Twenty-Six
Day: 1453; Hour: 17
Draco is standing in the lobby, hands shoved in his pockets, his eyes glazed over, but firm on the staircase. His pants are a little too tight and a little too high on his ankles, his shirt painted onto his shoulders and just reaching the top of his pants. He looks ridiculous, but the clothes look expensive and she knows they are from a world he left behind.
She knows what he's thinking, because it's not hard to guess. He grew up in this house that had been a home, that is now used as the "other side's" headquarters. He probably spent his first night of life here, had his first cut, learned how to fly and practiced spells before Hogwarts. He celebrated holidays, had family dinners and birthday parties, spent school holidays here. It had been his home the same as she had hers, in a different place, in another world. She knows he is thinking of this, of his past, of memories only the walls and him can remember.
"Do you know when they are bringing our trunks back from the safe house?" he asks suddenly, his face shuttering, and his eyes dropping toward his socks, one black and the other blue.
She jumps and tries to play it off like she just saw him. "Oh. Um...I think someone just left to get them, actually."
"Hm."
"What happened to the clothes you were wearing before?"
He looks up at her then, blowing the fringe off his eyes. She tries to see the boy who lived here standing in front of her, but she can't anymore. "I burned them. I couldn't get the blood out."
Day: 1454; Hour: 6
"We were able to get at some of them because they were fractured - there was no leader, they were lost. They are reorganizing now, and it's not going to be so easy anymore. They know their hideouts and safe havens have been compromised from the Death Eaters we have captured, so they are forming new ones." Auror Wright throws a packet down on the table and steps back as Lupin steps forward.
"There have been some recent Death Eater captures that have given us new locations, but they have formed a new circle of leaders that are the only ones to know all the new places they have taken over. Some of the locations you'll be going to are old, likely abandoned, but the Dark are known to leave their captures behind if they aren't of use anymore."
"Will we be acting on the old or the new locations first?" Ginny asks. She hasn't looked at Hermione once since she entered the room, though Hermione kept finding her own eyes staring at the redhead.
"Both - the old locations and the new ones that seem temporary. They could leave the short-term hideouts at any time, and any prisoners left in the old ones can die at any time, so speed is vital. You'll work from the information we have on time schedules. First, you'll go to the places that have been abandoned the longest, and the locations that they have taken residence in for too long not to be moving on soon."
"What about the new locations that they have-"
"We don't know the location of their new headquarters, or where they have taken up root. That is someone else's mission - this is yours." Wright interrupted Lavender and slides two large packets to Draco and a man she doesn't know. "Malfoy and Rogers will be planning the mission executions. Malfoy, Rogers, and Potter are in charge of this team. Those are your orders."
Lupin passes out a sheet of parchment to each one of them, covering what was already said in the meeting but in more technical wording. Hermione signs the bottom without reading it and passes it back. In the beginning she had read each one she was handed, but it only took her four months to break the habit. She wonders how thick her folder is with those sheets of parchment.
"The three of you will meet in the Room of the Advance Guard for further briefing. The rest of you are dismissed - prepare your belongings, you will be leaving tonight."
Hermione tries to follow Ginny, but a hand on her arm pulls her back. Harry doesn't let go until they have walked so many turns and corridors she doesn't know if she'll find her way back. "I've been keeping something from you. I just...didn't know when the time was right."
He lets go of her arm and Hermione blinks at him, taking a step back as if to protect herself. This really had no possibility of being good news. "Now would be the right time, if it's that important Harry."
"Fred and Percy have... They were killed in that battle, Hermione."
"What?" Her voice is too faint, her vision goes hazy, and some far corner of her brain processes that Harry looks as if he might spring at her.
"I..." He chokes on spit, or the tears he forces back, but his hand trembles against her cheek when he wipes her tears away. "Arthur is in a coma. George refuses to come out of his room, they even have to feed him by...magical means. He doesn't know about Ron yet."
"Oh, God." Hermione feels sadness drag her down until she is dead weight in the arms of Harry's hug. "Oh, God."
Day: 1454; Hour: 8
"Molly is taking care of George and Arthur. Bill and Charlie are on missions for the Order. Ginny requested she be in this one. Lupin offered them all to take a break, to wait out the rest of the war, but they wouldn't take it. Except George but...he hasn't spoken since. And Molly, but just for now, she said. I think Lupin knows that if one more tragedy hits them, it might just..."
Hermione woke up to find herself sleeping in a bed with no idea how she got there, Harry's forehead on hers. He had woken up when she went to remove his glasses, and they had laid in silence until he decided to give some more details.
"You're taking this fairly well, Hermione. I mean... I thought you might still be...after you woke up."
"This war has taken a lot from me. It's not going to take my ability to fight. There's still a job to do." He gives her a look that makes her very uncomfortable, so she rushes on. "I do grieve, Harry. I give myself some time for that. But there's not a lot of personal time to be had, and so I don't mourn. Do you understand? I can't right now. Not when what they died for isn't done yet."
He is quiet as she stands, fixing her hair on top of her head and breathing in deep to clear the heaviness in her chest. "You've changed. You used to be a lot more...emotional."
"We all have," she shrugs. "It's human nature to adapt to your environment."
"But what happens after we're done fighting, Hermione? When you can't distance yourself from the truth anymore, and the cemetery is-"
"Someone told me once that we can't wait for the fallout. Because there are a lot of fallouts, Harry, and we don't know what's going to happen, but we just sort of... We have to survive. We keep going. If you're in a car one day and it crashes-"
"What does this have to do with a car? This has to do with friends, your friends, our friends who are dead and-"
"I-"
"-aren't coming back. Ever. Not ever again. You can't keep pretending-"
"I know they are dead, Harry!" She forces the ball back down, blinks the tears away, clenches her fist so they are no longer hands that shake. "But they are dead for a reason. Tonight, I might be dead for a reason. And that reason is not so I can sit in this room and cry for a year, and hate- The reason is to find Ron. To make sure Harry Potter kills Voldemort. To secure the future. To save our world. I'm going to let them rest in peace, Harry. And I'm going to fight until we have it too."
Day: 1454; Hour: 12
His room is simple. She had sort of been prepared for a black dungeon with some cage where his pet snakes would have been. But it's large, white, one green wall, pictures, touches of green and silver from when their Houses still defined them. Maybe they still do.
His bed is too hard, for him at least, and she knows this because she has spotted him trying out the softness of mattresses in new safe houses when he didn't think she noticed. But it doesn't take long until she doesn't feel it under her back, until she can't see anything in the room but him. She almost wants to laugh afterward, lying there in his bed with the sheets sticking to her sweaty skin. Not because it's funny, but because of the absurdity of it all. It is the room he spent most of his life in, outside of Hogwarts. The room he once hated her in, the bed in which he dreamed of a future with the Death Eaters. The speed of change was absurd. But maybe it hadn't come that fast at all.
There's a picture of his parents across the room, sitting endlessly on a bench in the backyard. A group of Slytherins, including him with his hair slicked back, chasing a rogue snitch around their common room. Him and Pansy, their arms around each other's shoulders, grinning madly and raising up drinks they were just too young to be having. Another is knocked over, the picture hidden against the wood of the shelf, and she longs to turn it over.
These are reminders of who Draco Malfoy was. She forgets that a lot now, and only remembers who he became. She doesn't think that's such a bad thing anymore.
She thinks of the last time he looked around this room, thinking it was the last time he would. Of how scared he must have been before he left, and she squeezes him tighter now, because maybe he is still scared. He lifts his head at that, off her shoulder, and his breath is cool against the heat of her ear.
"There's a small Muggle village in Northern Ireland...Broomhedge, southwest of Belfast. There's a small postal office. Locker 9, code 5863. If anything were to happen to me, I have a favor to ask, Granger." He pauses, and she realizes that she's holding her breath. "Hermione."
"Of course."
"There's a key in my trunk to a vault at Gringotts. You are the only person beside myself that is cleared there to use that key. Inside, there is a box. It only opens with my fingerprint, so let's hope I don't burn to death. The box holds a Portkey to where my mother is, and you will give her the contents of the locker. No one is to know she is alive, Hermione. It was my mistake not to burn that letter, but the secret does not go beyond you. Understand?"
"Yes."
"You'll do that?"
"I promise." She breathes out the words, because her state of shock over his trust is too great to form harder sounds.
He pauses, lifts his head, and the hardness of his eyes does not fit with the softness of his mouth. "Thank you."
Day: 1454; Hour: 14
Hermione has to wander, making sure to look like she knows where she's going, before she can find where she left her trunk. Draco had grabbed her rather abruptly when she had been dragging it toward the lobby. She feels a little too self-important at the moment, but she knows that Draco's trust is a very hard thing to earn. It makes her feel the actual progress between them instead of having to look back to see it.
She had been curious as to why he hadn't just said the address, but Draco was too paranoid. If she were captured, he would blame himself. Knowing him, he might have even erased the knowledge from his own head. No matter how much more complicated it would be though, if it came to it, she would do it. She just prayed it never would come to it.
All the same, Hermione is about to do a Very Girl-y Thing. He would probably hate it, but she couldn't resist doing it once it was in her head just in case he didn't. She wanted him to get the significance to it, and she can only hope that he didn't think it was some strange I-think-I'm-more-important-to-you-than-I-am sort of thing, especially after the information he shared with her. It was just that she had looked at his photographs, and she hadn't been able to stop thinking of what he thought when he stood in the room. If he couldn't get the memories of who he was and his mistakes out of his head.
She had a heated debate with herself over which one to choose on the way to her trunk, and had reached a decision halfway back to his room. He is gone, the thin excuse disappearing from her head as she walks quickly toward the shelf. She resists the urge to peek at the picture in the down-turned frame, and leans another against two frames so it can be seen.
It's a Muggle photograph, captured by someone she can't remember. Neville is sitting at a table and grinning, his hands over his red face. Draco and Hermione stand with her shoulder leaning into his arm, Draco full out laughing and looking at Neville with Hermione laughing so hard her eyes are squeezed shut. The background is a safe house, the background is war, but the picture doesn't show it.
She has loved the picture since the moment she saw it, and it's one of her absolute favorites. She hopes she can get a copy of it later, and that he doesn't throw it out. She hopes he understands what she means to say.
Day: 1454; Hour: 16
Hermione can't help but stare at him when he looks at such a loss for what to do. It's almost like she has to remember that this isn't normal for Harry. She knows he has seen his own side of the war, but not theirs. And it's such a simple thing, the way they all drag their trunks into the lobby, sit on top of them, with one hand reaching for the Portkey and the other secured at the handle of the trunk. It's just a routine, the best way to Portkey somewhere with their luggage, but Harry, Ginny, and a young man she doesn't know stand awkwardly staring at them.
"Hurry up," Rogers barks, and then they move, dropping their trunks and following the example. Harry looks flushed. She stares the whole time.
Rogers is in motion before Hermione can even notice where they are. The dreaded white house she hates so much, enough to not care about the water she and Draco flooded it with...God, whenever that was. It felt like a decade, maybe. She's surprised to find another painting next to her own, above the closed in fireplace. It's a tree from another safe house, the one that lights up like gold in the spring, and somehow she knows it's from Dean.
"Malfoy and I have already laid out the plans for tonight. I know some of you are new," he only looks at the young guy standing in awe next to Harry, "so I'm going to give a crash course before I get to the mission tonight."
Rogers ran over the meaning behind the flare colors, the heat of the coin they carried, and other basics. Hermione watches Draco draw lines and symbols on a large sheet of parchment he hangs on the wall. She finds another painting, a sunrise or sunset over a field - sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.
"Are you uncomfortable?"
"What?" Harry whispers back.
"You look uncomfortable."
"I'm not used to this."
"Following Draco's plan?"
"I haven't before, but I've worked with him, and I've heard about it. It's not that."
She stops herself from telling him it's the same thing, because she doesn't think it is. Harry hasn't worked with many "normal" fighters, from what she's heard. Top Aurors and members of the Advance Guard mostly. He had been pulled out of this because it was too dangerous, because his life was at too much of a risk before he killed Voldemort. She had a feeling he was used to fairly dangerous missions, but relatively safe ones. Not ones where the new kids threw up all over your shoes and no matter how well planned things almost always went wrong.
He would be fine though - he is a very skilled wizard. And... "I'm here."
He smiles at her and looks to Draco as the blond turns toward them to lie out the plans. "I know."
Day: 1455; Hour: 1
Hermione had been on Harry's team all night. It felt off, and as strange as it was to admit, she didn't know if she liked it. Nearly every mission she was a part of with Draco where they had to split up, she was with him. She had grown used to it, and in a life that did not allow routine she liked it where she could find it. In the first and second locations Harry had to grab her arm to follow him, because she always stepped after the flash of blond on instinct.
"Cleared," she whispers over to Harry, Justin, and the new kid. They nod their agreement.
"Hermione, Simon, go upstairs to make sure the other team is cleared. Justin and I will search the rooms for any infor-"
"You're splitting us up?" Hermione cuts him off, surprised.
"Yes," Harry says this slowly, as if he doubts her metal stability.
"We don't split up." Not unless there was an emergency, or the ground was too big to cover while staying in teams. Rare cases. Not anything else.
"Hermione, this place is probably empty, just like the first two-"
"You're going on-"
"Hermione," Justin whispers, and nods his head to where Simon has taken off up the staircase without her. She makes an aggravated noise and follows after him quickly.
Perhaps the thing she had wanted for so long in the beginning, to fight with Harry, was going to take a lot of adjusting to.
Day: 1455; Hour: 6
"Just like old times," Lavender sighs about the mission, sliding a plate of the pancakes she cooked to the middle of the table.
"Indeed," Seamus mutters, looking skeptically at the food.
Justin pokes his fork at them gingerly, showing the middle raw. "Some things just don't get better with time."
"Why are we ending the day with pancakes?"
"Because it's morning."
Day: 1455; Hour: 8
There are five bedrooms and twelve of them. Three of the rooms only have one bed, and those are shared by Harry and Ginny, Lavender and Angelina, and Draco has the other to himself. Rogers and an Auror who only goes by "Tim" share a room, Auror Fitz and Justin in another. Seamus originally was sharing with Fitz, but backed out before sleep for a reason she didn't know.
"Why aren't you sleeping in Malfoy's room?" Seamus sounds aggravated, and this is probably because he is sleeping on the floor and she is on the couch.
She had been wondering the same thing, with the bar pressing into her ribs and the cushions threatening escape. She thought it would be awkward if Harry saw her disappear into Draco's room, but it was too late for secrets and she didn't want to think she was still at the point where she cared. Mostly, she didn't know how Draco would take it. She is too tired for sex, and one night of just sleeping beside him hardly meant she could form a habit.
She doesn't know if she will ever know the rules between her and Draco. She couldn't deny that she was a coward, sometimes, when it came to this thing between them. But she doesn't know where the lines exactly were with them, so it is usually best to avoid the general area. She knows how fast he can shut down and turn away, and she didn't want to deal with it.
"Go to sleep, Seamus. I'm sure we'll come up with a plan to take turns with the sleeping arrangements."
"I hope so," Simon grumbles from the floor.
"Shut up, new kid. It's not like-"
"I don't know what-"
"If you two don't go to bed, I swear to God..."
"I could go to bed, if I had a bed."
Hermione groans and pulls her blanket over her head.
Day: 1456; Hour: 13
"You look...lovely this morning."
"Shut. Up. Harry." Hermione bites, and points at Draco when she finds him staring at her. "You too."
He raises an eyebrow at her and reaches up to grab the sugar bowl off the top of the fridge where he had shoved it back too far for her to reach. And she knows it was him because he's the only one who does it. Beside herself, but just because she knows he'll put it back up there again if she doesn't.
She grumbles the afternoon away.
Day: 1456; Hour: 1
"Do you have a problem with being on my team?"
"What?" Hermione asks, chopping at the bush that just smacked her in the face. With the bickering between Seamus and Simon, the sunlight streaming into shade and curtain-less windows, and the terror that was the couch, she is going on little more than an hour of sleep. Lack of sleep is something she is used to, but lack of sleep with the deadly mood swings that come before her monthly add up to something lethal.
"Last night, that first house tonight... You always try to go off in a different direction. I realized tonight that you always try to follow Malfoy."
"I'm sorry, Harry. I'm just used to being on his team when we're on the same mission. I mean, I get paired up with other people sometimes but... I don't know, I'm sorry."
"So you're okay with being on my team?"
"Of course you prat, I've-"
"Just checking." Harry grins, throwing an arm over her shoulder. "How much longer are we walking?"
"Another thirty minutes or so, by the map."
"Do they really test for magic this far out?" He frowns, dropping his arm as they climb over or under a fallen tree.
"We took a chance taking the Portkey as close as we did, actually. There-" She cuts herself off and blushes, spotting ten faces waiting for them at the bottom of a hill. It has been a long time since she lagged behind so much.
"What is Rogers doing with his hand?"
"No more talking." Hermione whispers, and it's an answer though he might not know. It serves the purpose though, and they both fall silent.
Day: 1456; Hour: 7
"I meant everyone will work out rotating the sleeping arrangements, not just me."
"Well everyone thinks they have ownership over their more comfortable arrangements, and so no one wants to rotate except the "unlucky sods" as that basta-"
"I am not playing rock, paper, scissors for the couch."
This argument lasts for the span of three minutes until Hermione yanks her blanket out from under Seamus and accidentally hits him in the face with her pillow. She feels a bit like a child as she marches down the hall, tripping over her blanket, but she is as petulant as one at the moment. He answers on the fourth rap of her knuckles on the door.
"Either I'm sleeping in there or you're cuddling up to Simon and hoping Seamus doesn't kill you in your sleep."
He lifts an eyebrow at her, and she can see the hint of a smirk as he drawls. "Choices, choices, Granger."
She lowers her nose from the air when he opens the door wider and walks back into the room. She had been trying to ignore the possibility of him closing the door in her face, but the knot of nervous tension in her gut refused to, so it is still relief she feels when she steps inside. He sits down in the corner of the room, his back to the wall, and paper spread out all around him.
"Planning?"
"Rogers insists that everyone receive maps of the locations before we leave for them. I told him he can do it himself than, but he's left."
"The mission?"
Draco looks up at her, his forehead wrinkled from the rise of his eyebrows, and he scratches his temple with the end of his pen. "He had a meeting at Headquarters. I'm unaware if he'll be back."
So there is another bed open. She'll save the information and if Rogers isn't back tomorrow, maybe she'll tell Simon. Seamus could keep the couch. Because she doesn't know what else to say, "I see."
"Do you want to be put on tomorrow or do you need a break?" This has to be the first time anyone has ever asked her this during the entire war.
"Did I hear that right?"
"Potter, Finnigan, Fitz, Johnson, Weasley, and..." He flips a paper, "Simon? I thought it was his first name. I'm either sending you or Brown with them, and I'll go as well if Rogers is back. The rest will be on call for backup until the third location. The first two are small - a cottage and a flat, both in the Muggle world. There's little chance of needing everyone, and sending a dozen people in will look too suspicious for the Muggles. Do you want half the night off or no?"
He's probably aware of what her recent mood swings mean, because he's been around her enough to know, and also that they precede her avoiding sex for a few days. She isn't sure if she should feel embarrassed about it but she doesn't. "I'll go the whole night."
"You should get some sleep in that case, Granger. I'm sure Potter doesn't need you attacking more shrubbery tomorrow."
She glares at him. "It had thorns on it, it was attached to my clothes."
He gives a slow smile to the blue marker lines in front of him, and she huffs her way to the bed. "Can you not use that blanket? It's scratchy."
"I have to. You're a blanket hog."
He blinks at her, a confused expression on his face, and she smiles because it's adorable. "I am not."
"How do you know? You're sleeping."
"Because if I use a blanket at all, I usually end up throwing it off me. Why would I hog the blankets when I don't like them?" This is completely true.
"Fine." She just happens to like her scratchy blanket.
"Go to bed, Granger. Your arguments are weaker than usual."
"So is your...screw it."
Day: 1456: Hour: 15
It is dark when she wakes up; this is usual. Draco's chest is to her back, his hand under her shirt, his fingers spread across her stomach; this she rather likes. She can feel a hardness at the small of her back, and when she pushes closer, he exhales harder at the top of her head. It is surprisingly intimate, and as she begins to think of just how she wants to wake up this morning, she remembers that there was a different reason as to why she is awake at all. Something...alarming.
She feels the lull of sleep dragging her deeper before she breathes in deeply and is back to being aware. Smoke, or fire, or burning. She and Draco jolt to sitting positions at the same time, no longer than two seconds after the shrill scream from outside their door.
He beats her to the door, and she presses her back to the side of it as he gives her the warning look that he's going to open it. The moment he does, she aims to the left and him to the right, but there's no one there. She heads toward the living room and Draco heads right down the hall. Seamus and Simon appear in front of her, sleep-tousled and wands raised.
"Cleared."
"Cleared!" Angelina yells from the top of the stairs.
"Fire!" Someone else yells from the direction of the kitchen.
"It's only in the rubbish bin, get a pot of water you dramatic-" She can hear Draco begin, but Lavender cuts off her hearing.
"Shit! I thought I put that out!" Lavender is pounding down the steps, face red and hair matted.
"The fire?" Seamus is as confused as the rest of them.
"You were smoking." Hermione accuses, taking in how distraught the other woman is. She has only seen her like this for one reason. For however creepy Hermione found Harold, Lavender couldn't go very long without the man.
"Oh, smoking? Great! So it's not enough that we go and put our lives on the line every day, you've got to try and kill us-" Seamus starts what is only going to turn into a long-winded rant.
"Shut up-"
"All taken care of?" Hermione asks from the doorway of the kitchen, and is forced to stumble in when someone slams into her back.
"What fire?" Fitz looks around wildly.
"It was in the rubbish bin. Justin is stomping the last of it out. An-"
"Good job, Lav. Throw a lit cigarette in ther-"
"I thought it was out all the way!"
"Thankfully there's a hose in the backyard," Draco glances at her, and she wonders if he's thinking about the time they used it on one another. "I suggest you get dressed in more than a nightie before you clean it all up, Brown."
Hermione doesn't see Lavender's response, retreating toward Harry's room quickly as something pieces itself together in her mind. There are four women in the house, and unless Justin has a special talent of screaming like a female, someone was screaming for another reason. The only other female on the bottom floor is Ginny.
"Harry?"
"We're alright. Everything alright out there?"
"Yes. Is... Is Ginny alright?"
Hermione is paranoid, and paranoia leads her to a big imagination. All she can think as to why Harry isn't opening the door is because he can't. Is because something isn't letting him. Hermione learned a long time ago that the monsters in her basement, in the cleaning cabinet, in all the places her mother did not want her to go as a child - they were real. They were very real, and they wear black hoods with ivory masks, and they all want to kill her.
"Open the door, Potter." Hermione jumps because he is right behind her and she hadn't even felt or heard a breath of movement.
Harry looks annoyed when he does, looking first at Draco above her head and then at her. "She had a nightmare, Hermione. She's fine."
"I just wanted to be sure."
"She can stay behin-" Draco starts.
"She won't stay behind - she'll go the whole night. She's fine, it's a nightmare, Malfoy. You can't tell me you haven't had one."
They both glare at one another until Harry shuts the door.