She sat on her bed the next morning staring down at the locket that was nestled between her breasts. Everything in her screamed out to pick it up and let Draco know the good news. And yet... She could not completely shake the price following through would cost the both of them.

It would become her responsibility to lure Draco over their side. To become exactly what she had been accused of. A treacherous conspirator in an attempt to save him from himself, even after she had agreed to let him figure out. And if she succeeded he would become a turncoat, his use relegated to informant.

Was being together worth losing some of the most integral parts of themselves? And if it was, how could she look him in the eye without telling him the truth when all it would do is push him away? Did she have the strength to lie to the one person she could still be honest with?

Pulling the ornamental case from its resting place, she watched as the tiny diamonds sparkled in the candlelight. Giving off the same impression of innocence that she seemed to, but she knew the truth... She was the same selfish fallen angel from the last four months who did what she wanted regardless of the ramifications. The one who had been willing to lose everything for the boy.

Hermione pressed the small clasp on the side and the top popped open, waiting for her message…

Her hand shook as she pressed the tip of her wand to the silver, imprinting what she wanted it to say.

Sat. at midnight

After a few minutes with no response she got up and finished getting dressed for the day. It wasn't until she was reaching down to grab her bag that metal heated her skin.

What? How?

A smirk lifted her lips as she sent her taunting reply.

Magic…

Choosing to ignore the almost instant and doubtlessly crude answer, she hitched her bag onto her shoulder and started down for breakfast.

-\/- -\/- -\/- -\/- -\/-

"How can they keep expecting us to act like none of this is happening?" Ginny fumed as she threw the newspaper back at her with a tad too much force.

"They expect us to continue to arm ourselves with knowledge so that we can handle what is happening!" Harry told her, his hand hesitating in the air above her shoulder. Unsure if it was okay to soothe her outburst or not. The girl's responding glare had it quickly disappearing at his side.

Hermione had to fight back the smirk that wanted to make its way across her face as she rolled up the offending source of anguish and tossed it into her bag. Taking one for the team she pulled the anger onto herself. "He is right, you know..."

"No... They keep us cooped up here so we are "safe" but let everyone else fend for themselves. We should be being trained to help!"

It seemed as if every morning they all held their breaths, full of anxiety until they found out who was the latest target and just how deep the wounds would go. And this morning had been particularly rough... A family of five, with a newborn baby, had been added to the list of victims meant to send a message.

"That is not their job, Ginny... I get it. I really do, but sending a bunch of teenagers into battle is only going to add numbers to the dead en masse." Hermione tried rationalizing with her. "Not all of us were able to get tutoring from Harry..."

"Exactly my point! They... We should be concentrating on expanding Dumbledore's Army instead of having us waste a year playing catch up because of Umbridge's ineptitude."

She tried breaking the tension with a joke. "So you pretty much want Harry to put his education on hold so he can teach DADA?"

"I didn't say that!"

"You kind of did." Ron interjected, willing to take some of his sister's heat until she burned herself out and apologized.

"Shut up Ronald! No one asked for your stupid opinion." The girl's cheeks flamed a dangerous color of red, indicating just how angry she was.

"No one asked for yours either." He snapped back.

Ginny surprised them all when she burst into tears rather than attack. She jumped up and fled from the table. Hermione quickly followed after her, weaving between students to keep up with the frantic pace. At the entrance way she was forced to take a hard right to avoid running into a group of Fourth Years and almost ran directly into someone. Trying to prevent the full on collision, she sidestepped again, her shoulder brushing against theirs.

"Sorry." The words came automatically before she even had the time to look up and see who she was speaking to. Intent on getting to Ginny as quickly as possible her glance was meant to be fleeting but immediately tried to root her place, making her stumble over her own two feet as they fought on what to do.

Draco stood there, his cold hard mask firmly in place for the audience surrounding them. However that wasn't the cause of her uncertainty to continue after her friend... This was the first time that she was within such close proximity to him since the night in the bathroom and it was painfully apparent that his stress was eating away at him and making him sick.

The dark sunken circles under his eyes made it look like he had been sucker-punched. Twice. All the color was washed from his features and when combined with the unusual unkempt state of his dress- he was reminiscent of a stand-in from some 60s zombie movie. All alarming signs at how long it must have been since he had slept last.

An uncomfortably hushed silence fell over those closest to them, waiting for the confrontation. Her mouth automatically said the required words. "Get out of my way."

"Or what? Is the big and bad mongrel going to make me?" For just a second an apology flashed in the flat gray eyes but was quickly squashed down with a hard smirk.

"Go to hell, Malfoy." She snapped, her jaw clenching so she wouldn't say what she actually wanted to.

"Already there." He said with a roll of his eyes before turning away, ending the charade and freeing her to continue after Ginny.

Which she promptly did, tracking her down in the nearest girl's bathroom. When she entered the girl was sitting on the floor underneath the line of windows that allowed the morning sunlight to brighten the shadowed corners, giving off a false air of cheerfulness to the otherwise distressing scene.

She made her way over and sat down next to her. Not saying anything but giving an unspoken confirmation that she would be there when she was ready to talk. Ginny sniffled and stubbornly glared at a particular tile that she had found fault with. It didn't end up taking long before a loaded sigh fell and the witch whispered. "I'm sorry..."

"I know."

"I... I just... They're killing babies! Babies, Hermione!" A new round of sobs racked the girl's thin frame as she hid her face against the knees she had brought up to her chest.

The air was sucked from Hermione's lungs as she reached over and wrapped an arm around the trembling shoulders of the friend who rarely showed this side of herself. "Shhhhhhh... I know."

"How are we supposed to act like that isn't happening?"

"We're not supposed to act like these barbaric crimes are not happening, Ginny." She said, not fully believing the words herself even as they crossed her lips.

Ginny finally lifted her head and stared her in the eye, the spark of her challenge mixed with tears caused her brown eyes to shine. "Then what are we supposed to be doing?"

"We are..." She trailed off, trying to find the right combination of words to appease the boiling anger inside of the other witch. "We are supposed to have faith. Faith that Dumbledore and The Order know what they are doing and that we will see a day when justice is dispensed for the victims."

It felt like a thick poison had coated the inside of her mouth, considering how her own faith was wavering but there was no reason to spread her doubt of their Headmaster. Not when it was so desperately needed for the fight ahead... She swallowed hard and gave Ginny a gentle squeeze. "It is going to be okay. Maybe not tomorrow... Or next year... Or a decade from now. But one day it will be okay."

"The same day that justice is dispensed?"

"Maybe..."

"Well... I cannot wait for the day every single one of those beasts are given the same judgment they have sentenced on others." Ginny's anger flared again, until it consumed any resemblance to the young girl Hermione had met so many years ago.

"Don't... Don't say that, Ginny. We are better than them."

"Are we really?" The girl's skeptical words chilled her to the bone and had her scrambling for the right answer.

"I hope so." She said honestly before rubbing Ginny's shoulder. "Come on. Let's get you cleaned up and go have some breakfast. Everything looks much more optimistic after some sustenance. Especially the caffeinated kind..."

A deadpan stare was the only response she got but there was no argument when she stood and helped the redhead up. She ushered her over to a faucet and turned it on, righting the temperature before stepping back so Ginny had enough space to wash. With one crisis taken care of, her attention shifted to the next.

"I will be right back." She said as she quickly locked herself in the closest stall. Pulling the necklace from the confines of her white button-up, she sat on the toilet to make her farce believable and sent a straightforward one word request.

Eat

Not having the luxury to sit and wait for a reply, she snaked the locket back into its concealment and rejoined Ginny at the sinks. After washing her hands she turned to the girl who was standing there staring at herself in the mirror. "You ready?"

"Yeah, yeah." Ginny's eyes flicked to hers in their reflection. "Thanks."

"Anytime." She reached over and laced their fingers together. "Now, how about we load up on carbohydrates to make ourselves feel better?"

A quick sad smile slowly morphed into a real one at the prospect of them overindulging on the decadent bits of the breakfast spread that awaited them. "That sounds like the best plan you have come up with in a long time!"

-\/- -\/- -\/- -\/- -\/-

It didn't take long for the somber mood to lift when they returned to the table. Between the pick up from the sugary sweetness provided by massive amounts of pancakes and the boys' efforts at keeping the conversation light, Ginny was back to her normal bantering self. Slinging playful insults with her brother and prodding Lavender on a salacious rumor about her favorite singer that had turned out to be true.

Anyone who looked at their group would think that everything was perfectly normal and the scene from earlier had never happened... Except for the fact that Hermione's eyes kept involuntarily flicking from her watchful eye on Ginny to the Slytherin table, checking to see if he was going to follow her advice. Each time her attention wandered, he was playing with the food on his plate instead of actually eating it, engaged in what looked like a heated discussion with his own little group of friends. When he left she hadn't seen him take a single bite.

The same routine happened throughout lunch- other than her anxious glances morphed into outright glares as her instruction was ignored. His blatant disregard for his health had her seeing red. Did the sacrifices of others to keep him alive and well mean so little to him?!

Her knee started to bounce as she fought with herself to stay seated instead of running off so she could send another message. There was no purpose in nagging... At least not until she could do so face to face on Saturday. He wouldn't be able to ignore her then.

"Wait! Muggles don't really believe that, do they?" Lavender's maddening shrill tone brought her back to the conversation.

"The children do." Dean explained from his spot nestled up next to Ginny.

Lavender shook her head while Parvarti voiced their mutual disbelief. "Wow!"

"You have to remember there has to be an excuse for the presents being hidden."

"So the parents explain it away with a giant bunny?" Lavender asked incredulously. Obviously thinking Dean was taking advantage of her lack of muggle knowledge.

Biting back her retort that the practice was based on ancient traditions that dated back to when the Mesopotamian Gods were worshiped, Hermione's gaze once again flitted over to her more prominent vexation. Who sat there staring off at something only he could see, completely absorbed, it was as if there weren't hundreds of voices echoing all around him.

"That sounds like a lot of work to get none of the credit." Ginny cut in.

"They have to make the holiday magical for their children somehow, right?" A defensive edge snuck into Dean's question, having been raised solely by a muggle mother. "It's not like they can charm an Easter Egg to hatch doves or whatever else..."

She risked another peek out of the corner of her eye and was caught off guard when her stare unexpectedly found his. He didn't look away from her brazen study but there wasn't much to read in the fixed mask.

"True..." Lavender conceded. "Being a muggle parent sounds like a pretty thankless job, if you ask me. They do all this work for different holidays and the good stuff always comes from some imaginary being."

Hermione ended up being the one to break their tense standoff by looking down at the empty plate in front of him for a second. His eyebrow rose slightly but he gave no other indication that he understood the overt message she was trying to send.

"I... I guess." Dean shrugged, the movement instinctively caused her attention to drift back to the group surrounding her.

"Aye, but they do it for the love." Seamus acknowledged.

The smile that started to lift her lips was quickly squashed by the look on Harry's face. A heavy reminder that not every child had guardians that cared, much less loved them. She was grateful that he was able to go to The Burrow this year for break instead of staying on so he could avoid the ugliness in the Dursley's home.

"Could you imagine any other reason you'd be willin' to wake up before dawn to stick sweets into odd places just so your screamin' imps can find them later?" Ron asked with a shake of his head.

Suddenly the world exploded in a rain of red and white and shrieks of terror. And for a moment she thought the impossible had happened, her hand even twitched to her wand…

Her eyes automatically twitched to each face at their section of table, checking for who had been wounded but found they had been covered in a splattering of fruit pudding and whipped cream. Everyone but her jumped up. Lavender and Pavarti still shrieking their dismay as globs of the sticky dessert fell from their hair. Ginny and the boys on the other hand, all reached into the pockets of their robes- ready to hex the culprit.

Within seconds the rest of the room picked up on what had happened and erupted in a deafening mixture of laughter and screams (from some of the younger years). The teachers, who had previously been seated at the front of the room enjoying a calm meal, quickly stood to better assess the situation but it was McGonagall's voice that rang out over the chaos. "THAT IS QUITE ENOUGH!"

Instantaneously every single student settled down and stared up at the severe witch who glared out at each table in turn. Her gaze fell on random students who dared to move, when she was satisfied that she had everyone's attention she finally spoke again. "Who threw that?"

Of course no one answered. All of them sat there silently staring up at her. Harry, Ron, Dean, Seamus, Ginny and randomly- a clean Neville; stood still as statues. Their wands pointed at an unknown opponent.

"As Deputized Headmistress when Professor Dumbledore is away, like tonight, I will ask one more time. Who threw that?"

The echoing silence hung in the air making it hard to breath from the thick tension.

"Hundreds of eyes and not a single pair saw something? That is regrettable." Professor McGongall said, her disappointment evident as she continued. "Unfortunately someone did in fact throw an..."

With a few flourishes of his wand, Professor Flitwick nonverbally cast a hovering charm. Once the offending object was a few feet in the air he quickly followed with a silent Scourgify causing the mixture of cream, berries and bread to disappear…

"An... apple." The tiny wizard squeaked, even though everyone in the room could plainly see the glistening green fruit.

"Yes, thank you. An apple at the Gryffindor table, like some dimwitted brute." McGongall reiterated. "I will not stand for such clownery, and until one of you comes forward to tell me who, there will be no extracurricular activities. Everyone will report to their commonrooms after dinner. The only exceptions are those of you who have express permission from your Head of House that says otherwise."

The murmur of displeasure at her proclamation quickly threatened to become outright shouts, so she raised her hand for silence and continued. "I understand that this may seem harsh but what if this inappropriate prank had gone wrong and it was hot soup that the apple had landed in? What if those innocuous berry stains were burns? No, I refuse to have another student harmed, particularly while you all are under my watch. I will make sure the suitable consequences are dispensed. Is that clear?"

Her uncharacteristic show of emotion calmed the crowd's reaction to the punishment. The witch took a deep breath before addressing the section of Gryffindor House that had been hit and then the room at large. "Lower your wands and go get cleaned up. The rest of you will finish your meals and go to your next class. Remember that my door is always open..."

After another long look around the room McGonagall walked down the aisle between tables and right out the open doors. As soon as the professor disappeared from view the crowd broke out in pandemonium. Some threw out names of the possible delinquent while others complained of the unfairness.

Hermione slowly stood, grabbed her bag and joined her sullied group of friends before they all made their way out of the dining room with their heads held high. An attempt at a bravado she wasn't sure they felt with everyone's eyes on them, following each movement of their advancement.

It didn't take long for other students to start to shadow them. A large swarm filed into the entrance hall, grudgingly listening to the instructions given and heading off to their next destinations for the day. No matter the level of dissent, there was no use in aggravating the staff further and they all knew it.

Halfway up the stairs she felt the unmistakable chill that raised the hair on her arms, an intuitive warning that someone was watching her... Closely.

She stopped climbing and looked over her shoulder, scanning the steady stream of bodies for the ogler. Even standing there covered in mess, she was mostly ignored... Except for the random annoyed glance at her unexpected halt, none of the students looked her way.

Until her gaze fell on the twinkling amusement reflected in the well known swirling depths of gray. Of course it was him... Leaned casually against the wall, he reached into the pocket of his robe as a titillating smirk flashed on his lips. Quirking his eyebrow in challenge, he brought out a bright green apple and took a large bite.

Her jaw clenched at the implication but she was able to keep any other tell from showing her indignation.

At least he was eating…

"What are you looking at Hermione?" Ginny called from a few steps up.

"Nothing!" She answered, turning away and quickly joining her.

"You sure?" The girl asked, glaring at the blonde head that quickly disappeared down the corridor that led to the dungeons.

"Just Malfoy being creepy Malfoy. Let's go." She said dismissively, starting the climb up to Gryffindor Tower again.

Ginny followed quietly, lost in her own thoughts for a long stretch of time before blurting out. "I think Harry is right and he is up to something, Hermione. Shifty little ferret that he is..."

Unable to contradict the obvious, she nodded and shrugged. "Good thing Harry is on the case then, huh?"

"Mhm."

A relaxed silence settled around them as they continued on their hike, allowing them both plenty of time to contemplate the same snake...

For her, more specifically on what the hell he had been thinking…