By Blade or Fire
The battlefield reeks of smoke and blood—thick, suffocating, embedding itself in Hermione’s very bones. Every breath she takes is laced with the acrid scent of burning flesh, every heartbeat a frantic drum against the chaos that surrounds her. The world is nothing but noise, a cacophony of screams and spells colliding like shattered glass. And yet, she no longer flinches. She no longer hesitates. Hesitation is a death sentence.
The war has been raging for over a year now. A year of blood, of loss, of fighting tooth and nail for every inch of ground. The war had begun with something like hope. They had believed, in the beginning, that it would end quickly. That Voldemort would fall as he should have all those years ago. But time had proven them all fools. They had underestimated him. Every day he seemed to grow more powerful, his reach stretching further, his Death Eaters multiplying like shadows, fear fuelling their ranks as much as conviction. The Order fought back with everything they had, but it was never enough. Too many had died already. Too many names spoken in grief-stricken whispers, too many bodies buried under hastily marked graves or left where they fell, because there was no time for mourning. And still, they fought on, because there was no other choice. The Order, once a bastion of resistance, was dwindling under the weight of grief and exhaustion, their numbers thinning, their morale a brittle thing.
At first, they had held on to the notion of restraint, convinced that they could win without sinking to the same depravity as the enemy. But war had no patience for morality. It hadn’t taken long for the Unforgivables to come into play. First, a whisper, an act of desperation. Then, a necessity. The moment it became clear that mercy meant death, that hesitation cost lives, the lines between right and wrong blurred into something unrecognizable. Even Hermione, who had spent her life believing in justice and righteousness, found herself uttering curses she never imagined she would dare to speak. And she was not the only one. The Order, once a force of resistance built on principles, had become something darker, something desperate. There was no glory in it—only survival.
The battlefield had become their reality. Days and nights blurred together in an endless cycle of fear and exhaustion. They had fought in the streets, in the forests, in the very homes they once considered safe. They had fought in the ruins of Hogwarts, in the corridors where they had once studied and laughed and been young. There were no victories, only temporary respites before the next wave of violence. And with each battle, Voldemort’s grip tightened.
There had been arguments, protests—Harry had fought against it with everything he had. Loudly. Fervently. He and Ron were gone, chasing myths, searching for the key to Voldemort’s downfall while the rest of them bled in the mud. And so his words, however passionate, had lost their weight. Those who fought day after day, those who woke each morning knowing it could be their last, had stopped pretending they could afford honour. Hermione had been among them.
In the beginning, she had stayed behind. Worked in the infirmary, tending to the wounded, mending bones, wiping away blood, and whispering reassurances that she wasn’t sure were true. She had spent endless nights watching friends and allies die, hands shaking as she tried to save them, failing more often than she succeeded. But it hadn’t been enough. The casualties grew by the day, the injuries more brutal, and Hermione had been overwhelmed by a crushing sense of guilt. She was wasting her talents. She wasn’t doing enough. She had been drowning in helplessness, in the suffocating guilt of knowing that for every person she saved, countless others perished.
It wasn’t enough to mend the broken. She needed to prevent the breaking. And so, with a clenched jaw and unshakable resolve, she had taken up her wand and stepped onto the battlefield.
And it had changed her.
She had thought fighting would make her feel stronger. That being out there, facing the enemy directly, would ease the weight of helplessness that had been crushing her. It hadn’t. If anything, it had only hollowed her out further. But she kept fighting, because what else was there to do?
She had heard the stories—of how people changed, how war stripped them down to their most primal instincts. She had read about it in books, seen echoes of it in history. But she had not understood, not truly, until she found herself on the battlefield with a wand in her hand and death in her eyes. The first time she cast the Cruciatus Curse, her hands had shaken so violently she thought she might drop her wand. The second time, they didn’t. And by the third, it felt like second nature. The guilt was still there, lurking, but it no longer choked her. There was no time for guilt. There was only the fight.
Now, she stands amongst the wreckage, her wand steady in her hand, but her pulse pounds like a war drum in her ears. The Order is scattered, pushed back, fighting desperately to hold the line, but the Death Eaters keep coming. And at the heart of it all—cold, methodical, relentless—is him.
Draco Malfoy.
Hermione sees him before he sees her.
He moves through the war-torn field like a spectre, fluid and precise, untouched despite the chaos. His robes, once a mark of wealth and privilege, are now a shroud of death, black and slick with battle. The guise he wears hides nothing—his expression is carved from marble, from ice, from something too sharp to melt. He has become Voldemort’s blade, cutting through their ranks without pause, without remorse. His wand strikes without hesitation, his curses landing with deadly accuracy. He is no longer the boy from Hogwarts. He is something else entirely—He kills as if it means nothing, as if it is nothing.
And Hermione had heard the stories. While tending to the injured, she had listened to the murmurs of his brutality. The tales of how he cut through the battlefield like a reaper, how he left nothing but bodies in his wake. Some feared him more than the Dark Lord himself, for Voldemort was a nightmare, but Malfoy was real. And yet, no matter how many times she heard his name spoken in fear, her mind betrayed her with the image of a different Draco—one whose lips had once brushed against her own in a darkened corridor, whose hands had once clutched her arms like she was the only thing keeping him from falling apart. The past and present refused to reconcile, leaving her stranded between memory and reality.
A part of her had chosen to fight just to see it for herself. To understand how the boy who had once touched her like a secret could become this.
And yet, for all the battles, all the skirmishes, neither of them had ever faced the other. They had seen each other from across burning fields and shattered ruins. Their gazes had locked through the haze of war, but neither had moved, as if both were waiting, delaying the inevitable. Avoiding the truth of what it would mean to stand opposite one another, to lift their wands and cast the killing blow.
But tonight, there is no more running.
Draco turns. Their eyes meet across the battlefield, and for a breathless moment, the war ceases to exist. She knows what he sees when he looks at her. She is not the same girl he once knew. She is not soft, not righteous, not untouched by the dark. And yet, he hesitates.
She raises her wand first. The spell poised on her lips is dark, cruel—one she would have never dared to utter before. But before she can release it, he moves.
They collide in a violent clash of magic, spells ricocheting, their duel a flurry of fire and fury. The air between them crackles, thick with something neither of them will name. There is no room for words, and yet, words find them anyway.
"Still trying to save the world, Granger?" Draco sneers, his voice cutting even as he deflects her attack with a flick of his wrist sending her stumbling back. "Tell me—does it ever get tiring?"
"Not as tiring as running, Malfoy," she counters, her hex slicing through the air, grazing his sleeve. "Is that what this is? Running from yourself?"
The smirk he wears falters, and something flickers across his face—brief, fleeting. Then it is gone. "You don’t know anything about me."
Her jaw tightens. "I know exactly who you are."
And she does. She sees him, even now, even like this. The tension in his grip, the exhaustion in his eyes, the fractures beneath his carefully crafted mask. And for the first time, she wonders—wonders if he’s as lost in this war as she is.
But wondering is a luxury she can’t afford.
The next curse comes too fast, and before she can react, she is on the ground, his wand at her throat. His breath is uneven, his hand steady, but only just.
For a long moment, neither of them move. The world spins around them—explosions, screams, the sharp crack of Apparition—but here, now, it’s just them.
And then, like a dam breaking, it crashes over her. The last time they had been this close. The last time his breath had ghosted over her skin. The last time his touch had burned rather than threatened.
A candlelit library, the air thick with parchment and dust, his fingers ghosting over the pages of a book as if afraid to touch her instead. The way he watched her then—like she was something just out of reach, something fragile, something forbidden. The unspoken weight of it all pressing against them like the turning of a final page, a story unfinished yet inevitable.
The stolen moment by the lake, moonlight fracturing over the water, their reflections shifting with every ripple. His voice had been raw, hoarse from a night of silence or from all the things he refused to say. He had looked at her then, truly looked at her, as though memorising the shape of her, the weight of her presence, like he already knew she would be something he’d have to leave behind. And when he had whispered her name, it was barely a sound at all—just a breath, just a shiver in the cold.
A hurried embrace in the shadow of a ruined tower, the scent of fire and fear thick in the air between them. The battle had raged around them, the screams of the dying carried by the wind, but for a single, stolen second, she had let herself believe that none of it mattered. That she could stay there, against the jagged stone, his hand gripping the back of her neck, their bodies too close, too desperate.
It had been the very beginning of the war—before the weight of it settled into her bones, before she understood what it would make of them. Before she had seen the way battle sharpens people into weapons, hones them down to something unrecognisable. Back then, she had still believed in choices, in something beyond fate and bloodlines and the inevitability of their opposing sides. Back then, she hadn’t yet realised that whatever their roles in this play were, they would never end the final scene clutching one another’s hands.
He had whispered something against her temple—something she couldn’t remember, or maybe something she had forced herself to forget. But she remembers the way it felt. Like the last moment before the fall.
Now, here, with the dirt beneath her and his wand at her throat, those memories feel like a cruel joke. A life lived by different versions of them, ones who had still believed in choices, in something beyond this war, beyond bloodshed and ruin. But choices were a luxury they had long since lost.
"Do it," she whispers. She doesn’t know if it’s a challenge or a plea.
Draco’s wand wavers, just barely. Just enough.
His jaw clenches. "Not tonight, Granger."
And then he’s gone, swallowed by smoke and shadow, leaving her gasping in the dirt, her heart pounding against her ribs like it’s trying to escape.
She doesn’t know whether to feel relief or disappointment.
But she does know one thing—this war isn’t over. And neither are they.
As she rises to her feet, wincing as blood trickles from a fresh wound on her arm, the realization settles in with an unsettling weight—this undefined force between them is not merely lingering but evolving, sharpening into something perilous. It is no longer just an undercurrent of the past or a relic of distant memory. It has become something more insidious, something that neither distance nor war nor the brutality of their circumstances can seem to sever. And perhaps, it never could be.