A/N: And we're back to Dramione! I'd forgotten how much I enjoy writing these two.

This is a little different to my previous Dramione fics. In actual fact, I'd say this has been my most ambitious tale to date. How can you tell a love story when one of your characters keeps dying? The story was written for the Hawthorne & Vine If the Prompt Fits fest 2017, in response to a prompt by sinopia (basically this story's summary). It's a War AU, and picks up with our heroes searching for a way to trace Horcruxes. Hopefully, any changes to canon will come across as you read it.

I do hope you enjoy this story. As usual, I am just playing with these characters, and all comments and critiques are welcome!

CHAPTER I

Just one more.

Ever since she was a little girl, Hermione had always wanted just one more. One more story. One more chapter. One more page.

Her mum would smile and roll her eyes but acquiesce, the two of them tucked up in bed together, munching on chocolate fingers. Years later, her dad would frown and threaten no pudding for a week if she didn't put that torch down and go to sleep.

And her late night reading had continued right through her time at Hogwarts, although then her books were no longer whimsical tales of enchanted trees and ginger beer, but fat textbooks and tomes about a world she'd never known: books Harry and Ron found deathly boring but which she devoured hour after hour.

Even now—now her reading was for more desperate purposes, now their very lives depended on the information she could unearth—she couldn't help it. She read and read. No matter the day. No matter the hour. No matter how little sleep she'd gotten the night before, or the night before that.

And evidently, it drove Draco Malfoy nuts.

He scowled at her from the sofa, where he lay flat on his back, blond hair in disarray, dark smudges beneath his eyes. And Hermione sympathised with him—she did! They'd been at this for months and with no luck—but this was their assignment, there were people depending on them, and she'd be damned if she let it beat her.

"If you pick up another book, Granger, so help me," he threatened as she reached towards the teetering pile beside her.

"Just one more," she promised, "and then bed."

He'd perked up at that and arched a brow she'd known him long enough to read.

"Our own beds," she said blandly, flipping open the book.

He sighed, dramatically and with what she was sure was feigned disappointment (because how could it not be?), and selected another book from the top of his own stack.

They read in companionable silence for a while, the only sound the rhythmic ticking of the old grandfather clock, the rustle of pages turning and the distant crash of waves. Her hair, pinned up haphazardly with her wand, tickled the back of her neck, and she adjusted it, moving the book with her head so she didn't have to interrupt her reading.

"As enthralling as you hoped?" Draco asked drily. A glance told her he was watching her, a teasing lilt to his mouth.

"Captivating," she said, although it wasn't. Not particularly.

"Let me guess," he said. "It's a step-by-step guide to defeating You-Know-Who?"

If only it were so easy. She ignored him, turning the page and reading on. Unfortunately, she should have learnt by now that that only spurred him on even more.

"A top secret recipe for the perfect Victoria sponge? Ten steps to pleasing your man?"

"You've got your own book." She gave him a stern frown. "Now be quiet and read it."

He smothered a laugh but did as he was told, and enjoying the blessed silence, Hermione concentrated on her book once more.

It still wasn't particularly riveting. The back cover had promised an in-depth study of the darkest spells, but compared to the Dark Lord's magic—terrible magic she'd been unfortunate enough to witness first-hand—it was nothing but child's play.

With a sigh, she glanced up—perhaps Draco was having more luck—and realised he had his eyes closed, both hands tucked behind his head as the book hovered, open, above him.

So that's why he'd gone so bloody quiet.

"Have you forgotten how reading works?" she asked, tetchy with tiredness.

A smile stretched across his face as, eyes still shut, he gave a lazy wave of his hand. The book turned a page.

"Not at all," was all the irritating sod actually said, but his stubbornly closed eyes gave Hermione a flash of wicked inspiration. She tugged her wand from her hair and pointed it straight at him.

"Finite," she said, and the book came crashing down. Right on his head.

"Right," he said, shooting upright with a glower. "I'm done."

"Spoilsport," she said mildly, twisting her hair back up and pinning it in place with her wand. "You haven't even finished the book."

"There's nothing in here," he said, flipping through it. "Just some old, irrelevant wizard pontificating on the implications of immortality." He paused, suddenly, then turned back a page.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing. I…" He turned another page, lips moving silently as he read. Hermione pursed her own in annoyance.

"Malfoy."

When he still didn't reply, she snapped her book shut to scowl at him—"Malfoy, I swear…"—then cut herself off as his eyes, bright with victory, darted up to meet hers.

"I think I've found something," he said.

...

The war, Hermione had realised, would never end so long as Voldemort was still alive. It had taken them an embarrassingly long time to work out why the blasted man, if he could be called a man any longer, was so ludicrously impossible to kill.

Horcruxes. Six of them, to be exact.

Harry had destroyed one, quite unknowingly, in their second year at Hogwarts. And before Dumbledore's death, almost five years ago now (Merlin, how time flew), the older wizard had destroyed another.

That left four, not including the Dark Lord himself, and as the country slipped further into the Death Eaters' clutches, Hermione despaired of ever finding the others.

Which was why she and Draco were here, tucked away in this sand-swept safe house on the Dorset coast, a new stack of books delivered to them daily.

Their simple task?

Devise a way to trace the Horcruxes and destroy the Dark Lord once and for all.