A/N: Hey, everyone! Sorry it was a day later than expected. I was intending to write this all out Saturday night, but I was suddenly IM'd by an old summer fling of mine I hadn't heard from in years and we ended up talking far into the night. Sigh If parts of this chapter seem rather sappy, please blame it on him and his sweet, silly words that neither of us believed for one second.

This chapter is slightly longer than mine usually are. What ended up happening was that I started out writing from Draco's POV and then realized that I didn't have anything more to say from his side of the story at that point. I therefore switched over to Hermione's POV, but it evolved into a memory chapter, and I couldn't cut that short. So what you basically have is a normal memory chapter with a little half-chapter at the beginning. Sorry if that doesn't sit well with you, but them's the breaks I guess. I think that, really, the Draco POV part should go with the previous chapter. When I do some editing and reposting when I'm done with the story, I'll probably do that. It will flow better that way.

Chapter 16: The Children of the Damned

A few weeks after the Partis Sensus had turned his world on its ear, Draco had experienced something that, until then, he could not remember experiencing before; he woke up from a dream, not terrified or in pain, but with a sense of comfort and peace. A good dream. It was a concept as foreign and alien to him as cell phones and orthodontics.

He had quickly surmised that the dream must have been a product of Hermione's subconscious, for he highly doubted that all of his accumulated happy memories could provide his own with enough material to work with in the "good dream" department. Normally, the dream-sharing phenomenon, which he had gleefully termed "REM rape" (Hermione was not amused, which only made him say it more), pissed him off, but it was such a relief to wake up without his heart racing in terror that he almost wished it would happen again. It had, several days later, and then, to his great surprise, he'd had a good dream of his own.

In this dream world, he had been flying, and he had been wonderfully, joyfully free. He did not want to give Hermione credit for this newfound happiness, but he suspected that it was her gentle influence on his sleeping mind that had resulted in this change of dream scenery. Initially, that had pissed him off as well, but that too had soon faded. Now he was simply grateful for the brief respites from nightmares and reality (which was sometimes worst of the two) that his new dreams could give him.

As he'd slept in the library, he had been dreaming pleasantly again, but this had not been a flying dream, as all of his good dreams had been thus far. This time, the happiness was mellow, comforting. He had been at peace, or he supposed he had; he had never known peace in his waking life, and therefore had nothing to compare it to.

More disturbing than this unfamiliar emotion was the fact that it did not recede immediately when he woke. His sleep-muddled brain, still basking in the serenity of his dream world, had not seen blood-lines or principles or a less-than-friendly seven-year history. Instead, it has registered a quiet voice, a gentle smile, a familiar face, and, damn it all, he had smiled back at her. He knew the action had surprised her; hell, it had surprised him. He blamed it on the dream, on his disorientation, on anything but the fact that he had been glad to see her. That made it easier, but it didn't make it okay.

Several minutes after the incident had occurred, he was still attempting to justify it to himself, and therefore almost skipped right over perhaps the most important words he'd ever read in his life. He was just about to turn the page when a distant alarm sounded in his head, breaking through the muffling fog of his self-justification. He read the lines again, didn't believe them, and read them once more. He might have continued to stare at them all day if he hadn't felt Hermione soft hair brush the side of his face as she leaned over him.

He snapped himself out of his trance, but was still just shocked enough to forget to flinch away from the touch of her hair, which felt like raw silk against his skin. He pointed to the lines in question, hoping that she would confirm that they were more than products of his wishful imagination.

"Does that say what I think it says?" Her sweet, clean scent wafted over him on the same air that carried her wary hopefulness as she leaned forward over his shoulder to read the words he half-doubted were actually on the page. He didn't bother to make any effort to avoid contact with her; she was always careful enough for both of them. Too careful, in his opinion, about everything. Never a movement made or a word spoken without serious thought. It had to be a boring and strenuous existence.

He felt the shocked disbelief jolt through her, saw it freeze the features of her face in incomprehension. In a trembling voice, she said the words aloud, and it wasn't until she was finished that he really believed. He turned to look at her, and was rewarded (no, damn it, not rewarded, for what did he care?) with a small, joyful smile of triumph.

"We found it," she whispered. Her happiness was like a cool, gentle rain, and he fought hard against the smile his traitorous mind wanted to give her in return. He was trying too hard to keep himself from being entranced by the childlike pleasure she was exuding to protest when she snatched the long-searched-for journal from his hands. Her eyes ran hungrily over the page, desperate to see if they had really found the answer they had so long been seeking.

He watched her for a moment, trying as always to figure out what it was about her that intrigued and infuriated him so. The last three weeks had rather puzzling for him. The more time he spent in Hermione's presence, the less loathsome said presence became. He knew instinctively that, for the sake of his sanity, it should be the other way around. It had reached the unthinkable point where her company was not only less-than-repulsive; it was familiar, even comfortable.

He knew her, damn it! He knew the way she laughed, and the exact color of her guileless, doe-like eyes. He could recognize the sound of her footsteps or the scent of her shampoo. He could recite from memory the classes she took and the tests she'd had last week. He knew where she was going for her Christmas holidays. He knew her deepest and most painful secrets. He knew that his own were safe in her steadfast, unwavering hands.

He didn't want to know those things; quite the contrary! He wanted to wash them from his memory the way he washed away the dust and sweat of a Quidditch match. He wanted to be rid of all the accumulated words and gestures and subtle emotions he had witnessed that had conspired against him to make him hate her less, or perhaps not hate her at all.

He hardly knew what to think of her anymore. She was a Mudblood, a hated enemy of nearly seven years, a self-righteous know-it-all, a poster-child of all that he had been taught to hate and stamp out. She was also clever, and uncompromising, and stronger and more complex than anyone had the right to be. She was so . . . unexpected. He knew every emotion that gripped her, every fear and desire she had, but she still surprised him.

Oh, how he wished he hadn't thought that, because no sooner had he done so than she went and proved him right. Without warning, she gasped slightly and then, seized by excitement, reached out and grabbed his arm as if to get his attention. He watched as her eyes went unfocused and then cursed as he was sucked into the depths of his own mind, wondering bitterly which of a thousand ugly memories his subconscious would choose to revisit next.

She hadn't meant to touch him. She hadn't. She'd just been excited, that was all. To have finally found a glimmer of hope in a situation that grew more hopeless everyday . . . It was a heady feeling, and it had wreaked havoc on her common sense. She had found another mention of a possible cure, and in her excitement had done the first thing that came into her mind -- she had reached out for the person she wanted to share it with.

She realized her mistake instantly, cursed herself for her lack of self-control, but it had been too late by then. It had been nearly a month since she'd been an unwilling hostage to Malfoy's memory, and she had almost forgotten the sense of claustrophobia that seized her as her ability to breathe was whisked away and the world spun rapidly out of focus.

She opened her eyes . . . And was seized for a moment by the terrifying thought that she was blind. She could see nothing in the impenetrable darkness, but she gradually became aware of an urgent, whispered voice, the sensation of two hands shaking her roughly, desperately, and the overwhelming desire to hex the moron with a death-wish who dared to wake her in the middle of the night. Yep, she was definitely in Malfoy's head. Her train of thought also seemed to suggest that she was not blind, but in a night darkened bedroom.

She sat up abruptly and shoved away the hands that had been trying so desperately to wake her. Irritably, she groped on the nightstand beside her for something -- what was it? -- and tried to clear the sleep from her mind, foreboding tracing icy fingers on her heart. Malfoy was not worried; if anything, he was pissed off, but Hermione couldn't shake the feeling that whatever had given her unknown companion reason to wake her was going to be very bad indeed.

Her hand suddenly latched onto the thing she had apparently been searching for -- Malfoy's wand. She heard herself mutter "Lumos" in Malfoy's familiar voice, deep and melodic as it was now. In the sudden brightness, beyond the strands of white-blond, sleep-mussed hair that obscured her eyes, the pale, frightened face of Vincent Crabbe was watching her with trepidation. White-hot anger flashed through her veins.

"Damn it, Crabbe, what the hell are you doing?" she snapped, pushing hair out of her eyes and sitting up further. "I've told you never to disturb me when I'm sleeping! Was even that too difficult for you?"

"I'm sorry, Draco," Crabbe whimpered, causing Malfoy's lip to curl with disdain and Hermione to wish she had eyes to roll in disgust. "But, but --" Crabbe stammered, apparently too upset over angering Draco to remember why he'd risked rousing that anger in the first place.

"Get it out, you idiot!" Hermione heard herself snap. "I'm already awake now."

"It's your father, Draco," Crabbe whispered urgently, holding his breath as though preparing to bear the brunt of whatever reaction he expected this news to induce. Hermione felt Malfoy's body go very, very still, his anger instantly dissipated.

"What happened?" Malfoy's voice was tense.

"We don't know," Crabbe replied, and his voice trembled slightly, though it didn't seem to be out of fear of Draco anymore. "There was an ambush at the Ministry tonight. They're saying Potter was there, and Dumbledore, and . . ." Crabbe gulped audibly, "the Dark Lord."

Even as Draco's heart fluttered painfully in her chest, Hermione felt a thrill of remembered fear. This was Draco's memory of the night when she, Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Luna Lovegood had gone to the Department of Mysteries. The night of Sirius's death. The night Malfoy's father had been captured. Funny that, before now, she'd never given a thought to what was going on back at Hogwarts that night. She was apparently going to find out.

Hermione threw aside the heavy, warm blankets under which she was buried and swung her legs over the side of the bed. The damp, cold air of the Slytherin dungeons hit her apparently bare chest (what an odd sensation that was), but she barely registered the physical discomfort. The cold dread that had settled in her chest far outweighed whatever chill might hang in the dark air of the dormitories.

Now that she was outside the heavy, muffling hangings of Malfoy's four-poster, she could hear other whispered, tense conversations, the rustling of clothes being pulled on hastily, and the sounds of the other fifth year boys stumbling about in the dark. She quickly began dressing as she questioned Crabbe in a terse, tightly-controlled voice.

"Who?"

"We don't know. We weren't even supposed to know about the raid at all, but Pansy overheard her father talking. She didn't know it was going to be tonight."

"How do we know it was?" She turned to look at Crabbe, whose face looked drawn and frightened and far less cruel than it usually did. The part of her that was still herself and not Draco registered that he must be worried about his father, and with good reason, she knew. He had been among those Death Eaters captured in the battle.

"Two seventh years who were up studying for their last NEWT saw Dumbledore returning with the wounded. They say students were with them. Potter for sure, and probably several others."

"Is that all?"

"No. Zabini went down to the infirmary to see if he could hear anything. Dumbledore and a few Order members were discussing what to do with the Death Eaters they'd captured. He didn't hear any names."

A heavy sadness settled with finality in Hermione's chest. Having finished dressing, she swung a cloak around her shoulders, pocketed Malfoy's wand, and began to make her way out of fifth-year-boys' dormitories and down into the Slytherin common room.

Considering what time it was, the common room was extraordinarily full, and eerily silent. Dozens upon dozens of haunted faces turned in Hermione's direction as she entered. The news of the attack on the Ministry had apparently spread fast. Hermione was under no illusions that the assembled group was waiting to hear news of their fellow students. They took care of their own, and no one else. The worry in their eyes was for their parents; these were the children of Death Eaters, of Dark wizards, of the pureblooded fanatics who would sooner see Hermione dead in a gutter than in Hogwarts.

It was curious then, that it was her heart, not Draco's, that went out to them. They couldn't help it if their parents were Death Eaters any more than she could help it that hers were Muggles, and no matter what they had done or said to her in the past, their fear and worry seemed genuine. Sitting huddled together, wearing pajamas and robes and looking young and frightened, they didn't look like cold-hearted Slytherins to her; they looked like children who feared for their parents, who had no way of knowing if they had just become orphans of their own war. It was a sobering sight.

Draco, however, had no pity for them. Hermione walked among them without giving the slightest sign of comfort or sympathy. They asked for none. Perhaps that was just the way Slytherins were, and it saddened her to think how lonely an existence that must be.

She found that both she and Malfoy wanted nothing more in that moment than to get out of the smothering silence, away from the wounded, bottomless gazes of his housemates. A tangible weight, like a suffocating blanket of grief, had descended on the Slytherin dungeons that night. Here, in the darkest depths of the Hogwarts castle, was the worst kind of hell imaginable, where children suffered that most terrible of torments: loving those who did not deserve it.

She had never before considered what the families of Death Eaters had gone through that night. Sitting at home or at Hogwarts, unsure if their loved ones were dead, wounded, captured, or worse, not even sure if they had been involved. No way to get information without risking exposure, no one to turn to for answers or comfort. She looked at the taut, guarded faces of the students she passed, willing herself to remember their expressions forever. If she ever began to doubt in the justness of her cause, she intended to fall back upon the sight of children with wary eyes, fighting to hide the weakness that was their love for their parents.

She found herself stopping in front of a dark, regal-looking boy with exotic eyes, who was talking in terse undertones with Theodore Nott, who looked haggard and pale, and Pansy Parkinson, who, lacking her usual coat of make-up and clutching her robe together with trembling hands, seemed far less detestable than usual.

"Blaise," she said in Malfoy's deep, rather strained voice. The dark boy turned to look at her, his eyes ebony black and fathomless in the dark room. "Have you heard anything more?"

"Nothing," the boy replied evenly. His face and voice betrayed no emotion. If his parents were among those who might be involved, if he was worried about them at all, he did not show it. Apparently deciding that nothing more was to be gained by talking to the unmovable Blaise Zabini, Hermione turned to look at Pansy instead. She stared at her with shell-shocked, pleading eyes, as if hoping that Draco could somehow make what was undoubtedly a living nightmare for her go away. Hermione had never felt so sorry for her.

"What did you hear your father say, Pansy?" she asked. She had never heard Malfoy's voice sound so gentle before.

"Something about tricking Potter into going to the Ministry. He was talking about how pleased the Dark Lord would be when the Death Eaters could present Potter and his Mudblood-loving friends to him after they were caught in the ambush." Chills went through Hermione as she listened to Pansy speak so flippantly about the capture and inevitable deaths of Hermione herself and all the people she cared about. Draco was unmoved by that particular aspect of Pansy's revelation, but instead it struck a hollow fear in his already-anxious heart. Hermione knew he was thinking that if the chance or honor and glory, the chance to be the one to capture Harry Potter, was involved, then his father was almost sure to be as well.

"Did he say who would be going?" Pansy mutely shook her head. The weight on Draco's heart didn't lessen. Into Hermione's mind's eye, came the image of a pale, beautiful face. Not his father's, surprisingly; a woman, with long, platinum hair and pale blue eyes, her face shattered with grief. Hermione realized all at once that it was not for his father than Draco feared; his worry was solely for his mother, who he suspected, apparently, would not mentally or emotionally survive the loss of her husband. If it was possible for Hermione's heart to break when her it was far in the future and in a body other than the one she currently inhabited, than it did so in that instant.

With nothing more to be said, nothing more to be done, Hermione fell into a chair with more grace than she possessed in her own form. Tormented with images of Malfoy's broken, grieving mother, her heart strung tight with terror, she sat there in the tortuous silence, waiting for a distant dawn to bring news of death and sorrow to her and the rest of the children of the damned.

Hermione blinked and found herself back in the library of Hogwarts. Light poured in the windows. The air was warm, filled with the comforting scent of old books and a faint hint of the breakfast being served at that moment in the Great Hall. Funny, then, that Hermione still felt chilled, as though a part of her remained in the cold, dank dungeon of the Slytherin common room.

Malfoy was watching her with blank, guarded eyes. He was expectant, wary, ready to defend himself against whatever probing questions or angry tirade he was anticipating her to throw at him. She took a very small amount of pleasure in surprising him by doing neither.

"I hope your mother's okay," she said quietly. He blinked at her, obviously expecting anything but that. It took him a few minutes to respond, but when he did it was with a relief and gratefulness in his stormy eyes that he would never have given voice, although he didn't really have to.

"She is now," he replied in a soft voice. He didn't offer any further explanation, but that was okay. She didn't need one.

She sent him a very tentative smile, and held the journal she was still holding out to him, pointing to the passage she had wanted him to read. He studied her for a long minute, and then, with a quirk of his lips that was the closest thing to a smile he had ever given her intentionally, he took it.

A/N: Review! I want to know what you think of the chapter, of course, but even more than that I'd like to know if you'd be interested in reading a little one-shot that grabbed hold and held me at gunpoint until I wrote it out. It's D/Hr, of course, and basically involves a Draco from the future looking back on the day that changed his life. It's entitled "Nothing Important Happened Today" (that's a quote, and brownie points to anyone who can tell me who said it, or wrote it, as the case may be). There isn't a huge amount of plot (mostly Draco musing about his past and the paths he chose for himself), and it's rather cliché, but I think it's quite prettily written. What do you think? Would you be interested? Should I post it, or should I leave it gathering cyber-dust on my computer?

Also, I have discovered that in my haste to get chappies out to all of you, I have been letting a few grammatical and spelling errors slide. I also seem to be terrible at gauging what kind of response I will get to different ideas, and often find myself pondering two or more possible routes the story could take, unable to decide between them and longing desperately for a sounding board. I have used all of those deductive reasoning skills my high school used to say I had in abundance and have decided that I may be in need of a beta. Would anyone be interested in the job? If not, do you know anyone who might be? It wouldn't have to be a permanent arrangement (just for "Linked") and I'm not asking for miracles, here; I'd just like someone to read through my chappies to correct any glaring errors who won't be annoyed if I send them e-mails begging for an objective opinion on my crazy thought processes. My e-mail is in my profile. Drop me a line if you want the job!