I do not own Harry Potter!

Not entirely sure about this chapter, but I kinda like how vulnerable we see Draco!

Chapter IV: Master of the Elder Wand

The golden trio looked between one another.

"Someone has to go talk to him." Hermione whispered, breaking the tense silence. Ron looked positively horrified at the idea of talking to Malfoy about something so personal.

"Rock, paper, scissors?" Harry suggested and they all nodded. "One, two, three."

Immediately Hermione went for the rock as both the two boys went smartly for the paper. Hermione groaned as the other boys grinned to themselves.

"Okay, off you go Hermione." Ron grinned and leant back in his chair, finishing off his juice.

"What am I supposed to say?" She whispered.

"I have no idea, but you're the motherly one." Harry shrugged as Hermione raised an eyebrow.

"Motherly one?"

"Yeah you know, mother instincts."

"You expect me to mother Malfoy?" Hermione pulled a face.

"Not mother him, just talk to him." Harry rubbed his neck gingerly. Hermione let out a frustrated sigh and walked out the kitchen.

She felt fear creep into her chest. What if he didn't want to speak? What if he lashed out and completely lost it? Worse, what if he point blank rejected her comfort? Hermione took a deep breath and ascended the stairs, her eyes fixed on the next one and the next one until finally she was short of stairs and stood on the small landing.

Hermione reached out and knocked timidly on Draco's door. There was no answer.

"Malfoy?" Hermione called out clearly and she heard a soft click and swoop of Alohomora cast on the lock of the door. She took a deep breath again and opened the door.

Draco's room was engulfed darkness, and she could just about make out his slacking form on the bed. He was sitting, slouched, unusual for a Malfoy. Hermione hovered in the doorway before shutting the door behind her. She walked over to him and sat gingerly on the bed beside him.

Draco breathed in deeply, aware of her presence beside him but he made no attempt to acknowledge her. He knew exactly what she had come up here to talk about and he didn't feel like talking. He sort of regretted giving her the newspaper, but they were going to find out anyway. He could sense Hermione's tense body very close and he breathed in again, trying to calm himself down. Draco suddenly wanted to shout and yell and hit but not while she was in here with him, she was far too close and he was scared he'd loose it.

"Draco?" Hermione whispered and Draco's stomach twisted as he realised she'd used his first name. He felt her hand on his arm and he tensed under her touch, but she didn't move her hand away. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." Draco replied, his jaw set sternly. Hermione nodded in understanding then realised he couldn't see her in the dark.

"Whenever you are ready." She whispered and hesitantly she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

She wasn't sure why she did that. It felt strange to comfort a person who had previously killed and hurt and was on the side she was so determined to destroy. But he was, after all, still just a boy, a teenager, like her, who'd loved and lost in this war. She knew he felt a great amount of guilt, as she had when she'd lost her friends. Lavender, Seamus. She'd heard they'd been killed by a group of Death Eaters. But losing friends wasn't the same – being ripped from your parents brings you a whole new level of agony that can't even be compared to losing friends.

Draco tensed immediately at the sudden embrace but didn't move her away. He was not used to the whole caring thing, and this embracing business was scary. But he liked it. The warmth and safety that was radiating from her aura was comforting, and he found himself leaning into her embrace. She tightened her hold on him and his head fell onto her shoulder. She soothed him, rubbing circles on his back and rocking him slightly.

It was strange, to see Malfoy so..vulnerable. It was even stranger to see him open up like that, to her. He hadn't said anything, not the whole time they sat like that, but she felt like that one movement, where he just collapsed onto her, had shown her a lot. He was vulnerable and scared and fragile, he had lost and given up everything.

"It's my fault." Draco whispered unexpectedly, looking up at her. Suddenly he cast a Lumos, the room illuminating with soft white light, their features springing to view as they looked at each other. Draco's face was perfectively emotionless, but she could see it all in his grey orbs.

"Not it's not." Hermione contradicted.

"It is. I simply stunned my parents. I should have killed them myself." Hermione was shocked and stunned into silence.

"Wouldn't it have been better to kill them by my own hand then let them suffer at the hands of him?" He looked up at her. "He would have tortured them. The way I let Bellatrix torture you." Hermione flinched.

"It's not your fault, you did not condemn them to their fate." Hermione whispered.

"I stunned my parents. Left them there to be manhandled and tortured and killed by the most powerful spectrum of evil. I did this to them. I should have murdered them myself. But they were my parents, how could I have killed them?"

"Stop it." Hermione said fiercely, tears springing to her eyes.

"I don't care about my father. Not really. But my mother.." Draco's voice broke and abruptly he tore himself from her arms and edged to the opposite end of the bed and refused to speak any more. Draco whispered "Knox." and the light faded, plunging them both in darkness again that seemed to stretch out forever between them. Hermione felt strange at the loss of contact. He didn't even look in her direction as she sighed and reached out for him, only to stop inches away from him, her hand lingering in the air.

"Whenever you are ready." Hermione repeated her earlier words and exited his room sadly.

Draco lay back on the bed and rolled over onto his side, staring at the spot she previously occupied. She had been so understanding. How could she understand what he did? How could she understand that he had condemned his own mother to her death? A woman who was far from innocent through actions, but at heart she was just another fool to fall for the Malfoy charms. Not only did she conceal her own fate when she married Lucius Malfoy, but unknowingly her son too.

Draco groaned and pulled at his hair angrily. He counted to one hundred slowly and opened his eyes, feeling calm and emotionless again as he pushed his current predicament to the back of his mind. He had to focus on the now and what was being planned at the exact moment in the kitchen of Shell Cottage.

xxx

"Where are we going to find the Elder Wand?" Harry asked Hermione as they sat once again at the kitchen table.

"Well the Elder Wand is passed down from the person who owned it to the person who defeated the person who owned it." Hermione explained, earning two sets of confused faces. Hermione rolled her eyes. "If Harry owned the wand and I defeated him, I would become the possessor of the Elder Wand."

"Ohhh." Harry and Ron said together, understanding now. Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Wait. If this Elder Wand is so powerful, how come the person who owned it got so easily defeated that it gets passed down to the person who defeated the person who owned it?" Harry asked, and Hermione pondered that thought for a while.

"I am completely and utterly confused now." Ron muttered.

"A familiar feeling, I assume?" Draco drawled from the kitchen doorway, his trademark smirk plastered on his face. Hermione was surprised to see him but didn't say anything; she only smiled at him. Ron darkened his expression.

Draco joined them at the table and listened as they continued to talk about the Elder Wand.

"Well Harry, I should imagine that all the previous owners were taken by surprise or brought down by extreme violence."

"Or a simple Expelliarmus." Draco piped in. Everyone looked at him curiously before Hermione slowly nodded her head.

"That could work."

"Who was the previous Master of the Elder Wand then?" Hermione wondered aloud.

"Dumbledore." Both Harry and Ron said at the same time; it seemed rather obvious and it made sense that Dumbledore would have the most powerful wand ever created.

"So, I assume it's buried with Dumbledore, then?" Hermione mused. Harry nodded his head as Hermione frowned. "Dumbledore was killed, which would mean that..." She trailed off in horror.

"Snape is the Master of the Elder Wand!" Harry figured out and Ron slammed an angry fist on the table, making his tea slosh everywhere.

Draco held up a hand after having pondered on something that sent chills through his body. Everyone was suddenly silenced as they stared at Draco. He looked up at them, his brow furrowed.

"I disarmed Dumbledore in the Astronomy tower before Snape killed him."

Harry, Ron and Hermione stared at Draco for a long time. Draco stared back, his blood running cold at what exactly he just said meant.

"Draco Malfoy is the true Master of the Elder Wand." Harry whispered.