Seventh Year, Part 10, 1998

She hastily wiped at her eyes again and pushed herself up from the ground on shaky legs.

"It's nothing."

Even to her, the denial sounded half-hearted and unbelievable.

"That was LUCIUS and NARCISSA MALFOY!"

"It… Draco...I…"

For once in her life, her mind failed her. She simply could not think of the proper words to string together that would somehow salvage this nightmare.

Harry knew.

He had seen Lucius in the mist, heard the awful words he'd said. And he knew.

"It was never Draco," Harry said slowly, as if he couldn't believe what he was saying.

"Harry, please," she said, taking a step toward him.

He held up his hands defensively and stepped back from her.

"You gave him the prophecy? You… GAVE my prophecy to...to a Death Eater?"

"Harry…"

"Is that where it started? Or was it even earlier? He's a predator, Hermione, and you - god, you were still a kid."

She opened her mouth but couldn't get out words.

"All this time. You...Malfoy? LUCIUS Malfoy? That's why Mal- Draco - cursed you, isn't it?" he said as he mentally put the pieces together.

A fresh wave of tears filled her eyes.

"Harry, just… calm down for a moment."

"CALM DOWN?" He yelled. "You - my best friend - you're FUCKING Lucius Malfoy? He's a DEATH EATER! He's…"

Harry took another step back from her and stumbled over a tree root. He regained his balance quickly and tugged at his hair.

"My best friend...and HIM. He's in the inner circle. He's a MURDERER!"

"No! He's not. He's not a murderer," she shot back immediately, even though she knew of the muggle woman Lucius had been forced to kill. That one didn't count, she'd often told herself.

"He doesn't want this Harry, he doesn't want any of this."

"How can you be so STUPID? He's USING YOU!"

"No, he's not. I promise, he's not!" she insisted.

"He's part of the inner circle! Don't be so stupid, Hermione! Bloody fucking hell, what happened to you? Did he do this? Did he imperius you? I'll fucking kill him!" He snarled.

"No! No, Harry, he didn't hurt me. He wouldn't hurt me. He loves me."

Harry laughed bitterly. "God, how can you be so fucking stupid? He's using you to get to me. You HEARD that, just now."

"No, that was the horcrux! Harry, it wasn't real. Lucius, he - he wouldn't do that!" she insisted. She knew, deep down she knew, that the horcrux was playing on her own fears, her own insecurities. Lucius had given her no reason to distrust him.

Harry looked down at the arm that hung limply at her side. "He gave you that, didn't he?" he said, pointing to the bracelet that never left her wrist.

She followed his gaze and touched the bracelet protectively. "He did."

"You - you've had that for ages! How long has this been going on? Did he - you, it was your birthday. Seventeen. Oh my god, you were a child, Hermione, that's sick! He's fucking sick!"

"No, he's not. He - I approached him. I did. He.."

"Don't try to justify it. Just… don't. Did he rape you, or did you willingly spread your legs for a Death Eater?" he hissed.

She recoiled, as if she'd been slapped. His words were reminiscent of Sirius's, and it broke her heart to hear them from her best friend.

"Lucius would never do that to me. Ever."

"All this time, Hermione, ALL THIS TIME, I've thought you were with Mal - Draco. You LIED to me. You lied to me, you lied to Ron. You've done nothing but lie for years! You gave him the prophecy! You lied to me! How could you? I TRUSTED YOU!"

"You CAN trust me! Haven't I proved that? I've given up EVERYTHING to help you, Harry! I've risked my life over and over and over again for you! I've given up my final year of school. I've given up my PARENTS. My parents, Harry. I did that for you! I've worn that damned locket and carried that bloody fucking cup and rode a dragon and was chased by a snake and camped in the woods and starved and risked my life to help you end this nightmare!"

There was no holding back the deluge of tears then. Her emotions were already overwrought from Harry's brush with death and the horrific experience with the horcrux.

"We're risking our lives, and you're sharing information with Voldemort's inner circle!"

"He wants out. He's always wanted out. He never wanted this. He wants Him gone!" she sobbed.

"He's playing both sides of the field! How can you be so fucking naive?" he shot back. "God, he - I don't even want to think about how much information you've told him about the Order."

She breathed out sobbing hiccups as Harry paced angrily back and forth across the campsite.

"Does he know?"

She looked up at him from her spot on the cold, hard ground.

"What?"

"What we're doing out here, what our task is? Does. He. Know?" he ground out, pointing at the remnants of Helga Hufflepuff's golden chalice.

She opened her mouth to respond but did not know what to say. To admit that she'd told Lucius about the horcruxes was to admit that she'd broken Harry's trust and would only confirm his worst fears. But to lie, to lie now, when she was so desperate for him to believe in her and in her sincerity seemed inherently wrong.

"He's helping us," she whispered. "He is. He...he helped me research, gave me spells I could try to destroy the necklace. He figured out where the cup was hidden. He's the one who gave me Bellatrix Lestrange's hair, so we could get the cup."

"YOU TOLD HIM?"

"He's HELPING us!" she sobbed. "We couldn't have done this without him? Don't you see? If it weren't for him, we could have been captured or killed at Grimmauld Place. If it weren't for him we wouldn't have been able to get the cup."

She had to make him understand, she had to make him see just how much they'd needed Lucius. She did not want to even consider just how lost they'd be without Lucius's help. Harry had been willing to accept that help when it came from Draco.

"He's EVIL! He...he GAVE Ginny that diary, he gave a HORCRUX to an 11 year old kid!" Harry yelled.

"He didn't know what it was! I swear! He didn't!" she gasped.

He laughed incredulously at her. "Please, Hermione, PLEASE tell me that you aren't that stupid. It's bullshite. All of it. God, he's really done a number on you."

Harry paced as he ran his fingers angrily through his hair, muttering to himself. Hermione, for her part, was still frozen on the ground, unsure how to calm her best friend. It was not unexpected that he'd blow up like this. After all, she could admit to herself that, however good her intentions had been, this was still a pretty big secret she'd kept from him. He would rage. He would be furious.

But then he'd calm down.

He'd calm down because they were stuck in the woods in the midst of a war and a fight for their very survival.

He stopped pacing, his back to her, and stood in silence as if trying to gather his thoughts. Hermione pushed herself up from the ground and brushed off her worn denims. She would have to apologise. A lot. Maybe even see about arranging a meeting between Lucius and Harry. Surely if Harry could sit down with Lucius, could see and hear with his own eyes and ears just how very much Lucius wanted out from under the despotic thumb of the Dark Lord, he would understand.

And then it would be okay, she told herself.

"I want you to leave."

She was drawn from her plans and thoughts by Harry's quiet statement.

"W-what?"

He turned to face her then.

"I said I want you to leave."

"What? Why? You can't be serious?" she stammered.

"You've compromised everything, Hermione, everything. I didn't even tell Sirius why we needed to find R.A.B. and that locket. He's my godfather, my only real family left, and I didn't tell him. But you - you told a Death Eater. You told Voldemort's right hand man. You claim he's helping you, but you don't know that for certain. You claim he wants out, but how can you really know? Dumbledore insisted Snape was trustworthy, dismissed all of my fears, all of my suspicions, and Snape KILLED HIM."

"Lucius isn't Snape," she whispered, shaking her head. "He's not."

"I don't give a flying bloody fuck!" he yelled back. "I can't trust him, and I can't trust you."

"You can! Harry, you can trust me."

"Take your clothes, your personal things. I assume you can use your bracelet to go back to your Death Eater."

He was really going to do it. He was kicking her out, out of their campsite, out of his hunt for horcruxes. After all of these years, everything they'd done together, everything she'd sacrificed for Harry, for their safety and their freedom, for the magical world… and he was tossing her aside.

No, no, he couldn't do that, she thought desperately. He needed her. He needed Lucius. Ron had already left them, and Harry couldn't possibly do this alone! How was he to sneak into Hogwarts, find and destroy Rowena Ravenclaw's mysterious artifact, find and kill Nagini, AND fight Voldemort, all without her help? It simply wasn't doable.

He would have to turn to Sirius, to the Order, and then she knew. She knew Harry, and she knew that he'd get bogged down in wanting to help with whatever the immediate needs were because he was incapable of turning his back on someone in need, and the hunt for the final horcruxes would be delayed, with potentially disastrous results.

The very success of their mission depended on her.

Harry had turned his back on her and stomped into the tent. She could not see him, but she could hear him rummaging about, likely gathering her things. She swallowed hard and considered her options.

She could leave. She could return to Lucius's side and give Harry some space until he calmed down. But no, that would not work. She would be unable to find him again if she left and he picked up camp and moved somewhere else. Besides, she'd never forgive herself if anything happened to Harry in her absence. What if he got hurt? What if he was captured?

And what of Lucius? How could she possibly explain to Lucius that she'd failed? Lucius was risking everything to help her, to help Harry, and she could not bear the idea of telling him that she'd let him down, that Harry did not want their help.

No, leaving was not an option.

She had to fix this.

If only she still had that time turner from third year, if only she could go back and somehow undo Harry witnessing her vision from the horcrux, she thought desperately.

A solution sparked in her mind, and perhaps, under a different set of circumstances, she would have ignored it, would have looked for another option. But desperate times often did call for the most desperate of measures, and in the face of war and chaos, there simply wasn't time to come up with a more reasonable solution, not when Harry was being so unreasonable.

If she couldn't turn back time, she would simply have to remove the memory of her destruction of the horcrux from his mind.

She had done it before, with her parents. She could do it again, she told herself. This was simple in comparison, just a precious few minutes of time to erase and replace. She could do this. She had no time to come up with another option, she reasoned.

It's dark magic. You intend to use dark magic against your best friend, against the savior of the light.

Some part of her, deep within, recoiled in horror at the very idea of using dark magic again against someone else she loved, but Hermione willed that part of her mind to quiet. War was never truly black and white. That was only for fairy tales and pretty stories the victors fed to the masses. War was terror and suffering and misery and acknowledging that sometimes you had to do bad things for the greater good, that sometimes the ends really did justify the means.

Her hand shook as she raised her wand, pointing it toward Harry's back.

Do it now! Do it before he turns around! This is your only chance! He can learn the truth later, after the war.

She forced herself to take a deep steadying breath.

This is the right thing to do. Harry needs you, and he's not thinking rationally. You can fix everything.

The whispered incantation slipped from her lips, powered by the force of her magic.

The spell was considered inherently dark, as it merged a lesser cousin of the imperius curse with a memory charm that allowed the user to not just remove a memory but replace it with something else entirely.

Magic twisted and turned within her, coiling and uncoiling like a snake, slithering through her blood, her veins, before shooting from the vine wand clasped in her shaking hand.

The curse hit Harry from behind, and he paused before turning toward her, a blank look on his face. She held her wand steady, focusing on the memory she wanted to replace, as he walked slowly toward her.

A fresh wave of tears streamed down her cheeks when she at least lowered her wand and collapsed onto the cold ground.

She'd really done it.

She'd used dark magic against her best friend. She was a terrible, horrible person.

That same awful unsettled feeling she'd experienced after wiping her parents' memories and sending them on their way bubbled within her. She wanted to claw at her chest, to rip out the turmoil inside of her. Instead she sat pathetically on the ground, sobbing.

"Shhh… it's okay, 'Mione. It's okay," Harry's soothing voice reached her ears before she felt his hand on her arms and shoulders. His attempt at comfort, the result of her spellwork, only made her sob harder.

"I'm so sorry," she cried.

He shifted onto the ground beside her, wrapping her arms around her. "You have nothing to apologise for. That was… intense. I… I knew the horcrux could talk, in my head, but I didn't know there'd be a visual with it. Seeing myself and Ron killed by Voldemort that's...that's upsetting to anyone."

She continued to cry, her body racked with guilt at his mention of the false memory she'd implanted. In his mind, he'd seen his and Ron's murders play out in the mist from the horcrux while Voldemort taunted her. It was admittedly a horrific vision and one she might have had herself had Lucius not been in her life.

"Hey, c'mon now, it's okay. It wasn't real," he said soothingly, hugging her tighter, "And you did it - you destroyed the horcrux!"

They sat together on the ground, Hermione huddled in Harry's embrace until she managed to pull herself together.

"It was so much worse than wearing it," she whispered as she wiped at her eyes.

"I probably should have gone first. That was pretty reckless to just do it without taking any precautions to protect us," he admitted. "Then again, you did call me a reckless, bloody, stupid Gryffindor."

He laughed lightly, and Hermione forced a smile at his attempt at humour. She attempted to quell the roiling feeling inside of her. The last time she used this spell, Lucius plied her with chocolate and sex and made that unsettled feeling go away, but she had only herself to rely on now, and it was exhausting.

"Do you want to destroy the other one tonight, or should we go to bed? It's terribly late," she pointed out.

He looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. "No reason to wait. Might as well get it done."

He pushed himself up from the ground and brushed off his clothes before helping her up.

"Do you think some sort of silencing spell would work on it? So we don't have to listen to it?" he asked as he picked up the sword.

She frowned. "I don't know. I mean, when I wore the necklace or carried the cup around in my robe pocket, I could hear the horcrux whispering to me, in my head. It seems unlikely a silencing spell would do much."

"You're right. Probably best to just remind myself it's not real and push through," he said. She wasn't sure if he was trying to convince her or himself.

Harry dropped Slytherin's locket onto the ground and picked up the Sword of Gryffindor. Before she could say another word, he stabbed the locket fiercely, piercing the gold with the blade. That same awful sound emerged from the necklace, and she had to force herself to take deep, steady breaths as her mind recalled the horror of the cup's destruction. The same black substance leaked from the desecrated jewelry, the same black mist swirled about as it had before.

This time she watched in horror as images of death and destruction emerged from the mist. She saw herself, Ron, Sirius, the Weasleys, their friends and housemates dying in agony as they whispered "It's your fault. You did this to us. Why didn't you save us Harry?"

It was horrific to watch, and it had to end, now.

"Stab it again, Harry," she said urgently.

His eyes were squeezed shut, trying to block out the terrible images.

"Harry! Stab it again!" she said in a louder voice.

He lifted the sword, dislodging the tip from the metal before striking it again. To her immense relief, the mist dissipated, the horcrux screamed, and then it was over.

The locket and the cup both lay mangled on the ground.

Harry was panting from exertion as she flung her arms around him.

"We did it," he whispered into her tangled curls.

"That was horrible," she admitted, hugging him tightly.

"I know. Can't believe we've still got two more of these bloody things left."

Harry had tossed the remains of the two horcruxes onto the fire before retiring to the tent. Something inside her twinged with guilt at the sight of two beautiful pieces of Hogwarts' history, consigned to the flames, and she felt angry at Voldemort for desecrating items belonging to their school's founders.

It was still night, so they both climbed into their respective cots and attempted to sleep. The destruction of two of Voldemort's horcruxes apparently eased Harry's mind, for he slipped into a peaceful slumber with surprising ease. She, however, lay awake for a long time, guilt eating at her for using dark magic against her best friend. The first rays of morning sunlight were peeking through the dense forest when she finally drifted to sleep.

~oOo~

The last two chapters have been rather emotional and intense. I hope they've lived up to your expectations. I'd love to hear what you think about this latest turn of events.

Coming next: Harry and Hermione move closer to the next horcrux, and Hermione is reunited with Lucius.