Song Inspiration: Graveyard - Halsey

Chapter 28

Draco had known this was a bad idea before they had left but now, with the four of them crammed together under Potter's blasted Invisibility Cloak (seriously, it all made so much sense now that Draco knew that the other wizard had one; it explained so much of what the trio had been able to get away with over the past six years), he felt vindicated in the knowledge that he had been right. He and Weasley were crouched over nearly in half considering how tall they both were, and even Potter was hunched over uncomfortably to try to keep their feet from showing beneath the edge of the fabric.

As soon as said feet had slammed into the ground in Hogsmeade, a horrid squealing sound began, echoing through the empty streets around them. Draco grabbed Hermione's hand and tugged her along, knowing that she would have grabbed Potter and Weasley to keep them all together. He dragged them all to hide behind a large crate that sat by the rear entrance of the Hog's Head. Sure enough, after only a few seconds had passed by, several men emerged from the buildings surrounding them.

"…got to be Potter!"

"No one else…"

"…stupid enough to show up here after dark!"

The voices echoed around them as the four crouched behind their makeshift shield, hardly daring to breathe lest they be discovered.

Suddenly, the back door of the Hog's Head opened and a face that looked eerily like their deceased Headmaster poked around the frame.

"Potter!" the Dumbledore look-alike whispered sharply, looking around for them.

He heard Potter take a deep breath, as if debating something with himself, before he flung the cloak off of his body. He heard Hermione groan in frustration, but clearly Potter had known what he was doing. Once he had appeared, the man had nodded and motioned to the opening behind him.

"In here, all of you," he whispered.

Hermione pulled Draco along with her and the two of them and Weasley followed Potter into the dimly lit bar. As they disappeared into an upstairs room, he could hear the older wizard arguing with one of the men who had been searching for them.

"…my damn cat out if I want to!"

Draco smirked to himself: the man had much more spunk and personality than their headmaster had ever possessed.

They heard the door slam shut downstairs, then the creaking of the stairs underneath the man's feet, before he appeared at the door, staring at them intently.

Able to look at him more closely now, Draco was able to spot several little things that differentiated the man before them from their former headmaster. The similarities were still uncanny enough that it caused his stomach to roil at the memory of what Dumbledore had asked of him, and what had eventually happened to the man as a result of his actions.

"Mr Dumbledore?" Hermione asked, and the man peered at her for a moment before nodding.

"Aberforth," he supplied before turning back to Potter. "What in Godric's name are you doing here, boy?"

Draco could see Potter bristle at the man's tone, but he answered anyway.

"We're looking for something that's in the castle," he said evasively. "Something that Dumbledore told us we needed to find in order to win this war."

"I see," the man said waspishly. "It always was Albus' way to send others to do his work for him."

"That's not true!" Potter said, vehemently defending the man.

"Oh, it isn't? So, I suppose that the job my brother assigned to you is perfectly safe, as befits someone who should have been under his protection?"

Draco scoffed at that, unable to hold it back at the memory of his own arrangements with Dumbledore, and Aberforth's bright blue eyes locked on him for a moment before the man continued to speak.

"See? This one here knows the truth of it. Tell me, Mr Malfoy," Aberforth said, surprising Draco at the familiarity with which the man spoke his name, "what did our esteemed warrior of the light ask of you?"

Draco looked down at his shoes, unwilling to answer.

"He asked Draco to stay hidden behind enemy lines when Draco came to him for help," Hermione supplied bitterly, "then told Draco that he had to commit murder."

The man's eyes turned to Hermione now, and he nodded.

"I won't deny that my brother wanted to do what he thought was right, Mr Potter," he said, finally turning to look back at Harry, "but he had a tendency of getting other people killed for the sake of his crusades, be they righteous or not. It looks like your friends," a wave of his hands to where Draco and Hermione stood side by side, "have certainly learned this from experience."

"Be that as it may," Potter said firmly, and Draco was shocked that he did not defend their fallen leader any further, "he gave me a task to complete, so I'm going to finish it. You can give up if you want to, but we," he motioned at himself and Weasley, then at Hermione, "will carry on."

Aberforth stared at him for several moments longer, his blue eyes piercing in their intensity. Then he walked over to a large painting of a young girl that took up the majority of one wall in the room.

"Go get him, please," he asked of the girl in the portrait, who simply nodded with a smile and a slightly vacant look in her eyes before she turned and walked out of sight.

"You should all sit down, rest while you can. He'll be here soon," he said, then turned and walked from the room.

When the door closed behind him, leaving the four alone, Draco turned to Hermione.

"You don't have to be angry with him, you know," he said, then clarified at her confused look. "At Dumbledore. I'm not."

At his words her brows furrowed.

"How could you not be angry with him, Draco. He asked you to risk your soul for nothing at all. He wasn't even willing to free your mother from You-Know-Who."

"Maybe. But he didn't kill me outright. I count that as a win," he said with a smirk.

Hermione did not find his words amusing and stormed away from him to stand beside Weasley on the other side of the room. Potter walked over to him.

"I never said it, by the way, but I'm sorry."

At Draco's look of confusion, Potter continued.

"I'm sorry that he didn't help you…it was wrong of him, and I honestly had a hard time reconciling the man that I knew with someone who would leave a teenager and a woman in a dangerous situation. So, I'm sorry that no one was there to help you, that he left you to face it all alone."

Draco appreciated the sentiment of Potter's words, but they weren't fully accurate.

"I wasn't alone," he said simply, looking at Hermione where she stood across the room.

Potter simply nodded, but before he could say anything else, Aberforth had returned. The man looked expectantly at the now-empty portrait on the wall, and Draco and the other three watched it as well. Suddenly a shadow appeared, growing larger and larger, before the frame swung outward to reveal…

"Neville!"

Hermione rushed at the other Gryffindor, as did Weasley and Potter, while Draco stayed back towards the back wall. The cacophony of voices filled the small room as the trio questioned Neville about what had been going on, what he had been up to, and why nearly every visible inch of skin was covered in cuts and bruises.

Finally, Neville noticed Draco standing at the back of the room and stopped, staring at him incredulously.

"Neville," Hermione said, "Draco is here with us. He's here to help us stop You-Know-Who."

"And he and Hermione are a thing," Weasley added, only the smallest trace of bitterness in his voice.

When Neville's jaw dropped, Hermione nodded and walked over to Draco's side to clasp his hand tightly in her own, her earlier irritation at his flippant statement about Dumbledore now gone.

After quickly catching them up to speed on what had been going on, as well as informing Aberforth that there would be a few more people Apparating into the pub, Neville motioned for the four of them to follow him.

They all clambered up into the tunnel behind the young girl's portrait and began the long trek to the Room of Requirement.

"Oi!" Neville yelled as he hopped from the tunnel and into the Room of Requirement. "I have a surprise for you lot!"

He stepped aside with a grin as Harry dropped out behind him, followed by Ron, and then Hermione. She noticed that Draco stayed in the shadows as the entire room erupted in cheers at the appearance of Harry Potter. She motioned him forward to join her as everyone else crowded around Harry and Ron.

"What in Circe's name is he doing here?" Terry Boot yelled out suddenly, pointing an accusatory finger at Draco.

Hermione moved to defend Draco but before she could get out a single word, Harry spoke up.

"Draco is with Hermione. He's helping us defeat You-Know-Who."

"That's bullshit," Ernie Macmillan said. "He's a fucking Death Eater."

"He's a spy for the Order," Ron said, looking at Ernie with a glare that dared the Hufflepuff to say something else. "And like Harry said, he's with Hermione. Do you think you know him better than both the Brightest Witch of Our Age and the Chosen One?"

Hermione was shocked. She could see by the slightly stunned look on his face that Draco was, too. She had been surprised that Harry had defended Draco, but when Ron had? She had been absolutely floored.

Suddenly, another voice pipped up from the back of the room, taking Hermione completely by surprise.

"They're right. He helped rescue me."

Luna Lovegood walked to the front of the group of students that stared at her in stunned disbelief. She smiled happily at Draco before walking right up to him and wrapping her thin arms around him in a hug.

"Hello, Draco Malfoy," she said airily, and Hermione watched with a smile on her face as he patted her on the back awkwardly.

"Hello, Luna," he said. "It's nice to see you again, although under much better circumstances this time."

The younger witch simply beamed at him, before moving to stand at Hermione's side.

Hermione listened as Harry described what they were looking for. Granted, there wasn't too much description to be given, and Hermione could see the frustration on everyone's faces as they tried to puzzle out what the four of them were there to find. After much discussion, and some input from Luna, it was decided that Harry and Luna would head up to Ravenclaw Tower together while Ron, Hermione, and Draco stayed behind in the Room of Requirement.

After what felt like hours but had probably only been about 30 minutes or so, Luna and Harry came back into the room. Luna's expression was more serious than Hermione had ever seen it.

"Headmaster Snape has summoned all students to the Great Hall," she announced to the room.

Draco, Hermione, and Ron all stood just inside the Room of Requirement. At Luna's announcement, Harry had insisted on joining everyone else in the Great Hall. No matter how hard the three had tried to convince him that it was exactly the last thing he should do if they were going to have any chance of finding the next Horcrux, Harry had been adamant.

"It's time to end this," he had said stubbornly. "I'm pretty sure I know where to find the next one, so we just have to destroy the diadem and the cup, and then it's just the snake left before we can take care of You-Know-Who. Doing it this way, on our terms, is our best chance."

So now the three sat waiting for the other shoe to drop. Instead of a shoe, though, it was witches and wizards that began to drop from the portrait hole behind them. Hermione watched in shock as people joined for the battle, one after another.

Kingsley Shacklebolt, Remus Lupin, every single member of the Weasley family apart from Ginny, who was downstairs in the Great Hall…the number of people arriving seemed to multiply with every second that passed until there was a rather large collection of witches and wizards gathered in the room. As Hermione filled everyone in on what was going on, Kingsley took charge of the group.

"Come on," he said to the group at large. "If Harry is confronting Snape, he may end up needing backup. We can't let him stand on his own."

The group left the room in a mass exodus, heading down to the Great Hall.

Through the large double doors, they could hear Harry's voice ringing through the large room and Kingsley pushed both doors open before striding in dramatically, a small army at his back. Draco stayed at the back of the group as they had discussed on the way down. While everyone had accepted the fact that he would not let Hermione go without him, they also knew that it could still be vital that his cover not be blown, so he would stay at the back unless he was needed.

Hermione watched as Snape took one look at their group before fleeing, and looked on in admiration as McGonagall immediately took control of the room. Suddenly, a piercing ringing filled Hermione's ears. Clutching her hands to her ears to block out the sound, she looked up to see everyone else in the room was similarly affected.

A harsh, high whisper echoed through the room, feeling as though it were whispered right into her ear.

"I know that you are preparing to fight... Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts... I do not want to spill magical blood. Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded... You have until midnight."

The silence that filled the room as Voldemort's words faded from the air around them was palpable. It didn't last for long, however.

"He's right there!" a voice tinged with terror echoed around the room as Pansy Parkinson pointed at Harry. "Someone grab him."

The quote from Voldemort is pulled from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, chapter 31.

sbz