AN: Hi! I have this story cross-posted to AO3 (you can find me there under the same username, hellvwng). I am able to respond and engage much more easily and freely there and I LOVE chatting with readers and discussing with them, so please read and comment over there if you'd like! Thank you to everyone that has commented already: I read each and every review and I'm eternally humbled that people are enjoying my story. mwahhh
Draco stared at Hermione in disbelief.
"That's impossible," he said. His eyes were narrowed as he stared up at Hermione; his gaze seemed to be flitting between her each of her eyes, as if he were trying to catch her in her lie.
"There's no way to defeat the Dark Lord. He keeps returning like the world's most malevolent cockroach; how many times has he evaded death? He can't be killed, Granger, and you're delusional if you thi-"
"He can't be killed because he's tethered to this existence by Dark objects," Hermione interrupted him. Draco paused mid-sentence in his derisive rant.
"The Dark objects, the tethers … they're called horcruxes. I think your mother discovered their existence. The Insurgency has been trying to find out more about horcruxes but information on them is very, very rare," she breathed out.
There was a strange glint in Draco's eye as he looked off. He seemed to be digesting what she had just told him, turning it over and over in his head.
Finally, he turned his gaze back to Hermione.
"How do we destroy the horcruxes?" Draco demanded. There was a deadly fervour in his gaze. He was hungry for blood.
Hermione sat back and stared appraisingly down at him.
The information he had revealed that night, and the raw intensity with which he confessed it all … she knew he hadn't been lying. He really was trying to escape with his mother, hide from the war.
But she couldn't trust him. Not with something so elusive; the key to defeating Voldemort. The Insurgency would survive for another few months at best without Draco. There was still a chance that he could simply change his mind and withdraw his aid, if an opportunity to escape with Narcissa suddenly, somehow materialized.
Even if Draco had confessed and pledged his loyalty, Moody would still see to it that Draco was eliminated out of an abundance of caution. Hermione couldn't return to Grimmauld Place with nothing to show for her mission: someone else would be sent to dispose of Draco. Someone more bloodthirsty; someone who would execute him without hesitation.
Frowning, she bit her lip. She didn't have many options here.
"Swear an Unbreakable Vow first," Hermione said suddenly.
Draco scoffed.
"Do you really think I'm going to betray your Insurgency to the Dark Lord? After everything he did to my family?" he ground out. His lip was curled and he looked at her with distaste, as if she were some sort of vermin.
"No," Hermione said slowly. "But I can't guarantee that you won't just bolt and disappear with Narcissa."
She stared hard at him. Draco's eyes were glittering back at her, but his lips were pressed together hard. His ensuing silence confirmed her fears; he was loyal to his own family, first and foremost. Whatever attachment he felt for her was just an afterthought in comparison.
"Swear an Unbreakable Vow first, and then I'll tell you. I'll- I'll go find a binder. But I can't leave here without your loyalty, because- … because-"
"Because Moody will have me killed by someone else. Through exposing me or sending someone here," Draco finished for her.
Hermione nodded miserably and stared at her hands as she wrung them.
"I can't … I can't let that happen, Draco," she whispered. She looked back up at him, suddenly desperate. What if he refused? What if he didn't believe her, or believe in the Insurgency?
It was a long shot. Hermione had just admitted that horcrux information, first and foremost, was rare. They both knew the Insurgency was struggling. Whether or not they could find the horcruxes and then destroy them was still one big question mark.
He was so worn down by the war already. He had carried hope in his heart, ignited by Hermione's optimism, just for it to be dashed away by reality. He had been disappointed by her once already, and was conflicted again.
It would be easier to just let go and … accept his fate. He had been prepared to do exactly that before her enraged interrogation and subsequent breakdown. Maybe he was still planning to go through with his suicide. He deserved a respite from the war.
Draco seemed to be having the same thoughts as her. He looked up at her appraisingly; there was exhaustion in his face. He had carried the war on for so long, been sharpened into a weapon by it.
He had been sharpened far too much and turned brittle by it.
There was a quiet, tired sadness in his eyes.
Hermione reached out and grasped his hand.
"Draco, please. I- … I don't know what I would do; I can't- … I can't go through with the alternative. I can't leave you here. Please, please swear an Unbreakable Vow."
Her voice trembled as she finished so quietly, she was whispering. She stared imploringly at him. Begging him with her eyes.
Please.
I can't give you up.
He gazed back at her wearily. Hermione waited with bated breath, praying. Agonizing.
He hesitated.
Finally, he gave a sigh and nodded slowly.
Hermione's heart squeezed painfully and she gave a sob of relief, bending down to press her lips to his forehead in reverence.
She took her time healing him.
With the acceptance of Hermione's deal, they had both received a stay of execution.
She nearly started crying again. The relief had washed over her like a crashing wave and she was drowning in it. Hermione had been resigned to her mission and her culpability for Draco's death for so long that she had forgotten what it felt like, to move without guilt.
To be able to look at him without darting her eyes away, too terrified to take in the sight of him. Fearing that it may be the last.
To be able to touch him and reach for him, without wondering how many times she could do this.
How many times left, before she couldn't anymore.
Voldemort had not been merciful in his torture of Draco for his failures. He recounted quietly, woodenly, what had happened while Hermione was tending to his injuries.
Draco had been overseeing the Dark Army in Voldemort's absence, during his head-of-state visit to Romania. His visit was kept secret in the fear that any publicity around it meant an attack by the Insurgency, or sabotage by surrounding sovereign states. Draco had expected the Insurgency would attack various bases, and then bomb Sussex. That had been the plan.
He had not been expecting Hermione's desperate raid of Sussex, he told her sullenly. She had the grace to blush furiously and whisper an apology, rubbing her hands soothingly over his injuries. Her accusation of Draco being a "reprehensible fucking coward" weighed heavily on her mind still. He was anything but one.
A bombing of Sussex in the Dark Lord's absence would have been terrible enough. The unexpected loss of dozens of his Death Eaters there had enraged him further. What good was it to have a High Reeve, then?
The Dark Lord had tortured him for hours after Draco's return from Sussex. He had other Death Eaters, the ones that remained after the slaughter at Sussex, perform Crucios simultaneously on Draco while Voldemort himself used Legilimency.
Even with the excruciating torture, Draco's Occlumency walls held - but just barely. He had diverted the Dark Lord's rage with memories of Lupin's murder at his hands, and the decimation of Team Gamma at Draco's hands.
He had appeased the Dark Lord with Lupin's last moments of gut-wrenching fear and terror for their unborn child. He had shown the Dark Lord the aftermath of Sussex: Robards, Davies, Tonks dead.
Draco had gutted his cousin himself, and strung her corpse up with her own intestines. She hung from a tree at Sussex, a deadly and enraging warning of the retaliation that was to rain down on the Insurgency for their provocative assault.
Whatever tiny baby bump she had been concealing was no more. Her abdominal cavity had been torn open, organs pulled out and defiled by Draco.
Bile had risen in Hermione's throat as Draco spoke bitterly. It threatened to spew out of her like noxious poison but she swallowed it back.
There was no question that there was a spy in the midst of the Dark Lord's followers. Draco himself had evaded suspicion thus far, the most trusted servant and general, but the whispers carried through the ranks.
He had been punished severely and left for dead. Draco had Apparated to the cottage and planned to die by Hermione's hand, on Moody's orders.
He had crafted his death to destabilize the regime. The loss of the High Reeve, the raid and bombing of Sussex, the loss of dozens of Death Eaters would be a heavy blow for Voldemort.
Tremors wracked his body for hours after, even with Hermione's expert healing and innovative electrical pulses through his muscles. There was a fair amount of internal bleeding to deal with too; he would've died in the cottage, if she hadn't found him.
"Does Voldemort expect you to return to him?" she asked him quietly as she worked.
Draco expression was flat as he regarded her.
"He sees this as a test. If I survive this punishment, I must rise up greater than before. If I die, then I was never worthy of his attention," he said.
A new wave of guilt rose through Hermione before she squashed it down desperately. She was responsible for his condition; he had decimated Voldemort's own army to save her, at great cost to himself. Whatever paltry healing she was offering to him seemed like a weak consolation prize in comparison.
I'm going to find the horcruxes and destroy them, she thought to herself as she worked. I'm going to defeat Voldemort. I'm going to free the Insurgency from this war. I'm going to save Draco and his mother.
Draco had fallen into an exhausted sleep as she worked. The last of his energy had been used up recounting the horrors of that night and re-living the trauma of his torture. Hermione finished her healing and then gently Levitated him onto the hastily Scourgified cream sofa. Taking one last look at his tired, sombre face, she rose and steeled herself.
Then, she left the cliffside cottage and Apparated to Spinner's End.
Snape sat opposite her, behind his shabby wooden desk. Hermione was seated on the threadbare and slightly musty sofa in her usual place.
They regarded each other warily.
"You seem quite well for someone who has just carried out an execution, Miss Granger," he drawled out. His voice was lazy and casual but there was an edge of accusation in his tone.
Snape's eternally black eyes were glittering maliciously.
Hermione saw no point in avoiding his pointed question. She stared at Snape and chose her words carefully.
"Draco's loyalties were … never to Voldemort. We know that. We- … you and I had assumed that he was trying to get the Dark Mark off, and pit the Insurgency and Voldemort against each other so he could swoop in and claim power after the dust had settled. But," she swallowed heavily and licked her lips, then continued on.
"It was Narcissa. It was always Narcissa. Voldemort tortured her and forced Draco's hand; made him take the Dark Mark and used her as bait to push him even further. He was trying to find a way to escape with her."
Snape stared at her.
Hermione continued on, rushing her words out. Anything. She wanted him to say something, anything.
"I mentioned horcruxes and he had no idea what they were. He was never pursuing immortality, he had no aspirations to become the next Dark Lord. He was just trying to protect his mother."
This elicited a response from Snape. His expression darkened and he stared back at Hermione, aghast.
"You told him about the horcruxes?" he hissed at her, rising suddenly from his chair in one jerky motion. His hands had been placed atop the surface of his desk and he leaned into it, glowering at her.
Hermione stared back defiantly.
"He saved me from Sussex, Severus," she hissed back harshly. "He was bleeding out in the cliffside cottage, he would've died. He was planning on it! He never planned to live to see the end of this war after Narcissa refused further Blood Rituals; he was going to just give up."
"You should've LET him, Miss Granger!" he barked.
Hermione recoiled, as if Snape had physically reached out and struck her. She had never seen him so furious before.
"You do not understand what you have done, Miss Granger. Is this another one of your idiotic, self-righteous quests? Righting the injustices of the world? Have you decided that Death Eaters and war criminals are now deserving of the protection of S.P.E.W. or whatever other nonsense."
Snape was panting slightly at the sheer force of his anger. His expression was deadly.
"Draco is just as likely to be our salvation, as our collective downfall. He may hold some affection for you, idiotic teenage hormones and awkward sexual fumbling, but he serves no one but himself and his family. He is dangerous; a man unbound by morals and beliefs, but caged only by his personal loyalties. Wherever the dust may settle, whichever outcome would benefit him most above all, he shall seek that."
Hermione flushed at the accusations levied against her but refused to break eye contact.
"Narcissa had discovered something about horcruxes, I need to find out what," she insisted. Her hands were clenched into her jeans and her back was straight as a rod. She couldn't back down. Draco's life depended on her convincing Snape.
He looked at her, completely unmoved. The silence in the room was tense.
"Narcissa is a Malfoy and a Black," Snape said emphatically. Slowly, even, as if Hermione were dim. "You have not seen her in the First Wizarding War, Miss Granger. She is supremely capable, deadly and cold. Whatever knowledge she harbours of horcruxes, you would be hard-pressed to obtain from her."
Snape's lips were pressed into a thin line. He hesitated, and then continued.
"I certainly believe- … no, I know that Narcissa cares fiercely for her son. But she is cold and indifferent to everything around her. If she had somehow acquired knowledge of the horcruxes, but did nothing to act on that knowledge, it makes me question the feasibility of even obtaining the horcruxes ourselves."
"She was tortured extensively and already in poor health. I believe she discovered it a few months ago; the timeline of her health failing, after such a long period of stability, would make sense. Perhaps she was trying to acquire and destroy them, but simply couldn't," Hermione hedged.
Snape stared at her coldly, but there was something resigned in his gaze at Hermione's words. Her heart fluttered tentatively.
"You are as likely to doom us and get us all killed as you are to save us, Miss Granger," he ground out.
She gave a mirthless laugh that held a touch of hysteria.
"Severus, look what happened at Sussex. That was the best we could manage without Draco; Tonks's body is hanging from a tree, Gamma needs to be buried in a mass grave. We're out of options for the tome. If we don't do this, we're all going to die anyway," she said simply.
They stared at each other for a bit before Snape finally nodded and rose. Hermione stood up too, and they made their way of out Spinner's End. She held her arm out.
Snape grasped it, and they disappeared.