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Back when the war started, Hermione never thought that it could be this long. She imagined—they all did—that it would be over quickly. They had the Chosen One on their side, after all, and a road map, the plan that Dumbledore had left behind for them. Seven Horcruxes, three Hallows, one cryptic will. Simple.
But old men in their towers have always been able to keep their hands clean and the war is darker and bloodier and longer than any of Dumbledore's well-meaning plans. They've destroyed five of the seven Horcruxes, the snake still at Voldemort's side and the diadem buried somewhere in the corridors of Hogwarts, and Harry has two of the Hallows, cloak draped across his shoulders and stone buried deep in his pockets. And somehow, it's still not enough.
They smuggle Muggle-borns out of England and across the channel to France or all the way across the Atlantic to America, where the American wizards have been eying the situation warily with one hand on their wands. They sabotage Death Eater projects with devices that Fred and George once designed for their joke shop, dangerous things tucked away in brightly colored packages. They fight and they run and they plan and there's still something missing.
It's a hot summer day when Draco Malfoy marches out of the woods and declares that he wants to join their side.
No one believes him at first. Ginny wants to tie him to a tree and leave him there, Ron wants to extract every bit of Death Eater information they can get and then wipe his memories, Luna wants to remove the wrackspurts from Malfoy's head, and Hermione...Hermione looks at the ghosts in Draco Malfoy's eyes and thinks that she might recognize them. “He never wanted to kill Dumbledore in the first place,” she argues, pacing around their tent. “He was sixteen and scared and trying to protect his family.”
“His family are all Death Eaters,” Ron snaps and scowls up at her. “I wouldn't trust the git as far as I can throw him.”
“So not very far then,” she mutters under her breath and almost immediately regrets it. She and Ron fight and make up and then fight again even now when they're not Hermione and Ron anymore, almost like a never-ending tennis match. (Not that she's played tennis in years, or that anyone besides Harry would even pretend to understand the Muggle metaphor.) They lob disagreements back and forth and hold every previous argument in reserve to backhand down the court and she's so tired. Not just of the arguments with Ron, but of the camps in the woods that they have to abandon in the middle of the night and of the scars that crisscross her stomach and of the way the list of the dead just keeps on growing. She never says it, of course. The Hermione Grangers of the world are not allowed to be tired. But maybe neither are the Draco Malfoys. And she looks at the purple shadows under his eyes and the cuts and bruises that range up and down his arms and she knows that they trade in the same kind of exhaustion. That maybe both of them want this war to end so very badly that they don't care what it takes to do it.
“He could have given us away at Malfoy Manor and he didn't,” Hermione adds, shuddering at the thought of their narrow escape. They'd been found by Snatchers and Malfoy had pretended not to recognize them when they'd been shoved in front of him for inspection. Harry and Ron thought that maybe he hadn't known it was them underneath the disguising charms but she had seen him hesitate, gray eyes fixed on the ground and mouth twisting, a million and one calculations probably racing through his head, and, no matter what anyone else believed, she'd seen him choose. He'd fixed his gaze back on them with a perfectly blank face and straightened his mouth and lied with the stunning ease of someone who'd done it far too often.
“But why now?” Harry asks. “What could have made him finally snap?”
“His father's dead and his mother's been a prisoner at Malfoy Manor for almost three years now,” Luna says quietly. “That's not an easy thing.”
They all fall silent for a moment at that. The Weasleys are still fighting for the Order of the Phoenix, tucked into some underground hideaway or hidden at Shell Cottage, but many of them don't know where their families are. The Patil twins' parents haven't been heard from in months and Dean Thomas sent his Muggle parents out of the country, with a ticket whose destination he didn't know, just in case he got questioned and captured. Xenophilus Lovegood is most likely dead, no sign of him after an explosion at the Quibbler. Hermione's own parents are in Australia, blissfully unaware of the fact that they ever had a daughter. Even purebloods who refused to go along with Voldemort's agenda, the old Slytherin families who remembered when cunning was a word and not a condemnation, have been murdered and fled Britain. Loss is the language that they all speak now and Draco Malfoy speaks it like it's his mother tongue.
“How do we know you won't go running back to the Death Eaters the moment we turn our backs?” Ginny asks, chin held high and arms folded across her chest. They've put him in a small tent, hands magically bound together and under guard, and now they're surrounding him on all sides. The judge and the jury, Hermione thinks, and wonders who would be the executioner.
“They killed my father and only kept my mother alive as a hostage,” Malfoy says flatly. “Funnily enough, things like that might make you change your mind about going around in a robe and a mask murdering people.”
“Aren't you worried about what'll happen to her when they find out you've gone?” Hermione points out and refuses to feel bad about it when he winces. At fifteen, she nearly branded a girl as a sneak for the rest of her life (even if she slipped the counterspell under the door of Ravenclaw Tower, late at night when no one could see her) and at nineteen, she can't let herself care about Draco Malfoy's haunted eyes.
“My mother can take care of herself.” Malfoy's mouth compresses into a flat line and that's all he'll say on the subject. “I'm not the only one, you know,” he adds after a minute. “There's lots of us, Slytherins who grew up being told they were going to turn out bad no matter what and who'd like the chance to prove otherwise.”
“Then where are they?” Harry asks and throws his arms out wide. “Afraid to come out of hiding and declare for our side?”
“Smart, not afraid,” Malfoy corrects. “It takes more than Gryffindor bravery to win a war. The people who wave swords and charge into battle usually end up dead. What we can give you is--”
“Three pieces of information,” Hermione blurts out. Everyone turns and stares at her. She keeps on going, because she's done with running in circles and into dead ends and she'll take what she can get, even if it comes in the form of sharp angles and sharper words and a smirk that itches its way underneath her skin. She never thought she'd be striking any kind of bargain with Draco Malfoy but then she never thought she'd know what fresh blood looked like on her hands either. (It stains her skin scarlet and sends a coppery taste crawling down the back of her throat and never seems to come off her clothes however hard she scrubs.) “You can pick what kind, but three pieces of information. We'll see if they pay off and if they do, you're welcome to stay. If they don't, we'll wipe your memory and send you running back into the forest. Deal?”
“Deal.” He holds out his hand. She shakes it. Something goes racing up her spine.
He's not lying. He tells them the locations of Death Eater prisons and the schedules for security patrols, the guards the Order can bribe or incapacitate in order to get their people out, the people likely to waver and turn their coats, the plans for raids, the supply caches that the Order then blows up or steals. And slowly, steadily he gives them name after name of Slytherins who want to join in the fight. He's building a network of spies, Hermione realizes while she's watching him one day, bent nearly double over a sheet of parchment filled with code in Daphne Greengrass' neat handwriting. The sun catches the edges of his uncut hair and slides along the back of his careful hands and she remembers watching him stare down the parchment the same way in Ancient Runes. (When did she watch him in Ancient Runes?)
“How do you know so much about ciphers?” she asks quietly. He turns and blinks at her like he can't believe she even asked the question. She can't either. “Wizards can just say a few words and make the words on a piece of paper disappear and reappear.”
“Exactly. Breaking codes takes time and patience.” He taps the parchment with the end of his quill. “Something a lot of wizards don't have. Just like that riddle you solved first year, when you and Potter and Weasley were off getting house points for breaking rules. It was a bloody easy riddle, of course, but the principle's the exact same.”
“That's brilliant,” she breathes. Of course Death Eaters wouldn't bother with anything that couldn't be solved by waving their wands a few times, anything that seemed even remotely Muggle. She wishes that she'd thought of it herself and already her mind is racing ahead, wondering what else they can use these for.
“Thank you,” he says, coloring slightly. “When we were first and second years, Theo and Blaise and I taught ourselves codes just for fun. When we got older, we realized that we didn't always know who was listening.”
“It's a book cipher, isn't it?” she says as she leans over his shoulder. “What are you using for it?”
“The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. Thought it was appropriate. We only use this one for low-level information, though,” he adds absently. “Too easy to crack.”
“That's a Muggle book. Le Carre.” She read nothing but spy novels for a month, the summer in between fifth and sixth years. When Harry and Ron asked her about it, she said it was for strategic purposes and they just nodded and shot each other a knowing look. Just like Hermione, to not be able to relax even on vacation, to make everything she did into one long bout of tedious research. What they didn't understand was that Muggle books were their own kind of escape for her, a world without Death Eaters or dementors or the elaborate wizarding traditions and codes she still couldn't seem to decipher.
“I read, Granger.”
“Muggle books? Really?” She narrows her eyes at him. The Draco Malfoy she knew, the pale-haired boy with the permanent twist to his mouth, wouldn't have touched a Muggle book if you'd promised him the House Cup.
“There was a library near where my aunt Andromeda lived. We went to visit her once or twice, when my father was away on a business trip. She and my mother spent most of the time arguing anyway,” Malfoy adds quickly. “I didn't have anything to do but read. Besides, have you read many wizarding books? Bunch of rot.”
“Exactly! Remarkably unrealistic romances set in 19th century England with absolutely no attention to historical accuracy. You know, there's absolutely no evidence that any of the Bronte sisters were witches,” she huffs. Malfoy smiles, just a little. Then he turns back to his parchment and they don't speak for the rest of the afternoon. But she stays anyway. There's a potion she needs to work on and she may as well do it here, in the silence and stillness that the rest of the camp completely lacks. War is a messy business and their camp is a constant rush of people and papers and plans, everything coated in the mud and the mist that seems to cling to them wherever they go. It's embarrassing to admit it, but what Hermione misses most about her life before is the Hogwarts library.
“I don't suppose you brought any books with you when you decided to defect?” she asks him a few days later. She's gotten into the habit of working alongside Malfoy when she can. Not because she enjoys his company, of course. Because he's easier to work beside than Ron, who's a brilliant strategist but can't seem to sit still for a minute, or Harry, who's constantly being called away to deal with every problem that arises, or Ginny, whose solution to most problems involves a well-placed hex and a death stare. He's quiet and only takes up a corner of the camp table, stacking parchments on top of each other rather than letting his papers spill across the table, and even though tension is coiled into every inch of his body, Hermione feels calmer when she can spot the flash of his white-blonde hair out of the corner of her eye. (She doesn't know why. She doesn't want to think about why.)
“Not all of us are walking libraries, you know,” he drawls but he turns back to his pages a little too quickly, cheeks stained faintly pink. Later that day, a battered paperback copy of Possession turns up on her side of the table. She reads it cover to cover twice.
Slowly, steadily, they learn to shape their days of work around each other's rhythms. They sit on opposite sides of the camp table, her with her potion ingredients and ancient spellbooks and him with his scrolls of code, two steaming cups of weak tea between them. (Tea leaves aren't exactly a supply priority.) And they work. Sometimes—more and more—they talk. And sometimes (more often than she wants to admit) she passes a problem across the table to him.
“Have you ever made anything like this? Because I think it's impossible,” Hermione declares and passes him a faded potions book that seems to date back at least three centuries and promised her a failproof recipe for a particularly tricky memory potion. (It lied.)
“It's not impossible,” he says, eyes scanning the pages rapidly. “I mean, the way the idiot who wrote this does it, it's impossible. But if we make a few modifications, we just might be able to pull it off. If we add in some dragon's teeth--”
“And where are we supposed to find dragons' teeth in the middle of the Forest of Dean?” Hermione demands.
“Find a dragon, of course. I'm kidding, Granger,” he says when she shoots him a horrified look. “I'll get some from one of my sources.”
Three days later, a neatly wrapped brown paper package containing eight dragons' teeth and a variety of illicit potion ingredients arrives from Theo Nott.
“He's deep in it,” Malfoy says when Hermione wonders out loud how on earth Nott obtained them. “And he managed to make friends with one of their supply masters. We have to be careful about what we ask from him, but if you really needed something, Theo could get it to you. Just don't spread it around—knowing Potter and Weasley, they'd probably ask for treacle tart.”
The jibe doesn't sound quite as sharp as it should, though, and when Hermione looks at Malfoy more carefully, she sees the violet shadows that have taken up residence under his eyes and the fine lines that have begun to etch themselves around the corners of his mouth. He's always been quiet around the camp, the lone Slytherin in the midst of a crowd of Gryffindors practicing their spellcasting, Ravenclaws getting in impassioned theoretical arguments, and Hufflepuffs perfecting team evasive maneuvers that always seem to involve colorful puffs of smoke, but last night, he couldn't even muster up the energy to insult the Weasley sweaters.
“Is someone in trouble?” she asks. It's a tremendously inadequate expression.
“None of my friends think they're going to make it out of this war alive. And do you know what the terrible thing is, Granger? They're probably right,” he says quietly. His laugh is hollow as bone.
Hermione covers his hand with her own before she can think better of it, lacing her fingers through his, and squeezes tight. There's a warmth seeping under her skin from where their hands are intertwined and she really should let go. She should get up and walk away before this strange sensation sinks even further into her bones, before she has a chance to become attached to it. But she doesn't.
Two days later, Draco gets a message from Daphne Greengrass and nearly breaks all the bones in his hand smashing his fist into a tree. “They're onto her and Pansy,” he says to the war council, two red spots of color burning high on his cheekbones. “She doesn't say it outright but she knows that they don't have long left.”
“So we'll get them out,” Hermione says and the room erupts. Ron's shouting and pacing, Ginny is offering to hex anyone who needs hexing, Harry is peppering her with questions, Neville is talking over it intently with Luna, and Malfoy...Malfoy just stares at her with wide eyes. She stares back and tilts her chin higher. Something stretched tight inside her snapped when she heard the news about Daphne. And the funny thing is, she never really knew Daphne Greengrass. It isn't like it's Ginny, who she's spent years staying up late with at the Burrow or Neville, who patiently practiced waltzing with her for weeks before the Yule Ball or Ron and Harry, who feel like pieces of her after all these years. But she remembers the slim blonde Slytherin carefully guiding the first-years through the dungeons and working out Arithmancy problems with a determined twist to her mouth and a mug of tea at the table next to Hermione's in the library. She remembers the coded request Malfoy let her glimpse, where Daphne asked him to get her little sister Astoria out if anything happened to her.
And she remembers Pansy Parkinson, who sneered at her and mocked her for six years worth of school. Pansy Parkinson, with her sharp tongue and pug nose. Pansy Parkinson, who smuggled Muggle-borns over to France in trunks full of designer clothing that she claimed she was sending back to Paris to have redone and poisoned Antonin Dolohov with a cup of tea. Pansy Parkinson, who has watched her entire family disappear behind Death Eater masks. It's the Slytherins' war too and Hermione refuses to let anyone else die for it.
“We can end it,” she tells Harry. There's a hot, tense feeling that makes her feel slightly lightheaded creeping through her stomach and she can practically hear her pulse surging under her skin. The Hermione of three years ago would have called it excitement with a dash of apprehension. The Hermione of now knows that excitement is a word that belongs to birthday parties and Christmas presents, to bright primary colors and sprinkles on top of cupcakes. What she feels now is something significantly bloodier. “We get them, we get the other Slytherins, we get the snake and the diadem, and then we get Tom Riddle.”
“Daphne and Pansy have been poisoning the snake,” Malfoy says. Everyone's eyes snap to him, except for Harry who just grins smugly. Malfoy must have run the plan by him before he let Daphne and Pansy go through it. “In slow degrees so no one notices anything. It was Pansy's idea.”
“That's bloody brilliant,” Ron says slowly, eyes narrowed and one freckled hand tapping against the other. Hermione recognizes that look from all of the games of wizard chess he beat her at—he's running through strategies, deploying imaginary troops, locking everyone into place for the endgame. “Have you got anyone who can help Neville get to the diadem?”
“Theo and Blaise are both stationed at Hogwarts. They can get him in and out, but not without compromising their own covers—there's a chance they'll be able to run but--”
“So we take them in too. Start calling your spies in,” Harry tells Malfoy. “All of them. If we end this, we end it with all four houses together.”
Draco Malfoy smiles. Something stubbornly pushes its way into Hermione's heart.
Four days ago, Neville arrived back at the camp with two Slytherins, a destroyed diadem, and bad news. The Death Eaters have warded the castle so only those of pure blood can enter and when she hears the news, she excuses herself so she can go into the woods and hurl hexes at an unsuspecting tree. Hogwarts is supposed to be a home for every child with magic, whatever kind of blood runs through their veins, whether they've been running around on toy brooms since they were three or felt the first surge of magic crackle through their veins when they found their wands. And because the blood ward means she'll have to stay behind from the raid to kill Riddle, she can't even curse any of the bastards who did it into oblivion.
At first, she argues with Harry, trying to find a way around it, refusing to let her friends fight without her. But it's Ron, always a general at heart, who finally tells her why she needs to stay behind. It's not just the blood ward. If things go wrong—if they don't make it back—Hermione will be the one who saves everyone else. The one who tells everyone else's story. She's not entirely sure how she feels about it.
He finds her the morning of the ambush in the quiet hours before dawn. She hadn't wanted to say her goodbyes but she did it anyway, throwing her arms tightly around each of her friends and whispering how much she loves them. So now she's sitting in the woods, knees drawn up to her chest, and trying to breathe.
“Hermione,” he says from behind her and his voice snags and catches on the syllables of her name.
“Are you—are you all leaving now?” she rises and turns to face him and—Oh. Oh. His face is clearer than she's ever seen it and his eyes might devastate her if she let them.
“Soon. I just wanted—I wanted to say thank you. I mean if I don't make it back. Or if I do. I--”
He doesn't get to finish his sentence because she kisses him. She doesn't know why she does it. (Maybe she does.)
She kisses him, hot and fierce and gasping. She kisses him like she wants to leave her mark branded on him in red lipstick. And she kisses him like it's the only time she'll ever do it.
“Draco,” she says. “Don't you dare die.”
He nods dazedly.
They all come back. Bloody and bruised and battered, yes, but they all come back. Draco finds her after the aftermath, when the wounded have been sent to the infirmary and they've started breaking down the camp to move in the morning.
“So tell me,” he asks quietly. “Did you only kiss me because you thought I was going to die?”
“No,” she says. “Did you kiss me back because you thought you were going to?”
“No.” Draco takes a breath, shifts back and forth. “This—you know this is never going to be easy?”
“Good then.” Hermione says firmly and reaches over to take his hand in hers. “I never said I was interested in easy.”