Just so you know, there will be a few flashbacks at the beginnings of some of the chapters. They don't necessarily relate to anything specific within the chapter, and they aren't in any particular order. They're there to sort of give you some idea of what things were like for Hermione and Draco before they landed in 1944. And expect that, if I reference something in a chapter that you don't quite understand, it will be in a flashback later on in the story. Just thought I'd let you know so that you don't get confused.

Secondly, I just want to say that I am NOT good at multi-chapter stories. I find them to be exhausting. I've always liked a good one-shot. It's like a good one-night-stand: enjoyable, but without strings – you forget about it and move on to the next one. I tend to move way too fast, but I'm trying to keep a lid on it here. If you noticed that things are progressing unnaturally or that the story line is completely unrealistic, PLEASE TELL ME. Whether in a PM or a review, let me know what you think. I will probably love you for it later.

Thanks to electricsymphony, who always brightens my day (well, my week, really) with her eloquent reviews. I've missed you!

Also, I forgot to put a disclaimer in my first chapter, so here it is: I don't own Harry Potter, and I cry myself to sleep every night mourning that fact.

On to the story!

Giraffe :)

oooo

Hermione woke only moments after she fainted.

She was extremely embarrassed that she had done so, considering it had never happened to her before. She was not in the habit of swooning. Even while enduring two months worth of torture at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange and even occasionally Voldemort himself, she had never passed out from the pain, though she'd admittedly come close multiple times. Then again, she had never been in a situation like this before.

Despite having spent most of the day engaged in a bloody battle – in fact, the last five years of her life could be said to have been one long bloody battle – she had trained her mind to remain sharp no matter what trials and tribulations she had to endure. This was no different, although it was the most unlikely, outlandish thing that she had ever thought could have happened.

The Albus Dumbledore she had seen before her little fainting spell (she sneered inwardly at her own weakness) and was now again looking at through blurry eyes was far younger than she had ever seen him, and, most notably, very much alive. Which led her to the conclusion that she was either caught in an alternate reality or, more likely, had been thrust back in time. And not just back in time, but back to a time when she very likely had not even been born yet.

The prospect was mind-blowing and utterly frightening. Her head spun with the revelation. A shock of hot energy resonated in her chest and sent strange tingles throughout the rest of her body. She closed her eyes, suddenly dizzy, and shuddered heavily with the feeling. It reminded her that only a few minutes ago Fawkes had collided with her, and now he was lodged firmly inside of her ribcage. That searing heat, not quite as blindingly painful but still incredibly uncomfortable, was ever-present, pulsing along with the beating of her heart. As if there were two hearts beating in tandem. Or like her heart had suddenly absorbed another, beating twice as strong.

It looked like Fawkes' essence was here to stay.

She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision and focus on her very un-dead former Headmaster, who was asking her a question. The first thing she noticed, of course, was that he held his wand in one hand – not the Elder Wand yet, she noted – and she tightened her grip on her own just in case.

"Are you quite all right, my dear?"

Hermione felt a sudden, irrational anger grip her by the throat. "Does it look like we're all right, Albus?" she snapped, her eyes undoubtedly flashing with her displeasure. She vaguely registered Fawkes landing next to her on the floor, and she absentmindedly ran a hand down the smooth red-orange feathers of his neck and back.

Dumbledore stood leaning against his desk, staring at her with an inscrutable expression. "Are we…acquainted?" he asked, his tone deceptively light but underlined with steel. "I find myself unable to remember ever having met you, but you seem to be awfully familiar with me. And Fawkes seems to be comfortable in your presence," he added, gesturing to the beautiful bird.

Hermione pushed herself to her feet, unsteady and weak. Her transport through time and space had felt like she'd been sucked through a very tight, very long tube the width of her little finger, dark and oppressive and utterly terrifying. As a result she felt like her body, already in bad shape from the battle at Hogwarts, had been kneaded and stretched like a particularly elastic piece of dough.

Albus calmly raised his wand as she stood, and she scoffed. "Honestly, Professor, put that away," she said, rolling her eyes. "If I'd wanted to do you harm, I would have acted on it already." She looked him solidly in the eye. "I do know you, Albus – and rather well, at that. We just haven't met yet…" she continued, shifting on her feet. "Well, I mean, in this time." She looked around. "Which is when, exactly?"

Albus Dumbledore, like Hermione herself, had a remarkably sharp, quick mind. She saw the surprise flit across his face, soon replaced with a look of keen interest. "What time did you come from? And what is your name?"

Despite herself, she found her lips quirking up at the corners. Same old Dumbledore. It was so like him to answer a question with a question. However, she was very aware that Draco remained unconscious on the floor beside her, and she was hard pressed for time.

"My name is Hermione," she said, not offering her surname. It was best, she thought, not to give away any information at this point unless necessary. Narrowing her eyes and making sure her tone was firm and yet not hostile – she most certainly didn't want her old Headmaster as an enemy, especially when she was stuck in a different era – she continued. "Let me make one thing abundantly clear, Professor Dumbledore," she said lowly, making sure her eyes never left his. "I don't have time for your games, and I know you too well to be manipulated by you – I've had enough of that for a lifetime, thanks very much," she quipped. "So you answer my question, and help me get my friend to the hospital wing, and I will answer yours when I see fit."

Hermione guessed that Albus Dumbledore had never been on the receiving end of any sort of insubordination, especially from someone that wasn't much older than most of his students. His eyebrows shot up into his hairline. He looked simultaneously displeased and amused. The twinkle in his cerulean eyes that she had once found endearing and mysterious was now something she abhorred, for it most often was a sign of scheming and impending manipulation.

Or imminent Legilimency, apparently.

He didn't even try to be subtle about it, and she saw him coming from a mile away. She imagined that he thought that, perhaps, because she was so young, she could not possibly be a match for someone of his age and experience – after all, it wasn't common for grown wizards to be proficient in mind magics, much less an adolescent; however, Hermione had experience of her own, and if she could manage to throw the likes of Voldemort out of her head she could do the same with her formerly beloved mentor. Her methods were a little bit unorthodox, she would be the first to admit, and there were certain images that she couldn't keep from popping to the forefront of her mind; Occlumency had never been one of her strengths, after all. Legilimency, however, she was very good at. And, in true Hermione fashion, she had managed to turn her offense into a very effective defense.

Feeling her walls give way under his mental attack, she saw one of the memories from her imprisonment at Malfoy Manor: Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange standing over her prone form, the former's heavy cleated boot pressing insistently down on her midsection as the latter gleefully held her under the Cruciatus curse for who knew how long – and then she did the mental equivalent of picking her broken wall up, swinging it like a baseball bat and slamming it into Dumbledore's own mental shields.

She didn't get very far – only a glimpse of his recent thoughts stemming from his brief interaction with her; she couldn't help but gasp at the image of herself in his mind. She looked positively dreadful. Then his superior mental barriers pushed her out, and, while his energies were diverted to his own defense, he could no longer focus on his invasion of her mind. He physically reeled backward, leaning heavily upon the desk that had propped him up just moments ago.

Hermione took a calculated step back from him, her wand held up between them. Just a formality, really, to show him that she was no pushover. "Well, that was rude," she said, the exasperation in her tone mocking him. She couldn't help herself. She often used sarcasm as a suit of armor. "But now that you know that that particular method won't work, perhaps we can try things my way?" she finished, smiling at him in a manner that wasn't entirely friendly.

She was pleased to note that his eyes no longer twinkled at her. His gaze was not openly hostile, however; she had not expected it to be. Dumbledore's mind was far too inquisitive to pass up a chance to learn something new; he almost never jumped to conclusions, and was good at pushing aside his emotions in favor of satisfying his curiosity. Instead those blue orbs were shrewdly wary and questioning. His face was blank. Even at a younger age, Albus was a master at his game. No wonder Voldemort had been so obsessed with defeating him – they played the same field.

Hermione had learned to play over the years, too.

"It seems a pointless endeavor to argue with you, Hermione…" He paused, giving her a moment to fill in her last name; she did not. He coughed. "Well then, let's get your friend here to the infirmary." He looked her over. "You don't look to be doing so well, either. But once we get you patched up, I will insist on continuing this conversation, child. Rest assured, you will not be leaving that hospital wing until I have some answers."

"I understand that, sir," she responded, respectfully bowing her head. Despite her guardedness in his presence (for she had learned so much about Dumbledore after his death, and it had forever changed her opinion of him) Hermione knew that her old Headmaster was a good person, and a good ally to have. He wasn't entirely trustworthy – they had all learned that the hard way. But he was an advantageous friend to have in a situation like this. "Expect an Unbreakable Vow – or a Wizarding Oath, at the very least." She looked up into his eyes. "I can't trust you to not accidently let something slip that could be potentially disastrous if it fell into the wrong hands."

Dumbledore gave her a tight smile, but there was a quirk to it that suggested that he was pleased with her forethought. "Understood," he answered curtly, bowing his head in return. "Now, shall we get your friend…?"

"Draco."

" – Draco, to the hospital wing? He seems to be in…poor condition."

"Indeed." She turned once more to look at Fawkes. Her eyes narrowed. "I have a bone to pick with you, Fawkes," she said, trying to keep the unpleasant expression from her face. "Don't go too far, you hear?" She turned to Dumbledore to explain, turning the door handle as she did so. "Your feathered friend is the reason we're in this mess," she said coolly. "I'm not pleased with him at the moment."

"Interesting. I imagine I wouldn't be so pleased, either. Phoenixes rarely do anything without purpose, however." Dumbledore tucked his graying auburn beard into his belt before raising his wand and easily levitating Draco's limp form towards the door. She opened it and let the two men pass through ahead of her before shutting and locking the door of his office. She felt hot tears well in her eyes at the sight of Draco's body, a fresh reminder of their recent activity. She banished them before they could fall.

She followed Dumbledore's quick steps as well as she could, but she felt herself lagging. She was suddenly so overcome with exhaustion that she could barely stand on her own, let alone walk. She was in fact moving, her feet dragging the ground as her legs refused to properly work. Her condition was not just the effect of her wounds – she had been through much worse, and could handle these just fine, as evidenced by her state in the Battle of Hogwarts. It was the receding adrenaline, and the effect of the travel through space-time, and the effort that her body had made and was still making in order to accommodate Fawkes' sudden and inexplicable presence in her body. She could feel his warmth…feel his fire. It flushed under her skin, prickling her nerves.

She vaguely heard Dumbledore speaking, but realized he was not addressing her; two, no three, forms had joined them in the hallway, rushing to their aid. Albus gave them some ambiguous explanation, and then she felt two figures at her side, helping to prop her up. A boy in Gryffindor robes was helping Dumbledore levitate Draco down the hall.

The girl on her right was big-boned and tall, with shoulder-length hair the color of straw. She was wearing her daily Hogwarts uniform, Hermione noticed as she was gently lowered to sit on the edge of a hospital bed, and wore her robes over the top and sported a shiny blue and silver prefect badge. Ravenclaw, then.

There was a boy on her left, though as her eyes blurred all she could see of him was dark hair and green-lined robes. A Slytherin. She mentally rolled her eyes. How delightful. While the pre-war Hermione would have scolded herself for the blatant stereotyping, the post-war Hermione felt no compunctions about judging harshly and swiftly. Such judgment had gone a long way in keeping her alive all these years, especially when Voldemort and his Death Eaters had officially labeled her Undesirable No. 2 (she would have almost felt flattered, if not for the increase in danger the title posed). Of course, there were always exceptions – several of her old classmates from Hogwarts had defected, including Draco, whose heroic actions had time and again belied the nature she assumed all Slytherins possessed. Still, it never hurt to be cautious. She could always change her opinion later.

Huh, she thought dreamily. The hospital wing…when did we get here? As her mind began to drift into darkness, she struggled to stay alert. Now that she had gotten her little soiree with Dumbledore out of the way, she was rapidly losing energy and cognizance. She waved her arm at the blurry figure of the mediwitch on staff – whoever that was in this time period, she couldn't know. Albus had never actually given her the time frame that she'd asked for.

"Pepper up potion," she mumbled. She noticed that the fire in her heart was heating her blood, causing a sensation of warmth to move throughout her body and stay there. It was not painful, this time – it was actually rather comforting, and made her a bit sleepy.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, dear?" came a firm but kind voice at her side. "It might be better to put you to sleep in order to better treat your injuries."

The thought of being put to sleep around these strangers – Hogwarts staff or not, Dumbledore included – alarmed Hermione. They couldn't be allowed to find the shrunken purple bag that she had tucked into her bra, even if it was warded; that little beaded bag, which she had been using since she, Harry and Ron had gone on their horcrux hunt, held everything important. Including items that hadn't been invented yet – a computer, for one; books that hadn't yet been printed by people that hadn't yet been born, and all sorts of oddities including, but not limited to: Harry's invisibility cloak, the Marauders' Map, three basilisk fangs wrapped in plastic wrap (her Muggle heritage still made appearances), a set of extendable ears, and Harry's Firebolt. Dozens of bottles, safe in foam-padded chests, held a variety of potions: a bit of Wolfsbane, varying strengths of Veritaserum, less than a tablespoon of Felix Felicis, and plenty of Polyjuice, among others. Three extra wands were bundled tightly in the canvas fabric of her own tent. It also held all of her modern day clothing, including old, unused school uniforms, brightly colored lacy lingerie, and all-black cat-suits with sleek, magic-absorbent leather armor that made her feel like she was part of a S.W.A.T. team. Or a car thief. She even had her father's beautiful old-fashioned revolver and a cache of hand-grenades packed protectively in a tight, padded case.

Harry's entire inheritance, all of the forty-five thousand galleons in his Gringotts vault, was sitting, unassumingly, at the bottom of the bag in a giant wooden chest. All of the assets her parents left her in their will had been liquidated, and stacks of Muggle money were arranged neatly in a cardboard box, amounting to nearly four hundred thousand dollars. A locked safe protected part of the Malfoys' estate, about five million galleons worth of gold and jewels and old family heirlooms. In short, Hermione and Draco were rich beyond imagining, especially considering the rate of inflation in both the wizarding and the Muggle world. It was comforting, at least, to know that the two of them would be well financed despite whatever trouble they might get themselves into in this era.

That bag also held most of her personal belongings of sentimental value: photographs, jewelry given as gifts, a couple of Molly Weasley's horrendous but comfortable sweaters…

Clothing that had belonged to Ron. Things that she had put stasis charms on to keep them smelling like him.

Hermione shook her head adamantly, looking at the mediwitch and adopting her "authoritative Granger" attitude, so dubbed by Draco – the one that seemed to get the most results.

"Pepper up potion first, please," she said, even when her eyes went hazy and her shoulders slumped in exhaustion.

She thanked the mediwitch graciously as she uncorked the bottle and guzzled down the potion, the spicy taste making her eyes water even more. But she felt an instant improvement; not much of one, but it was enough to get her through this nightmare until she could find a way to resolve their little…problem.

She cleared her throat and blinked away the moisture in her eyes, sitting up straight and wincing as the burnt skin on her shoulder blade and back protested – loudly. She spoke.

"Please, help my friend first. He was hit with an unknown curse – a sort of black, smoky essence, but I didn't get a good look on how the caster did it. He's been unconscious for a few minutes. Most of my wounds are superficial – some of them I can heal myself," she said, remembering that she held her wand in her right hand and wondering how she'd managed to keep hold of it through it all. Instinct, she supposed. "I can wait. Please – go to him first."

The mediwitch seemed stunned into action, immediately following Hermione's commands. It was obvious that the healer had never been subjected to dealing with a victim of war, much less two. Hermione watched her perform a scanning spell on Draco's still form. Most of his body flared red, and all of a sudden Hermione wanted desperately to cry.

But she did not. Because she needed to keep her wits about her.

Mad-Eye Moody's voice echoed in her head. Constant vigilance!

Discretely so that no one would notice, she shifted closer to the side table of the bed she was on…a Daily Prophet sat there, opened to page two, and there was a date printed in tiny letters at the bottom corner: Monday, September 18th, 1944.

Something resonated within her, like the answer to some puzzle where the pieces didn't fit in quite right.

Ah. In the summer of 1941, a rebel group, led by Zhou Feng, an idealist that was perhaps a little too heavy-handed with violence during his campaign, had attacked the Chinese Ministry. They had also razed a well-established wizarding school in the far western mountains to the ground a couple of months before, though Feng claimed later that it was merely an accident – and that no loss of life was intended to occur. Unfortunately, forty students and two professors died in the fire, and the remaining students found shelter within the Ministry of Magic, which, consequently, was attacked by the same group not a month later. Then many students had been forced to go on the run, while many others were forced to fight. It was a plausible explanation that Hermione and Draco, after a couple of years of war, had been fighting to help protect the Ministry against the second attack by the rebel group, which had happened on September 18th.

It was their best bet as a back-story; two students that had been ousted from their home and then forced to fight and flee to survive. If Hermione claimed to have fled the war in Europe, escaping Grindewald's grisly campaign, there were details that could be researched and verified, and Hermione and Draco would be discovered to be liars, and people would demand to know the truth. If she said that they had gone to Beauxbatons or Durmstrang, they would be ousted as soon as someone had the presence of mind to check the student logbooks. But very few people here knew of what was going on in China and the rest of Asia. Both Draco and she knew Mandarin, were mostly fluent in it – close enough to pass inspection. They had been to China and had stayed there for quite some time – had even travelled to the ruins of the old school, which had been abandoned after its destruction. They'd spent hours upon days upon weeks researching and discovering all the Orient had to offer.

It would have to do. Now the only problem was not knowing if Draco would blurt something out when he awakened from this coma, or if she could at least use Legilimency to plant the story inside his head so that he understood what to say and what not to say; although planting things in someone's mind was extremely difficult, and Hermione wasn't so sure she could pull it off. Also, how would they explain their ability to apparate through Hogwarts' defensive warding? They would need a good excuse.

The implications of being exposed as time-travelers would be…unfathomable. It would be an unparalleled disaster. Chaos of epic proportions would follow.

She thought again about Dumbledore, about how much to reveal to him. She honestly didn't know. She could probably read him better than most people, but that wasn't saying much. The bottom line was, as much as she wanted to give everything over to him and let him handle it, she couldn't trust him.

Plus, even throughout her school years, Dumbledore had been secretive and manipulative. He would never willingly hurt an innocent person, especially a child – but he had no such compunctions about using them. He had used them all at some point or another, and at the end, at the First Battle of Hogwarts, when it was supposed to have been over, it just…wasn't. The last few years of her life had been a total disaster. After Hogwarts, and after Harry, Ron and she had travelled around the British Isles on their search for horcruxes, they had come to realize just what an impossible task had been set upon their young shoulders. That was also around the time that they were exposed to the utter brutality that Voldemort and his followers were capable of.

They had all had a hard time with Cedric Diggory's murder, the battle at the Department of Mysteries with Sirius' death, and the death of Dumbledore, but it had truly started with the murder of her parents, and on the drawing room floor at Malfoy Manor, and the subsequent death of Dobby. The First Battle of Hogwarts had been a nightmare, and they'd lost many Order members and students. And it had continued in the same manner for years, growing worse and worse over time. People were captured and tortured until they begged for execution. Muggle families – including children of any age – were targeted at random, killed in their homes or kidnapped for the Death Eaters' own amusement. Muggleborn families were told to flee, or given sanctuary by the Order and set up at safe houses.

Hermione had been too late. She had failed her parents, not gotten to them in time, and they had suffered immensely at the hands of Voldemort himself before they were brutally killed.

And Albus Dumbledore had not experienced any of this with them; he did not know the horror that they'd had to endure, the loss they'd had to deal with, the constant injury and the unrelenting grief and the body count piling up. He had not had to watch as his friends and colleagues died around him, did not have to watch as the Golden Trio struggled to come up with the answers – searching for anything that might help them. And Hermione, with her incredible capacity for forgiveness, had not forgiven Dumbledore for all that he had done – and all that he hadn't done, but should have. Because after the horrific events of her twentieth birthday on September 19th, 1999, and Hermione's ensuing imprisonment, something in her had broken, and she would never be able to get her former optimism and sense of morality back. The idealistic, somewhat naïve girl, still able to maintain a sense of disillusionment about the world despite what was going on around her – that girl had died in those two gruesome months, and Hermione was never the same afterwards.

She would have to get Draco's opinion on how much to involve their Headmaster (well, she supposed he was only a Transfiguration professor and Deputy Headmaster, in 1944) later, when he woke up. For now, she would play her cards close to her chest – which might be difficult, because she wasn't quite as good as Draco was at keeping up a constant fake façade. But she would have to do it; it was a matter of survival. She wasn't fit to act on Broadway, but she could lie well enough that she would get by. It had taken years to be able to lie even a tenth as well as Draco or Pansy or any other Slytherin could, but under their tutelage (and the pressure of being in some sticky situations) she had learned to guard her emotions better and to spin a quick, realistic tale that would fool others. Unfortunately, despite her progress, apparently her eyes really were the windows to her soul; Draco told her that he had learned to truly read her because of the emotion that swirled so blatantly in her chocolate gaze. That was something she suspected she would never be able to control.

Narcissa Malfoy had been an excellent teacher though, as patient in teaching Hermione how to school her expressions and lie convincingly as Hermione had been in teaching her how to cast a patronus. Draco in turn had taken it upon himself to teach her Legilimency, and, to everyone's surprise, she had caught on quickly and become proficient at it in a matter of months.

Strangely enough she struggled more with Occlumency, having a hard time keeping people out of her mind. So she had developed her own brand of defense, that which she had used with Dumbledore just a few minutes ago: when someone tried to enter her mind, she would push up a memory that would do no harm (like she and Harry and Ron at the Burrow, or having Ginny do her hair, or drinking firewhisky with Draco), and then she would quickly go on the offensive, forcing the attacker out of her head by focusing her energies on getting into their mind. It worked for her fairly well, although certain memories, despite her efforts of hiding them away, were sometimes pulled to the forefront of her mind no matter how hard she tried. Nothing with sensitive, secret information, but just memories she would rather forget.

Watching Sirius fall through the Veil. Being tortured and carved up on the floor of the Malfoy Manor parlor; seeing her bright, pure scarlet blood, untainted by mud of any kind, seep into the floor as the Malfoys looked on with horrified eyes shining from carefully impassive faces. The sense of horror when she found her parents' mangled bodies. Being captured by snatchers for a second time, watching on with Ron, Fleur and Ginny, as Seamus Finnigan was killed in an unmentionable way. Legions of inferi. Being attacked by a manticore. Nearly drowning in the cold waters around Iceland. Seeing Voldemort raise his wand, red eyes gleaming, as he struck down Kingsley Shacklebolt and Minerva McGonagall as Bellatrix cackled with glee.

Waking up in a cell to the smell of death.

Hermione pulled herself out of her own thoughts, knowing the path that those memories would lead her down. But just for a moment, the stench of rotting flesh entered her nose, and she felt the urge to vomit.

Remembering where she was, and angry that she had let her thoughts wander thus, she raised her wand and began to attend to her own wounds, her brown eyes flashing every few seconds to where her time-traveling companion lay, still unconscious, though his breathing seemed to slow and deepen as the unnamed mediwitch hovered over him, waving her wand in complex patterns over his unmoving form. Hermione let a small smile grace her face – even whilst lying down, injured, and pale as death, Draco Malfoy still managed to cut an impressive figure. As Dumbledore, the mediwitch and her assistant, the boy in the Gryffindor uniform that she'd seen before, cut off Draco's blood soaked clothes, they revealed a pale, well-muscled body that was scarred by years of throwing curses and receiving them.

As each scar was revealed, Hermione recalled where he had gotten them. She remembered his duel with Harry in their sixth year, resulting in a handful of small, faint white scars that littered his upper body. A shallow scrape on the back of his thigh was the result of a narrow escape from a bad-tempered manticore. Just below his right pectoral was a circular scar that had come, strangely enough, from a Muggle bullet. A jagged pink line draped itself over Draco's broad right shoulder, caused by a slicing hex at some time or another. A nasty, puckered scar, nearly purple in color, ran the length of the inside of his left forearm, distorting his Dark Mark; it was an ironic mirror of the faint, white writing on her own arm, carved there so long ago by a half-mad woman intent on inflicting the highest level of pain on someone she considered to be worth less than the bottom of her shoe. Strangely enough, Draco had gotten his fighting the very same witch, his deranged aunt.

The worst indications of past violence inflicted upon her handsome friend, however, were the many raised stripes of skin that crisscrossed his back. They were a gruesome and heartbreaking testament to the earlier years of his life that he spent living with Lucius Malfoy, and he had only admitted this to her and Harry after several shots of firewhisky one New Year's Eve at Grimmauld Place. The next morning he seemed not to remember talking about it in front of Harry and her, and they had never let on that they knew. When Hermione ventured to ask Pansy about it later, the pretty Slytherin's cobalt eyes filled with tears and she had begged the two Gryffindors not to ever mention it – especially in front of Narcissa, whose guilt as having failed Draco as a mother drowned her everyday. Of course Harry and Hermione had solemnly agreed and had never spoken a word of it since.

There were, of course, many other scars and disfigurements that littered Draco's finely sculpted body, but contemplating them all would send Hermione into a tailspin of memories that she would have a hard time pulling herself out of. She was prone to wallowing at inconvenient times, and now was definitely inconvenient.

As she struggled to remove her blood-soaked left shoe and sock without pulling the burnt skin on her back, she felt a presence in front of her, casting her into shadow. Instinct had her tensing, an offensive spell on the tip of her tongue, but she forced herself to relax, trying to remember that she was no longer on a battlefield but safe in the hospital wing of Hogwarts.

But…how safe were they, exactly?

"Here, let me."

She looked up, taking in the dark haired Slytherin boy from earlier that had rushed to her aid. She subtly did a perfunctory examination of his form. He was devastatingly handsome – she thought, almost angrily, that he was far better looking than any of her friends and acquaintances back in her time. He was even more visually stunning than Draco or Harry or old pictures she had seen of Sirius Black, and it almost felt like a betrayal to their memories.

His hair was shiny and black, perfectly wavy in a way that looked unintentionally styled; the kind of hair Hermione had envied her whole life. His eyes were dark, but of an indeterminable color, and his skin was gorgeously pale. He was tall, surely over six feet, and he stood with perfect posture that looked as natural as breathing. His chest and shoulders were wide, but his waist and hips were far narrower, though it was hard to get a definite sense of his size and musculature whilst he wore robes. His fine, curved lips were pulled upwards in a semblance of a smile.

Why a semblance, you ask? Because there was not even a hint of warmth in those dark eyes. They were frigid and depthless, dark pools of icy water that reflected back at her.

It made her uncomfortable, and yet she was sucked into those eyes, hopelessly intrigued by the coolness of them, the lack of feeling or indication of his thoughts. Nearly jealous of how they revealed no emotion.

Hermione leant back slowly, warily outstretching her leg in his direction. "Thank you," she said softly. He bent down on one knee, bringing her left foot gingerly up to rest on his thigh. Her eyes, sharp as an eagle's, tracked his movements.

She did not trust him.

But then again, she did not trust much of anyone anymore. And especially not here, when the only person she did trust implicitly to watch her back was unconscious.

She did not expect the tender way in which this Slytherin began to unlace her shoes, one at a time; did not anticipate the gentleness of his large hands as he pulled the soiled boots from her small feet, followed by her socks. He then cast a quick Tergeo followed by a Scourgify on his hands and her leg (both done nonverbally, she noticed, cataloguing the detail away for later), and began to work on finishing the job Harry had so pathetically tried to start.

His healing spells were as well cast as hers were, but he could do them mostly nonverbally, which she had always struggled with in learning medical spells. Healing spells were among the few that Hermione had never mastered nonverbally or wandlessly, in addition to a few other dark spells that required greater power to cast. As such, a sudden spike of jealousy flared in her chest – part of that innate competitive streak that had propelled her through both school and war, detrimental though it may have been to her mental health and her relationships.

She was tempted to start on the healing of her broken wrist, but was afraid she would botch it because of her exhaustion and the damage to her right hand, which, whilst adrenaline had been pumping through her body, she had been able to ignore; but now that the high of the adrenaline of battle that she was so used to had worn off, she felt each hurt tenfold, and her right hand, her wand hand, was struggling to grasp the long piece of dark walnut due to the entire layer of skin having been scraped off and her knuckles bruised and swollen beyond recognition. She let her wand rest on the bed beside her, just an inch away.

She startled as she felt a lightly calloused hand graze her right calf and ankle in a curious caress. She looked down to see the stranger examining her leg with a calculating gaze, turning the calf over this way and that to study the nasty puckered scars there. Three deep gouges ran parallel from her knee to her ankle, and there was a clear semi-circle of tooth indentations on her heel. They were relatively fresh and had not healed well, over the last two months since she'd received them, due to infection. They were still tender.

"What happened?" he asked curiously, his eyes meeting hers.

She tilted her head to the side, regarding him with sharp dark eyes that missed very little these days. She contemplated what to tell him, and settled on the truth, though she did not offer details. "Werewolf," she said, her answer quiet, meant for his ears only. "Albeit in human form. After that, infection."

He did not respond but for a slight downward turn of his lips and a mysterious flash in his eyes, merely went back to work, standing fluidly and moving to heal the rest of her injuries. He lifted her damaged right hand gingerly and she stifled a hiss of pain as he reattached the skin, although she did wince.

She stiffened as he began to reach for her left arm, which she had cradled to her chest. She had never bothered to cover the scar that Bellatrix had given her, calling her out on her heritage, but that was before, in her future. Everyone had known who she was, and she had never been ashamed of her lineage. It was a core part of her identity.

She enjoyed the irony that she could outmatch almost any Pureblood on the battlefield and in the classroom. She had, in her sixth year, been awarded the Barnabus Finkley Prize for Exceptional Spell-Casting, an award only given before to Dumbledore in his school days. She was fluent in four languages: English, Russian, French and Mandarin, and had a fair knowledge of Gobbledygook, Spanish and Haitian Creole. She had invented many of her own spells and potions, spending hours slaving away over books and writing a few theories of her own. She had great magical power, rivaled only by a select few: Voldemort, Dumbledore, Harry, Dolohov, Bellatrix, maybe Draco (on a good day) and perhaps (to her surprise and everyone else's) Luna Lovegood. She had defeated countless Death Eaters in duels, and had gained quite the reputation amongst the ranks of both sides of the war. Voldemort himself had targeted her often when he had the opportunity, sensing a worthy target and a huge threat, and she had avoided him like the plague; she knew that, while she might have given him one of the best fights of his life, she would not be able to defeat the Dark Lord single-handedly. But everyone else was fair game, and while she had her fair share of scars, she had not been beaten yet.

And yet, she was just a Mudblood. Irony at its best.

However, in this time, in this place, surrounded by people she did not trust and faces she did not know, she had a gut feeling that it would not do for them to know of her blood status. There was so much that she still didn't know, and she needed to get her bearings before she played. She wiggled the fingers on her right hand, and managed to put a passable glamour charm on the inside of her left arm just in time for him to pull it away from her chest. The scar appeared fuzzy and indistinct.

She bit down on her already swollen lip (Selwyn had caught her by surprise when he'd slapped her hard across the face, forgoing magic to physically assault her) as her healer's large, cool hands cradled her shattered wrist. She could not help the snarl of a foul curse word that came, unbidden, to her lips.

The boy's head shot up as she uttered a pain-filled "fuck," quietly but loud enough for him to hear. The smirk that curved his lips was one of shocked, but not necessarily disapproving, amusement.

"Hurts, does it?" he said smartly, grinning, and she sent him a loathing glare that would instantly silence most men. However, apparently this man was not "most men," and he just grinned wider, waving his wand over her wrist to assess the damage.

"What's your name?" he asked. His tone, just slightly teasing before, had slipped into a sort of politeness that she supposed would charm most people; but Hermione Granger was not "most people." His expression was not unkind, but there was a sort of distance about it that implied that he didn't really care as much as he wanted people to believe he did. And those eyes were still bitterly cold.

"Hermione." She noticed a glint of silver on the lapel of his jacket, hidden partially by his robe. "And yours?" she asked in return, adopting a similar expression of polite disinterest that she hoped, somewhat childishly, would irritate him.

He shifted, and she saw that the metallic glint on his lapel came from a shiny silver and green Head Boy badge. She cocked her head, curious, rifling through her memories, jumping back to everything she had ever read on the school year of 1944-1945. She froze, suddenly, and her eyes travelled from his proud badge to the eyes that she found so entrancing.

"Tom," he said, one eyebrow lifting imperiously. He stuck out a hand for her to shake. "Tom Riddle."

For the second time that day, Hermione fainted.