After the Yule Ball at the Triwizard Tournament, the fact that Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy were mad for each other was the worst kept secret at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
It wasn't just because Draco had kissed her in front of everyone at the end of the ball. There were plenty of conspiracy theories about someone using a love charm to foster inter-house affection that night, some blaming it on Dumbledore himself. Whatever the reason and in spite of whether Draco started it or not, at least half the school had passionately snogged each other at the ball. (Ron Weasley's neck alone took days to heal from the love bites Pansy Parkinson left behind.)
After all of that was over, a person would have to have exquisite timing indeed to catch Draco and Hermione in an embrace. A careful observer might notice some bumping against one another when walking the corridors, parts of the library that would be suddenly strangely inaccessible late in the evening, and some spectacularly disarrayed hair on Hermione's side, but not much more.
No, what tipped everyone off that it wasn't all just a magical mistake at the Yule Ball was that cat of hers, that shaggy orange creature called Crookshanks. He had somehow found a way to go between Gryffindor Tower and the Slytherin Dungeon at will. No one knew how he did it, but some nights, especially before a difficult exam for the Slytherin fourth years, Crookshanks would stroll out from under a sofa or behind a curtain in the Slytherin common room and bound into Draco's lap to keep him company while he worked.
In fifth year, the cat kept coming, even months after the new headmistress started the Inquisitorial squad with Draco Malfoy as its student leader, charged with hunting down Harry Potter's new secret student group. The school population humoured Malfoy and Granger's obnoxious game of cat and mouse - all except the headmistress, who hadn't been at the Yule Ball and who knew nothing about Crookshanks.
It was extremely convincing at times, but the consensus was that their theatrical displays of enmity were played to keep Malfoy in a position where he could insulate his girl from Umbridge for as long as possible. It lasted until Umbridge's abuse of veritaserum meant Potter's secret couldn't be hidden another moment.
Yes, how could it be anything but an act when Crookshanks would still appear in the Slytherin dorms, purring and bumping his chin against Draco's knuckles as he spent cold nights revising for his OWLs by the fire?
After the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, Draco and the cat were seen together in Hogwarts just one more time. Hermione had been brought back from the Ministry to the school's hospital wing badly cursed. Madam Pomfrey had poured a dozen potions down her throat to counteract it but Hermione spent the rest of the night awake, sore and sick and sad, unable to take a sleeping draught that might interact with the rest of her medicines. Everyone else from the scene was sleeping soundly under the effects of their potions when Malfoy arrived at the door to the hospital wing not long before dawn.
By then, he and Nott and Crabbe had met with Snape to hear about their fathers' arrests, and his mother had contacted him by floo, almost incoherent with grief but intent on explaining everything in her own way. She wanted to tell him, to warn him of what to expect next. He had raged and cried but hadn't slept - felt like he might never sleep again - and now he was being refused entry to the hospital wing.
Madam Pomfrey had been debriefed on the tragedy at the Department of Mysteries too. "No, Mr. Malfoy, you may not visit at this time. We are not in the business of offering up the injured for vengeance."
"I don't want any vengeance," he tried to assure her. "I just need to see - her."
Madam Pomfrey tossed her head. "You will have all of your questions answered in a few hours, along with the rest of the students. The headmaster - that is, the real headmaster, Professor Dumbledore - will be addressing the school shortly. Now, if you please, it is very late - "
She was pushing the door closed against his knee as he protested. "Madam Pomfrey, believe me, I have no ill intentions toward anyone here. I - " he stopped at a familiar feeling against his shin. "Wait!" he called, scooping up the cat. "This is Hermione Granger's cat. Look at him - he's half kneazle. If I meant to hurt her, he'd be scratching my eyes out right now. But listen to him purring instead. You hear that? Please, let me see her."
Madam Pomfrey stood considering the frantic, white-faced boy, eyes rimmed red with old tears and sleeplessness, barely sixteen, his family in ruins, clinging to a cat that was purring like a Muggle motor, pleading to see a girl he had kissed at a ball a few years ago - a girl far too good for him by just about everyone's reckoning.
Slowly, Crookshanks pivoted his head toward the woman barring the door, his golden eyes blinking languidly.
"Quickly and quietly," she said as she led them inside.
Weasley was tucked into the bed across the room from Hermione's, snoring noisily, potioned out of his mind, his arm thick with bandages. In her own bed, Hermione's eyes were closed but she lay awake and restless, wincing against her pillows.
"Hey," he said.
Her eyes cracked open. "Crookshanks!"
The cat slipped from his arms, plummeting to the bed and curling itself into a furry heap on the blankets between her feet. "Crookshanks, how did you get here?"
"He just appeared at my feet in the corridor, like he does," Draco explained.
She gasped, seeming to just have noticed who had brought the cat. "Mal - Draco."
He hoped his tone was neutral. "Hi."
"Hi," she echoed.
He looked more than exhausted, as if he'd been physically beaten. Since he'd arrived, he'd hardly spoken at all but she had heard it anyway - the similarities in tone and cadence between Draco's speech and his father's. Lucius had been wearing a mask when she'd seen him at the Ministry earlier, but his voice was unmistakable, especially to her. And the eyes - they'd been visible through the openings in the mask, clear and glittering with hate and anger, fear. It was completely different, but at the same time, not unlike the glittering of Draco's eyes when they were together, and he was irrepressibly happy to be with her.
"Where are you hurt?" he asked.
"Kind of all over, but mostly here." She waved a hand along her left side, over her ribcage.
"Who did it?"
It was a much more specific question than it seemed. What he wanted to know was whether his father had done it. "It wasn't him," she said.
He crossed to the right side of the bed, sat down, and with his quick lightness he swung his legs onto the bed, slipping both his arms around one of hers, managing to embrace her without aggravating her injuries. He nestled his chin into her shoulder, his breath on her neck, his face in her hair.
After a year and a half of being with him, however clandestinely, her body had developed a conditioned response to his. Her bloodstream flooded with comfort and well-being at his touch, even if it was just a brush against her robes in the tussle for potion ingredients at the back of the classroom. It was the same tonight. His presence was medicine, real as anything Madam Pomfrey could dispense. Hermione made way for him on the small hospital cot, letting him fill the space, tipping her face to breathe in the scent of his hair, her closed mouth resting in an almost-kiss against his crown.
"Hermione - "
"Shh, not yet."
She crossed her arm across her aching ribs to hold him tighter. If they could just lay here together in the quiet - Draco, Crookshanks and herself - she might be able to sleep in spite of the pain. But that wasn't why he'd come. He lay beside her vibrating with anxiety. For right now, her fight was over. His was just beginning.
They'd been able to hold themselves apart from everything else for so long - apart from Harry, Draco's parents, the Order and, well, the other side. But they'd finally been overtaken. Lucius Malfoy had drawn Harry out, had stood in the Department of Mysteries, masked and murderous and included her among "the others," the ones who could be killed if necessary. Draco couldn't have known it was coming, or that it would be this way, but still...
She inclined her head to look at him. He felt her shift and glanced up at the same time. It was too much and she shut her eyes, easing a tear out of each of them. His thumb was on her face, brushing the tears away, and she felt him rising against her undamaged side, moving to kiss her. There was a quaver in his lips and breath, as if he was unsure she'd still accept him but desperate for her anyway. With no hesitation, she returned his kiss with firm pressure, with the slick warm seal of an opening mouth.
Of course, of course.
He stretched higher, deeper into her kiss, still hardly moving for fear of hurting her. He clenched his fists to keep from grabbing her and simply running away, disappearing, making their separateness from everyone else a permanent reality somewhere no one would ever find them. Not that it was possible - not without costing each of them things they couldn't bear to lose.
How was he going to tell her that they were gathering at his house, at this moment? His mother had told him to expect it. They were coming - not just awful Aunt Bella but all of them. In one more day, before school ended, he would be there with them, the reluctant, terrorized lord of the manor, just weeks past his sixteenth birthday, unable to refuse anything, doing whatever they asked in order to keep himself alive to keep his mother safe. Or at least to keep the foul, snake-faced dark lord from unmanning his father in the worst way he could, by tampering with Lucius's wife.
Hermione pulled away from him, and though it hurt her to swallow, she did anyway. "Someone said something tonight. It wasn't about us, but it was. They said, 'It's time to learn the difference between life and dreams.'"
He bowed into her shoulder, groaning before he sat up beside her on the bed, nodding miserably.
"Don't go to them," she said.
"Them?" he said. "They've got my mother, the only real family I have left now that…" He couldn't finish. "Imagine it was you. What wouldn't you do to get your parents to safety?"
The question ran through her like a shiver. "But they're not safe, are they? Bring your mother here, to Dumbledore. And your father - well, at least," she began, in the worst possible way to say anything to someone grieving a loss, "at least in Azkaban your father is safe, in his way."
He stood up, scoffing. "Thanks. But you've got no idea."
"I bloody well do," she answered, sitting up painfully in her bed. "I was under the same roof as you-know-who tonight. In the line of fire of - of people doing his work. And even unconscious and injured, I escaped them. Look at them, they can't win. We're stronger."
Draco shook his head. "Are you? Not everyone made it out of the Ministry. We Blacks have suffered a death in the family tonight, as I'm sure you haven't forgotten. No, and they've got nothing to lose now. From now on, they'll be brazen. It'll be carnage all around. This was just the beginning of a wave of casualties."
"Listen to me Draco, have some faith in Dumbledore, and in Harry."
It was the least persuasive thing she could have possibly said. He was shaking his head again. "All that means is that they'll be next. And there's nothing you, Hermione Granger, can do about it. Get out of the road. Keep your parents out of it. Take them away. Lay low for a few years."
"You know I can't do that."
"Hermione - "
"If you're so worried about me, then help me."
He pulled at his hair. "Don't make me choose between my parents and you. If I don't choose my parents, they'll die. You - you've got people to protect you. My parents have no one. Just me."
She rose to kneeling on her bed. Crookshanks flexed his ears in opposite directions. "You can't stand up to Voldemort by yourself."
"No," he agreed. "My father - he was powerful, a perfect servant, and not even he - no, the best we can do is survive, and wait. It's all anyone can do."
"Hope, Draco," she said, her voice still soft in the sleeping hospital ward, but high, near tears. "I know it's hard for you to imagine tonight. But - please hope."
He stood in front of where she still knelt on the bed, leaned his forehead against hers. He spoke through gritted teeth. "I'll go home, pass a dark and horrifying summer, and when you see me again - who knows what they'll have done to me, what I'll have done by then. But whatever happens, remember that I…" He stopped, grimacing as if in pain, holding his breath. "No, this is not how I wanted to say this to you."
He let out his breath, moving as if to take a step back, to leave, when she grabbed the front of his jumper with both of her hands, holding their faces together. "What, Draco? Say what to me?"
He strained against her hold, looking away. "No, you can't hear it for the first time like this."
"Draco, don't go." Her ribs burned and she was sinking back to sit, still gripping his jumper, but gathering it up, pulling it over his head.
With his head caught inside his jumper, he stammered unintelligibly before she pulled it clear. She dropped it on the bed, next to Crookshanks who stretched and kneaded it with his claws. Draco sat blinking at the jumper she'd taken off him, bewildered, the high tragedy of his tone slipping. "Granger," he gasped, looking over his shoulder at sleeping Weasley. "It's definitely not the best moment for us to do this for the first time either."
"I am not seducing you," she smirked.
"Aren't you? Then stop taking my clothes off," he argued as she pressed on with unbuttoning the cuff of his shirt.
She pushed his sleeve to his elbow, baring his long white arm. "This is where your father has the Dark Mark, isn't it?"
There was no point denying it now. "Yes. It's black and about the size of a witch's hand."
"Brilliant," she said. "Hand me my wand. It's on the table there."
He raised his eyebrows but passed her the wand. She took it, holding it not by the handle, but near the tip, as if it was a quill. "Keep still," she said.
A cool blue line of light flickered from the end of her wand, shrinking and sharpening into something like a small stylus. It looked energetic enough that he should have recoiled from it, but he didn't, trusting instead, his arm motionless as she lowered the stylus toward the tender flesh of his inner arm.
"As you know, you are mine," she said. "I have a prior claim on you. If those people try to mark you - "
"When they try - "
"Whatever happens, they will find it's not as easy as they might have expected. You are not friendless, Draco Malfoy. You are - " she caught herself and stopped, smoothing the skin under her wand, blowing on it like dark embers, watching for it to flare with heat and light. "You have people who care for you, who protect you, who defy what hurts you."
He kissed the top of her head as she bent over his arm. "I appreciate the righteous ranting but do stop and tell me what it is you're trying to do, exactly."
"I'm inscribing a spell on your arm. It's both a protection and a message. Whoever comes after will have to remove it before they can leave their own mark."
He smirked. "You're defacing me? With a message? Make it filthy then."
She laughed, relieved to hear him sounding more like himself. "I will not."
From her office, Madam Pomfrey jumped at the sound of laughter. She would never lose the awe she felt at the resilience the students had in their tragedies, always ending up laughing in her hospital somehow. None of them ever grew tired of kissing or laughing.
On the bed, Draco sat over Hermione as she worked, batting at her hair. "Can't we move all this out of the way? I want to see what you're writing."
"You'll see when I'm done. Stop moving or it'll be wobbly and illegible."
"Does that matter if it's mostly invisible?"
"Of course it matters." She sat back. "There."
He pulled his arm toward his face, squinting.
"Breathe on it," she said. "It's like a trick some of the girls use to leave love notes on glass."
He opened his mouth and breathed a hot cloud onto his forearm. An image flamed to light. It was the size and the exact shape of a woman's hand, her hand. In the centre of it was a heart - not a Valentine's heart like the ones festooned over everything at Madam Puddifoot's - but an anatomical heart. And written across the heart was a word: hope.
"The H is extra large, because it stands for 'Hermione,'" she said.
Speechless, he traced the H with his fingertip.
"One more thing to set it properly," she said, taking his arm in her hand again. "Crookshanks, if you please?" She took the cat's front paw in her hand, pressing on the pads to bare his claws. Using a small, yellow talon, she scratched the skin at the centre of Draco's mark until a single drop of blood formed, not even big enough to bead and roll away. The outline of the mark flashed once before receding into his skin.
"Thank you, Crookshanks," she told the cat as he curled his paws underneath his body again. "And last of all..." She bent and kissed the tiny wound. Her strength left her before she could sit back up again, and she stayed bowed against his skin, her lips pressed to the mark she'd left, something mounting inside her, around her cursed heart, fighting, but already so tired.
His free hand found her chin, and he tipped her face to look at him, raising her up. "I can say it now."
"I think you'd better."
"Hermione Granger, I love you."
Saying no more, she kissed him, deeply and breathlessly, and he held her until she could no longer keep from squirming in pain from the effort of being injured and upright for so long.
"Maybe you'll be able to sleep now," he said as he eased her onto her back. She caught his arm as he straightened up, breathing on it to see her mark again.
"You are loved," she told him in a hoarse voice. "Seeing this won't stop them, but it will let them know what will stop them in the end." She took him by his tie, reeling him in, and whispering something almost unbearably sweet into his ear.
The sun was rising now, golden light streaming through the leaded windows, glinting off Crookshanks's coat. It caught Draco's eye, and he considered gathering up the cat and taking him away, leaving Hermione to rest uncrowded. Crookshanks seemed to know and lifted his head, glaring a warning that he would not be moved.
Draco vanished from Hogwarts before Hermione and Ron were released from the hospital wing. By the time they had recovered, the term had ended. Hermione spent a token few weeks with her parents before she was sent for to stay with Ron and Harry at the Burrow, bringing Crookshanks with her.
If the cat ever found his way from there to Malfoy manor, neither he nor Draco ever told.