A/N: Hello to all new readers and many old ones! I am so delighted with your response to the last chapter. It's funny because I considered not even including that scene, or at least not giving Harry his own entire chapter. I'm glad it was well-received. I seriously love hearing your feedback, plot musings and theories - I assure you all of them will be answered at some point along the line. With your help, Reverse is close to 1,000 reviews! Think we can make it over that milestone with this chapter? :)

A Mother's Presence

The small conservative village of East Belham was under siege. Most of the inhabitants had already crowded through the hidden passageway inside the church to the underground burrows Tom Riddle had helped create more than a decade earlier by the time the Carrow siblings pounded on the door. The tunnels extended beyond the edge of the Anti-Disapparition Jinx the Sovereignty had placed around the entire city years ago, so conservative families could escape in groups once they'd fled beyond it.

Blaise was closer to the church's entrance than Draco, and he pulled one of the doors open. "Bloody hell! D'you think you two could have cut it any closer?"

Amycus and Alecto hustled breathlessly inside, their faces smudged with soot. "The birds are everywhere; they burned Hamlet's Row before we could come through. We had to slip through the post…"

As they spoke, Blaise continued to stare out the door. "Draco…"

Dread filled him at his best friend's tone. Racing up beside him, Draco cautiously peered around the church doors. A gust of hot air slammed into him, blowing his hair up and around his face, and he almost staggered backward at the wall of flames approaching from the western side of the village, billowing black smoke obscuring the early morning sun.

Suddenly, he noticed motion down one of the small paths leading to the church, and a flash of red hair.

His eyes widened.

Weasley or Evans - whichever Viceroy it was, it didn't matter.

"Right. Time to go." He slammed the doors shut and fired a shocking charm into the gold coin he'd been gripping in a fist with all his might — the signal to raise the security wards.

"Dear Merlin!" Abruptly, Alecto dropped the bag she'd been looking through, turned and clutched her brother's arm. "Mum's chest! It's gone — it must have fallen out when I dropped my purse, Amycus! It's all we have left of her; I've got to try to Summon it!"

Before any of them could stop her, she spun, pulled open the church door, and stepped outside.

A jet of purple light flashed toward them from the village only a moment before the air outside the door shimmered; the conservatives' protective shields up.

Alecto staggered and turned back to them, her face stunned. She looked downward. Dark blood was spreading through the entire front of her blouse.

Draco felt sick, stupefied; he wanted to help her, treat her, do something, anything, but he found that his feet were frozen. All he could do was stare at her in horror as her shocked gaze slowly lifted back to them.

He saw the life leave her eyes a second before she slumped to the ground.

He couldn't breathe, gaping at her crumpled body. It - It had all happened so quickly… She couldn't - She couldn't really be dead… could she?

For several seconds, none of them moved, but then Alecto's dark-haired brother jerked his head upward, his gaze fixed on the street outside, now swarming with Sovereignty forces, and let out a roar of agony. Draco took one look at him and the expression in his eyes and suddenly found he was able to move again; he flung himself in front of Amycus.

"Get out of my way, Malfoy!"

"You can't! Amycus, you can't!" Draco pushed him backward. "Think of her! You know they'll kill you; she wouldn't want that!"

But he was only fifteen, and the taller, broader man easily flung him aside. "I don't care; I'll take some of the bastards with me first!" he roared, charging out the door.

"No!"

Draco again lunged after him, but Blaise grabbed his arm, hauling him backward. "Draco, no! Are you mad? You can't go after him! Those wards won't hold if the Sovereign's with them. We have to get o—"

BOOM!

An explosion rocked the building, sending them both flying to the floor-

Draco gasped and gripped the bed sheets, flinging himself over and onto his other side, squeezing his eyes shut.

His mother was looking at him, her gaze heavy with emotion, while he stood in front of her, nearly shaking with anger and frustration, in their flat's tiny kitchen, his holiday luggage on the ground beside him.

"You remember what I've always told you, darling, don't you?" she said.

He nodded weakly, and couldn't help but muster a faint, halfhearted smile in spite of himself even though he'd rather yell as he mumbled the familiar words, "We must never lose our smiles."

Draco let out a shaky breath, his tense, aching muscles finally, finally relaxing.

"That's right." Narcissa smiled herself and gently touched his cheek lovingly, even though her face was tired and lined. "And you have such a beautiful one. We'd all be at a great loss if you did."

His weak smile widened slightly at her words before he ducked his head, embarrassed. He sighed. "I'm sorry, mum, I know; it's just… Sometimes it's so hard." His hand clenched into a fist. "I mean — Why Quidditch? Why did they have to take that away from us? What harm could possibly be done if we played? We aren't a threat to them; we aren't any less than them…" He shoved his hand through his hair, fighting back another wave of despair. "It isn't fair!"

Her eyes were pained as she sighed and drew him into a hug. "I know, darling. I know how much you love Quidditch. I know how much it hurts."

He welcomed the comfort of her embrace. It had been a very long first half of third year; the inequity between the more conservative students and the rest of the school had only seemed to grow worse - or perhaps simply more obvious - the older he became.

After a moment, he shook his head. "I just wish there was something I could do."

She sat back, her gaze brightening. "Oh, but there is." She held him out at arms length. "Would you like to know a very important secret I have learned in my life?" When he nodded, she made sure to catch his gaze so he knew she was serious. "When things like this happen - and they will, it's simply a part of living - we have two options: We can choose to allow these forces outside ourselves to embitter us, perhaps even destroy us. Or we can choose to rise above them, and only use them to give us insight about ourselves, and perhaps even the very reason we're alive. Yes, what's happened to all of us has been unfair, but it's also been a gift, Draco! Do you see how?"

His jaw tightened. Nothing about the discrimination he'd begun to see all around him seemed like a good thing, which had made this year such an unhappy one, so much so that the world had seemed to lose the magic, the luster he had usually seen everywhere around him after growing up with Narcissa as his mother.

"Not really, no," he admitted in a mumble, staring at the ground.

"Because losing so much," Narcissa went on, "has helped us see that what truly matters is that which remains when everything else has been taken from us. Not money, not things, not names or power — but family. Friends. The unshakable sense of self we hold deep within us. Togetherness. Love." He heard the smile in her voice as she took his hands in hers. "I may not have the manor the Second Viceroy's wife does and I may not dress like Viceroy Evans, but I am the proudest, luckiest woman in the entire world. Do you know why?"

When he shook his head again, biting his lip, she whispered fervently, "Because I have you."

He blinked back a sudden rush of tears and looked up at her quickly. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, that he was so grateful he had her for a mother, too, but the normally talkative boy suddenly found himself unable to speak.

Despite this, Narcissa reached out and cupped his face tenderly, her smile warm. "And I've been able to watch you grow into a compassionate, brilliant, wonderful young man, and that means more to me than all the money or titles in the world."

But then quickly, far too quickly, his mother's face and one of his most cherished memories twisted into his worst nightmare.

He was no longer standing in their aging flat but crouched on the floor of the foyer of an unfamiliarly beautiful Mayfair home. He was older now, his hair and clothing soaked with sweat, his entire body shaking, his nails digging so hard into his palms they drew blood.

An amused, throaty purr floated inside the shattered stained glass window above him.

"Come out, come out, Little Malfoy. Time to play."

He jerked and twisted sharply, clutching a pillow and praying for relief.

Pale, tear-filled blue eyes bore into his, sending searing agony straight to the heart of his soul.

She silently mouthed, 'I love y—'

A flash of green cut her unspoken message short.

"Mother!"

Draco lurched forward...

...and his entire body painfully collided with a hard thud against something solid and unyielding.

He gasped and opened his eyes to darkness, clutching what could only have been a floor. His heart leapt to his throat; lifting his head, his eyes frantically scanned the darkness for any indication of where he was - until he heard a muffled curse nearby.

"Malfoy. Get the bloody hell out." Evans' voice sounded rough with sleep and positively vexed. "That's the third blasted time tonight. You'd better go become best mates with the common room couch because you sure as shite aren't sleeping here anymore."

Draco tiredly let his forehead fall back to the ground with a small thud, the instantaneous stab of panic at finding himself alone in a dark room with an unknown someone immediately beginning to ebb. A cold sweat had soaked through his shirt, and his entire face ached. Despite his fatigue, he didn't want to fall asleep again, not to the nightmares that only left him when he was so exhausted his entire body shut down and his subconscious mind had no choice but to fall into unconsciousness.

The darkness in Evans' massive Head Boy room was almost as complete as the Instant Darkness Powder in Hermione's, but he managed to find his way to the door and blindly stumble unevenly down the steps outside it to the Head common room, clutching the railing, swimming in a pair of Evans' pajama pants and sweatshirt, even though the two of them were roughly the same height.

After what he'd lived through, it was easier than he would have liked to push aside the aching pain shooting through his right thigh with each step he took. But being able to simply walk again, unfettered, undirected, uninhibited, was a foreign, almost out-of-body experience that spurred a claw of anxiety at his chest and sweat to dampen his hands.

Feeling nauseous, he forced himself to breathe evenly and carry on, reminding himself over and over that he was allowed to do this, that no one with a wand was going to emerge from the blackness to pursue him or punish him. He bit his lip, hating that he had instinctively begun to automatically question his own freedoms — the very thing that he, his mother, his friends, his kind had for so long been fighting against. He hadn't noticed it during the days and weeks and months with the Weasleys, when he'd simply been following rote orders, often struggling to survive hour by hour. But now that he was closer to freedom than he had ever been in the past two years − the closest he might ever be — it was painfully obvious his mind had still been conditioned.

With a wince, he collided first with a table and then, finally, a sofa. He collapsed onto the incredibly soft material of the latter, his leg weeping in relief. It was so blessedly luxurious that the very act of his sitting on it surely must have been illegal, but no inspectors from the Agency for Conservative Management and Inspection materialized to arrest him; no Weasley swooped in to beat him or worse like his tensed muscles and quiveringly alert mind seemed to fully expect they would.

Sighing heavily, he cautiously allowed himself to slowly relax, staring blankly above him. A faint, fuzzy light met his gaze.

Then what he was looking at came into focus.

Something inside him jolted, and he blinked, scrubbing at his exhausted eyes.

Like someone had flung a handful of pixie dust in the air, thousands of stars - the entire Milky Way, it seemed - unfurled above him. The ceiling must have been Enchanted, but…

Merlin, the last time he had seen the stars had been…

Suddenly, a bright, pointed light shone down on him.

"Draco?"

He squinted at the beam's source.

"Pansy?" he croaked.

He heard a door softly close and quiet footsteps on the stairs, and he sat up and moved over on the cool leather of the sofa so she could sit beside him. He could just make out the front of a cylindrical metal object in her hands, and he vaguely remembered seeing something like it in one of his earlier Muggle Studies classes. "What's…"

"A torch. Hermione gave it to me, so I can use it for light, instead of…"

She trailed off, but Draco knew what she'd meant to say. Instead of magic.

"Well. So I can get around at night if I need to," she finished awkwardly.

She switched it off, sighing deeply.

He understood exactly how she felt.

For a moment, the only sound that passed between them was their breaths, the common room utterly silent. Draco still wasn't fully convinced that any of this was actually happening, but if Pansy and Evans were witnessing the same things he was — if he and Pansy were actually sitting here, together — then perhaps he wasn't losing his mind after all.

After a minute, he surrendered himself back to this strange fantasy-reality hybrid, and looked toward Pansy in concern. After what they'd both been through, it would have been impossible to escape nightmares completely, but he fervently hoped hers weren't of the same intensity that his were. "Trouble sleeping?"

He heard more than saw her nod her head. "Yes - A bit, I suppose. Then I heard something… I thought it might be you."

Pansy was and had always been, without fail, one of the kindest, most considerate people that Draco had ever known. The thought of anyone doing something to her to cause an inability to sleep made him at once protective and angry and indescribably frustrated that he was so powerless to do anything about it. He could tell from her voice she was worried about him, and his lip dully quirked sideways in an effort to alleviate some of her concern.

"So you expected Evans to kick me out during our first night together?" he asked lightly. "But we'd been getting on so well! Why didn't you give me fair warning that our beautifully blossoming relationship was doomed to end before I let it go so far?"

She laughed softly. "I didn't mean that, you goof! I just - I remember how you always… Well. I suppose it isn't important now." She paused, then found his hand and held it tightly. "Oh Draco, I'm so glad you're here!"

Draco closed his eyes, unspeakable gratefulness and relief soaking through his tired bones like a soothing balm. He had known Pansy for as long as he could remember, and he loved her like the sister he'd never had.

Until that day, he hadn't thought he would ever hear her voice again.

"I am too, Pans," he whispered.

He wanted to reach out and hold her then, if only to reassure himself that she was actually there, though he didn't bother to try. He couldn't, not with his hands restrained...

He blinked, then gritted his teeth and let out a small breath of frustration.

His hands weren't perpetually bound anymore. He could.

He wrapped his arm around Pansy, and she snuggled next to him, shifting slightly. He had almost forgotten what this felt like - close, gentle human contact. All he'd ever felt of it in two tortuously long years were the times Peia had visited him during the previous academic year and would take his hand… until Hermione had begun helping him.

Draco swallowed and forced himself not to think of the sensation of her fingers carefully holding his face, his arms, his chest as she gently but reliably made the excruciating pain everywhere - everywhere, it seemed - fade and disappear. He knew she wasn't interested anyway (frankly, he couldn't think of any reason between fire and the five elements of why she would be, not now), and this was the very last time and place to be thinking, wanting things he could never have-

Suddenly, fingers that were not his grazed his cheek.

He cringed backward, panic jolting through him like a shockwave.

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" Pansy whispered, immediately pulling her hand back. "Does it - Does it still hurt?"

Draco squeezed his eyes shut, his heart pounding. He knew what she was talking about, and the very thought of the extremely visible mark Weasley had burned into his face made him sick.

Swallowing back bile, he said quickly, "You know, I'd rather we talked about something else. Anything else."

"Oh - yes, of course! I'm so sorry, Draco, I didn't mean to make it worse…"

He shook his head to wave off her apology before realizing that in the faint light she probably wouldn't be able to see it. He sincerely hoped his swift brush off of her concern hadn't hurt her feelings, but he truly hadn't expected her, and Evans, for that matter, to examine the scarred side of his face like he was a deformed species of skrewt quite as much as they had, either. Whether horror or pity or no sympathy at all, the extended stares made him incredibly uncomfortable.

"What about the others?" he forced himself to ask, keeping his voice as hushed as hers. "Do you know if any made it out? Blaise?"

She shook her head. "Most didn't, I don't think. Everyone we know - so many people, Draco - they're all on a list of — of House-Witches and Wizards. Hermione copied it from the library. It's - it's awful." Her voice shook with the pronouncement, and she paused. "I think… I'm fairly certain Blaise is at Hogwarts."

An odd combination of hope and dread swirled within him - hope that Blaise was so nearby, dread at the conditions in which he was likely being forced to live. He swivelled his head toward Pansy, her form barely visible in the ebbing darkness of the coming dawn. "Merlin. He isn't — With who?"

"I — I don't know. It isn't like that, I don't think." She sounded surprised by the question. "He's not a personal… servant, like you and I were. Hermione says most of the House-Wizards here seem to work in the kitchens, or do cleaning. I haven't told her or Harry about him yet. I just… I hate to ask them to do something about it. I mean, what could they do, Draco, without drawing even more suspicion to themselves?"

Draco's hands gripped the pillow beside him. The position they were in was bloody agonizing: so close, so close to the ones they cared about, yet so impossibly far that a permanently insurmountable barricade may as well have been erected between them. And to not have magic through any of it...

Pansy was right - what could they do? Even though this, right at this moment, felt almost like normal, like Life Before, if they so much as stepped outside this common room, Draco was very aware they would both be considered state prisoners without parole, with the impotence of Squibs to boot. That knowledge, the utter powerlessness of it, was like a five-ton weight indelibly embedded atop his chest and shoulders.

Her voice dropped slightly. "I think - I'm not sure, but - I think Hermione's trying to find a way to get back to her world."

Something dangerously close to his heart abruptly twinged. Dully, Draco stared into the very faint light of morning as Pansy continued, "I mean, she's never indicated she is to me, and she's helped so much already that I'm grateful, I really am. But she's barely left the library since she got here, even to sleep. Draco… what if she does?"

The extreme precariousness of both their situations if Hermione were to leave caused his stomach to roil, and he tried not to think about how he had felt hardly a day earlier when he'd thought she actually had. But knowing that she was actively searching for a way back caused a different kind of pain inside him.

After a moment, he shook his head at himself, disgusted; if anything, he had needed to hear this unsurprising revelation. Hermione was smart, and good; of course she wouldn't want to stay here any longer than she had to. She hadn't asked for this dark, oppressive world, and she certainly hadn't deserved it either. He himself had physically hurt when, only hours earlier, she had sunk to the ground and wept… hurt because he understood how much she must have missed the place she had come from, and hurt because he knew that helping him had only made her situation more stressful and dangerous rather than less.

"I can't blame her, can you?" he asked hollowly. "If I had lived in her world and was sent here, you can bet I'd do everything in my power to try to get back there, too."

"I know." He heard a soft, mirthless breath of air jet out her lips. "I just wish we could go with her."

Draco closed his eyes and took her hand again.

So did he.

More time passed before Pansy glanced at him curiously. "How did you know? That her memories would affect Harry like - like they did?"

A very faint smile pulled at his lips that Draco couldn't restrain, nor could he help the fleeting tug of satisfaction he felt at the memory of the usually iron-faced Gryffindor's unexpected but positively impressive regurgitation that rivaled that of a mother Hippogriff feeding her chicks. Once Evans had caught his breath, he'd glared fiercely at them all (except Pansy, who he couldn't even face), spat, "This never leaves this room," and tromped off to his suite. Draco was surprised he'd even been allowed to sleep there that night.

He only hoped it had helped the situation more than hurt it.

He remembered then that a question had accompanied the amusing reminder, and explained, "Yesterday, when I… went up to her dorm. She…"

He hesitated. He knew how much time Pansy had been spending with Hermione, and he didn't want her to feel hurt that Hermione had opened up to him and not her. "…she might have told me a few things."

"A few? I think she told you a lot. Much more than she told me." For a moment, Pansy sounded despondent, but then she shook her head. "I can't even imagine what she's dealing with. It must be so hard for her to know who's on her side when everything here's so different from what she knows. When we're even different from what she knows." She twisted toward him, her eyes wide. "She must really trust you."

Draco blinked and shrugged, trying to ignore the uncomfortable squirm in his stomach those words elicited. Hermione's question from the night before rang in his ears, after she had stopped crying and they were sitting on the floor of her bedroom and he was still holding her loosely while wondering if the appropriate thing would have been to let go. But he didn't, not until she pulled away herself and looked closely at him.

"Draco," she had asked, "...who do you think I am?"

He hadn't been entirely certain of how to answer her.

More morning light had begun to creep into the room via the ceiling. Pansy drifted in and out of sleep against him as the room brightened, while he stared unseeingly at the thankfully unlit black coals in the hearth, trying not to think about the ceaseless ache in his thigh now that he had nothing else to focus on.

"Draco…" she murmured suddenly, stirring beside him.

Her worried tone caused him to sit up and focus down on her fully. "What is it?"

She stared forward at the fireplace. "Tom and Bella aren't on any list." Her voice wavered. "Do you think they're… dead?"

Almost immediately, Draco had the opposite thought — What if they weren't? If anyone could have managed to escape the Final Suppression, it would have been Aunt Bella and Riddle. And if they had been killed, certainly the Sovereignty would have celebrated their deaths to the point of excessiveness, wouldn't they have?

Not that it mattered, he supposed — he doubted even Riddle had the power to undo what had been done to them — but the idea that the legendarily powerful Resistance leader and his aunt might have gotten away was comforting, somehow.

He squeezed Pansy's shoulders reassuringly with the arm he had wrapped around them. "I think Peia'd be able to tell if her mum weren't alive anymore, don't you?"

Pansy brightened. "Oh, I didn't think of that. You're right; of course!" She paused, nibbling on her lip, before she looked back up at him. "I just — Draco, that awful day — what happened?"

His mother's surprised scream pierced his memory. His eyes abruptly began to burn, and Draco promptly squeezed them shut.

He was surprised the question hadn't come sooner.

Lowly, he said, "Someone betrayed us, Pans."

For a moment, only silence met his words.

"Who?" she finally whispered, sounding horrified.

Draco shook his head. "It could have been anyone." The inexplicable mystery had eaten away at him since the very day of his capture, and the frustration he felt suddenly bubbled into his voice. "Everyone knew about the plan, they just couldn't say anything about it. But as soon as my mother — as soon as they had —" He felt ill, and he trailed off and cleared his throat, struggling to voice the words he knew he needed to say. "Once she was - dead, the First Viceroy got a message about it almost immediately. At that point, any one of them would have been free to tell her that information. Anyone."

Tears shone in her eyes. "But why? Why would anyone who was already leaving want to prevent their own escape — want to leave us all to this?" She gestured around her with her hands, and he knew she meant their imprisonment.

He again shook his head limply. "You know how many conservatives thought we should stay. All I can guess is that it was one of them."

"But they weren't told the plan, were they?"

He shrugged tiredly. "Perhaps they overheard. Or pretended they supported the idea so they'd learn everything they needed to."

She was quiet again for a long time, while Draco tried not to focus on the memory of the nightmare from which he'd only just jolted awake.

"I'm so terribly sorry about your mum," she whispered eventually. Her shoulders had stiffened, and he knew she was trying not to cry.

Draco's throat tightened, and he nodded tautly. Even two years later, it was one of the few actions he could manage in response. "Me too," he croaked hoarsely.

"Draco?" Pansy asked much later, after the room had become so filled with light he expected either Evans or Hermione to emerge from their respective dorms at any moment, "How long do you think this is going to last?"

He knew what she meant, and shook his head and sighed. "I don't know."

Pansy was staring off into the fireplace, her gaze troubled. Perhaps it was because he'd just been thinking of his mother that he knew exactly what Narcissa would have exclaimed if she'd seen the both of them:

Chin up, darlings! We aren't at a funeral! Life has plenty of hardship, it's true, but look at you now! You are together. You're alive. And if that's all there is - then it is enough.

The wisdom and hope that the memory of her presence gave Draco had been one of the few things that had kept his spirit alive in a place where constant suffering threatened to smother every ounce of life and joy from his soul.

It was in those darkest, cruelest places that he had discovered the truth of the counsel she'd given him in their flat so many years ago: the tiniest, simplest moments of peace, of kindness, even of love, held more meaning and worth to him than anything else the world could ever attempt to provide. Indeed, those moments were so rare as they were sacred that he'd found they were always cause for celebration when they occurred - or, at the very least, some degree of hope or buoyed spirits.

No, he decided, Pansy's face was unacceptably despondent if one considered they were somehow together again, and in a safe and decent place, even though he had no way of telling how long any of it would last.

He elbowed her lightly. "You know what that means, don't you?"

When Pansy looked over at him questioningly, he turned toward her fully, a mischievous grin tugging at his lips. "We've got loooads of lost time to make up for while we're here."

Immediately, she tensed. Her blue eyes studied him suspiciously. "Draco… Draco, no…"

When his hand shot out toward her right side — her only side he knew was ticklish — she jerked away from him with a small shriek. "Draco Malfoy, you prat!"

Reconfiguring the Marauders' Map turned out to be a much simpler task than sabotaging it.

As the light of morning peeked through her windows, Hermione toiled through the now-familiar structure with only half the focus she'd needed to muck with it weeks earlier. She'd set to work on it as soon as she'd risen, if only for the purpose of throwing it in Harry Evans' face so he could see exactly where she was at all times and steer clear of her as much as she wanted to avoid ever running into him.

Pansy's bed had been empty, and Hermione had guessed she was with Draco.

Draco.

At the memory of last night's emotional breakdown, Hermione wanted to bang her head against something hard, but the only thing available was the plush mattress, which would defeat the purpose of the urge entirely.

Except for the time she was seven and had come home from school to find her very first pet, a chubby hamster named Rex, dead in his hamster wheel (she'd wailed to her parents for hours while they'd buried him under the plum tree in the backyard), never in her life had Hermione lost it completely in front of anyone — never, not even Harry during the Horcrux search, though she'd certainly cried plenty of times then. But when she had, she'd always walked away, found her own space, did what she'd needed and composed herself before returning. Even though Harry and Ron must have known what was happening, they had rarely interrupted her.

And that had simply been crying.

Last night had been something different altogether.

Looking back on it, Hermione likened what she'd experienced to the terror of being lost in utter darkness near the edge of a cliff, the sound of waves crashing all around providing no indication of how to retreat... and unwittingly stepping into thin air. It was the closest she had ever come to allowing herself to descend so deeply into depression, blind panic and soul-sucking despair that her very sanity was threatened alongside it. Without a doubt, it had been one of the most frightening things she had ever experienced, and she reluctantly had to admit…

She was grateful Draco had been there. Even though he still hadn't had any idea of who she really was or why she was here.

Meanwhile, Harry Evans was prepared to crucify her with his gaze alone, even though she'd already told him the truth of her history and her good intentions.

And Draco had been…

Well, Hermione couldn't deny it. Draco Malfoy had been wonderfully sensitive, to the point where even she had sensed his concern. The minute she'd stopped crying and found she could actually breathe and think clearly again, she'd had to ask,

"Draco… Who do you think I am? I've told my story to two people, and neither of them have accepted me like you have. Why?"

He hesitated. "What do you mean?"

She shrugged. "When I told Pansy, about who I am, really, I got the impression she thought it was just an alias, that she was just waiting for me to turn into some conservative spy and, I don't know, break her out, I suppose. And Harry - Morgana, he's interrogated me like the bloody Inquisitorial Squad for days. You don't even know why I'm not My anymore, or my motivations, but you haven't asked me a thing about it since the day I arrived."

He looked down at his hands. "I think… I'd rather you told me," he said slowly. He glanced toward her briefly. "I reckoned you'd do it when you were ready, if you wanted to."

She shook her head fervently and wiped again at her swollen eyes, sniffing. "You'll think I'm mad."

"I won't." He looked back at her earnestly. "I swear to you, I won't."

He sounded so sincere that she stared at him, searching his genuine gaze for any indication that he wasn't truly interested in, or might be severely judgmental of, what she was suddenly very ready to - no, needed to - say.

She found none.

So she told him everything.

About Harry, and Ron, and how words could not describe how close the three of them were. About wise old Dumbledore who wasn't bad at all and a different Dark Lord named Voldemort who had once been called Tom Riddle, and how they had fought him for years and had only just defeated him when she had inexplicably been ripped here. She told him about the cruel, nasty version of him, even, and how all his acquaintances were horrific and prejudiced in her world but seemed to be the only good people here; how Snape was a mystery in both Universe A and this one, and how she didn't know why her parents were dead here, only that they were... and how much it hurt that the Harry of this universe still hated her so much.

The story simply spilled from her lips, and as it did she found she was unable to stop, even if she'd wanted to.

He'd stayed mostly silent but had asked a few pointed questions throughout her narrative that made it clear he was listening. At the end, when she'd been so worried he would turn into Harry Evans and despise her for simply being who she was, he only shook his head and said, "Even a mad person couldn't make up something that mad, Hermione."

And then he gave her a small, reassuring smile that told her more than anything else that he believed her.

The exchange of pure emotion between them had caused something to shift, and Hermione suddenly felt more comfortable sitting right where she was than she had felt anywhere else in the whole of her time in Universe B. To her incredulity, she actually laughed in relief instead of crying all over again like she'd feared she would, finally, finally feeling like herself again - like she wasn't about to split apart in a million different pieces.

"Merlin... what are you even still doing here?" She wiped her face one last time - the eyeliner and mascara and Merlin knew whatever else she slapped on every morning must have gotten everywhere - and nudged him slightly toward the door. "For heavens' sake, you haven't seen Pansy in years. Go be with her. I'm much better now, really."

For a moment, he didn't move, just studied her closely. Then he gave her another smile, his eyes kind, and nodded. "I'm glad."

He used the foot of the bed to pull himself to his feet, turning to go. Before he did, he looked back and waved his finger at her, his eyes initially teasing before shifting to seriousness. "Don't - ever… hold something like that inside yourself for that long again."

Hermione couldn't help but think about how different those words were from Ron's mournful exclamation of, 'Girls! Crying all the time!', and she smiled again. A moment before Draco reached the door, she shook herself from the memory of her world and called, "Draco!"

He looked back at her. For as quickly as she'd been comfortable moments earlier, she suddenly felt incredibly awkward and instead studied the Weasley sweater she was again holding in her lap after she'd shown it to him during her narrative. "Thanks. You know… For that."

His eyes softened. "I'm more than happy to listen to you. Anytime."

She snorted and shook her head. "I seriously doubt that."

The look he gave her then was anything but amused, and it stirred something within her that she was not prepared to examine or consider. "Anytime, Hermione."

"Hermione… Hermione?"

The very same voice jolted her from the memory. She blinked quickly to find both Pansy and Draco standing near her room's entrance.

"Oh - sorry about that!" Hermione shook her head, focusing on the pair of them.

Draco was already looking at her intently. For a moment she felt the urge to avoid his gaze, before she shook the peculiar sensation away, and instead thought about how strange it was to see the two Slytherins together. She'd gotten so used to spending separate time with their Universe B personalities that the sight of them beside each other immediately sent her mind back to the Pansy and Draco of Universe A.

And this Draco also had dark circles beneath his eyes.

"How was your night with Hogwarts' very own Hungarian Horntail?" she asked somewhat sarcastically. "No limbs lost in your sleep?"

Draco and Pansy exchanged a look she almost didn't catch before Pansy swiftly shut the bedroom door and Draco said slowly, "It… could have been worse."

"Harry threw him out," Pansy said matter-of-factly, coming back to stand alongside him.

Hermione sat up, her anger flaring. "He what?"

"Believe me, it was for the best," Draco said quickly, shooting Pansy a glare.

"The best?" Hermione echoed in disbelief. "Oh, of course it would be the best, for him. Where exactly did he expect you to sleep, the sofa? I hope he at least conjured you a mattress-"

"Hermione," he said firmly, holding up a hand with the slightest of winces, "If we're going to be perfectly honest, I'd much rather sleep on the couch than with Evans any day."

Behind him, Pansy snorted and stifled a giggle. For a moment, Draco looked exasperated, but the amused grey eyes that found Hermione's said otherwise. She couldn't help but meet his expression with a slight smile before he shook his head and looked back over his shoulder. "Your maturity is stunning, Pans."

"Sorry, I know, I know, it's just - The way you said it—"

"Perhaps you missed the part where I also said I would much prefer to sleep on the sofa."

Pansy continued to laugh at the idea of it, and Hermione smiled as she watched them interact. Their lighthearted, good-natured banter was like a breath of fresh air from the dark-themed conversations of her classmates that normally surrounded her.

Draco shuffled a bit closer to her and looked down, tapping his fingers on the bed. "What is this?"

Hermione followed his motion. The blueprint of Hogwarts reflected back at her on weathered parchment, even though she didn't fully recall the moment she'd finished fixing it. Well, at least she'd completed that job before she zoned out entirely.

"The Marauders' Map, of course," she said automatically, before she realized that of course he wouldn't have known what it was.

"Oh, that's right! You haven't seen it before, have you?" Pansy came up beside them and sat down on the edge of her bed. "Can I show him, Hermione?"

Hermione nodded and flipped the map around. Draco sat down too, and Hermione edged sideways to make room on the bed so they were all looking at it from a decent angle. Pansy quickly scanned the map with her finger, clearly familiar with its layout, then pointed at a moving dot labeled 'Susan Bones.' "See? It shows where everyone in Hogwarts is at all times. There's the Hufflepuff Basement..."

They studied the slowly budding activity there as Pansy continued to explain the basic principles of the map. It was still fairly early, even for a class day, and though many students were clustered in their dorms, some were starting to rise.

"Amazing," Draco said, tilting his head slightly to peer at some of the scripted location names. "I take it we would be on here somewhere as well, then."

"Yes. We… are right…" Hermione flipped the map over and easily found their location, pointing to the east side of the castle. "Here. The Central Tower." She laid her fingers on three dots clustered together with their names on them, then ran her fingers to the Head Boy's room and the dot that said 'Harry Evans,' the spiteful toad. "And this is…"

Abruptly, she noticed another label in the Head Common Room.

'Lily Evans' was hurtling toward her quarters.

Pansy let out a horrified gasp. "Is that…?"

Holy hell.