Two
Day: 217; Hour: 18
Hermione has developed a system. It is not the best system, and some might say it is the worst system, but it is hers and it works most the time.
Cast and wait.
She always does her best to look for the insignia or sign to let her know if it is a Death Eater or one of her own that she spots, but when it gets too bad and frantic and she can't tell, she has no choice but to Stupefy first and check second. She has learned by now that there isn't time for hesitation in a fight.
Anyone who has noticed her lackluster method hasn't yet said anything to her. The people on the receiving end of it have varying reactions. Some are understanding, but the further up in rank they go, the less likely she's been able to get away without some sort of anger problem directed at her for at least a week.
She brought up the issue at various meetings, and to Moody and Tonks personally. Nothing was done about it however, except for her being asked if she wanted to leave the Order (by a not so tolerant Moody). So, she adapted, as all people must do, to their environment in order to survive.
Cast and wait.
Hermione rolls, and swears she feels a spell hit so close to her that it burns. Thankfully, the Death Eaters play with Avada far less than she had thought they would. They were much more into the torture first.
She rolls to her feet, less agile than she has seen it done by many others, and aims in the general direction of the spell caster. She's disorientated but she manages to hit anyway, and leaves her attacker fallen. It's too clear here, so she runs, looking for cover. The smoke that usually comes with a lot of wand work and destruction is both her enemy and her friend, and she realizes this the most when it is no longer there.
There is a silhouette emerging into the path in front of her, and she gives it just a second before she stuns them. She can never tell which way they are facing when it's like that, and there is no time for hesitation.
She creeps forward, watching for any signs of anyone else. She's horrible at sneaking around though, and her feet seem too loud, and she stops breathing to cover up the noise it makes gasping into her lungs. Halting her breath wasn't a good idea however, as the moment her body kicks it into a desperate need, she's even louder and more ragged than before.
The woman on the ground wears no mask or hood, but her sleeve is void of anything as well. An Auror had been the first to make this mistake, and he was dead now, Hermione knew. They drilled it into their heads after that.
Not all fighting for Voldemort were Death Eaters. Some were just hard supporters who managed to find out about the battle, or just weren't marked yet. There were also a few cases where Death Eaters stripped their identifying hoods off to masquerade themselves as friendly. No one could be trusted without the Phoenix or the orange band around his or her arm.
Hermione isn't sure what alerts her to someone's presence, or if anything did at all but her natural curiosity to check around herself. When she sees him though, she gasps so hard that it stings her lungs, forcing her to cough. It is a booming sound in the stealthy silence around them. It minces her spell to ruins the first time, and when Lucius gets the idea and raises his wand, she manages to finish speaking Stupefy before he can finish whatever he was casting.
She watches him fall, disbelieving, and coughs violently into her sleeve, wide eyes still open over her arm and staring. She nearly expects him to rise back up and come blow her all to hell. She is more nerve-wracked now than she has been all battle, and she is completely unsure about what to do with herself. Or with him.
Does she find someone? Does she try to alert the Order, or someone higher up? Does she just kill him off now?
She sends furtive glances around her and rises up from her squat over the other woman. Her heart jackhammers the moment she is fully upright, because he knows she's coming. This is Lucius Malfoy, and he knows she is coming; frozen and waiting for her, just a dozen footsteps away.
Except it's not. She blinks down at him for at least twenty seconds before she herself can move. The anger-twisted face of Draco Malfoy greets her from the ground instead, and she honestly should have known better. Lucius was in Azkaban, after all. Draco had also been close enough for her to see the waving orange ends of the tight knotted band had she looked past anything but his hair.
"Crap," she mutters, and touches those same ends just to be double sure that they are there.
She contemplates leaving him like that until someone finds him at the end of the battle, but she knows it will just be a worse situation if she does. She stands and watches his oddly positioned frame for a second more before un-stunning him.
He is quick. Much quicker than she has seen from Harry, or Ron, or anyone off a broom. So quick that she is on the ground before she is completely sure that it was he who does it and not a spell from someone else. He takes a little longer to appear, but it is still faster than she can move to prevent him from doing so.
His knees are heavy and bony, pressing and cutting into the softness of her thighs. He has a hand on her chest, no doubt able to feel the wild thrumming of her heartbeat, and his wand is pressing uncomfortably into the skin beneath her chin. His face hovers over hers, sneering, eyes dark, and she thinks that steel grey is cold at the same time as it is hot. His hair hangs forward, blowing against his face with the wind.
"What. The fuck. Are you doing?" he seethes.
"I thought you were someone else," she seethes right back, because he will learn she is not Parkinson or one of those girls, and she will not take his crap.
The 'someone else' doesn't need to be defined, as understanding lights his features and then darkens them. Hermione bucks against that painful grinding of his kneecaps, and shoves an unmoving shoulder. She digs her own wand into the base of his throat, and it is a battle of eyes and unwavering hate.
"If you can't see the big, bright, orange cloth on my arm, Granger, then you do not belong in a place like this."
"One could argue that you don't belong with it on your arm in the first place," she yells, and it is too loud for the situation, but she is sick of Draco Malfoy telling her where she belongs.
"Is that it? Stunned me on purpose, angry that I'm here, and then couldn't go through with whatever unsavory, ill-minded idea you had in mind?"
"Please, Malfoy. You're not even worth the wand work. And if you were, it wouldn't be a stunning spell - I'd send you where you sent Dumbledore, because that's the only place you belong," she hisses through her teeth, shoving her wand into the skin of his throat until it could go no more.
His face twists more, and he leans down further, digging everything in, and she knows that what he is about to say will be something horrible. He opens his mouth to speak, eyes lit in anticipation of a delivery that never came.
"Can you tell me why you two are lying here in the middle of a fight, with your wands on one another?" An orange band flutters, and a vaguely familiar face greets them with anger and distaste.
Malfoy is hauled off of her, but his grip on her shirt brings her up halfway before he notices and drops her painfully back to the ground. He whirls and shoves the man with the grip on the back of his shirt, looking seconds and inches away from all out going at his face.
There is a yell, and the Auror drops, dead. Malfoy spins like the hunted, and it is not a Stupefy that she hears, but an Avada Kedavra that burns his lips. She stares up at him from the ground, less active but still panting in time with his own heavy breathing.
He licks his lips, lowers his wand, and looks down at her, a murderer. He is haunted, but it is not the shock that comes with the first time, and she knows that even if it is the second, he is far too used to it than he should be. If Harry was right about Malfoy having not been too far gone to kill anyone on the tower, he was wrong about it now.
He turns then, disappearing back into the smoke, and leaves her with two bodies and a head like a carousel.
Day: 238; Hour: 8
Ginny is one of the strongest girls she has ever had the pleasure to know, but she is also young and too hopeful for even Hermione. She has this tougher, sassy exterior that always makes her come off like she is better than she is. But Hermione watches her, and sees her crash over and over again, struggling with the daily dealings of no news from Harry and Ron. She has yet to receive even a letter, and it bothers her far more than she is willing to let anyone know.
She loves Harry. Loves him as she always has. But there is not much room for love in war, and Hermione has begun to learn that as well.
Ginny sleeps with Seamus on a night where he was half-drunk and she was... Well, Hermione isn't sure what made Ginny do it, but she had. Maybe it had been some sort of revenge thing because she was hurt, or maybe she had just been curious... All the same, she had emerged from a bedroom, rumpled and disheveled, at two in the morning.
She locks herself in her room and cries for three days straight. By the time Fred and George discover what happened, Seamus was three quarters of Britain away. Thankfully, as far as anyone knows, the news remains elusive to Molly, Arthur, and the rest of her older brothers.
She is standing in Hermione's doorway now, hair glittering orange and deep red in the shadows and moonlight. It is the time between the third night and the fourth morning, and only the fifth day since Hermione has been back. She is scheduled to leave again at the end of the day to the Malfoy Manor, and only God (or Moody) knows after that.
Her motions are practiced and mechanical, but it is a defeated slump with which she collapses under the blankets. Hermione usually turns her back to people sharing the bed with her, because she has a thing about people breathing in her face - she hates it. This is an exception however, and she throws her arm around the bony pair of shoulders across from her.
Ginny's skin is cold, like she had just come from the outside, and Hermione can hardly feel any life in the set of her bones. She rubs her shoulder blades in the little pinches she knows Ginny likes, and scoots closer so they share the same pillow.
"He doesn't have to know." She begins to cry then, throwing Hermione into a hug.
Hermione wraps her arms about the other girl's head, and twirls long strands of red around her fingers. She lets Ginny cry, and cry, and cry, and she stares at the black wall that is really blue with the lights on.
"He'll find out," Ginny whispers, positive in her statement.
"He'll understand." Eventually. "It's okay."
Ginny shakes her head against Hermione's shoulder. "No, it's not."
"It will be." And she is silent after that.
Day: 239; Hour 12
Molly and Arthur do their best to make all of them forget any other problems, and focus on the fact that it is Christmas. It is slow in the beginning, as the absence of Harry and Ron isn't easily forgotten, and Ginny is obvious in her depression and regret. It picks up though, when Hermione learns to forget the differences in past Holidays, and just focus on the positive things about this one.
She is happy she is here with all of them.
Day: 245; Hour: 19
Hermione smiles at Hannah, Cho, and Justin, the only ones in the house for the New Year celebration. Her cheeks are warm and red with wine, and she hopes this year will bring change.
Day: 256; Hour: 10
There is smoke, and smoke, and blood. Blood all over everything. It's on her hands, and clothes, and she can feel it caked and layered on her face. It makes her want to throw up, and so she does, all over her new shoes. She spits and spits to try and get rid of the long strands of saliva and the horrible taste in her mouth, but it doesn't work.
She breathes deep, her throat burning and raw, and her breath catches in her chest. Her feet numb and dumb, trip over themselves, and the ground, then a body. It is warm, and crunches and squishes against her foot at the same time. He is dead, beneath his mask and blood spattered face, but she still scrambles back from him anyway. She spits the puke from her mouth, closing her eyes as she heaves again, and sees his lifeless brown eyes staring back up at her. It reminds her of her Uncle Henry and the dead deer he kept hanging from the walls of his garage, with their wide and petrified glassy eyeballs staring her down.
Her fingers curl in grass and dirt, and she's crawling. Crawling until she manages to get enough momentum up to pull her feet to the ground, and then she is running. Running, and running, through smoke and the smell of sulfur and dark magic. There is a cracking in her chest and throat as she strangles air in through all the phlegm and bile, and her heart is like a dead weight in the hole made for it.
"Jesus, help me. I just... home. Need... God." She's starting to edge to hysteria and she knows it, because her tears have made her blind, and she's running without paying attention.
Through the grey, she sees a movement, trivial at first, and then the outline of a hood against the smoke. They are collapsed to the ground as she lowers her wand, and she keeps running. Wounds crisscross her skin, and her shirt is soaked with her own blood. It's running from her head in gushes that don't seem to end, and she twirls and twirls in a dizzy sort of dream.
"Help!" She tries, screams, because she can't find the medical help she needs by eyesight alone. "Help!"
And it is not for her, but a man she does not know, with the Phoenix orange and red on his sleeve. A man who is dying and gurgling blood bubbles, and who didn't want her to let go of his hand.
"Help me! Help me, please! Shit! Shit." She breathes, harsh, spins. "Damn it. Damn. Damn."
Her breath is rush, rush, rushing and now she's hyperventilating. Gasping in air, and reaching out to clutch something, but there is nothing there.
"A man! He's... a man..." Her eyes drift, and she peels them open, but they drift again. "Help."
The world tips, spinning up and to the right, and then any air she had left, leaves her in a whoosh, without a fight. She is met with blackness before she can even breathe again.
Parkinson. Pansy Parkinson now, is in her face as she opens her eyes from that dark. It had seemed to last forever and ever, and if she thinks hard, she can see flashes in between of things she does not know if she dreamt or truly saw. The point is that she had fallen to unconsciousness, and now Parkinson is above her, drowning her.
Yes, drowning her. There is water all around her, covering her, choking her as she breathed. Hermione gasped and choked, and lost all connection to oxygen. She grabs Parkinson's hands on her shoulders and cuts into them, or tries, but her fingernails are blunt and she can't break skin. She tugs instead, and yanks, and presses her fingers like a vice into the frail structure of bones that make up Parkinson's wrists.
Hermione catches a breath, gasps and coughs. Coughs long and hard, and it burns her throat like fire. She is winning now, or something close enough as she can breathe a little more. Panic is still tough and terrible, but it is nothing to the look of fright on that face hovering over hers.
Hermione drops a hand away to go for that face, but then Parkinson has pulled a hand back as well. It slaps Hermione across the face, again, and then again, and then so hard that it bashes the other cheek off the side of the tub.
Tub.
Hermione blinks slowly at the chipped yellow. Water rushes in a wave between her face and the porcelain, and it is tinged red with blood. Her blood. Pansy Parkinson's pure hands buried in all that muddy water.
She breathes, slow, and pulls her head up a little. It is heavy, and she feels as if every bit of her has drained and rushed away with that wave. The water sloshes, and she looks back to Parkinson, shell-shocked.
"It's alright, Granger," she whispers, and Hermione realizes that they are crying.
There is a tightness in her chest that soars up into her throat, and it cracks and explodes as she breathes out, and she sobs. Pitiful, broken sounds that echo off the tiles, and lets her head fall back on the tub again. Her eyes focus on the water stained ceiling, and her fingers are stiff as they curl into the heavy fabric of her jeans.
"Oh, God." She remembers the man, and falling, and does not know if this was real or if she has lost her mind fully to war.
"It's okay."
It is not.
"Where am I? Where..."
"You're at the shelter house on Pine Grove. They brought you here after... I suppose you were in a fight. There's others out there too, and that woman... Tonks. Tonks is coming back soon."
"I don't remember," Hermione breathes, raises those foreign-feeling hands to her face and shakes her head. "I don't remember."
"You were in shock, Granger. You were... all over the house, and hitting the walls, and yelling..." There is a mutter, a distant sound of speech. "I had to snap you out of it before you injured yourself even more."
"Why..." Hermione shook her head, because she could not grasp how Parkinson, Pureblooded elitist, could begin to care. "Thank you."
Thank you, because it doesn't matter how. Only that she did. That she did, and she had helped, and she deserves Hermione's appreciation because of it.
Hermione tries to pull herself up, but Parkinson is forced to help. It feels as if she's lost most control over her basic motor functions. There is pain. In her head, and back, and arms, and everywhere. Everywhere.
Then she forgets the hurt of it all as her eyes fall over Parkinson's shoulder and to the doorway. It takes her a few seconds of sporadic thought and placement before she really gets that Malfoy is standing there. He leans against the frame with all the nonchalance in the world, his stance relaxed and his face blank. He sneers when she looks at him though, and gives her an assessing glare before turning his eyes back to Parkinson.
"I don't even know why you bothered. The fact that Granger has gone mad isn't your problem."
Parkinson brushes her hair behind her ear and climbs out of the tub, ignoring him all together. He straightens up, tense and annoyed now, and simply watches as the two fumble to get Hermione out of the tub.
Hermione is embarrassed and blushing like mad that she needs help at all, that she is in this circumstance, and that Malfoy of all people has to see it.
"You're never going to learn, Pansy."
"Fuck off," she snaps.
"Fuck off?" He holds a rage laced through those words that makes even Hermione's skin raise in bumps along her shoulders.
Parkinson stops and licks her lips, glancing up at Malfoy. He nods slowly, looking rather sinister, and moves from the doorway in all sharp movements and hard angles. Hermione almost cares what that was all about, but not enough, and Parkinson is helping her steady herself before she can even bother trying.
Day: 274; Hour: 22
There is a letter from Harry that she keeps folded and buried in her back pocket. She carries it with her everywhere. When she showers, it is transferred from one dirty pocket and into the clean one. At times, she can feel its presence like heat. Often times, she has to reach to make sure it is there.
Neville waits patiently for her to take her turn as she shoves a hand down to feel the sharp edges. Just to be sure. Pansy and Angelina are yelling at one another in the other room, in a fight that had started over a bag of chips and escalated into something to do with Angelina's ex-boyfriend. Neville is completely put out by the presence of Pansy and Malfoy, and informs her it is only the second time he has had to deal with them in one of the shelters. Hermione has lost count of how many nights she slept in the same house with them, though she has no idea as to why that is.
They generally avoided one another anyway. Besides a handful of fights with Malfoy about breakfast and the theory of Darwin, and a few rather civil words exchanged between Pansy and she, they basically kept to themselves. Pansy and Malfoy, that was. Hermione usually roamed the house in proof that she wouldn't hole herself up in response to their presence, and the two of them mostly kept to the rooms (or room) they were in. It was usually a surprise to turn the corner and see them.
Unless, of course, she was with other friends. Her own ex-Housemates tended to be the worst. Seamus and Dean specifically. Malfoy was a huge, neon target for most the guys dealing with some pent up aggression. Malfoy didn't even seem to mind, and there had been quite a few duels and fistfights Pansy and she had taken to breaking up.
There is a crash from the living room, and Neville's head snaps up to share a look with her. They are up, on their feet, and out into the other room in a matter of seconds.
"Go ahead! Go ahead, bitch! Hit me! I'll have your ass in Azkaban so fast, your head will spin! They're just waiting! One little thing, and you're done! You Death Eater slag! You-"
"I'll kill you-"
"What? What? Was that a threat? I feel like my life is in danger now! I'll have to Floo Moody, and let him know that you are unstable and cause an unsafe environment-"
"Oh, you can't fight me? I thought you were a Gryffindor, bitch! You pussy! You coward! Scared? Huh?" Pansy screams, throwing herself forward and trying to pry the arm around her waist off.
It is no use, as Malfoy is not removing his grip from her. Instead, he walks backward, dragging her struggling form against him to take along. He walks slow, letting them get their words in, and watches Angelina with a smirk. He looks at her like one might upon a frog backed into a corner by a three year-old, but without the pity.
"Coward! You-" Pansy starts, and Angelina yells and rushes forward, but a nameless man grabs her arm.
Malfoy squats and hauls Pansy up against his frame. She bucks and yells, and elbows back against him, but he only wraps his other arm around her and speeds up his retreat to the bedroom.
"So," Hermione turns back to Neville at the sound of the door being kicked shut and Pansy's furious yell, "my turn, right?"
Day: 291; Hour: 17
Seamus feels her thigh in a way that makes her stomach flip in the exact sort of way a man should never aim to make a woman feel. She thinks of Ron, the last to have ever tried it, and of Ginny, who still looked stricken at the mere mention of the Irish.
The air is fresh and light outside, and she sits alone until the sun rises, thinking about friends and sex and how often the two seem to meet now.
Day: 304; Hour: 18
Hermione knows she should have sent the birthday well wishes three months ago if she wanted them to reach Ron on time, but she has good excuses for not planning this as well as she usually does.
Day: 306; Hour: 7
When Hermione walks into the house, she is sure the last thing she expects Malfoy's reaction to be is one of anger. Directed at her for walking wrong or something, sure, but not Parkinson.
Still battle-weary and tired, Parkinson only squeals in protest and surprise as Malfoy grabs her arm and sends her flying into a different room. Hermione stills in her own surprise, but he spares her no glance as he charges into the bedroom and slams the door shut behind him.
Hermione isn't sure if she should rush in to defend the girl who had helped her that night in the tub, and several times over the past few days as well, or if she should just sit and wait. She chooses the latter, because Malfoy/Parkinson business isn't hers.
She is still worried though, and so she stays in the hall in case she might need to rush in. Malfoy only raises his voice once, muffled and deep, and it is Pansy who screams the most. Hermione knows Malfoy though, and in her head, she can hear and feel that velvet flow of hard words. When Malfoy is at his angriest, he speaks in the lowest tone. It's a dangerous sound - one a person is forced to pay attention to, and he probably knows it.
Malfoy flings open the door, the knob breaking through the wall and plaster as it is slammed. He doesn't bother to shut it, and his body is tight and thrumming with rage as he paces a narrow line down the hall and out of sight. A moment later, a door slams, and in the stillness, she can make out Parkinson's crying.
It takes her a few seconds of pushing herself before she peeks inside the room. Pansy is uninjured, sitting on the bed with her hands clasped in her lap.
"Are you okay?"
"Fuck off."
And had it been Ginny, or even Lavender, she would have entered anyway. This was Parkinson though, and so after a slight hesitation, Hermione turns for a bathroom and a hot shower.
Day: 324; Hour: 1
Hermione lies and stares at her ceiling, though she is eavesdropping more than she is thinking. The walls are thin, and she can hear Dean and Malfoy screaming at one another down the hall. Hermione had been wondering how long it would take for Malfoy to snap, and he has now.
Malfoy had been yelling about that night on the tower, and choices, and Hermione kept thinking of how Lavender put it in the same perspective for Hermione three weeks ago. At the time she had thought that Lavender was just trying to rationalize why she wanted to sleep with Malfoy, but perhaps she had just had a different insight.
Do you blame a child for doing what his father said, when that child should have been old enough to make his own choices? Yet, if that person has only been exposed to one sort of right their whole lives, do you still blame them for having a biased opinion because they were never shown how to see from a different perspective? And do you still blame that boy, despite everything he faced, that in the end, he never went through with it? Even when he supposedly is now doing what he can to rectify his mistake in the first place?
Perhaps you do anyway. Because a man was still dead because of his actions, wasn't he? And perhaps that is the reason Dean threw a fist into the aristocratic structure of Malfoy's jaw. And perhaps that was why Hermione remained in her bed instead of doing a single thing about it.
Day: 360; Hour: 11
She literally trips over Malfoy, the sun blinding her eyes and exhaustion making her feet stupid. He is sun baked, reeking of sweat and blood in a way that tells her he has been lying there for a very long time. Blood tracks from the corner of his mouth, down the sides of his face, and stains the white of his hair. His teeth are pink and lined red, and when he looks up at her, she isn't sure he sees her at all.
There is a man, his black hood crooked on his head, lying just inches from Malfoy, dead. Malfoy's body shakes with the long aftershocks of Crucio, and it has seemed to paralyze him for who knows how long.
"Malfoy? Malfoy, can you hear me? Follow my finger." His eyebrows draw down, and he gurgles as if he is trying to speak, but only more blood rushes up from his mouth.
She rolls him to his side, blood as red as hers rolling onto the dirt ground and pooling in an oval. His shirt is scorching against her hands, despite how heated they already are. She lifts an arm and tries to wipe the sweat from her face, feeling the rub of burnt skin against the fabric.
But it is nothing compared to Malfoy. He is beet red and soaked to the bone.
She rolls him back over and he is breathing through his mouth now, his stomach caving and rising in short pants. "Okay, good. Very good, Malfoy. Now, I'm just...I don't know..."
She shakes her head, because she only knows basic healing spells, and nothing that could really help him. There is a pain relief potion in her pocket, and she pulls it out, popping off the top with her thumb.
"Alright, I'm going to pour..." His mouth shuts, and she goes about opening it again. "I'm just going to pour this in... it's going to help you, Malfoy. It's just to take the pain away, okay? I promise. Just..."
He refuses to open his mouth, and she is forced to pry it open with a lot of pulling, clutching, and digging. The bright green liquid fills up his mouth before he can get it closed again. Hermione waits, but he does not swallow. He takes slow, measured breaths through his nostrils, the green sloshing inside his mouth.
"Malfoy!" She wipes the sweat from her face again, in her eyes and burning now, and looks around them. "Just swallow! If it does anything but help, you can kill me, alright? Okay? I give you permission!"
He blinks, his eyes on hers now, fully focused. It makes her feel as if he would like to kill her regardless. He still doesn't swallow.
"Just..." She paused. "Can you swallow? Are your throat muscles locked too? Is... Jesus."
She wraps an arm around his head and pulls him up a few inches, her free hand smoothing over his throat like something she had seen Lupin do once. She is shaking with fatigue and with lack of knowing, and it doesn't even matter that much, because it is just pain relief. It isn't going to save his life or anything. And she already knows how angry he is over it, and how much he is ridiculing her in his head, and it makes her blush under all the heat already in her cheeks.
"Okay. Okay," she whispers and lowers him back down, and her hand is shaking when she cups his chin and turns his head.
The liquid splashes over to join his blood, and his eyes are different now when she turns his head back. He looks at her like she is a little insane, maybe, and also in a way that she does not understand. Perhaps she has seen the look a thousand times, but never on his face, and that makes all the difference.
"Okay. Okay. Okay," she repeats, looking around them again.
The Order puts up Anti-Apparition wards around any place they attack, which is usually detrimental for any fleeing Death Eaters. All Aurors and members of the Order carried emergency Portkeys just in case they had to flee as well. Hermione pulls hers from her pocket, a lighter wrapped in a scarf, and presses it into Malfoy's hand. She curls his fingers around the weight, holding them tightly, and then pulls the scarf from between a crack in his fingers. Belatedly, she remembers that he carries one as well and that she should have used his, but it is far too late.
His eyes are wide now, surprised maybe, and she presses the scarf with her name at the bottom onto his chest and pulls back before he disappeared. Just in case there is a mass emergency, and they might need to know that she has no Portkey.
She stares at his blood on the ground, at the spot where he had been, and then the red sticky pureness all over her fingertips. After a second more, she forces herself back, and grips her wand, moving on.
Day: 365; Hour: 2
Parkinson sits on the bottom stair of the porch, the very one that Lee Jordan guided her over earlier yesterday morning because it was unsteady with the weak wood. Hermione is unsure if she is waiting for Malfoy or nothing at all, but the door still creaks when she opens it, and Parkinson responds as if she had been waiting for her all this time - no movement at all.
"It's different, isn't it?" And Hermione meant the war, or the dark, or the quiet of the night, but Parkinson reaches up to touch the bob of her hair.
"You noticed?"
She sees it then, the shorter length, and thinks perhaps Parkinson isn't the sort of person to talk about much of anything else. "Yes. It's nice."
She doesn't respond, and Hermione feels awkward at first, and then just lost in her own thoughts over the one year milestone they have reached now.
Day: 397; Hour: 5
Ron doesn't write her for three weeks, and she doesn't receive it for another two. It is a piece of something she feels as if she has been missing for a very long time, because it has been four weeks since she has seen a single face she can recognize.
It is neat in some places, and so sloppy she cannot make out words in others, but she reads and studies it until it makes sense, before shoving it into her pocket beside the ones from Harry.
Day: 400; Hour: 23
"I should have known I would see you around with your nose up in the air, Granger. How does the air smell from your self-created pedestal?"
"Excuse me?" Hermione isn't sure how having her head currently shoved inside the fridge was somehow Malfoy-equivalent to her nose being in the air.
"Did your friends praise you? Hermione Granger, the sweet little Muggle-born saving the big, bad, son of a Death Eater. The schoolyard bully. The nasty ferret. How caring and giving she is."
She blinks twice at the strange sauce substance in a jar, and pulls back to look at him over the door. "I haven't even said a word about it-"
"You haven't had to. The way you've been walking around all day with that broom shoved up your arse and bending your spine straight says all you have to about it. Think you're one up on me, do you? Think you're some sort of better person-"
Hermione wrinkles her nose at the odd slur to his voice, and the leer on his face. "Malfoy, are you drunk?"
"Fuck, Granger. I must look completely evil in your eyes. Drunkenness. Does this break one of those cardinal rules of your God? Are you deeply offended by my sway and bloodshot eyes? Are you shitting yourself in indignation, Granger?"
He smells of sex and liquor. It assaults her senses the moment he is close enough for his scent to kick in. He is rumpled, his hair messy and a red love bite, fresh, on his neck. His eyes are dull though, and there are smudges of purple under the grey.
"I don't care what you do, as long as it doesn't hurt me or my friends, Malfoy. Furthermore, I didn't say or act in any way that was smug...or...or meant to rub in your face the fact that I Portkeyed you out over a friggen month ago. It wasn't that big of a deal. And if it was a big enough deal for you to be bringing up, it only proves what kind of person you are that you're angry about it, instead of just thanking me."
He seems to only have understood one part of this. "Thanking you? Oh, yes, Granger. That is what I should do, isn't it? What would be proper of a fellow member of light, right? Thank you for bruising my ribs with your shoe when you fell over me. Thank you for nearly drowning me to death. Thank you for Portkeying me to an empty bloody house where I stayed, alone, for four hours! You're marvelous under pressure. I'm sure you know this already from your random Stupefys you like casting at passing shadows."
She is blushing fiercely, embarrassed because this is the truth and they both know it. "I should have just left you there baking in the sun then. My apologies, Malfoy."
She shuts the fridge door as hard as she can, though it is not hard enough, and only makes a soft sound as it closes. She is glaring at him, but he is smirking in a devious way that is almost frightening enough in the dark of the kitchen to scare her. Her wand is on the counter, next to her burnt bagels, and a good five steps behind his rapidly approaching back.
"You should have. Yes, Granger. Yes, you should have left me there. The one who let the Death Eaters in, right? The bad, bad Slytherin who-"
His tone of voice makes her hairs rise all down her arms. "Are you mad? Yo-"
"Completely. I'm fucking insane. Insane." He is seriously beginning to scare her now. "Why do I deserve to be left?"
"What?"
He darts forward then, grabbing her arms, and she is reminded of just how quick he can be. He throws her up against the wall, pinning her with the force of his bodyweight slamming into her. The tip of her toes brush the linoleum, but the rest of her is suspended. Even her breath, as she stares at his face in front of hers, and waits for the fallout.
His eyes are wild, wide, alert. They dart and track the minuscule movements of her face, and his breath reeks when it hits her nose. His fingers tighten, and later she will bruise, but she doesn't think of this yet.
"Why do I deserve to be left?"
"Malfoy. Put. Me. Down."
"Answer the question, Mudblood-"
She rushes her knee up and it only meets his thigh, and it manages to anger him more than hurt him. He pulls them back, slams her forward again, pulls back, forward again. Pain shoots from the small of her back to the bottom of her skull, and she almost cries out. She punches him instead, and digs her nails in, and pinches, and kicks at him some more. He tears his hands from her upper arms to find her wrists, and his hips jerk forward to slam her against the wall when she starts to slip down in her struggle. She growls, pulling her arms from his attempts to grab them, and clobbers him over the head and to the face. He is slowed with the droll of inebriation and the way she is coming at him from all angles, but there are chords and bricks of muscle in him where she is softer, and there isn't much of a chance before he has her pinned again.
"Don't call me that! Don't you ever say that word again!"
"Answer the question! Answer the question!" He yells this, his words so rushed that they form a stream of sounds she can't distinguish at first.
"You are-"
"Why do I get left? Huh? Why do I get left!" He slams her back again.
"Because you're you! Because you- Because you're a racist. Because you're a boy who can stand here and fight for my side, but still call me that fucking name! Because you're throwing me into a wall! Because you're Draco Malfoy, and you. Are. An. Asshole. Because you don't deserve to be saved!"
"Then why did you!" he screams, frustrated and at the end of a short rope, as if this has been the question all along.
Hermione doesn't know how to respond, and he bares his teeth and shakes her. She stops all her pushing and squirming and kicks, and looks back in the face of his confusion, drunkenness and rage.
"Because I'm Hermione Granger," she whispers.
Because she is the girl who has faith in humanity even when it has none in her. Because she is the stupidest smart person you'll ever meet. Because there always has to be the person who believed too much in nothing at all.
"Draco!" His name was a whispered gasp, laced with shock and disapproval.
He looks disgusted by her answer, and all the hardness of his body steps back. His fingers clench, making her face tighten in pain, and then he lets go and drops her. Her bare feet smack the floor, and Pansy is there, pushing between them and against him. She sways and staggers, and he is holding her up more than she is getting him away.
"What are you doing? What are you doing?" she whispers, stumbling over her words.
He stares and stares at her over Pansy's useless struggle, though he begins a slow, backwards trek to the doorway in acceptance of her attempt. He doesn't break eye contact, and it is the most captivating hold a person has ever had on her. Her heart hammers and her body aches, but she cannot look away from Malfoy and the clear grey that tells her lies about how drunk and sane he is.
He raises a finger, long and pale, and shoves it into the air. "Don't ever do it again. Don't ever fucking do it again."
Then he turns, Pansy stumbling against his back, and makes for his bedroom.
Day: 410; Hour: 19
Harry has messy handwriting, and it is even worse when he is in a rush. Judging by the sloppy scrawl in front of her, it looks as if he had been too busy to even write. Which makes her appreciate that he had even more. Though, it is Harry, and his busy could be battling Voldemort and a slew of Death Eaters, or an intense game of chess with Ron. All the same, she is happy for the letter.
He tells her nothing of his location, or details of what he is doing, but he tells her there is progress - and there is hope in that. He misses her, and it feels good to be missed, and Ron is doing well too. They are kept up-to-date on how everyone is doing, and they don't understand why Arthur and Molly have allowed Ginny to join the real fighting. Ron has injured his finger somehow, and they are getting closer to coming home. She reads and reads over again this letter at least thirty times before letting it join the others in her back pocket. She would surely have read it thirty more times had Lavender not walked in the room to declare temporary roommate status. The last thing Hermione needs is for Ginny to find out she has received another letter, and another opportunity has passed where Ginny could have received one at all.
"It's good that I don't know him that well. Passion dies the more you know a person. Proven. Fact." Lavender smiles at a girl Hermione does not know, but thinks is too young to hear about Lavender's sex life or fight in a war at all.
Lavender shags a strange looking man with a thick beard and bright green eyes, who is at least ten years older than her, but who she finds undeniably attractive. It is a pattern Hermione has begun to see emerge, and perhaps people were having sex all over at Hogwarts too, but she does not remember seeing it so blatantly obvious. At times, she feels as if she is the only one not having sex with a stranger or friend - because it is usually a stranger or friend, as there seems to be room for sex in war, but not relationships. They excuse it as if it does not matter because it is a desperate time, but Hermione thinks it does still matter.
Fighting and death and fear are not excuses to become whores and shag every winking bloke or bird that comes your way. But that is the way she is wired, and Hermione faintly recalls the number of times she has thought the same as her peers.
Lavender and the girl continue giggling and talking about positions and techniques, and Hermione lies in bed and watches the shadows the clouds create over the moon. She thinks of how alone she has felt for months now, but without the ability to actually be alone. She thinks of Harry and Ron, and how happy or sad they might be now. She thinks of her parents, and friends, and death, and hoods moving in black towers against gloomy skies and white smoke.
Sometimes, she thinks of her blood. She closes her eyes and feels it pounding and pulsing, and rushing against her skin and through her veins. At times, the feel of it makes the hollow of her throat cave and croak, and she wants to cry. Other times, she concentrates really hard on feeling important, and confident, and to have faith in who she is. And at times, like now, she is not sure how to feel at all.
She plays with the bottom of her dad's big T-shirt that she's worn to bed since she was nine, and she sings old songs in her head until she falls asleep.
Day: 412; Hour: 4
It is not like she thought it would be; war. Back at Hogwarts there would be a problem, time to find the solution, and then a way to solve it. There had been fear and danger, but it had been very different. At the time, she had thought it was a very dangerous thing, her life and her friendship with Harry. She understands now that she did not have a broad enough range of experience to fully measure that danger.
War is sloppy. It is bloody, and hard, and wrong, and all the things that are normally associated with it. But it is sloppy, Hermione persists in her head, because she has never heard anyone else say it before. There is hardly any time, and what time they do find is never put to too much good use. Then there are long, long lags where absolutely nothing happens at all, but people letting off steam and trying to forget that they are waiting, and what for. But they still need more time, more people, and more research, because she knows already that a war cannot be won just by heroes and those with hearts.