Part 2.

During the first few months of the war, Hermione felt much less stability than Harry or Ron in the war effort; as a result, she jumped roles frequently as she searched to make a place for herself. She trialled as a mediwitch, but she hadn't had the time for the training required of her to become a fully qualified Healer; she tried going on the missions with Harry and Ron, but people always used her as a correspondent to the other two, giving her orders when they wouldn't have dared approached the boys. She had found it disgustingly condescending and misogynistic, and had quickly slashed that option from the list as well. By then, she had begun feeling a little worthless, a little useless, and it had been almost pure chance that she found herself stumbling into the Logistics department.

She had been at one of the sites the Order (despite his death, many had decided to keep Dumbledore's original army alive as an honour to both the man and his beliefs) had set up as a safe point, and a blueprint had caught her eye. Hermione had pushed her way into the room, and the amount of paper that had been crammed into the tiny space amazed her. The piles were almost stacked up to the ceiling, each piece covered with either diagrams so detailed they made no sense to her, and writing miniscule enough that even squinting did not help her make much out of them.

It was here that Matthew Libon, head of Planning and Logistics, had found her digging through his notes. After the initial confrontation and hostility and he had been convinced that she wasn't a spy (he didn't get out much), his attitude became much warmer and quickly began explaining what he did. She had been ecstatic about stumbling upon them, and dumbfounded that it had not occurred to her earlier to seek it. Aside from being intellectually challenging, it was a job that had no stipulated working schedule, eating and sleeping hours were liberties, and all of the above had been exactly what Hermione was looking for. Even then her bad dreams had started accumulating to become a regular thing, and she had grasped the chance at avoiding sleep itself with both hands.

.

Tonight, a little girl lies at her feet. Hermione studies her, finding a morbid fascination she never knew she had rising within. After a while she remembers the girl. She remembers the auburn hair that glowed in the firelight, the tear tracks down her mask of soot. Most of all, Hermione remembers the clawing feeling in her throat at seeing the slack face of a ten year old who had died in the stiff arms of her Muggleborn mother. In her dream, Hermione kneels down and sits by the bodies, wondering if she was going into some sort of second-degree shock (hush).

She wishes that she knew their names. The war was destroying more than lives, wiped out more than just towns and homes. It blasted people off the fabric of history, erased their existence entirely from memory. The loss of the wealth of a human mind was staggering, immeasurable; but the fear of dying and leaving no trace behind filled Hermione not with a sense of loss, but one of terror. She learnt quickly that when bodies began piling up, the time to remember each life was proportionally slashed.

She leaned over and brushed a curl off of the girl's face, and draped her cloak over the mother and daughter. With a little thought, they could be sleeping (hush now). Hermione lingers for only a minute longer, before pushing away.

She stands slowly, only to look up to see someone staring back.

After the first few times, the sight of the shrouded figure draws from her only a brief jolt of surprise. He is not always there (Hermione was almost sure it was a man, or perhaps a tall, well built woman). She has yet to see more than just his outline, but she does not chase. In the dream construction of her memories, Hermione shies from the implications of someone she did not recognize appearing in them.

When she casts her gaze back to the girl and her mother, wanting their existence to be remembered by at least one person, Hermione turns cold. Slowly, her brain clicks over the changed scene that had rearranged itself behind her back.

The ground is the same, the blackened trees still stand, but there is no blood, and there are bodies. Bodies everywhere, some mutilated, some half buried by earth… but bodies nevertheless. Flopping like string less puppets with the teer dead in a ditch isn't that just -

Hermione knows that if she tries to walk, she will probably fall. If she falls, she will probably never get up again, and she doesn't know what that would mean for her consciousness since these were unlike any normal dreams she ever had before. She stands still instead, and does not know that the lack of physical stimulation is just the trigger that her mind needs to identify this new scene.

The site had been a hideout. It had been her shift, her responsibility to look out for any approaching danger. She remembers being tired and stressed, but worst of all she had been impatient. She wanted to return to her actual task of constructing new wards for the safe houses, not march up and down the perimeter like a dog. She remembered, in the pits of boredom, muttering a few spells that checked on the wards, forgetting that operational wards would pulse a bright light, a beacon in the night. The spell had been out before she realized her mistake, and after the great flash of light the ground gave a mighty heave. Someone had seen her stupid, stupid mistake, and had decided against taking on the wards. He would instead make the earth buckle beneath their feet and swallow them whole instead.

The sheer amount of magic required to move solid earth was so mind blowing that Hermione's caution had not overridden her scepticism. They kept tabs on every Death Eater who had a significant amount of magical power, and they had received no alerts that one may be nearby. She ran, but perhaps not as fast as she should have; she shouted, but maybe not as urgently as she could have; she began casting counter-spells, but perhaps not as quickly as she would have if she had realized how real the threat had been. People were moving, but even as they were bolting out the doors Hermione remembered watching colossal chunks of dirt rise from the ground, the resulting hole swallowing everything above it, before the hovering mass crashed clumsily back down to earth.

The attack had lasted only a few minutes. Limbs stuck out almost comically from the ground, tables and beds were half buried. Walls had collapsed, and the air was filled with moans and shrieks. There wasn't much blood, but so many people had just been completely buried under the earth, choking to death on it. It had been one of the worst days of her life, and she did not need to relive it through a dream (hush quick).

That scene is where she now stands. Hermione looks around frantically for a way to walk out without stepping on anything – anyone – but her gaze lands instead on a figure standing a few dozen meters away from her, apparently uninjured, surveying the area as she had been. She squints, trying to place a name to the face, but a bend in the wards jolts her from her sleep. She looks around wildly; the sudden intrusion of magic makes Harry sit bolt upright from where he lies on the couch, makes Ron freeze in the middle of ducking behind the bench. When it is only Arthur who pops into view, sheepish expressions sprout onto their faces. Ron straightens with a little cough, and Hermione hastily tucks her wand back into her sleeve. Harry grins as he walks over to a confused Weasley Senior.

"You three really had me worried for a second," Weasley senior joked. "The looks on your faces…"

Hermione begins to blush, but she spies the way the older man's knuckles had gone white over his wand and turns to hide a grin instead.

"Hey Dad, thought you'd forgotten about us." Ron says.

"Oh, I did," Arthur banters, "But someone reminded us a few hours ago that we needed to come collect you, or you'd come hunting us." He pauses to squint at their faces, his gaze lingering on Hermione. "Are you sure you're all ready to go? I'm sure another day or so of rest wouldn't do you any harm."

"We were just wondering when we were allowed out of here," Hermione says firmly. "We're grateful for the chance to relax, Mr. Weasley, but we really feel like we need to be getting back."

Arthur watches all of them but when they all nod, he sighs. "Alright, if you feel that you're up to it. I've been trying to hold off the press, but I won't be able to do it anymore as soon as you step out of these wards."

"We can face a few cameras and quills," Ron jokes softly.

Hermione pulls a face, not feeling as confident as him. They take a few moments to gather their cloaks before Apparating with Arthur, straight into a hall.

The ceilings are high, the walls shiny and dark, looking like polished marble. The floor spreads itself at her feet, sprawling across an area so large, so unlike their cosy safehouse that it is disconcerting. For one second there is silence, and Hermione has a smallest of moments to expel a breath. Then it's as if someone flicked a switch; light and noise explode into her face all at once, surprising her enough that she flinches and her hand darts towards her wand. After the years of needing to be cautious above anything else (constant vigilance!), she finds that that need did not disappear, or even relent enough to let her rejoice as she sees others rejoicing around her.

"Mr. Potter! How did you finally defeat He Who Must Not Be Named?"

"Ms. Granger, any words to commemorate this amazing day?"

"Mr. Weasley! Where have you all been these past three days?"

"There are still reports of Voldemort sightings coming in, what do you have to say about that?"

"Is it really over? Is the war really over? How do you feel about that?"

The words feel surreal. Hermione scratches nervously at the skin at her fingers as they are pushed along. Ron and Harry turn, as though they sense her unease. They shift their bodies slightly and effectively block her from view. They begin catching the rest of the questions that come their way, saving their own questions she sees that they have for her for later. The next reporter that shoves his question into their faces almost has his camera hexed into his. He quickly withdraws as Aurors converge on them and begin to clear a path.

Voices clamour dimly in the back of her head, and Hermione can't even pin one to one of the hundred faces pressing down around them. The faces smile, laugh, grin, shout, exult; but for some reason it all bubbles down to a blurred murmur in her ears, a brook of voices that seem distinct on first impression but cannot be siphoned and sorted from one another upon closer inspection. Hermione shakes her head. Pull together simple just breathe -

"…mione," a quiet voice murmurs into her ear.

She turns her head, a miniscule movement, and brushes against the skin of Harry's jaw.

His eyes worry at her. "I think you should go back home after this, you look faint. There's only…" His voice fades away, dips back into the stream.

Hermione shakes her head as though trying to shake sleep from her eyes. "Okay Harry, just lead the way."

She doesn't notice how thin her voice sounds, misses the look the boys exchange over her head. There is a tightening of hands on her elbows, but she disregards that too, and the attempt that it was to ground her.

She is so tired.

.

Matthew Libon taught her a lot of things. She had a little experience with plotting and planning, not including their little stints in Hogwarts, but the intricateness of the professional work stunned her. He was twice her age, and had dedicated his life to his work. For the first week, Hermione sat on the sides, while Libon managed to simultaneously work and explain each step of his actions to her as he completed them. It did not take any spectacular feats for her to become privy to all his information. Rather, as soon as he was sure of her identity was (more precisely, once he knew she had an iron clad alibi against any suspicions he may have about her), and perhaps more importantly her intelligence, there was no question she could not ask, or any sheet of paper hidden from her eyes. Hermione found that not all the members on the team allowed her such freedom among their belongings, but Libon was surprisingly easy to get along with.

For the first week, to the amusement of a few of her friends, she spent very little time talking and most of it immersed in listening. She slept rarely, only a few hours at her time, and even then her mind buzzed with the information she had learnt the previous day. Libon had only one rule: Hermione could write nothing he told her down. Forfeiting notes for his wealth of knowledge was quite a price to pay, even though she was quite confident in her retention skills. She spent every crumb of attention in soaking it all up: intel, site maps, weather patterns, tracking devices and spells, stealth charms… she even began developing Libon's characteristic trait of researching even the most ambiguous details of a site, such as the local culture and history, and harvesting any news clippings concerning the business published within the last five decades.

It took Hermione a characteristically short time to become an intern of sorts to Libon. By then she was in so deep that aside from the Logistics crew, she saw very little of anyone else until it came to briefing the attack teams. The planning of raids was an activity undertaken by almost all field agents, but the bigger, more delicate jobs were handled almost exclusively by them. She did not know all of them by name, as very few took the time to talk to her, but she knew the name of three others that worked at Libon's level: William Tully, Eliza Furth, and Kyle Bettin. Instead of being assigned Heads of various tasks, they were all instead assigned entire plans, and each applied their own brand of planning to each mission. Their little department worked in an intricate way, and spiralled out like a spider web. Almost always these four were the only people in the entire Order who knew the whole plan that would be carried out, and the field agents would have their respective slices of information that was relative to their job. Libon still refused to let her take notes, the result of which had honed Hermione's memory skills to an almost disturbing degree of accuracy.

.

It is the second night they have spent away from the safehouse that Hermione finally comes face to face with the nameless figure of her dreams.

In the previous nights, Hermione dreams constantly. Despite the return to her routine, despite the work she slaves over in an effort to ensure that she is too tired to dream, she does not escape the reel of memories her subconscious plays back to her every night in the few hours it has; sometimes even minutes. She shies away from the Dreamless, because she knows that there is a very real risk that she would become addicted to the potion (the Muggle term for it would be drug).

There is no white lining along the edges of her vision, no haze or blur; nothing that physically marks her dreams separate from reality. She realizes that it is this missing distinction that traps her within these subconscious plays, that blurs the line between sleep and flashbacks. She would lean her head on her arms for just a moment, and wake up an hour later with paper clinging to the side of her face. When she asks, her colleagues tell her they disapprove of her exhausting hours, and flat out refuse her request to wake her when they next find her sleeping amongst her papers.

When she does not relent, it is Tully who finally takes her aside, and tells her to forget it.

"Short from physically dragging you and locking you in your room, or spiking your drink, we cannot make you rest," he says seriously. "So when your body is so tired you fall asleep in the middle of a blink, I think you should be taking that as a very big slap in the face. You need to rest more, Hermione."

I don't like what I see in my dreams, she cries silently. Don't make me face them.

On the third night back, Hermione opens her eyes to find herself in a field. The dry grass reaches her waist and rustles hoarsely as she passes by (walk quiet gentle). She can't help but hold her breath, clench her fists, because every night she expects the dreams to take a turn for the worse, float a scene she fought to have buried to the top of her mind once more. Today, she is clean, she is alone, but she is holding two wands. One is hers, she doesn't recognize the other.

The solitude slowly adds to her fear. She looks around, and her eyes comb for familiar territory. Something niggles in the back of her mind, something missing. Her mind shuffles for things to place in the landscape: a tree gone, a charred body misplaced. This goes on, a dizzying, nauseating repetition, and it isn't until a figure appears at the edge of her vision that Hermione understands what is wrong. Her memory is lacking. Someone had been there that day. She hadn't been alone.

When she looks back, her path is marked by the bent stalks like a snake trail. The person stands where her path begun, as though he had Apparated to the exact spot she had started walking. This time the dream is day enough and he is close enough that she can not only see his face, but she is also able to recognize it. Hermione stumbles backwards, shocked and a little fearful.

"Malfoy?"

For a moment, he is perfectly still, so still that he gives Hermione the impression that she is speaking to herself. Surely it is him. He had changed, of course he had, but his face still remains recognizable, and of course there was the hair. Always the hair.

His Stupefy shoots towards her so fast she hurts herself trying to fling her body out of the way. The searing red burns with it her fear, the crackle of burning shrub igniting outrage in its place. Hermione draws her wand and Malfoy spits hexes at her so fast three bounce off of her shields before she has turned enough to aim properly.

What is his problem?

The magic behaves enough like magic would in reality, did not distort as she thought it should in a dreamscape. Dreams.

Hermione had told herself during the war that she would – could – stop doing what every day expected of her to do after they had won (for it had always been after, and not if), and only then. The shattering moment of seeing Harry alone on the hill was exactly what Hermione had thought she needed as closure, as a sure sign that she could stop living a nightmare. The innocent, childish thoughts of it will end happily ever after had, even if she loathed to admit it, helped her get by. However, it was evident now that her nightmare had merely moved from her waking moments to her sleeping ones.

She is abruptly seized by a blind rage. I have played my part. Did I do something wrong? Why is this haunting me? Enough enough I've had enough enough just -

It adds to the adrenalin, helps her move faster and sharpens her sight. Her duel with Malfoy quickly begins favouring her side, and he is backed up against a large bale of hay she might've sworn wasn't there a moment before. Burnt grass smokes around them.

The duel ends in a strange way: a stray spark buries itself into the skin of Malfoy's wrist, and he drops his wand with a yelp. Hermione lunges forwards and turns his head up as she presses her wand sharply into his throat.

A dozen questions run through her mind. Are you real? What are you doing here? Can you actually hurt me?

The questions peter down to a quiet hum of thought. You can't be my subconscious, the last time I thought about you was when Juliet's son threw a tantrum and broke her Ming vase. Years ago. It's not feasible that dreams from my immediate past have you in them.

"What are you?" That sounds accurate, succinct.

"Haaaa."

The rasp scares her for a moment before Hermione realizes that she is pressing down too hard on his windpipe. She relieves the pressure, but only a little. She is daunted by his physical strength, but there is very little difference in their levels of magic. She knows that Malfoy is not stupid enough to risk her casting anything this close to his throat.

He coughs once, before staring at her cheek with a defiant expression. "I'm human."

Hermione leans on her arm again, and a gurgle rises from him. "Try again."

Malfoy struggles against her, and snarls when three sparks shoot into his face. "You're a fucking psycho Granger, do you know that?"

"Try. Again." (hush)

"What do you want me to say?" She feels his magic pulsing against hers, struggling, but for the moment, trapped. "My name's Draco Malfoy, I'm twenty three. I attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry before the Dark Lord descended once more over Britain and everything went to hell. Life has become slightly more interesting for me than others, though despite my doubts, I've clearly clung on to sanity better than most."

She measures the time by heartbeats. After five, she is almost sure that he will not attack her again, without reason. After ten, she allows herself to tear her eyes away and glance at his fallen wand. It was not twitching towards him, he did not show any indication that he was about to summon it and return to their duel. However, it was only after twenty (she lost count) that she relaxed, leaning away but also taking his wand with her. She drew a shaky breath, before glaring at him.

"What are you doing here?" (Don't belong here you)

"I should be the one asking you that," he snaps back, his calm quickly dropping away.

Hermione curls her tongue back over the curse that leapt up her throat. "Do not mess with me," she snarls, "or I will destroy you. Merlin knows that I've done worse."

He raises an eyebrow at that, but does not disregard her threat. When he next speaks his voice is cautious, with a fine tremble that she is surprised that she can hear. She does not know him well enough to label it correctly as either fear or anger. "What exactly to you want me to say? I'm as surprised as you are that you're here."

There is truth in his words, but there is also something about his phrasing that makes her pause. Reason crawls its slow way back to her; it takes Hermione longer than she would have been proud of to riddle it out. A simple question, that does not give too much away, will confirm it all.

"What do you mean?"

He seems to be trying to assess her. His gaze piercing, but shuttered enough that she can't read him. He doesn't answer her.

She tries again. "Are you conscious?"

After the longest while Malfoy tilts his head to the side; a simple confirmation. She lets go of him and steps away so quickly that he seems surprised. He raises a hand – slim, but rough – to touch the hollow of his throat. Hermione ignores him. Her head is spinning. This isn't right isn't right -

She paces, one hand knotting itself into her hair as the other grips her wand tighter. Her head swirls as her steps quicken, and Hermione decides that this isn't the plane of existence that she wants to begin thinking about this. One last glance tells her that Malfoy is silently questioning her sanity (aren't we all hah I am hah) as she strides quickly away from him and towards nothing else. However, as she walks farther, Hermione feels herself being pulled from the dreamscape, like taffy.

She wakes with a loud breath to the four walls of her bedroom. Hermione utters a wandless spell, and her wards glow a sunny yellow. Only then does she allow herself to draw the covers over her head, leaving a small space for air, preparing herself to think.

Within the past three years, Draco Malfoy had become one of the hardest Death Eaters they had ever had to track. His obscurity prickled the attention of a number of people, and even Hermione had been assigned at one point to try and pin him down. After Voldemort's initial upsurge, Malfoy Manor had been one of the many pureblood estates that had become quickly inaccessible to the Light, but the massive plot of land that it sat on marked it out from the rest. The Malfoys themselves quickly disappeared from the public eye as well, though Lucius, and even Narcissa, appeared quite commonly to those eyes that picked him out from behind his Death Eater masks.

There had never been any primary evidence as to what Draco had become after following in his father's footsteps. Speculation, rumours, rumoured sightings, sometimes even actual sightings, but none informative enough to confirm anything else other than the blindingly obvious: he had become a Death Eater. He was very, very rarely seen at raids, and his magical signature appeared even less frequently than Voldemort's at the utterly destroyed locations they had arrived too late to stop. There had just simply been no way to track him.

Hermione thought that secrecy surrounding Malfoy placed him on a pedestal higher than any Death Eater deserved, even became a topic for small talk. His name became discussed in the same breath as the Lestranges, the ones who had set fire to Diagon Alley, and Dolohov, who had managed to plant a spell in Gringotts that rotted the brains of almost half the goblins on duty that day. Of the rumours that managed to not only last past a week but also constantly mutate to stay interesting, Malfoy And What He Had Been Up To had always been on the list.

So what did that leave her? Besides with a man that had evaded their best wizards for half a decade, a man she had not seen since he was seventeen, a man so (apparently) dangerous that she had seen a look of relief on Aurors' faces when they came back from a search for him empty handed. This is the man she is sharing her subconscious with, a time when she is at her most vulnerable and completely defenceless.

Hermione takes a deep breath, and finds that she lacks the strength to pull herself out of bed.