A/N: A couple notes before we begin--first, for those of you who've read Bad Faith, I am trying not to rewrite that story with this one, so let me know if I'm successful. Second, I'm sticking as close to canon as possible, making my own best guesses as to what and where the horcruxes are, but I'm a Draco/Hermione shipper, so that's the pairing I focus on, even if it's never going to happen in canon. (Though JKR gave us Dramione shippers some excellent canon-fodder in HBP.) I'm skipping the Ron/Hermione pairing JKR has set up completely. Because I want to. D
There were days—and nights—when misery heaped on top of misery and it seemed like the whole world was conspiring to push him over the edge.
It was snowing.
It was freezing.
And he didn't have the foggiest idea where he was going to go, but freezing to death didn't seem like any sort of plan. Of course, he'd spent most of the last few months without the foggiest idea of where he was going to go, with the tedium broken by the occasional attempted murder. Of him.
He shook his head, snow melting in his longish hair so that it whipped icily over his cheeks, and wrapped his arms tighter around his body, surveying the hills ahead.
He could go to America. To France. To sunny Spain or Africa or wherever the hell he wanted, so long as it was warm. There was no reason to stay here and…what, suffer? Avenge his mother? There was no law that said Draco Malfoy was obligated to wander the English countryside with only the most vague hope that somehow, some way, he'd…
Draco swore under his breath and blew on his freezing, aching hands, forcing himself to think. He wasn't going to America any more than he was going to the moon. The Mark ached dully on his forearm and his wand was a comforting presence in his threadbare pocket, a slight weight that he only noticed if he thought about it. And that spelled out his choices, didn't it?
He wasn't useless, he told himself fiercely, though he only half-believed it.
He could try to break his father out of Azkaban. The Dementors weren't there anymore; it was guarded by wizards, mortal, killable wizards, and with Lucius' help, with the help of the other Death Eaters locked up there, he might be able to pull it off.
And then what? He'd be welcomed back to the fold?
No, that bridge had been well and truly burned. Draco smiled sourly. Hell, he hadn't just burned down the bridge, he'd pissed on the fucking ashes, metaphorically speaking.
And his father wouldn't be grateful for the rescue. If the Dark—if Voldemort didn't kill him outright for repeated failure, he would set Lucius the task of hunting down his errant son. It didn't bear thinking about, so Draco didn't; he looked instead at the next hill, and the next, and wished he had some destination in mind so that this hike seemed less pointless.
However he tried to force his mind away from a single, wild hope, it kept circling back desperately to gnaw at it.
Harry Potter.
Ron Weasley.
His heart dropped to his shoes and he closed his eyes for a second. Hermione Granger.
If anyone would help him, she would. She was soft-hearted. He knew that well enough; he'd despised her for it.
The old white rage threatened when he remembered Potter and Weasley, the old prejudice when he thought of the long-molared Mudblood, but…
But.
There was a tree stump conveniently nearby, and he sat on it, ignoring the cold, burying his head in his hands. It was too big. It was switching allegiances he'd held his whole life, it was betrayal of his father and even his mother of the highest order, it was tantamount to a death sentence. If a Death Eater caught sight of him, just once, with Potter or any of Potter's wanker friends, then he was a dead man. The hunt had been half-hearted, until now. Voldemort had bigger fish to fry, and Draco had done his level best to stay the hell out of the way.
He wished he could forget his mother's face, and almost as bad, that kindly old voice that spoke from the phoenix fire. Go, my son.
More tears. He despised them as weakness and swiped them away. He'd bawled enough in the last year. His face heated scarlet as he remembered sobbing in front of Moaning Myrtle, for fuck's sake, and here he was now, crying like a bloody infant.
How could he even consider this?
What else could he do?
His chest was tight, and he leaned back and gulped in a breath of frigid air, the remnants of his tears freezing on his cheeks. He rubbed his arms absently, stared at the looming grey clouds, and snowflakes caught thickly on his eyelashes and dusted his cheeks. So quiet, he thought, and drew another deep breath, scratching his forearm.
Dumbledore's bird had saved him. By extension, Dumbledore had saved him.
Voldemort had murdered his mother.
He wrapped his mind around these facts, and they fit jaggedly, pieces of a puzzle he'd never, ever imagined holding in his hands, trying to force it all into some order, some purpose, and if this were arithmetic, the solution would be obvious. Take his chances. And pay his debts.
Hermione woke, as she always did, just before dawn, and briefly disoriented. There weren't any curtains around her four poster bed…
No, she wasn't at Hogwarts.
She scrubbed her eyes and sat up, surveying her rather spartan room at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. There remained a momentary urge to look for her schoolbook, and re-read the assignment one last time before class, or find the essay she'd been working on and make sure she hadn't missed any misspellings…and where were her school robes?
Her longing for the library was so keen, it was almost an ache. She loved the smell of old pages, the quiet rustle and whisper of the other students, and always so much to learn. It always amazed her, even if it made her smile and giggle, that Ron didn't realize how incredible his world was. Even Harry didn't seem to care. But she was Muggle-born and raised, and until the letter came down the chimney from Hogwarts, she'd never known the Wizarding world existed.
She shook her head and slipped out of bed, rummaging for her brush even as the mirror on her dresser tut-tutted her.
"It curls," she said defensively, and resolutely attacked the sleep-tousled mess that was her hair.
"It is an outer manifestation of your inner disorder," the mirror informed her sternly, and she rolled her eyes and walked away. She didn't need lectures from a preachy mirror before the sun was up, and she was one of the most orderly people she knew. Ron was constantly informing her of that fact.
She wondered what Ron would say if she ever told him why she had studied and worked so hard in her classes. How could she not? Who wouldn't want to learn how to Transfigure a teacup or brew a love potion, or, she thought, sobering, learn to defend the people they loved? Who wouldn't want to learn all they could, and practice until they could do it without a thought?
It had never seemed like a revolutionary or outrageous notion to her, but it often reduced Ron—and sometimes Harry—to openmouthed head-shaking.
It wasn't as if, she consoled herself as she found she was looking, once again, for the usual satchel of books, she was barred from Hogwarts. Prof—Headmistress McGonagall had made it clear that she, Ron, and Harry were welcome back whenever it suited them, and she was willing to provide lessons whenever they had time. Remus Lupin, aside from his incursions into the werewolf population, certainly had taught them a lot, and even Tonks was slipping in lessons whenever she could.
Best of all, in Hermione's mind, she had a certain indestructible bit of parchment that gave her unrestricted access to the Hogwarts library. Whatever book she wanted. Whenever she wanted it. For as long as she needed it, and yes, to Madame Pince's obvious horror, that meant the occasional book left the shadowy confines of the library itself.
Headmistress McGonagall might as well have written, Miss Granger is a responsible young woman who can be trusted with the greatest treasure Hogwarts has, and she will return it in due course and undamaged.
Hermione had hugged the bit of parchment, danced an inner dance, and when she was certain she was alone, kissed it.
She grinned at the memory as she stripped off her nightclothes and foraged for clean robes. That was another thing she missed about Hogwarts: the elves had been wonderful about seeing her clothes laundered. Kreacher was less than reliable, and as much as she tried to give him the benefit of every doubt, she was always half-afraid he was going to do something horrid to her clothing.
In the room next door, she heard Harry stirring. He was generally an early riser, though Ron would have to be dragged from his bed by force.
Snatching several rolls of parchment from her desk, she hopped down the steps with a cheery Good Morning! in the direction of Harry's door, unrolling one as she walked, though she'd read it often enough to have memorized it. Her smile dropped away as she reviewed once again the familiar story: the history of Voldemort as they knew it, with every detail Harry could remember, a list of known horcruxes and possible horcruxes, and another of possible locations…
The headache she recalled from last night threatened to reassert itself, and she hurriedly re-rolled the scroll. They had a number of starting places, anyway, and threatened by Hermione and Ron both with a wide variety of hexes, jinxes, and curses, Harry had reluctantly agreed to pursue the simplest horcrux first: the locket stolen by one Regulus Arcturus Black.
RAB.
It hadn't required genius to figure out who RAB was; just a look at the Black family tree. It was possible that Regulus had been named for his uncle Alphard, but as Alphard had been blasted off the tree, Hermione rather doubted it. His blood traitor tendencies probably hadn't manifested themselves all at once.
And having identified RAB—or at least a likely candidate—it had been Ron that recalled the heavy locket they'd found while cleaning Number Twelve, memorable because of the hour the men involved had spent trying to open it. It had insulted their masculine dignity that there was something they couldn't open—in her opinion, something broken that they couldn't "fix."
The problem being that Mundungus Fletcher had ransacked the house in Harry's absence, and he wouldn't be out of Azkaban for a few months.
The things Harry had said when they realized this weren't fit for mixed company. Or any other company.
Lost in thought, Hermione started breakfast. It wasn't a chore she enjoyed, but Kreacher certainly didn't cook anything edible, and Harry and Ron just could not seem to master the simplest household spell. She had her suspicions about that particular inability.
The options, she admitted, weren't wonderful. Try to find the other horcruxes—and they were trying—but in the meantime, she knew the Death Eaters were hunting them.
The bright sunlight streaming through the wintry windows dimmed a little on that thought, and even her irrepressible optimism faltered. The question really was, would Harry be able to find and destroy the horcruxes before the Death Eaters destroyed them? And even if he managed that, how was he supposed to kill Voldemort? Their wands wouldn't work in a duel, and even though she'd seen Harry throw some highly impressive punches in his time, she somehow doubted the final battle between good and evil would rest on the outcome of a fistfight.
She missed Dumbledore. In her worst moments, with a fear that rendered her near tears when she thought of facing the end, whatever that end might be, without him. And as frightened as she was, she knew it couldn't be anything like what Harry felt.
She'd never tell him, but for all that she nagged him and scolded and lectured, Harry was her hero. And if that wasn't the stupidest possible way to express it.
His footsteps thudded on the stairs, and she snapped back to the omelet she was mixing, muttering an oath and siphoning out the cloves that had somehow made their way into the mix, smiling at him as he entered the room and thumped wearily into a chair, his eyes slightly unfocused. With a flick of her wand, she sent a cup of coffee floating to the table and won an answering smile for her trouble.
"Thanks," he muttered, guzzling it.
"Is Ron awake?"
"He'd better be, or I'll hang him by his ankle again."
The shadows under his eyes were almost purple. Frowning mentally, though her smile was fixed on her face, she poured the omelet into a skillet and set it sizzling. No oven required.
That still took some getting used to. Hermione refused to cook when she was home. The second her mother found out a six course meal could be magicked up with a few flicks of a wand, Hermione would be cooking for the rest of her life. Or her parents' lives, anyway.
She grinned and flipped the omelet. Yes, she'd certainly dodged that bullet.
"What're you so happy about?" Harry grumped.
"Lessons today," she said cheerfully, and winked. "Cooking lessons."
"Ha-ha."
"The day will come," she said with mock severity, "that I'm not going to be here. Then who's going to cook for you? Kreacher?"
"We'll go to the Burrow." With a sigh, Harry flipped open the Daily Prophet, scanning the headlines as he did every morning.
In the midst of the hunt for horcruxes, rendering Number Twelve livable, and an assortment of other concerns large and small, Hermione mused as she plopped Harry's breakfast in front of him, something had gone terribly, terribly wrong when she was responsible for the cooking and Harry hid behind his newspaper every morning. Another week of this and she'd start taking collections for the House-Witch Liberation Front.
Ron stumbled into the kitchen just as she was sitting down with her own breakfast, bleary-eyed, his red hair sticking up wildly in all directions. He managed a half-hearted wave before he slumped into his chair and laid his head on the breakfast table.
"You might at least get dressed," Hermione began, and cut herself off before she said, after I went to all the trouble of making breakfast for you. The words had been on the tip of her tongue. Tip of her tongue.
Harry studiously flipped to the next page.
"Tired." His head drifted upward as he scented the air. "Coffee?"
"Get it yourself or steal Harry's." Hermione took an irritated bite of her omelet, flicking her wand to butter her toast.
"Anyone we know dead?"
"Not today." Harry absently took a bit of omelet and washed it down with coffee. "Florean Fortescue's back. He doesn't remember where he was, but he's alive."
"He's at St. Mungo's, then?" Hermione asked, after a whispered prayer of thanksgiving to whomever.
"Mm-hmm."
"That omelet looks really good, Hermione." Ron said hopefully.
"Yes, it's all ham and melted cheese. Very tasty." She took a bite and smiled.
"And we were up so late working without food…" His voice trailed off and he gave her his best approximation of a winning smile.
"It's a shame that you just can't master the spells," she agreed solemnly, just to needle him. His omelet was on the counter and she'd only used the tiniest bit of an invisibility charm to hide it.
Harry swore, dropping the Daily Prophet on his omelet.
"Someone tried to kill Mundungus Fletcher!" He snarled, jabbing his finger at the offending headline. "Look!"
AZKABAN INMATE MOVED TO ST. MUNGO'S FOLLOWING ATTACKMundungus Fletcher, lately of Devon, was taken to St. Mungo's last night following an attack by one Roland Wentworth, a guard at Azkaban that may have been acting under the Imperius Curse.
The Minister for Magic had no comment on this serious breach in security, but sources inside the prison say that following the mass defection of the Dementors, Azkaban is less secure than ever for both the prisoners and the guards. Alastor Gumboil, lately of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, had the following remark:
"Get those cameras out of here or you can find out for yourself how secure Azkaban is."
His offer notwithstanding, this Daily Prophet reporter has discovered…
"That's all?" Ron asked, flipping up the corner of the paper. "Nothing more on Dung?"
"No." Harry swore again, gulped coffee, and slammed his mug onto the table. "We need to find out how he's doing. We need to go see him."
"Tonight," Hermione said quickly, before Ron could speak. "Not today. There will be too many people, Harry, and if we can stay out of sight, we should."
"And if some Imperius'd nurse makes a try for him?" Ron retorted. "He's a member of the Order after all, Hermione, we have to protect him."
"That's not what worries me," Harry said, interrupting what looked to be a promising argument. "I wonder why anyone would bother trying to kill him when for all anyone should know, he's just a thief."