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Chapter Text

---Preface---

An excerpt from “Traveling Through Time: Tips, Tactics, Tolerances” by Tilda Turner.

<<When performing a Binding Spell related to events in time, it’s essential to choose the leading event carefully. Shouldn’t that particular circumstance occur, the effects might be of catastrophic proportions. A small change in the path established could result in large differences at a later state. This is called the Snidget Effect, which in magical chaos theory refers to a sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which even an inconsequential change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can determine a chain of alarming events in the following states.  Imagine a storm destroying an entire city. That storm might have been caused by the flap of the delicate wings of a Snidget on the other side of the world, or rather, as per our case, a flap of wings that didn’t happen when you had anticipated it would. >>

PART ONE

1.

June, 1997

“We need to get you up to the school, sir. Madam Pomfrey…” Harry said, reaching for Dumbledore’s arm and pulling him up, his brows drawn together with worry.

“No, I need Professor Snape, Harry, he’s the only one…” Dumbledore coughed, leaning all his weight on Harry’s side. 

“Sir, you can’t walk. We need to knock on some door and ask for help,” Harry pleaded, looking around, desperate for an idea that wouldn’t come.

Dumbledore’s breathing was rattly, his frame shaking with each intake. Slowly, he looked up, his eyes traveling to the castle. He frowned, muttering something. 

“Sir?” Harry asked, but the old professor was lost in his thoughts, his eyes flitting back and forth over the castle towers.

Harry squeezed his arm and he looked back at him, as if he was surprised to see him there. 

“Sir, we need some kind of transport to go back to the castle,” Harry suggested and Dumbledore nodded, turning to the Three Broomsticks.

“Rosmerta…she always has spare brooms lying around, just…just Accio a couple Harry, will you?” he mumbled, his legs quivering under him.

Harry took out his wand and summoned two brooms that soared towards them from the alley behind the pub. 

“Put your cloak on, Harry, in case someone is up late,” Dumbledore instructed, mounting on his broom. Harry did as told and kicked the ground a second after the Headmaster. He flew close to him, ready to grab him should he falter, but it seemed Dumbledore was regaining some of his strength, a glint of determination shining in his gaze. Harry didn’t know what, but something was up. He had a weird feeling, a prickle on his skin, like the aftermath of electric current cursing through him. 

As they approached the castle grounds, Dumbledore muttered under his breath in a weird language. Harry’s broom shivered in his hands as they silently swooshed past the wards Dumbledore had placed on the castle. The Headmaster angled his broom up, towards the Astronomy Tower. They landed past the ramparts and Harry immediately took off his cloak while dismounting. He was at Dumbledore’s side in an instant, supporting him while he massaged his chest, a grimace pulling at his thin lips. 

“Harry, go fetch Severus. Don’t talk to anyone else, just bring him here and…” Dumbledore was cut off by the door bursting open, a shadow of billowing robes hurrying out of the spiraling staircase.

“I’m here, Albus,” Professor Snape drawled, reaching him and grabbing his other arm. He never looked at Harry, his cold gaze focused on the Headmaster, examining his pale face and ragged breath.

“Severus, right on time,” he mumbled, patting his hand with his blackened one. “Is the castle quiet?”

Snape nodded, his mouth clamped shut, but Harry swore he could see a muscle tick in his jaw. He couldn’t observe further, because Dumbledore faced him, his piercing blue gaze fixed in his green confused one. 

“Go back to your dorm, Harry and don’t say a word to anyone just yet. We’ll talk in the morning, I’ll send for you as soon as I’m rid of that foul potion. Now go, put your cloak on.”

“But Professor, you need to go to the infirmary,” Harry started, but Snape turned, his eyes reduced to slits of pure hate. 

“You heard the Headmaster, Mr. Potter. Go to your dorm, he will be taken care of,” he hissed, venom and impatience lacing every syllable. Harry ground his teeth, hoping to show just as much hate in his gaze, before turning to Dumbledore and nodding. He took his cloak from the ground, donned it, then stepped through the door and closed it behind him without a backward glance. He slipped a hand through  the back pocket of his jeans and took out an Extendable Ear, placing an end right under the door and holding the other to his ear, unfurling the twine while he noisily stepped down the stairs. When he reached the door, he pushed it open and closed it again, remaining hidden on the final step. He waited for mere seconds before Snape spoke.

“How do you feel? What did you have to face?”

“A weakening potion, with hallucinating properties. My lungs and stomach burn, but I will survive, I think.”

There was a ruffle of fabric, then a stopper uncorking. “Here, drink this, it will contain the spreading. I need to brew something more specific, though, and run a diagnostic…”

“I’ll be fine, Severus. Tell me what went wrong here. I was expecting a Dark Mark over the tower. What happened?”

Harry held his breath, eyes slightly widening. What?

After a split second, Snape sighed. “I don’t know. When I didn’t see them arrive, I went to the Room, but Draco wasn’t there.”

“Where is he?”

Silence pressed on Harry’s ear. 

“He’s disappeared, Albus. He’s not in the castle, my wards cannot sense him.”

Silence again. Harry frowned. What were they talking about? And where was Malfoy?

“Did you hear from your friends? He isn’t with them, I presume.”

“I just got an owl from Alecto. They couldn’t get through the cabinet, it didn’t work, so the mission was aborted. But they want an explanation to feed to the Dark Lord. He’ll be furious as soon as he finds out.”

Harry went cold. Was he referring to Voldemort? What mission was Snape on about and why was Dumbledore disappointed it hadn’t worked out?

Dumbledore paused. “You have a theory.”

Snape took his time to choose his next words. “I think the cabinet didn’t work. Draco panicked, because the Death Eaters weren’t coming through and he stepped in to try it. I believe he’s stuck in there, Albus, because he didn’t repair it properly.”

Death Eaters? Malfoy had been trying to get them into Hogwarts through a cabinet? How? 

Dumbledore mumbled. “This is quite unfortunate, Severus.”

What?

There was a charged pause, Harry could almost picture Snape’s confused look when he spoke again, because he was just as dumbfounded.

“Unfortunate? The boy is missing, Albus, and he was, is , a crucial element of the Dark Lord’s plans, as well as ours! He might be in serious danger there. It’s not just unfortunate, it’s a deadly situation.”

When Dumbledore answered, it was like he was talking to himself, doing some kind of shopping list. Harry’s skin raised with goosebumps.

“We’ll have to come up with a good story, a believable one. And we’ll have to rethink the plan from here. I still have some time left before the curse from the ring eats me alive. I have a brilliant mind, Severus, we’ll find a solution. Let’s go to my office, you have to write back to Alecto before she gets suspicious.”

“What about Draco? How do we get him out?”

“We don’t. He’ll be much safer lost in there than facing the consequences of his failure. Besides, the Unbreakable Vow links him to you. Should he be in danger, you’ll feel it and we’ll worry about it if or when it happens. Now, help me down the stairs, Severus. We have much to do.”

Shocked to his core, Harry pulled the twine and opened his door just as the two professors opened theirs. He stepped in the corridor and turned the corner, waiting for them to get down and walk in the opposite direction, before heading towards Gryffindor Tower. His heart was thumping so loudly in his ears, Harry could barely hear his footsteps on the marble floors. What the hell did he just witness? 

He had known Malfoy was up to something, right from the day they had followed him and his mother in Knockturn Alley. He had known he was playing around with something in the Room of Requirements, but this? Getting Death Eaters into Hogwarts, where his friends and innocent children were? It sounded a bit much even for Malfoy. And why on Earth did Dumbledore know about it and had done nothing to stop it? Why was the Headmaster actually disappointed the plan hadn’t worked out? 

Dumbledore had asked him to say nothing to anyone just yet, but he couldn’t keep such a terrible secret to himself, especially since he didn’t understand what was actually happening. He needed Ron and Hermione, he needed to make sense of that pile of information and he had to do it now. 

When he crawled out of the hole and into the common room, his friends were sitting on the couch. Ron was half asleep, his head resting on Hermione’s shoulder, mouth slightly open. Hermione looked up from the book she was reading, a frown pulling immediately at her brows.

“Harry! What’s going on?” she gasped, getting up. Ron stumbled and jerked up as well, eyes opening in confusion. Harry bunched the cloak and threw it on an armchair, before pacing in front of the fireplace, too on edge to sit.

“I don’t know exactly, but it’s huge. And it’s dark,” he said. Then abruptly stopped and turned to face them. 

“Malfoy is missing.”

Chapter Text

2.

September, 2001

Breath.

In and out.

In and out.

In and 

Three years and six months since she’d seen Harry’s green eyes, fixed into the void, up towards the dark ceiling of Malfoy Manor.

Two years, one month and sixteen days since Ron had looked up from the hole in his chest, his gaze confused, as blood spread out on his shirt. Since Theo had run behind her, taking a bullet while asking her to make things count. Since Arthur’s body had fallen to the ground like a rag doll. Since Lupin had sacrificed himself to let them escape. 

Five months and ten days since Fred had left her alone, drained of any fighting spirit, broken beyond repair and tired of trying. 

Three months and three days since her last letter to Ginny, begging to stop asking her to leave England behind and start a new life somewhere else, somewhere safe, because nowhere was safe and she had to rectify that. She had to make things count.  

Four years, one month and one week since she’d last seen her parents, since she’d erased herself from their minds. 

Hermione stopped and bent forward, her hands resting on her thighs. Her heartbeat drumming into her head, her breaths coming out in sharp bursts, one  after the other. She straightened and pushed back the flyaways that had escaped her ponytail, some stuck to her damp forehead and cheeks. She closed her eyes and tilted her head to the sky, blocking out a perfect dawn smearing low clouds with streaks of gold. 

She tried to steady her breathing, pushing away all those numbers and painful memories attached to them. She had to stop doing this, remembering. Every single image from the past four years was tainted with blood and tears and desperation she felt that she could have avoided. The guilt, eating at her soul like a disgusting parasite, was always fighting to get to the surface and most days it was impossible to squash. Usually, running was a temporary solution to pull her away, out of the grim reality that was closing in on her. But some days, like today, it wasn’t enough. She had tried to run faster around the Black Lake and along the tree line of the Forbidden Forest, pushing her body to its limits. Her chest was aching and her muscles were burning like hell, but her memories were always faster, her sorrow stronger, her guilt tougher. 

Hermione dug the heels of her palms into her eyes.

“Fuck,” she cursed, shaking her head. She might as well accept defeat and go back to that fucking cabinet. Maybe working all day on it, holed up in the crammed, messy Room of Requirement, without breaks nor results, would be sufficient  punishment for her battered mind. 

She finally opened her eyes, glancing at the pinks and lilacs unfurling over the lake and reflecting on the still waters like a painting of old times. She huffed and turned towards the castle, mentally cursing nature for being able to flaunt such beauty at her, despite all the darkness she had in her heart. As if it was enough to make her forget, to make her heal the rips and cuts in her core. She would always be bleeding, her invisible wounds oozing black venom that no antidote could cure. 

Hermione trudged up the slopes and reached the entrance arch, her gaze fixed ahead, unseeing. Her head was full of noises from her school years, laughter and cries and giggles. But her heart was deaf, closed against any further possibility of pain. She was drained. She was alone, as she wanted to be. Because she didn’t have anything left to give, so she didn’t want to take.

The castle was quiet when she went past the Entrance Hall, the hourglasses of the four Houses covered in a thick layer of dust. The rubies and emeralds didn’t gleam anymore. Hermione took the stairs two at a time, heading up to the fifth floor. She needed a bath to wash away the sweat and fatigue of her morning run before getting to work. 

She was walking down the corridor to the Prefects’ Bathroom, when she heard a clatter echoing somewhere over her head. Peeves had disappeared long before and she was sure Dobby was in the kitchens, preparing the food she would only nibble on at lunch to fully eat it at dinner, feeling once again guilty for not honoring the elf’s hard work at taking care of her. 

She turned around and ran upstairs, only to find the sixth floor corridor empty. She frowned and took another flight of stairs to reach the seventh floor. She readyed her wand and paced the first corridor, turning the corner carefully, the memory of her second year encounter with the Basilisk making her skin crawl. When she reached the last turn that would lead to where the Room of Requirement was, she peaked around and her heart almost stopped in her chest. The armour she always moved in front of the empty expanse of wall, where the door usually appeared, was on the floor and someone was hovering over it. His long trench coat grazed the stones, while he bent down to pick the armor up with a pale hand, the other holding what looked like a gun, his white blond hair falling on his forehead. He cursed when a piece of the armor clattered to the ground again, the deafening noise bouncing on the walls.

Hermione stepped into the corridor, her wand pointed at him, unwavering, while her heart thudded at a million beats per second in her chest. 

“Drop your weapon, Malfoy.”

Draco Malfoy whipped his head up, his pale grey eyes wide. His hand let go of the armor altogether and he straightened, gaze fixed on her. He was just as she remembered him and yet entirely different at the same time. And there was something in his eyes that she couldn’t pinpoint, something she couldn’t place in a face like his. Something soft that couldn’t possibly belong to the likes of Draco Malfoy. As soon as she’d spotted it, it was gone and Malfoy raised his hand, pointing the gun at her. Hermione gripped her wand tighter.

“What year is it?” he asked, his voice low and rough, as if he hadn’t used it in years. Hermione faltered, but masked her surprise with an icy glare.

“Drop. Your. Weapon. Malfoy.”

“Tell me what year it is, Granger,” he replied, moving a step closer to her. 

Hermione focused. She didn’t know this version of Malfoy, coming from who knows where, after being stuck in the Vanishing Cabinet for over four years. She assessed him and noticed he was wearing ragged muggle clothes. And, of course, he was holding a gun, not a wand, pointed at her. His hair was messy, his jaw sharp and covered in a faint, barely-there stubble. There were lines around his eyes and purple bruises underneath them, but his gaze was sharp, not a hint of madness showing there. He was lean and strong, taller than she remembered, with broad shoulders and muscles jumping under the stretched fabric of his coat, but looked as if food hadn’t been a priority lately. She could relate to that.

“I’ll tell you if you drop your gun, Malfoy,” she countered, not giving in.

Annoyance flared in his gaze, but he slowly lowered his arm, never breaking eye contact. He didn’t say anything, but his expression of barely contained frustration spoke for him. Are you happy now?

In response, she lowered her wand as well, keeping her senses alert. 

“2001, September,” she said, studying his face carefully.

He frowned, his eyes narrowing in plain confusion. He looked at her, then looked around, as if noticing for the first time he was back in Hogwarts. 

“2001,” he whispered to himself, then looked back at her. “And you’re here,” he added, his voice gruff with emotions she couldn’t understand. Then, in a split second, his features hardened and he strode down the corridor looking ahead in determination. 

“Where do you think you’re going, Malfoy?” she asked, moving right in his line of steps, pointing her wand square to his chest. He stopped, the tip of her wand digging in his sternum. Malfoy looked down at the thin wooden instrument, then back at her, with cold indifference. For some reason, her heart started to beat faster.

“I’m going to London. I’ll kill Donovan and all his fucking minions. I’ll raze all the muggles supporting him, if it comes to that,” he stated, his words spilling out like chips of ice.

“You know about Donovan? How? Where have you been? What year do you come from?” Hermione fired, her wand pressing harder in his chest. 

He looked bored. “I have shit to do, Granger. We’ll chitchat when I come back,” he said, pushing the wand aside and striding around her and towards the corner of the corridor. When, not if. Bold show-off, that hadn’t changed. Hermione whipped around, rage mounting.

“Move another step and I’ll petrify you on the spot, Malfoy.”

He halted, his back to her. She heard him huff before turning to face her again, his stormy eyes as cold as ever.

“2005, Granger, that’s when I was. And believe me, it is a shit show for wizards there. Donovan is fucking running the world and the Grid is becoming permanent,” he spat out. 

The Grid . Flashes of experiments and suspicions, arguments and fights came back to the forefront. Gunshots, blood, her friends falling to the ground, screaming in pain. Lupin shouting to take cover, Ron lifeless on the ground. Theo smiling. 

Make things count.  

She swallowed and focused back on Malfoy, opening his mouth again. 

“So, I really need to go and get rid of him before he takes it to America, because when he does, there’s no turning back. And if memory serves me right, he hasn’t announced his negotiations with the Macusa yet, right?” he gritted out, stepping closer to her, hitting her wand tip with his hard chest on purpose. 

Hermione blinked. 2005. He had stepped through the Vanishing Cabinet, jumping back in an already established timeline. 

“You’ve jumped four years back. You need to lie down and rest, immediately, before you have a seizure,” she said, lowering her wand and grabbing him by the arm, already in down-to-business mode. Malfoy pulled away, as if she’d burned him, and glared at her, an angry grimace distorting his lips.

“What the hell are you on about? There’s no fucking time to lie around! I have to go and shoot him in the head, Granger, are you deaf? He’s going to destroy magic! Wizards and witches will die out!” he shouted in her face. Hermione held her ground, schooling her features in a cold mask of calm.

“I understand, Malfoy, I know what Donovan is doing, I’ve seen him start this thing. And if you think killing him is the solution, I’ll let you go. Tomorrow, after you’ve calmed down and the fabric of time has adjusted to your annoying presence.”

Malfoy scoffed and threw his arms up. “What does it even mean? When I stepped into the cabinet years ago, I went four years into the fucking future, Granger, and nothing happened! Why would this be different?”

“Because the future isn’t set in stone and when you travel forward in time there is space for possibility. When you travel back, though, the events are already written, so if the timeline senses you as a menace, it will get rid of you, Malfoy, especially if you jump back this far,” she explained, her lecturing tone of their school days kicking into place and fitting like a glove, even after years of disuse.

Malfoy laughed. He laughed in her face. “This is the biggest pile of dragon shit I’ve ever heard, Granger. Now, get the fuck out of my face, I’m busy,” he said, turning away without waiting for a reply.

Hermione fired a silent Stupefy right over his shoulder, red sparks blowing his hair near his left ear. Malfoy went rigid and slowly turned, his fingers holding the gun so tight they were white. 

“Calm down and wait until tomorrow,” she said, but it sounded more like an order rather than a suggestion. And Malfoy heard it as such. Slowly, he walked up to her until he was inches from her face, towering over her small frame.

“What makes you think you can tell me what to do, Granger? I waited years to come back here and murder that fucking idiot, and you of all people should be glad of that!” he seethed, his warm breath tickling her lashes. He was pale with contained fury and his eyes were knives glinting in the pale light of sunrise. “So, you either let me go or…”

He stopped, words trapped in his throat, and his free hand flew to his chest. He gripped the fabric of his shirt over his heart and grimaced, taking a step back.

“Malfoy,” Hermione gasped, reaching to steady him, his legs bending, knees hitting the floor. She knelt beside him, grabbing his arm.

“Malfoy, look at me!” she cried, a shot of panic cursing through her veins.

“I can’t feel my legs,” he gasped, gun dropping on the stone floor beside him. 

“Fuck,” Hermione muttered, helping him sit, his back and head resting against the wall. His eyes closed, he swallowed hard, his hands trembling.

“Open your eyes, Malfoy, stay with me here! You’re not fucking dying on my watch, after all the shitty hours I spent trying to repair your stupid cabinet,” she yelled, her hand grabbing his jaw and tilting his head towards her. Malfoy obeyed but Hermione instantly knew something was wrong, because his pupils were so wide they ate almost all the grey iris. 

“Why’s everything dark? Granger? I can’t see you,” he whimpered, lifting his hands to search for her in the darkness of his blind gaze. His long fingers found her cheeks and gently traced her face, trembling. A small sigh filtered through his chattering teeth. 

“Draco, fight it, please! I won’t let you die,” she said, her voice steady even if her soul was wavering. She turned to the empty corridor.

“DOBBY!”

Two seconds later, a small House Elf with floppy ears, a nose like a pencil and bulging green eyes, popped out of thin air and immediately rushed to Hermione’s side, concern hatched in his wrinkly face. 

“Dobby is here, Miss Hermione Granger! What can Dobby…” he stopped, a loud gasp escaping his mouth. Then a smile stretched his lips and he jumped up and down on the spot. “Miss Hermione Granger did it! She pulled Master Malfoy out of the cabinet! Dobby knew it! Miss Hermione Granger is the best witch in the entire world!”

“Yes, Dobby, but we’ll lose him if we don’t do something immediately. He is seizing, as I said he would!” she rushed out, locking eyes with the elf. Dobby’s face fell as he got nearer, examining Draco’s quivering body and his lost eyes. His breathing was shorter and he was getting paler and paler.

“Dobby brings the potion!” he said, nodding and preparing to Disapparate. 

“Wait! Bring a bottle of Firewhiskey as well. We need a conduit or the potion might not be enough,” she whispered, hoping that Malfoy wouldn’t hear it at that point.

Dobby disappeared with a loud crack and she turned again to Malfoy. 

“Draco, do you hear me?”

“Don’t go away,” he whispered, pain clear on his face. Hermione took his hand and placed it on her cheek again. He was cold and clammy. Shit. 

“I’m right here, Draco, I won’t leave you,” she promised, her heart beating faster. He shook his head and swallowed again, harder, as if his throat wasn’t working properly. 

“I’m sorry, Hermione,” he whispered and her stomach clenched. 

Draco Malfoy had never called her by her given name. 

There was something about this Malfoy she would have to work out. But it wasn’t the right moment. Right now, she desperately needed to save his infuriating life. 

Dobby reappeared holding a vial of purple liquid and a bottle of liquor, already uncorked. Hermione took the latter and looked the elf straight in his bright eyes.

“Listen carefully, Dobby. We’ll lie Draco down and you’ll keep his mouth open while we pour the potion and the Firewhiskey at the same time, is that clear?”

Dobby nodded, his ears flipping up and down furiously.

Draco’s breathing was shallow now and his eyes were closed. Hermione and Dobby dragged him on the floor. She gently slipped one hand behind the nape of his neck, keeping his head slightly up, so he wouldn’t choke on the liquid sliding down his throat. Dobby gripped his jaw, opening his mouth, and placed the rim of the vail on one corner, while Hermione brought the bottle to the other.

“At the count of three, Dobby. Ready? One, two, three…”

They poured and when the vail was empty, Hermione quickly removed the bottle. Dobby closed Draco’s mouth and held it shut, while she set the liquor on the floor and pressed her hand on his chest.

“Come on, Malfoy,” she muttered, willing his heartbeat to get stronger. 

Dobby pulled away his hand and started worrying the frail hem of his tiny vest. After what felt like years, Malfoy’s eyes flew open and he gasped for air, his hands stretching in front of him and grasping Hermione’s face. He held on to her like she was his lifeline and when his eyes finally focused on hers, he didn’t let go. He watched her, breathing heavily, his shoulders shaking. And there it was, that softness again, that seemed so odd on Malfoy’s sharp and angular features. Hermione surprised herself thinking it didn’t look bad at all, though.

But again, it lasted too little to dwell on it. His hands fell in his lap and he blinked, confusion draining away, as his breathing slowly went back to normal.

“What potion did you..”

“Reviving potion, with Firewhiskey as an amplifier. You might feel a bit dizzy for the next few hours. But at least you’re not dead,” she said, standing up and brushing away invisible dust from her knees. “Now, do you believe me?” she asked, holding out a hand to help him up.

Malfoy looked at her hand for a few seconds, before taking it and standing on his feet. He braced himself on the wall, his head spinning a little, but he could feel his legs and the light was back to normal.

“Still a pile of dragon shit. Real, yes, but shit anyways,” he grumbled, massaging his temples.

Hermione scoffed, letting go of him as soon as he seemed capable of handling himself, and took a step back. She felt the need to put some distance between them, the cold imprint of his fingers still scorching her cheeks. 

“You need to rest, whether you want it or not, Malfoy. You can’t go anywhere like this, let alone kill people with a very high level of security keeping them safe,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. 

Malfoy slowly nodded. “I guess I can give Donovan another day upon this earth before I blast his head open,” he begrudgingly conceded.

Hermione sighed inwards. “Great. Dobby will take you to a warm room where you can rest and shower. We aren’t keeping all the castle heated, so you won’t be sleeping in your old bed.”

Malfoy groaned. “Thank Salazar. I don’t want to go back there ever again.”

She narrowed her eyes in curiosity, but went on without prodding. “Hufflepuff’s dorm is in use, since it’s nearest to the kitchens, which is also where we eat. You’ll find me there when you wake up. You can have some food before you get going with your brilliant plan.”

A corner of Malfoy’s lips lifted slightly in a ghost of his signature grin. There, now he looked much more like the Malfoy she remembered. 

“Hufflepuff’s dorm. My, my, how the mighty have fallen,” he mumbled, already turning to walk away. 

Dobby sent a questioning look to Hermione and she nodded. Then, he trotted past Draco to lead the way.

“Malfoy,” she called, her defensive stance still tightly in place. He stopped right at the corner and only turned his head, the cool mask of indifference back on.

“You’re welcome,” she said. For saving your life hang silently in the air between them. He scoffed, shaking his head. He looked exhausted and somehow defeated, as if dying would have been a better outcome.

“Not in a million years, Granger,” he bit out, turning the corner and disappearing along the other corridor. 

Hermione stood still until the echo of his steps faded, then her shoulders sagged and she exhaled deeply.

Phase one of her plan was officially in motion.

Chapter Text

3.

“This is Master Draco’s bedroom. Dobby stole some clean clothes in the city for Master Draco,” Dobby announced, proud of his efficient actions, showing Malfoy a pile of jeans and shirts neatly folded on a bare mattress opposite a carefully done bed. Dobby snapped his fingers and the flames roared in the fireplace, warming the slightly cool chamber. 

“The bathroom is through that door, if Master Draco needs a shower. Dobby will be right back with a cup of tea,” he said, bowing so low his ears hit the stone floor. 

“There’s no…” Draco started to protest, but the elf had already disapparated with a deafening crack.

“Whatever,” he sighed and looked around. The four posters were draped with yellow and black curtains, the colors just a tad faded. Only one bed was made, fresh linen tucked under the mattress, covered by a neutral brown blanket. Thank Merlin for small mercies. 

He walked to the pile of clothes and picked up a white shirt, not really caring if the fit was right. He wouldn’t need it since he wasn’t staying. 

Dobby suddenly apparated behind him but he didn’t even flinch at the noise. Draco was used to masking pretty much everything. Years of squashing emotions down, of hiding his liabilities and his rage in favor of surviving, had made him the perfect picture of collectedness. He had merely faltered before, in the corridor, taken aback by the sight of her and the residual high of the jump. Warm brown eyes flashed in his mind, but he blinked it away.

“Three sugars, just like Master Draco likes it!” Dobby shrieked, walking around him until they were facing each other and he held the cup to him, a wide smile stretched on his thin lips. 

Draco looked at the cup, then at Dobby. “I’m fine, thank you Dobby. You can leave it on the nightstand.”

Dobby’s smile didn’t falter, but his ears quivered a little while he turned and put the cup down, right beside Draco’s bed. 

“Please, Master Draco, Master Draco has to rest. Miss Hermione Granger said it’s very important,” the elf said, wringing his knotty fingers in his lap, eyebrows drawn down low over his big eyes.

“If Miss Hermione Granger said that, it must be true. She knows it all, doesn’t she,” he muttered, shedding his coat and pulling out his weathered boots directly with his feet. 

“Oh, yes! Miss Hermione Granger is very clever and knows everything! She told Dobby weeks ago that Master Draco would have a seizure if he came back from somewhere in the future! Miss Hermione Granger said we had to be ready to calm down Master Draco’s pompous ass by force, that’s what she said!” Dobby explained, a knowing smile on his pleased face.

Draco snorted out a bitter laugh. “Of course she said that,” he scoffed, pulling his shirt over his head, showing translucent scars across his lean torso. The Dark Mark on his forearm was faded but it still jumped to the eye on his pale skin. Draco’s gaze absently passed over it, before turning to Dobby.

“Thank you for your help, Dobby. I think I’ll have a shower before taking a nap,” he said, an edge of quiet dismissal cooling down his already icy tone. Dobby didn’t seem to mind and nodded, glancing back at the cup of tea before disapparating on the spot. 

Draco shook his head and stripped down to his briefs, images of Granger pointing her wand at him crowding the forefront of his brain like weeds. If she was being sincere, she was the reason why he had been able to get through the cabinet again. And she had also saved his life. But why? To her, Draco was a Death Eater that had tried to get his lot into a castle full of innocent, underage children. Why on Earth would she want to have him back? Draco roughly knew what had happened in her past while he was gone. Not the details, but the general gist, and he couldn’t find one single reason for her to want him alive, after all his family had put her and her friends through. 

He stepped into the shower and let water spray on his head at full force. It was icy cold, stabbing his skin like knives, but he was used to it. He relished the pain, the shivers, the rush of adrenaline every time his breath caught. It meant he was still alive.

Finally, after what felt like a month, he turned off the water and stepped out, fishing a towel from a hook near the sink. He scrubbed his skin and hair, then wrapped it around his hips and headed back to his room, carefully avoiding the mirror and his reflection.

He searched through the pile of clothes until he found a fresh pair of underwear. He tugged them on and sat on the edge of the bed, raking a hand through his damp hair. He reached for his cloak and took out his wand and gun, then gently set the muggle weapon under his pillow. He focused his attention on the wand, twirling the smooth wooden instrument between his fingers. He waved it around his head, a murmured spell on his lips, and his white blond hair instantly dried. A relieved moan escaped his throat at the thrum of magic flowing freely through his veins again. It had been so long he didn’t even remember when he last cast a spell. 

Memories of the bleak future flooded his brain, his heartbeat spiking in his chest. His Occlumency shields were weak, maybe because of the time jump or the Firewhiskey in his body after a very long dry period, but he had to focus and slam them back in place, keeping everything inside his damn fortress. Otherwise, he would shatter, and he couldn’t do that. Certainly not here. Especially not in front of her. 

Draco looked around and saw the cup of tea, still steamy on the bedside table. He reached for it and cradled it in his cold hands for a bit, looking at the amber liquid gently swaying inside. He took a sip, the sweet taste of sugar smothering his taste buds. Gods, how long had it been since he’d had sweet tea? He drained the cup, hot liquid almost blistering his throat, then sighed deeply, his mind swimming with exhaustion. He laid down on the bed, the blanket slightly scratchy against his bare back, but he didn’t care. He was too tired to even move the covers. His head rested on the fluffy pillow and he moaned again. Merlin, how he had needed some comforts! He was still blessing the mattress for  sagging snugly under his weight, when his lids slid shut and he  fell blissfully into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

********

The Grid is becoming permanent.

Malfoy’s words had been pounding in Hermione’s head all day, echoing like a curse she had been anticipating for years. A curse to which she had been desperately looking for a solution that wouldn’t want to be found. 

Hermione flipped through a page of today’s Telegraph that Dobby had managed to fish out of a bin in his daily scurrying around the villages, searching for food. And searching for news, since Hermione was always after intel. Living at Hogwarts meant she had full access to magic. The Grid would never work there, due to the ancient and mysterious type of magic that made its very foundations. But Hogwarts was completely cut off from the rest of the world, so she needed information about what was going on out there, and Dobby was a very useful asset in that department. And in food stealing. Actually, Dobby was the best ally she could possibly ever think of. Since House Elves’ magic wasn’t picked up by the tracing web of the Grid, Dobby could go around and use his magic to stock up on food and discarded newspapers without anyone ever noticing. Hermione would never forget his haunted gaze when she’d arrived at the castle months before, how he had hugged her tight at the knees and wept on her jeans, moaning “Harry Potter’s best friend” between sobs. Her heart had broken all over again, the image of Harry’s lifeless body still plaguing her worst nightmares. 

Hermione inhaled deeply, blinking faster to keep her tears at bay. She had to shield her mind better, build her walls stronger and higher. She had to train  more and master her still new Occlumency skills. Especially with Malfoy around.

“GRANGER!”

As if summoned, Malfoy bellowed from somewhere behind the kitchens’ door, anger so heavy in his voice it seemed to seep between the cracks of the thick stonewall. She closed her eyes for a second and sighed.

“Here we go,” she muttered, standing from one of the four long tables that mimicked those in the Great Hall, and strode towards the door. She pulled it open and stuck her head out. Malfoy was aimlessly pounding on the wall, three paintings down the one that led into the kitchens. He looked furious, just as she had anticipated. When he heard the portrait open, he whipped around and faced her, eyes hard and flaming, like bolts of lightning in a storm. He was in her face within two strides, his long legs eating up the space between them. Even his walk screamed rage, and yet, when he was but mere inches from her nose, he visibly struggled to keep his emotions in check, nostrils flaring with strained effort.

“Your Elf spiked my tea with Dreamless Sleep potion,” he gritted out, his jaw clenched. Gods, his voice was so low the hair on the back of her neck rose.

“On my orders, yes,” she replied casually, eyes boldly fixed on his.

Malfoy’s jaw ticked.

“And he took my gun and my wand. Was that on your orders, too, Granger?”

“Actually, I did that myself,” she lightly corrected, crossing her arms on her chest. “By the way, there were pajamas in your stack of clothes, you know?” she hinted. Surprisingly, a corner of Malfoy’s mouth tilted up, a spark of cruel mischief lighting up his cold eyes.

“Did you enjoy the view?”

Hermione cocked a brow. “No, I didn’t have the time, I had to go through your pockets.”

Malfoy’s amusement evaporated, instantly replaced by even more fiery rage, his fists so tight at his sides that his knuckles were pure white.

“You, filthy little…”

“...Mudblood?”

“…bitch.”

Their eyes narrowed in surprise, and for a moment the silence was so thick it could have been cut with a knife. For a long moment, they studied each other, a mixture of curiosity and confusion, as if they had never met the other before, an echo of something untold and unlived ghosting in the air between them. Then Hermione blinked and the air shifted. 

“You had no fucking right, Granger. I want my belongings back, now,” Malfoy growled, getting even closer, the fabric of his black t-shirt grazing her forearm. 

“I’ll give you back your things after you give me some answers,” she countered, then turned and walked back into the kitchen. She sat at the table, going back to her newspaper, as if he wasn’t even there. After a moment of utter disbelief, Malfoy had no choice but to follow her inside, and slammed the portrait door behind him with unnecessary force. He took a chair in front of her and sat down, making as much noise as possible, then pressed his palms on the table and leaned forward, while Hermione carelessly flipped a page. 

“I could have given you the answers you seek with my wand in my pocket, Granger, you know? Or are you too scared the big, bad Death Eater would have cursed you as soon as he was awake?” he sneered, so similar to the boy she remembered. Her stomach clenched. 

“I was worried you would have fled the moment you were awake, Malfoy, to execute your master plan of being the savior of all wizard-kind,” she replied, then looked up from the newspaper and bore her gaze into his. “Or was that not your intention all along?”

His jaw tensed, just barely, but she saw it.

“It was, and I was right,” Hermione confirmed, turning back to the crumpled pages in front of her. 

Malfoy’s nostrils flared again. “It gets you off, doesn’t it? Always being fucking right?” he spat, venom lacing  every  word.

Hermione scoffed. “It’s actually a pain in the ass most of the time, Malfoy, and your childish sexual comebacks fly right over my head, so why don’t you cut it out and eat something? Then you can start by telling me where you have been and what’s going on in the future. The faster this conversation's over, the sooner you’ll be out of my face, right?”

Draco observed her for a second, taking in the hard line between her brows, the circles around her eyes and the closed expression that kept her face locked away. This wasn’t the girl he remembered from school, the one always laughing with her friends or jumping from her seat with excitement to answer a question. This woman cursed and jabbed back, pain constantly etched in her gaze so deeply it chilled his bones. Because he could actually relate to her and he wasn’t ready for that. He relaxed his back and inhaled, pushing his Occlumency walls higher. 

“Right.”

Hermione nodded and reached for her wand. It was keeping up a giant messy bun on top of her head and when she took it out, her massive mane of curls careened down her shoulders and back, unruly locks bouncing around her cheeks and neck. Draco swallowed hard, but she didn’t notice, her gaze focused on a plate levitating from the other end of the table.

“Dobby stole some beef today, you’re lucky,” she announced, placing the plate of beef stew and potatoes in front of him, a spoon gently dropping into it from over his head. Two slices of bread flew from a basket, alongside an empty cup. 

“Aguamenti,” Hermione spoke, filling it up under his attentive eyes. “It’s not spiked with anything, Malfoy,” she added, placing the wand between her teeth, gathering her hair up again with her hands, and skewering her bun back into place. Some locks had escaped their confinement, framing her face, making her look a bit younger and softer. When she looked back at him, he was still staring.

“What? Isn’t the dinner of your likings, Your Majesty? I’m deeply sorry, but beggars can’t be choosers these days. Eat,” she said, then turned her attention to a short article in the corner of the final page.

Draco sniffed the plate, searching for poison or recognizable potions, but couldn’t spot anything other than the delicious smell of tasty food. So he dug in and took a spoonful to his mouth. He had to fight a moan. He devoured the stew in minutes, then polished the plate clean, picking up each and every drop of sauce with bread.

“God, Malfoy, did you stop to chew it?” Hermione murmured, eyes wide fixed on him.

“I don’t remember the last time I ate meat before today,” Malfoy reluctantly admitted, then gulped down his cup of water. 

“Is it that bad in 2005?” Hermione asked. 

Malfoy rested against his chair and exhaled from his nose. 

“If you need to hide your identity and don’t have a real job, getting food is difficult,” he said, eyes locking with hers. They stared at each other for a few seconds in silence.

“What happened to you?” Hermione asked, her voice gentler.

Draco’s gaze dropped to the table. He pushed aside the empty plate and laced his fingers over the wooden surface. He looked fraying at the edges and even if he managed to keep his mask of indifference well in place, Hermione noticed all the little details that said it: the split skin around his thumb nails, the sharp edge of his tense jaw, the lines on his forehead, the shadows deep in his eyes. She noticed them because she recognized them, since she was used to seeing them in the mirror every time she looked at herself, disappointed. 

“You obviously know this part already,” he started, “but I was stupid enough to get stuck into that damned cabinet. I had to repair it and use it to let Death Eaters inside the school. Voldemort’s orders,” he said.

Hermione nodded. “But the cabinet didn’t work?”

“I tried to repair it for months, and I actually thought I’d managed to, at some point. But the night Dumbledore left the castle unattended, it didn’t work. I panicked and…” he paused, gritting his teeth. “I stepped in, to see if it was a problem of direction, if maybe it only worked from that cabinet to the twin in Borgin and Burke and not the other way around. But it didn’t. It was still broken, because when I stepped out, I was in an empty shop in a sunlit Knockturn Alley.”

Draco closed his eyes and hunched over the table, as if carrying his story inside him was a burden, weighing him down. “In Borgin and Burke there was only dust, so I walked out and wandered around, looking for someone. But there was no one, neither in Knockturn Alley, nor in Diagon Alley. The shops were empty, the windows broken in places and…Gringotts was a pile of rubble,” he said, never looking up.

“It happened in March, this year,” she explained, “Donovan asked the goblins to work for him, but they refused, so he bombarded the bank and killed many of them hiding inside. Then raided the place. Some goblins managed to escape, but the majority  were taken.”

Draco nodded. “I thought I was dreaming. I ran back to the cabinet, stepped in and tried to return to Hogwarts, but it didn’t work. I tried for hours, with no results. When I realized it wasn’t a dream and that I was stuck somewhere in a parallel world, I ran around like an idiot until I found myself in the alley behind the Leaky Cauldron, having a full blown panic attack and unable to breath.

“A woman heard me from the street and came to calm me down. I was lucky because she was a witch. She was Polyjuiced, and she explained to me where and when I was. She told me not to use my wand and sent me back to Borgin and Burke to wait, that she would join me with food and an explanation in a couple of hours, she said. And she did.”

Hermione frowned. “A witch? Did you know her?”

Draco shook his head, avoiding her gaze. “She said she had to keep her identity a secret, I only met her with her disguise on. But she helped me a lot. She explained about the Grid and Donovan, she taught me how to live like a muggle and use as little magic as possible when the tracing web was up and…” he sucked in a breath. “We planned to kill Donovan together.”

Hermione leaned forward. She had so many questions and doubts she wanted to voice, but kept her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She didn’t want to risk annoying him to the point of stopping. His words were too precious. 

“It went to shit, Granger,” he announced, bitterly, raking a hand into his white blond hair. “We planned and planned, but it was all for nothing. She died,” he whispered, and Hermione was sure there was pain in the low undertone of his words. Malfoy had come to care for that woman. And he had lost her. After finding himself alone in unknown territory, without family, or friends. Without a way back.

“I’m sorry, Malfoy,” she said, and found that she meant it. He didn’t look up and sniffed.

“I left London and went into hiding. I started running from one village to the other every few weeks, trying to plan a way to get back at Donovan, but I was alone and he was getting more powerful by the minute. He takes the Grid to America at the end of 2002 and after that the entire world uses his propaganda against wizards. It’s a witch hunt all over again, but this time we can’t use magic to get out of it. I went all in at some point, I almost got myself killed because I was too angry to think straight, but then… Then I quit fighting. I start living as a muggle, hiding my powers as best as I can. I mingle, doing what I can to earn a decent living. But in 2005 he has a new idea,” he said, finally looking up at her. 

Hermione flinched at the rage in his gaze. “Which idea?”

“The Grid is permanent almost everywhere during the day, the tracing web spots forbidden uses of magic at night, but it doesn’t spot magical people when they aren’t actively using it. So, he finds a way to increase the frequency of magical waves in a witch or wizard’s body with a fungus that is a magical enhancer,” he explained. 

Hermione gasped. “I’ve read about that kind of thing in The Spore Scrolls ! A small quantity of it can make your spells stronger for a limited amount of time.”

Draco nodded. “Donovan laces the water supply with it. Tons of it.”

“Tons?” Hermione asked, her eyes wide.

“So much it makes magic uncontrollable. Wizards and witches start channeling without wanting to and the web finds them all. The first experiment takes out almost every magical person in London,” he said, flexing his fingers on the table.

“How did you save yourself?”

“I wasn’t in London. But when I heard the news, I bought bottled water and went straight for Borgin and Burke, desperate to try the fucking cabinet again, hoping it would work for some kind of miraculous reason. And it did. I stepped in and it brought me back here. So, I suppose I should thank you, Granger,” he finished, telling her the final words with a sour grimace. She ignored them, her mind whirling around the terrible information just acquired. Time was ticking, Donovan had to be neutralized, sooner rather than later. 

Fuck. She had to speed up her plan.

“Are you satisfied, Granger? Am I allowed to shoot him in the head now?” Draco asked, crossing his strong arms over his chest.

“You said you tried to kill him, Malfoy, but didn’t succeed. What makes you think you will now?” Hermione asked, genuinely curious.

“I know what I did wrong the first time,” he simply said, ice in his gaze. For the first time, Hermione saw the calculating killer in front of her, not the crazed man that had hopped out of the cabinet that morning.

“Okay, suppose it works and you kill him. What do you think happens? His carefully crafted empire of power goes down like a castle of cards? His muggle entourage and political allies get scared and sign an agreement with the few wizards and witches still around? The Grid gets destroyed for good?” she asked, getting up and placing her hands on the table. Malfoy watched her, considering her words, waiting for her final hit.

“No, Malfoy. None of that will happen. And do you know why? Because his damned castle of cards is made of steel and welded together in a solid piece, so that whoever takes his place can pick it up and transfer it on another desk and go from there.”

Draco narrowed his eyes to slits. “Smash the head of the snake, and the entire body dies, Granger.”

Hermione shook her head. “Not in this case. I wanted to kill him too, you know? You have no idea how much information I’ve piled up about him and the structure of power he created around him. He is a clever motherfucker, Malfoy,” she spat, slamming a palm on the wood in frustration. “If he dies, there’s someone ready to take over, someone his muggle supporters already know and like. He painted us as villains, using what Voldemort did to them and drilled it into their scared minds. There is no turning back from that kind of shit, Malfoy.”

“It’s not reason enough not to try, Granger. Not for me,” he countered, standing up and leveling her hard gaze. Hermione studied him, finding only a slab of granite in front of her. 

“Then at least read my data before getting yourself killed for nothing. At least go prepared,” she demanded, pushing an inch closer. 

Malfoy stayed still, his eyes flitting back and forth on her face.

“Why? Why would you help me, if you think I’m wrong?”

“Because I hope you’ll understand it for yourself, since you clearly don’t give a fuck about my opinion,” she scoffed.

Draco was silent for a second, assessing her, like a fighter with an opponent.

“Why did you even repair that cabinet, Granger?”

The question stabbed something in her chest. Hermione flinched away, her eyes going darker in the dim light of the kitchens.

“I asked Dumbledore to do it when it happened, when Harry told me you were probably lost in there. He said you were better off in there than in a world where Voldemort had you by the throat. I would have done it sooner if I could have, Malfoy.”

“Why?”

“Because you were a kid! Lost in a broken artifact that could fuck your mind up!” she shouted, slamming her hands down once again.

“I was a Death Eater,” he retorted, cold and collected, as if he was talking about someone else.

“Yeah, because that was your choice, wasn’t it? Adults used you, just like they used me and my friends, for a war we were never meant to get out of unscathed. They sacrificed us when they should have protected us,” she gritted out, resentment spilling out from her lips like incandescent tar. 

“So, four years later, you come back here and make up for their mistakes by saving me from that cabinet. Out of the pure goodness of your heart,” he said, implying there must be something else. 

Hermione chuckled and shook her head. “You would never believe it, Malfoy, would you?”

“I made your life a living hell, Granger, for years. Why would you help me?”

“Because what came afterwards made me put things into perspective. Just because you hated me, didn’t mean I shouldn’t get you out of there if I could,” she pointed out.

“I didn’t hate you,” he hastily countered, but seemed to regret his words as soon as they were out. Hermione’s lips parted, confusion flickering in her eyes.

“You were the brain of your trio, Granger, what you do has always a meaning behind it. What’s the meaning behind this one?” he pushed, before she could focus on his slip of words.

“Why do you care? You’re free and you have an incredibly stupid mission to carry out, haven’t you?” she asked, starting to walk around the table and to the door.

“Where are you going? This conversation isn’t over, Granger!” he said, whipping around with heated indignation. 

“I’m going to bed, Malfoy. If you want to read my research on Donovan, you’ll find my archive in McGonagall’s office, first drawer of her desk. The door isn’t warded. Have fun,” she said, stepping out without a backward glance. 

“Granger!” he shouted after her, but she didn’t come back. He growled, his fists clenched tight. He didn’t hate her, but she was making it very difficult to keep it that way.

Chapter Text

4.

After roaming around the kitchens for a while, Draco found a pot brimming with warm, black tea. He grabbed it, along with his empty cup, and headed out, letting his feet take him to McGonagall’s office. He hadn’t been a regular as a student, but after a couple of wrong turns and a detour provided by the moving staircases, he found the door he was looking for. The handle gave in without a single groan. No wards, just as Granger had said. 

He stepped inside, candles immediately flickering on for him, illuminating the room. It felt smaller than he remembered, with large windows overlooking the Quidditch pitch and training grounds. The big fireplace was scattered with remnants of burnt logs and cold ashes, suggesting recent use. 

Draco reached the desk and placed his cup down, slowly pouring tea into it. He took a sip, his eyes gliding over the books on the shelves, neatly stacked and organized alphabetically. It seemed like something Granger would do with her books, but it was highly unlikely that she’d messed around with anything in her mentor’s office. Which explained why Granger had always been a big fan of the stern professor.

Draco turned and walked around the desk. He opened the first drawer and found a ledger, bound in crimson leather. He took it out and flipped through the first pages. Every inch was covered in notes, neatly written in rounded cursive letters, some words underlined or marked by tiny asterisks that referred to additional sentences crammed on the margins. There were hundreds of pages worth of research, along with cutouts from different newspapers, tucked between the final sheet and the hard cover. He unfolded a couple and saw articles from different time periods, but all about the same topic: Donovan’s rise to power. 

Draco sat down in McGonagall’s high-back chair and started reading in candlelight, sipping his ever-warm tea, darkness enveloping the castle grounds behind him. 

Granger’s account started with Potter’s death, which she actually only mentioned in passing, as the catalyst for Voldemort’s attempt to rule the wizarding world. The dark wizard had used the advantage of despair at the Chosen One’s demise to lash out and ensnare magical people and muggles alike. He had been especially brutal towards muggles, using torture and terrorism to kill many and scare all into submission. This part Draco knew, Donovan had made his mission to remind every living muggle how his intervention had saved them from an existence of fear, death and enslavement to wizards. Obviously, he had failed to explain how his heroic actions had been made possible by the help of a fraction of good wizards and witches. 

There was an entire chapter of the ledger dedicated to Karl Donovan’s life and doings, and judging by how Granger’s writing was branded into the page, her hate for the man matched Draco’s.  Her words weren’t the usual adoring praises that newspapers were encouraged to publish, recounting embellished versions of Donovan’s feats. She was clinical, listing what was necessary to understand the character and his motives. 

Born and raised in a rich Wiltshire family, Donovan had studied at Oxford University and graduated with flying colors in Engineering, along with the future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who had become his best friend in school. They were so close, Donovan had been part of his team way before his mate stepped through the door of number 10, Downing Street. And they were so close that the Prime Minister had told him in confidence, praying him to keep it a secret, that a Minister for Magic had appeared in the fireplace of his office his very first night. That wasn't exactly public knowledge. Draco wondered how she had managed to get that kind of information.

I’ve seen him start this thing , he remembered her saying right before his seizure. Had she met him? Or had she gleaned gossip from someone very close to him? If so, how?

Draco went on, and found out Donovan had been working on the Grid till the summer before their fourth year, after the episode of the Quidditch Cup. The Prime Minister had kept sharing with him all his worries about “those weird wizards” and he had decided they needed a backup plan, in case something dangerous would reach the muggles. And when it did, he was almost ready. That was definitely something she would have known only from the man himself, Draco thought. 

Turning the page, he found a sketch of a round object, similar to a Golden Snitch without wings. The Grid. Granger had poured on paper all she knew about it, small arrows connecting words to parts of the drawing, which was actually pretty accurate. As if she’d seen one up close. Draco frowned and read carefully.  In his years living among muggles, he had tried to learn as much as possible about them and how they interacted with the world, reading about those things that were intrinsically theirs: electricity, mechanics, information technology, medicine, physics, but also religion and poetry, to try and figure out if they felt differently than wizards. All the stuff he had learnt was crucial to understanding how the Grid worked. Essentially, it was a metal device with a battery and electronic components, full of sensors that sent signals to a small computer system in it. The sensors were supposed to detect magic in a determined area around the device, while the computer system was supposed to process it and activate blocking and neutralizing frequencies to inhibit magic. 

In fact, Draco had learnt that magic was just a type of frequency waves, just a type of energy, that could be easily nullified with the right counterpart. When you had the general frequencies of magic, you just had to write it into the software of the Grid system and tell it to block them. Draco was still confused about all those computer words but he had a general understanding and it was clear to him how it was possible for his wand to stop working when the Grid was up and running. But how had Donovan found the frequency of magical waves? 

When Voldemort had killed Potter, the wizarding world had fallen into chaos and in that moment the Dark Lord had turned feral, attacking and killing as many muggles as possible. According to Granger’s record, muggles had asked the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore and Potter’s fellas, for help. The ledger reported: “ it was Donovan’s idea . Once allied, we helped muggles improve their technology, especially the Grid. Donovan worked closely with a team of wizards to isolate the frequency of magical waves and weaved it into the device.” Draco’s frown deepened. Why had they actively helped muggles create something that could destroy wizards? 

Rage mounting, he continued reading. “The Grid could be the solution to incapacitate Voldemort long enough to destroy his final Horcrux and kill him once and for all.” Then there was an asterisk and Draco had to examine the page carefully to find the extra sentence related to it. When he found it, though, his eyes narrowed. “I know it was our only option, but I couldn’t trust him all the way.”

Granger had been there. She had been there from the very start. 

Trying very hard to push away his anger and disappointment, he kept reading about how the area a Grid could cover wasn’t very big, so they must be placed over inhabited environments in a carefully planned net; how the battery inside the Grids wasn’t everlasting, making it impossible for them to run 24/7; how the first prototypes hadn’t even been infrangible. Then Granger mentioned there had been improvements after Donovan’s betrayal, thanks to wizards freely choosing to work for him in exchange for protection. He read that they started using metals infused with Occamy powder and dragon blood, to make the Grid stronger and more powerful; that they implanted self recharging batteries that fueled on the magic detected; that sensors where imbued with tracing spells to detect magic even when the Grids weren’t working. And with each line, his hands trembled a little bit more with repressed anger.

Hours passed and Draco went on, devouring page after page on how Donovan had built his character, how he had gently pushed his dear friend the Prime Minister out of the picture  and had taken his place. He read about how the clever engineer had chosen the members of his close circle meticulously, branching out in every relevant field of muggle society, placing his minions in all the right positions. Draco read about Donovan's campaign of hate against wizards, showing people the truth about their hiding, but feeding them with lie after lie on the danger they posed to muggles, describing them like they were all Voldemorts and Grindelwalds. Finally, Granger had recorded all the names in Donovan’s paying books, with information on their role, their weight in the system, and their impact on public opinion. She had also jutted down scenarios of what would happen if Donovan died, who would succeed and who would step in if the successors perished as well. And he always seemed to be covered. He had planned ahead manically. The only way to tear his empire down and go back to a peaceful coexistence between wizards and muggles was to simultaneously murder each member of his web of power. 

Draco pushed his fingers in his hair, pulling at the roots, his eyes closed. His skin was buzzing with frustration. Because Granger was fucking right. Killing Donovan wasn’t the solution. It was a patch too small on a very big rip in the fabric. Draco bolted up, the chair falling on the floor. He grabbed the empty pot and threw it against the door. Porcelain shards exploded, scattering around the floor like rain droplets. Draco stared at the exact spot on the door where the pot had hit, his eyes unseeing, his heart running a thousand miles a second yet perfectly still in his chest. She would have died anyway, even if they had done things differently. And he would have died as well, if he had decided to stay and avenge her. And it all would have been for fucking nothing. 

She had died for nothing. 

Slowly, Draco turned to the window, pale sun rays clearing the sky of a new day. The Quidditch stands were faded and splintered in places, the Houses’ flags shredded by time and elements. He stepped closer to the stained glass and let his eyes travel over the training grounds, and further to the Lake. A minuscule dot was running fast on the lakeside, a bouncing nest of curls piled on top of her head.

Draco turned and slammed the ledger shut, then walked to the door, porcelain crunching under his boots. Granger was hiding something and it better be a plan to beat Donovan and reestablish the right order of things, because he was empty handed and clueless at the moment. If there was something he really hated, it was not being in control, and after four years of that he’d really had enough.

***************

Malfoy was hiding something. 

Hermione couldn’t stop thinking about his downcast eyes while he told her about his years in the future, his strained voice while mentioning the mysterious woman that had helped him. He wasn’t telling her everything, that was clear as day. And she couldn’t even blame him, obviously. They had never been friends in school, very far from it. Actually, how do you define someone that is disappointed about your failed death by means of Basilisk attack? Enemy?

I didn’t hate you.

She scoffed, trudging up to the castle after her daily run around the Lake. She had a hard time believing him. He’d called her a Mudblood every time he could, mocked her in class, bullied her and her best friends for years. He had made sure her life would be miserable when he was around and he had wounded her time and time again. Which shouldn’t have happened, since Malfoy wasn’t important enough in her life to cause her real pain. 

And yet. 

He had managed to wound her because she had been curious. And she had been curious because he was clever, and talented. Because he held himself like Royalty and was confident to the point of puffery. Because he was fierce and cruel, as if he himself didn’t have feelings, so he couldn’t understand hurting others. He had managed to wound her because she had paid attention to him. Hermione had wondered if what Malfoy liked to show matched what he had inside, if he was spoiled and rotten for real, or if it was just an act to hide something else. She had asked herself plenty of times if he could feel the cold as she did, if he had blood, clean and precious, running through his veins or if he had been spared the pain of being human. She had wondered if the glances he’d sent her way when no one was watching were just to assess his enemy, or if he had been curious as well. 

Some of those questions had been answered. Malfoy had red blood just as hers. Harry had confirmed it when he’d recounted his unfortunate attack in the bathrooms using the Sectumsempra curse. 

And he did have feelings. Harry had heard him cry, right before the duel. 

As for the stolen glances, she had no clue, and maybe she would never have. Maybe she had just made them up, after all. 

Hermione climbed the few stairs to the entrance door, her eyes focused on the stone steps, when something in the air shifted. A subtle scent she couldn’t place, the feeling of eyes pinning her to the ground. She halted and looked up. He was planted in the doorway, arms folded on his chest, wearing the same clothes as the night before and a hard glare on his face. His usually perfect hair was mussed and looked run through one too many times. Malfoy hadn't slept and judging by the granitic line of his mouth, he had spent the night reading her research and being annoyed by the truth it held. Picture the face of a disappointed boy who hadn’t received the present he’d asked for Christmas, but push it to its extremes. That’s how he looked. He was so angry his jaw could snap in half at any moment, but he was carefully keeping everything under the surface. Barely, though. Hermione could almost see heat waves radiate from his toned body. She was quite sure he would be able to cast wandless magic in that moment, if he wanted to.

She reached him, stopping one step from the entrance, and looked up to his face, boldly planting her eyes in his, waiting for him to speak first. But when he did, it wasn’t to complain or lament, it wasn’t to pile shit on her carefully recorded information. He said something she hadn’t anticipated.

“Why did you bring me back, Granger?” he calmly asked. 

Hermione opened her mouth to answer, but he cut her off.

“And don’t feed me your Hufflepuff bullshit that it was the right thing to do. Even if it’s true, it wasn’t the only reason,” he said, narrowing his eyes.

Hermione rested her hands on her hips. Malfoy leaned towards her slightly. 

“You have a plan and need me to execute it. That’s the only reason I could think of for you to voluntarily subject yourself to my presence,” he mused. 

Hermione’s brows flew up. “Is that you, Malfoy? Or are you someone polyjuiced as Malfoy right now? Because the git I knew would call me blessed for being graced by his company!”

Malfoy scoffed. “The Malfoy you knew died in 1997, when he got stuck in that fucked up cabinet and ended up trapped in a shitty future. So if you have a plan to avoid said future from happening, I’m all ears, Granger,” he spat, pointing a finger at her face. “I spent the night deciphering your horrible handwriting only to have my dream of smashing Donovan’s brain destroyed, so you’d better have another option here or I’ll be disappointed.”

Hermione chuckled. “Oh Merlin! How could I possibly live knowing I wasn’t up to your standards?” she asked, one hand on her chest, in mocking mortification.

Malfoy gritted his teeth, she could see his jaw work in evident restraint.

“Tell me your goddamn plan, Granger.”

Hermione observed him for a second, then sighed  “Meet me in Dumbledore’s office in half an hour, Malfoy. I need to show you something before we have that conversation, or you’ll just yell at me that I’m batshit crazy,” she said, taking the final step and walking just around him through the entrance.

His fingers closed around her wrist in a flash and she whipped around, eyes fixed on his pale hand on her heated skin. His hold wasn’t painful, just firm, and the pads of his thumb grazed over her pulsing veins. Her heart sped up without her consent. She wasn’t scared, or angry, just…confused. Hermione looked him in the eyes and her chest ached. His silver irises were a sea of molten metal, heavy with something she couldn’t grasp, something that tugged at her core. A flicker of pain swirled in his gaze and his hand fell away. Instantly, her chest felt lighter and her lungs expanded with air.

Malfoy swallowed. “I won’t wait another minute, Granger. We are going now.”

She took a breath, then two. “I need to shower, Malfoy. It won't take me more than fifteen minutes, really.”

“Now,” he repeated, taking just one step towards her, and crowding her space. Stupid long legs.

Hermione snorted. “I’m sweaty! And I probably smell!”

“Your scent is not an issue to me, Granger,” he said, his voice a little too low, a little too soft around her blushing face. He had just meant he didn’t care about her smell, right? He had said smell , right? 

Her brain was fuzzy for a moment, she felt like she was trying to breathe underwater and she didn’t know why. Malfoy took another step closer, maybe half a step, really. But he was suddenly everywhere, a faint lingering note of smoke tickling her nostrils, mixed with the echo of soap from yesterday’s shower. An image of abs and defined hipbones through fabric flitted in the back of her mind and she held a breath. Was he trying to intimidate her with his imposing physical presence?

Hermione stepped back and inhaled deeply. “Fine, then, let’s go now, since your spoiled ass cannot wait a quarter of an hour,” she jabbed, then turned around quickly and marched up the stairs, forcing herself to clear her mind and focus on the task at hand. This was it, after all. Now she had to convince Malfoy to work with her if she wanted her plan to succeed. But as she climbed stairs after stairs, his steps echoed behind her, his presence as tangible as a cold wind on her damp neck, and she found it hard to concentrate on building up her Occlumency walls.

Because, most definitely, he hadn’t said smell .

Chapter Text

5.

June, 1997

Hermione knocked on Professor Snape’s office door, an anticipating shiver running down her spine.

“Come in,” Snape’s drawl beckoned and she pushed the door open.

The professor looked briefly up from the book he was perusing and his sour expression didn’t change a single bit.

“Miss Granger, as you can see I’m very busy right now, I’m sure…” he started, but Hermione would have none of that today. She was fed up with six years of his attitude.

“You must get Draco Malfoy out of the Vanishing Cabinet, Professor. It could be dangerous, and he’s a minor!” she said, planting herself right in front of his desk. Snape slowly tilted his head up, black beady eyes asserting her like a disgusting insect bothering him in his sleep.

“Are you drunk, Miss Granger? This early in the day?”

Hermione crossed her arms. “I’m not drunk. I’m concerned, as you should be. Malfoy is one of yours, professor.”

Snape arched his brow. “Why would I be concerned, when Mr Malfoy is safely stashed in a secret location under the Order’s protection, as was mentioned at breakfast to explain his sudden absence?”

He pointedly stressed the final word, but all Hermione could hear instead was “disappearance”. 

“I know he is stuck in the cabinet, professor, there’s no need to pretend here. I’ve already spoken with the Headmaster, who clearly isn’t in his right mind anymore!” Hermione shrieked, throwing her hands up. “So, I am begging you to see reason, professor. You are Draco’s only hope of getting out of that trap! You can’t possibly leave him there, not after the Montague episode! His mind could be damaged!”

Snape stood up like a spring and placed his hands on the desk, spidery long fingers spreading over the open book. He leaned into Hermione’s face and pinned her down with his disdainful glare.

“You think you know everything, but in all honesty you know absolutely nothing of what is at play here, Miss Granger. Now, if I were you, which thankfully I am not, I would mind my own business and concentrate on being of service to the people who actually have a real need for that clever brain of yours,” he hissed in such a low voice she had to strain to get all his words. Then he withdrew, and sat back in his chair, eyes focusing on his book.

“Rest assured, Mr Malfoy is in no danger at all. Actually, his present situation might benefit him a lot more than his previous one. Besides, if your nosy friend Mr Potter eavesdropped properly, you should know I would sense if Draco was indeed in a tight corner,” he added, flipping a page. 

“But professor,” Hermione made to protest, but Snape flicked his hand to the door and opened it wide.

“Have a nice day, Miss Granger. Make sure to enjoy the idleness of these few remaining days at Hogwarts. There’ll be a lot ahead of you this summer, I’m sure,” he said with finality, not even bothering to glance her way. 

Having been so clearly dismissed, Hermione scoffed loudly and turned towards the door, her hair positively sparking with electricity.

*****

September, 2001

The spiral staircase that led to the Headmaster’s office wasn’t moving anymore and the gargoyle statue that asked for the password had stopped asking a long time before. Hogwarts had gone silent after Voldemort’s rise to power, when the few students still attending had been taught Dark Arts, Unforgivables, how to torture and destroy, rather than how to create something beautiful with their magic. When the Dark Lord had been finally defeated, muggles had started their repressive campaign and wizards and witches had gone into various forms of hiding. No one had gone back to Hogwarts on September 1st from that moment on. 

Hermione had been shocked by the quiet she’d heard upon stepping into the castle last May. All the portraits were empty, only trees, fruits and flowers remaining. Peeves and the House Elves had left, the ghosts were nowhere to be seen. Dobby had told her how every magical creature had gone away one by one, slowly and yet in a blink. The stairs continued moving occasionally, and candles and torches flickered on when someone walked into an empty room. But everything else was quiet, like a house vacated after being sold. Hermione had cried herself to sleep that first night, noisy memories fizzling out in the darkness of the empty castle. 

“Take a seat, it’s going to be a long one,” she suggested, walking into the circular office and heading for the main desk in the centre of the room. Draco looked around the unfamiliar place, sunlight filtering through the high windows and caressing all sorts of instruments, resting on every available surface. They were all still and silent, but some glimmered, tickling his eyes. He saw a couple of chairs in front of the wooden desk, but didn’t sit. He crossed his arms again, and planted his feet on the dusty carpet. Hermione was filing through an old notebook, looking for something, but saw his stance from the corner of her eyes.

“Or stand like a marble statue, I really don’t give a f…”

“Have you always been this sassy, Granger? Or is all this crude vocabulary new?”

“I’m sorry, your Holiness. I didn’t mean to wound your delicate ears with my foul mouth,” she retorted, finally fishing out a piece of parchment from the notebook. “Have you always been a prude? Or is that new?” she parrotted, handing him the slip of paper, a glint of amusement in her chocolaty eyes. 

Draco stared at her extended hand. “What is that?”

“Read it. Tell me what you think it is.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I have a better idea, Granger. Why don’t you stop fucking around and tell me what is going on in that bushy head of yours?”

“So you can use crude vocabulary, uh?” she asked, arching a brow. Her arm was still held out, and she didn’t look like she’d heard his suggestion. 

Draco exhaled from his nose, and Hermione was almost surprised that smoke wasn’t coming out from his nostrils. He was pissed, and she could sense it, but she wasn’t backing down. She was going to control the narrative.

He finally snatched the paper from her hand and unfolded it. She observed his eyes scanning the slanted handwriting that covered the sheet, the content committed to memory in those months spent in solitude in the castle. She saw his brows furrow, his lips thin and press together more and more, confusion mixing with a kind of frustration she was already accustomed to. It was the prickly sensation of looking at the evidence but not having the solution, fingers grazing the edge of it, but still out of reach. 

When Malfoy looked up and found her staring at him, Hermione braced herself.

“This is Dumbledore’s handwriting,” he stated, wrestling to keep his emotions away from his voice. But his eyes were speaking volumes. Oh, his eyes were liquid mercury, so hot they were burning his pupils.

Hermione nodded, her lips sealed. 

“This list he made,” Malfoy went on, “these events…they never happened. Why am I reading it, Granger?”

“Look closer, Malfoy. What else do you see between the lines, between letters?”

Draco observed the paper again, bringing it closer to his face. His lips parted.

“Runes?” he asked, noticing red symbols interspersed in the text. Some letters were replaced by runes, others were scattered on the margins. 

“Are they written in blood?” he asked, brows close together.

She nodded, quiet again. Draco went through the list once more, his heart stumbling on the first sentence at the top, his own name mocking him from the parchment. 

Draco Malfoy repairs the Vanishing Cabinet and gets Death Eaters inside the Hogwarts castle.

The following sentences described other events, like Snape killing Dumbledore on the Astronomy Tower and Potter defeating Voldemort in a duel. There were some very specific and other more generic events, like a mother protecting Harry for his son , or a brave wizard finding the Gryffindor Sword and killing Nagini . But they all had in common the fact that they had never occurred. So, why had this list been written? Using runes and blood, no less. A dreading sensation of knowing the answer slithered up Draco’s back, goosebumps rising all over his skin.

“Granger…is this connected to some kind of blood magic?” he asked, looking up at her, wishing he was wrong. Hermione stared at him for seconds, then walked around the desk and stopped in front of him.

“Have you ever heard about the Relligo Charm, Malfoy?”

He didn’t move, searching the nooks and cracks of his brain for the wisp of a memory. 

“It's very old druids’ magic, isn’t it? Some kind of ritual before battles?”

Hermione’s eyes glimmered, but her face didn’t give away anything. “Correct. Latin prisoners witnessed propitiatory rites that required blood sacrifices to bind warriors to victory, using runes carved into stones. They recorded everything, when they were able to escape, and their warlocks tried to recreate the rite. Through the centuries, it was refined more and more, and it was referred to as the Relligo Charm, from the Latin word for bind, tie together.” 

Hermione stepped closer and pointed at one of the runes on the parchment. “The runes intertwined with the words act like bindings for the events listed and the blood is a conduit to make magic stronger when the spell is cast.”

“But…how exactly does it work?” Draco asked.

“The original rite was used to assure victory in battle, and it was a sort of make a wish thing . The druids wrote down what they wanted to happen and performed the spell to bind the victory to their wish. The Relligo still follows that principle: you write down what you want to happen, using blood and runes to heighten the power of the spell, then cast it and bind those events to the fabric of time. It’s extremely complicated and requires a very powerful wizard to guarantee that it works,” she explained, her eyes roaming over the paper. “The thing is…even the most powerful of wizards can’t be sure it will actually work.”

“Why?”

Hermione inclined her head. “Because events usually depend on more than one variable, especially when people other than you are involved.”

“But when the spell is in place the events are bound to happen. It’s the entire purpose of the spell,” Draco objected, confused. 

Hermione shook her head. “It’s more complicated than that. The fabric of time is very reluctant, so the binding works in a waterfall model,” she said, searching his eyes, asking him to understand. “The Relligo tries to tie the leading event to success, so it’s imperative that we choose a bulletproof one. All the other events follow, binding to the previous one, in a sort of victory chain .”

“But in this way, if the first one doesn’t occur the others won’t follow.”

Hermione bit her lip. “It’s actually worse than that.”

Draco didn’t reply, driving his eyes deeper into hers, trying very hard not to gauge out the answer for himself using his Legilimency abilities.

“If the leading event fails to occur, it’s like a loose thread in the fabric. It opens up to disastrous possibilities. Basically, a small change in one event can cause catastrophic results down the timeline. It’s called Snidget Effect, from a metaphor by Tilda Turner in his Traveling Through Time: Tips, Tactics, Tolerances. A big storm could be the direct result of the flap of wings of a Snidget,” she said, words tumbling quickly out of her mouth. Draco followed the movement of her lips, his eyes resting there even after she’d gone silent. His mind was running, out of breath, trying to connect all the threads.

“So, the best way to make sure the spell works is to choose an event you’re certain will occur, correct?” he asked, his brows drawn together. 

Hermione nodded. “The best option would be an action that the caster is going to perform, to reduce the margin for accidents. If not the caster himself, at least someone you know will deliver for sure.”

Draco processed her words, his eyes going back to the first sentence in the list. 

“Why would Dumbledore choose this as a leading event, then? It’s stupid, and he wasn’t stupid,” he replied, his fingers instinctively flexing on the parchment. 

Hermione scratched behind her neck, looking out of the window. The sky was a shade of blue that reminded her of summer. 

“I have no idea why he did what he did, Malfoy. Maybe he was sure you would never disappoint Voldemort, given what was at stake. Maybe he thought you would ask Snape for help in case of difficulties, so he was certain you would succeed. I don’t know,” she repeated, looking back at him. “What I know is that things didn’t go as he had planned and the Relligo backfired. In our faces, since he conveniently died and left us to deal with the consequences of his poor choices,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Draco noticed she was trembling, and it wasn’t for the cold. 

“The old man overestimated my abilities. And my honesty,” he said, folding back the parchment and tossing it on the desk. “The Cabinet was an extremely difficult riddle to solve and even when I thought I had made it, I clearly hadn’t. And I was so stubborn and angry with everyone and everything, that I made Snape believe I had repaired it weeks before the chosen date for the attack.”

“And he didn’t question you?” she asked, doubt in her tone.

“I am a very good Occlumens, Granger, I never let him near my mind,” he said, a shadow of his sneer on his lips, then walked to the window, his back to her. “Besides, Borgin backed me up, because the birds I used to test the cabinet had gone through alive. So, you see, my pride was the actual catalyst for this disaster,” he added, almost to himself, with a bitterness that punched her in the stomach. This Malfoy was not what she had been preparing for. 

“If Dumbledore hadn’t attempted something this dangerous, your pride wouldn’t have mattered, Malfoy, so don’t wallow like a crybaby. Let’s concentrate on how to make this right,” she said, taking a couple of steps in his direction.

“I guess there isn’t a counterspell for this thing, or you would have tried it, right?” he asked, without turning around.

“No. Once the spell is cast there is no way to lift it.”

Malfoy turned, crossing his arms and smirked. “Great, so the only solution is to go back in time and convince Dumbledore not to cast it.”

Hermione scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Malfoy. I can’t go back in time if I have no idea when he cast the spell! The only solution is to make the leading event happen.”

Draco’s smirk faltered, then morphed into a grimace. “And how, pray tell, would you do that?”

“Going back in time to help past-you repair the cabinet.”

“How?”

“With a time turner.”

Malfoy stared at her, then laughed, one hand running through his hair. “You are batshit crazy, Granger! Time Turners are so rare they’re basically a myth! Where the hell do you think you can get one?”

Hermione clenched her fists. “In the Department of Mysteries, in the former Ministry of Magic. There is a room where I’m sure we can find at least one.” 

Malfoy’s laugh died out and he walked up to her. “So your plan is to sneak into the Ministry, the present seat of Donovan’s labs, which is brimming with magical and muggle guards, Grids and tracking spells? Let’s suppose you get inside just fine, how the fuck do you think you’ll get out alive?”

Hermione looked up into his very close eyes. “I have means and ideas, it can be done.”

Draco’s gaze flitted on her face. “Okay. Let’s say it can be done, what’s next on your very suicidal plan?”

“We go back to one week before your past self was supposed to let Death Eaters into the castle and we repair the cabinet to make sure it happens. When it does, the timeline will reset, the Relligo will kick in and things will go hopefully as Dumbledore foresaw them,” she fired, holding his appraising stare. He didn’t say anything, just observed her in a way that made her feel bare. She checked her walls, but found them strong and standing. And yet her skin buzzed under his silent scrutiny. When he finally spoke, an elastic band snapped in her throat.

“You keep saying we , Granger. But you’re arrogant and clever enough to do all this on your own. What is my role in your plan? You don’t want to work with someone you hate on a delicate task like this.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You should.”

Her breath caught. He was so close she could feel the heat from his body and his eyes were so clear they almost shone in the morning light.

“I need your help, Malfoy,” she managed.

“What for?”

“Well, getting into the Ministry can be done, but I admit I could use some backup,” she conceded. 

Malfoy shook his head. “As much as I love to hear Hermione Granger admit she’s not invincible, that’s not that. Why me, Granger?”

Because you’re my only option.

Because I have no one left.

Because I’m desperate.

Because it has to be you.

She sighed and went for the rational answer.

“When you travel through time, it’s imperative that you never meet yourself, for obvious reasons. But it’s also highly advised not to interact with people that knew you at some point, because it could create forks in the time continuum, all sorts of wormholes and sliding doors,” she explained, her gaze fixed on him. Draco frowned, as if he wanted to ask something, but didn’t speak.

“Since your past-self was working on the cabinet, the risk of meeting him would be very high. Only you can help me avoid…yourself in the past,” Hermione finished, observing his reaction. Draco stared at her for a moment more, then let his eyes wander around the room, processing. After long, quiet seconds, he scoffed and shook his head, clenching his fists down his thighs. 

“I don’t have to come with you for that, Granger,” he stated, then nodded towards a half-opened ornate closet where a stone basin shimmered with silver liquid. “You have a Pensieve there. I’ll give you my memories of those days, you can make yourself a schedule of my movements and you’ll be just fine,” he added, already turning around to reach the door and leave. Hermione’s brows went to her hairline.

“Wait, Malfoy! You don’t want to do this?”

Draco stopped and turned. “ This is a crazy attempt at getting yourself killed, Granger, so no, I don’t want to take part in this.”

“You wanted to go and kill Donovan without a plan! How is that better than my plan?” she shouted, marching up to him, fury buzzing in her ears.

“I didn’t say it was better,” he gritted out, a storm building in his eyes.

“So you admit you would have risked your life like an idiot!”

“Risking my life is not a fucking problem, if it means getting rid of Donovan and his motherfucking ideas!”

“Then you were ready to throw yourself in the most dangerous idea possible, but you’re not ready to help me find an actual way to solve this mess?” she pressed on, taking another step into his space. Malfoy was taller than her by at least a head and a half and she had to tilt her face up to look him in the eyes. Draco was silent, his gaze fixed in hers, his chest rising and falling faster at each of her words. But she was relentless. 

“I see. I’m the problem, then! You don’t want to do this with me! Is that because I’m a Mudblood? Do you still hate me for that or is it something new?” she asked, watching his jaw clench, his muscles tightening around his neck. “You read my reports, you know I was there when Donovan entered the picture. Do you hate me because I didn’t stop him in time? Because I let him rip your world, our world, in half?” she continued, another step closer. Too close, his hard body was almost too close and she had no idea why she had pushed so far, what the hell her own body was thinking. But he didn’t move, didn’t back away. Hermione had the distinct sensation he was actually leaning towards her.  

“Your mind is clouded by your need to succeed at this attempt, Granger,” he said, his voice almost a murmur over her face. “You need information from me. You don’t need me . You don’t want to work with me, you don’t trust me, never did, and with fucking reason.”

Hermione didn’t reply. He was right, she didn’t trust him. Or at least she didn’t trust his past-him, the Malfoy she knew. But this one? This rational, silent and less arrogant version? She could come to tolerate him and rely on him enough to accomplish her goal. She was about to tell him, when he spoke again.

“Tell Dobby to bring some vials in my room. I’ll give you my memories and you can do whatever you want with them. When you’re done, you’ll hand me my wand and gun back, and I’ll be out of here,” he stated, with a finality that took her breath away. Then he inched a wisp closer, his hair falling on his forehead almost tickling her cheeks. “Believe me, Granger. This is what you want,” he whispered, then he was gone, faster than the wind. Hermione was still breathing in his words when his steps down the stairs blended in the stillness of the castle.

Great. 

So much for controlling the narrative.

Chapter Text

6.

Hermione didn’t see him all day. 

Not that she’d looked for him, but she suspected he had holed up in his room anyway, to avoid her. 

Or maybe he wasn’t avoiding her at all, the castle was just too big for them to stumble on each other. 

But she was certain he didn’t want to talk to her. 

Of course he wouldn’t want to, they had nothing to talk about. He had refused to work with her, he wanted nothing to do with her.

He was just like his teenage self: prejudiced, entitled and a stupid coward. 

And yet he had been ready to die to kill Donovan, so maybe he wasn’t that much of a coward anymore. 

Just prejudiced and entitled, then. 

But he had also said he didn’t hate her, and had sounded sincere. 

And he had offered his memories for her to view, to help her accomplish her mission. That didn’t qualify as entitled in her books. 

So, why the hell was he so set on not being involved in first person?

Hermione growled and violently shut the big tome she was failing to  read. The loud thump echoed in the deserted library. It was past midnight and she hadn’t stopped thinking about her conversation with Malfoy for one second the entire day. 

She had spent the morning examining the cabinet, reviewing all the spells she had piled on the damned thing in the past months, trying to figure out if it was the last one that had worked or a combination of many. She had forgotten to have lunch, her mind split between mulling over Malfoy’s slashing of her carefully crafted plan and making hypotheses on the repairing of the magical piece of furniture. 

In the afternoon, she had trudged to McGonagall’s office and found shards of porcelain all over the floor, her ledger still resting on the desk after Malfoy’s reading. She had cleaned the room, then sagged in her mentor’s chair and stared out of the window until the sky had gone dark, her mind whirring like an overworked clock. Dobby had brought her a sandwich and a cup of hot tea at some point, announcing that Master Draco had shown up to the kitchens for dinner then had disappeared again, without asking for her. She had picked up the food, thanked the little house elf and gone to the library, determined to push Malfoy away from her thoughts for the night at least. She hadn’t asked Dobby to bring him vials for his memories. She wasn’t giving up so easily. 

After hours of turning pages without seeing the content, her sandwich was still on the plate and the tea was still hot only because of the ever-warming spell Dobby used to place on all the cups. And she was angrier than before, because she hadn’t figured out this Malfoy and his reasoning. He had carefully watched himself from answering why he wasn’t willing to take part in her mission and that lack of response was eating at her. On her part, Hermione had also been very careful to give him only reasonable motivations that could convince him to be involved. She wanted him to choose freely. Should she try using emotional reasons? But why would he need them? Especially from her, a former enemy on so many levels? And yet he had kept asking for more. Suddenly, those looks from school when no one was watching didn’t seem a figment of her imagination.

Hermione inhaled deeply, closing her eyes and lowering her Occlumency walls. She let emotions run free in her mind for just a second, then concentrated on a pair of icy grey eyes. Malfoy had stepped into the cabinet four years before, ending up in a future he had no clues about. He had lost his family and friends in a blink. He had lost life as he knew it, only to find himself in a world where magic was synonymous with persecution and immediate death. And according to his words, both those he had spoken and those he actually hadn’t, he had managed to build something, only to have it taken away as well. He had lived alone, mostly severed from the magic flowing in his veins, constantly wearing an armor to survive. He had gotten coarser and coarser, protecting himself from hurt, not allowing himself to get close to anyone, lest them be ripped away from him again. 

Hermione knew what that meant. She knew what loneliness makes to people because she had tried it on her very skin. She had lost them all. Even those still alive, she had pushed them away, to protect them. To protect herself. Because she couldn’t lose anymore. She had nothing else left to survive another loss. 

She tried to put herself in his shoes. What would convince him? What would convince her, if he was the one asking for help? 

Honesty. And the whole truth, even if it was ugly and heavy to accept. Even if it meant being pushed into doing something out of obligation. She had wanted to avoid this, but the success of the mission was, once again, more important than anything else. She hated this, because someone else had used this kind of dynamics on Harry and consequently on her and Ron, and there wasn’t something she despised more than manipulation. But there wasn’t another way. 

Hermione stood so quickly the chair fell to the floor, a deafening thunder in the darkness of the silent castle. She stomped out of the library, sandwich and tea forgotten, and headed to Hufflepuff dorms. 

She was angry. With herself, with Malfoy and with the world in general. But she was especially angry with Malfoy because of course he had to be difficult and make her do this! When she reached the shared landing of boys and girls rooms, she was fuming and didn’t even stop to think he might be sleeping. She just pounded on the door, as hard as possible.

“Malfoy! I know you’re in there! Open!” she shouted and pounded some more. She was about to land another blow, when the door flew open, a gust of air ruffling Hermione’s curls for a moment. She took him in, her arm still held mid-air, and swallowed. He had just a pair of briefs on, almost his entire body on display. She’d seen him like that when she’d sneaked in to take his wand, but she hadn’t really lingered. She’d noticed the scars on his chest and the Dark Mark on his forearm, but he had been asleep, relaxed and harmless. Now he oozed danger, each and every  muscle taut and tense with contained fury. His mercury eyes glimmered in the shadows of the landing, his lips pressed into a thin line. She noticed his hair was damp and brushed backwards, just like when he was a kid in second year. Every other inch of him suggested he couldn’t be more different than that kid. 

“I hope there’s a reason why you’re screaming like a harpy in the middle of the night, Granger. Are we under attack?” he deadpanned, standing still in the doorframe. 

“We need to talk, it’s important,” she said, taking a step towards him. He didn’t budge.

“I was trying to get some sleep,” he replied, cold as the Black Lake’s water.

“There’s something I haven’t told you this morning. About the Relligo,” she confessed, locking eyes with him. Draco still didn’t move.

“What is it?” he asked, giving no signs of wanting to let her in. 

Hermione sighed. “The information about this goddamn spell is a bit lacking. Many aspects haven’t been solved and at some point wizards stopped using it, because it could be too unpredictable in his results. So, it is unknown how much the wording of the leading event is binding to the success of the spell itself.”

She saw him hold his breath, frozen in the shocking realization her words brought. Then, slowly, he stepped aside and silently let her in. Hermione crossed the threshold, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes. 

The room was only lit by a small fire in the common fireplace, the air barely warmer than outside. Malfoy didn’t seem to feel cold, though, no signs of goosebumps on his smooth, pale skin. Hermione let her eyes roam over his wide scarred chest for a millisecond, before focusing on his face. Which made it even harder to concentrate. The shadows played with his sharp features, making the planes of his cheekbones look more chiseled than ever, his eyes shining brighter from under his brows. She forced herself not to look at his mouth. Why she had to do that she honestly didn’t know. Her body was acting weird around Malfoy, and she couldn’t explain the reasons behind that insubordination. Yes, he was handsome, she could admit that much. But he was Draco Malfoy, for fuck’s sake!

“Is this just a theory of yours or is there some kind of evidence that supports it?” he asked, mercifully pulling her out of her mind.

“Some of the books that mention the Relligo state that the wording of the events is crucial. That would explain why Dumbledore was vague on some of the remote ones, since they would be difficult to word in detail,” she said, slowly walking to the fireplace. “Other books don’t dwell on the topic, but still recommend precision in the wording stage, to avoid regrettable consequences ,” she added, quoting the air around the last two words.

“Do we have proof of those regrettable consequences happening because of a discrepancy between event and wording of thereof?” he asked, taking a couple of steps towards her. His feet were bare, the ridges of his bones visible under the skin. Hermione looked back at him, her face warming.

“There are very few records of modern Relligo spells, Malfoy, many of which aren’t even labelled as successful or failed. That’s how much of a risk Dumbledore took!” she jabbed, throwing her hands in the air with frustration. 

“So, you’re telling me we cannot know for sure how much the wording is relevant,” he mumbled, coming next to her in front of the fireplace, hands resting on the mantel. She observed his profile, painted red and gold by the flames underneath. An image of a portrait she’d seen somewhere, during a trip with her parents ages before, popped into her mind. He looked like a fallen angel, his eyes full of rage and helplessness, his muscles tense and ready to snap. Something on his back, a darker shadow in the dim light, caught her attention. She tilted her head imperceptibly to have a better look. It wasn’t a shadow, it was a tattoo that covered a big part of his upper back and went down his spine. It seemed to be a dragon, with spread wings and a circle around his horned head. Was it a sun? She couldn’t linger more, she actually shouldn’t, so she dragged her eyes away from the skin of his back and turned it to his profile again.

“Yes, which is precisely why I think we should act as if it is. Should the wording be important, the Relligo wouldn’t kick in if I repaired the cabinet in the past,” she forced herself to say, pushing away her inconspicuous curiosity. “It doesn’t matter if it’s your younger self or present one, but it has to be Draco Malfoy to do it.”

His nostrils flared when she spoke his full name, but he said nothing. Hermione went all in.

“There’s something more.”

He closed his eyes and exhaled from his nose, his shoulders sagging a little, as if to ask how there could possibly be more than that.

“When you said I could retrieve the Time Turner on my own, you were right. I could have greeted you with it around my neck, actually. But I didn’t,” she started, then paused and took a deep breath. She was about to lay herself bare for him to feast on her soul. But she had to. “I didn’t do this thing on my own because I am scared.”

At her confession, his head whipped around, gaze swirling with molten lava. 

“I’m scared of what I could do if I met Donovan on the mission, and no one would be there to stop me from murdering him and getting killed for it. I am scared of fucking it all up and die in there. I’m just scared of doing it alone, Malfoy. That is why I’m asking for your help for that, too,” she admitted, looking at her feet, avoiding his piercing eyes, afraid of what she could find there.  

“And you’re so desperate that the former Death Eater you hated in school is better than doing this alone?” he asked, his voice just above a whisper. 

Hermione shook her head. “I didn’t hate you, I already told you that.”

“But you don’t trust me. You kept crucial information about that damned spell.”

“Because I wanted you to choose to do it!” she blurted out, then sighed, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I wanted you to feel like you were choosing, not being forced into it. I don’t like how it feels when you have no choice and…I think you can relate.”

Malfoy seemed to digest her words, then shook his head, a bitter smile on his lips. “What a big disappointment I must be to you, Granger. Even given the option, I chose to be a jerk.”

Hermione tilted her head and observed him. “Is it because of me? Because of what I am?” she asked, and hated the vulnerability in her voice, but brushed it off in her mind. Malfoy must have heard it too. He watched her for a moment, then looked away and straightened, pushing away from the mantel, one hand automatically going through his damp hair.

“You are a witch, Granger, and a damned good one at that. I’ve been out of my ass long enough to acknowledge that. But I called you names and treated you like dirt for too much, and that leaves a mark,” he said, massaging the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. Hermione stared at him, shocked. Who was this Malfoy? The ghost of the child was still there, in the mannerism, the smirk, the way he held his shoulders straight. But the snark in his voice had dulled, the cruelty in his words had dimmed. He had finally grown up, she realized, away from those who had shaped his mind towards evil and prejudice in his childhood. 

He opened his eyes and their gazes locked. She felt raw under his scrutiny.

“I refused because this mission is very delicate, and we aren’t a good match, precisely due to those marks. You don’t trust me, Granger. You might never be able to, and I get that. But in this kind of operation, trust is essential.” 

“You’re right”, she admitted without hesitation. “But I don’t trust you because I don’t know anything about you, except what I learnt in school, Malfoy. What I see in front of me, now, though… you’re not who you were.”

“I’m worse,”  he said, taking a step closer to her, almost framing her against the fireplace. “I killed, in cold blood, muggles and wizards alike. And I regret nothing, Granger. I’m angry, all the time. And I want revenge more than anything else. I could murder Donovan and his men using only my bare hands, no magic. I would relish the feel of their blood through my fingers. You have no idea how difficult it is to stay here, instead of going to London and rip his fucking throat out in the middle of the street,” he whispered, his face dangerously close to hers, his nose almost grazing her cheek while he confessed his darkest secrets into her ear. Hermione inhaled deeply, only to have his shadowy scent shoved down her nose, tickling her insides with something she really didn’t want to acknowledge right now.

“Actually, I do,” she whispered back and he drove his eyes into hers, his gaze so intense it made her head spin. He looked…starved. 

“Do you?” he asked, a corner of his mouth lifting.

“Donovan fooled me and then destroyed everything I had left. I am in between, Malfoy. I can’t live like a muggle, can’t live like a witch. I am nothing because of him, and I don’t like being nothing.  I killed too, and that’s not what keeps me up at night. I would kill him straight away if it made a difference, Malfoy, but we both know it wouldn’t,” she said, staring at him hard, even if her hands were trembling. Draco was so close she felt the ghost of his warm breath on her face. 

“Work with me. Let’s make this mess right. I will trust you if you let me in, Malfoy. Are you willing to do the same?”

Draco let his eyes travel on her face, studying her eyes and resting on her lips for a long second. 

“People get hurt around me, Granger,” he mumbled, still staring at her mouth. 

Hermione felt her stomach twist and flatter.

“Am I surrounded by joyful folks, instead?” she retorted. 

“Fair point,” he smirked, his gaze travelling up to her eyes and lingering there, calculating. Then, like a gust of wind, he stepped away and put distance between them. Hermione breathed, her face suddenly cold from the lack of him. 

“Let me sleep on it, Granger. Or were you planning on going to the Ministry tonight?” he asked, his words laced with subtle mockery. Hermione ignored the teasing and walked past him, heading for the door. 

“Come look for me when you’ve made up your mind,” she said, fingers on the door handle. “I’ll tell Dobby to bring your wand back. I didn’t realize you wouldn’t be able to dry your hair,” she said, turning around and fighting the urge to bite her lower lip in embarrassment, frustrated she’d overlooked something that obvious. 

Malfoy gave her a blank look from under his brows and pushed his fingers through his slicked back locks. When he reached the nape of his neck, the white blond strands were soft and perfectly dry, slightly wavy at the ends and casually framing his smug face. Hermione’s lips parted, impressed at the fluidity of his wandless spell.

“I’m flattered that Hermione Granger worries I could catch a cold,” he said, walking up to her and resting his hand on hers around the handle. “But I have a couple of aces up my sleeve.”

He opened the door, the slight pressure of his cold hand firing goosebumps up her arm and down her back. Hermione stepped out, slowly taking away her fingers from under his. 

“Don’t sleep too much,” she hinted, then turned and crossed the landing to her dorm’s door. She opened it and walked past the threshold, pulling the door closed behind her without a second glance.

Draco stared at the old wood for a while, caressing his handle gently.

“I won’t,” he whispered to the darkness.

Chapter Text

7.

April, 1998

“Are you certain, Lucius? We cannot make such a mistake,” Bellatrix hissed, digging the cold blade of her knife on her throat. Hermione felt the sting of the skin opening and a warm trickle of blood running down the column of her neck.

“I’m telling you, Bella, it’s them!” Lucius Malfoy confirmed, his manic eyes fixed on Harry’s swollen forehead. She had thrown him a Stinging Hex before getting caught, in a desperate attempt at disguising him as long as possible. But Lucius knew them, quite well, and he was also eager to please the Dark Lord with a victory. Handing over Harry Potter would be his golden ticket to safety till the end of the war.

Hermione’s gaze darted to Ron, furiously thrashing in Greyback's strong arms, and then to Harry, Lucius’s fingers pulling the hair at the back of his head to expose his face to the light. She had to find a way to escape, immediately, or they were doomed. 

“See? The scar is right there, Bella. It’s him, I’m calling the Dark Lord,” he said, triumph in his voice, hurling Harry down on the marble floor. Harry tried to scramble away, but ropes appeared around his body and secured him in place. Lucius then pointed his wand to his exposed Dark Mark and pushed the tip in his flesh, eyes rolling back in his skull for a moment. Hermione felt Bellatrix hiss in her ear, her arm tightening around her middle. Ron roared in her peripheral, and Greyback growled, grabbing him harder.

“Oi, Malfoy! We captured the scums, we want recognition when your boss arrives,” Scabior said from behind them. Bellatrix spun around with her, the knife scratching deeper in her flesh. Hermione refused to whimper, even if the pain was excruciating. 

“How dare you talk to the Lord of this Manor with…” she started, murderous, then stopped abruptly, her eyes landing on the sword in Scabior’s grasp. Hermione heard her intake of breath and knew, deep down, that they were as good as dead. 

“Where did you find that sword?” Bellatrix hissed, buzzing with contained fury.

Scabior must have sniffed the danger, his eyes widening. “The bitch had it in her purse,” he said, nodding towards Hermione. She waited for Bellatrix to cut her throat then and there, but the woman wanted answers first. Her nails dug into her scalp, while she pulled her hair to angle her head back even more. A groan escaped her lips. 

“Is it true, little Mudblood? How did you steal it?” she singsang, her breath tickling the shell of her ear. Hermione kept her mouth shut, but Bellatrix pushed the blade harder, warm blood sliding down her front. She screamed.

“LEAVE HER ALONE!” Ron shouted, before Greyback wrapped a forearm around his neck, pulling a gurgling sound from his throat.

“How did you steal the sword, Mudblood?”

“We found it in the forest! Please, we stole nothing!” Hermione squealed.

Bellatrix looked at Lucius. “Severus?” she asked.

Lucius nodded, his eyes narrowed. “Maybe that’s what he was doing there.”

“If the Dark Lord finds out…Lucius, we are all dead!” she spat. The knife quivered on Hermione’s throat. Without a word, Lucius turned to Scabior.

“Avada Kedavra.”

The leader of the Snatchers sagged on the floor, the sword of Godric Gryffindor clattering on the marble. Everyone went absolutely still. Lucius strode to the corpse and picked up the weapon. He looked around and saw Hermione’s beaded bag, clutched in the hands of a Snatcher. He grabbed it and pushed the sword inside it. 

“Tell the Dark Lord what happened and you’ll end up like Scabior here, after a very thorough torture session,” he drawled, dropping the bag on the floor with a rattling. Greyback looked like he wanted to reply, but the crack of Apparition silenced him. Voldemort appeared in the centre of the room, in his smoky black robes. His red pupils took in the scene around him, finally landing on Harry, still pinned down on the floor. Hermione noticed the effect of the Stinging Hex had faded away and her friend was very much recognizable. There was no way out now. 

Voldemort's thin mouth curled up in a vicious sneer. She felt her blood freezing in her veins.

“Harry Potter. What a pleasant surprise,” he whispered. His gaze snapped to Lucius. “Finally you prove useful, Lucius. Now, get rid of this superfluous audience, my friend. Potter and I have unfinished business to attend to.”

Lucius bowed his head, then looked around and nodded. The Snatchers scrambled out  of the drawing room in an instant, while Greyback stared down at the Malfoy patriarch.  

“Get the blood traitor to the dungeons, we’ll deal with him later,” Lucius instructed. Ron tried to shout and writhe, but Greyback’s arm was too strong around his body while he dragged him away.

“My Lord, please! Let me witness your victory over the scum that dared challenge your greatness!” Bellatrix pleaded, her voice small and sweet like a baby. Voldemort glanced her way and his eyes glimmered. 

“Is that the famous Mudblood, dear Bellatrix?” he asked. The woman nodded furiously, her coarse curls rubbing on Hermione’s cheek. 

“I believe it would be an incredible lesson for her to watch her best friend die today. Let her see a new world start in this room,” he declared, smiling with frightening satisfaction.

“No, Harry, NO!” Hermione screamed, the pain of the blade on her skin forgotten while thrashing around in Bellatrix’s hold. The woman let the knife fall to the floor and covered her mouth with her bony hand, muffling her screams. 

“Shut up, bitch,” she hissed in her ear, pushing so hard on her lips Hermione felt her lungs emptying and constricting in her chest.

Voldemort was already circling around Harry’s incapacitated body.

“Well, look at you Harry! At my feet at last.”

Harry’s face was calm. “Are you going to be a coward, Tom? Or will you face me in a fair duel?” he asked, his voice void of fear. Hermione’s stomach clenched at her best friend’s bravery, even in the face of death itself.

Voldemort smiled. He had never looked more like a snake. “I’m done being fair when it comes to you, Harry Potter. You have the unpleasant habit of sneaking from my hold, so I think I’ll play dirty this time.”

Hermione’s eyes widened when Voldemort produced his wand from a hidden pocket and pointed it at Harry’s face. Her best friend parted his lips, surprised, and his green gaze flitted to hers.

“Avada Kedavra!”

A flash of golden light exploded in the room, flinging Voldemort against the wall. Bellatrix stumbled back, but didn’t lose her hold on her. Hermione watched Harry’s head lolling on the floor, the life gone from his eyes. Lucius scrambled to the Dark Lord motionless figure on the floor, his hand reaching for his pulse. His grey eyes widened and he slowly turned to Bellatrix. Before he could say anything, a sharp intake of breath caught his attention, while Voldemort came back to life. Hermione’s eyes traveled to Harry’s body. She saw him blink. 

She knew it. She had been right, all along. 

Harry was the accidental Horcrux. 

Her mind started running like a hunted animal. Dumbledore must have known. But he hadn’t told Harry, why? Because he would have sacrificed himself right away, of course. And he couldn’t. Because of the prophecy. Because he was the only one committed enough to find and destroy all the other Horcruxes first, wasn’t it? But Nagini wasn’t dead yet. And Voldemort wasn’t stupid, he would realize as much and start suspecting. He would go check on his other Horcruxes and find none. If Harry died today, their chances at getting Nagini were down to zero. They were lost. And her best friend…

“He’s breathing, my Lord! He’s breathing!” Bellatrix cried, Lucius’s head whipping around. Hermione felt her hold loosen a little and decided to act. She sank her teeth in Bellatrix’s hand, elbowing the witch in the stomach with all her strength. Bellatrix screamed, but didn’t let her go. Hermione tried to stomp on her foot while throwing her head back aiming for her nose. She felt the crunch of bone against her skull, Bellatrix whining like a baby, her arms finally letting her go. She sprinted towards Harry, the sound of running steps echoing in the corridor reverberating in her ears. 

“Hermione, dive!” Ron cried from the door, a small house elf on his heels. Dobby. He could apparate them out.

Hermione threw herself on the ground just before a jet of red light flew over her. She turned and saw Bellatrix aiming again, her eyes bloodshot and her rotten teeth on display. Hermione rolled on the floor, avoiding another spell, trying to reach Harry. Ron and Dobby were almost there, jumping away at Lucius’s curses. From the corner of her eye, she saw Voldemort getting up, his wand pointed.

Everything went silent. 

She didn’t hear the spell, didn’t hear Ron’s scream, didn’t hear the giggle from Bellatrix’s throat. She only heard Harry’s final breath when the green light hit him square in the chest. Her fingers were mere inches from his. His beautiful green eyes had been searching for hers, an apology written in his irises.

September, 2001

Hermione shot up, screaming, her hair sticking to her clammy skin. She was trembling so violently the bed creaked under her body. In the darkness of her room she thought she could see his eyes again. Her hands covered her face, tears mixed with sweat made her skin slick under her fingers. It had been a while since this particular nightmare had visited her sleep. It didn’t matter how many times she had it, though. It always felt like being there again, watching her best friend die before her eyes. 

She tried to take a deep breath, her teeth still chattering in her skull. She always woke up at the same point, her fingers almost grazing Harry’s when it was too late. Dobby had got them out before Voldemort could kill them all, managing to apparate them and Harry’s body to the Burrow. She remembered Fred pulling her away from his unmoving form in the grass. She remembered Ginny screaming so loud her ears felt raw. 

Three years had passed and the pain was as fresh as that day. 

Hermione pushed the tips of her fingers over her eyes and forced her walls up, occluding desperately. After a couple of failed attempts, her memories were safe in a book in the back of her mind, her breathing back to normal. She scrambled out of bed, pushing the tangled covers away from her body and walked to the window. The sky was still dark, but a line of lilac was growing on the horizon, dawn on its way. There was no point in trying to sleep a couple of hours more, her skin still buzzing with nervous energy. She reached for her wand on the nightstand and transfigured her pajamas into running gear. Already feeling her heartbeat quickening, she walked out of her room, sprinted down the stairs and darted through the corridors, heading for the grounds, running from her nightmares.

**********

Hours later, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Room of Requirements, in front of the Vanishing Cabinet, when she felt his presence. She didn’t turn. Surrounded by notes and books, she tapped the wood of the open wardrobe and a stream of yellow runes appeared in midair in front of her eyes, along with strings of numbers and flux lines.

“Are those diagnostic spells?” Draco asked, his light steps halting right behind her. 

“Sort of. It’s a modified version to monitor magic fluctuations in artifacts analysis. It’s used in repairing processes as well, to check how things are going. I found out about this kind of spell the day before you appeared. I was planning to use it to see if I was doing something to this blasted thing, but then…” she explained, moving a hand in his general direction. “So, I made some alterations and I’m trying to use it retroactively.”

“Why?”

“Because I have no idea which spell or combination of spells repaired the cabinet.”

“Wouldn’t it be the last one you used?” he asked, and Hermione heard a clear duh in his tone. 

“Well, if you had been trying the Cabinet over and over again unsuccessfully while I was firing spells at it, yes. But since you just tried it once, maybe it had already been working for days, or weeks, when you stepped in,” she mused, prodding the glowing projection and scribbling some notes. “I mixed this diagnostic spell with a Priori Incantatem , so it shows the layers of spells I used and how they impacted the magic of the cabinet. It’s kind of slow, I’ve managed to trace back only a couple of days this morning,” she admitted, trying to push away the impatience from her  voice. 

Draco kept quiet for a while, observing her vanish a projection and cast another, this time a dull orange. 

“Granger, are you sure this cabinet is repaired?” 

Hermione narrowed her eyes and turned her head around and up. He was a giant from her position. 

“What do you mean? You’re out of it, Malfoy, isn’t it proof enough?”

He had his hands in his pockets and was watching the cabinet intently, his grey eyes  darker, as if a storm was on the way.

“What if I ended up in a sliding door and used a cabinet from an alternate timeline? Maybe that connection works just fine, maybe it’s not the same we need in the original timeline,” he suggested. 

Hermione froze. Merlin’s ball sack.

“What makes you think you were in a sliding door ?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s a possibility, isn’t it?”

It was. And Hermione hated that she hadn’t thought about it herself. 

“Fuck,” she muttered, stabbing the projection and blowing it away. She tucked her feet under herself and pushed up, standing in one movement. 

“This is all useless if I don’t make sure the thing works,” she said to herself, staring murderously at the cabinet, hands on her hips. “I’ll have to go to London, I need to test both sides.”

“We,” he corrected.

Hermione blinked once, then turned towards him. “We?”

Draco was still staring at the cabinet. “ We need to test it.”

She faced him fully, getting in his line of sight. “We?” 

He looked down at her, face blank but eyes swirling with a mixture of emotions she struggled to identify.

“I’m in, Granger.”

She felt her pulse quicken. “You’re in.”

“For all of it,” he nodded.

She swallowed. “For all of it?”

“Are you a parrot, Granger?” he sneered, arching a brow.

She rolled her eyes. “I was just checking if I heard you correctly. You’re willing to help me retrieve the Time Turner as well?”

“What part of all of it isn’t clear to you, exactly? Aren’t you supposed to be clever?” he asked, lightly teasing. Hermione was surprised about the lack of actual venom in his words, but the overwhelming sensation of relief blanketed everything else in her mind. She almost wanted to throw her arms around his neck, but something in the tense curve of his shoulder convinced her to refrain.

“You have conditions, don't you?” she said, narrowing her eyes.

He took one step towards her, his hands still in his pockets. “I won’t follow orders blindly, Granger. I want to be informed beforehand about your plans, you will not keep anything from me,” he said, enunciating each word carefully. He reminded her of Snape. 

“Of course,” she agreed, nodding once.

“I will trust you, Granger, if you can handle trusting me,” he added, with a hard look. “If we are doing this as equals, I want to have a say in the planning. You will listen to my suggestions and consider them, can you bear it?”

Hermione crossed her arms on her chest. “Absolutely, Malfoy.”

He bore his gaze into hers a bit harder. “And I want to see how you fight, hand to hand.”

This time, Hermione stepped closer. “No problems. But I want to see your wand work in a duel.”

“Deal,” he countered, eyes like chips of ice. 

Hermione smirked. “Let’s get started, then. We can go down to the training grounds for a skirmish session, I’m ready.”

“No.”

Her face fell. “What do you mean no ? What else do you have to do?”

“Nothing, Granger, but you have to eat your lunch. I can count your ribs with your sweater on,” he scolded her, not a hint of humor in his voice. 

Hermione scoffed. “You’re no better than me in that department, Malfoy.”

“Not because I forget to eat,” he reproached with a glare. Then he turned to walk away. “Dobby stole a chicken, it’s a shame to waste it,” he added, almost at the corner of the giant pile of junk that formed blocks in the enormous City of Hidden Things. 

“Training grounds at 4?” she called after him.

Malfoy looked over his shoulder. “Can’t wait.”

************

Draco spotted her from afar, skipping down the slope that led from the castle to the Quidditch pitch. From his broomstick, she was a burgundy dot in the green grass. Squeezing his thighs and stirring the handle of the old flying broom, he swerved right and drew a full circle, turning around towards the training grounds. The wind whistled in his ears and pushed his hair away from his face, while he sped up to reach the meeting point before her. He had missed flying more than anything else, probably even more than casting spells freely. The sense of freedom he had in the sky, with nothing around him other than air and blue, was unmatched by anything else. 

Well…Something actually came to mind. A flash of a warm smile, the sweet caress of her lips, her whispered pleasure in the darkness. He held his breath and shoved everything in a crammed room behind his occluding walls. That was all gone, off limits, he had to bear it in mind very clearly.

Draco started to deep dive, increasing the speed inch after inch, the ground running up to meet him. When he was mere feet from the hard soil, he pulled up and drifted simultaneously, angling parallel to the ground. He dismounted flawlessly, jumping down and placing the broomstick on his shoulder. 

Hermione was walking towards him, in a pair of jogging pants and a matching burgundy hoodie. Her mane of curls was piled on top of her head in a messy bun, wand stuck in the centre. 

“Show off,” she yelled and he smirked despite himself. 

“Still scared of flying, Granger?” he asked when she stopped in front of him.

“Even I have a flaw, Malfoy,” she jabbed with a cocky smirk of her own. 

He put down his broom and pointed at her feet. “You’ve dropped some modesty there, Granger.”

“Pot, meet kettle,” she retorted, taking out her wand and conjuring a big sparring mat  behind him. Then, she pulled out a dagger from the front pocket of her hoodie. With a tap of the wand, it duplicated into four. Hermione handed two to Draco. 

“Daggers?” he asked, one brow arched.

“Don’t you know how to use them?” she replied, matching his expression. 

He chuckled, accepting the weapons. “I wouldn’t be this sassy before a fight, Granger. I’m still a spiteful Slytherin.”

“Some things never change, I guess,” she quipped, walking around him and reaching the mat. Draco turned and watched her placing her daggers down before pulling her hoodie over her head, revealing a fitted sports bra. His eyes glided over her bare shoulders and down her back, while she stretched her arms and rotated her torso just enough for him to catch a glimpse of the curve of her breasts. Draco blinked and walked to the opposite side of the mat, taking off his sweater as well, while occluding so hard his eyes hurt. Placing his wand on the ground near his discarded piece of clothing, he focused on the handles of his daggers and examined the blunt blades and rounded tips. 

“I’m ready when you are, Malfoy,” Hermione called out. He looked up and saw her standing on her side of the mat, her legs slightly spread and planted on the ground. She was holding both knives in her hands, arms resting down her sides. Her posture wasn’t bad, he noticed. 

Draco stepped on the mat and dropped one of the daggers over the edge and into the grass. Hermione walked towards him, then started to circle around. He mirrored her, studying her stance, the way her eyes assessed him, how her body tensed and angled. Unexpectedly, she threw one dagger at him. Draco dived left, the knife flying mere inches from his shoulder. Impressive. While he was distracted, she charged quickly, her left hand aiming at his face, her right one stabbing at his torso with all her momentum. Draco stepped back, swiveling right, his armed hand parrying her shot to the stomach.  Hermione drew back, flexing on her knees and aiming her knife to his right thigh, almost quick enough to touch his leather flying pants. Draco spun on one foot, lifting his armed hand up, then pushed down on her exposed shoulder. She ducked last-second and took half a step back, to regain her footing. Then, she kicked out on his open side, trying to hit his knee. He grabbed her leg and twisted it, pulling a groan from her lips. Hermione fell and he pulled her towards him, crouching to pin her to the ground. Her arms were free and she hit him on the temple with the handle of her remaining dagger, throwing him off balance for a second. It was enough to push him off her and on his back. Hermione straddled him and put her dagger to his throat, panting heavily. Draco looked down at the blade then up at her face. Her gaze was pure murder, almost stunning to watch.

“Not bad,” he mumbled. “Strength isn’t your forte, but you’re quick, and bold. Maybe too bold. I’ll teach you how to wear down your opponent before going for the kill,” he said, remaining still under her warm body. 

Hermione scoffed. “You’re on your back, Malfoy, and you talk like you’re the winner?”

A corner of his lips lifted and he reached one hand around her wrist, while his other arm hooked around her narrow waist. He maneuvered her down on the mat and under himself effortlessly, holding her arms over her head with only one hand, but hard enough to keep her pinned to the ground. Hermione growled, her breaths coming out loud and quick. Draco felt her chest rise and fall between his legs and he had to push harder on his Occlumency walls to keep his face straight.

“The match wasn’t over, Granger,” he said, then lowered his face over hers, his blond locks tickling her flaming cheeks. “Never let your opponent’s hands free to move. Who knows where they could end up,” he whispered, his free index boldly running up the bare skin of her side. Goosebumps erupted in his wake. His eyes swam in her molten chocolate irises and for just a second he indulged in her fire, basking in the forbidden warmth. He let her go a moment later, pushing up and holding a hand to help her as well. Hermione considered his peace offering for a moment, before grabbing it and letting him lift her on her feet. 

“You’re good at this,” she stated, retrieving her knives from the ground. 

Draco dragged a hand through his hair. “I had a lot of free time in the future. I sneaked into some gyms,” he explained, walking to his side of the mat to retrieve his wand. When he turned around, he caught her staring. His back and torso were on full display, in plain daylight and she was watching. Unabashedly.

“You also visited a tattoo parlor,” she stated. 

Draco looked over his shoulder on instinct. “I wanted to know how it felt, the muggle way,” he simply said.

“Was it different from…” she asked, nodding to his Dark Mark on his forearm. Draco’s eyes trailed over the dull contours of the skull eating a snake. It had stopped moving, supposedly after Voldemort’s death, but it hadn’t faded completely.

“Less painful. Gratifying, in a sense,” he said, picking up his sweater.

“Does it have a meaning? I mean, it’s a dragon, so it probably represents you, but what is the circle around his head?” Hermione pushed, curiosity plain on her face. 

Draco pulled the sweater on, then looked at her. “It’s the sun. It’s a dragon flying freely towards the sun,” he said. It wasn’t a proper explanation, but Hermione nodded, looking away. 

“Now that I saw your hand-to-hand skills, do you want to duel?” he asked, eager to fill the silence. Hermione agreed, reaching her side of the mat.

“Mind you, Granger, I’m a bit rusty with the wand,” he added, rolling his wrist around and adjusting his hold. Hermione’s lips curved slowly, while taking a graceful dueling stance.

“We’ll be gentle, Malfoy, don’t worry,” she teased and Draco felt a stirring in the pit of his stomach. Why did her words sound remotely erotic to his ears? He couldn’t analyze further, because a jet of red light sparked from her wand, aimed at his chest. Draco flicked his wrist to cast a shielding charm, but it came out weak, the force of her attack making him stumble.

“So much for being gentle,” he mumbled under his breath, sending a stupefy her way. She deflected it with a small swipe of her hand. “Your spells are weak, Malfoy. Try making them verbal,” she suggested, sending another disarming charm at him.

“ Protego ,” he yelled, a thick shield erupting from his wand. She was right. 

Of course , she was. 

Hermione grinned. “Now, try to stun me, use another verbal one.”

“ Stupefy ,” he said, sparks flying her way. She deflected and responded quickly. 

“Your aim’s a bit off?” she considered. 

Draco just shrugged. “A bit of air refraction, maybe.”

They went on dueling for a while, until Draco’s hold on his magic felt stronger and purposeful, then he switched back to non-verbal spells and tried a set of trickier incantations, to test his resistance. Hermione eventually disarmed him, catching his wand mid-air. 

“Not bad,” she said, mimicking his words from earlier. “We have to work on strengthening your flow, but you just have to get used to casting with your wand again, I guess. We can train together if you want,” she offered, handing him his wand back. Draco took it and bore his eyes into hers.

“Fighting and dueling?” he asked. Hermione nodded, waiting. 

He tilted his head, conceding. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to go into the Ministry prepared.”

She grinned and he saw her restraining from clapping her hands together. She balled her fists to her sides and pushed a little onto her toes. “Great, I’ll draw a schedule. I would say, sparring in the morning, dueling in the afternoon, and plotting in the evening?”

She sounded excited and for a moment she looked younger to his eyes, a spark of mischief he had spotted in her during their school years, while sneaking around with her friends, breaking the rules. He had been watching her, more than she would have ever noticed. More than he wanted to admit to himself. 

Draco nodded. “Starting tomorrow?”

Her brows shot up. “Starting tonight, Malfoy! We don’t have time to lose, here. Meet me in the Defense classroom at 8, we need to figure out how to test if the Cabinets’ connection actually works,” she said matter-of-factly, a hint of her swottiness lingering in the back of her voice. He observed her put on her hoodie, her bun all wonky on her head. She pulled at the hair tie and he heard it snap, her hair tumbling down her shoulders like a waterfall from an exploded balloon. His breath caught. 

“Fuck it,” she mumbled, gathering her locks again and skewering them in place with her wand, but they kept falling apart. Draco grabbed one of his daggers and transfigured it with a flick of his wand.

“Here,” he said, handing her a hair clip. It was tortoiseshell, big enough to hold her impossible amount of curls. Hermione’s gaze snapped up to his face, a veil of awe sparkling in her eyes. 

“I knew someone that loved these things,” he explained, silver irises swirling with his usual mix of inscrutable emotions. Hermione picked it, her fingertips briefly grazing his palm. She twisted her hair in an oblong knot behind her head and pinned it in place.

“Thanks,” she muttered, looking at him from under her lashes, a soft blush warming her face. 

Draco shrugged. “Try not to break that, too,” he suggested, a little harsher than necessary. Then walked away, heading for the castle, never looking back. 

He bit the inside of his cheek until he drew blood.

Chapter Text

8.

“First fact: we could technically apparate into Diagon Alley, because the area is highly charged and the Grid is faulty there, but I don’t think we should risk it,” Hermione pondered, flicking her wand towards the blackboard, notes appearing in white chalk. “So, the safest option is to side-along with Dobby.”

“I’ll do it,” Draco said, stretching his legs under a desk. His knees had bumped against the wooden edge twice already. Had they always been that small?

Hermione shook her head. “I’d prefer to go myself, Malfoy. I’ve never seen that Cabinet in Borgin and Burke, I’d like to examine it. Especially if the connection won’t work.”

It made sense, so Draco nodded. “Alright, you go. Disguise?”

She pulled a bunched piece of fabric from the teacher’s desk. “Invisibility Cloak. It was Harry’s father’s, it’s quite unique. The invisibility spell has never been refreshed,” she explained and threw him the cloak. Draco caught it and examined it, brows furrowed. The material felt like running water under his finger pads. He draped the thing over his left shoulder and watched it disappear completely, without any sort of ripple or halo.

“It’s not a normal Invisibility Cloak, is it?” he asked, still running his eyes on the artifact. 

“Dumbledore thought it was one of the Deathly Hallows,” she replied, her voice hard as granite.

Draco looked up. “That’s a myth, Granger.”

She shrugged. “I honestly don’t care, Malfoy. As long as it works, it could have come from hell, it wouldn’t bother me.”

Draco lifted a brow at her, then threw the cloak back. Hermione grabbed it quickly and folded it.

“Second fact: this time we need to use something more than just green apples and birds to test the cabinets, I think,” she teased, her words appearing on the blackboard behind her. 

Draco’s eyes narrowed into slits. “How do you know I used green apples?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You ate an awful lot of them in Sixth Year, Malfoy, I just assumed.”

He crossed his ankles and smirked. “Why did you watch me eat, Granger?”

She scoffed. “I was keeping an eye on you, Malfoy, because you were acting very suspiciously.”

He hummed and folded his arms on his chest, signature smirk still in place. Hermione placed her hands on the desk. “I was thinking that, if apples and birds work, we should also test the cabinets with something bigger and more complex, like a rabbit or a chicken or… a Kneazle!”

“I might have one in my pocket, Granger, let me check,” he drawled, remaining perfectly still and looking at her with contempt. 

She started to bristle. “I’ll ask Dobby to find something, he’s a good hunter.”

“That he is,” Draco conceded.

“Great. When we have some…testing material, Dobby will apparate me in Borgin and Burke and you’ll start sending me stuff. If I receive it, I’ll send it back and you’ll go to the next item. If I don’t get anything in five minutes, I’ll send Dobby to check. If everything passes, the connection is restored,” Hermione said, walking back and forth behind the big desk.

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll regroup and go through the spells you used and see if there is something we can still try,” Draco suggested and she nodded.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” she concluded, cracking her fingers absentmindedly.

“Which relies a lot on that poor house elf, so I really think you should inform him,” Draco pointed out, eyes fixed on her hands. 

“Dobby?” Hermione called. A pop resounded after mere seconds and the flappy eared elf appeared on Draco’s desk, wearing a tartan pleated skirt and a pair of leather suspenders. 

“Miss Hermione Granger! Is it time for night tea with a splash of joy?” Dobby asked, a mischievous smile spreading on his face. Hermione blushed, her eyes briefly flitting to Draco.

“No, Dobby, I called you to ask if you could help us with a mission!” she blurted out, walking  around the desk to stand in front of him, then proceeded to fill him in.

“Of course, Miss Hermione Granger! Dobby can do all of that! Dobby will go into the Forest and capture as many animals as Miss Hermione Granger wants!” he shouted, excitement making his ears tremble. Hermione smiled fondly.

“Thank you Dobby, but I really want you to be very careful! Your safety is more important than anything else,” she said, patting him on his bald head. 

Dobby’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Dobby promises, Miss Hermione Granger!”

When he popped away, Draco was observing her with a curious look on his face. 

“What?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips. 

“Night tea with a splash of joy?” he teased, with a knowing smile.

Hermione huffed and turned around, reaching nervously for the Invisibility Cloak. “It’s just a teensy bit of Firewiskey, Malfoy. It helps me sleep better sometimes.”

She heard him shuffle and stand up, the wood creaking. “I think I’ll go to the kitchens. I wouldn’t mind some night tea with a splash of joy myself,” he mused, his tone light and casual. Hermione whipped around and watched him walk to the door.

Later, when she stepped into her bedroom, a steaming cup was waiting for her on the nightstand. The sweet aroma of whiskey coming off of it was undeniable. She snorted, a little smile playing on her lips. 

**********

It took Dobby three days to hunt down all the required test subjects . Draco and Hermione used the time to train as planned. In the morning, she met him by the Quidditch pitch after her usual run. He always arrived with his broom on the shoulder, wearing a tight pair of leather pants. He then proceed to strip off his sweater, while she conjured a sparring mat, making a point not to stare at his broad tattooed shoulders. After a couple of hours of intense training, where she ended pinned on the floor more often than she liked to admit, Hermione went back to the castle fuming and bristling, and avoided him until it was time to meet again for dueling. They had cleared the Great Hall of the four tables to have enough space of maneuver and spent the afternoons sending spell after spell at each other. Dueling was Draco’s turn to be pissed and overpowered, since his non-verbal spells were still weak after three sessions. During the first one, they had worked on strengthening his verbal spells back to his usual power, with great success, but as soon as he tried a silent one, it came out laughable. 

Hermione waved away a stunner with her elbow and he growled like a caged animal.

“Don’t get mad, Malfoy! It only kills your concentration!” she shouted from across the room, swirling her wand around and sending a burning hex his way. 

Draco slashed the air to produce a shield. Those were coming out strong enough to hold her hexes out, but attacking spells were just shit. He was about to retort with a harsh comment, when a crack resounded in the middle of the room and Dobby appeared, struggling to hold onto one of Hagrid’s portable cages that was hissing and thrashing of his own accord. Without even blinking, Hermione sent a Freezing charm right at the centre of the cage, which went immediately still. The sudden lack of movement sent Dobby on his little butt on the floor.

Draco watched her run to the house-self, still a little stunned by her speed and  perfect aim. She was a menace. A very talented, bushy haired, out for blood menace. And that made things to his body that he really didn’t want to acknowledge.

“Miss Hermione Granger! Dobby found a Kneazle, as requested!” Dobby’s shrill voice echoed in the gigantic room. Draco shook his head a little and walked up to the pair. The elf was beaming with excitement and pride, unaware that his flimsy arms were bloodied and scratched almost to the bone. 

Hermione’s eyes widened, her gaze snapping to the furry animal frozen in the cage. “Dobby, for Christ’s sake! You didn’t have to bring a Kneazle specifically ! Any larger animal with this kind of vibe would have been fine! Like, a normal cat or…” she started, and Draco could see the light in the round eyes of the poor elf starting to dim.

“You did great, Dobby. A Kneazle was just what we needed. Granger, why don’t you clean those deep cuts on his arms before they get infected with Merlin knows what that beast has under his claws?” he suggested, with a hinting glare. Hermione's mouth hung open for a second, then her eyes trailed down Dobby’s figure and she seemed to deflate. With a guilty smile, she patted him on the head and kneeled, murmuring healing charms over his wounds. Dobby’s lower lip started to tremble.

“Miss Hermione Granger and Master Draco are so kind to Dobby, so kind! Dobby is such a lucky elf!” he wailed, big tears spilling down his tennis-ball-like eyes. 

“Oh Dobby, don’t even start! We are the lucky ones here, without you we would never be able to accomplish anything,” Hermione murmured with a final flourish of her wand, all cuts closed and healed. 

“And we’ll be starving,” Draco added, a dreadful note in his voice. 

Dobby smiled, buzzing with energy again. “Is Dobby apparating Miss Hermione Granger to London now? Dobby found all the poor creatures to be shoved into the cabinet!”

Hermione seemed to consider the idea, but Draco was having none of that. The frail elf had been in and out for three days, hunting Gods knew where and looked exhausted, his odd corduroy kilt and cotton vest shredded and mudded. Draco cleared his throat and Hermione looked at him.

“No, Dobby, not now. We’ll do it tomorrow, after you’ve had a good night’s sleep, okay?” she said standing up and pocketing her wand. “In fact, I think we can manage dinner on our own tonight, right Malfoy? Dobby can go rest, effective immediately,” she added, with a glare of her own. 

Draco nodded, picking up the cage. “Sure, Granger. I’m positive you’ll whip up a wonderful meal, while I take this knocked out guy to the Room of Requirement. I’ll see you later down to the kitchens,” he purred, with a wicked smile, then turned to Dobby. “Go to sleep, mate, you’ve earned it.”

Dobby watched him walk out of the Great Hall with an adoring look on his wrinkled face. “Miss Hermione Granger said Master Draco may be horrible like he was in school, but Dobby thinks this Master Draco isn’t that bad,” he said with a dreamy twinkle in his bulging eyes. Hermione’s ones were narrowed to slits and she was glaring at the tall figure disappearing through the giant oak doors.

“I don’t know Dobby, I haven’t decided yet.”

*************

“Alright, then. You have everything lined up in there, yes?” Hermione asked Draco for the fourth time, wringing her hands together, eyes flitting to the door of the Room of Requirement behind him. Dobby was basically jumping on the balls of his feet beside her. 

“Yes, Granger, and I have the order branded in my brain by now. Want me to repeat it? Again?” he replied, his tone strained.

“Please?” she squeaked. 

Draco sighed. “Apple, bird, chicken, rabbit, big feral cat.”

Hermione nodded. “Alright, then. I guess we can get started. Count to twenty from our disappearance before you start sending stuff, okay?”

“As we agreed, yes,” he said, frustration starting to surface. Dobby grabbed her hand and she gave Draco a final hopeful look before nodding again and letting the house elf side-along her to London.

Draco observed the empty spot in front of him for a couple of seconds, then stepped into the Room and reached the Cabinet. There were four cages on the floor beside it and he pulled out a glossy green apple from the pocket of his hoodie, his finger pads sliding on its smooth skin. He finished counting in his head, then opened the cabinet and placed the apple on the bottom. He closed the door and tapped it with his wand, murmuring the activating spell. He felt a swish and a tremble in the air around the wooden artifact, then stillness again. Carefully, he peeked inside. The apple was gone. He wasn’t surprised, though. It had worked with apples for him too, years before. Draco waited for the weird shift in the air again, before opening the door and finding the apple back in place, this time with a big chunk missing. He smirked and picked it up. Granger had bitten into it. He placed his lips on the exposed flesh and took a piece as well, the tangy taste sending a shiver down his spine. He savored it for a moment, his mind wandering into dark places, then he put the fruit on a table covered in long forgotten bits and bobs, and proceeded to gather a bird from one of the cages.

Like the apple, the small animal went forth and back easily, darting out of the cabinet in a flourish of feathers and chirps. The chicken wasn’t a problem either, but when it was time for the rabbit, Draco’s stomach clenched a little. What if it didn’t work? What if he had indeed crossed back from a different Cabinet in his sliding door universe? Because he was certain he had been in a sliding door, even if he had no intention to tell Granger, he simply knew. He gently placed the soft animal in the cabinet, closed it and waited. The shift passed, he peeked and the rabbit was gone. His heart thumping, he looked again when the air trembled for the second time and the rabbit was back. Alive. A shuddering breath left his lips and he took his time petting the fluffy animal before securing him back in his cage. Finally, he turned to the Kneazle. It was massive and they had put a calming spell on it to avoid its escape. So, Draco heaved it out of the cage and placed it in the cabinet, its sleepy eyes slowly blinking in the change of lighting. 

“Good luck, buddy,” he whispered, while closing the door, and tapped the wand on it. It worked. The wild cat disappeared and after what felt like years, the shift in the air made his hair stand on the back of his neck and he found the animal in the Cabinet. 

“She made it,” he whispered, a smile spreading on his face. He laughed out loud, taking the Kneazle in his arms and transferring it to the cage again.

“You’re going back to the Forest tonight, mate!” he chuckled, then turned to the chicken with a mischievous glint in his gaze. “Can’t say the same to you, future dinner,” he added, no hint of regret in his amused voice. He was still smiling while latching the cage of the Kneazle, when the crack of apparition made him whip his head up, expecting to see a grinning Granger bouncing on her feet. But only Dobby was there, hands frantically pulling at his flapping ears, his eyes wide with fear. Draco’s blood ran cold.

“Where’s Granger?” he asked, frozen in place.

“Master Draco! Dobby tried to stop Miss Hermione Granger, but Dobby wasn’t quick enough! Miss stepped inside in a flash!” Dobby wailed, tears brimming in his horrified eyes.

Draco’s heart stopped in his chest. “Stepped in where, Dobby? In the Cabinet?” he asked, but his voice sounded so far away it felt like he was eavesdropping on someone else's  conversation.

Dobby nodded furiously, his lips trembling. “Dobby is going to bash Dobby’s head with a lamp. Dobby bad, bad elf,” he cried, sprinting to catch an enormous lamp resting on the nearby table. On instinct, Draco grabbed the frail elf by the middle and locked his arms on his sides, while he thrashed and keened like a haunted soul. Draco felt the shift in the air on his skin more than in his ears and his head turned to the cabinet, just when Hermione stepped out of it, the biggest smile plastered on her triumphant face. 

“It works!” she cheered, her eyes searching the room for him, but when she saw the scene playing in front of her, her happiness faltered. Dobby sighed in relief and went limp in Draco’s arms, who let go of him and left the poor creature deflated on the floor. He straightened, his eyes darkening and jaw hardening, and reached her in a couple of strides. When Hermione searched his gaze, a chill shook her. She had never seen him this furious, not even back in their school days. 

“Malfoy, I…”

“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked, his voice so low and gravelly it sounded otherworldly. He took a step closer, but kept his hands fisted down his sides. He was trembling with rage. “You could have been stuck in there, Granger. What the hell were you fucking thinking?” he asked again, teeth gritting on the final word. 

“But I didn’t, I’m here and the Cabinet works! We can move on with the plan and…”

“What plan? The one that you think you’re too clever to follow? Because last time you made me repeat it to the point of nausea, it didn’t entail you stepping through that damn trap!” he pointed out, his tone getting louder, his hands still clenched to the point of breaking. 

“That is correct, Malfoy, but we had to test the thing thoroughly,” she started, but Draco interrupted her again.

“I remember agreeing that the Kneazle was enough, or am I mistaken, Granger?”

“You are not mistaken, but we had to be sure it worked for people, Malfoy. So, I thought…”

Malfoy bristled. “That’s exactly your problem, Granger! You think too much and share too little! When exactly did you think it was a good idea to step in the cabinet yourself? Because I have the feeling it wasn’t a spur of the moment decision, am I right?” he implied, barely containing his anger at that point. 

Hermione swallowed, guilt cramming her chest all of a sudden. “It worked, it doesn’t really matter when I…”

“IT MATTERS TO ME!” he shouted in her face, his eyes flashing with silver lightning. Hermione went still, her gaze locked in his. She could make out pain laced with anger and she couldn’t understand it. Why was he hurt? Why had she hurt him? She wanted to say something, but nothing that felt right came to her, so she stayed silent, while he searched her face, looking for what she didn’t know.

After long moments, Draco sighed and stepped back, shaking his head.

“I told you I didn’t want to be kept in the dark, Granger. I demanded to be made aware of all the steps, all the decisions, all the ideas, before acting them out, and you agreed. We decided to trust each other,” he said, sending a heated glance her way. “But it’s clear you cannot do that. I’m not going to be your puppet in a suicide mission, Granger. I won’t be anyone’s puppet ever again.”

And with that, he turned and walked away, disappearing around the corner and towards the door of the Room. Hermione’s chest ached, as if a Bludger had hit her at full force. She didn’t know how long she remained still in front of the Cabinet, but when Dobby recovered enough to shake her, she felt so numb she couldn’t feel her fingers.

Chapter Text

9

January, 1999

“How was he?” Hermione asked, drawing a spiral with her index on his chest.

Theo adjusted his head on his forearm. “Who, Draco?”

“Mmmh. Was he a good friend?”

Theo scoffed. “Merlin, no! He was terrible, at least at Hogwarts. He wasn’t that bad before school, but I guess his father’s pressure changed the game,” he mused. 

“He was obsessed with his father, wasn’t he?” she asked, looking up at him. 

Theo pursed his lips, pensive. “He wasn’t obsessed with him. He needed his approval, though. I don’t think he wanted to be like him, but he felt like he needed to, like it was required of him.”

“What makes you say that?”

Theo inhaled from his nose and hummed. “We used to talk at night, sometimes. Especially after fourth year. He had many questions and doubts about his father’s ideas and beliefs. But he always asked me to keep our conversations to myself. He didn’t want people to know he was building a conscience, I think he was worried it could reach his father’s ears.”

Hermione frowned. “What questions?”

Theo looked down, contemplating. “You were actually a frequent topic of discussion.”

Hermione pushed up a little, curious. She was about to ask more, when someone knocked on the door.

“Mione, Remus is here. He has information to discuss,” Ron’s muffled voice told her from the other side.

Hermione rolled her eyes, exhaustion creeping up her spine. “Okay, give me five minutes.”

Ron hummed, and after a pause he added- “Theo, Remus brought new guns to train with, I’ll wait for you in the attic.”

Theo arched a brow and Hermione covered her mouth to hide a giggle. 

“I’ll be right there, mate,” he replied and heard Ron walk away. 

“I thought we were being a bit more subtle, actually,” Theo said, fishing his briefs from the foot of the bed, while Hermione pulled on her shirt.

“We live in close quarters, it’s not that difficult to piece it together if we disappear at the same time this much,” she said, a smile in her voice. 

“This much?” he asked, incredulous. “I was going to ask you for more sessions, Princess!”

Hermione laughed and threw him his jeans. “No way, Nott. I can’t risk you falling in love with me and getting all clingy and protective. I honestly can’t have you throw yourself in front of me during battles, Ron is enough already!”

“Merlin knows how little you need me to protect you! The other way around, if anything!” he joked, snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her into his naked chest. Hermione laughed and placed an open mouthed kiss on his chin, while Theo bit her nose lightly. 

“I will always watch your back, Nott.”

“I know, Princess, it’s what you do.”

October 2001

Hermione sank under the surface, holding her breath. She opened her eyes, the soapy water immediately stinging and making her want to rub it out to get rid of the pain. But she kept them open, her fingers curled at her sides. She deserved it, this burning sensation, this minuscule punishment. It felt too much and not enough at the same time, guilt clawing her chest and throat. She had betrayed him, right at the start. After working hard to convince him he could trust her, she had ruined everything. A bubble of rage exploded in her stomach and she screamed under water, loud and hard, her voice muffled by the liquid pressing on her lips, threatening to dive into her lungs. And she considered that for a second, a blissful end to her personal hell. But she couldn’t. She had to make things count, she owed it to Theo.

Her feet pushed her up and she emerged out of the water, gasping for air, her eyelids closing and squeezing hard. She swam blindly towards the edge of the enormous bathtub in the Prefects Bathroom and she felt for her wand on the cold tiles. She grasped it and murmured a cleaning charm on her eyes, the sting disappearing a second afterwards. Hermione sighed and crossed her arms over the edge, forehead resting on the porcelain. She grounded herself in the feeling of water sloshing around her breasts and back, the chill of air raised goosebumps on her exposed skin. 

She had to talk to him, find a way to convince Malfoy that they could do this together, that she would be honest with him from now on. She had to tell him her reasons, why she’d acted the way she had. 

Right on cue, the door of the bathroom opened and Malfoy stepped inside, his head down, a towel in his left hand and his wand in the right. He had almost reached the edge of the tub before he spotted her floating on one side. His gaze hardened and he turned around.

“I’ll come back later,” he said, already walking away.

“Malfoy, wait,” she called, pushing on her hands and hoisting herself out of the tub. She hastily reached for a towel and wrapped it around her naked body, while almost running behind him, her wet feet slapping on the tiled floor. 

“Malfoy, wait, please! Draco,” she called again and he finally stopped, still not turning around. His hold on the towel tightened. 

“I’m sorry,” she confessed, in the silence of the steamy bathroom. After long minutes, he faced her, his brows slightly slanted over his eyes. His gaze didn’t know where to rest. It travelled up from her feet and over her naked legs, then took in her wet curls stretched over her shoulders and plastered down her arms to her elbows, rivulets of water running down her forearms and dripping from her fingers. It finally flitted over her face, her red rimmed eyes, her slightly parted lips, her furrowed brows. 

“I…You were right, it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing, I had been planning it, but not from the beginning,” she explained. “Last night, I was in bed, overthinking the whole thing and…I convinced myself it was necessary to test that cabinet for people and I knew you wouldn’t allow me to do it if I told you.”

“You could have tried,” he replied.

“What would you have said?”

“I would have done it,” he answered, not a single bit of hesitation. 

Hermione threw her hands up, the towel sliding half an inch on her chest. “Which was exactly what I wanted to avoid! I couldn’t risk you ending up stuck in there again! You have to repair the Cabinet in the past, Draco, it might be crucial to make the Relligo Charm work. If I got stuck in there, you would still be able to carry on the plan,” she blurted out, in a single breath, her chest rising and falling. Draco’s jaw tensed.

“I don’t need protection, Granger, if it’s what you were trying to do.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t protecting you. I was watching your back, Malfoy, which is what partners usually do on a mission. That’s what I’d want, at least.”

He observed her, assessing her words. Hermione took a step closer.

“I promise you, I didn’t do it because I don’t trust you. I just…” she looked around, pushing the wet strands from her cheeks. “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. And I’m ready to take an Unbreakable Vow if you need me to.”

Draco narrowed his eyes. “I don’t need an Unbreakable Vow, Granger. Your word is enough, if you think you can keep it.”

Hermione held her hand out, droplets flinging at his shirt. “I do, I promise. I won’t keep you in the dark, you have my word.”

Draco watched her hand, then looked up and locked his gaze with hers. His eyes weren’t dark anymore, but there was still a shadow on the bottom of his irises. He squeezed her fingers, his skin a bit rough on her wet palm.

“Do me a favor, Granger,” he muttered, pulling her gently towards him, his face close to hers. “Don’t put yourself in danger over me, okay? I already owe you, I’ll never be able to make it up to you if you go on like this.”

Hermione licked her wet lips, a sting going straight to her heart. “You owe me nothing.”

Draco’s lips lifted at the corner. “Just because I didn’t thank you, it doesn’t mean you didn’t save my life, Granger.”

And with that, he let her go and stepped back, his eyes gently sliding over her half naked body. She started to shiver and he draped his towel around her shoulders.

 “You’re dripping wet,” he whispered and electricity cursed all over her body. On instinct, he twirled a rogue curl around his finger. She felt the tingle of magic and her breath caught silently in her throat. After a second, her mane of unruly hair was dry and lightly floating around her heated face.

“There,” he smirked, “I wouldn’t want you to catch a cold, Lioness.”

There was absolutely no way she would catch a cold right now. Her body was positively on fire.

*******

In the following days, they managed to ignore the incident of the Cabinet and established a routine. After their individual workouts, an exhausting run and a dangerous flight respectively, Hermione and Draco trained on the sparring mat in the morning, while the afternoon was for magical dueling. She was getting better at fighting hand to hand, taking her time to wear down the opponent and leaning more on her speed rather than on strength. Draco’s non-verbal spells were getting stronger by the minute and he was also teaching Hermione a couple of nasty curses she had never heard of, like a very vicious hex that melted clothes and skin together with consequent unbearable pain. They spent the remaining hours of the day examining the Cabinet, casting modified diagnostic spells to track down the fluctuations of magic that could point out which spell had repaired it. 

It had been a week of intense work now, and they were especially drained that night. Draco  was sipping a hot cup of tea spiked with a generous splash of joy, while looking at a page of Hermione’s notes about some of the first spells she’d used on the magical piece of furniture back in May, when she gasped noisily. He looked up from the parchment, the tea in his cup sloshing dangerously near the rim. She was sitting cross-legged in front of the Cabinet as usual, her hair knotted and pinned in place with the hair clip he’d given her, but her back was ramrod straight and she was intently focused on a line of blood red runes floating before her eyes. 

“This motherfucker spell…” he heard her mutter.

“Any progress?” he prodded, slowly getting up from his high-back, very much uncomfortable armchair, and reaching her. 

Hermione pointed the wand to the line of runes and narrowed her eyes. “It was this stupid spell that somehow restored the connection! Of course it was, it’s the darkest and most pureblooded of them all!”

Draco arched his brow. “Do I sense prejudice here? It’s unbecoming of you, Granger, you’re spending too much time with me.”

She looked up with a smirk and shook her head. “I should have known it was this one. It’s a very old practice, maybe you’ve heard of it,” she ranted, getting up and going for one of her notebooks piled on a spindly legged stool. “It’s a marking spell for property binding: if you place it on all your belongings, it’s easier to track them down if they get stolen or lost. It is passed down into families, in case of heritage doubts.”

“Does it work with blood, then?” he asked, observing her fingers turning the pages of her notebook at painful speed. 

“When you’re tying the property to yourself, yes. But there is a version used to tie objects to each other, either to make sure they don’t get separated, as for pieces of a tea set, or to strengthen their connection…” she said, finally stopping on a specific page.

“As for twin Vanishing Cabinets,” he finished, taking a couple of steps and placing himself behind her to look at her notes from over her shoulder. 

“Precisely. Maybe the Cabinet here got damaged in time and the spell was altered. As a consequence, the connection became faulty and they weren’t able to communicate properly anymore,” she suggested, her index finger sliding down the lines of text and stopping on an entry that dated back to early August. Draco followed her movement and read her smooth handwriting.

“Incanto Adnexio,” he muttered and she nodded, her bunched up curls tickling his chin. 

“The original rite requires runes carved in a hidden point of both objects and a smelly paste-like potion to be rubbed all over them, while you chant the words thirty-one times,” she explained, pointing at a list of ingredients scribbled on the bottom of the page. 

“Let me guess: the refresh requires the smelly paste as well?” he asked, a slight hint of amusement pretty detectable in his tone. 

Hermione made a gagging sound. “You have no idea! It was like spreading Hippogriff dung mixed with Bubotuber pus. At least it disappeared immediately after I’d finished casting the spell, but I felt it in my nose for days!”

Draco bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing. 

“The thing is…I didn’t feel any kind of shift in power after that spell. I honestly thought I’d wasted my time, since I didn’t have the twin cabinet here and couldn’t treat that one as well,” she pondered, stepping closer to the glowing diagnostic, where a flat line spiked up right in the centre, the red runes of the Adnexio glowing over its highest point. 

“It’s the only fluctuation you’ve detected so far, though, so maybe that was it,” he suggested, but she remained silent, as if not convinced.

“This was early August, right?” he asked, and she nodded, finally turning around with a small sigh. “Continue with the diagnostics, go further back, while I examine your records from May onward. I’ll tell you what spells I’d already tried and we’ll stop at the first new one you got in. If there aren’t other spikes, that’s the one,” he said, nodding toward the glowing stats midair. She captured her lower lip between her teeth and he had to watch away, his hands twitching at his sides. 

“Makes sense,” she said, turning again to the cabinet, lost in thoughts.

Draco cleared his throat, walking back to retrieve his cup of tea. He gulped the content down in one sip, the hot liquid burning a path down his sternum and into his stomach. 

“We should also start planning the Time Turner Heist,” he said after a second, his voice coming out gravelly, probably due to flaming hot tea and whiskey still coating the poor walls of his throat. 

Hermione exhaled deeply and threw her head back. “Yes, we should start on that, too.”

Draco risked looking her way and immediately regretted it. The column of her throat was exposed, her nose in the air, her eyes closed. He could see her long lashes kissing her rosy cheeks even from that distance. He suddenly needed a cup of neat Firewhiskey to gulp down. 

“Second guessing already?” he forced out, putting as much taunting as possible in his voice.

Hermione reached one hand to the nape of her neck and massaged there, slowly moving her head around. A small creaking sound echoed in the silence.

“No, but…sometimes I just want to go and kill Donovan, to hell everything else,” she confessed, opening her eyes and offering him a tired smile.

“That’s my line, Granger,” he replied, giving her a smirk of his own. 

“Maybe I am spending too much time with you, Malfoy,” she fired back, but there was no snark in her words. They sounded almost fond and the idea that Hermione Granger was enjoying his company sent a jolt of electricity down his spine. 

No, get out of this, his mind screamed, but his body moved without permission and in three prowling strides, he was in front of her, a corner of his mouth lifted, his blood boiling in his veins. 

Get the fuck out, this is madness, a voice angry-whispered in his ear, but he needed some respite from all the occluding, all the pushing back. He needed to breathe, so he did it. He inhaled, and the sweet scent of vanilla and flowers that was intrinsically hers flooded his nostrils and slithered under his skin, threatening to break him to the point of no come back. But he breathed again, let it fill him up to the brim, until he couldn’t make out where she ended and he began. And just as always, it calmed him, like just the right amount of oxygen after a too long deep dive.

“Should we cut on the training? Do you need some rest from my outranking presence, Granger?” he asked, lower and warmer than it should have been. Hermione scoffed, but he could spot a blush deepening on her cheeks.

“Careful, Malfoy. Your head is swelling so much, you might not be able to pass through the door if you continue at this rate,” she replied, leaning towards him with a cocky smile. 

“If your nest of curls manages to push through, I’ll never have any problems,” he jabbed, with his signature smirk, inching a little bit closer. He could count her freckles and the whisper in his head was positively pulling out its hair in frustration. 

Hermione chuckled bitterly. “Joking on my hair is so original, Malfoy! What’s next? Are you going to call me an insufferable know-it-all or will it be something about my front teeth?”

“Your teeth are perfect.”

He felt her intake of breath rather than hear it. They were so close he actually felt the air being pulled from the small space between them and the lack of sound finally shook him from his high. He stepped back, searching for something moderately cruel to say to cover up his slip-up. She was watching him transfixed, as if she had never seen him before.

“Your nose, though,” he jabbed, forcing a glint of fire in his gaze, “it's wonky.”

It worked. She immediately furrowed her brows, confused. “Wonky?”

“Worse than Diagon Alley. It leans on the left so much, sometimes I can’t see anything else,” he added, with a sneer that would have made his past self proud.

Her hand flew up to her face, fingers tracing her nose blindly. “That’s a bloody lie, Malfoy! My nose is not wonky!”

“It’s so off center it makes me nauseous,” he continued, walking backwards slowly, mischief apparent on his face. 

Her eyes to slits, she took her wand in a flash. “You’re an ass, Draco Malfoy!”

“With a very straight, very centered nose, though,” he replied, then slipped behind the corner fast enough to avoid a well aimed stinging hex that sent flying around all sorts of junk . 

******

Draco was devouring a plate of onion soup, when Dobby popped out of nowhere in the middle of the kitchens. 

“Good morning, Master Draco,” the Elf trilled with a genuine smile. “Is the lunch to Master Draco’s liking? Dobby cried all morning cutting onions!” he squealed joyfully.

Draco nodded, gulping down a particularly big chunk of bread he had managed to stuff into his mouth before Dobby’s appearance.

“It’s great, Dobby, really. I haven’t eaten this well in four years, honestly,” he confessed, thinking back to all the thrown together, not very decent meals he’d had since stepping into the dystopian future he’d been stuck into. Since he’d come back, he felt like he was finally putting on some weight and together with all the training on the sparring mat and the flying, he was feeling stronger and more himself than ever. Granger didn’t know, but she’d saved him in more than one way.

“Have you seen Granger, Dobby? Did she forget to eat again?” he asked, keeping his tone casual and light.

“Dobby just left Miss Hermione Granger in Professor McGonagall’s office. Dobby reminded the Miss to come down to lunch, so that Miss Hermione Granger wouldn’t forget!” the Elf dutifully reported, nodding so hard the little tea cozy he was wearing on top of his head bounced right off. 

“What is she doing there?”

“Dobby doesn’t know, but Dobby helped Miss Hermione Granger move a very big, very delicate bowl from the Headmaster’s office,” he explained, pointing his finger to a loaf of bread sitting on a counter and slicing an extra piece that flew to Draco’s plate. Draco narrowed his gaze, absently picking up the bread and cleaning away the remaining drops of soup on the bottom of his plate. She had moved the Pensieve, so she was probably planning on using it. With a final sip of water, he stood, taking his plate to one of the giant sinks. Dobby’s eyes filled up with horror.

“Master Draco doesn’t need to do this! Dobby can take care of the kitchen!” he cried, snatching the plate from his hands. Draco let him, but furrowed his brows.

“Thank you, Dobby, but remember you’re not a servant anymore, okay? We can help you around, and you can ask us to,” he said, his voice probably softer than he’d ever used with the Elf. Dobby looked up to him, eyes shining. 

“Dobby knows, Master Draco. Dobby is happy to take care of friends,” he whispered, a small tear sliding down his wrinkled cheek. 

Draco nodded, looking away. “Right. I’ll go check on Granger, then. I’ll make sure she doesn’t drown in that bowl.”

Dobby gave him a solemn glare. “Dobby is certain Miss Hermione Granger knows how to swim!”

Draco smirked, walking to the door. “Of course, she does. She knows everything,” he muttered to himself. 

When he reached McGonagall’s office, the door was ajar. He lifted his fist to knock anyway, when Hermione’s hissed curse broke the silence of the castle. He bit his lip to stop a smile and waited an extra second before lightly knocking.

“Come in,” she fired, frustration oozing from her voice.

Draco stepped inside and stopped just in the doorframe to observe the scene. She was standing behind the desk, the Pensieve laid on top of it, its swirling content casting a silvery glow on her irritated face. Her hair was down, for once, expanding around her cheeks and cascading on her shoulders. Draco took a small breath from his nose. 

“You look pissed, for a change,” he teased.

“This thing isn’t working! I wanted to see my memories of the Department of Mysteries, but I can’t!” she bristled, crossing her arms on her chest. 

Draco cocked his head. “What do you mean it isn’t working? Did you put the memory in?”

Hermione huffed, looking away. “No.”

“Well, if you don’t do that, it’s not going to work, Granger,” he explained, slowly.

“I know!” she shot back. 

Draco looked confused. “Then, why aren’t you doing it?”

Hermione exhaled deeply, tightening her hold on her middle, then bit her lip. Gods, he hated when she did it! It fired him up inside in a way he didn’t want to deal with.

“I don’t know how to do it,” she confessed, looking at him from under her lashes to spy his reaction. When she was certain he wasn’t going to mock her, she started to talk very quickly, milling her arms in the air frantically, as if something had snapped in her chest.

“I mean, I do know the theory and I have been trying it for weeks, but it won’t work! I thought that maybe it was because I hate that office and all the memories it brings about, so I can’t concentrate properly on the ones I need! So, I asked Dobby to help me move this damned thing here, but I still can’t manage to take out a single wisp of a memory from my stupid brain! I almost burned a hole in my temple trying and now I’m nervous, and…”

She stopped, his hands gently grasping her wrists. He was right in front of her, his fingers on her skin, grounding her. She looked him in the eyes and a sense of quiet filled her chest. How was Draco Malfoy, her youth nemesis, capable of doing that to her? She had no rational explanation to how this version of him made her feel most of the time. But she was starting to like it. 

“Quiet down that brilliant brain of yours, Granger, and I’ll help you, okay?” he offered, his words a light caress on her cheeks. Had he always been this handsome?

For Merlin’s sake, Hermione! Get a grip on yourself! It’s fucking Malfoy! a scandalized voice shouted in her head.

Actually “fucking Malfoy” is a very poor word choice, Hermione. Not helping your cause, another, more flirty voice replied.

Hermione internally shook herself and nodded. “Okay.”

Draco’s gaze flitted on her face, assessing her flustered state, but didn’t say anything about it. 

“I reckon you know a bit of Occlumency, right?”

She looked stunned. “How do you…”

“It shows in your eyes, a subtle vacancy, maybe when you’re pushing too hard,” he explained. “What technique do you use?”

“I…I build walls around memories, or store them into boxes or books on shelves?” she said, tentatively. She was very self-conscious about her Occlumency abilities, because they were far from refined and entirely self-taught, so she knew she wasn’t mastering the thing yet. By a long shot, actually.

If Draco was disappointed, he didn’t let it show. “I suggest you choose one method and stick to it. It’s easier that way, and quicker if you need to use Occlumency on the spot.”

“It’s not…I mean, no one taught me, I just tried it and I’m still figuring it out, kind of,” she replied, avoiding his gaze.

“Which of the three leaves you less drained?” he asked, and it beat her how accurate his question was, how precisely it described the feeling of Occlumency. 

“Books,” she said, right away, and his mouth relaxed a little at the corners.

“Shocker,” he muttered and she rolled her eyes. “Then practice that style, hone it, make it perfect to you. It saves a lot of energy,” he said, back to his professional tone. 

“I will, but how does it relate to syphoning my memories in that blasted bowl?”

“I was getting there, Miss Patience,” he teased. “When you’re selecting the memories to hide with Occlumency, you pull them forward in your mind, right? Before pushing them in boxes or books?”

“Yes,” she nodded, carefully.

Draco cocked his head. “There. Do the same with the memory you want to extract and hold onto it, feel the weight of it, the space it occupies behind your eyes. Then push it into the tip of your wand instead of the box or book in your mind. When you feel the emptiness of that space, let it go, and the memory will be attached to your wand,” he instructed, his voice clear and comforting.

Hermione nodded, a thoughtful expression bending her features. 

“Try it,” he pushed, and she made to get her wand on the desk. That’s when she realized his fingers were still around her wrists. On instinct, she concentrated on the feel of his skin on hers, his pads on her pulse, warm but slightly rough, hard calluses tickling her softness. Her eyes travelled down and glided over the back of his hands, veins snaking up his forearms and under the rolled up sleeves of his white shirt. The angular shape of his thumb stood out against the delicate curve of her own hand. An imperceptible movement caught her eye, a glint of silver on his middle finger. She hadn’t noticed before, but he was wearing a ring. It wasn’t the signet with his house crest she had seen him wear back in school. This one was a simple silver band, with a small, triangular shaped onyx stone embedded in it. Draco must have noticed her curiosity, and slid his hands away from hers in a fluid movement, pushing them into the pockets of his black trousers. 

Shaking away the sense of loss, she cleared her throat and grabbed her wand. 

“Let’s get this over with,” she muttered and closed her eyes, pointing her wand at her temple.

“Wait, make sure to hold onto the memory first,” his voice suggested and her wand halted midway. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, pushing around her mind to find the right memory. She had to fight the urge to pack everything away when the images of her friends on that horrible day started crowding the forefront of her mind. She gathered it all together and brought it forward, right behind her eyes, as Malfoy had said. She concentrated on the physical space it occupied and then placed her wand at the temple. The memory immediately attached to the magnetic pull of it and she pushed it carefully, until there was nothing left, neither the pain nor the basic sensation of it. 

Hermione opened her eyes to a wispy filament of shimmery vapor, dangling from the tip of her wand in the space between herself and Draco, and a smile spread on her lips. 

“I did it!” she whispered, observing the memory then looking up at him. His gaze was fixed on her, that impossible to decipher glimmer of something on the bottom of his mercurial seas. 

“Now, let it slide into the Pensieve and you’re ready to watch it,” he said, a note of gravel in the back of his throat. Hermione did as told, then watched as the swirling ink-like liquid got darker and darker, finally showing the circular hall behind the door of the Department of Mysteries from the ceiling. 

“Dive with me?” she asked, and it sounded more charged than it should have. It was meant to be a professional invitation to study an environment they were going to infiltrate soon, in order to record details, possible hiding nooks, escape routes. Instead, it felt like a desperate attempt at holding onto each other for support in the darkness of an unknown destiny, with the looming shadow of a terrible outcome. And Draco felt it too, like a tonne of bricks raining on his head. 

He took a breath and locked eyes with her. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

10.

When they came out of the memory, Draco was quiet. His father had been there, together with a number of Death Eaters he had sure known, threatening school children’s lives on a psychopath’s orders. Hermione had looked at him observing Lucius with a hard gaze, his face pale as snow. Did Draco know about his family’s fate?

She dipped her wand into the Pensieve, the memory swiftly latching onto its tip, and she transferred it back in her head. A cold trickle of ice slithered behind her eyes and she quickly pushed it into a book in the back of her mind, sighing with relief. 

“Those Time Turners didn’t look too good, Granger,” Malfoy said, his voice toneless. 

“They were caught in a loop. I’m sure they managed to restore them. There are Unspeakables in there, aren’t they supposed to be the best on the market?” she pointed out, looking around for a place where to store the Pensieve safely. 

Malfoy hummed and sat in a high-back chair in front of the desk. “What do we know about security measures at the Ministry these days?”

Hermione opened a cabinet near the fireplace and started taking out bottles, examining labels and level of content. “All I know dates back to May, when I was still planning to get inside and murder Donovan. Your information might actually be more updated, if you were scheming to go down that hole, too.”

Draco crossed his arms. “We considered it, but since the place seemed to be swarming with guards, we waited for a public speech.”

“Yeah, that’s one of the reasons why I started to think I had to give in,” she said, finally uncorking a green bottle of whiskey and sniffing it. “Guards at the new muggle entrance, security checkpoints on every floor, badges and wand assessments. Not to mention a central Grid that goes on at night and small departmental Grids working at intervals. Some floors are closed off to wizards and it’s impossible to get inside if you’re not an employee.”

“Getting in at night is not an option, I’d say,” Draco noted, following the movements of her hands while she conjured two glasses and poured the whiskey in them. 

“We would have to get in before the Ministry closes, and at that point it would be very difficult to get out without making noise,” she pointed out, pushing one of the glasses towards him. 

“Then we have to get in disguised as someone working in the Department of Mysteries, since a normal worker wouldn’t probably have clearance to that floor. Are you sure it’s still up and running?”

Hermione took a swig of liquor. “Yes, Donovan would never pass on the opportunity to learn as much as possible on magic. I would say that’s basically the department with the most wizards in the entire building.”

“Do we have names?” Draco asked, keeping his arms tightly crossed on his chest. Granger had an impressive amount of intel, gathered most certainly in questionable ways, so he was sure she would pull something out of her top hat. He watched her swirl absently the amber liquid in her glass, eyes lost in the emptiness of the room. 

“It might be a stretch, but I think she could have access…” she mumbled, sipping again.

“Who?”

She focused on him, locking her eyes with his over the rim of the glass. 

“Daphne Greengrass.”

Draco went rigid for a second. “How on Earth did she become an Unspeakable?”

“She didn’t, but she is in the Curse Breakers office - don’t look at me like that, I don’t know how she pulled it -  and they work on that level, too. If we are lucky, she knows someone in the Time Room well enough to justify her presence there for a short time span,” she explained.

Malfoy seemed to  consider her words for a moment, then reached for his drink and downed it in one gulp. When he spoke again, his voice was deadly, words calculated and precise.

“We have to find out where she lives and sneak into her house, make her talk about her routine and connections in the department. Then, we have to incapacitate her for a day, so one of us can take her place.” 

“Dobby can find her house, we’ll do some muggle-style tailing and break into her house. Wards aren’t allowed, Donovan doesn’t like the idea of wizards feeling safe in the privacy of their houses,” she told him with a grimace. “I have Veritaserum to get all the information we need and a batch of Polyjuice that would make Barty Crouch Junior pale,” she listed, then downed her whiskey as well. “I’ll take her place, you’ll come under the Cloak.”

Draco nodded. “Agreed. You’re wanted, I’m basically a no one to Donovan and his minions right now, if I slip from under the Cloak I have some leeway.”

“Exactly. If Daphne is anything like her teenage self, she’ll surely know someone in the Time Room I can flirt with, while you get a Time Turner and replace it with a replica. Down there, the Grid is pointless so we’ll be able to use magic unrestrained,” Hermione pondered, cracking her fingers. 

“How about getting out? You just walk out with an excuse?” he asked.

“I have some of Fred and George’s products left. I’ll eat some Nosebleed Nougat or Fever Fudge and ask to call in sick for the day,” she replied.

Draco made a conceding noise. “What if it goes tits up and we’re surrounded?”

“We’ll throw some Instant Darkness Powder and run to the Atrium. We’ll have to carry muggle weapons too, because they’ll try to fire up the Grid on us. And since we don’t have a Floo connection, we’ll have to get out from the muggle entrance quickly, and lose them in the streets,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes. 

“How much ammo do we have access to?”

“Several guns with sufficient cartridges for an hour guerrilla fight and one hand grenade,” she answered, without even blinking. 

Malfoy’s lips quirked up. “I call dibs on the grenade.”

“All yours,” she replied with a mischievous smirk.  

*****

They kept training for the following week, while Dobby tried to figure out the current whereabouts of  Daphne Greengrass. Draco focused on strengthening his non-verbal spells and worked on his Duplication charm until it was flawless. He basically cast it on anything, littering the dining table with spoons and cups, or recreating all the objects lying around the Cabinet when they were in the Room of Requirement, finishing their scans. Hermione never told him off, even when the junk started to pile up on the chipped desks and falling down with loud clunks that made her jump out of her skin.

One morning, while they were sparring, Hermione threw him one of her dull knives and he duplicated it midair, with a flick of his bare hand, then ducked to avoid having them hit his forehead. 

Hermione chuckled. “That was impressive, Malfoy, really!”

“I don’t like your surprised tone, Granger,” he warned her, bending down to grab the training weapons, but there was a ghost of a smile on his lips.

“Now you only need to work on your aim on human targets” she added, stretching her neck.

Draco narrowed his gaze. “My aim is perfect.”

Hermione cocked a brow. “Your spells never hit me, Malfoy. I’m fast but not that much.”

His face was a mask of blankness. He summoned his wand and pointed it at the blade of the knife in his hand. The silver became polished and sharp and he flipped it so it was perfectly balanced between his index and thumb, then looked her right in the eyes and threw the knife at her. 

It happened in a blink. 

Hermione held her breath, shock rooting her on the spot. The blade was traveling at light speed towards her heart, but before it could reach her, Malfoy flicked his wand, with his left hand, and a jet of red light enveloped the dagger, bringing it off-course. She whipped her head and saw it lodging in the trunk of a tree several feet behind her and a little to her right. She looked closer and her lips parted. The tip of the knife was perfectly in the centre of a knot in the bark, and she had a feeling that it wasn’t a coincidence. 

When she turned around, he was right there in front of her, a knowing smirk on his smug face. 

“I told you my aim was perfect, Lioness. Don’t assume, it doesn’t look good on your pretty face,” he whispered, bending dangerously close to her ear. His warmth lingered near her neck for a second longer, then he straightened and walked past her, heading back to the castle. Hermione let out a long, slow breath. For some reason, the realization that Malfoy had been purposely avoiding hitting her with his spells made her feel like something was melting at the bottom of her stomach, trickling down to her very core. 

She gave him an adequate head start, then walked back as well, taking the long route around Hagrid’s hut. She needed to think and breathe a bit more, before sharing air with him again. With a deep sigh, Hermione let her eyes glide over the abandoned house her former Care for Magical Creatures professor had lived in for ages. The thatched roof had caved in on one side and the windows were opaque with dust. The spiral of smoke, usually coming from the chimney during the cold season, was just a long gone memory. She turned to the pumpkin patch, dried and empty, and her heart felt heavy in her chest. Hagrid had been abroad, trying again to convince giants to ally with the Order, when Harry had been killed. A week later, McGonagall had received a wooden crate with his severed head in it. The giants had made it pretty clear where their loyalties lied. 

Hermione looked up to the sky, once again angry that it kept being blue and beautiful, when people were being killed and tortured beneath it. By now she knew nature didn’t give a fuck about humans and their silly squabbles. She knew there wasn’t a God, nor any other kind of deity that cared about them slitting each other’s throats for fun. And yet, she was still disappointed by the unfairness of it all. She closed her eyes for a moment, memories of all those she had lost crowding her mind. She concentrated on each one and let it fill her up to the point of tears, then gently pushed them in a big tome with smooth pages and a black leather binding. Her family album. When everyone was safely tucked in there, she allowed her tears to stream down her cheeks and with a final glance towards Hagrid’s home, she turned around and went back to the castle.

Crossing the kitchen threshold half an hour later, showered and dressed in a fresh pair of jeans and a black hoodie, she found Dobby sitting cross-legged on the table where they usually ate, his ears trembling with hardly contained excitement. Draco was reading the paper the house elf had brought in and his brows were narrowed low over his icy eyes, quickly eating up the words on the page. When he heard her steps, Dobby jumped up, grabbing the tips of his ears and pulling them desperately.

“Miss Hermione Granger! Dobby is back with news on Daphne Greengrass!” he screeched out. Hermione looked back at Draco.

“Don’t look at me like that, Granger. I told him to wait for you, I know nothing,” he drawled, without even lifting his eyes from the newspaper. 

“Good job, Dobby. You can tell us, as soon as Malfoy here is done with the gossip column,” she said, walking to a cupboard to get a glass. 

“I wouldn’t call it gossip, Granger. Donovan is traveling to New York in November, the article doesn’t say why, it only mentions diplomatic meetings. I wanted to check if the news aligns with what I remember happening,” he explained, folding the paper and tossing it on the table.

“Does it?” she asked, pouring herself a glass of pumpkin juice. 

“Unfortunately,” he replied, eyes focused on a spot on the floor, unseeing. 

Hermione sighed and took a long swig of juice, then turned to Dobby.

“Go on, Dobby. Tell us what you found.”

After a couple of days of sneaking around the old Greengrass Estate and concluding only Astoria was living there, Dobby had moved to London. It turned out the elf had taken a leap of faith and stationed himself near the magical entrance of the Ministry, hoping to see Daphne, who Draco had showed him through a memory from his school days. Hermione had been skeptical such an approach would work; she was confident Daphne would use her personal fireplace to go to work, being the heir of a wealthy family like the Greengrasses. But Dobby had tried it anyway and he had been lucky. In fact, he had spotted her at the end of shift on his first attempt. He had followed her and watched her entering a big residential building on Brook Street, in Mayfair. The next evening, he had positioned himself inside the main door and waited for her to come back, so that he could follow her up the stairs and to her apartment. 

“Daphne Greengrass lives on the third floor, apartment number 14, and has a grey doormat. Her window is the fifth from the left, third row from the bottom,” Dobby said, finally sitting down on the table again, quite exhausted after recounting his tailing story in one single breath. 

“Great job, mate,” Draco complimented him, patting his knotty knee. Then turned to Hermione. “We’ll tail her for a couple of days, to be sure of her  routine schedule. We'll break into her apartment while she sleeps, one night we’re sure she’s inside.”

“We’ll strap her to a chair and give her Veritaserum before interrogating her,” she finished, nodding. 

“Next morning will be show time,” he concluded, dragging a hand through his hair, eyes trailing to the kitchen enormous fireplace.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, sensing there was a question in his blond head.

“We need a hiding spot in London. Not just for the tailing, but also in case the extraction goes sideways and we can’t apparate back here immediately.”

In case we get injured. He hadn’t said it out loud, but she’d heard it anyway. And he was right. Apparition with wounds or injuries always led to splinching, so it was out of question. 

“I have one,” she said and he studied her face for a moment, unsurprised. 

“It was Harry’s godfather’s childhood home,” she went on - “We used it as headquarters of the Order, only the Inner circle knew the location, though. It’s under the Fidelius Charm . I kept using it after the betrayal and no one of Donovan’s men ever found it. It’s bulletproof safe,” she assured, conjuring a muggle pen and tearing an angle of the newspaper. She scribbled something and handed it to him. Draco took it and read the few words she’d jotted down:

12, Grimmauld Place, Islington, London, UK

“It’s not very close to the Ministry,” he noticed, setting the scrap on fire with a snap of his fingers. Hermione tried to mask her admiration. He was very good at wandless magic, it came almost natural to him and he made it look so effortless she was almost jealous. 

“No, but in case things go south that’s actually better,” she argued. Draco said nothing, eyes once again unfocused in thought. She took a deep breath and laid her glass down on the counter.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday, I say we take the day to pack and get ready before starting the tailing on Monday,” she suggested, then turned to Dobby. “We’ll need your help apparating to Grimmauld, Dobby.”

The elf nodded vigorously. “Dobby helps! Dobby is checking today if the house is clean!”

“I lived there till May, I’m sure it’s only dusty,” she assured him, but the elf would have none of that. He jumped from the table and stood straight. “Dobby is freshening up the house for his friends. Miss Hermione Granger and Master Draco eat the pies Dobby stole in London and wait for Dobby to be back for dinner.”

And with a snap, he disapparated. Hermione sighed and looked around, noticing two round meat pies hastily wrapped into a linen towel. She summoned two plates and strode to the end of the table to place the pies on them. She brought one to Malfoy, still lost in his mind, and sat down on the opposite chair. 

“Where are you in early October 2001?” she asked, trying to make it sound as little accusatory as possible. He finally focused his attention on her, gaze sharp. 

“I was living over Borgin and Burke in Knocturn Alley. We were planning Donovan’s assassination, so we spent most of the time tailing him in Muggle London. He is in the Muggle Ministry a lot, strengthening his net of power, so I don’t think we’ll meet myself while tailing Daphne,” he said. 

Hermione broke off a piece of pie crust with her fingers. “When you say we , you refer to yourself and the woman that found you at the Leaky? I don’t remember her name…”

“I didn’t tell you,” he bit out, gaze growing colder. 

“Right, what was her name, then?” she asked, popping the piece of buttery crust into her mouth.

“It wasn’t her real name, Granger, what use can it have for you?” he jabbed, clenching his fist over the table. 

Hermione shrugged. “I’m just curious.”

Draco studied her for a moment, with the hardest gaze she’d ever seen on his handsome face.

“Jane.”

It came out cold, but a vein of pain lingered on the vowels. 

She had to look away. She swallowed, taking another bit of crust and crumbling it between her thumb and index. She knew this conversation was slicing him up inside, but she pushed on.

“And she never dropped the disguise?”

“No.”

“Why do you think that was?”

Draco scoffed. “Because she didn’t trust me fully. I was a Death Eater, Granger, one that had been trying to kill Dumbledore for a year, while looking for a way to let a group of fellow deranged acolytes of Voldemort inside a school. She was rightfully worried I could have sold her, if I had known her identity,” he said, as if it was quite obvious. 

“But how would she know what you had been up to?” Hermione asked, flakes of pastry clinging to her digits.

Draco narrowed his eyes. “Because she had been at Hogwarts at the same time as me.”

“But no one knew what you were doing at that time.”

Draco was losing his temper. “She had been fighting for the Light during the war against Voldemort, one of your friends told her. Maybe even you, who knows,” he gritted out.

Hermione frowned. “That would have made her Inner Circle. Didn’t you have any suspicions on who she might have been? Has she ever told you anything personal? Like her Hogwarts House or where she was from? Or if her parents…”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Granger, she’s dead!” he shouted, standing up with a start. Hermione flinched and looked him in the eyes. His hair was falling on his forehead, his irises shadowed, dark pools of metal swallowing her whole. He was vibrating with fury. But it wasn’t just that. She could see that hint of desperation shining under the surface. The cracks in his perfectly cool mask of strength were all over his face if you wanted to see them. If you were able to recognize them.

“You had feelings for her.”

Draco drew a sharp breath from his nose. “Granger…”

But Hermione wasn’t scared by the dangerous halo growing around him.

“You fell for her, even if she wasn’t in her real body. But how? I mean, how much was she able to share with you, to keep her identity hidden but still be sincere enough to make you fall in love with her true self?”

“This is none of your fucking business, Granger. Why are you so determined to butt in my past? It’s over, she’s dead and I’m back in the right place, what do you want?” he hissed, aggressively placing his hands on the table and leaning towards her. 

“She definitely made a difference in your story, Malfoy! You’re a different person from the boy that stepped into that cabinet and I’m curious to find out what changed you, that’s why! We’re doing a very dangerous thing together, I’d like to get to know you a bit better,” she clarified, not backing away from him.

“Because you cannot bring yourself to trust me, do you?” he spitted out.

She narrowed her eyes. “No, Malfoy, because I don’t understand you. You’re hot and cold with me, one moment you’re giving me a hair clip, the other you’re rude and brooding, trying to scare me by throwing sharpened knives at me. I just want to understand what to expect from you, especially on the field.”

“And you think you’ll achieve that by asking me about another person? That’s a shitty technique, if you ask me,” he sneered. 

“Another person that gained your trust and help without even telling you her real name! So, yes, knowing about her would give me an idea of how your mind works!”

Draco scoffed and turned, one hand running down his face. 

“You want to know how my mind works?” he asked, his back to her, then spinned and bore his eyes in hers. He looked a bit manic around the edges, but his gaze was cold and steady. 

“I knew who she was from the first moment I met her in that alley behind the Leaky Cauldron, but I let her believe she was safely disguised. I used her to understand the new establishment I’d walked into and carefully listened to what she told me about her, comparing it with what I already knew from school. She never lied, just omitted here and there to keep her cover. And as time passed, yes, I grew attached to her,” he confessed, his voice growing lower and darker at every word. “She gave me a different perspective on my beliefs, but it was because I was looking for one since after taking the fucking Mark.”

“You mean, on blood purity?”

“That, and muggles being as much human beings as wizards. And I realized wizards and muggles had made the same stupid mistake in following a madman’s ideas, creating a regime of persecution towards the other. That is why I started fighting with her against Donovan and his muggle supporters, not because I thought muggles were animals, in case you were assuming,” he said bitterly.

“I wasn’t assuming.”

“Really? You do an awful lot of that, Granger,” he retorted with a poisonous sneer. 

“You’re being a jerk again,” she pointed out coolly. 

“Because you’re getting on my nerves! Snooping in my past, sticking your damned finger in wounds that are still festering! You, of all people, should understand,” he cried, slamming a hand on the table. There it was. His cracks had finally opened and he was unconsciously letting out some of his soul. Hermione shot up. 

“That’s exactly because I know a thing or two about those wounds that I’m trying to get you to speak, Malfoy! Maybe letting the rot out would help you!”

“You don’t know me, you don’t get to tell me what helps me, Granger, do you hear me?” he said, standing in her face. He was fighting very hard to keep it together, but he was almost at his limit. 

Hermione sighed from her nose, but didn’t relent. “Malfoy, listen. I’ve been thinking,” she started and he let out a bitter laugh, turning away from her and sticking his hands in his hair. 

“No, listen,” she went on, grabbing his forearm and urging him to face her. He went still as a statue. “Maybe she’s still alive here somewhere in this timeline, we could look for her while we’re in London. You could see her again, talk to her, have some kind of closure,” she suggested, but words died on her lips when she saw the glint of pure hate in his eyes. It chilled her to the bones.

“It must be hard for you to lack pitiful people swarming around you, needing your help and acknowledgment, Granger, but you have to face it: Potter and Weasley are gone, and I’m nothing like them. I’m not your charity project,” he said, with so much venom, she dropped her hand, as if he’d bitten her. When she’d backed away a step, he straightened and went on - “You’d better focus on the tasks at hand, we both need you sharp and concentrated on the mission, not on my closure. I’ve had that, by the way, since you need some gossip about me,” he mocked her, closing in on her again. 

“I killed the guard that shot her. With a muggle screwdriver. And oh, I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed it. I enjoyed his screams, and all the blood dripping from his eye sockets. I made it last as long as possible,” he hissed, staring her dead in her eyes. She took in his dark, void gaze, the cold curve of his lips, the hard lines of his face in the warm light of the room. She was still searching her brain for something to say, when he walked past her and left the kitchens. Her shoulders sagged, while she beat herself internally. Her mum used to tell her to mind her own business, especially around people she didn’t know well. And she definitely didn’t know Draco Malfoy at all.

Chapter Text

11.

September, 1998 - The Burrow

“But he is our only source of information, Hermione! If he quits, we’ll be cut out from all their plans!” Ron said, arms thrown wide in the air. 

“He has to get out, Ron, they’re starting to sniff around! Lucius has been suspecting a betrayal for months now, it’s just a matter of time before they give him fake information to feed us and smoke us all out! He can’t go on, it’s too dangerous, for him and for us!” Hermione explained, trying very hard to keep her tone level and neutral. She very much wanted to whack him on the head right now. 

“We need him inside, he’s the only one that can find out how to break down the wards at Malfoy Manor!” he pointed out, his blue eyes running around the table to find an ally. They landed on Ginny, as they often did when he needed someone as angry as him to back up his fierce ideas. “Gin, tell her we need him inside to get to Nagini.”

Ginny was staring at her folded hands on the table. She blinked twice, then shook her head, the freshly chopped ends of her fierce red mane grazing her neck. “Hermione’s right. If any of the Death Eaters suspects him, the moment he pushes to uncover classified information he’s done for. And they’ll use it to their advantage to get to us. We can’t afford that, Ron.” 

“Yeah, and Theo has helped us a lot, Ron. We can’t ask him to risk his life like this,” Neville chimed in, giving his friend a stern look.

Ron scoffed. “We are all risking our lives, Nev, some of us already lost it.”

Ginny shut her eyes, hands clasping tighter. Molly, who was busying herself with cleaning the kitchen behind them, muffled a sob into a kitchen towel. 

From Ginny’s left, Fred shot up.

“That’s exactly why we should pull him out immediately, you idiot! Why are you acting like this, brother? I know for a fact that you like Nott, why are you so willing to throw him under a train?” the twin asked, disappointed.

Ron’s face fell, his eyes vacant for a second. Then he flopped down on his chair, hands on his face. 

“I think I’m losing my mind,” he whispered through his fingers. “We are no closer to destroying the final Horcrux than we were in April, and the Death Eaters are butchering us. I’m just desperate for the tiniest thing that could give us an advantage,” he went on.

“Not at Theo’s expense, Ron,” Hermione chastised him.

He sighed. “I…wasn’t thinking straight. I’m sorry.”

Lupin patted his forearm. “You need to keep a positive mindset, Ronald, or you’re going to cave in. We managed to secure Hogwarts once and for all, and we established that You-Know-Who is keeping Nagini in Malfoy Manor at all times, so that’s a start.”

“And we blew up Rosier Estate with at least ten of them inside. That’s a pretty decent victory to me,” Percy pointed out, his pompous tone replaced by a rougher cynicism that quite suited him.

“And those muggles we saved from the attack in Barbican’s Theater? That’s a victory too,” Luna cooed with her dreamy voice. Neville smiled her way, his fingers lacing with hers under the table. 

Ron slid his hands up in his hair and nodded. “But it’s not enough.”

Molly whipped around, her hands on her hips, eyes rimmed red with held tears. “But it’s something, Ron! And we’ll do more with what we have. There’s no need for another kid to die because of this war!”

Hermione turned to Lupin. “I’ll meet him tomorrow, I’ll tell him to settle his affairs and be ready for the extraction.”

Lupin nodded. “Warn him that we’ll have to interrogate him thoroughly with Veritaserum before we locate him in one of our safe houses, Hermione. I know you trust him completely, but we cannot risk a breach.”

“He already knows, and actually suggested it, Remus,” she replied. Then, with a furtive glance Ron’s way, she asked - “If he’s clean, can we put him in Grimmauld with us? He’ll be a target and Grimmauld is the safest spot we have.”

Lupin shrugged. “If everyone agrees, I don’t see why not.”

Hermione looked around the table, gathering everyone’s nods of approval, one knowing glance from Fred and an actual smirk from Ginny. 

The back door of the kitchen opened and Arthur walked in, Kingsley right behind him. 

“Oh, Thank Merlin, you’re back! I was starting to worry,” Molly gasped, reaching for her husband.

“We were perfectly safe, dear, nothing to worry about,” he assured her, deep lines stretching around his tight smile. He kissed her softly on the cheek, then ruffled Ginny’s bob on his way to his usual chair at the head of the table. Kingsley patted Lupin on the back and sat right beside him. Molly levitated two plates in front of them, steaming soup wobbling near the edges. 

“So? What did the Muggle Minister want?” Fred asked, sitting on the edge of his chair. Kingsley  had been on the protection team of the Muggle Minister, before the Ministry of Magic was taken by Voldemort, and had managed to keep in touch with him secretly during the war, providing as much Order assistance as possible, considering their dwindling numbers. If wizards were having it rough, muggles were outright mangled by the Death Eaters’ attacks. Terrorism of the worst kind was occurring on a daily basis around muggle cities and London was suffering the most. But just because it was flashier to set on fire a famous museum like the National Gallery rather than torturing an entire village in the countryside, it didn’t mean both things weren’t happening at the same time. Together with lots of similar attacks taking place almost every other day. And the muggle Ministry wasn’t dealing with the situation very well. That was why the Order hadn’t been surprised when, a couple of days prior, the muggle Minister had contacted Kingsley asking for a meeting. The Statute of Secrecy had been breached long ago, as for Voldemort’s will of  making perfectly clear who was running things, so it was actually shocking it had taken them so long to reach out for help to the good wizards. 

After exchanging a tired glance with Arthur, Kingsley spoke.

“As we mused, they asked for help. But they also offered theirs in return,” he cryptically said. 

Hermione frowned, but Fred beat her on the reply.

“How exactly do they think they can help us? They’re dying like flies out there!” he scoffed. Molly gasped at his hard words and Ginny glared at him. He was right, though. How could muggles help, if magic was ten thousands times stronger than their weapons? A gun could never beat a wand. One couldn't actually take a gun out of their pocket if there was a wizard with a wand around.

“Apparently, they have been working on a device that could be the very solution to their problems and ours as well,” Kingsley went on, unconcerned. “One of the Ministry’s best engineers has created an object that could potentially prevent a wizard from accessing his magic, and therefore make him momentarily harmless.”

Everyone around the table went impossibly still and silent for a moment, digesting the idea. Hermione was horrified by the implications of what Kingsley had just said. It was dangerous and gave muggles too much power over wizards. But…

“It would give us a way to kill the bloody snake and You-Know-Who himself,” Ron murmured, his eyes wide. Ginny’s head snapped his way, their gazes locking with a tinge of fierce hope that made Hermione shiver.

“And this thing disables all sorts of magic? Even wards?” Percy asked, matter of factly. 

Arthur shrugged. “It’s unclear, yet. They haven’t completed the device, they need help from wizards for that.”

“How so?” Lupin asked, and Hermione was relieved to hear a note of mild skepticism in his tone that totally matched hers. 

“The engineer was there, he explained a little about the process behind this device,” Kingsley offered, looking back at Lupin, but then his eyes drifted to Hermione, the closest person to a muggle they had among them. “He said that magic is energy and energy is made of waves and has a frequency. So, magic has a specific frequency that, once identified, can be intercepted and blocked, in some ways. Like music, or light.”

Everyone looked at her now, waiting for some kind of confirmation. She had studied some muggle science on her own, for the sole academic purpose and because her dad loved it so much she wanted to still have something to talk about with him. She nodded and Ron actually smiled.

“So? If they know that, why haven’t they completed the thing yet?” he asked, bending over the table. 

“Because they need a wizard or a witch to study the frequency of magic, don’t they?” Hermione quipped, her eyes pointedly piercing Kingsleys’. 

“Yes, when they identify the frequency of magic, they might be able to make the device work and we could bring it close to You-Know-Who to kill him and the snake,” he replied, calmly.

Hermione arched a brow. “How? Our magic would be blocked, too.”

“With muggle weapons,” Arthur interjected and Ron slapped a hand on the table with a yelp of victory. Hermione looked around the table. Ginny was still looking hopeful, Neville was a bit confused and Luna had her usual dreamy face. Fred was considering the whole thing cautiously, Percy was outright skeptical, while Molly was openly frowning. Lupin was unreadable.

“This is dangerous,” Hermione said, her voice cold and strained. “If we give them this kind of power over wizards, they might use it against us as well, not only the bad ones.”

“Oh come on, Hermione! We’ll be helping them, why would they want to go against us? It’s the Death Eaters they need to get rid of, as we do! Once You-Know-Who is out, we’ll take care of the rest and relieve them of any trouble. We’ll go back to secrecy, right Dad?” Ron asked, turning to Arthur. 

The older Weasley glanced at him then back to Hermione. “We’ll make terms clear, establish boundaries and negotiate carefully to avoid unpleasant situations in the future.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, then at Kingsley. “They are scared of us now, negotiations might not be enough to protect us. We cannot hand them all our knowledge on magic like this, it’s suicide.”

“I’m confused here. Aren’t you supposed to like muggles, Hermione?” Ron jabbed, a bit rougher than he should have. 

Percy turned on him. “Shut up, Ron. She’s got a point. If we do this, we’re exposing all wizards and witches to potential slavery, if muggles decide they would rather get rid of us all in the end.”

“They’re right, Kingsley,” Lupin said, a darkness in his voice Hermione had never heard before, not even after losing Tonks. He was usually trying to find the positive aspect of every situation, but right now he looked like all the tragedies of his life had caught up with him. 

“Do we have another option, though?” Ginny pointed out, nervously drumming her fingers on the table. Hermione whipped around to her. The girl was trying very hard to be reasonable, but she could see the need for revenge in the fire burning in her eyes. She finally saw a way to get back to Voldemort for killing the man she loved, and she wanted blood. 

“She’s right,” said Kingsley, his gaze in Lupin’s. They stared at each other for a while, a battle of steel glances and granite wills. It was Fred who said the sensible thing for once and broke the staring contest.

“We should discuss this with the complete Order, make a vote,” he suggested. “If the majority agrees, we go for it, but we have to think this through, very carefully. Hermione and Percy are right. It might blow in our faces.”

Neville nodded, and Ron scoffed. Hermione glanced at Lupin and saw her concern mirrored in his eyes. It might blow in their faces, yes, but they had no idea how badly.

********

October 2001

Draco stormed out of the castle and straight to the changing rooms, down to the Quidditch pitch. He took the broom he used every morning and jumped on it, kicking up from the ground with such force he shot up in the sky like a bullet. 

The air was cold, biting his face and hands with its sharp teeth, but he didn’t care. 

He leaned flat on the handle and pushed, increasing the speed to a breakneck pace. His eyes watered, but he didn’t care. 

He flew past the Hogwarts grounds, towards the river pouring in the Black Lake, following his curves through the low mountains. He flew for hours, his hands gripping the broom so tight he eventually couldn’t feel them anymore. 

He didn’t care. 

He didn’t care, because the pain in his chest was stronger than the cold, stronger than the numbness of his limbs, of the sting in his eyes.

Breathing was painful, thinking was painful. Remembering was devastating. 

He had managed to occlude his feelings away, all that sharp guilt, all that helplessness that came with the memory of her. He had worked on the walls around her for years, adding layer after layer, burying everything deep in his mind, away from his heart, trying desperately to forget. 

Because forgetting was easier than bleeding slowly to death every single day. 

Because forgetting was easier than seeing the image of her branded on the back of his eyelids every time he blinked.

Because if he managed to hide the pain, then it didn’t exist. And if he convinced himself of that, then life would be bearable again. 

But, of course, Granger had to disrupt all his careful work! Of course, Granger had to tear down his crafty deception with a couple of well placed questions, speared straight to his broken soul! Of course, she was the one to throw in his face how much of a delusional idiot he was if he thought it possible to hide the dust under the rug like that. 

She wasn’t dust. She was light, always shining through his cracks, always blinding his gaze, always warming his skin, even if he didn’t want her to. 

One cannot forget how the light feels. 

But how was he supposed to go on, to accept the cold when he had savored light so sweet and heartwarming?

How could he possibly move on when she was everywhere? In his heart, in his mind, on his very skin? 

How could he heal if she was constantly reopening his wounds?

But what if Granger was right? What if he had to get the rotten out indeed? Or maybe he could let the fresh in. He could surrender to that need for good. That need for floral scent and chocolate glances. 

Draco groaned and screwed his eyes closed, pushing the broom to its very limits, in a useless attempt to outrun his heart. 

*******

Hermione had looked for him in all the usual places, with no success. Then, she’d searched the Slytherin common room and the Astronomy Tower, even the Owlery, but Draco was nowhere. Maybe he had gone flying to clear his head. She’d spotted him early in the morning sometimes, while she was running, crossing the sky at such speed she’d shuddered. It was probably his way to cut out the world and its noises, as well as those in his own head. 

So, she took a book from her personal stash and curled up in an armchair by the fire in Hufflepuff common room, waiting for him to come back. He had to walk past her to go to his bedroom, after all.

She’d never thought she would say that, but reading was surprisingly difficult, with their fight repeating in the forefront of her brain like an old movie film jammed on an unpleasant scene. She felt horrible. The way she’d pushed him, knowing fully well how much pain she was causing him. And the way he had retaliated, like his teenage-self would have done, had made her feel even worse. Because, to be honest, this Malfoy was trying to be civil and decent, even in the trickiest moments. And she had managed to make him revert back to the spiteful git she didn’t like very much.

Yes, he wasn’t the best human being probably, but he had been trying. The way he talked to Dobby, his little gestures towards her, the constant control over his temper, that rarely slipped, were proof. 

Maybe that had made her eager for more. Eager to know him, to understand him. Eager for companionship, for closeness, for warmth, for touch…

“Stop. This. Madness,” she whispered, banging the book against her forehead. 

Hermione had felt that pull towards Draco before, but never this strong. She remembered feeling this weird sensation, as if there was an invisible thread drawing her to him. It resembled the sensation of side-along Apparition, with that pull behind the navel, but combined with a tingle that sent hot shivers down her back. 

It had happened in Third Year for the first time, after smacking him square in the face for the Buckbeak Gate. Then again, at the Yule Ball, when she’d turned around and found him staring at her in confusion. And in Fifth Year, in Umbridge’s Office, caught by his squad of Slytherin goons. He had sent her a heated glare at some point and she’d grimaced back, but her stomach had twisted in a strange way. Finally, Sixth Year had been a crescendo. She’d found herself searching the Great Hall for him, or sending sideways glances at him in Potions, with the nagging sensation she should have been doing something to get him out of the misery he was sporting on his handsome face. And when Harry had almost killed him…she pushed the memory of that night away.

Now that he was around her again, she had that tingle at least once a day and it was driving her mad. Why was she drawn to him like a wave to shore? 

The door opened and Draco strode in. Hermione looked up and her heart stumbled. He had never been more handsome, with his face flushed by the cold and his hair tousled around his face. Had he gone flying in that flimsy hoodie? Was he that mad at her?

“Malfoy,” she said, standing up, her book tumbling on the carpet. 

He didn’t look at her and walked straight to the dormitory door.

“I can’t do this right now, Granger,” he muttered, and he sounded drained. 

“Draco, please,” she tried, taking one single step, her bare foot gently hitting the hardcover of the forgotten book. He halted, already on the other side of the room. 

“Granger, really, I can’t. I don’t have the strength to fight, my comebacks wouldn’t live up to my usual nasty standards,” he bitterly replied, but there wasn’t enough snark in his voice to hurt.

“I don’t want to fight, I want to apologize. Again. Gods, is that all I do these days?” she asked herself, hanging her head a little. 

Draco didn’t say anything, the image of her in a towel, dripping water on the tiles, sealed his lips tight. 

“I was awful, Malfoy, I know. I shouldn’t have pushed you like that on something that clearly hurts you. I…” she sighed, placing her hands on her hips and looking up to the vaulted ceiling. “I don’t know what happens in my brain when there’s something new to learn, be it academic or not. It’s like my need to know everything overrides my ability to control myself,” she explained and it sounded strained, as if she was admitting something about herself she didn’t want people to know. A flaw to be ashamed of. 

“You hadn’t taken your pills, then?” he asked after a bit, completely serious. 

Hermione searched his face, confused. “My pills?”

“For your condition. Your chronic smart-assiness.”

And then she saw it, where she would have found nothing years ago, she saw a tiny spark of humor. The relief she felt sensing he wasn’t angry anymore shocked her for a moment.

She sighed dramatically. “Yes, I was trying to cut back on my treatment, but apparently I can’t. I’m beyond hope.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. “I tried that myself, with my asshole syndrome, but it seems I’m stuck with the pills as well.” He walked to her and picked up the book from the floor.

“I shouldn’t have brought up your friends like that. Hurting others is a defense mechanism I’ve learnt in my household, which is hard to kill,” he admitted. 

She held her breath, her eyes a bit shinier than usual. “We’re both beyond hope, then.”

Draco chuckled, handing her the tome. “A match made in hell.”

Hermione took it, her fingers almost grazing his. “I’ll make you a deal: I can call you out when you’re being an ass, if you give me an opportunity to be a know-it-all when I’m getting on your last nerve.”

He lifted a brow. “How?”

She shrugged. “You ask me a question about something you don’t know, like stuff that happened in the years you were gone. This will give me an outlet and I won’t be butting in your private stuff.”

Draco sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. “You can ask me questions, Granger.”

“Just not about her.”

“Not about her. Not yet.”

Warm chocolate poured into cold steel, the pull and tingle stronger than ever, and she wondered if he could feel it as well. 

“I like the deal, though. I have some questions, actually,” he mused, his gaze somewhat distant. He snapped back almost immediately and extended his hand. A slow smile spread on her face and she took his fingers. They were so cold she shivered. 

“Deal,” she said, and squeezed his hand. He tightened his grip and lingered, his eyes taking her in with such intensity her knees trembled. He had looked at her with heat before, but it had always felt like teasing, or power-flirting. Right now, it seemed sincere, passionate, charged, and the pull behind her navel stretched and tightened, snapping like a metal cord. She gasped softly, the sensation travelling up her back and around her neck, warmth spreading all over her body. And somehow she knew he felt it, too.

Draco leaned closer, his breath hovering over her cheeks, his eyes incapable of leaving hers. And then he spoke, it was such a soft whisper she thought she’d imagined it.

“Hermione…”

Her name on his lips made her head spin. It tasted like a spell. Her heart drummed against her ribs so loud she was sure he could hear it. And his lips were so close she could almost feel them ghosting on hers. 

The loudest crack echoed in the room and she squealed, jumping back and falling into the armchair. Draco spun around, wand drawn so quickly it sent involuntary red sparks from its tip.

“Miss Hermione Granger and Master Draco did not eat their pies! They must not skip meals! They must feed for the mission! Dobby is waiting here until Miss and Master finish lunch and dinner! No sleeping without food!” the little elf ranted, levitating the meat pies and two bowls of steamy vegetable soup to the low table near Hermione’s armchair. 

Seeing there was no impending menace, Draco put his wand in his pocket and ran a hand in his hair. 

“Right, Dobby. Let’s not forget ourselves, here,” he mumbled, taking a seat on the other side of the table. The mourning tone of his voice, though, told her he wasn’t referring to the food at all. 

Chapter Text

12.

June, 1999

“The radius isn’t very big, yet, but it will cover the perimeter of the Manor and its immediate surrounding gardens,” he assured, handing Hermione a sheet of paper with printed data and neat annotations in his clear handwriting. She scanned it thoroughly, then looked up. Donovan was taking another paper from his blue folder, his thin lips moving on sentences she couldn’t concentrate on completely. Her brain was stuck on danger alert. She observed his posture, his open shoulders, his straight neck, his clear brown eyes and perfectly gelled-back hair. He looked like a member of the Royal Family in his pressed white shirt and tailored grey slacks, not a successful engineer, and yet he had brains to go on for miles. And that scared her to lengths she wasn’t comfortable sharing with anyone except Lupin. Remus was on the other side of Donovan, observing the round object laying on the lab desk, a minuscule led shining red intermittently on top of the sphere. 

“For how long?” Lupin asked.

Donovan shrugged. “Once we activate it, I can guarantee roughly forty minutes, maybe an hour.”

“Twenty minutes are a big difference, Karl,” her former professor pointed out.

“I’ll test it for resistance, if today’s test goes as we hope,” he assured, with a smile that could bring down empires. He turned to her. “I was going to ask you if you’d want to do the first trial, since you’re the strongest frequency we’ve registered so far?” he asked, with a twinkle in his eyes. Hermione shivered.

“Yes, no problem,” she said. Donovan was pleased, Lupin was worried. 

“Maybe we should start with lower frequencies?” Remus suggested carefully, but she shook her head. 

“If it works on me, it will work on others. We can save time with a faster trial period,” she said and Donovan nodded.

“Exactly. I’d say we test it on you next, Remus, considering your nature,” he pointed out gently, making Hermione’s toes curl in her shoes. Donovan was smooth like a snake. Sometimes, in the back of her mind, he sounded a lot like Voldemort. 

There was a knock on the door and an assistant in a lab coat peered inside.

“The Minister’s here, Sir,” she announced and Donovan straightened. 

“Coming, Georgia,” he nodded and turned to Hermione. “The audience has arrived, it seems. I’ll greet them and be right back, so we can start, okay darling?”

She nodded and he was out the door right away. Lupin and Hermione exchanged a long glance.

“He’s too greedy,” he muttered, picking up the Grid and twirling it in his fingers.

“He might be keeping information from us,” she added.

“What kind, do you reckon?”

“The data is easily altered, since we aren’t following the tests full time,” she explained, glancing back to the papers scattered on the desk.

Lupin considered her words, watching the carved surface of the metal ball in his hand. “We’re keeping information from them as well. We still have some aces up our sleeves.”

“Not as many, Remus,” she pointed out.

He cocked his head. “We’ll be prepared, Hermione. They don’t need to know our backup plans for D-Day. Tell Fred and Theo to stash up on muggle weapons, will you?”

Hermione’s stomach fluttered and she finally smirked. “They’ll be thrilled.”

“Say, do you think they could put their hands on a couple grenades?” Lupin thoughtfully asked.

Hermione chuckled. “Gods, they’re going to think it’s Christmas, Remus.”

******

October, 2001

Dobby apparated them under the Cloak in the middle of the night. They landed in a crouch to hide their feet, since Malfoy was infuriatingly high. The small square was deserted and mostly dark, only illuminated by some dully lighted windows here and there on the grimy fronts of the surrounding buildings. The place looked just the same: dingy, dirty and desolate. Just delightful. 

“Let’s go,” Hermione whispered and led them between the numbers 11 and 13. After a couple of seconds, the building seemed to shake, sliding on both sides to accommodate an extra set of stairs that led to an extra door with  the number 12 on it. They all climbed up the steps and filed through the door quickly. When it was safely closed behind them, Hermione lifted the cloak. 

“Dobby is lighting the fires now, the house is cold,” the elf announced and trotted towards the kitchen first. Hermione looked at Draco, who was taking in the dark corridor and the staircase that led up to the bedrooms. If he was surprised or curious, he was making a hell of a job masking it.

“Come, I’ll give you a tour,” she said, climbing the stairs. Draco followed her, unusually silent, and peered into all the rooms she showed him: the living room she had helped clean during the summer before Fifth Year, the small bedroom Harry and Ron had shared, Sirius’s and Regulus’s rooms, and the bathrooms on every landing. 

“You can choose any bedroom, Dobby cleaned them all apparently,” she said, while they descended again. 

“Where do you sleep?” he asked.

“Second floor, door to the left, why?”

He shrugged. “I’ll take the one to the right. I can’t fall asleep without your snoring, I’m a creature of habit.”

Hermione scoffed, turning just enough to send him a smirk over her shoulder. “Liar, you can’t hear me snoring at Hogwarts.”

Draco lifted a brow. “Have you silenced your room, Granger?”

“I didn’t want to ruin your beauty sleep with my nightly bad manners,” she casually said. Draco observed her for a moment, while they stepped down the final staircase.

“Nightmares?” he finally asked.

Hermione waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, well, they’re getting better anyways.”

“Try to occlude before you go to bed. It usually helps,” he suggested. “And you don’t need to silence your door here, Granger. I would like to notice if someone tries to break in and assassinate you. I might be helpful, I have a gun.”

Hermione chuckled. “Good point.”

They went down the hallway corridor and she briefly glanced at a charred rectangle of wall on their right. The memory of burning Sirius’s mother’s portrait to finally shut her up gave her a jolt of melancholy, the good kind though. If she strained her ears a little she could still hear the echo of Fred’s laugh. 

The fireplace in the kitchen was roaring already and Dobby had set two mugs of tea with a generous splash of joy on the table. 

“God bless the little fella,” Draco murmured, sitting down and grabbing a  steamy mug.

Hermione took hers to the fireplace and sat on the stone step. “He really is a blessing.”

“How did you bond him to you, by the way? He was a free elf, last I remember. Potter made sure to piss off my father thoroughly with his little stunt,” he said, amused rather than irritated.

“Actually, he did it all by himself. When I went back to Hogwarts in May, he was there all alone. I think he was going insane with grief over Harry’s death,” she explained, her hands tightening around her mug. “As soon as I stepped foot in the castle, he was hugging my legs, crying like a fountain and pleading with me to let him help as he could. I think he willingly tied his magic to me, out of desperation.”

Draco hummed, intrigued, sipping his tea. “I’ve never heard of something like this. Then again, house elf’s magic is pretty uncharted territory.” 

“Definitely different from ours, the Grid doesn’t pick it. It’s another frequency, I think,” Hermione nodded.

“I wonder for how long. It’s actually strange that Donovan hasn’t made up for that glitch.”

“I don’t think he knows about house elves’ existence. And the wizards working for him either don’t care enough about them to mention, or are purebloods that are careful not to lose their only way to use magic even when the Grid is running,” she said bitterly, then gulped down her tea. “Alright, let’s get some sleep before our little stroll to Mayfair, yes?”

******

Daphne Greengrass had a very boring life. She either didn’t have a fireplace or Floo connections were frowned upon these days, because she walked to and from work every day and she was usually on time. She had lunch inside the Ministry or in a little café around the corner of the magical entrance, mostly alone or with a female colleague, a redhead with short ringlets that bounced like springs when she skipped to cross the street.

On the second evening of their tailing, Daphne didn’t go straight home but walked to a pub to get drinks with a bunch of people, came out around midnight with a tall man that accompanied her all the way back to her apartment and spent the night. He hurried out of the building at dawn. Draco suggested to tail her a couple more days and see if it was a pattern or a one night thing, to avoid breaking in with another person present. And so, after a week of thorough tailing, they found out that Daphne Greengrass took a different man home every odd night and he always left before breakfast.

“Do you think it’s a rule or unspoken agreement?” Hermione whispered, when yet another handsome stranger walked out of the elegant building door at the first lights of day. 

“Unspoken, but very hinted at. Purebloods are terribly good at hinting,” Draco replied. Hermione’s little cough sounded a lot like figured .

They planned to get inside the following night, when no dating was foreseen. Dobby apparated them into the building, then left them with the promise to come back if they needed him. They climbed the stairs up to the third floor under the Cloak, then Hermione slipped out to pick the lock of Daphne’s door. Fred had taught her years ago, with a set of jimmies he’d nicked from a stall in Portobello Market. Her fingers worked quickly and the lock clicked after a few seconds. Draco arched a brow at her, quite impressed.

“Good job, Dodger,” he whispered, and she sent him a devilish smirk.

They tip-toed inside, closing the door as silently as possible. Hermione took a vial of bright green potion out of her trusted beaded bag and dropped some on a cloth. She passed the vial to Draco, who promptly stashed it away in his coat and walked in front of her, gun trained ahead. They crossed the living room and went into a short corridor with two doors, one closed at the end  and another ajar on the left. Draco peered inside and saw Daphne sound asleep in her queen size bed, curled up under a voluminous blush duvet. Hermione crouched and walked under his arm, stepping inside with light feet. She bent over the bed, quickly placing the damp cloth on the woman’s mouth and nose. Daphne briefly opened her eyes, panic shaking her awake, but the potion worked fast and she fell back on her pillow, unconscious. Hermione kept her hand pressed down on her face for a moment longer, to make sure the blond witch was out, then straightened up. 

“Turn on the light, will you?” she asked Draco, who had lowered his gun and was already closing the curtains before switching the light on. Hermione snatched Daphne’s wand from the night stand and placed it in the back pocket of her black jeans. They quickly inspected the apartment, searching for hidden weapons or extra wands.

When they were satisfied, Draco lifted Daphne in his arms and brought her to the kitchen, depositing her in a chair. Hermione retrieved two lengths of rope from her bag and he tied Daphne expertly, tight enough to immobilize her, just shy of hurting and bruising. Her blond head lolled on her chest, carefully curled locks spilling over her face. 

“Ready?” he asked, taking out his gun again. From her bottomless purse, Hermione fished a small pipette of dark brown glass and another vial with electric blue liquid. She pushed Daphnes’ head back, pressed her fingers around her lips to open her mouth and emptied the pipette of Veritaserum in her throat. Then, she uncorked the vial with her teeth and moved it back and forth under Daphne’s nose. Her eyes popped open instantly, a loud gasp escaping her lips before Hermione’s hand covered it shut against muffled screams and sounds of protest. Her eyes wandered around, she struggled against the restraints and tried to move her head out of Hermione’s hold, but the witch was unmovable, even managing to close the blue potion before it spilled on the carpet. 

“Come now, Daph, you’re making too much fuss,” Draco chided, aiming the gun straight at her face. The blonde girl stilled, her eyes going wide like blooming sunflowers. Recognition flashed in her astonished gaze and Draco grinned.

“You haven’t forgotten me, then. How touching,” he sneered. “Now, be a darling, just like mummy taught you, and say you won’t scream. I’d hate to drive a bullet in your pretty face. It would look abysmal in an expensive coffin, don’t you think?”

Daphne must have deemed him earnest in his not so veiled threat, because she nodded slowly and went completely silent. Hermione peeled away her hand and stepped at her side, training Daphne’s wand against the girl’s temple. Daphne’s gaze darted to her and unadulterated fear marred her lovely features. Draco noticed and arched a brow.

“No need for introductions I suppose. Do you recognize this witch?”

“Yes,” Daphne said, a little surprised that words were coming out of her mouth without her consent.

“Who am I?” Hermione asked.

“Hermione Granger,” she replied, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion.

Draco and Hermione exchanged a look, then she leaned a little closer to Daphne and started the interrogation.

“Are there any undetectable wards we haven’t noticed here? Or any devices that would bring governmental officers upon us?”

To her credit, Daphne tried very hard not to answer, but her tongue loosened despite her effort. “Yes, I have a ring on my finger with a protean charm that calls for help.”

Hermione ducked behind the chair and slipped off a simple gold band from her middle finger. She studied it for a moment, then threw it to Draco, who caught it from the air with Seeker reflexes and hid it in a pocket of his coat. 

“Great, now that’s out of the way, let’s have a friendly chat, princess. Where do you work?”

“Magical Research Building, former Ministry of Magic.”

“Which department?”

“Department of Mysteries, Curse Breaking Office.”

“What do you do?”

“I file reports, describe artifacts before they’re analyzed by the Curse Breakers. Office work.”

“How did you end up there?” Draco chimed in, curious.

Daphne glared at him. “My dad gives a lot of money for research to Donovan’s organization.”

“Of course he does. Silly question, my bad,” Draco snorted, then dipped his head to Hermione. “Please, continue.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right. Do you ever deal with the rest of the Department of Mysteries, where the Unspeakables work?”

“Yes, I do some occasional office work for them, too, if they need it.”

“So it wouldn’t be strange if you walked into the Time Room and chatted with one of them there?”

“No, I do it every day,” Daphne offered, with a grimace that said very well how much she actually wasn’t willing to offer. 

“How many Unspeakables are there in the Time Room?”

“Three.”

“Names, descriptions and degree of familiarity you have with them?”

Daphne pressed her lips together, her face becoming red.

“In case you hadn’t worked it out, you’re under Veritaserum, Daph. No use in shutting your mouth like that, it’ll only give you crows feet,” Draco smirked, endlessly amused. Right on cue, her mouth burst open and she gasped for air, words hurtling out like darts.

“Trevor Wickermy, tall, long black hair tied in a ponytail, I’m not very close to him because he wouldn’t respond to my flirting, ever. Hartie Rosendale, fat, bold and very handsy, disgusting to flirt with. Jason Crates, young and terribly handsome, I’ve been flirting shamelessly with him for months now but he hasn’t asked me out yet!”

Draco chuckled and Hermione had to fight a giggle of her own. Daphne looked ready to bury herself under six feet of concrete. 

“Alright, we’ll circle back to that. Now walk me through one of your typical work days, starting in the atrium of the former Ministry. What do you do after you get there?”

Daphne sighed, her shoulders sagging a little. Maybe she’d figured out she had no choice or that there couldn’t possibly be more embarrassing topics than her flirting habits, but she told them in great detail what her work day usually entailed, providing colleagues’ names and descriptions useful to identify people Hermione was supposed to interact with. They also solved the issue of the rotating room behind the entrance of the Department of Mysteries, which was used to confuse intruders and make it very difficult to find their way around the rooms. For people working there, though, it didn’t spin, thanks to a magicked badge they pinned to their clothes. Daphne had one in the first drawer of her vanity table. 

When they had enough information to carry out their plan, Hermione straightened and came to stand next to Draco.

“One last question: how much magic are you employees allowed at home? Do you get arrested for, say, filling up a glass of water with your wand during the night?” she asked Daphne, who looked exhausted beyond repair. 

The girl shook her head. “No, our houses are overlooked by the tracing officers. We do get a written rebuke at the end of the month, though, if too much magic has been picked at our registered domicile.”

“Splendid, get ready for that then,” Hermione announced and trained the wand at her. “ Obliviate .”

Daphne’s expression of surprise melted away gradually, replaced by a beatific glazed over gaze of peace.

“Almost done,” Hermione muttered, and Draco produced the vial of green potion he had previously put away in his pocket. He emptied its content in the parted lips of the blonde woman as Hermione finished the incantation. Daphne fell back into unconsciousness, head gently tipping over her chest. 

“ Diffindo ,” Hermione said to the bindings, sending them piling up the floor with a thud. Then, she silently levitated her back to her bed. After tucking her under the duvet, she plucked a bunch of blonde hair from her head and walked back to the kitchen.

Draco’s arm was elbow-deep into her bag, trying to take out three flasks of Polyjuice Potion, one for the initial transformation and the others to freshen up the disguise in the following hours. 

“It’s almost dawn,” he pointed out, opening a silver flask and handing it to her. Hermione dropped a hair inside and waited a moment.

“Are you sure we have everything? Are you going to remember everything?” he asked, an edge of nervousness she’d never detected in his voice before.

She arched a brow at him. “I’m Hermione Granger.”

“Thank you for telling me, I had forgotten! I was going to start calling you hey,” he drawled, unamused. 

She rolled her eyes. “I mean, of course I’ll remember everything, you prat. I’m Hermione Granger, the biggest know-it-all of our time, my intrinsic nature demands me to remember everything, always. That’s what I do best.”

Draco’s lips lifted. “I don’t know, Granger. You’re pretty good at terrorizing Donovan’s employees, too. Daph was outright shivering when she saw you. You must have been out for blood, back in your rebellious era.”

She smiled at him like the Cheshire Cat and he had to admit that it made things to his insides when she looked that wicked.

“Let’s say I loved to blow up stuff in my rebellious era,” she cryptically said, walking to Daphne’s bedroom. “I’ll take this and change, be right back.”

Daphne’s essence was by far the less foul she’d downed, bright pink and only a little lumpy. When  the process was complete, her big mane of hair had shrunk back in her scalp, replaced by a perfect head of blonde locks. She examined  her borrowed features, the perfect nose and blue eyes, the elegant curve of her cheekbones. Greengrass was a beautiful woman, that was unquestionable, but the cold light in her irises irritated her to unspeakable ends. Hermione vanished her clothes, walked into the bedroom and selected a silk blouse and a pencil skirt from Daphne’s wardrobe, fumbled in her drawers to find a pair of stockings and slipped on the shortest heels she could find. She pinned her hair back in a simple knot, letting frame pieces fall around her face, then snatched a pair of pearl earrings and the Ministry badge from the vanity.

“I don’t remember the last time I wore heels, and I would have been fine keeping it like that” she grumbled, striding into the living room while pinning the badge on her chest. Draco was sitting on the couch, legs crossed comfortably, and was flipping through a Vogue magazine. He looked up and observed her. Hermione could actually see the moment his Occlumency walls went up. It was weird to witness, Malfoy’s technique was usually flawless and very subtle, like occluding was second nature. But that morning, in that foreign apartment, with pink dawn light filtering from gauzy curtains, he seemed to be trying too hard. Hermione saw the light in his mercury irises go out, like a snuffed candle, and darkness overflowed from his pupils, spreading and morphing in absolute nothingness. A line from a book that described how the Dementor’s Kiss left the recipient came to her mind and her heart stuttered. 

“Draco?” she whispered. A flash of pain passed behind his gaze and he blinked, turning his head away. He closed the magazine and threw it on the coffee table while standing up. He sniffed and pulled out the Invisibility Cloak from inside his coat. 

“Let’s get going. Remember to look like there’s something smelly in the air at all time, as per Pureblood Galateo,” he reminded her, his voice so cold and distant she felt as if someone had opened a door on a frosted mountaintop. 

Hermione forced herself to nod, plucked a trench coat from a hook near the door and snatched Daphne’s expensive purse. 

“I’ll be right behind you the whole time, don’t jump if I touch you,” he said, tucking Hermione’s beaded bag in an inside pocket of his coat, then threw the Cloak on himself. She thought she caught a crack on his perfect mask of indifference just before he disappeared, a crease of pain wedged between his eyes, but pushed it out of her mind. 

Focus, Granger.

Hermione took a deep breath, arranged Daphne’s features in a haughty expression of boredom and opened the door. 

Showtime.

Chapter Text

13.

July, 1999

The bullet went right through Voldemort’s skull, between his red eyes, and he sagged down like an empty robe. He fell right beside the bloodied corpse of Nagini, its head severed and oozing black blood on the green blades of grass of Malfoy Manor’s back garden. The Death Eaters that had tried running when the Grid had snapped in place were scattered on the ground, killed by the muggle weapons the Order members had strapped to their belts. Those that had kept rooted on the spot, behind their master, were now wide eyed and terrified. Lucius Malfoy was paler than ever, Bellatrix seemed a little girl robbed of her favorite toy. 

Ginny lowered her arm, her gun still hot, and smirked. “Seems you’re all going back to your suites in Azkaban, after all.”

Kingsley looked around to the muggle agents blending among them, signaling it was time to incapacitate all the remaining Death Eaters and take their wands, before the Grid switched off. 

But no one moved. 

A rustling from the rose bushes of Narcissa’s now wild flower garden caught everyone’s attention.

Hermione gripped her gun tighter, wand still clasped in her other hand. The hair on the back of her neck was standing. Donovan came out of the bushes, in an elegant black suit, his hands in his pockets. He was smiling. She whipped around and met Lupin’s equally mournful gaze. In her peripheral vision, she caught Theo imperceptibly edging closer to her on her right.

“I don’t think your prison would be enough of a punishment for what they have done, Ginevra,” Donovan announced and nodded to one of his men. All muggles fired at the same time, all Death Eaters went down in seconds. Ron turned to Donovan, shock and anger marring his usually jovial face. 

“This wasn’t the deal, Donovan! What the hell is going on?” he bellowed.

“I’m afraid our deal went down, after all,” he announced, with a pleased smile.

Ron moved towards him, but a shot echoed in the air and he halted mid step, confused. He looked down to his chest, a stain rapidly expanding on his T-shirt, then searched for Hermione. His blue eyes were surprised, as it was unfathomable that she had been right, that muggles might be trying to backstab them. He fell to his knees and Ginny cried in the background, mayhem erupting all around them, but she could only see those eyes, those freckles standing out more than ever on his paling skin. She saw him mouthing an apology before falling face down on the grass and she thought the light was finally going out in the entire world. 

But it didn’t. The sun kept shining as hot as hell over them, and a rain of bullets started falling from all directions. Someone took her wrist and dragged her towards the maze behind the Manor, desperately trying to get them away from the open space. It was Theo.

“Granger, run, come on!” he shouted over the noise. Hermione ran, but had to look back. Arthur and Bill were down, Neville was picking up Luna’s wounded body while Ginny covered them with fire. Fred had slung Ron’s corpse on his shoulder and was running behind them, occasionally shooting back at the muggle troopers. Some Order members had run in the opposite direction, splitting the group in two, as they had planned to do in case of a similar outcome. Lupin took cover behind a bush, his rifle trained at a group of agents shooting towards Kingsley, who was trying to pick up Seamus’s body. A bullet went through his head and he tumbled down. Lupin swore and stood up, firing madly at the muggle men while running backwards. He was going to die. She stopped and twirled around, her gun aimed. 

“Granger!” Theo shouted. But she didn’t move. She shot and got one in the face. Lupin took down two and Theo, with a sigh, killed another. There was a short moment of quiet, and they took advantage of it to sprint inside the maze. Lupin reached them and they all pushed in, turning left and right, following Theo, who had walked in that maze many times as a child. They found the centre, a beautiful fountain spurting water in the sunny afternoon.

Panting, Hermione turned to Theo. “How long till the Grid goes down?”

Theo gave her a pitying look. “It was supposed to switch off twenty minutes ago, Granger.”

“And we are way out of its supposed radius, too,” Neville chimed in, red faced with the effort of running with Luna on his back. 

Hermione looked at Lupin. “What do we do? We cannot run out of the property, we don’t have cover, they’ll shoot us down.”

Lupin patted his jacket pocket. “The Ace, Hermione.”

She widened her eyes. “There are too many of them, Remus! It would have worked if they had been less. Like this, you’ll never make it!”

“What’s The Ace?” Ginny asked.

“The Grid is in the rose garden, I run there and blow it up, while you run in the opposite direction, towards the little wood on the left. When the Grid goes down, you all apparate away,” Remus explained, taking out a grenade from his pocket. 

“We, Remus. We all apparate away!” Hermione cried. A sound of boots on gravel announced they had been followed. Fred looked behind them, alarmed.

“Any chance we have another ace to get out of this fancy cul-de-sac?” he pushed.

“Listen here, we hide on that turn” Theo said, pointing at an opening in the edges on their left, “we wait for them to get to the fountain and then we blow them up with my grenade. When the air settles we run back out and deploy the Ace, okay?”

They all nodded, but Hermione wanted to protest and Theo felt it.

“Fred, Ginny, how many bullets do you have left?” he asked, checking his own gun.

“Enough to cover Remus for a while,” Fred replied, sensing where that was going. 

“Okay, then we cover him till we can, then we run,” he agreed.

“No, you have to run immediately,” Remus protested, but Theo shook his head.

“If no one covers you, you’ll be dead before you can be close enough to throw the bomb,” he insisted. Someone yelled through the maze and they all turned to the entrance.

“Let’s go,” Theo ushered them to the opposite side and they hid behind the edge. He palmed his grenade and peered around the corner. 

“Cover your ears,” he whispered, grazing Hermione’s hip. 

After a moment, a squad of black clad troopers swarmed the centre of the maze, rifles and guns ready to shoot. Theo sent her a boyish grin before pulling out the pin with his teeth and sending the grenade hurling towards the troopers. Her hands went up to the sides of her face and she crouched down, just when the grenade exploded in the fountain. Chunks of stone flew around, lodging in the men’s faces and bodies, smashing their skulls and throwing them down like rag-dolls. The noise was so deafening Hermione could only see Theo’s lips shouting to run. 

And run they did, without looking back, without acknowledging the mutilated bodies scattered around on the gravel. They came out of the maze and settled along the edge, guns and rifles ready to fire, while Lupin started at a breakneck pace towards the rose garden. Bullets whistled in the air, but they were ready to respond. Hermione assessed their surroundings and targeted a shooter hiding behind a decorative bush. They all chose their targets and they fired without holding back. Lupin was almost at the edge of the garden, when a bullet reached his shoulder. He cried like an animal but continued running. 

She was focused on the fire from the ground, so she didn’t see it coming. Muggles had snipers on Malfoy Manor’s roof and they had a pretty clear view of Lupin from there. When bullets came down on him, his screams sounded like howls during a full moon. He was close enough to throw, so he briefly looked behind him and winked at her, his scars stark on his face, before sending the grenade over the bushes. When the bomb was mid air, Theo grabbed her arm and pulled her. 

“Let’s go!” he shouted and they all started running toward the woods. As soon as the explosion damaged the Grid, they could apparate. Hermione focused on her breathing, pushing away the image of Lupin covered in bullet holes, of Arthur and Bill laying on the grass, of Kingsley going down. 

Of Ron. 

Ginny was silently crying, running just ahead of her. Neville was wheezing, Fred grunted adjusting Ron’s body on his shoulder. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion. How long was it taking to the grenade to explode?

The whistle of a bullet raced over her head and she screamed, dipping her shoulders.

“Fuck,” Theo cursed, turning around for a millisecond. Then he pulled her in front of him and pushed her forward. 

“Make things count, Granger,” he whispered, right before another bullet reached them and she suddenly didn’t feel his warmth behind her anymore. She halted and whirled around. Theo was down, a flower of crimson blood expanding on the nape of his neck.

“No, Theo, NO!”

She fell to her knees and turned him around, his ocean eyes already vacant and lost in the summer sky. Her chest caved in and she forgot how to breathe. Sound went out, the explosion of Lupin’s grenade so loud even in the distance. Her fingers trailed down Theo’s cheek and she felt something wet on her own face. 

Something changed in the air, a static went down her body and magic thrummed in her veins again. Pain was somewhat stronger now and a blinding rage filled her up to the brim. She looked up and saw the men that had been shooting at them. She pointed her wand in his direction and a jet of green light erupted. He went down, eyes wide, but three others appeared from nowhere. Hermione twirled her wand around and took them at the same time with one single killing curse. She didn’t even have to say the words aloud. Magic seemed to ooze from her, she was barely able to keep it in, the cracks of her soul widening by the second.

Someone grabbed her shoulder. She turned and saw Ginny’s wide eyes.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Hermione nodded, grasped Theo’s hand and apparated to the Burrow, swearing she would make things count. 

****

October, 2001

Getting inside from the magical entrance of the former Ministry was easy. Draco, under the cloak, flushed down first while Hermione loudly complained about those stupid faulty toilets to throw off anyone in line outside of their booth, before stepping in the toilet bowl and flushing again. When she got out of the Floo, she crossed the Atrium briskly, keeping her eyes trained ahead, even if she was curious to see how the building had changed under muggle usage. The dark wood of the floor and wall panels were just the same, but there was only an empty void where once gurgled the massive Fountain of Magical Brethren. Hermione looked to the other end of the Atrium, where a long escalator climbed up and disappeared into the ceiling, similarly to all London tube stations entrances. 

The muggle entrance.

Their plan B if things went tits up. 

She registered two guards standing on each side of the escalator, rifles in hand. She blinked and refocused ahead, walking to the elevators, Draco just behind her. She stepped into a luckily empty one. She pressed the button for the ninth floor and the golden grille rattled close. As soon as the elevator moved, she let out a small breath. 

“Keep your nose up,” Draco muttered from her left. Hermione straightened. The elevator came to a stop with a screech and a cool female voice announced the Department of Mysteries. She stepped out and braced herself. Last time she’d been there was in Fifth Year, with her friends, on a mission that Voldemort had carefully planned for them. She’d been cursed by Dolohov, Ron had been attacked by brains, Harry had been possessed by Voldemort. So many nice memories, really. 

They had almost infiltrated the Ministry while looking for Slytherin locket during the Horcruxes’ hunt, since Dolores Umbridge had put her hands on the artifact, and she’d worked in the Muggle Registration Committee at the time. But they’d ended up taking the easier route and breaking into Umbridge’s house at night. They’d stunned her and levitated her unceremoniously out of the window before burning the place to the ground, with all her kitten themed plates and pink, frilly doilies. That was an actual happy memory, come to think of it.

Hermione’s heels clicked on the black tiles of the floor while she walked to the dark door at the end. She turned the handle and pushed it open. She slid in, feeling Draco’s presence just a breath away from her. His hovering warmth grounded her. 

When the door closed behind them, the circular room she remembered all too well didn’t spin. The badge on her chest worked and she felt one of the endless weights on her stomach lift. She walked to the second door on her left, where Daphne’s office should have been, and stepped into a corridor-like room, with a row of cubicles on either side and another black door at the end that supposedly led to the rooms of the Curse Breaking Department. 

Daphne’s cubicle was the fourth on the right, just next to her friend’s Nina, the red-haired girl they had seen her share lunch breaks with. She peered inside the girl’s booth and found her sitting at her desk, a crate on the floor near her feet and a big decorated urn in front of her. She was scribbling something on a piece of paper and simultaneously tapping her wand on the porcelain vase. 

“Good morning, Nina,” Hermione greeted, keeping her smile neutrally polite. Nina looked up, her eyes vacant for just a second, then a grin spread wide on her face. 

“Hey Daph! You’re late,” she chided, pointing her pen at her accusingly. “But you’re also an incredibly lucky ass, because Tilly has been called inside for an emergency meeting.”

Tilly was the Head of their office and usually sat in the first cubicle, which Hermione had seen empty and had thanked the gods for that. She smiled slyly, channeling all the Slytherin spirit she could muster.

“Well, what can I say? My ass is perfect and lucky, I guess!”

Nina chuckled and shook her head. “Hurry up, you have a crate fuller than mine in there!”

Hermione rolled her eyes and walked into her office. It was just like Nina’s, only the pen on the desk was a different color and the crate on the floor was indeed brimming with artifacts.

“Great,” she muttered, shedding her coat and hanging it by the door. She took out Daphne’s wand from the waistband of her skirt and sat at the desk, fishing a plastic bag full of silver creasted spoons out of the crate. Draco brushed her shoulder and bent near her ear. His sweet scent tickled her senses and she had to blink several times to keep her face straight. 

“I’ll take a look around, be right back,” he whispered, making her shiver. Then he was gone and she set to do Daphne’s job of describing all the artifacts that had to be analyzed by the Curse Breakers later on. Draco came back pretty quickly and hovered in a corner of the cubicle while she interpreted her part for an amount of time that would be deemed reasonable to an outside eye. Her crate was still half full when she huffed and stood up, walking out of her space and peering again into Nina’s. 

“I’m bored,” she announced, with a very Pureblood pout. Nina looked up and set her pen down, with a knowing look. Apparently this was the right course of action. 

“Time for an errand in the other rooms?” she suggested, wiggling her brows.

“Do you think Jason would be in the Time Room today?” she asked, with feigned innocence. 

Nina giggled and stomped her feet like a baby. “Do you think he’ll finally ask you out?”

Hermione winked. “Only one way to find out! If Tilly makes an appearance, tell her I went to the bathroom.”

Nina’s giggle followed her when she walked down the corridor and into the dark circular room again. 

“You’re a natural,” Draco murmured, while they crossed the hall and reached the door right in front of them. Hermione made a gagging sound and pushed the door open, stepping inside.

The Time Room was just like she remembered, minus the wreckage they had caused to it. The shimmering light that filled the place still looked like a thousand crushed diamonds scattered in front of a ray of sun and made every surface sparkle and gleam. There  were clocks everywhere, ticking in unison, and the various desks were covered in books and papers and more clocks and hourglasses. She looked to the far end of the room and saw the bell jar with the time cycle inside. The image of a Death Eater with a bawling baby head stepping out of it made her almost flinch. She let her eyes travel over the walls until she located a cabinet with a glass front and there they were: rows upon rows of Time Turners displayed there like little time soldiers. 

“Gods! I knew it was my lucky day when I woke up without my back pain!” a booming voice announced from a corner of the room. Hermione whipped around and saw a thick, middle aged man with a shiny bald head and a greasy smile on his face. Great, the handsy one Daphne hated to flirt with. 

“Hartie!” she exclaimed, walking towards him. He was holding a golden stopwatch in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other, but he set them both down on the desk and walked around it to meet her. He wasted no time to live up to Daphne’s warnings and rubbed Hermione’s arms, his eyes roaming over her body with a bit too much interest. 

“Hey, doll! What are you doing around here? Not that I’m complaining,” he laughed.

Hermione shrugged. “I was getting bored in my little cubicle, I thought I’ll come over and ask you guys if you had any errand I could run for you,” she explained, then produced the most cat-like smile she could. “And if you don’t, that’s even better, so we can chit chat a little.”

Hartie gave her a condescending look. “Jason’s not here, precious,” he told her, with a very patronizing tone. Hermione wanted to smack him in the head. Instead, she only arched a brow and stepped around him, reaching for the stopwatch on the desk. She wanted him to turn around and give his back to the cabinet of Time Turners, so that Draco would be free to snatch one and replace it with a replica. She succeeded: he pivoted on himself like Earth worshipping the sun.

“Why, is Jason the chit chat expert in this Department? Can’t you entertain a lady bored out of her wits, Hartie?” she asked, innocently. Hartie chuckled and took a step towards her. His smile was predatory, slick and hungry, and his eyes kept flicking to her chest. She despised him.

“Oh, I do, doll, but chit chat is not my trick of choice to entertain a woman. Especially a pretty one like you,” he hinted, planting himself right in front of her and reaching for her chin with his index. 

She puckered her lips. “I’m sure we’ve had this conversation before, Hartie, haven’t we?”

He looked down to her lips and his teeth showed. “Mmm, was it the one about how inappropriate it would be if someone walked in on us being…close?” he asked, leaning even closer. Hermione felt his belly poke at her stomach and had to fight her instinct to jab a finger into his left eye and carve it out. 

“The very one,” she confirmed and he chuckled in her face.

“Then it really is my lucky day, because no one is going to walk in today! Jason’s on holiday leave, Trevor’s upstairs for a meeting and the Prophecy Hall is closed for maintenance. What a treat, uh?” 

Hermione wanted to vomit. What a treat, indeed. She registered movement in the background. Her eyes fleetingly went to the cabinet and she saw the door with the glass front inching open slowly. She threw her head back and laughed as loud as possible.

“Oh, Hartie! You never give up, do you?”

In a flash, Hartie’s beefy arm snaked around her waist and pulled her close. Hermione gasped, her hands protectively pushing on his chest to keep him at a distance. But he was strong, the git, and he was very set on entertaining her. 

“Not when I know the value of the prize, I don’t,” he said, lowering his mouth to her neck. The stench of stale smoke and sweat made her gag. She shoved at his chest, hard, but he was unmovable. Hermione let out an angry wail and just before his lips pressed on her jaw, he was hauled away from her and sent sprawling against a bookcase. Books and clocks tumbled on Hartie’s moaning body.

Cold hands cradled her face and Draco appeared in front of her, eyes blazing like molten mercury. 

“Are you hurt?” he asked, voice low and dangerous. She shook her head and he nodded.

“I have the Time Turner, let’s get out of here before…” but he couldn’t finish, because Hermione saw Hartie point his wand at him. She grabbed Draco’s coat lapels and pulled him towards her to get him out of the fire line. She stumbled and they fell on the floor, right before a jet of blue light soared through the air and hit a dark spot on the opposite wall. A high pitched sound broke out at full blast. 

“I’m going to murder this piece of shit,” Draco growled, rolling around and aiming his wand at Hartie, still sprawled on the floor, panting. Hermione was quicker, sending a stunner his way with Daphne’s wand.

“We have to go! If this place goes into lockdown, we’re dead!” she said, standing up and running to retrieve the Cloak on the floor. Draco followed her, looking murderously at Hartie’s unconscious form. Hermione grabbed his hand and tugged on it. 

“Draco,” she pushed. He whirled around and assessed her for injuries. When he found none he seemed to snap into pantzer mode, pupils swallowing his irises with darkness.

He twined their fingers together and ran out of the Time Room and into the circular hall. Some women from Daphne’s office were peering out of their door, the loud alarm still bleating in the air. Draco dragged Hermione to the exit, right when another door banged open and three wizards hurled themselves out, wands up and ready to stun. Hermione sent a jinx to their legs, while Draco threw Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder behind them, sending the hall into pitch black darkness. They darted through the black tiled corridor, desperate to catch an elevator before someone could stop them. The heels were killing her and she felt her skin start to bubble up under the surface. She hadn’t had time to take another dose and the effect of the Polyjuice was fading. She was going to transform back. A whimper escaped her lips, Daphne’s shoes were too tight and the clip holding her hair too small. 

Draco turned towards her. “Granger…”

“Yeah, I know, fuck!” she managed through her gritted teeth, while she wretched the clip free and let her curls tumble down. Draco flicked his wand at her feet and a transfiguration spell turned her heels into a pair of trainers just like those she used during sparring. She sighed in relief, squeezed his hand and looked behind them. A jet of red light flew over their heads. Hermione shouted a bombarda that ricocheted on the wall, sending a shower of tile shards in the faces of their pursuers.

They finally reached the elevator, the alarm still blasting at full force, and Draco pushed the button for the Atrium frantically. Two wizards emerged from the dust cloud obscuring the corridor, firing jinxes their way. Hermione shielded them, while the grille rattled closed. Draco sent a silent curse towards them, flipping them backwards against the walls. 

The lift shot up and he whirled around to face her.

“They’re probably waiting for us in the Atrium, and the Grid is likely activated,” he reasoned, pulling out a gun from the arnesse secured around his shoulders and handing it to her. Hermione took it, removed the safety and slotted her fingers around the handle. Draco did the same with his, keeping his wand gripped in his left hand. Their eyes met, silver into chocolate, and a current flew through her body, firing up all her nerves endings. 

“We run for the muggle entrance, you call Dobby only when we’re out of reach, okay?” he instructed and she nodded. Then he reached for his neck and pulled out a small hourglass encased in a series of circular golden frames and attached to a long chain. 

“You should keep this, Granger,” he said, trying to lift the Time Turner over his head, but she stilled his fingers with hers. 

“No, Malfoy. You keep it. You get out of here alive, no matter what, do you understand me?” she asked, her eyes boring holes of fire in his.

He slowly shook his head. “Together or nothing, Granger.”

“But it’s you that has to go back, Malfoy, I’m just an extra!”

“Together or nothing,” he repeated, leaning closer, letting something slip from his carefully occluded mind.

Hermione huffed in frustration. The elevator was slowing down. They were almost in the Atrium.

“Just don’t die, you git,” she growled and turned swiftly, not before catching a ghost of a smirk on his lips.

As soon as the grille opened, she gave it a shot and shouted a “ Protego!” , successfully casting a shield around them. 

The Grid wasn’t up yet. 

A bunch of guards wearing blue uniforms and pointing their guns at them were thrown off balance by the force of her spell and Draco blasted them off their feet, clearing a path in the line of protection waiting for them outside the elevators. They ran through the enormous void of the Atrium, a siren bleating above them, people getting out of their way and guards at their back, shooting right at Hermione’s shield. Draco kept turning over his shoulder to fire exploding spells on the floor, lifting dark wood planks in a rain of spiky shards that slowed their enemies down. 

“Get the Grid up, I repeat, get the Grid up already!” one of them shouted into a radio, dangerously  close to their backs. Hermione turned and peered around Draco’s side, but it was definitely the wrong move, because the guards on the radio widened his eyes.

“IT’S HER! It's Hermione Granger! I repeat…”

Draco stabbed his wand towards his face and an array of infected boils surfaced on his skin. His cry of pain made Hermione’s skin crawl. 

“Faster, Granger!” Draco shouted and she pushed harder. They were almost at the escalator leading up to the muggle entrance, the two guards lifting their rifles towards them. Draco sent a Reductor Curse at one of them, while Hermione levitated the weapon out of the other’s hands. She was pushing it away from him, when she felt it. Magic sizzled out in her veins, leaving her gasping for air. Draco grunted behind her. The Grid was on.

Her shield disappeared and her wand became utterly useless. Draco was ready: he shot two bullets in succession and killed the guards beside the escalator, just before a new wave of bullets exploded behind them. They ducked their heads, then turned in unison to respond to fire. Hermione saw Draco rotate his torso, shoulders perfectly in line with his wrist, and fire a series of precise shots that sent six guards down, bullets meeting their targets always in the same spot: their throats. It was satisfyingly unsettling to watch him shoot, with his elegant features set in marble, the impeccable technique and yet a thirst for blood that translated into deadly precision. It was terrifying and yet hot as hell. 

From the corner of her eye, she saw a fresh wave of black dressed guards spilling out of the fireplaces. Those, too, had rifles.

A bullet almost grazed her thigh and she jumped sideways. Draco steadied her with his wand hand, giving her a little push on the small of her back to boost her forward.

“DO NOT KILL THE GIRL. THE MINISTER WANTS HER ALIVE!” someone shouted.

Great, she could use that.

“Draco! Go ahead of me, I’m a human shield! You heard him, they want me alive,” she screamed over the noise.  Draco pressed his lips together, clearly not happy to obey, but breezed past her and pivoted to fire again. Bullets were less now and less precise, since her back was exposed. 

They finally reached the escalator and they hopped on, climbing the steps moving slowly to the surface. 

“CUT THE POWER!” a man shouted and Hermione swore under her breath. She looked up past Draco’s shoulder: the stair was never ending. Her head whipped back, a line of men clad in black combat suits and aiming guns was climbing right behind them. 

“They’re on us, Draco!” she screamed and he looked behind them. 

“Duck,” he said and she did, without a second to spare. He turned, swiftly, and put a bullet right between the eyes of the guards behind Hermione. The man dropped backwards, creating a macabre domino effect with his colleagues, giving Draco and Hermione a small advantage. They pushed forward, running up and up on the escalator, occasionally turning to open fire and slow down the guards. When her legs started to feel like jelly, a gust of wind ruffled her hair. A patch of sky was visible from the top of the escalator.

“Sweet Salazar,” she heard Draco mutter, then he grabbed her hand and powered through the last steps and into the street. They came out in a deserted back alley, with an old, red telephone booth in a corner. They had briefly assessed the area in the previous days, and from there they could easily get into a main street and blend into the crowd of London. Draco pulled her just to the end of the pavement, then left her hand and rummaged into his coat. From the muggle entrance, the guards started to pour out, guns already aiming.

“Behind me,” Draco urged her, grenade in hand. It was a flash of a moment, it happened so fast it blurred in her mind. She stepped around him, Draco lifted his arm to throw, and just as his fingers hurled the bomb at the entrance of the escalator, a bullet soared through the air and hit his left shoulder. Draco hissed, his body jerking back, then pivoted in front of her and pushed her towards the corner of the street, behind the telephone booth. She had no time to scream or protest or panic, because the explosion sucked the air from her lungs and sound from her ears, throwing her in a suspended void between reality and fantasy. Draco enveloped her in his arms, shielding her in his wide chest. He smelled like fire smoke and sweet tea, with a coppery hint that seemed out of place. Something wet touched her cheek while noises started to take shape in her ears again. Hermione pushed back enough to observe him and a stain of fresh, dark blood punched her in the eye. It was right under the clavicle, beside the armpit, and it was spreading.

“Draco, you’re bleeding.”

He simply nodded, pressing his lips together. “I’d guessed as much. We need to get going, we’re not safe.”

In the back of her mind, her rational self agreed. In the forefront, though, the only coherent thought she could form was a litany of please God, not again, paired with flashbacks of gunshot wounds taking  loved ones away from her forever. The idea of losing Malfoy should have just been an irritating inconvenience, a drawback on her plans of saving the wizarding world from Donovan. 

But it was more than that. 

The idea of losing Draco felt unbearable, her brain couldn’t work its way around it without giving her a panic attack that brought her back to Hogwarts, to other wounds and another kind of fear. It felt foreign just the same, but she couldn’t help it.

The pull towards him was getting impossible to ignore and losing him…

Somehow she was sure it would result in her final breakdown. 

Chapter Text

14.

July, 1999

“RON!” Molly screamed, falling to her knees in the sunburnt grass of the backyard at the Burrow. Percy held her in his arms, a bloodied gash on his neck.

Fred laid Ron’s body on the ground, Ginny apparated right beside him and grabbed her brother’s arm, tears running down her cheeks. Fred shook his head and she hung hers, shoulders trembling hard. Molly cried so loud it echoed in the open countryside, a flock of birds flying up from the fields behind them. 

Hermione fisted Theo’s shirt over his chest, anger flowing through her veins so hot she left a charred handprint on the fabric. Fleur was standing behind Molly’s quaking body, her eyes on the horizon, as if she was waiting for Bill to arrive next. But Percy had preceded them all, he had surely told them Arthur and his elder brother had fallen in battle. Hermione caught Fleur’s gaze and shook her head once. The blonde girl’s eyes shone with tears, but she forced them away, her lips trembling with untold sorrow.

Neville apparated closer to the house, Luna moaning in his arms. 

“Help!” he bellowed, turning frantically on the spot. “She splinched, help!”

Fleur whipped around and hurried him inside, wand at the ready to heal, diving into action to keep away her breakdown. Others arrived, not many, either carrying a body or a wounded friend. Ginny got up to help, Percy hauled a crazed Molly inside. Hermione looked down on Theo’s face. His dark curls were spilling on his forehead messily, his ocean eyes were closed, maybe she’d done that at some point, she didn’t know. He seemed asleep, at peace with the entire world, no more pained by the guilt of his actions as a Death Eater, no more haunted by the horrors of what he’d had to do to help the Order as a double agent. He was so beautiful, so young, so perfect. A tear dropped on his cheek from Hermione’s eye and she wiped it away with her thumb.

“I’ll fix this mess, Theo. I’ll make things count, I swear. I’ll make them pay,” she whispered, grazing his jaw with trembling fingers. “Starting today.”

She smoothed his rumpled shirt reverently, then stood up, wand gripped tight in her right hand, and walked away from the house. Fred saw her and scrambled up, running to catch her.

“Hermione! Hermione, where are you going?” he yelled, grabbing her wrist and turning her around. She looked him straight in the eyes, murder written all over her face.

“To the lab. I’ll blow it up before he secures it.”

Fred frowned. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Let’s go.”

Just seconds afterwards, they apparated in front of the building where Donovan’s team worked. Where Hermione had worked, along with her friends, to help make the Grid possible. Donovan had other storage units for his research, she was sure of it, but this lab was the biggest one and if she had even a chance to take something away from him and slow his ascent a little, she would take it. 

“How do we…” Fred started, but she was deaf and blind. Hermione walked straight through the door and stunned the secretary sitting at the front desk. The woman didn’t have time to even lift her head up. Hermione waved her wand and the desk exploded. Fred did a double take, eyes widening. 

“Mione, what…”

She whipped around and pointed her wand at his jaw. Fred looked at her, alarmed.

“I’m razing this place to the ground, Fred. Now. If you want to help, fine. If you’re not angry enough after losing half of your family, then please get out of here and leave me alone. I’m certainly angry for the both of us,” she hissed, her hair slightly swelling around her face. Then she turned, without waiting for a reply, and stepped into the elevator. Silent, Fred followed her, his jaw ticking, his eyes dark with pain. When the doors slid open, they stepped directly into the main lab rooms, where people were working. Some engineers in white coats turned their heads to the elevator, confused. One of them looked scared. He started to walk to a desk to pick up a phone. Hermione saw him and sent a jet of green light his way, hitting him square in the chest. When the man fell, dead, all hell broke loose. People started running towards the stairs, but Fred blocked the emergency exit door with a swift “colloportus”. Hermione threw bombardas to every surface, every piece of paper, every computer, setting the entire place on fire, destroying every source of data she could see. Fred stunned person after person, petrifying them, binding them to the walls or the chairs, levitating them against the ceiling. And they went to other rooms, destroying prototypes of Grids, archives full of research, databases and samples. And Hermione’s magic grew stronger and hotter and more powerful with each spell she cast, fueled by her burning anger. She couldn’t see anyone, couldn’t hear anything, only Theo’s breathing when they were alone, in the darkness of their room. Only Ron’s laughter when they trained in the backyard at the Burrow. Only Harry’s yell of excitement when he flew on his broom. 

They were all gone.

Theo.

Ron.

Harry.

Lupin.

Bill and Arthur

George.

Her parents.

All gone, all dead, all lost to her. And she wanted someone to suffer for it, just like she was suffering. Her heart was broken beyond repair, she had nothing left to lose. 

She stepped into the room where Donovan had tested the Grid on her for the first time. She had never felt so physically violated before, as if someone had carved out a piece of her soul with a knife. When she’d stumbled against the wall, shocked, Donovan had smiled in triumph. 

He was going to pay.

A surge of magic escaped from the tip of her fingers, the glass that divided the testing area from the desk exploded into shimmering dust. Hermione growled, furniture levitating and splintering up in shards. The computer where Donovan had registered all the progress of the Grid so far, blew up, flames licking the ceiling. Hermione’s core was overcharged, the pulsing of her magic overtaking her heart. She had to let it out, or she would probably be consumed by it. Fred stumbled inside, wide eyed. 

“Hermione, let’s go. Someone called the police,” he told her, but she couldn’t move.

“Get out, Fred,” she gasped, trying to hold her magic in. She didn’t want to hurt him.

“Hermione…”

“GET OUT! Get down, take cover, I can’t keep it in, Fred! GO!” she yelled and Fred walked out, casting a shield around himself and crouching under one of the few desks remaining intact. Hermione closed her eyes and thought of Theo. The snap in her chest was so painful she thought her ribcage had fallen open. Magic exploded from her, going outward in a halo of golden light, crashing everything it touched. It sounded like a bomb going off and the building shook. When the wave retreated, she fell on her knees, sobbing and gasping for air. Fred grabbed her shoulders and hissed, burnt, but didn’t let her go. 

“Fred, I feel it building again,” she sobbed, shaking like a leaf in the wind. She looked him in the eyes, and he must have seen something devastating there because his lips parted and his face fell.

“Stun me and get me away from here,” she whispered through chattering teeth, tears falling down freely. Fred nodded, pointed the wand to her stomach and murmured a stunner, gently. Darkness kissed her eyelids and all the pain went blissfully away. 

*****

October, 2001

Hermione didn’t realize they were moving until they were hurrying down Birdcage Walk, zigzagging through all sorts of people crowding the sidewalk along St James’s Park. Her hand was in Draco’s and she noticed his fingers were cold and clammy around hers. 

Fuck, she had to focus. 

She cleared the fog of panic in her mind and looked around. People were staring, turning their heads, whispering. Hermione looked up at Draco and noticed that the blood stain was covering a big chunk of his chest now. 

“We’re sticking out, let’s get away from the spotlight,” she muttered and crossed the street, pulling him behind her. Hermione walked into a side road, then turned a corner and went on until she saw a small, secluded alley. She dragged Draco in and propped him against the wall of a brick building. He was pale and breathed through his teeth. 

“Dobby!”

The elf appeared when her voice was still raising on the y, his ears shivering more than ever.

“Dobby is ready for extraction, Miss!” he announced, reaching out to apparate them.

“We can’t Dobby, Draco is injured, I need you to heal him first,” she explained, pointing at the dark blood soaking Draco’s coat. Dobby’s eyes trailed over it and horror made them impossibly wide. He started shaking his head violently.

“Dobby can’t, Miss! Dobby doesn’t know any healing magic! Dobby never used it!”

Hermione grabbed Dobby’s bony arm. “What do you mean? Can’t you at least try?”

“Dobby might kill the Master if Dobby makes a mistake! Dobby can’t!”

“Just apparate us back to Hogwarts, Dobby, we’ll figure it out there,” Draco said, his voice coming out strained. He was pressing on the wound, blood staining his pale hands and filtering through. 

Please God, no. Please.

“You’ll splinch and die, it’s out of the question,” she firmly replied, looking around for an idea. Her gaze landed on an old Ford Fiesta parked along the road, its cobalt painting chipped on the roof and rusted on the bumpers. 

“Dobby, can you open and start that car for me?”

Dobby observed the wreck, then nodded and snapped his fingers. The doors flew open and the engine whirred up sputtering. Hermione breathed out and snaked an arm around Malfoy’s waist. He unconsciously leaned on her for support. This wasn’t good.

“Great, let’s go!”

“What are we doing?” he asked when he was sitting inside, pale and sweaty, his teeth gritted close. 

“We borrow the car and go back to Grimmauld,” she explained, hands on the wheel, then turned to Dobby. “I’ll need surgical supplies to take care of the wound, Dobby, I don’t have magic here, I’ll have to do it the muggle way.”

Draco groaned in the background. “A thief and a doctor. You’re full of surprises, Granger.”

Hermione ignored him and gave Dobby a list of stuff she needed, from the top of her head. The elf nodded frantically, then popped away and she pressed her foot on the accelerator, driving out of the alley and into the empty side streets. 

“You know how to drive?” he asked, words slightly slurring in his mouth. 

Please, God. 

“Yes, dad taught me one summer when I was a teen,” she explained, turning left into a main road packed with traffic. “But I’m not big on orienteering, maybe you can help me with the road here, Malfoy?”

“So I’ll have to stay awake, uh? Very subtle, Granger, I’ll give you that. Turn right at the next traffic light,” he instructed, adjusting slowly in the seat. The movement made him hiss in pain and he threw his head back, eyes pressing closed. 

“Am I going right here?” she asked, forcing him to look.

Draco nodded. “Straight till Holborn Station, then turn left.”

Hermione hammered on the accelerator, pushing the car faster. She knew the itinerary very well and she also knew it was a twenty minute drive at least. What she didn’t know was if Draco had twenty minutes before passing out for blood loss.

“You’ll get a speed ticket, Senna,” he muttered.

She scoffed. If he was being sarcastic, maybe there was a good chance he’ll make it. 

“You stink, I can’t wait to get out of the car,” she replied, turning sharply left and overtaking a slow cab. She avoided a head-on collision with a motorbike at the very last second. 

“Liar, Malfoys never stink. You just don’t want to dump my corpse in a back alley if I die in this car,” he reasoned, with a forced smirk. She looked at him fleetingly. He was so pale she could actually see veins under his eyes. 

“You’re not going to die, Malfoy, unless I kill you,” she gritted out, sharply turning into St. John’s street.

“I wouldn’t blame you,” he said, his head lolling a little to the side. 

Hermione punched him on the thigh. “Wake up, Malfoy! Come on! We’re almost there!”

Draco grunted and blinked several times. 

“Why would I want to kill you, tell me?” she asked, trying desperately to keep him engaged. 

“Terrible person, horrible attitude, mark of the devil on my arm,” he slurred, dragging a hand in his hair, smearing it in blood. “Wasn’t able to protect you,” he added, sounding sleepy.

Hermione frowned, finally getting in Grimmauld’s neighbourhood. “What are you talking about? I’m alive, protection was successfully provided.”

He didn’t reply. She turned and his head was hung on his chest. 

“Fuck,” she groaned and parked the Ford in the small square in front of the house, where she was pretty sure she couldn’t. Rules be damned. 

“Dobby!”

The elf appeared in the back seat, eyes wide and worried. 

“Let’s get him inside,” she said, getting out of the car and running to open his door. She grabbed his face and slapped him hard. Draco’s eyes twitched and opened, but his usually sharp gaze was veiled and distant. 

“Draco, we’re home. Just a little more effort and then I’ll take care of you,” she promised, her hand gently cradling his flushed cheek. He nodded and reached for her face.

“Hermione…” he whispered, so broken and vulnerable her heart sank. He always said her name in the most random moments, but it always sounded like a surrender.

Dobby slightly levitated him out of the car and supported him to the threshold, while Hermione opened the door and hurled herself inside. Her hands were shaking, her teeth chattering in her skull. 

Please God, please no. Please God, please no. Please God, please no. Please God, please no.

“Where’s the stuff, Dobby?” she asked, forcing herself to still her tremors. 

“In the kitchen, Miss. The light is better there,” he answered, levitating Draco through the hallway. Hermione ran to the kitchen and saw the instruments and supplies she had asked for, arranged neatly on the table. The fire was up in the fireplace and the room was warm. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t right now. 

“Lay him on the table, here,” she instructed, and Dobby gently let Draco on the wooden surface. 

Hermione observed his face for just a second, then had to look away. His skin was waxen, not in a flattery, aristocratic way. He looked like a corpse. She focused down, where his wound had soaked his coat. She grabbed a pair of scissors and cut his clothes off his shoulder. There was so much crusted blood she couldn’t make out the bullet hole. 

“Dobby, clean here,” she ordered. The elf did it with a wave of his little hand, and she was finally able to see the damage. The wound was small, a round hole that continued to ooze blood. She lifted his shoulder a little, to see if there was an exit wound, and found the skin on his back jugged and mangled. The bullet had gone through. 

”I need to clean this and close it,” she muttered, grabbing a bottle of disinfectant and peering up at Draco. He was passed out, but the sting might bring him back.

“Dobby, be ready to stun him.”

“But Master Draco is a wizard! Dobby can’t…” the elf screeched, panicked. 

“Dobby!” she said, her voice low and imperative.

The elf whimpered and nodded. Hermione poured disinfectant on the wound and the effect was instantaneous. Draco’s eyes flew open and he screamed like a wounded animal, thrashing and fighting to sit up. A flash of light and he went limp again. 

“Great, now turn him on the side, so I can clean the back as well. Stun if needed, Dobby, okay?”

Hermione poured more disinfectant on the exit wound and applied a clean gauze, pressing as hard as she could, then focused on the entrance gash. She took a curved needle, already rigged with surgical thread, and began stitching, occasionally wiping the bloodied skin. She turned to the back laceration and took her time closing it carefully, trying to piece together the jugged edges as well as possible. 

“Dobby, look in my purse, it’s in Draco’s coat. There must be some essence of dittany,” she requested, cutting the stitch and reaching for gauze pads. After a moment, Dobby handed her a small bottle. She opened it, extracted the dropper and let some yellowish liquid spread over the puckered skin. Green smoke billowed upwards then disappeared. The wound looked several hours old already. She repeated the operation on the front and bandaged Draco’s shoulder carefully. When she could no longer see the injury, she sighed. 

“Dobby take off these thorn clothes and let’s levitate him upstairs in his bed, yes? We’ll pour some blood replenishing potion down his throat when he’s lying comfortably,” she suggested, gathering shredded fabric, bloodied instruments and empty bottles of disinfectant away from Draco’s unconscious body. Dobby did as asked, and she followed him on the second floor, making sure he didn’t bump Draco’s head around. Once in his bed, Hermione lifted the covers over his bare chest and caressed his cheek. He was cold and pale, but he was breathing steadily. He was so beautifully innocent, a flash of a memory of another Slytherin whizzed in and out of her mind. She felt her knees buckle.

No. Draco was alive. He was going to make it.

 Dobby reappeared with a dark red potion and proceeded to administer it to the passed out wizard just as they had done weeks before, when he’d seized on the cold stone of the seventh floor corridor at Hogwarts. 

“We’ll give him another later this evening,” she whispered, while Dobby cleaned Draco’s blood smeared hair and face. The elf studied her, eyes shining with concern.

“Dobby is looking after Master Draco now. Miss can go wash her hands and drink some water before she passes out on the floor,” he advised. Hermione blinked, her head spinning a little. She nodded, giving one last look at Draco. He was alive. He was going to be fine. 

“Right, yes Dobby, thanks,” she murmured and fled the room, crossing the landing and locking herself into the bathroom. Her breath came out quick and uneven, her heart beating like a drum in her ears. She leaned on the sink, head hanging down and inhaling from her nose, in an effort to avoid vomiting. Hermione felt rage surge in her stomach, so fierce and hot the thrum of magic began boiling under her skin. The Grid was on at that time of day, she couldn’t possibly be able to use magic, and yet she felt it pushing in her veins, begging to be released. She screwed her eyes shut and occluded so hard a drop of blood ran down her nose. She ignored it and pushed through. 

When she finally felt calm and empty, Hermione lifted her head and watched herself in the mirror. There was a bloody handprint on her cheek. His blood. She washed her hands and face, fingers trembling, and didn’t even notice when her tears started to flow, blending with the tap water. She just wept, one fist shoved into her mouth, water running in the sink. She fell on the cool tiled floor, crying and crying, shoulders shaking in silence, nose bleeding while she tried to keep her Occlumency walls up. But it was so difficult to stash everything away right now, so difficult to subdue her magic that begged to be released. It was so fucking exhausting to keep pushing on, when loss was behind the corner, when blood was smeared all over her hands, when life wouldn’t stop threatening to leave her utterly alone. 

******

Draco stirred in his bed, head turning on the pillow, and cracked one eye open. He was in his room at Grimmauld, comfortably tucked under warm covers. The curtains were drawn over the window, but a sliver of purplish light filtered from a small gap in the middle. Besides his bed was an armchair that hadn’t been there before. Hermione was curled up into it, asleep, her own curtain of hair covering half of her face. He breathed in, the subtle floral scent of her shampoo travelling up his nostrils and filling him up. He smiled in the dark. As if she’d felt his eyes on her, she moved, gasping and straightening in the chair. 

“You’re awake,” she whispered, and leaned over the bed, to check on him closer. She touched his forehead and sighed in relief. Her long curls tickled his bare collarbone. He drank her in, unashamed. 

“My mouth tastes like rotten meat,” he announced and she grimaced.

“I hope you’re just making assumptions on the taste of rotten meat,” she said, standing to retrieve a glass from the desk.

“Kind of,” he mumbled, trying to lift himself in a sitting position. A sharp pain in his left shoulder pulled a groan from his lips and he ended back down on the pillow. He suddenly remembered what had happened and why he had woken up with her at his bedside.

“Easy, tiger, it’s still fresh,” she cautioned him, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Here, drink this,” she muttered, bringing a glass to his lips and supporting his head with her hand. Draco obeyed, gulping down what was responsible for the bad taste in his mouth. Blood Replenishing Potion, if he wasn’t wrong. Her fingers lingered in his hair behind his neck for a moment longer and he savoured the touch.

“I’ll get you some water,” she said, standing up and walking to the desk again. She helped him drink once more, then carefully lifted the bandages to check on the wound.

“It could use some more Dittany,” she mumbled almost to herself. 

“How bad is it?” he asked, not particularly concerned. It hurt, but was bearable, compared to other injuries he’d gone through. The pain of the Sectumsempra curse had set his bar quite high.

 “Well, the bullet has passed through. You’ll have a pretty gruesome scar on your shoulder and the wing of your dragon is ruined forever, but I think you’ll recover. Can you move your fingers?”

He lifted his hand from the duvet and reached for hers, covering her fingers with his and squeezing gently. She watched their joined hands and her breath itched.

“I can,” he whispered. Hermione exhaled and closed her eyes. They stayed like that, in silence, each of them rearranging their thoughts in their exhausted minds.

“You scared me to death,” she whispered after a while and Draco’s heart sank at how small her voice sounded.

“I’m sorry, Granger. But I’ll be fine, the mission is still up,” he assured her. She shook her head and looked him in the eyes. Even in the dim light of the room, he could see she’d cried. She’d cried for him? She shouldn’t have. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t do this, she shouldn't…

“That’s not why I was scared, Draco,” she said, her eyes shining. “There was so much blood, I…” she stopped, pressing her lips together. He twined his fingers with hers, his thumb drawing circles on her palm. She suddenly looked more like her younger self, the little Muggle-born that had been hiding in a bathroom when a troll had been spotted in the dungeons. In the darkness of that room, she showed him that it didn’t matter how many swear words she used or how fast she hurled curses around, she still wore her heart on her sleeve. And he wanted to shield that heart with his entire body.

“Granger, you saved me, I’m here,” he reassured her, softly. 

Hermione nodded, looking away and inhaling from her nose.

“Together or nothing?” she asked after a moment. 

There was so much unsaid between them, so much to process and analyze, so much to understand. Every fiber of Draco’s rational brain urged him to push her away, to protect them both from the inevitable downfall to come. But his soul…oh, his poor, selfish, wretched soul needed her, was desperate for the warm light of her shining sun. 

He brought her fingers to his lips and pressed a light kiss on her skin. 

“Together or nothing.”

Chapter Text

15.

“You shouldn’t be up. Why are you up?” Hermione asked, her book forgotten on the table when Malfoy casually strolled into the kitchen hours later. He wasn’t wearing a t-shirt, but she forced her eyes to go straight to the dressing of his wound instead of lingering on his chest. The gauze was clean and her mind let out a sigh of relief.

“I wanted to check if my legs had been damaged by the hit,” he teased, dropping in a chair in front of her.

Hermione cocked a brow. “You were hit in the shoulder, not your spine, dumbass.”

He waved his sane hand in the air. “Never been a fan of anatomy.”

She shook her head and stood. “You should eat something. How do you feel? Pain? Itching? Nausea? Do you feel hot?” she asked, retrieving a covered plate from the kitchen counter.

“Gods, Granger, haven’t you seen me? I’m smoking,” he smirked, winking at her while passing a hand through his hair. She sighed and suppressed a smile of her own. If he was back to sarcasm, he was okay. She placed the dish under his nose.

“Yeah, sure Malfoy, as long as you believe that. Eat, Dobby stole fish and chips, and it’s still warm.”

Draco lifted the plate and sniffed the content. He actually moaned, eyes briefly closing in ecstasy. Hermione pressed her lips together and looked away, moving her hair away from her neck. She accusingly glanced at the fireplace. The kitchen was a little too warm, maybe. 

“We need to get Dobby a present, before we go back in time. One of those kilts he loves, maybe? The bolder the better,” he said, grabbing a piece of fried fish and stuffing it into his mouth. Hermione went back to her book, just to have an excuse not to watch him eat. 

“We’ll figure out something, sure.”

Draco swallowed, took a chip and dipped it in ketchup. “Where is he now?”

“City centre, checking how many posters of my face with the word wanted underneath it are plastered around town. I bet it’s around a hundred,” she casually mused, flipping a page.

Draco snorted. “My money’s on a hundred thousand, Granger. Get ready to pay.”

“Either way, we’re stuck inside. We can’t risk being recognized,” she said, absently drumming her fingers on the table. Draco observed her for a while, silently chewing his juicy dinner.

“Missing the morning run, uh?”

She looked up. “Just a little. It’s my way of getting rid of pent up energy and clearing my head. Like flying for you, I guess.”

“Let’s apparate back, then. I’m fine, we can go as soon as Dobby returns,” he suggested, attempting a shoulder shrug that made him grimace a little.

“No, we’re waiting until the wound is fully healed,” she insisted. “I’m not risking  you splinching, I don’t have enough Dittany for that. I don’t have enough Dittany to properly close your present wound, honestly. We’ll have to rely on muggle remedies.”

“They’re slow, I’ve tried,” he replied, taking another bite of fish. 

“You tell me, I grew up with that stuff as a kid. And I used to scrape my knees a lot,” she snorted, a smile surfacing on her lips.

“Really? I thought you would have been a quiet little girl, always reading in a corner while the others ran around like monkeys,” Malfoy teased, biting a chip with a wolfish smile.

“Yeah, well, I liked to be a monkey, too,” she said, sticking out her tongue to him. Draco smiled ruefully and offered her a chip. Hermione took it and popped it into her mouth. He watched her chew and swallow, almost mesmerized. Their eyes met and she felt a blush built at the base of her neck. 

“Anyway, I want you to be strong and rested before we go back to Hogwarts and move on with the plan. Which is going to take a while, because I’ll need to brew some potions before we travel back in time. We’re out of basics,” she announced, looking around the kitchen.

“I can help, I was the best in Potions class,” he offered backhandedly. 

Hermione scoffed. He narrowed his eyes.

“What?”

She shook her head, the corners of her mouth fighting to lift up. “Nothing, Malfoy. I’d appreciate your help.”

“You scoffed. Why did you scoff? I was the best, I had the highest marks,” he clarified, his voice growing peevish.

“Yes, with Snape. Wasn’t he your godfather, by the way?” she asked, puppy eyed and innocent. The cheeky, little minx. 

“What are you implying, Granger? That he wasn’t objective?”

“Oh please, Malfoy! Of course he wasn’t! He played favorites with you Slytherins all the time, and he hated me! If he hadn’t hated me…”

“You would have gotten better grades than me, that’s what you’re saying? Don’t make me laugh, Granger! We both know I was the most competent potioneer in the classroom there, beside Snape himself. You were good, granted, but you lacked…”

“What? What did I lack?” she attacked him, leaning over the table.

Draco arched his brow. “Creativity and instinct. You acted too much by the book, which only gave you school level potions. Perfectly acceptable, don’t get me wrong, but not exactly brilliant in themselves,” he explained.

“How would you know? You only paid attention to your pompous ass, anyway,” she countered, crossing her arms on her chest. She was irritated. 

“No, I didn’t,” he simply said, his mercury eyes fully taking her in, sliding on her face like chips of ice on warm skin. She shivered a little. Imagined stolen glances hadn’t been imagined at all, then. A thrill travelled down her back making her whole body tingle. 

“No? What did you pay attention to, then?” she asked, with the kind of hole in the pit of your stomach that comes with charged anticipation.

His lips parted, but he never answered. A bang resounded upstairs and a shrill cry echoed immediately after.

“Miss Hermione Granger! Master Draco is not in his room! Master Draco has disappeared!” Dobby shouted running down the stairs. He was so shocked he had forgotten he could apparate. Hermione chuckled. 

“He’s here, Dobby, he’s eating and being the usual pain in the ass!” she shouted back, her eyes still locked into his.

*****

Later, Hermione convinced Draco he had to lie down and let her look at his wound. So, he reluctantly trudged out of the kitchen, Hermione on his heels. In the corridor, though, he stopped in front of the charred spot on the wall beside the stairs. 

“What happened here?” he asked. Hermione peered around his shoulder and smiled. 

“Oh, well, nothing Mrs Black didn’t deserve. I mean, she should have seen it coming, after putting that permanent sticking charm behind her very opinionated, prejudiced and loud portrait, shouldn’t she?” Hermione ranted. 

Draco turned around to face her, surprised. “Did you burn down a painting from the wall?”

“She screamed mudblood a lot,” she defended herself. 

Draco huffed and lifted his good hand in surrender. Then he looked around the hall. “Mrs Black, uh? So, this house was Black property.”

“Your mother’s cousin, Sirius Black, was the last owner of the bloodline, yes,” she nodded. Then she remembered something and a little light sparked in her eyes. She walked around him and took his hand, pulling him along the corridor. 

“Come, I’ll show you something,” she said and guided him on the stairs and to the first floor, turning to a door that led to a room they hadn’t used yet. Draco focused more than anything else on the feel of her skin against his and let her walk him around like a puppy. Hermione brought him into a big drawing room, with old furniture, green velvet curtains and olive walls. The bigger one was darker, and when he looked a bit better, he noticed that it wasn’t painted, but covered in a decorated old tapestry, with branches woven into the fabric. He got closer and saw names embroidered in golden thread, like fruit clusters hanging from the branches or stemming lonely in other places. His gaze glided over the wall and black spots jumped to his eyes here and there, circular burns where a name should have been. On top of the tree, large words read: 

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black

 ‘Toujour Pur’  

“This must be very old,” he commented, reading some of the first names under the family motto. There were dates of birth and death, he noticed.

“Sirius said Middle Age, even if the first name recorded here is from the 1820s,” Hermione explained, her head tilted up and eyes searching for something.

“Was it exposed to free flames or the burns are deliberate?” he asked, but his tone suggested he already knew the answer.

“Sirius’s mother used to burn away blood traitors from the tapestry. Petty form of retribution, if you ask me,” she said distractedly. 

Draco snorted. “Then it’s only fair that her portrait paid in kind. A Dantesque contrappasso of sorts.”

She whipped around, lips parted in awe. “You know Dante?”

He arched a brow, almost offended by her surprised question. “Of course I do, Granger. I wasn’t raised by wolves,” he scoffed with the haughtiest tone he could muster. He stood there, without a shirt on, a muggle wound dressing sticking out in the dark and his hair disheveled, but he had never looked more aristocratic to her eyes. She turned away quickly, returning to the tapestry and finally finding what she had been looking for.

“Look, you’re there, too ” she pointed at a lower branch on the right. Draco followed her finger and narrowed his eyes.

Draco Malfoy, 1980.

He followed the golden thread up from his name and the air was squeezed from his lungs by an invisible hand. 

Narcissa Black Malfoy, 1955-1997. Lucius Malfoy, 1954-1999.

Hermione sensed something was off and followed his gaze. She cursed under her breath.

“I’m an idiot, Draco, I’m sorry,” she murmured, crossing her arms. 

He shook his head. “It’s okay, I knew they were gone. Father was killed at Voldemort’s demise, right? Donovan made sure his heroic act of freeing the world from all Death Eaters was well remembered.”

Hermione sighed. “Yes, he was. Lucius and Bellatrix were executed on the spot. I think they died immediately, no pain at all.”

“Pity,” Draco muttered. He took a step further and his fingers grazed his mother’s name. His face was a mask of marble, but his eyes were burning. 

“What happened to her? Do you know?” he asked, voice soft and quiet. Hermione debated with herself. He had just been shot, he was tired and full of  healing potions, mind probably still reeling from the adrenaline of the past hours. She didn’t really want to add more wood to the fire, but could she deny him the truth? She wouldn’t want anyone to do that to her, if the subject was her parents. 

“I do.”

Draco didn’t turn, his eyes didn’t leave her name for a moment. He just waited, in silence. Hermione inhaled from her nose and hugged her middle tighter.

“You’d been gone for around four months, Voldemort was living at your house at the time already. He was obsessed with your disappearance, he thought your parents hadn’t told him everything and that they were hiding you away. Snape hadn’t told Lucius the truth, your father knew the public version of your disappearance: that you had betrayed them and told the Order Voldemort’s plans, consequently asking to be protected. But I believe your mother had managed to convince Snape to confess the truth to her.”

“She was rather convincing,” he murmured, a little smile playing at the corner of his mouth. 

“Voldemort used Legilimens on them both, finding nothing. But he knew your mother was a very skilled Occlumens, so he kept attacking her over time. One day in October, when Lucius was on a mission abroad, Voldemort…” Hermione hesitated, a chill running down her spine. “He tortured Narcissa to death, trying to break her mind.”

Draco was just frozen in place. He didn’t even blink. She caught his throat bob, but nothing else. Her gaze went to his eyes. Vacant, distant, empty. 

“When Lucius came back, she had been buried and taken care of. Voldemort told him Narcissa had betrayed them both and that he didn’t have to mourn a faithless wife. On his next mission, Lucius murdered more muggles than planned. And started going after Snape, suspecting he hadn’t told him everything,” she continued, her voice a bit steadier. 

“But Father followed Voldemort till the end, anyway. Even after that monster had taken his beloved wife,” he murmured, his hand falling to his side. 

“I’m sorry, Draco,” she whispered, reaching for his arm, gently caressing his cold skin. 

“How do you know all the details?” he asked, looking away from his mother’s name on the wall. Hermione’s chest ached, blue eyes appearing in her mind. She took a step back, her arms going around her stomach again, subconsciously keeping her together. 

“Theo told me,” she managed, her gaze going around the room, almost expecting to see him pop up from around a piece of furniture. 

“Theo? As in Theodore Nott?” he asked, brows furrowed.

She nodded, then focused on his bandaged wound. “Okay, you need to rest now, and I think we should really take a look at your injury before you take a nap. Let’s go,” she announced, walking hurriedly to the door as if ghosts were chasing her around. And in a way, they really were.

*****

The following morning, Hermione was reading her book on Time Turners’ rules for the umpteenth time, lying on the old couch of the drawing room with her hair hanging loose from the armrest. Draco was standing at the window, peering down in the square from the blade left open between the heavy curtains. He was wearing a shirt today, his left arm in a sling around his neck.

“Granger?”

“Mmmh?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“I’ll understand if you don’t want to answer.”

Hermione held her breath.

“What is it?”

Draco was silent for a moment. She looked up at the ceiling, waiting. 

“What happened to Theo?”

Four words. It took only four words to make her understand how  Draco had felt when she’d inquired about his girlfriend from the future. The air around her went still, and she was able to make out minuscule lints of dust floating above her, in the ray of midday light that came from the window. It was as if time had stopped for a moment, but simultaneously it slipped from her fingers in a flash, because she wasn’t able to hold onto her Occlumency walls and everything came flowing down from her mind into her chest. 

Everything. 

Every smile, every touch, every whisper in the dark, every shout, every tear, every drop of blood. Every second spent, every second wasted. Every word unsaid, every thought ignored. Every if and every but. 

Every shade of blue. 

And in the space of an instant, her lips parted, her voice came out, carrying a sentence that had gone on repeat in her head for two years, just  out of her reach, as a background noise, as a scratchy label on the inside of a t-shirt rubbing on the skin when you moved around, and leaving a burn.

“He died because of me.”

She heard him turn, but he didn’t walk to the sofa. 

“We don’t need to talk about this,” he said, gently. And she felt her heart swell, brimming with gratitude at his understanding. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe she needed to talk about Theo. Theo deserved to be talked about. 

“Will you listen if I do?” she asked. Draco didn’t say anything for a while, then she heard him shuffle on the carpet and the stool being pulled from the piano. 

“I will.”

She swallowed and closed her eyes. This was going to hurt badly, but maybe it was the only way to try and make it stop hurting all the time. Maybe it could be the first step towards healing her aching chest.

“When you disappeared, Dumbledore gave a speech at breakfast. He told the school you had been working for Voldemort but had finally decided to change sides and confessed his plans to the Order. He said you were being protected somewhere safe. Theo came to talk to me after that. He knew his father would want him to fill your place into the ranks and he wanted it to be worth something. So, he asked me if he could work as a spy for us, from the inside. I told him we already had Snape, but he was convinced he could be useful in different ways. I was angry with Dumbledore, so I bypassed him and put Theo in contact with Mr Weasley, who got him together with Lupin for an evaluation of character. They deemed him sincere and he became a double agent as soon as he got the Mark,” she explained, one hand on her sternum, focusing on her breathing. 

“He was terrific, he managed to pass information about raids and minor muggle attacks that Snape didn’t even know about, since they stemmed from Voldemort’s generals and not himself. The Order saved so many lives because of him….” she whispered, the hot prickle of tears stinging her closed eyes.  “When Harry died, Ron and I joined the others and I became Theo’s handler. We got close, became friends. We had a lot in common.”

“He loved reading. He spent as much time in the library as you did, that’s for sure,” Draco murmured, a hint of nostalgia in his voice.

Hermione smiled despite a tear sliding down the corner of her eye and into her hair. “He was funny, even if we were living in a war, he managed to make me laugh. He understood me in a way that Ron and Harry never had, that no one ever had, actually. We fell into each other’s arms at some point,” she confessed, her chest tight and aching. Draco didn’t comment. He waited for her to go on at her own pace, to say as much as she wanted to. 

“Lucius took him under his wing into the ranks, he told Theo a lot. That’s how he knew about your mother and all the background scheming and doubts about your disappearance. He knew the official story was bullshit, but hadn’t pushed to know the truth, to avoid becoming a target and ending up putting you in danger. He only asked me to tell him when we finally pulled him out.”

“They started to suspect him?” Draco mused.

“Your father did, yes. After getting rid of Snape, he became paranoid and started looking for other spies. I told Theo to get out quickly, before they snuffed him.”

“Wait, my father killed Snape?” Draco asked, incredulous. 

“Yes, found him leaving the sword of Gryffindor in the forest for Harry, to use it to destroy Horcruxes. He realized Snape was a spy working for Dumbledore and murdered him on the spot,” Hermione replied, almost toneless. At some point, violent death had become almost commonplace in her life, and it was kind of surreal to think about. 

“Horcruxes…I read the word in your report, but I still don’t understand what they are,” Draco commented, mildly curious. “A question for another day. So, Theo got out? How?” he circled back.

“Killed his father in the middle of the night, burned his manor to the ground and disapparated to our handling spot. From there, I moved him here, where I was living with a small group of inner circle members of the resistance. He fought along us, until the Demise Day. I prefer to call it the Betrayal Day, though, I think is more appropriate,” she said, exhaustion starting to strain her voice.

“I read the records of that day, in the future, from Donovan's perspective, of course. How did you get out? He made it look like no wizard or witch had survived,” he asked. 

Hermione sighed. “How did we get out? Sacrificing. Lupin died blowing up the Grid with a grenade and we disapparated away as soon as the thing was down. Theo…he was shot seconds before we were able to get out, to protect me from crossfire while we were running. Bullets were raining down on us, he knew he was going to get one, but moved anyway. He died because of me.”

Draco didn’t say anything immediately, then she heard him exhale.

“No, Granger. He died for you. It was his choice, not your fault. It’s different.”

Hermione let it sink. The implications of his words, the web of questions that tangled around her heart thickening and darkening. And before he could even think about his next question, she already knew what it was going to be. And the guilt expanded, coated everything and pressed on her windpipe.

“Did you love him?”

Did she? She didn’t really know how to answer that. Of course, she’d loved him, in a way. But had she loved him in the right way? In the same way Theo had loved her? 

“I don’t know. Not as I should have, not at the right moment,” she confessed out loud to herself. “We were living in a fucking war, I had so much on my mind, so many different emotions crowding inside here. Theo was there, he was my anchor, we kept each other afloat. And I thought it was just that for a while. But then…when he wasn’t there anymore…” she trailed off, air coming short. 

“What if you’d have had more time? What if he had survived the war? Do you think he would have been the one, Granger?” Draco asked, his words almost coming out pained in some way. 

“How am I supposed to know that?” she asked, anger veining her voice.

“You just know. You feel it in your bones, under your skin,” he said, then paused and she heard him breathe in, then exhale, the air coming out tremulous from his lips. “It’s like walking in the shade for a while, then turning the corner and being bathed into scorching sunlight. That feeling of finally being in the perfect spot, at the right temperature, when your skin is warmed up and slightly tingling and you cannot stop smiling. That’s how you know. And realization comes just like that ray of light around the corner, it hits you unexpectedly and makes everything clear,” he explained, his voice distant. Maybe he was still walking on that lit up side of the road. 

Hermione swallowed. “Was she the one for you, Malfoy?”

“Yes, she was.”

His reply came right away, no need to ponder or think about it. Hermione registered a small pang of pain in her chest that she couldn’t really place, so she decided to ignore it. She thought back to Theo, to how he made her feel right and understood, to how she wanted to spend time with him more than others because of that. She had loved him, but that ray of light Draco mentioned hadn’t caught her.

“Even if he wasn’t the one, it doesn’t mean I loved him less,” she said, more to herself than him, more to confirm the way she felt was legitimate. Because those days, everything about herself made her feel uncomfortable, wrong and unworthy. And it was exhausting. 

“Absolutely, Granger. Love is love and it’s never meaningless,” he reassured her. After a moment and with a softer voice, he added, “And I’m sure he felt it, even if you didn’t say it out loud.”

Tears slid down her temples, into the back of her neck and into her hair. She cried in silence, mourning him all over again.

*****

Draco lay wide awake on his bed, in complete darkness, gaze on the ceiling. The wound didn’t hurt, it didn’t even feel tender anymore after the stitches had come out. He was going to tell Granger they should go back to Hogwarts right away. They were ready. Weren’t they?

And yet, he found himself reluctant to go. All in all, he liked Grimmauld Place. It was quiet and smaller than Hogwarts, which meant he and Hermione spent more time together here. And they couldn’t train or duel, so they talked more. She was easy to talk to, actually, she actively listened to him. Her questions were always on the verge of blunt, but she was really trying to keep some distance from his secrets. And thank Salazar for that, because he was starting to lose it. He wanted to share, wanted to talk and tell her everything, even if he shouldn’t. All he wanted was to come clear and confess…

A scream pierced the silence and he was at the door in seconds, gun in hand, crossing the landing to her bedroom. 

“HARRY, NO!” Hermione cried again. Draco pushed the door and hurried inside. She was thrashing in bed, covers tangled around her small frame, wild hair spreading on her pillow like tentacles. She was asleep and having a nightmare. He registered that she hadn’t silenced her room, then sprinted into action..

Draco left the gun on the nightstand and sat on the bed, shaking her shoulders. She was clammy, agitated, still moaning in pain and turning her head left and right.

“Granger, wake up!” he called her, but she couldn’t hear him, lost in the darkness of her tortured mind.

“Harry, Harry, no,” she wailed, a sob breaking her voice. Draco slid an arm around her waist and hoisted her up, a hand going to her cheek. It was wet with tears. She was so small in his hold, so frail. 

“Granger, wake up, come on,” he said louder and shook her again. Her eyes flew open and her hands reached for his face, desperate for support. Her pupils were blown wide with fear and breaths came out of her lips short and quick.

“Draco,” she gasped, her fingers trailing over his cheeks and neck. 

“I’m here, Granger, you’re safe,” he murmured back, holding her a little closer on instinct.

She searched his face, his eyes, realization dawning on her, and her breath didn’t slow. 

“I’m sorry, I…I forgot to silence the room, I’m sorry, Draco…” she fumbled with her words, looking away and around the room, but her hands were still on his face and his arm was still around her waist. 

“Breathe for me, Granger,” he said, leaning towards her and her gaze snapped back to his, her lungs relaxing of their own accord. Draco focused on her, caressing her cheek, drawing circles on the little patch of exposed skin just over her hip bone, until she completely calmed down.

“There you go, it was just a nightmare,” he reassured her and she nodded, then shook her head.

“It was real. It was Harry dying, at the Manor, it was…” she whispered, swallowing hard and shutting her eyes. Draco coaxed her head up and she looked back at him.

“It’s over now, you’re not there anymore,” he told her and she believed him, but the pain was still there, in her irises, in the slight trembling of her lips. She didn’t know that, but he knew what was going on inside her head now. Normally, he would have let her decide, but right now she was too vulnerable and he was too selfish to let it slide.

“I can stay if you want. Until you fall asleep again,” he suggested and she looked at him with unveiled hope that sliced his heart open like a butcher’s knife. 

“Would you?”

Draco didn’t say anything, he just climbed in bed beside her and adjusted around her body. Hermione burrowed into his right side and rested her head on his chest, sighing in relief. He placed his hand on that little sliver of bare skin and inhaled the floral scent of her big, tangled curls. He could die like that and he wouldn’t regret a thing. 

He listened to the sound of her breathing and registered every little movement of her body, her fingers softly spasming on his stomach now and then. She wasn’t going to sleep unless she talked it all out, but she wouldn’t bother him, of course. So, he had to push her again.

“I have nightmares, too. Of the day I took the Mark, of Bellatrix teaching me the Cruciatus by using it on me. She said you have to experience it, to make it hurt better,” he said, the words bitter on his tongue. Bullets could never rival with the pain of that first torture at the hand of family. And a father standing there, watching and asking you not to scream, would always be worse than a bloody wound to him. 

“She was a crazy bitch,” she murmured on his chest, her hand sliding up on his exposed abs. 

Draco chuckled. “Gods, yes. I hope she’ll never rest, wherever her soul may be.”

“Amen,” she agreed. They stayed silent for a while, listening to each other’s breathing and heartbeat. Then Hermione sighed and he knew what was coming. 

“I could have saved him. Harry.”

Draco’s fingers pressed a little harder on her hip bone. “Why do you say that?”

“I knew what he was. Maybe, if I’d told him, he might have been more careful and…”

“What do you mean what he was ?”

Hermione paused, probably to find the best way to tell that story to him and he waited. 

“Do you remember Second Year, the Duelling club? When Harry spoke Parseltongue to that snake you’d summoned?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget that.”

“Well, Harry could speak Parseltongue because Voldemort could. Because he had a piece of Voldemort's soul in his body. Harry was an accidental Horcrux Voldemort had created the night he’d tried to murder him,” she explained, quietly. 

“What exactly is a Horcrux?” he asked.

“It’s an object usually, where a wizard hides a piece of his soul to keep it from dying. If you get killed, your body is destroyed, but your soul lingers on, because it’s protected into another vessel. Killing is the way to split your soul, then there is a very dark ritual to bind the piece you’ve ripped to something else. Voldemort had created six, but his soul was so far gone that when he tried to kill Harry, it split again and a piece attached to the only living thing in the room.”

“Potter himself,” Draco finished, mulling over the revelation. 

Hermione nodded, her hair tickling his jaw.

“So, you three were looking for the Horcruxes, while the Order kept Voldemort and the Death Eaters occupied, until Potter was ready to destroy the prick?” he asked, skeptical.

“Yes, basically. There was a prophecy, as you probably know, that said that only Harry could kill him or vice versa. That was because of the piece of soul they were sharing. Anyway, until all the Horcruxes weren’t destroyed, Voldemort was unkillable, so…”

“But that means that Potter had to die too, before Voldemort could be killed, right? So why didn’t you guys avadad him at the Manor, after…” he started, but Hermione shook her head.

“Nagini was still alive when Voldemort killed Harry. And by the way, Harry did survive: Voldemort killed his piece of soul with his first curse. Then he realized what was going on and killed him for good. And that’s also why it was so difficult to get rid of him afterwards. He knew what we had been up to, that we had destroyed all his Horcruxes except for Nagini, so he made it impossible to get to her.”

“Hence, the Grid,” Draco said, the puzzle pieces finally clicking in place. 

“But I had been suspecting he was a Horcrux for a while, because he sensed them, and he could see in Voldemort’s mind…It was too much of a coincidence, and I stopped believing in those when I received my Hogwarts letter. If I’d told him…” she trailed off, blinking fast. He felt her lashes on his chest like a feathery caress, along with a hint of wetness. 

“He would have faced Voldemort even sooner, Granger. Potter was selfless and brave, not a strategist. Knowing it would have only made him restless, and you know that better than me,” he told her, his fingers reaching out on her skin under her shirt. 

“Yet, I feel responsible,” she confessed softly. 

Draco sighed. “You shouldn’t carry all the weight of the world on your shoulders, Granger. You’ll end up breaking your back.”

“That’s who I am, Draco,” she said, but sounded tired and helpless in the darkness of that room.

“I know, but ask for help. Let people share the responsibility sometimes,” he insisted, gently caressing her stomach.

“I’m learning, I’m trying. I asked you, didn’t I?” she replied, slowly getting closer to him. 

Draco scoffed. “First tries are never a success, I’ll give you that. Next time choose someone better.”

“Modesty doesn’t suit you, blondie,” she murmured, sleep seeping into her voice. 

“Don’t tell me you prefer the stuck-up version of me, Granger!” he teased, a smile spreading on his face. Hermione lightly yawned, her hand travelling up to his left pectoral and resting on his heart.

“I like you either way,” she mumbled, already more in the dreamland than in reality. Draco’s breath caught and his hand spasmed over her stomach, fingers splaying out possessively. He waited until her breathing was regular and deep, then he buried his face in her hair and sighed.

“I like you, too, Lioness.”

*****

 “Malfoy? Where are you? Dobby brought food!” Hermione called from the stairs. She had been looking for him in his room, but found it empty.

“Drawing room!” he replied and she followed his voice. She looked around, confused.

“Are you under the Cloak, Malfoy?”

“Why would I be under the Cloak? I’m here, at the window,” he said, as if it was obvious. Hermione walked around the couch and saw him, sprawled on the floor in a pool of sunlight pouring from the half opened curtains. His lids were closed, his right arm bent under his head, and the light shimmered over his pale skin. His fair hair seemed almost golden in the afternoon sun. He looked so perfect she almost gasped in awe. Then panic kicked in and she hastily reached him.

“Did you fall down? Were you dizzy?” she asked, worry quickening her words.

Draco didn’t open his eyes, but arched a brow. “Do I look like someone that falls down, Granger? If I’m on the floor, it’s because I chose to be on the floor,” he lectured her, then patted on the carpet next to him. “You should try, it feels amazing.”

Hermione’s lips parted, confusion stealing her voice, but the memory of that hand on her skin a couple of nights before spread a tingle in her stomach and down her legs. Fuck it, she thought, and laid down beside him, close enough for their shoulders to brush together. She let the sun kiss her face gently, warm her neck and chest. She took a deep breath and let his spicy scent envelop and guide her down underwater. 

“It does feel amazing,” she conceded, her eyes shut against the blinding light. He moaned in response and they stayed like that for a while, busking in the sun, listening to the quiet noises of the street below. 

“We should go back to Hogwarts, Granger,” he broke the silence at some point.

“You think you’re ready to apparate?” she asked, tentatively.

“I’ve been for a while, and you know it,” he gently pointed out.

She sighed. “Then we should, I guess.”

“You don’t sound excited to leave,” he pointed out.

Hermione shrugged. “It’s easier here. You, me…we haven’t fought once since we arrived.”

“So that wasn’t you giving me a break because I was injured, uh?” he joked.

“Oh, please! It was just a scratch,” she retorted with a smile. Draco snorted. 

“You’re right, though. We should get going…we have stuff to do before we proceed with the plan…”

“Yeah, like reading that book of yours on Time Turners one more time. I think you haven’t memorized the punctuation yet,” he jabbed and she elbowed him in the ribs, pulling an amused huf from his lips. 

“Yes, yes, make fun of me just because I want to be prepared, Malfoy! Time Turners are complicated and meddling with time is dangerous. You should read that book, too,” she suggested.

“I have, twice, while you slept.”

She turned around, opening her eyes wide. The light stung and she hurried to shade her face with one hand. “Did you sneak on me to steal my property?”

Draco chuckled, his throat exposed and bobbing in the sun. “You’re one to accuse!” he said, turning and cracking one eye open. His grey iris was transparent like glass in the light. “Just a taste of your own medicine, Granger, isn’t it?”

She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t, she wasn’t physically able to form words and string them up in sentences, because at some point, while laying in the sun on a dusty carpet beside a handsome man, she’d realized something that had taken away her breath. 

“Draco?” she whispered, when she was sure he wouldn’t get up and leave her there. 

He didn’t reply, he just kept staring at her, with a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Can’t you feel it?” she asked, her left hand slowly inching closer to his fingers on the carpet. 

“What?” he chased.

“This,” she replied, grazing his skin. A jolt of warmth travelled down her hand and into her arm, radiating in her entire body. She knew he felt it too, because he closed his eye and swallowed, his hand lingering against hers.Then he lifted it and dragged it down his face.

“It doesn’t matter what I feel, Granger.”

“It does to me,” she stated, fully turning towards him. He opened his eyes and observed the ceiling for a moment, then rolled on his side to face her.

“It shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

He lifted his hand and reached for her cheek. Slowly, he let his index draw the contour of her profile and rest on her neck. His eyes took in every detail, every freckle, every lash, every crease on her lips. He was mesmerized and there was longing so deep in his gaze she almost cried in pain. But then a cloud moved over the sun and suddenly there was shade all over them, the warmth gone, the light obscured. He shut his eyes and sighed, rolling on his back and pushing up from the floor.  

“Because I’ve nothing left to give you,” he said, while walking out of the room. 

Hermione remained there for a while, but the sun didn’t come back. She had been on the right side of the pavement for a moment, but she’d turned a corner and was back in the cool shade.

Chapter Text

16.

April, 2001

“Maybe if we…”

“It’s useless, Hermione. Once you see it, there’s no unseeing it,” he gave up, pushing the ledger away from him over the kitchen table at Grimmauld Place. Hermione huffed and pulled the roots of her curls.

“I know, but I still think we should try.”

Fred dragged his hands over his face. His hair was longer, like he used to have it in Fourth Year, and there was a shadow of a beard on his jaw. His brown eyes were focused vacantly on a spot on the floor. He looked exactly like Hermione: exhausted and drained. 

“What for? To get ourselves killed? He has backups in every sector, his hate campaign against magic won’t stop with his death, Hermione!”

“Then we kill them all!” she suggested, a ghost of their shared rage still lingering in her voice.

“Us two? Against them all? With the Grid on? Do you hear the insanity of it or it’s just me?” he replied, getting up and pacing in front of the fireplace. 

“I know, it will take a while, but..”

Fred sighed loudly. “Look, Hermione, I get it. You want revenge, and believe me if I say I want it, too. But this isn’t the right way. This is the dying way without accomplishing anything! We need to find another angle, another idea, a bloody strategy!”

“There isn’t another angle, Fred!” she shouted, smashing her palm on the table. She was starting to get frustrated, the uncontrollable need to let magic out pushing under her skin. But the Grid was up during the day and the tracking spells were at night. She was going insane. 

“There must be! Maybe it will take longer, but we could figure something out, to infiltrate his ranks or…” he suggested, shaking his head, trying to think of a solution. 

“There isn’t another angle and there is no time, Fred. We have to get rid of him and his minions, and the sooner we start, the better,” she repeated, pointing her index on the table over and over, a slight tremor working up her arms and legs. 

Fred watched her carefully, concern etched in every line of his face. 

“Hermione, I think we should reconsider this suicide mission. In fact, I think we could do with a little break and a change of scenery. Maybe it could help put things into perspective again,” he said, slowly, as if talking to a baby. And she heard it.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him and stood up. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about going to France for a while, leaving England and, I don’t know,” he suggested, walking around the table and grabbing her arms, “gathering some other wizards and witches willing to jump back into the fight, maybe.”

Hermione studied his expression, the light in his eyes, the frown on his face. She shrugged him away and took a step forward, planting a finger into his chest.

“You want to quit.”

Fred scoffed and shook his head. “I don’t want to quit, Hermione. I want you to look at this from the right perspective. You’re obsessed with killing Donovan and all his allies, but we cannot do this alone! Can’t you see it? I mean, you’ve written pages and pages of notes that prove it, for Godric’s sake!”

“So what? We give up because it’s too difficult?”

“No, we give up because it’s too dangerous!” he yelled, then he hung his head and scratched his chin. “We regroup, we think about something else, then we try again.”

Hermione crossed her arms. “No.”

“Hermione, please. Come to France with me, let’s spend some time with Ginny and the others, it could be good for us, for you! You’re losing your mind here!” he pleaded, cupping her face gently, eyes desperately chasing hers.

Hermione covered his hands with hers and stared at him head on. “I’m not leaving, Fred. I made a promise, I’ll keep it.”

Fred pressed his lips together. “Theo would want you to be safe and live your life, Hermione. He wouldn’t want this bullshit for you.”

Her gaze hardened and she stepped away from him, leaving him with his empty arms lifted midair. 

“You have no idea what he would want. Leave him out of this. And if you don’t want to fight anymore, just say it, then go pack your things and leave, Fred. Go to France, go to your family, but leave me alone. I choose for myself,” she asserted, trembling with rage. 

“They’re your family, too,” he stated, getting closer to her.

She shook her head with a bitter chuckle. “No, they aren’t. I sent my family to Australia without a single memory of me, Fred. I erased their minds clean, and what for? If I don’t make things right, all would have been for fucking nothing!”

“We’ll make things right, Hermione, just…not like this. I don’t think this is the solution,” he replied, brows angled in a way that spoke about his resignation even more than his voice.

“Then leave, Fred. Go, I can do this on my own.”

“Hermione, come on. I don’t want to leave you, I love you,” he whispered, trying to catch her hand, but she stepped away again. Her face was hard like stone, cold and distant. 

“No, you don’t, and I don’t love you either, Fred. We stayed together out of necessity, we latched onto each other because there was no one else around. We respect each other, care for each other, but love is something else. And you should get away from me and look for it somewhere else,” she said, showing no emotion at all. Fred stepped back, as if she’d just slapped him. He searched her gaze, looking for a hint of hesitation, but found none. He straightened, fists tight at his sides. 

“You’re going to get hurt, Hermione, you know that?”

She simply nodded. “I’m ready for that. Just don’t come for me. Whatever you read or hear about me, leave me in your past and go on.”

And so he did. By night, Fred was packed and he left, leaving an empty silence behind. Hermione walked into his bedroom afterwards and found all his remaining tricks from the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes on the bed, along with a note that only read “Be safe, Golden Girl.”

After his departure, April passed in a blur of tailing and scheming that ended up in nothing useful, paired with an impossible amount of rage and frustration. One day, while she was having a shower, it dawned on her that Fred had been right. She needed another perspective, another angle. 

She needed to go to the library.

So she packed her stuff and stepped out of Grimmauld Place and, thoroughly polyjuiced into a blonde muggle girl she’d met in Portobello Market, she walked to Diagon Alley. The street here still reeked of magic, the Grid not fully working on that charged area. She looked around, the rubbles of Gringotts still sparkling under the spring sun. She went up and down the crooked street, watching the empty windows, letting her eyes glide over the signs of the barred shops and reminiscing of a time she had almost forgotten. She took her time dipping her toes into every good memory she could think of: the first time she had changed muggle money into magical galleons and sickles, the ice cream at Fortescue’s, buying her beloved Crookshanks at Magical Menagerie, stocking up on quills and parchments and books before going back to school. She thought of spotting Hagrid’s furry head over the crowd, of queueing to get the useless autograph of a useless wizard like Lockhart, of sneaking into Knockturn Alley to tail Draco Malfoy and his mother. She missed those days, when everything felt difficult, but was far easier than what she was going through in the present.

When she reached the Leaky Cauldron again, she stepped inside and draped Harry’s Invisibility Cloak over her head, just for good measure. She stayed still in the centre of the main room, eyes closed and mind void, concentrating on her unruly magic and letting it fill her completely, pushing to the edges of her body. A  shuffle of feet on the pavement outside got her attention, but she let it go. She was invisible, unstoppable, alone. And finally visualizing the enormous wrought iron gates of Hogwarts, she disapparated, leaving London behind.

******

November, 2001

Dobby side-along apparated them back to Hogwarts that very night, after a quiet dinner. Draco went to his room bidding Hermione goodnight, without even glancing in her direction. She remained in the middle of the common room for a long minute, then walked to the library and spent the night reading a book on potions, her mind numb with repressed pain. 

She woke up the following morning with her head on the old pages and a crick in her neck. She stretched out, rubbed her eyes and refused to let herself think. She just stood and transfigured her clothes into running gear, already walking out of the library and into the corridor. She saw the gray sky from the high windows and registered the cold wind on her skin when she stepped outside, but she was occluding so hard she wasn’t able to care about anything. She went down the slope of the grounds and only started to run when she reached the Lake. If she could keep her steaming emotions behind a slab of granite long enough to cool them down, maybe she could survive. She pushed her legs harder, her lungs burning somewhere behind her ribs. Icy droplets of water hit her skin, but the sensation was barely acknowledged by her suppressed nervous system. Her eyes wandered over the surface of the Black Lake, circles within circles expanding on the dark water every time a raindrop fell from the gloomy autumn sky. But Hermione couldn’t comprehend that geometric pattern unfurling under her eyes. She couldn’t even understand why the colors were so off and her nails were turning blueish. Her mind was so far withdrawn in itself, it was hard to use it. Something warm trailed down her nose and into her mouth. It tasted weird. She halted, breathing hard, and swiped a hand over her lips. It came away smeared in red. She sniffled and closed her eyes. She couldn’t do this. 

Hermione stayed out by the Lake for hours, lowering her Occlumency defenses little by little until her mind raged like a fighting field. She let it ripple and crash around her skull, let her heart break all over again, let her tears mingle with the rain. When her pain finally felt less overwhelming, she  tidied up her memories and feelings and tucked them neatly into her books, then trudged back to the castle. She dripped all over the floors of corridor after corridor, till she reached the Prefects Bathroom. There, she submerged into the bathtub and waited, until the hot water turned her skin pruney and the sensation of wetness became unbearable.

While she was trying to drown her mind in a bathtub, Draco was drowning his own in McGonagall’s booze on the Astronomy Tower. After two hours of tossing and turning in his bed, he had padded to the old Gryffindor Head of House office and nicked a bottle of something smelling very strong and earthy, climbed the remaining floors to the tower and sat on the parapet, his bare feet dangling out in the void. It had started raining when he was around the middle of the bottle, which was pretty early on. He had stayed there, under the rain, his hair and pajamas soaked through, his throat burning and mind swimming in dark waters. Even after an entire bottle, he wasn’t drunk. He couldn’t even suppress his stupid thoughts like that anymore. And anyway, it felt too much like a repeat of a worse time, when mourning was all he was able to do. 

At the first lights of dawn, he had walked down to the pitch and retrieved his broom from the changing room. He had gone flying in the rain, letting the icy drops stab at his face and hands for hours, hoping the cold would clear his head already. But she was still there when he landed back. She was still everywhere and he found himself unable to push her away. He stayed out of all her usual spots in the castle, had a shower in the old Slytherin dorms, the chill of the deserted dungeons sneaking under his skin at every breath. He holed up in Dumbledore’s office, since he knew she hated it and avoided it as much as she could, and skipped breakfast and lunch, a splitting headache almost blinding him at some point. 

He finally resolved to make a trip to the kitchens in the afternoon and found a note for him on the table with a list of potions they should brew. His thumb passed over her neat handwriting, so clear and precise, so easy to read. He loved the way she always crossed her Ts and dotted her Is, every single one of them, no exceptions. If her handwriting said anything about her, it was that Hermione Granger was reliable. She knew her stuff, you could count on her. She was there and she was always right. 

She was there. 

She was still there and he was itching to take what he could. 

But was it right? Was it real? Or was it just a fluke?

Hermione saw his stretched out, aristocratic handwriting under hers at dinner, with a couple more suggestions and a reminder to check if they had all the ingredients. She rummaged into Snape’s old supply closet and listed what was missing, then handed the slip of paper to Dobby, who immediately disapparated to go “shopping”. 

When she went back to their common room, she left another note for him on the low table near the fireplace, where he usually took his night tea, telling him they could get started on Blood Replenishing potion and Pepper Up whenever he wanted. She walked to her room and closed the door, casting the  silencing spell twice. 

The next morning, her note was pinned on her door and read: 

Meet me in the old Potions class after breakfast. Remember to eat.

She crumpled up the slip of paper and went running, angry. How dare he tell her what to do? How dare he care about her after telling her he had nothing left to give? How dare he make her feel even lonelier with his thoughtful words? He had no fucking right! She would eat when she was hungry, not when he told her to. She ran an extra round, then went back and showered, before stomping to the dungeons. 

Snape’s classroom was just the same as always, dark and grim, with round tables set with cauldrons ready to be filled with magical ingredients. When she stepped in, Draco was already at his station, chopping something with a silver knife.

“You’ve already started,” she noticed.

He didn’t look up.

“I’m prepping the ingredients for the Pepper Up. I’ve already set your station for the Blood Replenishing, but if you want to switch…”

“That’s fine, I don’t care,” she hastily replied and walked automatically towards the table she always used. Malfoy had neatly placed all the ingredients on it, next to the cauldrons, along with a knife and ladles. How did he know it was her station? She turned to ask him, but halted, realization dawning on her. She had been using that table since school, in all their shared lessons. Had he remembered? Hermione berated herself silently and shook her head. Of course not, it was just a stupid coincidence, nothing more. 

Setting a timer midair with her wand, she poured water into the cauldron and lit the fire underneath it. 

“Did you ask Dobby to gather some Flobberworm Mucus?” he asked, chopping what looked like Mandrake root, in identical minuscule pieces. 

“And Valerian springs, yes. He’ll probably bring everything back in a couple of days,” she replied, muddling Lady’s Mantle into a mortar with a little too much force.

“Good, Calming Draught could be useful as a painkiller, in case we need one,” he suggested, starting on lemongrass springs. 

Hermione made a non committal sound and concentrated on her potion. They worked in silence for a while, the bubbling of cauldrons and tinkling of ladles successfully replacing words and conversations. They both tried very hard to avoid looking at the other, actually failing miserably. 

Hermione’s gaze kept flitting up from her cauldrons and traveling towards his rolled up sleeves and messy platinum waves falling over his forehead. The way he furrowed his brows while stirring his potion reminded her of Sixth Year Potions lessons, when he was more silent and closed off, as if his mind had been elsewhere. Which had been, by the way. Very much elsewhere, on a deadly mission for Voldemort himself. He looked less pained now, more relaxed, but still tormented by something she couldn’t read. At some point, he popped a button of his shirt and opened his collar a little and she had to look away and push on her Occlumency.

Draco somehow always felt her eyes on him and waited until she looked away to sneak a peek at her. Hair wild around her face, cheeks rosy and parted lips, she was so beautiful it knocked the air out of his lungs at each glance. She was less nervous than during school, less pressured into doing better than others, but her movements were still jerky and intentional, her gaze still shiny and focused on the task. At some point, she chewed on her lower lip, reaching for Most Potente Potions to check on something and he had to look away, feeling his defenses thinning like thawing ice.

He cleared his throat. “We should get planning for the final step.”

Hermione nodded. “Yes, we should. We’ll be done with the potions in a couple of days, I guess, so…”

“Tonight, in Defense class?” he suggested, stirring one of his bubbling cauldrons. His tone was neutral, almost bored, but his jaw twitched and his heart sped up.

“Yes, sure, we might as well get started,” she conceded, unexcited, while her stomach clenched. A headache started building behind her eyes. 

After a pause, Draco started cleaning his station. He needed to keep his hands busy to talk to her, which was a new thing. 

“Do you want to train after lunch?” he asked offhandedly, vanishing all the discarded pieces of lemongrass and mandrake root. 

Hermione swallowed. As if on cue, all the past training sessions came careening forward in her mind and all the times she’d ended up on top of him on the mat gathered in a corner, waving at her devilishly. She occluded hard and quick, a stab of pain piercing at her right temple. 

“No need to,” she replied, getting to cleaning herself, “your spells are stronger and we hopefully won’t need any hand to hand moves back in time, since we won’t be engaging with anyone, so…” she concluded, absently swiping at her nose. Her hand came out red, again.

“Fuck,” she whispered, and quickly wiped it on her black jeans, breathing deeply to relax her mind walls. She was pushing too hard on the Occlumency. She turned a little away from him and murmured a scourgify at her face while he wasn’t looking.

Draco sighed, his eyes lost into the bright red bubbling liquid in front of him. Of course, she was avoiding him. And he should be happy about it, because that was what he wanted, right? To keep her at arm’s distance, safe and sound away from him. Because the closer she got, the more dangerous it was. And besides, she didn’t really want him around. She couldn’t. It was a stupid glitch, a coincidence. Right? 

But, what if it wasn’t?  

What if it wasn’t and he was just wasting time? They would travel back in a few days, they would repair the cabinet there and the timeline would reset and…and then it would be over and he would have wasted time. And why? Because he was scared? Because he thought he was unworthy of happiness, even the short lived, fleeting kind? Because losing her was painful beyond comparison and he was tired of hurting? But wasn’t it worth it if it was for her?

But what if it was a glitch?

Why do you care? It’s going to be over soon anyway.

“Hermione…” he whispered, looking up, but she was facing away, one hand to her nose. 

At her name, she gasped and fumbled with her wand, vanishing something on the table with a flick of her wrist. “I need to check something in the library, can you bottle my batches? I’ll see you later,” she hastily said, walking to the door and never looking back, as if a troll was chasing her in the woods. Draco stared at the door for long seconds, confused, a sinking sensation of dripping tar into his core. 

Maybe it was already over. And he was an idiot.

Chapter Text

PART TWO

"It felt as if in making any inconsequential decision, I might choose wrongly and forever close a door; there would go my other life.”

17.

2nd May, 2001

After Fred’s departure, April passed in a blur of tailing and scheming that ended up in nothing useful, paired with an impossible amount of rage and frustration. One day, while Hermione was having a shower, it dawned on her that Fred had been right. She needed another perspective, another angle. 

She needed to go to the library.

So she packed her stuff and stepped out of Grimmauld Place and, thoroughly Polyjuiced into a blonde muggle girl she’d met in Portobello Market, she walked to Diagon Alley. The street here still reeked of magic, the Grid not fully working on that charged area. She looked around, the rubbles of Gringotts still sparkling under the spring sun. She went up and down the crooked street, watching the  empty windows, letting her eyes glide over the signs of the barred shops and reminiscing of a time she had almost forgotten. She took her time dipping her toes into every memory she could think of: the first time she had changed muggle money into magical galleons and sickles, the ice cream at Fortescue’s, buying her beloved Crookshanks at Magical Menagerie, stocking up on quills and parchments and books before going back to school. She thought of spotting Hagrid’s furry head over the crowd, of queueing to get the useless autograph of a useless wizard like Lockhart, of sneaking into Knockturn Alley to tail Draco Malfoy and his mother. She missed those days, when everything felt difficult, but was far easier of what she was going through in the present.

When she reached the Leaky Cauldron again, she stepped inside and draped Harry’s Invisibility Cloak over her head, just for good measure. She stayed still in the centre of the main room, eyes closed and mind void, concentrating on her unruly magic and letting it fill her completely, pushing to the edges of her body. A  shuffle of feet on the pavement outside got her attention, and her eyes flew open. There was someone in the back alley. Still covered by the Cloak, she readied her wand and silently walked to the door that led to the exit on Muggle London. Carefully, she leaned against the wood and heard someone sob and gasp for breath. She pushed the door an inch and peered out. What she saw almost stopped her heart right there.

It couldn’t be.

He couldn’t be. 

There, sitting with his legs to his chest, having a full blown panic attack, was Draco Malfoy, in his black suit and lacquered shoes, wand discarded on the dirty floor of the alley. His eyes were wide with horror and he was trembling like a leaf in the wind. He looked tired and pained, but young. Just like he had looked in…

She gasped. Could it be?

She opened the door all the way and took off the cloak, kneeling before him. Draco gasped and scrambled away, hitting the brick wall behind him. Hermione reached for his wrists, gently but firmly.

“It’s okay, Draco, you’re okay. You’re not alone,” she reassured him, while his crazed gaze took her in, confused and scared. 

“I can’t…I can’t feel it…” he blurted out, utterly helpless. And she knew immediately what he was talking about.

“I know, there is a problem with magic here. You’re not crazy, I can’t feel it either,” she said, even if it wasn’t entirely true. Her magic had always been stronger, and she could still feel it when the Grid was up sometimes, if she was near a magical area, for example. But it was imperative that he didn’t try to use his magic right now. The tracking spells could sense him and they would be exposed. 

“Gringotts…” he whispered, eyes so wide she feared they might fall out of his sockets. The pupils were eating up at his clear grey irises. She had to calm him down or he would pass out. 

“Yes, I know, and I’ll tell you what happened if you breathe a little, okay? I’ll tell you everything and I’ll help you, I promise. How did you end up here?” she asked, gently, caressing his pulse point on his wrists. His heart drummed under her fingers.

“The Cabinet, I stepped into it and…I came out in Borgin and Burke, but…this is all wrong. It was night, now it’s day, I…who are you?” he asked, doubts seeping into his expression and expanding in his voice.

“Jean,” she said, opting for a lie closest to the truth. “My name is Jean, and you’re right, Draco. This is all wrong, because…” she sighed and looked at their joined hands. Maybe this was a sign, him stepping out of the Cabinet in her reality, when she needed a new angle. Maybe she didn’t need to go to the library, she just needed another study partner. And maybe a ruthless Slytherin one could be the solution. With a newfound determination, she inhaled and looked up, chocolate into mercury.

“You’re four years into the future, Draco. And everything went to shit since you stepped into that Cabinet.”

*****

November, 2001

Time Turners are finicky things and Hermione Granger knew that better than anyone. When she had received one by the Ministry in third year, to follow all courses and therefore make an informed decision about her academic future, she had studied the rules carefully and they were still imprinted in her mind to that day. Plus, being the infamous know-it-all that everyone accused her to be, she had read and memorized every book the Hogwarts Library had to offer about Time Turners and time travel in general. So, she was somewhat of an expert on the topic by now. 

That’s how she knew traveling so far back in time would be very tricky and that they needed to plan it carefully. She also knew she had to give this task her complete focus, so she decided to push as far back as possible whatever it was she was feeling for Draco Malfoy at the moment and stop being a wuss about it. It was useless anyway, since he refused to acknowledge what she was certain he felt as well, so be it as he wanted!

That night, when they met in the old Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, she was nothing but professional, while he was nothing but grumpy. Why, she had no idea, and frankly didn’t care anyway. 

“So, as you already know, this thing here allows us to go back in time, but it usually moves on hours. However, if you need to travel very far back, it’s impractical to use a hours system, hence these other frames here,” she explained, pointing at the outer golden circles around the central hourglass. “The first loop is for hours, the second for days and the third for months. Therefore, for an accurate jump, we need to calculate an exact number of hours, days and months to turn the loops accordingly and end up in the right place in time.”

“Which we decided it is…?” he asked, arms crossed over his chest and legs propped up on one of the students’ desks. 

“I would say a week before you stepped into the Cabinet? So that we have enough time to repair it. You know, in case something goes wrong,” she mused. 

“Alright. So, four years, four months and ten days, plus seven days of margin, makes roughly fifty-two months and seventeen days. One of those four years might have been a leap one, but it’s just a day more, it shouldn’t cause problems in the big calculation,” he drawled, sounding almost bored. 

Hermione arched a brow. “You’re good with numbers.”

“I’m good with everything, Granger,” he sneered, and it felt like they were back to their less complicated, slightly hostile relationship. It made her heart bleed a little. 

“Not at modesty,” she grumbled, setting the Time Turner on the desk. “Alright, the number of turns is sorted, then. Now, I’m sure you know that Time Turners only go back in time, not forward, and allow the traveller to stay in the past for a limited time span, so…”

“We’ll have to destroy it, when we’re there,” he finished.

“Yes, which means that if we botch the jump, we’re stuck there until we reach the moment we need in the traditional way,” she added, observing him throwing his head back and exposing his throat.

“We cannot botch the jump, we have a precise number of turns,” he drawled and this time he was full out bored. She twitched.

“It’s a big number of turns, Malfoy, we might miscount or there might be a glitch. This thing here has been restored, yes, but it was severely damaged at some point,” she reminded him, impatience seeping through her words. 

“And whose fault was that?” he muttered, not low enough to be unheard.

“Hey!” she gasped, fists on her hips.

Draco straightened and arched a brow at her. “What? It’s true, you blew up half of the Department of Mysteries back there.”

“You’re a baby,” she hissed and he waved a hand in the air.

“Whatever. What’s the plan once we’re there? Assuming,” he cut her when she opened her mouth to protest, “ that we don’t botch the jump.”

“We hide inside the Room of Requirement and repair the cabinet when your past self isn’t working on it,” she  simply said.

“Can he get inside if we already are occupying the room?”

“Umbridge and your stupid Inquisitorial Squad managed to get in, back in Fifth Year, once you knew exactly what to ask for. So, I guess if what we need aligns with what your past self needs, we’ll be able to be inside it at the same time no problem,” she speculated, her mind racing so fast into her skull, he could almost see it zooming behind her eyes. 

“What if you’re wrong?” he teased.

“I’m never wrong!”

Draco chuckled. “Who’s not good at modesty now?”

Hermione scoffed. “If I’m wrong, we’ll hide in an empty classroom on the seventh floor. We’ll ward the hell out of it and no one will find us. We use the Invisibility Cloak to get around if we need something. We only get out one at a time and at night. Same thing goes for bathroom and shower breaks. Any questions?”

Draco smirked and shook his head. She was fuming and he adored when she was all flustered and angry.

“Great. Here,” she jabbed and threw a canvas satchel at him. “This has an undetectable extending charm on it, so you can pack whatever you want in it. I suggest a school uniform as well. Not that we’ll fool anyone in case we get caught, especially you, but, you know…”

Draco snatched it midair. “Why especially me? I’m not that different from four years ago.”

Hermione looked at him for a second then glanced away, a blush spreading on her cheeks. “You’re taller.”

“That’s it? A few inches won’t make such a difference,” he shrugged.

She rolled her eyes. “Your shoulders are broader and your face…”

“Yes?” he pushed, hands tensing in anticipation. 

Hermione swallowed. “You know, your jaw and cheekbones…” she muttered, pushing away her curls from around her neck. “You’re a man, Malfoy, not a boy of sixteen.” 

Draco stood up and walked to the desk. “A man, uh? You said I was a baby earlier,” he teased, placing his hands on the desk and leaning towards her. 

“I meant brain-wise,” she replied, inching forward. 

Draco smirked. “You’re not a girl anymore, either,” he muttered, eyes traveling to her lips. She gasped softly and tightened her arms around her waist.

“Yes, well, maybe we should skip uniforms altogether,” she fumbled out, wanting to turn around and leave but unable to move under his heated gaze. 

“Gods, no, please. I can’t wait to see you in a skirt again,” he whispered, with a mischievous grin that showed his perfect, white teeth. 

Hermione squirmed, his brain short-circuiting. What the hell was he doing? After pushing her away two days before?

She took a step back and shook her head. “Go to bed, Malfoy, you’re being stupid.”

Then she stomped to the door. Draco hung his head and sighed.

“Granger, wait! Can we talk?” he asked, turning around. She halted with her hand on the handle.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “There’s nothing to talk about, though, is there? You have nothing left to give, right? Or you don’t remember what you said?”

“I do remember what I said, and I do remember what you asked,” he said, taking a step towards her. “You asked me if I felt it, Granger, and…”

She whipped around, fire in her eyes. “…and you said it didn’t matter, Malfoy. And you were right. It doesn’t matter. We have a mission, that’s what matters.”

He took in her trembling lips and shiny eyes with all the tears she didn’t want him to see. He registered her white knuckles, her quick breaths, her pride and pain written in every line of her beautiful, beautiful face. He missed her so much, in his arms, on his chest, their hearts beating together in the dark. He missed her warmth, her scent breathed in fully at all times. He missed her fingers on his face when he kissed her. He missed her even more because he might have lost her again, even if she was right there at arm’s reach. 

“Hermione…”, he whispered, and it came out lost and broken, resigned.

She swallowed and shook her head. Turning around in the blink of an eye, she was gone from the room. And he was alone.

Chapter Text

18.

November 2001

“Malfoy, you can finish the potions by yourself, I gather, since you were the best in our class, as you heatedly stated. I’ll pack everything we need in the meantime. H.”

“Granger, can we talk? D.”

“Work on the potions. The plan is ready, we have nothing to discuss. H.”

“Fine, I’ll work on the potions, but I still need to talk to you. Can you please show to one meal of your choice? Since I can’t find you anywhere. D.”

“We don’t need to talk about anything if it’s about that conversation back at Grimmauld. You were right, it doesn’t matter. H.”

Draco stared at the note in his hands for the fourth time that night, then folded it and shoved into his pocket. He stirred his last batch of Dreamless Sleep for the last time and observed the color change into crystal clear, mind drifting away from the cauldron, away from the dungeons. 

The first time he’d read her final reply, he’d been confused and slightly panicked. He’d had to recut his valerian roots twice, almost losing an entire batch of potion. Then, he’d snatched the note from the table and read it again, anger seeping into his stomach at every syllable.

You were right. Fat lie! She never agreed with him, this was most certainly her trying to silence him and force him to keep his distance, that’s what it was!

It doesn’t matter. Fatter lie! Her eyes said something entirely opposite, every time she looked at him and her Occlumency slipped a little. 

He’d crumple the piece of paper and tossed it across the room, angrily stirring the concoction a little too fast. He’d had to scrape the bottom of the cauldron thirty seconds afterwards. He’d never botched a potion before, ever. Wasn’t it proof enough that it did matter after all? 

Well, those were your words, you idiot , the usual nagging voice whispered in his ear. Draco’d deflated and dragged a hand down his face. Fuck.

He’d crossed the gloomy classroom and picked up the note, flattened it on his thigh and read it again. Shame had set into his heart, with a sprinkle of pain. That conversation . Had it even been a conversation? He hadn’t contributed much. As usual. Because talking wasn’t his thing, it was hers. A Malfoy didn’t talk about feelings and emotions. A Malfoy brooded in the dark with a bottle of scotch, nursing an oozing gush in his soul in self-hatred. 

He’d folded the paper and pushed it into his pocket, going back to Dreamless Sleep, following directions and cutting ingredients, which was a much easier task than understanding his own thoughts. 

The fourth reread had brought up defeat, unabashed and definite. He had fallen under his own axe, one he had been sure was cutting the right tree. He had been certain that pushing her away was the right thing to do. To protect her, to protect them both. But then, the sweet, tentative way she’d touched him on that floor, in the warm sunlight, how she’d asked him if he felt it, too…He had been scared and he’d hit harder on the trunk. But the blood that had gushed out had been thicker and darker than he’d anticipated. And the trunk that had fallen had taken him down with itself. And now he didn’t know how to rise up again. 

*****

“Alright, we’re all set,” Hermione said, peering inside her beaded bag for the last time and sliding the strap over her head and across her chest. They were standing inside the Room of Requirement, a couple of blocks down the Vanishing Cabinet. Draco had his satchel on his shoulder, his wand in his hand and was observing her nervous stalling.

“Has Miss Hermione packed the food?” Dobby asked, lacing his knotty fingers in front of his chest, big bright eyes gleaming in the dusty light of the room. Hermione nodded and focused on her hand, counting out loud what she had in fact packed.

“Food, potions, emergency kit, books, clothes, Invisibility Cloak and Map, even a gun and some munitions, which won’t work back there but it’s nice to have a backup,” she said, her gaze avoiding successfully both Draco and Dobby and concentrating on a pleat of her skirt. They had donned uniforms that Dobby had tailored to their present heights and sizes. It’d felt a bit weird at first, being in a robe again and sporting colors that didn’t mean much more to Draco, but the sight of her in a skirt and knee long socks had produced a little earthquake in his entire body and he’d deemed the idea of nostalgic dressing up not that bad at all. 

He cleared his throat. She snapped towards him and he simply nodded.

“Yes, right, we’re all set,” she repeated, words coming out forced and pained. Hermione finally looked at Dobby and a little smile spread on her lips, eyes already shiny with held tears. “I guess this is goodbye, Dobby.”

The elf smiled wide. “Dobby will wait here, in case Miss Hermione and Master Draco need to come back! Dobby keeps the castle warm!”

Hermione turned to Draco, a cry for help in her broken gaze. He frowned and turned back to the little creature standing before them in adoration. He knelt on one knee and leveled him, resting one elbow on his thigh. 

“We are not coming back, mate, not to stay at least. If something goes wrong and we’re brought back here, we’ll jump again, right away. We have to fix things, you understand?” he asked him, firmly but with a gentleness in his voice Hermione had rarely witnessed. Her heart swelled in a way she didn’t want to analyze. 

Dobby’s forehead scrunched over his bulging eyes, in confusion. “Dobby will never see Miss and Master again? What will Dobby do?”

Draco placed a hand on his little shoulder. “You could go see the world, Dobby. Find a place that treats magic still with respect. I heard Brazil is beautiful, very colorful and extravagant.”

Dobby seemed to consider his words, then smiled wistfully. “Dobby likes colors!”

Hermione muffled a sound in the background that resembled a sob, but Draco smiled back at Dobby. “I know you do, buddy. Plus, it’s a great country to have an adventure and I’m pretty sure you like those, too.”

The elf nodded furiously, his flappy ears slapping his temples playfully. Draco looked up at Hermione and let his eyes flick to her red and gold tie. She understood. Hastily swiping at her wet cheek, she loosened the fabric around her neck and slid it over her head, curls tangling and flopping back over her shoulders. She kneeled in front of Dobby and gingerly slid the tie over his head and around his wrinkly neck, securing it in place. Dobby’s eyes became impossibly big and he palmed the silk tie with a reverence she’d only seen on his face when Harry was around. 

“You’re free,” she whispered through trembling lips, unable to contain her tears that fell unadulterated down her chin. 

Dobby looked up and his pupils were swimming in tears of his own. She sniffed and threw himself at Hermione, his bony arms wrapping around her impossibly large mane of hair and hugging her close. 

“Miss Hermione Granger takes care of herself and makes sure Master Draco doesn’t fuck up,” he babbled, while Hermione caressed his back, a watery chuckle on her lips. 

Before Draco could indignantly reply, Dobby was latched on his neck, burying his wet face into his collarbone. For a moment, he didn’t know what to do, then his mind offered him images of his childhood he was very ashamed of, and his arm came around Dobby’s middle.

“I’m sorry, buddy. For what my family did to you,” he muttered in his ear, but Dobby shook his head and pulled back a little to stare him seriously in the eyes. 

“Dobby remembers nasty little Master Draco. Master Draco is not that boy anymore. He is a good man now.”

Draco scoffed, but warmth spread in his chest. “I don’t know about that, Dobby.”

“But Dobby knows. And Miss Hermione Granger knows, and she is always right!” Dobby stated, so earnest and sure that he almost convinced Draco. 

“Of course she is,” Draco teased and felt her giggle at his side. 

“Yes, but she forgets about food, so Master Draco must make her eat!” Dobby instructed, dead serious again.

Draco nodded. “I promise I’ll take care of her, Dobby.”

Hermione held her breath, observing that exchange as if she wasn’t even in the room. She noticed how every sign of humor had leaked from Draco’s expression, how his hands had tightened over Dobby’s shoulders, how the promise issued had come from his mouth but had roots into his eyes. She filed all those information in a little binder book in the back of her mind library and committed that moment to memory. It sparked an unbearable need to bury her face in his chest and stay burrowed into his arms for eons. Instead, she simply grazed his forearm and stood. Draco swallowed and gave Dobby a final squeeze before getting up and facing her.

“Let’s do this,” she said, finally locking eyes with him. He didn’t shy away and fished the Time Turner from the pocket of his robe. He slid the golden chain over his head and then extended it over hers. She stepped closer to him, her chest gently bumping onto his hard planes. Sparks erupted in the places where their bodies collided, like meteors crushing down to Earth. Draco offered her the small hourglass encased in the golden loops and she took it with steady fingers. In unison, they turned one last time towards Dobby, who stood there, his hands gripping the Gryffindor tie resting on his minuscule chest. 

“Thank you for all you’ve done for us, Dobby,” Hermione whispered. 

Dobby awarded her with a tremulous smile. “Dobby is happy to help his friends.”

She nodded, her throat closing around her deep emotions and her eyes strayed back to Draco. She must have felt her last minute fear, because his hands came gently to her hips, anchoring them together, and motioned his chin to the magical artifact into her hands. 

Hermione looked down and spun the outer circle for the first of fifty-two times. The air shifted and Dobby was gone. It was working. She kept spinning and counting under her breath, while Draco kept his eyes on her fingers and double checked. The air around them continued shifting, like a draft blowing on their necks from a door left ajar. The light started to change rapidly around the twentieth spin, some object tripping from the towers of junk or surging up from the floor and onto the piles. A couple of fast moving shadows flickered in the background at some point, but they weren’t able to identify them and they were gone in a blink of an eye anyway. When Hermione reached the thirtieth spin her brows furrowed a little.

“What is it?” he asked immediately.

“Nothing, it’s just…I don’t know, I think it feels warmer,” she explained, continuing her job. Draco lifted a hand and touched the base of the pendant. It felt like a jewel kept in a warm hand for a long time. 

“Do you want me to take over?”

She shook her head and went on, but at the forty-eighth spin she grimaced.  

“It’s scorching hot,” she hissed, quickly reaching fifty-two and swapping to the central hoop. When she spun it for the first time, a rumble echoed underneath their feet. She bit her lip and went on, but at each spin the rumble became louder and faint tremor shook the towers of junk around them. 

“What the hell…” Draco muttered, looking around, the room spinning just like the Time Turner. The hourglass was shining with a sparkle that hadn’t been there before. And at each spin the light grew brighter and the sand in the little jewel seemed to melt into liquid metal.

“Granger…” he warned her, but she couldn’t talk anymore, the pain of the heated metal on her finger pads was becoming too much to handle. He had lost count of the turns and she wasn’t counting out loud. The hourglass was becoming too bright to look at and he had only one second notice to wrap his arms around her waist, before a ray of light exploded from her hands with such force they were lifted off their feet and pushed apart. Draco was thrown against a pile of sharp-edged furniture and sagged to the floor with a grunt. He was breathless and blinded for a few seconds, then the world started coming back into shape and his head stopped spinning. He blinked several times to put into focus the high vaulted ceiling of the Room of Requirement, then carefully planted his forearms on the floor and pushed up, looking around for Hermione. She was lying face down a few feet from him, her curtain of hair covering her face and making it impossible to understand if she was hurt. Pushing away nausea, Draco stumbled up and scrambled to her, gently turning her on her back and peeling away her hair to examine her face. There was a scratch on her cheekbone, but her temples were clear. He felt around her skull for injuries but found none, then raked his eyes over her body. There was no blood. 

“Hermione,” he called and she immediately stirred and moaned, peeling her eyes open, with a deep grimace on her lips.

“Draco, what…” she started, looking around the room and back at him.

“The Time Turner overheated,” he explained, helping her to a sitting position. 

Hermione groaned and rested her back and head against a chest of drawers with peeling paint. “Definitely not the best on the market, those Unspeakables.”

Draco sat beside her and snorted. “Restored objects are never like new ones, Granger. It’s not surprising. Let’s just hope we’re in a useful time frame, because we won’t have a second chance.”

Hermione rolled her head around and stared at him with furrowed brows.

“What do you mean?”

He simply pointed his finger in the general direction of their previous position and when she pivoted to watch, a curse came out of her lips at light speed. The former Time Turner was now a collection of glass shards, bent out hoops and broken chains. The sand of the hourglass had melted together and solidified into a blob of shiny metallic matter. 

“Starting out strong, here,” she muttered plopping back against the drawers. She sighed, then reached for her wand inside her robes. She opened the beaded bag secured to her waist and summoned two vials of Calming Draught and a silvery flask. She handed a vial to Draco.

“Bottoms up, we can’t risk seizure,” she said and downed her potion. Draco did the same, then nodded to the flask in her hand.

“Firewhiskey? “

“Helps the potion kick in faster,” she explained and took a generous swig before passing it to him. Draco followed, smacking his lips in appreciation. 

“How did you work it out? Snape never taught this in class.”

“It’s not common practice, it’s war protocol,” she said, stashing the flask back in her bag. “I read it in a book, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

They stayed in silence for a while, sitting on the floor and waiting for their bodies to adjust to the new timeline. The Room was quiet and slightly cool and the light was just the same as always, like the perennial dusk of an ancient cathedral. 

“Are you okay?” Draco asked at some point, his voice soft as feathers. 

Hermione inhaled and nodded. “Yes, you?”

“I don’t feel like seizing,” he stated, pushing himself up and extending a hand to help her. She let him, then brushed her skirt and adjusted her robes. 

“Great, then we can go on with the plan. I’ll go see if I can find a newspaper and you set up a headquarter here, okay?”

“Do you want me to go out, instead?” he asked, a wisp of concern flitting over his brows. Hermione shook her head, taking out the Invisibility Cloak and the Marauders Map.

“No, let’s stick to the plan,” she said, draping the cloak around her shoulders and disappearing from her neck down. Her floating head looked at him, stern and solemn. “I’ll be back,” she uttered, before pulling the cloak over her mane of hair.

“Use the door, don’t smash it,” he piped, and he heard her chuckle. 

“How do you even know about Terminator?” she mused, her voice retreating towards the end of the isle. After a while, the big oak doors opened and closed  with an echo, and then it was quiet again. 

“Because you told me,” he murmured to the void around him.

*****

As soon as Hermione was out of the Room of Requirement, she switched to stealth mode. Keeping near the wall, she assessed her surroundings and observed the light coming from the high windows. It was rich and orange, suggesting a beautiful sunset over the Scottish Highlands. Studying the Map, she noticed that most of the students and teachers were in the Great Hall, probably having dinner. Perfect. 

She cast a silencing charm to her feet and started down the corridor and stairs, descending to the first floor and reaching the doors of the Library. Her favorite place on Earth was almost empty, which was actually a blessing. Madame Pince was hovering behind her desk, registering a stack of tomes in a gigantic ledger spread open over the wooden surface. Hermione quickly passed her and wandered around the isles until she found a forgotten newspaper on a table. She was sure it was of the day, since Madame Pince always threw away the old ones before closing the library for the night. Hermione snatched it and peered at the top corner of the front page. 

Her heart stumbled on a heartbeat. 

A sigh of relief wrestled with a gasp of horror in her throat, but nothing came out in the end. It was good and potentially bad at the same time, but mostly good, probably. After reading the date again for good measure, she took a resolute breath and rolled up the Daily Prophet. She stuffed it into a pocket of her robes before walking back out of the library. She had to do a detour on the fourth floor because Mrs Norris was strolling around lazily and she had always had the sensation that the old cat could see through the Cloak. 

When she stepped back into the Room of Requirement, she reached the spot where she’d left Draco, but he wasn’t there. 

“Malfoy?” she called, walking down the path and turning right. 

“To the left,” he called, the scratching of furniture on the floor trailing after his voice. Hermione backpedalled and went left, walked around a bend and found him rearranging an old sofa behind a pile of old desks. In front of the sofa there was a table with two chairs, neatly placed on a rug. On the left, separated by a stained folding screen, was a king size bed in a wrought iron, rusted bedpost.

“You’re redecorating, how sweet,” she teased, throwing the cloak on the sofa and fishing the newspaper from her pocket. 

Draco had shucked off his robes and vest, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, leaving his forearms on display. Her eyes glided on his skin, over the Dark Mark and down to his veiny hands. Maybe she needed to get rid of the robes herself as well, the place was getting warmer. 

He scoffed. “I don’t know what you had in mind when you told me to set up our headquarters. But if you want to sit on the floor, be my guest. I have long legs, I’m sure I can use the sofa by myself.”

“So touchy,” she replied, tossing the Daily Prophet onto the table. Draco eyed it, but didn’t pick it up. He slid his gaze to her and cocked a brow. She mirrored him but didn’t say anything.

“So? Did we make it?” he forced out, reaching for the paper with his long arm. He unfolded the battered copy and looked for the date. 

“We did, but we are almost two months away from the due date,” she finally said, while his fingers tightened on the paper. 

Merlin’s ball sack.

The date on the top corner read May 8th, 1997. A date he was certain he could never forget, even after an Obliviate spell. Because it was the day Harry Potter had sliced him open in a bathroom on the second floor. 

Chapter Text

19.

July, 2001

Draco was lying on the floor of Borgin’s apartment, over the shop in Knockturn Alley. He had detected a spot right under the windowsill that shaded his eyes but kept his legs warm. And it was perfect to check if someone was walking in the street below, he only had to sit up and look down. And he did that a lot, especially when he waited for Jean. That, and peering at the clock on the far wall of the living room, counting the minutes that separated him from noon, when she usually came around and spent the afternoon with him. 

Jean had kept him alive. She’d brought him food for the first couple of weeks, then she’d taught him how to shoplift. It had been fun, the adrenaline cursing in his body every time he stole a bread roll from a stand at the market was the highest peak of his day. Then, he had learnt about the existence of pawn shops and he’d got rid of his signet ring, making enough money to buy food for a year for them both. She’d voiced her concerns he might regret it later, that his ring was a memory of his family and his name.

“My name is useless here, and that ring is way too fancy for my current outfits,” he’d replied, pointing at the hoodie she’d brought him. Of course, it had been difficult to part with the only physical object that tied him to home, but home had been a cold place lately after all. 

Jean had also kept him sane. She’d show up every day, either in the morning or after lunch. Sometimes, she’d even stayed the night, when he was particularly restless or nasty. Somehow she knew he was going to have nightmares on those nights and didn't leave him alone. Maybe she had nightmares, too, and knew what it felt like to wake up screaming to ghosts hiding in the shadows. He dreamt about taking the Mark again, the pain of it so strong he usually woke up with his fingers clutching his forearm in a vice. But Jean was already there, pushing away his damp hair from his forehead and whispering comforting words that meant little, but worked miracles to his battered soul. 

She told him everything about Voldemort, the war and the Betrayal Day. She had explained to him how the Grid worked, but hadn’t been very straightforward on who Donovan was and how he had managed to fool the Order of the Phoenix. She knew stuff, it was evident, but kept a lot hidden. On the other end, she had been much more open about the Second Wizarding War. She had brought him official records, old newspapers and Donovan’s press releases that described how wizards had threatened and tortured muggles for years. She had told him who had died of the people he had known. She never gave him many details on that topic, though, since she maintained she didn’t know a lot of things. He thought she just didn’t want to talk about it. He hadn’t asked too many questions either. He wasn’t ready to know. 

Jean was plotting something, and was gathering information to put that plot into motion. He was curious and very much bored, so he had decided he wanted to ask her if he could help. 

He also wanted to ask her to drop the disguise already. By now, he had worked out her identity. Actually, he’d had an inkling from day one, but spending time with her had made it into a certainty. The way she moved and talked, the small  details here and there, especially when she was telling about the war and Potter. She always called him Harry, no surname, as if they’d been close.

And Draco wanted to see her face again. He needed to. That weird pull towards her that had started building back in Third Year had resurfaced, even if he’d tried to squash it down while carrying out his mission in Sixth Year. Now, spending time with her, even in disguise, it was stronger than ever and he felt the need to explore it. He missed home, he missed his mother, but here he was finally free. There wasn’t a Lord Voldemort to please, there wasn’t a Cruciatus Curse to avoid for treason, there wasn’t a father that filled his head with bullshit about muddled blood and stolen magic. Bullshit he had stopped believing many years before, but had to keep pretenses up to navigate his pureblooded world. Here and now, even under the impending doom of muggle supremacy and magic suppression, Draco Malfoy was finally free to acknowledge his feelings for a muggle born witch. He was free to feel those feelings and free to want them. Free to want her. 

Back home, he’d had to occlude his heart away, push every thought in a dark closet of his mind, lest Voldemort could find the proof of his betrayal. Now, he could analyze and understand why he felt so drawn to her. It wasn’t very difficult to answer that question. She was brilliant, had brains to spare, was braver than anyone else he knew, passionate and a little mischievous. She could have done a great Slytherin, actually. 

The hands of the clock met on the number twelve and he shot up on instinct, looking down out of the window. The street was empty. He waited, sitting on the floor with his back straight, eyes almost unblinking. After ten minutes, she finally came into view from around the corner and pushed the door of the shop. 

Draco stood up and sat at the table, opening a book on a page at random. 

“Malfoy, I’m here! Sorry I’m late, streets were busy, there was some kind of parade,” she said walking in, with a paper bag in one hand. 

He didn’t look up immediately, arranging his face in an expression of indifference and ignoring how loud his heartbeat was in his ears.

“Don’t worry, Jean, it’s not like I’m looking out of the window until you come around, you know?” he drawled, snapping the book closed and observing her with his nose upturned. She smiled and put the bag on the table. He looked down at it, a brow arched.

“What is it? We didn’t need any food,” he pointed out.

“Just open it,” she suggested, sitting at the table.

Draco reached for the paper bag and ripped it open, peering inside. Two round apples shined up at him. They were green. His head snapped up and he found her studying him with a small grin.

“I remembered seeing you eating them at Hogwarts,” she confessed, somewhat shyly. And fidgety. And nervously. Uh. Those weren’t just apples.

“Is this a bribe, Jean? Are you trying to entice me because you need something?” he asked with a smirk. Her mouth dropped open.

“Merlin, you’re good,” she murmured.

Draco sneered and plucked an apple from the bag. He shined it a bit more on his sleeve, then took a bite. The tangy taste, the crisp texture, the sweet coming just at the right moment. That must be what gods used to eat somewhere.

“I’m a Malfoy, I have the concept of bribe engraved in my genetic code,” he stated somewhat bitterly.

Jean chuckled. “Look at you, talking all muggle sciency.”

“You’re burying me under those books, what am I supposed to do? Ignore them? I’m bored,” he pointed out. 

Those seemed to be the right words because her eyes twinkled. 

“Bored, uh? Maybe I can solve that,” she hinted, leaning a little over the table.

Draco bit the apple again and chewed, without looking at her. 

“How?” he finally asked, faking disinterest, while his heart thumbed like a drum.

“Would you like to kill Karl Donovan with me and get rid of all Grids, once and for all?” she asked,  point blank. He almost spit out a mouthful of apple in surprise.

He observed her for a moment, the glint in her eyes, the upturned corners of her mouth. She could almost imagine her real features beyond the disguise twisted with conspiratorial mischief. She wasn’t joking. He’d known she was up to no good, but this? This was massive.

It was a dangerous mission she was presenting there. Donovan was powerful, that he knew, even if he had no idea of the extent of his power. And they didn’t have magic to back them up. They had to rely on muggle weapons and strategies, which he had amassed some knowledge so far, but still. Plus, the possibility of dying in the effort of saving magic there was very much a thing. All in all, it wasn’t a very good idea.

“When?” he  heard himself reply, shocked by himself in the back of his mind. 

Jean smiled slowly, and his surprise transformed into dread. She hadn’t dropped her disguise yet and he was already done for.

******

May, 1997

Two months. They had to kill almost two months before repairing the cabinet. And there wasn’t a lot they could do, without getting caught and sending the timeline tits up. 

But right now, that wasn’t what Draco had on his mind. Right now, he kept reliving the duel in the bathroom with Potter, in slow motion and bright colors. He remembered every spell they’d cast against each other. He remembered what he had been about to cast when Boy Wonder had sent a dark curse to his chest. Years later, lying on a bed in the future, with a woman tucked into his side in the middle of the night, Draco had felt ashamed of himself for almost using the Cruciatus Curse on a fellow student. He had experienced that kind of pain, and forcing someone else to endure it was disgusting. 

He also remembered what his last thoughts had been, in a pool of water and blood on the cold tiles. Among his own choked breaths, he had unconsciously thanked Merlin it was over, and it had been a weird kind of relief knowing he was going to die and be finally free of fear and responsibilities. When he’d woken up in the Hospital Wing, covered in bandages from neck to waistline, he’d been a little disappointed. He’d changed his mind later, especially after meeting her and falling in love, but he still thought he’d deserved it, especially coming from Potter.

Draco was quiet while Hermione took out some food from their stashed supply, which was now evidently not going to last. He was quiet during the quick dinner made of canned beans and roast beef sandwiches. He was quiet while she checked her notes about the cabinet and the Incanto Adnexio they would have to perform later on. Draco observed her and concluded she hadn’t remembered what day May 8th was. It was fine, really, he hadn’t expected her to. Still, she was Hermione Granger and she remembered everything. She’d told him that, once. Honestly, it was better that way. Much better, because she wasn’t going to ask questions and make him talk about it, which he would really rather not. 

Hermione stood up and stretched her arms over her head, yawning lazily. 

“Do you think we should take turns sleeping? In case someone gets in?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.

“If it makes you feel safer, yes. I can take the first one, go rest,” he offered, pointing his thumb to the bed behind the screen. Hermione’s lips parted a little.

“Shouldn’t we, like, draw straws for the bed? I mean, it’s very chivalrous of you,  but…”she stammered, but Draco waved a hand. 

“Nonsense, Granger, I won’t let you get near my incredibly comfortable and plush couch. The bed is all lumpy and hard, you take it,” he drawled, fighting to keep a smile from his lips. 

Hermione made to retaliate, but he narrowed his eyes on her. “Go, before my only-child attitude resurfaces. I’ll keep watch and draw some basic wards around our quarters.”

She smiled and yawned again. “Use the modified ones, those we can access but others can’t, will you?”

Draco snorted. “Jeez, thank you for reminding me, Granger. I had forgotten about common sense there for a minute.”

She stuck her tongue out to him while walking to the bed. His insides rearranged like puzzle pieces. He observed her transfiguring her uniform in a set of grey pajamas and gather her hair in a knot on top of her head, before lying down on the old mattress. He’d performed a series of scourging charms on it earlier and had added cushioning and warming charms all over it. The sigh that escaped her lips when she wriggled under the covers told him his charms had held.

Draco sat on the couch and studied Hermione’s notes until he heard her breathing change pace. When he was certain she was asleep, he stood up and cast a web of wards around their space. She’d taught him a modified version of a notice-me-not charm that allowed the caster to resist it, together with whoever they included in the spell, and he’d been quite impressed by her achievement. Warding magic was hard to crack, but again, she was the smartest witch of their age, right?

When he was finished, he glanced at her small body resting peacefully, then took the Invisibility Cloak and the Map. He walked through the maze of junk and towards the door, without looking back. 

The castle was quiet and the high windows cast a halo of moonlight on the stone floors. Draco checked the Map for Peeves, Filch and Mrs Norris, but none of them was on his path. He navigated corridors and stairs, absorbing the silence and the thrum of magic in his veins. Back in 2001, with the castle deserted, the sensation had been subdued and he’d found it a bit harder to access his full power. Maybe Hogwarts was such a stronghold also thanks to the enormous amount of magic coursing in its inhabitants’ bodies, and being abandoned was taking a toll on it. He wondered if Dobby had been losing his marbles, living there alone for years, also for that reason. 

When he reached the double doors of the Hospital Wing, he checked the Map again. Madam Pomfrey was tucked away in her office-room and only a couple of names were floating in the main ward. One of them was his. 

Draco carefully pushed the door open and slid inside. He walked down the corridor between two rows of beds until he reached his, then halted, his breath coming short. A slightly younger version of himself laid under a white sheet, his platinum hair tousled and slightly wavy on his forehead, as if he’d come out of the shower and left it to dry on its own. He was pale and his cheekbones stood out, bathed in silvery moonlight. He looked dead. 

The white sheet and thin, cotton blanket were drawn up to his clavicles, leaving his bare shoulders peaking out. Bare wasn’t a correct description, though, because gauze bandages were wrapped all over his chest and up to his neck. They looked freshly changed, but a faint rosy ghost of blood could be perceived just where the seam of the blanket rested. 

Draco let his eyes glide over his twin and suddenly he understood what Hermione had meant when she’d told him he had changed. It wasn’t just the height or the width of his shoulders. Something was different in his younger version’s face. Something was amiss.

The entrance door opened softly and he almost jumped out of his skin, before remembering being invisible. He took several steps back, until he silently bumped into the empty bed behind him. He squinted towards the end of the ward but saw nobody nor heard any steps. When he was almost convinced he’d imagined the whole thing, a voice murmured a finite and a disillusionment charm dropped, revealing a visitor right next to his bed. 

The world stopped turning for a moment, or maybe it was just his heart severing connection with his brain and sending him into a paralysis. 

He was hallucinating. 

He was hallucinating, for sure, because there was no possible universe or timeline or sliding door where Hermione Granger went visiting Draco Malfoy in the Hospital Wing in 1997. 

She could not be there, with her impossibly big bush of curls, frizzier than ever, and her tie loose around her neck. She could not be there, with shiny chocolate irises framed by long, thick, black lashes, still wet with tears. She could not be there, her hands at her sides, a slight tremor shaking her fingers. She could not be there, with her full lips pressed together in the attempt to keep them from trembling. Draco realized he had lifted a hand to touch her, to make sure she was real. He stopped just in time to avoid a catastrophe. 

Young Hermione took a step forward and carefully sat down on the side of the bed, folding her hands in her lap. She sighed and shook her head. Draco was in a stupor. What was he looking at? What did that mean? On instinct, he walked to the other side of the bed and observed her collect herself, fidget with the rim of her skirt, fight something inside of her she might not understand herself.

“I don’t know why I’m here, Malfoy,” she whispered, her eyes trained in her lap. “I’m sorry Harry did this, no one deserves something like this.”

Her breath caught and she rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. 

“When he told us…” she sniffed. “When he told us, I scolded him for trusting that stupid book. How could he try an unknown spell on someone like that is beyond me!” she said, ashamed and angry. Then, all of a sudden, her shoulders sagged and a shaky breath came out of her lips.

“You could have died,” she whispered, her head bowed. After a moment, she looked up and took him in. Her gaze was…Draco under the cloak stepped closer.

“It shouldn’t bother me, right? I mean, yes, you’re a person and I don’t want you to die, but it shouldn’t bother me this much , right? God, I had a panic attack in the dormitory, I had to get out before I woke up the other girls, I had to lock myself in a broom closet because…because my head kept feeding me images of you dead in a pool of blood and…and…” her throat closed and she muffled a sob with her hands on her mouth.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t know why I care, I don’t…” she shook her head and took a deep breath before going on. “It’s been building for a while now, but I don’t understand it. You’re nasty, to my friends and me. And you’re definitely up to something bad. But…” she swallowed and fell silent. Draco knew she was rearranging her thoughts in a coherent sentence there. He could just read the signs: the chewing of her lower lip, the fast blinking and the calm breathing. 

“I know you look at me sometimes,” she admitted, a corner of her mouth skirting the edges of a smile. “And I wonder if you feel it, too.”

Draco under the cloak went still. 

Can’t you feel it?

Hermione sighed and tentatively reached for the swell of his hand under the blanket. She placed her fingers on his and looked up at his peacefully sleeping face. 

“Maybe not, and even if you do,” she went on, a lilt of bitterns in her sweet voice, “you’re probably disgusted by your own mind for going near a Mudblood. And if what Harry thinks is true, we’re going to be on opposite sides in what’s coming. But…” she hesitated. She scooted a little closer to his face and whispered right beside his ear. Draco had to lean closer to catch it.

“Please, be careful, Draco.”

Draco under the cloak reared back, his heart beating like a herd of hippogriffs running at breakneck pace into the Forbidden Forest. 

She had cared for him, even there, in the original timeline. It wasn’t a fluke or a glitch. It wasn’t something stemming from the sliding doors.

He turned around and ran between beds, his steps muffled by the silencing charm. He slid past the doors and didn’t care about the noise, he had to go, quickly. He didn’t check the Map on the way back, almost ran into Peeves on the third floor, but managed to avoid him. He took the stairs two at a time and didn’t check the corners, he was in a hurry. He had to get to her.

When he reached the seventh floor, the empty stretch of wall produced a door before he could even ask it, so strong was his will to get to her. He stumbled in, wrenching the cloak away from himself, and hurried through the junk piled high, turning bend after bend in a haze. When he was almost at the headquarters, something small and warm smacked into his chest, lots and lots of hair almost suffocating him. Hermione gasped and braced her hands on his chest, taking him in with worried eyes. He grasped her by the hips and observed her gaze go from anxious to angry in zero seconds. 

“Draco Malfoy!” she hissed, pushing him away from her with trembling arms. “Where the hell have you been? I woke up and you weren’t there! Cloak gone, no note! I was coming to look for you, you idiot! Where did you go in the middle of the night?” she asked, gasping for breath. 

“To the Hospital Wing,” he simply replied, watching her reaction closely. Her shoulders twitched and she held her breath for a moment. He saw her throat bob when she swallowed. She had remembered, then. She had just pretended not to, maybe hoping he actually hadn’t. 

“It’s May 8th,” he continued, “I’m there on May 8th, because of the Sectumsempra,” he clarified, even though he knew he didn’t need to. She had remembered. 

“I know,” she countered, automatically. Her eyes were wide like moons, bottomless pits of molten chocolate. He could make out some specks of caramel near the pupils, a small golden freckle in the right one skirted right near the edge of the iris. 

“Someone visited,” he said and she stilled even more. Maybe she wasn’t even breathing anymore.

“Draco…” she whispered, and he was nearly undone by his name on her lips, pleading for mercy like that. But he had to stay strong, he had to tell her everything, right now, or might be never instead. And he was sick of never. He wanted everything, again. Because everything tasted like heaven with her and he was a selfish bastard.

“I lied to you, Granger, many times,” he confessed, but she didn’t seem hurt by his words, just relieved somehow, as if she’d been waiting for him to come clean. She’d known that, too.

“I lied when I told you that the girl that saved me never lifted her disguise. She did, after a while, when I asked her to. And I lied about her name, too. She wasn’t called Jane,” he said, looking her straight in the eyes. “She was called Jean.”

Hermione gasped, parting her lips, her gaze flitting over his face, as if asking if he was really telling the truth now. 

“And I lied when I told you it didn’t matter, that I didn’t have anything else to give. I lied because I thought it was just a fluke, a joke that time was throwing at me in these stupid sliding door universes. I lied because I was scared of giving you the little I had left, just to see it shattered again by the timeline resettling and laughing in my face. I lied because you deserve more and I thought you were getting close to me only because there wasn’t anyone else around,” he confessed, words spilling from his lips like petals of a rose unfurling in someone’s fingers. 

She shook her head, but her voice didn’t come out, her throat closed by shock. He took a step forward and placed his hands on her hips again and she let him. She actually sighed when his fingers dipped into her flesh and left imprints of his need on her skin.

“I lied and I tried to let you go, because how on Earth would Hermione Granger want someone like me in the real timeline?” he mused, bitterness on his tongue. Hermione’s eyes filled with tears and she shook her head again, reaching for his cheek. Draco leaned in her touch, a tremulous breath slipping from his lips. 

“But then I saw you there tonight, I heard your words and…we were there, Granger, all along. It finally makes sense,” he said, through a chuckle, and he leaned his forehead on hers. Hermione sniffled and cupped his face in her hands, fingers nibbling at his jaw with urgency.

“Ask me again,” he whispered, their noses grazing, their breaths mingling. And somehow she knew what he was aiming at.

“Can’t you feel it, Draco?” she murmured, his lips so close she could actually feel them ghosting over hers.

“Yes, Hermione. Yes, I can.”

His kiss was a feather, tentative, almost incredulous. He drew her closer, flush against his hard body, while his soft lips explored hers in a delicate request for permission. She let her fingers dip into his hair and pushed on her toes giving herself away to him, completely. She felt his grin spread over hers, a chuckle rumbling in his chest, mingling with her giggle of relief. Her Occlumency wall crumbled down, pulverized by the warmth of his touch on her skin. A sigh seemed to envelop her mind, a cord finally snapping in her chest, a piece locking into place where there had been a void before. What had always felt weird and confusing, was obvious now, in his arms. And the light hit her so hard and hot on that side of the pavement, she decided she didn’t want to cross the street to the shade ever again.

Chapter Text

20.

End of August 2001

Traveling by Tube hadn’t been as traumatic as he’d imagined. There had been lots of bodies pressed into the carriage at first, but as the train progressed out of the city centre, people had dwindled away and he had managed to breathe freely again. Not a pleasant experience with all those mixed smells lingering inside the small space, but still. 

Jean had smiled at him apologetically for the entire trip, and he’d successfully maintained his Malfoy trademark expression all along, which was a mix of upturned nose and disgusted grimace, peppered with a cold stare of disdain every time someone bumped into him. Inside, he had just wanted to sneak an arm around her and anchor himself in that moment. She was trusting him with something new and entirely hers, and it meant a lot to him in his journey towards the understanding of the muggle world. 

Draco had been brought up with the firm belief that muggles were animals, filthy and thieving, that had acquired magic with sneaky and illegal plotting. He had been taught to hate them, despise them, treat them like their blood was muddled and dirty. 

“Never touch a Mudblood, Draco,” his father had hissed the night before his first ride on the Hogwarts Express. “They carry diseases on their very fingertips.”

And he had believed him for a couple of weeks. Then, he had started wondering what kind of disease that little girl from Gryffindor might have that didn’t show any symptoms whatsoever. She was annoyingly clever, but he doubted that was a sign of illness. Now, after years of keen observation and hushed conversations in the dorm with Theo, after mulling over and over all the things he had learnt about that girl and her fellow muggles, he had realized his father had been messing with him all along. Muggles weren’t filthy, nor provided with mud in their veins. They smelled, yes, but some wizards did too. Muggles were just people, with a different set of skills, ideas and prejudices. They loved and hated just like wizards. They fell for wrong propaganda just like them.

They stepped out of the Tube on Golders Green, on Finchley Road, and Jean steered him along the street for a while, then they turned left. They walked past a big cemetery, tomb stones and mausoleums jutting from the green grass like shards of ancient times, silently guarding histories that almost no one remembered anymore. The houses on both sides of the street were intrinsically English, with little front lawns, trimmed edges and cars parked in paved driveways. 

“Here we are,” she announced, stopping in front of one of those houses, with brown roof-tiles and ivy creeping up the right side of the wall. The curtains were drawn and the door was a shiny auburn, with a brass knocker. There wasn’t any of those means of transport that muggles used. Draco had spotted one in each driveway. And the grass was withering and yellowish, unlike other lawns. 

Draco followed her to the door and waited until she opened it with a small key. 

“Come in,” she invited him quietly, stepping inside. The sun was setting and the house was dark and cool. He looked around the small entrance hall and thought of the Manor on instinct, of the marbles and statues and portraits and enormous flower vases his mother kept always overflowing with roses and peonies. He spotted a coat rack with trench coats and a jumper hanging by its hood. There was an empty umbrella stand near the door, and a narrow console to leave your keys and purses. A staircase led upstairs and a narrow corridor ended with a closed door. Jean turned left under an arched entrance that opened on the living room, then stuck her head out back at him when he didn’t follow.

“This way,” she beckoned and he obeyed dutifully. 

The living room was spacious but cozy, with an expensive looking rug and a leather couch. The walls were covered in shelves laden with books of every size and color. He recognized some spines. She had brought him muggle literature and scientific tomes while he was holed up in Knockturn Alley and apparently they’d come from here. Her personal collection. Through those books, he had learnt a lot and he had frequently needed a moment to collect himself and realize how complex muggle society and needs were. Magic was impossible to explain, but electricity wasn’t that easy, either. 

There was a fireplace in red bricks, but it was empty, and a black rectangle on a small table that he knew was called “tellyvision” or something like that. He had read about it, of course, and was actually curious to see it in action because it didn’t make perfect sense yet. He walked to the fireplace and picked a framed photo from the mantlepiece. A tall man with a brown beard and a sprat of freckles across his nose was smiling fondly down to a minute woman, with a head of curls and a pair of piercing green eyes. She was focused ahead, smiling politely at the camera. They weren’t moving, as per muggle photo science. In the background, an ancient monument of Roman architecture that he recognized to be the Colosseum, in Rome. He observed other pictures as well, but it was always those two people and no one else, even if some of those photos seemed intended at a larger party. There were strange positioning and gaps in some places, as if someone was missing.

“This was my parents’ house,” she said, and he turned abruptly. She was by the window, her arms crossed on her waist, holding herself together it seemed. 

“It’s a quiet muggle neighborhood, away from the hustle of the centre. I thought it could be safer for you,” she offered and he nodded, putting back the frame on the mantel.

“You don’t live here, though,” he observed, taking in the dusty film over the furniture. 

“No, but I’ll stay if you want, then we can move into my safe house as soon as we’re ready to strike,” she replied, taking a step closer to him. 

Draco looked at her, still polyjuiced into a blond girl with delicate pale skin and blue eyes. She reminded him of Daphne Greengrass on some levels, but this version had a warmer gaze, and plumper cheeks. He needed her to drop the disguise. The ache in his chest was becoming unbearable. 

“You still don’t trust me, do you?” he asked, and he had meant it to come out bitter, not sad and pained like that.

She flinched a little and didn’t answer. Draco nodded.

“I’ll be honest with you. I wanted to go back, for my mother mainly. I left her alone, with Voldemort living in our house and…I’d made a promise, I had a mission. A mission that, if accomplished, would keep her alive. Her and me, of course. And I wanted to go back, so I tried the Cabinet every day. Til July,” he said, staring her in the eyes. She remained silent, but her gaze was speaking volumes all along. You could polyjuice all you wanted, the eyes would always give you away.

“When you asked me to join you, I stopped trying to go back. Because, who am I kidding? There is no going back. And she’s probably dead already, my mother, isn’t she? So, I told myself, be brave for once in your useless life and do something that matters,” he said, his gaze dropping to his hands. “I also stopped trying, because I want to stay here. With you. I’m selfish, and I finally want a chance at being where I want to be, without people telling me what I should want instead.”

“Draco, what…” she started, but he looked up again and pinned her to the spot with a heated glance.

“I know who you are, I’ve known for a while, maybe forever. And being near you here has finally explained what I’ve always felt in the back of my soul, at Hogwarts. What I’d never had the courage to examine and accept. Because I was a coward, because I was afraid of my father and worried about my mother. Worried about what people would think. Worried of dying for feelings I wasn’t supposed to feel, because that’s how I’d been raised!” he exclaimed with a bitter chuckle.  

“I know it sounds crazy,” he continued, driving a hand through his hair, exhausted, “but there aren’t prejudices here, no upbringing rules to respect, no expectations to satisfy. I’m free and you’re here and…you can trust me,” he finally said, locking eyes again. She didn’t shy away, she stared back. 

“You don’t need to bribe me into doing anything, I will follow you wherever you need me to. I will never betray you, ever. Not to wizards, nor to muggles, I swear on my mother’s soul,” he stated, dead serious, never breaking eye contact. 

She observed him in silence for a while, then uncrossed her arms and walked to him. She stopped when they were so close her chest almost brushed his. She had to crane her neck to keep looking him in the eyes.

“You said you know who I am.”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me. Who am I?”

Draco lifted a hand and brushed a finger over her cheek. He could feel the faint bubbling under her skin, while the potion started to wear off. She didn’t act upon it. She didn’t recoil from his touch and waited for an answer, looking stern and hopeful in equal measure.

“Hermione Granger,” he whispered.

At the sound of her name on his lips, she closed her eyes and when they blinked open again they weren’t blue anymore, but rich brown with specks of caramel. Her skin tone had deepened, her curls had framed her face. His lips parted in awe. She had never been more beautiful. 

“What now, Malfoy?” she asked, a little tremor in the back of her throat, well masked with defiance. 

He fully cupped her cheek, closing the distance between them. She looked surprised and curious, a warm kind of longing coiling deep in her pupils. 

“What I said to Jean earlier, was meant for Hermione. I wasn’t lying, I’m not lying. It’s probably a first in my life, Granger, a little appreciation would be preferable here,” he said, his mouth lifting in a half smile. He wanted to sound cocky, but she saw his vulnerability laid out for her all over his face. Like she had never seen it before.

She covered his hand with hers and pushed her face towards his, till their noses grazed. “I’m appreciating, Malfoy, deep down,” she murmured.

He was still smirking when her lips found his.

*****

May, 1997

He lifted her up and she anchored her legs around his waist, their lips hungrily latched to each other. Draco walked her back to their nook and lowered her on the bed, kneeling on the mattress and watching her hair spread on the pillows like ink. God, she was unreal, with her mouth rosy and slightly swollen, her eyes bright and hot with need. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her until this very moment. The ache in his chest had never been this strong and deep. He had mourned her, lost her forever, and had slowly come to some sort of acceptance that he would never hold her to his chest ever again. But now she was there before him, and he felt so grateful and undeserving at the same time, he couldn’t rule in his poor thumping heart. 

“Draco,” she whispered, reaching for his face, tentatively. He must have been staring. Draco leaned down and kissed her gently, pushing every thought to the outskirts of his mind. She was there, with him, and he had a second chance. This time he would give her everything.

His lips travelled to her jaw and down her throat, drawing a path of searing hot imprints, until he found her collarbone, where he let his teeth graze her skin softly. Hermione gasped and arched towards him, hands threading in his platinum hair. Swiftly, Draco caressed the side of her breast with his thumb, vanishing the grey top of her pajama, with wandless magic so seamless she didn’t even notice until his mouth kissed the swell of delicate skin right at the hem of her flimsy cotton bra.

“You must teach me how you do it,” she breathed out, throwing her head back into the pillow. She felt his smirk on her breast, while he moved closer to her hard nipple, his lips hovering dangerously over the cotton.

“Swot, always thinking about academic achievements,” he murmured, then enveloped her peaked nipple with his mouth and darted his tongue out. She moaned so loud it echoed in the vaulted room. Gods, he was going to die tonight.

“Draco,” she pleaded, while he trailed a hand up her naked leg, where once had stood a layer of fabric that he had expertly vanished again. His fingertips grazed the smooth flesh of her inner thigh until they found her knickers. He gently ran his index over her folds through the cotton, then pushed them aside and plunged in, dragging it down and up again. She was sleek with want. He groaned and his head span, a jolt of pleasure electrifying all his nerves-endings. Playing nice was over.

Draco lifted a little and tore her knickers away, nudging her legs apart a second later. She gasped in surprise but didn’t resist. When he kissed her stomach and down to her belly button, she held her breath and waited. Only when his mouth found her folds and his tongue stroked her clit she finally released a long, shuddering moan of unadulterated pleasure that almost shattered his resolve. He pushed his tongue inside her and her hand came to the back of his head, nails grazing his scalp in a request for more. He gave her more. One of his hands shot up and pushed her bra away from her perky breast, rolling her nipple in tandem with his tongue and she pressed into his mouth and into his hand, crying out his name. The way her voice rolled around the r and leapt up on the o made him jerk inside her, his hand spasming around her breast with the effort of holding on for dear life. He pressed on the right spot at the right moment and she came undone in his hands, her pleasure waving out from her throat unrestrained. She was vocal and that aroused him to no end.

Still trembling from her high, she grabbed him by the tie and dragged his face to hers, capturing his lips with hunger. When she let him go, she was panting, her chest rising and falling against his shirt. Her eyes were shining like burning embers and her gaze melted his ice shards in an instant.

“I want you, now,” she gasped, loosening his tie and tugging at his shirt. He didn’t let her repeat herself. Tearing away clothes as if their lives depended on it, he was bare before her in seconds and only paused to enjoy her hungry eyes taking in his body in awe. Hermione touched all his scars, from his hipbones up to his shoulders, lacing her hands around his neck. Before adjusting between her legs, he vanished her bra, the final barrier between their naked skins. Hermione lifted her hips and latched her legs around his narrow waistline, feet gently caressing his toned thighs. He lined his cock to her entrance, then caught her eyes before pushing in with a single fluid thrust. Her eyes rolled back in her head and a strangled moan escaped her lips. He had to close his eyes to steady himself or he would come there and then. 

Draco gave her a moment to adjust and stretch around him, then gently moved out of her and thrusted back in, savoring the delicious friction between their bodies. 

“Draco,” she called again, want etched so deep in her voice he almost gave up. He slid his arms around her waist and hoisted her back up a little, letting her legs widen around his waist and thrusting deeper. She liked that. A lot. She came again on his cock, squeezing him with each wave of pleasure and he groaned and gritted his teeth hard to hold on a little longer. He was distracted and she used one of the fighting maneuvers he had taught her to roll him on his back and straddled him. 

She was a goddess, with her hair wild around her face, cascading down her back and chest, curls almost covering her breasts in full, nipples peeking through her lustrous locks. 

She rode him, pushing her throat out, arching her back and chasing her pleasure once more. And he knew he was done for, even before she looked back down at him and whispered those three words that unleashed his carefully restrained need.

“Come for me.”

And he obeyed, hard and fast, calling her name, his muscles taut and threatening to snap. He came and spilled himself in her, without thinking, without dreading, without fear of anything. Because they were safe there, and the future would be short-lived, so consequences be damned. She might have thought the same, because she just took it, with her eyes to the ceiling, her chest rising and falling, her lips stretched in a content smile that seemed to say: This moment is all that matters. And it’s finally mine.

******

“Draco?”

“Mmmh?”

Silence. Hermione opened her hand over his pectoral, fingers splaying out wide, as if to contain all his chest in it. 

“Did you think of her, of me in the other timeline, while we…” she trailed off, unsure. Draco kissed the crown of her head softly and spoke on her skin.

“I thought of you, here, in my arms. And you are her in some way. You are the girl from school, as well,” he explained. 

She sighed and looked up. “But I’m also not. The Hermione you loved in the other timeline, she never went back to Hogwarts, never found out about the Relligo. She never healed in the way I did.”

“But your souls are one and the same, Granger. She might have been a bit more reckless, you might be a bit more calm, but it’s you. The same person I used to long for when I was a stupid teenager, scared of getting what he really wanted,” he replied, cupping her cheek. And he firmly believed that. He had loved an Hermione that had been out for blood, with unfinished business and a streak for revenge stronger than preservation spirit. He had loved an Hermione that had kept secrets from him, many and big. But he loved this version of her here just the same. Because he loved Hermione Granger, all of her, always her, only her. 

She smirked at him. “So you admit you had a crush on me, then!”

He chuckled. “Let’s say that, if I had woken up in the Hospital Wing tonight I would have snogged you senseless.”

She giggled and burrowed into his side, then sighed. “I wonder what would have happened, then. If we had found a way to each other there.”

Draco had wondered, too. 

“We did find a way to each other, in both sliding doors. That must mean something,” he suggested. He didn’t want to say out loud what his theory was, he wanted to hear if she reached the same conclusions. And he could almost hear the noise of cogs and gears turning and clicking inside her mind, while she made hypotheses. It was actually very sexy.

“Do you think…” she paused, pushing up a little to look him in the eyes. Her gaze was twinkling with unspoken hope. “Do you think we’re fated? Meant to be?”

He pushed some curls away from her forehead and stroked her cheekbone.

“I think our souls know each other, somehow. I think they chase each other through time and events,” he said. 

She parted her lips. “Is there something like that? I mean, have you heard of it?”

He shrugged. “Soul magic is very misty and there’s little literature on it. But the concept of fated mates relies on this mechanism, partly. Souls are shards of energy that travel and they recognize each other sometimes. I think that’s what ours did, pulling towards the other for purchase.”

Her eyes widened a little. “Pulling…” she murmured, then sat a little straighter and Draco propped up on his elbow.

“When did you start to feel it? The pull,” she asked. 

“Around Third Year,” he answered, already sensing her train of thoughts. He had already confessed his feelings to another version of her, but she hadn’t revealed a lot about hers. Draco hadn’t known she’d had a crush on him in school, the other Hermione hadn’t been ready to open up to him. But he had loved her anyway, even if what she could give back wasn’t everything she had to give. This version, this Hermione before him now, though…she was something else because she was ready.

“After I hit you?” she pushed and he nodded. She smiled, as if she’d just solved a very complicated riddle. 

“I need to go to the library, find everything on soul magic! You might be right! We might be fated and our souls recognized each other when I touched you for the first time! Merlin, Draco! It’s been there, all along! We were so stupid and we lost so much time!” she blabbed, words hurtling out of her mouth at breakneck pace. She was already getting up, naked, reaching for clothes that were actually nowhere. Draco enveloped his fingers around her wrist. She paused and turned, almost surprised he was still there.

“Calm down, Quicksilver,” he murmured with a half smile. She frowned with a smile of her own, then scooted back in bed and sat crosslegged in front of him.

“You’re right, we wasted a lot of time, and it was mostly my fault,” he confessed, placing a finger on her lips when she started to protest. 

“You know I’m right, Granger. I was the one always pushing you away and keeping you at distance. And I did it because I was an idiot, thinking your interest must have been a fluke of the timeline. Apparently, I couldn’t have been more off the path,” said, a smirk starting to pull at his lips. “Now, as much as I would love a trip to the library to do some sexy research, I would also suggest we try to make up for that waste of time I’m mostly responsible for,” he hinted, curling his finger under her chin and getting closer and closer to her lips. She let out a small breath on his mouth, a blush spreading on her cheeks, and he smirked. 

“How do you suggest we do that?” she chanced, her voice coming out liquid with want. 

Draco’s smirk widened, his perfect teeth shining in the dim light of the Room. “How do you feel about your personal space? Do you deem it essential?”

“Not really,” she breathed, lips ghosting on his.

“Great, because I don’t think you’ll have any in the next few weeks, Lioness,” he murmured, capturing her lips in a searing kiss. Hermione responded, scooting closer until she was sitting in his lap, legs wrapped around his waist, feeling him already hard again against her core. He let his hands slide up her back and hide in her hair, massaging her scalp while he kissed with a passion that ignited her like a match. But she had to tell him something, had to make one thing clear, right now. It was important.

She pushed on his chest a little and pulled away, his gaze filling with worry immediately. 

“Wait, Draco, there’s something I have to say, before we get into this,” she said, cupping his cheek. 

He narrowed his eyes. “I think we are into this already, Granger. At least knee-deep,” he pointed out. 

She grinned and rolled her eyes. “Yes, well, I still want to tell you this. I need to, and I need you to understand it.”

He became instantly serious, arms fastening around her waist, as if he feared she might fly away. 

Hermione took a deep breath. “You can tell me whatever you want about the other timeline, the other…version of me you met. Or you can tell me nothing, and it would be fine by me. I don’t care. I only care about you, Draco Malfoy, here with me now. Do you understand?”

His gaze was granite, hard and unflinching. His lips were pressed together and his jaw was tense. She pushed her consciousness towards his, opening completely, letting all walls tumble down before him and her eyes show everything, all at once. He felt it, and she witnessed the inscrutable veil of Occlumency that seemed like second nature on his face dissolve. She saw a shade of gray that had rarely been there before. His irises were almost silver, sharp like a knife, with a kind of pain she had kept hidden in herself as well. But right there, at the edge, there was a whisper of something new. His features softened and his arms molded around her with the gentleness of freedom that one can only experience in a safe place. 

“Yes, I do.”

Chapter Text

21.

October, 2001

“I’m back,” Draco called from the hallway, closing the door behind him and tossing the keys on the console. 

“About time,” Hermione scalded him, dashing from the living room, her face drawn in a mask of concern. “I was this close to downing a Polyjuice and coming to look for you,” she added, crossing her arms on her chest.

Draco frowned and glanced at the clock hanging on the wall over the console. 

“I’m not late, Granger, why are you worried like this?”

“I don’t know, I’m anxious, that’s what I do. I’m Hermione Granger and I’m a professional knickers self-twister,” she snapped, throwing her arms out. 

Draco smirked walking towards her, his left hand holding two paper cups and a suspicious, small, brown bag. He got dangerously close to her and leaned down to place a small kiss on the tip of her nose.

“Let me take care of your knickers, Granger, will you?”

His suede voice rumbled into her stomach and made her whole body tingle, but she resisted the urge to strip him naked on the spot, forcing her eyes to travel down to his occupied hand. 

“What’s that you’re holding?”

Draco’s smile widened and he handed her the cardboard tray with the two coffee cups. “It’s pumpkin spice lattes. I saw the poster in that muggle place you told me is popular and I wanted to try it. People were queueing for this stuff, it must be good.”

She sighed and took the cups. “It’s extra, Draco. We can’t afford extra.”

He opened the brown bag and showed her the content. Two dark squares that smelled very much like dark chocolate and butter made her mouth water. Brownies. Holy brownies. Sweet and fat and sinful brownies.

“We can’t afford extra every day, Granger. We can do that once in a while though, around Halloween for instance. Plus, I stole a length of sausages, so I saved money here,” he pointed out, arching a brow and heading for the kitchen. Hermione followed him, a delicate scent of nutmeg and cinnamon starting to trail out of the small sipping holes in the cups’ lids. 

“How did you do that? Nicking meat is dangerous, Draco!”

He placed a canvas bag on the kitchen counter and started fishing out groceries with a smug grin on his handsome face.

“Big diversion at the nearby fruit stall. It was messy, but a pumpkin the size of a Giant Purple Toad exploded and there was a bit of a frenzy for just enough time to make a length of sausages disappear in my trusted bag here.”

Hermione’s jaw went slack. “You used magic? With the Grid up?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, baby,” he tsked, placing a loaf of bread near the sausages. “I didn’t go to the city centre, I hit the market in Woodgreen, there’s no Grid there yet. And, before you object to that, my wandless magic is so subtle it never trips any tracking spell.”

“Draco, it’s still dangerous,” she said, fingers gently reaching for his forearm. He stopped while pulling out a bag of dried chickpeas and caught her eyes, full of concern. He cupped her face with his free hand and kissed her softly. 

“I know, and I am being careful, I promise you. But you need to eat some meat sometimes, Hermione. You’re getting thinner, I don’t like that,” he said, caressing her jaw with his thumb. 

“Meat is expensive and we need to keep the money for emergencies, in case we have to get away quickly, Draco. We can’t use it up on food. And you can’t get caught by using magic to steal it, either,” she said, pouting like a baby. He loved when she made those puppy eyes, she thought she could win him over with those. Of course, there was no need to win anything, he was completely and utterly sold to her, but he let her believe he still had some self-interest. Because it was intoxicating watching her play nice. 

“Granger, we have plenty of money. My signet ring was solid platinum, and I struck a very good deal with that peasant at the pawnshop. I think I scared him a little,” he mused with a smirk. “Maybe it’s the hair, who knows.”

She chuckled and slid her arms around his neck, burrowing between his legs. He let the grocery go and grasped her hips on instinct. 

“I want you to hold on to that money, Draco. We don’t know what will happen after we strike on Donovan,” she muttered, pushing on her tiptoes and placing a kiss on his chin. Draco pulled her closer. 

“Once he’s dead, wizards will take their places back, Granger. I’ll have my Malfoy inheritance, you’ll be covered in gold for your heroic feats and we’ll live happily ever after. Isn’t that the plan?” he asked, over her lips, hungry for a real, deep kiss. 

“What if the plan does not plan?” she suggested, but her heart wasn’t in it. She could feel his need against her stomach and she was already pulsing with arousal.

“I won’t allow it. You know how petty I am when things don’t go the way I want them, I’m an only child,” he said, hands palming the back of her legs and swiftly lifting her up and on the counter, slotting between her thighs, pressing into her centre. 

Hermione giggled, hooking her feet behind him and pulling him closer, grinding against his hard cock, a moan sliding past his lips. 

“Oh yeah? And what do you want now?”

He kissed her jaw to her ear and hovered there, his hands snaking under her jumper and up to the side of her breasts. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her nipples were already waiting for his fingers. 

“I want to eat you out, until you’re soaking wet, then I want to make love to you for hours. Then, when we are both exhausted, I want to eat those delicious brownies while watching Terminator because you promised it’s as good as Rambo, Granger, and I really hope I won’t be disappointed, ” he whispered, slowly rolling one of her nipples between his index and thumb. His other hand reached behind her head and gently took away her hair clip, letting her curls fall down freely. Draco sighed, burying his nose in the locks brushing against her neck.

Hermione moaned. “Can’t see disappointment in any of that.”

*****

Trafalgar Square was the stage of a chilling oxymoron. It was full of people, like Hermione had never seen it before, and yet it was as quiet as if it had been deserted. The crowd, bundled up in scarfs and knit caps against the cold air of Halloween evening, was tightly packed in the rectangular space, some people even standing on the edge of the fountains, others perched on the dais of Nelson’s Column. A few children had been placed on the back of the brass lions, little tamers with huge eyes pointed towards the facade of the National Gallery. Everyone’s eyes were pointed there and the silence was so deep it almost pressed on Hermione’s eardrums. Her fingers tightened around Draco’s, while they observed ahead, waiting for the event to start. 

Right at the top of the stairs that led to the famous art gallery, a stage had been erected, with a naked metallic pole in the centre of a wide, round base of the same material, that reflected the dying embers of an uncharacteristically beautiful fall sunset. A man stepped onto the stage, in his pristine black suit and  tailored, woolen coat. His dark hair was gelled back, just as he’d always worn them, and his face was a mask of benevolence. 

Karl Motherfucker Donovan.

Hermione felt a surge of rage ignite in her chest and spread through her body. The Grid was up, and judging from the numbness in her veins, Donovan had managed to increase its strength.  She wanted to grab his heart and take it out of his body with her bare hands. 

He strode towards the centre of the stage, right in front of the pole, and took in the crowd, his piercing eyes scanning the square at large. A thin smile spread on his closely shaved face. He looked like an emperor assessing the peasant working his land. He looked like a priest about to bestow his wisdom upon the fallible followers of his parish. But even from that distance, Hermione could feel the evil glint in his eyes.

“My beloved citizens,” he said, and his voice reverberated over their heads, amplified by microphones and speakers. “Thank you for gathering here tonight on such a treacherous day! You are brave and I commend you for that!” he handsomely praised the crowd. A couple of women sighed around them and Draco squeezed her hand to stop her from scoffing. Treacherous day referred to Halloween, a notably witchy holiday, that the new Government had seen fit to abolish. People had been thoroughly scared out of their brains with such harsh propaganda that the abolition had been pretty easy to obtain. All the scary bits that hinted to magic had been wiped away, hadn’t even made an appearance in the shops actually. And no one was wearing a costume, of course. Because Halloween was when the veil between worlds was thinner and magic in the veins of those evil wizards and witches was stronger. They could strike from any spot and people wouldn’t want that, right? No one would want to be mistaken for one of them, not even for a second, not even for a laugh. So there you go, no Halloween celebrations allowed and stronger security in the week leading to that night. Hermione had been angry beyond words when they’d heard the orders on the news. Draco had been incredulous. Muggles were indeed just as stupid as wizards then, following orders of terrors from a single man. Even if Donovan was no Voldemort in appearance and manners, he sent out the same vibes, the same ideas of repression and murder. In a sense, he was taking a course of action that not even  Voldemort had. He wanted to wipe away wizards, not just enslave them. He was after extermination. Sitting on the couch of Granger’s house, listening to that talking box that showed real time stuff, Draco had finally grasped how bad the situation was. They had to make something, quickly, or magic would become a thing of legends.

They were both polyjuiced tonight, for good measure, and out in the open to gather intel. They had been planning to get to Donovan at the Ministry or around his house, but the security was too strong to breach in those places, so a public event might have been a better idea. They were there tonight to assess how difficult it could be to place a bullet in his forehead in a setting like that one. They couldn’t use explosives or make a big attack, they didn’t want innocents to get involved, so a personal assault was the best solution. And since Draco had revealed to be a terrific shooter, they could use that. Hermione had tested him in Knockturn Alley, where she could still risk a silencing charm since the Grid wasn’t fully working over that magic soaked area. He was able to hit a very small target from a very long distance, and never failed to nail the exact spot he chose. So that could be done. They only needed to plan how to get out of the mayhem that would result after Donovan’s brain had spilled on the floor. A smile tugged at Hermione’s lips at the image. 

“And it’s because of your courage that I want to reward you with a prize. Tonight of all nights, is the perfect occasion to remind you how hard the Government is working to keep you safe from threats to your peace and wellbeing. Tonight, that we used to call Halloween Night, I want to tell you how much we are improving our tools to defend ourselves from dangerous lunatics!” Donovan shouted, spreading his arms out as if to hug them all. The crowd seemed to awaken and cheered, breaking the silence and giving Hermione the chance to snort unnoticed.

“Fucking bastard,” she muttered, and Draco soothed her, stroking her fingers in his. His eyes were scanning the square, looking for security measures, guards planted at corners, guns ready to shoot. He even spotted a couple mingled in the thick of the crowd. The place was carefully surveilled, but he could make out a bunch of escape roots and a possible hideout. 

“Focus,” he whispered back, before the cheering fizzled out. Hermione straightened. Donovan let his arms down his sides and the silence came back. He smiled and it made her skin crawl.

“The Grid, that dutifully protects us from magic, is stronger! My team made truly incredible advances in their research and we are now able to run it for 12 hours straight, almost everywhere here in London, and we are bringing it also to other cities, like Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester,” he announced, eliciting surprised gasps and cheerful laughters. Hermione narrowed her eyes. Twelve hours was a lot of time, but it still meant the Grid was unable to recharge while in use. So nights were still handed over to tracking spell. The fucker still needed wizards to run his regime of terror.

“To keep our streets safe at night, we are going to implement current measures with a special snatch squad that will take care of those nasty criminals on the spot and bring them to the law!” he cried, a thunderous applause almost covering his last words. Hermione held her breath. A snatch squad. Just like the Snatchers that Voldemort had used. Couldn’t people see it? The same pattern, the same ideas, the same techniques? She looked around and only saw starry eyed followers, wrapped around his little finger with unquestioned trust.

“But I make a plea to you, my beloved citizens! You are the most valuable resource to the Government and to yourselves! Keep your eyes open and report witches and wizards whenever you think you spot one, without fear! Because it’s only like this that we finally defeat our enemies and make this world a safer place!” he added, his voice smooth as silk, his hands clasped together in front of him. Draco beside her swallowed, his body tense and ready to snap.

“Tonight we bring to justice a fierce and lethal threat that one of you dutifully reported, spotted using his demonic qualities to alter his physical appearance, trying to sneak away from the city at night! Tonight, on Halloween Night, we show them how we purify our world from their infectious disease,” he explained, stepping aside to let the pole be the centre of attention again, while a burly brute all clad in black robes dragged a man on the stage, his hands tied with metal cuffs, a chain wrapped loosely around his ankles. He had a hood on his face and he was struggling to get free from the beast’s grasp. The executioner lifted him into the metal circle and slapped him against the pole, keeping him pinned there with one big arm. Another man, thinner but equally dressed in black, hurried up on stage with a thick coil of metal cord in his arms. He started wrapping it around the poor prisoner’s legs, then torso and shoulders, until he was incapacitated. Both executioners stepped back and Donovan approached the wizard to tear his hood away. He was younger than Hermione had expected, not yet thirty maybe, with dark hair and pale skin. He wasn’t crying nor pleading, but fiercely snarling around a gag placed between his teeth. 

“Let the world be free of your fetid tricks, wizard,” Donovan hissed, the microphone bringing his voice around the square. People seemed to be on the verge of falling over with anticipation. Hermione wanted to scream. 

With a nod to the executioners, Donovan stepped down the stage. The two cronies reached down a hole in the floor and heaved up bundles of wood, piling them around the base of the pole, right at the wizard’s feet. Draco’s gaze hardened like stone and he pulled Hermione closer. They were going to burn him at the stake. 

When the thin executioner threw gasoline on the kindling, the crowd cheered, applauding and screaming obscenities at the poor wizard, who was now squirming and thrashing against the metal cord around his limbs. Where it made contact with naked skin, it ate up the flesh, opening wounds and letting blood drip out. It was like people could smell it because their cries for justice became louder. 

The burly executioner lit it up a lighter with a flick of his wrist, then threw it at the wizard’s feet, the dry logs soaked in gasoline catching fire in a blink. The flames grew higher and higher in the span of mere seconds, licking at the wizard’s clothes, making the incandescent metal cord brand into his already blistering skin, while the white hot pole melted the flesh of his back. The gag must have fallen out, because his screams rose so high over the crowd's cheer that Hermione’s knees menaced to buckle under herself. Draco felt her unsteadiness and kept her up against him. The smell of charred flesh and burnt hair made him gag and he had to swallow several times to avoid vomiting there and then. No one noticed in the frenzy of the moment. No one paid attention to them, all eyes pointed towards the pyre. They could have bloody left unseen, but their legs seemed rooted to the smooth stones of the square, their eyes unable to close over the massacre in front of them. It might have been them on that stage. It still may be. 

“We have to hurry,” Hermione mumbled, grasping his arm tighter, fingers leaving bruises his numbed skin couldn’t register. 

They had to hurry. They had to murder Donovan, take down his regime. They had to strike, until they were still free. Until they were still alive. 

******

May, 1997

Draco Malfoy spent a week in the Hospital Wing after the Sectumsempra, which meant they didn’t have to worry about him sneaking in the Room of Requirement to work on the Cabinet. It also meant that Harry wouldn’t be obsessing over the Marauders Map looking for him, since he knew very well where he was. And that all translated in Draco and Hermione being relatively free to roam around the castle at night for a week. 

Draco took it upon himself to shag her in every corner of the castle that had sparked a fantasy back in school, either his or hers. Turned out that the library had been one for both of them, so it had been first on the list. They sneaked in after midnight, reached the tucked away History of Magic Section and packed the entire aisle with silencing and repelling charms. Hermione was throwing in a couple of extra Muffliato when she felt him hover behind her, his fingers pushing her curls aside and exposing her neck. Draco leaned in and ghosted over her pulse, gently grazing her skin with his knuckles. Hermione sighed, reaching up for his silky white hair and pushing her back against his chest. His other arm snaked around her waist, hand splaying over her hip and pressing her into him. He kissed her neck, down to her shoulder, while his fingers covered her throat and travelled up to the jaw and his other hand inched down her belly towards the hem of her skirt. Of course they were in uniform, officially in case someone caught them, unofficially because it turned them on to unspeakable ends. 

When his hand finally found the apex of her thighs, Hermione gasped and arched against him. Draco moved slowly over her knickers until he reached the elastic band and his fingers slipped beneath it, playing with her soft skin, taking his time in his exploration. His other hand had left her jaw and had expertly popped enough buttons of her shirt to expose her perky breasts. He moved aside the flimsy cup of her bra and gently stroked her nipple, while his left index plunged between her glistening folds. She moaned in his ear, loud and long, demanding. 

“So wet, Granger. Is it for me or for the books here?” he asked, and she could detect a smirk in his voice that sent a jolt down her spine. 

“Definitely the books,” she breathed, while he pumped his finger inside her and rolled her nipple in unison.

“Do you want to read something, then. We could do this another time,” he suggested, starting to retrieve his hand from her knickers, but she grabbed his wrist and stopped him. 

“Don’t you dare, Malfoy,” she hissed and he chuckled, the low rumble reverberating against her back. 

“So bossy, Granger. You would have been a perfect Head Girl,” he murmured, stroking her clit with his thumb while pushing two fingers inside her. Hermione gasped and sighed, throwing her head back. 

“Tell me what to do, Granger,” he whispered, moving his fingers slowly in and out, his other hand stilled on her breast. 

Hermione swallowed, breathing deeply. “Make me come.”

Draco smiled a wolfish smile and pinched her nipple, turning his fingers  inside her and curling them. He drew a couple more circles over her clit before she clenched around his digits and her pleasure cascaded in waves, her moans almost bringing him over the edge, too. She had unconsciously been massaging his erection with her backside, her round bum stroking him while she chased her own release. She was still coming down off her high when he flipped her over and hoisted her up, pushing her against the bookshelves and wrapping her legs around his waist. Hermione was surprised for just a second, before her hands swiftly opened his trousers and released his cock from its confinement. Draco was inside her in an instant, freeing a liquid gasp of  bliss from her lips. 

“Merlin, you’re so perfect,” he murmured, placing his hands behind her back to support her and avoid too much pressure of the wood on her flesh. Hermione kept her thighs tightly wrapped around his waist, moulding to his body while he set the pace. Draco adjusted her a little bit higher, so that his mouth was perfectly leveled with her exposed breasts. His mouth took in one of her nipples and his tongue flicked around it. Hermione pushed against him, demanding more friction, more contact points and he gave them to her. He wanted to give her everything.

“Draco, harder,” she gasped and he lightly bit down on the hard peak of her breast. She arched, breathless, while he pushed harder and faster, his mind ready to blow up with ecstasy. He pushed further between her legs, reaching a deeper angle, while licking her nipple up and down, then rolling his tongue around it. She came again, her walls tightening around him and bringing him over the edge a second later. His head was spinning, but he kept her up and secured against the shelves, her head resting on a small gap between old books. He buried his head in her chest, her heart beating indents into his cheek. 

“Immagine if Professor Binns would float around here now,” she giggled, dragging her fingers through his hair.

“He was so utterly unbothered by life that he didn’t even notice when it slipped away from his body, Granger. I don’t think he would let a couple of students shagging ruin his nightly stroll,” he mused, looking up and planting his chin on her sternum. She laughed and sighed, satisfied. 

“I imagined it just like this, you know? When I saw you studying some tables down from mine, back then,” she confessed with a mischievous grin. 

“Is that so? Miss Revision Plans had dirty reveries instead of doing homework?” Draco teased, gently setting her down on trembling legs. Hermione playfully swatted him on the bicep.  

“Oh because you were so pure of mind, weren’t you? If you had a crush on me, don’t tell me you didn’t dream of fucking me here after curfew as well!”

Draco smirked dangerously. “At some point I didn’t even care about curfew, I wanted to bend you over a table so much, Granger.”

Her breath itched. “Over a table, uh?” she asked, trailing a hand down his chest, teasing his muscles over the shirt. 

“Intrigued?” he retorted, arching his left brow and closing his fingers around her wrist. 

“For research purposes,” she said, looking at him from under her lashes. Such a little vixen she was. Draco’s cock twitched at the mere sound of her voice. 

“Let me help you with the research then,” he growled, hauling her up and walking her to the nearest table, while she giggled into his neck. 

*****

Hermione was a bit surprised when Draco brought her to the Astronomy Tower the following night. They had spent the day in bed, cuddling and napping naked in each other’s arms, briefly getting up to nibble at some food for sustenance, but apparently he’d been planning the whole night in detail in his head all along.

Once they’d reached the door that led to the ascending stairwell, he’d made sure the entire area around the entrance to the tower was well warded and repelled any possible passers by. He had conjured blankets and pillows, placed warming and cushioning charms all over the exposed round space so that she would be comfortable and cozy. He had loved her slowly and gently, taking his time to kiss every inch of her body, worshipping her like a goddess, pleasuring her with a tenderness that left her speechless. When they were finally both spent and sated, they laid down on the makeshift bed and he kept her by his side, drawing patterns on her naked skin with his long fingers. The sky was clear that night and the dark planes were quilted with stars and constellations that glimmered over them. 

Draco was intently observing them, the mysterious shapes reflected in his grey irises. He felt her watching him curiously, her hand resting on his chest where his heart was quietly beating. She always did that, as if she needed to be sure he was there, alive and real. 

“I like stars,” he murmured, searching the darkness for the constellation that gave him his name. 

“Because they’re so far away they can’t be bothered with human quarrels?” she asked amused, with a very believable aristocratic drag in her tone.

“Because they can’t have feelings,” he said instead, making her pause with confusion. “They’re just rocks, with no remorses, nor regrets. I wonder how that feels like,” he went on, wistful.

Hermione stayed silent for a while, turning her eyes to the sky as well.

“Feelings are what makes this life worth living, though,” she whispered, and her voice was soft and light, like fingers trailing over a wound to heal it. 

“Can’t we just have the good ones, then? Happiness, love, kindness, the easy ones?” he asked, tucking a forearm under his head, eyes finally locking onto the constellation of Dragon.

“Love is never easy,” she retorted, her hand over his heart twitching a little. 

She was right of course. Love isn’t easy, especially when it’s too big to be contained in your chest. It’s not easy when you have to push it aside and make choices around it. It’s not easy when you still have so much in your soul but the other person is not there to take it. It’s not easy when you love someone that doesn’t love you back or that doesn’t deserve that love but you cannot very well choose who you love. It’s not easy to love from a distance, from the shadows, letting the other free to love someone else. 

“But it’s always worth it,” he whispered, gazing down to her turned up face, the light of the moon playing tricks on her skin. She looked happy and his heart ached for a multitude of reasons, some of which he was trying very hard to banish from his mind. 

“You’re also worth it, you know?” she asked, cupping his jaw tenderly, her eyes never leaving his. Draco gave her a half smile, but his heart wasn’t in it. Her fingers pressed reassuringly into his cheek.

“You are, Draco. You are to me,” she insisted, wanting him to understand, to accept what her feelings were towards him and towards his past, too.

“I have a Dark Mark, Granger,” he said gently, lifting his tattooed arm and pushing a curl behind her ear. He always touched her as if she was made of glass. 

“Not because you wanted it,” she replied, and he knew she believed those words. He didn’t want to break her certainty, but had to. He wanted to be honest with her, even more because he hadn’t been right away, straight out of the Cabinet. 

“I did, Granger, I wanted it when I took it,” he confessed, his voice low but soft, laced with self loathing. Her mouth snapped closed and she furrowed her brows, waiting for what he had to add. 

“It was either this, or have my mother and father killed. And me as well. I was given a mission: take the Mark, get Death Eaters inside Hogwarts and kill Dumbledore. Either accept the honor, or die. I didn’t want to die, Hermione. I wanted to live and I wanted my mum to live, too. It didn’t matter who got trumped in the process,” he confessed, staring straight into her eyes.

“This doesn’t mean you wanted to take the Mark, Draco,” she pointed out, dragging his face gently towards hers until she could place a small kiss on his lips. He let her, because he was selfish and wanted her comfort more than anything else, but he lightly shook his head. 

“Don’t condone my actions, Granger. I’m a bad person.”

“You’re not bad, Draco. You’re just not perfect, like everyone else on the planet.”

“I killed people in horrible ways, and I would do it again,” he said bitterly, but she shrugged. 

“I’ve been there, too, and I don’t think I’m a bad person. We just made bad choices sometimes, it doesn’t mean we don’t deserve redemption.” 

Draco sighed and looked back at the starry sky.

“Redemption,” he repeated, savoring the world on his tongue. “I hope your soul remembers this when I become a real Death Eater once the Relligo kicks in.”

Her palm gently pushed his head towards her and their gazes locked again. The strength of her will radiated from her warm irises and her determination felt ironclad. 

“I’m Hermione Granger, my intrinsic nature demands me to remember everything, doesn’t it?” she said, an echo of a different conversation twinkling in her eyes. Draco chuckled, his throat bobbing a little. 

“I hope you’re right.”

Hermione scoffed, adjusting closer to his side and slinging a leg over his. 

“I’m always right.”

This time Draco laughed up at the sky, his heart flattering in his chest. 

Love might not be easy, but happiness definitely was.

Chapter Text

22.

End of January, 2002

The pub was buzzing with Friday night patrons, fresh out of work and straight into the weekend frenzy. The air was already stuffy and it wasn’t nine yet. The counter disappeared between bodies queuing to get a pint and bartenders were busy pouring draught beer from taps, expertly dosing the liquid and tipping the glasses to produce the right amount of foam on top. Music was playing in the background, a lively Irish gig slithering between loud voices and boisterous laughter. 

“So I told Craig it wasn’t fucking possible, was it? But he said - Hey! They use fucking magic, mate! Anything’s possible!”, a man in a trench coat said, slapping a hand on the table, his half-pint trembling, a drop of foam sliding down the cold side of the glass. Hermione laughed with him and took a sip of her own beer. Dark, earthy, thick. Like the blood she imagined would gush out of this man’s throat if she could have it her way. 

She pushed a strand of dark hair behind her ear, but it was so straight and fine it slipped back on her face, annoying her to no end. She smiled sweetly.

“God, they are a menace, aren’t they?” she mused and the man nodded, gulping down a big swig of his beer. Bottoms up, she thought, be a good boy.

“They are, but the Grid is getting stronger every day now. Fourteen hours, last test recorded,” he said, with a pleased expression. 

“Wow, what an improvement! And what about the snatching squads? I hear they’re catching people better than those treacherous tracking things, you know? Maybe we’ll manage to get rid of their magic sooner, yes?” she asked, making a disgusted little sound before drinking some more Guinness. The man laughed and nodded, his eyes twitching a little. 

“I bet… Donovan would love to, but…those snatch squads can’t do much without tip offs or spells,” he admitted, frowning a little and swallowing, confused. 

“Well, people are helping though, aren’t they? Reporting as many sightings as possible?” she pushed, keeping her tone light.

The man took another sip of beer, blinking fast. When he spoke, he sounded mildly choked. 

“There are some reports, yes, but sometimes they’re wrong. Some of the people don’t have magic.”

“So they’re released, right?” she asked, her fingers playing with the rim of her glass.

The man shrugged, trying to keep his mouth shut. He failed.

“They can’t, can they? They would speak up and tell people the Government is failing, going around blind hoping to catch wizards.”

Disgust dropped into her stomach like a stone in a pond, but she didn’t allow it to surface on her borrowed face. 

“What about executions? Anything planned in the near future?”

The man chewed on his tongue. “A big one on Valentine’s Day. Five people, I’ve heard.”

She cocked her brows, impressed. “Five, uh? Security will be a nightmare to organize! Any special measures?”

He eyed her, hands trembling a little, a drop of sweat running down his temple. He was resisting, but was he also suspecting? Hermione wasn’t sure if muggles knew about Veritaserum and how it worked. She had been using this technique with Fred a lot, back in the days of intel gathering. It was how she’d stashed away so much information about Donovan and his castle of cards made of pieces carefully welded together . 

She laughed a little and drank some beer, waving a hand in front of her.

“I mean, I’m sure there are, I was just curious if things are different for big executions like this,” she dismissed it, smiling brightly. The man was still compelled to answer by the potion, but his suspicious gaze ebbed. 

“Yes, there are more guards. And snipers on rooftops all around the area,” he explained, then drained his glass.

“Where is this one taking place?” she casually asked, looking to the bar for a moment, a movement catching her eye. 

“Piccadilly Circus. They’ll stop the traffic and everything,” he said. Hermione nodded, taking her last gulp of Guinness. 

“I’m sure it’ll be a hell of a show! Can you please excuse me? I need to hit the loo,” she said, standing up and walking towards a set of stairs that led down to the toilets. Someone followed her and when she was about to push open a door to the back alley, a silky fabric enveloped her, making them both invisible to the world. 

“Be quiet, there are snatchers outside,” Draco whispered, while they stepped out in the dark street. True enough, a couple of tall men were caging someone behind a bunch of big trash bins overflowing with black garbage bags.

“Just confess already, you tart! They saw you drop your wooden stick in the bathroom, filthy witch. Confess and we’ll be merciful,” one of them said, shaking a girl by her arm. She gasped in pain.

“It was just a hair pin, one of those Asian things! It’s not a wand, look,” she whimpered, reaching for her chignon with her free hand. Her hair was a luscious shade of red. And it reminded Draco of a different girl, a fiery Gryffindor, good at Quidditch and with heaps of brothers.

He tried to push Hermione away, towards the main street, before she had the same thought but she halted, rooted on the spot. 

“Fuck’s sake, Granger,” he hissed, but she didn’t budge.

“Wait,” she whispered, transfixed.

The other man slapped the girl so hard she hit the wall with the back of her head, the wand clattering to the cobbled floor. Because it was a wand, there was no mistaking it for something else there. The man put his foot on it and pushed hard until it snapped. The girl cried out in pain, as if her own arm had been torn from her body. Hermione flinched. 

“Granger, let’s go,” he pleaded, his whisper covered by the girl’s lament. But Hermione was out the Cloak in a blink, unconsciously inching towards the poor witch on the pavement, whimpering and crying. She took out her own wand on instinct, and all blood drained from Draco’s face. She wasn’t polyjuiced anymore. If they saw her, she was dead. Her foot hit a puddle and the girl lifted her head, her eyes searching the darkness. The lankier guard whipped around, just when Draco grabbed Hermione by the coat and hauled her behind the bins, throwing the cloak over them. 

“It’s her, Gas! I saw her,” the man shouted, craning his neck down the alley, looking for them. The other one whipped around as well, confused. The girl took the opening and scrambled away in the opposite direction.

“You fucker! She’s escaping, come on!” the plumper man cried, grabbing his friend’s elbow and running behind the girl. 

Draco didn’t loosen his grip until the echo of their footsteps had quieted down, until he could actually hear her heartbeat against his own. Even if her curls were suffocating him, he didn’t let her go.

“What the fuck were you thinking, Granger?” he asked, when they finally stood visible in the alley again. He was more scared than angry, but that didn’t prevent him from breathing fast and hard from his nose, looming over her confused face. 

“Clearly, I wasn’t thinking,” she retorted, putting away her wand, avoiding his gaze. 

“They could have captured you, one of them recognized you!” he hissed, dangerously close now, hands trembling by his sides. 

“It’s too dark, no one will believe him,” she muttered, starting to walk towards the main street. Draco grabbed her arm and turned her around. 

“Maybe, or maybe someone will! They’ll start looking for you again, Granger! Don’t brush me off like that, it was fucking stupid, what you did!” he pushed, his heart drumming in his head. 

She could have died. She could have died. She could have died. She could have died. She could have died. She could have died , the melody said and his knees felt like fucking jelly. 

“I know, I fucked up, okay? I’m sorry, I wanted to help her, I…lost it, I lost it for a moment, okay? Or am I not allowed to lose it for a fucking moment?” she asked, her eyes starting to well up with tears. The gravity of the episode was finally catching up on her and she started trembling like a leaf. Draco hauled her into his chest and held her close, his fingers burrowing into her curls. 

“We are not allowed to lose it, Granger, you know that,” he muttered into her hair and she nodded.

“I’m sorry, she looked like…” she started, her voice so small it made his heart ache.

“I know,” he whispered, hugging her a little tighter. He sighed and kissed the top of her head. “Let’s get out of here. Do you have your beaded bag on you?” 

She nodded and showed it to Draco, their most trusted storage safely attached to her side under the coat. 

“Good, to Borgin and Burke then, we cannot go back to your house,” he said, starting to drape the cloak over them. Hermione sighed.

“I have a safer place,” she said, then laced her fingers with his while they became invisible. 

She led him through town on foot for a while, getting away from the more crowded areas of Soho and China Town, until it felt safe for Draco to step out of the cloak and step down the stairs of a Tube station. Hermione walked right behind him, whispering instructions from under the protective shroud of the cloak, directing him on the right train and down at the proper stop. They came up in a quiet neighborhood, with a nice park and simple houses, but Hermione walked him away from it, until they reached a more working-class area, with brick Georgian townhouses in various shades of beige and maroon that looked tipsily alike. She finally stopped in the middle of a small square, touching his elbow to signal that was the place. Not a very nice one, if one asked him, but he waited. After some rustle of fabric and a pause, she extended her arm from under the cloak and he saw some kind of doodle on her skin. He gently cupped her wrist and pulled it closer to his face and the doodle morphed into a scribble in blue ink that read:

12, Grimmauld Place, London

Draco scrunched his forehead and looked up. The numbers on the doors jumped from 11 to 13, but as soon as he’d registered the information, the wall trembled and started to slide right, until a new door appeared, with a rusty 12 on it. 

“Sweet Salazar,” he muttered, while Hermione twined their hands and pulled him towards the house. Once inside, some candles lit up in the corridor-like hallway, but it was still dark as fuck.

“What is this place?” he asked, looking around, squinting a little to adjust to the very dim light. Hermione balled up the cloak and shoved it into her purse.

“Welcome to the last standing safe house of the Inner Circle of the Order of the Phoenix,” she announced with a half smile.

“It’s not exactly your style,” he quipped, following her down the corridor and into a kitchen with a massive fireplace. Hermione retrieved a lighter from the mantlepiece and kneeled down to start a fire from some half burned logs. 

“Options were limited, and this place was safe. Still is. But it’s right inside the Central Grid’s radius, so no magic,” she said, snatching a piece of paper tucked inside a crate beside the fireplace. She lit it and stuffed it under the timidly smoking logs. The wood crackled and sizzled, then a small tongue of fire leaped between the logs and expanded over them. 

“Such big news,” Draco drawled, sitting down at the big dark table. He took in the room, the walls blackened by smoke, the sooty mahogany mantlepiece that had once been a rich marrow and now was mostly black, the old coppery pans and pots hanging over a massive stove that had rusted in some places. This house reeked of pureblooded money and decadent extinction, and he was curious to know more about it, but didn’t ask. Hermione hadn’t told him whose house was this and he had the feeling there was a reason, so he kept all his questions to himself and decided to ask them when both their minds were a bit more uncluttered with other worries.

“Any luck with the policeman?” he asked, when she finally sat at the table, the fire finally strong enough to tackle the chilling temperature of the room. 

“The Grid is reaching fourteen hours of runtime, the Snatchers aren’t going to replace the tracking spells any time soon and people are reporting basically anyone, so the Government is executing muggles as well, to cover up for wrong arrests,” she replied, her hands folded on the table. Draco frowned. Shit was hitting the fan, as muggles would say, and that only meant Donovan needed to tighten up security as quickly as possible. If that sort of behavior came out in the open, people would revolt against him.

“The girl I was talking to mentioned they are speeding up improvements on the Grid, so Donovan wants to get rid of Snatchers and spells alike as soon as possible. I guess it could be related to that, too,” he mused, tapping a finger on the wood. He looked up at her and found her eyes fixed in a vacant expression.

Hermione sensed his gaze. “Next execution is on Valentine’s Day and it’s going to be a big one. Five people,” she said, catching his stare. 

“Where?”

“Piccadilly Circus.”

“Security?”

“The usual, plus snipers on the buildings.”

Draco clicked his tongue. “Risky.”

“We’ll steal a couple of bulletproof vests.”

“Yeah, because they’re so easy to come by! Plus, snipers target the head, Granger, according to the movies you showed me.”

“We’ll hide under the cloak.”

“I need to be out of it to shoot.”

“We create a diversion, direct their attention somewhere else while you shoot and then disappear under the cloak,” she countered, without missing a beat. Draco growled inwardly. She had decided, there was no convincing her to stand down. He only needed to keep her as safe as possible with a decent plan. 

“We have two weeks to figure it out, I’m sure we’ll work something up,” he conceded, turning his palm up on the table. Hermione offered him a triumphant smile and put her hand in his.

“Together,” she murmured.

Draco smirked. “Always.”

*****

14th February, 2002

They were both fully polyjuiced again, with all their belongings stashed in Hermione’s beaded bag, ready to flee London as soon as the mission was completed.  Hermione was disguised as a slender blonde woman with pale eyes, her hair in a low ponytail with a couple of waves escaping and framing her diamond shaped face. Draco was a tall man with messy ginger locks and freckles to spare, a disguise that had been source of interminable teasing from Hermione, due to the strong resemblance he bore to the signature Weasley traits. How the mighty had fallen, he’d dramatically swooned, drawing a fit of giggles from her that had made his heart flatter around his chest like a delighted bird. Draco had secretly admired the Weasley after discovering almost the entire clan had sacrificed to the war first and the resistance against Donovan after, so he wasn’t really bothered by her sweet mocking. 

They were crossing Leicester Square hand in hand, the lights of the theaters shining over their cold cheeks. Their feet proceeded slowly, adjusting to the relaxed pace of a river of people ahead of them, all headed to Piccadilly Circus. Draco had his gun in the wide pocket of his favorite coat. It had been Hermione’s father and was a bit large around the shoulders, but it gave him freedom of movement and provided cover for weapons in the chest and waist area. Also, it was a bit on the longer size, so it reminded him of wizarding robes and as much as he liked muggle clothes he was nostalgic some days. 

Hermione’s own pockets were stashed with Nosebleed Nougats from Weasley Wizards’ Wheezes she was about to offer to children she would accidentally bump against, when they would be close enough to the stage. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I stepped on your foot! Here,” she gasped, smiling indulgently to the parent and handing the child a chocolate. The parent nodded and the child accepted the treat in colorful wrapping. 

“Happy Valentine,” she added, turning around and walking in the opposite direction. To keep her odds high, she repeated the operation at least six times all around the square, just before Karl Donovan appeared on stage. She reached Draco in the centre and squeezed his wrist. Draco nodded and gripped his gun tighter in his right pocket. As soon as someone started screaming for the nosebleed, he was to shoot the bastard on stage and Hermione would pull out the cloak from her bag and drape it over themselves. She already had a hand in the opening of the little purse, her fingers latched around the flowy material. They hadn’t managed to get bulletproof vests in time, so the cloak maneuver had to be quick and precise, or they would be sitting ducks for snipers.

Draco let his eyes travel around the square and on the stage. There was a security ring of black clad guards all around the perimeter of the crowd, but the entrance to the Tube station was surprisingly clear. Up on the buildings he could make out a bunch of shadows, that were probably aiming their rifles down at the people. A line of troopers was standing just in front of the stage, shotguns in hand and pointing to the floor, ready to sprint into action if the situation required it. On the stage, behind the tall figure of the Prime Minister, five gallows stood, thick nooses gently swaying in the  night breeze.

 The crowd went silent when Donovan lifted his arms, wide open at his sides to hug them all. It was his favorite move. Hermione knew it was all a scene, he hated physical contact. He almost never even shook hands with strangers. He had never touched Lupin or any other Order Member apart from her. And maybe Ginny once. 

“My beloved citizens! Thank you for your presence here tonight! The love you’re showing me, and the humble Government I lead, warms my heart on this romantic day!” he said, his voice booming over the crowd. His suit was midnight blue tonight, partially visible under a tailored coat, a shade lighter of his jacket and slacks. He was handsome as usual, but his eyes seemed harder, the purplish halos around them faintly detectable under a thin layer of concealer. Good, things weren’t going exactly how he had planned, supposedly keeping him up at night. Not for long, though. 

“I want to show you how much the Government loves you in return, providing protection from monsters that still roam our streets, their veins black with magic!” he cried, the crowd cheering and booing in response.

“You know how we all work tirelessly to round them all up as soon as possible to extinguish the threat they pose to us! And tonight I have a special bounty to offer you, as a token of love!”

He gestured to someone off stage and four hooded people were brought up and positioned behind the nooses. The prisoners were of different heights and built, but each of them had to be propped upright by a guard, as if they weren’t capable of standing on their own. 

“They’re drugged,” Draco murmured. Hermione gritted her teeth, one hand going to his forearm. He could feel her heat through his coat and jumper. 

“They’re four,” she replied. Draco frowned. The nooses were five, but there were only four prisoners. Why? What was going on here?

“Our law enforcement department, also thanks to your reports, has managed to acquire some of the most dangerous wizards and witches that terrorized us in the weeks following Demise Day! And tonight, I offer them to you, with a deserving necklace around their necks,” he said, a smile spreading on his lips. He snapped his fingers and the guards slipped the nooses around the prisoners throats, hoods still on. An excited murmur lifted from the crowd and Draco heard a small wail from the back, a child’s tantrum of some sort. Maybe a Nougat was about to be eaten. He adjusted his fingers around the gun in his pocket. 

“I’m sure you’re wondering who’s missing there,” Donovan mused, his arm drawing an arc towards the empty noose left, right in the centre. He chuckled and Hermione’s skin crawled. She instantly knew something was very wrong tonight. She felt magic bubble under her skin, even if the Grid was up, even if she wasn’t supposed to be able to use it, she could feel it. It had happened before, since her magic waves were stronger than others and sometimes, especially when the Grid was around its power limit, she felt she had access to it. 

Donovan’s gaze washed over the crowd, observing the people with curiosity, letting his eyes rest here and there, attentive and pondering, as if looking for someone.

“I don’t like this,” Draco muttered, his lips barely moving. 

“I’ll ask you not to panic, but I have reason to believe there is a very dangerous witch among you tonight,” he calmly announced, eliciting gasps of horror from the crowd, people started shifting and eyeing each other with frightened glances. Draco’s heart stopped for a second and a shiver ran down his spine. Those Snatchers in the back alley. They had seen her and reported her. Someone had actually believed them. Hermione had been reckless after Betrayal Day, she had told him how she’d destroyed Donovan’s main lab just minutes after the ambush at Malfoy Manor and she had been wanted since then. Desirable No. 1. Draco had a feeling Donovan had never stopped looking for her. And tonight he was playing with them. 

Draco took advantage of the noise to bend a little and speak to Hermione.

“We abort, he knows. Too dangerous.”

But she didn’t seem to register his words. Her eyes were focused on the people on stage and the buzz of magic was ringing in her ears like static. Draco could feel the heat radiate from her in waves.

“She is wearing a disguise, I’m sure, but she is here anyway. The most wanted witch of England, the most dangerous terrorist at large. She destroyed a research building on her own, in plain daylight, with people inside,” he said, playing on the crowd’s fear, warping the truth to his needs. Hermione tightened the grip on Draco’s arm and the heat made him almost jump. Was her magic surfacing? He knew she could access it even with the Grid on sometimes, but she always kept it in check. Could she do it now, with anger fueling it? He stepped closer to her.

“Careful,” he only murmured, cold sweat beading his forehead despite the chilly night. 

“She is very good at hiding, I’ll tell you that. Very quiet and calculating, she is. But let’s see if Miss Granger can keep quiet while her friends here die,” he smirked, signaling the guards. The hoods came off and it was like stepping back in the past, walking down a corridor in Hogwarts after a lesson. There, in the nooses, four familiar faces appeared and Draco felt the punch of defeat hit his stomach. Because he knew he wasn’t going to be able to stop her. He knew with a fierce certainty he wouldn’t be able to save them both from what was about to explode. Because up on that stage were some of her best friends. Ginny and Fred Weasley, Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood were about to be hanged and he was sure Hermione wouldn’t stand by and accept it graciously. 

As soon as the hoods came off, static crackled around her hair and the cry of a wounded animal escaped from her lips. He tried to tell her it was a trap, they couldn’t be them, her friends were safe somewhere in France and Greece as she had told him. Those people were polyjuiced prisoners, drugged to play the part, bait to lure her out, but it was useless. They had been spotted, Donovan had seen her, people had cleared a circle around them and a sniper had pointed his rifle to her chest, the red dot of the laser aim visible in the dark. Draco grabbed her arm and pulled her, extracting his gun and shooting up over a building, the laser beam disappearing for a second. The noise of the gun shot made the crowd explode, shouts filling up the square, people running left and right. Donovan barked something on the stage, the line of troopers shouldering their way through the madness and towards them. 

They had to run, hide, get out of that spot, they were exposed and visible now. Draco started pulling Hermione back, but other snipers were targeting them now, a red dot appearing on his own chest as well. She saw it, her eyes widening in panic and it all happened at once. She took one single step. Draco saw the dot disappear from his chest and heard a low whistle cross the air. Hermione stumbled forward and her magic flared around them. A bubble of golden light envelopped them, while she slid down his chest, knees hitting the pavement. 

“Hermione?” he whispered, trying to pull her up, but she shook her head and frantically patted her waist to find her bag. Her breaths came out ragged and wet. Draco kneeled before her and reached for her hands, his fingers sliding over hers, coated in blood.

“Hermione! No, no, no, we have to go, Hermione,” he cried, while she took off her bag and pressed it in his hands. Draco’s eyes flitted over the dark stain spreading on her sweater, right in the centre of her stomach, her hands trembling and dripping blood over his. He looked up and found her gaze trained on him, her face white as the moon.

“I’m so sorry, I made a mistake,” she blurted out, her voice feeble, tears spilling down her cheeks. 

“No, it’s okay, you’re never wrong, you’re Hermione Granger. We can fix this, Hermione, we can,” he stammered, grasping her hands tight, but not knowing what to do. His magic wasn’t working, he couldn’t heal her or apparate her away, he had nothing.

Hermione shook her head and tried to smile at him, one hand going up to his face. They were still polyjuiced, but her disguise was slipping, her eyes were back to a warm shade of chocolate. She inhaled deeply and caressed his cheek tenderly.

“I made a mistake, Draco, because I should have let go of this madness and get out of here with you when I could,” she whispered. The sound was muffled under their dome of light, but bullets were hitting the shell from outside and her strength was rapidly fading. She was slipping from him right in front of his eyes and he could do fucking nothing.

“Hermione, please don’t leave me now. We said together,” he murmured, taking her face in his hands, touching his forehead to hers. She sobbed and kissed him softly. Her lips tasted of copper. 

“Please, be safe,” she whispered, eyes in his, before squeezing them shut and gathering her remaining magic to apparate them out of the square and into a familiar alley. When they hit the pavement, she was still in his arms, her eyes closed, her chest silent. Her face was back, her curls wild around her pale cheeks and he cupped one, his thumb stroking her soft skin.

“Please come back to me, Hermione,” he whispered, but she couldn’t listen to him anymore. His tears dropped on her face, on his bloody hands, on her dark locks.

“Hermione,” he called, surrender in his voice. He sat against the wall of the back alley of the Leaky Cauldron and cradled her against his chest. With shaky fingers, he fished out the Invisibility Cloak from her bag and draped it over them, hiding from the world, and cried in silence while his heart crumbled into dust.

Chapter Text

23.

March, 2002

It took Draco two weeks of Polyjuice and Veritaserum to find Jerome Biles. The bloke wasn’t the biggest fish in the sea, but he was Head of Security in one of Donovan’s labs in the city, and that was enough. He could use him to get inside the network and find the sniper that had killed Hermione. It would take time, but Draco was patient. And driven. Revenge was the only thing that kept him getting up in the morning. He hadn’t allowed himself to mourn for long, jumping right into action to make things even. 

Hermione was gone. 

He had buried her in the small patch of land behind The Apothecary, where the owner used to grow some magical plants to stock up on fresh ingredients. It was all weeds and dead grass now, but it was right inside Diagon Alley and her spirit would be surrounded by magic, she would be safe there. He went to visit every night and transfigured a twig or a leaf into a flower to lay near the small stone he had placed on top of her grave, with a small sun carved in it. He was using wandless magic, because she would have wanted him to be careful, even in a place where Donovan’s power couldn’t reach him. And every time he kneeled down and placed the flower on the ground, he promised her he would be careful, and he would make things right.

So, he had started spending time in the pubs and bars where Donovan’s followers gathered, where he could eavesdrop on policemen and lab workers. He had talked to them, dropping a little Veritaserum here and there, asking questions, finding leads. Until he had chosen the right face to wear to get inside: dear old Jerome Biles. 

No family, no kids, no old parents to care for. He fancied guys, which was frowned upon in his environment. To avoid gossip, he used to go to clubs out of the city, which was great because the Grid wasn’t always reaching that far. Draco tailed him for a week before he deemed it time to act. 

The night he accosted him, Draco wasn’t Polyjuiced. His face was still unknown to Donovan and his minions, so he decided he was safe using his own charm for what he needed to do. He followed Jerome into a gay club out of town and sat at the bar for a while, observing how he flirted with a tall bloke near the dancing floor. Jerome was in his fifties, fit and broad shouldered, but his hairline was quickly receding and he had a big nose that made him look like his head was plastered on the wrong body. Draco waited for the tall bloke to walk away before getting up from his stool, drink in hand, and reached Jerome, whose eyes were longingly following his failed attempt at a hot night. 

“He’s not your type,” he told him, taking a sip of his Americano, letting his hair fall a little on his forehead. Jerome glanced around at him, brows arched.

“And you would know, because…”

Draco smirked. “Because I’m your type.”

Jerome had looked him up and down and laughed, a twinkle in his eyes, and after that it had been almost too easy to get him out of the bar from the back door. Draco had pressed him against the brick wall, kissing his neck and groping the bulge in his trousers, while the man let down all his defenses. Poor Jerome never felt Draco take out his wand from his sleeve. 

“No hard feelings, mate,” Draco whispered in his ear before pointing the tip to his throat and slicing it open. His eyes went wide, but he had no time to scream for help, blood already choking him. Draco gently placed him on the ground, closed his eyes and cleaned away any trace of blood. Then, he took out a small jar from his coat pocket and cut all Jerome’s hair with a swipe of his hand, placing the strands in the glass container. He searched his pockets, took his wallet and house keys. Finally, with a cold stare, he transfigured him in an empty bottle of whiskey, that he carefully placed in one of the garbage bins. 

From another pocket, Draco extracted a flask, placed one single hair in it, waited a few seconds, then gulped down the content. He had done it so many times now he didn’t even wince when his body cells bubbled and rearranged into Jerome’s. He transfigured his clothes to match those of the late Head of Security and tucked the wand safely in his jacket, before walking away into the night. 

*******

May, 1997

“You’ll be discharged tomorrow, right?” Hermione asked, looking up from the book propped on her lap. Draco twirled one of her curls around his index, eyes still skimming the page from over her shoulder. She was curled up against his chest, reading, and he was tagging along while cuddling her gently. She was warm and soft and smelled nice. He could live like that forever, really.

“Yes, this is our last night of freedom before my whiny self comes pestering us in here,” he murmured, locking eyes with her. She smirked. 

“We should go to the kitchens, then. Stash up on some food,” she suggested, touching his shirt around his throat, knuckles tickling his skin swiftly, leaving a faint trail of fire. He loved how she always touched him involuntarily, as if drawn to him, incapable of staying away. He did just the same, intoxicated by her closeness. 

“Mmmh, I guess you’re right. We won’t be able to move around a lot when he’s back on the loose,” he conceded, reaching to close the book and putting it on the floor. 

“I hope there’s cake,” Hermione sighed, her head resting on his collarbone, nose grazing his neck. Draco tangled a hand in her hair, soft and heavy against his palm. Merlin, he loved her hair. He couldn’t believe there had been a time in his adolescence when he’d thought it was ugly. He wanted to be suffocated by her mane of ruthless curls, wanted to feel them all the time, through his fingers, on his chest, on his neck. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and stay there for hours on end. 

“Cake? Since when are you a sweet tooth?” he murmured against her temple.

“I’m not, actually. Maybe it’s you rubbing off on me,” she teased, angling her face up and capturing his lips in a light kiss. 

Oh, there was rubbing, for sure. A lot of it. His core was perpetually melting in puddles, gathering around his lower belly and keeping him constantly warm and aroused, night and day. The rubbing was necessary. It didn’t matter if she was fully clothed or completely naked, Draco always wanted to devour her. They might be just sitting on the sofa, reading, or observing the Cabinet to assess its conditions, he always ended up snogging her senseless before sliding into her in a flurry of moans and gasps. And she let him, every single time. She actually initiated some of the snogging sessions by standing too close to him, casually kneading her backside against his front, or hugging him and stretching like a cat, arms around his neck. His brain short-circuited with a lot less than that, honestly, and she knew too damn well. They were indulging in each other, starved for more, and it was blissful. 

“Is it, now? I wonder what could happen if I rubbed a bit more,” he mused, one hand traveling up her stomach and resting on her breast, thumb gently stroking her already peaked nipple through the fabric. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she moaned softly. He kissed her, slow and tender.

“Draco…” she whispered, her eyes closed.

He hummed on her lips, circling his thumb around and around.

“Cake…” she breathed and he chuckled, resting his forehead on hers, stilling his hand. 

“Right, cake. Let’s get you some,” he said, hoisting her up in his arms and placing her on the carpet through giggles and gasps. 

Hermione retrieved her wand from the sofa and disillusioned their feet, while Draco draped the cloak around them. They walked to the kitchens in silence, the castle already fast asleep. They avoided Mrs Norris on the first floor and reached the corridor with the fruit painting that led to the Hogwarts Kitchens. Hermione tickled the pear and they slid inside quickly, closing the door behind them. The house elves were already in bed, but the fireplace still simmered with low flames and bright coals, perpetually awake and ready to be used. It shed a warm light all around the room, long shadows playing among the four tables’ legs. 

Hermione went straight to the pantry where Dobby used to stash the meager leftovers of their meals in the future and actually gasped when she saw how much food was waiting there to be ransacked. Draco opened another cabinet where a cooling charm kept perishable goods always fresh. 

“Bingo,” he smirked, taking out two plates and setting them on one of the tables. Hermione turned with an armful of stuff and her eyes widened in delighted surprise. 

“Cake,” she moaned, placing bread-rolls, fruit and cheese aside to devote her entire attention to the two slices of cake invitingly beckoning her closer. A three layered slice of chocolate cake, with ganache and dollops of whipped cream caught her attention first, but then her eyes took in the lemon tart with white meringue on top and her mouth watered unashamed. 

“Lemon merengue,” she whispered, grabbing the plate and sniffing the sweet treat like a drug addict in abstinence. Draco pried it from her hand and kept it out of her reach. Hermione stared at him with a murderous look.

“Let me feed it to you,” he said, a low note in his voice that promised so much pleasure she couldn’t really resist. She hopped on the table, legs dangling from the edge and parted her lips in anticipation. Draco positioned between her knees and snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him. Hermione gasped, hooking her legs around his thighs, hands coming to rest on his chest, while he grabbed the spoon from the plate and loaded it with lemon tart. He lifted it to her mouth and pushed it slowly through her lips, watching as she licked it clean. He wanted her to lick him like that instead. He managed another spoonful, his arousal mounting and simmering, but when she dipped a finger in meringue and sucked it, moaning in saccharin ecstasy, he couldn’t resist no more. He put the plate down, tangled his fingers in her hair and kissed her like a starved man. Hermione slid on the table, her legs locking around his waist and pushing her flush against his chest, need so strong he could taste it on her tongue, mingled with the tanginess of lemon curd.  

Draco pushed the shirt off her shoulders, a button popping open, exposing the top curve of her breasts. Hermione raked her nails up his neck and into his hair, grinding on his already hard cock, a growl vibrating in his throat while he explored her mouth, nipped her lips, palmed her breasts. They were so far gone, they didn’t hear the door open, nor the light steps of slippered feet on the stone floor. Only when a throat softly cleared, Draco’s dazed mind registered they weren’t alone anymore. He instinctively hoisted Hermione down the table and pushed her behind him, wand in his hand in a flash and ready to strike. But when he turned to face the intruder, his blood ran cold.

“Well, this is an outcome even I couldn’t have anticipated,” Albus Dumbledore mused with a glint in his pale blue eyes. 

Merlin’s bollocks in a pair of dirty briefs.

Draco was still, wand aimed at the Headmaster, his brain navigating a sea of murky and sticky shit. Hermione behind him was equally stunned.

What do I do?What do I do?What do I do?

Stun him, you idiot!

It’s Albus fucking Dumbledore! I don’t stand a chance!

“Mr Malfoy, shouldn’t you be in the Hospital Wing right now?” the old wizard asked, sounding genuinely curious, his clever gaze observing Draco and the little he could make out of Hermione, still safely tucked behind him. 

“I was feeling better, Professor,” he replied, his voice not quite as cocky as its younger one had been. 

Dumbledore hummed in assent, taking a step towards them, a shadow of a smile on his creased face. “I can see that, Mr Malfoy. Madam Pomfrey’s concoctions are miraculous, indeed. I might be mistaken, but you look perfectly healthy, and even a little taller.”

See? You should have stunned him before he could figure it out.

Hermione scoffed bitterly and walked out of Draco’s back, her own wand grasped loosely in her hand.

“Okay, let’s cut the bullshit here,” she huffed, boring her flaming eyes into the headmaster’s clear ones. “There’s no point in lying, Draco, Dumbledore cannot be fooled. He might be an asshole, but sure enough he’s not stupid.”

Dumbledore arched a brow, his surprised gaze flitting to Draco’s, almost questioning him about Hermione’s foul language and snarky tone.

Draco dipped his head and smirked. “Cut her some slack, she’s been through a lot.”

The headmaster observed them more closely, taking in details, studying their features and how they kept close to each other. 

“When exactly are you from?” he finally asked.

“2001,” Hermione replied, without missing a beat. “Draco, here, hit as far as 2005.”

Dumbledore’s look of interest went from her to him and back. 

“You are here to fix something that went wrong, I presume.”

Hermione laughed. She laughed in their old headmaster’s face. She laughed in the most powerful wizard’s face. If Draco hadn’t already been smitten for her, that would have probably made him fall in love with her right there. His cock actually twitched in his trousers and he wasn’t ashamed one bit.

“Did you hear him, Draco? Something went wrong, he presumes,” she bit out. She shook her head and took a step forward. She was angry, Draco could tell. Her hair was getting bigger.

“Does the Relligo Charm ring any bells?” she asked, “Is there any chance you haven’t cast it yet?” 

Dumbledore had the decency of frowning.

Hermione scoffed. “Right. Well, it won’t work, the Snidget Effect will warp the entire future and we’ll end up being hunted and killed by muggles like in the good old days.”

Dumbledore considered her words, then looked at Draco, as if sensing already what was the deal there. 

“What happens?” he asked anyway.

Draco straightened his back. “I fail. I don’t repair the cabinet, get stuck in the damn thing and don’t get Death Eaters here. Your leading event never happens, so your charm doesn’t kick in, and you don’t deem it necessary to fish me out of the cabinet to prevent that. I honestly wonder why, by the way.”

Dumbledore considered, calm and serene, despite the tragic confession they were giving him.

“As I’m sure you know by now, time is of the essence. It would take a lot of it to get you out, the plan would not be pursuable anymore, anyway. Since the Rellingo hasn’t been properly solved as a spell, I’d believe there might be some space to play around it. Some records suggest it might kick in as soon as another event of the chain happens. I guess those records were wrong,” he simply replied, more to himself than to them. 

“You guess right,” Draco confirmed. 

Hermione scoffed. “I cannot believe you were so irresponsible. You used a spell with no guarantee of working and risked all our lives in the process! Harry’s life,” she growled, disgust painted on her face. Then, with a bitter chuckle, she pressed on, “But I guess that was in the cards anyways, uh? Just, why didn’t you tie the Relligo to an action you would perform? It was the best way to kick it started!”

Albus sighed and lifted his blackened hand.  “Because I am dying, Miss Granger. I feared tying the chain to me would send it astray when I finally took my leave from this Earth. Magic usually responds to these kinds of fluctuations, so I figured I would bind the chain to someone that would survive the entire thing. Mr Malfoy, here, has a strong sense of self preservation, so I deemed him a good bet,” the Headmaster explained with a sad smile. Draco didn’t know how to take his words. Were they a compliment or an offence? Was he calling him clever for figuring out how to stay alive in shitty situations or a coward for saving his ass first?

“Clearly, you didn’t think this thing through enough. We’re here to clean up your mess before it happens,” Hermione explained, her tone still cold as ice. “Draco will repair the cabinet, his younger self won’t need to step into it to test it, and the chain of events will be set in motion.”

Pushing aside his thoughts, Draco placed a hand on the small of her back, soothing her with slow caresses. “Professor, we need you to keep it to yourself. We know how to repair the cabinet, we have it under control. Tonight was a slip that won’t happen again.”

Dumbledore bore his gaze in theirs. “Do you have everything you need?”

They nodded. 

“Where are you hiding?”

“The Room of Requirement. It’s not on Harry’s map, so he can’t see us,” Hermione said, a little softer this time. 

Dumbledore hummed, considering, musing over everything, then he waved his blackened hand in front of him, lightly, as if they were talking about the weather. “I’ll ask an elf to leave you some food every night in the last empty classroom on the sixth floor, so you won’t have to come down here, risking meeting someone else,” he said. “There will be wards around the Prefects’ Bathroom after one in the morning, you’ll be able to access but no one else will until sunrise. For personal hygiene. Password’s Mooncalf. And in case you’ll need anything, I’ll be up until three in the morning in my office. Chocolate Frog,” he added airily. 

“Thank you, Professor,” Draco said, sensing Hermione rigidly leaning into him. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes never left Dumbledore’s. The old wizard sighed and bowed his head. 

“I am deeply sorry for all the sorrow my behavior and my mistakes caused to you, Miss Granger,” he finally murmured. “Please believe me when I say that some of what happened was not intended to.”

Hermione scoffed. “Some of it was, though.”

Dumbledore inclined his head, a sad smile on his thin lips. “Some of it was, indeed. But I promise you I am not proud nor happy about it.”

“You better not,” she muttered under her breath and grabbed the Invisibility Cloak from the table she’d set it on. Draco murmured a summoning spell, the food flying in his magically extended satchel. Then he sent a final look to Dumbledore, dipped his head imperceptibly and reached Hermione by the door. 

When Dumbledore thanked them in a whisper, they were already concealed and into the dark corridor. 

Chapter Text

24.

April 2002

After almost a month of casual questions, files pulling and records reading, Draco finally put his hands on the security plan for Valentine’s Day execution. The list of snipers was pretty long, but killing Undesirable No. 1 had to give you some kind of popularity in the ranks. So, Draco asked around, with Jerome’s face, during a Friday night at the pub, and the name he needed popped up, among the general reverence and euphoria.

Connor Abney was young, well trained and loyal to his country. He lived in a regular house in Oakeshott Avenue when he wasn’t on a mission and had a girlfriend that worked in fashion and stayed in an apartment in the City. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke and didn’t do drugs. He only went out for beers on Saturday nights but he usually had Diet Coke. He went grocery shopping at farmers’ markets and preferred to use his bike rather than public transport. He ran for an hour in the morning and another in the evening. He was such a boring guy Draco wanted to roll his eyes every other minute while tailing him and just shoot him in the head during one of his running sessions. But that would be too easy. Not painful enough. Killing Abney was his first act of war against Donovan, and it needed to attract his attention, tell him someone was after him. 

Oakeshott Avenue was in a very quiet area, mostly clear of wizards even before Donovan’s regime of terror. Even if it was into the radius of the Grid, the coverage was flimsy, especially at night, and he could feel the pulsing of magic under his skin. Tracking spells must be a bit off too, because he’d tried some wandless magic and no one had come for him. There were some Snatchers patrolling the streets around three in the morning, but they only did a round and then disappeared. It was a series of lucky coincidences, yes, but it also meant that anything odd would be reported right away. Which meant Draco had to be careful and clever. Thank Salazar he was a Slytherin. 

When he knocked on Abney’s door that night, he was disguised as Jerome and wore a pleasant smile on his face. Connor gave him a blank look. They didn’t know each other. Great. 

“May I help you?” the young man asked, not opening the door all the way.

Draco nodded and showed him his credentials, Jerome’s badge shining in the warm light of the porch. “I’m Jerome Biles, Head of Security of Chelsea’s Lab. We are colleagues in a sense,” he said, with a note of camaraderie in his voice.

Connor smiled and opened the door wider. “In a sense. What can I do for you, sir?”

“I was tasked with security plans for the opening ceremony of a new wing of our lab. I'm building a team for the event and since what happened on Valentine’s Day we need to be more careful than usual,” he explained, furrowing his brows. “I’d like to have you in the squad, as our sniper. May I come in and discuss this further?”

Connor moved aside and beckoned him in. “Sure, sure.”

Draco stepped inside and politely looked around, waiting for Connor to lead him to the living room. The young man walked ahead of him and he followed.

“I didn’t know the Chelsea Lab was expanding. Isn’t it one of the smaller ones? Or maybe I’m thinking about another…”

Draco snapped his fingers and his words were cut short, a silencing spell hitting his vocal cords. Connor halted, hand flying to his throat, and Draco took advantage of his confusion to grab him and smash his head against the wall of the hallway. A sickening crunch resounded and Connor’s mouth opened to let out a cry that no one could hear. He stumbled on the carpeted floor, eyes rolling in his sockets and Draco hoisted him up by the front of his jumper. He smashed him down hard, banging his head again, a smear of blood trailing down his temple. The man was blinking fast, his legs limp. Draco dragged him towards a door on the left and ended up in the kitchen. He threw Connor on a chair and waved his hand to place a mild sticking charm and a light body binding spell on him. The man stiffened, eyes still rolling in confusion, his breaths coming out short and labored, but silent.

Draco grabbed his throat and forced Connor to look at him. His heartbeat dug into his palm, a desperate drum banging on the battlefield. 

“Any second now I’ll be back to my original appearance. I want you to look at the real me when I kill you. I want my real face to be the last thing you see before your pathetic heart stops beating,” he said, his voice already back to normal, so low it made Connor's skin crawl with fear. Draco let go of his neck and went to the kitchen drawers, opening one after the other until he found something he could use. In the last one under the sink was a long, sturdy screwdriver that reminded him of a wand. 

“You know, Connor, this isn’t really about you,” he explained, walking back and halting in front of him. “Of course, you were only following orders, but still. It was your bullet that killed my girlfriend. So, you see, I have to do this.”

He pried Connor’s legs open and stood nearer, crouching slightly over his terrorized face. His breathing quickened, Draco could see his chest rise and fall, rise and fall, his mouth trembling in the effort to open and shout against the spell that kept him immobilized. Draco, back in possession of his cold features, smirked.

“I would tell you I’m sorry about this, but I would be lying. I have been dreaming about gutting you for weeks now, and I won’t stop until all your blood is out of your body, even if all of it would never compare to a drop of Hermione’s,” he snarled, then with a quick stab he sank the tip of the screwdriver into Connor’s left eye. The man shuddered against the spell, his body pulsing with pain and the need to scream, but Draco pressed further, blood spurting down the man’s face and coating his own fingers. 

Draco scoffed and shook his head, taking out the screwdriver with a squelching sound. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I got carried away and didn’t ask you which eye you use to aim! Is it the left one?” he asked, a dark twinkle sparkling in the mercury of his irises. Then, he shrugged. “Oh well, I guess it’s either one or the other.”

The screwdriver went through the right eyeball and Connor squealed. Draco pressed a hand on his mouth. He couldn’t recast the spells, he needed to stay under the radar in case the trackers picked anything. He kept the man pinned to the chair and pushed the screwdriver deeper. When he felt resistance, he leaned his weight into his arm and gave a final thrust. Connor shuddered under his hand and then went still. Draco swallowed, suddenly aware of the smell of blood attacking his nostrils. He let the handle of the screwdriver go and stepped away, his fingers dripping red on the white tiles of the kitchen floor. Acid built in his throat, but he forced his gaze to stay on the dead sniper slumped on the chair. 

“I’m coming for you, Donovan,” he swore under his breath, cold rage clawing at his chest.

*****

August, 2002

Jerome’s face had granted Draco access to names, lots of them. Names of guards on Donovan’s payroll, names of scientists and engineers working at his projects, names of snatchers catching wizards and witches all around England for him to execute. And Draco had taken all those names and written them down in a little black notebook and  spent his days hunting those people, killing them. 

Since Connor’s body was found with a note pinned to his chest that said “You have a new Undesirable No.1 coming for you”, Donovan had tightened his fist, strengthening security around himself and his labs, pushing on his research and improvements behind closed doors. The Grid was becoming more powerful all around London now, and a new mechanism of self recharging had been implemented, to make it last further into the night. So Draco had to become more creative in his strikes, and lean more into muggle techniques. 

After killing the sniper, he had lived like Jerome for another few weeks, enough to gather as much intel as possible. When his hair had run out, Draco had relocated to Knockturn Alley, back to Borgin and Burke’s apartment over the shop, taking with him all of Jerome’s weapon supply. He spent his days tracking down Snatchers mainly, following them under the Invisibility Cloak until they were alone enough to be killed. He almost took down one every two days. 

Every time there was one of Donovan’s public appearances, Draco made sure to be close enough to drop a homemade molotov or set some bin on fire, or shoot at one of Donovan’s associates, just for the sake of causing distress and remind the motherfucker he was still out there, biding his time before the real thing. Karl Donovan may have been cruel, but he wasn’t dumb. He had realized pretty quickly there was a resurgence of the rebellion and he had started working to keep it as quiet as possible, so people wouldn’t flip with worry. But when Draco’s attempts were in crowded places, Donovan addressed those acts as feeble tries that only proved his point further: wizards were dangerous and unhinged, ready to endanger innocent people without a second thought. But Draco didn’t get mad at that. He only showed up at another event and pushed harder. He relished Donovan’s angry glare running around the gasping crowd, his hands fisting at his sides, his nostrils flaring. Draco was eating at him and he lived for all of that.

Spite wasn’t his only source of sustenance, though. He survived on a combination of stolen and bought food. He slept too little and smoked too much, nicking cartons of cigarettes on restock day from the piles lying around a dingy smoke shop in Islington, where the owner was too stoned to notice. 

His appearance was also affected by his lifestyle. His eyes were constantly circled by purple shadows and, when he forgot to shave, a light stubble covered his chin and jaw, making him look like his father fresh out of Azkaban. His hands were coarse from all the rubbing he did at the end of the day to clean the blood from off his nails and cuticles. He was at a point where he only wore black clothes because he wasn’t able to get blood stains off white shirts and using magic was too dangerous and vain. 

But he didn’t care. 

Getting rid of the people that worked for Donovan towards eliminating all wizards and witches from the world was the only thing that kept him alive and let his mind wander away from the thought of Hermione. 

Draco was constantly occluding, even if it was more difficult under the Grid, because of magic suppression. He struggled to keep his walls strong around all the memories of her, numbing his brain and heart in the process. Because it was either that or death by madness. 

Somedays it was worse than others, his mind playing tricks on him, making him believe he’d smelled her flowery scent or heard her laugh. 

Somedays he kept asking himself if Hermione would have forgiven him for all his murders. Then he remembered she wasn’t around anymore, and all the killing was because of that. 

Somedays he couldn’t stop looking at his Dark Mark on his forearm, couldn’t stop replaying Aunt Bella torturing sessions in his mind, couldn’t quite believe he had become the closest thing to a real Death Eater possible. Maybe he was always meant to be that, maybe he was never a good person, just a coward. 

Somedays the image of his mother being tortured by Voldemort because of his absence made his chest cave in. And with the face of his mother, came that of his father, proud of what he was doing: murdering muggles. He kept repeating in his head that he would do the same with wizards and witches if they were responsible for Hermione’s death, but his father’s smirk of approval never faded, and Draco ended up throwing punches to walls and splitting his knuckles in the process. He had a web of little scars on his hands that would never fade completely. 

And amidst all of that, her absence was a physical pain in his stomach that never ebbed. It was as if a chunk of flesh had been carved from his body and taken away, leaving an open wound that wouldn’t heal.

Draco tried the Cabinet everyday, sometimes even twice a day, hoping it would bring him back, or at least some place else. Some place where she was still alive and well, surrounded by people that loved her. Some place where he could still see her smile, even from a distance. But the Cabinet never worked and he couldn’t use magic to try and repair it. Besides, he had failed once, when he’d had all the magic in the world at his disposal, how could he possibly succeed here? So he trudged upstairs and got ready for another sleepless night.

Tonight, though, when he closed the door to the Cabinet, he didn’t go back to the apartment.

Tonight he had work to do. 

Karl Donovan was the guest of honor at the End of Summer Ball, a charity event that used to raise money for lost causes of all sorts. This year, they would be funding a new hospital ward specialized in treating magical injuries on muggles. There weren’t enough casualties these days to make that necessary, so Draco knew it was just another name for one of Donovan’s research projects. In fact, he had finally understood that Donovan wasn’t simply scared by magic. He was curious about it, and before getting rid of it completely, he wanted to understand as much as possible of it. Oh, how he must be upset he couldn’t get near Hogwarts, with all the repelling and secrecy wards around the castle that kept muggles away. He couldn’t get in even if someone else brought him, Remus Lupin had made sure of that. It was one of the few things Hermione had told him about what the dynamics between the Order and Donovan had been. Lupin had sensed the man wasn’t completely trustworthy and he had wanted to put up some safety measures, in case something went wrong. Before  letting wizards accept Donovan’s help with destroying Voldemort, his former teacher had gone back to Hogwarts in the middle of the night to alter the wards to repulse the fucker if he ever tried entering. And thank the gods he had, or Donovan would have destroyed it like Gringotts.

Draco draped the Invisibility Cloak over an elegant suit he had rented in Oxford Street and walked out of Knockturn Alley and Diagon Alley, towards Regent’s Park, where the open air ball would take place. He had only spent the money on the stupid clothes because he had no intention to let them go to waste. Because tonight he was going to kill Karl Donovan and end the magical suppression once and for all.

******

May, 1997

The corridor to the Prefects bathroom was deserted the following night, signaling the possibility that Dumbledore had kept his word. Young Draco would be stuck in his common room all night attending a little welcome back party organized by his housemates. Smuggled Firewiskey and top quality muggle weed would be involved, so Draco and Hermione from the future could safely go have a bath together. Sure, Harry would keep his eyes on the Map, but Malfoy’s name would be plastered in the dungeons long enough to make him go to bed eventually. 

The sunken pool-like bathtub was already filled with warm water when they stepped inside the cool chamber. Hermione opened a couple of taps that poured flowery soaps and scents in it and a soft layer of foam covered the surface in seconds. Draco carefully placed the Invisibility Cloak and the open Map on the edge of the tub before stripping down and dipping into the water. He went under and came back swiftly, sleeking his platinum hair back from his face. Hermione was still taking off her socks, smiling behind her curtain of curls. 

“Come on, Lioness!” he called, reaching the edge and placing his forearms on the tiles. “I keep telling you, you wear way too many clothes. Get closer, I’ll vanish them for you, love,” he teased, lifting a hand and wriggling his long fingers, water drops splashing on the floor. 

Hermione shook her head and gathered her hair up with her clip, before popping one button at a time of her shirt, slowly. Deliberately slowly. A flash passed in Draco’s eyes and a wolfish smirk stretched on his hungry face.

“Oh, I see. You’re putting on a show for me,” he whispered, resting his chin on his crossed forearms. 

“Maybe,” she murmured, reaching the button over her navel and letting the shirt hang open around her waist, a line of skin visible in the centre. She reached around and unzipped her skirt, which fell around her bare feet and flared out like a flower. Draco gasped. 

“Where did you even find lace knickers?” he groaned, instinctively pushing a hand out again and caressing her ankle, up her calf and knee, leaving a trail of dripping water. 

“I had a set in my beaded bag,” she said, pushing the shirt down her shoulders and revealing a matching bra with flimsy lace cups that left nothing to the imagination. Draco started salivating. 

“Granger, it’s emerald green,” he growled, wrapping his hand around her leg and pulling gently towards him.

Hermione smirked. “I changed the color, thought you might like it.”

She started pushing down the straps but Draco squeezed her leg. She arched a brow.

“Keep it on,” he murmured, eyes so hot they could have burned a hole in her skin. She smiled and squatted down to sit on the edge of the tub. As soon as her thighs hit the tiles, Draco grabbed her around her waist and pulled her in the water, flush against him. He was hot and hard against her soft curves and she shivered with the strength of his desire. God, she couldn’t get used to it, the way he wanted her and claimed her over and over again. He seemed to never get enough of her and she thrived in his hunger, because it matched her own perfectly. 

She had been pushing away her curiosity for Draco Malfoy for ages, trying to hide the pull she felt because it was inconceivable that a Gryffindor muggleborn fighting against Voldemort could have any interest for the Slytherins Prince with a Dark Mark. And yet, in the end, all those words were just that. Words. Because she had done dark stuff, and he had grown to be a decent person. Because he looked at her as if she was gold, and she felt her heart beat with warmth again after feeling empty and helpless for too long. And his lips on hers made so much sense she wondered why it had taken them so long to figure it out.

Hermione wrapped her legs around his hips and Draco gently steadied her against the wall of the tub, water and bubbles sloshing around them. He pressed his hard length against her core and she threw her head back, throat out for him to explore. Draco left a trail of wet kisses along her neck and up her jaw, resting right under her earlobe and biting the spot gently. Hermione moaned and pressed herself harder against his chest.

“I’ve never done it in a bathtub,” he mumbled to her ear, his thumbs caressing the sides of her breasts over  her bra.

“Me neither,” she whispered back and felt one of his hands reaching down and between them to push aside the lacy fabric of her knickers, trailing his index down her folds and into her entrance. The soapy water made everything sleeker with barely there hint of sting. She gasped with pleasure and leaned into the contact.

Draco smirked, his nose rubbing on her neck, teeth trailing down the column of her throat while he hooked his index inside her. His thumb ghosted over her clit and brushed up and down. Hermione growled. 

“Let’s try it then, see what happens,” he suggested and Hermione felt her knickers disappear, again. She snaked an arm between them and reached down, wrapping her hand around his shaft and positioning the tip of his cock  between her folds, right over her clit. Draco’s head snapped up and his eyes found hers, pupils dilated with surprise and pleasure. 

“Yeah, let’s,” she replied, moving his cock up and down between her folds, rubbing it against herself, pleasure building at the bottom of her belly with each sleek stroke. She pumped it gently, while searching her own release and Draco groaned, resting his forehead on her clavicle. 

“Use me, Lioness, I’m yours,” he murmured on her wet skin. 

A few more strokes and she came, hard, pressing herself closer to him, her cries echoing in the vaulted bathroom. Draco pushed inside her while she was still clenching with her orgasm, chasing her, setting a pace that would bring her over the edge again. Hermione almost choked on her own breath when a new wave of pleasure crashed over the previous one, stronger and steadier, making her head spin. 

“Draco!” she moaned, while he thrusted in and out of her, keeping her body flush to his in the floating water. Some splashed over the edge, soap bubbles fizzling on the tiles. He angled his head down and bit her nipple over the lace, gently but enough to make her peak again, keeping her pleasure going while he chased his own. 

“Oh, God, Draco,” she pleaded, tightening the grip of her legs around him, heels of her feet digging in his toned backside just right. Draco looked up and caught her shiny eyes, just before she latched her mouth on his neck and bit hard enough to leave a mark, moaning into his pulse. It sent an electric shock down his body and he came, groaning unashamed, relishing the sting of her teeth in his flesh. He wanted to be branded by her, wanted to carry her on his skin forever.  

When the high finally subsided, he kept her in his arms, floating lightly into the water, breathing in the scent of her hair while she nuzzled his bitten neck. She giggled at some point.

“This was so much better than the last time we met in this bathroom,” she said, snuggling into him even further. 

Draco smirked. “It wasn’t that bad for me, last time,” he teased and she looked up. “I mean, the great Hermione Granger apologized to me and I almost saw her naked. I’d call that a victory,” he pointed out with an arched brow.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you were so fuming you almost didn’t let me talk.”

Draco’s smile faltered a little and he looked around the room. Hermione frowned.

“It’s okay, Draco, you had reasons to be cross,” she started, pulling away from his chest to properly look at him. Draco shook his head.

“I actually owe you an explanation for my behavior there,” he said and she started shaking her head as well, but he cupped her face with a wet hand.

“I really do, Granger. You were right when you said that I was being hot and cold with you, and I think you need to know the whole truth about why I was acting like that. Just…” he paused, sighing and closing his eyes for a moment. “It’s difficult, for more than a reason.”

“Draco, we don’t need to do this. I understand. You had just stepped back from a future where you’d lost me, I mean, you were conflicted and…” she mused, but he shook his head again. 

“It wasn’t just that, Hermione.”

Her name on his lips always made her pause. Maybe because he always said it with a pain in his voice that made her soul tremble. She fell silent and waited for him to tell her what he had to. Because it was plain on his face that he needed to do this, to be honest and open with her. 

Draco took a deep breath. “Promise me you won’t blame yourself for something you actually didn’t do. And that you won’t blame another version of you for something that doesn’t matter anymore, Granger. Can you do that?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, capturing her bottom lip with her teeth. Draco half smiled, prying the lip free with his thumb. 

“Just consider what that version of you was going through. It’s you, but you never find out about the Relligo. What were you looking for, when you decided to leave London and come back here to Hogwarts?” he asked.

Hermione considered his question and thought back to herself in the Leaky Cauldron. “I was looking for a way to take down Donovan. I wanted revenge at all costs,” she admitted, not sure what Draco was about to tell her.

He nodded. “That’s the version I met. That’s the Hermione that decided not to go back to Hogwarts and stay around to take down Donovan with a new partner in crime. So keep this in mind, okay?”

Hermione frowned. “What did I do to you Draco?”

Draco gave her a sad smile. “Do you remember how convinced I was that I could kill Donovan and make his empire of terror crumble just by doing that? Well, I wasn’t playing dumb, I was really convinced I could. Because I hadn’t read your report.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean? I wrote that report before meeting you in the alley. That report is the reason Fred gave up. I had to make you read it, before getting you on board, I…” she cut herself with a gasp, horror seeping in her eyes. 

“I didn’t tell you everything,” she whispered, her eyes flitting back and forth between his. Draco shook his head gently. He wasn’t angry, nor accusing. Why wasn’t he? He should be! She had pulled him blind in a suicidal mission!

“And I didn’t ask you anything, love,” he said, stroking her cheek. “I just wanted to do something good for once in my life. You see, I was brought up like a prince, spoiled rotten. My father had decided everything for me since I was a toddler and when I met you and spent time with you, even polyjuiced, I realized I was free! I wanted to be free of all the chains the past meant,” he explained, smiling brightly. “Even after you dropped the disguise, I didn’t ask you about my mother’s death, or how exactly Voldemort had managed to kill Potter. That’s why I didn’t know about the Horcruxes, or Theo,” he said, then paused. Hermione looked at him with big eyes, an invisible hand squeezing her chest hard. Draco had trusted her completely, let her decide what was worth mentioning. He had just followed her blindly. And she had let him.

“I lied when I told you we were in Knockturn Alley in October 2001. We were at your house in Muggle London, and then we stayed at Grimmauld Place for a couple of weeks before attacking Donovan, so I knew the house already when you brought me there when I got wounded,” he told her, a smear of guilt in the set of his mouth. “But I didn’t know it was a Black property because, back then, you didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask,” he went on, touching her jaw, then a lock of her hair on her forehead. He couldn’t keep his hands still, couldn’t stay away from her. He was nervous, Hermione realized, as if he feared she would think less of him because of what he was confessing. Because he had kept things from her, acting as if he hadn’t known some stuff when he had. Because he was worried she wouldn’t trust him anymore. 

And then it struck her. Draco hadn’t asked anything to her other self for the same reason. A seventeen year old Slytherin, out of a magic cabinet and into a weird reality, stuck with a Gryffindor he wasn’t supposed to like, polyjuiced because she couldn’t trust him. If he had started asking questions, she might have left him, and he couldn’t risk that. He was finally free to love her there, he couldn’t ruin it. Hermione’s heart swelled with pain.

“Oh Draco,” she whispered, eyes full of tears, “I am so sorry. I used you, I was blinded by rage.”

Draco shook his head. “I let you, Granger. And it would have been okay, if it hadn’t ended up the way it did,” he said, his shoulder sagging. “I keep telling myself that, if I had demanded more information, maybe I would have been able to convince you to stand down, maybe you wouldn’t…” he stopped, clenching his teeth. Hermione cupped his face.

“That version of me couldn’t be saved, Draco,” she told him, and he closed his eyes. 

“I know,” he muttered, pressing their foreheads together. “I know that now.”

Hermione stretched her neck up to kiss him gently. “I’m sorry I kept things from you here, in this timeline,” she apologized, “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Draco.”

He nodded and kissed her back, smiling on her lips. “Same here, Lioness.”

Now everything made sense to her. The hurt in his eyes, the way he kept his distance, how he had reacted to her report. Draco hadn’t known how much Hermione had been involved in the creation of the Grid, how painful the Horcruxes hunt had been. He hadn’t known about Theo, or his parents. He hadn’t known about her feelings for him in school. That version of her had told him nothing. But she had brought him to her muggle house, had shared that part of her with him, completing a change that Draco had started on his own, and making him the man in front of her now. The man she could only keep for a handful of weeks. She buried his face in his neck, tears spilling and mixing with drops of water and soap on his skin. 

She was so tired of doing the right thing at the expense of her own happiness.

Chapter Text

25.

August, 2002

Regent’s Park was a picture out of a fairy tale book. The Ball was taking place in the inner circle of Queen Mary’s Gardens and the committee had certainly spent a fair amount of money in setting the scene. The luscious trees sparkled with crystal decorations that reflected the glimmer of fairy lights and lanterns. The bushes of flowers in their symmetrical flowerbeds were laced with ribbons and golden threads, matching the dainty chairs and tables carefully placed all around the gardens. The banks of the pond were fenced for safety with a long, silky white rope, braided  with pink and golden beads. There were translucent bobbles floating over the dark water, filled with tea lights and glitter, the surface of the pond sparkling in the dark like a starry sky. Waiters in blindingly white uniforms walked around the park with their trays full of canapés and champagne flutes, carefully balanced on their expert hands. A full orchestra sat all around a stone fountain, playing an elegant lento in the background, while people in ball gowns of every color and fashion talked, laughed, whispered and gossiped, feet deep in the neatly cut grass. 

Draco mingled easily, with his platinum hair combed back and his freshly shaved jaw. He had placed a glamour on his dark undereye circles before leaving Knockturn Alley and his silver irises stood out on his pale face. He snatched a glass of champagne from a passing waiter and took a sip. It fizzed on his tongue, flowing easily down his throat and jumpstarting his numbed chest. He was in his element, what he had been raised for. High society at his best. He let his eyes pan over the beautiful flowers and felt almost bad he was about to set everything on fire. Hermione’s smiley face in her muggle house, her cheek smudged with flour while attempting at making something that resembled a cake, made his stomach clench. His guilt evaporated.

He walked around for a while, looking for Donovan, checking what kind of security measures he had in place tonight, but there weren’t any troupers around. Draco was pretty sure they were all in civilian clothes, which made things a bit riskier for his plan. If you could call it a plan. His idea was to drop Weasley’s Whiz Bang Deluxe into the pond to cause some ruckus and shoot Donovan in the general mayhem. Honestly, it wasn’t a big plan, it certainly wasn’t elaborate, and it wasn’t even that accurate, but he was done waiting and his anger was eating up at him. He had to act. 

Draco was circling back to the gates, his second glass of champagne in hand, when he heard a laugh on his left. He turned slightly and there he was. Donovan, in a black suit with black shirt and tie, hair gelled back as usual, gleaming under the fairy lights of a willow tree. He was holding a flute of his own and was carelessly laughing at something an old woman had said. Other people stood next to him, all hanging on every move or sound he made. A burly man was standing just one step behind him, his legs a little apart, one hand in his pocket. Draco observed him better and noticed something in his right ear. He might be Donovan’s bodyguard. 

Draco looked away and assessed the area around them. They were close to an elongated portion of the pond, where a pretty wooden bridge crossed to the other side of the waters. Right behind the bodyguard’s back. Draco nonchalantly walked there, stepped away from Donovan and his flock of lapdogs and reached the bridge. A couple was sitting on a bench under an arch of wisteria on the other side of the pond and could easily spot him if he climbed the bridge just yet. So, he stayed by the brink, leaning in the tall bushes surrounding the banks. He took his glass of champagne to his lips with one hand, while reaching into his pocket with the other. 

The Weasley Twins were clever bastards and had made sure their fireworks were waterproof and could be activated without using a wand. They had a similar mechanism to muggle grenades, so you just had to pull at the thread on the bottom and the thing would go up in sparks within 5 seconds. Draco took out the small purple tube from the pocket of his slacks, pulled the thread and casually threw the device into the pond just in front of him. He took a couple of steps back and let his glass fall before a column of water exploded in the air, colorful sparks shooting out in every possible direction. Everyone near the pond turned and screamed, someone started running to the gates of the park, others stomped through the flowerbed, throwing tables and chairs down, while the fireworks expanded and created animal figures in the air. It was similar to Fiendfyre, but less dangerous since it didn’t really burn anything. But it was grand and muggles were scared to death.

 Draco took out his gun and zeroed in on Donovan being pulled away from his bulky bodyguard. Draco aimed at his head and planted a bullet in the nape of his neck. The big man froze and fell down, Donovan turning in shock, looking around for the killer. But Draco had run behind a tree, this time aiming between Donovan’s eyes. Of all muggle weapons, guns were his favorite and shooting was extremely easy for him. Maybe because it reminded him of dueling with wands, with the way he had to carefully pick the target and send the bullet to the right spot like a spell, or it wouldn’t be effective. If he managed to get Donovan just right in the centre of his forehead, he would be dead in seconds and wouldn’t even realize it. He wouldn’t suffer. Draco hesitated. The bastard wouldn’t even suffer, damn him. He deserved to be tortured and skinned alive and Draco was about to give him an easy way out. The hesitation cost him his entire mission.

“By the bridge! He is by the bridge!” another guard screamed, while someone pushed Donovan safely to the ground. A bullet whizzed in Draco’s general direction, splintering the tree trunk several inches above his head. Draco swore and cursed himself internally, then started to run, his teeth gritting so hard they might chip in his mouth. He heard someone running behind him, in the general noise of people screaming and fireworks popping, but he didn’t look back. Another bullet whistled behind him, and he took a turn through a bush of tall roses. He scraped his face and hands with thorns, but avoided a deathly wound. His follower didn’t give up and he heard his feet on the gravel as soon as they came out of the rose bushes. Draco attempted a blind shot, he couldn’t turn and let him see his face or he would be trapped if he survived this. The bullet didn’t land and he pumped his legs harder, heading right at the private hedge while reaching into his inner pocket to get the cloak out. If he could throw it over himself fast enough, it would seem he’d disappeared into the hedge and he could easily swerve right and get away from his chaser. 

He was just about to take out the cloak when a bullet finally found him. A searing pain shot up his left leg, when it sliced his outer thigh and made him stumble. Draco roared but refused to fall and pushed on. He could almost hear the guard’s hard breathing behind him when he wrapped the cloak around him and stepped out of his tracks. The man abruptly halted, confused, giving Draco time to tiptoe away from the gravel and onto the grass again, where his steps wouldn’t be detected. He half ran half limped away from the guard, skirting the hedge until he found the Jubilee Gate he had walked through at the beginning of the night. There were impromptu checkpoints being organized, but he passed through unnoticed under Potter’s trusted cloak. He kept on the side of the road, one hand pressed on the wound in his leg. It was painful and bleeding, but not enough to stop him from getting back to Knockturn Alley. 

It took him a while to reach a Tube station that wasn’t oozing with troupers in black uniforms, but when he did he allowed himself to slump on a seat in an empty carriage. When he stood to get out, a blood stain was darkening the dirty fabric of the bench. By the time he was safely back in the Leaky Cauldron, he was shivering and clammy, his head spinning feverishly. He laid inside the pub, right behind the counter and took out Hermione’s beaded bag from under his shirt. He dipped his clean hand inside and summoned a blood replenishing potion with a bit of wandless magic. The vial flew to his fingers and he unstoppered it with his teeth before downing the content in one gulp. He sighed in relief when the potion started working and bowed his head to examine his leg. He needed to close it and stop the bleeding and he needed to get the hell out of London, because he wasn’t sure his face was still unknown after tonight, and the Polyjuice stash was starting to dwindle. 

Draco took out his wand and murmured a cleaning charm at his thigh. The blood disappeared, leaving a long gush on the outer side of his leg, where his pants had ripped from the impact of the bullet. It was mangled, and raw flesh waved up at him, some probably missing. 

“Episkey,” he whispered, but the lips of flesh barely got closer to each other, a shock of pain travelling up and down his entire body.

“Fuck,” he growled, closing his eyes and throwing his head back for a moment. Then he focused again on the gush and trailed his wand over it. “Vulnera Sanentur,” he chanted lowly, a dark memory resurfacing from a dormant part of his brain. After a couple of repeats, the wound closed and stopped bleeding. He sighed hard and rested on the floor. 

When he felt strong enough to get up, Draco walked back to Knockturn Alley and tried the Cabinet one last time. It didn’t work, of course. It would have been too easy, right? So, he trudged to The Apothecary and went to the small garden behind the shop. He knelt down on Hermione's grave, flowers perpetually fresh shivering under his fingers. He let his index trace the small sun on her makeshift tombstone and allowed himself one last tear for her.

“I failed here as well,” he whispered. 

Then, concentrating on a small muggle village in the Highlands on the outskirts of a once Malfoy property, Draco Malfoy disapparated away. 

****

January, 2003

The perpetual Grid had reached Perth around Christmas, banning magic night and day all around the city. Some smaller villages and farms in the area were still out of the radius and mainly covered by tracking spells, but Draco was starting to adjust to a full muggle life already. Not that he really had a choice.

When he had apparated on the outskirts of a former Malfoy property, back in August, he had almost splinched himself and it’d taken several minutes before he was able to get up from the gravelly path he had landed on and walk to a crop of trees just behind a smaller version of his Manor. He had slept under the Cloak in the small forest and waited until the sun was fully up before heading for the muggle village on the other side of the forest. There hadn’t been signs of Grids or men looking for him, so he had gone as far as taking off the cloak for an hour and buying some food to live on in the next hours. He had spent the rest of the afternoon back in the forest, had slept again under the cloak and gone back to the village the following day, only to find a sketch of his face plastered on every wall. There wasn’t a name, but a clear association with Hermione and the magical terrorism. He had been seen after all and he wasn’t safe anymore.

He had left the village and roamed around the fields, breaking into farms at night, sleeping into barns and stealing what little food he could manage without making it too obvious. In one of those farms, he had found a cellar well stocked with whiskey and he’d got so drunk he hadn’t been able to get out, passing out in a corner, his trusted cloak keeping him safely invisible from prying eyes. The numbness had been so blissful he’d kept the habit up, looking for cellars with alcohol, distilleries and the occasional restaurant storage room when he braved going to bigger towns. He was drunk most of the time, because it kept the pain away, the thoughts dormant, the panic subdued. 

Until it didn’t. 

When the alcohol stopped working, he started thinking he had to find something stronger, something better. But that meant talking to some kind of dealer somewhere, and he really couldn’t risk showing his face. 

With sobriety the pain came back and with it a new feeling of helplessness that put strange ideas in his head. What was the point of living, really? He couldn’t use magic most of the time, didn’t have enough money to start anew, and if he had, his face was attached to the reputation of a murderer and terrorist. He wasn’t free, had nothing, had no one. He’d found rat poison in a barn one night and almost eaten it on a whim. But it seemed his cowardice had come back for him, because he couldn’t push himself to do it. Or maybe it was his need for revenge, the hope that one day he’ll be able to go back to London and crash Donovan’s skull with his bare hands. 

In October he’d had an idea. He’d hopped on a train to Edinburgh under the cloak and walked around the city for a while, until he’d found a drunken tramp huddled in a filthy coat, begging for a hot toddy under a passageway. Draco had taken out one of his last vials of Polyjuice and thrown one of his own hair in it. He’d taken off the cloak, walked to the man and handed him the shot.

“Here, it will warm you up,” he’d said, while the beggar snatched it from his fingers. Draco had recognised the addition, felt it thrash in his own bones, and watched as the man gulped down every drop. When his skin had started bubbling and his cells rearranging, he’d gasped and looked at him with comic betrayal in his beady eyes.

“What have you done to me?” he’d cried, but there had been no one around to hear him, and in seconds he’d looked like Draco, in filthier clothes. Real Draco hadn’t answered, he’d just let the loathing at himself bubble up in his stomach and punched him square on the temple. His mirrored image had fallen down, almost unconscious, and Draco had knelt next to him. He’d reached into Hermione’s beaded bag at his side and taken out the jar where he’d stashed some rat poison. Just in case he would work out the courage to off himself at some point. He’d emptied it in the man’s mouth and forced him to swallow. Draco had looked at his own face contorting, foam gathering at his lips, eyes shooting up and bulging out, his whole body spasming, until he’d gone still. The beggar hadn’t reverted back to his appearance, as per Polyjuice rules. Draco had dragged him to the corner of the main street and left him there, in plain sight for the first passer by of the following morning. He’d sat in a recessed doorway, fully covered by the cloak and waited. 

His body had been found, the police had come and he’d been immediately identified. Draco had lurked around Edinburgh for the following week, watching as the posters of his face were taken down, reading Donovan’s announcement of his capture on discarded papers. There was no Undesirable No.1 anymore, and the Government was going to keep the streets clean of wizards, everyday better than the day before. 

Draco had left the city and gone back to walking from one village to the other, the cloak perpetually covering him, living off of discarded food and few stolen goods, biding his time, waiting for people to start forgetting about him. Around Christmas he’d gone to Perth, his hair cut off close to his scalp, a stolen beanie to cover his pale head, and he’d tried walking around the city without the Invisibility Cloak. No one paid him any mind. That’s when he’d decided to stay.

He had settled in an abandoned building that might have been some kind of hospice, in the suburbs of Perth. He spent his mornings scurrying for food and looking for a muggle job he might be good at. Hermione had made him a fake ID back when they were in Knockturn Alley, in case they had to flee muggle style, and he still had it in her bag, so he might be able to pull it off and find a way to earn some money to live like a person and not a criminal on the loose. He needed quiet and time to regroup, before striking again. Getting to Donovan would become harder and harder from now on, but he still harboured the hope he could manage it, he just needed a real, solid plan. And weapons. 

Draco was turning into High Street, coming from his last day as temporary warehouseman for the holiday season at St. Johns Shopping Centre, fluffy snowflakes gently falling all around him. He was thinking back to a woman looking at him suspiciously the previous morning, as if she knew him somehow, his hair now starting to grow back into his signature platinum locks. Maybe it was time to pack up and leave Perth for another place. His job was over anyways so instead of looking for something else, he might as well go to another city altogether. Or maybe he could find a place in a farm in the countryside, he wasn’t scared about working hard and getting his hands dirty by now. His father’s face sneering down at the Weasleys in Diagon Alley around ten years prior flashed into his mind and he almost bursted out laughing in the middle of the street. If only Lucius Malfoy could see his only son now, heir to the Malfoy fortune and perpetrator of one of the purest bloodlines in the whole Wizarding world. He would have a seizure. 

Draco smirked and shook his head. Pureblood. Slytherin Prince. Malfoy Heir. What an utter pile of hippogriff dung. He was just a person, capable like anyone else to sweat picking up boxes, or bleeding when cutting a finger on a sharp edge, or digging in a garbage bin to scurry for food. Or crying for a lost love. 

A bell jingled with a door opening on his left, a woman stepping out of a shop and hurrying down the road with a little white bag dangling from her fingers. Draco looked around and saw his reflection in the big window of a jewellery shop. He dismissed the hard set of his jaw and the cold glint of his pale eyes, and ignored the wider line of his shoulder. He glanced down at the exposed jewels shimmering under expertly placed lights. He recognized the grey velvet of the displayers from a memory of a distant past, Hermione’s giggle and her hand swatting at his forearm when he almost  walked inside at her suggestion. 

“See that ring with the black gem? It would look perfect on your hand,” she’d said, pointing at a simple silver band with a small triangular shaped onyx stone in the centre. Draco had observed it for a moment, a corner of his lips lifting.

“It’s nothing like my old signet ring, Granger,” he’d pointed out. Then, with a full smile he’d said - “I love it.”

Hermione had laughed, her eyes flitting through the displayers until she’d seen something else. “And that one for me, what do you say? Simple, but with a hint of color?” she’d asked, pointing to a gold band with a small diamond in the centre, flanked by two emeralds.  Draco’s eyes had softened and he’d motioned towards the door of the shop.

“We’re getting them,” he’d said, while Hermione looped her arms tighter around his bicep, trying to stop him.

“Draco! Are you out of your mind? We cannot buy them! They’re too expensive!” she’d shrieked, digging in her heels until he’d halted. Draco had turned, a little disappointed.

“We can confund the woman, I don’t even need my wand. She’ll think we’ve already paid,” he’d said simply, but Hermione had shaken her head. 

“When we buy our wedding rings, we’ll pay for them,” she’d said, and the way her voice had quivered and her shoulders had set had made Draco feel suddenly very warm all over his body. 

Now, in the window of that chain store, Draco only saw the silver band. The golden one with emeralds wasn’t there, as if to mock him in some coincidental way. With a slow sigh from his nose, Draco reached inside the beaded bag he always kept in the inner pocket of Hermione’s dad’s coat and took out a wad of paper bills. He would have to live off stolen food for a while again, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did since he’d lost her. 

He walked inside and bought the ring. 

****

June, 1997

“How long did you say it takes to prepare that paste for the Adnexio?” Draco casually asked, flipping through the pages of Hermione’s notes on the Cabinet work. She was reading on the lumpy couch and was uncharacteristically silent. Actually, she had been for days. Draco had noticed some new books, so he’d figured she’d been to the library while he was sleeping, and she’d been pouring over those tomes for hours, often resisting his sexually charged advances. Days were passing by surprisingly quickly and it was time to get ready to repair the Cabinet, but Hermione seemed preoccupied with something else. He was actually a little scared of asking what that was, because he had an inkling and he wasn’t ready to face it, if he was right.

“It needs one night of brewing, it’s not that big of a challenge,” she muttered, flipping a page as if it had personally wronged her. 

“We do need to steal from Snape’s stash, though. That’s a little more complicated and I really think we should start planning that,” he pointed out with a smirk.

“I’ll do it, I’ve done it in Second Year already,” she huffed, waving a hand in the air dismissively. Draco arched a brow, wanting very badly to dig deeper in the topic, but decided he needed to push on the Adnexio instead.

“And when do you plan on doing it?” he carefully asked. A loud snap made him startle and he looked at Hermione, big book closed on her legs. He placed down her notes and got up from the bed. 

“Can’t wait to get this over with, can you?” she sneered, eyes focused on the moth eaten rug on the floor. Draco frowned, confused. 

“I beg your pardon?”

Hermione scoffed and pushed the book on the sofa, springing up and turning to face him. “You gave me hell to convince you to do this, and now, all of a sudden, you’re eager to wrap this up! Draco Malfoy, the hero, ladies and gents!”

 She acted all angry and sour, but her eyes told a different story. Draco saw tears welling up, her lips stretching to hide a tremor. 

“What is going on, love?”

“Don’t call me love! You cannot call me love, when you’re so unfazed by this!”

He frowned. “Unfazed? Unfazed by what?”

“Us being over, Draco!” she cried, a strangled sob working his way up her throat. “Once the Cabinet is repaired, the timeline resettles and we…we disappear into nothing,” she croaked, one hand going to the side of her neck, fingers reaching up, as if she needed to push breaths out manually. Draco took a step forward, but kept the sofa between them. He felt like she needed space, or maybe he did. 

“You really think I’m unfazed?” he asked, arching a brow. 

“I don’t know! I don’t see you tearing your hair out desperately! You’ve just asked me about the Adnexio…” she harshly pointed out, throwing her arms up. Draco scoffed, pushing a bubble of anger down his throat, refusing to pop it.

“It’s the plan, Granger! Your plan, by the way! I…” 

He ran a hand in his hair and sighed deeply. “You know what? I’m not doing this,” he said, turning  to stare at the bed, grasping at his Occlumency defences and forcing them around the wounds in his heart. 

“What? What aren’t you doing?” she asked, stepping around the sofa and planting herself in front of him.

“You’re rage baiting me here and I won’t do this!” he hissed, locking eyes with her. The pain he saw there punched his guts with a force that cut his breath. He gently reached for her jaw, wrapping his fingers on the nape of her neck, dipping into her soft curls. She closed her eyes, a tear slipping down her cheek. “We both knew this was coming, Hermione. I don’t like this one bit, and you know it. But we don’t have another option,” he whispered. 

Hermione shook her head and grabbed his wrist. “Yes, we do. We forget all this shit and we go away. To hell Voldemort, and Dumbledore, and Donovan! We go to Argentina, or Papua New Guinea, I don’t know, some place where no one knows us. We go and we live our life together, just you and me, Draco.”

She was pleading with him to run away with her, far from challenges, dangers and problems. Far from everyone and everything they were meant to save. And he wanted to say yes, more than anything. He wanted to see her happy, smiling and free of burdens. He wanted her whole for himself, because he was selfish and loved her like he had never loved before. The Draco from 1997 would have done just that, without a second thought. But the Draco he had become, the Draco that had seen her die and witnessed the magical world crumble to dust….

“We cannot do that, love,” he softly replied, tightening his grip on her neck, covering her hand with his other one, keeping his eyes in hers. “We need to do the right thing, we’re the only ones that can make things right.”

Hermione shook her head again and took a step back from his hands. 

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she said, lifting her hands up in surrender, or maybe she was trying to shield herself subconsciously. 

“Granger…” he murmured, closing the gap between them, snaking an arm around her waist while she continued shaking her head, hugging her middle, swallowing a hard lump lodged in her throat. Draco cupped her face and tipped it up, searching her glistening eyes. She bit her lip hard, trying to keep her tears from spilling, but to no avail. His heart broke a bit more and the rage mounted in his soul. He could easily snap Dumbledore’s neck at that moment.

“Granger, the safety of the entire Wizarding world depends on us, on this mission. As much as I hate it, we have to stick to the plan.”

“I don’t give a fuck anymore, okay? I don’t want to forget you, I don’t want to give up on us!” she cried, her fists coming to his chest, but he didn’t flinch.

“We are meant to be, Granger, our souls are fated. We are going to find each other again,” he reassured her, but a wet scoff broke from her lips.

“That doesn’t mean we will end up together for sure, Draco!” she said, tears doubling down her face. The certainty in her tone told him those knew books she’d been pouring over might be what had put her in a mood. She knew something about fated souls that he didn't.

“What did you find?” he asked, keeping her in his arms.

“Fated souls are a thing, yes, and all the signs point to the fact that ours are indeed fated. But the pull doesn’t always end up bringing two people together,” she explained, her lips trembling around the words. “If we don’t spend time close to each other, feeding that pull to grow it into something more, if we don’t give each other a chance, we might drift apart, Draco. You can marry someone else and I wouldn’t give a damn about it! And how do you think we’ll manage to get close during the war that will start? We’ll be on different sides!”

“We can still find a way to each other afterwards, Granger, when the war is over. We managed in two different timelines, didn’t we?” he suggested, but he wasn’t convinced himself. He knew she had a point and he also knew why.

“Draco, we managed because you were free of your family and I was alone! Do you really think your father would allow us to be? Do you think my friends will understand us? If we survive, that is! And if we don’t get even further apart because of our actions!” she cried, fisting his jumper in her hands, a tremor shaking her entire body. She looked up at him, sobbing uncontrollably and his fingers twitched on her face. 

“Please, Draco, I don’t want to lose this. I want you, I want us. You’re the ray of sun around the corner of the street for me, there will never be anyone else that makes me feel whole like you do. I want your stupidly handsome face in my life forever. Please don’t give up on us, don’t give up on me,” she whispered, pleading, desperate. 

“I’ll never give up on you, Granger, but if we don’t repair this fucking cabinet, the Wizarding world is doomed! Your friends will die, magic will disappear and all the fight and sacrifices would have been for nothing! Are we more important than everyone else, everything else?” he asked, his heart heavy in his chest, his throat bobbing. He wanted to answer his own question, but he couldn’t. He needed her to see reason, otherwise he would capitulate as well and he fucking couldn’t.

“Yes!” she yelled, clawing deeper at his jumper, shaking him. “For fuck sake, Draco! One hundred times yes! The timeline will reset! We will fade into nothing! All we had, all we lived through will be no more, will have never been! I am not ready to forget you, why are you?” she desperately asked, new tears running down her neck. 

Draco’s eyes widened and his hands grasped her face tighter. “Do you really think I’m ready to lose you? Granger, I’ve lost you once already and I barely survived! If I could choose freely, I would sweep you into my arms and disapparate right now, but I cannot do what I want anymore!” he told her, his gaze hard as granite.

“Why? Why can’t you?” she asked, frustration dripping from every word.

Draco shook his head, jaw twitching. “You are the sun for me too, Hermione. You are the light that sliced my chest open and taught me how to breathe. You saved me, in so many ways I cannot even count them. And I love you so deeply and with such force that sometimes it hurts,” he whispered, grazing her cheeks with his thumbs. “And I would run away with you and be perfectly happy with the world going up in flames behind us, but I know you wouldn’t. In ten years, you would look back and regret abandoning your friends, the people you loved, the world that gave you a voice, and you’ll hate yourself for doing it and me for letting you. So, I much prefer disappearing from this timeline with you by my side and loving me, rather than find hatred in your eyes one day and watch you drift away from me. I’m an only child, I can’t stand losing, especially when it’s you I’m losing, Hermione.”

Her eyes drifted over his face, taking in all the love, pain and surrender plainly displayed there  for her to see. And a fresh wave of tears came. Because he was right. She would come to regret her choices in the end, because she was Hermione Granger and she always had to do the right thing. 

“I still don’t want to give up on this,” she murmured, opening her hands on his chest, softly pressing to feel his heartbeat. 

Draco released a shaky breath and leaned his forehead on hers. 

“I have an idea. But it entails a modicum of meddling,” he carefully said. 

Hermione sniffed and observed him, determination building on her face.

“We’re already meddling here, Malfoy, I don’t see why we can’t push it a bit more.”

Draco chuckled, a glint of boyish mischief in his grey eyes. “My reckless, reckless Lioness.”

Chapter Text

26.

September, 2004

The first autumn chills had reached Dublin at the beginning of September, just around the time the Hogwarts Express should have been trudging through the Scottish heath towards Hogwarts. Draco had welcomed the drop in temperature, since summer and warmth always made his brain fuzzier. And reminded him of her. 

Yesterday was her birthday and he had been restless for the entire week up to it, his mind constantly feeding him images that never ceased slicing his chest open. He didn’t know who’d said that time heals any wound, but the bloke certainly was an idiot. Time didn’t heal shit. Changing town every two months didn’t heal shit. Not even moving to the only Irish town still fighting Donovan’s perpetual Grid had made him feel better. He could access magic better here, yes, but he still couldn’t use his wand and needed to hide from sneaky snitches that had been seduced by Donovan’s propaganda, so all in all things weren’t that better, really.

He had managed to find a steadier position in a stock warehouse, though, so he could afford eating slightly better and sleeping in a one room apartment without rats or bugs for roommates. Mould was still a thing, but he’d gotten used to it. And to a lot of other things, honestly. 

The spoiled Draco Malfoy from school was a distant memory. The pampered boy that always had his ways had disappeared long ago. And he actually didn’t miss him so much. He was still clever and cunning, cheating and deceiving when there was the chance to. As for the time he had swindled a guy at work and convinced him his bike was actually Draco’s. Or when he had talked up the pretty lady at the front desk of the gym where he had decided he wanted to go, making her believe he had paid for an entire year in advance just the previous week. Having a bit of magic now and then made it easier, of course. He had become a pro in wandless casting, managing to use the barest amount of magic to tweak things enough for his charm to do the rest. He was well informed about strike days against the repressive regime that Donovan was slowly taking everywhere, when the Grid was shut down all around the city in protest. He made sure to do all his tweaks on those days, including stealing some pricey food, like meat and good quality tea. 

Today was one of those days and he had a plan to get a muggle tattoo. A big, expensive one that he could never afford otherwise. Draco walked into the tattoo parlour midmorning and smiled at the woman sitting at the front desk. She had a short, dark bob of hair that reminded him of Pansy, but the likelihood ended there. This woman had a pleasant smile and a pointy nose, thin tattoos on the sides of her face and as many piercings as her ears could carry. 

“Hi, there! How can I help you?” she asked,  openly eyeing him up and down. He pushed his lips in a devil may care smirk and let his hair fall on his forehead carelessly. His hours in the gym were paying off, even if his eating habits weren’t exactly ideal, so he was still on the leaner side, but he definitely didn’t look like a sickly teen anymore. Girls generally liked him and he banked on that a lot to get what he wanted.

He reached the desk and leaned on it, tapping his long index on the dark wood. The woman’s eyes unfocused for a fraction of a second.

“I’m here for my appointment. We talked last week, remember?” he asked, his voice silky and rumbly.

The woman looked slightly confused and embarrassed. “Uhm, sure, yes. Can you…what’s your name again?” she asked, fumbling for her planner. She opened it on the current date and Draco leaned over the desk to point at a blank spot on the page. 

“Draco, see? I’m right there, back tattoo?” he murmured, face close to hers. The woman nodded and looked up at him, smiling. 

“Draco, right! Yes! Did we discuss the subject already?” she asked, a bit breathy. 

Draco retrieved a folded piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to her. “This is the picture you designed, I studied it for a while and I have to say I really like it.”

The woman opened the paper and observed the drawing, sketched with a black pen in precise lines. It wasn’t her artwork, it was Draco’s. It had taken him months to perfect it but he was finally happy with it. She nodded and looked up, another wide smile on her red painted lips.

“Great! Let’s get started then, it’s a lot of work!” she announced, standing up. 

“I’d like to pay in advance, actually. It is a big piece, it’s only fair,” he said, taking out his wallet. She was starting to protest, but Draco flicked his fingers inconspicuously and she went silent, her gaze glazing over while he pushed a ten pound bill over the desk. 

“That’s what we agreed upon, right?” he asked, his charming smile washing over her. She nodded, pocketed the ten pounds and made a note in her planner. While she walked around the desk, Draco tapped the page and the number changed to one thousand.

“All set, then. Let’s get you inked! Come with me,” she beckoned, crossing the threshold to the back study. He followed her, taking off his coat while walking. 

The room was small, but well lit and spotless clean. The woman went straight to a padded chair in the centre and fumbled with a lever behind it until the back bent backwards. 

“You can sit here, you’ll have to straddle the thing, but you can rest your arms there. If you feel uncomfortable we can switch to the bed,” she instructed, a soft blush creeping up her neck. Draco smirked, recognising the innuendo.

“Don’t worry, endurance is my forte,” he hinted and she laughed a little, her cheeks almost matching her lipstick. She walked to a desk with technological appliances and started playing with them, until one of them produced a sheet of paper. Draco had done some research into the subject and knew that muggles either traced a sketch on the skin before going with a needle and ink, or went free hand. It seemed this one preferred certainty and had made what they called a stencil.

He waited until she turned to face him to lift his jumper over his head. The more enthralled she was the less magic he had to use today. She took in his chest, his scars concealed under a glamour he’d cast beforehand, and her eyes travelled down to his navel and waist line. She cleared her throat. 

“Turn around and sit, so I can place the stencil better.”

Draco did as asked and straddled the chair leaving his naked back to her. He heard her breathe deeply, then something sticky covered his shoulders and spine up to the dip of his lower back. After a couple of minutes, she peeled the paper off.

“Look, tell me if the placement is okay for you,” she said. Draco turned his head, his gaze meeting his reflection in a mirror she had taken off the wall. He studied the image carefully before nodding. 

“Alright then,” she cheered, walking away. She put on a pair of black gloves, took her supplies and carted another chair behind him. “If it hurts, just tell me and we can take a break,” she assured him, before switching on her tattoo machine, its soft hum mixing with the faint background music. 

When the needle punctured Draco’s skin between his shoulder blades it was only a tingle, as if someone was pinching him with long nails. As the hours passed by, the sensation became more insistent and flesh started to pulse in some places. The worst part was the central body of the tattoo, on his spine, but the pain was nothing compared to what had been taking his Dark Mark. He had screamed like a baby, his father displeased by his shameful behaviour. Now, in this muggle place, his mouth was shut, his skin numbed by years of unbearable misery. He kept his eyes on the Mark for the entire time, the outline now slightly faded and unmoving. Every time the woman tried to take a break, Draco tapped on the padded chair and her back stood a bit straighter, her eyes a bit wider, no fatigue visible on her face. 

“God, I think we’re done!” she whispered after six hours. He closed his eyes and sighed from his nose, his aching shoulders relaxing. He heard her stand and go fetch the mirror again.

“Take a look,” she invited him and Draco turned his head. His usually pale skin was red and sore around the black lines of a dragon with spread wings that covered his shoulder blades, their delicate veins hatched in his flesh with precise thin lines. The details were impressive, the eye of the dragon felt almost real and its tail snaked down Draco’s spine and ended in pointy spikes in the curve of his back. His gaze flicked up again and softened when he observed the outline of the sun right behind the dragon’s head. His light, his sun, his guidance in the dark. His Hermione.

“It’s perfect,” he murmured, a knot untangling in his chest. 

Finally, his Golden Girl was forever branded in his soul and on his skin both.

****

June, 1997

When the end of June came, Draco Malfoy from the future repaired the Vanishing Cabinet under the close supervision of Hermione Granger. She never touched the potion while Draco brewed it in the previous days, never used her wand to cast the Adnexio spell. She only walked Draco through the process and instructed him step by step, but in the end, when the Cabinet covered in the smelly paste glowed purple for a second, it was him who uttered the words and waved the wand. It was him who cast a diagnostic spell to check if the data matched those of the repaired piece of furniture they’d had in the future. Draco Malfoy had mended the Cabinet, just like Dumbledore’s notes required. 

They spent the following hours making love, slowly and without barriers, trailing their fingers on each other’s skin, looking each other in the eyes, committing to memory every detail, already knowing it would soon mean nothing. 

When the sun came up on Saturday morning, Draco got up, put on a pair of briefs and went to the sofa, while Hermione reached for her wand on the nightstand. She conjured parchment and quill, while he took a page from her notebook and a pen he had brought from the future. Draco wrote a letter, hunched over his own thighs, Hermione wrote another, tangled in the bedsheets. She cried the entire time, tears smearing the ink she had to fix in the end. He had to stop every other sentence, his hand slightly trembling. When they were done and evidence was paired with their letters, they put their collaterals into envelopes and got ready for the second half of their plan. 

Dormitories would soon be empty, all students running down to the Great Hall for breakfast and out to enjoy the final days of school by the lake or playing on the grounds. Draco from the past would soon come to the Room of Requirement to work on the Cabinet one last time and would finally celebrate finding it repaired. They had no idea how long it would take for the Relligo to kick in and when exactly they would disappear, so they had to act quickly. Hermione cast the strongest Disillusionment charm on herself, while Draco draped the Cloak over himself, before they walked out and went their separate ways. 

She reached the Gryffindor Tower pretty quickly and waited for someone to open the portrait and get inside unnoticed. Her eyes took in the circular Common Room, lived in and cozy, with all sorts of bits and bobs lying around in the messiest of displays. A smile tugged at her lips. This was how she wanted to remember it. No one of her friends was sitting in the lumpy armchairs, which was good, because it made everything a little bit easier. A little girl came out of the door that led to the ladies dorms and Hermione slid in quickly, keeping against the wall while climbing up to the sixth floor. She pushed the door and tiptoed inside her old shared bedroom. She spotted immediately Lavander’s bed, makeup products scattered on the rumpled sheets, and Parvati’s as well, covered in discarded clothes that hadn’t made the outfit of the day. Her bed was under the window, neatly made, her trunk closed. She sat on the mattress and sighed a tremulous breath, looking down to the grounds towards the lake. All her running sessions came back to her, the pain in her legs, the heaviness in her lungs. All the tears she’d shed for her friends and her parents. 

Hermione turned to her trunk and lifted the lid. The beaded bag was already there, on top of everything else, an extension charm already in place even if no one else knew. Perhaps she had been preparing for war her entire time there, perhaps she’d known from the first day on the Hogwarts Express that life wasn’t going to be easy for her in the Wizarding World. She pushed aside a layer of clothes and found her books, stacked on the bottom in alphabetical order, her favourite method. Just like McGonagall used to keep hers. She picked her runic dictionary and opened it towards the end, then slipped her envelope between the pages. With a complicated swirl of her wand, the envelope disappeared from view and she added a sticking charm on top before closing the dictionary and putting it back in its place. She closed her eyes for a moment, her fingers still on the spine of the book.

“Please, believe,” she murmured, a spark of hope burning in her chest. 

At the same moment, Draco was walking down to the dungeons and sneaking into the Slytherin Common Room. Some of his fellow Slytherins were hanging there, playing chess or lounging on the elegant leather couches, the green glow of the Black Lake washing over everything from the round windows. He went to the dorms, the path branded in his memory after six years of strutting around like a prince in his castle. His shared room was blissfully empty and he let the cloak slide down to the floor, while he kneeled in front of his trunk. He was rummaging through his expensive stuff  looking for just the perfect spot to hide his letter when the door creaked open and his heart stilled. He whipped his head around and met a pair of blue eyes, dark brows furrowed over a questioning look.

“Theo,” he croaked, his hands stilling inside the trunk. Draco wasn’t wearing muggle clothes, and being on the floor helped hide his different height. Yet, he felt like Theodore Nott, his childhood friend, could easily read him anyway.

“I left you in the Great Hall,” Theo said, his gaze running all over him like a diagnostic spell. 

“Yes, I forgot something, took a shortcut,” he said, realising too late that he should have given him some kind of snarky remark. Theo seemed to realise it, too, his eyes slightly widening for a second. 

“Right. I just needed my bag,” he replied, reaching for it to the foot of his own bed, then started to walk back to the door. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

A sudden uncertainty about the future seized Draco’s mind and he acted on instinct, many different feelings crowding his chest.

“Theo, wait,” he called. His friend stopped and turned again, a couple of dark curls tumbling on his forehead. He ran a hand through them as a reflex. Draco could see why Hermione had fallen for him. Theo was a beauty, and a brain as well. 

“I need to ask you a favour,” Draco said, locking eyes with him, steel into ocean. Theo only nodded, the most serious expression on his handsome face. 

“I have to do something tonight and…it might not work out the way it should,” he started, his fingers grazing the envelope resting on top of the content of his trunk. “If I disappear tonight, your father might want you to take my place in the ranks.”

Theo’s fingers twitched on the strap of his bag. He didn’t ask questions.

“Of course he will,” he simply agreed. That was why Draco liked him more than any other of his classmates and considered him a friend. Theo understood him, shared his background and the challenges it brought with it. He was the only person on Earth he felt comfortable enough to have conversations he shouldn’t be having. 

“When he does, make the right choice, Theo. Fight the right battles and help the right people win the war that will come. Stand on the right side,” Draco said, never leaving his gaze. 

“What are you asking me exactly, Draco?”

“To make things count. They need as much help from the inside as possible,” he insisted, then decided to throw caution to the wind. “She’ll need someone to look her back at some point.”

A light glimmered in Theo’s eyes. He understood, but pushed him.

“Who?”

Draco didn’t miss a bit. “Granger.”

The silence that followed her surname was heavy on their ears, but they didn’t need words to understand each other. Theo knew that Draco wasn’t his Draco and he also knew he was trying to tell him something without giving away too much. Draco knew that Theo had a fascination for Hermione and that he hated his father and Voldemort more than anything in the world. He didn’t need to push too much there. 

“Alright. I’ll make things count,” his friend said, nodding once. 

Draco respected Theo on many levels and thought of him as a friend. But even so, Hermione was more important and he was still a selfish bastard deep down. He knew that this conversation had sealed Theo’s death if the Relligo didn’t work out, but he still didn’t feel as much remorse as he should have. 

He nodded in response and let his shoulders relax. With a final glance, Theo turned and went to the door. He was already a foot beyond the threshold when he spoke again.

“Draco?” 

“Yes?”

Theo looked at him from over his shoulder, a mischievous glint in his eyes. 

“Who does she choose in the end?”

Draco scoffed and shook his head. Leave it to Theodore Nott to figure out so much in such a short exchange of cryptic sentences.

“I don’t know, mate. I guess only time will tell.”