certainly hope you do, Hermione."
She glanced back at the room they were in. "Can anyone hear us?"
"No, only a Malfoy can open the crypt. We're safe here."
Hermione sighed in relief and turned back to face the woman. "He's going to be alright, I promise."
Narcissa faintly smiled at her. "I know he is."
"You do?" How did she know Draco wasn't really dead? Which he was, technically, but only for the time being
"If my son was really dead, the man who took an Unbreakable Vow swearing to protect him wouldn't still be alive, would he?"
Hermione furrowed her brows and shook her head. Could it be? "Snape?"
Narcissa nodded. "Now, how is my son?"
"Well, he is dead," she admitted, "Just temporarily."
"Follow the tunnel," Narcissa had said, just moments after Hermione was done going through her plan with her. "It'll lead you at the edge of the Malfoy property."
The last step of her plan before leaving the Manor had initially been Obliviating Narcissa to forget her son was alive and forget the Unbreakable Vow. At last, Hermione figured she might still need her help and it'd be quite hard to explain why if she thought she'd killed Draco. Eventually, they decided memory locks would be the easiest and most risk-free option, just in case. Hermione had only practiced with them a few times before but she was confident in her abilities. She had to be. They couldn't afford the Dark Lord wandering in Narcissa's mind and learn Draco was still alive and one could not place locks on their own memories. Someone else had to do it. She knew it, Narcissa knew it and she was positive Draco would understand as well. In a matter of seconds, Snape's Unbreakable Vow, Hermione's involvement and Draco's not-so-final death were pushed in a locked corner in Narcissa's mind, unable to be accessed by anyone through Legilimency.
With Draco's body levitating in front of her, Hermione was doing as Mrs. Malfoy instructed – she was following the tunnel. She'd been walking for at least half an hour before she saw anything that looked any different from the dark walls surrounding her. Stone stairs led up to what she assumed was the edge of the property grounds. Before she moved any further, she took the Invisibility Cloak out of her Disillusioned beaded bag and draped it over Draco's body, then proceeded to cast an Invisibility Spell on herself too. With a hand on Draco to make sure she wouldn't lose track of him, she climbed up the staircase and was greeted with the faint light of the moon shining upon them.
An exact replica of the black gate and fence at the entrance of the Manor was towering over her. When she reached out to touch it, just like its twin, it turned to smoke to let her pass. With one last glance back, the stairs leading to the tunnel now gone and the Manor far behind her, Hermione took a step forward and left the Malfoy grounds. With her hand still tightly gripping Draco's, she held up her wand and pictured the Apparition Point in the Forbidden Forest in her head. When she opened her eyes back, after the familiar feeling of Apparition, she was standing right at the edge of the Hogwarts grounds. Hermione drew the Marauder's Map out of her bag and tapped it with her wand.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
She quickly unfolded the parchment and checked where the students and Filch were. Filch was in his office, along with Mrs. Purr and no student seemed to be out roaming the corridors except for a few Prefects on patrol duty. That made her sigh in relief. She could not afford to be noticed by anyone, Draco could wake up any moment and he was supposed to be dead. She was lucky dinnertime was already long gone and the curfew kept everyone in their common rooms.
Seeing there was no one on the side of the ground floor hallway she needed in order to access a secret passageway that led to the statue of Boris the Bewildered on the fifth floor, Hermione allowed herself to smile.
Pocketing her wand, Hermione kept the Map open and focused on the area she needed, then, her hand still in Draco's, proceeded to walk out of the Forest and towards the entrance of the castle. There was no need to lock the doors when the Death Eaters controlled everything for miles.
Once they were in the Entrance Hall, Hermione quickly closed back the doors behind her and, with another quick check on the Map to be sure no one was headed their way, she started walking towards the Founders' Tapestries. The passageway was hidden behind the one depicting Rowena Ravenclaw. Hermione pushed it aside and tapped the wall with her wand.
"Dissendium!"
A large opening in the wall revealed a staircase. She was expecting it to be dark and gloomy but Hermione found it was the opposite. Everlasting torches were secured to the walls to lighten up the corridor that revealed a long set of stairs that led to the fifth floor. When the stairs finally came to a stop, barely a minute later, the Map instructed her to tap the stone in front of her and repeat the incantation again. Hermione quickly made sure there was no one on the fifth floor either before doing so. As the statue of Boris the Bewildered slid away to let them step out of the tunnel, she almost ran to the staircase that led to the sixth floor and then to the seventh. She had been fairly disappointed to see there were no shortcuts between the fifth and the seventh floor except for one that would have taken her too much time to access, as it was too far from the statue of Boris.
The entrance to the Room of Requirement appeared as soon as she stepped foot onto the seventh floor and Hermione did not hesitate to reach for the door and open it. A gasp welcomed her into the Room and, as she turned around to see Ginny stare through her she realized she still had the Invisibility Spell on.
"It's fine, it's just me," she then said and dropped the barrier between herself, Ginny and Harry, then she pulled the Cloak off Draco. Dropping it on the floor, along with the Map, Hermione levitated his body onto the nearest couch and sat on the floor beside him, sighing.
"How in Merlin's name did you pull this off, Hermione?"
"Is he… dead?" Ginny asked moments later, hesitantly looking at Draco.
Hermione looked up to meet her eyes and shrugged. "Dead as a doornail."
"Is there any way to tell if the spell worked?" Harry asked.
She laughed a humorless laugh and shook her head. "We're just going to have to wait and see if my dead boyfriend comes back to life."
Ginny raised her brows and crossed her arms. "You found a way to resurrect the dead?"
Hermione sighed. "No. The spell I found merely transfers your soul, so to say, somewhere else, so that in case of death by magical means your body will be the only one dying, while your soul stays alive and can come back to you. You have to kill both in order for someone to truly die. It's basically a second chance at death."
"How's that different from a Horcrux?"
"A Horcrux is a permanent solution, this one isn't. The soul automatically comes back to its body when the person dies because the spell that trapped it somewhere else is no longer kept active by the person's magic. You can't take the fragments of soul in a Horcrux back into your body. They are completely dependent on the objects that host them. So if your body dies, you'll be able to come back to life but your soul will still be in a Horcrux until you destroy that one too. The Dark Lord's body was essentially destroyed the night he tried to kill Harry but the fragments of his soul he trapped into Horcruxes never made it back into his body. They're still there."
Ginny seemed to be considering it while Harry just sat in an armchair. He had already read about the spell in Secrets of the Darkest Art.
"So it's a temporary Horcrux but less immoral and without the murder part?"
Hermione shrugged. "Pretty much."
"I don't know, Gin. It seems real, at least on her part." Harry Potter was leaning on the farthest wall in the room, arms crossed on his chest. By his side, Ginny looked at him with a raised brow, skeptically glancing back at Malfoy and Hermione.
"I've been telling you, I don't think they're faking."
Harry didn't need a mirror to know the expression on his face was all but pleased. "She's been there all night, hasn't moved an inch," he sighed, finally looking away and staring at the Gryffindor tapestry on the wall he was facing.
He wasn't sure how he felt about it, just yet. He didn't like it, that he was sure of, but he didn't hate it either. He'd only seen Hermione's side of the story, never Malfoy's. For all he knew, he wasn't even into her, he was just faking it to have an easier time around Voldemort. If that was the case, his plan had failed spectacularly.
Plus, Hermione did have a thing for lost causes and underdogs. House Elves and Ron were proof enough of that much. Harry decided he would add that to his mental list of reasons as to why Hermione would fancy Draco Malfoy, of all people. Draco Malfoy, the boy with an evil family who was forced to take the Dark Mark and serve a sociopathic megalomaniac with genocidal plans.
"He made all the wrong choices," he muttered absently.
Ginny shook her head and sighed, glancing back at the two. "He never had a choice."
Well, if that wasn't a hopeless case, Harry didn't know what was.
"Didn't know you were getting fond of the ferret, Gin," Harry whispered back, so Hermione wouldn't hear them. Not that she was paying attention to them, anyway. Not only had she not moved from the armchair she was curled in near the couch Malfoy was laying on, holding his hand, she'd also not paid attention to anything else but him, as if one moment of distraction could result in something tragic.
Ginny rolled her eyes but smiled back at him. "Far from it. I've just been paying more attention to them, that's all, and I got to thinking. What could he possibly have done differently? To not end up where he is now, that is."
"Get out of there, for once. Fight for the good side. Dumbledore would have helped him." Harry could feel the anger building up again, at the thought of his former Headmaster. He had mixed feelings about Albus Dumbledore.
"It's different for him. He's not like us, Harry. He has his mother there, who's possibly the only person he cares about besides himself. His entire family's on their side. It's easier to do the right thing when everyone's always pushing you in that direction and you have your family with you. He's never had that."
Harry snorted and looked away again. "Sirius did it. The Blacks weren't much better than the Malfoys."
"Sirius' family weren't the Blacks and you know it. It was your parents and Lupin. And that awful rat, too, Peter Pettigrew." Ginny winced at the memory.
Harry refused to move his eyes back on his girlfriend. Deep down he knew Ginny had a point, he just didn't want to admit it. Old grudges were not easy to forget and he had too much history with Malfoy as it were, the new addition of Hermione's debatable judgment did all but erase it.
"Look, I know it's hard to start questioning morals and choices at this point in the game but sometimes you have to," she continued, placing a hand on his crossed forearms. "You don't have to like him. I certainly don't. Just… I don't think we should look at him as the enemy anymore. He's had so many chances to rat us out and he hasn't."
"Yet," he muttered.
"And why do you think that is?" She raised a brow at him and sighed after a few seconds of silence on his part. "It's Hermione. We've been treating them both like the enemy this entire time but she's really not. It's not just his mother anymore, I think he actually cares about her."
As Harry was about to snort again, Hermione gasped, standing up. Draco Malfoy had come back after all. Ginny grabbed the back of his shirt when he started to move towards them, holding him back.
"How are you feeling?" He heard Hermione ask him, still holding onto his hand.
"Like shit," a raspy voice answered and she finally let go of him before locking her arms around his neck, sobbing. Malfoy's arms didn't hesitate to curl around her too, although he could see it took him quite the effort.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Saint Potter was here to save the day, wasn't he?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "I can hear you," he said, loud enough for him to hear.
"I don't care."
Hermione re-emerged from his neck and glared at them both. "Ah, stop it already, you two."
Malfoy said something Harry didn't manage to hear and Hermione smiled down at him and rolled her eyes, shaking her head, so he probably wouldn't have wanted to hear it anyway.
"I'm sorry you had to do that."
Harry barely managed to overhear Malfoy's words and even then he wasn't sure he heard correctly. He was apologizing because Hermione had been forced to kill him. Who does that?
"Someone who doesn't want the people he cares for to live with the guilt of having killed him," Ginny whispered. Harry hadn't realized he'd said that out loud.
"I guess we'll see, won't we?"