With Hermione still riding on his back, Draco sat sideways on a bench at the Slytherin table in the dim, deserted Great Hall. Even as he set her down on the wooden seat, she left her feet crossed in his lap, her arms around his neck, her face tipped against his head.
She hummed in his ear. "This is nice, even if it is on the Slytherin side of the hall."
He smiled but the initial enthusiasm with which he'd greeted her, all snogging and ardent declarations of love in the dungeon corridor, was simmering into sadness as he faced the conversation ahead of them.
She kissed his cheek. "Tired?"
He nodded. "So very tired."
"We don't have to - "
"Yes, love. I'm afraid we do."
She withdrew her feet, straightened her clothes, and sat primly beside him. "Show me."
Perhaps it was mostly ceremonial, and she had known all along it was there. The revelation would be momentous all the same. Everything would change once she saw it, though neither of them was sure exactly how.
She held her breath as he bunched his sleeve into the crook of his elbow and turned his arm toward her. She had seen photographs and drawings of Dark Marks in books and in the press. She had seen one conjured in the sky over the quidditch world cup campsite in her fourth year. None of this past exposure prepared her to see one in living skin. Its black lines were not made with pigments but with scar tissue, flesh not dyed but burned black, hard and raised, dead.
Of course, what was most horrible of all was that the Mark was on his flesh - Draco's, his arm that held her, danced with her, his smooth white skin that she knew by smell, taste, temperature, texture, everything - it was now defiled.
He held the arm between them, extended like a filthy specimen for them to grimace over. She leaned past it, her hands on his face, rising to her knees beside him on the bench to kiss his forehead. "Draco," she crooned. "My sweet Draco, I am so sorry."
He choked out a single sob of relief, and a tear trailed out if his eye, onto her hand still braced beneath his cheekbone. She kissed his eyelids, his wet lashes. "You don't deserve this. It's not you."
His marked arm twitched between them, as if he had begun to move to embrace her, naturally, as he had done for years, but then recoiled in disgust at himself. She sensed it and answered by pulling at his elbow until the arm was free, and slung over her back.
"You keep holding me, Draco Malfoy."
With both arms, he pulled her close.
"Does it still hurt?" she asked after a moment, her face against his neck.
She felt him swallow, his voice hoarse. "Sometimes. Today, when Snape took me away, I must have been out of my mind with pain."
She sat back. "Can you answer some more questions? I've read about Marks, and Harry and Mr. Weasley think they know things, but I want to be sure I understand."
"Hermione, I'm not sure I understand it myself. But I'll do my best." He moved to pull his sleeve back into place, hiding the Mark, but she stopped him with her hand against his.
"What happens if you touch it?" she began.
He sighed. "Like a lot of magic, it depends on what I intend by the touch. Most of the time, nothing happens." He swept his fingertips over the mark so show her. "But if I press it with a finger or wand with the intent to call him, he'll come. And if he decides I don't have a worthy reason for calling him, I'll get cursed, maybe to death."
"Wait," she said. "What would happen if you called him here, to a place so well protected against apparation? Would he get dashed against the wards and die outside the castle, just like that?"
Draco frowned. "I - I don't know."
"No, that must not work," Hermione said. "If it did, Snape would have offed him that way ages ago."
He raised his eyebrows. "Snape? Why would Snape do that? Snape is a…"
He trailed off, and they sat staring at each other, their brains clicking through the implications of what each of them had just said. The Snape Draco knew was not the same person as the Snape Hermione knew. They didn't know what to make of it, but knew they had better stop talking about him immediately.
Draco forced a cough. "The Dark Lord must have some kind of agency when it comes to responding to calls, otherwise we'd have way too much power over him. Seems like a plot hole in a shoddily edited story but - I dunno. Still, I'd rather not be the one to experiment with it."
She let it go. "So what happens if I touch it?"
Her fingers were moving toward his arm but he snatched it away, holding it tightly against his chest, out of her reach. "That's something else we need to talk about."
He told her of how the love token she had inscribed on his arm had flared to life before the Dark Lord's eyes on the night he had marked Draco, how it had risen out of his flesh and scattered into hundreds of lights over all the assembled Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself.
"At first, he mocked it. Laughed and acted like your spell and all the feelings behind it were nothing, sad little childish jokes. But when he called me to him tonight, it was different. He was deadly serious and gave me this long, creepy speech about how Death Eaters can't really love, saying I'd just end up destroying anyone I brought close to me - "
"He's lying," she interrupted. "We don't destroy each other by staying close. That's how we save each other. Don't listen to him."
He laughed and took her hand. "I hate him so much that, unless he threatens me with the extinction of my whole family, I'll subvert whatever he tells me to do. Even if I hated you, I'd force myself to fall in love with you now just to disobey him."
She faked a scoff, taking her hand back to shove at him. "Nice."
His laughter quieted to a smile as he leaned forward to burrow his face into her hair, his lips pressing a slow kiss on her neck just below her ear. "Persecution just makes being with you even better."
She shivered at his kiss, nestled her cheek against the side of his head.
But," he said, sitting back. "He actually encouraged me to find someone to f- I mean, to have a physical relationship with, as long as I keep it cruel and unequal."
She coughed out a bitter laugh. "Well, I suppose there's got to be someone here who could see to romanticizing angsty junior Death Eater mystique."
"Or at the very least, someone desperate to touch my hair."
"You are not altogether un-horrible," she said, smirking, her arms crossed to keep from touching his hair herself.
He turned his back to her and lay down, his head in her lap, growing serious again. "I'll tell you what was most striking about our meeting today. It wasn't so much what he said, but the fact that he changed his story. He went from sneering and being dismissive of the idea of me being in love to threatening and menacing me about it. Something changed his mind. Something," he paused, looking up at her over his brow. "I think something spooked him. And I think it was you, Hermione."
She raised her eyebrows, uncrossing her arms. "Tell me the rest."
"So your original spell," he began again, "revealed itself when breathed on."
"Right."
"And now, when I breathe on the place where your token used to be, there's nothing." He demonstrated. "But when the Dark Lord was inspecting it today, I thought I might have seen something flickering, like a trace of it was still hidden deep inside me." He raised his arm, bringing it close to her face. "Breathe on me, love. See if the spell you left remembers its caster and responds to you."
She held his wrist and breathed hotly against the Mark. They waited. Nothing happened. He swore.
He was letting his arm fall away when she tightened her grip on it. "One more time," she said, "with intent." She bent her head closer to the Mark, and then even closer, lead as if by some magical instinct, until she found herself kissing it, both the scarred, blackened skin and the smooth healthy whiteness around it.
Afraid for her, Draco jerked his arm away. And he saw it. There it was, fragmented, broken but visible, glowing faint and blue, her handwriting on his skin, not quite readable anymore, but they already knew what it said: hope.
Her gasp at the sight of it quickly became a laugh, delighted, disbelieving.
Draco sat up. "I knew it," he said, crushing her in his arms. "Only you - Hermione, what have you done, you brilliant girl?"
She laughed against his shoulder. "That spell," she was saying, her mind working, "it's an ancient one. I read about it in a book from the tenth century, from the archives of the Mitrian Monks. I'll find it again and read everything I can about it. Maybe there will be something useful in it - something to help us out of all this."
He sat back, taking her hands. "Slow down, alright?" he said. "This isn't the first spell of this kind that's ever been used against the Dark Lord." He stopped, swallowing hard, fighting something. "It's not the first spell he's faced that works on - on love."
He waited as she remembered on her own. "Harry's mum," she said, "Lily Evans, the spell she used to save Harry. You think our token is like hers? If she were here to kiss Harry's scar, would it flash blue?"
Draco shifted and shrugged. "All we know is that what she did worked, and that she died all the same." He gathered Hermione close again, pulling her into his lap, tucking her head under his chin. "I won't have that. I'd rather the Dark Lord just have his way with me rather than have him hurt you. I'm not a baby, like Potter was. I'll gamble with defending myself if the only alternative is for you to waste your life defending me."
She said nothing, but let him hold her. There was no point in arguing yet. They needed to learn more about the spell and that would have to wait until the library opened in the morning. She sighed and straightened up, leaning out of his arms.
"We should go to bed," she said.
Draco's face flushed red. "Wh-what? Now?"
She glanced at her wristwatch. "Yes, now. It's almost one o'clock in the morning. We can't start to work on this until tomorrow. And look at your poor raccoon eyes. You're completely knackered. You need sleep."
"Oh - oh sleep," he said, as if he'd only just learned about it. "Sleep - you sleep in Gryffindor tower, I sleep in Slytherin."
"Right." She batted his arm. "What did you think I was…?"
He caught her hand. "Nothing! Nothing - just that, seeing as love is so powerful and all - maybe, before too long - I mean, eventually - "
She shook her head, grinning. "Draco Malfoy, I will see you in the morning."
He kept hold of her hand as she stood to leave.
"Don't look at me like that," she said. "Like your heart is going to be broken if I leave."
He tried to smile. "I'm not doing it on purpose."
She laughed softly, cradling his head in her arms. "You are adorable - and brave to defy them like this instead of hiding from me or pushing me away. Thank you for showing me, for trusting me."
"I do trust you," he said, pressing his lip on her hand. He wanted to say more, to promise her he would keep her safe and that, in the end, everything would be alright. But there wasn't enough truth in it, not yet. Though, for the first time since he was marked, there was hope - something to build truth on.
By the time he reached the Slytherin common room, alone, Draco's energy, based in adrenaline and endorphins, was gone. He was barely awake as he made his way through the greenish dimness of the sprawling, quiet room. In the late night stillness, one of the last things he wanted to hear was the voice calling his name.
"Stop right there, Draco Malfoy."
The voice was Pansy's. She was curled under a fur throw on a sofa with a view of the door, rubbing her eyes and demanding to speak with him. He startled at the sight of her, remembering all of a sudden her role in tonight's nightmare, and the danger she was in.
"Pansy. You're right," he said. "We do need to talk. But can it be tomorrow? I'm not even sure what to say yet. I need some time to think it over. And I need to sleep. I've been all the way home and back tonight."
"How very inconvenient for you," she said, getting to her feet, letting him know without a word how inconvenient it was for her to sit up all this time.
"Thanks for waiting to check on me," he said. "I'm fine. Just tired."
She was getting closer to him, stopping when she was near enough to smell Hermione's scent on his clothes. She wrinkled her nose. "You smell like you've been dragged through the mud."
His posture was instantly rigid. "Pansy, I'm not going to talk to you if you're like this."
She lowered her chin. "You just said you're not going to talk to me tonight anyway. You're running off to bed no matter what I want. So what does it matter?"
He took a step toward her. "Pansy, stop. And promise me you won't leave the castle until you hear me out later tomorrow."
"I'll promise you nothing," she said, far too loudly for the time of night.
"And don't go anywhere alone," he pressed on.
She yelled a laugh into the sleeping dormitory. "What does that mean? Are you saying I can stay with you for the rest of the night? Lead the way, Draco. Take me with you. Tuck me right into your bed."
He let out an exasperated breath. "You know that's not what - Pansy," he said, calling her back from where she was tugging at the door to his room. "Look, I went home tonight and while I was there, I realized there's been a mix-up, a case of mistaken identity. And it means you're not safe."
"I'm Prender Parkinson's daughter. Pure-blooded as a witch can be. I am perfectly safe."
"Pansy, you know as well as anyone that blood purity is just a weak excuse for - no - will you listen? I can't explain it all to you. It's dangerous and I don't really understand it myself but please, take my advice and stay safe. Don't leave the castle, and don't go anywhere alone."
"As if you care," she snarled.
"You are one of my oldest friends, Pansy. You're like family to me. Of course I care."
"Shut up, Draco!"
He shushed her in return. "Keep it down or you'll have Nott out here," he warned her. She looked up at him and could tell by the shift in his facial expression that he was warming up to the idea of handing her off to Theo Nott, like she was a quaffle in a quidditch match.
"Don't be bothered with me, Draco," she said. "Just look me in the face and admit that you're in love with Hermione Granger."
"I'm in love with Hermione Granger," he said without a trace of hesitation.
She staggered backward, ever so slightly.
"I'm sorry for every time I dragged you into the middle of it. That was self-serving of me and a terrible thing to do to you. I assumed you were more detached than you were. But believe me, I do care about you. And I need you to listen to me and stay in Hogwarts until - until I don't know when, I'm sorry."
She was speechless, her delicate, pretty chin quivering, near tears.
"Promise me, Pansy. Please."
For an instant, she let him take her hand. Despite the coolness of the Slytherin dorm, his skin was still warm from his time upstairs - with Granger.
She tugged her hand out of his. "No, Draco. From now on, what you want plays no part in what I choose to do."
He was calling after her, following her as far as he could into the girls' corridor. "Now's not the time for this, Pansy. Listen to me."
"I didn't say I wouldn't do what you wanted," she said, turning to call back at him, knowing everyone must be stirring in their beds, rather hoping they were. "But I didn't say I would do it either. All I said was that it is none of your business."
With the slam of a door, she was gone.