Draco squeezed Hermione's hand tight, as they both moved their attention to the jewel encrusted goblet now lying on the floor a few feet away. Night was beginning to fall outside, and Hermione could think of nothing less important than the fact that she had missed her two after lunch classes.
At first glance the horcrux was nothing more than an old jeweled goblet sprawled across the floor of the Head common room. As Draco held Hermione's hand in his own, and stared down at the object he could not help but feel the power that breathed from its core. He had been using the cup as a drinking goblet for a month now, and had never truly felt the raw power it possessed before. However, now that he knew it was there, it seemed impossible that he hadn't recognized it earlier.
"It seems very small for something so dangerous, doesn't it?" Hermione pondered quietly from beside him.
"It does. I can't believe these things even exist."
"We couldn't either at first, but the more you learn about Voldemort the more it seems obvious that this is the path he chose. I wonder what it will do when we try to destroy it."
"What do you mean? Won't it just…die?" Draco was feeling more apprehensive now, afraid to let Hermione make any move toward it.
"I don't think so. I took some horcrux books from Dumbledore's office last year just after he…well anyway…it says there should be some type of defense mechanism on horcruxes. At least a smart owner would put one there. Knowing Voldemort it's bound to be protected by dark magic."
"You mean it will know it's trying to be destroyed?"
"Well it should have instinctive defense mechanisms in it. It should go into survival mode if it realizes it's being attacked. It's kind of like a Human being. Well, almost."
"Almost." Draco repeated darkly.
The two stared at it for a while longer, unsure of what to do next. Both were apprehensive of the effect the power of the horcrux might have on them if they went near it.
Hermione took one deep breath and began to release her grip from Draco's hand and take a step towards the goblet on the floor.
But her attempts at advancement came to no avail as Draco held her back by her arm keeping her from making another step.
"Draco we have to do this." She said firmly, not facing him but still staring at the horcrux.
"I know. I just…don't think you should do it. Maybe you should go help Potter or something. I can do this on my own."
"You've got to be kidding me." Hermione said furiously.
"What if it tries to kill you or something!" Draco retaliated to her tone. "I can't have that Hermione. I won't have that!"
"Draco, you're being ridiculous." Hermione shouted, turning to face him. "I've nearly been killed for more than half of my life. It seems that most of my time in the magical world is spent trying to avoid death. I'm used to it. I can help destroy the horcrux."
"I just don't feel right about it! You're too…fragile."
"Fragile!" Hermione protested moving towards him. "Draco, while you were taunting me all those years in school, let me fill you in on what I was doing. In first year a troll nearly tore my head off, in second year a basilisk nearly killed me, in third year the Whomping Williow clobbered me, in fifth year I befriended a half giant and escaped a heard of angry centaurs not to mention death eaters, and in sixth year I fought off several more death eaters including Frenrir Greyback! I think I can handle a horcrux!"
Draco stood flabbergasted at her speech. He'd always known Hermione was strong, and that she had been through death trap after death trap being Harry Potter's friend, but he never knew the details. He suddenly had no doubt that she could destroy a horcrux.
"I've escaped death so many times it's almost becoming another daily chore. So tell me, how am I so fragile now in destroying this horcrux? What makes this time so much different from all the other times I ran head first into death and you never stopped me?" Hermione's face was fuming, but Draco had never found her so beautiful.
"Because now I love you! Okay? I love you." The truth came bursting from Draco before he had time to ponder the words. "And it changes everything! I can't just watch you throw yourself into danger all the time now. I just can't. It's physically painful. I love you, and I can't stand to see you do something dangerous when it's unnecessary. I can do this myself, and you can just be…you can just be safe for me."
Hermione could see in the glow of the silver in his eyes and how intensely he meant his words. The anger on her face softened, and she took the extra step towards him and wrapped her arms perfectly around his body as if they were molded for each other. She didn't know if she loved Draco yet. It was too soon to tell for her. But she did feel that if he were to leave her, she could never be as happy with anyone else as she so recently had been with him.
"Draco, I care...so much about you. I don't know how I do, I mean only yesterday you were my sworn enemy. The last two months though it's as if something has been thawing in me." Her stream of conscious thoughts flowed out of her as she held onto him close. She felt his arms wrap around her own torso in acceptance of her hug. "I just know that I feel something for you that is…incredible, almost indescribable. More incredible than anything I've ever felt with anyone else. I don't want anything bad to happen to you either, but we're at war here. And people get hurt in wars. As much as I care about you, I care about defeating Voldemort too. And I want to make sure that when I die, if that's today, tomorrow, or one hundred years from now I need to know that I did everything in my power to help defeat him."
Draco acknowledged that she did not say she loved him back, and he accepted that. In time he could only hope she would. But he knew that he loved her, and he knew that she spoke the truth. That she needed to help him destroy the horcrux, and so that is what they would do.
Draco pulled himself from her grip and smiled softly down at her, kissing the top of her head.
"Okay. How do we do this?"
Hermione beamed back up at him before putting on her game face and once more staring directly at the goblet.
"I guess we just…stab it. It makes the most sense. I mean, I'm sure it's not that simple. There's bound to be wards on it, it can probably sense when it's in danger. But I think the quickest way to find out what defense it has is to come at it straight on."
Hermione moved toward the goblet, but Draco held her back once more.
"Let me go first, okay? At least let me do that."
"Why don't I just try to touch it first okay? And then you can take the next step." She said reasonably. "I'm sure there's more than one step to this thing and the first is bound to be the most safe."
Draco was going to protest, but figured that it made sense for one person to try at a time so the other could help out as needed in case one was disabled somehow.
Hermione kissed him slightly on the cheek before kneeling down a few feet away and grabbing one of the basilisk fangs off the ground.
"Okay, on the count of three. One…two…" Hermione held the fang in her fist, a determined look upon her face. "Three!"
On three, Hermione took swift steps across the room toward the goblet, a look of determination on her face. She was just about to crouch down to stab it when a force field seemed to hold her back just inches away from the goblet.
Hermione was stunned, and tried to turn to face Draco, but the goblet seemed to have some hold on her for a moment as she watched the cup prop itself upright in a stiff movement and slowly fill to the brim with a dark red liquid.
The moment the cup was full, it seemed to release her from her restraints and she was able to take a few steps back in awe. She had never seen or felt such magic before.
"I told you step one would be the safest." Hermione said bringing the fang back down to her side.
"What does it mean?" Draco's soft whisper came from behind her.
"I'm not sure." Hermione answered, still stunned at the cups actions.
"Maybe you should try to stab it again, just to see what it does."
Hermione took a deep breath and made to move toward the cup once more, but there still seemed to be a force field holding her back just before he could touch the fang to the cup.
"It won't let me get near it. How can I destroy it when I can't touch it?" Hermione turned to stare at Draco incredulously.
As she turned, he gasped in horror at her face. Hermione's light brown eyes had transformed into the same dark blood red as the liquid in the cup. As if Voldemort's eyes were possessing her own.
"What is it?" Hermione asked concerned.
"Nothing." Draco stammered out. He didn't want to alarm Hermione so he put a puzzled face on and racked his brain for anything distracting. "What do you think of all of it?"
Hermione thought pensively about everything she had read about horcruxes. As she thought, Draco willed himself to concentrate and not look into Hermione's eyes again. Clearly she was still Hermione and not Voldemort…for now.
"I think you need to drink whatever is it in." Hermione said interrupting his thoughts. "I mean it won't let me come at it in destroying mode. My guess is that the person who wants the horcrux needs to not want to destroy it. I think acceptance of drinking the liquid within it would prove that. Voldemort would want to be able to come back and claim his horcruxes if need be, this must be the process he has to go through too if he wants to touch it."
"Drink it?" Draco stared at her puzzled, catching a glimpse of her eyes once more. He willed himself to not turn away in disgust.
"Yeah." She said, confused at Draco's sudden distance.
Hermione shrugged it off and walked toward to goblet once more without the intention of harming it. When she got to the point where she was usually held back the goblet seemed to allow her access to it, and she gripped it firmly in her hands.
"I can feel the evil inside of it trying to come into me when I hold it like this. I wonder how you couldn't notice it before?"
"Sometimes magical objects are completely ordinary until one finds the niche in it. It makes sense that I couldn't notice the anger was caused by the cup when I didn't acknowledge it as more than a goblet."
"Right…well…here I go." Hermione shook a bit as she brought the goblet to her lips.
"WAIT!" Draco screamed from the other side of the room.
"What?" Hermione stopped abruptly and lowered the goblet.
"Let me do this part." Draco said sternly.
"But part one was too easy." Hermione argued.
"Please Hermione. It's already affecting you…I can't stand to see what else it does. We should share the weight of the horcrux. You got past the first barrier. Let me do the second. Like we agreed."
"Affecting me?" Hermione asked distracted.
"Your eyes…" Draco shivered, unwilling to explain further.
He grabbed his pocket watch out of his robes and brought the gold plate up to Hermione's eyes so she could see their reflection. Hermione nearly dropped the goblet in horror. Her eyes were not expressing her own current emotions, but seemed to emit something else entirely. There was an evil in them that was not felt inside herself. If the eyes were not affecting her mood, then it seemed that they were in place to affect Draco more than her. Hermione's level of understanding of magical objects was beyond her capabilities at that moment.
She looked intensely at Draco who had now come to stand by her side. Draco took the cup from her hands and immediately felt the evil emotions trying to flow into him. Hermione didn't approve of him taking the cup, and Draco knew he couldn't win this without a fight. He felt the anger of the cup building inside of him, and he knew it wasn't wise to start an argument in the condition the cup was putting him in.
"Just let me do this!" He said brashly wanting to throw the goblet on the floor, but calmed himself. "Please Mione." He contained himself, and his voice was softer this time.
He touched Hermione's cheek with the back of his hand and she nodded in defeat.
"You can do this Draco." Hermione said, giving in to his demands. "I'll be right here in case anything happens."
"Okay." Draco breathed in deeply. "No countdowns this time. I'm just going to do it."
Draco distanced himself from Hermione with two steps backwards just before chugging the liquid into his body.
"How is it?" Hermione asked anxiously from across the room.
"Disgusting. It tasted fowl…just completely evil. But also oddly familiar."
"Okay that's…weird. So now what? Do we try to stab it again?" Hermione asked confused. She was sure there should have been more to the liquid than just a gross tasting drink.
"Sure I guess." Draco said whipping his mouth with the sleeve of his robe and shrugging.
Hermione was suddenly excited. This could be it; they could be at the final step to destroying the horcrux.
"Excellent." She said giddily. "Well maybe since you did step two, I can complete step three and stab the thing! What do you think?"
She waited for a reply, but Draco's face had gone blank.
"Draco? What do you think?" She asked again, wearily this time.
But Draco seemed to be in a far off place. His skin grew a few more shades paler than it already was and he fell to the floor, the goblet still firmly in his grasp.
"Draco!" Hermione screamed in horror and quickly fell to the floor with him reaching out to get a closer look at his face.
"Don't touch me, you monster!" Draco yelled at her and slapped her hand away fiercely.
Hermione was confused, but then remembered how red her eyes had been before. The potion must be making him fear her eyes.
"Don't move Draco I'll be right back!" Maybe she could fix her eyes.
Hermione sprinted to the bathroom and stared at her blood red eyes in the mirror that seemed to not be her own anymore. It was as if Voldemort himself had possessed her eyes, and they were scary. She did not blame Draco in the slightest for pushing her away. Her own face looked scared, but her eyes were pure evil. She couldn't look away, as if the eyes were trying to put her into a trance. She was horrified. Hermione grabbed her wand from her jeans and quickly pointed it at the mirror.
"Reducto!" She shouted, and the mirror blasted into a thousand tiny pieces. The backlash of the glass cut into her arms, leaving tiny scratches all over her body. Hermione dropped her wand on the floor in shock. She mentally cursed herself. If Draco was frightened of her before, that was nothing to how he'd react to her covered in blood. At the thought of Draco her mind raced to how she left him in the common room and without thinking a step further she ran out of the bathroom once more to find him huddled on the floor, his robe covering his body, the hood moved over his face which was buried in his free hand.
He wasn't moving, and Hermione found that the most frightening of all.
"Draco?" She asked quietly, moving toward him now at a slower pace. She noticed the skin on the hand covering the goblet was bubbling quickly, as if it had been shifting. Hermione pulled her eyebrows down in confusion as the bubbling stopped.
"Draco, are you okay?" She asked, a quiver in her voice.
"Draco?" The voice came from under the hood. It held a distinct edge that Draco's had in their enemy ridden days, but there was something more adult about it, as if it was older.
"Draco you're scaring me."
"I'm not Draco."
"What are you talking about! Of course you are!" Hermione cried incredulously. She was shaking from head to toe. She took another hesitant step toward him and knelt across from him.
"Draco, please tell me you're okay." Hermione said, knowing full well that the potion in the horcrux had done something to him. She reached a shaky hand up to the hood and with a deep breath pulled the hood down.
The first thing she noticed was how Draco's hair felt. Before it had been short and messy, but now it felt long and slick. She knew now why the voice sounded like Draco's, but was oddly cold and unfamiliar at the same time.
Lucius Malfoy was staring back at her from under the hood. Before she could let out a full scream he pushed her back and she flew a few feet from him landing hard on the ground in front of the couch.
Her head spun and she fought to keep a clear head wondering what potion was in the goblet. She had feared it might be polyjuice when she saw the bubbling skin, but she was even more frightened now that it seemed this advanced polyjuice didn't just alter your appearance it also morphed the personality of the drinker. Draco Malfoy seemed to have become Lucius Malfoy.
"Who are you!" Malfoy shouted rising from his position and coming to stand over her. He knelt down and wiped the blood the glass had caused out of her face. At first no signs of recognition graced his features and Hermione hoped for a moment he wouldn't recognize her. Then darkly happy features crossed his face and his lip curved into a smirk of recognition.
"I should have known with the stench of your blood. I can smell a mudblood from a mile away. But how lucky for me that it isn't just any mudblood, but Harry Potter's mudblood to grace my presence."
Hermione shook in fear as his face was nearly a foot away from her own. She wondered desperately where her wand was, then remembered she had left it in the bathroom after she broke the mirror. She wondered if any of Draco was left in there fighting to get out.
"Draco, please fight this. You can do it. The potion is trying to take you over. Concentrate on yourself."
"Draco? Is this why you're here? For my son?" Lucius glared evilly at Hermione as he grasped both her wrists down into the carpet hard. She tried not to squeal in pain.
If should couldn't reason with Draco she was going to have to reason with Lucius.
"Yeah. I'm here to kill him. So if you don't mind I need to be getting on my way." Hermione tried to sit up but found herself rudely knocked down by Lucius' knee thrown into her chest.
"Not so fast mudblood. You can make excellent bait for Potter and Weasley if we hold you as prisoner."
"No way." Hermione said fiercely suddenly realizing the danger she was in. It was true that Lucius couldn't apparate her outside of Hogwarts while they were on the grounds, but he didn't know that yet. It seemed he didn't even know where he was or that he even bothered to care. She wasn't sure if Lucius was actually here or if Draco had somehow transformed into him. "You can't take me out of here. We're at Hogwarts."
"Are we really?" Lucius mused evilly from above. Hermione took the time to note that he had dropped the goblet to his side as he grabbed her wrists. Now if only she could reach the basilisk fang she left on the couch cushions just above her. All she had to do was reach her arm up and over and it was hers. "And you were planning on murdering my son in here?"
"That's right. These are our head dormitories." Hermione said focusing on keeping a conversation with Lucius. It was better than the pain inducing alternative.
"Well I doubt that you would do that mudblood. You're on the side of the light are you not? Murdering isn't really in your morals. So tell me what you are really doing here." He said darkly as he pushed his knee further into her chest making it hard to breathe.
"I swear that's what I was going to do."
"Don't LIE to me mudblood." Lucius said quickly taking an arm away from her wrist and pulling a large shard of glass out of her leg. "I don't know what happened here mudblood, but I do know that glass is very, very sharp. Unfortunately, it seems that you managed to miss all your vital arteries. I can fix that for you if you like." He mused at her, and pushed the glass onto her skin just above her wrist.
"NO!" She said, stopping his movements just before he punctured her vein. "Okay fine I'll tell you the truth."
"Go ahead." Lucius said amused as he pushed his knee lower and into her stomach. She felt shards of glass move inside her skin and hoped he wasn't doing worse damage.
"Your son has Veela blood in him."
"How smart of you to figure it out. Of course you would get into other people's business this way. He gets it from his mother's side."
"Then you must be Narcissa's mate."
Lucius hissed at this as if she was intruding on private territory.
"This is none of your business." He threatened to push the glass further into her skin, nearly breaking it.
"Well you see I'm Draco's mate." Hermione said quickly.
Lucius released tension on the glass pressed to her wrist for a moment in disbelief.
"Impossible." He whispered.
"Very possible." Hermione smirked. Although she was in pain, she could see she was hitting a nerve. Distracting him meant reaching the fang and stabbing the horcrux to end this. "You see Draco is in love with me. I was just going to go tell him that I was in love with him too so we can get on with this whole mate thing, but then you showed up and rudely interrupted things."
"YOU ARE LYING MUDBLOOD! Draco may have some Veela in him, but more importantly he has pure wizard blood in him, something far more potent. His genes would NEVER allow him to pick such filth for a mate!"
Even in the utmost important moment as this one, where it was everything to stay focused, Hermione could not help but be hurt by Lucius' words. Words she was sure he would speak himself if it was actually him who was here with her and not some mirror image being hosted by Draco.
"I can see it in your face mudblood. You know I'm right. Draco could never love you, in fact I bet he never has and he never will. Even if you were his mate, his pureblood status would carry more weight than his 1/8 Veela traits. He would rather die lonely than have you be his mate.
Hermione willed her brain to focus on destroying the horcrux and not on the words that left Lucius' mouth.
"You're WRONG!" She shouted angrily as she lifted her right leg and kneed Lucius in the face. In his moment of stunned reaction he let go of Hermione's wrists and his knee fell of her chest. She quickly reached up and grabbed the fang from the couch. She grasped the fang with all her might and rolled back over again to where the goblet lay. She was inches from it.
As she reached over to stab it, Lucius got to her first and quickly slashed the sharp glass down her right arm right in the vein. Hermione gasped in pain as the blood hit the air leaving her with a stinging sensation. Luckily, her arm managed to swiftly fall down perfectly into the cup of the goblet. The fang pierced the gold easily and Hermione could hear a wailing scream as it shriveled into a melted mess on the floor beside her. She swore she could almost hear the thing take its last breath just as she felt she was about to take hers. She felt Lucius crumpled form fall next to her with the cup and with her last bit of energy she frantically moved toward him. She knew Draco was in there somewhere and fate could only be so cruel to take Draco's life with the cup.
She reached over and pulled the hood off his face and nearly cried in relief when she saw short blond hair peaking out of the darkness.
"Draco." She sighed peacefully.
Hermione tried to focus on his face, but it seemed to be losing clarity with her loss of blood. Hermione mustered all the energy she had and lifted her bleeding arm over to his face. Her hand gently stroked the side of his cheek and with her touch his eyes flickered open to meet hers.
"Mione." He mumbled smiling tiredly. "Your eyes…they're perfect."
Hermione managed to smile, happy to know that her eyes must have returned to normal with the dying of the horcrux.
"What's happened to your arm?" He asked suddenly urgent as he lifted himself off the floor to examine it fully. "Oh sweetheart what happened?"
Hermione could only smile as she began to lose consciousness. They had destroyed the cup, Draco was alive and perfect. Instead of alarm she could only feel bliss as she felt Draco frantically trying to keep her awake and stop the blood from flowing from the large gash in her arm.
A/N: PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!