Hey people! Back again because we FINALLY have internet (yay!). It's a long chapter for all those lovely people who reviewed and as bribery for all those who didn't (you know who you are). It's nearly finished…I'm trying to come up with a satisfactory ending but am not having much luck at the moment. Anyway. Hope you like. Enjoy, Istalindar
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Six years on and the war still raged. The Muggle World had retreated into a war-locked state: they weren't at war but it felt as thought they were. It was dangerous to go out at night, and even during the day, a perfectly normal street could suddenly erupt in flashes of coloured light, screaming and explosions. The Wizarding government struggled to keep the war under wraps but it was slipping through their fingers, slowly but inevitably.
Draco Malfoy, Voldemort's Right Hand, had made a name for himself. His father was dead, no one knew about Narcissa. He was known as a fearsome Deatheater, cold, emotionless, distant. He couldn't be caught, half the time he wasn't even seen. He was second only to Voldemort on the Ministry's most wanted list.
Sometimes, privately, Hermione considered the concept that the cold, sneering face that glared from Wanted posters was not the man they all sought. Sometimes she wondered if there was someone he loved, hidden far away from the war. Or she wondered if behind the indifferent mask there was grief, for a friend who been sacrificed to the struggle between good and evil.
She never spoke these thoughts out loud. Harry and Ron had always hated him from the very beginning, though try as she might she couldn't work out why. The one time she had asked, they had told her some confusing half-truth about being told that Malfoy was trouble with a capital T and that he would bring nothing but destruction and death to them. Hermione was sceptical. How on earth could they know that at eleven?
But it was just another thing on the list of things she couldn't say. Because no one would listen, because they were so locked up in the black and white of good and evil they'd forgotten that bad men loved and good men hated.
In truth, it comforted her to think that there was love in Malfoy's heart for someone. Even if it was just a son's love for his mother. Because the idea that Malfoy was without love, utterly and completely, was both terrifying and horrific. A man without love had nothing to live for, and men without a purpose were those that were most dangerous.
"Hermione! You ready?" Ron appeared at her side and she nodded, reasserting her grip on her wand. They were about to go on another street raid, where they were bound to meet and fight Deatheaters, maybe even the infamous Draco Malfoy.
Hermione hoped not. Draco scared her, there was something in his grey eyes that she couldn't identify, and his skill as a murderer was considerable. She hadn't seen him in over a year though; there were rumours he'd gone underground. No one knew why.
"Hermione!" Ron snapped, a little annoyed. "Stay with us, or stay here."
"I'm with you." Hermione retorted, and resolutely pushed thoughts of the enemy to the back of her mind, focusing on the task at hand. They thought they'd found a Deatheater safehouse, and had every intention of massacring each and every one, unless they found one, like Malfoy, who might have information.
At school, Hermione had never imagined herself a murderer. But no matter what she fought for, that's what she was.
"Good luck people."
That was Harry, their fearless leader and her best friend alongside Ron. He winked at her, and then they began the apparation pattern, three at a time to strategic positions around the house. She was in the penultimate three, and appeared silently, the pop of apparation masked by a silencing spell. She could see the others, all placed carefully. Harry had developed into a brilliant tactician, bested only by Cho Chang, who had one of the shrewdest minds for attack tactics that Hermione had ever seen. The Ravenclaw had lost a lot to this war, lover and baby daughter, and had turned her impressive mind to destroying the people that destroyed her life. Her single-mindedness made her brilliant. Her loss had made her dead at heart.
Then there was the sign, the soft owl call, and the battle began. Hermione wasn't a part of the first attack party. She led the groups positioned to apprehend the escape of the Deatheaters. They'd placed subtle anti-apparition wards around the house, so hopefully it would stop the Deatheaters getting away.
The night exploded into light and noise, and Hermione waited patiently with her team, blood pumping adrenaline around her system, every sense on high alert. Which is how she had the split second warning about the rear attack.
"Down!" She shouted, barely audible over the battle in front of her. She dropped into a crouch, already firing spells at the Deatheaters behind her. They were trapped, and she saw that Carey hadn't been fast enough, the ex-Ravenclaw lay dead on the grass.
"Break!" Came a shout from somewhere, and the Deatheaters scattered. But Hermione knew that voice.
"Michaels, Millan, with me!" She yelled, running after the Deatheaters into the forest. She could see them ahead, and she dropped several with well-aimed hexes. Finally she was face to face with one, and he spun to face her, eyes blazing from behind the silver death's-head mask. The flare of a hex illuminated them for a brief second, and they both froze.
Hermione was facing Draco Malfoy.
And Draco Malfoy was facing the Woman from The Tower.
"My Lord!"
"Hermione!"
Two shouts from the side, two flashes of light, and an explosion that flared, brightened, and became very hot very quickly. And when the light and smoke faded, both were gone.
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Draco had known the moment he'd seen the twin flashes of light that the spells, each aimed diagonally, would meet, combine, and explode. And he'd also known that this woman, the Woman from The Tower, was not going to burn in an explosion. Not while he had it in his power to save her. So he'd stepped forward, pinned her wand hand and brought her close to his body, all in a split second, and apparated away before the explosion set them both alight.
Unfortunately, his apparation had been careless, and he hadn't taken the time to think properly. All he'd been able to think of was protecting her, of not letting her die again, not letting her suffer again. Of not leaving her to lie in suspended animation with tearstreaks on her cheeks and a necklace dangling from her fingers like a pendulum, ticking away time.
And so, while he had managed to not splinch himself, or her, he had managed to apparate them into The Tower. Only The Tower was on it's side, beside the ruin that was Hogwarts, intact only by virtue of the spells that had warded and protected the room. The suspended animation was gone though, his ability to move confirmed that.
"What the fuck!" Hermione ripped herself from his grasp and spun, wand raised. "What the hell did you do?"
"Saved your life." Draco said mildly, removing the hood and mask and dropping them indifferently to the floor. The revelation that the Woman was actually Hermione Granger had rattled him, but he was determined not to show it. "Although we now have the problem of getting out."
"You apparated us into somewhere we couldn't get out of? That was clever." She sneered.
"At least I did something." He returned calmly. He looked around for the door, then looked up.
Well, that was typical. The door was directly above them, on the ceiling. There was no way in hell they'd be getting out of here, not without helping each other, anyway.
"And why did you do that?" She asked coldly. "Why didn't you kill me the moment you saw me?"
"I noticed you didn't either." He replied. "Nor am I dead now, while my back is turned to you and your wand is still raised."
"I only kill to people's faces." Hermione managed, her voice slightly strangled. Draco turned slowly, those unnerving grey eyes searching her face.
"After all this time," He said softly, "And you still find it difficult to kill." He smiled. "How like you." She didn't reply, staring stonily at him. He faced her fully, and held out his hands. "Well, here I am. Facing you." Hermione met his gaze and held it, and Draco was struck by the strength he saw there. Strength to do what was right, no matter what the cost. But on her terms.
Killing, but only face to face.
"We're in a tower." Hermione said flatly. "A round one, with the door on the ceiling. I can't move it on my own. So killing you would have no purpose."
"Ah." He nodded sagely and dropped his hands. "And when we escape this tower? What then? First to draw?"
"That's how it is." She said flatly, her voice belying the uncertainty that flared for a mere second in her eyes.
"Because it was made this way. For us." Draco replied mysteriously, and she glared but did not allow herself to ask what he meant.
"Whatever, Malfoy. Let's just get the hell out of here." She said darkly.
"As the lady commands." He said mockingly, and she resigned herself to ignoring him.
Hours later, and they had had no luck whatsoever. They'd tried magic, but it had failed. The wards on the room were such that the spells just bounced of the sides, ricocheting around the tower forcing the two to duck and jump about until the spell subsided.
They tried that once.
Several failed attempts proved that the tower would not be moved by trying to roll it either, they merely made fools of themselves running at the sides like a gerbil on a wheel.
After that, Draco sat down to collect his thoughts, but she was distracting him. She was pacing, face set in thought, occasionally muttering to herself. She was the splitting image of the Woman in the Tower, but instead of tear-streaked, she was beautifully dishevelled, a pink flush high on her cheeks, and could as easily have come from bed as from a battle. More easily, even.
She caught him watching her and glared.
"What?" She snapped. He shook his head.
"Nothing."
"You were staring." She accused.
"Yeah, I was." He nodded.
"Why?" He shrugged.
"Because you're pacing the room like a caged tiger and as the only moving object in the room you draw my attention." The answer seemed to unsettle her because she frowned, then turned away and continued pacing, stepping over the mask and hood for what seemed like the millionth time. Draco was personally surprised she hadn't spitefully stepped on both, grinding them both into the wall-floor of the tower.
Suddenly, she stopped pacing and dropped to the floor opposite him, leaning back against the slope of the wall with a sigh, staring up at the door that mocked them with its closeness.
"Nothing?" He said wryly. She shook her head, but didn't look at him. "Nor me."
"Why did you do it?" She asked, sitting up and meeting his gaze. "And don't answer with a question, just…just answer. You should have left me to die." He nodded.
"You're right, I should have. And everything I have ever been taught, save for one conversation and one experience, screamed for your death. But, lucky for you, that conversation and that experience were enough to save your life."
"Is that meant to generate a thank you?" She asked, one eyebrow arched. He smirked.
"No."
"Good. Answer the question." Draco stared at her for a moment, trying to decide what to tell her, how much to tell her. Did he tell her about the woman who had slept in this tower in suspended animation? The woman that had loved him and he had loved back so much he died so she, in turn, died so he could live? Did he explain his confirmed theories that the woman had been her, from an alternate future, and the black-haired man had been Harry, and the red head who had explained it all had been Ron? His friends in an alternate future?
Or did he just say she reminded of someone he had once loved? Accurate, yet as far from the truth as he could get?
"You remind me of someone I loved. You look very like her." Hermione's eyes grew wide, and he could practically hear the cogs in her head turning. Then, to his surprise, she smiled.
"I'm glad." She whispered.
"What?" He asked, confused.
"I'm glad. That you have loved. I was afraid you hadn't."
"What- why?" He demanded, utterly bewildered by her explanation.
"Sometimes…I used to wonder. You've got this reputation as someone cold, emotionless. Someone who doesn't feel for anyone. It makes you a very capable killer." She nodded slightly. "But I always…well, I thought it was sad, for you, if you never loved. Even just the love of a friend. Not pity-" She said hurriedly, watching the expression on his face. "Just…I don't know. Not pity. I just always hoped, for you, that there was someone who you loved. Just to keep you human."
"Stop me being the next Voldemort?" Draco said wryly. She shrugged with a little nod.
"I guess." She shook her head. "It's stupid, I shouldn't even care, Harry and Ron would go mad if they found out. I'm not meant to care, not meant to think of you or any of the Deatheaters as anything other than evil to be destroyed."
"We are evil." Draco said, satisfaction in his voice. She rolled her eyes.
"Evil men still love." She said quietly. She shook her head and fell silent.
During his school career, cut short as it was, Draco had never made the slightest effort to get to know 'Mudblood Granger'. She'd been filth, dirt beneath his shoe, the thorn in his side. All he knew about her was that she was clever, and that she hung out with Potter, that she was Gryffindor and cleaned up well.
That was, essentially, it.
He had never imagined, back then, that he could fall in love with such a woman. And chances were, he couldn't. This woman, the one sitting awkwardly in front of him twirling her wand thoughtfully between her fingers, was a different story. He could imagine loving her easily.
Which was both surreal and disturbing.
The fact that she looked bed-tumbled, as flushed and dishevelled as though someone had just ravished her mere seconds before she'd thrown on clothes did not help. She'd been attractive at school, but then Malfoy had thought of nothing but the other girls. And then there had been the Woman. And suddenly, he found Mudblood Granger and the Woman had meshed into one; beautiful and strong and determined.
And, in the alternate universe, willing to sacrifice herself to change the future so he might live. That kind of devotion, that strength of love that fuelled the will and brains of a woman who might have any man she desired, especially when she looked like this…it was something Draco had never even considered wanting.
He found himself wanting now.
"You're staring again." Hermione said, breaking into his thoughts. He shook his head to clear it. "What was her name? The one I remind you of?" He stared at her, unable to answer, and she took his silence for a rebuttal and looked back down at her hands and the twirling wand. "Sorry."
"What do you know about time travel?" He asked. Her head jerked up and she frowned.
"I know it won't get it out of this mess." She said with a small laugh.
"No, seriously." He insisted. "Time travel. What do you know?"
"Some." She shrugged. "It's dangerous, and the mechanisms are complicated. It's how I managed third year." She said with a slight smirk. His eyes widened.
"What?"
"I took lots of classes third year. Some of them were at the same time. I had to be simultaneously at two places at once. So I used a Time Turner. Only for the year though, it was exhausting. Why do you ask?"
"Would it be possible," He began warily, trying to phrase it carefully so she wouldn't get suspicious and dismiss him. "For someone from the future to go back and change the past in order to prevent something happening?"
"Definitely." Hermione hesitated for a moment, then grinned. "I did that too."
"Excuse me?" Draco asked, his eyes widened. Surely she couldn't know?
"Third year. Remember the hippogriff that scratched your arm?"
"He gouged me." Draco corrected darkly. She rolled her eyes.
"Remember how he was sentenced for death, but then he got away?"
"Yes. And Black escaped."
"We did that. We went back in time about two hours, saved Buckbeak, saved Sirius, stopped Harry getting Kissed to death by Dementors. Happy ending."
"Seriously?" He demanded, and her lips twitched as she nodded. "So it's possible."
"What's the scenario, and I'll tell you how likely it is." She said. "Or, at least, I'll try."
"Seventh year student dies, so another seventh year goes back to first year to prevent certain occurrences that lead, in the long run, to the first student's death."
"That's simple enough." Hermione said with a shrug. "Changing past events to affect the future is all too easily done. But the person who had gone back would be trapped until the equivalent moment of when they'd gone back. So if they left Christmas 2007 to go back to Christmas 2000 and change events, they'd have to wait around until Christmas 2007 again."
"And then what?" Draco asked. Hermione shrugged.
"As far as I understand it, they cease to exist. Their younger double carries on, and the older just…ends. Vanishes."
"There one second, gone the next." Draco said quietly, remembering how the red-headed man, who he was almost certain had been an older Ron Weasley, had simply vanished without a trace.
"Why do you ask?" Hermione asked, curiosity piqued.
"No reason. I was curious. I always wondered how the hell you got to so many classes in third year." Draco said, losing his nerve suddenly. Hermione gave him a shrewd look but didn't press the issue. She glanced at her watch.
"They're going to think we're prisoners." She said into the quiet. "Yours and mine."
"You're a prisoner." He corrected. "Mine will think I'm dead. I don't get caught."
"No. Except when you lock yourself in towers." She said with a slight smirk. He glared back, but it had lost a lot of its fire.
"What about you?" He asked. "You should have killed me in the forest. Instead you stood and stared at me." Her lips quirked into a smile.
"It was a diversionary tactic." She said mockingly.
"A poor one, at that." He commented, both on her excuse and her use of staring as a tactic. "Answer." She sighed, looking away.
"I find it…hard." She admitted finally, looking up. "I've been fighting this war in one form or another since I was eleven. But before I never had to kill, never had to extinguish a life. And while Harry sometimes says my most remarkable trait is my strength to do what is right, no matter what…I just find it so hard. Especially if I knew them. I spoke with you, shouted at you, slapped you, hated you…" Her voice quieted and she looked down. "I hated you so much." She whispered, her hand clenching around her wand so tightly he thought she was going to break it. "But that level of involvement, that much emotion tied into to you…you're not some evil nameless shadow. You're Draco Malfoy, who lived to make my life hell as children and then grew up to become the one man we've all sworn to kill."
"But you didn't kill me."
"Nameless shadows, black cloaks and silver masks…they're nothing. Puppets. As long as I don't meet their eyes I can say the words. I could have killed you, but I looked up, and I saw your eyes. And I knew instantly who you were, and then I hesitated."
"That will get you killed." He said quietly.
"I'd prefer that." She answered honestly. "I'd prefer to die because I'd hesitated to murder someone than to live because killing meant nothing to me."
"Then Potter was right about you." Draco said simply. "Your greatest trait is your strength. To stand and die rather than kill someone in cold blood."
"This coming from a Deatheater."
"Evil men can still love, and Good men can still hate." Draco echoed her words.
"I knew that would come back and bite me some day." She said bitterly.
"Don't." He said sharply, and she frowned, looking at him in confusion. "Don't belittle yourself." He elaborated. "You…God, Hermione, in all this war, you still find it hard to kill. You would prefer to die, hesitating to kill, than live having killed hundreds. And you, one woman in a crowd of hundreds, remember that humans are not black and white, evil and good. Don't belittle yourself. Ever." There was a pause, where she stared at him with wide eyes. Several times she opened her mouth as though she was going to say something, then shut it again. Finally, she spoke.
"You called me Hermione."
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Hours passed, and they considered and discarded hundreds of ideas, discussed and discarded a hundred more. They had formed an unlikely partnership, trying to get themselves out of the tower. It was ironic, all those times Draco had wished to be in the tower, with her, that now, when he finally got his wish, he wanted to be out of the tower.
Well, he did and he didn't.
He certainly couldn't stay here forever. But the moment they left the tower, gone would be the camaraderie, the banter, and the unanswered questions that burned in both their minds to which they would not give voice.
He wanted to leave, but in leaving he would lose her. The woman who, in another life, had loved him so much that she had sacrificed everything to keep him alive. The woman who mourned his death even as she ensured his life. The woman who had loved him.
The woman he had, once upon a time, gone willingly to his death for.
She couldn't know how he felt, didn't understand the burning emotion in his eyes the split second before he realised she was looking. But in explaining, he could lose her entirely.
"Why do you look at me like that?" She turned from yet another fruitless attempt to escape and put her hands on his hips. He raised an eyebrow.
"Like what?"
"Like…like I'm a puzzle. A puzzle you're willing to expend energy into solving. Like I have an answer to a question that you're dying to ask but won't. Like you're torn between telling me a secret that would potentially kill us both for the telling and the knowing but it's still destroying you inside. Like locking yourself in here with me was possibly the best thing you've ever done with your life but you have to work out what to do about it before we think of a way to escape and our time runs out. Why are you looking at me like that?"
Draco stared at her in shock. And then, to her surprise, he started laughing.
"I'd forgotten," He said as his laughter died away, "How painfully astute you could be." Hermione stared, then dropped to the floor suddenly, as though her legs suddenly wouldn't hold her. "Why am I looking at you like that? Because you have answers I need. Because if I explain to you why you'll either kill me or laugh in my face, but if I don't explain you won't even have a chance of understanding. Because I locked us in here on purpose, though not consciously." He moved and crouched in front of her. She resolutely looked down, but he put one finger under her chin and tipped her head up so her gaze met his. "I will tell you. But only if you want to know."
"I'm not sure I want to know." Hermione whispered, brown eyes locked with his grey. "Though I will ask why you picked this tower, of all places."
"It was a safe place for me, at Hogwarts. As a tower, it was warded. You could enter only as far as the door swung, and then it was blocked off. Inside there were two people, in suspended animation. I used to come here to think, or to try and work out an idea. I felt safe up here, no one knew where I was and no one could find me. When I realised the spells would combine and explode, I grabbed you and went somewhere safe. This is what my mind picked."
"Your safe spot in the castle." Hermione nodded, understanding. "That makes sense. And also helps, quite a bit." He frowned, confused, and she rose, stepping around him and looking thoughtfully up at the door above them. "You said this room was warded." He nodded. "And in suspended animation?"
"I assumed so. The people there…I don't know how long they'd been there but they never moved-"
"Were they dead?" She asked bluntly. He shook his head.
"I can't be sure. But I don't think so." She nodded.
"Then we're inside the warded room. Obviously not in suspended animation, although technically we could just be moving so slowly that anyone outside would think we were completely still."
"Movement would have made the necklace swing." Draco shook his head. "And it never moved at all."
"Necklace?"
"There was a necklace hanging from her fingers." Draco said shortly. She nodded.
"So lets assume there is no suspended animation for now. However…" She turned and faced him. "Where are they?"
"Vanished."
"Where?"
"Their time had come." He said flatly. And watched, slightly bemused, as awareness dawned on her face and her eyes widened. She resisted the urge to ask, and nodded sharply, before turning back to the challenge at hand.
"Maybe…" She began, but subsided, thinking hard.
"What?" Draco moved to stand beside her, staring up at the door.
"Nothing, actually. Well, nothing helpful. I was going to say what if she locked herself in, using the necklace as a key-charm. But that's useless as we don't have the necklace so…what?" Draco was tugging at his collar, and suddenly he was pulling at something and then lying in his hand was a silver snake studded with green gems. "You stole her necklace?" Hermione demanded, aghast.
"No! I couldn't get in, remember?" Draco snapped back, annoyed that she'd thought he'd steal the necklace. "This was a gift from my father, when I turned eighteen. It's the same necklace."
"But how?"
"Different futures." He said shortly, well aware that any second now her genius mind would make the connection and she'd know half the story.
"But same necklace." A split second. "But that means-"
"I gave the woman the necklace in the other future. Yes, I know. Please, let's move on." He said tiredly.
"She made a great sacrifice for you." Hermione said quietly, taking the necklace from him with a care that bordered on reverence.
"I know." He whispered. She glanced at him, and for a brief second she caught his eyes, and she looked away hurriedly. What she saw there…pain, regret, sorrow, longing…
"I think I can do this." Hermione said, looking around the tower once more, then back up to the door. "If this works the way I'm hoping, if I can get up there and use the necklace to break the wards, we should be able to use magic to roll the tower enough to reach the door and get out."
"And how were you planning on getting up there?"
"Give a girl a leg up?" She asked, fluttering her eyelashes. It broke the sombre mood and he nodded with a smirk, forming a stirrup. She put her foot in it, her hands on his shoulders. "Do not drop me." She warned him. Their faces were very close.
"Hope you aren't heavy." He said with a grin. "On three. Three!" He hoisted her up and she shrieked a little but reached up anyway.
"I need to be higher." She said. "By about a foot."
"You need to be taller by about a foot." He muttered darkly.
"Come on, Malfoy!" She insisted, and he precariously lifted her up higher. She was heavy, but not exceedingly so. She stretched up, higher, higher, and then her hand passed through the wards by the door and the snake pendant touched the door for a brief second. There was a surge of magic and she wavered, and suddenly she was falling with a shriek.
"Gotcha!" Strong arms cradled her inches from the ground, and again, their faces were uncomfortably close. "You alright?" He asked, something almost like concern in his voice. She nodded slowly.
"Fine. The wards are down." He nodded, setting her down and releasing her.
"I assumed that's what the surge was. Shall we have a go and moving this thing?"
"Only one of us." Hermione said cautiously. "Just in case it bounces." Draco nodded, aimed his wand at the wall, and concentrated. The tower rocked, and Hermione climbed shakily to her feet. "It worked." He nodded. "Shall we?" He glanced at her, then away.
"Lets." He said coolly, already some of the Deatheater persona resurfacing. Hermione sighed, and the pair of them set to work.
They nearly went too far, and it was only by cautious use of a freezing spell that they stopped it. They scrambled up the wall and out of the door, dropping gratefully into the muddy ground outside. Draco looked at her.
"Goodbye." He said. And disappeared.
"Wait!" She exclaimed, too late. The snake pendant was still glittering in her left hand, and with a sigh she pocketed it. Then she, too, apparated home.
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