Chapter 2
Harry was the first to move. His movement was lightning fast, frantically looking around and barely missing smacking his head on the table.
“Hermione!” He sat up to face her. “Oh, please be okay.”
Deciding this was a good enough time to start her acting career, she opened her eyes. “Harry? What happened? Where are we?”
“I don’t know, but what do you remember?” He was speaking fast, and didn’t take stock of the state of the room. Mumbling to himself and then turning to Ron, who still hadn’t woken up. Hermione moved to the other side of Ron. He should’ve woken up by now, so she shook his shoulder lightly. Movement behind his eyelids suggested he was just a bit slower to consciousness, and Hermione sighed in relief.
“The last thing I remember is seeing Dumbledore unarmed, speaking to someone,” Hermione didn’t know if Harry had seen Malfoy or not, “but before I could see who it was, I was stunned.” Harry moved to the door and looked out, “Get Ron, we have to go find Dumbledore.”
Once Ron was fully awake and standing, the trio made their way out and down the hall. Students and staff were wandering the halls now, all trying to piece together the carnage that lay in the castle. A scream followed by a thud from outside sent Harry running, Ron following.
What is it with these boys taking off, not worried about who is following them? She wasn’t expecting a response, it was her thought after all, but there it was. Malfoy’s voice answered her with livid tone: Which one of them left you behind for the second time tonight?
Not bothering to respond, Hermione took off after Harry and Ron. When they came to the courtyard, the body of Albus Dumbledore lay undisturbed by the masses who gathered outside. Harry wasted no time running to his side. Hermione held back, looking for one of the professors, spotting McGonagall breathing heavily to her right. Without thinking, Hermione illuminated her wand and raised it with her wand arm.
From the darkness of the night, students and faculty raised their wands in respect for the fallen wizard. Harry’s sobs were the only sound that could be heard. In the distance, a fire was stirring across the grounds. But the only thing Hermione could focus on was the body of a great wizard twenty paces from her.
One week later
After the death of Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts closed early, OWL and NEWT exams to be held next week. Hermione looked around her childhood room, boxes stacked up ready to go to the charity shop, books shrunk and stuffed into her mother’s old purse.
Jean and Matthew Granger haven’t been to this house since the summer Voldemort returned. Jean and Matthew Granger didn’t exist anymore after that. It was too much of a risk to leave her parents unprotected in the darkness that was spreading across Britain, so she modified their memories and sent them away the moment she returned home from Cedric Diggory’s funeral. The house was slowly packed up when Hermione came home from school, but it was mostly her memories of childhood that remained. She took pieces of her parents before modifying their memories: her dad’s favorite shirt, her mother’s purse, and the fluffy burgundy blanket her mum bought when they found out she was sorted into Gryffindor. Keeping herself on track, she placed all her books she couldn’t take with her should she need to run into a box and labelled it Grimmuald Place, then shrunk it, and sent it through the floo she connected last year.
Hermione was still reeling from the events in the Astronomy Tower, but had yet to hear from Snape. Malfoy checked in once a day to see if she was safe, but she never responded. She wasn’t sure if she was able to shut on his access to her thoughts, but she tried to use her limited knowledge of Occlumency to make sure he wasn’t getting her thoughts all the time.
When she was finished sorting through boxes, she called a cab to help her move the boxes to a charity shop. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a silvery doe standing in her backyard.
“Look for a doe in the next week.” Snape.
Grabbing her wand, she tossed some trainers on and walked outside. When she approached, the doe started speaking to her in the bored monotonous voice of her potions professor: “I should hope you aren’t wandering about unarmed. We will be coming to your childhood home in the next twenty-four hours. Do not be alarmed. You will get your answers at last.”
We? Oh, gods she was going to have to face Draco Malfoy in her childhood muggle home after she just packed it up after two years of it laying abandoned. The doe fizzled out into a mist and she walked back inside. Hermione was supposed to go to the Burrow tonight, but she will have to reschedule that and meet them tomorrow. Now that she was seventeen, she was hoping Molly would not disapprove of her joining the Order of the Phoenix, even if she was returning to school in September for her Seventh Year.
She grabbed a parchment and quill from her bag, the one she performed an undetectable extension charm on halfway through sixth year, and began to write two letters. The first to Ron, telling him her parents wished to spend another day in the States before they came back home. A lie, but no one knew what she had done to her parents for their protection, so it was a necessary lie. The second was to Harry.
Harry,
I hope the weather is treating you nicely. My holiday in the States is going swimmingly, but our flight is being rescheduled for twenty-four hours from now.
I will land at precisely at 10 pm tomorrow, underground. Missing you terribly, but I did get you a lovely birthday present!
Hermione.
She wrote the letters as though she was actually travelling for two purposes; the first was so that if intercepted, no one would know she was home. The second was to protect the lie that her parents were with her. She couldn’t have Death Eaters intercepting letters and finding out that she was to arrive at the home of the Weasleys, known members of the Order of the Phoenix, or that she was by herself in a muggle neighborhood. Harry had given her Hedwig to care for, since his uncle was atrocious to her, so she attached the two letters to Hedwig’s leg, gave her a treat, and gave her instructions to go to Ron first, then to stay with Harry for the night before flying to the Burrow.
The doorbell rang.
Hermione stilled. Snape’s Patronus hadn’t even been gone twenty minutes, it couldn’t be him. She crept towards the door, steering clear of all the parts of the floor that could make it known someone was home. There wasn’t a car in the drive since her parents had sold it before she sent them away, but from what she knew since the house had been abandoned, no one ever came to this door. There were wards against the muggles who got too interested in the house that never sells and no one ever goes in. In their minds, the Grangers packed up and left without their weird daughter.
Peering out the front window, she saw a man wearing black robes. His face was hidden behind the bush that had slightly overgrown, but Hermione knew it was a Death Eater. Muggles didn’t wear robes. Without thinking twice, she called for Malfoy in her mind.
Death Eater at my muggle home.
The doorbell rang again.
If he were to come inside, he would find a house with no furnishings and no trace of humans left. Crookshanks, her beloved cat, had been staying with the Weasleys since she started staying there over the summers after fourth year. He was looking for her. She moved as quick and quiet as she could back up the stairs to her bedroom. Grabbing her mother’s purse and a new jacket, she focused on a spot she could apparate to where Snape and Malfoy could meet her. The Forest of Dean. It was a spot she visited with her parents when she was younger. They would camp and swim in the stream nearby. She concentrated and when she felt the sensation behind her navel, the front door to her childhood home was blasted open and a pair of shoes clicked along the hardwood flooring downstairs. Before they hit the stairs, Hermione was gone.
Birds chirping in the distance greeted her, and she opened her eyes to see the forest as peaceful as she remembered it. Hermione stood in a small clearing, unsure how she managed to remember a place like this from a time before Hogwarts. A twig snapped to her left and she didn’t hesitate to throw her wand up, a stunning spell on the tip of her tongue. A voice stopped her from doing so.
“Frankly, when someone is screaming at you in your own mind, one would think you’d notice and give a reply.” Malfoy’s tone was dripping with so much sarcasm she wanted to smack her head against a tree.
“How did you know I would go here?” That was the first thing she asked the boy who bullied her and her best friends, the boy who in all likelihood murdered their headmaster not even a week ago.
He tapped a slender hand to his temple with a smirk. “Your occluding was stellar the last few days, I thought you went mute finally.” He stepped out into the clearing from the tree he was leaning against. “But imagine my surprise when the first time I hear your bossy voice, it was to tell me a Death Eater was at your home.”
“Will Snape be joining this meeting?”
“Yes, but we are not meeting in a forest you apparated to in a panic,” he held his hand out for her to take. “We will be going to a secure Malfoy property in a different country.”
Hermione folded her arms across her chest. She was not going anywhere with him until he gave her some answers. How could he think she would trust him after he let Death Eaters into the castle full of innocents and she wasn’t even sure if he was a murderer. His face lost all pleasantries the instant the thought flitted through her mind. She slapped her makeshift occlumency shields up.
“You’ll get your answers if you just follow me.”
“You’re not seventeen yet. How can you apparate?” Malfoy gave a small smile.
“Been keeping up on me, have you?” When she narrowed her eyes, he continued. “I turned seventeen at the beginning of June, passed my apparition test the following day. The same day you did.”
“I’m still not going with you to a location I have never been.” Malfoy mumbled something to himself, something along the lines of her being bloody difficult. In her mind, she heard his thought: At least she is still brilliant to not go somewhere without verification, unlike Potter. “You know I can hear you even if you don’t talk right?” She snapped, not particularly interested in hearing him bad mouth, or think, her friend. Even if he is technically right.
A small smirk danced across his sharp features. She slapped her shields back up.
“Fine, if you won’t take my word for it, then call for Severus.” He said it with such conviction that she wouldn’t be able to with no owl or means of communication. She mirrored his signature smirk at him.
“Expecto Patronum.” From her wand burst her little otter. The otter made her way around Malfoy in a dance, mocking him slightly. When she stopped in front of Hermione, she delivered the message. “Go to Severus Snape and ask him to follow you to a spot. Relay this message: The Forest of Dean, five minutes.” Malfoy watched unguarded fascination as the otter trotted away into the trees.
“You can cast a powerful Patronus.” It wasn’t a question, but it also wasn’t a compliment.
“Yes, Harry taught me. Although I have a slightly stronger one that can communicate messages than he or Ron do.” With nothing left to say to him, she began making her way to her left, where she thought the river would be. She didn’t expect him to follow, but she knew he would. So they walked in a tense silence. She tried to keep her mind blank, no thoughts that were integral to their war efforts. When she heard the sound of rushing water, she moved behind a tree to open her little bag.
A small smile situated itself on her face when her mother’s favorite primrose scented perfume was still attached to the inside of the bag. Reaching down into it, she grabbed a blanket—not her family blanket, one she was saving for Harry or Ron to use if they needed to—and then closed the bag. She stepped out from behind the tree, right into the body of Malfoy.
Hermione looked up at him with a frown. “You know when a lady is trying to find some privacy, it’s considered rude to hover around her hiding spot?”
Malfoy shrugged and stepped back. His eyes caught on the blanket in her hand. “Where did you get that from?”
“Thin air” came her tart reply. She moved to a spot that was clear of roots and placed the blanket on the forest floor. When Malfoy didn’t move to sit next to her, she grinned. She couldn’t imagine the pureblood sitting on a blanket in the forest, and just the thought made a giggle escaped her.
“Are you laughing at me?” He glared at her.
She shrugged. Shifting so she could lay on her back, she decided she could ask at least one question before Snape came. “Why were you more concerned with my safety that night?”
Malfoy moved to lean against the tree across from her. He didn’t say anything for a while, so she just let her mental shields fall. If he couldn’t say it out loud, then maybe he would feel more comfortable divulging information where no one could trace it except a legilimens. “I wasn’t.”
When he didn’t give any sign that he was going to continue, mentally or verbally, she closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the water and the surrounding forest. The crack of apparition jolted her awake.
“You fell asleep for ten minutes.” Malfoy.
She had let her guard down around someone she knew could cause her immense harm. Stupid. If it came down to running from the Ministry and skipping Hogwarts all together, she could not let her guard down like that.
Snape appeared from behind a tree. He nodded at Malfoy and turned to face Hermione. As she was still laying on the blanket, his lips turned down into a frown. She supposed that was as much of a greeting as she would get, so she stood up. “Miss Granger, I had hoped to meet you and Mister Malfoy at a secure location, not in the middle of the woods,” Snape said.
Hermione brushed the invisible dirt from her clothing in an effort to hide her blush. “Yes, well excuse me for having a brain in my head and not going to a ‘secure location’ with someone I do not trust during a time of war.”
Malfoy coughed. She couldn’t tell if it was to hide his amusement or disdain for being labeled untrustworthy to her. Did she care if she hurt his feelings? Not entirely, but she knew it didn’t feel good when people don’t trust you.
“Yes, well,” Snape began, mocking her previous words, “I would hope you would find it in your logical heart to follow me to this location as I am sure you have a billion questions in your head that have no answer in a book.” She glared at her potions master. Malfoy actually laughed.
“Fine, but I will side apparate with you.” Snape raised an eyebrow, but held his arm out for her to take. Hermione grabbed his elbow and could barely feel the pull at her navel before her feet hit the soft carpeting of a room. She looked around, dropping Snape’s arm as quickly as she had grabbed it.
They appeared to be in a sitting room. The walls were a light blue and the furniture was various shades of dark blues. She went to go sit on the dark blue arm chair when the sound of apparition forced her to jump. Only one time would she allow her guard to fall and she had already made that mistake today. Malfoy had appeared to the right of her chair. Rolling her eyes, she sat down in the opposite chair simply to spite him. Her back was to the door, but she kept her ears open for any sounds. Snape started speaking from the same spot they appeared in. “
What exactly did you get from your conversation with Dumbledore before he died?”
Hermione glared. “You mean before he was murdered? Nothing. The man gave nothing away except that Malfoy wanted something from me and there is a prophecy.”
“Did you tell her the contents of the prophecy with him present?” Snape turned to face Malfoy. The blond shook his head, eyes on her the entire time. “Good.”
She whipped her head to the professor. “Good? How is that good? I know nothing of what happened that night other than somehow I need to keep a secret and that a headmaster I looked up to was murdered in cold blood for some maniac’s gain.”
“Granger, did your grief blind you that much to the greatness of Albus Dumbledore?” Malfoy spat at her. The venom behind his voice was reminiscent of when he first called her a mudblood. She recoiled slightly, causing him to soften his tone. “Your beloved headmaster was going to give you to me in exchange for something from my aunt’s vault at Gringotts.”