The wolf may come back. Hermione watches for it, turning in place, her heart aflutter and her limbs shaky, while Draco wrenches his sword from the other, dead wolf's side. Night falls above the trees, casting long shadows wrought in the shape of wolves and monsters. She can't tell where the world ends and her terror-fuelled visions begin; a patch of dark shifts and she whirls, incinerating a tree to a glowing, fragmented husk.

Her chest heaves up and down like great bellows. The Horcrux watches all the while, cold eyes raking down her spine, calling to her with its sinister whispering and sensual tug, tug on her ribs, beckoning her closer, but she won't go, she won't. The wretched thing must be destroyed, somehow.

"I need to rest." Draco wipes his blade clean on a spongy patch of grass and slides it into the leather loops, stiffly, each movement tentative and paired with a flash of teeth. Grimacing, he's grimacing, she hasn't healed all of his injuries. "For a little while, before we make for the castle again."

The horse has fled, leaving deep hoofprints between the blood-soaked leaves and strewn contents of the saddlebags; she and Draco are utterly alone, and weakened—how will they stand even the barest chance of rescuing his parents?

She can't draw a full lungful of air, the breath lodges in her throat and stutters, choking her until she puffs out a shallow exhale and begins again, cyclical, in and out until she's seeing stars. Calm yourself. Breathe. Air shudders at the back of her throat on the precipice of a sob, but she has survived Lord Voldemort's court, she has survived drowning, and Bellatrix, and fleeing in the freezing cold, and a werewolf attack; she will survive again. She will survive this.

A thin bedroll lies unfurled, its leather buckles torn to scraps by long claws. Hermione crouches beside it and fashions a nest-like bed with what she can find, breathing deeply through her nose. Survive. They need rest, and food.

Draco approaches, laying a hand on her arm. Even through the thick material of his cloak—still draped around her shoulders—she can feel the warmth of his palm, firm and steady and real. She can't look at him just yet. Her eyes prickle and her throat burns; seeing his soft, tired eyes would snap something inside of her, and she needs to be strong, she needs to breathe, to survive, survive, survive.

She waits until her fluttering pulse has slowed to a steady beat before turning and embracing him; his breastplate is cold and wet under her cheek, flecked with his blood and the wolf's, coppery and sharp, shot through with the heady scent of meadowsweet. Draco unclasps his armour, lets it fall away, and clumps of the frothy blooms spill out, wrinkled and drooping, onto the forest floor.

She picks up a sprig and twirls it between her fingers, releasing the scent; floral and earthy and unmistakably Draco, carrying her through the passages of her memory past every brush of shoulders and lingering touch.

"Does every Death Eater do this?" The smell clings to her. It's difficult to imagine trained knights stuffing their armour with flowers; the thought drags mirth up through her throat and she has to fight the absurd urge to laugh.

Draco's pained wince as he lowers himself onto the bedroll quickly sobers her. She sits beside him, laying her hands on his chest, feeling the rumble of his voice as he speaks. "Most don't bother. I learnt this from my father."

"You must be very close." She keeps her eyes on his torso, sending tendrils of magic to twine between his ribs, healing and easing in its curiously sentient way, like a slithering golden serpent. Her gaze flickers up to find him pensive, his eyes closed off and distant.

His only response is to take her hands and pull her to lie beside him.

Knee to knee, nose to nose, they lie under the star-flecked canopy, staring into one another's eyes without speaking. The sweetest sorrow fills her chest as she runs her fingers over his cheek and through his hair, trailing her fingernails against his scalp until his eyes drift closed. His arm is propped under his cheek, healed and smooth and immaculate, but who is to say what illness lurks beneath, ready to claw its way free at the full moon's next rise?

She shifts closer, twining her arms around his neck and pressing her face into the crook of his shoulder, breathing in the warm, damp scent of his skin, feeling the rough scratch of his shirt. His pulse beats evenly under her cheek and his breaths are slow and deep, stealing a moment of sleep just as she steals this moment.

Silence presses in all sides but it is deceptive; the forest is rife with danger, teeming in the darkness at the edges of their halo of softness and peace. Her magic shimmers around them in a diaphanous cloud, his breaths puff against her skin and, for a little while, they are safe.

She needn't worry about the full moon. The thought comes unbidden, worming cold, grey fronds into her warm sleepiness. Her eyes snap open. She needn't worry about the full moon, for they will not live to see it wax. This is the last snatch of peace they will ever know.

It only makes her hold him closer.


Her grim prophecy proves true when midnight limns the trees in murky, mournful grey. The earth shakes beneath their heads, hauling them to wakefulness then to their feet, back to back, watching the gaps in the trees.

"He's sent Death Eaters." Draco draws his sword with the soft swish of leather against steel, leaving the sheath-loops and his armour on the ground. "When they break the tree line, you will need to run. Run towards them, they won't be able to turn quickly enough, and make sure—"

"I'm not leaving you." Her stomach congeals into a hard lump, making it difficult to speak. Does he really think she will run and leave him to his fate without a backwards glance? Hauling on his shoulder until he turns, she seizes his jaw when he tries to look away. "Until the last," she says thickly, staring up into his eyes. "Until the last, do you hear me?"

The distant rumbling is louder, morphing into distinct, individual hoofbeats against the hard earth. Beat, beat, beat; a monstrous heart, a war drum.

Draco brushes the hair from her face and presses a slow, tender kiss to her forehead, lingering until she can smell the horses and hear their huffing, grunting breaths from the darkness of the forest.

Warmth blooms from his touch but she breaks away, pushing him behind her. "Don your armour."

He will need it.

His last strap clicks into place just as the first black-plated knight explodes from the brambles, thundering towards them, sword raised, deathly intent clear in every emotionless line and edge of his brutal armour. His horse makes it all of two strides into the clearing before Hermione punches her hand in its direction and both horse and rider spin through the air, flailing, terrified equine screams piercing her ears above the steady throb of her magic. A pang shoots through her at the heavy thud and crack of the horse against the ground, its shriek withering then falling silent, but this is war, and she will fight until her last breath.

The forest is alive with movement, weaponry and glossy armour shining between every bough and bush. Air tickles the back of her throat as she breathes, in and out, a path of sweat pricking along her back and in the seams of her hands. Behind her, Draco tenses, knees bent and sword raised in the corner of her eye.

The fallen Death Eater strains free from under his dead horse and staggers to his feet. She expects him—any of them—to speak, to make demands of her and Draco or strut like roosters, boastful of the impending executions, but all is silent.

Then they converge.

There is no emotion, no feeling, her every thought and action narrows with needlepoint precision to the swarm of Death Eaters pressing in from every corner, at least a dozen of them, transforming the forest into an onyx panorama. Power lashes through her arms and slams into black metal armour, denting it, sending black beetle knights onto their backs where they lie dazed and gasping.

The thread connecting her to Draco has never flared as bright—a scarlet river intertwining their moving, dancing bodies—as it does now. She clenches the thread bridging her to him with one hand while the other dips again and again into the well stretching deep beneath her sternum, hurling glittering waves of magic at the Death Eaters until finally, finally, her fingertips scrape the bottom. It aches down to the very centre of her being but she cannot stop, not when Draco is fighting two Death Eaters at once, blocking and parrying but slowing, she sees it in the droop of his shoulders. His hair is streaked with blood—he wears no helmet. Where is his helmet?

Across the clearing, scattered there by their fleeing horse. Too far, too far, she is waning, as is Draco, and still, there are more of them, suits of gleaming armour streaming from the trees, swallowing the weak moonlight with their jet-black pauldrons and tassets.

A blazing heat spreads from her shoulder and she stumbles, crying out, hand flying there to find hot blood streaming from a thin gash. It's not deep, she can still move her arm, but the unstoppable power in her breast is now little more than a dribbling creek bed in the height of summer.

"No!" comes a shout from across the clearing. At first, she thinks it is Draco, but a Death Eater cuts his hand sharply downwards and the other one backs away, his sword falling. A streak of crimson drips from the tip of his blade—my blood; she grips the wound tighter, staunching it. "The Dark Lord wants her alive. Kill the traitor!"

Draco cannot win. The whisper twines sinuously through the coils of her mind. Only you can save him. Ice drips down the back of her neck, twisting her face to the side, her eyes alighting on the ripped satchel. At the edge of her vision, Draco moves as though through water, slow and staggering, his sword a bright flash of silver before it is concealed by the press of armoured bodies surrounding him.

Come to me come to me come to me. She follows the tug on her breastbone, walking on numb feet. The diadem is frigid against her hands. Dark power pulsates from the metal like a cold heartbeat, filling the gulf inside of her with gushing, roiling strength, then yanking it away as soon as she brushes against it. Come to me come to me come to me. Ice burns her fingertips but she cannot let it go, her skin is fused, and Draco is—Draco is dying.

The red thread stretches, taut and quivering, poised to snap.

Thin wailing reverberates in her lungs, rising and rising until she is glowing with white-hot fever.

She lifts the diadem and sets it on her head.


Silver mist. Dim light between trembling, vein-like branches. Breath on her face; the wind, but she cannot smell it.

She is outside of her own body, floating, caught like a scrap of fabric in the trees, looking down at the cold, cruel smile twisting her lips. The words that stream from her mouth belong to someone else, her voice soft and sibilant and barely recognisable.

"I gave you a task, Draco. You have failed me."

Draco kneels at the centre of a ring of black knights, a sword jutting from his back like a sad and broken wing.

Her heart does not falter, her lungs do not spasm, she stands tall and serene as a statue cut from marble, the diadem sitting cold and proud across her brow, sapphire glowing from within—a fierce, wicked light. The part of her which hovers above as a breath of insubstantial mist can only watch herself stalk closer and kneel before Draco, lifting his chin with hard fingers.

"I had such high hopes for you," she hisses, nails biting into his jaw. "What a waste."

He falls hard against the ground as she thrusts him harshly away, standing in a liquid, graceful movement and turning her back.

His eyes are glazed and smoky, staring up at the canopy and the muted stars peeking through. "Hermione," he gasps, frothy blood leaking from the corners of his mouth.

She floats above him, ghostly hands cupping his face. He cannot see her, she is not real, she knows this, but it is as though he is looking right at her.

The red thread falters—she feels it, distantly, pulling her towards her body, frayed to a bare sliver.

"Hermione…" Draco turns his head and reaches for her retreating back, fingers clawing at the soil. His breath rattles in and catches, choking on her name, spluttering out bright specks of blood which stains his lips and chin like brackish, fetid wine.

Fraying, fraying, their connection is wavering, his eyes drift closed, her body strides away into the forest, the diadem's sapphire a bobbing blue will-o'-the-wisp; she follows, gliding through the trees like smoke. She has no ears but there is a dull roaring, surf breaking against a pebbled beach, she seizes the thread and pulls, pulls, sucking in a gasp as the two parts of her collide in a cosmic burst.

Icy hands around her throat, squeezing, parasitically sucking her life force; Lord Voldemort's savagely handsome face is a glaucescent blur like she is seeing it through a very thin, gauzy fabric, straining towards her, his eyes bleeding red and morphing into reptilian slits beneath the diadem's dark band. Shadows on great and terrible wings swoop in to smother her; she falters, the thread strains, she knows Draco will die if it breaks and she will die with him.

"You belong to me." The words twist around her in a pearly, insidious spiral; Lord Voldemort's lips do not move, frozen in a hazy sneer. "Your parents traded you like chattel and I paid the price. I own you."

Magma brims in her throat, her eyes, her hands. I belong to no one. I will destroy you, and your castle, and everything you have ever touched. These words seethe in her mouth but the rage she feels is wordless, without grace or splendour or even righteous fury. There is only the fire.

She lets it consume her, raking her nails down that hated face, snatching the diadem from her own head and pitching it as far as her strength allows.

The sharp sting of ozone. A final, wavering shriek. Blood in her veins, air in her lungs, fire in her soul.

Her breath burns. She's running. Her body is her own again, and she pushes it to the brink, breaking into the clearing at a sprint, starlight flickering over the trees and the black armour and she realises it's emanating from her skin, echoes of Horcrux-power glowing inside of her, hot coals waiting for a bellow blast.

She scorches the Death Eaters into nothing. It barely takes a thought. Fluffy ash spirals in a perverse snow flurry, settling on Draco's greying skin, melting into the blood.

There's so much blood. She drops to her knees, pressing her ear to his lips, hands fisting in the fallen leaves and twigs as though the pain of it will ground her when she wants to simply float away into the night sky. She tries to swallow but her throat is tight, as stuffed full of cotton wool as her stomach.

He cannot be dead. If he were dead, she would be, too. She scrabbles for the bridge between them, wading through the ever-shifting, blinding light until she finds the remnants of it hanging on by a bare sinew.

Stay, stay, please don't leave me. She drags her way up the thread, staining it gold behind her, and pours everything into that tiny, flickering connection, lips pressed to his, breathing life—her life—into him.

He doesn't stir, she sits back on her haunches and stares down at him but he doesn't stir, his face is as still and pale as a corpse, the blood made so much brighter for it. The sword protrudes hideously from a gap in his armour; she pulls it free and flings it into the bushes where it shatters into a thousand glittering pieces, shredding through leaves and bark and her own skin but she cannot feel it, cannot feel anything happening to her body when inside, she is screaming. An endless, tearing scream, pulling her fragile resolve in on itself until she crumples, face buried in the crook of his neck.

Tears elude her, as do the sobs she wishes would wrack her chest; anything but this silent screaming burning her up inside.

The golden link strains between them, taunting her. This is the moment it fades forever, leaving a gaping hole in her chest, she knows it, but the severance does not come. The thread only glows brighter, lacing between them in a delicate needlework pattern, binding, sealing, locking; a hefty click rattles through her ribcage.

Draco's hand settles on her back. "Hermione." His voice is a croak but he is alive, eyes open, colour flooding back into his cheeks.

The tears come as she gathers him to her breast, rocking back and forth, cradling his head—heaving sobs, wrenched from deep in her belly. Alive, alive, she can't speak, only hold him.

His arms are tight around her waist, face pressed close over her heart. The moon passes overhead and turns the world soft and milky, that is how long they sit wrapped in one another's arms.

She could stay like this forever; let the forest grow around them, mossy statues eternally entwined in this still and quiet clearing where they will never be found. Her heart is full, tears streaming down her cheeks, turned cold where a chill wind grazes her skin.

"I thought that I lost you," he says, pulling himself up so they are at eye level, holding her face in his hands; she can see where tears have cut pale streaks through the dirt and blood on his face. His eyes flick between hers, bright and silver—he is alive, speaking with her, sitting up, and she is dizzy with longing.

She places her hands over his, closing her eyes to soak in the feel of his warm fingers against her cheeks. "I'm here. We're safe."

They rise together, staggering, Draco cradling his middle, her supporting him with an arm around his waist; they stand in silence and breathe in the chilly air which stinks of blood, of burning, of lingering decay wafting from the turned earth like fungus spores detached and released.

"You're hurt." His thumb brushes over the bloodstain on her sleeve; it's turning brown, crusting to her skin.

The crease between his brows, the lines around his mouth, they make her heart ache. She grips his hand as though the tight squeeze of her fingers will reassure him of her strength. "A scratch, nothing more."

His lips part, eyes flashing, but a high whinny shivers from the forest and he turns away, shielding her with his body.

Of course, there are more. She squashes the whimper rising in her chest, clotting her emotion. Everything—her spasming lungs, her watery stomach—trembles with the effort.

She is empty, her skin dull and lifeless, her magic weak and distant and so far out of reach, she doubts she will ever make use of it again. The hoofbeats merge with her rumbling pulse, beating at such a tempo the forest seems to rise and rise, curving overhead, a cathedral of wood and vine.

Horses trumpet at the edge of the clearing, cantering, circling them. She heaves Draco's sword from the ground and holds it uselessly at hip height, muscles burning, arms straining, but she will swing it with every last scrap of strength possessed to her or perish in the attempt. The golden thread twitches with her spiking pulse, wrapped inside of her like a thin and vital chain.

A bowstring creaks taut; she whirls to find herself staring down the length of an arrow shaft to a man with a face like stone, marked with a livid scar stretching across his forehead in silver lightning tendrils. The other rider has a shock of fire-kissed hair, wielding a wickedly gleaming blade.

"Who are you?" She fights to keep the tremor from her voice, raising the sword a little higher.

"It's them." The man lowers his bow. "The ones from the letter."

Letter? Her palms grow slick with sweat; she readjusts her hold on the sword. "What letter do you speak of?"

The man with hair like fire dismounts and makes for them; Hermione steps in his path, her stomach in knots, breaths coming quick and fast through her nose. She feels Draco's fear as though it is her own, the link between them pulling her heart into her throat.

The man flips his sword to his other hand—a skilled swordsman, or incredibly arrogant—but she is willing to kill with her nails and teeth. Feral, ferocious, her hard edges bristling and snapping beneath the confines of her skin.

Something shines in the depths of his eyes; a hint of keenness, of understanding, for he sheathes his blade and steps closer, palms raised.

She can hear Draco breathing shallowly behind her, air catching in his throat and hiccoughing out in small grunts of pain. His voice is low, lips near her ear. "Look at the emblem."

A bird, wings outstretched to catapult it from a pit of flames, gleams on their chests, picked out in amber thread. The sword falls to her side and her arms go slack, oddly buoyant without the dread weight. Draco's fingers cuff around her wrist, sliding down until their palms are pressed, fingers entwined.

"We're with the Order of the Phoenix." The man with the lightning scar slides from his horse. The crunch of his boots is distant, as from the depths of a cavern when she stands at the entrance, staring into the great unknown stretching before her across endless rolling hills and verdant foliage. "I believe we may be able to help one another."

FIN