A/N. I could apologize a thousand times and it would never be enough.

I can see the reviews now - "I DID MY WAITING!" Not quite thirteen years, but it has been a while, hasn't it? I'm sorry for the not so brief abandonment of this story, but I made a promise and if it takes forever, I'll finish this story.

To my devoted readers, those who have messaged me and voted for my stories in contests and have waited patiently to read this chapter, I thank you. Thank you thank you thank you. I'll do my best to deserve your attention.

Any returning readers, Hi Guys! I finally did it! I know, I'm lame. I want to warn everyone in advance that this will probably take on mature tones as we go on. Possibly more graphic, both v. But as I've gotten older, as have you guys and let's be real…

Who doesn't love Game of Thrones?

A playlist for the songs that have inspired so far on my journey re-immersing into Draco and Hermione's story so far:

Grave Digger by Matt Maeson

Third Bar by Snow Patrol (I do believe this was on an old playlist of mine, whether it was related to this or another story, it's been so long *shrug*)

Bruises by Lewis Capaldi

Gooey by Glass Animals

…~oOo~...

Chapter Twenty: In Which He Makes An Ally

The blade held Draco's interest captive for days. He could feel it's aura waft our every time he opened the box he kept it in, wrapped with a royal blue satin cloth. It's glass surface threw rainbow glares when the sunlight hit it. The etching of the symbol of Grindelwald was nearly invisible at times and others it seemed to stare him down.

Whatever magical properties it had, the dagger kept secret. For two days he stared at it, levitated it, tried different spells on it. Nothing except an odd white glow would occur, and once it would abruptly stab its point down into whatever surface was beneath it. A thick scar through the center of his palm told the story of the first time that happened.

It was his job to keep it safe, but for what reason he had no idea. It just looked like an art piece, not at all practical as a weapon, but pretty in a trophy case and moody when magicked.

He considered whether or not to ask Hermione to have a look at it, but decided against it. With so much going on, he wanted her to at least put to rest the puzzle that was revealing itself, the pasts of Grindelwald and his relationship with Dumbledore. Whatever came of their time in the laboratory they'd kept beneath Dumbledore's childhood home, whatever the significance of the blade was, they were all pieces of an out of focus photo.

He couldn't even begin to ponder over Chelsea's visions, for the rest of the long list of things he had to worry about.

His upcoming nuptials being the most pressing.

Draco took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair, looked around at his Ministry office. It was bleak and boring, all black wood and grey carpet with smoky curtains and leather armchairs. The walls were bare except for shelves and his desk had but one or two baubles on it, one being a paperweight that Adam had transfigured for him in the shape of a mushroom. Why a mushroom he had no idea, he doubted it was on purpose, but the randomness of its presence made him almost smile sometimes.

It struck him suddenly what his office was missing. What his life was missing. He needed a confidante, a second pair of eyes, an opinion that wasn't motivated by fear, or personal favor, or hatred.

He found himself standing in his Floo saying loudly, "Hogwarts, the Headmaster's office."

...

"Draco," Lucius said from his Dumbledore's desk. Draco would always think of it as that. No matter how long his father defiled the name of headmaster, Lucius would never belong in that chair. "What do-"

"Shape's portrait. I want it. I'll send someone or you will. I know you don't appreciate the presence of portraits, or the memory of your oldest friend, but I do. Make it happen." Draco spun back on his heels.

"A letter wouldn't have done?" Lucius said with a vague amusement.

Draco looked at his father from the Flop. "I find I'm running low on patience as of late."

"As you wish… Mister Undersecretary."

Draco couldn't help but pause at that. He was about to reach for the bowl of powder upon the mantle when his father went on, "A prestigious title and yet you seem to cringe at it. Not only with me, your father, but Snow...and the Dark Lord."

"I'm a puppet. I hardly earned my title."

"Still. You should be proud. Stretch your wings, test your limits a little bit. You have authority now. Did you not want that following our triumph in the war? Power?"

"Not necessarily," Draco said shortly. "I wanted to live my life."

"Are you...unhappy?"

"Am I allowed to be?"

"That depends entirely on what it is you're unhappy about." Lucius folded his fingers together. "There are plans in place and our masters need you at the top of your game. But happiness can be negotiated. For all that you do and you've done… surely you can make a few requests to keep you… content. Fiscal compensation, absolutely."

Draco pondered it only for a moment. "Let's start with the portrait of Severus. We'll talk numbers later."

"You remind me of him. That worries me."

"Worries you how? Aside from the plague of misery that haunted him to his grave."

Lucius pretended to get distracted by his workload. "He had his secrets. Dangerous ones."

While Draco was sure it would astound his father to know that he was a multi faceted human being, deeper than the puddle he was seen as, he said nothing and threw a fistful of powder down into the fireplace. "Draco Malfoy's office, the Ministry."

…

"Well, well, well. Look who's unearthed me from the bowels of Hogwarts," Severus intoned from within his frame. "I liked it there. Quiet. And you've brought me…?"

Draco peered over at the man he called godfather and professor. Seeing Snape's essence reborn on canvas was as unsettling as it was reassuring. The only person in the wizarding world who could understand the tangled web he was weaving was dead, but at least in a limited way, his wisdom lived on. Potter or Weasley would have sought council with Dumbledore's portrait in desperation, but know one knew desperation like Severus Snape.

"Ministry of Magic," Draco said, hand cupped around the mug of hot coffee on his desk. "Undersecretary's office."

Severus looked about. "Which would belong to…?" He stopped abruptly as he realized. "I certainly never pictured you as a politician." Snape pressed his lips. tter, pulling strings and faking documents from too high a standing in our government, kidnapping children, being the deceitful pet pupil of not one, but two blood supremacist mutinists, yet…"

"And I never pictured myself as a spy for the Order taking commands from Harry bloody Potter. Yet..." He spread his fingers out at the current scene. "Here I am."

Snape gave a small sigh, "There you are. And it seems we have a great deal to speak about."

Draco raised his wand and began warding the room, protecting against eavesdroppers and enchanting whoever dares comes to his door to suddenly be distracted and politely screw off. Once he finished his murmuring, he said, "I'd offer a chair."

"You weren't funny as a child and you aren't funny now. Now, you're obviously out of your depth. Start speaking, boy."

It was a long story. Draco was grateful for the carafe of hot coffee as he topped himself again and again. Snape listened intensely, only interrupting to ask a question. While the beginning of his career as spy was complicated, it only got more so when Draco went into the details of Harry Potter rising from the grave. And graver still, the fine tunings of the Dark Lord's return and his plans for Draco.

The dread Draco felt in his chest was reflected in Snape's nearly black eyes. Once he finished his piece, Draco waited eagerly for Snape to answer him, guide him, create a master plan where Draco could be free of his chains by breakfast.

"That's quite a deep hole you've dug for yourself, boy," Snape said with some form of both bitterness and pity.

"Any suggestions on how to handle the hole?" Draco asked with a grinding lack of patience, the snap he'd felt coming for weeks was so nearly there. Once it finally came undone, he wondered if he'd first challenge all of his oppressors to a duel or set himself on fire and call it a lifetime.

Severus seemed to ponder this carefully for a long while. "You're deeper than I ever was, that's for certain. It's because you're young. The Dark Lord and Snow have to establish a generation, you are a good face for the dream of their new age.

"The Greengrass girl has to be a bigger part of this. I remember Astoria to be a bright, attentive student with the power of manipulation in bounds. There is more than beauty there and someone else knows that. Perhaps it is Garrick Greengrass playing his own game, with the leverage he believes he has over your father, but it's too simple. There's support there. Snow, I'd think. It's too flowery for the Dark Lord's taste.

"As was the plan with the child, Margot. Beauregard. The name is familiar but I don't remember a Hilde."

"The possibly-dead husband was named Noel."

Snape's eyes sparked with recognition and his face dropped. "It can't be."

"You know Noel Beauregard?"

"When I knew him, he went by Noel Gardner. That Noel is not possibly dead, he is very dead. I saw him die. The man was...a lunatic. Killed for sport. He was a Death Eater for years before I was."

Draco held up his hand and demanded, "Death Eater? You're claiming that Margot's father was in the first regime? That's a broad assumption, considering a very different last name."

"Gardner was his mother's maiden name. A single pure blood witch, alone in raising her child, she found support from Voldemort when the rest of the wizarding world scorned her for the scandal. She ended up marrying a French man, Rafe Beauregard. Noel would use the name Beauregard in coded messages, in the early days."

"And this man is dead?"

"Absolutely." The word snapped in the room like a tome being clapped shut.

The younger man cleared his throat. "I don't know," Draco crossed his arms and kicked a leg up onto his desk. "I was damn sure Potter was dead."

"This is different," Snape hissed through his teeth. "I watched him die. We're talking about the hole you've dug, but I did the same in my life." His lips curled sourly. "In this particular case its nearly literal. I killed Noel Gardner during the first war."

"As part of your role as spy?"

The portrait of Severus's face fell hard. The look aged him and it was hard to believe the man had died in his early thirties. "Not at all. I was very loyal still at that point. He had...frustrated me a few too many times and during the next raid we were partnered for, I trapped him, wandless, in the house as it burned to the ground. I watched it go to ash. No one came out of it alive, apart from me."

Eyebrows raised, Draco took a breath. "A heartwarming anecdote. That does not change the fact that Hilde Beauregard does exist, someone using the name Noel Beauregard was at the inn, and Margot is a gigantic brat who believes her father to be dead. Now I'm no Auror, but I'd stretch comfortably to believing Noel found a way out from that fire and fled to France, married that horrible Frenchwoman and went on to have a horrible child, all under his step father's name. And I have a theory that takes this entire conspiracy a step further and I know you'll call me a madman for it."

"We're all mad here," Snape recited the quote with resignation.

"I think Snow, behind his mask, is Noel."

Snape chuckled cynically, with a depth that came from Tartarus itself. "That would be very bad. Very bad indeed. The man might as well have had multiple personalities. Perhaps more so than I originally believed. If that psychopath is alive and working hand in hand with the Dark Lord, I'm not totally surprised the government has got to this point."

"It explains how important he stressed retrieving Margot was. How he got Hilde to -" Draco stood with the shock of his discovery. It was all making sense, it felt obvious. "Oh my God, Hilde knows. Of course she does. She has to know his true identity, that's why she lied to the press about her daughter's whereabouts! Snow is probably their best bet at keeping their daughter safe right now, with wizarding rights activists beginning to climb from the depths, petitioning every day. They're on separate rises to power, expanding territories, and without anyone knowing, they're doing it together. Do you think the Dark Lord knows?"

"Of course he does, foolish boy, he has the same mission, they all feed one another," Snape said persistently. "This has gone too far, the disease that is the Dark has spread and I must insist that you change strategy drastically.

"The Order is too soft, you'll never be able to take charge there and have them do what they need to do. They live in fear, the golden age is finished, so naturally their famous can-do attitude has been corrupted. Like I always suspected it might. They are drowning in their own despair and cannot see the forest for the trees. You must forge a path wide enough for everyone to see clearly and follow. From one side...or the other."

Draco snorted. "Pardon?"

"If you cannot trust the Order to follow your lead and take down Voldemort once and for all, you must do so trusting no one but yourself. In which case you must dismantle Voldemort's ranks from within, with the subtlety of a ghost. You need to use the power you're being handed, the same power you fear, and break that very hand. Crush it."

Shuttering to even ask, Draco found he could hardly help it. "And Hermione?"

The breath Severus heaved came from his gut. "Your primary concern should be the state of the Ministry and it's -"

"Hermione," Draco stressed heavily, feeling a creaking in his ribs. "Hermione is my primary concern."

Snape looked at Draco with the closest thing to empathy the man could show. If Snape was near pitying him, by Merlin, was Draco screwed. When Snape finally spoke again, his grinding baritone rolled softly, carefully, and Draco did all that he could not to give everything up just then. Snape said, "I understand. You love her. Your fear for her. You wish to protect her with every weapon in your arsenal but, boy… your weapons are few and your structure is weak. You can hardly protect her while you struggle to protect yourself."

Of course, he knew this already. It's what kept him up at night, knowing that as far as he had to go, it would be impossible to shield her all along the way. "Then what do I do? I won't leave her defenseless."

With a scoff, Snape went on, "Give the witch some credit. She's hardly defenseless. But of course, that's no peace of mind for you. You must entrust her care with another, because while the Order is sorely wounded, if they won't fight they will hide. Recruit someone who is capable, focused, but without the weight of so many responsibilities."

It was not easy to hear. Draco's insides were cringing at the thought of leaving Hermione's well-being to anyone besides himself, but if anything happened to her because he was foolish enough to believe he could carry himself and her through to safety…. Well, he would not go on. The end of Hermione Granger would be the end of him, so for the sake of the Wizarding world, he would do whatever it took to keep them both alive.

He considered the candidates. He knew Potter would devote himself readily should Draco ask, but while Golden Boy was eager and loyal, he also had a history of messiness and wasn't the quickest of the Order with his wand. Longbottom, a surprisingly agile duelist, a resilient wizard if Draco ever knew one, had his own priorities of the heart. Draco could not expect to put Neville in a situation to support Hermione over Luna should circumstances become dire, nor could he ask it of Luna herself. The Weasley twins were too easily distracted, too erratic - they'd tackle a mountain troll if it seemed a jolly idea at the time.

And then it hit him.

Strength. Focus. An accomplished fighter. Someone who cared deeply for Hermione. Someone who took an order seriously and was just crazy enough to put himself before an Avada in the name of nobility.

Draco smiled grimly to himself and sipped his coffee. "I know the man for the job. Now, onto the issue of this dagger…"

"Boy," Snape said with a sudden hardness. "You can hardly afford to be flippant about this. Because people, even very powerful people fail. Wizard, muggle; we are human. And humans make mistakes. Be sure of your choice, or regret it until you become the portrait of a man who died a lonely and surly without a legacy apart from his students… And I think we can agree I was hardly 'well loved'."

Letting that sink in for a moment, Draco nodded solemnly. He cleared his throat and went on, "The dagger... "

For hours the two men talked extensively about all the possible lore about daggers, and the experiments that should be done in more secure quarters. Snape believed its origins to be older than Grindelwald himself, and then defaced by the dictator, as that madman had done with a number of magical artifacts during his reign. They talked on strategy and manipulation, defection and betrayal. They made lists upon lists of possible moves to make and possible allies along the way. They deliberated advantages and weaknesses, they explored angles of their disadvantages thoroughly.

There was one thing they refused to discuss to any length, though. And it was the grim reality that no matter how they prepared and deliberated, Draco's fate was sealed the moment he chose to play both sides. In all likelihood, he'd make the same fate as his mentor. Draco could only hope that someone, one day soon, would hang his own portrait in their office.

...

The Burrow stood tall and lovely in the afternoon sun, its garden fresh and bountiful. He'd waited four days to track down the man he'd entrust with Hermione's life. Word had it he stayed odd nights at the Burrow and he'd asked the twins to let him know the moment he needed the couch again. That morning Draco received the letter saying the Burrow had a guest as breakfast and so Draco began rehearsing his proposal.

There was a very strong possibility Draco was about to make the biggest mistake of his life and he thought that merited a moment of contemplation. The man was a worthy champion, Draco told himself. It was oddly perfect for the role Draco was casting him in, with his slyness and his brutishness. The man was actually quite intelligent despite the language barrier. Yes, he met all of Draco's requirements and Draco wasn't beyond the fact he'd say the same of a guard dog, but would it be enough?

He was a fool to keep on the inner monologue of "if Voldemort plants himself into the continent and possibly descend into the darkest era of wizarding history, and if everyone I care about starts dying around me" because it was no longer the matter of "if". The next few plays he'd make, should they succeed, would mean chaos one way or another. Ultimately, where decisions made chaos, more decisions were made, and so the cycle would go until all the pain and suffering would meet some kind of end.

And Hermione would live. It was all he could be certain of. The peace he'd made with that irrevocable fact made every step slightly lighter, every breath a little easier in a world where he was choked by smoke. He strode toward the Burrow, toward the front door and as he readied to use the secret knock, he caught a waft of tobacco. He only ever smelt burning cigarettes when leaving Order meetings or when arriving too early and the smell, as it was now, was accompanied by a quiet conversation.

A short stroll around the corner revealed Arthur, leaning against the wall of his rebuilt home and Victor Krum standing shortly across. The two mean were chatting over a fag. Neither of the men smiled; no one was too jolly these days around the Burrow.

"Figured it was you coming through the barrier," Arthur said plainly, standing straight to shake his hand. Draco never expected or sought any welcoming feelings from Arthur Weasley in the beginning of his career in the Order, but once Draco kept the secret of the married man's most precious and darling vice, there was an acceptance between them.

Viktor said, "There is no meeting. Vhat are you doing here?"

"Forward as always, Krum," Draco answered with begrudging admiration. "I'd like to have a conversation. With you."

"A short one, I hope," Krum said, with a sigh. "I go home. I got letter from cousin, he needs help."

"What sort of help?"

"There have been riots. Attacks. Vizarding families need refuge. They need help to escape."

Draco snorted softly. "Britain is no refuge as of late."

"Vhich is vhy I take them to America and vhy I leave soon."

"Do you have time for lunch and a drink, on me?"

The expression Viktor made did not lack confusion, nor hesitation. It was the same way someone might look before reaching out to hold a tarantula. There were no especially warm feelings shared between the men, but a sort of trained respect. Even though Draco was aware that Viktor was cautious of him at times, but most of the Order members were. That came with the role of spy - even your true allies would never really shake their suspicions about you.

"Lucky for you," Viktor said, digging a little hole in the dirt with the toe of his boot, "I do not say no to free drink." He dropped his butt into the hole and buried it among the petunias.

…

The clanking the glasses and rustling of the pub felt deafening as Draco and Krum grew silent. Draco sipped his whiskey and Krum tapped his pint glass with his index finger, his brow scrunched and big bottom lip pushed out. The bitter side of Draco thought about how the man looked like an ape trying to translate for a horse when he got too deep in thought. But he did his best not to say out loud how if Krum thought any harder the lamps would flicker.

"Herm-own-nee needs no protecting," Viktor said decisively. "She vould take offense if she is to know you ask me this." Draco noticed how Krum's ever-improving English suffered when he was conflicted.

"Of course she would, which is why she's not to know," Draco sneered with a wave of his hand. "She is stubborn and proud and all other dangerous traits that her House inherit, but I've sunken too deeply into my role to stand between her and what's to come. The unrest in your home country and its borders is only the beginning. Voldemort is gaining and he is planting his seeds across the continent. I need someone who will be willing to operate outside the limits of the Order and carry out my plans in my stead."

Viktor took a swig of his pint and licked his lip. "You need a lackey."

"I need a friend," Draco said tersely. "I need a personal ally. Not one of the Order or of the Death Eaters. But a wizard I know is suited to the tasks I'd assign. I don't ask for blind service, only the promise of loyalty to Hermione above all else in desperation. It's not secret I'm not the most popular member of the Order of the Phoenix, but I put my life on the line every day and if there is one thing I can ask in return for that, it's the love of my life be safe."

"Is that all?" Viktor said facetiously, brow propped.

"If it's money you want, I have that," Draco said with a splay of his hands. "Whatever it takes, whatever you want, I'll make it happen. I'm a powerful man."

Viktor held his hands up, palms out. "There is nothing I vant. Nothing you can give."

Heaving a breath, Draco felt his resolve shake. "There must be something."

It felt like a lifetime before Krum finally spoke again. "Herm-ee-own-nee is good woman," Viktor said firmly. "Too good for you."

"I take that as a compliment," Draco replied dryly. It was painfully true, after all.

"I vill do it." The ex-Quidditch player downed the last quarter of his pint. "Vhat do you have in mind?"

…~oOo~...