Hermione took the bus.
Even with Boxing Day's reduced holiday public transport service, it wasn't very far and it wasn't very difficult to make it through London from the Grangers' house to Grimmauld Place. While her parents were still in bed, she wrote them a note saying she was meeting friends for the day, and then slipped out into the blue lit morning.
Christmas had been quiet. Her aunts didn't overstay their welcomes, leaving her to pass most of the holiday with just her parents, who were a little weary but, content to be through with all their festive cooking, eating, and drinking. Hermione had hoped Snape would come back to tell her exactly what had happened to prompt Draco to move from Malfoy Manor to an unplottable former safehouse, but no news came. Imagining the possibilities was making her mad. Uneasy silence - it was always this way when it came to the Order.
She'd done what she could to keep communication flowing on her own, sending her patronus streaming from her upstairs bedroom window, flickering out over London like Aurora Borealis, but quickly vanishing from sight in the light pollution of the city. Patronuses were mystical, romantic means of expression but they didn't send receipts. She had no idea if Draco had received her message or not. For all she knew, he might have been moved on to somewhere else already.
It was not to be borne.
She stepped off the bus in Islington, onto pavement still glittering with morning frost, and in the sleepy, early holiday morning, 12 Grimmauld Place revealed itself to her. It was shabby as ever but sadder, tragic and lifeless now Sirius was gone.
With great care, her wand drawn, she passed through the door, already flinching against the wave of profanity she knew to expect to come crashing out of Walburga Black's portrait at the sight of her. Sure enough…
"Back again, is she? Filthy mudblood, bold as you please, here in our hall. Putrid scum - shameless, showing her face here after luring our Sirius to his death. Disgusting - "
It had never been like this before. This abuse was beyond name-calling and noise. This was an attack with a truly formidable weapon: Hermione's own grief, not baseless prejudice, something real. She hadn't expected the filthy old portrait to have it in it. Hermione covered her ears with her hands, bowed her head, and clipped down the hall, eager to get behind the drawing room door and slam it.
She didn't hear Draco half running, half sliding down the stairs. Still in the hall, he caught her in his arms and spun the both of them around to face the portrait. "Aunt Walburga, aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
The portrait snarled. "Do not touch her."
"I will. And you ought to have some manners, Aunt Walburga. A lady of your calibre speaking to my guest like this - it's beneath you. I won't abide it."
She shrieked. "My darling boy, don't you know what she is?"
"Yes. And I thought we understood one another, Aunt Walburga, after all our talks these past few days. I'm disappointed in you. I won't be able to sit and visit with you anymore if you're going to curse and swear at my guests, and I do mean all of my guests. Please, Auntie."
The face in the portrait turned away, vanishing behind the heavy frame with the sound of bitter weeping.
Once she was gone, Draco looked down at Hermione, still held against him in his arms, staring wonderingly up at him as she had been since the moment he appeared.
"It's you," she said, her arms around his neck, pulling his face to hers. She kissed him - his mouth first, deep and warm, and then the rest of his face, item by item, cheeks, nose, eyelids, forehead, as he tried to speak.
"You found me," he said, walking her backwards into the drawing room. "It's like a miracle."
She let herself be led, eyes barely open as she continued to kiss his face. "No, it's just a tip from Snape and the Muggle bus system."
He kicked the door closed to keep Kreacher from spying, lifted her into his arms and carried her to the sofa, sitting her down across his lap. She left off kissing him and tucked her face into the crook of his neck, dragging in a deep breath full of the scent of his skin. He reached into her hair, caressing her face, and that was when she noticed the scabbed cuts on his palm. She took his hand in hers, kissed it gently.
"What's this?"
"Cut it on some broken glass."
"Accidentally?"
He shrugged. "I suppose."
She sighed, reaching for her bag and the dittany she'd brought with her just in case.
"Draco, what happened at home that was so bad you couldn't stay there for even a day? Is your mother - "
"She's unhurt," he said, hissing a little as the medicine seeped into his skin. "Still recovering from her first visit to Azkaban, still hosting You-know-who, but she's not in any immediate danger. Neither am I, really. He's angry with me, but he still finds me useful enough to keep alive."
Hermione set her medicine aside, her fingers combing through his hair. "Tell me what happened."
He told her their charm was more than a nuisance for the Dark Lord. It was an obsession, and he was now hunting Hermione as a means of getting rid of it.
"The three of us are linked in some kind of twisted magical triad. When you summon the charm, it hurts him. And when he summons the charm," he squeezed both of her hands in his. "Hermione, what happens to you when he does it?"
She swallowed. "That's what he must have been doing when I fainted in our kitchen the same night you went home. I wasn't damaged, but it did lose consciousness."
Draco hugged her hard against himself. "You weren't damaged because he barely got it to flare. If he uncovered it fully, if he kept it visible for longer - my stars, Hermione, what could he do to you?"
She cradled his head in her arms, pressing kisses against his hair. "He can't use it to kill me in a sneak attack. I'm almost sure of that," she said. "If it is like Harry's mother's spell - and I do believe it is, no matter what Snape says - then ultimately, its protection reaches full power only through a willing sacrifice. If I don't know you're in danger, I can't use my will to sacrifice myself for you."
He sat up straight. "Snape admitted it's the same. That's not good. You have to promise me you'll never do that. Don't sacrifice yourself for me. I wouldn't have let you mark me if I knew it might put you in a position to have to choose between my life and your own."
She rose to her knees, straddling his lap but keeping herself too high to press her pelvis into his. She only wanted to look him in the eyes, to press their foreheads together as she said, "We won't let it come to that, Draco. We're going to find another way out."
"You haven't promised."
"No, and I won't."
"Hermione - "
She hushed him with a kiss, leaning into him, until the softness of her chest against his clavicle, the pull of his hands against her hips, became too much, the racing of his pulse building to a throbbing, deep and demanding, and he broke away with a moan, saying only, "The monks."
She understood and shifted to sit beside him, draping his arm around her shoulders.
Draco sat regaining his composure, and calculating. "I never seem to be hurt by the charm. You're not hurt when you summon it yourself. But he is hurt every time, whether it's him who summons the charm or not. He wouldn't let me see his wand hand last time. It must have been bad."
She hummed, agreeing. "It's like our charm is an immune system and he's a virus it fights to ward off."
Draco looked down at her, puzzled.
"Immune system," she repeated. "It's a Muggle interpretation of human physiology - how the body reacts to disease. My parents deal only with teeth but they're still scientists. They have lots of books on the body and I've read them all."
"Teeth?"
"Yes, have you seen your aunt's teeth? She could use a good afternoon or two at a dental surgery."
Draco still looked confused. "Don't worry about teeth," she said. "What I'm saying is, if we can get close to the Dark Lord and I summon the charm myself, maybe we can - end this."
Draco sat up, alarmed, withdrawing his arm. "End what? The entire Death Eater uprising?"
She blinked. "Well, why not?"
"Hermione, even when Potter's mother died, it still just knocked the Dark Lord back for a decade. He wasn't destroyed for long. It didn't truly end anything. Just ask Potter."
She gaped at him. "I don't have to ask him, I've been there - "
"I know. I'm sorry. I don't mean to - "
"Look," she said, "Dumbledore is working on a solution right now. He's got Harry helping, though Harry's still not exactly sure with what. They'll work it out. They will, with a bit more time. Time we might be able to buy for them, or somehow make it easier for them, more peaceful, more likely to succeed. At the very least, we could get Voldemort out of your house, for stars' sake."
Draco took both of her hands in his. "You are a darling to want to rescue me. But you don't know what he's like, face to face. Every time he's come for Potter, you haven't been around or alert for it. I'm not," he hurried, "I'm not trying to discount your contributions to keeping Potter alive through all of it but - when you talk about confronting the Dark Lord, getting in range to see if you can seriously wound him with your charm, you don't understand what a terrifying prospect that truly is."
His hands were shaking, something he didn't realize until she raised them in front of them to kiss them. As he talked about the Dark Lord, he had become cold, his skin slick, feeling sick to his stomach, breathless. Seeing him this way was frightening for her, so frightening she stopped arguing and called for Kreacher to bring some tea. They would speak again about using the charm against the Dark Lord, in spite of danger and trauma. But not today.
She stood up from the sofa and eased Draco onto his back on the musty cushions. Kneeling on the rug beside him, she smoothed his hair from his forehead.
Kreacher came and went, muttering and scowling.
"What happened, Draco?" she said, pressing the teacup into his hand. "You still haven't told me everything. When he took you and summoned the charm - what else did he do?"
He set the tea back down on the table, dropped his arm over his eyes, and told her about his short stay at Malfoy Manor - the hysteria of his mother, his violation by legilimens, being questioned and forced to take veritaserm, the Dark Lord's threats, the taunting about giving his mother to Snape, talking about his father like an animal in a zoo, and the Fidelius spell that had enraged him enough to attack Draco with his wand before throwing him onto the glass. He held back nothing but an explanation of the cabinet. That he would save for when they were back at Hogwarts, and he could show her.
A tear fell from the corner of his eye as he came to the end. She rose to her knees and kissed it without a word, climbing onto the sofa to nestle beside him, the full length of her body pressed against his, enfolded in his arms. "Have you been sleeping well since you came here?" she asked first.
He scoffed. "Not at all, That's when I found the time to make friends with Aunt Walburga's portrait."
Hermione breathed a small laugh. "I've never seen anyone talk to it the way you do. Last time I was here, there was just a lot of hollering back at her and throwing a tarpaulin over the canvass."
"Understandable. It's just a portrait, after all. It can't learn. But we can appeal to the higher virtues of its nature," he said, the final word fading into a yawn. His shaking had stopped, but it left him more exhausted than ever.
She smiled against his shirt. "Shall I lie here and adore you while you sleep?"
He held her tighter. "As long as you don't leave yet, do whatever you like. But it would be nicer for me if you got some sleep too."
"I'm too happy to sleep. Isn't that awful? In spite of everything you've been through over the last few days, I'm still foolishly happy just to be with you. I'll gladly lie here for hours. I even brought some books."
He laughed with closed lips against her forehead. "Of course you did. Oh, and when Kreacher comes in, tell him Young Master Black forbids him to tell anyone you've been here."
She smirked. "His real master is Harry, you know."
"We all know that. But Aunt Walburga is enjoying the play acting and it protects you so let it go, yeah?"
She wondered if she had ever heard Grimmauld Place go as silent as it did when Draco closed his eyes beside her on the sofa. She had never been here without a crowd to meet, plot, laugh, and eat with, without the portrait screeching, or Kreacher's hateful whinging. There was none of that today, in the white winter light in the drawing room. All she could hear at the moment was Draco's breathing.
She pulled a blanket from the back of the sofa and tucked it around them. "Thank you," she said softly, not sure he was still awake.
"Hm?"
She propped herself on one elbow to look at his face, his eyes closed, finally restful. "Draco, you stood up to the thing you fear most because it threatened me. You risked everything. Don't do it again. But understand that I love you more than ever for it."
She bent to kiss him. He was sleepy and warm but still sweetly responsive, too tired to cause much trouble even as she curled a leg over his, and pulling herself as close to him as she could get. As she settled back down onto the cushions, his arms closed around her again.
He breathed into her hair. "Worth it."
In the evening, she rode the bus back to her parents' house.
"Nice day with friends?" Ann asked somewhat archly as Hermione let herself back into the house.
"Yes. Quiet and relaxing."
"Who did you see?" Ann probed.
Hermione shrugged. "Oh, you know. Only Devon Musgroves."
Ann raised an eyebrow. "Draco Malfoy? Indeed. Well don't book anything for tomorrow," she said. "You'll be seeing the doctor for that prescription."