"Ms. Granger, if you cannot stay awake in my class, then do not waste my time," Professor Snape snapped. Hermione leapt in her chair as his voice jolted her from a strange half-sleep at her station.

"I apologize. May I be excused for a moment?" she asked, shaking the haze from her mind.

"You may leave and not come back."

"You okay?" Harry mouthed to her. She nodded, biting back a grimace as she avoided Draco's concerned eyes on her as she crossed the room.

She entered the empty hallway with her book bag poorly closed. She rubbed her hands up and down her face, some illogical part of her body thinking she could put a band-aid on her sleep deprivation with the friction. She had grown intimately familiar with the strange, cool tingles accompanying a night without sleep. The waves of brain fog and bleary vision were simple truths of her existence, as fundamental as her need for food or water.

She pulled her hair off her neck into an off-centered ponytail as her shuffled her unconsciously toward Gryffindor tower. Fine, she conceded to her body. Just a couple of hours. She needed to sleep, or she would be useless when she and Draco met up to research that night.

A figure stood in the center of the hallway, stopping Hermione in her tracks. He was taller than her, but shorter than Ron, wearing jet black robes and a disturbing mask on his face. A voice rang clear through Hermione's mind, the thought pushing through her exhaustion: Harry's whimpering voice the night of Cedric's death. And they had these masks... like silver faces with slits around the eyes.

Bolts of panic slithered down her limbs. A Death Eater in Hogwarts.

"I don't know how you got in here, but you need to leave," she said loudly, her voice surprisingly clear.

The Death Eater walked toward her slowly, and Hermione drew her wand before she considered running.

He was only a few metres from her when he pulled the mask off.

"Do you really mean that?" he asked.

She should have been relieved to see him. Every time she had seen him for months now, the sight of Draco's face brought her relief and warmth beyond what she could have imagined for herself. But there was something in his eyes now, something that kept her fear planted firmly where it was.

"Draco?" she whispered. "Why are you wearing that?"

"Oh, this?" he asked, looking down at his robes as if he only registered then that he wore them. "It's the uniform, Granger, I didn't get much choice. At least the colour is timeless," he shrugged.

"O- okay, so you're under cover. He said you had to wear it for an assignment, but now you're looking for me. And we're going to find a- a way for you to get out of it, like the other one," she stumbled, taking a step back from him. Draco shook his head impatiently.

"I told you," he said, rolling his sleeves back so the tip of his mark was exposed beneath the hem of his sleeve. "Your efforts were fruitless. The attempt would have been admirable, I suppose, if it hadn't been such a waste of my time."

"I'm dreaming," Hermione said, shaking her head.

"No," he corrected. "This is real. This is very real."

Draco suddenly morphed seamlessly into an exact replica of herself. Every detail, down to each disheveled ruffle of her clothing, stood as a mirror in front of her.

"You know the worst part of our inevitable failure?" Mirror Hermione asked in a voice so cold she had never heard it on herself. "All that regret coming for us. All that time wasted trying to find some solution. 'Oh, Draco, please! Please don't give up! We'll find a way! We'll find a way!'" she mocked cruelly. "Such a little liar, aren't we?"

Hermione tried to stun her replica, but despite the jet of red connecting with its target, the other Hermione did not even blink. She only turned back into Draco, still standing in his Death Eater robes, the mask in his hand. He stepped closer to her.

"I just wanted to embrace our last weeks," he plead, reaching out toward her face. She flinched slightly as his fingertips grazed her cheekbone. "I just wanted to see you smile again, like you did in the beginning, before I told you anything. I just want to touch you while I still can. Why couldn't you give me that to hold onto? Selfish, selfish little Granger."

Hermione haplessly tried to stun him again but found him to be just as impervious as her mirror. Draco yet again morphed into herself.

"Never could raise our head from the books," the other Hermione sighed. "Never could stop brainstorming, never could shut up about how to get him out... amputate the arm, run, get Dumbledore, escape to some distant Muggle country. Like Voldemort wouldn't find us. And we know he would! Yet here we are. Half-collapsing, pushing him away when he tries to hold us so we can find a miracle," the other Hermione sneered at the last word in a fashion that reminded Hermione of Draco only a year ago. "And then," other Hermione continued, "we'll have the nerve to cry our eyes out about not having any photographs with him! No sweet love notes, no mementos... Nothing to remember our first love but a new argument every day as you decide what's best again."

Hermione dropped to her knees, her exhausted legs caving beneath her.

"I'm trying to save him," she said.

The other Hermione turned back into Draco. He dropped to his knees in front of her, placing his mask gently on the ground.

"And while you are so busy trying to save me, all I will carry of you are memories of you forcing me to whisper sweet little platitudes in your ear about hope. About my non-existent faith in you. Platitudes I am too smart to believe. Isn't that what you love about me, darling?"

Hermione shook her head, avoiding his gaze.

"You're not real. He believes we'll find a way."

Draco sighed and grabbed her face, pulling her to look at him.

"I really, really don't, Granger. But what's a man to do when you look at him like that?"

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut, and Draco released her face with force, pushing her backward. She felt her head collide with the ground, but she made no effort to move as he stood in front of her.

"When you really think about it, you're taking the last few weekends I even have away from me as I placate your delusions! How fair is that?" Draco asked, pacing with a new bout of righteous anger.

Hermione felt hot tears pooling onto the ground beneath her. Draco spotted it instantaneously, pulling her to her feet by her arm. He steadied her with a fierce, tight grip on each of her arms.

"Now, now. Don't cry," he whispered, shushing her. He leaned in and planted a hard, fleeting kiss to her lips. "It will be over soon. One day... one slip, and he pulls you from my memories and forces me to kill you," he said in a soft, comforting voice.

Hermione glared at him.

"I'd rather it be him anyway," she said coldly.

"I know, love. And you're not afraid of that anyway, are you? Irrational little thing," he smiled. "Most people fear death, and the deepest of those fears are simply the most creatively horrifying way to bring about that death that their imagination can conjure. But you... no. You fear failing me. And you know what's funny about your fear and the typical fear? You failing me is just as inevitable as death. It is only time. In fact, yours less than most," he taunted her. As he breathed in her face, Hermione realized that while he looked like Draco, he did not smell like him.

"Stop," she plead.

"Of course, after I kill you, I'll chain myself to a boulder at the bottom of the lake. What a romantic tragedy we are-,"

"Riddikulus."

Before her eyes, Draco slipped to the ground, letting her go from his iron grip all at once. Hermione fell back onto the ground only to see that his shoes had turned to banana peels, and he had fallen before disappearing altogether.

"Your missing boggart, Professor."

Hermione turned around to find Draco with his wand drawn, whisking the Boggart into a mystical cage at the end of Professor Snape's wand. Harry and Ron stood beside him, staring at her with wide, betrayed eyes.

"Oh," she whispered before resting her temple back to the cool ground. Her exhaustion and emotional battery left her only just able to register that she had just exposed her relationship with Draco and his ties to Voldemort in one embarrassing display a third year could fix. A third year, however, who knew what they were looking at. A third year who maybe had slept in the last five days.

"Come here."

She felt Draco's arms lift her to his chest. She looked back again to see Harry's arm holding Ron back from rushing toward her. She rested her head against Draco's chest as he started walking her toward the dungeons.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Don't be."