Four

Day: 645; Hour: 11

Hermione had passed them again yesterday, which marked it twice in a row, and couldn't help but wonder what they were doing there. This afternoon she delivered the package handed to her that morning and received another to take back with her. She has no idea what any of the packages over the past three days have contained, but being a delivery girl at the moment is a lot more appealing than what she had been doing a month ago.

"Granger." Hermione spins quickly, nearly falling over the man brushing past her, and stares white-faced back at Moody. He doesn't look impressed.

She wonders if he had been waiting for her, as she had passed him the last two days at the same time going in the opposite direction. Now it is later, and she is on her way home, but there he is. "Sir."

Malfoy stands just behind and to the side of Moody, his eyes somewhere above her head. She had thought they were done with whatever they were doing when she had failed to pass them earlier.

"I believe you acquired something of importance to myself. We'll have lunch." She doesn't think she has ever heard Moody make anything less than demands.

She nods, slightly, and waits for him to begin to walk so she can follow him to the location. She makes sure to stay beside him, so she does not feel like a tag-along, and so she is not behind Malfoy. Malfoy seems to have the same idea however, and takes the spot on the other side of Moody.

Lunch is a strange affair, and when all she orders is a cup of tea, she is greeted with glances from both men. She has not been eating much, she knows, and is aware that it shows a little. Sometimes she can eat like she is ravenous, and other times it is days that she goes with soup or crackers before she eats much of anything at all.

"I said lunch, not tea time." Moody stares at her until she orders a salad, and when he continues to stare, she orders fish, though she knows she will not eat it.

There is not much conversation, though she notices that Malfoy and Moody seem far more relaxed in one another's presence than she would have ever thought. It reminds her of the pat to the shoulder she had seen a few days ago, and wonders just how much time they have spent together. Malfoy was constantly involved in missions, she had heard, and maybe that was why.

Hermione breaks the silence by asking Moody questions to be sure of his identity. With the incident at Hogwarts, the fact that they were at war, and the odd timing of today, she knew she could not be too sure. Moody seems to know this as well, and though he scowls at her through the whole process, he responds to her inquiries.

Malfoy stayed relatively silent as they ate, and spends most of the time staring out the window in front of him. His shoe scuffed hers when he sprawled out his legs more under the table, but he didn't acknowledge that he had.

Moody stood with the package safely tucked into his coat and left to pay the bill. Hermione searches for something to say in the tense air left at the table, and when Malfoy seems to recognize that she is doing so, he levels his eyes on her. The last hint of the sun turns his eyes bright and takes the tint of yellow from his platinum hair. For a moment she is comparing and contrasting the differences in the structure of his face, until his solid gaze makes her uncomfortable. He still leaves it on her once she's looked away, and it remains until they stand and must head for the door.

"I'll see you at home at eight," Moody tells her, and they move in the opposite direction before she has a chance to respond.

Day: 645; Hour: 17

Padma lets out a huff of breath between her teeth and shakes her head.

"Is there a problem, Patil?" Moody turns his eyes toward her, his face just as stern as it had been when he announced the news.

"No." She lingers over words, unsure, and then rushes on. "I just don't understand why we have to have a... leader." She turns her disapproving eyes toward Malfoy, who seems bored in the center of the room.

"Yes, I suppose you wouldn't, considering the dismal mission you helped to fail two weeks ago," Moody snaps, and she blushes. "A leader is someone skilled enough for the position, and who can be turned to if the need for a backup plan comes during the mission. A leader eliminates procrastination on what to do, like your team's three hour indecision last mission, and provides a plan everyone must follow immediately to get the job done."

Padma gives a tense nod, avoiding his eyes now. Hermione turns her own attention from the girl and back to Moody. It seems as though she wasn't the only person now to recognize Malfoy's abilities and determine it to be a good option to use them. Moody looks over his shoulder at Malfoy, and the younger man steps forward, laying out the plan.

When he is finished, there is silence. Hermione isn't sure if it is because they all agree, or because Moody seems to have accepted the plan and will refuse for it to be changed.

"Alright. One a.m., front door."

Day: 646; Hour: 22

Hermione shoves the cloth of her shirt into her mouth to stop herself from coughing too loudly. Someone had just blown a hole through one of the stone walls, and the dust of rock is choking up her lungs.

She is bleeding. She had taken a rock to her left arm, and she is nearly positive that it is broken. She holds it over the wound at her side, but can't help but be thankful it was the most damage the Death Eater could do before Neville got him. She thinks she is bleeding at her back as well, hit with a slashing curse, because she can feel it burning and the waistband of her pants are wet.

The slashing curse hit her just seconds after she lost sight of Anthony's back, and that was near the beginning. She knows she has been bleeding for a while now, and isn't sure if it is that or the lack of clean oxygen that is making her dizzy. Neville had found her, and she had followed him through corridors until this last explosion. He has been out of her sight for at least a quarter of an hour, and she has found no one but a single Death Eater.

Her panic is a solid mass inside her chest, her heart beating wildly, and she has to feel along the wall as she walks just to keep her balance. Neville had told her they had found the pensieve they had come for, which is good, because Hermione has been to more than one mission in which the Order's spies have been wrong. They must have been pulling out now, she knew, and she is horrified at the thought that they might have left her.

Her mind is disoriented, her feet clumsy as she tries to remember how to get out. Her cloak, with her Portkey wadded inside one of the pockets, was left beneath the rock and debris that had fallen on it. Hermione supposes it was just her luck to have taken it off before the explosion. If she hadn't been hit in the side and decided to use a scrap of it to wrap around her middle, she would be out of here by now.

She hears rushed feet behind her, and turns. The world spins with her, speeding up, and whirls until she hits the ground. Her wand is still up, pointed at the figure until her vision clears enough and she can see it is Neville. She lowers her wand, bracing tired fingers against the rough stone floor, but then she is hauled to her feet with no attempt by herself. She panics, a strangled cry forcing its way out of her stone-dust covered lips as the arm tightens around her and she's pressed against moving hardness with a grunt from behind her. She points her wand at the arm pressing so hard into her, but the world tips and blinks to black.

For a dread-filled moment, she is sure she has fallen to unconsciousness, but then suddenly there is Anthony and Terry in front of her against bright blue walls and blinding lights. She registers that mercifully, she can't be held captive by a Death Eater given the distant familiarity of the safe house they are in. Neville appears before her, looking disorientated himself, and then she is gone again. She closes her eyes, a mew rising up from her throat as she grabs the arm around her for some semblance of balance, and holds back the need to vomit from all the spinning.

Grimmauld Place then, and it is three seconds after her arrival of utter silence before the living room bursts into activity. The arm releases her as Lupin performs a Levitation spell on her, and questions are thrown out as he brings her to what she assumes will be the small, makeshift infirmary. As she struggles to keep her nerves calm and focus, she raises her head, bypassing the image of a surprised Lavender and Colin, and settles her eyes on the figure directly ahead of her. Malfoy stands, staring after her, covered in her blood.

Her dirty, dirty blood.

Day: 662; Hour: 9

The window is open, and Hermione half expects to see water covering the wall beneath, but it is dry. The rain is coming down in a constant heavy shower, and the wind flaps the summer green leaves wildly in its wake. Thunder rumbles, and halts, and rumbles deeper, and for a moment Hermione forgets she is a witch and worries that the power will go out.

It has been just under three weeks since she last saw Malfoy, blood-caked, in the living room at Grimmauld Place. She has thought a lot about it since, and could see like a photograph, the image of him at the back of her eyelids. She wonders constantly how he must have felt that night, with Mud blood all over him. He had done it willingly though. He had come from behind, when she didn't have her cloak, and he must have seen.

She imagines the old Draco Malfoy would have left her there, before daring to even come close to the proximity of her 'dirty blood'. Hell, the old Malfoy would have been the one to cause it, in all likelihood.

Had his beliefs changed so drastically? There had still been this part of her that was holding out for the fallout of him. That was waiting for him to be found out for spying on them, and that all the things she had seen from him had simply been his way to dig into them deeper. Yet he had still passed the Veritaserum test when he was still in jail, and the Legilimency test after that, hadn't he? Or else he wouldn't have been there at all. And even if he had somehow managed to find his way around the truth being found out then, if he was really still a Death Eater at heart, why would he have touched her at all, let alone bloody, when he could have waited for Neville to Portkey her out? A Death Eater, undercover or not, would have never done such a thing.

And isn't that a startling truth. Malfoy was on their side, he must have been - and perhaps he was fighting for a different reason, but the fact remained that he was still fighting for them. His old beliefs and prejudices must have tapered off somewhere, and maybe it was at the top of a tower, or the first time he put the orange Phoenix cloth around his arm, or when he buried Pansy Parkinson. But they had all the same, to a good enough extent that he was here with the same purpose as the rest of them. To win the war, to defeat Voldemort, no matter how much Muggle blood he got all over his expensive trousers or Pure blood he would end up with on his hands.

She watches him now, through the window, a clot of black and a flare of white. The sun is low as the rain drizzles out, the clouds moving to shine down golden through the layers of trees. Fog wraps around the branches, and with the light, it looks as if it is raining tiny drops of the sun. Malfoy is standing in front of two large oaks, his boots sunk in mud, and himself soaking wet.

Hermione doesn't know why he stands there, waiting out the rain, or why he leans his shoulder against one of the trunks like he's going to keep on waiting. It's very odd, but there's a sort of peace in the set of his bones that she has never seen before.

Later, he will walk in to find her sitting at the table, and his feet will slosh in the water inside his boots when he steps. She will briefly think of thanking him for the last mission in the same sort of way he had 'thanked' her many missions before, but will decide to be the better person. It will escape her in a rush, and he will pause with his back to her and his foot poised to step out of the kitchen. He will reply low and raspy, as if he hadn't used his voice in months, and tell her if it hadn't been him then it would have been someone else.

But it was you, she will say, and he will keep walking.

Day: 665; Hour: 8

She had written a four-page letter to Harry and Ron two months ago, and never received a reply. She finds the envelope unopened on Arthur Weasley's desk as he talks to her about the possibility of using Muggle communication devices. He pauses in his excitement, and she looks up after a moment to meet a gaze that is far quieter in emotions than she has ever seen on him.

"No letters in or out yet, Hermione."

"That was two months ago."

He pushes hers aside, revealing another envelope. "Mine has been waiting for three."

Day: 667; Hour: 3

Lavender is sitting at the table at one in the morning, and Hermione has to pause in her step at the way she looks so flustered. Lavender hasn't look flustered since the last Hogwarts' ball, as far as Hermione's recollection goes, and it's a damn good one.

"What's wrong?"

"It was just...strange."

"What was?"

Lavender looks at her for a very long time, until she realizes that Hermione isn't walking away without an answer. "I just slept with Malfoy."

Hermione can feel her head pull back in surprise, though she doesn't know why she is so surprised. Lavender sleeps with a lot of people. People sleep with a lot of people. "Oh."

"He was... He was rough, but I was expecting it. But he didn't even look at me. Not once. Just pushed my knickers and his pants down and...did it."

"You didn't want him to?" Hermione hears her voice go thick and quick, because it does that when she feels the need to move but doesn't allow herself to.

"No, no, I did." Her muscles unclench and she lets the breath out from the ball in her throat. "But...it was so odd. And then he just waited for not even two seconds, let go of me, pulled up his trousers, and nodded at the door."

"Oh."

"I feel... used." Hermione briefly wonders if Lavender realizes that 'using' is exactly what all the men have done with her. "I mean, I'm the one who approached him. I didn't know if he would give in, but he's gone a couple of months from what I hear-"

"You approached him?" It must have taken some gall on her part.

"Why not? Touch a man's chest and tell them you don't have any knickers on, and-"

"Classy."

Lavender rolled her eyes. "It's not that hard to make them interested when you are, I mean. But then he just made this sound, which bothered me. Like he had offers all day and had to keep throwing them off or something, when I know no one around here-"

"Lavender, I really-"

"And then he just shoved me into the wall, no foreplay or anything. He didn't even kiss me, which was so odd. I mean, it wasn't bad. I just... didn't expect that. That's never happened to me before. Usually a man wants to touch me all-"

"Good night." Hermione's face contorted as she turned from the kitchen, because she doesn't want to hear about Lavender's sex life in the least.

Thinking of Lavender's sex life was odd enough for her, but Malfoy's was even further out of that range. She had heard at Hogwarts when he dated Pansy, and then another Slytherin, she could never remember the name of. Besides a few overheard conversations on the Slytherin's attractiveness, that had been about all she heard on the matter. She might have known that he was having sex with Pansy, or at least thought so, and perhaps one or two others, but it wasn't something she had to think about. Or worse, be supplied the details of, as Lavender just attempted.

Now she has to go through life knowing Malfoy's rough in bed, and Lavender likes to be touched all over. Wonderful.

Day: 669; Hour: 2

"Is it horrible to say that I always thought it was so cheesy when I arrived at Hogwarts and found out witches really do fly on brooms?"

"Why is that cheesy?" Ginny comes to a halt and hovers beside her.

"Because it was almost like a joke or something. In the Muggle world, it was a cliché in all the books and movies that witches rode on brooms, cackling in front of the moon or something."

Ginny gives her a bemused look. "It's the truth, though, isn't it?"

Hermione shrugs after giving the ground a hard look. "I suppose it depends on what you know first. That affects everything you perceive after."

Ginny nods sagely, and flies around Hermione's unmoving form again. "That's life, Hermione. Hop on."

"What?"

"Hop on. You're bored, I can see it. Terribly bored, and I'm just as bored just floating here with you ground-ridden. So get on."

"I don't like to fly, Ginny, you know that-"

"Oh, yes. The big, tough Gryffindor afraid of heights." Hermione glowers and Ginny laughs. "Come on."

Hermione eyes the broom in speculation, and then the woman astride it. "I don't know."

Ginny dips her head before making her voice deeper. "I promise I'll be gentle."

Hermione barks a laugh and shakes her head. "Will you hold me tight?"

"With my rippling muscles, love."

"You're an idiot."

"And you're a coward." Ginny grins, dropping the manly act and tapping the front of the broom. "Come here and ride my stick."

"Oh, my God! Ginny!" Hermione blushes hot red and laughs at the same time, embarrassed because all sexual innuendo makes her embarrassed, even when it's nothing more than a joke.

She climbs on in the end, and Ginny doesn't pull any tricks and keeps the broom low, and Hermione forgets about everything but having fun with a friend for the first time in a very, very long time.

Day: 674; Hour: 12

She wonders how long he stood in the doorway watching her devour her food before she spotted him. She had just been depraved of food for almost three days except for a small package of biscuits she had to sustain herself with. Needless to say, as soon as she arrived at the stark white house, she headed right for the kitchen.

She hasn't seen him in close proximity for weeks, since the morning after Lavender's confession. Even then, he had been in the other room as Lavender gave him saucy looks and he completely ignored her. Lavender had eventually given up and retreated to Hermione's side, where she once again ran commentary on his weirdness.

"Is there anything left?" She can't make out his facial features in the darkness, but he sounds amused, and it surprises her.

"I'm hungry," she snaps back, because she is, and she is also moody when she's starving to death.

When he emerges into the kitchen fully, there is no trace of amusement on his face. She isn't sure if that's because of her reply, or if she has just imagined it in the first place. She feels minutely bad for snapping at him, especially as he may not have meant it in a bad context, and so offers him back up the middle ground. Malfoy may not deserve her feeling bad about anything when it came to him, but she had always made steps in her life to prevent herself from stepping on anyone who was being trampled on by everyone else.

Considering that they hadn't gotten into a physical altercation in nearly a year, she figures she's allowed to feel a little bad for being mean if she wants. "There's noodles left in the pot if you want them."

He digs around in the pantry instead, which is good, because when he emerges with a can of soup she takes the rest of the noodles for herself. He stands and watches her while she unloads the rest into her bowl, and it makes her nervous.

"What?"

"There's only one pot in the house, Granger." He explains this as if he has had to explain it to her every day for the past year.

"Oh. Sorry." The apology slips out without a thought, and it immediately makes her uncomfortable that she just apologized to him of all people.

He says nothing, but looks at her for a long moment before accepting the pot when she holds it out for him. He turns for the sink and grabs the washcloth, and she is struck by the oddness of Draco Malfoy doing dishes. He is probably aware of this, or of her watching him, or just of her being there at all, because his back and shoulders are set in rigid lines as he turns on the tap.

"Have you been here long?" She knows what persuaded her to ask; she hasn't spoken to another individual in over a week, and there is desperation here.

He doesn't seem willing to answer her, so she sits and shifts, and waits for him to speak or leave. The tap turns off, and she hears him squeeze the washcloth dry. Ron, Harry, Lavender, and Dean never squeeze them dry, and it has always annoyed her to no end.

"Long enough." And this could have meant two minutes to her, with as much as this particular house gave her the creeps.

He moves to the stove to set the pot down, and she watches out of the corner of her eye as he moves for the can opener in the drawer. The faint light from the window hits his shirt and she sucks in a breath.

"You're injured."

"Actually, this is the tomato sauce you somehow managed to get on the end of the counter." He is annoyed, and when she looks harder, she can see the dark wetness around it where he must have tried to wash it out.

"It's not like I did it on purpose."

"Perhaps you should clean up after yourself."

"I didn't see it, Malfoy."

"Then turn on the fucking light," he snaps, flinging a hand toward the light switch and shooting her with a quick glare.

Hermione chews her pasta with narrowed eyes aimed on him. "It's just sauce."

He turns and just stares at her, his body set tight and his jaw clenched, as if she can tell all that he wants to reply with through his eyes and body posture. But she does despite her annoyance that he thinks she can, because it was just sauce. Which was why he was bothered with it, but not angry enough to bring it up. She had been the one to do so.

She does not know what to say, so she doesn't say anything at all, and turns back to the bowl in front of her. Malfoy's soup can hits the trash bin a little harder than necessary.

Day: 685; Hour: 15

Malfoy leaves the white house after a week and a half that had been filled with the occasional conversation that either ended in annoyance or awkward silence. Hermione had found herself relating to Malfoy in the fact that they both didn't have anyone else to bother with. Not just at the house, but in general. Hermione was alone or with strangers more than she was ever with her friends, and she had figured Malfoy was in the same situation more so than herself. Besides the slight acceptance he had seemed to gain from Moody, she doubted he spoke to anyone else.

Except herself, now. Even that was forced and strange, and usually didn't last more than five exchanged sentences. He kept looking at her as if she was trying to find out how to gut him, and she couldn't exactly blame him. She may have wanted to talk to him because there was no one else, but she had the ulterior motive of finding out where Malfoy sat in life as well. She was a curious girl, and always had been, and Malfoy was something she had been wondering about since she had first seen him in that interrogation room.

Though most of the time they had spent at the house was used up with ignoring one another, or with Hermione searching for common conversation that always floundered, she is definitely lonelier now with him gone. Not that he provided much in the way of stimulation, but there had been someone there at least and that she could recognize.

Two days after he left she would be thankful for a stranger to fill the void.

Day: 695; Hour: 18

Most of the Aurors she encountered were older than her, and usually completely ignored her. They would sit and drink, or stay in their room, or huddle off in corners to whisper about things no one else was allowed to know. The few times she actually attempted to discuss something, even so much as the wallpaper, and she was immediately shutdown.

They acted as if she were trying to glean information out of them or something. She personally thought they were all stuck on themselves and self-importance, and it bothered her to no end. As if they couldn't find something to discuss with her because she wasn't a high level Order member, or because she was so much younger.

Besides the occasional surprise brief conversation over a book or television show, they were mostly lost to her. That was the exact reason why her trunk contained more books than garments. She read each day, all day, for the past week. She woke, she read, she ate, she read, she went to bed, and then repeated the process. Her eyes are tired and itchy by the eighth day, and she finds herself closing them to look at nothing at all for an hour.

It begins to rain, her eyes still shut and the book still open in her hand, and she moves without really thinking of what she is doing. Thunderclaps are loud and startling across the sky, and lighting flashes white in front of the open window. She blames the window for being open, and therefore reminding her of the memory she had forgotten under piles of her life.

The rain is hard against her tired skin, and ice cold, and by the time she is outside for a single minute, she feels numb. She carries on however, her untied boots sloshing in puddles and mud, until she finds a large oak tree in the middle of the dotted woods. She remembers Malfoy, relaxed and content in a body that had previously always looked as if it were trying to escape its skin, and she leans her shoulder against the trunk.

Her clothes stick to her body, rivers of water cascading down her skin, and her hair weights and plasters itself to her head, face, and neck. She turns her face up, allowing the droplets to beat down against it. She looks up to the fog, to the skyline, and breathes until she's so lost in nature that she can't find the mind to be lost in anything else.

Day: 701; Hour: 11

Hermione groans as she shoves the door open, tugging her trunk behind her. She thinks she seriously needs to get rid of some of her book load, but she knows she will regret it when she's alone again.

Neville looks up at her from the couch, and she finds Malfoy's gaze lifting up from the coffee table to meet hers as well. Both men are hunched forward over some sort of map, and Malfoy begins to roll it up before he even looks away from her. Hermione breathes out, the breath crackling in her chest, and she sniffs loudly as she kicks the door shut behind her.

"Hey, Hermione."

"Hey," she cracks.

"Sick?"

"Yeah."

"I guess it's going around then." Neville winces.

"No. No, I just got uh... caught in the rain." Hermione waves in an obtuse manner that likely makes him think it was about a mission or some such.

She still isn't sure if the hour of mind-numbing relief was worth the week long cold that doesn't seem to want to go away. She isn't sure what even possessed her to follow Malfoy's unvoiced advice, but she puts it down to temporary insanity. A lot of people got away with that during war, she had heard.

"Is it freezing in here, or is it just me?"

Neville eyes her in her sweater and heavy robe while he sits in a T-shirt and shorts, and gave a small, sympathetic smile that she had never seen anyone pull off better than Neville. "I'll make you some tea. Or cocoa?"

"Mm. Surprise me." Hermione shrugs, and leaves her trunk at the door, throwing herself down onto the loveseat.

"Draco, can I get that blanket behind you?" Hermione's head snaps up, and her snot is nearly allowed to pass the border of her nostrils because she is too surprised to even sniff.

Malfoy pulls the blanket off the back of the recliner and tosses it to the arm of the couch she's on rather than to the patiently waiting Neville. Neville throws her a smile as she slowly pulls the blanket toward herself, eyeing the two of them warily. Since when did Neville start calling Malfoy anything other than... well, Malfoy? She wonders just how long the two had interacted with one another for Malfoy to not even give a look at the sound of his first name coming from the other man.

Neville disappears into the hall as Hermione decides to ask him later. Malfoy turned his attention to the notebook on his lap during her distraction, and she finds him working through the fringe hanging in front of his face as he scribbles something down.

The blanket is warm, though she doesn't know if it's from the house or Malfoy's back, but probably the latter. She cuddles up to it anyway, wrapping it around herself snugly. She doesn't notice the silence, and only manages a few sips of the tea Neville returns with before she is too lazy to keep holding it. She watches through bleary eyes as Malfoy studies his notebook and Neville thinks, and she is lulled to sleep by the soft murmur of their conversation.

When she wakes, it takes her several long moments to realize that it must be a different day. Malfoy sits in the same spot she had last seen him, now in different clothes, as he traces a bright pink line of a highlighter across lines of black on the paper in front of him. She can't see from her distance and the blur of sleep, but she knows the lines are names, because she has seen name sheets in much the same fashion in the meeting rooms.

He sighs, but it is more a movement than a sound, and pushes his hair back from his face. He caps the marker, contemplative as he looks at the list, and then tosses the bright pink tube onto the table. He pulls his feet in, and she realizes that his socks are mismatched, and wonders if he knows this as well.

When she looks back to his face, he is watching her, and Hermione knows how ridiculous it is to close her eyes despite the fact that she does it anyway. Blood rushes up to warm her face, and when she weakly pries her eyelids open again, his expression hasn't changed but for a lifted eyebrow.

"Is that how you hide from the monsters in your closet?"

No, just from the ones on the recliner, she will think to say later. Instead, she blinks, and blinks, and comes out with, "I usually pull the pillows over my head, actually."

He huffs a laugh, seemingly just as surprised with her answer and his own reaction, as she is. "I see your methods are just as effective in all your battles then, Granger."

She takes a moment. "Are you suggesting I hide from everything?"

"No. I'm suggesting you always take the easy way out, even when it isn't going to work."

She glares at him, propping herself up from her balled position. "I don't take the easy way out of anything-"

"No?"

"If I took the easy way out Malfoy, I wouldn't even be here right now."

He stares for a long, pensive moment, before murmuring a reply. "I suppose you're right."

"Furthermore, I don't see where you get off thinking you-"

"Already going at it, then?" Neville appears in the entrance to the hall, waving a tea bag as if it were a white flag. "Hermione?"

She almost doesn't drop it, because she doesn't like to play retreat when it comes to Malfoy, but Neville's face turns grave and tired, and so she does. With a huff and a groggy mumble, she shoves her covers aside, rumpled and a mess as she stands. She can feel Malfoy's eyes on her sleep-ruined and untamed hair, but frankly doesn't care.

She glares at him as she passes, and his eyebrows rise to wrinkle his forehead, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Your socks don't match, by the way."

Perhaps it was childish, or he didn't even care, but she sniffed and raised a haughty nose to him anyway.

"I don't think you'll ever stop fighting with him," Neville tells her, later, when they are seated and she has woken up more. "No matter what. You're not in different Houses, you're not on different sides, but you'll always still fight."

"It doesn't mean we aren't different people. I don't care if Malfoy comes up with every battle winning strategy and starts a foundation to free the house-elves, because there will always be a part of him that will be that arrogant git, and there will always be the part of me who will never forget it."

Neville laughs, and stares down at his tea, and she knows he thinks he is going to say something she won't like before he even speaks. "He's not that bad, Hermione. He's still Malfoy, but... older. More mature. Less dangerous, and cruel. I don't know..."

"I don't know why he's here. I've figured out that it's not for any nefarious reasons, and I know he's become an important part to this war somehow. So maybe he doesn't believe in genocide. Does that make him a good person? I don't think so. I don't know him."

"He's different. He's more... withdrawn or something. But that could be where he is. I don't know. He's just different."

"He is. But how much?"

Neville shrugs and finally meets her eyes. "Enough, maybe."

Hermione shoves her hair back and sighs. "I know he doesn't hold the same beliefs. I know he's a good strategist. I know he basically gave up all he knew just to be here. But I also know he's still arrogant, he's still mean, he's still angry, and he's still a prat. He still says things just to piss me off, and he still does things that tell me he thinks he's better somehow. Especially at fighting. Well, only that, really, that I've had to deal with so far."

"He is pretty good at that." Neville shrugs again. "I'm not saying he's a good person-"

"He could still be a bad person."

"But given the fact that there has been change, I've seen enough to make me willing to give him a shot at seeing just how far the change goes. He's not the best person in the world, but neither are you and neither am I. He saved my life, Hermione. Twice. I'm not going to shut down the possibility of him being an all right bloke, while thinking him a bastard after he did that for me. I can't."

Hermione nods, staring down at the table though all she sees is the rapidly shrinking figure of Malfoy standing with her blood all over his skin and clothes. "He's still a prat."

"He'll always be a prat."

Day: 707; Hour: 20

"I think I see you more than I see anyone else."

He probably doesn't know how to respond to this, and that is why he doesn't.

"If you could have one thing in life, what it would be?"

He doesn't answer this at first either, but when he looks up from that notebook she now always sees him with, she thinks he realizes she is going to keep bothering him. He sighs heavily, as if she were a child asking him to turn back time.

"Absolute power." He continues writing, not even sparing her a glance.

Hermione frowns at him, because she has been trying to think of him as Changed Malfoy, and this seems very much like just a Malfoy answer. "Absolute power corr-"

"Upts absolutely. Yes, I know."

"Well, I'm not surprised."

He looks at her then, briefly, and looks superbly annoyed. "And why is that?"

"You've always been on a power trip and looking for more of it." She is honest.

He drops the pretense of the notebook and looks up at her from under his hair and eyelashes, and his forehead wrinkles down. "I suppose you recognize that trait in me, because you know it in yourself."

"Excuse me?"

He exhales hard through his nose and closes the notebook, raising his head to look at her fully. "What do you want out of life, Granger?"

"That's not relevant-"

"It's completely relevant. I answered your question when I didn't want to, now I expect you to do the same."

"I don't care what you expect."

"That's mature."

She glares until her eyes hurt. "I want us to win the war."

"And then?"

She shakes her head with a shrug, searching for the answer in the carpet for a moment. "I don't know. Peace. To finish my last year. To get into a good university. To become a healer, or get a position in the Ministry, maybe. Or maybe I'll be a teacher."

"So, I suppose you'll be able to achieve these things without any power?"

"What?" It seems quite inadequate, her reply, and she knows this.

"You need power to win a war. You need power to maintain peace. You need to find some power within yourself to complete your last year after all of this, and power in your accomplishments to get into a good school. You need power to heal people, or make headway at the Ministry, or to teach people. You-"

"You're twisting my words aro-"

"You twisted mine. I suppose you thought I meant world domination, or what? Pureblood supremacy, perhaps, or to become the new bloody King of England. I want the power to do the things I want to finally finish this bloody war and to move on with my life. You're the one who perceived it to be in a negative aspect, without any indication to what I might want to achieve with that power."

Hermione stares at him and flounders. "Well, the way you said it-"

"Bullocks. Everything needs power in order to work-"

"Well, what am I supposed to think! You may be here, Malfoy, but I don't know why. It's not too hard to look at you and see the same person who called me Mudblood and who tried to kill my Headmaster. What should I think?" She yells this loud enough for the entire house to hear if anyone else was even there.

His face is set in grim lines, his mouth tight, and the veins on his neck let her know he is seething. "I don't give a fuck what you think."

"Why are you here?" He stands, ignoring her as he turns for the door, and so she asks again, and then again, until she is yelling it at his back.

He turns suddenly, so fast she thinks he must have almost lost his balance, and the chords in his neck stand up sharply against the heated red skin when he screams. "Why the fuck do you think I'm here!"

He hasn't meant it to be a question given the way he doesn't wait for a response, but she is on her feet now too, and following after him. "Why should I believe you mean things in a good way, when all I've ever seen from you, is you meaning those same things in a bad way? I-"

"Yes, I'm a right bastard, Granger, aren't I? Volunteering for war, spending days coming up with plans and strategies, and bailing your pathetic asses out of bad situations. I guess this makes me a bad person."

"Don't act like you're some angel-"

He turns from his fast pace down the hall, just to start it back up immediately, but now toward her rather than the bedroom. "No, you're right. I grew up with all this racism caught up around my heart, and I hated you for what you were, and what you did despite it. And even now, after I've changed my ways, it doesn't matter what I do, because I'm still the man who came from that boy, aren't I? And I'm a murderer, of course. Of course. Let us not forget that."

"Just because you've made some changes, it doesn't just mean-"

"You're a hypocrite! Don't act like your hands aren't just as filthy as mine!" He bent his head until she felt his breath on her forehead, his face sinister. "I guess we're both dirty, Granger."

"I do what I have to!" It came out thick and a little strangled, but she has never spoken to anyone about what she has had to do, just as they never do to her.

"We all do in the end, don't we?" He waits as she shakes her head at him, disgust on her features for him and herself. "What do you want me to do? Do you want me to apologize for hurting your feelings in fucking school, like there isn't bigger shit to worry about? Because I'm not going to. I don't know what you fucking people want from me, but this is all I'm giving. If you're not satisfied, fuck off."

This time, she lets him walk away.

Day: 708; Hour: 7

Perhaps Malfoy did always do what he had to do. He was racist because that was what he was, and there is no excuse for that. It didn't matter if that was what he had been taught, because in the end, it was what he had practiced himself. He had let the Death Eaters in that night, and almost killed Dumbledore, because it was what he had to do. He had come to the Order because it was what he felt he had to do.

To repent? If so, to himself or to everyone else? For revenge?

And Hermione, as she lay in her bed, thinks that maybe it doesn't matter. The point is that he was there, now, fighting for them - and doing a good job of it at that. The point was that he had lost all of his old life to start all over by risking his new one nearly every day, and that that was the biggest apology she was going to get from him. Perhaps it didn't matter that there was a part of her that would always be angry with Draco Malfoy, because there was the rest of her that had to be busy being angry with the real enemies. The ones who hadn't begun to seek redemption.

When does redemption begin? She likes to believe it is at the top of a tower, when a boy lowers his wand, his power, his control, his future in the ranks he had been promised and walks away to never be the same again.

The question for Draco Malfoy, of course, was when it ended.

Day: 713; Hour: 10

She receives two letters at the same time, both from Ron, though there are three paragraphs at the end of the second from Harry. They are getting closer, she knows. The first letter is brief, though comically details a bad-cooking experience that left Hermione gasping for air, but the second letter reeks of enthusiasm. Ron even gave an exclamation point to the 'Hey Hermione' that introduced the rest of the letter.

She searches for clues to support her theory in the faces of the people around her, but they are war worn and show nothing. It does not dampen her own spirit, however, and Ernie can only laugh at her when she smiles like a fool for days following.