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Chapter Text

She lost her magic slowly, at first. 

It started as a creeping deadness somewhere low in her abdomen.

It spread outward like necrosis into her chest and her head and her limbs. She had no recollection of when, exactly, it had begun. There were holes in her memory as large as oceanic trenches.

A gradual loss of the ability to cast spells over the course of weeks in captivity.

The loss progressed more rapidly after the night she encountered Dirk Creswell, about two weeks into her imprisonment at Malfoy Manor. 

She was being kept in one of the manor bedrooms. A long, thin silver chain stretched from the bedpost to the collar around her neck, effectively limiting her mobility to a few armspans from the bed. 

It was charmed to be far stronger than it looked. It was also spelled against being used as a weapon for strangulation – against others or herself. 

She had tested it extensively.  

She ran her hands along the chain, trying to work out the nature of the charm that had been used to bewitch it in case she could steal a wand and attempt the countercurse. 

The Arithmetic root of the charm on the chain was ‘zero’. Demiguise. Without form. She could tell by the way the air shimmered around it and by the texture of the magic. It moved like velvet under her hands. 

She heard commotion outside the door of the room – stumbling and groaning. Male voices. 

Her entire body froze up. Dread thumped into her stomach, heavy and immovable. She wanted to crawl out of her own skin, to exist without a body somewhere for a very long time. 

She felt half-dead after a week of this kind of captivity. Dead like watching herself from above and beginning to understand that dying could progress in minuscule increments. Death was not so much an endpoint as it was a process. 

She found herself standing as the bedroom door crashed open, although she knew it was useless. Standing or sitting – what did it matter, really? 

She stood up anyway. 

The door rattled as it was flung open. Two men stumbled through the doorway, one supporting the other. Her heart leapt. Could this be some sort of haphazard rescue attempt? 

A flash of blond hair – not Harry or Ron, then. They were still out there somewhere, no doubt trying to move heaven and earth to get her back. 

Malfoy, maybe? Her mind raced as she tried to figure out if she even wanted Draco Malfoy to walk through that door. Would she get Malfoy the Order spy, or Malfoy the Dark Lord’s inquisitor? 

But it wasn’t Malfoy. It was some other light-haired man – his face was vaguely familiar, but her brain felt too panicked and scattered to place him. He was being supported heavily by another man. Bile flooded her throat and her muscles locked up as she recognized the second man – Walden Macnair. 

The younger man was bloodied, shirtless, and foaming at the mouth with exertion. 

She clasped her hands together to still their shaking and steadied herself with a breath, trying desperately to keep her wits about her. She badly wanted to curl into a ball so small and quiet that she could disappear. Instead she observed. The younger man was hurt, but it didn’t appear to be a mortal wound. Macnair’s wand was in his second holster, secured on the inside left sleeve of his uniform. The other man did not appear to have a wand. Hermione quickly took in the brand on his neck – identical to the one on her own. 

A Muggle or Muggle-born slave, then. 

The men stumbled over to the bed, and Hermione attempted to move away to avoid being bowled over by them but stumbled over the hem of the dress she’d been told to wear. It was floor-length – thin, phosphorescent silk, so white it almost bled to silver, with a plunging neckline and back. It wouldn’t have been out of place at a pureblood gala. The length made it impossible to move easily, and her legs got tangled in the fabric, throwing her off-balance. The chain around her neck caught her. It made a sound like the tinkling of delicate jewellery and bit into her neck. 

She grasped the chain to steady herself and watched the two men with hawk-like attention. In spite of her exhaustion and the mangled, hollow feeling in her chest, she forced herself to track every movement and object and potential weapon in the room, hoping for the barest opportunity to escape. 

She knew why they’d put her in this outfit. Some men liked long, elegant dresses. Others preferred short, suggestive ones. She dug her nails into her arms and resisted the urge to draw blood. It didn’t matter what she said or did from this point on: her clothes always ended up on the floor. 

Her mind felt pulverized. She blanched but remained still and silent in a bid to delay that part of the night from starting. Dread lanced up her spine, so strong that it made her want to claw open her arms and rip herself free from her body somehow. 

Macnair deposited the man on the edge of the bed and moved back to take him in, grinning, eyes hot and bright, filled with a visceral mania. Hermione pulled her lips in and felt the urge to step backward. This was going to be bad. 

The younger man collapsed into a seated position on the bed, head lolling. His eyes were fixed on his hands, which were open in his lap, covered in fresh blood. He was wheezing like he’d run a sprint, back heaving.

“Easy, my boy,” Macnair counselled. “The fight is over, and you won.” His eyes were lit from behind with some recent memory. 

The younger man continued to gasp desperately for air, head lowered to his chest. He was bleeding profusely. There were deep gouges in his shoulder, evenly spaced. Half-crescent shaped. It looked like something had bitten his shoulder. Bitten and held on, tearing straight through skin and tendon. 

Hermione drew in a sharp breath and wished she hadn't. The scent of blood was biting and coppery, stinging her nostrils.

Macnair stepped forward and clasped the man’s unwounded shoulder like he would a comrade after a battle. “You pulverised that Muggle filth. I thought you were done for when he started to savage your shoulder, but you broke free somehow. And at the end, snapping his neck from behind – a bloody brilliant way to finish him.” Macnair whooped with glee, slamming a fisted hand into his palm to emphasise the word ‘finish’. “Winning three fights in a row, Dirk.” 

The name jogged her memory. Dirk Creswell. Muggle-born, about ten years older than her. Former head of the Goblin Liaison Office at the Ministry of Magic. By all reports, a very mild-mannered Ministry bureaucrat who’d never had much interest in fighting a war. Macnair continued, “You’re making a name for yourself. You’re worth every Galleon I paid for you.” 

Her stomach lurched. The image was clear in her head, now – two men locked in an arena, forced to rip each other apart with their bare hands. Only one would get out alive. Blood sport. 

Dirk made a sound in the back of his throat. The breath went out of his lungs, only to be forced back in. He was hyperventilating, maybe, or just severely winded. She couldn’t tell.  

Macnair removed his wand. Hermione catalogued how easily it slid out of the holster and how loosely he appeared to be gripping it. He passed his wand over Dirk’s shoulder and murmured a healing charm. The wound closed up – partly. “This will scar wonderfully, just like the one on your back,” Macnair said, voice low and possessive. “Make you look as fearsome as you truly are. Your scars will terrify the next man you’re slotted to fight.” 

Macnair reached out and touched the newly healed flesh of Dirk’s shoulder, fingering the scar. Dirk flinched violently – pain or fear. As Macnair continued, something subtle changed in his posture. He leaned closer, inhaling. He brought his hand up to Dirk’s face and traced the line of his jaw. 

There was black, carnal tension in the room, taut as a wire. She knew what the release of that kind of tension looked like too well to let it progress any further. 

“Don’t,” she said to Macnair. The word scraped out of her throat. Speaking felt unbearable, but all she knew was that she couldn’t watch in silence for a second longer. It made her want to die, seeing him touch another person like that.

Macnair looked over at her. Her ears rang from the onslaught of fear and the blood rushed into her head as her vision began to tunnel. She could feel herself starting to tremble uncontrollably at drawing his attention.

Apparently he’d forgotten she was even there. He shook his head and seemed to come back to himself slightly, stepping away from Dirk. “Did you hear that, Dirk?” Macnair murmured with amusement. “You appear to have a protector. An admirer.” He grinned at her, eyes dripping down her body.

Dirk didn’t reply or look up. He didn’t even appear to have heard the exchange.

Macnair looked back down at Dirk. He shook his head again, like shaking off a pesky but persistent urge. “You deserve to relax and celebrate your victory tonight, my boy.” It almost sounded as if Macnair was reminding himself of that fact. He clasped Dirk’s shoulder again – congratulatory, man-to-man-like, performing his masculinity with renewed vigour. He conjured up a bottle of Ogden’s Old Firewhiskey and slapped the shaft of the bottle into Dirk’s hand. “You deserve a shower, a drink, and a fuck, and not necessarily in that order. This bottle is from my personal stores, aged to perfection. And as for the fuck–” Macnair chuckled, a low hum, turning toward her. His eyes felt like hot pokers on her face and body. She wanted to squirm away. All of the carnality and residual energy from watching a blood sport – moments ago, directed at Dirk – was redirected toward her.

Macnair jerked her forward by the chain, wrenching her around, pressing the front of his body into the back of hers. She repressed a convulsion of disgust and tried to remain still. 

Macnair’s closeness disgusted her, but she also disgusted herself. The dirt, grime, and dried blood caking her skin had been temporarily covered with a magical glamour, but she still felt the grit and filth between her fingers. She’d also been hastily doused by House Elves with a cloying, heavy perfume – it clung to her and mixed hideously with the scent of blood and sweat it was meant to obscure. No one had thought to let her bathe; the illusion of cleanliness was all that mattered. 

His wand was in his semi-limp hand. She thought of making a grab for it. Was it charmed against usage by others? Were his defences lowered enough? Perhaps he was feeling over-confident, as men so often were when they basked in other men’s victories.

He turned her to face Dirk Creswell, apparently for the benefit of Dirk’s inspection. “This is not just any lowblood slut. This is Hermione Granger. Just look at her.”

Dirk didn’t. Macnair wound his fingers into her hair and wrenched her head back and upward into his shoulder, twinging the muscles in her neck. His oily, bloodied fingers on her scalp brought on a full-body shudder that she failed to suppress. Nausea wracked her in waves. “You’re one lucky Mudblood, Creswell. Yaxley wanted her made ready for his use, but his plans changed at the last minute, so I got her for you for the night. Potter’s Mudblood. A fitting reward for a champion.”

The news that Yaxley had wanted her made the breath go out of her lungs. He was one of the worst – not because he was rough but because he had a proclivity for using the Imperius Curse. He liked to pretend his victims enjoyed whatever he was doing to them. 

Macnair’s hand dropped from her scalp to her collarbone and then to her breast. She felt her entire throat constrict around a dry heave, although she tried to stifle the sound. Her heart hammered and her skin prickled violently. She suppressed an urge to try to wrench away. 

Macnair chuckled at her response to his hands. He said, “She is quite a magnificent creature. I hope you’ll enjoy her as much as I have.”

Dirk’s head came up at Macnair’s comment. One of his eyes was bloody and partially dislodged from the socket. 

With a final squeeze to her breast, Macnair released her from his grasp and she stumbled away, arms going instinctively around herself, trembling. She felt her face crumple. It never got easier to endure. Never. 

Macnair gifted Dirk with a final wave of his wand – a spell that firmly reattached his eye to the socket and reduced some of the inflammation. Dirk groaned with relief at the cessation of pain. “We’ll have that eye looked at more closely tomorrow morning. I doubt you’ll be able to regain full sight, but it’s worth a look from a Healer. Well.” A weighted pause. “I’ll leave you, now. Enjoy yourself, boy. You deserve it. I’ll even let you have a lie-in tomorrow morning.”

With a parting leer at her, he turned his back and left the room. The lock clicked shut behind him, a definitive sound.

Macnair’s exit had a similar effect to a bomb detonating. Dirk’s entire body convulsed, and he gave a sob of agony. He launched off of the bed – his breath made a wet sound as he dragged air in and out of his lungs.

Apparently, he’d been holding himself under some modicum of control around Macnair, but now he let himself go. He gritted his teeth, still coated in another man’s blood, and roared. The sound was so ferocious and unmoored that Hermione stumbled as far away from him as the chain would allow. She pressed herself against the far bedpost, freezing instinctively, terrified that his violence would find an outlet in her. 

He stumbled around the room, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes, making sounds like someone was driving a nail into his skull. He crashed into the nightstand, insensible, and it splintered noisily. He looked down at it – for a second, two seconds. And then he picked it up and hurled it against the wall as hard as he could, muscles cording in his back.

The sound was deafening. Hermione tried to pretend like she was part of the bedpost.

He picked up the splintered remains of the nightstand and hurled them against the wall, and did that repeatedly, until it resembled tinderwood. Then he collapsed to the ground, sobbing, wheezing, bellowing nonsense.

She felt unable to move, petrified that she would draw his attention, but she winced inwardly at the amount of noise he was making. Her legs felt weak at the thought of Macnair hearing the noise and coming back to investigate. 

He cried and raved and, with time, slowly came down from the height of his frenzy. His sobs became mere wheezes, and his wheezes became exhausted shudders.

Some minutes later, he dragged himself up and looked around the room as if he didn’t know where he was. His gaze fell on Hermione, pressed against the bedpost. She flinched. She kept her eyes down, silently praying that he would turn his attention elsewhere. 

He turned his back and stumbled into the bathroom. Her legs gave out and she slid down the bedpost, trying to breathe through the roar of blood pounding in her ears. 

She heard what sounded like vomiting, interspersed with sobbing. Water from a faucet started running. Her ears were pricked, cataloguing sounds, interpreting their meaning, extrapolating his motives and future intentions. It was the only thing she could do – cling to the small scraps of agency remaining to her.

She wondered how long he’d been fighting. How many Muggle and Muggle-born men he had killed in order to be allowed to stay alive. Wondered if he personally knew any of the men he’d been forced to fight. Bile rose in her throat.

She ran her hands over the chain again, trembling. The man was clearly unhinged – barely clinging to sanity. He was also almost twice her size, capable of snapping her in half like a twig. A fact that had never once crossed her mind while he was a mild-mannered Ministry bureaucrat.

She fought off hot lashes of panic by closing her eyes and losing herself in the bright spots in her memory – past moments she hadn’t known were precious until despair had started to tighten its grip around her, casting her future in a sightless grey-black pallor that siphoned hope.

She remembered: three years ago, sitting beside Ron and across from Harry and Ginny at the Hog’s Head as they announced their engagement (“and at the same age as my parents,” Harry had said, grinning so widely that he could barely get the words out). The hope of that moment cut through the fog of the past few years – overwhelmingly bright, running the whole barroom with an orange-red, Christmas-lit wonder. The aliveness of sitting across from them in that moment and squeezing Ron’s hand warm in her own had imbued her whole life with a sense of movement, forward motion – the whisper of an escape from the drudgery of war. 

She remembered: all of the days in Hampstead with her parents, in the house they had filled with jazz records and handmade miniatures of cities and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, hearthlight-rendered – the glow of it all still strong in her mind like an anchor, a shelter from storms, an illusory place of safety. The memory of it could lull her still, even if it only existed now in her mind. 

Her heartbeat slowed as she huddled into the warmth of her memories.

It was a long time before Dirk lurched back into the bedroom. He looked unsteady, probably from his damaged vision and from sheer exhaustion. He appeared much cleaner and less bloody, but still shirtless, wearing the same filthy, bloodstained pair of trousers.

His eyes went to Hermione. The chain was cutting into her neck because she had moved as far away from the bed as it was possible to be, knees curled into her chest to hide the plunging neckline of her dress. The ridges of the bedpost dug into her bare back as she leaned against it for support. 

“Is there any food?” It was the first time he had spoken, and his voice cracked out of his throat, bone-weary and devoid of warmth.

She shook her head, afraid to look at him or speak.

He tried again. “Can we have food brought up by a House Elf? Can you call for one?”

It was the most normal he’d sounded all evening. Apparently he’d calmed somewhat while in the bathroom. She stifled a hollow bubble of laughter. She supposed – with the dress and the collar that resembled jewellery – that she might look, to him, like the sort of person who possessed some measure of power. She hadn’t eaten anything remotely resembling a full meal in the weeks she’d been at the manor.

For a moment, she felt a sense of camaraderie with him. They were both Muggle-born, both suffering and starving. She wondered if he felt it too – wondered if there was a chance that he wouldn’t hurt her. 

Hunger was the most degrading sensation she had experienced so far, eclipsing other more obvious degradations. Starving gave desperation a physical form – it eroded dignity more rapidly than anything else could. After weeks of gnawing starvation, she felt ready to give anything for a hot meal. She wanted it more than healing potions. More than a warm, safe place to sleep. More than escape, in her worst moments.

She chanced a quick glance at Dirk’s face. She could see the same desperation in his eyes now, but his expression was shot through with hope – a dangerous combination. She wondered how to break the news without triggering his simmering rage. She was acutely attuned to his posture and non-verbal cues, all of her energy focused on parsing their meaning. Beneath that, she felt slightly woozy from hunger and exhaustion. Her mental capacities were waning. Words felt heavy and futile in her mouth. Finally, she said, “There’s nothing. I’ve barely eaten anything. Not for several days. Just scraps from their plates.” 

Dirk startled her by uttering a peal of laughter. “Well, fuck.” He stumbled over to the bed, and she realised it was because the Firewhiskey was still lying there, untouched. His laugh seemed to spiral slightly out of his control before he reined it back in. “He gives me a whore and an entire bottle of Firewhiskey,” he said, more to himself than her, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, “and forgets that I haven’t eaten in two days. Two fucking days. I kill someone with my bare hands, and can’t even get a hot meal for my trouble.”

He unstoppered the Firewhiskey. His throat worked as he drank it like water. He stopped only when he started to choke, spluttering and spraying the liquid all over the bed. He gasped for a few moments, coughing and shuddering, and then took another pull.

He cast his gaze around the room. Roving. It was almost frantic, like he was trying to latch on to anything that would distract him from what was happening internally.

There wasn’t much. A chair, a desk, a splintered nightstand, a wardrobe, a bed, and her.

He wandered around restlessly, bringing the bottle to his lips again and again. She hoped against hope that he would drink enough to pass out soon. He opened the wardrobe, which was mostly empty. He rifled through the desk, probably hoping for food.

He turned back to Hermione. She was the only viable distraction in the room.

He stared at her as he took another swig from the Firewhiskey bottle. He didn’t offer her any, and she didn’t ask.

“Get on the bed,” he said, gaze dropping below her face. 

She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t say anything. She felt too small to speak, engulfed by the enormity of his presence, smaller and more helpless than she ever had in her life.

Suspended in that moment, she started to feel it: a creeping deadness somewhere low in her abdomen.

Her magic – latent, ever-present, fire-bright – was disappearing.

The loss became faster over time, rapidly losing charms, then curses, then even the capacity to sense magic, stillness inside growing cavernous. Eventually her magic went out of her like a light switching off – sudden and total and resoundingly silent. 

~

Two months earlier

Harry was dying a little more noticeably every day. 

She stopped short on the Gryffindor girls’ dormitory staircase and stifled a gasp at the sight of him. Harry was in the Gryffindor common room, alone, trying to fasten his cloak. His hands were trembling too badly to do it.

She almost didn’t recognize her best friend, who had once been broad-shouldered and lightning-quick; her best friend whose eyes had once crackled like embers, whose expressions had once been lively, vibrant, discerning. Now, Harry moved with a heaviness that belied his young age, shoulders bony and hunched inward, skin papery thin, eyes dull and sunken in their sockets. 

His own magic was cannibalising him.

He tried to hide the fact that it was killing him, of course. He stood up straight and kept his chin high and put his hands flat on the table when he couldn’t control the palsy. He vomited as discreetly as he could manage and took suppressants to mask the deep, rattling cough he had developed.

But it got harder to hide with every treatment the Order of the Phoenix inflicted on him.

Treatment. The very word was a misnomer. The treatments were, in fact, the source of his deterioration. They amplified his magical power as surely as they shattered his physical health – weakening his heart, his lungs, his joints and bones.

But Order leadership pressed forward.

The treatments, after all, were working.

Harry’s magic had never been more powerful, and their hope of vanquishing the Dark Lord grew stronger with every passing day.

They called Hermione a genius and promised her the Order of Merlin, First Class, after the war. They gave her free rein of Snape’s old Potions dungeon and bestowed her with the rare, expensive ingredients necessary for producing the potions that were killing her best friend.

Harry became quieter as the pain worsened. His eyes grew dimmer.

She hated watching it more than she could possibly express, but desperation had driven her to come up with something that might give Harry and the Order a sliver of a chance at winning the war.

She fantasised in great detail about shattering the vials that were neatly lined up in her Potions workroom, carefully labelled in her own hand. She imagined hurling them at the wall. Imagined watching the colour come back into Harry’s cheeks, slowly.

In reality, she’d just watched him deteriorate. She watched, and dug her nails into her palms, and bit her cheek until it bled, and sometimes, when she was certain she was alone, she tore her room apart. She flung breakable objects into the wall, overturned furniture, slashed pillowcases, ripped down curtains.

A certain catharsis in the wreckage and the reparation of wreckage. A certain satisfaction in being able to break something.

At night, she dreamt of being swept away by tsunamis. Merciful cataclysms.

Frozen on the stairs, she swallowed thickly and forced a deep breath. She let the threat of tears dissipate and squared her shoulders as she finished descending the stairs. Harry fumbled with the clasp of the cloak, failing again and again as it slipped from his fingers.

She stepped in front of him. “Let me do it.”

She easily fastened the cloak with steady hands. Was he trembling from the neurotoxic effects of the potions or from nerves about the impending battle?

She looked up at his face. Although he hid it well from other people, she knew him well enough to know that he was nervous. A slight twitch of his mouth, eyes darting downward.

He was trembling from anxiety, then, not nerve damage. She breathed a sigh of relief. “You must’ve been afraid, all those times you fought Voldemort before. But I’ve never seen your hands shake. Except for that time you fought a literal dragon.” Her mouth quirked up slightly.

Harry shook his head. He spoke less and less these days, and she wondered if he might not reply. But he marshalled his voice. “I wasn’t afraid the other times because the stakes weren’t as high. Or maybe they’ve always been this high, but I was too thick to realise it.”

Hermione straightened the cloak on his shoulders. Fussing with his clothing was pure habit, at this point. She said, “It’s normal to be afraid of death, Harry. The stakes couldn’t be any higher.”

Harry shook his head. “It’s not death I’m afraid of. That’s always been there, for me, facing Voldemort – the possibility of my own death.” He took a shaky breath. “My thoughts were about you.”

“Me?” she asked, brow creasing. He nodded tersely in confirmation. She paused as her surprise registered. “It’s a war, Harry. All of our lives are on the line. How am I any different?”

The war had dragged on for too long. She could number the years by deaths. Eight years since Dumbledore had died. Seven since Dobby. Six since Tonks. Four since Ginny. One since Snape. The years piled up like cadavers, and Harry blamed himself for every single one.

He looked extremely reluctant to answer her, but he did. “All of our lives are on the line, true.” He hesitated and then spoke all at once. “But if Voldemort wins – don’t look at me like that, Hermione, if he does . . .” He closed his eyes, scrunching them inward. “They’re not planning to kill you or any other Muggle-borns. You know that, don’t you?”

He still wouldn’t use the word ‘slave.’ Couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud, although part of him knew what Voldemort planned to do with Muggle-borns.

Hermione didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to confirm it. She forced herself to meet his gaze. “I know.”

Harry turned his head to the side and pinched his mouth in. She knew he was biting the inside of his cheek to force himself not to have an emotional reaction. He’d done that since he was eleven – probably learned to do it while living with the Dursleys, where any show of emotion was ignored or punished. He said, “I can’t think about it. You, like that – I can’t.”

Her throat tightened. Slavery, subjugation, slowly losing the will to fight back – those were her worst fears for herself. She thought she had hidden them well. Now, those fears were in Harry’s face too. Pure divination.

Sometimes it scared her, how completely Harry loved people – like a train hurtling down the tracks without a functioning brake. There was nothing left to spare with love like that. No margin for error.

“Stop that,” she admonished, trying for lightness and missing badly. Harry frowned, so she clarified, “That selfless thing you do where you love people too much for your own good.” 

He answered her dryly. “You make it sound so noble. It’s not really a choice.” He coughed, and it rattled his whole frame. He said, “Do you remember the time in second year, when you hugged me in the Great Hall, after being un-petrified from the basilisk? You got a running start and threw yourself into my arms.”

She nodded and felt her brow furrow, confused at the change of subject. 

Harry continued, “That’s the first hug I remember.”

She froze.

Harry shrugged and kept his gaze lowered, cheeks stained with colour. He pushed his glasses up his nose unnecessarily.

She shook her head, in a kind of dazed denial. She imagined a smaller version of Harry, who still had the same expressive eyes and wiry shoulders and natural capacity for love – drifting through childhood, withering from neglect, year after year.

The reality of a childhood like that – of course he never spoke about it, because what words were there? It was indescribable. Unbearable to imagine in any kind of detail. She stammered, “There must have been someone who hugged you before that – your aunt, or a friend, or a teacher . . .”

Harry shook his head, almost apologetic, wincing as he saw the pain in her expression. It hurt too much to think about. He pulled her into his arms immediately, but she didn’t hug him back. Her arms felt limp with devastation. “Shush. It’s all right, Hermione, it really is, because then I met you and Ron and Hagrid and Sirius and the Weasleys, and – I didn’t mean to make you cry. Just wanted to explain. This is why I get a bit mental at the thought of you or Ron being in danger.”

A bit mental.

It was the understatement of the century. Harry had once split the earth open, two hundred paces of it, to prevent a curse from striking Ron across a battlefield. Clods of dirt exploded into the air, a fissure rent the earth and split the ground, creating a sinkhole that swallowed Ron’s attacker as swiftly and silently as a grave.

Loving as deeply as Harry did wasn’t a choice. It was an inevitability.

And while he easily could have gone the way of Tom Riddle and closed himself off to the possibility of love, he had veered sharply in the opposite direction. When he met Ron and Hermione – the first people who allowed him to love them – he’d poured all of his pent-up affection and longing and attachment into them, bonded to them so strongly that it was sometimes terrifying.

Harry took a breath and released her from the hug. “Anyway. That’s all to say, I’m afraid of what will happen if I don’t defeat him tonight. For your sake, not my own.”

She swiped at her face and forced her voice to be steady and firm. “You will defeat him. I know it. I have complete faith.”

Harry’s mouth twisted. “Wars aren’t won on faith.”

She could hear the heavy knowledge in his voice. The Order was outmatched. They’d been running on fumes for months. It would be a miracle if they survived this battle.

She put a bracing hand on his shoulder. The shadows under his eyes looked permanent. She wasn’t sure which part of the war had been more corrosive to him than to her. It had something to do with killing and something to do with losing Ginny and something to do with his connection to Voldemort’s mind and everything to do with carrying the burden of defeating the Dark Lord on his shoulders, for years, without complaining or breaking down or asking for help.

She looked at him – at how diminished he was – and thought, wars aren’t won at all.

She didn’t say that. She gripped his shoulder tightly and leaned closer. “You don’t need to worry about me. If you – fail – tonight–” she couldn’t say if you’re killed, couldn’t even think it, “I’m not going to stop fighting. Neither are the rest of the Order. I promise.” 

Harry looked at her and nodded, like he was steadying himself in her gaze. 

At that moment, Ron came clattering down the stairs, lacing up his arm brace. He grinned and clapped Harry on the shoulder. “You ready, mate?”

Harry nodded, pale and serious.

Seeing them stand side by side in the firelight made Hermione’s stomach twist with an all-too-familiar guilt. Beside Ron, who was well-muscled and bright-eyed and suffused with color, Harry looked positively frail.

Her fault.

“You look a bit peaky,” Ron noted, grin dimming. “But it’s nothing we can’t temporarily fix. Accio medical bag.”

Ron’s medical bag slapped into his hands, and he began rummaging through it. He still didn’t look fully comfortable in the role of Healer, but he’d taken it on more out of necessity than because it was a good fit for his temperament. Harry couldn’t manage to go five minutes without encountering mortal peril, so he needed a round-the-clock, on-call medic.

Hermione had many strengths, but she had quickly found that abiding the sight of blood was not one of them. So, the job had fallen to Ron. 

He’d been a horrible temperamental fit for the magical equivalent of medical school – easily frustrated and discouraged, irascible, insecure, and allergic to book learning. He’d dragged himself through it by sheer determination and scraped a degree by the skin of his teeth.

Ron wordlessly handed Hermione potions. These were standard, harmless brews that could be found in any Mediwizard’s kit – not the potions that she had invented to strengthen Harry’s power. Those were kept under lock and key at all times. 

She accepted the potions without comment. She unstoppered the first one and handed it to Harry. He grasped it without question and put it to his lips. Ron’s hand shot out and stilled him before he could down it.

“Bloody hell, Hermione.” Ron glared at her, radiating disapproval. “Will you please tell him what he’s taking? He deserves to know.”

Ron’s comment lashed her like a whip. She hid a flinch and looked at Harry and said, “This one’s a mild sedative and pain reliever. It should take care of the hand tremors, but it won’t dull your focus.” She silently accepted another potion from Ron, and when Harry had downed the first one, she handed him the second. “This next one is Strengthening Solution, for your muscles and grip strength. This one is Vitamix potion, for your energy and reflexes. Girding Potion, for endurance – that one tastes bad –” She winced as Harry spluttered but managed to swallow. “And Pepper-Up, of course.”

Obligingly, Harry took each of them.

Ron snapped his medical bag shut and crossed his arms. “Don’t worry, mate. They’re safe – I prescribe this combination to my brothers all the time before raids and night battles. The patented Ron Weasley arse kicking starter cocktail.”

Harry started to come back to life before their eyes as the potions took effect. He straightened up and relaxed his shoulders. Only then did Hermione realise he’d been hunched and tensed against the spectre of constant pain. His eyes started moving more quickly, devoid of the sluggishness they’d grown accustomed to. A flush came into his cheeks and his eyes brightened.

He was still too thin, but he reminded Hermione of his old self.

It was a false illusion, of course. Temporary and chemically induced. After a few hours, he’d crash precipitously, weaker and more exhausted than before.

Ron grinned. “Not quite as good as new – but I think this is as good as it’s going to get, without risking a coma after the potions wear off.” Ron drew his wand and flipped it through his fingers. “Now. Are you lot as ready as I am to be finished with this war?”

~

They climbed the stairs to Dumbledore’s old office in single file.

When they reached the top of the stairs, raised voices sounded from inside – mostly male. Harry knocked, and then moved to open the door without waiting for a response.

Hermione grabbed his wrist, startled by his impulsiveness. “Stop. Wait for them to invite us in.” He ducked his head and heeded her without argument. 

The voices ceased abruptly at the sound of the knock. “Come in, Mr. Potter.”

They entered Dumbledore’s old office, which had been repurposed as Order headquarters. Gone was the whimsical, elliptical quality of the room, which had once been articulated by antique, whirring gadgets, fantastical wall hangings, and by Fawkes glowing on his perch.

The room was sterile. Utilitarian and stately. Scrimgeour’s people had decorated uniformly in black marble inlaid with gold. The tapestries had been torn down and the gadgets were nowhere to be seen.

As they entered, Hermione noted that the full Order leadership council was present. Rufus Scrimgeour, Alastor Moody, Kingsley Shacklebolt, John Dawlish, Randall Savage, Minerva McGonagall, and the ambassador from the International Confederation of Wizards, Valence Hale.

When Scrimgeour caught sight of the three of them, his expression soured in a familiar way. “Miss Granger, Mr. Weasley, please step outside. You are not members of this council and are forbidden from entering the office of the Minister without an appointment.” His tone brooked no argument.

Harry raised his head. “They stay or I leave.”

Scrimgeour didn’t have any choice but to concede. More and more, he looked weary and frazzled, and especially so when dealing with one Harry Potter.

Scrimgeour said, “Our intelligence indicates that the Dark Lord’s forces will attack within two hours. We have fighters in place at all entrances and more ready to move into place in the Great Hall.”

Harry nodded and took a steady breath. “Good. I’m ready. I’ll do everything I can.”

“What you can do,” Moody growled, “is get your head straight. Wars are won and lost between the ears.” He jabbed a finger at his own head. “You’re going to have to be the one to kill Him. He’s been behaving erratically since we destroyed his final horcrux, and this may be our only chance. There is no room for hesitation or error.”

“Understood.” Harry nodded, keeping his face blank and still. He was much less expressive than he’d been minutes ago in the common room. 

“Good. Then you’ll undoubtedly agree that Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley must be evacuated to a remote safehouse while we undertake this final battle.”

Ron and Hermione reacted before Harry did. Explosively.

“That’s bollocks ,” Ron said, as Hermione simultaneously sputtered, “We will do no such thing.”

She found her voice while Ron was turning steadily redder. “You need us.” Her words cut through the air. “You can’t afford for us to sit this out. Harry needs a combat Healer and trauma medic beside him, if anything happens. That’s Ron. There’s no one else who can do it as effectively.”

“And Hermione is the best cursebreaker we have,” Ron added. “We’re fighting in this battle. That’s the end of it.”

Scrimgeour looked at the ceiling, and then at Moody and Valence Hale, exasperated. “This is why I wanted them to wait outside."

Valence Hale spoke. His voice, smooth and disarming, cut through Ron’s grumbling. He spoke to Harry. “They are a liability,” he told Harry. “Simple as that. You have proven yourself completely incapable of acting rationally where they are concerned. Your sentimentality is a handicap.”

Minerva McGonagall cut him off sharply. “That is enough, Ambassador. You cross a line.”

Hale lapsed into a seething silence, and Kingsley spoke up. “Harry, your love for your friends is not a handicap in the least. But in this particular situation – which requires you to be at your most clear-headed – they may be more of a handicap than a benefit in the fight.” Kingsley threw an apologetic glance at Ron and Hermione. “We honestly thought you’d be enthusiastic about the idea of keeping them out of harm’s way.”

“Kingsley, shut up,” Ron snarled. “We’re standing right here. I am not a bloody handicap.”

Hermione straightened her spine. “You can’t forbid us from fighting. I won’t hear any more about it. You would have to force us to stay back. You’d need an Auror who is quick enough to Stun us both and a Healer standing by to dose us with sedatives. Are you sure that’s the route you want to go?”

“Enough, Miss Granger. Both of you,” Scrimgeour ordered, eyes flashing to Ron. “You are not members of this council. You do not make decisions.”

Hermione opened her mouth to retort, face burning with indignation, but Harry beat her to it. “I agree with Hermione,” he said to Scrimgeour. “Of course I want them to be safe. And I agree that I would probably be more clear-headed if they weren’t there. But they have as much right to fight this battle as I do. They would never forgive themselves – or me – if they sat out.” Harry crossed his arms. “I can’t bring myself to take this decision away from them.”

“We’re making the decision.” Moody’s voice cut into them. “This part is not up to you, Potter. It’s bad enough that you’re part Obscurial. You’ve lost control before, and it could happen again. It’s too dangerous. We forbid them from coming.”

Harry barked a laugh and turned his back on the assembled council. It was a singularly rude gesture. His expression had changed, and it was stripped down, mirthless. “I’m not a weapon you can use in any way you see fit. If Ron and Hermione don’t fight, I don’t fight, and you’ll be one saviour short of a victory.”

Hermione watched members of the council exchange slightly terrified glances. They no longer had any control over what Harry did or how he acted, and he was growing increasingly mercurial. Scrimgeour’s mouth twisted down. He looked, once, at Moody and Hale, but Moody shook his head infinitesimally. Scrimgeour said, “You risk them needlessly, then, and at the peril of winning this war.”

Harry nodded stonily. “Then that’s how it will be.” He kept his back turned, shoulders tense. “Anything else?”

McGonagall cleared her throat and began to speak, and Harry’s shoulders softened slightly at the sound of her voice. “We assemble in thirty minutes in the Great Hall to brief the rest of the Order. Until then, I suggest you go downstairs. Make yourself visible. The fighters in the hall will be grateful to see you calm and prepared for the battle.”

Harry nodded again. His eyes flashed to Valence Hale, filled with contempt. “And I suppose you have nothing to say to me today? No bullshit guidance from the International Confederation?”

“The Confederation is ready to step in to aid with peacekeeping and maintaining order as soon as you’ve defeated the Dark Lord. As always, we support you. I am not sure what I have done to lose your good regard, Mr. Potter,” Hale replied, “but I sincerely wish that I still had it.”

“Well, you don’t,” Harry confirmed, with scarcely collared rage, and turned to leave. When no one seemed to have anything further to say, he exited the office with Ron and Hermione and began descending the stairs, two by two.

“Harry – slow down –”

Hermione was wheeling her legs to keep up with him. She wasn’t used to having less energy than he did. At her behest, he halved his stride, nostrils flaring. Harry said, “I really hate that Confederation prick. Calling you a liability.”

“He’s under a lot of pressure from many angles, Harry, being a diplomat,” she reminded him. “But just remember that he’s ultimately on our side. Thank you, by the way. For advocating for us to fight in the battle. I know it’s not what you would choose.”

Harry nodded. “It isn’t. So don’t let your guard down and stay close to me. Both of you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ron cut in. “This isn’t our first go-round, mate.” Ron grinned nervelessly at him, and only let his grin slip after Harry had looked away.

Preparations for the battle were well underway in the Great Hall. Harry entered as discreetly as he could manage, which wasn’t very. The dread was so palpable that it seemed to muffle the sound in the room. Different Order members coped with tension in different ways.

George Weasley threw firecrackers at the ceiling.

Lavender Brown talked nonsense to Parvati Patil at greater length and at a faster clip than usual. 

Luna Lovegood practised Severing Charms.

Neville Longbottom vomited into a metal canister.

No one hugged or made eye contact for too long or said anything remotely resembling ‘goodbye.’

As people became aware of Harry’s presence, the energy in the room started to shift and mellow slightly. He was there. Their only hope of defeating Voldemort, according to the prophecy.

Hermione waited until Neville was finished vomiting and then sat down next to him, close enough that their shoulders were touching. Neville Vanished the sick and the canister with it. When he looked sideways at Hermione, his voice was steady and assured.

“Why am I the only one who still vomits before a battle?” He grinned slightly in remembrance. “It used to be a bunch of us. Including you, if I remember correctly.”

“You’ve become the bravest,” she explained. “That makes you the most afraid.”

The side of Neville’s mouth tipped up.  

Hermione’s head snapped to Harry as he stood up abruptly. He pressed a hand to his scar. “Voldemort’s here. In the castle.”

A few Order members had time to stand up and draw their wands before the doors of the Great Hall exploded inward. 

Chapter Text

Screams. The heavy thuds of bodies being hurled backward.

She threw herself to the ground and flung both arms over her head to protect from splintering wood.

A seismic shockwave rippled through the floor.

Through the dust, she saw Harry crouched low with his palm pressed flat to the ground. Red light emanated from him and flared around her, blinding. The light encompassed every Order member in the room. She could tell by the look and feel of the spell that he had cast Praetorum Vincis, the most powerful defensive spell in the Light magic canon.

Shields born of Harry’s magic would deflect all but the most powerful incoming spells.

Harry cast not a moment too soon.

Magic ripped through the air towards them. An onslaught of flashing light erupted from the entrance to the Hall.

Death Eaters. A mass of them.

Her brain scrambled to make any sense of it. She staggered up, towards Harry, ears ringing in the aftermath of the explosion.

“Harry–” she and Ron pulled him up from the floor, and she viciously deflected an oncoming spell with a slash of her wand, “how did they – what –”

She side-stepped a streaking red curse and lobbed Reducto in the direction of the doorway.

Harry flung a massive ball of lightning at the onslaught of Death Eaters. Without turning his head, he said, “I don’t – they came early – they bypassed the fighters at the entrances . . .” He punctuated his thought with another blast of lightning. Death Eaters crumpled to the floor. “We need to get Order leadership down here and bring fighters inside. The strategy has already gone to hell–”

A hurtling piece of rubble forced all three of them to duck. 

Death Eaters poured through the blown-in doorway, masked and unmasked, hurling curses with precision and speed.

Dark curses thundered against the magical shields protecting the Order fighters, chipping away at them. Brand new curses. Death Eaters always invented new magic before an important battle.

She needed to invent the countercurses, fast. 

Near the entrance, an unfamiliar Dark curse clipped Mandy Brocklehurst in the shoulder. She went down seizing.

To Harry, she said, “Keep my shield up.”

“I will.” Harry barely paused his casting. “Don’t leave my sight.”

She moved with purpose into the thick of the chaos, tracking the Death Eater who had cursed Mandy.

Her heart thundered in her ears. She took a breath and slowly released it, focusing her field of vision. The movement in the room seemed to slow to an intelligible speed.  

The key was to keep moving no matter what. Moving targets were harder to hit. 

The Death Eaters in front of her appeared thrown at how rapidly she moved forward, scrambling to cast and react effectively. She ducked forward to dodge a curse and sprang up. “Gravitas Quem!” She slashed her wand and a black hole opened up in the floor , pulling the Death Eaters relentlessly towards the ground, unable to raise their wand arms.

Mandy was only a few paces away now, still twitching and seizing on the ground.

Hermione needed the Death Eater to cast the curse again so she could hear the invocation. She hurled a spell at him – something not too difficult to block, to get his attention.

To her relief, the Death Eater fell for her bait. He snarled the curse at her, the same one he had used on Mandy.

Dorcha leichtreachas.

She hurled Impedimenta at the curse and slowed its trajectory, stepping to the side to watch it pass by, noting its color, brightness, texture, and arc.

Dorcha leichtreachas.

The spell had a Gaelic root. It was lightning-based and moderately Dark.

Her mind whirred, calculating the likely countercurse with Arithmancy and quickly formulating the correct incantation and wand movements. 

She drew in a breath, focusing inward and locating the source of her magic. She felt it at her center, a bright thread of light running from the crown of her head down through her core. An effortless connection – mind to body, internal world to external surroundings.

She raised her wand and drew deeply on her magic, pulling from subterranean reserves. “Eadrom cloch.” One half-circle of her wand, counterclockwise, and a sharp flick.

The spell reversed. 

Mandy stopped seizing, her body going limp and boneless.

“Rennervate.”

Hermione dragged Mandy to her feet. She canceled an incoming spell with an agitated slash of her wand. 

“You all right?” Hermione asked, gripping her elbow.

Mandy staggered and blinked rapidly, spitting blood, trying to regain her senses. “I – yes. I’m bleeding – I think I bit my tongue.”

“You were seizing,” Hermione explained. “I countered it. New Gaelic electricity spell.”

Mandy nodded, eyes wide with gratitude. “Thank you, Hermione.” She raised her wand, eyes skittering left and right. “Shit. There are so many of them.”

Sbe scanned the room. Death Eaters heavily outnumbered Order fighters. They had practically surrounded the Order members in the middle of the Great Hall, who were circled up, fighting back to back.

There were more Order fighters outside, guarding the premises. They started to break Death Eater ranks and force their way into the Great Hall, clearing a path. 

Bill Weasley had been stationed outside the front gates. He loped into the hall, flinging curses. When he saw Hermione, he vaulted forward and grabbed her arm, leaning in to be heard over the roar of magic.

“Order leadership are trapped. Voldemort put a sealing curse on the exit to Dumbledore’s office. I can’t break it. You’ll have to do it. Go now. They could be dying in there.”

She forced herself to focus on his voice as she threw up a shield to block an incoming spell.

She had a split-second decision to make – leave the Great Hall to attempt to rescue Order leadership, or stay within Harry’s sight like she’d promised him.

He would be so furious at her if she put herself in greater danger. But if leadership perished, the Order would fragment and collapse. She looked back once at Harry. He was firing on all cylinders, completely absorbed in the battle, Ron by his side.

“Hermione, go!” Bill urged, panic infusing his voice with urgency. 

She’d have to beg Harry’s forgiveness later. She sprinted towards the doors, dodging and weaving as best she could.

Spells crashed into her shield charm as she burst into the hallway and whirled left, down the corridor in the direction of Dumbledore’s office.

The number of fighters thinned as she moved farther from the Great Hall. Her ears were ringing in the comparative silence. She realized that her footsteps were echoing down the empty corridor and hastily cast Muffliato.

The quality of the silence gradually changed. The farther she traveled, the more oppressive it became, as if vibrations couldn’t penetrate the thick, blanketed quality of the air. She stopped dead in the middle of the corridor. The back of her neck prickled. 

“Petrificus Totalus.”

The spell came at her from an impossible angle, at the very moment she turned her head in the opposite direction. Her attempt to parry was a millisecond too slow.

She felt the spell shatter her shield charm and take hold in her bones. It rippled outward and froze her muscles and nerves.

She couldn’t see who had cursed her or where he came from, but she could hear the crack of his boots pealing on the stone, drawing closer and closer. Dread washed over her in slow-crashing waves.

Some part of her knew who it was before he stepped in front of her – a primal part that registered fear and threat faster than language.

Draco Malfoy – the most feared Legilimens on either side of the war. 

His presence created a negative space in the corridor, a blank spot in the tapestry of light and shadow that constituted the hallway. He seemed to be made of different material – the kind of matter that existed around and between things but had no substance itself. He induced slippage in her vision – her eyes wanted to drift away from him, inexplicably, but when she forced herself to focus on him, she met a gaze that reminded her of an ice-dark lake in late November, liquid blackness on the cusp of freezing. Beneath the surface, silver-quick shapes leapt and wheeled through the darkness, but she couldn’t see them clearly. Not even her own image reflected in that black.

His eyes raked her like claws, a big cat playing with a frozen mouse. Immediately, she sensed that he was the sort of person who saw the entirety of someone else while divulging nothing of himself – a one-way mirror. 

It took her several moments of frozen terror before she was able to register the rest of him. He was taller than she remembered from school, dressed in ink black Death Eater robes, priest-like with his high, stiff collar. His skin and hair were seraphic – pale fire in contrast to his clothes and eyes.

He plucked the wand out of her outstretched hand like plucking an apple from a tree.

He looked at it once before meeting her gaze, mouth curling in disdain.

“You’re pretty useless without this, aren’t you?” He flicked her wand.

Then, he inspected it more closely. He ran his fingers along the grooves and vine-shaped etchings on the wood, turning it in his hands. Her heart slammed against her ribcage, and the hairs on her arms stood up. Her connection to her wand was so intense that it bordered on physical. It felt like Malfoy was touching her.

His hand stilled, and he looked up from the wand, eyes going to the pulse jumping at her throat, then up to her eyes. “You don’t like that very much, do you?”

She felt awash in helplessness, breath growing shallow and panicked. Malfoy was the Dark Lord’s most renowned inquisitor. He had a reputation for ripping apart the minds of his victims while extracting information. Rumours had been circulating for years that he had become an even better Legilimens than the Dark Lord.  

Her mind raced, frantic. He didn’t fight in battles. Ever. Why was he here? She hadn’t seen him since the Battle of Hogwarts six years ago. He had remained in the shadows of the war. His eyes were different, now – blanker, emptier, and somehow more cutting for it. Eyes like surgical knives.

The blood drained from her face as she realized how bad this could be for her.  

She had no natural skill in Occlumency. No defense against him.

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get you alone?” Malfoy asked her. He flipped her wand through his fingers, tilting his head in consideration. “Well. We’re alone now.”

The threat was left to implication. She had the frantic urge to move back from him. Being paralyzed was all the more unbearable when she was thrashing mentally, beating herself black and blue against the scaffolding of the spell.

“You’re probably calculating the probabilities now,” Malfoy murmured, dropping his voice. “The probability of getting out of this alive. The probability of getting out of this without being interrogated and tortured.” He grinned, a sharp upturn of his lips, baring his incisors. “I’m guessing you don’t like those odds.” 

The odds were nearly zero, and they both knew it. He leaned closer, so close that she could feel his breath ghost her hair. “I could take you back to the Manor and rip all the useful Order intelligence out of your head. And then, I could turn you over to Greyback. Or Bellatrix.”

The scar on her arm prickled at the memory of blood, blinding pain, and Bellatrix’s black, dilated pupils hovering inches from her own. Her knees might have buckled if not for being held by the immobilization spell. Malfoy pulled back and looked into her eyes. “No? You don’t want that?”

He watched the panic rise in her eyes for a few moments longer, and finally broke the oppressive silence. “To avoid that eventuality, I suggest you listen very carefully to what I am going to say next. I require your full attention and cooperation. Blink if you understand.”

She complied. He certainly had her full attention – her ears and eyes were fixed on him like prey on a predator. 

He nodded, apparently satisfied. “You are so lucky, Granger.” His voice dropped to a purr, eyes empty as he fixed them on her. “You may be of more use to me alive than dead.”

She stopped her mental thrashing, mind going still.

His gaze moved over her shoulder as commotion sounded from down the hallway – the battle drawing nearer. He refocused his attention on her. “I’ll make this brief. I know that Potter is dying. I know that the Dark Lord’s mind invasions are slowly killing him, as are the potions you make for him. He needs to learn to protect his mind. I can teach him Occlumency.” He looked thoughtfully at her wand. “You, in turn, possess something that I want. I propose that we come to an arrangement.”

Her mind went blank. She was at a loss. How could he know that Harry was dying? And what did she possess that he would want badly enough to betray the Dark Lord? 

“We can’t discuss it any further here.” Malfoy made a dismissive motion. “We’re both a bit busy, it seems. But I wanted to make contact.”

He removed something from his pocket and reached for her outstretched hand. Mentally, she flinched, expecting a curse or a shackle. He had a small vial hung on a string, filled with a wisp of whirling silver – clearly, a memory of some sort. He tied it around her wrist and then murmured an anti-shattering spell and an Invisibility charm. It disappeared, but she could feel its weight.

Malfoy spoke slowly and deliberately. “I am going to let you go,” he explained. “I expect your undying gratitude for that.” He released her wrist. 

She attempted to narrow her eyes, trying to convey contempt and disbelief with her limited means. 

Malfoy must think her incredibly desperate if he assumed she would willingly enter into any type of arrangement with someone as dangerous as him. He took in her expression, and his mouth tipped up. He said, “If you survive this battle, you’ll want to look at this memory. It will also show you how to contact me, when you’re ready. You will contact me.” His voice was so assured that she felt a chill lance down her spine. He glanced briefly behind him. “In about thirty seconds, three Death Eaters will burst from around that corner. Bombarda maxima followed by a couple of Stunners should do nicely. If I were you, I’d get back to Potter as soon as you possibly can, if you want him to live.”

He placed her wand into the front pocket of her robe and paused in his retreat. She could only see him out of the corner of her eye as he stopped next to her, facing the opposite direction. “Word of advice, Granger – if you get caught, a quick Avada to your own head is the best option. You have five seconds to draw your wand.”

He was gone from her field of vision before she could react internally.

His Finite Incantatem must have been wordless, because she jolted back into motion just in time to draw her wand against the three Death Eaters who skidded around the corner, one after the other.

Reeling with shock, she threw Bombarda maxima followed by two Stunners in quick succession. The Death Eaters flew back.

That was the series of spells she would have used without Malfoy’s input – a deeply disturbing and inexplicable fact.

She clutched her wrist to reassure herself that the invisible vial was actually there, that the whole interlude hadn’t been a surreal hallucination. She whirled around to see if she could glimpse Malfoy. He had vanished.

Her hands were shaking so badly from pent-up tension that she nearly dropped her wand. She couldn’t make a single bit of sense out of any of it.

She pushed it down and tried to get a handle on herself. Order leadership. Harry. Those were her immediate priorities. She could puzzle out Malfoy later.

She started again towards Dumbledore’s office, only to cross paths with Charlie Weasley, who vaulted around a corner and narrowly missed her with a Confringo. “Hermione, thank Gods,” he murmured, clutching his chest. “Minerva broke the curse on Dumbledore’s office from the inside, and we’ve just escaped. Voldemort is here in the castle, isn’t he?”

She nodded, stomach churning. “We’ve got to get back to the Great Hall. There are so many of them.”

Charlie inclined his head. “Go. I’ll be right behind you.”  

She didn’t need to be told twice. Malfoy’s words were burned into her mind. I’d get back to Potter as soon as you possibly can, if you want him to live.

Everything else he’d warned her about had come true exactly as predicted. She drew in a steadying breath and re-focused her concentration on getting back to Harry. She started to run, leaping over bodies of enemies and allies, heaving spells with vicious precision as she drew closer to the entrance.

Voldemort was in the Great Hall. The air and light seemed to cave to his presence. In her mind, Voldemort greeted her with a swift, nightmarish silence. And thrumming beneath it all, a slow and sickening buzzing, like flies circling a carcass.

Voldemort and Harry were locked in combat. The battle raged on around them.

Hermione staggered to Harry’s side, winded from running, doubling over with exertion.

When Harry saw her out of the corner of his eye, relief painted his features momentarily before his brow drew down ferociously, lips white and shaking. He only took his eyes off Voldemort for a moment.

“You left my sight.” He bit off each word, and punctuated his statement by casting an ear-shattering spell in the direction of the Dark Lord. 

Harry’s magic cracked at her like the warning crack of a whip. She felt it combust around her, sizzling, flaring briefly.

His magic didn’t harm her, but he was clearly so furious at her that he couldn’t fully control it.

Indignation rose up as she lashed him with an admonishment. “I’m completely fine. It was necessary. For God’s sake, concentrate, Harry!”

Ron stumbled towards her, covered in grime and sweat but apparently uninjured. He clutched her hand. “We need to take care of the Death Eaters so that Harry can concentrate on Voldemort.”

She held her wand shakily in front of her and tried to parse the current state of the battle. Everything was chaos and confusion, moving too rapidly to follow.  Harry’s attention was locked mostly on Voldemort, who was twenty paces away. However, numerous Death Eaters were also flanking Voldemort, casting powerful spells in Harry’s direction. Harry was doing what he usually did with Death Eaters – parrying their spells and occasionally flinging them back and down with Stupefy or Impedimenta.

Harry refused to unleash the devastation the Order so desperately wanted him to, instead opting for a strategy of disabling or disarming.

Leadership was going to be absolutely furious with him. Harry was now capable of wide-scale devastation, but he never used his power to its fullest extent – only on Voldemort.

He ascribed all the evil in the world to Voldemort, who had killed his parents, who had given orders to the Death Eaters who had killed Ginny and Sirius and Dobby.

The magic erupting from Harry’s wand was cataclysmic, but it was punctuated by weaker spells aimed to neutralize the Death Eaters flanking Voldemort. He needed to focus his full power on the Dark Lord.

She spoke to Ron. “I’ll shield you and pin them down; you go on the offensive.”

Ron nodded once and started to move forward without looking back at her. He trusted that she would cover him. She conjured a powerful shield around him and started throwing spells in the direction of the Death Eaters – anything she could think of: the more perverse and off-kilter, the better. 

She tried to narrow her focus to casting spells, but everything was chaos – screaming and smoke and spellheat and the sound of magic crunching against bone. Her wand was slick with sweat, threatening to slip from her hand. Sweat dripped into her eyes, burning and tearing from the smoke. She could barely see; she cast a quick soothing charm on her face and hurled her wand back in the direction of the Death Eaters.

She felt the exact moment when her wand slipped from her grasp. She tightened her fingers a moment too late. It clattered soundlessly to the floor.

She lunged.

She scrabbled for it and screamed a shield charm just as a Confringo curse came within an inch of her face. She cried out in pain as it seared her eyebrows – felt like her skin was being flayed from her face with heat.

Two seconds. Maybe three. That was how long she faltered in covering Ron. But he was far afield, focused on offense, dangerously close to Killing Curse range, and he was relying on her to send a steady torrent of spells at the Death Eaters he was attacking.

The protective barrier around him flickered, and before she could renew it, Albert Runcorn threw a non-verbal, blinding green curse at Ron. He crumpled soundlessly to the floor.

A scream started and died in her throat. Her heart stopped for a beat. Then, she created a shield around Ron’s still body, the most powerful one she knew. Death Eater spells bounced off of it. She hurled offensive spells in their direction, desperate to keep them from moving forward.

He might not be dead. There was more than one green curse in the magical lexicon. She had to check. She had to get to him.

But something had shifted – a subtle change in the sound and airflow of the hall. 

She took her eyes off the Death Eaters to glance at Harry.

He was standing shock-still at the center of the battle, wand dangling uselessly in his hand.

His gaze was fixed on Ron’s unmoving form, blind and deaf to everything else. The Death Eaters and Voldemort intensified the onslaught of magic – deadly spells were missing Harry by mere inches, unheeded.

“Harry!” Hermione screamed. She scrambled towards him. “What are you doing?! USE YOUR WAND!”

Either he didn’t hear her or he heard her and didn’t bother to respond. His wand hand remained motionless at his side. His gaze was fixed in horror on Ron’s body. The roar of spells was deafening at this point, and she vaulted to his side, blocking everything she could see and intercept.

It was useless – like trying to stop the breaking of a dam. Harry’s offensive magic had been the only force keeping firepower on both sides even remotely balanced.

“Harry, move!”

It was a strangled cry from her throat. Voldemort unleashed what could only be described as a torrent of black, unfathomable magic – the central point of a supermassive black hole that siphoned all the light in the room. He aimed it straight at Harry.

Harry just said, “Ron’s dead, Hermione.”

Hermione leapt in front of Harry and raised her wand at Voldemort. She frowned at the oncoming spell and used her wand to do – something. She twisted herself into the magic, relying fully on intuition – understood it with thought but also before thought, and she comprehended its nature a moment before it collided with her. She twisted her wand upward and willed .

The black hole warped and converged on itself, winking out.

She blinked. It took her a moment to realize she’d actually countered it.

Voldemort met her eyes, moving beyond rage into something far colder and more gripping.

She felt on the verge of collapsing. “Harry–” she stumbled back into him, wand trained on Voldemort, trembling with adrenaline. “Harry, you have to help me fight, now–”

She risked a glance back at him and jolted at what she saw. Harry’s eyes were completely black. The whites had disappeared. His face was contorted into an expression of such anger and hatred that he was unrecognizable.

She staggered instinctively back from him as he seemed to pull all of the air in the room into himself. For a moment, she was unable to breathe – suspended in a vacuum. No air, no pressure, no sound. Magic erupted from him, black and viciously fast, like a reverberation. She felt it blow harmlessly past her, cold as death.

Death Eaters and Order members crumpled to the floor. When Harry’s magic reached Voldemort, the Dark Lord uttered an unearthly scream – cacophonous, ear-splitting. Hermione covered her ears in agony.

The pain made Voldemort more dangerous. He threw a piece of magic at Harry so complicated that Hermione couldn’t follow its trajectory. She couldn’t even begin to understand how to block it. The spell made contact with Harry, and he fell to the floor, seizing visibly.      

The breath went out of her lungs. Voldemort was still screaming, wraith-like. Spellfire had ceased. She skidded to Harry’s side and placed a hand on his chest. He was twitching spastically, limbs jerking.

“Shit. Shit.” She wasn’t a Healer. She worked through her repertoire of common countercurses and healing spells, but none of them seemed to be having any effect. Harry had been hit with a Severing Charm in the stomach, at some point, and was bleeding heavily. He was also twitching, foaming at the mouth.

“No.” She tried charms to counter electricity spells. Nothing happened. She clawed at her face, stifling a whimper. She cast a stasis charm over him, and the twitching calmed. She’d placed him into a magical coma, which at least stopped the seizing.

She didn’t know how to stop the bleeding.

The screaming ceased abruptly. Hermione whipped her head to Voldemort and watched him disappear into a thick black plume of smoke, fleeing the Great Hall like a demon from a holy relic. The Death Eaters who were still alive followed his lead, taking flight, shattering windows as they exited.  

Hermione staggered up, ears ringing, vision swooping. Her lungs were burning, choked with smoke. She tried to focus her eyes. The scene slowly came into focus – bodies of Order members and Death Eaters fallen to the floor. 

Silence followed the chaos, punctuated only by the crackling of flame and the occasional sound of rubble falling from the blown-in walls. 

She frantically scanned the hall. No movement or signs of life from anyone else. 

She was the only one left standing.

Chapter Text

Her vision swam as she blinked rapidly, eyes fixed on the motionless bodies on the floor. Was everyone dead?

Harry wasn’t dead. And he needed a Healer. If Ron was still alive–

She scrambled over to where Ron had fallen and located him by a red-orange tuft of hair. Miraculously, her shield charm had held. She flung herself to the floor and placed a hand on his neck.

There was a strong pulse. He was unconscious, not dead. White-hot relief flooded her body. He’d been hit with a blinding green variant of Stupefy – a cruel imitation of Avada Kedavra that sometimes fooled Order members into leaving their allies for dead on the battlefield.

She murmured the countercurse. He jerked back to consciousness with a gasp, shooting up so quickly that she lurched away. His eyes were wild and panicked.

Ron looked around, frantic. “What happened – Harry–”

With mounting dread, she followed his gaze.

Many of the bodies on the floor were unmoving. Corpses, now. However, a number of Order members were apparently alive, staggering up. They were blinking, disoriented, trying to adjust to the smoke and dust and absence of noise.

The Death Eaters remained prone.

“Where’s Harry?” Ron asked. “What the hell happened?”

She struggled to form a coherent sentence. “Harry – he did something – and it wiped out almost everyone, and it injured Voldemort before he disappeared. But Harry’s hurt. A cut on his stomach, and Voldemort cursed him. He needs a medic. Are you all right?”

Ron clutched his head, and it came away wet with blood. “Bloody hell. Where is he? Hermione – your face is completely covered in burns.”

She jolted. She’d forgotten. She must be in too much shock to feel pain. “I’m fine. You can heal me later. Harry needs your help.” She dragged Ron to his feet.

When Ron saw him, saw the amount of blood, he levitated Harry. “Hospital Wing.”

They staggered over corpses, out of the Great Hall, ears still ringing. She focused on trying not to slip in the blood and rubble and entrails. They were only twenty steps down the hall when Ron made a strangled sound of alarm in the back of his throat. He dropped to his knees beside Harry.

Ron said, “We don’t have time to get him to the Hospital Wing.” He conjured a cot in the middle of the corridor and levitated Harry onto it. “He’s losing too much blood.” Ron enlarged his medical bag with a spell and began removing equipment – magical instruments, bandages, and poultices.

She tried to look at Harry’s wound but her head started to swim, vision spotting. She quickly averted her gaze, feeling faint, trying to will away the urge to sit down and put her head between her knees until the dizziness passed.

After all these years of war, she’d thought she would be used to seeing blood and horrific injury. 

Not this amount of blood. Not when it was Harry.

If he kept bleeding at that rate, he would go into shock from blood loss. If he went into shock from blood loss, he could die. If he died, it would be her fault. His heart was considerably weakened from the treatments she gave him.

She would never, ever forgive herself.

She muffled a sob, hands fluttering helplessly at her sides. Frantic and useless.

Newly revived Order members were rushing down the corridor, weaving around them, some stopping to stare at Harry’s bleeding form.

“We need space,” Ron said. A small crowd was starting to gather as people realized it was Harry. “Hermione, cast some type of ward. We need Pomfrey or another Healer down here as soon as possible. Can someone go get them?”

No one moved or responded. Ron’s hands were frenzied with equipment.

“Hermione,” he prompted again, losing patience.

Her chest tightened. She cast a barrier that gently pushed onlookers back and gave Ron enough space to work.

Her heart slammed against her ribcage, breath coming as if through a straw. Suddenly, she wanted to run – get outside, get away from the smoke-thick air and from Harry’s pale face. She turned her back on him, shuddering. “Hermione.” Ron’s voice cut through the haze of her panic.

She turned back to him, keeping her eyes averted from Harry. Ron was struggling to organize medical equipment for beginning the necessary procedure. Rolls of gauze streamed out of his bag and onto the floor – his hands filled with so many instruments that he dropped them and swiped them up in his haste to lay them out on the surgical tray.

Ron said, “I know you don’t do well with blood, but I need you to help me. Poppy isn’t here and I can’t do this alone. I’m going to need you to assist me with holding instruments. I think the Severing Charm nicked an ileocolic artery, and he’s bleeding a lot. We need to do this fast.”

She placed a shaking hand over her mouth, eyes going unwillingly to Harry. His abdomen was hemorrhaging bright red blood. Even she knew that they had mere minutes – maybe – to save him.

She forced herself to move. She knelt next to Ron and looked down at the medical instruments he was laying out. Each one seemed sharper and more exacting than the last.

A wave of nausea overwhelmed her. She felt her stomach lurch, and bile came into her throat before she could stop it.

Heat flashed up her skin. She leaned urgently away from the tray and retched, bringing up only bile. She felt another dry heave coming on, and then another. She couldn’t stop. Harry’s pale face and bluish lips kept intruding on her vision.

She didn’t think she could survive losing him.

“Hermione.” Ron grabbed her shoulders and shook her. Hard. Her teeth rattled. “Get it together. I need you to help me. I can’t do this alone and Pomfrey isn’t here. Do you understand me?”

She nodded, dragging in breath. She’d been floating somewhere above her body, but Ron’s shake brought her back.

Ron said, “Remove his shirt while I sterilize my hands. I need to do a laparotomy to seal off the vessel. You’ll have to hand me instruments and hold things.”

She was shaking so badly that her teeth were chattering. She forced herself to breathe and tried to pretend she was looking down at a stranger instead of her best friend.

As she used her wand to sever the front of his shirt and pull it open, Ron finished sterilizing his hands and moved alongside her, levitating the tray of medical equipment to arm-height.

“I’m going to need to make a larger incision.” Ron took an instrument from the tray. “Then I’m going to need you to use two retractors to hold his abdomen open so that I can locate the source of the bleeding, suction it, and then use a clamp for temporary hemostasis while I magically seal off the cut.”

His words ran together in her mind. “Ron – I can’t –”

“I need you to do this right now. If you don’t, he’s going to bleed to death.”

He leaned forward and made a shallow incision around the wound. His hands were completely steady.

“Grab two retractors from the tray,” Ron said.

She looked at the tray in a complete panic. Which were those? They all looked the same – sharp, deadly, and easy to mix up. “I don’t know which ones they are,” she got out. She felt like she was collapsing on the inside, her organs being crushed by pressure.

She reached blindly for something, hands shaking, and knocked half the instruments off the tray. They clattered to the floor.

Ron’s face went white with suppressed fury. He plunged a hand into his medical bag and produced a potion. “Draught of Peace,” he said, voice brusque. “Take it.”

She did, and she immediately felt the potion take effect. Her heart rate started coming down – the vice grip on her chest loosened. Ron steadied her hands with his own and brought one to his chest. She could feel his heart rate: slow and reassuring.

Ron looked into her eyes, gaze steady. She couldn’t help but try to locate the irritation and resentment at her that she knew had been building the entire war, but he was masking it well in this moment. He only looked calm, and she felt her heart rate decrease.  “I can do this, but I need your help. All you have to do is follow my instructions and keep your hands steady. I’ll do the rest. But you have to stop panicking.”

She nodded and forced a breath into her lungs, all the way down to her stomach. Ron picked up two instruments from the tray and said, “I need you to pull the skin on his abdomen open – about this far apart–” he demonstrated, “so that I can see inside. Then I’m going to need you to hand me instruments. Okay?”

She nodded, beyond the point of being able to speak. Ron gave the retractors to her. She positioned her hands, which were considerably steadier from the potion, and pulled the skin of his abdomen open, copying exactly what Ron had done.

Ron nodded. “Good.” He removed an instrument from the tray and started operating, apparently unbothered by the viscera. Hermione took in as little sight and sound and smell as possible, imagining she was somewhere else.

Her hands were sweating. Her grip on the retractor started to slip. She gritted her teeth and suppressed any sound for fear of distracting him. Ron kept one hand on the suction and took the retractor from her slipping hand with the other. “Take the suction out of my hand and replace it with the clamp. The one that looks like scissors with two blunt ends.”

She repeated his instructions to herself before moving to be sure she had it right. She took the suction – he let go – placed it on the tray, and handed him the clamp.

“Good. Take the retractor again.” She took the retractor back from him and watched him clamp something inside that was spurting blood. It all looked the same to her – a mess of guts and organs. The smell caused a fresh wave of nausea. Ron picked up his wand and started reciting the spells that would magically seal the artery. His wand movements were incredibly precise – tiny motions left and right, with the fine motor control of someone threading a needle.

He let out a heavy breath as he finished the spell. “I’ve stopped the bleeding. Keep holding while I sterilize the area.” He murmured more spells. She focused on keeping her hands steady.

“You can release the retractors. Slowly,” Ron said. “I need to stitch him up. He’s going to be okay, I think.” She tried and failed to suppress a sob. Ron’s eyes flashed up to her. “I can handle it from here.”

She scrambled away and burst into silent tears at the edge of the barrier, trying not to distract him. Emotion exploded out of her – terror, relief, deep gratitude for Ron. Anger at herself.

And guilt, which subsumed everything else. She was killing her best friend. Ron was keeping him alive.

She allowed thirty seconds of uncontrolled sobs to rack her body. Then, she forced herself to calm.

Harry was alive. He wasn’t going to die, for the moment, but he was still cursed.

He needed her to find the countercurse.

She moved back to Ron’s side, swiping impatiently at her tears. The salt stung the raw burns on her face.

Ron finished tying the final suture and checked Harry’s blood pressure and vitals.

“Pulse is strong,” Ron said, as he felt her reappear. “That was a close call, but he’s going to live.”

“I need to figure out what curse Voldemort used on him.” Her voice warbled.

Ron glanced up at her briefly – the first time he’d looked at her since starting the surgery. His face was tense and haggard. “You need to take a few minutes for yourself. You’re probably in mild shock.”

She noticed that Harry’s blood had spurted into Ron’s hair at some point during the procedure. She couldn’t remember when. She could barely remember anything.

She said, “Scourgify.” The streak of blood vanished. “I’ll – I just need a few minutes. He’s okay?”

“He’s not going to die, Hermione.” Ron’s eyes were steady and reassuring on hers.

“Okay.” Her voice sounded small. She conjured a glass of ginger ale – her Mum used to give it to her when she had an upset stomach – and moved a few paces away. She sipped it, hoping the bubbles would settle the churning in her gut.

She jolted as she felt the glass vial against her wrist. Malfoy, and his offer. She’d completely forgotten it. There was no time or emotional space to think about it now. 

It took her ten minutes to regain any semblance of control. She did so by focusing on deciphering the countercurse to the spell Voldemort had thrown at Harry.

Voldemort’s magical repertoire was the most extensive in the known world, and she didn’t recognize the spell he’d used. It had all happened so fast. She racked her brain, trying to remember what the spell had looked and felt like.

It had exhibited a stochastic trajectory, which made it impossible to block. Only a few spells in the known pantheon had that type of trajectory. That narrowed it down considerably.

She needed a book. She needed twelve books. She could see their names in her head. Magical Theory. The Book of Spells. Extreme Incantations.

She Summoned the books from the library and waited, biting her nails, until they flew around the corner and thudded into her outstretched hands. She opened Extreme Incantations to the chapter on lightning-based spells and started reading on the floor next to Harry, fingers shaking as she scanned the pages.

Pomfrey arrived along with other medics, and they levitated Harry to the Hospital Wing. She followed behind, three books tucked under one arm, one book open in another, reading frantically as she walked. She sat absently at Harry’s bedside, looking up at him intermittently to be sure he was still breathing. 

At length, Scrimgeour – looking considerably worse for wear – came to Harry’s bedside, along with Kingsley Shacklebolt. Ron stood and started bringing them up to speed. 

She tuned them out. Ron could handle it. It took her ten minutes to locate the curse. “Fulgur animo,” she said aloud, eyes going to Ron, when she was sure.

Ron turned to her, away from his conversation with Kingsley and Scrimgeour. The circles under his eyes had grown darker, and his mouth was drooping with exhaustion. “That’s the spell?”

“I’m fairly certain,” Hermione replied. “Lightning-based Dark magic. One of the only known spells with a stochastic trajectory.”

All three of them looked at her blankly.

“Stochastic. Chaotically organized. Not deterministic. It’s a distant relative to the Baubillious Charm. You know the one.”

“So what does the spell do?” Ron asked.

Hermione swallowed. “It short-circuits brain electricity. It causes the equivalent of what’s known as a grand mal seizure, in Muggle terms.”

Kingsley’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds serious.”

“It can be, if it lasts long enough,” Hermione replied. “Brain damage, memory loss . . . but he was only seizing for a few seconds before I put him into magical stasis.”

“Please tell me there’s good news.” Ron’s face was pale and set, braced for bad news.

She shook her head, worrying her bottom lip. “There’s no known countercurse,” and before his face could fall any further, she said, “but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a countercurse. Every curse has a countercurse. I’ll figure this one out.”

She nodded once and went back to her reading.

She opened three books and conjured parchment and started scribbling notes. As she read, her mind began whirring. She searched for the rune or the Arithmetic root of the Fulgur animo spell.

Demiguise. Zero. Without form. She had memorized the complex numeric charts that translated Latin spells to runes, and runes to Arithmetic roots. She started calculating, reducing the incantation and the root to a series of numbers. Her calculations allowed her to understand the magical properties of the spell and how it was linked to magical form.

Once she broke it down into its basic Arithmetic components, she built the countercurse. Most Wizards needed hours with numerical charts, rune dictionaries, and books on magical theory to do it effectively: puzzling over how to translate numbers to their rune form, how to translate runes to their Latin verbal form, how to translate written words to sound and movement and intention.

She could usually do it in seconds. This one took her five minutes.

“I think I’ve got it,” Hermione said, looking up. Ron and Scrimgeour and Shacklebolt were still speaking in low voices.

Ron rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah? What is it, then?”

She nodded, biting her lip. “It’s a difficult countercurse, but I’m fairly confident I can perform it correctly. We’ll need to release him from stasis before I do. Then I’ll perform the countercurse. Hopefully, that will reverse the spell, and his mind won’t be damaged further.” She looked at Ron, full of trepidation and hope.

Scrimgeour surveyed Hermione, doubt coming into his face. After a pause, he said, “I think we should get a second opinion.”

“There is no second opinion to get.” Her voice cracked in warning. She brandished the book at him. “This is extremely rare, advanced spellwork, beyond the expertise of most professors, and the magical theory behind it is practically impenetrable. We don’t have time for this. I’m not sure how to make you understand–” 

Scrimgeour cut her off. “Miss Granger, I am not willing to risk Mr. Potter’s life based on a few minutes of frenzied reading and your word that you came up with the correct spell. Mr. Weasley has also informed me that you are in shock. We must proceed with the utmost caution–”

Blood rushed into her face and she resisted the urge to shout. “Frenzied – in shock – no. You need to listen to me about this–”

“Save your breath, Miss Granger. You do not get to make unilateral medical decisions for Potter.”

“But Ron does?” 

It shot out of her mouth before she could stop it. She wanted to take it back immediately, seeing Ron’s face twist with the unexpected affront. 

It wasn’t that Ron shouldn’t be trusted, although she knew he would take it that way. She was just so tired of being second-guessed, having her professional competence questioned by people who hadn’t the slightest inkling what she did. 

She paced the bedside, clenching and unclenching her fists. “Sorry,” she said in their direction. “I . . . of course we can get a second opinion. I just get a bit – forceful – with spells and books and things.” She cleared her throat self-consciously. “We can owl some experts and professors we know. One of them ought to have heard of Fulgur animo.”

Scrimgeour nodded. “There’s an Albanian professor, Borealis Zogolli, who specializes in Dark magical curses. I’ll see if I can get him on the Floo to confirm your research.”

Scrimgeour swept away. He only returned hours later, which allowed time for Ron to heal the burn marks on her face and regrow her eyebrows.

As it turned out, Professor Zogolli had heard of Fulgur animo, but had never seen it successfully performed, given its difficulty. He told Scrimgeour that he knew of Hermione by her work, and that her research was usually impeccable.

Scrimgeour relayed all of this to Hermione in a slightly muffled voice, without making eye contact.

Hermione nodded curtly when he was finished. “All right. I’ll do the countercurse now. No use waiting.”

Scrimgeour left without further argument.

Hermione stood up and placed her hand on Harry’s forehead. She ran her fingers through the hair at the crown of his head. Ron came to stand next to her. She looked at Ron and steadied her gaze in his.

Ron squeezed her hand. He said, “If anyone can do this, it’s you. I wouldn’t choose anyone else to attempt it. Neither would he.”

She nodded, barely able to hear him over the sound of her own heartbeat. Focus . She took a breath, and then another one, and after four or five breaths, she drew her wand. Her hand was steady. No room for emotions or nervousness. She needed absolute focus and clarity.

“Will you release him from stasis when I’m ready?” Hermione asked.

Ron nodded.

She said, “Give me a moment. I need to get a sense of the magic.”

She closed her eyes and reached out. Not physically, but she twisted into a magic she couldn’t fully see or comprehend. There was a certain element of intuition with complex magic. It was all grasping and locating edges and forces that didn’t exist in the physical world. Wands would only get in the way of this part.

“Go ahead,” Hermione said, and Ron flicked his wand. Harry jolted into motion, seizing so violently that his back arched and cracked. They should have put a stick in his mouth; he was going to bite his own tongue off. She fought that thought down. She was tense, knuckles white on her wand. She had been mouthing the countercurse to herself and practicing the delicate wand movements in her head. She took a breath, submerged herself in the magic radiating from him, and started moving her hand in an over-practiced motion. She recited, “Fulgari quiescat.” Her pronunciation was exact, voice pitched as deliberately as a choir singer’s, and her wand hand moved with symphonic precision.

Nothing happened. He kept seizing, limbs contorting spastically. Her mind liquidated. She had no back-up plan – this was it. She had been so sure of the curse and the countercurse. She must have made a sound without realizing it because Ron moved toward her. Her legs felt weak, but Ron’s arm was around her waist before she even knew she needed to be steadied.

“Hermione – look.” She didn’t respond to his voice. “Look.”

She forced her gaze up to the bed. Harry’s seizing appeared to be diminishing, convulsions becoming shakes and then slight tremors. Finally, his muscles relaxed and he went still on the bed.

A coldness crept into her as she stared at his still form. Icy terror, unspeakable. It froze her in place. She couldn’t bear to check to see if he was alive. It was Ron who placed a hand on Harry’s throat and paused. Hermione’s eyes were locked on Ron’s face like trying to divine a fortune.

Ron spoke. Her lungs were burning. “He’s alive. There’s a pulse.”

She dropped her wand and moved to the bed, hand going frantically to his forehead. It was reassuringly warm.

“Should we – should we try to revive him?” She looked back at Ron, muscles drooping with relief. 

Ron shook his head. He waved his wand over Harry and examined the result. “His vitals are steady. It’s hard to tell what brain damage there might be from the diagnostic alone. Let’s let him rest and wake on his own.”

She nodded without looking away from Harry’s face. He was alive. Alive, for the moment. Her eyes were fastened on the rise and fall of his chest, terrified that he would slowly stop breathing. She had no notion of how long she sat there.

She could remember a time when her world had felt larger and consisted of more people. – her parents, Ginny, the rest of the Weasleys, Neville, Luna, Seamus. Her focus (and Ron’s) had funneled to a narrow point over the course of the past few years – keeping Harry alive for another year, month, or week.

Lately, keeping him alive for another day seemed a victory. 

When Harry opened his eyes, she was still sitting on the bed. Ron was crumpled into a chair next to the bed, limp with exhaustion. 

Harry blinked and looked uncharacteristically defenseless. As he focused on her face, his expression filled with recognition. Relief, that she was alive. 

Harry asked, “Ron.” It was an urgent question and a faltering, deadened sound in his throat.

Hermione moved aside so that Harry could see Ron sitting in the chair. She lurched out of the way as both of them moved at the same time. Harry flung his arms around Ron’s shoulders and held on with a death-grip. She could see his hands clenching and unclenching against Ron’s back with some combination of pent-up terror and relief.

“Be careful, you git,” Ron chided over his shoulder. “You have fresh sutures in your abdomen. Don’t make me redo them.”

She could sense Ron’s surprise at how tightly Harry held on to him, and how long he stayed like that. Finally, Ron pulled away and moved back to the chair, passing a hand over his face to hide some flicker of emotion.

Hermione pulled Harry into a hug after Ron had moved away. His left side seemed weaker than his right as he attempted to wrap his arms around her.

Over her shoulder, Harry said, “Thank God you’re alive. You left my sight during the battle, you idiot.”

She felt a wave of relief envelop her. He remembered. He knew them, which meant he didn’t have severe brain damage. She could see it all in his face, in that one series of expressions. Emotions of that intensity were only driven by memory and knowing.

Hermione pulled back. “Do you remember what happened?”

He tried to speak, but it came out slurred, like he didn’t have full control of his tongue. “I . . . Ron. I thought he was dead. I got so angry that I went – blank. I think the Obscurus took control. That’s all I remember.”

She recounted what had happened, but her voice faltered when she started to describe the part where he had almost died. Ron took over, moving to the other side of Harry’s bed. “You almost bled to death,” Ron told him. “That’s part of why you feel so weak. We patched you up.” Ron’s lips went thin with repressed fury. “Harry, you can’t just drop your guard like that in the middle of a battle. No matter what happens.”

Harry just looked at him, face open and filled with anguish. “I thought you were dead.”

Ron blinked rapidly and broke Harry’s gaze. “Well, I wasn’t.” He hardened his voice. “You better not ever do anything like that again, you careless git. This is the last time I’m going to stitch you up for making a stupid, preventable mistake. All right?”

Harry glanced at Hermione. They both knew this was patently untrue. Ron had saved Harry’s life after one hundred reckless mistakes, and he would do it one hundred times more if he had to.

“Sorry,” Harry said. “I’ll try to be more careful.”

Ron nodded and launched himself away from the bed, putting both hands behind his head. He was probably on the verge of tears and didn’t want Harry to see.

She took Harry’s hand. “It’s been a few hours since the battle ended. They retreated after what you did. Voldemort seemed injured.”

Harry nodded. He touched his scar. “I can feel him. He’s still alive, but wounded. He’s – really angry at me.”

His eyes behind his glasses looked bigger than normal, pupils contracted. Hermione said, “You need rest. You’re extremely weak. Can you drink some Blood-Replenishing Potion and then go to sleep?” They’d managed to find a single vial left in storage, but it wasn’t enough to fully replenish the amount of blood he’d lost.

Harry nodded, eyes falling shut.

She unstoppered the vial of potion. “Drink,” she instructed. “Then, sleep.”

She fiddled with the invisible vial on her wrist as Harry drank. She could think about her encounter with Malfoy tomorrow. They could think about everything tomorrow, after getting some sleep.

Ron came back near the bed. She could tell by the tension in his posture that he was still angry at Harry. He started organizing supplies in a nearby medical cabinet, making more noise than was entirely necessary.

“Will you be able to sleep?” she asked. 

Harry looked up at her. “I don’t know.” He hesitated, suddenly bashful. “It’s a silly request, but . . . would you tell me a story?”

She nodded and scooted closer to him on the bed, pausing for a few moments as she tried to think of a suitable tale. She was too exhausted to make anything up. It would have to be something she already knew. “Once upon a time, there were four siblings – Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy – who were sent to the countryside during the war.”

Harry smiled ever so slightly – a rare expression to see on his face now. 

“The youngest sibling, Lucy, discovered an enchanted wardrobe that led to a place called Narnia . . .”

Ron continued to rummage in the medicine cabinet behind them as she recited the tale from memory. She spoke for a few minutes, drifting through the story. Lulled by the sound of her voice, Harry’s face began to relax in increments. She said, “Aslan died for Edmund, sacrificing himself in Edmund’s place.” 

Ron had gone still, listening. She lowered the volume of her voice as Harry drifted closer to sleep. “But Aslan was resurrected because a deeper magic existed – a magic that could reverse death. And when he came back, Lucy and Edmund made him promise that he would survive the war. That he would die of old age, not a single dark hair left on his head.” 

She stroked his hair, tears in her eyes, but kept her voice calm and even. “Hope was sparked by his return. And that’s the story of how the war against the White Witch was won and lost and won again.”

“How does it end?” Harry asked, almost asleep. “Is there ever peace?”

“Yes,” she answered, but he had already faded.

Chapter Text

After Harry had fallen sound asleep, Hermione knew she ought to do the same, but she couldn't relax. She felt unsettled and wound-up, head buzzing. The encounter with Malfoy kept intruding into her thoughts. 

She sighed and fiddled with the bracelet. It couldn’t wait till morning. She wanted to look at the memory now if a Pensieve was available in the Order Memory Bank. It was worth a try. 

Shoulders slumping with exhaustion, she made her way down to the bottom of the castle – past the kitchens, the Potions dungeon, and a narrow set of stairs that led to the Order’s Memory Bank, where they had re-created a facsimile of the long-since destroyed Hall of Prophecies in the Department of Mysteries to house important memories and auguries from Seers.

Luna Lovegood, in spite of her own forgetfulness, had adopted the role of the Order’s memory archivist with a strange but natural affinity. She cared for the memories entrusted to her like a gardener nurtured plants.

Hermione was surprised to find the door to the archive open and Luna inside. The room was filled with shelves upon shelves of memories encased in orbs that caught and refracted the diffuse, cerulean-tinted moonlight pouring in from the windows of the Black Lake. 

“Hermione.” Luna looked up from the silvery threads of a memory she was carefully transferring from a cracked orb to an intact one. She seemed uninjured from the battle. “I’m pleased you’re alright. I came down here to check if any memory orbs had been shattered in the battle.” She smiled, eyes slightly unfocused. “Some of them are cracked and need repairs, but none broke. I was about to close up, actually.”

“Would I be able to use a Pensieve before you leave?” She massaged her forehead, wilting with exhaustion. She’d never been close to Luna, despite their proximity in age and their shared friendships with Harry and Neville. Luna’s lack of social grace and dreamy girlishness had a way of disconcerting her. “I need a time-sensitive favor. I’m working on inventing a spell, and it’s blood magic, lineage-based. I’m wondering if you have any memories of Draco Malfoy in the Bank. For spell research.”

It was a thin excuse, but Luna wasn’t very detail-oriented. It would serve well enough.

Luna swept her gaze over the shelves, eyes clouding. Her organization system was completely unfathomable to Hermione but seemed to have its own twisted branching logic. Luna had placed the various memories thoughtfully next to others that needed similar amounts of light and attention to thrive. “We only have one memory of Draco Malfoy. He’s been careful about wiping the memories of Order members who’ve encountered him over the years. He’s – a bit of an unknown, really.” A shiver juddered through her. The dimness of the room would have been downright eerie if Luna hadn’t lit the whole space with floating fairy lights. “There are the rumours about him – you’ve heard them, I’m sure – but all unconfirmed. He’s very careful.”

She bit her lip. Of course he was, as a high-ranking member of Voldemort’s intelligence division. He had taken pains to cover his tracks.

“What’s the memory you have?” Hermione asked.

“From Colin Creevey – viewable to the public, by Colin’s consent. A memory of an interrogation he underwent while in captivity about a year ago. Colin escaped, but his memory was wiped by Malfoy, although eventually I managed to break that charm. Quite a complicated bit of spellwork to reverse.” Luna fiddled with the charm bracelet on her wrist.

She straightened her shoulders. “I’d like to see the memory.”

Luna tilted her head, eyes widening with apprehension. “Are you sure? It’s rather violent and disturbing, especially for a Muggle-born.”

She ground her teeth. “I’m sure. And, Luna – I’d appreciate it if you could keep my visit between us. The spell I’m working on is top secret.”

“Of course, Hermione.” Luna flicked her wand to Summon the memory – the orb floated unhurriedly toward them. Hermione swallowed once before she accepted the orb from Luna’s outstretched hand. “Use the Pensieve upstairs and to the left. I’ll be sure you’re not disturbed. And, Hermione – I’ll be here afterwards if you’d like to talk.” Her eyes crinkled with kindness. “Part of my job as memory-keeper is to help people come to terms with what they see.”

“Thank you, Luna.” She smiled distractedly. “I’ll be fine. You should head out and get some sleep. I’ll close up.”

Her stomach somersaulted as she made her way to the room with the Pensieve. There was no avoiding this. Better to have information about how Malfoy operated than go in blind.

Before she could think too much, she dumped the memory into the Pensieve and dove in headfirst. 

It was always strange, being in a memory. She was both separate from Colin Creevey, as if watching the scene from the side of the room, and also vaguely aware of Colin’s perceptions and sensations.

The sensation of cold hit her first.

Dampness and piercing chill – the kind of chill that meant they were deep underground. A dungeon, somewhere, but not Malfoy Manor. Somewhere worse.

Colin was shackled to the wall of the room, and across from him was Eleanor Finch-Fletchley – Justin’s older sister. She’d died a year ago in Death Eater captivity.

A chill crept down Hermione’s spine at seeing Eleanor again. A horrible pit started to form in her stomach.

The cell door clanged open. She tensed, expecting Malfoy. Instead, Terrence Higgs and an unknown man entered. Higgs looked the same as he had at Hogwarts – painfully gangly, slightly twitchy, with a too-pale complexion and sunken eyes.

Higgs hissed in annoyance. “I didn’t know we caught a girl.” He threw an irritated glance in Eleanor’s direction. “You know I’m complete shit at doing Legilimency on girls. Can’t ever get the construal right. We’ll have to get Malfoy if we don’t want to bollocks it up. Go and fetch him.”

The other man nodded and exited quickly. Higgs turned away from Eleanor and approached Colin. “You, on the other hand, I can make quick work of.”

Hermione shrank back against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut. It was useless but instinctive. She knew what was coming. To perform Legilimency, a Legilimens had to establish eye contact. Colin knew that too, and would do anything he could to resist looking at Higgs.

What followed was predictable, but no less unbearable for it. The torture started quickly. First Higgs  used blunt fists on Colin’s face until the Slytherin was winded, back heaving, knuckles bloody. When Colin still wouldn’t look at him, he used Crucio. Colin’s scream exploded against the wall, rattling all three of them. His cries shattered her composure, and she stumbled back into the corner of the memory as he writhed and twitched against the wall. She felt the strong urge to extract herself from the memory. His face went beyond pain, into something indescribable. She saw the moment his resolve broke, the moment he decided to start pleading for an end to the pain. He raised his eyes to Higgs in capitulation.

Higgs grinned and put his wand to Colin’s temple. “Legilimens.”

It didn’t hurt, exactly, but it felt like being robbed of the right to privacy and control of his own mind. Colin jerked back, hands scrabbling against the stone, frantically trying to push Higgs away, but Higgs wasn’t touching him. There was no defense. Higgs tore through haphazardly through  memories without a care for Colin’s distress.

Higgs ripped the relevant intelligence – Order meetings, battle plans, briefings – out of Colin’s mind like ripping pages out of a book. She felt her stomach turn over and pressed her hands to her abdomen,  averting her gaze from Colin’s hands clenching and unclenching. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t fully shut out the sensations he was experiencing. Higgs didn’t stop when he had the Order-relevant memories. He started flicking through other memories – private reveries, shameful thoughts, moments of humiliation.

Higgs’ pace was languid, and Hermione realized he was doing it purely for amusement, face alight with glee. Colin thrashed against the spell, tears of embarrassment filling his eyes.

Higgs grinned. “Sorry, Mudblood. Couldn’t help myself.”

Higgs lurched out of Colin’s mind as the heavy metal door of the cell clanged open. Colin gave a strangled whimper of relief.

The air in the room seemed to go completely still as the figure of Draco Malfoy filled the doorway. For a moment, Malfoy’s eyes landed on Hermione in the corner, and she could swear he locked his gaze with her, although rationally she knew that was impossible.

She dug her nails into her palms, trembling with adrenaline, and reminded herself that she was watching a memory. He couldn’t hurt her.

He broke her gaze and swept past her. She swallowed shakily and scrutinized him. His face was far less expressive than it had been at Hogwarts, devoid of his habitual arrogance or haughtiness. His eyes were different, too. She couldn’t say how, exactly. Just that they seemed more like weapons than anything else. He was nearly as tall as Ron but much slenderer, and he moved with peculiar precision.

As his eyes parsed the room, he wrinkled his nose in disdain at the sight of Colin – bloody, face mangled, slumped against the wall.

Malfoy directed his voice at Terrence Higgs. “As per usual, I see you’ve made quite a mess of things.”

Higgs twitched and turned toward Malfoy, swelling like a pufferfish. “I got the information we needed, didn’t I? In less than ten minutes, at that.”

Malfoy curled his lip and regarded Higgs with blatant scorn. “I suppose so. You are dismissed. I have it in hand from here.” 

Higgs deflated and scurried from the cell without argument. His shoulders tensed as he passed Malfoy, angling himself instinctually away.

Malfoy looked speculatively at Colin, tilting his head, but ignored Eleanor. He stalked slowly towards Colin and leaned back against the wall beside him, so close that their arms were practically touching. Colin tried to move away, but he was too tightly shackled.

From there, Malfoy’s gaze drifted across the cell, landing on Eleanor. He stared at her for a long while, expression contemplative, until the silence became unbearable.

When he spoke, both Colin and Eleanor nearly jumped out of their skin. Malfoy asked, “What’s your relationship to each other?” He didn’t take his eyes off Eleanor, and she turned her head as far to the side as she possibly could. “Are you a couple?” His eyes flickered between their expressions. “Friends? Or just acquaintances who happened to be partnered on this mission?”

He listened carefully to the silence that was emanating between the two of them, tilting his chin, weighing it. “Friends,” Malfoy decided, eyes gleaming in triumph. Colin’s flinch confirmed it. “Well. We can work with that.”

Hermione felt her vision start to tunnel. A slow, sickening dread roiled her stomach. Malfoy’s voice held the promise of pain that would be drawn out. It conjured nightmares by pure implication.

Colin started to tremble uncontrollably. He hadn’t done that around Higgs.

Malfoy threw his gaze at Colin. “Be a good Mudblood and stay silent while I interrogate your friend. If you make a sound, I will make her sorry for it.”

The threat was extremely effective. Colin closed his mouth and lapsed into a pained silence.

Malfoy removed his wand and cast Muffliato around himself and Eleanor, shielding the content of their conversation from Colin.

She could tell that his next actions were precise and calculated. He crossed his arms casually as he spoke to Eleanor from across the room. His voice was a mere rumble to Colin, who could hear the tone but not the content. Malfoy seemed to evoke precisely the amount of fear he wanted to by titrating his tone of voice, posture, and expression. Eleanor’s face went whiter and whiter as she listened. Malfoy peeled himself off of the wall and spoke again as he started moving towards her, as if tightening an invisible noose. Her lips were shaking. He was using distance, now, too, as a tool to invoke fear. Eventually, he got close enough to be able to touch her, inches away.

Using this method – tone of voice, facial expression, physical distance – he spoke to her until her eyes rolled to the side in abject terror and her resolve broke.

She started to sob silently. Eleanor took two breaths and looked him in the face. He paused and remained still, clearly waiting for something.

She nodded.

Hermione recognized the moment when Malfoy invaded her mind. Her eyes widened in panic, and she tensed, pulse pounding at her throat. Their eyes were locked. She couldn’t seem to look away. He was in her mind for maybe ten seconds. He broke her gaze and she looked down, blinking frantically, trying to regain possession of herself.

The muscles in Malfoy’s shoulders were coiled. He was looking off the side. 

The Legilimency had clearly been smooth, quick, and seamless. Apparently, he’d gotten all the information he needed in a fraction of the time Higgs had needed with Colin.

Hermione relaxed and slumped against the wall. Only then did she realize that her heart had been pounding with anticipation of something truly horrific.

It seemed Malfoy was highly adept at non-violent interrogation. He made Higgs’ method look as brutal and unnecessary as an anvil.

She felt a wave of relief so strong that her knees threatened to give out. Maybe he wasn’t as horrible as the rumours made him out to be. 

Malfoy asked Eleanor a question. His tone was surprisingly gentle and devoid of scorn.

She looked at him and nodded firmly. She spoke to him. Deathly quiet.

Malfoy nodded. She watched his jaw clench. He drew his wand and started speaking.

Eleanor nodded again, breath coming shallowly. Malfoy pressed the wand under her chin and snarled the words of a spell just as Eleanor made an animal sound of terror, eyes locked on him.

He slit her throat.

The world tilted. She threw her arms over her eyes, but it was too late. The image was emblazoned on her eyelids – blood spurting from Eleanor’s jugular, and the expression of terror on her face as she bled out. She slid down the wall as the life drained from her eyes.

Malfoy stepped calmly away from her to avoid the spurting blood.

When he turned toward Colin, his face was expressionless, as if he had been absorbed in doing an Arithmancy problem.

“You–” Colin shouted. “Why – why did you – why did you do that?” His eyes were wide, face going greyer and greyer.

Her mind scrambled to understand it. Malfoy had clearly gotten the information he needed from Eleanor. Why kill her? Why not leave her alive, as Higgs had with Colin?

She realized that her face was wet with tears. She swiped at them and tried to focus.

“Why did you do that?” Colin repeated, voice raw. He looked like he was starting to go into shock. “You – you’re depraved.”

Malfoy said, “On the contrary, I consider myself a humanitarian.” His eyes gleamed, pristine as voids.

The clear sarcasm made her vision spot with rage. The callousness. Malfoy raised his wand at Colin and started to speak the words of a memory charm.

Hermione dragged herself out of the Pensieve. The memory felt like it might pull her back under the surface. Her face was soaked with tears, heart hammering.

Just a memory. She wasn’t in any real danger.

But Malfoy had frightened her, even with the space-time distance that a Pensieve provided. 

She’d known, of course, that he was a high-ranking member of the political police. That he made people disappear, that he was responsible for the aura of fear and silence that pervaded Voldemort’s regime.

But seeing the reality of it with her own eyes was far more disturbing.

She frantically tried to understand why Malfoy had killed Eleanor so quickly and decisively. Could it have something to do with the intelligence he’d extracted from her? Eleanor hadn’t been an important or high-ranking member of the Order. Hermione doubted there had been critical intelligence in her head. Nothing worth killing for, regardless of where Malfoy’s loyalties lie. 

Her shoulders slumped. She hunched over the basin of the Pensieve and hung her head. Much as she’d like to find another explanation, this killing felt gendered. He’d chosen to leave Colin – a Muggle-born man – alive. He’d killed Eleanor without hesitation.

I consider myself a humanitarian, Malfoy had said. It sounded like mocking sarcasm, but – in some twisted way, might he consider this a mercy killing? 

Something about that ripped through her with more intensity than she expected. Killing was never a mercy. It had eradicated Eleanor’s agency, smothered the possibility of escape or other positive outcomes.

She clenched her fists. Being Muggle-born was bad enough, but apparently being a Muggle-born woman was nothing short of fatal.

Regardless of his rationale, Malfoy clearly didn’t blink at killing Muggle-born women in cold blood. His behavior had knocked the wind out of her. She wanted to go upstairs, crawl into bed, and try to forget she’d seen any of it. Instead, she Summoned a Calming Draught from her potion store and downed it in one swallow.

 She touched the invisible vial of memories that Malfoy had tied around her wrist and bit her lip.

What could he possibly show her that could counteract what she just witnessed? What would possibly make her trust him enough to contact him?

She reversed the invisibility charm and carefully untied the vial from her wrist.

Did she really want to risk looking at this memory? It could be even worse – a way to frighten or coerce her into doing his bidding.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she flung the memory into the Pensieve and threw her head in after it.

She tried to orient herself as the memory slowly took form from dust and shadow.

They were in a different holding cell. Apparently cells were where Malfoy spent the majority of his time. 

He was attempting Legilimency on a prisoner, but this time Hermione was inside Malfoy’s head as he did it. When he attempted to make the mental incision, a sharp crack of pain radiated from the base of his skull up the crown of his head, a hairline fracture.

Malfoy felt it, too, and she understood from his reaction that this was not a normal part of Legilimency. When he tried again, his head reverberated like a gong being struck. He staggered back from his victim, disoriented. After the reverberations passed, he tried a third time, gritting his teeth, and succeeded with considerable effort. 

But Malfoy was concerned. She could feel the heaviness in his chest as he returned to Malfoy Manor and swept through the gates. 

The rest of it was less a memory and more a conglomeration of images, emotions, and sensations. 

She saw him begin to research his condition frantically in the Manor library. Something was wrong with his Legilimency, but he didn’t know what. It was breaking down slowly and had been for the past couple of years. She watched him scribble notes on parchment, pour over books, contact Mind Healers – all futile. 

She watched him sit across from his mother at the dinner table – Narcissa looked much older than when Hermione had last seen her. She was a mere wisp of a woman now, all the color bled out of her once-golden hair.

A scream tore through the laughter at their dinner table like a false note – jarring, unnerving.

She watched Malfoy try and fail to find any solution to his faltering Legilimency. And finally, defeated, he threw a tome at the wall of his bedroom and buried his face in his hands. 

Malfoy paced in this room, thinking for hours. Then she felt the memory sharpen in intensity and verve. This part felt very recent, maybe only a day or two ago. He scratched out words on a sheet of parchment – she jolted when she saw her own name. 

Granger, he wrote. I want a stabilizing potion. Free Kreacher. 

The memory faded to blackness. 

She emerged from the Pensieve, gasping as she broke the surface. 

Malfoy had known she would easily be able to connect the dots. He was losing his ability to do Legilimency and didn’t know why, but he knew of her reputation as an inventor of potions. Clearly, he wanted her help in stabilizing his failing Legilimency. 

In return, he’d offered to teach Potter Occlumency to help protect his mind from both the Obscurus and the Dark Lord’s invasions. 

As per his note, the only way to contact Malfoy without Voldemort catching wind of it would be to free Kreacher the House-elf. The Dark Lord had a chokehold on the usual avenues of communication – Floo, Apparition, owl, trains, broom travel . . . but House-elf magic couldn’t be tracked by wizards. 

Harry was the owner of Grimmauld Place and thus the wizard Kreacher was bound to serve. But if they freed him, Kreacher’s true loyalty would be to the Blacks – probably to Narcissa, since Walburga was dead and Bellatrix was as sadistic to elves as she was to humans. 

They could use Kreacher to travel freely between Grimmauld Place and the Manor without detection.

It was an ingenious solution. 

She puzzled it over, trying to keep pace with her racing thoughts. 

Malfoy’s motive for contacting her was believable. He was in dire need of a potion that only she might be able to create. The two memories didn’t contradict one another. Malfoy clearly hated Muggle-borns, but he cared about preserving his failing Legilimency more. He was willing to work with a Muggle-born to achieve that end. 

The part she couldn’t understand was why he thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she would agree to this offer.

Did he really think she was desperate enough to brew him a potion that would make him better at ripping apart minds for Voldemort? 

She didn’t want to have any part in making him a more complete monster than he already was. His Legilimency failing was a godsend to the Order. He was one of Voldemort’s most prized assets, and she would be glad to know he was no longer an active threat.

True, Harry’s mind was weakening from a combination of the potions she gave him, the Obscurus becoming more active, and Voldemort’s attempts to invade his mind. A decent teacher would be invaluable to shoring up Harry’s mind.

She shuddered at the thought of allowing Malfoy anywhere near Harry. Malfoy was as likely to unhinge Harry’s mind as he was to heal it given the brutality she’d seen him capable of in the memory.

It was far too risky. She couldn’t bring herself to truly consider it, as desperate as they currently were for a solution to Harry’s failing health.

She shook her head and consciously stilled the trembling in her hands from the leftover adrenaline. Malfoy was too dangerous. Too unpredictable. 

She would find another way to protect Harry. One that didn’t involve actively colluding with the best Legilimens in the Dark Lord’s army.

She would have to.

~

Trembling with exhaustion, eyes drooping even as she stumbled up to the Gryffindor common room, she murmured the password and entered to see that Harry had already been discharged from the Hospital Wing and brought there by Ron. He was sprawled on the couch, tucked beneath blankets. 

Too exhausted to do anything else, she curled up in the armchair closest to him and fell asleep almost immediately, clutching an orange throw pillow and pretending it was Crookshanks. 

At some point, Ron stumbled back into the common room from the hospital wing. After running a quick diagnostic on Harry, he fell face-first onto the couch by the fire, asleep before his head hit the armrest.

She drifted back into blackness.

“Hermione.”

She startled awake, jolting out of an uneasy half-sleep.

It was Harry’s voice, punctuated by the sound of fire crackling in the hearth.

Groggily, she thought that it must be hours later – the middle of the night. 

She blinked sleepily and sat up, trying to orient herself. Harry’s voice had sounded strangled and urgent when he had said her name just a moment ago. “What is it?”

Harry shifted and pushed himself into a sitting position on the couch, wincing at the pain in his abdomen. “Sorry to wake you,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I just – I couldn’t stop thinking.”

He pressed a hand to his scar, eyes on his lap.

“Thinking about what?” Her voice was thick with sleep. 

“How many Death Eaters do you reckon I killed today?” His voice was pitched to careful neutrality.

She hid a wince. It was inevitable that he would eventually ask this question. She didn’t speak for a long time. Ron’s soft snoring tempered the silence.

Finally, she mustered her voice. “I’m not sure, exactly. Twenty, maybe.”

It was a low estimate. He didn’t have to know that.

He shuddered. She watched his thin shoulders hunch, watched his face pinch inward. He rubbed the back of his neck, as if trying to banish a phantom sensation there. He didn’t speak at first – just closed his eyes against her words.

When he opened them, he said, “I don’t remember, but I think that whatever spell I used – or the Obscurus used – it was dark. Very dark. I can feel the aftereffects now.”

Her mouth turned down in sympathy, and she reached for his hand. He grasped it. His skin felt clammy. The act of killing ripped pieces out of the soul, and the Dark magic left discernible traces. She could sense those traces around him now. Dark magic, she knew, left traces along the back of the neck and down the spine. Traces in the air, warping the bend of the light and the arc of dust motes in the air – impressing whorls into wandwood, too. 

What Dark magic took away from a person – that couldn’t be spoken aloud. It had to be circumvented. It could only be conveyed by the presence of imprints, signifiers of a thing that was no longer there. A vacuum, a gash of negative space, of aching.

He squeezed her hand. He said, “Every time I use Dark magic to kill, I feel the connection strengthen between my mind and His.”

She nodded in bleak understanding. He shuddered again, hand going back to his neck.

He hated this. She could see it on his face. 

She never knew what to do for him in these moments. There weren’t any words of comfort or solace she could think of.

“You’re cold,” she said. It felt inadequate, but it was better than silence. “Let me make us some tea, and then we can move closer to the fire. I’ll be just a minute.”

Harry nodded, eyes heavy and dark as lead.

She padded up the stairs to her dormitory, too groggy to remember the name of the tea strain to properly Summon it – and rummaged through her trunk to try to locate it. It took perhaps thirty seconds.

Harry’s scream ripped through the air when she was halfway back down the stairs.

She flew down only to see that Ron had jolted out of sleep, staggering toward Harry. Harry’s back arched off of the couch and his muscles spasmed, eyes flying wide open, unseeing.

“He’s possessed!” Ron tried to grasp Harry’s shoulders. Before he could manage it, Harry jerked so violently that he flew off of the couch and onto the ground, writhing in agony.

No . This couldn’t be happening. Not after everything they’d just been through. It felt like being suspended in a perpetual nightmare.  

She skidded to the floor and took Harry’s hand firmly between her own. Ron staggered back. She sensed his horror from his posture and jerky movements.

Most times, Harry could keep Voldemort out of his mind with Occlumency. But more and more, he failed due to physical weakness and the strengthened mental connection between them, and there was barely anything that she or Ron could do to help him. They could only stay with him and hope he managed to regain control.

His eyes rolled back in his head. “I’m here, Harry,” she promised. “I’m right next to you. Please fight this.”

Harry gritted his teeth. He started to moan, and then a sound of raw agony was ripped out of his throat.

It was animalistic. A sound that no human being should ever make.

Her adrenaline went through the roof. He bucked and scrabbled at the floor. He started to scream so much and so loudly that his voice eventually gave out. His screams became hoarse rattles. His hands clenched and went flat on the carpet, fingers spasming and curling into claws. 

Voldemort was in his mind. The agony was purely mental.

His breathing was coming only in tortured gasps – wheezing, throat closing. Hermione kept hold of his hand and gulped in breaths to stay quiet and keep in control. She felt like she was going to lose her mind, watching him in this much pain, helpless to stop it. She was right next to him, but she couldn’t do a single thing except stay with him.

“I’m here, Harry.” She forced herself to keep talking. “I’m still here. You can fight this.”

She looked up at Ron, who was standing above them. He had been completely frozen, looking down at Harry with glazed eyes. Slowly, his chest started to convulse, and she realized with a jolt that he was choking back sobs. He looked down at Harry, open-mouthed, spittle and snot running freely down his face. He put a shaking fist to his mouth.

“Ron.” She tried to brace him with her voice.

This part, Ron couldn’t handle. He could do surgery with steady hands, but this – seeing Harry in this much mental agony and not being able to do anything – completely debilitated him.

“RON,” she said again. “Bring me my potion bag. Now.” She couldn’t let go of Harry’s hand to find her wand. 

Ron looked at her helplessly as another agonized yelp tore out of Harry’s throat. She winced and shuddered at the sound.

Ron lost it. He pressed his hands into his eyes and groaned, clenching his teeth through sobs. “I’m sorry, Hermione – I just can’t –”

He turned to leave.

He got halfway out of the room before she could open her mouth. “Ron, no – please don’t leave us like this –”

He was beyond hearing. He left in a blur, slamming the portrait hole shut.

“Shit.” She fumbled blindly for her wand with the hand that wasn’t holding Harry’s. “Shh, I’m here, Harry,” she promised, gripping her wand. “Accio Potions bag.”

The bag flew to her, and she rummaged through it with a shaking hand until she found a heavy-duty Strengthening Solution. Sometimes it was enough to give him the burst of energy he needed to close Voldemort out. Sometimes.

But it was a dangerous gamble. For every ounce of strength and energy Harry gained in the moment, he would pay for it two-fold when the potion wore off in a few hours. Borrow too much strength, and it could kill him later.

This was the worst mind invasion yet. His breathing was shallow, chest caving with panic. She had to snap him out of it – he looked so far gone that she didn’t know if he would come back.  

“Harry, drink this.” She unstoppered the bottle with her teeth and held it to his lips. “Drink this,” she coaxed.

Harry opened his eyes, but it wasn’t Harry looking out of them. “Don’t touch me, you filthy Mudblood,” he hissed. His voice was inhuman, eyes milky, gaze laced with hatred and disgust. Seeing that expression directed at her from Harry’s face – it made her want to shrivel up and die. 

“Harry,” she pleaded again, emphasizing his name. “Drink this. You need to drink this.”

He closed his eyes. Some part of Harry that still knew and recognized her voice opened his mouth and swallowed as she held the vial to his lips. “Good,” Hermione said. “One more sip. Good.”

As the potion went down, she watched his skin start to flush from the effects.

It didn’t take Ron long to come back. About two minutes, at most, but it felt like a lifetime, alone, listening to Harry’s rattling, exhausted whimpering. Her shoulders collapsed in relief when Ron re-entered. He had a hand over his mouth. He kept to the far side of the room, trembling violently.

She forced in a breath as she started to see signs that Harry was regaining control. The expression on his face flitted between agony and deep concentration.  

With a roar, Harry threw Voldemort out of his mind, using his shaky Occlumency to block the Dark Lord from re-entering.

Hermione wrapped her arms around him. It was dangerous to do when Voldemort had any control at all of Harry’s body. Voldemort had tried to kill her before using Harry’s hands.

But this time, it helped him come back.

Harry tensed as the last traces Voldemort seeped from him, braced against the possibility of a second  attack. And when his mental walls were strong enough to keep Voldemort out for the time being, he collapsed limply against her, boneless. She took on all of his weight. He was gasping with exertion, chest heaving.

“I’m here. He’s gone,” Hermione assured him.

She looked up at Ron over Harry’s shoulder. He was shuddering with relief.

They never knew if this would be the time that their best friend didn’t come back.

This one was bad, she mouthed to Ron, and he sagged against the wall to keep himself upright. 

Harry smelled sharply of urine and sweat. He’d wet himself, at some point, during the worst part of it. She cast a wordless charm to clean him up, hoping he was still too disoriented to be embarrassed about it.

She felt so grateful to have him back that she could barely find a way to express it. “You scared me so badly. I thought – you might not come back from that.”

“Did I hurt you?” Harry winced with guilt. 

Always his first question. Always.

“No,” she said. “You didn’t let him hurt me. You never do.”

“Hermione –” Harry slurred, barely coherent. “Where’s Ron–?”

“He’s right here,” she said, beckoning impatiently to Ron.

When Harry’s attacks were particularly bad, he wanted Ron there. Normally, she hugged Harry and talked to him until he regained some sense of equilibrium. But more and more, this wasn’t enough.

Ron flinched, and took several deep, steadying breaths before wrenching himself away from the wall and approaching.

Ron knelt down on the floor next to Harry, bringing his shaking under control only with immense effort. “You’re all right, mate,” Ron said. “You’re safe. I’m here, too.”

Harry magnetized to his voice, into his arms, and Ron hugged him, head going over his shoulder. Ron gripped the back of Harry’s neck – protective, bracing.

There was nothing comparable to being held by Ron. He was large – he towered over both of them – and he had the best hug in the world. When Ron held her in his arms, she felt like the world couldn’t touch her.

Hermione saw Ron stifle a shudder as he fully began to realize how bad the invasion had been. Harry looked completely shattered – devastated, devoid of the pride or self-consciousness that would normally prevent him from accepting comfort from his male best friend. 

But Ron stayed upright and straight-backed, pretending at strength. Hermione could smell traces of vomit on Ron’s breath, sour and acrid.

Ron had him, for the moment. She took a deep, rattling breath, and tried to collect herself.

She reached out and touched Harry’s back, to let him know she was also there. They huddled on the floor like that for a long time. Ron closed his eyes and took deep breaths. Her heart rate slowly came down.

At length, when Harry had calmed, Ron pulled away. “Let’s get you up to bed, mate. You need rest.”

Ron took his elbow and helped him up, and slung Harry’s arm around his shoulder, supporting nearly his full weight. Harry still looked unsteady on his feet, so Hermione went to his other side and slipped his left arm around her shoulder. They stumbled up to the boy’s dormitory and got Harry into his four-poster bed.

“I shouldn’t sleep–” Harry protested, but his eyes were already drooping. “I need to stay alert–”

“Shush,” Hermione said. “Voldemort is tired now, and he’s wounded. He’s not going to try again tonight. We’ll set wards.”

“Mrmmm.” It was a muffled protest. Harry was already asleep.

She sat, watching over him, for another ten minutes, making sure that his heart rate and breathing remained steady. Invasions like this one had to take a toll on his heart – as did the potions that strengthened his magic.

Ron knelt next to Harry’s bedside and did healing spells – the sutures had ripped open slightly during the possession, and he mended them. He cast several protective spells and a monitoring charm that would alert them if Harry’s heart rate changed. He looked dead on his feet. When that was finished, Ron reached out and took her hand.

He pulled her up, into him, and buried his face in her hair. “Sorry,” he whispered, and she knew it was an apology for leaving them in the common room. It didn’t feel like enough, but she was too exhausted to fight with him. He led her over to the four-poster bed next to Harry’s. They lay down and sunk into each other. There was no talking. She tangled her legs in his, trying to get as close as she possibly could, and he pulled her tightly against his chest. They lay like that, intertwined, so hurt and exhausted that it felt more like necessity than pleasure, to feel the heat of each other’s skin. She reached up and touched his face, coarse with dried tears.

She was the only one who was ever allowed to see how much it cost Ron to be Harry’s best friend. 

Harry came first in his life. Before his family. Before her.

Being Harry’s best friend was not an easy charge. That was why he and Hermione had to share it. When one of them collapsed from the stress, the other was there to pick all three of them up.

Only now, wrapped in Ron’s arms, did she allow herself to break down. She permitted herself to feel the gut-wrenching fear, the helplessness, the agony of watching Harry be tortured: watching it up-close, forcing herself not to disengage. She cried and Ron stroked her hair and said nothing. She eventually fell asleep, lulled by the safety of his arms and the warmth of his skin.

Chapter Text

Draco became aware, first, that his throat was burning.

Next, he became aware that he didn’t know where he was or what had just happened.

Stomach churning, skin crawling. Sour aftertaste in his mouth.

He came back to himself in increments. The smell of willow and hyacinth wafted on the cool, predawn air. He was outside – on the grounds of the manor.

It took him a few moments to piece together what must have happened. He’d no doubt rushed out of the dungeons and onto the grounds after hours of performing interrogations, desperate for fresh air. 

This reaction – dissociation, memory loss, tasting bile – seemed to be happening more and more frequently following interrogation of prisoners using Legilimency.

For years, he’d been able to use potent Legilimency without blinking an eye. He didn’t want to dwell too long on why that was starting to change. 

The battle at Hogwarts had ended hours ago. While fleeing, a few enterprising Death Eaters had managed to capture three Order members. Draco had been tasked with using Legilimency to extract relevant intelligence from their minds. He’d been at it for almost the entire night.

Unbidden, an image of Granger flashed into his head – frozen by his spell, eyes wide and expressive as they’d always been, trying to parse his words through her terror. He could only hope that she didn’t shatter the vial of memories he’d tied around her wrist into a million pieces. 

She wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t. They were too desperate to reject his offer. 

He straightened and performed a hasty cleansing charm on himself, forcing down the bile. Dawn was breaking, and he’d been expected at the police headquarters hours ago. He closed his eyes and started to Occlude.

He was so numb by the time he Apparated to police headquarters that he couldn’t even feel his own heartbeat.

He liked to test and prod the depth of his numbness on these occasions to be sure it would see him through. He brought a memory of his mother to his mind’s eye. A childhood memory, all scent and sound and touch: the rustle of taffeta skirts when she snuck to his room after parties; willowy fingers combing his hair back; the sharp, warm crack of her laughter; the lingering scent of bergamot and sandalwood in her wake. 

He felt nothing. Not a twinge of affection or warmth or nostalgia. That ought to be sufficient, then.

Corban Yaxley, the head of Voldemort’s Department of Magical Law Enforcement, had set up police headquarters in an old, bombed-out Muggle military building. It had been air bombed in the 1940s during World War II and abandoned entirely until Yaxley had found it on a raid and taken a liking to it.

Something about the brutalism of the paneless, gaping windows and the ever-present rubble. 

Below them, a deep underground structure had been magically expanded to house an endless, labyrinthine chain of dungeons. The below-ground portion seemed to grow larger and more unfathomable with every passing day.

People disappeared permanently beneath these floors.  

Yaxley had reconstructed the main chamber of the above-ground portion of the building. High, vaulted ceilings. Monochrome chill. The cold always seeped into Draco’s bones.

Yaxley liked to hold court in that chamber. It was one of the trappings he enjoyed most about being second-in-command to the Dark Lord.

Of course, no one was truly second-in-command. The Dark Lord made sure of that. Power shifted like sand in his army. Uncertainty about the chain of succession encouraged rabid in-fighting and suspicion amongst contenders to the throne. 

Draco paused outside the door of the main chamber, eyes skittering over rubble, ash, and dust. He never knew what he would get when he entered that room except that he would inevitably have to endure Yaxley’s presence.  

He took a final moment to cement his public mask: a pitch-perfect imitation of his father’s glib indolence.

He used his wand to throw open the heavy, granite doors of the main chamber and strode inside, head up, shoulders thrown back.

There were several dead bodies littering the floor. Blood stung his nostrils. The bodies, he told himself dispassionately, were mannequins. He scanned the room with cool, half-amused eyes. Yaxley sat at the head of the room, with Bellatrix and Greyback flanking him, and, seated around an ornate table, a number of other Death Eaters who held high-ranking positions in the police force. Bellatrix held the leash of a crup; the creature growled and snapped at its bit, mouth bloody, twisted into a snarl. It was trained to viciously attack any Muggle or Muggle-born in the vicinity. It had ripped out the throat of one of the mannequins on the floor.

Draco pretended that this was all highly regular.

The battle at Hogwarts had gone exceptionally poorly for their side. The Dark Lord was injured, and Draco was one of the few who knew the extent of it. Yaxley had taken over command of the police force for the time being.

An air of false confidence permeated the room, bolstered by Yaxley and Bellatrix. They were following the Dark Lord’s standard playbook for defeats or set-backs of any kind: project an air of calm authority. Minimize loss. Ignore deaths or injuries. Playact business as usual.

People who deviated from this script in any meaningful way tended to end up dead or missing.

An officer, Belby, was speaking to Yaxley. Some sort of briefing. Heads turned toward Draco, but Yaxley didn’t acknowledge his presence.

Belby said, “After word of the outcome of the battle got out, there was some overnight unrest in the magical parts of East Sussex. Nothing that my squad couldn’t put right.”

“Casualties?”

“Twenty or thirty civilians, possibly conspirators sympathetic to the Order. Unavoidable. No casualties on our side. I don’t expect we’ll hear a peep from East Sussex again.”

Yaxley nodded. “Thank you, Belby. Well handled.”

Belby inclined his head. “We brought you a gift, sir. Something we thought might amuse you.”

Draco rolled his eyes. Belby was an excellent brown-noser; Yaxley loved gifts, praise, and arse-kissing so unabashedly that it gave him secondhand embarrassment for the man. 

“We captured the Muggle police chief from East Sussex and brought him here. We thought you might enjoy having a chat with him. See how Muggle police tactics compare to Wizarding ones. Perhaps you could put him under Imperius for a time, if you’d like to wreak havoc on the Muggle contingent of East Sussex. Your Imperius is legendary, sir.”

Yaxley’s eyes gleamed.

Draco crossed his arms. The one actual talent he had – the only one that was truly frightening.

No one had ever been able to throw off Yaxley’s Imperius, including Potter, who threw off Imperius like bulls threw off riders.

Yaxley flicked his hand. “Thank you, Belby. You may leave us.”

Belby nodded at the abrupt dismissal and turned on his heel. He flinched as he became aware of Draco standing there. He turned his eyes down and walked past Draco more quickly than was altogether natural, giving him a wide berth.

Yaxley finally turned and met his gaze. Clearly, he had made a show of taking his time to acknowledge Draco’s presence. When he saw the look on Draco’s face, he gestured brusquely to Bellatrix, Greyback, and the other officers at the table.

“Leave us,” Yaxley commanded. Some of the officers shot up out of their seats and made a beeline for the doorway.

Bellatrix and Greyback left more slowly. Greyback gave Draco a frightening, conspiratorial grin, and Bellatrix winked at him and touched the nape of his neck as she passed. “Mind your manners, nephew.” Her voice burrowed into him. “We wouldn’t want you at each other’s throats again,” purred in a tone that told him that was exactly what she wanted. Her crup growled and snapped at his ankles.

Once the room had emptied, Draco approached the table. Yaxley was leaning back in his chair, apparently relaxed and unbothered; he was one of the few remaining Death Eaters who had the courage to look Draco straight in the eye.

His features had always been brutal – wide-set eyes, broad nose, and coarse yellow hair – but his actions had only come to match recently. As a young boy, Draco remembered Yaxley smiling down at his daughter, the harshness of his features mellowed and softened, rendering him almost unrecognizable. 

His wife and daughter had died in an Order terrorist attack on the Ministry several years ago. The Order had come to resemble a terrorist organization more and more over the years as their numbers dwindled and their desperation grew. 

Now, Yaxley’s reputation for brutality against the Order preceded him. He said, “Draco. Alive and well, I see, as is your father. Praise Merlin.”

The sincerity in his voice was undercut by slight sarcasm. Draco inclined his head in acknowledgement. “I share your sentiments, Corban. A miracle that we survived when so many others perished.”

Far from a miracle, they both knew, but one never spoke plainly if it could be helped. Draco put his arms behind his back and regarded Yaxley coolly. “The battle at Hogwarts didn’t go quite as well as hoped, but I would be remiss not to acknowledge your other successes. Apparently, last week you won some big victory against Order forces in Warwick.” He allowed one side of his mouth to tip up.

“A resounding, strategic triumph for our side,” Yaxley crowed. “I led the charge.”

“Mmm.” Draco raised an eyebrow.

The line of Yaxley’s mouth was tight, eyes alight with disdain. He clearly wanted a fight. “That’s the difference between you and I, Draco. You’re not a general. You’re not even a soldier – always been shit at combat. You operate only in the shadows – a coward to your very core. And you rely heavily on me to maintain law and order in this government.” 

Yaxley stood, drawing himself up to his full height . He moved with the unhurried assurance of a man who had grown used to pulverizing his enemies.

Draco allowed his lip to curl slightly as he listened impassively to the tirade and analyzed Yaxley’s tone and posture. It was no secret that he and Yaxley hated one another, but he wasn’t normally this antagonistic. Something had shifted – Yaxley wouldn’t dare insult him this blatantly if only for fear of retribution from his father. 

But Lucius and Yaxley had been growing closer as of late, and it was possible Yaxley felt confident enough in his standing with Lucius to move from petty sniping to open warfare with Draco.

Draco looked at his nails and said, “You need information and counterintelligence to win battles, Corban.” 

“We might as well be reading fucking tea leaves, given the quality of information you lot provide. And the type of men your father recruits for that branch–” Yaxley grimaced. “Spineless, deceitful, morally addled psychopaths who are kept on the thinnest of leashes. Much like yourself.”

Draco smiled sharply at that assessment. “We gave you the intelligence you needed to clinch the victory at Warwick. I expected at least a smattering of gratitude for that.”

He raised an eyebrow, eyes burning into Yaxley’s. There was a strained pause.

“Thank you,” Yaxley said, “for providing information one rung above useless.” Yaxley approached him but stopped a respectful distance away. He had to look up at Draco now. His eyelid twitched. “When the history of this government is written, I will be the one mentioned by name. Not you. Not some simpering, two-faced welp who thinks himself important because he temporarily has the Dark Lord’s ear.”

Draco grinned at Yaxley without breaking eye contact. “The Dark Lord has orders he would like me to relay to you.” Yaxley’s eyes bulged further, neck going red. “But that can wait. I’m unhappy with you, Corban.”

“Watch your tongue.” Yaxley’s voice boomed, echoing on the stone walls. “You’re half my age, boy. Your branch of the police reports to me. You should be worried about whether I am unhappy with you.”

“Hmm.” He ignored the diatribe. “You did it again, Corban. You allowed your men to brutalise one of the Order captives in my custody: the custody of the intelligence police, not the DMLE. A woman by the name of Frobisher.”

Yaxley scoffed. “You mean that Mudblood whore from the Order? She needed her wings clipped, and my men saw to it. They had some fun with her. You can’t fault them for that.”

“Oh, I can. They raped her before I had a chance to interrogate her with Legilimency.”

As he waited for Yaxley’s reply, Draco raised his eyes to the ceiling and examined the snaking tendrils of blackened rot running the length of the moulding.

Yaxley scoffed. “What does it matter, what order it goes in? You’re just whinging because you wanted the first crack at her, is that it?”

Unfortunately, deep Occlusion did not prevent the cognitive experience of horror from occurring, only the bodily sensations that usually accompanied it. The filth that Yaxley spewed on a regular basis made him want to take an icepick to his own head and lobotomize himself. 

As loath as he was to admit it, Yaxley’s pointed jab was not completely off the mark. Draco had no moral high ground in this conversation. What he did for the intelligence police was comparable if not worse than what Yaxley’s men had done to Frobisher. He ought not to pretend to himself that he was taking a stance against Yaxley out of moral conviction; this was mere pragmatism. 

He rubbed his forehead. “How many times have I told you not to interfere with the handling and interrogation of prisoners in our custody? There was important Order intelligence in her mind. I’m certain of it. By the time I got to her, her mind was too shattered to make any sense of it. We lost significant intelligence because the thugs you employ couldn’t keep their cocks in their trousers.”

Yaxley shook his head and regarded Draco as if he were an idiot child. “Haven’t you heard? Last week the council officially sanctioned rape for use against Muggles and Muggle-borns.” His eyes felt like blackened tunnels, voice dripping with vicious satisfaction.

Draco looked away. He marveled, for a moment, at the fact that they were apparently stupid enough to put something like that in writing. A blatant war crime. So certain of their impunity that they no longer even seemed to fear the International Confederation of Wizards.

The High Council, a sham legislative branch of the government, was a pitiful public relations feint by the Dark Lord not to appear blatantly dictatorial. The Dark Lord allowed the council to pass and uphold their own legislation on the rare occasion that he had no strong preference on the matter being discussed.

Apparently, the Dark Lord had no strong feelings about the use of rape in his army.

But Yaxley did.

Draco noticed that one of the iron-wrought chandeliers on the ceiling was half-ripped out of its moulding, dangling precariously from its remaining tether, poised to crash to the floor at any moment. He forced his gaze back to Yaxley. “New policy, I presume? What was the impetus?”

The fact that they were discussing rape as a policy struck him as so absurdly horrific and surreal that he felt like he was watching himself have this conversation from somewhere above his body, dissociated from his own anesthetized word choice and flippant tone. 

Yaxley made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t be daft. It’s not written into law, just an internal memorandum. It’s only sanctioning behaviour that was already occurring. Soldiers are so rarely rewarded for their hard work. A small incentive that keeps men satisfied. It will demoralize the Order, and it’s a surefire method for destroying magical ability. Shock and awe, sort of thing.”

Draco closed his eyes briefly. “Your men directly interfered in the collection of intelligence by our branch of the police. I don’t care what the policy is. You’re making this war harder to win. Tell the cretins under your employ not to touch prisoners in the custody of the secret police. If I catch one of them disobeying this order, I will cut off the offending organ so that he becomes incapable of doing it again.”

Yaxley sucked in a breath and moved closer. “You are treading on thin ice with me, Draco. You do not make threats or give me orders.”

“Funnily enough, I just did. The Dark Lord agrees with me, by the way. Don’t embarrass yourself by requesting an audience to contest it. He’s not feeling very charitable at the moment.”

Draco turned his back. He could almost feel Yaxley sputtering with fury behind him. Draco heard him take several deep breaths. When he spoke again, it was measured. “One of these nights, when you’ve dropped your guard, when you think you’re safe in your bed, you will find yourself dreaming that you’re a puppet on a stage, attached to strings and wires, pandering to the crowd. And when you wake up, you’ll find that it wasn’t a dream at all. You’ll find that I’ve already put you under. And you will never come back up.”

Under Imperius. His stomach clenched. Draco paused before speaking to assure that his voice would be even and toneless. “If you’re making threats like that, you must be afraid. Most people are, when they finally begin to understand.”

“Understand what?” Yaxley grated.

He ignored the question. “We’ll review your orders from the Dark Lord tomorrow, Corban. You’re in no state for it today.”

Without turning back, he strode out of the room to simmering silence.

~

Hermione woke hours later to Ron’s gentle kiss on the mouth. She was still tangled in his arms. His lips felt like momentary relief. She leaned into the kiss, and Ron hummed with pleasure against her mouth. He slipped his hands beneath her t-shirt and dragged his fingers up her spine, vibrating with desire.

As she fully woke up, she drew in a surprised breath and pulled sharply away from the kiss.

Ron groaned in frustration. When he opened his eyes and looked at her, they were defenceless.

She untangled her limbs from his and said, “You know this doesn’t lead anywhere good.”

It usually led to something close to full-on sex.

And then it led to Ron beginning to hope for more than she could ever give him. Beginning to dream of boisterous weddings and red-headed children and escapes to seaside cottages. 

She didn’t want any of that. Perhaps she had wanted it briefly, as a seventeen year-old girl who thought that constant bickering was invigorating and physical attraction was a solid foundation on which to build an entire relationship. 

Ron was her best friend, but when she allowed herself a moment of weakness and gave in to her desires, she wanted temporary comfort and physical closeness and distraction from the current nightmare that was their day-to-day existence.

That was all.

It was downright cruel to give in when he wanted so much more.

She pressed her nose into his neck, nudging him apologetically.

“You’re going to kill me one day with this, Hermione,” he whispered. But he didn’t sound angry in the slightest. He didn’t even sound surprised.

Shouldn’t be sleeping in the same bed with him. Shouldn’t be clinging to him like someone drowning or allowing him to kiss her when she knew it would mean more to him than her. 

She must be rotten deep down for acting this way. In an effort to quell that line of thinking, she asked, “How long have we been asleep, you think?”

“About ten hours, I reckon.” He jerked his head at the clock on the wall behind her.

She shot up in alarm. It had felt like only a couple hours, at most.

Harry was still dead to the world. Sleeping peacefully. “It must be mid-afternoon.” She stifled a groan. “People will be wondering where we are.”

Ron pulled her back down. “We’re okay. Just lay here with me for a second.”

She put her head back down next to his and allowed herself to meet his gaze. They looked at each other for a long time.

“I’m sorry I left you alone with him during the possession,” Ron said. “That was a shit thing to do. I’m sorry I shook you so hard yesterday during the surgery.”

She brought his hand up to her face and dragged his fingers gently along her cheekbone. “Forgiven.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry I lost my head while you were trying to heal him. I’m sorry I knocked over half the tray of medical equipment. I’m sorry I didn’t Stun Runcorn in time.” She fingered the newly healed cut on his forehead.

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Forgiven.”

It was something they always did. They never held grudges or let resentment build up. They both made errors in judgment when the pressure was high and the stakes were life or death. Acknowledging those mistakes and forgiving one another was part of how they maintained their grip on sanity.

“Listen.” Ron’s voice turned solemn. “I am trying to keep Harry alive. I am giving it everything I’ve got. So are you. But we . . . we are barely keeping him alive. This . . .” his voice broke. “The potions, the battles, the mind invasions. This isn’t sustainable. For him or for us.”

She nodded to show she’d heard him, but his words didn’t connect. Ron seemed to say things like that more and more often. She was exhausted of hearing it. She had no more devastation or worry left to spare.

Something flashed in Ron’s eyes. He took her chin firmly in his hand. “Let me say it in a different way.” His eyes were so blue that it hurt. “One of these days, we are going to wake up in this bed – you’ll be grumpy, and I’ll try to kiss you, and we’ll talk about getting scones later. A regular morning. And we’ll look over, and Harry will be dead.”

The image sunk hooks into her. She felt her face crumple. She shook her head violently and gritted her teeth against the thought. Pain swelled in the back of her throat and she tried not to vibrate with the force of suppressing emotion.

She’d thought she’d understood desperation. She didn’t, until now.

The desperation filled up her throat and cut off her air and had a physical presence, now. Ron was right. If they didn’t do something drastic – and quickly – Harry would be dead within the month. No one could survive what was being done to him for long. It was unbearable to watch. 

Malfoy’s offer flashed into her mind. I know that Potter is dying. I know that the Dark Lord’s mind invasions are slowly killing him, as are the potions you make for him. He needs to learn to protect his mind. I can teach him Occlumency.

She’d thought that she wasn’t desperate enough to entertain an offer from someone as dangerous as Malfoy.

Apparently, she was. Making a bargain with Malfoy was risky, but they were quickly running out of other options. Recent events were pushing her past limits she’d believed were non-negotiable.

They’d almost lost Harry three times in the past twenty-four hours. She felt her insides crumpling. She didn’t care, really, what Malfoy wanted from her, or if he was laying a trap. She would give anything she had left to save Harry.

Ron spoke again, and it was slightly strangled. “I’m sorry. I can see that I’ve upset you, but–” His breath hitched. “Hermione, if I have to watch Harry go through anything like last night ever again, I will lose my goddamn mind.”

The muted anguish in his voice cemented her decision. She pressed a kiss into his forehead and firmed her voice. “You won’t have to. I’ll figure something out.”

 Ron didn’t question her or ask how. If she said it, he took her at her word. His shoulders relaxed and he nodded, reassured. 

She sat up as she heard Harry shift in the bed. Harry blinked his eyes open sleepily and tried to push himself up, but lowered back down when he realized how weak he was. The effects of the Strengthening Potions had worn off, and he was paying the price now.

She squeezed Ron’s arm a final time before climbing out of bed and going to Harry’s bedside.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, pulling her jumper more tightly around herself. When he opened his eyes, his gaze drank her in like a tonic.

“Like I’ve been hit full-speed by a train.”

“Sounds about right.” She smiled tiredly but then grew serious. “What you went through this time – it looked bad, Harry. Worse than usual.”

She placed her hand over his. Ron, behind her, pretended to be asleep. He wasn’t good at having this kind of conversation with Harry. He relied entirely on her.

Harry moved his hand away from hers and fisted it against his sternum.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asked. She kept her face open and leant forward.  

Closing his eyes against her, Harry shook his head. The silence devastated her.

She swallowed, disappointed but unsurprised. This topic was on the list of things Harry outright refused to talk about – growing up with the Dursleys. Ginny’s death. The Dark Lord’s mind invasions.

“I’m always willing to listen.” She placed a hand on the bed, near his shoulder. “You’re not alone with this. Ron and I are right here.”

“I know,” Harry replied. “I’m so grateful for you and him that I–” he cut himself off, lost for words.

“I’m going to protect you, Harry,” she assured him. “Watching you like that–” She shook her head and shuddered. “I don’t want to see that expression on your face ever again.”

He swallowed and looked at her with an expression that was too close to reverence for her comfort. She didn’t deserve his reverence. 

 “With Voldemort–” he said, “when he was in my mind–” His voice faltered and he closed his eyes. She stayed perfectly still and attentive.

She saw something come into his face. A desperation to speak. An inability to put words to agony. He opened his mouth and then closed it, defeated.

Her heart fell. “Try again,” she begged.

It took almost a full minute to get the words out. “He lies to me,” Harry said, finally. His voice sounded like bone scraping against bone. “He tells me so many lies, and I start to believe them.”

He looked like an eleven year-old boy in that moment. Lost. Vulnerable. Desperately confused.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked them rapidly away. “What does he tell you?”

Harry shook his head, a dismissal of her question. “Usually – after a few days – I can be certain what’s true and what isn’t. But I’m so mixed up right now.” He gritted his teeth and tried to slow his breathing.

“Ask me,” she said. “Ask me for the truth. I’ll tell you.”

“Ginny is still alive, but she’s been captured?”

She felt a sudden and deep and blistering rage toward Voldemort. “That’s not true. Ginny’s been dead for three years.”

Harry nodded – some strange combination of relief and devastation. “Oh. That’s – I thought she might be.”

“Ask me more.”

“Dumbledore – he’s dead? And Snape? And Dobby?”

“Those are true.” She forced reassurance into her voice.

He lapsed into a morose silence. After a few minutes, another question occurred to him.

“Have I been taking potions for the past few years?”

She nodded, tensing.

“Why?” Harry asked, brow creasing in confusion.

“You have to be the one to kill Voldemort, according to the prophecy, but your magic hasn’t fully matured. A few years ago, I invented a potion-mediated immunotherapy that supercharges magical development. We started giving you the potions when you were twenty-one in the hopes that you would gain magical power. And it’s working. Your abilities have increased at least five-fold.”

Harry nodded, pulling his lips in. “But then – why am I so sick and weak? I felt that way even before the possession, I think.”

She froze but tried to keep her voice even. “The potions have side effects – vomiting, systemic inflammation, exhaustion, neurological complications . . . a list longer than your arm. Enhancing magical ability in this way is not a natural process, and it puts a lot of stress on your system. Your body is struggling to keep up.”

Harry’s mouth opened slightly before he closed it. “I agreed to this,” he remembered, mind coming out of a fog.

Hermione corrected him. “You insisted. Ron has tried to talk you out of continuing the treatment more than once. But – now that you’ve realized that it might increase our chance of winning the war, you refuse to stop the treatments.”

He was silent for a beat.

“You make the potions,” Harry ventured, as if seeking confirmation.

Her mouth trembled. “Yes. I make them.”

He didn’t have any more questions for her after that.

~

Harry slept for most of the afternoon and through the night. When she and Ron awoke the next morning, he was gone. They hastily checked the Marauder’s Map for his whereabouts.

She said, “He’s down in the Pensieve Memory Bank.” She looked helplessly at Ron. “We’ll have to tell Scrimgeour that he’s not coming to any meetings today.”

Ron looked away. “Bloody hell. You think he’s locked himself in with the Pensieve? Luna let him?”

She nodded. When Harry became too ill to function, he spent the day with Ginny, lost in his memories of being with her.

The rest of the time, he kept most memories of Ginny in the Order memory bank. Locked away, so that they didn’t engulf him, so that Voldemort couldn’t touch them. 

Ron’s expression darkened. He said, “He shouldn’t be alone right now. If Voldemort invades his mind without either of us there . . .”

She ran her finger along the edge of the map and considered. “Luna knows to summon us immediately if anything happens to him. Scrimgeour’s asked to see me.” She refolded the map and began hastily pleating her hair. “Then I’ve got to go and check the Potions workroom – see if anything was upended during the battle.”

The lie fell effortlessly from her lips. She rarely lied to either Ron or Harry, so she was surprised at how easy it was. Scrimgeour had asked to see her, but afterwards, she planned to go to the library to research Malfoy’s condition. 

She wasn’t even sure if she could make the potion he was requesting, and it would be dangerous to strike a deal she couldn’t follow through on. Especially with someone like him. 

She’d considered telling Ron and Harry about Malfoy’s offer, but it didn’t take long to realize what a thoroughly horrible idea that was.

Harry was so intensely protective of her that he was unlikely to risk her safety for any reason. He was too volatile to negotiate with Malfoy on his own right now – reckless and liable to lash out impulsively with magic.

Ron, on the other hand, might see the practicality of at least considering an offer from an enemy. But Ron had always been more sensitive and temperamental about Malfoy’s taunting. Malfoy would get under his skin in any conversation that lasted longer than three seconds, and violence would ensue.

It didn’t take a genius to see why Malfoy had gone out of his way to approach her alone.

She was the best one to handle this. By herself. She could bring Harry and Ron in later, when she had it sorted.

Ron accepted her lie without question. He pushed his jaw out. “Be careful with Scrimgeour. He can be a sneaky bastard when he wants something from the three of us. D’you reckon it’s odd that he never meets with more than one of us at a time if he can help it?” 

She tied off her pleat and tsked at his suspicious, stubborn expression. “I know that you and Harry don’t trust him, but – he’s on our side, Ron. Ultimately, he wants what we want.”

Ron huffed at her in clear disagreement but didn’t press his point. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I’m always careful. I can handle him.”

She squeezed his shoulder in reassurance before she made her way up to Scrimgeour’s office.

She stopped short in the doorway of the office, mouth dropping open. The burn marks and blood stains had been completely removed; the smoke damage repaired; the items on the desk made neat and whole; the smell of death masked in a bleached, lemony scent.

As if a battle hadn’t ravaged the office mere hours ago. As if nothing at all had happened.

The Great Hall would be fixed, too. Scrimgeour wanted it that way. Sterilized. Reassuring. Giving the illusion of safety and peace above all else.

The size of the office seemed to expand when it was only herself and Scrimgeour. She took a seat, dwarfed by the breadth of the desk and the formality of the room.

The Minister greeted her with a nod and a perfunctory smile. “Tea, Miss Granger?”

“No, thank you, Minister.”

Always Miss Granger to him. Never Hermione. It felt like being addressed by a professor in school.

Scrimgeour considered her silently for a few moments. He had a stern, striking countenance. Something in his gaze was leonine – intensified rather than softened by the silver-rimmed spectacles he always wore. His hair, mostly grey now, was shot through with red-orange streaks. 

She straightened her spine and reminded herself that he was a good man. He’d spent his entire career, forty years of it, fighting Dark wizards like Voldemort. He’d been the political lynchpin of the resistance following the start of the war – trusted, feared, and admired by many kinds of people, capable of uniting multiple factions of the resistance and leading with an iron fist. He didn’t seem to sleep, and she’d never known him to take a day off. He was driven by a single-minded need to depose Voldemort and win the war.

Sometimes she felt Scrimgeour was the only one who truly understood the urgency of winning, and was willing to make difficult and unpopular choices in the service of that goal.

Scrimgeour asked, “How are you recovering? I heard you sustained injuries from the battle.” His expression warmed slightly.

She waved off his concern. “Minor injuries. Your family are well?”

She quite liked his wife, and his teenage son was quickly earning a name for himself as a competent fighter in the resistance.

Scrimgeour nodded. “Both alive and well. Kind of you to ask.”

She braced herself. “How bad were the losses on our side?”

Scrimgeour folded his hands. “We benefited from a combination of Potter’s powerful defensive magic and sheer luck, it seems. Only two casualties on our side. Thirty-four on theirs. Three Order members were taken captive by Death Eaters. And the breach in our wards that they exploited has been found and fixed.”

Two dead. It could be so much worse. It usually was worse.

Scrimgeour tilted his head. “How is Potter?”

Hermione broke his gaze and looked at her lap. “The battle took an extreme toll on him. He won’t be attending any meetings today. And – there was another possession by Voldemort, a few hours after the battle. This one was . . . severe.”

Scrimgeour’s eyes flashed in surprise. “We have Arthur’s briefing on the critical wand shortage today. I thought he’d want to attend that.”

She nodded. Wands were becoming scarcer and scarcer by the day because Voldemort was destroying wands and kidnapping wandmakers. “I’ll have to catch him up.” 

“That’s the fourth possession in as many weeks. Why wasn’t I notified immediately?”

She stiffened at his accusatory tone. Telling Scrimgeour about the mind invasions often had the opposite of a healing effect on Harry. The Minister always insisted that Harry be assessed and questioned immediately about the details and circumstances of the possession.

The last thing Harry ever wanted to do was talk to anyone about the horrific details of what Voldemort had done to him. Not to Hermione, and certainly not to some emotionless member of Scrimgeour’s staff.

She steadied her voice. “He needed time to rest. He still does.”

Scrimgeour cleared his throat. “He should be seen by a Mind Healer. We have one on retainer – Adrian Pucey. His credentials and training are excellent. I’ll set up a session for Potter as soon as possible. He’ll do assessments and offer treatment recommendations.”

Hermione nodded, pushing down her resistance to that idea. Normally, she would protest because Harry hated Mind Healers as a general rule. But she felt desperate enough about his current condition to allow it.

Scrimgeour asked, “The newest batch of potions? How are they coming along?”

“As well as can be expected. There are always complications. I trial them on myself to be sure they’re safe.”

She’d made herself violently ill numerous times during experimentation with and development of Harry’s current regimen of potions. If it meant that Harry didn’t get any more sick or weak, it was worth it.

“Excellent,” Scrimgeour said. “As usual, you’re doing top-notch work. Since we lost Severus, all the complex potion brewing for the Order has fallen to you, and you’re rising to the task. Severus would be proud.”

She felt herself warm at his praise. As in school, approval from authority figures had a profound effect on her. She wanted very badly to be respected for her skill and competence in the Order. “Thank you, Minister. I’ve also been working out countercurses for some of the nastier spells we saw in battle–”

He cut her off. “Do not stretch yourself too thin, Miss Granger. You must remember that your primary job in the Order is not that of arithmancer or cursebreaker or potioneer. Your primary job is him.” He fixed her with a severe look. 

She bristled, but only slightly. She knew it was true – it had always been true. Sometimes she wanted to forget she was Harry Potter’s best friend and spend all night inventing spells or reading Potion theory books or drinking too much coffee or losing herself in the heady waters of theoretical abstraction.  

Luxurious fantasies, nothing more. 

She didn’t even want that, not really, not until the war was finished with Harry alive and healthy (she wanted it desperately sometimes, in the early hours of the morning when she couldn’t sleep and her mental defenses faltered).

She forced herself to nod at Scrimgeour and pulled her lips in. 

“Potter’s magic seems stronger than ever, so your regimen is working,” Scrimgeour noted. “But the power Potter displayed in this last battle was greater by magnitudes than anything we have witnessed before. What we saw a glimpse of – that was astonishing.” His eyes glinted. “Powerful enough to match the Dark Lord.”

Her throat tightened and heat rushed to her face. Scrimgeour’s cavalier attitude made her want to hit something. Did he have any idea how close Harry had come yesterday to killing every Order member in the Great Hall? 

“That was not Harry.” Her voice burst out of her before she could modulate her tone. “That was a force that none of us have the power to control or direct. The Obscurus that resides within him is a manifestation of pure rage. If we encourage that in Harry during a battle or otherwise, he will not merely destroy Voldemort. He will destroy himself and every living thing in the vicinity. He almost did that yesterday.”

Scrimgeour lowered his eyes and tapped his pointer finger against the desk. “A fair point. We don’t fully understand the extent to which Potter is an Obscurial, or how this has re-emerged after a period of latency in his teens. It’s only – I do wish that there was a way to harness the raw power he displayed during that battle.”

She ground her teeth, muscles quivering. Blood pounded in her head. “He lost control because he thought Ron was dead. No amount of raw power is worth putting him through that amount of mental agony.”

Scrimgeour nodded and broke her gaze. “Agreed. It’s only . . . he killed more Death Eaters yesterday than he has for the rest of the entire war. The blow we dealt to the Dark Lord’s forces was significant.” He paused, thoughtful. “Potter’s extraordinary capacities for mercy and kindness are admirable qualities, to be sure. I only wish they didn’t hold him back from wielding the power that we so desperately require to win this war.”

She felt rigid. Scrimgeour’s voice was clinical, unemotional. That was why he was Minister for Magic. He had the ability to operate with logic and reason where Harry was often emotional, impulsive, and erratic. Scrimgeour’s rationality had undeniable benefits, but the Minister had known Harry for seven years and somehow managed to retain an antiseptic, clinical attitude towards him. It sent shivers down her spine. 

She replied, “My priority is keeping Harry alive and mentally stable, Minister. To do that, he has to be allowed to act according to his conscience. He’s not a ruthless person. He’s kind and forgiving, sometimes to a fault.” She thinned her lips. “We can’t force him to become an entirely different person for the sake of optimizing the Order’s war strategy.”

Scrimgeour considered her silently from across the desk. He drew in a breath. Then, he said, “Intelligence reports indicate that the Dark Lord has officially legalized Muggle-born slavery in his regime. The law went into effect last week.”

She knew that. Of course she knew that. She’d read the same report.

Still, hearing it felt like being slapped. She looked away from Scrimgeour, turned her head as far as it would go, trying to regulate her heart rate and breathing.

She bit the inside of her mouth. She wanted to scream at someone. She also wanted to sink into the floor and never come back up.

Scrimgeour said, “I suspect I do not need to remind you of the societal and personal ramifications of losing this war.”

But that was exactly what he’d done. She looked at her lap and tried not to let her hands tremble. Protecting Harry and winning the war were sometimes in diametrical opposition. It was a conflict she could not resolve, as hard as she tried. Scrimgeour only seemed to care that Harry lived long enough to vanquish the Dark Lord. If his heart gave out the next day, Scrimegeour would probably consider his death a regrettable but necessary sacrifice. 

The Minister leaned back in his seat and steepled his fingers. “As always, I appreciate your willingness to work so closely with my office regarding Potter’s condition. My rapport with him has been quite strained, of late, and I rely heavily on your weekly report to remain informed, and to relay information and instructions to him. I understand that you are not in an enviable position, but your labors are indispensable to the war effort.”

Hermione nodded and dug her fingernails into her palms and tried not to let the torment show plainly on her face.

Chapter Text

She spent two frantic days researching Malfoy’s condition in the library, pouring over books to find any reference to failing Legilimency. In the back of her mind, an invisible clock was ticking down to the moment of Harry’s next possession. 

Two days was too long to do nothing. Two hours was too long. Voldemort was probably recovering from his injuries by the minute, planning another attack on Harry, and the mounting tension burrowed into the muscles of her neck and spine, cranking them tighter and tighter until she felt wound taut.

Loss of ability to do Legilimency over time wasn’t uncommon, although it seemed to depend on the method used. Apparently there were different schools of thought about how to most quickly and accurately perform Legilimency. She had no idea what method Malfoy used. 

She bit her lip. She might be able to create a basic stabilizing potion that would mask his symptoms, but without knowing more about Malfoy’s subjective experience of performing Legilimency, she wouldn’t be able to invent a potion that would address the root cause of his ailment. 

It appeared she would need to speak with him. 

She avoided this by convincing herself she needed to do more research at the library at Grimmauld Place, which had far more dark, rare texts than the Hogwarts library. Knowing Malfoy, he was probably using a Dark Arts method to perform Legilimency, and she didn’t want to be caught unawares. 

Reading at a breakneck pace, she wandered idly into the kitchen at Grimmauld to grab a snack, nose still buried in her current book. 

She didn’t even notice there was another occupant until she heard her own name. 

“Hermione, dear.” 

She jumped and raised her eyes, halfway through stuffing a scone into her mouth. Molly Weasley was standing by the sink, in the middle of preparing dinner. Hermione choked slightly and tried to swallow. “Molly. Hi. Sorry.” 

She’d forgotten that most of the Weasleys were staying here temporarily. Her heart sank. She desperately needed to keep researching, but she also didn’t want to be rude.  

Molly’s hair was shot through with gray now, but her cheeks were still rosy, eyes crinkling with kindness. Hermione hastily put down the scone and snapped the book shut as Molly approached. 

She put both of her hands on Hermione’s cheeks, looking her fully in the face, feeling her forehead.

“How are you holding up, dear?”

It was the first time in a long time anyone had really asked her that and been fully present to her answer. Molly’s eyes had a way of dredging up the truth. Hermione felt emotion rising up into her throat. “I’m all right. I’ve been better. Just trying to stay focused on some important research.” She tried to stuff it back down for fear that she would start crying and not be able to stop.

“You look a bit peaky, sweetheart,” Molly cooed. “Have a sit-down while I finish chopping these carrots. I’ll make you some tea.”

“Thank you, but I’m all right.” She felt the urgent need to keep moving, keep reading, keep pushing herself, because otherwise she would break down completely. “I really should get back to this reading.”

Molly was not having it. She bustled to the stove and set water heating in a kettle. “Actually, dear, I’m glad I have you alone for a few minutes. I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

Hermione tensed as she clutched the book to her chest. “What’s on your mind?”

Molly braced her hands on the kitchen counter, elbows bent slightly. “It’s only – I’m worried to death, watching Harry weaken like this.” She stayed very still, vibrating, clearly trying to keep her spine straight and her voice level. She said, “You and Ron see him every day, so maybe it isn’t obvious, but he looked so much more frail than the last time I saw him.”

Hermione’s blood ran cold. What had it been – a month? Had he really deteriorated so noticeably in a month’s time?

Molly burst into tears – loud and unstifled.

“Oh – Molly–” Hermione moved toward her, book clutched awkwardly in her hand, and placed a tentative arm around Molly’s shoulder. She wasn’t naturally a good hugger, but the effort alone must count for something. They huddled together in front of the sink for a few moments. “I’m worried about him too,” Hermione admitted. “All the time. It’s been a particularly rough month, with the treatments and battles and possessions. And,” she added, “we really had our hopes pinned on this battle being the final one.”

Molly nodded, sniffling, and removed a handkerchief from the pocket of her apron. “We all had high hopes for that.” She looked up at Hermione as she dabbed her eyes. “I hope you know that I love him like a son. Since Ginny died – I only have so many children left.”

She nodded, mouth turning down. Her throat was tight and hot.

Molly said, “I say this to you in that spirit, dear. I hear that you have control of the development and dosage of the potions he receives? The ones that strengthen his magic?”

Hermione tensed but nodded. Molly said, “Ron has told me that the side effects of the potions are painful and possibly life-shortening.” A cold stone lodged in the pit of her stomach. Molly turned to her and clutched both of Hermione’s hands in her own, brimming with desperation. “I am begging you to skip his next dosage, or at least reduce it.” Molly put her hand on Hermione’s cheek. “I can see how much pain he’s in with my own eyes. He won’t say it because – well, he’s Harry – and so someone has to say it for him. Please, Hermione. You have more control over this than any of us do. I can’t stand aside and watch him wither away from the strain of fighting this war.”

Hermione went so rigid that she thought she would snap in half. She pulled her hands away from Molly and spoke in a trembling voice. “The potions we give him are safe. I test every single one on myself. He needs more power than he currently has to have a chance against Voldemort, and he needs it fast. This is the most logical solution. I am doing the best I can,” she tried, “to balance the needs of the war and the health of my best friend–”

Molly’s face hardened. “How can you bear to think of winning the war at the cost of Harry’s health? How can you even put those in the same category? Harry is a person – a person that we love dearly–”

“I love him too.” She felt her eyes start to burn and prickle, and she whirled around, turning her back before Molly could see her face crumple. “But Muggles and Muggle-borns are dying by the hundreds – Voldemort is killing, enslaving, gaining power rapidly – and I can’t turn my back on that when the most viable solution is within my grasp.”

“Oh.” She heard the breath go out of Molly’s lungs, like being thrown to the ground. “This is about your lofty ideals, then. S.P.E.W., half-breed rights, and now martyring Harry for the sake of Muggle-borns–”

“No – that’s not – for the sake of Muggle-borns?” Her voice was loud, now, scathing, and she didn’t care if other people in the house heard her. She brought her hand down on the counter. “We cannot afford to lose this war. Any of us. Strengthening Harry’s magic is our last hope.”

“Hermione, you may be strengthening his magic,” Molly said, “but this is killing him. You’ve always been too lost in your head, too removed from compassion and empathy. Please.” Molly tried to grab her hands again, but she jerked them away. “For a moment, try to think of Harry as a mother would.” Molly’s eyes were soft. “Think of him as a boy who needs protection. He trusts you. How can you bear to do this to him?”

She recoiled as if she’d been slapped and stumbled backwards, careening into a spice rack. Glass shattered as the shelf dislodged from the wall. Her voice shook when she spoke. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You – you’re not seeing the bigger picture. You’re too wrapped up in emotion to think clearly. I will not be lectured and reprimanded by someone who knows so little about the realities of the war we’re fighting.”

Molly rose up, took a step forward. “I beg your pardon?”

“You rarely fight in battles. You only attend some Order meetings. You have no idea what we’re up against. You’ve relegated yourself to cooking and cleaning and keeping house, and that’s fine, but I won’t be scolded by you–”

“Oi! What’s all this commotion?” George loped to the doorway of the kitchen. The grin died on his face when he saw the ferocity of the glare on his mother’s face.

“Out,” Molly ordered, voice rising to a screech. “Both of you. OUT OF THE KITCHEN.”

Hermione jolted, trembling like a whipped dog. She snatched up her book and hastened out of the kitchen, ushered by George.

“Blimey, Hermione. What on earth did you do to work her into that kind of temper?” George asked.

She couldn’t answer. It was all she could do to hold back a flood of tears.

“I need to – need to get back to this research– sorry–”

She swiped her face discreetly and fled George’s presence, even though she could hear him protesting. She took the stairs two at a time and barrelled into the library. The scent of old books felt like a balm to her soul. Trembling, she bolted the door. 

When she was alone and safe in the library, the tears exploded out of her, beyond her control. 

Harry was dying in front of her eyes. Everyone could see it. Molly had only stated the obvious.

Her fault.

Molly blamed her. Ron blamed her, although he would never say it aloud. All of the Weasleys probably blamed her.

They were right. She’d weaponized her best friend at the Order’s behest. She’d done it ruthlessly and with the full knowledge that she was harming his health and well-being.

She forced herself to sit at the table and opened the book. She needed to concentrate and think and read more. The words blurred and fractured as she tried to concentrate. 

The responsibility for deciding whether Harry should continue the potion regimen was entirely hers. If she decided to stop brewing the potions, no one else could do it. If she decided to keep brewing them, Harry would continue to take them without question or argument. 

Scrimegour didn’t care if Harry’s heart or mind eventually failed. Just that he survived long enough to kill Voldemort. Molly and Ron cared more about Harry’s life than they did about quickly ending the war. They were willing to see the war drag out or not be won at all if it meant Harry would live.

She cared about Harry’s life, and she also cared deeply about living in a world where Muggles and Muggle-borns weren’t being enslaved and brutalized.

Sometimes she felt like the only one.

She took deep, gasping breaths, trying to calm herself and think rationally.

She needed to stop crying. She ripped her hair up off of her neck and violently twisted it into a bun, relishing the pain. She allowed the air to cool the skin of her neck and ordered herself to get a grip. She swiped the tears from her face, clenching her abdominal muscles to try to push away the roiling, sickened sensations.

With effort, she reasserted control over her own mind, forcing her thoughts to drown out her emotions.

Molly was driven purely by feeling and personal sentiment. Her suggestions weren’t rational or well thought-out – she lacked knowledge, context, and ability to temper her emotions.  

Scrimgeour and Order leadership were unsympathetic to Harry’s suffering, driven purely by logic and rationality.

Both sides believed they knew better than her, but conveniently, they had placed the weight of deciding, and thus the blame for a wrong decision, squarely on her shoulders. They grew more antagonistic and resentful of her power by the day.

She felt more desperate and alone than she ever had in her life.

She opened and closed her hands slowly – a pointless grasping at thin air. The books on the shelves seemed to loom over her, closing in. 

She conjured up a Bluebell Flame to comfort herself. She ran her fingers through the flame – twisting it, contorting it, moulding it to her touch.

There was nothing to be done for it.

She would have to contact Malfoy.

What other choice did she have?

It was a wildly dangerous gamble, even if she took pains to mitigate the risk to Harry and the resistance.

But she had reached the limits of her power. Order leadership would not help her to protect Harry. If she crossed Scrimgeour and refused to brew the potions for the sake of Harry’s well-being, the alliance that was holding the resistance together would crumble. The war would be lost if the Order fragmented, and her careful diplomacy was the hinge it swung on.  

She would contact Malfoy without telling anyone else. 

The Bluebell Flame flared and brightened in her hands, cutting the murky gloom of the library. She took small comfort in its steady light. Malfoy was a thoroughly horrible person, and he also happened to be the only person other than Snape who had managed to keep Voldemort out of his mind. If Malfoy taught Harry to protect his mind and control his magic, she could have it both ways. She could protect Harry from the worst effects of the war, while continuing to appease Order leadership and strengthen Harry’s power.

She felt as if she’d been walking a tightrope for the entire war, pitching and careening between the sheer drops on both sides, grappling for purchase. Adding Malfoy to the mixture might send her tumbling to her death. Or it could stabilize them. 

But how to outmaneuver a ruthless, brutal Legilimens with a particular penchant for killing Muggle-born women?

She stared at the flame in her hands for hours, mind shifting and flickering with the fire. 

~

It wasn’t hard to convince Harry to free Kreacher. It wasn’t hard to convince Harry of anything in his current state. She argued the importance of self-determination for all magical creatures and stressed the cruelty of owning an elf who despised him. She promised to wipe Kreacher’s memory of all Order-relevant intelligence. Harry heard the passion and determination in her voice, and his eyes softened immediately. He didn’t have the energy to fight with her about it.

As predicted, once he was freed and his memory wiped, Kreacher went immediately to Narcissa. He only paused to snarl, “Mudblood filth” at Hermione before popping away.

Kreacher returned to Grimmauld Place hours later with an expression of reluctant contrition; he averted eye contact as he handed her a note from Draco Malfoy.

Grimmauld Place. Tomorrow night, 6pm. 

She fumed. He’d chosen the day and time without asking. Overbearing bastard. Did he really think she could just clear her schedule and cater to his?

Tomorrow night wasn’t nearly soon enough. It left another day for Voldemort to attack Harry, and the gall set her teeth on edge. She furiously penned back a brusque note. Let’s meet tonight.

The reply came almost immediately. Can’t get away sooner, Granger. Tomorrow night, 6pm.

That left her far too much time to stew in the horrifying hypotheticals. 

Luckily, a distraction presented itself, at least for the remainder of the evening. After three days of mostly staying in bed, Harry insisted he needed to put in a public appearance. He felt it was his duty as a figurehead of the Order to put in an appearance after battles as soon as was humanly possible, to bolster morale and assure others that he was on the mend.

“Let’s only stay for a few minutes,” Harry begged in an undertone as they made their way toward the Ravenclaw common room. “I’m not in the mood to talk or be around people.” He rarely was, anymore. 

Word had gotten around of an informal gathering of the younger Order members – a post-battle celebration or distraction or commiseration – whatever it was that stood in for parties nowadays. Mostly, an excuse to drink heavily and try to forget for one night that they were locked in an unrelenting war.

She nodded in agreement, trying to focus on anything but the looming threat of Malfoy. “We don’t need to stay long. Then, you can rest.”

He had only recently regained the strength to get out of bed for more than an hour or two. Although he was healing physically, the mental aftereffects of Voldemort’s possession were not so short-lived. She saw his lingering fear in the tightness of his mouth and in the way he held his shoulders. Instead of talking about any of it, he became increasingly irritable and withdrawn, snapping without provocation. 

“How was your session with the Mind Healer?” she asked as they approached the entrance to the common room. “That was today, right? With Adrian Pucey?”

Harry stiffly rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks coloring. “I, er – I may have accidentally thrown him through a wall.”

She stopped short. “What?”

Harry turned even redder. “I – it was an accident. Mostly. I lost control of my magic.”

“Harry.” She put her hands on her hips. “You have to work on your control. You can hurt people now just by thinking it–”

He cut her off waspishly. “I know, Hermione, please don’t nag, I’m trying, it’s just – I’m a bit jumpy around Legilimens right now. And I know he’s a professional, but when he used Legilimency on me, it felt like–”

His voice faltered. He bit his cheek, unable to meet her gaze.

Her shoulders slumped. The frustration drained out of her body quickly, replaced by worry. She softened her voice. “Was it helpful at all? Did he have any thoughts about – treatment – or any recommendations? Before you threw him through the wall, that is?”

Harry shook his head, mouth turning down. “I don’t really want to see him again. It – he – he was trying to be helpful, but . . .” Harry trailed off. His eyes went blank. She frowned in concern. “I don’t really remember the whole session, to be honest. I think – it might be too much for me, right now. Or maybe I’m too stubborn or mistrustful for Mind Healers to be of any help.” His voice was low and bitter. “In any case, I don’t think he wants to see me again. He was – a bit miffed about the broken bones.”

Bones. Multiple. 

A wave of nausea hit her as she considered Malfoy’s offer to try to teach Harry Occlumency. If he threw a licensed Mind Healer through a wall, what would he do to Malfoy?

She bit back a series of worried follow-up questions. It wasn’t normal to black out during a treatment session or throw someone through a wall for performing a standard medical procedure. None of this was normal.

She squeezed his arm. “I’m glad you tried seeing him. I’m sorry it wasn’t more helpful.”

Harry nodded shortly, without looking at her. “Let’s get this over with.”

They entered a gathering that was fairly quiet and subdued, for the moment. Many people looked shell-shocked. Firewhiskey and Butterbeer were flowing liberally. 

Harry entered to general sounds of relief and ebullition.

“Harry–” Romilda Vane’s voice, high and breathy.

“Thank Merlin, you’re all right.” Neville, who threw an arm around Harry’s shoulder, displacing Hermione from his side.

“I count four limbs and one specky git. All looks to be in good working order.” George punched Harry in the shoulder and draped an arm over his other shoulder.

Harry accepted their well-wishes with as much aplomb as he could manage – smiling weakly, hugging Neville in return, nodding politely at Romilda. Her mouth tightened as she watched him. He looked exhausted – not just physically, but emotionally too. His eyes were dull and guarded at the same time. A certain emptiness in his tone as he responded.

Like he was going through the motions. Forcing himself.

He bounced back a little more slowly from battles each time. He looked a little more ragged after each treatment. And his eyes grew dimmer and dimmer with each possession by Voldemort.

She turned away.

Ron was already there, speaking with a couple of his brothers, drinking Firewhiskey straight from the bottle. Hermione tore herself away from Harry and approached; Ron smiled as he saw her. His eyes went briefly to Harry – always checking, always vigilant. His expression darkened as he saw the same thing that Hermione had. His eyes came back to her face.

“Firewhiskey will help,” Ron said, ducking his head. He conjured a glass and poured her some from the bottle.

She drank without protest – very different from her attitude towards alcohol at the beginning of the war – because she knew Ron was right. Firewhiskey would help, temporarily. Plus, she needed something to take the edge off her nerves about meeting with Malfoy.

She talked with Charlie and Bill, and Ron mucked about with them, and Fleur joined them briefly. Although she knew it wasn’t normal, she couldn’t help but watch Harry from across the room. It was automatic now, an ingrained habit.

A number of the younger Order members were afraid to approach Harry – as if being chosen by prophecy and gaining magical power had elevated him to the status of a myth and not a real person. 

Others were bold enough to approach him. They often encountered polite distancing from Harry. He would speak with people in the role of Harry Potter quite freely, on his good days. Offering counsel to those who sought it. He often managed to be engaging. Sincere. Comforting. A steady presence for the people who relied on him for morale and leadership.

But if people tried to go any deeper than that, they hit a brick wall.

Romilda Vane was attempting valiantly to engage him in conversation. Harry looked away and said something short. Dismissive. Searching for another conversation to join. Curtly, he dismissed himself with a polite smile and a rushed apology.

Padma Patil was less overt in her attention. She could sense when Harry wanted to be quiet, and she spoke. She listened warmly when he wanted to talk. She never pushed him or inserted herself where she wasn’t wanted, but she found ways to be near him. Ready to protect or intervene when people were gawking or prattling or being inappropriately intrusive, as people so often were with public figures.

Harry made his way over to Neville, clustered with a group of men, speaking quickly and with big gestures, which meant it was about quidditch. Someone handed him a Firewhiskey which he tossed back gratefully.

And then there was Gabrielle Delacour. She carried herself like an avenging Valkyrie. Sheets of silver hair and whip-like ferocity. She had grown up with war as her constant companion. Only eighteen years old, but she dueled like lightning striking. As far as Hermione could tell, she deeply disliked being part Veela. She snarled at anyone who mentioned it. She treated her effect on men like an inconvenience. She was small too. Shorter than Fleur by a whole hand.

About as tall as Ginny, come to think of it.

Gabrielle liked to duel with Harry in training because she was one of the only fighters who could still sometimes outduel him. When they weren’t dueling, Harry spent the rest of his time pointedly ignoring her existence. If she approached him outside of training, she had the same effect on him that she had on most men – complete with blushing, stammering, and stumbling over words and nearby objects. Nevertheless, Harry wasn’t one for outright rudeness. He usually attempted conversation, keeping his eyes stubbornly and politely on her face. He typically only managed a few mangled sentences before apologizing, excusing himself, and fleeing the room, face flaming like a sunrise.

“Hermione.” Ron’s voice cut into her thoughts, soft but persistent. “He’s fine. Stop mentally hovering. Drink your Firewhiskey.”

He clinked his bottle with her glass, and she jolted. Charlie and Bill were staring at her. How much of their conversation had she missed?

Bill smiled at her and asked, “What’s new with you, Hermione?”

She searched for an appropriate topic to discuss – something unrelated to desperation, top-secret meetings with Death Eaters, or Harry.

“I’m – er – I’m working a lot.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m working on the countercurses to some of the trickier curses we saw in battle.” She looked at Bill and felt her face start to become more animated. “I came across a rather fascinating construction for a fire-based curse, a relative of Confringo – the numerical properties of the root rune are quite remarkable, and it forced me to consult Numerology and Grammatica for the first time in years. Turns out that I had to use some spherical trigonometry to calculate the root for the countercurse – I’ll show you my work, Bill, because I think you’d find it fascinating–”

“Bloody hell, Hermione.” Ron cut her off soundly. “I love you, but I came here to drink Firewhiskey and have a few laughs, not attend an Arithmancy seminar.”

She deflated slightly and ducked her head. Charlie sniggered at Ron’s comment before stifling it, although when she darted her glance to Bill, he looked slightly disappointed and wasn’t laughing. She threw her most disapproving look at Ron. “Just because you have no appreciation for a conversation with some substance doesn’t mean your brothers don’t, Ronald. Honestly. Bill, I’ll show you my work later. We can have an Arithmancer chat. For now, I’ll relieve you all of my presence, since some people find me to be such a crashing bore.”

She shot Ron a final glare before moving away.

“Hermione, c’mon–” Ron whinged, making a half-hearted move after her. “It was a bloody joke, you know it’s all in good fun–”

She took a large gulp of Firewhiskey as she searched for a different conversation to join. After short deliberation, she decided to approach Padma, who was clearly only half-attending to her conversation with Lavender and Parvati.

“Padma.” Hermione took her arm, steering her forcefully away from the conversation with her sister and Lavender. “I’ve been admiring the herbal tinctures you and Neville made for slowing blood loss. Dittany, fluxweed, and knotgrass, right?”

Padma’s face lit up and she nodded. Hermione steered her toward a couch. “What were the magical properties of those plants that made you think to combine them?”

They lost themselves in conversation, allowing the party to ebb and quicken around them, discussing Herbology. It was a fantastic distraction, and a sight better than other conversations Hermione could have found herself stuck in. Eventually Neville joined them. Given the amount of Firewhiskey he’d consumed, he got a bit heated about the usage of fanged geranium for restoring memory loss. She was beginning to think it was rather adorable when someone’s head crashed unceremoniously into her lap.

A mess of dark hair. Glasses askew. Harry had put his head in her lap and the rest of him had fallen bonelessly onto the couch, flopped onto his back.

“Oof. Sorry,” Harry slurred. She jolted. He was drunker than – well, drunker than she’d seen him in a long time. Getting sloshed was more Ron’s style of thing.

She felt immediately like she’d been doused in cold ice water. This wasn’t just anyone getting drunk on a whim. If you were Harry Potter, getting drunk meant weakened Occlumency shields and possible mind invasion by a psychopath. It meant decreased control over emotions, and higher risk of sudden, explosive magical outbursts. It meant endless gossip and reports of his behavior making their way back to Order leadership.

Which was why Harry never let himself get drunk.

“Wotcher, Harry,” Neville said warmly. “You look like you’re having fun – you’ve finally let loose a bit.”

Padma’s brow creased with concern. “You don’t look well, Harry. I could get some water. I think I have some Pepper-Up in my bag–”

“She is so nice,” Harry said to Hermione, gesturing at Padma. “Why is she like that? She is always so nice to me, and her eyes are so pretty. It makes me angry.”

Padma’s hand froze in her bag, and she made a strangled sound in the back of her throat.

Harry didn’t notice. “The room’s a bit spinny, as it were,” he commented.

“Okay,” Hermione said. “We’re getting you to bed, then. Up you go.”

She lifted his head off of her lap and helped him to stand. He was still fairly steady on his feet: she would count small blessings.

“Sorry, Padma,” Hermione said, wincing. “Sorry, Neville. We’re going.”

“Harry–” Padma said, and Hermione tried to drag him away before he did any more damage.

Harry pointed a wobbling finger at her. His magic, which was very poorly controlled when he was drunk, crackled in the air around Padma in a distinctly non-threatening way. “Stop being so nice, and also having nice eyes and hair, and – just go somewhere where I don’t have to look at you. Ever.” Hermione wrenched him away, but not in time to stop Padma’s face from falling. Over his shoulder, he said, “Sorry. I’m a drunken arse. Sorry, Padma, I didn’t mean that. You can stay wherever you like and please just thoroughly ignore me–”

“Harry,” Hermione snarled, and bodily dragged him away. “You utter prat. Stop talking. You’re being rude. Say another word to anyone, and I will hex you.”

Where the hell was Ron when you needed him? When you were half-carrying your drunk male best friend out of a party? Hermione looked around and caught sight of him.

Apparently, when you needed Ron, he was guzzling Firewhiskey and entertaining Lavender Brown. On his lap.

Bloody typical.

She put her arm more firmly around Harry’s waist and steered him toward the door of the common room.

“Hermione, wait.”

Breathing through her nostrils, trying to rein in her temper, she turned to face an earnest-looking Anthony Goldstein. Her bloody Potions brewing partner. 

“Hullo, Hermione. Hullo, Potter,” Anthony said, nodding warmly. “Hermione, could I have a private chat? Er – don’t blow me to smithereens for asking that, Potter. I mean well.” 

He was half-joking, but his eyes were wary. It was no secret that Harry was protective of Hermione.

Harry scoffed. “Don’t be bloody ridiculous, Goldstein.” Harry then leaned closer to her, speaking in a loud whisper. “Hermione,” Harry said, “I think this man has romantic intentions towards you.”

It appeared he thought he was being helpful. She blushed and smacked Harry on the back of the head. “Shut up, you drunken fool.”

Harry straightened up, immediately apologetic. “I’ll just–” he cast his gaze around, wobbling, “—there’s a lovely space of unoccupied wall, just over there – I’ll bugger off–”

Harry made to move away, but she grasped him tightly. “No. You’re staying right here.”

After the scene with Padma, God knew what other trouble he would get himself into if left to his own devices.

“I’m sure Anthony can say whatever he was going to say while you’re here,” she said to Harry, smiling tightly at Anthony.

“Er,” Anthony said. The words looked caught in his throat. His gaze flickered nervously to Harry, then back to Hermione’s face. Harry’s head was turned away, and he was pretending to be immensely interested in one of the light fixtures on the far wall. “I was wondering – after we work on potions tomorrow – if you’d like to take a walk with me around the lake? Maybe get some hot chocolate? It’s – not a proper date, but we don’t have much in the way of those, anymore.”

Anthony’s cheeks were slightly pink. Hermione felt like she wanted to be anywhere else. Talking to anyone else. “Oh,” she said, voice going high. How to reject him politely? “Anthony, I really don’t think that’s a good idea at the moment–”

Harry cut her off soundly and inserted himself. “What she means to say is, she’s flattered and she’ll give it some thought. Right, then. Thanks, Goldstein. Bloody good to see you.”

Harry nodded at him and made a stumbling move towards the common room door, and Hermione was forced to follow, glaring. “You utter pillock– you’re a meddling arse–” she started, only to be soundly interrupted.

“Harry, wait.”

Gabrielle Delacour’s voice sounded from behind them like a gunshot.

Was there no end to this? Could they not leave the bloody common room without getting accosted by every man, woman, and child in the vicinity?

Gabrielle approached them unhurriedly, cigarette dangling from her fingers, dressed in combat boots, baggy jeans, and a Metric tee. Her waist-length silver hair was impossible not to stare at. It moved like mercury, quicksilver-bright. 

Harry froze. Gabrielle took a drag of her cigarette and thrust her chin at Harry. “I’m not going easy on you in duelling just because you’re hungover tomorrow, you dolt.”

Her French accent had faded over the years and now there was just a lilt of it in her voice, lending all of her sentences an air of slight superiority. Gabrielle’s eyes moved from him to Hermione, and she tossed her hair. It rippled like a moonlit pool. It had the same effect on Harry as a bludgeon to the head. 

Harry opened his mouth but no words came out. A blush was already creeping up his neck. He tried to speak but something closer to a mewl escaped his lips. Hermione winced in sympathetic embarrassment for him.

“For fuck’s sake,” Gabrielle said, “ten years you’ve known me and now you can’t even have a normal conversation outside the duelling ring? Get a hold of yourself, you absolute cad.” She flicked the cigarette irritably. “You seem like you’d be a bit of alright if we could just chat and have a smoke. Instead it’s –” she rolled her eyes and made a dismissive gesture, “whatever this is.”

Harry blinked once at her, like an owl. 

“Is he always this pathetique, Granger, or is it my sparkling personality?”

Gabrielle grinned conspiratorially at Hermione and gave her a wink, which did something funny and inexplicable to her stomach that she was probably not going to examine. 

When it was clear that Harry had become entirely non-verbal, she offered, “Sorry. He’s completely sloshed. Best get him to bed before he menaces the party any more. Chat later?”

Harry covered his eyes, clearly trying to ward off the debilitating effect Gabrielle had on him. “Ugh,” he said, clearly directing that sentiment at himself. 

Gabrielle’s expression did something strange – a glimmer of hope followed by a rapid closing off. She straightened up to her full height. She clearly wasn’t used to being dismissed out of hand. “I’ll be around.” Her voice was ice cold as she whirled away, silver hair flaring around her.

“Her hair. It’s so bright,” Harry whispered to Hermione, peeking through his fingers in horror. She tried and failed to stifle a peal of laughter.

“Harry,” she said, as she muscled open the common room door and pushed him through, “I think you’ve just thoroughly torpedoed every potential romantic option you had for the foreseeable future.”

“Good,” Harry answered. “I’ve been bloody meaning to do that for months.”

He reeled slightly and steadied himself against the wall. Now that they were alone, Harry’s expression closed down. Far sadder and more removed than he allowed it to be in public.

She took his arm and guided them gently in the right direction. “Padma’s really ace,” she commented. “I didn’t know you thought she was pretty.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Harry said. His voice told her not to pursue this line of discussion. “We’ve been through this.”

She pushed, but only a little, voice light and airy. “I see how you look and act around Gabrielle. Harry, it’s so obvious that you fancy her–”

“No.” Harry’s voice was flat and hard. “I’ve told you. It’s just the Veela thing. It’s – biological.” 

She hummed. “You don’t act like that around Fleur. And did you see her back there – she’s clearly interested in you–”

“Hermione. Are you completely daft? That show she put on back there wasn’t for me. It was for you, you bloody idiot.”

She stopped short in the corridor and sputtered, short-circuiting. “Don’t be ridiculous–”

"You don’t be ridiculous. She’d been mooning over you since we were seventeen, and you ignore her. I’d be barking up the wrong tree, with her.” Seeing that he had the upper hand, he continued, “You’re hardly one to nag me about sabotaging my own love life. Back there with Goldstein – bad form. He’s a nice enough bloke – why would you turn him down out of hand?”

She glared and opened her mouth. Anthony was decent looking – dark wavy hair, darker eyes, and a head taller than everyone else. “I don’t have time or energy for someone like Anthony,” she said without thinking, thinning her lips. 

Her statement’s effect on Harry was profound. His expression drooped visibly, and the lights in the corridor flickered and dimmed as his magic influenced them. “I want you to have a normal life,” Harry said. “That includes dating and such, if you want.” Guilt clouded his face. “Please, Hermione – being my best friend doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice other parts of your life–”

She cut him off soundly. “Harry. Don’t even start with that rubbish.”

He was convinced that she and Ron had ruined their lives to be his best friend. Convinced that they felt resentful, trapped in a role that put him at the center of their lives. He never stopped feeling guilty about it, and even innocent comments like the one Hermione had just made could trigger self-flagellation.

She said, “Last time I checked, I volunteered to be your best friend. Not to mention, we’re in the middle of a war. No one has a normal life. Get that godsforsaken expression off your face. I’ll date if I want to. But I don’t want to date Anthony.”

She halted as she recited the password to Gryffindor common room and clambered through the portrait hole. Harry stumbled and would have toppled to the ground if she hadn’t caught his elbow.

He straightened up and she released him, turning fully to face him. She softened her expression. “It’s been three years. Ginny would be so bloody furious with you if she knew you were still pining over her memory.”

Harry opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

It was common knowledge: he blamed himself for Ginny’s death. Had somehow convinced himself that Death Eaters had targeted her because she was his girlfriend. And he was unwilling to put anyone else in that kind of danger, no matter how nice they were or how bright their hair was.

Isn’t it bad enough, Harry had screamed once, during one of his rages, that I love you and him? Gesturing to Ron and herself. Haven’t I done enough damage? You have no idea how badly I wish I’d never met either of you.

Not true, of course. Such a blatant lie that it wasn’t even hurtful.

Harry wouldn’t let himself love anyone else. He already considered his attachment to the both of them a selfish indulgence. And he still loved Ginny. He’d be a horrible partner in his current state – temperamental, constantly in need of medical care or emotional support or God knew what, depending on the day. 

Those were his reasons. She knew them by heart. But as he opened his mouth to explain, she realized that he didn’t have the energy. He closed it, face drooping. “I’m so tired, Hermione. Let’s not talk anymore.”

A lump formed in her throat. “I know. Come on, let’s go to bed. You’re not sleeping alone tonight, you drunken fool. Alcohol weakens your Occlumency shields. You know that. What possessed you to drink your own weight in Firewhiskey?”

“I just couldn’t be arsed anymore.” Harry’s words ran together at the edges. His chin dropped to his chest as they climbed the stairs to the dormitory.

He was borderline incoherent, but she knew what he meant. He was running on fumes. The weight of the war forced him to choose between bad and worse. Between drinking an entire bottle of Firewhiskey or having an emotional meltdown in public. Between risking mind invasion or complete despair.

No good options.

Getting drunk was the best he could do.

She sat him down on the bed and helped him take his shoes off, then cast protective wards. Barriers that would make it harder for Voldemort to attack him. She summoned her potions bag and measured out Strengthening Solution and held it to his lips. He drank without bothering to ask what it was.

And then she curled up next to him on the bed. Voldemort usually made his most successful attacks when Harry was alone. They didn’t understand why. But being next to him was the best protection she could offer.

She didn’t care what Neville or Seamus would say if they came up to the dorms and saw them lying in bed together. She refused to leave him alone. Not in this state.

Harry pulled her closer, nuzzling his face into her hair, and she smiled slightly. “Go to sleep, Harry. You’re going to be so furious at yourself in the morning. But go to sleep, for now.”

Harry held her tighter and sighed into her hair. “No one’s better than you,” he mumbled, and promptly passed out.

~

Ron burst into the dorm-room early the next morning, startling Hermione awake. She pushed herself to her elbows, disoriented. Her mouth was dry; dread enveloped her as she remembered the imminent meeting with Malfoy. 

Harry was sleeping peacefully next to her.

No mind invasions, then, last night. She blinked up at Ron in disoriented relief.

Ron looked wholly unsurprised to see them in bed together, fully clothed. They slept like that sometimes, and he had learned to accept it. Ron looked renewed. Jaunty. Shoulders a bit straighter than usual.

He’d definitely shagged Lavender last night.

Not the first time, and probably not the last. Ron wasn’t exactly discreet about his occasional involvement with Lavender, but he never purposely drew her attention to it. He believed it would hurt her to know. It didn’t, but she thought there was a part of him that wanted it to. 

So, both of them remained silent on the topic.

Ron leapt onto the bed, startling Harry awake with a pained groan. Ron inserted himself between the two of them and propped himself up against the headboard, throwing an arm around each of their shoulders, grinning slightly at Harry’s annoyed groan.

“Bloody hell, Ron – this bed isn’t big enough for three people, and you’re the size of two regular people–”

“Am not,” Ron said, grinning without concern. “I’ve already been down to breakfast, and the rumor mill is churning this morning.” He looked up at the ceiling, waiting for one of them to respond.

Hermione looked up at him hopefully. “Did you bring us anything from breakfast, then?”

Ron hesitated momentarily before fishing a scone wrapped in a napkin out of his robes. “I know how much you love those little scones with the jelly in.”

It was the closest thing she would get to an apology for his rude comment last night.

She felt her face brighten as she took the scone. She kissed him on the cheek and bit into the scone with great gusto. “So,” Ron repeated. “Rumor mill. Churning.”

When neither of them took his bait – Harry looked borderline comatose and she was engrossed in the scone – Ron sighed and looked at Harry. “You got sloshed, had a screaming match with two women, and dueled a third on your way out?”

Harry fumbled for his glasses. “Agh. Your voice is grating on my ears, Ron.”

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Ron was grinning from ear to ear now, looking down at Harry. “This will be in the papers, if you’re unlucky.”

“I don’t – I don’t think – I reckon I would remember a screaming match or dueling. All I remember is having a distinct urge to be sick all over my shoes. Possibly in response to an attempted conversation with Gabrielle Delacour.”

“Not the response she usually elicits in men, but each to his own,” Ron counseled. “Hermione? Put us out of our misery.”

She huffed between bites of scone. Always the sober one, looking after one drunkard or another, being their collective memory. But Harry really did look pale and worried that he had done something horrible. She sighed. “It’s your own fault that you don’t remember. Perhaps you’ll think twice next time about downing a bottle of Firewhiskey in the space of twenty minutes. You didn’t scream at or duel anyone. You just – told Padma and maybe Romilda to go away. In no uncertain terms.”

Ron clocked him on the back of the head. “Idiot,” he said. “Both of them are fit as hell.”

Harry rubbed the back of his head. “Thank God,” he said. “I’m never brave enough when I’m sober. Well, to be fair, I was sober when I told Romilda to go away. But I do that at least once a week.”

“And you’re a bloody fool for it,” Ron told him. “She’s extremely fit and extremely keen on you. Can you take a moment to at least consider the possibilities?” Ron closed his eyes, as if imagining them himself. “I don’t think you can.”

She smacked him in the chest. “Don’t be disgusting, Ronald.”

“Oi,” Ron said, “I’m not saying he has to date her. I mean, I’d almost approve of her, if she hadn’t come so damn close to killing me with that love potion in sixth year. But just – as far as one-night stands go, you can’t argue with her assets–”

“Ron,” Harry begged, “that’s not happening. Ever. My headache is growing by the minute, and I’ve a feeling it’s something to do with you speaking.”

“And I refuse to listen to any more of your filth,” Hermione added, ducking out of his arm. “I doubt Romilda would appreciate being the butt of your jokes.”

Ron’s face swelled with indignation. “I’m complimenting her. Lovely assets.” When her expression darkened, Ron wrapped his arm more tightly around Harry’s shoulder and slunk down on the bed. “This one has no sense of humor,” he complained to Harry, eyes flashing to Hermione. “Never has. See if I bring her scones ever again after this. She’s a constant stick in the mud.”

“And you’d better be glad of it right now,” Hermione said. “You’ve got duelling practice in–” she checked her wristwatch, “—seven minutes.”

“What.” Harry staggered frantically out of bed and searched himself for his wand.

Ron gave her a horrified look. As if she was the one who had scheduled this. “All three of us? It’s Saturday morning,” he groaned, scandalized.

She polished off the scone with and said, “Just you two. I’m doing a wandmaking lesson with Ollivander. You’re with Hestia.” She’d become increasingly interested in learning how to create wands, given the dire shortage in the Order currently. “Hestia’s cheeriest on Saturdays.” She performed a quick charm to tame her hair. “Lucky for you.”

~

At least her lesson with Ollivander would take mind off her mounting nerves about meeting with Malfoy later. Still, her mind involuntarily ran through the plan again and again in her spare moments. 

She had penned a confirmation of their 6pm meeting time and sent it back with Kreacher yesterday:

You will only be allowed past the wards in Grimmauld on several conditions. You will come alone. You will come without a wand. And you will keep a distance of five paces from me at all times.

If you break any of those conditions, my extensive wards will forcibly expel you from the building.

She took Malfoy’s non-response as consent to those terms. With those stipulations in place, she could force him into a disadvantage magically and neutralise him physically.

Then, there was the problem of his Legilimency.

Although the ability to do Legilimency was strengthened by a wand, she’d seen Malfoy use it wandlessly on Eleanor with ruthless effectiveness. Worse yet, she had little skill in Occlumency, as hard as she’d worked to cultivate her ability over the years.

She had resigned herself to the fact that Malfoy would likely try to incapacitate or torture her with mind invasion. It was his only remaining advantage, and he would do whatever he needed to gain the upper hand.

If he invaded her mind, all she could do was grit her teeth and endure it, and respond with a counterattack more quickly than he expected.

Legilimency couldn’t kill a person as far as she knew. Harry had endured much worse at Voldemort’s hands than anything Malfoy could probably dream of inflicting.

She could endure whatever he did to her too.  

She would have to.

Chapter Text

She arrived at Grimmauld Place fifteen minutes before their agreed-upon meeting time. The Weasleys had relocated to a different safehouse days ago, so she was alone. 

As she waited, images of Eleanor Finch-Fletchley’s face as Malfoy slit her throat kept intruding on her vision. How easily Malfoy did it, and how blank his expression was afterward.

She forced down the urge to be sick from anxiety and took a Draught of Peace to settle her stomach. It didn’t help very much. Her nerves were shot to hell. She tapped her wand repeatedly against her palm and focused on the weight of it, concentrating on the latent magic humming at her fingertips.

Her magic was the only reassurance she ever had.

Her nerves were further frayed by the presence of the House-Elf heads mounted along the wall of the drawing room, watchful as sentinels. She’d grown used to their gruesome presence over the years, but with Malfoy’s imminent arrival, they somehow took on a fresh menace.

As did the fact that no amount of firelight ever seemed to illuminate the corners of Grimmauld Place.

She stoked the fire and watched the room brighten. She flung her wand at the ancient chandelier; the candles flared to life. She lit every wall sconce she could see, but the flickering light did not seem to penetrate the murky, immovable greyness of the house.

This was an old, pureblood house. She had never felt it more strongly. She was an interloper. If the house were alive, it would swallow her up and spit out her bones.

The moment Malfoy arrived, she knew she had made a mistake.

He materialised with Kreacher by the doorway, which was the room’s only exit. She immediately felt claustrophobic. The space seemed to shrink, so that Malfoy could easily close the distance between them. The length of his arm span seemed impossibly long.

She wondered if he had any idea how frightening he was by the mere confluence of his qualities – blood status, money, family name, stature, maleness, penchant for cruelty, Legilimency. His mere existence was a threat that did not need embellishment.

His eyes were the worst part. His gaze made it clear that physical distance didn’t provide her a single ounce of safety. His eyes could cut into her from across the room if she dared to look him in the face. Legilimency was a wandless, long-range weapon in Malfoy’s hands.

His presence had the effect of a suspended guillotine – silent, taut, promising swift, unforeseen violence.

Her heart was pounding so loudly that she could barely hear the crackle of the fire behind her. She forced the tremor out of her hands. Harry and Ron were going to kill her if she didn’t make it out of this in one piece.

This was by far the most irresponsible plan she had ever concocted. Malfoy was hardly the same pampered, puffed-up bully she’d known at Hogwarts. He’d become a dangerous, dogmatic murderer with a talent for psychological manipulation. He didn’t need a wand or physical proximity to spin someone into a sobbing panic.

Nevertheless, she had decided one thing firmly before the meeting. She would look him in the eye, no matter what.

Steeling herself, she squared her shoulders, tilted her chin up, and met his gaze.

Malfoy blinked, gaze locked with hers, and looked at her for a long time. She braced herself for the anticipated onslaught of Legilimency – a quick, slicing invasion followed by the wrenching away of her mental autonomy. It didn’t come.  

He raised an eyebrow, face otherwise blank. “You’re not afraid to look at me.”

His tone was challenging, but there was an undercurrent of surprise. Clearly, he was accustomed to people averting their gazes and displaying abject fear in his presence. He probably enjoyed it; the vile, preening bully she’d known from school certainly would have.

Only now he had actual power, and that was a terrifying thought. Her heart still crashed against her ribcage, and her chest and throat constricted more tightly with every breath she drew in. She clenched her wand and focused on responding in an even voice.

She consciously relaxed her vocal chords, tilting her chin up. “I am,” she said, “afraid to look at you.” 

He shifted his weight, a slight movement, and it made her realise how closely she was monitoring every tiny change in his body language. He started to approach her, but she held up a hand.

“Stay there.” She forced authority into her voice. “That’s close enough.”

“Then you’d prefer we shout at one another from across the room?” His voice cut the air. “This is ridiculous.” He paused, and she sensed the threat in it. “Granger, if I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve done it back at the battle, after I paralyzed and Disarmed you.” His eyes slid over her, assessing. “I could hurt you even now.” His voice was soft and confident – no arrogance or bluster, and that made it worse.

She bristled and raised her wand, spine going rigid, muscles cording in preparation to strike. “I was under the impression you wanted something from me.” She breathed through her nostrils. “Are you used to threatening people to get what you want? Well, let me be clear. Make another threat and I will Banish you from the premises permanently.”

“Fine, fine.” Malfoy looked at his nails, apparently unconcerned with the wand levelled at his forehead. “But I suggest you mind your manners.”

The nerve, to say something like that at wandpoint. She had half a mind to hex him on the spot, just to rattle his aura of seeming invulnerability.

“This is not a zero-sum game, Granger,” he said. “We both stand to gain from having a civil conversation, and we both lose if this turns violent or either person walks away from the negotiation. In that spirit, I request that you lower your wand.”

It was the first indication of any kind that he was also on guard. If the tension between them escalated any further, one of them was guaranteed to lash out preemptively.

She lowered her wand slightly but kept it at her hip, pointed in his direction. Looking him in the eye was already a radical act of trust, and he must know that on some level.

 “This is as good as it’s going to get, Malfoy. So let’s talk.”

“Mmm.” He seemed to accept her slight concession to civility and said, “Potter’s dying, isn’t he?”

She jolted inwardly. It rattled her to hear it stated so bluntly from an enemy, from someone who could use that knowledge maliciously. She opted for denial; after all, Malfoy might be fishing for information. “He killed thirty-four Death Eaters last Tuesday, Malfoy. I’d hardly say he’s on his deathbed.”

Malfoy levelled his gaze at her and tapped his forefinger against his opposite elbow. “This interaction will proceed far more efficiently if you tell the truth. It’s my job to gather information, and I do that quite effectively.” He paused and appeared to be weighing her expression. “The potions you’re plying him with are ruining his physical health, and the Dark Lord’s invasions have decimated his mind. His magical power is growing, but his emotion regulation is rubbish, so he loses control of his magic more and more often. Am I missing anything?”

She bit her tongue and tried not to show any emotion. He knew far too much, in more detail than she had believed possible.

Malfoy asked, “Do you think he’ll die from heart failure before he loses his mind? Personally, I’d bet on the latter, but it’s a bit of a toss-up right now.”

She had expected this. Cruelty. Flippancy. She successfully muted what would otherwise have been a stronger reaction to hearing him speculate so callously about Harry’s imminent death.

She swallowed. “Why insist on negotiating with me? Why not go through Order leadership?”

Malfoy’s eyes swept around the room as he took his time answering. She wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but it sent a chill down her spine. “I don’t trust Order leadership. Neither do you three, from what I gather.”

Hermione ignored his final statement. He was fishing for information again. “But you trust us?”

Malfoy looked at her with cold, manufactured amusement. His face was strangely blanked out – she remembered more expression on it, back at Hogwarts. “I trust Potter’s word.”

She raised both eyebrows in genuine surprise. “You’re joking.”

Malfoy shook his head. “Give your friend some credit. He saved my life, back at the first Battle of Hogwarts. After we’d just got through trying to kill him.”

Her expression darkened at the reminder. “A bitterly regretted mistake, given what you’ve become.”

“Careful, Granger.” Malfoy raised his chin in a small, sharp movement. A clear warning.

He used silence like other people used ammunition – to threaten, intimidate, and suggest violence. His silence, now, was more terrifying than any word he could have spoken.

She shifted from foot to foot and resisted the urge to take a step back. He saw it. His eyes glinted. He said, “In any case, I trust Potter’s word. The man is structurally incapable of breaking a promise.”

“And what makes you think he would promise you anything?” Her tone was spiked with protectiveness; she knew that Malfoy was correct.

“Because he needs my help.”

She tried to conjure an image of Malfoy helping Harry in any way. It was so blatantly ridiculous that she felt an unexpected laugh bubble up into her throat – possibly fueled by fear and hysteria. She pressed her lips together, trying to stifle it, shaking with the effort.

Malfoy tilted his head, trying to read her. Finally, the laughter burst out of her mouth. There was no universe where the image of Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter cooperating wasn’t patently ridiculous. It was beyond imagining.

Malfoy froze. His expression darkened. For a moment, she saw a flash of the old, adolescent fury from Hogwarts. Then, he relaxed and returned to stillness. He said, “You wouldn’t risk speaking to me if Potter didn’t desperately need my help.”

She tried to stifle the remainder of her laughter. She must have a death wish to be laughing at someone so dangerous. “Harry needs your help like he needs a hole in the head,” she clarified, and meant it. Malfoy was as likely to drive Harry to insanity as he was to help him, if past interactions were anything to go by. “To be completely honest, I took this audience with you out of pity. How do you possibly think you could help him?”

His expression didn’t change. “Potter needs someone to teach him Occlumency – to protect his mind against invasions from the Dark Lord and to Occlude strong negative emotion, so that he can stay in control of his magic.” Malfoy paused, gauging her reaction. “If he doesn’t learn soon, he’ll implode from the strain of fighting this war, and he’ll probably destroy every living thing in his proximity in the process.”

With effort, she kept her expression blank, but felt a muscle in her jaw tighten. Malfoy knew exactly what they needed and why. There seemed to be little use bluffing or dissembling with him.

She tilted her head and tried to examine him objectively, but found that she could not. There was too much history between them. She crossed her arms and said, “I can’t think of a worse teacher for Harry than you.”

He raised his eyebrows pointedly, emulating surprise at her rude assessment. She had the distinct feeling that all of his expressions were contrived. He was clearly no longer used to being laughed at or insulted by anyone.

His tone was even, devoid of menace or reprimand. “I’m a better Occlumens than Severus was. Better than the Dark Lord. I’m his only chance.” He tipped his mouth up slightly, daring her to contradict it. She felt her brow draw down into a ferocious scowl at the truth of it. “And I’m a bloody good teacher.”

She shook her head in blatant disbelief and tried to suppress a scoff. It was absurd. Malfoy was arrogant, cruel, and intemperate; any one of those qualities would bar him from being a good teacher.

He had moved closer – only slightly – and she tensed again. She could see him more clearly now, grey eyes refracting firelight. Deep shadows obscured half of his face. In response to the disbelief in her expression, he elaborated. “Most Legilmens – they use a brutal method to teach their students Occlumency. Severus certainly did. But my method of teaching is more collaborative. I’m the only person who can teach Potter how to protect his mind without breaking it. You suspected this, or you wouldn’t risk speaking to me.”

She tried to remain expressionless as hope and despair caused an aching in her throat and chest. Hope that Malfoy could offer something different from what Snape or a licensed Legilimens had attempted. Despair because it was Malfoy. She cut her eyes toward him. “Give me one good reason why I would let you anywhere near my best friend’s mind. It’s ridiculous that you’re suggesting we trust you.”

Malfoy shrugged, looking off to the side. “Your choice, Granger.” His tone was exacting. “If you don’t choose, time will choose for you.” He hesitated before his gaze slid to hers, like a bolt sliding home. “Accept my offer, or I guarantee that you will bury your friend within the month.”

Her eyes fluttered shut momentarily before she caught herself. He’d gone straight for her worst fear without hesitation. He hadn’t said you will lose the war. He’d said you will bury your friend. She asked, “What exactly do you want in return?”

“Two things. I want a stabilizing potion for my Legilimency. And I want you to put my mother and wife into hiding. The Order’s network of safehouses are completely untraceable. Even to me.”

For a split second she stopped breathing as she tried to process his second request. Dimly, she recalled that Malfoy and Astoria were married. She thought they had married three or four years ago, although she hadn’t heard about any children resulting from their union.

He wanted her to invent a potion that didn’t yet exist and to agree to hide his awful mother and wife?

She felt bitterness rise up in her throat and pushed it down, biting out her next words. “What, you don’t have any spare properties in the Cayman Islands where you could send them?” She gave a quick, disgusted snort. “I thought Malfoy money went further than that.”

It rankled her, the idea that two obscenely rich, bigoted Purebloods would be crowding their limited safehouse space.

Malfoy was silent for a few beats, looking at the floor. Finally, he said, “My father mustn’t be able to find them.”

She felt herself go still. That was a surprise. She’d figured Lucius would be part of whatever plan Malfoy was concocting. Apparently not.

“And I take it your father will try to – locate his wife, if we put her into hiding?”

Malfoy nodded. “Tirelessly.” He looked at the back of his hand. “But if I can’t trace them, he can’t either. I’ve made certain of that. Somehow, your safehouses are completely untraceable.”

That was her doing, actually. Best he didn’t become aware of that fact, now or ever.

She expelled a breath and considered him. He wasn’t looking at her any longer, and she felt some of the tension go out of her posture because of it.

It was a risk, hiding Narcissa and Astoria Malfoy. They would incur Lucius’s wrath, and he had many resources to bring to bear on the Order if he suspected they were hiding his wife.

For all she knew, Narcissa and Astoria might be spies for the Dark Lord.

Malfoy seemed to be awaiting her decision, head bowed. Finally, she said, “We would need you to take an Unbreakable Vow not to harm Harry or betray the Order. Your mother and wife too. That’s the only way we can trust you. And I’ll need more information from you about your failing Legilimency in order to craft more than a basic stabilizing potion.”

Malfoy was silent and still, gaze cast down. Finally, he raised his head to look at her. “An Unbreakable Vow is no small ask. We’ll need a day to consider it. And I’ll need more information about Potter’s current mental state, and his relationships, before I agree to teach him Occlumency. I want that information from you, not him.” Malfoy’s mouth tipped up with vague amusement. “I don’t have a death wish, after all.”

She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling, reluctant to agree to giving him more information than necessary. She saw no other choice. She swallowed, gritting her teeth, and forced herself to nod. It meant another meeting like this one: heart in her throat, white-knuckling her wand, trying not to go to pieces on the inside while she pretended at bravery.

She felt like collapsing at the thought of doing it a second time.

She forced herself to speak. “I’ll give you one day to think it over. Harry’s health is deteriorating by the minute, and if you won’t agree to it, I’ll need to find another solution.” She gave him a sharp glare. “Come back tomorrow evening with Kreacher at the same time, and I’ll tell you what you want to know about Harry – within reason. Same rules. No wand. Alone. Keep five paces distance from me at all times.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Fine. But I wish you’d stop deluding yourself. Your silly little safety precautions aren’t protecting you.” He took a deliberate step forward, farther into the light, and she tried not to flinch. “The only thing protecting you,” he bit out, “is the fact that you have something of value to offer me.” 

The coldness in his gaze was palpable from across the room. 

He didn’t see her as a person who was worthy of respect – he saw her as a means to an end. Her worth was conditional. She felt her throat tighten. He hadn’t antagonised her, but only because she’d been a hair trigger away from blasting him into oblivion. He was a feral dog on a faulty leash.

She would have to remember that every moment she spent in his presence.

Malfoy seemed to bask in her fear like other people basked in the sun’s warmth. He grinned, teeth catching the light, and disappeared with a sharp ‘crack’ alongside Kreacher. 

She collapsed against the wall, hand on her chest, and swallowed convulsively, trying to regain equilibrium.

Chapter Text

He braced himself for the force of Granger’s gaze the second time he met her at Grimmauld Place.

Her eyes still hit him like a punch to the gut.

No one would look him straight in the eye anymore, and certainly not the way she did. She held his gaze without blinking, brow slightly furrowed, eyes steady and unguarded. She wasn’t using Occlumency; it was on par with baring her neck to a werewolf.

Her vulnerability was the thing that disarmed him.

He was no longer accustomed to looking at someone who looked back. It felt slightly addictive. He couldn’t help but hold her gaze and drink in the rest of her. Her face was all clean lines and angles, hair still ungovernable, loose curls tumbling around her face and backlit to a glowing umber. She would probably be strikingly pretty now if she didn’t look so tense and frightened. He didn’t need to use Legilimency to perceive her fear: her expression was tight and drawn, mouth pressed into a thin line, skin almost grey.

But her eyes were as they had always been – dark and flashing, filled with clear intelligence and quick discernment. Like Potter, her heart was always in her eyes; they were lit with the same forceful empathy.

She raised her wand slightly, and he felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. The way she was holding it made him understand that she was dangerous with a wand in her hand. 

The set of her shoulders conveyed the unspoken expectation that she was someone who deserved to be respected and listened to.

That expectation would quickly be shattered, in the circles he moved in. To put it mildly.

She was lucky. Lucky in her friends and lucky in her circumstances. Lucky that Potter kept her so close and shielded her from every bad thing he could think of. Lucky that Weasley’s reputation as a butcher on the battlefield preceded him – the man wasn’t known for his healing skill in Death Eater circles. 

Lucky. Bitterness suffused the word. 

She still had the same eyes from Hogwarts. The bleeding-heart eyes. The House-Elf Liberation eyes.

As if Potter had let every other damn thing burn to the ground if it meant that her eyes could stay that way.

She pressed her lips together more tightly and then pulled them in – resigning herself to being in his presence, it seemed.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” she said, shifting her posture. Her feet were unconsciously set into a duelling stance, wand levelled at him.

Of course he’d come back. By some sick twist of fate, he found himself in the unenviable position of needing her willing cooperation. 

If it were just the Legilimency stabilizing potion he wanted, he might have considered just kidnapping her back at the battle and coercing her to brew it. But his mother’s health was deteriorating by the day in the manor; she’d once been the most skilled Occlumens he knew besides Severus, but she’d abused that aptitude so intensely and for so long that her mind had started to shatter. He couldn’t bear to watch her do it to herself any longer, and he’d long ago realized that his father would be of no help in this matter. 

The Order’s safehouses were completely untraceable. Lucius would hunt Narcissa to the ends of the earth if he sent her anywhere else. 

So, he was now at Granger’s mercy. He would rather die than let her know how much he needed her help, so he made his next words flippant and glib. 

“I’m a bit surprised I came back myself given your beastly lack of hospitality last time.” Irritation flickered in her face – a familiar expression from Hogwarts. He gestured mockingly and asked, “You won’t deign to offer me a drink or even a seat? The options for seating look – suspect – to say the least,” he swept his eyes over the dusty, drab furniture, “but it’s good manners to offer.”

“Does threatening to hurt your host constitute good manners too, then?” Her tone was meant to be aloof, but her vocal chords were too tense to pull it off.

He sighed and shook his head at her. She wasn’t going to let that tiny little threat go. What did she expect, when he’d been made to attend these meetings without the benefit of a wand?

If he hadn’t researched her behaviour so carefully over the years, he could very well be walking into an ambush or a bloody death trap. Threats were the least she should expect.

She cleared her throat. “You can take your chances sitting on that chaise over there.” She jerked her head at the farthest piece of furniture from the fireplace, tucked into a shadowy corner. “I prefer to stand.”

He eyed the green monstrosity to which she was referring. If it didn’t collapse or suffocate him in a plume of filth, the dust bunnies would surely devour him.

He gave her a sour expression and slowly waltzed over to the chaise, noting that her shoulders tensed and her wand went higher. Her eyes tracked his movements relentlessly.

It must be exhausting.

He’d Occluded himself into deep apathy in preparation for this meeting – deep enough to guard against any true emotional reaction that Granger might provoke from him. But Occlumency didn’t dull his ability to read her emotions, and he could sense her fatigue at having to maintain her current level of vigilance.

He grimaced as he ran his finger along the back of the chaise and found it coated in a league’s worth of dust. “I’m considering taking an Unbreakable Vow, as you requested. But I’m not agreeing to the arrangement we discussed quite yet. I still need information about Potter in order to agree to teach him.”

He noted that when he averted his gaze for long enough, her shoulders relaxed significantly. It was his eye contact that rattled her. He tilted his head up to the ceiling, pretending to be interested in something there.

Finally, she spoke. “How do I know you won’t use this information to hurt him?”

“You don’t.” He gave her a brief, level look. “Until I take the Vow. But if you want me to consider your offer, you’ll have to risk it.”

She lapsed into a rather seething silence. Perversely, he enjoyed her expressions of anger.

No one emoted around him much anymore, except to show fear or deference.

And he was sick to death of fear.

“Fine.” She pursed her lips at the concession. “But no questions about Order war strategy, battle plans, or the logistics of our operation. And I reserve the power to veto any question you ask.”

He refrained from rolling his eyes. Didn’t she know that he could just rip that information out of her head if he actually wanted it? “Very well.” He looked off to the side to allow her some time to process his response without scrutiny. “So. Are the rumours about Potter true, then?”

“Which rumours?” Granger’s expression drew down. “The rumours that he can walk on water? Raise the dead? Level a battlefield?”

He shook his head. “The rumours that he’s part Obscurial.”

Her shoulders went up to her ears. “Vetoed.” Her tone was final, eyes hard and guarded.

These fucking Gryffindors had absolutely no guile. None. “That’s a yes if I’ve ever heard one.” He grinned slightly at the huff she made. “I require the answer to this one. Teaching Occlumency is no picnic.” He allowed his lip to curl into a caricature of disdain. “The process provokes strong emotion in the student. You know that from when Severus tried to teach Potter Occlumency. I need to know what exactly I’m in danger of provoking.”

Granger grumbled and shifted her weight, clearly looking for any excuse to jump to conclusions and assume the worst. “That’s your planned method? Snape tried to teach Harry Occlumency with all the delicacy of a hostile scorpion.”

He felt a sharp pang in his chest at the mention of Severus. The man hadn’t even been dead a year, and already Granger was speaking about him in a biting, scornful tone. He felt grief well up beneath his Occlumency – a palpable wave, only muted.

He bit out, “Severus died in the service of your cause. Perhaps he deserves more than your contempt.”

Surprise suffused her expression. He watched her make a mental note that he had known Severus’s true loyalty. It shouldn’t be all that surprising, given that his job was to seek out information that could be used to blackmail or gain leverage. After the surprise passed, she had the decency to lower her eyes and look ashamed. “I never felt contempt for him.” She worried her bottom lip. “He was a poor choice of teacher for Harry, but not a bad one for me. He taught me everything I know about brewing Potions, even though he frequently reminded me that I was a lost cause.” Her lips turned up slightly – the first spectre of a smile he’d seen from her.

He felt the tightness in his chest subside slightly as she spoke, but it was already too late. His old animosity toward her had bubbled to the surface – her constant posture of moral superiority, her know-it-all tone, her knee-jerk contempt for Slytherins. He felt a cruel desire to punish her for speaking so callously about a man whose memory deserved better.

This, then, was a perfect opportunity to educate her about Legilimency. Using an experiential method.

He feigned gentleness and said, “Severus thought well of you. He mentioned you by name sometimes. He didn’t mention many people by name.”

She looked up at him, surprised, gaze open and unguarded. He struck without warning and pierced her mind with his own.

She was defenceless.  

He sunk into her mind. He could feel everything now. All of her internal sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Her surprise, her panic at the inability to push him away or break his gaze. Her eventual terror, when she realized she couldn’t raise her wand arm.

Finally, after a few more moments of struggling against him, the slow realisation that he could do whatever he wanted.

She had no privacy from him. No ability to control where her own mind went, or where his went.

The control was his now.

His victims always shrivelled with embarrassment when they realised that part. She blushed furiously, eyes filling with the knowledge.

He brought a memory to the forefront of his mind and shoved it into her consciousness, forcing her to watch what he had experienced.

It was his memory of a conversation with Severus from earlier in the war.

He was leaning against the wall in the workroom of Spinner’s End, watching Severus move frenetically between potions – stirring one, adding herbs to another, capping bottles and uncapping others.

Severus said, “The Dark Lord is not unprepared for a victory. He has the political will and systemic structures in place to rebuild Wizarding society in his own image. He has already quietly passed laws that restrict the power of Halfbloods and Muggle-borns, and when he defeats Potter – and he will, at this rate – he will stop being quiet about it. Do you have any real sense at all of what will happen to some of your former classmates – Miss Granger, for instance – if the Dark Lord defeats the Order?”

Draco sneered, the old contempt from Hogwarts rising up in him. “What of it? Granger is an arrogant, hyperverbal swot. She could use a lesson in humility.”

Without warning, Severus grabbed Draco’s collar and shoved him into the wall. Draco’s hand instinctively went for his wand, but he stopped himself. Severus hissed, “Still your tongue, you insolent child. Miss Granger is often insufferable, but I do have some grudging respect for her talent and passion. I do not consider myself a sensitive man or a sentimental one, but I assure you that I have no desire – none at all – to see her brutalised and tossed aside by the monsters in this regime who call themselves men.” 

He released Draco abruptly, whirled around, and moved back to the potions work station, nostrils flaring. 

Draco freed her from the memory and severed the connection between their minds.

She tore her eyes away and stumbled back, raising her wand in a flash. She threw a curse at him – fast and debilitating. He only managed to dodge it by a millisecond. Her second curse hit him full force. Incarcerous. Ropes cut into his torso and arms.

Her back hit the wall. It shook, and she forced in a shuddering breath, wand levelled at him. She flicked it again and flung him into a hard-backed chair. The ropes attached themselves to the chair, and he felt them tighten uncomfortably, binding his arms to his side, cutting off his circulation.

Victims of his Legilimency rarely reacted with a counterattack. They were usually too disconcerted and frightened to do anything but gasp and try to flee his presence.

“Don’t move,” she said, voice shaking. “You’ve lost that privilege.”

She wouldn’t look at him now. The pulse at her throat was pounding visibly, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Her wand hand was trembling. He couldn’t tell which was stronger – her fear or her rage.

She hissed another spell at him, and he rocked back.

Blinding pain struck his eyes. It felt like sandpaper scraping his retinas, and he yelped in panic, struggling against the ropes. The second wave of pain caused him to stifle a scream – he felt like the spell was gouging out his eyes.

“Can you do Legilimency without your eyes?” she wondered aloud, over the stifled screams he was making. “You’d be pretty useless to the Dark Lord without them, wouldn’t you?”

She approached him as he writhed in the chair, squeezing his eyes shut and flinging his head to the side to try to escape the pain. It didn’t help – open or closed, the same all-consuming agony. “Are you an imbecile? Did you forget I had a wand?” Her voice was barely recognizable. “Eyes are so delicate.” She watched him writhe in pain for what felt like an eternity before she cancelled the spell.

He slumped down in the chair, eyes burning and watering, squeezing them frantically shut against the light and air. His eyes felt like pincushions shoved full of needles. His focus narrowed to surviving the next second of agony. A thought slipped through the pain – he was blind. She’d taken out his eyes. 

She said, “I only used a Stinging Jinx. Do that to me ever again, and I will blind you permanently.”

Relief flooded his mind, but his body was still wracked with spasms. He became dimly aware that the pain seemed to be subsiding. 

He breathed raggedly for another minute and finally forced himself to regain possession of his voice. “Fuck, Granger,” he got out, heaving with the effort of speaking. “Simmer down.”

Coherent thought returned slowly. She’d lashed out because she was rattled; her mental autonomy was clearly precious to her, and he’d shattered it with impunity.

He blinked again, trying to clear his watery vision, but he could only make out blurry shapes. He looked up at Granger. Even blurred, he could see that she looked like she was going to puke, face grey and drawn.

“No one has ever used Legilimency on you,” he surmised.

She blanched, which confirmed it. It was quite a shock, the first time.

He stifled a groan, blinking rapidly to disperse the lingering pain in his eyes.

Her gaze was cast to the side and her lower lip trembled. “I suppose you consider that a lesson in humility?”

She was struggling not to cry now that the rage had subsided. He could scarcely fault her. He regularly reduced grizzled men to sobbing puddles with his brand of Legilimency.

“Hardly,” he replied, squeezing his eyes shut to try to clear them. “I showed you a memory of a man who defended you and spoke well of you. Probably in more effusive terms than he ever used in your presence.” Her expression told him he was correct. “Not exactly mental torture. If I wanted to hurt or humiliate you, I have a variety of memories at my disposal that would serve that purpose.”

“I’m sure you do,” Granger spat, voice shaking. She swallowed her tears and raised her chin slightly. “What you just did – invading my mind – is a blatant violation, regardless of what memory you showed me. But I don’t expect a brute like you to understand that.”

He flinched inwardly. She could not begin to fathom the level of nuance with which he understood violation.

“You did mean to hurt me,” she said. “You meant to frighten and intimidate me. A warning.”

“Well, yes,” he admitted, ducking his head. “But only a little.” He grinned. “Luckily for both of us, I have become skilled at titrating my cruelty.”

Granger’s eyes fluttered shut. He could tell that she was only just beginning to understand how dangerous he was.

He continued, “Consider that an experiential demonstration of what mind invasion feels like. A laughably mild example. That’s called insertion. Forcing someone else to experience what you’ve experienced. One of the many Legilimency techniques at my disposal.” Her chest was heaving with disgust. “If you didn’t like that, you’d be horrified by its opposite. That’s called extraction. Forcibly ripping information or memory from a victim’s mind. That’s far more invasive and traumatic.”

Granger steadied her voice, despite the fact that she was still shaking from the effects of his invasion. “Voldemort can do those things to Harry?”

He nodded. “Those things, and much worse. Warping memories. Twisting them. Shredding them. Potter must have some natural skill at Occlumency to have retained his sanity for this long.”

Granger looked at the floor. He could see her eyes growing wet as she thought about that. He plowed on, hoping he would be able talk himself out of his current (literal) bind. “Now you know what it feels like. And you know that even a mild incursion can bring up strong emotion.” He tested the ropes cutting into his arms, but there was no give. “If Potter is part Obscurial, I need to know. Otherwise, I risk triggering emotion that might kill us both, if I’m not careful.”

Granger said nothing. Her head was turned as far to the side as it would go. An ugly knot started to form at the bottom of his stomach. He hadn’t expected such a mild invasion to affect her so intensely, and now she wouldn’t even look at him. Which was a damn shame, because her eyes – dark, flashing, intelligent eyes that seemed to take up her whole face – made him feel like he was still Draco Malfoy from fifth year: little more than an occasional annoyance who could be brought to heel with a slap or a sharp word. 

He sighed. “I promise not to do that again, Granger. It was for demonstrational purposes. And because you called Severus a hostile scorpion.”

Granger pulled her lips in. She seemed to be weighing her options. Finally, with effort, she straightened her spine and met his eyes. Wary, but steady. “I meant what I said about blinding you if you try that again. That’s your final warning.”

He felt himself do a mental double-take. She was afraid and brave and vulnerable and frightening all at once. He couldn’t make any sense of her.

She backed away slowly, wand trained on him, and flicked it again to loosen the ropes holding him in the chair. He shook loose from the ropes and stood up, which caused her to retreat further back – all the way to the wall, partly obscured in flickering shadow.

Clearly, he’d lost whatever tiny amount of goodwill he had gained from behaving himself during their first meeting.

She looked so strung out with fear that he was surprised she was still able to hold a conversation.

That wouldn’t do.  

He would temper his menace. 

He began to wander around the room, slowly enough not to alarm her. He made his way over to a portrait of a dour, steely-eyed wizard in blood red robes. The man nodded curtly at him before hissing with contempt in Granger’s direction.

“Shush, you.” Draco threw an admonishing glance at the portrait. The man grumbled incoherently before lapsing into glassy-eyed silence. Most portraits his age had lost the ability to speak clearly, reduced to grunts and wordless vocalisations. To Granger, he said, “My great-grandfather, Pollux Black. Charming man, by all accounts.”

“Seems like it.” She eyed the portrait balefully. It eyed her back with identical sentiment.

“Aside from the raging alcoholism.” He tipped his mouth up in her direction and eased his posture, hoping she would follow his lead. 

Her lips relaxed slightly, but she was still on edge. He turned his back to her as he flexed his hands to recover circulation. He said, “So, answer my question. Is Potter part Obscurial?”

She was silent for so long that he turned back around. Her eyes were big and mistrustful. Finally, she braced herself and said, “Yes, he is.”

“See? That wasn’t so hard.” He inclined his head in mocking thanks. “Now – how severe is it?”

“You don’t need to know the details–”

“Yes, I do.” He pitched his voice softly. “I need to know what caused it to know how bad it is.”

She said nothing, gaze on the floor.

He made an impatient sound. “Would you prefer that I guess?”

Her silence indicated that she would prefer they not be discussing this topic at all.

He ventured a speculation, looking at the ceiling. “Obscurial tendencies usually develop in childhood. Potter was raised by those horrid Muggle relatives of his, yes?” He slid his gaze over to her. “So . . . his uncle had a temper, perhaps? Knocked him around? Or was it his aunt?”

Now the silence was very tense. After a long stretch of it, she answered haltingly.

“They neglected him.” Her mouth turned down. “I think the neglect was fairly severe. And his uncle made him feel ashamed of his magic, so he distanced himself from his own ability. But then he met Ron and I–” her lips turned up and softened, “and – and he wasn’t in danger of becoming a full Obscurial, after that. But recently, his latent Obscurial tendencies have re-emerged. When he gets upset enough, he starts to lose control. Something else starts to take control. His connection to Voldemort is strongest in those moments.”

He crossed his arms, brow still creased. “And how, exactly, does Potter regain control when he starts to lose it?”

“By looking at Ron or I. By hearing our voices.” She glared at him, daring him to laugh or make light of it.

“Are you fucking him, then?” He allowed a grin to emerge. “Is he fucking Weasley? Or are all three of you fucking each other?”

She turned bright red and ducked her head, squirming at his words. Still just as prudish and stiff as she’d been at Hogwarts, from the look of it. Her movements had always been awkward and boxy. She looked ill-at-ease in her own body, as if she didn’t particularly care for having one.

He’d thought it might be fun to disconcert her a bit, to watch her skin flush. He’d wondered what that would look like – colour blooming prettily in her cheeks. But her expression was pinched inward with discomfort, desperate to mask feeling overexposed. Her whole face looked blotchy and discoloured, and he found that he didn’t enjoy making her blush in this way very much after all.

He said, “Don’t look so shocked, Granger. What do you expect people to think? The three of you are inseparable. It looks like more than friendship from the outside.” He jeered the word friendship, gave it a filthy connotation.

She raised her eyes to his, complexion uneven with red and pink splotches. “You’re a perverted creep,” she said. “Vetoed.”

He dismissed her accusation with an airy wave of his hand and conjured an easy lie. “Oh, hell. Look, I’d rather not think about your sex lives in any kind of detail either, but by some massive misfortune, Potter’s inner world has become something I’m required to understand. Yech.” He grimaced. “Listen, Granger, as much as I enjoy watching your prudish Gryffindor self squirm in discomfort – and make no mistake, I deeply enjoy that – I am actually asking the question for a serious reason.”

“And what reason could that possibly be?”

He wiped his expression of mocking carnality. “How much do you know about how Legilimency works?”

She looked at the ceiling. She appeared to be doing sums in her head. He made a show of crossing his arms impatiently as he waited. Finally, she said, “To try to help Harry, I’ve read about fifteen books dedicated to the subject, and hundreds of sections of numerous other books. I would say I know a fair bit.”

“But you’re not a Legilimens,” he said, knowing how much it would needle her. “You don’t have any natural aptitude for it.” He kept his gaze innocently neutral as he watched the irritation leak into her expression.

“I can’t do anything to change the fact that Legilimency runs in magical families – like Divination.” Her tone was resigned. “Any aptitude Harry got in it was from his father’s side. So, you’re correct, I have no skill in it. But not for lack of trying.”

Unable to resist rubbing it in, he asked, “Hermione Granger, not top of the class?” He feigned shock. “How will you live?”

She gritted her teeth and clenched her jaw, clearly trying to master her irritation. He could tell she hated every minute of this conversation. It was delightful.

He continued, “Many of the books you’ve read are likely outdated or full of nonsense. There’s a silly, popular notion that Legilimency and Occlumency can’t be taught in any systematic manner because minds are mysterious and idiosyncratic.” He badly stifled a scoff. “That’s not true. No one has ever written a coherent theory of how Legilimency functions, except possibly Massieu, but even he isn’t very nuanced in his articulation of a usable framework.”

She was silent for a beat. “Guillaume Massieu? I’m surprised you’ve even read his work. He was Muggle-born.” She unconsciously bit her lip and peered at him, as if re-evaluating.

“I do read, Granger,” he admonished. “And yes, I also read the banned Muggle books – the ones the Dark Lord regularly uses for kindling bonfires at Death Eater revels.” He ‘tsked’ at her. “In any case, your reading clearly hasn’t got you far enough, or you wouldn’t need me.”

She rolled her shoulders and didn’t retort, head lowered.

“No response?” He allowed genuine pleasure to leak into his smile. “I must admit, I do like seeing you speechless.”

“Make your point.” He could see in her expression how much she hated that they needed him. It was unspeakably satisfying to watch a know-it-all struggle with not knowing. He basked in it, watching her try to keep her expression neutral. 

“Let me educate you.” He put as much sneering condescension into it as he could possibly muster. He watched her fists clench and turn white. She was practically vibrating with the distress of not being the expert in the room. “Being a good Legilimens requires creating a construal of another person’s conscious experience – essentially, a map of someone’s mind. In order to enter a mind, you have to understand that person’s experience of the world. It requires knowing what drives someone, what motivates them. A working hypothesis, so to speak.”

She crossed her arms. “A construal.” Her posture radiated scepticism. “I’ve never read about that technique in any book.”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not in any book. It’s my own technique. Many of the seminal texts on Legilimency emphasise a more brutal approach. That’s the approach the Dark Lord uses too. But more often than not, you drive a person to insanity with that method before extracting all the useful information.”

Granger looked down at the wand in her hand. “Harry’s episodes – the ones he has when Voldemort invades his mind – they’re getting worse.” She fisted her wand in both hands, knuckles going white, before forcing them down to her sides. “I’m not sure how he hasn’t gone insane from the strain of it already.”

“Potter is sickeningly resilient,” he replied, “but the Dark Lord’s method is getting more brutal. He’s become less and less human over time, and he’s no longer able to use the technique that made him such a famously talented Legilimens in the first place. That’s why he relies so heavily on me now.”

He could tell this was new information to her. She looked fully absorbed in what he was saying, carefully attuned to his tone and expression. When she turned her full attention to something, it was intense enough to be frightening. She asked, “Does Voldemort still use Legilimency on enemies he’s taken prisoner?”

He paused, pretending to examine a dusty floor-to-ceiling bookshelf while debating whether to give away that information. The tomes on the shelf were so old and grimy that he could not make out a single title, given the poor lighting. In the end, he answered her truthfully. “The only prisoners we give him to read with Legilimency now are the ones we don’t mind going batshit insane before all the intelligence is extracted.”

She was silent, aghast, eyes brimming with fear for Harry. He capitalised on it. “That’s why I asked the question about who Potter is fucking. I need to create a construal if I want to enter his mind and teach him Occlumency without damaging it further. And to create a construal, I need to know what matters to him and understand the nature of his relationships.” He saw the question in her eyes and anticipated it. “It’s not like I could just ask him. Potter is a loose cannon – immense magical power with very little impulse control, especially when it comes to me. He’d probably sear me to a burning crisp if I asked who he was fucking.”

Her glare was pure ice. “You didn’t have to be so crass when you asked me.” She brought a hand to her brow, as if to ward off a headache. “Would it have been so difficult to politely inquire about our relationships?”

“But watching you squirm and blush was so much more fun,” he lied. It hadn’t been fun to watch that in actuality, although he’d thought it might be. He wanted to know more about the nature of her relationships in particular– his curiosity had been peaked – but he would rather chew nails than let her know that. 

She narrowed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re an arse. You’re lucky I’m still willing to answer your question.” She turned her face slightly away. “Harry won’t even look at anyone who isn’t Ginny. He’s never gotten over her. It’s been three years.” Her face drooped with well-worn grief.

“Mmm,” he murmured, “so it’s you and Weasley fucking, then.”

He caught her in a moment of vulnerability, and her head came up sharply, eyes going wide, easy to read. She dropped her gaze. The blush creeping up her neck was all the confirmation he needed.

Predictably, her Stinging Jinx connected with his hand. He hissed in pain and brought his fist instinctively to his chest. It would swell from that spell – the skin was already becoming shiny and inflamed. "Shit. You are aggressive, Granger.”

Her voice cracked at him like a whip. “I have no idea why you feel entitled to speculate about my sex life, but that ends now. You’re vile.” She took a deliberate breath in and then out through her nose. “You’re also conflating sex with love. Pathetic, but predictable.” She let out a put-upon breath. “Harry loves Ron and myself more than anyone else in the world. He doesn’t allow himself to form other attachments. If you need to know what matters to him, that’s it. Keeping us alive and safe. Use that to create your construal.”  

“How hopelessly Gryffindor.” He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he massaged his swollen hand and considered what he had learned.

As he had suspected, Potter was part Obscurial, which made teaching Occlumency a dangerous gamble. However, Potter wasn’t far gone enough to be a lost cause. The Obscurus could be managed if Potter still retained the ability to feel love.

He straightened up and lowered his arms to his sides. The fire was burning low and steady in the hearth, but the light in the room had dimmed significantly. They’d been talking for quite some time, it seemed. “I’ll do it, then. I’ll take the Vow and teach Potter Occlumency.”

She quickly masked the surprise on her face and considered him for a long moment. “Why?”

Granger was probably baffled about his motives. She must be able to deduce that putting his wife and mother in Order custody appeared to be a significant sign of trust and confidence in the resistance, and an implicit promise that he would not raze it to the ground. Unless, of course, he was setting a trap. He decided to throw some fuel on the fire of her confusion. 

He spread his hands mockingly. “I’m willing to make a bargain. My skills for yours, and for Potter’s word that he’ll hide my mother and Astoria. Oh, and I want to be acquitted of all crimes, if the Order wins the war.”

She swallowed and pressed one hand against her stomach, curling inward slightly. He watched the conflict play out on her face – disgust warring with desperation to save her friend.

Finally, she hardened her expression and straightened up. “You’ll have to agree not to harm Harry in any way, and not to reveal Order intelligence.” She seemed to brace herself physically and said, “In order to create more than a generic stabilizing potion for your Legilimency, I’ll need to know more about what precisely you’re struggling with.”

He felt himself retreat internally, a quick and decisive closing off. Rationally, he knew she was asking a valid question, but he could not remotely afford to entertain answering it. He ground his teeth. “Does it look like I’m struggling, given what I just did to you? Would you like a repeat demonstration?” It was a snarl, designed to flood the part of her brain that registered threat and end this line of questioning permanently.

She flinched, hunched her shoulders, and kept talking. “That’s ridiculous. You came to me, Malfoy. You showed me in the memory that you were struggling – why would you deny it now? I need to understand what happens internally when you try to perform Legilimency.” 

He lowered his voice a register and added a note of menacing finality. “You don’t need to know the details, Granger. Aren’t you supposed to be a savant? Just make me a damned stabilizing potion. Something to dull or ward off the worst of the pain.”

People didn’t usually ask any more questions after he spoke to them in that tone. It was one he tried to use sparingly but to unrivaled effect. 

He could practically see her suppressing the tremor in her shoulders. She swallowed visibly and said, “You could get that from any potioneer. If you want something more effective and specialized, you’ll agree to tell me more about your difficulty. Not today, but eventually. Until then, I can make you a basic cognitive stabilizer.” She paused in thought and then added, “If you want to be acquitted after the war, you’d better have more skills to offer the Order than just teaching Occlumency.”

“Just Occlumency?” He let out an exasperated breath. “You’re shit at negotiating, Granger. I have the one skill that your friend needs to stay alive. I should be asking more from you.”

She scoffed. “Are you capable of anything other than ripping minds apart, or is that your only talent?”

Granger looked at him like an insect she wanted to grind into the floor.

He pretended not to notice and flicked some lint from his sleeve. “I’m a fair hand at Potions, thanks to Severus. He was my teacher too.”

She stiffened and bit her lip in consideration. “I haven’t been able to find an adequate brewing partner in the Order since Severus died. If you want our help, you’ll make an Unbreakable Vow to teach Harry Occlumency and assist me with brewing Potions – if you are actually as competent as you say you are.”

He nodded. “In exchange for hiding my mother and Astoria. I’ll need Potter’s word on that. Not yours.” He made the snub clear as day. “You’ll teach me how to brew your Legilimency stabilizing potion too, after you develop it. I’d rather suffer your presence temporarily than rely on you to brew it for me indefinitely.”

She looked mutinously unhappy about giving him free use of an invention so valuable but didn’t protest. She really must be quite desperate. He continued, “A few stipulations about the Vow. I want you to be the Bonder. You will send me the wording ahead of time, and I will change it as I see fit. You will include nothing in the Vow that would impede my ability to do my work for the Dark Lord.” He paused and raised his chin. “Don’t put any junk in it, Granger. I’m very good at detecting bullshit, and I do not intend for this Vow to be my death sentence.”

“If you hurt Harry, the Vow will be the least of your immediate concerns.”

“I suppose I’m meant to be frightened of that lumbering ginger oaf who trails around Potter like a guard dog?”

Granger shook her head slowly. “No.”

Her eyes darkened as she approached. She pressed her wand into his throat. He could feel her magic radiating from the tip of her wand, barely leashed. It gathered like lightning – potent, deadly, and precise. He’d never met anyone who had a magical signature so powerful that it impressed itself into the air around him. It was like staring directly into the jaws of a large, feral cat.

She said, “If you hurt Harry in any way and the Vow doesn’t kill you first, you will answer to me.” She tilted her head to one side. “If that doesn’t frighten you, it should.”

He didn’t laugh or smirk or break her gaze. He didn’t dare speak. He just nodded, remaining very still under the tip of her wand.

Only a true fool would provoke someone so dangerous. She was clearly talented, loyal, and desperate – a lethal combination. She was prepared to do something truly destructive for Potter, if the need arose.

When she was convinced of his understanding, she stepped away, wand still raised. “Give me two days to arrange everything. I’ll contact you when we’re ready. We’ll do the Vow here.”

He tilted his head and spoke with mocking concern. “However will you get Potter and the Weasel to sign on to this wild gambit?”

She looked away, and it felt like a thread of pure light snapping. “The boys go in for wild gambits more easily than sensible plans.”

He said, “I’ll expect a note in a couple of days, Granger.”

He called on Kreacher and popped away before she could say anything else.

Chapter Text

“You agreed to what? With who?” Ron launched himself out of the armchair in front of the common room fireplace. He put his hands behind his head, clearly trying not to explode at her.

It was just the two of them – she didn’t think it wise to tell Harry about Malfoy yet. Presently, Ron’s face was turning an impossible shade of red. He turned his back to her, and she fidgeted with the tea mug in her hands before answering.

“I did what was necessary to help Harry, and I’m fine–”

Ron whirled back around, snarling. “Hermione, he could have done anything to you. Do you realise how dangerous and irresponsible it is to go rogue and deal with someone like Malfoy? We’re lucky you’re not dead. We’re lucky he didn’t steal information from your mind and run back to Voldemort.”

She clenched her tea mug until her knuckles went white and bit her tongue. What had he expected her to do? He hadn’t offered any viable solutions to their predicament. He’d left her to solve the problem on her own. 

She forced a slow breath in through her nostrils and spoke levelly. “We were running out of options, and this is the best I could do. Besides, I had safety measures in place when I met with him. I’m very careful. You know that.”

“This was reckless.” He blanched as she watched the possibilities flash through his eyes. His expression was seesawing violently between rage and fear.

“So Harry’s the only one who is allowed to be reckless? I’m a Gryffindor too,” she pointed out. 

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ask for my help?”

Because she knew he’d react like this – with rage and suspicion and wild emotional reactivity. He would’ve tried to forbid her from taking a meeting with Malfoy, and then she would have had to do it behind his back anyway.

She pressed her lips together and forced herself to take a sip of tea before responding. “It was easier this way. I knew you wouldn’t like it. And, admittedly, it was dangerous. But we have to try this. We have no better option, in my estimation.”

Their argument took on a predictable pattern for the better part of an hour. The tips of Ron’s ears steadily reddened as he grew more insistent that entering in any kind of bargain with Malfoy was likely to end in disaster. She responded with a detailed risk-benefit analysis of accepting Malfoy’s offer. As Ron’s voice grew louder, Hermione pitched her voice more levelly and kept her expression calm. This, of course, infuriated him.

If she were feeling more charitable, she might be able to acknowledge that his anger was coming from a desire to protect Harry and herself. Seeing as she was feeling distinctly uncharitable and knew how easily she could eviscerate him with rational debate alone, the argument escalated. 

Finally, Ron lapsed into a seething silence, pushing his chin out. A final bastion of stubbornness.

He turned his back to her, considering her carefully laid points.

Finally, he said, “I want to meet with Malfoy. Alone. That’s the only way I’ll agree to go forward with this.”

The mere idea caused her stomach to twist into knots. “That’s out of the question. He’s dangerous. It isn’t safe. It’s better that we get him to take the Vow before spending any more time in his presence–”

Ron turned and looked at her with so much accusation that she quailed slightly. He didn’t need to speak to drive home the hypocrisy of her words – his expression sufficed.

“Fine,” she grumbled, unable to meet his gaze. “It’s – it’s only fair, I suppose. I’ll send a note with Kreacher to see if Malfoy is willing to meet with you.”

~

Malfoy appeared in the drawing room of Grimmauld Place the following day.

She froze when she saw the expression on his face – black, dour, eyes raking her like claws.  

The hair on the nape of her neck stood up, and she pressed her elbows into her sides, resisting the urge to step farther back from him.

He spoke in a growl. “You’re pushing your luck with these pointless meetings, Granger.” He leaned toward her. “This is the last time I come here without a wand.”

She nodded, trying not to freeze completely. “Ron’s in the makeshift infirmary upstairs. He asked to meet with you alone, but I’ll be outside in the hallway.” She beckoned for him to go first through the drawing room door, gripping her wand. He bared his teeth at her before turning his back and making his way down the hall.

She sensed she’d already grown too comfortable with him. They needed to make him take the Vow, and fast.

“Left, and up the stairs,” she instructed, careful to keep her wand raised and two arms’ lengths between them as they walked. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that Ron is a good deal more trigger-happy with a  wand than I am. It’s the door on the right.” She halted. “If you provoke him, I can’t say what he’ll do.”

Malfoy stopped in front of the infirmary door, back still to her. The hallway was poorly lit, but the light caught his eyes as he turned his head to her. “And if he provokes me?”

Her stomach clenched and sunk as she saw the muscles coil in his shoulders and neck.

She had wanted to avoid this entire scenario – the flammability of male tempers and egos, the inexplicable need to establish dominance hierarchies.

She had only neutralised Malfoy by allowing him to have the upper hand from the start. Ron was not remotely capable of doing that.

She swallowed. “I’ve asked him to behave himself.”

Malfoy made a non-committal hum and put his hand on the knob of the door. “We’ll see if he’s capable.” 

~

Draco pushed open the door of the infirmary and entered with the air of someone arriving in his own drawing room. He swept his gaze lazily over the room’s contents.

Weasley was there, seated in the corner of the room near a makeshift surgical table. The room looked cleaner and brighter than the rest of Grimmauld, which wasn’t a ringing endorsement. Several unoccupied beds lined the far wall, sheets crisp and unruffled.

Of course, Weasley and Granger would have evacuated any patients from this safehouse before allowing him inside.

Weasley appeared to be restocking his medical bag with supplies. The cabinet behind his head was filled with all manner of medical provisions – elastic and cloth bandages, tourniquets, adhesive tape, and an entire shelf of hand-labelled potions and tinctures.

Weasley looked up at him briefly, unsurprised, before returning his eyes to his current task – hand-rolling and magically shrinking cloth bandages.

Although his posture and demeanour were relaxed, Draco understood that this situation had been carefully choreographed.

Weasley’s wand was in his hand, but this was a natural extension of the task he was performing, so the threat wasn’t overt. He had to focus his eyes on his task, so he didn’t have to hold eye contact with Draco for long periods, which reduced the threat of Legilimency, allowing Weasley the upper hand. Legilimency was the only weapon Draco currently had at his disposal, and Weasley was depriving him of the ability to use it. Moreover, he’d positioned himself in the corner of the room, which was an excellent defensive position.

Clever. More clever than he had expected.

Weasley also posed something of a physical threat. He’d somehow grown freakishly taller since Draco had seen him last, and he had filled out significantly, no longer the gangly teenager of Draco’s memory. Suffice to say, Weasley looked capable of physically pulverising him.

Weasley inclined his head. “Malfoy.”

“Weasley,” he answered. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since you were seventeen – the first Battle of Hogwarts.”

“Yeah. You don’t really fight in battles anymore, do you?”

He ignored Weasley’s needling barb and began to stroll around the room, examining various shelves and the stands near the beds.

Draco said, “I haven’t seen you in person, but I’ve kept tabs on you.” He placed a finger to his head to indicate what he meant. “Using Legilimency to watch memories of people who’ve interacted with you.”

He watched Weasley’s expression tighten with discomfort.

Omnipotence was so damn frightening to people.

He continued, “Last memory I saw of you was from the battle at Lancashire. It was a massacre, if you recall.”

Weasley’s shoulders came up slightly and his cheek twitched. He remembered, then.

Draco said, “Your side defeated ours soundly. Only a few of our fighters managed to survive. I used Legilimency on one of them and saw you there at the battlefield, after things had wound down. You were the designated field medic. You healed every Order member you could reach in time. You ignored the dying, injured Death Eaters.”

“Sounds about right.” Weasley used a sterilising solution to wipe down a scalpel before placing it carefully into his bag. His hands were unnervingly steady.

“Hmm,” Draco murmured, moving slowly around the room. “You let them die.”

“And?” Unbothered, Weasley began to sterilise a surgical knife. 

Draco quoted, “Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick and wounded, and abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm.”

“I know the Hippocratic Oath.” Weasley’s voice dropped a few registers and his eyes flashed up in warning, brow drawing down.

He allowed scorn to infuse his words. “Human life is sacred to Healers. They don’t heal discriminately. I don’t know what you are, Weasley, but you’re not a Healer.”

Weasley scoffed. “A lecture on medical ethics, on healing indiscriminately, coming from someone who kills discriminately.” He didn’t take his eyes off of the bandages.

He barely had any resemblance to the hot-headed teenager Draco had known at Hogwarts.

“Good thing I don’t want to be a Healer, then,” Draco replied, mouth tipping up. “To tell you the truth, Weasley, I didn’t think you had the brains to become a Healer. It’s fairly high-level work.”

Weasley ignored the insult. “You don’t need brains to become a Healer. You just need to be dedicated and put in the bloody effort.”

“I don’t remember you having much work ethic back in school, either.” He wondered what it would take now to get a rise out of him.

Weasley’s shoulders tensed slightly, but he consciously rolled them back before he finished winding a spool of suture thread. “Anyone can become dedicated with the right motivation.”

Draco was closer now, but not within Weasley’s arm span. He picked up one of the medical instruments lying on the surgical table and examined it casually. “And what’s your motivation?”

Weasley was silent for a very long time before he answered. He looked absorbed in what he was doing. When he finished, he looked up, wiping his hands on his coat. “Keeping my best friend alive,” he said.

Draco found that he didn’t have anything quick-witted to say to that. No off-colour remark or scathing aside.

Weasley said, “No one else was going to bloody do it, so.” He shrugged – a familiar gesture from Hogwarts, one of the few reminders that Weasley had once been the blundering annoyance he remembered from school. 

Draco felt a piercing stab of envy. The same envy he’d always felt towards Weasley – the bitter unfairness that Weasley, of all people, was the one Potter and Granger had chosen as their best friend. He had always felt that Weasley was deeply undeserving of that position. Now, looking at the man he had grown up to be, Draco felt not just envy, but self-hatred.

That combination made him fantastically cruel. “Did it scare you, in the first Battle of Hogwarts, when Crabbe’s Killing Curse came within a hair’s breadth of Potter?” Draco grinned slightly, watching Weasley’s expression.

Weasley nodded wearily and raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if he had expected something like this. “Yes, it did scare me, Malfoy,” he admitted, mouth turning down slightly. “But don’t get too puffed up about it. I was scared a hundred times before you lot tried to kill him, and have been scared a hundred times since, because Harry is complete crap at keeping himself out of harm’s way.”

Weasley’s gaze was open. He wasn’t interested in protecting himself from Draco’s possible derision or scorn by pretending to be tough. He’d always been so guarded and sensitive back at Hogwarts – easily the most volatile of the three of them, with the thinnest skin. But now, Weasley wasn’t interested in pretending he didn’t care about his best friend. He sounded weary of pretending.

It occurred to Draco that Ron Weasley was so far above him, morally speaking, that they might as well be a different species.

It made him want to draw blood.

He sneered, “You’re bent for him, Weasley. You must be. Does he know?” He grinned and let that linger before bringing down the hammer. “Pathetic – besotted with a man who is still in love with your sister.”

Weasley froze for a moment. Then he tilted his head, like looking at a slightly repulsive but interesting specimen. “I completely forgot how much I hate you.” Draco watched his shoulders tense, watched the urge for violence come over him, and then watched him master it. “You think people haven’t speculated about my sexuality – in the papers, behind my back, to my face – given how close Harry and I have always been? You should attempt to insult me with something more original.”

Draco Occluded his shock. He had thought, without a doubt, that Weasley would fly into a rage. Ginny was unquestionably a sore topic, and most straight men went berserk at taunting like this. 

Weasley, the grown-up version, carefully finished wrapping the final spool of suture and placed it in his bag. Then, he came around from the surgical table and approached Draco slowly. He resembled his brother Bill, nowadays, in stature.

He had apparently perfected the ability to loom.

“I called you in for a chat,” Weasley intimated, “because I wanted to personally detail the list of ways you won’t die, under our current arrangement. It’s extremely short.” His face was devoid of humour.

Draco refrained from rolling his eyes. Did Weasley actually believe threats would work on someone like him?

Weasley said, “Let me take some time to highlight ways you will die.” He paused, hand tightening on his wand. “If you make Harry more angry or unstable than he already is, you die. If you embarrass him or use your Legilimency to torment him in any way, you die. If you make the training crueller than it has to be, you die. If you so much as touch a single memory of Ginny, he will splatter your guts across the floor himself.” Ron smiled sharply. “You get the idea. If you hurt him in any way, or put any extra mental strain on him, you will die, because I will gut you.”

Draco had been around a lot of very scary people for a long time, so he’d learned to differentiate legitimate threats from empty words. This threat was credible. Weasley had a look in his eye that was bone-chilling. The capacity for murder was written plainly on his face.  

Draco chose to say nothing.

“This, then, is the very short list of ways you don’t die.” Weasley leaned in closer, casually invading his space. “You teach Harry Occlumency, to the best of your shit-for-brains ability, with care to every aspect of his well-being. If you do this, I will allow you to keep breathing.”

Draco nodded without breaking Weasley’s gaze. Any verbal disagreement in this moment would clearly lead to a physical confrontation, and that was counterproductive to his goal. They were practically nose to nose, but Draco didn’t back down or move away. You couldn’t, with someone like Weasley. You had to hold your ground.

Weasley was a wolf pup who thought he was full-grown, play-fighting with an actual direwolf. 

He would let Weasley play at dominance, for now.

But he would be damned before he gave Weasley any hint of submissiveness with his non-verbal communication. “Hmm. This sounds strangely familiar,” Draco said, keeping his voice even. “Granger said the exact same thing. She was scarier, you know. More concise, and scarier. You’ll have to work on your delivery.”

Weasley didn’t change expression. Draco realised that his heartbeat was slightly elevated. It felt dangerous, mouthing off to someone like him.

But he hadn’t dared mouth off to Granger when she’d threatened him.

Weasley stepped away and turned his back. “Hmm,” he murmured, satisfied. “You seem to have a good understanding of her then.”

No wonder the three of them had survived as long as they had under such brutal circumstances. Anyone who threatened one of them threatened all three – and he couldn’t decide which of them was the most terrifying.

Weasley wandered back over to his medical bag. He waved his wand to start shrinking and packing away the equipment he’d prepared on the table. “By the way.” He raised his eyes. “Allowing you to teach Harry Occlumency – I’ll give you one guess as to whose idea this wasn’t.” His expression darkened. “I am begging you to give me a reason to break the Hippocratic oath, you worthless little shit.”

“Redundant per your earlier threat, but noted nonetheless.”

“Leave, now. We’re done.” Weasley jerked his head in dismissal. 

~

Draco had always felt there was something unholy about the number three.

It was an arcane number. An odd, unnatural, unbalanced number.

Bad things always came in threes.

As he stood before Potter, Weasley, and Granger, he felt he’d never despised the number more.

The three of them somehow always added up to more than the sum of their parts. When they were together, they formed a shatterproof circle of protection around themselves, emulating invincibility.  

It was damned unsettling.

Three was also the most fragile number. Three was always shifting – three contained fluctuating dyads, alliances, resentments – three was balanced precariously, always on the verge of fragmenting.

Draco would depend on that fact.

The good news was that Potter looked like a complete wreck.

Draco didn’t know what he was expecting after all the build-up. Not this, though. Potter’s eyes were flat and dark behind his glasses. His skin was pale, stretched, and the circles under his eyes looked permanent. He was thin – thinner than Draco remembered from school – all wiry muscle, and even that was starting to waste.

He was smaller than Draco remembered, too. Or maybe he just seemed that way now beside Weasley.

Granger and Weasley looked like two torches on either side of him, blazing with life, compared to the person who stood between them.

The difference was marked. It was clear that Potter had run himself into the ground to protect them from the worst effects of the war. How tragically predictable of him.

But Potter was quite diminished from the person that Draco remembered from the first Battle of Hogwarts.

This was supposed to be the saviour of the Wizarding world?

“You look like shit, Potter,” Draco said, by way of greeting. Weasley bristled, which pleased him. “You look ten years older.”

Potter clenched his jaw and nodded, looking off to the side. “Having your mind regularly invaded by a raging psychopath doesn’t do any favours for the complexion.”

Potter was more caustic than he remembered, too.

Potter said, “You look alarmingly healthy for someone who rips minds apart for a living.” He frowned, mouth turning down, as he considered Draco. He looked strangely disappointed.

Draco pretended disinterest and looked at his nails. “Thank you. I do try to take care with my appearance. Drinking the blood of my enemies – your friends, funnily enough – has done wonders for my health.”

Weasley gave Draco a brutal grin, air hissing through his teeth as he laughed. It was frightening. Weasley looked at Potter. “He thinks he’s funny. Are you hearing this?”

Weasley flung a curse at him – something that looked capable of breaking his jaw. Draco parried it with his wand, unconcerned. Weasley wasn’t very fast at casting spells. It was Granger he really had to worry about.

“Ron.” Granger’s voice was flat with reprimand.

Weasley looked at her over Potter’s shoulder. “Don’t mind me. It’s just that fuckwit here thinks it’s funny to joke about committing war crimes–”

Draco cut him off. “Oh, you want to talk about war crimes, Weasley? Look no further than your own medical ethics–”

“Malfoy, you and I aren’t even in the same category of human–”

“Ron, ignore him,” Granger advised, cool and unruffled. “He’s baiting you.”

Potter started to approach him. He looked calm and unbothered – like approaching an inert, harmless object. There was no overt threat to his approach or movements. Unlike with Weasley, who loomed and threw his weight around, Potter presented no façade of intimidation.

But he was capable of wide-scale devastation.

Potter looked up at him. They were close now – only a few paces apart. Close enough to cast the Killing curse and not be able to dodge. Weasley was tensed, wand drawn, and Granger was watching closely.

“Let me be clear about something.” Potter’s voice was cold and flat. “You have terrorized the magical population of Britain for the past few years with your squad of mind police. You make people disappear. You rip information out of their heads. You’re the reason that people are afraid to even think of fighting back.” Potter’s mouth tightened. He was laughably easy to read – more expressive than he meant to be. What Draco did for Voldemort clearly bothered Potter on a fundamental level. “If we didn’t need you, I would put you on trial for war crimes of the highest degree. You fucking cockroach.” It was a hiss of true, unbridled loathing. It had more bite than any of their exchanges in school. “We intend to keep you on a very short leash. Agree to make the Unbreakable Vow, now. On our terms. Or get out of my sight.”

Draco pulled strongly on his Occlumency to keep his expression neutral and unruffled.

He had known that Potter loathed him. Known it on an abstract level. But seeing Potter’s face as he said it, hearing the viciousness and pure contempt in his voice – that was different. It made something inside him want to shrivel up and die. He didn’t know why. After six years, Potter’s opinion of him should have meant little.

But old habits died hard. Draco had always cared about Potter’s opinion.

Instead of acknowledging that in the slightest, Draco said, “You don’t have any other good options, or you wouldn’t be risking this. Careful. I haven’t taken the Vow yet.”

Potter looked completely unaffected by his threat. Draco thought that maybe he didn’t have much energy left for unnecessary emotion.

When Potter spoke next, his voice was low and disbelieving. “You’ll take an Unbreakable Vow?”

It seemed he didn’t want to exchange any more pleasantries. “In return for the safekeeping and concealment of my mother and Astoria, as discussed. And for the promise of a pardon.”

Potter nodded, eyes fluttering shut with apparent exhaustion. “We’ll hide them and keep them safe. You have my word.”

Draco reeled momentarily and then nodded. Potter’s word alone was as good as an Unbreakable Vow.

Potter said, “I can’t promise you a pardon if the Order wins. But I can promise you that I’ll work to get you acquitted of your crimes with whatever power I have after the war.”

That was another infuriating thing about Potter. He didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep.

Draco nodded. “And if you die, but the Order wins?” His mouth curled slightly. “It’s a real possibility at this point, Potter. Just look at you.” He spread his hands in faux-apology.

Potter scoffed and looked away briefly. “How pragmatic. I’ll put a clause in my last will and testament for you, Malfoy.”

Draco nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Let’s do the Vow, then.”

Weasley cleared his throat. “Lucky for you, Malfoy, we’ve decided that Hermione will be your Bonder. If it were me, I’d throw a few extra clauses in right at the end, if you catch my drift.”

“Ron, enough,” Granger said, throwing him a look that was warm but laced with warning.

She approached the two of them and removed a piece of parchment from her pocket – neat lettering in her own hand. “I’ll read straight from the script we agreed upon,” she assured Draco, meeting his eyes. “You’ll have to grasp forearms for this to work.”

Potter approached after a moment and offered his arm, watching Draco like he would a poisonous insect.

Draco grimaced slightly but extended his arm straight out, keeping as much distance between them as possible, and grasped Potter’s forearm. Draco thought this might be the first time they’d ever voluntarily touched without violent intentions.

Granger began to speak the words of the spell. A strange, twisting sensation started at the crown of his head and ran all the way down to his core, the place where his magic was housed in his body. He felt his magic being drawn outside of himself and intertwined with Potter’s. 

Potter’s magic met the border of his – bright red and more vast than he could have imagined. An endless well, so deep that he couldn’t find the bottom.

How could Potter keep control of that much power? It was like the molten core of a star residing within a person. 

Granger spoke with precision and intention. “Will you, Draco Malfoy, teach Harry Potter Occlumency to the best of your ability?”

“I will.”

He felt his magic harden and calcify around his words – a physical covenant.

“Will you, Draco Malfoy, refrain from intentionally inflicting harm on Harry Potter, other than the harm that is an inevitable result of teaching Occlumency or preserving his well-being?”

“I will.”

The feeling intensified – a binding sensation to his magic.

“Will you, Draco Malfoy, promise to refrain from disclosing or maliciously using any information you acquire as a result of your new role with the Order?”

“I will.”

It felt like a noose tightening around his soul. Potter’s magic sunk into his.

As quickly as it set in, the sensation faded, and Granger ended the spell.

Potter released his forearm, and Draco flexed his hand.

He didn’t feel any different physically. But the Vow was within him, now, and he would carry it until death.

For a moment, all four of them were very still. The gravity of what they had done froze them in place.

Granger’s shoulders slumped, arms going limp at her sides. Tension leaked out of her posture and expression, and her mouth trembled, eyes bright. She briefly placed a hand over her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut, as if savouring the feeling of an oppressive weight lifted.

Potter merely looked surprised, eyes fixed on Draco in a reassessing way. He pushed his glasses up his nose, appearing overwhelmed with this new dynamic.

Potter could hurt him as much as he wanted, in any way he wanted, and Draco would never be able to retaliate.

It must be intoxicating.

If Potter were smart, he would use this newly gained power to throw Draco to the wolves end Voldemort’s regime once and for all.

He was relying on the fact that Potter needed him, at least until he became capable of Occluding his own mind.

You couldn’t kill someone whose skill you desperately needed to stay alive.

Weasley looked triumphant and smug.

Draco felt a surge of hatred and Occluded the urge to punch the satisfied expression off of Weasley’s face.

“I hope you have a perfect memory for where you learn your information, Malfoy,” Weasley said. “We’d hate for you to accidentally slip up and succumb to the Vow.”

His shit-eating grin said otherwise.

“Nose down, Ron,” Potter murmured mildly. He turned his attention back to Draco. “We should start Occlumency lessons as soon as possible.”

“Obviously,” Draco agreed, grimacing in disdain. “Every day you don’t learn Occlumency is a day I risk being found out. And speaking of, now that the Vow is in place and we can speak openly, we need to discuss risks and liabilities. If any of you are captured and interrogated, my cover is blown. I have some thoughts about how to minimize that eventuality.”

Granger puffed up, immediately offended. “Our risk mitigation and security are perfectly adequate, Malfoy.”

He turned his gaze to her and started to move slowly, circling her. Potter and Weasley both tensed. Her ears turned red but she didn’t turn to face him. “You’re the Order’s biggest liability, you know.”

Now she did whirl, narrowing her eyes. “Hardly. I’m careful. Even if I did get captured, we operate on a strictly need-to-know basis, so Harry and Ron know things I don’t, and vice versa. Capturing one person won’t overexpose the Order because information is laterally distributed and only a few key players have all the pieces.”

“But you know quite a bit, don’t you?” he pressed. “You know how to brew the powerful potions that strengthen Potter’s magic. In fact, I’d venture a guess that a lot of the magic their Order relies on for offense and defense is your doing.” Their collective silence told him he wasn’t wrong. “And you can’t do Occlumency for shit.” He doled out that last part like a verbal slap. 

“Watch it, Malfoy.” Potter’s voice was spiked with warning. 

He rolled his eyes and continued to address Granger. “Have Order leadership ever considered what would happen if you were captured alive? It’s shockingly irresponsible that they let you in the field at all.”

He watched a blush creep up her neck. Clearly, fighting in battles was something she’d stubbornly insisted on continuing, even though she knew it was a tactical risk. 

“He has a point, Hermione,” Potter conceded. “We’ve talked about this. You know my opinion.”

Having Potter agree with him was a strange sensation. He pressed his advantage. “Tell me, has Scrimgeour set you up with a security detail, like Potter has?”

After a moment of stunned silence, Weasley snorted audibly and Granger gave an explosive peal of laughter. “That’s absurd, Malfoy,” she managed after a minute. “I’m not nearly grandiose enough to consider it. My name is hardly ever mentioned in communications we’ve intercepted from Death Eaters.” He made his expression as cold and skeptical as he could manage, and she stuttered, scrambling for more reasons. “I’m not on their radar as a target for intelligence gathering. No one on your side even knows what I do. They think I’m Harry’s bookish Mudblood sidekick who spends all her time reading obscure magical theory.” 

He crossed his arms, noting that Weasley winced slightly when she used the word ‘Mudblood’ to describe herself. “Request a security detail,” he ordered, “and stop fighting in battles for now. Both of you.” His eyes flashed to Weasley. “Any other course of action is stupidly reckless and you know it.” He paused, weighing her expression. “Now that I’m involved, you’re a liability to me, and I won’t tolerate unnecessary risk.” She looked mulish, and he expelled an irritated breath. “I see two options. I could either Obliviate you and Weasley of all knowledge of my work with Potter –” she went rigid as a rod, hand going for her wand, and he rolled his eyes, “or you could allow me to use Legilimency on you and Weasley to create false pathways in your mind that misdirect a Legilimens away from the information they’re searching for.”

“No.” Potter said it before he was finished speaking. “Stay out of their minds.” He took a step forward, and Draco became suddenly and acutely aware of the threat of his magic. He could feel it in the air like a separate entity, chomping at the bit, begging to be let off its leash. 

He wasn’t sure that Potter was completely in control. 

Granger shot Potter a quelling, reprimanding look. He’d answered for her, and clearly she didn’t like that. She considered before answering for herself. “Giving you free rein to re-organize information in my mind seems like a terrible idea. I’ll pass, thanks.”

“This is a necessary measure if you want to be kept in the loop. We triple our risk of being found out if we do nothing.” He paused, giving her a moment to prove to herself that she couldn’t argue with that. “It’s this or Obliviation, Granger. Besides, my Legilimency won’t harm you. It won’t affect your ability to remember the information I protect. It will just misdirect an intruder, like a trap door. It will take a few minutes at most.” He grimaced. “It probably won’t fool the Dark Lord, but if he gets anywhere near you, we have bigger problems.” He watched her suppress a shudder. “But my method will send your average Legilimens down a rabbithole.”

She narrowed her eyes. “And Legilimens in the Order have never offered to do this for us . . . why, exactly?”

“They wouldn’t have the faintest notion of how.” He didn’t bother to hide the disdain and superiority in his voice. 

“Add another clause to the Vow about this.” Potter’s tone brooked no argument. “Promise you’ll only use Legilimency for the purpose of creating decoys in their minds. Nothing else. That’s the only way I’ll let you.” 

He paused, quickly calculating the risk-benefit ratio. Adding clauses to the Vow was dangerous – it tightened the noose by increasing his probability of accidentally triggering instant death. 

However, if this was the only way he could convince Potter to mitigate his risk of being discovered, it might be worth tolerating another clause, if it was worded very specifically.

Finally, he spoke. “That’s the last fucking clause I’m adding. This Vow is going to draw and quarter me.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Malfoy,” Weasley said, grinning like a fiend. 

Following a heated debate with Granger about the wording, they added to the Vow. Even so, it felt like pulling teeth to get Potter and Weasley to allow him to use Legilimency on Granger. Following a predictable litany of threats to his general person from both of them (painfully redundant, given the Vow), he entered her mind to hide information and create false pathways. 

He could tell she was nervous as she stood in front of him by the way her eyes kept flickering to the floor and back up. Her first experience of Legilimency with him had been forced and intrusive. Now she was anticipating something similar. 

He made his incision gentle and gradual this time, skimming the surface of her consciousness before going deeper. Entering her mind felt like walking into a cathedral – vast, filled with light. Ceilings that stretched into the bright ether, borne up by pillars as massive and immovable as thousand-year-old oaks. He couldn’t resist the urge to wander.

The tenor of her recent memories was sharp with desperation and agony, but bright spots were scattered here and there. He found his attention most drawn to those. They were rare and precious, and so she hoarded them. A moment or two collapsed in the refuge of Weasley’s arms, allowing herself to rest. The flash of Potter’s smile, rarer and rarer. Mostly, the thrill of inventing a new spell or making a new intellectual connection. She frolicked in ideas and theories, endlessly delighted by them. She had the most variegated internal landscape he’d ever encountered. 

Being in her mind felt like relief. Like resting. Like he’d spent his entire life fiddling with the radio, listening desperately to static, muted and garbled transmissions devoid of meaning. Only to hear music – sudden and clear. 

That thought was surprising and disarming and appalling all at once. How had he allowed himself to drift so far from his objective? He chalked it up to a one-off, a massive fluke. He must be desperately exhausted to have let himself slip like that. If he wasn’t careful, Granger would notice that his wandering had nothing to do with his stated goal. With massive effort, he Occluded all of it and dragged himself back to the task at hand. 

He was aware of all of her perceptions of him as he deftly created the decoy pathways. She was surprised that his Legilimency didn’t hurt her. She thought it felt like a cool, painless knife sliding through her mind, and she noticed the preciseness with which he made his mental incisions. He worked quickly and slipped out of her mind in less than two minutes. 

“There you are,” he murmured. “Most Legilimens won’t be able to find a trace of me – or the location of Order safehouses and such – in your mind.”

She blinked. Potter was hovering, white-faced with concern, and she assured him that she’d barely felt anything, “rather like a routine dental cleaning.” Whatever that meant.  

Weasley was even more obstinate about allowing Draco into his mind, and he didn’t appreciate Draco’s input (“I can assure you, Weasley, I have even less desire to enter the rabbit hutch you call a mind than you do to have me enter it”)  but after Granger threatened to Petrify him, he relented and endured the Legilimency with a shockingly poor attitude.

That debacle completed, they moved back to more comfortable waters, discussing logistics.

Granger said, “When can you get Narcissa and Astoria out? We’ll need to make it look like they ran and came to us of their own volition. Order leadership doesn’t know about our agreement, and we’d like to keep it that way.”

He replied, “I can get them out tomorrow. But once they’re out, Kreacher refuses to stay with me at the Manor. He’ll go with my mother. It will be impossible to communicate with him once he’s behind Order wards.”

Granger bit her lip. “We’ll need to find another regular means of transportation for you, then. Where should we do the lessons?”

Potter spoke up. “Hogwarts is safest. The wards on the castle are ancient and powerful. Voldemort’s vision is weakened and clouded there – even when he invades my mind. If we want to avoid drawing his attention to our lessons, that’s our best bet.”

Draco nodded in curt assent. He didn’t like any of it, but Potter was probably correct.

Granger hummed in thought. “We’ll need to find a way to get you in and out of Hogwarts. All of the usual means are tracked by the regime and prohibited by the castle’s magic.” She crossed her arms. “Give me a day. I’ll come up with something to get you in and out. Until then, we can continue to use Grimmauld Place as a liaison point and Kreacher as the go-between.”

He scowled at her, irritated for a reason he couldn’t fully articulate. He told himself it was because she didn’t have a ready-made solution for their transportation predicament. Nothing whatsoever to do with the Legilimency debacle.

He put more vitriol and accusation into his voice than usual in order to mask his growing uncertainty. “Very well. I suggest you figure out something quickly if you’d like the four of us to live out the week.”

It was cruel to saddle her alone with the burden of figuring out a solution to their shared problem, but he felt like punishing her for an offense he couldn’t name. She merely nodded in acceptance, as if she was used to being treated that way. 

If her mind was going to be so godsdamned resplendent and distracting, the least she could do was put it to good use.

Chapter Text

Granger sent him a note the next day. I think I’ve found a solution. Needs verification. Meet Harry outside Grimmauld at 6:00pm.

As requested, he met Potter on the street outside Grimmauld Place. Kreacher cracked him effortlessly from the steps of the manor to the street outside the Black family estate. Granger was nowhere in sight.

He jolted inwardly as he noticed that Potter was smoking a cigarette. He stubbed it out as Draco approached, eyes hard and dark. Exhausted. Mistrustful. “Give me your wand, Malfoy.”

“Why?” He bristled. 

“The Vow only prevents you from harming me, not Hermione or Ron. So you’re still dangerous to them, and you’ll hand over your wand when you’re around them.”

He scoffed. “The Vow is already approaching lunacy as it’s written. I wasn’t going to allow you lot to add more unnecessary clauses. Do you have any idea how hard it will already be for me to stay alive, given what I agreed to?”

Potter’s eyes didn’t soften. “You’ll be fine, Malfoy, as long as you behave.” Potter gave him a long, searching look. “I didn’t want to say it in front of Hermione, but I’ve heard rumours that you like murdering Muggle-born women.” His voice was even and toneless. “If I suspect you pose even the slightest threat to her, I’ll kill you.”

He felt a bone-deep chill. Potter had clearly killed enough people recently to be numb to it.

Potter reiterated, “Give me your wand, or we don’t go in. Deal’s off.”

“Unbelievable.” He wrenched his wand out of its holster and threw it at Potter’s feet. Stupid prat didn’t realize that he could hurt her without a wand if that was what he really wanted.

Grimmauld Place greeted them with its usual dour gloom.

Granger was waiting in the foyer, although Weasley was notably missing. Probably being a relentless do-gooder at the hospital. She actually smiled at Potter when they approached. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes brighter than he had ever seen them. She clapped her hands together. “Excellent. You’re both here. Let’s go to the library.”

She bounded up from her seat and practically skipped to the door without waiting for either of them.

Draco looked at Potter and raised an eyebrow. “Is she drunk?” he asked in an undertone.

Potter shot him a frosty glare – apparently not yet willing to engage in a civil conversation. Draco persisted.

“High, then? Pepper-up Potion? Gillyweed?”

“No. This is just how she gets with–”

Granger’s voice cut them off as she bounced down the hallway, a few paces ahead of them. They were struggling to keep up. She looked back at Potter, clearly talking to him and not Draco. “This is – this is good , Harry, when you see – you won’t believe how many hours I spent reading about quantum mechanics.”

“Quantum wazzit?” Potter frowned.

“Quantum mechanics – Christ, Harry, what did they teach at the Muggle school you went to before Hogwarts?  It’s a branch of physics, and it provides an explanation of how particles at a subatomic level interact, and it’s– well, it’s important when the ordinary laws of physics stop working. Sound like anything you’ve heard of?”

“Well, no–” Potter started, but Granger kept talking.

“It’s a fascinating subject. The wave-particle duality, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle – and Einstein, some of his writing, so interesting – ‘spooky action at a distance’, is what he called quantum entanglement. That’s the name for what happens when a pair of particles interact in such a way that the quantum state of one cannot then be described independently of the state of the other, even if they’re nowhere near one another . . .” Her talking became faster, more technical, and extremely hard to parse.

Draco arched an eyebrow at Potter.

Potter looked completely baffled and somewhat overwhelmed. When he caught Draco’s gaze, he made a circular motion with his hand. He said, “I just let her go on. It usually ends after a few minutes.”

She dashed into the library without pausing her speaking, and began using her wand to pull books from the shelves, all while continuing in an unbroken, maniacal stream-of-consciousness treatise on . . . well, what exactly it was on, Draco couldn’t be certain.

Breathlessly, she asked, “Again, does that sound like anything you know of?”

Granger whirled to Potter, arms filled with books, eyes wide and bright with expectation.

Potter looked briefly at the ceiling before he clapped his hands together. “Hermione, I love you dearly, but I followed absolutely nothing you said for the last five minutes.” Her expression started to deflate. Noticing this, Potter said, “All I could gather is that you’ve more than likely invented some new branch of magic.” Her expression brightened slightly, but she still looked crestfallen. “Now, please explain it to me in plain English.”

She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “Three sentence rule,” Potter said pointedly, as he took a seat at the library table. He steepled his fingers and leaned forward, brow furrowing in concentration.

Clearly, they had been through this before.

Granger paused and looked down at the scribbled notes in front of her. Clearly, she was struggling to find a way to say it simply enough. Finally, she raised her chin. “Dumbledore invented a lot of very complex magic that no one else knew how to do and enchanted Hogwarts so that no one could get in or out easily.” She squeezed her eyes shut. One sentence. She only had two left. “I think he used Muggle quantum mechanics, combined with Arithmancy theory about movement and transportation, to design a system that is impenetrable to any Wizard who only has the usual ideas about magical movement and transportation. But if you don’t have the usual ideas – if you apply quantum theory – you can understand how to move things in and out of Hogwarts. The way Dumbledore could do.”

“That was more than three sentences, and they were run-ons–” Draco felt the need to point out, but she cut him off, glaring.

“ . . . meaning – see, Malfoy, there’s another clause to this sentence – that I think I can create a new piece of magic that links one object to another from a distance, and one object can be the vessel for moving a person through time and space instantaneously to the location of the other object.”

“So – like a Portkey? Except two objects instead of one?” Potter looked both frightened and hopeful.

“Yes, like a Portkey.” Granger rolled her eyes. “But not a Portkey. An entirely different mechanism, with different underlying magical theory. And – the objects are specifically tied to one individual.”

After a moment, Potter said, “That’s even better. Does that mean he couldn’t surprise us by bringing anyone with him, and no one else except Malfoy could use it?”

“Yes. Exactly.” Granger’s eyes were gleaming. “Wouldn’t want a repeat of what he did in Sixth Year.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Draco pointed out.

Potter ignored him. His eyes were fixed on Granger. “You get more scarily brilliant every year.”

“And the best part, Harry, is that they’ll never be able to replicate this, because they don’t know what quantum mechanics are, because they burn Muggle books for fun – so it’s all ours. They couldn’t steal it even if they wanted to.”

She wasn’t looking at Draco. He was certain she didn’t care what he thought about any of this – with the Vow in place, Order secrets were safe with him. She was entirely focused on Potter.

Potter looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head in amazement. He let out a breath and gave her a close-mouthed smile that was brimming with suppressed happiness and admiration.

“I’m going to vomit if I have to watch to any more of this,” Draco informed them. “Granger. One sentence rule. Better yet, let’s make it a three-word limit, with you. Why am I here right now?”

She bristled. When Potter talked about a three-sentence rule, his voice was full of weary fondness. When Draco said the same thing, his voice was pure scorn and condescension.

She pulled her lips in and lowered her gaze. “You just need to be present when I do the spell to link the magical objects to one another. Your magic is tied into it.” She scowled. “Oh. Sorry. Was that more than three words? Do you need something a bit simpler?” She rose from her seat and approached him, looming. “You sit quietly.”

Draco stiffened. Condescending wretch of a woman.

Glowering at her, he settled into his chair next to Potter at the library table as Granger moved away and started reviewing her notes. It looked like she had written a long series of Arithmancy equations – the kind used to predict the effect of a new spell.

As she reviewed her notes, Draco threw his head back and studied the dark, inky ceiling, arches rising up into the shadows. The Blacks had always had decorative tastes that seemed designed to evoke a formless, gothic dread in their guests. Charming.

Draco’s eyes roamed, taking in the books and the dark drapery and the arched windows. He read the inscrutable names of the books Granger had sprawled on the table, containing phrases like ‘wavefunction collapse’. Whatever that meant. He sighed noisily and conjured up little sparks with the tips of his fingers and flung them at the ceiling for fun. He looked over at Potter, whose eyes were beginning to droop with sleepiness and lack of stimulation.

He cleared his throat. “Er, Granger? Are we going to be done any time this century?”

She didn’t seem to hear him at all. Her nose was inches from the parchment. Draco rolled his eyes and tapped his finger impatiently against his forearm.

“Hell, I didn’t sneak away to watch Granger scribble notes on a piece of parchment. This is taking too long.” He reached out to shake her and get her attention, tell her to hurry up and get to the spellwork.

Potter lunged like a viper and caught Draco’s arm, grip hard and reprimanding.

“Do not interrupt her while she’s reading,” Potter said in a low voice. “Or thinking. Or casting.” He was glaring at Draco like he’d committed some sort of cardinal sin. Granger was too absorbed in what she was doing to notice either of their voices. Potter jerked his head toward Granger. “Just be silent, Malfoy. Watch.”

Draco dropped his arm and rolled his eyes. Did Potter think he’d never seen magic done before? 

He crossed his arms and leaned all the way back in his seat, spreading his legs, the picture of bored indolence. He turned his eyes back to Granger. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth and re-positioned her quill as she checked her Arithmancy for a final time, quill looping and dipping just a millimeter over her original text, tracing and retracing her work.

She nodded to herself and placed the quill down, picking up her wand, lost in thought. She removed two brass coat buttons and placed them on the table. “I think–” she said, “yes, this should work.”

Her expression was intent as she gripped her wand and turned her wrist counterclockwise. She began to twirl her wand in slow, widening concentric circles. Her movements were small and incredibly precise, like a master violinist. The intensity of her focus pulled the air taut as her magic gathered and began to spin, threads of light intertwining. Draco could sense that she was reaching out with a spontaneous grasping, like echolocation – bringing new magic up out of pure, formless space. The magic took on a quality similar to sound, vibrato amplifying itself. Secondary spells sprouted up from the implications of the originals, organic, sharp reflections, mirror scintillations.

He drew in a breath. It was orchestral magic – a new spell intuited out of the ghostly refrain of the former, and then echoes building upon echoes. She was bringing magic up out of thin air, as if by chance, chasing implicit patterns, kindling that became a bonfire that became mathematics, pure alchemy, chains of spells connected so intuitively that the impetus could only be accidental. The forms must be too complex for even Granger to understand, and she was simply moving from moment to moment; she could only form magic pieced together like intertwined hands, groped blindly and made sense of by touch alone. And even in the final moments, when he could imagine no more, her magic seemed to leap and multiply out of itself, an impossible twisting transformation of colour, form, sound, and time.

Madness. This was madness.

She finished casting, flicking her wrist, and a powerful wave of energy, warm and golden, transferred into the brass buttons. His eyes moved to her face. Granger lit up like a flame, expression brightening and filling with joy.

Magic came to her like breathing. Like flight. A gift.

He felt frozen, completely absorbed. His mouth went dry. He was tingling with warmth, heart pounding, unable to pry his gaze from her.

Pulling heavily on his Occlumency, Draco pushed down the strange sensations flooding his body and hardened his gaze. He moved his eyes to Potter, who looked like he was watching a master painter or musician at work – silent, admiring, careful not to disturb her process.

“I think it worked,” Granger said breathlessly, gaze fixed on the brass buttons. “Let me test it on myself first.” She swept up a button with a cloth handkerchief and said, “I’ll Apparate to the safehouse in Hartfordshire with one of the buttons and leave this one here. I’ll try to get back by touching the one I bring along.”

As she prepared to Apparate, Potter grabbed her wrist. His anxiety was sudden and palpable. “You’re sure this won’t hurt you?”

Granger grinned with a recklessness that was more familiar in Potter’s face than her own. “As sure as I ever am.”

She cracked away.

Potter hissed with anxiety and threw Draco a dark look. “You’re lucky Hermione is a good person. I would have suggested we test this on you and had no regrets if it went sideways.”

Potter’s shoulders didn’t relax until Granger appeared seconds later, whole and apparently unharmed, lips shaking with excitement as she smiled. “It worked.” She bounced on her toes. “It worked perfectly.”

And now he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from her. Unbelievable. She had invented a mind-bogglingly complex piece of magic that made his life far easier than it would otherwise be. Then she had tested it on herself, risking her own safety to assure his, without a single complaint or even a glance in his direction. Like it was nothing.

When was the last time anyone had risked their life for him?

That was the bloody cherry on top of the beautiful piece of magic that she had just invented.  

Fucking symphonic magic.

So beautiful that it actually made him angry.

The only thing he could think to do was Occlude heavily and be crueller than before in an effort to mask his clear discomfiture. He tapped his timepiece. “I don’t have all day to watch you give yourself an aneurysm over inventing silly little spells, Granger.”

Her expression deflated slightly. She nodded, straightened up, and tried to collect herself. She took a deep breath. “Fine. Let’s finish up, then. We can use two objects of your choosing for travelling back and forth.”

He took two of his rings off and threw them on the table. He hurled them with so much force that she rushed to catch one before it bounced to the floor. He said, “Make it quick. You keep one at Hogwarts, I don’t care which. I’ll take the other one back with me.”

Warily, Granger picked up one of the rings, which was pure gold embedded with a deep, red-black stone. “These look expensive. Are you sure you don’t want to use something a bit more practical?”

“I’m sure.”

“These don’t have any other enchantments on them?”

Draco shook his head slowly, eyes daring her to ask another inane question.

Granger nodded at him and closed her eyes briefly in an apparent effort to re-focus. She turned her wand on him. He tensed slightly. “Don’t worry,” she assured him, “it doesn’t hurt. I’ll perform the spell again. Then, we can test them.”

When her magic rent the air for a second time, he felt something begin to shift inside of himself that could never be shifted back.

~

Hermione spent the following day making arrangements for Narcissa and Astoria Malfoy to move into the Hartfordshire safehouse.

They certainly wouldn’t be living in luxury, but they would have a room of their own, access to a garden, and the company of another Pureblood defector.

It was the best she could do. Regardless, she expected little gratitude from people as haughty and entitled as the Malfoys.

Harry, Ron, and herself had agreed to meet Malfoy, Narcissa, and Astoria at Grimmauld Place for the exchange and transportation to the safehouse.

Kreacher diligently transported each of the Malfoys from the Manor to the foyer of Grimmauld – Malfoy first, then Astoria, and finally Narcissa. Hermione noticed that Kreacher then hovered around his mistress, protective and concerned.

As Narcissa and Astoria appeared, they both looked around, disconcerted. They were clearly frightened, and Hermione couldn’t help but wonder what circumstances had made them so reliant on Malfoy for protection. Each of them were clutching a large bag, wearing travelling clothes. They were unsure of when or how they would be transported to the next location.

Narcissa looked unwell. The lines around her mouth had deepened, her hair had greyed, and her expression was strangely vacant and unresponsive. She kept her eyes on the ground, avoiding their gazes. Astoria was more readable, but she looked pale and fragile. Her mouth was set in a mistrustful line, but she made eye contact with the three of them, despite flinching when she saw that Harry was present.

They must be terrified of him. They’d probably been brainwashed into believing Harry was a killing machine, if they bought any of the Death Eater propaganda that people living under Voldemort’s regime were inundated with on a daily basis.

Hermione cleared her throat and stepped forward. She forced a smile that she hoped was genuine and unthreatening. “Welcome,” she said to both of them, ignoring Malfoy. “I know we haven’t always been on the friendliest of terms, but your lives and safety are more important than that. You’re not the first pureblood defectors we’ve housed, and I’m hopeful that you’ll find some peace here.”

Narcissa said nothing, and Astoria nodded in acknowledgement. She had half expected a rude or disdainful response from one of them, so this was promising. Hermione continued, “We’ve arranged for transportation to a safehouse in an Unplottable location. We ought to get you there fast, as there are security measures and wards there that will prevent your detection. If anyone is looking for you, we’ll want to be quick. We’ll have you take the Vows once we’re there.”

Narcissa’s face crumpled slightly, although she was clearly trying to hold herself together for their sake. Kreacher nudged her leg and gently offered a handkerchief, murmuring, “Mistress mustn’t cry.”

“Will you give us a minute?” Malfoy asked.

Hermione nodded and gestured for Harry and Ron to move to the other side of the foyer.

Hermione watched the three of them out of the corner of her eye. Malfoy was murmuring in a low voice to them – instructions. Astoria said something in reply – Hermione couldn’t make it out, but she detected worry in her tone.

He said something curt. Dismissing her worry. Astoria pressed an object into his hands. He wrapped his arms around both of them suddenly, enveloping them, chin pressing into his mother’s hair. They wrapped their arms around him in return – worried, protective, grateful. He closed his eyes, clearly reluctant to let go. Hermione began to feel like a voyeur and quickly turned her gaze away.

“What a show,” Ron snarled, voice audible from across the room.

“Shut it,” Harry admonished. It didn’t look like an act to her, and Harry’s expression confirmed that he felt the same.

Eventually, Malfoy broke their embrace and made his face expressionless. He nodded reassuringly at them as they made their way over to Hermione and braced themselves to travel by an unknown means.

Hermione held out the key ring she had Transformed into a Portkey, and Narcissa took hold of Kreacher’s hand. Narcissa and Astoria reached out simultaneously for the Portkey. Malfoy’s expression stayed level as they vanished into thin air.

Later, after Narcissa and Astoria had been safely transported and settled, Hermione found her mind returning to Malfoy and his expression as he hugged them.

He didn’t look like a cold-blooded killer in those moments.

She knew, of course, that Death Eaters had families and Christmases and tea at breakfast, but this was the first time she’d seen it up close. For a few hours, she felt uneasy, struggling to reconcile Malfoy the inquisitor with Malfoy who hugged his mother and wife like he never wanted to let go.

After giving it some serious thought, she came to the conclusion that Malfoy was an even worse person than she’d initially believed.

It was one thing to be incapable of feeling empathy at all, like Voldemort. That was a genetic defect – an inherent deficiency in compassion.

But Malfoy clearly felt empathy and human feeling towards a select few.

His lack of empathy for Muggle-borns was conscious, active, and voluntary – a denial of their humanity. That was how he could manage to rip minds apart and slit throats without batting an eye.

Mudbloods didn’t register as human to him.

Monsters had multiplicities, she supposed. She shuddered, wrapped her arms around herself, and prayed that the chain they’d used to tether him would not break.  

Chapter Text

It took less than an hour of Occlumency lessons for Harry to hurl Malfoy into a granite wall.

Malfoy’s body made a sickening crunch against the stone before crumpling soundlessly to the floor of the Room of Requirement.

Hermione felt her stomach drop as she watched him collapse. An hour ago, she had stolen Harry’s invisibility cloak for the purpose of spying on their first lesson. She didn’t trust Malfoy, not even with the Vow in place, not after he’d invaded her mind with such casual cruelty during their first meeting.      

The thought that he could do it to Harry (or much worse) had made her anxious enough to use the cloak to spy, even though it was a blatant invasion of Harry’s privacy. Better, in this case, to ask his forgiveness than his permission, and be ready to intervene if Malfoy’s brutality surfaced.

The lesson had started badly and devolved from there. Harry had marched into the Room of Requirement with his wand already drawn, focus trained on Malfoy, face set just like it was moments before going into battle. His eyes were hard and dark, shoulders tensed, jaw clenched. He stopped at least ten paces from Malfoy with the air of approaching a hostile wild animal. Malfoy’s back was turned, gaze fixed on the bookshelf the Room had conjured.

“They’re all quidditch books,” Malfoy commented, jerking his head at the bookcase. “Rather more your taste than mine.”

Harry raised his wand higher, biting his cheek. The knuckles of his hand were white, fighting to hide a tremor, as Malfoy finally turned.

The danger of Malfoy was evident in every line of his body – it seemed habitual for him to move and speak and act like a big cat stalking prey. But as he took in Harry’s expression and drawn wand, he seemed to shed his menace. It fell away like a cloak slipping to the floor. 

He quirked an eyebrow and asked, “Which hex are you planning to use on me first?” He scuffed his foot on the floor and looked away, throat dipping. “No matter. Can’t be much worse than Sectumsempra in Sixth Year.”

“Incendio.”

The bookshelf behind Malfoy’s head exploded into flames. Hermione slammed a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. The eruption caused a sudden firestorm; searing hot air whipped dangerously close to Malfoy. He leapt away, slapping his hand over the back of his neck to keep the skin from scorching in the heat.

“What the actual fuck, Potter.” He ran a hand through his hair, ostensibly to make sure it hadn’t caught fire, and narrowed his eyes, face filling with familiar contempt.

“I will burn you alive if you make any sudden movements or even think about using Legilimency on me.” Harry’s voice was flat.

Malfoy jerked his head in the affirmative. “Fine.”

It was clearly not the response Harry expected, and he lowered his wand – not all the way – still radiating barely-leashed aggression. She watched Malfoy carefully for signs of fear, but she didn’t see any.

Harry could be terrifying when he wanted to be – she had forgotten that. His volatility only enhanced his menace.

But when she looked more closely, the pulse at Harry’s throat was jumping wildly. The tendons in his neck were starkly visible, and his wand hand was beginning to tremble more perceptibly.

Voldemort’s most recent attack on Harry’s mind flashed into her memory – screaming until his voice gave out, screams becoming rattles, rattles becoming wheezes, throat closing in panic, muscles seizing so severely in pain that his hands curled into useless claws. The guttural, inhuman sounds of agony he had made once screaming no longer sufficed.

Now, he found himself alone with a person who was even better at invading minds than Voldemort.

Putting these two alone in a room together had been a horrible idea, upon further reflection. Mutually assured destruction was the first phrase that came to mind.

She screwed her eyes shut, nausea thumping dully into her stomach. She curled her arms around herself and clutched her wand to her chest, forcing herself not to intervene preemptively.

“I take it you’ve tried seeing Mind Healers?” Malfoy pitched his voice in a tone she had never heard him use – disarmingly gentle and devoid of contempt.

Harry jolted slightly, scrutinizing Malfoy’s face, eyes narrowing in suspicion. Usually, Malfoy’s questions were carefully laid traps, and there was no reason for Harry to believe this time was any different. For a moment, his shoulders tightened, and she thought he would lash out. Then, his demeanor changed – he went limp, staring without seeing. Silent resignation. He said, “The best the Order had to offer,” voice deadened.

Hermione winced. Clearly, he was just waiting for Malfoy to hurt him. 

“How many?”

“Three.” The word fell from his mouth like a stone.

Malfoy nodded, expression neutral. Without a sneer or smirk, she barely recognized him. “And did they improve your condition?”

“No. I think one of them actually made it worse. I threw him through a wall.” He tipped his mouth up in bitter remembrance.

“And you still showed up here today?”

Harry’s shoulders went up again. He was tensed against the expectation of cruelty. It was all he had ever received from Malfoy.

It didn’t come. Harry jerked his head once in confirmation.

Malfoy said, “That was hopeful, then. Not many people would have the nerve to give this a fourth try.”

Harry frowned, seeking the sarcastic undertone, the subtle double meaning. Malfoy’s voice was soft and sincere. When he couldn’t find any ill meaning, Harry hunched his shoulders and waited. It was clear that he thought Malfoy was lulling him into a false sense of security, only to bring the blade down harder.

After a strained silence, Harry snapped. It appeared that he simply couldn’t handle the helpless dread of waiting for Malfoy to lash out. "You can drop the act, Malfoy." His voice was bitter and guarded. "Let's be honest and call this what it is. It's a desperate, last-ditch attempt to pretend that I have a chance of living through this war." 

Hermione felt the ground tilt beneath her. She braced her hand on the wall, trying to breathe through the tightening in her chest and throat. Did he really think that they were all pretending? 

Harry continued, "We both know that there’s not a chance in hell you’ll actually teach me anything useful.” He swallowed, and it looked painful. “But if it makes Ron and Hermione feel better, we can spend an hour a week in this room and pretend we're working on Occlumency." Harry's voice held a vicious precision that she rarely heard when he was speaking to her. He scoffed, a dry and bony sound. "Don't worry. You'll still get your pardon."

Harry’s shoulders were slumped, head bowed. He had collapsed in on himself, devoid of the instinct to fight that had animated him moments before. Without it, he looked small, thin, and hollow – like a person who was almost entirely used up.

Malfoy’s brow creased and he shook his head slightly in response. "That's not how I see this, Potter. I can teach you to keep the Dark Lord out. I don't intend to playact. I took an Unbreakable Vow." 

Harry barked out a short, insincere laugh. "You're not capable." He sounded so certain that it sucked the light and air out of the room. "You only know how to rip minds apart, not protect them. You think I haven't seen the effects of the Legilimency you've done over the years?" Harry bit his cheek, jaw clenching. "Some of your victims are still in the Janus Thickey ward. Non-verbal, drooling, staring at walls. They piss themselves with fear whenever your name is mentioned.” He tightened his fist, face white. "So stop pretending you can help. You're no better than Voldemort."

Malfoy went still for a moment, head bowed. When he looked back up, his eyes were more empty and vicious than before. In fact, there was a disconcerting familiarity in the way he looked at Harry now. She recognized the expression from Hogwarts – a cruel, searching gaze that sought the place he could cut deepest. 

Harry squared his shoulders and gripped his wand more tightly as he saw this change. Now they were back on familiar ground. 

The hair on the back of her neck stood straight up. If Malfoy harmed Harry in any way, the Vow would kill him. Surely he must remember that?

Malfoy looked off to the side. "If you give up and let yourself die, Granger and Weasley won't be long for this world, you know.” He had opted to sidestep Harry's vitriol, which was not a good sign. She could tell that he was going straight for the jugular with calculated precision. 

"Don't be ridiculous," Harry muttered. "I'm not an idiot. I plan to take Voldemort down with me when I die, and Ron and Hermione will live to see the end of this war, even if they're not happy about it at first." 

His final words were drowned out by the roaring of blood in her ears. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel, and she tried to breathe through the heat flooding her neck and face.

She wanted to scream at him for saying that.

He had promised. He had promised them that he would stay alive through the war. But his plan all along had just been to give up, to sacrifice himself in the act of defeating Voldemort? Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked repeatedly, stifling the urge to throw the cloak off, march up to him, and scream into his face.

Malfoy replied, dismissing Harry's assuredness. "Granger and Weasley will die before they let you give up. Can't you see that?" He shook his head and gave Harry a pitying look. "Granger has already twisted herself into Gordian knots trying to save you. She came to me, after all. I'm sure you can imagine all the ways that could have gone wrong." Harry’s spine went rigid. "Weasley, too. He traipses after you like some pathetic nursemaid, constantly risking his life to save yours, even though it's becoming painfully clear that you have a death wish." 

"Shut up, Malfoy." Harry’s nostrils flared.

"They'll either die trying to save you, or they'll die of the grief of losing you. If the grief doesn't kill them, the guilt will.”

"Shut up." Harry pulled his lips back, baring his teeth, and Hermione felt herself take an involuntary step backward. Did Malfoy have any idea how dangerous this was?

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed. He said, "You're even more selfish now than you were back in school. An impressive feat, to be sure. Haven’t enough of your friends and family died for you already?"

Harry flung himself at Malfoy, barrelling into him and shoving him into the wall, lips pulling into a snarl. His fist connected to Malfoy’s face faster than her eyes could follow, and Malfoy’s head flew to the side from the force of the blow.

It took Malfoy a moment to recover and turn his head back towards Harry, who was still baring his teeth, nostrils flaring. Suddenly, Malfoy's mouth disappeared. It simply popped out of existence.

Transfiguration like that – wordless, wandless, precise – Harry shouldn't be able to do Transfiguration like that.

The result was horrifying.

Slowly, Hermione watched the realization dawn in Malfoy's expression. His eyes widened. He made a sound in his throat which had nowhere to go but back down. 

His eyes looked suddenly bigger, like a fish gasping on a hook. 

Hermione felt herself reeling, disoriented, seconds away from throwing off the invisibility cloak and casting a Barrier charm between the two of them. 

Malfoy brought a hand up to his face. He felt the smooth, blank expanse of skin where his lips used to be. 

This time, he yelped, fingers frantically searching for his mouth. He clearly didn't know how to counter the spell. 

She didn't either. 

"I told you to shut up." Harry's eyes were blown wide behind his glasses, glinting with red, teeth chattering in fury. "Why didn't you listen?"

His face had contorted into a mask of hatred, vibrating with the effort of controlling his hostility. She remembered this, from back in school: how the two of them brought out the worst in each other. "You deserved that," Harry hissed, stabbing a finger inches from his face. "You deserve a lot worse." He laughed, more of a heaving sound. "I regret saving your life all those years ago from the Fiendfyre." He leaned closer. "I wish I had let you burn." 

Malfoy went very pale. He closed his eyes, breathing through flaring nostrils – apparently trying to Occlude.

As Harry watched Malfoy grow increasingly white, the menace started to drain from his posture. As easily as it had disappeared, Malfoy's mouth popped back into existence. He made a guttural choking noise, shoulders slumping with relief. 

Hermione felt herself trembling with unspent adrenaline, heart pounding, hands shaking badly. 

She couldn't quite believe Harry had done that. If Malfoy had vomited from the shock or terror, he might have died of asphyxiation. 

Harry released Malfoy's shoulders and stepped back, clearly trying to regain control of himself. Malfoy wrenched himself from the wall and stumbled a few paces away, turning his back.

He hunched into himself, shoulders heaving, and shuddered visibly. It was the first time his effortless composure had slipped.

He looked shaken. He looked far more human than before. 

After a few moments, Malfoy straightened up and pressed his fingers to his lips, as if trying to reassure himself that they were still there. When he turned around to face Harry, her breath caught in her throat at his facial expression. For a split second, she could see how trapped he felt. It was in his eyes – a frantic, fleeting desire to retaliate, or least to defend himself, coupled with the complete inability to do so.

Malfoy was used to having all of the power and being in complete control of an interaction. This dynamic was a far cry from that. 

The Vow made it so that he had to try to teach Harry Occlumency, on pain of death. He had to do it even if Harry tortured him and threatened to kill him on a daily basis.

Even if he felt like he would choke on his rage. Even after hearing I wish I had let you burn.

For a moment, Hermione felt deeply sorry for him. A pang of guilt lanced through her chest for insisting on the Vow.

She swallowed as she watched Malfoy resign himself to the task of teaching Harry Occlumency. He carefully suppressed the whirlwind of emotions, eyes fluttering shut and then back open.

It was quick – like a record skipping – and his expression had returned to its usual glibness before Harry could notice any of it.

"You are a menace, Potter," Malfoy noted.  

"Watch what you say to me." Harry’s posture was crackling with hostility. "I can do that again, easily. Maybe I'll make it permanent next time." 

She felt deeply unsettled at witnessing this version of Harry – one who had hair-trigger violent urges and gleefully threatened a person who couldn't defend himself in any meaningful way. It wasn’t the Harry she knew.

It occurred to her that perhaps the version of Harry she knew was extremely limited.

"Is that what Granger and Weasley do?" Malfoy straightened fully. "Do they tiptoe around your foul moods? Try not to piss you off too badly?"

Harry colored slightly after freezing for a moment in bashful recognition.

"Do you have any idea how shit that probably is for them?" Malfoy asked. "Being responsible for their moods and your own?" He made a sound of muted disgust. "Well, that nonsense doesn't hold with me. I'm not going to walk on eggshells for fear of setting you off."

Harry’s eyes widened slightly.

Malfoy paused, scrutinizing Harry's expression. "If you – beat the shit out of me, or lose control of the Obscurus – or whatever else you're thinking of doing – that's on your conscience." Malfoy waved a hand at his own face, annoyed. "And that shit you just pulled? It makes me dislike you even more than I already did. And it makes me not want to teach you Occlumency."

Harry blinked. The remaining aggression drained from his posture. 

Seeing this change, Malfoy crossed his arms, cheek twitching slightly in uncontrolled annoyance. “No more disfigurement spells from now on.”

“Fine,” Harry spat, “if you stop blatantly provoking me.”

Malfoy regarded him with a hint of annoyed amusement. “I provoked you for your own good, Potter. The Vow would have killed me otherwise.” He spread his hands wide and made a short, sarcastic bow. “I now live to serve, apparently.”

Harry seemed slightly flummoxed, as if it hadn’t even occurred to him that Malfoy had purposely provoked him into a rage.

She thought back to how collapsed and lifeless Harry had looked at the start of their session – shoulders wilted, head hanging, expression flat.

Malfoy had purposely provoked Harry in order to shock him out of the hopeless, despondent slump he’d fallen into. Hatred was nothing if not motivating.

Malfoy straightened and wiped the sarcastic expression from his face. "Do you know who taught me Occlumency?" He put his hands in his pockets and turned to examine the blackened bookshelf, still smoking from the aftereffects of Harry's spell. 

"Is this the part where I'm supposed to pretend to care?" Harry's voice was pure ice. 

Malfoy's breath whistled between his teeth. He was silent for a few moments. "I was fifteen when I started learning. After my father went to Azkaban. To survive in the Dark Lord's army, you need to contribute added value. But no amount is ever enough to ensure your family’s safety." His voice was not bitter, just matter-of-fact. “I turned out to be a bit rubbish at the bog standard Death Eater fare: killing and torturing and raiding and such. So, I needed a unique skill.”

Harry looked completely unmoved. He turned his face away. "Is this some pathetic attempt at a sob story? You really are a sociopath if you think I'm going to feel sorry for you." 

Malfoy ignored his comment. "I was lucky that I went to Severus first, for Occlumency lessons. He was a thorough but uncharitable teacher – impatient with my slowness to learn, but I trusted him. I always understood that there were lines he wouldn't cross."

"Maybe not with you." Harry's mouth tipped up, voice edged with bitterness. 

Malfoy said nothing to that. He continued, "Severus taught me until I was good. Then Bellatrix and the Dark Lord taught me the rest. With them – the stakes are sanity or insanity." Malfoy paused – or perhaps he faltered. His voice caught slightly, although she couldn't see his expression with his back turned. "Bella started teaching when I was sixteen."

Harry's face drained of color as he heard that.

"She – preferred hurting me with an audience present. We'd be at a party, or in a shop, or – Christmas, or something – and she would flay my mind open. She would do it until I was flat on my back, screaming, begging her to stop."

Harry listened in begrudging silence. He had completely lowered his wand. Malfoy said, "I think she did it to protect me."

"She didn't do it to protect you." Harry's tone was bleak. "She's a sadist."

"Well, it did protect me," Malfoy said, "because I was excellent at Occlumency before the Dark Lord ever used Legilimency on me." His voice became softer and more hesitant. "But excellent wasn't enough. His Legilimency makes Bella's look harmless and quaint. Bella only steps into the anteroom of your mind. That's all most Legilimens are capable of. But the Dark Lord – he goes straight to the deepest part." 

Harry's eyes fluttered shut in pained recognition. Malfoy still had his back turned, holding himself rigidly. "I never felt the brunt of what he could do. I was good enough by then to keep him out of the parts of my mind that were most important. And I forced myself to learn even more quickly, after that, from pure desperation to keep him at bay." After holding himself still a moment longer, Malfoy turned slowly to face Harry, expression unreadable.

Harry's cheek twitched in distress, and he looked down at his hands. "No one ever taught me. Occlumency never took."

Malfoy didn’t say anything, and he didn’t look away. It felt like compassion to Hermione.

Harry interpreted the silence as ridicule. His mouth tightened. “Go on, tell me how shit I am at Occlumency. I know you’re thinking it, so go ahead and take the piss. Let’s get this part over with.”

Malfoy looked at the ceiling. “Much as I’m loath to admit it, I think you’re probably decent at Occlumency. The Dark Lord is just ten times better than everyone else.”

“Except you. Apparently.” There was desperation in Harry’s expression, badly masked. He blurted the next question seemingly against his better judgement. “You can keep him out now? Completely?”

Malfoy had moved closer to Harry during their exchange – slowly and without being too obvious about it, so that they were at normal conversational distance now instead of dueling distance. He was calm, hands open at his sides, wand nowhere to be seen. He nodded in response to Harry’s question. “He thinks he uses Legilimency on me, but he doesn’t.”

“How?”

“That’s what I’m going to teach you, if you’ll let me.”

Harry’s face closed down as he seemed to remember who he was speaking to. He scoffed and looked away. “If you’re going to try to teach me with the same method Snape used, don’t bother. I’d rather go it alone.”

Malfoy shook his head. “I won’t use Severus’s method. I have my own.”

Harry laughed hollowly. “Brilliant.” His cynicism and distrust radiated like heat. And beneath that, a poorly hidden fear of being hurt again. 

“You’re allowed to distrust me in a general sense, Potter,” Malfoy assured him. They were only a few paces apart now. Harry hadn’t moved back. “But in this room, with the Vow in place, you’ll have to trust me with your mind if you want me to teach you Occlumency.”

Harry flinched. “Not a chance in hell. Just tell me how to shield my mind. Verbally.”

Malfoy shook his head. “That’s not how this works.”

“That’s damn well how it’s going to work between us.” Harry wouldn’t look at him now, and he clenched his hands into fists to avoid Malfoy seeing that they had started trembling again.

Malfoy’s brow creased slightly. Though his expression was unreadable, she thought that he might be unsure of how to proceed with someone who responded to feeling vulnerable by incinerating things.

“We can go slowly,” Malfoy assured him. Hermione jolted. It was completely uncharacteristic – his tone, his posture – free of malice or sarcasm. “Today, I thought we might just talk.”

Harry tensed. “Are you joking? I don’t think we’ve ever had a civil conversation in our lives. We’re not going to – talk.” He jeered the word. “We’re not going to – go slowly. Just teach me how to be tougher. Less weak and vulnerable. I can’t–” He looked down at his hands. “I can’t close my mind off.”

“I can teach you. Merlin knows we don’t like each other, but if you trust me, we may succeed.”

Harry’s eyes hardened behind his glasses. His shoulders tightened as if preparing for a pre-emptive strike. He looked like a cornered animal. His magic started to crackle in the air.

“Potter, I need your word that you are not going to reduce me to a small pile of ash for asking questions. Can I have it?”

Harry looked away. His stubbornness was clearly warring with his desperation. He nodded churlishly, refusing to meet Malfoy's gaze.

Malfoy hummed in acknowledgement. "First question," he warned. He pitched his voice as if approaching a skittish horse. "When is the Dark Lord most likely to succeed in invading your mind?" 

Harry paused, hovering on some sort of precipice. His eyes rested on Malfoy's – mistrustful, but pained, too. He took a deep breath. "When I'm alone. And when I'm feeling strong emotion. Usually it's anger. Sometimes it's guilt. If it's strong, he can feel that I'm starting to lose control. That's when he invades." 

"Hmm." Malfoy appeared to be thinking. "Strong emotion and vulnerability to mind invasion. How do you think those two things are linked?"

Harry was silent. He shifted his weight and pushed his glasses up his nose, searching for the answer. Finally, he admitted, "I don't know. All I know is that I feel too much. Too strongly. I always have. It leaves me wide open to attack." He hung his head. 

Malfoy waited a moment before speaking. "Too much?" He appeared to be keeping his expression carefully neutral. 

Harry's face twitched and crumpled. He moved away from Malfoy and turned his back, shoulders tensing. "I don't see how this relates to Occlumency. Just tell me how to keep him out of my mind, Malfoy. You're like – your mind is like a one-way mirror. You can see what everyone thinks and feels, but no one can see in. Teach me that."

"That’s what we’re doing. Answer my question, Potter." 

"No.” His voice dropped a register. 

"You said you feel too much. What part of it is too much?" Malfoy asked, voice tightening, clipping his words.

Harry went still. The muscles in his back were coiled. Finally, he managed, "Too much anger, too much grief . . ." he faltered and took a rattling breath. "Too much empathy. Too much love."

The back of his neck turned bright red. Malfoy was quiet. He allowed Harry's admission to rest in the air. That was how it felt to her. Like it was resting. 

Harry's shoulders trembled. "I know it sounds – bent, really. It's a weakness I can't seem to overcome. Have a go at me, then. Order leadership certainly does. They've been trying to toughen me up and cut it out of me for years." 

Malfoy hissed in curt dismissal, an acid sound that made Harry jump. "And how has that worked so far?"

“You bloody well know it hasn’t, because I'm here asking for your help. Piss off, Malfoy." 

The teenage Draco Malfoy, the one from Hogwarts, would have lost his temper and thrown a hex by now. The grown-up version of Malfoy took a deep breath. She watched him Occlude his frustration. He said, “At sixteen, my father’s advice – be tougher, be stronger, soldier on – wasn’t working.” Harry’s posture eased slightly. “So I asked Severus to teach me Occlumency, and he did. He started with emotional awareness and control."

Harry's head had come up slightly, back still turned. He was obviously listening now. Malfoy said, "I thought Severus would teach me a way to block all emotion. To clear my mind of it. But – he told me to let it in."

Harry's head tilted in clear confusion. 

Malfoy continued, "You can't control your anger, right? I couldn't either. But I learned to feel all my anger as deeply as I could. And then I learned to use it like a scalpel."

Finally, Harry turned to look at Malfoy. Confused but attentive. "I don't understand."

“Emotions are information. Treat them as such.” Malfoy paused. “When you feel fear before a battle, you don’t push it away – you use it. It makes you braver than everyone else and improves your decision-making.” Harry looked mulish, but Malfoy said, “Other emotions are the same. Anger, grief, love – let them in.”

"But . . ." Harry's brow creased with skepticism. "If I don't push the anger or grief away, they'll just overwhelm me, and the Obscurus will come out, and Voldemort will invade."

Malfoy tilted his head. "Are you certain? And . . . aren't those things already happening anyway?"

Harry lapsed into silence, ducking his head. He pulled his lips in. "So – what? You want us to talk about feelings together? Are you off your head?”

“The foundation of good Occlumency is emotional awareness and control. Can you even name any emotions, you enormous git?” His tone was deliberately needling. “What were you feeling just now when you went berserk and removed my mouth from my face? Explain.”

When Harry’s expression transformed into what could only be described as abject horror in response to being asked about emotions, Malfoy said, “It’s the first step to learning Occlumency, for Merlin’s sake.”

“It’s the first step to my fist connecting with your face again, more likely.”

“Cease threatening fisticuffs. It’s painfully Gryffindor and you’re starting to get on my last nerve.” Malfoy’s tone was surprisingly mild.

Harry lapsed into a stubborn silence. He pushed his jaw out, and for a few moments, Hermione thought they might have reached an impasse. Finally, Harry muttered an answer. "I got angry when you called me selfish and accused me of letting people die for me."

Malfoy nodded, seeming to accept that answer. "You felt something before anger, though."

Harry clenched his jaw. "Nope. Just anger." 

Malfoy shifted his weight and crossed his arms. "You can't learn to become aware of anger if you don't know how it starts. What emotion did you feel before anger?"

"Fuck this. I don't know." He bit his cheek. 

Malfoy raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

Harry was silent for a long time. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, doing anything else. Finally, when he realized Malfoy wasn't going to relent, he looked at the ceiling and spat the answer like a hex. “Fear.”

Malfoy didn’t say anything to that, but his expression softened and he nodded.

Harry blustered on, trying to cover his discomfort with silence. “So – what are you saying? I should feel more things? I should get angry and break stuff?”

Malfoy’s lips turned up slightly in apparent amusement. It was hard to mistake it for ridicule when it looked genuinely warm. “How typical.” He wiped the smile from his face. “I’m suggesting that you can feel anger without acting on it. It takes practice.”

“So, what? We make a stuffed puppet of Voldemort and I practice not blowing him up?”

Malfoy barked a laugh, and Harry looked taken aback. “It has to be a bit more realistic than that. Something you’re actually angry at.” Malfoy’s eyes sparked. “Like . . . me. We could have you practice on me. But remember, the key is to feel the anger without acting on it. You seem intractably angry at my general existence – all that talk about letting me burn and such.”

Harry froze, going slightly pink at the reminder. He swallowed audibly but seemed too proud to apologize. “Well – now that I know I’m supposed to feel angry at you – for practicing’s sake – it’s hard to feel it genuinely.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “Give me some credit, Potter – making you angry was my sole mission in life for five years at Hogwarts. I think I can provoke you if necessary. But remember – I can’t defend myself, verbally or physically.”

Harry’s brow creased. “Let’s do something easier first.”

“Not a chance. This is trial by fire. We need to make progress today.” Malfoy tilted his head and considered Harry. “You know, I’ve changed my mind. We need to move more quickly. I think I fancy using Legilimency on you after all, just to assess your skill level–”

He locked eyes with Harry and appeared to make a mental incision.

Harry’s reaction was equivalent to a bomb going off in a small space. He sucked all the air out of the room and into himself, and then he flung it at Malfoy – air, light, and sound converging in a pulse of pure matter that sent Malfoy flying like a rag doll.

Malfoy hurtled backward ten feet before crunching against the wall. He crumpled to the floor, boneless.

The rage left Harry’s expression instantly. He froze and stared at Malfoy’s prone form; the blood drained from his face.  After a few moments of stunned silence, he rushed to Malfoy’s side.

Fully panicking now, Hermione threw off the Invisibility Cloak and rushed over. Harry startled visibly when he saw her, mouth dropping open. “Hermione? What are you– how are you–”

“Later,” she told him in a clipped voice, motioning to Malfoy. He had folded over, head slumped to his chest, completely still. His torso was tilted at an unnatural angle.

She could feel her heart in her throat. Harry had thrown Malfoy with extreme force. The impact had looked so severe that she wouldn’t be surprised if he was dead, but at the very least, he was concussed and had broken some bones. She frantically felt for a pulse in his neck as she summoned Ron with her Patronus, hands shaking.

Harry ran his hands through his hair until it stuck straight up and babbled apologies and other nonsense.

Ron arrived within minutes. His diagnostic confirmed her suspicions – Harry had broken no less than three of Malfoy’s ribs and overextended several ligaments in his spine, inducing whiplash. By sheer luck, he was not dead or concussed. When Ron revived him, Malfoy gasped soundlessly, trying to get his breath back as Ron begrudgingly healed his broken ribs.

“Malfoy,” Harry got out, hovering above him. His face was completely white, lips tight. “You – you did that to make me angry, didn’t you?”

Malfoy nodded, too winded to speak, rolling his eyes slightly.

“You weren’t actually going to use Legilimency on me,” Harry deduced, squeezing his eyes shut. 

Malfoy nodded again, somehow pulling off non-verbal condescension even though he was crumpled on the floor and incapable of speech. 

Harry said, “I’m a prat. I’m sorry. I – when I thought you were going to use Legilimency on me – I – I was so afraid that I just . . .” he trailed off. “It turned into rage, and I lost control.”

Malfoy was still gasping soundlessly.

As he caught his breath, Hermione bit her nails and paced. Trying to keep the guilt out of her voice, she explained to Harry why she had been sitting in on their lesson.

Harry looked affronted. “You were spying on me?” Then, he paled. “You . . . you heard everything I said?”

She nodded, pulling her lips in, trying not to think too much about what she’d overheard.

“You weren’t supposed to hear any of that.” His eyes were icy as he regarded her, posture awkward.  

“I know.” Her voice sounded hollow. 

Finally, Malfoy regained the ability to speak, although Ron urged him to stay on the floor until he could find some pain relief potions. Malfoy spoke weakly once he got his breath back. “I thought you might do something stupid like that, Potter.”

“Then why on earth did you pretend to try to use Legilimency on me, you lunatic?”

Malfoy spoke in short gasps. “You needed – to see the consequences. Of – acting on your anger.”

“I could have killed you.” Harry looked furious all over again.

“But you didn’t,” Malfoy observed, placing a hand on his chest, wincing. “I don’t think you actually wanted to, or I’d be dead.”

“You couldn’t have tried something more mildly anger-provoking first?” Harry’s eyes looked livid behind his glasses.

“We haven’t the time,” Malfoy reminded him, attempting to stand up gingerly. “Let’s continue the lesson.”

Harry’s mouth dropped open. “But–”

“We moved too fast. My fault. We’ll go more slowly.” Harry looked half-tempted to offer Malfoy a hand as he braced himself against the wall to stand fully. “But something tells me you won’t make that mistake again.” His legs wobbled slightly, and his hand went white from pressure on the wall. “And, you now understand that anger is usually fueled by another, deeper emotion. In this case, fear.” He winced as if he had a stitch in his side, but continued. “If you can become more aware of your emotions and use them, you have a chance of keeping the Dark Lord out. Now, let’s continue the lesson.” 

Harry closed his mouth and nodded. He looked relieved, apologetic, and willing to do whatever Malfoy next suggested. 

She marveled for a moment at what Malfoy had just achieved. Harry had all the actual power, but Malfoy had somehow maneuvered himself into the position of being in full control of their lessons. 

Ron resentfully handed Malfoy a pain potion, seemingly miffed to have to give him a potion from their limited stores. Malfoy wordlessly accepted, grimacing as he swallowed. 

“And you.” Malfoy rounded on her, eyes burning, and she couldn’t help but take a step back. She thought he might have been too distracted by the pain to hear what she had told Harry. “You’ve done enough spying, I think.” His voice was frosty with disapproval. “Out.”

She squared her shoulders and put her hands on her hips, attempting sternness. “You don’t exactly seem to have the situation in hand, Malfoy. You two need supervision. Maybe I should stay.”

Malfoy looked ready to unleash a verbal evisceration. His eyes were narrowed with contempt, pupils contracting. He crossed his arms. “What would you have done differently?”

You swot was left to implication.

She paused, running their conversation through her mind, and shifted her weight. “I would have been more – hm. Well, at least not–”

But she found herself struggling to justify any of her suggestions. Would she have been more kind than he had? Less inflammatory? Malfoy had been confrontational and painfully honest, yes – but he seemed to have done it with a purpose in mind.

And he had been unerringly patient and kind with Harry in the moments when it mattered.

Her method of helping Harry hadn’t worked. Maybe it was time to allow for a more aggressive approach.

“I – hm.” Her voice faltered, and she ducked her head in contrition.

He said, “I can handle this on my own, Granger.” 

She believed him.

It felt like carrying an unspeakably heavy weight alone for years, only to have someone else stoop down and shoulder half the load without complaint, without stumbling from the weight or dropping it or asking how on earth she’d been carrying it alone all this time.

Her throat tightened and the bridge of her nose began prickling. She met his gaze and nodded once and turned on her heel before he could see her face fill with the shock of profound relief.

Chapter Text

Three days later, at the agreed time of their first joint potion brewing session, Malfoy appeared in the entranceway to the Potions workroom, looming. His physical presence and the feel of his eyes on her face confirmed her dread about spending time alone with him.

Only her dread was now tinged with other, more confusing emotions.

One of them was gratitude.

She just couldn’t get the sound of Malfoy’s voice out of her head when he spoke to Harry – it was a different voice from the one he always used around them. He was still an arse, no doubt, but he was a patient, dedicated, painfully honest arse who wasn’t intimidated by Harry’s wild mood swings, who didn’t look at Harry like Order leadership did – a time bomb that was liable to explode unless expertly defused.

Malfoy had stuck with teaching Harry long past the point where certified Mind Healers had given up.

There was no denying it. She was grateful to Malfoy. His patience and paradoxical kindness with her best friend had moved her beyond words.

She felt her brow starting to knit together as the gratitude washed over her, felt her shoulders tense. Gratitude was a hard emotion to stomach when combined with the other ones she felt toward Malfoy – fear, revulsion, mistrust.

The entire situation was starting to give her a headache.

Her fist clenched around a vial of Vervian infusion.

This wouldn’t do at all. This – gratitude – was excruciating.

He didn’t deserve her gratitude. He didn’t deserve any positive regard at all.

He had probably killed more Muggle-born women than she wanted to think about. He had probably killed Gods-knew-who-else, and tortured others, and used his Legilimency to violate the mental autonomy of countless Order members and friends.

He was in no danger of becoming a good person.

One measly show of kindness did not erase the litany of atrocities piled at his feet.

His motives were simple enough to understand. He wanted to keep his family safe and, more importantly, hedge his bets and buy himself a pardon in the unlikely event that the Order won the war. Malfoy was as selfish, myopic, and horrid as ever.

He merely understood how to do a job efficiently. If being kind to Harry was part of the job, he would do it.

But she wouldn’t pretend that his kindness was born of anything other than self-interest. When he appeared in the doorway, she tensed and instinctively located her wand, lying within arm’s reach on the worktable. 

His facial expression served as a clear reminder that his kindness was not for her.

His kindness was manufactured, circumscribed to teaching Harry, fueled by the Vow and practiced only under the threat of death.

He had not taken any vows that would stop him from harming her.

His expression held the cold potential for cruelty, and his barbed silence settled over her like a shroud. Instinctually, she tightened her fingers around her wand on the table and closed her expression down completely.

To her surprise, he took in her rigid posture and barked out a cold laugh. "Are you planning to brew potions with one hand and be ready at all times to hex me with the other?" 

She drew her brow into a scowl and tried to breathe deeply to control the habitual fear flooding her body. Malfoy entered without invitation, stalking slowly into the room and casting his eyes around. He said, "You realize that you'll have to let go of your wand at some point if I'm to be your brewing partner, yes?" 

He sounded unsurprised and slightly exasperated. He added, "Potter is so damn paranoid that he confiscates my wand before I'm even allowed to be in the same room as you." His voice was leaden with contempt. He raised his hands and pulled back his cloak to reveal an empty wand holster. "So I'm unarmed. Satisfied?" 

Unarmed. As if a full-fledged Legilimens was ever truly unarmed. 

Nevertheless, it did comfort her that he wasn’t currently in possession of a wand. She nodded warily in acknowledgement and recited a spell to charm her wand against him. She spoke loudly enough that it carried across the room – her wand flared brightly before dimming. "If you so much as touch this," she indicated her wand, "it will give you third-degree burns. Your brewing station is over there." She jerked her head curtly to indicate a separate table that was at least fifteen paces from her own. "I'll Wingardium you the ingredients you require. We don't need to come within striking distance of one another." 

"Would you prefer to handcuff me to the workbench for good measure?" His posture was stiff, voice vicious, fired like a warning shot into the air between them.

"I thought about it," she admitted, "but you'll need full range of motion with both arms to properly assist me." 

Malfoy's mouth curled in clear disdain. " Assist you." She detected an undertone of superiority. 

"Correct." She punctuated her response by pointedly levitating some of the ingredients for the Invigoration Draught to his workstation.

Predictably, Malfoy didn't make a move toward his workstation. Instead, he started to circle the room, examining its contents. The various decoctions, tinctures, and tomes were illuminated by candlelight, throwing chaotic shadows over the walls and tables. Variegated potions – moonstone blue, wolfsbane violet, djinn orange – caught the flicker of the candlelight and cast steam and incense into the air, further blurring and softening the edges of the room.

It was the most comforting place in the castle that she knew of. The rhythmic sounds – hissing, bubbling, crackling – were enough to lull her into a sense of focused calm.

Malfoy’s presence ruined that particular effect.

He looked unimpressed by what he saw in the room, eyes moving cursorily over her work. He drifted toward the darkened worktable in the far corner of the room where Harry's potions were in the process of brewing. Those potions had a strange, oblique, kaleidoscopic quality – at first glance they seemed a uniform, swirling opal color, but on second glance, the pearlescent liquid appeared to be shot through with darker, crimson-black veins. The Necronomicon was open next to the cauldron at his elbow.

She tensed instinctively but refrained from telling him to step back. Best to appear impassive and uninterested. He would have no way of knowing what they were and thus no reason to linger. 

He paused in front of the worktable, falling into stillness. He leaned over one of the cauldrons and inhaled, brow furrowing, clearly trying to identify the potion.

"Don't touch anything." The words escaped her mouth before she could help herself. 

His gaze slid to her, and he 'tsked' at her comment in disappointment. The implication was clear: as if I would.

The potions she brewed to strengthen Harry’s magic were extremely complex – pieced together from priceless, apocryphal texts – the Book of Eibon and the Pnakotic Manuscripts, amongst others. They were also delicate and filled with rare ingredients – drops of Heracles cloud formations, succubus tentacles, distillations of Azathoth, and essence of quicksilver.

She didn't need Malfoy blundering about and knocking things over.

Hands clasped behind his back, he stooped lower over an open notebook filled with scribbles in her own hand. To her surprise, he actually seemed interested enough to read her notes. Nosy bastard. Probably trying to find a way to steal Order intelligence. His eyes went to some of the textbooks stacked on the table behind the Necronomicon, propping up various vials of herbs and tinctures. 

His brow creased. "Muggle books?" he asked, tone mild and curious. 

She nodded stonily, unwilling to disclose more. 

"Psychoneuroimmunology," he pronounced carefully, as if saying the word for the first time. "Sounds like one of those made-up Muggle words." 

"Yes, quite," she responded, voice cold enough to frost the beakers. "Nothing that you'd condescend to take an interest in."

Briefly, she thanked the universe for pureblood bigotry; they didn't have a chance in hell of replicating her work. Malfoy's general attitude – that Muggle science was useless and "made-up" – had allowed many of her inventions to confound his side in the war. They had no knowledge of how to begin to parse Muggle science, so they found themselves helpless and baffled when it was weaponized against them.

Psychoneuroimmunology was the discipline she had combined with Potions to brew the concoctions that profoundly strengthened Harry's magic. Her potions were the crowns of the Order’s armamentarium in the war.

Malfoy made a non-committal 'hmm' and continued looking at the potions and books with unabashed interest. His laser-like focus sent a chill down her spine. She knew he couldn't reveal Order intelligence under the Vow, but his attention still made her nervous. "Stop dawdling," she snapped, "and let's get to work. I don't have all afternoon." 

Malfoy shrugged, clearly not in any hurry to heed her command. "What is it that you do for the Order, exactly?" he asked, turning his attention away from Harry's potions. “When you’re not spying obsessively on Potter, that is.”

She narrowed her eyes at his jab but chose to ignore it.

Although he'd taken an Unbreakable Vow, she wouldn't put it past him to try to gather information and later find a loophole in the wording of the Vow. Unfortunately for him, she had written the Vow, which meant that the wording was unassailable. She decided (out of spite and an abundance of caution) not to give a straightforward answer. "I do whatever needs doing." 

His mouth tipped up as he slowly made his way towards his brewing station. "That's no answer." He used his fingers to tick off items. "You brew Potions, clearly. You fight in battles. You do curse-breaking. You're an Arithmancer. That would be a lot of responsibility for three people, much less one. Is that why you always look so pale and exhausted?" 

She huffed at his observation. It wasn't exactly flattering. So what, that she usually only had time for a few hours of sleep? "It's a war. We all do the jobs of three people." 

He crossed his arms and faced her fully, tilting his head. "Mmm. But you don't just break curses or brew potions. You invent them, don’t you?"

She rolled her eyes and tutted in exasperation. "Why are you asking questions you clearly already know the answer to?"

He gave a cold scoff. "Call it a habit." Malfoy wandered over to his brewing station – finally – and started examining the contents of the table. He picked up a jar and held it up to the candlelight. "Spell invention is certainly a dangerous way to spend your time. One mistake or miscalculation . . ." He placed the jar down and drew a finger across his throat, meeting her eyes. 

She broke his gaze as a shiver rocked down her spine. A symbolic gesture like that had more weight when she knew he'd actually slit someone's throat. She shrugged, running her fingers along the wooden slats of the worktable. "It's fine. I'm careful." 

Malfoy raised his eyebrows, eyes glinting. "I'm sure you are." He looked at the ceiling. "Spell inventor isn’t a very common profession. Do you know why?" 

"I feel certain that you're going to tell me." She scowled at him. 

"They all die young," he deadpanned. "Blow themselves up, disfigure themselves, or have a close enough scrape with death that they give up the pursuit." His lips turned up slightly. "I can only think of a few who've lived past the age of thirty. Dumbledore and Severus dabbled in spell invention, but – selectively." He grinned with no mirth, more predatory than anything. "You seem determined to make a career of it." 

She regarded him sternly, unwilling to engage on this – or any – topic of conversation. "Sometimes calculated risks are necessary. I don't consider myself reckless." 

"Does anyone in the Order even understand what it is you do?" Malfoy narrowed his eyes at her. 

Why was he asking so many questions? He sounded curious, but she knew better. His motives were undoubtedly more sinister. 

"You are far more chatty than I imagined possible," she said, folding her arms. "Won't someone on your side notice your absence from the manor if you spend hours chatting nonsense and dragging out the brewing process?" 

Malfoy shot her a dark look. "I'm starting to get the distinct feeling that you don't enjoy my company. I cannot imagine why." He pressed a hand to his heart, mocking. He clicked his tongue. "Your poor attitude doesn't put me in a very charitable mood for brewing." He pouted, clearly manufacturing the expression, and looked back down at the ingredients on his brewing station. "Let me guess – you want me to brew Invigoration Draught?" 

She registered surprise that he had apparently deduced that while talking himself blue. “Yes – there are enough ingredients there for three batches.”

His eyes darkened as she spoke. “This wasn’t the deal, Granger.” His voice had a punishing, sing-song quality to it now, and she felt a resurgence of fear. “You said you would teach me to brew your Legilimency-stabilizing potion, not this commonplace swill.”

Her hackles immediately went up. “For one thing, I’ve told you that I need more information from you before I’m able to create a Legilimency-stabilizing potion. You were so defensive and cagey the last time I asked you that I wasn’t able to make a start on it.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop precipitously. Malfoy had an uncanny ability to shut down a line of questioning without saying a single word. Biting off his words, he said, “Be a good little inventor and go read about how to make it. Hmm?”

Did he think she was an imbecile? “I have read books, Malfoy. Several of them. It’s just – there are different schools of thinking when it comes to performing Legilimency. And I need to know which one you ascribe to, because different things can go wrong–” He pinned her to the wall with his gaze, hostile and growing colder by the moment. She forced herself to continue. “You said that most Leglimens use a brutal method to teach their students, but you’ve invented your own, and it’s different. If you could tell me which traditional school of thought it most resembles, that would be valuable–”

Malfoy’s gaze was frigid. “I told you. I create construals to do Legilimency. Hypothetical maps of another person’s mind. Why are you being so dense about this?”

“So – okay.” She faltered, scrabbling at what she might be missing. “So then, when you’re doing that, where does the process start to break down–?”

He spoke through gritted teeth. “What qualities do you think would be necessary for a Legilimens using the construal method?” 

You idiot, his expression implied. 

She didn’t answer right away. If she had to guess – Malfoy had to do a great deal of perspective-taking to perform Legilimency. He had to hypothesize about how it might feel to have another person’s lived experience. 

Her mind whirred. 

It was a process that required high-level theory of mind, engaging the prefrontal cortex in addition to the anterior insula. He probably had well-developed mirror neurons. 

Essentially, Malfoy would require a keen ability to empathize. 

Oh.

“Your capacity for empathy is failing,” she ventured.

It made sense, given the kind of person he was. It was probably becoming difficult to muster enough empathy for Muggle-borns to even create accurate construals, given how much he reviled her kind. 

Something flashed in Malfoy’s eyes – dark movement just beneath the quicksilver surface. 

Immediately, she understood that she’d given the wrong answer. His glare was as frosty as it was derisive. She’d failed some kind of test in his eyes, and there was no recovering from it. 

“You know what, Granger? Forget it,” he snarled. “Just give me the basic cognitive stabilizer for now.”

“But–” She knew she absolutely shouldn’t press him, but somehow her mouth kept moving. “Why is this a guessing game with you? Just tell me how I got it wrong. I could invent a potion that could increase your store of empathy, but if that’s not it–”

Now he looked livid, and she could tell now they’d somehow entered dangerous waters. She cut herself off and clamped her mouth shut, shuddering at the silence that was emanating from him. 

When he spoke, it was quiet and final. “Drop it, Granger.”

“Fine.” There was a stretch of extremely strained silence. She would do more reading to try to understand where she’d gone wrong. To fill the horrid silence, she stammered, “I’ve brewed you a more basic cognitive stabilizer for now, but – I need you to help me brew Invigoration Draught today.”

Malfoy retracted his anger as easily as he had called it up. He looked down his nose at the cauldron as if it had personally insulted him. “Is there a reason you’ve assigned me child’s play?”

She tensed before squaring herself up to him – she should have expected resistance and a bad attitude. “You're arrogant and you over-promise – I can't trust you to brew anything more difficult until you prove your competence. I'm not wasting ingredients on your braggadocio." 

His lip curled and his eyes went dark. "A bright Seventh Year could brew this draught. Frankly, I'd be a bit insulted, except, oh yes – your opinion is meaningless to me."

She thinned her lips and started chopping Alihotsy leaves for her own potion. "You agreed to help me. Start working."

Malfoy examined her expression closely, and then the tiniest smile came into his face. "You're truly used to partnering with incompetents, aren't you?"

Perhaps if she started outright ignoring his questions, he would actually do something useful. She chose this tactic and pointedly ignored him in favor of chopping Alihotsy leaves. Carefully, she assembled her ingredients, double checking the ratios and lining them up near her cauldron. 

To her surprise (and relief), Malfoy was silent for a few minutes as he worked on his potion. He broke the silence abruptly. "I don't have any mandrakes at my station. An oversight, perhaps?" His eyes glinted at the possibility of catching her in an error. 

"No," she replied, surprised that he had already reached the step where they were needed. "I'll stew the mandrakes and Wingardium them to you." Malfoy was already a flaming death-trap of a person – she didn't need to provide him unrestricted access to a creature that could kill her with its cry. 

She set a fresh cauldron to boil and turned her attention to a small group of potted mandrakes on the table at her elbow. 

Stewing mandrakes was one of the least pleasant tasks she could think of. They always screamed as they were boiled alive, and even with earmuffs, it was a bit of a nightmare to see their expressions and hear their devastated wailing. 

She looked at the pot of mandrakes for too long after the water came to a boil. 

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Malfoy sneered, from across the room. "You actually feel sorry for them, don't you? They're plants, Granger."

She jolted and wiped away an expression of sadness that she hadn't even realized was detectable. She pulled a grimace. "It always feels like boiling babies alive. Then again, I ought to remember who I'm speaking to. Maybe boiling babies alive isn't that far outside your moral purview."

Malfoy considered her from across the room, expressionless. There was no indication that her insult had stung. "Your moral purview is the one that should be suspect here. You're practically in tears over boiling a plant." Malfoy retorted. "That House-elf liberation garbage was bad enough, but what next? The Society for the Preservation of Various Species of Algae? The Ancient and Noble Order of Protecting Grasses and Ferns?"

She responded by Levitating earmuffs for the mandrake cries in his direction, too hard. They pummeled him in the chest and fell to the floor before he could react. "Put those on, unless you want to drop dead. Which, by the way, I'm largely in favor of."

With a snarl, Malfoy bent to retrieve the earmuffs. "Should I be at the ready with smelling salts, in case you faint from squeamishness or moral anguish?" His lip curled in mockery. 

She slammed the earmuffs over her own ears, thankful to have a reprieve from his voice. She darted her hand toward a mandrake pot, noting with satisfaction that Malfoy scrambled to put his earmuffs on in time. She did the task quickly, averting her gaze from their faces as much as possible, and trying not to think about their panicked screams as they hit the boiling water. When it was over, she breathed an internal sigh of relief but tried to keep her outward composure. 

She stewed the mandrakes and carefully levitated half over to Malfoy, opting to keep the earmuffs on for the rest of the brewing session because it was a fantastic excuse to ignore him completely. 

Finally, he got her attention by gesturing rudely. Already annoyed, she pulled one earmuff away from her ear, raising an expectant eyebrow. 

"What's the next potion you need assistance with?" 

Frowning, she looked at his cauldron. The ingredients were gone and the potion was wafting fragrant steam. 

Rather than approach him, she opted to Levitate his cauldron over for inspection. 

To her chagrin, it was a decent Invigoration Draught in the exact quantity she'd requested. He'd outpaced her, too, but didn't seem to have made any errors. She ventured a tiny sip, and felt a jolt of energy course through her veins. Functionally it was decent, too. 

She made a show of examining it for another minute, and when she could find no errors, she said, "This appears sufficient. Blood-Replenishing Potion is next on the list."

She thought she saw a glint of triumph in Malfoy's eyes, but he began brewing the Blood-Replenishing Potion without comment. 

His Blood-Replenishing Potion was annoyingly good, too. She felt her competitive nature flare and started trying to outmatch him in brewing speed and precision. Her potion quality and quantity improved because of it, and she was satisfied with their combined output after the first session. She Levitated him the cognitive stabilizing potion, and he pocketed it without a word. 

Malfoy returned a few days later for a second brewing session. Angel’s Trumpet Draught was next on her list.

It was a particularly tricky brew because it involved a seemingly endless series of similar steps with tiny variations, required to be completed in a specific order.

When she saw Malfoy begin to falter and confuse one step with another, she felt a small surge of triumph, followed immediately by guilt. She quickly offered corrections, which he accepted without argument. During a lull in the brewing, she noted that he was scrutinizing her workstation, where she had ingredients lined and stacked in perfect order.

He opened his mouth and she braced herself, fully expecting a cutting remark about anal-retentive perfectionism.

“Hmpf. I’ll use your organization method next time.”

He went back to tending his potion, and she tried not to let her mouth hang open.

When it came to the final step, which required an unusually complicated bit of spellwork, she flushed and shuffled her feet. This spell had always given her trouble, and she could never understand why.

She stared down her cauldron and tried to focus her mind on the precision of her wand movements. It didn’t help that she had an audience present. On the fourth failed try, her cheeks were flaming, and she hissed at the cauldron.

“You’re too stiff,” Malfoy drolled, unapologetic. He seemed entirely unconcerned with hurting her feelings, and she glared at him. He merely rolled his eyes. “Give me your wand and watch me do it.”

“No. I’ve almost got it. Let me try once more.”

She tried and failed three more times before huffing and biting her lip. They needed to bottle this potion today, but her stomach flipped at the thought of handing Malfoy her wand. Giving away her only means of defending herself, even for a few seconds, made her hands clammy.

She rubbed her forehead. “Just – tell me how to do it,” she conceded at last.

Malfoy shook his head, crossing his arms. “Words aren’t going to help. I need to show you. Just give me your wand for a few seconds, Granger.”

She pulled her lips in. After a moment, she hastily charmed her wand against being able to cast Unforgiveable spells and other overtly destructive spells – Reducto, Confringo, and the like – but it wasn’t a perfect solution and Malfoy could certainly find spells that would harm her if he was creative.

She shuffled her feet and hesitated, heart pounding in her ears. She approached warily, trying not to let her shoulders go up to her ears. Malfoy rolled his eyes at her caution – and why did he seem so accustomed to having people be terrified of him? “If I wanted to harm you, I’ve had ample opportunity, in spite of your paltry efforts to protect yourself.”

Paltry efforts. Hardly. She’d been exceedingly careful. She scowled at his assessment and approached closely enough to hand him her wand before backing away. She didn’t like being within his arm’s reach if she could help it.  

He took it without ceremony and turned toward his cauldron. “You’ve seen an angel’s trumpet flower, yes?” She nodded, tapping her finger against her forearm, eager to be done with it and have her wand back. “They hang so heavily on their branches. It has to feel like that in your body when you cast the spell.”

She gave a reluctant nod of agreement. Most of potion brewing was very mind-reliant compared to other branches of magic, but this was an embodied spell. She bit her lip and forced herself to observe.

She watched his body loosen and mellow, almost as if he were a marionette hanging from strings. He raised her wand and let his arm hang limply from his shoulder as he performed the spell, like an angel’s trumpet flower hanging from its branch.

She stifled a huff of indignation as his spell succeeded.

After insisting she watch him perform the spell once more, he handed her back her wand, expression mild and innocuous. He looked harmless in that moment – a convincing and effortless artifice.

She gripped her wand, body flooding with relief, and retreated back to her own side of the room. Once there, she attempted the spell, but Malfoy cut her off before she was even done uttering the words. “Stop thinking so hard about it, Granger. You’ve memorized the words and movements. Just feel your way through the spell.”

Easy enough for him to say. Malfoy looked at home in his body in a way that very few people did. He moved naturally and with a clear connection to his physicality, and he did spells the same way – like a natural embodiment of the movement the magic needed to materialize.

Strange, that someone who specialized in invading other people’s minds looked so at home in his own body.

Her vigilance of him slipped by the middle of their third brewing session together. 

Powdered root of asphodel. 

She needed it quickly – within the next minute or two if she didn’t want to spoil the potion she was stirring. 

Her mind was already three steps ahead, rehearsing the next few instructions as she automatically moved toward the Potions storage cupboard just off the main dungeon. 

Often she fell into a kind of trance-like state while brewing potions – the flickering candles, billowing steam, and the wafting scents of boiling herbs lulled her into a pleasant, half-delirious, hyper-focused state. 

Powdered root of asphodel.

She scanned the shelves of the cramped storage room, eyes darting over various tinctures, dried herbs, and embalmed animal parts. 

“You’ll want an older batch of asphodel for this potion.”

Malfoy’s voice ghosted up her spine – too close for comfort. She jumped visibly before she could hide it and whirled to face him, heart rate spiking. He was leaning on the doorframe of the potions storage room a few feet away, arms crossed, apparently relaxed and unbothered. 

She cursed herself for practically forgetting he was there. 

She’d grown too comfortable with him. Complacent, even.  

Now she didn’t have her wand, and he was blocking her only exit. 

This was the closest she’d ever been to him, close enough that she became acutely aware of his physicality. Taller than her now by almost a foot – her head barely came to his shoulder. His leanness suggested compact, understated strength – the kind of person whose physical strength she might underestimate at first glance. 

He was backlit by the flickering candlelight. Only his grey eyes seemed to refract the glow. The rest of him was swallowed in shadow. 

He easily could have snuck up behind her and wrapped a hand around her throat, or grabbed her wand from the workroom table and hit her with a binding curse to the back. 

Stupid. So, so stupid. Reckless and foolhardy. 

She swallowed discreetly and tried not to look as unsettled as she felt. She couldn’t even remember what he’d just said. Her pulse was frenzied. “Hm?”

“An older batch. Of asphodel?” He quirked an eyebrow at her frozen posture. Then he took a step farther into the stockroom. She resisted the urge to press herself back against the shelves for fear of upending glass bottles and appearing easily spooked.

A step closer and her knees went a bit wobbly. She wondered if she’d have a chance to scream before he slit her throat, or if she’d only give a half-garbled, incoherent gurgle of panic like Eleanor. 

He was almost within arm’s reach now. 

She searched the room for a weapon – something to bash against his head. A step closer, and she wondered if he would enjoy hurting her before he killed her. 

He was too close now to even pretend at any semblance of social acceptability – a hair’s breadth away, close enough that she could smell the sharp, cedar scent on his robes.

She curled her hand around the mouth of a large, oblong beaker and decided that if he touched her, she’d smash it against the side of this head. 

He reached out a hand, eyes on hers, expression amused, and she flinched at the movement. His hand stretched far above her head as he lifted himself to his tiptoes and practically brushed her robes with his own. She was holding her breath as if she could neutralize the threat of him by staying perfectly still.

A clink, and then he was holding a vial of powdered asphodel from the highest shelf. 

He didn’t step back from her right away.

A reminder that she was not making him behave. He was choosing to behave – a tiger lazily swishing its tail as its eyes tracked her movements. 

“This looks to be the oldest batch you have in storage,” he said mildly, and handed it to her, tilting his gaze down to meet her eyes. His were dark and unreadable. Their fingers brushed as he handed her the vial – his hands were surprisingly warm instead of the reptilian temperature she’d expected. 

She still wasn’t breathing. She took the vial and nodded, unable to step back. He stepped away as if nothing was amiss. And maybe it hadn’t been. Would she have batted an eye if Anthony Goldstein had done the same thing? Malfoy turned his back and returned to his workstation without another glance in her direction. 

Had she imagined a veiled threat? 

Paradoxically, his behavior had the opposite effect of a threat. It somehow made her feel more comfortable. She rationalised that if he’d really wanted to hurt her, Malfoy would’ve done it while he had her cornered in the storeroom.

It gave her the bravery to stay within his arm’s reach for longer at their fourth brewing session. For today, she'd chosen to attempt a black fire potion; one portion of the brewing process was extremely time-sensitive and worked best with four steady hands – one for chopping, one for mixing volatile tinctures, one for stirring, and the other for casting a Purification charm. The brewing of this potion required that they work side by side at the same workstation to assemble the final product. 

She came closer to him for longer than she had ever allowed. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, but she reminded herself that her wand was charmed against him and that she could hex him into oblivion if he made any sudden movements.

They worked side by side to assemble the potion for almost twenty minutes. He followed her lead smoothly, hands steady, and – given that this particular potion exploded on contact if it was brewed incorrectly – she thought they did a fine job of assembling it without issue. 

After they'd finished the most difficult part of the potion, she breathed a sigh of relief and moved to the opposite side of the table from him to continue separating Exploding Ginger Eyelashes. It seemed unnecessary to move all the way back to her brewing station if she would need to come back to this one to bottle the potion.

After a stretch of silence, Malfoy spoke. "It feels oddly relaxing when you're not leveling your wand at my head the entire time we're speaking."

"I'm still doing that mentally, so don't get too comfortable." She gave him a black, warning look. 

"Mmm." Malfoy's mouth tipped up slightly in acknowledgement. "It's just – you're slightly less terrifying this way." 

The descriptor surprised her. Malfoy had shown no signs of fear in her presence, so she'd assumed he was at ease. Then again, he was a skilled Occlumens who barely showed any genuine emotion.

She felt the tension in her shoulders ease slightly at his admission. "Terrifying?" she repeated. "That's how Fred–" she shook her head, rubbing two fingers against her temple. "He likes to take the piss. Says I'd be pretty if I wasn't so scary." The comment slipped out so easily that she didn't have time to stop it. She had felt, for a moment, like she was making idle conversation with a fellow Order member. Sternly, she reminded herself that this was Draco Malfoy. She purposely shuttered her expression. "Never mind. Forget it." 

But Malfoy was already considering her words. He tilted his head, and suddenly she had the sense that he was truly looking at her. His gaze felt like being bathed in a floodlight – intense, illuminating, exposed. "Fred Weasley has it backwards," Malfoy decided at last, eyes moving back to his cutting board. "You're pretty because you're frightening. It's part of your appeal."

She felt heat flood her cheeks against her will. His compliment was disarmingly sincere – no hint of sarcasm or derision in his voice.  Even worse, it struck a chord in her. It made her feel, for the first time in a long time, as if someone had actually looked at her.  

"Did you just–" she sputtered in shock, trying to make sense of it. "Did you actually say–?" 

"Gods, Granger, are you that starved for compliments?" he murmured, already re-absorbed in his work. "It was an offhand observation. I can't be the first person to point out that you've become objectively fit." 

She scrambled to put his words in any kind of context that made sense, based on what she knew of him. Given his hatred for Muggle-borns, she assumed that he meant she was attractive in the most degrading way possible – like an object that he might purchase and possess for the thrill of it. Or maybe more like a circus aberration – an exception amongst Muggle-borns, one in a million. She wasn't sure which was worse. 

She wondered briefly if she ought to be afraid that Malfoy found her attractive in any way. He had a storied history of callous cruelty towards Muggle-born women, and they were planning to spend a lot of time alone together in future weeks. 

But she didn't feel afraid. Not in this moment. Not even slightly. Malfoy's tone had been level and matter-of-fact, and his eyes were already re-focused on his work. 

She should feel afraid, but she didn't. 

That was confusing. All of it was confusing. She scrambled for a way to turn the attention away from herself, giving him a narrow look. "How would your wife feel about you calling me pretty?" 

Malfoy's mouth tipped up – apparently amused and unconcerned. "I imagine she'd agree with me. She's a woman of fine taste." 

She felt her blood start to heat at his words. Not that she had any respect for Astoria Malfoy – a complicit, obsequious Pureblood wife who would burn Muggle-borns at the stake if it meant making the society pages or pleasing her husband – but Malfoy's comment had a flippancy that suggested a basic lack of respect for Astoria. Why should that surprise her, given the sordid rumors she'd heard about his marriage? 

The Prophet had become a state-run propaganda outfit for Voldemort's regime in Southern England. When it wasn't printing overblown accounts of military victories, it was printing trivial nonsense about Pureblood society "intrigue" to distract readers from military losses. She read the paper for the purposes of gauging the opposition's current level of desperation, but she couldn't help but notice that Malfoy featured frequently in the society drivel section of the paper. Malfoy Marriage on the Rocks? . . . Draco Malfoy Photographed Leaving Langham Hotel with Russian Heiress – Business or Pleasure? . . . Childless Malfoy Marriage Fuels Rumors of Barrenness, Divorce . . . Will Draco Malfoy Seek a New Wife to Secure An Heir? 

He was by all accounts a flagrant philanderer who carried on high-profile extramarital affairs with a variety of women. He didn't even bother with being discreet about it for the sake of shielding his wife from embarrassment. 

He was as morally destitute in his personal life as he was in his professional life. His flippant comment only reinforced this.

She thinned her lips. "Your flippancy towards her is cruel, Malfoy. Then again, that doesn't surprise me, given the Prophet headlines I've read about your marriage. Don't think I feel sorry for Astoria in the least, though. You two deserve each other." 

The chopping blade in Malfoy's hand went still. He held it suspended an inch above the cutting board. Then he leaned forward, voice barely above a whisper. "Insult me all you want, but if you disparage my wife ever again, I will make certain that you suffer."

Her heart went into her throat and her chest tightened. She resisted the urge to lean away or step back from the table. He looked – scary. Scarier than usual. His voice held the quiet promise of pain, and its intimacy prickled the back of her neck. 

On second thought, though, his hypocrisy took her breath away. He was blatantly disrespectful of his wife, and yet he had the gall to threaten her for one comment? She felt blood rushing to her neck and face as her muscles started to quiver. 

She spoke before she could stop herself. "So, then you're the only one who is allowed to disrespect her?" 

He clenched his jaw and put down the knife. She saw the moment he switched from defense to offense. He narrowed his eyes and drew in a slow breath, fixing on her face like a predator on prey. His words lashed her with white-hot menace. "Do you know what the newspapers say about your love life, Granger?" 

She tensed, trying not to freeze under his gaze. She didn't know, because she'd made a firm decision to stop reading articles about herself. The combination of Pureblood bigotry and misogyny in those features was horrifying enough to curdle even the strongest stomach. Malfoy didn't pause in his assault, though. "They say that Potter and Weasley share you. They call you a shameless whore with no respect for traditional values, and they attribute your loose morals to your blood status."

She broke his gaze, face flaming. She knew, of course, that the papers printed that sort of nonsense, and that it was engineered to titillate and drum up readership, but it still hurt. She pulled her lips in and shook her head, rolling her shoulders back. "That's nonsense," she told him levelly, "and even if it were true, it's no one's business but mine."

Malfoy looked vindicated at her reaction. "Luckily for you," he murmured, "I don't believe what I read in the papers. You shouldn't either."

She bit her lip, unable to meet his gaze, but felt herself frowning in thought. She supposed she had assumed the worst about Malfoy and his marriage based on the Prophet.

"You know what I do believe?" Malfoy asked, ducking his head to catch her eye. "I think Potter is in love with you but won't admit it to himself." He paused, as if savoring the expression on her face. "And I think you're in love with him, too, but you're fucking Weasley because it's a convenient, familiar comfort and it allows you to remain in denial. That's far more tragic and pathetic than what the papers print about you."

The muscles in her chest and shoulders began to lock up as he spoke, and she could feel her ears burning against her will. She turned her face away, trying to fight down the feeling that Malfoy had exposed more than she was comfortable admitting even to herself. 

The idea that she was in love with Harry was patently absurd, of course – and she highly doubted that Harry was in love with anyone but the memory of Ginny. But Malfoy’s observations about her relationship with Ron had hit home. She hated herself for using him in such a callous way and giving him false hope of a relationship when there was no potential. It made her want to sink into the floor and never show her face in public again. 

She had forgotten how Malfoy could cut to the bone – expertly discern psychological pain points and use them to inflict as much damage as possible. He'd always been good at that, even at Hogwarts. 

Frantically, she searched for any emotion that wasn't shame, and finally hit on a wellspring of outrage. Clearly Malfoy had gathered his information from what he had seen in Harry's head during Occlumency lessons. How dare he use that information as a weapon, to embarrass and punish her? It was underhanded, it was unsportsmanlike, it wasn't technically breaking the Vow – it was everything she loathed about the way he operated. 

"That's low, Malfoy," she spat, trying not to smart from his words. "Using what you learn in Harry's head to try to needle and embarrass me? I didn't think you could fall any further in my estimation, but apparently it's possible." 

Malfoy grinned and slid the cutting board towards her, a sharp, aggressive motion. "I didn't need to look in Potter's head to learn any of that. Your facial expressions are telling enough." He gave a cold chuckle, raising an eyebrow and daring her to contradict it. "Even a blind man would be able to tell that your relationships with Potter and Weasley are co-dependent and dysfunctional. I feel sorry for all three of you.”

She stiffened, ears starting to ring slightly. Apparently, when Malfoy decided to go on the attack, there was no 'off' switch. He was leering at her with no remorse, watching his words do their damage. 

She wouldn't tolerate his abuse and leaned forward, spitting with rage. "There is nothing dysfunctional about my relationships. We're doing the best we can to survive. But – I don't even need to explain myself to you . " She crossed her arms, staring him down. "Get out. I'll bottle the potion myself." She forced her mouth not to tremble. "Don't come back for the next session unless you're willing to be civil and refrain from verbal abuse." 

He scoffed. "Verbal abuse? Me?” He held her gaze as he shook his head in disbelief. “Perhaps I won't come back at all." He threw the remaining ingredients onto the cutting board and turned away. "Good luck finding a brewing partner who isn't a halfwit – those seem to be in short supply in the Order."

He slammed the door on the way out, and she huffed, lobbing a clove of garlic at the spot where his head had been moments before. Childish, she knew, but garlic warded off malevolent spirits, and he certainly qualified. 

She braced her hands on the potions worktable and tried to breathe until her heart rate came down. She couldn't tell if she felt like screaming or crying or both. Much of what Malfoy had said was nonsense, but some of it was close enough to the truth to hurt. It irked her that he had actually been able to get under her skin in a way she hadn't allowed until today. She was acting as hotheaded as Ron – reacting without thought, allowing emotion to rule her. 

Hermione focused inward and breathed until her thinking slowed. The important thing was to brew potions adequately, and Malfoy was actually competent at that, despite being an ornery, combative moral cesspit of a human being. She zipped herself up more tightly and promised that if he came back, she would be ready to work with a cool head and an even temper no matter how cruel he was feeling. Malfoy was a master manipulator who knew how to play on emotions for a living. She wouldn't open herself up to that kind of influence again. She would be impervious. Professional. Unshakeable.

She finished bottling the black fire potion only after her blood pressure had returned to a semblance of normality.

Chapter Text

Weeks passed without Harry having a single mind invasion. Hermione started to see tiny improvements in her friend – his mouth didn’t seem so taut, his eyes didn’t look so sunken in their sockets, and the smallest flush of health came back into his cheeks.

The Occlumency lessons were working.

At the very least, they weren’t making him any worse. He looked safer. Less afraid. He still had days where he snapped at her and isolated himself, and days where his physical health took a turn for the worse, but it was undeniable improvement.

That was why her stomach knotted up at the thought of administering the next dosage of his potions regimen.

He looked healthier than he had in months. She wanted to cry at the thought of watching his health take a sharp turn for the worse. The Order Council, however, was determined to see his regimen continue uninterrupted. Part of her agreed, because he needed more magical strength to have the best chance against Voldemort.

They were so close to winning this war. She could feel it.

Ron, however, was having none of it.

They rowed about it – a continuation of the same argument they had every month. She tried to explain her reasoning and remain calm, but she felt her throat going tight as she continued to try to get through to him.

Ron bristled. “Clearly, you don’t care about my wishes as his friend.” He shook his head, spine rigid. “So maybe you’ll listen to my advice as a medical professional. Skip his dosage this month. His heart is too weak.”

Ron’s voice tore into her. Scrimgeour’s voice yanked her in the opposite direction as she recalled his words. I suspect I do not need to remind you of the ramifications of losing this war. You, of all people, remain acutely aware of what is at stake.

For a moment, she considered giving in to Ron’s demand. Then, she reminded herself that she had carefully tested and titrated the dosage to be safe. Rationally, increasing Harry’s magical power using a controlled method was their best chance of winning the war.

She shook her head. “We’ll go forward as planned. I’ve tested the dosage on myself, and it’s safe–”

“For how long?” Ron cut her off. “And combined with injuries and possessions? You can’t be sure.”

She said nothing, and he looked at her for a long time. The blue in his eyes was sometimes too bright and accusatory to keep looking at. She broke his gaze.

Ron spoke through gritted teeth. “How does it not hurt you to do this to him?”

She flinched. She tried to explain, but the words died in her throat.

It did hurt her, but she did it anyway. Worrying only about Harry was selfish. Muggles and Muggle-borns were being killed and enslaved every day, and she couldn’t ignore that. What she was doing felt selfish and cerebral and calculated all at once – all of the worst insults people had ever hurled at her.

She stiffened and marshalled her voice. “I’m balancing our needs as well as I can. The Order’s needs, not just Harry’s. And I think my judgement and understanding of the treatments I give are sound. I’m disappointed that you would doubt my competence and expertise.”

Ron shook his head in disbelief. “Not your competence. Or your expertise.”

She lowered her chin. He didn’t have to say the second part, so he didn’t. She repeated the only argument that eased her conscience even slightly. “It’s Harry’s choice in the end. Talk to him if you want him to stop.”

“You know he won’t. But if you stopped brewing the potions–” He looked away and his jaw rippled when she remained silent. “Halve the dosage. Please.”

The desperation in his voice bludgeoned her. She wanted to burst into tears. She felt herself buckling under the strain of having to make the final decision. “Fine. I’ll give him three-quarters of what Scrimgeour wants him to take.”

“How generous.” His sarcasm was overt. Unable to meet her gaze, he ran a hand through his hair and let out a slow breath. Voice shaking slightly, he said, “I can’t stay to watch him take the potions. I’m sorry. I’ll see you both later.”

“But he needs medical supervision–” her voice was choked and disbelieving.

“Get Poppy to do it.” He stopped in the doorway, clearly deciding whether or not to speak. He braced himself and hurled the words at her. “If Ginny was still alive, she would never allow this.”

She felt herself crumpling, but he was gone from the doorway already. She started to prepare the potions with shaking hands, swiping at her tears, wondering if she would be able to look at Harry as she handed him the vial, wondering if she would be able to look at him ever again without hating herself.

If that was the price of winning the war, she would take it.

~

Some nights, alone in his room, Draco gave in to the temptation to let his Occlumency slip.

He Occluded almost all the time now, even when he was alone.

It hadn’t always been that way. He remembered a time when he would only Occlude when the Dark Lord or other Death Eaters were present; then, from an abundance of caution, he started Occluding around strangers and acquaintances; then around close friends and family (for their sake as much as his own); and then, finally, even when he was completely alone.

It was easier this way. Cleaner. It reduced the frequency of and intensity of his breakdowns, helped him to stay focused and avoid falling apart completely.

If he allowed himself to feel, it would incapacitate him for days. He couldn’t afford days – couldn’t even afford hours.

There weren’t words to describe the horror that he was expected to absorb as an inquisitor on a daily basis. Images were seared into his mind instead. The rictus of pain in a Muggle-born man’s face during torture – contorted, inhuman. The way that starvation made all people look the same after a while, indistinguishable and animal in their misery. They lost their hair and their clothing and their personalities, faces sallow, expressionless, glassy-eyed. The smell of human filth in the dungeons that turned his stomach every time. Layers upon layers of it, sunk into the bedrock of the manor now. The animal sound of fear that a helpless person made in the moment before they died – a strangled, guttural whine of breath escaping lungs. The stench that accompanied abject terror – sharp, sour, lingering.

So, he Occluded almost all the time.

Except, of course, when he was doing Legilimency. In order to create construals of other people’s minds, he had to allow himself to feel. 

Falling apart was not an option. 

Sometimes, though, alone in his bed at night, he flirted with letting his Occlumency slip.

It was exhausting to Occlude constantly, and easing up felt like suddenly gulping air after a long time underwater.

It felt too good not to give in sometimes, at least a little. Reducing his use of Occlumency felt like releasing pressure from a faulty valve. He toyed with complete release in these moments, balancing on a knife’s edge of control. He knew that if he gave in to full emotional release, it would be a seismic blast that would drive him through the floor and take days to recover from.

So he flirted, only half in control.

He always felt pain first, an amalgamation of horror, helplessness, despair, rage. Sometimes he destroyed his bedroom or sobbed until he hyperventilated.

He couldn’t linger in that space for long. He knew very well where it led. Suicide was not a luxury he could realistically afford anymore. Maybe at nineteen, shocked by the reality of a regime like Voldemort’s, but not anymore.

So he didn’t linger in the pain for long, although it felt good to know it was still there. Maybe one day, when he’d fulfilled his purpose, he would give in to the freefall of despair.

Instead, he sought out other emotions to focus on for distraction.

When he reduced his Occlumency, and after the initial onslaught of pain, he often found his mind returning to Granger.

She had crowded his thoughts in a truly maddening way since that night in the library at Grimmauld Place: her magic blooming veins that became rivers that became elaborate canticles – prism-like, shimmering with verve. He couldn't even begin to work out what kind of magic she had invented or how. Perhaps his mind was turning the memory over like a vexing puzzle.

At first he’d thought it was intellectually-fueled aggravation that drove his thoughts back to her again and again.

Although aggravation was too fleeting to describe what he felt – more like angry perseveration.

If anything, brewing potions with her had made his fixation worse. There was something about her face: clean lines, disarming eyes with dark lashes. and borderline frightening intensity. 

Watching her invent magic had been bad enough, only to discover that she was brewing potions so complex that he found himself baffled. Every time he thought he had the full picture of her, another facet revealed itself. 

It wasn’t that he found her attractive, exactly. She was pretty enough, he supposed, but boxy and stiff most of the time, ill-at-ease in her own body. Her movements were jerky and unnatural. She’d locked away so much of her physical spontaneity to be more vigilant and implacable than everyone else. She appeared to believe that it kept her safe.

Although – there were times when she forgot herself, usually when deeply engrossed in brewing or casting a spell. She forgot to guard herself so closely, and she softened. Her play at masculine rigidity melted into something warmer and more feminine and altogether more natural. In those moments, her magic blazed like a wildfire.

He replayed those moments again and again in his head – the way her fingers grasped her wand, lips soft and supple, speaking the words of spells like invocations or prayers. Her eyes bright and unguarded, lit with curiosity and wonder, dark sweep of her eyelashes accentuating the curve of her cheekbones.

Not attractive, usually. Only in those rarified instances.

He groaned as he realized that the fabric of his trousers was becoming increasingly strained as his hand instinctually moved to relieve the growing hardness there.

His hand froze. “No,” he said to the dead air. He would not lower himself to wanking to thoughts of Granger, of all people. It would be unthinkably humiliating.

Anyway, she was more infuriating than alluring. She seemed hellbent on assuming the absolute worst about him in every possible instance. It was exhausting to endure, and it made him annoyed enough to lash out sometimes. Their most recent tiff had left him reluctant to go back for another session lest she see fit to berate him further. The woman had an uncanny ability to hone in on his worst fears about himself and pick at them relentlessly until even Occlumency didn’t do much good.

He knew he would go back, though. That was the bitter truth of it. He would go back because being in her presence felt like a strange balm against having to exist in the rest of the world. 

With sheer willpower, he shored up his Occlumency – akin to picking up a boulder he didn’t have the strength to carry. He forced himself to do it anyway. The relief slipped away, but the impressions of emotions lingered. 

He pushed himself off of his bed, restless and unsettled. It was almost midnight, but sleep was far away. He grabbed his broomstick, performed a quick Shrinking Charm on it, and stole out of his room, praying that he could go undetected in the corridors. He made it down the stairs without interference, much to his relief.

Laughter exploded from the billiard room as Draco ducked his head and strode briskly down the hall.

To his displeasure, one of the Death Eaters – Rowle, he thought – poked his head out of the billiard room, shrouded in a cloud of cigar smoke, and called his name as he was almost out the front door.

“Draco! Shirking your hosting duties, eh, lad? Come have a drink. We never see you down here.”

Closing his eyes briefly, Draco turned with a perfunctory nod, hoping the darkness would help to cloak his discomfort. “Work beckons, as always, my friend. Next time,” he promised, flashing his best imitation of a sincere smile. The word ‘friend’ curdled on his tongue in reference to Rowle.

He turned and fled the Manor before Rowle could say anything else.

Work, in fact, was the excuse he used to escape most social gatherings. The Malfoy Manor no longer resembled a private residence so much as it did a train station at rush hour.

It certainly didn’t feel like his home anymore. It hadn’t for a long time. 

When he couldn’t bear being there, when he felt like his mind was going to devour him, he went flying above the forest just west of the Manor.

Those woods were silent and dense with shadows, especially at night. He reversed the Shrinking Charm on his broom and swung his leg over the handle, rocketing into the air.

There was a peace to the silence and blackness of the treetops. His mind went blank as he pitched and dove through the air, relishing the cold bite of the wind, the sharpness of the nighttime breeze.

He focused on the feel of his hands gripping the broom, the dark brushstrokes of treetops, the roaring of wind in his ears, the sharp scent of moonlit air.

He flew higher and higher, so high that the trees became specks, so high that the manor became a thumb-sized blur, so high that the air thinned and he began to grow dizzy with it. Then, he plummeted, so fast that it was like a freefall, and his stomach lurched wildly, and he became unmoored from his mind. At the last possible second, just before it was too late, he pulled his broom up sharply, mere inches from the treetops, so close that the branches brushed his legs. He tumbled to the forest floor and dismounted with a satisfying thud, heart pounding wildly. He rolled onto his back and looked up at the night sky through the forest canopy, gasping with exhilaration.

This was the only relief he could find – the pure flood of adrenaline, losing himself in physical sensation. For a few seconds, his mind was clean and blank. He lay in the forest, arms splayed out in the underbrush, fleetingly numb.

In those tiny, precious moments, he could almost forget he had a mind.

~

Potter looked like an entirely different person by the time their next planned lesson arrived. 

He looked, quite frankly, like he had a horrible flu that would have left a more sensible person bedridden. 

Potter was the opposite of sensible. He’d dragged himself into the Room of Requirement at their agreed lesson time looking pale and gaunt, posture sagging, swaying like he could barely keep his feet. 

"You look dreadful, Potter," he pointed out. "Way worse than usual, and you looked rubbish before." 

Potter looked like he couldn't even muster the vigor to be afraid of Draco today or to bristle at his insults. He didn't seem to have extra energy for responses or expressions that weren't absolutely necessary. 

When Draco received no response, he prompted, "It's the demon potion Granger brews for you every month, isn’t it?"

Potter shot him a quelling look. "I'm fine." 

"You look like a slight breeze could knock you over. Are you sure you want to do this today?"

Potter drew in a breath, as if girding himself. "I can't afford to skip any lessons with you. And I've done more difficult things in worse shape, so just get on with it."

Draco huffed and tried to figure out how he might go about teaching a walking corpse. He racked his brain for a facet of Occlumency that was high-reward, low-effort. In the meantime, Potter turned his back, conjured a bucket, and threw up into it, heaving for almost a full minute. He looked far too well-practiced at that. 

"This is ridiculous," Draco felt the need to say, after he was fairly sure Potter was done. 

Potter Vanished the bucket and turned back around after scrubbing his mouth with his sleeve. He shook his head. "It's fine. Today and tomorrow will be the worst, and then it will get better. You can't make a fuss every time I puke. It happens too often." 

Bloody hell. Why was Potter being so nonchalant about what was clearly bordering on a medical emergency? Had he conditioned himself to accept this kind of mistreatment from the Order without putting up a fight?  

He knew Potter well enough, though, to know that he was too stubborn to be talked out of completing the lesson. Reluctantly, he started teaching.

He was five minutes into what he considered a very engaging review of emotional control when Potter's eyes fluttered shut and he swayed slightly. Then, without warning, his knees buckled and he collapsed to the floor. 

His first instinct was to cast a hasty Disillusionment, because this might be a possession by the Dark Lord. If the Dark Lord saw him there, he was as good as dead. 

Potter convulsed on the floor once, twice, violently enough to launch Draco into action. He conjured a Patronus and flung it towards the door with his wand, commanding it to find Granger. Then he knelt at Potter's side. 

He turned Potter onto his back and felt his forehead – his face was drawn and sheet white, eyes closed, though the seizing seemed to have stopped. 

He was afraid to attempt Healing magic, as any spell he performed could worsen the seizure. That might constitute harm under the Unbreakable Vow, which would result in his swift and sudden death. He settled for casting a simple Warming Charm. That couldn’t possibly hurt; Potter’s skin was icy to the touch.

It was strange, seeing his childhood nemesis prone and helpless on the floor, deathly pale. At one time in his life, the sight would have brought him glee.

Now it just made his stomach churn. 

He wondered if Potter had felt similar after using Sectumsempra on him in Sixth Year. The memory made him long for a time when schoolyard duels could be put right by older, wiser Professors. 

Luckily, it took Granger less than two minutes to arrive with Weasley in tow. 

She skidded to the floor at his side, trembling, face contorted with worry. "What happened?"

"He was throwing up earlier, and then he started seizing out of nowhere," Draco explained. "He collapsed and convulsed a couple of times." 

Granger stammered, "What – Ron, what should we–?"

Draco noted that Weasley's posture was angled away from Granger. He was also avoiding eye contact with her, lips pressed into a thin line. 

Weasley spoke brusquely, more to the room in general than a direct reply to her. "The neurotoxicity probably caused a secondary partial seizure. I'll need to get him up to the Hospital Wing to assess and perform the anti-seizure spells." 

Weasley was strangely calm and matter-of-fact, like speaking about someone he barely knew. Granger, on the other hand, was visibly trembling. Weasley Levitated Potter's body from the floor and started making his way towards the door. 

Granger followed like a ghost. "I'll come with–"

Weasley whirled back around, turning the full force of his glare on her. "You know what, Hermione? Don't." Weasley softened his tone, but only slightly. "Come up later." 

It wasn't a suggestion. Weasley performed a quiet warming charm before hastening from the room with Potter's unconscious body in tow. 

Granger flinched as the door slammed shut behind Weasley. Then her shoulders collapsed. She put a hand over her mouth and shook with the effort of suppressing sobs, turning her body away from him, clearly embarrassed. 

She seemed much less frightening like this. It took all the fun out of the scathing commentary he had been waiting to deploy.

At length, she took a massive breath in and squared her shoulders. He watched her physically force herself to stop sobbing. It looked like she was grinding herself into the dirt. She seemed to have no tolerance for emotions that didn't immediately benefit her. 

She wiped her eyes once and turned back to him. He almost winced at how painful and unsustainable it looked to suppress that much emotion. 

"Thank you," she said shakily. "I – thank you." 

She looked at a loss for what to say other than that. He supposed she'd forgotten their tiff from the last potion brewing session. Her expression held that strange combination of mistrust and recalcitrant gratefulness. 

When he simply nodded in response, she said, "You probably saved his life by calling us so quickly. He shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning, much less tried to exert himself mentally."

"And yet he swore up and down that he was fine right up until the moment he passed out." Draco raised a sardonic eyebrow at her. 

She rubbed her forehead in a gesture of familiar agitation. "Bloody typical."

She met his gaze briefly before biting her lip and looking down at the floor for a long while. Finally, she said, "You could have let him die." Her brow creased as she tried to puzzle it out. "The Unbreakable Vow didn't specify that you needed to save his life. It only specified that you cannot intentionally inflict harm." Her voice cracked. "It would have been an easy way to release yourself from the Vow without dying. If you were acting purely in your own self-interest, you would have done it."

It appeared unfathomable to her that self-interest wasn't the sole motivator of all his life decisions. He experienced a brief moment of black annoyance before landing on a sufficiently cryptic, flippant response. Sincerity was an anathema, and any amount of sincerity in relation to Do-Gooding was cloying and overwrought. 

He said, "If Potter had died during one of our lessons, do you really think Weasley would believe I had nothing to do with it? You think I want that psychotic ginger brute to kill me in a much more painful way than the Vow would?" He scoffed dismissively. "Not taking that chance." He cracked an inauthentic smile and put a hand on his heart. "Please don't accuse me of decency or selflessness without hard evidence." 

Granger considered him. Her expression (tinged with a slight, unfamiliar warmth, not that he was keeping track) cast some aspersion on his stated reason for saving Potter's life, but she didn't press the point. 

She seemed more interested in silent self-flagellation at the moment. Her expression became wracked with guilt again – the same expression that came into her face every time she looked at Potter. 

The source of her guilt was obvious enough, although he didn't pretend to understand why she made the choices she did.

He wanted to understand her better, and that desire felt deeply unwelcome. 

He rationalized. If he could sate his curiosity just this once, perhaps it would bring him some much-needed relief.

He realized that the silence between them had stretched for quite some time, but Granger wasn't aware of it. She also seemed lost in thought. 

"Permit me a question?" he asked, mostly to bring her back into the room. 

She shook off her thoughts and looked up at him, nodding warily. It was a sign of growing trust that she agreed to it at all.

Part of him – and he fought it down tooth and nail – warmed at seeing Granger edge closer to him every time they spoke, like watching a skittish songbird flutter closer and closer to resting in his outstretched hands. 

"Why those potions?" he asked. "All the magic you could have invented with your oversized brain of yours, and you chose potions that weaponize magic at the expense of a person's physical health."

Immediately, he saw that he'd struck a nerve. She drew herself up to her full height and squared her shoulders, clearly ready to bark a defensive response. He preempted it because it was not the answer he wanted. He said, "They're spectacular, Granger. Truly. And they probably gave Potter a chance. Without them, the Order would have lost years ago. I can see their utility, but – they're just surprising, coming from you, is all. Miss Society for the Preservation of Various Species of Algae.” He imbued his voice with some familiarity and tipped his mouth up.

Her shoulders relaxed slightly. She paused, considering a more nuanced response now that she didn't feel she had to defend her choices to him. At length, she said, "Sometimes war necessitates creating things that we wouldn't even consider in peacetime." She pulled her lips in. "Desperation to win – to survive – changes the whole function of magic." She sighed. "You can't always make the things you really want to, when their function doesn't serve the goal of winning a war."

"And what are the things you'd really like to make, if you could?"

He was truly curious, and his tone reflected it. The question and its sincerity disarmed her visibly. She looked like she was at a loss for words – as if no one had ever asked her. As if she'd never asked herself. 

Her mouth and shoulders quaked. She looked like she wasn't going to be able to answer without crying, and he could tell she really didn't want to cry in front of him again.

He decided to take pity on her – he found that sometimes (usually) his questions unsettled people. "Never mind. I'm terribly nosy, is all." He measured his words and tone as he said the next part. "Forgive me, Granger, but your stated reason for brewing those potions strikes me as a bit mercenary. In all honesty – that sounds like Rufus Scrimgeour talking, not you." 

She bristled. "It's not Scrimgeour. I made the decision." 

“And why do you make the decisions?”

“Shove off, Malfoy. Clearly you don’t think I’m worthy of the responsibility or competent enough to do it well–”

“No. I meant that it seems like quite a burden – to be the one to decide.”

Her eyes widened and her expression filled with surprise. Then she took a measured breath and spoke through clenched teeth  "Do you think you could do better than me in my place? Be less mercenary? You know nothing about desperation, and nothing about making impossible choices. You're on the side that’s winning the war." She was vibrating with indignation, clearly on the verge of tears. 

She was wrong about desperation and impossible choices, but he didn't point it out. "I'm not saying I could do better than you, Granger, or be less mercenary." He made his tone gentle. "It was just – I wanted to understand you a bit better." 

Her eyes again filled with surprise when she realized he wasn't conversing for the purpose of ridiculing her. She froze momentarily, then nodded and seemed to try to pull herself together. He watched her start to shore up her psychological defenses with rationalization and emotional repression. Aloud, almost as if trying to reassure herself, she said, "The most important thing is winning the war. There are costs to winning that I’ve factored in – ethical lines I’ve crossed and can’t uncross. I’ve accepted that there will be collateral damage." 

Oh. She was deeply indoctrinated in the Order propaganda, then. This level of brainwashing was nearly impossible to effectively combat without a significant investment of time, patience, and trust. 

He decided to settle with poking her worldview a little – just enough that it would plant some seeds and disconcert her without utterly destroying her. "Is that what Scrimgeour is telling you?"

Her head jerked up. He registered slight shock in her expression, and she opened her mouth with a well-practiced defense of Scrimgeour and the Order, but something stopped her. She closed her mouth. He could practically see her brain whirring. Her shock was followed predictably by narrowing eyes, indicating suspicion of his motives. 

He watched her expression close down, mouth tightening. She rolled her shoulders and turned her back. "You talk too much, Malfoy." But what she meant was that he'd got her to talk too much. "It's rather annoying.”

“So I’ve been told,” he conceded mildly. 

Her shoulders were tense, arms pressed to her sides. The conversation appeared to have disquieted her. He felt a pang in the center of his chest, dulled by the Occlumency but still present, an instinct to comfort her. "Granger," he started, and before he could stop himself, "you are a good friend to Potter. I hope you know that." 

She turned, looking at him fully, and she'd forgotten the danger in doing that. 

Her expression was filled with hope – wanting desperately to believe his words – and doubt, fueled by fear that she was failing Potter. His reassurance appeared to have struck something deep within her. A wound that she tore open regularly and never allowed to fully heal.  

"I try to be." Her voice was barely above a whisper, but her intonation spoke volumes. 

"I can see that." He nodded and didn't use this admission to hurt her, manipulate her, or press his advantage. It was the most natural thing in the world for him, but he almost never let himself do it. He felt warmth start to fill his chest. 

And he watched tendrils of trust start to burgeon in her gaze like tiny sprouts pushing up out of the earth. 

“I brought you something,” he said. The admission sounded slightly surly because it escaped him before he could fully condone it. This warmth in his chest was too addicting to quell. 

Surprise filled her face, but there was less trepidation than he might have expected.

He fished the vial out of his robe pocket and held it out to her, fully expecting that she would Accio or Wingardium the object so that she didn’t have to come within his arms’ reach.

She approached him slowly, face filled with curiosity, expression unguarded. She came close enough to touch and reached out to take the vial from him.

Their fingers brushed. Every nerve ending in his hand alighted. As he retracted his grasp, the touch reverberated – warmth and pleasure zinged up his arm, all the way to his shoulder.

She looked down at the vial and turned it in her hands, lips parting slightly. She was close enough that he could smell the scent of whatever she used in her hair – lavender, fresh and herbal. It drew his attention to her curls. There was something almost extravagant and maximalist about the way she wore her hair. It proved a striking contrast to everything else about her – clothes, shoes, body language – understated, minimal, without fuss. But her curls were baroque. He wondered if they would feel as decadent as they looked.

“Fairy wings?” Her breath caught – an impossibly lovely sound. She brought her eyes up to his. “These – these are so rare and expensive. How did you know I needed them?” Her mouth twisted with guilt, and he watched as she silently debated whether she could accept them.

“An educated guess. You invent potions, and these are a key experimental ingredient in many brews. Their usages are so versatile, I’d be surprised if you didn’t need them.”

She held the vial up to the light, admiring the gauzy, diaphanous texture of the material. “There must be at least twenty in here.” She pursed her lips. “These are worth a fortune. I can’t–”

“I paid nothing for them. I go flying in the forest west of the Manor some nights, and the place is lousy with wood fairies.” He felt his mouth turn up. “Devious little things to catch.” He threw a sharp grin at her as her expression filled with concern. “And before you launch into an impassioned tirade about fairy emancipation or conservation, they regrow their wings, bite me for my trouble, and flit away before I can blink.”

She bit her lip and relaxed her shoulders once she understood that no fairies had been permanently harmed by his actions.

She wrapped her fist around the vial and muttered an anti-shattering charm, voice careful and reverent, before placing it into her robe pocket. She looked up at him. “Thank you. This was – unexpected. I appreciate the effort it must have taken.”

He nodded and didn’t look away, eyes locked on hers for as long as she would allow.

Pain lanced through his skull – a sharp, jagged vein of it, radiating from the center outward. It was expected, the intensification of one of his near-constant headaches, but it came on suddenly. He suppressed a wince and broke her gaze.

She drew in a slight, surprised breath. “You’re in pain.”

It wasn’t a question.

He stepped away and turned his back, berating himself for letting her stand so close and look at him for too long.

He made his voice cold and implacable. “It’s nothing.”

He heard her huff slightly. “It’s not nothing. I thought you were just – a rigid person – but that’s exactly how Harry holds himself when he’s in pain and trying not to show it.”

He started to protest, but she cut him off. “Don’t deny it, Malfoy.” She softened her voice. “What happened?”

What happened? Where to even fucking begin?

He felt himself weaken at the compassion in her voice, firmly present even for someone she still considered an adversary in many ways.

When was the last time anyone had been observant enough to notice he was in pain?

He could usually hide it even from his mother and Astoria these days. But Granger was too familiar with stubborn men trying to hide their discomfort to be fooled by any platitude or excuse he might conjure.

He sighed and reluctantly turned back to her, hardening his Occlusion. “It’s nothing. Just headaches from the worsening Legilimency issue. Save your concern for someone who needs it.”

Her mouth tightened and her brow furrowed. “Malfoy, your Legilimency problem is clearly getting out of hand. Just tell me what’s happening so that I can help find a solution.” 

He felt himself shut down in response to her question like reflexively slamming a door. It was automatic, deeply ingrained. He’d learned to guard this part of himself so closely that to share it felt like condemning himself to death.

If anyone – friend or foe – managed to learn and replicate the method he had developed to do such effective Legilimency, he would no longer be the Dark Lord’s most coveted asset. 

An even deeper fear lurked beneath that one. 

Granger’s solution to his failing Legilimency might be more horrific than the problem. 

She had weaponized Potter on behalf of the Order. Taken all of his best qualities – courage, selflessness,  magical power – and warped them into something vicious and unrecognizable. He didn’t even know if she was fully aware of what she had done.

Granger might do the same to him and his Legilimency, if he let her.

He was already monstrous enough without her help. He didn’t need her to metastasize his power or mutate it into an even more horrific form. 

He grimaced and scoffed. “I’m fine. Your cognitive stabilizer is staving off the worst of it.”

Granger was silent for a few moments. He heard her shift her weight with discomfort. Then, softly, “You took an Unbreakable Vow. Why won’t you let me uphold my end of the deal?”

He made his voice cold. “You’re getting my skills at a bargain. Don’t complain.” 

He could sense, even without looking, that she was deeply uncomfortable with that. Fairness was important to her. 

Finally, she huffed in concession. “Let me at least give you something I make for Harry. It’s an excellent pain potion.”

He scoffed. “I said it’s nothing, Granger. Besides, I can’t afford to take anything that will dull my focus, even for a few hours.”

“You think Harry can?” She had already Accio-ed a vial of whatever miracle drug she’d concocted, and he could tell she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. The vial slapped into her hands. “This won’t dull your focus or reaction time, but it will give you some relief.” She pressed it into his hands. “Take it. I insist.”

Her hands were folded over his in an attempt to ensure he took the vial. He jerked his hands away, stifling a sharp intake of breath at the suddenness of the contact – at how warm and strong her hands felt. He pocketed the vial. “You are incorrigible.”

He edged his tone with venom to cover up how good it felt to accept help and concern from someone. After being starved of affection for weeks, even something as simple as the warmth in her voice felt too addictive to linger in for long.

He couldn’t get used to relying on her compassion or anyone else’s.

He realized that he was glaring at her and tried to moderate his expression. She said, "Promise me you’ll tell me if you need more.”

He made a noncommittal sound. 

She cleared her throat. “Well. I'll contact you when Harry is feeling better – we can do the next Occlumency lesson probably in a few days."

"As ever, I'm at your beck and call." He laced his tone with slight annoyance, but mostly a weary fondness. "I assume you'll require my assistance with brewing potions as well?"

"I've got a batch on schedule for next Wednesday.” He noticed the slight sheepishness in her tone, indicating that she remembered their tiff but was eager to move past it. "If you're able to get away, I would greatly appreciate the help." 

A week and a half. That seemed a rather long time away.

He shook that from his head and nodded curtly in confirmation. He reached for the ring in his pocket to travel back to the Manor. "Until then, Granger." 

Chapter Text

As it turned out, Potter could only be convinced to rest for two days. 

Draco put those two days to good use, performing as many interrogations as he could so as to be available once Potter recovered. 

Although interrogations with Legilimency were taking more of a toll on him: ringing in his ears, dizziness, and increasingly horrific headaches.  

Draco had one such headache when he entered the Room of Requirement for his next lesson with Potter, squinting blearily at the too-bright light of the cheery Gryffindor-esque space. He clawed at the pain potion in his pocket and hastily uncapped it, forcing it down before Potter arrived. 

Then, he took a few minutes to solidify his Occlumency shield in preparation for meeting Potter’s usual hostility – where was the half-wit, anyway?

Potter entered the room ten minutes late. He looked less ill – moving more quickly, face less sallow. Still exhausted, but no longer drooping like a wilted houseplant. His jaw was clenched, knuckles white around his drawn wand. Spending all his newly found energy on hypervigilance, apparently. 

In their lessons, there were never only two people present – there was always the shadow of a third. The Dark Lord lurked in their interactions like an oppressive spectre, animating Draco’s words with meanings they did not have, sowing sourness and mistrust at every turn.

Draco sighed internally. Potter seemed to have amnesia. No matter how much trust he succeeded in building in the prior session, the current session always felt like starting from square one.

He attempted to summon patience. “Afternoon, Potter. You look . . . terrible, but slightly less so.”

“Thanks. I’ve been dreading this all day,” Potter said in response. His face was pale and drawn, eyes sunken, posture fixed somewhere between feral, cornered animal and collapsed marionette.

“How complimentary.” He made his voice dry and raised an eyebrow.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

Draco bit his tongue and tried to quell the annoyance that darkened his mood every time he had to be in Potter’s numbskull presence. His headache intensified as if on cue. The man was nearly incapable of growth or change. Drilling information into his head was like pulling teeth. He understood now why Severus had grown frustrated enough to resort to punitive techniques while teaching Occlumency.

“Very well.” He ducked his head in acknowledgement. “Let’s not drag things out, then. You need to start learning practical Occlumency techniques. Feints, smokescreens, decoys. These are things you can only learn experientially.”

Potter’s magic cracked at him: a black, ferocious energy, always vying to be unleashed. Potter reined it in with effort but let it linger in the air like a blade waiting to be brought down.

He had been expecting it, but it still raised his hackles. Potter’s voice rumbled. “No Legilimency today.”

Draco ground his teeth and briefly indulged in a fantasy of inflicting bodily harm. “You’ve said that every day since we’ve started lessons. Frankly, your progress has stagnated.” He made his tone as gentle as he could manage. “If you want to get better, we have to do this part eventually.”

Potter twitched his shoulders. “Well, not today.”

Internally, he started ranting, as he often did during their lessons. This idiot clearly had a death wish. If he didn’t learn Occlumency, the Dark Lord was going to torture him into insanity, and yet he wouldn’t agree to submit to even surface-level Legilimency for the sake of learning a new skill.  

If Potter didn’t feel safe even with an Unbreakable Vow in place, then Draco was at a loss for what would make him feel safe.

There was only one other option he could think of. The nuclear option.

He’d been reluctant to use it, but it seemed he had no choice.

He crossed his arms, fingers tapping an annoyed cadence on his forearm. “As much as it pains me to admit this, with a bit of teaching, you would be an excellent Legilimens, Potter.”

Potter’s expression immediately paled further. He shook his head firmly, brow knitting together. “I don’t want that.” He opened his mouth, struggling to find the words. “I’ve only – just by accident, used Legilimency a few times. It feels wrong. Invasive. I don’t want to get better at learning how to do that to people.”

Draco looked away, off at the wall. “Of course you don’t. That’s exactly the reason you’d be good at it.”

Potter seemed confused. He pushed his glasses up his nose and nodded in assurance. “Well, whatever. I just want to learn Occlumency. To protect myself.”

Sometimes it got exhausting, being in the presence of such principled morality. He scoffed. “Don’t be reductive, Potter. Legilimency and Occlumency are two sides of the same coin. In order to gain skill in one, you have to understand the nature of the other.”

Potter looked unconvinced. He crossed his arms, clearly not comfortable with the idea. Of course he wasn't. He liked clean blacks and whites – clear delineations between the victim and the perpetrator. 

No use drawing this out. Draco said, "You won't agree to having Legilimency used on you, so we'll have to take another approach. You'll use Legilimency on me, and I'll show you how to repel an attack." 

Potter's eyes hardened and his posture stiffened. "I’ll pass, thanks. I'm – not that kind of person."

"What kind of person?" He made his voice soft and curious, a tone that would draw anyone in. 

"The kind that can just – hurt someone that way.” Potter covered his mouth briefly, lip curling. "I think Legilimency should be a form of Dark Magic."

The disgust in his tone stung a little, even through the Occlumency. Potter's expression only confirmed it – twisted up slightly, nose crinkled, although Draco didn't think he realized it.

He felt something hot and sour in the pit of his stomach. His instinct, of course, was to lash out like he'd done with Granger, given enough provocation. 

Only he couldn't lash out. The Vow prevented that. His second instinct was to defend his actions – give reasons, explanations, context. Also useless and immature. There wasn't enough context in the whole history of the world to justify the things he'd done. 

Instead, he attempted to return to the shelter of his professorial guise. "Legilimency is a tool, Potter, just like any other magical technique or tool. It has no more inherent goodness or evil than the intent of the person wielding it." 

Potter only made a noncommittal sound, as if he didn't fully believe it.

After a few moments, the silence became entrenched. Potter was purposely stonewalling him.

Draco forced himself to speak with the least amount of irritation possible. “Your choice, Potter. Victim or perpetrator. Which is it going to be?”

Faced with this choice for perhaps the first time in his life (and fuck him for that, by the way), he appeared to struggle with the decision.

After several moments of prolonged silence, Draco decided to force his hand. Nothing would be accomplished this century otherwise. "Our lesson is done for the day if you don't choose one or the other." 

Potter tried to glare, but his mouth was turned down, ruining the effect. “Fine. I’ll do the Legilimency thing, just this once.”

Draco shook his head in disbelief at the stricken expression that had come over Potter's face – like he'd agreed to murder someone. Begrudgingly, he added, "You're not going to hurt me, Potter. It'll be like a toddler flailing with a stick at the Whomping Willow." 

Although Potter looked displeased to be compared to a stick-wielding toddler, at least the stricken expression eased slightly. Squaring his shoulders and clenching his teeth, Potter asked, "What do I do?" 

He replied, "What has it been like when you've used Legilimency by accident in the past?" 

Potter appeared to be thinking (a rarity not to be interrupted). He said, "It's usually happened when I want to know what someone is thinking. I try to put myself in their shoes – think what they might be feeling in a certain moment, and why. And then . . ." he paused. "I look at them and it just happens – like a cut with a knife, and I can see what they're thinking at that moment." Potter flushed, looking down at the floor, and rubbed his neck. "Then I look away because it feels wrong."

"Well," Draco supplied, raising a wry eyebrow, "your conscience need not be bothered by the thought of hurting me with Legilimency, all things considered. Consider it a form of restorative justice, if you like."

Potter tipped his chin up, unimpressed. "You know that isn't how it works, right? Hurting you won't make anything better, tempting as it sometimes is." 

Draco jolted inwardly. Mostly he managed to forget how good Potter was, but when reminded, it knocked the wind out of him. He wasn't used to goodness like that. It was a minor miracle that Potter still possessed as much humanity as he did. 

It made Draco want to flush himself down the toilet. 

He snapped, "Listen. Just – attempt to use the same technique on me that you used when you did Legilimency by accident. You have to become curious about what I may be thinking and feeling. Project yourself into my shoes." 

Potter wrinkled his nose, recoiling involuntarily. "Urk. No. I don't want to understand what you think, or why." 

Bugger. He should have anticipated this. 

Luckily, Gryffindors were easy enough to manipulate. 

"I wouldn't be so hasty," he countered. "I've accumulated many interesting scraps of information – knowledge, memories, secrets – in my line of work over the years. I'm sure I have something that could pique your interest." He spread his hands wide in invitation, inclining his head.

Potter regarded him with weary cynicism. "I doubt it. I don't have much interest in stolen secrets."

He scrutinized Potter’s expression before carefully choosing his next words. "I have memories of Ginny Weasley. Memories you haven't seen. I've used Legilimency on many people who knew her." 

Potter went still. He didn't move or speak for a long while.

Then, Draco noticed a faint disturbance in the space around Potter, a vibration of the airwaves that held a strange menace. Too late, Draco realized. Potter's expression and posture were radiating a certain pernicious kind of grief – a grief that cannibalized everything it came into contact with. 

This was the grief of love that hadn't been fully felt, love suppressed and gagged and shoved into a lightless, airtight trunk. Potter thought he wouldn’t be able to bear feeling it, not when Ginny Weasley was gone.

Draco had unknowingly walked into a minefield, and one misstep now would blow them both to pieces. 

Potter asked, "What memories?" His voice was tar-black, posture radiating hostility.  

His heart rate sped up as he scrambled for the correct reply, because the wrong reply (and there were many) would be lethal. He made his tone solemn and earnest. "Little flashes of her, here or there, in other people's memories," he said, feigning far more calmness than he felt.  "Simple moments. Throwing a curse in battle, or speaking to someone, or playing quidditch."

The hostility in Potter's expression faded once he understood that the memories didn't involve cruelty or pain. It was replaced with a well-worn expression of – longing, was the only word for it. Too raw to look at directly, and Draco found himself averting his gaze.

How many times had Potter combed his own memory for the scraps of her he could find, only to come up empty? And what would he not give for even one new memory of her – a few moments of seeing a glimpse of her face, a flash of her hair, or hearing her speak a single word? 

Potter didn't talk for a long time, and Draco allowed the silence. Finally, Potter made a slight choking sound, as if coming back to himself. "I'd like to see those memories." 

Pointedly, Draco looked away. "No. Never mind. Now that I see your reaction, I'm sorry I brought it up. There's no point in dwelling obsessively on the past like that." 

He'd laid the trap, and Potter would only need the smallest nudge to step inside. Potter's face contorted with painful desperation. "No. Malfoy – really. I'd like to see them. It would mean the world to me." 

"The answer is no, Potter." 

Potter's incursion into Draco’s mind was involuntary, forceful, and instantaneous. His Legilimency had been locked away in a part of his mind he refused to access, but desperation brought it to the surface. Potter made a clumsy foray into Draco's mind, and Draco pushed a memory of Ginny to the forefront. It was Draco's own memory of her from Fifth Year, when he'd played Seeker against Ginny in a quidditch match. She whirled through the air in his memory, vaulting, pivoting, and making hairpin turns. When Gryffindor scored, her maverick grin felt contagious, breath coming in frosty, dragon-like huffs in the chill December air–

He slammed his Occlumency walls down and forced Potter out of the memory. Potter blinked, as if coming out of a deep trance – stupefied, amazed, and deeply moved. As he came back to himself, his expressions moved rapidly from reverence to pain to fury. 

"Malfoy – no." Potter made a strangled sound. "I was – I wanted to see the rest–"

"And you will, if you can learn to break through my mental defenses." He tilted his chin up. "Let it be known, bribery is not beneath me." 

"Malfoy, this isn't a joke," Potter hardened his voice. "This isn't a bloody carrot you can dangle in front of me. Those memories, they mean more than you can possibly understand–"

"All the better for motivating you to learn, then." 

For a moment, he thought Potter might resort to torture, but he brought himself up short and seemed to try to rein in his worst impulses. 

"What you just experienced," Draco said, capitalizing on the rare state of having Potter's full attention, "that was me executing what's called an expulsion . That's a technique you can use to forcefully repel someone from your mind. Useful, if you don't mind someone knowing you don't want them there." He paused, letting that sink in. "The downsides of expulsion are that the Legilimens know they've been rebuffed, and they may counter with a stronger attack." 

Potter seemed to be listening and processing, if only in the hopes of using the knowledge in the future to access the memories of Ginny. 

Draco continued, "I want to show you a more subtle Occlumency technique, one that will allow your skill to go undetected. The Legilimens who is attacking will believe that he is accessing your deepest thoughts, desires, and wishes – which are the ones he will go for if he wants to do the most damage – but in reality, you've hidden them." 

Potter's eyes widened slightly. "That – is that what you use to fool Voldemort?" 

"Yes." He inclined his head. "I don't think he even knows this technique exists. It's difficult to pull off."

"Why?"

"It requires a deep knowledge of your own psyche, and a familiarity with the complex internal map of the mind. To create a false core, you must know where the true core is located and what it consists of." 

He catalogued Potter's shifting expression. For the first time in his life, Potter started to believe that he, Draco Malfoy, actually had something useful to offer. Best take advantage of this glitch in the universe and press onward. 

"So," Draco instructed, "use the same Legilimency technique you just used to delve deeper into my mind. You know what it feels like from doing it accidentally just now. And don't try to get to any memories of Ginny. Those are locked well away. Instead, think about trying to discover who I am and what drives me to do what I do." 

Potter huffed, apparently chagrined at the thought of having to bridge the psychological distance he'd been keeping between them.

He really was the most incorrigible student. Teaching a golem would be easier. "Fine," Potter said. "So . . . how do I do that, then?"

Hadn't Potter been listening to any of his painstakingly delivered lessons? "Remember how we discussed the importance of forming a construal? It's a theory about the way you think another person might view the world – what drives them, what motivates them. Use that as a starting point for exploring the layers and organization of their mind."

Unsurprisingly, Potter looked lost. He attempted to make it painfully concrete. "For instance, if I was going to create a construal of Granger's mind, I would probably put 'insatiable drive to save helpless magical creatures and acquire implausibly large books' at the center of the construal."

Potter stiffened. "How about you don't use Hermione as an example when you’re talking about forcing your way into someone’s mind."

The man really had zero sense of humor when it came to Granger. "Hell, Potter, she was the first person who popped into my head. Simmer down." 

"Fine. I get what you're saying. Let’s move on."

He prayed for patience and exhaled. "All right. So go ahead. Create the construal." 

He fixed his eyes on Potter. It was uncomfortable looking at him this much, and he was sure Potter felt the same. Men weren't socialized to look each other in the eye for longer than a moment or two.

Potter seemed to need a moment to shake off his own unease with the whole situation, but once he did, he focused his gaze and made an incision into Draco's mind, attempting to form a construal. 

Potter's construal was dark. He made all the worst assumptions about Draco's motives – the logical, easy assumptions, the ones that most people made. Potter's Legilimency technique was also terrible. He seemed to think that using his mind like an anvil, demolishing barriers, was the best method. As Potter bored with clumsy determination down through layers of his mind, it was laughably easy to misdirect him. Potter's certainty grew with every layer he thought he successfully passed through – surface sensations, thoughts, emotions, current desires – down deeper, to values and beliefs, to formative memories, and finally, to core drives. 

At his core, Draco Malfoy was a person who enjoyed violating boundaries, who reveled in dismantling the cogs and pinions that constituted a soul. That was why he was so good at Legilimency and why he was the Dark Lord's best inquisitor. He enjoyed it more than everyone else did: the helplessness, the pain, the palpable fear. Sometimes he tried to convince himself that he didn't like his work, and sometimes he succeeded. But in his heart of hearts, he knew he loved it too much to ever leave the Dark Lord's service. 

The core of a person was always sounds and images. At his center was a black hole that was fed by the terror and pain of his victims: the static, never-ending roar of empty space. Stories and images were etched on the surface of the black hole – remnants of what had disappeared into it. Entire lives that had winked out in strangling darkness. His victims' last memories were of pain and violation. They all told themselves stories to make sense of the world, lullabies against emptiness and chaos. In the final moments before death, he ripped their stories away from them so that only a void greeted them, and with it, the sensation of being pulled under by a massive sleeper wave into the ocean, whorling blackness and gasping and panic-confusion. 

Then nothing. 

Potter recoiled mentally. It was almost too ugly to look at – barely human, barely comprehensible. 

He vaulted out of Draco's mind and drew his wand instinctively. A curse was halfway out of his mouth before Draco could react. 

He showed Potter his open palms and spoke in a loud, firm tone. "It's fake."  

This didn't seem to appease Potter, whose eyes had narrowed into slits, tensed as if in preparation to fight for his life. 

"It's a false core, Potter." He prayed that this trigger-happy idiot would see reason. "It isn't real." 

Potter shook his head, reeling with disbelief. Draco added, "I'll take Veritaserum, whatever you like, to prove it. It's just a highly convincing illusion."

Slowly, Potter lowered his wand, shoulders still up at his ears. He shuddered and shook his head, as if trying to physically shake off the memory of the open-mouthed, gaping void in Draco's mind. 

"It felt real. Like I was seeing the truest version of you." He paused, lost in thought. "And the memories that fuel it, and the beliefs – it all makes so much sense. It's too consistent with your behavior to be false." He blanched. 

Draco nodded in acknowledgement. "It's a flawless dupe. I'm rather proud of it." 

Potter was watching him now with renewed vigilance. "Are you sure it isn't real?" 

No, he wasn't entirely sure. Not on the bad days. That was what made it such a convincing illusion. 

He relaxed his mind to stillness. "Of course I'm sure."

That was what Potter needed to hear in the moment to feel comfortable, so he imbued his tone with effortless conviction. 

Potter gave a reluctant grunt of respect. "That's some dupe, Malfoy." 

"I can teach you to do it, too, but I need you to let me use Legilimency on you so that you can learn the defensive techniques." 

When Potter predictably tensed up, Draco spread his arms wide and presented himself for Potter's inspection. "Do I look hurt? Did your Legilimency destroy me? "

Potter was too proud to admit that no, it hadn't. He pulled his lips in and looked at the floor. 

"Look, I trusted you with my mind, and you know how the other side works now," he pressed. "It's not a black box, and it's not uncontrollable. Let me see one memory. Any memory of your choosing."

Potter flinched and went sheet white, averting his gaze. The vestiges of trauma were clear as day.

He tried another angle. "We have to build trust, and we can't build it if you never give me a chance," he pleaded. "Put a memory – something boring – at the forefront of your mind. I promise that I will only look at that." 

The silence between them stretched like an unbreachable chasm. 

"Fine." Potter's voice was so soft that Draco almost didn't hear. "One memory. Five seconds. I will pulverize you if you go any further." 

With extreme reluctance, Potter brought his eyes up. Draco met his eyes behind his glasses and caught the shape of the memory. He made his touch on Potter's mind feather-light, almost undetectable, but enough that Potter knew he was there. 

Potter's inner state shocked him. People were generally nervous about Legilimency, but Potter was terrified. He was close to full-blown panic – heart thudding, bile flooding his throat, muscles quivering. His thoughts were on the verge of becoming incoherent from pure terror. And yet he held the memory still and didn't attempt to pull away. 

Draco dipped lightly into the memory, and when Potter didn't object, he immersed himself. 

It was a memory of Granger. 

Potter had found her in the Gryffindor common room earlier that afternoon in a rare moment of peace. 

She was splayed sideways in a high-backed armchair, legs flung over one arm of the chair, puddled in a large Weasley sweater, reading a book that was twice the size of her head. Her brow furrowed as she read. An unremarkable memory, to be sure. 

He was about to pull away when she looked up at Potter. 

It felt to Draco like being bludgeoned in the head. 

His brain started to flatline. Her eyes were bright like Firewhiskey lit from behind, open and filled with trust, lit up with affection and respect.

When she looked at him, he felt like he was worthy. Worthwhile. He felt the breath stuttering in his lungs. 

The act of looking at Potter changed Granger's whole face. Her lips were soft and relaxed, gaze alight with playfulness. Draco became intensely aware of how her hair grazed her collarbone, how her cheeks were slightly flushed from sitting so close to the fire. Seeing her through Potter's eyes, he became suddenly, acutely aware that she was female. 

"Harry," she said in greeting, tone pleasant and familiar. 

Draco pulled back from his own thoughts and focused on Potter's experience of the memory. Potter noticed none of the details that he had – not her hair grazing her collarbone or the flush of her cheeks. Her gaze was familiar to Potter. Unremarkable. When she met his eyes, Potter felt a spark of warmth in his chest. He felt comforted, happy to see her, curious to know how her day had been, eager to tell her about a dueling move he'd perfected in training. His feelings of fondness and trust were all plain – but Potter didn't feel paralyzed, transformed, or profoundly aware of how dark and full her eyelashes were. 

Draco vaulted out of the memory, feeling a sudden, unexpected wave of blackened, roiling jealousy toward Potter. The old jealousy from Hogwarts. Potter was loved deeply by Granger, and in turn, he loved her without holding anything back. It was precious, that love, and it made his chest physically ache with loneliness. 

Potter exhaled with relief and looked down at the floor for a long while, clearly trying to bring his panic under control. Distracted by his own emotions, which was convenient for the time being. Draco turned his back, trying and failing to Occlude completely. 

He would never be able to look at Granger the same way again after coming across that innocent memory. He raked a hand through his hair. 

Fuck. 

It was Potter's fault, for making her look at him that way. Their relationship couldn't be fully platonic. That wasn't friendship. 

He mentally slapped himself and tried to get a grip. With effort, he schooled his expression and turned back around. 

Some of the color had come back into Potter's cheeks, and he looked less likely to vomit than minutes before. 

Draco gritted his teeth. "Well? You're not dead, are you?"

Potter scuffed his foot on the floor. "No. I didn't like it, but . . . I can tolerate it, as long as you don't cross any boundaries." 

"Understood. May I ask a question?"

Potter nodded, biting his cheek. 

"Why did you show me that memory?"

Potter shrugged. "It was just the first regular one that came to mind."

Regular.  

Potter took it for granted. Having Granger look at him like that – it was a regular afternoon for him. Unremarkable. Not even worth mentioning. 

He suppressed a growl. 

"Was there something wrong with it?" Potter asked, clearly confused. 

"No. It was just – no. It was fine." 

He found an excuse to end the lesson quickly after that. 

They'd made considerable progress, and now it was imperative that he go home and bash his head repeatedly against his bedroom wall.

Chapter Text

The following week alternated between Occlumency lessons with Potter (the numbskull was actually beginning to make decent progress) and the aforementioned bashing of his head against hard surfaces to keep thoughts and images of Granger at bay.

A distraction presented itself in the form of an obligatory ball being thrown at the manor. The word ball was far too celebratory to describe the monthly debacles he was forced to endure. His headache returned with throbbing force, and he downed another pain potion to be able to tolerate socializing.

He straightened his bowtie and squared his shoulders, tightening up his Occlumency in preparation for entering the manor ballroom.

Parties were infinitely worse without Astoria on his arm to act as a social buffer. She had always plastered herself to his side during balls, laughing and smiling and effortlessly smoothing tension or filling dead spaces in conversation. She knew her sparkling presence deterred certain kinds of behavior and talk in most Death Eaters.

At least, he conceded, this was a party with wives and children present. Usually Death Eaters stayed on their best behavior towards Muggle-born slaves during parties where their families were in attendance.

A small mercy.

His eyes fluttered shut as he prepared himself to navigate endless conversations with sycophants and diplomats.

He entered the ballroom to the familiar din of tinkling glasses and polite conversation. The ambience was celebratory, but forced. The servants had done a fantastic job of providing the illusion that a war was not currently taking place. Good wine had been unearthed from the farthest depths of their cellar. The crystal chandeliers gathered and re-distributed the brightness in the room, giving the impression of opulence and ease – a trick of the light. Meat was in short supply. So were dairy and coffee. Some enterprising servant had managed to wrangle and multiply all three rarities and prepared beef tartare, cheesecake, and piping cups of coffee outfitted with both sugar and cream.

Astoria and his mother’s disappearance from the manor still qualified as a fresh scandal. Draco noticed a few conversations end abruptly as he entered the room.

He relaxed internally as he remembered that his father was still in Germany. A second mercy. His entrance was met with a stifled combination of fear and deference. As the drinks continued to flow, braver guests might try to approach him and ingratiate themselves in the hope that he would remember their kindness if they were ever arrested by his branch of the police.

However, most people who had any sense at all avoided him as politely as they could manage.

After all, he had the power to arrest and detain anyone on British soil with impunity. The only grounds he needed were suspicion that a person had experienced a thought of dissent or disobedience toward the Dark Lord. Every single person in the room, at one time or another, had had an unsuitable thought about the Dark Lord.

Thus, he had reasonable grounds to arrest any of them. Following arrest, collecting enough evidence for a conviction via mind interrogation was simple. He’d never encountered a mind he couldn’t crack open. After that, it was only a matter of locating a single impure thought.

Too easy.

Most people had learned to avoid looking at him, much less speaking with him. Presently, he could see the whites of all the eyes in the room, tracking his movements while pretending not to.

“Oi.” Theodore Nott approached him with a grin, interrupting his thoughts. One of the few people still willing to look him in the eye. He was deeply grateful for it. “This is a surprise. The recluse actually makes an appearance.”

Draco nodded at him and moved his eyes to the Dark Lord at the front of the room, holding court. “Unavoidable.”

They both knew what that meant. The Dark Lord required Death Eaters to host and attend a certain number of formal balls during the social season. “Alas.” He spread his arms in a hopeless but amiable gesture. “I’m overwhelmed with hosting obligations this season, given the unexpected absence of my mother and wife.”

“Any word about them, then?” Theo asked, eyes crinkling with concern. “Does the search committee have any leads?”

Draco covered his mouth with his hand. “No. It’s for the best, I think.”

He held Theo’s gaze to make sure he understood. Astoria and his mother were safer and happier away from the manor. Theo caught his meaning and nodded in acknowledgement. Then, more loudly, Draco added, “Glad to be shot of Astoria, to be honest. She was a frightfully disappointing wife, in more ways than one.”

Several party guests were within earshot, and he took care to be overheard. He sought to cultivate a very specific persona in public. In the Dark Lord’s court, spies and informants were everywhere.

Theo’s throat dipped. He took a drink. “I believe it. She only seemed to display token loyalty to Our Lord, at best.” He smiled. “In the market for a new wife, perchance?”

He ‘hmmed’ and gave Theo a look that conveyed he would rather lose an eye. Aloud, he said, “Eventually. It may take a fair while. You know how Malfoys are. Notoriously picky about wives.”

Unbidden, Granger’s eyes flashed into his mind. Warm as Firewhiskey when she looked at Potter. Crackling when she looked at him. Her glare did something inappropriate to his stomach, and her curls were even more problematic. Worse still, the mind-bogglingly beautiful magic, and the way her lips shook when she smiled–

Draco cleared his throat. He needed a distraction in the form of a female who wasn’t Granger. Fast. That shouldn’t prove very difficult. There was usually no shortage of interested women flitting about. To Theo, he said, “Anyone I could audition for the role?”

Theo smirked knowingly and surveyed the room. “There’s a redhead here from the Russian delegation who seems a bit of your type. She’s talking to Blaise right now. Looks like she could use rescuing.”

Draco shifted subtly to allow himself to follow Theo’s gaze.

Ah. She was his type – a waterfall of fiery curls raked carelessly back from her face, and eyes that sparked with clear verve and intelligence. He felt a surge of attraction.

He loved this pastime – chasing beautiful women, basking in their attention, the mutual attraction, the flirtation, the slow seduction. It was a fantastic distraction for him. The best one he had found that didn’t involve significantly altering his brain chemistry.

He drew a breath in. “Think I have a chance with her?”

Theo arched an eyebrow. “You cannot possibly be asking me to collude in making your ego any larger than it already is. The combination of wealth and charm you possess ought to be outlawed.”

He ignored Theo, which was usually the safest option. The redhead met his eyes from across the room but didn’t linger on his face. She shifted uncomfortably as Blaise leaned closer and spoke to her.

Draco didn’t want to come on too strong. If she was interested, she would give him some indication. He took a cocktail from a tray and smiled tightly at Theo. “Let’s give it a few minutes.”

He looked at her once more as he conversed with Theo – she met his gaze, but he couldn’t tell if she was interested. He decided to leave it. He’d made his interest fairly clear with his eye contact, and that was enough. She would approach if she wanted to.

For a few minutes, he lost himself in conversation with Theo. In public, they couldn’t speak about anything that truly mattered to either of them. But they could speak obliquely, talk around things, and that was better than other vapid, empty conversations he would be subject to with other people. He knew he ought to mingle, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it tonight.

Theo was not a Death Eater – he’d never had the stomach for it. He spent as little time in the Dark Lord’s court as possible. They’d once been closer friends, but Draco had made great efforts to distance himself from Theo for the past few years. It was the safer option for his oldest friend – attachments were dangerous, and he didn’t want to see Theo hurt or used as collateral in some Death Eater power play.

Theo, stubborn arse that he was, still insisted on treating Draco like he was a normal person and not a  menace to society.

Theo rolled his eyes expressively. “Surprise, surprise. She’s coming over. That’s my cue to bugger off, I expect.”

“Much appreciated. Off you go.” Draco swatted him away.

Theo smirked once at the approaching woman and whirled away, making it look like he urgently had somewhere else to be.

The woman approached him with finesse; she was subtle, demure, and used the tips of her fingers to brush his elbow as she came to stand in front of him. Immediately, he knew that she wasn’t the type of woman to throw herself at anyone. He glanced at her, flicking his gaze over her lazily, but paused when he caught wind of the full extent of her beauty.

“Do you have a couple minutes to spare?” she asked. “I’d like to chat you up.”

He laughed and opened his posture to her. He leaned back, correcting the space between them, a subtly respectful movement that he found made women more comfortable.

Flirting commenced as it usually did. He said something small and amusing. She brushed his shoulder lightly, almost imperceptibly, as she replied, head tilted to the side. He smiled slowly at her, conveying interest and enjoyment.

Her eyes lit up as they spoke. He felt his face start to grow warm with pleasure. He liked flirting for its own sake – liked losing himself in banter with someone new. He never had the expectation that it would become anything else. Sometimes flirtation shifted naturally into kissing and maybe even fucking.

Which was precisely how he’d gotten himself in such trouble with the newspapers.

As she spoke, he imagined running his thumb over her bottom lip. He thought about how it would mould to his touch. That image sent a jolt of pleasure down his spine.

She must have seen something in his eyes – some subtle shift towards carnality.

She turned her face up to him, baring her neck. She asked, “Do you want to go upstairs now, or later?” Something flickered in her expression, but he couldn’t quite parse it.

He blinked. Did she mean what he thought she meant? Women weren’t usually so direct, and it took him aback. “Er.” He cleared his throat. “Right now, I’m merely enjoying the pleasure of your company.”

That seemed a safe response. It also happened to be true.

She lowered her eyes. “As you wish, Inquisitor. Just say when you’re ready.”

He jolted so hard that some of his whiskey splashed out of his glass and onto the floor. Although her voice was pitched seductively, there was something hollow in it. Resigned.

Even worse, she had pronounced his title with clear deference.

“How–?” He found himself fumbling for words. “How do you know my title–?”

She looked up at him. He became painfully aware of his height, of how casually he loomed over her. “Your friend Blaise told me, when I saw you looking at me and asked him who you were.”

Draco clenched his teeth, disgusted at having Blaise named his friend.

They were not friends.

His vocal chords were tense as he pitched his voice lower. “What else did Blaise say?” 

“He didn’t say anything else, just that you’re the Dark Lord’s best inquisitor.” She laughed, an octave too high, fluttering her eyelashes. “A girl can’t exactly ignore a clear summons from him, can she?” She attempted to hold a smile, red lips curving up, but they shook slightly. Her lipstick was beginning to smear at one of the edges, ruining the illusion of perfect composure. “Lucky for me, you’re charming and attractive, so it’s not exactly an imposition.”

But he had caught the flicker of fear in her eyes she tried to hide. It was clear as day, now. That was the micro-expression he’d seen earlier.

It felt like being plunged into ice cold water. All of the warmth and pleasure drained from his body in an instant.

She was afraid for herself. For her family. Ignoring even an implied desire of an inquisitor might result in arrest, detainment, interrogation, or permanent disappearance.

There were worse things than having unwanted sex, and her eyes were filled with the imagining of all of them.

He felt like the organs in his stomach were being removed with a sharp, tiny implement.

He had been relatively relaxed and unguarded, but now he felt his spine go rigid. 

Her eyes widened at the shift in his posture. She was carefully attuned to him. “Please, I didn’t mean to offend–”

Draco raised a hand to cut her off, eyes fluttering shut. He swallowed. “I apologize, Miss Petrova. I’ve communicated expectations I did not intend to. My error, and my deepest apologies.” He cleared his throat. “My only desire was that you would come over and speak with me.”

He couldn’t think. He felt frozen by the implications of her words. It was clear that she felt obligated to please him. Did she feel obligated to any other powerful men in the room? Corban Yaxley? Rodolphus Lestrange? Had Blaise implied something to that effect?

Or had he implied it, with the mere threat of his presence, and by making eye contact?

Sometimes he forgot the amount of fear he elicited. Sometimes he wanted to forget, or pretend it didn’t exist. Certain Death Eaters basked in it.

It strangled him.

She was holding her breath, eyes fixed on his face, watching his expression like trying to solve a puzzle that her life depended on.

He rested a gentle hand on her gloved forearm – completely devoid of flirtation. “You are a guest in my manor, Miss Petrova. I apologize if any other message was imparted.” He ducked his head. “Speak only with whom you wish. Leave when you like. As the host, I insist on it. Your comfort is my responsibility.”

She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, breaking eye contact, and then looked up at him. “Thank you.” She took a shaky breath. “I – I very much appreciate that clarification. I . . . apologize if I was too forward.” She closed her eyes and appeared to be mentally berating herself.

“No apology necessary. The error was mine,” he assured her.

She nodded like coming out of a trance. With a preoccupied smile and a polite excuse, she swept away.

He turned on his heel and attempted to exit the ballroom in record time. Unfortunately, Terrence Higgs, one of the Legilimens under his command, was loitering near the doorway, watching the scene with hooded eyes. Draco tried to pass by him without engaging, but Higgs called out, “She give you the brush-off, mate? You want me to arrest her?” 

He felt the bile rise up in his throat just in time to push it back down – his esophagus burned in protest – before turning to look at Higgs. Higgs’ expression was intentionally amused as he tried to gauge Draco’s reaction. He wiggled his eyebrows, grinning suggestively.

If Draco wanted him to be kidding, he’d be kidding, and they’d both laugh it off as a ridiculous notion. If he wanted him to be serious, the smile would fade from his face and morph into something more sinister as he moved to heed Draco’s command. 

But Higgs’ expression gave him plausible deniability. It was standard practice when suggesting atrocities around here. 

Draco entertained a brief but satisfying fantasy of knifing Higgs in the gut in front of every single person in this ballroom. No one, probably, would try to stop him or blink an eye. 

“No.” He said it with as much cold finality as possible, watching Higgs stiffen. “You must be drunk to think you can joke like that with me. Go home, Higgs. That’s an order.” 

Only when he had reached his own warded rooms did he let his Occlumency collapse.

He felt his face crumple and he gritted his teeth against the intensity of the emotion crashing down on him. He leaned heavily against the stone wall, heart slamming against his ribcage.

He would never make flirtatious eye contact with a woman at a party again. Not after this. They weren’t attracted to him – they were afraid of him. Their interest was coerced at best, forced at worst.

Not even purebloods felt safe from the whims of the police now. He didn’t think the fear used to be this pervasive. Or maybe it had always been this way, and he’d just been in deep denial.

A familiar sensation began to bubble in his stomach, a wave of nausea and coldness, followed by an aching in his chest. He had the urge to crawl out of his own skin – discard his body and leave it there for a vessel that was less painful to live in. The aching intensified as he thought about his mother and Astoria far away in an Order safehouse, as he thought about the way Granger and Potter looked at one another, as he imagined what it might feel like for people to allow him into the actual warmth of their lives.

He dropped his chin to his chest and put a hand to his throat, trying to breathe through the aching.

The loneliness stole the breath out of his lungs.

Isla Petrova was right to be afraid of him. He'd gotten so used to inflicting psychological pain that he didn't remember how to do anything else. He'd destroyed so many of the people he interrogated, and that talent for ruination couldn't be contained to his professional life. It seeped into all of his personal relationships eventually – with his mother, with Astoria. 

He'd sent his mother and Astoria far away because they'd be safer out of the Dark Lord's grasp and also out of his. 

With a lurch, he realized that his poison would eventually seep into his relationship with Granger. 

Maybe not tomorrow or the next time he saw her, but a day would come when he would hurt her, too. 

He began to feel woozy with sickness as he considered Granger. He remembered the tiny tendrils of trust in her eyes – delicate, hopeful, bright as early spring. 

They were a lifeline for him.

He needed to crush them into the dirt before they became any stronger. 

The more she grew to trust him, the more she would shatter when he hurt her, and he would hurt her. Physically, emotionally – did the how and when of it matter? He would hurt her eventually, or else her growing closeness to him would endanger her, because he was surrounded by hyenas in the Dark Lord's court. If she came too close, she'd be devoured, by him or by them.

He blanched. 

He would have to drive her away and end their budding friendship. The sooner, the better.

He considered cutting off contact. He could just stop brewing potions with her, disappear from her life without explanation. 

That would probably disappoint and confuse her, but it wasn’t permanent enough. He needed to burn his bridge with her – otherwise he would be tempted to go back on his decision, especially if she tried to reach out or reestablish contact with him. 

He could be cruel. He could make her rue the day she’d met him. 

It would be like second nature. 

He didn’t want to do anything horrendous enough to upset the fragile stability they’d found – Potter’s mind was getting better. He wouldn’t jeopardize that.

But he could afford to be a little cruel. Enough to deter her from spending time alone with him. Granger was smart enough to understand that even if he didn’t like her, he was bound by the Vow to fulfill his duty to teach Potter Occlumency.

He resolved to do it tomorrow at their potion brewing session. 

He fell into bed, head throbbing with pain, and lapsed into an uneasy half-sleep. He dreamt of the very beginning of earliest spring – frenetic movement and tiny growths, sprouts of bright green leaves stretching tenuously towards the sunlight. 

~

He entered the potions brewing session with Granger strongly resolved to destroy any goodwill between them. The thought of doing so made him want to put his face underwater and scream without stopping, but she would be safer this way.

He watched Granger’s reaction as he entered the room. Her pretty, full mouth turned up slightly as she met his gaze. Her eyes, which seemed to spark like signal flares around Potter, were more wary and closed down around him. She still wasn't entirely sure he wouldn’t hurt her, but she was growing more comfortable and secure by the day.

He could hardly take his eyes off of her. He had the sudden, overwhelming urge to dive into her mind with Legilimency, to be absorbed into her. He Occluded that absurd notion and pressed his lips together.

He couldn’t unsee her through Potter’s eyes. He couldn’t unsee the way her face lit up when she invented magic.

It was a damned nuisance.

“Afternoon, Malfoy.” Granger’s voice was tinged with hopeful caution.

“A distinctly unpleasant one,” he replied. “My personal worst nightmare: stuck down in a dungeon with you, brewing a large quantity of the dullest imaginable potions." 

She looked unfazed by his bad attitude. A hint of weary fondness flitted into her face. “If we work quickly and cooperate, we'll be finished soon enough.” She picked up a beaker with a practiced motion and tipped some liquid into a cauldron.

Draco glared.

“You look like you’ve swallowed a Hinkypunk.” Granger’s brow creased with something like concern. “Your mood seems even fouler than usual.” 

He scrambled for something to critique. “If I’m honest, it really irritates me to see a Gryffindor down here tinkering with Severus’s cauldrons.”

This room had been like a holy place to him. The only place he ever looked truly at home.

Granger pursed her lips in mild disapproval. “Not tinkering. That's a very reductive description of what I do. I keep his cauldrons in good working order. He’d like that.” She raised her eyes again, scrutinizing his expression. “Is everything all right?” She fumbled around in her robe pocket. “Do you need more pain potion? I brewed an extra batch last week, just in case–”

He swallowed past the ache in his throat as he took in her expression. Even now, after he’d been overtly rude and hostile, she was attempting to ease his suffering and repair their relationship as best she could. 

“I’m fine,” he managed to snarl, too ashamed to accept her kindness. 

Wilting slightly, she tucked the offered potion back into her pocket. “Okay. Chop some valerian root, then.”

He bristled. “I’m not your assistant, you insufferable shrew.”

She threw a stirring rod at him, forcing him to catch it. “Then stir the decoction of herbs fifty-two times counter-clockwise and I’ll chop the valerian root. Just help me brew the potions, Malfoy.”

Best not to drag this out. He threw the stirring rod at her head, and she ducked to avoid being clocked. It shattered noisily on the table behind her. Her eyes went wide with shock. 

“You idiot,” she hissed, glaring. “That was a quartz crystal stirring rod. Snape only has one other.”

He grinned at her clear distress. “I’m here strictly in a consulting role today. I agreed to offer my wisdom and expertise, not spend hours slaving over cauldrons like some third-rate potioneer.”

Granger’s face turned so red that he thought she would combust. “I was under the impression I would have a brewing partner today. It will be almost impossible to tend all of these brews myself, and we cannot waste these ingredients. We’re running on fumes as it were. If I’d known you were planning to laze about, I would’ve asked Anthony to come help instead.”

“Who, Anthony Goldstein?” Draco sneered. “That Ravenclaw hack? No wonder you’re having so much trouble, if he’s your usual brewing partner.”

A potion burbled angrily at her from behind her back, threatening to spill over. She whirled around and tended to it, summoning the other crystal stirring rod while chopping valerian root with her other hand.

“You’re really not going to help me.” Her voice was icy but also tinged with confusion and the first hint of hurt.

“I can offer some suggestions for improvement of your technique. From over here.”

It felt good, in a twisted way, to watch her shoulders tighten with agitation. To watch her scramble for control. To disconcert her as badly as she had disconcerted him, with her hair and her eyes and her extraordinary magic.

He crossed his arms, leaned against the wall, and grinned fiendishly as she tried to save her potions from ruination for the next twenty minutes.

It was quite impressive, really. She appeared to be able to think about two things simultaneously and keep four separate potions straight in her head while using both hands to stunning effect. She must be ambidextrous.

“Your valerian root wasn’t chopped finely enough,” Draco said. He looked at his nails.

She shot him a glare. “I know that, you cretin,” she said, baring her teeth and hissing. “I just couldn’t chop it quickly enough – and it had to go in just now –” she cut herself off as she focused urgently on three other tasks.

“The infusion of wormwood isn’t fresh, either. I can tell by the color and texture.”

The back of Granger’s neck turned red. Her ears seemed to steam. “It’s the freshest batch we have with what we can forage and afford,” she snapped. “I’m not a miracle worker.”

“That much,” he said, “is obvious.”

He watched her dart around the room for the next hour, pivoting and whirling. She was practically doing somersaults to keep everything under control. He offered criticism in the most irritating and uncharitable way he could manage, and she became increasingly annoyed.

It made him slightly sick to watch her struggle and grow angrier with every snide comment, but his strong Occlumency also made it fascinating – like watching a train derail without having to feel the jolt of the collision.

Finally, she exploded and threw a vial of carbonic acid at him. He ducked, and it shattered against the wall behind his head, hissing. “Either shut up for the next fifteen minutes, or get out.”

He chose the first option but snickered as she adjusted the heat, hands shaking, and attempted to bottle four different potions in the span of three minutes. Vials and cauldrons were whirling around her head like balls being juggled in the air.

In the end, she managed to bottle every potion effectively – just barely. She hissed in pain as she burned her hand while juggling too many vials.

Nevertheless, all of the potions had been a success. It really was quite impressive, although he would rather die than admit that to her.

Granger wilted, hair three times bushier than usual, wincing as she applied essence of dittany to the burn on her hand. She looked close to tears.

“You’re worse than useless,” she said, face red and blotchy with exertion. “This may be a joke to you, but some of these potions are critical, life-saving tonics. I almost ruined them today by being two hands short.”

“You look a fright,” he commented blandly.

Her lips drew into a snarl, and finally, she detonated.

“Don’t you have anything better to do with your time than sabotage my potion-making? Being a mind rapist for Voldemort doesn’t quite sate your desire to inflict pain and suffering?” She was spitting her words in hatred, expression twisted into something unrecognizable. “Get out. Don’t ever come back down here, you useless brute.”

He froze. For a moment, his ears rang like a gong that had been struck.

Mind rapist.

The phrase cut through his Occlumency and went straight to his gut.

His stomach pitched and flipped over and then shriveled, seeing the revulsion in her eyes.

She’d told him to get out.

Only he deeply looked forward to spending time in her presence.

She was one of the only people in his life who looked him squarely in the eye and bantered without concern, as if he was his old self. Like he didn’t make people disappear at his whim.

He felt more like himself with her than he had in a long time. 

He felt like an animal with its foot caught in a trap. He wanted – fuck. Some part of him wanted her to look at him the way she looked at Potter, with approval and warmth and a subtle crinkling around her eyes. No amount of manipulation or threatening or violence would get him that.

His veins flooded with ice. 

He’d known walking into their brewing session that he would have to be cruel and say something unforgivable. He’d been stalling during her brewing, dragging this out, perversely enjoying his last few minutes of being in her presence, even though she was angry at him. 

But now, with her comment, she had just made his goal – finding the heart to say something cruel and mean it – so much easier. 

Her disgust and hatred hurt. And why did she suddenly have the power to hurt him? He didn’t remember granting her that.

He straightened from the wall to his full height. “You certainly love calling me brutal. It’s your favorite insult.” He smirked. “Funny, that.”

“Funny how?” She was burning with indignation.

Gryffindors took bait so easily. “Funny because I look like a damn amateur in brutality compared to you.”

She scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She looked so dismissive of that perspective that it made his head hurt.

“You know,” Draco continued, approaching slowly and indirectly, so that she didn’t become too alarmed, “I’ve spent considerable time in Potter’s head at this point, and I’ve noticed some interesting patterns.”

She capped the dittany and put her hand over her wand, frowning. He was too close for her comfort already. She growled her next words. “It’s private, whatever you saw. Telling me is a breach of Harry’s trust.”

“Oh, it’s nothing you don’t already know,” he said. “Potter’s childhood – well, it makes mine look like a damn picnic. Sure, my father was . . .” he paused, barking a laugh, “a disciplinarian who expected excellence, but at least he noticed me.” He paused and picked up one of the stirring rods, twirling it idly in thought.

He could practically see her heart rate starting to rise. She opened her mouth, probably to tell him to shut up, but he plowed on. “I’m not sure that you or I can understand what it was like for him. Being locked in that closet. Going hungry. Wearing rags. But that’s all–” he shook his head. “That’s bearable. The unbearable part is the emotional starvation. Being ignored when he spoke or when he cried. The constant searching and hoping for any tiny scrap of affection – and never finding it.”

Her eyes welled with tears. She was silent, so he continued. “After a lifetime of that kind of neglect – he would have accepted any love, from anyone. He just happened to meet you and Weasley first. His misfortune.” Her expression filled with confusion. He met her eyes, closer than ever now. “He’ll accept any treatment from you. Don’t you get that?” He shook his head, lip curling in disgust. “You could break his fingers one by one and he would cling to you with his broken bones and forgive you the next second. And, so . . . when you give him potions that are slowly but surely killing him, he takes them. He will continue taking them until the day they kill him, if it means keeping your love.” He leaned closer to her. “You’ve successfully weaponized your best friend at the Order’s behest. So don’t call me brutal, Granger.”

“No,” she said, voice small, “that’s not how it is–” But his words were already doing their damage, sinking hooks into her. She staggered back from him as if she’d been slapped, face crumpling. Too easy.

She made a choking sound. Her wand was still lying on the work table. He grabbed it and moved towards her in a flash.

He took hold of her robes and pulled her close, holding the wand to her neck. Her eyes were wide with terror.

Such a well-known expression to him. He was back on steady ground at last.

He said, “Lest you think you have the upper hand, this is a reminder that you do not.” He jerked her closer, face inches from her own. “Don’t forget for a single moment that I can easily disarm you, tear into your mind, and have you begging for my mercy if I so choose. Your wand won’t protect you, and the Vow won’t protect you.” Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates. “Same goes for Potter. I could make this training more painful for him than it is, even with the Vow in place. He is so easy to hurt, once you have his trust.”

Now, he had her stifling panicked sobs, like he had imagined. Pliable to his will. This felt more familiar.

Worse, but more familiar.

At least the revolted expression had been wiped from her face.

“I am only behaving myself in your presence because I choose to do so,” he bit out. “You’ve gotten far too comfortable with me, Granger. You will cease casually insulting me. You will cease throwing things at my head. And most importantly, you will keep your opinions about my work for the Dark Lord to yourself."

He stepped away, clutching her wand in his hand, and sauntered back to the door of the dungeon.

From extensive experience and from his father’s teaching, he knew exactly how much cruelty was enough to attain the desired effect.

And he knew – he needed to do a little more. He could barely bring himself to stomach it. He forced his voice not to break as he drove the dagger home. "You will behave yourself in my presence. If I see one hint of disrespect from you, I will grind you into the dirt. Do you understand?" 

She looked too shocked to respond – eyes wide, wet, and unseeing. Finally, she nodded. 

“Good," he barked. "I’ll leave your wand at the top of the stairs.” He flipped it through his fingers. “Don’t tell Potter about our little chat today, hmm? If you do, I’m certain he’ll Crucio me. But that won’t stop me from hurting him back. He still needs me. No escaping that.” 

He turned and began climbing the stairs, nauseous with a vicious satisfaction. 

Part of him hoped she would scream obscenities at him. Attack him from behind. Dig her nails into his skin, spit on him. 

But she didn’t do any of that because he had terrified her into stillness. 

She'd never speak to him again after this. 

He paused at the top of the stairs and looked down at her wand. He ran his fingers along the delicate vinewood carvings, marveling at how it felt beneath his hands. Beautiful – intricately carved, dense with complexity and power, and fiercely loyal to the person who wielded it. 

He pressed it to his chest and closed his eyes. 

Would it be so wrong to put a location-tracking charm on her wand?

He’d done this to keep her safe, after all. He might as well be thorough about the job. Potter seemed extremely paranoid about her safety, which comforted him, but it never hurt to have an extra precaution in place. He murmured the charm over the wand and felt the magic take effect. 

Placing the wand carefully on the ground and stepping away from it felt like wrenching something precious out of his hand.

He would retrieve his wand from Potter at their next lesson; he had a back-up at the manor and didn’t think he could bear to look Potter in the eyes right now.

He waited another thirty seconds before using the ring to disappear back to the manor, cocking his head to listen for sounds of movement downstairs. 

There was nothing but resounding silence.

Chapter Text

Hermione stood frozen, heart hammering, listening intently for any sign that Malfoy was coming back. Absolute silence indicated that he had gone.

She should be feeling something. She knew that. Instead, she was numb.

Zombie-like, she dragged herself up the stairs to retrieve her wand.

It had been chucked carelessly into a corner at the top of the stairwell. She picked it up with unfeeling fingers and pushed open the door to the hallway.

She climbed the stairs to the Gryffindor common room. A glance downward revealed that her hands were trembling violently, although she couldn’t feel it.

She paused outside the portrait hole, scrubbed the tear tracks from her face, and forced several deep breaths, attempting to stop the trembling in her hands.

She was fine.

Malfoy hadn’t actually done anything except threaten her. She wasn’t injured.

She recited the password and climbed through the portrait hole as quietly as possible, praying no one was in the common room. She wanted the safety and solitude of her dorm room.

Unfortunately, Harry and Ron were there. She paused beside the portrait hole, observing them.

The fire crackling in the hearth cast long, warm shadows on their faces. Piping hot mugs of cider wafted ribbons of steam, and a game of Wizard’s chess lay forgotten on the coffee table between them. 

With a jolt, she realized that Harry was smiling. Ron was telling a story, gesturing wildly as he described a chaotic scene in the hospital wing. Apparently they’d tried to do a vampire tonsil removal, and the process had not gone smoothly, involving several non-lethal puncture wounds and a snarly, delirious, drugged-out-of-his-mind vampire.

Harry’s smile – crooked, small, but genuine – was the first she had seen in months. A laugh burst out of him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard that sound.

Ron finally noticed her. “Oi! Hermione, what are you doing standing in the corner? Come over here, you weirdo.”

He waved her over, baffled, before resuming the story. Harry’s laughter was infectious – it always had been – and Ron was shaking with laughter too now.

She forced her feet to move towards them.

Their laughter was the best sound she had heard in a long slog of joyless, terrifying months.

Harry looked over at her, speech tinged with mirth. “How was potion brewing? Hopefully Malfoy didn’t give you too much trouble.” There was no real concern or suspicion in his voice – more of a put-upon amusement. She opened her mouth to say something that would deflect suspicion but realized that no words were coming out. Luckily, Harry didn’t notice. He took a sip of his cider, wrinkling his nose and blowing on it. “Are you already finished brewing? I figured you weren’t because Malfoy never came back to grab his wand.”

For the briefest moment, she considered telling them what Malfoy had said to her. She let herself linger in that fantasy – taking shelter in Ron’s arms while they discussed how to pulverize Malfoy together. She wouldn’t be alone with this. They wouldn’t let her be alone.

But Harry’s eyes were brighter than she’d seen them in months, and he looked like he actually believed they were safe.

She couldn’t bring herself to rip that away.

Besides, she didn’t deserve any of the safety or comfort they would provide. She didn’t deserve Harry’s laughter or Ron’s unconditional love, which was present even when he was furious with her for her choices.

She didn’t deserve any of their goodness.

Potter will keep taking the potions until the day they kill him, if it means keeping your love.

She would find a way to deal with Malfoy alone.

Hermione forced her vocal chords to unstick. “We’re finished. I’m exhausted, though. Going to kip a nap before dinner.”

She turned away, leaving them to their Wizard’s chess, dragging herself up the stairs.

The dorm room was mercifully empty.

Only once she had spelled the curtains around her bed shut and cast a privacy charm did she sink into the mattress and let herself crumble. Her breath hitched, and she drew in a gasp, like coming up for air.

Now she could feel her body. She was trembling, disoriented and dizzy. Beneath that, icy dread spread outward from the center of her core.

The thrum of the quiet, private darkness did a strange kind of alchemy that jolted her fully back to life. A sob exploded out of her, and then she was feeling all of it – Malfoy’s cruelty, the terror seeping slowly into her bones as he pulled her close.

When you give him the potions that are slowly but surely killing him, he takes them. He will continue taking them until the day they kill him, if it means keeping your love.

Malfoy’s words had sunk into her like poison roots unfurling. She knew they would burrow deeper with time and uproot her certainty like weeds, throttle her self-worth like strangler vines. She wouldn’t understand the full extent of their damage at first, and by the time she did it would be too late.

What Malfoy had said was unarguably true. How had she not seen it?

All this time, she'd been telling herself that Harry took the potions voluntarily, out of deep moral conviction for the Order’s mission. He wanted to win the war. He wanted justice and goodness to prevail. He wanted those things.

Now, she realized that he was acting out of fear of losing her love and friendship.

For someone with an upbringing like Harry’s, what she was doing was coercive. Worse than coercive. An ultimatum.

A violent wave of nausea rocked up her spine. She pitched over the side of her bed just in time, heaving her guts out. Heat seared her face and neck. She curled inward and tried to fight down another wave of sickness.

Harry would be far better off if he’d never met her in first year. 

At her core, she was rotten. Unfeeling. Ruthless. Brutal. Especially to the people she loved. More concerned with abstract ideals – justice, equal opportunity, freedom from oppression – than with the actual people in her life. 

She Vanished the vomit, raked her hands through her hair, and hunched over, shuddering at how quickly she'd placed her trust in Malfoy.

Stupid. Stupid.

She had been so naïve. So silly and idealistic. Malfoy had been kind to Harry a few times, helped her with one or two difficult potions, and thrown her scraps of emotional support ("You are a good friend to him, Granger"), and she'd let her guard down faster than a first year.

Was she really still so gullible? So easy to fool? Her eyes welled and spilled over with tears.

She had welcomed a wolf into their midst. Malfoy was vicious and unpredictable. For days at a time, he could project a reasonable, empathetic façade, only to lash out and reveal his true nature.

She wracked her mind to try to understand why his behavior had changed so drastically from one day to the next. It didn’t make any sense. Was he lashing out unpredictably as a form of emotional terrorism that kept them pliable to his will?

She had made a massive mistake placing even a small amount of trust in him. Now Harry trusted him too.

She pummeled the tears from her cheeks and pushed down the hurt twisting her stomach. This was her fault – she had given him the ability to hurt them.

She dragged a breath into her lungs and mentally hurled the sadness away. It stubbornly remained. She focused on Malfoy's face, his frigid eyes and predatory expression.

The hurt crystallized into anger. That felt more manageable. Anger was active, at least, and she could feel the fury thumping through her body at Malfoy for shattering her sense of safety. For demanding obedience and respect.

How dare he. Who did he think he was? Who did he think she was?

Did he think she would just curl up into a fetal position and cry herself to sleep? Show up to their next brewing session acting like a completely different person: obsequious, meek, respectful?

Malfoy posed a serious threat to their safety now. She would fix it by eliminating the need for him. 

His fatal mistake had been threatening Harry. 

Same goes for Potter. I could make this training more painful for him than it is, even with the Vow in place. He is so easy to hurt, once you have his trust.

If Malfoy had only threatened her, she might have found a way to compartmentalize it and move forward with their current arrangement. But the moment he’d threatened Harry, she knew she had to gut their deal.

Rage solidified her resolve. She would find a way to remove Malfoy from the equation. 

If she had to kill him to do that, so be it.

Any way she cut it, they still needed him for now, so she couldn’t kill him outright, not when Harry’s mind was still vulnerable.

She bit her lip and ran her hands along the etched carvings of her wand.

A pang of grief lanced through her chest as she realized that for the past few weeks, she’d shared some of the heavy burden of keeping Harry alive with Malfoy. It had felt so good to put down some of that weight for a little while. The thought of picking it back up again made her eyes fill with fresh tears.

Her mind went still, as it sometimes did just before a paradigmatic shift occurred. 

She waited.

Then: she’d been so preoccupied with defense – protecting Harry, securing the Vow, locking in Malfoy’s loyalty – that she’d neglected the possibility of going on the offensive. 

The prophecy had said that Harry needed to be the one to kill Voldemort, but she didn’t believe in Divination anyway.

What if she could find a way to hasten Voldemort’s downfall? Then Harry wouldn’t need Malfoy for protection anymore. 

There had to something they’d overlooked – a potion or spell she could invent, or another angle to approach this from– 

Her stomach curdled. She wasn’t foolhardy enough to think she could do this alone. She would have to go back to Scrimgeour and Order leadership for help.

It scarcely seemed better, relying on them for help – essentially a choice between a hammer and an anvil. At least Scrimgeour didn't lash out unpredictably or terrorize her at every opportunity. 

She forced herself up from the bed, drawing in a steadying breath. The sooner she accepted that Malfoy was a lost cause, the easier her next steps would be.

She needed to meet with Scrimgeour. She had failed at protecting Harry with Malfoy’s help. It was time to adopt a new strategy and seek allies elsewhere.  

~

Apparition was becoming too painful to endure. The compression intensified the agony in Draco’s head, which was near-constant now without pain relief potions. Nevertheless, after hours of performing interrogations, he Apparated from the police headquarters to the manor. The crack nearly split his skull in two. He stumbled through the gates, vision doubling slightly. Doing Legilimency clearly made his condition worse.

The wind turned blustery, almost howling, branches whipping against the gunmetal gray sky. He clutched his coat to himself and hurried inside, desperate to raid his medicine cabinet and down the strongest pain potion he could find.

It probably didn’t help that he hadn’t been sleeping much since what he’d done to Granger a few days ago. He kept replaying how wide her eyes went as he grabbed her collar and pressed her wand to her neck. His throat tightened involuntarily when he remembered the trust he’d painstakingly cultivated with her – how her defenses had come down brick by brick.

The dreams of her – the ones he’d been denying he was even having – had only intensified. Dreams of oversized jumpers, warm coffee eyes, magic blooming from her wand like the first notes of a nocturne exploding into color, the shape of her collarbone in the firelight, the smell of potions incense and flickering candlelight, all preludes to touching her lips, trailing his hand down her neck, lower still, the sobs he’d brought from her throat replaced by moans and gasps he could only imagine the sound of, and shuddering pleasure and his own blinding release, so strong that his vision whited out.

His days felt empty and monotonous without potion brewing sessions to punctuate them. Practically purposeless, except for his lessons with Potter. Occasionally he would catch a glimpse of her in Potter’s mind – biting her lip in thought, furrowing her brow, twisting her hair up into a knot onto her head. She looked troubled and paler than usual, but her eyes were still lit with compassion and determination.

She was safe and mostly unharmed. He’d hurt her a little to protect her from being hurt more.

He grimaced and pushed the memories from his head.

These feelings would fade with time.

He had done the moral, unselfish thing.

He clung to that empty comfort at night, just as he clung to images of his mother and Astoria living somewhere quiet and full of sunlight.

The foyer was dark and cold, a rarity these days, as Voldemort’s court had been using the Manor as a de facto home base for the past few years. Many members of the court had vacated the manor temporarily, given that the Dark Lord was currently abroad. Draco had instructed the house elves not to bother with lighting the fires in every room, as he was one of the Manor's few current occupants. 

He froze halfway down the hall. A light shone from the crack under the door of his father's study. 

For a moment paralysis set in, as it had when he was a little boy. He remembered creeping towards the closed study door as a child, waiting to be called inside, certain that his father could see straight through the solid English oak door and into the hallway. 

He shook off that lingering paranoia and squared his shoulders, trying to focus through his headache. 

Lucius must have returned earlier today from his two-week trip to Germany. Draco would have to greet him eventually, and sooner rather than later. He couldn’t afford to give the appearance of hesitation or avoidance.

He clenched his teeth and Occluded heavily before approaching and rapping his knuckles against the doorframe. 

"Come in, Draco."

His father's voice wrenched him forward like a hook in the gut.

He forced himself to open the door and greeted Lucius with a courteous, self-assured nod. All of his movements were carefully choreographed in his father’s presence, aimed to convey confidence and impartiality. "Welcome back, Father." 

Lucius was seated behind a burnished walnut desk, inking parchment in his distinctive scrawl, and didn’t look up. He held up a single, insistent finger as he finished the document. His strokes with the quill were crisp and slicing, head bent slightly to the task, spine straight as a rod.

Lucius took a full thirty seconds to acknowledge his presence, and in that span, Draco felt the self-confidence drain from his body. The assuredness he wore like a perfectly tailored suit out in the world seemed to warp and shrink in the immensity of his father’s office. The air was dark and heavy in here, difficult to breathe without choking. Bone-thin lamplight barely reached the mahogany wall paneling, mere lip service to the notion of proper lighting. The fire seemed to generate little heat or illumination, but the snapping and crackling of wood set his teeth on edge. 

He felt the urge to make himself smaller – hunch his shoulders, cave in on himself, tuck his chin to his chest. He badly wanted to fidget or shift his weight from foot to foot, anything to diffuse the unbearable tension of facing down his father’s silence. 

He kept his shoulders back, raised his chin, and remained still.

At length, Lucius met his gaze, mouth turning up slightly. "Apologies, Draco." He pushed back from his desk and stood up, making a small gesture toward the crystal decanters at the side of the room. "A drink, I think. Cognac?”

The question was so perfunctory that it was clear Lucius wasn’t looking for a real answer. He was already reaching for the decanter. Draco made a hum of assent.

“Don’t mumble, Draco.” The reprimand struck him as both unnecessary and infantilizing, but he felt himself speak a correction before he could think.

“Apologies. Yes, Father, a cognac would suit me.” He straightened and felt himself shrink another size.

Lucius didn't acknowledge his correction. He busied himself with the task of pouring two cognacs, measuring generous portions into each crystal glass. He turned to hand Draco the drink. The thought of drinking it with his raging headache made him sick, but he didn’t dare refuse.

“What should we drink to, Father?” He cupped the glass in his hand and swirled it, forcing himself not to wince at the pain in his head.

“Your mother’s safe return.” Lucius held eye contact for a beat too long, boring a hole in his forehead. Draco clinked their glasses without breaking his father’s gaze. After they drank, Lucius said, "There is much to talk of. Walk with me."

Lucius never made requests, only commands. He exited the study without waiting for Draco, assuming he would trail behind, and made his way toward the billiard room. It was Lucius's favorite room in the house, although Draco had always felt dwarfed there, even now. As a child, he had never been allowed inside, but the glances he had stolen revealed a room that was shrouded from his view by clouds of cigar smoke. Still, he caught glimpses of amber liquid glinting through crystal in firelight and heard the deep, low rumble of male voices discussing unknowable secrets, hushed and elliptical.

Lucius opened the doors to the billiard room and sauntered inside as the fireplace roared to life. "Diplomacy in Germany has been rather useful for keeping a pulse on how the rest of the magical world perceives our burgeoning nation-state."

"And? What have you learned?" Draco asked. Firelight warmed the cherry wood-paneled walls, casting long writhing shadows over the leather wingback chairs. Black tree branches clawed the double-paned windows, squeaking intermittently against the glass.

"International opinion remains against us, for the time being, but I am beginning to see paths to appeasing the International Confederation of Wizards and gaining respect on the world stage." He paused and seemed to be weighing how much to disclose. "Power is shifting quickly, Draco. It is important that the Malfoys remain on the crest of the wave, and on the right side of history." 

Draco inclined his head. "As we always have, Father."

Internally, he carefully recorded each of his father's exact words, filing them away for later analysis. Lucius seemed to be implying that the Dark Lord's influence in the regime was weakening, and that other parties were beginning to make bids for power. 

It made complete sense, of course. The Dark Lord was a fanatic – an ideologically rigid psychopath. He'd been instrumental at the beginning of the movement for radicalizing his followers, whipping them into a fervor, and drumming up enough support to launch a successful coup of Southern Britain. However, his hateful virility was not a sustainable foundation for a functioning government. The Dark Lord had come to power by surrounding himself with practical and politically gifted men: Lucius Malfoy and Corban Yaxley.

In the same way that Scrimgeour had made the Order politically viable, Lucius had used his influence, wealth, and charm to legitimize Voldemort. He managed the control of information coming in and out of the regime – he owned the Daily Prophet and personally vetted the propaganda that was distributed. He also managed the flow of information coming in by heading the intelligence police.

It was no coincidence that Draco was the lynchpin of that branch. Lucius utilized all of his assets very carefully and counted his son amongst them. 

"Any leads from the search committee on your mother or wife?" Lucius asked. He was always measured and unhurried, questions phrased as if borne of mere passing curiosity. He crossed the room to stand by the fireplace. Draco watched him swirl the cognac – the liquid made sharp, slicing motions, pitching precisely up to the rim of the glass but never tumbling over.

"None," Draco replied. "No sign of them or leads on who might have taken them."

Lucius drew in a breath. "Rather disappointing." 

Draco tried to discern his father's mood, but that was usually impossible. It set him on edge, to put it mildly. He would have to wait for some subtle expression or gesture that would eventually tip his father's hand. 

"Very," Draco said. Offering the least amount of emotional or verbal ammunition in any given conversation was the wisest course of action with his father. 

"Your mother's absence poses difficulties, you understand. Social, logistical, and otherwise. The optics are poor." 

Occluding heavily prevented Draco from visibly clenching his jaw. His heart rate increased slightly; without Occlumency it would have been hammering in his ears.

In classic form, Lucius was more concerned with impression management than his missing wife’s well-being. His father had always loved to show Narcissa off like a gleaming centerpiece on his mantle. Since she'd left, Lucius had been behaving as if a precious object had been stolen from him. 

His father’s fingers twitched spastically around his cognac glass as he brought it to his lips. For someone as self-possessed as Lucius, this was a clear sign of perturbation. "At least we've been able to do damage control in the Prophet. The party line is that they were taken against their will. That's the best spin, you understand." 

Draco tensed mentally and forced himself to maintain steady eye contact, pretending ease. Lucius's tone and his use of the phrase party line indicated that he did not fully believe they'd been taken against their will. 

"Regardless of the truth, I want them back." There was steel in father's tone beneath the velveteen assurance. "A man cannot be expected to command respect if he cannot even keep hold of his own wife. He begins to look ridiculous. Wouldn't you agree?" 

Draco made a noncommittal sound and allowed the horror to wash over him, coldness spreading from his gut into his chest. Lucius didn't care whether they'd been taken against their will or had run away – didn't care a whit for their current safety or comfort. Didn't care about their preferences in the matter. He wanted them returned: in any condition, under any circumstances, at any price. 

Draco had known that Lucius would hunt Narcissa down like a bloodhound. That was why he had waited to act until his plan to get her out was infallible.

In espionage, his father was his most challenging adversary, even above Voldemort. Although Lucius was not as powerful a Legilimens, he was more devious than Voldemort in many ways, a master chess player always several moves ahead of everyone else.  

Draco had spent weeks running through the plan to hide Narcissa and Astoria in his head, poking holes in it from every angle, thinking the way his father would think, trying to go a step further even than that, and using all the information he'd collected as an inquisitor to inform his choices.

He could only pray it would be enough. 

Lucius’s glass made a sharp, metallic knell as he set it on the table. "Where is my wife, Draco?"

With the Order. As far from your grasp as I could get her. 

The words were on the tip of his tongue and almost tumbled out. A bubbly warmth had been spreading through his chest undetected, and a millisecond too late, he realized. His father had dosed his cognac with Veritaserum. He had mistaken the warm feeling it brought on for the mere effects of the liquor. The truth serum was coursing through his veins now, and the urge to spill the truth was overwhelming.

Gritting his teeth, he settled for a carefully modulated version of the truth, which was easier to force out than a blatant lie. 

"Her whereabouts are unknown to me, Father." He drew in a steadying breath. "I wish she and Astoria were here as much as you do."

A flash of disappointment crossed Lucius's face. He knew his son was mostly immune to Veritaserum, but he'd clearly been hoping to catch him by surprise and receive an honest answer before Draco realized what he'd been dosed with.

Lucius suspected him of something, and the mere fact started to curdle his insides.

He knew the kind of mood his father was in now. The kind of mood that had compelled him to sit ramrod straight and frozen through hours-long dinners as a young child, that had made him warn the house elves to keep out of sight. This kind of mood made him observe Lucius with conditioned, hairpin attention, waiting for the inevitable moment his father would flip from the genteel, controlled stillness of his public persona into the violence he reserved for his private life.

He examined his son severely, looking down his nose. "Don't dissemble, Draco. I'm not a fool. You presume I don't know that you and your mother have been in each other's confidences?" 

He should have guessed. Lucius had spies everywhere, including elves, and he relentlessly surveilled even his own family. No occurrence in the manor went beneath his notice. 

“Mother likes to talk,” Draco answered, careful not to lie. “About this and that, usually. Her greenhouse, the chrysanthemums, her next gala.”

Lucius raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. Sometimes, he had the sense that his father was omniscient. Draco had cultivated an aura of omniscience around himself in his role as lead inquisitor. The key to controlling a population with fear wasn't to be truly all-knowing and all-seeing, which was impossible – it was to project the illusion of such, so that people began to censor themselves. He'd used his father's playbook to develop that reputation.

Sometimes, though, he believed that his father truly possessed the omniscience that Draco only pretended to. 

He bolstered his Occlumency and attempted to maintain an air of nonchalance. His life depended on it. But his head was being sautered open with pain and his vision was doubling again. He bitterly wished he'd taken a pain potion before attempting this conversation. 

Lucius crossed the room and hefted one of the billiard sticks into his hands. He twirled it idly, punishing Draco with the silence. His father was masterful at using silence like an acidic marinade. It would eventually break down even the strongest will.

"You know by now," Lucius intimated, "that I suspect you had something to do with their disappearance. Only, proof has been elusive. There is not a moment of your time that cannot be accounted for."

Nausea rocked up his spine, imagining the extent of his father's surveillance. At times, he thought he was paranoid, but now his worst fears were being confirmed. Lucius was always watching him, accounting for every moment of every day. Were there spies he didn't know about? Surveillance methods he hadn't discovered? 

He resisted the urge to swallow and raised a glib eyebrow. "Is there something you'd like to accuse me of?" He let that challenge hang in the air. Then, he pushed himself to act more convincingly than he ever had in his life. "I resent the fact that you suspect me. I have been working ceaselessly for the good of the Malfoy family name, and this is your thanks? Unfounded suspicion and paranoia? We should be focusing on our mutual enemies, Father." 

Lucius's expression remained impassive as he watched his son's performance. Almost as if he already knew it was an act but was silently gauging how much Draco had improved over the years. 

He took a step closer, and Draco flinched internally, remaining outwardly still.

His father spoke in a deadly soft tone, eyes flashing with a reptilian quality. "Draco, if I find out that you had anything to do with the disappearance of my wife, I will make you wish you had never been born." 

His Occlumency wavered. Lucius’s words had a way of burrowing deep as they could possibly go, dragging pure emotion out of him despite ironclad defenses.

Lucius took a few steps closer, twirling the pool cue between his thumb and forefingers. His father's choice of words opened up what felt like an endless pit of despair and rage within him. 

-the disappearance of my wife-

Not your mother. My wife. 

She was always his possession before she was anything else. He had no sense of Narcissa at all as a person separate from himself, with her own agency and volition. The idea that she had any identities more important than being his wife was unthinkable to Lucius. 

For a moment, his father’s Occlumency wavered, and he saw a flash of the humiliated, impotent man he had been during his stint in Azkaban. Helpless to protect his wife or child and a scourge to the Malfoy name. “You must understand, Draco.” He cleared his throat, hands tightening spastically on the billiard cue. “I disgraced the Malfoy name once, a failure of foresight and a deficiency in power I do not ever intend to repeat. And your mother – she is soft power. The kind the Dark Lord does not have. A smokescreen and a sparkling diversion. A symbol of gentility. Grace. Nobility. And I cannot be without her in the coming months. Do you understand me?”

Draco suppressed a bubble of hysterical rage. Lucius could not be without the symbol of a loving, devoted, noble pureblood wife at his side. Any warm body would do. It wasn’t Narcissa Celeste Black he wanted with her vibrant soul. Lucius didn’t care that she’d been slowly losing her mind from abusing Occlumency year after year. So long as she was here. Physically present and accounted for. 

It made him want to flay the skin from his father’s bones. 

Lucius’s expression flickered again: helplessness, impotence, and terror. 

But a desperate, despondent Lucius was also the most dangerous iteration of Lucius there was. 

Draco realized that he had frozen instinctively and was barely moving, watching his father for the moment he would explode into violence. He felt strangely paralyzed, thrown back into childhood, when using his fists would have been futile and using a wand, impossible. His father was the only person in the world who could still make him feel this helpless.  

Lucius lunged at him and slammed him back into the wall, pressing the billiard stick horizontally across his throat to cut off his airflow. “I said, do you understand me?”

Draco went limp – years of learned helplessness had conditioned him not to fight. His head cracked against the wall, and he felt a fissure open in his mind, swallowing him up.

Something was terribly wrong – something with his mind, from using Legilimency too much, and the physical force of his father's assault had pushed the damage over the edge. 

His vision began to spot, greying in and out like radio static. He knew he only had seconds before he fully lost consciousness. 

The last thing he saw was the changing expression in his father's eyes – shifting from tightly controlled rage to vindication to confusion and finally to something resembling panic. He felt his father release him swiftly from the chokehold, and after that, the greyness bloomed into blackness and roaring in his ears.

Chapter Text

She met Scrimgeour at Norcliffe Cottage in Wales, one of the Order's lesser known safehouses. Scrimgeour regularly used the seaside cottage as a private retreat for mulling over important decisions. She Apparated directly into a blustering gale and landed almost sideways on the stormy beach near the cottage. 

The wind whipped her loose hair about her face as she struggled to make her way to the cottage against the rain and the biting, briny wind. Pendulous black clouds siphoned the daylight from the sky, creating the illusion of evening.

Gritting her teeth, she stumbled up to the entrance of the cottage and spoke the password. She waited for the wards to come down and entered the cottage to low, flickering lamplight. Her teeth were chattering with the cold.

 She murmured a hasty Drying Charm, followed by a Warming Charm. Scrimgeour was usually alone when she met him at Norcliffe, so surprise registered when she noted three coats hung on the coat rack as she discarded hers and unwrapped her scarf. Who else was here? 

"Through here, Miss Granger," she heard Scrimgeour call from the study. 

She scraped her boots on the mat to dislodge caked sand and then tramped through the living area towards the study, noting a steaming pan on the stove and a bottle of red wine. 

Scrimgeour was the first person she saw in the safehouse office, sitting behind the oak desk. Casually, her eyes moved around the room to see who else was present, but she jolted as she recognized the man sitting on the couch. 

Corban Yaxley. 

Relaxed, hands behind his head, staring at her with a brutal face out of wide set eyes. 

She had her wand out in a flash. “Expelliarmus." Nothing happened – the spell brought back no wand. 

"Miss Granger." Scrimgeour placated her with his voice. "Please, lower your wand. I invited him here." 

She cast rapid-fire Disillusionments and countercurses to Dark spells that Yaxley may have used on Scrimgeour. Wand trained like a sniper rifle on Yaxley, she barked a question to Scrimgeour. "What gift did you give me at Bill and Fleur's wedding, and what was the exact phrase you used when you handed it to me?" 

He spoke almost before she was finished. "The Tales of Beedle the Bard. In the hope you found it entertaining and instructive." 

His answer took a few seconds to register, and even then, she didn't lower her wand. She stared bug-eyed at Scrimgeour, unable to process the situation or fully believe he wasn't Imperiused. 

Scrimgeour continued, "I can assure you, Miss Granger, that I am no happier to have him here than you are. He is here for urgent negotiations, as is Ambassador Hale."

She tore her eyes away from Yaxley to take in the room's third occupant, seated on one of the couches. Valence Hale, the ambassador from the International Confederation of Wizards. 

They were the last three men on Earth she would have expected to see sitting calmly in a room together, sipping mulled wine. 

She struggled for words. "What do you mean – what – "

What negotiations were there to be done with someone like Corban Yaxley?

Her eyes skittered back to Yaxley, but he was relaxed and apparently unarmed. Scrimgeour tried to soothe her again, but Yaxley held up a hand. 

"It's no bother," he murmured to Scrimgeour. "The girl can keep the wand in her hand if it puts her at ease." 

She had half a mind to hit him with a binding curse or worse. She couldn’t understand why Scrimgeour was acting so casual about his presence. This was their chance to arrest a notorious criminal with a list of war crimes longer than her arm. This was Ambassador Hale's chance to detain him on behalf of the Confederation.  

"What are you waiting for?" Her eyes went back and forth from Scrimgeour to Hale, mouth dry. "Why aren't you arresting him?"

Scrimgeour shook his head. "He has been granted temporary immunity for the purpose of entering into urgent negotiations. As unlikely as it may seem, I think you'd be interested in hearing what he has to say."

“Would I?” The hair on the back of her neck rose. Being in the same room with Yaxley was unsettling, and she only knew a portion of the crimes he'd been accused of. 

Scrimgeour nodded. "His propositions are directly relevant to you. That is why I invited you here today." He capitalized on her shocked silence and said, "I know this is alarming – it alarms me too. But please, sit down and endeavor to keep an open mind. Would you like some mulled wine?" 

He motioned to a steaming ceramic pitcher on the side table. She almost laughed. As if she would turn her back on Corban Yaxley to do something as trivial as help herself to a drink. 

The entire situation bordered on ludicrous. She asked, "How many people know about this meeting?" 

Scrimgeour folded his hands in front of him. "Myself, Kingsley, Ambassador Hale. And now, you." 

She swallowed but tried to hide her discomfiture, perching on the farthest seat possible from Yaxley, spine rigid, clutching her wand tightly. 

Nothing good could come from a meeting like this. And yet, she was too stunned to do anything but sit and try to gather more information about what might be occurring. 

Hale, seated to her right, was unnervingly still, and hadn't said a word. 

She turned her eyes to Scrimgeour, desperate for an explanation – something that would make this less disturbing than it currently seemed. 

Scrimgeour leaned forward in his chair and regarded her from across the desk. "Mr. Yaxley has proposed an exchange that would bring the war to a swift end." 

She tried not to openly gape at him. That was exactly what she had been hoping for, given that Malfoy was no longer a trustworthy ally.

Before she could respond, Scrimgeour said, "He will give us Voldemort. He claims he can allow Potter to deal the fatal blow." 

She felt her mouth fall open. Hale added, "Confederation sources confirm that this offer is credible. He has the leverage to do it."

For a moment, she had the sense that she was watching herself have this conversation from somewhere near the ceiling. She felt dissociated from her bodily sensations, like experiencing the scene through a shroud. 

She heard herself say, "In exchange for what?" 

Yaxley responded. "For your cooperation." 

A growing buzzing in her ears made it hard to understand. Yaxley’s gaze was fixed on her like the beam of a searchlight.

Her nerves were so shot that she must have heard something different than what he said. "I'm sorry, what–?"

Scrimgeour held up a gentle hand. "Please don't fret, Miss Granger. Allow me to clarify. The potions you invented that strengthen Potter's magic have not gone unnoticed by the opposition. They are unparalleled in the history of potioneering, and they are of great interest to many parties. The trouble is, no one seems to be able to replicate them." 

She felt rooted on the spot, eyes focused on a blank space of wall somewhere behind Scrimgeour's head. 

This couldn't be happening. 

She dug her nails into the palm that was clutching her wand hard enough to draw blood, trying to bring herself back into the room. 

They were all looking at her. Expecting an answer. Expecting a reaction. 

Words seemed out of her grasp, obscured by a thick, seeping horror. 

Scrimgeour continued speaking when he realized that she was not going to respond. "Those potions are priceless, you understand. They could be varied and altered to spectacular effect, sold at astronomical prices . . . mass produced, even, if you're able to reliably teach your technique to other potioneers." Scrimgeour's brow was creased, attempting to gauge her reaction. "They are precursors to massive wealth, with the right backers. Mr. Yaxley is requesting that you avail yourself to him and his allies for a limited amount of time.”

Mass produced. 

The phrase rang in her ears strongly enough that she jolted back into the room, into her body. 

Her heart was pounding, hands beginning to shake. Words came suddenly, in floods. "Those potions were meant only for Harry – as a one-time, desperate solution to a failing war effort. The ethics of using them are questionable at best, reprehensible at worst, and they aren't fit for mass consumption, they're detrimental to physical health, they take years off a person's life . . . they're a Faustian bargain and they were absolutely not meant to see the light of day after the war.” 

She'd planned to destroy the recipe the moment the Order won the war. She looked forward to that day with delirious desperation. 

Scrimgeour nodded in acknowledgement. "All of us in this room understand the ethical considerations of utilizing potions like these. We acknowledge that this would need to be a tightly controlled and regulated substance. Be that as it may, it would be a shame to see such brilliant innovation go entirely unused." 

She stared at him, throat closing in absolute disbelief. There were so many competing thoughts in her head that she struggled to grasp at the most urgent one. Steadying her voice, she asked Yaxley, "What would you plan to do with the potions?'"

Yaxley said, "Consider them a consolation prize for losing the war." He grinned. "We'd quickly amass enough wealth to buy an island, flee the country with our families, and avoid pesky international tribunals. No offense, Hale."

She looked over at Hale, blood rushing to her cheeks. The Ambassador was silent and still on the couch, expression unreadable, apparently more than willing to continue allowing Yaxley to speak. 

She closed her eyes and squeezed them shut, trying to marshal the cacophony of protests in her head. She addressed Scrimgeour first, unwilling to even look at Yaxley now. "Forgive me for stating the obvious, Minister, but selling weaponized potions to the opposition hardly seems like it would bring the war to a swift end."

Scrimgeour couldn't possibly be this stupid. She knew he wasn't. Deposing Voldemort would only be the first step in a long, drawn-out process of rounding up high-ranking Death Eaters, de-radicalization, reunification of Britain, and the dismantling of their well-oiled propaganda machinery. Supplying the opposition with potions capable of inflicting mass destruction would only prolong that process and put the Order at a greater disadvantage. 

Did he really think Corban Yaxley and Lucius Malfoy would turn and run once Voldemort was deposed? 

Scrimgeour answered her in soft tones. "I will speak more plainly with you than I ever have before, Miss Granger. The war is coming to an end. It will conclude with or without our consent. Potter and the Dark Lord are both substantially weakened. If we force another confrontation between them, I believe the victor of that battle would be left to chance." He steepled his fingers. "I would prefer to control the narrative, as would you. If Potter defeats Voldemort publicly, it would be a significant victory for our side. Logistically, but also optically – it would bolster confidence in the Order and sway public opinion more strongly in our favor than anything else would. I believe it leaves us in the best possible position for driving the narrative and controlling the tenor and substance of reunification." 

She stood abruptly, heart pounding so loudly that she could barely hear his final words. "You're talking as if – as if – no." She shot a glare at Yaxley. "My answer is no. I refuse to consider making backroom deals with war criminals in order to improve the optics of our victory. And, if these potions got into his hands, I'd hardly call it a victory. Only in the most myopic, short-sighted way." 

Yaxley leaned back in his seat and raised an unconcerned eyebrow at her outburst. 

She shook her head, feeling so disgusted and off-kilter that she could barely look at Scrimgeour. "I'm disappointed you would even entertain this, Minister.”

Yaxley said nothing, just watched their conversation unfold with shark eyes – black, emotionless, biding his time.

"Miss Granger, please," Scrimgeour begged. "I, too, agonized over whether to entertain this option. In the end, I chose to enter into negotiations for the good of the Order. I urge you to take time to consider this offer. It may be the only palatable one we receive." 

She bristled. "I don't need time to consider his offer. The answer is no." She smarted, shame starting to bloom in the pit of her stomach. "Either I leave or he does, Minister. Harry would have walked out before he even had a chance to open his mouth and spew this poison."

"Mr. Potter doesn't need to know about this meeting," Scrimgeour said. His eyes fluttered shut. "You do not require his permission to make decisions about your own inventions.” He paused, weighing his words. “You know, Mr. Potter would keep you out of every battle and mission, if we let him make decisions for you. He would keep you in a pristine, padded cage. Safe, but useless to the resistance."

She scoffed, chest and throat tightening as pressure built behind her eyes. Heat flooded her body. He was desperately twisting motivations, attempting to manipulate her in the most transparent possible manner. "That's not true. Harry wants what I want. Our interests are the same."

Scrimgeour regarded her coolly from behind the desk, brow furrowing.

"He's dying, you know." Scrimgeour's voice was soft and contemplative. She flinched. "Ending the war quickly may be the only way to see him live through it." 

She couldn't believe he was saying these things in front of Yaxley. "No, he isn't," she said. "The treatments, I oversee all of them. We're keeping him alive."

"You're doing your best," Scrimgeour conceded, "but we need to bring this war to an end before it destroys him."

She felt herself collapsing slightly on the inside. She knew in her heart that Harry was buckling under the strain of it all. She pulled her lips in, trying to hide the fact that they were shaking. 

Scrimgeour leaned forward. "How can you refuse this offer, when it is the key to quickly ending the war? Mr. Potter wouldn't approve, but he will destroy himself if he thinks it will keep you safe."

Tears sprung into her eyes, but she blinked them away quickly. Scrimgeour had truly pulled out all the stops, but she could see his manipulation clear as day now.

"No," she said again. She forced finality into her tone. 

"Very well." Scrimgeour’s mouth turned down as he accepted her decision. “I’m afraid I must ask you to leave, Mr. Yaxley. Miss Granger insists.”

Yaxley rose to his feet. He appeared entirely unbothered by her refusal, which unsettled her. "This is disappointing, but there are plenty of other ways this can end. Plenty of other parties interested in a choreographed armistice. None of them are as favorable to you, of course."

His eyes raked over her, personalizing his comment.

"Good day, Rufus. Ambassador." He strode from the room as if he had somewhere far better to be. 

Valence Hale also rose from his seat and made his excuses before following Yaxley. Clearly he had only wanted to present for the negotiation portion of the meeting.

She shivered and tried not to feel hollow as she turned back to Scrimgeour. He looked like a different person – or perhaps more like the person he had always been. Her stomach was in knots. She felt a wrenching sensation in her gut that was difficult to ignore. She had no idea what it meant. 

She swallowed around a lump in her throat. Scrimgeour had made a bad choice entertaining Yaxley's proposition, but clearly he'd seen reason when she'd reprimanded him. Hadn't he?

She banished her unease by pulling up an image of Malfoy's cruel, unyielding gaze as he gripped her collar and held her close, wand pressed to her neck, face inches from her own. 

The Minister was safer. 

Scrimgeour looked down at the desk for a few moments, brow creased and troubled. The hand resting on the desk curled into a loose fist before he removed it and seemed to come back to the room. 

He cleared his throat. "I do apologize for exposing you to that ugliness, Miss Granger." His face spasmed with distress, a rare loss of composure. He massaged his forehead briefly with his hand – she noted it was trembling slightly. "You must understand, Corban Yaxley is a man I personally detest. It brought me no joy to bring him here, but I fear we are running out of palatable options.” 

The tremor in his hands frightened her. He must be under a great deal more stress than she realized. “What do you mean?”

“Only that our resources are running low. I know you’re aware that we struggle every year to scrape together the necessary funds for our basic needs.”

She pulled her lips in with anxiety. “Well, selling weapons to the opposition isn’t the option I’d choose as a first-line solution.”

Scrimgeour hesitated before saying the next part. "There is another route we could take. One that I didn't want to mention before."

She exhaled slowly through her nostrils. It would have been nice to have all options on the table at the beginning of the discussion, but Scrimgeour was clearly only divulging information at the pace he wanted to. 

She managed, "What other option?"

"We may have finally located the Corona Borealis." 

She forced herself not to inhale sharply. "That crown has been lost for two millennia." 

Ginny, in the years leading up to her death, had searched tirelessly for it, convinced that it was the crucial advantage they needed to win the war. It was the crown of Ariadne, a powerful mythical object, as steeped in clairvoyance as the Mirror of Erised. When placed on the wearer’s head, it was purported to show multiple possible future realities and the choices needed to reach them. 

It could show them how to win the war. 

"An old Greek historian came out of the woodwork last week, provided us context we didn't have before," Scrimgeour said. "We were able to narrow down a likely location for the crown – Dionysus's temple in Argos."

She sat back in her chair, thinking how excited Ginny would be at this turn of events. She felt a surge of adrenaline. It was intoxicating – the idea of getting straightforward answers. 

She'd been grappling with questions of how to win the war on her own for far too long. 

Frowning, she asked, "That temple still exists? I thought it had been destroyed."

"To Muggle eyes, yes, but it's been magically preserved and warded. A museum of sorts now owned by a wealthy Greek wizarding family. But the crown itself is buried with Ariadne's urn in the catacombs below the temple." Her mind was whirring with this new information. “We have reason to believe it is protected by ancient, complex Dark curses, some of which may have no known countercurses." He gave a huff of dissatisfaction. "We would need someone with rapid casting time, powerful curse-breaking skills, and the ability to deconstruct complex Dark magic – God only knows what kind – on the fly. The only person qualified for the extraction job is you." 

She fidgeted with her wand. No one else in the Order had that particular skillset. Scrimgeour seemed to intuit her next question. "We could provide a cursebreaker from the ICW to assist you."

"The curses aren't what worry me," Hermione replied. Although perhaps they should. "There's bound to be private security on the premises. What do we know about that?"

Scrimgeour said, "It's an old, narrow building with several chokepoints that will likely have security guards, even at night. We'll have to scout the location of the underground vault that houses the graves. There are rumors of supernatural security at the vault level – Phaedra and draugr." 

She had never encountered a Phaedra before and she preferred to keep it that way. They were rare magical creatures – dark, phantasmagoric female shades that often appeared to guard the tombs of queens, empresses, and Pharaohs. Those who saw them in the flesh rarely lived to tell the tale.

Scrimgeour must have sensed her hesitation because he said, "We can send you with a skilled team of Aurors. They'll handle the security. Your job would be to focus on breaking the Dark curses around the tomb."

"Is there any chance of Death Eater interference?" she asked. "They were searching for the crown too, if I recall, and Greece is a neutral country in the war. We won't have established the wards and Apparition points to make a quick escape if things go south."

Scrimgeour steepled his fingers and looked out at the storm for a moment. "We needn't worry about interference from them yet, but we should complete the extraction soon. No telling how quickly information unearthed by the historian will reach the wrong ears." 

She narrowed her eyes. "And why not tell me about this option before haggling with a war criminal to barter dangerous weapons? It seems to be the better choice." 

"That is a matter of opinion," Scrimgeour answered, straightening his glasses. "Personally, I believe that Yaxley's offer may be the most peaceful and controlled denouement to the war that exists." He took in her bullish expression without reacting. "We’ll agree to disagree on that point, I suppose." 

She considered in silence. It sounded like a fairly risky mission, but she also knew that they were running out of options. Scrimgeour must have read it off her face. "You'll have the most competent Aurors in the Order. I promise to keep you safe. Mr. Potter would never forgive me otherwise."

She didn't believe that Scrimgeour had much particular concern for her well-being, but she did believe that she was a valuable enough asset to the Order that he wouldn’t risk her needlessly. 

Harry was still too weak from his treatment to be able to accompany her any time soon, and Ron was desperately needed in the hospital. They wouldn’t risk him on this mission, given that he didn’t have the combat skills for dangerous magical creatures.

She would have to go without them, as uneasy as the idea made her. Grimacing inwardly, she thought about what it would be like to inform them that she was going on a dangerous cursebreaking mission on foreign soil. Imminently.

They would try to stop her, of course. 

Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Harry had enough on his mind without having to worry about this, too. 

"When?" she asked, squaring her shoulders. 

"We could have a team assembled by Monday evening."

Three days from now. 

She would have to come up with a believable cover story to tell Harry and Ron before then. 

~

The mission might actually have succeeded, if not for the demon. 

John Dawlish – their overconfident, blustering mission leader – was mostly to blame. 

He had set the tone from the moment he walked in the pre-mission debriefing – late, she noted – by asking that the intelligence analyst start from the beginning. He took a seat at the head of the conference room table and crossed his arms, furrowing his impressively bushy ginger eyebrows, firing questions at the analyst and interjecting his own commentary. The other team members were comparatively silent. 

She didn't know any of the Aurors in her security detail very well. It consisted of several former DMLE Aurors: Stephen Williamson, Rose Zeller, Jacob Proudfoot, and Roger Davies.

She knew Rose and Jacob vaguely from speaking with them a few times but had never even spoken to Roger or Stephen. John Dawlish, on the other hand, had a reputation for being a competent but overbearing mission leader. 

She felt uneasy, not knowing the team's combat strengths and weaknesses or their potential blind spots. Bitterly, she wished that Scrimgeour had thought to assign at least one person she knew and trusted to the security detail. 

When Hermione voiced concerns about the lack of intelligence regarding the number of guards and temple layout, suggesting that they perhaps do preliminary reconnaissance first, Dawlish dismissed her comment. 

"Your role in this mission is as cursebreaker, Hermione. Let us worry about getting you in and out. You just focus on doing your job, and I'll focus on doing mine."

Cursebreaker sounded like a diminutive. Clearly he viewed her as a specialist who was used to cushy assignments and needed coddling to get her job done. 

On the other hand, he viewed himself as a battle-hardened generalist whose job was more important and difficult than hers.

She fixed him with a cold glare. "With respect, John, I will be on the ground during this mission too, and I want to understand our risks and liabilities before walking into what could be a more dangerous situation than we currently understand."

Dawlish leaned back in the chair and put his arms behind his head, regarding her with a vague smirk. "You may be used to a certain level of special treatment on missions, given who your best friend is, but I will remind you that Rufus Scrimgeour named me mission leader, not you. Your concerns are noted, but I will make the final call." He broke her gaze and gestured impatiently to the analyst. "Continue, please." 

Her blood boiled for the remainder of the meeting as she tried to focus on the logistics and not the fact that their mission leader seemed like an overconfident dunce. Dawlish appeared wholly uninterested in several important details, brushing them aside with overgeneralized statements. 

Her mind unwillingly went to Malfoy’s warning: you are the Order's biggest liability, you know. 

He had made her promise not to go on risky missions or expose herself to danger. 

But she didn’t listen to Malfoy anymore.

Nevertheless, Malfoy would be furious if he knew how casual Dawlish was acting about security. She was angry, too, but short of backing out of the mission, there was nothing she could do. Her diplomatically worded concerns fell on deaf ears. 

Now, crouched with the other members of the mission outside the gates of the Temple of Dionysus, following one International Floo trip and an uncomfortable broom ride, she felt vindicated in her paranoia, and even more miffed at Dawlish.

The more information she’d gathered, the less she liked  the idea of robbing the place. 

For one, her research on the family that currently owned the temple had sent up several red flags. The Fourlis family were essentially the Malfoys of Greece – powerful, well-connected Purebloods who could trace their lineage and multigenerational wealth back to ancient Greece. One of the sons, Belen Fourlis, had joined the Death Eaters a few years ago and abandoned his family seat. 

Probably a solid indicator of the family's political leanings rather than one bad apple, if she had to venture a guess. 

The Fourlis family was also rumored to have connections with organized crime – she didn't want to think about what might happen if a family like that caught a Muggle-born trying to steal a priceless Dark artefact in this political climate. Muggle-borns went "missing" all the time – probably a mixture of Death Eater kidnapping and the anti-Muggle-born sentiment that had already existed prior to their takeover of Britain. 

Blaming the disappearance of Muggle-borns on Death Eaters usually worked well if you wanted a quick, bulletproof excuse that wouldn't be investigated very thoroughly by local police. 

She shivered. This family had deep pockets, so their security measures were undoubtedly state-of-the-art. Her security team’s pre-mission debrief had contained a startling lack of details about information as basic as how many guards were posted at night and what the above-ground layout of the temple looked like. Information was clearly kept well-concealed by the Fourlis family, given the number of priceless artefacts that the museum housed. 

The gates surrounding the grounds were imposing by themselves, black iron-wrought bars with jagged tops. On the grounds, she saw signs of movement – guards with wands in their hands who seemed to circle the perimeter.  

The temple itself was guarded by gargantuan statues of Dionysus, sentinels staring bleak and lifeless straight ahead into the darkness, exuding removed godliness.

“Bloody hell. Is this place a museum or a fortress?” Dawlish muttered. 

Flanked by the statues, the marble doors to the temple were massive, twenty feet high, carved entirely of raised reliefs of men locked in battle, stabbing one another with spears and knives from above, below, and sideways – nonsensical chaos. 

"Looks like a fortress to me," Roger murmured in response. He exchanged a brief, put-upon glance with Hermione.

"The plan stays the same," Dawlish replied, surveying the landscape – dark, craggy, and lit only by blue-grey moonlight. "Rose and Roger will sneak in first to neutralize the guards by the entrance. There look to be four, and if you take them silently, we can avoid raising the alarm. Hermione, Stephen, and Jacob with me. We're to go up the center and find a way inside the temple. Maintain a visual on Hermione at all times." 

Rose and Roger nodded before slipping through the gates and making silent progress towards the wandlight in the distance. 

One wand extinguished as a form crumpled. Two, then three. The last one wavered before snuffing out. 

"That's our cue," Dawlish muttered. "Hermione, stay behind me." 

They crept closer to the temple entrance, crouching low to the ground. Their position was too exposed for her comfort, heart thudding in her ears, making it hard to hear anything else. 

The plan went to bunk quickly when Jacob was hit squarely in the chest with a streaking red curse, crumpling with a strangled gurgle. She dove to the floor and narrowly missed being hit by a twin curse. Her eyes followed the trajectory of the spell as she army-crawled forward, muttering a second Concealment charm. "From the roof," she hissed at Dawlish, who was also flat on the ground. 

She couldn't see their assailants – they must be well-concealed. Dawlish hurled a blind spell toward the roof and hit nothing. Pausing in her crawl towards the temple, she cast the most powerful Disillusionment curse she knew. Immediately, the guards on the roof became visible, and she took one out with a hasty Stunning spell before he realized what had happened. The other one started firing spells, returned by Williamson and Dawlish. 

She made it to the entrance of the temple as sparks from spells showered the air. So much for subterfuge. They had definitely triggered whatever alarms existed, and more security would likely be on the way within minutes. 

She needed to do this fast. 

Trusting that Dawlish and Williamson could handle the rooftop guard, she narrowed her focus to deconstructing the blood malediction curse on the doorway. Arithmancy equations and numerology charts whirred through her mind as she muttered the words of countercurses as quickly as they came to her. Her focus was so intense that she lapsed into a kind of trance, oblivious to the incoming sensory information. 

The curse melted under her spells, bright red, seeping into the earth like a slow-acting poison. 

After that, a spell as simple as alohomora sent the doors scraping open, allowing entrance into the temple. Hermione ducked to the side and cast hominem revelio to confirm that there was no one waiting to ambush her.  

She glanced at Dawlish, who was still engaged with the sniper on the roof, and knew she ought to wait for one of them, but time was critical now that they had made such a commotion. 

She slipped silently inside, refreshing her Concealment charm, wand gripped tightly in her hand. 

Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness – the only illumination in the temple was cool moonlight pouring through the windows, suggesting shapes of towering pillars in blue and grey. There was an underwater quality to the entire space, muffled and rippling. 

The temple walls were narrow and close, although the ceiling was so high that it stretched into yawning gloom. The entryway narrowed to a corridor wide enough for only one person to pass through, apparently opening up into a larger second room. 

She started to move carefully toward the corridor, only to jump slightly at a "psst" from behind her. It was Dawlish, bushy eyebrows drawn down in disapproval, holding a finger to his lips. A chunk of his hair had been shaved off by a spell, giving him a slightly deranged appearance. He motioned for her to let him go first through the narrow part of the temple, gesturing for Williamson to stay behind her. 

She nodded tightly. 

Dawlish crept forward. The temple was silent as a grave. In the shadows, she could see shapes of artefacts mounted on stands and protected by glass cases. Any spellfire in this narrow space would result in glass shrapnel that could be deadly if not properly shielded. She hoped it wouldn't come to that.