The Battle of Hogwarts Part 5
With Goyle sufficiently contained, Hermione began the most awkward walk through Hogwarts she'd ever endured, wand in hand and Draco Malfoy by her side. The silence between them was painful, made all the more so by the sounds of battle that were far too close for comfort for Hermione. The tasks she and Harry still had to complete weighed heavily on her mind.
"The wards have fallen," Malfoy said matter-of-factly, and she stopped to stare at him.
"What?" he said when she did not say anything.
"How can you be so calm, with everything that just happened and is happening around us?"
He stared back at her for a moment before tapping his temple with his finger. "Occlumency. I suggest you use it to focus. I'm sure you know how. I doubt my father would bother fucking you if he thought your mind was an open book for the Light to read."
He studied her for a moment and then his eyes widened.
"He taught you didn't he?" he asked. When she nodded slightly, he swore under his breath.
"He… Dumbledore was a legilimens. Did you know that?" she asked quietly, noting his wince at the mention of their former headmaster.
"Yes. My father wanted me to attend Durmstrang because of him. He only agreed to my mother's request to send me here once I learned occlumency and proved my ability to occlude."
Hermione knew how painful it was when Lucius tested her occlumency shields, and she recoiled at the idea that Lucius had done that to a child, to his own son, and yet she knew that it also would have been a precautionary measure he would have taken to protect Draco's mind.
"Did he… did Dumbledore violate your mind?" she asked quietly.
"He tried. Many times. He was good. Very good. It was hard to detect unless you knew he could do it. Had he wanted, he could have forced the issue more, but I'm sure my father being who he is was at least somewhat of a deterrent to our departed headmaster. Enough about Dumbledore. What I really want to know is how my father got into your knickers. I always took you for such a prude," he said.
The sudden change of pace in the conversation and the way his voice went from casual to cold was shocking.
"I am not talking to you about that," she said stiffly, taking a step back from him and keeping her wand ready. She had no intention of getting stuck in another broom closet on this night.
"Why not? In case you haven't noticed, there's a war going on around us. We could all die tonight. Sure you don't have anything you want to confess?"
"To you? Hardly."
"Why not me? I'm here. Besides, I'm apparently the only person around who knows your twisted little secret: that you're fucking my father and not me. Speaking of which, what on earth possessed you to tell Potter that we're together?"
She stopped walking again and glared at him before sighing. "Harry's a lot smarter than you give him credit for. He knew I was communicating with someone through my bracelet, and he knew it had to be someone well-connected enough to share information with me and also someone who could afford to customise a piece like this," she said, holding up her hand.
Draco grabbed her wrist and twisted it to see the bracelet. He raised an eyebrow as he looked at it and then at her but said nothing.
"What? No scathing commentary about goblin-wrought silver being too good for a mudblood?" she asked.
He dropped her arm quickly. "You said it, so there's no point in repeating it. That's a pathetically small sapphire, compared to the jewelry he gives my mother."
She drew her arm in toward her chest, as if to protect the bracelet. "I happen to love it. It's perfect for me, and frankly, not everyone wants to be ostentatious. The whole point was for it to blend in and not raise questions. Besides, it's my birthstone."
"Whatever, Granger. So I became your supposed lover-turned-source. You couldn't come up with anyone else?"
"Harry came up with you on all his own after he saw me take a curse to protect your sorry arse," she snapped.
He looked taken aback and for a brief second, she thought perhaps he was contrite, but being Draco Malfoy, he naturally had to ruin that moment by glaring at her as they descended another flight of stairs.
"You're such a fucking noble Gryffindor, aren't you? Would it have killed you to just leave me the fuck alone that day?" he muttered.
"Yes, Merlin forbid I save your pathetic arse again and again."
They were silent for a moment as he followed her down the hall.
"Is there a reason you're still following me?" she asked.
"What kind of a secret lover would I be if I left my beloved behind in the midst of a battle?" he asked, a mockingly aghast look on his face.
She stopped again and grabbed his forearm, making him stop as well.
"What is it that you want from all of this?"
He arched an eyebrow at her, looking disturbingly like his father as he did so. "From all of what?"
She held out her arms, gesturing around them. "This! This apparent battle we're going to have here tonight. The war. Vol- the Dark Lord. All of it. And spare me the attitude, Malfoy. I'm not in the mood for it."
He paused and stared down at her, and she steadied herself for what she was certain would be a stream of hateful commentary. Instead, to her immense surprise, his shoulders sagged, and he permitted himself to look almost vulnerable.
"I want this to be over. I never wanted this, a mark on my arm, forced servitude. My father couldn't stop the Dark Lord from marking me, and I… I never wanted...I don't disagree with the basic tenets of blood supremacy. Purebloods ARE superior to muggles and mudbloods, but war and violence and death...it's all fucked up. I never wanted anyone to DIE."
Hermione stared at him, trying to wrap her head around the idea that he was perfectly fine with bigotry and prejudice, just not murder. Could he really not see how easy it was for his fellow Death Eaters to go from dehumanising muggleborns to calling for the extermination of people like her? Did he really not understand that hatred and bigotry were steps on the path to mass murder? His willful ignorance over the power of his hateful words, his unwillingness to see just how his prior words and actions perpetuated hatred and led in part to the awful situation they were all in infuriated her, and she had to resist the urge to punch him again.
"So, what? You just wanted to hate me from your lofty post of wealth and privilege?" she spat, infuriated that after she'd saved his life not once but twice, he still had the gall to think himself superior to her.
"Am I supposed to fall at your feet and be grateful because you didn't actually want to kill me with help from your fellow terrorist gang members?" she said angrily. "You just wanted me to be hated and discriminated against because heaven forbid you have to get your hands dirty or stand up for anything. God, you are everything that is wrong with the wizarding world. Go fuck yourself, Malfoy."
She turned on her heel then and stomped off on the opposite direction. She would find a different way downstairs and back to Harry.
~oOo~
There was something poetic, she thought as she stomped down the hallway, about telling her school nemesis to go fuck himself. It had felt good, really good. She admitted to herself that it was perhaps not the most practical thing she'd ever done, as he was supposed to be her secret lover/informant, but at the moment she could not begin to care. She'd put up with far too much from him over the years, and she was utterly done with his bullshit. Everyone had a limit, and she'd reached hers with Lucius's son.
She had been so wrapped up in her argument with Malfoy that she'd temporarily set aside the reality of war waging around them. Reality came crashing down when the first curse flew at her with a shout of "There's one! Get her!"
Two Death Eaters in masks and robes fired at her before ducking back behind the curve of the hallway.
Not Lucius, not Lucius, her mind supplied helpfully. She'd long-since memorised the flow of lines and swirls on his skull-like mask. It didn't matter who they were though because there were two of them firing at her, and she was a sitting duck, trapped in a wide open hallway.
She quickly cast a shield and retreated backward, needing a way to take cover. There were stone columns further back in the hallway, and if she could get back there, she would be safer. Sensing her retreat, the Death Eaters converged, and she drew them toward her, heart pounding in her ears, adrenaline rushing through her body.
You've trained for this. Everything Lucius has taught you… you know how to do this, she reminded herself.
She doubted she could truly hold her own against a Death Eater of Lucius's calibre, but these two… the curses they flung at her shield were dark, potentially lethal even, but were not cast with the same level of magical power and force as she knew her lover to possess. She stood a chance, but with two against one, it would be difficult.
Lucius's teachings whirled through her brain, drilled into her through training sessions at the townhouse and at their Scottish manor retreat.
If you cannot immediately cast a killing curse or do not wish to use an unforgivable, then your strategy must be to disarm and incapacitate your opponent as quickly as possible. Robbing your opponent of his voice will slow him down and buy you time.
A shield is strong defensive magic, but a wizard of the Dark Lord's calibre can destroy it every time. Do not rely overmuch on your shield. Use it to buy time to get your bearings or to draw your opponent to a more favourable location.
Never assume that your opponent is truly disarmed just because you've removed his wand. A number of Death Eaters are adept at wandless, non-verbal magic. Even a dying wizard can fire off a hex or a curse, so incapacitate or kill quickly.
Do not waste time on middling curses, and do not hesitate. Your opponent will not hesitate to kill you.
She dropped her shield long enough to use her wand to fling a tapestry from the wall into the two wizards, knocking them off balance and temporarily obscuring their vision. It wasn't a perfect execution as it knocked down one Death Eater completely but only partially hit the other. She then immediately cast a silencio, followed by an expelliarmus. The silencio hit its mark, but in the second it took her to cast the expelliarmus, one of the Death Eaters had recovered enough to block her attempt at disarmament.
What she thought was a bombarda was sent hurtling back at her then, crashing into the wall above her and blowing out a section of stone. Hermione jumped out of the way as quickly as possible, coughing from dust stirred by the debris. A smaller bit of stone hit her left arm, sending a shot of pain down to her fingertips.
She cast back, taking down one of the Death Eaters with a sectumsempra. He crumpled to the ground then, the black of his robes obscuring the blood she knew was now pouring from his body at a rapid pace.
Hermione realised she had a choice. The fallen Death Eater was not yet dead and could potentially still fire off a few curses at her, but his partner was alive and well and able to attack. What would be best? Should she disarm the injured Death Eater and then go after his partner, or should she hope the injured Death Eater was incapacitated enough that he couldn't cast on her? Regrettably, Lucius had been unable to provide actual dueling practise with multiple opponents for her, and the Death Eaters weren't exactly casting some of the nicer hexes and jinxes Harry and the others in Dumbledore's Army had used in their fifth and sixth years when they dueled with two or more on one.
What would Lucius do? She thought frantically, throwing up a magical shield to try to buy herself time.
The telltale green light and rushing sound of an avada kedavra flew at her, weakened - no doubt - by the Death Eater's inability to cast verbally. She barely managed to move out of its path, but it was still enough to shatter her shield. Nothing could prevent the killing curse, unless you were Harry Potter, apparently.
The sight of a killing curse, especially one aimed directly at her, jolted Hermione, and she knew what she had to do.
An avada kedavra required magical power and skill, which she had in abundance, and it required nerve. You had to truly mean it to cast an unforgivable curse. She had never cast it, never considered it. There were other ways to take someone down, other ways to eliminate an opponent.
As she stared down the Death Eater before her, Hermione knew that it was him or her. Only one of them would walk away from their fight, and hatred burned in her at the thought that this wizard meant to snuff out her life before she'd truly lived it, to take her from Lucius, from Harry before the battle was done.
Magical energy surged inside of her, roiling and churning, building until it could no longer be contained. It channeled through her and through the delicate vine wand in her hand, exploding into a burst of green light as the words slipped past her lips.
"Avada kedavra."
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as she watched the light move forward and she heard and felt the sensation of rushing, like blood pounding in her ears and the roar of water rushing over the edge of a cliff and crashing into the rocks below.
Her curse struck home, hitting the Death Eater square in the chest. He crumbled instantly, dead before he hit the ground.
She had done it. She'd cast the killing curse.
She expected to feel something, although she wasn't sure what. Instead in the immediate aftermath of the curse, she felt numb. Had the prior killing of Amycus Carrow hardened her so much already, she wondered.
She was barely aware of her own body as she cast again, using an expelliarmus to disarm both the dying and the dead wizard. With three wands in hand, she brought her shield back up and moved forward to check on the other Death Eater. By that point, the surviving wizard was panting shallowly as blood pooled around him.
She consider attempting another killing curse to put the man out of his misery, but she wasn't sure she had it in her to cast it twice in such rapid succession. She instead cast a stupefy to render him unconscious. It was a small mercy she supposed.
"Bloody fucking hell, Granger!"
She whirled on the spot, strengthening the protective shield around herself and then allowed a moment of relief when she saw it was only Draco Malfoy standing at the end of the hallway.
"What do you want, Malfoy?" she asked.
"You… you just KILLED them. Both of them?" he seemed stunned as he walked toward her.
"It was kill or be killed. Being Harry Potter's muggleborn best friend tends to be a rather large target on me, and I'd like to live," she said flatly.
She felt deeply unsettled from the use of such dark magic, and she wished suddenly that she could bury her face in Lucius's robes and feel his arms around her. She'd just killed two wizards. Yes, there had been an element of self-defense to it, but she'd dueled them to them to the death. She drew in a ragged breath and tried to take Draco's prior advice to use her occlumency skills to compartmentalise her mind and lock down her emotions so she could focus on the tasks that lie ahead.
He approached her cautiously, his own wand drawn.
"Do you… did you know them?" she asked, gesturing to the dead wizards.
An expression of relief came over his pointed face as he shook his head.
"I don't recognize the masks," he said quietly. "And I'd rather not know who is behind them."
Hermione nodded briefly and then looked down at the two additional wands in her hand. If Death Eaters had made it into the castle, she couldn't just leave wands lying around for them to pick up and use. She tossed them both onto the floor and cast a quick incendio to reduce them both to a pile of ash.
"You are really fucking scary, Granger," he said, cringing as he watched the wands burn.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Your father taught me."
He snorted. "I didn't exactly think you learned it in Gryffindor."
"Every bit of dark magic I know, I know because of Lucius."
"I don't doubt it. He certainly knows a lot of it."
"Why are you here?" she asked, still perplexed as to why he'd followed her and was standing there making conversation over the bodies of two of his fellow Death Eaters.
He sighed, and she could not tell if it was in frustration or resignation.
"I didn't...look, I never wanted this. I never wanted to be a Death Eater. I never wanted this bloody mark on my arm. I don't want to be here. I was… I was trying to be fucking honest with you, Granger."
"And you want a medal for that or something?"
"What? No! God, you are such a bitch. I'm trying here, okay?"
"Look, I don't like you, Malfoy, and you don't like me. I'm fine with that. Can we just call a truce or something until this is all over? Because I really cannot deal with you being an arse right now. Harry needs me, and I need Harry to be focused on our mission and not on some fear that his best friend's 'relationship' is imploding or that you're going to go betray me to your Death Eater mates," she said, throwing her cards out on the table. "And I need to know that you're not going to put Lucius at risk by telling anyone that he and I are together."
Draco looked taken aback by her bluntness, and then he narrowed his eyes in anger at her.
"First, they're not my 'mates,' and second, how dare you even think that I'd risk my father's life like that? The ONLY reason I am going along with this ridiculous charade of being your...whatever it is I'm supposed to be...is because the Dark Lord and His more devoted followers would not hesitate to kill my father for turning blood traitor!" he said angrily. "As it is, they'll turn on ME if they think I'm disloyal in some way."
"Fine. As long as we're on the same page."
She knew Draco hated her relationship with his father, but as long as he was willing to protect Lucius, he could hate all he wanted. The absolute last thing she wanted was for the wizard she loved to get cut down by his fellow Death Eaters. It honestly had not occurred to her until that moment that in protecting Lucius, she'd potentially put a target on his son's head.
He looked resentful, but he nodded curtly. "Fine. So are you going to tell me what the rest of your mission is, aside from apparently ending the Dark Lord?"
She stared at him for a long moment, debating just how much she could tell him if she was to have his support.
"There's...the Dark Lord did things, dark things, in an attempt to become immortal. It's why he wasn't truly vanquished when Harry was a baby," she finally said. "It's the worst sort of magic."
Draco paled at the idea that his master was immortal.
"We've been undoing that magic, over the last few months. And there's one thing left we need to do to make Him truly mortal again so that Harry can defeat Him."
"He can truly die?"
"Yes. Well, not at this exact moment, but soon."
"I'm not rushing into battle after you, you know."
"I wouldn't expect you to."
"My loyalty here only goes so far."
"Of course it does. That doesn't surprise me."
"I took a magical vow to not share information about your relationship with my father, not to act as some sort of bodyguard for you."
"I've literally saved you once already tonight. I think I'm good."
"I still hate you."
"I still hate you too."
"So we're good?"
She sighed.
"Yeah, I suppose. Let's go find Harry before someone else attacks us."
They both turned then and continued down the hall, leaving the bodies of the two Death Eaters behind.
~oOo~
Happy New Year, all! When I started writing this story just after Christmas 2017, I thought it would may be 25,000 words or so. Here we are at 100K+ with a long way to go. I'm so honoured that so many of you have chosen to come along for this wild ride. I never expected the response I've gotten to this story, and I cannot thank you enough for reading, following/favoriting, and sharing your thoughts with me.
I will be starting back in grad school in another week, and my opportunity to write will likely be very limited after that, so I appreciate your patience in advance. I hope to post another chapter next weekend.
Thank you all,
Elle