A/N: And now... We mess with Draco a little. hehe. (Worry not, aside from a few chapters, there will be no further Dramione.)

Fall of The Double Sided Git:

1998...

Like he'd been commanded to, Draco returned to the battle, landing just by the front doors of the castle. The huge oak doors weren't doing much in the way of preventing entrance anymore, since the left one has hanging cockeyed off its bottom hinge and the right one was lying on the ground a few metres away in pieces of wooden debris like so much driftwood. There was a huge chunk of brick missing from the right side of the doorframe, indicating that whatever curse or explosion that had taken out the doors had been a very powerful one.

Draco hardly had to time to gawk, though, since he'd landed in the midst of a battle between a masked Death Eater he was ninety-nine percent certain was his Aunt Bellatrix and a tall redhead that could only be a Weasley. As he dove to the side to avoid a flashing red curse, Draco was fairly certain it was one of the twins, just don't ask him which one.

Weasley used the hanging door as a shield, which was fortuitous for him, but not so much for the door as it too exploded into flying shrapnel.

Fuck! Draco just managed to cast a shield before he was struck by flying bits of oak door. Turning, he snarled at his aunt, "Watch it!" and for the sake of appearances, he threw a, "Confringo!" at Weasley that he was fairly confident would bounce off of his shield.

Yep. Right again. I'm good.

Aren't you always?

Not lately, it seems.

Weasley gave a convincing scream and then had the audacity to wink at Draco. The silver blond haired boy rolled his eyes and ran on, leaving Weasley to it.

Playing both sides of the war like his Uncle Severus would have almost been fun, if it weren't for the dead seriousness of the curses being thrown between both factions of the battle, which he had to dodge and shield like mad from. (Weasley and Aunt Bella weren't the only people in the courtyard and Entrance Hall by a nautical mile.)

The cackling laughter coming from the Death Eater behind Draco confirmed her identity as she advanced in Weasley's direction, intent on checking on the state of her prey. Draco didn't stick around to see how it went, because he had his own mission in mind. His last glimpse of Weasley as he dashed towards the marble staircase was of the young man waiting in ambush behind the doorway for Bellatrix.

Draco wasn't actually sure who he was rooting for. His aunt was an evil bitch, but she was still his aunt. (Family loyalty and all that.)

As he climbed the stairs two at a time, Draco ran on adrenaline, happily allowing it to mask some of the pain in his leg from Nagini's bite. He'd apparate again, but he wasn't sure what wards were still up around his destination and didn't want to end up bouncing off them and ending up only-Merlin-knew-where. Draco was completing the second part of his cursed master's command; to make himself useful.

Except, Voldemort would never approve of the task Draco had set himself.

Draco was looking for something very sharp and very lethal with which to kill that twice damned snake. His heart was filled with sorrow and vengeance and he was determined that the snake was going to die for killing the one person in the entire world that actually understood Draco and fully supported him. I'm going to miss you, Uncle Sev.

Draco passed suits of armour with axes and swords in hand with barely a glance. They weren't what he needed. To get through the magical protection on Nagini, Draco needed something stronger. Something just as magical.

He needed the Sword of Gryffindor.

And that was in the Headmaster's office. He'd seen it there the last time he visited Uncle Sev.

There's only about a thousand steps between me and there.

Not a problem.

Really.

My leg isn't bothering me at all.

Draco was silently laughing at his own morbid humour when he suddenly gasped and staggered into the nearest stone wall for support. He clutched his forearm as it burned like the fires of hell and vertigo assaulted him for what felt like an eternity.

When the dizziness finally passed, he stayed in place with his shoulder against the wall and his head down while he panted in the aftermath of agony. What the fucking hell was that? That was way too intense for a summoning.

The sound of running footsteps heralded the arrival of large black shoes in Draco's line of sight.

"Hey, Draco, are you all right? You look a little…"

What? Scorched? Bloody? Nauseous? Exhausted? In a world of pain? About two shakes of a wand from going barmy from the stress?

You must be imagining things.

I'm still the best looking thing in this old pile of rocks.

Hiding a grimace, Draco straightened up to his full height, raising his eyes as he did so. He nearly sneered out of habit at the tall, dirty blond haired boy, wearing a patterned jumper Draco would never be caught dead in, but the gleaming silver and bejeweled sword in Neville's hand stopped him. How the fuck did he get that?

Does it really matter?

"Of course I'm all right, Longbottom, I'm just resting here because I was waiting for you."

Neville gave him a skeptical look that Draco didn't blame him one iota for. He was talking out of his arse, after all. "You were?"

Draco nodded firmly. "I was. Okay, maybe not you specifically, but a Gryffindor of any sort. I need that sword to do something important and something tells me it will work much better if a Gryffindor is wielding it."

Neville blinked at him for a few stupid looking seconds before he shrugged. "Okay. What are we doing?"

Merlin, he's a trusting idiot. Hasn't Potter told him that I'm evil and shouldn't be trusted? Good thing I'm not actually one of the bad guys. Most of the time.

"We're going to kill a snake," Draco said with a confident toss of his head.

Neville's face lit up. "Blimey, Malfoy. That's what I'm doing anyway. Harry told me about it and I thought of the sword and…"

Draco rolled his eyes and grabbed Neville's sleeve. "Whatever." Grasping the other boy's arm firmly, he spun them into an Apparition and sent them back to the grass near Hagrid's hut.

Neville stumbled out of Draco's hold when they landed, clearly holding back the urge to vomit out of willpower alone, looking rather green. Draco hid his own dizziness, still not fully recovered from whatever that episode was a few minutes ago, and the blood trickling down into his shoe had to be affecting him as well. I should probably do something about that.

"Merlin's pants, Draco, a little warning," Neville gasped out.

Draco just smirked at him. Then he looked around himself and found his eyes opening wide.

What in the hell has been going on here?

This was not what Draco was expecting.

It was worse.

And better.

Just up the hill from them, Nagini was swallowing someone, only their shoes still visible, and their body making a huge lump inside the snake's scaly form. Ugh. I did not need to see that yet again.

Judging by the sad state of the trainers on the person's feet, Draco was betting the latest victim of Nagini's appetite was Ronald Weasley.

With a grimace, he looked down the hill and saw Voldemort, Potter, and a half dressed Greyback all lying prone on the ground, looking quite dead.

Holy fuck! No wonder my mark went berserk! Voldemort is dead! I do believe a dignified happy dance may be in order when next I'm alone.

Fuck that. I'll probably do a jig on his grave. I can't believe the bastard's actually dead.

And so was Harry and Greyback.

The first inspired a tinge of remorse, but not much; the over-glorified Harry Potter had never been his favourite person.

The second was cause for another little celebration; the wizard-turned-werewolf disgusted and scared the piss out of him. Draco had always had the feeling that Greyback would happily eat him for breakfast if the Dark Lord had allowed it. After ripping his arse apart first, of course; the monster wasn't picky as to who he buggered as long as the rear end was attached to someone under the age of twenty, and the younger, the better.

Meanwhile, Neville had been doing his own gawking. And when he spotted Potter, of course he let out pathetic, "Harry, Oh Merlin, Harry."

Draco grabbed his sleeve again to stop him from running down the hill and pointed him upwards with a little shake of a set of shoulders that might be broader than Draco's. That's just not fair. "You can cry over Potter later. First, you need to go kill that snake, you hear me?"

Neville stared at him with wide, teary eyes, but finally nodded.

"Good. Now, I'm going to go up there first and will distract her. You come up after me and do your best impression of a Slytherin and sneak up on her then cut off her head, okay?"

Neville just stared.

Draco shook him again. Come on, Longbottom, grow a pair! "Okay?"

Neville sucked in a big gulp of air. "Okay."

"Good. Let's do this."

Hermione gently closed Snape's eyes when the last glimmer of life had left them and they were staring sightlessly past her shoulder. What a waste of a brilliant man. He had so much more to offer this world and so much life left to live. It would have been nice to get to know him for real.

Maybe I can do that if the Time-Turner idea works. The hard part will be convincing him to listen to a teenager.

She sighed as she rose to her feet on unsteady legs, her knees aching from being pressed against the hard wood floor.

Now what?

Rubbing her aching head, woozy from stress, blood loss, shock, hunger, and probably dehydration, Hermione forced herself to think.

First, find my wand.

Second, fix or change my clothes.

Third, find the Time-Turner.

No. I take it back. Third should be take care of myself at least a little or I'll pass out before I even get to the Time-Turner.

And finally, fifth, go back in time and somehow fix all this without causing any radical paradoxes. Easy.

Grimacing at what would undoubtedly be anything but easy, Hermione carefully stepped past Professor Snape's body and out into the bright sunlight of early morning.

She was just in time to watch, in a very surprised fashion, Draco (his silver blond hair was unmistakable) and Neville, who had the Sword of Gryffindor clutched tightly in his large hand (she recognized the jumper) go up the hill one at a time.

Draco walked around to the front of a very fat Nagini, apparently taunting the snake as it tried to lunge at him, but the weight of her dinner was holding her back from moving quickly. Merlin, he's braver than I thought. Even if Nagini is slower than normal, that's still a very risky move.

And there goes Neville. Ohhhhh. Be careful!

Her hand came up to cover her gasp as Neville snuck up behind the distracted snake, and then with a lunge, he swung the sword as hard as he could, beheading the snake.

The next instant, she exploded into millions of particles of black dust, completely covering Neville and Draco, and leaving the body of Ron exposed to the world once more. Oh, god.

And then Draco collapsed like he'd been shot through the heart.

Oh, Merlin! Draco! What happened to him? Was it the venom? Has he had a delayed reaction to the anti-venom? Blood loss? What?

Hermione was running up the hill before she even knew her feet had started moving. She didn't even particularly like Draco, but Hermione had watched enough people die lately that she didn't want to add one more if she could help it.

Holding her hand behind her as she ran, she called, "Accio Wand!" in the most commanding, determined voice she could muster, not sure where her wand had ended up.

A few seconds later, a familiar wand of patterned vine wood landed in her waiting fingers, and she clutched it gladly. It always felt like a piece of herself was missing when she didn't have it. And she was tired, and depleted enough from fighting and running all over creation all night, that doing wandless magic, such as fixing her clothes, just seemed like an extravagant use of whatever energy she had left.

Turns out she had a lot more magical energy left than she thought, because only a step later, another wand hit her hand, and then three more. And then a sixth and seventh came flying down the hill, aiming right for her.

Hermione stumbled to a halt and gawked at the wands now scattered around her. Holy crap! Did I do that? How is that even possible? Don't these wands have allegiances to their owners? Or does death and poor magic become negated by superior magic?

Leaving that question for another day for further study, she bent and gathered up all the wands and then jogged the rest of the way to Neville who was gaping at her with the biggest eyes she'd ever seen. Is it the crazy wand trick, or the fact that I'm ninety-five percent naked?

I'm betting naked.

Deciding it was best not to know for sure, Hermione simply handed Neville his cherry wood wand back with a crooked half smile. "Sorry. I didn't do that on purpose."

"Blimey, Hermione, I didn't think you had. That was bloody brilliant, though. It flew right out of my pocket."

Hermione didn't know what to say to that, so she just shrugged once, and then knelt on the ground beside Draco, putting all of the extra wands down beside her. Neville followed her and hovered above.

They were both studiously not looking at the black dust covered body of Ron, looking unnaturally stiff and gruesome.

She was happy to see that Draco's chest was still rising and falling with a normal pattern of respiration; so much more reassuring than the too few and far between breaths that Snape had been taking.

Assuming it was blood loss that had taken Draco down, Hermione murmured a quick, "Diffindo," to part the seams of his black trouser leg up past the point where the trail of sticky blood started near the inside of his thigh. It was high enough that she was given a view of the hem of his silver silk boxer shorts. She also got an eyeful of the strong looking muscles in his thigh and calf all covered in sticky red blood.

At the top of the trail of blood were two deep and gory looking fang punctures. Nagini sure isn't nice about it, is she?

Neville leaned over from the other side, gawking at the wounds. "Merlin. The snake got him?"

She nodded as she thought, "Scourgify," to clean the blood off his leg, trousers, and sock. "Yeah, earlier. Snape had anti-venom, though, so Malfoy should be okay." Focusing on the wounds, she thought, "Episkey," hoping the minor healing spell would be enough to close them. She then added, "Reparifors," in case there were any lingering paralytic effects from Nagini's magically enhanced venom. Even if there weren't, it couldn't hurt him and would be useful for any burns he may have received from the fiendfyre. (The black marks of fire's ash all over him indicated he'd been even closer than she had to being toasted alive.)

Hermione was pleased to see the deep punctures start to close in. Transferring her wand to her left hand for the moment, she dug into the pocket of her tattered jean remnants for the shrunken beaded handbag that contained all of her worldly possessions. Thank Merlin that didn't fall out. Returning the small purse to its usual size, she put her hand in, and pulled out a vial a moment later after commanding the essence of dittany into it.

A drop of the precious liquid was placed very carefully in each of the healing punctures, causing a bit of a sizzle as new skin started forming immediately. Thank Circe.

Hermione then applied the dropper to her tongue, allowing three drops to fall. She swallowed the bitter liquid as she screwed the vial closed and could feel the multiple cuts and scratches already starting to heal all over her body. A quick and silent 'episkey,' with her wand pointed at herself gave the healing another nudge. She then put the vial away and then cast a quick spell. Hermione looped the (very recently) lengthened rope drawstrings of her purse over her head and shoulder so it sat diagonally across her body.

She almost gave in to the urge to transfigure it into something decidedly larger just so it covered more of her skin, but then Draco twitched and she turned her focus back to him, watching anxiously for more signs of life.

Draco sucked in a lungful of extra air as his eyes popped open. His leg was tingling, his left arm was strangely numb, he was flat out on the cold dewy grass, and there was a half naked wood nymph with a nimbus of insane hair kneeling above him.

What in the name of Merlin is going on now?

Fuck. Is that Granger? It must be Granger. Who else has hair like that? Did Greyback do that to her clothes? Of course he did. I hope she got away before he hurt her too much. She looks really pretty with the sun shining on her like that. And blimey, that's a lot of skin showing. It looks very lickable under the blood and dirt. I sure would like a taste of all that. How come I never tried to be nicer to her? Oh, yeah, the whole muggle-born thing. Maybe Father would overlook that now that she's practically a hero. She's smart, and beautiful, and very powerful. Sounds like an acceptable bloodline to me. But geez, girl. Eat some food. There are way too many bones sticking out of your body.

Oh. Maybe she's starving because she's been on the run for most of the year. Uncle Sev said the Ambitious Trio had been camping in the woods to avoid getting caught. Who knows what they had to eat? Questionable mushrooms? Tree bark? Seaweed? Makes the terrible food here actually sound appealing.

Okay. Not really.

But still. We have got to get some groceries in that girl. I wouldn't mind taking a shot at winning her over to Team Draco, but I like my females to have a little more cushion between the skin and the bones.

Hermione gasped when Draco suddenly sat up, tired of lying on the cold ground and contemplating. "Draco! You're awake!"

No shit. And you're delightfully naked. What of it?

She scooted back a bit, wishing she was wearing a whole lot more clothes as his grey eyes gave her a once over. Twice. "Are you feeling all right? You passed out."

I gathered as much. Draco dragged his eyes off her bare skin before his trousers decided to shrink. Speaking of which, they caught his attention as he looked down at his scrubbed nearly raw leg and saw the nearly healed punctures. "Yeah. I'm okay. Thanks for fixing me, Granger."

"You're welcome," Hermione responded with graciously. She ran her wand down the length of his leg and his trousers repaired themselves in mere moments.

Draco was impressed with the nonverbal magic. "What happened to me?"

Hermione shrugged, now hugging her arms across her middle to cover herself up a bit. "Don't know. I was hoping you could tell me. I don't think you lost enough blood to pass out and you seem perfectly all right now."

Draco frowned, thinking, as he rose to his feet, then offered her a gentlemanly hand as well.

Hermione raised a rather shocked brow at the elegant hand (that she was pretty sure was better taken care of than hers), considering he'd never offered to help her with anything in the entire six plus years that she'd known him, but then took it and let him pull her up.

What did happen to me? Not the snake bite, I was feeling decent enough before Nagini went poof. Merlin, Hermione hardly weighs anything. I have brooms with more heft to them. I wonder if it has to do with killing the last horcrux? The timing certainly fits.

Hermione and Neville watched in fascinated interest as Draco suddenly shrugged out of his black robe and tossed it at her, and then unfastened the buttons on the left cuff of his white dress shirt and pushed up the sleeve. All three of them gawked at the pale, pinkish silver, barely visible brand of the Dark Mark. The skull and snake looked like an old scar.

"He's really gone," Draco whispered in the most relieved tone Hermione had ever heard. "Thank Circe. Nagini was the last connection. The whiplash of released power must have knocked me out."

Did all the other Death Eaters faint too? That would have brought the battle to a quick ending. I hope the others had the presence of mind to tie them up and take their wands.

Hermione had already concluded that Draco was a Death Eater, albeit a reluctant one, but Neville hadn't a clue, until suddenly he did. He backed up quickly, nearly stumbling over Ron's body, a look of horror on his face as he stared at Draco. "You're… You're a Death Eater. How could you?"

Draco sighed as he did up his sleeve again. "Former Death Eater, thank you very much. And never by choice."

"How can it not be by choice?" Neville demanded.

Draco shot him an exasperated look. "He would have killed my mother if I hadn't. After letting everyone who was inclined have a go at her first. That a good enough reason for you?"

Neville gulped. "Yeah. That's good enough. I'm sorry."

Surprised at the apology, Draco shrugged. "It's fine. I'm just glad all this is over."

Hermione tried to hand Draco back his robe, but he shook his head. "Keep it. You seriously need it more than I do."

Now Hermione was the surprised one. Wow, Draco actually has a nice bone in his body. Who knew? "Thanks." She shrugged into the fine, if somewhat smoky smelling material with undertones of an pleasant spice that she realized must be Draco's scent. She was grateful for the instant warmth, not realizing until that moment that she'd been shivering. Then she cast a quick spell to shorten it so she didn't trip on the extra four inches of material at the bottom. She could have pulled her own robe out of her little purse, but the thought of wearing Draco's robe was just too much to pass up. Not that she fancied him or anything, but she wanted to bask in the manifestation of his first ever known act of generosity. It might even be worth it to put a sign on the back that said, 'Draco Lent Me This'.

Hermione nearly giggled at the imaginary reactions before she remembered the still grim situation she found herself in.

Her best friends were dead.

It didn't get any more depressing than that.

A/N: I understand that the word 'vial' is generally spelt as 'phial' in the Harry Potter universe, but I practically flinch every time I read it because I have issues with a ph (f) sound replacing a v sound, so I just can't make myself write it. I hope you all understand and don't hate me for it. :D