He didn't die; but he came close. They both did.
The Weasleys had taken their direction-giving duties seriously though. Seemingly with ease, Bones led them to a wall and found a chink in it large enough for Crabbe or Goyle to climb through. "It shouldn't be warded," she said over her shoulder before crushing the parchment of directions in her fist and tossing it through the gap. Nothing flashed or burned so Bones stepped up onto some of the bricks that had crumbled to the forest floor and climbed the fissures in the old wall. The opening was quite high, but she managed to scramble into it with something that might not have qualified as grace but seemed impressive anyway. She stopped once there, turning easily so that she was sitting in the hole and grinned at Draco, reaching out to him. "Give me your hand."
Draco wasn't that stupid. The way of hand-holding led to a long road of shame and self-hatred. "Don't be ridiculous. I can get through myself."
She shrugged and turned to jump lightly out of the Hogwarts' grounds.
It took Draco longer than it had taken her to figure out how to climb the chinks in the wall but he got it, dropping down to land by Bones moments later.
She was already scoping out the area around them, but turned to wrinkle her nose at him when his boots hit the leaf-litter. He stayed upright and glared at her. It was only when she raised her eyebrows and turned away that he realised that the nose had been an affectionate gesture, not a reproval. She scooped up the piece of parchment as she began walking. "Road's this way," she said before he could rectify the situation. Not that he would have anyway. There was nothing he could have said without compromising himself.
They had barely taken a dozen steps towards the road before Bones stopped dead. Draco glanced at her; he'd had his hand on his wand since they'd gone into the Forbidden Forest but he began to pull it now, before he even saw the shudder work its way through Bones' frame. "What is..?" he began, reaching his free hand out to touch her because she looked terrified. It surprised him how warm his voice had sounded. Before he could ponder the implications of any of that, he felt what she had. A deeply biting cold wrapped around him as the stars above flickered out. There was no point in asking Bones what was going on; Draco knew. He could already feel the despair enfolding him.
When the two Dementors came gliding into the open for them it was probably the most terrifying moment of Draco's life. He didn't know how to cast a Patronus. Voldemort controlled the Dementors now and no one had thought he'd need one. And Bones was there. Maybe he deserved whatever was coming for knowing so much and never saying anything; but she didn't. If they were up against anything else; werewolves, Death Eaters, even Voldemort himself, he might have been able to buy her enough time to get away. Time could not be bought against Dementors.
His hand was still pressed against her shoulder blade and he slid it down her spine, trying to keep his breathing steady. It was a losing battle. "Bones." He forced his voice to soften in a way it never had before; setting the timbre of it to soothe and comfort. If they were going to have their souls taken then he wanted to think that, in it all, he had done something right. He didn't deserve salvation, but he wanted to take a step towards redemption.
Her jaw tilted back and she let out her breath. It wasn't in defeat. She was going to fight the same as every Bones before her had and every one after her would; and someone like her should not have had to take their last stand with him. Then her arm came up, wand in hand and she was casting a Patronus so bright that it almost blinded Draco.
When he could see again, the Dementor's were retreating.
"Merlin. Fuck." He doubled up, panting; palms clammy and chest aching as his heart thumped against his ribs. His stomach was churning; but he turned his head to look at Bones.
She was very white in the wand light; eyes open wide and body shaking too hard to hold her wand steady, even though she'd obviously cast a Lumos. Adrenaline and fear. Draco was riding a wave of it too.
"Hey," he said, stepping toward her. He knew better than to touch her; he should have by now, but he wound an arm around her and pulled her into him, pressing his mouth into her hair. She was amazing. Even through the haze of stress and relief he knew that when he thought of this moment later; he would remember how she looked fighting, not how scared he'd been. It took him a moment to realise that her legs weren't supporting her. He probably could have held her up for a while, but his nerves were shot, so he lowered them both to the ground.
"I'm sorry," she said finally, seeming completely unabashed to be leaning right up against him. "I should never have asked you to come. It was so stupid." She sounded as though she might start crying. Usually that would be all sorts of terrifying but Draco had used up his quota of fear for the night.
"We need to get back to Hogwarts," he said, glancing back at the wall they had climbed through. She was warm and soft though, and he didn't really want to move.
Sitting up straighter, she stared at the wall too. Her eyes were already pretty dark with the insufficient light from her Lumos charm, but he swore they got darker. "You go," she said. "I've got…" The pause was perceptible; stretching across long enough moments that even someone without a suspicious nature would be able to see the lie. "I've got a friend I need to see in Hogsmeade."
"Are you joking?"
Looking miserable, but resolute, she shook her head. She still had the piece of parchment crushed in the fist that wasn't holding her wand and Draco reached out, wresting it from her grasp. When he opened it, it was blank.
"No directions," he said, voice calm but full of raw accusation. He thought of how easily she'd found the barely visible path to the wall, how quickly she'd seen the opening in it and how effortlessly she'd navigated the footholds to get through it. "Were the Weasleys even the ones who found that?" He pointed towards the wall, glaring at her as he pushed her away from him. She did not try to draw him back.
"I found it," she said.
He was thinking more clearly now. More like a Malfoy. She hadn't been careful enough to make her lie look as though it stood alone; and the one lie revealed others the moment Draco looked at the situation objectively. "And the clearing where I helped you with Fiendfyre?" he demanded.
She lifted her shoulders and let them drop. "I found that too. Harry wouldn't have told me about a place even if he knew of one. The forest's dangerous."
It stung that she had so much faith in Harry Potter keeping her safe and so little faith in him. She had asked him outright to go to the forest, evidently not thinking for a moment that he would share Potter's gallant outlook on life. "Really?" he snarled, letting the word drip venom. She backed away from him across the leaf-litter and he was gratified. "What was all of this then?" he demanded, keeping the tone. She had just stared down two Dementors so he knew that she wasn't afraid of him; but the tone did something to her and right now it was the only weapon he had. "This meeting up stuff? Was it some sort of ruse you were using to show the school how utterly malicious I am?" He knew better though. She was a Bones; she would be trying to get to his father through him. And he had let her.
"I don't think you're malicious," she exclaimed, looking mortified that he could think that of her.
"I am," he said, tone all ice and frost. He hoped it hurt her. "You have no idea."
For a moment she stared at him before sighing and pushing herself to her feet. He rose too. He would not have her look down at him on top of everything else tonight. "I'm sorry," she said, voice stilted and a little too formal. She didn't blush though, so she was being sincere. "I just wanted to spend time with you; I didn't want…" She shrugged again as though too much had gone wrong to work into words.
Part of him – most of him – wanted to throw down and hit her with everything he had. He was almost beyond caring that he'd never been able to gather any sort of ammunition on her, he had no idea of how to hurt her, and everything he did in conjunction with her turned out wrong. He was hurt; and he wanted her to feel it. But – she hadn't blushed; her eyes were clear and had stayed on him. There was a significant chance that she had just wanted to spend time with him. And a huge part of him was trying to clamour that whole argument out of existence in favour of sweeping her away in a wave of acidic fury-filled diatribe. "You need to explain this," he snapped out, the words broken up into sharp, disjointed sounds. He had never given anyone the benefit of the doubt before; and he was giving it to her far more often than he should have. Not wanting to even think about what that meant, he glared at her. It was too much ammunition; this on top of everything else. She already had enough to break him.
"I'm…" she looked around, as though searching for answers in the trees.
"The truth," he bit out.
"I'm a Bones," she said. Her voice was steady, so was her gaze; anchored on his suddenly. She spoke as though that part explained the whole. It did. She was a Bones, and the Bones' were notoriously against the Dark Arts.
"I'm a Malfoy," Draco spat at her. He realised only after he said it that he had put too much fire behind the words, as though he wasn't so sure that he was a Malfoy. Damn it, only she could do this to him.
She kept his gaze. "You're my friend."
Draco searched her face for any sign of a lie. He didn't find one and the relief of it almost made him sag.
"I won't lie to you again," she said, sounding almost pleased at the situation. "Not about important things. I'm no good at subterfuge anyway."
"Good," said Draco, voice hard and not ready to let her off the hook yet. "What's going on?"
She smiled, eyes lighting up in delight. "I'm trying to learn defence," she said. "Umbridge hasn't been the best teacher and the war's looming so…" She shrugged as though that explained it all, twirling her wand easily. "That was the first time I cast a Patronus on Dementors," she said. "I wasn't sure I'd be able to. Happiness is so…" Frowning, she tilted her head. "Intangible? Harry made out like you had to have this one really, really strong happy memory, and I don't."
Draco remembered her asking about the nature of happiness the night she'd gone swimming in the Forbidden Forest. She'd sounded as though she'd thought about the issue for days and hadn't been able to figure it out. "Well, how did that..?" he motioned to the cloudless sky to indicate the lack of Dementors and she shrugged.
"I guess my whole life has just been so happy that one memory doesn't really stand out from the rest," she said. Her lips twisted uncertainly. "That would mean Harry's life has been so…" She broke off and shook her head, but Draco got it. Potter didn't have enough happiness in his daily life to use that if he had to fish about for one strong memory. Draco might have taken more satisfaction from that notion if he wasn't uncomfortably aware that he would probably fit into the same category.
"Why are we going to Hogsmeade?" he asked, rather than dwell on that idea. It was then that he realised that while Bones didn't intend to lie to him any longer, it didn't mean that she intended to tell him the truth.
"I can't tell you that," she said easily, finding a new path in the dim light and taking it. "I can tell you more about the D.A. lessons though."
After everything that had happened – after how much ground Draco had already conceded – he strongly considered throwing a hissy fit at this latest indignity. It was done though. He had grudgingly accepted her apology and he doubted that any amount of pushing would win him back the pride he had lost in the bargain. He sighed philosophically and started after her; feeling less annoyed about the whole thing than befitted a Malfoy.